Dr Rangan: Stress affects every single organ of the body. And therefore, if you lower your stress levels, you can improve the function of every single organ in the body.
Dr Rupy: Welcome to the Doctor's Kitchen podcast. This is going to be part two of my fascinating conversation with Dr Rongan about how to deal with stress. Make sure you pick up a copy of his book, The Stress Solution, and you can pre-order my book, Eat to Beat Illness, in all good bookstores and on Amazon too. If you haven't listened to part one, make sure you give a listen to that before you listen to this one. You don't want to miss the vital information that we talked about in that episode. Let's get on with it. I have a morning mantra that I've been doing now for probably I'd say about a year at least, and it's super simple. And I love how you formalised it with the 3Ms because I think embodying that doesn't take that long at all. And the way you've just described it brilliantly is something that I'm going to consider doing as well. But I say a morning mantra. I literally get up, sit on the side of my bed, I look out the window, and I say to myself, in my head, but I might start saying it out loud now, the world is beautiful, I'm going to be productive today, and I'm going to be happy today, and those three things. And I say that every single day, and I've done that for a year now, and it is life-changing. It is mood-changing, and it certainly puts you on a positive accent for the rest of the day. And I try and remember back whenever, I mean, there's going to be negative things that happen throughout your day, but I always try when those happen to become more intuitive and actually more mindful of, yes, I'm experiencing a negative moment, but bringing myself back to what I did first thing this morning when I sat on the side of my bed looking out at the grey sky, mostly, because it's London, promising myself that the world is beautiful.
Dr Rangan: Rupy, I love that. I mean, I think that's just incredible and it really highlights what we said earlier on in the podcast, which is the brain is constantly responding to the information it's given. So what you're doing there is giving it positive information. So your brain is starting to think, hey, the world's a pretty good place. I don't need to mount my stress responses. And there is good science now on affirmations. I put some of the studies in my book. You know, affirmations have been shown to improve problem-solving performance by undergraduate students. This stuff sounds all woo-woo, right? But this stuff works. And you know, we are in a mental health crisis at the moment. We do have huge rates of depression, anxiety, chronic work stress. We need to do something about it. And these are simple things. Let's be really, really clear about this. There is zero downside to any of this. Right? You know, yes, you might feel uncomfortable, you think, actually, this is not me. Give it a go for seven days. See how you feel. See how the people around you start to respond, how your life is less stressful. Look, we're all going to have stressful days. That's the reality. You know, my tips, your tips, the book, the stress solution, that's not going to magically mean you never have any stress-free, you know, you're not going to have any stressful days anymore. That is going to happen. But it's about giving yourself resilience, a buffer, so you have less of those stressy days and that you're better equipped to tackle them when they hit, because life is always changing. Things are going to happen that throw a spanner in the works. And you know, some days, you know what? You are going to overreact. It is going to be too stressful, even if you've done everything else right. That's okay. But by understanding where stress lives, by understanding what stress is, I think that's the way we start to come up with a plan for dealing with it.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, and I I tell you I resonate with that and I think, so the the to bring it back to the book, The Stress Solution is essentially your four-pillar plan, uh, you defining stress or teaching the reader how to deal with stress using the four-pillar plan concept. Is that is that correct?
Dr Rangan: Yeah, sort of. I'm basically trying to simplify stress. You know, there's science in the book, there's research papers, but but it's I've really tried to make it, I hope like my first book, very easy to read and hopefully very entertaining to read. And people who have seen early copies and have read it have, you know, it's been incredible to hear their response, which has been, as I'm doing it, I want to make changes in my life. I get that. And it's a lot of people say, once you get it, it's intuitive. You get it, you understand. I think once people have read the introduction, right, they'll understand stress. And they'll go, oh, right, I get it now. I totally get it. There's there's a so it's not, you know, it's similar in the sense to my first book in the sense that there are four core pillars in the book: purpose, relationships, mind, I've forgotten now, and body. You're a record. Yeah. There are four core pillars in the book, uh, body, mind, relationships, and purpose. And in each of them, there are three chapters. There's a beautiful symmetry to the book to really make it easy to understand. And each of those chapters is on, um, a particular topic. So there's one chapter in the relationship section, for example, on touch and the importance of human touch. And I'm really proud of this chapter because I haven't really seen this science, uh, you know, out in the public much. And it's the importance of human touch and how we've got touch receptors on our skin that directly go to our emotional brain. So, you know, I make the case that basically human touch is as important to our minds as food is for our physical health. And it's about how we become a touch-averse society for good reasons in many ways, that we're scared now of touch. But actually, human touch is critical for our well-being. And I talk about simple ways that we can get more touch, whether it's, you know, you hug your friends when you see them rather than just shake their hands, for example, or, you know, or whatever, or just saying hi. Um, I I really noticed that this has really changed the way I parent, actually, because when I met this professor, Professor Francis McGlone, who's one of the world's leading researchers in on touch fibres, who I used a lot of his research, uh, for that touch chapter. It was incredible. He said to me that there are these touch fibres that sit in our skin that are optimally stimulated when we stroke at three to five centimetres per second. Now, who who optimally tries to stroke at three to five centimetres per second? No one. But funnily enough, if a mother has to stroke their child, they will automatically lock into that speed. Wow. Right? It's intuitive within us. And when you stroke the skin at that rate, you've got these C-tactile nerve fibres that go all the way to your emotional brain and they help lower your cortisol levels, which are our main stress response hormone. Now, round about the time I met, uh, Professor McGlone, my son at that time used to, every time when I put him to bed, he'd say, Daddy, stroke me. And I didn't realise how important, I didn't realise what was going on there. I thought, yeah, he just wants me to stroke him. No big deal whether I do it or not. You know, I did, but I thought, yeah, okay, fine, whatever. After spending time with Francis, with Francis McGlone and actually delving deep into his research, I thought, wait a minute, my son is craving, you know, some sort of emotional response at the moment. And I will literally sit with him every night after he goes to bed, sometimes for 10 minutes, just stroking him until he falls asleep, because I know that is what his body is crying out for. And I really feel that we've lost touch with these, well, lost touch, I didn't mean to. We've really lost connection with these intuitive signals and these things that have been part of culture for so long, you know, whether it's, you know, touching our partners, right? I it's probably a tad controversial, but I make the case in the book that for many of us, we know the, um, the beautiful curves of our phone and touch them more than our partners. You know, we we're we're certainly touching our technology more than we're touching other human beings. And I think there's something in that. We have to get back to basics. And, um, I've got all kinds of tips in terms of how people can do that, whether it's with their friends, with their work colleagues. And I I get, I'm not talking about inappropriate touch. I get that is very threatening and that will put your stress responses up. And I've got to be very careful how you talk about touch. And I've been very careful in the book how I talked about it because, you know, some people have been inappropriately touched before and they might be slightly averse to being touched. And I also cover that. I say, okay, that's okay. And that's one of the reasons why massage is getting, you know, so popular now. You know, we are craving human touch. Yes, our diets have changed, we're craving good food, but we're craving human touch. We're craving connection. We're craving real, deep, meaningful human connection. And it's amazing how, you know, on one level, it's crazy that me as a GP is having to say all of these things.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, yeah. It's it's something that should be intuitive, but unfortunately, the design of our environments hasn't taken into account our evolutionary needs and our mental design. And I think once we get back to that understanding of actually how we've evolved as a tribal nation, one that experiences sense of purpose, community, touch, all the things that we've talked about in this podcast, then we can actually serve our well-being much better and our health and our physical health, not just our mental health. And I love the interconnectedness of everything as well, because it's something that I I touch on on the book, The Doctor's Kitchen and the new book, Eat to Beat Illness, is how, uh, the interconnectedness of the human body shouldn't be separated from the mind at all. It's all one thing. And once we get back to that understanding, then we can actually improve our our lives.
Dr Rangan: Yeah, I absolutely agree. And I think in many ways, you know, talking about physical health and mental health, in some ways it's a little bit short-sighted. And I do it sometimes, right? But I recognise it is a little bit myopic because
Dr Rupy: It's kind of like talking about alternative medicine, conventional medicine, traditional medicine, ancient medicine. You know, it sounds very separate, but it's it's medicine.
Dr Rangan: It's medicine. Exactly. What's good medicine? How can we get our patients better in as harmless a way as possible? That really drives everything that I do. Um, and I, you know, when you were sort of giving that sort of synopsis of where we're at today, where society is at today compared to how it, um, used to be, you know, the other the other big piece is nature. Um, and I sort of go into this in a lot of detail in the book, and I sort of think that nature is the perfect antidote to the technological world. You know, technology forces us inward. You know, whereas whereas nature is expansive. It forces us outwards to like, it just broadens our mind in so many different ways. Um, so many, so so many cool things I found about nature when researching and writing the book. Um, I I put this section in on fractals and how fractals are these geometric shapes that are only present in nature. We see them in trees, in leaves, in forests, in coastlines. And we are hardwired to respond to fractals. Just looking at fractals mean that our stress levels go down. Your there was a study that your cortisol levels, which is one of your body's primary stress response hormones, goes down when you look at fractals in nature. Just looking at it. It's just incredible.
Dr Rupy: It's pretty incredible. I remember reading some studies actually on the on the basis of a book called Your Brain on Nature. And they looked at a study of two different groups. One of them was shown urban environments with grey pavements and concrete. And others were shown images of nature, trees, natural environments. And they gave them the same tests to do afterwards. And they found that the scores of those looking at nature and naturalistic environments were significantly higher than those in the urban environments.
Dr Rangan: So and then that's just one example.
Dr Rupy: That's just one one study. Yeah. I mean, the cortisol levels is another one, inflammation levels, uh, obviously
Dr Rangan: So much. The parahippocampus, which is a part of your brain, when you look at fractals, the parahippocampus activity goes up, which helps us to process and regulate emotions. So let's just think about that for a minute. If you struggle to process and regulate emotions, let's say you get anxious, let's say you struggle in interactions, maybe, and I'm not saying definitely, maybe spending more time in nature is going to help you with that. It's just, you know, I don't think it's just one thing. It's about a lot, you've got to just do a little bit of nature, a little bit more human connection, a little bit better with your diet, a little bit better with purpose. It's not about suddenly living the perfect lifestyle. You know, it's just about doing a few things. Most of the suggestions I make, I've got to say, take less than 10 minutes a day. Um, which is the whole point. It's what is accessible. Most people have got green space near them. You know, yes, they may not have a beautiful woodland, but they might be a local park. Um, where, you know, their lunch break. I'm a huge fan of, I mean, I don't know if everyone can do a non-tech lunch hour necessarily, but I think for people where they're having a lot of work stress and they're busy lives, I think if possible, putting your phone in the drawer, going out for a 20-minute walk at lunchtime is such a beautiful way to recharge, rather than what we mostly do, myself included, which is, oh, right, okay, right, what can I catch up on now? Look at this, oh, I'll check my Instagram quickly. I'll check my emails, reply to a few. So then you go back to work, you've not switched off. You've just kept on and on and on. And, you know, the other great thing is that when you switch off from a task, so when your brain is not focused on completing a task, you would think that your brain starts to go to sleep a little bit or your brain activity starts to go down. It's not true. There's a part of your brain called the default mode network, the DMN, that literally goes into overdrive when you're not focusing on a task. And that's associated with creativity. This is the reason why so many of us, myself included here for sure, have so many great ideas when we're in the shower or when we go out for a walk, because we're not focused on a task. So what what happens then, your DMN in your brain goes into overdrive and starts to help solve problems that you were trying to solve, but you couldn't. So when I was writing the book, and I'm interested to know what you did when you had writer's block. For me, it was like, put the phone down, go for a walk in nature, I'd come back and it's as if in that half an hour space, my brain was trying to solve the problem. And I was like, oh, I've got it.
Dr Rupy: Yeah. What did you do when you hit writer's block?
Dr Rangan: Totally. I I hit writer's block so many times over the summer when I was writing Eat to Beat Illness. And I remember blocking off whole days where I thought I can do this chapter, this chapter, this chapter. These are the papers I want to write about. And I would just be sat in front of my computer and just nothing would flow. And I remember texting someone. I was just, it's just not coming, it's not coming. And they just said to me, put your phone away, close your laptop and go for a walk in the park and don't look at your phone, don't listen to any music, just walk in the park. And I thought, okay, fine, I'll do that. And honestly, that became a routine. I would actually put an alarm on my clock every hour or so to go and do that and just give myself some time to think because that is when you are washed with all these different sorts of ideas and stuff. And it's funny you said that about being in the shower because when I'm in the shower, I've got so many ideas. You want to rush out to write them down. It's totally crazy, isn't it? And we also, it's counterproductive because you sort of think you're losing out on time. You're going to miss out because you're not working. And yet, we use that when writing a book, but I I would I would make the case that every single person these days, so many of us are filling our brains with noise from the minute we wake up to the minute we go to bed. We've got zero downtime in our day. Um, whether it's phones first thing in the morning, emails all day, going all the way through to when we're in bed at night. Even even standing in a damn cafe waiting to be served. Right? 10 years ago, you'd be waiting, you'd be there with your own thoughts. You'd be looking around, you might bump into a friend. Now, what do we all do? We're stuck in our phones, using that five minutes of downtime to get ahead. You could walk past your best mate, you may not even know because you're stuck in your phone. I don't mean you, I do the same thing as well. We're stuck in our phones. We're not allowing ourselves to have downtime. And it really ain't that difficult. You can have 10 minutes in the morning, 10 minutes at lunchtime, 10 minutes in the evening. And I promise you will feel a benefit for your health.
Dr Rupy: All right. So to wrap up this, uh, what I did is I asked my, uh, community on Twitter and Instagram, all the different social media, uh, platforms, uh, some questions about stress. And there's tons. And this is something that I I've started doing new with with guests on the podcast.
Dr Rangan: Is this going to stress me out, Rupy?
Dr Rupy: Hopefully it shouldn't stress you out. But, uh, we'll do a quick round. And I know some of the answers are going to be quite long-winded. It's going to take longer than 15 seconds, but we can try and keep them short.
Dr Rangan: We'll try and keep them short. Okay.
Dr Rupy: Let's try and do it. Okay, fine. All right. Uh, tips to control to control stress when your heart rate is up.
Dr Rangan: Breathe.
Dr Rupy: Breathe. Okay. That's a that's a good one. How would you how do you breathe? Like what kind of what's your favourite sort of breath? Because there's loads of out there, aren't there?
Dr Rangan: There's loads of breathing techniques, but my favourite is one that I sort of came up with in practice a few years ago, which is what I call the 3-4-5 breath, which is when you breathe in for three, breathe out for four, sorry, breathe in for three, hold for four, and breathe out for five. And anytime that your out breath is longer than your in breath, you start to activate your parasympathetic nervous system, which is the relaxation part of your nervous system. So it's a very simple way of switching off stress and promoting relaxation.
Dr Rupy: Amazing. Uh, can stress manifest as back problems? This is quite interesting because I've heard some anecdotes about this.
Dr Rangan: 100%. No question at all. Stress is can either be one of the main contributors to back problems. It can certainly make any pre-existing imbalances and pains that you've got much worse. And I certainly know when I had back pain, which thankfully I managed to get to the root cause of and get rid of now, that I remember that when I was stressed, it would always get worse. No question at all.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, it's something that I've suffered actually. I've spoken to you about offline actually about back pain and I've noticed that when I was stressed, it would flare up and I could never really figure out exactly what was going on, but I believe it's something to do with my pain perception receptors. Um, and actually you introduced me to um, a friend of yours, Chris, um, who's really helped me actually. We just had one session and, you know, just took me through the motions of both the the physiological aspects, but also the mental aspects as well.
Dr Rangan: And I think that goes to that point we were talking about before, physical health, mental health, how we make all these separations. You know what? Back pain can be a combination of multiple things. Yes, you can have a physical problem, like an imbalance or, you know, maybe let's say your glutes aren't firing as well as they could do. That might be a contributory factor. But at the same time, you might have stress that plays a component as well. We're always so keen to look for what's the one thing that's causing this. Sometimes it's a combination of two or three things and you have to tackle all of them at the same time.
Dr Rupy: Absolutely. I I totally agree with that and it's a combination of issues that I find with with everything that I come through. I've never come across a silver bullet that removes everything. So I think it's really important to take note of. Uh, can stress, I think we've already answered this actually, but can stress actually help with anything?
Dr Rangan: I think we talked about this at the start of the pod. To be very clear, stress affects every single organ of the body. And therefore, if you lower your stress levels, you can improve the function of every single organ in the body. So absolutely, whether it's your brain function, whether it's the way your heart pumps, whether it's how fast you want to run, whether it's, um, how well you want to perform at work, whether it's how close you want to feel with your partner, stress affects absolutely everything, the quality of your relationships, your mood, your ability to sleep. I mean, sleep, not sleeping is a huge source of stress. And we didn't really get time to go into that today, but yeah, it is so, so worth having two or three simple things that you do every single day to help lower your stress levels.
Dr Rupy: Absolutely. Are we biologically wired differently from each other to deal with stress? So in a sense, am I wired to have a lower threshold or a higher stress threshold than yourself?
Dr Rangan: I don't know if we're born that way necessarily, but I think that is ultimately what happens. As we say, as I've already said, we adapt to the environment that we are in. So for example, there's a part of the brain called the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. It's part of your rational brain. Now people can think of the brain is very complex, but you can think of two things. You can think of your rational brain and your emotional brain. And these things are both vying for attention. Now, normally you want your rational brain to be in charge, the CEO, making sure everything's working optimally. You don't really want your emotional brain sort of wreaking havoc and making irrational decisions all the time. One part of that rational brain is what I said, the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, and it's a really important part of the brain. Now, what happens if you experience chronic work stress, your dorsolateral prefrontal cortex gets smaller. So that is adapting to what's going on. So at that point, you will be wired differently than someone who has not had that chronic work stress. So the point is, is that no matter where you are, we can still change things. I think that's the empowering thing, is that if we have had a stressful life, yes, we may be more prone to getting stressed at certain situations. Um, but this works both ways. You know, you can change these things very quickly. And I really want people to remember that. Just because you are someone who might be overreacting a lot to things, who feels stressed out by every little thing, who feels overly emotional when your colleagues don't, there are a lot of simple tips in my book that are going to help you start to rewire your brain.
Dr Rupy: So, I have a lot of friends who are parents, one of whom is yourself. And I think the tolerability of parents with kids goes up in terms of their stress levels. They can tolerate a lot more stress, crying kids, the fact that you've got to deal with their food and looking after them the whole time. I look at what they do and what you do and I get stressed out. And I don't understand, but you adapt. Your brain rewires itself.
Dr Rangan: You adapt. You actually start, you know what, it's funny when you when you're out with your friends who don't have kids and you can actually learn to phase out from the kids' chatter sometimes. I'm not saying that's a good thing, but you can actually learn sometimes that you just don't hear it. You just switch it off whereas you'll be like, what's going on? There's so much noise going on.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, yeah. And I work in paediatric A&E, so I know what noise is like and I can still hear the chatter of my friend's kids when we're at dinner.
Dr Rangan: But but it highlights the point, doesn't it? That we can change. Our brains will adapt. And that's probably, I think, one of my key messages is you've got a choice. You can either feed your brain stress signals every single day and your brain will wire in response to that, or you can feed it calm signals. And I would say, as much as possible, feed it calm signals, feed it happy signals, and you will automatically lower your stress levels.
Dr Rupy: Absolutely. I I totally agree with that. And this whole concept of neuroplasticity is is absolutely fascinating for me. Okay, I'm going to tie up with a couple more questions. Is there a role for drugs like CBD for stress? This is something that I'm coming across quite a bit actually. Loads of people are asking me about CBD. Do you think that has a role in stress?
Dr Rangan: Yeah, I really think it does. It's not something I've covered in the book. Um, I have started to read research papers on CBD. I've certainly, I've certainly got anecdotal reports from some of my patients who found it incredibly beneficial. So yes, I think there is going to be more and more of a role there for CBD.
Dr Rupy: And what is your top tip for learning to say no to things, i.e. overcommitting? And this is something I struggle with, so I'd be really interested in your answer.
Dr Rangan: Well, you know I struggle with this as well, but I have tried to get better and better. I think my top tip is if the invitation or the request doesn't fill you with excitement and joy immediately, say no. And that's something I'm not perfect at doing. I'm getting better at it, but I find also you start off saying no, you can change your mind to yes later often. But when you say yes, I mean, classic me used to be say yes to everything, really try and help, want to do everything. You keep people dragging on for a few months and then you just, I just can't do that. And and you you realise that actually all I had to do was just say no in a really polite way right at the start and I would have, it would have been better for me and better for the other party. So, um, I struggle with this, but I think that's a, I hope that's a good tip for people. Does it fill you with real excitement and joy right at the start?
Dr Rupy: Amazing. Amazing top tips there and incredible pod. I cannot wait for the stress solution book to come out and getting my copy of it. Rongan, we'll have to get you back on the pod because we didn't talk about food at all.
Dr Rangan: No, I was going to talk about food and stress. It's all in the book anyway.
Dr Rupy: It's all in the book. We'll have to get you back on and we'll talk about food for stress. Uh, but thank you very much again and uh, I'll catch you soon, buddy.
Dr Rangan: Thanks, Rupy.
Dr Rupy: So there you have it. That's the full conversation that I've had with Dr. Rongan about how to deal with stress. We talked about loads of things, sense of purpose, perspective, gratitude, the magnitude of mental health as well, and how many things stress can actually impact. You can follow Dr. Rongan at Dr. Chatterjee on Twitter, Instagram, all the different social media platforms. I've linked to those in my show notes. Grab a copy of his book, The Stress Solution, which is out in all good bookstores. And remember, you can pre-order a copy of my new book, Eat to Beat Illness, which has an entire chapter on mood and how to deal with stress, what to eat for stress, what lifestyle measures there are for stress, and all the evidence behind the recommendations. You can catch me at thedoctorskitchen.com. Make sure you give a five-star rating to this podcast if you enjoyed the information. It really does help other people find it, and I value your support. See you next time.
