Life Uncut - Stressed? Overwhelmed? Tired? Eat, Sleep and Live Better with Dr Rangan Chatterjee

Episode Date: April 3, 2025

When was the last time a friend asked you how you’d been and why do I think that a part of your response was that you’re feeling a bit fatigued, overwhelmed or exhausted? Surely it’s not just us! The way our lives are constructed these days and the life stage most of us are at leans into chaos. Today we are speaking with one of the world's leading experts on how to reduce stress, improve our energy levels and feel a lot better in really simple and free ways! Dr. Rangan Chatterjee is a leading figure in lifestyle medicine and a trusted voice in health and wellness. With over two decades of experience as a practicing medical doctor, he has a particularly simple approach to help us all make small changes in our lives to improve our health and wellbeing. He has written 6 books,hosted TV shows for over a decade and he hosts one of the most popular podcasts in the world "Feel Better, Live More." We speak about: Our victim mindset How women disproportionately take on stress Can we rely on willpower? Emotional eating Guilt and relaxation What areas of health are different for men and women The menstrual cycle; how it affects hormones and stress  Do women need more sleep than men? Links for Dr Rangan Chatterjee's website, podcast and Aus tour You can watch us on Youtube Find us on Instagram Join us on tiktok Or join the Facebook Discussion Group Tell your mum, tell your dad, tell your dog, tell your friend and share the love because WE LOVE LOVE! XxSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This episode was recorded on Camaragal land. Hi guys, and welcome back to another episode of Life Uncut. I'm Brittany. And I'm Keisha. And today we're going to talk about something that affects every single woman I know, every single person I know, but today we are really going to hone in on women. Stress. Think about the last time you spoke to a friend. When did you run into somebody and say, hey, how are you going?

And they answered with, I am great. I've been having so much fun lately. I'm super relaxed. I'm loving my life. It's not often that you hear that response. The most common response is overwhelmed, stressed, flat out like a lizard drinking, can't sleep, running around chasing my tail, running around after the kids, anxiety is high, haven't had a day off in weeks.

I feel like that is the most common response. I do too. And I just feel like even within myself, I just have this constant feeling of not being able to quite catch my tail, like not being able to quite catch up. You know, we joke a lot about the whole, oh, this week's been really stressful, but don't worry, next week will be better. But then we just keep on saying that time after time after time. And next week's worse.

Exactly. And stress is something that I think we are all experiencing to such a large extent. But none of us really have particularly easy and simple ways to break that stress down and to reduce it in our lives. And that's why today's guest is the wonderful Dr. Rangan Chatterjee. Now, he is a practicing medical doctor. He's got over two decades' worth of experience. He is also a writer.

He's written over six books. He's hosted TV shows for over a decade, and he has one of the most popular podcasts in the world in the health and wellness category. It is called Feel Better, Live More. And I think we all underestimate just how much stress affects our lives and affects our body mentally, spiritually, physiologically, the whole kit and caboodle. And the best thing about Dr. Chatterjee is he really breaks it down to make it simple. It's

not complex. He wants to make it palatable because he genuinely cares about changing people's lives. So from your 23 years practicing medicine, what do you think are some of the most common issues women are facing? I know from the outside, from people in my life and myself included, I feel like burnout and overwhelm are the things that seem to be consuming everyone's lives. Yeah, I would agree. I think stress, fatigue, burnout, overwhelm seems to be the symptom of the day, right? I mean, you're asking for women. I think a lot of men feel that as well, but specifically with women, I would say absolutely. That is a huge issue. I think it's getting worse. And I think we're looking at it the wrong way, actually. One thing I've realized

over my 23 years of practice now is that stress doesn't just come from the outside. We think it does. We think stress is only to do with what we have going on. I've got to do this. I've got to do that. I've got to pick this person up. I've got to do that. My boss has asked me to do this. that is true those things are all stressors at the same time I would say for most of us the majority of stress we experience is generated by ourselves what do I mean by that this was probably the key learning in my life a few years ago which is probably the number one reason why I generally feel calm happy content generally in control of life even though I have a busy life because I realize that we have the power with our minds to frame every situation we can take

what I call a victim mindset to life and I say that with compassion I honestly do I'm not I'm not blaming anyone for that or we can say what I call the architect mindset to life where we understand that we get to frame every single situation and so you know it's it's something that until you get it it seems like what you're talking about right but i'll tell you how i got this one of the most powerful conversations i've ever had on my own podcast which has been running for seven and a half years now is with a 93 year old lady called edith eager now when i spoke to her she was 93 years old and she was telling me about her childhood now when she was 16 years old she got taken to Auschwitz concentration camp with her sister and both her parents were murdered

within two hours of getting there right she's a 16 year old young you know young lady and two hours after her parents have been murdered she's asked to dance and perform for the senior prison guards and you know what she said to me she said Rangan listen I never forgot the last thing my mother said to me my mum said to me Edith never ever forget nobody can take from you the contents that you put inside your own mind so she then tells me when I was dancing in Auschwitz I wasn't actually dancing in Auschwitz in my mind I was in Budapest Opera House there was a full orchestra playing there was a full house there was beautiful music it was wonderful and I'm thinking your parents have been murdered you're you're literally in a death camp and you're reframing this in your

mind and there's many things she told me but the final word she said to me which relates to your question is she said this she said rongan i have lived in auschwitz and i can tell you the greatest prison you will ever live inside is the prison that you create inside your own mind wow and i'll tell you britney keisha that penny dropped for me that day i thought that's what we all do we go around the world and the car driver cuts us up and we get stressed and angry and we feel that it was the car driver that made us stressed and angry. But it isn't actually. It's our response to the car driver that's making us angry. I relate to that so much and I've spoken about this and we wrote about it in our book, but I spent a month with this Buddhist monk and

the one thing, the big takeaway that I took from his learnings was that your whole life and quality of life depends on your reaction to the given situation. It's not the situation because that's happened regardless. You can't change it, but you can change the way you think about it. You can change the way you deal with it and you can change the way you move on. And I still try to put that into practice now. I even had road rage this morning on the way here. And then I had to stop myself for a second and think, why am I so angry? I can't change what is happening right now. Yeah, that is such a beautiful example. And there's so many things there. First of all, even if we know this stuff, it doesn't mean we won't still do it, right? So as you said,

you had road rage this morning, but you're at least aware now that actually, you know what, I was generating that stress. Like it wasn't the driver. It was actually me. I didn't need to. That's the key learning for people because why I'm so passionate about this idea is yes, it relates to your contentment and your happiness but it also relates to your health right and this is the the big thing I try to outline in my in my latest book make change at last I try to say guys the reason why we're struggling to make changes that actually last in the long term and we keep trying to think why can't I give up sugar why can't I do this why can't I do that is I think we forget about internal stress so let's use the car driver as an example right so we all know that

feeling when we're driving our car when someone cuts us up and that we might start shouting or going you know stupid driver shouldn't have a license whatever you know whatever story whatever our version of that is what we do in that moment is we're creating internal emotional stress that internal emotional stress is not neutral you will have to neutralize it in some way or another. And how do most of us try and neutralize it? Sugar, caffeine, alcohol, two, three hours sort of doom scrolling on Instagram, whatever it might be. Those things are a response to the stress that we created by the way we interacted with that neutral situation. And once we learn to go, wait a minute, maybe I can train myself to not go mad every time a driver comes into my lane

because i used to be that guy and i'm not anymore right i've become aware first of all and little by little by practice or i couldn't do it and that night i was like ah wrong you know what you did it again today didn't you next time you don't need to act like that just like if you're going from the sofa to a 5k we understand that you can train your body physically but you can also train your mindset and so going back to your original question loads of women are struggling with stress overwhelm fatigue i'm not at all saying there aren't external stresses on women that there absolutely are but what i'm also trying to say is that actually a lot of the stress in our lives is by the way we look at the situation and if we learn to look at situations differently

often we won't feel the stress dr strategy is something that i've heard you speak about before that is kind of related to this whole mindset shift around food in particular. Like you just mentioned, a lot of us seem to struggle with the whole sugar craving, the whole like it gets to a certain part of the evening and we scurry away into the kitchen and we'll find whatever we can in the pantry or in the freezer or in the fridge because we're just trying to kind of feel something that we describe as a sugar craving. What's your take on emotional eating and why is it that especially when we're fatigued we're burnt out and we're stressed so many of us are kind of turning to this this little buzz that we're trying to get overnight time before we go to bed

yeah it's a great question and i think again this is the big missing piece when we talk to people about food or improving the way that they eat people are eating not just for physical hunger they're eating for emotional hunger as well right and if you're eating for emotional hunger you don't need another diet book telling you about the principles of healthy eating right you already kind of know that you need to understand what are these internal triggers one of the exercises that i love and i've been doing with my patients for years is called the three f's or the freedom exercise okay so the three f's are feel feed and find okay so next time someone is on their sofa at 9pm in the evening. And even though they had a full meal at eight o'clock, they feel like some

ice cream. I'm not saying that's ever happened to you guys. It was literally me last night. I was just thinking this is me last night. Just in case this applies to anyone. Okay. The 3F exercise can be really, really powerful. Okay. So you're sitting on the sofa, you've got an urge to have ice cream. Okay. The first step. So I say, have a little pause before you go and get the ice cream out of the freezer, just ask yourself, what am I actually feeling? That's the first F. Okay. Is this physical hunger? No, I kind of ate an hour ago. Is this emotional hunger? Am I tired? Am I stressed? Have I just had a row with my partner? Has the children's bedtime gone on too long? Whatever it might be, what am I really feeling? Then go get the ice cream and have it

if you want to. Okay. The next time it happens, you go through the first F again, what am I feeling and then you go to the second f how does food feed the feeling so the second f is feed so you've identified the feeling is stress and then you go oh well when i have my ice cream in the short term at least i feel less stressed ah okay so that's why i'm eating i'm like i'm feeling stressed and ice cream makes me feel better okay great the next time it happens you then go to the third f so you you again go through the process what am i feeling i'm feeling stressed how does food feed the feeling oh the ice cream makes me feel less stressed the third f is find now that i know the feeling now that i know how food feeds the feeling can i find an alternative

behavior to feed that feeling so what you're going to say can you find can i find the food can i find the treat can i find the thing that's going to satisfy no well you could you could you You could apply it like that, or you could go, okay, so I feel stressed. I normally go to ice cream. What else can I do to manage that stress? Okay. Let's say you like yoga, for example, right? You could put on YouTube and go, actually, I'm going to do five minutes of yoga, right? You could identify that, you know what? I'm not at any time to myself today, right? I've just been on Zoom calls. And so ice cream was a way of just treating myself. okay how could you treat yourself in a different way ah maybe I'll run myself a bath and nourish

myself in a slightly different way if it's loneliness that's causing you to eat as it is for many people they feel a bit isolated or lonely instead of going to the ice cream what else could you do well if you live with someone like your partner or a flatmate you could go and talk to them if you don't you could pick up your phone you could phone a friend you could phone one of your parents if they're still alive or whatever it might be and I know it sounds super simple but I have used these 3S with patients for years and it can often be life-changing because you know your question was why do we do this right a lot of the time we're not conscious of why we're doing this we get the urge and before we know it the spoon's in our mouth right with

ice cream in it and all this exercise does it just starts to give you a little bit of a gap between the stimulus, which is I want to eat something and your response, which is the ice cream. And the more you just create a little gap there, the more you start to understand yourself. And once you understand why you're going to that behavior, right, you've automatically changed your relationship with that behavior. Even if you go to it in the future, you'll know, you know, I'm managing stress here by eating this ice cream and it means you're for most people they're less likely to do it once they're tuned in to why they're actually engaging in that behavior so again it's a simple exercise that you can apply to food you can also apply to alcohol or three

hours scrolling tiktok or instagram you can it's a very simple you know will it work for serious addictions no probably not but at the same time for many of us when we've got these behaviors is that we're really trying to cut back on, it can be a very powerful exercise. How much do you think willpower comes into play? And having said that, do you think willpower is something that you can learn? I even say this last night, yesterday, you mentioned if you're really stressed, you want to eat. Yesterday, I was really stressed. I'd been crying in the day. I'd had a whole lot of things, got to nighttime and I bought 22 Easter eggs, big ones. And I started to eat them because I was like, I want my hit, started to eat them, couldn't stop. And then

there was a complete disconnect with my brain and my body my brain was literally saying stop eating them like stop it now put what is in your hand down and then I couldn't do it and then I said to myself at least chew slower and I could not that's what I said I was like enjoy the egg that is in your mouth and I could not I could not my mind was being like slow it down enjoy the moment and then I just was like a guzzle guts and I thought what is happening there why is this huge disconnect happening between my brain and my body were you stressed at the time is that what you said oh yeah through the roof yeah yeah and you know stress causes a disconnection right because when you are stressed it literally changes the way you experience the world right so when you're

stressed your physiology completely changes right you're not expansive you're not compassionate and empathetic looking at the other perspective your whole focus comes in when you're stressed you're looking for problems you feel a bit tense anxious hyper vigilant that's natural because stress ultimately is your body saying that it thinks that it's in danger right and that's the problem these days is that our stress response has been activated not by wild predators it's been activated by the state of our daily lives by our email inboxes by our multiple social media channels we're trying to keep up to date with or whatever it might be right and our body responds in a different way but that's the key point Brittany you have to understand that actually stress

literally changes your physiology so you know you're saying there's a disconnect there yeah there is a disconnect there that's literally what is going on right so instead of beating yourself up about that it's like recognizing oh wow okay when I get really stressed and you know let's say yesterday happens again in two weeks right is there anything you can learn from yesterday what you didn't do for example that you could have done that could help you have less stress if a similar day happens in two weeks yeah i mean absolutely firstly i wouldn't buy the easter eggs on special secondly i would probably do pilates yeah but also did you take a break in the day right were you just powering through and the stress just accumulates because that's another

thing often when we're busy and we're stressed we don't take breaks and all those breaks even a five minute walk can help reduce stress levels reduce travel so you're less likely to get to your threshold and at your threshold is when you buy the 22 easter eggs right you don't buy it when you're just a little bit stressed you buy it when you're right at your threshold so again I don't believe in the concepts of wasted time anymore right in the sense that we spend time it has a consequence and if we can learn from how we spent our time it wasn't a waste so your stressful day yesterday could be a very powerful teaching moment for you could be like oh wow so i've still got that tendency when i'm really stressed to go and buy 22 easter eggs how might i not have that much

stress in my life if the same events happen next time could i take a walking break could i do a bit of meditation halfway on when i'm commuting home instead of listening to the news i'm not saying you did that but could i put on some relaxing music for five minutes or put on a meditation app and just reset it's not as hard as we think it is once we're aware of what's actually driving our behaviors on this concept of relaxation i think a lot of us i mean particularly for women in our age categories they've got a lot on their plates a lot of them will be raising young children a lot of them will still have full-time jobs and and even for us who don't have kids like i feel as though my day is just go go go go go go go go go i get to the very end of the day i shut the

laptop and I try to get to sleep. And the concept of relaxation is one that we've had many conversations about things like toxic productivity and how we are not meant to be trying to fit every single minute and every hour of our day to be the most productive that we can. And relaxation is something that I feel quite uncomfortable with. Guilty. Yeah, I think it is guilt. And there's definitely a discomfort when I'm taking time you know time that I would say would be time out to try and put myself into a relaxed state and it almost creates like a bit of a cycle for me where I'm like okay I know that relaxation is necessary so that I can get good sleep and so I can feel good and maybe so that I can be good tomorrow but then when I'm actually trying to do

the things that relax me I feel guilty about the fact I'm not using the time more efficiently is this something that you see a lot like in your clinical practice oh yeah especially with women i've seen this for years in fact in my first book i wrote about this and i i actually said in that book that one thing i've heard from female patients over the years time and time again is when i taught something about me time and some time each day for you know i one of the things i would often say to them is you know can you find 10 minutes a day where you do something unashamedly for you not for your partner not for your kids something that just you want to do and often if I was able to persuade them and inspire them to go now this is really important give it a try

they would come back and say you know what doc you gave me permission to relax and it was a really interesting phrase I heard because I thought I never thought my job as a doctor was to give anyone a permission to do anything but I do find that it's particularly with women they would often describe to me exactly what you just said I've seen definitely with mums loads of times and I appreciate both you said that you know you don't have kids so that's not necessarily the reason why but what I'll often say to them is look if you're not if you're feeling guilty about this what I often encourage them to do is what is it you would love to do like absolutely love not you know I want I need to do this because it's going to help me relax I need

to do my meditation all right forget all that for a minute what would you love to do that sounds like fun because we know from the research that regularly doing things that you love makes you more resilient to stress and at the same time being chronically stressed makes it harder for you to experience pleasure from those things that you used to love and so like i remember this one patient she was a fourth i think she was 44 years old and she was a mother and she had a crohn's disease uh inflammatory bowel disease which is on the rise unfortunately there's many reasons for that but I said to her look I really want you to take 15 minutes each day for yourself I want you to do something that you love and literally for her it was getting into salsa dancing right she'd

always wanted to do that but she never thought she could justify the time she was doing stuff for her husband doing stuff for her children doing stuff for her community she never felt yeah actually I'm worth it it's okay to have 15 minutes a day for me and just doing that for four weeks her symptoms her symptoms from Crohn's disease went down by over 50 percent right and you know didn't cure it just to be clear but it was much more manageable for her because her stress levels went down and so you know and I think what better prescription to get from your doctor, then do something that you love, right? This could be dancing. It could be playing your guitar. If you're into playing guitar, it could be singing in your kitchen, dancing in your kitchen.

It could be watching your favorite comedian on YouTube for 10 minutes and laughing. But I often find that's a simpler and easier way to get into relaxation sometimes. And it can be very effective. Dr. Chatterjee, your book, The Four Pillar Plan, How to Relax, Eat, Move, and Sleep Your Way to a Longer, Healthier Life. What a great name for a book because everybody wants that. Let's talk about the four pillars and how did you decide that these were going to be the specific special four? Well, so the four pillars of health that we have the most control over and have the most impact on our health are food, movement, sleep, and relaxation. And what I say in that book and I still maintain to this day is that you don't need perfection in any one of the four

pillars but you need balance amongst all four okay you need to think about those four and I think a really helpful piece of advice for anyone listening to this right now is to ask yourself in which of these four pillars do I need the most help most of us intuitively know that if you ask you know food movement sleep and relaxation which one is our kind of weak area what happens if you have two well let's come to that like if you've identified that actually this one's really bad right i would say you're much better off making one change in that weak area rather than trying to strengthen your favorite area and your and your strong area a bit more so what i would often see is people let's say people who are really interested in nutrition their diet is already

let's say 85 percent goods they're obsessed with taking the diet from 85 percent good to 90 or 95 good but neglecting the fact that they're only sleeping five hours a night and i'm like you know what keep your diet where it is a little bit of sugary stuff at the weekends fine don't stress about that i would much rather you focus on bringing that five hours of sleep up to five and a half hours or to six hours if you can yeah sure seven hours if you can but you know just a little bit of improvement i found over the years that it's much more effective to strengthen your weakest pillar right so I think it's a very simple thing for people to ask themselves which pillar do I need the most work in and pick one thing in that area where you can start to make

it better in response to your question if you find there's two areas well the first thing I'd say is which one is weaker if you know and if if you don't know I would say yeah put your attention on those two right don't worry about the other two pillars just go these two really a lot of attention at the moment I don't know let's say it was stress and sleep for example you know you say okay what's one thing I can do each day to help me de-stress and what's one thing I can do that's going to help me sleep better and just focus on those things I think the where we really get into trouble is where we try and make loads of changes in all of these four pillars and we end up doing nothing. Britt what do you reckon you'd struggle with the most? Sleep's definitely

mine 100%. And that's actually something that I wanted to chat to you about. Obviously, men and women are wired very differently. How do these pillars or sorry, which category or which pillar itself affects women and men differently? Yeah, that's a great question. I would say stress is probably one of the big ones where you see, A, I think it's the thing that affects so many of us these days, you know, the World Health Organization say that stress is the health epidemic of the 21st century. I would say the way that we can often manage stress and the way we look at stress can be quite different. I think women absorb a lot of the stresses of the world around them into their bodies. I think, you know, it really relates to what you said before about

this guilt. I think women very much are wired to want to, you know, look after the world around them you know nurture and I think the way modern society has changed where there is so many things to do and so many pressures I think it probably adversely affects women more than men and we know that women for example get higher rates of autoimmune disease than men and stress is a big part of that right in fact Dr. Gabor Maté trauma expert he calls women I think modern society's stress absorbers right which is really interesting he says there's all this stress in the modern world and women seem to be i'm not saying men have no stress to be clear but i do think women are quite unique with how they take that stress on and how much it affects their bodies i feel

like we internalize it more i think so yeah very much so and often don't vocalize it whereas you know you can't say men and women we're all different within that but broadly speaking i think men can be better at compartmentalizing things and just moving on actually i'll leave that and it's in its slot there and i'm i can move on to a different part of my life and not think about that whereas i i certainly my experience with seeing patients over the years is that women don't do that in the same way i think potentially people can learn to do that but i don't i think men more naturally tend to do that i always think food we can think about differences between men and women and again these are just broad generalizations broadly speaking a lot more men

tend to thrive on fasting plans than women, right? That doesn't mean women can't fast, just to be clear. I've got many female patients over the years who thrive on a certain form of fasting. What do you mean when you say thrive? Do you mean that they have the results they're after or that they actually feel better and have better physical health? Both really, both. Because I think there is this narrative now that fasting is maybe okay for men, but it isn't something women should do. I agree broadly speaking that men and women deal with this stuff differently. I think fasting can be a stressor on the body, right? It is a stressor on the body. So if you're already experiencing lots of stress, and we've just mentioned how

women may be internalized stress in a different way to men, fasting can be an additional stress and tip them over i have seen that as well but i do think broadly speaking to that sort of general question what do men and women respond differently to i think the way they deal with stress i think can be quite different but also the way that they deal with fasting can be very different as well a lot of this is cultural in the sense that you know these things are quite punchy areas of people to talk about right but there is a lot of pressure on women these days i think and i'm saying this as a man this is what I've observed with patients what I've observed with my wife and her friends let's compare to I don't know 50 years ago right just to be clear I'm not saying we should be

going back to the way things were 50 years ago I'm just just to be super clear life 50 years ago for all the potential negatives in some ways it was simpler right people knew what their role was whether we agree with those roles or not those roles are quite well defined in many cultures and I think those well-defined roles led to a simplicity and potentially lower stress whereas I think one of the risks or one of the unintended consequences of all the increased opportunity now that women are getting compared to 50 years ago and I'm not even saying it's as good as it should be i'm just saying compared to 50 years ago what i find is that yeah women are working now they're doing great jobs they're starting amazing businesses yet if and when they choose to have

children they still feel that maternal instinct of being the carer being the nurturer being the one who wants to look after the kids so in 50 years ago perhaps broadly speaking their focus could just be on that whereas now the focus is i'm still trying to run my business i'm still trying to crush it on Instagram and I'm also trying to look after the kids that is a lot to contend with right and I don't think this has been planned I'm saying this is an unintended consequence but I think it's something we need to wrestle with as a society I think we need to wrestle with this idea it's like are we putting too much on women's plates how can we change that but I also to defend men here and I'm a man saying this but I also do believe that men are also struggling with the new

gender roles right men are also struggling with well what is my role now like I remember my dad was never ever at a school play a school performance like dad works right dad's job was to earn the money to feed us all whereas I remember when my kids were young I had a busy job but I was I still felt huge pressure and I wanted to be at my children's performances you know I wanted to be at school at 2 p.m to watch them read out a recital whatever it might be and again I'm not complaining right I'm not complaining at all but I do think it's interesting and I don't I think we need to have honest conversations about how our roles have changed and it's okay to say actually we're struggling with this and I think saying that we struggle with this doesn't mean we want it to

go back. And it doesn't mean we're being sexist. It just means, hey, this is a real problem. Let's come together and try and figure out how we might move forward with this. Did that all make sense? Absolutely. I also think what plays in here is the way we now live, right, is quite alien to how we used to live. So the nuclear family, for example, is a modern invention, right? For most of human evolution, we did not bring up kids by ourselves you know in nuclear families it was in tribes it was in communities and so this has a real consequence right now everything has plus points and negative points pretty much everything in life there's an upside and a downside okay so one of the upsides

of many people will say now is we have independence we can move away get a really good job go to the city have all this opportunity that we didn't have in the past great that's an upside downside is we've often moved away from our parents our siblings our community the people who knew us the people who would support us so the consequence of nuclear families is so many couples their relationships are under huge stress after they have kids you know I've seen it with a lot of my friends I've seen it with countless patients and it's not that the people don't love each other it's just it's too much for two and this is on the assumption that there's two parents living together which of course much of the time isn't the case but if two parents are working and then

they have children to look after and they have no support nearby that is full on you have no time to nourish your relationship you know so you know the partners become distant they start niggling with each other that in and of itself creates stress right and so I think the only way we get to the solution is by honestly identifying what is the root of this problem and understanding that I don't think we were designed to do all this by ourselves that I think is one of the root causes of why there's so much sort of stress going on and why we're struggling with these new roles on this topic of stress i think for me the first thing that is affected when i feel stressed is that i'm not able to get as good quality sleep and i think that that is something that probably

everybody experiences but another thing that i think is specific to women is that these hormonal fluctuations that we go through whether that be you know throughout a time of life or even a time of the month i mean i guess i'm sample study of one but i've definitely experienced different sleep patterns and the quality of sleep that I'm able to get, I feel like it changes over the course of like my menstrual cycle and throughout different periods of my life. What are those changes? How are they affecting, you know, firstly our stress levels and how are they affecting our ability to get good quality sleep? When you mentioned the cycle there, the menstrual cycle and how in different stages of the cycle, you feel different levels of stress and different

amounts of sleep that is normal okay that's completely normal you know your body is hormonally different throughout the menstrual cycle that's one of the key differences between women and men we operate on these 24-hour cycles women operate on you know traditionally this more 28-day cycle of course there's a bit of variation there whether it's 28 days or 26 or 30 31 but you know broadly speaking that's a massive difference between men and women and I actually remember I spoke to Dr. Mindy Peltz on my podcast about maybe three years ago she was just breaking down the different stages of a female cycle and how a woman might want to eat differently at various times she was you know I remember very clearly she was saying you know the week before the periods she

was saying actually you know most women do crave carbs and it's okay to actually indulge and have those carbs in that week but uh you know at the start of the cycle you may not as much so if you do want to you know change your diet and go lower carb for example then that's the time to do it but we also discuss in that conversation let's say in a in a heterosexual couple for example let's say a man and a woman right the benefits of actually being quite open about what stage on someone's cycle someone is so i think for many years we've thought well it's you know it's not the man's business you know what's going on with a woman's mental cycle but we were just hypothesizing well might it create more harmony in relationships if the other partner whether it's a man or woman

frankly doesn't really matter knew that actually yeah at this point you know I'm not sleeping as well I'm a bit more moody I'm craving carbs actually then you know at those points actually you could if you if let's say if that was my wife for example and i knew okay this is the week leading up to a period and she's struggling with her sleep with that knowledge i can be more patient i can you know try to not take things personally and go oh this is hormonal she's struggling with this and i think increasing that communication over these things i actually think while some people may say it's an infringement of privacy and it's no one else's business fine i'm not here to tell you know what everyone should or shouldn't do i just think it's quite a

nice thing to think about actually might that be helpful and it's certainly since that conversation my wife and i do communicate about this kind of stuff and i would say it's really really helps because i have a much better understanding of where she is in her cycle and how that also affects her and therefore affects our relationship do women need more sleep than men as a rough generalization i would say in my experience i would say yes right that seems to be the case but i can't say it's the case for everyone right you just can't we're all individual we're all different so i can't say that every woman needs more sleep than every man but as a broad principle i do think women tend to thrive on a little bit more sleep than men certainly again this is again

an n equals one but in my own marriage i would say my wife absolutely needs more sleep than me a good hour a night more sleep than me and it's very noticeable if she's not getting that and I don't mean that in a derogatory way just to be really clear I've just said I'm just genuinely it's sort of just I'm just defending my wife that I'm not saying anything negative it's just I would and I think we would both agree she does need more sleep than me and that's certainly what I've seen with my patients. There was an interview that you did with Dr Gable Maté and for me it was so powerful and it was something that really changed the way I think. And it was sort of around, you know, he's in his late 60s

and it was around if you had to go back and do something differently in your life, what would you do? And it was really powerful when I watched it and he talked a lot about he would do everything differently and he would spend more time sitting in joy and things that, you know, his family and the things that mattered to him because he just thought he had to work, work, work. For me, I really took a lot away from that conversation and i've been thinking about it a lot out of all the conversations you've had over the years and

all the incredible people you've had the chance to speak to is there something or someone or a piece of advice that has really stuck with you and changed the course of the way that you think and act yeah he wishes he'd played more yeah right he for all his success for all his expertise for all the fact that he's invited all over the world to speak and he sold a squillion books he again has regrets he wishes he'd lived life differently he wishes he'd played more and that goes back to what i said earlier on about passion right doing things that you love that you enjoy is really good for you it helps you become more resilient to stress as well so i think too much of the health conversation these days is about deprivation and restriction right we don't talk enough about joy doing things

that you love is good for you right it's really good for you and actually it's something i wish we would talk about a lot more and actually when I come on tour to Australia this summer I will absolutely be talking about this and the benefits of more joy and passion in your life so I've had four conversations with Gabba on my podcast over seven years and they've all touched me in different ways but if you say what was the conversation what was the piece of advice that has had the most impact it's what I started the show with right it's my conversation with Edith Eager that I re-released recently for an episode 500 special that conversation changed me it fundamentally changed who I was because not only did she say those magical words you know Rangan I've lived

in Auschwitz and I could tell you the greatest prison you will ever live inside is the prison that you create inside your own minds but it literally you know I remember coming out of that conversation and I said to my videographer I'm not the same person anymore like I I'm not the same person anymore but the way I view myself in the world has fundamentally changed because for me understanding that in a death camp she could reframe her experiences it just really powerfully taught me that oh wrong you know what even on your worst day you're not in a death camp right so if she can reframe her experiences in Auschwitz you can reframe them in your own life and that single realization has changed the way that I experience life it's changed the way I experience

stress and if I'm ever struggling I go what's the other perspective here how can I take a different perspective on the situation which would mean it would not be as stressful so I've had over 500 conversations many of them have left a profound effect on me but if you make me choose it would still be that conversation with that 93 year old lady Edith Eager what a beautiful and powerful woman that's so special thank you so much for joining us today we are so grateful to be chatting to you from the other side of the world but we might not have to chat to you from the other side of the world for very long because you are coming to visit us in melbourne sydney and brisbane in july we are going to have links to dr rungan chatterjee's social media podcast and tour in our

show notes thank you thank you thank you so much for joining us guys thank you very very much really enjoyed my chat and i cannot wait to be in australia this summer so we're coming for a family holiday and those three dates and we cannot wait well if you have some time in sydney we'd love to show you around and if you would like to have a chat in person i mean i don't necessarily want to make you work more on your family holiday but if you've got the time we would love hey why listen let me check it out and if so yes i'll see you guys in sydney i look forward to it you would love that take care guys bye