The 7 Energy Vampires Stealing Your Life - How To Sleep Better & Be Happier | Dr. Rangan Chatterjee

1. 0:00 – 1:01

   Why sleep quality shapes mood, health, and daily functioning

   1. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee0:00

      When you're not sleeping well, every aspects of your life gets worse. Moods, relationships, focus, concentration, how much we eat. And in the long term, sleep deprivation increases your risk of early death and increases the chance of pretty much every chronic disease that we've studied so far. I've been a doctor for over two decades now. I've seen tens of thousands of patients. But what I have seen time and time again is that people are engaging with behaviors that they don't realize are sabotaging the quality of their sleep. When I can help them improve their sleep quality, immediately they feel a change in their energy and their vitality. And so in this video, I want to share with you some of the common things I have seen my patients do in the evening that without them realizing has negatively impacted the quality of their sleep. The first thing I want to talk about is what I call liquid stress.

2. 1:01 – 5:05

   “Liquid stress” (Part 1): caffeine timing, sensitivity, and the vicious cycle

   1. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:01

      So what's liquid stress? Well, in that category, I put caffeine-containing drinks and alcohol. Now, I understand that many people consume these beverages. They enjoy these beverages. But I think it's really important to understand the potential impact that they might be having on your sleep. So let's start with caffeine. Now, we all metabolize caffeine slightly differently, which basically means we've all got a different tolerance to how much caffeine we can manage. However, in my experience, many people are consuming far too much for their own needs, and it's having a negative impact on their sleep. And here's the problem. If you drink too much caffeine at the wrong times, it negatively impacts your sleep, which means the following day you wake up feeling tired and you need more and more caffeine to get you through. And so it becomes a really vicious cycle that can be really hard for people to break out of, especially if they have to function during the day. Now, when we think about compounds in the body and how quickly they are broken down and then eliminated, we often talk about something called the compound's half-life. Well, the half-life of caffeine is roughly six hours. Now, I do appreciate we're all slightly different and that exact amount will depend on your genetics. But let's just imagine that for all of us it is six hours. Well, what that means is if at noon, so midday, you leave your office and you order a large coffee at your local coffee shop, it means that at 6:00 PM, six hours later, half of the caffeine in that drink is still going around your body and your brain. And it means at midnight, a quarter of the caffeine that you consumed at 12 o'clock is going around your body and your brain. Now, for many of us who know that we're sensitive to caffeine, we wouldn't dream of having a quarter cup of coffee in the evening before we go to bed or a half cup of coffee at 6:00 PM. So with that knowledge, you're now empowered to think, "Wow, could that be an issue for me?" You see, many people will say, "Well, look, I've been fine. I've been having a 3:30 PM cup of tea or cup of coffee my entire working life. Why would it suddenly be affecting me now?" And this is something I've seen many, many times. People were able to tolerate a certain dose of caffeine for a period of time, but then at some point they no longer can. And I think there's a number of potential reasons for this. You may have heard me talk about stress in the past, and I talk about stress thresholds, this idea that we can accumulate a certain amount of stress, but when we get to that threshold, that's when things start to go wrong. And I often think about caffeine in relation to thresholds as well. I have seen before that when patients are, let's say, under low levels of stress, life is pretty calm, there's not much going on in their personal life, things are generally feeling calm and in control, they can often tolerate a bit of caffeine, maybe late afternoon at 4:00 PM, let's say. But when the stress load in their life starts to increase and go up, it's almost as if they don't have the capacity anymore to deal with that caffeine. I've seen this enough times to know that this is a real thing. So the reason I'm bringing this up is if you're someone who's struggling with your sleep and you have told yourself a story that caffeine is not at play here because in the past you were absolutely fine with caffeine in the afternoon, I

3. 5:05 – 12:13

   Testing caffeine’s impact: experiments, withdrawal, and hidden sources

   1. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee5:05

      just want to sort of invite you to consider that perhaps things have changed. And the only way you would really know is by cutting it out. Right. So if that is you, what I'd recommend is that for at least seven days you consume any caffeine you're going to have in the morning, so before noon, and just pay attention to what happens. And then if you're not sure, what you could do is go cold turkey and cut it all out for a week or two and see what happens. Now, if you are going to go cold turkey, you may well get withdrawal symptoms. People can feel moody, really tired, headaches, their emotions can be quite turbulent. It can cause relationship issues. So you've got to be careful before you adopt an approach like this. So for most people, and in the past when I've reduced my own caffeine consumption, I have done it very, very gradually because if I was to stop abruptly, you can get a lot of symptoms. So the point I'm trying to make is that caffeine is a psychoactive stimulant. It's the most consumed psychoactive stimulant on the planet, and if you look around any urban environment now, any airport, any shopping mall, any town center, any village, what do you see? A surplus of coffee shops. But don't get me wrong, I love sitting in a coffee shop with a nice long black doing a bit of work. I enjoy the vibe, the atmosphere. But I think if we take a step back, we have to ask ourselves what has gone on in society whereby we have this many coffee shops. You know, what's going on? You know? What's your relationship like with caffeine? Can you function without it? Do you agree that much of society is overly reliant on caffeine? What's really interesting is that many people who consume caffeine regularly will tell you that they need caffeine to function well. It helps them think better. It helps them be more cognitively sharp. And yes, there is some data supporting this, but, and it's a very big but, there was a University of Bristol study from 2010 which really seemed to conclude that caffeine only helps our cognitive performance if we are a habituated caffeine drinker. Basically, if you're used to having caffeine regularly, then the reason you feel a boost in the morning is because you're suffering from withdrawal symptoms, and all that caffeine is doing is getting you back to the sort of level where non-caffeinated drinkers exist all the time. Now, I don't think it's cut and dried. I think there is some evidence to support that a bit of caffeine can improve our cognitive performance in certain situations and athletic performance, having said that. But what I want to do is help empower people, right? I want to help you understand the impact that caffeine might be having on the quality of your sleep. Now, if you cut it out for a week or reduce it to just being in the morning for a week and you find that you're sleeping better and that your energy goes up and you have more vitality and more focus and your relationships are better, then you're empowered with that information. You can then choose what you want to do. You may go, "Wow, I quite like feeling like this." Or you might go, "Actually, although I'm feeling better, I really miss those extra cups of coffee that I was having, and on balance, for me, I'd rather have them." Only you can make that decision. I just want to help you understand the impact that it might be having on you. And as I say, in my experience, I've seen so many patients who told me that caffeine wasn't having an impact on their sleep health, but when they cut back on it, reduced it to just being in the morning or quit altogether, they soon realized just what it was doing. Now, the scientific research on caffeine and its impact on our sleep is pretty clear. It shows us that caffeine can prolong sleep latency, which is the time it takes to fall asleep. It can reduce total sleep time. It can reduce sleep efficiency and worsen perceived sleep quality. But again, it's important for me to remind you that this is a dose-dependent effect. Many people are absolutely fine with a small dose of caffeine at some point in the morning. So I'm not trying to say you should give it up. I'm asking you to pay attention as to what impact it might be having on your sleep. Now, what about those people who say, "I'm absolutely fine. I can knock back a double espresso after dinner at 9:30 PM, and I fall asleep completely fine"? Well, look, it's impossible for me to comment on every single situation. But the scientific research that I've read that does look at this is seeming to suggest that even if you can fall asleep after drinking, let's say, a double espresso in the evening, that the quality of your sleep may not be as good had you not done that. And again, I think some of the best ways to assess this for ourself is to ask ourselves, you know, when we wake up in the morning, how do we feel? What is our energy like? What are our relationships like? Is anyone around me flagging that I'm being a bit moody? Of course, all these things can have other reasons behind them, but if we're trying to assess our sleep, generally speaking, it's not really the number of hours that we need to be overly worried about. Yes, on balance, most people seem to need between seven and nine hours, but some people seem to do okay on six and a half hours, right? Some people need a bit more. And again, you can ask yourself these questions in the morning, you know. Have I woken up feeling refreshed? Can I wake up at roughly the same time without needing an alarm? All of these things help to give you an idea of the quality of your sleep. So when we're thinking about caffeine, it's not just coffee and black tea you need to be thinking about. Green tea does contain caffeine. Even decaffeinated coffee has small amounts of caffeine within it. Dark chocolate can have caffeine within it. I know for me personally, I'm quite sensitive to caffeine. I will consume caffeine, but only in the morning. If I have dark chocolate in the afternoon, I can often feel it in bed at night. So just be aware that caffeine

4. 12:13 – 18:48

   “Liquid stress” (Part 2): alcohol—sedation vs sleep, fragmentation, and REM disruption

   1. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee12:13

      is hiding in all different kinds of places. And if you are trying to improve your sleep, then trying to be more mindful of your intake is usually a really good idea. Now, the other form of liquid stress I often think about when it comes to sleep is alcohol. Many people use alcohol as a way of winding down in the evening, and many people will tell you that it helps them fall asleep. Now, whilst it's impossible to say what's going on in every individual situation, as a general rule, we have to stop thinking of alcohol as a sleep aid. Alcohol is really a sedative, and sedation is not the same thing as sleep. It's easy to mistake it for sleep, but if you were to observe both states in a sleep lab, you would see a completely different picture with your brainwaves. Sedation is where your brain cells have switched off. Sleep is where hundreds of thousands of brain cells coordinate in their firing. It's a very different process. So in my experience as a doctor, many people who are struggling with their sleep are doing so because of their alcohol consumption. Now, can we say that any amount of alcohol is gonna affect someone's sleep? I don't think we can say that. A little bit like caffeine, there are genetic tendencies at play here. I also think, just like caffeine, that the amount of stress in your life also impacts how quickly and easily you can metabolize alcohol. And back in the days when I did used to drink alcohol, I would often find that a glass of red wine in the middle of a work week when there was a lot of stress going on and I was quite tired would have quite a negative impact. But that same glass of red wine, if I was on holiday somewhere, switched off from work with my family, would have very little impact. So I think it's impossible to look at these things in isolation. The rest of your life, the context seems to matter quite a lot. But if we look directly at what the scientific research shows us about what alcohol does for our sleep, most of the research points to alcohol affecting our sleep in the following ways. Firstly, it fragments your sleep. So basically, when you've consumed it, you may well feel as though you've slept fine, but you wake up feeling exhausted, and often this is because you woke up on multiple occasions through the night. It was a much lighter sleep than usual. And because you're often not aware of those increased wakenings, you often don't draw the association and you think it had nothing to do with that alcohol, but it was the alcohol causing the sleep fragmentation, which is why you feel so tired the following day. Alcohol also has a negative impact on a type of sleep that we call REM sleep, rapid eye movement sleep, also known as deep sleep, and that's a particularly important part of your sleep cycle. Many sleep researchers call it emotional first aid because it's the part of the sleep cycle where we actually process difficult experiences that happen during the day. So that's really, really important, and if we look around at society and see how many people these days are struggling with their moods, with depression, with feeling anxious, well, it stands to reason that alcohol consumption, reducing REM sleep, which as I've just mentioned, is emotional first aid, could that be contributing? Absolutely. On a wider note, we know that when people are sleep deprived, their outlook on the world is more negative. The tired brain remembers more negative experiences than the well-rested brain. So improving your sleep quality is one of the quickest ways that you can actually change your experience of the world. Now, look, many people will say to me, "Yeah, Doc, I understand this, but I really enjoy a glass of wine in the evening just before I go to bed. It relaxes me. It's a time for myself. It's a little reward." Now, I understand all of those things, and I understand there can be some powerful associations with certain things like alcohol. And again, I'm not trying to say that you need to give up. What I'm trying to say is that I know that for many people, consuming alcohol in the evening is negatively impacting their sleep, and that poor sleep is negatively impacting the quality of their life. So I'm just trying to help you understand that you might want to reexamine your relationship with alcohol. And if you do insist on consuming it in the evening, if you say, "No, that's a part of my life," then I would urge you to consider could you bring it forward in the evening? For example, if you was to have a glass of red wine at 5:00 PM as opposed to 10:00 PM, the truth is that the 5:00 PM glass of red wine is gonna have less of an impact on your sleep than the 10:00 PM one because by the time you go to bed, some of it will have been processed and metabolized. Having said that, we've got to be careful. If we start drinking at 5:00 PM, it could lead to even more drinks. It could lead to increased snacking, et cetera, et cetera. There are always knock-on effects. But the real take-home point is that if you are gonna have it in the evening, the earlier the better when it comes to your sleep. So there's many reasons to have a little think about how much alcohol you're consuming and when. And just zooming out here on this whole topic of liquid stress, I get it. Many people enjoy caffeine-containing drinks. Many people enjoy alcohol-containing drinks. I really don't want to be here telling you what to do with your life. You're absolutely able to choose what is right for you. But what I have seen time and time again... Is that people just don't realize the impact that these drinks are having on their sleep. And my hope is by helping you understand that, you may be able to reset your relationship and consume them if you choose to, in a way

5. 18:48 – 24:55

   Rethinking couples’ sleep: separate beds, cultural beliefs, and temperature mismatches

   1. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee18:48

      that's helping you and not harming you. Now, something else at night that can have a negative impact on our sleep is something that a lot of people find controversial, and that's the idea of whether we should sleep in the same bed as our partner. Now, do you have a partner? Do you sleep in the same bed as them? Do you sleep in separate rooms? It's really interesting. If we look at the research on this, there was a study in England which found that one in four people in a couple would get up during the night and go to another room. And another study I looked at showed that when one person moves, there's a fifty percent chance that their partner will wake up or have worse sleep. So why, in some cultures, is this such a controversial idea? And I think the word culture here is really, really important. Here in the UK, and certainly I know from when I've been in America, this idea that a romantic couple should not share their bed at night is often met with disdain. In fact, I know a close friend of mine who I discussed this with recently said, "No way, mate. If my wife and I start sleeping in the same bedroom, that's the start of the end." And what's really interesting, because if you zoom out here, I think people are afraid that if they're not sleeping in the same bed, it says something about the quality of their relationship. But I think that's a very myopic way to look at this. What does sleep loss do for us, okay? There's many implications of not sleeping well. We feel more tired. We have less empathy. We're less likely to show compassion. We're more moody. We're less able to resist temptation. Our lifestyle behaviors are poorer. All these things happen on the back of poor sleep. Now just think about how you want to show up with your partner. Well, I imagine most of us want to be full of energy. We want to be patient, full of empathy, full of compassion. We want to be looking after ourselves. But a poor night's sleep can play havoc with that. So I think in many couples, if they have the room and the space, and I appreciate not everyone does, but if they do, sometimes the very best thing is to sleep in different beds. If both partners are getting a good night's sleep by themselves, then I think the way they show up with each other is gonna fundamentally change. Now, of course, here in Western cultures, there's often a concern over intimacy. What does it mean if you're not sleeping in the same bed as your partner? But I think this really is a cultural idea, because intimacy can mean many things. Spending time together, hugging, opening up, being vulnerable. Yes, of course, sex can play part of intimacy. But even in couples who sleep in separate beds, and I can think of many patients who have done this over the years, they intentionally create time for that intimacy in their relationship. They sleep in separate beds at night. They get better sleep. They show up in a much better way, and then they intentionally put in and schedule time for intimacy. So there are many ways to look at this. Of course, if you are sleeping in the same bed as your partner and things are going fine and your sleep is fine, of course, there's no reason to change that. But if you're not, it may be a simple way of changing things. Now, there's many cultures around the world where it's actually quite normal. There are certain cultures in Asia where a mother will sleep with the children and the father will sleep somewhere else. In many European countries, and I've noticed this when I've been to hotels, there may be a double bed, but there are two different duvets. So even if people are in the same bed, they both have their own duvet. And there's a wider point here about sleep, which is many of us prefer to sleep at a different temperature to our partner. And as a broad rule, doesn't apply in every case, but from what I've seen, men tend to prefer it a little bit cooler. Women tend to prefer it a little bit hotter. And so perhaps if you're sleeping in the same bed, but you both got a different duvet, perhaps with the right tog for you and how you like your temperature, well, that could be a very helpful way of trying to make sure that you both get good quality sleep. Of course, if your partner snores or is getting up several times throughout the night to use the bathroom, that can be disruptive. So I think we really need to get away from this idea that not sleeping in the same bed as our partner means that there's something wrong with our relationship. On many occasions, it can actually improve our relationships. And I think it's really important for me to emphasize that not everyone is able to sleep in a different location to their partner if they actually want to. Of course, you need space, you need room, you need another bed, you need another location in the house. If you don't have that, it may not be possible, and of course, that can make it really challenging. And if that is you and you're having difficulty sleeping in the same bed as your partner, well perhaps different duvets might help. Perhaps an eye mask, perhaps some earplugs. There's even quite a bit of new technology out there these days, if you're interested, where people can put devices underneath their mattress which keeps one side of the bed at a different temperature to the other side. There's

6. 24:55 – 31:31

   A “one-dimensional” evening: why mental rest needs variety, not more of the same

   1. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee24:55

      all kinds of innovations in this space, but I do recognize that even with the best intentions, for some people, this is gonna be really, really tricky. Something else that I've commonly seen negatively impact our sleep and frankly our overall rest these days is the nature of activities that we're doing in the lead up to bed. Now, of course, for most people working conventional hours, that would be in the evening. And the reason I've been thinking about this is because I've seen a lot of patients over the years who actually felt that they were sleeping pretty well. Okay? So they said, "Yeah, I'm getting seven or eight hours. I'm going to bed. I'm falling asleep. I wake up fine." But it's not that they were tired, they just didn't feel mentally refreshed. Now, I think there's a subtle difference here which I've noticed on many, many occasions. They're sleeping well, they think, but they're mentally feeling fatigued. And usually when I've looked at what these patients were doing in the hours preceding bed, I found that they were very much doing similar things to what they were doing during the day. So in the modern world, we can keep working, can't we? We can work until dinner time, we can stop and have dinner, and then we can get back on our computers and keep working. And I've come to think of this as a one-dimensional life experience as opposed to a three-dimensional one. What do I mean by that? I think our bodies and our minds need variety. If you're working all day, you take a break for dinner, and then you're working again in the evening, you're stimulating the same part of your brain. Okay? It's one-dimensional. But we know from lots of scientific research now that doing art, being creative, these things wake up different parts of our brain, and in many ways act as a form of rest for our bodies. So when people think of sleep, I think, yeah, it's kind of rest for your body. It's a little bit of rest for your mind, of course, as well. But I think in this modern world where we're being constantly stimulated, I don't think we're giving our minds enough rest. So sleep is rest for your body, but in the evening you need to think about rest for your mind as well. Now, there's many ways in which you can do this, right? For me in my life, right, a lot of my life is based around non-fictional content, facts, science, talking to people on my podcast. And often in the evenings I would also read more nonfiction books to keep my knowledge updated and to get me ready for my next podcast guest. But a few months ago I started to experiment, well, what happens if I don't read nonfiction in the evening? Instead, I read fiction. Not only did I feel that my sleep quality improved, I also felt mentally different in the morning. So I just want you to think about that for a moment. What do you spend your days doing and what do you spend your evenings doing? Is it the same or is it different? Now, of course I get it. Sometimes we have to work in the evenings, and I don't think all the time it's necessarily a problem. But if you think your life has become far too one-dimensional, everything feels the same, everything is related to the same types of content, the same types of work, I encourage you to think about, well, could I do something different this evening? I bet you'll find that you wake up feeling different. I've experienced it myself and I've seen it with many of my patients. So what sort of things could you be doing? Sorry to interrupt. To make sure you are taking action after watching this video, I have created a free special guide to help you improve your sleep and reduce fatigue. Now, in my clinical experience, most people who are struggling to sleep are doing something unconsciously in their day-to-day life that is negatively impacting their ability to sleep at night. So in this free guide, I share with you five of my very top tips, tips that I have seen transform the lives of many of my patients. So if you wanna get ahold of this guide, all you have to do is click on the link in the description box below. It's gonna depend on what you do during the day, but it could be reading books. It could be playing your guitar or piano and singing. It could be learning a language. It could be writing a kids' story or a fictional story. Right? We've all got different passions, and I do think there's something here where we are living these one-dimensional lives rather than the rich tapestry of three-dimensional experiences that is available to us, and I don't think we're having this conversation enough when it comes to rest. You know, sleep is a form of rest, but it's not the only form of rest. And I think if you can broaden your experience of life, change what you do in the evening... Could even be a jigsaw puzzle. In fact, you can think, you know, here in the UK it's not long since it was the Christmas holidays, and in this country many offices shut down for a couple of weeks. People spend time with their families. They play board games. They do the kind of fun stuff that we've been doing for decades. But we don't do them regularly. Life has become so serious for so many people. This fun, hobbies, creativity, art, comedy, watching comedy in the evening. That's one thing I started doing a lot recently. I thought, "Okay, I'm gonna watch some comedians this evening." I laugh, I look at the world in a different way, and I wake up feeling more refreshed. So if you think this might apply to you, why don't you give it a go? See what happens when you do something different in the evening, when you access a different part of your brain in the evening, and pay attention to how it feels the following morning. Something else I think many of us recognize is adversely affecting the quality of our sleep is screen time

7. 31:31 – 35:05

   Screens at night: circadian disruption, overstimulation, and relationship costs

   1. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee31:31

      in the evenings. Now, you've probably heard about this. You probably know about this yourself, yet you still find yourself in bed at night with that smartphone scrolling, even though you might have told yourself you're not going to do that. And I get it. It's really, really tempting. So why is it that for some of us, our use of screens in the evening is negatively impacting our sleep? Well, there's a whole variety of different reasons. One is to do with the light exposure. If we think about our bodies and we think about something called circadian biology, this idea that our bodies run on these daily 24-hour circadian rhythms. Okay, if we think about that, one of the fundamental modulators of that rhythm is light exposure in the day and minimal light exposure in the evening. Okay, that's what we've always had. We would wake up with the sun, we'd be outside for most of the day, and in the evening the sun would set, it would be dark, and we might have some campfire. But that has almost been flipped in the modern world where we are spending a lot of the day indoor, so we're not getting much light exposure in the day, and we're getting far too much in the evening. And that can be really confusing for our circadian rhythm. So one of the reasons why screen use in the evening can, for some people, negatively impact their sleep is because it's working in complete opposition to what your body's circadian rhythm wants. One of the things that light exposure in the evening does is alert us, so it keeps us up. It stimulates us, which can make it harder for us to fall asleep. And one of the other issues I think with screen use in the evening, particularly if it's smartphones, is if we are in a relationship, let's say, with someone else, we can often be in the same physical space as them, but in our minds, we're a million miles away. We can be in the same room, in the same bed, so physically in the same space, but mentally we're in our own curated worlds. So we think we're spending time together, but we're not really. And so many relationships are being adversely affected by our addiction, dare I say it, our addiction to screens. So I think there are multiple reasons why screen use can be problematic in the evening if it's not moderated. One of the other reasons is to do with overstimulation. Okay, what are you doing on that screen? Are you relaxing? Are you switching off? Are you doing something different from what you did in the day, or are you doing more of the same? Are you checking work emails in bed? Are you getting into arguments on social media? Are you consuming negative content or news headlines? I mean, what is it you're doing on that device? That's gonna impact how your mind is. You know, what are the inputs you're putting into your mind? And I've said this before, but I think it's worth saying again. If you struggle to sleep and you lie in bed sometimes thinking about all the negativity that exists in the world, and you've just watched the news, I'm not sure watching the news in the evening before you go to bed is a good idea. In fact, I think for most people, watching the news in the evening is a really bad idea when it comes to the quality of your sleep. Now, there's many more reasons I could talk about when it comes to screen use in

8. 35:05 – 44:14

   Designing a calmer evening: turning the phone off, charging outside the bedroom, going “analog”

   1. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee35:05

      the evening. But on a personal level, one thing I decided to do just over a week ago now is to turn off my smartphone every evening at 6:30 PM. Now, I get it. Not everyone is gonna be able to do that for a whole variety of different reasons. They may need to be contacted. They may need to be on call for work. It may be to do with children or family members. I get it. The way I get round that in my own life is that I still do have a landline. So I put my smartphone off, and my immediate family and my close friends have my landline number, which means if someone really does need to get me, they can just pick up the phone and call me on my landline. But it means for me, it's a very easy way to shut off all the noise from work and the outside world. And I've got to be honest, it has been absolutely transformative. I mean, first of all, if that phone goes off at that time, I've found that I'm just much more present in the evening. I find that when I'm reading a book in the evening, which is what I really like to do in the evening with a dim light, sit there reading, I find I'm not being distracted. When my phone was still on, even if I was trying to avoid looking at it, you know, every now and again whilst reading a book, you just go and pick it up and see what was going on in the world or on Instagram or whatever it might be. And I'm always keen with my patients to look for the root cause of problems. What's the most upstream lever I can help them turn which automatically takes care of multiple downstream behaviors? And I gotta say for me, turning my smartphone off at six thirty PM feels like one of those big upstream levers. I press off and it automatically changes the trajectory of my evening. I do recognize that not everyone can do this. I wanna make that super, super clear. But if you can, if you're able to, if you feel there's another way that people can contact you should they need to, I don't know, maybe it's worth a try. You see, with all these things, I want you to experiment. I want you to figure out a way that you can live in harmony with the modern world, because it can be hard at times. And I get it. These phones can be great. There's so much great information on them, but that also is where the problem comes. You see, it's hard to switch off when you know on the other side of that phone is any movie you wanna watch, any social media posts you wanna look at, or your photos, or your friends available on tap, whatever it might be. It's hard to resist. It's not because you're weak, it's because it's the nature of what these devices are. So any way that you can think about resetting your relationship with your screens in the evening, I think, and I've seen time and time again, and I've experienced, will absolutely have an impact on your health. And if all you do is charge your phone outside your bedroom, even that I have seen have a transformative impact on the lives of so many. The simple reality is if your smartphone is on your bedside table, A, it's very difficult to resist looking at it, both in the evening, but also if you wake up to use the bathroom in the night. If you see that phone there, there is a huge temptation to look at it, and we know that light exposure between ten PM and four AM, if done regularly, can play havoc with your body's circadian rhythm. But also, we know from other research that if your phone is in your vicinity and you're not looking at it, you are literally using up willpower and cognitive reserve to not go and look. Okay? So it's not neutral having it there. There's actually a real cost. And the reality is that for so many people, this is a life-changing move. Now, if you're thinking, "Oh, I would love to do that, but my phone's my alarm clock," I humbly suggest that you think about purchasing an alarm clock. You can get them really, really cheaply online now. And what? Ten or fifteen years ago, that's what everyone did. So I honestly believe an alarm clock, if you need an alarm to get up for work, as opposed to your smartphone, can be absolutely transformative. Another thing I see really negatively impact the quality of our sleep in the evenings is overstimulation. And of course, we've just mentioned screens and smartphones, and yes, they do contribute to overstimulation. But just think about what our lives can often be like these days, particularly in the evenings, with technology, with smart homes, with beeps, notifications, light, different noises, sounds. We're getting stimulated all the time. I mean, many of us these days struggle to sit in silence and just be at peace and rest. And I've found that if you think analog in the evenings as opposed to digital, I think you'll be surprised at what kind of impact that can have on your health. Most of the overstimulation we're getting comes from digital products. Our TV, our smartphone, our laptop, our iPad, whatever it might be. That's where the stimulation is coming from, and we almost wanna calm that stimulation down in the evening, especially in the time preceding bed. That means we wanna calm down the light, the noise, the pings, the sounds. We wanna keep it calm. We wanna quieten everything, and I think analog is a beautiful way to do that. So when I say analog, what do I mean? Well, basically things that are not on devices. Okay? Playing cards is analog. Reading a book as opposed to reading an article online, right? Reading a book where you feel the pages, you turn them, you're getting texture on your hand, you're having a real-life physical connection with a product. I think music. Of course, you can access music digitally, and I think that's completely fine. But in the evening, let's say you've been stimulated a lot during the day visually. Well, could you close your eyes? Rest your eyes. Stop the stimulation coming in and put some music on and listen to that music, hopefully music you enjoy, without also looking at your emails, without also looking at Instagram or X. See, that's the key. We multitask too much. Even when we're switching off in the evenings, we're also keeping abreast of everything else that's going on. But sometimes we don't wanna keep abreast of everything else that's going on. That's one of the things that switching my smartphone off at six thirty PM every night has given me. I'm intentionally choosing to say, "I don't wanna be kept abreast." The world is doing what the world is doing. At the moment, I don't wanna know. I am choosing- I'm taking control of the situation saying, no, now the world can do what the world wants to do. Now I'm connecting with my wife, I'm connecting with my children, and I'm connecting with myself. So have a think about analog activities that you could potentially replace your digital ones with in the evening. Journaling. You know, journaling is something I'm a huge fan of. Journaling can help us reflect on our day, develop self-awareness, help improve our sleep. It can help stop rumination and anxiety over the things that we can't change about the day. It can be a very, very useful practice. And two questions I love my patients to ask themselves every night is, what went well today, and what can I do differently tomorrow? Two very simple questions that if done regularly, can help you make changes in your life in a very compassionate and non-judgmental way. So do have a think about replacing digital with analog in the evening, and pay attention to how that makes you feel. So I hope you found those suggestions useful. Remember, the quality of your sleep in many ways determines the quality of your life. So pick one or two. You don't have to do them all. Pick the ones

9. 44:14 – 51:07

   From sleep habits to the bigger picture: why stress (and sleep) can block health progress

   1. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee44:14

      that appeal to you. Give them a go. Pay attention to how you feel. And hopefully, very quickly, your life will start to change. I can't say there was one particular moment, right? But I remember over a period of years, things were coming up, and the whole diet and nutrition thing wasn't enough to help my patients. Just nutrition's great, movement's... Sorry, I say diet and nutrition, I mean nutrition and movement, which is basically what the whole discussion around health gets polarized and just it's all about food and it's all about movement. Those things are important, but I realized for many patients they simply weren't enough.

   2. SPSpeaker44:51

      Yeah.

   3. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee44:52

      And so a couple of things, I guess, from my practice I've noticed. One particular patient I saw, I still remember this super clearly, right? He had type 2 diabetes. I think he was maybe, I'm gonna guess late 40s, early 50s. He had type 2 diabetes. He saw my TV show. He'd read some of my blogs. He'd read some other health blogs on the internet, and he thought, "Wow, maybe I can do something with my diet to help my type 2 diabetes." Right? So he went on to what most people would call a low carb diet. Okay? Now, I say most people would call... I'm sort of, I'm not a huge fan of that term, and the reason I'm not a huge fan of that term, even though many of my friends use it, is because I think it's very simplistic. I think we have demonized fat for many years, and I think we d- are potentially doing the same thing with carbs now, unless we have a bit more context and a bit more nuance. But this guy, he went on what would be called a low carb diet. He really cut down his refined and processed carbohydrates. Fantastic. And he was starting to get an improvement in his blood sugar. Now, he was doing this just from, you know, reading information on the internet. He was empowering himself and making a change, but he was getting frustrated because his blood sugar wasn't coming down anymore. It had plateaued.

   4. SPSpeaker46:06

      Mm.

   5. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee46:06

      And he was trying to cut his carbs even more to figure out, oh, it must be... I must, I must not be doing it right. I need to cut back more.

   6. SPSpeaker46:14

      Yeah.

   7. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee46:15

      And anyway, he ends up in my door. He ends up in my clinic, and he says, "Hey, look, Dr. Chatterjee, I've been doing this. Um, I'm still on metformin", which is a, a blood sugar drug. "I've really got my sugar under control, but I can't get it any lower and it's frustrating me." And I was looking at his life and I thought, hey, man, this guy is stressed out. He is a busy executive. He's working late every night. He's not sleeping well. All kinds of other things are going on, and I actually think he's stressing himself out more trying to cut carbs even more. And so, you know, I spent a bit of time trying to understand what was going on, and it was quite clear to me that stress was the primary issue, but he was resistant. I said, "Look, we need to really work on your stress levels. When you are stressed out, that will raise your blood sugar. I don't think this is any longer a diet issue. I think this is a stress issue. You've made great changes in your diet. Well done. But focusing overly on that area, you're missing the big picture."

   8. SPSpeaker47:14

      Yeah.

   9. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee47:14

      So all he had to do was some simple things, right? I helped him over the course of a few weeks to switch his computer off, his work computer off for an hour before bed. I mean, he was literally doing work emails in bed 'cause he had so much to do. He was resistant at start, at the start, so I started with 10 minutes, and then he gradually was starting to feel the difference. He went up to an hour. He was also killing it in the gym. And what I mean by that is he was a busy exec, working hard, rushing hard, you know, always on the go. When he went into the gym, he would go to, like, a really intense spinning class.

   10. SPSpeaker47:47

       Mm.

   11. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee47:47

       And I said, "Hey, look, I think you're tired. I think your body is deplete. What I'd love you to do is, yeah, sure, work out, but maybe let's work on yoga for a few weeks. Let's really w- work on a type of exercise that restores you and is not depleting you."

   12. SPSpeaker48:03

       Yeah.

   13. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee48:03

       Now, I'm not against spinning, right? But it's about the right form of exercise and movement in the context of the rest of your life.

   14. SPSpeaker48:11

       Yeah.

   15. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee48:11

       So he was a bit resistant, but he agreed. So basically, he switches off before he goes to bed. He cuts down the technology. I teach him some breathing techniques, like one that I call a three, four, five breathing technique. When you breathe in for three, you hold for four, you breathe out for five. And he switched the spinning classes for yoga. Within six to eight weeks, his blood sugar started coming down, and maybe six to 12 months later, it had come right back down to normal. He didn't change his diet. And I told him, "Actually, you can eat more carbs than you currently are. Just relax a little bit. Have some more whole food carbs. I think you're going way too extreme for what you need." So that's just one... I've got so many-

   16. SPSpeaker48:51

       Yeah, yeah

   17. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee48:51

       ... stories, but that's one case where I thought, hey-

   18. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee48:54

       It's not all about food and movements. There are t- for me, I say there are two other big pieces, the sleep, which obviously you're an expert on, or you're an expert on all, the whole wellness space, but sleep is a big issue.

   19. SPSpeaker49:05

       Yeah.

   20. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee49:05

       But I think stress is an issue that people, as you've already said, people are not talking about it enough.

   21. SPSpeaker49:11

       Yeah.

   22. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee49:11

       That's why I wrote the book. I wanna give stress the air time it deserves so people start to take this thing seriously. And, you know, to, to give you another example, Shawn, what happens every January, right? In the US and the UK, what are people trying to do? They're trying to cut down on sugar. They're trying to cut down on alcohol. Now, here's the thing. If you, in January, if you say to yourself, "Hey. Look, I've, this is the year I'm gonna do it. This is the year I'm gonna get my life on track. I'm, I'm cutting down on the sugar this time. I'm cutting down on my alcohol," what I see happen in my clinic is this. For one week, people use willpower. They're fine. They can do it. Two weeks, they might be okay. Even three weeks, they might be fine, but then they start to go back to their existing behaviors, and I see that often we use alcohol, often we use food and things like sugar to soothe the stress in our life.

   23. SPSpeaker50:05

       Mm.

   24. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee50:06

       So if I don't deal with the underlying stress in their life, I can't change the behavior. So, look, I don't like giving these things a rank of importance. I think food, nutrition, movement-

   25. SPSpeaker50:15

       Yeah

   26. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee50:15

       ... sleep, stress, are all important.

   27. SPSpeaker50:17

       Yeah.

   28. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee50:18

       But if people are listening to this podcast and they have tried to change their nutrition and they can't make it stick, maybe it's because they're using food to help deal with the stress in their life.

   29. SPSpeaker50:28

       Mm. I love it. Yeah. So powerful. And I think that all of those components you just mentioned, it depends on the time of year. It depends on the day. It depends on the person. It depends on so many factors. It's unique, and it's really, um, it's a interesting kinda ebb and flow, you know? Sometimes other things are gonna get more attention than others. But stress, and I'm so glad you mentioned this, that you are popularizing this conversation about it, because it's so overlooked. Now, you mentioned something about, you know, changing some things with his lifestyle, not the food, and getting his bl- helping to support his blood sugar in coming down. How exactly can stress affect our blood sugar in the first place?

10. 51:07 – 1:04:40

    Understanding stress: the stress response, blood sugar, and “micro stress doses” (MSDs)

    1. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee51:07

       Yeah. Look, Shawn, that's a fantastic question, and I think the, the best way to answer that is to really explain clearly and concisely what the stress response is, right? The stress response is fundamentally there to keep us safe. That is ultimately what it's there to do. So let's rewind two million years ago, right? Two million years ago, we would be in our hunter-gatherer communities, in our tribes, okay? We're getting on with our business, doing whatever we're doing. If a wild predator is approaching, like a lion, then we suddenly start to change. What happens? We're scared. We think, okay, there's a predator attack, uh, there's a predator approaching. In an instant, our stress response kicks into gear, right? So what happens? A series of physiological changes kick into place when that happens. Your blood sugar starts to rise. Why? Because then more glucose can go to your brain, which is what you need in an emergency situation.

    2. SPSpeaker52:03

       Right.

    3. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee52:04

       Your blood pressure starts to go up so more oxygen can get to your brain. That's gonna help you get away from the lion, right? Your amygdala, which is the emotional part of your brain, that goes onto high alert, so you are hypervigilant for all the threats around you. That is an appropriate response when you're in danger. Your blood, right, your blood starts to become more prone to clotting. That's great, 'cause if you get attacked by that lion and you get cut, instead of bleeding to death, your blood's gonna clot, and that's gonna save your life, right? So in the short term, these things are super helpful. The problem today is that many of us are having our stress responses activated not by wild predators, but by our daily lives.

    4. SPSpeaker52:48

       Mm.

    5. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee52:48

       By our email inboxes, by our to-do lists, by our competing demands, by two parents working, one's trying to rush home to pick somebody up and take them to a sports class. Elderly parents we might have to look after. For many of us, our bodies are reacting in the same way. So those things that work so beautifully well in the short term, like your blood sugar going up, if that's happening day in, day out to your life, well, that's gonna lead to low energy. It's gonna lead to obesity and type 2 diabetes, right? Because stress raises your blood sugar. That's the reason it does it.

    6. SPSpeaker53:21

       Mm.

    7. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee53:21

       It's not just food. It's not just movement. As you know yourself, Shawn, s- uh, sleep deprivation raises your blood sugar.

    8. SPSpeaker53:28

       Yeah.

    9. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee53:28

       But everyone's still just talking about food, when we need to broaden out that conversation. Blood pressure's a big problem these days. Again, I've just shown people how blood pressure, your blood pressure going up if you're running away from a lion is appropriate. If you're at the gym and you're doing a spinning class, your blood pressure will go up. That's an appropriate response to a short-term stressor. It's these things are becoming long term, that's where the problem i- i- is coming about. And that emotional part of your brain, the amygdala, which I told you about, which goes onto high alert when you're stressed, that is an appropriate response if a predator's attacking. If you are in downtown LA tonight and it's dark and you think someone might be following you, you want your emotional brain to go onto high alert. You want to be hypervigilant.

    10. SPSpeaker54:15

        Right.

    11. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee54:16

        But if that's happening day in, day out to your email inbox, that's what we call anxiety. So the stress response, once we understand it, we start to realize, the studies show that 90% of what a doctor sees in any given day may in some way be related to stress, which is a remarkable figure.

    12. SPSpeaker54:33

        Yeah, yeah. You know, this is a great segue into, you talk about these MSDs, right? These micro stress doses. Because for me, immediately a thought comes up, well, those are small things. You know, the email inbox, the, the rushing to get my kid to their practice, but it's all of those things combined. Like, that's not a lion coming your way, but it adds up. Is that right?

    13. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee54:57

        Absolutely. And this, you know, I remember, Shawn, when I, um, sat down to write this book, I was trying to figure out how do you simplify stress? How do you really get across in a very simple, non-judgmental way what you're talking about? Because I think we ignore stress a bit. We, it's, we talk about it all the time. We know that we're a stressed out culture, but I'm not sure what that means. Many of us don't know what it means or what we can do about it. So, the way I simplify it is this. The first thing to say is we've all got our own personal stress threshold, right? And that will vary. Yours may be different from mine. It may even vary from day to day depending on how, how we slept, and all kinds of different things. And I make the case that it's that threshold that's important. When you get to your threshold, that's when things start to go wrong. So, how can, how do I explain that even further? Well, I say we've got two kinds of stress, right? We've got macro stress doses, right? And these are the, you know, these are the really s- really traumatic things that may happen. You know, this could be physical abuse. This could be, uh, a bereavement. This could be a relationship breakup. You know, these things are what I call macro stresses. They are big hits of stress that we do need to process, and we may need to see someone to help us with that. So. But what I'm primarily talking about is the opposite of that, which are these micro stress doses, or as I call them in the book, these MSDs. Now, what is an MSD? An MSD, as you've just really demonstrated, is a small dose of stress that in isolation we can handle, right? With no problem. O- one of these things, I've got to pick my kids up, I need to rush there and get them. No problem. It's when they start to add up one on top of another, they get you closer and closer to your own personal stress threshold, and when you hit your threshold, that's when things go wrong. That's when your back goes. That's when an innocent email from your boss suddenly becomes problematic.

    14. SPSpeaker56:45

        Mm.

    15. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee56:45

        That's when we fall out with our partners-

    16. SPSpeaker56:47

        Mm

    17. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee56:47

        ... or scream at our kids, because we've hit our threshold. It wasn't necessarily the last stressor in our life that caused it. That was just, you know, the straw that broke the camel's back. It's the final piece that gets us to our threshold. And I make the case that many of us are leaving our house in the morning having already been exposed to 10 or 15 micro stress doses.

    18. SPSpeaker57:10

        Mm.

    19. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee57:10

        So, I'll give you an example. What is a, what is a common scenario these days? A common scenario is people are stressed out at work. They come back late, and they don't wanna go to sleep because they wanna unwind. They want some time for themselves. So, they start watching Netflix. Okay? And then one episode turns into two, which turns into three. I get that. I have done this before. I am not being... I'm not judging people for doing this. But let's say you go to bed at midnight, because f- you finally feel that, "Hey, I've, I've unwound from the day, and I've got to be up at 6:30 for work tomorrow." So, you go to bed. Right. You set your alarm for 6:30. So, you go to bed, and let's assume you're in a deep sleep, right? So you're in a deep sleep. Your alarm goes off at 6:30 in the morning. Boom, that is micro stress dose number one.

    20. SPSpeaker57:55

        Mm.

    21. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee57:55

        Because that's jolted you out of your deep sleep. You look at your phone. You look at it and go, "Ah, I've got a bit more time. Let me just put snooze on." You put snooze on. Six minutes later, again, the alarm goes off. Micro stress dose number two. Then what might you do? You might go, "Ah, come, let me look at my phone." Quickly look at email. "Oh, man, there's three work emails from yesterday I didn't respond to. I need to do that today." MSD number three. Then you quickly g- flip onto Instagram, and you see, "Oh, man, why is that person having a go at me for my last post? They're having a little niggle at me."

    22. SPSpeaker58:27

        Mm.

    23. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee58:27

        MSD number four. Then you realize, "Oh, man, I've been in bed for half an hour just doing this stuff. I'm gonna be late for work. I need to get up and get out." MSD number five, and you can quickly see how before we've even left the house in the morning, we've had 15 micro stress doses. Why is that a problem? That's a problem because it means you now are much closer to your own personal stress threshold. That means it won't take much in the day-

    24. SPSpeaker58:53

        Mm

    25. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee58:53

        ... before you get and before you flip over. So, you know, my approach is not just about re- reducing the stress in your life, because, you know, I get it. Some people have got super stressful lives. Maybe I can't reduce all the stressors in their life. You know, if you're a single mom with two kids, and you're working two jobs, you know what? That is a significant amount of stress in your life. Even if you cannot remove the stress, though, you can make yourself more resilient by reducing how many micro stress doses you've been exposed to, but also with some simple techniques that we can all use. So, I, I don't know. I think that micro stress dose is something that is really taking off in the UK. People really like that as an idea to help them identify a- and, and think about stress.

    26. SPSpeaker59:35

        Yeah. Yeah, man, so powerful. Uh, it reminds me of WMDs, you know, weapons of mass destruction.

    27. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee59:41

        Yeah.

    28. SPSpeaker59:41

        You know, these micro stress doses and the way that they influence our lives. And what's so cool is that, so for years I've been talking about a different version of this, and I call it your overall stress load. And this is the first time I've seen it in book form, and you detailing out, like, how it all can take place and just put so much on top of you, and you don't even realize it. And we're really just kind of putting ourselves at a disadvantage before we even get into the day a lot of times. And so, man, so fascinating. And if you could, and, uh, th- this is the first time niggle has been said on the show, by the way.

    29. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:00:14

        What did I say?

    30. SPSpeaker1:00:15

        Niggle.
11. 1:04:40 – 1:16:58

    Downtime, default mode network, and simple stress resets (tech-free breaks and walking)

    1. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:04:40

       Your brain's gonna adapt to be able to function in that environment, but it, it doesn't do that good a job. I mean, when talking about what the brain, talking about how stress affects the brain, um, I think a really useful thing, a really practical way of looking at that that people I think will resonate with is this whole idea of downtime. Okay? So I think one of the big, big problems I see in society is that we've lost downtime. Downtime has been slowly eroded away. It's been stolen from us. Every single moment of the day, if we have nothing to do, we, we pick up our phones. We're now absorbing. We're, we're, we're reading new information. We're learning new things. We're reacting to what's going on around us. If ... Uh, we're here in Santa Monica recording this, right? If you were here, I reckon 10 years ago, and you walked into a cafe, right? Or, or a bar or a restaurant or whatever. You wa- went into a coffee place, let's say, and there's a queue. I bet you 10 years ago that people would be looking around. They'd be daydreaming. They might bump into a friend or a work colleague. They might be looking at the, you know, the pastries and think, "Am I gonna have this today? Am I gonna resist?" Right? But they w- they, they'd, they'd be, they'd be switched off a little bit.

    2. SPSpeaker1:05:53

       Mm-hmm.

    3. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:05:53

       If you go into any ... If we walked out of here now and went to the, the nearest coffee place and you see the line, what is everyone doing?

    4. SPSpeaker1:06:00

       On their phone.

    5. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:06:00

       We're on our phones, right?

    6. SPSpeaker1:06:01

       Yeah.

    7. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:06:01

       We're on our phones. And you might ask, "Well, why is that a problem?" The reason that's a problem is 'cause your brain needs downtime. So we used to think, Shawn, that when we switched off from a task in front of us, that our brain went to sleep, but it's not true. We've realized in the last few years when we switch off, there's a part of our brain called the default mode network, or the DMN, that goes into overdrive. Right? So what does that part of the brain do? Right? It does many things, but one, two things it does, it helps you to solve problems and be more creative.

    8. SPSpeaker1:06:36

       Hmm.

    9. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:06:36

       Right? So this is the exact reason why people, so many of us have our best ideas when we go for a walk or we're in the shower. I mean, I get some of my best ideas in the shower.

    10. SPSpeaker1:06:46

        Hmm.

    11. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:06:47

        Right? Why is that? It's because, because you've switched off, your brain tries to solve problems for you. Right? Is that making sense?

    12. SPSpeaker1:06:55

        Yeah, absolutely.

    13. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:06:56

        It, and it's so-

    14. SPSpeaker1:06:56

        Absolutely

    15. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:06:56

        ... powerful. And downtime, we don't see the, the problem with always being on our phones, right? And always consuming information. Your brain needs downtime to thrive.

    16. SPSpeaker1:07:07

        Yeah.

    17. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:07:07

        And this is why I'm so keen to say even, like, I go into a lot of, uh, companies, big companies, talk about employee wellness, and one of my top tips is have a tech-free lunch break even if it's just for 15 minutes. Right? Put your phone in the drawer, go outside, have a walk. It sounds so simple, right? I made a, a, a different show last year for ITV in the UK on stress, and as part of that show we got to follow three people, and we got to do... We measured their stress levels literally for three days, like minute by minute, and we were tracking what they were doing and how it was affecting their stress levels. We did something called heart rate variability monitoring on them, which I think you've covered before on the podcast.

    18. SPSpeaker1:07:50

        Yeah.

    19. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:07:50

        And essentially a high HRV, so a high heart rate variability, is a good thing. It means that your body is able to cope and adapt to the stress around you. A low reading when your heart beats is l- very much like a metronome, is actually slightly problematic. It, it, it, it suggests that we've had too much stress on our body and our body's not able to cope and adapt. Now, one person in particular, right? He was, I'm gonna guess he was around 40 from recollection. A 40-year-old guy, he was a manager in his local company, and he took his job super seriously. Super, super seriously. He came in early, he worked through lunch, he stayed late. He'd go home. When he'd go home to unwind, he'd drink more alcohol than he wanted to. It was impacting his relationship with his wife, it was impacting his sleep, and he wanted help. Now, I could see on his work days that you looked at his stress readings, they would start to go up throughout the morning. At lunchtime, because he didn't take a break, they'd keep going up. By the time he left home, he'd had a huge accumulation of stress, and that would affect his relationship and, and impact his alcohol habits.

    20. SPSpeaker1:08:56

        Hmm.

    21. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:08:57

        All I asked him to do, Shawn, was this. I said, "Listen, what I'd love you to do, at lunchtime put your phone in your drawer for 15 minutes and go for a walk." Right? He goes, "Yeah, okay. I can do that. Fine." He goes and does that for about a week. The following week we retrack everything. What happens? You see on those work days his stress levels go up in the morning as before. At lunchtime, they go right back down to baseline. They reset. And in the afternoon, they hardly go up to anywhere near the same level. So what does that do? That means that when he goes home it has a knock-on consequence. So look, objectively with the data I've seen a big difference, but what's more interesting to me is subjectively what does he think? What does he feel? Not what does the, the tech say. He says, "Doc, I feel like a different person. I've got more energy. I'm more productive in the afternoon. I'm now leaving earlier than I'm meant to finish. I'm leaving home early."

    22. SPSpeaker1:09:53

        Hmm.

    23. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:09:53

        "I'm drinking less alcohol, and I'm closer with my wife now." Right? From a 15-minute lunch break.

    24. SPSpeaker1:10:01

        Wow.

    25. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:10:01

        And this is, I'm so keen to make health accessible to people. Like, wellness I think has become, for many people they think, "Oh, that's great, but it's, it's expensive, it's inaccessible." Every single one of us has the ability to have a 15-minute tech-free lunch break every day, and I guarantee if people are skeptical, try it for seven days and see the difference.

    26. SPSpeaker1:10:23

        Yeah.

    27. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:10:23

        Because, yes, that, that's the kind of a story which you can sort of think about, but your brain, your default mode network, it wants to help you. It wants to be more creative. It wants to help solve problems for you, but you can't do that unless you give it downtime. To make sure you're taking action after watching this video, I've created a free breathing guide that's gonna help you reduce stress, calm your mind, and boost your energy. In this guide, I share with you six really simple breathing practices that work immediately. Even just one minute a day will start to make a big difference. To receive your free guide, all you have to do is click on the link in the description box below.

    28. SPSpeaker1:11:05

        It's so valuable. The, the problem with it, though, is that it's too simple.

    29. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:11:09

        It's too simple.

    30. SPSpeaker1:11:10

        You know, it's too simple. And listen, there was a... And I mentioned this on a past episode. Um, if, if especially a lot of people that listen to this show, they're wanting to perform at a high level in all the areas of their lives. And if you're talking about that work performance, if you're talking about tapping into that creativity like you mentioned and problem-solving, the idea that not pressing and beating-
12. 1:16:58 – 1:30:39

    Meaning, purpose, and passion: using the LIVE framework and daily pleasure to reduce stress

    1. SPSpeaker1:16:58

       In the book, you cover some very specific areas. You talk about, uh, in these four sections, purpose, relationships, body and mind, and some very practical things. But the one that really stood out for me, and you started the book with, was talking about how purpose relates to stress, and this was just fascinating for me. Immediately, I was like, "Yes, that's the thing." But can you just break down why you felt that was important to put into the book?

    2. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:17:24

       Yeah. Look, um, the science is pretty clear. Like, having, not having a sense of purpose in your life is associated with much poorer health outcomes, uh, a- across multiple conditions. It's associated with much less happiness, lower income levels. So many things are associated with not having a sense of purpose in our lives. And I feel that fundamentally a life which has no meaning and purpose in it is inherently a stressful life, right? We can talk about all the other things, but actually not having a reason to get up in the morning, not actually knowing where you're going with your life, I think it's incredibly stressful. Now, I appreciate that even simply saying that can sound stressful to someone if they're hearing that and they're going, "Yeah, okay, fine, but I don't like my job. I don't like where I live. Um, what can I do about that?" And so why I started the book with this, 'cause I think it is probably one of the most important things, and yes, of course, breathing, exercise, meditation, nature, all those things are important, and I cover them all, and I give practical tips in them. But I think the meaning and purpose piece is probably the most important, and I think it's one of the freshest. It, it's a new idea for people to latch onto. And so, Shawn, a few years ago, I came across this Japanese concept, ikigai. Have you come across it before?

    3. SPSpeaker1:18:41

       Yeah.

    4. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:18:41

       I was on Facebook, and one of my friends posted, uh, they said that these four circles, right, these four different circles, and where they intersect in the middle is your ikigai. It's how the Japanese live. It's their, the way of living your life so you have meaning and purpose. And the four things are this. You need to find one thing in your life that you're good at That pays you money, that you love, and that the world needs. And I thought, "Okay, that was great. I like that. I would like a bit of ikigai in my life" [laughs] Right? But then I would use this concept with my patients, and I'd talk to them about this. And for many of them, they just found it too intimidating. They found, "Yeah, man, that sounds great, but how, how am I gonna get there?" Right? And, and actually, on the UK book tour back in January, I remember I gave a big talk in London, and at the Q&A at the end, a Japanese student put her hand up, and she said, "Dr. Chatterjee, look, I'm very familiar with ikigai. It's part of my culture. But I've found it very stressful my whole life. It's a impossible ideal for me to live up to." Do you see what I mean? Yeah, yeah. It's, it's, it- it's great if you can get it, but many of us don't feel we can. Yeah. And so I created a new framework in the book- Mm-hmm ... called the LIVE framework to help people start to find meaning and purpose. Um, it's, like, called the LIVE framework, L-I-V-E, L for love, I for intention, V for vision, and E for engagement. Now, we don't necessarily need to go into the whole thing, but I think the first one is super, super interesting for people. And I think it will really shed some light onto their lives. L is for love, right? So that is about passion. So the research tells us this, Sean, it tells us that regularly doing things that we love makes us more resilient to stress. Hmm. Yeah. But conversely, being chronically stressed makes it really hard for us to experience pleasure in day-to-day things. Hmm. So it works both ways. Yeah. So passion is a huge part of meaning and purpose. It's a huge part of stress. It's a huge part of health. I had a patient, maybe a year ago, 52-year-old chap, right? He was the, um, he was the CFO of a plastics company local to me, and he came in to see me. And he was, he was married. He had two kids. He had a good job. You know, he was living in a pretty decent house. You know, from the outside, his life was good. But he came in to see me. He said, "Dr. Chatterjee, look, um, some days I kind of struggle to get out of bed in the morning. Um, my motivation's down a little bit. I feel a bit flat about things. Is this what depression is?" And so I... We were chatting. I started to try and understand what was going on in his life. I ran some tests, some bloods. They were all normal. And I said, "Look, how's your job?" "Job's okay. I mean, I don't really enjoy it, but I've got to do it, you know? I've got a mortgage. I've got a family to feed. That's why I do my job." I said, "Okay, how's your marriage?" "Yeah, so-so. I don't really see my wife that much. Yeah, I guess it's okay." Very, very indifferent. Hmm. Hmm. And I said, you know, "Have you got any hobbies? What do you do in the week that you enjoy?" He said, "I don't really have any hobbies. I'm too busy." I said, "What about the weekends?" "Weekends, you know, I've got to do all the house chores, household chores. I've got to take the kids to their sports classes. I don't have time, Doc, for hobbies." I said, "Okay, did you ever have a hobby?" "Yeah, you know, like, as a kid, as a teenager, I used to love train sets." Hmm. I said, "Okay, have you got a train set at home?" "Yeah, I've got one in the attic, but I haven't seen it in years. It's probably, it's probably dusty and, you know, got cobwebs on it." I said, "Look, what I'd love you to do when you get home tonight is get your train set out." Now, I fully appreciate it's probably not the advice he was expecting from his doctor. [laughs] But that's the advice I gave to him. Anyway, I didn't see him for a few weeks, right? And that's not uncommon. We simply, we have so many patients. We can't follow everybody up. Yeah. But three months later, I'd just finished my morning clinic. I w- I was in the car park about to do some home visits for the, like, elderly patients who can't come into the practice, and I bumped into his wife. And I said, "Hey, look, how's your husband getting on?" She said, "Oh, man, Dr. Chatterjee, I just want to say thank you. I feel like I've got the guy I married back again. He comes home from work. He plays on his toy set, on his train set. He's on eBay buying collector's items." [laughs] "And he's subscribed to, like, some monthly magazine now." I thought, "Okay, that's great." I, I felt really good. I still hadn't seen him. Three months later, I was looking at my clinic list, and his name's on it. He had done some blood tests, and he was coming in to see me for the results. So I said, "Hey, how are you getting on compared to six months ago?" He said, "Doc, I feel like a different person. Life is good. I've got energy. I feel motivated, and I'm concentrating much better." I said, "Okay, great. How's your job?" "My job, I love it now. I'm really getting a lot out of my job." "How's your relationship with your wife?" "So good. It's the best it's been for years." Hmm. So Sean, I'm gonna ask you a question. Did that chap, did that man have a mental health problem? I mean, he certainly had symptoms that would be consistent with a mental health problem. You know- Yeah ... I could have diagnosed him with something like depression, potentially. Yeah. But it's not what he really had. A deficiency of passion in his life. Hmm. And when we corrected his passion deficiency, when he corrected his passion deficiency, not only does he feel better in himself, now the, the job that he didn't like so much, he's enjoying and getting more out of. Now his relationship's starting to improve, and this is why I'm so passionate about passion. Yeah. Right? We talk about health. We talk about the amount of vegetables we're eating. We're talking about the workouts we do or don't do, and of course, that's important. But I want people to give passion the same priority as they will give to the number of vegetables they have on their plate, right? It is so important. So the prescription I give to people is, can you give yourself a dose of pleasure every day, even if it's just for five minutes? It could be reading a book, going for a walk, listening to a podcast, right? It could be, you know, it could be coming home from work, putting on your computer, going on YouTube, finding your favorite comedian, and laughing for five minutes. I don't care what it is, but that's my challenge to everybody listening to this podcast Can you give yourself five minutes of pleasure and passion every day? And the second, um, request I'd make of the audience, I know it's your audience, but if you don't mind, uh, my request-

    5. SPSpeaker1:25:13

       Yeah

    6. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:25:13

       ... I'd make of them is have a think. When was the last time you did something in your life that you really, really loved? Something you did not just to post on social media, but something you did because it makes you feel good.

    7. SPSpeaker1:25:26

       Hm.

    8. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:25:27

       If it's not been for a while, that's okay, but I would suggest today at some point you look at your calendar, you make some calls, and you schedule it into your diary. Passion is important for your health. It's as important, I would argue, as any other component of your health.

    9. SPSpeaker1:25:42

       Absolutely. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Uh, this could be roller skating. This could be hula hooping. This could be, um, you know, walking your dog. This could be basketball. When we think about purpose, we tend to just immediately jump to what we do for a living, for our job.

    10. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:25:59

        Yeah.

    11. SPSpeaker1:25:59

        And you just gave a great example that him doing something that he loved fed back into his work, and he found greater love there as well. So please keep that in mind, because we all have this opportunity to start this today. But I think it's a matter of giving ourselves permission to do something that we love.

    12. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:26:16

        Yeah.

    13. SPSpeaker1:26:17

        Which is crazy we have to say that, but it's just like today we're so distracted and we're so, quote, busy. But I'm telling you right now, there are people who are far busier than you who are far happier because they've given themselves permission to do something that they love.

    14. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:26:30

        For sure.

    15. SPSpeaker1:26:31

        Yeah.

    16. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:26:31

        And, and you know, the reason I share these examples is I really want to make health accessible for people. I don't want people to think, oh, you know, meaning and purpose is quite lofty. It's quite, many people might feel it's quite unattainable. Like depending on where your life is currently right now, that idea of having meaning and purpose may, may be quite stressful to think about it.

    17. SPSpeaker1:26:52

        Mm-hmm.

    18. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:26:52

        And I think passion is a beautiful entry point, because you don't have to change anything else. Just start putting a little bit of passion into your daily life, and what you'll find is it starts to feed you. It starts to nourish you. And over the coming weeks, over the coming months, other things in your life will start to become clear.

    19. SPSpeaker1:27:09

        Mm-hmm.

    20. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:27:10

        And it's like a knock-on effect. You don't have to go from zero to hero. You don't have to suddenly quit your job, find the job of your dreams, you know, find the partner of your dreams, the dream house. That's not what I'm talking about. Take these small steps, and the small steps will take care of the big steps later.

    21. SPSpeaker1:27:27

        Mm-hmm. Yes, yes, yes. Man, this is so good, and I really want to illustrate this point here and how purpose and passion translates into the re- like your real tangible health. I wasn't planning on sharing this, but I just sent this to somebody today. And um, I just had a conversation with him about it. It's actually Eric Thomas, ET, who was just on the show recently. And this was a new study, and this was published, this is a actually brand-new study. This is nuts.

    22. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:27:52

        Wow.

    23. SPSpeaker1:27:52

        Wait till you hear this. Brand-new study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, JAMA, current open. It uncovered that people who didn't have a strong life purpose, which for them this was defined as a self-organizing life aim that stimulates goals for them, right?

    24. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:28:08

        Wow.

    25. SPSpeaker1:28:08

        That's a very tangible way to put-

    26. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:28:10

        Yeah

    27. SPSpeaker1:28:10

        ... uh, purpose in mind. And so here's what they found. These folks who didn't have a strong life purpose were more likely to die than those who had a specific, uh, life purpose, and die specifically from cardiovascular diseases. Now, here's what it translated to be. This study included 7,000 American adults between the ages of about 50 to 60. They found that people without a strong life purpose were more than twice as likely to die over the course of the four-year study period compared to those who had one. This is nuts, right? So again, this isn't causation, but this is a very interesting correlation, and it's something that matters, you know, because we're talking about invoking something that does, it's a stress solution. And we understand today, thanks to you, how detrimental stress can be. And so we have to incorporate something that we love. Give yourself permission, not just for your own mental health and well-being and happiness, but literally this can protect your life.

    28. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:29:04

        Yeah. Shawn, please do send me that study as well. I'd love to see it after this podcast. I, that sounds super, super interesting. The, the point that also came to, to my, into my head as you were just describing that is, you know, guys, look, I guess a lot of people will be listening to your show and trying to get tips on their well-being. They want to improve the way that they're feeling, improve their diet, improve other aspects of their health. What you will find is when you start to engage in regular passion, you will find it gets easier to make those other decisions. You'll find it easier to make healthy food choices because it will, it nourishes such a crucial part of us that actually then we will feel less of a need to compensate and, and actually soothe the stresses in our life with sugar and chips. Do you know what I mean? It's like it's all connected. And hey, could there be an, I wouldn't say an easier, but a more inspiring tip to do? Do something that you love, right?

    29. SPSpeaker1:29:59

        Yeah.

    30. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:29:59

        It's not like you have to do something you don't like. We're, we're asking you guys to do something that you love.
13. 1:30:39 – 1:35:42

    Reframing stress and building positive reflection rituals (family dinner questions)

    1. SPSpeaker1:30:39

       Add it in every day. This is so awesome. So one of the things that you talk about in the book, and this was a really interesting study that you noted, and I want to talk about. I think this is one of the most powerful tools that we have access to that we're not utilizing. Uh, it was a 2012 study you noted that was if we change the way we think about a stressful event, we can improve our physical health and also the way our brain reacts to these micro stress doses. And what the study was, it compared the group- ... of folks who didn't reframe their stress, and the participants in this study who reframed their micro stress doses, so thinking about them differently, because the stress, micro stress doses happen to everybody, but reframing them, they had lower blood pressure, higher attention levels, and even improved their efficiency of their heart muscles. Nuts, right?

    2. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:31:29

       It is nuts. It's... And this is why I'm such a huge fan of daily reframing practices.

    3. SPSpeaker1:31:34

       Yeah.

    4. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:31:34

       So people, look, we've got something called negativity bias as humans, right? This is probably what's kept us alive and s- for, and survive for so long. You know, we always turn our attention to the negative. So, you know, at the end of your day, you know, if you've had a stressful day and a busy day and you think about it, often the negative stuff will come up. Oh, you know, what happened? Or someone, someone ignored me in the corridor at work, or, you know, whatever. Someone bumped into me in the cafe and they were rude, or the waitress wasn't that ni- whatever it is, we come back to the negatives. And there are so many beautiful things that you can do in the, in the evening that don't take long, that can just reframe the day for you. And as you said with that study, when you reframe, actually it changes the way your brain processes things.

    5. SPSpeaker1:32:16

       Mm-hmm.

    6. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:32:16

       So I'll tell you one thing I do, Shawn, with my, um, family. Like when I'm at home and I make it a huge priority that, obviously I'm in LA at the moment, but when I'm back in the UK and I'm in my house, we all sit and have dinner together.

    7. SPSpeaker1:32:30

       Mm-hmm.

    8. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:32:30

       And there's no technology there. It's a, it's a big thing for us. And we play a little game, and the game we play is that everyone has to go around the table and answer three... Well, it used to be three questions, it's now five questions. But I'll start with the three questions to keep it super simple. 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? Now, it's such a powerful game, but I actually thought this is gonna be really good for my kids.

    9. SPSpeaker1:32:58

       Mm-hmm.

    10. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:32:58

        But it's actually really good for my wife and I as well.

    11. SPSpeaker1:33:00

        Mm-hmm. Yeah.

    12. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:33:01

        Because you, you very, you very quickly start to reframe the day. You start to look at the positive things, and there is positive in every single day if we can start training our mind to look for it. So the practice is about training yourself every day to start looking at the positives. A few months ago, my daughter said to me, "Hey Daddy, you know, at school today, Annabelle opened the door for me on the way out to lunch break." You know, that's a small thing. I very much hope that what I'm doing by that is not only improving my own health, but I'm also modeling to my children. I'm ho- I'm hoping that actually they're starting to learn on a daily basis, let's start looking at the positives that happen in, in everyday life. So that's one game that people might find useful. Um, if you've had a negative experience in the day, right? A great way to reframe it is to actually write it down. Like, if you start writing it down, it's very hard to be as critical to yourself as when you keep it in your head. In our head, we can make it, we can turn it into a big thing. As soon as you start writing it down, you start to realize how ridiculous some of the self-critical behavior can be sometimes.

    13. SPSpeaker1:34:04

        Mm-hmm.

    14. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:34:04

        It sounds, it just sounds silly when you write it out, and you can start to be a lot more rational. The other way you can try and do it, this is another tip for people if they struggle with negative experiences and they can't switch off from it, and these practices also help, help our sleep quality, which you well know.

    15. SPSpeaker1:34:19

        Yeah. Right.

    16. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:34:20

        But another one is to imagine you are a commentator on your life. Like if you're a, like in a sports game that people are watching, there's a commentator, right? You guys call them commentators here as well?

    17. SPSpeaker1:34:29

        Yeah, yeah, yeah. [laughs]

    18. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:34:30

        Yes, you're a commentator. Imagine you are commentating on your life.

    19. SPSpeaker1:34:33

        Yeah.

    20. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:34:33

        So let's say you ha- your boss, there was a meeting with your boss and something negative happened. In your own head, you can turn this into something that it never was. But on the, if you pretend you're a commentator, and you also write it down, you say, "Okay. So I came to that meeting. Actually, my boss was actually super tired. He's not performing well today 'cause his kids weren't doing so well. That's why he's tired. That's why he didn't really look at me and give me the attention. It wasn't because of the way I was feeling." Look, some of these tips may resonate with people, some of them won't. Choose the ones that do resonate with you. I will say that that gratitude practice that I play with my family is fantastic.

    21. SPSpeaker1:35:13

        Yeah.

    22. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:35:13

        A lot of my friends now, sometimes we'll play it with my friends when we're out for dinner. We'll play it together. It sounds a little bit, it sounds a little bit California, right?

    23. SPSpeaker1:35:20

        Mm-hmm.

    24. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:35:21

        But it's great and it's so powerful.

    25. SPSpeaker1:35:23

        Yeah. I love that.

    26. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:35:25

        If you enjoyed that video, I think you are really going to enjoy this one where I outline five powerful ideas that will improve your life immediately. I figured out over two decades of medical practice that these are the tips and techniques that really move the needle

Episode duration: 1:35:42