#2 The Science of COVID - Dr Tom Buckley

Season #1 April 07, 2022

Andrew and Dr Tom have been working together for 17 years under 5 different business iterations, with a mutual interest and desire to bridge the gap between the science of human performance and the reality of the human experience.

Dr Tom has been studying all the research and science around COVID and has come up with some definite ways of reducing your risk of contracting COVID and what you can do to maintain your health during and after being infected. He has also been extensively looking into the emerging literature on "Long COVID" and how that has been affecting people both short and long term.

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Episode Transcript

00:00:00:01 - 00:00:12:05
Dr Tom Buckley
A risk factors for getting covered are not the same risk factors for long COVID. And as soon as you appreciate that. And so this is not about blaming myself. This is where I'm at. Then you can come back into control of things again.

00:00:12:11 - 00:00:40:16
Andrew May
Welcome to the Strive Stronger podcast by Andrew, where I am blessed to talk to world class experts in a range of fields including sport, entertainment, media, performing arts, military science and a whole lot more. And we do two things, more than two things, but primarily one is we look at the origin of that word, strive from the French word Ostrava, which means to push through challenging times and come out the other side and the word stronger, stronger physically, psychologically, emotionally, and stronger in our relationship.

00:00:40:16 - 00:01:03:11
Andrew May
Stronger finance is stronger in all parts of our lives. What a great segue into today's topic. We're going to be talking about well-being, immunity, and COVID. What a topic to talk about. We hear about it every time we turn on the TV, on the radio. And I've got a world class expert in with me today. Today's guest has literally worked by my side for the past 18 years in five different business iterations.

00:01:03:11 - 00:01:28:19
Andrew May
We know that because I judge it by his eldest son's birthdays. And I saw your eldest son recently with a beard and driving. So it's been a long time. Dr. Tom Buckley originally trained as a specialist intensive care R.N. before undertaking his doctoral studies. Look at the impact of stress on human physiology and cardiovascular risk factors. He is associate professor and a director of research education in the Faculty of Medicine and Health at Sydney University.

00:01:29:06 - 00:01:47:08
Andrew May
He's an adjunct professor at Southern Cross University. This is a really big list of achievements. He's also the research director with assets derived stronger. Dr. Tom is renowned as one of the world's leading experts on the impact of stress on human functioning. This is a really good intro to show why he is here today to talk about COVID.

00:01:47:16 - 00:02:08:02
Andrew May
He's written more than 100 publications, research based papers that appear in peer reviewed academic journals. He's also the coauthor with me of Match Fit, which is now sold. Do you believe over 85,000 copies? Dr. Tom Buckley, welcome. And from my mates that I trained with on a Monday morning. Those copies are not all sitting in my parent's garage on the Gold Coast.

00:02:08:10 - 00:02:10:14
Dr Tom Buckley
I certainly overnight. Andrew afternoon.

00:02:11:16 - 00:02:33:24
Andrew May
Now, we have done lots of interviews. We've done a few podcast before and the different panels the night business fit podcast. We're always producing content. This is the first time we've done it under the Stryde Stronger banner. And I thought the best way to launch with you is Let's talk about a topic that you're doing a lot of researching on, writing on, and now speaking on COVID.

00:02:34:10 - 00:02:41:01
Dr Tom Buckley
Yeah, it's dominating all our conversations these days, isn't it? Two years later and it's still as fresh as day one isn't as I.

00:02:41:01 - 00:02:55:00
Andrew May
Remember you saying in a large bank that we do. We got us into to one of our was our original 30 day booze program. And you said this is not going away. This is going to be here for a number of years and purpose. I don't know. Isn't it just going to be something that comes in and leaves fairly quick?

00:02:55:08 - 00:03:02:15
Andrew May
It's not two years later it is still occupying so much time, so much anxiety, so much stress.

00:03:03:06 - 00:03:20:10
Dr Tom Buckley
Yeah. And I think it was fairly clear quite quick that this was a pandemic, that this wasn't something that was isolated to an area. And viruses have a have a tendency to to hang around, to have a tendency to come back in different forms. Or different variations. And I guess that's what we've seen over the last two years.

00:03:20:20 - 00:03:38:12
Andrew May
And now that same Clyde got you back into the bank a couple of weeks ago and asked you to come in and talk to people about COVID Long COVID vaccination. A lot of this is evidence based, not emotion based. So you have been living, breathing, and you're doing a lot of talk for our client. So we could talk about this for hours.

00:03:38:12 - 00:03:58:02
Andrew May
And I know you do with some of your academic friends. I'm going to try and find a pitch between science where you live and interpreting so people listening to this understand what it means. So we'll try and dance between the two as a rough rhyme. Dr. Tom, five things I'd like to cover. Number one, where are we with COVID Number two, the history of pandemics.

00:03:58:02 - 00:04:16:01
Andrew May
I've heard you say the Spanish flu and swine flu didn't go away overnight. Three, What can we do to boost our immune system and overall well-being? Four, If you or a loved one gets COVID, what should you or they focus on? And also want to look at this question that a lot of people ask us, can you get COVID twice?

00:04:16:10 - 00:04:28:13
Andrew May
And number five, you and I are working. It's fascinating. Some of the work that we're doing now with some high net worth individuals, some entrepreneurs, some very well-known executives on long COVID. So I want to talk about that as well.

00:04:28:17 - 00:04:51:09
Dr Tom Buckley
And just on that point is that, you know, well, there's the science. Science takes a while to be generations, to be peer review, to be published. So we guess we're all living in this laboratory called The World at the moment. And we all have our own personal experiences and they're just as valuable as a peer review publication. So while we will talk about what evidence we have, I'm really, really conscious.

00:04:51:14 - 00:05:12:11
Dr Tom Buckley
Conscious that there's a lot of evidence we don't have. It's been generations or we haven't got to researching every aspect of COVID yet. So as we get into this a lean, a lot of what we know from the science, but I'm also very, very aware of what we see with clients, what we see in family members, what we see in friends, because that's evidence as well.

00:05:12:17 - 00:05:28:17
Andrew May
I think you find a nice balance on that. My understanding in academia, at least two, two and a half years until you can get a real grasp on research. Now, this is only been around for two years, so the research is not going to come out. And if we wait for the research to come out, we're going to be sitting idle for a long, long time.

00:05:28:21 - 00:05:53:00
Dr Tom Buckley
Yeah, actually, I can even correct you on that. I mean, two and a half years of creating evidence and translation is what is rapid, and that's kind of what we've got now maybe a bit quicker in some of the sort of emergency treatments of COVID where we were moving evidence into practice really, really quickly that the translation science actually shows in medicine and health, it generally takes about seven to seven and a half years before things get translated.

00:05:53:00 - 00:06:12:22
Dr Tom Buckley
If we were to change everything we do in our well-being, in our health or in medicine, if we were to change everything on the latest study, we'd be change in practice every other day. So we do have to take a measured approach to what's the volume of evidence, what's the level of evidence, how generalizable is that evidence to this population?

00:06:12:22 - 00:06:33:14
Dr Tom Buckley
Because a study conducted in 90 year olds may not translate at all to 50 year olds. And so we have tended to go back and look at weights of evidence, and that can take years. It could take 15 years to have five studies in a particular area. But what we've seen with COVID is absolute rapid generation of science, and that comes with some special risks as well.

00:06:33:22 - 00:06:42:02
Dr Tom Buckley
But I think what we've seen with COVID is that it comes with some tremendous rewards for for us both at a public level and a high national an individual hospital level.

00:06:42:02 - 00:06:52:16
Andrew May
As most of our listeners, Dr. Tom, are hugely impatient. They're not going to wait for seven years. So let's go with no one. Where are we at with COVID, including the latest updates, advances, what science showing is right now?

00:06:53:04 - 00:07:11:07
Dr Tom Buckley
Yeah, we know a lot about the virus itself. We know it's an ugly cell under the microscope. We know it's got these spike protein zeros and people see these pictures of this round lipid looking fat globules. So people have this vision of us so we know what it looks like. We know how where it's finished and the body is.

00:07:11:12 - 00:07:33:14
Dr Tom Buckley
Most people are infected through the respiratory system we know is attracted to a receptor in there called an AC receptor, which is a receptor that's associated with blood pressure regulation. Normally, we know that some people have more and less of them, which helps us to help understand some of the risk factors. And we also know that there is another surface enzyme some people call a surface protein.

00:07:33:14 - 00:07:49:07
Dr Tom Buckley
So actually an enzyme that's involved in how that that virus then gets into the body because Andrew listeners probably know that viruses are different to bacteria, bacterial colonies outside the body, whereas viruses have to actually invade and get into the cells of the body.

00:07:49:07 - 00:07:53:23
Andrew May
To replicate so that Donald Trump missed. I think I promised I wasn't going to mention Donald.

00:07:53:23 - 00:07:54:02
Andrew May
Trump.

00:07:56:22 - 00:08:00:21
Andrew May
But yeah, there was a lot of misinformation about that, wasn't there at the start?

00:08:00:24 - 00:08:25:15
Dr Tom Buckley
Oh, I think there's a lot of misinformation on COVID and a lot of opinions or belief informed facts been thrown around rather than sex for the sake of it. But I think that's okay because people generate their own experiences and to have their own knowledge attitudes, beliefs around topics, we just got to work out what what's what's factual or what's likely to be true for is a true for them.

00:08:25:15 - 00:08:51:13
Dr Tom Buckley
Or true for themselves. So it's it's a messy area. The what we absolutely know is a virus gets in, gets generally gets into the respiratory system. And we generally know that invades the cells and then it replicates within the cells. And so most people have had respiratory symptoms at the start. The good thing about that, I mean, that's a simplistic version of a very complex process, but the advances in our understanding have been unbelievable.

00:08:51:13 - 00:09:16:04
Dr Tom Buckley
And I think a lot of the prevention and treatments come from understanding those pathways, understanding the exact proteins, enzymes, receptors involved. And now we actually understand how the virus spreads around the body. So the understanding is phenomenal. We've had vaccination developed in record time, but it takes a long time to develop test pharmacological therapies to you to prevent or treat.

00:09:16:08 - 00:09:23:15
Andrew May
Oh, I'm going to ask you a question and this is personal because it's based on a couple I know the wife got COVID, the husband didn't.

00:09:23:21 - 00:09:44:13
Dr Tom Buckley
Yeah. Look, at some of this is a mystery, but we do know a fair bit. I mean, we know the risk factors, so we know there are not causative factors of disease, but the risk factors are a higher risk of getting caught. And, and interestingly, men are slightly more at risk than women. People with higher blood pressure, with prior cardiovascular disease, with prior lung diseases.

00:09:44:13 - 00:10:16:15
Dr Tom Buckley
Interestingly, not so much asthma, but some of the chronic diseases that people have are risk factors. Interestingly, and particularly what your expertize, you know, cardio respiratory fitness is a massive risk factor. Even things like doing six minute walk tests actually predict your susceptibility to getting COVID. So I think, you know, we said very early on in this, you know, that never, ever been a better time to be match fit and never been a better time to have good wellbeing and good health behaviors at the beginning of COVID.

00:10:17:03 - 00:10:41:03
Dr Tom Buckley
That's still true today. Smoking is obviously a risk factor because smoking you know what smoking does to the lungs you'll have more of those ace receptors. Do you know that's a lot more more susceptible to pathogens such as a virus actually invading into the lungs. So we know those risk factors that helps in a way to understand why some people get it and some people are less likely to get it.

00:10:41:03 - 00:10:52:13
Andrew May
Or some people not get it because I've heard in the media and I've been wanting to ask you this is everyone going to get COVID or will some people not based on the immunity, based on their DNA structure?

00:10:52:14 - 00:11:16:16
Dr Tom Buckley
Yeah, two things there 11, I think some people that have more genetic expression of those receptors, some people seem to have more perhaps have more or more activated ace receptors, just like people. Some people have had higher blood pressure than others. Then some of these surface proteins have discovered that are absolutely essential for this virus to actually get from outside the respiratory system into the respiratory cells.

00:11:17:22 - 00:11:43:16
Dr Tom Buckley
Some people don't have the genetic profile to have them switched on and they're doing some some some studies where they're doing what they call COVID exposure tests, where they expose individuals who don't have this genetic switch on. So, you know, they match the language of these genes and they seem to be quite refractory to actually to COVID actually replicating and invading the cells in the body.

00:11:43:16 - 00:12:01:04
Dr Tom Buckley
So. So that would help to explain because like you, I know lots of families where the whole family has this except one individual. Yeah. And so some of the risk factors help, but I actually think there's probably some more to the genetics there as well. Well, I don't just think it from our reading of the literature, it appears there is.

00:12:01:12 - 00:12:06:17
Andrew May
Yeah. I'm going to say something really intelligent. This might not have happened really for.

00:12:08:03 - 00:12:08:06
Andrew May
I'm.

00:12:08:17 - 00:12:08:24
Dr Tom Buckley
Listening.

00:12:08:24 - 00:12:18:18
Andrew May
To the doctor. You don't meant to make the jokes COVID is not a respiratory virus. It's a whole body virus that attacks the endothelium.

00:12:19:01 - 00:12:21:10
Dr Tom Buckley
Yeah. Look, that's, that's very, very true.

00:12:21:10 - 00:12:24:02
Andrew May
That is intelligent, right? Because you said that to a patient the other day.

00:12:25:02 - 00:12:25:06
Andrew May
That.

00:12:26:01 - 00:12:26:18
Dr Tom Buckley
You were listening.

00:12:27:02 - 00:12:50:09
Andrew May
But what's interesting is this patient has seen a respiratory expert and a lot of people who and we'll get to LONG-COVID as well, going and seeing specialist, respiratory specialist and are still finding that they're not treating the fatigue. They've got all the problems of the challenges they've got. But your view on that was was really rounded and quite different to a lot of other approaches.

00:12:50:09 - 00:12:50:18
Andrew May
I've heard.

00:12:51:02 - 00:13:15:08
Dr Tom Buckley
So my view on those come from speaking to a lot of those respiratory specialist, hematology specialist cardiac specialists salon that I worked very closely with. What they will say to me is that, you know, when you have a respiratory infection, it's a respiratory disorder and the symptoms you get are originating from that respiratory infection. So oxygenation breathlessness maybe signals to the brain to raise a temperature, to kill off, try and kill off pathogens.

00:13:15:17 - 00:13:42:04
Dr Tom Buckley
And if that temperature or if that infection spread into the blood, then you'll have blood pressure issues. That's, you know, from a source sepsis type scenario. So it's it's a respiratory disorder and everything else systemically is in response to that when they're dealing with patients who are really ill with COVID, it's actually a whole body disorder. It's not just it may have started in a respiratory system, but actually COVID has the potential to attack all the organs in the body.

00:13:42:12 - 00:14:03:23
Dr Tom Buckley
And that makes a lot of sense because those receptors responsible are actually spread all around the body. And the organs that are most prevalent in, of course, are the respiratory system, the gastrointestinal system. So a lot of patients get gastric problems and tummy problems there in the nose and an the mouth of the tongue. So people often have issues with sense of smell and taste.

00:14:04:02 - 00:14:07:03
Andrew May
I know a lot of people have had that. They've lost their smell. They can't taste.

00:14:07:03 - 00:14:29:03
Dr Tom Buckley
Food. Yeah. So so if the virus is interacting with those organs, then the function of those organs is very highly likely to be to be affected. And that's a seems to be a very common symptom. And then of course, longer term, people then tend to have symptoms that often go beyond the acute infection. And we generally call that long COVID vaccination.

00:14:29:09 - 00:14:50:24
Andrew May
My understanding those three types we're hearing a lot now, they're double vaccinated, triple vaccinated. And I'll just underscore that we're talking about this based on science, not emotion. No. We've had the chart in my family, your family, friends, colleagues, they so many views on this. And I think whenever somebody starts with I think I feel that let's go to the doctors, let's go to the scientists.

00:14:51:06 - 00:14:54:12
Andrew May
So can you give me a scientific update on vaccination?

00:14:55:07 - 00:15:05:14
Dr Tom Buckley
Yeah. Before I do that, just just to say that, you know, people do develop opinions about what they feel is acceptable to put into their own bodies. And I really, really respect that.

00:15:05:14 - 00:15:14:09
Andrew May
So I'm sure a lot of people will be listening going, what if I had AstraZeneca? Pfizer have been the big ones that Australian audience have taken.

00:15:14:16 - 00:15:42:02
Dr Tom Buckley
So the three main main vaccine types here in Australia, some more overseas, but a 33 main. So most people are familiar with AstraZeneca. That was one of the first ones here in Australia. So that's what's called a viral vector vaccine, and that's where a strand of RNA is encapsulated within a different virus, a dead virus. And then that's how we stimulate the immune system to to develop recognition of what COVID might look like.

00:15:42:20 - 00:16:02:18
Dr Tom Buckley
The second type is a visor. Most people familiar with Pfizer and and that one's a more in a vaccine strand of it, more in a sit in a sort of a fat globule for all the world. And enough stimulus to body to produce these spike proteins and then the body recognizes them, develops an immune response and then it's prepared should it get it again.

00:16:03:03 - 00:16:16:15
Dr Tom Buckley
And then the third time a protein based, which is the spike proteins or form of a spike protein or spike protein replica that the body is exposed to and then the body develops an immune response to.

00:16:16:16 - 00:16:35:02
Andrew May
Well, I think it's really important that we don't gloss over the science on this. So it's really good to give people an understanding. And why we've got the different vaccines, how this has evolved, and how are we going to get out of it. So let's get to point number two history of pandemics. Can we say when we think this is going to be a memory?

00:16:36:17 - 00:17:04:07
Dr Tom Buckley
No, I think it'll become a memory, less of a memory when less people gets acutely ill from it. And when the media stop recycling every story they can on it. The reality is that viruses, if you look at a history of pandemics, several viruses hang around and they often pop their head up in different forms over time. You know, swine flu, Spanish flu, you know, they're the same virus.

00:17:04:10 - 00:17:26:13
Dr Tom Buckley
The pessimist in me or the realistic scientist to me thinks we're going to be living with COVID a long, long time. The history of virus is still a long time. Years and years. Yeah. And we live with colds and flus all the time. And I think we will get to a stage where we're coronaviruses in the same category a remember, the common cold is the corona is corona.

00:17:26:13 - 00:17:32:01
Andrew May
Virus because each iteration gets weaker and weaker and weaker. So eventually it wanes itself out dead.

00:17:32:07 - 00:17:56:13
Dr Tom Buckley
That's what's happened historically with viruses, is that they weaken as they then more times they replicate, and the more times they evolve, they tend to weaken. My observation is that seems to be true as well. Here we call that the current wave on second wave. You know, it's it's more transmissible. And right now we're moving into a phase where we've got another variant to that that seems to be spiking numbers again.

00:17:57:02 - 00:18:28:19
Dr Tom Buckley
But we don't see massive jumps in hospital numbers. We certainly see patients hospitalized as we do with the flu and other respiratory disorders every year. But we're not seeing massive intensive care numbers now. For the number of people who actually are positive with COVID. And the official numbers are probably only a small percentage of the actual numbers. We're not seeing this massive, massive rise in hospitalizations like we saw you remember New York, you remember India and remember London, London, France.

00:18:28:19 - 00:18:35:21
Andrew May
Where I've run a field where you used to run when you were living in London as well. What, like turned into a military side? Yeah, with hospital beds.

00:18:35:24 - 00:18:53:15
Dr Tom Buckley
Yeah. And the same in the US. I've got colleagues in the US who said be photographs and a car park is a morgue. You know, there were horrific times that's happening to small degrees in places, so we shouldn't trivialize it. But it's not not at the same degree as what it was in the earlier versions of the of the virus.

00:18:53:16 - 00:19:11:04
Andrew May
The panic is somewhat subsided, hasn't it, like it was two years ago. 18 months ago, where we thought everyone was going to end up with a shocking case of COVID. Multiple people in hospital are not downplayed. But what you and I and what our team has tried stronger a saying a lot is focus on what you can control.

00:19:11:12 - 00:19:27:11
Andrew May
Now if you get COVID, you've got to deal with that. We're going to talk about what people can do. But we've got to live with this life will go on and focus on what you can do to boost your immune system, focus on your wellbeing, focus on your relationships, get time in nature, exercise now depending on where you are.

00:19:27:16 - 00:19:32:06
Andrew May
If you've got COVID, you have to side down but don't stop living is really what I'm saying.

00:19:32:11 - 00:19:51:12
Dr Tom Buckley
I 100% say that. I mean, you should always get busy living, not dying, you know? And I think there has to be our philosophy here because we've been two years, we're two years waiting for this to go away. Ain't going away. There'll be some version of it around probably indefinitely. So we do have to get busy living we have to get busy living our best lives.

00:19:51:12 - 00:20:15:14
Dr Tom Buckley
And what that means for different people is different things. I mean, for four for us here, strive stronger. It's about being being as healthy as we can be. It's about enhancing a wellbeing. And for me, it's about minimizing the risk because the one thing I do take exception to is people saying is prescribing COVID. And I don't know if you know what I mean by prescribing COVID, but, you know, I see this among my own family overseas.

00:20:15:14 - 00:20:34:02
Dr Tom Buckley
So one member gets a cell. We purposely all just didn't bother. We just said, we'll get it and get it over with. The problem is that for some people, it will be a mild symptom. For other people, it could be quite severe illness and we know the risk factors are, but we not can predict exactly who's going to really, really get sick.

00:20:34:02 - 00:20:51:12
Dr Tom Buckley
And for other people, the symptoms might never go away. So I think it's dangerous to take this philosophy of, oh, we're all guessing it because as soon as we accept that, it will spread. And a problem with spreading around the population is so if we just allow it to do that, we take for granted it's going to get weaker.

00:20:51:17 - 00:21:06:01
Dr Tom Buckley
But there'll be carnage on the journey. But we don't always know if this virus will get weaker. And so, you know, if we let it run rampant, the immunologists say it's a lower risk, but there's a potential for what kind of variant you might end up with.

00:21:06:01 - 00:21:26:06
Andrew May
When COVID first came into our lives two years ago, who was get vaccinated, wear masks, hardly anyone said be healthy, look after your immune system. Did we miss a major opportunity they did. The government missed a major opportunity to to promote health and wellbeing rather than just disease management or virus management.

00:21:26:14 - 00:21:48:22
Dr Tom Buckley
Yes and no. I mean, we certainly said those things and we certainly preached that and lived that because we were very acutely aware that a healthy immune system is important to defend your body from COVID and to recover from COVID. If your guess is. And of course a healthy immune system lives in a healthy body, so highly functioning immune system lives in a healthy body.

00:21:48:22 - 00:22:06:07
Dr Tom Buckley
So we were really, really aware of that. I think, you know, when you have a go back to when I worked in emergency department one time you know, if somebody comes in and they're bleeding, that's not the time to do. You know, let's let's look at why your cholesterol is up. Let's have a chat about what your heart rate is.

00:22:06:16 - 00:22:32:03
Dr Tom Buckley
That's the time to actually stop the bleeding. And so if you look at it from early on into COVID, you know, everything was about preventing people getting the infection. Yeah, everything was about how do we manage in the health system? Because the health system has had tremendous strain and tremendous carnage among individuals in there. The effect it had on health workers you know, so this is what the focus was, is what can the health system court do?

00:22:32:03 - 00:22:53:07
Dr Tom Buckley
We have to have enough medicines, do we have enough? There was one point, do we even have enough oxygen? There was a point where we did not have enough masks for the health professionals. So so it was an emergency thinking. It was like, stop the bleeding. It was like, try and let's get through this. I think I am a little disappointed now that we have gotten control of that.

00:22:53:08 - 00:23:08:17
Dr Tom Buckley
I mean, there are people out who would say we're not fully in control. But I think as a population, we are kind of in control now of two years later. So I think it is disappointing that we don't have that public narrative as much as we should.

00:23:08:21 - 00:23:35:24
Andrew May
And, you know, I asked that question totally biased, as I say, former, but I still put on my exercise physiologist hat, but I just I just couldn't help but think, Tom, every time I read something, heard something worth something. Why isn't the government saying if you are overweight, if you smoke, if you have diabetes or metabolic syndrome, if you got all these risk factors, you really look after those as much as you are looking after wearing masks, washing your hands and everything else.

00:23:36:08 - 00:23:51:15
Andrew May
I just don't, you know, the stats. So if someone is overweight, if they do have metabolic syndrome or they pre-diabetic or they got chronic inflammation, what are the stats around that? What's the increased likelihood they end up in ICU? What's the increased likelihood they end up with about that strain of COVID?

00:23:51:18 - 00:24:00:18
Dr Tom Buckley
It ranges anywhere from two fold to sometimes 15 fold increase risk, relative risk. So human behaviors are very complex.

00:24:01:07 - 00:24:25:09
Andrew May
I went to you need to do a Masters to try and work out how simple or how simply cannot teach behavior change. So said you after three years. Oh my God, this is so complicated. Hundreds of models, emotions, feelings, thoughts, behaviors, grandmothers, cultural beliefs, religions. Yeah, it's everything we teach together and everything you do in your world. Everything I do in my world of sport, your world of medicine and study behavior.

00:24:25:09 - 00:24:26:10
Andrew May
Change is so complex.

00:24:26:10 - 00:24:46:07
Dr Tom Buckley
It's complex because what happens is that people start putting value judgments on others and saying, Well, you're overweight. So good enough for you for getting COVID, you know? So you run the risk of creating that kind of narrative. You also run the risk for individuals or falling into the self blame game. And that's very very toxic and associated with really bad outcomes.

00:24:46:13 - 00:25:07:00
Dr Tom Buckley
We see that in heart disease where people were blamed themselves for getting the heart disease. You know, I shouldn't have done this. I shouldn't have done that. I should have done that energy. And I self-blame is actually very, very toxic and it doesn't really help with recovery. So there's two sides to the public messaging. One is, yes, we should focus on our wellbeing, but we don't we shouldn't really need COVID for that.

00:25:07:09 - 00:25:13:08
Dr Tom Buckley
I mean, all our how long we live, how well we live, they're all determined by our health and wellbeing.

00:25:13:08 - 00:25:30:24
Andrew May
Well, you and I are working on our next book out sometime in the next few years called Peak Performance Intelligence. And part of that is we're looking at it. How do people manage physical psychological and emotional state, how they influence others, but a big thing. And you've jumped on the bandwagon because when I first said you, I wanted to live to 130.

00:25:30:24 - 00:25:46:19
Andrew May
I think you thought I was Stockholm lazy, mad. But maybe the science has caught up with my optimism. But we can see country that if people do the right things, especially earlier, you've got to tap into this stuff. Not when you're 70 or 80 but in your forties and fifties and then you have a long, long go running at this.

00:25:47:01 - 00:25:48:19
Andrew May
A lot of us will get to 100 plus.

00:25:49:13 - 00:26:08:17
Dr Tom Buckley
I hope so. I mean, I think our kids are more likely to get there in better shape than we are. We're likely to push ourselves there and drag the bodies there in some state or other. I think our kids are more likely to bounce to their, particularly if they the sort of trend we see, which young individuals are very interested in their health.

00:26:08:17 - 00:26:28:14
Dr Tom Buckley
You know, my eight year old and my 17 year old are way more health literate than I ever was at that age, you know, but but we do fall into patterns of behavior that we don't think about. And you're sometimes a convener and sometimes with just the environment, sometimes they're there what we can afford to do. So I think, well, there we go.

00:26:28:14 - 00:26:49:03
Dr Tom Buckley
Be very careful. I think we need a narrative that we do have control of our wellbeing. We do have ability to reduce our risk here of viruses, not just COVID, but the flu and other viruses. We do have that but we've always had that. We have we have the ability to reduce our risk of heart disease. And yet two out of three men will develop heart disease.

00:26:49:03 - 00:27:10:22
Dr Tom Buckley
I mean, there's genetic predispose additions as well. So, you know, we can control the environment in our behaviors. And then even doing that, there will be people who get really, really sick, I think. Yes, it's it's I am disappointed we're not having the discussion more, but we don't have it anyway. If we did, we wouldn't be advertising have to processed foods on television.

00:27:10:22 - 00:27:14:05
Dr Tom Buckley
The government would have banned years ago. It's a tricky.

00:27:14:05 - 00:27:35:23
Andrew May
Area filling our kids full of sugar. Rather let's say I come and see you in our human performance lab because I want to optimize my wellbeing, performance productivity and my immune system sucks for people listening. Can you give them like four or five, six things, vitamins, minerals, tactics, strategies, to boost wellbeing? Now time stamp this in Australia we are heading into the colder months.

00:27:35:24 - 00:27:46:20
Andrew May
Yeah, we have a lot of people listening to this in the northern hemisphere as well. So heading to winter you probably want to up this, but what would you tell people to do just generically to boost wellbeing in immunity?

00:27:46:21 - 00:28:13:22
Dr Tom Buckley
So just generally just leave corporate aside at the moment generally I mean I think, you know, we often think that I think anywhere about 60 to 70% of it is diet. I think, you know, we have often heard the saying and you're an elite come from a running background, you can't run a bad diet. We saw the London Olympics, the phenomenally high percentage of the athletes there actually had blood sugars in the pre-diabetic range and they release Olympians.

00:28:13:22 - 00:28:27:14
Andrew May
And friends of yours and mine and you were coming through Ireland running track and I was in Australia in an amount like a large amount of people that I've trained with have heart disease. Yeah, and our great athletes, but they ACRA.

00:28:27:24 - 00:28:56:13
Dr Tom Buckley
Yeah. So multiple factors in there with stress and, and overtraining syndrome. But, but I think 60 to 70% of his diet, if you don't get that foundation right then well all those things help. Absolutely. Help. I think you got to get that foundation right. That's highly individual. I mean there's multiple factors as to what's the right side for a person, which is why all diets one diet doesn't work for everybody.

00:28:57:05 - 00:29:22:13
Dr Tom Buckley
There was a, I remember going to a lecture at the Sydney Medical School once when I was studying public health. An absolute expert in this area said we should take the label off of all diets and just call them diet and put you on a diet. Pick one out of the hat. And so this is a diet for you and everybody will have results for a little while while they do it, because just by becoming conscious around what we're eating about altering what we're eating, we tend to get results.

00:29:23:00 - 00:29:47:21
Dr Tom Buckley
What's right for you, what's right for me. I mean, you and I know this because we've done some genetic testing and we know that, you know, I'm a little less carb tolerance than you, and I need higher omega three fatty acids. So I need a more higher natural fat diet. And you so so we have to when I work with clients, I have to look at individual but if I'm gonna give a if I'm going to give a broad guideline, I'm going to say there's a few areas you need to look at just what you're eating.

00:29:48:10 - 00:30:11:09
Dr Tom Buckley
And that should be as natural as possible. There is how you cook it, and that should be as slow as possible. Yeah. And then there's within that, there's what your metabolic requirements are. So if you're, you know, running 20 kilometers day, you're going to need more macronutrients and macro calories, you need more calories and somebody who's walking 5000 steps a day.

00:30:11:09 - 00:30:26:15
Dr Tom Buckley
So that's how much you should eat. So you've got to look at it that way. But I think as a general rule, if you can just avoid the processed foods, particularly the ultra processed foods, that's foods with more than four ingredients. You probably adding seven or eight years to your life.

00:30:26:16 - 00:30:46:07
Andrew May
You were in a workshop recently, one of our executive performance programs, and someone said, when reading food labels, what should I look at? And you said nothing could buy foods without food labels. I think it's really simple. It's stuff as natural as possible that comes from nature, lots of vegetables. I can stack your plate with vegetables and also alcohol.

00:30:46:13 - 00:30:52:04
Andrew May
Alcohol in moderation. So we got nutrition covered and we could do a whole talk on nutrition separately. What else?

00:30:53:12 - 00:31:00:18
Dr Tom Buckley
So mobility, we are designed to be mobile we a lot of us have become sedentary.

00:31:00:24 - 00:31:10:04
Andrew May
Yeah, but on busy night, like working from home and I go from the bedroom to the kitchen to the makeshift office, and I've got kids and I just don't have time to exercise. I can't do it now.

00:31:10:05 - 00:31:11:13
Dr Tom Buckley
You physiology doesn't care.

00:31:11:20 - 00:31:13:21
Andrew May
How or you don't understand.

00:31:14:05 - 00:31:16:01
Dr Tom Buckley
And our physiology doesn't understand.

00:31:16:09 - 00:31:17:17
Andrew May
I do understand and.

00:31:18:00 - 00:31:25:03
Dr Tom Buckley
I know what you do right now. I know we evolved to be mobile. We evolved to be running around hunters and gatherers.

00:31:26:00 - 00:31:37:11
Andrew May
We didn't have Jimmy brings alcohol, we didn't have 24 hour fitness. You know, you used to chop some wood and then you'd bake some food and then you'd go down to the well and like we just become sort of lazy.

00:31:37:21 - 00:32:04:00
Dr Tom Buckley
Yeah. And we've also fallen into, I got we become lazy, but society is structured in a way that doesn't require us to beat up mobile. We're able to drive everywhere, we're able to work with computers and even a lot of factories and are all automated this, automated that. So we've evolved there. So we do have to now focus on purposeful exercise more doesn't have to be go to the gym and look like our in a squash nigga.

00:32:04:05 - 00:32:24:14
Dr Tom Buckley
It does have to be more ability. We do need to get the body moving and we do need to challenge the body in different ways. Sports resistance, you know, force to work on our strength for distance for us to, to, to be able to go for long periods and also be able to go fast for short periods. We need to challenge the body.

00:32:24:22 - 00:32:29:15
Dr Tom Buckley
When you take to heart rate up, we need to let it come down. The value of taking it up is training it to come down.

00:32:30:04 - 00:32:34:19
Andrew May
And what a great link. I'm going to throw in one because I know you have this in your list. It'll be recovery.

00:32:35:01 - 00:32:35:15
Dr Tom Buckley
Well, that's the.

00:32:35:15 - 00:32:55:22
Andrew May
Third generation sleep and we're talking a lot about micro recovery now. It's relevant in the day, the 20 to 32nd or 92nd little mini breaks athletes build this in. But corporate workers especially working remote when we're on Zoom meetings or team meetings all day have been proven to be twice as cognitively draining people listening to this don't need the research.

00:32:55:22 - 00:33:02:00
Andrew May
They've been practicing this for two years and they're totally fatigued and over working behind screens.

00:33:02:09 - 00:33:25:11
Dr Tom Buckley
Yeah we need to normalize recovery we need to look at recovery in two or three different ways. One, we need to see it as as important as eating food in our day. We need to build it in across today and we need to plan for it at night time. And that's our big failure as a society, as a Western society, is that we accidentally fall asleep or we fall asleep, fatigued.

00:33:25:20 - 00:33:46:20
Dr Tom Buckley
We need to we need to plan for recovery. We need to see that is as important as the nutrition you put in, because the best nutrition in the world with poor sleep, you're going to be having anti-inflammatory food and you're going to be creating inflammation from poor sleep. So we've got to prioritize it. It's not easy, though, and you know, we kind of see recovery.

00:33:47:03 - 00:34:01:13
Dr Tom Buckley
You and I often laugh about this. We see recovery is sitting on the lounge with a remote control, a beer or a bottle of wine and a television in front that's our vision of recovery. Yeah, that's not all recovery. That's actually stressing the body of.

00:34:01:20 - 00:34:16:08
Andrew May
What we get from sport. We accelerate recovery, and you bounce back quicker physically and psychologically. You play more. You have your top team on the field, you win more games, everyone's happy, you keep your job. So in sport, it's not even an argument we we recover first try and second.

00:34:16:14 - 00:34:32:12
Dr Tom Buckley
Yeah, yeah. And that's the that's the sort of philosophical shift we need to make where we we work and we work hard and then we try to recover at night. And I say try because we know we know from the work we do in the lab, the majority of people don't recover adequately. We actually need to switch that around.

00:34:32:12 - 00:34:57:22
Dr Tom Buckley
We need to say, I'm going to get my recovery done and I'm going to do it really, really well. And when I've done that now I can work hard, play hard, play my sport hard, and then I'll go back into recovery. So recovery should come first. Athletes know that because you're not going to perform at the Olympics. I mean, as a great examples at the London Olympics of athletes who really struggled with the circadian rhythms when they moved to London, they really struggled with the stress of expectations.

00:34:58:13 - 00:35:29:14
Dr Tom Buckley
They resorted to prescription medicines to be able to sleep that's not judgmental. I don't know how you would cope in a cold room, but they had to do things. But they actually were instilled that the ice were going to sleep a different sleeping. And we know that was a lot of sleep meds and the underperformance, I mean, you know, how in those stressful scenarios, recovery is really challenging and you've got to optimize everything with recovery but for our day to day lives, you know, if we're not recovering, we're just building this basket of debt the whole way from week to week to week and then we break down.

00:35:29:24 - 00:35:46:01
Andrew May
And what is it? Can you make a note in our show notes? We'll put a link to the blog we just did on the IRP, another acronym, Annual Recovery Plan. And again, borrowing from sport, you map out, let's call it period ization. You have an off season play hard. When are you rotating players? When are you rotating yourself?

00:35:46:08 - 00:35:56:06
Andrew May
When you have rest weeks. We just do it in sport, right? And we've adapted that to the corporate world. So we've got nutrition, mobility, normalizing recovery. What else can people do?

00:35:56:13 - 00:36:02:13
Dr Tom Buckley
Well, I think the big one is having fun you know, I think we kind of forget to have fun.

00:36:02:15 - 00:36:08:13
Andrew May
They got a Can I rewind two and a half years ago, Dr. Tom Buckley, when we looked at six levers for that street.

00:36:08:16 - 00:36:09:18
Dr Tom Buckley
I knew you were going to go.

00:36:09:22 - 00:36:20:16
Andrew May
Recharge, think, connect, then say, I didn't realize this was in your know today. And what did you say to me when I said, I think play is going to be in the book is one of the key levers well, what did you really think?

00:36:21:08 - 00:36:25:20
Dr Tom Buckley
I probably won't say what I was thinking, but I did.

00:36:25:20 - 00:36:27:15
Andrew May
Well, do it in your accent. What the fuck?

00:36:28:11 - 00:36:57:23
Dr Tom Buckley
Well, I was very much thinking, you know, play really, really like, you know, is there a science to play? You know, because the book was so scientifically based. Yeah, I was wrong. But but in my in my defense, I was aware of a couple of things here. I just had an associated with play 11 socializing or the opposite, a loneliness, you know, feeling connected, feeling part of society, families feeling wanted are phenomenally important to our wellbeing.

00:36:57:23 - 00:37:05:02
Dr Tom Buckley
So so in my defense, I knew that I just hadn't seen play as the sort of currency of that.

00:37:05:03 - 00:37:24:14
Andrew May
I'm very provocative in stirring you, which I love doing. But, but play I think it's seen as I just got to play. But we didn't realize the seriousness of going applying to detach psychologically, to have found that Charles Lloyd predisposes him to play. And we talk about this, you know, what do your kids do? They watch play school, they have playdates, Play-Doh, playtime and play lunch.

00:37:24:14 - 00:37:45:23
Andrew May
And what have we done the last two years? Teams, meetings, we'll zoom full stop. That's it. That's where we were. It ends and one of the psychologists you and I have an intellectual crush on who Stuart Brown you set up the National Institute of play in his eighties. So psychologists who'd been studying very serious frameworks and schema and Freud and looking at self-efficacy.

00:37:45:23 - 00:37:52:00
Andrew May
Albert Bender all the stuff I get excited about set up an institute of play at 80 because he realized we we're missing something.

00:37:52:03 - 00:38:18:21
Dr Tom Buckley
Well you did because he was ADHD and what we find with older individuals in society is that they go back to play and play becomes a place of joy, connection, shared goals, shared vision, socialization, all the things that keep us healthy into old age, all the things associated with living longer and living healthier. So play, play you you were very right to see play there as a central part of that.

00:38:19:05 - 00:38:42:16
Dr Tom Buckley
An important part to play, of course, is laughter. I mean, there's a socialization. And as to, you know, engaging in something, you get joy from but also laughter is so good for the body. I mean, if you go to lots of hospitals now, particularly children's hospitals, they'll have laughter sessions they'll have, you know, doctor clown or somebody like that coming in and uplifting the kids.

00:38:42:16 - 00:38:47:09
Dr Tom Buckley
And and it's not just about keeping them entertained. It actually speeds up their recovery.

00:38:47:10 - 00:38:55:20
Andrew May
Well, you've given me permission. Now, when I say really stupid jokes in our staff meetings, I just look at Angela and say, it's good for your immunity. And she said, Yes, I do. But it has to be funny.

00:38:59:05 - 00:38:59:16
Andrew May
What else?

00:39:00:08 - 00:39:23:01
Dr Tom Buckley
Well, we know how toxic loneliness. And so I think we absolutely have to work on our relationships. And so and that can be fundamental to everything that I just spoke about. It can be fundamental to how you eat if you're really, really trying to have a healthy diet. But your partner or wherever you live, which is the opposite, you can be swimming uphill.

00:39:23:01 - 00:39:28:13
Dr Tom Buckley
And we see this with clients all the time. One of the first things I'll say to them is, is your wife on board? Is your husband on board?

00:39:28:14 - 00:39:52:08
Andrew May
And one of the first things I say now and what we've learned collectively is how are your relationships with your partner male, female, significant, other, significant others? I had a recent conversation, someone who's in a polyamorous relationship. I haven't told you about that one. That was interesting. Yeah. I had to really maintain my professionalism and not ask the questions I wanted to ask, but he's really happy he's connected.

00:39:52:10 - 00:40:00:12
Andrew May
Yeah. So if and why do we ask this it has massive implications on your immune system if you're in an unhealthy, toxic relationship.

00:40:00:18 - 00:40:25:20
Dr Tom Buckley
Yeah, because because stress is a few things. If you want to put your immune system to sleep then pour in a lot of stress and pour in a whole load of sugar and alcohol on top of us and you really will put the immune system to sleep. So, you know, if you really want to keep that immune system functioning and functioning well, then you've got to keep your stress hormones down and you've got to keep sugar away because sugar sugar depresses the parasympathetic recovery system.

00:40:25:20 - 00:40:58:00
Dr Tom Buckley
Now, what level of sugar does that in individuals? Varies, because some people have really good metabolism to metabolize sugar and clearers and other people, their pancreas struggles to clear it. So sometimes we do have to work out what level of sugar. But as a general population, we know that we take onboard way too much sugar. So poor Lord, sugar, poor and a whole load of stress dampen down your recovery and have toxic relationships and your immune system will be in the floor.

00:40:58:10 - 00:41:18:07
Andrew May
And it's got a lot to do with today's topic about wellbeing in immunity. So let's summarize nutrition eating foods as natural as possible and not reading food labels because you should have less food labels. Number two is mobility and movement. Number three is to normalize recovery. One of my favorites topics number four is play and laughter. Five is strength in relationships.

00:41:18:07 - 00:41:24:10
Andrew May
Can I ask as well about supplementation? What vitamins and minerals should people be taking to give them that extra boost?

00:41:24:23 - 00:41:25:13
Dr Tom Buckley
None at all.

00:41:26:03 - 00:41:27:10
Andrew May
Very quick response from that.

00:41:28:22 - 00:41:51:12
Dr Tom Buckley
I say that just to be contrary, I think there's no point in putting in vitamins and supplements. You've got all those six sorted out because what you're trying to do is plug holes and you need to know what holes to plug with supplements. So supplements have an absolute role to play in optimizing our well-being, optimizing our mental and physical functioning in optimizing our immunity.

00:41:52:13 - 00:42:28:02
Dr Tom Buckley
But the reason for supplements, you just give everybody and you've got to look at an individual level. And so I can you can draw them all out and I can talk about them. The reality is that if we got the diet right, then we would need any supplements. But but I say that currently and contrary to reality is that in our modern living, the way we live, where food is grown harvesters, the way food is generated, the way we cook it, it's incredibly hard to get all the nutrients that would completely optimize the human body.

00:42:28:12 - 00:42:50:18
Dr Tom Buckley
So that's why we do look to supplements. But we've got to be careful because just because a food source takes fish oil. Yeah, I remember when fish oil, you got all the cardiology conferences and fish oils been shown and and the original research came from the Eskimo populations and suddenly everybody true fish oil lying on top of their meals.

00:42:50:18 - 00:43:16:23
Dr Tom Buckley
Yeah, but what would be easy reaching really rubbish processed meats or having chips, they're having burgers and shoving fish oil in. Well, let's fast forward now. 20 years and fish oil isn't the America America's or the miracle heart save or that we thought it was. Now perhaps if we went over here and a wild fish a lot more and got more fish oil from oil fish then we would see a very different outcome from fish oil.

00:43:17:05 - 00:43:38:24
Dr Tom Buckley
So what I always want to ask people with regards to supplements is are you using it? Are you using it as an addition to changing nothing? Or are you using it to actually supplement what are you doing? And so you know, you'd be better off eating the fish, and likewise you'd be better off using the colored vegetables to get your micronutrients.

00:43:39:14 - 00:44:02:15
Dr Tom Buckley
But in reality, there are times where you need a bit more of this, or you're trying to optimize your health or your well-being, your longevity. And then there are supplements that have been shown to be effective but if you don't have the basic nutrition right, and you don't have the mobility going and you're trying to counter us, counteract stress with supplements and supplements, probably not doing anything.

00:44:02:23 - 00:44:13:14
Andrew May
Then we'll do a separate podcast. Like we said, we're going to in another month or two on supplements and how we get people to that fountain. Yes, but that's a different conversation around wellbeing and and COVID.

00:44:13:21 - 00:44:42:13
Dr Tom Buckley
I'm so sorry, Andrea. I just want to make a point to listeners is that I'm not saying supplements don't have you stay. Do we use them all the time in our lab with some clients myself, you know, but there's reasons it's not I take a multivitamin off the supermarket shelf because that's just probably giving you expensive urine unless it's targeted at a specific deficiency or a specific sort of therapeutic effect you're looking for.

00:44:42:14 - 00:45:03:20
Andrew May
Yeah, if I can summarize that target, those basic building blocks, proper nutrition, food in its most natural form, my building movement, normalized recovery play, strengthen relationships, I think and again, I'm biased, but I think everyone on their personal board, you know, you've got a doctor or a lawyer, you still have a dentist. You say periodically your accountant, you should have someone who advises you in this stuff.

00:45:04:01 - 00:45:23:06
Andrew May
And we have a lot of people we work with in that area. This is not a plug. This is just a side to people on your personal board. Have someone who helps you regularly with your physical well-being and your fitness unless you're qualified in this area. And on the same, I go and see people like you on my nutrition to make sure that I'm topping stuff up as well, because it's it changes, right?

00:45:24:06 - 00:45:28:06
Andrew May
Kids relationships, travel life. We're in a constant state of flux.

00:45:28:14 - 00:45:50:02
Dr Tom Buckley
Absolutely. And I think if you're for listeners, if you're really interested in supplementation and we all should be then then do it with somebody who's qualified to advise you. And I'll just give you one classic example on that. People who pour in vitamin D, you know, they often pour in too much and then they start move calcium starts moving into weird places in the body.

00:45:50:02 - 00:46:09:09
Dr Tom Buckley
And so you don't be taking so much vitamin D to your calcium is pouring into your coronary arteries and you have a whole lot of problems down the road. You need to know, do you need it? If you do, how much and what else should be taking wishes or where is the threshold before it becomes harmful? Because any supplements taking too much can be really harmful.

00:46:09:23 - 00:46:16:12
Andrew May
Number four in my frame, Dr. Thomas, if you do get covered, what should you focus on? I'm thinking a lot of what we've just discussed.

00:46:17:12 - 00:46:39:03
Dr Tom Buckley
We have that there's probably a few specifics that might be helpful. Tell you a tiny little story. When my brother got covered in Ireland, you got this text message. You'll be listening to this, you'll be laughing. You got this text messaging saying he'd been positive and he needed to isolate for a week and it then said, you need to stay in your room it's like.

00:46:39:09 - 00:46:57:21
Dr Tom Buckley
So you've been very specific about staying in his room in the text message from the government. Then I remember looking at going, But what if you lived in the house on these? On which room? So so there are things we do need to do for protecting others, such as isolating ourselves. But we've also got to think about what's good for us.

00:46:58:03 - 00:47:21:08
Dr Tom Buckley
And of course, staying in a dark room is not good for you. You know, if you can be without contacting others, you can get some sunshine you can get some sunlight remembering that these all these UV rays and higher temperature and sun are all really good for your immune system and help you to recover the big thing we need to do is to manage acute symptoms as a first point.

00:47:21:08 - 00:47:40:17
Dr Tom Buckley
So we need to look after our health as normal. If you're on medicines, if you if you're on medicines, don't have medication vacations, you know, if you've got symptoms that are beyond what you would normally have with a cold or a mild flu, then get in contact with your doctor or your healthcare provider and make sure that you're managing symptoms.

00:47:40:17 - 00:48:05:24
Dr Tom Buckley
Because there can often be a threshold where symptoms go from a sniffle and a cough and a sniff and a runny nose to I've got chest pain or I've got palpitations or I'm really now struggling to breathe. We need to act on them. We need to get advice and a great thing here in Australia as we can phone our GP's, we can get advice and get advice on whether or not we need any medicines or what do we actually need to go to hospital so that so that's our first stage.

00:48:06:07 - 00:48:23:13
Dr Tom Buckley
Then the second stage is really looking after ourselves. We need, you know, people ten I know people who've had COVID and are working frantic at home. Yeah, I think we need to give ourselves permission. I've got COVID. The things I do now are hopefully going to help me to get over this quicker and not have prolonged symptoms.

00:48:23:21 - 00:48:34:19
Andrew May
So which is so important with what we're seeing now because some of the people we are working with on LONG-COVID rushed it and thought, I'll just get through this. It takes a couple of days and I'll bounce back. That is such an important point.

00:48:35:02 - 00:48:51:11
Dr Tom Buckley
Yeah, I think a lot of the discussions I'm having with people now are very different to two years ago where it was all really around how do I manage myself? I've got COVID now, it's very much how do I maximize my recovery out of COVID? And the first thing we've got to do is go slow. Everybody wants to sleep, sleep.

00:48:52:05 - 00:49:11:08
Dr Tom Buckley
If your body wants to walk around, walk around. So be really tuned in and, you know, purposeful exercise. We need to pack away when you have symptoms or in the early phase of COVID, even if you go negative on your on your test and you can move around a bit because you're not infectious, we need to move from exercise to mobility.

00:49:11:18 - 00:49:37:03
Dr Tom Buckley
We need to eat really we want to enhance the liver function. So we need to eat to have a really clean liver. And so if you look at processed foods, sugar additives, alcohol, when you get rid of all that, we need to eat a really clean diet because the liver is so involved in the immune system. And we also need to get a lot of those inflammatory mediators and cytokines out of the body because they're the ones potentially giving people to prolong symptoms.

00:49:37:13 - 00:49:57:18
Dr Tom Buckley
So we just got to clean things up, slow down, seen things up, mobilize, not exercise and just really be conscious that I need to invest time. Now, the biggest thing not to do is to rush back to work because I've got to catch up on four days of work and that's when you start putting the stress in. So once you do that, you've put the immune system to sleep.

00:49:58:15 - 00:50:13:13
Andrew May
The other question I've got on this time is can you get COVID twice and all the media is showing. Yes, I think there's people in Japan have reported three or four times, but can you get a different variation? So could I have a Macron at the same time as Delta?

00:50:14:04 - 00:50:36:17
Dr Tom Buckley
That's a great question. It's one that is of great concern is that you would get both at the same time, particularly when you have two variants floating around a population. We've tended to have one variant dominant. We don't always know and we probably won't know right now because people are not always having PCR test on, so they won't know what variants they have.

00:50:37:08 - 00:51:00:23
Dr Tom Buckley
Is it possible to have two at the same time? I don't know of cases of personally, but I guess theoretically it is possible. Could you have Delta and then go on recon and you know, they're all labeled after the grief alphabet, so who knows what next one will be of concern? Yeah, we do know of people who have had positive across the different waves.

00:51:00:23 - 00:51:24:17
Dr Tom Buckley
So yeah, it is possible. We do know that for about six months people do have a degree of natural immunity after having it, but we know after about six months that tends to wane down again. Which is why you can get re-infected. So it is a false security to say, well, I've had COVID, so I'm immune. You are less likely to get COVID in that first six months, maybe the first four months more so.

00:51:25:01 - 00:51:28:01
Dr Tom Buckley
But after six months, then your immunity starts to wane.

00:51:29:06 - 00:51:54:23
Andrew May
Good link immunity one. Let's talk about long COVID. We've danced in and around and off. We've purposely held back. I'm going to quote an article, a recent article in The Australian that also references an article in the financial Times. The subheading is Fatigue and Brain Fog, according to the Office for National Statistics in the UK. 1.1. 5 million people or about 2.2% of the population had long COVID symptoms over the new year.

00:51:55:09 - 00:52:32:09
Andrew May
Many times the number who have died. The symptoms include fatigue, shortness of breath, loss, of taste and smell and difficulty concentrating, often termed brain fog, but also palpitations and nausea. Later in the article, it says The size of the economic hit in the UK is nearly impossible to forecast, according to economist Julian Jessop. If if 100,000 people were unable to work due to long COVID, that would be 0.4% of the workforce or a total hit of 0.4% of GDP would cost the UK economy over $18 billion a year.

00:52:33:14 - 00:52:53:03
Dr Tom Buckley
It's probably very similar to what happens each season with the flu. You know, when we have people out of the workforce because they're not able to function, that the risk with long COVID, of course, is it isn't one or two weeks for some people. It can be seven, nine months a year and maybe for some unfortunate people, maybe day, maybe indefinite.

00:52:53:03 - 00:53:11:09
Andrew May
So you go back to check up first long however, said. The World Health Organization has been saying it's four or five weeks. This article quotes long coauthored with a number of experts who have a clinic in the UK that now takes 15 weeks to get into, which is causing stress, anxiety and a whole lot of other psychological symptoms.

00:53:11:09 - 00:53:17:15
Andrew May
So with long COVID, it's not just a physiological, it's a psychological. What do you term LONG-COVID?

00:53:17:21 - 00:53:45:03
Dr Tom Buckley
Yeah, I think time time is useful and the different studies have measured for weeks, five weeks, 12 weeks, five months, seven months. And you see slightly different variation in the symptoms. I mean, some symptoms just seem to go on. What, what differentiates it from acute cold? The research, the symptoms are no longer directly associated with the infection. It's no longer breathlessness form or fever or the immune system has dealt with the infection.

00:53:45:09 - 00:54:09:04
Dr Tom Buckley
But we get these prolonged symptoms so that's how we're defining LONG-COVID. The most prominent one tends to be fatigue or people talk about brain fog, but about 70% of people who report long-covid also report high levels of anxiety or mood swings or difficulty concentrating. It really is a group of symptoms that very slow slimmer chronic fatigue.

00:54:09:06 - 00:54:23:14
Andrew May
Well, that's the only thing in our research when we dug in that some of the treatment is similar to some of the treatment for chronic fatigue. But like chronic fatigue there's so many other variables, it's not cut and dried. This is exactly what you do. It's not like that.

00:54:23:24 - 00:54:47:08
Dr Tom Buckley
No, it's not. And I think we also have to appreciate that we don't fully understand chronic fatigue either, and it's often a lot of trial and error and treatments. And and we don't always manage to resolve chronic fatigue and individuals often people learn to live with and manage to stay functioning and know when not to push, etc. So we probably don't know enough about LONG-COVID.

00:54:47:09 - 00:55:06:15
Dr Tom Buckley
What we do know is over time, the symptoms decrease in volume in the population. So if 40% of the population have fatigue at five months, it's down to 20% at say 12 months. Know. So we're beginning to understand that for most people these things are resolving, but we don't know it. Three years, five years what percentage of them?

00:55:07:13 - 00:55:40:22
Dr Tom Buckley
I'm also acutely aware that if you study any population, you'll get a percentage of the population who report fatigue and some of these symptoms too. So they tend to try and control for that and the studies by determining that these symptoms were not there. pre-COVID. So it is real. It is real. There I think personally from and I think you've observed this to a lot of the people I'm working with or around me in other circles that have prolonged symptoms called long COVID, we're often very busy, high flying, middle aged individuals.

00:55:41:12 - 00:55:44:02
Dr Tom Buckley
And the research is showing that to.

00:55:44:24 - 00:56:03:10
Andrew May
And the individuals that we are working with and a couple come to mind, similar to when I first started working with people with chronic fatigue, told many years ago and you said someone said, what's the hardest thing about chronic fatigue? There's obviously the fatigue and not being able to train and go into functions wanting to go to bed.

00:56:03:18 - 00:56:30:15
Andrew May
But it's the psychology around that as well. Is the the self-worth, the lack of confidence then that leads to a reduced self-efficacy and then it can really spiral long term. You can have anxiety and we haven't seen this in our clients, but I'm reading about this is depression. So you got someone who's, you know, in the top of their game and then they to try to to approach the treatment on this like they've done with everything else.

00:56:30:15 - 00:56:45:01
Andrew May
Like when I've work with some chronic fatigue people and it it often goes away when you do a multifaceted approach like we do. But when you can't put your finger on it and you're used to being in control, that that especially that demographic you talk about. Natasha Herring.

00:56:45:10 - 00:57:07:13
Dr Tom Buckley
Yeah. I think perceptions of control are really, really important here. If you are the type of individuals I've seen with not all but a lot of them with what we call long COVID symptoms are people who are used to, you know, if I put all these inputs in, I get these outputs you know, if I really work in my nutrition, I feel better if I do a liver detox.

00:57:07:13 - 00:57:14:22
Dr Tom Buckley
So I sleep better, my dreams are better, you know, I've got more energy and there used to have been in control of their wellbeing.

00:57:15:02 - 00:57:38:11
Andrew May
So a lot of these people, in fact, all the people we're working with on LONG-COVID collectively you and I are working on a three pronged approach will get to they've got really good PCU, they've got good performance intelligence, so they know the heart rate variability, they know their resting heart rate, they know how they respond to nutrition. Yeah, some of them we've worked with in the past and we haven't, but they students of human performance and that's even more frustrating.

00:57:38:16 - 00:58:12:05
Dr Tom Buckley
Yeah. The people we're working with we often been working with for some time and really teaching them how to optimize the physiology and really to maximize their, their physical and mental wellbeing. And in most humans is predictable. If we do this, we get this and then suddenly post-covid the putting in all the inputs, but it's not working it's not, you know, they're not getting the outputs they're used to and that lack of response or lack of control can really be deflating, really can, it really can mess up with people's mindset.

00:58:12:13 - 00:58:24:18
Dr Tom Buckley
And I think this is what I'm seeing most and is that if, if you're out of control and you feel like you're now a passenger on this journey, then, then it really can lead to very negative thinking.

00:58:24:19 - 00:58:35:12
Andrew May
I've been quoting Stoicism with a number of these clients and they look at me, they look at you like we're weird and you and I are in a good where we'd.

00:58:36:03 - 00:58:36:19
Dr Tom Buckley
Speak for yourself.

00:58:38:04 - 00:59:06:14
Andrew May
But it is actually it's a it's a very different approach to LONG-COVID to slow down, you got to recover. You've got to allow your body, your brain and also sitting with it's the only framework I can think of. I'm going into psychology. But when we look at Barbara Fredrickson is brought in and build theory, like when I first heard that because it's not bad thoughts out, positive thoughts in it says in any part of our lives, you're going to have some negative thoughts, but you learn to live with that.

00:59:06:14 - 00:59:23:09
Andrew May
And I think what we're trying to teach people with LONG-COVID is you've just got to embrace this, try and slow down, trust us in the process and hope that your body and brain is going to take care of itself. That's the I can get it. If I was in that situation myself, Tom, I'd freak out.

00:59:23:21 - 00:59:49:09
Dr Tom Buckley
Yeah. And I think I would, too, because you know what I mean. I might freak out a little less. Now, there's I know some of the approaches to dealing with this, and so I'd probably I'd probably move into that different thinking that, okay, the usual things here, I've got to switch my thinking a bit because the risk factors for getting covered are not the same risk factors for long COVID yep.

00:59:49:11 - 01:00:12:10
Dr Tom Buckley
As soon as you appreciate that and say, okay, so this, you know, this is not about blaming myself. This is just where I'm at. There are some physiological and psychological constructs at play here. And as soon as you start to think about what they are and get proactive in dealing with them, then you can come back into control of things again.

01:00:12:18 - 01:00:33:09
Dr Tom Buckley
And so a lot of the work that I'm doing with clients is very much about, okay, so we're moving from here to here this is what we're going to try next, what we're trying to. So you're creating you're creating a structure for navigating through. And the reality is that all the people will get better. Most people will get better.

01:00:33:19 - 01:00:44:03
Dr Tom Buckley
The question that's all known is how soon? And the problem that I see for a lot of people and you and I would be the same, is that we would tend to be impatient, but if we wanted now.

01:00:44:05 - 01:01:04:07
Andrew May
So if you're running your own business and you're taking it through IPL, well that's your vision. If you're running a big or if you're involved in a publicly listed company and every quarter you have a reporting season, that's big stuff hanging over you. Really big stuff. Now, I'll allow me please to sound intelligent again because I believe there's a three pronged approach to treating people with long COVID.

01:01:04:07 - 01:01:24:05
Andrew May
And yes, I got this from you. I've actually loved the learning I've had working with you, but also seeing clients respond to this. So the three pronged approach that you advise our clients and there's going to be an underscore to this in a moment, but no one is regain organ function. Number two, wash out inflammation, particularly through sweating to get rid of the cytokines.

01:01:24:05 - 01:01:30:23
Andrew May
And number three, fire up the mitochondria Now, the underscore on this is you would want to go and do this if you've got heart problems.

01:01:31:14 - 01:01:52:11
Dr Tom Buckley
Yeah, well, no one is exactly that. Number one is just to you know, if you had a fire in your house, you'd, you'd go and assess what damage there is and go and assess the structure and you'd look at, you know, you do an inventory of where things and so I think you have to remember it covers like a fire in the body and it's being in different organs.

01:01:52:11 - 01:02:17:17
Dr Tom Buckley
And yeah, we have got plenty reports of people having like scarring in the lungs or, you know, inflammation or even scarring in the heart and can happen in other organs in the body, in the kidneys as well. So so the first thing that's what number one for me is about just assessing where the organs are. So my approach there is to check out physiologically where a person's almost a kidney function, like with some liver function like what's their oxygenation like?

01:02:17:17 - 01:02:52:12
Dr Tom Buckley
What's there? Are they excreting acids out the body properly? So, you know, a lot that can be done through pathology. But if there is any cardiovascular symptoms at all, I'll want to make sure that is not a cardiovascular inflammation, pathology myocarditis, something like that. So so no one for me is about is about making sure that there is no ongoing infection at the moment, that the immune system has done its job and the levels are coming back into normal zone, that there's no things, proteins circulating in the body, the blood sugar isn't still there.

01:02:52:12 - 01:03:00:15
Dr Tom Buckley
Insulin levels are not sky high So just making sure that this acute phase is truly over, if it's going to be over, I'm.

01:03:00:15 - 01:03:19:00
Andrew May
Going to interpret just a little bit for someone listening to this going, whoa, what did he go through then? I'm actually really impressed that I knew what you were talking about, Ben, because I've been riding shotgun. But Dr. Tell Him gets people to go get a full blood pathology and he takes the panel and you're looking at inflammation markers, looking at what's happening to blood sugar levels just to see what's happening in the system.

01:03:19:07 - 01:03:26:07
Andrew May
And if you're worried about someone with a family history or if they are reporting any chest pain you go in, they get a a heart check.

01:03:26:12 - 01:03:54:07
Dr Tom Buckley
Yeah, I'll I'll refer I'll refer clients to to go and get a stress echocardiogram, particularly if they're struggling and a heart rate's shooting up when they're exercising their I want to make sure that the heart's functioning properly, that the rhythm is regular normal, and that the ventricles are pumping to where they should because what you don't want to do is to introduce challenges or stress or challenges into somebody and actually trigger them to have a heart attack or trigger them to have something way worse than what they have.

01:03:54:08 - 01:04:07:00
Andrew May
I'm going to go totally my I didn't know how I would get this in, but I'm going to I see a window. Do you understand the significance of 3 minutes? 29 seconds point five, 14, four, 500 meter Australian runner.

01:04:07:11 - 01:04:09:10
Dr Tom Buckley
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I certainly do.

01:04:09:11 - 01:04:16:20
Andrew May
Yeah. Stuart McSwain and a track meet last week pulled out of a tank with extreme heart palpitations.

01:04:16:20 - 01:04:38:13
Dr Tom Buckley
Yeah. Yeah. So I think, you know, and this is if people listen to this because they're really interested they're still listening now. They must be very interested. You do not want to trigger more stress into a stressed body because the weakest points or the most vulnerable points are going to show up first and covered with COVID can affect a heart.

01:04:38:22 - 01:04:58:23
Dr Tom Buckley
And running at that level is already a massive stressor on the heart. We started this podcast talking earlier around, you know, elite athletes and the effect in the heart. So we really got to look after the engine. And it is a muscle. It's not made of titanium. So that's yeah, I was really disappointed for him to hear that.

01:04:59:15 - 01:05:27:01
Dr Tom Buckley
But we see that with a lot of elite cyclists as well. Who've come back from COVID and come back maybe too quick. Now, they would say, no, you know, it's not too quick, but it's too quick when you start to have symptoms or your performance goes down. So we do just need to really. So from my perspective with the people I work with, I just want to make sure does that before we start doing anything else on number two or three, that medically they're in good shape and safe.

01:05:27:10 - 01:05:38:17
Andrew May
Yeah, we get the tick and our clients come back. Woohoo! Okay, open up. What's number two? How do you wash out and remove the cytokines and get people in a very different space?

01:05:39:06 - 01:05:57:19
Dr Tom Buckley
There's two arms to that one. You need to get the liver working really well. If so, if I see any sluggish liver I see results in the blood that indicate the liver sluggish or struggling, then I really want to get the liver working better because that's going to be how you're going to start getting the toxins out of the body.

01:05:58:02 - 01:06:00:03
Dr Tom Buckley
And then I'll want them to sweat them out wishes.

01:06:00:06 - 01:06:13:10
Andrew May
With a sauna. And I recently asked you to come and look into sort is the difference between the traditional Swedish or Finnish sauna and the infrared sauna. Before you came back to me on a report, you'd bought an infrared sauna. I take that as a thumbs up.

01:06:13:24 - 01:06:32:09
Dr Tom Buckley
Yeah, because it's more energy efficient. I guess is for to have a sauna at home. I mean, there's, you know, there's a different reason why I want to sign at home, but to have a sign of I mean, you need one that's you know, you don't have to wait 2 hours for it to heat up. And it's reasonably energy efficient and it's compact and small and infrared ticks, all those boxes.

01:06:32:18 - 01:06:46:17
Dr Tom Buckley
Plus it doesn't need to generate as much heat to to create body heat and sweat. It's important to sweat from the inside out. So going into a steam room is not the answer here. And you see that often in the gyms where people come in to pour water on top of the heat. Sure, they want loads of steam.

01:06:46:17 - 01:07:16:04
Dr Tom Buckley
You know, they are increase in the temperature, but you don't want steam. It's not steam here. It's actually about trying to sweat from the inside out so the studies on on longevity become four years of studies from Finland. They've been traditional Finnish sauna. They haven't been infrared but the physiological mechanism is logical and a lot of the experts would agree that the physiology responds to infrared, sauna, would be the same as the Finnish one.

01:07:16:04 - 01:07:32:07
Dr Tom Buckley
So, you know, if it's if it's all about sweating and it's about heat, protein adaptation, it's about dilation, the blood vessels increase, in blood flow. It's like exercising, sitting down and sweating while you do it in the sauna. If if to say you should get the same effect from the infrared.

01:07:32:11 - 01:07:35:23
Andrew May
And you get some of our clients doing sauna three, four, five, six times a week.

01:07:36:12 - 01:07:47:21
Dr Tom Buckley
Yeah, well, the Finnish studies show that, you know, at least four days a week is for a longevity perspective. So you probably need to have one home to be able to do that without being absent from home every evening.

01:07:48:06 - 01:08:01:07
Andrew May
Dr. Thom's approach is a three pronged approach to treating LONG-COVID. No one regained organ function. Make sure everything's working well on the inside to wash out the inflammation. The other thing we should add is after a sauna, have a shower. It's really important.

01:08:01:07 - 01:08:02:12
Dr Tom Buckley
Yeah. Oh, really important.

01:08:02:16 - 01:08:19:20
Andrew May
For those talks. Yes, yes. I know some people will have a sauna and then go to bed one and then wash the toxins off and no. Three, fire up mitochondria. Oh, we're going to talk a cycle I tape C and can I go back to the only time I've actually heard Krebs Cycle made sexy was Dr. Paul Batman.

01:08:19:20 - 01:08:29:02
Andrew May
Hello, Paul. I'll make sure I send you an episode of Back When I started Exercise Physiology, but can you explain a little bit about what's happening with mitochondria first, then how you fire it up?

01:08:29:17 - 01:08:49:21
Dr Tom Buckley
So what we know with well, what we think we know are certainly more than hypothesized that the evidence is pointing to is that the mitochondria, dirty energy, the energy making part of the cell, I remember we're billions of cells and every cell has to make energy whatever its function is, maybe to contract a muscle, maybe to have clarity in the brain and think or maybe to blink.

01:08:49:21 - 01:09:14:03
Dr Tom Buckley
You're right. You know, you're already seeing the energy we may die energy in the mitochondria of the cell. We need glucose molecules mostly we need oxygen and then to fire up like you would occur, you need to create the energy. Do what we see here in long coal. That is that it seems like the mitochondria cause sluggish. And that would help to explain a lot of fatigue.

01:09:14:12 - 01:09:34:16
Dr Tom Buckley
And so a foggy brain and some of the symptoms we get. So yeah, yeah, we make sure there's nothing medically going on. We try and get the inflammation down and all the inflammatory markers cytokines out of the body because they all, they all get in the way of creating energy. And then we want to try and fire optimize our country.

01:09:34:17 - 01:09:41:00
Dr Tom Buckley
We try and get those mitochondria firing back to be not our normal efficiency.

01:09:41:12 - 01:09:42:08
Andrew May
Best way to do that?

01:09:43:18 - 01:09:56:09
Dr Tom Buckley
That's the loaded question. And there's a lot of trials at the moment looking at different sort of proteins and supplements and amino acids to try and do that. We definitely got to move. We've got to try and move them. We've got to do.

01:09:56:09 - 01:09:57:02
Andrew May
It without.

01:09:57:13 - 01:10:19:18
Dr Tom Buckley
We would not stress very measured very purposeful measured exercise measure and recovery, stimulation, recovery, stimulation, recovery. And then there are some supplements that we can use there is a series of case studies now showing potential effectiveness of hyperbaric oxygen chambers. And so I think and explore.

01:10:19:19 - 01:10:21:05
Andrew May
Exploring with a couple of our.

01:10:21:05 - 01:10:46:24
Dr Tom Buckley
Clients. Yeah. Oh, absolutely. And this this has all been tried and tested and shown to work quite well in many people with chronic fatigue. But here, here it's a bit different. You hear it because it's post-viral, but certainly that looks to be very, very promising I think there's potential for other things like cold therapy as well. The evidence is not quite emerged yet on that.

01:10:47:06 - 01:11:05:02
Andrew May
Challenge on cold because you know, I get at my keynotes now, I get it from to have a cold shower and I have men and women coming up to me after all that cold and it's killing me. Where do you live? I live in the Gold Coast. That's not a cold shower. That's like a lukewarm shower. So if you can't do that, you're not going to go to a three minute ice bath.

01:11:05:16 - 01:11:24:18
Andrew May
Hello, I Gladstone, who works with us as well during the icebox, but if you're not wanting to build a lot of stress into the system, it's probably not the time to go into a three minute ice bath. It's probably not the time to go and do cryotherapy, but you could basically board depending where you live. A cold shower might be an okay way to start.

01:11:25:02 - 01:11:45:08
Dr Tom Buckley
Yeah, I take a cold shower or a cold shower, you know, short cold shower can be quite invigorating and actually promote energy and stimulate lots of lots of hormones in the body. We don't want to add more stressors, but but we kind of do have to do these little micro stresses to sort of trigger the mitochondria into action.

01:11:45:18 - 01:11:55:03
Dr Tom Buckley
I'm, I'm just a bit more anxious about cryotherapy. I, I like to see. Yeah. A long time ago and I have to admit I found it quite unpleasant.

01:11:55:03 - 01:12:07:16
Andrew May
It's a weird feeling. It's like you're, it's it's like your petrol pump being stuck in the freezer. Yeah, it is bizarre. So yeah, I think we're some of the people we're working with who are struggling with cold showers. There's no way we accelerate them into cryotherapy.

01:12:08:04 - 01:12:33:09
Dr Tom Buckley
I know, but if, if evidence emerges over the next couple of months that it does show to have beneficial physiological effects and I would start promoting it, we see seeing that with our other approaches. So I think for me it's quite important to be as scientifically based as as possible um, you know, I wouldn't be promoting people go into ketosis, you know, you're adding another stressor into the body.

01:12:33:16 - 01:12:44:04
Dr Tom Buckley
But there are, there are a lot of experts in this area that think intermittent fasting could have a role to play here in firing up the mitochondria. I would reserve until I see evidence.

01:12:44:11 - 01:12:47:13
Andrew May
Is there a link between autophagy and mitochondria?

01:12:48:07 - 01:12:55:16
Dr Tom Buckley
I don't know. I mean autophagy for those for listeners to figure is just how the body sort of gets rid of old defective cells.

01:12:55:19 - 01:12:58:11
Andrew May
So the reason you're asking if you're getting rid of the waste products in the aisles.

01:12:58:11 - 01:12:58:22
Dr Tom Buckley
Yes.

01:12:59:03 - 01:13:06:19
Andrew May
Because that allows you then to fire up the mitochondria that have been sleeping or, or withering away possibly too.

01:13:06:21 - 01:13:37:00
Dr Tom Buckley
I don't know. Yeah. To be continued, I think it's important not to do there. A lot of people are just saying, oh, this, do this, do this, do this, and they're all well intentioned. I tend to want to follow the evidence and also sort of follow what would be plausible physiologically with people. And I do think we don't call it a won't be one answer for everybody and it'll also depend on what prior exposures you've had and what your tolerances are to some of the activities and even some of the supplements that I would use.

01:13:37:15 - 01:13:54:21
Andrew May
The three pronged approach to summarize, number one, regain organ function to wash out the inflammation, especially with soreness three is fire up. The mitochondria with a whole lot of strategies could be cold water, it's movement but not too much. Can I also say if anyone's listening to this, get some help with some simple.

01:13:54:23 - 01:14:29:02
Dr Tom Buckley
Yeah, yeah. I think absolutely critical. I mean, I think, you know, if I was somebody with Long Call that I would go with somebody to coach me through all of this because there would be a tendency to go extreme with stuff. There would be a tendency to push hard and do too much of it. You really and you might be blinded to some of the negative effects it's giving you by doing too much or being overexposed, you know, going into the sauna for 90 minutes, you know, that's got to be a stress on the body.

01:14:29:06 - 01:14:30:19
Dr Tom Buckley
That's not what we're talking about here.

01:14:30:20 - 01:14:52:04
Andrew May
The type of clients who are more susceptible to long COVID are the ones that will throw everything at it and try to get it done really quick, but that can have an adverse effect. So if you are listening to this and you want some support and I don't normally do it gratuitous plug in our podcast, but I'm going to reach out to Tom and I, and if we can't fit you in with our capacity, we'll at least try and point you in the right direction because don't go this alone now.

01:14:52:05 - 01:15:11:16
Dr Tom Buckley
I don't go it alone. And you know, when we talk about our three prong approach, you know, we we measure the physiology, we measure the hormone levels, we measure the inflammatory metrics. You know, so so we are following the trail of physiology. We check out the organs to make sure that somebody is not their symptoms are not secondary to some pathology.

01:15:11:16 - 01:15:40:05
Dr Tom Buckley
That's going on. And then we monitor very carefully the effect of any intervention, whether it be heat therapy or cold therapy, whether it be hyperbaric oxygen exposure sure. Or what dietary approaches we're taking or supplements where we're measuring the effectiveness in real time because we're all learning here. It's just this is a new phenomena. And some of the therapies we're using are been around a long time and we're tailoring them to individuals.

01:15:40:21 - 01:16:02:09
Andrew May
We've covered a lot today. You've covered a lot, and I've asked some probing questions. We've no one looked at where we are at with COVID. The latest of to we've looked at the history of pandemics and you said we're going to be in this for a long time. Three heading into winter or just generally what we should do for our overall wellbeing and immunity for when you get or if you get COVID what should you focus on?

01:16:02:16 - 01:16:11:18
Andrew May
And five, we've spoken about approaching long COVID with a three pronged approach. Before we wrap up, is there anything we have missed, anything else you would like to let our listeners know?

01:16:12:03 - 01:16:39:21
Dr Tom Buckley
I think there's 11 comment I'd like to give people is that when people do get COVID, I think generally people are pretty good as well. The symptoms are pretty good as slowing them down. Process and isolation is very good at breaking some of the commitments they most always want to make. The whole paddies anyway. I hate to think that people are out to go to work with COVID and floating around as if they didn't, and it is important to slow down.

01:16:39:21 - 01:16:59:01
Dr Tom Buckley
Look after yourself. You have I think you have a window of opportunity here to try and get as well as you can as quick as you can by looking after yourself. Most people are good at that, but my biggest fear is that then when people reengage with the broader world for this work or sport or family or that they try to play catch up and you know, the work has mounted up.

01:16:59:09 - 01:17:30:11
Dr Tom Buckley
So if you are working with somebody we call it or you are living with somebody who's recovered from COVID, give them a break, try and release some of the pressure, try encourage them to to prioritize what they need to do and get rid of the things that they don't need to do. I think the other thing is to absolutely be sensitive to the fact that it seems to be high, quite normal to have some degree of psychological discomfort from having had COVID, and particularly if the symptoms are slow to go away.

01:17:30:11 - 01:17:49:21
Dr Tom Buckley
So people may be expressing high anxiety, they may be showing some symptoms of depression or mood disturbance or not be there happy self and just to be aware of that and sympathetic of that. And if you're somebody who's got those symptoms, please, please reach out to people for help. Don't try and do it alone.

01:17:50:04 - 01:18:10:15
Andrew May
Great advice. Lots of great advice today. Thank you for coming in specifically talking about this. It's such a topical point in every conversation. Now, there's so much misinformation, there's so much bullshit. So it's great having the facts and some strategies around it. We are going to come back in a month or two and we'll talk about PACU. So we'll talk more about the pointy end of performance or a side.

01:18:10:15 - 01:18:17:01
Andrew May
I was specifically on coherence and strategies around that. Dr. Tom Buckley, as always, it was a pleasure chatting.

01:18:17:13 - 01:18:18:22
Dr Tom Buckley
My pleasure, Andrew. Thank you.

01:18:21:03 - 01:18:59:16
Andrew May
Hey, it's Andrew and we hope you enjoyed that episode. We would really appreciate it if you helped us amplify these strides stronger with Andrew, my podcast, by sharing episodes with colleagues and friends and going to iTunes and leaving a rating and review. This really does help us get this message out to a wider audience. And if you would like to know more about how to drive stronger uplift teams through optimizing human performance and wellbeing, make sure you check out Strive Stronger dot com, and if you'd like to know more about my personal practice focusing on all things human performance, go to Andrew made dot com where you can explore the books I have written including Match

01:18:59:16 - 01:19:21:02
Andrew May
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01:19:21:13 - 01:19:28:07
Andrew May
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#2 The Science of COVID - Dr Tom Buckley

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