Elevate Your Health: 4 Lessons From 150 Podcast Episodes

Have you ever followed a protocol that worked brilliantly for someone else — a diet, a fasting window, an ice bath routine — and found it did very little for you? Or worse, left you feeling flatter than when you started?

I've now recorded well over a hundred and thirty episodes of me&my health up, heading toward a hundred and fifty. I've interviewed chiropractors, physiotherapists, acupuncturists, kinesiologists, fitness coaches, exercise physiologists and mindset specialists. In this episode I stepped back and asked myself a simple question: what have I actually learned? Four things kept surfacing, and together they've changed how I practise.

Lesson one: awareness opens doors you didn't know existed

The first gift of all these conversations has been discovering therapies I had no idea were out there.

Art therapy for mental health was one. I'd assumed it meant sitting down and drawing. It's actually a clinical practice — a qualified therapist uses art as the vehicle to draw expression out of you, reaching things that conversation sometimes can't.

Sound therapy was another. The idea that struck me is the contrast between the low-frequency noise of modern life — engines, motors, traffic, sounds that travel and linger — and the high-frequency sounds of nature: birdsong, breaking waves, running water, sounds that arrive and dissipate. The suggestion is that high-frequency sound helps settle the nervous system, which matters because healing, digestion and rejuvenation all happen in the parasympathetic "rest and digest" state. This is an emerging area rather than settled science, but as a prompt to get more nature-sound and less engine-noise into your week, I find it a useful one.

I also learned about vagus nerve stimulation — gentle electrical stimulation at the ear to activate the parasympathetic branch of the nervous system. Most of us live sympathetic-dominant: busy, switched on, in low-grade fight-or-flight. That imbalance shows up as anxiety, low mood, and very often as digestive trouble, because gut function and mood are so tightly linked. And I was introduced to red and near-infrared light therapy, which appears to support cellular function and tissue recovery, with research emerging across skin, brain and physiology.

You don't need to try all of these. The point is that if conventional approaches haven't worked for you, the map is bigger than you think — and simply knowing that is the first step.

Lesson two: more is not better — find your Goldilocks dose

This is the lesson I learned the hard way, and it's the one I'd most like you to take away.

Across every one of those modalities — sound frequencies, light wavelengths, vagus nerve stimulation settings — there's an optimal range, not a "more is better" curve. Not too little, not too much. Just right for your body and your goal.

My own cold-water exposure is a perfect example. I turned it into a mental challenge: how long can I stay in? And while it was helping my digestion, my muscles began tightening up. I ended up with neck stiffness, a sore back, and noticeably less flexibility and mobility — all from overdoing the cold. Same story with the sauna. Hottest setting, longest session, surely better? No. Just dehydrated, tired and run down.

I've seen this in my endurance years too. I did a lot of marathon and Ironman racing, and when I eventually saw a heart specialist it became clear that volume of endurance work had taken a toll. You can look extremely healthy and still have pushed your body to an extreme that it will eventually bill you for.

Anything taken to an extreme drives the body out of balance. The question is never "how much can I handle?" It's "what's the right dose for me?"

Lesson three: you are genuinely unique — stop copying the influencer

This follows directly. There is no one-size-fits-all in health, and the reason isn't motivational fluff — it's biological.

Your gut microbiome is distinct from anyone else's, and it's shaped in part by your ancestry and the foods your lineage ate. I've had real success in clinic simply by returning clients to their ancestral way of eating. If someone's family is Brazilian, getting them back to traditional Brazilian foods often works beautifully, because their gut flora is equipped to break those foods down and extract the nutrients. Eating a Western diet their system has no established capacity for is where the bloating, the discomfort and the fatigue start.

It's why one person thrives on a paleo approach and another doesn't, why intermittent fasting transforms one person's energy and leaves another depleted. And it's why bouncing from diet to diet is so damaging — constant dieting is a direct route to a disordered relationship with food.

So when you see a celebrity or influencer getting a result, remember three things. Their genome isn't yours. Their background isn't yours. And their goal may not even be your goal.

Lesson four: health is holistic — and driven by your values

Here's the other thing about the person whose results you admire: whatever protocol they're promoting is almost never the whole picture. They're also sleeping well, moving regularly, recovering properly and managing stress. Nobody gets there from keto alone.

The most profound thing I encountered across two years of podcasting, though, came from studying the work of Dr John Demartini before interviewing him. The idea is that our highest values emerge from our biggest voids. If you've struggled with your health, health becomes a high value. If money has been scarce and matters to you, wealth becomes one.

It explained my own life to me. I was an unhealthy child with real health challenges, and that void created the drive that has me doing this work today. My illness has ended up serving you.

What follows is the useful part. When you live aligned to your genuine values — rather than your parents' values, or your industry's, or the ones you absorbed from social media — you come into balance. Your nervous system settles. You're authentic, and being authentic is good for you. Since I oriented my life around what actually inspires me, I've had more energy, better emotional regulation and better health. My own top three values are my family, my health and your health, and knowing that makes decisions simple.

There's a nice corroboration in the longevity research. When I interviewed a researcher who had visited Blue Zone communities in Greece, the three factors he put at the top were living with purpose, moving the body throughout the day, and strong relationships. Nutrition didn't make the top three — which I find both humbling and encouraging, because when you're living an inspired life you tend to eat better anyway. You're operating from your prefrontal cortex rather than from the amygdala, where we chase pleasure and flee discomfort, and where food becomes the easiest available reward.

Key takeaways

Widen your awareness. If standard approaches haven't worked, there are more options than you realise — explore them with evidence in mind.
Apply the Goldilocks principle. Not too much, not too little. Extremes in cold, heat, training volume or protein all carry a cost.
Weigh short-term goals against long-term health. Ask whether this year's physique is worth a joint replacement later.
Accept that you're unique — your microbiome, your ancestry, your goals. Stop copying protocols built for someone else's body.
Think holistically. Sleep, movement, food, stress and relationships all pull on each other.
Identify your real values and build your goals from them. Alignment is where energy, consistency and good decisions come from.
Remember what the longevity research emphasises: purpose, daily movement and relationships sit near the top.

This is the thinking behind everything I do at me&my wellness. I'm not interested in handing you a protocol and hoping your body cooperates. My work is to help you build awareness, find your own optimal dose, and shape a holistic plan that fits your biology, your life and what genuinely matters to you — because that's the only version you'll sustain.

Start with one question this week: am I doing this because it's right for me, or because it worked for someone else? Then adjust accordingly. Small, sustainable tweaks beat dramatic swings every time.