Rangan Chatterjee, MD On Quelling Stress, Cultivating Intimacy & Reinventing Health Care

Today we’re going to talk about stress. In proper doses it’s actually beneficial, promoting resilience -- both physical and mental. This week’s guest has seen the perils of chronic stress first hand. A UK-based medical doctor, he found himself increasingly treating patients suffering from the downstream implications of living with this malevolence. It prompted him to ask, why is this happening? His name is Rangan Chatterjee, MD. He decided to find answers to this question -- and do something about it. If that name sounds familiar, perhaps it’s because you caught him on the BBC, starring in Doctor in the House. Perhaps you read his bestselling book, The Four Pillar Plan, released in the United States under the title How To Make Disease Disappear. Or maybe, just maybe, you caught RRP 376, our popular first conversation from July of 2018 that launched our friendship. For those unfamiliar, Dr. Chatterjee is a pioneer in the field of progressive, functional medicine. Widely regarded as one of the most influential doctors in the UK, he is double board certified in internal medicine and family medicine and holds an honors degree in immunology. An in-demand lecturer, he created the very first “Prescribing Lifestyle Medicine” course accredited by the Royal College of General Practitioners in London. In addition, he hosts the popular Feel Better, Live More podcast (which I’ve appeared on twice) and has been widely featured on an array of prominent media outlets like the The New York Times, BBC, Forbes, The Guardian, The Financial Times, and many others. The focus of today’s conversation is also the subject of Rangan’s latest book, The Stress Solution -- an important primer on how chronic stress can lead to disease, along with strategies, tools and lifestyle changes proven to protect against and reverse its toxic effects. This is a conversation about the very nature of stress. What creates it. The health implications it produces. The many simple things you can do to alleviate it -- and it's varied ill effects. More specifically, we discuss Rangan’s direct experience fielding patients with chronic stress -- and the science-based strategies he deployed to ameliorate the condition and reverse it’s negative consequences. We talk about the critical role sleep, meditation and mindfulness practices play in combating stress. And how human touch, intimacy and connecting with nature can assuage it's impact. We cover breathing techniques. Disconnecting from our devices. Carving out “me time”. The importance of finding passion -- and infusing your life with purpose. Lastly, we dig into Rangan’s new found love for Swimrun (I’m taking a wee bit of credit for that one Dr. C!). You can watch it all go down on YouTube. I think we can all benefit from de-stressing ourselves this holiday season. Both fun and important, my hope is that you listen keenly -- and put Dr. Chatterjee's prescription into action. Peace + Plants, Rich Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Rich Roll?

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• 1:05Rangan Chatterjee?

  The research is suggesting that the feeling of being lonely is as harmful as smoking 15 cigarettes a day. We are social beings. We are wired to be together. Having close, nourishing relationships is one of the best ways to de-stress. But ironically, having too much stress in your life, I think, makes it very hard to have those close, nourishing relationships. But we are feeling isolated. We're feeling disconnected in this supposedly ultra-connected world. Sure, digitally, we've never been disconnected. There are amazing things about technology. I would accept that. But in terms of real, deep, meaningful human connection, I think there's a pretty strong case to say we've never been this isolated.

• 1:49Rangan Chatterjee?

  It's between 70% and 90% of all conditions that a primary care doctor sees in any given day is in some way related to stress. So I want the reader to be able to identify, where does stress live in my life? Because you need awareness. Once you know where it lives, you know what? Pick one of the simple things, try it for seven days, and see if you feel different. That is all I ask from someone.

• 2:15Rich Roll?

  That's Dr. Rangan Chatterjee, this week on the Rich Roll Podcast.

• 2:30Rich Roll?

  The Rich Roll Podcast. Hey, everybody. How you guys doing? It's holiday season. Are you hanging in there? Is it going OK? Is it tricky? I know it's tough. There can be a lot of anxiety and stress around this time of year, but I am with you. I feel you. And I'm here, hopefully, to provide a little bit of respite from all of that. My name is Rich Roll. I am your host. This is my podcast. OK, today, we're going to talk about stress. Why? Because it's the holiday season. And I would imagine it's kind of top of mind for a lot of people who are navigating the treacherous waters of the season that is upon us. And I guess I would say upfront that it's important to point out that stress is part of being human.

• 3:15Rich Roll?

  If you ask former podcast guests like Doctors Susan David and Kelly McGonigal, who is a guest that's coming up in January, they will tell you that in proper doses, stress is actually beneficial in promoting emotional resilience and other things. But that's very different from the elevated levels of social and emotional stress that increasingly define our daily experience, leading the World Health Organization to qualify chronic stress as the health epidemic of the 21st century. And over time, and left untreated, this type of stress promotes not only low libido, poor memory, and weight gain. It can also lead to heart disease, depression, autoimmune disorders,

• 3:57Rich Roll?

  premature aging, and a litany of other serious and deleterious health conditions. Well, this week's guest has seen the perils of chronic stress firsthand. As a UK-based medical doctor, he found himself increasingly treating patients on the daily who suffer from the downstream implications of living with this malevolence. His name is Rangan Chatterjee, Rangan Chatterjee, M.D. And he decided to do something about it. If that name sounds familiar, perhaps it's because you caught him on his BBC show, Doctor in the House, or maybe you read his bestselling book, The Four Pillar Plan, released in the United States under the title, How to Make Disease Disappear. Or maybe, just maybe,

• 4:41Rich Roll?

  it's because you caught our first conversation back in July of 2018, RRP 376.

• 4:47Rich Roll?

  Which was a very powerful and popular episode that also created a great friendship between us. For those unfamiliar, Dr. Chatterjee is a pioneer in the field of progressive functional medicine. Widely regarded as one of the most influential doctors in the UK, Rangan is double board certified in internal medicine and family medicine, and holds an honors degree in immunology. An in-demand lecturer, he created the very first prescribing lifestyle medicine course accredited by the Royal College of General Practitioners in London. And in addition, he hosts the popular Feel Better, Live More podcast, which I've appeared on twice, and has been widely featured on an array of prominent media outlets like The New York Times,

• 5:31Rich Roll?

  the BBC, of course, Forbes, The Guardian, The Financial Times, and many others. The focus of today's conversation is also the subject of Rangan's latest book, The Stress Solution, which is a great and important primer on how chronic stress can lead to disease, along with strategies, tools, and lifestyle changes proven to protect against and even reverse its toxic effects.

• 6:03Rich Roll?

  Okay, Rangan. So this is, of course, a conversation focused on stress, the health implications caused by the chronic variety, and many simple things that you can do to alleviate it and its copious ill effects. More specifically, we discuss Rangan's direct experience fielding patients with chronic stress, and the case study strategies deployed to treat the condition and reverse its effects. We talk about the critical role that sleep, meditation, and mindfulness practices play in combating stress, the importance of human touch, intimacy, and connecting with nature. We cover breathing techniques, disconnecting from our devices, carving out me time, and the importance of finding purpose and passion in your life.

• 6:48Rich Roll?

  And last but not least, we talk about Rangan's newfound love for swim runs, something I'm taking a wee bit of credit for on that one, Dr. C. We could all use a little less stress and a little bit more of what Rangan's prescribing. This one's important, so let's do it. This is me talking to Dr. Rangan Chatterjee.

• 7:11Rich Roll?

  Welcome back to the podcast.

• 7:13Rangan Chatterjee?

  Rich, it's a pleasure to be here for sure.

• 7:16Rich Roll?

  Happy to resume our ongoing conversation. Welcome to Los Angeles. It's a beautiful day here in LA. I know you love it so much. You're gonna move here. I'm gonna make that happen.

• 7:28Rangan Chatterjee?

  I literally am thinking about going back to my wife's side. Listen babe, you know, I think we should really think about this.

• 7:33Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's pretty great, right?

• 7:36Rangan Chatterjee?

  I mean, I did calls this morning on the beach, right? I didn't have anything for two hours. And so I spoke to my PA for like literally an hour whilst walking on the beach. And that's not fully embracing the nature, but I thought this is pretty nice.

• 7:47Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's good. And what's cool about kind of watching you over the last year with the podcast and all the work that you're doing is there's a lot of overlap. Like, I feel like almost every UK-based guest that I've had on the show is a friend of yours or has been on your show. We have, you know, Jim Newman and Ross Edgley. And we should talk about Tony Riddle because

• 8:09Rangan Chatterjee?

  He'd just done it.

• 8:09Rich Roll?

  Just yesterday, he finished his 30 days of running, essentially 30 miles a day, barefoot from south to north.

• 8:20Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah, incredible. I mean, obviously, we both had Tony on our shows. And, you know, I've known Tony for a few years and I love what he does. I love what he stands for. I think what he puts out there, I guess, is quite out there for a lot of people. But I think we can all learn from that and you can take a little snippet from that if you want and apply it into your own life. I'm literally working on my barefoot running. Like, I wear barefoot shoes generally.

• 8:45Rich Roll?

  You're all about the vivos.

• 8:46Rangan Chatterjee?

  I am. I love them, man. I really do. They've changed my life for sure.

• 8:50Rich Roll?

  Well, the thing about Tony is that it may be out there, but basically he's attempting to get people to hearken back to, you know, a foregone era where these things were not out there, but basically just how we lived.

• 9:04Rangan Chatterjee?

  That's all he's doing with is getting back to what we have done for the bulk of our evolution, for sure. But what fascinates me about Tony's journey, because I've been following it like yourself. I was meant to go running with him on, I don't know, day seven, day eight.

• 9:19Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 9:20Rangan Chatterjee?

  And then we were going to record a live event.

• 9:23Rich Roll?

  I guess he was trying to do podcasts like almost every day along the way.

• 9:26Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah, exactly. So talk about filling his schedule, you know, running all day.

• 9:30Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 9:31Rangan Chatterjee?

  Bringing his kids and his wife with him and recording podcasts. But when I spoke to him, we didn't actually get to run together. A couple of reasons for that, but a few days in, Tony had come across a problem. You know, his feet were swollen. They were really painful. He couldn't put them down. And we actually, I think we've not released it yet, but we actually spoke live that evening about how is he dealing with that? How is, you know, this big thing he's put out to the world, I'm going to run thirty miles a day for thirty days, yet maybe day six, suddenly I can't put weight through my foot.

• 10:06Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 10:07Rangan Chatterjee?

  You know, and on many levels, I think that is a stressor. It's kind of like, what am I doing this for? I told everyone that I'm going to do this. I've been building up for this for years. I've been on national media talking about it. Do I need to pull out? And so I really enjoyed that conversation about how do you deal with adversity?

• 10:25Rich Roll?

  And that was early on.

• 10:27Rangan Chatterjee?

  That was early on.

• 10:27Rich Roll?

  Yeah. And around day, maybe, I don't know, in the mid, mid twenties, he really started to have big problems. And I don't know if you saw the images of his feet, but they were like, it looked like he had elephantitis. They were so swollen up like balloons. And he had to, I think he took one day off maybe, or he took a little bit of a break. And the thought that went through my mind was, look, man, I know you've got, you know, people watching you and you put this pressure on yourself. But there's a difference between the tenacity required to push through difficulties to kind of, you know, access that inner potential and that untapped reservoir of what we're all capable of.

• 11:13Rich Roll?

  And then there's just not being smart. I mean, I looked at his feet. I was like, you shouldn't be on your feet at all. And one day off isn't gonna change it. So I had serious concerns and reservations about him continuing.

• 11:25Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah, I think I think it was about two days off he took in the end and he thought, you know, take a few days off, recover, recuperate, use the ice, use the breathing, do what you can. But still, I agree. I was thinking, you know, if that was a patient in my clinic.

• 11:38Rich Roll?

  Oh, you'd be like, forget it.

• 11:39Rangan Chatterjee?

  Exactly. You'd be writing him a note saying, you're off work, you can stay at home. So from that perspective, it's fascinating. But what I was keen to probe him on actually is, you've come with your wife, you've come with your kids, and you're clearly very disappointed that this has happened. You know, it's, you know, it's clearly, you know, on a guttural level, that is frustrating. You know, if I had set out to do something like that, it'd be like, you know, I've got to tell the world now that I can't do this. But I was really intrigued as to how he deals with that with his kids around him. Like, did he have, you know, like, I often, I think, put pressure on myself as a father. I'm kind of figuring that out. I'm learning to let go and just accept things a lot more,

• 12:19Rangan Chatterjee?

  which has been for sure a process of, a deep process of inner work and inner discovery. But I'm super intrigued as to, did he feel a pressure in front of his kids to demonstrate adversity happens in life? How am I gonna handle this? And I found that super, super fascinating because I think he did.

• 12:38Rich Roll?

  I'm sure he did. There's no question that he did. And here's another thought. His whole thing is that we're born to run barefoot, right?

• 12:47Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 12:47Rich Roll?

  But here he is with basically elephantitis on his feet, which is, you know, you gotta say like, this is, this is, this is sort of detracting from his core thesis. Like, if your feet look like that, maybe you should be running barefoot.

• 13:00Rangan Chatterjee?

  But that's the added pressure, right? That's the added pressure that this is my thing, this is what my, my whole thing that I'm putting out to the world is around this sort of natural way of living. But hey, all credit to the guy.

• 13:11Rich Roll?

  He did it.

• 13:11Rangan Chatterjee?

  Because he did it, right?

• 13:13Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I had some texts with him this morning, super proud of him, so.

• 13:16Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah, me too, man.

• 13:17Rich Roll?

  It's very cool to see.

• 13:17Rangan Chatterjee?

  It really is awesome.

• 13:19Rich Roll?

  Yeah. And on the subject of Vivo Barefoot Shoes, we have to talk about your, your new fascination with swimwear.

• 13:26Rangan Chatterjee?

  Hey man.

• 13:27Rich Roll?

  Like, you've gotten, you got yourself in a wetsuit and overcame your fears, did this race, and now like, this is kind of your thing.

• 13:35Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah, I mean, I think if I'm honest, Rich, I think you've played some role in that journey for me. From, you know, I'm not genuinely not just saying this, you know, I, I listen to your podcast. I really enjoy it. I find it arguably the best podcast out there in terms of what connects with me, where I'm at in my life and what I want to listen to. Especially given that I don't really listen to many health and wellness podcasts anymore because, you know, I do that. So I don't really want to be.

• 14:04Rich Roll?

  I don't either because it just, it feels like homework.

• 14:06Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah, it feels like homework, you know? And I actually don't really consider my podcast a health and wellness podcast, frankly, anymore. I think it's.

• 14:13Rich Roll?

  I don't either.

• 14:14Rangan Chatterjee?

  I think it's, I don't actually know how I would define it. It's a, I don't know. It's, it's an everything podcast.

• 14:20Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 14:21Rangan Chatterjee?

  But to come back to your question about Swim Run, you know what? I've always been a pretty fit guy, I think, but I never did endurance sport. You know, I did little, you know, I was always about, you know, I'm going to do 10 minutes of body weight exercises today in my kitchen every day.

• 14:37Rangan Chatterjee?

  But I never really did endurance. So what happened is over the past few years, I'm changing, you know, I am. I'm doing a ton of deep work on myself and as part of that, what I thought my desires were and what I wanted to do is not what I thought it used to be. So that sounds really kind of quite vague. So

• 14:59Rangan Chatterjee?

  Swim Run, I saw when you did it. I've been, because I am a fan of Evo Barefoot Shooters and I had become friends with those guys. And, you know, that's a whole nother story in itself. They're one of the big sponsors of.

• 15:11Rich Roll?

  Your show. Your show too, right?

• 15:13Rangan Chatterjee?

  Recently now on the show, yeah, but the World Series for sure.

• 15:15Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 15:16Rangan Chatterjee?

  And so they invited me to not one of the Otillo, Attilo, I don't know how you pronounce it.

• 15:23Rich Roll?

  Officially branded. There was a guy who came to my live event the other night from Sweden and he corrected my pronunciation. I thought I'd finally gotten it down.

• 15:32Rangan Chatterjee?

  How are you going? Give me your best shot.

• 15:33Rich Roll?

  Ottila. Which is close, but not, it's definitely not it. Don't even try. Just call it Otillo and we'll just be, you know.

• 15:40Rangan Chatterjee?

  We know what we're talking about.

• 15:41Rich Roll?

  English speaking nimrods.

• 15:44Rangan Chatterjee?

  But so they invited me, they invited me last year actually to their inaugural one. So this was their own invite only retreats that they were putting on in this.

• 15:53Rich Roll?

  Vivo did, right? Yeah.

• 15:54Rangan Chatterjee?

  Vivo did.

• 15:55Rich Roll?

  I, I remember because Ross was there too.

• 15:57Rangan Chatterjee?

  Ross was there, exactly. And I couldn't go last year in October for a variety of reasons. So it didn't work out. This year, they gave me advance notice. They said, we're gonna do this, summer solstice in June, Rangan, we'd love you to come. I said, yeah, okay, guys, no worries. I've got, I've got plenty of time. I'm gonna train. I'm gonna figure this out. I think I called you once when you were in New York. You very kindly gave me some time and gave me a few tips on what I needed to do, because I'm not really a swimmer. I'm not really a runner, like an endurance runner. So it was the week, and this event was on the Saturday, and I'd been noticing that I was super busy on like, my book came out of the UK, I've been doing the tour, doing all the kind of crazy stuff that we're all doing now when we're in the

• 16:39Rangan Chatterjee?

  public eye. And I thought, this is nuts. I can't really do this on Saturday. Like, I haven't trained. I've hardly swum. I've certainly never swum in open water. So I, I, you know, and I'm like, I phoned up a guy called Nick, who sort of works there at Viva. I said, hey, Nick, look, we're coming to the event, you know, you said we can come down with the family. We put the flights, my wife, me, my two kids, we're gonna come. Looking forward to seeing Devon. I don't know that part of the world. I don't think I can compete, mate, if I'm honest, because I've been too busy, man. I've been overworked. I'm not trained. And he was great. And he said, listen, if you have a desire, Rangan, to do this at some point, this is the best place to start. We've got safety boats everywhere.

• 17:22Rangan Chatterjee?

  You'll be absolutely fine. Any problems will pull you out. And I thought, okay, all right, fine, I'm in. Let's do it. Right. So I didn't, I didn't understand what it was. I didn't understand what swimming was. I knew, I knew what it was in the sense that I know you swim and you run, right? I knew that much, but I didn't really know the feeling. I didn't know the training for it. Anyway, so let's fast forward to Saturday. It's Saturday morning, and I didn't sleep that well. I was pretty nervous. Um, you know, the night before, like, people from Sweden who like came second in the main event were talking, and I'm like watching these guys and, you know, everyone's feeling, you know, to me, everyone is pretty confident. They've done this stuff before. They know what they're doing. I'm thinking,

• 18:04Rangan Chatterjee?

  all right, you, you know, you, you've always pushed yourself. Let's see what happens. I think I'll be okay. So I wake up, I am opening the box for the first time with my new hoop wetsuit, right? I, I have not even tried it on yet. So let's, so this is, this is how I'm prepared I was. I'm taking it off. I put it on. I'm, I'm struggling to get this thing on. I'm like, This is pretty tight. Like, should they be this tight? Man, I know you live in California, right? You wear wetsuits. If you have never worn one before, you don't know what it should feel like.

• 18:33Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 18:34Rangan Chatterjee?

  So I'm, I mean, and I think you saw that photo I posted on Instagram, like, is this what a wetsuit should look like? Right? So I put it on. I think it's a bit tight. Then I think, okay, well, I don't really have another option anyway. And put my shoes on and then I meet where we're meant to meet. And we now go on a journey, like, we, we have to get a coach with the other competitors to the start. So we get on the coach. I've got my goggles on my head, got my swim cap on, got my wetsuit and wearing my shoes. Walk on. Everyone's got all this other gear around them. Like, people have got like-

• 19:08Rich Roll?

  The paddles and the-

• 19:09Rangan Chatterjee?

  Paddles.

• 19:10Rich Roll?

  Attached to their leg and the whole thing.

• 19:12Rangan Chatterjee?

  And I'm initially thinking, I don't get this. What's going on here? And I think, okay, look, it's probably easier that you don't know anything about that. Keeps it simple in your head. Just go there. Now, look, I looked at the, the, the, I didn't do the, the kind of ultra type distance. I did the sort of medium one, but I think it's the sprint one they call it. And I'm looking at it and I'm thinking, okay, first swim, two hundred fifty metres. Okay, look, I can swim that in the pool. Now, yes, I normally stop after every fifty metres for a little breather, but I reckon I could get through two hundred fifty metres. Then there's a two point five K run, then there's a six hundred metre swim, like, I think a six K run, one point two K swim downstream and a three K run. So I thought-

• 19:54Rich Roll?

  One point two K, that's legit.

• 19:55Rangan Chatterjee?

  That is legit. It was downstream, to be fair. But so, so here's what happens. I meet my partner and they, they partnered me up with someone who's very experienced. So don't worry, Ron, we'll have someone who's super experienced. Anyway, we start.

• 20:09Rangan Chatterjee?

  It's cold, number one, right? It is freezing. I go in, I'm like, oh my God, this is so cold. I think, okay, come on, you could do this. And so we start swimming. And I remember so clearly, we must have only gone about a hundred metres. And then I suddenly became aware that I can't see the bottom. Like, I know this sounds obvious, but I'm suddenly aware in my head, I can't see the bottom of, of, this is not like the pool. I cannot see the bottom. I start to panic. I start to breathe fast. I wouldn't swim. I started to, um- You know, have a very mild sort of panic attack.

• 20:44Rich Roll?

  You needed a stress solution.

• 20:45Rangan Chatterjee?

  I needed a stress solution, you're right.

• 20:47Rich Roll?

  You needed a pillar.

• 20:48Rangan Chatterjee?

  But I did not have one. I did not have one. So, so I'm there. And then what I do, my, my, um, my partner, Dave, I grab, I grab hold of him. Like, I'm like, Dave, Dave, I can't do this. He's like, Rangan, look, just relax, take some deep breaths. Lie on your back, you will float in your wetsuits.

• 21:04Rich Roll?

  Right. I think that was one of the things I told you when you called me. I was like, if you just get freaked out, you'll, you'll float, just roll on your back and it'll take a minute.

• 21:11Rangan Chatterjee?

  It's a shame that in that moment, my rational brain wasn't able to draw these things in. And I said to him, there's no, in my head, I'm thinking, there is no way in hell. I'm lying on my back, like, I am panicked. I didn't have confidence I would then float. Anyway, so listen, I'm thinking at that time, if we get to the end, if I get to the end of this 250 meters, when I get to the end of this 250 meters, there is no way in hell I'm getting back in this ocean. This is exactly what I was feeling. Anyway, I ultimately managed to get to the end, right, get there. And then I think, okay, like, it's only 2.5 K the next run. I can do that. Easy. No problem. Let's just do the run. So I did the run. I'm feeling really tired doing it because I think I'd expended a lot of nervous energy with all that panic.

• 21:57Rangan Chatterjee?

  Then I get there and now we've got the 600 meter swim and it looks as though it's really away from the ocean, like, like quite far, like you have to swim through this gorgeous arch. And I looked at it and I thought, come on, Rangan, you can do this. Come on, you've just done that. If you can swim 250, just take your time, stay calm. You've been through it, you can do it. And it was quite, I was quite lucky because I started to go out. I can remember so clearly, you could still stand up right at the start. Then after about a hundred meters, the ocean, the floor seems to come up again where you could stand up again. So I thought, okay, I'm just going to stand here because I can. And my partner's like, are you okay? You okay? I'm like, yeah, I'm fine. I've just seen there's an opportunity for me to stand and just get my breath.

• 22:38Rangan Chatterjee?

  I'm just going to take it. Anyway, I go, I finish it. I go and complete the whole race. I feel literally like I've won the lottery. I feel, I don't think I felt that feeling of joy, exhilaration.

• 22:52Rangan Chatterjee?

  Pride and I was just, this is one of the most amazing things I have ever done. And I mean, you can unpack that if you want, but for me, that was my first experience of swim run. I loved it. I have now become obsessed. Uh huh. I now, it's all I think about. I watch swimming instructional videos on YouTube every single night. I'm like doing the classic, I'm all in now. I'm working on my stroke. I'm like, oh, should it be this angle? Should it be 90 degrees when it's coming through or like 100 degrees? I'm literally obsessed with swimming. And then the summer, so I don't live near the ocean, right? Right. So I go back to my urban setting near Manchester in the UK. I'm starting going to the pool and then at the start of July, when my kids were off,

• 23:36Rangan Chatterjee?

  we booked a last minute holiday to Lanzarote in the Canary Islands. And we go there and I'm thinking, you know what? I've not swam in the ocean for six weeks. We're on an island and I started Googling for open water swimming nearby. You know, I certainly didn't have the confidence to just go and swim in the ocean by myself. And I found this guy called Paul, who I think is regarded as one of the best swimming teachers around. He's been out there for 25 years, phoned him up, lovely guy. He said, just come down to our, we do ocean swimming every Tuesday morning. Come to the group setting. I'm like, hey man, I can't come to the group. Like, can I have a one on one? He's like, wrong. Just come to the group. I'll see what you like. Don't worry.

• 24:15Rangan Chatterjee?

  So I go, anyway, within two days, he has me swimming out from the coastline, 250 meters out or 250 meters is back, like in minutes without even thinking about it. He was such a good teacher. And you've, you fast forward to the end of the summer in August and I went back to Devon, back to the place of my fear. Uh huh. And Galahad, who's the CEO of Viva Beefe, he said, mate, we're going to swim around the island. I'm like, you know, two months ago, I couldn't get in the water. He's, I said, how far is it? He said, it's about 1.5 K around it. Anyway, after three days of being there, we went out, I swam 1.5 K around this island. It was one of the most beautiful experiences of my life. There were little rock channels. I saw wildlife.

• 25:00Rangan Chatterjee?

  And I just felt alive, man. So yeah, I mean, where do you want to go with swim run? I love it.

• 25:06Rich Roll?

  That's amazing. So are you signed up for another race?

• 25:09Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah, well, you know, we're in California. So I got here on Tuesday and I was a bit jet lagged. I didn't sleep much on that night, but I know that these guys, as part of my YouTube exploration, I've come across Tower 26.

• 25:22Rich Roll?

  Oh, yeah, Jerry.

• 25:23Rangan Chatterjee?

  Jerry. And I know they do a Wednesday morning ocean swim in Santa Monica. I'm staying with my buddy Drew in Santa Monica. I was lying about it 4:30 thinking I'm knackered. I did my HRV on my phone, which I don't always do, and I thought it is tanked. You know what? Forget it. I'm just gonna go to the ocean. So I went and I joined these guys. I didn't do the whole session, but I did 750 metres there.

• 25:45Rich Roll?

  That's great.

• 25:45Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah, it was awesome. And so am I signed up? Yeah, I'm gonna do Malta.

• 25:48Rich Roll?

  Oh, you're doing Malta?

• 25:49Rangan Chatterjee?

  We do Malta. I know your buddy runs it.

• 25:51Rich Roll?

  Yeah, so John Shaw, who is a friend of ours, who came on our, him and his wife came on our Italy retreat. And Kurt Rego, well, I think it's, I think John, I don't know if he's the race director or organizer, but he's sort of the point person on the island who's in charge of making sure this thing gets pulled off. And when I was in Malta recently, I went out with their, they have a hardcore crew.

• 26:14Rangan Chatterjee?

  I saw it on Instagram.

• 26:15Rich Roll?

  Yeah, there's like 10 guys and they get together like a couple of mornings a week and they swim around around the island. It's fantastic. You're gonna love it.

• 26:22Rangan Chatterjee?

  I'm also gonna do Cannes now. So literally one week ago, Galahad texts me and said, hey, man, we're going out to Cannes. We've got a villa. There's spare beds there. Do you want to come out? Now, here's the challenge for me. My favorite artist in the world at this moment in time is John Mayer, right? I love, I love his lyrics. I love his music. I love his bands. I have seen every tour when he's ever been in the UK. Now, on the Friday nights before the Cannes event, I spent a lot of time, probably too much money, getting four very good seats for the John Mayer concert in Manchester. And I thought this would be great because my kids like John Mayer as well. Maybe this will be a really great first gig for us all together.

• 27:06Rangan Chatterjee?

  The four of us go near the front. We watched John Mayer play. This is how much I've changed is that for me now, even one year ago, I would not miss that John Mayer gig for anything. But for me now, it's like, if I'm honest, I'd rather go to camp for the weekend. I'd rather spend the weekend, the weekend in nature. I want to get back in the ocean. I want my kids to experience that. And so I'm canning the gig. And I'm going to where

• 27:36Rich Roll?

  The sacrifices we make.

• 27:37Rangan Chatterjee?

  Hey, man, I get it's the first

• 27:39Rich Roll?

  John Mayer is on the chopping block for Swim Run.

• 27:42Rangan Chatterjee?

  But you know,

• 27:43Rich Roll?

  It's great. It's cool. No, it's super awesome to see you take to that like that. And I love how Swim Run is growing and becoming this thing. I will say this, when I was in Malta and I, and I went and worked out with those guys, um, we were, we were, uh, attacked by a swarm of jellyfish.

• 28:03Rangan Chatterjee?

  This is the stuff I'm not sure I need to hear.

• 28:04Rich Roll?

  This is like a larger conversation about the environment and the acidification of our coastal waters, because I think it has a lot to do with the fact that a lot of the, you know, marine wildlife is, is being decimated because of, um, the degradation of the environment, which now allows jellyfish to proliferate. And we were out in this bay, just, it was, there was no way out. I mean, it was a massive swarm and everyone's just darting for the shore. And we all got bit. And the, I've been bit by jellyfish quite a bit, like in Hawaii. Like, you know, I know what it feels like. I've managed it, but this was like a whole different thing. And I got bit on my wrist and I don't know if you can see that.

• 28:46Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 28:47Rich Roll?

  This was in May and I, I have like a permanent scar here from, from that.

• 28:53Rangan Chatterjee?

  Joe Mayer sounded quiet.

• 28:54Rich Roll?

  I shouldn't have told you that. Uh, hopefully this time of year, that won't be a problem.

• 28:59Rangan Chatterjee?

  So that was in Malta.

• 29:00Rich Roll?

  That was in Malta. Yeah. Those guys go out like every day. It doesn't seem to be an issue. So I think you're going to be fine.

• 29:05Rangan Chatterjee?

  Hey, look, it is.

• 29:07Rich Roll?

  Now this is going to live in your head. I feel bad for you.

• 29:09Rangan Chatterjee?

  I know, man. You can tell. I like moving towards things that I can't do. And if, if I reflect on my, my, my own personality traits, I'd say that is probably something I've always done a little bit. I kind of like that. I really do strongly feel that that's, that's where you grow, right? So. Four months ago, swim run was just a word I knew. I sort of had seen it a bit online. I was interested, but now it's changed my life, right? What I love about it for me is that the events seem to all be done in harmony with the natural environment.

• 29:40Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that's the thing that's super cool about it.

• 29:42Rangan Chatterjee?

  There's no plastic at these events. It's super cool. The people are great. That appears to be, from what I've seen in my limited experience, not that much of a competitive element to it as you may get in triathlon. And again, this is just a perception.

• 29:57Rich Roll?

  I think that's accurate. I mean, it's still, it's competitive and it's competition, but it's a different, it's a completely different environment. The relationship to the competitive aspect of that is very different. It's very grounded in, in, in nature. It's very participatory in general and it's, yeah, people want to win and all of that, but it's really not about that. It's about this shared experience.

• 30:18Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah. And so what am I doing with that is one of my best buddies, a guy called Jeremy, who lives in Bristol, which is, I don't know, 150 miles away from me. We both have got this calling to do swim runs, so we've, we're going to try and do three or four runs a year together. Now, we can't train with you together, which of course from a competitive element may be an issue, but it's also a way that we can actually see each other, right? And do something fun together and not just, you know, hang out in a cafe when we get together or something, you know, do something. So we're super stoked and excited that actually we might be able to do this together. Now, my son, because he's seen me do this, right? He now says, Daddy, could, you know, maybe I can do one of these with you. And I know Vivo are going to do a kids one next year at their event as well.

• 31:02Rangan Chatterjee?

  And I'm thinking, for me, I mean, circling back to what we said with Tony, I very much, I very much, the way, one of the motivations for me to complete that race, right, on, on a very deep level, I'm sure, was that.

• 31:19Rangan Chatterjee?

  My kids were there, right? They knew that daddy was gonna do this swim run event. Now, it doesn't mean there's anything wrong with saying, hey, you know what, guys? I was too scared. I couldn't do it, right? There's nothing wrong with that. But I also felt, wouldn't it be lovely to show my children that actually it's okay to be scared of something? It's okay to lean into that and see what happens. And it's just, hey, man, I'm trying to do the best I can, like every parent, right? I don't know if I am, but that was also a slight motivation for me.

• 31:47Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's great. Um, that hasn't worked with my kids. Like, they don't care at all.

• 31:53Rangan Chatterjee?

  But have you tried to force them into it?

• 31:55Rich Roll?

  No, I've not, no, definitely not, definitely not. I mean, I think on some level it registers, but it's not, it's not as if they're saying, hey, they're not tiptoeing towards it. They're just like, that's dad's thing, you know? Which is fine. They have their own stuff.

• 32:09Rangan Chatterjee?

  Hey, exactly. But did you, I mean, you didn't grow up in California?

• 32:12Rich Roll?

  No.

• 32:12Rangan Chatterjee?

  So this whole love of the ocean, I mean, is that a new thing since you moved here?

• 32:18Rich Roll?

  No, I've always loved the ocean and I love summer and the beaches and all that kind of stuff. It's interesting when, when, um, what I've noticed living in California is that kids that grow up here don't develop that same affinity for it because it's always there. Like when I was a kid, when we got to go to the beach, that was like a big deal. Like I would, I would do anything to go to the beach. Like it was super exciting and exotic and, and something you only got to do a couple of times a year. Uh, but when you live here, like my, my kids are like, we don't want to go to the beach.

• 32:53Rangan Chatterjee?

  But isn't that?

• 32:54Rich Roll?

  I, I don't know.

• 32:55Rangan Chatterjee?

  But I guess it's not the same with everything. Like when something's on our doorstep, we don't really appreciate it.

• 33:01Rich Roll?

  Yeah, you take it for granted.

• 33:02Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah, and I, uh, a few nights ago, I was with my friends, um, my buddy Drew, who I'm staying with. We went to see some of his friends in Venice and we were just hanging out in, in his friend's place in the evening. And I asked them all, I said, hey, guys, look, you are literally two blocks from the ocean. Like I am literally, all I think about at the moment is getting to the ocean.

• 33:21Rich Roll?

  Can we, can we go to the beach?

• 33:22Rangan Chatterjee?

  No, I, I just said, how often? I said, do you guys, do you guys go regularly to the ocean, you know? And they're like, you know what, we actually don't. We've not been there in a few weeks. And it was really telling for me that, hey, this is super fascinating, isn't it? That these guys, they live here, they're not going because it's there all the time. And then, you know, that's how busy our lives are, right? And we don't often, myself included, appreciate those little things, appreciate those things about where we are. We always, you know, I travel to, you know, for me, it's a holiday when I'm at the beach or in the ocean. I'm like getting not as frustrated as I might have done in the past, but you know, all day on Sunday, it was a beautiful day. I could see the ocean. But I'm in an office in Fourth Street, recording podcasts all day.

• 34:06Rangan Chatterjee?

  Now, I get it, that's work, although frankly, to call it work seems ridiculous since I enjoy it so much. But it just, I've been, I've been really, really wrestling with this this week. This whole idea of nature, the ocean, do you move out? If you move out near the ocean, do you just start getting busy in your own life? And therefore it is something that you might do when, when your friends visit and they want to go to the ocean. You're like, hey, hey, look, we've got this beautiful beach here. I don't know, I haven't figured it out yet, but I, I'm really being called to nature these days.

• 34:42Rich Roll?

  Well, I think all of this dovetails perfectly into the things that you care about and you talk about and the subject matter and themes of, of, you know, the book, The Stress Solution, which is about reconnecting and what Tony talks about too, like reconnecting with nature and, you know, prioritizing time for your friendships and intimacy and touch and, you know, physical exercise and mindfulness and disconnecting from our digital lives and all of these things.

• 35:08Rangan Chatterjee?

  For sure. I don't think it's unrelated. I think, hey, what do they say? That you often write the book that you need to write for yourself, right? I would absolutely accept that that was probably the case for writing this book. You know, I can say it was, I was writing it for patients and because this is what a problem that I see. And of course, that is one of the reasons, but I think on some deeper level, it was like, look, I need to get on top of this. I need to figure this stuff out for myself. And yeah, as you say, a lot of the themes that are in the book are the themes we've just spoken about because they are universal themes of what I think makes. A healthy, happy human being. I don't think it's separate that, oh, this is about stress or this is now about nutrition

• 35:51Rangan Chatterjee?

  or movement. Actually, it's all part of the same thing. And this is, as we were saying, I don't know if we said it off air or on air, the whole idea of what we do in our podcasts, which is it's quite hard to define because it's not one thing, you know, I almost find it limiting to call mine a health and wellness podcast. It's an everything podcast. It's a how to live your best life podcast, like very much yours is, although I don't want to pigeonhole yours into that category.

• 36:15Rich Roll?

  I actually, when, when Apple Podcasts changed their categories, I, I took mine off of health and wellness and put it into education for that reason.

• 36:25Rangan Chatterjee?

  Wow.

• 36:25Rich Roll?

  Because I, I wanted to broaden that spectrum a little bit because I don't think, you know, yeah, I do a lot of health and wellness and fitness stuff on my show, but I think to define it as such is not really accurate.

• 36:39Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 36:40Rich Roll?

  You know?

• 36:40Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah, I agree. I totally agree.

• 36:42Rich Roll?

  And the, the larger point being that we can look at these things in isolation, nutrition, sleep, you know, fitness and all of these different sectors that all contribute to the wellbeing of a human being. But ultimately, it is the synergy between these things and taking a more holistic, you know, 10,000 foot view on how we're living our lives that is really the most important thing. Like if you have your diet completely 100% dialed in, but you can't sleep at night, or you don't get along with your boss, or, you know, you're, you're staring at your phone all day, how healthy are you? And that's, you know, something I've said many times before on this podcast, but in order to truly be

• 37:26Rich Roll?

  at your full potential, you have to find a way to balance all of these disciplines. And, you know, it's, it's, it's hard. It's not easy, but to, but to take them at piecemeal, I think is, is missing the larger opportunity.

• 37:40Rangan Chatterjee?

  And I think this is some of the content that we covered when I was on for the first time, because my first book. Again, it covers food, movement, sleep, stress, all these pieces. But I couldn't really, it just felt wrong to me to focus on one area because I believe health is a combination of all these various things. And I, I think I really furthered that idea with this book. I really feel that the kind of the two books fit together. This is a progression. Am I more proud of this book? I don't know, on one level, yeah, because I don't think I could have written this book three or four years ago. I don't think I was able to. The relationship section of it is probably, probably the part of it I'm proud of stuff. Like, I think it's that and the meaning and purpose section.

• 38:24Rangan Chatterjee?

  I think it possibly two areas that people may not have been expecting. And I think they potentially offer the most value for people in there. I'm proud of the other sections, but I think relationships, I think, and the erosion of our relationships, the fact that we are so busy all the time, that we don't prioritize our relationships, even the relationships that we do have, when we are with those people, often we're not present, often we're disconnected, often we are physically in the same space, geographically we are together, but in our heads, we can be millions of miles away because we're on our devices or we're distracted by what we've got to do. You know, or you, you know, you come home from work in your car and you stop and as

• 39:07Rangan Chatterjee?

  you get out, you pull out your phone and check your emails and then or you check Instagram. And as you're walking in, you are also checking that and suddenly your daughter comes out and actually you're not present there, you're still thinking about that. And I think these things sound small, they are so, so important. Having close nourishing relationships is one of the best ways to de-stress. But ironically, having too much stress in your life, I think makes it very hard to have those close nourishing relationships.

• 39:39Rich Roll?

  Yeah, there's no question about it. You know, I think it's super important and it and it leaves me, you know, doing an inventory of, you know, my personal relationships outside of, you know, you know, my marriage and my kids, but with my friendships like so I found myself in a situation where a lot of people I consider friends like yourself. Our relationship is based on doing podcasts together. It's like, like I feel bonded to you, but we've never spent any time off mic. You know what I mean? Like it's, it's, there's something not right about that. And as I was, you know, preparing to speak to you today, I was going over your book again, and I'm going through it. And I'm like, I think, I

• 40:21Rich Roll?

  think your, your talent and your genius is your ability to take all of this information that's out there and synthesize it and then present it in an incredibly accessible and digestible way, like taking concepts that are perhaps confusing if you get into the weeds on them and just, just drilling down to the essentials and presenting the most important aspects of them so that people can actually fully understand and implement these things into their lives. And I'm looking at, I'm like, yeah, I know that. I know it's like, it's, I'm reading it. I'm like, there were, there were certain things that were brand new to me that I want to talk to you about that I thought were super fascinating. But a lot of it is like, I know all this stuff. And yet here I am.

• 41:03Rich Roll?

  A week and a half ago, two weeks ago, I was in Nantucket. I did two conversations on stage, which was amazing and, and super gratifying and incredible. Came back, last minute preparations for this live event, which, which we have to talk about the fact that you said you were going to come and you didn't. I know. Well, let's talk about that. But hold on a second. We'll circle back to that.

• 41:26Rich Roll?

  And had that experience, which was unbelievable, but also like a tremendous amount of work and stress and anxiety, you know, inducing. Now doing this with you and then tomorrow morning, I have a 7:00 AM flight going to Tel Aviv to do another conference. It's like, it's a lot. And I'm trying to be a husband and a parent and.

• 41:48Rich Roll?

  And and learn how to manage a team of people. And I'm like, I haven't made time for my friends or called this person back. I've just, I've been grinding, you know, and I'm tired. And even though I understand all these principles that you speak about in the book, and I agree with all of them, if I'm honest with myself, I'm I'm not practicing them very well.

• 42:10Rangan Chatterjee?

  First of all, I appreciate your compliments about the book and what I try and do with them. Because, you know, that is something when I'm sitting down to write, I'm always thinking hard about my audience. I'm thinking, what exactly is going to help convert the knowledge into action? What is, I'm not interested in writing a book that everyone reads, and then nobody does anything on the on the back of it. I'm not saying it's easy to write a book like that. But I've read many books like that, where it's like, yeah, okay, fine. I get all that. It's nice to read. I feel inspired, but I'm not going to go and do anything. So in my head, I'm thinking, how can you take these deep concepts? How can you simplify to the bare necessity?

• 42:54Rangan Chatterjee?

  And then give an actionable, achievable solution for someone that they might feel, you know what, I can probably do that. And you actually, if I'm honest, you've got to put your ego to the side a little bit, because I certainly found this with my first book as well. But also this book, that there's a tendency at times to go, I want to show people what I know, you know, I know more, I know way more depth than this. But my editor was great for this as well, to give credit where it's due. It was a case of like, this is not a book for you to show off your knowledge. This is a book to help every single reader. That's the goal. And so you've got to, I find I have to put my ego to the side and go, it's not about showing off.

• 43:38Rangan Chatterjee?

  Is there a clear narrative? Have you made the case well enough? Have you inspired them so they they feel that this is achievable for them? That's a key one for me. I work as a doctor, Rich, with patients from all different backgrounds. Wealthy people, affluent people, but also people without much money. I've spent a lot of time in deprived communities and I'm very passionate that actually we should be giving health information to people that is applicable to everyone. You know, we are living, you know, I'm staying in Santa Monica this week. What is this? The wellness capital of the world, right? You walk around, well, I went to Air One on the way here to grab lunch, right? It's easy to buy a healthy lunch, but I probably dropped forty two dollars there. I'm thinking. It's not cheap at Air One. No, right. Again, I'm not criticizing. I'm just saying that is not accessible to many people. Not at all.

• 44:22Rangan Chatterjee?

  So what I try and do is think, what is the most important thing here? And what is the action point? So you mentioned friendship, that you're not making time for your friends. I think a lot of guys get into that position where they get busy with their career. I think it probably affects men more than women, although I can't say that in all cases. I know many of my male friends, as we've got busier, right? As we have got into our thirties and our forties and mortgage and family and work commitments, we often don't spend time with our friends. Many of us are lucky to have friends, but we don't prioritize. Because what happens? We see what they're doing on social media. We see where they've been on holiday. You feel like you know them, right? You feel like you've been spending time with them.

• 45:03Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah, I feel like I've been spending time with you because I listen to you in my ears when I'm doing something else most weeks. So I feel, hey, I know Rich, like I've seen what he's doing on Instagram and Insta stories. I've watched a YouTube video. And on one level, I genuinely do feel that I know you. But on another level, it's like, you're right, we've not spent that much face to face time. I would like to unpack that because I think it's not always necessary. But to illustrate how important I think it is, let me say, I mean, there's a patient I saw, thirty seven year old chap. So this guy is self-employed. He has got a successful business. He works for himself. He drives a sports car. You know, he is, from the outside, he's very successful.

• 45:47Rangan Chatterjee?

  He is working late every night. He's doing emails at the weekends. He's going, go, go, go. Comes in to see me, says, hey, Dr. Chasi, look,

• 45:56Rangan Chatterjee?

  I find it hard to get up bed sometimes in the morning. I'm struggling to concentrate. Sometimes I'll just sit there and I'll feel nothing.

• 46:05Rangan Chatterjee?

  I get tearful from time to time. Is this what depression is? And I said, okay, look, let's, let's try and figure out what's going on. So I'm asking him various aspects about his life, finding out what's going on. Um, what does he do? What are his passions? What are his hobbies? You know, how long has he felt like this, et cetera, et cetera? I do a few tests, everything's normal. And then it becomes quite clear to me that this guy never sees anybody that he's friends with. And he, he's quite lucky in the sense that he lives in the village where he grew up. So what does that mean? A lot of his friends live nearby to him, but he was saying, well, you know, I see what they're up to, you know, I see, I see what they're up on social media. Um, this is not an anti-social media piece, right?

• 46:48Rangan Chatterjee?

  But he thought because he's seen them, he's seen where they've gone, he's seen pictures of their kids. He sees what they had for dinner last night, right? This is the madness, but he doesn't see them. So I said, look, would you consider for the next six weeks? This suggestion, what I would like you to do is at least once a week, I would like you to see one of your friends in person. And when you're with them, I'd love you to put your phones away and really be present for that interaction. Now, he was pretty desperate, right? He was at that point where he was open to what I had to offer. And he said, yeah, sure. Okay, I'll give that a go. He goes away. Maybe five or six weeks later, he comes back, uh, and I ask him, how are you doing?

• 47:32Rangan Chatterjee?

  He said, Dr. Shashi, I feel like a different person. I'm feeling good. Uh, my energy's come back. I'm concentrating at work. Um, I've got that spark back in my life. I want to say thank you. Now, I then said to him, well, what's going on? You know, what did you do with your friends? He said, look, well, the first time we played five-a-side football and that was super fun. But after that, all we did is every Sunday morning, I'd get together with at least one of my friends in our local cafe. And we would chew the fat over a latte.

• 48:04Rangan Chatterjee?

  So the question then for me is, and I would ask the listeners who are hearing this story to think about is, did this guy have a mental health problem? Right? He certainly had symptoms that were consistent with a mental health problem. Or did he have a deficiency of friendship in his life? And when that friendship deficiency got corrected, other things in his life came back online. Now, I have seen this pattern, Rich, over and over again. I am not trying to say in every case, it is that simple. It is clearly not. But I think that's a very powerful example of somebody who literally had a friendship deficiency. When he corrected that, things got better. And we know, you know, the science supports all of this.

• 48:46Rangan Chatterjee?

  Uh, what is it that the research is suggesting that being lonely, the feeling of being lonely is as harmful as smoking fifteen cigarettes a day? I mean, when I go and talk about this in companies about wellness and I ask people, it says, does that surprise you? I mean, pretty much everyone's got their hands up saying, yeah, how could that be? And then I explain that once you understand what the stress response is, when you understand what it is doing, everything in your life starts to become clear. So two million years ago, you're in your hunter gatherer tribe, or let's say you are not in your hunter gatherer tribe, actually, you are separate from the tribe. Your body is smart. Your body is trying to prepare you for what might happen. Your body knows you are vulnerable to attack, so it activates your stress response.

• 49:28Rangan Chatterjee?

  Your immune system gets ramped up, your body becomes inflamed. All of these things are smart things, because if you then do get attacked, you're already, you're not going to die. You've got your best chance of survival. Fast forward now to two thousand and nineteen, and we've got a problem where many of us are not really in danger, but we are feeling isolated, we're feeling disconnected in this supposedly ultra-connected world. Sure, digitally, we've never been disconnected, I would accept that. There are amazing things about technology, I would accept that. But in terms of real, deep, meaningful human connection, I think that's a pretty strong case to say we've never been this isolated.

• 50:08Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I think that's accurate. I mean, there's a lot to talk about in what you just said. That was a brilliant monologue. I appreciate that. Um, I think.

• 50:20Rich Roll?

  What generally happens is that individual that came into your office would go into, would either not seek help, or in the event that that person has the wherewithal to seek help, would go to a practitioner. And at least in the United States, the system is set up wherein that doctor would only have 15 minutes with that person. And it's a setup rigged to diagnose and prescribe. And that person would leave with some kind of antidepressant medication, most likely, and would then consider themselves depressed or clinically, you know, having some kind of mental malady without the tactile kind

• 51:00Rich Roll?

  of real world, practical solution that you would implement because you had the opportunity to provide that person with a little bit more bandwidth.

• 51:08Rangan Chatterjee?

  The setup is the same in the UK, right? We have 10 minute appointments. So this was over the course of two appointments because I did some tests, came back. Yeah, sure, it wasn't just 10. I probably ran late and I probably did 15 to 20 minutes. But I am passionate that actually, yes, the system is not set up to make it easy to do these things. I absolutely recognize that. And it's a common theme that doctors will say, I will also say. But it is possible. It is possible. And it's possible when you listen. You need time to listen, for sure. And I'm not, don't get me wrong, I can't do that in every case, right? I have to, obviously, in that sort of system, you have

• 51:50Rangan Chatterjee?

  to pick and choose which ones you're going to go deep on. When do you pick up that actually this person may be receptive to this? Because you could make the case that a patient comes in like that, they're not going to listen. What, what, the doctor gives them a prescription to see a friend once a week? What kind of prescription is that? What kind of doctor are you? But of course, I don't do that in every case. I do that where I feel it's appropriate. But the reason he did it, I believe, is because I listened. I did not judge him. I offered a number of solutions. And I said, look, would you be interested in this? And when I, when I teach doctors about, you know, for want of a better term, lifestyle medicine, and how we can use lifestyle, not only as prevention, but also as the

• 52:31Rangan Chatterjee?

  treatment for many of the chronic conditions we're seeing, I say to them, the number one skill you need as a healthcare practitioner, in my view, after nearly 20 years of seeing patients, is can you listen non-judgmentally?

• 52:46Rangan Chatterjee?

  And can you be compassionate? Because I think when you, when you can do those two things, opportunity and options start to rise to the surface. And I'm super proud of that case, but that case actually taught me more than it probably taught him.

• 53:01Rich Roll?

  Hmm.

• 53:01Rangan Chatterjee?

  Because I have applied that with other people.

• 53:04Rich Roll?

  It's like this book, right? I'm sure you've read this book, Lost Connections. You probably know Johan.

• 53:08Rangan Chatterjee?

  I know Johan, again, probably my most listened to podcast so far is my one with Johan, right?

• 53:12Rich Roll?

  You did one with Johan, yeah. I mean, that's the entire thesis of, of, of his book right there.

• 53:17Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah, but people don't get, I don't think that this is biological. It feels a bit trivial, friends, you know, what, you know, this, we are social beings. We are wired to be together. You know, other, you know, you mentioned touch before, right? So there was a chapter on touch in this book. And again, this is something I was super proud of because I devoted a whole chapter to the importance of human touch. Can I expand on that?

• 53:42Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 53:42Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah, so I, I was filming a new BBC One documentary about a couple of years ago. And as part of it, we ended up at Liverpool John Moores University. And I met a chap called Professor Francis McGloin, who is probably one of the world's leading researchers in touch. And he was telling me about his research. And I was literally getting mesmerized and blown away by it. I thought, I don't know anything about this. This sounds utterly incredible. This is starting to connect a few dots for me in my head. And so, you know, dived into the research, wrote the chapter about it. But there is something primal about human touch. And it links to that story we just mentioned about us being social beings. So there are two kinds of touch nerve fiber.

• 54:26Rangan Chatterjee?

  Okay, we often feel that actually the touch nerve fiber is there. So if you were to touch me on my forearm, I would know, oh yeah, Richard's touched me on my forearm. So geographically telling me where I'm being touched. But there was another type of nerve fiber as well that is super, super important. There's a fast nerve fiber, which tells you where you've been touched. And there is a slow one, right? Let's use pain as a way of, of unpacking this. I think it's a little easier to understand with pain. So if you're in your kitchen and you are cooking something and you hold a boiling hot pan by accident, instantaneously, what happens?

• 55:06Rangan Chatterjee?

  You feel the burn on your hand. But there is actually a little bit of a delay before you actually feel it. Exactly. You initially, you let go, like straight away, within milliseconds, you will let go of that pain. That is the fast pain nerve fiber telling your brain, I have been touched. This is a problem. Move your hands. A few seconds later is when the emotional qualities of that pain comes in. You might feel a little bit affronted that actually that has happened. Even a better example, I guess, is a kid falling down. I remember when my daughter was four years old and she tripped in the back garden and she fell on her knee. So initially, she's like rubbing her knee. She's not crying. She's a bit bemused. She's just rubbing her knee. About four seconds later, the crying kicks in.

• 55:50Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah, every, every parent has seen that in the child, that delayed response. Exactly. So what is that? These are the two different pain fibers. One is telling you what's happened. So she rubs her knee. The other one is the slow one. It takes longer, but that gives the emotional quality to the pain. Touch is the same thing, right? So we've got touch. One touch nerve fiber tells you where you've been touched. But there's another one. It's called the CT afferens. This, the name doesn't matter, but they're, they're basically slow nerve fibers. Now, what I saw in Professor McGloin's lab is incredible. These nerve fibers are optimally stimulated when you stroke them at three to five centimeters per second. Now, I know what you're thinking.

• 56:33Rangan Chatterjee?

  When I stroke my partner or my kids, I'm not calculating on my watch. Am I doing it at this pace? But when researchers look at mothers stroking their children, stroking their babies, they automatically lock into that speed. It is innate. It is within us as humans. And what does that nerve fiber do? That nerve fiber goes to a different part of the brain. That nerve fiber goes all the way up to the deep, that the primitive emotional part of the brain. It helps you lower levels of the stress hormone cortisol. It helps increase levels of natural killer cells. That's the part of your immune system that fights off viruses. It lowers your heart rate. It lowers your blood pressure. Simply from being touched, right? So we have become a touch averse society.

• 57:18Rangan Chatterjee?

  I totally get that there are reasons for that, right? There has been far too much inappropriate touch. But have there been some unintended consequences from doing that? Have we now become so scared to touch other people? That actually we're now not nourishing a really fundamental and important part of what it is to be human?

• 57:38Rich Roll?

  Hmm.

• 57:38Rangan Chatterjee?

  I think that's the case now. To tie it up to what where I was going before, when we were talking about humans being social beings. What is amazing about these C T afferent nerve fibers? Is that the bulk of them are on our upper back and our shoulder. Right, so on an evolutionary level, why would nature put so many of these nerve fibers on our back?

• 58:01Rich Roll?

  Hmm.

• 58:02Rangan Chatterjee?

  Right, in a place that we can't actually easily touch. Why would it do that? Well, I was chatting to Francis about this. We hypothesized that actually it is a way of bringing us close together. We would have to have somebody else give us that touch. It would help bond us to another person. Not only that, not only do we as the touch receivers get benefit from doing this, right? The touch giver also gets benefit. They have a release of endogenous opioids in their body from giving touch.

• 58:31Rich Roll?

  Hmm.

• 58:32Rangan Chatterjee?

  So human touch is, you know, what would he says this, this is his phrase. Human touch is not a sentimental human indulgence. It is a biological necessity. And when you dive into the research, you can't come up with any other conclusion.

• 58:48Rich Roll?

  Hmm, that's super interesting. Yeah, and we're we're in a dearth of that right now.

• 58:54Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 58:55Rich Roll?

  I think we're all starving for real, uh, real human touch. You know, I think we have to, um, you know, bifurcate.

• 59:07Rich Roll?

  Sexuality from this and just focus on, you know, what it means to be connected to another human being, you know, what does intimacy mean? You know, I think intimacy gets conflated with sexuality, but to be intimate with with another human being is the stuff of life. And when we're separated from that, we we we de-evolve mentally, emotionally, spiritually, and ultimately physically.

• 59:33Rangan Chatterjee?

  I mean, if I reflect on my own behavior as a doctor, like 10 years ago, if someone came into my surgery in my clinic, and if I had to deliver bad news, I know what I used to do. I'd pull my chair close. I would lower my tone in my voice. I'd put my arm or my hands on their upper back and shoulder, and I would deliver the news. These days, I don't do that. I am also a little bit scared that it is inappropriate now to touch someone. It is inappropriate to touch a patient. And just to be clear, of course, in many occasions, it is. But have we lost something? I mean, that's a rhetorical question. Yes,

• 1:00:16Rangan Chatterjee?

  we have lost something. But it is so fundamental. And that's why one of my recommendations that I make is, you know, again, trying to present the case, then give somebody something actionable is keep a touch diary, right? Write a diary of how many times in a week you have meaningful, appropriate human touch, right? And my challenge is, look at the number and see if the next week you can double it. Just try it and see what happens. But you know, Rich, there's also some really fascinating research that kind of kind of supports this. In the NBA, a few years ago, they did a study, and they showed that the teams who touched each other more at the start of the season, who had more physical contact with the teams who who finished higher.

• 1:01:00Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 1:01:01Rangan Chatterjee?

  Which is incredible. Now, look, I'm not trying to-

• 1:01:03Rich Roll?

  It's amazing that that someone even thought of doing that.

• 1:01:05Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah. But this stuff is primal. If a waiter or a waitress gives you the check in a restaurant, and they put their hand on your shoulder when they do it, you tip more. Right, that has been shown in other research. The point I'm trying to make is that this stuff is important. We are starving when it comes to human touch and it's not as hard as we think it is. Like, I met you today, what did we do? We had a hug, right? That was nice, right? I encourage, you know, my guy friends, we now hug a lot more since I dived into this research. Like a good mate of mine, Steve, Steve, sorry about this buddy, but I probably wouldn't have, you know, in the past, we might have just given a hug. Very un-British of you. Yeah, well, I got it.

• 1:01:50Rangan Chatterjee?

  It's probably spending seven days in LA. Here in Southern California, we hug all the time, but. But it feels good, right? Last time I met him, he came to my house a few weeks ago. We hugged and it feels good. And I think this stuff, you know, the conversation around health, I feel, gets overly polarized regarding food and movements. Now, I am not for one minute saying that these things are not important, but I think there is far too much focus on them personally at the expense of other factors. And here's the funny thing about stress, right? And this is what I really figured out as I was unpacking the book and writing it.

• 1:02:33Rangan Chatterjee?

  Often our food choices, often our movement habits, often why we do certain things is because of the stresses in our life. So what happens in January? Every January in the US, in the UK, New Year, New Year, time to get healthy. Right, so what are the two commonest things that I see people doing in my clinic? I want to reduce sugar or I want to reduce my booze, right? Those are two commonest things. So what is the pattern that I see is this? For a week, for two weeks, maybe for three weeks, willpower gets them through. It's like, yeah, getting sugar out of the house, I'm not going to have it. This year is going to be different. It's not going to be like the last few years. This year I get on top of things. Same with alcohol, you know, I'm now not going to drink.

• 1:03:16Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah, I've overdone it over Christmas and New Year. That's it now. I'm in, I'm sorting my life out. One week, two weeks, three weeks, then there's a time it starts to creep back in. And my view on that is, in a lot of cases, it's because the sugar or the alcohol was serving a role in someone's life. Of course. Of course, I know it's super obvious to say it, but what they're doing is that, and the reason I'm explaining is I think people will be listening to this and somebody there is going to go. Yeah, that's me, actually. I do that every January, but I can never get past January the fourteenth. And if you are using sugar, or if you're using alcohol, or if you're using anything

• 1:03:58Rangan Chatterjee?

  to soothe the stresses in your life, I think many people are going to be very limited in the change they're going to make, unless they address the underlying stresses. Address the underlying stresses, then you no longer need to engage in the same behaviour. I'll give you another example. I had a patient who was a, I can't remember his job, he was sort of some sort of managerial position in a company. And he came to see me for, you know, a whole variety of different reasons. The point was, is that when we looked at his lifestyle, it was quite clear to me what was happening. So he would drink a lot of alcohol. And it was affecting his relationship, it was affecting the, um, his sleep, it was affecting his performance, right?

• 1:04:40Rangan Chatterjee?

  But he wouldn't, you know, he wouldn't drink every day, but what would happen when you looked at his week is he would start drinking on a Wednesday. So what happens when you unpack his life? Wednesday, just after lunch, he has to present a team meeting. He finds it incredibly stressful. So by the end of Wednesday's work, he is super amped up. He goes straight home and he wants to unwind. So he opens a bottle of wine, has a glass, one glass turns into two, two turns into three. And before you know it, Wednesday, he has a whole bottle of wine. Therefore doesn't sleep well, wakes up tired, feeling a bit angsty, needs more caffeine to get him through. By default of that happening, he's quite anxious throughout the day, feeling stressed throughout the day.

• 1:05:25Rangan Chatterjee?

  Because he's drinking caffeine all the way into the afternoon, you know, he then drinks more alcohol on Thursday, affects his sleep, and this pattern continues whereby come Friday, it's two bottles of wine, come Saturday, it's two bottles of wine. And Sunday, he spends just recovering for the week ahead. Now, what did I do? Of course, as you well know, Rich, there are multiple things at play here. But in this particular instance, I helped him, we sort of unpacked his week and I helped to say, hey, look, you know, it seems that on Wednesdays, things start to go wrong. So.

• 1:05:57Rangan Chatterjee?

  Is there something else that we can maybe think about doing to de-stress? And he said, well, you know, we looked at a few options. There was a yoga class.

• 1:06:03Rich Roll?

  I was just gonna say you should go to a yoga class right after work.

• 1:06:06Rangan Chatterjee?

  You should, we should swap places, man. In fact, you go to my place, I'll come and live in the study California.

• 1:06:11Rich Roll?

  Keep going.

• 1:06:12Rangan Chatterjee?

  So what happens next is that he goes, okay, fine. So Wednesday, straight after work before going home, what does he do? He goes to yoga. Now, he was a little resistant, but again, he was seeking help, so he came to see me. So he goes to yoga. Within weeks, everything changes. When he comes back, he reports what happens. On a Wednesday now, he relieves that stress at yoga. He goes home feeling calm, feeling present, changes his relationship with his wife. He still has a glass of wine on a Wednesday night, but it's one glass. Doesn't affect his sleep as much. He feels good on Thursday. Again, he'll have a glass of wine on the Thursday, not the whole bottle. And, you know, ultimately, over the course of a few weeks, it completely transformed things.

• 1:06:56Rangan Chatterjee?

  So that was the trigger point for him in the week. So I hope that people listen to this, someone's gonna identify in their own life and go, yeah, wait a minute. Yeah, this is, that's like a similar pattern for me. Maybe if I can manage my stress in a slightly different way, maybe those knock-on consequences will be different. And so, look, these are individual cases, but they apply to all of us in many aspects of our life.

• 1:07:22Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I think basically what you're doing is you're telescoping up on the, on the, on the whole situation and trying to get at the root causes of, of these things so that the solutions that you're implementing are taking into consideration the downstream impacts of these behavior. So instead of just saying, well, don't drink a bottle of wine, you're looking at what is causing the person to make that choice in the first place. And then you see the domino impact either way, either positive or negative to what happens to that, which I think is, I mean, that's, that's the way to address these things, you know?

• 1:08:02Rangan Chatterjee?

  This has come from experience because what is all public health messaging? It's, you know, eat less of this, move more, you know, you're drinking too much alcohol. You know, doctors over and over again tell me, this stuff is all great, Dr. Chatterjee, but, you know, patients just don't do what we tell them to do. I would argue that that phrase in itself needs shifting. I generally get really good compliance with my patients. Like, I do not say that to boast. I say that because I really think that when you communicate effectively with them, people want to change. People don't want to come in and not follow your advice. People don't want to take half a day off work to come and sit in a waiting room, wait

• 1:08:46Rangan Chatterjee?

  for 20 minutes whilst you're running late to come in and see you, so that they can ignore your advice. People want to feel better. That is my number one belief in my job, is that people fundamentally want to feel better. They don't really want to be there, so let me help them feel better.

• 1:09:08Rich Roll?

  So what is leading to that idea that patients don't take the doctor's advice? Is it in the delivery, in the manner in which these practitioners are trying to advise the patients? Like, where is that communication breakdown?

• 1:09:23Rangan Chatterjee?

  Look, I think conventionally, if we look back over the last 30, 40 years, there has been a certain tradition in medicine, this very paternalistic relationship that I have a problem, I come to the doctor, he's gonna, he or she is gonna figure out what the problem is, give me a diagnosis, and then give me some form of prescription, usually a pill to take to get rid of it. And again, I would make the case that maybe 30, 40 years ago, that worked super well. Like, if you were coming in with an acute problem, like a pneumonia, and, you know, you're coughing, you can't sleep, you've got sweats, "Hey, doctor, help me." You know, they listen, they make some tests. Hey, you have got pneumonia. That's the overgrowth of this bug. I've got a pill for you that is going to kill that bug and you will be better. Right.

• 1:10:07Rangan Chatterjee?

  That approach has worked and still does work. Of course, there are unintended consequences of that in the example I gave, but that approach I think does work and the whole medical system, as you've alluded to already, is set up around that model. We are not set up, A, to look for root causes. People online will say, yeah, we are. This is all nonsense. You know, all doctors look for the root cause. I'm sorry, but I disagree because I know what our training is and we're not really trained to look at it because I don't think we had to in the past. So A, I don't think we're trained to do it. B, I don't think the system is set up in a way that allows us to do it. And look, if you are a busy, tired, stressed out

• 1:10:45Rangan Chatterjee?

  doctor and you have, like in the UK, a NHS GP will see between 30 and 50 patients a day. Right? I get it. Right? You're sitting there. You've got five people waiting outside. The easiest thing in the world, A, is to give a prescription because you can get that done quickly and run on time and start to build through your backlog. But also, I think the way we're taught and the way often in that rushed setting that we deliver this information is, I think it's, I think it's destined to fail. Like, if you have a patient, right, who comes in, type 2 diabetes is the obvious example to use, right? The patient's in front of you and you've got their test, right? Let's say they're coming in for some blood tests. They're trying to figure out what's wrong with

• 1:11:30Rangan Chatterjee?

  them, why they're so tired. You run some blood tests and they've got type 2 diabetes, but they don't know this. So I actually do this at role play at the end of the course that I teach to doctors to demonstrate just how different these things can go. So the conventional one is this. Patient comes in, knocks on the door. Hey, Brian, how you doing? Yeah, Doc, you know what, I'm feeling knackered. I've got these blood tests. I want to, I could get the results. Yeah, yeah, sure. So without looking at them, looking at the computer, looking at the screen going, yeah, you know, you have got something called type 2 diabetes, right? That's a chronic illness. It's a bit of a problem because if we don't get on top of it, it may lead to heart attacks. It may lead to amputations in your leg. It's the commonest cause of blindness in this country. So we really need to get on top of it.

• 1:12:14Rangan Chatterjee?

  Now, the good news is we've caught it. I've got some drugs for you. We're going to start today on metformin. Normally, within a couple of years, we need to add a second drug. Sometimes we then have to go to insulin, which are injections. But don't worry, we've got it all under control. I'll get you seeing the diabetes nurse and we'll get this stuff licked. Okay, Brian's in shock as he gets up and walks out the door and it's like, hey, but also, Brian, you know, if you can lose a bit of weight and go to the gym, that would help as well. Okay, so Brian walks out. Yes, you've given lifestyle advice, but what does he take away? He takes away that, oh, well, 99% of that conversation was that we didn't mention lifestyle, mentioned this drug and that they've got this under control for me. Cool, but I can keep going doing what I'm doing.

• 1:12:56Rangan Chatterjee?

  If you, that sounds like I'm, I'm making this up, but that's an extreme example. I can guarantee you that is how some of these consultations go down. There'll be people listening to this who have been in that consultation. Now, I'm not having a go at the doctor because I do recognize that things are challenging. But what about the same scenario where Brian comes in, you make eye contact with him, you don't look at your computer screen, you have a conversation with him, find out what he's concerned about, and then you say, hey, look, something actually has come up, Brian. Do you know anything about blood sugar? A little bit. You explain, hey, your blood sugar is a little bit higher than we would ideally want. Now, it's actually gone into the range of something that we call type 2 diabetes. Do you know what that is?

• 1:13:36Rangan Chatterjee?

  No, doctor, I don't know what that is. Okay, look, it's a condition that actually it doesn't develop overnight. You have not just got this in the last week or the last few months. This has been going on in your body for maybe five years, maybe even 10 years. This has been building up. Now, look, there are a couple of options. Yeah, there are some drugs that we, we, we sometimes need to use. But if you're open to this. I can help you look at your lifestyle and try and figure out with you, what are the various factors that may have led to this? Are you interested? Hey Doc, yeah, if you can let me know what I can do, that would be amazing. And if you go down that road and you spend the time connecting and spend the time explaining to them what they can do and what they feel is achievable,

• 1:14:21Rangan Chatterjee?

  I think even within 10 minutes, you can get a good result.

• 1:14:23Rich Roll?

  But this is communication.

• 1:14:25Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:26Rich Roll?

  Right? So why aren't medical schools training doctors to better communicate with patients, particularly if compliance is an issue? It seems like that should be part and parcel of what it means, you know, to be trained as a doctor. Like you're going to be, you're going to spend your entire career communicating with patients, telling them what to do, what's wrong with them, et cetera. Shouldn't there be a, there's a, there's a skill to that, right? To do it effectively.

• 1:15:00Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah. You know, one of the things I'd say from certainly when I was going through med school applications, and from what I understand, it's not really changed that much, although they have tried to evolve. That is not anywhere in literally how you are assessed. It is what are your grades, right? What is your interview like? Now, I guess an interview on some level is looking at your ability to communicate. I get that. But I think, I think the health landscape has changed. What we needed in doctors 30 years ago is frankly not what we need in the bulk of our doctors today. It has moved on. And therefore, the skill set that a doctor requires in the 21st century is fundamentally different in my eyes than the skill set a doctor needed in the 20th century.

• 1:15:44Rangan Chatterjee?

  So it is about saying, yes, we should be assessing it. I think that's important, but also we should be looking at, can we train it? Like, I think you probably can train it. You can teach people some skills of how you do that. How do you actively listen? How do you not interrupt? The patient's story, you know, basic things that frankly, I would argue it's not just about being a doctor. If you want to communicate with your partner, with your wife, with your children, right? It's the same skill set. So, given that most of what we now see as doctors is driven by collective modern lifestyles, I say eighty percent is driven by collective modern lifestyles. Well, doesn't it not stand to reason that actually

• 1:16:26Rangan Chatterjee?

  these sort of life skills that we need to be able to communicate effectively are probably top of the tree when it comes to being a doctor?

• 1:16:33Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Well, I think it is changing slowly. We're seeing the the growth and the advent of functional medicine. And, you know, there are more and more people like yourselves who who understand this and are and are stepping into a new way of practicing medicine. So I'm hopeful in that regard. But it does seem like there needs to be some systemic changes in updating the education and also the continuing education, right? I mean, you have to do all this continuing education all the time. Like, couldn't that be built into that as well?

• 1:17:06Rangan Chatterjee?

  I mean, Rich, what I'm trying to do to help this problem is, because I was talking about it in the media for years, right? I'm saying this is a problem. We need to change this. And I was thinking, yeah, but what do you do? It's all about talking about it. But then what is the solution? I thought, you know, I've I've hopefully inspired millions of people with my TV show showing that all these chronic lifestyle driven conditions can absolutely be turned around, are certainly dramatically improved by making small changes to key areas in your lifestyle. And then I thought with a colleague of mine, Dr. Ian Panger, we were like, you know what? Should we just set up a course? Should we just create one? And we did it. And we we've created the first in the UK and Europe, it's the very first course called Prescribing Lifestyle Medicine, that is accredited by the Royal

• 1:17:51Rangan Chatterjee?

  College of GPs. Now, that is important because it gives It gives a certain gravitas to the course. It gives it a stamp of approval that people may not otherwise give it. And it was very hard to get accreditation. We had to jump through a lot of hoops. We probably had to compromise various aspects of the course that we ideally wanted, but nonetheless, we've done it. And we have a ninety five, more than ninety five percent of attendees so far, I think it's the best course they attended, highly recommend it to their colleagues. And we have not just had primary care practitioners. We've had consultant cardiologists come, psychiatrists, nurses, pharmacists, because this is a problem that is systemic in medicine. Now, we've probably trained nearly a thousand,

• 1:18:35Rangan Chatterjee?

  a thousand healthcare professionals so far in the past eighteen months, and we've got big plans on how to expand that. Now, people always say, you know what it's like, you do anything, and there's the naysayers. It's like, oh, that's fine, but it should be compulsory in medical school. Oh, that's fine, but you're never going to make change like that. And I'm like, well, hold on a minute. Five years ago, this course didn't exist. It certainly didn't have any credibility. This year, we've got a fully accredited course where people can come and get their CPD points. That is progress. At every single event, we invite some medical students for free to come. They come, give us feedback. We are talking to medical schools. This is how change happens. I'm not saying we'll get there, right? I don't know if we'll get there, but this is my effort to try and contribute to this process

• 1:19:16Rangan Chatterjee?

  to say, hey, look, this, this course is fantastic. Please come if you're interested. But, you know, here's the problem, Rich. We're still relying on a doctor who has an interest, who is prepared to give up a Saturday and pay the money to come and train the course, right? So in many ways, you're, you're, you're only attracting the people who've got that interest, right?

• 1:19:40Rich Roll?

  Yeah, but you started, you know, and you got to fan the flames of positive change, right? This is, this is forward progress. So.

• 1:19:47Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah. And so hopefully in five years' time, this will be a part of medical school training, or it will be compulsory. We can only hope.

• 1:19:54Rich Roll?

  Right. Well, let's drill down into stress a little bit more deeply. This book opens up with you saying, listen, sixty to eighty percent of the people that come into my office have some kind of stress-related condition. The World Health Organization has, has qualified stress as the epidemic of the twenty first century. Like, this is something that we really need to look at.

• 1:20:21Rich Roll?

  Stringently and figure out protocols for redressing. And I feel like the word stress is used very cavalierly, like, wow, we're all stressed. I'm stressed out, I'm anxious, or whatever. But perhaps it might be beneficial to like, define the term. Like, when we say stress, like, what do we actually mean? And what is happening biologically, physiologically in the body when we are under this form of duress?

• 1:20:48Rangan Chatterjee?

  I mean, I would agree with you that the term is slightly problematic. I think we do use it. It is common parlance now. Not a day goes by where you do not hear the term, right? You talk to a buddy, you've not spoken to in a while. Hey, mate, how you doing? You're, yeah, yeah, mate, I'm OK, I'm not too bad, a little bit busy, a little bit stressed, but I'm OK. It's, it's become that normal. And so I guess, taking that 30,000 foot view, fundamentally, what stress is, because stress is different for every single person. It is a perception. It is a perception when your body feels that it's under threat, that it is in danger. That fundamentally is what I think stress is. Now, how do you explain that?

• 1:21:30Rangan Chatterjee?

  Because that statistic you mentioned, and it comes from the Journal of the American Medical Association, 2013, there was a paper where they did a little study. And they said that up to, it's actually 70 to 90%, between 70 and 90% of all conditions that a primary care doctor sees in any given day is in some way related to stress.

• 1:21:50Rich Roll?

  That's bananas.

• 1:21:51Rangan Chatterjee?

  That is bananas, but I'm going to explain why I think it is quite easy to understand when you understand what the stress response is. So let's go back again to 2 million years, right? Two, three, whatever. We go back a couple of million years ago and understand how our stress response evolved. So we were, again, in our hunter gatherer community, getting on with our business, doing what we need to do, and a wild predator is attacking or approaching. We get scared. In an instant, our stress response kicks into gear. So what happens then? Well, the series of physiological changes start to take place that are designed to keep us safe. So I can't list them all, but let's go through through some of them. Your blood sugar

• 1:22:35Rangan Chatterjee?

  starts to rise. Great. That means you're going to deliver more glucose to your brain. That is fantastic in that threat scenario. Your blood pressure starts to go up, so you can deliver more oxygen to your brain. Your amygdala, that's the emotional part of your brain, right? That becomes hyper reactive. So you are literally hypervigilant for all the threats around you. Your blood starts to become more prone to clotting. So that if you were to get attacked by that lion and that predator, you're not going to bleed to death. Your blood's going to clot. It's going to keep you safe. These are very, very smart, complex mechanisms that are designed to keep us safe. The problem is, quite simply, is that now in the 21st

• 1:23:17Rangan Chatterjee?

  century, many of us are having our stress responses activated, not to wild predators, but to our daily lives, to our email inboxes, to our to do lists, to the fact that we've got competing demands at work, to the fact that two parents are working and someone's trying to rush home to pick up the kids, the fact that actually we're living separate from our family, so we're having to do all the childcare ourselves. We don't have grandparents around us. To the fact that we may have elderly parents now we're looking after, as well as looking after a young family for many of us, that is activating our stress response. So what happens? Well, those mechanisms that are so helpful to us in the short term,

• 1:23:59Rangan Chatterjee?

  they start to become problematic. Blood sugar going up is fine for 30 minutes. If your blood sugar is going up day in, day out, well, that leads to fatigue, obesity, high blood pressure, and ultimately type 2 diabetes, just from being stressed. And I go back to saying what I said before, what the whole conversation around health is dominated by diet and movement. Talk about type 2 diabetes. It's all about which dietary tribe you subscribe to. I can tell you that stress is a very, very key player when it comes to your blood sugar. And I have put many cases of type 2 diabetes into remission. Yes, I changed their diet for sure. But when the diet plateaued, the way I got the blood sugar lower was by

• 1:24:40Rangan Chatterjee?

  addressing their stress levels. So, blood sugar, problem helpful in the short term, harmful in the long term. Blood pressure. Again, same thing. Great if you're running away from a tiger. Great if you're in your spinning class in the gym. It's an appropriate response to that stress awe, but if that's happening to your email inbox, that's a problem. What about your emotional brain, right? The amygdala. I've just said, when you are trying to escape a predator, you become hypervigilant to all the threats around you. That is appropriate. If you go to downtown LA tonight and it is dark and you are walking down a dark street and you think somebody is following you, you know what? You want your amygdala to go on

• 1:25:21Rangan Chatterjee?

  high alert. You want to be hypervigilant to all the threats around you. If that's happening day in, day out to your life, that's what we call anxiety, right? So suddenly, this very complex mechanism, when you simplify it right down, we can start to see why up to 90% of what I see as a doctor is in some way related to stress. But what about the things that it switches off, right? We've spoken a bit about relationships. So libido is a big problem these days. I've been practicing for nearly 20 years. I'm seeing more cases of low libido now than I've ever seen. Not a week goes by where I don't see a young male in their twenties complaining of low libido. This was not happening even five years ago, certainly in my practice.

• 1:26:05Rangan Chatterjee?

  There are many factors to consider, but stress is probably the biggest in my view. Again, go back 2 million years. You are running away from a threat. In that moment, you need to prioritize survival. You do not need to be able to chill out and procreate with your partner. So your body switches it off, right? It almost sounds overly simplistic, but I love simplicity because when you understand it simply, you start to realize, hey, I understand now why anxiety, why low memory, why poor concentration, why insomnia, why low libido, why hormonal problems, why obesity, why type 2 diabetes can all have stress as a key player. Gut problems, right?

• 1:26:48Rangan Chatterjee?

  Last Mintel survey in the UK showed us that 80% of UK adults have complained of some form of GI problem in any given year, right? Now, food, of course, is a factor. But I would argue that stress is a bigger factor because what happens, again, just like libido, if you're running away from a lion, you don't need to be able to digest food, you should get switched off, just like that. And I tell you, one thing that I've discovered in my practice for maybe the last two, two and a half years, a lot of people feel that they are reacting to certain foods. And I say that they are reacting, they are intolerant to certain foods. And I have gone through many years asking people to maybe avoid certain foods for a short period of time as a trial, then reintroduce and see what happens.

• 1:27:34Rangan Chatterjee?

  But what I've discovered since I've really dialed into stress is sometimes people are actually not reacting to the food, they're reacting to the fact that they're eating in a stressed out state. So when I teach some of my patients breathing techniques and I say, look, you really need to have some sort of switch off between your work and your eating.

• 1:27:56Rangan Chatterjee?

  I am not casting judgment on anyone. I also often will buy my healthy, organic, whole food lunch, and I'll still be working and doing my emails whilst doing it, right? But you've got to understand, you might be eating the right thing, but if you're not eating it in the right way, there could be a consequence. And some of these patients no longer react to those foods when they change their state before they eat, which literally was mind blowing to me because those patients in the past, I had asked them to remove that food for a period of time. So it is so, so powerful. And I kind of reflect on the French when I think about this because there is this whole French paradox, right? You've heard of this, right?

• 1:28:37Rich Roll?

  Right, well, they eat all these crazy foods and and they don't have the obesity problems and the chronic disease problems that we have. And so why is that? Is it their de-stress lifestyle? They take, you know, their mealtimes are sacred and elongated compared to, you know, what we do here in America.

• 1:28:58Rangan Chatterjee?

  Same in the UK. Look, I've recently been thinking about this a lot because there are multiple theories why the French paradox exists. But with the knowledge I now have on stress, I would have to say that there's a very powerful case to be made that actually the way they are eating. Means that actually their food is going to have a different impact on their body. It's going to do, it's going to do something different. If you prioritize a 90 minute lunch break where, hey, you know what? It's lunchtime. We're not doing that call. We're closing the computer. We're sitting down. We're chilling and we are now going to have lunchtime. Of course, when you understand the stress response, it is going to do something different. And I actually had an interview with a French journalist last week.

• 1:29:39Rangan Chatterjee?

  Cause my, uh, it's cause my, my, my first book has just come out in France. And I asked her at the end of that interview, I said, Hey, look, can I ask you, does that still go on? I've spent a lot of time in France for skiing for sure, but I was saying, does that still go on? She goes, yeah, by and large, it is still what goes on now in some of the heavily urbanized places like Paris. And some of the companies where there's a lot of international people working there. It is starting to get eroded away, which kind of makes sense. But I don't know, I find it so interesting.

• 1:30:10Rich Roll?

  Well, I get the, the, the idea that when you're in a stressed state, it restricts blood flow to your digestive system. But what is the impact on the microbiome? Or why would that lead to some kind of allergic reaction to a certain kind of food?

• 1:30:27Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah, well, first of all, I'm not saying, uh, true allergy. And we've got to be very careful that we distinguish allergy from intolerance. That's a very different biological mechanism. So, you know, I think it's important just to clarify that if you have a true allergy, that when you eat some food, you get, um, you know, you get red cheeks and your lips start to swell. I'm not saying in that instant, but I think some of these milder intolerances or not so mild, many things happen, your microbiome changes with stress. It's not just food that impacts, um, your microbiome, your stress levels do. That has been shown time and time again. Your digestive enzymes. So in order to digest food, whatever is you're eating, you need the presence of certain digestive enzymes to digest that food.

• 1:31:10Rangan Chatterjee?

  If you are switching off as a very broad and non-precise term, your digestion, the levels of digestive enzymes go down. So it can affect multiple different organ systems. It can affect various different things in your gut. I have found over and over again now, not only for intolerances, that with gut problems, I am more and more focusing on the stress around how they eat. And I'm getting great results from doing it. I had a patient, right, who had Crohn's disease, right? So Crohn's disease, for people who don't know, is one of the inflammatory bowel diseases. People often have severe stomach cramps, they will often have, they have to go to the toilets,

• 1:31:52Rangan Chatterjee?

  maybe up to fifteen, twenty times a day, there'll be blood there, very, very physically unpleasant, socially unpleasant. A few years ago, I had a patient who was under the gastroenterologist's, and she had tried the various drugs, they didn't work that well for her, she didn't like the way that they made her feel, so she ends up at my door. I start trying to help her. Now, granted, I did start with diets. I thought, okay, let's see if we can change some things, let's see what happens. And we got a bit of an improvement, for sure. And she was feeling motivated and inspired, that, okay, this is great, you know, I'm finally getting some control over this condition. Then I don't see her for a little while, and then she plateaus. She comes in to see me, I hadn't seen

• 1:32:32Rangan Chatterjee?

  her maybe in six months. And I'm talking to her, and she's like, Dr. Chas, you've got to do something. What else do I need to, you know, do? What do I need to add into my diet? What do I need to cut out? She was talking really fast. And I started to, started to unpick her life a little bit, and it was really clear to me, I was just trying to picking up on this, this sense of background anxiety. She was rushing around, she was like many of the female patients I see in my practice, they were so caring, they were nurturing, she was looking after her husband, she was looking after the kids. Everything she did in her life was for somebody else, and she was not doing anything for herself. And there was many things to do, but the first thing I started off with her was with, I said, look,

• 1:33:18Rangan Chatterjee?

  I know you want me to give you some more advice on your diets. I know you might want me to refer you to a nutrition professional, maybe to go deep into this. But just hear me out. I think that's not the lever to turn at the moment. I think the background stress levels in your life are playing a role here. And I wonder if we could try something there. She was resistant because in her head it was all about diet. So she wanted more dietary advice. And I said, look, all I want you to do is I want to take, I want you to take a bit of time for yourself every day. Just 15 minutes, right? So this is not deep breathing before a meal. This is just saying, look, do something for yourself. 15 minutes a day. And if you can, once a week, I want you to do something that you're really, really passionate about, that you've always wanted to do and you've never done.

• 1:34:04Rangan Chatterjee?

  Anyway, so we also did what's called an MSQ, a medical symptom questionnaire. So I scored the level of her symptoms. She goes away. A month later, she comes back. She feels like a different person. Her symptoms have gone down by 50%, 50%. Now, she still has Crohn's disease. She still has symptoms. It's just significantly better. I said, what have you been doing? She said, well, you know what? Every morning when I drop the kids at school, I now park the car, leave my phone in the car and I go for a walk in the local park for 15 minutes. I said, okay, great. What else do you do? Doc, I've always wanted to do salsa dancing, always. I've never done it, but you give me the kick. So every Thursday night, I go to a salsa class.

• 1:34:45Rangan Chatterjee?

  Now, this was just a month, Rich, but I have followed up, so I've seen what's consequently happened. What does this tell you? This tells you that there are multiple facets going on in everybody's life that can impact every organ system in the body. I have not got rid of her condition. She still has Crohn's disease, but it is a damn sight easier on her and easier to manage now that she's started to lower her stress level. So when you ask the question, what is stress? Well, her stress, right? Wasn't too many emails necessarily. Her stress was the fact that she didn't have enough passion in her life, that she didn't do anything for her that made her feel complete, that nourished her. And so when you ask the question, what is stress? It's going to be different for different people.

• 1:35:30Rangan Chatterjee?

  And that is fundamentally what I tried to do with this book is. As completely as possible, simplify the topic, but then have these four concrete areas. So I want the reader to be able to identify, where does stress live in my life? Because you need awareness. Once you know where it lives, you know what? Pick one of the simple things. Try it for seven days and see if you feel different. That is all I ask from someone.

• 1:35:57Rich Roll?

  I mean, what's interesting about that example that you just gave is that the stress in that woman's life wasn't some external pressure. It was an absence of something in her life, right? Which is not how we really think of stress. It was the fact that she didn't have something that was causing her that kind of duress that was contributing to her, to her symptoms. And, and it is interesting to kind of deconstruct stress and look at the different faces that it has. And you talk about this in the book. You talk about like the MSDs, the, the micro stress doses that we get throughout the day. It's not, it's not that stress is inherently bad. It's the chronic stress or the repetitive nature of these little micro doses of stress that we're getting all day long throughout our

• 1:36:40Rich Roll?

  day, within moments of waking up in the morning, that culminate in this chronic stress condition that's creating all of these problems. But that's also very different from this thing that you call the adverse childhood experience, like the ACE, which is essentially the idea that we've all experienced traumas in our lives, some more severe than others, whether it's a childhood trauma or some experience that you had, that even though it was in the past, it still rears its head and contributes to your, to your stress condition, when it's sort of provoked through memory or some experience that you have throughout the day that reminds you of it.

• 1:37:17Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah, you know, this is one of the challenges when I sat down to write this thing. It was, how do you explain what stress is? And how do you also differentiate these different kinds of stresses? Like you mentioned adverse childhood experiences. These are, you know, really significant and traumatic things that happen, you know, when you're a kid, whether it's abuse, whether it's maybe, you know, not having parents, you know, being an orphan, all kinds of things that we know impact all of your life outcomes. And I was trying to figure out, how can you describe this? And then I came up with this concept of micro stress doses and macro stress doses. And I'm so pleased that this has taken off and like lots of people now use that in their classes.

• 1:37:57Rangan Chatterjee?

  Lots of yoga instructors contact me on Instagram and say, hey, look, I'm using this as a way of describing to people the difference. And I think it's a very useful way of looking at your own life. So a micro stress dose is a little dose of stress that in isolation, you can easily handle. But when they mount up one on top of the other, they start to add up and they can start to become problematic. So we have all got what I call our own personal stress threshold. And it will probably vary throughout various different days of the week, depending on what we've got going on, depending on how well we've slept, how many balls we're juggling. But we have this stress threshold. So let's say you wake up in the morning and you're feeling calm.

• 1:38:42Rangan Chatterjee?

  You can start accumulating micro stress doses bit by bit. And the more of them you accumulate, the closer you get to your own stress threshold. When you get to your stress threshold, that is when things start to go wrong. That is when you have an unreasonable reaction to an email that you received. That is when you have an argument with your partner. That is when you scream at your kids when they haven't actually done anything because you have passed your threshold. And I make the case that many of us have had 10 to 15 hits of micro stress before we've walked out of the door in the morning. So what is the conventional, not the conventional, what is a common scenario these days? Okay, work stressful. Come back, I'm knackered, I want to unwind.

• 1:39:27Rangan Chatterjee?

  I don't want to go to bed because then it all starts tomorrow. So I'm going to stay up late on Netflix, unwinding and numbing what is going on in my life. So I go to bed late. Right. I set my alarm for 6:30 in the morning because I've got work the next day. Okay, so you're in a deep sleep and at 6:30, your alarm goes off. Boom, micro stress dose number one, because waking you, jolting you from a deep sleep is a stressor on the body. You look at the time, you look at which will be on your phone, you look at it, you know what? I've got a few more minutes. You press snooze. At six thirty six, boom, alarm hits again. Micro stress dose number two. Then you think, you know what? Yeah, I better had get up now.

• 1:40:09Rangan Chatterjee?

  So you grab your phone whilst you're sort of stretching in bed. Let me just look at my email. Oh, man, there was three work emails yesterday. I didn't get around to doing them. I've got to do that today. MSD, micro stress dose number three. Then you quickly go onto social media. Oh, you know what? Someone's been mean to me on my last post. MSD number four. Then you realise, oh, my God, I've been in bed for 20 minutes. I'm running late now. I really need to get a move on. And I'm not going to keep sort of labouring the points, but you can very easily see how before you even leave the house in the morning, you've picked up 15 MSDs. And what does that mean? That means you are closer to your threshold, which means it's going to take less little hits of micro stress in the day to tip you over. This is why I'm so passionate about having some downtime,

• 1:40:54Rangan Chatterjee?

  having some space in the morning to insulate yourself, make you more resilient. It's not just about reducing the stress in our life where we can. I get some people live difficult lives. Some people don't earn much money. They're working two jobs. That is fundamentally stressful. But if you can adopt some of these techniques, and pretty much every single tip in the book is free, and I'm super passionate about that, that they are accessible to everyone. You know what? You can apply these tools to make yourself more resilient to the stress. So let's say you've got a stressful life. If you're going out of the house with only two micro stress doses as opposed to 15,

• 1:41:34Rangan Chatterjee?

  you've got a much bigger buffer before you start to have problems. And so I think that's a useful analogy. I will say though, even if you have had a macro stress dose, one of these big hits of stress, like, you know, like trauma of some sorts, like physical abuse. And I say this with the utmost respect, of course. That needs processing, that needs probably to see a professional and actually untangle that. But if you talk to psychologists, if you talk to therapists, they will tell you that it is even more important in those situations that you apply these principles because they will help keep you at a level that hopefully you can manage things a bit

• 1:42:16Rangan Chatterjee?

  better than without. So it really, I really do believe that this is a book for everyone, whether you have macro stress doses, micro stress doses, whether you have too much stress in your life, or whether you have not enough passion, because these are universal themes. And I do think I have simplified it right down where people will think, you know what? Yeah, you know what? Maybe I can't do that. I think I can do that.

• 1:42:37Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I think that, I think you're absolutely right. And what I like about the book is that it's, it's very practical and solution. I mean, it's called the stress solution. I mean, it's about the solutions, right? And some of these are, are very easy to implement in your life, like go for a walk, turn your phone off, go to bed early, like, you know, very, very like simple, implementable tools, morning routine, whatever that may look like for you, meditation, mindfulness practices. Some of them are a little bit more ephemeral. I mean, your first bucket here is purpose. And, you know, that's a, that's a harder

• 1:43:18Rich Roll?

  thing to kind of figure out for yourself. Everybody has their own relationship to purpose. And, you know, I feel like there's a lot of people who live their lives relatively untethered and don't have a sense of purpose, or what, you know, we both know the, the Okinawans call ikigai, which you talk about in the book. And that's a journey, right? So how do you help? I mean, I think that's fundamental, right? If you don't have purpose, then everything else is sort of a, a house of cards. But that's the hardest one.

• 1:43:48Rangan Chatterjee?

  That's the hardest one. That's why I started the book with it, because it's the hardest. And I think it's the most important because fundamentally, a life lacking meaning and purpose is inherently a stressful life, right? It it just is. We all know that. It the research backs it up. Not having a sense of meaning and purpose in your life is associated with much worse health outcomes. Of course, do we need science to tell us that? No.

• 1:44:12Rich Roll?

  And feeling bad about the fact that you don't know what your purpose is is an added stress on top of that.

• 1:44:17Rangan Chatterjee?

  Absolutely. So let me clarify my view on this. So I thought, okay, this is all about practical solutions. I, like you, love that Japanese concept of ikigai, right? I do. I came across it, I think, on a Facebook post a few years ago, and I was, you know, one of my-

• 1:44:33Rich Roll?

  It's a Dan Buettner thing from Blue Zones.

• 1:44:35Rangan Chatterjee?

  I didn't come across it with Dan, actually.

• 1:44:37Rich Roll?

  He he helped kind of usher it in because Okinawa is one of the Blue Zones and and their relationship with purpose, which they call ikigai, is fundamental to their longevity and happiness.

• 1:44:47Rangan Chatterjee?

  For sure. And so one of my Facebook friends, so if you're watching the video, that was inverted commas friends, and to be fair, I'm being slightly, you know, I'm sort of trying to make a point, which is probably not the best way of doing it, but I saw this post and she put this thing up about ikigai. And I saw these four circles and the middle area was shaded where these four things intersect, you know. Ikigai is when you find something in your life to do, something that you love, something that you're good at, something that the world needs, and something that pays you money. And I read it, and I think I read this pretty soon after my dad died, which is a very significant

• 1:45:28Rangan Chatterjee?

  moment, clearly, for me. And I remember reading that and I thought, I like that. You know, I fancy a bit of ikigai in my life. You know, I want that. And I started to reflect on it, think about it. And then I thought, well, this could be useful for some of my patients. So I started to talk about this idea with my patients, and I found many of them found it- Quite stressful to think about. How can I find one thing in my life that gives me this sense of ikigai? That's just too stressful. You know, I'm, I'm working to pay the bills and to meet the mortgage payments and to put food on my plate. You feel ashamed that you can't master that. And, and, and what was super interesting to me is in January, when I, when the book came out in the UK and I was on my tour, I was in London and I spoke about this. And at the end, people, there was a Q and A,

• 1:46:14Rangan Chatterjee?

  and this Japanese student in London put her hand up, you know, so she, she asks a question. She says, Dr. Chatty, I just want to add to this, that I have grown up in Japan and I have heard about this concept of ikigai and I found it super stressful my whole life as I have to live up to this esteemed idea that is embedded in my culture and I find it stressful and I can't do it. So that was super interesting. I heard that from my patients. I also heard it from a Japanese student in London. So I'm not, I, I, I sort of pay homage to this in the book, but then I come up with what I call the live framework. I've come up, created a framework that I think, and I've seen very, very practical for people

• 1:46:55Rangan Chatterjee?

  of how they start to find meaning and purpose in their life. Cause I get it. You're listening to this podcast on a train and you're thinking, yeah, meaning and purpose. It's all very well for you two to talk about that. You know what? Your life is different from mine. So it's a very simple framework. L is for love. I is for intention. V is for vision. E is for engagement. Now, we don't necessarily need to unpack the whole thing, but the point about it is you don't need to get all of these from one aspect in your life. You can get them from different aspects in your life, but it's a simple way to start moving you towards finding your meaning and purpose. So what is the first L? The first L is love. It's about passion. Right. So research shows us that regularly doing things that you love helps to make you more resilient to stress.

• 1:47:41Rangan Chatterjee?

  And I'm saying that resilience is super important, but at the same time, being stressed out day in, day out makes it harder to experience pleasure in day to day things. So one of the prescriptions I give people, and I don't particularly like the term prescription, but one of the recommendations I make is to have a daily dose of pleasure. You can live just for five minutes. Now. Again, just to bring this to life, I had a patient, fifty two year old chap, or maybe fifty three, you know, early fifties chap, CFO of a local plastics company, right? Again, comes in to see me. He's worried, Doctor, do I have depression? What's going on?

• 1:48:24Rangan Chatterjee?

  I struggle to motivate myself sometimes. I can't concentrate at work. I feel quite indifferent about my relationships. You know, what is going on? So, as always, I try and unpack different aspects of their life. So, do you like your job? Yeah, not really, you know, it's so so, I have to do it, you know, I've got a family, I need to provide for them. I said, okay, fine. How's your relationship with your wife? You know what? So so, you know, I don't really see her that much, it's fine.

• 1:48:49Rangan Chatterjee?

  Do you, um, do you have any hobbies? Dog, I don't have time for hobbies. I'm busy. I get back late. I said, okay, what about weekends? Weekends, I've got to do the household chores, I've got to take the kids to their classes. I don't have time for hobbies. So, the prescription I gave him, the recommendation I made to him at the end of doing this, and again, so that I don't get, not that it matters if I get criticised, but just so people understand, I did do the safety nesting that is required of me. I didn't feel he was an active suicide risk. I didn't do all these sort of various things that I have to do as a doctor. I did check. But ultimately, what I felt was that he didn't have any passion in his life, right? And I said, look, did, I know you don't do any hobbies now. Did you ever have a hobby?

• 1:49:34Rangan Chatterjee?

  Well, yeah, I guess, you know, when I was a kid, when I was a teenager, I loved playing with train sets. I said, okay, great. Do you have a train set at home? I've got one at home. It's in my attic. I've not seen it for years. I said, okay, look, what I would love you to do when you go home tonight is to get your train set out. Now, you've got a smirk on your face, right? Yeah, I get it. Hey, I have no judgement on people's hobbies. I had a train set when I was a kid. Well, I thought you were, I thought you were smirking at the fact that the doc, he came in to see me with a, with a problem he was concerned about, and my prescription was to get out his train set. Oh no, I'm with you on that. Okay, you're with me on that. Okay, so, so, he, again, he agrees to go and do this. So he goes away. I don't see him then. It is not uncommon in general practice in

• 1:50:19Rangan Chatterjee?

  the UK for you not to be able to follow up every single patient. You just simply cannot do that. So I got on with my job, I was, you know, doing my thing. Three months later, I'd finished my morning clinic and then we have something called home visits in the UK where, you know, normally after your morning clinic, you will then have a list from reception of people who are maybe elderly and firm who can't get out to the practice and you go and visit them at home to look after them. So I was, I went to the car park to go and do my home visits and I bumped into his wife. And I said, hey, hey, look, um, you know, how's your husband getting on? He said, Dr. Chastity, I feel like I've got the, the guy I married back again. He comes home from work, he's straight onto his train set, he's on eBay all the time trying to buy collector's

• 1:51:01Rangan Chatterjee?

  items and he's, and he's subscribed to this monthly collector's magazine now, right? So she's happy. Wearing his conductor hat at the house. Hey, but she's happy, but I still hadn't seen him, right? Again, roughly three months later,

• 1:51:17Rangan Chatterjee?

  I'm just going through my clinic as usual and I see his name pop up and he has had some blood tests, had a well-manned check and he's coming in to see me to go through them. Welcoming in and before we go into the blood results, I say, hey, look, how are you getting on? He says, Doc, I feel like a different person. Life is great. I said, my mood's better. I've got energy. I said, okay, cool. You know, how's your job? Job? I love it. Really getting a lot out of my job now. How's your relationship with your wife? Really, really good. I feel really close to her. So just like that case, I don't know how long we've been chatting for, maybe an hour ago, just like that, uh, story about the kid who was feeling low and who had a friendship deficiency. Did this guy have a mental health problem? Sure. I think he had symptoms that would

• 1:52:02Rangan Chatterjee?

  be consistent. I could have made, I could have labeled him and given him a diagnosis, right? And of course, sometimes that may be appropriate, although I have issues with labels because I think what that does to people, that's a separate story. Or did this chap really have a deficiency of passion in his life? And the remarkable thing for me is when that passion deficiency gets corrected. Not only does he feel better in himself, but everything else in his life starts to come back online. The job that he couldn't stand before, now he enjoys. The relationship that was a bit tired and he felt a bit indifferent about, now he's feeling closer to his wife.

• 1:52:41Rangan Chatterjee?

  And you know, this is why I'm trying to make the case that this this live framework is applicable. It is achievable. If you are listening to this and you want more meaning and purpose and you don't know where to start. I challenge you, when was the last time you did something you love, right? If you haven't done it recently, schedule it in your diary. It doesn't need to be fancy, it doesn't need to be swim run like we did at the start, right? For many of my patients, I say, give yourself five minutes a day for a daily dose of pleasure. That could be going for a walk, that could be reading a book, listening to a podcast. It could even be coming home from work, going onto YouTube, finding your favorite comedian and laughing for five minutes.

• 1:53:22Rangan Chatterjee?

  So when we say meaning and purpose is unattainable for many people, I disagree because if you start with small, small steps. I mean, you could call them hacks. I know you're not a huge fan of the hacking worlds. And I wouldn't call them hacking in the same sense. I'd call them, you want to get to a certain destination. The destination seems too far away. So let's look at a signpost that's nearby. Let's just break this down, make it super, super simple, do something for five minutes a day that you enjoy. Do that consistently, week after week, and you will start to find other things in your life that will bring you closer to meaning and purpose. That's just the L, right? But I'm super passionate that we can all find meaning and purpose. Of course, it's harder.

• 1:54:06Rangan Chatterjee?

  This guy didn't find his icky guy, right? This chap I just spoke about. He's not quit his job and is now living on a beach and living his kind of this romantic idea of what a beautiful life looks like. No. He's just found passion in his life and suddenly his day to day life that was monotonous before suddenly is vibrant. And I'm so passionate about this, Rich, because it's not as hard as we think it is. Take small, small steps.

• 1:54:35Rich Roll?

  Small steps are everything. I mean, I think what happens is. People, I mean, it goes back to what we were talking about earlier, but people see, read, hear this message of follow your passion, and it does have that shame provoking, you know, unintended consequence to it. And it just seems overwhelming and intimidating because that gets associated with quitting your job, or, you know, sort of, you know, being a digital nomad, or like making these massive, you know, seismic shifts in your life. But, and, and, and that may be the ultimate trajectory if you keep pulling on that thread. Like, maybe that train guy is gonna reinvent himself and become some kind

• 1:55:18Rich Roll?

  of, you know, like, toy train entrepreneur, who knows? But more likely than not, it is just having the wherewithal to set aside a little bit of time to take a tiny step to, like, embrace some aspect of, of what you love. I mean, that's how it started with me. Like, I just, I went back to the swimming pool and jumped in the water. You know, it was nothing more than that. And it's led to me sitting here with you in, in a manner I could have never predicted in a million years. But the tiny first step that seems meaningless and unconnected to ephemeral concepts like ikigai and passion is where all of these things are seeded.

• 1:55:57Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah, for sure. And, you know, this is such a fundamentally important point, not only under the umbrella term of stress, just for, just our overall wellbeing, you know, how we feel about ourselves. It's very hard to do that without passion. It's very hard to do that unless there is some overarching objective or direction in your life where you are going. And I get it. Many people don't feel that they can have it. This is why I drill down, I think so hard, how do you make this achievable? How do you bring these kind of really lofty concepts and ideals? And how do you bring them right down to...

• 1:56:42Rangan Chatterjee?

  Something that someone who's working in a council flat, who's working two jobs, who feels that there is no way out to something that they can apply. And, you know, I know this stuff works because I've been using these tips with real people, busy people with busy lives. And you pointed it out, that's it. It's not about necessarily that first step. Of course, that's very important, but who knows what that guy will be doing in five years? He's, he's now on the road to that destination. Well, there is no destination, but he's on that road, on that journey towards meaning and purpose, and it starts with those small steps.

• 1:57:20Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm. So we are headed into holiday season, the most stressful time of the year. By the time this podcast comes out, we'll, we'll be, you know, more in the thick of it. This is, this is the moment where stress peaks. People are with their relatives, they're in high-stress situations, there's a lot of pressure to show up for other people, and it pushes people over the edge. So I think it would be really helpful and instructive to kind of provide some guidance for how people can better navigate the, the minefields of the holiday season.

• 1:57:59Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah, sure. You're right. It is, it is all over the world, I think, well, certainly in, in the countries in which we live. It's, it's a time fraught with problems, pressures, external pressures, things that we feel that we have to do. There are so many things that we can do, but the, the thing that is rising to the surface in me now is think about downtime, right? We need downtime. We thrive on downtime. Our brains thrive on downtime. You simply cannot get up.

• 1:58:34Rangan Chatterjee?

  Go on your phone, consume, watch what the world is giving you, reacting. Go to after-work drinks, go to all these family engagements, come back, lie in bed, consume more. You simply just cannot do that without there being a consequence. You will be accumulating micro-stress doses after micro-stress doses and you will go over and it will lead to family arguments. It will lead to a row with your partner. It will lead to you getting stressed out at work and falling out with your boss. It is all a consequence of that framework of micro-stress doses and where is your stress threshold? You need to minimise the micro-stress doses and you need to take active steps to increase your resilience. So, well, let's call this simple. You mentioned a morning

• 1:59:16Rangan Chatterjee?

  routine, right? I'm a huge fan of morning routines and the framework I create for people is a morning routine has three M's, the way I see it. Mindfulness, movement and mindset. So if you want a morning routine, you don't know where to start, think about those three M's. Now, you can personalise them to your own life. If you have got an hour in the morning, great. If you've got five minutes, you can still do it in five minutes. Mindfulness, that could be meditation, it could be breathing, you know, whatever you want can be mindfulness, whatever appeals to you. Movement, anything you want, do some push-ups, do some yoga stretches. And then mindset. Mindset is do something to put you in a positive frame

• 2:00:00Rangan Chatterjee?

  of mind. That can be reading a book that you enjoy that makes you feel good. It could be doing some affirmations like I often do with my daughter. Now, to really be clear on this, I have a patient in particular who says, "Doc, these morning routines, they sound great. I'm too busy. I've got to get the kids ready. I don't have time for this." She now, I have persuaded her to try it and she now sticks religiously to her five-minute morning routine, right? So my own routine tends to be about half an hour. I have that luxury now. I didn't always. But hers is five minutes. So what does she do? Let's break those three M's down. First, then mindfulness. She does deep breathing for one minute when she gets up, right? She does a breath that I've taught her that I really

• 2:00:44Rangan Chatterjee?

  like called the three, four, five breath. When she breathes in for three, She holds for four and she breathes out for five. Now, that is one breath. In the book, there is a whole breathing menu with six different breaths. If you don't like that one, don't do it. Choose one that you do like. So that's her one minute of breathing. Then what does she do? For her next two minutes, she does some sun salutations that she learnt in a yoga class. Just two minutes. Then what she does, she reads a book that she likes. She keeps, she keeps five books there and she picks one. She reads a few pages. Just the act of having five minutes to herself in that morning actually transforms the rest of her day. She, this particular patient had really bad eczema.

• 2:01:27Rangan Chatterjee?

  Her eczema has gone down dramatically since she started doing this morning routine. When you understand the physiology, of course, that makes sense. Stress ultimately impacts the immune system. eczema actually, at its core, is a slight dysfunction of certain parts of the immune system. Therefore, if you can impact the immune system, you stand a chance that you actually might be able to reduce your eczema. Not in every case, but in this case. So have some time to yourself, really be mindful of that. And if you find a morning routine helpful, start there. Now, the next thing I'd probably say to people is think about how much you've moved, right? Yes, we know physical activity is important, but fundamentally, if we go back to too many years ago, when we think about our stress response, what is the stress response designed to do?

• 2:02:13Rangan Chatterjee?

  It is priming us for physical activity. Nowadays, the stresses are coming in such a way like, you know, we're sitting on our butts at our desk and our email inbox is stressing us out. Or the fact that actually, oh man, I am exhausted today, but everyone at work is going out tonight. And then my sister's flying into town tonight. Oh man, I just want to go to sleep, right? So I would say, have you moved enough? Just ask yourself, have you moved? If you haven't, just make it a priority every day to do something. Even if it's a 10 minute walk at lunchtime, put your phone down, go outside for 10 minutes and you will start to burn off that stress in your body. But those are two simple things, right? When you're travelling, if you're travelling to go and see your family, right?

• 2:02:59Rangan Chatterjee?

  And this applies not in the holiday season as well. The people are travelling to work and they're getting stressed out. Use that travel time.

• 2:03:07Rangan Chatterjee?

  To really, to really look after your mental health, right? Don't put the news on. Don't listen to what Trump has just tweeted, right? Own your mental space. Own what's going on in there. Use that time to listen to relaxing music. Listen to an inspiring podcast. Pull up the Calm meditation app on your phone and put your headphones in and meditate for 10 minutes. I am not asking you to do three hours of yoga every day, even though that will help you, right? I'm asking you to just think about, have I given myself a bit of time today? If you are getting stressed out at a party, your family are there, your mother is stressing you out, right? Your mother-in-law, let's say, you know, or whatever. Check in with your breath. It's a cliche.

• 2:03:52Rangan Chatterjee?

  It is the biggest cliche, just breathe. If people understood what breathing actually does, on a fundamental physiological level, we would all be practicing every day. Breathing is information for your body. When you're feeling stressed, when you've got deadlines that you're working away for, you will not realise, but your breathing will change. You, you will start to breathe more from your chest than your diaphragm. You will breathe quicker. Your breath will be more shallow. And what does that do? That sends messages to your brain that I am in danger, that there is a problem. And that gets you in a vicious loop where you start to breathe faster. Now, the great news about that is, is that you can very easily change that situation. If you consciously change your breathing, you can change your physiology.

• 2:04:35Rangan Chatterjee?

  So if that's happening, you're at a party, whatever, there's a work do. You know what? Maybe go to the restroom or go, go outside and just for two minutes, breathe. Do the three, four, five breath. If you don't like that one, do a box breath where you breathe in for four. Hold for four. Breathe out for four. Hold for four. I guarantee if you do that for one minute or two minutes, you will feel calmer. And the way you deal with that situation will absolutely, it will change. You will, you will be less reactive. Alcohol, right? I get it. It's a time of year where people like to drink. Fine. I recognise that. That is something people associate with that time of year.

• 2:05:17Rangan Chatterjee?

  Just be mindful of the fact that alcohol will trash your sleep, right? There's no other way of saying alcohol trashes our sleep quality. If you've been out for a few nights on the bounce and you're tired, you know what? Learn to say no. Just, just look at your diary and go, you know what? Do I need to go to every single social engagement? Or can I go, you know, I've gone to two this week. Maybe I'll just stay in one night and, you know, I'll reset my stress threshold by having an early night and going to bed. And then maybe I'll go out tomorrow night. If you're out drinking, maybe can you just reduce it a little bit? You know, if you like to have a glass of wine when you're out, fine. Most people who drink, when you talk to them sober, will tell you.

• 2:05:59Rangan Chatterjee?

  And I appreciate, you know, I appreciate that everyone's different on this. But for most people, the enjoyment comes from that first drink. For, I shouldn't say for most, for many people, right? There's kind of diminishing returns after that. So I mean, you may have a different perspective on this. I'm sort of.

• 2:06:13Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I have a, I have a whole other thing on that, but go ahead.

• 2:06:15Rangan Chatterjee?

  Okay, I, okay, I'm gonna say some people.

• 2:06:18Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 2:06:18Rangan Chatterjee?

  Right. They will find that actually their enjoyment comes from that first drink. That just little feeling of unwined from the day. You know, maybe have that first drink, enjoy yourself, stay out. And then, I don't know, don't go, don't go overboard because what happens in holiday season, and I've never really thought about this, never really been asked this, but what happens in holiday season? Is fundamentally, your micro stress doses add up. There are more micro stress doses in your life. So you are operating near to your stress threshold much more than you ordinarily would. So anything that pulls you away from that is important.

• 2:06:57Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I mean, I think the holiday season is an exacerbated scenario in which we become very reactive to our environment and less mindful about the choices that we're making because there's a lot of expectations set by other people. And we ping pong around like, oh, I have to go to this event and then there's that thing. And then my relatives are coming in and I gotta make sure that I get a gift to this person. And it is a, you know, that can be a fight or flight situation. But I think fundamentally, the more we can cultivate a healthy respect for how to say no when appropriate and how to create healthy boundaries around self-care.

• 2:07:41Rich Roll?

  These, these are the preservation strategies for navigating these things. Just because you're invited to all these places doesn't mean you have to say yes to all of them. And I feel like sometimes, and I know this for myself, I feel like, no, I can't. You don't understand, like I have to go to this thing because if I don't, then this will happen and that person will say that. You don't know my family and, you know, all of that, like I get all of that. But to have the wherewithal or the compunction to say, okay, maybe I do have to go to that, but let me take two minutes to just be with myself and breathe so that I can create kind of a protective invisible boundary around myself that allows me to be more present, more mindful and less reactive so that when I am with that family member that easily provokes

• 2:08:26Rich Roll?

  me, when they push that button, like I know that they're going to, I don't do what I always do, which is react and then create this downward spiral of, you know, emotional terpitude.

• 2:08:37Rangan Chatterjee?

  That's what detachment does, doesn't it? And that's what a daily practice of just simply taking a bit of time for yourself, whether it's meditation or breathing or just sitting out staring at the garden where you live, right? What these things start to do for you, they help you, they help you get that bit detached. So when someone does potentially inflame you, you're not immediate.

• 2:08:58Rich Roll?

  Extra moment.

• 2:08:59Rangan Chatterjee?

  You've got an extra moment to go, hey, you know what? I just, you know what? I get it, you know? She's traveled a long way, you know? She didn't sleep well last night. Okay, I get it. Let's just let that be. So I think that's important. The other thing, you know, thinking about the holiday season, it's, I've got to say, it's hard to think about it because I am literally, I've been walking on the beach this morning. I don't know what the temperature is. It's sunny outside.

• 2:09:18Rich Roll?

  Seventy-five degrees out right now.

• 2:09:20Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah, it's so gorgeous. It feels like, hard to be talking about this, but, you know, thinking about it, I think over the last two years, what we have done with my wife's family around Christmas time, the holiday season in the UK is. I mean, it's not the holiday season. This is particularly around Christmas is for us and for many people, this whole idea of gift buying is incredibly stressful. Oh, I must get everyone a gift. I need, you know, I mean, there are so many facets to this, but we have had a very open conversation with her family about not buying gifts. Right now, I get for some people, it is a fundamental part of Christmas. I am not trying to suggest that that need not be the case. It was a fundamental part of Christmas for us, but we have really thought about what Christmas means to us.

• 2:10:05Rangan Chatterjee?

  And really, for us, it's about a time where we can actually switch off and actually spend time with people who maybe we don't prioritize enough at other parts of the year. So we have asked everyone, it's like, look, would you be open to not doing the whole gift thing, right? A, there's an environmental component to this, which is a big thing for many of us these days. This whole idea that we're buying all these frankly unnecessary gifts that most people don't like what we buy for them anyway. And they go in the charity shop or they just sit in a cupboard and they just accumulate. We buy wrapping paper and we wrap it all. Again, I am not trying to take away the magic of Christmas for someone who's listening to this, and they love that.

• 2:10:45Rangan Chatterjee?

  I am just, I'm just articulating what we have done. We still do that for our kids, although a lot less than we used to. But with my wife's home, we simply, we don't buy gifts for anyone anymore. And we use them. And you know what? That has reduced the stress level so much. Like there's days running into Christmas, I'm not fancy trying to rush around thinking, oh, I need to buy a present. That A, you know, you buy something just so you can give them the present and say, happy Christmas. I check the box and then it ends up in a landfill. Yeah. So I think there are many components to sort of, I would ask people, think about the holiday season. What is it really about for you? Not, not what is it about the way you just, you know, gut reaction sort of, oh, it is about presents.

• 2:11:26Rangan Chatterjee?

  It's about going out. It's about seeing my friends. Really take a step back and maybe write down, actually, what is it I love about the holiday season? And I think whenever we get our thoughts out of our mind onto paper, it helps to helps to order things, helps to clarify. I mean, on another note, one of the best things about writing a book, I think, is you can have all these wild ideas in your heads, but actually, the act of writing a book means you have to order them. You have to find some sort of coherence and clarity to them. And I think you can apply the same thing to the festive season. Write down what you like out of it, what it means to you, and then think about all these engagements, all these things that you've got to do.

• 2:12:05Rangan Chatterjee?

  Which ones actually truly match what gives you joy about that part of the season? And I think people might find that, look, I've never tried this to anyone, I'm just, it's coming up to me now, but I'm thinking that might be a useful framework for people to look at this and go, hey, you know what? You know, I do love seeing my family, because I don't see these guys much. But the fact that I go out with work for three nights just before that, and I get drunk every night and I'm not sleeping, means I go into the funnest part of that time, already exhausted, already a little bit ratty. Maybe I should just prioritize the thing that I really like about it and not do all this other extra stuff. So I don't know if people find that useful.

• 2:12:45Rich Roll?

  Yeah, no, I think that's a, it's super practical advice, you know, I mean, it's a it's a time fraught with emotional landmines and, you know, I think there's a lot of people, myself included, who go into it thinking this year is going to be different. And then I do the same things that I've always done and I get the same results. And it's only if you're willing to, you know, make those alterations and, you know, invest in your wellbeing and you're proactive about how you set that schedule and that agenda and what is important and what your priorities are, that you're going to get a different result.

• 2:13:18Rangan Chatterjee?

  So based on that, what are you going to do differently this year?

• 2:13:23Rich Roll?

  I am, I'm actually taking the entire month of December off.

• 2:13:27Rangan Chatterjee?

  Wow.

• 2:13:27Rich Roll?

  So I haven't really taken a break. Like, I, I get to go on a lot of cool trips to cool places, but it's generally related to some work thing or some conference or something like that. I really haven't taken like a vacation, let alone a legitimate break from what I do. Like, I've never missed a week of the podcast in seven years. So I'm, I'm going to completely tune out 100% for

• 2:13:54Rangan Chatterjee?

  No episodes getting released?

• 2:13:55Rich Roll?

  No, we're, we're banking everything now. We're getting all the work done. So the show will continue to go on. But I'm going to have nothing to do with it and I'm going to be off email completely. So I haven't, I've never done it. It's, it's kind of frightening, actually. Like, I'm looking forward to it, but I'm also a little scared.

• 2:14:10Rangan Chatterjee?

  I'm excited for you.

• 2:14:11Rich Roll?

  Emotional attachment, like, oh, if I, if I, what happens if I step out of this, you know?

• 2:14:16Rangan Chatterjee?

  Do you think, do you think, do you think you can step out without checking, without going?

• 2:14:19Rich Roll?

  Well, that's what we're going to find out. I'm committed to it, though. And I've had like a year to mentally prepare for it. Cause last year I had good intentions about doing this, but I didn't, I didn't set in motion everything that needed to be set in motion for it to become a practical reality. And this year I took steps to make sure that I could do that. So.

• 2:14:41Rangan Chatterjee?

  I mean, that's incredible.

• 2:14:42Rich Roll?

  It's going to be a hectic October and November in order to get everything done so that I can do that. But I'm actually looking forward to it and I, and I really need it. And I think, you know, Rangan, part of it is I love what I do and I've been doing it for a while, but, but, you know, I started to sense this feeling of, of, of like burden around it, you know? And that's not the relationship I want to have to my work. I want to be excited about it and enthusiastic about it. And so there's warning signs like, hey, you really need to reset a little bit and invest in, in a little bit of rest and self-care.

• 2:15:19Rich Roll?

  So that you can maintain that kind of relationship with the career that you worked so hard to create and that you care so much about.

• 2:15:28Rangan Chatterjee?

  I mean, I guess what you fundamentally talking about is downtime.

• 2:15:31Rich Roll?

  Yeah. And I haven't taken any downtime in years and years and years. And I'll, I'll take like a, a day. I mean, I, most, most weeks I work seven days a week. It's not, it's not like I'm working all day, every day, but I'm like, it's never off. And, you know, I don't, I don't know if I've ever even gone on like a week vacation. So this is like very, very much longer.

• 2:15:49Rangan Chatterjee?

  Do you know, for me, as a listener of your show, as well as someone who's, who's been on for the second time now, I, it's interesting because. I'm not necessarily sure that everybody is aware of that in the sense that, you know, we, we all, you know, what do we do on social media, right? We, we, we posted cool things that we're doing in our life, right? So I may look at your feed and go, hey, oh man, Rich has gone on this cool run in the hills today, or he's now in the ocean, or he's training for swimming. I've not trained, I need to, that's the motivation to go and train, right? And may not also recognize that actually, yes, you're doing that and you're sharing that, but at those other times, you are working your butt off, right?

• 2:16:31Rangan Chatterjee?

  And I think that's super fascinating because although that might seem unrelatable to some, someone may go, well, I can't take four weeks off. Okay, well, use that, break it down into your own life and figure out what is it that you can do? What is achievable? As you said, you tried to do it last year, you couldn't manage it, but you are doing it this year. I'm so excited to hear you say that because frankly, I have no idea how you have put an episode out every week for seven years.

• 2:16:57Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I mean, you do seasons, right? Which is a much more.

• 2:17:00Rangan Chatterjee?

  I, I, so I, I do what I don't, right? So what do I do?

• 2:17:03Rich Roll?

  Responsible way of doing it.

• 2:17:04Rangan Chatterjee?

  I don't, I don't do it in a conventional way. I basically take August off each year from the podcast. And I say each year, it's only been going for 18 months. So there's been two Augusts in that where I've taken off. Now, my decision to do that is because I have a young family.

• 2:17:23Rangan Chatterjee?

  You know, they're off school during that time. My life and my career has really got super, super busy over the last few years. I enjoy it, but I also want to make sure I give time to my kids whilst they're young. So I am not perfect. I have not done it the way I want to ideally do it, but not putting the podcast out because I don't have a team yet, um, who I can, well, I'm not at the stage yet where that can go out without me, but it sounds as though you couldn't either for seven years, right?

• 2:17:50Rich Roll?

  Well, I mean, it's, it's also been a situation of me addressing certain character defects around, like my control freakness and like, and how I've managed the workload. And now being in a situation where in order to. Continue to do it and, and kind of ensure the best evolution of it. There are certain things that I need to step, step back from and empower other people to do, which makes me nervous as well. So this is like a growth thing for me where I feel very uncomfortable about it, but also believe in its necessity in order to continue doing this. But let me just make clear at the same time, I'm not a practicing doctor while trying to do a podcast

• 2:18:32Rich Roll?

  like you are. This is like the main thing that I do. I mean, I do other things, but this is the thing that takes up the most amount of my time.

• 2:18:38Rangan Chatterjee?

  I think, you know what, that's, that's such a, it's really fun for me to hear that on one level because,

• 2:18:46Rangan Chatterjee?

  you know, it's easy. We all fall into the comparison trap, you know, whether we want to or not. We look at people, we go look at this, this show's doing this and this show's doing this and stuff. And one of my friends said to me the other day, he said, mate, you know, like you do the podcast as well as see patients, as well as write a book a year at the moment. And I'm thinking, oh yeah, that's a good point, actually. It's kind of like, it's not my main thing.

• 2:19:09Rich Roll?

  And you're like, you're out like talking about the stress solution, but you got another book that's about to come out.

• 2:19:13Rangan Chatterjee?

  In the UK.

• 2:19:14Rich Roll?

  Cranking out these books. I was going to make a joke about how you have this irrational affinity for the number four, but like, because all your books are about.

• 2:19:22Rangan Chatterjee?

  I've changed it in the next one.

• 2:19:24Rich Roll?

  Yeah, like you're, now you're stepping up to five in the next one.

• 2:19:27Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah, look, hey man, look, I am not perfect. I'm trying to figure this stuff out at the same time. But one thing that really excites me about hearing your story is as well as you giving yourself some time off, I bet some magic starts to happen, right? Downtime is so fundamentally important for our brains. And just to make it super clear for people and make it really practical and accessible in their own life, right? We used to think that when we stop focusing on a task in front of us, we used to think that our brains would go to sleep, right? That is not what happens. There is a part of the brain called the default mode network,

• 2:20:08Rangan Chatterjee?

  or the DMN that goes into overdrive when we stop focusing on a task in front of us. So what does that part of the brain do? Well, it does many, many things. Two of the ones I think are hyper relevant here are the DMN helps you to solve problems and it helps you to be more creative, right? So this is the reason why so many of us come up with our best ideas. When we go for a walk, or if you're like me, when you're in the shower, right? Because you have disconnected, you're not focused on something, so your brain does what it wants to do, which is help you and solve problems for you. So I would, I would hypothesize, and I look forward to hearing what happens on this time out for you.

• 2:20:52Rangan Chatterjee?

  I would imagine you are going to get a ton of creative ideas, stuff that is, have been bubbling away there, that is potentially, look, I recognize you go for long runs, so I'm sure ideas come up.

• 2:21:03Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I mean, the running and the swimming is part of that for me, but I get what you're saying. And, and, and that is part of the intention as well. Like I have, like I have other books that I want to write, but this takes up so much time that it's very difficult for me to carve out the amount of solitude required to actually write, write another book.

• 2:21:22Rangan Chatterjee?

  For sure, but, you know, for, for someone listening to this, who's just heard what I said about the default mode network, I'd really love them to take a minute and think, how can I access that sort of creativity and problem solving ability in my day to day life? And one of my top tips for people I speak to in a lot of companies now about employee wellness, and I say, one of the most transformative things you can do is take a tech free lunch break, even if it's just for 15 minutes, right? Because what that does is that you fire up the DMN, you will start to, you will come back more productive, your stress levels will have come down, you will have more energy, problems that you couldn't solve in the morning, you will start to solve in the afternoon.

• 2:22:06Rangan Chatterjee?

  And it's such a simple little thing, it's, you know, for want of a better term, it's a hack, right? But there is incredible science around what that actually does. Many of us, if we work in an office, we're sitting there typing away on our computer, on our emails. Oh, it's lunchtime, okay, pull it out, right? Let's have a look at Instagram, let's go on my personal email, right? Again, no judgment. I also do that many, much of the time. But you will start to tap in to this innate potential that your brain has when you give it downtime. I made a show for ITV in the UK last year on stress, right? And what did we do as part of that show? We took three people and we measured their heart rate variability 24 hours a day for three days.

• 2:22:47Rangan Chatterjee?

  Now, that is, you know, we don't need to go down that road, but that is just a measure of your stress levels. You know, you want, you want a lot of variability from one beat to the next. That shows you are constantly able to adapt to a changing environment around you. If there is no variation or little variation, it means you are, you have taken on a lot of stress and you are unable to adapt. So it's a bit of a marker of resilience as well. Now, one of these people in particular, he was a manager, I don't know how old he is, about 40 years on, I'm going to guess. Manager, working super hard in his company, wants to lead by example. So gets in early, works right through lunch, stays late working. Now, he obviously applied to come on the show because he was feeling super stressed.

• 2:23:32Rangan Chatterjee?

  He was drinking a bit too much. It was affecting his relationship with his wife. I mean, these are common themes, right?

• 2:23:38Rangan Chatterjee?

  And we measured things. We measured his stress levels. We had an objective measurement. So what was really clear is when he was in the office, he started off the day pretty low stress. They start to go up, start to go up. At lunchtime, they kept going up. They kept staying high. In the afternoon, they kept staying high. He'd leave work late. His stress levels were pretty high when he's coming back home. And consequently, there were a lot of compensatory behaviours on the back of that. All I did with him in the week, all I did was suggest to him that he takes a 15 minute break at lunchtime without his phone. Now, he was super lucky because he, very near his office, there was a river, right? So he had a bit of nature. So all this guy does, at lunchtime, phone goes in the drawer.

• 2:24:23Rangan Chatterjee?

  He walks for 15 minutes around a river and comes back. And we did that for a couple of weeks. We re-put the tracking devices on him.

• 2:24:32Rangan Chatterjee?

  Objectively, huge difference. Stress levels again mounting up in the morning, but at lunchtime, they almost reset back to normal. So he's again, starting off the afternoon, very far away from his stress threshold, to use my initial analogy. In the afternoon, they're not going up anywhere near as high as they did before, and that's impacting his behaviours in the evening. So objectively, we've seen a difference. That's important, but not as important as his own subjective experience, at least not to me. What did he feel? He says, Doc, you know, I've got more energy. I'm more productive in the afternoon. I'm actually finishing work early now. And he's not drinking as much and he feels closer with his wife. So the point I'm trying to make is, that may sound super, super trivial. Oh, go for a walk.

• 2:25:17Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah, I've heard that before. Go for an intentional walk at lunchtime without your phone. I guarantee if you do that for seven days in a row, you will start to feel a difference. Probably not even for seven days, you will start to feel a difference. So it is such an important tip. You fire up that part of your brain. And, you know, I don't think it's just the walk for him or just the downtime. Nature is very powerful as well, what it does to your stress levels. Simply being in nature lowers levels of the stress hormone cortisol. It is utterly remarkable. Many theories, but have you heard of fractals?

• 2:25:47Rich Roll?

  I was just gonna say, I wrote it down here. And as you were talking, I was like, oh, here's the moment where I'm going to interject about fractals. Because that was, when I said at the very beginning of the podcast, there were a couple of things I did not know about, that I wanted to talk to you about. That was one of them. What is going on here?

• 2:26:04Rangan Chatterjee?

  Okay, so that's because we've got such a deep connection from actually never having met each other, apart from in a podcast studio. No, it's, fractals are, you know, fractals are a shape. They're a particular kind of geometrical shape that you only get in nature. You get it in rivers, in coastlines, in leaves, you know, on trees. That's where you get fractals. And the research suggests that when a human being looks at a fractal, something happens, right? The act of looking at a fractal means that your stress hormone cortisol starts to come down, simply from looking and being in nature.

• 2:26:45Rangan Chatterjee?

  Now, that was remarkable when I read it and I looked at the research. But then, as I was diving deep into this, I found some more research which suggests that even if you can't get into nature, if you just look at a picture of nature, you also start to lower your stress levels as well. Not to the same degree, I don't think, but nonetheless. So there is something uniquely powerful around nature. Simply being in nature will lower your stress levels. And so I think, going back to that story, I think, you know, if you are lucky enough to live near some green space, or you work near some green space, and at lunchtime you can go and access that, great. If not, look at a picture. If not, right, what I, there's a section in there which I'm entitled staring at a tree.

• 2:27:29Rangan Chatterjee?

  And I say, you know what, go outside, sit on a chair somewhere, and stare at a tree for five minutes, you will lower your stress levels. And so, you know, but Rich, on what level does this not make sense that we are, you know, we are hardwired as human beings to being in nature? Does it actually surprise you that much that there is research to back up what you intuitively feel?

• 2:27:51Rich Roll?

  No, it's common sense. And what I love about basically almost everything that you've said today is that these are all tiny little things, but there's something about the aggregation of them that can accumulate to really combat, you know, this epidemic of stress that we're, that we're experiencing. And I think what happens is, and I'm sure you've experienced this with your patients, is that when you embark on one of these small little things, whether it's a walk down to the river, or the five minutes of mindfulness practice in the morning, once you start to feel a little bit better, that creates an emotional connection with that practice that then encourages you to do more, and then a momentum begins.

• 2:28:34Rich Roll?

  And once you have momentum, it becomes a lot easier to do these things, and then you want more, and before you know it, your life shifts. And I think what, what happens with people is, they look at a little practice like that, and they're like, well, how much difference can that make? And they just dismiss it, right? Or... Or they think, you know, I need to lose 50 pounds, or they set some crazy goal, but then they are short sighted about the work that's required, or the time period that is rational to achieve that. And when they don't achieve the results that they seek in a compressed period of time, they lose hope. And my encouragement is always to take a longer view. Like, I think that we overestimate the changes that we can make in this short period,

• 2:29:19Rich Roll?

  while forsaking, I think, the huge changes that can be seen a year from now, two years from now, three years from now, that are achievable through these very small, bite-sized little practices.

• 2:29:30Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah, for sure. And that's the exact approach I take, that I've seen work not only in my own life, because I have a slight A-type tendency to sort of go all in or all out.

• 2:29:41Rich Roll?

  Right, me too.

• 2:29:42Rangan Chatterjee?

  You know, as my, the amount of hours I-

• 2:29:44Rich Roll?

  I'm gonna do it an hour in the morning.

• 2:29:46Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 2:29:46Rich Roll?

  Five minutes, stuff.

• 2:29:47Rangan Chatterjee?

  Exactly.

• 2:29:48Rich Roll?

  And then I burn out. And then I'm like, and then-

• 2:29:50Rangan Chatterjee?

  It's not for me.

• 2:29:50Rich Roll?

  And then a month goes by before I'll just do five minutes again.

• 2:29:54Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 2:29:54Rich Roll?

  I think that's a common thing, too.

• 2:29:55Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah, this is, this is sort of, kind of demonstrated by my two hours on YouTube swimming videos every night at the moment, right? But, but this is kind of, you know, this is actually the subject that I'm unpacking in my third book, Feel Better in Five. That's actually exactly what I'm looking at, is how do you create? What is the science of behavior change? And what was super fascinating for me is when you delve into the science, it actually supports exactly what we've been talking about. It's so beautiful, it's so, and obviously, you wanna, let's come back to why I didn't come to your event on Friday, okay? Because you didn't want to cover that.

• 2:30:26Rich Roll?

  It's all right, man. I'm just, I can give you a little bit of shit for that.

• 2:30:29Rangan Chatterjee?

  But it's, but it's relevant for this story, because the reason I couldn't come in the end, so I remember seeing the post on Instagram, and you said you'd be doing your first live event, and as a fan, I was like, oh my God, I'm gonna be in LA at the same time. Or I could be in LA if I just shift things a bit, I can come. So I text my buddies, like, hey, should we all go to Richard's event on Friday? Sorted everything out. Obviously, then schedules changed, and all kinds of things came in. And I was trying to, I wanted to talk to BJ Fogg.

• 2:30:55Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 2:30:57Rangan Chatterjee?

  Because, A, I've been looking into some of his research the last few months, and I thought, hey, I don't know how far he is from LA, but maybe I can interview him whilst I'm here. And I contacted BJ, and he said, hey, while you're here, I'm running my two-day bootcamp. And I had, I wanted to attend 12 months ago, but I couldn't fit it in. And I've heard rave reviews about it. And so I had to do a lot of personal wrestling in myself, what am I going to do here? And then I looked into, I thought, I can cut it fine. I can leave an hour early on the Friday. I get to LAX at seven thirty. I text my buddy and say, if I land at LAX at seven thirty, how far is the Wiltshire Theatre from there? Can I make it? He goes, man, I think you're going to be cutting this a little bit too fine. And then I was thinking, honestly, I thought.

• 2:31:40Rich Roll?

  So that's gonna, that's not part of the stress solution.

• 2:31:43Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah, I thought you're going to go to bootcamp. You're not going to properly engage in it because you're going to be thinking about the time. There's other factors in there, but ultimately I didn't come. But the reason for bringing that up is because I want to talk about BJ Fogg in the sense that what I unpacked when doing his research is that it ultimately is these small changes.

• 2:32:02Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 2:32:02Rangan Chatterjee?

  When done consistently, that leads to those big ones. The research is out there to support that. But what fascinates me so much is this is what I figured out intuitively as a clinician who listens to patients and watches what tends to work and what tends not to work. Because anybody can lose weight over two or three weeks if they go on a crash diet. They can, right? You can follow any diet book out there and you can go all in. And you will probably, if you stick to that, will probably lose weight. But the question then is, will that still be there in six months? Will it be there in two months and 12 months? More often than not, it is not. And I found, as I say, to beat the same drum, it is not necessarily about those big changes.

• 2:32:46Rangan Chatterjee?

  Of course, some people can do that. I'm not trying to take away from people's experience if that is the way they have done it. Great, good luck to you. But if you have struggled to make consistent, significant progress in your lifestyle, if you listen to your podcast and you get inspiration each week, but you still feel, hey, that sounds great, but I don't know where to start. I would say, find one thing you heard us talk about today that resonates with you, that you think you want to do. Don't pick something that you don't want to do. Pick something that you do want to do. Figure out how you can introduce a very small change in that area consistently for the next few days and then reassess. And I bet you, more often than not, you're going to feel good about yourself.

• 2:33:30Rangan Chatterjee?

  Your identity is going to change because suddenly what happens then, oh. I'm the kind of person who can make behaviour change. I've done that for the last five days. That has always been my approach with patients. Set the bar super low. Set it low. Patient meets that, able to do it, feels good. And then they by themselves start raising the bar. Meditation, I, one patient I asked, once I made a deal with her, I said, what can you commit to? She told me, I can't do meditation, it's not for me. I've tried doc. I said, okay, okay. What do you think you can do? Can you do 10 minutes a day? Uh, yeah, maybe. I said, okay, okay. Can you do five? Uh, maybe. I said, okay, okay, how about this? Can you do one minute a day?

• 2:34:13Rangan Chatterjee?

  One minute? Yeah, yeah. Okay, sure, I could do one minute. So, okay, look, can you commit to me now? For next few weeks, you're gonna do one minute a day. Okay? Yeah, I can do one minute a day. I said, fine, let's do one minute a day. I'll give you an extra tip here. The best way to create a new habit is to stick it on to an existing habit that you were already doing without thinking about it. So what do you do first thing in the morning? Um, yeah, I go down and put the kettle on and make a cup of tea. This is the UK, right? So we make tea. So I said, okay, fine. What do you do when you put the kettle on? And while the water is boiling? Um, I probably just flick on my phone a little bit, have a little check of the internet. I said, okay, fine. So let's, why not? Is this acceptable to you? Every morning, you are gonna make a cup of tea, you don't need to think about that.

• 2:34:59Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah. Why not at that time, you do one minute of meditation? She says, okay, I can do that. So you're not having to find any extra time in your day to fit this in. She goes away, she starts doing this. One month later, she's doing 10 minutes a day. Right? Because what happens? She does it every day for a few days, she does it for a week, she's like, but she's not so bad, I can do this. And then that one minute becomes two minutes. That two minutes becomes five minutes, that five minutes become 10 minutes. That is the approach I have seen over and over again work for people. Please, if you are struggling, take something from that. Put that into your practice, not next Monday. Right? Maybe put it into practice tomorrow. You know? Do it. If you, if this is the holiday season when it comes out, right?

• 2:35:45Rangan Chatterjee?

  Can somebody listening to this put this into practice tomorrow morning? Right? First thing you do tomorrow morning, give yourself some time. Do one minute of deep breathing if you don't want to do meditation.

• 2:35:54Rich Roll?

  Yeah, beautifully put. Um, the only caveat that I would add to that.

• 2:36:00Rich Roll?

  involves sidestepping the logical next question. And the logical next question being, okay, you have all of these little practices that I can do. Meditation, sleep, you know, going into nature, going on a walk, turning off your phone. What's the most important one? Just tell me the one thing that is the most, the biggest one. And, you know, I'm sure you've gotten this question, right? To me, and I'm interested in your perspective, and then we gotta end this because we've been going forever. But to me, the answer to that is, which one speaks to you? Which is the thing that you feel like you are naturally magnetized by? Like, what is the one thing that you feel like resonates with who you are as a person? Or the person that you would like to be?

• 2:36:41Rich Roll?

  Like, if, if you're repelled by one of these things, and another one looks like, oh, that might be cool. Like, maybe do that one first.

• 2:36:51Rangan Chatterjee?

  Okay. So what I would say to that is, for other people, I would say, as I always say, do not try and make a change in something that doesn't speak to you. There's no point, because you're gonna, you're setting yourself up for failure. Choose, and I've said this at talks before, I've said, look, if any of the tips and tools I am recommending, you don't like, and you don't think, ah, that's not for me, fine, don't do it. There are so many tips, pick one that you do like, that does speak to you. So that's the first way I'll answer that question, is for advice to other people. If you're asking me, and I am literally trying to rack my head now through all these chapters in the book,

• 2:37:35Rangan Chatterjee?

  and trying to figure out which one speaks to me the most at this moment in time. There's two that are coming to the surface of me. Two are jumping up, it's 12 chapters, and about two of them are coming right to the surface of me, which is the nature chapter and the one on intimacy. Those are the ones that are really coming up for me at the moment, if I really tune into how I'm feeling. I'll start with nature. I mean, you've asked me to say one thing. So, okay, let's go with nature. I can expand on the other as well if you want, but I think nature is what is calling me more than anything at the moment. And I've tried to figure out where this has come from. And I think it's because I grew up in a very urban environment, right? My parents were immigrants

• 2:38:16Rangan Chatterjee?

  from India. They came over to the UK to set up a better life for themselves and for their kids and their family. And I really reflect on this. What did we used to do on holidays? Well, every other summer as a kid, we'd go to Calcutta in India and spend six weeks there. Three weeks, my dad would come, then he had to go back and work, but six weeks with my mum and my brother. And we'd play with our cousins, we'd play street cricket, we'd do all this stuff in an urban setting. I didn't go to the ocean, right? I didn't go into forests. When we didn't do those things, the other, the alternate years, we'd go around Europe. My dad would take a holiday, he'd drive us around Europe, we'd go sightseeing in all these European cities. My parents had never left India before, before they came to the UK. It was for them, they wanted to see all

• 2:38:59Rangan Chatterjee?

  these European cities, right? We'd walk around, we'd stand in queues to go to all these tourist attractions, right? Of course, it was fun, but I didn't really get exposed to nature. I'm, I am not criticizing my parents, but as I'm getting older, and as I sort of think about what I wanna introduce into my children's lives, nature really calls me at the moment. And, you know, I, I, I did a, I did a weekend devon at the end of August this year, and we did things I've never done before. I got on a surfboard, right? I'm what, forty-two? I have not been on a surfboard until the summer in my life. I watched Point Break when I was fourteen, I was mesmerized. I, I, I was like, oh my God, I wanna learn how to surf. I booked a surfing holiday in Newquay,

• 2:39:43Rangan Chatterjee?

  and for some reason, I think I wasn't allowed to go, or something happened. And I'm feeling alive when I'm getting in the ocean. Like, this whole open water swimming that we started this podcast with, it makes me feel alive. Yes, I'm a little bit scared when I'm in there still, but I come back feeling, oh my God, I've just done that. So, the one that speaks to me, the one that I'm trying to put into practice every day in my life is nature.

• 2:40:09Rangan Chatterjee?

  I don't think anything is speaking to me more than nature at the moment. Fractals. Fractals.

• 2:40:17Rich Roll?

  Good talking to you.

• 2:40:18Rangan Chatterjee?

  Thanks for having me, man.

• 2:40:20Rich Roll?

  I love it. I love the work that you do. I love your enthusiasm and I feel like if I were to pull out that Venn diagram of ikigai, that all of your, that this is all operating at the highest level for you, that you are doing what you're passionate about, that it is fulfilling a need and it's in service to other people, it's providing you with a living. All of those boxes are checked and I think you're exactly where you're supposed to be. And I'm excited about the new book. You're always welcome to come back and talk to me about that as well. And thanks for sharing today.

• 2:41:01Rangan Chatterjee?

  Thanks for having me. We'll see you soon.

• 2:41:04Rich Roll?

  The book is The Stress Solution: The Four Steps to Reset Your Body-Mind Relationships and Purpose, available everywhere. And Rangan is pretty easy to find on the internet these days, right? So what's the best place to direct people if they want to connect with you?

• 2:41:19Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 2:41:20Rich Roll?

  Instagram, probably.

• 2:41:21Rangan Chatterjee?

  Probably Instagram, yeah. Instagram and all the podcasts, I'd say is probably the best place.

• 2:41:25Rich Roll?

  Oh, yeah. Feel better, live more.

• 2:41:28Rangan Chatterjee?

  Says it all, right?

• 2:41:29Rich Roll?

  That's right, man. Tune it up. All right. Until next time. Thank you.

• 2:41:34Rangan Chatterjee?

  Thanks, buddy.

• 2:41:35Rich Roll?

  Peace. Plants. Fractals. A beautiful and multi-talented man, that Dr. Chatterjee. Hope you guys enjoyed that. I did. I also hope you got a good education, a good overview on how you can reduce the anxiety and stress in your life, particularly throughout this heightened holiday season, and hopefully sidestep these chronic ailments, avoid becoming a statistic, and live a long, healthy life. Do me a favor, share your thoughts with Rongan directly. He is at DRChatterjeeUK on Twitter and at DRChatterjee on Instagram. Pick up his new book, The Stress Solution, as well as The Four Pillar Plan in the UK,

• 2:42:17Rich Roll?

  alternately titled How to Make Disease Disappear in North America. And I got links to all of that in the show notes. If you'd like to support the work we do here on the show, subscribe, rate, and comment on the program on Apple Podcasts. Tell your friends about your favorite episode. Share the show on social media. Hit that subscribe button on YouTube, Spotify, and Google. And/or you can support us on Patreon at ritual.com/donate. Mad love for my team for helping me put on the show every week, including this episode. Jason Camiello for audio engineering, production, show notes, and interstitial music. Blake Curtis and Margot Lubin for videoing and editing the show. Jessica Miranda for graphics. Ali Rogers for portraits. DK David Kahn for advertiser relationships and theme music by Analemma.

• 2:43:02Rich Roll?

  Appreciate all of you guys. I love you. I will see you back here next week with an extraordinary, very unique conversation with Kendra Little. Kendra is a former collegiate and professional golfer who, at the age of 12, was discovered by doctors to be born intersex. And for nearly 20 years, she's kept it hidden until now. I really appreciate her trusting me with her story. It's an amazing conversation. And here's a clip. Until then, stay healthy. Take care of yourself. It's not indulgent. You are the only one of you that you've got. Happy holidays. Feast, plants, namaste.

• 2:43:44Speaker 02

  I did everything in my power just to block it out and not think about it. And I got really good at it, which probably not a good thing to block things out that are clearly impacting your life and need to be addressed. You know, I'd have, I'd have moments or I'd see things in the news or hear about other people that were somewhat related to gender or whatever. And it would kind of bring me back to a self-realization moment. And it was like a great cause of anxiety. I think that's an important thing to say. This is something that I've been trying to kind of tiptoe around, like in talking about this, because one thing I don't want to do is alienate the trans community and delegitimize what they're feeling, just because it's not from a genetic standpoint.

• 2:44:28Speaker 02

  I was genetically born both. But that doesn't mean that someone that wasn't genetically born, you know, as they were born, or who they were born as, that doesn't take away from how they feel, just because they don't have like a, you know, genetic thing to back it up. It goes back to, it's never about what anyone else thinks or anyone else feels about you. It's about how you feel about yourself.