Out of instinctive rebellion against his father’s wishes, he resisted the idea of becoming a doctor as a teenager, gave in at the last minute and got a D in physics, and “entered medical school with grades that would be laughed at today.” did. His medical school was at St. Bartholomew’s College in London, where he preferred the social side of things.
“Sports, drinking, comedy…I got involved in sketch comedy at cabaret nights, performing sketches and songs. It was started by Graham Chapman from Monty Python. It probably doesn’t exist anymore. Everything was just… I wasn’t PC.” (He remains an avid fan of the arts and snuck out of our conference to see a homosexual retelling of The Nutcracker at the Southbank Centre.)
Rote learning wasn’t for him, but he did some hands-on clinical research and was involved in an early project to find out whether coffee was good for people. The answer, as he has frequently emphasized lately, was yes. “I loved that kind of thing. It was like being a detective. I got a real excitement out of it that I would never get from memorizing biology essays.”
Once I qualified, I took up the role of junior doctor at Barts in Hackney, east London, before transferring to Clinique Université St-Luc in Belgium. After bluffing through the interview in his poor French, he comes to the conclusion that there is a language barrier between him and his 14 heart patients.
Really, quite brave. “Yeah, but I was fluent in about three months.” And I got her wife with that. ” At the time, Véronique Bataille was a medical student who wooed Spector with a box of croissants before “introducing a good restaurant” in Brussels. “In the 1980s, even the food served in hospital canteens was better than what I ate in London restaurants.”
A year later, Bataille moved to London to work with Spector and was promoted to consultant specializing in melanoma. The couple married in Belgium in 1988 and have two children, Sophie, 34, an immigration lawyer, and Tom, 31, who works for a healthcare start-up.
As a genetic epidemiologist, Spector’s main interest is in studying how our life choices and life events play a role relative to our genes. With his TwinsUK register, he studies his two people with strikingly similar genes to find out why one gets diabetes or cancer, why one is thinner than the other, or whether each is different. I could ask them how they react to certain foods.
By 2012, this research revealed that of all the things that twins do, their microbiome is the most unique. The microbiome is the collection of millions of microorganisms, fungi, viruses, and other single-celled organisms that reside within our bodies, but especially within us. guts. Spector likens it to a rainforest. Flowers will only bloom if there is a proper balance of biological diversity. Giving it too much of something or the wrong thing can throw it off balance and cause long-term damage.
So the real key to good nutrition may lie as much in learning about our individual microbiome as in adhering to overarching rules, such as closely monitoring calories in and calories out. yeah. Spector was preparing to investigate this further when he suffered a minor stroke while skiing in the Alps with his family. Although his symptoms were relatively mild, this strengthened his determination to improve his health.
“That was the turning point when I put on a retrospective mirror. One of the main human drivers is selfishness. We all like to think we’re altruistic, but we really want to be focused. If there is, it’s very good to hold an event. I had a real-life event with no known cause, and I developed high blood pressure, so I was wondering what to do,” he says.
“We knew nothing about how to give advice about nutrition, and we realized that most of the information, especially on government websites, was patently wrong. I thought I should be able to think that way.”
So he began a long period of nutritional self-experimentation, including a brief flirtation with veganism while radically reevaluating his eating habits. Continuing his research, he wrote his book Diet Myths. It includes research gleaned from an experiment in which his own son, then a college student, ate nothing but McDonald’s for 10 days.
In the end, he felt sick, depressed, lost his appetite, developed jaundice, felt constipated, and had a decrease in 1,400 types of bacteria in his intestines. Other than that, he had a great time. “They really took advantage of students,” Spector said.
Currently, Tom’s microbiome health is still well below average compared to his father, who is in the top 5 percent according to Zoe’s score. Do either of them regret the experiment? “Hmm, I think so, yes. I really want him back. He’s still young and has time to improve, so my goal is to get him in the top five percent with me.”
For the previous 20 years, Spector had eaten bananas, muesli and orange juice for breakfast and supermarket sandwiches and chips for lunch. He now drinks black coffee first, eats natural yogurt with kefir, chopped nuts, fruit, and seeds around 11 a.m., eats a salad or avocado on toast for lunch, and dinner. I often eat vegetarian curry. His goal is to eat 30 plants. per week (including herbs and spices).
“It’s always different, but people always ask me to outline what they eat in a day. One of the points is that you always have to vary it.”
I ask him if I can show him what he had for breakfast. Before he could answer, I placed a berry-flavored protein bar and a banana in front of him. He picks up the bar with his fingertips as if it were radioactive material or crime scene evidence.
“Well, anything that comes in plastic packaging with what we call a ‘health ring’ is generally bad. It says “rich in fiber and protein”, but this is the issue at hand. The ingredients list on the back is his one paragraph long and that alone tells me all I need to know about it. It’s super processed food.”
I’m a typical person that Specter often encounters. People think that they are young and health conscious, but in reality they think they can eat anything because they just exercise a lot. “I go to the gym, eat this, and think I’m done. That’s nonsense. You’re not protein deficient. Bananas are fine, but they spike your blood sugar, so I try to vary it up with different fruits.” ”
Even though very few people are deficient in protein, it dominates dietary supplements and is usually expensive because it’s easy to add to anything and easy to sell to young vain people like me. There will be a price increase. Spector despairs at the rise of the protein supplement industry, especially now that the country is in the midst of a “fiber crisis.” He similarly despises meal replacement powders and almost all supplements.
I wonder aloud what it’s like for Spectre to attend a banquet. I pity the dinner party hosts who have to think about what to feed him. “Well, I don’t get invited to dinner parties as much as I used to…It’s really upsetting. I’m not judgmental at all, but they think I don’t like lasagna,” he says.
“The truth is, everything goes off on special occasions. I’d rather not eat than be socially awkward. I’d rather eat with friends and be sociable than worry about making a mistake once in a while.” is far more important.”
Ideally, he believes that meals that last many hours are healthiest, with a variety of dishes on the lunch table, allowing you to choose what and how much to eat. Mediterranean and Middle Eastern countries do this well. One-pot meals, while convenient, are generally worse.
He insists he’s never strict and follows a “about 90/10” rule when it comes to luxuries like eating out, chocolate and alcohol (mostly red wine in the latter case). He didn’t eat meat for six years, but now he eats meat about once a month, having learned how beneficial it is to consume even small amounts of meat if it’s of good quality.