Professor Tim Spector

Presenter0:01

BBC Sounds, Music, Radio Podcasts. Hello, I'm Lauren Laverne, and this is the Desert Island Discs Podcast. Every week, I ask my guests to choose the eight tracks, book, and luxury they'd want to take with them if they were cast away to a desert island. And, for rights reasons, the music is shorter than the original broadcast. I hope you enjoy listening.

Presenter0:42

My castaway this week is the scientist Professor Tim Spector. He's challenged long-standing ideas about our diet and how it affects our health through his extensive research into the gut microbiome, the microscopic world inside each of us. It's diverse, unique, and intimately involved in the great medical mysteries of our age, rather like Tim's CV. He's professor of genetic epidemiology at King's College London and the founder of the Twins UK Registry, one of the richest collections of genetic data in the world. He's a pioneer of a food revolution, producing several best-selling books and a tech entrepreneur. His COVID tracking app, allowing millions of us to record our health and symptoms, earned him an OBE during the pandemic. Health and food tracking versions now have 4 million subscribers around the world. He was born into a medical family and credits his mother's adventurous spirit with nurturing his aptitude for taking calculated risks in life and at work. He says, when you change subjects, it's really risky. You have to learn a new language and you have to get accepted by your peers and convince people to give you money without a track record. But I like throwing myself in. Professor Tim Spector, welcome to Desert Island Discs.

Professor Tim Spector1:53

Hello.

Presenter1:54

So Tim, let's start with the gut microbiome then. I mean, it's widely discussed these days, but for something so vital, it does feel rather intangible. It's not an organ in the traditional sense. How do you describe it?

Professor Tim Spector2:07

When I call it a virtual organ, it's like we've discovered something that has a function that's it is hard to touch, but there are trillions of these microbes in the lower part of our gut that are community, and they're really like a community of chemical factories. And if you think of them in that way, like mini pharmacies that change the food you eat into amazing chemicals that have all these effects all over our body. So once you realize that, that they're producing vitamins and hormones and key brain chemicals that make you happy or sad or full or hungry and alter your immune system, it gives you a whole new

Professor Tim Spector2:45

the concept of really how our body works.

Presenter2:48

Yeah, a line of yours I think is uh we are more bug than brain.

Professor Tim Spector2:51

Yes, we are. And every time we go to the toilet, we become more human, is the other way of looking at it. So we're continually turning these things over, but they have 500 times more genes than we do. And so we co-evolved with them so they could produce all the substances that we, poor weedy humans, couldn't actually make ourselves. So we're very dependent on them, and we've got to start treating them right.

Presenter3:15

It's a fascinating field of science, and your recent research about the microbiome and bacterial diversity has made you somewhat of a disruptor, though, in the field of nutrition. What are your main findings for someone who hasn't read your work? How would you summarize?

Professor Tim Spector3:28

That we've got so much wrong in the past because we've treated nutrition as this really simple concept of calories, fats, sugars, proteins. So all our advice has been to just very simply reduce calories, reduce fats, reduce sugars, and you'll be fine. So it's one size fits all. One size fits all, but also dumbing down what is an incredibly complex science into these rigid rules that have patently failed. And actually I spent...

Professor Tim Spector3:56

the last of ten years looking at the evidence, it failed to stack up. But these myths have continued for various reasons, mainly the food industry, but also lack of funding for nutrition itself and lack of recognition of it as a real science.

Presenter4:09

And what does that mean for you as someone who's going into the field and disrupting all of that?

Professor Tim Spector4:14

This is what I love doing, challenging what is accepted norms. I find that really exciting. And I've always tried to do research that is new and going to actually change some ideas rather than just adding on to what other people have done.

Presenter4:28

One of the most radical ideas of yours is that calorie counting is not the best way to lose weight. Why not, exactly?

Professor Tim Spector4:35

A number of reasons. It's really hard to do.

Professor Tim Spector4:38

Even trained nutritionists can't do it properly. And if you do manage to reduce your calories, you will lose weight, but your body reacts to compensate for that. It slows down your metabolism, it ramps up your hunger signals, it's unsustainable. And nearly everybody, even in really controlled trials,

Professor Tim Spector4:58

eighty percent, ninety percent of people return to where they were and some people overshoot. And it's about time that, that message got out to people that it really doesn't work. And low calorie foods that are usually ultra processed are

Professor Tim Spector5:11

actually making you hungrier and so driving those hunger signals. So you look at a packet and say, ooh, low calorie, I must get that. It's full of chemicals, it's full of other things. You'll overeat, you'll get sugar spikes and things that cause problems.

Speaker 45:25

Mm-hmm.

Professor Tim Spector5:25

and it'll affect your mood and everything else. So we've got to move away from calories and start looking at food quality and what actually we're eating and think about our food more. That's really one of my main missions is to change the way people think about food.

Presenter5:40

So where is the hope? Can we cultivate a good microbiome after many years of unhealthy eating? Can we create that inside ourselves?

Professor Tim Spector5:48

Absolutely, and this is one of the things, you know, why in a way I've switched from genetics, where all you can do is blame your parents, to the microbiome, where you can actually, everybody can make their gut microbes better, and you can often do this in just a few weeks just by feeding them the right foods, ignoring calories, just making sure you're getting plenty of diversity, you're getting your 30 plants a week, eating the rainbow, you're having your fermented foods, you're eating in a time window that allows your gut microbes to rest.

Presenter6:20

So taking breaks is important.

Professor Tim Spector6:22

Yeah, I mean just like we need to sleep and relax and our body has a really clever circadian rhythm that allows us to then use that nighttime to repair all the hard work we've been doing in the day and all those cells repair, so our gut microbes need to rest as well. So no point late night snacking, keeping them up all night. Finally, we all need to cut down ultra-processed food. That's the probably, you know, maybe the number one thing we're all doing wrong in this country is because of this calorie message, this low-fat message, this low sugar message, we've ignored the fact that we eat four times more ultra-processed food than in France, Italy, Spain, and it is literally killing us.

Presenter7:01

Well, we're here to talk about microorganisms, but of course also music. So I think we'd better go to your first disc, Tim. Tell us about your first choice today.

Professor Tim Spector7:09

Life on Mars by David Bowie is my chosen one to start off with because I sort of grew up with David Bowie. He was my first album I bought as a kid and I sort of worshipped him, knew all the lyrics and get very emotionally attached and I just love the complexity of some of these songs and the fact he evolved over his career reinventing himself, which in retrospect suits me. I didn't realise it at the time. I got very upset when he changed.

Presenter7:37

But now you can relate to it.

Professor Tim Spector7:38

But now I love all his changes he made and I mainly regret as I never saw him live.

Presenter7:43

Why this track in particular?

Professor Tim Spector7:44

Just reminds me of my rather tormented teenage time. I was a very sulky teenager and life on Mars, you know, it was all about other lives and what else is out there. And so for me that was very important.

Speaker 47:58

It's a god-awful small affair.

Speaker 48:03

To the go with a mousy hand

Speaker 48:07

But Tamani is yelling no

Speaker 48:11

And her daddy has told her to go.

Speaker 48:15

But her friend is nowhere to be seen.

Speaker 48:19

Now she walks through her sunken dream.

Speaker 48:23

To the seat with the clearest view

Presenter8:26

David Bowie and Life on Mars. So Tim Spector, you were born in London, nineteen fifty eight. Your mum, Juno, was a physiotherapist originally from Australia. I think your dad, Wally, an eminent pathologist. How did the two of them meet? Because I think they were quite different personalities.

Professor Tim Spector8:42

Yes, it's always a mystery to me how they actually got together, because they were so different. My mother had come over on a boat with her mates from Australia to work as a physio in London hospitals, and I think they met at a a hospital party somewhere in Bloomsbury, I think, is where they they met.

Presenter8:59

As well that

Professor Tim Spector9:00

He was taken by her energy and looks, and she was taken by his wit and braininess.

Presenter9:07

Sounds like the perfect combination.

Professor Tim Spector9:09

Most of her other boyfriends had been sort of muscular skiers and tennis players. When my parents married and they found out really my father wasn't interested at all in sport or he couldn't catch a ball or swim or he said he was too heavy to swim, she made sure that my brother and I really got into all these activities. She was a state swimmer in Australia, but she didn't want the same sort of brutal regime just in one sport, so she gave us a whole range of things to do. So what kinds of sports? Did everything really-cricket, rugby, soccer, swimming, ice skating. She sent us off skiing because we couldn't go as a family. Horse riding, nearly everything that you could do, trampolining, karate. We had a full schedule.

Presenter9:54

Well that's the sort of full Olympic schedule there, like you're describing almost everything but the curling. So you had a very active childhood. What about your diet growing up? What did the family eat?

Professor Tim Spector10:04

Unfortunately, my mother's skill was not in cooking. She was the only person I know who could actually burn peas.

Professor Tim Spector10:11

So it was a sort of Australian cuisine of the 1950s.

Professor Tim Spector10:15

She got better. It wasn't great diversity, I would say.

Presenter10:18

And it was a a medical family. As you say, your mum was a physio, your dad was a a pathologist. And obviously a medical career can mean very long hours and would have back then. Did you get to spend much time with your dad when you were growing up?

Professor Tim Spector10:30

No, we were really brought up by our mother. He

Professor Tim Spector10:34

was either in it in his jacket and tie, even on the beach, or he was in his office working or or doing stuff. So and because he didn't play football with us or anything, just the odd walk. So we used to go have a holiday in Cornwall and go for walks, but didn't really see much of him, which was a pity looking back and it's very different to the way, you know, I think.

Speaker 110:43

Oh d

Professor Tim Spector10:58

Parents now treat their kids.

Presenter11:00

So you didn't have that kind of common ground where you could come together sharing a hobby and connect. Were you fascinated by his world? Even though you know the image of him in the office in his shirt and tie sounds a little bit remote, but maybe interesting to a kid?

Professor Tim Spector11:12

It was a mixture because I was a rebel I was making sure he wasn't going to tell me what to do and so I fought against being a doctor until the very very last possible moment. He wanted you to be a doctor did he? He wanted me to be a doctor yes and he realized I had the potential to do it and he realised my brother didn't or had different interests. He was much more artistic. But you know I did the wrong A levels initially and I did everything to sort of say I'm not being pushed into that direction. But eventually he convinced me. He said listen if you don't want you to do being a doctor A it's quite good fun being a medical student. He'd been mentoring Graham Chapman who was one of the Monty Python team and told him the same to just get your medical degree then be a comedian. And so he said the same to me. He was like you can be like Graham Chapman. You don't have to do medicine art.

Presenter11:53

You can be like

Presenter11:54

Uh

Presenter11:55

That's a pretty good sell.

Professor Tim Spector11:57

It was a good sell and it eventually worked. So I switched A-levels in the last year and scraped into medical school.

Presenter12:03

Well, we'll come back to that, but for now we want to hear your second disc today, Tim Spector. What's it going to be?

Professor Tim Spector12:08

This is Dance the Nights from Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet.

Presenter12:13

Why have you chosen it?

Professor Tim Spector12:14

Because it reminds me of going to Sydney Opera House.

Professor Tim Spector12:18

And in the early 1990s when I was on sabbatical in Sydney and we had a fantastic time living in a house near the harbour working there and of course it goes back to my Australian roots and the fact that I spent several years of my life there, both at I went to school there with my brother for about a year and I've been back doing sabbaticals.

Presenter13:39

Dance of the Nights, from Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet, played by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Vladimir Ashkenazi. So tell me more about your school days, Tim. You obviously had potential, but you've described yourself as quite a late starter. Why did it take a while for things to click?

Professor Tim Spector13:55

A combination of lack of attention, overconfidence, minor dyslexia and being left-handed meant I sort of no one could read in my writing. And I was rebellious, so very few teachers sort of could get anything out of me. And I was always trying to do the absolute minimum. There wasn't much that actually interested me. I was more likely to just be annoying the person next to me.

Presenter14:19

But did you have flair? Were there certain subjects that did capture your attention that you excelled in?

Professor Tim Spector14:25

The only prize I ever won was the Junior Art Prize, so I was good at art, strangely.

Professor Tim Spector14:30

And I wasn't encouraged to do that by either my parents.

Presenter14:34

So your dad talked you round about getting into medicine and and trying to get into medical school. You did get a place eventually, but you actually took a year out before you went, I think, and and worked as a hospital porter.

Professor Tim Spector14:45

It was the early days of people doing, you know, before gap years were popular, so most people didn't do them. But I decided, yeah, it's a great time to travel and do things. So, in order to get the money together, I did various jobs and I was lucky enough to just walk into a job at the Middlesex Hospital as a porter. And the first day they sent me straight into the operating theatre to hold the lights for an operation. You know, there was no sort of two weeks of initiation and processing.

Presenter15:16

So what was that like?

Professor Tim Spector15:17

The first day they had an emergency Caesar section of a pregnant lady and in those days big incision. I was holding the lights and this big white belly's there and the scalpel goes across and blood starts coming out and I fainted and so there's a yeah there's a big crash and then they had to take me away. But I love the camaraderie of working behind the scenes in the operating theatres. It also told me I was going to be useless as a surgeon. That's the thing very early on. I knew this is not for me.

Speaker 415:42

Uh

Presenter15:42

Yeah.

Presenter15:49

It's time to hear your third disc, if you wouldn't mind. What's it gonna be?

Professor Tim Spector15:53

So at school you had to decide whether you were going to be for the Beatles or for the Rolling Stones. And if you were a rebel, a bad boy like me, you were definitely a Rolling Stones fan. So I think I've seen three of their farewell concerts in the last 30 years. And the track I particularly like is Paint It Black. And that's because it's quite a dark, melancholy tune that just resonates. And I do remember hearing it multiple times as I was driving back for my father's funeral, which happened when I was about 21, still a medical student. So he was only in his 50s? He was only 57, yes. And happened very suddenly. And I was on a skiing holiday with friends. And my girlfriend at the time came and said, you know, I'm sorry, you know, your dad's died. They've been trying to get a hold of you for three or four days. It's days before mobile phones. So I was a bit stunned. And I had 14 hours by myself in a car driving across France in snowstorms.

Speaker 116:40

And they've

Presenter16:56

Oh, to get hold of it.

Professor Tim Spector16:56

to get back on the ferry, listening to the radio and listening to music. And it sort of reminds me of that time that I was sort of reflecting, yes, there was sadness, but it was also this sort of slight anger that I hadn't got to know him. I was just about to sort of qualify as a doctor. We could have had chats. I could have sort of caught up. So this feeling that I never really knew my father. And it was an odd mixture of emotions.

Speaker 417:34

I see a wretched and I want it into black.

Speaker 417:40

No colours anymore, I want them to turn black.

Speaker 417:47

The girls walk by dressed in their summer clothes

Speaker 417:52

I have to turn my head until my darkness goes.

Presenter17:57

The Rolling Stones and Painted Black Tim Spectre. So your dad died at just fifty seven. You were in your early twenties. You said you barely got to know him and then, you know, you suddenly found yourself as the executor of his will, which must have been really tough.

Professor Tim Spector18:11

Exactly. My parents had divorced a few years earlier, a rather messy divorce. He hadn't really sorted any of his uh affairs out and it was a real mess, unraveling a lot of his personal life that I didn't know about.

Presenter18:25

That's difficult.

Professor Tim Spector18:25

That's difficult at all.

Presenter18:26

That must have compounded your sense of not knowing who he was, then?

Professor Tim Spector18:30

I think so, yes, exactly. And going through his stuff and realizing he was doing, he was actually writing, I found out, a book for the public called Social Pathology about how stress and the environment can affect diseases and things. But there wasn't enough of it to carry on. So you're going through all his stuff, slowly trying to understand the father that you never really had those deep conversations with. But I did get to speak to a lot of his friends and

Presenter18:57

There is a

Presenter19:01

He was so well regarded. I mean, I read some of the the tributes to him that people wrote in in newspapers at the time and

Professor Tim Spector19:07

He was pretty famous in his field. He did work on cot death and he was a extremely bright scientist in his own right, done huge things, but was an amazing teacher as well. And so many people said he inspired them. You know, I just felt, well, you know, why didn't I have have that connection with him? Why did my, you know, my brother and I not.

Presenter19:28

And why didn't you, do you think? What what do you think now, looking back?

Professor Tim Spector19:28

And why don't you do something?

Professor Tim Spector19:32

I don't know why.

Professor Tim Spector19:35

I guess he was probably just waiting for us to mature enough that we could have proper conversations with him.

Presenter19:40

Yeah.

Professor Tim Spector19:41

You couldn't interact at the physical level.

Professor Tim Spector19:43

And maybe that was it. But I've come to terms with it now, I think, more than I had. So I'm not certainly not angry anymore.

Presenter19:47

I think

Presenter19:51

Were you angry at the time?

Professor Tim Spector19:54

Yes, there was a a certain feel of anger and I had lots of dreams recurrent dreams that he'd suddenly reappear having been living in Brazil or Paraguay and come out and said, Okay, I've you know just had to disappear for a bit, but I've come back now.

Presenter20:10

Yeah.

Professor Tim Spector20:10

Yeah. So it's interesting how my subconscious was sort of um

Presenter20:12

Trying to find a better ending for you.

Professor Tim Spector20:14

Exactly, yes.

Presenter20:15

But it's interesting that you said about his unpublished book, because it sounds like he had epidemiological leanings then. So he's talking about social disease and the impact of our environment. I wonder whether the the path that you've taken, you feel like you've got closer to him through your work.

Professor Tim Spector20:30

Absolutely, yes, no. I mean, I think of all the things

Professor Tim Spector20:33

that I've done, he will probably be most proud about me writing books for the public and explaining in simple language what's going on and how our environment affects our health.

Presenter20:44

At the time you lost your dad, you know, you'd been quite a rebel, even though you were taking the route that he'd been so keen for you to go on. I wonder whether going through all of that changed your attitude, changed your approach to life?

Professor Tim Spector20:55

I didn't realize it at the time, but looking back

Professor Tim Spector20:59

It probably was a bit of a turning point in my career. And I went from really just trying to cruise and just get fifty one percent when you needed to get fifty one percent and have as much fun as possible to saying, well actually, could I actually be good at this? And if I'm good at it, could I actually enjoy it?

Presenter21:17

Tim, you know, you lost one parent very early and the other is obviously still here, has has lived so long. I wonder if that's been a a driver in some of your research. You must have reflected on the apparent contrast at play in your own genetic makeup.

Professor Tim Spector21:32

Yes, so my mother's 91 and my father died at 57. So is it a bit like a roulette? You know, which genes have you got? And certainly up to very quite recently, I believe that genetics was the predominant force in that. But increasingly we see that genetics are not that important in aging and age-related diseases. And it's highly likely now that my father died because he died suddenly from a heart attack in his sleep without any notice. He probably had a very poor diet, lack of exercise, and a bit of genetics. Actually, lifestyle is much more important than I ever thought. And my mother has been super active, even into her 80s, was sort of doing Qigong and swimming and all kinds of physical things that kept her going and her diet was much better. I think I've taken a more positive view now than

Professor Tim Spector22:26

Certainly I did twenty years ago.

Presenter22:30

Once you'd qualified as a doctor, you went to Belgium for a year to work, despite not speaking French.

Professor Tim Spector22:35

Well, I bluffed my way at the interview. So there was this exchange scheme where

Professor Tim Spector22:41

You swapped places with someone from another country and that year it was someone from Brussels, a French-speaking Brussels. And I said, well, I can read a menu in French. And I did GCSE French. I can do this. And so they had an interview with 12 doctors, but they'd brought in one French specialist to grill me in French. But luckily his French was worse than mine. Ou esco vous avais à prit la français, monsieur spector. And so I managed to say one phrase and they all applauded. And so I got sent there. Then the trouble began when I actually got there.

Presenter23:19

Well, exactly.

Professor Tim Spector23:20

How did that go?

Professor Tim Spector23:22

It was very stressful, but I learnt fast. Probably the most stressful three months of my life as I had to get up to speed very fast. It's time for track number four, Tim. What do you want to take with you next? So my fourth choice is Fleetwood Mac Dreams. And this is because it reminds me of those really those first three months in Belgium. So I'd come back exhausted, my brain completely full of French, trying to relax. And I discovered this album and kept playing it and playing it. I think it's absolutely amazing. And I love the lyrics. And it also reminds me of meeting my wife, who just happened to be working there in the hospital in the ward. She was a final year medical student there that actually decided to take care of me. So she felt sorry for me. She saw me at one of these big grand rounds with about 500 people and I was presenting a case very badly and was being

Speaker 123:56

Yeah.

Professor Tim Spector24:24

Told off by the old professor and so she came and found me and said, Oh, I think I can take care of him and help him out. And Veronique has been doing that ever since.

Speaker 424:34

Now here you go again.

Speaker 424:37

Hey

Speaker 424:38

We want your freedom

Speaker 424:42

Well who will I keep you now?

Speaker 424:50

Which all around that you should play the way you feel

Speaker 424:57

But listen carefully to the sound.

Presenter25:04

Fleetwood Mac and Dreams. Tim, you and Veronique returned to the UK to pursue your respective medical careers. In nineteen ninety two you set up a large twin study. Now initially you were studying arthritis and osteoporosis. What were you hoping to achieve?

Professor Tim Spector25:19

The aim was to do something fun that no one else had done. So I went round the country for three months looking for something to do, thinking what area do I move into? And after beers with various colleagues around the UK, I came across a geneticist who said you should, called Brian Sykes, who said you should do a twin study.

Professor Tim Spector25:40

And I said, cool, I've heard about those. They're some nice little ones, and no one's doing it in the UK. So I said, okay, that's going to be what I'm going to do. I'm going to set up a twin study. And amazingly, got a grant. And then we got all kinds of media help because people love seeing pictures of twins in all the big newspapers at the time. We got on TV, getting volunteers. And this is all before the internet, of course. You had to do it in the old-fashioned way. And built up this huge cohort of twin volunteers. They loved coming down to London with their twin. We used to do a whole series of tests on them and give them feedback and things. And then as it got on, we did more and more PR, we did parties for them.

Speaker 126:08

We had to do

Speaker 126:10

Beautiful.

Presenter26:25

Parties

Professor Tim Spector26:26

Yeah.

Presenter26:27

Oh, the party's like...

Professor Tim Spector26:28

Twin parties, well they were they were frightening actually because these were mainly women and so at one point we had about a thousand twins at a party that we had at St. Thomas's on the lawn and I do remember giving them too much to drink. They were great fun and so they loved being something special and super altruistic, came from all over the country and gave their body and their time for science and eternally grateful for them. And I realized that they wanted to do everything. So they would be coming for the day from all over the country, meet their twin. They wanted us to study as much as we possibly could. So we moved very quickly from just doing x-rays of their knees and getting their bones checked to looking at their lungs, looking at their heart, looking at their brains, doing psychology tests.

Presenter27:18

Yeah, and the the psychological side is fascinating'cause still going strong. Thirty years later, sixteen thousand twins have been studied, I think. And as you say, it's not just physical. I mean, you're asking questions about, well, everything.

Professor Tim Spector27:31

The only limit was my curiosity and the ethics committee. So we asked them about politics, political views, found that voting to get out of Europe, for example, Brexit had a strong genetic component, at least did voting Labour and Tory. Only Liberal Democrat didn't have a genetic component. Obviously, environmental just depended where you were. Did studies on personality, anxiety, we did studies on hoarding, sexuality as well. And there was really hardly anything if you could ask it in a question, we could do it. Sense of humour was another one.

Presenter28:07

Does that

Professor Tim Spector28:08

Uh

Presenter28:08

Is that genetic?

Professor Tim Spector28:09

It depends on the joke.

Presenter28:13

So you said virtually everything turned out to be genetic?

Professor Tim Spector28:13

BAT

Professor Tim Spector28:16

Nearly everything, yeah. Found a few things that weren't. Which football team you support wasn't and whether you like Mr Bean or not.

Presenter28:23

Disc number five. What are we going to hear next and why?

Professor Tim Spector28:27

So the next one is Putting on the Ritz, which is a strange choice, but it's from the film soundtrack of young Frankenstein with Gene Wilder playing Dr. Frankenstein and he's basically doing a double act of tap dancing with Peter Boyle as the monster he's created. And it's hilarious.

Speaker 428:49

If you're blue and you don't know where to go to why don't you go where fashion sits?

Speaker 428:56

Oh my god.

Speaker 428:59

Different types who wear a day coat pants with stripes or cut away coat perfect fit

Speaker 429:10

Dressed up like a million dollar trooper

Speaker 429:15

Trying mighty hard to look like Gary Coon

Presenter29:19

Putting on the writs from the film soundtrack to Young Frankenstein with Gene Wilder as Doctor Frankenstein and Peter Boyle as The Monster.

Presenter29:27

Team Spectre, around 2011 you actually had a brush with ill health yourself. You were in Italy. What exactly happened?

Professor Tim Spector29:34

I was at the top of a peak about 3,000 meters. We'd been ski touring, which is a way of strangely walking uphill on skis. And it'd been a tough week. And suddenly I didn't feel very well and my vision was blurred. And skiing down, I fell over several times, which was unusual for me. And got to the bottom, realised I had double vision. And as a doctor realized that is not a good sign. There's usually no good things come out of it. Normally it's a stroke, multiple sclerosis or a brain tumour. And so I had worried several weeks working out what it was. It turned out to be a small, tiny micro stroke in one of the vessels supplying my nerves to the eye. It did get better in three months, but I was left with high blood pressure and a sort of feeling of impending doom in a way.

Presenter30:30

Well, you would have been in not far off the age that your dad had been when he died.

Professor Tim Spector30:34

Yeah, I was about four years before the age he died.

Presenter30:37

I don't know.

Professor Tim Spector30:38

And thinking before that that I was sort of immortal and a super healthy middle-aged guy.

Speaker 130:44

Middle.

Professor Tim Spector30:45

and realizing that suddenly I'm I'm starting popping all these tablets, I'm having medical checks, am I heading exactly the same way? And I started really shifting also from

Professor Tim Spector31:00

Look at epidemiology of populations to saying, well, what do I do?

Professor Tim Spector31:04

I was really selfish. I said, you know, what am I g what advice does an individual do to try and make sure they do this? And I was reasonably convinced, you know, I wouldn't live much longer than my father. And I do remember discussing this with my kids, partly as a joke, so when they were being a bit mean to me, partly

Presenter31:22

What was that based on? Because you've got the the kind of psychological toll of losing your dad early, but also you were a doctor, so which bit of you is in charge of that thought, do you think?

Professor Tim Spector31:31

Well, it was a mixture because obviously at that time I was heavily into genetics. So I said, obviously, I share 50% of my gene with my father. He died suddenly at 57. I've just had a cardiovascular incident, which may or may not have been chance or not, not quite sure, but now I've got high blood pressure. I could end up the same way. And the rational side said, well, I am healthier. I do a lot of exercise. My mum seems to be okay. So, but and you don't think logically particularly, but as I approached that.

Speaker 131:41

Uh

Speaker 431:41

Mm.

Speaker 131:57

So

Presenter32:01

No.

Professor Tim Spector32:03

57 year point, it did become more important to me, but I think it also triggered me to really make some changes to my life and focus my attention really on all the things that were hard for other people to get, this personal lifestyle information that is so hard for the general public to get. This overlapped with me suddenly going to the internet and trying to seek out solutions and realizing that it was really, really hard.

Presenter32:32

The information that was coming at you was so complicated. So you decided to turn your own nutrition around because even though you were very active, you had put on a certain amount of weight, I think. You started exploring some new theories about the relationship between health and diet. What was your thinking at the time?

Professor Tim Spector32:47

I started off thinking that meat was bad and so I went vegan for about six weeks until I realised I couldn't give up cheese. I was very weak willed when it came to cheese but I did give up meat for several years completely. But then I realised that the science was evolving and that meat really wasn't the problem. It was getting enough plants in your diet and my whole understanding of the gut microbiome and how you have to feed that properly started to predominate.

Presenter33:15

Rooms.

Presenter33:17

The nature of the gut microbiome, and this is where it connects with the work that you'd done in twins, you've got these people who are genetically identical, but you had started to discover that actually their microbiomes were very different.

Professor Tim Spector33:28

Yes, that was an aha moment for me because I'd been looking for at least ten years in identical twin pairs to see what was different, because they have identical genes in all their cells in their body.

Professor Tim Spector33:41

If it was like looking for a needle in a haystack, if you could find what was different, maybe that would tell us why all of us are different, why some people get disease and others don't. Because they have the same genes, they have same upbringing, same environment for the first eighteen, twenty years of life. So there's got to be something there. And it turned out

Professor Tim Spector33:57

Their microbiomes are really very different. So, can you put a number on it? How different are we talking?

Professor Tim Spector34:03

They only share about 25% of their microbes with each other.

Professor Tim Spector34:08

and hardly more than unrelated individuals.

Presenter34:11

So this research formed the basis for ZOE, the health kit that enables people to find out their own response to different foods and then to adjust their diet accordingly. You know, in the years that followed, that was developed and it became hugely popular. It is expensive though, Tim. I mean, £300 or thereabouts to sign up and then a monthly subscription. Do you have any worries about the idea that you're reaching the worried well rather than the people who are at the sharp end and really need the help?

Professor Tim Spector34:39

Yes, it's always on our minds, but I think if you're launching any new product, you need those people who are going to be early adopters, going to be enthusiasts in order to refine the product. It's like saying who are the first people that bought a mobile phone. You need those people to drive it, to give you the enthusiasm, to give you the financial stability to make that product better and cheaper and more accessible for everybody. We're talking the same price as people pay for gym membership, but I hope that the broader things we're doing educationally, like the Zoe podcast, which is free, which millions of people now listen to, a lot of my social media posts, etc., they're all accessible. So the idea is that we can educate.

Speaker 135:18

Yeah.

Presenter35:18

Mm-hmm.

Professor Tim Spector35:22

More and more people and a subset will be doing these tests who have that money and spread the word. It's time for some more music, Tim. What's your sixth choice today? Louis Armstrong, live, all of me. And it reminds me of a time, again, I was a student and I'd sold my scooter, motor scooter, to a friend. And he was in York and had an accident on that bike and ended up with a paralysed arm. And he was in hospital for weeks and weeks and weeks. And he used to visit me. He asked me to bring him some music to cheer him up. I think he suggested Louis Armstrong. And since that time, I've always associated Louis Armstrong with cheering up music and very emotional for me. And it also reminds me how people get through hardship. And he's been amazing and never complained about his injuries or problems, just got on with life. And he can still even one-handed beat me at golf.

Speaker 436:37

Yeah, it's all me.

Speaker 436:47

Why not take all of me, babe?

Speaker 436:49

Yes, can't you see? I'm no good without you. Take my arm.

Presenter36:57

Louis Armstrong, all of me, for your friend Michael, Tim Spector. You were awarded an OBE in 2020 for your work on the COVID-ZOE symptoms study. Now that became the largest citizen science health project with 4.5 million users, I think, for the app that you developed. Tell me how you and your team created it, because it was extraordinarily quick, the turnaround.

Professor Tim Spector37:19

The third week of March, they closed, they said to everyone, go home and stop going to work, go home, lock yourselves away. And I was cycling home from St Thomas' Hospital along the river and I thought, this is very depressing. All these studies that we've been doing are all going to come to an end. What are we going to do? We can't just do nothing. And so by the end of my cycle trip, I come up with the idea of using an app to at least use the twins all over the country. to log in and what was happening so we could find out did they have COVID or not and use that in some way. And I spoke to my co-founders George and Jonathan and they said it's a fantastic idea but if it's an app we don't have to be just twins it could be everybody.

Professor Tim Spector38:02

Then they got the rest of the company together. There were 30 people in the company at the time. And they said, we'll stop everything. We'll develop an app in five days. And the amazing happened, and we launched this app. And within 24 hours, because of social media and lots of help from the odd celebrity, good old Stephen Fry, thank you, Stephen. We got a million people in 24 hours. And then by the end of the week, 2 million, and then eventually 4 million. And people loved it. And they're still coming up to me thanking me for that. Because not only did we tell people what was going on in their area, but we gave people a purpose. The government had said, stay away, don't do anything. We don't want your help. You've got nothing to do. And so people were actually desperate to help out. And so by feeling part of this community, I think it was really important. Just sad the government.

Professor Tim Spector38:57

tried to shut us down and and and didn't adopt the app nationally, which would have saved many lives and and perhaps and billions of pounds.

Presenter39:06

Was that because they had their own app and they thought that it was too confusing to have two?

Professor Tim Spector39:10

They were developing their own app. It was always next week, but it never quite came out and it ended up coming out about six months later and failed rather badly. So it was the old case of if we haven't developed it, we don't want to adopt anything new.

Presenter39:25

Queer early findings, Tim.

Professor Tim Spector39:27

We were the only ones collecting symptoms in real time. So there have been reports from Italy that people had loss of smell from some doctors we heard about. So we put that into the app, and very soon we saw that yes, one in five cases were presenting with loss of smell at that time. And this wasn't on any government literature at all. No one was aware of it. So people were only being told stay indoors if you've got a cough or a sore throat or a fever. They weren't told if you've suddenly lost your sense of smell. So they were still, you know.

Speaker 139:39

Yeah.

Professor Tim Spector39:58

going to old people's homes and going to hospital, etc. So we found this out, we publicised it, but it took still an inordinate time until the government actually acknowledged that it was real and put it in the guidelines. I mean the WHO put it before the UK government. I mean I'm very proud of the team that did that because I think we did save lives and psychologically it was very important for many people to feel they were doing something.

Presenter40:25

Tim, we've got to make time for the music. It's your seventh disc. What's it going to be next?

Professor Tim Spector40:29

Next one is the jam. That's entertainment. I love the jam. I was brought up really in the punk era, so it reminds me of my student days, but also whenever we put the jam on, my kids, young kids, used to go crazy and jump up and down on the bed. I've never understood why, but they still do it today, which is really funny. It just reminds me of my kids being small and cute. The fact we could enjoy the same music and they still like it is really amazing. And I've got a really different relationship with my kids than, say, I had with my parents. I think it's a generational thing and we're still very close. So this is for Tom and Sophie.

Speaker 441:11

A police car and a screaming siren Pneumatic drill and ripped up concrete A baby wailing, a stray dog howling The screech of brakes and lamplight blinking That's entertainment

Speaker 441:34

A smash of glass and the rumble of boots.

Presenter41:38

The Jam, and that's entertainment for your kids, Professor Tim Spector. Now outside work, you have passions, you have traveled, skiing, though I know that pursuing those passions has put you and your wife in danger before now. You were actually involved in a helicopter crash in twenty eighteen that was quite serious. What happened?

Professor Tim Spector41:56

We were on a ski touring trip in Georgia near the Russian border. We weren't supposed to take a helicopter, but the other lifts were broken, so we had a day of heli skiing. And as we came into land, it must have tipped, and the helicopter blade got stuck in the snow. We flipped over and crashed down from about three or four meters. It wasn't very high, but it caught fire. and we were in deep snow. It was a really surreal experience. Completely upside down. I was at the bottom.

Presenter42:32

You injured?

Professor Tim Spector42:32

Hardly at all. My wife was at the top and got thrown to the other side. We weren't wearing seat belts, which might have saved us actually. I could s see and smell the the smoke behind us and I remembered all those James Bond films where you only have ten seconds to get out before the helicopter blows up. I didn't know how long we had or if it would blow up.

Presenter42:37

Switch.

Professor Tim Spector42:51

and managed to crawl out in the deep snow and move away, but I was in the dark.

Professor Tim Spector42:59

because it was completely covered by snow or upside down.

Professor Tim Spector43:03

I was extremely calm. I think you either react in two ways. You either sort of panic and scream, or I was just in this surreal shock. Yeah, I was extremely calm. I was the last one out, we managed to walk away before we were worried it was going to explode. But I was so calm, I actually took a video of it. It was an experience that made me think. You know, I was lucky to survive that. Only about fifty percent of people had non-fatal

Speaker 443:26

Mm.

Professor Tim Spector43:30

accidents in those helicopters when they do crash just reaffirmed that life is for living and you got to get on with it. That was the moral of my story, not don't do anything dangerous again.

Presenter43:41

So it hasn't put you off future adventures? No. Well, I'm glad to hear that, Tim, because speaking of remote places, I'm about to cast you away to your desert island. I think it's going to be right up your street. You've lived as a hunter-gatherer, briefly, so I'm imagining that you are feeling quite positive about the challenge of the island. You think you'll be able to fend for yourself, deal with whatever it throws at you?

Professor Tim Spector44:03

Absolutely, yes. Um hopefully I'll be finding things to eat there.

Presenter44:06

How will you be with a a solitary life?

Professor Tim Spector44:09

Any writer knows they go away and write books.

Professor Tim Spector44:13

As long as I got a purpose.

Professor Tim Spector44:15

I'm quite happy to be on my own and I do actually like having some time on my own to really get my thoughts together.

Presenter44:21

Well, one more disc before we cast you away, Tim. Your final choice today, please. What is it?

Professor Tim Spector44:26

This is my hero, Elvis. Hard to pick one of his songs, but In the Ghetto is the one I've picked. And Elvis is of course the only person I can do a vaguely good impersonation of at um in karaoke.

Speaker 444:43

As the snow flies

Speaker 444:48

On a cold and grey Chicago morning, a poor little baby child is born.

Professor Tim Spector44:49

Golden

Speaker 444:54

Yeah.

Speaker 444:59

And his mamma cried.

Speaker 445:05

Cause if there's one thing she don't need, it's another hungry mouth to feed in the get-doh.

Presenter45:13

Elvis Presley in the ghetto. So, Tim, I'm going to send you away to the island. I'm giving you the Bible, the complete works of Shakespeare, and you can take one other book. What would you like?

Professor Tim Spector45:24

I'll pick Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens.

Presenter45:27

Ah the best of times, the worst of times. Why A Tale of Two Cities in particular?

Professor Tim Spector45:32

It's one of the few books I've read several times, so I know I can read it more than once without getting bored. It's a mixture of history and fiction, and it's also the idea of a person who has two different lives and can live different lives in different countries and different languages and sort of suits my

Speaker 145:47

Uh

Presenter45:47

Mm.

Professor Tim Spector45:53

Chameleon

Professor Tim Spector45:54

Personality.

Presenter45:56

You can also have a luxury item for sensory stimulation or to make life more enjoyable. What would you like?

Professor Tim Spector46:02

Currently I'll go for a fermenting set.

Presenter46:05

Now we're back to the gut bacteria.

Professor Tim Spector46:07

Yes, so I can ferment anything on the island and create new foods and tastes and smells. And that would keep me occupied for several months, I think. I'd be very happy'cause I'm into my fermenting phase of life at the moment.

Presenter46:22

What are you currently fermenting?

Professor Tim Spector46:23

Everything I can really, so things like mushrooms, I'm fermenting chilies, red peppers, as well as kombuchas and green teas and creating what I call timchi, which is my own form of kimchi, which is just any rubbish from the bottom of your fridge that you just put into salt and you can create a delicious dish.

Presenter46:46

Delicious is an interesting word. Is it all palatable?

Professor Tim Spector46:49

Ninety percent of the time it's delicious, ten percent it's revolting.

Presenter46:52

Well, I suppose you'll have plenty of time to to explore the ninety percent on the island. Finally, which track of the eight that you've shared with us today would you rush to save from the waves first, Tim Spector?

Professor Tim Spector46:53

Two.

Professor Tim Spector47:03

It's a tough choice, but I'll probably go with Louis Armstrong. Keep me happy.

Presenter47:08

Professor Tim Spector, thank you very much for letting us hear your Desert Island discs.

Professor Tim Spector47:13

My pleasure.

Presenter47:26

Hello, it was lovely chatting to Tim and I do hope he's taking full advantage of all the time he'll have to cultivate a diverse microbiome while he's on the island. There are more than 2,000 programmes in our archive which you can listen to. We've cast away many scientists and doctors over the years including Sir Michael Marmot and David Knott. You can also hear some of the musicians chosen by Tim too including Lewis Armstrong, Keith Richards of The Rolling Stones, Christine McVeigh of Fleetwood Mac and Paul Weller from The Jam. You can find all of those programmes if you search through BBC Sounds or on our own Desert Island Disc's website. The studio manager for today's programme was Giles Aspen, the production coordinator was Susie Roylands, the assistant producer was Christine Pavlovsky and the producer was Sarah Taylor. The series editor is John Gowdy.

Speaker 448:32

Hi, this is Kirsty Young. I just wanted to let you know that Young Again, my podcast for BBC Radio 4, is back. I'm telescoping two bits of this story together. That's okay. It's only memory. It's only short bits, we can say what we like.

Speaker 148:41

Classic.

Speaker 148:43

It's only sh

Speaker 448:45

In Young Again, we're joined by some of the world's most intriguing people.

Speaker 148:49

Bill was the CEO at Microsoft at the time.

Speaker 448:51

And I ask a simple question. If you knew then what you know now,

Speaker 448:56

What would you tell yourself?

Speaker 148:57

Be very, very careful about the people you surround yourself with.

Speaker 449:01

I gave too much power to people who didn't deserve it. Subscribe to Young Again on BBC Sounds. I'm looking forward to your company.