The Food Medic - S2 E4 - Stress with Dr. Rangan Chatterjee

Episode Date: January 2, 2019

In this episode, Hazel is joined by a fellow doctor, and lifestyle medic, Dr Rangan Chatterjee. Last year Rangan brought out a best-selling book titled the four pillar plan, which offers a 360-degree approach to health, and has just released his second book the Stress Solution. Throughout the episode, they discuss what stress actually is and how it affects the body, the concept of micro and macro doses of stress, how to manage daily stresses and how to harness a morning routine as an effective stress management tool. Find more about Rangan at www.drchatterjee.com or on Instagram (@drchatterjee) and Twitter (@drchatterjeeuk). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What's better than a well-marbled ribeye sizzling on the barbecue? A well-marbled ribeye sizzling on the barbecue that was carefully selected by an Instacart shopper and delivered to your door. A well-marbled ribeye you ordered without even leaving the kiddie pool. Whatever groceries your summer calls for, Instacart has you covered. Download the Instacart app and enjoy $0 delivery fees on your first three orders. Service fees, exclusions, and terms apply. Instacart. Grocer $0 delivery fees on your first three orders. Service fees, exclusions and terms apply. Instacart, groceries that over-deliver. Hey guys, and welcome back to the Food Medic podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Hazel Wallace,

founder of The Food Medic. The Food Medic is a media platform aimed at bridging the gap between traditional medical advice and the latest thoughts and developments in nutrition and other areas of lifestyle. If you're new to the podcast, welcome to the family. Make sure to catch up on older episodes of the podcast and also check out the Food Medic across all social media platforms. So it's a brand new year 2019. That feels very weird to say so where do I start last year was a big year for me it was a year of hard work but also fresh starts and new opportunities um I guess I challenged myself to do some pretty ambitious things some things I kept up like crossfit others not so much like making my own sourdough every week so this year I've decided to not make a new year's resolution and to instead set myself mini goals for the month. I'll share with you at the end of this episode what I'm doing this month as I hope you will join me as part of this week's challenge and I promise

it'll be good for you. So today I'm joined by someone who I've known for quite a few years now. He's a fellow doctor and lifestyle medic. Last year he brought out a best-selling book titled The Four Pillar Plan which offers a 360 degree approach to health and he's just released his second book The Stress Solution which we will talk about more today in this episode. He's also a resident doctor on BBC One Breakfast, a regular commentator on BBC Radio and hosts his own podcast, Feel Better, Live More. So sit back, relax and enjoy. Rangan, welcome to the Food Medic podcast.

Hazel, thank you for having me. How are you? Yeah, I'm good. Feeling a little bit of stress actually, which is a tad ironic. I know. So by the time this podcast goes out, your new book has just been released tell us about the book yes the new book is called the stress solution and it's literally about you know trying to explain to people what stress is where it lives in our 21st century lives and then I guess most importantly what we can actually do about it for me Hazel it's not really about just setting out the problem. It's

more about trying to really engage with people so they understand what stress is, how it can be good for us in the right dose, but also what happens when it becomes a little bit prolonged, how it can affect every single organ in our body. It can affect us in the short term, but also the long term. And then really, you know, these are tried and tested solutions that actually patients of mine have fed back to me over the years of work so I really try to come up with very simple and practical tips that if people are feeling overwhelmed and stressed I hope that some of the tips I put in my book are going to really resonate with them. Yeah absolutely and I want to come back to that in a minute but first of of all, let's just go back in time. So your introduction to lifestyle medicine started with food like mine, and realising that food is essentially very much an underutilised component when it comes to medicine, when it comes to health. And now you've shifted your focus from food to stress. What made you change that viewpoint? And do you think that stress is actually more urgent

than under nutrition or malnutrition um i think food is a critical component of good health there's no question about that but genuinely if you were interviewing me five years ago and you said what's the most important lifestyle component that impacts the patients that you're seeing i probably would have said foods now if you pushed me on what the most important one is, I would personally probably say stress based on my experience. And that's because not only can stress, particularly the way we're living our modern lives now,

be so toxic on our bodies, but even if we're talking about food, often the reason we're choosing certain food choices might be because there's an underlying stress so i'll give you know an example sugar you know so many people now are trying to reduce how much sugar they're consuming yet having talked to patients about this for years now some people were able to do that but some people weren't able to they found it too tricky and too difficult and i find that often there's an underlying stress in their lives that

whether work's too busy they've got too many commitments they've got elderly parents they're also trying to look after whilst also looking after their kids and ultimately if we're super stressed we're going to use various lifestyle choices to compensate for that so we all know that feeling when we're home in the evening we've had a stressful day if there are some sweet treats there we often crave those sweet treats and we'll want to actually soothe our stress a little bit by using them so i think stress is a big underlying driver for many of the lifestyle choices we make whether it's poor food choices whether it's the fact that we aren't moving as much as we should do because we're feeling so stressed we just want to sit there and actually slump on the sofa watching tv in the evening for example and you know sleep as well stress is a huge component when it comes to are we going to be

able to switch off and fall asleep so is it more urgent than food i guess where i'm currently at in my thinking i'd probably say yes although I hate actually having to choose one over the other like a white thinking yeah okay so I won't make you do that and I definitely agree with you you know there's a huge connection and when it comes to components of lifestyle that is really what I wanted you to say that it's all interconnected you know like from sleep to stress management to diet to exercise all of that is intertwined so let's talk about what exactly goes on in the body when we're stressed and I know you mentioned that you know there's a little bit of stress is good and then when it's a lot of stress over a long period

of time that's when we run into problems so can you explain kind of what actually happens in the body yeah okay so the stress response is there for a reason. The stress response in many ways turns us into the best version of ourselves. So our stress response evolved a long time ago. It's pretty much the same stress response that we had, you know, about 2 million years ago. So it's a bit of a cliche, but if we think back to what would stress us out 2 million years ago, you know, the stress response was there pretty much to keep us safe. So let's say a wild animal is about to attack. Our stress response would kick into gear. So a series of physiological processes would happen in the body. So sugar would start pouring into our bloodstream, which is going to help us run faster. That's a good thing in the short term.

Our emotional brain would go on to high alert. so we are hyper vigilant for any threats that might be existing in our environment that's a good thing if you're in danger and you're you know you need to be hyper vigilant to what's going on around you in the short term your blood will become more prone to clotting that's a really really good thing because if you get attacked by the lion and cut then actually you don't want to bleed to death. You want your clotting mechanisms to kick into gear. So it's going to help save your life. These are all really, really good things. But so many other things happen when the stress response kicks into gear. But if we just take those three things and say, well, what happens if those short term things become long term? Well, if there's sugar pouring into your bloodstream to help you run faster in

the short term, but that's happening day in, day in day out well that's going to contribute to low energy it's going to contribute to weight gain ultimately that can contribute to things like high blood pressure and ultimately this is why stress is such a big component of type 2 diabetes is that stress can also drive your blood sugar up so something that works beautifully for us in the short term becomes harmful if it's not switched off. We talk about the emotional brain. So in the short term, we're running away from a threat. Our emotional brain goes on high alert. Brilliant. But if day in, day out, your work is stressing you out and therefore your emotional brain is on high alert, suddenly you're going to become anxious. You're going to interpret simple emails as being problematic. You know, an innocent glance in the corridor at work, you're going to think,

oh, you know, has someone got a problem with me or have I done something? Is my boss about to sack me? You know, blood clotting. In the short term, your blood being prone to clotting, that's a good thing. But if that's happening day in, out well blood clots are you know one of the big causes of heart attacks and strokes so the stress response is there for a reason not all stress is bad at all exercise the right dose and the right intensity of exercise it's a stressor on the body but the body adapts and it becomes resilient and it grows back stronger yet if you kill it in the gym when you're already back it actually the same exercise can start to become too much of a stress on your body and start to have negative consequences so it's really not about demonizing stress it's trying to understand what stress is and then try and figure out how we can change it and i guess

you just said it there as well it's about the the dose, but also the frequency. And one of the things that you talk about in the book is kind of micro and macro stresses. So can you explain what the difference is there? Yeah. So many of us have experienced, you know, really significant stresses in our life, whether it's trauma, abuse, maybe bereavements, these kinds of things. These are things that i would call macro stress doses these are large doses of stress life-changing yeah exactly that probably require you to deal with them talk to a therapist maybe and go through a process of actually processing that emotion and and sort of coming to terms with it now i've got this concept called a personal stress threshold. So all of us have our own personal stress threshold. Basically we can wake up and we can deal with multiple stresses

in our life up to a point. When we get close to our threshold or we tip over our threshold, that's when everything starts to go wrong. We feel stressed, we feel anxious, we become overreactive, we become overly emotional, we become angry. And so if you have had several macro stress doses in your life, you are probably living each day to day much closer to your personal stress threshold than you would be otherwise. And so therefore, it's really important that I help these people get on top of the micro stress doses in their lives and micro stress doses are the little things that in isolation aren't actually that much but when you add them all up on top of each other actually they bring you closer to your stress threshold does this make sense so far yeah no absolutely yeah and so

you know an example would be my inbox for me as well email inboxes are a huge source of my stress i sort of write about this in the introduction about a typical case where you know someone could wake up and i would say micro stress dose number one is that alarm jolting you out of your deep sleep okay so then you press snooze because you're like oh i'm knackered i don't want to get up yet and then you wake up 20 minutes later you're already rushing because you're running out, you know, you're running late. That's micro-stress dose number two. You switch on your phone and you say, oh, there's a notification from the gas company saying, oh, you're not paid your latest gas bill. Micro-stress dose number three. Four WhatsApp messages that you've not got back to that you need to get back to. Micro-stress dose

number five. You're rushing around, you put some toast in the toaster, get ready, and then, oh no, the toast is burnt. Micro-stress dose number number seven and before you know it many of us before we've left the house and let's abbreviate micro stress dose to msd which is what i do in the book is you might have had 10 or 15 msds before you've even stepped out of your front door and why is that important well what that means is that you are much closer to your own personal stress threshold. And so therefore, suddenly you get into a fight with your work colleague, or you get cut up on the roads, and you have this moment of road rage. Whereas if you had actually left the house with only two or three MSDs as opposed to 10 or 15, you are much further away from your stress threshold. So

really, this concept of micro and macro stress doses help people to understand that hey there is a difference i'm not trying to say all stress is the same at all but most of the things i see day in day out in my practice now are just an accumulation of micro stress doses from the minute we wake up to the minute we go to sleep and that's why i think the world health organization are calling stress the health epidemic of the 21st century because it is endemic and it's everywhere. Yeah and we talked about how a little bit of stress is actually essential particularly for survival but also for like performance. So how do we as individuals know what our own threshold is because mine might be higher than yours or yours might be higher than mine. When am I approaching that threshold? And when am I going to tip over the edge?

And how do I prevent it? Yeah, I think Hazel, that's, you know, such a good question, because they are all different. And it depends on the various things that have happened in our respective lives, what we've got going on at the moment. You know, one thing I think has happened more and more as we become a stressed out society is that we become a little bit disconnected from our bodies we're so busy every time we've got a bit of downtime we fill it up with other things and i think that means that we've lost the connection as to when we might be feeling stressed i think that a lot of people simply understanding the difference between micro stress doses and macro stress doses is really useful for them to start looking at their life and saying, oh, right, I get it.

That's why on a Thursday after the office meeting, I'm really wound up because it's just an accumulation of stresses throughout the week. Whereas on a Monday morning, I'm actually really calm. And actually that same meeting with my work colleagues doesn't really bother me. I think even just that level of awareness starts to help people make changes. But importantly, you know, you ask, what can you do about it? And I think I'm not giving people a prescription that they need to do this or they need to do that. What I'm trying to do is offer them a lot of different options and say, hey, look, these are things that have worked for many of my patients. If you don't like one of them, don't do it. Don't do something that doesn't feel comfortable to you,

but do the things that actually resonate with you. And you think, hey, you know what? That's only five minutes. I reckon I could fit that in. And that's how I think we can start moving away from our stress threshold. So someone might be listening to this right now and they might think, hey, that fictional case you said of that lady or that man who leaves the house with 10 to 15 micro stress doses that's me and just knowing that instead of leaving the house with 15 msds if we can apply some principles and get that down to 10 msds that's going to make a difference that's going to mean you're a little bit more resilient and so in the morning for example i'm a huge fan of what i call in the book zoning in which is a bit like basically a morning routine okay i think if you are that person who wakes up late and it's just go go go and pressure from the minute you wake up can you get up a tad earlier is the first question the

second thing is even if you can't what happens if you have five minutes or 10 minutes of calm first thing in the morning that's something that I've put into my own life over the last few months and it has made a phenomenal difference not only in how I feel after those 10 minutes but how I feel throughout the day because I just feel that that bit of calm means that I've just got a bit more reserve in the tank now to deal with everything that I've got going on in the day and when I don't't have that morning routine, I feel I'm just a little bit more reactive. Little things start to bother me. Someone says something on social media and I'm, you know, it starts to bother me. Whereas when I'm feeling really calm, it just is like water off a duck's back. And so look, you know, a morning routine is something I think we would all benefit from, but it doesn't have

to be scary. You know, if you have an hour in the morning, sure, make it an hour. But if you've only got 10 minutes, make it 10 minutes. So one of my options is what I call the three M's of the morning routine. So that would be meditation, movement, and mindset. And that's literally what I do every morning at the moment. So I'll get up, my phone, I'll put it on, I'll put it in airplane modes so that i don't start reacting to what the world wants me to react to so i'm in control i'm a huge fan of the calm meditation app at the moment so i'm i'm a big fan of that too yeah so that's literally how i start every morning i just press play and i sit there for maybe 10 minutes and do their meditation now what i try and do and i'm sure many of your listeners will have children and i've got two

young kids eight and six i try and get this done before they're awake but it doesn't always work so what's happening at the moment is i finished my first m i'm on to my second m which is a bit of movement this can be literally two or three minutes of some yoga stretches it can be some flexibility work it's just a little bit of movement to get my body moving first thing in the morning often my daughter who just turned six will turn up at that point actually what is great you know the old me would have been frustrated that that's got in the way of my morning routine but she just joins in she's oh daddy you're on the second m now said yeah okay come on this she does some movement with me and then the third thing is mindset and mindset is just anything to put you in a positive frame of mind

so that could be two or three minutes of reading a really positive book that you're reading you know and that's something I often will do sometimes with my daughters there I'll do affirmations affirmations are just short powerful statements in the present sense that you repeat several times to try and feed your brain information that actually everything's good everything is calm and so one that my wife used to do is I'm happy I'm calm I'm stress-free now it sounds ridiculous how will that make a difference yeah you go and look in PubMed there's actually quite a bit of science on what affirmations can do one study showed that affirmations in undergraduate students improve their exam performance so with my daughter often we'll

just sit there for two minutes, hold hands, and we'll just say, I'm happy, I'm calm, I'm stress-free. And we just repeat that for a minute or two. And I feel calm. I feel relaxed. My daughter feels amazing when she's doing it with me. You know, that's something that people might want to consider. Some people may say, that's all very well for you, but you know, I've got kids at home. There's no way I can do that in the morning i said okay fine you know i think first thing in the morning is the best time but if you can't do that what about when you drop the kids at school do you have five or ten minutes

straight after that where before you get into your day you have five or ten minutes of calm one of my patients actually she drops her kids she drives to work and in the car park before she goes into work she does 10 minutes and in the car park before she goes into work she does 10 minutes of meditation in the car before she goes in again it's had a huge difference on her life and so I really don't want to be too prescriptive I'm trying to give people suggestions and ideas that they can personalize into their own life but if people are listening and thinking oh I quite fancy that I said give it a go try it for seven days and see how you feel at the end of it yeah because that's what I was going to ask you about I personally find it very difficult to advise

on stress management because I think it's such a personal thing and you've just described a really lovely morning routine but that's personal to you so when you're sitting down with someone and you can tell from what they've told you the story they've told you the you know the shape of their life that they're very stressed where do you start do you sit down and go through the micro stresses that they see every day and try tackle it one at a time do you encourage they journal it kind of like you would with a food diary and pick out the triggers where does someone start yeah the reality is it varies from patient to patients because these are the things i've learned in nearly 18 years of seeing patients now that there is no

one-size-fits-all i find hazel that what i'm trying to do when a patient's sitting in front of me is listen carefully and see what actually makes them tick what are the sort of pinch points with them that i think is going to help to inspire them to make change? What I will recommend one patient for stress will be completely different with another patient depending on their lifestyle, what's going on, where they're feeling those pinch points. The difficulty I have when I then try and write a book about it is, well, I really believe in personalized approaches. So then how do you write a book that allows people to personalize it? And of course, it's a very challenging thing to do. And the way I've tried to do it is really take a very kind and compassionate approach and say, hey, look,

it doesn't matter if you can't do this. You don't have to do 20, 30 minutes of this a day. Even a few minutes will help. If this approach doesn't work for you, find the stuff that you feel resonates with you so breathing for example is a great one a lot of us we never think about our breath yet breathing is fundamental to life yes of course we're all breathing otherwise we wouldn't be here but when we're stressed and anxious our breathing starts to speed up so a very simple way that we can start to de-stress and relax is to focus a little bit on our breathing and there are so many breathing techniques out there my own personal favorite is one that i came up with in practice a few years ago which is the three four five breath and

basically our nervous systems we can think about them in two broad parts certainly overly simplified but i think it's a useful way to think about it. Your sympathetic nervous system, which is the fight or flight part of the nervous system, and your parasympathetic, which is the relaxation part of your nervous system, very crudely. And anytime your out-breath is longer than your in-breath, we start to wind down the sympathetic nervous system activity. So we actually help to promote relaxation in the body so the three four five is just a simple thing where you would breathe in for three hold for four and breathe out for five and i've got patients who repeat that maybe five or six times it only takes about a minute a minute and a half i've got one patient who's a teacher in a very stressful job and works with special needs children and has really suffered with anxiety a

lot and often used to go out really suffered with anxiety a lot and often used to go out at lunchtime smoke a lot of cigarettes just to help deal with the stress that they're ready for the afternoon I remember teaching him the 3-4-5 breath in my clinic and he was pretty skeptical if I'm honest at first of course I did many other things as well but I said hey look you know I think this is something that you might be able to use in the day so you actually have a bit more reserve and resilience for the afternoon and he said all right doc you know I'll give it a go so he goes off and he does it I see him four to six weeks later he absolutely loves it he does it for five minutes at the start of his lunch break and five minutes right at the end he goes into his car in the car park and does it in there

and he says he just feels a lot calmer in the afternoon he doesn't find that the job stresses him out it's just a way of resetting at lunchtime and i think here's there's a wider point there which is these little moments of calm that we all used to have built into our lives are slowly being eroded out so a lunch break for example for many of us now we're stuck at our computer with our smartphone or you know trying to catch up emails whilst we're eating now look i'm not criticizing i do this as well often i try not to but sometimes i will do it and lunchtime could be really a time for recharging your batteries for the afternoon even something as simple as a 15 10 minute walk without

your phone at lunchtime can be incredibly beneficial. And I tell this to a lot of people who work in offices, put your phone in your drawer, go outside for a 10 minute walk and just see the difference it makes. These are small things, Hazel, but and they almost sound trivial as if what's that really going to do? But you do a few of these things every single day and very quickly people start to feel a bit more control a bit more agency over their lives yeah i completely agree and i think i definitely definitely use breathing practices when i'm working myself and if anything it helped me get through the most stressful periods within my foundation years and just taking time out even on the ward to just breathe for for a minute and it's something that

I always advise and particularly when I'm asked to go into workplaces and talk about how they can enhance wellness in the workplace like breathing techniques are just and reclaiming your lunchtime like you just said we all deserve a lunch break any time that you can have to just sit down and I want to bring it back to work because there's an incredible and astonishing stat that each person on average lost 25.8 days from work last year due to stress depression or anxiety so my question to you and it's something I'm asked quite often is how can employers harness stress management practices in the workplace what can they be doing better? Yeah I mean this is a big big question very topical because this is there's a real financial

reason why a lot of employers now are thinking about this because people taking days off work is not only a problem on a medical level on an individual person and their family which is clearly as doctors that's our primary concern but i think a lot of employers are now recognizing this is a financial issue as well i think there's so many things that they can do I mean one of the top ones which is probably less tangible is that ultimately we all need to feel as that we've got some level of control over our lives and I think employees I certainly felt this in the past when you don't feel you've got any say over how your day goes how You are going to manage your workload. That is inherently quite stressful So I think trying to give people autonomy as much as possible. I think it's a really good thing

I think it's very short-sighted to really try and micromanage people because I don't think you get the best out of them I think they feel incredibly stressed when that happens But in terms of more tangible and practical things that people can do Saying openly that actually you know what we really care about your well-being and your stresses have a really open culture where employees feel they can talk to their employers imagine offices where let's say 1 p.m is lunchtime could they do something at 12 58 where they put on something in the in the open plan office where they have like a two-minute guided meditation or they all do a breathing practice together for two minutes.

I think those things would be really, really lovely because not only are they going to help people get into a nice relaxation state before their lunch, which is also going to help them digest their food better, and that's another side to this, encouraging nature breaks. You know, for years we've had smoking breaks. It's been okay for people to go to the smoking shelter well you know i quite like the idea of green breaks where

if people feel free that you know once maybe for 10 minutes every morning they can go out and go for a walk around the block if they need to they're going to come back more productive in fact i used to do this in my surgery when i worked in oldham i would i'd get in earlier probably getting around 7 15 do all my paperwork start seeing patients at 8 and at 10 30 in the morning I would literally have a 15 no 10 minute break in my surgery so they wouldn't book a patient and they just would delay it for 10 minutes and I put that in I insisted on that with management and what I would do I would literally go around the block for 10 minutes just have aisk walk. And I'd come back and then I'd continue. And what they found actually, that I was still just as efficient. I was seeing all the patients that I needed to see. I was finishing on time. I was

being very efficient and effective because that 10 minute break, you know, it got me moving. It got me getting some fresh air. And I find that that was a really great thing for my own personal wellbeing, but for my work efficiency as well yeah i had to fight for that with my employer and i think it would be much better if employers were very open and say hey guys look you know we appreciate you work hard here if any of you feel like you want to go for a 10 minute walk at some point in the morning feel free to and so that's a simple thing that they could do i guess you know any works that can offer things like yoga at lunchtime or at the end of the day i think will be incredibly useful for people so these might sound quite out there but

i think they're absolutely achievable and all it takes is a few workplaces to start doing them i think many will follow suit yeah even if it's pre-work you know exercise classes or there's an incentive there because there is a huge amount of information and evidence to say that people who exercise have immediate beneficial effects on their brains or enhanced performance and we know this from studies done on like school kids in the states bringing back that into to make it normal to make movement normal and not the abnormal but you did touch on food and digestion and the impact that stress has on how we absorb food and we know this from you know conditions like irritable bowel syndrome which is massively linked to stress so what do we know when it comes to food and our mental health and

anxiety is there any foods that we can consume that alleviate symptoms and what foods can actually make symptoms worse? Yeah I mean food's a big topic when it comes to stress because I think many of us for years have not really associated food with our mental health or food with our stress and I think IBS is something I see so much in general practice it comes in multiple times every single day I think one stat says that 20% of us in the UK at some point will suffer from IBS type symptoms. And I used to always focus on food with those patients, but I realised for most of them, I couldn't get them really to a better place unless I also tackle their stress levels. And the reason is, is we've become aware of this

thing called the gut brain axis. So we've got our our guts down here we've got our brains up here we have known for years that stress coming into our brain has a negative impact on our guts we've known that but people intuitively know that if they're feeling nervous if they've got exam pressure or work pressure they can feel an urge to go to the toilet so that is emotional stress sending a signal down to your guts but in the last few years we've become aware now that how the gut brain communication works both ways so there are multiple communication pathways also from our gut that go up to our brain which is you know staggering to think about that and one of the ways that that's mediated is through our gut microbiome which is these trillions of microbes that live inside us now when those microbes get fed the right food,

they make something called short-chain fatty acids. Basically, these are compounds that have multiple beneficial effects on the body. One of them is that via the vagus nerve, they can send signals up to the brain. So I like to think of this as the food you consume, instead of just thinking about energy or calories, we can think of that food as information. Is that food sending your body information everything's okay, in which case

it's going to send calm signals to your brain? Or are you going to give your body food that actually is sending it stress signals? So you know, highly processed junk food, for example, which the gut bugs don't like, that's then going to send effectively stress signals to your brain. That's a very simplistic way that I try and break it down for people so how do we feed these gut bugs well we take out the foods that they don't like particularly well that's the sort of highly processed the junk foods really is what we're talking about the foods that they do like are the whole foods particularly colorful fruits and vegetables so you know one of the recommendations i make in the stress solution is to make your diet as diverse as possible. And the intervention is called Eat

the Alphabet. Can you eat 26 different plant foods every single month? And the whole idea is if you're eating a diverse diet, you're going to have much more diverse gut bugs, which in turn confers resilience in our body so I'm really passionate that lifestyle is very much underutilized and different people will be ready for different interventions at different stages in their life yeah it's like an adjunct to treatment for a lot of people and something that people can do at home and like you mentioned a few apps which are super helpful but technology can also be one of the triggers to a lot of our stress and we talked about micro stress doses and i think that even even if it's a positive

message that you get from someone that little ding that little stimuli is a stress response and i don't know about you rangan but i think we definitely need some guidance and some regulation when it comes to how we use these phones and technology do you talk about this in the book yeah a huge way a big part of it is on this it's not about demonizing technology because i think technology is brilliant but i do think it's like a new thing that we've got in our lives that we haven't quite yet figured out the good practice and i think you know i personally feel that protecting the start and the end of your day are really really important for mental well-being. That would be, you know, have your phone on airplane mode for the first half hour of the day if you can, an hour ideally.

And the same in the evening. You just start to quieten down the incoming noise. I think having some tech-free time every day is important for every single one of us. You know, there's all kinds of apps now. You know, you can actually monitor your screen usage on an app called moment or in the iphone now tells you each week and it's pretty staggering it's quite terrifying really especially when you use your phone for work but it for me i've actively been trying to get that number right down every week yeah well it's a good again that it applied there's a bit of gamification there this has

happened oh can i reduce that by next week? Personally, for me and for many of my patients, but certainly on a personal level, the most impactful thing I have done with my phone is to take off notifications. So whether I have a new like on my Instagram post, whether I've got a new tweet, I wouldn't know when I look at my phone. It sounds like a small thing, but I can tell you if you've never done it, it is absolutely life-changing because you suddenly are in control rather than your phone controlling you. But the other thing, you know, we talk about technology. I think the perfect

antidote to technology is nature. So technology and computers, you know, they sort of force us inward a little bit, whereas nature sort of is open and expansive. And one of the things I talk about is something called fractals. So fractals are these geometric shapes that you only see in nature. You see them in leaves and coastlines and trees. And actually, there's a lot of science now showing that when we look at fractals, our cortisol levels, which is one of the main stress response hormones in the body, start to go down. It's absolutely incredible. So it's as if we are hardwired as humans to be in nature from our, you know, millions of years of evolution. Even looking at a picture of nature does a very similar thing. And what makes me wonder, is this why Microsoft and Apple always

have nature pictures as their screensaver? So that's a simple thing people can do. Make sure your screensaver is nature or put a picture of nature up on your wall so people can sort of get what i call a daily dose of nature somehow into their lives that can be incredibly helpful at managing their stress levels absolutely um so we talked about when we were walking in here that everything's going on and obviously your book's just coming out and it's super stressful even if it's a good stress it's stressful time for you and I know your day-to-day life is going to be busy so I want to know how do you Rangan Chatterjee de-stress? Yeah so the first thing to openly admit is out of my four pillars of health which I talk about food movement sleep and

relaxation the one I struggle with the most is definitely the stress piece the relaxation piece I really do that's what I've been working on and that's why I'm so chuffed that over the last few months I finally managed to drill down to a regular meditation practice in the morning if I'm lucky enough to have 40 minutes in the morning I'll do it for 40 minutes sometimes it would just be 10 minutes but I'll always have a morning routine the odd day when I don't I feel it later and that in turn is motivation for me to not do it again yeah I never ever have phones at mealtimes I will always do a little bit of movement even if I can't get to the gym I will do like a little what I call a kitchen workout some squats and press-ups and lunges and I find that when I

do that you sort of burn off a bit of that stress energy I think probably my favorite part of the day for de-stressing is you know today obviously I'm in London talking to you I'm not going to be back for dinner time today but when I'm at home we play a little gratitude game at dinner every evening and you know I'd really encourage people listening to us to give it a go it literally is such a lovely part of our day. So what we do is that we all have to go around the table and answer three questions. What have I done today to make somebody else happy? What has somebody else done today to make me happy?

And what have I learned today? And, you know, if I'm honest, when I first heard about this game and I learned about it from a friend, I thought, oh, this is going to be really, really good for the kids. But you know what? It's pretty damn good for me as well and if we come into dinner time a bit stressed you know I've got loads of work going on or the kids I'm not a good day at school it changes the dynamic immediately we start to reflect on all the good that's happened in our day it's a a practice of gratitude, which we know has positive effects on our physical and mental well-being. And also, you end up learning stuff about each other that you wouldn't otherwise have known. One of the big problems of technology these days, I think, is that not only does it affect us, but it distracts us from those relationships that are meaningful to us. With our partners, often we can get back, but we're sort of half

there, but we're also half on our phone as well so this has a negative impact and that's why a quarter of my book is on relationships because i think not having close loving relationships can be a big source of stress yet stress itself could put a huge strain on our relationship so that's just a little game that has changed my life changed my family's life. The other thing I do, you know, the one hour before bed now, I'm pretty good most of the time. I will have a switch off point where I'm like, OK, now that's the day over. I'm on wind down for bed.

Laptop's closed. Phone goes off. I find for me the morning and the evening, you know, the two bookends of the day, if if I get those right normally that really helps me with my stress levels yeah I think that's a really nice note to wrap it up on and thank you so much for joining us today you've shared so much knowledge and information it's been such a pleasure but before you go where can we find the book the stress solution is out everywhere amazon every sort of bookshop you can see it everywhere so um if something you heard today resonates with you yeah do give it a go and where can we find more from you i'm on social media on facebook and instagram i'm at dr chatter g d r c h a t t e r j e

e on twitter it's at dr chatter uk or probably one of the best places in my podcast which is the feel better live more podcast which you can get everywhere. Wonderful. Thanks so much. Thanks, Hazel, for having me. Yay! Okay, guys, so that was Dr Rangan Chatterjee. I hope you enjoyed the episode

and picked up some tips on how to minimise stress in 2019. Before you go, as always, I have a challenge for you. This week, I'm challenging you to switch off your phone at least an hour before bed and to not sleep with it in your room. The reason I'm asking you guys to do this is because I've been doing it for the past couple of weeks and I'm finding it really

useful. It means I'm getting a sounder sleep. It means I'm not getting disturbed in the night and I'm waking up a lot more fresh. So please do give it a go even if it's just for the next week. If you're up for it, make sure to let me know on social media by using the hashtag thefoodmedicpodcast. Finally, a big happy new year from me. I'll see you again next time where we're going to hear from Laura Thomas and we're going to be talking everything about intuitive eating which is perfect for this time of the year when we are being bombarded by diet messages so make sure to tune in and I'll see you again next time