The Wellness Scoop - Dealing with Stress

Episode Date: January 22, 2019

70-90% of all GP consultations are related to stress. Dr Rangan Chatterjee talks to us about what’s going on with the stress epidemic, from what stress really is, to how it impacts on both our mind and our body; how it’s linked to a vast variety of conditions from fatigue to anxiety, gut problems, diabetes and lack of libido; why we need to get a handle on it and how to make positive changes, particularly when it comes to technology, social media, loneliness, friendship and affirmations. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, everyone, and welcome to the Delicious Yellow podcast with me, Matthew Mills, and my wife and business partner, Ella Mills. Hi, guys. So today, we're joined by the absolutely brilliant Dr. Chatterjee. And I've been following his work for the last couple of years and absolutely love the kind of holistic approach that he takes to medicine. He's been working as a doctor for about 20 years now but today we're going to focus all about stress and I've had a look at his most recent book which is brilliant and I was absolutely blown away by a quote that said stress is the biggest issue that you currently see in your clinic and you think that between 70 to 90% of the GP consultations that you're doing are related to stress in some way. And that just kind of completely blew my mind. And I think for us, running a business, it can be quite stressful.

And I think we both know that it's not what we should be doing being that stressed, but we end up being that stressed. And we've got a lot to learn from you. Well, I don't know about that. But there's a lot to talk about with stress i mean i definitely suffer from stress i think just as much as the next person and i think as you say it's something i see in my practice every single day not a day goes by as a doctor i see patients where i don't feel um you know many of their symptoms are in some way related to stress. And that statistic you mentioned, that comes from a paper that was published in America, I think it was the Journal of the American Medical Association a few years ago published that and said, we think around 70%

to 90% of all GP consultations are in some way related to stress. And it's an incredible statistic. I mean, it blew me away. Like I had absolutely no appreciation of the extent to which that was an issue. Well, what's interesting, Ella, is that, you know, there are symptoms that people come in to see their GP with symptoms typically, you know, they like lack of libido, gut problems like Irritable Bowel Syndrome, even things like type 2 diabetes, we can in some way relate them physiologically to stress. And can you define stress in its most basic form? Yeah, I think if we think about stress, I think what we need to do is go back a couple of million years ago to when we were evolving and when our stress response basically came about. So if we rewind two million years, for example, our stress response evolved to keep us safe.

It's a bit of a cliche now, but we would be, let's say, being attacked by a lion. In that instant, we had to kick in our stress responses so that we could run away from that lion and get to safety, right? That's a good thing. So what happens? Well, many things happen. One thing that happens is that sugar pours out of your liver, pours out of your muscles and goes into your bloodstream. Why does it do that? It does that so you can run faster. That makes sense in the short term. If you're getting stressed day in, day out, every single day, that sugar pouring into your bloodstream is no longer helpful. It's really harmful. It will cause weight gain. It could cause mood issues. It could even

contribute to the development of something that's epidemic now, type 2 diabetes, just from stress. So, you know, type 2 diabetes, everyone talks about diet, which of course is a significant contributor, but it ain't just diet. You know, I've got some patients in my practice who I've managed to put their type 2 diabetes into remission, not by addressing their diet. The diet was actually already pretty good, yet they still had blood sugar issues. I figured out that they were really, really stressed. And once I taught them some simple stress management techniques, I was able to get their blood sugar under control. So that's just one example with blood sugar, how something in the short term that's helpful becomes harmful in the long term. But another thing that's reaching, you know,

that many people, not just middle-aged people are suffering from now. I see a lot of guys in their 20s coming in to see me with lack of libido. It's a big problem, one of the biggest causes of that. And presumably something as well we're not talking about that much because one of those issues that people are a bit nervous about raising. People are really nervous, particularly guys in their 20s. They're really nervous and they actually feel really good when I say, hey, look, you know, I've seen loads of guys like you this week who are coming in with the same problem. It feels, I think for all of us, no matter what we're suffering from, it feels good on one level to know that, oh, there's other people like me out there. Totally.

But what's really interesting when we think about stress and libido, one of our primary stress response hormones is something called cortisol. Now, cortisol is made from its precursor, which is something called LDL cholesterol. Now, why is made from its precursor, which is something called LDL cholesterol. Now, why that's important is this. LDL cholesterol then gets converted to cortisol when your body needs it. But LDL cholesterol can also go down a different path. Instead of going to cortisol, it can go to other hormones, what we call the sex steroid hormones, such as estrogen, also the hormone testosterone. So, normally, if your system is in balance and you're not too stressed and you're getting on with your everyday life, LDL cholesterol gets partitioned off really nicely where it should do.

A little bit goes to cortisol, a little bit goes to testosterone, a little bit goes to estrogen, et cetera, et cetera. That's brilliant. But if you're stressed, and you're chronically stressed day in, day out, basically all your body's resource is spent going down to cortisol. So you have very little left to go down to testosterone or oestrogen. And why that's relevant is that in medicine, we will often treat downstream symptoms. So we all say, oh, you've got low testosterone, we'll give you testosterone. Or like women, for example, who might be suffering from hormonal problems, often will consider giving them hormones. Again, these things have value. But more often than not, if you go upstream, you go, actually, if we can address the stress levels here, we might be able to impact

the symptoms. And I'm finding that more and more. And what are the three best tools you give for stress management then when you diagnose them? It has to be personalised. But if I just take a step back, what are some common things that I give to a lot of people? Well, technology is brilliant, there's no question, but technology is also a huge form of stress. You know, we're told that we're more connected than ever before now. But when we're talking about meaningful human connection, I would argue based on what I see in my GP practice, I think we've never been more isolated. Yeah, you had this brilliant quote that today's online relationships are quote, the nutritional equivalent of fizzy pop and a

chocolate bar for breakfast. Yeah. Which I thought really summarised quite how bad you felt it was, which I thought was incredibly interesting. To be clear, I love social media. I love technology, right? So this is not... No, but how potentially bad it is, sorry. Yeah, yeah. No, no, I absolutely agree, Ella.

It's, you know, there are ways to use technology in a helpful way and there are ways to use it in a way that it starts to harm us. If we are using every bit of downtime in our day mindlessly scrolling social media i think that can be a problem and i've you know also waiting for the next dopamine hit of just waiting for that next message that you're desperate to get as an addiction almost i'll give you one example about six years ago in my gp, I saw a 16-year-old boy come in. It was a Monday

afternoon. I was, you know, I was running late in the afternoon, so we already have three patients waiting outside. And the 16-year-old chap comes in, and he comes in with his mother, and he hands me a letter. And basically, he had turned up to A&E on the Saturday having tried to harm himself. Now A&E had assessed him, they had, you know, they'd had a look what was going on, they thought he was safe to discharge, but they wrote him a letter saying give this to your doctor on Monday and ask him to consider prescribing antidepressants for you. Now the easiest thing in the world would have been for me to write a prescription, give it to him. I would have saved a bit of time on my consultation and would have started to catch up. Boom, done my job. I just couldn't do it. I just thought, I don't get this. I saw some know this family. They seem reasonably well balanced. I don't really understand why a 16 year old boy is trying to harm

himself. So I spent a bit of time with him trying to understand what was going on. I asked him questions. And by the end of that consultation, I really had a strong sense that his use of social media wasn't helping him. So I said, hey, Devin, look, obviously one option is I can prescribe you an antidepressant. But from chatting to you, I think you have an unhealthy relationship with your phone. And I think that is contributing to your mental health problems. He said, really? I said, yeah. I said, would you like me to help you understand what will help you actually start reducing that? He goes, yeah, sure. So you've got to understand that he's a 16 year old boy, but he's, you know, he's desperate for help because he's just rocked up in A&E. So he's willing to listen to what I've got to say so I said okay Devin for the next week

for one hour before bed I want you to switch your phone off and you know I'll see you back in a week obviously if you're feeling bad in the meantime call me and I'll help you but why don't we try that anyway he goes away comes back a week later I said Devin how you doing and he said you know I still don't feel great but there's something's changed I'm sleeping sleeping better. I've got more energy. I'm less up and down during the day. I think my mood's a little bit more stable. I said, okay, that's great. Brilliant. Shall we start increasing that? So over the next few weeks, I increased that to being two hours in the morning and two hours before bed. And bit by bit, he's starting to say, yeah, I'm feeling better and better. He's still not still not great i'm not trying it wasn't a miraculous reversal right about six weeks in um i'd also been reading about how our food can

affect our mood i said hey devon what are you eating and he said you know it was it was a typical teenage boy teenage boy diet you know lots of sugary drinks lots of fizzy drinks lots of sugary junk food from morning all the way through the day until evening. And I said, did you know that the food you're eating is a huge stress on your body? And actually, that when you're having that blood sugar crash mid morning, because you're eating something really sugary in the morning, two hours later, your sugar is falling rapidly, your stress response hormones, cortisol and adrenaline will go up then. And that will impact your mood hormone. So that's not just an energy problem or a hunger problem. That could also be a mood problem. He said, really? I said, yeah, would you like me to help you understand how to change your diet? So,

you know, I did quite a few things with him, but he didn't go to a whole food organic diet. What he did do is just have more healthy natural fats throughout the day. He'd have more avocados, nuts. He'd take nuts and olives with him to school to snack with. And he found his mood was a lot more stable. It's not the social media that's the problem. It's how we use it. If we're using it from the minute we wake up to the minute we go to sleep and we're just passively consuming things. And, you know, I think we're all susceptible to this. Totally. I mean, how do you guys find it running your businesses? Do you ever do you ever kept it down on social media? Yeah, 100%. I think I think it's exactly that, which is that even though you know, that of course, it's a kind of highlights reel, it's a space for

inspiration ideas connecting with people. But I think as you said, it's it's just being really quite strict with yourself in a sense, like if you're in a great mood and you're sitting on the bus on your way to work and you're just scrolling through seeing what your friends are doing being like oh amazing I'm so happy for them having a great time but if you can't sleep and it's one o'clock in the morning and you're stressed and you're worried about stuff and you go online and you get sucked into that vortex of social media where you suddenly end up looking at someone's cousins friends sisters like god knows what you you know, you can, you start to think, oh, well, I'm doing this and I'm doing that. And I'm really stressed about this. I'm

stressed about that. And they look like they're really happy. And I feel really left out. And you can immediately get so down on yourself and it can 100% heighten your insecurities. And so I do think you have to be very, very strict with yourself. But I think listening to you, I think one of the things that kind of keeps coming up in my mind is like, I don't know if we, you always say that the only way to kind of change something is to be brutally honest with yourself. And I think that we're actually also often not that honest with ourselves, like, because we don't want to make the changes. We all kid ourselves, I kid myself on this. Totally, like, I'm not stressed, I'm not overwhelmed, I'm not overworked like I'm not stressed I'm not overwhelmed I'm not overworked I'm not

this I'm not that and you know trying to fit everything into modern life is really challenging yeah and I read that again when I was when I was looking through your book is that you know the sense of for example like friendship how important like you know human physical touches for example you know and like all the medical benefits you talked about of that but yeah we deprioritize our friendships because we're so busy because we've got to achieve that and we've got to achieve this you know what's really interesting is that and i was guilty of this for a few years and probably still am to a certain degree i'm really trying to change it but because we're so busy and because we see what our

friends are doing on social media we feel less of a need to actually see them in real life exactly there's been a massive surge in people who go out for lunch and dinners on their own now because they can just sit there on their phone and they don't feel like they need to interact with people so it means in in some ways it's a good thing because people feel like they've got company but in another way it's like if you do that too often you're probably cutting yourself off it's a massive thing it's a massive thing and i realized the last years i had probably deprioritized without realizing it my really close group of friends, who are still my group of friends from uni when I was there at Edinburgh.

And we all live hundreds of miles away. So, you know, that's almost an excuse as well. But, you know, for us, what we decided to do, we made a firm commitment that twice a year, we're going to get together for a golf weekend. Yeah, nice. And it's not, you know, we say golf, it's not about the golf. Actually, it's just about, that's the excuse that gets us together. I have the same thing where I went to university in America.

So I see my friends on social media and they're like, it looks like they're having a great time and I won't then check in for a few weeks. Then you actually do check in. You actually realize that something actually really important in their life has happened that maybe they wouldn't be sharing on social media. You just get this completely wrong lens yeah and it's a great point and i say to people that seeing your friends in real life yeah it's not a luxury it's an absolute necessity for good quality health and well-being and i can tell you male loneliness is on the rise and we're seeing it in a big big way loneliness is becoming

quite an epidemic isn't it and there's always the thought that loneliness is with the elderly but it seems it's actually not now at all it's with the younger generation males aged between 30 and 45 are one of the loneliest groups that we have which in some way is linked to the increased rates of male suicides and a lot of men just either don't have friends or they don't see them and with the advent of things like pubs closing all over the country um you know those those sort of social meeting places where people i don't you know guys and girls of course would go they're suddenly being eroded away and you know there's less of this opportunity so if we're living these isolated lives now you know that is a that is an insult to the body i don't know if you knew this or not we say this a lot ella and i you know we feel like we got great company because we work together with each other

the whole time we're literally with each other but you know we go we can go like several weeks without seeing our friends because we've just got so much happening but we feel like we kind of got company because we've got each other and then we finally get to go out for dinner with our friends or something like oh my god wasn't that absolutely and it always like the hour before you're like oh my god do you actually think we should go yeah we've got so much work to do so much work so oh my god i wish we hadn't put this dinner and then invariably we get home we're like oh my god we're so glad we did that the point there is i think that really resonated with me is that our to-do lists in the 21st century are never done. There is always

something else to do, right? Whether you run an online business or whether, you know, you've got a more sort of regular stereotypical structured job, I think there's always stuff to do. There's always another email to answer. There's always a WhatsApp to get back to, always, you know, your social media to check. so we've got to start diarising in those important things that nourish us in a different way we've got to start putting in the diary you know our next date with our friends you know we've made a vow that this group of four friends like there's always got to be another date in the diary we've got to get a date in one of the things that I just wanted to note because I found it quite interesting and there

was this this moment of me when I was reading the book for a second that I was like yeah but I'm sure this is all just a psychological benefit and then I got to the point where you said but for example on human touch and the importance of those kind of nurturing intimate relationships that the benefits of affection and human touch are things like lowering your heart rate lowering your lowering your blood pressure reducing cortisol levels raising levels of natural killer cells. Like there's actually also like a real kind of biological benefit to this as well. And I just really would love you to kind of touch on that for a second. For those who are thinking, oh, it's all, you know, wishy-washy. It's not wishy-washy. No, it really isn't. And that's, it's a great point you bring up, you know,

being lonely, being socially isolated is a biological insult to your body. You get inflamed when you feel isolated. If you get socially rejected, we can measure, you know, one hour later, your markers of information have gone up. Why? Because on an evolutionary level, if we were left out by ourselves, we could be prone to getting attacked or being in trouble so our body would prime itself and put you know the immune system would go into overdrive and we'd be getting inflamed to help protect us in case we get injured which is just incredible and you then fast forward to you know now and where loneliness is on the rise we think this is changing our body you know being lonely is as

harmful for your health as smoking 15 cigarettes a day, right? It's crazy. It's absolutely crazy. And we haven't really had that appreciation. The public, even us as doctors, I don't think we've had that appreciation. But you mentioned one aspect, which I think is probably my favorite chapter in the book is the one on touch. I was really, really proud of this chapter because I was learning as I was writing it. I didn't know that much about it, but I came across this really great professor, Francis McGlone, who has done a lot of the world's top research on touch receptors. And basically, our skin has got touch receptors, as we well know. But when you stroke your skin,

or someone else strokes your skin, you've got special nerve fibers that read that, and it goes all the way up to your emotional brain. If you don't stroke your skin, you're not feeding those nerve fibers. You're not feeding one of these primitive pathways in your body. So we know that touch absolutely will lower your stress levels, which is why people enjoy going for massages. And for many of us, it was quite a provocative line in the book, but I think I talk about that for many of us, and I'm not going to look at eye contact either. My wife's not here. But many of us, you know, we're touching our curvy iPhones, more than we're touching our partners. Yeah. And, you know, on some level, there's an uncomfortable truth there that actually,

do you know what I'm saying 100 it's really depressing like we all i mean i think most people listening to this and we know i think i've definitely talked about this with friends i think we're all guilty of it like we get into bed and there are all those memes going around the internet of kind of modern couples and we're just sitting in bed on our phones and we're all having affairs with our iphones basically and it's it's it's a big it's a huge huge issue but it's because it's addictive isn't it it is addictive and look this stuff ain't going away no so we've got to learn to live with it we've got to put in new sort of i kind of feel that we're you know technology really in this shape and form that

we see it now is maybe 10 15 years old if that's and i kind of think we need some good tech rules yeah you know a bit like we've got good sleep rules, what we call sleep hygiene rules. I think we also now need some good tech rules. We can't be on tech 24-7. I think we all need to create some boundaries where, like three simple things I often talk to people about with tech is, what about in your lunch break? Try and have a lunch break without tech. With a book. With a book or you meet a friend for lunch and you communicate with him rather than being distracted with a phone. Again, I'm not criticising, as I say, I struggle with this as well. So, you know, trying to have a tech-free lunch out, even if it's just a walk

around the block or a walk in your local park, hugely beneficial. I think switching off notifications for me has been game-changing because those notifications from your phone, every time someone's liked your latest Instagram post or your Facebook post or you've got a new email, these things mean you're never, ever going to be in control. But it's addictive, right? Because it releases dopamine when you get one of these things, which is addictive.

And so you're constantly looking for that next hit. You are. And I didn't realise how life-changing it would be doing it. But for me now, when I look at my phone, I don't know if I've got 20 emails waiting or zero emails. I don't know if someone's liked my Instagram post or not because I've got to automatically refresh my email inbox. I've got to go into the app and have a look. And it allows me to just have a bit more calm around it.

And I guess the third tip I give people is to try and actually have your social interactions where possible without your phone so what i mean by that is you know if you're going out for dinner with a friend just leave your phone at home leave it home or put it in you know put it in your bag in your bag put it in your coat pocket and there's a study which came out recently shows even if the phone is on the table turned face down it still distracts you from the conversation you're having you just keep looking and so I think that's a good tip but the other one is like and I've been guilty of this sometimes you you know I come home from day at work and you know I come home see my wife

and I'm distracted because I'm sort of half saying hi and I'm half kind of yeah also checking my phone or just getting back to something and I'm not present so I'm distracted because I'm sort of half saying hi and I'm half kind of also checking my phone or just getting back to something. And I'm not present. So I really try and put my phone away and say, okay, I'm now going to say hi to my wife, say hi to the kids. I'm literally not on my phone around for 10 minutes and just really, you know, be present with that interaction. I know these things sound wishy-washy and really soft. No, but also there's so much about how also being present is the thing that makes you happiest in the world. And so, which can only be good for your stress levels. So people dealing with stress without trying to overgeneralize, we talked about less

technology, more time with friends or loved ones. You say that the majority of your patients don't need a pill, they need a lifestyle prescription. What are the other things that people can really try and tap into that may be able to help them? Yeah, when it comes to stress, and if we're sort of focusing on how stress impacts the body, that it's really important to understand that it works both ways. So what I mean by that is, what we do with the food that we eat, the physical activity we take, the sleep that we get or we don't get, can be a stress on the body. But also when we're stressed, it can impact those things. So let's take food, for example, right? Why is there a whole chapter on food and a book on stress? Well, we know that the food that we eat can absolutely be a stressor on the body. As you guys know, there's something called the gut

microbiome, this, you know, the idea that we've got trillions of gut bugs that live inside us and some scientists are calling those gut bugs our brains peacekeepers yeah we had uh dr megan rossi on um on an earlier episode we talked about it was fascinating something like 70 of the immune system lives they're saying lives inside the gut which is yeah which is incredible but what why that's empowering for us is that we now know it works both ways. So for example, let's say you get stressed by, you know, too much work, right? So those stress messages come to your brain and that can send messages down to your gut. We intuitively know that when, you know, if people are stressed, they're taking an exam, they often feel the urge sometimes to go to the toilet because there are messages from your

brain that come down to your gut. But we also know it works the toilet because there are messages from your brain that come down to your gut. But we also know it works the other way. So messages from your gut can send information to your brain. So if you can put the right food in your mouth, you can basically from your gut, send messages up to your brain that everything is okay, that you're not in danger, that you're living a calm, stress-free life. And, you know, one of the simplest ways of trying to encourage you to, you know, have a healthy population of gut bugs is by eating a wide variety of colourful vegetables and fruits to a certain degree. But the more colours you can get in, the better.

They help to feed those gut bugs. Those gut bugs, when they're fed well, will send calm signals to your brain rather than stress signals. So stress and food is absolutely linked the other reason it's linked is because when we're super stressed we tend to eat crappy food yeah yeah we crave junk food yeah it impacts it seems as well i don't know it'd be so interesting to hear from you but i always find it seems i was with friends and family that stress seems to affect either us in one of two ways either it it makes us just crave really sugary junk food and just taking a lot of comfort in food comfort eating,

or I've got friends, for example, when they're really stressed, they just can't eat. I don't eat. I'll be talking to Ella if Ella's out of the office, and some days I'll talk to her at four o'clock and be like, oh my God, I literally have not eaten today. Because you're so stressed that you can't fathom yeah but if you what's interesting about that when you go back to the evolutionary story when you're running away from

that tiger or that lion your body will kick in the stress response but it will switch off things that are not deemed important at that time so you know libido for example gets switched because we're stressed. We don't need to procreate when we're running away from a tiger, right? And likewise, we don't need to eat at that time. We don't got time to sit down and chill and eat. So it switches off digestion, which is one of the reasons why appetite goes in some people. One of the reasons why gut problems are so stress related. It was all bowel syndrome, which affects what maybe 20% of the UK population at some point, which is just incredible. I've realised that the way I can get my patients better

is, yes, by tackling their diet, but almost always I need to tackle their stress levels as well. Because if you think about the gut is linked to the brain and the brain is linked to the gut, if you only tackle it from one side, you're not tackling the other signals that are coming down. So I think that's, food's a big one, exercise, you know, we all know we should be moving more. But again, we think about what our stress response

does, it primes us for physical activity. So our body is getting geared up with our stress response to actually be active, to run away. But in the modern world, we're getting stressed out by emails, by social relationships, by our to-do lists. Well, we're not then being physically active. So even a quick, you know, short burst of physical activity, like literally one minute of bodyweight exercises on the floor or just jumping up and down for a minute can help to relieve stress out of your system. There can be some funny looking offices around the UK. There could be, but I know that, you know, I know when I start to get a little bit moody.

Do some star jumps. Yes, I do. But when I look back, I think, oh God, for the last two or three days, I've just been chocker with work and I've not done much. I'm not being active. And it's just almost like but then you just become so much more productive if you then actually do just take the time to get out and do some exercise yeah i find that so much i've really found that this year yeah i have to move in some capacity and and i have to move every day and not i don't mean like a hard workout i mean like a 20 minute gentle yoga stretch a walk walk with my dog, but just I need to

consciously move. It's just, it makes the world of difference. And as you said, you can go two or three days because you don't have time for whatever reason. And you feel yourself feeling a bit lower, a bit stress, more stress, not sleeping as well. And it's so easy to point it back to that. But then you lose the motivation. You lose the motivation. It's hard. And, you know, we go through these ups and downs where we have, you know, periods of our life where we're doing things really well. Yeah. And then, you know, stress will come and it slips and we fall into bad habits. I know, I feel that one way, and I talk about this in the book is literally, how can you take control? If you wake up, you know you know imagine this this is the scene for so many people

they're lying in beds you know the fastest sleep the alarm blares right so they're jolted out of sleep they look at it's their phone that's blaring so they switch the phone off they're straight onto they get the blue light from the phone straight into their eyes they're straight onto emails instagram facebook whatever and it starts the noise starts and it doesn't finish. So I think one way that we can actually try and get ahead of ourselves and actually make sure that not only do we feel less stress, but we also are in a position better to react to the stresses that come later in the day is to have, you know, is to carve out a little bit of time in the morning to ourselves, you know, like a morning routine or what I call, you know, zoning in each morning. And it can be five minutes, it can be an

hour. It really depends how much time you've got and what other priorities you've got. This is something I have tried to do for a number of years and I go through phases where I can do it and I can't. But at the moment, I'm in a really good phase. So I've not been traveling much over the last two weeks and I get up each morning. First thing do is I go on the calm meditation app yeah doing about 10 to 15 minutes meditation then from there I either put on some nice relaxing music and do just five to ten minutes of just movement just um hip stretches bit of yoga just some light movement and this is the new thing that I've added in is there's something on mindset each morning. So I call it the three M's in the book where

every morning we see where you do meditation, movement, and mindset. And I think any morning routine should try and cover those three things. Now, often my daughter who's five has actually clocks that I'm awake by this time and she's turned up in the movement section. I really want to do my mindset. And how do you do the mindset piece? So what I do because she's turned up in the movement section I really want to do my mindset and how do you do the mindset piece so what I do because she's now yeah there she's only five I think okay do you want to do affirmations with daddy so yeah yeah come on so we we sit there we hold hands together and we just try and get ourselves into a positive frame of mind so we literally you know it's a little bit cheesy but we honestly do this we say you know I feel happy I'm calm I'm stress-free I'm happy I'm calm I'm stress-free and I'm happy, I'm calm, I'm stress-free. And we do

that for about two minutes together. And at the end of it, I've got to tell you, she's got a big smile on her face. I've got a big smile on my face and I feel completely chilled. If she's not down and I'm doing it myself, I may do that. Or I may simply just read a book for five or 10 minutes, something that's, you know, quite a positive book, uplifting something uplifting and I feel I can tell you not only do I feel great at the end of that morning routine those benefits last all throughout the day I'm less reactive and you know I've tried to go through this with patients and many people say oh you know I can't do that I'm too busy but I tell you the patients who've done it on your commute though as well I think that's the other thing is that and I'm I myself am always guilty of these things as well being like i don't have time i

don't have time but what you could do is on your commute find a really nice you know relaxing playlist on spotify whatever it is put your headphones in and you sit there or you stand there and you listen to it and you you know as you said you repeat some sense of mantra or affirmation you could do it in the shower you could do it while you're walking down the street on the way to work it's about being mindful of trying to take that time and like I try I'm trying myself to do it at the moment so when I'm walking for example our office is about five minute walk from the tube instead of walking down Oxford Street staring at my phone I put my headphones in I listen to some music which I find really calming and soothing and gets me in a good space. And you have a bit of a conversation with yourself. And you're like,

today's me a great day. You know, and I was doing it today. And for a minute, I was laughing at myself because I was like, I am so grateful to be alive. And then I was like, okay, but now I feel literally so buoyed. Like I genuinely feel so grateful to be alive and I feel excited about my day. And I didn't before I started that exercise. So who cares if it's a bit silly? Yeah, who cares if it feels a bit silly? Because you're right, these things sound, oh, do they really, really work? Yeah, try it.

Try it. But if you think about what we were saying with social media, it's the same thing, right? Our brains are constantly responding to the information they're fed. So if you're fed on your social media feeds, that everyone around you is on the beach all the time and seeing the most beautiful sunsets every day, and you're not, you think that's normal. If you feed yourself affirmations every day, just for a minute or two, you say positive things to yourself, that becomes you. And, you know, five, 10 years ago, I would have been pretty sceptical about that. But there was some pretty good research on it now as well. Some students who did affirmations

performed significantly better in their exams than those students who did not do affirmations, because our brain is constantly responding to information. And, you know, Ella, Matt, I think it's really important to say to people listening to this, or they think, oh, they're 3Ms, or, you know, I haven't got time for a 20 minute morning routine. Fine. Even if you do one minute, anything is better than nothing. It's not about perfection, right? Exactly. And I think the other thing is, is that, which I think you've touched on really nicely, is that we've got to acknowledge the fact that we live in a busy world. Like I did my yoga teacher training last August and I remember having this moment I was coming back and math was running the company and kind of in charge of everything and I was chanting

and I'd come back and I was so happy and I'd be singing him these chants very out of tune and he was like god you've lost the plot but um you know and I remember being like oh gosh how on earth do I reconcile all these amazing ways of living that I'm learning this incredibly kind of grateful positive optimistic way of looking at this world with the reality of like yeah walking down Oxford Street during commuting and the stress of you know having you know 40 people in our business or the rest of it and I think what I've come to realize is you've got to accept that you can't live in an alternate universe where you've got two hours to have a morning routine where you do 20 minutes of meditation, and then you do an hour of yoga, and then you meditate again, and then you

make your, you know, green smoothie, and then you do this. It sounds amazing. But it's completely implausible. And I feel like we then make it worse by putting this pressure on ourselves that, you know, life shouldn't be stressful. And you know, we should be on a digital detox the rest of our life. And actually, like, we do live with technology, we do live in an exciting, busy world, and life stresses will happen, like stressful things will happen, difficult things will happen. And it's okay to acknowledge that they're stressful, but we need to then go out of our way to create the tools to deal with them. And I think it's about understanding how you kind of live with the two at the same time. Yeah, I think Ellie, you just you just completely nailed it there. I mean, that is literally, I think the challenge

for all of us stress is that, you know, whether people think they're stressed or not, in my experience, pretty much everyone is stressed. It's just a case of how much these days. If you just compare life now to 50 years ago, it is a different form of life. And, you know, the approach that I take in everything I do with patients, but also in this book, The Stress Solution is, it's about simple bite-sized pieces of information that everyday people with busy lives can absolutely put into practice. It's about one minute of deep breathing here or there, and then showing people what that does to your body, what that does to your physiology, how that can lower your stress levels immediately. It's about a five-minute workout that you can fit in, you know, without any equipment, without even getting

changed. You can just, you know, rock it out in your kitchen. It's about creating a bit of time each day where you don't have tech. Maybe it's just simply you have dinner each evening, wherever you have it, whether it's at work, hopefully, if it's possible to have it in company of some sort, that's always beneficial, but not everyone's lucky enough to be able to do that but can you have one meal a day without your phone on or without that being part of that that meal time experience little things like this add up and make huge huge changes this you know lowering our stress levels is absolutely possible for every single one of us i'm i see that i'm a practice every day that's kind of why i wrote the book is to really impart this information that, you know, you have been trying to successfully help people make healthy food choices for a number of years, right? I've last years have also been trying to

do the same thing, you know, really try and encourage people to make those healthy choices with their lifestyle. But I've realised actually that often the food choices are a compensation for the fact that they're super stressed. So they're self-soothing with unhealthy food or sugary treats. And so I'm finding I'm getting much more long-term benefit with people when I sort of help them address their stress levels. And then I find that it's a lot easier for them to make the dietary changes right because everything's connected everything's connected and it starts that cycle so on my list that I have I have more time with friends less technology eat better try and find some time to exercise and morning routine like your 3ms are my takeaways is is that right are

there any others that that you would add into that no Matt I think they're brilliant and i'd love you to try and put them into practice in your life and let me know how you guess on so i'd love to love to hear what that does for you i will um and one thing that we um we ask of with every guest that we have at the end of each episode um i think you may have given us a clue with your three m's but maybe there's something else, a mantra, a practice or routine that you live by each day? Yeah, I think for me, it would have to be to do with my family. When I'm at home, what we do every dinner time is we sit around the table, we don't have devices there. And we go through this little exercise, which was a bit of a game, really. And there's three questions and we all have to go around the table and answer it. So what have you done today to make somebody else happy? What has someone else done today to make you happy? And what have you learned today? And I've got to tell you,

it's one of my favorite parts of the day because what it does is that, A, it's a gratitude exercise, which has many benefits on our health. I thought this would be really, really good for the kids to do, but actually it's pretty good for me and my wife as well. And we get to know, we really get a deep insight into each other, what's been going on. You know, I hear things from the kids about, you know, stuff that they may not have told me otherwise. And it's just a beautiful way of having some family time,

being really connected with each other. And also, I'm hoping it's going to teach my children a practice that as they get older, as they enter this stressy world that currently exists, I'm hoping that it's a practice that keeps them in good stead as they get older. I absolutely love that. I want to do that at home tonight. Yeah, me too. I love that. I really, really love that. Well, thank you so, so much for sharing all of this with us. It's been so interesting and I hope our listeners will take a lot from it. Yeah, I've definitely learned a huge amount. So thank you so, so, so much for coming on today. It's been my pleasure. And Matt, I just want to tell you, I'm huge fans of what you guys do to

keep up the great work. Thanks for having me on. You're very kind. Thank you. And if you have any feedback on this episode, we would love to hear it. So please do review it. Please do rate it and share any of that feedback with us. And otherwise, I hope you can tune in for our next episode and definitely subscribe. There'll be a new episode coming out for you every Tuesday. Thanks so much, everyone. Thank you. or run a pre-produced ad like this one across thousands of shows to reach your target audience with Libsyn ads. Email bob at libsyn.com to learn more. That's b-o-b at l-i-b-s-y-n dot com.