The SURPRISING SCIENCE On How The Body HEALS ITSELF With Food! | Rupy Aujla

food is not a pill it's not a symptom killer it's a way in which you can build a more resilient body and mind you were having scary heart problems you change your diet and your lifestyle and you no longer have heart problems [Music] we're both really passionate about the healing power of food and what it can do for a whole variety of different conditions but i think what happened to you in your early 20s really shows just how powerful food can be so what if you could take us through what happened how old were you you know what were the health problems that you were struggling with yeah and how did you sort of go ahead and deal with them i started having palpitations and i remember vividly the first time i had it i was sat at the nurse's station casually writing in my notes and i could feel nauseous and my heart beating through my through my shirt i could almost see it like jittering on my chest and i turned to my restaurant i was like look i feel my heart's going a little bit faster would you mind feeling my pulse and literally within five minutes bleep taken off me hooked up to a cardiac monitor and the the ecg showed bond or atrial fibrillation so it was an af which is an irregular heart rhythm where your heart beats irregularly and in my case very very fast like 200 beats per minute and that was my first experience of being a patient myself up to that point i think if i'm being honest with myself i had that sort of a steer authority like you know i'm a junior doctor i've got the stethoscope i'm charging up and down the wards speaking to patients you know really leaning into that idea of like a doctor yeah that sort of that identity that was and that was quickly stripped away from me quit in in an instant i was in a patient hospital gown i was hooked up to a cardiac monitor i was being this is a memory that i have being wheeled down the corridor everyone else minding their own business but for me that was so embarrassing that was so embarrassing seeing all these people walk past me and me being in hospital gown when moments before i was in the corridor probably attending to patients yeah that i've been seeing do you know what i mean and 24 at the time yeah i was 24 24. unusual very rare and in good health until then would you say you would say that generally good health so as in no kind of diagnosis or pre-existing condition that anyone knew about exactly yeah so nothing in my family to suggest that i would have any cardiac problems i wasn't overweight i didn't have any blood work issues i'd never you know had any i wasn't even drinking caffeine at the time there was nothing in my personal medical history that would have predisposed me to having this issue and that was that was the start of my journey as a patient luckily i didn't need a cardioversion i i left uh the hospital the next day going back to work a few days later actually with some medications an anti-arrhythmic pill in the pocket we call it flacconide and were you scared i was definitely scared the the moment uh my parents came to see me actually when i was in the cardiac assessment unit and uh my mum was putting on a brave face but when she saw the coded monitor and she and she saw the wise and all the rest of it i could see that she was a bit freaked out and and that honestly made me a bit scared as well even though i was a doctor i knew what was going on but that was scary and and what was scary was the lack of control because this wasn't a one-off episode as i came to find out i thought it might be a one-off you know maybe i didn't have enough water that day maybe i was a bit stressed maybe i hadn't slept properly there's a whole bunch of reasons as to why someone might flip into atrial fibrillation as a one-off but then it would happen again and again two to three times a week lasting anywhere between 12 and 36 hours 200 beats per minute you know it was a chronic issue that was seemingly getting worse and and the first time i happened that happens you're in the hospital did some of the time it happen when you're trying to relax at home or you're out with your friends you know and what are you experiencing at that time you know yes you can feel your heart beating but is it hard to take a breath i mean just paint a picture of what that what that's like yeah absolutely i would love to have said that it was a triggering event um you know whether it was stressor at home or hospital but honestly i could be going to play tennis and just about getting my racket out the bag and then i'd flip into af that was incredibly frustrating sometimes i'd be having dinner and i would just flip into af there was no seeming pattern of why i was having these issues and when i was having that it was nausea it was a bit of sweatiness it was an uncomfortable feeling that i'm about to faint um it almost felt like a bit of a panic attack and there's probably some stresses involved in that as well that lead you to that sort of impending doom but this was a a real physical symptom i caught multiple times on ecg's because there was a suggestion from a different number of different cardiologists that i saw at the time i saw a whole bunch about whether what type of uh arrhythmia this was was it a reentry pathway was it bond or atrial fibrillation was it flutter you know but we we found that after doing some electrophysiology studies which is where you put a guard right into the heart and you look at the electrical impulses and seeing where they're coming from that this was definitely atrial fibrillation but it was it was almost the um it was not knowing when it was going to happen as well that was really frustrating that that like a control i mean you know whether it's with your case or if i think about just any number of patients when when there is that lack of that that there's no sense of control over when this may or may not happen it's very disempowering even the idea and we'll get to this later this idea i've always felt strongly that i have to be able to empower a patient in front of me in some way that they feel they've got some degree of agency over what happens to them because without that yeah it's really challenging so you get this in your early 20s you know the i guess prime of your life you just qualified you want to go out and actually learn the skills and you know make your way in the world and something holds you back you have atrial fibrillation you have this irregular heartbeat so you've seen the cardiologists what happens where you know you obviously had some pills that you could take if you have a go in search of revelation you can take the pill to help you but you know what happened because there's a very powerful story here in terms of how you empowered yourself made some changes i think advice by your mum tell us a little bit about what happened what the conventional medical profession advised that you do yeah and what you ended up doing yeah and you know i think it tells a huge story as to where you are today absolutely yeah and i think it's important to say from the outset either either path would have been perfectly acceptable yeah you know i've had some some close friends of mine actually later on in their life experienced similar things to me and they've gone down the conventional medical path and some with success some some not so but at the time i was offered uh something called an ablation which is where you burn an area it sounds a bit awful but you you isolate an area around the pulmonary vein where you have these misfiring cells that cause atrial fibrillation this irregular pattern of beating and as a 24 year old no pre-existing issues with no weight problems nothing i was a really good candidate for this and this was being sold to me by a number of different senior colleagues you know really esteemed people some of the best cardiologists in the country if not globally and on the other hand i had my mum with no pre-existing medical qualifications you know very smart woman analytical runs her own business you know investment bankers done a whole bunch of things she was like you really need to look at your dying lifestyle before you allow someone to burn a hole in your heart which is exactly what she described what the procedure is it's not as gory as that as it is as she described it and honestly to appease her i was i was like okay fine i'll i'll take six months i'll delay this procedure for six months i got the blessing of my cardiologist and said look you're going to need this procedure at some point take the medications in the meantime if you want to do some weird wonderful stuff with your diet fine but you're going to need to come back at some point and so i had nowhere to start really i mean my mum would suggest a few recipes and that kind of stuff and luckily i had the ability to cook my mum actually taught me how to cook before i went to med school she taught me a couple of recipes one of them was a thai lemon grass curry so i i got this a new identity when i was at university that oh this guy can cook he can make this like wonderful curry and so to keep up this pretense i would always learn new recipes and i'll be that experimental person you know in my in my house share and i loved it i absolutely loved getting into cooking and stuff so i applied that knowledge of flavor building to healthier ingredients and it was a very simple thing at the start you know i would have cereal in the morning i'd have a sandwich at lunch and i would have pasta in the evenings that was like my normal quote-unquote diet if you analyze that you know with a critical eye there's a lot of refined sugars there's lots of inflammatory fats in there what i was having was most likely going to be on the go so i probably was impacting my digestive system you compound that with all the other insults that i was likely having on my microbiota and my sleep my stress levels all these different things may have contributed to atrial fibrillation it's still quite arguable but to start off i started really simply outwent cereals in the morning in came oats and nuts and season leftovers from the night before very very simple changes and that catapulted into me bringing in tupperware and i got labeled tupperware boy by my consultant so you'd cook foods yeah whole food and bring it in absolutely yeah things like what do you remember yeah dark green leafy vegetables bitter miso some pumpkin seeds wasn't really recipes it was like non-recipe recipes it was just whatever i thought looked healthy and whenever i did a little bit of research i was like oh yeah this is meant to be better for me you know we didn't have nutrition training back then so just from what you had picked up from society or your mum or i don't know magazines yeah yeah yeah yes essentially yeah yeah oh i think this is healthy yeah healthier let me focus more on on these sorts of foods absolutely yeah i didn't have a grounding in nutritional medicine at that point in time to really give me the blueprint or the guiding principles behind what i should be eating it was sort of a bit of intuition how do i feel after i eat this yeah you know do i feel sluggish like i would having that pasta bake at the hospital or should i add a little bit of greenery in there would i you know look at some recipes and try and add like a side to it yeah absolutely i would do sides of wood of whatever was seasonal some root vegetables uh again like nuts since these quality fats always kept on coming up for me because i added crunch and texture and taste so it's really interesting you your mum says before you burn a hole in your heart why don't you think about changing your diet and lifestyle which actually it's a very reasonable thing to say yeah and actually you can think about well as doctors as a profession why do we not say things like that more often about a whole variety of different things look we've got these medications and treatments before we go down that route what would happen if you did six months off a change to your lifestyle so you start changing your diet and a couple of things that you said one one was oh how do i feel when i have this compared to the pasta bake from the hospital canteen well that's really interesting to me your did you start to notice because you were doing it for your heart right but what were those short term things you started to feel immediately when you changed you know your food intake and when did it dawn on you that actually this might be having an impact on this potentially more serious condition of this heart complaint the atrial fibrillation yeah yeah yeah um definitely becoming more intuitive about how i felt afterwards was something that my mum taught me how to do she was like you know just check in with yourself after you eat and just see you know if that she was very very vague about things that was the thing i was you know coming from a medical background i was quite analytical i wanted to see results i wanted to see the impact of it and and that answers your second question because i was really fastidious at tracking when i had episodes what i'd done before that what how long that episode was for and how frequent that episodes were so i had like a whole notes file and all these different things and after practicing some of these different dietary hacks combined with some lifestyle ones as well actually because my mum actually taught me how to meditate when i was a teenager before my gcse exams so i had the knowledge of meditation that i started to practice at the same time as all these dietary impacts as well and all these dietary changes and so that combined with everything i think is definitely part of the story definitely you know paved the way as to how i feel today and how i feel about lifestyle medicine in general but what what i started to notice was that the time in between different episodes started increasing you know instead of it being two to three times a week it would go once a week between these hearts yeah episodes between these episodes that would last you know 12 hours 36 hours or so and you could draw a correlation you could say wait a minute like this used to be three times a week yeah it's only once a week so it's not gone but it's getting better was that enough to keep you motivated that was a motor small motivating factor but then again i i spoke to one of the cardiologists that i was seeing at the time and i said look i've noticed this pattern and i didn't have the i didn't actually have the confidence to tell that person about what i was making what changes i was making myself actually yeah and i remember saying to us i'm noticing a pattern that it's it's not as frequent and they kind of brushed it off you know they're like you know you can go through a period of quinessence i think they they called at a time or uh because of course food and lifestyle have nothing to do exactly yeah yeah and and to be fair to them i hadn't told them about the changes i was making but it was you know it wasn't like oh interesting let's let's monitor you for a little bit longer or maybe the medications are kicking you know maybe it's you know because of some of the other were you taking medication during this time as well or was that was that um it was an as and when medication that when you flip into atrial fibrillation you take something or you're taking something to prevent it coming on so initially i was on a beta blocker persistently i came off that very quickly it was within four weeks that i did not like the side effects a lot of people can experience depressive like symptoms uh they can have libido issues it can impact your sleep yeah there's a whole bunch of reasons as to why people come off beta blockers even if it it was a cardio selective beta blocker that i was on and so i was left with flecha knight so like you said an anti-arrhythmic that it's actually not very nice to take you actually get a real sort of nauseous feeling for a number of hours after you take it so it wasn't a perfect solution but it was something that that kept me from the the impact of atrial fibrillation i should probably point out the reason why atrial fibrillation is problematic it's because when your blood uh is pumping in an irregular way your blood becomes sticky all those different particles are pushing and and jump uh bumping into each other which makes that blood sticky which makes you more at risk of clots which is why atrial fibrillation is associated with things like strokes and and even ischemic events in different parts of the body exactly yeah um and so that that was certainly something that crossed my mind at the time but i persisted with it and that little motivation around diet and lifestyle was like okay maybe i should just carry on maybe i should compound this with yoga and flow and all these things that my mum was talking to me in the background you know what it's like with mums when they say you should do something you're like nah i don't know you kind of brush it off but she was very tactical about the way she would approach these things with me she was like oh i heard this thing about yoga it's really interesting isn't it yeah instead of you should do this you should try and practice this you should you know instead of giving me rules around it it was almost like a subtle suggestive hint about something that could improve how i was feeling it's really interesting i think the approach in mum has taken i think we can all learn quite a lot from that but one was that moment so you you you've gone from three a week you change your diet you go off the beta blocker so you're not actually taking anything unless you go into atrial fibrillation but you're changing your diet doing a bit of yoga doing a bit of meditation you're noticing the frequency come down to one a week then what happens does it at some point i don't know does it at some point stop yeah yeah so i've got i've still got the notes actually with all my ecgs and all the sort of clinic notes and stuff and i there's a moment where i have this realization and i look and i'm like it's been two months and then it goes to three months with nothing with nothing and then it just carries on i remember having that conversation again and this time i spoke about dying lifestyle and again like i don't want to make it seem as if every cardiologist is dismissive yeah strong lifestyle there are plenty out there especially now that are coming around to this idea of just how powerful it can be but at the time it was just seen as again a period of time where it goes away it will likely come back it will likely stick around and we should still really push ahead with some of the more the interventions that are a little bit more aggressive and so that realization was was huge for me because at this point i'd done a bit more research into i was looking at things like the microbiota inflammation pathways specific types of ingredients you know looking at it with like a more of an analytical mind and it actually changed my practice as well it changed what i wanted to do i was sort of hell-bent on being a surgeon when i started and so that realization the idea of maybe i should do something like general practice where i can have conversations with people about other aspects of of yeah their diet and well-being as my experience of gp was when i was in f2 20 odd years ago so you have your first episode at 24. do you remember when you had your last episode of atrial fibrillation where your heart was piercing this fast no i don't that's so weird i don't have a vivid memory of the last time because i guess it's like a lot of things you you so it's like when you've had bat cake for years and then you don't you don't kind of remember you just it's also i don't have it anymore yeah yeah well my life isn't being held back anymore by that thing yeah and so do you think that was within a year if it's starting yeah it was it was uh just over a year just over a year so about a year or so since quite a scary thing happening at 24. yeah and the condition atrial fibrillation which people wouldn't naturally draw a link between diet and lifestyle i think what's so powerful about that for me is that when we talk about foods and its impacts on our health i think for many years the prevailing narrative in society and within our profession is yeah we see a role with obesity and type 2 diabetes right there's kind of an obvious link there but i don't think that link has been made for many years with other things whether it's how fast we age depression gut problems libido heart electrical heart issues like atrial fibrillation you know what i mean i think that really speaks to this healing power of food and that you change your diet and your lifestyle and you no longer have atrial fibrillation yeah absolutely and i think it's that between how powerful diet can be for a collection of different issues that has plagued our thinking around diet and lifestyle in general like you eloquently demonstrated on your show the impact of dying lifestyle beyond the traditional ways in which we we view it which is cardiovascular disease reducing cholesterol and obesity no one's really gonna argue much with that but when you're applying those same principles which are very simple to mood to chronic pain to cognitive disorders brain fog all these issues you then see the links yeah it's it's all foundational so what i was doing in retrospect was building the resilience for my body to look after itself and that is something that i want to try and instill as in as much people as possible because i think the the the term food as medicine can be sometimes uh misinterpreted as food as the pharmaceutical food as a person the one of the things i wrote about my first book actually food is not a pill it's not a symptom killer it's a way in which you can build a more resilient body and mind such that it can take care of itself and it sounds a bit out there but that's generally what i believe and what i can see from research with all the training in nutritional medicine you've done since then all the studying you've done the three best-selling books the podcast you know the new app which we're going to talk about you've gone deep into the weeds of the science of nutrition and how it can help if you reflect back now what do you think was going on right what was going on that you were having heart problems scary heart problems right at such a young age what do you think changing your diet and lifestyle actually did have you thought about that yeah you got some ideas i thought about it a lot and it's really hard to pinpoint just one thing and i don't think it is one thing and we don't need two exactly that's what thing was it well maybe it's a combination of everything yeah and this is the thing that dogs nutritional medicine in general because we can't envisage a world where we can test multiple factors simultaneously we can only really think about that randomized controlled trial model where you add an intervention whether it be a supplement or a pharmaceutical to someone's regime and then we observe an impact and we control using placebo and we you know take time to make sure we've got the right cohort etc etc in my end of one case it's likely going to be a bunch of different things so we can look at the microbiota for example the population of microbes that live in and around us all over our body largely concentrated in the large intestine foundational to our health inseparable from well-being we know now about what it can do to improve the lining of the guts improving the functioning of our natural immune system how it impacts with our mood how it impacts on inflammation pathways how it balances sugar what i was doing by changing my diet very broadly without going to specifics from a pretty processed diet if i look back on it and actually look at it with more of a critical eye to something that was more whole food and it doesn't need to be like raw food it didn't it wasn't anywhere near as well as i eat today actually it was just better than the normal better than norm exactly that had a dramatic impact as we can see now from research on improving the functioning of those microbes that include bacteria fungi viruses nematodes a whole selection of different microbes that we're learning a lot more about even today and that shift can happen very quickly i know in my case it took quite a while before i i observed quite quite an impressive reversal of my condition but even in some studies as short as a few days you can drastically change the population of your microbes so me consistently eating well and changing it from processed arm process would have definitely had an impact on multiple levels so the gut microbiome is one thing that now with all the knowledge you've got reflecting back it's like well i i had more whole foods less refined processed foods so my gut health improves and as my gut health improves that can help a whole variety of different things in my body any other theories absolutely so by having a lot more greens in my diet just general greens i mean i was having whatever i could at that point in time we know looking at inflammation pathways the impact that greens can have at a cellular level so they they have a what we call a hormetic effect so people see foods that we intake as having a direct anti-inflammatory effect i.e when i have turmeric for example that's going to reduce my inflammation levels actually what's happening is that it is activating our endogenous anti-inflammatory pathways so having a mild aggressor like turmeric actually does it actually aggravates some of ourselves we have a net benefit overall i use the analogy of exercise so when you when you exercise you're actually shearing your muscles you're creating quite a stressful event in in your in your muscles and your physiology puts your blood pressure up increase cortisol levels increase sugar you know if you looked at it at a snapshot it doesn't look like a very healthy thing to be doing but the net effect on that on dementia on mood on cardiovascular disease massive improvements so at a similar level that's kind of what we're doing with food as well so me having a collection of all these phytonutrient rich foods so these these plant chemical rich foods was having that net benefit at an and at an inflammation level in my cells as well so that's definitely another element of it so you've got the microbiota you've got inflammation something else that i think is harder to prove in my case was perhaps having a selection of different foods that were nutrient dense that had more things like magnesium in or selenium or vitamin b12 what does nutrient dense mean to you so nutrient dense to me means less processed such that it contains a lot more of those bioavailable micronutrients so things like vitamins and minerals but also those plant chemicals of which we know there are thousands polyphenols come up quite a bit in things like berries and coffee and other anti-inflammatory uh chemicals that you find in greens like sulforaphane in dothraki carbonyl or the indoles or the glucosinolates that for me is nutrient dense and and when you look at that processing pathway that the um uh the spectrum of process versus unprocessed the more refined your food the less nutrient denser is because we're stripping away bit by bit all those different nutrients it's incredible you were describing there all kinds of benefits that you get from let's say greens the way you were talking it made me think that within these foods is a whole pharmacy of medicinal compounds that are doing different things you know the way you know we let's talk about food as medicine yeah because well before we do what would your mom say if someone said to your mum is food medicine what do you think her answer would be she would be she would be the absolute champion of that statement yeah absolutely without a shadow of a doubt and she and it's because not because it's something that she has developed a belief for it's because it's a reflection of her cultural heritage yeah this is something that we have known for millennia and we've chosen to ignore maybe not in in a negative light but certainly something that we we've we've forgotten about yeah absolutely so your mum would 100 say food is medicine we'll be back to the conversation in just a moment now many of us struggle to find time to eat all of these incredible whole foods that's why i'm a big fan of good quality whole food supplements like this one that's been in my own life for over three years now it contains over 75 whole food source ingredients vitamins minerals pre and probiotics and can help us support our energy focus digestion and our immune system athletic greens are giving my audience a fantastic offer one year's free supply of vitamin d and five free travel packs with your first order you can see all the details at athletic greens dot com forward slash live more or simply click on the link below now back to the conversation but this term food is medicine has become in some circles a bit divisive and i don't really know about this divisive movement uh or or that that i didn't really i didn't really know much about that people were questioning that but many of my followers have brought certain things to my attention say hey look what do you think about this term you know a lot of people saying we shouldn't be using it you've been in the public eye for a number of years now promoting you know with your own story but also with your cookbooks and all your amazing content on social media you're helping people understand just how powerful food can be do you consider it sweet medicine i definitely do and the reason why is because when i think about all the different things that i do as a clinician and what constitutes medicine it would be naive of me to belittle medicine as the prescription of pills and the practice of interventions like surgery or minor ops or even the application of psychotherapies as that's medicine by by us having a conversation or by you having a conversation with someone or someone listening to this it is medicinal in lots of ways absolutely by me showing empathy to someone by me describing how they can improve their sleep that's it this is medicine yeah and in its absolute form in its purest form but to drill down on why i think people have an issue with the term i can understand that i i definitely recognize the controversy around the term food is food as food and medicine can you explain it because to me it's very clear that food is medicine it doesn't mean other things are not medicine yeah it's like there's lots of things as you say exercise sleep is medicine uh love is medicine listening carefully and attentively to your patients is medicine right that's how i view it so what what what do you think yeah so explain what where you think that um there's validity to it potentially not being medicine well i think when people inappropriately try to suggest that food should be a replacement for all the other elements of medicine that we have at our disposal all the pharmaceuticals all the psychotherapy interventions all the other aspects of what we just described as medicine i think that's where it becomes problematic where it becomes food is an exclusive medicine this is what we should be focusing on and nothing else that's just did this i i've not really seen that much so does anybody ever does anyone promote that like i mean i i personally haven't seen that but i've certainly heard heard of that and i there was um there was a really um impactful case that i came across as a junior doctor uh i was working in renal medicine i know you specialize in in renal uh she was on dialysis and she had a form of cancer i forget the exact type now it's going back about eight years or so and she'd completely taken herself off all medications at the advice of a healer who had suggested that all she needed to do was have these selection of foods and so i think those isolated and i have to stress it it's an isolated case where people take the food is medicine to the extreme yeah that's where it becomes problematic but what i i think what we're getting here is there is a sometimes on social media a willing for misinterpretation to try and taint someone on social media right and i think we've both on been on the receiving end of you know comments and that kind of stuff so i think that's where it becomes an issue to further clarify what would i think about in terms of food as medicine is we should look at it like a spectrum right yeah the majority of what i think i can do by helping people eat well consistently every day is preventative medicine and this is the the biggest bucket of food as medicine for me is preventive medicine we have a bunch of studies to show that if you improve one's diet increasing whole grains increasing plants etc etc we can prevent a whole suite of different disease there is another minority bucket where it's food as a supportive medicine where it's alongside all the other things and that can be alongside cancer therapies it could be alongside psychotherapy psychiatric therapies it can be as part of recovery after having an elective procedure great wonderful supportive medicine something that we don't utilize a lot in medicine today and then in the in the minority of cases food is literally the soul medicine that we use to lies and there are some cases even like you know refractory treatment refractory childhood epilepsy where we prescribe ketogenic diets that have some fantastic results in the isolated group of of pediatric patients where food has been remarkable absolutely remarkable and so i think when we think when we try to get to the nuance of what we mean by food as medicine and we we display it like that that spectrum like i've described it's quite hard to argue against it is i think it is nuanced um for me you know i spent a lot of time thinking about food medicine is food medicine so to me it is and i've got to say to having used that term with many of my patients for years i found it to be helpful and i i feel i've never had any feedback from my patients saying actually that term is quite confusing for me i don't like it so i'm biased by my own experience with tens of thousands of patients but for me there's like literal cultural and philosophical reasons why i think food is medicine philosophically i think we're living in an era now where you know about 80 to 90 of what we see as doctors is in some way related to our collective modern lifestyles so therefore if we don't give lifestyle and nutrition the same weight as pharmaceutical interventions when i say the same weights if we don't talk about them in that way it's always going to be deemed as inferior you know that the classic case someone comes in to see their daughter with a new diagnosis of type 2 diabetes doctor spends the first nine minutes out of the 10 minutes talking about the blood results and metformin and the fact that you're going to need more medications and you'll end up on insulin and then as you're walking out the door oh and if you can just you know maybe go to the gym and change your diet a little bit that may help well what message does that patient get it's like yeah there's dying lifestyle there but it's really about me taking this medication yeah so i think philosophically given what we're now afflicted with what's bankrupting healthcare systems all over the world i think it's time to elevate the status of foods and lifestyle in terms of what we view as medicine um but but also i think there's a cultural element to this which you touched on with your mum yeah and i i think to some cultures certainly you know we've got indian backgrounds this idea that food is not medicine is just an alien concept i don't think my family would understand that i don't think my grandparents would even understand the question what do you what do you mean you know we were brought up in such a way that you know i've got a slight cold at the moment so what was i literally before you arrived i'm doing what my mum taught me to do when i was little when i had a sore throat which is um you know hot water finely cut ginger pepper turmeric and manuka honey that's literally what i was drinking all morning so that i can uh have this conversation with you do you know what i mean yeah absolutely so i don't know if any of that fits with you or not but that's kind of yeah my take on it why i passionately believe it is but i'll also before before you respond i also want to say look if that term doesn't work for people as well i'm okay with that yeah totally if that doesn't fit your belief system totally cool but absolutely i think it's hard to make the case that food isn't super super powerful absolutely yeah and i think uh i completely agree with that analogy of of looking at food in those different elements cultural philosophy it's very very ingrained in us and it's very easy for us to understand but certainly for someone who doesn't come from that background who hasn't been brought up with that i can understand why it can be a little bit off-putting for whatever reason i i get that but for the reasons that we need to take nutritional medicine a lot more importantly i think it's important just as you said to elevate the conversation around food in all environments clinical academic culturally yeah day to day the food environment and if you just look at the stats i mean like one in five deaths globally diet related increasing the likelihood of mental health disorders by 43 if you're on a westernized diet if you look at the number of cancers that are related to diet and lifestyle it's around anywhere between 25 and 30 depending on where you look at all these different sources from the who all these huge institutions are all recognizing the impact that diet is having it can have conversely the positive impact as well i'm i'm an example of how that can be in in an extreme way but also just generally looking at like you said the issues that are afflicting healthcare systems globally and causing the most amount of costs and damage to people's livelihoods and their ability to live disability free lives it's having a huge huge impact and that's why we need to talk about it a lot more i wanted to talk a little bit more about my my issues at the at the start as to the reasons as to why i might have improved my own condition because i i realized we left the listener thinking about inflammation the microbiota and the micronutrients that i may have been replacing and i think looking at blood work just to tie a knot on this thinking about the blood work that i was offered at the time was pretty standard but not really robust in terms of looking at all the different micronutrients that could have been off whack and there's no real way of showing that now but i know from my own research vitamin e certain types of b vitamins magnesium even omega-3 at low levels can predispose or at least have an association with heart irregularities so had i just through chance improve those through diet it's hard to say i did try some supplements at the same time as well but i think that's an important part of the story you know mate what's interesting is you said that i was just drawn back to my days on cardiology wards or in hostile medicine or even as a medical student and you know we know that potassium and magnesium impact the heart and sometimes we're giving iv infusions you know with magnesium right and it's kind of like well of course you can take magnesium through your vein or as a medication but you can also get it from food right so it's it's just fascinating to me that even now i would say in 2022 with you know loads of people around the world are trying to elevate the conversation about food as medicine you're one of the most prominent voices i'd say in the uk who's doing this which is fantastic um and globally having said that you know i think your message is is going everywhere but even now it's still very much okay as i said taxi diabetes and obesity you know we've been talking about things like the smiles trial and depression and mood for years there's this you know emerging field of nutritional psychiatry um we're understanding you know that there are more conditions but i still don't think a heart beat irregularity i don't think that is common knowledge that actually well what if i'd say that for me the wider question is what's it going to take for a 24 year old who's now gets atrial fibrillation for the first time is scared is worried goes to see their doctor of course some things are going to need treatment quickly depending on the condition i certainly understand that we both respect the field of cardiology but in cases that are non-urgent that potentially can wait how far do you think we've got in terms of people saying hey listen before we to to borrow from your mum before we burn a hole in your heart um i love the way she put that i know just blunt sometimes i mean she was really trying to get me to change my diet so clearly yeah so she's taking a few softly softly approaches hey you don't hear this about yoga but when it came to someone st you know burning something in her in her baby boy's uh heart yeah she she took it rather more more approach so yeah but but i guess you see the point where i'm going with this it's like are we moving on do you think are people having these conversations more is a cardiologist listening to this now and go wait a minute i didn't know that rupee story's really powerful maybe that patient who i've got on my cardioversion list for next week maybe i should just go hey listen should we just should we just pause two or three months let me ask you that let me ask you the question about your diet and lifestyle you know are we making progress yeah uh i would like to say that we are but it's really hard to state that with any degree of certainty because i i i i think we all live in our little bubbles right yeah and so you know some people in my close personal personal network they get it they see what i've done they have seen some impacts on their patients i've inspired them to do a bit more reading perhaps they've read some of the references and and the books that i've written they've done some of their own primary digging and they found you know what having these conversations with their patients has been really pivotal yeah my skeptical side is saying i don't think we're at a point now where we can reasonably expect people who have been in the established medical system for over two sometimes three four decades to suddenly have a realization after listening to this conversation or maybe multiple conversations about this topic before they enact changing themselves because coming from it very honestly i was battling for the establishment against my mom in a lot of ways as well you know i was like mum you have no idea what you're talking about the conversations i had with her which i'm really embarrassed to talk about now but you know i've spoken to this senior doctor i've spoken to this colleague of mine this guy's a registrar he's seen so many people you have no idea what you're talking about you have no evidence you have none of these different studies to back you up what you're saying i need to have this this is my life in the balance right now and i think the reasonable suggestion of someone who is having a non-urgent intervention who has the time to explore other areas that's definitely something i'd want to see in the future but are we there now i don't think so will we get there in the future with the stuff that you're doing with prescribing lifestyle medicine with what coloring medicine is doing in the us and hopefully what we're doing in the uk as well with all the prescribing uh practices including social including exercise including sleep elevating the conversation amongst people that we haven't even had any interaction with let's say i think yeah we'll get there at some point in the future but today i i think unfortunately rangan we're still a bit fringe yeah i don't know if you agree with that what do you think i i'm an optimist right um i i mean are we there yet no definitely not is it better than it was when you were 24 i think so is it better than it was five years ago yeah i think it's getting better is it is it too slow for some people and there'll be many patients listening to this or watching this on youtube right now he will be you know stamping their feet around it's not going fast enough you know i went to see my doctor last week and they said food has got nothing to do with my condition and there's no point changing my diet because it's not you know you you you always hear this i'm sure you get the same dms or the similar ones that i get that's right but i do think it's changing and my evidence i guess for that is the course that mutual friend of ours a and pangea and and myself co-created with my cash this course prescribing license and i think we've trained over maybe 3 000 healthcare professionals around the world now and the feedback very much like in your course has been phenomenal people are saying i think the last study the last survey we did i think 95 percent of people who have done it say it significantly changed the way they practice and it's not just gps who've done this course as consultant cardiologists psychiatrists gastroenterologists we're we've broadened it out now so you know nurses uh pharmacists physios you know so and that's accredited by the world college of gps right so the fact that it's got the stamp of official approval from the establishment that wasn't happening 10 years ago do you know what i mean yeah you know you bringing over culinary medicine to the uk that didn't happen 10 years ago it's hard to change so if you know how to do your job and manage your workload doing it a certain way i don't know it takes something like a personal issue you know you had a personal issue which changed what you what you thought and now hugely influences what you do and you help so many people around the world now with what you do you know i've had personal issues you know namely with my son when he was six months old so i think without that it's really hard because you're fighting against the system and it's easier to practice here's the truth mate it's easier to practice in the current system oh absolutely and not talk about nutrition and lifestyle it's easier to make the diagnosis give the drug you run on time do you know what i mean that's that's the uncomfortable truth i think you've really hit the nail on the head there and it is really uncomfortable because i don't want to i don't want people listening to this to think that we're suggesting that anyone is lazy or they don't want to help but when your back is up against the wall and you're battling through tens of patients in your morning session and then you've got to do your phone calls and your prescriptions it's easier to have cks guidelines clinical knowledge summaries on your computer the algorithms that all the ccgs will have your list of medications and just look at the symptoms look at the blood results bang bang bang you're done eight minutes next patient please we've all been there we've all had to work in that environment and unfortunately that is going to be the biggest barrier before we actually engage in conversations where we can truly look at the the root cause of why people are ill and let me just be clear i still don't know what the root cause of my illness would be i believe that it was food i believe it was stress was it other things was it movement was it sleep was all the other things going on i didn't really know but i know that the solution will always be doing what i did naturally and that's what we need to scale up to as many people as possible there's also this prevailing belief this is something that i've discussed a lot with with other doctors and i love your opinions on this is that we work in a system here in in the uk and in the us as well for people listening to this around the world where we constantly need more staff we need more doctors we need more nurses we need more boots on the ground to tackle the issues that we're seeing i my my belief and my understanding is that it's not a staffing issue it is the way we practice that needs to change and also the way in which we engage with these lifestyle-related illnesses and actually it's about empowering people directly so it's almost like you know using the analogy of going up string upstream yeah it's going upstream to the patient actually going straight to them and getting them to instill those practices not signing them with any blame not us you know doing in a really empathic way but that's how we actually prevent a lot of disease rather than going for the the age-old get more doctors in we need to train up more nurses we need to get more people and hospitals well i agree mate first of all we're never gonna find enough doctors and nurses to deal with all the patients who are sick and struggling it's just not going to happen it's just simple maths in my view and let's let's just say your case because this really speaks to one of the things i want to talk to you about today which is something that's been on my mind a lot over the last few years really is what does it mean to be a doctor in 2022 for you and for me right but for anyone really but let's say for you and for me so going back to your case you didn't have any studies to back up what you were doing you didn't really see a nutritionist and i'm all i'm a huge fan of people who've got expertise in nutrition i think we should absolutely be utilizing them as and when we need to and where people need that expert help right but let's think about what you did it was simple changes right the changes you made anyone can do if they pick up one of your first three books right i've got your second book here eat to be illness which i really really like it's probably my favorite if i can say that i like it whether it's the pink lettering on the front or not but i i just love there's something about it i really like yeah um like you don't need to see a doctor to do that right one of the reasons that i write buttons and i do this podcast is because you know from your own podcast i probably get i don't know hundreds of messages a week of people saying oh that podcast helped me with my depression i don't have anxiety anymore oh your first what helped my mum reverse her type 2 diabetes you think well hold on a minute do we need more doctors and nurses possibly for some things no question but a lot of the stuff that you and i are talking about and have been talking about in public despite certain criticisms over many years because we've got the passion and the desire to help people right so my question for you especially given what you're currently doing perhaps you could tell that story but also start off by saying well what does it mean to you to be a medical doctor in 2022. yeah yeah that's a really powerful question and something that i've been thinking about quite a bit actually i must admit that is my favorite book as well the reason why is because what i invited the reader to do and like you know no one used to buy the book i mean i put all the information out on free podcasts and all the rest of it but the the the chapters are such that i zoom into different topics right i zoom into skin brain eye health even cancer the uncomfortable topic of mental wellbeing and i zoom into how nutritional medicine intersects with that particular specialty and i drill down on some of the studies that we have available to us now looking at what was studied what diets what dietary patterns what ingredients and then i come up with a list of suggestions at the end of each chapter that people should think about through the lens of whatever that particular health goal is around so brain health or eye health or whatever in the final chapter i basically invite the reader to zoom out and when i invite the readers to zoom out and i say look these are all the foods that i suggested and these are all the lifestyle practices i suggested it's all the same because what i'm doing is basically allowing you to see and and read how all nutritional medicine is about is optimizing your physiology such that your body knows how to look after yourself so going looping back to what i was talking about with me earlier this is what we do with nutritional medicine there's no it's not like a food for every symptom it's not a specific thing that you need to change in your in your diet to have this desired outcome it is really about leveling up and improving your physiology such that you can engage in those innate mechanisms that know how to prevent disease in the first place to answer your question about what doctor is in 2022 we've chatted about this i think about a year ago because i was i was really struggling and i think it comes down to identity and what other people perceive me to be if i call myself a doctor so in my mind a year ago a doctor was someone who goes to clinic goes to a e you know engages with patients writes prescriptions have those meaningful conversations instills lifestyle changes and stills nutritional changes all the things that i love doing day in day out but that's changed a lot for me as i've seen the potential for what i can do through other means whether it be books whether it be podcasts whether it be the new app that's going out how can i actually help people better themselves and it goes back to what we were talking about i don't think we actually need more doctors and more staff i think we need more empowerment of patients and is me going to clinic every single day and seeing 40 sometimes 50 patients in a 24 period gonna move the needle as much as i can if i engage more and all these other activities that i've i've been blessed to sort of have and all these different uh pathways i've i got now and i i did a bit of reading and looking into the data around uh the number of staff that we have in the nhs and and comparing it to other healthcare systems so right now we have around 2.8 doctors per capita per thousand in in the uk that's not bad in terms of an average you look at europe as around three in the the best country i think in the world is qatar is around seven seven per thousand so it's a it's a big difference there the difference in health outcomes actually is not that big in fact the uk is number 10 in the world if you look at a certain uh rating system okay you also look at spend per capita we're again pretty high up and and if you track population growth over the last 60 years with the number of doctors and the number of nurses going to profession we're outpacing population growth so we're actually getting more and more doctors per capita as should be the case as we invest in healthcare systems but fundamentally what we're missing is that we're treating a different collection of diseases than we were 60 years ago and i know you know a lot about this it's less of the infective conditions and it's more of those other conditions that come out of quite frankly uh the environment in which we've created for comfort you know we're inside all the time we don't go out as much we don't exercise much we're exposed to a lot of things in our environment in terms of toxins in terms of the foods etc etc everyone knows this kind of stuff and so really to tackle that we need to really change the way we we practice medicine and so me being a doctor in 2022 doesn't necessarily mean i should be on the front line battling day in day out because i think that and and for all i have the utmost respect for anyone doing this day in day out it's a tough tub job but i've actually taken the decision to take a prolonged sabbatical over the next 12 months where i explore this very question and figure out how i can actually have the biggest impact the most meaningful impact on the most amount of people it's a collection of education teaching inspiration and also digital where i can actually scale some of the teachings that i put into books and actually try and spread that far and wide such that we can actually create a population of proactive empowered people where we don't need to treat them in emergency rooms i mean i love it it's it's clear that you've spent a lot of time thinking about it and and the thing for me but i'd circle this a bit before you came up today i want to talk to you about identity because you know a couple of things in your story that i've heard about before apparently you weren't very confident at school which i think if people see you today giving keynotes and you know making your videos on instagram for many years and sharing stuff that'd be like hold on a minute this guy didn't or maybe doesn't identify as confident i think that was interesting um you mentioned in your story in your 20s how you had this identity of a doctor you know with the i don't know the shirt on on the stethoscope and then before you know it your heart's going at 200's and suddenly you're in a patient gown in a wheelchair feeling embarrassed right which i found you know super interesting when you said that but even this whole idea this i guess this what it means to be a doctor in 2022 is something i've sat with a lot as well because you know something pippa grange said to me when she came on this show a couple of years ago she said we're going to think about psychology and medicine they're very conformist professions i've never forgotten that because you know we want to be accepted by our peers and you know we think a doctor means doing a certain thing but if we just sort of again zoom out i think the original meaning of doctor is educator so i would argue like you given what we are seeing which is symptoms and diseases as a consequence of the way we're collectively living that's not putting blame on people i totally get life is tough and the way society is set up makes it very hard for any one of us to make those decisions that we want to make but the reality is that's what's making us sick and so therefore well education and inspiration and that's the way you make change and again you know i i've been questioning stopping practicing you know um at least temporarily you know i've as we record this rupee i've nearly been in practice for 21 years right that is tens of thousands of patients now over the last year or two most of my focus has been on uh patients who've been chronically sick for years they've been under especially being on gps and they're still struggling i've seen them for an hour and a half and i try and put all the pieces together for them i love that right i i absolutely love doing that but honestly what i do with him is literally what i put in all my books literally what i talk about in the podcast each week there's nothing different by and large 95 percent of it is the same thing absolutely and as much as i love that i also love being a husband i love being around for my kids and seeing them and i've realized you can't do everything yeah you're going to make choices you know the the podcast that went already was with this amazing guy called oliver bergman who wrote a guardian column for years on time management and productivity and like it's such a powerful episode and he you know the big thing i got from talking to him in his book was this idea that everyone says you've got to say no to stuff yeah right that you don't want to do he's like yeah sure you've got to say no stuff you don't want to do you've also got to say no to stuff that you do want to do absolutely and that that was game changing for me oh i've got to say no to something that i do want to do because time is limited i'm now getting to the point where i'm like well i think i'd rather focus on teaching doctors and making that course as good as it can be writing a book every year or every other year with the best thoughts that i can come up with in a easy to read fashion and educate people through this podcast and social media content regularly and again it's letting go of this identity that you don't quite know where you've absorbed it from this kind of society is given to you this is why i wrote this section on nc in my new book it's this idea that actually these are fictional a lot of these things they're they're constructed for us we don't have to buy into them so i think i would almost argue given how many people you touch with your books with your podcasts hopefully with the app as well which you'll want to really understand the app shortly well you can almost make an ethical case rupee that if you don't do that and okay let's say some day's 50. but let's say on average i don't know 30 patients let's say let's say in a day you could help 30 people right well how much can you really help them given the current system like you can try you can run late you can give them your recipes and stuff but if you can so what's that on a five-day week yeah right which is pretty brutal these days for a doctor yeah you're seeing patients flying like that let's call it four days right on four days that's 120 patients right for in a week may you do one instagram post with some information and there's there's do you know what i mean yeah it's kind of like well absolutely yeah and so yeah i mean i could talk about this for two hours so i'll i'll wind it up here but essentially i've been thinking a lot about this and i totally understand it's like given the health landscape of the world at the moment well maybe this is also a part of medicine i i i'm so glad we're having this conversation because i couldn't agree more i think also it's important for me to recognize that i'm in a very lucky and professional position where we have the opportunity to step aside from the grueling day-to-day and actually exercise our ability to to influence and to empower and to and to teach people of all walks of life simultaneously and really scale up the information which is really going to have true impact yeah and as you just said you know hundreds of people every single week message you think about the people that don't yesterday right you know you know i mean there's going to be thousands of people that haven't taken the time because they're just getting on with it which is great it could it could just take that moment that one thing that you say to even in a clinical environment that one little thing that you say to a patient that enacts that change that gets them to quit smoking that gets them to think about something in a slightly different way that makes them happier these are things that we can scale up using our our current um activities one thing that really put things in perspective for me was when the first wave started i went back to work full time and i was in any thankfully it wasn't as busy as it as i expected it to be but it was still busy and i got involved with icu because i've done some icu when i was in australia and i was helping out with the family relationship liaison team so that's intensive care intensive care speaking to patients families every single day explaining what was going on with the ventilation settings and there was a senior team of doctors of cardiologists anaesthetists who were tasked with relaying this information from the frontline itu staff to patients and loved ones on a daily basis and the reason why i was seniors because we had to have those almost breaking bad conversations every single breaking bad news conversations every single day and that reignited something for me where i was like i want a retraining emergency medicine i remember having a chat to our mutual friend and about this on the phone i was like i'm going to do my mkms i'm chatting to my senior about this i'd like i've just reignited this passion and then when things opened up again and i was still working full-time on a e doing all the other stuff i realized actually what we're going to be witnessing is an acceleration of what i already knew pre pandemic in terms of what was the real issue which is the things that we talk about here the ways in which we can prevent things from occurring in the first place but it was going to be heightened because now we have the extra strain on a resource-constrained system that can't managerially find its way out i mean the bureaucracy in our healthcare systems as it is in a lot of places is like treacle it's like wading through archaic systems and we don't have processes and there are lots of barriers whereas now we have these platforms like you can get that information instantaneously to people it's incredible and so instead of doubling down on what i was going to do just retraining now i'm like actually i see clearly and if i'm honest i think there was a bit of a bit of an identity that i got caught up in like i'm i'm a real doctor i'm i'm going in i'm you know fighting the pandemic i'm one of those people that people are clapping for every thursday if i'm being very very honest and vulnerable myself part of me was that was a bit of an eager trip for me that was that was something that i i wanted to consistently identify with but when reality set in and i actually asked myself the question what actually makes me happy and what do i feel like i'm good at and what am i actually passionate about talking about and passionate about doing on a day-to-day basis it's it's what we're doing right now it's identity mate it's noise it is most identities i think are ego boosting in some ways and that's why i'm at a stage in life now where i don't really like for me it's about values not identity because values are universal and you can apply them to anything you do in life whereas identities are you know if my identity is a doctor and that's a big thing for me but what happens if i get sick and i can't work what happens if i get fired right and i'm no longer a doctor you know this one's when people retire you know the whole identity is that person and then they're no longer working and everything goes downhill physical health mental health emotional health because we've become really attached to a certain i say fictional identity they're not really fictional but i don't think there's anything wrong with having that identity it's just not becoming too fixed and too attached to it so wear it loosely um so i find that interesting and again i think i would have i think i've been wanting to make this decision even now i still even can't say to you i've made the decision you know what i mean there's still some yeah obstacle but i'm pretty sure again pretty sure within the next few months i think i'm gonna stop practicing and just see how that sits with me yeah for six months twelve months 18 months yeah right you know if you think about another way um people take it just just to start just just just a vernacular around stopping practicing i think is i think it tells a different story in your mind because you're not stopping practice yeah exactly you're engaging in it even more you're almost devolving absolutely it's an evolution absolutely yeah absolutely again it's a fear you know a few years ago no way the fear will people think i'm a real doctor as i've got to the place in my life where i don't really need external validation like i used to because i did for most of my life that's what i feel is allowing me to now go yeah it doesn't matter if people don't like it they're entitled not to like it yeah their thoughts have nothing to do with me yeah but can i look at myself in the mirror each day and know i'm doing the best that i can for my job i'm doing the best i can for my children my wife for what i want our life that's a kind of different conversation absolutely you're probably further along on your journey you've clearly thought about this quite a bit and i think it sits with you a lot better i'm probably better than i was but i'm still on that journey myself because i have these sweet conversations with my dad all the time and you know bless him he doesn't fully understand the impact of what a popular podcast can can deliver and the questions i get are like so you in the hospital this week it's a lot of that and like you know for as much as i feel that we're having impact sometimes it's those little things that kind of dig at that i'm like am i doing the right thing and i think again over time i'll firm up that decision in myself but it's a process for a lot of people myself included when your dad says that to you how do you honestly feel uh annoyed i do get a little bit in my in my head i'm like ah it just doesn't get it it like it doesn't understand and it's like it's pushing a stone up up of a hill sometimes it's i'm trying to get him to understand so it will help me along my own journey from being honest yeah yeah it's can i offer a phrase which for me has literally transformed the quality of my day-to-day life something i've i've read about in many ways in many books over the years so it was really brought home to me in a conversation i had with peter crone on this podcast i don't know a couple of years ago and the phrase is if i was the other person i'd be acting in exactly the same way as them and essentially that phrase is if i was that the meaning really is if i was that person with their upbringing with their view of the world with their bullying experiences as a child with their parents with the toxic first job they had well if i was them and had had their worldview and life experiences i would think and say the same thing as that absolutely and that honestly is something whenever i struggle with the actions of someone else or thinking oh if they did something different i'd feel different which is very disempowering because ultimately effectively what we are saying then is oh if my dad could only change you would be yeah happier and calmer which means you're putting your inner contentment and happiness in the hands of someone else who you can't control yeah so i would contend that maybe your dad loves you and in his eyes maybe i don't know medicine is a secure job you know rupees works hard you know what what's he doing all this social media podcast stuff like you know get a respectful job you know get married how you know yeah like could you do you would you i mean if you're happy together would you say that this is probably coming from a place of love absolutely absolutely and the way you've articulated that and i've heard you say that before actually and i'm glad you reiterated it when i was telling that story because it's made me think about it in a lot clearer in in a much clearer way if i was to unpack it a bit more my dad grew up in punjab grew up on a farm you know he was uh he went to he went to a really good university because he's his dad made lots of sacrifices such that he could go to that university and the ultimate sacrifice being he allowed his son to go and travel abroad to the uk where he started his own thing he worked in you know bakeries and bed factories and any job he can get his hands on until him and my mum mustered enough capital together to start a business and again all the risks all the seven day weeks all that insecurity to build up to a point where he can afford to send his son to some of the best medical schools in the world the best schools and then the one of the best medical schools and then for me to veer off and be like i'm going to take a risk here of course yeah of course he's going to like what are you doing i could just just take the safe i've done all that so you don't have the sacrifices absolutely sorry interrupts if you are enjoying this content there's loads more just like it on my channel so please do take a moment to press subscribe hit the notification bell and now back to the conversation so in my mind now just from you saying that it's made it a lot a lot easier for me to contend because what i love about it is it takes the sting out of a situation so it doesn't necessarily change the reality well it does actually it changes you know what is reality it's our perception so absolutely if it's suddenly like i i use that most days honestly that phrase whenever you know something's happening it's like oh if i was that person like if someone's it's very rare these days someone's trolling me right you know what if i was that person with that person's view of the worlds you know what i'd probably do the same thing and it it then means compassion becomes the first sentiment you feel it doesn't mean you have to accept stuff it just means that instead of being emotionally triggered and reacting from that place it's just a lot calmer you can make rational decisions like you might for example say hey dad listen you know can't be chat with you know you know when you say that to me um it's interesting because i i suspect you're you know you're you're wanting the best for me but what i hear is this and you know i've done that with mum like i've had conversations with my mum not quite the same thing but stuff where instead of feeling emotionally triggered i come from a place of compassion and actually you make progress do you know what i mean yeah absolutely so absolutely now i see that i'm going to try that well before we get to the app because i really want to understand the app because i think it's incredible what you're trying to do with it are you up for trying to quick exercise yeah let's do it let's do it man yeah so it's it's it's a two-part exercise okay and i think it relates to what we've just been talking about about you know life what what we want from our life not necessarily what other people want right so if i was to ask you what are three things you could do this week and you think you could do them regularly each week that would make you happy what are they so definitely investing time and spending with my parents for sure absolutely with family i really value time with my friends as well whether that's over a dinner i've cooked them or even a walk in the park i love like those are pivotal moments in my week that i really want to try and get in every single week and work to serve as many people as i can through really deep good work whether that be through podcasts copywriting newsletter app creation uh the recipes and all that kind of content i do for the digital platform that i i honestly gives me so much so much strawberry and the three things are quite clear demarcations you know friends and family being really you know nurturing relationships important one i should probably send my fiance as well [Laughter] but that comes under nurturing relationships right and then obviously something about work what um how good are you at doing that those nurturing those relationships each week i i think i'm good i've definitely got a lot better and the reason why i've got a lot better is actually because of my fiance i'm not just saying that i i think i've got a strand of uh overworking from my from my dad i think you know immigrant parents we've all got that sort of stranded us exactly you know i seen i've seen how hard he worked when i was a kid both my parents um and that element of me has led to some sacrifices over the last five six years where you know i'm not essentially practicing what i'm essentially preaching and rochelle has really kept me on the straight and narrow in that respect actually she's you know made sure we made time for sitting down at the table with no phones checking with each other making time to go and visit my parents more regularly i do that actually more with rochelle um and and even just spending time where it's just like me and her you know that that kind of stuff that i mean i was the kind of person in particular was writing those the first book i wouldn't go out for the weekend i'd just be stuck there writing because i was working five days a week as a gp and then two days and all the evenings writing and creating content so i mean we've sort of gone into the second part a little bit the first part is you know the three things that you could do on a weekly basis that i call happiness habits second part of the exercises fast forward to the end of your life you know rupee auger doctor's kitchen is on his deathbed right looking back on your life what are three things you will want to have done um it's a really really good question man it's i think it aligns fairly similarly to the families and friends i i would have wanted to have really rich experiences with my my family and my friends i did this thing sorry to go of course i uh i went on my first camper vanning trip last year with two of my best friends and i can't tell you how much i laughed for about seven days straight you know we had disagreements we had jokes we had you know just being in the outdoors i was the cook i was the driver it was just constant hilarity and like those experiences i want to have those over and over again you know and i think if i'm sat on my deathbed i want to be able to reflect on a bunch more of those i think certainly bringing the power of food to billions of people worldwide that's exactly what sort of the mission of the doctor's kitchen is all about yeah um and having that rich family experience where i've brought kids into this world where i've put you know good people on the planet who are grounded and have just amazing rich experiences and are allowed essentially to grow into whoever they want to become like that's i'm not at the point right now we're i've got kids or we're thinking about kids but certainly there's definitely something i want to want to do i mean it's it's it's i always love hearing people's responses to those questions because i think it's an exercise we should all do with regularity um it's it's one of the exercises in chapter one in my book and i've started doing it on the podcast asking people yeah and it's it's really great because it's not about beating yourself up it's just about bringing intention to our life like often it's on our deathbed we kind of know we want to spend time with our friends and family you know you've got this other mission to help you know billions of people understand the power of food right and that i guess pivots nicely into into your rap and that's kind of what you were saying about these weekly happiness habits you know you want to nurture time with your friends and family and the whole point of it is if we do these three i mean three is an arbitrary number right but it's i think it's a nice number three weekly happiness habits if we do them irrespective of anything else we're gonna get the happy ending that we've just defined right so for me it helps again cut down on that external noise should i do this should i do that what are other people saying it's like well hold on a minute for me you know it is friends and family so if i spend quality time with my wife and my kids each week well if i do that consistently week after week well i'm gonna tick off one of the three things i want on my deathbed two have spent quality time with them yeah right on my deathbed i want to have helped improve the lives of millions of people around the world very much like you yeah if i record a podcast each week and put it out there i'm doing that yeah and it also helps people realize when their life is unaligned okay wait a minute i say and i know from a few years ago you probably like me probably didn't neglect our friends absolutely you know very typical for men i'm not saying women never do this but you know as a generalization a lot of guys do this you know i've got some of the best mates anyone could wish for but for years i was too busy to see them do you know what i mean so i think we learned from that and changed that so absolutely you know i think it's just a very simple way to um cut out on the noise great exercise yeah it's important it's funny because i read that and obviously i we're going to jump on my podcast in a bit but i i read that i didn't do the exercise just skip through it oh yeah yeah it's a nice exercise but that is that is really profound it's just and you know we know what people are going to say on their deathbed why because palliative care nurses tell us absolutely the same thing you know and that you know i wish i spent more time with friends and family and i wish i'd worked less yes right but also this one gets me every single time which is i wish i'd lived my life and not the life that other people expected of me wow i think that kind of sums up what we've been talking about you know when it's something i sit with a lot okay well if i know that's what people say at the end of their life if i know that's what i'm going to say why do i need to wait for my death pairs why can't i start to make that decision now yeah um so we go a lot deeper there but i do want to talk about your rap you you stand on your deathbed you want to have impact to the lives of billions of people about the power of foods where does this new app fit in to that grand vision in in many ways i just want to say that that that access really did click well for me i'm still sort of like ruining from how much more clarity i have actually particularly the last thing you said about how people wished that they didn't live the life that other people wanted them to live or lived through the lens of other people's opinions and i think why i even started the app i mean who am i i'm not a tech entrepreneur i've got no reason to be in this sort of game and starting i mean the audacity of starting a tech company from scratch is is pretty incredible but yeah i did it because and i'm doing it because that's it really aligns with what i want to do it really aligns with where i feel that i can take the doctor's kitchen to the next level so to answer your question the app is a very simple digital platform where i create recipes we have a health goal filter where myself and the nutrition team have gone through all the nutrition papers and pulled out the dietary patterns and ingredients that align with specific health goals we've got five health goals at the moment we're going to build more they are brain health mental well-being inflammation cardiovascular health general well-being and it allows people to choose recipes based on those health goals and their other dietary filters so it makes it a lot easier to know what you should be eating and also to eat well consistently everywhere because everyone wants to think that it's about the specific nutrients you need to get these specific amounts i get that supplementation and targeted personalized nutrition is definitely the way forward but in a lot of cases the simple thing is consistently eating well so the app is designed to make eating well every day as simple as possible what we have right now is our mvp we're essentially just what does that mean a minimal viable product a very very simple libra of recipes that you can filter according to those means so hold on you can go on and let's say right let's say i struggle with eating well and i'm like you know i want some help you know rupees said he can make it easier for me okay great so i go on to go yeah like i want to focus on brain health please and i don't like these two foods and i have an allergy to this one food what i can put all that in you can put all that in and then what does the app spit out for me so you get a personalized for me section where you can choose from a selection all those recipes that fit that criteria so so recipes so i then get recipes but i guess in a book for example you've got loads of great recipes right but i have to choose i have to go through it go well what's this one for oh does it have any ingredients in oh i didn't it has something that i don't like yeah i'm allergic to that ingredient oh i need to send rupee a dm what else can i put in yeah is the app basically just taking all that out and go you just put it straight in then it will spit out the right recipes for you absolutely yeah so that's that's certainly the aim of what we want to do and at the moment you can you can use alternatives we put alternatives for the for the different ingredients and we also allow you to filter according to intolerances and allergies that you might have as well as the health goal filter that you that you choose and you can choose up to two but the beauty of the app and the simplicity of it is we we did a ton of research with people we brought people into the studio pre-pandemic we asked them a whole bunch of questions about what the barriers to healthy eating are what makes it so hard for you and a lot of the themes came out were culinary creativity the time and the complexity of recipes so the majority of the recipes are actually one pan recipes all the recipe instructions have got step by step uh images so you can see at what step of the way everyone should be we're also going to add new features so we're still very very much minimal viable product but new features where you can build a shopping list that integrates with supermarkets so you can say with your family say which recipes would you like kids and which recipes would you like uh to to all your other family members choose those builds your shopping list and that integrates with any online supermarket they want or take that shopping list to the market if you like doing that as well the other thing that we want to add is an integration of the ability to see a vetted nutrition professional as well so it's kind of like the healthy eating version of headspace or calm if michael actually smith is listening uh the uh the the integration and the communication of babylon or push doctor or one of those telemedicine platforms with also the colony creativity of all the recipes that we create as well so it's like a beautiful integration of all those different things on this one platform what what i see this solving the problem of is the consistently eating world issue some of the latter things that i want to build on top of are features that include wearables the investigation data so what does that mean investigation data that would be like microbiota testing genomic testing metabolomic testing oh wow also things like auring integration or woop integration or whatever wearable you prefer using like apple health and that way we can actually say you know what you you jog very often or you you are expending this amount of energy or these are your needs because of these activities that you've identified in the app these are the kind of recipes that you should be really eating and this is how you can make it super easy for you and then another stage and i'm just sort of like future scoping here the ability where you can have a selection of recipes that are available in your area that are freshly prepared according to our standards using the right oils the right cooking techniques and then delivered to you to your door and your family at the cost price so that this is where i see it being a viable option for insurers as well as healthcare practitioners as well as the individual consumer as well i mean it sounds incredible and this vision you have a couple of things came to mind as you've been describing it there one of them is circling back to a theme throughout this conversation is this idea of you know helping more people helping people eat better if you succeed in that through the app you're already succeeding in it in in in you know through your instagram through your through your books through your podcast that's being a doctor right that that's that if if if the advice you're trying to give in a 10 minute gp consultation someone is hey listen i think food plays a role here let me help you here's hey why don't you try these two recipes or whatever however long you might need to do that ultimately the goal is what the goal is for that patient to eat better yeah right because you think it's going to have a myriad of different benefits on their health well if you're doing that via an app because you've nailed it there what what do you know everyone's got a good week where then you know they're well rested and they buy the fresh foods and they you know we all have those days absolutely but we also have those days where you know what life's tough and you know we're looking after an elderly parent or we're struggling with there's loads of deadlines at work we don't have time to cook and actually we start to make decisions that we wouldn't ideally choose right yeah but again when we go and see our doctor we give them our best day what do you eat oh you know i i eat this for breakfast like that for lunch it's like well it's consistency it's like anything in life isn't it it's right exercise or any new behavior yeah it's consistency so if you can do that make it easier for people you know that's the way to have impacts and you mentioned like headspace and calm and it made me think well those those are great apps right they help make meditation accessible so many people who utilize those apps now are having health improvements absolutely so they're probably going to see their doctors less there's less pressure on the healthcare system right and you could argue actually rupee well maybe you're even better placed than a than a tech founder because of your you know years of experience seeing tens of thousands of patients well actually maybe that's a unique skill set and maybe this is the best use of your time to actually bring that knowledge to technology to help people to help exactly yeah and i think that just verbalizing this now it's helping me really solidify this in my head because there's been a lot of indecision along the way i mean like building a even building what we've built right now with a library of 300 recipes and the photography and you know the the system that allows you to choose according to your allergies and all that kind of stuff it's been a real real journey and i've had a lot of imposter syndrome along the way as well like who am i even thinking that i could even achieve this that that idea of me being a tech founder better being better place because of my clinical experience because of the communication i've had directly with people i mean i was doing customer service essentially for like the last six years because of like instagram podcast and newsletter feedback and all that kind of stuff so you know all that has really gone into this and what i feel that this could serve very similar to the likes of calm and other wellness apps there that have been super successful is scaling that information to as many people as possible and that's why i've been obsessed with this idea of creating a tech platform for a long time now and hopefully seeing it to fruition i mean we've got a long way to go with all those different features hopefully being able to see that fruition is it's going to be a real not just a career defining goal but a clinical career defining goal for the reason that you just suggested because that is hopefully going to have a tangible effect on people's lives i know that if i can increase someone's in portions of fruit and vegetable consumption as simplistic as it sounds i know that's having a demonstrable impact on their propensity yeah for illness i know that i'm practicing preventative medicine in its purest form so yeah that's that's the goal anyway it's pretty exciting hearing this you know i'm i'm not that techy in terms of my natural interest so it's very inspiring for me to hear that it's interesting we said about an aura ranks i see you've got one on i mean what are your views on trackers incidentally so i think it really depends on the person right let me see me so i'm the kind of person that can look at my auring data in the morning and i can make a reasonable judgment about how i should exercise what things i need to be looking out for in terms of my cravings in terms of what kind of food would make me sleep better the next day and make a reasonable uh solid decision about my day and and i'll forget about it until i check it the next morning another person would become super anxious about the fact that their aura ring scoring or whatever tracking device you use is less than 80 and that's gonna derail them psychologically for the rest of the day and actually create health anxiety around it it's kind of one of the reasons why i've taken to on social media asking people to really establish whether they should even be following me because i i realize that we have like um a microphone and we can't filter who listens via that microphone on the other end people really need to take that decision themselves and be intentional about where they get information and whether that information is serving them yeah so going back to our conversation about food as medicine for some people that's like kind of triggering and i they have their reasons i get that i disagree but they have those reasons for the same the same reasons me always talking about healthy eating increasing vegetable consumption looking out for fiber looking after your microbes for some people that's not that's a net negative yeah and there in lies the decision for that person to either unfollow me disengage with my information or perhaps choose someone else that better serves them yes mate i think there's such an important point in it is you know i think personal responsibility as an idea gets hijacked a lot you know i i think when it comes to food of course i'm for empowering people like you but i think we both i think we touched on the first time you came on we both recognized poverty plays a huge role in what people have access to um we we understand that actually some people want to make good decisions but where they live the food landscape around them is very very challenging and we definitely spoke about that even though it was over four and a half years ago when you're on the show the first time i remember you telling me the story about how when you were walking around your general practice yeah when i was in oldham yeah i forgot my lunch i couldn't buy something healthy like literally i'd have to walk at least a mile it was just kebab shots fried chicken shots i think this is where someone lives they are fighting against the prevailing uh direction of travel to make those good decisions so i get that but i think there's another part of personal empowerment and personal responsibility which is yeah take responsibility of who you follow you know yeah and i've you know it's funny over the last few months um i've spoken to a couple of people on the podcast david sinclair and david was mentioning his view on uh you know periodically fasting and skipping meals and one of the reasons i do long-form podcasting is because i think we're missing nuance and perspective and therefore i think if you have a one and a half hour two hour conversation with someone you can see all sides of it you can i think honestly i think long form podcasting is the way to change the world absolutely i genuinely believe that and i'm very passionate about doing that but you know i promote the podcast on instagram and instagram reel says you have a one minute maximum so as a team we try and be respectful and creates something that is empowering for people on that platform but also encourages them to go and listen to the conversation yeah the problem is is trying to cut down a two-hour conversation into a one minute reel is challenging and whenever and actually this is something we haven't discussed here but food appears to be one of the most triggering topics absolutely in all of health and well-being maybe close to politics i don't know anything that's more triggering for people than foods yeah yeah and so i remember when we put out a clip on um the david sicler episode which you know is one of the most downloaded episodes we've had it was really really powerful interesting but i understand that many people are struggling with eating disorders many parents are really really struggling with their children at the moment who have got a disorder relationship with eating and actually some of them were quite angry that they were quite you know disappointed in me that i put out that you know very much a lot of comments like oh you know love everything you do but really disappointed that you're promoting this at the same time that episode and the one with um dr jammed ass on how he uses fasting as a cardiologist has literally transformed the lives of people and i've realized that one message can never appeal to everyone yeah that's why i really reflect on this and sit with us and go okay well what do you do with this as a content creator like you i want to inspire loads of people and just realize it's impossible because someone who really needs to hear the message of fasting yeah it's not someone who's struggling with an eating disorder so why caviato in the in the audio i do intros i say please notes this video is not going to be for everyone yeah you know please i remember when i i remember being in the studio doing the intro to the doctor gentlemen last episode really trying to get it right saying guys look please understand the context in which doctor jammed us is giving this information he sees people who have got heart problems who are really struggling who possibly over consumed in their life and he's now not having to put needles into people's hearts because of fasting right i want to share that information yeah i also understand if you're a parent and your 13 year old daughter is struggling with eating disorders and you're worried and you don't know what to do and then you see someone who you respect giving information that may not be relevant i understand that it's hard and i really have compassion for that and i as a team we think about this and i think about how can i make this better because what you don't want to do is not put out the information on fasting that's going to help people absolutely but how do you do it i don't have the answer i don't know if you have any any thoughts on that i've yeah i i think the way you've described that is exactly how i think about it as well and i think you know during my training when i was working at brighton i worked at the pediatric hospital and unfortunately we had a number of very young children come in with i mean it's really hard to to to talk about it but there was there was a really young girl who just refused to eat and her dad was away and her mother brought her in and it was it was a you know a really traumatic time for for her and the team as well who we weren't specialized in eating disorders actually and again working on the wards we'd have a lot of young patients going into the bathrooms and exercising and and and doing all these these these activities that i'm sure we're all aware as a result of a psychological disorder so i have the utmost compassion for people who are triggered by these things but to your point it really does come down to how you your curation of your own digital environment it's super super important and i think again looking at this through the lens of what environments we have at the moment we have a physical environment we have a digital environment and we have something called meta which people see as something in the future actually i think it's right now if you look at the amount of time that we spend on our digital devices via zoom via social media via ingestion of news i would argue for a lot of people it's more than 50 percent so if meta is actually instead of it of us living in like a 3d world using vr instead if it's a point in time when we are interacting with our devices more than in real life i would argue that we're already there and so therein lies the importance of being really really intentional about how you create that environment so if that means not following people who talk about healthy eating or talk about fasting because that's going to have a negative impact on you then that's your responsibility i i i it's hard to say that a lot without because we are people because we we we want to like have your daughters we don't want to but it's just hard it's just difficult we can try our best to put things out as compassionately as possible but ultimately we've also got to understand but let's take this away from eating disorders i know it's a true it's a it's a triggering area and people are really struggling but if we feel let's say me take it out of anyone else like if i feel it's my right to go on social media you basically go on the internet which is literally the entire world and think that i can walk around on this street online and nothing's gonna bother me like we know in the real world that's impossible you're not going to go into the city center i think every every experience is going to be delightful no one's going to stand in front of me or get in front of me in the queue whatever what we understand but somehow we think online it should all be beautiful and sugary and again i think it just speaks to this wider point that we've lost the ability to realize that oh we don't have to agree with everything that everyone else has we probably don't agree on everything no of course you know what i mean we can respectfully yeah disagree go oh you know what that information is probably not for me absolutely and i think just to finish that i think half the problem also is when you've got kids on social media when i mean it's hard enough being an adult you're not you know do you know what i mean yeah yeah if you know as kids are developing their sense of who they are and they're then going on then you know i i get why people are saying well i understand why it's really really challenging absolutely coming back to the idea of nuance it's very hard to have nuance when you're using character limiting limited social media platforms it's also becoming increasingly difficult to have to hold even at a personal level two conflicting views in today's world you know covered great example you know i can be someone who is pro-public health policy but i still want to have questions about lockdowns i still want to have a conversation about what is the best pathway for all of us what are we sacrificing on one side what is the opportunity cost of shutting down all health care systems for the prevention of an infectious disease just for the record i think the first wave i think we would had this this worry and the uh the lack of knowledge around what covert was at the time to justify some of the actions that we did later on i think it becomes more of a nuanced issue and i think we've looked at it through the perspective of one opinion and anything outside of that opinion you're a covidia that sort of that language and the demeanor that people used on online i think is just abhorrent and we really need to work on that and i think to the other point you were talking about with regards to food and why it's so polarizing i think it almost comes down to like the importance of food to people at an evolutionary level so if you if you human me for a moment it's a bit of an esoteric opinion that i have on the on the evolution of food and how we've evolved but when we're hunter-gatherers we would have been in an environment where we we lived in a nomadic community let's say we would have woken up the cracker dorm you know circadian rhythm we would have uh gone out and either if we were typically the females we'd go out and and and gather berries and and forage probably with a baby struck to us so we've got load bearing so we're working our muscles as the male probably would have gone out hunting we've walked over like long planes that would have been our exercise would have been our meditation would have been our sort of stillness to make sure that we are aware of any predation and then coming back we would have shared that with the community and we would have had that food and we were going to sleep at a reasonable time there you have all the elements of lifestyle medicine all centered around this idea of food and if you look at our biology we are so hardwired for procreation and food these are really really humanizing traits and so it's no wonder that when you see on social media when people are arguing about different diets they're not really talking about the specific macronutrient composition that they believe is the right thing for everyone they're not really talking about why veganism should be the most important diet for everyone they're talking about something that is deeply human to themselves and i think that's what fuels a lot of anger online yeah i think you've nailed it i love that i love that it's a great perspective i feel we're warming up but we've we've been going a long time so um let's put a pin in this conversation uh i think we need to continue it as you have more uh features coming out on the app yeah please consider this an open invitation to come up any time or we'll talk more and i'm excited to see how your journey goes uh one thing we've not spoken about is berries and coffee and green and all that and all the benefits of these things which i thought we might see they're all in your books yeah right so and on the app so people can if you're going to point someone you've got three books out there yeah um if someone's inspired and goes hey you know rupee look i i kind of struggle i know food's important but i don't know how to cook like i'm a bit scared of it i didn't get taught by my parents i wasn't taught at school um which of your three books would you direct people to i think the last one three two one definitely it's my most practical book it's three portions of vegetables two servings one pan double the ingredients if you want to serve four it's a really easy methodology and process of cooking that i employ myself whenever i'm time yeah poor which we a lot of us are these days and minimizes washing up and it increases the amount of fruit vegetables that we consume on a daily basis and looking at all the research that's the one thing that i think that we should be looking at through the lens of nutritional medicine obviously there are all the other facets of of lifestyle that we also need to concentrate on but i think three to one is probably my most practical book but you know share recipes every week on the newsletter there's plenty on the website how do i get your newsletter on the doctor's kitchen.com yeah newsletter okay cool yeah you do you share recipes every single week we share recipes and we also share something to listen read or watch that will inspire them every week and the feedback for that has been wonderful and i it's genuinely me sharing what i've done that week to hopefully inspire people to live well and you know it can be a ted talk it can be a piece of research it can be a practice you know there's a whole bunch of different things that people can employ every week and you know like you've written about in your uh book on on maintaining small habits just stacking those on top of each other bit by bit and creating that sort of i mean that's why we haven't talked about morning routines we'll talk about that on my episode with you but that's how i've instilled things that have ultimately led me to heal yeah it's through practicing small things employing them and making sure that there's a system behind those and i think if we can all do that one thing that would be pivotal if that conversation resonated with you here is another incredibly powerful one that i really think you're going to enjoy there's a lot of foods that actually impair our health defenses our circulation our stem cells our healthy gut microbiome the ability for our dna to protect our bodies from the environment and also our immune system your body can't handle some of those foods that we have gotten used to eating

Channel: Dr Rangan Chatterjee

Views: 139,065

Keywords: the4pillarplan, thestresssolution, feelbetterin5, wellness, drchatterjee, feelbetterlivemore, ranganchatterjee, 4pillars, drchatterjee podcast, health tips, nutrition tips, health hacks, live longer, age in reverse, self help, self improvement, self development, personal development, motivation, inspiration, health interview

Id: k9fiPERmi00

Length: 114min 45sec (6885 seconds)

Published: Wed May 11 2022