Gut Health and Curiosity

There are some voices that are instantly recognisable aren't there? Sir David Attenborough's voice is certainly one of them. This week he turned 100. A hundred years on planet Earth. A century of looking closely. A century of asking questions. A century of staying fascinated by beetles, birds, bones, behaviour, ecosystems, extinction, evolution and the extraordinary intelligence of the living world.

The obvious memo from me this week would be nature. Nature lowers stress. Nature supports mood. Nature changes the nervous system. Nature gives your biology a signal of safety. But as I watched the tributes and thought about his life, I kept coming back to something else.

Curiosity.

Because when you really look at David Attenborough’s life, the longevity lesson is not only that he spent time in nature; it is that he never stopped being interested.

Let’s dive in...

Data

Where insight becomes impact

What I’ve been looking at this week…

This week, I’ve been looking at the science of curiosity. One study I keep coming back to looked at more than a thousand men in later life, average age just over 70. Picture them for a moment. Men carrying a lifetime of stories, habits, losses, loyalties, illnesses, routines, jokes, regrets and rituals. Some were still interested in the world. Still asking questions. Still mentally leaning forward. Others had begun to narrow. Same thoughts. Same conversations. Same day repeated with different weather.

The researchers measured two types of curiosity. Trait curiosity is your general tendency to be curious. It is the part of you that naturally wants to learn, explore, ask questions and understand the world. Some people seem to carry this through life like an internal pilot light. State curiosity is curiosity in the moment. It is the spark that appears when something catches your attention and you think, “I want to know more about that.” So trait curiosity is the pilot light. State curiosity is the spark. A curious life needs both.

Because what the researchers found over the following five years was intriguing: the men who survived had higher levels of both trait curiosity and state curiosity than those who died during the study period. [PMID: 8893314] Now, this does not prove curiosity alone extends life. Biology is never that blunt. But it gives us a fascinating clue. Staying interested may be a great travel companion through life.

Curiosity changes the state of the brain. In another study, researchers put people inside an fMRI scanner, which is a brain imaging machine that shows which areas of the brain become more active. The participants were shown trivia questions. Not life-changing questions. Small questions. The kind that make you think, “Actually, I do want to know the answer to that.” What happens in the brain when curiosity appears? The reward system starts to wake up. Dopamine pathways become involved. Dopamine is the chemical messenger linked with motivation, reward and the feeling that something is worth pursuing. Deep inside the brain, the hippocampus also becomes important. The hippocampus is the seahorse-shaped memory centre that helps turn experience into memory. [PMID: 25284006] So when curiosity rises, the brain is not just saying, “That’s interesting.” It is saying, “Pay attention. Store this. This may matter.”

I love that. Interest opens the door before information walks in.

And this is where David Attenborough becomes more than a birthday story worthy of recognition. He represents a brain that has spent a lifetime in active contact with the unknown. New species. New landscapes. New questions. New problems. New evidence. New ways of helping people care about what they could not previously see.

A curious brain is reaching. And reaching is important for ageing because the brain thrives on meaningful challenge. There is a concept called cognitive reserve. Think of it as the brain’s backup network. If your brain is a city, cognitive reserve gives you more roads, more side streets, more bridges and more ways to reroute when one pathway becomes blocked.

What many people get wrong is thinking curiosity is something you either have or do not have. I do not see it that way. Curiosity is also a practice. You can train it. You can protect it. You can lose it when life becomes too compressed, too repetitive, too reactive and too full of digital noise. And you can restore it simply by asking better questions.

Devices

Track it to hack it.

What I’ve been monitoring this week…

This week, the device I’d invite you to look at is not on your wrist. It is your calendar. I know that sounds almost too simple, but your calendar may be one of the most honest cognitive markers you own. It shows you what your life is repeatedly asking your brain to do.

Regular routines. Same meetings. Same routes. Same conversations.

Or does your calendar contain discovery?

A possibility for a conversation with someone outside your usual circle. A book you are reading slowly because it is making you think. A museum visit. A walk in a place you have never been. A documentary that sends you into a rabbit hole. A moment where you are not performing, producing, fixing or replying, but actually exploring.

That is the difference worth noticing.

Many people think their brain feels tired because they are doing too much. Sometimes that is true. But sometimes the brain is not just tired. It is undernourished by novelty and overfed by sameness.

Curiosity is cognitive nutrition.

And your calendar might just give you a clue about whether your brain is being fed. Your calendar does not just show where your time goes. It shows whether your future still has room to surprise you.

That is what David Attenborough has modelled so beautifully for a century. A life of looking closer. Asking again. Staying interested. Refusing to let the world become ordinary.

Decisions

From knowing to doing.

What this means for YOU…

This week, run what I call The Curiosity Calendar Check. It takes five minutes. Open your calendar from the last seven days and look at it as though it belongs to someone else. No judgement. No guilt. Just data.

How much of your week was maintenance? Meetings. Admin. Errands. Repeated tasks. Familiar conversations. Logistics. Replies. Responsibilities. The necessary architecture of a functioning life.

Now look for discovery. Where did you learn something new? Where did you speak to someone who challenged your thinking? Where did you go somewhere unfamiliar? Where did you read, listen, watch or experience something that made you pause? Where did you ask a question because you genuinely wanted to know the answer? Where did you feel that small inner spark of “I didn’t know that”?

If the answer is “almost nowhere,” that is useful data. It does not mean you are boring. It may mean your life has become too efficient. Efficiency is excellent for systems. It is not always excellent for the soul of a brain and the brain that wants to stay alive, alert and available

So here is the practical decision. For the next seven days, add one 10-minute curiosity cue to your calendar each day. Not another task. A question. That is all.

Write down one thing you genuinely want to understand and spend ten minutes following it. What actually happens to muscle after 50? How does light affect cortisol? Why do some people stay sharp into their 90s? What does my heart rate variability really mean? Why does music change mood? How does sourdough affect glucose?

The question almost does not matter. The reaching matters. Your brain gets a signal: there is still more to discover.

And if you want to make this even more powerful, use my 3Q method. Question. Quest. Quiet. Ask one question. Spend ten minutes on the quest. Then take one quiet minute to write down what surprised you. That final minute matters because surprise is a signature of learning. It tells you your brain met something it did not already know.

Maybe you're curious about your health and what your body needs - in which case feel free to reply to this memo with a question for me or go ahead and book a consultation with me.

💼 Case in point: A client came to see me recently and said something I hear more often than you might imagine. “I’m not depressed. I’m not ill. I’m functioning fine. I just feel a bit flat.” But when I asked him what he was curious about, he couldn't really answer. Because his life had become a loop. His brain was not empty. It was overfilled with repetition. So we started with his calendar. Starting just once a week, he had to schedule ten minutes of deliberate discovery. Something with no immediate business purpose. No productivity outcome. No networking angle. No measurable return on investment. A lecture outside his field. A gallery. A new walking route. A conversation with someone younger. A documentary on a subject he would never normally choose. A beginner’s lesson in something he was not already good at. At first, he found it uncomfortable. High-achievers often do. Being a beginner can feel like losing status, especially when you have built a life around competence. But after a few weeks, something shifted. He told me, “I've been smiling more.”

That is the shift I love. When curiosity turns a patient into a participant. And once you become a participant in your own biology, health stops being something done to you and becomes something you start to understand from the inside. That is The Million Hour Method in action. Data. Devices. Decisions. The data was his flatness. The device was his calendar. The decision was to bring discovery back into his week.

🎯 If you'd like to make decisions with precision based on your personal data and using devices that are specific for you, then book a private consultation and let's start to decode your health.

Diary

Where you’ll find me…

Last week: I was recording with Jake Humphrey and had a great evening speaking at The 22. I found myself having so many conversations about health that were really conversations about aliveness. Energy, sleep, protein, hormones, glucose, gut health and biological age, absolutely. But underneath all of that, people are asking a deeper question: how do I feel more like myself again?

This week: I'm extending my own curiosity and learning how to make candles! And will be spending an evening talking to complete strangers too. That's my curiosity calendar checked!.

Next week: I'm looking forward to a week of consultations with patients curious about what their test results reveal about what their bodies need.

Distinction

A thought to pause on…

"Longevity is not only staying alive. It is staying interested." That is perhaps one of the great lessons of David Attenborough’s 100 years on planet Earth .

Wishing you a wonderful week ahead (that's 168 hours of your Million Hour life!! Dr Alka

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