Reverse Your Age: The Million Hour Life Plan with Dr. Alka Patel

What if you could literally reverse your age and live to 114 years old?

Join Dr. Orlena as she sits down with Dr. Alka Patel, a former "drug-pushing" GP turned longevity expert who discovered the secret to aging backwards after a life-threatening burnout led her to a 106-year-old sage in India.

In this eye-opening conversation, you'll discover:

🔬 Why your biological age can actually go backwards - Dr. Patel reveals how 80% of aging is controlled by your lifestyle choices, and shares the simple blood test that measures your true biological age (hers is 30 years younger than her chronological age!)

⏰ Game-changing "time-based biohacks" that take just seconds but add years to your life - from the powerful 1-10 morning ritual to the 6-60 breathing technique that instantly shifts your nervous system from stress to peace

🎯 The surprising longevity secret that adds 7 years to your life - it's not what you eat or how much you exercise, but something most doctors never ask about (and it takes just 10 seconds a day to implement)

Whether you're feeling overwhelmed by conflicting health advice or simply want to optimize your healthspan, this episode cuts through the noise with practical, science-backed strategies you can start using today. Dr. Patel's approach combines cutting-edge testing with ancient wisdom to help you live your "million hour life" - that's 114 years of vibrant, purposeful living.

Stop guessing about your health and start testing your way to a longer, more energetic life. Your future self will thank you.

Connect with Dr Alka Patel: https://www.dralkapatel.com/ 

Podcast Index and Sign up for Weekly Emails: https://www.drorlena.com/blog/index-of-podcasts-and-blog-posts

Looking for support? Book a free call with Dr Orlena: https://bookme.name/drorlena/positively-healthy-chat-with-dr-orlena-fb

Transcript

 Hello, hello, hello. Welcome to Fit and Fabulous with me, Dr. Orlena. I'm super excited today because we have got an amazing guest and amazing topic lined up. Welcome, welcome, Dr. Alka Patel, and we're gonna talk about longevity, one of my favorite subjects

Amazing. Amazing. Yes. Longevity. But we haven't got that long to talk about it.

Dr Orlena : we have. We have, we've got enough time. Do you wanna start off just by introducing yourself and telling people a little bit about you and how you got into longevity?

Dr Alka Patel: Yeah, absolutely. So Dr. Aker is me as you said, and I guess behind every doctor there's always a story. Why do we do what we do? For me, I wanna maybe start by sharing how I show up in the world right now. And I've got three words, so wherever you find me, this is how I am. And those are fun, focus, and fine.

Dr Orlena : I love it. I love it.

Dr Alka Patel: Really important to me. And so I started off life as traditional gp, conventional gp trying to bring fun, focus and finesse into my world [00:01:00] and realized that what I'd been trained to do was not that. In fact, I started describing myself as a drug pusher. And as hard as that is, unfortunately in general practice world, it's the easiest fix in the quickest possible way.

So I diagnose people with high blood pressure, have a pill, and cut out your salt, diagnose somebody with diabetes and say, here's a pill, have less sugar. So it was very generic advice and what I realized was people were just not getting better and co coming back to me for more and more. And unfortunately, I became the victim of that myself as well, because.

We living in this go go. Society always on. Never off high standards. The person who's the go-to person, and that was me. Unfortunately, I burnt out and I know burnout is this word and we bandish it around and maybe we can get into what it really means as well. But my burnout was very physical which meant I was hospitalized.

Dr Orlena : Oh my.

Dr Alka Patel: yeah, I was hospitalized. [00:02:00] I was cut open in the middle of the night because I had a PUO. You'll know what A PUO is a pyrexia of unknown origin, which basically means you've got a fever. We have not a clue why. So I ended up having emergency surgery to find the source of it. My liver was shutting down, my kidneys were shutting down.

And they, that sort of, we hear people talking about end of life experiences and near death experiences and there's the light and you are running towards it. And honestly I genuinely was it, I had that experience and there were, there was a light and there were shadows and I was running and suddenly those shadows blocked me and it turns out they were the shadows of my three children.

Dr Orlena : Oh.

Dr Alka Patel: And here I am recovered. But what that burnout taught me was that taking care of myself is so important. And I know we hear it all the time, but we just don't do it. And there are those moments and we call them teachable moments in medicine. When someone goes through something life changing, that's your moment to do something different.

And that was the time for me, and I realized that the medicine I was chasing wasn't what I [00:03:00] wanted to give people, but I had to find another way. And I didn't know what that was. So I don't know about you, but sometimes you just have a calling, this really strong voice that says, do this. Come here, meet me.

And for me, I ended up going on a plane and headed off to India and I went to look after people at the end of their life doing some palliative care workout that'd never been to India on my own. Didn't speak the language where I went, which was Caroler. Had never done any voluntary work of this nature at all before.

And that's when I met my first centenarian. First person I ever met who was over a hundred years old. In fact, he was 106 years old. And he looked at Gandhi, the robes, the glasses, there's lines of wisdom just amazing. I had to ask him, of course how did you get to be 106? And he said This one thing, Orlena, he said to me, he said, I have been kind to my body and my body has been kind to me.

And that was my wow. It's wow, how? How do you do that? How do you be kind to your body? Because I know I wasn't, and I knew that all of my patients were. [00:04:00] We don't think about what does this vessel of life actually need? So when I came back to London where I am, I knew that I had to change things and really start teaching people about how to be kind to their body and how to live that longest.

Life possible. 'cause if, 'cause life is beautiful. I know we talk a lot about, the pain of it and how there are hardships. But really if we have a long life and it's a healthy life where your healthspan and your lifespan are matched, he was walking, talking, moving, eating, all of that. Isn't that what we want to live our longest possible life?

So that's what took me into longevity medicine and lifestyle medicine and really bringing together what we know innately. So that innate intuition of how to move, how to sleep, how to connect, we know what to do, but really then using this time that we're alive right now, there's this time of technology as well.

This time of being able to really understand how your body works, having access to tests and diagnostics, that for me, merged it all together. So I merge transformative [00:05:00] technology with innate intuition. I do the testing, I do the coaching, the consulting, the really getting you to understand what longevity could mean for you.

And I love it because now I can reverse your age.

Dr Orlena : Hooray. Tell us about reversing age. Tell us about biological age and chronological age and all of those things.

Dr Alka Patel: Yes. So most people think that aging only goes in one direction. So do you remember when you were in the playground? I remember this very well. We had those, all the always had riddles in the school playground, and one of them was always what goes up, but never comes down. And the only answer to that was your age.

And we eventually we'd go, ah, your age? Yeah. That can only go up and never come down. But now we know that we can reverse it, it can come down. It's a two-way system. So of course your chronological age only goes in one direction. The earth continues to move around the sun. We cannot change that. And so we do have this chronological calendar.

Which means you're getting older, but there's a difference between getting older and [00:06:00] aging. So aging really is. Processes, physiological processes that are occurring in your body. And we know now from a scientific perspective, there's 12 hallmarks of aging, 12 processes that occur that we can actually be live participants in and shift and change.

And that's biological aging, the aging of your cells. The aging of your pathways, the aging of your organs, and we can now measure that and we can track it, and we can change it by looking specifically at those hallmarks of aging and those lifestyle factors that contribute to that. 80% of aging is related to.

Your lifestyle, how you style your life. And so now what I do is a biological age test. So it's a finger prick test, that is a finger prick blood test that comes to you wherever you are in the world, I can send it out to you, wherever you are. And we get an accurate measurement of your biology, the aging of your cells, and more specifically looking at what's called inflammation.

So [00:07:00] your inflammation in your body is what's triggering your immune system and all of that is then speeding up aging. There's this beautiful world in the field of science called inflammaging, which creates,

Dr Orlena : I've never heard that one, but it's a good

Dr Alka Patel: it's lovely, say it lots of times. Inflammation. So inflammation in your body that is continuous and chronic speeds up aging and that's important to know.

Dr Orlena : Yeah. So do you wanna start by telling us all of those markers? Do people want to know the 12 markers or are they a bit sciencey?

Dr Alka Patel: sciencey. I'm I'm a woman who loves acronyms and mnemonics and you'll probably know this from med school days, is we had to have hooks to remember things and learn things by writers so much. So I call these 12 12 hallmarks your epic time span if you wanna live an epic time span.

These are the hallmarks to look at. I can. Reel them off, they'll make no sense. But if you want me to just,

Dr Orlena : No don't worry, you.

Dr Alka Patel: Yes. And you'll find, if you wanna go to my website dr al patel.com, there, [00:08:00] they're on there somewhere. So we're looking those looking at those. But the one that I am always super, super interested in is inflammation.

And it sits right at the center of everything else that's going on.

Dr Orlena : Yeah, absolutely. And I think like more and more we are learning that inflammation is, like I, I know we were talking before we started recording how you actually graduated before me, but I think when I graduated, inflammation wasn't this big thing that everybody talked about and now everyone's talking about inflammation the whole time.

And I think it's because we are just learning more and more about disease processes and the impact that our lifestyle has 

Dr Alka Patel: I

Dr Orlena : those things.

Dr Alka Patel: think we have to understand it. There's lots of words that get banded around other hallmarks of aging. One, like your microbiome is a key one. So yes, we're starting to talk about that more and learn about it, but I, we really have to make sure that from a medical perspective, we keep that perspective.

It's very easy to go onto social media and someone's randomly said the word microbiome or mitochondria, that's another hallmark of aging or talking about [00:09:00] cortisol. And suddenly you think you know everything about it. It's complex. We've gotta turn the complexity of the science Yes. Into the simplicity of living, but really do that with some deep understanding because sometimes you just mess things up even more.

Dr Orlena : Yeah. Yeah. And I, I think the human body is amazingly complex, 

Dr Alka Patel: yeah.

Dr Orlena : It, there's so many complex different systems inside there and that it is very tempting for people to just go, yeah, it works like this. And it's a bit like I don't think it does actually, because there's always another caveat, something else that influences that. do you wanna, you talked about lifestyle and thinking about. Lifestyle changes. And I love this question 'cause I have other experts on and everyone always says more or less the same thing, which I think is super good news. But do you wanna tell us like what you think in like broad strokes is the most useful things that we can do to impact our biological age or.

Dr Alka Patel: Yeah. In fact, I've identified 10 big areas. And of course they spell out the word lifestyle, don't they? [00:10:00] Because I love, we love, but there's some hidden in there that people don't think about. We can always talk about food and exercise and sleep and all those sorts of things, but one thing I discovered as when I was a conventional gp.

There's one thing I never used to ask my patients, and that was why I never understood their reason, their motivations, their drivers. And here's what's really important, Lina, is that if you have a reason, if you know your life's purpose, you add seven years to your life, and that's a really interesting longevity.

Hack, if we want to call it that, because we find what we've discovered it again from science, is that if you've got a reason to be, you will last longer. You'll work to that purpose. You'll have, I'm not talking about having a, big statue in the middle of Trafalgar Square. I'm talking about every day, right?

Dr Orlena : You are.

Dr Alka Patel: Yes. In a way, right? And again, ikigai has got really westernized. I was in Japan last year and talked to lots and lots of people and it, and it's beautiful. I don't even think we've got [00:11:00] western ways of expressing Ikigai as well, and we talk about it as purpose. So one of the things I would, absolutely recommend everybody to do is in the morning simply answer this question.

My purpose for today is. That's it. Because if you can have a purpose today, then guess what? You had one yesterday and the day before and then your months become your years, which become your life. So it's super important. And the other thing just on, on this as well is, I dunno about you, but one of the biggest things I hear constantly, especially from women is I don't have time.

Dr Orlena : Yeah.

Dr Alka Patel: don't have time to do A, B, or C to eat. Move sleep well because there's just too many demands on my time. So I'll use a lot of time-based biohack. So coming back to this one for longevity and purpose and life's purpose is I recommend something called the one 10. So do the one 10. So what means I'm going to come in?

Take one minute every day to step outside and we can talk about why light [00:12:00] is important as well. Step outside, get that light into your eyes, and then for 10 seconds just say to yourself, the purpose of my day to day is

Dr Orlena : Ooh, I love that. So I start my morning by cycling to the beach and going for a swim. So I'm gonna do that just before I jump in the water.

Dr Alka Patel: amazing. Love that. And listen, you can't, no one can say they don't have 60 seconds. We do. So do the one 10 and it's incredibly grounding. It sets the turn for your day and it is got a longevity attachment to it as well, which is

Dr Orlena : Perfect. I love that. I love

Dr Alka Patel: great. I can give you more time based bio hacks if you want.

Dr Orlena : Give us time-based biohacks. We like time-based biohacks. I think we, I think it's having small little things that feel achievable as opposed to. Oh, you have to get up at five o'clock in the morning and eat kale and balance on one leg. And I think for people that really feels a bit daunting and overwhelming. And when it can be broken down into okay, here's 10 of them, but how about you start with

Dr Alka Patel: Yes.

Dr Orlena : then you can add another one and then [00:13:00] you can add another one. And little things that really move the needle. And in my opinion, in all of these things, whether it's nutrition or exercise, I don't think people realize how they can just make little tweaks that have a huge great impact. But it's almost like you don't know until you've tried it, so you don't know how much much better you feel when you, until you've tried it.

Dr Alka Patel: I've got probably two things to say on that. One is don't spend time doing the wrong tweak.

So the tweaks are really important and we can keep stacking them and making them sustainable. So that's the second thing, is do the thing that you know you can continue to do as well. 'cause that's helpful.

The flip side of that is, if you are also someone like me is variety is also the spice of light. So don't feel just because you've started something and then stopped it, it's oh God, I failed. It's actually your body's calling out for maybe you are driven by the need for variety. And so you really try new things as well.

This body needs to be challenged as a vessel. Loves to try something new as well. But when I say, don't spend time doing the wrong tweet, it's really about getting to know yourself. So I'm a [00:14:00] very now data-driven doctor, so no decision about me without data about me. For example, I do a lot of testing related to metabolism and how you make.

Energy and energy is beautiful and that's the one thing that we all want. Yes, the sun gives it to us when we step outside, but what about your nutrition? What are you missing in your body? What is that magnesium looking like? That vitamin A, that vitamin C, all of that. Are you getting enough plants in your body, you've got enough antioxidants because your body, my body, we are different.

So yes, do the tweak. And if it does mean kale and balancing on one leg, by the way, I'm balancing on one and you can't see it, right? Opportunities.

Dr Orlena : No. But I meant if it works for you, if you like doing it, then obviously do it.

Dr Alka Patel: Yeah.

Dr Orlena : I was thinking of something that people like might find challenging.

Dr Alka Patel: No. I agree. So yeah, so more time-based bio. I can give you the, here's another one, which people forget to do. I call it the three 30. And it very simply is every 30 minutes, take three gobs of water, [00:15:00] because we don't think about hydration. Enough, simply put, and I had a time in my life I'd have, a liter of water on my desk and I'd just look at it all day long and the bubbles would form and I still haven't drunk it.

So that core to thirst is not always something that we pay attention to. We ignore it because we are busy doing other things. Sometimes we don't even feel it or we feel it very late because even a sort of 2% drop in your dehydr in your hydration levels, if you are 2% dehydrated, it affects your brain. You are not thinking clearly, you are not making decisions in the way that you want to.

And all of this is the sort of some, the reason I talk about time-based bio hacks as well is going back to aging and reversing aging, is I've run this club an online members club, which is called the Million Hour Club. And in that everybody set that ambition to live a million hour life.

So

Dr Orlena : And what does that equate to in

Dr Alka Patel: yes, I knew you were gonna ask that question.

Dr Orlena : My math is not quite right.

Dr Alka Patel: Yeah, it's [00:16:00] 114 years

Dr Orlena : Oh, wow.

Dr Alka Patel: and I really do genuinely believe that we're living in a time when we can do that. So you set that goal of 114 years, and then you make every hour count of those million hours. Because it's all about choice. What are you doing with the time that you have? How are we gonna get to a million hours of healthy, fulfilled, vibrant living?

And there's a couple of other words as well that sort of get banded around and we haven't really explained what longevity is so maybe we should do that as well. But we talk about lifespan, which is the length of your life. So think quantity, and we're talking about health span. How healthy are those years?

So think quality. There's two other words that I want to share. One of those is youth span, and that really is about how vibrant and energetic those years are. 'cause that's what we want as well. And finally, it's also wealth span. Maybe for you that means [00:17:00] financial wealth, but it's also this richness of life, this fulfillment in life, that wealth span as well, and the intersection of all of those.

When you talked about Ikigai, for me it's the intersection of lifespan, health span, youth span, and wealth span. That is longevity. Longevity is living your longest, healthiest, most fulfilled, vibrant, energetic, wealthy, healthy life. But it's all about the actions that you take. And so some of these time-based biohacks are the ones we talk about in the Million Hour Club.

I do the testing. Everybody tests their biological age every 114 days, and we test, 

Dr Orlena : wow.

Dr Alka Patel: it's great. So you've gotta a tracker, right? You've gotta know which direction you're going. Actually speeding up aging often with the stresses that we encounter. And so allowing time to be that sort of guide for not just what you do, but when you do it.

I call it bio synchronizing because you've gotta sync time with your biology. We've got clocks, we're governed by rhythms, circadian clocks, day and night clocks in every single cell. How are we [00:18:00] actually aligning to all of that as well? So that's really important.

Dr Orlena : Amazing. Amazing. And so going back to the time Hanks, have you got any more of those that you wanted to share with us?

Dr Alka Patel: Oh, I've got lots of people wanna get in touch with me as well. I've got some going all the way from 1 10, 2 23 34, 45 go. What's important that I that I believe is important. Okay, let's talk about the six 60.

Dr Orlena : Yeah.

Dr Alka Patel: The six 60 is slowing down your breathing to six breaths a minute for just 60 seconds.

Number one, your breath is always with you, so you don't have to pay for it or do anything else. Number two, you can control your breath rate. Magic number is six, and the reason for that is that number, again, looking back at the science and the research activates your parasympathetic nervous system, so parasympathetic for peace.

Sympathetic for stress and I test stress. So another test that I do aleena is measuring your cortisol levels through the day. So again, I send this test out to you, wherever you [00:19:00] are, all you've got to do is spit in a tube. Yes, I love body fluids of every nature spit in a tube throughout the day, and we get your cortisol graph.

And what I see a lot is that people's cortisols are crash.

Dr Orlena : So from your, so do you just do that once?

Dr Alka Patel: Yeah, so you can do that once over a 24 hour period, so to know.

Dr Orlena : Oh, okay. So you have to do for a period of time?

Dr Alka Patel: So you speed at 7:00 AM 9:00 AM 11:00 AM 5:00 PM, that sort of thing. And then send that back to me. Send that to the lab, and we get what's a graph of your rhythm, and we know what it should look like. And then we've got, again, we can time those interventions. So if your cortisol level say is high at two o'clock in the afternoon, but low when you wake up.

I know again, people are saying do breath work, go and meditate under a tree when you wake up. But that timing is important. If you do it in your cortisol levels, low in the morning, it's gonna drop it even further. You lose your VA room and you'll get up and go, and we need that in the morning, that activation.

But if it's very high at two in the [00:20:00] afternoon, that's when you can say I need time out. I'm doing 60 seconds. I've got 60 seconds to slow my breathing rate down in for four. For six. You've got control of your nervous system. You've got more clarity, more energy for the rest of the afternoon. Do that.

It works. It works from a physiological perspective. You'd actually can take control of your body. It works from how you feel. You feel more focused and it works from what you get back as well. And if you are running a business, if you've got people in front of you, they're going to see you sharper and more present as well.

So that's.

Dr Orlena : Whatever you are doing, whether you are being with yourself or being

Dr Alka Patel: Yeah.

Dr Orlena : or being with clients and colleagues, whatever you are doing, it's gonna give you more energy.

Dr Alka Patel: Yep. Definitely. And I'll give you one more. We've got so much to talk about, but there's another one which I call the five 50, which is related to body movement. So I'm standing up right now and most people spend most of their [00:21:00] day sitting down again. Give you a quick hack from the research.

If you stand more than you sit, you add ideas to your life. Magic number here is 3.5. If you sit

Dr Orlena : okay.

Dr Alka Patel: for less than three and a half hours a day, if you sit for less than three and a half hours a day, you add two years to your life.

Dr Orlena : Wow. It's not actually that much. Three and a half hours is not that much.

Dr Alka Patel: And people say to me two years is not that much. Is it really worth the effort? But honestly, I can tell you when you are at that point in your life and the end is here, you'd give anything for two more years, wouldn't you

Dr Orlena : Yeah. I personally think so. 

Dr Alka Patel: Would your family, the people who love you, the people who need you, would say just gimme two more hours. Two more days. Two more weeks. Two more years. Take it, do it.

Dr Orlena : so three. So we want to be making sure we are not sitting for more than three and a half hours.

Dr Alka Patel: Yeah. And that doesn't mean just, rock solid standing because again, if you're standing, you are also stagnant. So this is where the five 50 comes in is take 50 seconds to do five [00:22:00] stretches throughout the day. 'cause our bodies get less agile as we get older, unless we keep moving. And most people I meet have at some point in their life struggled with pain.

Muscle pain, joint pain, and we don't have to be struggling. So get up and stretch 50 seconds to just keep you know, one position. Or even if it is just lifting your neck, are you actually really stretching it? How many times a day do we do this? Your hands are always on a keyboard, but actually what's going on with your wrist?

50 seconds to just stretch. Do that. You'll see the difference It makes, I do that whenever I'm standing up and talking, I'm like more on fire than if I'm sitting down. You have

Dr Orlena : I,

Dr Alka Patel: and physical agility.

Dr Orlena : but so for people who are like working long hours and they perhaps don't have the ability to be able to stand, they don't have a standing desk or something like that, is adding in little bits of movement gonna help them. What happens to all those people who are like, there's no [00:23:00] way I can not sit for three and a half hours

Dr Alka Patel: First of all, you are lying to yourself 'cause I don't believe anybody needs to be tied to a desk for eight hours wherever you are. You have got autonomy and agency to stand up, to move and listen. You can move in your chair if that really is important. And also, you don't need a special standing desk or a gizmo.

I remember when I first started thinking about standing more, I got myself a cardboard box. This laptop

Dr Orlena : Yeah.

Dr Alka Patel: went on a box. Don't go and buy the chisel because it looks great. But you don't have the money or you don't have the time or the inclination to research it.

Dr Orlena : one of those big moving boxes, do you know what I mean? And put some books in it. Great place to store your books and then,

Dr Alka Patel: It all works. It all works. And then go get this beautiful, I love my standing desk table, but a trick here is put it on the position, okay? Even your cardboard box. Put your laptop on your cardboard box with no chair in sight before you go to bed. So that then when you walk in the morning, it's there and ready.

'cause otherwise, if the chair's there, guess what? You are going to sit on [00:24:00] it. If you've gotta go find the box, you are not going to do it. So like my standing desk that I'm at, I will in the evening put it on standing so that when I'm here I'm ready to go. 

Dr Orlena : My husband has one of those big balls

So that you have to balance, so he's not sitting on a chair. He's not standing, but he is engaging his core quite a lot because it rolls

Dr Alka Patel: Yeah that's brilliant. And especially I know you talk a lot about, weight and women, and I do and I do as well, and most women think they've gotta do the big exercise to lose the weight. But there's the small exercise, there's the really microscopic stuff, which again, if you're on a ball and moving.

All those small things add up. 'cause you are utilizing energy all the time and it counts, it doesn't have to be the big 10 K run in the park, which which is great. So I'll give you a quick another time bio hack for that by the way, which is called the two 20.

Dr Orlena : The link and I'll put the link in the show.

Dr Alka Patel: Yeah. Is very simply two minutes of walking. Walking itself is a fabulous form of movement and [00:25:00] exercise. If you're going to walk, again, stack your hack. Try a weighted vest. I love walking with a weighted vest. 'cause again, then you are also bone strengthening at the same time. Back to the 2 22 minutes of walking.

Dr Orlena : can I just I know we said we were gonna quiz each other. Are you actually bone strengthening? Because I know that Dr. Sims, I don't know if Dr. Sims, but she basically says if you're using a weighted vest, you are not really impacting your bones.

Dr Alka Patel: You are it's all relative. So if you're not using it you've actually got nothing to help remodel your bones. So we have osteoclast and osteoblast building bones and breaking bones, and it's happening continuously. The moment you add weight on. Based on what I've read, what I've seen and the imaging, because I do a lot of scanning as well and dexa scanning to look at bone strength and look at fragility as well, is that I have seen the difference that it makes and whether that's a weighted vest, whether that's weights on your wrist, whether that's weights on your ankles.

You do want to really start thinking about what's an extra load that I can carry, putting a backpack on. I've seen the data that's positive around that, but, for [00:26:00] everything and you'll know this, from an evidence perspective. You can find two sides to the same story. So the most important thing, and this is where my work really focuses on, is what I call n equals one.

Number one is you, doesn't matter what the research says, we should turn that evidence pyramid upside down so you'll know this only in medicine we have, very evidence-based approaches to what we do and what we say. And we start off with randomized controlled trials being the most important form of evidence that we have, and all based on research and randomization and a kind of population effect.

That population that trial's been studied on may not look anything like you.

Dr Orlena : Yeah, and I guess it depends as well what else you are doing. So if you are lifting weights, like thinking about muscle

Dr Alka Patel: Yeah.

Dr Orlena : weights, and then if you're doing. We had Dr. Tracy Clissold, who was a bone specialist a few weeks ago, and so she's got an amazing app called Osteo Gains, which really teaches you how to land properly. So if you're doing those things, perhaps the [00:27:00] weighted vest doesn't make much difference. But if you are not doing any of those things, perhaps the weighted vest does help.

Dr Alka Patel: And again, just think about what can you stack,

Dr Orlena : Yeah.

Dr Alka Patel: you, so for example, when I, we, I talked about the six 60 is actually, maybe you attach that to something that you are already doing. So you've got a habit already. I open my laptop. So you just say to yourself, use this phrase, when I will.

So I've got a course that goes through all of this as well. But when I will, when I turn on my laptop, I will slow my breathing down to six breaths. When I come downstairs in the morning, I will take three gobs of water. So you are attaching what you are doing to something you are already doing.

Attach new to the old and I think it's is, it is exactly that is it, if you're already doing something, what else can you do that's gonna be helpful for that? And interesting that you're talking about strength as well. I dunno if anyone's seen one of these but I have these in my doctor's bag now, so it's a grip meter and it.

Dr Orlena : Oh yeah.[00:28:00] 

Dr Alka Patel: And it tests your strength. And again, from a longevity perspective, we know that your grip strength is very highly correlated to mortality, which is unfortunately how quickly you're going to die and what you're going to die of. And so if you want to think about predicting longevity, how long you live, know what your grip strength is, because the higher it is.

The longer that you will live. And it's not just because your grip is stronger, it's a reflection of what's going on in the rest of your muscles as well. Because your muscles, I'm holding my thighs here, you probably can't see, but your muscles are your metabolic engine. And that's really important.

So that's strengthening. And the strengthening is all valid.

Dr Orlena : and so going to grip

Dr Alka Patel: Yeah.

Dr Orlena : How come so do people need to buy a machine or can they measure it? And what strengths are they hoping to aim for?

Dr Alka Patel: Yes. I do this in my clinic for people who, who come in and test people's grip strength. This is the sort of thing, to be honest. You can go online and buy it for yourself. But as you say, this is what I also find is people will get a number. You'll have data from [00:29:00] all sorts of things, whether it's a data ring on your finger or your Apple watch or whatever it is, and they go.

Ah, okay. And then you look at it and you don't do anything with it. The point is, do something with it. There is a lovely app as well, which is called grip Meter and it gives you your population based numbers. So what you should be male or female based on your age and your demographic.

And so see where you are with that. And the aim then is to strengthen, yes. Go and get one of these. This is also in my doctor's bag as well. Grip strengthening, right? But remember, this is not just about strengthening the wrist. This is about what other strengthening exercises are you doing? And in my course as well the Longevity Lifestyle course, I talk about exercise basics, B-A-S-I-C-S.

'cause most people will do one thing, oh, I love strengthening. I'll go and lift more weights, but they won't do anything for. Endurance. They won't do the yoga for the stretcher. We've gotta do all of it in that sense. We're not spending hours and hours doing it. But the key things to look at, balance, [00:30:00] agility, strength intensity, cardio and stamina.

Get your exercise basics right and then build on the finesse of it all. But you've gotta get that foundation really right. As well. I felt we were in the middle of a time-based biohack and we've diverted and I didn't finish what it was but maybe not.

Dr Orlena : You were talking about, you were talking about two minutes of walking. That's where we

Dr Alka Patel: Yes.

Dr Orlena : with the

Dr Alka Patel: Okay. Two minutes of walking and then 20 seconds of sprinting.

Dr Orlena : Okay.

Dr Alka Patel: that's like your hit in a way. So

Dr Orlena : Yeah.

Dr Alka Patel: 20 seconds of sprinting, two minutes of walking, 20 seconds of sprint. Why is that important? Have you heard of something called VO two max?

Dr Orlena : Indeed I have.

Dr Alka Patel: Good. So I believe this is your new vital sign, new kid on the block.

We are very used to medically testing pulse, blood pressure, temperature, oxygen levels, all important new kid on the block is your VO two max. So this, I'm sure your audience know know as well, but just very simply is

Dr Orlena : I [00:31:00] do because we did a whole podcast on it a

Dr Alka Patel: brilliant. So if you have a, but it's again, how maximally efficient are you at utilizing oxygen.

We need light. We need oxygen, we need nutrition. We like plants.

Dr Orlena : Yeah. And as my total hyper achievement and obviously I have a great VO two max, 'cause I do a lot of exercise. I'm like, how can I improve my VO two max?

Dr Alka Patel: Yeah. And so doing the two 20 can help. Again, it's not that you've gotta be in a gym for two hours go. You can build this into your every day. And that difference between having a low VO two max and having an elite VO two max from a longevity perspective is huge.

There's a 70% difference. Even. Even if you go from low to below average, you shrink that differential.

Dr Orlena : Yeah.

Dr Alka Patel: If you go to above average, you shrink it even more to 40%. You want to be improving your VO two max, and it doesn't have to take hours at the gym. But number one, test. Don't guess, measure it. Measure.[00:32:00] 

And number two.

Dr Orlena : with your VO two max, you can, it depends on what sports watch you have, but if you've got an Apple Watch, I suspect it's not a hundred percent accurate, but they will measure your VO two max. Obviously you have to be doing some exercise for them to

Dr Alka Patel: Yes. So a couple of things then about the sort of data. So Apple watches, data rings. They can give you this, but as you said, these are, it's all algorithm based and it's not highly accurate. I love the trackers because what they do is allow you to track you, so your important. Thing is to your number and what, where is that going?

What's the direction of travel? I do think that you need more accuracy. So at least, every sort of couple of months I test VO two max. I'm not sure if I've. Put it here with me, but outta my lovely doctor's bag Here. I'll show you a little device that I use if I could find it. Which I can't, but nevermind.

Which I put on a chest and it's really super easy. Within three minutes, you get a very accurate 98% accurate VO two max. It's using a technology called seism, but it also, once a year as a [00:33:00] minimum, go and do the thing, put the mask on, get on the.

Dr Orlena : where can we do that? Like I think a lot of people don't have access to those

Dr Alka Patel: Yes. Yeah. So what you're gonna want is yes, you can use your data rings as your approximation. Someone like me, I can measure your VO two max in very

Dr Orlena : But.

Dr Alka Patel: do as well.

What is as well. Yeah. So I think it's important to know, again, what are you testing, where are you testing it, and how often are you testing that as well.

Dr Orlena : Perfect.

Dr Alka Patel: Yeah.

Dr Orlena : Perfect. So we've had a whirlwind tour of so many amazing things. Any like last words of wisdom for us?

Dr Alka Patel: Yes. I would say think about what you need to know about yourself. Do you really know you. What do you want to find out about how you are made and how you function? Test don't guess. You can [00:34:00] age younger. You can reverse your biological age. My biological age is 30 years younger than I am,

Dr Orlena : Wow, that's amazing. And how do you measure your biological age?

Dr Alka Patel: The test, yeah, it's a blood test that looks very specifically.

Dr Orlena : blood

Dr Alka Patel: Yes, but a very specific blood test which looks at your your specific markers that are related to biological aging. And also there's some risk predictability in that. So I can also look at what's the next 10 years potentially going to look like for you.

Have you got any signals that indicate what areas to focus on? 'cause we've gotta look at that, it's being proactive and it's being preventative about what's coming in the future as well. So if there's one thing to test, I would recommend everyone has a look at their biological age and what that could mean.

Dr Orlena : And so how do people do that? They obviously go to your website and then.

Dr Alka Patel: Yes, pop over to my website. There'll be lots of information on it. You can book a consultation with me as well, and I could do that online, wherever you are in the world as well, and we can have a proper conversation about what is important to you. Nothing generic, everything really specific to what are your health [00:35:00] goals, what's getting in the way of blocking that, what's going to be the most important thing for you to test and understand about yourself as well.

So yes, please get in touch my website, which is dr patel.com.

Dr Orlena : I consultation and consultation that blood test.

Dr Alka Patel: We can talk about that during the consultation and see what the, what you want to do with that as well. But yes, we can we can definitely do that. That's not a problem. And I have a whole program, which is called 10 years Younger in 10 weeks. That's amazing. So we can talk about

Dr Orlena : do the program or you were talking about like your membership where people do like the hundred and 14 

Dr Alka Patel: yes.

Dr Orlena : you've got.

Dr Alka Patel: Yeah, I keep it, I wanna keep it really simple. 'cause I think the more you have it more complicated it is and people think I don't wanna do any of it. Okay. Number one is 10 years younger in 10 weeks. That's me, you. And very specific bespoke testing which is fabulous. Number two is the million hour club.

Set your sights on being a million hours. Have a biological age. Test every 114 days. Have all of your metabolism tested and be part of a community [00:36:00] as well. If you've got questions to us and you dunno where to go, there's a doctor there, me who can answer this. 'cause sometimes it's really tricky.

We do every two weeks we are going live, we have results reviews, we have master classes as well. So lots that goes on. If you think being part of a community is important to you, that's a good place to go. And if you just wanna just. Get started. Dip your toe in the water then. Yes. Book a decode consultation with me and we'll get going.

Dr Orlena : Perfect, fabulous. And I will leave a link to your website so people can go and browse

Dr Alka Patel: Yes.

Dr Orlena : and find all the exciting stuff. Thank you so much for spending some time with

Dr Alka Patel: Amazing. Thank you.

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