Speaker 1 (00:00:00):
Welcome to The Dr. Gundry Podcast, the weekly podcast, where Dr. G gives you the tools you need to boost your health and live your healthiest life.
Dr. Gundry (00:00:13):
Welcome to The Dr. Gundry Podcast. With all the health advice circulating today, I know it’s really easy to feel overwhelmed. Information seems to constantly change and experts rarely seem to agree. That’s why today I brought on special guest who says that by focusing on just four areas of your life, you can dramatically improve your health and your happiness. Who doesn’t want to be more happy? [inaudible 00:00:40] Dr Rangan Chaterjee, the star of a hit BBC series Doctor In The House, and author of How To Make Disease Disappear and his new book. Happy Mind, Happy Life. In fact, he’s had five books published in the last five years. He’s trying to catch me, folks. He’s an important guy we got to talk about. After a quick break, Dr. Chaterjee, and I will do a deep dive into his four pillars of health, reveal the secrets to true happiness and help you put together an action plan for feeling fantastic. So don’t go away. This is an episode everyone can benefit from. We’ll be right back.
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Okay. Welcome back. Dr Chaterjee, a pleasure to have you on the program. Congratulations on your BBC series. What’s it like to be a famous TV star in the UK?
Dr. Chaterjee (00:02:52):
Well, Dr. it’s going to be first of all, thank you for having me on your show. It’s a delight to be talking with you. That sort of famous TV doctor kind of angle never really appealed to me. The truth is, like many of us who are trying to promote health and wellbeing, I was getting very frustrated in medicine. As we speak, I’ve been practicing for 21 years now, almost as a medical doctor. I would get very frustrated that a lot of the time I was seeing symptoms that we were only just trying to suppress or hide with medication, rather than getting to the root cause. For me, it’s always been a drive to help my patients understand what’s the root cause of their problems and how can I help them make small changes that are going to make a big difference.
Now as part of that journey, yes, that has led to me being able to showcase this approach on a huge scale. Yes, BBC One, our main channel here, there was a series for a few years where I would go into people’s houses who were struggling with their health and pretty much all of them were already under GPs and or specialists. They were usually on medications. Despite that, they were still struggling. I feel very lucky and very fortunate to be able to have shown 5 million people, a week in the UK, just what is possible within a few weeks, when you take control of your lifestyle. That series has now been shown in 70 countries around the world. I feel the fame and being well known has come as a side effect of helping people. I’m okay with that because, I’m quite a private person, actually.
I like actually spending time with my wife and my kids. Usually, when people stop me, it’s to say, probably like yourself, Dr Gundry, to say something really nice and to say, “Oh, I heard something you did,” or, “I heard your podcast,” or, “I read one of your books. It’s helped me with my anxiety or my type two diabetes,” or whatever it might be. So what’s it like? I just feel very lucky that I get to practice medicine the way I want to practice it and help create change on a large scale through things like television, podcasting and books.
Dr. Gundry (00:05:11):
Yeah. I realize [inaudible 00:05:13] my former career, as a famous heart surgeon and I’ve operated on 10,000 people in my lifetime. But I realized that if I could teach people how to eat that I could help, potentially, millions of people. Makes a lot of sense. Now, it doesn’t make sense if you’re a heart surgeon to teach people how to avoid you. But in fact, that’s where the fulfillment is. Congratulations on finding a way to reach millions of people with your message.
Speaking of message, let’s talk about your first pillar, food. As people watching this show, we talk a lot about food on this channel. You and I are both very passionate about the fact that food is one of the most powerful tools we have. But you say it’s equally important to what we eat is when, how and why we eat. Can you tell us what’s the difference in terms of the foods we eat, which obviously we both agree are very important, but the timing of eating, the settings of how we eat. I just got back from France and the French have a completely different view of taking meals compared to folks in UK and America. Contrast some of those differences.
Dr. Chaterjee (00:06:47):
Yeah. Yeah. Like you, I’m very passionate about what food we are consuming. It’s clearly very, very important. I don’t think many people still realize just how impactful the food they can be, yes, on their weights, but also their mood, their energy, their brain function, their cognition, all kinds of things, which you’ve spoken about on your show many times in the past. Like you, as a practicing medical doctor, I was thinking, well, a lot of patients know I’m teaching them what to eat, yet they’re still struggling. They’re still struggling. A, they’re unable to make those choices consistently and regularly. I think what’s going on here? Why is that? I, like you, have seen tens of thousands of patients save my career. I’ve learned that actually, when we talk about food, yes, what we eat is clearly very, very important, but why we eat is really important to consider.
A lot of people know that high calorie, high sugar foods are probably not going to be helping them, yet they still find themselves in front of the sofa, in front of the television in the evening, binging on things that they know they don’t want to really eat. So the why we eat it’s important. Stress is a huge driver for so many people. How we eat; are we rushing around? I mean, you just mentioned France. You just come back from France. I think French culture is a beautiful way of looking at this because there is still a culture in France at lunchtime that actually people stop. You don’t grab your healthy lunch, for example, and eat it at your desk while sending emails. It’s still within French culture that you will leave the desk, you will sit somewhere, you’ll relax and you will enjoy your lunchtime.
I, actually, got interviewed by a French journalist, Dr. Gundry, about a year ago when my first book, How To Make Disease Disappear came out in France. I asked the journalist, I said, look, “We read about this in France. Is this still the same in French offices, in French cultures today?” She goes, “Absolutely.” The only place where you are starting to see this being diluted is in Paris, in the international offices where actually there’s a lot of people, let’s say, from America or the UK or from these other cultures. And this kind of quick lunch, at your desk, is now starting to infiltrate. But for most of France, it is …
If you think about, why it’s that important, well, our bodies are designed to eat in a particular state. If you think about our nervous system, we can think about it having a stress arm or a rest and digest arm. If we are stressed out, if we are … Ultimately, if we feel that there’s a predator approaching, which is where the stress system developed from really, all kinds of things happen to help facilitate you staying safe. Your blood sugar goes up so you can run faster and deliver more glucose to your brain. Your blood pressure goes up. Your blood becomes more prone to clotting. Fantastic. These things are all great to help you get away from a predator, or if you were to get attacked and get cut. Instead of bleeding death, your blood’s going to clot and it’s going to save your life. This is fantastic.
Another thing your body will do when it’s feeling stressed, it will switch off two very important functions. One is our libido. As a doctor, I see many, many cases of low libido, which we’re seeing more and more of. Stress is a huge driver of that. If your body thinks it’s running away from a lion, it’s not really the time to be chilling and procreating with your partner, so it switches that off. But the other function it switches off is digestion. You, with your books, are encouraging people to choose foods that are going to help nourish their health, rather than actually damage their health. But actually, the way we consume that food, if we’re consuming that healthy, organic, whole food lunch, whilst answering emails, actually, we’re probably not going to absorb as much of those nutrients in as helpful a manner as actually, if we’re totally switched off and relaxed. I’ve seen this.
Actually, when you switch off and relax and pay attention to what you’re reading, the studies have shown, there was one from Birmingham University, which showed us that actually people eat less at that meal and at subsequent meals. I know the feeling. In fact, I would say my health behaviors are pretty good these days, but one thing I still struggle with is eating too quickly and eating whilst distracted. Therefore, you can over consume. You can even over consume healthy foods by not paying attention. So I’m very passionate.
You and me have both heard of something called the French paradox, how can it be that the French are eating so-called unhealthy foods, yet not getting the same consequences as we might do in the UK or with you in America. Look, there’s many theories out there on this. Of course, they are eating a lot of real foods, whole food, even though we may regard it as unhealthy or certain people in society may have said these foods are unhealthy. I’ve got to be honest, I’ve been thinking about this and looking at the research for a good 10 years now. I genuinely believe that one of the key factors for why the French can consume these foods, yet still not have the same rates of heart disease and atherosclerosis as other countries is because of the way they eat. They are eating when their bodies are in a state to receive food. They’re eating more mindfully, more attentively, and therefore they’re actually going to pay attention to their hunger signals, in a way that we may not do when we’re sort of watching the television whilst we’re eating.
You mentioned the TV show, could I just share that the very first day I ever filmed for Doctor In The House, which is frankly, the first day I’d filmed in my entire life. I went to a family’s house in Shrewsbury in the UK, and they were struggling with all kinds of things. Weight, obesity was a big thing that they, as a family, was struggling with. I got there and I said, “Hey guys. Can you just show me what do you eat on a typical day.” The father of the house said, “Doc, come with me.” He took me into his car, we drove 15 minutes out of town, and we went to a fast food joint takeaway. So it was a drive through. I remember he spent £48. What’s that? That’s probably 60, $65, right? He spent on food for four people. It took 15 minutes to get there, 15 minutes to get home. When they got home, this really was remarkable for me, they even had in the kitchen, the trays from that fast food place. It was almost like the real deal experience at home.
All four family members went to different parts of the house. The mom would consume her burgers and fries whilst watching television. The 16 year old daughter was on the edge of the sofa, she was on Facebook, on her phone while she was consuming. The dad was somewhere else. They were not eating together. They were not paying attention. Sure, the food choices were not particularly health promoting, but also the way that they were eating was really quite remarkable. The truth is, within six weeks, I helped them transform what they were eating, and the mother of the house, who I diagnosed with type two diabetes on the first set of blood tests I did … She didn’t even know she had it. I was able to help her put it into remission within 30 days, simply by making these small to what they ate, how they ate, when they ate, all these kind of things. Quite a long answer there, but I just want to … I’m very passionate about this, that these small changes really do make a big difference.
Dr. Gundry (00:15:05):
I think you’re absolutely right. There was a famous food editor for Vogue Magazine, Jeffrey Steinberg, who wrote several books. One of them, The Man Who Ate Everything. He had a chapter, which I allude to in my current book, Why Aren’t The French All Dead? Because, like you say, almost everything that they eat, you would think ought to be killing them. Yet, as you know, and I know, the French have dramatically less coronary artery disease than the UK and the United States, even though they appear to eat very poorly. I’ll give you an example, personally, that I’ve learned through the years. My wife and I spend a lot of time in France and Italy going to small villages, finding what people eat. One of the things that you brought up, which I think is very important, is the time that they spend devoted, not only to cooking the meal, but also eating the meal.
It’s so different than what modern American, modern Britain have become accustomed to. The saying, even now, when we eat in a restaurant as Americans, we like to shove the food in, get the check and go. I was almost raised that way.
Dr. Chaterjee (00:16:37):
Yeah. Me too.
Dr. Gundry (00:16:38):
Yet, in France, you have to strangle somebody to have them deliver you the check. They have this philosophy, no, the table is yours. This is your table. We’re going to make you enjoy that table, even if you have to sit there for two hours at lunch, you’re going to sit there. It’s really fascinating. They really feel hurt that you don’t want to take advantage of enjoying that meal, spending time with your wife or your kids. It’s a very interesting cultural phenomenon that we could learn a lot from.
Dr. Chaterjee (00:17:23):
Yeah. Absolutely. It just shows what a powerful influence our environment and our culture has on the way we do things and our health. As passionate as I am about what we eat, and I really am, and like you I’ve written books on this, I’ve tried to share information that’s going to help people. I’ve also realized that this is an important piece, which really … For people who are struggling to make changes or are seemingly moving over to a real food diet compared to a highly processed one and are still struggling, or they’re overeating. There’s many reasons for that, of course. It may be that those healthy foods aren’t healthy for them. There could be all kinds of reasons, but actually this whole stress state whilst eating …
I’ll tell you what I’ve learned over the last few years, Dr. Gundry, is some people … Of course, many people are intolerant to certain foods, particularly these days. Actually, what I’ve realized was some of my patients is they weren’t actually intolerant to the foods, they were intolerant to eating that food in a stressed out state. Since I’ve sort of gone down this way of thinking with some of my patients, I’ve noticed that if I can teach people to do, let’s say, a one minute breathing exercise before they eat. One of the breaths I talk about a lot is the 3, 4, 5 breath. When you breathe in for three, you hold for four and you breathe out for five. Do that five times. It takes you a minute. You literally take yourself out of the stress state and into that calm, relaxation state.
I found that when some of my patients do that, they’re no longer reacting to some of those foods that they previously were. I find that really interesting. It’s a much more holistic approach. I feel, to health. Really, I’m driven by trying to help my patients. The research is very, very interesting to me, but real life kind of experience, what works for busy people with busy lives, also is just as important to me. To go, well, what’s going on here? That person has got a pretty good diet at the moment, but they’re still struggling. The other other piece around stress, I think, which is important to think about is, stress in and of itself can cause weight gain, which a lot of the public are not aware of. I’m thinking, “Well, why am I still putting on weight when I’m eating so well?” But we know that if you are chronically stressed, your body can hold onto weight.
It feels that maybe I’m going to need this extra fuel for this attack that’s coming, this kind of chronic stress state that many of us are in. There’s all kinds of research showing us that maybe 45% of us, some studies have shown, eat more in response to stress. We all know that feeling. Now, not everyone does. I think that same study showed that 35% of people eat less in response to stress. So it appears that in that particular piece of research, 20%, it doesn’t change their intake. 35% eat less, 45% eat more. What we are effectively saying is, many of us are trying to change our diets, we’re trying to eat better so that we can feel better and get more out of our lives. But a lot of the time we’re just looking at the diet, we’re looking at what food we should be consuming.
Of course that’s important. But if stress is driving almost 50% of people to eat more, and if that’s the reason someone’s eating too much or eating too much of the wrong kinds of foods, well, shouldn’t we pay attention to actually the underlying cause of the stress that’s causing that extra food intake in the first place? It’s quite obvious when I put it like that and people think about it. You’re listening to this Dr. Gundry. I’m sure people who buy your books and are getting the improvements, sometimes find themselves reverting back to previous behaviors when they don’t want to. In my last book, Feel Great, Lose Weight, which was around sustainable weight loss, I had a little exercise in it called the three Fs or the freedom exercise, which I’ve used with many of my patients who are struggling with this.
It’s very simple. Let’s say someone watching this or listening to this right now, Dr. Gundry, at 8:00 PM every night, they end up on their sofa in front of the television and they have a tub of ice cream in front of them, but they know they shouldn’t be eating it. They’ve read your book or my book. They know this is not going to help them, but they’re still there. I say, “Okay, let’s go through the three Fs.” The first F is feel. So before you eat that, just take a pause and just ask yourself, what am I really feeling? Am I really hungry, like physically hungry? Or is this emotional hunger? Am I feeling stressed? Have I been on Zoom calls all day, and I haven’t got any time to myself? Have I had a row with my partner? What is it? Then sure, if you want to have it, go ahead and have it.
Next time go to the second F. So I’m feeling stressed. The second F is feed. How does that food feed that emotion? Oh, when I’m feeling stressed and I have ice cream or sugar, it helps me feel, at least temporarily, less stressed. Okay, cool. Fine. Then you can move to the third F. Now that I know the feeling, now that I know how food feeds that feeling, then I can go to the last F, which is find. Can I now find a non-food behavior to feed that same feeling? If you’re feeling stressed out, and you go to sugar, when you know that you’re stressed, maybe you go for a walk around the block, maybe you do a quick five minute workout. Maybe you do a 10 minute yoga flow. Maybe you run yourself a bath and nourish yourself in that way, because you are emotionally hungry and not physically hungry, whatever it might be.
If you’re feeling lonely, maybe you go and have a chat with your partner, if you’re lucky enough to have one, or you phone your friends or your college buddy or your parents. The point is it’s so simple, but I have seen this, Dr. Gundry, transform people’s relationship with their health, relationship with their food, because you can use that exercise, frankly, with anything. You can use it with alcohol, you can use it with two to three hours on Instagram every evening. It really comes down to this understanding that every behavior in life, I believe, is therefore a reason. Often we try and change the behavior without recognizing the underlying drive.
For some people, yes, the diet book is enough. They see the foods they need to eat, they make the changes. They feel fantastic. Great. If that works for you, wonderful. But for some people, they get really frustrated because they keep buying these books on foods and they want to make the changes, they know they hear the testimonials, but they’re like, yeah, but I still end up on that sofa. There’s plenty more on that, but there’s a few sort of hopefully some practical guidance for people that they can use in their own lives.
Dr. Gundry (00:24:21):
Yeah. No. That’s a great point. I think, in my practice, certainly in the pandemic, I have a lot of people who’ve been very successful in my program and reversed their diabetes, their hypertension has gone, et cetera. Yet, with COVID one of the things that’s impressed me is number one, a lot of well, well, meaning people have gained weight. Their fasting insulin, which has plummeted and is great, starts cranking up. Their diabetes or the prediabetes, which was nonexistent, their hemoglobin A1C starts inching up. What’s fascinating to me is we measure fasting cortisol levels on all our patients every three months. It’s incredibly rare, during the pandemic, to see an elevated cortisol despite all of this. I think you’re right. Number one, I’m not impressed with the argument that cortisol causes weight gain, because I think we have cortisol resistance, which is unrecognized and adrenal resistance.
But, what’s fascinating to me is yet these people who know better, during the pandemic, have slid. They’re still eating, actually, really quite well, but they’re eating for boredom, they’re eating for stress and you can watch it. Luckily, these people are smart enough that when they see it on their blood work, they go, “You’re right. I knew this was happening. Here it is. Okay, I’m going to get back on.” As an undergraduate college I studied primate stress behaviors. One of the things that’s fascinating with primates is when they’re under stress, they actually eat much more frequently and they eat sugary foods. They will actually find more fruit and carbohydrates. You’re right. I think it helps us, momentarily. The dopamine levels, serotonin levels go up temporarily and then we crash and we need some more. The pandemic has been very interesting in exactly what you’re talking about.
Dr. Chaterjee (00:26:48):
Yeah. As you say, it comes down to all kinds of things. The way I wrote about it is, many of us now eat to fill a hole in our hearts, rather than a hole in our stomachs. That’s okay, don’t beat yourself up about it. Don’t feel guilty about it, because I think that can compound the problem. Just be aware. Maybe this conversation for some people is just going to give them that awareness to go, “Yeah. That was me actually. That’s what I do.” That’s okay. Once you’re aware, you can start to make different choices, but until you are aware, people just don’t realize.
I don’t know how much you pay attention to sleep in your practice. I’m sure it’s a lot Dr. Gundry. But we talk about weights or type two diabetes or, or frankly, any chronic illness, we know that sleep plays a huge role. I mean, even if we’re talking about food intake, most of the research supports that actually, if you are sleeping, let’s say five hours a night, compared to eight hours a night, you are eating, on average, 22% more calories the following day. Let’s just think about that. Within five days of not sleeping. Well, you are consuming a whole extra one day’s worth of calories. A lot of people don’t realize that, actually, your hormones change when you haven’t slept. Leptin and ghrelin, these hormones of hunger and satiety, go completely out of whack. So the morning after you haven’t slept, well, you always feel hungry and you never feel full.
This happened to me literally last week. I was on tour, I’m doing a national tour in the UK at the moment about Happy Mind, Happy Life, my new book on the connection between happiness and health. At one of them, it was a late event. There was a long book signing and talking to people afterwards. By the time I got to my hotel room, it was 1:00 PM. I normally go to bed at 9:00 PM. When I’m at home, I go to bed at 9:00, I wake up at 5:00, that’s when I’m at my best. The following morning, Dr. Gundry, I still wake up at 5:00, 5:30 so I was sleep deprived. I was ravenous all day. Let me tell you, I was not craving whole foods the following day. That’s the other thing. We crave sugary foods, high density calorific foods when we haven’t slept.
With some of my patients, even for weight loss, I’ve actually decided with some of them not to focus on what they ate, because actually some of them, it was pretty good. I could see that they were chronically stressed and only sleeping five hours a night. I thought, well, let me start with sleep. With some of them, I’ve actually managed to help them lose weight without actually overly focusing on what they ate. Because as they started to move to six and a half hours, seven hours, seven and a half hours, sometimes, they would naturally do two things. They would make better choices the following day and they would naturally eat less.
I’ve got to say, we mentioned the TV show, Doctor In The House. I’ve got to say Dr. Gundry, that was one of the most impactful things I’ve done in my entire career because the conventional GP appointment in the UK is still 10 minutes long, which is clearly not enough to deal with the kind of problems we’re seeing these days. But let’s say you had an hour, let’s say you worked privately and you had an hour. Even if you had an hour and you could talk to people and your patients about things, you still won’t get or pick up the things that I managed to see when I was in people’s homes for six weeks. You would see things that would never come up in the consultation room. The relationships in the family, underlying stress, where people would eat.
You would actually see what they really ate, because how often do your patients come to you and you say, “Well, what are you eating?” They give you their best day. When they’re at their best, this is what I eat, but I got to see what are they eating seven days a week, not just what they’re telling me in my consultation. I really feel that this holistic approach, that I’m so passionate about, has come from, yes, my history one on one with patients, but also these families I spent so long with. I saw, wow, it ain’t just one thing. Sometimes it’s not actually that hard, it’s just small changes in these four key areas; food, movement, sleep and relaxation, that can make a huge, huge difference
Dr. Gundry (00:31:20):
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Yeah. So true, yeah. Oftentimes, when I’ve got a patient struggling with weight loss, I’ll have them do a two week food diary. Fill out everything that goes through your mouth and then we have them bring it back in. We’ll look and I’ll say, “Well, now, you wait a minute, you had this.” Oh, well, that doesn’t count because that day I was running late and I grabbed something quickly. Then I’ll go, “Well, now, what about this?” Well, that doesn’t count because it was my best friend’s birthday and I had to be there. Of course, there was cake and ice cream, so that doesn’t count. For many of these people, it was the that doesn’t count, was the huge contributor to what they thought was a perfect diet. I never cheat. That doesn’t count. You’re right spending time with, with patients really makes a big difference.
I want to bring up something that you wrote about, actually early in your new book, and it really resonated with me. Your father was a physician. I think, because of social status, as you mentioned, he had to work incredibly hard to support your family. As you say, he basically got three, three and a half hours of sleep a night, worked two jobs. Correct me if I’m wrong. Your father passed away quite young. I think you blame, correctly, that lifestyle for his demise. I recall when I was a resident in surgery, I not only worked 120 hours as a resident, but I moonlighted two nights a week. I remember thinking about your father, I on a good day would get three, three and a half hours of sleep.
During that time, my weight skyrocketed. I was huge. I was constantly looking for high calorie, dense, carbohydrate laden foods to keep myself going. One of the things that was fascinating to me, when I came to the UK to do my pediatric heart surgery fellowship, my weight plummeted, because one of the things that happened is I wasn’t moonlighting. Number two on the weekends, I was now … I was off two out of every three weekends. I was not allowed to come to the hospital to see my patients. At first, the Saturday morning I showed up at work and they said, “What are you doing here?” I said, “Well, I operated on these kids yesterday. I want to see how they’re doing.” No, you’re not allowed here. You’re off. We’ll see you Monday morning. We’ll take care of things. Your colleagues will take care of things.
My weight plummeted. I lost literally 50 pounds in a year when I was a fellow at [inaudible 00:40:48]. That’s because, you’re right, I was sleeping. Number two, we had whole foods. We had a Greens grocery around the corner. I had no fast foods. It was back in the mid eighties. But the dramatic effect of sleep deprivation was dramatically brought home to me. You’re absolutely right.
Dr. Chaterjee (00:41:16):
Yeah. Thank you for sharing that, first of all. Yeah. I mean, dad, basically, it wasn’t three and a half hours a night so much. It was more that, for 30 years, he only slept three nights a week. Four nights a week, he was out the house. I remember this while he was a consultant physician at Manchester Ward Infirmary. Dad, from his day job, he’d often get home 5:30, 6:00 PM. He’d have dinner, he’d shave, and then at 7:00 PM, a car would be outside and pick him up and he would be out doing house calls, GP house calls, all night. He’d arrive back at 7:00 AM, have breakfast, he’d shave again and then he’d drive 40 minutes into Manchester and do his day job. That happened for 30 years. He only slept three nights a week in his bed for 30 years. The other four nights, he was out doing house calls in a car.
This is why I have zero doubts in my mind that this kind of chronic sleep deprivation, this chronic level of stress led to him, at 57, getting the autoimmune disease, lupus. From that, his kidneys failed. He was literally chained to a dialysis machine for 15 years until dad died just over nine years ago. Now, look, I love my dad, right. I know that he had all kinds of pressures on him. Ultimately, he moved to a new country. In the 1960s, as an immigrant, he came to the UK in search of a better life. My dad provided, in many ways, a great start in life for me and my brother. Now, I didn’t see my dad much growing up because he was so busy working. Again, I’m not having a go at dad. I really respect him for what he’s done.
But I have seen what the impact of that was. For me, I’m always very conscious of that in my own life. If I’m ever falling into that trap of overworking, I go, look, dad did it. He felt he had to, you don’t have to do it in the same way that dad did it. Dad has given you a great start in life, here in the UK, you don’t need to do the same thing. So that’s a good reminder for me, but I think there’s a wider point there for me, Dr. Gundry, which is the reason I wrote this new book, Happy Mind, Happy Life. Because in some ways you could say, “Well, why is a doctor, why is an MD like me, writing a book on happiness?” The reason I wrote this fifth book … I’ve written about food and sleep and movement and stress and weight loss and habit change over the past few years.
I still stand by everything that’s in my first four books, but I was thinking, is there something missing here? Is lifestyle, these four pillars, is that really the root cause of 80 to 90% of what I see? I still maintain it is, but I was thinking, well, but is there something that’s even more important, even more upstream as a driver of these lifestyle behaviors and therefore our physical health. From my clinical experience, 20 years, seeing tens of thousands of patients and from going into the research, I think there is. I think our happiness, how we feel about ourselves, how we feel about the world, how we deal with adversity, all these things massively influence our lifestyle behaviors and therefore our physical health.
The research shows us very clearly, happier people are healthier. There’s two big reasons for that. One reason is that if you’re generally more content with your life, and with the state of your life, you naturally make better lifestyle choices. You’re less likely to dive into that ice cream in the evening, you’re less likely to drink too much alcohol, all these kind of things. But even without lifestyle, even when you account for lifestyle, happier people are still shown to be healthier. There was a great study done with nuns. These nuns, they had the same lifestyle, same diet, same movement, same sleep, but they tracked them throughout their life. Very clearly the happier nuns, they were significantly healthier. They lived significantly longer, so even when you account for lifestyle.
And then there’s another more recent study where scientists took two groups of people into a lab, they were all given rhinovirus. It was all shot at their nostril. Rhinovirus, as you well know, the virus that causes the common cold. They could tell who was going to get sick by looking at their happiness. The not so positive mood category would get sick from the virus three times more than those who felt happy and content. Now, of course, there’s other factors there as well. But for me, as a holistic doctor, who likes to see, well, how can I really help all of my patients and the wider public live happier and healthier lives, I thought we’re not talking enough about this. We have to be talking about happiness. The new book basically shows that happiness actually is a skill that anyone can develop, once they know what to work on.
Everything in the book is free of charge. Doesn’t cost any money. It just requires people to make a little of commitment. We don’t have time to go into all of it, but one of the big problems with happiness, or one of the big problems in society, which impacts people’s health and their happiness, is that we confuse success with happiness. We often think they’re the same things. My dad made this mistake. He was successful, but he wasn’t happy. Now, dad’s case might seem quite extreme. Your case three and a half hours sleep a night, while your moonlighting may seem quite extreme. But actually, these days we can work on our emails till 10:00 PM, 11:00 PM and midnight. So the job that used to finish at 5:00 PM is still going on at midnight. We may be at home, we may not be moonlighting out, but we’re still working, we’re still got our active brain going on.
We talk about stress and burnout and what things can we do, meditation, breath work journaling. I talk about all these things, movement, exercise. Great. But the elephant in the room is why are so many of us getting burnt out in the first place? What are we chasing? Many of us think a better job, more money, a better car, nicer phone, those things are going to make us happy. But the problem is, is that many of us kill ourselves trying to get those things. We don’t nourish our close relationships. We don’t sleep enough. We engage in unhealthy lifestyle behaviors to get the success to buy the things that we think are going to make us happy. Time and time again, we see that for most of us, those things actually don’t make us happy and content, and they have a negative impact on our health.
So why is this relevant to me as a medical doctor? Well, many of my patients who come in with stress, anxiety, depression, burnout, insomnia, yeah, I can give them tips to help them … I will continue to do that. I have been doing that for many years and it can be very helpful. But at one point we have to ask ourselves the question, well, why am I working this hard? Do I have an alternative choice here? I appreciate, some people they may not, so I want to be respectful for that. I expand a lot of practical things in the book that people can do for that. I think it’s a big one. I really do. I think it’s a big one for people to say, at least once in their life, just sit down and make some reflections and ask themselves, what am I truly chasing here? Because actually, it may be that someone doesn’t need to actively focus on health. It may be that the best thing for them to focus on initially is …
It depends on the patient, right? I’m not saying let’s not focused on health. What I’m saying is, for some people, they would also benefit from saying, do I need to make a few changes here? Do I need to do as many of these extra shifts? Do I have another choice? Those sort of things. Yeah. I’m pretty passionate about this because I think it’s a missing link in health that I don’t feel we’re talking about enough.
Dr. Gundry (00:49:26):
People are listening to us, doctors, who have seen all this. Okay. Okay, Doctor, I get it, but your life is pretty good right now. You’re not working 10 hours a day and then taking care of two kids and taking them to 27 soccer practices, football practices. I’m working two jobs. How in the world do I find happiness in my current social situation? Give me one trick that I can add to my life, starting today, that’ll start to help.
Dr. Chaterjee (00:50:09):
Yeah. Okay. First of all, I get that. I’m certainly sympathetic with that. I understand I’m not trying to sound, in any way, as though you don’t have to do those things and life isn’t tough. I’ve worked in a very deprived area in the UK for a good eight years of my clinical life. A lot of on low income, a lot of people working two jobs, a lot of people on social security. The tips that I write about in all my books, I also use with them, because here’s the reality, yeah, maybe you do have to work two jobs and you have kids to take to classes and you have an elderly parent to look after, Hey, I’ve had a lot of that in my life. I’m currently caring for my 81 year old mum after caring for my dad for 15 years, when dad was alive, as well as trying to do my job, look after my kids, nurture my marriage. I get it. I’m not comparing my life to someone else’s. There’s no way I could possibly do that.
A simple tip, chapter nine in the new book is called Take A Daily Holiday, which is basically this idea that … What is at holiday? You’ve just come back from holiday. Let me ask you this, Dr Gundry, what is it that the holiday gave you, would you say?
Dr. Gundry (00:51:18):
Well, surprisingly enough, when I’m on a holiday, my wife and I are usually hiking three to five hours every day. We’re not sitting around the pool. People look at us and go, “What the heck? You’re on holiday? Why are you hiking 10 miles every day?” Well, you talk about in the book, I believe, in the Japanese concept of nature bathing. We want to be out walking along the water, walking through forest. For me, that’s my holiday, for no other reason. It gives my brain a tremendous time to shut down. For me, that’s our holiday. People go, “What a stupid holiday. You come back exhausted.”
Dr. Chaterjee (00:52:12):
I love that. I love that. The point I’m trying to make with this take a daily holiday is this idea, what is that holiday gives us. For all of us, it’s different things. For some people it’s sun. For some people, it’s time away from work, lack of stress, time with family. Great. One of the key things I think it gives most of us is perspective. When we’re out of our lives, we have a different … We can take a big picture view on the state of our lives. The little things that we were worried about, when we were in our lives, they seemed quite minor when we’re a hundred miles away, a thousand miles away, 30,000 feet in the air, in a plane, if we are flying. I thought, well, why do you have to wait for that one week a year to get perspective on your life?
Taking a daily holiday is what do you do each day for five minutes or 10 minutes where you stop and go outside your life, so you can reflect better. That could be five minutes of breath work. It could be journaling for five minutes in the morning with your cup of tea or coffee. It could be a walk around the block, anything each day that just gets you out of your life. I use this a lot with those patients when I was working in [inaudible 00:53:22] in this practice I was talking about.
Yes, I couldn’t change the fact that they had to work two jobs or that actually there was a lot of poverty there. But by having that breathing room, by teaching them a breathing technique, like the 3, 4, 5 breath, which I mentioned earlier on in this conversation, that can actually switch off their stress state and promote their relaxation state. They were able to show up to their lives in a different state. They were able to make better decisions, even in the face of adverse events. It sounds trivial, but I stand by it. These small things, these free things that don’t cost any money, can help the richest in society, they can also help many people on lower incomes if we give it a chance.
There’s a broader definition of happiness that I talk about in the book, which is not having a smile on your face all the time. It’s not about life being perfect. The way I see happiness, I’ve created a model called core happiness. Core happiness, I truly believe is the happiness that all of us deep down wants. The model is basically, I’ve created it very much like … Everyone understands that if you go to the gym each day and do bicep curls you are going to get stronger biceps. I think everyone listening or watching this gets that they sort of understand that. I’ve created this core happiness model to be very practical to say, if you strengthen your happiness every day, if you work out on your happiness every day, you are going to become happier, no matter who you are.
The core happiness stool has three legs. Each of the legs is separate, but essential. If any of those legs starts to weaken or collapse, your feelings of happiness are also going to weaken and ultimately collapse. The three components are alignment, contentment and control. Alignment is basically when the person who you really are and the person who you are being out there in the world are one and the same. Contentment is about, what are the things that I can do that make me feel content that make me feel at peace with my life and my decisions. Control, it’s not about controlling the world. It’s about a sense of control. What are the little things I can do each day that give me a sense of control over my life? Because the research shows people where a sense of control are healthier. They have higher motivation. They earn more money. All kinds of things happen to people who have a strong sense of control.
What I think is the beautiful thing about this model for people … The book’s been out for almost two months in the UK, and I’ve never had a book that’s been this successful or this popular, because I think it’s really speaking to people at the moment. You’re not directly working on happiness, you’re working on the three legs of the stool with simple practices that don’t cost any money at all. The side effect of that is you are going to feel happier, more often. The side effect of that, is that you are going to start improving your physical health. That’s a very, very quick summary of the ideas in that book.
I passionately believe that the tools in this book will help anyone, whether you are someone who feels stressed out and close to burnout at the moment, or whether you’re someone who feels life’s okay, it’s not bad, but could I be getting something more out of life than I currently am and more out of my health? I think people will find there are some missing links in this book for them that will help put a few pieces together.
Dr. Gundry (00:56:59):
Since you brought that up, what do you think about getting a dog?
Dr. Chaterjee (00:57:04):
Of course, it’s not for everyone. Not everyone loves having dogs. I think for most people it’s transformative. I don’t have a dog. I didn’t grow up with pets. My wife does not want a pet in the house, although, I’m starting to think about it. I think the connection you get, the companionship you get, the fact that actually you’ll probably end up walking every day without actually having to motivate yourself, just because you have to do it for the dog, even the touch and stroking … In my second book, The Stress Solution, which came out a few years ago, there was a whole chapter on touch and what it does to your stress system and how stroking another human being or being stroked in a non traumatic way, of course, can absolutely lower levels of cortisol, can really help all kinds of things happen in the body. Actually the same thing is with a pet.
Loneliness is a big problem, isn’t it, these days. Many people feel isolated, particularly the last few years, but even before that. We know that loneliness is a big health risk. I’m sure you, just as I have, have seen the studies, the meta analyses, showing that the feeling of being lonely may be as harmful as smoking 15 cigarettes per day. Of course, not everyone has got a partner, not everyone lives close to their good friends, but perhaps for some people, actually some of that can be alleviated with a pet. Yeah. I’m a big fan.
Dr. Gundry (00:58:33):
Yeah. I actually write prescriptions to my patients to get a dog. I’ve had a number of patients either tell me that’s the best prescription a doctor has ever written for me. And some of my patients actually bring back that prescription that’s been framed and they keep it on the wall because … I was thinking, as we’re talking, one of the things that a dog forces you to do is take it for a walk. We have four dogs.
Dr. Chaterjee (00:59:04):
Oh, wow.
Dr. Gundry (00:59:05):
One’s always a rescue, at least one. The great thing about a dog is you can watch their behavior while they’re out and see the absolute joy and happiness out of what we would think is just walking around the block, just sniffing things and being outside and living every day. I take my dogs for a walk and I just live through watching my dogs be happy. There’s no other way to describe it. That they are very happy.
Dr. Chaterjee (00:59:46):
Yeah. No, I love that. I absolutely love that. What I love about that prescription is it’s one thing that will have multiple, myriad benefits. They’re just focusing on getting a dog, but that’s going to end up being more fresh air, more vitamin D being made in their body, more movements, more connection. That’s what I’ve always been driven as a doctor who is … There’s 20 different things I could recommend here, they’re not going to do all 20. What is the one thing that I can recommend, that’s automatically going to have a lot of downstream consequences. That’s why I’m such a fan of lowering stress or promoting sleep.
I find, with patients, if they just start sleeping better … With most people in my experience, they’re doing something in their lifestyle that they don’t realize is negatively affecting their sleep. Actually, once you can help them identify that and change that, they sleep better. What happens? Their moods better. They eat better. They eat less food. They’re more inclined to move their bodies. They have lower levels of stress. All kinds of things happen on the back of turning that one lever. I think getting a dog, for the right person, of course, is one of those key levers to turn.
Dr. Gundry (01:01:06):
Sleep, you and I talk a lot about it. You’ve written a book about it. It’s easy to tell someone, “Get more sleep.” Putting that into practice is where the rubber meets the road. Give us one trick that can really make a difference. Is it dark promoting shades? Is it blue marking glasses? Is it turning off the TV earlier than expected? Give us one, or more than one.
Dr. Chaterjee (01:01:40):
Well, I could give you a lot, but in the interest of time, let me give you one in the morning and one in the evening.
Dr. Gundry (01:01:45):
Okay. Perfect.
Dr. Chaterjee (01:01:47):
I think we very much underestimate the importance of natural light. We hear a lot about blue light in the evenings, but actually exposing your eyes to natural light within an hour or so, ideally within half an hour of waking up, can have a profound impact on your ability to sleep at night. People don’t think about it. What they do first thing in the morning can absolutely impact what they do and how they sleep last thing at night, because light is such a powerful influencer of our natural circadian rhythms. This is these natural rhythms that we have in our body that actually we need to function at a certain timing to help us sleep at night.
Some of my patients that is the only thing they had to do was, instead of waiting till lunchtime or a lot of them stay indoors, they drive to work, they’re in an office. These days a lot of people don’t go out there. They’re stuck doing Zooms inside. They’re not going to the office, particularly in the darker months, depending on where you live. Actually, a lot of the time, all they need is 10, 15 minutes, natural light exposure. Yes, first thing in the morning, if you can. But if not at some point in the morning, even lunch time, but natural light helps you sleep better at night. That is the one thing I would say in the morning.
Then there’s many things, of course, like caffeine and alcohol and food timing. But if I was going to give one thing, what are you doing in that one hour before bed? What are you doing? What’s the state of your mind? What’s the state of your being? Are you still on? Are you still trying to fix problems? Are you still trying to do, solve things, write emails? This goes beyond blue light for me. Of course, that can be very, very important to address. But for anyone who’s got kids and is listening or watching right now, what do you do with your kids before they go to bed? Do you give them a lot of sugar? Do you put the lights really bright? Do you put the music on loud? No. You know that’s not going to help. It’s going to amp them up, it’s going to keep them stimulator. You don’t give them sugar, you lower the light, you lower your tone, it’s a relaxing bedtime story. Because these things promote your body going into the right environment to fall into a deep, relaxing sleep.
As adults, we’re the same thing. We need bedtime routines. We need signals to say to our body, oh, the work day’s over. Now it’s campfire time. Now it’s time to switch off to focus on connection, love, humor, romance, whatever it might be. I think simply changing your state … People have an alarm to wake up in the morning. Well, I think many of my patients have benefited from an alarm one hour before they go to bed, the alarm goes off and it’s a reminder. Okay, I need to now either shut the laptop or get very close to shutting the laptop. I need to now shift my state, put on some music, maybe run a bath. Maybe don’t watch the news. If you want to watch television, watch a comedy, watch a romance, something to put you in the right state of mind. There’s much more I could talk about, but these things, they sound very soft, but they really, really work. You’ve just got to do it.
Dr. Gundry (01:05:01):
Yeah. Your point is well taken, again. I have an Oura ring on, and one of the crazy things that the Oura ring does is about, oh gosh, 6:00 maybe 6:45 at night, I get a message that says, “Bed time is approaching, start to get ready.” Every time it pops up, my wife and I start laughing our heads off going, “It’s 6:45, are you crazy?” We’re just maybe finishing dinner, but your point is well taken. If we really prepared for sleep, which is probably the most important part of the day, that you and I talk about, if we prepared, like we prepared our kids for bed. Imagine if we took that seriously, what could be done. Even though I laugh at my Oura ring every night, I think it’s absolutely right on. We should listen to that sort of advice.
Dr. Chaterjee (01:06:05):
Yeah. For sure. I guess in many ways it just provides a gentle reminder to you. Oh, yeah. Let’s say you were stuck in your work emails or whatever you might be doing. It’s like, “Ah, yeah. Maybe I need to just wind this down a little bit now.” Yeah. These things could be very, very impactful.
Dr. Gundry (01:06:23):
One last thing I want to ask you about, before you go. You talk about this into your new book and I think it might be controversial. You say eliminating choice can reduce stress and support health. I mean, come on Dr. Chaterjee, don’t we have to make choices even about what to do before we go to bed. What do you mean by that?
Dr. Chaterjee (01:06:46):
Yeah. I absolutely stand by it. It’s not about eliminating all choice. It’s about choosing when it matters and not when it doesn’t. We’re now living in an era of .. America’s really interesting for me, as someone who lives in the UK. A few years ago, coming out to America for some lifestyle medicine conferences. Sometimes you’d go out at lunchtime. Well, not sometimes, you’d go out at lunch to grab some food. I always remember in America, in my experience, from what I’ve seen … I’m not saying this is the same in every place in America. But you go in a place and you want to order something, let’s say it’s, I don’t know, the chicken salad, whatever it might be. You get asked so many things. What would you like that? What extra would you like? What size would you like? Would you like blueberries with that? Would you like this with that? Would you like this topping? Would you like that?
I remember once thinking, “My, I just wanted the chicken salad. Now I feel I’ve got my food, but I’ve got a side serving of stress on the way out as well.” I’m making a bit of fun with that, because I understand for some people that’s really, really important. I’m not saying you should never choose. I have this concept called micro stress doses, that I think people find very, very useful, which is this idea that, actually, we’ve all got our own personal stress threshold. When we get to that stress threshold, that’s when things start to go wrong. That’s when we fall out with our partner, that’s when our neck goes into spasm or our back gets stiff.
But the thing is, what we don’t realize is, that we are accumulating micro stress doses from the minute that we wake up. Let’s say your stress threshold is up here, but you wake up feeling really calm and far away from it. You check your email, micro stress dose number one you look on the news, micro stress dose number two. Let’s say you don’t know what to wear, you spend 10 minutes trying to decide what combination of clothes should I wear, micro stress dose number three. The point I’m trying to make is, is that by the end of the day, or whatever time, you get close to that micro or that stress threshold, you think it was the last thing that happened that was the problem. The email you got from your boss at 4:00 PM, that was the problem. Usually, that wasn’t the problem. That was the straw that broke the camels back. You had just been accumulating micro stress doses throughout the day, such to the point, where actually then you blow up at that email.
How can we reduce micro stress doses? There are many ways, many ways. But one of the things I focus on in that chapter is choice. We don’t need to choose everything. There’s a report saying that in Starbucks, there are 80,000 different combinations of drinks. 80,000. If you know that you like a black Americano, you don’t need to look at the menu every time. You don’t need to go, “Oh. I wonder if I’ll have the latte or this or that,” because we know that takes cognitive load, that is increasing micro stress. You laugh at this, many people laugh at this.
There was a movement in America called 333. Courtney Carver, this fashion executive, she found choosing what to wear each morning a incredibly stressful experience that would affect her for the entire day. She limited herself to, I can’t remember exactly what it was, I think it was 33 items that she could choose from. I think that included shoes and coats and everything. I think she did that for three months or three weeks. Anxiety, stress, happiness, how you felt about yourself, all went dramatically down. She started this movement and people all around American and around the world were reporting the same thing.
We hear these things like Mark Zuckerberg, President Obama, apparently they wear the same thing every day, the same suits or Mark Zuckerberg the same t-shirt and jeans because actually … Yeah, sure, they might be washed, they might be different, but they’re not having to waste cognitive energy choosing. I could talk about this in a lot more detail, but I think the research is pretty compelling on this as well. Too much choice is bad for our health. I’m not saying don’t choose, I’m saying choose on the things that matter to you. Don’t waste your time choosing on things that, frankly, don’t make a difference and are causing you unnecessary stress, which in turn, will then cause you to eat the food you don’t want to eat. You’re going to feel stressed. You’re going to be less present in your relationships. It has so many impacts. I think it’s something I’m super passionate about.
People know this. Maybe people watching will resonate with this. On a Saturday night, one thing my wife and I used to like doing is, once the kids are in bed, sit in front of the television and put Netflix on. We would find there is so much choice that 45 minutes would go, we are still trying to agree on something to watch. Both of our moods are slightly off. We no longer want to watch anything together. We go off on our separate ways to either watch something on our laptop or read a book. Again, too much choice. Too much choice.
What I do now for that is anytime one of my friends, or on a podcast, I hear a good film recommendation I’ve got a list of my phone on my notes up. There’s always five films there. So anytime we’re sitting down to watch something, I’m not trying to go through this endless selection of choice. It’s like, “Okay. Hey babe, we’ve got these five.” Boom. First one on the list. It makes such a big difference. Yeah. There’s a lot more on that in that chapter, but I’m very passionate that actually it does make a difference.
Dr. Gundry (01:12:42):
All right. We’ve touched a lot of things. If you were going to start with any of these things, for our listeners, what would you say to focus on most?
Dr. Chaterjee (01:12:57):
Look, I’d say one of the most important things for anyone to focus on, no matter what their goal is, I would say it’s a practice of intentional solitude each day. I’m talking about five or 10 minutes, if you’ve got longer, great, but if you haven’t, even five minutes will do, where you’re not consuming something, you’re not bringing stuff from the outside in; email, social media news, work. Five minutes to allow your innermost thoughts and feelings to come up, because many people simply don’t have that in their life. Much of the time people are making poor decisions around their health, because they’re disconnected from how they’re really feeling.
Honestly, I wouldn’t have given you this answer 10 years ago, I would’ve probably gone to a whole food diet, which of course I’m very passionate about. I would’ve spoken about sleep. It’s not that I’m not passionate about those things, but I’m always looking for going upstream. What’s one thing I can do that will automatically bring a lot of other things back online. I’ve found, in my own life and for many of my patients, a daily practice of solitude, whether that be journaling, meditation, breathing, whatever it might be, helps you start to pay attention to yourself. It allows innermost thoughts and emotions, anxieties to come up. It allows you to process them. That has a transformative impact on your health and your happiness.
Dr. Gundry (01:14:22):
That reminds me, I did mission work in Ethiopia and also in Zimbabwe at some hospitals. There was a big sign in Zimbabwe in this hospital. It said, “Sometimes I sits and thinks and other times I just sits.” What you just said is actually very profound, that I saw in a hospital in Zimbabwe. Sometimes it’s good to sit and think, but other times it’s good to just sit. Good for you.
Dr. Chaterjee (01:15:07):
I love that. Thanks for sharing.
Heather Dubrow (01:15:15):
Hi everyone, it’s Heather Dubrow telling you to check out Heather Dubrow’s World on Podcast One. Every week we discuss the hippest, hottest, newest trends in health, wellness, parenting style, and so much more, including all things, Housewives and Botched. Download new episodes of Heather Dubrow’s World on Thursdays and Fridays on Podcast One, Apple Podcast, Spotify and Amazon Music.
Dr. Gundry (01:15:36):
All right. It’s time for our audience question. This week’s question comes from Don on YouTube, who watched my lecture on protein. He says, “How should I consume the 30 grams of protein I need daily? Should I break it down into 10 grams of protein for breakfast, lunch of dinner? Or should I eat all 30 grams of protein in one meal?” Well, quite frankly, Don, I don’t really care. I can tell you that great apes, most animals, don’t choose when they’re going to eat what they’re going to eat, their macros. They just eat when these things are available we have a wonderful ability to take proteins when we need them and don’t take them when we don’t need them. However you want to get your protein in your life is fine.
What I do think is useful is, as a general rule, we in America are over proteinized. By that, I mean, we put far too much emphasis on the amount of protein, particularly animal protein, that we eat. One of the features of all of the blue zones, where people live the longest, is they have a remarkably low animal protein diet. That’s not to say they don’t eat animals, but animal protein contribution to their diet is remarkably small across all of these. So, that’s a great question. When you want to eat your protein is fine with me.
Time for the review of the week from Michael [inaudible 01:17:22] on YouTube. Dr. G you’re so fascinating in your development and you’re making me want to live more. You are my best friend. Keep up your good work. Namaste. Well, thank you, Michael. This is why I do this. I was in France this past week and people from Switzerland who came up to me and said, “Look, I see you on YouTube. I see you on the podcast. I see you on the internet. You changed my life.” I was pumping gas yesterday in a filling station in Palm Springs and the gentleman pumping across from me said, “You’re that TV doctor, aren’t you?” I said, “Yeah, I am.” He said, “You’ve changed my life. I’ve down 20 pounds. Let me ask you a quick question, how do I give up cornbread?” We had a nice discussion on how to give up cornbread, but that’s why I do this. Thanks. If I’m your best friend, I want to be your best friend in health for everybody because I’m Dr. Gundry and I’m always looking out for you. See you next week.
Thanks for joining me on this episode of The Dr. Gundry Podcast. Before you go, I just wanted to remind you that you can find the show on iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher or wherever you get your podcasts. If you want to watch each episode of The Dr Gundry Podcast, you could always find me on YouTube at youtube.com/drgundry, because I’m Dr. Gundry and I’m always looking out for you.
