true friend: a cosy chat with holistic health expert Ben Warren
At the BePure Clinics Auckland and Havelock North, Ben has handpicked and trained an incredible team of Clinical Consultants to continue emphasising the importance of personalised nutrition and lifestyle. Despite being a very busy chap, Ben kindly sat down shared the details of where he’s been, what he’s up to, and what’s next.
Describe what you do?
My days and weeks are incredibly varied. At the moment my days mostly involve traveling around the country on my nationwide tour, The Hormone Secret, presenting seminars on my latest research into female hormone health. Even when I’m on the road I’m often working with clients, BePure Clinical Consultants, other members of the team or talking to the media (while Jack drives!). When I’m not on the road I’m at the BePure Clinic in Havelock North or Auckland, supporting the team and seeing clients which is always a lot of fun.
I’m currently in my second year of my Ph.D. at the University of Christchurch so I’m constantly travelling to Christchurch. At the moment I’m spending my time there looking at cancer cells replicating through a microscope in the lab or running molecules through a mass spectrometry machine.
Another week could have me flying around the globe to attend some of the most advanced nutrition, health and medical conferences in the world. I can then bring the knowledge of that these world experts are doing and why it’s working, back to the BePure Clinic.
If it’s the weekend, I’m often on the farm and my day very much revolves around eating great food and working on the farm. I enjoy walking on the beach, going for a surf or taking the girls for a ride on the horses.
What are you most proud of?
I’m most proud of our team at BePure. I think our clinical team is one of the best in the world and our Head Office team is unbelievable. Everyone at BePure is so committed, passionate and so skilled. I’m incredibly proud. It’s one of those things, I stand back and really go “wow” – I don’t quite know how we did that, but we did and it’s amazing!
Tell us about something you are up to right now?
We are currently setting up one of the most advanced laboratories in Australasia so that we can do a lot more testing ourselves, so that’s really exciting! We are full steam ahead on that project at the moment. I can’t say too much more yet, but early next year we will be releasing more information.
What are you reading/watching/listening to?
I usually have a pile of about 40 books next to my bed. A lot of these books are around parasitology. Over the past few years, I’ve been interested in parasitology - human parasites - because we run into them so often in the clinics with our clients. I’m also looking heavily at human metabolites which are involved in my Ph.D. From a business angle I’m reading a lot around value and innovation so that we can make it easier and more affordable to live a healthier lifestyle – those are the areas I’m into at the moment.
How did your journey start with BePure?
My journey with BePure started with my own health journey. I was a golfer but I had a bad back injury which, unknown at the time, was primarily driven by a food intolerance to dairy. When I changed my diet I was just amazed by how dramatically it changed how I felt. I couldn’t believe that I didn’t know that diet could have such a huge impact on how we feel? So then I thought, how did everyone not know this?!
This sparked my passion to learn as much as possible around our bodies and how they work. I wanted to learn about nutrition and the impacts of diet and lifestyle, nutrition and how it impacts how we think, feel and physiology and then how to share this with as many people as possible. I wanted people to experience the great gains that I personally experienced from improving my diet. So that’s what really drove the start of BePure.
What are your plans/inspirations for BePure?
We want to build the future of personalised nutrition and holistic health, creating a new way to understand health and wellness that is primarily looking at how we can maintain optimal health and function of the human body.
If we look at health on a spectrum, with optimal health at one end and sickness on the other, we find people are operating at a level of ‘sickness’ or ‘just not sick’ at the lower end of the spectrum. At the moment we have a medical model that is very much a disease-oriented system, which is much like an ambulance at the bottom of the cliff.
A disease treatment system tests and treats for disease, meaning the bar for health is set at the lowest point of sickness. As a result, people are considered ‘healthy’ and then all of a sudden are diagnosed as ‘sick’.
At BePure we want to completely transition our population to the optimal health end of the spectrum by testing risk factors for disease prevention. By measuring, monitoring and maintaining optimal health on a daily level we are striving to create a solution that integrates into people’s lives, making it easy for people to maintain optimal health – to look and feel great, every day.