What Actually Matters When It Comes to Ageing Well — with Dr Jeremy Hunt Longevity Clinics

What does longevity actually mean beyond the buzzwords?

In this episode of Inside-Out Connections, I sit down with Jeremy Hunt, a plastic and reconstructive surgeon who has expanded his work into the longevity space, focusing on prevention, personalised health, and what truly supports long term vitality.

We explore the difference between lifespan and healthspan, why so many people feel overwhelmed by conflicting health advice, and how to cut through the noise to focus on what really matters.

From preventative testing and early intervention, to biohacking, peptides, and the role of lifestyle, this conversation brings clarity to a space that can often feel confusing and out of reach.

Most importantly, we discuss how longevity is not just for the wealthy, and the simple, evidence based steps anyone can take to support their health now and into the future. 

What We Cover

• The difference between lifespan and healthspan and why it matters
• Why longevity is about prevention, not just treatment
• How standard medical testing is being used earlier to avoid disease
• The foundational pillars of longevity including sleep, exercise, and nutrition
• Why there is no “silver bullet” when it comes to health
• The truth about biohacking and how to approach it realistically
• What peptide therapies are and where they currently sit in medicine
• The role of visceral fat and why it matters more than you think
• Simple, cost effective strategies that can significantly improve long term health
• Why longevity is not just for the wealthy and how to access it in a practical way
• How to cut through the noise and make informed decisions about your health

🔗 Where to Find Dr Jeremy Hunt

Website: https://longevityclinics.com.au

Instagram: Longevity Clinics Australia

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If this episode resonated, share it with someone who’s trying to make sense of their health or navigating this stage of life.

These conversations are here to bring clarity, not confusion.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:03

Welcome to Inside Out Connections, where we explore the link between your skin, your gut, emotional health, and your deeper sense of self. I'm your host, Tracy Ann, a wellness coach exploring what it really means to reconnect from the inside out. Today's conversation explores the evolving space of longevity, beyond the buzzwords and into what it actually means to support our health as we age. Dr. Jeremy Hunt is a plastic and reconstructive surgeon who has spent years working at the forefront of aesthetics and physical transformation. Over time, his work has expanded into the longevity space with a focus on prevention, personalized health, and what truly supports long-term vitality. In this episode, we explore what longevity really means in practice, what's worth paying attention to, and how women can navigate this space in a way that feels informed, balanced, and realistic. Dr. Jeremy Hunt, thank you so much for joining me today.

SPEAKER_01 1:07

Pleasure, Tracy.

SPEAKER_02 1:08

Pleasure to be here.

SPEAKER_00 1:09

What led you to expand your work into longevity medicine?

SPEAKER_02 1:13

So that's uh that that is a good question. I think everybody reaches a point in your life where you start to realize that it's finite and there's a point where you need to start paying a bit more attention and detail to enjoying a good, long, productive life. So I reached a point a number of years ago where I started looking around, trying to come up with I'm in good health and I'm fit and I'm not as young as I was, and I want to stay mobile and active. What is it I need to start thinking about doing now to try and make sure I have good senior years? And there really was uh a a real paucity of information out there. So I really struggled to find the answers. So I went to my GP and uh checked the routine things like blood pressure and cholesterol, and then I did a little bit more investigation, a bit more digging and went down quite a long, deep rabbit hole, as I'm sure some people know, and then merged at the other end going, okay, I think I've distilled out the important factors. I think I have a plan, and that was a good plan for me personally. And then my patients in my practice start asking the same question. They start saying, hey, I've reached this point in life, what do I need to do? And then I thought, you know what, I'll just uh I'll provide them with a portal or a service where they can come, they can have well-informed information. Uh in my mind, it needs to be evidence-based, it needs to be effective, and try and distill out, you know, the pearls of wisdom that are amongst the sea of Instagram posts that we all see on a daily basis about all of the things we have to do. You have to do this and you have to be doing that. Well, you don't have to be doing them, but some of them are going to be beneficial. So that's that's what led me down that path.

SPEAKER_00 2:53

I love that. And also just as our kids are getting older, and like you said, you get to that point where you you want to live another 50 years, right? You want to be there for your grandkids and you we want to look good, but we also want to feel good. So that's that's really important. So what were you specifically seeing clinically that prompted that shift?

SPEAKER_02 3:13

So it was more the case that I I was very aware that medicine's done a great job in terms of increasing lifespan. So there's there's a few buzz terms around lifespan, health span. So lifespan in the last 50 years, we've managed to up the average age of uh life by 19 years, which is a pretty phenomenal progress. So we're all living longer, which is great. But in the meantime, there's been absolutely no shift in the quality of those years. So in essence, we've added on another 19 years of age, old age, so that there's this difference, there's this divergence between, you know, lifespan getting longer, health span getting less, and there's this big gap in the middle where you want good health span with good lifespan. So as you say, you can run down the beach with kids and grandkids and you can do all the things that you do now. So the whole basis of longevity medicine is identifying things identifying factors now that can be altered to try and prevent the onset of disease, identifying disease earlier so it can be treated more effectively. And then there's a few there's a guideline that's built on good lifestyle, good exercise, and then a few little tiers on top of that that hopefully can make us enjoy those extra 19 years that we've earned through all the good work of medicine.

SPEAKER_00 4:36

So, how has your definition of aging well evolved over time?

SPEAKER_02 4:42

So for me, it's uh it's got to do with mobility. I I enjoy a lot of physical activities, I enjoy um a lot of outdoor stuff. I've got kids doing those activities with your family who are younger than you, so they're fitter than you, and they're more flexible than you, and they're faster than you, and they're stronger than you. And there's a point where you want to keep up with those kids. I d I don't want to be sitting on the sidelines watching my kids playing sport. I want to be playing sport with them. I want to be active. So for me, that's the that's the primary objective is to live good years, active, healthy, mobile, and functional years. That's really what I'm looking for.

SPEAKER_00 5:27

So, how would you say longevity is different from anti-aging?

SPEAKER_02 5:31

So I think anti-aging as a concept is a nice concept. No one wants to age. Uh and maybe anti-aging is has been in the past more of a superficial appearance type focus, whereas longevity medicine is it's less about what you can see. It's more about how your cells function. It's it's at that microscopic level. It's not what we can see with the naked eye that's going to make the difference in longevity. It's actually getting your cells to run as efficiently as they should be so that you can get maximum function. So if you think about we're we're an engine. We we feed the engine and the engine burns every day and we we go from A to B just like a car does. But a car needs to be serviced. And we rarely take time to service our bodily systems. A car will do better with a fuel additive potentially. There are additives you can add to your diet that will increase the efficiency of your engine. It will give you more mileage per liter of petrol. It will mean your tires wear out less. There are a million and one metaphors as to what longevity medicine will do. And I think, as you say, anti-aging is maybe a little bit more about appearance, what we can see on the outside, whereas longevity is a little bit more about what's what's happening deep on the inside.

SPEAKER_00 6:59

I love that analogy about the car because I'm sure so many people run their cars into the ground. Oh, 100%. Yeah, we're all hopeless.

SPEAKER_01 7:08

We're all hopeless. We're hopeless.

SPEAKER_00 7:10

Yes, that's right. So a lot of us run our bodies that way too. And often we we hit the wall where we're like, oh my god, what's just happened? But it's because we haven't listened to the signs along the way that totally the car needs a, you know, an additive or the wheels need pumping up, or you need to go in for a service or whatever. So yeah, listening to your body is really important. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_02 7:32

And it and it is it's true. It's when that car goes in for that service and they send you a long list of things that you were not aware of that need to be done to keep your car going for the next 12 months, you're inclined to then do those things. So longevity medicine is all about a bit like taking a peek under the bonnet, maybe doing some baseline investigations, just working out where the system is running at, and then identifying parameters that maybe could be tweaked a little bit in one direction or the other to just maximize, maximize good health span. It's all about health span.

SPEAKER_00 8:05

And I guess for the critics out there, some people might think that we're taking it too far. What do you say to those people?

SPEAKER_02 8:10

Aaron Powell I say to those people that you know, s science is science and facts are facts, and research is there for a very good reason. So when when you take a group of people and you have a similar group of people and you give half the group an intervention and half the group no intervention, and then you measure parameters, then at the end, if there is a difference in the outcome for those two groups, and it was done scientifically by a non-biased person in a good university facility and the design was good, then we call that scientific evidence. And there is scientific evidence that a lot of these things do work. So I can go into a few fairly straightforward, simple ones in a while that I think everyone could implement tomorrow that are going to be worthwhile. But on the background of that, there's also a huge amount of noise and clutter about things that you need to do this and we need to do this. And the pendulum of popularity swings in and out on what's the what's the trendy thing to be doing at the moment. And that's not what we're spow. That's why I set up a medical practice for starters. So everything's based in medicine, it's not based on social media and influences. We want to offer people informed, scientifically based options with proven outcomes. That's that's the underlying philosophy of the longevity clinics that we run.

SPEAKER_00 9:33

So what are the biggest misconceptions you're seeing, particularly for women?

SPEAKER_02 9:39

Probably the biggest misconception is that there's a silver bullet, that one one one agent will fix everything. If I take it in reverse, at the moment, ever every guy in his 50 thinks he needs to be on testosterone. Every guy thinks that testosterone will come through, you know, a needle, and that's the solution to my problem, and that's my longevity solved. As women age, hormone hormone changes are inevitable and they are significant and they have potentially significant adverse effects on people's lifestyles. The taking of HRT, hormone replacement therapy, is is a great thing. It's not necessarily the silver bullet, though. That's that's really the one key misconception is that the foundation of longevity is going to be diet and exercise. On top of that will be hormones, on top of that will be weight management, on top of that will be supplements, and on top of that will potentially be the sexy things that everyone talks about on Instagram, peptides and NADs and IV infusions. But the fundamental baseline, the proven baseline is going to be diet and exercise.

SPEAKER_00 10:53

And sleep, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 10:55

And sleep. Sleep is sleep is key. Sleep is sleep is the, you know, the unsung unsung hero of longevity. Yeah. And it's becoming really apparent that sleep is when your body will rejuvenate and restore. It will decrease cortisol levels, it will decrease visceral fat levels, and they're the bad things. So bad things are cortisol, visceral fat. Visceral fat is a is an evil little bugbear that uh we carry, but it increases as your years go by. We can talk about visceral fat if you want to. It's one of my favorite little subjects.

SPEAKER_00 11:31

From a 50-year-old woman perspective and being on HRT and having those changes, I'm definitely bigger in my tummy than what I was before. I mean, I'm not big by any means, but I just you notice the changes. So is that visceral fat?

SPEAKER_02 11:45

Aaron Ross Powell That that is visceral fat.

SPEAKER_00 11:48

So there's visceral fat is so there's two types of fat.

SPEAKER_02 11:52

There's there's the if you think your core is your core, your muscle core is like a barrel that is all muscle. On the outside of the barrel is the skin and the fat underneath the skin, that's the subcutaneous fat. And inside the barrel are all the livers and the spleen and the kidneys and all the organs. And then surrounding that is a layer of fat. That is visceral fat. So your visceral fat starts to increase after your 30s. You start off with like a quarter of a kilo of visceral fat. Uh, by the time you hit 50, you're up to about a kilogram. But 50% of women over 50 have high visceral fat levels. Bear in mind that 65% of women over 50 are overweight by the standards. And the 35% of women in that age group are diabetic or pre-diabetic, then visceral fat is a big player in that state. And the problem with visceral fat is it releases, it it's it's it's a machine that's constantly turning over. It stores fat, dissolves fat, gives out fat, not necessarily when your body needs it. It releases inflammatory markers when the fat dissolves, and the inflammatory markers irritate tissue, which then creates adverse events. So let's just say if in a woman your waistline is more than 35 inches, in a man 42 inches, you have a high visceral fat level. A high visceral fat level creates a high risk of metastatic cancer, 44% higher than if you had a low visceral fat level.

SPEAKER_00 13:36

That's a big number.

SPEAKER_02 13:38

That's pretty high. That's insane. That's that's that's not hearsay. That's fact. And the problem is as your estrogen levels drop off, you store more visceral fat. So in men, as your testosterone levels drop off, you don't burn visceral fat as efficiently. So that there's definitely a point in given average woman who goes through menopause at age 50 to 52. Premenopause starts five years before that, and that's when the estrogen levels are dropping off. So into your 45th, 46th year, you might start to notice these changes where you're increasing visceral fat. Visceral fat is bad for you. So decreasing it is good for you. But things that will get rid of visceral fat are going to be HRT. So HRT will decrease your level of visceral fat. Sleep will decrease your level of visceral fat. Decreasing alcohol intake, decreasing stress in your life, increasing your exercise levels will get rid of visceral fat. So there's this big cycle. It's this big loop that's all revolving around diet and exercise being the keys to, you know, a healthy body and your cell, your cells not being inflamed and irritated by high sugar levels and high fat levels, and then heading off down an adverse path, which is really what cancer turns out to be.

SPEAKER_00 15:02

And it's so great to create an an awareness around this, having these type of conversations. And recently I I got an aura ring, and so I've become acutely aware of my sleep. So much so that I'm, oh, I've got to get to bed because it's 9:30 and it's, you know, half an hour longer. I'm not gonna get my little gold star. But it's so great. I've noticed a difference. Having that little bit of extra sleep, I've just it's just made a massive difference to my well-being as well as movement. I'm moving more, getting in more steps and you know, going to the gym regularly.

SPEAKER_02 15:35

The thing about sleep is is you don't you don't realise how much you missed it or needed it until you get it. And the whole the aura ring, ring and the Garmin Watches and all of the devices that monitor your biomarkers and give you biofeedback have changed the way everybody looks at things. And after a couple of nights of good sleep, you just go, this is just next level. Yeah. This stuff's addictive. I I I don't want to miss that get out of bed and spring out of bed concept because we've all been run running, we've been just burning the candle at both ends.

SPEAKER_00 16:12

Oh, if someone says, let's have a dinner at 8 p.m., I might be friends. Let's do a catch-up at 6 30 for breaking and I'm in.

SPEAKER_02 16:24

See, there's there is this problem too, where if you if you go too far down the rabbit hole, uh you get into, okay, so I need to get X many hours of sleep a night, but I'm not allowed to eat within three hours of going to sleep. Plus I have to fast for 16 hours, plus I have to take in X many grams of protein in a certain day. And you start getting to the point where it's just not fun anymore. So there is there is this balance where you go, you know what, there are some some guidelines I need to stick to, and then there are some things I do enjoy. So I'm allowed to have my bonus rewards as long as most of the time I'm sticking to the plan.

SPEAKER_00 17:04

Absolutely. Before you have no friends at all. Well, that's how I look at it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 17:08

Well otherwise otherwise we're all living in a bubble and it's just no fun of it.

SPEAKER_00 17:11

No, that's right. You've got to enjoy life. But it's a balance like anything. So, from your perspective, Dr. Hunt, what are the foundational pillars that impact health span?

SPEAKER_02 17:23

So I I I think it it it truly is like a baseline of good diet and exercise program. There are some things that, you know, diet, diet, we we live in a world where, you know, food is fast and once upon a time it wasn't. Food was whole once upon a time, now it's largely processed. So longevity is about filling the little gaps in our lifestyles where things are missing. So you want a you want a good diet, and to achieve that, you may need to supplement it in some way. There's there's good evidence that supplementing a diet with a multivitamin is beneficial. Once upon a time, we had soil that was full of full of vitamins or full of minerals and it'd go into the vegetables, and now we know that the level of vitamins and minerals in vegetables is lower than it was. And there is there is good scientific evidence. There have been studies where they've looked at people who took a multivitamin and people who did not take a multivitamin and they followed them for two years and they followed them for five years, and they assessed them for brain function, and there is a benefit from taking a multivitamin on a daily basis. In the world we live in now, maybe not in the world 40 years ago, but in the world we live in now, there is 100% scientific evidence that taking a multivitamin is going to be beneficial. You need a balanced diet, you need good sleep, you need regular exercise. There is insanely good evidence around exercise and how it will increase your lifespan and your health span. There is insanely good evidence around some simple supplements like uh fish oil. Fish oil, nice simple fish oil. So there's a few things that I would recommend people do on a daily basis to set the foundation. And then on top of that, you work your way up the pyramid towards the summit. And basic diet, basic exercise is the fundamental pillar. On top of that is making sure hormones are performing at the level that they should be. On top of that is maintaining a a healthy weight range, trying to decrease visceral fat as much as possible. On top of that is then maybe adding some further supplements. And then on top of that, as I say, are the very trendy peptides and NADs and things that people often assume is going to be the solution to all the problems. All I need to do is get on a peptide and I'll be fine. Or not unless the foundation is built up first.

SPEAKER_00 19:52

That's right. There's so many moving parts, isn't there? So for someone walking into longevity clinics for the first time, what does that journey look like?

SPEAKER_02 20:03

Yeah, I've got phenomenally good staff. They're all passionate about this area of medicine. So they have an interest. They they actively participate in all of the programs that we support and endorse. So when someone comes in, they are met with been open arms. It's we're here to hear what your concerns are. You can contact us online. It's very simple. A form gets filled in. One of the nursing staff will then get in touch with you. Find out primarily two things. Where are you at now? What's your primary objective? We will establish that with a series of routine blood tests. We'll then organize for those blood tests to happen. Those blood tests then get reviewed by one of the doctors. The doctors will then have a consultation with you to discuss what those blood tests showed. Those blood tests, they may then lead into some further investigations. There are some routine screening investigations that everybody should be doing. So that everyone over the age of 45 should be having a colonoscopy every five years, every woman should be having regular PAP smears, mammograms need to be done on a regular basis, skin cancer checks done on a regular basis. So we want to just tick those boxes and make sure that you have a clean slate. Once we have a clean slate, we might add further investigations, be it along a heart line or a lung line, and there are scans looking for coronary artery disease, if that runs in a family. Or if someone has a particular concern, we can steer them down the right path on the right investigation that we'll give them the answer they want. And then if that investigation turns out a result, then I have the network to send you to the specialist who will be able to give you cutting edge advice. And then we have a stable platform. And then onto that, we might tweak diet a little bit, tweak exercise a little bit, we might add some supplements, and then we'll see you in 12 months. Call us if you have a concern. We'll see you in 12 months. We'll run your routine blow. Test again and we'll just make sure that you are heading in the right direction.

SPEAKER_00 22:05

So obviously it's different type of testing and assessments that you're doing in comparison to standard health care. Are they a lot different?

SPEAKER_02 22:16

They are the same. Tests that will be used in standard healthcare. We're using them in healthcare before there's a problem, trying to avoid the onset of that problem. So that if you went to your doctor and you you had symptoms suggestive of high blood sugar. If you had, you know, numbness in numbness in nerves, you had weakness, you had brain fog, you had frequency of urination, then perhaps the doctor might think, you have diabetes, we need to investigate this by checking your blood sugar. We're checking the blood sugar before you have five years of diabetes.

SPEAKER_00 22:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 22:53

That's that's what it's all about. So Preventative. Preventative. It's is there's this concept of medicines 3.0 that was put out by some of the longevity experts that basically said, okay, the key to success is not to let the not to treat the disease, but to avoid the disease. If you can avoid the disease, then we don't have to treat it. And the logic of that is is great. There are routine standard blood tests, there are routine validated screening tests for people of different ages looking for cancer risk, be it breast cancer or colon cancer. There are higher level investigations for people who have specific concerns. So there is an increasing swing towards people considering doing full-body MRI scans. There is some evidence that that is beneficial. There's some evidence that it's not beneficial in the general population. So for that reason, it's not available as a routine screening test. But for that specific individual who wants to pursue that, they're the sort of investigations that we'll we we will facilitate.

SPEAKER_00 23:59

And for somebody who is over the age of 50 that are going and doing full-body MRIs, I mean, chances are you're going to find something, would you say?

SPEAKER_02 24:13

Yeah, good.

SPEAKER_00 24:13

That's good.

SPEAKER_02 24:15

The problem is when we do find something, what do we do next? So that uh the the challenges with all tests are that sometimes they will the test will think it's found something, but the test is actually not sensitive enough or specific enough to it be precise. So it might get it right 98% of the time. And uh you know, that's that's where it creates the the challenge, where if you do find something, what is the next step? And for us, the next step is say we we find something on your your full body MRI that shows something in the liver. Well, then you're straight off to my favorite liver expert who will know exactly what to do next. And it may well then be, ah, this is this is nothing to worry about. And we have peace of mind and that's what we're looking for. But there have been occasions where people have found disease states they didn't know that then go on to get treated with obviously a far more favorable outcome. So it just depends on your level of uh sensitivity.

SPEAKER_00 25:18

Early intervention. Yes.

SPEAKER_02 25:20

How how how keen you are to go chasing down that that rabbit hole?

SPEAKER_00 25:25

Well, I had uh genetic testing years ago and found out that I have the APOE4 gene, one copy. Found out in my early 40s and haven't done anything about it apart from I live a very healthy lifestyle. Uh but at what point would I go get a brain scan?

SPEAKER_02 25:46

You would go and get a brain scan, or if you if you if you had symptoms of anything suggestive, then we would be off for a brain scan straight away.

SPEAKER_00 25:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 25:54

If if you live a healthy lifestyle with no symptoms and your your mind makes you think you want a brain scan, then in my mind you have dis-ease about the concern about do I have a brain tumor? Disease is disease, and I want to treat your disease. I want you to be at ease. So if someone comes to me concerned and they say, Look, I think I want to do a brain scan, um, I'm very happy to facilitate that for them because that will give them, it'll give them as an individual the answer they're looking for, as opposed to the entire population needs a brain scan on a regular basis. The evidence for that doesn't exist as yet.

SPEAKER_00 26:42

I I chatted to someone recently who said to me that longevity clinics and testing are really only for the wealthy, and it's all very good and well if you have money. For those who don't, how can they tap into this space without it becoming overwhelmingly expensive?

SPEAKER_02 26:58

Okay. You take on evidence-based uh interventions that will make a difference. Everybody should be on omega-3 fish oil. Ninety percent of the population is deficient in omega-3s. Omega-3s, if you have a high level, you have a 66% lower chance of dementia than if you have a low level. That's a chip shot. A gram of fish oil every day, you decrease your chance of dementia by 66%. Who's not going to take that? Okay. Um by the way, while you're at it, you decrease your chance of cancer, you decrease your chance of what we term fragility, which is the immobility, joint immobility of old age that leads to falls, which leads to fractured hips, which are significant. Everyone should be on omega fish oil. Everybody should be on a multivitamin. This is easy to do. It's not vastly expensive intervention, and they're proven to work. If you're on a if you're on a multivitamin, every two years you're on a multivitamin, it will decrease your aging by two months. So you go out two months. It's not it's not huge. But if you start a multivitamin 20 years down the line, you're you've done 20 years of two months. There's years more quality of life to be had by having a multivitamin. There's solid evidence that it increases brain function. So multivitamins, chip shot. Uh, protein. We don't eat enough protein. Full stop. It's hard to eat as much protein in a day as we probably need to. It's not that hard to have some sort of protein supplement in the form of, you know, whey protein or something like that on a daily basis that will increase your protein intake, increase protein intake, means stronger muscles, stronger bones, better outcome. So that's that's three simple ones. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_00 29:05

And you feel better. Like you do feel better because you can't just take it for a month and go, well, that didn't work for me. You have to be on vitamins consistently to get the impact.

SPEAKER_02 29:14

Trevor Burrus, Jr.: It is it is a slow burn. That's the thing. It's a slow burn and it is like f adding in the fuel additive to your petrol that means your engine runs more efficiently so that your services are less extensive and your services are less expensive because over years and years and years you run a you run a better life. You know. The other one that uh you know everyone seems to want to talk about is creatine. Everyone everyone there's a lot of people.

SPEAKER_00 29:39

Yeah, what are your thoughts on creatine?

SPEAKER_02 29:40

Okay, so my thoughts on creatine is creatine is another one of those relatively cost-effective things that you should be on a daily basis. So there is evidence that creatine at five grams a day will increase muscle bulk and increase muscle function. Muscle bulk is one of the strongest indicators for or correlators with longevity, increased muscle bulk, decreases your all-cause mortality by 50% in your senior years. Well, how does how does big muscle bulk stop you, stop you from dying? It it stops you from tripping, it stops you from falling over. Uh, if you fall over and fracture a hip over the age of 65, the statistics about you not leaving hospital from that injury are horrendously high. So being able to catch yourself as you trip and not have a heavy fall is is a major, major asset in senior years. So five grams of creatine, increase muscle bulk. If you go to 10 grams of creatine a day, you increase brain function and muscle bulk. And these are all, these are all proven. So it's not that hard. In my mind, uh, you know, I want to decrease my chances of dementia. I don't want to fall over. I'm I'm very happily taking my amiga fatty fatty acids, and I'm very happily taking my protein and my creatine, and I take my vegetable greens and my multivitamin in a in a daily blend milkshake that I whip up and have for breakfast. And then you're you're off to a flying start. Then you cut out the bad things, you cut down fatty foods, you cut down the alcohol consumption, you try and get more sleep, you do exercise on a regular basis. Now that that exercise, that's another very interesting one. Once upon a time, they used to think that the bar for exercise was five hours of exercise a week. And then they broke it down and they started looking at what type of exercise you're doing. So they broke it down into vigorous exercise, moderate, and light exercise. So light on a daily basis, you're just walking, walking around the house, walking around the office, that's light exercise. Moderate exercise is going for a brisk walk. Vigorous exercise is, you know, going hard, putting your heart rate up to within 70% of your maximum heart rate. So you're going hard, you're sweating hard. And the magic number for time that you need to do this came down from five hours to 10 minutes.

SPEAKER_00 32:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 32:12

Insane.

SPEAKER_00 32:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 32:14

Insane.

SPEAKER_00 32:15

So there's no excuse, people.

SPEAKER_02 32:17

Well, there really is there's there's there's really no excuse. These interventions are not expensive. It's not the it's not the domain of the rich and famous. Some things are the divine.

SPEAKER_00 32:30

So we are so conditioned, and I think it comes down to like gym classes, right? So a PT doesn't want to be paid 10 minutes for their time. No. They need an hour, they need to charge for their hourly rate. But we're conditioned that this is how we're meant to exercise. Well, if I can't do an hour, then what's the point? I'm just, it's not going to be hardly worth it. But it is. I mean, you can do so many sets with weights of an exercise of your choice it within 10 minutes and feel sweaty and fatigued afterwards.

SPEAKER_02 32:58

Totally.

SPEAKER_00 32:58

Totally.

SPEAKER_02 33:00

And the benefits are crazy. That sort of exercise, 10 minutes of sweaty exercise a day, decreased your risk of all cause mortality in your senior years by 50%, decreased your cancer risk by 40%, decreased your cardiovascular risk by 50%. These are crazy numbers. Yeah. They're crazy. And doable. And doable and and absolutely free of charge. Yeah. If you've got 10 minutes and you're sitting around. And the thing about the 10 minutes is they then went, okay, so of the 10 minutes, does it really matter how you do the 10 minutes? One minute. You could you could do 10 one-minute sessions or one 10-minute session, and they're equally beneficial. So everyone will find in their day 10 minutes or five minutes or three minutes or two minutes where they could just do a bunch of star jumps. I remember seeing my granddad in his kitchen. He was in the in the Navy doing his morning calisthenics routine and star jumps and stuff like that. Star jumps, they're quite exhausting, actually.

SPEAKER_00 34:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 34:04

You know, a couple of minutes of those and you're done. But the benefit is massive.

SPEAKER_00 34:09

I remember my mum doing the Richard Simmons exercises. I don't know if he was around when you were younger, but I just remember this guy with this crazy orange hair. Yeah. Yeah. And it was all the aerobics exercises and on the mat. But there we have access to so much these days on YouTube, Instagram, or whatever of following people. So yeah, you're right. So just looking at how you personalize a longevity plan, I know I jumped on your website and I had a look. You you cover everything from weight loss, peptides, menopause, hormonal imbalance, gut health, hair health, longevity, supplements, osteoporosis, prevention, stem cell therapy. I mean, there's so much there. So how do you personalize a longevity plan? Is it the same for everyone, generic, or is it completely individual?

SPEAKER_02 34:56

It is 100% tailored and customized. It is where are you at now? What are your concerns? What are your objectives? Uh, let's do the baseline tests, and then we'll we'll then follow your lead. We'll make recommendations on on tweaking the baseline. If you want to head down a path of epigenetic testing, we can facilitate that for you. We can arrange the test to happen, we can put you in touch with a geneticist who can talk to you about the results. If if you have a particular interest to just clear the headspace and noise about peptides, we will very happily do that for you. And if that's a path that you then want to go down, we'll help facilitate that for you. So that not everybody wants the same shopping list and not everyone's concerns are going to be the same. So we want to just make sure we've filled the baseline holes and making sure everyone's running at their maximum most efficient and then supplement their specific needs.

SPEAKER_00 35:54

So what tends to surprise people the most once they start looking at health through this lens?

SPEAKER_02 36:00

The numbers, like the numbers I just gave you. Do you want a 44% less chance of metastatic cancer? Do you want a 66% less chance of dementia? Then start taking fish oil. That was that easy. That's the thing. It's so easy. And now these these facts have come from, you know, there's a quagmire of junk out there. And then there's a there are some phenomenal researchers with phenomenal understanding, far better than mine, who will distill down these facts and come up with with guidelines. The thing that amazes me is it's not that hard. It's not that hard. There's just a lot of noise around the, let's just say, the more sexy side of things. Everyone needs to be doing this. Everyone needs to be doing this. You don't need to be doing anything. You've got a choice to do it. And it's uh it's an informed choice. You need to make an informed, intelligent choice.

SPEAKER_00 36:56

Biohacking is a term we're hearing everywhere. What does it actually mean in practical, evidence-based sense?

SPEAKER_02 37:05

Okay, so so biohacking is going to be taking some biological markers and then looking at those markers and then distilling out things that can be tweaked or modified. So biohacking would be analogous to you waking up in the morning and looking at the data from your aura ring. And your aura ring is going to say poor sleep. And you're then going to act on that to then try and have it next day say restorative sleep, or you want to increase your your deep sleep and increase your REM sleep. So you will then modify your behavior that next day to get a better biological outcome for yourself. That is biohacking. It's looking at your own data and then making modifications to maximize your performance and get better results.

SPEAKER_00 37:59

Okay, for an example, my ring is telling me that stress is my core function at the moment. So what would what could we do for me if I was to come in to see you and say, hey, I'm meditating, I'm taking magnesium, my stress levels are still through the roof. What would you do in that situation?

SPEAKER_02 38:22

I would I I would probably be looking to put you in touch with someone who could identify what was what those stresses or stressors were, um, and then modify them. It could it could be the sleep pattern needs to be modified, could be aspects of the work-life balance. There is that there are many benefits from exercise. It's the the time of day that you exercise, it's the time of the evening when you're eating before trying to get to sleep. And we would just track those numbers and someone would implement some suggestions on changes and then continue to track those numbers and hopefully see a beneficial outcome.

SPEAKER_00 38:58

Sure. Yeah. Peptide therapies are becoming more talked about. I don't know a thing about them. What are they and what role do they play in supporting health and aging?

SPEAKER_01 39:10

So peptides, peptides are everywhere. Peptides are like, they are absolutely everywhere.

SPEAKER_00 39:16

Yeah, and some people are really like, yeah, they're amazing, and other people are like, there's not enough evidence.

SPEAKER_02 39:22

Peptides are peptides are a combination of amino acids. Amino acids are what make protein. If you link the amino acids together and you've got a chain of amino acids that's less than 30 amino acids long, that's called a peptide. If it's longer, then it becomes a protein. If you if you think steak is a protein, if you eat protein, your gut digests it and it's destroyed. So peptides, if you're going to use them, need to be injected. That's the first first challenge with it. And peptides have been around for a long time. When insulin came along, it changed the world. Insulin is a peptide. The GLP1 agonists, the the Ozempics and the Wagovis and the Manjaros of this world, they're peptides. And they have changed this world for the benefit. There are questions about them being used inappropriately. Peptides are not brand new. And the thing with peptides is they'll go through a phase. They'll go through initial laboratory testing, then animal testing, then human testing, and then they're released. So those peptides, insulin, wagovi, azempic, manjaro, they've been through that process. There are other peptides that are not through that process as yet, though in laboratory and animal studies show potential benefit. And of course, there are people who are interested in those benefits. And there are people who will anecdotally tell of their experience. That's not scientific evidence. That's someone's personal experience. So at the moment, there are a number of those peptides around that potentially will show benefit, maybe. At the moment, they're not showing high adverse risk factors. They don't have major downsides, but they are not mainstream treatments. So they're sort of on the fringe. In my opinion, I think there will come to be a time when, just like Manjaro and Wagovi and Ozempic, they will become standard treatments. So if people think they want to get involved with peptides, here's the hot tip. It's a medication. It comes on a prescription. Therefore, it probably should come from a doctor, as opposed to an online, I just bought some from somewhere and they sent me some white powder in a jar with no instructions on what it is, no testing, no qualification, and it was pretty cheap, far cheaper than if I got it from a real medical practice. Well, I would not be injecting that stuff in myself in a pink fit. So if people do want to go down a path of peptides, I would strongly suggest they go to a medical practitioner who has some understanding. The peptides we work with are going to be all Australian made, they're Australian compounded, they're Australian tested. And I personally, this is not research, this is my anecdotal experience, have had good experience with some of the tissue healing anti-inflammatory peptides. And then out there, there are many, many, many peptides. And they they sort of come into different groups. So there's there's a group that will help with soft tissue injury, there's a group that will help with weight loss, there's a group that will help with weight loss without decreasing muscle. So that one of the problems with uh the weight loss peptides, OZEMPIC, is that you lose, you can lose a lot of weight, which is great, but you don't want to lose muscle mass. You don't you want to lose fat, not muscle.

SPEAKER_00 42:56

And that's inevitable. I had um Professor Belinda Beck on last week and spoke about that and about sure you do lose weight, but you're losing muscle as well.

SPEAKER_02 43:06

100%. And losing muscle is well, having muscle is good for you. Ergo, losing muscle is very, very bad for you. If you are on those particular peptides, you definitely need to be mindful. And this is where DEXTA scans and things are very useful to us, and we'll use DEXTA scans to measure visceral fat and subcutaneous fat and lean muscle mass. So it gives us a baseline. So when we when we start any intervention, we need a baseline that we can then do the intervention and then reassess and then then modify to maximize the outcome. That way we're making sure we're not sending people down an adverse path. But it may well come to bear that some of the other peptides, Ipamarella, there's lots of names out there people will hear about, will be a better option for some people than Ozampic and Wagovi. But that time has not come yet. So if you look to the States, the the pendulum is swinging back. Back in the direction of them becoming more mainstream. The FDA has put them back on the compounding list for whatever reason, be it political or financial, the pendulum is swinging. And I think these will become mainstream.

SPEAKER_00 44:14

Any major side effects?

SPEAKER_02 44:16

All medical intervention carries side effects and downsides. So the side effects and downsides are small. You're giving yourself a needle, you might get a bruise. If you don't give yourself the injection sterile, you might get an infection. So all of those things exist, but they're very, very low. With we talk about a thing called the therapeutic index with medication, and that's the how how wide are the goals between getting a goal in and then going too far and creating an adverse outcome. The therapeutic index for a lot of these is massively wide. So it's very hard to create a problem by doing too much of it. But they all do have downsides and we all have to keep an eye on things. And some of the other pep some of the peptides will change your blood count and increase the stickiness of your blood. So we're definitely watching that because we don't want sticky blood creating clots and then having problems. So it's not for the it's not for the locker room at the back of the gym. That's basically my bottom line.

SPEAKER_00 45:20

Yeah, good advice. So where do you see women wasting time, money, or energy when it comes to their health? Obviously, we invest a lot into looking after ourselves, particularly from that aesthetics perspective. So where are we wasting effort?

SPEAKER_02 45:40

There's so much noise. There's just so much noise. And in this day and age, it's just coming, coming at you from every possible direction. And everybody has access to information. So everybody is a an appointed expert. So that everybody is just throwing things at you all day long. And then you're sitting there managing all of the other aspects of your life while being inundated by this almost, almost pressure, this noise of you, you've got to do this, you've got to do that. If you're not doing this, you're missing the boat. That's where time is wasted. Time is wasted when you don't have time to distill your way through all of the literature and all the research on this stuff. That's what that's what doctors do. We distill things down and we come up with some some core treatment principles. We then assess the patient's specific needs, and then we apply the right tool at the right time to get the right result. That's what medical practitioners do. That's what doctors and nurses do very, very well. So my best advice is just to seek medical advice. Just seek advice of someone who can steer you down the right path.

SPEAKER_00 46:52

Yeah. Are there trends or treatments that are popular right now but not actually moving the needle?

SPEAKER_02 46:59

Lots.

SPEAKER_00 47:02

To name some obvious ones.

SPEAKER_02 47:04

Okay. One of my favorites, methylene blue.

SPEAKER_00 47:06

I haven't even heard of that. What is that?

SPEAKER_02 47:08

Oh, that that came along that came along a while ago when some people have a lot of influence, rightly or wrongly. So that if some body, a particular person, does something, a lot of people will think that this one thing is massively beneficial, and boom, this craze arises where everyone needs to jump on this bandwagon quick smart. And then turns out the bandwagon wasn't moving that fast anyway. So they jumped off that one and jumped on the next one. So they they come and they go. So methylene blue, it's a type of dye that we use in medicine for a very specific medical problem where we're trying to decrease carbon monoxide in the blood system. But the inference was if you bought down carbon monoxide, which is bad, it increased oxygen, blah, blah, blah. And it was this bright blue dye that you would drink and you would go bright blue.

SPEAKER_00 47:57

Wow.

SPEAKER_02 47:58

It's the craziest one of the craziest things I've ever seen. Craziest. It's insane. Yeah, there were some high-end British, possibly politicians who got involved in it, and uh suddenly everyone wanted to be on it. So there are lots of things that do not move the needle. And and the problem is to see movement in that needle takes time. And it takes, you know, okay, here's here is here is an intervention. Here is a group of people who are equal in all ways as best we can match them. Half get the intervention, half don't get the intervention, wait for the period of time, reassess. So it does take time for these things to evolve. So, you know, the multivitamin study I just alluded to, that that published results at two years. So it took them two years to go, okay, we've been giving these people a multivitamin, here are our results, bang. And then they just released the five-year results. So it takes time to see the needle move, and that's the problem. That that's where we lie.

SPEAKER_00 48:56

And it's not one size fits all. I think it's really important. What works for one person is not going to work for another, and so on, right? So it's like you said, it's important to be in the right care when we're going down the road of specific treatments, injections, vitamins, whatever it may be. It's good to get a baseline of where you're at to then be able to build from that. 100%.

SPEAKER_02 49:17

So you need to, and and it it's a bit like it's a bit like the the aura ring in the sense that if you have a baseline, you can then create your own biofeedback of actually seeing things heading in the right direction with exercise and things. We use we'll use parameters. Uh there's one called the VO2 Max, where we'll test how much oxygen your body can transport in a in at different levels of exercise. And then you can go on an exercise program and you can then retest. And when you see you're doing well, you'll do more and more of it. Your device may tell you your biological age is this, and then next week it's this, and you're like, I'm getting younger. This is fantastic. Those those sort of monitoring of things and feedback and they're they're very valuable, super valuable.

SPEAKER_00 50:07

I just wanted to touch back to that the genetic testing part that we spoke about. And sometimes we may not get uh good news. So do you find that clients are aware going into this of hearing terrible results? And if this is the case, do they have access to genetic counsellors for moments like that?

SPEAKER_02 50:28

Yeah, 100%. So what I what I what I like is good and what I like is good, reliable, solid, unequivocal information. And I can't carry all of the medical specialties on in in my limited brain space. But I do know a lot of people who do know a lot of good stuff. So genetic testing is where you will do your test and your genes are your genes. You can't we can't then change your genes. But what it may show is that you'll have a tendency to express something later in life, and a modif a modification at this point in your life may change the way that gets expressed. So dementia is a is a is a great example that genetically you can have a predisposition towards dementia. And at this point in your life, you could implement some changes that could mean that that predisposition was decreased into the future. That's very valuable. And the genetic testing and the genetic map, it's extensive. So I do work with some very clever geneticists who will sit down with my patients and take them through the results, take them through the significance, what it means, what it means for them, what it means for their family, what it means for reproduction, what what interventions now could potentially maximize the outcome further down the line.

SPEAKER_00 51:56

And I'd imagine that the testing has just gotten better and better. I did it around maybe 15 years ago.

SPEAKER_02 52:04

Yeah. It's it's just it's madness. It's like medicine's in a crazy, crazy golden age. I mean uh a while back, if you think about pregnancy and they do some testing, now the number of tests they can pick up on those pregnancy genetic tests is just exponential. It's crazy. And that's why you just need you need to be in touch with the experts. You just need to go, look, this is not my area of expertise, but I know the person who will be able to steer you down the right path.

SPEAKER_00 52:33

Sure. So you sit in a unique position having worked across both longevity and aesthetics. How do those two worlds connect for you now? What's the difference between looking well and truly being well?

SPEAKER_02 52:47

I think I think it all arose because, you know, I had a personal interest in it. It was very interesting. To start delving into it on a personal level to try and maximize longevity got me motivated. So the more I read, the more interesting it became. And then my patients are so much like me. They say that in the end, your practice will reflect you. So like attracts like. I have in I have intelligent, inquiring, discerning patients who want good, clear clarification on the quagmire of information out there. So all of my plastic surgical patients are dying to hear about longevity. And they they're very grateful that they now have a a portal that they have trusted in the past for another service to be able to go, if you I know you'll steer me down the right track. So for me, the two have just merged. And it's been a lot of it's been a lot more fun going back to my basic biochemistry university days, going, you know what, it is this stuff is intensely it's it's crazy interesting. Crazy interesting. Someone someone once put to me, you know, the greatest thing about medicine is having a complete, commensurate and total understanding of the human body. What a gift that is. And I went, you know what? You're right. You're right. It's just such a great thing.

SPEAKER_00 54:06

Building that bridge and and having that connection, like you said, with your patients and building that trust. That's super important when there's so much noise out there.

SPEAKER_02 54:14

Yeah, totally. Totally. So so there is there is a certain, you know, there's a certain burden of responsibility that comes with it, but it's it's like being the surgical burden of responsibility. You're you're you're on point. You're on you're on your game. This is this is the pointy end of medicine. So when when we in the clinic are giving advice to people, it's not without due consideration and without due precision and expertise and delivery of correct, meaningful information. And as you say, it's very it is very individualized. It's not cookie-cutter, it's you know specific to someone's, you know, specific needs and concerns where we will offer one one path or a different path.

SPEAKER_00 54:56

Aaron Ross Powell If you could simplify longevity down to a few key priorities, what would they be?

SPEAKER_02 55:04

Uh the unbelievably underestimated importance of sleep. Even even myself, I have just realized what a what a phenomenal difference it makes. Crazy. So sleep is sleep is essential. Daily exercise is absolutely essential. Oddly enough, the more vigorous the exercise is, the the less time you need to spend doing it. So people will find their happy medium. Some basic dietary supplemental changes in in this world in 2026 to replace the things that we've lost in our diet, maybe through agriculture, maybe that were there 50 years ago, are relatively simple to do and they are cost effective and they will reap benefits into the future. So, you know, my advice get good sleep, do exercise on a daily basis, and think about some simple supplements. Fish oil, fish oil, magnesium, creatine, protein, they're probably the big four.

SPEAKER_00 56:04

Yeah, I love that. That's really good advice. I could talk all day with you uh about longevity. Yeah, I love it. Before we wrap up, I'd love to offer a moment of reconnection. So what has your body taught you about yourself, Dr. Hunt?

SPEAKER_02 56:21

What has my body taught me?

SPEAKER_00 56:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 56:23

Oh, that well, okay, that that you've only got one. That's this that's the first thing. And that what you used to be able to do once upon a time, you cannot do anymore necessarily. So, you know, whiteboarding with the kids, that's that's hard work, let me tell you.

SPEAKER_00 56:42

I know, because I did that about two years ago. I went to that the Penrith uh where you ski on a cable, and I went back to, I thought I was 15 all over again, how I used to jump start off the ticket, and it was my daughter's birthday. I was pushing all the teenage boys out of the side. And I seriously, I was in physio for about six months afterwards. So just my hip is never the same. But in my mind, I was that 15-year-old all over again.

SPEAKER_02 57:07

So yeah, this this dawning realization that you know what, I'm not as not as fast and not as quick and not as strong as I used to be. But boy, right now, I don't want to get any less fast and quick and strong than I am now. So now's the time to jump on board and start making those changes to try and ride this good life, this one life you've got. There's only one look at it, uh, as long and as far as you possibly can. Now is the time to jump on board. That's that's what it's sort of taught me.

SPEAKER_00 57:38

Totally. What season of life are you in right now?

SPEAKER_02 57:42

Ooh. How many seasons have we got?

SPEAKER_00 57:45

However many you want.

SPEAKER_02 57:47

Uh yeah, I'm I'm sort of in a I should be in an autumn, I guess, but I'm way off autumn. I'm I'm sort of in a spring, actually. I've got a rejuvenation. This is this whole, you know, projects are great. So projects are good and personal benefit from it and physical benefit. I'm way healthier than I was five years ago. Crazy. Crazy. So I'm I'm in spring and I'm looking forward to a very long, long summer.

SPEAKER_00 58:17

Yeah, yeah. Awesome. Dr. Jeremy Hunt, thank you so much for bringing such clarity to a space that can often feel overwhelming. This conversation really helps cut through the noise and brings it back to what truly matters when it comes to aging well. Where can people get in contact?

SPEAKER_02 58:36

Uh, easiest one is uh we we are longevity clinics. So just look online, we're on all the social media platforms, longevityclinics.com.au. Uh see what we've got, drop us an email, the girls in the office will call you back. We start off with we just answer people's questions. We don't charge people for it. It's really it's fairly straightforward. It's like you make an inquiry and you're talking to one of my expert staff, uh, they will then take you through the options and whether you go down that path or not is up to you. But that initial inquiry, there's no charge. It's just free information. And uh that makes it very accessible. Anyone who's interested, yeah, longevityclinics.com.au or the social media platforms, and we'll get back to you.

SPEAKER_00 59:22

And I'm really looking forward to having you back on for a part two conversation on all things plastic surgery.

SPEAKER_02 59:29

My pleasure. This has been great. Tracy, thank you so much.

SPEAKER_00 59:31

Great, thank you.

SPEAKER_02 59:32

Thanks so much.

SPEAKER_00 59:37

Thank you for joining me on Inside Out Connections. I hope today's conversation reminds you to tune in and find small ways to self reconnect. If this episode resonated, please share it with a friend or leave a quick review. Come join me on Instagram at insideout skin gutcoach.