Feel Better, Live More with Dr Rangan Chatterjee - #4 How Food is Medicine with Dr Rupy Aujla
Episode Date: February 9, 2018In this episode Dr Rangan Chatterjee speaks to Dr Rupy Aujla, author of The Doctor's Kitchen, where they discuss the power of food and lifestyle change as medicine as Dr Rupy believes that what we cho...ose to put on our plates is the most important health intervention we can make. Show notes available at: drchatterjee.com/rupyaujla Follow me on instagram.com/drchatterjee/ Follow me on facebook.com/DrChatterjee/ Follow me on twitter.com/drchatterjeeuk Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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Hi, my name is Dr. Rangan Chatterjee, medical doctor, author of The Four Pillar Plan and BBC television presenter.
I believe that all of us have the ability to feel better than we currently do, but getting healthy has become far too complicated.
With this podcast, I aim to simplify it.
I'm going to be having conversations with some of the most interesting and exciting people, both within as well as outside the health space, to hopefully inspire you, as well as empower you
with simple tips that you can put into practice immediately to transform the way that you feel.
I believe that when we are healthier, we are happier, because when we feel better, we live more.
It's a huge pleasure for me to invite on today a really good friend of mine,
Dr. Rupi Audula. Welcome, Rupi. Hey, mate. How's it going? Yeah, good. Thanks for making some time
today to come on the podcast. Oh, my pleasure. Absolutely. So Rupi is an NHS GP, and he started
a project that I'm a huge fan of called The Doctor's Kitchen. And Rupi, instead of me actually
trying to tell the listener about The Doctor's Kitchen, it might be better if you can share what caused you to start The Doctor's Kitchen, and what is The Doctor's Kitchen. And Rupi, instead of me actually trying to tell the listener about The Doctor's Kitchen, it might be better if you can share what caused you to start
The Doctor's Kitchen and what is The Doctor's Kitchen? Sure, yeah. I suppose I would say it
started in my head about five or six years ago when I was in GP. I was training as a registrar
at the time and I was constantly running late because I'd be writing down recipes and trying to inspire my
patients how they could eat their way to health whether that be to manage their diabetes or
improve just their general well-being as well it didn't always need to be about weight.
So I thought wouldn't it be great if I started a blog or a YouTube channel where I create recipes
and I talk about the clinical research behind the ingredients I use in an effort to inspire everybody about how our plates are positive health interventions.
So I mustered up the courage to do just that about two years ago
when I was working as an emergency doctor in Sydney
and I recorded my first video in my kitchen just talking about,
I think I was talking about micronutrients or something like that
and I filmed a couple of recipes and I was talking about micronutrients or something like that. And I filmed a couple of
recipes and I was so nervous about putting it out. But luckily, the reception from both patients and
my colleagues was really positive. And since then, I just continue to do the same thing on
social media. I'm on Instagram and I create recipes and I basically pull in lots of different
research that I think is going to be engaging and motivating to patients to use.
So I suppose that's the doctor's kitchen in a nutshell.
It's had other reach outside that.
But yeah, that was what it started as.
Yeah, Rupi, I mean, you can tell your passion when you talk about it.
And I think that certainly comes through on your channels as you're incredibly motivated, but you're passionate to help make it easy for people and
make it practical for people absolutely yeah and i think there's certainly that commonality between
what we both do in terms of i think we really believe in people we believe that they have got
the ability to become healthier and therefore happier but what we're trying to do in our own
way is give people tools to do that yeah yeah well i'll tell you what
the thing that comes to mind when you you were describing doctor's kitchen is we're both you
know we both work as gps and in the nhs currently we have this 10 minute consultation model and i
know over the past few years as i have studied more and more the therapeutic value of lifestyle
and nutrition the whole 10 minute consultation concept comes up yeah but
how can you do it and one of the ways I've managed to you know it's not ideal but one of the ways I
managed to do it is by finding online resources or online things or books that I like and I trust
almost setting the scene in the consultation but then referring people to to look at various
things and it sounds as though doctor's kitchen started very much with that idea in mind.
Totally. Yeah, yeah. Because I was running late. I literally just didn't have time. And
not to say that I still don't run late. I still run late all the time, as I'm sure you do as well.
Like by the end of my consults, it's probably like an hour and a half. That's because it just
comes out and people have questions, etc. But yeah, it really was a time-saving resource. And I employ
that same tactic, I think, still today. Signposting, giving patients homework, kind of gives
them the idea that this is something that they need to take control of. They need to put effort
into. It's not just that 10-minute consultation. The GP is going to give me a medication. I'm
going to feel really better. It's not how medicine works, but that's how we've been
tricked to believe. And that's the sort of culture that we've made around going to the GP surgery.
Whereas exactly like you're saying, signposting, using online resources, getting people motivated
about and getting them to do a lot more work around their conditions is what I'm a massive
fan of. And that's what we need to try and encourage as well. Yeah, absolutely, Rupi. So Rupi, I've been a practicing doctor for 16 years
now. How long have you been practicing for and how long have you been a GP for? Yeah, so I qualified
as a doctor in 2009. So it's been about nine years now. And I qualified as a GP in 2014. So
GP for four years now. Yeah. And so I'm still quite junior in my training I would say
but in the last few years my learning curve has just been so steep and it's fantastic to have
people like yourself to look up to and actually get resources from but yeah I mean like you know
we never stop learning we're always picking up new bits of information and trying to find ways
in which to give people access to that as well.
Yeah, absolutely. Rupi, one thing I've always liked about you is, you know, something about you really resonates with me and how I view things, which is I've never been scared to learn
from any health discipline. I'm very happy to learn from a meditation teacher. I'm very happy
to learn from a personal trainer, from a musculoskeletal therapist. I've never really been that precious about my
medical doctor title. I'm very proud of it. I'm very proud of the training I've been given.
But at the same time, I recognise that actually what we're seeing today in the 21st century,
it's an epidemic of problems that in a large part are driven by people's lifestyles.
And I think there have been people out there for many years in different professions helping to teach people
how to create better and healthier lifestyles.
And I think sometimes without realising it as medical doctors,
we have maybe put the brakes on some of these other people
because they've sort of spoken to our patients
and the patients come and check it with their doctor.
And the doctor often not always
but often will sort of say oh no no there's no evidence for that you know that's not the way to
do it and it's really exciting for me to see both with yourself but also you know with other younger
doctors now coming through we're really believing in this message and actually Lysol can be our best
medicine yeah absolutely and I think it's just that whole open-minded culture that we're actually trying to create
amongst medical schools and medical students as well.
I get a lot of medical students asking me
where I get all these resources from.
And it's really interesting that you picked up on the fact
that we're both like this,
where we both take learning and teaching
from other disciplines outside medicine.
And one of the most important things I learned quite early on
was to learn from patients
as well, because patients would come and say, this has really worked for me. And rather than just
dismissing it, like perhaps a few GPs would do, I listened to that and I do my research behind it as
well. And then I go back to them and I say, you know what, that's actually quite good. It's not
harming you. It's safe. It's not costing the bank. If this is having some
actionable, tangible benefit to you, then I'm all for it. That's absolutely fine by me.
And I think perhaps because I had my own health issues, I overcame them with a lifestyle
perspective. That's what gave me that kind of perspective as well. And my upbringing,
my mum was very much into lifestyle when I was growing up. So that sort of permeated through my medical training
and maybe that's why I'm a bit more open-minded like that as well.
Yeah, I think there's a couple of points to pick up on there.
I mean, the first one for me is that you listen to your patients
and I think that is something that is so deceptively obvious
when we talk about it here,
but actually the system, the way it's currently set up,
often doesn't allow that to happen.
I recently posted on my Facebook wall about what makes an effective consultation.
And it's amazing how many members of the public would go and post and say
when they don't feel heard, when they don't feel listened to.
And I've realised actually in my 16 years of seeing
tens of thousands of patients now, that actually listening to your patient has huge therapeutic
value because often they have not, they've never had anyone listen in a non-judgmental fashion,
just listen to what they have to say. But the second point about that I would say is
we should always be learning from our patients. If a patient comes to see us and says well i tried this and i feel better if i don't know about it i think very
much like you i want to know i want to learn about it oh that's brilliant okay well you know what i'll
give you a point for two in two weeks time and i'm going to go and look this up and see is there
anything to support that and often even if there isn't't, I'm very comfortable with harmless interventions that are making people feel better.
You know, I don't always require, personally speaking, and I don't want to speak for you on this,
but I think evidence is incredibly useful for us to help guide our practice, but it doesn't dictate my practice.
It's just something that guides me.
But the other thing, Rupi, and I see this with a lot of doctors in this kind of field of, you know, lifestyle medicine, for want of a better term.
Often there's a bit of a personal story or a personal realisation that actually, oh, wow, this has incredible power.
Would you mind sharing some of that at all?
Yeah, yeah, sure.
I mean, so a lot of people may have come across my story.
I used to suffer from paroxysmal atrial fibrillation episodes, which is where your heart beats very fast and irregularly.
I didn't have any clear triggers.
I actually started during my junior doctor year,
so I'm sure stress had a part to play.
And going through lots of different hoops and investigations
and meeting lots of different cardiologists at the time
and other medical professionals, I was offered an ablation.
I was definitely going ablation. I was
definitely going to go for that. My mum was very much dead against that, given her naturopathic
lifestyle approach. So I investigated some lifestyle measures and cut a long story short,
what I did was put my body in the best environment I could using a lifestyle approach. And just to
shorthand that, that is exercise, sleep, mindfulness, and nutrition,
essentially the things that you talk about
very eloquently in your book.
And my initial aim wasn't to reverse my condition.
I think that's really important to get that across.
It was actually, if I'm being honest,
to optimize my body for a procedure
that I was planning on having.
But what happened was I reversed my condition.
And retrospectively, it's incredibly hard to pick apart
exactly why that happened.
Was it the supplements I started taking?
Was it the nutrition?
Was it the mindfulness?
Was it, you know, all these different elements?
And it was obviously now for us,
it's the holistic perspective that I took to my body,
my environment, and putting myself in the best position I could, where my body essentially self-healed. And that sounds like a bit of an
out there term, a bit kooky, but that's essentially what happened. And that's why I'm very open-minded
about this whole thing. Actually, going back to when I was a junior, I remember the first time a
patient came into me in GP, and they came off their medications for blood pressure.
I think they were only on one pharmaceutical at the time. And they told me they meditated their
way out of their medications. Now, the doctor in me at the time was like, I have no idea what this
is. I don't know who this patient is, why they're talking to me about meditation, meditating your
way out of blood pressure. But the most important thing is I didn't dismiss it.
And I said, you know, that's great.
In my head, I was like, this sounds a bit weird, but that's great.
I'm quite conscious that I want to keep abreast of how your blood pressure is changing over the next few months because in my head, I was like, well, that's clearly not right.
But then I did some research behind it, and it was really interesting what I came up with.
And that has now permeated through my clinical practice now, where actually talk very openly about meditation and stress relieving factors, because as you know, it's a massive driving, as I'm sure you do, when you share little insights about yourself and what happened on your journey, I think it really connects with people.
And I think people buy in a little bit as well when they hear you've been through stuff.
And, you know, I'm delighted you did reverse your condition.
And it's fascinating that that wasn't your goal.
was to have the operation, that procedure, the ablation,
just to optimise how well your body,
the state your body was in,
to optimise that environment to give you the best chance of actually coping with that procedure.
But by doing that, you ended up getting rid of it.
Yeah, yeah.
Now, what do you do then?
Do you pretend that hasn't happened
or do you then start to question?
Okay, well, maybe there's something in that.
I would argue it doesn't really matter which component it was. And I think one of the hardest this five-year-old boy had, he was under three doctors.
He had a really bad eczema.
He was under a dermatologist.
He was under a gastroenterologist for his reflux.
And he also would see his GP for a very different kind of tummy cramp pain.
And I was convinced that it was all the same thing in the sense that if I could optimise his gut health, I had a suspicion that all three of those seemingly separate conditions
might get better. I changed a few things. I changed multiple things to do with his lifestyle.
And I remember one of the critiques levelled at me in the media afterwards was, well, you changed
multiple things. How do you know which one it was?
And it really made me thinking, we've been very much trained and schooled.
And I guess this works very well for pharmaceuticals and for drugs.
Yeah, totally.
Take 100 people, put 50 people on a drug, 50 people don't take that drug,
who gets better?
I get that.
But often the interventions that we're recommending are harmless
and actually they work in a very synergistic way.
So why I'm passionate about what I call the four pillars of health is because I think it's a very simple framework that patients can apply.
And I actually think doctors can apply it to actually help their own health.
Totally, yeah.
And I think there's a beautiful simplicity there.
simplicity there. I think it's actually deceptively simple because I think when people do take that 360 degree approach to these four critical areas of health, I think they all play off one another.
You know yourself when you eat better, often it makes you want to move more. And if you move more,
often your sleep is better. You can't really isolate them. Has that been your experience?
Yeah, totally. Yeah. And I think maintaining that holistic perspective
is something that we need to get used to
talking about as clinicians as well,
and particularly with the work that you've done
and with the work that lots of other medics are doing in this field
is giving a lot more confidence to other medical practitioners
to, A, do it themselves.
And when you actually do it yourself,
you're much more enthusiastically talking about it with your patients as well. And going back to the evidence base, I think, yes,
we are trained in medical school to look at the gold standards of evidence base. And that is very,
very important for everyone to get across. But often we use things like randomized control trials,
we use a standard format, which is really good at looking at single variables and seeing
how they perform and how one intervention performs against each other but like you said our biology
is trillions of different processes at the same time and the sorts of medicines and i say that
in vertical because i believe it is still medicine meditation is is medicine, exercise is medicine, food is medicine. These are multiple different interventions that we're doing simultaneously.
So it's incredibly difficult to put in the same framework
that is geared towards testing one variable at a time.
It's almost impossible.
Yeah, absolutely.
And I think when you do go and look at these Lysol interventions
and you start digging into the research,
they have such widespread effects on different pathways in the body. So, for example, if
you haven't slept very well, yes, we know that your hunger hormones and your hormones
that help signal satiety, they're all changed. We all know that when we don't sleep well,
we crave poor and more sweet food choices the next day. We're more insulin resistant
when we haven't slept well. Our
levels of cortisol, the stress hormone go up when we haven't slept well. These are all different
things that are going on in the body. But food, a huge part of Doctor's Kitchen is about foods.
And we know that food is information for our bodies. Food can change the expression of our
genes. Food can change hormone levels in our body.
We don't look at it in that way.
We know drugs can do these things,
but actually we don't think, well, actually lifestyle can.
Exercise increases BDNF, brain-derived neurotrophic factor,
which is like miracle growth for our brain.
If we had a drug that could do that,
we'd be shouting from the rooftops what it does.
It is remarkable. I think the science actually is there um and maybe we have to be a bit smarter with how we interpret
it but i'd like to talk to you about your book groupie it's fantastic that it's out there now
um i'm sure it was a labor of love massively yeah i think we were doing it simultaneously right
i remember texting you like when's your deadline? Oh,
yeah, my deadlines are coming up. And yeah, it was a labour of love for sure.
Can you tell me a little bit about the research that went into that? Because I know from chatting
to you, you really spent a lot of time trying to find the research for these recipes that you put
in the book. And I'm interested, was the research there? And how did you find it?
Sure. Yeah. So I mean, I described the book as a culinary journey through food and medicine,
where I've created a hundred delicious recipes, breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks, and some pastes as well,
that are mirrored by the scientific evidence, the plethora of different studies that permeates through my philosophy around food.
And the first section is about exactly what you're just talking about uh how our food affects our genes the expression of our genes rather um how
it affects the microbiome the very foundations of our existence all those different things and
i think there's probably over 250 academic references there that i've pulled from multiple
different sources one from medical school where school where I look through all my nutrition
lectures, some from the functional medicine world where they practice a lot of lifestyle medicine,
some from traditional journals like Cell and Gastroenterology and Nature, because there is
so much fascinating stuff out there that I'm using on a daily basis and I'm thinking about
when I recipe create on a weekly basis and I talk to people and when I do talks and stuff like that.
And I just wanted to get out onto food, but making it digestible, excuse the pun,
making it easy and accessible as well. So it's not just about certain ingredients that are
highly priced. It's about making wellness and this whole era of lifestyle medicine
accessible to everyone. And that's something I'm truly passionate about.
Yeah, I've seen that actually in the things you write about and things you post about.
something I'm truly passionate about. Yeah I've seen that actually in the things you write about and things you post about it's not just about you know feeding the middle class as well it's about
making it reach all sectors of the population. Yeah totally. Until recently I worked at a practice
in Oldham which is there are certain populations there which I would say don't have access to the
same things that other more affluent populations have. And I served for a good seven
years, a community where a lot of them were on benefits, a lot of them didn't have much disposable
income. And what I found incredibly hard was, I could spend those 10 minutes would often turn
into 30 minutes. We had a hugely high rate of type 2 diabetes and childhood obesity,
things that I regard as completely preventable. And in many cases, I regard them as reversible
if we give patients the right information. But what I really realised is that I can spend half
an hour with this family and I can empower them with all this information. But then if they walk
out that door and it is too hard for them to make those lifestyle choices, then it's never going to work.
And often that did happen. And I remember in that practice, if I ever forgot to bring my lunch, which was rare, but if I did and I walked out of the practice to go and buy some lunch, I found it incredibly hard to buy anything healthy.
It was kebab shops. It was fried chicken shops. It was, you know, £1.20 for a very, very filling meal.
And I thought, wow, that's what these guys are facing on a day-by-day basis.
And even trying to, you know, I think we are trying to help empower patients to give them that knowledge, which I think is critical.
But I think personal responsibility across a society only goes so far.
I think it's important.
But I think personal responsibility across a society only goes so far.
I think it's important.
But I think we also have to help create environments where it's easier for people to make these changes.
Totally, yeah.
I've seen that, are they called Made in Hackney?
Made in Hackney, yeah. Can you tell me a little bit about that?
You sort of posted about them quite a bit.
They're a community kitchen based in Hackney called Made in Hackney.
And they basically teach the local community, which happens to be low socioeconomic
area, where to get whole foods from, how to prepare them, how to cook them and do this on a daily
basis. They're really making the link between food and health. And as the only medic in the
organisation, I sort of offer a clinical perspective on why food is so important to health and stuff
like that. But I'm passionate about that organization because I really see that as the blueprint for going forward and how
GP surgeries up and down the country need to be affiliated with community kitchens,
just like Made in Hackney, where you or me as a GP can say, hey, you know, you're not eating
that right. Maybe you need to learn how to use sweet potatoes or more whole vegetables or
different sorts of root vegetables and that kind of stuff. There's a really good community kitchen around the
corner. Go check them out and they'll be able to help you with all these different things that
we've been talking about today. That really is the future. It's something so simple. It's not
pharmaceutical led. It's not something that I believe is out there either. I think there's
something very actionable going forward. I often get asked by other doctors, like, where do you start? Where do you start with like how you introduce the
conversation to food? And it's really different because I'm not going to start recommending
whole nuts and seeds or flax or something like that to someone who doesn't know where they're
going to be sleeping in the next couple of weeks because they're on benefits, for example. I'm
going to start having conversations with them on a completely different level
compared to someone else
who might already be very educated in food
and just wants to know how to heighten their awareness
of different sorts of foods
or cook a particular sort of meal.
Well, then that comes down to what we were talking about
right at the start of this podcast,
which is listening to patients.
I mean, there's no one rule that, you know,
this is the way you deal with your patients.
It really depends who that patient is,
what is their understanding, what is their understanding,
what is their belief, and where are they meeting you at?
I've been very fortunate with the documentaries that I've made.
I really feel privileged to have made them because I feel that we all talk about wanting more time with our patients, and I actually got that time.
And, you know, I actually, although I'm very proud of the help
I've managed to give these patients, I think they taught me as much as I taught them, if not, arguably, they taught me more because I have really changed my practice.
I've changed how I do things. I've got a much deeper understanding of how the things that we say to patients or, you know, really impact them, but also how a 10 minute consultation, you know, people put on a front.
but also how a 10-minute consultation, you know, people put on a front.
They tell you the information they think you want to hear.
You know, you might ask questions that help you quickly get to the root cause or what you think is the root cause.
I think we often miss the big picture.
You know, how often do we get told,
the patient tells you the important thing as they're walking out,
door on the handle, oh yeah, doctor, and the other thing is,
and that's the crux of the matter. You need to get them back in and have that handle. Yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah, doctor. And the other thing is, and that's the crux of the matter.
Yeah, totally.
You need to get them back in
and have that conversation.
Totally, yeah.
But I've also seen, you know,
patients and families
from all different socioeconomic classes.
And if we just deal with food for a minute,
I agree with you.
I think healthy, sustainable eating is
and should be available
to every single person in this country.
Totally, yeah.
And I think that's what we should be striving for.
And have you found that on social media,
and obviously your main channel seems to be Instagram,
I know you're across them all,
and I'd love you to share with the listeners where they can find you.
Sure thing, yeah.
But I'm really interested as to have you,
has there been any kickback against,
or have people been talking about, you know, this is all very well for, you know, wellness is to preserve the middle classes and it's not accessible to all.
Has that come up anywhere or in your conferences or anything like that?
Definitely, yeah. And I think it's a prevailing argument that I have to deal with in clinic quite a bit.
This whole notion that healthy eating is inaccessible and it's expensive for the majority of people.
this whole notion that healthy eating is inaccessible and it's expensive for the majority of people. And I'm really trying to smash that preconception about healthy eating, because when
you do it right and you learn the different sorts of hacks that I talk a little bit about in my book
as well, it doesn't become more expensive than the average household can actually afford. Sorry,
my Instagram is doctors underscore kitchen if you want to look at the different sorts of recipes.
sorry, my Instagram is doctors underscore kitchen if you want to look at the different sorts of recipes.
And you'll see that I try and use
just normal, wholesome ingredients
with a little bit of spice,
a little bit of flair every now and then,
just to make it exciting and accessible
for the majority of people.
But that is something that comes up quite a bit
in clinic in particular.
And just giving little bits of advice
of how they can actually heighten the nutrient density
of their meals without breaking the bank
and how you can prepare from scratch, which takes a little bit more time but it's much
better for you in the long run that's sort of how we get around that it's it's about sort of
convincing not only our patients but also the culture of new medics about why this is an
important discussion to have once you empower people about how their food has a direct impact on health,
then you can inspire them to spend a little bit more time per week choosing food, or maybe even
a little bit more money as well. I think we've spent, as a proportion of our household income,
less on food going over the last 20, 30 years. So we need to really address that balance because
we're spending a bit more on technology and clothing and all the rest of the things which are great.
But, you know, ultimately, we need to look after our things.
And the most important thing of which you should be putting the blueprint for every other aspect of your life is your health, first and foremost.
Yeah, absolutely. I think that's a really good point.
And people talk about the expense of food.
And absolutely, I recognize that for certain populations, it can be incredibly difficult, and we need to help create change. But I think also, we also have to recognise actually, maybe
there is a certain cost to health in the modern world. And maybe that's a cost that we're not
prepared to pay as a society. Again, I'm keen to what I do recognise that certain foods actually
are beyond the price of some people.
And I think we have to make food more accessible to different communities and different populations.
But also that we have to prioritise, I mean, you know, how much importance do we give
to these things? In your book, do you talk about different conditions and different recipes that
can actually help different conditions? Yeah, I talk a little bit about that,
but I'm quite careful not to add a prescriptive element to food because as you know, the root
cause of any disease can be completely different to another. So it might be due to stress levels
or sleep or lack of exercise. You can't just eat healthy food and expect to be 100% well the whole
time. Unfortunately, it doesn't work like that. It's the balance between everything else that's
going on in your lifestyle. So it's certainly one of the most important
features of health. And I think it's the most important health intervention that we can
make, but it's really the delicious conversation starter to lifestyle medicine. If I can convince
people that they can take care of their health with delicious meals, that is quite easy to have
a conversation around, then perhaps we can have a talk about sleep and meditation
and maybe address some other things that are less sort of well-recognized
about how that has an impact on health.
So I think most people will recognize that food is important health intervention.
You are what you eat and all these different sayings
that we say quite commonly in society, but we don't really action.
But things like meditation and sleep and how important sleep is
and all these different things,
that's a little bit more on the periphery
of people's understandings.
So really that's kind of like my way in.
It's like a Trojan horse.
And I think you're absolutely right.
I think if you'd asked me five or six years ago
what I thought the most important component was,
I would have probably said food.
Well, I would definitely have said food.
I've actually evolved my thinking on that. It's not that I don't think food's important.
I've just learned from patients that actually different people want to start at a different
point. And my personal bias is food, because that's what I did. And therefore, I think all
of us on some level probably reflect our personal biases into a consultation as much as we try not to.
I certainly think we possibly do.
I can't obviously speak for every doctor.
I know there's a great article, I think it's in JAMA, the Journal of the American Medical Association, 2015,
showing that doctors who engage in physical activity themselves are much more likely to counsel their patients on physical activity.
likely to counsel their patients on physical activity so i think this really feeds into that you know our own practices with nutritional lifestyle really influence the conversations
we have with our patients but i've also realized that some patients i've had particularly i can
think of a couple of mental health patients with depression you know didn't really want to change
their diet and i'm very passionate that our food can impact our moods but they wanted to get more
physically active first and that was their gateway to get to food yeah so again it all comes back to
listening to patients and hearing where are they at maybe they want to start meditating yeah you
know although it's not common so there will be some people out there who want to tackle that first
yeah totally yeah um so I think you know I really like what you're doing Rupi find it incredibly inspiring i'm i'm not surprised that actually so many people are following you now and
and are really trying to take your information and actually help them in their own lives and i
and i you know like you i share a similar mission in terms of trying to help doctors
totally understand the importance of so we can help you know burnout is a bigger problem at the
moment you know gps there's such a high level of disillusionment
and workload and stress.
So I think not only can we help patients,
we can help doctors look after themselves better.
Absolutely, yeah.
I was just at the Royal College of GPs, actually.
There was a wellness focus event,
and we're talking about different strategies
in which to help other GPs that are facing burnout
because I think you've experienced burnout.
I've experienced burnout. That's why I ran away to Australia and did emergency medicine which
I found much more relaxing than being a full-time GP and one of the things I suggested is culinary
medicine where we actually teach GPs and other hospitalists and different specialties in medicine
how to cook and how to take better care of themselves because just like that JAMA article
about how if you're more active
and physically active, then you're much more likely to talk to your patients about it.
If we employ lifestyle practices ourselves, then we can do the same thing.
So we can talk about meditation.
We can have a bit more of an open-minded conversation
about where patients are at as well.
So that's something that's really important.
Yeah, well, Rupi, I know you've got big plans coming up
in terms of trying to be part of the conversation, in terms of helping doctors learn how to cook and help their patients.
That's incredibly exciting.
As you know, I'm sort of often, including on the last documentary series, I talk about what I consider to be four key pillars of health.
pillars of health, eat, move, sleep and relax and how I feel it's a really good template for people to apply in their own lives to think actually which pillar do I need the
most work on?
Maybe I'll start there at the moment and see where I go.
I think it's deceptively simple because I've seen the power when people do apply that.
I think it can be really quite profound.
But one thing I'd love to do is ask you what are your sort of four top tips that you'd give to
maybe the listeners of this podcast and how they can improve their own health yeah yeah sure so I
mean there's so many different ways we should start this so I'll start with food as I always do
but um eating colorfully is probably one of the easiest things that I suggest to patients because
rather than counting calories or counting macronutrients i think we
need to get to the bigger picture which is where the quality of our food is coming from and one of
the most exciting things that i first came across that really put me on this trajectory around food
is the notion of phytochemicals the different chemicals that we find in plants that confer
benefits to us through multiple different ways like impacting the expression of our genes impacting
our inflammation pathways etc so eating colorfully is a really good way. I often get Buddha bowls,
Google images on my computer screen and just show people this is literally what you want to be
eating on a daily basis, these different colors. And you can talk about the different ways in which
that can confer benefits. So eating colorfully is great is great mise en place or preparing is something
that i do every day so using tupperware making sure i've got my lunch sorted because unfortunately
we live in in very fast-moving societies and cities where the convenient options are not
always the best obviously i still use them where I can, but where possible, I try and prepare as much as
possible. So bringing lunches in, preparing your garlic and having everything like chopped, like
your ginger and chili and all the rest of it before you start cooking as well is a nice little tactic
I use because cooking for some people is not a relaxing activity. It can be very stressful.
So making sure you're preparing in that way as well is going to prepare yourself for a bit more successes in the kitchen and then i would say the third thing is sleep it's probably
one of the least recognized factors in chronic health conditions that we're seeing so just like
we were talking about earlier about how sleep deprivation can affect different hormone levels
that increase your sort of desire for food it reduces society it means that you're
going to have those cravings and grab an almond croissant on your way to work and stuff much more
readily than if you were to have good amounts of sleep and then actually your hunger levels go down
and of course all the different other factors that sleep affects as well like melatonin and the
different hormones that we have and how that has antioxidant effects and restorative mechanisms to our brain health and things like that. So sleep is super important
and prioritizing that, not eating too late, making sure you're putting yourself in a calming state
before bed, the things that you talk about in your book is absolutely fantastic. And the fourth
thing is something that I've been practicing for years, but I recently put on my Instagram account and it's practicing gratitude.
So I do this exercise on my Insta stories every day
where I think of three things that I'm grateful for
that have happened during the day.
And really it's a practice that reminds you
and reminds me on a personal level
about the magnitude of life
and how there are multiple different things
that occur on a daily basis
that are absolutely
wonderful and it can be coming across a tree that you hadn't had a good look at before it could be
you know appreciating the fact that you just spoke into your sibling and you don't speak to them
every day or a kind gesture that someone gave you on the bus or the way to work or something like
that those little elements of life that actually give you so much positive energy
can sort of overshadow any of the stresses or any of the smaller things
that give us a lot of inflammation-producing hormones in our body and stuff.
And it really just gives you the bigger picture.
And I think that's a nice little thing to do before going to bed
so you don't ruminate and actually allows you to have a better sleep.
So those are probably my four things to round up yeah they're great i think you know i'm on board with all of them and it's interesting we said about gratitude that's something that i
talk a lot about in my book um in fact one of the kind of the structure of my book is um there's
there's four key components to it the four pillars and, and 25% of the book is on each.
So I'm really trying to give equal priority to food, movement, sleep and relaxation and give people five possible interventions in each that they can do to help improve their health.
I say you absolutely don't need to do all of them.
You know, doing all 20 is going to be, frankly, very hard in the modern world.
But I say you need to find what's right for you and give all 20 is going to be frankly very hard in the modern world yeah but
i say you need to find what's right for you and give people tools on how to do that but one of
the tools in the relaxation pillar is gratitude and i talk about a game that we play at home with
my wife and my two kids every single day we all be sitting around a dining table and it's actually
a game well it's not really a game It's an exercise I learned from the strength coach, Charles Poliquin.
And we have to go around
and we all have to answer it.
It's firstly, you know,
what have you done today
to make someone else happy?
What has somebody else done
to make you happy?
And what have you learned today?
And although it started off
as being a really good thing
for the kids to do,
actually, it's a really great thing
for me and certainly my wife as kids to do. Actually, it's a really great thing for me
and certainly my wife as well to do.
It helps us reflect.
And it really helps, you know, this whole connection piece.
It helps us, you know, instead of just mindlessly eating our food,
we're all communicative, we're learning about each other's day.
And so, you know, just sort of share that personal story.
That's what goes on in the Chastity household pretty much every night.
That's great to hear.
So, Rupi, look, thank you so much for making some time today to come on my podcast.
If you want to just tell people the name of your book, where they can buy it,
you've obviously mentioned your social media channels.
But I highly recommend everyone listening,
you do go and take a look at Rupi's book
and see if it's something that you can implement in your life to help you.
So, yeah, the book's called The Doctor's Kitchen. I've kept it pretty simple. see if it's something that you can implement in your life to help you yeah yeah um so yeah the
book's called the doctor's kitchen i've kept it pretty simple and you can find me on doctors
underscore kitchen and on my website thedoctorskitchen.com well that's droopy that's great
in the time and uh no doubt i'll get you back on the podcast in a few months as things progress
for both of us yeah let's do it that's the end of this week's Feel Better Live More podcast. Thank you so much for listening and
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