 too much choice is bad for our health. Choose on the things that matter to you. Later to have you on the program, congratulations on your BBC series. What's it like to be a famous TV star in the UK? Well, that's going to be first of all, thank you for having me on your show. It's a delight to be talking with you. You know what, 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, you know, I was getting very frustrated in medicine. You know, as we speak, I've been practicing for 21 years now almost as a medical doctor. And 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. So 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, you know, on a huge scale. Yes, you know, 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. And despite that, they were still struggling. And I feel very lucky and very fortunate to have been able to have shown five 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. So I feel the fame and being well known has come as a side effect of helping people. And I'm okay with that because, you know, I'm quite a private person actually. I like actually, you know, spending time with my wife and my kids. And usually when people stop me, it's to say probably like yourself, that's going to be, it's 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 and 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. Yeah, you know, I realized that my former career as a favorite famous art 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 and, you know, makes a lot of sense. Now, it doesn't make sense if you're a heart surgeon and teach people how to avoid you, but in fact, that's where the fulfillment is. So congratulations on finding a way to reach millions of people with your message. So speaking of message, let's talk about your first pillow, food. As people watching this show, we talk a lot about food on this channel and 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. So can you tell us what's the difference in terms of foods we eat, which obviously we both agree are very important. What 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 both the UK and America. Contrast some of those differences. Yeah, I mean, I think, yeah, like you, I'm very passionate about what food we are consuming. It's clearly very, very important. And I don't think many people still realize just how impactful the food they can be, yes, on their weight, 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. But 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, right? 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? And, you know, I like you've seen tens of thousands of patients over my career and I've learned that actually when we talk about food, yes, what we, it's clearly very, very important but why we eat is really important to consider. Like 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 is important when stress is a huge driver for so many people. How we eat, you know, 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 know, you don't do your, you don't grab your healthy lunch, for example and eat 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. And I actually got interviewed by a French journalist, Dr. Country, about a year ago when my first book, How to Make Disease Dispair came out in France and I asked the journalist, I said, look we read about this in France. Is this still the same in French offices and French culture 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, you know, quick lunch at your desk is now starting to infiltrate. But for most of France, it is like, and if you think about what's, why is that important? Well, our bodies are designed to eat in a particular state, right? If you think about our nervous system we can think about it having a stress arm or a rest and digest arm. And if we are stressed out, right? If we are, you know, ultimately if we feel that there's a predator approaching which is where the stress system developed from really you know, all kinds of things happen to help facilitate you staying safe. You know, your blood sugar goes up so you can, you know, 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 to death your blood's gonna clot and it's gonna save your life. This is fantastic. But another thing your body will do when it's feeling stressed it will switch off two very important functions. One is our libido. And 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 procurating with your partner. So it switches that off. But the other function it switches off is digestion, right? So food, 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 gonna absorb as much of those nutrients in as helpful a manner as actually if we're totally switched off and relaxed. And so I've seen this and actually when you switch off and relax and pay attention to what you're eating the studies have shown there was one from Birmingham University which showed us that actually people eat less at that meal and at subsequent meal. So I know the feeling and 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 and therefore you can over consume you can even over consume healthy foods by not paying attention. So I'm very passionate and 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. And 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 were unhealthy but I've got to be honest, I've been thinking about this and looking at the research for a good 10 years now and 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 are eating when their bodies are in a state to receive food. They're eating more mindfully, more attentively and therefore they're actually gonna 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. And you mentioned the TV show, could I just share that the very first day I ever filmed for Dr. 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 were struggling with. And I got there and I said, hey guys, can you just show me what do you eat on a typical day? And the father of the house said, doc, come with me. And 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 pounds, right? So 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. Now when they got home, this really was remarkable for me. They even had in the kitchen the trays from that fast food place, right? So it was almost like the real deal experience at home and all four family members went to different parts of the house. You know, the mum 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. So 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 2 diabetes on the first side of blood test 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 changes to what they ate, how they ate, when they ate, all these kind of things. So quite a long answer there, but I just want to, you know, I'm very passionate about this, that these small changes really do make a big difference. I think you're absolutely right. You know, there was a famous food editor for Vogue magazine, Jeffrey Steinberger, who wrote several books, one of them, The Man Who Ate Everything. And he had a chapter, which I alluded to in my current book, Why Aren't the French Ball Dead? Because, you know, like you say, almost everything that they eat, you would think ought to be killing them. And yeah, as you know and I know, the French have dramatically less coronary artery disease than UK and the United States, even though they appear to eat very poorly. And I'll give you an example personally that I've learned through the years. My wife and I spent a lot of time in Trans-Middley, going to small villages, finding what people eat. And 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 meat, but also eating the meat. And it's so different than what, you know, modern America and my custom too. And the same even now, when we eat in a restaurant, as Americans, we like to shove the food in, get the check and go. And I was almost raised that way. And yet in France, you have to strangle somebody to have them delivery you the check. And, you know, they have this philosophy, no, the table is yours. This is your table. And we're gonna make you enjoy that table. Even if you have to sit there for two hours at lunch, you're gonna sit there. And it's really fascinating. They really, you know, feel hurt that you don't wanna take advantage of enjoying that meal, spending time with your wife or your kids. And it's just a very interesting cultural phenomenon we could learn a lot from. Yeah, absolutely. And it just shows what a powerful influence our environment and our culture has on the way we do things. And our health and as passionate as I am about what we eat. And I really am. And like you have written books on this, I'm trying to share information that's gonna help people. I've also realized that this is an important piece which really for people who are struggling to make changes or seemingly, you know, moving over to a real food diet compared to a highly processed one and are still struggling or they're overeating. But there's many reasons for that, of course, right? And maybe that those healthy foods aren't healthy for them. There could be all kinds of reasons, but actually this whole stress state while seating. You know, I'll tell you what I've learned over the last few years, Dr. Khandri, is some people, of course, many people are intolerant to certain foods, particularly these days. But actually what I've realized with 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. And I've had many patients now since I've sort of, 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. So one of the breaths I talk about a lot is the three, four, five 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. And you literally take yourself out of the stress state and into that calm relaxation state. And I found that when some of my patients do that, then no longer reacting to some of those foods that they previously were. And I find that really interesting. It's a much more holistic approach I feel to health. And 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 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 people, you know, a lot of the public are not aware of. They go, well, why am I still putting on weight when I'm eating so well? But we know that if you're chronically stressed, your body can hold on to weight. It feels that, you know, maybe I'm gonna need this extra fuel for this attack that's coming. You know, this kind of chronic stress state that many of us are in. But there's all kinds of research showing us that maybe 45% of us, some studies have shown, eats more in response to stress, right? It's incredible. You know, and 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. So what we're 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 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, or should we pay attention to actually the underlying cause of the stress that's causing that extra food intake in the first place? And you know, it's quite obvious when I put it like that and people think about it. You know, you'll have seen this, Dr. Gunray, I'm sure people who buy your books and are getting the improvement sometimes find themselves, you know, reverting back to previous behaviors when they don't want to. And I have in my last book, Feel Great Loose Weight, which was around sustainable weight loss, I had a little exercise in it called the 3Fs or the freedom exercise, which I've used with many of my patients who are struggling with this and it's very simple. So let's say someone watching this or listening to this right now, Dr. Gunray, at eight 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 and they know this is not gonna help them, but they're still there. I say, okay, let's go through the 3Fs. The first step 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? Have I not had any time to myself? Have I had a rare with my partner? What is it? I'm like, sure, if you wanna have it, go ahead and have it. Next time, go to the second F, right? 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 step, which is Find. Can I now find a non-food behavior to feed that same feeling? So 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. You know, 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 doctor country 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, right? And often we try and change the behavior without recognizing the underlying drive. And 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. So, I mean, 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. Yeah, that's a great point. And I think in my practice, certainly in the pandemic, I have a lot of people who've been very successful on my program and, you know, reverse their diabetes or hypertension is gone, et cetera. And yet with COVID, one of the things that's impressed me is, number one, a lot of well-meaning people have gained weight. Their insulin, which has been, their fasting insulin, which has been plummeted and was great, starts cranking up their diabetes or the prediabetes, which was non-existent. Their hemoglobin A1C starts inching up. And what's fascinating to me is, we measure fasting cortisol levels on all patients every three months and it's incredibly rare during the pandemic to see an elevated cortisol level. 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 affordable resistance, which is unrecognized at green over resistance. But what's fascinating to me is, yet these people who know better during the pandemic have slipped. They're still eating actually really quite well, but they're eating for boredom. They're eating for stress and you can watch it. And luckily, these people are smart enough that when they see it on their book work, they go, you're right, I knew this was happening. And here it is, okay, I'm gonna get back on it. There's an undergraduate college that is studying primary stress behaviors. And 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. So 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. So the pandemic has been very interesting in exactly what you're talking about. Yeah, and as you say, it comes down to all kinds of things. We ultimately, many of us, 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. And 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 gonna give them that awareness to go, yeah, that was me actually, oh, that's what I did. That's okay, once you're aware, you can start to make different choices. But until you are aware, people just don't realize it's also, I don't know how much you pay attention to sleep in your practice. I'm sure it's a lot, Dr. Gendry. But we talk about weights or types of diabetes or frankly, any chronic illness. We know that sleep plays a huge role. I mean, we're talking about food intake, but 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. But let's just think about that. Within five days of not sleeping so well, you are consuming an whole extra one day's worth of calories. And a lot of people don't realize that actually your hormones change when you haven't slept. You know, 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. Like 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. And you know, 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 p.m. Now I normally go to bed at 9 p.m., right? When I'm at home, I go to bed at nine, I wake up at five. That's when I'm at my best. The following morning, Dr. Gundry, I still woke up at five, half-five. So I was sleep deprived. I was ravenous all day. And let me tell you, I was not craving whole foods the following day, you know? And that's the other thing. We crave sugary foods, high density, calorific foods when we haven't slept. And so with some of my patients, even for something 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 or not. I thought, well, let me start with sleep. And 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. And I've got to say, we mentioned the TV show, Doctor in the House. I've got to say, Dr. Gundry, that 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 work 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? And they give you their best day. Like, well, 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. And so 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. There's just small changes in these four key areas, food, movement, sleep, and relaxation that can make a huge, huge difference. Yeah, it's so true. Oftentimes when I've got a patient struggling with weight loss, I'll have them do a two-week food diet. And, you know, so everything goes through your mouth and then we have to bring it back in. And we'll look. And, you know, I'll say, well, now, wait a minute, you have this. Oh, well, that doesn't count because that day I was running late and I grabbed something quickly. And then I'll go, well, now, what about this? Well, that doesn't count because with my best friend's birthday and, you know, I had to be there and of course there was cake and ice cream. So that doesn't count. And so many of these people, it was, that doesn't count was the huge contributor to what they thought was a perfect diet. You know, I never cheat. Well, that doesn't count. So you're right, spending time 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. And I think because of social status, as you mentioned, he had to work incredibly hard to support your family. And as you say, he basically got three, three and a half hours of sleep and I worked two jobs, correct me if I'm wrong. And your father passed away quite young. And I think you blame, correctly, that lifestyle for his demise. And 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. And I remember thinking about your father. I thought a good day would get three, three and a half hours of sleep. And during that time, my weight skyrocketed. I was huge. And I was constantly looking for high-gallery, dent, carbohydrate, late foods to keep myself going. And 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. And number two, on the weekends, I was now, when I was off, I was off two out of every three weekends, I was not allowed to come to the hospital to see my patients. And the first morning of the Saturday morning, I showed up at work and they said, what are you doing here? I said, well, I operate on these kids yesterday. I want to see how they're doing. 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 them. My weight plummeted. I lost, I lost literally 50 pounds in a year when I was a fellow at that great arm strength. And that's because, you're right, I was sleeping. Number two, we had whole food. We had a greengrocer around the corner. And my, you know, I had no fast foods. This was back in the mid-80s. But the dramatic effect of sleep deprivation was dramatically brought on to me. So you're absolutely right. Yeah, that's, I mean, 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 of the house. I remember this while he was a consultant physician at Manchester Warn Infirmary. And 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 chores, GP house chores 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 chores in a car. And 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. And from that he got 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? And I know that he had all kinds of pressures on him. And ultimately he moved to a new country in the 1960s as an immigrant. He came to the UK in search of a better life, right? So my dad provided in many ways a great start in life for me and my brother, right? Now I didn't see my dad much growing up because he was so busy working. And again, I'm not having a go at dad, right? I really respect him for what he's done. But I have seen what the impact of that was. And 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, Cap U 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, right? And the reason I wrote this fifth book, you know, I've written about food and sleep and movement and stress and weight loss and habit change over the past few years. And I still stand by everything that's in my first four books. But I was thinking, is there something missing here? Is lifestyle, you know, 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? And 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. And 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 the ice cream, you know, in the evening, you're less likely to drink too much alcohol, all these kinds of things. But even without lifestyle, even when you accounts for lifestyle, happier people are still shown to be healthier. There was a great study done with nuns where 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've lived significantly longer, right? 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 nostrils. So rhinovirus, as you well know, the virus that causes the common colds and they could tell who was gonna get sick by looking at their happiness. So 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, what is, you know, 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, right? 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 and everything in the book is free of charge. It doesn't cost any money. It just requires people to make a little commitment. And, you know, 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. And many people, now, dad's case might seem quite extreme. Your case, three and a half hours sleep at night while your moonlighting may seem quite extreme, but actually these days, we can work on our emails till 10 p.m., 11 p.m. in midnight, right? So the job that used to finish at 5 p.m. is still going on at midnight. We may be at home, we may not be moonlighting out, but we're still working. We've still got our active brain going on. And, you know, we talk about stress and burnout and what things can we do? You know, meditation, breath work, journaling. I talk about all these things, movement, exercise, great. But the elephant in the room is like, why are so many of us getting burnt out in the first place? You know, what are we chasing? Many of us think about a job, more money, about a car, nicer phone. Those things are gonna make us happy, but the problem 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 gonna make us happy. But 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've come in with stress and anxiety, depression, burnouts, insomnia, yeah, I can give them tips to help them and I will continue to do that. And 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, right? So I wanna be respectful for that. But you know, I expand a lot of practical things in the book that people can do for that. But I think it's a big one. I really do. I think it's a big one, computer. 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 that's not focused on health. What I'm saying is that 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? You know, those sort of things. So 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. So what do you say people are listening to us, doctors who have seen all of 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'm gonna add to my life today, starting today that I'll start to help. Yeah, okay, first of all, I get that and I'm certainly sympathetic with that and 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 people on low income, a lot of people working two jobs, a lot of people on social security and 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, right? And I'm not comparing my life to someone else's. There's no way I could possibly do that. But like a simple tip, chapter nine in the new book is called Take a Daily Holiday, which is basically this idea that, what is that holiday? You just come back from holiday, right? Let me ask you this, Dr. Gundry. What is it that the holiday gave you, would you say? 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 and 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. And we want to be out walking along the water, walking through the forest. And for me, that's my holiday. For no other reason. It gives my brain a tremendous time to shut down. And so for me, that's our holiday. People go, what a stupid holiday. You come back exhausted now. No, I love that. I love that. And the point I'm trying to make with this Take a Daily Holiday is this idea, what is it a holiday gives us, right? And 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 seem quite minor when we're 100 miles away, 1,000 miles away, 30,000 feet in the air in a plane if we're flying, right? And I thought, well, why do you have to wait for that one week a year to get perspective on your life? So 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 at Oldham in this practice that I was talking about. And 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 three, four, five breath, where, 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. And 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. And so, 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 call happiness. And call happiness, I truly believe is the happiness that all of us deep down wants, right? And the model is basically, I've created it very much like, you know, everyone understands that if you go to the gym each day and do bicep curls, you're gonna get stronger biceps, right? I think everyone listening or watching this gets that. They sort of understand that. And I've created this call 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. So the core happiness stool has three legs. Each of the legs is separate but essential. And if any of those legs starts to weaken or collapse, your feelings of happiness are also going to weaken and ultimately collapse. And 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, you know, 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 and 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 the 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. So what I think is the beautiful thing about this model for people and, you know, the book's been out for almost two months of 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. And the side effects of that is you're going to feel happier more often. And the side effects of that is that you're gonna start improving your physical health. And so that's a very, very quick summary of the ideas in that book. But even if you are, even if you, you know, I partially believe that the tools in this book will help anyone, whether you're someone who feels stressed out and close to burnout at the moment or whether you're someone who feels your life's okay. It's not bad. But it's, could I be getting something more out of life than I currently am and more out of my health? And I think people will find there are some missing links in this book for them that will help put a few pieces together. Switch your brother up. What do you think about getting a dog? I think, of course, it's not for everyone. You know, not everyone loves someone else. I think for most people, it's transformative. You know, I don't have a dog, right? It's not, 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 will 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 kind of, in a non-traumatic way, of course, can absolutely lower levels of cortisol, can really help all kinds of things happen in the body. And actually the same thing as with a pet, so I think for many people, and loneliness is a big problem, isn't it, these days? Many people feel isolated, particularly over the last few years, but even before that, and we know that loneliness is a big health risk, you know, I'm sure you just as I have seen the studies, the meta-analysis 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. So yeah, I'm a big fan. Yeah, I actually write prescriptions to my basions to get a dog. And I've had a number of basions either tell me that's the best prescription a doctor has ever written for me. And some of my basions actually bring back that prescription that's been framed and they keep it on the wall because I was thinking, you were talking, one of the things that dog forces you to do is take it for a walk. And what I like to do is, you know, we have four dogs. Oh, wow. One's always a rescue, at least one. And 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 snitching things and being outside and living every day, you know, 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. Yeah, I love that. I absolutely love that. And I can see, you know, what I love about that prescription is it's one thing that will have multiple myriad benefits. Right, so they're just focusing on getting a dog but that's gonna end up being more fresh air more vitamin D being made in their body, more movements, more connection. But and that's what I've always been driven as a doctor is there's 20 different things I could recommend here. They're not gonna do all 20. What is the one thing that I can recommend that's automatically gonna have a lot of downstream consequences? That's why I'm such a fan of lowering stress or promoting sleep. I find with patients that they just start sleeping better. And with most people in my experience they're doing something in their lifestyle that they don't realize is negatively affecting their sleep. And actually once you can help them identify that and change that, they sleep better. What happens? Their mood's 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. So I think, you know, getting a dog for the right person, of course, is one of those key levers to turn. Sleep, right? 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 rope. Give me, give us one trick that can really make a difference. Is it, you know, is it dark promoting shades? Is it blue blocking glasses? Is it turning off the TV earlier than expected? Give us one or more than one. Well, I could give you a lot about it. In the interest of time, let me give you one in the morning and one in the evening, right? Okay, perfect. I think we very much underestimate the importance of natural light. We hear a lot about blue light in the evenings, right? 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 rhythmic, you know, rhythms that we have in our body that actually we need to function in a certain timing to help us sleep at night. So some of my patients, that is the only thing they have to do is instead of waiting till lunchtime or a lot of them that stay indoors, they drive to work, they're in an office. These days, you know, a lot of people don't go out. 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 lunchtime, but natural light helps you sleep better at night. So that's one thing I would say in the morning. And then there's many things, of course, like caffeine and alcohol and food timing. But, you know, if I was gonna give one thing, what are you doing in that one hour before bed? All right, what are you doing? What's the state of your mind? What's the state of your being? Are you still on? You're 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 gonna help. It's gonna amp them up, right? It's gonna keep them stimulated. So you don't give them sugar. You lower the lights, 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, you know, to focus on connection, love, humor, romance, whatever it might be. And I think simply changing your states, 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 wanna watch television, watch a comedy, watch a romance, something to put you in the right state of mind. So that's much more I could talk about, but these things, they sound very soft, but they really, really work. You just gotta do it. Yeah, your point is well taken again. I have a horror ring on, and one of the crazy things that the horror ring now does is about, oh gosh, six, maybe 6.45 at night, I get a message that time is approaching, start to get ready, and 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 it like we prepared our kids for bed, imagine if we took that seriously, what could be done? So even though I laugh at my horror ring every night, I think it's absolutely right on, and we should listen to that sort of advice. Yeah, for sure. And I guess in many ways it just provides a gentle reminder to you, oh yeah. Like let's say you were stuck in your work emails or whatever you might be doing, it's like, oh yeah, maybe I need to just wind this down a little bit now. So yeah, these things can be very, very impactful. One last thing I wanna ask you about before you go, and you talk about this in your new book, and I think it might be controversial. You say eliminating choice can reduce stress and support health. I mean, come on, January, you don't really have to make choices even about what to do before to go to bed. So what do you mean by that? Yeah, I absolutely stand by. It's not about eliminating all choice. It's about choosing when it matters and not when it doesn't, right? We're now living in an era of, I'll tell you America, America is really interesting for me as someone who lives in the UK a few years ago, right? Coming over to America for some lifestyle medicine conferences. And sometimes you'd go out at lunchtime, well, not sometimes, you'd go out at lunch to grab some foods. And I always remember in America, in my experience from what I've seen, okay, I'm not saying this is the same in every place in America, but you go in a place and you wanna order something. Let's say it's, I don't know, the chicken salad, whatever, whatever it might be. And you literally, you get asked so many things. Do you know, what would you like with 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? And I remember once thinking, I just wanted the chicken salad and now I feel I've got my food, but I've got like a side serving of stress on the way out as well. And I make it 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. What I'm saying is, at this concert called Microstress Doses, that I think people find very, very useful, right? Which is the idea that actually we've all got our own personal stress threshold, right? And 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, right? But the thing is what we don't realize is that we're accumulating microstress doses from the minute that we wake up. So let's say your stress threshold is up here, but you wake up feeling really calm and far away from it. You know, you check your email, Microstress Doses number one, you look on the news, Microstress Doses number two. Let's say you don't know what to wear and you spend 10 minutes trying to decide what combination of clothes should I wear? Microstress Doses number three. And the point I'm trying to make is, is that by the end of the day, or whatever time, you get close to that stress threshold, you think it was the last thing that happened that was the problem. The email you got from your boss at 4pm, that was the problem. Usually that wasn't the problem. That was just the final, that was the straw that broke the camel's back. You have just been accumulating Microstress Doses throughout the day, such to the points where actually then you blow up at that email. So how can we reduce Microstress Doses in a light? There are many ways, right? Many ways, but one of the things I focus on in that chapter is choice, right? We don't need to choose everything. We don't need to go into, like there's a report saying that in Starbucks, there are 80,000 different combinations of drinks. 80,000, right? So 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 that takes cognitive load. That is increasing Microstress. You laugh at this, right? Many people laugh at this, but there was a movement in America called 333. Courtney Carver, this fashion executive, right? She found choosing what to wear each morning a incredible, stressful experience that would affect her for the entire day. And she limited herself to, I can't remember exactly what it was, I think it was 33 items that she could choose from. And 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 around the world were reporting the same thing. And 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. And 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. So 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 wanna eat, you're gonna feel stressed, you're gonna be less present in your relationships. It has so many impacts. And I think it's something I'm super passionate about. People know this, right? 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, right? 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 wanna watch anything together and we go off on our separate ways to either watch something on our laptop or read a book and again, too much choice, right? Too much choice. So 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 and 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, right? Boom, first one on the list. And it makes such a big difference. And so, yeah, there's a lot more on that in that chapter, but I'm very passionate that actually it does make a difference. All right, all right, we've touched on a lot of things. If you were going to start with any of these things for our listeners, what would you say you're focused on most? 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, right? 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. And much of the time, people are making poor decisions around their health because they're disconnected from how they're really feeling. I'd say, honestly, I wouldn't have given you this answer 10 years ago. I would have probably gone to a whole food diet, which of course I'm very passionate about. I would have spoken about sleep. And 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 that I 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 and that has a transformative impact on your health and your happiness. That reminds me, I did mission work in Ethiopia and also in Zimbabwe and some hospitals. And there was a big sign in Zimbabwe in this hospital and said, sometimes I sit and thinks and other times I just sits. And what you just said is actually very profound. That I saw in a hospital in Zimbabwe and sometimes it's good to sit and think but other times it's good to just sit. And good for you. I love that. Thanks for sharing. I hope you enjoyed this episode of the Dr. Gundry podcast. Make sure to check out the next one here. My practice that every day that nutrition is actually the number one factor in how you age and actually how your skin ages.