We're all stressed. What should we do about it?

How stressed have you been lately? Are you heading towards burn out? Time and time again, Dr Rangan Chatterjee has seen chronic stress wreak havoc on his patients' lives — contributing to autoimmune disorders, gut problems, low libido and more. But the most devastating blow struck his own family, when his father's punishing work schedule forced him to medically retire in his 50s. It’s an experience that led Rangan to rethink his own work and approach to medicine. Today, Dr Chatterjee, a GP and host of a mega popular wellbeing podcast, shares his story, as well as strategies for better managing stress in your own life. This episode first aired in June 2025. Guest: Dr Rangan Chatterjee https://drchatterjee.com/GP, author and host of Feel Better, Live More Credits: Presenter/producer: Sana QadarSenior producer: James BullenProducer: Rose KerrSound engineer: Tegan NichollsTo find the transcript of this episode, head to its original webpage https://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/allinthemind/lifestyle-medicine-chronic-stress/105376644. To explore more great episodes from the award-winning psychology podcast All in the Mind with host Sana Qadar, download the ABC Listen app (Australia) or search 'ABC All in the Mind podcast' wherever you get your podcasts. There you'll find more episodes on mental health, trauma, attachment theory, wellness hacks, and family relationships. You'll also hear interviews with experts like Esther Perel, Billy Garvey and Ethan Kross. All in the Mind is created for ABC's Radio National by specialist journalists and reporters at the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

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• 0:38Speaker 03

  Hey there. A heads up, this episode is one from our archives. I thought I knew what it meant to feel stressed, or overworked, or underslept, or close to burnout. I mean, I feel versions of these often enough. But then Dr Rangan Chatterjee told me a story that's almost unbelievable. It's the story of his father.

• 1:02Speaker 04

  So my dad grew up in India. He came to the UK in 1962. And dad basically worked to give his family in the UK, so my mum, me and my brother, and his family back home, a better life. But the way dad worked, looking back now, was mind blowing, honestly. Like, because for 30 years, my dad only slept three nights a week.

• 1:29Speaker 03

  Did you catch that? Three nights a week.

• 1:34Speaker 04

  So he was a consultant physician at Manchester Royal Infirmary. And I can remember this so clearly. Dad would do his day job in the middle of Manchester. So we lived in a suburb of Manchester. So he'd drive home, maybe take him 40 minutes or so. And he'd come in about 6, 6.15pm. Mum would have dinner ready for him. He'd go to the kitchen, he'd have dinner. He'd go upstairs and shave. And then at 7pm, he'd leave the house to do GP house calls all night. And he'd arrive back again at 7am. When he got in at 7am, he'd have breakfast in the kitchen, he'd go upstairs. And shave again.

• 2:10Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 2:11Speaker 04

  And then he'd drive 45 minutes in traffic back to Manchester to do his day job. So for 30 years, dad was doing, you know, both of these jobs and he only sat three nights a week. And I didn't know this at the time and there was a lot of stress at home. And of course there's, you know, he was exhausted all the time.

• 2:31Speaker 03

  At the age of 58, all of that chronic stress and sleep deprivation finally caught up with Rangan's father. First, he was diagnosed with lupus, which is an autoimmune disease where the immune system starts attacking healthy tissues and organs.

• 2:46Speaker 04

  And basically he had to medically retire. His kidneys completely failed. He lost the sight in one of his eyes. And then he was literally chained to a dialysis machine three times a week for 15 years. And so what's really interesting for me is, you know, reflecting back now, although my dad's case might seem quite extreme. I have seen many iterations of that in my practice for years. People think they can keep pushing, pushing for more, better job, a bit more money, another promotion, a nicer holiday, whatever it might be. But, you know, the thing is that quest for more is driving so many people to stress themselves out.

• 3:29Speaker 04

  And the belief that at some point in the future, everything's going to be okay and I can chill and relax. But I've seen time and time again, people come in wishing they'd stopped earlier.

• 3:41Speaker 03

  Dr. Rangan Chatterjee is a GP with more than 20 years' experience. And his focus and his passion has long been lifestyle medicine.

• 3:50Speaker 04

  In fact, 80 to 90% of what we see as medical doctors today is in some way related to our collective modern lifestyles.

• 3:59Speaker 03

  But you might recognize him from his mega popular podcast, Feel Better Live More, where he delves into the science of lifestyle medicine and wellbeing. And in his experience, one of the biggest lifestyle factors impacting people's health is chronic stress.

• 4:15Speaker 04

  The 53-year-old executive who kept pushing and working every weekend and coming back late until he gets the heart attack. The 46-year-old mother who never does anything for herself, everything is for her partner, her children, her elderly parents. But I've seen this so many times. And for me, it's always trying to get to the root cause. And I would say for so many people, chronic stress is at the root of many of their short-term symptoms and their long-term health problems.

• 4:47Speaker 03

  So today on All in the Mind, we are focusing on chronic stress, what it's doing to our brains and bodies, everything from our decision-making abilities to our libidos. And we're also finding out the signs and red flags to look out for that tell you your stress levels are unhealthily high. We'll also find out what you can do about it. This is All in the Mind. I'm Sana Qadar.

• 5:17Speaker 03

  Just going back to when you were first talking about your dad's story and how he was working for 30 years while you were growing up, I just wondered whether you or your family, did anyone think that his pace of work was nuts? Or was it kind of just normalized, the fact that he was only sleeping three days a week?

• 5:35Speaker 04

  I think as a kid, that's just your normal. You're just like, you're used to dad not being around. Oh, dad's working tonight, dad's working this Sunday, or whatever it might be. So on a personal level, me and my brother, I'm not sure we were aware. I think it was normalized for us.

• 5:50Speaker 03

  Right.

• 5:50Speaker 04

  I do remember Mum often saying, why are you doing this? You don't need to take, you don't need to work on Christmas Day. You don't need to work on Boxing Day to gain even more money to send home, right? Why don't you just stay? And so I, you know, I don't want to speak about my parents' marriage in the sense that I don't know what went on.

• 6:04Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 6:05Speaker 04

  But I certainly think as kids, we didn't really see the full impacts of it. I think for us, it was normalized.

• 6:11Speaker 03

  It's such an immigrant thing for, especially that generation, to want to work so hard and send quite a lot back home to help sisters and brothers. Like, it's a familiar story in a way. Not that anyone in my family was only sleeping three nights a week, but you know, the other details of it are similar.

• 6:26Speaker 04

  Yeah, but that's why I feel, as I've got older, I've just become, I'm pretty non-judgmental these days. I think I used to be. I just think more and more, none of us know what's going on in someone else's life. And I think once you really get that, you just become a lot less judgmental and more compassionate to the world around you.

• 6:43Speaker 03

  Now, you would think watching his father's punishing schedule, the chronic stress, the lack of sleep would put Rangan off a career in medicine. But like I said, he followed in his footsteps and also became a doctor. But early on in his medical training, Rangan started to feel like something pretty important was missing from the medical system.

• 7:04Speaker 04

  Yeah, I think when I qualified from Edinburgh Medical School back in 2001, I thought that I'd been taught all the tools that I needed to go out there into the world and help my patients. So when you qualify, you start off in hospitals. And I did that for quite a few years. And I think there was a frustration early on in my career that what I'd been taught to do was suppress symptoms, often with medications. And that was really front of mind for me when I did move into general practice, because I thought a lot of these patients who were coming in were not really getting to the root cause of their problems. In fact, 80 to 90% of what we see as medical doctors today is in

• 7:44Speaker 04

  some way related to our collective modern lifestyles. Yet not only do we not get trained in how our lifestyle specifically affects different aspects of our health, we're not really taught how we actually put that into practice. So our default as medical doctors often ends up being prescribing pharmaceutical medications for symptoms that are driven by our lifestyle. And for me, that was very unsatisfactory. And I tell you, Sana, one, you know, one really seminal day for me was when I finished a long day in NHS general practice, where I'd probably seen about 50 patients. And I was tired. It was the end of the day. And I looked at my patient list on my computer screen. And I asked myself,

• 8:27Speaker 04

  Rangan, how many patients have you really helped today? But honestly. And hand on heart, I thought, well, I think I properly helped about 20% of people. The other 80%, sure, I was professional. I listened to them. I might have sent them for a test or given them a medication to help hide a symptom. But I thought, they're going to be back. I didn't really help them get to the root cause of their problem. So that day, I realized that actually, I can't do this for the next 40 years of my career. There must be another way. And for me, that way is what we call lifestyle medicine.

• 9:02Speaker 03

  Lifestyle medicine is a relatively new field. It's a branch of evidence-based healthcare that focuses on trying to prevent diseases before they start, rather than just treating them once they set in. Chronic diseases like Alzheimer's, heart disease, type 2 diabetes, cancer and stroke. It's a response to the fact that in the modern, post-industrial era, there's been a shift in the kinds of diseases that most affect people in high-income countries. That's a shift from mostly infectious diseases to mostly chronic diseases, which often have lifestyle or environmental drivers.

• 9:38Speaker 04

  I want to be really clear, Sana, I'm not blaming people here. I understand that modern life is challenging, and a lot of people are not able to eat as well as they want to. Their jobs mean that they're sedentary for a lot more time than they might choose to be. They're chronically stressed, chronically sleep deprived. I'm not saying that people are doing this to themselves. I'm saying I don't think there's enough awareness that our lifestyle, and if you can personalize and change specific parts, what I call the four key pillars of health: food, movement, sleep and relaxation, you can have profound impact on all aspects of our health, short-term and long-term.

• 10:19Speaker 03

  And so that brings us back to chronic stress, one of the main lifestyle factors wrecking havoc on people's health. Because stress sets off a whole bunch of responses in the body. It makes your blood pressure rise.

• 10:32Speaker 04

  So that more oxygen can be delivered around your body.

• 10:35Speaker 03

  Makes your blood sugar levels rise.

• 10:36Speaker 04

  So more glucose can get to your brain.

• 10:39Speaker 03

  It also throws your amygdala.

• 10:40Speaker 04

  Which is the emotional reactive part of your brain.

• 10:43Speaker 03

  Into high alert.

• 10:44Speaker 04

  So you're hypervigilant.

• 10:46Speaker 03

  And while we evolved this stress response to keep us safe, the problem is our brains can't fully tell the difference between the threat posed by a lion or tiger who wants to eat us versus our email inbox.

• 11:00Speaker 04

  Yeah, you know, the email inbox, the children we have to rush to pick up after work, the elderly parents we're having to look after when we don't even have our... Our tribe and community around us anymore. The three social media channels we're trying to keep up to date with. The constant bombardment of negativity on the news, whatever it might be. Our bodies are responding in very similar ways. So just to just to tie the loop up. Blood pressure going up in the short term. When you're running away from a tiger or a lion, great. Blood pressure going up temporarily while you're doing a 30 minute spinning workout at the gym. Great, no problem. But blood pressure going up day in, day out to the state of your life. Well, that's what's going to increase your risk of a heart attack or stroke.

• 11:45Speaker 04

  And you talk about the brain, the amygdala, the emotional part of our brain. If you think there's a wild predator there. The emotional part of your brain becomes hypervigilant. Why is that important? So you can hear everything, a pinprick or there's a rustling in the bush. If that's happening to the state of your daily life, well, that's what we call anxiety.

• 12:07Speaker 04

  So once you understand the stress response. You actually understand stress is therefore a reason. But we're not designed to be stressed all the time.

• 12:19Speaker 03

  I want to dive deeper into how chronic stress affects our brains. Specifically our mood and cognition. Because you might have noticed, I definitely have. That when you're super stressed, you are probably more moody and snappy. And you struggle to make decisions.

• 12:34Speaker 04

  Chronic stress has a huge impact on the way we make decisions. Okay, so think about your brain in two parts. It's a slight oversimplification, but I think it really helps us understand this concept. One part is the front of your brain, the prefrontal cortex at the front of your brain. Where you make your logical and rational decisions. And then further back, the emotional part of your brain where the stress response comes from. When you think you're in danger. Ideally, you want both of those parts, you know, online and in balance. But when you're chronically stressed, you switch off the prefrontal cortex. That part of your brain that makes logical and rational decisions. It goes offline. So you're left with the emotional brain ruling the roost.

• 13:20Speaker 03

  And this also explains why, when you're stressed, you can be more emotionally dysregulated. And this is a real problem long term because chronic stress doesn't just change the functioning of the brain, it can change the structure. For example, there is a well-established link between chronic stress and depression. And we also know that chronic stress can shrink the hippocampus, a part of the brain that's critical for learning and memory. I could go on, but I'll stop there because I think you get the point. Chronic stress is bad for many different reasons. But just two other points I do want to make briefly is that, one, there is plenty of research finding that people from poorer backgrounds often experience higher levels of chronic stress because of the precariousness of their lives.

• 14:05Speaker 03

  That puts them at a higher risk of being impacted by these kinds of changes in the brain. Second, there's also growing research in Australia, the UK and the US suggesting Gen Z are the most stressed generation thanks to a combination of factors, including the COVID pandemic, financial insecurity and the rising cost of living, and the impact of social media and technology.

• 14:33Speaker 03

  Okay, so I want to ask, when should a person start to be worried about the amount of stress they're feeling? Like, when can you know? What are the signs to look out for that you've been chronically stressed for too long?

• 14:44Speaker 04

  I mean, it's highly individual for all of us. And the problem is that the more you get used to chronic stress, the harder it is to tune into your own body and figure out that, oh, my God, I need a break. You know, this is going on for too long. One of the big factors is also that these boundaries between work and home have been decimated with technology. Right? So 25 years ago, there were natural endpoints to the working week. You know, when you left the office, you were kind of done. So You know, how can people know? Well, one good sign is when their mind is racing at night and they can't switch off to fall asleep. That's a good sign that your mind has been overactive and you've not given yourself a chance to sort of wind down.

• 15:28Speaker 03

  Another sign, Rung and says, is stomach problems.

• 15:31Speaker 04

  We know from a bit of research done a few years ago that in the UK at least, and I've no reason to believe that it will be different in Australia, eighty-four percent of UK adults have some form of gastrointestinal symptom each year, which is incredible.

• 15:47Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 15:48Speaker 04

  The number one cause is not, in my view, diet, it's stress. Think about it, if you think there's a predator about to attack and you have to keep yourself safe, your body will switch off functions that are not essential to your survival. So you do not need to be able to digest food efficiently if your body thinks it's in danger, which is also why, you know, some of the time we're trying to eat our healthy, whole food meal, but we're also doing it whilst answering work emails. But the reality is, you're not going to absorb that food properly. Now, I'm not judging, I will also do this despite knowing it, right? But the truth is, sometimes, and I've had patients who think they're intolerant to

• 16:30Speaker 04

  certain foods, but once I taught them a simple breathing technique called the three, four, five breathing technique to help them down-regulate their stress response before they eat, they find, oh man, I'm not getting symptoms anymore.

• 16:43Speaker 03

  If you're wondering how that breathing technique works, keep listening, we'll explain that in a moment.

• 16:48Speaker 04

  Now, of course, there are true food allergies, I'm not talking about that, but for some intolerances, you're not actually reacting to the foods, you're reacting to the fact that you're eating that food in a stressed-out state. So if you're getting a lot of indigestion, a lot of bloating, constipation, or whatever it might be, that might indicate that you're chronically stressed, right?

• 17:08Speaker 03

  And then, just one other sign we'll mention that can tell you you might be chronically stressed, is if you find your libido is starting to suffer.

• 17:16Speaker 04

  We, as doctors, are seeing more low libido in younger and younger in age groups than we've ever seen before.

• 17:22Speaker 03

  Interesting.

• 17:22Speaker 04

  Number one factor is chronic stress. Again, think about it through that evolutionary lens. If you think your body's in danger, your body doesn't think, oh, I need to now be able to chill out and procreate with my partner.

• 17:34Speaker 03

  Right.

• 17:35Speaker 04

  So it switches off libido, and this is a massive issue because it affects relationships, it affects how men and women feel about themselves and their vitality. And again, I've treated lots of cases of low libido by helping people lower their stress levels.

• 17:53Speaker 03

  I want to know more about, you mentioned the breathing exercises, I want to know more about tools and tips for de-stressing. What do you advise people do? Because, you know, work is still stressful, the news is stressful, like, modern life doesn't fully change, we have to change how we relate to it. What do you suggest people do?

• 18:10Speaker 04

  Yeah, so the first thing I want to say here is that one thing that 23 years of medicine has taught me is there's very rarely one thing that works for everybody. We've all got different gut microbiomes, we've all got different emotional histories, and so we respond to different things. What, let me give you a selection of things that I recommend to people, and then people can sort of play around and see what works for them. I believe the way you start your day has a huge impact on the rest of your day. So I think a useful way to look at the way we start the day is through the lens of what I call micro-stress doses. Okay, so what's a micro-stress dose? It's a little dose of stress that in isolation we can handle just fine, but when those

• 18:53Speaker 04

  micro-stress doses accumulate, they get you closer and closer to what I call your personal stress threshold. And at your personal stress threshold is when things start to go wrong. So let's say you went to bed late because you were watching Netflix, and your alarm goes off on your phone at 6 a.m. That is what I call micro-stress dose number one, or MSD number one.

• 19:15Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 19:15Speaker 04

  Okay, because it jolted you out of a deep sleep. You look at it, you go, I'm still tired, you put snooze on. Six minutes later, the alarm goes on again. Micro stress dose number two. Then whilst you're in bed, you open up your email app. Oh, man, there's three work emails I didn't do from yesterday. I need to get on to that today. You're nodding your head a lot here at the moment.

• 19:34Speaker 03

  You're describing my mornings pretty much.

• 19:36Speaker 04

  MSD number three. Okay, then you go to the news app and see about some gas explosion that has happened that's killed people, whatever it might be, okay? And I don't mean that to sound negative. You know, I, you know, obviously if people are dying with something, I'm deeply compassionate about that. The point I'm trying to make is, is that many people I've seen in practice over the years, in the first hour of the day, they've accumulated 10 to 15 micro stress doses. It means you are very near your personal stress threshold, which means you have a less capacity in the day to deal with it. So it won't take much to tip you over. So going back to your question, some of us have got more agency to make decisions and change things than others.

• 20:19Speaker 04

  I'm saying that for some of us, we don't need to start our day with 10 to 15 micro stress doses. If you had an alarm clock instead of your phone, for example, that can be game changing.

• 20:30Speaker 03

  Simple, but effective. Rungan also recommends a morning routine. He recognizes people can sometimes balk at the idea.

• 20:38Speaker 04

  They're like, oh, man, I don't have time for a morning routine.

• 20:40Speaker 03

  The thing is.

• 20:41Speaker 04

  Everyone already has a morning routine. The question is, are you conscious of that morning routine? Right? You've got a routine, that routine I just mentioned, that's a morning routine.

• 20:50Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's my routine, the emails and the social media.

• 20:52Speaker 04

  So you're repeating that routine every day. Fine, but that's going to have an impact on you. So I believe a nice framework to think about morning routine is what I call the three M's. Mindfulness, movement and mindset. You don't have to do all three, but I think if you have the time, all three can be done quite beautifully in quite a short period of time, right? So mindfulness could be anything like a bit of meditation, breath work, whatever, drinking a coffee in silence, right? Just paying attention to the coffee and not actually scrolling your emails or Instagram at the same time. Movement can be some stretches, a few weights, whatever it might be. And mindset is something to put you in a positive frame of mind. So it could be reading a little bit or journaling.

• 21:38Speaker 04

  Now, I get it. A lot of people will be going, I don't have time for any of that in the morning. Okay, let me give you an example of one of my patients who said that to me. She was a single mother. I think she was about early 40s from recollection. She had really bad skin that was flaring up lots and it was making her life miserable. And I got a strong sense that chronic stress was driving her skin flare ups. So I suggested about a little morning routine and she said, I don't have time for any of this stuff, right? I said, okay, do you have 15 minutes? No. Do you have 10 minutes? No. Do you have five minutes? Well, yeah, I've got five minutes. I said, okay, great. So, M number one mindfulness, she did what I call the three, four, five breaths. Let me just explain what that is because I mentioned it before as well.

• 22:22Speaker 04

  Anytime your out breath is longer than your in breath, you help to switch off the stress part of your nervous system and activate the relaxation part of your nervous system, okay? So three, four, five breath is simply you breathe in for three, you hold for four, and you breathe out for five. One of those breaths takes 12 seconds, five of them takes simply one minute. And it will literally change your physiology in just that one minute. So she did one minute of three, four, five breathing, two minutes of movement, and she used to love yoga, but since she became a mother, she never had time. So she did three or four of her favorite yoga moves.

• 23:05Speaker 04

  And then she did two minutes of mindset, and for her it was just affirmations. Now, there is quite a bit of research on affirmations and what they can do for our wellbeing and our stress levels. They're a little bit controversial, everyone buys into the research. But nonetheless, I think it's a very positive, empowering thing for someone to do. So she would say for two minutes, I'm happy, I'm calm, I'm stress free. I'm happy, I'm calm, I'm stress free. Remember, this took her five minutes.

• 23:31Speaker 03

  Rungan says that over the next 10 days, this patient's skin flare ups reduced significantly.

• 23:36Speaker 04

  Because it's not just about those five minutes. What do those five minutes do? They remind you of what it feels like to be calm and relaxed. Once she started doing that, she was much more likely to stop at lunch and go for a 10 minute walk around her office block. She was much more likely to pay a bit more attention to her evening meal and make it a bit healthier.

• 23:59Speaker 03

  Basically, that small change had a ripple effect.

• 24:04Speaker 03

  Now, despite his own busy schedule, there's a lot that Rangan does in his own life as well to keep stress at bay. Things like having a hobby, he plays guitar, journaling daily, making time for some form of physical activity every day.

• 24:17Speaker 04

  I now, at this stage in my career, have quite a bit of autonomy.

• 24:21Speaker 03

  Right.

• 24:21Speaker 04

  And I recognize that, okay? Not everyone does. I'm able to structure things so that I can.

• 24:27Speaker 03

  And one of the ways he's restructured his life recently is he quit his medical practice. He did that to free up time to focus on his podcast and his books and his public speaking and his role as a visiting professor of health education and communication at Chester Medical School. It's a very different life to his 30s, when he was working full-time, taking care of his young family, and helping to care for his ailing father.

• 24:56Speaker 03

  I'm curious to know, what do you think your father would think about the life you've carved out for yourself and the work life you've carved out for yourself?

• 25:02Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's a great question. I actually think about this quite a lot. You know, dad died, I think, yeah, 12 years ago, just over 12 years ago. One of the things on a personal level that used to make me sad was that all the things that my dad would have been proudest about, you know, as an Indian immigrant to the UK in the 1960s, the fact that, you know, I had my own primetime BBC One TV show. I've had six Sunday Times bestselling books. I have the largest health podcast in Europe, whatever it might be. My dad got to see none of those things. And it used to really upset me. But at the same time now, I realize that if my dad was still alive, I wouldn't be doing any of these things. Because, well, there's two reasons for that. One is, and if there's anyone listening who's a carer,

• 25:48Speaker 04

  you know, they'll know how stressful life is when you're a carer. You know, I came back to the northwest of England to help my mum and my brother look after my dad. I didn't have time for anything else, you know, it was hard enough just to look after dad, just about keep my job going and see my wife, right? It was very, very stressful. So number one, if dad was still alive, I don't think I'd have time to do the things that I've done.

• 26:09Speaker 03

  Right.

• 26:09Speaker 04

  But secondly, the most important things I've learnt have come from my dad's death. And now I've reframed my dad's death to believe that dad actually gave me a gift through him dying.

• 26:20Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 26:20Speaker 04

  Because the man I am today, the questions I started to ask myself after my dad died, I'm not sure any of those things would have happened until dad had died. So actually, again, I understand the death of a parent is a really challenging time for most people.

• 26:38Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 26:38Speaker 04

  I'm not expecting or asking anyone else to reframe their own parents' death in this way. But I do believe that life is simply a set of experiences and it's the story we put onto those experiences that ultimately determine the quality of our life. And I'm able to 12 years on now reframe my dad's death as being, that was a gift to me. Because all this wisdom, I hope that I can share with people that really helps them. A huge part of that has been through my dad's death.

• 27:07Speaker 03

  And you mentioned other patients you've worked with who had also kind of worked themselves to the bone, regretted not stopping earlier. I'm wondering, do you know if your father wished he hadn't worked quite so hard by the time he got sick? You know, did he wish he had stopped earlier?

• 27:23Speaker 04

  You know, there's only one question I would love to ask my dad if dad was still alive. And I don't know the answer. One of the questions, the only question is, dad, was it worth it?

• 27:36Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 27:36Speaker 04

  Because being truthful, although dad worked himself to ill health, I've changed my view on this over the past years. I now think, Rong, and you have no right to think that your dad made a mistake. You don't know that. Dad may say, if he was alive, he may go, "Son, I'd do that all over again." Because my only purpose in life was to look after my family back home and to give you and your brother the very best start in life that I could. Now, if that is true, which I believe it to be true, my dad may say, "Well, I kind of did that, right? I looked after everyone at home. And look at what you're now doing, son. Look at how many people you're helping all over the world with what you do. I would do that all over again."

• 28:21Speaker 04

  So I'm hypothesising here. I honestly don't know. Do I believe my dad could have done those things and not got ill at the same time? Yeah, I do believe that was possible. But how can I possibly know? But he never said to me, to be clear, "I wish I'd stopped earlier." So I'm speculating.

• 28:43Speaker 03

  Rangan, it's been so lovely chatting to you. Thank you for sharing your family story and the story of your patients and everything you've learned over the course of your career. We really appreciate it.

• 28:52Speaker 04

  Yeah, thanks so much for having me on.

• 28:54Speaker 03

  That is Dr. Rangan Chatterjee. Until recently, a practising GP. And he's also the host of the Feel Better, Live More podcast. That is it for All in the Mind this week. Thanks to producer Rose Kerr, senior producer James Bullen, and sound engineer Tegan Nichols. I'm Sana Qadar. Thank you for listening. I'll catch you next week.