[Angela Foster] (0:00 - 0:06)
You look at least 20 years younger than your age. What are you doing differently in your 60s that most women miss?

[Liz Earle] (0:06 - 0:18)
It's sky before screen. Don't look at your phone until you've looked outside and seen some daylight. We will look back at this time and our lack of sun exposure as being as damaging to our health as smoking.

[Angela Foster] (0:18 - 0:24)
If we're wearing sunscreen, can we still synthesise vitamin D? There's a long answer to that question.

[Liz Earle] (0:24 - 0:34)
One of the things that you speak about is water. Tap water is a bit like ultra-processed food. I put electrolytes in my water, rock resin from the Himalayas.

[Angela Foster] (0:34 - 0:43)
You put it in coffee? I do, yeah. When you put minerals in your water, I feel like it really wakes up your brain.

Yeah, definitely. You can feel that sort of electrical charge. We are electrical beings.

[Liz Earle] (0:44 - 0:46)
Drink a bit more water, maybe with a pinch of salt.

[Angela Foster] (0:46 - 1:06)
It really is that simple and is fundamentally going to change how you age. Liz, we had breakfast a couple of weeks ago for your book launch and the thing that really struck me is you look at least 20 years younger than your age. Your biological age is also over 20 years younger.

What are you doing differently in your 60s that most women miss?

[Liz Earle] (1:06 - 2:12)
Oh my gosh. Well, thank you for saying. I think really for me, it was understanding my biology better and really unravelling things that I'd never heard before.

You know, I've been writing about wellness for nearly 40 years and when I discovered things like circadian rhythm and my relationship with daylight, that just kind of made all the difference. And I think it's, you know, you talk about mitochondria and how our cells are working and, you know, when we understand that, our biology just follows suit. It kind of becomes almost automatic.

I think because my earlier book, About a Second Half, was this kind of manifesto for midlife women and that covered off a lot of the basics, things that we all know about. You know, we all know that we need to be eating more protein as we age. It's really good to lift some weight, do some resistance training, to prioritise our sleep, you know, sort out our hormone health.

You know, those are all kind of the pillars that are non-negotiable. But I think what really moved the dial for me was understanding the relationship with circadian rhythm and daylight, which is so simple, isn't it? I'd never heard it before.

[Angela Foster] (2:12 - 2:42)
It is so simple, but yet there's so many kind of facets to it as well with artificial lighting that we're going to dive into. When you talk about circadian rhythm, this is like, at this time of year, I don't know about you, but I just feel really upbeat because we're coming into, you know, summer's ahead of us, it's getting lighter and lighter. But in the UK, it's actually quite difficult, isn't it?

Because if I was going to follow my circadian rhythm in the UK, I'd be up at 8am in sort of December and then 4am in July. How do you master this across the year?

[Liz Earle] (2:42 - 5:00)
Well, I think it's about being balanced and kind of doing the best you can without being obsessive. So, but that, you know, you're right. That is one of the reasons why we have high rates of seasonal affective disorder in the winter, because we don't get that daylight.

We don't get that early morning shot of near infrared and the kind of the real wavelengths that we need to produce all our happy chemicals, our dopamine, for example. So I think you have to do what you can. I'm not an early bird.

I'm not looking forward to the summer months when the sun is up at like 4.30. I really struggle with that. If I'm really honest with you, I struggle with kind of 6.30, let alone 4.30. So I don't think you have to be up with the sun. If you are an early bird and you're able to, then that's great.

You're absolutely winning. But for me, it's about getting up as early as I can, as early as works with my schedule and the first thing, seeing daylight. So that is the most important thing within the first, well, ideally within the first of 10, 15 minutes of waking up, seeing some daylight.

Now, if you can get outside, that's brilliant. If you can't, just open a window. You know, I have a window in my bathroom and I brush my teeth in front of an open window, whatever the weather, whatever the time of year, because it is those early morning light signals going into our eyes, going into the retinal cells in our eyes that start to trigger all sorts of inflammatory chemicals, the hormone cascade, the production of cortisol and later chemicals like dopamine, for example, and setting up melatonin for later in the day. So it's that early morning.

And I think just try and do it within your routine, but do get some daylight. You know, make sure, I have this saying at home, it's sky before screen. Too many of us wake up with our phones, don't we?

And I say in the book, please don't do that. Just get an old fashioned alarm clock or a little digital alarm clock that doesn't tick, so it doesn't keep you awake and wake up with that if you need an alarm, because otherwise we get drawn in, we get drawn into that blue light on the screen and before we know it, we're answering emails, we're checking messages, we're scrolling newsfeeds before we've even had a chance to wake up properly and think about the day. So if you just remember, don't look at your phone until you've looked outside and seen some daylight.

[Angela Foster] (5:01 - 5:11)
I love that. It's such a simple thing to do in your morning. What's special about the light around sunrise and sunset if we can see it?

[Liz Earle] (5:12 - 10:51)
Well, light is not one thing, it changes. So for a start, it has so many different wavelengths. You've got lots and lots of different colours that are all invisible that we can't see.

You've got the visible spectrum and then you've got the invisible spectrum. And we all know enough a little bit about red LED light because we've seen it in face masks and the effect that that can have on the skin because it's penetrating the skin and having a biological effect on our cells. So there are all sorts of other wavelengths as well, along with the red wavelength, you've got blue, cyan, purple, yellow, green, orange, and they're all having different signals, different messaging to our cells.

And in addition to the near infrared, you've also got the mid infrared and the far infrared. So you've got all these different light waves. And then of course, you've got UV, then you've got UVA and UVB.

You know, most people, I think when they think about sunlight, they're just told, oh, it's UVA, which is ageing and UVB, which is burning, end of story. Well, oh my gosh, it is so much more complex than that. You know, I've interviewed a lot of photobiologists and neuroscientists who are specifically working on light and really understanding that we are creatures of light.

We evolved under sunlight. You know, the sun is the giver of all life for everything on this planet, including us. And we wouldn't be here if we hadn't had the action of sunlight on our mitochondria when we were early man, just kind of beginning, beginning to walk the earth.

So it is fundamental for us. We are programmed to respond to light. We're programmed essentially to get up with daylight and go to bed when it gets dark.

That is the circadian rhythm. That is that 24 hour that we were designed to follow. So very first thing, before the sun even comes up over the horizon and you get that kind of pre-dawn glow, that's when we're getting these near infrared and far infrared light signals.

There's no UV. So that's why I say don't wear sunscreen first thing. There isn't any UV to protect us from.

So I think that's, you know, a lot of people don't really understand that. They don't really understand the full complexity of light. So first thing in the morning, you've got these early near infrared signals that are talking to the mitochondria in our eyeballs that are programming our cells to do all sorts of things.

First thing it does is it spikes a little bit of cortisol. Cortisol gets a bad rap as the stress hormone, but we need a little bit. We need a bit to get us out of bed.

Otherwise we just kind of lie there in a stupor. So you need a little bit of that stress hormone and then all the other hormones start to cascade from that. So then a little bit later on, then we get UVA.

That's the first UV to appear. And UVA, interestingly, has been found to have, believe it or not, benefits for the skin. Who knew?

So again, you'd think, well, why do we get UVA if it's so bad for us? Well, it's there for a reason. And there's a really interesting scientist called Professor Richard Weller, and he is the chair of clinical dermatology in Edinburgh, Edinburgh University.

And you'd think that kind of a medical dermatologist would not be advocating going out and exposing yourself to UVA, but that's exactly what his research team and he are talking about. Obviously measured, you're not going to damage the skin. But what he discovered was that UVA triggers the production of nitric oxide through the skin.

And nitric oxide is very potent. It's very helpful for helping to prevent cardiovascular disease. It helps with the flexibility and pliability of our arteries.

And people take it as a supplement. They go and buy nitric oxide. But actually, if you go out in the morning, you're going to get nitric oxide free.

And so that's UVA. Then later on, you get UVB. We don't get UVB till later in the day.

So again, there's no reason to screen for UVB because it's not there. We tend to get it around, depends on the time of year, but it might be 10, 11, something like that. And it's not there in the winter.

Now, UVB is really important because it makes vitamin D. And there's this real kind of acknowledgement that we are in the UK, very deficient of vitamin D. And the reason for that is we're deprived of UVB sunlight.

So UVB is synthesised through the skin. And UVB is really important for that. Vitamin D is not actually a real vitamin.

It acts more like a hormone, has many, many biological impacts and uses. And it's involved in our immune system. It's involved in metabolism, insulin regulation.

It's been linked with bone health and brain health. I mean, you name it, vitamin D is really crucial. And I hope everybody listening is supplementing with it because that's really important.

But of course, we get it free from UVB. So these UV wavelengths are around sort of in the middle of the day and then they tail off. So you talk about sunset.

So that again is a key time to get outside because by the time the sun is going down, we've lost the UVA. We've lost the UVB. And what is left are these mid, near, far infrared wavelengths, again, which talk to the skin, which talk to our cells.

And they are setting up melatonin so that we sleep better in the evening. That's our lovely sleep hormone. They're calming the body, they're reducing stress and they're preparing us for a good night's sleep.

So at the very least, if you can get a little bit of daylight at the beginning and the end of the day, either outside or open a window, you know, when the sun is setting, try and get outside. That's your cue to actually go out and get some of the benefit of these lights, which we can get for free. I mean, that's the amazing thing.

It's free and it's easy.

[Angela Foster] (10:52 - 11:25)
Yeah, we don't have to go and buy red light panels to do it. It's interesting what you say there because when I started focussing on light and I really thought, you know, in the winter months when it's very short light exposure, if I could get outside and go out with my dogs, you know, just for a short walk a couple of times a day. So even going out before the school run at 3.34 as the sun's starting to set in November, even just little things like that felt markedly better during the winter. You're talking there about the vitamin D. If we're wearing sunscreen, can we still synthesise vitamin D?

[Liz Earle] (11:25 - 15:19)
There's a long answer to that question. The short answer is no. The long answer is much more nuanced.

It depends. If you are wearing your sunscreen properly, which very few of us do, bear in mind that it needs to be applied very thickly and it needs to be applied absolutely to totally cover the skin. Now, most of us don't do that.

Most of us, if we're using it, we'll put it on a thin layer. We'll miss bits. So when people say, yes, you get vitamin D from the sun when you're using sunscreen.

Yeah, because you're not using your sunscreen properly. You're actually allowing some of that that UVB to come through the skin. But when you look at the clinical tests in the labs where they're applying it properly, then no, because it's designed to block it.

And if it's not blocking it, then it's not working. So, you know, for me, it's and I talk a lot in the book about safe sun exposure. You know, I have a beauty background.

I am very interested and highly invested as a woman with fair skin ageing, not to age and damage my skin. OK, that is absolutely priority. But I think in the whole public health messaging, we've taken it too far and too extreme and we've lost sight of actually the goodness of sunshine and daylight.

And we've become too frightened of it. And we've become that the messaging is far too broad. So, for example, I talk about a public health campaign on the London Underground and there's a clinical dermatologist, actually, who I spoke to at length for the book.

And she writes papers on skin cancer. She's a serious expert, very highly published. And she really took issue with this campaign because it was run on London Underground in the winter.

And it was talking about the importance of wearing SPF 50. And she was saying it's ridiculous. It is absolutely ridiculous because people leave home before the sun comes up.

They're travelling underground because that's where these posters are. They're then walking into their office. They're indoors because it's cold and they're going to stay indoors for most of the day.

And then they walk back to the Tube and they go home again. And it's dark because obviously in the wintertime, it's dark by about four o'clock. Tell me why you'd need to block your skin with a sunscreen.

There is no sun. So I think we need to be much cleverer about where we use sunscreen. It's judicious use of it.

Obviously, if you're fair skinned and you're out in the middle of the day with strong sun exposure, you do not want to burn your skin and you need to protect it. For me personally, I prefer to cover my skin. I prefer to cover it with clothing, with a hat, sit in the shade or whatever.

But that's my personal choice. Other people might want to use a sunscreen. I think we also have to understand that there are hidden consequences that are only just being discovered now about some of the synthetic sunscreens.

For example, there's this connection between the skin's microbiome and our immune cell modulating. They talk to each other. The skin's microbiome has a direct relationship of communication with the rest of the body.

The skin is actually an organ of light reception. This is what we're just beginning to understand, that the skin has light receptors on it for reasons. They're signalling.

It's not just blocking and keeping our insides intact. The skin is actually doing something active in the light. And if we disrupt those signals, there is potential to disrupt how our immune system might function.

This is something that the scientists are looking at. There's also the issue of skin sensitivity and the dermatologists seeing increasing numbers of rosacea, psoriasis, inflammatory skin conditions, perioral dermatitis, for example, because of overloading the skin with unnecessary ingredients. So I'm not anti-SPF at all.

I'm just saying be careful and mindful of the type that you use and when you use it.

[Angela Foster] (15:20 - 15:44)
Yeah, for sure. And also I suppose like some of them contain toxins, right? And things that you don't want absorbed into your skin as well.

You talk about preparing the skin, which is kind of a new area as well of science in terms of going out in the morning light, which I guess we would have done ancestrally, right? We would have been awake around sunrise. What can we do to kind of prepare our skin, especially now we're sort of recording this in May in anticipation of summer?

[Liz Earle] (15:45 - 17:58)
Well, the people who work with quantum biology and circadian biology and who are very much in favour of getting a lot of sunlight also do not want anybody to be damaging their skin. So it's about adapting the skin. And, you know, the worst thing that we can do is stay indoors all year and then rush out for our two week summer beach holiday and fry ourselves on the beach.

And we wonder why we go red and we burn. That's because our skin has not got used to the sunlight. We haven't adapted to it.

So this is a good time of year if you want to get some gentle adaptation by going out early in the day when the UV is low and the UV index generally is lower at this time of year and just getting five, 10 minutes, just building up gradually that sun exposure. And then your skin does become acclimatised. It does thicken slightly, which is good.

That's what you want it to do. That's what things like retinols do makes the skin stronger. It's producing more collagen.

And interestingly, some of those early morning light signals are also talking to fibroblasts in the skin. Fibroblasts are the cells that are making collagen and elastin. So I don't know if you take collagen supplements.

I do. But actually by going out in early morning light, I'm telling my body to make more collagen. So it's preparing the skin.

And you're right. You know, when we look historically, we were getting up with the dawn and we were going out and working in the fields or hunting and gathering or whatever. And so our skin was being primed for what we knew would come later in the day, which is stronger sunlight.

So it stands to reason that the skin starts to make those anti-inflammatory protective chemicals. It starts to produce nitric oxide. It starts to create the fibroblasts setting up for more collagen and elastin because we know that we're going to need it later on in the day.

Now, if we miss that early signalling and we go out straight later in the day, our skin has not been prepared for that. It's not ready to receive the stronger wavelengths of light. And actually, when you look at things like pigmentation, that really comes from the disruption of melanin forming into clumps and clusters because the skin hasn't adapted properly.

So if you can adapt your skin properly, then you're going to see far less sign of damage.

[Angela Foster] (18:16 - 18:31)
Super interesting. So just by kind of timing this effectively, we can enhance, as you say, things like collagen and elastin production. We can protect our skin effectively.

We can optimise for vitamin D. We can optimise our sleep and wake cycle. It's just amazing the effects on light.

[Liz Earle] (18:31 - 19:52)
Isn't it? I mean, who knew this? You know, I mean, this is going to become commonplace.

You know, this book, I have to say, is, you know, it may seem a bit out there right now, but I think a lot of things do seem weird and extraordinary until they become mainstream. And then it's just like, oh, yeah, no, we know. Of course we need some sunlight.

Of course we know. You know, we mustn't go and smother ourselves in sun cream first thing in the morning before we've actually had the chance to get some of the goodness. You know, it is going to become just a commonplace, everyday acceptance.

And again, quoting Richard Weller, this professor, he says that he thinks that we will look back at this time and our lack of sun exposure as being as damaging to our health as smoking. I mean, that is a pretty bold statement for a clinician, for a medical clinician to say. So and again, it's about balance, isn't it?

It's just and I think it's a very nuanced discussion. And I'm really keen for people to read about this and understand it. And there's huge sections, actually, in the book about this, because I knew that it would be such a hot topic.

And I thought I'm not just going to glance over this because it's important to fully understand it. And the book is fully referenced. The back section is packed with clinical studies and references and quoting medics who support this because I really want it to be taken seriously because it's so valuable.

It's free and it's valuable.

[Angela Foster] (19:53 - 20:08)
It is. I love the way you've backed it all up with science. It's kind of like a return to nature, isn't it, that we inherently knew?

I mean, the sun has to be good for us in a way. Otherwise, why do we have it? And it gives so much energy to plants, to everything, every life form.

Can't survive without it.

[Liz Earle] (20:08 - 20:30)
No, no, we have to respect it. You know, the sun is in a way it's neither friend nor foe. It's it's a superpower.

And, you know, it's it's very careful use of it. But in the old days, they used to use heliotherapy. They used to have hospitals were built with sun terraces and patients were wheeled out on these cast iron beds with wheels to get sunlight because they knew that it speeded up their recovery time.

[Angela Foster] (20:31 - 21:12)
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So you know what to change through diet, movement and sleep. I'm testing myself and my family. Get 10% off at getstride.com forward slash Angela or check the link in the description below. Yeah, yeah, for sure. I remember seeing like photos of that actually, or I don't know if they're photos or drawings, but they came up on my social media account of these kind of, yeah, sort of terraces with lots of hospital beds on them.

[Liz Earle] (21:13 - 21:24)
Yeah. And then again, you know, you have to say, well, because all light outdoors can be very beneficial. What happens when we come indoors?

Because the light then is very different.

[Angela Foster] (21:25 - 21:49)
Yes, which I wanted to move to next. I was sitting under some lights here as we're recording, as you do. But I'm very aware that, you know, I remember when all the lights started being changed right for LED and actually just feels incredibly harsh than a full spectrum light bulb.

I think you have changed a lot of things in your home since this. Tell us what we need to know about indoor lighting.

[Liz Earle] (21:49 - 24:52)
So indoor lighting, I'm afraid, is the kind of the junk food equivalent of what we're absorbing. And it is a single, especially LED, that it's a shortwave blue light. And when we think about our mitochondria, these little organelles in our cells that give us our energy, our mitochondria love broad spectrum light.

They are super happy. They are gleeful when we're outdoors and they receive all this broad spectrum input. When we come indoors, we're only feeding them with a shortwave blue light and they really don't like it.

They go into massive decline. And potentially that's why some people feel so much worse when they're working indoors all the time, because they're sitting under LED lights. Now, there is a bit of good news.

You don't have to redo all your lighting. And I was pleased to discover this because my kitchen is just full of LED downlighters, like most people, I guess. There's a guy called Professor Glenn Jeffrey, and he's a professor of neuroscience and ophthalmology.

He's based at UCL and also at Moorfields, and he works a lot with the eyes and with light. And what he discovered is that, yes, shortwave blue LED lighting is damaging to our mitochondria. It has a significant health impact.

He'd like to see it taken out of hospitals, for example, for sure. Schools, all of those care homes, all those facilities where people need especially to grow and develop and be well. But he discovered that if you just put one or two of the old fashioned incandescent light bulbs into your home, you can help your mitochondria.

So you are going to give your mitochondria, you're going to feed your mitochondria with a little bit of that broad spectrum light that they love so much. So, for example, I'm sitting here I have a desk lamp with an old fashioned light bulb. I just bought it online and it was like £1.50. It's not expensive. And I have that sitting on my desk and it balances the blue light that I'm getting from my screens and my overhead lighting. And you can do that in your kitchen. You can have a couple of lamps that you just plug in and use those in the evening instead of your bright down lighters.

You can put one beside the bed. You can have one even if you work in an office that's brightly lit, you can take in a light. I did a radio interview with Jo Good in BBC London and I was in the studios and she was really beginning to panic.

She said, I spend most of my day in the studio. I can't get out. There's no daylight.

I can't open a window because that's obviously the other option that you can let in a bit of broad spectrum light by opening a window. But many of these offices are sort of hermetically sealed and we can't do that. So I said, listen, Jo, just bring in a lamp and plug it in.

And she said, oh, you know, BBC, health and safety aren't going to like it. And I said, well, just maybe have a really small one and nobody can see and you can just plug it in and just benefit from that. And if you really can't do that, take daylight breaks, you know, go and get a little bit of daylight whenever you can.

You know, if you're going to nip to the loo, just kind of pop your head outside at the same time or if you take your tea break, you know, take a cup and just have it outside whenever you can.

[Angela Foster] (24:52 - 24:58)
And if you're lucky enough to be near a window, presumably opening the window will also balance some of the LED.

[Liz Earle] (24:58 - 25:44)
Yeah, and this is something that I learned actually also is that light isn't linear. You know, it won't just come in a straight line through that crack. It will come in and it will bounce around wherever you are.

And also something that I do when I'm driving and if I'm driving long distances is I just crack open the window a little bit or if I'm travelling in a car, I just say, you know, do you mind if I just open the window a fraction? Because I know that that light will come in and it will bounce around and it will benefit my cells. So, you know, tiny things like this can make a massive difference to how you feel.

And I'm really interested, Angela, that you say that, you know, when you were dog walking in the winter, even just that kind of little bit of light snacking, if you like, is going to make you feel better. It's going to lift your mood and it's going to help strengthen your immune system as well.

[Angela Foster] (25:44 - 25:55)
Yeah, hugely. I noticed a big difference. And like you were saying, opening the window in the car.

Yeah. If my kids allow me, when they do, right? I'm like, you know, once you've got the window open because they need their morning light.

[Liz Earle] (25:55 - 26:14)
Oh my gosh, they really do. And I say that to my boys now, you know, please, you know, get out sky before screens. Yes, I know you're going to want to start scrolling the minute you wake up, but please just open the window or step foot outside before you do that.

Even if you can just give me five minutes, I know that I'm going to help you feel better for the rest of the day.

[Angela Foster] (26:14 - 26:28)
I think that's what you do so well in this book is to make it easy. Like, I love that sky before screens and having a lamp on your desk or just cracking open the window in your office in the car. Yeah, just rather than sort of sitting and worrying about it and thinking I haven't got it perfectly right.

[Liz Earle] (26:29 - 26:49)
None of us do. You know, none of us, you know, and I actually am a great believer in the 80-20 rule. 80% of the time I'm pretty good, you know, with my routines and what I'm eating and my sleep and all the rest of it.

20% of the time, I mean, it's tequila and cake. You know, that's kind of how you've got to live in balance, haven't you? Life is for living.

You can't be puritanical about everything.

[Angela Foster] (26:50 - 27:12)
100%. One of the things that you speak about, and light comes into this as well, is water. The section on water is really fascinating to me.

I think if we start simply, let's talk about filtering and then move through, because some of the things that you included about water and just the way it affects our energy are just really, really interesting.

[Liz Earle] (27:12 - 32:27)
So water, again, is a superpower. If you look back ancestrally to what we involved with, light and water were two of the key inputs. But our water back then was very different.

It was, some people describe it as living water. You know, it was bubbling up from aquifers underground. It was running.

It was free flowing through streams and rivers. And it was being purified by rocks that it was coming up from underground. And it was collecting lots of trace minerals and being really, really vital for us.

And if you compare that to the tap water that we get today, again, just like indoor lighting is like the junk food of the lighting world. Actually, tap water is a bit like ultra processed food. It has been ultra processed.

It's passed through human beings many times because it goes back into the sewage system. It gets purified and it gets sent back out there. And it needs to be cleaned, obviously, to keep it safe.

We're very fortunate in the Western world, we have access to clean, safe water. But that means it's chlorinated. It's often fluoridated.

It will have lost a lot of the minerals that it came up with when it came up from underground naturally. And it's likely to contain traces of pesticides and pharmaceutical residues, hormones, for example. You know, so many people on SSRIs, you're going to have traces of all kinds of pharmaceuticals that will end up in the water supply.

So I think firstly, you can check, you can go onto your local water company's website and you can check and they have all their reports. But I think just a simple water filter is a helpful measure. Actually, it makes water taste nice is why I don't really like the taste of chlorinated water.

So I think having this and I look at all the different types, you know, you can have things from a really simple jug filter. If you can go for a glass jug filter, because of course, then you've got the issue of microplastics that we need to talk about, because microplastics are ever prevalent in water supply. We don't know quite what the impact is.

You know, they say now that we've got about a teaspoon's worth of microplastics in the brain at the moment. So it's, you know, we've got to look at ways of getting rid of that and minimising our impact. So, so filter your water, but just be careful about how you filter it.

And then to take it to the next stage, think about remineralising it. Think about what water had naturally. You know, if we were lucky enough to drink bottled mineral water, for example, bottled at source.

Well, why do people buy it? Well, they buy it because it tastes great. And it's also got a really interesting mineral content.

So I put electrolytes in my water first thing. I don't do it all throughout the day, but my first glass of water in the morning in the bathroom, I have my tub of electrolytes and that's potassium, magnesium, sodium, maybe a little bit of calcium. And that's replenishing the minerals that I will have lost overnight through dehydration.

And it provides cells with a little electrical charge, which is what they need to function properly. We are energetic beings. Our cells run on electric current, if you like.

So putting those minerals back into our hydration, I think is very helpful. Even just a pinch of sea salt, for example, can help with that mineral balance. So those are kind of the basics.

And those, I think, are probably fairly well understood by most people who are looking at health. And I should just say, fundamentally, women especially need to drink more water. And as we age, we lose the thirst signal.

So we're often not aware that we've become dehydrated. We know we lose so many signals, don't we? When we get older, we lose our capacity for lots of things.

And recognising thirst is one of them. So making sure that we stay well hydrated is really important. But then we get into living water and what that means and is it a real thing?

And structured water, which some people may have heard of, structured or easy water. And easy water is interesting. It's actually spelt E-Z.

But because it's American and they pronounce their Zs as a Z, it translates as E-Z water. So it's become known as easy water. It actually stands for exclusion zone water.

So structured water or exclusion zone water is a newly discovered phenomenon. It's the fourth phase of water. It was discovered by a guy called Professor Jerry Pollock over in Washington University in the Pollock Labs.

You can go and look him up. He's a fascinating guy. And he discovered that our cells run on structured water.

And do you know what makes structured water? Mitochondria. Mitochondria are very involved in structured water processing.

And what enables them to do that is sunlight. So you're kind of, you're coming back 360. You're doing the full circle as to one of the reasons why we need to get sunlight in daylight is it supports our mitochondria.

And one of the activities that the mitochondria are doing is helping to structure the water within our cells. And the water within our cells is helping us have more energy and give us more vivacity and strength. And our mitochondria obviously do things like provide energy.

They help with our DNA repair. So they're going to be better able to do that. So I think we're going to be hearing more about structured water in the future.

And it's coming out of the kind of woo-woo territory of living water and into the world of recognised science.

[Angela Foster] (32:27 - 34:39)
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I remember reading about this a few years ago and just being really struck by how we could access it as well in nature, in certain foods, right? So it's like that gel-like substance, isn't it? Like when chia goes into water and you create it or, you were actually mentioning on the book, which I thought was a really great hack, was putting water into sunlight for 30 minutes or so before you drink it and then drinking it reasonably quickly afterwards would structure the water.

[Liz Earle] (34:39 - 36:07)
That certainly has been shown. When you look at water under various magnification methods, you can see the structure of water. You can see the cells, well, they're not cells, but you can see the elements of the water become more structured, become more aligned.

And that's why it's called structured because unstructured water looks very jaggedy and rough and then it becomes more ordered and structured when it has been changed. And there are ways that you can change it. Putting water in sunlight can actually have an impact.

Vortexing it, so swirling it, can also change the structure of water. I think the big question is what happens then when we drink it? Does it stay structured or does it just sort of dissipate and then we have to restructure it?

The science is still kind of emerging on that. There have been some studies done by companies who claim to be able to structure water and they have looked at the production of ATP for example, so that energy source that we run on and you can measure it and they've measured before and after and they claim good results with it. So I think it's likely to have a beneficial effect.

And again, it's something that is emerging. And I wanted to include it because it's emerging science and I wanted this book to be kind of as forward thinking as possible, which is also why I've looked at things like deuterium depleted water, which is yet again another stage of water that we're going to be hearing about in the future.

[Angela Foster] (36:07 - 36:13)
Yes. Yeah, I think we should touch on that because you talk about hydrogen water. Hydrogen water I love, yes.

[Liz Earle] (36:14 - 37:42)
So hydrogen water I think is really becoming more mainstream. You may have started to see tins of hydrogen water appearing in kind of high-end health spas and longevity clinics and it's basically water that has extra hydrogen. So it's just H2, rather than H2O and it's a selective antioxidant.

So we know about antioxidants, you know, they're good, they knock out free radicals, they help protect the cells from oxidative stress, etc. However, we need a little bit of that. You know, it's like you need a little bit of inflammation to help with wound healing.

You know, you don't want everything to be anti-inflammatory because you need a little bit. So knocking out all your oxidative damage or oxidative reactions may not be the best option and you've got, you know, broad-spectrum knocker-outers, if you like, like vitamin C, which comes and, you know, clears away all the, or a lot of the excess free radicals. What hydrogen does and what hydrogen water is so good at and I think why it's so interesting is it's a selective antioxidant.

So it knows to go for the bad guys. It knows to go for the most toxic forms of free radicals and it takes them out and it leaves alone the potential for free radicals to actually get on with what they're supposed to be doing. After all, it's the excess of free radicals that's damaging, not free radicals per se.

[Angela Foster] (37:44 - 37:48)
Very clever. I have a, yeah, hydrogen water making machine.

[Liz Earle] (37:48 - 37:50)
Do you? I have a little flask.

[Angela Foster] (37:51 - 38:07)
I'll have that, yeah, once a day. And also the minerals, what you were mentioning there in the morning, I think people underestimate, just we think of caffeine as waking us up, but when you put minerals in your water, I feel like it really wakes up your brain. Yeah, definitely.

You can feel that sort of electrical charge because we are electrical beings, so.

[Liz Earle] (38:07 - 38:45)
Yes, completely. Just a little bit of salt and I actually like Celtic sea salt. You can get lots of different brands and it comes from salt plains in Northern France, the coastal region, and it's very pure.

It's unpolluted, but it contains high levels of different trace minerals. It's slightly damp when you buy it. It's kind of weird and it's slightly greyish in colour.

I used to use a pink Himalayan rock salt, but there were some concerns and some studies looking at high levels of heavy metals. So I think that's something that needs to be considered quite carefully. But the other thing that I do really like, I don't know whether you're into this at all, is shalajit.

[Angela Foster] (38:47 - 39:02)
So I tried one form of it and yeah, I didn't particularly, I don't know, I didn't get on with it that well, but then I have since tried fulvic and humic minerals. In another form, which I definitely have enjoyed and seen benefits with.

[Liz Earle] (39:02 - 40:24)
So fulvic minerals, I think are great and I have a reverse osmosis water purifier at home and it's great because it takes out everything. You know, it takes out all traces of pharmaceuticals, fluoride, chlorine, the whole thing. It takes out microplastics.

You know, it really is very, very, very pure. But the problem with that is it takes out all the minerals. So if you're going to drink, you know, like drinking distilled water or reverse osmosis water, you need to remineralise it.

Otherwise you're likely to be missing out. So then I have a little mineral dropper that I put just a few drops in a jug. So I think fulvic minerals are really interesting.

They are, again, coming from rock sources. They contain traces of many, many micro minerals that we need in just the tiniest, tiniest bit. But actually even that tiniest bit is helpful for the body.

And shilajit, I actually really like. It's this sort of black, gooey, like rock resin from the Himalayas. It has a very strong earthy taste.

And when you first taste it, you think, oh my gosh, this is just rank. I can't have this. But for me, I'm addicted now.

If I don't put a little dot of shilajit in my morning coffee, my body is like going, hello, where is it? We really need it.

[Angela Foster] (40:24 - 40:25)
I agree. You put it in coffee?

[Liz Earle] (40:25 - 40:26)
I do. Yeah.

[Angela Foster] (40:26 - 40:29)
How does that alter the taste? Or not so much?

[Liz Earle] (40:29 - 41:00)
It does. It does alter. I mean, you're only using a tiny bit.

It's highly concentrated. And you need to be careful to buy it from a really reputable source because it's quite expensive. And there is a whole market, unfortunately, in the kind of adulteration of shilajit and what people are selling you.

But it's a tiny dot. And I just, I love it. You know, Angela, I've got really used to that.

It kind of, it's almost like, sort of like muddy soil taste. That sounds really disgusting, doesn't it? But yeah, like my body is calling out for it.

[Angela Foster] (41:01 - 41:17)
You're still selling me. You're still selling me on it. I'm going to try it because...

If you tell me that your body now sort of craves it in coffee, that tells me that there's something, right? That, yeah, it feels that it needs. I might try it again.

Because so far, my latest thing is putting creatine into my coffee.

[Liz Earle] (41:17 - 41:17)
Great.

[Angela Foster] (41:17 - 41:50)
Yeah, I do that too. Yeah. But do you know with creatine, it's interesting, isn't it?

Because I've been running some experiments with creatine because everyone talks about the bloating and then I was finding from the research that if you put it in something warm, it dissolves so much better. And as long as you're well hydrated, you won't get that. But then on and off, I kind of do.

And I think it's also because I'm sometimes a bit low in potassium. So then I'll do these experiments where I'll be like, okay, I'm not going to have creatine for two weeks. And in the beginning, I'm sort of like, oh, I don't notice any difference now.

I'm absolutely fine without it. And then after about two or three weeks, I realised, no, I feel so much better with creatine.

[Liz Earle] (41:50 - 43:06)
I feel better with it. I think there is potential to look at the different types of creatine. I think the bloating often comes with creatine monohydrate.

And there's another form, I think it's called HCL. Yeah, HCL, are you using that? Yeah, and that has less bloating.

So I would certainly, if you're going to do your experiments, I love the fact that you're experimenting on yourself because that's exactly what I do. I think it's important to look at the research, but I always say, look at the me search as well. Because how does it affect you?

You know, this is what I'm thinking. How's it going to affect me? What's going on in my body?

Because, you know, we are genetically different. And what works for one person is not necessarily going to work for somebody else in the same way. Because we all have different genetic pathways and genetic variations.

Our SNPs are different. And we can't just say it's a blanket, take this dose of that for everybody and it's going to work. Because of course it's not.

You know, you need to adjust dose and type and find out really what your body is responding to. But there are certain fundamentals that our body does love, like daylight, like hydration. You know, those are, I think that's a really safe ground, I think for everybody to be really investing in.

[Angela Foster] (43:07 - 43:25)
I agree. Mitochondria is a real theme in the book because it's linked to energy. It's also linked to oestrogen.

And for women in midlife, that's really important, that bi-directional relationship with mitochondria. What are the other things that you do, Liz, for protecting and taking care of your mitochondria?

[Liz Earle] (43:25 - 46:00)
So the three principles, the first section of the book is based on the three pillars, if you like. One is light, one is water, and the other is energy. I called it energy because I didn't want it to sound too woo-woo because it's really what we're talking about is vibrational energy and magnetism.

And we're looking at the earth's energetic current. And the earth has a resonance. It's actually called the Schumann resonance.

And it's a slight hum. We can't hear it, but it's there. And we have lost ancestrally that connection with it.

We used to walk around barefoot. We used to spend all our time outdoors. And we would benefit from...

That's basically the principle of grounding or earthing when we have that direct connection with the body. And obviously, we're now indoors. All our soles of our shoes are plastic, leather, with synthetic glues and things that separate us.

So if you can buy grounding shoes or grounding trainers and walk around in those outside, I think that's a benefit. But again, getting out and having that natural connection first thing. So when you're outside looking at the daylight, just make sure that you've got your shoes and socks off and connect.

You don't have to be on grass. You can ground even on concrete. You can ground on stone.

You can ground on soil, earth, rock, beach, sand. If you're wild swimming, that's a great way of grounding the body as well because that gives you that same energetic connection. And I think it's again, it's about really recognising what the benefits are to the body and what the mitochondria respond to.

And the studies have been small, but they do exist showing that if you are grounding, you can lower your cholesterol... Not your cholesterol, sorry. If you are doing your grounding, you can lower your cortisol level and you can lower inflammation and the body does just become calmer.

And then other things that I love, like vibrationally, I love things like sound baths and gongs. And I looked at the whole vibrational resonance of what happens to ourselves when we hear certain frequencies. And I've downloaded lots of Solfregio frequencies, which you can just get on any of the music providers, you know, Spotify, Apple, all of that.

They all have free downloads that you can listen to. And there are different frequencies that tune into different wavelengths in the body. Some are designed for healing, some are designed for energy and mental clarity, some are designed for sleep and for calm.

So it's, yeah, I think the whole area of vibration and vibrational healing is fascinating. And it's something that our mitochondria do respond to.

[Angela Foster] (46:01 - 46:39)
It's amazing. And I think just so much more, as you say, is going to come out in relation to this, because we know when we go to a sound bath, just how lovely that feel, like you feel it vibrating through your body. It's just beautiful.

As I'm listening to you now, I'm thinking about a lot of the things that you speak about here. If I observe my Labrador, he just naturally does them. He wakes as soon as it, you know, he'll wake up as soon as the sun rises, if I go down early.

There was one thing that was really fascinating me, was he always will go and lick the tops of long grass early in the morning. And I was like, what is it about that? Now, I hope I remember this correctly, because I researched it last summer.

And I believe it's because of the morning light, there is easy water resting.

[Liz Earle] (46:40 - 46:53)
Oh my gosh, do you know that makes perfect sense? That makes perfect sense, that the dew would have easy water in it, because it's been exposed to that early morning red light. How very fascinating.

We should all be dew gatherers.

[Angela Foster] (46:54 - 47:05)
We should be. I love it. I'd love to know what to do.

But in the book, you also go into all these healing frequencies. There's so much more in there that I would just love everyone to go and pick up a copy of this. It's a brilliant book.

[Liz Earle] (47:05 - 47:06)
Thank you.

[Angela Foster] (47:06 - 47:15)
How to Age. And I think it is the type of book, Liz, that I can just go back to, you know, chapter by chapter and just kick off little things. I think that's what I love about it, is it's so practical.

[Liz Earle] (47:16 - 47:52)
I tried to do that. There's a lot of science in there. And there are bits that you can skip.

You know, I put the science in because I wanted the naysayers and the medics who might be sceptical to go, oh, actually, you know, that science is robust. And I go and look up the studies that you've put at the back. So it is fully referenced.

But at the end of each section, there's a really simple checklist. This is the things that you can do every day. So, you know, if you want to skip all the science a bit, no problem.

But, you know, just make sure that you're doing these little bits, you know, get a couple of incandescent light bulbs and drink a bit more water, maybe with a pinch of salt. You know, it really is that simple. And it is fundamentally going to change how you age.

[Angela Foster] (47:53 - 48:07)
Yeah, well, you are the proof in the building for that. It's just amazing. Where can people find out more about you?

The book is available everywhere now. It's already bestseller. Absolutely incredible.

It's just been so fun watching you launch the book as well.

[Liz Earle] (48:07 - 48:33)
Thank you. Well, bless you for saying. I really appreciate it.

And I really appreciate the sisterhood, you know, women supporting other women and getting these strong messages across. It's just so helpful. So thank you.

So my website is Lizal Wellbeing, lizalwellbeing.com. And I have a podcast like you. So my podcast is called Age Better.

And yeah, I love it. I mean, it's my life's work is to communicate and to talk about these things. And I'm just going to continue doing it.

So thank you for supporting me.

[Angela Foster] (48:34 - 48:44)
Amazing. Thank you so much. And for coming back on the show to talk about your second book.

We also linked to the previous interview that we did on A Better Second Half as well. So thanks so much, Liz. Thank you.

What if the key to looking and feeling 20 years younger wasn't another supplement stack, but something you could get for free, starting tomorrow morning?

Liz Earle's biological age is over 20 years younger than her chronological age, and in this episode she breaks down exactly why. It comes down to three things most women in their 40s and 50s have never considered: circadian rhythm and the light you are exposed to, the water you are drinking, and the energy your cells are actually running on. If you are feeling tired, foggy, or like your body is aging faster than it should, this episode will change how you see your daily environment.

WHAT YOU’LL LEARN

• Why morning light fixes low energy, poor sleep, and hormone imbalance after 40
• How indoor LED lighting damages your mitochondria and the simple swap that reverses it
• Why sunscreen may be blocking the vitamin D and nitric oxide you need after menopause
• How tap water disrupts hormones and energy and what to drink instead
• What EZ water is and why it matters for mitochondrial energy and aging after 40
• Why mineral deficiency causes fatigue and brain fog in perimenopause
• How grounding and circadian light slow visible aging from the inside out