My guest is Dr Tim Spector OBE, award-winning Professor of Genetics, author, and founder of worldwide phenomenon the Zoe App. Tim's work is renowned in the scientific community. He's hailed in popular culture as the straight-talking doctor who's changing the way we eat, with best-selling books such as The Diet Myth and Food For Life. His current project, the Zoe App, tracks the power of the gut microbiome on overall health and longevity. Tim's been meditating since the 70's. Learning as a teenager to aid his studies ("I got bored so easily"), he had no clue if he'd keep it up. Surprisingly to Tim, he's been doing it regularly for almost five decades.
Today I’m talking with Tim Spector, Professor of Genetic Epidemiology at King’s College London. He’s an award-winning scientist and author, with over 1,000 original articles published in some of the world’s top scientific journals — placing him in the top 1% most-cited scientists on the planet.
Tim leads the world’s largest identical twins study, TWINS UK, and stemming from this wrote a best-selling book Identically Different, which makes understanding genetic traits and how our environment impacts our genes, easy for anyone.
He then wrote The Diet Myth and introduced the importance of the gut microbiome for human health. This expertise has now expanded into the Zoe App, a tool for testing your biome and blood sugar levels and then personalising your dietary intake.
During the pandemic, Tim pivoted the Zoe App to collect data on Covid-19. Tim and his data scientists mapped and analysed symptoms and positive cases, leading to the largest study in the world with over 2 million active participants.
His latest book, Food for Life… takes an in-depth look at all the latest scientific evidence on what we eat, how we eat, and why; and how we can use this knowledge to improve our own personal nutrition.
Tim learned to meditate in 1976 and has continued as a regular meditator ever since. I met Tim and his wife Veronique in December 2021.
So Speaking of Meditation, here’s Tim.
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Speaking of Meditation is written and produced by Michael Miller, with direction by Jillian Lavender and assistance from Emma Rae.
Original music by Rich Jacques.
https://www.richjacques.com
Graphics by Elle and Elle.
http://www.elleelle.com
Speaking of Meditation… What are you noticing? Who is benefitting? And how are you staying inspired?