20 July 2001

I have just returned from 3 weeks in South Africa, where I was doing a series of lectures and workshops. South Africa has always been one of my favorite places in the world. It is a country of great contrasts: a country of violence, reconciliation, desolation, and hope. For me South Africa is a cauldron into which all of the conflict and challenges of the world have been poured. Except, there, everything has always been magnified by a factor of 50. It all seems to happen in South Africa before it does any other place in the world.

This was a very special trip for me, a trip I made with my youngest son Aaron. For it is the first time I have been back to South Africa since 1994 when the new constitution came into force. What I found was amazing. Johannesburg is now like a ghost city. The huge office buildings and thousand-room hotels in the center of the city are completely empty. The desks have gone, so has the plush furniture that once graced the inside of hotel rooms, and so have the people. Out of fear, all of them have fled there to the suburbs. Buildings stand empty with 'for sale' and 'for lease' signs discreetly hanging on their walls. On the streets below these skeleton-like buildings small shopkeepers sell plastic buckets, discount clothes and hoola hoops. This city reminds me of Blade Runner which takes place in a devastated Los Angeles in the year 2019. Except in Johannesburg, all this is for real. There, cars are hijacked daily and drivers are trained to protect their taxis and limousines to prevent this from this happening to them.

Yet civil war which everyone predicted has not happened. Amongst black tribes, Afrikaner and white South Africans of British decent, I found an immensely rich and passionate belief that somehow, together, they will make the future work. And, despite the horrors that have taken place in this country in the past 50 years, there is a remarkable lack of cynicism and a real sense of hope. Aaron and I found it inspiring to be there.

After my work was finished not where we only lucky enough to spend a couple of days in the Cape. We were also blessed with 5 days in the bush at Makalai. Makalai is a private game reserve located in the North Eastern Lowveld. It sits on 15,000 hectares of conservancy against the magnificent Drakensberg mountains west of the Kruger National Park. Not as well known as Londolozi, Mala Mala and some of the other longer established game reserves, Makalai carries a unique spirit of love for the land and its animals and for its guests. An ethnic bush retreat, and one of the finest private game reserves in the sub Sahara near Hoedsprut, it offers the very warmest of African hospitality within a curious mixture of thatched roofs and walls adorned with ancient mystical symbols. Tatler magazine called it the most "innovatively designed hotel in the world" and I can see why. The food was fabulous spiked with surprising flavors from different African countries.

Both Aaron and I are besotted with animals. For me there are only two places on earth in which I feel absolutely at one with myself and the universe, the African bush is one of them. The other is on a boat somewhere in the middle of an ocean .

When I am in the bush for more than three days I have no inclination whatsoever to come back to civilization.

My recent documentary TO AGE OR NOT TO AGE screens this month in the Southern Hemisphere. It has been an extraordinary experience for me, one from which I have learned a tremendous amount about how possible it is to transform the health of a person of any age simply by changing the way you eat and live. We took participants away from the high-carbohydrate low-fat diet that governments continue to tell us is healthy (although statistics show that in the last 15 years since the so called food pyramid based on this belief has created more coronary heart disease, obesity, diabetes and other forms of cancer than ever before). All that pasta, potatoes and bread are most decidedly not the way to eat for health and to prevent early aging. Before the documentary I spent some time last year researching Syndrome X, a collection of related symptoms or disorders which includes insulin resistance, the inability to deal properly with dietary carbohydrates such as sugars, together with other problems such as abnormal blood fats, elevated cholesterol or triglycerides, overweight and high blood pressure. If you have never heard of Syndrome X you are not alone. Eighteen months ago neither had I. It is a disorder that most people seriously risk developing when they reach middle age if not before. It can not only make you feel terrible, it can also make you highly prone to early aging and degenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s, cancer, diabetes, heart disease, and of course obesity.

What we did on the program was to select 8 people from all different walks of life and all different ethnic groups between the ages of 30 and 60. We then had them checked for the standard medical parameters which not only determine health but also their biological age. LDL/HDL cholesterol , triglycerides, lean body mass to fat ratio, (the most important of all in relation to aging), fasting insulin levels, blood sugar levels and blood pressure levels, as well as measuring how well their bodies process oxygen. We then put them onto an anti-Syndrome X Paleolithic diet, (which, by the way, you will find in two of my forthcoming books- THE X FACTOR DIET to be published by Random House in January which deals with permanent fat loss without ever having to go on a slimming diet again; and the book I am writing now - AGE POWER.

I also put our documentary participants onto a simple program of weight training using videos designed by one of my personal heroes, the sport nutritionist, Michael Colgan. After only  five weeks we measured these people again. The results were phenomenal. To begin with, every single participant had registered abnormal parameters when first measured at the hospital. After 5 weeks, virtually all of these parameters had normalized. Not only was I stunned by these life-changing results so was our medical advisor, expert in functional medicine, Dr Tony Edwards. None of us dreamed that you could bring about such a revolution so quickly.

I enjoyed working with our participants enormously. What was most exciting to me however was not these dramatic shifts in the medically measurable parameters but rather the sense of personal power and freedom that all of these people began to experience between the second and third week of the change. They really developed attitude. Day by day they became more and more full of joy and enthusiasm just about being who they are and living their lives. I grew to love each one of them and learned a great deal more about how powerfully you shift the way the body functions, you also shift your whole attitude towards life.

At the moment I am nose deep in research and writing for AGE POWER - to be published in September 2002. At the same time, I am busy finishing my novel SELKIE to be published by Harper Collins probably also 2002. That is about all for now. I am feeling just a wee bit overwhelmed (not an unusual experience for me) as I sit down at the computer. I still have that funny voice in my head that says "Oh dear! Can I really make this work and produce a book?" Send prayers.

With lots of love to all of you.

Leslie