These Daily Habits Are Destroying Your Brain, Body & Life! (But You Can Reverse Them)

1. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee0:00

   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 being shown now in 70 countries around the world. I've shown things like Type 2 diabetes, um, you know, vanished within 30 days, a change that has proved sustainable two or three years later.

2. SPSpeaker0:34

   Mm.

3. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee0:34

   Uh, panic attacks, anxiety gone down by 70, 80% in just six 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. 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.

4. SPSpeaker1:03

   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.

5. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:12

   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.

6. SPSpeaker1:26

   Mm.

7. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:26

   And that's pretty worrying, actually. You know, 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 gonna mean they're gonna 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 acute problems. They responded very well to the sort of pharmaceutical model, the, the one pill for every ill model.

8. SPSpeaker2:11

   Mm.

9. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee2:11

   So let's say you have a pneumonia, for example, okay? That's when 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 gonna give you a pill to get rid of that bug." And then within a week, within two weeks, you know, your, your problem's gone, right? The model of medicine we have now responds... You know, w- was set up in that era. What we're seeing today in the 21st century is chronic disease.

10. SPSpeaker2:43

    Mm.

11. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee2:43

    Whether it's Type 2 diabetes, okay? Which i- it's like a modern epidemic. Whether it's mental health problems, right? In, in the UK, right, one in four people in any given year are gonna 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 gonna be? Am I gonna be able to function? Am I gonna be able to talk to my family, or I'm gonna start losing my brain health-

12. SPSpeaker3:10

    Mm

13. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee3:11

    ... and my, my memory? Um, so these sort of conditions require a different approach, and that's why life expectancy is going down, because w- we're, w- we're not really well-equipped to tackle these problems, 'cause these problems don't respond to a one pill for every ill model. You've gotta change multiple things, right? You've gotta 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.

14. SPSpeaker3:46

    Mm.

15. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee3:46

    That is not your destiny, though. It doesn't mean you're gonna 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 environment, how you live your life, that shapes and that determines whether those genes are switched on, if they're switched off-

16. SPSpeaker4:06

    Mm

17. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee4:06

    ... 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 gonna 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.

18. SPSpeaker4:57

    Mm.

19. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee4:58

    When we feel better, we live more. So much of the time, the problems people are telling me about, the, the disagreements they're having, the family disharmony they're having, often it's 'cause they don't feel good.

20. SPSpeaker5:11

    Right.

21. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee5:11

    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.

22. SPSpeaker5:22

    Mm.

23. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee5:23

    And it all starts to add up. A- 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?

24. SPSpeaker5:37

    Mm.

25. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee5:37

    A- 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 wanna 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 five years ago-I wouldn't have known that.

26. SPSpeaker6:08

    Mm.

27. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee6:08

    You know, five, six 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.

28. SPSpeaker6:15

    Right.

29. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee6:15

    Maybe the fact that you're on Netflix or YouTube till 1:00 AM every night and you're only sleeping five hours a night, actually, if you go to bed one hour earlier, you will find you get more bang for your buck than trying to cut out a little bit more sugar in your diets.

30. SPSpeaker6:29

    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 five years ago I would've 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%.

Episode duration: 2:08:49