hey how are you yeah i'm all good thanks hayley are you excited for our topic on bone density
and bone health today always i'm always up for learning well i thought it'd be interesting to
talk about what differences there are in men and females as with bone density because we often see
in clinic post-menopausal ladies coming to see us in clinic and it is a condition that particularly
affects or changes more significantly for women as opposed to men. So about 200 million
postmenopausal women will suffer with a condition called osteoporosis. And osteoporosis is where
the change in the bone occurs. So due to estrogen effects in the body, as that declines, as we get
older through the menopausal years, it has an impact on our bone. And that leaves us quite
vulnerable to suffering a fracture, especially as we grow older, if we don't try to maintain good
bone density. And we don't often think about what we've done in our younger years. So when we're
sort of up to the age of 20, little do we know sometimes that we're forming the bone density at
the time. And when you are young, you need to be doing lots of weight bearing and high impact
exercise to kind of help that bone matrix. But sadly, after the age of 20, and especially in
women, the hip and the spine bone cells have actually sort of fully formed and all the bone
density has occurred at that stage. And then as we get older, some of the other bones, like the
peripheral bones, like the radius, which is the bone in the forearm, starts to go down from the
age of about 30 to 40 and it declines thereafter so we want to try and maximize the the bone density
when we're younger and because it kind of stores it up ready for when we're older and good news for
guys because you guys are a little bit luckier than us ladies because it tends to drop off your
bone density henry from the age of about 53 54 it starts to gradually decline so again it's something
that men need to think about too,
but it's even more essential for ladies.
Did you know about your bone density
dropping off at that age, Henry?
Well, I've heard of osteoporosis
and I have heard that it's more
in that kind of postmenopausal women.
I have heard that,
but I haven't particularly thought about it a lot.
But I guess what you hear about is,
you know, whether it's a grandparent
or someone you know,
and then they fall over
and they fracture their hip
or, you know, they break a bone.
And that's normally...
kind of worrying sign that like well maybe they'll start to decline in other ways because now they're
not so mobile they can't get out so maybe where they used to you know go hang out with their
friends now they can't get around so much then they're stuck at home and now they're watching
daytime tv and now suddenly you know they're they're not you know doing as much and that you
know you always hear when when like an older person breaks your hip it's like oh you know
that's not great like hopefully they can bounce back and uh and i guess you know i i try not to
fall over but i have fallen over and i don't tend to break hips so i'd kind of assume my bones are
probably fairly strong but i was interested you're saying about um that up until year 20
is a kind of the time to you know kind of build that density so does that mean that you know if
you've got kids and they're kind of you know uh those teenage years doing lots of impact so is
that like kind of sport and making sure they're not just sitting around and playing computer games
are actually getting out and I don't know, is it like falling out of trees? I don't know,
what kind of impact is good? Is it? Yeah, absolutely. So up to age 20 is for the hip
and the spine predominantly. And then sort of after the age of 40, it's radius and other bones.
So it starts to go down. But in terms of spine and hips, bones, then yeah, in your younger years,
and for all our bones, we need to try and kind of build that good high density bone strength.
And that's achieved mainly through resistance, so body resistance exercise or high impact training.
So that would be things like jumping, skipping, playing sport.
Like you said, you might get involved in doing kiddie type exercises.
So something that we sometimes see even in our younger population.
sometimes children are quite weak because of the effects of having sort of sat and done gaming or
other computer game type things and they lose a lot of strength and stability around their shoulders
and their scapula which is their shoulder blades and they're so sort of weak that they can't even
do things like you remember when you're a kid you do like those wheelbarrow walking and you hold
them by the legs and you kind of walk along you know they can't do that for very long because
we've just got a little bit weaker because of everything that we tend to do you know kids as
they go through teenage years and things as well they might be on mobile phones more you know iPads
that sort of thing computers laptops so we don't necessarily you know jump around climb trees go
and play more sports I mean there'll be some teenagers that do do more kind of physical activity
but we tend to find you're either in group one which is the high impact do sport regularly or
you're in the other group which is never really think about exercise hardly doing anything at all
so that's the group that we're particularly concerned about because it's what you do in
your younger years that's setting you up for that older years and especially if you know like a
grandparent that might have osteoporosis you know sometimes these things can run in families so if
you know that you've got a little bit of a risk factor from any genetics or just generally that
it might need need to be really important for you to actually strengthen up and really think about
that and the more we can do the better because obviously it does set you up for when you're older
like you said you don't want to be falling because if you fall over it's quite a hard that's quite a
hard sell though isn't it to tell someone who's 18 oh by the way when you're 70 they'll be like
what like they're not even thinking about tomorrow yeah yeah yeah totally but actually that kind of
I guess if you're a parent you can kind of encourage your kids to you know at least do
something and is there like a is there like an optimal amount or is it just make sure you're
you're you're doing something over nothing or is it um because i guess the kind of you would think
that doing stuff like it's like rugby or netball or football or something that's kind of physical
and you'll run around that you'll be more prone to getting injured but actually what you're kind
of saying is that actually by doing something with a bit of impact and moving around that you're
doing better off later on in life it's kind of yeah it's a bit kind of reverse yeah yeah absolutely
so when you um so with things like rugby if you're quite quite into sport and things like that
yes you'll be running around loading that kind of foot striking to the ground is going to be sort of
shocking the body and that's what helps the bone form and if you're doing that sort of thing and
you're naturally building strength anything even if you do other forms of exercise then you're
going to bounce back from whatever injury or any condition faster and that's why it's so important
like you say it's a hard sell because often children might be thinking about that and we're
seeing the impacts nowadays because obviously these chronic conditions, osteoporosis is also
considered a little bit of a metabolic disorder and about absorptions and vitamins and what we
need to do for our body to help keep the bone nice and strong. And that again is a hard sell
and it's something that I always think should be taught in schools. I mean some schools might be
teaching that and I'd be very impressed if they were because that's exactly what we need to be
teaching our children and it's really like it's that if osteoporosis or a break or a fracture when
you're older is really debilitating and it's like the fourth biggest cause of death um from a break
so it's it's not like this is like low priority it's um it's hugely impacts on your life because
you know you're like you said you're not going to be as mobile you're not going to be able to move
around as much for a long period of time and it's extremely painful so any patients who have ever had
a fracture either in their spine or in the hip it's a long process through recovery and it's very
frightening as well and you can have with these kind of conditions you can have multiple fractures
as well so they can appear there are medications that people can take when they're older to try
and stop the breakdown of our bone that's how they work so there's something called biphosphonates
that you can take. So if you're at risk of osteoporosis, or if you've been told that you're
osteopenic, which is like the precursor to osteoporosis, then some patients will be given
a biphosphonate medication to stop any further breakdown. But it's not just with natural
deterioration of our bone density because of declining estrogen or hormonal levels in a female.
It could be something like cancer treatments. So we see a lot of people who've gone through
cancer treatments and with that effect that can leave the bone quite sort of vulnerable too so
they're often quite osteopenic so it's important for that patient group to also consider what
exercise they're doing and with all kind of guidelines aerobic exercise is often said that
you should be doing 150 minutes a week which is approximately 30 minutes five times a day and five
times a week but in terms of resistance and strength training three to five times a week
is a good amount to do. And that should be sort of doing multiple sets of resistance.
But you have to be a bit careful because if you're a patient who might have had a fracture,
you can't just go to a, you know, necessarily a regular gym and go and start squatting with a
load of weights because there's things that you should and shouldn't do. Things that people can't
actually do because they have sort of actually degenerated in terms of fitness level already.
and that's a precursor that's built up over time.
So, you know, you can have somebody who's quite slender
and usually it's the people who are a little bit more underweight.
So if their body mass index is lower,
can be more susceptible to these kind of conditions.
So if you're a little bit thinner,
but you know you haven't really got much muscle mass,
that's going to be hard to build up.
So there's quite specific things that you need to work on.
But again, like you say,
it's not something you think about when you're younger,
but if you have anyone in your family sort of growing up seeing grandparents it should make
you stop and think about it but it's a very difficult thing to try to get people to do
so if so if you're so you said at the beginning that it affects um women more than men so if so
say my wife as an example she's um she's approaching menopause she's not but like let's
assume you know fast forward um a decade or so and she she she knows in her childhood she did
no sport she basically sat in the library and read books and you know so she wasn't doing impact
exercise and now she's suddenly worrying of like oh actually um you know i know that my grandparents
that i've got you know i can see a future that's happening because she's now listened to this
podcast what what kind of things could she do that because she can't go back to her 20s and be like
right now let's do some resistance is there is there things that she can do right now that could
like you know help or is that really kind of like if you've had a you know 50 years of doing nothing
or not enough you're kind of at the mercy or is there things that can move the dial if that makes
sense yeah so um so with with females they say um so people in their 50s it's like half of women
in their 50s will have a break due to like a fracture due to osteoporosis and one in five
men would have a similar fracture due to an osteoporotic condition so it's much less common
and men. And a bit like your wife, you know, I studied all through my younger years and obviously
tried to do a bit of exercise, but I wasn't a physio when I was 17. I don't think I even
probably thought about it at that point. But it's never too late to improve your physical health in
multiple areas. And one of the reasons I ever got into bone density and as a specialist interest
area clinically was because my own mother was diagnosed with osteoporosis and she fell through
COVID, I think it was, and she kind of blacked out because of the virus, I think, and then she fell
and broke her back. And that was picked up just from scans. And then it all escalated from there
because it's a silent condition. You don't know it's happening. And the best thing you can do if
you're interested is to do what we call a DEXA scan. So it will measure your bone density. And
if somebody has like a parent who has got severe osteoporosis, then it's quite useful to know in
your sort of 40s and 50s whether you do have a low bone density as well however is it going to
change management you might not go on to medications unless you you know you have broken something as
well so you've been playing tennis you fall over classic injury fall out onto a stretched out hand
you fracture your wrist and then sometimes people will go for scans for some other body part and it
might also be a coincidental finding they might say by the way it looks like your bone density is
not great i think you should have a dextra scan so it sometimes gets picked up that way but in terms
of what your wife can do now it's never too late to build bone strength so we need our muscles
obviously they support our joints so the stronger our muscles can be the more kind of resistance and
impact that's going to give for the for the bone and that's obviously going to try and maintain
bone density as best we can because although we might not form so much as we obviously as we get
older because it is on that decline we can kind of preserve it better and also think about nutrition
and things like that. We know with bone density that we should be thinking about our vitamin D
levels. We should be thinking about things like our calcium levels and making sure we get good
calcium into our diet. And we know as well from sort of more recent research that vitamin K is
also important because vitamin K works very nicely with vitamin D. So I don't know if your wife takes
any of these vitamins, but out of all of them, these are essential ones with regards to bone
because the vitamin k can help push your vitamin d into your bone to kind of preserve it it's like a
i sort of see it as like a a signal it's like the vitamin k is oh in a minute vitamin d it's over
there you need to go into that bone please because otherwise the vitamin d doesn't it needs to be
sort of absorbed and uptake like taken up into the bone so that's how that works you know minimally
what people can do if they do nothing else at all they should be thinking about their vitamin d
levels they should be thinking about the vitamin k and vitamin k can be found naturally if you've
got a good healthy diet you might not even need to supplement you should be thinking about trying
to get it from your food sources so a lot of the k vitamins are from some green leafy vegetables so
your broccoli and your spinach and your kale and that sort of thing then your some of your other
k vitamins are found in things like your animal-based products so no not everybody can eat
those but things like butter eggs even lard sometimes can also help and that just yeah it
can really help um so obviously in moderation because obviously the effects on your cardiac
system but that where you can find it so in moderation and you don actually need that much so if you using say butter instead of margarine just very minimally you only need I think it a microgram per your kilogram of body weight
So if somebody's 65 kilograms,
you would only need about 65 micrograms of vitamin K.
So it's not a huge amount.
So you should, if people are sort of eating good vegetables
and a balanced diet, they should be getting what they need.
So you mentioned vitamin D. So obviously, whenever I think about vitamin D is sunshine.
And obviously, we've been having a glorious summer and plenty of opportunity to get some good vitamin D.
Or if you've been on holiday, you know, sitting out in the sun.
But obviously, I kind of think about my own life and that, you know, the winter and the autumn can be quite grey.
And then, you know, if you spend most of your day indoors in an office, you're kind of, you're not necessarily getting your,
your vitamin D. So things that I try and do is, you know, when I wake up in the morning,
I let the dog out and then I try and just like stand outside, just even just like five minutes,
like whether, you know, waiting for the kettle to boil or something, just to try, you know,
if there is a bit of sunshine, I don't know if it does anything, but I'm like, well, I'm going to
be indoors all day. So this, this has got to be better than nothing. But I know that a lot of
like doctors recommend that you should particularly over the winter take like vitamin D supplements
because we're just not getting enough. But like you said, you can get it in food sources. So I
guess you know get it from the sunshine but also you can get it from food then you know that's also
going to be good as well isn't it yeah exactly and you and you do need both sources um obviously
in the uk we're a bit unfortunate that we don't normally have um high levels of um vitamin d
so it's important that we do get out and about in the in the daylight um and there's good research
to show that if you get out in the early morning sunshine as well it's particularly good for like
your retinas and your eyes but you um you have to balance this out because you have to watch the
you know i think um it was a clinical nurse and specialist that i once had a conversation with
and they said you know you only really need about 15 minutes through your forearm that's as much as
you need the amount of vitamin d through your body and you have to weigh that up with you know not
burning yourself and not causing any kind of skin cancers and things so it's a really hard medium to
like middle ground to find because you want that vitamin d from natural sunlight but you need to
watch that you're not getting too much and you're not leaving yourself a bit vulnerable because
like skin cancers are shockingly um prevalent and if you i think if you burn yourself it
significantly increases your chance of melanoma by 75 so it's really not good it's really it's a
really tricky one um but we do know that vitamin d is needed for our body and it's really important
for I think over 700 different functions in the body.
It's incredible.
It's an incredible vitamin.
And like you said, you can get it in your food as well.
So things like egg yolks are high in vitamin D.
And we need that from the food sources as well.
But we know the highest percentage of vitamin D
does come from daylight or sunlight.
So we just need to find a nice, happy medium
so that we're just doing the best we can for our body.
And I think if you, I take vitamin D supplements.
I take them all year round.
I found I was a little bit borderline at one point, probably because I'm always in clinic.
I'm always in clinic and so I don't always manage to get out and all through the day.
But sometimes if you take your vitamin D supplements, it is worth thinking about,
especially if you are at risk of osteoporosis or you are osteoporotic,
making sure you have those other supplements as well, possibly.
But you should always check with your GP first because I've seen interactions with other medications.
and with all these things you can take too much especially of the vitamin k's that's you know we
don't want to be taking too much of that whereas vitamin d is a bit safer and it would be very hard
to overdose on vitamin d really okay if you're taking the high strength or whatever you you kind
of yeah it wouldn't be too bad but you should just take the recommended amount um which is about a
thousand iu um per day and then if you know you're you know if you're feeling really fatigued or you
know you haven't been sort of in the sunlight you might want to get those levels checked but it's
you don't have to go and have your levels checked you could just start taking a vitamin d supplement
again if you're a complex medical case or you've got a lot of different conditions happening you'd
want to check that out first but it's so it's so good i think vitamin d is sort of underestimated
as to how good it is for you yeah yeah um to me it just like when i think about it like getting
nutrition from food makes a lot of sense because it's like I kind of think of it like you know
putting petrol into a car you know it's like it keeps it going but kind of knowing that you can
absorb like vitamins from the sun like it shouldn't sound far-fetched but in my mind it sounds kind of
kind of nuts that like like obviously like a plant gets food or you know gets energy from the sun and
you know nutrients from the soil but also that we we can also do that to a certain extent which yeah
I think when I think about it it seems a bit bit weird but actually it's probably quite normal
it's not you know i think you know maybe it's a another excuse to you know it's good to be outside
and like i said don't get don't get sunburned and particularly that time in the morning but actually
you know i know that if i you know particularly when it's a little bit gloomy or you know the
weather's not so great actually if you just get out of bed get straight into the car go straight
to the office come home it's dark then you're inside like you just don't spend any time outside
so even just like five minutes i actually think it's just quite nice just kind of you know being
in the garden for a little bit or just kind of, you know, looking at a further field horizon,
I find quite kind of gives me a bit, you know, a bit of clarity in the morning. And then,
you know, if you're getting a bit of vitamin D, you know, that's a happy bonus.
Exactly. And it's got so many other health benefits, hasn't it? So obviously mental health
is always going to give you those benefits as well. And like you said about the exercise,
like the kind of nutrition side, I mean, if you eat healthy and you do exercise,
fortunately it's not a marketing thing it's not you know it's not attractive and it's not appealing
for somebody to market that put it in a bottle and go oh look this is like you buy this online
and you can have this every day and in two days time you're going to feel amazing you know these
things are hard work aren't they it's it's hard work to keep a consistent exercise program it's
hard work to keep a consistent food routine and a good healthy balanced diet but it's the biggest
reward if you can do that and your body will thank you for that and I heard a really interesting
quote once and it said um your older years is a representation of how good you've been to your
body through your younger life and I just thought it's a really nice way of thinking about that
because yeah how you are in your later years in terms of how mobile you want to be with your
retirement your grandchildren whatever you know that is a representation of how how good you've
been throughout the other decades.
Yeah.
I guess we're just, we're just, people just don't think about that kind of long term,
like kind of, you know, like you try and imagine yourself like when you are retired or, you
know, when you, you are a bit older and it's not like a kind of natural thing to think
about.
Like, you know, you might think about what am I going to have for dinner or what are
we doing on the weekend?
Or maybe like, what am I, where do I want to go on holiday next year?
But I think a lot of people, my psychopathy don't often think that far into the future,
But actually, when it comes to stuff like health and your body, you know, we've all seen old people who, you know, they're either really hunched up or you're just like, you know, like someone who's clearly not in a great space.
When you see something like that, you think, I really, that doesn't look fun.
I wouldn't, you know, that doesn't make me want to get old.
And I guess you have to just remind yourself that, you know, that could be a real reality if you don't do something now.
And so actually, you know, looking after your body, whether that's through exercise or eating properly or just, you know, making those conscious decisions to try and put yourself, give yourself the best chance so that, you know, when you're older and you have got grandkids that, you know, that actually you can be that fun grandparent and still do stuff and live a fulfilling life.
And also on the flip side, there's always those people that you meet who, you know, are old, but they're not, they're still living life to the fullest.
And you're like, wow, that's how I would like to be when I'm old.
But you know, that's probably also come with that they've either sacrificed or they, you know, they've made those conscious decisions to not, you know, do that thing that maybe isn't so good for them.
Or, you know, to be disciplined, to keep exercising and have a good routine and stuff.
And it's easy to say, isn't it?
It's harder to do it.
but I guess well that's just kind of part of what this podcast is about it's just to you know get us
all encouraged to actually do something yeah and I think you know I think um being in clinic I see
the stories all the time and I see the effects that um or the conditions that people have to
live with and and it's a real wake-up call every day um and obviously I'm fortunate enough to help
these people and I love what I do so um I come home and I'm like okay however tired you are you
I think, oh gosh, I better do some exercises myself because I spend all day telling other
people to do them.
And it is that reminder because you kind of run away from what you don't want to become.
You know, you don't want to, like you say, you want to be that kind of fit, mobile grandparent.
And it's devastating for us in clinic if you get people coming in saying, you know,
please help me.
All I want to do is I want to be able to bend down and see my grandchild or I want to be
able to play with them or even, you know, younger, younger populations.
or you know i'm worried about you know i daren't do this because i fear i'm going to do this or i'm
going to feel i'm going to break you know my back or you know i'm fear a fear of fracture or now i've
broken this and now i can't do that and you quickly as you get older you quickly lose momentum don't
you lose more muscle mass anyway it's harder to regain it's much harder work and um and the people
who you do often see so i often say some of my 80 90 year old patients are some of the healthiest
patients I ever see in a day you know compared to even some 30 year olds because and when you
question them and you do that as a clinical examination often you'll you'll sort of pick up
as to why they are so healthy with what they do you know I love my gardening and I like doing this
and I keep active and I eat lots of vegetables eat lots of you know I don't eat processed food
and I don't eat this and you think yeah yeah it all makes sense and then so it does it really does
your body is a representation of how good you look after it and it is the one thing we you know we
don't get another one we just get one body and I've always found it fascinating that's why I went
into this career and I just love sharing what I learned because I just feel like everyone should
know about it because before it's too late because otherwise one day people wake up and I hear it all
the time you know even this week in clinic you'd hear someone say you know suddenly I just got old
why you know I just woke up and suddenly it felt like everything was going wrong and that's a shame
because the deterioration of whatever is happening is happening way before that moment in time it's
just whether you can recognize the patterns and what things need to change in your life
and when you said earlier like what could your wife do there's things like it's good research for
skipping so there's a great research article that says if you skip for 16 weeks so obviously not all
for the full amount of time.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Not continuously.
Not continuously for 16 weeks.
But if you were to skip a little bit per day for 16 weeks,
you can significantly improve your bone density in that course of time.
I think it was up to like 40%.
So it's quite high.
There are things you can do to make a difference.
And any resistive exercise.
So if you're just putting a little bit of resistance against the muscle
or the body, doing weight resisted,
you could just go against the wall with your hands against the wall,
do like what we call a little bit of a body press you just push your body once in the wall and back
again things like that if you're especially if you're a little bit older and you're not sure what
to do so that that's a bit easier than say a press up on the floor exactly yeah yeah because if you're
if you kind of you know you've got to be a little bit vulnerable you're going to be a little bit
vulnerable maybe in the shoulders as you get older so doing things that feel kind of confident you
feel confident to do especially if anyone has osteoporosis who's listening you need to be very
careful about the type of exercises that you do and you shouldn't just start you know don't just
start the skipping that I just said this is for somebody who is you want to build up to it you
want to build up or maybe skipping is not appropriate for that person because if you've
got a history of multiple fractures you might want to just start with doing things what we call like
balance training and ankle strength training and just starting to work closely with a physio first
and then build up, kind of build it up.
Well, like having that balance,
because obviously, you know, if falling over,
whether, I mean, obviously if you fall over in tennis
or something or off your bike, but that's one thing.
But I guess often when you hear of someone falling over,
it's like they just tripped over like a step or,
you know, I kind of like trip up steps all the time
and I rarely fall over.
And that's because I guess I've got good reactions
and good balance and you can kind of correct yourself.
But I guess if you haven't got that,
then you fall over.
And if you're carrying a bit of extra weight
or, you know, your brains are a bit more fragile,
you're more likely to then get a break.
And obviously I don't have anything to back this up,
but my assumption would be that once you've had that kind of break,
that maybe that's the kind of the accelerator of the kind of,
oh, I now feel old.
Like, because suddenly, you know,
if it dramatically changes how you kind of live your life,
you know, suddenly you become a bit more sedentary
or, you know, you stop doing certain stuff,
then I don't know, I guess in my mind that would seem to make sense.
but yeah yeah so we yeah we see it so we um so I had a patient once who um had given up everything
um you know she she fell over say she was in her 80s um she stopped driving she um you know she
didn't go out as much and she became very housebound um and then so like I run like bone
density classes at the clinic in Bury and um she started coming to these classes and and you know
she wasn't she didn't have big expectations of what was going to happen she thought maybe she'll
just um get a little bit stronger and she she might you know prevent some falls but after about
only a few sessions um she said she'd gone back to driving she'd gone back to all these things and
that's usually unheard of um and some of her friends thought she'd taken some kind of magic
pill just to make herself better but the programs that i run are kind of i design them based on
research um i'm a bit of a geek really so i like reading all the scientific journals
and so I very much go by you know what is the best exercise and has it really changed it hasn't
really changed in the research it's all about resistance and balance and fall prevention and
that sort of thing so sometimes we just stand on those like little wobble boards I don't know if
you've ever seen them they're like little beautiful boards just because as you as you mentioned about
the ankle and things if you can improve your ankle strength you can really reduce your risk
of falling because in our ankles we've got proprioceptors you can kind of retrain them so
that if you do happen to fall or trip or you know just knock yourself and you think you're going to
go over if you've got good ankle stability that's going to help you reduce your chances of fully
going over onto the floor and potentially breaking something so something as simple as that can make a difference but obviously variety is best if we can do a little bit of all sorts really is the best thing to do yeah it makes me also think of kind of like that kind of uh social context of like
you know if you're if you're out leading a leading a kind of active life whether you're
into gardening or you go to some club or you know there's something that's kind of so you're
interacting with other people and you're kind of keeping your life kind of quite full you're
probably more likely to be a bit more active and then also be with people who you know you know a
similar age to you but they're either a bit healthier or a bit less healthy and so you can
kind of benchmark yourself but then you know you hear a lot in the news and you know and i know a
few people who you know they kind of retire and then they suddenly leave very kind of small lives
whether you know they're not they haven't got like a kind of club so they're just you know whether
it's just watching daytime tv or netflix or playing scrabble whatever then they're not kind of getting
out there so therefore they're moving less and then you know they're losing muscle mass because
they're older and then maybe they're not seeing other people so they're kind of you know and then
it all kind of declines doesn't it and then maybe like you know you become more you become more
vulnerable kind of mentally and then and then actually you're more prone to kind of hurt yourself
or then have the resilience to like bounce back from like you know uh that kind of you kind of
see sometimes people kind of look like they've just given up and they've just like accepted oh
I'm old now and there's nothing I can do about it.
And it's kind of like, well, no, there is something you can do about it.
But I guess, but only you can do that.
Like, you know, you can lead a horse to water, can't you?
Yeah.
But I, but I guess it's that thing of, if you think about it now, like, okay,
I'm fit, young and healthy and I'm not, don't have to worry about it.
But if you kind of think about your future and go, well, actually,
I don't want to be in that situation where I am kind of feeling old and
vulnerable and not able to like do stuff and that whole life's just not quite
as fun as it used to be.
well actually if you don't want to be in that situation well now actually you can start
you know trying to build yourself so that doesn't become a reality maybe i don't know yeah well i
think all of us just we just want to all live don't we as as healthy as we possibly can because
you know there's no there's no fun living living life when you're chronically ill i mean that that's
just not pleasant we see it all the time and and it's really hard and although yeah exercise and
any kind of um movement is always good for regardless of whatever condition there's evidence
behind it for all conditions but it's it's much harder if that's set in first isn't it so you want
to yeah just keep your fitness levels up as best you possibly can because you don't really want to
end up in that in that state and it is really tricky because like you say you do have to put
all the kind of effort into doing that and it is it is a difficult thing to maintain as you get older
because we just naturally lose fitness anyway and I think there was a sign one you know like on the
road signs where you see um the kind of icon of two elderly people with a walking stick have you
ever yeah i don't remember they're not allowed anymore i think i don't think they exist but
um i think we were kind of you know growing up i think you you that was the image that you expected
an elderly person like it's terrible it's terrible isn't it i mean hopefully that's still banned like
you shouldn't have those but um but i mean you don't want to end up like that and the posture
is so important like if people don't want to do anything after this podcast like posture is so
incredibly important especially for bone density or osteoporosis because often you'll end up in
quite a flexed posture so you know you sort of see these um uh hyper kyphotic positions but if
you can even and that has an impact on your digestion and your breathing so we you know
elderly people will say you know i'm struggling to have a cup of tea because they can't extend
their neck because they're so curved over they might struggle with their breathing and the
digestion is is just not as great so posture's got so many good benefits too um but you know i see it
all the time that youngsters are in sitting in terrible positions and that's not going to do
them any favors when they're older um and if you are osteoporotic listen to listening to this you
should be working on your posture all the time just even as something as simple as widening your
collarbones and squeezing your shoulder blades back and down behind you is enough to open things
up gently and trying to sit more upright rather than that kind of leaning forward flex posture
because that all has an extra. I watched a program on Netflix and not saying this is the gospel of
truth and it was about a Japanese community but they mostly sat on the floor and so they were
they were living quite kind of social lives but they were sitting on the floor and then getting
up from the floor and often if they were doing something they were holding something so they
could they could get up without having to use their hands and then they were kind of comparing
it to kind of most western people that never sit on the floor because it's kind of well I've got a
nice comfy seat why would I sit on the floor and actually there was some kind of thought that maybe
because they spent quite a lot of time sitting on the floor that actually they just they stayed much
more kind of active and and kind of strong but it was good for their posture because obviously when
you sit on the floor it's hard to slouch because there's nothing to slouch on I don't know but
But then because they were with lots of other people were also doing it, it was like, well, then that was just what they did.
You know, so it wasn't kind of, you know, so they were leaving kind of.
And I thought that was kind of quite interesting that maybe maybe we need to stop giving people really comfy chairs with all those magic buttons that make them kind of like lift them out.
And actually, maybe they should just, you know, sit on the floor.
I don't know.
Well, it did do a bit of a trend.
I remember.
I don't know exactly when it was, but we obviously hear about trends all the time in clinic.
And then somebody once said to me like, oh, yeah, there's a measure of fitness if you can get up from the floor with your legs crossed first, whether it's a Christmas party trick or a fitness test.
But so there are these things that you hear about.
We did this. We did this in my work.
And it was I was a bit shocking.
So I was able to do it.
But actually, even the young people, younger people, people younger than me weren't able to do it.
And I was just like, these are warning signs.
Like if you're in your twenties and you can't get up off the floor without using your hands,
like, you know, and I guess it's a bit of kind of a bit of fun, but actually it's probably
a bit of a flag of like, actually, you know, if you've got a hundred plus year old Japanese
lady who's able to do it and is still living a fairly fit and fulfilling life, then maybe
if you can't do it in your twenties, that's something to strive for.
I don't know.
Yeah.
And that should definitely be alarm bells when you're 20.
Yeah, absolutely.
Especially in that position.
like is even getting up from the chest um people as we get older we classically see that um people
will say that they use their hands to push themselves up from a chair as being quite mean
physios will say no you're not allowed to use your hands you've got to try and you know wiggle your
bottom to the edge of the chair you know try and ground through your feet and push up with your
thighs and your bottom to try and propel yourself and that even even doing that can make a huge
difference if you can't do much at all that's going to make a big difference and um and especially
you know trying to make yourself sit to stand frequently so if you're if you're elderly
listening to this or you know if anyone happens to be listening to this then if you're sitting
to standing all the time then that's really good exercise that's again weight bearing that you come
up into standing and it's resistant exercise as well because you can put your foot through the
floor so don't so not using my arms just getting up okay well but that's such an easy thing
That's such an easy thing to just do, isn't it?
Because we, you know, if you sit down at the table and you get up, you know, people are
sitting down all the time.
Just, yeah, great.
Well, I didn't know that.
And you could turn that into a fitness test by seeing how fast you can do 10.
And you could even time this.
You get, we love timing things in physio, but, you know, you could time yourself and
see like how quick can you achieve 10?
And then you must keep your feet flat on the floor.
you know you mustn't be um trying to lift your feet up and trying to like some people cheat
yes getting momentum but that's a safe exercise for everyone to do regardless of your age and i
think if you if you google it you'll probably find it but there's sometimes like a little timetable of
um what what kind of seconds you should reach at different decades of your life so if you know
if you're taking more than say 20 seconds when you're um in your 20s that's really not a good
sign so but obviously okay when you're 80 you you might take 26 seconds or a bit longer but
there's an interesting um breakdown of that that you can sometimes come across but if you're not
too competitive then literally just just doing that without timing yourself is is really good
for you and it's good for your your heart rate it's good for your sugar levels it's good for
your bones it's good for your muscles and it's easy it doesn't cost anything um and anyone can
do it anywhere and even if you can't do anything at all like sitting up posture is also really good
but yeah doing any kind of resistance exercise so even carrying your shopping um especially when
you're older like that's also sort of counts because you're kind of carrying weights and you
know and we have people in our clinic it's so lovely to see when you see sort of elderly people
doing exercises in the gym like it's it's just amazing and i i wish everyone was doing that
because you can really improve.
And people think that because they're older,
there's no chance of getting any better.
They think that they've reached that point
and it's only downhill.
But you can always improve
because our muscles are what we call red muscles.
So you can always build strength.
It might take longer as you age,
but it's not impossible.
And if we don't use it, we lose it pretty much.
Gotcha.
Yeah, well, that sounds good.
And I like the idea of the little competition.
I'm definitely going to time myself.
And I was also thinking that kind of image of, you know, the young, the scout leader,
I don't know, helping the old person with their shopping across the road.
And actually, you know, as a young person who's fit and healthy, you know,
probably we think that's helping the older person.
But actually, the older person is better they carry their own shopping
because it's going to be good for them.
So next time I see an old lady with heavy shopping, I'll applaud her and say,
well done, you're doing a great job.
And of course, help her carry it if she asks.
but yeah of course yeah encourage you yeah you're absolutely right though because we do have um you
know everyone you know you care about your loved ones and yeah we do see you know people very
concerned and they'll say that you know a very overprotective partner or husband or wife and
you know they've got best intentions to look after them but actually a physio we sort of have to
sometimes say well actually no you don't like stop helping them in this part because we want them to
to do it because otherwise it's not going to work and the amount of times I get asked about those
postural like straps or things that you can put on to improve your posture and I say to people
they're handy for feedback so if you're really clueless about where you should be on your posture
but again that would really need to be put on by a physio to kind of say like this or you know
somebody to say like this is where you should be but that's not going to do it for you in the sense
that your muscles will get lazy if you wear them all the time so you get atrophy through the muscles
you have to really do all these things get your muscles to fire and get the muscles to wake up and
give it some work to do and that's when you'll get the best from it but i know henry you being
in the food industry um or brilliant at all your cooking i know you we had a conversation um a while
back just about how you can naturally get nice collagen from your food when you cook so tell us
more about that because I can't remember exactly what you told me. Yeah well so for me collagen
obviously has become quite trendy and you kind of my social feed seem to be full of people
flogging collagen powder in the last few years I'm sure you've had the same. For me well what I
know of collagen is really a kind of gateway to gelatin so as a chef gelatin is a wonderful thing
because it does a few things.
It's a flavor carrier.
So if you've got like a pot of water
and you put some aromats,
you know, some herbs, some spices,
you know, it'll perfume the water.
When you drink it,
it'll be quite kind of weak.
But if you've got gelatin in the water,
it acts as like a little kind of flavor trap
and it absorbs those flavors into it.
So you get a more kind of intense
and a better flavor coming through the sauce.
So gelatin is really good from that point of view.
But also if you've got it in a gravy or something,
it gives you a very nice kind of mouthfeel as it kind of like coats your tongue.
So if you had, you know, kind of flavoured water, it would just kind of go down quite easily,
but you wouldn't necessarily have a kind of part in your mouth.
But if you've got gelatin within that water, it's going to coat really nicely.
And all those flavours are going to be, you know, explosive and delicious.
And it's going to make things taste really nice.
So the way that we get this is through bones.
So chefs love making stocks and they're not making stocks because they're fun.
They're making them because,
you're essentially you're boiling up bones and within the bones is the collagen which I think is
like the most common protein within the body I think it's you know it's in your skin it's in the
connective tissue it's in your bones and so if you boil it it then extracts that collagen out
and then turns it into gelatin and then you get a lovely kind of wiggly wobbly stock so for me the
bit that I know through and this is not because of understanding the science this is just through
trial and error that certain bones and things will give you more gelatining tend to be the ones that
have a bit more kind of connective tissue or kind of joints. So like chicken wings, for example,
will give you a much more jellified stock than say, if you were just kind of cooking up the rib
bones. And same with like a beef stock, if you just have like a rib bone, you'll get a slightly
nice flavor but you but if you've got like a foot so like a pig strotter or a calf foot you'll get a
lot more gelatin coming out of that so anything that's kind of moving you're going to get a better
stock coming out of it and so from my point of view if you want to make a really delicious gravy
or something that's like a stew or something that like a risotto that's got some really good flavor
and depth having a really good stock really helps now when you kind of think you know if you're
running a professional kitchen, you know, you're going to be doing a lot of butchery. So you're
going to generate a lot of bones. You'll probably be buying meat from a wholesale butchery. They'll
sell you bones because they want to get rid of them. And you're, you know, you're making these
in big pots and bubbling away and they're going to last you for a few days. Now, obviously at home,
most people are not going to be buying in pig strottes and large boxes of chicken wings,
etc to make stock so how do i do it practically myself the way that i pretty much always make
stock is um we quite like eating a um um a roast dinner on a sundae particularly during the winter
to say we've had a chicken or um you know a lamb shoulder or something whatever it might be as long
as you've cooked it on the bone rather than discarding that carcass at the end which um
a lot of people do and it's um you know here you've got so much potential and also something
for a second meal is you just take your carcass.
Now it's already been roasted in the oven,
so it already got some nice caramelization so there plenty of flavor There be little bits of skin on it There be a bit of meat meat you haven shredded off pop it into a pot of water now you don want to kind of flood it too much so the way i would do it is is uh put your bones into the
into the pot and kind of squash them down a little bit so you've broken it up have you henry yeah i
mean a chicken carcass once it's been roasted it's going to fall to bits fairly easily if you've got
bigger bones you might find that they don't fit in your pots so but a chicken chicken works really
well because a lot of people you know roast chicken is quite kind of classic sunday lunch
and um and it probably makes the most kind of versatile stock lamb stock quite lamby and quite
good with lamb dishes but whereas chicken stock you can use it for lots of lots of other applications
and um then you you know i would then chuck in any kind of um leftover veggies that you've got
particularly if you've got like carrots or onions i wouldn't add things like cauliflower or peas
because they're not gonna they're not gonna bring much to the party but then you could add in some
fresh onions some some chopped carrots some bay leaves bit of garlic a thyme if you've got it
growing in the garden some peppercorns quite good and then cover it with water and then if you've
got any leftover gravy that you've made you can just add that in as well because that's that's
all flavor you know and particularly like and this might not sound appealing to some people but if
you've if if your plate is full of gravy and chicken bones just scrape it all in like it's
fine it's all flavor it's all delicious so don't don't like chuck it away instead of scraping it
into the bin you're scraping it into the pan yeah yeah don't scrub into your bin because you're
end up with a smelly bin then so actually you might as well you know get get the flavor out of
it and then you want to bring it to a simmer fairly quickly and this will bring up any kind of like
essentially kind of scum it's not right but you bring it up to a boil any kind of impurities rise
to the top it's a bit like you know when you see like a turbulent sea and it's all kind of like
frothy at the top that essentially all comes to the top you then turn the boil down so it's much
lower and then just using a spoon just scoop that off and chuck that away so that's just the impurities
is coming out.
Now, you'll get more of that
if they're raw bones.
So if you're cooking it from scratch
and you haven't roasted them,
you'll get a lot more of this coming up.
Whereas from a roasted joint,
you probably might get a tablespoon.
But if you ever do like
a whole pack of chicken wings
and you boil them up,
you'll be amazed
at how much stuff comes out of them.
And it's not necessarily bad for your stock,
but what it does do
is it makes it cloudy.
Now, maybe for home use,
you don't care.
But obviously,
if you're selling shiny gravy
to people who have spent a lot of money,
having a cloudy stock is not a desirable thing.
Anyway, then you just want to let that simmer
for a couple of hours.
Now, there's a few things you can hack with that.
One is you can buy yourself a pressure cooker,
which just essentially cooks under pressure.
So I think it speeds it up by four times.
So what could take five hours,
you can do it in an hour or an hour and a half.
And that kind of slow cooking helps extract all of the flavor,
but particularly that collagen out of the bones.
you can add like a little like a cap full of vinegar or lemon juice and that can help speed
up that process of extracting the collagen out but um but uh but then you won't want to go too
much because you don't want it to taste like vinegar now the other thing is you never you
never season a stock so if you listen to chefs talk they'll always talk about season season season
whereas you never season a stock and that's because if you then reduce it if you've seasoned
it and you've now got a really nice salty water and then you reduce it you're going to get it too
concentrated so so we always leave the salt out and then because you can always adjust that later
now a few hours later you know it's been bubbling away nicely uh you then just want to sieve it
into a container now a roast chicken stock you know i try and make like a liter so like from one
carcass and you know like three four hours of bubbling away you can get a good liter of stock
now because it's had a bit of roasting to it it's going to have like a nice dark brown color to it
Now, once it's cooled, pop that in the fridge.
That will last for probably four days.
It probably lasts longer.
The more gelatin you have in it, the longer it lasts.
So like the gelatin acts as a kind of,
it stops bacteria being able to like travel through the liquid.
But what we would tend to do is Monday,
we might have, I don't know, something else
because Jess doesn't want to eat chicken.
You know, the kids are like, we had that yesterday.
But then kind of Tuesday, Wednesday,
you can use that to make a really great ramen.
Now, it's such an easy dinner
because you literally just, you get your liter of stock,
you pour that into a pan.
Now, if you want to go super fancy,
you can add things like kombu and some katsubushi
and make essentially like a mirin stock.
You don't have to that.
You could just add some soy sauce,
those little dried mushrooms are quite nice,
maybe some ginger, some garlic.
A bit of miso paste is really good,
particularly by the live miso.
It's going to be really good for your gut.
And then you just, essentially, you bring it to the boil,
cook some noodles on the side,
you could boil an egg if you want,
and then just shred in your chicken, any kind of leafy greens.
So you talked about your vitamin K from your kale and stuff.
Chop that in.
Chop up some spring onions.
You can get loads of lovely veggies in
and essentially just taste it, season it,
and you've got yourself a really delicious bone broth, essentially,
that's going to be full of flavor.
And also it's coming from a meal that you've already paid for.
So you've already paid for your chicken.
Now, okay, yes, you've got a little bit of extra veg,
but really, you know, it's pennies.
and actually you're going to have yourself a really delicious meal.
And my kids absolutely love it.
So it's, and what we quite like doing is,
because, you know, I like mine with a bit of spice in it,
or I might want to put some kimchi in and they're not so into that.
So you can almost do it as like you just give them the broth
and then you just have like your chopped up bits on the outside.
Then you just kind of add what you want, you know.
So Jess would probably absolutely load hers up with, you know, kale
or, you know, any kind of leafy green because she loves that.
I'd probably have more chicken because I quite like that.
And, you know, you just, you know, a sprinkle of some toasted sesame seeds and a bit of sesame oil on top.
And, you know, you'll have something that will, you know, be far nicer than what you'd get at Wagamama.
I don't know if it's wrong with Wagamama, of course.
Yeah, that sounds great.
And it just, you know, it's using up all of your leftover bits.
And, yeah, totally delicious.
Or you could just use it, you know, as the base for, you know, if you're going to make a chicken pie, for example.
Say you've got loads of shredded chicken left.
You could then use that to thicken your gravy or your sauce.
and it's just going to have so much more flavor
and it's going to be the nicest pie that you've ever made.
I guess you could, could you also use,
I remember like when I make risottos,
I normally use a stock.
So you could just use that into the risotto rice
when you're cooking it off with onions.
Would that work the same
or would you have to try and convert that?
Absolutely.
No, no, absolutely.
So like a risotto made without stock
is just kind of boiled rice.
So like, it's not like, yes, you can put loads of cheese.
There's only so much parmesan and butter
that you can add to a risotto without the stock
the stock is like i was thinking of it like a like an orchestra there's different you know when
you hear it all together it sounds wonderful but like if you hear the individual instruments they
can sound a bit like like so what like a tuba is is probably fairly no one wants to listen to the
tuba all day long without some other instruments to accompany it and and a stock kind of really
kind of like brings everything together and you know you might have that little bit of acidity
and that's like you know the oboe it's like i don't even know what an oboe sounds like but if
you took it out you would miss it it'd be that little high note that kind of that goes like oh
oh yeah, that just makes it sore or something.
And I actually know nothing about music.
But that's how I can imagine it.
It's a collection of things coming together
and a stock can just elevate
particularly that kind of depth of flavor.
But also if you've got a stock
that's got lots of collagen in it,
it's also elevating it
because when you're eating it,
that gelatin's coating your tongue and your mouth
and it's giving you a kind of a richer,
more intense flavor
because all those other flavors that you've added
aren't just being washed down.
Actually, they're kind of lingering in your mouth more,
which makes it taste nicer.
And now this is, so for me,
like I get excited by bones because of gelatin
and then lo and behold,
turns out it's really good for you.
And so it's kind of like,
so I'm like, it's a win-win.
I'm like, it's great.
Like I love, I love gelatin, you know,
it's a great thing in cooking.
And actually-
And so your hair and nails as well.
It's so good for your hair and nails
or the gelatin and the collagen.
so how would you um quickly turn it into a tasty gravy and i assume you could do that around
christmas time as well just keeping it in the fridge for a few days it would it would last you
could do like a get ahead gravy couldn't you yeah i do okay so if i do if i do christmas dinner i do
christmas dinner every bloody year i hope so there's no getting away from it so so you you buy
yourself the best turkey you can afford i would then chop off the wings um because generally
speaking the wings you know people don't tend to eat them they look quite nice but just just chop
them off now you can there's a tutorial on youtube you can you can read how to do that sharp knife
don't chop your fingers i'd also then chop off the parsons nose which is that kind of bit at the
front because again there's not a huge amount of meat on there but there is loads of collagen in
it so i would take them off the day before i would then roast them up with some onions
carrots some celery and then into a pan or a pot and then boil it up with some aromats some herb
spices etc and make yourself a really kind of dark turkey style then christmas day you roast your
turkey and um it's now roasted to perfection you then take it out the tray and you've got your um
you know the bottom of the tray you've had some onions and some garlic and some um carrots and
stuff and they've all kind of caramelized down and there's all the kind of juices that have come
out of the turkey that have now started to kind of like they look a little bit like kind of like
a bother all kind of marmitey thing so you then you put that tray onto your your stove you start
to heat it up and you might want to loosen it with a bit of you could add a bit of water just
to kind of like loosen it off or you know a splash of wine would be really good you know
whatever you've got like a nice um a glass of white wine or so and boil that off that gives a
bit of acidity to again it's like that kind of oboe now depending on how you like your stock so
some people like their gravy just like flavorsome and thin some people like it thicker so my my
father-in-law likes his to be thick enough that the spoon will stand up in it i've kind of weaned
him off that but i but i know that if i give him a very thin gravy he's not gonna be too pleased
he likes something with a bit of thickness so i would then just add some flour um into the pan
again cook it stir it around with all the kind of bits and veggies in and stuff and um and allow
the kind of flour to cook out and start to thicken then you add in your stocks that you've made the
day before or a few days before and uh and then you just want to like simmer it and reduce it in
the pan and then um after kind of like 10-50 minutes or so you can then just sit that into a
into a smaller pan any kind of fat will then rise to the top and you can just um lift that off it's
good to leave like a little bit of fat but you don't want like a kind of an inch of particularly
if it's a free range bird it might have quite a lot of fat come off it because it's just going to
be kind of greasy on your plate um and um yeah so then just stick that out and you can save that for
you know something else uh putting over your wrist potato so to speak and um and then you just want
to taste it so obviously seasoning is super important um and then checking for acidity again
so whether like a little splash of um something like a sherry vinegar would be nice at christmas
you know like a little softer than a kind of um white worm vinegar something that's just going to
add a little bit of acidity but not too much harshness and then because it's christmas we're
then going to do something called Mont-Tuber, which is essentially, it's French for mounted
butter, which sounds kind of weird. Essentially, you get cold butter and we're just going to
whisk that into the pan. And what that does is it kind of emulsifies the butter into the
pan, into the gravy, sorry. It gives it a slight thickness, but it gives it a real richness
and a super shine. So when you go to a fancy restaurant and you've got like this beautiful
gravy and it's like shiny and glossy and you eat it and you're like, what is in that?
Well, it's probably about four days of effort to get to that point.
And they started off with, I don't know, 20 litres and now they've got a litre left.
But that little bit of whisking and butter in just kind of, yeah, it makes it sing.
And now I'm not saying you need to do this for every gravy, but it's Christmas, hey, so you might as well.
Yeah, exactly.
Absolutely.
And can you use any flour, like corn flour?
Can you just use whatever you've got, like plain flour?
Does it have to be a particular one?
No, anything.
I mean, I'd go, obviously, I tend to go plain flour just because I think there's actually a nice bit of flavour to it.
A cornflour works really well, particularly if it's a bit thin and you want to then add it later on, so you can make a little slurry.
And essentially, like Bisto is just cornflour with some beefy elements added to it.
And that's why you can add it at the end of a gravy.
Whereas if you add flour into the gravy at the end, you can end up with just lumpy bits of flour floating around.
So cornflour works as like the end one.
It kind of, like cornflour can give it a kind of like shininess and a kind of slightly cheaper taste.
I don't know. I don't love corn flour. It's not my favorite. It's a backup one, whereas I think
flour, you get a slightly nicer texture. But that's just my preference. But then actually,
if I was making it not for my father-in-law, I probably wouldn't put any flour in it because
I'd rather work on a kind of reduction. So actually reducing the stock down because it's
just going to intensify those flavors. But then you end up with a lot less gravies. If you're
feeding 20 people or 10 people and you know that your uncle is going to smash through half a liter
of gravy then using flour is a great way to bulk it out a little bit and there's nothing wrong with
that but probably if you're sitting in a a fine dining restaurant um and they they probably haven't
thickened it with flour because it's kind of it's it's it's giving it more body rather than kind of
the production side we're actually getting more of that collagen and gelatin which gives just gives
you more flavor in your mouth and a better feel. Another thing you can do, and if you really get
into making stock and you really want this collagen, is that you can make yourself a big
pot of gelatinous stock and then you can reduce it right now. And then what you can do is you can
pour it into an ice cube tray. Now you'd want this to go from like two liters down to kind of
250 mils to like really hard anything. And it'll feel kind of thick and shiny on the spoon. You
pour that in pop that in the freezer and then pop them out and then if ever you've got like a sauce
or a gravy that's feeling a bit lacking because you haven't made the gravy you can just chuck one
of those in and it's almost like um adding like a bistro cube but it's kind of it's not going to be
full of you know it's you've made it yourself it's and it's full gelatin and um and it'll it'll just
lift everything and make it delicious i love that that's a great little fact so that's if you like
prepping that's something you can do yeah love a bit preparation yeah that sounds fantastic
So you've made me really hungry now, Henry.
And I think we've given everyone quite a lot to digest there,
literally, haven't we, with how they can eat after their bone health.
So that's fantastic.
Well, thanks so much for those top tips, Henry.
That's really useful.
I'm going to try that for my gravies.
And it's really great to know I don't have to bother with cornflour
because it's often something I'll find and then I'll leave it in the cupboard
and then I'll be like, oh, it's kind of gone off, I think.
So it's good that you can use any.
Yeah, thank you.
And great.
I love all those tips.
I'm going to definitely be getting out of my chair without using my hands.
I think that's a good little test.
And also just that kind of, yeah, thinking about your future health
and, you know, being a bit more conscious about it.
I'm definitely going to have a chat with the wife and kind of, I don't know,
even if we don't make a plan, just actually like, you know,
just kind of being aware that there's things that we can do now
that could really be beneficial later on in life.
Exactly.
Yeah, exactly.
Brilliant.
Well, thanks very much, Henry.
until next time
we'll see you soon
cheers Hayley
cheers Henry