Keith Gooden: In today’s episode of the Motorhome Matt podcast…
Matt Sims: I’ve had some shocking news.
Keith Gooden: And we answer your questions about low-emission zone fines, ensuring your ability to tow, and water system issues. Welcome to the Motorhome Matt podcast. I’m Keith Gooden.
Matt Sims: And I’m Motorhome Matt.
Keith Gooden: Industry insights and expert advice for the world of motorhomes, caravans and campervans. It’s brought to you by www.thatleisureshop.com and sponsored by Ripe.
Matt Sims: Now remember, please do follow on your favourite podcast app or if you’re watching on YouTube, subscribe and the little bell.
Keith Gooden: It’s the finale, the last one, the end of the line, the Motorhome and Campervan Show season finale. When is it?
Matt Sims: It’s the 19th to the 21st of September at the Lincolnshire Showground. It is the season finale. It’s the highlight of the year. It’s a massive event. One of my favourites for sure. Hundreds of motorhomes there from lots and lots of dealers for sale, new and used. And of course, hundreds of traders as well, selling accessories, tech and gadgets – all sorts of stuff – and live music every night. So you can arrive on the Thursday and leave on the Monday. It’s just £85 for a whole weekend with live music every night. There is a small charge for the Saturday night’s entertainment. And, of course, you can go for the day. So if you just want to be a day visitor, it’s £7.99 including the booking fee, and you get a discount on the day pass. Just go to mhmp.info/warners to find out more.
Keith Gooden: It’s the Motorhome Matt podcast. I’m Keith Gooden.
Matt Sims: And I’m Motorhome Matt.
Keith Gooden: Brought to you by www.thatleisureshop.com and sponsored by Ripe. We have got some pretty shocking news to tell you today. Matt, in February you were in hospital for an angiogram, that’s where they take a look at your heart and see what’s going on there. So can you give us a brief recap about that?
Matt Sims: Yeah. So I’d had a dry cough for three months and an ache in my shoulder, some chest pain and so off I went for this angioplasty where they do an angiogram and have a good look about and I had to have two stents fitted. So I had four arteries cleared that were blocked up and two inflatable balloons fitted dissolved. They were a trial and they dissolved leaving no metal work inside my heart – it’s a new treatment. And the surgeon said to me, “I reckon you’ve got three days before a fatal heart attack. I will fix this for you now,” which was a bit of a shock at the time.I had these stents and carried on, had a real new lease of life at the time, I have to say. And you can check out the episode – “From cough to heart surgery,” we called it. It was recorded last year in February time. And then we revisited this a year later, so February this year, how I was doing a year on. And it has still not been right. I was discharged from cardiac rehab. I got to my tenth session and had a bit of what they called a cardiac event, where I had a real tightening of the chest. It felt quite uncomfortable and it happened halfway through me doing this kind of round of exercises. So they sat me down and asked have I ever taken a GTN spray and I’ll be quite honest, I haven’t.
Keith Gooden: What was that?
Matt Sims: I can’t remember what it stands for, gly… basically you spray it under your tongue. And it opens all your arteries up in the whole body. So your blood pressure tanks, you get a headache and that’s what I was scared of. By opening up all your arteries, it means your heart can operate properly. So you have to take it sitting down and I took it and it was – like that. I was like, oh my goodness, that’s amazing. And the nursing staff said, wow, and by this point I was being discharged from cardiology, having been told I didn’t have angina or unstable angina. And I was like, “There’s still something not right.” My reaction to the GTN spray was textbook and I said, well, what does that mean? And the nurse said, “You’ve got angina.” So I was referred back into cardiology, more ECGs, more tests and the consultant said, “Well there is part of your…” it’s what’s called a LAD artery. It’s a bit blocked at the top. This is a left arterial descending artery, it’s the main artery in your heart that goes over the front of your heart. “That’s a bit blocked at the top. So what we’ll do is an MRI or let’s do an ultrasound.” I said, “Look, can’t we just do another angiogram? Let’s go and have a proper look.” So she said okay. She said, “What we’ll also do is what’s called a wire pressure test,” where they put a wire into the artery that’s affected and then give your heart a drug that makes it feel like it’s turned to brick and is trying to punch its way out of your rib cage. You really can’t breathe. It’s not very nice. So I go in for this angioplasty and was given this drug. He said, count to 20, it will start, and at 90 it will stop, just keep counting. Anyway at ten he said stop, and I literally couldn’t breathe, it was horrible. And I heard one of the staff said, “Yep, positive result.” And I thought, oh, that’s good. Turns out that’s not good. And so I go back to my ward and my surgeon, who I’ve got to know quite well, a consultant comes around and she says, “Sixteen months ago this LAD artery was 25% blocked, it’s now 75% blocked.”
Keith Gooden: Three quarters?
Matt Sims: Yeah. “We need to do something about it.” So I said, “Well, what’s the plan?” And she said, “I suggest surgery.” So I was hoping that there was some kind of keyhole, and I’ve got to have a triple heart bypass, which on Friday was a massive shock. And it still is now as I go back to Friday to remember how I felt. It was – yeah, that’s pretty serious surgery. I then had a really good conversation with a registrar who explained what would be involved, and then the surgeon rang me who would do it and was on the phone for half an hour, which was very good of him. And he really put my mind at rest, but it’s still scary. So there’s obviously a huge incision in your chest, break your breastbone, open up, and they actually pull a vein out of your arm or your leg, an artery, and do a ‘motorway junction’ bypass.
Keith Gooden: Yeah, bypass the blocked or diseased part.
Matt Sims: I said, “Is this a single bypass?” They said, “No, it would be a triple heart bypass.” So they go from junction 20 to 22, as it were, is how he explained it to me. And of course the recovery time is significant, so I spend a few days in intensive care, a week in hospital and then twelve weeks recovering. I’m not allowed to drive for a month for a very practical reason, which is if I had an accident in the car and the steering wheel hit my chest, it would break my chest open. They wire it together until it fuses and the wires stay there. So it’s like wow, I didn’t consider that. I’m not sure I want to even be a passenger in a car. So it’s going to be a journey for sure. But, and this is the bit I suppose I’m getting my head to, is on the other side of it, I’ll have a new lease of life. So I’ve realised that my operating norm is much lower than perhaps it used to be. I get out of breath. I discovered my threshold on the weekend. First world problem, our dishwasher failed. So I pulled the old one out, disconnected it, fresh feed, waste drain, electrics. I put the new one in, it leaked, head down, looking under the worktop, replumbed it, and then collapsed. And my blood pressure was really low, 103 over 68, which is very low for me. I spent an hour on the sofa whilst I recovered, and my blood pressure came back up. I was like, blimey, if I can’t even replace a dishwasher… so, yeah, I’m being mollycoddled by family, friends and absolutely the team at work, not being allowed to do very much. And I guess I’ve had to be honest with myself that I’m seriously ill and I’ve not been honest about that both privately and definitely not publicly. So this is me kind of fessing up really and saying, okay, I need to get this fixed. So hopefully this autumn it will get addressed and we can move on. And you’ll tell me off, Keith. I said to the surgeon – everyone I’ve said this to has told me off. I said, “Well, I’ve got a lot on this autumn.” Several shows, the Lincoln one we’ve just been talking about, the big one in Birmingham of course, lots of other speaking engagements planned. And of course everyone says, Matt, this is your health. And the surgeon, do you know what he said? He said, “Well, tell me what you’ve got on when and let’s plan this around that. Because if I throw a date in your diary and it causes a load of clashes, you’re going to get very stressed about stuff and that is not going to help your repairing and recovery. So let’s have an objective call about it, a conversation about it,” which we did. So unless things change dramatically, end of October, I’m due to have this surgery and we’ll go into Christmas hopefully fully repaired.
Keith Gooden: A new man?
Matt Sims: A new man with a new lease of life.
Keith Gooden: And we must say, before you make any judgements, that it’s not because Matt has led a particularly unhealthy life. You do have a genetic condition within your family, don’t you, which causes heart disease – which is part of the reason why you’re so aware of it in the first place.
Matt Sims: I do. Both my granddads had angina. One had a stroke. But I have a high cholesterol called lipoprotein A, which is not commonly tested for. There’s no treatment for it. So my other cholesterols – I’m on lots of meds, as we’ve joked many times about. If I jump up and down, I rattle. Those cholesterols are described by my lipid consultant as beautifully low. So 0.7 – if you understand cholesterol scores, it’s good, it’s healthy, but it’s medically affected, of course. So I brought my cholesterol score right down, but lipoprotein A isn’t really affected by that and you can’t treat it with any medication and you can’t affect it with diet. A good healthy lifestyle is imperative and going forward it’s certainly something I will be focused on. But this LPA is the root cause and I was born with it. So my kids have all been tested and as the boys turn 18 they will be tested too and it’s a red flag. So it’s not necessarily a case of, if you’ve got high LPA, this is the course of treatment you’re going to end up with, but it’s a great warning sign that there might be some blocked arteries because that’s what it causes, which I’ve suffered with. And mine, it turns out, this particular LAD artery is blocking up pretty quick now. So time is of the essence. I’m not critically ill, but I’m seriously ill, needing urgent medical treatment which in NHS terms is within the next few months. So yeah, that’s where we are.
Keith Gooden: So pretty shocking stuff. So we’ve seen how you feel about it and how it’s affecting you, but we must say even though it is major surgery, the outcomes for this sort of surgery are incredibly successful. It’s got a fantastic track record and as we said before, a bypass is where they take a piece of vein or artery out of an arm or a leg and they literally bypass around the disease or the blockage. Our thoughts are all with you, Matt, and you know we’re wishing you the very, very best. It must be incredibly stressful for you, but we’re looking forward to having you back a new man.
Matt Sims: Mrs Motorhome Matt can’t wait. We’ll be back walking around like we used to, hiking, doing all sorts of stuff, cause she gets really frustrated with me at the moment because I just run out of puff. It’s ridiculous. I get tired having a shower. You know, I’ve always joked I get tired running the bath, that I can’t actually run – and I can’t run! This has just become my norm and I realise now that I’ve kind of slipped into it over time. I’ve just accepted that this is how I am and I’ve become that unfit bloke who’s put on weight and I need to change that. And so now I know why and that’s great, and so I’m very much optimistic, totally optimistic for the future. I am an eternal optimist. I’m just grateful for a glass, never mind how much water is in it.
Keith Gooden: Mine’s always full of wee. It’s half full of wee.
Matt Sims: Well, mine’s full of something else at the moment, I have to say, along those lines… but we can fix it. And the team at the Bristol Heart Institute in cardiology are amazing. They really are phenomenal. So I feel like I’m in really good hands. I’ve had loads of people say to me, Matt, they do this surgery pretty much every day. The surgeon said the same. He said we do this regularly every week and the success rate is really high. So yes, it’s really serious it’s very invasive and your recovery is going be long. And so all of that is frightening, but out the other side, hopefully in the new year, it will feel very different.
Keith Gooden: So the question is, what are going to do about the podcast, then?
Matt Sims: I’d love to carry on with it. I know we’ve discussed how we do that and we’re going to find a way through that. We might end up doing some Zoom ones – that would be fun, we’ve never done that. I probably won’t be up for doing one from intensive care. So our plan – that we’re going to try and carry on putting one of these out every week, as we have done for nearly four years – is no mean feat.
Keith Gooden: Doesn’t really matter what I think. Motorhome Maddie is the one that makes the decision.
Matt Sims: Well Maddie’s on board, she’s showing thumbs up behind the camera. So we’re going to try and pre-produce some content. You both came up with a great idea of doing some content which is audience Q and A, which we can potentially batch record before we get there. And I think that would be great.
Keith Gooden: Yeah. And it’s great because, you know, if it wasn’t for you watching and listening to the podcast and your questions, there wouldn’t be a podcast.
Matt Sims: True.
Keith Gooden: Yeah. This isn’t a second best, this is having podcasts which are mainly with you, mainly your questions. I’m looking forward to that. I’m always banging the drum for more of that.
Matt Sims: Me too. And actually, I wonder whether it might become a new trend for the podcast next year where we have a regular episode which is just your questions because they are gold. They really are. They are fantastic and we’ve got so many to catch up on. And I do try and answer as many as I can, but they don’t all make the podcast. So perhaps that’s what we’ll do. So the plan is to work through this so we try and get a few weeks or maybe months in the bag. Nonetheless, we’ll be keeping you updated on my progress. And do you know what? I think this is an opportunity for those watching. If you’ve got that cough or an ache – I’ve said it before, but I will say it again. Go and get it checked out. That annoying voice from your other half is important. It was Jude, Mrs Motorhome Matt, that did my e-consult, that got me the GP’s appointment, that got me into A and E and got this angiogram. And even then, once being discharged from cardiology, I still knew something wasn’t right. So here we are now bypassing the problem with major surgery to fix it. So it’s taken two years to get to this point I suppose, but don’t ignore it. It’s your body giving you a warning sign, as mine did doing the dishwasher. It said, “You can’t be doing this, Matt, you’ve got to slow down.” So take note and take action. Please don’t ignore it. I was told I was three days from a fatal heart attack. I’m not quite at that point again, but I’m being told I’m months from a heart being unable to pump, which results in, you know, a pretty serious heart attack. So don’t get yourself into that position. Do take note, take action. And if you’re being treated and you’re being discharged, and you think, “I’m still not right,” keep fighting, keep saying no.
Keith Gooden: Make a pest of yourself.
Matt Sims: A friend of mine is a retired A and E consultant. I won’t quote what he said you have to be, but basically, be a pain in the neck. He was far more blunt than that. But he is senior NHS. He said you have to get your voice heard, so campaign on your behalf, please, make sure you do.
Keith Gooden: And it goes for women as well as men. Women suffer from heart disease, just as much, if not sometimes at certain ages, more. A big shout out as well to the NHS. It’s what I always say is what makes Britain great, the National Health Service. Thanks to everybody who works there and works on our behalf. So we’ve talked about it, we’ve talked about what we’re going be doing in the future and making sure Matt is sensible. But there are lifestyle changes that you can make right now. Nobody’s lecturing you, but you have been talking to some people, haven’t you, who can help.
Matt Sims: Absolutely. And we’re guilty as a pastime of people not of always making the right lifestyle choices when it comes to diet, exercise. And that’s not unique to the motorhome community, that is everyone and particularly at a certain age. It’s too easy to become complacent and frankly maybe lazy. I am, I’m guilty of this. And I’m trying in various ways to try and lose weight but I have to be careful at this point in time because of other conditions and so on that I’ve got. But I’ve been talking to a wonderful couple who are on Instagram as @bfrankhealth, the letter B, Frank, and they are all about lifestyle changes which are easy for all of us to make. And I’m delighted that Warners shows have given them a stage at the upcoming shows to present to us how making some really simple changes can make massive benefits to our physical health and our mental health. And that’s been a huge journey for me as well, the anxiety side of this and the mental health side of this. And the biggest treatment for me has been talking about it and this podcast has enabled me to do that, for which I am very grateful. So I asked B Frank if they would be prepared to work with me and I become almost their guinea pig and said, well, what changes should I start making as I go into rehabilitation from this surgery that are lifestyle changes that will have a meaningful and lasting effect?
Amy BFrank: There are a lot of things that you can do which is amazing because you have much more control and you have much more power over how you recover than maybe you are led to believe. So there’s lots of physical, mental and sort of dietary lifestyle things. I’ll leave Tom to talk about exercise, but in terms of rebuilding your body after surgery and building yourself back up, focusing on diet and specific nutrients that help rebuild the body and focusing on your health on a cellular level is really what’s going to speed up your recovery. So if you think about what you need to repair the body, you need a lot of protein and you need a lot fat because those are the two building blocks of the body. So, everything in your body is pretty much made up of proteins and fats and then obviously all the micronutrients and macronutrients and stuff. But protein and fat are the two macros that you want to be focusing on.
Matt Sims: So don’t become vegetarian?
Amy BFrank: Don’t become vegetarian. No. Definitely don’t become vegetarian. But you can focus on, because of your condition, leaner meat. So you could have 5% beef mince, chicken, turkey, things like that. But I wouldn’t go for low fat dairy because low fat dairy often has a lot of additives in it that you don’t really want to be eating. Kind of high quality nutrient dense food, even organ meats if you want, but you don’t want to overdo it on organ meats, you don’t need to have a lot of those. Is it 150 grams a week of something like liver? So you can just split it up.
Matt Sims: I’m not a fan of liver. So we’re alright there!
Amy BFrank: No, I do not like it.
Tom BFrank: Although we do have a technique. So you can buy liver, grind it up and then freeze it in little blocks and then put the blocks in meal of your choice and it will just melt in. It would be like an OxoCube almost going in. You will never taste it and you’ll still get the glorious great effects from it.
Amy BFrank: Yeah. That’s what we do because we also don’t like the taste of it.
Matt Sims: So one of the fears I’ve got is obviously my breastbone is about to be cut open. i mean, it’s so hard to get your head around.
Amy BFrank: Yes.
Matt Sims: It’s going to be wired back together. And I really want it to fuse back together as quickly as possible so I can get as active as possible afterwards. So protein and good fats?
Amy BFrank: Protein and good fats. And even in terms of supplementation – I mean, not giving you exact advice yet, but things like collagen, very important for rebuilding muscle. Lots of bone broth, really essential nutrients in there to help rebuild the body. And that’s great for your gut health as well, bone broth is. And then things like, because it’s bone, calcium, but vitamin D and vitamin K2, you need them for calcium.
Matt Sims: And is there core choices of foods that will give me those vitamins or should I take supplements?
Amy BFrank: Vitamin D supplements you need, because we get it from the sun. You only get small amounts from food. So, in the Northern Hemisphere, we don’t have much daylight in the winter unfortunately. You can play around. There’s lots of information online with dosages and then you avoid the vitamin D toxicity, which is something that the NHS often talks about a lot.
Matt Sims: Things like dairy and kefir, are they good as well?
Amy BFrank: Yeah, absolutely. But there’s only small amounts of vitamin D in there, you’ll never get what you really need from food alone. You have to supplement because the sun is the main source. The sun hits a type of cholesterol in our skin and that’s what turns eventually to vitamin D. And within foods, you do get cod liver oil, eggs, meats, small amounts.
Tom BFrank: But in terms of kefir and dairy products, they’re great sources of healthy fat.
Amy BFrank: And calcium. Yeah, really good.
Matt Sims: Yeah. And it was the calcium that made me think that surely kefir is good for that.
Amy BFrank: Absolutely, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Matt Sims: So Tom, you’re the physical guy.
Tom BFrank: I’m the physical guy.
Matt Sims: I fear you.
Tom BFrank: We’re going to be having a lot of fun.
Matt Sims: I know. Well, you’ve so kindly agreed to work with me through this journey on the other side of it particularly and into next year where I want to try and lose some weight. I want to get healthier, I need to. And I realised that over the last eighteen months, my health has slowly been declining and it’s become my norm and I’ve just accepted it. I’m not doing anything like the things I used to do two years ago. So, what should I be doing? Are you going to have me running marathons and sweating and being Mr. Motivator? Because I’ll be honest, I’m not going to turn up.
Tom BFrank: You will turn up. I’ll be at your door, Matt.
Matt Sims: You know where I live.
Tom BFrank: Exactly. I think the beauty of exercise is it’s about how much you want to put into it at first. And I think that what I would like to do is I’d like to set you out on a routine where we’ve got three days a week where we’re delegating specific exercises to those days. We’ve got to start slow and steady because we’ve got to get you to a point where you can actually enjoy the exercise rather than as you said before, where you’re feeling out of breath and you’re finding it difficult. So it’s about entering exercise that maybe you don’t perceive as exercise straight away but it’s just going for those general walks. You were talking about walking around barefoot in your garden. That’s just one of those amazing things that we don’t class as exercise necessarily, walking, but it’s such a beautiful exercise that we can do. And it’s a great way of building up your cardiovascular system. We can start with nice slow-paced walking and then I can ask you to speed it up a little bit and we can get a bit more range on it. That’s something that we can do.
Matt Sims: How do you turn exercise into the thing you say I enjoy? How does that happen? Is it like a switch?
Tom BFrank: Well, it’s interesting. So, a lot of people motivate themselves through music or podcasts or listening to something or even working whilst doing exercise. If doing there’s a sport or if there’s an interest of yours that we can find, that’s something I think we could nail down and we could really find. Or if you really enjoy a podcast, we could find that as well, awesome music. Something I like doing is making playlist for my clients, so I could make you a playlist or I could make you something along the lines of an interest. Or you can just have me in your ears talking to you the whole time, because that’s something else I do. And I can talk to you for the hour and bore you you’re going, God, I’ve got to do this exercise now because otherwise you won’t leave me alone. So I am always going to be there. And as I said, with the specific dedicated workouts, I would like to be there with you. And no matter where I am in the country, I can work with you operationally through digital technology that’s around nowadays. I can be there with you. And I’d like to do that particularly at the beginning stages because it is about finding that joy. And also, if you can find a way of doing that with someone as well, that often helps because they will help carry you through those moments where you’re thinking, God, I don’t want to do this. I don’t want to get up this morning. And Tom’s not available, I might miss today. Well, you won’t because you’ll have that other person.
Matt Sims: Well, I have a feeling that you and Mrs Motorhome Matt are going to gang up on me, your new best friend. That’s it. So I’ve got no chance. I’ll be honest, this is going to happen. So, you were talking about the barefoot walking. So, you inspired me to do this at Camper Van Campout. You gave an amazing talk where we met for the first time. And I think it was your first talk on stage. It was brilliant. And you had us all stretching and swinging and, you know, doing these really basic exercises which were great fun. And I guess that’s part of it, isn’t it?
Tom BFrank: You said the word there. See, you fell into the trap. You straight away said it was great fun. In one moment, you said you weren’t having fun, now you are having fun.
Matt Sims: But you gave great advice and said, just go out and walk barefoot in your garden. Now, we’re very, very lucky where we live. And it’s like waking up on holiday and I’m very grateful for that. And we know how lucky we are. We have a fantastic view. And we have a big garden at the front of the house, and the back where we can walk around. But there are some big mental health benefits to doing that. You said the stretching whilst the kettle’s boiling for your morning brew. Just talk me through that. What are those benefits?
Tom BFrank: Well, getting outside. So, talked about vitamin D a moment ago. Getting outside and having natural daylight. We again believe that we need the sun beaming down on us in this beautiful scenario. But actually, just getting outside, having natural daylight on you is just an incredible way of doing it. So every morning, Amy is outside drinking her tea. In the morning, she’s doing jumping up and down on the grass barefoot without fail. And it’s something that I go out and do at a slightly different time to Amy because she’s up at quarter past five. But going outside and getting that daylight is so important. Connecting with the Earth is so important. And it’s one of the things that we sort of don’t do anymore because the first thing that we do in the morning is we normally put on some plastic socks and then we put some shoes on with soles and we never connect with the Earth.
Amy BFrank: And with screens.
Tom BFrank: Screens, yeah.
Amy BFrank: Screens first thing in the morning.
Tom BFrank: Blue light straight away.
Amy BFrank: Yeah. Yeah. This is all about your circadian rhythm as well. The mental health benefits of going outside are very well established. But also, what you’re doing is when you get daylight first thing in the morning, you’re anchoring your internal body clock, which is your circadian rhythm, which regulates every single cellular process in your body. Everything. Mood, digestion, energy.
Matt Sims: And is circadian rhythm gonna be important for me?
Amy BFrank: Absolutely. So this is what we’ll talk about. So, things like when you wake up in the morning, open your curtains and have your cup of tea, have your cup of coffee outside if you can. I know the weather is not going to be good in the winter when you’re recovering, but still any daylight, even if it’s cloudy, is beneficial for you because it’s always greater outside than inside. The lux of the daylight is always better. You can actually get special daylight bulbs, which are a lot brighter. Maybe that’s something we could look into.
Tom BFrank: And a morning alarm as well.
Amy BFrank: We’ve got a sunrise alarm which helps us get up. Ideally, we would be living to the natural daylight. So we would be sleeping longer in the winter than we would be in the summer months, but that doesn’t work out because we all work. So there are great bits of technology now that can kind of mimic nature. They’re obviously not the best thing, but they’re better than not having it at all.
Matt Sims: And one of the habits I have is I get up in the dark. And then I go to the bathroom and I’m on my phone, looking at my phone. My first experience of day of light every day is blue. That’s not good.
Amy BFrank: No. So something that you can do – like Tom said, our sunrise alarm is great, but if you need to go on your phone first thing in the morning, you can still either wear your red light glasses, so they’ll shield you from the blue, or you can have a filter. You can put filters on your phone. So they can be set to come on at times as well. So every night, my phone switches to a yellow screen at seven and that doesn’t turn off until seven in the morning. Automatically, you can set that up. So, yes. There are always things like that. Obviously, it’s not ideal, but you’re trying to mimic nature in a way because this is another reason why I think people are so sick nowadays – because we’re living a life that’s so distant from the life that we’re supposed to be living. The circadian rhythm, the circadian health thing, I mean, it’s so important. Nobody really knows about it.
Matt Sims: No. Well, we don’t talk about it.
Amy BFrank: No, no.
Matt Sims: The culture in this country is very, very far removed from the knowledge base where you guys have got all this expertise. So, I am genuinely very grateful to you both.
Tom BFrank: Well, our key thing is to try and help people remember that health is actually fairly simple. Doing the basics is what’s going to make you healthy. And that’s what we want to bring into your life, trying to make it as basic and as easy as possible around your busy life so it doesn’t affect what you actually need to do in the day and it doesn’t become a problem. Because as soon as it becomes a chore to be healthy, we don’t do it. We go, no, I’m too busy, I can’t do it. What we try and focus on with our clients is to bring into a standard life of what you are doing. We’re trying to make it so, oh, well, I’ll just do that while I’m doing something else anyway. And that’s the beauty of it. The only thing that will be slightly different is when we start putting exercise classes as it were, routines in that we’ll be doing together. But you will probably be like, oh, now I’ve got to find half an hour with Tom. How’s that going to happen? But I wanted to touch on something that you said before about mental health as well, because the beauty of this all is that with your condition and what you’ve been going through, you’ve been very honest and you’ve talked about how that’s affected you. I would say that in the space of the next couple of months of working with you, you will see a massive change in your mental health in terms of excitement and enjoyment in what you’ll be doing because you’ll be realising that actually everything that you’re doing is working towards a healthier physical self. That always gives you a healthier mental self. And I think that will totally change and everyone knows you as the smiley happy Matt. The one that’s always on form, smiles in the morning, smiles in the evening, no matter what gets thrown at you, you’re always there and you’re always happy and you’re supporting so many other people. What we would love to do is to be able to give you a little bit of that support within yourself and the motions that you can do each day. And I think that’s going be something that’s very powerful.
Matt Sims: Tom, Amy, thank you both so much. I’m actually excited to work with you both.
Tom BFrank: I can’t wait. This is going to be fun.
Matt Sims: Where can people discover more about BFrank if they want to find out a little more about what you’re up to?
Amy BFrank: We’re quite active on socials, specifically Instagram. You can find us @bfrankhealth. And again, it’s just b, the letter b, and then Frank Health. We also have a website, but you can get to that from Instagram, clicking in the the bio. We’ve got all of our links there and stuff.
Tom BFrank: Something exciting is we are launching an e-magazine. October 1 is our first volume and you can find all of the information on our website. But if not, then please do contact us on Instagram. We’re going be doing loads of promotional work and it’s brilliant because it’s going to be your monthly issue on how to find healthy recipes, workout guides. We’ve got blogs in there from various different people. We’ve got exclusive discount codes on all of the products that we class as Frank approved. What other things have I missed? We’ve got so many good things.
Amy BFrank: We’ve also got seasonal calendars, so seasonal vegetables you should be focusing on. We’re going to have a little bit from farms. So farms that are farming, helping the environment and educating on real food and stuff and where our food comes from, because that’s another thing that we’re so disconnected from, food. So, education about real food, how it’s grown, and then there’s gonna be ultra-processed food swaps.
Matt Sims: I love these on your Instagram. These are brilliant.
Tom BFrank: This is what Amy’s getting known for.
Amy BFrank: You don’t have to go without, but there’s always a better option.
Matt Sims: Of course.
Amy BFrank: You know?
Matt Sims: But it’s education.
Amy BFrank: Yeah.
Matt Sims: So this is where you’re going to help me and I hope help you as well as you join me on this journey with this wonderful couple. It’s been great to have you on.
Tom BFrank: Thank you so much.
Matt Sims: Again, thanks for agreeing to help me. And we’ll get through this together, I think.
Tom BFrank: Well we’ll have to do updates for everyone so that everyone can see all the updates and the changes that we’ve made.
Matt Sims: I would love that.
Keith Gooden: Matt, is that NordVPN deal still running?
Matt Sims: Yeah, it is. And if you grab their two-year plan right now, you’ll get four extra months for free. And of course there’s the thirty day money back guarantee. So you can try it risk free. But the value isn’t just in the saving. It’s what you get. I use it every time I’m in the van now whether it’s a campsite wifi here in the UK or tethering abroad. It keeps my data private, blocks dodgy sites and pop-ups and it means I can stream TV as if I’m sat at home. Honestly, it’s one of those things you don’t think about until it’s too late, so better to get it sorted now.
Keith Gooden: The link is in the episode description. Nice and simple. It’s the Motorhome Matt podcast. I’m Keith Gooden.
Matt Sims: And I’m Motorhome Matt.
Keith Gooden: It’s brought to you with www.thatleisureshop.com and sponsored by Ripe. It’s our Q and A, the questions and answers, where you ask the questions and Matt, he’s the expert. He answers them. Howard is in Braintree.
Howard: Oh, hi, Matt. Recently went to the Isle of Wight in our motorhome. And knowing that we’ve been in an older motorhome before, we went with our Auto Trail. And when we got back, of course, we received a fine for going in the smoke zone, which is in Gunwharf, which is the only way in and out of the ferry. And lo and behold, we got one coming out again. And so it’s cost us a grand total of £210. This is absolutely ridiculous. So, basically, we can’t use the ferry anymore. Thank you, mate.
Keith Gooden: I do apologize about the audio quality on that one, but a very good question.
Matt Sims: Mhmm.
Keith Gooden: He’s been fined for going in an ultra low emissions zone, but he says there’s no way around it. He can’t use it anymore or he’s got to pay the fine. Is that the case?
Matt Sims: So the bit I didn’t get my head around, and I need to look into this and maybe somebody knows and you can advise, but is it the case you were fined because you didn’t pay the daily fee or was that the fee? Was that the charge? £105 each way?
Keith Gooden: Can’t be.
Matt Sims: So in Bristol, we have a ULEZ zone or Clean Air Zone and there are bits of it where you can’t get to the motorway without going through 300 yards of it. It’s really annoying. And if you don’t pay it, then yeah, think it’s a £100 fine. But it’s a £9 charge to go through it. So I think double check – is there a daily fee to use it and then go that route? Or is it the case that if you don’t pay, there’s a large fee? It sounds to me like that was the fine, not the daily charge.
Keith Gooden: Yeah, and a lot of these low emission zones have websites you can go on. I used the one for London not so long ago, because a lot of modern cars don’t have to pay the fee. You put your registration number in, and it tells you immediately there online whether you need to buy a pass to go in for that 24-hour period.
Matt Sims: But it’s not just modern cars. It’s about the emissions. So my 1934 Austin 7 is exempt. We love driving through Bristol in this. People go, “It’s Brum!” It’s from 1934, stinks of petrol, blowing smoke out the rear, and we don’t have to pay the low emissions cost. I love it. It’s great. It’s like cheating the system, winning at life.
Keith Gooden: So Howard, yeah, use those websites. Have a look. I’m sure if it’s as you’ve described, it would prevent lots and lots of people from being able to use the road without having to pay a massive fee or fine. So just double-check it, would you, Howard? We have got Dave in Redditch right now who has got a question for our sponsor, Ripe.
Dave: Hi, Matt. This is Dave from Redditch. I currently own a motorhome and I’d like to tow a car. I’m currently with Ripe Insurance and they give fantastic insurance apart from the fact that they do not cover for towing. I was just wondering if this is likely to change as they’re going to charge me a whole year’s insurance just to cancel the policy.
Keith Gooden: Okay, feedback from Ripe on that one. “Hi Dave, thanks for your positive feedback. Apologies for any confusion here as we can cover for towing but it has to be a maximum gross weight of 1,500 kilograms, which has been built to be towed by a motorhome.
Matt Sims: They went on to say, “However, there are some instances where we wouldn’t cover towing such as a mechanically propelled vehicle,” I guess that means a car, “A horse box trailer or a caravan. As a valued customer, we hope this is the cover you’re looking for and we can help you in this instance. We’d be more than happy to sort this out for you.” Thanks, Mel from the Ripe team.
Keith Gooden: And remember, you can get 15% off your insurance premium with Ripe by clicking the link in the description for this episode. Next question, John Scott’s in Glasgow. “Hi, Matt. I have a Bailey Adamo 74 DL and have a problem with the water system. I fill it up with water and the gauge reads 100%. The pump runs fine, but then stops at 50%. Is there a way to recalibrate my system? Any help or advice would be appreciated. Many thanks.”
Matt Sims: We’ve had this question before and it wasn’t from John, it was from someone else. So whether this is a Bailey system issue or the hardware they’re using, I don’t know. It seems odd that two people, as far as I’m aware, have had the problem. My suggestion, John, will be contact your Bailey dealer whoever that might be and I’m sure they’ll be able to sort this for you or get to the bottom of why it’s happening. But do let me know how you get on. If you’re listening to this and you’ve had this issue on any motorhome, let me know because it could be the common denominator is not Bailey, it could be the water system gauge manufacturer. I’d love to know.
Keith Gooden: Yeah, could be any one of those components, couldn’t it? Matt, if someone’s after a motorhome and just needs theirs looking after, where would you send them?
Matt Sims: Well, I’ve gone to RV Super Centre for years whenever I’ve needed RollerTeam spare parts in particular, so I know first-hand how helpful they are. They’re not just about parts, though. They’re the UK’s one-stop shop for motorhomes whether you’re buying new, used or even an ex-hire if you’re after great value.
Keith Gooden: And they do servicing as well, don’t they?
Matt Sims: Full service centres, parts, accessories, bodywork repairs that are insurance approved and they’re NCC-accredited workshops. What I like is they’re a small and super friendly team but with nationwide sites. They’re in Toddington, Edinburgh and Belfast. So they’ve got that local feel but with a huge reach.
Keith Gooden: Sounds like the full package.
Matt Sims: Exactly. You can find out more at www.rvsupercentre.co.uk and we’ll stick the link in the episode description too.
Keith Gooden: So Matt, how do people get in touch with us?
Matt Sims: We would love it if you did. You can head to mhmp.info/askmat, fill in the form and we’ll read the question for you. We’d love it if you recorded your question – just click the orange button. But please do remember to tell us where in the country or where in the world you are!
Keith Gooden: And if you’re looking for trusted brands and services then make sure you visit the Motorhome Matt Approved directory. It’s at mhmp.info/approved.
Matt Sims: And remember to follow on your favourite podcast app, or if you’re watching on YouTube, make sure you click subscribe.
Keith Gooden: Thanks for listening to the Motorhome Matt podcast. Remember to check back here for more episodes full of hints and tips and helpful advice. We’ll see you soon for another Motorhome Matt podcast brought to you with www.thatleisureshop.com.
