Paul Franks on How to Prevent Diabetes through Food & Lifestyle

Dan Churchill's The Epic Table

“Genes load the gun, the environment pulls the trigger.”

Team, today world-renowned Professor Paul Franks joins us to discuss diabetes, genes vs lifestyle, the nature vs. nurture idea, precision nutrition and more! Professor Franks received his B.S. from Brunel University, his M.S. from Exeter University, his M.Phil. from Cambridge University, and his Ph.D. from Cambridge University. Clearly, the man is a weapon. He focused his education on epidemiology, biostatistics, and genetics and then concentrated his research to study Type 2 Diabetes, specifically lifestyle interventions to improve health. Currently, he is the Genetic Epidemiology and Deputy Director at Lund University Diabetes Center in Sweden, the Genetic & Molecular Epidemiology Unit., and he is an Adjunct Professor at Harvard Chan School of Public Health in Boston. Professor Franks is truly one of the most knowledgeable people I have had the privilege to talk to in this space. He is also an elite athlete having run 50ks at 11 years old and having completed his first Iron Man at 21. In this episode we discuss what disease is, specifically diabetes, and how it is affected through genes, lifestyle, and the ways we can prevent it.

Specifically, we discuss:

• How to eat, train, and get good sleep all in a way that is healthy, disease preventative, and ENJOYABLE.
• In this episode we breakdown the nature vs nurture myth
• How can we adopt a healthy lifestyle to prevent diabetes and improve our performance when the foods offered to us are in direct contradiction
• Does our current science telling us how to improve the way we eat decrease mortality or do we need a better approach?
• We dive into using machine learning to find the best optimized food for individuals to combat diabetes
• We explain precision nutrition and how it can be used to prevent disease
• We discuss the struggles in accumulating strong nutritional data
• And Professor Franks provides a rule of thumb to ensure you are eating healthy:
• Less processed foods
• Plant centric
• Everything in moderation

Legends! I am so thrilled to have the opportunity to learn from professionals such as Professor Paul Franks, and I owe so much of this opportunity to you my epic team so I want to say THANK YOU!

You can find Professor Paul Frank’s info below:

• Professor Frank’s Twitter
• Professor Frank’s Harvard Page