Life doesn’t end at 40! How to live well for longer, with Dr Jenna Macciochi
Happy Place
Fearne Cotton
4.6 • 15.2K Ratings
🗓️ 14 July 2025
⏱️ 74 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Hit midlife? What do you want to do with the second part of your life? Immunologist Dr Jenna Macciochi wonders that despite living longer now, we’re not necessarily living as healthily or as fully as possible during that time.
In this chat with Fearne, Jenna talks through how we can keep our bodies as resilient as possible as we age, so we have the strength to properly embrace the fun parts, and better cope with the shit parts.
Jenna breaks down the science of immunity and its relationship with ageing, but there’s no mad biohacking here, just simple advice to make sure your body is a comfortable home to live in: we’re talking food to support your gut microbiome, oral hygiene, and reducing stress. Plus, there’s chat about how your social life is affecting your immune system! (Spoiler – you’ve got an excuse to hang out with your mates more!)
Jenna’s book, Immune To Age: The Game Changing Science of Immune Health, is out now.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, a massive welcome to Happy Place with me, Fan Cotton. This is the show that takes care of |
| 0:07.3 | your body and your mind. Today, I'm chatting to Dr. Jenna Machoki. At that time in my life, |
| 0:14.1 | I was like, in a job I hated, in a life I hated, I was like really floundering along. And it suddenly |
| 0:19.2 | was this week-up call of like, how do I do the next part better? |
| 0:23.3 | And you can't undo all the stuff you did before, all those years of like drinking too much, late nights, all the wrong decisions. |
| 0:30.3 | But I can make changes now that take me forward. |
| 0:33.3 | And I kind of felt like I'm not done like because I've crossed over into the second half of my |
| 0:38.1 | life at 40. Like I've got so much more I want to achieve. Right. I think you're going to really |
| 0:42.7 | enjoy this chat. Even if you don't know much about Jenna, please stick with me because I think this is |
| 0:47.6 | one for all of us that we need to hear big time. Don't you feel that you sometimes just sort of ignore things that are going on in your body? |
| 0:57.2 | Or you just sort of don't really pay much attention to your health. |
| 1:00.8 | I do it all the time. |
| 1:02.2 | I have got what probably would be known as like menopause denial somewhat. |
| 1:08.4 | I'm like fingers and ears, don't want to talk about it. |
| 1:10.1 | And obviously we've chatted about it on Happy Place before. I sort of don't want to think about it. |
| 1:14.5 | But more recently, look, we're very honest in this space, aren't me? It's a safe place, guys. |
| 1:19.3 | It's a safe space. My periods are all over the gaff at the moment. My cycle is going from like |
| 1:25.6 | 33 days to 24 days and then it goes long again. It is all |
| 1:31.2 | over the place. And again, I'm still head in sand, not looking at it. And I think whenever I have a chat like |
| 1:36.6 | this, it makes me take all of this stuff more seriously, not in a scary way, but in a way where I really |
| 1:42.2 | need to like actually, first of all, write down |
| 1:44.9 | when I've had my period, because I'm still not even doing that, like an absolute idiot, |
... |
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