“Innovation and Creativity - The search for a higher life quality” with Olga Donica - Part 2

Olga Donica is in conversation with Jonathan Humphries, your host.  Olga is Head of Innovation, Research and Longevity at Clinique La Prairie.

In part 2, they will be discussing the latest thinking around innovation and the leading edge holistic health supplements brought out recently by Clinique La Prairie. These supplements are designed to improve our quality of life, and they are based on a whole research of genetics and epigenetics and the environmental impact on our genes, touching on centenarians and what it means to live longer and better.

Haven't listened to Part 1? Here it is!

Join us for this enlightening conversation! Follow our journey and our discussion with some of the most renowned and influential people of our time.
 
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Transcript

Olga CLP podcast part 2.mp3

Jonathan Humphries [00:00:01] I am your host, Jonathan Humphries. Welcome to the HoCoSo Conversation - Part two. These are unfiltered conversations with people sharing their life journeys and learnings to help us become better versions of ourselves. Welcome to the HoCoSo Conversation. Today I will be in conversation with Olga Donica. She is the head of Innovation, Research and Longevity at Clinique La Prairie. Clinique La Prairie has over 90 years of innovation and research and in the fields of longevity and prevention. Today, we will be discovering and exploring the role of innovation and Olga's passion and curiosity around innovation. And we will be touching on the latest thinking and product that has come out of Clinique La Prairie, which is the holistic health supplements, which are designed to improve our quality of life, reduce inflammation. And it is based on a whole research into the fields of genetics and epigenetics, which is around the environmental impact on our genes. What we will also be looking at is the overall aspects with regards to stress, the effects of cortisol, the emphatic system, gut, health, sleep. We will look at balance and performance, now obviously a lot of our audience are in stressful situations; they need that to perform. And however, there are tools available and the holistic health supplements are one of the leading edge in the world in order to have a balanced lifestyle, in order to have a better longevity of life. We will also be touching on centenarians, and we will be looking at what it means to live longer and better. The recent studies are saying that one in two children born today have the chance of reaching 100 years old, depending on, obviously, location and environmental factors. And therefore, it's even more important that we focus on both our mental health and our physical health and our overall well-being. And holistic health supplements is one of the tools to address that. It is an absolute privilege to be working with Clinique La Prairie and helping communicate this wonderful product to our audience. So without further ado, I'm going to introduce you to Olga Donica. Thank you very much. I guess that leads me into; let's talk about holistic health supplements. And you mentioned before about, you know, the process is always around idea generation and then coming up with different opportunity, the different options and then prototyping. So what was the genesis of the idea to create holistic health supplements? Was it around offering clients something that they could have once they leave Clinique La Prairie, or what was the rationale for creating this? 

Olga Donica [00:03:07] So holistic health is one of the most important projects of Clinique La Prairie right now. And the reason it's that important, we give so much emphasis, is because of our longevity expertise. So we are a medical institution specialized in preventive medicine and longevity. And what we create, we create clinical experiences for our clients, for our guests across a program that is built on seven days stay and it's all built and integrated in a holistic way across our four pillars. So you as a guest, if you come to Clinique La Prairie, you choose based on your goals, the theme of your program. And each program is built based on medical pillar, nutrition pillar, movement and well-being. Why? Because we want to create these 360 degrees holistic intervention in a clinical way, and it's all about the experience. We want our guest at the end of the week to have this wow impression. They've been here not in the medical institution only, but they had this comprehensive and integrative experience and discoveries. It's really a moment of discovery of themselves. We learned so much screenings from longevity, blood markers, genetic tests, epigenetic tests, MRIs, ultra sounds, other additional tests. This really allows us to understand and to know our guests clinically, medically and nutritionally, and to drive personalized intervention while they are here. The huge gap was after they would leave. We felt that we were not present enough in their daily lives because no matter how much knowledge you can transfer to your client in seven days, it's all about the supportive part that was happening after their stay here. They would go back home and then they would try to apply, of course, important strategies and recommendation that we have given to them. But at a certain point, they are quite progressively, they were quite lost. So we felt that we as a longevity institution with expertise of 90 years of existence in science, we had the responsibility to provide advanced tools for our clients that will focus on these longevity aspects. So the holistic health, it's actually a four year project. It started always with the idea that how we can deliver to our guests, not necessarily guests that have been here, also for clients that never been to Clinique La Prairie, a tool where we actually transfer all this knowledge in a capsule. So this was our first step in creating a product that deeply represents the longevity method of Clinique La Prairie. And holistic health is actually a longevity food supplement line that aims the complexity of aging mechanisms. It's four dimensions. So at immunity and regeneration level, detoxification so liver function, metabolism, sleep, and then brain health. You know, when it comes to aging, you might judge immediately that, oh, I'm quite young. I don't really need this kind of solutions right now. Well, let me tell you that we actually start to age very early in life after 30 years old. It's what scientifically is defined as functional decline, this loss of performance of our organs and body systems, that, of course, at the beginning happens at micro level. So you cannot actually tell that you are really aging. But at that molecular and cellular level, there are already changes happening that will lead us to this loss of performance and that significant decline later in life. We as a preventive medicine institution, we don't really want to focus on chronic diseases or diseases at a later stage of our life. For us, it's really important to act way before when everything starts to happen. And those are actually, if I may say, for our audience, those are inflammatory processes that is actually the common ground for this functional decline for aging mechanisms, age related damage and chronic diseases. So our line of holistic health really focuses on these aspects. So it's a line of food supplements, all vegan. So all our capsules are vegan. 80% of our ingredients are plant extracts that are known scientifically to play an important role in these complex mechanisms of aging. So as I say, we have four themes in the collection that, according to the client or individual needs, would actually be combined in a way to reach kind of a certain level of personalization in therms of which food supplement you as an individual have. And that really aims, one of the goals is also to have kind of enhancement at these four levels, everything that touches the immune system under the genetic process, your ability detoxify, which by the way decreases with age. The younger we are, we are much more performant to detoxify from toxic compounds. As we age, we lose this ability, meaning that your body will be able to remove or excrete less and you'll accumulate more. And this accumulation is what's actually accelerating the cellular damage and then other mechanisms of functional decline. And then we have the focus on metabolism and sleep and brain health. By the way, brain is something that I am super passionate about. It's that neuroscience and brain health and how our brain actually is connected to a different system inside of our body. And it's why we wanted to create the solution for the brain as well that will focus on boosting cognition, but also protecting the brain because again brain needs antioxidant protection, anti-inflammatory protection and healing action as well. 

Jonathan Humphries [00:09:17] That's wonderful. 

Olga Donica [00:09:17] So it's all surrounding four systems that are declining with aging. And no matter it's a woman or a man, we all experience this, let's say age-related damage that really happens in early stage of our life and earlier will act on the type of diet that we're getting, stress that we are exposed to, sleep that we are managing to have better will be managed across our life and later in life would be able to delay the installation of chronic diseases and reduce quality life. 

Jonathan Humphries [00:09:56] Mm hmm. And that's the real objective here, is to really have the opportunity to have a better quality of life as we age.

Olga Donica [00:10:06] Absolutely, as we age, yes. Because longer we already live, but not necessarily healthier. And again, I'm just trying to making sure that I'm not getting wrong here in terms of explanation. As I said, we're a longevity institution. We don't want to stop aging because you cannot. Aging is a natural part of human body. You should not neglect it. We should embrace it. And exactly. Putting together all these pillars of healthy diet or strategic diet that aims, you know, protection and healing and movement, exercise, good quality sleep, maybe reducing the intake of alcohol, intake of sugar, intake of animal protein could be some of the strategies that would really have a significant impact on the way how fast we age and how progressive the process is inside of our body. 

Jonathan Humphries [00:11:01] Mm hmm. So there's many aspects to what you're saying here. And what I like about it is obviously this focus around prevention. Inflammation is obviously one of the key aspects to aging well or not well. And I presume obviously if you take the holistic health supplements, it's not for your clients, then that they can have any lifestyle that they want and just take the supplements to try and counteract that lifestyle. It's got to be connected and also they've got to be looking at as many ways as possible as reducing the inflammation in their system. And, you know, part of that is obviously not just diet and all these other things, but reducing stress levels. As we know, stress has a significant impact in terms of inflammation as well in various parts of the body. So I'd like to kind of go to this whole quality of life, because I presume a lot of your clients are there, and I would assume that they are there because they have high performance, high exposure. They're in a responsible position. They need it in a way to make sure that they can perform at the ultimate level and the highest possible level of whatever that might be in their profession or in their lives. Stress is a normal factor that goes alongside these high performance positions. And I'm trying to link it into the audience a bit. A lot of the audience are from the hospitality sector, senior executives of all kinds across the sector. They've got obviously significant responsibilities the sector's in, you know, let's say it's doing extremely well at the moment. But for the last few years, it wasn't. And it's, I'd say, it's turbulent is probably the right way of saying that. So what about the approach to stress? How is that incorporated with what you're offering at Clinique La Prairie and also around, you know, the supplements themselves, obviously? How are you able to communicate that this whole holistic health approach is helpful in order to help with coping with stress as well? And the reason I'm kind of linking it to that is, you know, we've done a whole series on Resilience called the Hospitality Resilience Series. It was all around different ways of being able to make ourselves have higher resilience levels so that we can cope with the uncertainties and unpredictability that's set upon us. And I think that's all we can do, actually. We can be in a better place to cope with unpredictability and uncertainty, but we can not be in a good place. And when we're not in a good place, we can't perform. If we're in a good place, we can perform to the best of our abilities at that particular point in time. So once again, it kind of links to quality of life, because if we're in a good place, then we have the opportunity to make the most of the opportunities that life presents itself and the responsibilities that we have. So I was just wondering how that ties in with everything you're doing, because it's one thing to kind of offer a supplement. It's another thing to kind of say this can help in some way offset the stresses and strains that you're presented with, which would obviously help impact the immune system. 

Olga Donica [00:14:22] It's a very good topic to explore. Let me tell you that stress, it's actually a good mechanism of reaction to the changing environment. It's how we actually work. It's a good thing in the beginning. It only becomes deleterious when it's chronically existing in our daily routine. So this chronic stress then causes a lot of disruptive effects in the body because by the very well-documented reaction, which is the production of cortisol which is our stress hormone, which makes us to be reactive to the situation, which is quite important and good for body biology. But then stress can be really nocif to different body systems, to our quality life, to our overall health, impacting sleep in a very, very dramatic way. By the way, if you are not managing to have a good sleep, you are not managing to recover because the process of repair and regeneration happens mostly at night. Let me remind you that your brain is recovering during the sleep. There's a very well-documented system that is called the lymphatic system built by glial cells that is responsible to detoxify, clean and repair our brain tissues through the night. But glial cells are only active when we sleep. So if you have a disrupted sleep, meaning that all this, let's say, mechanisms that are naturally there to repair here and protect or not be able to execute that given task. And that happens across all our body immune system as the other case. So we are repairing constantly our body, but the maximization of this process happens at night. So stress will have an impact on these processes. And let me, Jonathan, tell you something. Stress management starts in the gut. Gut has this factor, number one, how we start to heal and to recover from stress deleterious effects is that the composition of your gut microflora, the bacteria that lives inside of your gut that will be responsible and help to cope better with stress and anxiety in a very interesting way. So here at Clinique La Prairie, in our programs, we are actually, by default across all our programs is a global approach. We focus on gut health recovery and recovering in a natural way throughout food strategies. This gut integrity and microbiota composition because we have bacteria inside of our gut that actually have a positive impact and beneficial impact on mental and cognitive health. And actually a disruptive gut composition can really have a even more dramatic effect in our lives. So I would say the starting point, it's there. It's how we can bring food elements or even food supplements that will have that. And of course, then all the elements that are constructed and integrated around to reach this, let's say, environment of calming, relaxing, detaching, disconnecting, for example, meditation is something very, very important. And we also do it in our programs as a tool of, let's say, helping our patients to understand better stress and stress management and how actually throughout meditation process we actually can heal. Because, yes, we are also healing. We can heal our bodies, brain and our ability to be reactive and responsive to the environment in a more balanced way. When it comes to, let's say, nutraceuticals, which are food supplements, you have so many ways to also act in a holistic way. And when we have created the line of holistic health food supplements, we thought that we really need to have kind of a tool or product that will aim naturally this process of healing, recovering the circle and return, improving sleep, giving tools for the relaxation. When I say tools, actually are a bite of compounds that we place in the capsule. And of course, that helps with the stress management, but it's all about also discipline. More disciplinated you are, more responsive and reactive you will be to the stress and your all inner organs and systems would be affected in such a dramatic way. Think about cardiovascular system. Think about your immune system. Cortisol is a really kind of hormone that shapes the health of all this inner balance. So yes, in holistic health, we have actually two tools that can be actually used isolately or combined together. And this is the balance product or then the energy which focused strictly on brain health and cognition, empowerment. And in all our formulation, we're actually about to kind of create a very intelligent formulation for all our products. And we didn't actually explore that because this goes again back to the innovation part. So we wanted to create kind of an exclusive formulation that would be unique, complex and holistic at the same time. And all our food supplements have been created following this three layer technology. So we have three big groups of compounds that makes part of each formulation. And we have actually a first layer which is holistic complex. We have second layer that is called foundation ingredients and third layer that is called enhancing ingredients. These two layers are present across all the products that we have in our collection and holistic complex would be the one that will be common to all the products. And that holistic complex is built by five bioactive extracts that aims the pillar of holistic intervention which is stress management, immunity, regeneration, senescent action or senolytic action in this case, antioxidant and anti-inflammatory property. Why? Because we said, we decided together, of course, with our experts in the field. You as a guest, as an individual, no matter what the cure you use, the holistic complex would be there to cover the needs of what we understand is a longevity intervention, which is always linked to inflammatory and oxidative stress, is linked to repair and rejuvenation, it's linked to your immune system, it's linked to your brain modulation and as well senescent process. If I may, the senescent cells are cells that actually lose their ability to divide. They are trapped in this cycle cell arrest. So they cannot divide anymore, but they don't die. They are resistant to apoptosis, meaning that those cells eventually will start to develop a phenotype of pro-inflammatory activity. Senescent cells are creating inflammation, are creating functional decline, are accelerating the aging processes. So across all our formulations we have this holistic complex that is common and then foundation ingredients and enhancing ingredients would be different from one product to the other to target the therapeutic goal of the supplement. So in foundation ingredients, we have elements, bioactive extracts and sometimes some vitamins and minerals that are there to play that synergy of the overall formulation and conditioning ingredients would be characteristic to each goal. So if we talk about detoxification there, you'll have mostly ingredients that will enhance, boost and modulate your ability to detoxify. If we talk about the brain, definitely there will be elements that will promote brain health, brain performance, cognition in a way that would be boosted. And then we have the third layer, which is the enhancing ingredients, and they're mostly placed there to play this synergy and to enhance the overall therapeutic action of the product, but also to protect inside formula, inside of the capsule against oxidation. I don't know if you know Jonathan, but in food supplements we have an issue of stability and quality is that when you use natural extracts, plant based extracts, they are extremely sensitive to the storage, shelf life. So you are creating a product with the most advanced and let's say interesting elements extracts that across the shelf life of the product, they might oxidate side of the capsule. So you are losing the quality of ingredients. By the way for our holistic health food supplements, we're running quality tests every six months to make sure that what we are delivering in the product is what we aimed at the beginning came out from the bench to the final product in the capsule. So it's really important elements of this enhancing ingredients to protect overall formulation against oxidation and to make sure that the product is delivered to you has exactly the defined and established action that was done by our experts in the field. By the way, our Holistic Health Project was an in-house project, but we have a life science team, external team, that worked with us to validate and to finalize the formulations. So we kind of draft it. And it's funny because if you look at the first draft of what we had as holistic health supplements at the beginning and at the end, well it's kind of a dramatic change because all of our food supplements are designed prototyped produced, in fact, here in Switzerland. So we have to follow Swiss regulation about food supplements, which, by the way, is still very strict, probably the most strict across all countries, and certain ingredients that we call it internally fence ingredients might not be authorized in Switzerland. So we kind of shaped our formulation across the time of research and development. And then at the end we submitted the formulations to our life science team. So they were experts. Cannot mention names, but we had an expert in genetics, in immunology, in nutrition, in pharmacology that helped us actually to make sure that what we decided, integrated and combined together, we're going to work, we're going to be therapeutically interesting and efficient as well. And just to come back to your initial question about stress and what kind of solution we might have. Of course, it's all about integrating several aspects of health, such as good quality sleep, recovery. Blue light really affects the sleep and recovery, the diet that you are getting, the exercise that you're doing, and then of course, solutions such as nutraceuticals, food supplements that really play an enhancement role on top of everything that you're doing already as a baseline as a lifestyle. Again, as you mentioned, and this is a very important detail to be precise, is that food supplement alone? Well, might have the effects, but in order to maximize and to aim what was actually defined at the beginning, you really have to integrate in a holistic way with other aspects of our daily routine and health. And definitely together they have this powerful synergy and the efficacy and efficiency which we are looking for would be empowered absolutely. 

Jonathan Humphries [00:26:21] Yeah. You know, I think that's what makes what you've created here world class. And I think that's why it's really moving the nutritional supplement industry forward. It's leading edge. And one of the things that I have spent quite a bit of time thinking about, it's kind of linked to a personal situation in terms of seeing the decline of my own parents and quality of life. But now there's a lot of studies around quality of life as we age. And I know that you have an interest in the centenarian area and you've explored research in the centenarian area, at least from what I've seen, you know, this has come out of, did a course recently which is called the Modern Elder Academy, which is all around midlife transition. And what was coming out of the research that they've conducted of people later stage life is that those that feel that they have a purpose in life and can contribute to what life has to offer, whether it's community and friends and family, they tend to live seven years longer than those that don't with all other things being considered. And if you think about that, seven years, that's the same as if you quit smoking at the age of 50. The chances are that you could potentially add seven years to your life as you grow older. So I would like to just explore that with you around quality of life with regards to purpose, the social part, how important that is as we grow older. So maybe you can talk to the centenarian research and how that links also with maybe your passion around longevity. 

Olga Donica [00:28:05] Absolutely. Well, centenarians are kind of impressive individuals and bodies in body biology because you can learn a lot about the path of life, the factors and behaviors across their life, and understanding a little bit from outside, what are the main factors that will contribute to longevity in this case, living or reaching hundred years of age? And again, of course, biologically, there are many aspects such as genetic factors, epigenetic changes, the environment mostly that will play a fundamental role in how the path to longevity will go to these individuals. And definitely you and our audience knows that when it comes to centenarians across the globe, we have blue zones that are actually recognized as places where they concentrate on the number of individuals living around 100 years or more. And those five places are Sardinia in Italy, Greece, an island in Greece, which I don't remember the name, Okinawa in Japan, Costa Rica and California. So there's a lot of no good quality studies about centenarians and this challenging of understanding what exactly are behind of leading such a long life. And one of the very interesting aspects it's fascinating me a lot is actually two: There's many factors that they've been able to identify; the type of diet that they're having. For example, the natural movement. They say the movement that they have daily across their daily tasks: gardening, cleaning the house, cooking, doing some agriculture. It's what they call the natural movement. And it's something that we actually, humans, today are doing in gyms and in sport rooms. As with the course that this all guided with cardio, with muscles, not that kind of activity. It's more natural movement of the body, which is a significant factor for longevity. And another aspect that's been identified is actually you've mentioned the social part, you know, the purpose and to belong, to belong to a group. Two important aspects that are identified across all these blue zones and contribute in a significant way to longevity. So basically that leads us to understand that mental part and cognitive part is absolutely important to contribute to slow down the aging process and to slow down the age related damage or decline. You know, brain is among the most complex structure that we have in our body, but also the most sensitive ones. So, for example, environmental factors such as pollution, stress exposure, lack of sleep, the type of diet that you are having will deeply shape the neurobiology of your brain. And this says a lot, does a lot to us about how we should take care about our health and about brain and sleep and stress. And it's true that our neurone connections are absolutely influenced by social parts, the way with which we are connected, the trust that we are building with others, family, friends, neighbors, colleagues, whatever, and the purpose, as you mentioned. What's your position or possible your life meaning when you wake up in the morning, your purpose? And this is something very, very important, those in the context of longevity. And then we can mention many other aspects such as calorie restriction, plant based protein intake. Nutrition speaking, there's many, many aspects that been studied; the intake of omega 3 fatty acids that are also important in the context of inflammatory processes and aging as well, the conception part. So across these studies, what they have been able to notice or to observe is that women are procreating later in life, actually have kind of protection. I mean, there are biological mechanism associated with the way how fertility goes and the later we have the first child, this would be a factor that will contribute to longevity to women. So reproduction actually later in life is a marker for longevity in women. And this is again, it's a very fascinating outcome. Doesn't mean that we need to plan, let's say, later in life. It's just an observation that was made. So it's a learning process. We can learn a lot from centenarians, but Jonathan let me tell you, that's probably in the last ten, 20 years, we'll have way much more centenarians than we do now because the access to the technology, health care system, prevention, all the treatments and the information that we have available, that actually makes us way much more knowledgeable that we were way before. And this prevention part. And by the way, prevention is a very complex intervention. Might be "Ah you eat some plants, you sleep 8 hours" and that would be fine with you and you live longer and better. But we see it in our daily routine across all of the experience that we give because we quite experiences all the problems that we build and implement here. Prevention is a complex task and requires a lot of resources, strategies and knowledge to be correct in them. 

Jonathan Humphries [00:33:42] Absolutely. And I think there's also this balance of incorporating prevention behaviors in our lives, but then not being overwhelmed by it, that it creates stress because back in, that can contradict the benefits that we're actually creating. So it is all about the balance of everything that we're doing. And, you know, I think you've probably heard the same studies as well that obviously depending on location and environmental factors, that there's a 50% chance or a one in two chance that if you're born today, that you could live to 100. So it's the population from that regard is only going to increase. And I think it's then it's not about length of life, it's about the quality of their life that we actually have. So I just want to say, Olga, thank you and to your team and Clinique La Prairie to contributing towards a better quality of life for individuals and for everybody. And obviously what it does and I know that the holistic health and Clinique La Prairie and the science and the research that you're doing is obviously at the moment it's leading edge and it's obviously available to those that can afford it. But as with all innovations. Innovation trickles through the system, and over time there will be innovations available to more and more people and more and more of the population and as a benefit of the leading edge research that you're doing. So I just wanted to say thank you for making sure that the innovation is occurring and that we have a direction to higher quality of life as we get older. So thank you very much, Olga, for being here today. 

Olga Donica [00:35:20] Thank you, Jonathan, for having me here. It was a big pleasure to have such a exciting and interesting discussion. I hope this was a good topics that people that are hearing us could apply. You know, I always like to say small steps to big changes. So if you are able to apply a few aspects of what we define as prevention and healthy lifestyle, you are already halfway through age longevity, that's for sure, and quality life, as you say. And definitely lifespan is one thing, but healthspan is completely another dimension and it's where the complexity goes. And was a very big pleasure to be here to exchange with you about longevity and health and prevention. Thank you. 

Jonathan Humphries [00:36:06] Thank you very much, Olga. Thank you for listening to the HoCoSo Conversation. We hope you enjoyed this episode. If you did, please do share us with your friends and community. Take a look at our previous episodes and look out for our next ones. We look forward to you joining us on this unique exploratory journey.