Latest / INSPIRE STORY / #027 _The Power of Staying Healthy

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#027 _The Power of Staying Healthy · INSPIRE STORY

0:24
Speaker 1: So you started a podcast as well. I started in
0:27
Speaker 1: January if that Penguin helped me launch it because they
0:31
Speaker 1: you know, and and I did it without much thoughts
0:35
Speaker 1: the first six episodes and then Apple picked it up,
0:39
Speaker 1: they started promoting it. It sort of was number one
0:42
Speaker 1: on iTunes in the UK for about two weeks.
0:44
Speaker 2: Wow.
0:44
Speaker 1: And again I appreciate it just launched. So these things
0:47
Speaker 1: are all skewed metrics.
0:48
Speaker 3: Yeah, well they kind of over they overly inflate in
0:51
Speaker 3: the early days so that people can discover it.
0:53
Speaker 1: I mean, I think it's good. So that's that's going
0:56
Speaker 1: really well. So most episodes go to number one on health.
1:00
Speaker 1: That's great, and so I've I love it though. It's fun.
1:03
Speaker 1: It's the best because you have conversations. And I've done
1:06
Speaker 1: so much work on the BBC where they just edit
1:08
Speaker 1: everything and ultimately what ends up coming out is a
1:11
Speaker 1: filtered version of what you actually said. Right, And I think, well,
1:14
Speaker 1: I can talk to anyone I want about anything, you know, whoever,
1:17
Speaker 1: as wrong as you want to. Yeah, so I'm gonna
1:20
Speaker 1: I'm just trying to figure out how to There was
1:24
Speaker 1: no master plan. It just happened. But now I realize
1:26
Speaker 1: I enjoy it, So I'm trying to figure out, Okay,
1:28
Speaker 1: how do I how do I build a structure and
1:31
Speaker 1: a system around this, which is tricky. Yeah, I'm happy
1:37
Speaker 1: to talk to you about that.
1:38
Speaker 3: I mean, I'm always trying to figure out that equation
1:40
Speaker 3: as well, because once you start to get into it,
1:42
Speaker 3: you realize like, oh, well this is actually there's quite
1:44
Speaker 3: a bit that goes into it to do it well,
1:46
Speaker 3: and it takes a lot of work.
1:47
Speaker 1: Yeah, what it is, go for it. Yeah, it's given
1:50
Speaker 1: us focus. You know, I kind of at least every
1:52
Speaker 1: Wednesday now way new Set it goes out, Social post
1:56
Speaker 1: goes out. You know, it's show notes go now it's
1:59
Speaker 1: an exist. At first, people kept saying, I say show notes,
2:02
Speaker 1: I'm barely getting this out. But my pa now is
2:06
Speaker 1: sort of trying to do that as well. So I
2:08
Speaker 1: kind of I feel it's growing. I feel it's something
2:10
Speaker 1: I feel I really want to own it and actually
2:14
Speaker 1: personalize it a bit more. So I'm looking forward to it. Yeah.
2:17
Speaker 3: Yeah, well you figure out what it wants to be
2:20
Speaker 3: in the doing of it, you know.
2:23
Speaker 1: Yeah. I love the title Feel Better, Live More. I
2:25
Speaker 1: love it, and it kind of encompasses me and what
2:28
Speaker 1: I'm about but I think I can make more of it,
2:32
Speaker 1: and we're going to do some live events around it.
2:35
Speaker 1: You know, Penguin a delight with and because I signed
2:38
Speaker 1: a two book deal with them, so I do some
2:41
Speaker 1: live events around the UK to start with, which I'm
2:43
Speaker 1: looking forward to. I know you've done a few of those,
2:45
Speaker 1: a couple of them, but that's great.
2:48
Speaker 3: I mean, I know you're kind of in town doing
2:51
Speaker 3: some press around the new book and all of that,
2:52
Speaker 3: and you just came from kt LA. So I watched
2:55
Speaker 3: that a couple of minutes ago before you arrive, and
2:58
Speaker 3: it's that classic thing. It's like you're there for a
3:00
Speaker 3: three minute, you know, and it's like you can just
3:02
Speaker 3: spit out like Okay, here are the four pillars, and
3:04
Speaker 3: then you're out right.
3:05
Speaker 1: You're right. You can't really get into it, but that's like,
3:08
Speaker 1: you know, yeah, it's different. Yeah, but I came out
3:11
Speaker 1: for the Feel Good Summit. Really. You know, Mark's business
3:14
Speaker 1: partner and Drew. I think you know Drew, Yeah, I
3:16
Speaker 1: know Andrew. I really like Drew feels he's kind of
3:19
Speaker 1: He's one of the guys I think in my entire
3:22
Speaker 1: life who I've met who seems to be really in
3:25
Speaker 1: touch with who he is. He seems to. I get
3:27
Speaker 1: that impression anyway instead of and I always I always
3:30
Speaker 1: come away from the interactions with him feeling like a
3:32
Speaker 1: better person, feeling like I know what I've got to do.
3:35
Speaker 1: I kind of really enjoyed he invited me out to
3:37
Speaker 1: come and speak, and Mark did to be fair and yeah,
3:42
Speaker 1: once I knew I was coming, then I thought, Okay,
3:44
Speaker 1: let me let me try you know a few things
3:47
Speaker 1: if I can. You know, if I'm going to have
3:49
Speaker 1: time away from the family and my wife and my kids,
3:51
Speaker 1: I'm trying to I'm not here for a vacation right basically,
3:55
Speaker 1: even though I get it, you know, I went on
3:57
Speaker 1: a burd in Venice having said that with a buddy yesterday,
3:59
Speaker 1: which is good fun, that's cool.
4:01
Speaker 3: So I woke up this morning feeling super lousy, on
4:06
Speaker 3: the verge of getting sick. And I almost never ever
4:09
Speaker 3: get sick, like it's almost never, and if I do,
4:13
Speaker 3: when it starts to come on like it like it
4:15
Speaker 3: like it was this morning, I can usually kick it
4:18
Speaker 3: in a day. But it made me sort of knowing
4:21
Speaker 3: that I was going to speak to you today, I
4:22
Speaker 3: was like, all right, well, where am I in the
4:24
Speaker 3: four pillars, you know, and it's like, okay, well, my
4:27
Speaker 3: diet's pretty good. Movement, I'm probably moving too much of anything. Relaxation,
4:32
Speaker 3: I'm completely failing in that. And sleep I probably give
4:35
Speaker 3: myself a B minus C plus right now.
4:37
Speaker 1: Like it's a.
4:38
Speaker 3: Great little cheat sheet for taking inventory of where you're at.
4:44
Speaker 3: And it's like, I know I'm overextended right now. My
4:46
Speaker 3: adrenals are fried, I'm exhausted from travel. It's no shock
4:49
Speaker 3: that I wake up and feel lousy. So here I
4:52
Speaker 3: have the good doctor to diagnose me.
4:56
Speaker 1: We saw it, by the way, Yeah we started. Oh
4:58
Speaker 1: my god, I didn't realize a racking. Oh my god,
5:02
Speaker 1: I had no idea we started. We're just chatting, okay. Yeah, Well,
5:09
Speaker 1: I mean I think the four pillar framework for me
5:12
Speaker 1: is it's just something I can apply. You can apply,
5:16
Speaker 1: my patients can apply. It's just a simple way of
5:18
Speaker 1: looking at your own health right and figuring out which
5:22
Speaker 1: one of these four areas do I need the most working,
5:26
Speaker 1: you know, because I think most of us intuitively know,
5:29
Speaker 1: you know, most of us. It kind of got a
5:32
Speaker 1: pretty good idea. Actually, you know, my diet's pretty good,
5:35
Speaker 1: you know, but I'm not sleeping so well, and and
5:40
Speaker 1: I love it because people get confused and bombarded with
5:43
Speaker 1: health information all the time. Now you go on the internet,
5:47
Speaker 1: there's a million blogs out there, often the same conflicting things.
5:50
Speaker 1: People get paralyzed, you know, they get, they get, they
5:53
Speaker 1: just don't know what to do with this information. Half
5:55
Speaker 1: of my job as adults when people come in is
5:57
Speaker 1: to say, okay, Gouds, you're confused, Okay, let me want
6:00
Speaker 1: to simplify this down for you. And I know there's
6:03
Speaker 1: a deceptive simplicity to those four pillars, but I think
6:09
Speaker 1: I really feel it's deceptively simple because I've seen how
6:13
Speaker 1: life changing it can be when people apply those in
6:16
Speaker 1: the right life. And it takes the pressure of people.
6:18
Speaker 1: It's not about a perfect diet, it's not about you know,
6:23
Speaker 1: the perfect gym routine. It's about doing enough in each area.
6:28
Speaker 1: And I'd like to think it takes the pressure of
6:30
Speaker 1: people anyway. That's yeah, well, I.
6:32
Speaker 3: Think I mean, just for people that are listening when
6:34
Speaker 3: we're talking about the four pillars, we have relaxation, sleep, movement,
6:39
Speaker 3: and food, right. And what's great about the book is
6:45
Speaker 3: that it really is super accessible and it's like, this
6:48
Speaker 3: is not you know, you don't have to like stretch
6:51
Speaker 3: and try to adhere to some kind of protocol that
6:55
Speaker 3: only few people are going to actually able going to
6:58
Speaker 3: be able to master.
6:59
Speaker 1: Like this is like basic stuff.
7:01
Speaker 3: But I think, you know, when I'm reading it, I'm like, Okay,
7:04
Speaker 3: I get that, I get that, I get that this
7:05
Speaker 3: is like top level things. But it's that gap between
7:09
Speaker 3: the information and the action where I think most people stumble.
7:12
Speaker 3: It's like, Okay, yeah, I know I need to get
7:14
Speaker 3: a good night's sleep most nights, I don't though.
7:17
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, Well that's a huge issue. I mean, that's
7:22
Speaker 1: that's one of the big issues in health. You know,
7:23
Speaker 1: there's all this great information out there, there's great public
7:26
Speaker 1: health messages often and people aren't following them. Why are
7:30
Speaker 1: people not following them? And I've got many thoughts on that,
7:33
Speaker 1: But specifically, the approach I take with these four pillars,
7:36
Speaker 1: particularly when I was writing the book, is how can
7:40
Speaker 1: I make it accessible to people? How can I write
7:42
Speaker 1: it in such a way, How can I peperate with
7:46
Speaker 1: real life case studies from my practice that hopefully people
7:50
Speaker 1: can relate to, and see how just making some simple
7:53
Speaker 1: changes in those four ca areas can have such a
7:55
Speaker 1: profound effects. And you know, we can all have a
8:02
Speaker 1: fantastic outcome when we do a ten day diet of
8:06
Speaker 1: some sort, right, when we exclude everything from our diets,
8:10
Speaker 1: we can feel better in ten days. Okay, many of
8:13
Speaker 1: us can do that. But I'm interested in what changes
8:16
Speaker 1: can I help someone with that it's going to work
8:18
Speaker 1: for them today in the short term, that's also going
8:21
Speaker 1: to work for them in one month, in six months,
8:24
Speaker 1: in twelve months, And how can I help them build
8:26
Speaker 1: in this lifestyle change over a period of time. And
8:30
Speaker 1: that really has come from my practical experience. You know,
8:32
Speaker 1: what I put out in the book is literally nearly
8:36
Speaker 1: twenty years of experienced of seeing patients. And it's not
8:40
Speaker 1: just what the science says. The science is important to me,
8:43
Speaker 1: but you know what's even more important to me is
8:45
Speaker 1: actually what works in real life. You know, what will
8:49
Speaker 1: a busy mother do who feels that they've got no
8:51
Speaker 1: time to look after themselves and they're just running around,
8:54
Speaker 1: just doing doing, doing for their kids, maybe for their partner,
8:58
Speaker 1: maybe for their elderly parents, that just go go go, right.
9:02
Speaker 1: I'm interested in how can I connect with her so
9:07
Speaker 1: that she feels yeah, you know I can do that
9:10
Speaker 1: and That's why I've tried to make all the recommendations
9:14
Speaker 1: simple and achievable and tell one of the one of
9:16
Speaker 1: the one of the most fun things for me that
9:19
Speaker 1: I've had fed back to me since the book came
9:22
Speaker 1: out is that people feel that as they're reading it,
9:25
Speaker 1: that well, I want to do that I can make
9:27
Speaker 1: that change, you know, and that that makes me excited
9:30
Speaker 1: because I'm not telling people to go on a punishing diet.
9:33
Speaker 1: I'm not telling people to go on a grueling workout regime.
9:37
Speaker 1: You know, I'm recommending some very simple things. And why
9:43
Speaker 1: I think simple is important because we like as human beings,
9:46
Speaker 1: we like to feel good. Right if we if I
9:49
Speaker 1: set the bar low and we meet that, it feels good.
9:53
Speaker 1: You know, I've done what the dot right you created.
9:55
Speaker 3: You create an emotional engagement with that process where the
9:59
Speaker 3: where the patient feels empowered.
10:00
Speaker 1: Yeah. I give you prime example of that is in
10:04
Speaker 1: the move pillar. Okay, so, just in case people aren't familiar,
10:08
Speaker 1: there's four pillars and there's a quarter on each of
10:11
Speaker 1: them in the book. In the mood Pillar. I took
10:13
Speaker 1: all kinds of recommendations, but one of my favorites is
10:16
Speaker 1: something to do with strength trainings. I think strength training
10:18
Speaker 1: is very much undervalued in society. You know, we don't
10:23
Speaker 1: think about it enough. And you know you'll lean muscle
10:26
Speaker 1: mass independently, predictional mortality. It absolutely determines for a huge
10:33
Speaker 1: pot how we're going to be as we get older.
10:35
Speaker 1: And a few years ago I was in my practice
10:38
Speaker 1: and I've read all the research on it, and I thought,
10:40
Speaker 1: you know, I'm going to tell my patients about strength training.
10:42
Speaker 1: I remember this guy came in and I said, you know,
10:45
Speaker 1: it's really important for your blood sugar balance but also
10:48
Speaker 1: for your overall health that we do a bit of
10:50
Speaker 1: strength training. And he goes, what does that mean dark?
10:52
Speaker 1: I said, well, you know, you really maybe do some
10:54
Speaker 1: resistance at the gym, maybe thirty forty minutes, three times
10:57
Speaker 1: a week. He goes, okay, you're here, I'll try. He
11:01
Speaker 1: came back maybe four weeks six weeks later, and I said,
11:05
Speaker 1: how are you getting on? I said, you know what, Doc,
11:09
Speaker 1: You know I really want to, but you know works busy.
11:12
Speaker 1: The gym's not on the way back from work. Ah,
11:15
Speaker 1: you know, I just not got around to it. And
11:18
Speaker 1: I thought in that instant, I thought, well, what's going
11:21
Speaker 1: on here? You know, I didn't think, why is he
11:23
Speaker 1: not doing what I said? I always thought I'm not
11:26
Speaker 1: giving him advice in a way that he feels is
11:29
Speaker 1: applicable to him in the context of his life. And
11:33
Speaker 1: in that moment, I came up with this this five
11:35
Speaker 1: minute kitchen workout basically, which is, okay, I need to
11:38
Speaker 1: make it accessible for him. And I actually took my
11:41
Speaker 1: jacket off and I was literally teaching him five moves
11:44
Speaker 1: that he could do. And I said, I literally want
11:47
Speaker 1: five minutes twice a week. And that was the start
11:51
Speaker 1: for him, and literally he loved it. And he he's
11:54
Speaker 1: now doing, you know, two hours of strength training a week,
11:56
Speaker 1: but you start off with that, and I'd make it
11:59
Speaker 1: super digestial. See. But I just had a couple in
12:01
Speaker 1: their sixties recently, same thing. There was so skeptical rich
12:05
Speaker 1: you know, they came out at the consultation with me
12:07
Speaker 1: that can really you know, that's what I need to do.
12:10
Speaker 1: And I said, guys, I'll tell you what. I'm going
12:12
Speaker 1: to see you back in four weeks. Please try and
12:14
Speaker 1: do these five exercises in your kitchen. Right, you don't
12:18
Speaker 1: need to join a gym, you don't need to change,
12:21
Speaker 1: you don't need to buy any equipments. Right, they went away.
12:24
Speaker 1: There's a couple in their sixties and they came out
12:27
Speaker 1: four weeks say to that, and I said, how you
12:28
Speaker 1: guys doing. They said, that's Chessey. We love it. It's
12:31
Speaker 1: changed our lives. You know. We started off doing it
12:32
Speaker 1: in the kitchen, but now we do it every night
12:35
Speaker 1: for ten minutes on our upstairs landing as we run
12:37
Speaker 1: our evening bath. And I learned from my patients. I
12:42
Speaker 1: love reading the science, but you know, getting people better
12:46
Speaker 1: in real life doesn't come from reading scientific papers. There
12:50
Speaker 1: is a difference to how do you convert that into
12:54
Speaker 1: real actionable information for people. And that's what I'm passionate about.
12:58
Speaker 1: That's what you know. I You know, you see all
13:01
Speaker 1: these wars on social media about what the new science
13:03
Speaker 1: says and what the science has and I read them
13:05
Speaker 1: more right, But I think we just divides people. We
13:08
Speaker 1: confuse people on what they should be doing. And I've
13:12
Speaker 1: tried to come up with a with a with a
13:13
Speaker 1: program and a philosophy in this book where it's as
13:17
Speaker 1: relevant to let's say, a vegan as it is to
13:21
Speaker 1: a meeting sair. It is as relevant to someone in
13:25
Speaker 1: a low socioeconomic neighborhood to the CEO of her top company.
13:31
Speaker 1: Sorry if it's someone who's the CEO of a company,
13:33
Speaker 1: you know, earning lots of money. Because I've worked in
13:36
Speaker 1: some of the poorest areas in the UK. I spent
13:38
Speaker 1: seven years in a place called Oldham. You know, a
13:40
Speaker 1: lot of people on Social Security, and I thought, these
13:44
Speaker 1: guys have the right to the same quality health information
13:47
Speaker 1: as you get out here in California, right, And that's
13:51
Speaker 1: when I was writing the book. I thought, I want
13:53
Speaker 1: these suggestions that I make to work for everyone. I
13:58
Speaker 1: want to bring people together, you know. I want to
14:00
Speaker 1: bring the low carb people with the low fat people.
14:03
Speaker 1: I want to bring them together and go, look, what's
14:05
Speaker 1: the commonality here? What can we all focus on? And
14:09
Speaker 1: that's the real That's something I feel very passionate about.
14:11
Speaker 1: And most of the recommendations I make, in fact, there's
14:15
Speaker 1: twenty recommendations, not that everyone has to do the more
14:17
Speaker 1: I so you absolutely don't have to do them all.
14:19
Speaker 1: If you don't, if you don't like one of them,
14:21
Speaker 1: don't do them. You know, I'm really trying to allow
14:24
Speaker 1: people to personalize it. But nineteen out of the twenty
14:26
Speaker 1: are completely free, right, You can't make an argument that
14:30
Speaker 1: they cost money. The one that you can make an
14:32
Speaker 1: argument for is when I say unprocessed your diets. You know,
14:35
Speaker 1: you can argue that depending on where you live, depending
14:38
Speaker 1: on your income level, you may struggle to eat an
14:41
Speaker 1: unprocessed diet potentially in certain parts of the country without
14:47
Speaker 1: a bit of money.
14:48
Speaker 3: But you did also in the book sort of provide
14:52
Speaker 3: a roadmap for how.
14:53
Speaker 1: To do that cost effectively.
14:56
Speaker 3: I do, yeah, And I think, you know, one of
14:58
Speaker 3: the obs are of be I mean, I've spent a
15:00
Speaker 3: a lot of time thinking about this subject of you know,
15:03
Speaker 3: our respective silos, especially in the diet world, and what
15:06
Speaker 3: you see on social media and the bickering and the
15:09
Speaker 3: conflicting science, and you know, I'm always thinking like, well,
15:13
Speaker 3: what is the best way to navigate this and communicate
15:18
Speaker 3: to the audience in a way that will be the
15:21
Speaker 3: most positively impactful. And I spend a lot of time
15:24
Speaker 3: thinking about how to bring people together like yourself. And
15:28
Speaker 3: it's tricky, you know, when people get very entrenched in
15:31
Speaker 3: their ideologies and you know, somebody who's part of the
15:34
Speaker 3: plant based camp. I see it on all sides, and
15:36
Speaker 3: everybody's guilty of it. At various times, and it's not
15:42
Speaker 3: helping anyone. What it's doing is paralyzing the average well
15:47
Speaker 3: intentioned consumer who's just trying to get actionable advice to
15:51
Speaker 3: improve their lives. Maybe ten percent.
15:54
Speaker 1: Yeah, I totally agree. And you know, you say, with
15:57
Speaker 1: all guilty of this from time to time, and I
15:59
Speaker 1: think has to get a bit older, a bit more experienced.
16:02
Speaker 1: I think, actually, you know what, why does one group
16:05
Speaker 1: have to be right? Why can't many different groups be
16:09
Speaker 1: right for different people? And you know, we don't often
16:11
Speaker 1: don't think about the context of someone's life, or their
16:13
Speaker 1: cultural beliefs, or how they've grown up. And I always,
16:17
Speaker 1: as a practicing physician, I just bring it back to
16:20
Speaker 1: my consultation and I think, Okay, what have I seen?
16:22
Speaker 1: What do I keep seeing? And I've seen? The reality
16:25
Speaker 1: is if you talk about diet, for example, which again
16:29
Speaker 1: we I think we overly focus on it. And what
16:31
Speaker 1: I mean by that is, I think food is very,
16:34
Speaker 1: very important, but food is much more than fat versus cubs, right,
16:38
Speaker 1: But good health is much more than just food. And
16:42
Speaker 1: my own personal bias is that when I change my
16:45
Speaker 1: diet right, my health starts to improve.
16:48
Speaker 3: Right.
16:49
Speaker 1: But that's my personal bias, because I've had many patients
16:53
Speaker 1: who that wasn't the root. They want us to take
16:56
Speaker 1: some of them. Like I've got so many patients who've
16:58
Speaker 1: got mental health problems. They didn't want to change it,
17:00
Speaker 1: doubt even though I knew that would help improve the
17:03
Speaker 1: way they felt about themselves and their well being. They
17:06
Speaker 1: started getting more physically active first, and then that made
17:10
Speaker 1: them feel better, so then they wanted to change their diets.
17:12
Speaker 1: And that has almost been pivotal in this four pillar approach,
17:17
Speaker 1: which is okay, guys, you choose where you want to start.
17:20
Speaker 1: I don't mind if you want to start with food,
17:22
Speaker 1: start there. But if you don't want to start there,
17:25
Speaker 1: that's okay as well. And you know, I want to
17:29
Speaker 1: make this. You know, this book came out a few
17:31
Speaker 1: months ago in the UK, right, and it's doing incredibly well.
17:35
Speaker 1: And I think the reason it is doing so well
17:38
Speaker 1: is because I've really tried hard to not talk down
17:43
Speaker 1: to people, not to tell people what to do. Nobody
17:45
Speaker 1: wants to be told what to do. I don't do that,
17:48
Speaker 1: and it surprises people. But as a doctor, I have
17:51
Speaker 1: never still in nearly twenty years of practice, I've still
17:54
Speaker 1: never told a patient of mine that they have to
17:58
Speaker 1: give up smoking. What I mean by that is, I
18:01
Speaker 1: feel that my job as a doctor is to have
18:06
Speaker 1: an honest conversation with him. If they come into my
18:08
Speaker 1: consultation room, and if they ask me, my job is
18:12
Speaker 1: to tell them what that is doing for their health
18:13
Speaker 1: and their well being. If at the end of that conversation,
18:17
Speaker 1: the man or the woman says to me, hey, doc,
18:21
Speaker 1: I get it. I hear what you're saying. But you
18:23
Speaker 1: know what, I get so much enjoyment out of that,
18:25
Speaker 1: and it's not going to quit. I feel, as a
18:28
Speaker 1: human being, I feel what right do I have to
18:31
Speaker 1: say to him, No, you must give it up, you know.
18:33
Speaker 1: And actually, I think one of the reason why I
18:36
Speaker 1: tend to get really good compliance with my patients is
18:38
Speaker 1: because I do treat them like partners. I treat them
18:41
Speaker 1: like adults, even if that smoking conversation is just setting
18:44
Speaker 1: the scene for six months down the line or twelve
18:47
Speaker 1: months down the line, when they thought about it and
18:49
Speaker 1: reflected and we've done a bit of other work and
18:50
Speaker 1: they come back go, he you know what, I might
18:52
Speaker 1: be ready for it now. So I think, you know,
18:56
Speaker 1: I think that side of things is really really important.
19:00
Speaker 3: Finding the psychological button that's going to activate the person.
19:03
Speaker 3: And everybody has something different. There's a different way in
19:06
Speaker 3: with every individual. So you almost have to really take
19:10
Speaker 3: like an inventory of someone when they come into your
19:12
Speaker 3: office to try to determine what is the thing that
19:16
Speaker 3: I can talk about with this person that's going to
19:18
Speaker 3: catalyze change in them.
19:20
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know, the hardest thing for me, Rich
19:23
Speaker 1: was I know how to do that one on one
19:27
Speaker 1: with the patient, you know, all right, I'd like to
19:29
Speaker 1: think I do, you know, it's I think the biggest
19:32
Speaker 1: skill of a healthcare professional is actually how do you
19:34
Speaker 1: instruct to communicate with your patient? I think that is
19:37
Speaker 1: the number one thing that actually leads to good outcomes.
19:40
Speaker 1: I don't care how many papers and how many science
19:42
Speaker 1: things you've read. If you don't know how to make
19:45
Speaker 1: it personal and relatable to that person in front of you,
19:48
Speaker 1: it doesn't matter, really doesn't matter.
19:50
Speaker 3: But the system is not set up to encourage that.
19:52
Speaker 3: And that's one thing I want to explore with you.
19:54
Speaker 3: And I want to get into the four pillars and
19:56
Speaker 3: all of that, but I think maybe it would be
19:58
Speaker 3: good to kind of contextualize all of this by establishing
20:04
Speaker 3: the lay of the land right now in terms of
20:06
Speaker 3: what is going on with chronic lifestyle disease in North
20:11
Speaker 3: America and.
20:11
Speaker 1: The developed world because.
20:13
Speaker 3: The statistics and this, you know, specifically, some of the
20:15
Speaker 3: numbers that you use in your book, they're just appalling.
20:19
Speaker 1: But beyond appalling that they're unsustainable for every single healthcare
20:23
Speaker 1: system on a financial level, but on a human level,
20:27
Speaker 1: on it just on a moral level. You know, chronic
20:30
Speaker 1: disease is affecting so many families and it's causing pain, disability, heartache,
20:35
Speaker 1: premature death. You know, I've gone on record before as
20:38
Speaker 1: saying eighty percent of what I see as a medical
20:42
Speaker 1: dottor in my practice is in some way related to
20:46
Speaker 1: our collective modern lifestyles. Okay, I'm not putting blame on people,
20:50
Speaker 1: right because I get it it can be tricky, okay,
20:52
Speaker 1: But I'm saying, collectively, the way we're living our lifestyles
20:55
Speaker 1: is having a negative impacts on the way that we feel.
20:58
Speaker 1: And look the book, there's some US statists, but I'll
21:01
Speaker 1: give you a UK statistic that is frankly alarming, right
21:05
Speaker 1: and this is from twenty twelve. Okay, that in twenty twelve,
21:08
Speaker 1: So what's six years ago? One report suggested that the
21:12
Speaker 1: UK was paying twenty billion pounds, so that is about
21:17
Speaker 1: twenty seven twenty eight billion dollars dollars sorry, million dollars
21:22
Speaker 1: on that direct and indirect costs are Type two diabetes.
21:28
Speaker 1: It's insane. Type two diabetes is a fully preventible in
21:34
Speaker 1: most cases. It is a preventible condition. It is a lifestyle,
21:37
Speaker 1: environmental driven condition. And we're saying we're going to effectively,
21:41
Speaker 1: if we don't do anything different, we're going to allow
21:43
Speaker 1: it to bankruptile healthcare systems.
21:46
Speaker 3: I find it incredibly, incredibly sad. Yeah, I'm looking at
21:50
Speaker 3: your book right now. One in ten Americans currently has
21:53
Speaker 3: type two diabetes. Between nineteen ninety and twenty thirteen, rates
21:56
Speaker 3: of this disease shot up by an incredible seventy one
21:59
Speaker 3: percent in the US, US one of the most dramatic
22:01
Speaker 3: increases of any nation. It costs US two hundred and
22:04
Speaker 3: forty five billion dollars a year.
22:06
Speaker 1: Half of all.
22:06
Speaker 3: American adults currently suffer from a chronic disease, with one
22:10
Speaker 3: in four people suffering from two or more. Chronic disease
22:14
Speaker 3: is by a wide margin, now the deadliest problem facing America.
22:17
Speaker 3: It's true, it's unbelievable.
22:19
Speaker 1: It's this is for America. This is not just a
22:23
Speaker 1: health problem. This is an economic problem. This is a
22:26
Speaker 1: you know, I think the US are going to struggle
22:29
Speaker 1: to be a well functioning economy, a global power, you know,
22:34
Speaker 1: whatever you want to call it, with this way of disease,
22:37
Speaker 1: because it people don't often think about is this cornic disease.
22:40
Speaker 1: It is affecting their whole body. Is it's affecting the
22:42
Speaker 1: way that their brain operates. It's affecting their ability to
22:45
Speaker 1: be productive in the workplace, productive and happy and interact
22:49
Speaker 1: with the with their families, with their work colleagues. And
22:53
Speaker 1: that's the other thing, you know, I see a lot
22:54
Speaker 1: of the disharmony I see in relationships and families. Often
23:00
Speaker 1: it comes down to, you know, not the only thing,
23:03
Speaker 1: but often a key part of that is that people
23:06
Speaker 1: don't feel good in themselves. They're functioning day to day suboptimally.
23:11
Speaker 1: They're not functioning at peak performance. So they are, you know,
23:15
Speaker 1: they're having little rows and little little problems with their partners,
23:18
Speaker 1: with their kids, with their work colleagues. And often that's
23:21
Speaker 1: because they're putting junk in their mouth, right, which is
23:23
Speaker 1: affecting their brain and their mood. They're sort of only
23:26
Speaker 1: having five hours sleep a night, which is you know,
23:29
Speaker 1: you know, trashing their brain in the morning. When in
23:31
Speaker 1: terms of you know, you know yourself, or certainly I
23:33
Speaker 1: know as a father, you know, if I haven't slept well,
23:35
Speaker 1: my ability to deal with the stresses at home and
23:39
Speaker 1: you know, let things just lie, you know, or when
23:40
Speaker 1: the kids are doing something, it's much reduced. And yeah,
23:44
Speaker 1: it's not even close. Yeah, So a lot of these
23:46
Speaker 1: things are happening because we're not looking after our health.
23:50
Speaker 1: And you know, I think when we say chronic disease,
23:52
Speaker 1: I think it's it's always worth explaining that we're talking
23:55
Speaker 1: about things like yes, TARP two diabetes, Yes, high blood pressure, yes,
24:00
Speaker 1: heart disease and stroke, yes, Alzheimer's disease, but we're also
24:05
Speaker 1: talking about things like mental health problems. You know, the
24:08
Speaker 1: latest statistic in the UK right which comes from the
24:11
Speaker 1: Mind Charity, is that one in four people in the
24:13
Speaker 1: UK are going to have a mental health problem in
24:17
Speaker 1: any given year. I just find it an incredible statistic.
24:21
Speaker 1: And you know, we're still looking for this pharmaceutical model
24:26
Speaker 1: of care to try and fix these problems. I can
24:29
Speaker 1: tell you it's just simply in a lot of cases,
24:33
Speaker 1: it is not working. And herein is the crux of
24:36
Speaker 1: the matter. Forty to fifty years ago, what we were
24:40
Speaker 1: seeing as medical doctors responded very well to the magic bullet.
24:44
Speaker 1: You know, you come in, right, you've got to let's
24:46
Speaker 1: say you've got a chest infection or a pneumonia. Right,
24:50
Speaker 1: you've got the overgrowth of the bug that's causing you
24:52
Speaker 1: this problem. Come and see the doctor that they identify
24:55
Speaker 1: and give you a pill to zap that bug, and
24:58
Speaker 1: then in a week or maybe ten days, you're better. Right.
25:02
Speaker 1: We can talk about the knock on consequences of that,
25:04
Speaker 1: but that's a separate story. But that worked forty fifty
25:08
Speaker 1: years ago. The bulk of what we've see now does
25:11
Speaker 1: not respond to this. You know, one pill for ever
25:15
Speaker 1: real model. There's multiple things that are going on, and
25:18
Speaker 1: it's not just one suggestion you've got to make. You've
25:20
Speaker 1: got to tackle multiple things in one's lifestyle if you're
25:24
Speaker 1: going to get a result. And you know, those four
25:28
Speaker 1: pillars could have been five, six, seven, Right, I could
25:30
Speaker 1: have expanded it out right, Frank's god six Frank.
25:34
Speaker 3: Six, Yeah, but you guys can battle it out.
25:37
Speaker 1: Is in four or six. Yeah, exactly. And the reality
25:40
Speaker 1: is is that the clash always is is how can
25:45
Speaker 1: you communicate complex health information simplistically, not in a patronizing fashion,
25:52
Speaker 1: but in a way that actually people feel, Okay, I
25:54
Speaker 1: get it. I can do that. And I nearly went
25:57
Speaker 1: to five, you know, but I thought, no, I'm just
26:00
Speaker 1: going to stick to four. Like so, I think connection
26:03
Speaker 1: and communities.
26:03
Speaker 3: That was one of franks I think, and I actually
26:06
Speaker 3: wondered that, especially since you know, you talk about the
26:08
Speaker 3: sort of the blue zones and the diet part and
26:10
Speaker 3: that's such a key component of longevity from those studies.
26:14
Speaker 1: Yeah, oh absolutely, I mean I the connection piece I
26:19
Speaker 1: put in the relaxed pillar. So one of my recommendations is,
26:23
Speaker 1: you know, to eat around, reclaim your dining table, right,
26:26
Speaker 1: and it's to sit around at least once a day
26:28
Speaker 1: if possible, to have a meal with someone else if
26:30
Speaker 1: you can. And I bring into in that chapter why
26:35
Speaker 1: community is so important, and that really is what I
26:38
Speaker 1: hang it off in the book, because You're right, I
26:41
Speaker 1: could have made a fifth pillar all about it. But
26:43
Speaker 1: I also think there's something in keeping it simple, simple
26:46
Speaker 1: enough that people think I get it. I can do
26:49
Speaker 1: that today. I don't need to wait till January next
26:52
Speaker 1: year to start this big program. This feels pretty achievable.
26:56
Speaker 1: And I can tell you, rich, where did that Reclaim
26:59
Speaker 1: your Dying table come from? Because people might go, yeah,
27:03
Speaker 1: how's that going to help with my health? Why is
27:06
Speaker 1: that important? I made some TV documentaries for BBC Television
27:12
Speaker 1: where he went and lived with an alongside families to
27:17
Speaker 1: help them with their health problems. And I was very fortunate.
27:21
Speaker 1: I feel very humble to have had that experience to
27:23
Speaker 1: be invited into people's homes and actually actually see in
27:26
Speaker 1: real life what they do, not what they tell me
27:28
Speaker 1: in the consultation room, but what they actually do in
27:31
Speaker 1: real life. And so many of the families I stayed
27:34
Speaker 1: with didn't set a neat together. You know, forget about
27:39
Speaker 1: what they're eating for a minute. You know, one of
27:42
Speaker 1: the kids is maybe on the sofa scrolling their their
27:45
Speaker 1: Facebook whilst they're eating. You know, Mum might be watching
27:49
Speaker 1: television but also doing her emails while she's eating. Dads
27:52
Speaker 1: in another room, the son somewhere else. And I saw
27:55
Speaker 1: that and I thought, what was the norm? I'm sure
27:59
Speaker 1: it was in the US, just as in the UK,
28:01
Speaker 1: maybe forty years ago that every dining table, every house
28:04
Speaker 1: would have a dining table. Now we're knocking them out.
28:08
Speaker 1: We're making room for big widescreen televisions and all this
28:11
Speaker 1: sort of stuff. And I made the recommendation to so
28:14
Speaker 1: many of those families, say guys, look, you know, we
28:16
Speaker 1: an't going to change what you eat, but I wonder
28:17
Speaker 1: if you guys could manage once a day where you
28:21
Speaker 1: sit together and eat as a family. And I saw
28:24
Speaker 1: the profound benefits. Yes, they were eating less because they
28:28
Speaker 1: were eating more mindfully, and they were connecting whilst they
28:31
Speaker 1: were eating. But there was this couple who lovely middle
28:36
Speaker 1: aged couple, and I came back after a few days
28:39
Speaker 1: and I said, how are you guys doing with that?
28:40
Speaker 1: And the husband said to me, I said, It's incredible.
28:44
Speaker 1: You know, I feel like I'm really connecting with my wife.
28:47
Speaker 1: I'm sitting We never used to sit around and without
28:50
Speaker 1: devices and have our meal. But I'm asking her about
28:53
Speaker 1: her day. I'm learning things that happened. His wife said
28:57
Speaker 1: the same thing. And they feel closer than more. Intimer
29:00
Speaker 1: see that just from making that suggestion, and I learned.
29:04
Speaker 1: I didn't learn that in my consultation room. Had I
29:07
Speaker 1: not gone and stayed with those families, I wouldn't have
29:11
Speaker 1: seen that something that I thought was relatively normal is
29:15
Speaker 1: frankly not normal anymore.
29:17
Speaker 3: Right, right, right, Yeah, it's becoming.
29:20
Speaker 1: You know, it's gone the way of the Dodo.
29:22
Speaker 3: You know, it's sort of thought of as antiquarian and
29:26
Speaker 3: quaint and you know at this point, but there's so
29:29
Speaker 3: much truth in what you just said. But I think
29:31
Speaker 3: the first hurdle is really getting people to understand on
29:34
Speaker 3: a very basic, elementary, fundamental level that they have control
29:39
Speaker 3: over their health, that the decisions that they make about
29:41
Speaker 3: how they're living their life hour to hour, day to
29:44
Speaker 3: day have profound implications in terms of whether they're going
29:47
Speaker 3: to succumb to disease or live vibrantly. And I think
29:51
Speaker 3: for a lot of people that's revelatory and new.
29:55
Speaker 1: That's brand new. Even the way I was taught at
29:58
Speaker 1: medical school really didn't didn't empower us, you know, didn't
30:03
Speaker 1: empower me as a medical doctor with that information, because
30:05
Speaker 1: back then we thought our genes were our destiny, right,
30:08
Speaker 1: That's kind of what we thought was going to happen then,
30:10
Speaker 1: was we've got you know, as we do the Human
30:12
Speaker 1: Genome Project, we get more and more we understand that
30:14
Speaker 1: it's all to do with our genes. What cards have
30:16
Speaker 1: we been dout when we come out of the womb.
30:19
Speaker 1: But the last ten years has changed all of that,
30:21
Speaker 1: you know. And again the statistics vary depending on who
30:24
Speaker 1: you read, but you know, there seems to be a
30:25
Speaker 1: bit of consensus now that about ten percent of our
30:29
Speaker 1: health outcomes for most of us is down to our genes.
30:32
Speaker 1: Ninety percent of it is down to our environment and
30:35
Speaker 1: our lifestyle. And that's incredibly empowering. So I think there
30:38
Speaker 1: is a generation out there who think and have been
30:43
Speaker 1: trained to believe that it's you know, my father had
30:45
Speaker 1: touched dibet so of course I'm going to have touched
30:47
Speaker 1: on ibetes. There's nothing I can do, you know, And
30:50
Speaker 1: in some way that plays into the whole emotional piece,
30:53
Speaker 1: which is, you know what, I'm going to keep making
30:56
Speaker 1: these choices because it doesn't matter. You know, Dad got it,
30:59
Speaker 1: I'm going to get it. Might as well enjoy my life,
31:01
Speaker 1: right or that's the perception, and that's the key message
31:06
Speaker 1: I try whenever I speak, whenever I teach doctors, whenever
31:09
Speaker 1: I talk to the public, I'm always trying to say, guys,
31:12
Speaker 1: we've got the control. You know, we've got more control
31:15
Speaker 1: than we think. Just to be clear, that are some
31:18
Speaker 1: genetic conditions that are related to you know, like even
31:21
Speaker 1: even Alzheimer's for example. You know, there is under one
31:24
Speaker 1: percent of Alzheimer's is due to your genes. Right, some
31:28
Speaker 1: people are born with something that means it's very likely
31:31
Speaker 1: they're going to get it, okay, but that is not
31:33
Speaker 1: the vast majority of us. And I think even that
31:36
Speaker 1: message is like a revelation for people. And even if
31:40
Speaker 1: I could, you know, help the incredible you know, people
31:43
Speaker 1: like yourself and other doctors and other people who are
31:46
Speaker 1: trying to spread this message around the world. If all
31:49
Speaker 1: we do is get that message out there, that's a
31:52
Speaker 1: great starting point. Because here's the other thing, right, is
31:55
Speaker 1: that one of the things that frustrates me about the
31:58
Speaker 1: infighting on social media and on the internet about a
32:02
Speaker 1: lot of these things is that many people are kind
32:05
Speaker 1: of saying similar things. Right, So to give you one
32:08
Speaker 1: extreme viewpoint here, I wouldn't call it an extreme viewpoint,
32:13
Speaker 1: but just to sort of paint in the picture. Obviously,
32:16
Speaker 1: there is a lot of animosity between certain groups, whether
32:20
Speaker 1: it's vegan, plant based versus low carbon you know, animal products,
32:26
Speaker 1: you know, for an example. But both groups, right are
32:31
Speaker 1: saying now that actually we can reverse a lot of
32:34
Speaker 1: these chronic diseases. You know, both groups will say we
32:38
Speaker 1: can reverse tar to diabetes. We can reduce our chances
32:41
Speaker 1: of getting out time is by adopting our dietary pattern, right,
32:46
Speaker 1: So I trying to sift through that and sit just
32:50
Speaker 1: outside it and look at it and go okay. So
32:53
Speaker 1: compared to ten years ago, when very few people were
32:56
Speaker 1: saying that we could reverse a condition like tarch to diabetes,
33:00
Speaker 1: I was crazy making yeah. And now we've got this
33:04
Speaker 1: coming out from people who, yeah, may have a different
33:06
Speaker 1: viewpoint on how the best way to do that is, right,
33:09
Speaker 1: but they're all saying we can reverse this stuff that
33:13
Speaker 1: I think is a revelation. I think we need to
33:14
Speaker 1: focus on that. Go okay, great, so I don't necessarily
33:17
Speaker 1: need to be on medication for the rest of my life.
33:19
Speaker 1: I might be able to do something about this. And
33:22
Speaker 1: I find that exciting, And I think that's the message
33:25
Speaker 1: we need to get to people and then then help
33:28
Speaker 1: them make small changes. So why do people find it
33:30
Speaker 1: so hard? So many reasons for that, you know, there's
33:33
Speaker 1: a lot of emotional reasons behind that as well. But
33:36
Speaker 1: I think if we can make it seem accessible to them,
33:40
Speaker 1: if they feel, hey, you know what I can do that.
33:44
Speaker 1: Like one of my recommendations is fifteen minutes in me
33:46
Speaker 1: time a day. Most people what fifteen minutes? You know?
33:52
Speaker 1: And it's incredible because that it's like a domino effect.
33:56
Speaker 1: You start it off simple, you get people go why
33:59
Speaker 1: I can do that? I think I can manage fifteen minutes, right,
34:02
Speaker 1: and then that domino falls, you start to feel the benefits,
34:06
Speaker 1: and then the other dominoes starts to come in line.
34:09
Speaker 1: But doctor chatterjy, you don't understand my life.
34:11
Speaker 3: I get up at four thirty in the morning, I
34:13
Speaker 3: got four kids, I got to get them dressed into school,
34:15
Speaker 3: and then I work two jobs and by the time
34:17
Speaker 3: I get home at ten thirty eleven o'clock at night,
34:20
Speaker 3: and I got to try to make a little bit
34:22
Speaker 3: of food for my kids, and I'm just exhausted.
34:25
Speaker 1: I get it. I understand. So what do you think
34:27
Speaker 1: you can manage? Can we start with five minutes? Do
34:30
Speaker 1: you think you can find five minutes in your day?
34:32
Speaker 1: And that's the approach I'd take. You know, these are
34:34
Speaker 1: just suggestions. These not prescriptions. These are saying, Look, I
34:38
Speaker 1: think fifteen minutes is a great starting point, but if
34:40
Speaker 1: all you can manage is five minutes, right, And even
34:43
Speaker 1: that fictional lady who you know you just spoke about,
34:48
Speaker 1: I bet you she can manage five minutes somewhat in
34:51
Speaker 1: her day, you know. And that's not me being judgmental
34:54
Speaker 1: at all. I'm just saying I've I've got patience like that.
34:58
Speaker 1: And what I try to one on one is find
35:00
Speaker 1: the way in. Find what is it that they're doing.
35:02
Speaker 1: Where can I get a bit of traction here? What
35:04
Speaker 1: can I start them with. I've made a deal with
35:07
Speaker 1: a patient before that they're going to do two minutes
35:08
Speaker 1: meditation a day, right, So I can't do it? They said,
35:12
Speaker 1: I can't meditate. I can't. You know, I'm not going
35:14
Speaker 1: to have time. You know, it doesn't fit with my lifestyle.
35:16
Speaker 1: I said, okay, you brush your teeth for two minutes
35:18
Speaker 1: in the morning. Okay, why do you do two minutes
35:21
Speaker 1: in the morning. So I've always done that, I said, yeah,
35:23
Speaker 1: you've You've ingrained that in a habit. Even if you're busy,
35:26
Speaker 1: you never don't brush your teeth for two minutes in
35:28
Speaker 1: the morning. Two minutes in the evening. Okay, because yeah,
35:30
Speaker 1: that's right. I don't I said, well, how about then,
35:32
Speaker 1: do you think you can manage two minutes of meditation? Yeah?
35:36
Speaker 1: Two minutes. Sure, And we made a deal. I said, okay,
35:40
Speaker 1: I tell you what, let's make a commitment now that
35:42
Speaker 1: you're going to do that. She goes away, she starts
35:44
Speaker 1: doing that. You know, within about two or three months,
35:47
Speaker 1: you're doing twenty minutes a day. So I very much.
35:51
Speaker 1: You know, this comes from real life experience. Rich. This
35:54
Speaker 1: is you know. I I when I look back on
35:57
Speaker 1: my career, and I think early on in my I
36:00
Speaker 1: really had a real disconnect with you know. I went to,
36:04
Speaker 1: you know, very prestigious medical school. I qualified as a specialist,
36:07
Speaker 1: and I moved to general practice because I was always
36:09
Speaker 1: searching for something in medicine that resonated with me. When
36:12
Speaker 1: I was working in kidney medicine, I thought, ah, I
36:16
Speaker 1: don't want to spend my whole career just looking at kidney's.
36:18
Speaker 1: Everything I always intuitively need everything was connected, and I
36:22
Speaker 1: felt that we were getting too super specialized in medicine.
36:26
Speaker 1: So I moved much of my much of my dad's
36:30
Speaker 1: You could come from a line of doctors. I come
36:32
Speaker 1: from a line of doctors. You know, he's an Indian
36:34
Speaker 1: doctor who came over to the UK. You know they
36:38
Speaker 1: value the specialist. Right, his son GP His son had
36:42
Speaker 1: qualified this especially, had done all the hard work to
36:44
Speaker 1: get there. I said, Dad, you know, I'm I think
36:46
Speaker 1: I'm going to change. I'm gonna I'm going to be
36:48
Speaker 1: become a generalist. Why do you want to do that?
36:51
Speaker 1: And I've always Now now that I get it, now
36:54
Speaker 1: that I understand what I love doing with the patients,
36:58
Speaker 1: I can look back now and go That's why I
36:59
Speaker 1: was slightly frustrates it. I didn't get that deep enjoyment
37:03
Speaker 1: out of my job that I do today because I
37:07
Speaker 1: just thought I was giving pills out.
37:09
Speaker 3: Well, you're a people guy too, right, Like I can
37:11
Speaker 3: tell that you're somebody who enjoys basically like figuring out
37:15
Speaker 3: what makes other people tick. And that's such a huge
37:19
Speaker 3: part of practicing medicine that I think we lost touch with.
37:24
Speaker 3: That is now slowly starting to come back. We're seeing this,
37:27
Speaker 3: you know, influx, this rise of functional integrative medicine. Doctors
37:31
Speaker 3: like yourself, it's become you know, it's becoming a thing.
37:35
Speaker 3: And yet it's still very much a small sliver in
37:40
Speaker 3: comparison to the way most people are practicing medicine and
37:44
Speaker 3: the way that most patients experience their healthcare practitioners.
37:50
Speaker 1: And it's it's it's very signed, it's very signed, because
37:53
Speaker 1: this is you know, this is affecting people's lives. You know,
37:57
Speaker 1: it's people are dying early, that day to day life
38:00
Speaker 1: are being hindered because you know, we're not evolving with
38:06
Speaker 1: the times. The health landscape of the developed world, and
38:09
Speaker 1: actually the development probe as well has changed, so the
38:13
Speaker 1: way we practice medicine also has to change, but it hasn't.
38:17
Speaker 1: And therein lies one of the big problems. And you know,
38:22
Speaker 1: I say, you know I've created I was getting so
38:25
Speaker 1: frustrated with this. I thought, Okay, you know, I can
38:28
Speaker 1: keep talking about it. I can keep going on BBC
38:30
Speaker 1: television and talking about this being a problem, but how
38:32
Speaker 1: are we going to start fixing there? So with a
38:34
Speaker 1: colleague of mind, I create a brand new course called
38:36
Speaker 1: Prescribing Lifestyle Medicine. That was the first Prescribing Life of
38:40
Speaker 1: Medicine course to be accredited by the Royal College of GPS.
38:44
Speaker 1: So it's great, yeah, And we taught two hundred docs
38:47
Speaker 1: in the UK back in January. We ran it again
38:50
Speaker 1: in April. And why that accreditation was important because it
38:55
Speaker 1: gave it a bit of validity. It gave it to
38:57
Speaker 1: other docs who were like, yeah, I kind of I'm
38:59
Speaker 1: reading all the stuff on the internet. I'm interested, but
39:02
Speaker 1: you know, having the CPD points there for people to
39:05
Speaker 1: come legitimizes it. It legitimized it. And you know it
39:08
Speaker 1: took you know, we spent six months working up this course.
39:12
Speaker 1: You know we're trying to do it in one day.
39:14
Speaker 1: But it's my way of trying to say, look, yes,
39:16
Speaker 1: I've showcased on television that type T dibetes, fibromyalgia, you know,
39:22
Speaker 1: can be reversed in many cases, panic anxiety stats can
39:27
Speaker 1: come down my seventy percent by making lifestyle changes.
39:30
Speaker 3: Immune diseases, all all sorts of things.
39:33
Speaker 1: I feel like, you know, I've helped showcase that to
39:36
Speaker 1: a mainstream audience on BBC one and in countries all
39:39
Speaker 1: over the world, that these conditions can often be reversed
39:44
Speaker 1: but certainly dramatically improved, right by making these changes to
39:48
Speaker 1: these four key areas. And I thought, well, that's great,
39:51
Speaker 1: but if the public are watching that, then they go
39:53
Speaker 1: to their own doctor for help in that, but the
39:55
Speaker 1: doctor doesn't know what to do with that. That's where
39:58
Speaker 1: we got a problem. So I thought, as a medical dotor,
40:00
Speaker 1: maybe I can. I can I can be part of
40:03
Speaker 1: the solution by helping to educate a new a new
40:06
Speaker 1: generation of doctors in what is possible and what I
40:10
Speaker 1: We end the course with a me and my colleague.
40:14
Speaker 1: We we do a role play, right, and people love
40:18
Speaker 1: the role play because what we do is we on stage.
40:21
Speaker 1: We sort of go through how a consultation might roll
40:26
Speaker 1: when someone comes in with tch to diabetes. And the
40:28
Speaker 1: first one is what typically happens, which is, you know,
40:31
Speaker 1: someone knots on the door. I'm the dog. I'm looking
40:33
Speaker 1: at my computer. You know, I'm typing away. The guy
40:36
Speaker 1: comes in. I barely make eye contacts. I say, hey, Barry, look,
40:41
Speaker 1: you know we've got some use for you. Very you know,
40:44
Speaker 1: pretty worrying blood results have come through. You've been diagnosed
40:47
Speaker 1: with a condition called tuc To diabetes, tuchted diabetes. You
40:50
Speaker 1: know it puts you increased risk of heart disease, you know, stroke, Alzheimer's.
40:55
Speaker 1: You know you may start getting nerve damage. We may
40:58
Speaker 1: you know, some people need to amputate their lefts. But
41:00
Speaker 1: don't worry. We've got a great medication for that, you know.
41:02
Speaker 1: So we're going to start you on that today, within
41:04
Speaker 1: a you know, we're going to start your something called
41:06
Speaker 1: metform and today. Normally within within six months twelve months,
41:09
Speaker 1: will put you on a second pill. Sometimes we'll need
41:12
Speaker 1: to progress to winsulent injections, but don't worry. We'll be
41:14
Speaker 1: keeping a regular eye on you. And as Barry is
41:17
Speaker 1: walking out in shell shots, Hey, and if you can
41:20
Speaker 1: lose a bit of weight as well and go to
41:21
Speaker 1: the gym, that'd be great. Okay if that is even so,
41:25
Speaker 1: if that is even said. But even if it is
41:27
Speaker 1: said like that, what does the patient walk out with?
41:30
Speaker 1: They walk out with. Okay, I've got the condition. It's serious, okay,
41:35
Speaker 1: But the doc said there's loads of yeah, loads of
41:37
Speaker 1: drugs he can give me. He only mentioned lifestyle. That's
41:40
Speaker 1: not really that important because you spent the whole time
41:41
Speaker 1: talking about about drugs. So I say to people, if
41:45
Speaker 1: we prioritize lifestyle, the patient will prioritize lifestyle. If we
41:49
Speaker 1: prioritize drugs, they will prioritize drugs. That's and so you
41:54
Speaker 1: Compare that with Barry coming in and me saying, hey, Barry, look,
41:57
Speaker 1: you know you know those blood tests you recently done,
42:01
Speaker 1: actually a few things have shown up in there. And
42:03
Speaker 1: you have a conversation. You say, Barry, look, your bloodchick
42:06
Speaker 1: is a little bit high and you're actually in the
42:08
Speaker 1: range now what we would call tartied diabetes. You know
42:11
Speaker 1: what that is? I don't know. Well, you explain what
42:13
Speaker 1: it is. You say, hey, Barry, look, here's the thing.
42:16
Speaker 1: You will have been doing things in your lifestyle, possibly
42:19
Speaker 1: without realizing it, for a good ten years now that
42:22
Speaker 1: has led you up this continuum so that you now
42:25
Speaker 1: actually have a diagnosis of tati diabetes. Would you like
42:29
Speaker 1: me to help you understand what those things are, how
42:31
Speaker 1: we can change them, and then hopefully, if we're lucky,
42:34
Speaker 1: we could start turning this thing around. Yeah, hey, dot strategy,
42:37
Speaker 1: I'd love to. Yeah, you know, let's talk again. I
42:40
Speaker 1: don't want to labor the point, but the whole dynamic
42:43
Speaker 1: is different. Barry goes out of that consultation with some
42:47
Speaker 1: actionable steps, thinking, hey, you know there's something I can
42:50
Speaker 1: do about this, right empowered. Yeah, but that comes to
42:53
Speaker 1: our skill as a clinician and also our willingness to
42:56
Speaker 1: prioritize that.
42:58
Speaker 3: But in fairness, there also has to be systemic changes
43:01
Speaker 3: to the way the entire system is set up. I mean, look,
43:06
Speaker 3: you know, doctors are well intentioned. They want to help people,
43:09
Speaker 3: they want they want to be healers. That's why they
43:11
Speaker 3: get into it. But when the system is constructed such
43:16
Speaker 3: that they have five or ten minutes with each person.
43:19
Speaker 1: It's it's it's it's set up to fail in that way.
43:22
Speaker 3: So like, I love the fact that you created this program,
43:26
Speaker 3: but you know it needs to be across the board
43:29
Speaker 3: in the medical schools, like from the very beginning, doctors
43:33
Speaker 3: need to be trained in all of this stuff, and
43:36
Speaker 3: systemic changes have to be made that allow for that
43:38
Speaker 3: kind of bandwidth with each patient so that that person
43:44
Speaker 3: can leave with that sense of empowerment.
43:46
Speaker 1: Rachel absolutely whites, And you know, ultimately this is not
43:49
Speaker 1: just going to be the adults. So you know, this
43:51
Speaker 1: is arguably you know, we need to collaborate more with
43:55
Speaker 1: nutrition professionals, with health coaches. You know. But what I'm
43:59
Speaker 1: what I cite to people is people say to me sometimes,
44:01
Speaker 1: why do dots need this training? You know, why can't
44:03
Speaker 1: dots just refer to the right people. And there's a
44:06
Speaker 1: fundamental misunderstanding of what our job is, you see, because
44:11
Speaker 1: if we don't know, right, okay, we SWaCH up time
44:14
Speaker 1: to diabetes and let's say obesity, right, these are things
44:16
Speaker 1: which are obviously for many people related to our lifestyle. Okay,
44:21
Speaker 1: So to arguably we might refer here, okay, what about
44:25
Speaker 1: conditions like mental health problems? Right? What about something like
44:29
Speaker 1: migrains which affects cause huge disability, huge morbidity across the population.
44:34
Speaker 1: What about these problems where we don't automatically think that
44:38
Speaker 1: lifestyle has a role when I know full well and
44:41
Speaker 1: I've seen that you can absolutely make a huge impact
44:43
Speaker 1: with these patients with lifestyle changes. Unless we get the training,
44:48
Speaker 1: we're never ever going to be even referring these guards
44:51
Speaker 1: to health coaches or lifestyle professionals to help them. Yeah,
44:54
Speaker 1: you wouldn't even know to do. You don't even know
44:55
Speaker 1: to do that, you know. I gave it electric in
45:00
Speaker 1: Bristol in the UK in January where for the Royal
45:03
Speaker 1: College of GPS on well Being for doctors, because burnout
45:06
Speaker 1: in physicians is a huge problem. And I said to
45:09
Speaker 1: these guys at the start, I said, how many of
45:11
Speaker 1: you with a patient who comes in with a mental
45:14
Speaker 1: health problem like depression. How many if you talk about
45:16
Speaker 1: food with those patients, and you know, about five percent
45:21
Speaker 1: of the room put the hand up. Then I presented
45:23
Speaker 1: some of the science behind it, including you know, there's
45:26
Speaker 1: this beautiful trial from February twenty seventeen called the Smiles
45:29
Speaker 1: trial in Australia. Very small, okay, but it was a
45:33
Speaker 1: randomized control tries showing that people who followed a modified
45:36
Speaker 1: Mediterranean diet. These are all patients with depression, moderate or
45:40
Speaker 1: severe depression. They were already on therapy, nothing of that,
45:44
Speaker 1: none of that was changed. But one group went on
45:47
Speaker 1: a modified Mediterranean diet for twelve weeks. The other group
45:50
Speaker 1: had some sort of talking social therapy, and at the
45:54
Speaker 1: end of twelve weeks there were statistically significant remission rate
46:00
Speaker 1: the group who went on a modifated Mediterranean diets. Now,
46:03
Speaker 1: there was only sixty seven participants, but that adds to
46:06
Speaker 1: the weight of evidence that is already building. And I said, guys, look,
46:09
Speaker 1: how many of you now are going to have this
46:11
Speaker 1: conversation with your mental health patients. Pretty Much everyone put
46:14
Speaker 1: their hand up, because you know, something that seems so
46:17
Speaker 1: obvious to me, is not mainstream knowledge amongst these professionals.
46:21
Speaker 1: So yes, the training needs to help that. You know,
46:23
Speaker 1: this training needs to be compulsory in medical schools. I
46:26
Speaker 1: absolutely agree as somebody who said, when we put on
46:29
Speaker 1: this course, you know, because everyone's you know, a social
46:32
Speaker 1: media expert these days, is like, you know, this is
46:34
Speaker 1: not enough. You know, we need to get this some
46:35
Speaker 1: medical schools. I agree with all that You've got to
46:38
Speaker 1: start somewhere. I start, I've got to start somewhere. You've
46:41
Speaker 1: got to give this movement credibility.
46:43
Speaker 3: The mental health pieces is so huge, and I think,
46:47
Speaker 3: you know, I'm interested in your experience, Like if you
46:49
Speaker 3: when you start talking about treating mental illness or things
46:54
Speaker 3: like depression through lifestyle alterations.
46:57
Speaker 1: People get nervous.
46:58
Speaker 3: Yeah, right, because we're just used to thinking of it
47:02
Speaker 3: a little bit differently than we think about physical health.
47:05
Speaker 3: But it is so debilitating for so many people, and it.
47:09
Speaker 1: Kind of lurks in the shadows.
47:11
Speaker 3: And you know, my experience is in working with lots
47:14
Speaker 3: of people and being part of the recovery community for
47:16
Speaker 3: many years, is that even when you're amongst people who
47:21
Speaker 3: are very high functioning, who seem like they have everything together.
47:24
Speaker 3: If you can get them in a safe environment where
47:27
Speaker 3: they have an inkling, a slight willingness to be vulnerable,
47:31
Speaker 3: and you just poke them ever so slightly, you'd be
47:35
Speaker 3: amazed at what comes out. We're all dealing on some
47:37
Speaker 3: level with all kinds of stressors and anxieties that are
47:41
Speaker 3: really in disha of our times. Like how we live
47:46
Speaker 3: our lives now is so antithetical to the natural rhythms.
47:50
Speaker 1: Of you know, how we evolved. Yeah, I mean absolutely.
47:55
Speaker 1: And you know, there's this theory about sickness behavior, which
47:58
Speaker 1: is if we think about the body and our stress
48:02
Speaker 1: response system. Okay, and let's say in Paleolithic times that
48:09
Speaker 1: we had come down with an infection, okay, so were
48:13
Speaker 1: our immune system goes on high alerts, so it produces
48:16
Speaker 1: all kinds of inflammatory markers to help us fight that infection.
48:19
Speaker 1: But what it also does is make us tired, It
48:21
Speaker 1: makes us sleepy, it makes us withdraw, we don't take
48:24
Speaker 1: pleasure from things, and it almost sends us back to
48:27
Speaker 1: the back of the cave and the dark so we
48:29
Speaker 1: can just rest and recuperate, you know, whilst the body
48:33
Speaker 1: is attacking what it needs to attack, and a lot
48:36
Speaker 1: of people are speculating that actually is very similar to
48:39
Speaker 1: what's going on with mental health problems. It's potentially an
48:42
Speaker 1: appropriate or an inappropriate response. Well, it's something that was
48:47
Speaker 1: an appropriate response in a different environment, but as the
48:50
Speaker 1: environment has changed our twenty first century living, that response
48:55
Speaker 1: is actually doing us harm now. But it served us
48:58
Speaker 1: very well in the past. And I kind of like
48:59
Speaker 1: that because it really helps me understand why does our
49:03
Speaker 1: body have all these mechanisms at play, why things suddenly
49:06
Speaker 1: start to go wrong with all these different systems in
49:08
Speaker 1: our body? And what's changed is the environments. But the
49:11
Speaker 1: other great point you bring up, Rich is that lifestyle.
49:15
Speaker 1: You know, what's that God doing mental health? You know
49:17
Speaker 1: that's a And what I would say to that is,
49:20
Speaker 1: and I've got me very key, very careful to caveat this,
49:22
Speaker 1: is that any chronic disease, even type two diabetes. But
49:27
Speaker 1: let's talk about mental health. There are multiple factors that
49:31
Speaker 1: play a role. It ain't just one thing. So yeah,
49:33
Speaker 1: you may have huge and more emotional trauma that he's
49:36
Speaker 1: dealing with, right, but it doesn't mean you can't also
49:41
Speaker 1: get an improvement from optimizing your lifestyle. And it's it's
49:45
Speaker 1: not necessarily one or the other. We're always looking for
49:48
Speaker 1: what is it? Is it emotional or is it physical? Well,
49:50
Speaker 1: maybe it's a combination. And I talk a lot in
49:55
Speaker 1: my book and in my sort of work that I
49:57
Speaker 1: talk about the thresholds. Right, We've all got an individual threshold.
50:03
Speaker 1: So the way I trying to explain it is if
50:05
Speaker 1: if if we're born in perfect health, Let's say we
50:08
Speaker 1: start down here in perfect health, we can deal with
50:11
Speaker 1: multiple insults up to a point. So let's say you know,
50:16
Speaker 1: I don't know, we had a ton of antibiotics as
50:18
Speaker 1: a baby. Okay, we didn't enjoy our school. You know,
50:21
Speaker 1: we got bullied at school. We need a poor diet,
50:24
Speaker 1: We don't work out, we worked too hard. We get
50:27
Speaker 1: very very close to our threshold, and then something happens,
50:29
Speaker 1: you know, you have a bereavement in the family, or
50:31
Speaker 1: your girlfriend breaks up with you, and that tips you
50:35
Speaker 1: over your threshold. That's when you get sick, and we think,
50:39
Speaker 1: what was the last thing that we need to fix? No,
50:41
Speaker 1: it's you. Once you push your once you cross your threshold,
50:44
Speaker 1: you need to start again. It's like in life, you've
50:46
Speaker 1: got one ball, two boards, you're juggling three four, Right,
50:50
Speaker 1: You're just about keep everything going. That someone throws a
50:52
Speaker 1: fifth ball in everything falls down, And so my approach
50:56
Speaker 1: is about making multiple changes and so No. On the
50:59
Speaker 1: last series of Doctor in the House, there was a
51:02
Speaker 1: lady right who had a significantly traumatic emotional event when
51:06
Speaker 1: she was nineteen right, you know, ended up in intensive
51:09
Speaker 1: care in a coma. She woke up, she was scared
51:12
Speaker 1: out of her mind. Since said she had really bad
51:13
Speaker 1: panic and anxiety attacks, okay, which is crippling her life.
51:18
Speaker 1: And she applied to be on the show because she
51:19
Speaker 1: was desperate. She had tried counseling, she tried antidepressants and
51:23
Speaker 1: nothing was working. And again I didn't know if I
51:26
Speaker 1: was going to be able to help her or not.
51:27
Speaker 1: But I thought, okay, what's going on here. Her diet
51:29
Speaker 1: was appalling. You know, she was compensating with the way
51:32
Speaker 1: she felt with junk food and processed food. You know,
51:35
Speaker 1: she was up late on her screens, all this kind
51:37
Speaker 1: of stuff. Right, And again, she was very skeptical when
51:40
Speaker 1: I suggested that we would start by changing her diet.
51:45
Speaker 1: You know, there was a huge resistance. Well, you know,
51:46
Speaker 1: you're saying, I've done this to myself with the food
51:48
Speaker 1: I'm reasing. No, no, no, no, I'm not saying that. I'm
51:50
Speaker 1: saying that something significant happened when you were nineteen, but
51:55
Speaker 1: you have, you know, because of the way you felt,
51:58
Speaker 1: you put loads and loads of layers onto that as well,
52:00
Speaker 1: and lots of compensatory behaviors around that. Let's just start.
52:04
Speaker 1: You've tried counseling, you've tried antidepressants. Okay, let's take a
52:07
Speaker 1: different approach. So we started with her diet and it
52:11
Speaker 1: was just incredible. By at the end of six weeks,
52:14
Speaker 1: her symptoms had gone down by seventy percent. Not a
52:18
Speaker 1: miraculous reversal, but her quality of life had improved immeasurably,
52:23
Speaker 1: and I feel and towards the end we then got
52:25
Speaker 1: here to a talking therapist, but she was in a
52:28
Speaker 1: much better state that she could now access that and
52:31
Speaker 1: deal with that. And you know, we've got sorry to
52:35
Speaker 1: labor the point, but you've got to do multiple things
52:38
Speaker 1: in multiple areas. And that's why this is not a
52:40
Speaker 1: book about food. This is why it's a book about
52:43
Speaker 1: you know, there are many great books on food. I'm
52:45
Speaker 1: not against that, right, but I think what that stuff
52:48
Speaker 1: is out there, right, what can I contribute? Want to
52:51
Speaker 1: I want to show people that the quality of your
52:53
Speaker 1: sleep is as important as the food that you put
52:57
Speaker 1: in your mouth. And I didn't know that five years ago.
53:00
Speaker 1: And you may be skeptical of that potentially, but you know,
53:03
Speaker 1: when you look at the research of what sleep deprivation
53:06
Speaker 1: does to us, you know, I have helped patients reverse
53:09
Speaker 1: or simply put their times and ibts into emission.
53:12
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's something in the book about insulin resistance, the
53:15
Speaker 3: impact of poor sleep on insulin resistance, which I did
53:18
Speaker 3: not know how significant that was.
53:20
Speaker 1: It was, It's crazy, it's huge. And there was a
53:22
Speaker 1: study recently done where they sleep deprived a healthy group
53:27
Speaker 1: of people down to four to five hours a night,
53:31
Speaker 1: which is not dissimilar to what a lot of the polation.
53:33
Speaker 3: A lot of people, and a lot of people will
53:35
Speaker 3: swear that they're fine with that.
53:37
Speaker 1: A lot of people will swear they're okay with that.
53:39
Speaker 1: But here's the thing. A lot of the time, so
53:41
Speaker 1: there's two points there. When you say people say they're
53:43
Speaker 1: okay with that, we go back to my threshold analogy. Okay,
53:48
Speaker 1: they may find that that sleep deprivation and they may
53:51
Speaker 1: not have any symptoms yet, they may be getting away
53:53
Speaker 1: with it, right, But they may be moving up towards
53:55
Speaker 1: their threshold, so that sleep deprivation may be okay day
54:00
Speaker 1: to day. They may perceive it as being okay. But
54:03
Speaker 1: then when when the stress goes up at work, when
54:06
Speaker 1: something happens that they're not expecting, when they lose their
54:08
Speaker 1: job or their mother gets sick, suddenly they're that much
54:12
Speaker 1: closer and they tip over. And that's why I think,
54:16
Speaker 1: you know, we we exist on a continuum of health.
54:21
Speaker 1: You know, when you get diagnosed with tarch to diabetes
54:24
Speaker 1: that started ten years ago, right. Of course, when you
54:26
Speaker 1: get diagnosed Withoutzheimer's disease that started thirty years ago, right.
54:29
Speaker 1: So we need as a system, we need to better
54:32
Speaker 1: help people identify when they're moving up that curve, when
54:36
Speaker 1: they're not at diagnosis stage, but they're moving up that curve.
54:40
Speaker 1: But the thing was sleep deprivation. And I've got patients
54:42
Speaker 1: who've come to see me who's they have changed their diets.
54:46
Speaker 1: They've read the blogs, right they whether it's plant based,
54:49
Speaker 1: whether it's another approach, they've read all that and they've
54:51
Speaker 1: they've changed their diet. And I come in and I
54:53
Speaker 1: see them and their blood sugar is still not coming down.
54:57
Speaker 1: And I think your diet is pretty good. You know,
55:00
Speaker 1: some of them super stressed and not sleeping. And there's
55:02
Speaker 1: one particular case, fifty two year old guy, you know, busy,
55:06
Speaker 1: you know, high performer executive. His diet was fantastic, but
55:09
Speaker 1: he was going so frustrated that he couldn't get his
55:12
Speaker 1: sugar down anymore. And when I started to say, look,
55:15
Speaker 1: we need to think about switching off your computer in
55:17
Speaker 1: one hour before bets. We need to do five minutes
55:19
Speaker 1: and meditation a day, right, just to get you started.
55:23
Speaker 1: You know, six months lady, his bludge starts coming down,
55:25
Speaker 1: you know, because it's not always diets, and that really
55:30
Speaker 1: is the you know, I'm not trying to say diet
55:32
Speaker 1: it's not important. It is clearly very very imports not
55:35
Speaker 1: all diet. It ain't all diet.
55:37
Speaker 3: And I think that's what get when when you get
55:39
Speaker 3: into these silos and these arguments, you know, the sort
55:42
Speaker 3: of implicit messages it is all diet, right, and yeah,
55:45
Speaker 3: diet's huge, it's super important, but beyond that, there's so
55:49
Speaker 3: many things. You could be the most perfect raw vegan,
55:52
Speaker 3: you know, fruitarian, whatever, But if you're bananas and you
55:57
Speaker 3: argue with people all day long and you're an asshole
55:59
Speaker 3: and you don't sleep good night and you're staring at
56:01
Speaker 3: your phone all day long like you're not a healthy person.
56:03
Speaker 1: Yeah, you're not. And if we go back to sleep
56:05
Speaker 1: for a second, that that study where they deprive people
56:08
Speaker 1: to four to five hours a night for I think
56:10
Speaker 1: six nights, Okay, they had a forty percent reduction in
56:14
Speaker 1: their capability to manage their blood sugar and the end
56:17
Speaker 1: of that some of them would have been diagnosed as
56:18
Speaker 1: pre diabetic right just from sleep deprivation. Wow. And I
56:23
Speaker 1: think we've got to start bringing this into the equation.
56:25
Speaker 1: Because you mentioned the blues ends. I talk about the
56:27
Speaker 1: blues zones, and I find them fascinating because we can
56:30
Speaker 1: learn so much from them. That when you know, I
56:33
Speaker 1: know you've had Dan on the show before, and you know,
56:35
Speaker 1: I had the privilege of meeting Michelle Poulain, who's the
56:38
Speaker 1: Belgian researcher who I think, along with Dan, helped to
56:41
Speaker 1: sort of coin the term and do all that work.
56:43
Speaker 1: I met him in Guernsey last year, which which is
56:45
Speaker 1: an incredible experience which I'll tell you about actually. But
56:49
Speaker 1: when we look at them and we try and look
56:50
Speaker 1: at the perfect diet, I understand the rationale behind that.
56:54
Speaker 1: But we're looking at a populations who are eating well,
57:00
Speaker 1: they're also pretty physically they're physically active every day, they're
57:04
Speaker 1: sleeping well, they've got low levels of stress, and they've
57:06
Speaker 1: got a strong sense of community. Right, So when we
57:09
Speaker 1: look at them, it's a lifestyle, it's the whole piece
57:13
Speaker 1: put together. And when we compare in the West, where
57:17
Speaker 1: we are underslept, we're overly stressed, we're physically inactive, and
57:22
Speaker 1: where a lot of us are eating highly processed junk food. Right,
57:26
Speaker 1: that's just a recipe for trouble. And we can't, I
57:29
Speaker 1: don't think, just take one aspect of the blue zones.
57:31
Speaker 1: We have to look at it all and go, you know,
57:34
Speaker 1: let's let's try and optimize as many of these as
57:36
Speaker 1: we can, and the other the other. The other thing
57:39
Speaker 1: I sort of would love to sort of try and
57:41
Speaker 1: get across, is I get it. Life is tricky for
57:44
Speaker 1: some people. You may work shifts, right, you may find
57:48
Speaker 1: it hard. Right, So maybe if your sleep pillar ain't
57:51
Speaker 1: going very well, maybe you need to optimize the food
57:54
Speaker 1: pillar and the movement pillar and the relaxation pillar. You know,
57:58
Speaker 1: you can get to your you can lower your threshold
58:00
Speaker 1: in many different ways. And I think the blue zones
58:02
Speaker 1: are a prime example of people lowing that thresholds, you know,
58:06
Speaker 1: and keeping themselves very resilient, because that's the thing. Keeping
58:10
Speaker 1: yourself away from that threshold doesn't just mean you're going
58:13
Speaker 1: to feel better. You've got more resilient. So when life
58:17
Speaker 1: does chuck you, it's cove bulls and that will happen.
58:20
Speaker 1: Nothing stays static, everything's alwaching. You more resilient to fight.
58:23
Speaker 3: Its Yeah, And I think you know, it's only getting crazier.
58:28
Speaker 3: I mean, with these you know, devices in our pockets,
58:31
Speaker 3: it's becoming harder and harder to detach, to disconnect. And
58:36
Speaker 3: you know what's going to happen ten twenty years from now,
58:39
Speaker 3: It's going to be almost impossible to.
58:41
Speaker 1: Unplug at all.
58:43
Speaker 3: And the pace of life just continues to to.
58:46
Speaker 1: Get rapider and rapider.
58:49
Speaker 3: And you know, there's no there's no like you actually
58:52
Speaker 3: have to work to be bored. Now, there's just no
58:57
Speaker 3: there's no reason to ever be bored again. You can
58:59
Speaker 3: be over stimulated during every minute of every waking hour.
59:04
Speaker 1: We've lost the art of stillness. We've lost that ability
59:07
Speaker 1: to just sit there and lot our mind wonder and
59:10
Speaker 1: actually that's when a lot of the creativity happens. You know,
59:12
Speaker 1: your your default mode network, your DMN in your brain,
59:16
Speaker 1: which is where a lot of these creative ideas come from.
59:18
Speaker 1: That goes into overdrive when we're not focusing on a task,
59:21
Speaker 1: when we're just sitting there, you know, just watching the
59:23
Speaker 1: world go by, or maybe when you're going for a run.
59:26
Speaker 1: I'm going to bet that you get a lot of
59:28
Speaker 1: your great ideas when you're out running. Oh yeah, absolutely,
59:30
Speaker 1: rather than when you're.
59:31
Speaker 3: The only time where I can just be by myself
59:34
Speaker 3: and my thoughts in nature.
59:36
Speaker 1: Yeah, because you're not trying to sit here figuring it out.
59:38
Speaker 1: I've got this problem. I can't I can't get to
59:41
Speaker 1: the bottom of this. You go out for a running,
59:43
Speaker 1: I've got the solution.
59:44
Speaker 3: Right, Or when I am grinding it out and trying
59:47
Speaker 3: to figure it out, I'm like, oh, let's see what's
59:48
Speaker 3: happening on Twitter. I'm going to stare up my phone. Now.
59:51
Speaker 1: I know that's feeling. But I recently gave a talk
59:54
Speaker 1: to Apple in London on well being for their employees,
59:58
Speaker 1: and you know, incredibly you know, privileged to feel very
1:00:02
Speaker 1: humble to go in there and towards them and actually
1:00:05
Speaker 1: spoke to them about tech, and I said, to feel
1:00:07
Speaker 1: I felt like I was in the lions den talking
1:00:10
Speaker 1: about tech and some of the problems, but also how
1:00:13
Speaker 1: what a great opportunity they've got because so many people
1:00:16
Speaker 1: use their products, they can actually shape the world. Well
1:00:19
Speaker 1: you know, and I think they do take some of
1:00:21
Speaker 1: these things quite responsibly. You can actually really shape what
1:00:24
Speaker 1: people do. But what was interesting I spoken up my
1:00:26
Speaker 1: four pillars to them to try and improve their well being.
1:00:30
Speaker 1: At the end of the talk, this chap came up
1:00:32
Speaker 1: to me. He must have been in his mid twenties, right,
1:00:36
Speaker 1: He said, hey, you know, don't actually I found that
1:00:38
Speaker 1: really really interesting. But can I ask you something? I said, yeah, sure,
1:00:41
Speaker 1: far away. It's like if I switched my phone off
1:00:44
Speaker 1: an hour before bed, what am I going to do?
1:00:50
Speaker 1: Which he was serious, Man, Yeah, I'm not kidding you.
1:00:53
Speaker 1: This is this is a canic panic. He was deadly serious.
1:00:56
Speaker 1: And I thought that I learned a lot that. I thought, Wow,
1:01:00
Speaker 1: for some people that are so embedded to this, they
1:01:02
Speaker 1: genuinely don't know what they're going to do without it.
1:01:05
Speaker 1: And I thought, you know, I've got two young kids seven, Well, no, now,
1:01:09
Speaker 1: eight eights and five years old, and I worry about this,
1:01:13
Speaker 1: you know, as a father. There's always something to worry
1:01:15
Speaker 1: about as a parents, and I think, what am I
1:01:16
Speaker 1: going to do? You know, very soon everyone in my
1:01:21
Speaker 1: son's class is going to have a phone, and he's
1:01:23
Speaker 1: going to be like daddy kind of have one. He
1:01:25
Speaker 1: already asked it for his birthday recently, and you know,
1:01:28
Speaker 1: I looked at he's thought, you know, I'm not going
1:01:29
Speaker 1: there with dad. You know, I know what the answer is,
1:01:31
Speaker 1: but I worry because I don't want to make my
1:01:33
Speaker 1: children's social outcasts. Yeah. I really struggle with knowing some
1:01:38
Speaker 1: of the problems.
1:01:39
Speaker 3: I yeah, it's a legit, it's a legit concern. I mean,
1:01:41
Speaker 3: I'm older than you, but you know, I didn't grow
1:01:44
Speaker 3: up with you know, I didn't start using a computer
1:01:46
Speaker 3: until I was in college, and that was still many
1:01:49
Speaker 3: years prior to the Internet. So, you know, myself and
1:01:53
Speaker 3: to some extent yourself, like, we're the last generation of
1:01:56
Speaker 3: people to know what it's like to be without all
1:01:59
Speaker 3: of them these things. There will never be another generation
1:02:02
Speaker 3: of humans who have lived through you know, what it's like.
1:02:06
Speaker 1: To not be on the internet. And so.
1:02:10
Speaker 3: It is tricky, you know, as a parent myself to
1:02:13
Speaker 3: try to find that balance because on some level we
1:02:16
Speaker 3: have to accept the fact that that these devices are
1:02:20
Speaker 3: part of what it means to be fluent in the
1:02:22
Speaker 3: language of our times. So it's not about like, no,
1:02:26
Speaker 3: you can't have it. It's about creating responsible habits around it,
1:02:31
Speaker 3: which is difficult when you're talking about a device that
1:02:34
Speaker 3: has the addictive potency of heroin.
1:02:39
Speaker 1: I mean, you've just hit the nail on the head.
1:02:41
Speaker 1: It's not about demonizing these devices. And this technology is fantastic.
1:02:46
Speaker 1: It's utterly life changing. You know, we can we're having
1:02:50
Speaker 1: like what we're doing right now, what we're doing right now,
1:02:52
Speaker 1: you know, or you know, we could have done this,
1:02:54
Speaker 1: let's say, of a skype right we could have been
1:02:56
Speaker 1: five thousand miles away from each other having a conversation
1:03:00
Speaker 1: because of this technology, which is utterly incredible. And I
1:03:03
Speaker 1: think what we have to just remember is that this
1:03:05
Speaker 1: is a new technology, right we haven't quite yet figured
1:03:09
Speaker 1: out as a human way is how do we use
1:03:12
Speaker 1: it in a way that it really helps us and
1:03:15
Speaker 1: serves us rather than enslaves us. And just as we've
1:03:18
Speaker 1: got like sleep hygiene rules, I think we need technology
1:03:21
Speaker 1: hygiene rules. We need you know, what a good practice rules?
1:03:25
Speaker 1: You know? Do we need a bit of tech free
1:03:27
Speaker 1: time every day? I absolutely believe we need a bit
1:03:29
Speaker 1: of tech free time every day. But here's the thing.
1:03:32
Speaker 1: If you've got that device near you, it's very very
1:03:34
Speaker 1: hard because they are addictive, you know, and I you know,
1:03:37
Speaker 1: one of the sort of recommendations I make is, you know,
1:03:41
Speaker 1: can you have a screen free sabbath? Can you have
1:03:43
Speaker 1: one day a week without a screen completely? And now
1:03:46
Speaker 1: I get it. People are gonna almost be having palpitations
1:03:50
Speaker 1: at the front. What am I going to do? Yeah,
1:03:52
Speaker 1: so I say, well, if you can't do a whole day,
1:03:54
Speaker 1: try an hour. Start there, I tell you, on a
1:03:57
Speaker 1: Sunday morning, Right, if I go with my wife and
1:04:00
Speaker 1: my two kids to the local park, Right if I
1:04:04
Speaker 1: go and my phone's in my pocket, Right, it goes
1:04:06
Speaker 1: something like this, kids are playing, we're all into act
1:04:08
Speaker 1: saying before you know it, I'm just hey, they're on
1:04:11
Speaker 1: the climbing. If I just have a cheeky little look,
1:04:13
Speaker 1: you know what's going on Instagram? What's you know? And
1:04:16
Speaker 1: then before you where are the kids? You know? Something
1:04:18
Speaker 1: like that that somebody abducted them. Yeah, but before you
1:04:21
Speaker 1: know it, you're drawn into this world because it's powerful,
1:04:23
Speaker 1: it's engaging. If I make the decision i'm leaving my
1:04:26
Speaker 1: phone at home, I have a completely different experience. I'm present,
1:04:30
Speaker 1: I'm mindful, I'm paying attention to what's going on.
1:04:34
Speaker 3: And my kids warming panicky and feeling naked. Yeah, no,
1:04:38
Speaker 3: I love it, but I've got used to it.
1:04:40
Speaker 1: I've got used to it, and ultimately my kids, particularly
1:04:43
Speaker 1: my daughter, she'll call me out if I'm in the
1:04:44
Speaker 1: room with her somewhere and I'm distracted on my phone.
1:04:47
Speaker 1: She's like, daddy're not listening to me, are you? I
1:04:49
Speaker 1: tell you, that's like a dagger in the heart for me.
1:04:51
Speaker 1: And I'm like, okay, yeah, I'm just going to put
1:04:53
Speaker 1: my phone off in another room. And so I as
1:04:57
Speaker 1: a father, one thing I think is really important, as
1:04:59
Speaker 1: something I really trying to here toe is spend at
1:05:02
Speaker 1: least one hour a day with my kids when I'm around,
1:05:05
Speaker 1: you know, without my phone anywhere in sights I'm not
1:05:09
Speaker 1: even on because I just that's my strategy. Again, I'm
1:05:14
Speaker 1: not saying everyone has to do this. I'm just saying
1:05:15
Speaker 1: I'm trying to figure it out. I'm as addicted to
1:05:18
Speaker 1: this technology as anyone else says, I'm trying to figure
1:05:22
Speaker 1: out a way where I can still get the best
1:05:24
Speaker 1: of it without harboring myself and also my relationship with
1:05:27
Speaker 1: my kids in the process.
1:05:28
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, when you figure it out, let me know.
1:05:31
Speaker 3: It's hard, right, It's hard. It's really hard, you know.
1:05:33
Speaker 3: I mean it's like and I like, I make my
1:05:37
Speaker 3: living through this, you know, through through this ecosystem, so
1:05:41
Speaker 3: it's even more difficult for me to create because I
1:05:45
Speaker 3: can just make a justification.
1:05:46
Speaker 1: Wow, this is what you know, I need to be doing.
1:05:48
Speaker 3: I need to be I got to promote the latest podcast.
1:05:50
Speaker 1: I gotta da da da da.
1:05:51
Speaker 3: And you know it's not good for me, you know,
1:05:53
Speaker 3: And so I go through phases where I'm really good
1:05:57
Speaker 3: and then I lapse. And you know, as somebody who's
1:05:59
Speaker 3: a recovery alcoholic, like, it just pings every part of
1:06:02
Speaker 3: my brain that wants to use and check out and
1:06:05
Speaker 3: get that little rush.
1:06:07
Speaker 1: But what's you say? You know, you compared it to alcohol.
1:06:09
Speaker 1: But let's talk about food for a minute. People will
1:06:11
Speaker 1: often say, yeah, I could eat well for a short
1:06:14
Speaker 1: period of time, then I've fallen off the wagon. I
1:06:16
Speaker 1: couldn't do it, you know, I've and it's the same
1:06:18
Speaker 1: thing with these phones. It's I'm not expecting perfection from people. No, A,
1:06:23
Speaker 1: it's not my right to expect perfection from anyone, but
1:06:26
Speaker 1: I'm not. That's not what I'm I'm trying to suggest
1:06:28
Speaker 1: in what I what I do with patients, what I
1:06:30
Speaker 1: do with when I speak to the public, or in
1:06:32
Speaker 1: the book I'm what I'm trying to do is empower
1:06:36
Speaker 1: people with information. Say look, guys, this is what's going
1:06:39
Speaker 1: on right, this is going to be having an impact
1:06:42
Speaker 1: on you. Here are some strategies that you might want
1:06:45
Speaker 1: to adopt. Why don't you suck it and see? Why
1:06:47
Speaker 1: don't you try this? You like this one, you don't
1:06:50
Speaker 1: like this one, fine, you've tried it. That doesn't work
1:06:51
Speaker 1: for you. Try this one. I mean, one thing I
1:06:53
Speaker 1: will say is one of the most life changing things
1:06:56
Speaker 1: people can do. Okay, it's take off notifications, right, and
1:07:01
Speaker 1: I'm deadly serious. You don't need you know, That's the
1:07:04
Speaker 1: way you can start taking control of that technology and
1:07:06
Speaker 1: go I don't need to be notified every single time
1:07:10
Speaker 1: someone likes my Instagram post or my latest Facebook article,
1:07:13
Speaker 1: or someone's just retweeted me, I don't need to be
1:07:16
Speaker 1: notified every time, you know, so all my notifications are off.
1:07:19
Speaker 1: My email inbox is on manual refreshed so I can
1:07:24
Speaker 1: look at my phone. I could have twenty emails waiting
1:07:27
Speaker 1: for me. I don't know. I have to go into
1:07:29
Speaker 1: the app and I have to you know, refresh the
1:07:31
Speaker 1: screen right, and then I see and you know, that's
1:07:34
Speaker 1: a small step that I think most people can manage.
1:07:37
Speaker 1: And I would say to people listening to this who
1:07:38
Speaker 1: attempted to do something, I'd say, start there, Just start there.
1:07:42
Speaker 3: That's one thing I have done, and that that was
1:07:44
Speaker 3: life changing. All the notifications on my phone are off.
1:07:48
Speaker 3: The one thing where it gets me into trouble, though,
1:07:50
Speaker 3: is when you take notifications off your text messages, because
1:07:52
Speaker 3: there's an expectation when someone texts you that you that
1:07:56
Speaker 3: prompts an immediate response.
1:07:58
Speaker 1: Aspectation you come from.
1:07:59
Speaker 3: Well, I don't know, maybe it's it's self generated in
1:08:02
Speaker 3: my own mind, but I've trained now, like I just
1:08:05
Speaker 3: I basically, unless it's really pertinent, I don't respond to
1:08:12
Speaker 3: text matches messages right away, so that people who text
1:08:15
Speaker 3: me don't then develop that expectation. But I don't know
1:08:18
Speaker 3: if you've noticed this, Like texting has now become like email.
1:08:21
Speaker 3: It's like it's almost like my I used to just
1:08:24
Speaker 3: not get that many texts, but now I get so
1:08:25
Speaker 3: many texts that.
1:08:26
Speaker 1: It's like the same thing.
1:08:27
Speaker 3: But then I don't think to check my text because
1:08:29
Speaker 3: I don't have that little.
1:08:30
Speaker 1: Number on there. I don't know when I have new ones. Yeah,
1:08:33
Speaker 1: it's you know.
1:08:34
Speaker 3: I can also gray scale your phone too, which I think.
1:08:37
Speaker 1: Is a great Wells familiar with you.
1:08:39
Speaker 3: There's a setting where you can go in and remove
1:08:42
Speaker 3: all the color and so it's just black and white screen,
1:08:45
Speaker 3: and there's something about the way that everything is colored
1:08:49
Speaker 3: in a specific way. There's a lot of money in
1:08:51
Speaker 3: science that's gone into, you know, creating that compulsive, addictive response,
1:08:56
Speaker 3: and color has a big role in that. So there's
1:08:59
Speaker 3: been bud He's done that when you gray scale your phone,
1:09:02
Speaker 3: that it really tempers that compulsivity. Yeah, there's a guy
1:09:07
Speaker 3: called Tristan Harris who's doing like a lot of research
1:09:11
Speaker 3: in this right now. He's doing the podcast Rounds and
1:09:14
Speaker 3: super fascinating.
1:09:15
Speaker 1: That's super interesting. Yeah, you know, communication is changing, isn't it.
1:09:19
Speaker 1: You're saying, like text messages are becoming a bit more
1:09:21
Speaker 1: like emails, and it's very hard now to it's very
1:09:27
Speaker 1: hard to put those boundaries in now. You know. I
1:09:30
Speaker 1: try my best to guard my number, my phone number,
1:09:33
Speaker 1: with my life, you know, because that then means people
1:09:37
Speaker 1: have got access to me on a Sunday, on a Saturday,
1:09:39
Speaker 1: you know, when I'm on family time, and those boundaries
1:09:43
Speaker 1: have just got blurred now. And you know, it's funny,
1:09:45
Speaker 1: you know. I also think that we've lost an element
1:09:48
Speaker 1: of respect on other people's time and their boundaries, not
1:09:51
Speaker 1: because we're meaning to, but I give an example. Recently,
1:09:55
Speaker 1: somebody who's got my number added me to WhatsApp group
1:10:01
Speaker 1: of like fifteen people, fourteen of which don't have my number.
1:10:07
Speaker 1: And when it first happened, was I was, you know,
1:10:11
Speaker 1: I was like, oh man, I'm on this WhatsApp group
1:10:13
Speaker 1: now and these fourteen people who don't have my number
1:10:16
Speaker 1: have now got my number so they can contact me
1:10:19
Speaker 1: personally in a way that they couldn't do before. And again,
1:10:22
Speaker 1: it's nothing about ego or anything like that. It's just
1:10:24
Speaker 1: more I'm really trying to guard my own personal time,
1:10:28
Speaker 1: my private space, and I feel that's been taken away
1:10:31
Speaker 1: from me now and the person who did it didn't
1:10:34
Speaker 1: do it with any malice. We haven't really written the
1:10:39
Speaker 1: etiquette rules exactly. That's what I think is going to
1:10:42
Speaker 1: be written over the next few years. And now is
1:10:45
Speaker 1: what is the right etiquette? Like, as you say, there's
1:10:48
Speaker 1: an expectation of the text message you should be responding.
1:10:50
Speaker 1: So you're helping to educate your community, your friends, people
1:10:54
Speaker 1: who have access to via your text You're helping to
1:10:58
Speaker 1: just educate them a little bit. Hey, you know when
1:11:00
Speaker 1: he says to me, I'll get back to you, but
1:11:01
Speaker 1: it won't be quick. And I think we all have
1:11:03
Speaker 1: to do that, you know, Tim Ferris And in the
1:11:05
Speaker 1: four hour workweek, you know about that's when I learned
1:11:08
Speaker 1: about emails, about pre setting the expectation when someone's actually,
1:11:12
Speaker 1: you know, this email gets checks twice a week or
1:11:15
Speaker 1: once a day. You know. I did that for a while.
1:11:17
Speaker 1: Then I took it off, and you know, I'm always experimenting,
1:11:19
Speaker 1: but it's about changing the expectation.
1:11:21
Speaker 3: Whites, Yeah, he was, he was here and he showed
1:11:24
Speaker 3: me his phone and it said that he had like
1:11:26
Speaker 3: eight thousand unread emails or something like that, and I
1:11:28
Speaker 3: was like, do you read them? And then mark them unread.
1:11:30
Speaker 3: He's like, no, I've never looked at them. And I
1:11:32
Speaker 3: did an experiment when I was in as I told
1:11:34
Speaker 3: you before the podcast, just got back from Italy. I
1:11:37
Speaker 3: did an experiment where I had a colleague of mine
1:11:40
Speaker 3: my assistant, handle all my emails while I was gone.
1:11:43
Speaker 3: I'd never like turned over my entire email box to
1:11:46
Speaker 3: somebody else and gone away for like two weeks and
1:11:48
Speaker 3: not looked at it. And that was a that was
1:11:51
Speaker 3: definitely a learning experience. It was great, but it was like,
1:11:55
Speaker 3: for a minute there, I felt very weird, you know.
1:11:58
Speaker 1: Almost like naked, that's your thing. And I think the key,
1:12:03
Speaker 1: as you say, is that we don't know the rules yet.
1:12:06
Speaker 1: We're all trying to figure this out.
1:12:08
Speaker 3: Well, we're in the infancy of the most powerful technology
1:12:12
Speaker 3: that we've ever created. Yeah, we're trying to find our
1:12:15
Speaker 3: way and we're stumbling without the you know, the tools yet.
1:12:20
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, this is such such a huge impact
1:12:24
Speaker 1: on us. I don't think we even realize, you know,
1:12:26
Speaker 1: how big this is. And I'd go as far as
1:12:28
Speaker 1: saying that this arguably our stress component in our lives,
1:12:32
Speaker 1: and the way we use our technology for many of
1:12:35
Speaker 1: my patients is arguably more important than the food that
1:12:37
Speaker 1: they're putting in their mouth. Right, it is to be
1:12:40
Speaker 1: on the entire time to wake up and go first
1:12:43
Speaker 1: thing on that on that phone, and the noise that
1:12:46
Speaker 1: comes in from that constantly throughout the day, and often
1:12:49
Speaker 1: it's still going on when we're in bed at night lying.
1:12:51
Speaker 1: They're still checking everything. No downtime. That is having a
1:12:55
Speaker 1: huge consequence on the way many for us feel. And
1:12:58
Speaker 1: you know, I actually I think I started the book
1:13:00
Speaker 1: with his story about this sixteen year old boy who
1:13:03
Speaker 1: I saw maybe six years ago, this chap called Devon.
1:13:09
Speaker 1: This was in a typical conventional medical practice, you know,
1:13:12
Speaker 1: in our National Health Service. I have ten minute appointments.
1:13:15
Speaker 1: And it was a Monday afternoon surgery. Okay we call
1:13:18
Speaker 1: them surgeries are just phoenix basically. Okay, a Monday afternoon clinic.
1:13:22
Speaker 1: I had about three or four people in the waiting room.
1:13:24
Speaker 1: I was already running a little bit late, and this
1:13:27
Speaker 1: sixteen year old boy walks in with his mother. I
1:13:31
Speaker 1: opened up the file and I see there's a letter.
1:13:33
Speaker 1: And basically on the Saturday, this guy ended up in
1:13:36
Speaker 1: the er because he tried to harm himself, and there
1:13:40
Speaker 1: was a letter there from the yar doctor saying, hey,
1:13:42
Speaker 1: Dots Shashy, look, this is what's happened. We assessed him,
1:13:44
Speaker 1: he was safe to discharge, but could you please start
1:13:46
Speaker 1: one antidepressants? So he's there, he's with his mum. I
1:13:51
Speaker 1: sort of know the family anyway, because I've been looking
1:13:53
Speaker 1: after him for a period of time, and I thought, okay,
1:13:56
Speaker 1: what's going on here? Why is this sixteen year old
1:13:58
Speaker 1: boy from a seemingly well balanced family that I've never
1:14:02
Speaker 1: really detected any issues with before. Why is he ended
1:14:06
Speaker 1: up harming himself in the eer department on the Saturday.
1:14:09
Speaker 1: I thought, I just can't start on a nasty depressed
1:14:11
Speaker 1: I need to figure out what's going on here. I
1:14:13
Speaker 1: just couldn't do it. So I spent maybe ten twenty
1:14:16
Speaker 1: minutes with them, and I thought, hey, I need a
1:14:19
Speaker 1: bit more time there said guys, look, are you able
1:14:21
Speaker 1: to come in tomorrow morning at the end of my
1:14:23
Speaker 1: morning clinic and I'll spend a bit longer with you.
1:14:25
Speaker 1: And I said, yeah, sure, So they came in the
1:14:26
Speaker 1: following day. At the end of that, I thought, okay,
1:14:29
Speaker 1: there's many factors at play here, but one thing really
1:14:32
Speaker 1: worries me, which is his use of social media and
1:14:35
Speaker 1: his smartphone. And I said to him, I said, look, Devin,
1:14:38
Speaker 1: would you be interested in reducing in me helping you
1:14:42
Speaker 1: reduce your usage? And he said, well, is that going
1:14:44
Speaker 1: to help? I said, well, look, I don't know, but
1:14:46
Speaker 1: I think I don't think it's helping your current mental state.
1:14:49
Speaker 1: Would you be willing to give it a go? And
1:14:52
Speaker 1: he was at that low eb and he said, yeah, sure,
1:14:54
Speaker 1: if you think it's going to help. So we agreed
1:14:57
Speaker 1: for the first week that just for one hour before bed,
1:15:00
Speaker 1: he'd switch off his fan and he wouldn't go on
1:15:01
Speaker 1: the internet. He comes about seven days later and I
1:15:05
Speaker 1: said to him, you know how you doing? And he said, well,
1:15:08
Speaker 1: you know, dots Chashy, I'm I'm still not great, but
1:15:12
Speaker 1: I feel less up and down in the day. I'm
1:15:14
Speaker 1: sleeping better. I just you know, I've got a bit
1:15:16
Speaker 1: more energy. Things aren't quite as bad as they were.
1:15:19
Speaker 1: I said, okay, so you've already seen that that's having
1:15:22
Speaker 1: a little bit of an impact. What if we increase
1:15:24
Speaker 1: it a little bit more? And over the next few
1:15:27
Speaker 1: weeks we increased up to two hours in the evening
1:15:29
Speaker 1: before bed and two hours in the morning where he
1:15:32
Speaker 1: doesn't go on his phone. Okay, he's starting to feel better.
1:15:37
Speaker 1: You get it, not cured or anything, but significantly better.
1:15:41
Speaker 1: Then I thought, okay, we tackled that, he's getting that
1:15:43
Speaker 1: bedded in. I also then went into his diet. I said, hey,
1:15:46
Speaker 1: what are you eating? It was a typical teenage diet,
1:15:49
Speaker 1: lots of hardly processed sugary junk food, snacking all throughout
1:15:52
Speaker 1: the day. And I said, hey, Devin, did you realize
1:15:55
Speaker 1: it actually that food that you eat can have an
1:15:57
Speaker 1: impact on your mood? Is that really? I said, Look
1:16:00
Speaker 1: what happens when you have this food? Right, deadly serious?
1:16:03
Speaker 1: I'm like, you know, when you're eating this food, you
1:16:05
Speaker 1: have this high sugar foods, you're going into blood sugar
1:16:07
Speaker 1: roller coaster. So what happens to you're having that in
1:16:09
Speaker 1: the morning before school mid morning, your sugar's crashing fast.
1:16:14
Speaker 1: That's not just an energy problem, that's not just a
1:16:16
Speaker 1: sugar problem. That is also a mood problem because when
1:16:19
Speaker 1: it crashes that, your stress response goes up in your body.
1:16:22
Speaker 1: Adrenaline corters will go up. Right, this will have an
1:16:26
Speaker 1: impact on your mood hormone. It's like, are you kidding me?
1:16:28
Speaker 1: I'm like, this is what's this will be playing a
1:16:31
Speaker 1: role here. So because he understood why I was asking
1:16:34
Speaker 1: to make the changes. It wasn't just me saying you've
1:16:36
Speaker 1: got a change your diet. I drew out a little
1:16:38
Speaker 1: graph room, I explains him. He goes, okay, that makes sense,
1:16:41
Speaker 1: show me right. So I explained what he might be
1:16:43
Speaker 1: able to do, you know, take some nuts with him
1:16:45
Speaker 1: for those snacks, to keep his blood sugar sable throughout
1:16:48
Speaker 1: the day, those kind of things. It wasn't a perfect diet.
1:16:51
Speaker 1: He didn't go full on Mediterranean right. He just made
1:16:54
Speaker 1: enough changes and then he started to improve again. Bit
1:16:59
Speaker 1: by bit he's getting and then I stopped seeing him.
1:17:01
Speaker 1: Suddenly he doesn't come in as much. I'm getting on
1:17:03
Speaker 1: with my busy practice. And then I come in about
1:17:06
Speaker 1: six months later and there's a letter on, you know,
1:17:09
Speaker 1: as part of my mail. I'm going through open this
1:17:11
Speaker 1: letter and it's from Devin's mum, and he says, Deatier
1:17:14
Speaker 1: just want to thank you. You've completely changed Evan's life.
1:17:17
Speaker 1: He's happy at school, he's interacting with his friends, he's
1:17:20
Speaker 1: joining local clubs at the weekends. He's just you know,
1:17:23
Speaker 1: he's just a joy to be around. I just want
1:17:26
Speaker 1: to say thank you. And I've learned so much from
1:17:30
Speaker 1: that case rich because I thought, wow, yes, I think
1:17:34
Speaker 1: there are emotional issues as well. But simply by tackling
1:17:37
Speaker 1: two of those four pillars, right, the relaxed pillar where
1:17:40
Speaker 1: I helped him reduce his social media use, by helping
1:17:43
Speaker 1: him understand what was going on, I helped him improve
1:17:47
Speaker 1: his diet by maybe twenty thirty percent. It's not full on, right.
1:17:51
Speaker 1: He started to be empowered enough to see how that
1:17:53
Speaker 1: impacted his lifetile. So this is a sixteen year old boy.
1:17:56
Speaker 1: He was he was at a fork in the road, right,
1:17:58
Speaker 1: he could go down one path. I'm all my antidepressants.
1:18:02
Speaker 1: I've got depression, right, that's the label. I've got no
1:18:07
Speaker 1: doubt he would have been put on a repeat prescription.
1:18:08
Speaker 1: He could still have been on that five years later,
1:18:11
Speaker 1: but at that moment he took another path. He now
1:18:15
Speaker 1: has empowered himself. You know. I really helped him to
1:18:18
Speaker 1: understand how the environmental choices he makes impacts his mental health.
1:18:23
Speaker 1: And I very much hope that that's going to keep
1:18:24
Speaker 1: him in good stead going forward, because if things get
1:18:26
Speaker 1: tough in the future, he will know actually the rhyth
1:18:29
Speaker 1: of them things. I might be able to do which
1:18:31
Speaker 1: are going to help me? And really, this is what
1:18:33
Speaker 1: I'm saying, this four for that approach is deceptively simple. Right,
1:18:37
Speaker 1: we think you know where's real medicine, Where's where's the
1:18:39
Speaker 1: cool stuff? This is the cool stuff. If you get
1:18:42
Speaker 1: this stuff right, everything gets better. Yeah, if you're lucky,
1:18:45
Speaker 1: you can reverse your disease, but you can certainly improve
1:18:48
Speaker 1: the way you feel. Pretty much everybody can improve the
1:18:52
Speaker 1: way they feel. You know, whether you've got a disease
1:18:54
Speaker 1: or not. If you're just someone who's who wakes up
1:18:57
Speaker 1: tide every day and needs sugar and coffee to get
1:19:00
Speaker 1: you through you each day, these principles are going to
1:19:03
Speaker 1: help you. If you got Tompsy Dobies, it's going to
1:19:05
Speaker 1: help you. It doesn't matter because he's a universe. I
1:19:07
Speaker 1: can't invent the principles of good health that the same
1:19:10
Speaker 1: principles that existed on I can't come up with a new,
1:19:13
Speaker 1: con separate book and say, hey, guys, I've got the secret,
1:19:16
Speaker 1: right I don't.
1:19:18
Speaker 3: It's the secret no one wants to tell you that
1:19:20
Speaker 3: you've never heard before. Yeah, I mean, I think the
1:19:22
Speaker 3: most powerful thing in all of it is getting the
1:19:26
Speaker 3: lights to go on in the patient, like by making
1:19:29
Speaker 3: you know, like a lot of the book is about like, look,
1:19:31
Speaker 3: let's just these baby steps, right, and if you can
1:19:34
Speaker 3: just get a patient to implement one or two of those,
1:19:39
Speaker 3: the lights go on. They start to make that connection
1:19:42
Speaker 3: between how they're living and how they're feeling, and then
1:19:45
Speaker 3: they're invested, and then you're basically catalyzing that person's journey
1:19:50
Speaker 3: for the rest of their life. They're going to go
1:19:51
Speaker 3: off and you know, continue to grow and explore and
1:19:54
Speaker 3: refine and change and do all of that, you know,
1:19:57
Speaker 3: on their own, with guidance of course from people like yourself.
1:20:01
Speaker 1: But it's that.
1:20:02
Speaker 3: Empowerment piece that I think is so important, and I
1:20:05
Speaker 3: think it's a fundamental paradigm shift in the doctor patient
1:20:10
Speaker 3: relationship from one of you know, the traditional paradigm of
1:20:14
Speaker 3: like I'm the expert, You're going to do what I
1:20:16
Speaker 3: tell you, and there's no we're we're not in a
1:20:19
Speaker 3: partnership here, like you know, I'm the authority to Okay,
1:20:23
Speaker 3: let's sit down and have a chat and like we're
1:20:26
Speaker 3: we we're a team here, and what can we do together?
1:20:28
Speaker 3: Where it just it fosters that sense of self determinism.
1:20:33
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a partnership. It's got to be a partnership
1:20:36
Speaker 1: between doctrin and patient because those days of that paternalistic
1:20:40
Speaker 1: relationship they're over. They're gone. I mean, there's still a
1:20:43
Speaker 1: certain generation who expects that.
1:20:45
Speaker 3: There's still I mean, yeah, most of it is that
1:20:48
Speaker 3: way still.
1:20:49
Speaker 1: Mostly it's that way.
1:20:50
Speaker 3: Are the rarity still.
1:20:52
Speaker 1: I think I've always been slightly old in the head
1:20:55
Speaker 1: because I've never seen it like that. I've always kind
1:20:57
Speaker 1: of wanted to have that partnership, that conversation.
1:20:59
Speaker 3: I've always but it didn't start that way for you,
1:21:01
Speaker 3: Like we didn't even tell the story about how you
1:21:03
Speaker 3: got into all this.
1:21:05
Speaker 1: Yeah it did, is so well. You know, it's interesting
1:21:07
Speaker 1: that because I reflect back now on my career and
1:21:15
Speaker 1: you're right, it didn't start that way, but on some
1:21:17
Speaker 1: level it did. So, you know, to put it in perspective,
1:21:21
Speaker 1: is I qualify for metament medical school, and I thought,
1:21:25
Speaker 1: I've got all the skills and I need to get
1:21:27
Speaker 1: out there and make people better. Great, So what I've
1:21:29
Speaker 1: trained for must go and make dad proud, Yeah exactly,
1:21:33
Speaker 1: you know, and family proud and all this kind of
1:21:34
Speaker 1: stuff that you know, I grew up with and I
1:21:38
Speaker 1: wrock up and I'm, you know, doing a cute medicine,
1:21:40
Speaker 1: and then within a couple of years, I'm, you know,
1:21:42
Speaker 1: leading the kardak arrest team and the hospital and doing
1:21:45
Speaker 1: all this all the kind of cool, acute stuff that
1:21:47
Speaker 1: you think being a doctor is all about. But actually
1:21:51
Speaker 1: I reflect back and I think even then, I don't
1:21:53
Speaker 1: think I was deeply satisfied. You know, I saw how
1:21:56
Speaker 1: powerful modern medicine can be. For a cute promise, people
1:22:00
Speaker 1: walking in through the door sick, and you give them
1:22:03
Speaker 1: whatever you need to give them, and suddenly they're transformed,
1:22:05
Speaker 1: just incredible, So you don't really question at the time,
1:22:08
Speaker 1: you don't even know you're saying, Hey, we go to
1:22:10
Speaker 1: medicool really early in the UK, we don't do a
1:22:14
Speaker 1: degree first, so you know what I qualified as adults.
1:22:17
Speaker 1: I must have been twenty one, twenty two.
1:22:20
Speaker 4: Oh really, wow, that's way earlier, so early, something like that,
1:22:24
Speaker 4: maybe twenty two, you know, And I think now, I
1:22:27
Speaker 4: think I didn't even have the life experience to be
1:22:30
Speaker 4: able to understand.
1:22:31
Speaker 1: What people were going through. But the point is I was,
1:22:34
Speaker 1: you know, I was okay, my career was going fine,
1:22:36
Speaker 1: and I was doing my specialist exams and I thought, yeah, Okay, fine,
1:22:39
Speaker 1: I'm going to figure this out, you know, and you've
1:22:43
Speaker 1: alluded to, you know, my personal story, which is that
1:22:48
Speaker 1: you know, I had already moved made the move to
1:22:50
Speaker 1: general practice because I was I really felt that we
1:22:53
Speaker 1: were just missing the big picture. We were just getting
1:22:56
Speaker 1: so down rabbit holes in one area without seeing how
1:23:00
Speaker 1: everything is connected. And I was working in general practice,
1:23:04
Speaker 1: and you know, we just had our first child. You know,
1:23:07
Speaker 1: my wife had breastfed him for the first six months,
1:23:10
Speaker 1: as per the guidelines, and as well, you know, we
1:23:12
Speaker 1: thought we're doing the best thing. And I'm not saying
1:23:14
Speaker 1: we weren't doing the best thing, but we were. We were,
1:23:15
Speaker 1: you know, we're pretty health conscious family. And we went
1:23:18
Speaker 1: on a holiday to France and the Christmas holidays, and
1:23:23
Speaker 1: you man, I can still remember it so vividly that
1:23:26
Speaker 1: we were staying in my friend shale in a place
1:23:29
Speaker 1: called Shamany in France, and they weren't there yet. We
1:23:33
Speaker 1: were just there and my son hadn't been wealth throughout
1:23:35
Speaker 1: the day. He had a bit of a cold, and
1:23:38
Speaker 1: for some reason my wife didn't put him down in
1:23:40
Speaker 1: his in his cots, which is in the basements. Didn't
1:23:44
Speaker 1: feel white, you know, maternal intuition or whatever you want
1:23:47
Speaker 1: to call it. She didn't do that. And I remember
1:23:51
Speaker 1: that she was sitting It was a big open plans,
1:23:54
Speaker 1: you know, living room and kitchen, and she was sitting
1:23:57
Speaker 1: there and I think I had the kettle on, and
1:23:59
Speaker 1: she just called out to me and said, you know wrong,
1:24:01
Speaker 1: did he stopped moving? Come? You know? He just shouted out.
1:24:04
Speaker 1: I just came over. He put my son at his
1:24:08
Speaker 1: arms had gone back, he was rigid, and he just stopped,
1:24:12
Speaker 1: and you know, I thought he was choking. I thought
1:24:17
Speaker 1: maybe he was choking on his mucus and his flam
1:24:19
Speaker 1: and you know, my sort of my medical training was
1:24:22
Speaker 1: sort of like okay. So I turned him over. I
1:24:23
Speaker 1: tried to clear his airway. He's not breathing. It's not breathing,
1:24:27
Speaker 1: it's just you know, I frankly, I tried to clear
1:24:31
Speaker 1: as that way. Nothing was happening. And in that moment,
1:24:33
Speaker 1: I wasn't a highly qualified DOTSA. I was a scared
1:24:36
Speaker 1: dad and I froze right. I was just standing there,
1:24:39
Speaker 1: what's going on? I've got to figure this out? And
1:24:40
Speaker 1: my wife had said, look, we just got to get
1:24:42
Speaker 1: to the hospital. So we rushed into the car you know,
1:24:46
Speaker 1: I almost kill us all because we are on this
1:24:48
Speaker 1: little slope and the car skids because I'm just so panicked.
1:24:52
Speaker 1: We end up in the hospital, which isn't very far,
1:24:54
Speaker 1: and you could see when we got there that the
1:24:56
Speaker 1: dotsors were worried because you know, for people who don't know,
1:24:58
Speaker 1: a six month old child and have a convulsion, it's
1:25:01
Speaker 1: called a Februle convulsion. If they've got a fever with it,
1:25:04
Speaker 1: that is not actually that worrying that can happen in
1:25:07
Speaker 1: that age. He had no fever, so you could see
1:25:10
Speaker 1: the doctors were really panicked. I said, Okay, what's going
1:25:12
Speaker 1: on here? Why's he got no fever? Because that's that's
1:25:15
Speaker 1: the common cause. You know, they were sticking at a
1:25:18
Speaker 1: line in his neck, you know, all kinds of stuff.
1:25:22
Speaker 1: Then he had to be blue lighted down the mountain
1:25:24
Speaker 1: to the big mountain hospital because we were in a
1:25:25
Speaker 1: little resort. But did they get him breathing? They got
1:25:28
Speaker 1: him breathing, They gave him a diaz a PAM to
1:25:30
Speaker 1: get him going, you know, and stop all that. And
1:25:33
Speaker 1: I wasn't allowed in the ambulance, so I had to
1:25:35
Speaker 1: follow it in a car, and I was just panicked
1:25:37
Speaker 1: what the hell was going on? No one knew. They
1:25:39
Speaker 1: took bloods from him. He had two lumber punctures. You know,
1:25:42
Speaker 1: we thought we're going to lose him that night. We
1:25:43
Speaker 1: were absolutely so scared. A few hours later, the doctor
1:25:49
Speaker 1: comes into the room and he says, you know, there
1:25:52
Speaker 1: was shouting. We know, you know, he's you know, we
1:25:55
Speaker 1: know what's happened. What's happening? He said, he's got a
1:25:57
Speaker 1: very low level of calcium, and because of that low
1:26:01
Speaker 1: level of calcium, he's had a convulsion, so what we
1:26:03
Speaker 1: call a hypo calceumic convulsion. I said, okay, fine. They
1:26:08
Speaker 1: didn't know why at that point. They just said, okay,
1:26:10
Speaker 1: this is the cause. So to put it in perspective,
1:26:13
Speaker 1: the normal calcium level on that particular test is two
1:26:17
Speaker 1: point two to two point six. Even if we see
1:26:21
Speaker 1: it at one point nine, we consider that very low.
1:26:23
Speaker 1: His was zero point ninety seven. So his was tanked
1:26:27
Speaker 1: barely compatible with functioning. That's why he had his convulsion.
1:26:31
Speaker 1: So they gave him an intravenous calcium infusion. You know,
1:26:33
Speaker 1: this is what modern medicine does best, right, fix that
1:26:36
Speaker 1: acute problem. But then what happens is that I think
1:26:39
Speaker 1: about an hour or two later. I can't even remember
1:26:41
Speaker 1: the time. You know, it's all a bit of a blur.
1:26:43
Speaker 1: But he said, you know, we now know why he
1:26:45
Speaker 1: has no vitamin D in his body. He's very very low.
1:26:48
Speaker 1: So because he has no vitamin D, his calcium has
1:26:51
Speaker 1: dropped low. So it's kind of long story short, and
1:26:55
Speaker 1: I'm sorry to have labored the point. It's just it
1:26:57
Speaker 1: gets quite emotional when I think back, and I'm you know,
1:27:00
Speaker 1: I still can't clear that that out of my head.
1:27:02
Speaker 1: It's terrifying and in a nutshell, this is a fully
1:27:08
Speaker 1: preventable problem. Right, my son nearly died from a preventable
1:27:16
Speaker 1: vitamin deficiency, and his dad, as a highly qualified specialist,
1:27:21
Speaker 1: general practitioner, immunology honors degree, you know, all this kind
1:27:25
Speaker 1: of stuff, for all these labels right which I had,
1:27:29
Speaker 1: I wasn't able to prevent that happening in my son.
1:27:32
Speaker 3: But how would you even know? I mean, if he's breastfeeding,
1:27:35
Speaker 3: you would be you would presume that he's.
1:27:37
Speaker 1: Given against you. But because ultimately, you know, I now
1:27:41
Speaker 1: know that, and again people are going to listen and go,
1:27:43
Speaker 1: why weren't you putting in on vitamin D? Maybe? And
1:27:46
Speaker 1: the reality is is that you know, that is just
1:27:49
Speaker 1: not at that time and even now, it wasn't that
1:27:51
Speaker 1: common knowledge that a lot of kids need vitamin D
1:27:53
Speaker 1: you know, particularly in the modern worlds. You know, there
1:27:56
Speaker 1: are regulation, there are guidelines that all children need vitamin deed,
1:28:00
Speaker 1: you know, and he wasn't getting them. Butts. I've got
1:28:03
Speaker 1: to say, about four or five weeks before this happened,
1:28:07
Speaker 1: I was doing some reading. I was coming across this
1:28:10
Speaker 1: in my own practice, and I, you know, I thought,
1:28:13
Speaker 1: I wonder my son should be on vice men D.
1:28:15
Speaker 1: So what I did is I phoned my wife from
1:28:17
Speaker 1: work and I emailed her a protocol. I said, hey, babe,
1:28:21
Speaker 1: can you just make an appointment? Can you just go
1:28:22
Speaker 1: and see the doctor and just ask because we get
1:28:24
Speaker 1: told it's drilled into us as medical doctors in the UK,
1:28:27
Speaker 1: we're not to make decisions on our own family. It's
1:28:29
Speaker 1: considered bad practice, you consider too close. And so I thought, okay,
1:28:33
Speaker 1: I'm going to do the right thing. So she printed
1:28:35
Speaker 1: it off. She went to see our GP and the
1:28:41
Speaker 1: GP said, you know, and she knew, he knew that
1:28:44
Speaker 1: I was a doctor, and he said to my wife,
1:28:47
Speaker 1: you could have just printed made this up on word
1:28:48
Speaker 1: that this is not this is rubbish. You don't need
1:28:50
Speaker 1: to do anything. You know, you're doing the best. And
1:28:53
Speaker 1: so she phoned me and said, this is what's going on.
1:28:55
Speaker 1: I said, okay, let me do a bit more researching. So,
1:28:57
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, because I wasn't confident in that
1:29:00
Speaker 1: to make that call myself, right, whereas now with hindsight,
1:29:03
Speaker 1: I should have just done it myself, bought the drops
1:29:05
Speaker 1: over the counter and given them to him. But I didn't, right,
1:29:09
Speaker 1: And you know, I've gone through years of trying to
1:29:11
Speaker 1: figure out why I didn't do that, and you know,
1:29:13
Speaker 1: having a lot of guilt attached to that, which is
1:29:16
Speaker 1: a separate issue, but I think quite an important one
1:29:18
Speaker 1: because that guilt. See what happens. He's in hospital, he
1:29:22
Speaker 1: nearly dies, modern medicine saves him. But then I that
1:29:27
Speaker 1: I'm reading about volume and Dean, I think, well, this
1:29:29
Speaker 1: is a critical, critical vitament for your immune system to develop.
1:29:33
Speaker 1: This is a critical vitamin for his bones to develops.
1:29:36
Speaker 1: He was diagnosed with rickets as well, right, a Victorian
1:29:39
Speaker 1: illness that he's now got in the twenty first century.
1:29:42
Speaker 1: And actually, on a side note, in the UK, rickets
1:29:45
Speaker 1: is on the rights which is just incredible. Wow, would
1:29:49
Speaker 1: not have that.
1:29:49
Speaker 3: I didn't think anybody go out Rickarts anymore.
1:29:51
Speaker 1: We're going up in the UK every year. I don't
1:29:53
Speaker 1: know the US stats, but it's going up. And you
1:29:56
Speaker 1: know what happened in that moment was that I thought, well,
1:30:00
Speaker 1: maybe this is the reason he's got exma. Maybe because
1:30:03
Speaker 1: you know, because XMA in some ways related to your
1:30:05
Speaker 1: immune system having an element of dysfunction in it, and
1:30:09
Speaker 1: instead of just putting creams on to suppress the symptoms,
1:30:11
Speaker 1: it's like, well, maybe this is why he's got it.
1:30:13
Speaker 1: So I felt so guilty about this that I said, right,
1:30:18
Speaker 1: I'm going to figure out how to get my son
1:30:20
Speaker 1: back to optimal health as if this has never happened.
1:30:24
Speaker 1: And that was my drive. Right, I became obsessed. I'd
1:30:27
Speaker 1: be reading going on the internet. I'd be reading about
1:30:30
Speaker 1: vitamin D nutrition and as you start reading, you start
1:30:34
Speaker 1: to come across I start to come across a whole
1:30:37
Speaker 1: ton of science that frankly I had never seen before.
1:30:41
Speaker 1: That I thought, why do I not know about this? Right?
1:30:43
Speaker 1: That's the sharking Thok, why do I not know about this?
1:30:46
Speaker 1: I learned more. I thought, right, I'm going to figure
1:30:47
Speaker 1: this out. I spent a ton of money of my
1:30:49
Speaker 1: own money. I started going out to America. I started
1:30:52
Speaker 1: coming on conferences on courses with the goal to get
1:30:55
Speaker 1: him better. Right, And I've got to say, I'm very,
1:30:58
Speaker 1: very thankful that my son is thriving. He's eight now,
1:31:02
Speaker 1: he's happy, he has no skin problems, he's doing well,
1:31:06
Speaker 1: he's sportsy, he's you know, I really feel that everything
1:31:10
Speaker 1: I've learned has helped me get him back to full health.
1:31:14
Speaker 3: Okay, So that was it wasn't just the incidence of
1:31:17
Speaker 3: going to the emergency room and treating it. This was
1:31:20
Speaker 3: something that required treatment over a prolonged period of time
1:31:23
Speaker 3: to get him well.
1:31:24
Speaker 1: But if it's how you look at it, modern medicine
1:31:26
Speaker 1: would say, well, he had a problem, he had a convulsion. Okay,
1:31:29
Speaker 1: we've identified that and fixed it. You're discharge now, good
1:31:33
Speaker 1: to go. Okay. But we but we're not looking at
1:31:37
Speaker 1: what the implications. How long was he low and that
1:31:40
Speaker 1: vitamin for how much of an impact has that held
1:31:43
Speaker 1: on the developments of his immune system?
1:31:45
Speaker 3: Right?
1:31:45
Speaker 1: And which that kills me? Is even think about that,
1:31:48
Speaker 1: you know what that might have potentially done already? What
1:31:53
Speaker 1: I know is that if you think about that threshold concept.
1:31:56
Speaker 1: Even if there has been, you know, an impacts from
1:32:00
Speaker 1: which no doubt they're they're that has I feel that
1:32:04
Speaker 1: I'm helping him optimize everything else that is possible to
1:32:08
Speaker 1: kind of mean that that is, it is going to
1:32:11
Speaker 1: have less of an impact. But here's the key, the
1:32:13
Speaker 1: science I learned from trying to get him better. Yes,
1:32:17
Speaker 1: I helped him. Then as a family, we started applying
1:32:21
Speaker 1: it in our lives. Right then I started applying it
1:32:24
Speaker 1: with my patients, and I for the first time in
1:32:26
Speaker 1: my career, I felt I was excited. I thought, I'm
1:32:30
Speaker 1: getting people better, I'm getting them off their medication. I'm
1:32:33
Speaker 1: actually understanding what the root cause of their problem is
1:32:36
Speaker 1: and how to get to it. And it changed my
1:32:39
Speaker 1: career and I you know, it's it's you know, in
1:32:44
Speaker 1: some ways, rich if this had never happened to my son,
1:32:49
Speaker 1: would I be doing what I'm doing.
1:32:51
Speaker 3: Yeah, It's that classic thing of you know, the worst
1:32:53
Speaker 3: thing that happens to you is the silver lining that
1:32:56
Speaker 3: that you know, creates something beautiful out of it.
1:33:00
Speaker 1: I mean civil liarning for me, it was it a
1:33:02
Speaker 1: civil learning for him? You know, I don't know, but
1:33:05
Speaker 1: I can say all right, I think. So I can
1:33:08
Speaker 1: tell you one thing that I've started to do now
1:33:10
Speaker 1: is I'm really working hard on myself to let go
1:33:13
Speaker 1: of that guilt because actually that guilt I think it
1:33:16
Speaker 1: served its purpose and I think now that that guilt
1:33:19
Speaker 1: is hindering my ability to be as good a father
1:33:21
Speaker 1: as I could be.
1:33:22
Speaker 3: Yeah, you can't keep punishing yourself and wear the hair shirt.
1:33:25
Speaker 1: Yeah. And he doesn't want that either. He doesn't want
1:33:27
Speaker 1: his dad to be guilty, you know. And it's for me.
1:33:31
Speaker 1: It was that transformative experience, you know, and I kind
1:33:36
Speaker 1: of just I used to justify it to myself. I thought, Okay,
1:33:38
Speaker 1: because of that, I've learned this, I'm helping my patients now.
1:33:41
Speaker 1: Then I get this BBC one show, this Prime SIME show,
1:33:43
Speaker 1: which goes out to five million people a week in
1:33:45
Speaker 1: the UK, and then you know, seventy countries around the
1:33:48
Speaker 1: world where I can showcase this so to millions of
1:33:51
Speaker 1: people around the globe, how no matter what your condition is,
1:33:55
Speaker 1: we can improve it with these lifeself recommendations. And I thought,
1:33:59
Speaker 1: you know, maybe that's his gifts to the world. Maybe
1:34:02
Speaker 1: in some ways that's what was required to give me
1:34:05
Speaker 1: this drive to do what I tell yeah, it's cool. Yeah,
1:34:09
Speaker 1: so wow, my head's gone.
1:34:10
Speaker 3: But no, no, it's it's it's it's an amazing story.
1:34:13
Speaker 1: And I'm sure he's going to be fine. Hey, he
1:34:16
Speaker 1: is going to be fine. He's incredible. In the context
1:34:20
Speaker 1: of your practice.
1:34:20
Speaker 3: And all these people that you treat and see, like
1:34:23
Speaker 3: what is the well two questions really, but the first
1:34:26
Speaker 3: being like, what is the number one thing that people
1:34:30
Speaker 3: struggle with the most? And I know you don't want
1:34:31
Speaker 3: to like sort of parse the differences between these four
1:34:34
Speaker 3: pillars because of this, you know, delicate interplay between all
1:34:37
Speaker 3: of them, but you know, where where are people going
1:34:40
Speaker 3: wrong the most? What's the most chronic, persistent condition or
1:34:44
Speaker 3: stumbling block that people face in your experience?
1:34:50
Speaker 1: Yeah, what is the most well, I think the most
1:34:55
Speaker 1: common stumbling block. You're right, I mean I think you
1:35:01
Speaker 1: got to take those four pillars individually because in different people,
1:35:04
Speaker 1: it's going to be a different one. But if I
1:35:07
Speaker 1: had to really pick one, and this is different from
1:35:11
Speaker 1: if i'd come on the show five years ago, I
1:35:12
Speaker 1: don't know if you were doing the podcast five years ago,
1:35:14
Speaker 1: was yeah, So if I were saying five years ago,
1:35:17
Speaker 1: I would have given you a different answer. Back then,
1:35:19
Speaker 1: I would have told you it was food, But now
1:35:22
Speaker 1: I'd say it's stress. You know. I think the majority
1:35:26
Speaker 1: of people I see I just stressed out. They're busy,
1:35:32
Speaker 1: they just got their brains full of stuff. They just
1:35:36
Speaker 1: there's there's no quiet, there's no stillness, there's no there's
1:35:39
Speaker 1: no respite from the noise. And I'm finding more and more.
1:35:43
Speaker 1: I'm going there a lot earlier than I used to.
1:35:47
Speaker 1: So I'd say that's probably the big one for me.
1:35:51
Speaker 1: That's the one that I struggled with the most. Hey,
1:35:53
Speaker 1: me too, you know.
1:35:54
Speaker 3: And yeah, as somebody who's driven and as an athlete
1:35:57
Speaker 3: like I just you know, my whole aim of mind
1:36:00
Speaker 3: is push, push push. I can do more, I can
1:36:03
Speaker 3: make it better, and I just dig myself into a hall,
1:36:06
Speaker 3: which is why I wake up woke up.
1:36:07
Speaker 1: This morning not feeling so great, you know. But it's
1:36:11
Speaker 1: about saying you can do more. You can do it
1:36:13
Speaker 1: all right, but you just got to You've got to
1:36:15
Speaker 1: have a stop point. You got to just you've got
1:36:18
Speaker 1: to schedule in these stop points where because these days
1:36:24
Speaker 1: do no matter what you do, your work has never done.
1:36:26
Speaker 1: There is always something else you can be doing. So
1:36:29
Speaker 1: I I rather romantically. Look back to time fifteen twenty
1:36:34
Speaker 1: years ago, and I imagine that people would and I'm
1:36:37
Speaker 1: sure I'm overly you know, I'm sure it wasn't quite
1:36:39
Speaker 1: like this, but I kind of imagine that. You know,
1:36:42
Speaker 1: let's say a working couple would come back and they
1:36:46
Speaker 1: might sort of have dinner with their children, let's say,
1:36:48
Speaker 1: for argument's sake, and at some point the children would
1:36:51
Speaker 1: go off to bed, and then it would be like, Okay,
1:36:53
Speaker 1: let's let's chill out together, let's maybe put the television on,
1:36:56
Speaker 1: let's let's watch something together. You know, there wasn't the
1:36:59
Speaker 1: ability to go right, that's done. Now I can get
1:37:03
Speaker 1: on with more work. Now I can actually open up
1:37:04
Speaker 1: my work emails. Now I can catch up with what
1:37:06
Speaker 1: I've not done yet. Now I can get ahead for tomorrow.
1:37:09
Speaker 1: I don't think for certainly, for the largest part of
1:37:12
Speaker 1: our revolution, we didn't have that possibility. No, when you
1:37:15
Speaker 1: went home, you were at home, you were home, work
1:37:17
Speaker 1: was at work. You're home. Now you chill and.
1:37:19
Speaker 3: Nobody could reach you, and nobody would unless there was
1:37:22
Speaker 3: some crazy emergency.
1:37:23
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. So, because we've got the ability to do
1:37:26
Speaker 1: these things, we always feel we can do more. So
1:37:29
Speaker 1: that's never going to go. Your to do list is
1:37:31
Speaker 1: never going to be done. If you think you're ever
1:37:34
Speaker 1: going to tick it all off and you're done, now,
1:37:36
Speaker 1: that ain't happening. There's always something else that There's always
1:37:38
Speaker 1: an email to get back to. There's always your Facebook
1:37:41
Speaker 1: to check. There's always a DM you just got on
1:37:43
Speaker 1: an Instagram that you could get back to. You know,
1:37:45
Speaker 1: it's endless now, or that WhatsApp group you've been attitude
1:37:48
Speaker 1: that you've got to respond to.
1:37:49
Speaker 3: Right, well, we all have like twenty inboxes now, you.
1:37:52
Speaker 1: Know, and people can't get you on one, they get
1:37:53
Speaker 1: you on another one. So you just got this constant bombardment.
1:37:56
Speaker 1: So I think that stress piece and a lot of
1:37:59
Speaker 1: people don't realize that that is a big risk factor
1:38:03
Speaker 1: for disease. But that will even negate you, that will
1:38:06
Speaker 1: even stop you from losing weight. People that I can't
1:38:09
Speaker 1: get their heads around that. But so many particularly I've
1:38:12
Speaker 1: got to say women, okay, And that's because I'm going
1:38:15
Speaker 1: from my experience. I'm not saying this affects women more
1:38:17
Speaker 1: than men. What I am saying is, in my clinical experience,
1:38:20
Speaker 1: I've seen a lot of women suffer hugely with stress
1:38:25
Speaker 1: and you know a lot of them are you know,
1:38:27
Speaker 1: really caring. They don't. They don't put themselves first. They
1:38:30
Speaker 1: put their children first, they put their partner first, they
1:38:32
Speaker 1: put their parents first. They do everything for other people.
1:38:36
Speaker 1: They've got no time for themselves. And what happens is
1:38:39
Speaker 1: because they're wired the whole time. They're cortisol levels, which
1:38:42
Speaker 1: are our primary stress response ormone. Those levels are high,
1:38:45
Speaker 1: they're persistently raised. But if they are persistently raised, it
1:38:49
Speaker 1: means your body thinks it's under attack, so it holds
1:38:52
Speaker 1: on to weight. And I've helped women get rid of
1:38:55
Speaker 1: menopausal sentence. I've helped them get rid of their weight
1:38:59
Speaker 1: problems when they've just from diet to diet for years
1:39:02
Speaker 1: and they keep hitting a plata and they think, what's
1:39:03
Speaker 1: the right diet? You know, this is the wrong diet
1:39:05
Speaker 1: for me. What's the next book? A Cam's what's the
1:39:07
Speaker 1: perfect diet? And I say, hey, they're saying a dietary problem.
1:39:10
Speaker 1: All of these are pretty good diets. Your mind never
1:39:13
Speaker 1: switches off, and just buy some simple stress management techniques.
1:39:18
Speaker 1: The weight starts coming off, or the menopausal symptoms start
1:39:22
Speaker 1: getting better. So stress impacts everything. And you know, I
1:39:26
Speaker 1: see it in my practices. I saw it when I
1:39:28
Speaker 1: did doctor in the house. I saw it in people's lives.
1:39:31
Speaker 1: And you know when I mentioned people sit back, and
1:39:33
Speaker 1: let's say a couple are sitting watching television in the evening,
1:39:36
Speaker 1: there's another issue there, which is now, let's if we
1:39:40
Speaker 1: play that scenario out. Let's say the couple do want
1:39:44
Speaker 1: to watch something together. Right, Actually, is very common now
1:39:47
Speaker 1: for people to be on their own devices because we
1:39:49
Speaker 1: can personalize everything. So I don't need to watch my
1:39:52
Speaker 1: wife's watching. I can watch my favorite show, she can.
1:39:54
Speaker 3: Watch hers, so the whole having her own personal experiences
1:39:59
Speaker 3: on our on our own.
1:40:00
Speaker 1: Yeah, so we're together in the same room, but we're
1:40:04
Speaker 1: not together together. And that actually that plays out in
1:40:09
Speaker 1: other areas. So you know, many people come and see
1:40:11
Speaker 1: their doctra about you know, their sex life or lack
1:40:14
Speaker 1: of intimacy and these kind of things. And the classic
1:40:16
Speaker 1: cliche now is as a husband and wife or whoever
1:40:19
Speaker 1: you know partner, two partners are in bed together, right,
1:40:23
Speaker 1: but they're both on their own devices, so that they're
1:40:27
Speaker 1: they're they're occupying the same physical space. Yet actually they're
1:40:32
Speaker 1: in their own wild, their own emails, their own Facebook, messages,
1:40:35
Speaker 1: their own Netflix shows, and that opportunity for intimacy that
1:40:41
Speaker 1: is going as well. And you know, as a Dolte,
1:40:44
Speaker 1: these things come up into my parties every day. People
1:40:46
Speaker 1: are complaining about this. And again, this technology is so
1:40:50
Speaker 1: great on so many levels. But if we don't we
1:40:52
Speaker 1: don't rain it in, it's affecting all aspects of our life. Yeah.
1:40:56
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's crazy to think that, but it's so true.
1:40:59
Speaker 1: I mean, and you know of what you're saying on
1:41:00
Speaker 1: some level is like your device is making you fat. Yeah,
1:41:04
Speaker 1: that's the way to get people to pay attention. That
1:41:06
Speaker 1: is the way. And then so you can talk about
1:41:08
Speaker 1: all the other things.
1:41:09
Speaker 3: But it really is amazing these crazy times that we're
1:41:12
Speaker 3: living in. Right, that's crazy to deal with all this
1:41:14
Speaker 3: kind of stuff that even ten years ago was non existent.
1:41:17
Speaker 1: Yeah, I know, we don't want to make clear which
1:41:20
Speaker 1: if if people listen to this and go, yeah, look
1:41:22
Speaker 1: I get all that, but it's just too hard. I
1:41:24
Speaker 1: would say, Look, maybe something they've heard that we've already
1:41:29
Speaker 1: spoken about, or something they might read about. Right, just
1:41:32
Speaker 1: pick something small, Just pick something small and start there.
1:41:35
Speaker 1: Maybe it's simply that you are one of these people
1:41:38
Speaker 1: who go on your phone and your bed at nights, right,
1:41:41
Speaker 1: what if you didn't bring into your bedroom or what
1:41:44
Speaker 1: if twenty minutes before bedtime you thought, okay, I'm just
1:41:46
Speaker 1: going to put this off now, okay, start that keep.
1:41:51
Speaker 1: You know, I live in a house and we keep
1:41:53
Speaker 1: our phone charges downstairs, right, And the rule is, but
1:41:57
Speaker 1: we don't always stick to it. But the rule is
1:42:00
Speaker 1: that we leave our phones downstairs. We don't bring them
1:42:03
Speaker 1: upstairs into the bedroom. Right now, I'm a human, right,
1:42:06
Speaker 1: we don't always stick to it.
1:42:07
Speaker 3: Are you on call though? At times where you have
1:42:09
Speaker 3: to have the phone nearby? No, the way I do
1:42:11
Speaker 3: practice now, No, I'm not so I don't need that.
1:42:14
Speaker 3: But look, I've worked with people who do right.
1:42:16
Speaker 1: So I'm like, okay, fine, on those nights you do it,
1:42:19
Speaker 1: I get it, But what about the other six nights
1:42:22
Speaker 1: in the week where you're not right? Because we can
1:42:24
Speaker 1: all make those justifications. You can make the justification that
1:42:28
Speaker 1: I run an online business, I've got to be connected
1:42:30
Speaker 1: at all times. Well, you can always make excuses for
1:42:33
Speaker 1: whatever it is that you're trying to whiggle out of. Yeah,
1:42:36
Speaker 1: And well, the thing is, when we say we're trying
1:42:38
Speaker 1: to wiggle out of it, I think this is where
1:42:41
Speaker 1: the empowerment comes in, because first, the first thing we've
1:42:43
Speaker 1: got to do is people have got to want to change, right.
1:42:48
Speaker 1: They might be listening and going, yeah, you know, but
1:42:50
Speaker 1: I don't want to do that. You know, if people
1:42:51
Speaker 1: aren't ready for that, they may they may buy my book, right,
1:42:56
Speaker 1: and they may read it and do something for a week,
1:42:58
Speaker 1: but then they're just going to put it on the show,
1:43:00
Speaker 1: have a go about to the world.
1:43:01
Speaker 3: Habits, or more commonly, they'll buy the book and give
1:43:05
Speaker 3: it to somebody who they want they want to help,
1:43:09
Speaker 3: without appreciating the fact that if that person they're trying
1:43:13
Speaker 3: to help doesn't want to change, it doesn't matter. It
1:43:15
Speaker 3: doesn't matter because people think that they can will people
1:43:17
Speaker 3: into that wanting to change mindset, and that is RESTful.
1:43:22
Speaker 3: Since I got into this world and since I've suddenly
1:43:25
Speaker 3: seen the lights, yeah you know, I'm trying to sing
1:43:28
Speaker 3: it from the rooftops. So first I've learned that, you
1:43:31
Speaker 3: know what, you cannot make anybody make these changes, you know, particularly.
1:43:35
Speaker 1: Not your family now.
1:43:36
Speaker 3: And I'm sure you get as I do, tons of emails, Hey,
1:43:40
Speaker 3: you know, seth, my mom, my brother, my my husband,
1:43:43
Speaker 3: my wife, whatever, They need to understand this.
1:43:46
Speaker 1: How can I make them understand it? You can't. You can't,
1:43:49
Speaker 1: you can't. You just got to, I say, some people
1:43:51
Speaker 1: you know in this why I try and lead by example,
1:43:55
Speaker 1: you know, not because I'm trying to be an example.
1:43:57
Speaker 1: I just I'm just going to con I've realized it's
1:43:59
Speaker 1: enough work to do it myself right in this crazy
1:44:02
Speaker 1: modern where we live in. I want to focus on that,
1:44:05
Speaker 1: and bit by bit hopefully people around you will, you know,
1:44:08
Speaker 1: if they're interested, you might just you know, spark that
1:44:10
Speaker 1: little bit of interest. And I say, i'd say one
1:44:13
Speaker 1: place has this has played out recently, which is probably
1:44:17
Speaker 1: not what people would expect me to say. But I
1:44:21
Speaker 1: you know, because I've got two young children, you know,
1:44:24
Speaker 1: now that they're at school, it's always tricky for me
1:44:26
Speaker 1: to sort of knowing what I know, and you know,
1:44:29
Speaker 1: I can't control everything about them anymore, and that's just
1:44:32
Speaker 1: part of growing up, right. But you know, often there's
1:44:35
Speaker 1: a culture at schools of like sugary junk food and
1:44:38
Speaker 1: all this kind of stuff, which you know, really on
1:44:41
Speaker 1: one level, I find very frustrating. And initially when they
1:44:44
Speaker 1: when my son started at school, it stressed me out,
1:44:46
Speaker 1: like ah, this is this is crazy. What am I
1:44:48
Speaker 1: going to do? And then my wife and I decided,
1:44:50
Speaker 1: you know, we're just going to focus on doing what
1:44:52
Speaker 1: we do. And at the end of that first year,
1:44:54
Speaker 1: they went on a school trip and people could bring
1:44:58
Speaker 1: their treats and for their school trips. So what we
1:45:00
Speaker 1: did is that again, we're not trying to make any
1:45:03
Speaker 1: judgment on anybody else. We're literally always causes when we're
1:45:07
Speaker 1: talking about children. You know, I genuinely believe that every
1:45:10
Speaker 1: parent is trying to do the best that they can
1:45:11
Speaker 1: for their childs within the contexts of their life and
1:45:14
Speaker 1: within their health belief system. But we felt that we
1:45:18
Speaker 1: want to keep feeding him healthy, nourishing food, you know,
1:45:21
Speaker 1: and we made these fruits. Well, I say we my wife,
1:45:25
Speaker 1: must we be really honest about this. My wife made
1:45:28
Speaker 1: these beautiful fruit kebabs. These I think there was mangoes, strawberry.
1:45:31
Speaker 1: It was just these colorful girls. And he took them
1:45:34
Speaker 1: in and then at their lunch break on their school trip,
1:45:36
Speaker 1: you know, everyone's having their stuff and he's having his
1:45:39
Speaker 1: fruit cababs, which he loves because he thinks that's a treat.
1:45:42
Speaker 1: You know, I'm allowed all this super sweet fruit today
1:45:45
Speaker 1: and we went to pick him up and his teacher
1:45:48
Speaker 1: said to us, So, I was just incredible. You know,
1:45:52
Speaker 1: I think we're going to institute this now as a
1:45:53
Speaker 1: practice for school trips. We're going to now do these
1:45:56
Speaker 1: fruit kebabs for everyone. We thought that was fantastic and
1:46:00
Speaker 1: I really learned a lesson that day. Again, I thought,
1:46:02
Speaker 1: this is incredible. You know, we're not telling other people
1:46:07
Speaker 1: what to do. I don't feel it's my place or
1:46:09
Speaker 1: our place to tell other people to We're just focusing
1:46:11
Speaker 1: on what we do. And that has been observed, and
1:46:13
Speaker 1: other parents had asked us as well, So that's incredible.
1:46:16
Speaker 1: And now other people are starting to adopt that with
1:46:18
Speaker 1: their children because of what they saw us do. And
1:46:21
Speaker 1: again it's that same principle that applies, which is you
1:46:24
Speaker 1: can't make someone else change. You just got to focus
1:46:27
Speaker 1: on doing what you're doing. And it is hard because
1:46:29
Speaker 1: if you're let's say, if you have had a health
1:46:32
Speaker 1: revelation by changing your lifestyle, yet your partner is not,
1:46:37
Speaker 1: all you want to do is tell them so no, no, no,
1:46:39
Speaker 1: is you know you do this, you do this, But
1:46:41
Speaker 1: I found it doesn't work.
1:46:43
Speaker 3: It doesn't work, and it's tough I'm sympathetic to people
1:46:45
Speaker 3: that are in that situation. Like I was lucky enough
1:46:48
Speaker 3: to have, you know, a wife who was super supportive.
1:46:51
Speaker 3: I don't know that I would have made the changes
1:46:53
Speaker 3: that I would have been able to make them, or
1:46:56
Speaker 3: make them stick without that kind of support.
1:46:58
Speaker 1: So it's very difficult.
1:46:59
Speaker 3: And the you know the thing about kids, I mean,
1:47:03
Speaker 3: we're very similar with our kids. My wife is an
1:47:06
Speaker 3: insane cook. She makes amazing food. It's the food that
1:47:09
Speaker 3: our kids prefer. But we don't make rules with them
1:47:13
Speaker 3: about what they can and can't do when they leave
1:47:15
Speaker 3: the house. Like I'm not that concerned about whether my
1:47:19
Speaker 3: daughter is going to have a piece of cake at
1:47:21
Speaker 3: a birthday party. What I am concerned about is her
1:47:25
Speaker 3: habits ten years from now and what her default settings are.
1:47:29
Speaker 1: Going to be exactly.
1:47:30
Speaker 3: And that comes through setting the example and through constant
1:47:34
Speaker 3: education and using food, the kitchen, the farmer's market, the
1:47:37
Speaker 3: grocery store, all of that, the cooking, teaching them how
1:47:40
Speaker 3: to make certain things. It's all like a homeschool recipe
1:47:44
Speaker 3: to instill, you know, those those ideals around food that
1:47:48
Speaker 3: I think are so important, and it's about serving the
1:47:51
Speaker 3: long term.
1:47:52
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you've got much more experience than me as
1:47:54
Speaker 1: a parent, you know, so I'm always happy to hear.
1:47:57
Speaker 1: And each kid's different, each kid's different, and I'm realizing
1:48:00
Speaker 1: more morning to let go. And you know, you know,
1:48:03
Speaker 1: at some point they're going to push back in experiments,
1:48:05
Speaker 1: and you know you cannot. It's very hard to fight
1:48:08
Speaker 1: societal norms.
1:48:10
Speaker 3: But if you don't give them anything to push back against,
1:48:13
Speaker 3: the impulse to rebel is diffused.
1:48:17
Speaker 1: Right.
1:48:17
Speaker 3: So if you're not saying like, oh, you know this
1:48:19
Speaker 3: is if you're if you're making all these rules, then
1:48:21
Speaker 3: when they get to a certain age.
1:48:22
Speaker 1: They're like, I'm out of the house, I can break
1:48:24
Speaker 1: the rule. Yeah, exactly. And you know we become acutely
1:48:27
Speaker 1: aware of that recently and really trying to modify our
1:48:29
Speaker 1: behavior around the kids because of that. And you know
1:48:33
Speaker 1: I mentioned before that I met Michelle Poulin. I don't
1:48:37
Speaker 1: know if you've I don't know. I don't know her,
1:48:39
Speaker 1: but it's a he's a heat searching I think when
1:48:42
Speaker 1: outwork initially to sort of help do all the research
1:48:46
Speaker 1: on the blue zones with them, and I was lecturing
1:48:49
Speaker 1: with him in Guernsey and Guernsey they were looking at
1:48:51
Speaker 1: Guernsey to say could this qualify potentially as a blue zone.
1:48:54
Speaker 1: I don't know why they've got up to with that,
1:48:57
Speaker 1: but very coldly, the people who were organize the range
1:49:00
Speaker 1: for me and Dan not being down me and Michelle.
1:49:03
Speaker 1: So you go and visit some of Guernsey's centenarians. I
1:49:06
Speaker 1: remember we went in a taxi and we went to
1:49:09
Speaker 1: this chap's house. He was one hundred and two years old.
1:49:11
Speaker 1: I remember we got out of the taxi and I
1:49:13
Speaker 1: knocks on the door and he comes up and he
1:49:16
Speaker 1: answers the door, which in itself was amazing to me
1:49:20
Speaker 1: because as a doctor I do home visits, right, that's
1:49:22
Speaker 1: something we still do in the UK. You know, if
1:49:24
Speaker 1: someone phones in and they can't get in, we go.
1:49:26
Speaker 1: And obviously it's a self selecting population. People are sick
1:49:29
Speaker 1: and ill, generally frail, that's why they're calling the doctor.
1:49:32
Speaker 1: But I've never had one of those. Patients will very
1:49:35
Speaker 1: rarely open the door for me. It normally there's a
1:49:38
Speaker 1: key lock or some a karr lets me in. This
1:49:40
Speaker 1: guy rocks up and he lets me in and we
1:49:43
Speaker 1: go and we sit down and there's a cup of
1:49:45
Speaker 1: tea made for us and we sit there and we talk.
1:49:47
Speaker 1: It's really interesting talk to him about his life. And
1:49:50
Speaker 1: you know, he said, until he was ninety five and
1:49:53
Speaker 1: started seeing doctors, he was great. And once he started
1:49:55
Speaker 1: seeing doctors as health went down. That's super interesting on
1:49:59
Speaker 1: one level. But he spoke to me, I can't remember
1:50:02
Speaker 1: the name of this thing, but he said, you know,
1:50:03
Speaker 1: one of his favorite tweats was this Guernsey loaf. It's
1:50:07
Speaker 1: like a mixture between an English cake and a French croissant.
1:50:11
Speaker 1: I can't remember the name of it. I was really interested.
1:50:14
Speaker 1: I thought, okay, you know, because I'm trying to work
1:50:15
Speaker 1: out what's the secret here, you know, And I say,
1:50:18
Speaker 1: you know, that's great. How often would you have that?
1:50:20
Speaker 1: Would you what sort of most days or at the weekends?
1:50:22
Speaker 1: It's like, oh no, that's chast Git Eastern and Christmas.
1:50:27
Speaker 1: We just have it at special times. And yeah, I
1:50:28
Speaker 1: can't have that every day. And I thought, that's the key.
1:50:31
Speaker 1: It's not about and I think this is consistent in
1:50:33
Speaker 1: all these blue zones. It's not about deprivation. These guys
1:50:36
Speaker 1: have sweet tweats. They don't have it every day after
1:50:39
Speaker 1: school or every mid morning coffee break at work, right,
1:50:42
Speaker 1: they have it now and again it's a celebration time
1:50:46
Speaker 1: as a tweet. And you know that's why the recommendation
1:50:48
Speaker 1: I make in the book is to denormalize sugar. Right,
1:50:51
Speaker 1: I'm not saying, look, we craze sugar. If you were
1:50:54
Speaker 1: trying to avoid sugar in this modern food environment, I
1:50:57
Speaker 1: think you're setting yourself up for failure because it's going
1:51:00
Speaker 1: to be incredibly challenging. I feel to long send completely
1:51:05
Speaker 1: avoids sugar. I think we need to denormalize sugar, you know,
1:51:09
Speaker 1: it just it can't be the everyday normal. It's going
1:51:11
Speaker 1: to be the occasional traits. That's the key with I
1:51:14
Speaker 1: think you have to be specific about.
1:51:18
Speaker 3: About what you mean by occasional, because I think people
1:51:21
Speaker 3: have different definit different definitions of that. And I do think,
1:51:24
Speaker 3: and I think you'll agree with me on this, that
1:51:28
Speaker 3: there's something to be said for completely cutting something out
1:51:33
Speaker 3: like sugar to allow your microbiome to adjust and your
1:51:36
Speaker 3: physiology to adjust. And there very well may be some
1:51:41
Speaker 3: discomfort because we are addicted to these kinds of foods
1:51:45
Speaker 3: and when we remove them, there's a craving that ensues.
1:51:48
Speaker 3: But if you can, if you can kind of weigh,
1:51:50
Speaker 3: you know, sort of whether that you can get to
1:51:55
Speaker 3: the other side and those cravings dissipate, and your relationship
1:51:58
Speaker 3: to those foods that once triggered you and held so much.
1:52:01
Speaker 1: Power over you no longer do, which I absolutely agreed. Look,
1:52:06
Speaker 1: you know, I go through this process. If you want
1:52:08
Speaker 1: to go cold turkey on it. I've taught people through
1:52:11
Speaker 1: how to do that, because for me, that's the approach
1:52:13
Speaker 1: I would take because you you within four or five days,
1:52:17
Speaker 1: you start to feel, you start to learn how good
1:52:20
Speaker 1: you can feel and how frankly hooked you are on
1:52:23
Speaker 1: this stuff. But some people that's too much for so
1:52:26
Speaker 1: I also take them through a step by step process
1:52:28
Speaker 1: that they can take and they want to go more gradually.
1:52:30
Speaker 1: But I agree. Often people will say, you know, I'm
1:52:32
Speaker 1: addicted to sugar, or yeah, but I've got a sweet tooth.
1:52:35
Speaker 1: You know what, We've all got a sweet tooth. We
1:52:37
Speaker 1: crave sugar. But if your norm is to have sugar
1:52:41
Speaker 1: in your cereal, even if you're not adding sugar, the
1:52:44
Speaker 1: inbuilt sugar in your cereal and your bread that you
1:52:47
Speaker 1: have in your sandwich at lunchtime, potentially in some of
1:52:49
Speaker 1: those breads, and you're already made pasta sauce in the evening. Right,
1:52:54
Speaker 1: your body gets used to sugar. Your taste buds adapt
1:52:57
Speaker 1: to what you're giving it. I remember a few years
1:52:59
Speaker 1: ago when I used to drink tea. When I first
1:53:01
Speaker 1: started ring sea, I had sugar in it, and I
1:53:03
Speaker 1: remember giving it up in the first few days. I
1:53:05
Speaker 1: couldn't stand the tea. This is awful, And then I
1:53:08
Speaker 1: got used to it. Three weeks later, I was at
1:53:10
Speaker 1: work and I picked up the wrong cup of tea
1:53:13
Speaker 1: and it had sugar in it, and I had to
1:53:15
Speaker 1: spit it out because something that I could have drunk
1:53:19
Speaker 1: three weeks previously now felt horrendously sweet to me. Because
1:53:23
Speaker 1: our taste buds adapt SAI. Yeah, they had the same experience.
1:53:25
Speaker 1: So I do feel that it's much better to have
1:53:28
Speaker 1: a period of let's say two weeks where you go
1:53:30
Speaker 1: cold turkey. Yes, you may well go through some withdrawal symptoms. Okay,
1:53:35
Speaker 1: I don't like to hear that. People don't like to
1:53:37
Speaker 1: hear that. But you know, we can will power things
1:53:39
Speaker 1: for a week or two, right, you know, maybe for
1:53:41
Speaker 1: four to six weeks that's harder, but we can will
1:53:43
Speaker 1: power for a week or two. Most people can. My
1:53:46
Speaker 1: big tip for that not only for that, my big
1:53:48
Speaker 1: tip in general for making lifestyle change, and people are
1:53:52
Speaker 1: serious about lifestyle change no matter what that is, I
1:53:56
Speaker 1: would say, make your home a safe right. If you're
1:54:02
Speaker 1: trying to avoid certain foods, do not bring them into
1:54:04
Speaker 1: the house. And the reason is just because in the
1:54:09
Speaker 1: twenty first century, in most places now, if you step
1:54:12
Speaker 1: outside your front door, you're having to exercise willpower everywhere
1:54:17
Speaker 1: you go. Right, you want to fill up petrol or
1:54:19
Speaker 1: gas in your car, right, you've got to walk past
1:54:22
Speaker 1: or the junk in the petrol station. You want to
1:54:25
Speaker 1: go to coffee, right, you know in the UK it's
1:54:28
Speaker 1: like this. You want to buy coffee, you stun in line,
1:54:31
Speaker 1: right you walk past or the pana chakolas or the
1:54:34
Speaker 1: pastries or the muffins. You may well have mentally thought, right,
1:54:38
Speaker 1: I'm going to say no. You go to pay, the
1:54:42
Speaker 1: barista will then say to you, hey, so would you
1:54:44
Speaker 1: like a pan of chokla with that? You know, you're
1:54:46
Speaker 1: constantly being questioned and pushed. So I'm saying that's going to.
1:54:49
Speaker 3: Be hard no, and yeah, ultimately willpower is going to
1:54:52
Speaker 3: fill you.
1:54:53
Speaker 1: Yeah, So don't use your willpower in the house, right,
1:54:57
Speaker 1: I know you will come back one day tired, stressed out,
1:55:00
Speaker 1: underslept right, and you will crave something sweet. And this
1:55:04
Speaker 1: happened to me a few weeks ago. I was, you know,
1:55:06
Speaker 1: going around the country talking about the book, talking to people,
1:55:09
Speaker 1: trying to promote health. I was exhausted right sitting there
1:55:12
Speaker 1: at home. I really feel like something sweet. I opened
1:55:15
Speaker 1: the cupboards. There's nothing, there's all this, there's nubs. I
1:55:18
Speaker 1: don't feel like all is and nuts at the moment.
1:55:20
Speaker 1: And you know what, after a little while, that craving goes.
1:55:24
Speaker 1: You're pissed for a minute, Yeah exactly, But that's but that.
1:55:28
Speaker 1: But that's it. But if you had if I had that,
1:55:30
Speaker 1: that that bag of potato chips, then I would have
1:55:33
Speaker 1: smashed through it because that's how I felt. And I
1:55:37
Speaker 1: really feel that it's such a key point. Control the
1:55:40
Speaker 1: environments that you can control. You just you're setting yourself
1:55:45
Speaker 1: up for winning. I talk about these these little glutes
1:55:48
Speaker 1: exercises that I do a lot of my patients that
1:55:50
Speaker 1: really helped me get rid of the ten year history
1:55:52
Speaker 1: of back ache. I do three to four minutes of
1:55:55
Speaker 1: them a day. But do you know when I did it,
1:55:56
Speaker 1: I wake up. How about a downtime in the morning,
1:55:58
Speaker 1: I very mindfully, particularly weigh out my coffee beans. I
1:56:04
Speaker 1: sort of I wait all out, a little bit obsessed
1:56:06
Speaker 1: with it. I pull the water in and then my
1:56:07
Speaker 1: timer goes on for four minutes, and as the coffee's brewing,
1:56:11
Speaker 1: my step is there in the kitchen and I do
1:56:14
Speaker 1: three minutes of gluten exercises. So it's in built in
1:56:17
Speaker 1: to my you know, I keep the stepper in the kitchen, right, Sure,
1:56:22
Speaker 1: my wife's not a huge fan that it lives in
1:56:23
Speaker 1: the kitchen. But the point is, you've got to set
1:56:25
Speaker 1: these things up so that you can make the lifestyle
1:56:28
Speaker 1: change easy. It ain't that hard, man, Honestly, it's not
1:56:30
Speaker 1: that hard, right. The teachable kind of takeaway is.
1:56:35
Speaker 3: Construct your environment to be conducive to making the healthy choice,
1:56:39
Speaker 3: and that's you know, what you do in your home
1:56:41
Speaker 3: is kind of a microcosm version of what Dan Butner
1:56:44
Speaker 3: talks about in the macrocosm. Like he always is saying, look,
1:56:48
Speaker 3: you know, we can browbeat people into trying to exercise
1:56:50
Speaker 3: and eat well, but ultimately you're not going to really
1:56:54
Speaker 3: solve the problem on like a civic level, on a
1:56:57
Speaker 3: social level until you create infrastructure that are conducive to that.
1:57:01
Speaker 1: You have bike paths, and you make sure that.
1:57:04
Speaker 3: There are no you know, terrible foods in the schools
1:57:07
Speaker 3: like all this stuff, so that everything is sort of
1:57:09
Speaker 3: out of reach. It's inconvenient to make the unhealthy choice,
1:57:12
Speaker 3: and everything is set up to be conducive to driving
1:57:16
Speaker 3: you towards making that healthy choice. And you can do
1:57:18
Speaker 3: that in your home and to the extent that you
1:57:21
Speaker 3: can control your environment at work or at play, whatever,
1:57:24
Speaker 3: you know, you have the ability to control that's going
1:57:27
Speaker 3: to ultimately pay big dividends long term.
1:57:30
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's the key, right, But we look at these
1:57:34
Speaker 1: blue zones and I don't feel you know, Dan would
1:57:38
Speaker 1: clearly knows better. You spend a lot of time out that.
1:57:40
Speaker 3: But I don't feel that these gods are necessarily trying
1:57:46
Speaker 3: to be trying to do anything. Their environment is just yeah,
1:57:48
Speaker 3: their environment is just conducive to them living long because
1:57:51
Speaker 3: they have to be moving and they're they're just living
1:57:54
Speaker 3: proximate to their family members and they're part of a
1:57:56
Speaker 3: faith community. Like it's all just set up to promote
1:57:59
Speaker 3: that without them having to.
1:58:01
Speaker 1: Give it a second part. They don't need to go
1:58:02
Speaker 1: to the gym. They're not going to the gym exactly.
1:58:04
Speaker 1: They just to get around to get their food to
1:58:07
Speaker 1: go and to do whatever they need to do. They
1:58:09
Speaker 1: need to walk that they're doing this stuff. And that's
1:58:11
Speaker 1: why I think overall there are two pieces here. One
1:58:14
Speaker 1: is the education piece, right, Okay, the education piece is
1:58:19
Speaker 1: you know, books like yours, books like mine, so many
1:58:21
Speaker 1: great books out there to try and help people understand
1:58:25
Speaker 1: what they might be able to do. But that's only
1:58:27
Speaker 1: one part of the piece, right, That one part of
1:58:29
Speaker 1: the puzzle. Of the other part is the environment. Right.
1:58:32
Speaker 1: Ultimately that the only time we're going to get the
1:58:34
Speaker 1: real public health gains that are going to transform your country,
1:58:38
Speaker 1: going to transform my country, are when there is infrastructure
1:58:41
Speaker 1: set up so that people find it easy to make
1:58:45
Speaker 1: those choices that you know, I posted a photo of
1:58:49
Speaker 1: this recently on my Instagram. You know, I was in
1:58:50
Speaker 1: London on the underground and I was in a station
1:58:54
Speaker 1: and there was I think two sorts of escalators and
1:58:58
Speaker 1: then in the middle there was a set of stairs.
1:59:01
Speaker 1: Nobody on the stairs, everyone on the escalators. And can
1:59:04
Speaker 1: I try and always take the stairs where I can
1:59:08
Speaker 1: stake the stairs? Yeah? And again I'm not again, I'm
1:59:09
Speaker 1: not trying to sort of set on my high hole.
1:59:12
Speaker 1: How dare you?
1:59:13
Speaker 3: You know? I really not, I get it, right, I
1:59:15
Speaker 3: think you're so much better. Yeah, I really don't. I
1:59:17
Speaker 3: genuinely don't matter. Honestly, it's not my it's not my
1:59:20
Speaker 3: thing that and I but you see it when people
1:59:22
Speaker 3: come off.
1:59:22
Speaker 1: You know, I flew in to LA a couple of
1:59:26
Speaker 1: days ago, and you get off, you go through customs
1:59:28
Speaker 1: and everything, and then there's those stairs to the luggage
1:59:31
Speaker 1: claim hall and there's an escalator. Nobody's on the stairs.
1:59:34
Speaker 1: We've just been I just did that last week. I
1:59:36
Speaker 1: know exactly what you're talking about. We've been sitting up butts.
1:59:38
Speaker 1: I was the only one on the stairs. Yeah, we've
1:59:40
Speaker 1: set on our butts for twelve hours. And it's easy
1:59:44
Speaker 1: because we're tired from the flight. It's easy to sign
1:59:45
Speaker 1: on the escalator, right, And I get it. And again
1:59:47
Speaker 1: I'm not criticizing people for doing that, but this is
1:59:49
Speaker 1: the point about the environments. Even if there was a
1:59:52
Speaker 1: sign at LAX right, and we know there's good studies
1:59:55
Speaker 1: at show in workplaces, if you put a sign on
1:59:59
Speaker 1: the left, if you put a sign there that, have
2:00:02
Speaker 1: you thought about taking the stairs? Yeah? There's a UK paper.
2:00:05
Speaker 1: I'll send you the link. It's really it's incredible. It
2:00:07
Speaker 1: makes a difference. You just have people thinking it makes
2:00:10
Speaker 1: a difference, right I gave. I gave so my UK
2:00:16
Speaker 1: publisher of Penguin. Right, so a few months ago I
2:00:18
Speaker 1: gave them a well being sort, the whole of Penguin
2:00:20
Speaker 1: in London. I went to talk to them about the
2:00:24
Speaker 1: four pillars basically, and they their offices are on the
2:00:28
Speaker 1: eighth floor for buildings. Every time I've gone there, I
2:00:30
Speaker 1: get escorted up there. Everyone takes you to the lift.
2:00:33
Speaker 1: And at the end I made them a challenge. I said, guys, look, obviously,
2:00:39
Speaker 1: you guys personalize this to your own lives, but there's
2:00:41
Speaker 1: an opportunity here. You all work on the eighth floor.
2:00:44
Speaker 1: You've all been at this talk. It's much easier to
2:00:48
Speaker 1: make change in groups and communities together. What if those
2:00:53
Speaker 1: of you who were able to you know, what if
2:00:55
Speaker 1: from tomorrow morning, not next week, not next January. What
2:00:58
Speaker 1: if from tomorrow morning you all try to help each
2:01:00
Speaker 1: other take the stairs each day? You know, how would
2:01:03
Speaker 1: that be? And there was a you know, there was
2:01:06
Speaker 1: a mixed reaction a little bit, but people are like, Okay,
2:01:08
Speaker 1: you know, that sounds pretty reasonable. I tried this right
2:01:11
Speaker 1: the next day. All of them took it. All of
2:01:14
Speaker 1: them took it. Okay, one hundred percent of people who attended.
2:01:18
Speaker 1: Four months later, eighty five percent of them were taking
2:01:22
Speaker 1: it four times a week.
2:01:24
Speaker 3: That's pretty good. I would have thought the attrition would
2:01:26
Speaker 3: have higher. Really no at the drop off yeah meaning yeah, no.
2:01:31
Speaker 1: Again, I was surprised. But that goes. That plays. That
2:01:34
Speaker 1: really teaches us how how much of a role community plays.
2:01:37
Speaker 1: Because if it's left up to an individual that, Hey,
2:01:40
Speaker 1: you go out for lunch and then you have to
2:01:41
Speaker 1: come back and you say, let's take the lift, what
2:01:43
Speaker 1: if your colleague says, yeah, I know, but why don't
2:01:46
Speaker 1: we just take the stairs? Right? When you do it
2:01:48
Speaker 1: in a group together, you start to make those changes.
2:01:51
Speaker 1: And I've got emails from so many people in pengments selling, hey,
2:01:54
Speaker 1: I didn't realize the impacts it had. I've I feel
2:01:56
Speaker 1: better about myself, I'm more productive in the afternoon, my
2:01:59
Speaker 1: relationship with my life is better since I started doing that.
2:02:02
Speaker 1: I'm sleeping better. And I'm not kidding you. This is
2:02:04
Speaker 1: not me exaggerating how powerful these changes are. It's these
2:02:09
Speaker 1: little changes bit by bit, these small changes become our
2:02:12
Speaker 1: new habits. These new habits become our health. You've got
2:02:16
Speaker 1: to start somewhere, and it doesn't matter. You know, these
2:02:18
Speaker 1: guys won't change in their diets. Right. All these guys did,
2:02:22
Speaker 1: right was take the stairs together four times a week.
2:02:26
Speaker 1: It's eight blocks of stairs, yeah, right. And people are
2:02:29
Speaker 1: emailing saying all these kind of great benefits and what
2:02:32
Speaker 1: that does? That then makes them feel better? Then they
2:02:35
Speaker 1: want to make a diet you change or then they think,
2:02:37
Speaker 1: you know, I wonder what else I could do. Maybe
2:02:39
Speaker 1: this fifteen minutes and meantime isn't all wud Maybe I
2:02:41
Speaker 1: can actually do this. And that's why I'm passionate. Say,
2:02:46
Speaker 1: one on one with someone, I will try and find
2:02:49
Speaker 1: a spot that I can really connect with them where
2:02:51
Speaker 1: I think, okay, you know, and find something that they
2:02:54
Speaker 1: can agree with, you know, agree to it with me.
2:02:57
Speaker 1: The difficult I had with write in a book is
2:03:00
Speaker 1: I really believe in a personalized approach, So how the
2:03:03
Speaker 1: hell do I write a book for the general population
2:03:07
Speaker 1: that personalizes it? And the way I'm trying to do
2:03:08
Speaker 1: it's by give people options. Give people so many options,
2:03:12
Speaker 1: real life options, right, Not that I fabricate it, but
2:03:17
Speaker 1: that I have seen over nearly twenty years that patients
2:03:20
Speaker 1: have reported back telling me this works in my life, right,
2:03:24
Speaker 1: not what the research paper says. Yeah, that's all in there, right.
2:03:27
Speaker 1: People want to read the research. I can give them that.
2:03:30
Speaker 1: But what I think I'm most proud of is that
2:03:33
Speaker 1: this book is making people want to make lifestyle change
2:03:36
Speaker 1: because they think, yeah, I can do that. Wow, I
2:03:40
Speaker 1: relate to that person he's just told me about Man,
2:03:42
Speaker 1: I'm going to start there. And it's been out for
2:03:44
Speaker 1: a few months in the UK, and it's just it's
2:03:47
Speaker 1: really transforming the way people are thinking about health. You know,
2:03:51
Speaker 1: the four pillar framework, it's almost quite goes. So I
2:03:54
Speaker 1: was saying, it's in common parlance yet, but a lot
2:03:56
Speaker 1: of people are talking about it. A lot of doctors,
2:03:58
Speaker 1: a lot of healthcare prevents, a lot in nutrition professionals
2:04:01
Speaker 1: are raising the concepts in their little ten minute consultation
2:04:05
Speaker 1: and then giving them the book. I had a psychiatrist
2:04:07
Speaker 1: contact me last week, a psychiatrist saying, can you talk
2:04:11
Speaker 1: to your publishers. I've actually bought thirty copies of your
2:04:13
Speaker 1: book and I've given them to thirty of my patients.
2:04:15
Speaker 1: But is there anyway we can get a discounted way, right,
2:04:17
Speaker 1: because this is not just about Tip two diabetes and obesiti.
2:04:22
Speaker 1: This is about mental health problems. This is about gut symptoms.
2:04:24
Speaker 1: This is about migraines, insomnia, depression, you know, it's about
2:04:29
Speaker 1: all these things. These aren't the chronic diseases. This is
2:04:32
Speaker 1: what I'm seeing day in day out as a dotter,
2:04:36
Speaker 1: and this is what I'm seeing that frankly, a one
2:04:38
Speaker 1: pill solution. It ain't working for the book of these people.
2:04:42
Speaker 1: They ain't working. And sorry to go on, I've just
2:04:45
Speaker 1: I know this works. I've seen this work, and I
2:04:48
Speaker 1: just want people to give it a shot, give it
2:04:49
Speaker 1: a chance. The beauty of it is the accessibility and
2:04:55
Speaker 1: the fact that the ask is so digestible.
2:04:58
Speaker 3: It's like, what is the what is the one thing
2:05:00
Speaker 3: that you can change? What's the tweak that doesn't take
2:05:03
Speaker 3: up any time and doesn't cost any money that can
2:05:06
Speaker 3: ignite you and get you engaged in your life in
2:05:09
Speaker 3: a different way and allowing that person to explore that,
2:05:13
Speaker 3: take ownership of it and go on their journey.
2:05:16
Speaker 1: Yeah.
2:05:17
Speaker 3: So the call really the call to action and we
2:05:19
Speaker 3: gotta we gotta land this plane. The called action to
2:05:21
Speaker 3: everybody listening is you know.
2:05:23
Speaker 1: What does that change for you? What is that?
2:05:26
Speaker 3: What is that one small thing that you can agree
2:05:29
Speaker 3: to that can begin to catalyze that shift.
2:05:33
Speaker 1: Yeah. Absolutely, it really is about that one thing that's
2:05:36
Speaker 1: the start, you know. I mean I think, I rich,
2:05:39
Speaker 1: what would be the one thing be for you? Hah?
2:05:41
Speaker 1: I think for me, I mean there's a whole.
2:05:45
Speaker 3: There's a litany of areas where I could use some improvement.
2:05:47
Speaker 1: But I think you know, I have challenges around.
2:05:51
Speaker 3: Eating food late at night that I know if it
2:05:54
Speaker 3: negatively impacts my sleep. I have issues about turning the
2:05:59
Speaker 3: devices off, uh, you know within a given time frame
2:06:02
Speaker 3: before going to bed. Those are two big ones. And
2:06:06
Speaker 3: I have a tendency to push myself too hard in
2:06:10
Speaker 3: work and in play that leaves me deplete it and
2:06:14
Speaker 3: so I don't carve out. I get uncomfortable when it
2:06:18
Speaker 3: comes time to carving out like relaxation and reflection time.
2:06:22
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I'm not dissimilar to that, if I'm honest.
2:06:25
Speaker 1: I mean I've recently, particularly since I've looked at all
2:06:29
Speaker 1: the Cicadian within research from excuse me, from California on
2:06:35
Speaker 1: you know, not easting too late at night, which is
2:06:37
Speaker 1: just incredible. I've really tried to limit that, but I
2:06:39
Speaker 1: struggle to carve out time for myself. I will sometimes,
2:06:42
Speaker 1: you know, particularly when traveling and your time zones are
2:06:44
Speaker 1: all off, you stop, you start looking at devices. But
2:06:47
Speaker 1: I wonder. I mean, I know you're interviewing me, but
2:06:50
Speaker 1: I'm just I can't. It's like this whole What I
2:06:53
Speaker 1: do in a consultation is I say, well, Okay, these
2:06:55
Speaker 1: are things you're struggling with. Perhaps I can also commit
2:06:59
Speaker 1: to something the same time, and then maybe from the
2:07:01
Speaker 1: next seven days we can sort of make a commitments
2:07:03
Speaker 1: to each other. We're going to try and do this
2:07:06
Speaker 1: one thing. And I have done that with patients before.
2:07:08
Speaker 1: So if you want to what do we what do we? Yeah,
2:07:11
Speaker 1: what are we going to commit to here? What about
2:07:14
Speaker 1: devices before bed? I mean, how do you feel about that?
2:07:16
Speaker 1: I can do that? What do you reckon? What's achievable?
2:07:20
Speaker 3: Achievable ninety minutes before bed?
2:07:24
Speaker 1: Do you think ninety minutes? I think I can do that. Yeah. Yeah,
2:07:27
Speaker 1: So it's what I call a no tech ninety away.
2:07:29
Speaker 1: We're going to do it. We're going to do it. Okay,
2:07:30
Speaker 1: I will also commit is it doable for you it is,
2:07:34
Speaker 1: I think so, you know, it's I went through a
2:07:36
Speaker 1: really good patch a couple of months ago. I was
2:07:38
Speaker 1: doing it all the time, and then I've fallen into
2:07:40
Speaker 1: a few bad habits. But this has renewed me. This
2:07:42
Speaker 1: has been like, Okay, I'm going a commitment to rich
2:07:44
Speaker 1: I'm going to do it, so I think I can
2:07:45
Speaker 1: do it as well. All right, we'll check in with
2:07:47
Speaker 1: each other. Yeah, and anyone who's listening and wants to
2:07:49
Speaker 1: let us know if they can do something as well,
2:07:51
Speaker 1: they should let us.
2:07:52
Speaker 3: Know, right right, Yeah, for sure, Like, well, yeah, why
2:07:55
Speaker 3: don't we make it a hashtag or something? Yeah, hashtag
2:07:57
Speaker 3: no tech ninety, no tech ninety. All right, that is there,
2:08:00
Speaker 3: you go, no technology. Let us know when you hear this,
2:08:03
Speaker 3: let us know how many people are doing it. Not
2:08:04
Speaker 3: in the nineteen minutes before bad, do it the next morning. Right, cool,
2:08:08
Speaker 3: final question and then I'll let you go.
2:08:10
Speaker 1: Uh.
2:08:11
Speaker 3: And I asked this of all doctors that come on
2:08:13
Speaker 3: the show. If you woke up in a parallel universe
2:08:16
Speaker 3: and you would become an American citizen then appointed to
2:08:21
Speaker 3: become surgeon general, what.
2:08:25
Speaker 1: Changes do you put in place? You know what I
2:08:29
Speaker 1: should have prepared an answer like this with your podcast
2:08:31
Speaker 1: so many times, and I have just not so.
2:08:35
Speaker 3: I mean on a kind of whether it's regulatory or legislative,
2:08:39
Speaker 3: like what kind of systemic changes would you like to
2:08:41
Speaker 3: see in health or the practice of medicine.
2:08:45
Speaker 1: I would say that culturally, I'd like legislative changes that
2:08:53
Speaker 1: pri size. Hell, so I would like it to be
2:08:56
Speaker 1: almost in the legislation that schools and hospitals don't sell
2:09:01
Speaker 1: junk food, right, don't stock junk food. Let's start there.
2:09:05
Speaker 1: Even that, yeah, would be transformative. And another I guess
2:09:09
Speaker 1: systemic change would be to really push companies and this
2:09:13
Speaker 1: culture particularly. I think you have it in America more
2:09:15
Speaker 1: than any other country. This You know, this work hard, constantly,
2:09:18
Speaker 1: beyond call, always be available on your phone, always be available.
2:09:22
Speaker 1: We need to take a leaf out of like a
2:09:23
Speaker 1: German company. I think Volkswagen did this recently, where their
2:09:25
Speaker 1: employees and physically cannot access their emails in the evenings,
2:09:31
Speaker 1: weekends and on a holiday time. They're just locked out. Right.
2:09:35
Speaker 1: And again it may not be Votswin, I think it is,
2:09:37
Speaker 1: but one of the German companies, and it's very common
2:09:39
Speaker 1: in Europe now for this to be implemented I think
2:09:42
Speaker 1: that would be a huge thing for America if that
2:09:44
Speaker 1: corporate culture will change, where we accept, hey, you're going
2:09:47
Speaker 1: home now. I do not expect my boss does not
2:09:50
Speaker 1: expect me to answer an email till eight thirty tomorrow morning,
2:09:53
Speaker 1: when I'm back at my desk. I think even that,
2:09:56
Speaker 1: because I think many people have got that expectation. They
2:09:59
Speaker 1: don't want to lose their job. They're like, oh, I
2:10:00
Speaker 1: need to repin. It's my boss. Even those small things
2:10:04
Speaker 1: have a huge impacts. Yeah, beautiful man, thank you so much.
2:10:09
Speaker 1: Which the pleasures be mine. I'm just such an incredible
2:10:12
Speaker 1: honor for me to be here, you know, five thousand
2:10:14
Speaker 1: miles away. I am going up and down the country
2:10:17
Speaker 1: on the train to London. I'm often listening to your podcast.
2:10:20
Speaker 1: I'm often learning a lot from what you you gleaned
2:10:22
Speaker 1: from your guess. I just want to thank you for
2:10:24
Speaker 1: the opportunity to come and torture myself.
2:10:26
Speaker 3: Thank you, awesome, Thank you. I appreciate that. That's very
2:10:29
Speaker 3: cool to hear.
2:10:30
Speaker 1: Excited for you, excited for the new book. The book
2:10:33
Speaker 1: is in the UK, it's.
2:10:34
Speaker 3: The Four Pillar Plant's see it here on video, and
2:10:38
Speaker 3: in the US they have changed the title it is
2:10:41
Speaker 3: how to make Disease Disappear. Why they changed americanized Its
2:10:46
Speaker 3: going to be more totally different, cover the whole thing.
2:10:49
Speaker 1: The content is the same, Yeah, the content same.
2:10:52
Speaker 3: So depending upon where you live, those are the titles.
2:10:55
Speaker 3: Pick it up wherever you buy fine books and come
2:10:58
Speaker 3: back and talk to me sometimes.
2:11:00
Speaker 1: I'd love to see. Cool.
2:11:01
Speaker 3: If you want to connect with doctor Chattergy, what's the
2:11:04
Speaker 3: best place to do that?
2:11:05
Speaker 1: We say Facebook or Instagram. It's at doctor Chrategy. It's
2:11:08
Speaker 1: probably the best place to get hold of me and
2:11:10
Speaker 1: we can have a conversation on there or possibly my
2:11:13
Speaker 1: podcast Feel Better Live More Podcasts. People can listen to
2:11:15
Speaker 1: that as well, and you meet that on iTunes and
2:11:17
Speaker 1: all get usual places. Yeah cool.
2:11:20
Speaker 3: Are you doing any public speaking events that are open
2:11:23
Speaker 3: to the general public? While some people yeah no, Well,
2:11:27
Speaker 3: by the time this goes up, is there like a
2:11:29
Speaker 3: schedule on your website or anything like that.
2:11:31
Speaker 1: Yeah, We're putting it on the website on dotor strategy
2:11:33
Speaker 1: dot com. It's also on my Facebook page, Facebook dot com,
2:11:36
Speaker 1: forward Splash dotor Strategy. There's an events section there where
2:11:39
Speaker 1: all my all my events are there. So yeah, I
2:11:41
Speaker 1: love speaking to the public. So if you if you
2:11:43
Speaker 1: want to come along, please do awesome.
2:11:45
Speaker 3: And final thing, are you going to take us out
2:11:48
Speaker 3: with a little guitar? We didn't even talk about the
2:11:51
Speaker 3: fact that you're a touring rock star. Oh man, you
2:11:54
Speaker 3: like took a you took like a sabbatical from your
2:11:56
Speaker 3: medical practice to tour with your band.
2:11:58
Speaker 1: I did, yeah, well, I kind of yes, that was
2:12:02
Speaker 1: what that was A long way back.
2:12:04
Speaker 3: What's the name of your band's.
2:12:06
Speaker 1: Well, I did it under my own name. The sop
2:12:08
Speaker 1: It was on the wrong end. It was when I
2:12:10
Speaker 1: back in the day when I had long hair, you know,
2:12:11
Speaker 1: I did my Did you do you have long hair?
2:12:13
Speaker 2: I did? Yeah?
2:12:13
Speaker 1: But I feel pressure. I don't know what to play.
2:12:15
Speaker 1: Do you want to what I mean, it's up to you.
2:12:20
Speaker 1: Well I'm hearing, uh see what feels right. I'm here
2:12:23
Speaker 1: in the in the hills in California and yeah, let's
2:12:28
Speaker 1: let's this will be a cover. That's good with you?
2:12:30
Speaker 1: Good man? You don't want that?
2:12:43
Speaker 2: And wanting down channel some medal sound and women on
2:12:48
Speaker 2: man mate for the one who want me to No
2:12:52
Speaker 2: one is still men one s she's a friend of mine.
2:12:55
Speaker 1: Tickety is it ticket?
2:12:59
Speaker 5: Hitty easy, don't have the sound in your wheels drive
2:13:06
Speaker 5: you crazy, lighting up?
2:13:10
Speaker 1: You still can.
2:13:12
Speaker 2: Don't even try to understand. To take a place to
2:13:16
Speaker 2: find your stand and tickeny easy. We have a sending
2:13:26
Speaker 2: on a corner on Windstow, Arizona. It's such a fine
2:13:29
Speaker 2: size to see. It's a girl, my lord, and flat
2:13:33
Speaker 2: bed for a sun down.
2:13:35
Speaker 1: I have a look at me.
2:13:37
Speaker 5: Tickety easy, tickennedys.
2:13:43
Speaker 1: It don't have the sound of yourn wheels drive you crazy,
2:13:50
Speaker 1: lighting up, but you still can.
2:13:53
Speaker 2: Don't even try to understand. Just find a place to
2:13:58
Speaker 2: make your stand and takeny say, but you jet lagging
2:14:08
Speaker 2: the voice. I don't know play that in a few games.
2:14:23
Speaker 1: Are right now?
2:14:23
Speaker 3: That was great little eagles for California.
2:14:27
Speaker 1: I say, hey, that's what That's what I felt.
2:14:29
Speaker 3: Awesome man, thank you.
2:14:31
Speaker 1: It's a nice time, buddy, all right. Peace Lance