The Doctor double act who can help you live healthier for longer
It’s not only about how long you live — but the quality of those later years. Here, TV’s van Tulleken twins reveal how their brilliant new anti-ageing series for the Mail can help YOU do just that ...
TV doctor chris van tulleken is explaining how he and his other half underwent counselling last year. ‘couples’ counselling, like marriage guidance, I guess,’ he says. ‘We just felt it would be a good thing to do.’
But it wasn’t his marriage that was in trouble (everything with journalist wife dinah, the mother of his one-year-old daughter, is ticketyboo); it was his relationship with his genetic other half. Yes, in the ‘spouse’ seat during counselling was Xand, his identical twin and fellow telly doctor.
It’s quite a revelation that these two — both contenders for the title of tV’s sexiest doctor, surely — have a relationship that might require them even to think of counselling.
The brilliant pair have emerged, in recent years, as the Ant and dec of the medical broadcasting world and two of the most in-demand medical experts in the country.
Aged 40 (Xand is older by seven minutes), they are both eminently qualified doctors, oxford-educated and experts in their fields. chris has a Phd in molecular virology and a diploma from the London School of tropical Medicine. Xand, whose Masters in public health comes from Harvard, is an authority on ebola. He has worked for the World Health organisation and lectures all over the world.
together, they provide accessible, quackeryfree answers to health dilemmas.
Now they are launching an unmissable antiageing series in the Mail, starting today with an eight-page pullout, which will show you simple, science-backed ways to stay healthy, mentally sharp and looking and feeling your best.
this series is based on their latest BBc smash hit, the twinstitute, which sees them taking 30 sets of identical twins and subjecting them to a barrage of tests as they try out various lifestyle changes — more of which later.
this series couldn’t be more timely: while life expectancy has generally risen over the years, many people’s healthy life expectancy ends at 64; after that, the risk of heart disease, dementia, stroke and cancers increases significantly. that means millions of us will spend the last fifth of our lives dogged by disease.
this is driving a growing field of research into ‘healthspan’; essentially improving not only people’s life expectancy, but the quality of life in those extra years.
today in the Mail’s pullout, the twins focus on anti-ageing your brain, and show you simple strategies to give it a boost — from telling you
why you’re becoming forgetful to revealing the techniques you can use to improve brain health and function.
NeXt week, they’ll be tackling stress, fitness and how to sleep better. together, all four of the life-changing, free pullouts form a complete, medically-backed plan. Not surprisingly, drug treatments are a key focus of healthspan researchers, but the emphasis should not exclusively be on more pills, suggests chris. ‘the pills many of us end up taking not only don’t work brilliantly, they won’t make you feel great.’
tellingly, he adds, many of the drugs used to treat the over-50s ‘are a replacement for a good lifestyle’.
‘one of the saddest things in my career as a doctor was being in a large hospital, seeing so many old and lonely people with diseases that, for many, were probably lifestyle-related.’
If there is a single motive that drives their telly work — and informs their series for the Mail — it’s ‘helping people take control over their destiny’, says chris.
‘While doctors can make a difference if you get a specific disease such as cancer, in terms of your lifespan and quality of life, the person who has real control is
you,’ he explains. one of the most compelling experiments on the twinstitute involves two sets of twins taking up painting and pottery to test the benefits of learning a skill on cognitive function — with some stunning results: one twin, in her mid-60s, shaved ten years off her brain age. As a result, chris and Xand are now taking up the piano (they tell you more about this in today’s supplement).
‘It’s easy to believe that our days of acquiring a new skill are over, but it’s never too late to learn,’ says Xand. ‘In themselves, doing these things is joyful, but they may have profound effects on the length and quality of our lives.’
Indeed, the brothers say joy is fundamental to ageing well.
the twins also made twins stay awake for 30 hours to test sleep deprivation, showing its effect on cognitive function and how to combat it; pitted other sets of twins against one another to see if short, hard bursts of activity were an effective way of exercising; and tested if mindfulness really combats stressful situations.
the results of these experiments — and more — are revealed in today’s and next week’s pullouts.
the twinstitute is a programme that only the van tullekens could have got away with presenting, insists chris.
‘I’m uncomfortable with the idea of twins being used as guinea-pigs in scientific experiments,’ he says. ‘But with us being part of the tests, it’s more collaborative. I have a problem with scientists who aren’t twins doing this sort of thing.’
Xand interrupts (they are champion interrupters and correctors). ‘obviously there are plenty of great twins researchers out there,’ he begins.
chris isn’t having it: ‘No. I feel proprietorial about it.’
An audience with these two is quite an experience. to say they bicker is to put it mildly. every third question involves them disagreeing. even when they are agreeing, they manage to disagree. And this is after counselling?!
on the other hand, it’s rare to come across even ‘normal’ siblings who are this close. When Xand discovered, to his surprise, that he was going to be a dad, chris was the first person he called. Xand knew chris was going to propose to his wife before she did.
they do better than most trying to articulate what it is to be an identical twin.
‘Being a twin is not always easy. It’s complicated having someone else moving through the world with your character and your dNA,’ says chris. ‘When they have children, those children are your children. Xand’s son is biologically mine; my daughter is his daughter. It’s a weird thing in life to have a clone.’
Good weird or bad weird? Both, he says. ‘When Xand is not with me, I’m not fully present; there’s a whole other me who isn’t in the room. But when he is with me, it removes a little bit of me. I love having him around and he’s also my best friend, but it’s strange: like having another body that you’re not in control of.’
ANd there is something a little freak-show about how their lives are entwined. they both went to the private King’s college School in South-West London: nothing weird about that — but the same medical school?
they love to tell the story of how one senior doctor reacted when he discovered one of them, whom he expected to be alert on the wards, fast asleep — a classic case of mistaken identity.
For a while their paths seemed to diverge. they chose different specialisms, and Xand moved to
the U.S. Then Chris got involved, by chance, in TV. He was giving medical support to a team of explorers when he was spotted by producers. He mentioned he had a twin who was also a doctor. You can imagine how excited the telly folk became.
Hilariously, their ‘twinness’ has been both a selling point and a hindrance. Presenting together is a nightmare. Xand was told to grow a beard because camera operators couldn’t tell them apart.
But everyone gets them muddled even when they are doing solo projects. Xand moans: ‘One reviewer called me Chris the whole way through his piece!’
Chris didn’t mind. ‘It was a good review. They used my picture.’ Their name is Dutch, but their parents are Canadian. Their father is an industrial designer; their mum a financier with a background in publishing. Both moved to London as students and went on to create what sounds like an extraordinary home life.
Their father provided the fun — and the blood and gore. ‘A lot of the stuff in our kids’ show comes from things we did with Dad,’ says Chris. ‘He would go to the butcher’s and buy us organs to do experiments on to teach us about our bodies.’
When their father brought home pig’s trotters, their mum showed them how to cook them. ‘Mum was great,’ says Chris. She worked in publishing as an editor and was an industrial designer and artist. She was a powerhouse, too, by the sound of it.
‘Mum wouldn’t mind me saying that she was the breadwinner,’ says Chris. ‘Dad was very funny and laid-back. Mum was — put it this way, she will give us notes on our sell-out West End show.’ He turns to his brother. ‘Is it true to say, Xand, that Mum is never quite satisfied? I think I could say that.’
Xand chuckles: ‘Mum will read my articles and say, “Why are you being so aggressive in your argument, why don’t you try this?” ’
Astonishingly, both still juggle media careers with medical ones. In Chris’s book, being a convincing TV doctor means being a practising one. ‘Otherwise, you don’t have a connection to the world you’re representing,’ he says.
So next summer Chris will have a break from TV to go back to the NHS — ‘and see what happens’.
The big difference in their lives comes with the domestic. Chris is settled in North London, with his family. Xand, who came back from the States a few years ago, is ‘single, as in unmarried’.
They have very different experiences of parenthood. Xand’s son Julian, nine, arrived when he was living in Canada. He’d had a fling with Julian’s mother, but was not in a relationship. Fatherhood came as a shock.
‘It was terrifying to me in a way that is hard to relate to now, because he is by far the best thing that has ever happened to me,’ he admits. He credits Julian’s mum with ‘making it easier than it might have been’. ‘Even phoning me and saying, “We are going to have a baby,” was courageous. She could never have seen me again, said, “I’m better on my own,” but she gave me the opportunity to be a dad.’
One might expect that Chris — the organised one, the consummate planner, the one who consistently complains about his brother being late and disorganised — would have hit the roof.
‘He could have,’ admits Xand. ‘But he didn’t. He said, “This child will have my DNA so it’s basically my baby too. We will get through this.” He was brilliant.’
Xand and his son have a ‘brilliant’ relationship, but it is a longdistance one. ‘The thing I miss is the school run, like our dad did. I do feel envious of anyone who gets to see their kids every day.
‘Watching how much hard work it was for Chris and Dinah, it was also an odd thing of thinking, I’m glad I’m not him — but also, I wish I were him.’
The Twinstitute is on BBC2 on Wednesdays at 8.30pm.