If You Feel STRESSED & STUCK In Life, WATCH THIS! | Dr. Rangan Chatterjee

On today's episode of Health Theory with Rangan Chatterjee, we discuss why low carb isn't the answer, the reason our life expectancy is decreasing, and how he's making disease disappear. Everybody, welcome to Health Theory. Today's guest is Dr. Rangan Chatterjee. He's a physician with a simple, albeit radical, new approach to medicine that he believes can make disease disappear. He has a hit TV show in the UK called Doctor in the House, where he has demonstrated the powerful effects of his approach in case after case. Now, what I want to know is how on earth can you make such a bold claim that you're making disease disappear? What's the the like basis behind it? Yeah, Tom, I think it's a great question. I think you know, when people first hear that, it sounds a little bit controversial. You know, how can you make disease disappear, right? Um but I think it really goes to what is our definition of disease. So, I've been a medical doctor now for, you know, almost 20 years. And I can tell you that the bulk of what I see, I'd say probably 80% of what I see, is in some way driven by our collective modern lifestyles. And when we change our lifestyles in the in the right way, I have seen so many of these so-called diseases disappear. That's what I managed to demonstrate on my BBC show that's been shown now in 70 countries around the world. I've shown things like type 2 diabetes, uh you know, vanished within 30 days. A change that has proved sustainable two or three years later. Uh panic attacks, anxiety gone down by 70-80% in just 6 weeks by making these changes. Chronic back pain for 30 years, right? Once we started addressing the cause, completely gone. Okay, and and and the list goes on. And I realized that no matter who they were, no matter what the name of their disease was, you know what? When you make simple changes in four key areas to your lifestyle, it is amazing how many of those symptoms just start to vanish. You've said that this is the first generation being born now that has a shorter life expectancy than the generation before them, which is pretty terrifying. Yeah, you know, in the United States and I think in the UK now as well, the current generation that are being born, you know, have got a lower life expectancy than any previous generation before them or certainly in the in in our recent history. And that's pretty worrying actually. Now, I've got two young kids at home myself and and that makes me worry is what sort of world are they being born into, you know, are are there now issues with health that are going to mean they're going to be less well-off than the generation before them? And I think this this really sort of plays into why there's such disillusionment at the moment with the way medicine is practiced. In the 20th century, right, even 30, 40 years ago, the bulk of what we were seeing as doctors, the bulk of what was coming in and people what people were complaining of were what we call the acute problems. They responded very well to the sort of pharmaceutical model, the the one pill for every ill model. So, let's say you have a pneumonia, for example, okay? This is where modern medicine is brilliant. So, a pneumonia, the overgrowth of a bug in your lung, right? You come in to see the doctor, the doctor says, "Yeah, this is the issue, right? I'm going to give you a pill to get rid of that bug. And then within a week, within 2 weeks, you know, your your problem's gone, right? The model of medicine we have now responds, you know, was set up in that era. What we're seeing today in the 21st century is chronic disease, whether it's type 2 diabetes, okay, which is like a modern epidemic, whether it's mental health problems, right? In the in the UK, right, one in four people in any given year are going to have a mental health problem. Um whether it's Alzheimer's disease, which you know, as we're living longer, people are now worrying, you know, as I get older, you know, how am I going to be? Am I going to be able to function? Am I going to be able to talk to my family or am I going to start losing my brain health and my and my memory? Um so, these sort of conditions require a different approach. And that's why life expectancy is going down because we're we're we're not really well equipped to tackle these problems cuz these problems don't respond to a one pill for every ill model. You've got to change multiple things, right? You've got to understand, and a lot of people still don't understand, including a lot of the profession, that these are conditions. There may be a genetic tendency, right? You may have a genetic predisposition. That is not your destiny, though. It doesn't mean you're going to get that condition, right? We know there's a um the the field is called epigenetics, uh which is basically this whole idea that, you know, you're born with some genes, but your environments, how you live your life, that shapes and that determines whether those genes are switched on, if they're switched off, how those genes are expressed. And that's a big shift, actually, and that's exciting because that means that we've in in a huge part we've got control over what happens to us. I think that's incredibly exciting. So, we need to start teaching our children. We need to teach our doctors. We need to educate the public. We need to change the ethos in schools, in institutions, to to sort of helping us foster a community where health is absolutely valued at the top because if it isn't, right, we're going to struggle in our lives. So, you know, I've I've watched many of your your your videos, Tom, and um you know, when we talk about trying to make a difference, trying to live a meaningful and purposeful life, right? Health is an ingredient of that. When we feel better, we live more. So much of the time, the problems people are telling me about, that the disagreements they're having, the family disharmony they're having, often it's cuz they don't feel good. Right? They're putting the wrong things into their body, whether it's food, they're not sleeping enough. That's changing their hormones, that's making them moody. That's causing them to have tension with their children, with their partner, with their work colleagues, and all starts to add up. And I've realized that often my training has taught me to suppress that downstream symptom, right, with a pill. Without actually going upstream and figuring out, well, what's causing this in the first place? And the approach I try and take on my TV show, with my patients, with my book, it's really about saying we've overcomplicated health, right? I want to simplify it. And we've overly focused on one area. So, obviously everyone talks about food when we talk about health. And food's important, right? But it's not the only thing. There are There are other factors that I would say are equally important, that even if you'd asked me 5 years ago, I wouldn't have known that. You know, 5, 6 years ago, I thought it was all about food, right? But I've changed my mind now. You might be better off saying your diet is good enough. Maybe the fact that you're on Netflix or YouTube till 1:00 a.m. every night, and you're only sleeping 5 hours a night, actually, if you go to bed 1 hour earlier, you will find you get more bang for your buck than trying to cut out a little bit more sugar in your diet. Yeah, one of the most interesting things about your approach is this whole notion of lifestyle over diet. As in, it's it's more important than that. And I thought, "Whoa, that's pretty radical." And 5 years ago, I would have said the same thing. I was at the height of building Quest Nutrition. All I I thought the answer to everything was what you were eating 100%. Me too. Right? And then my wife ends up having this catastrophic problem with her microbiome and it came on like that. It went from no sense of we have a problem to our life got put on hold for a year because she just couldn't eat and she was malnutrition. It was it really actually got scary at one point and I thought my wife's diet is perfect. So clearly there's something going on here that I don't fully understand. Part of it was my definition of perfect was totally screwed up. And then the other part was that there are so many other lifestyle factors. Talk about this notion of the threshold effect which I think is so important for people to understand. Yeah, it's it's an idea that we've all got our personal threshold, okay? So the way I explain it, if you were in my clinic with me right now, I pretty much go through this with every patient. I say, "Well, let's say you were born in perfect health here." But we've got this sort of personal we've got a threshold, right? So we can deal with multiple insults up to a point. So that could be, you know, poor diet, the fact that we don't move very much. We might have had a relationship breakup which is a stress on our body. We may have a job we don't like, right? And it's all building us up building up building up getting closer to our threshold. That's when they get sick, right? What I mean by that is often a patient will come in to see me and they'll say, "You know, doc, I was fine. Everything was going fine and then, you know, I changed my job, I don't like my new boss and then, you know, they they come down with an autoimmune illness." Right? But when you go into their history, you see things were not fine at all. They, you know, we're very resilient as humans. We can deal with lots of stresses, right? But something is like the straw that breaks the camel's back and and you can sort of you can find the last stressor that tips you up and pushes you over, right? But when you've gone over your threshold, often it's not a case anymore of taking off that last stressor, right? Often you have to go back to basics and build from scratch. Again, it's like, you know, if we were juggling balls, I often say, you know, in your life when things get busy, you can juggle one ball, two balls, three balls, four balls, and then someone chucks a fifth one in, and what happens? Everything falls down. And, you know, we we always look for what's that one thing that it is. Can I give you a a case story, right? Right? This is a very typical patient of mine, but this is a It was a It was a guy in his 50s. He's a 52-year-old guy, right? He's got type 2 diabetes. Now, he's a successful businessman. He's go, go, go all the time, right? He's, you know, working hard, working weekends. He's always on his email, right? And, he got diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. So, he saw on TV in the UK, he saw my BBC show, the first series, and he saw what I did with that type 2 diabetic patient. So, he drastically reduced the refined and processed carbs in his diet, okay? And then he read some other blogs, and he really got obsessed with low carb. And he was getting some changes, right? His blood sugar was coming down, but then it plateaued. And he was getting frustrated cuz he kept reading more and more blogs. He kept lowering his carb intake. And and he just wasn't getting anywhere. So, he he, you know, he ends up on my waiting list. He comes in to see me. And I'm going through everything with him, and I thought to myself, this is not a dietary issue anymore, right? Because he didn't realize, like many people don't, that your stress levels contribute to your blood sugar levels. Your sleep quality contributes to your blood sugar levels. It's not just your diet. Even though diet is something we can We get it, you know, we we eat a bit of sugar, that's going to put the sugar up in our blood. We get that. But, we don't get, right? And there's some really good studies on this, that if you only sleep 4 to 5 hours a night for 6 nights, okay? You are 40% less good at managing your blood sugar. Right? You become pre-diabetic after 5 to 6 days. Just from the lack of sleep. Just from a lack of sleep. It's It's incredible. When you start understanding that, you think, well, of course we need a more balanced, holistic approach to helping these people. So, this this chap, so what I did with him, I said, "Look, your diet is brill, okay? It arguably, it's too good. Arguably, you're you're you're you're almost you're trying too hard now and it's stressing you out." I said, "It's sleep and stress you." So, I I talk about these four pillars, all right? I talk about food, movement, sleep, and relaxation. That it's not about perfection in any one pillar, but it's about balance across all four. This approach takes the pressure off people. It's not about the perfect diet or the perfect gym routine. It's about making sure your diet is good enough, making sure you're moving enough, making sure you're doing something for your sleep and something for your stress levels. It's It's approach that works in the short term, but it's also going to be working 6 months down the line, 12 months down the line. So, this this chap with diabetes with type 2 diabetes, we came up with a with a system. I said, "Look, ideally, you'd have a 90-minute switch off before bed where you don't look at work emails, you don't go on your computer." He goes, "I can't do that, 90 minutes, no way." I said, "All right, what about 30 minutes?" So, he goes, "Okay." So, we started with 30 minutes. Okay? We also We agreed in the consultation, I spoke to him about meditation. Again, he was a bit skeptical on meditation. I said, "Okay, look, hear me out here. I'll tell you what, let's get an app, right? So, we downloaded an app in the clinic, right? I said, 'Okay, this is a free We download this. All I want you to do is commit to 5 minutes a day. That's it.'" Okay? So, all we agreed on was 30 minutes before bed, he'd switch off his computer and his tech and his work emails, and he'd do 5 minutes meditation per day with this app. Okay, that was it. And he starts with it. He comes back in 4 weeks and he says, "Okay, I'm already starting to feel feel better." You know, he's sleeping better. He feels less anxious and stressed the whole time. So, that was my way in. Then we got to increase it, so it was an hour in the evening, okay? It was uh he only stuck to 5 minutes meditation, but we then introduced something that I call the 3 4 5 breath. When you breathe in for three, you hold for four and breathe out for five. And he did that a few times throughout the week. And bit by bit he started to introduce these practices. He increased his carb intake cuz I said, "You're being too aggressive. You don't need to be that aggressive with your carbs, okay?" Six months later, the guy's blood sugar is no longer in the type 2 diabetic range. Okay? So, he puts his carbs up, he improves his sleep, he gets his stress levels down, and his blood sugar starts to come down. And that's why I'm so passionate, Tom, that when we take this rounded 360° approach to health, not only does it yield fantastic results, okay? But it's just it feels more accessible. It feels more achievable for people. Um I've got countless more case studies like that, but that that's I think rather counterintuitive because you know, 5 6 years ago I had I was using that what is called a low-carb approach a lot with my patients. Um and I can't I'm not a huge fan of the term low-carb. I think the beaut- the beautiful thing about it is that it it simplifies the concept. So, you know, so clearly that people get it. Um but I think, you know, we have unfairly demonized fats for 30 40 years. I I worry we're going to do the same uh with another food group in the same way. And I think, you know, ultimately you look at these blue zones around the world, these areas around the world where people are have got high rates of longevity. They're living to a ripe old age in good health. And you look at what they're doing. And I find it really interesting cuz a lot of a lot of them are having high carb diets. Like in Okinawa in Japan, they're having an 80% carbohydrate diets. But the carbs are not the refined and processed carbs that we're having here in the West, right? They're they're local sweet potatoes, right? Which is very nourishing. You mentioned the gut microbiome. Sweet potatoes and those sort of colorful vegetables are fantastic for our gut health. Absolutely fantastic. And I actually think that's what holds all the diets around the world which work well. Right? I think the commonality is not the carb content or the fat content. The commonality is they're all uh a local, minimally processed food that nourishes our microbiome. That's what I think is the unifying factor. And and the other thing I think when we look at these blue zones like Okinawa and we try and figure out, well, why are they why are they doing so well? We're trying to figure out, what is it in their diet that's the magic? But it ain't just the diet, it's the whole lifestyle, right? These guys have low stress levels. They sleep well, right? They're physically active every day. They prioritize community, right? That's why those guys are healthy, right? It's not just the one thing. And I think, why is it that this low carb approach seems to have such a fantastically beneficial role for so many people in the West? Well, I think what's going on here in the West, we are physically inactive. We are under-slept. We're over-stressed. We're having highly processed food. Okay? Maybe it's an And all those things make you insulin resistant, which is what actually leads to type 2 diabetes and is behind a lot of cases of obesity. Maybe it's in this environment in our highly stressed out, under-slept Western environment, maybe it's in this environment that that low-carb approach has such a beneficial role. Maybe those guys, they stay under that threshold in a different way. They don't need to be as aggressive with their carbs, let's say, because they're you know, they're getting all that sleep, they're getting their stress levels down. I think food is much more than fat versus carbs, but good health is much more than food. Right? Wow. That's really strong, yeah. I've always been interested as a doctor is to what works in real life. Right? I I love the research papers, I love the science, but I'm more interested in how do you convert that into real-life action for that person sitting in front of me. I I I could tell you, you know, one of one of my um one one One of the most popular things from this book is what I call the 5-minute kitchen workouts. And this This again came out of a need that I saw from my patients, right? So, you know, strength training is very much undervalued in society. You know, when we talk about activity and movement and exercise, right? We're always talking about, you know, walking more or, you know, doing more cardio. Well, there's nothing wrong with that necessarily, but we neglect strength. And once we hit 30, right? Once we get above the age of 30, we can lose 3 to 5% of our muscle mass every decade. Woah. It can be even more above the age of 50. And you know, your muscle mass independently predicts your mortality. It's one of the strongest factors to determine how well you're going to be when you get older. So, I was seeing all the research on this about 5 or 6 years ago, and I remember patients were coming in and I'd say to them, "Okay, guys, uh you know, strength training's really important. You know, I want you to work out for about 30, 40 minutes three times a week, you know, maybe get to the gym if you can. And I thought, okay, right, I've told them. I've told them about the research. Come back 6 weeks later, said, "Hey guys, how are you getting on?" I doc, you know, it's been busy, you know, the gym's bit expensive. It's not on the way back from work. I've not really done it much. Thought, okay, I'm clearly not giving them advice in a way that they feel is practical for them, that they feel they can do in the context of their lives. I've got to do something better. And in that in that moment in my consultation room, that 5-minute kitchen workout was born. I said, "All right, I'll tell you what, let's forget about the gym, let's forget about gym memberships, forget about buying equipment. I'm going to show you a workout you can do right here, right now, in your kitchen. I've got 20-year-old patients doing it. I've got 70-year-old patients doing it. You can modify it for any ability level. And you know, I find that by setting the bar low with people, right? And they achieve that, they feel good about themselves, they start to do more. It's about simple approaches that work in real life. Yeah, the science is all in there, but the science interests me, but it doesn't dictate what I do. I've got to convert that into what's going to really help my patients, real-life people with busy jobs, with busy lives, right? Who want to be healthy. I want to talk about the show for a second because being with people, living with them for 4 to 6 weeks and getting in there, what are you seeing that are patterns of um I'll call it bad behavior, but I'm I don't mean that in like the moral sense. I just mean it has an unintended consequence um that they may not even realize. And then, what are some of the fixes that are the simple things? So, like in the movement pillar, you've got that, something simple they can do in the kitchen. Um but, what are things that you see over and over and over that people do wrong that have a really simple fix? So, I'll tell you a few things. Yeah, food was food It a big one, there's no question, you know, when you open people's cupboards, you open their drawers, and you see what's in there. You see the naughty drawers, and you see the stuff that's in there. And then you also not only look at what's in there, which is basically all the highly processed food, it's all the sugary treats that live inside the house, right? But it's then as you're looking there, you see the family dynamic. You you see like the wife go, "Oh, you know, that's not mine. That's it. He always brings that in. I tell him not to bring that in." Cuz no, no, the the husband's like, "No, no, that's not the case at all. I bring them in cuz you like them." Right? You see that in every house. So, there's obviously this dynamic that um you know, who's responsible for it? You know, everyone's putting the blame without realizing it on other people. It's not me. It's, you know, I'm doing it for the family. So, I find that quite interesting. So, one of the fixes there is to control the environment you can control. Right? If you're trying to make healthy, let's say, food choices, right? Don't keep that stuff in your house. Right? So, I say to them, "When you walk outside your front door these days, you are having to exercise your willpower every step of the way. You go to a gas station, right? And you go to pay, you're walking past all the chocolates, all the bags of chips, everything, right? You're having to exert your willpower there. If you want to buy a coffee in a coffee shop, right? You stand in line, you order, you you're walking past the muffins, the pastries, the croissants. You constantly have to use the willpower when you step outside your house. I'm saying don't use it inside your house. Right? If you're serious about making those choices, and you want a sugary treat, you know what? Have it. Once a week, once every 2 weeks when you go out and meet your buddies, and you sit in a cafe and have it have it there. Don't bring it in your house, because what will happen is that you will come back tired, you'll come back stressed one day from work, you'll feel a bit low, and you will start gorging on what's in the house. You know, a few months ago I came I was going through a very stressful time at work, and all kinds of things were going on, and I was sitting at home in the evening with my wife, and I thought you know, I fancy something sweet. But, I I looked in the cupboards. There was nuts, there was olives. I was like, you know, I don't feel like those. You know, I want something sweet, but there was nothing there. And you know what? 10 minutes later, that craving goes. It's what I call an itchy mouth. Right? I'm not hungry. It's just, you know, I fancy something to put in my mouth. So, you know, controlling the environment you can't control, I think it's a very important thing that I taught all of those families to do. And they really, although they were resistant at first, they really saw the benefit. Right. Two things I want to dive a little deeper there. So, number one, do you ever get into the psychology of like, "Oh, I got this for you. No, you got it for you. What are you talking about?" Do you ever just like put a finger on it and say, "Hey, let's talk about what's driving that?" Yeah, absolutely. And more more these days than I even used to do, because I've realized that people have got very powerful emotional attachments as to why they do certain things. I'm going to tell you about the very first day I ever filmed for this documentary series, right? This is the first family. This is as I I rock up into this town called Shrewsbury in the UK. And, you know, a little bit nervous, cuz I'm there's a whole camera crew that's going to watch me be a doctor and try and help these guys, right? First time I've done that. And I meet the family, lovely family. That's been struggling with their health, whole variety of health issues. And they I say, "Guys, what would you typically eat?" Right? So, that the father says to the says to the family, "Hey guys, you know, just the usual tonight?" They said, "Yeah, Dad, just the usual, please." He says, "Come on, Doc, come with me." So, I go sit in the car. Right? We drive 15 minutes out of town to go to a McDonald's drive-thru. On the way there, the guy says to me, he says, "Doc, you know what? I know this stuff isn't good for us, and it's really, really embarrassing for me to actually be taking you here, but this is what we do. Mhm. Right? And I don't think I quite got it back then, but I reflected on this a lot since then, which is these guys knew that these weren't healthy choices. He knew that. But it was only when this third party comes in, someone who's got no emotional uh attachment to this family, he starts to feel really guilty. And he feels, you know, he feels he has to apologize to me for the choices he's making, which he which first of all, he doesn't need to apologize. But I found that really interesting. What's going on there? Why do people make choices that you know, are not serving them? Right? Why do you think they do it, for real? Because I think those choices, you know, I think those choices on some level nourish them. You know, they they if they're lacking something in some aspects of their life, they're getting that they're feeding their reward pathways. You know, so many people will eat to make themselves feel better. You know, if they've had a stressful day at work, or they're feeling a bit low, food is a comfort for them. Food helps them feel better about themselves, albeit for a short period of time. You know, we all know that feeling. If we have a sugary treat, you know, we can feel good. Yeah. You know, we So, we know intuitively that food can change our mood. Right? There's a lot of science now behind all of that. But I think it's because on a deep emotional level, maybe when they were a kid, they were conditioned that you know, you're not feeling so good, you're feeling well, oh, should we have some nice sweet treats? And this particular family, for example, again, you know, the the the the dad would say that I buy this stuff cuz it makes my wife happy. Mhm. She really likes it. So, in some way, he felt that he was doing a really nice thing for his wife. You know, his wife really enjoyed that sort of food. So, he felt as a loving husband, I'm going to give it to her. Right. You know, so I feel on some level he felt that was him helping, you know, his his part of being a good husband. Um but I'll tell you on that on that with that particular family, that as as we went to McDonald's and he ordered the food. And what was incredible for me is that he ordered it was about it was £48. It was that figure is locked into my head. So that's about $65, $70 maybe, something like that. Just for one meal for a family of four. But then we got back to the house with the food, right? And check this. We got there and in the kitchen they've got trays, right? So they've got McDonald's trays in their kitchen. So they dish up onto the trays and they serve them. So this is what happened then. The son is sitting at the dining table eating by himself while sort of uh scrolling his phone at the same time. Okay? The mom I think was watching television, okay? And she was eating watching television. I think the daughter might have been on her phone at a different part of the the living room and I can't remember where the dad was. The point is is that they're a family of four. The food is all ready at the same time. Yet they weren't eating together, okay? They were mindlessly eating whilst also, you know, doing their emails, sending text messages, doing their social media updates, whatever. And so the intervention I made with them, and I made it with a lots of those families, is to have one meal a day with someone else if possible sitting around a table. And I'm telling you Tom, that was transformative. That whole social connection piece, when and one of the recommendations I make in the Relax Pill is that eat round a dinner table for at least one meal a day with someone else if you can. You eat less when you do that, right? Why? Because you're not mindlessly eating. We can easily overeat when we're doing something else. There are studies showing that if you eat whilst watching television, you eat much more. Right? We know the feeling. I know when I used to watch a lot of sports games on on on TV with my buddies, and there'd be like a a bowl of crisps there, or tortilla chips. How many of those things can you do whilst you're whilst you're watching the game? Yeah, it's super interesting the way that people deal with food. When you were talking about sitting there with your friends, watching a show, or probably watching a sporting event on TV, and and just munching. And I thought, I a wave of like, I want to do that right now washed over me, because it is so deeply pleasurable. And one of the things that I think is so hard when you're trying to make these sort of global changes to people is we optimize for short-term pleasure with total disregard for long-term consequence. Yeah. And even in the story when you were telling about the husband, oh, it makes my wife happy, and I want to bring it home. But at the same time, it's I've seen some of your episodes. The knock-on effect of things like that is also, oh, she doesn't feel well. She has fibromyalgia. She's in constant pain. She's got a box of like supplements she's taking to try to mitigate some of just the lethargy or, you know, whatever symptoms she's having. And so, it's like, yes, in the short term you're giving her a drug-like effect, and it does change her mood, but then it starts back in this whole cycle again, which without dealing with that entire relationship to food as essentially a drug, I don't see how people long-term get on the other side of this. So, let's go through the four pillars really fast. Give me the I know there are no universals, but I just want to like get a sense of what is a problem that you think is sort of the biggest, most, um, readily seen problem in each of the pillars, and then as we go, like, what's one quick thing that you want to see people do by pillar? Okay. I'll tell you what, let's start with food. We've just been talking about food. I would say for people who are struggling with their diets and they're struggling with what to eat, I would say, why don't you focus on when you eat? Interesting. There's very powerful research now. A lot of it's coming out of California, the Salk Institute, where they're showing that when you eat is arguably as important, or certainly of critical importance, as well as what you eat. So, a lot of research has been done, particularly in animals initially, that's showing that if you restrict your food intake to about 10 to 12 hours, okay? Right? You can eat whatever you want 10 to 12 hours, right? You get improvements in your weight, improvements in your blood sugar, improvements in your immune system function, just from changing the hours that you eat. Because what happens when you when you go through a period of time where you're not eating. So, once you've not put food in your body for about 12 hours, we think that a process called autophagy has kicked in. Autophagy is like housecleaning for your body. So, just as if in your kitchen, if you didn't clean up every day, if the dishes, the plates were starting to stack up, by the end of the week it wouldn't be a very pleasant kitchen to walk into. When we don't eat for 12 hours, that that process autophagy starts to clean up the mess that's built up. And is that the magic number, roughly 12 hours? Look, for different people it would be different things, but, you know, 12 hours a day where you don't eat, for most of us autophagy will have kicked in. Okay. So, and the reason I stick to 12 hours is that it's achievable. My approach is not about perfection in any one area. It's about doing a whole array of different things, and that's what It's the synergy. That's where the magic happens. That's where you start to get all all different pathways in the body kicking in. Sure, if you think you're going to get more benefit from 10 hours or 8 hours, fine, go for it. But, I'd much rather people go, "Yeah, I've got a tick there. I'm going to move on to another one." Okay, so we have our tick there, and that was cool cuz it was not what I expected you to say. So, that's food done. What are we going to do next? Okay, um I think if we go with movement, I would say do not neglect strength training. Okay? And I would say do a strength training workout, whether it's body weight, whether it's my 5-minute workout, or your own favorite one, at least twice a week. But, my approach, whether it's the food recommendation I just made, whether it's the movement recommendation I I just made, or the sleep or relaxation ones, it's about simplicity. Mhm. Okay, so that's what I'd say in move. Okay, so that's food and movement. Okay. Sleep. Okay, I think this is arguably the most undervalued pillar of health, okay, because in 2018, if you're not prioritizing sleep, you're probably not getting enough. There's just infinite distractions, right? We all know that feeling where we're still sat up late watching more and more content. And again, a lot of great content out there, but it could be having a consequence. So, I can tell you that the majority of people who are having sleep problems are doing something in their everyday lifestyle that they do not realize is impacting their ability to sleep at night. Okay? So, my top two tips there would be a no tech 90. Try and have 90 minutes before bed with no tech. Right? But, the counterintuitive one is get outside in the morning. Mhm. Right? A lot of you don't realize that these daily rhythms are set by light. Right? You In order to sleep at night, okay, you need a differential between your maximum light exposure and your minimum light exposure. So, a dark room, right, has something called zero lux in it. Lux is a unit of light. If you go outside on a sunny day for about 20 minutes, you get about 30,000 lux. Brilliant. So, that's a really big differential. If you go outside on a cloudy day, you're getting about 10,000, 15,000 lux, right? If you go into a brightly lit office, a modern brightly lit office, you're getting about 500, maybe 1,000 lux maximum. Right? So, everyone's thinking about what they do before they go to bed in the evening, but a life-changing tip, and I This has transformed the lives of so many of my patients, is get outside in the morning for half an hour. Even that will help you sleep in the evening. Okay. What if I live somewhere super cold, and that sounds like pain? Is sitting next to a window going to work? No. You've got to get outside. Okay. Okay? And I go through There's so many ways you can do this. You know, in the UK, in January, it's not that easy to to want to go outside. It's dark. It's often dark till 8:00 a.m. It gets dark again at 3:30 p.m. I will sometimes put my fleece on, right? And I'll sit outside and have my coffee in the morning outside just so I get that light exposure. Cuz it's that fundamental to how we are as human beings. We need natural light. Okay. And last but not least, relax. Okay, relax. Again, there's a ton of suggestions, but I think the one I'm going to choose is 15 minutes of me time every day. Okay? Something for you and you alone. Something that does not involve your smartphone. Okay? And you're not allowed to feel guilty about it. It could be anything. It's important. It could be literally sitting in a cafe and enjoying your cup of coffee, but not rushing and taking it and trying to do a million things. Just sit there and people watch. Or just sit and read a book. Write something. We have lost stillness from our modern lives, and we need to get it back. That's incredible. All right, before I ask my last question, where can these guys find more about you online? Where can they get the book? Yeah, so I'm pretty active on Facebook and Instagram and it's at Dr. Chatterjee. Uh, the book is available in all, you know, usual bookstores. It's How to Make Disease Disappear. I've also got a podcast called Feel Better, Live More, which is uh you know, a great way to sort of find out a bit more about me. Awesome. And then my last question, if people were going to only change one thing that would have the biggest impact on their life, their health, what change would you have to make? Go to bed 1 hour earlier each night. Wow, nice and simple. Awesome. Rangan, thank you so much for being on the show, man. This is absolutely incredible. Guys, his approach I I can't get behind it any harder, any more aggressively. It is absolutely fantastic. As you guys know, in the journey that Lisa and I have been going on of trying to get her microbiome back in order, learning about functional medicine, hearing him call it root cause medicine, which which I think is so much more powerful in terms of understanding what it's really about. As you watch his TV show, which is great, by the way, you guys are going to want to watch that. It's a great way to be entertained at the same time that you are deeply educated into some of the mistakes that we all make. I think you will see yourselves reflected in these people a lot more than you may think. That's amazing. The book is incredible and it really does, as he said, keep it simple down to those four pillars. He gives them equal weight. They are literally given equal page count in the book so that you understand that health is better than just diet. I thought that was so good. That diet alone is not the sum total of health. I think that's incredibly important. We didn't get a chance to talk about um HIIT, high-intensity interval training. He goes into all of this stuff, but in a way that makes it very accessible. This is very much a man who understands you have to enjoy your life, that it's really about finding something that works for you and something that you're going to stick with for the long haul. And the results that he's gotten with his patients are astonishing. So, dive in, try it for yourself. I think you will be blown away. I think this guy is really going to become the face of a really big movement because of the way that he puts it together and the way that he's always looking for root causes. And do yourself a favor. I intentionally didn't go into it here because he's talked about it so profoundly elsewhere. Just look up why he started all of this and what happened with his son and how he addressed it and how it changed his life. I think you guys be impacted by that. All right, if you haven't already, be sure to subscribe. Until next time, my friends, be legendary. Take care. Thank you guys so much for watching and being a part of this community. If you haven't already, be sure to subscribe. You're going to get weekly videos on building a growth mindset, cultivating grit, and unlocking your full potential.