Last Neanderthals Podcast
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Last Neanderthals Podcast
You’re NOT Too Old To Transform Your Health: Fitness, Mindfulness, and Preventive Health || Ziauddin Yousafzai
Ready to transform your life at any age? Hear Ziauddin Yusufzai's compelling story of embarking on a fitness journey at 54, leading to remarkable weight loss and muscle gain. Learn how just one hour of exercise every other day has not only rejuvenated his body but also alleviated psychological stress, making him feel younger and more vibrant. Discover the differences in health awareness between Pakistan and the UK, and get inspired to adopt healthier habits for long-term benefits.
Explore the power of health education and the potential of our bodies to heal through regular exercise and a balanced diet. Ziauddin shares personal anecdotes of how these changes have reduced anxiety and improved overall well-being in his family. Emphasizing intuitive eating and mindfulness, this episode advocates for raising health awareness, particularly in rural areas, to reduce dependency on medication and doctors.
Dive into the necessity of preventive health measures over symptomatic treatments, with a focus on clean water and basic health education. Ziauddin's experiences underscore how access to clean water in the UK eliminated longstanding gastrointestinal issues, pointing to the need for systemic health infrastructure changes. This episode calls for a cultural shift towards health consciousness, advocating for individual actions and government initiatives to foster a healthier and happier society. Tune in for practical advice and inspiring insights on transforming your health and well-being.
PODCAST WITH AINE HARKIN: https://open.spotify.com/episode/3Jiors8sUeBhejFdpxDRSf?si=2LohgAV7RqaE7DgdmZqFCA
https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/last-neanderthals-podcast/id1719539675?i=1000658417460
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Today, my great father, ziauddin Yusufzai, is joining me. You have had a very impressive achievement you have lost 5kg and you've gained 2kg of muscle. You started working out about a year ago, right? How has that journey been like?
Speaker 2:I wish we have had this culture in my 20s or 30s or 40s. If we had this culture, which is here in the UK, I would have led a happier and healthier life until my 50s. You just need to give one hour to yourself in a gym.
Speaker 3:I think it's so important that if you focus on yourself like you have, it can improve the next 30 years of your life exponentially. You could live for 30 more years and 20 or 25 of those years you'll be happy, healthy. You'll be mobile.
Speaker 2:I feel that we have a potential doctor in our bodies. We just need to activate that system. There was a famous saying once I heard that the country where the playgrounds are crowded, the hospitals are empty In our culture, especially in Swathe people are now not walking as much.
Speaker 3:They're very sedentary. As people get older, the more they're stationary and the more unwell they get. We should definitely be encouraging people to be more active.
Speaker 2:My final word will be on this that we need to create a healthy culture for health, and then we will have a healthier and happier society and a country but you have had a very impressive achievement recently.
Speaker 1:You have lost five kg and you've gained two kg of muscle. And you never really worked out, went to gym throughout your life. You know exercising wasn't really part of your regime. You know you ran a couple of schools in pakistan. You moved here. You know you didn't like you only worked, started working out about a year ago, right, yeah, how has that journey been like?
Speaker 2:yeah, it's really amazing. I wish we have had this culture in my life when I was in swat valley, when I was in 20s or 30s or 40s. If we had this culture which is here in the uk, uh like I would have led a happier and healthier life until my 50s. So, basically, I started going to gym last year. So for the last one year I am regularly, punctually, attending gym, like every second day. I spend one hour in gym. And you met my trainer as well. She is like my teacher and my physical mentor and her sessions have transformed my body and my life. So I started for the last one year and I feel like, uh like, now I'm 55. So until 53 I was 53 or 54 years old.
Speaker 2:So I had a lot of issues all my life, of issues all my life, small and big. Some were kind of psychological issues, like you feel a pain in a part of body and which is more psychological kind of thing, not really physical. So different issues. At different times in my 20s, in my 30, 30s, in my 40s, I had been visiting hospitals a lot like at least once in a month or at least once in two months I had been visiting doctors, but for the last one year I haven't been to see a doctor and I'm so happy for this. Like I feel that my body was like a violin, like an out of order violin, discorded, yes, and it has been tuned, like all four strings have been tuned, by these gym sessions. So I feel healthier, I feel happier and my feeling as a human, my body feeling, is as if I'm in 30s. My spiritual feelings, my All kind of feelings Are amazing. So I wish and I'm talking to you guys that it is not for me that, like, I have achieved something. I'm proud of it, what I have achieved. But Sharing with you is important Because my friends who are of my age or my contemporaries I hear from them bad stories about their health.
Speaker 2:They're not doing well. Some are feeling very, some are feeling very old, some are have kind of the beginning of some ailments and diseases sugar, blood pressure, heart issues, so many other issues and I want to share my journey of physical health with them, to tell them that at least we can live 20 to 25 years more healthy life If we just one thing, if we give one hour in 48 hours of life to our health. And that is so simple. You don't need to go to any doctor or spend money on food supplements. You just need to give one hour to yourself in a gym, in a place where you lift weights and where you do push-ups, and I mean a trainer can guide you.
Speaker 2:That is not like a rocket science. So my simple message is that uh are are my. The simple purpose, like the purpose of sharing my views and my journey with you journey of health and journey of physical, physical training with you is to share it with my age of people who are not feeling well and who are feeling disappointed and feeling old. I assure them that they will feel young, much younger than they have ever felt in their life, if they give one hour and 48 hours to their own life and to their body. And I'm telling. Somebody may say one hour should be in 24 hours, but I'm telling you about my experience.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think that's a really important message, what you just said there, because, especially in our community, I think when people get to a certain age, they almost just give up, like I can't do this anymore. I'm 50, now I need to live a relaxed life and your health just for a year, like you have it can improve the next 30 years of your life exponentially, instead of like maybe if you don't do this, you'll only live for like 10 more years and those years you'll be plagued with illnesses. You could live for 30 more years and 20 or 25 of those years will be happy, healthy, you'll be mobile.
Speaker 2:so I think sharing this is yeah, it's really important, like you said yeah, of course, and when this transformation comes, it's like at some age or at some stage in our lives.
Speaker 2:We are all human beings. We make, we become burden burden for ourselves, burden for the family, burden on hospitals, burden for society. So, to keep yourself a blessing a blessing for your own self, blessing for your family, blessing for your community this is how that you can keep your health sound and you can and you can keep yourself yourself fit very simple thing. So this is so important uh, that uh, how we can uh prolong, like, the longevity of life and also the longevity of healthy life, is possible only through uh, through working on your body by yourself, not like looking external support from doctors or like from medicine or from taking a lot of different foods which is available in the market. I think that they don't work and sometimes I feel that we all have kind of we have a potential doctor in our bodies, like our bodies have a mechanism, kind of inbuilt system, that they, that they can build themselves, like, revitalize and can help themselves. We just need to activate that system, and that system could be activated by going to gym and making it so simple.
Speaker 1:now you're right, because the more you work out right, the less anxious you feel. When you're less anxious, less stressed, your cortisol levels are low, and when cortisol is high it weakens your immune system. So what you are saying biologically makes sense. And another thing you said that I can totally relate to is that you become a blessing for your family when you work out. One of my biggest concerns was, like, I absolutely love my parents and I want them to live a healthy and a long life. So I used to have these bad existential crisis because my mom has gone through a lot of illnesses like osteoporosis.
Speaker 1:When you get news like that that your mother has osteoporosis, when you get a news like that that your mother has osteoporosis in her, 50s as well, both yeah yeah, and then you were having health concerns and you know I saw you going to hospital and I was telling these guys I'm like you guys need to hit the gym honestly, like start eating clean, work out and over the last one year, like the, the difference I've seen both in you and my uh, you know, and my mother, um, it's just been, it's it's it makes me so happy and it's taken a lot of that anxiety away that you know, god willing, if you don't have a natural death like some weird freak death, you are, you guys are going to live a very long and healthy life. And you know, just to see, you know babi, my kola babi, or sometimes mama, to see her happy, you know just. You know she always used to complain about her back issues, always angry stress, and now, like you see her happy and I think that that's such a blessing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, and she, your mother, like torpeke, is so strong. I'm very impressed with the resilience that she has like getting these two health issues like osteoporosis and lupus. It's a quite big health challenge for an individual and she's coped with it so bravely. Like she defeated both of the diseases and now she is taking no medicine at all. So she's very brave. And also, like, the credit goes to khushal as well, because with exercises like that is the integral part of my transformation, of a change in my health, positive change in my health. But together with that, I should not ignore that as well. That is, the intake of your food. Like, if I go to gym every day and every dawn and dusk, every morning and evening, but if I take a lot of wheat and a lot of like breads and a lot of oily food and uh, uh, then I mean still it will be a challenge to improve. So we he's, he, he told us to stop carbs, um, and now we are taking more, uh, kind of vegetables and proteins.
Speaker 1:So that is also very helpful, you guys have reduced carbs, yes, but I think carbs are like I say. I told them that they think that at one point I was a bit extreme with it where they thought, like you know, like I was like I don't have carbs, like I got my mom on keto but later on, like you know, my mom still eats like a bit of carbs and rice here and there, but they're just sensible with it. I think you touched on it earlier your body, if you listen to it, right, your body is its own doctor If you listen to that body. That's what Anya also said.
Speaker 3:Anya.
Speaker 1:Harkin. We just had a podcast with her and she talked about intuitive eating. So you listen to your body. When you listen to your body, you look at your hunger levels and how, when you eat something, how it makes you feel just that like eating based on that can massively improve your life. Amazing, and you guys have been a great example of that way. You know you guys have a cake here and there, but it never goes out of balance. You know you guys never go overboard with it and when I see you having cake every other day, then I do tell you off as well, you know yeah, I see that and that's good, good reminder, uh, not to listen to your stomach and to your sweet tooth.
Speaker 2:Uh, listen to listen to your fitness, feeling of fitness, that what keeps you fit and healthy. That's more important than temporary and very momentary pleasures. Pleasures are mostly always harmful, so we should seek for long life happiness than momentary harmful pleasures. Anyway, I'm really thinking of like usually when I get something positive in my life. I wish everyone should have that as well, and I'm thinking of my community, of our country and our people in Pakistan, especially in the rural areas, where there is no availability or nobody talks about health education. And everyone has this every second person, especially after 50s or 40s even. They have this big file of the prescriptions from different doctors and they go from doctor to doctor and some says one thing, other thing, other doctors say different thing. They have a lot of x-rays and a lot of tests, everything, and then they carry this heavy load of prescriptions changing every few months, every week, sometime, with many side effects, with many harmful, disastrous effects on their health, and nobody. I mean there is no, no, no, no. There there is a like. There is no health education. Are in curriculum, are in schools and in universities, especially in schools. Uh, our curriculum don't have health education.
Speaker 2:So if our children learn how to keep themselves healthy by taking the right kind of food and by having regular exercises. I think that's it that learning will go with them for their lifelong, and that little change in habits, little change in habit of taking the right food and having some like kind of little work on your own body, that changes everything. So really, I wish that our people, rather than building lots of hospitals and private hospitals and we should like, focus on building more gyms, more, more places for exercise, more playgrounds. There was a famous saying once I heard that the countries that the country where the playgrounds are crowded, the hospitals are empty, and that's true and that's true. So I wish that we promote this culture of health education and promote awareness about health, that how one can keep oneself healthy.
Speaker 2:The problem is that when we are ill or we have some health issues, we always think outside of our bodies oh I have this issue and I'm like a car and I should be taken to the workshop. So we are. We are different. Automobiles are different kind of machinery machines. We are a different type of machines than a car and a bus. We have an immune system and we have an auto correction system which helps, and we should be our first doctors to go to our own body and and bring those small changes which can bring big impact and which can transform our health and lives yeah, I completely agree.
Speaker 3:I think in our communities, in our culture, especially in swath, we have adopted these new technologies, such as like cars and things like that, but everything else hasn't caught up. People are now not walking as much, they're very sedentary, and we also have this culture of respect for elders, which is good. But that also comes with when a person gets older, then the younger people do everything for them.
Speaker 2:Exactly, you're right.
Speaker 3:So then, yes, as people get older, the more they stay in their home, the more they're stationary and the more unwell they get, and it is really devastating to people's health. Everyone, like you, said a whole cabinet full of medications. Yes, that, like khashoggi said, has like really bad side effects. So we should definitely be encouraging people to be more active, because now it's even the younger generation. They're on like, they're watching tv or they're on tiktok all day instead of playing cricket or playing football, which was more prevalent in, I think, my dad's generation and the generation above. So what can we actually do to like push this more? Do you think it needs to be in the curriculum or do you think we can implement some sort of?
Speaker 2:like cultural shift. We all can contribute to it, as you said so beautifully, that I mean this culture of taking care of elders and then they become, like um, dependent. Otherwise they're quite healthy. Yeah, uh, and we make them dependent because we are young and now they are old and, like khushal should be doing everything for me because I'm in 50s now, malala and him and Atal are supposed to do everything and I should just bask in the sun laying on my bed under a tree, kind of that's very harmful for me. So what we can do, I think we can do. We can use all sorts of mediums, all sorts of platforms, from curriculum to social awareness about health, social awareness programs.
Speaker 2:You might have heard about free medical camps in Pakistan.
Speaker 2:Like there is a big culture of free medical camps, like it's a there is a big culture of free medical camps.
Speaker 2:Like this is the kind of like as the public health system can't meet the needs of the people to treat them. So here and there in rural areas, especially sometime in urban areas as well, some volunteers, doctors, some organizations, they hold these free camp, free medical camps and people come and they meet them and then they are examined and then they are given medicine on free. But I think that more than having that practice I mean, some people may need that as well, but it should be coupled the integral part and the main part of such camps should be awareness rather than just distribution of medicines. It should be more about, like just one example, if people know two things, very small, two things that they should wash their hands properly with a good a piece of uh, uh, uh, what that is like like uh, soap, I'm soup soap, soap okay with a with a good piece of soap, if they are advised that they must wash their hands, like cleanliness, which has been advised and emphatically advised by Islam as well.
Speaker 2:So if this one change will protect them from many diseases. Similarly, what should they eat if they are guided about it? And also they should take clean water, like. I was watching news a few days ago on a pakistani private channel and there was like a government, um, like was boasting, like they were, they were bragging about that they are going to train more, uh, guest, guest gastrologist, what they're called like gastroenterologists. Yeah, gastro and entologists like to train more and more gastroenterologists because there are a lot of people ill and they need more and more doctors. And I was thinking that if they had wisdom, then they would have, like, asked people or provided people with clean water, rather than providing them with a lot of doctors.
Speaker 2:I had this gastrointestinal issues in Pakistan for almost 43 years. As a child, I had issues and then, when I was in Mangora, I had gastrointestinal issues. I went to doctors as well. It was so frustrating and for the last 12 years that we have moved to the UK, I have had no issue with my stomach and with my gastrointestinal system. Why? Because I take clean water here.
Speaker 2:Yeah, prevention is always better than kill. Exactly so the government's approach is also very, very, very unwise, are not? It doesn't get to a root to the cause.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly, it's just superficial Cosmetic.
Speaker 2:Like they are treating symptoms. So rather than providing clean water to every home, to every family, they want to have one doctor for every family. They are just on medicines for all their life. That is disastrous. Yeah, so I mean, and also we should have programs in media, like in social media. People are already, I think they are sharing their stories, stories about how to keep oneself a dead skirt but also there should be more stories and more programs on televisions in Pakistan, like on Pakistan television network, and also private channels should come forward and they should introduce health programs for the awareness of health. That will also help a lot 100% awareness of health.
Speaker 1:Uh, that is that will also help a lot. 100 like. There's this culture of like you know you said about people just go to doctors and you know they prescribe them with pills and they people think that they are the good doctors. Yeah, when here the doctors are pretty much like the last resort is to give you antibiotics, exactly because the more antibiotics you take, the more you are what you call it, the resistance immunity, yeah, the more resistant you build and the longer and then the weaker the your immune system becomes.
Speaker 1:yeah, so, like there is that culture, we also need to break and things of that nature, and I don't know to what, if it's unwise or if it's almost exploitative that you know, instead of the government teaching these, like you know, making these prevention causes and avoiding the problem in first place, educating people on basic, you know, basic, um, basic diet education and exercise, the basic health education, yeah, they, they, just all their energy is going on fixing the causes, sorry, sorry, fixing the symptom rather than the cause Exactly.
Speaker 3:I think a big issue with Pakistan is that there's so many different problems to fix. I think they just they don't know what to do. I think only like 20% of the population has access to clean water.
Speaker 2:Then you can imagine that, yes, 80% of the population is taking dirty water or contaminated water, so you can think about their health.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and I think in cities like Karachi there's now mafias over water.
Speaker 2:I mean here. That's why I emphasize on awareness, Because so many things could be done by individuals, by families, by the people. If government is unable to provide clean water to every home, then at least there should be awareness programs that the people should know, that they should boil water, then cool it down and then drink it.
Speaker 2:I think that's a really good idea that is that is the cheapest and the simplest solution for having clean water, unless we are a developed country and we can provide every home with the facility of clean uh water. So it will take time, but like my final word will be on this that we need to create a healthy culture for health and then we will have a healthier and happier society and a country.
Speaker 1:That's beautifully said. Should we end it there, yeah?
Speaker 3:Guys, thank you so much. We don't need to ask you the last question again, because we've done that.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much for having me, and I have been on this podcast for so many times.
Speaker 1:It's the hat trick.
Speaker 2:It's the hat trick now, because I'm always available. Uh and uh, I like your podcast. You, you are doing great job thank you best of luck with all your work and thank you so much.
