Kind: captions
Language: en
on today's episode of health theory with
rongan chatterjee we discuss why
low-carb isn't the answer the reason our
life expectancy is decreasing and how
he's making disease disappear
hey everybody welcome to health theory
today's guest is dr ron gun chatterjee
he's a physician with a simple albeit
radical new approach to medicine that he
believes can make disease disappear he
has a hit tv show in the uk called
doctor in the house where he has
demonstrated the powerful effects of his
approach in case after case now what i
want to know is how on earth can you
make such a bold claim that you're
making disease disappear what's the
like basis behind it yeah tell me that's
a great question i think
you know when people first hear that it
sounds a little bit controversial you
know how can you make disease disappear
right
um
but i think it really goes to what is
our definition of disease so i've been a
medical doctor now for you know almost
20 years
i can tell you that the bulk of what i
see i'd say probably 80 percent of what
i see is in some way driven by our
collective modern lifestyles and when we
change our lifestyles in the in the
right way
i have seen so many of these so-called
diseases
disappear that's what i managed to
demonstrate on my bbc show that's been
shown now in 70 countries around the
world
i've shared things like type 2 diabetes
you know vanished within 30 days a
change that has proved sustainable two
or three years later
panic attacks anxiety gone down by 70 80
in just six weeks by making these
changes
chronic back pain for 30 years right
once we started addressing the cause
completely gone okay and and the list
goes on i realized that no matter who
they were no matter what the name of
their disease was
you know what when you make simple
changes
in four key areas to your lifestyle it
is amazing how many of those symptoms
just start to vanish you've said that
this is the first generation being born
now that has a shorter life expectancy
than the generation before them which is
pretty terrifying yeah you know in the
united states and i think in the uk now
as well the current generation that are
being born you know have got a lower
life expectancy
than any previous generation before them
or certainly in in our recent history
and that's pretty worrying actually you
know i've got two young kids at home
myself and and that makes me worry is
what sort of world
are they being born into you know are
are there now issues with health are
going to mean they're going to be less
well-off than the generation before them
and
i think this
this really sort of plays into why
there's such disillusionments at the
moment with the way medicine is
practiced in the 20th century
right even 30 40 years ago the bulk of
what we were seeing
as doctors the bulk of what was coming
in and people what people were
complaining of
were what we call acute problems they
responded very well to the sort of
pharmaceutical model the the one pill
for every ill model so let's say
you have a pneumonia for example okay
this one modern medicine is brilliant so
a pneumonia the overgrowth of a bug in
your lung right you're coming to see the
doctor the doctor says yeah this is the
issue right i'm going to give you a pill
to get rid of that bug
and then within a week within two weeks
you know your problem's gone
right
the model of medicine we have now
responds you know what was set up in
that era
what we're seeing today in the 21st
century
is chronic disease whether it's type 2
diabetes okay which
is like a modern epidemic whether it's
mental health problems right in the uk
right one in four people in any given
year are gonna have a mental health
problem um whether it's alzheimer's
disease which you know as we're living
longer people are now worrying you know
as i get older
you know how am i going to be am i going
to be able to function am i going to be
able to talk to my family or i'm going
to start losing my brain health and my
memory
so
these sort of conditions require a
different approach
and that's why life expectancy is going
down because
we're
we're not really well equipped
to tackle these problems because these
problems don't respond
to a
one pill for every ill model you've got
to change multiple things
right you've got to understand and a lot
of people still don't understand
including a lot of the profession
that these are
conditions there may be a genetic
tendency right you may have a genetic
predisposition
that is not your destiny though it
doesn't mean you're going to get that
condition right we know there's a um
the field is called epigenetics
which is basically this whole idea that
you know you're born with some genes but
your environments how you live your life
that shapes and that determines whether
those genes are switched on if they're
switched off how those genes are
expressed and that's a big shift
actually and that's exciting
because that means that we've in a huge
part we've got control
over what happens to us
i think that's incredibly exciting so we
need to start
teaching our children we need to
teach our doctors we need to educate the
public we need to change the ethos in
schools in institutions to so helping
us foster
a community where health
is absolutely valued at the top because
if it isn't right we're gonna struggle
in our lives so you know i've watched
many of your your your videos tom and um
you know when we talk about trying to
make a difference trying to
live a meaningful and purposeful life
right
health is an ingredient of that
when we feel better we live more
so much of the time
the problems people are telling me about
that the disagreements are having the
family disharmony they're having
often it's because they don't feel good
right they're putting the wrong things
into their body whether it's food
they're not sleeping enough that's
changing their hormones that's making
them moody that's causing them to have
tension with their children with their
partner with their work colleagues and
it all starts to add up
and i've realized that often
my training has taught me to suppress
that downstream symptom
right with a pill
without actually going upstream and
figuring out well what's causing this in
the first place
and the approach i try and take on my tv
show with my patients
with my book it's really about saying
we've over complicated health right
i want to simplify it and we've overly
focused on one area so obviously
everyone talks about food when we talk
about health and food's important
right but it's not the only thing
there are there are other factors that i
would say are equally important
that even if you'd asked me five years
ago i wouldn't have known that you know
five six years ago i thought it was all
about food
right but i've changed my mind now you
might be better off saying your diet is
good enough
maybe the fact that you're on netflix or
youtube till 1am every night and you're
only sleeping five hours a night
actually if you go to bed one hour
earlier you will find you get more bang
for your buck than trying to cut out a
little bit more sugar in your diets yeah
one of the most interesting things about
your approach is this whole notion of
lifestyle over diet as in it's it's more
important than that and i thought whoa
that's pretty radical and five years ago
i would have said the same thing i was
at the height of building quest
nutrition all i thought the answer to
everything was what you were eating a
hundred percent
right yeah and then my wife ends up
having this catastrophic problem with
her microbiome and it came on like that
it went from
no sense of we have a problem to
our life got put on hold for a year
because she just couldn't eat and she
was malnutrition it was it really
actually got scary at one point and i
thought my wife's diet is perfect so
clearly there's something going on here
that i don't fully understand part of it
was my definition of perfect was totally
screwed up and then the other part was
that there are so many other lifestyle
factors talk about this notion of the
threshold effect which i think is so
important for people to understand
yeah it's this idea that we've all got
our personal threshold okay so
the way i explain it if you were
in my clinic with me right now and i
pretty much go through this with every
patient i say look let's say you were
born in perfect health here
right we've got this sort of personal
we've got a threshold right so we can
deal with multiple insults up to a point
so that could be
you know poor diet
the fact that we don't move very much
we might have had a relationship breakup
which is a stress on our body we may
have a job we don't like
right it's all building us up building
up building up getting closer to our
threshold that's when they get sick
right what i mean by that is
often
a patient will come in to see me
and they'll say you know doc i was fine
everything's going fine and then you
know i change my job i don't like my new
boss and then you know they they come
down with an autoimmune illness right
but when you go into their history you
see things were not fine at all
they
you know we're very resilient as humans
we can deal with lots of stresses right
but something is like the straw that
breaks the camel's back and and you can
sort of
you can find the last stressor that tips
you up that pushes you over right but
when you've gone over your threshold
often it's not a case anymore of taking
off that last stressor right often you
have to go back to basics and build from
scratch again it's like you know if we
were juggling balls i have to say you
know in your life when things get busy
you can juggle one ball two balls three
balls four balls and then someone chucks
a fifth one in and what happens
everything falls down and
you know we we always look for what's
that one thing that it is
can i give you a case story right right
this is um
a very typical patient of mine but this
is a
it was it was a guy in his 50s i think
he's 52 year old guy right he's got type
2 diabetes now he's a successful
businessman he's go go go all the time
right he's you know working hard working
weekends he's always on his email right
and
he got diagnosed with type 2 diabetes so
he saw on tv
in the uk he saw my bbc show the first
series and he saw what i did with that
type 2 diabetic patient so he
uh drastically reduced the refined and
processed carbs in his diet okay and
then he'd read some other blogs and he
really got obsessed with low carb
and he
was getting some changes right his
budget was coming down but then it
plateaued and he was getting frustrated
because he kept reading more and more
blogs he kept lowering his carbon sake
and and he just wasn't getting anywhere
so he you know he ends up on my waiting
list he comes in to see me
and i remember going through everything
with him and i thought to myself this is
not a dietary issue anymore right
because he didn't realize like many
people don't that your stress levels
contribute to your blood sugar levels
your sleep quality
contributes to your blood sugar levels
it's not just your diet even their diet
is something we can we get it you know
we eat a bit of sugar that's going to
put the sugar up in our blood we get
that but we don't get right and there's
some really good studies on this that if
you only sleep four to five hours a
night for six nights
okay you are 40 percent less good at
managing your blood sugar
right you become pre-diabetic
after five to six days just from the
legacy just from a lack of sleep
it's incredible when you start
understanding that you think well of
course we need a more balanced holistic
approach to helping these people so this
this chap so what i did with him i said
look
your diet is brill okay arguably it's
too good arguably you're you're almost
you're trying too hard now and it's
stressing you out
i said it's sleep and stress for you so
i i talk about these four pillars right
i talk about food movement sleep and
relaxation that it's not about
perfection
in any one pillar but it's about balance
across all four this approach takes the
pressure off people it's not about the
perfect diet or the perfect gym routine
it's about making sure your dog is good
enough making sure you're moving enough
making sure you're doing something for
your sleep and something for your stress
levels it's it's an approach that works
in the short term but it's also going to
be working six months down the line 12
months down the line so this this chat
with diabetes with type 2 diabetes
we came up with a with a system i said
look ideally you'd have a 90 minute
switch off before bed where you don't
look at work emails you don't go on your
computer because i can't do that 90
minutes no way that's all right what
about 30 minutes so he goes okay so we
started with 30 minutes
okay
we also we agreed in the consultation i
spoke to him about meditation
and again he was a bit skeptical on
meditation i said okay look hear me out
here i tell you what let's get an app
right so we downloaded an app in the
clinic right i said okay this is free
download this all i want you to do is
commit to five minutes a day that's it
okay so all we agreed on was 30 minutes
before bed he'd switch off his computer
and his tech and his work emails and
he'd do five minutes meditation per day
with his app okay that was it
and he starts somebody comes back in
four weeks and he's like okay
i'm already starting to
feel better you know he's sleeping
better he feels less
anxious and stressed the whole time
so that was my way in then we got to
increase it so it was an hour in the
evening okay it was uh he only stuck to
five minutes meditation but we then
introduced something that i call the
three four five breath when you breathe
in for three you hold for four and
breathe out for five
and he did that a few times throughout
the week and bit by bit he started to
introduce these practices he increased
his carbons hey because i said you're
being too aggressive you don't need to
be that aggressive with your carbs okay
six months later the guy's blood sugar
is no longer in the type 2 diabetic
range
okay so he puts his carbs up he improves
his sleep he gets the stress levels down
and his blood sugar starts to come down
and that's why i'm so passionate tom
that when we take this rounded 360
degree approach to health
not only does it yield fantastic results
okay but it's just it feels more
accessible it feels more achievable for
people
um i've got countless more case studies
like that but that that's i think rather
counter-intuitive because
you know five six years ago
i had i was using that what is called a
low carb approach
a lot with my patients um
and
again i'm not a huge fan of the term low
carb i think the beauty the beautiful
thing about it is that it it simplifies
the concept
so
you know so clearly that people get it
um but i think you know we have unfairly
demonized fats for 30 40 years i i worry
we're going to do the same
with another food group in the same way
and i think you know ultimately you look
at these blue zones around the world
these areas around the world where
people are
have got high rates of longevity they're
living to a ripe old age in good health
and you look at what they're doing
and i find it really interesting because
a lot of a lot of them are having high
carb diets like in okinawa
in japan they're having an 80
carbohydrate diet
but
the carbs are not the refined and
processed carbs that we're having here
in the west right there they're local
sweet potatoes right which is very
nourishing you mentioned the gut
microbiome sweet potatoes and those sort
of colorful vegetables are fantastic for
our gut health
absolutely fantastic and i actually
think that's what holds all the diets
around the world which work well
right
i think the commonality is not the carb
content or the fat content the
commonality is that all uh a local
minimally processed food that nourishes
our microbiome that's what i think is
the unifying factor
and the other thing i think when we look
at these blue zones like okinawa and we
try and figure out well why are they
why are they doing so well we're trying
to figure out what is it in their diet
that's the magic but it ain't just the
diet it's the whole lifestyle right
these guys have low stress levels they
sleep well
right they're physically active every
day they prioritize community right
that's why those guys
are healthy right it's not just the one
thing and i think why is it that this
low carb approach seems to have such a
fantastically beneficial role for so
many people in the west well i think
what's going on here in the west we are
physically inactive
we are under slept we're over stressed
we're having highly processed
okay
maybe it's and all those things make you
insulin resistant which is what actually
leads to type 2 diabetes and it's behind
a lot of cases of obesity maybe it's in
this environment in our highly stressed
out under western environment maybe it's
in this environment that that low carb
approach has such a beneficial role
maybe those guys they stay under their
threshold in a different way they don't
need to be as aggressive with their
carbs let's say because they're
you know they're getting all that sleep
they're getting their stress levels down
i think
food is much more than fat versus carbs
but good health is much more than food
right wow that's really strong yeah i've
always been interested as a doctor as to
what works in real life
right i love the research papers i love
the science
but i'm more interested in how do you
convert that into real life action for
that person sitting in front of me
and i can tell you that one of one of my
um
one of the most popular things from this
book is what i call the five minute
kitchen workouts and this
this again came out of a need that i saw
from my patients right so
you know strength training is very much
undervalued in society you know when we
talk about
activity and movement and exercise right
we're always talking about you know
walking more or you know doing more
cardio and there's nothing wrong with
that necessarily
but we neglect strength and once we hit
30 right once we get above the age of 30
we can lose three to five percent of our
muscle mass every decade
it can be even more above the age of 50
and you know your muscle mass
independently predicts your mortality
it's one of the strongest factors to
determine how well you're going to be
when you get older so
i was
seeing all the research on this about
five or six years ago
and i remember patients were coming in
and i say to them okay guys
uh you know strength training is really
important you know i want you to work
out for about 30 40 minutes three times
a week you know maybe get to the gym if
you can
and i thought okay right i told them i
told them about the research
come back six weeks later said hey guys
how are you getting on
hey doc you know it's
been busy you know the gyms bit
expensive it's not on the way back from
work i've not really done it much i
thought okay i'm clearly not giving them
advice
in a way that they feel is practical for
them that they feel they can do in the
context of their life so i've got to do
something better and in that in that
moment in my consultation room that five
minute kitchen workout was born i said
all right i'll tell you what let's
forget about the gym let's forget about
gym memberships forget about buying
equipment
i'm going to show you a workout you can
do right here right now
in your kitchen i've got 20 year old
patients doing it i've got 70 year old
patients doing it you can modify it for
any ability level
and you know i find that by setting the
bar low with people
right and they achieve that they feel
good about themselves they start to do
more it's about
simple approaches that work in real life
yeah the science is all in there but the
science interests me but it doesn't
dictate what i do i've got to convert
that
into what's going to really help my
patients real life people with busy jobs
with busy lives right who want to be
healthy
i want to talk about the show for a
second because being with people living
with them for four to six weeks and
getting in there what are you seeing
that are patterns of um i'll call it bad
behavior but i don't mean that in like
the moral sense i just mean it has an
unintended consequence um that they may
not even realize and then what are some
of the fixes that are these simple
things so like in the movement pillar
you've got that something simple they
can do in the kitchen um but what are
things that you see over and over and
over that people do wrong to have a
really simple fix
so i'll tell you a few things yeah food
was food was a big one there's no
question you know when you open people's
cupboards
you open their drawers and you see
what's in there you see the naughty
drawers and you see the stuff that's in
there
and then you also not only look at
what's in there which is basically all
the highly processed food it's all the
sugary treats that live inside the house
right
but it's then as you're looking there
you see the family dynamic
you see like the wife oh you know that's
not mine that's he always brings that
and i tell him not to bring that in
because no no the husband's like no
that's not the case at all i bring these
in because you like them right you see
that in every house so there's obviously
this
dynamic that um
you know who's responsible for it you
know everyone's putting the blame
without realizing it on other people
it's not me it's you know i'm doing it
for the family so i find that quite
interesting so one of the fixes there
is to control the environment you can
control right if you're trying to make
healthy let's say food choices
right
don't keep that stuff in your house
right so i say to them when you walk
outside your front door these days
you are having to exercise your
willpower every step of the way
you go to a gas station right and you go
to pay you're walking past all the
chocolates or the bags of chips
everything right you're having to exert
your willpower there if you want to buy
coffee in a coffee shop right
you stand in line you water you you're
walking past
the muffins the pastries the croissants
you're constantly having to use the
willpower when you step outside your
house i'm saying don't use it inside
your house right if you're serious about
making those choices and you want a
sugary treat you know what have it
once a week once every two weeks when
you go out and meet your buddies and you
sit in a cafe and have it have it there
don't bring it in your house because
what will happen is that you will come
back tired you'll come back stress one
day from work you'll feel a bit low and
you will start gorging on what's in the
house
you know a few months ago i came i was
going through a very stressful time at
work and all kinds of things were going
on and i'm sitting at home and even my
wife and i thought
you know i fancy something sweet but i
looked in the cupboards there was nuts
there was olives i was like you know i
don't feel like this i want something
sweet but there was nothing there and
you know what 10 minutes later
that craving goes it's what i call an
itchy mouth right i'm not hungry it's
just you know i fancy something to put
in my mouth so you're controlling the
environment you can control i think it's
a very important thing that i taught all
of those families to do
and they really although they were
resistant at first they really saw the
benefit all right two things i want to
dive a little deeper there so
number one do you ever get into the
psychology of like oh i got this for you
no you got it for you what are you
talking about do you ever just like put
a finger on and say hey let's talk about
what's driving that yeah absolutely and
more more these days than i even used to
do because i've realized that
people have got very powerful emotional
attachments as to why they do certain
things i'm going to tell you about the
very first day i ever filmed for this
documentary series right this is the
first family this is i i rock up
into this town called shoesby in the uk
and you know a little bit nervous
because i'm there's a camera crew that's
going to watch me be a doctor and try
and help these guys right first time
i've done that
and
i meet the family lovely family that's
been struggling with the health whole
variety of health issues
and they
i said guys what would you typically eat
right so the father
says to the says to the family hey guys
you know just the usual tonight i said
yeah dad just usual please he says come
on doc come with me so i go
sit in the car
right we drive 15 minutes
out of town to go to a mcdonald's
drive-through on the way there
the guy says to me he says doc you know
what
i know this stuff isn't good for us and
it's really really embarrassing for me
to actually be taking you here but this
is what we do
right and i don't think i quite got it
back then but i reflected on this a lot
since then which is
these guys knew
that these weren't healthy choices he
knew that but it was only when this
third party comes in someone who's got
no emotional
uh attachment to this family he starts
to feel really guilty and he feels
you know he feels he has to apologize to
me for the choices he's making which he
which first of all he doesn't need to
apologize
but i found that really interesting
what's going on there why do people make
choices
that
you know are not serving them
right why do you think they do it for
real
because i think those
choices know i think those choices on
some level
nourish them you know they they if
they're lacking something in some
aspects of their life they're getting
that they're feeding their reward
pathways you know so many people will
eat to make themselves feel better you
know if they had a stressful day at work
or they're feeling a bit low
food is a comfort for them food helps
them feel better about themselves albeit
for a short period of time you know we
all know that feeling if we have a
sugary treats
you know we can feel good
yeah you know we so we know intuitively
that food can change our mood right
there's a lot of science now behind all
of that
but i think it's because on a deep
emotional level maybe when they were a
kid
they were conditioned that
you know you're not feeling so good
you're thinking well oh should we have
some nice sweet treats and this
particular family for example
again you know the
the the dad would say that i
buy this stuff because it makes my wife
happy
she really likes it so in some way he
felt
that he was doing a really nice thing
for his wife you know his wife
really enjoyed that sort of food so he
felt as a loving husband
i'm going to give it to her right you
know so i feel on some level he felt
that was him helping
you know his his part of being a good
husband
um but i'll tell you on that on that
with that particular family that as as
we went to mcdonald's and he ordered the
food and what was incredible for me is
that he ordered
it was about it was 48 pounds it was
that figure is locked into my head so
that's about
65 70 maybe something like that just for
one meal for a family of four but then
we got back to the house with the food
right and check this
we got there and in the kitchen
they've got trays
right so they've got mcdonald's trays in
their kitchen
so
they dish up onto the trays and they
serve them
so this is what happened then
the sun is sitting at the dining table
eating by himself while sort of uh
scrolling his phone at the same time
okay
the
mum i think was watching television
okay and she was eating watching
television
i think the daughter might have been on
her phone at different part of the
living room but i can't remember where
the dad was the point is
is that they're a family of four the
food is already at the same time
yet they weren't eating together okay
they were mindlessly eating whilst also
you know doing their emails sending text
messages doing their social media
updates whatever
and so the intervention i made with them
and i've made it with a lots of those
families is to have one meal a day
with someone else if possible sitting
around the table and i'm telling you tom
that was transformative that whole
social connection piece
when and one of the recommendations i
make in the relaxed pillar is that eat
around a dinner table for at least one
meal a day with someone else if you can
you eat less when you do that right
why because you're not mindlessly eating
we can easily over eat when we're doing
something else there are studies showing
if you eat whilst watching television
you eat much more right we know the
feeling i know when i used to watch a
lot of sports games on on on tv with my
buddies and there'd be like
a bowl of crisps there or tortilla chips
how many of those things can you do
whilst you're whilst you're watching the
game yeah it's super interesting the way
that people deal with food when you were
talking about sitting there with your
friends watching a show
uh or probably watching a sporting event
obviously and just munching and i
thought i a wave of like i want to do
that right now washed over me because it
is so deeply pleasurable and one of the
things that i think is so hard when
you're trying to make these sort of um
global changes to people is we optimize
for short-term pleasure with total
disregard for long-term consequence
and even in the story when you were
telling about the husband oh it makes my
wife happy and i want to bring it home
but at the same time
it's i've seen some of your episodes the
knock-on effect of things like that is
also oh she doesn't feel well she has
fibromyalgia she's in constant pain
she's got a box of like supplements
she's taken to try to mitigate some of
just the lethargy or you know whatever
symptoms she's having and so it's like
yes in the short term you're giving her
a drug-like effect and it does change
her mood but then it starts back in this
whole cycle again
which
without dealing with
that entire relationship to food as
essentially a drug
i don't see how people long term get on
the other side of this so let's go
through the four pillars really fast
give me the
i know there are no universals but i
just want to like get a sense of um what
is a problem that you think is sort of
the biggest most um
readily seen problem in each of the
pillars and then as we go like what's
one quick thing that you want to see
people do by pillar
okay
i'll tell you what man let's start with
food we just were talking about food i
would say for people
who are struggling
with their diets and they're struggling
with what to eat i would say why don't
you focus on when you eat
interesting very powerful research now a
lot of it's coming out of california the
salk institutes
where they're showing that when you eat
is arguably as important or certainly of
critical importance
as well as what you eat so a lot of
research has been done particularly in
animals initially that's showing that if
you restrict your food intake
to about 10 to 12 hours okay okay right
you can eat whatever you want 10 to 12
hours right you get improvements in your
weight improvements in your blood sugar
improvements in your immune system
function just from changing the hours
that you eat because what happens when
you
when you go through a period of time
where you're not eating so once you've
not put food in your body for about 12
hours
we think that a process called autophagy
has kicked in autophagy is like house
cleaning for your body so just as if in
your kitchen if you didn't clean up
every day if the dishes the plates were
starting to stack up by the end of the
week it wouldn't be a very pleasant
kitchen to walk into
when we don't eat for 12 hours that
process autophagy
starts to clean up the mess that's built
up and is that the magic number roughly
12 hours look for different people it'll
be different things but you know 12
hours a day where you don't eat
for most of us autophagy will have
kicked in okay so and the reason i stick
to 12 hours is it's achievable my
approach is not about perfection in any
one area it's about doing a whole array
of different things and that's what it's
the synergy that's where the magic
happens that's where you start to get
all these different pathways in the body
kicking in
sure if you think you're going to get
more benefit from 10 hours or 8 hours
fine go for it but i'd much rather
people go yeah i've got a tick there i'm
going to move on to another one okay so
we have our tick there and that was cool
because that was not what i expected you
to say so that's food done what are we
going to do next okay um i think if we
go with movements i would say do not
neglect strength training
okay
and i would say do a strength training
workout whether it's body weight whether
it's my five-minute kitchen workout or
your own favorite one at least twice a
week but
my approach whether it's the food
recommendation i just made whether it's
the movement recommendation i just made
or the sleep or relaxation ones it's
about simplicity
okay so that's what i'd say and move
okay so that's food movement okay
sleep
okay i think this is arguably the most
undervalued pillar of health okay
because in 2018
if you're not prioritizing sleep you're
probably not getting enough it's just
infinite distractions right we all know
that feeling where we're still set up
late watching more and more content and
again
a lot of great content out there but it
could be having a consequence
so
i can tell you that the majority of
people
who are having sleep problems
are doing something in their everyday
lifestyle that they do not realize is
impacting their ability to sleep at
night
okay
so my top two tips though would be a no
tech90 try and have 90 minutes before
bed with no tech
right but the counter-intuitive one is
get outside in the morning
right a lot of people don't realize that
these daily rhythms
are set by light
right you in order to sleep at night
okay you need a differential between
your maximum light exposure
and your minimum light exposure so a
dark room right has something called
zero lux and it looks as a unit of light
if you go outside on a sunny day
for about 20 minutes you get about 30
000 lux
brilliant so that's a really big
differential if you go outside on a
cloudy day
you're getting about 10 000 15 000 looks
right
if you go
into a brightly lit office a modern
brightly lit office you're getting about
500 maybe 1 000 lux maximum
right so p everyone's thinking about
what they do before they go to bed in
the evening but a life-changing tip and
i've this has transformed the lives of
so many my patients says get outside in
the morning for half an hour
even that will help you sleep in the
evening okay what if i live somewhere
super cold and that sounds like
pain
is sitting next to a window gonna work
no you've got to get outside okay okay
and i go through there there's so many
ways you can do this you know in the uk
in january it's not that easy to to want
to go outside it's dark it's often dark
till 8 a.m it gets dark again at 3 30
p.m i will sometimes put my fleece on
right and i'll sit outside and have my
coffee in the morning outside just so i
get that light exposure because it's
that fundamental to how we are as human
beings we need natural light
okay and last but not least relax
okay relax again there's a ton of
suggestions but i think the one i'm
gonna choose
is 15 minutes of me time every day okay
something for you and you alone
something that does not involve
your smartphone
okay
and you're not allowed to feel guilty
about it
it could be anything it's important it
can be literally sitting in a cafe
and enjoying your cup of coffee but not
rushing and taking it and trying to do a
million things just sit there and people
watch or just sit and read a book right
something we have lost
stillness from our modern lives and we
need to get it back
that's incredible all right before i ask
my last question where can these guys
find more about you online where can
they get the book
yeah so i'm pretty active on facebook
and instagram and it's at dr chatterjee
the book is available
in all you know usual bookstores it's
how to make disease disappear i've also
got a podcast called feel better live
more which is uh
you know a great way to sort of find out
a bit more about me awesome and then my
last question if people were going to
only change one thing that would have
the biggest impact on their life their
health what change would you have them
make
go to bed one hour earlier each night
wow nice and simple
awesome
thank you so much for being on the show
man this is absolutely incredible guys
his approach i i can't get behind it any
harder any more aggressively it is
absolutely fantastic as you guys know in
the journey that lisa and i have been
going on of trying to get her microbiome
back in order
learning about functional medicine
hearing him call it root cause medicine
which which i think is so much more
powerful in terms of understanding what
it's really about as you watch his tv
show which is great by the way you guys
are going to want to watch that it's a
great way to be entertained at the same
time that you're deeply educated into
some of the mistakes that we all make i
think people see yourselves reflected in
these people a lot more than you may
think that's amazing the book is
incredible and it really does as he said
keep it simple down to those four
pillars he gives them equal weight they
are literally given equal page count in
the book so that you understand that
health is better than just diet i
thought that was so good diet alone is
not the sum total of health i think
that's incredibly important he didn't
get a chance to talk about
hit high intensity interval training he
goes into all of this stuff but in a way
that makes it very accessible this is
very much a man who understands you have
to enjoy your life that it's really
about finding something that works for
you and something that you're going to
stick with for the long haul and the
results that he's gotten with his
patients are
astonishing so dive in try it for
yourself i think he will be blown away i
think this guy is really going to become
the face of a really big movement
because of the way that he puts it
together and the way that he's always
looking for root causes
and do yourself a favor we i
intentionally didn't go into it here
because he's talked about it so
profoundly elsewhere just look up why he
started all of this and what happened
with his son and how he addressed it and
how it changed his life i think you guys
would be impacted by that all right if
you haven't already be sure to subscribe
and until next time my friends be
legendary take care
thank you guys so much for watching and
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