 Hi, good evening, good morning, good afternoon wherever you are and welcome to this live chat today. I have a really interesting guest. So just to tell you a couple of things that makes this person really interesting. First of all, the person is a Guinness record holder. So I've never actually had a Guinness record holder on this particular show. So that's a first. The next thing that I should tell you is that the person is a doctor who's worked with NASA, who has worked with the Royal Air Force. Also does a lot of work as an entrepreneur. But you know what? Let me just get this person on screen for you. So that is Dr. Marcus Ranee. Marcus, terrific to have you here with us. And is there any part of your accomplishments which I have left out? You have, you have. And I think the reason why we're here today, which is my book, my new book, Act the Human Edge. I'm now very grateful to be a best-selling author to add to that list as well. But I could see that book right there behind you and so terrific. Yes, I know. So that's there. Lovely to have you here. Marcus, you know, you describe yourself as a champion of well-being and I would love to know what is it that you describe as a champion of well-being. What does that really mean and how is it linked to the book? Tell me about that. Sure. So I've been pretty fortunate. I've had a career which has span two decades but has allowed me to really dig and zag through life. I began by studying physiology in London and university college in London. And I was in the Royal Air Force at that point in time, which is where I was exposed to this fascinating area called extreme medicine. That's what happens to your body when you push it to the extreme environments. That allowed me to do some pretty interesting stuff. You mentioned I led an expedition to Mount Everest. I led an expedition to the Arctic Circle. I spent a lot of time in the European Alps as well. And then went on to NASA to work on the human spaceflight program before graduating as a medical doctor and working in London. And through those years then, after that moving to India about 11 years ago, my own journey has sort of pivoted away from sick care. As doctors, we call ourselves healthcare experts, but there's very little health in our care. It's mainly pathogenesis and disease. That's just the way the system is designed. But I got more excited and interesting in how can I truly unlock the potential that exists in my body and brain and then help people to do that as well. And so the journey from sick care to well-being and really championing this cause because 2020 was an incredible year for many reasons. And it might even sound interesting that I use the word incredible there, but it was. But I think the biggest realization has been for all of us, the competitive advantage that well-being plays in our lives. From a national security level by governments to an organizational level through the corporate work. And then at an individual level where it comes to our own health and well-being. And I just felt the world needed a champion for that. And so I've stepped up to the plate and this book as we're going to dive into is a testament to that work. Before I sort of talk to you about the book, I had a question that you have mentioned somewhere that you are a Guinness world record holder. Is that in the number of accomplishments that you have or the kind of going to space and doing all of that stuff? Is that what makes you a world record holder? What's it about? So I've not been to space yet. I work with folks that have and I'm looking forward to one day going myself, hopefully in the not too distant future. I have a Guinness record for backwards running. This is something which I achieved a few years ago. It was in Mumbai, the city where I live and it's a long story. And you're trying to run away from Mumbai but run backwards. What was it about? It was a record held by the largest number of people to race one another running backwards. And we were 1200 people. It was a record that was previously held by the city of Munich in Germany. The distance is around 700 meters. It was something in that region. And the reason I'm most proud of this is because I shared with my wife. My wife also holds the record with me and officially my eldest child, my son, Aiden, who's going to be five in a few weeks time. He has the record as well because on the first Guinness attempt, I attempted it. He was only 14 months at the time. I actually ran pulling his pram backwards. So his name is officially part of that record. For the second and third attempt, we were disqualified and so we couldn't use him in that manner. So he actually stayed with my father-in-law. But because he was part of one of the attempts that I eventually became successful, he holds the record as well. So that's what I'm most proud of and hopefully when he's bigger and I can tell him this story. You know the kind of things that parents will do to get the kids into the Guinness book. You get into the right scope, exactly. But you know, I want to come back and talk to you about your book, which really I read and I had some very fascinating kind of things. I'm going to take up two or three examples of that one. You know, you write about and as you said, extreme medicine is also about what happens to your body as you subjected to different kinds of conditions, these extreme conditions. One of them was about climbing Mount Everest. What happens to your body and why should we care about it? What can we learn from it? Just if you can tell us what it is and I'm going to invite people. If you have a question, do write your questions in the comment section. Tell us where you are from and what your question is. I will try and have Dr. Marcus address those questions. Yes, what was the thing about Everest? We live in an ocean of air. The atmosphere is actually an ocean comprised of many different gases that we learned in school. The depths of which which is at sea level is where the pressure is at its highest because you have all of that weight of the upper atmosphere pushing down at the very base layer. And in gaseous terms, concentration is a product of pressure. So the higher the pressure, the higher the concentration. Therefore, as you ascend up the atmosphere, such as getting in an airliner or climbing a mountain, the pressure reduces because the column of gas above gets lesser and lesser. And so the concentration of gas in the air, principally oxygen, which is what we breathe in to fuel all of ourselves becomes lower and lower. So climbing a mountain actually subjects your body to a hypoxic situation, which is where oxygen concentration drops down. And so your cells have to become much smarter in burning and utilizing oxygen. And that's the reason why so many changes, you know, people who have been skiing or trekking or even to a place like Laila Dark in India at a modest altitude would have noticed that you feel short of breath. That's because there's less oxygen in the air. So your body has to go through all of these different changes. Some of which are at a systemic level, such as increasing your respiratory rate, i.e. the rate of breathing or your heart beating faster. All of these are subtle things to get more oxygen flowing through the system. But what's interestingly interesting is that the longer you spend, like any of the extreme environments that I cover in the book, your body begins to adapt to it. If it doesn't break down, it actually adapts to it and it then accelerates itself similar to Talib's concept around antifragility, right? Instead of resiliency, antifragility. It's the same thing. Your body becomes a stronger version of that. And at a cellular level, you're actually better able to burn oxygen, utilize oxygen and the genetics of your cells actually change so that it becomes just so much more efficient and stronger. So this is the journey that Abhijeet, I take the readers on where I juxtapose the extreme physical world such as climbing a mountain and what you see as you climb the base camp, camp one, camp two, etc. Right to the summit and then take you on a journey inside of your cells and show you what's happening at your physiology. And therefore what are the limits of physiology but how you can achieve a higher state of performance through that as well. Yes, so when I was reading the book, I kind of thought that this is really climbing the Everest through a doctor's lens. So what's happening to you inside, what's happening to you outside. And I totally understand that because when I went to Ladakh and spent time there, the first day when you land, even though you're feeling as if nothing has happened, they actually tell you that you need to acclimate. And I've seen people who sort of go through that bravado that no, no, I'm tough enough, nothing happens to me. They really suffer from that. And then your body acclimatizes. So even when you do all those higher climbs, it is not that bad. But the first day it's really hard, your blood pressure changes, everything changes. When you look at, you know, if you move further up into space, how does that sort of, you know, change. So we understand what happens on the ground and then you sort of move up what changes. So the principal challenge with space travel, which I covered in chapter three, and look, I like so many other viewers probably I shared that aspiration of becoming an astronaut when I was a child. I had the good fortune of working at NASA on a space shuttle mission. This was a space shuttle Atlantis that went up to the International Space Station in 2008. And I was there for the launch and therefore the landing and monitoring the astronauts. It was a fascinating period of time. You see, when you go into space, of course, oxygen is a principal thing that we need to deal with because it's a vacuum, right? There's no atmosphere at all. So you carry the oxygen similar like you would if you were scuba diving, which is another chapter. But the principal challenge with space travel is the influence or the lack of influence, I should say, of gravity. You see, we take it for granted that just as we've gotten used to and evolved at sea level under a situation of an atmosphere of temperature of resources like food and water, etc. We have also evolved under one gravitational environment, right? That's a force of the earth pulling us towards its center. When you go into space, you don't have gravity there. And all of our systems, right from our cardiovascular system to our muscular skeletal system to even the way we perceive balance and our vision, all of those are under the influence of gravity. So the minute you remove gravity from your physiology, a whole load of things go wrong and they go wrong very, very quickly. So we've seen that image of Neil Armstrong putting one foot on the lunar surface. It's fine to go to the moon because the moon has about a sixth of the gravity. It's only a three-day journey to get there. But when we think about sending a woman or a man to Mars, hopefully in this decade and maybe a viewer will be one of the first ones there, fingers crossed from India, then we are in a situation where it's a six-month journey to get there. It is going to be at least six months on the surface by the time the planets realign themselves before you can come back home. So all in all, you're looking at an 18 to 20 months journey there and back. A lot of physiological deconditioning is going to happen. So scientists and doctors are spending a lot of time to understand what are the cellular changes and what do we need to do so that that person that eventually puts her foot or his foot on the Martian surface will not just collapse, but actually be able to do something worthwhile whilst we're there. So if you had a choice, would you take that journey and would you look forward to that and if there was an option, settle down in Mars? I would if there was a round trip. So I know Elon has recently come out by saying that he's happy to retire there. I wouldn't want to spend, do a one-way ticket, which is what he's currently suggesting. But I am reasonably confident that within the next 20, 30 years, space travel will of course become much more ubiquitous and possibly even interplanetary travel such as Martian travel. Probably not in our lifetime, Abhijeet, but definitely in our children's lifetime. We can expect to see the colonization of the moon and Mars and it being as commonplace hopefully as a transatlantic flight is today. And I think that that could well happen because as technology changes, many of these changes happen much faster. It sort of moves at a very slow pace initially and then it just goes through that exponential curve. So look at the price of mobile phones or data and all that. The way it has dropped what it used to be is to cost a certain amount of money to just even receive a phone call. And now it is the world's cheapest place in India to get data cost, if you look at that. I'm going to take you to the third example that I found really interesting. And the reason I want you to talk about that is, A, I want to bring you down to earth and talk about running a marathon this time, not running backwards but running ahead. And a lot of people in India are interested in running marathons included. What's the greatest distance you've done and what did you learn from it? Talk to us about what happens to your body as you go through these changes. So I'm a full marathon runner, full distance marathon runner 42.1 kilometers is what I achieved last year. I've been running for many, many years. I fell in love with it about seven or eight years ago and it's something that my wife and I, we share. And we're starting to see our kids now adopted and get interested in it, which I think is a great lesson for all parents. It's the best thing you can give to your children is the love for keeping fit and staying active. So we're very happy to see that. Marathon running is an incredibly difficult sport. The distances between five to 10 kilometers are actually physiologically pretty comfortable to do. I won't say easy because I'm sure viewers out there will probably challenge that, but it's a pretty comfortable distance to run between five to 10 kilometers. There are a lot of health benefits of doing that restricted distance, particularly cardiovascular gains, respiratory gains and benefits on mental and emotional health as well. But of course, human beings, we love to push ourselves and so we've constantly strived to go further and further. So anything beyond 21 kilometers really starts to enter a zone where if you're not careful, you can potentially do more harm to the body than good. Either it's the musculoskeletal strain on the joints or it's the cardiovascular impact of stressing your system. Just to give you throughout some statistics, the average, so the full marathon consumes 50,000 strides. That's how many times you have to put one step in front of the other to complete. It consumes around 3,000 to 4,000 calories for the average adult, which is well in excess of what you would consume on an average day. And of course, you are seeing your heart rate enter zones of 90% plus for extended periods of time. Three hours, four hours, five hours or longer in some situations. You're really, really pushing the limit when it comes to your ability to form a performance and physiological capacity. Therefore, there's a lot that has to go on inside of your brain. And a little bit of a spoiler alert for people who I welcome to read the book. When I first started to write it, it was only going to be restricted to six chapters. And each of the chapters was looking at a different extreme environment. We spoke about three already. There's a chapter on scuba diving into the Mariana trench. There's a chapter on surviving the Sahara and a chapter on going to the South Pole as well. But as I started to write, and of course I've had the opportunity to visit a number of these extreme environments, something suddenly occurred to me that we are constantly pushing our physical body to these extremes. And we train and we do our best to get there. But if our brain and principally our mind does not align itself in the right manner, then no matter what we try and do, we can't achieve those physical capacities. So the last chapter of the book is dedicated to that. It's called Mind Over Matter. And in that, I really started to study how did Eluid King Pushe recently complete a full marathon in sub two hours? This is something that we considered as a physiological improbability only six, not six months ago, but now a year ago when he did it in Vienna. So how is it possible that human beings are able to push themselves to limits that we perceive to be beyond the physical capacity? And what can we do? What can we learn? How can we train ourselves to imbibe some of those capabilities to get there as well? So that's sort of been my journey as well. And I would then sort of look at, you say a very interesting one about, you know, mental condition. And today, you know, because of the fact that the pandemic has made work shift home. And so we are now in a scenario where we are working from home. And one of the challenges that is happening is there's increasing risk to mental health that that's coming up, you know, for a number of reasons, you know, there's loneliness, there's lack of connect, etc. All that. What do you recommend that we do to deal with that? Yeah, this is a big problem. When the lockdown first started, and you know that I've worked with a number of corporates to try and enhance employee engagement and deal with some of the aspects around well-being. I began to take a weekly poll in India and asking people two simple questions. Out of 10, what is your stress level today? And what are the three things that are causing you to be stressed? As we entered lockdown, the average stress score was about 5.1, 5.2 out of 10. As the first phases of the pandemic started to occur, I started to see that stress level actually dropped. And now in hindsight, what was interesting to look back is that we went through a honeymoon phase. For a lot of people working from home was a novelty. We initially thought it was only going to be restricted to those 21 or 28 days. We did not imagine that it would go on for so long and would continue to go on even as we're speaking today. So stress levels actually went down because people were amused by the novelty of switching and doing something interesting and different, etc. And of course companies started to migrate from the early phases into the adoption phase and engagement phase to get people onto digital platforms. And then there was a lot of fun things happening. There were Zumba classes, there were musician classes, because we had to fill our times doing things. But then the thing changed and the Prime Minister came on TV and he talks about lockdown 2, lockdown 3 and that's where stress levels began to rise. Loneliness creep happened and the highest chart that I had on the stress indicator score went up to 6.7. But what was most worrying was that the percentage of people that were polling in the extreme category, so this is a score of 8 and above, went from 21% to 37%. And the number one reason of course was their uncertainty around work. Number two was the impact that this was having on their physical and the mental health of their friends and family. And number three was the deterioration in the quality of relationships, both at work and at home. That was interesting to see because irrespective of the city that I would conduct this in, obviously digitally but where the respondents were, irrespective of their industry, irrespective of their seniority. It was the same three qualities that were constantly contributing to the stress score. Now that number has come down with time. I think we have entered into a more of a transformative phase right now where a lot of leading organizations are looking at this as an opportunity to grow. People have number one started to build some degree of sustainability around their behaviors, either the way they work or the boundaries at home. But a lot of organizations and the leadership are looking at this time as an opportunity to move their organization to a position of growth. Moving from resiliency to antifragility, you know, again to Code Talib's work. So this is an interesting phase for us in India I feel because unlike the western part of the world in Asia for a variety of reasons, many of which we simply do not understand from an immunological perspective. We have been more fortunate when it has come to the impact that this virus has had on our health. And so we are returning to growth at a much quicker pace and opportunity than our western counterparts. But how we deal with this opportunity and what we do with it is entirely in our control. So that's been an interesting journey for me to witness over the entire world dealing with different companies and different people through this last year or so. So, you know, Marcus for the benefit of some of the listeners who have joined in a little late into this whole story. I just want to summarize a few things that stayed with me in our conversation so far. One of the things I thought, you know, you spoke about this whole thing of people being able to, you know, handle incredibly stressful conditions, the extreme conditions. You know, so you talked about what happens to the body as you go to the Everest. Then we talked about the scenario of what happens to the body when you go further up in space. You know, how the changes happen at the cellular level. Then you'd also talked about the fact that when you do extreme running, which is the marathon, then in which case, you know, in your book you talk about how those changes need to be built in. How do you sort of build that kind of resilience? And that was an important takeaway for me that beyond a certain point of time, beyond, you know, a certain distance, you should train and build that capacity in yourself. Otherwise, it could land up doing a lot more damage. But I also sort of then found that, you know, the sole conversation that you have about the way in which mental health has sort of really changed. Early days of the lockdown, it was fun because you're working from home. It's a novelty. You're cooking. People are really thrilled about it. Then this realization of uncertainty and therefore it sort of takes a dip and then comes right back. We are perhaps going through that phase when there is going to be a kind of a transformation. Is that a good summary of almost the first 20, 25 minutes of what we've spoken about? Absolutely incredible. Thank you. Thanks. So, you know, one of the questions which I thought was when people run for this kind of distance, is it a better idea to run on the road or on a treadmill? What do you recommend? What's better for your knees, for your heart? So looking at it from an ergonomics perspective, biomechanically, obviously the more natural this ground or substance is the better it is for the joints. So running on grass or on mud, a firm ground, I should say, is much better than running on a road from a spectrum perspective. There are different types of roads and this is a subtlety that a runner would appreciate. There's a tar road and then there's a concrete road. A tar road is actually much better because there's an elasticity in the tar. And you get a certain bounce which comes from the road into your body which allows you to just get a better stride if you go along. Now, of course, through the construction, particularly where I live in Mumbai, a lot of the roads are slowly being concretized and changing because of the metro works. And you notice it on your shoe wear and tear, but also on your way, your joints feel. So spectrum, therefore, is ground to tar road to concrete road. Treadmill running is, there's no joy in that. And the reason I say that is because you're fixated in one place. You maybe have a screen in front of you. You can watch something on Netflix or you can do a call if you want to. But the real joy in running is getting out there, seeing the sun come up, seeing the kids get ready for school and catch the bus, bump into people. There's a great running community, cyclist community and there's a lot of camaraderie that builds because of that. And you really get to know a person. When I go for my long runs with my fellow runners and we spend two, three hours running long distances, there's still a bit of chatter. We love talking about life and things. And you feel like you really got to know someone because you're going through the trenches as it were with them. So Treadmill is at the bottom of my list from an enjoyment perspective. And also, you refer to another interesting element. There's a question from Pooja Thirelli who has an interesting question. Is brisk walking different from jogging in terms of the benefits that what it does and if so, what's that difference? So any movement is good movement, Pooja. Firstly, let me say that. So it's useful for your cardiovascular health and your mental and emotional health as well. So if it's a choice between zero and one, obviously take the one. Brisk walking and running are fundamentally different things from an ergonomic perspective. You always have one foot on the ground running. There is a period of time when you're technically flying because you have no feet on the ground at a phase in the running cycle. So from an ergonomics perspective, your body is biomechanically going through two very different phase. Of course, running is a very natural thing as well. If you look at human evolution, we are a nomadic species. Anthropologically, we've come out of the heartlands of Africa. We're meant to be moving around. Agriculture has domesticated us. It's not the other way around. So because of that, many issues have seeped into if you've read Sapiens by Joval No Harare. Joval Harare. Yeah, and he talks about this as well. So running is a fantastic sport. It's something which comes very natural to human beings as well. And what I've always been amazed at is people who tell me, I can't run. I'm not built for running, et cetera. And I encourage them to just try. Start with walking, do some brisk walking, do a light job. And the number of people that then come to me and say, Doc, I wish I did this earlier. This is incredible. I just love hearing those stories. So anyone who's on the fence, try it. Please try it. There you go. We have one convert there already. Who says that? That's a great discussion. I'm going to sort of steer the conversation to a somewhat different area in terms of, you know, what is it that we can do to reach that kind of peak performance? One of the things that has happened as you talked about watching Netflix, watching movies in general now that we are at home, people are watching a lot of movies, screen time has increased dramatically. And a human connection has dropped. As a result of that, what are some of the things that we should be doing? And when you watch those movies that eats into your sleep time, what is the amount of recommended sleep time? Tell us a little about that. All right. Let's talk about sleep. It's one of my favorite topics. It is nature's most freely available performance enhancing drug. That's right. I call it a drug because that's precisely what it is. You know, in the old days, people used to wear a badge of honor, and they used to say, I don't need to sleep or I'll sleep when I'm dead. And I remind them that evolution is such an incredible force that anything which is not beneficial to the organism is weeded out over the generations. And evolution has had a long time to work on us. We may feel that we know we're very imperfect, but there's a lot of great things in our human physiology. And sleep is still there because it's a critical component of our performance. Sleep is not a downtime, in my view. Sleep is an uptime. It is the restorative part of the day when your body can strengthen itself, anti-fragility again. It can strengthen itself physically, mentally, and emotionally. So everyone watching, please make sure, if there's one thing you take away from this conversation, it's ensure you get at least seven hours of sleep every day. Your body is designed, and I use the word designed purposefully, to get between seven to nine hours. It varies for different people, obviously, but at least seven hours every day. And sleep is a journey, right? It's not just the seven hours that your head is on the pillow at night. It's what you do, and therefore what Abhijit is eluding to, what you do for those 60 minutes before your head hits the pillow, and what you do for the first 15 to 20 minutes after your head rises from the pillow at the other end. That journey, that three phases, is equally important for you to get the restorative and the most benefit that you can from sleep. And so I've been doing a bunch of bio hacks, you know, I love bio hacking and trying to improve my own performance. So I'm happy to share a couple of those with your viewers, if you feel it would be useful for them. Alright, go for it, go for it. So, you know, seven hours of sleep, that's the first one. Well, actually, let's go simpler than that, right? Seven hours can seem a bit daunting for someone, you know, like I'm a young dad, I've got two toddlers at home, and so someone may say, oh, you know, I can't control that, or I can't get enough of that. Let me give you a few really simple things that you guys can do, which are under your control, and that you alone are able to do so. Number one, temperature, the body is designed to sleep, the best quality of sleep is between 17 and 19 degrees Celsius, right? Around 18 degrees C, and that equates to about 65 degrees Fahrenheit for folks watching in from overseas. That's the best temperature where you get your most rest. So, if you've got an air conditioning and you are able to do so, set the temperature to that, have a nice double weighted quilt with you, or if you're living in a colder part of the world or colder climate such as folks joining in from North India, then ensure that you're able to control the temperature with your pullover, et cetera, right? So that's number one, right? That's really easy to do, and that's in your control. Number two is make sure your room is nice and dark. If you've got curtains which are substandard, well, put a black piece of crete paper behind it. Just darken the room because your eyes and the light reception by the retina at the back of the eyes is one of the most critical parts of that sleep journey. And so ensure you've got a really blackened room. Or if you can't even do that, just wear a simple eye mask, like you used to get on the aeroplanes in days that we used to travel on. So these are a couple of simple things. The third thing is never sleep with these devices. Our bedroom at home is a phone-free zone, and so no digital devices in the bedroom, no screens, no iPads, no televisions, and the earlier you can disconnect from it, at least 30 minutes preferably before you go to sleep, the better because your melatonin levels will be high and it will be put into a nice sleep journey from that. So I got tons of them and any viewers, I'll invite them to reach out to me on my social handles and I'm happy to share more biohacks. Simple, simple things that you can help to enhance your quality and quantity of sleep every day. So there are a couple of questions which have come up. Shubhankar actually has this whole question that there are a couple of leaders who wear a badge of honour and say, I like to sleep only four hours, that's enough. And what is that all about? Do some people manage with four hours of sleep, two hours of sleep and what does it do? There is a genetic, so there's an allele disposition change, that transposition change which happens in around 0.3 or 0.4% of the population where they are able to get the same quality of benefit from less than six hours of sleep every day. But from the number of people that tell me that they can survive or do well on four to five hours, they're either lying to me or there's something wrong with the biochemistry and our data sciences out there. So that's an important thing to understand that people maybe are saying this out of a badge of honour or a compulsion of some form of inner mindset that they have. But if they are given the benefit of sleep, they will see the advantages to themselves and I often tell them, just do it for a week and then tell me whether you find yourself more productive or not. If you are, go back to it. If you're not, well then let's have another conversation there after. The other follow up question to that is, when people talk about getting up from bed, what is it, what's the first thing one should do? The wrong answer to that question is look at the phone and see what have you missed over those last seven hours. So if that's the wrong answer, what's the correct answer? So the easiest way of not ensuring that doesn't happen is to plug the phone in another bedroom. And by the way, if you're worried that you've got elderly parents or loved ones who you need to be in connection with, remember those old landlines that we used to have, those dumb phones? Well, we can still have them at home nowadays and you can still install them. But if you need to wake up, there's a 300 rupee alarm clock available on an e-commerce site and you can order one of those and therefore you don't need the 1 lakh rupee phone to wake you up for the mornings. Look, the first 15, 20 minutes are critical because it's critical for a number of reasons. One is I think it's important for us to be in control of the intent that we want to set ourselves out for the day. But the minute that I open up the phone, someone else is defining my agenda before I get to do so. Either it's an email from my boss or a client or it's a WhatsApp message or it's a global leader that has tweeted something which is going to throw my whole day off for the rest of the day because of some unknown effect or impact. So that's the first thing to do. Allow yourself, give yourself the benefit to allow yourself to set your intent for the day. Number two is the early moments when you wake up or when you're at your freshest. And just like any other machine, any other device when it's fully charged, what you can do with it can be at a level of output that is exponentially higher than you might be able to achieve later on in the day. So if you're someone that needs to set aside time for creativity or deep thought or ideation, et cetera, why don't you use them? If you're a dreamer or a unicorn to use your book, then why don't you use the start of the day to your advantage? And the third thing, which is the same as the concept of eating breakfast, people say how important it is to fuel the body well at the start of the day. Well, your brain operates in a similar context. Imagine breakfast for the brain, something good, something nourishing, a healthy vibrational piece of music or maybe it's a chant, maybe it's reading a text that allows you to be put into a frame of mind. Maybe it's just writing in a journal, but feed the brain with something healthy so that you can achieve the most from your day. That's how I like to think about the first phase after we wake up. Fantastic. For me, doing a certain amount of creative work in the morning when I wake up is really the most productive. What I can do in an hour at that point of time, if I start doing the same work and I've done it multiple times, I've had to make those changes and learn the hard way. It just takes exponentially more. The same thing instead of an hour will take me four to five hours, seven hours and it's terrible. So I think, yes, I totally buy that. You were talking about some bio hacks when I got sidetracked with a number of other related follow-up questions. Do continue. You've talked to us a little about one of them. Tell me about the others. The concept of bio hacking is how can we distill the biggest goals that we have into simple things that can make an impact on my day-to-day. Quite often, the confusion arises. Just to take a little segue or tangent to the question, I'll come back to some examples. But I think the confusion arises in people like, for example, sticking to the analogy of running. Someone will say to me, Doc, I want to run a marathon. And I remind them that that's a goal. We should have these ambitious lofty goals. That's fantastic. But under the goal is the behavior. Being a runner is a behavior that sends to allow you to do that goal. Now, the behavior of running is associated with many singular habits like running or watching what I eat, et cetera. And under each of those habits is the bio hack. These are the atomic units as James Clare calls it, right? Or the triggers as BJ Fogg speaks about in his work on MIT. Tiny habits. He refers to it as tiny habits. That's right. Absolutely. So that's the idea of the bio hack. And I just look at it from a very biological lens. So for example, something that I do every day is, there's this micro bio that we have sitting inside of our gut, right? When I first went to med school, and it's 20 years this year that I started, I had one lecture on the microbiome. And now we have reached a stage where the science has led us to understand that there are 100 trillion microorganisms that reside inside of your gut. 100 trillion. By the way, you only have 5 trillion cells in your human body. So there's 20 to 1 microorganisms living inside of your gut. It weighs 3 kilograms of your body weight is foreign microorganisms, viruses, bacteria, protozoa, fungi, et cetera. And the gut and the brain is now connected through the gut brain access. So what I mean by that is the fuel that you put inside of you is broken down by these microorganisms, the microbiome. And the chemicals that are released will define and decide your physical health, such as diabetes, obesity, cancer, and your mental and emotional health as well. So what you put inside is fundamental to how efficacious and your level of productivity. So I really look at what I've put in. And so a bio hack that I ensure I do every day is ensure I get these six essential micronutrients. Omega 3, Omega 6, that's really useful for the nerve cells in your brain. Zinc and magnesium, really critical for your immune system and the functioning of your immunity and resiliency, et cetera. And then we have Vitamin C and Vitamin B, both of which are again important for various parts of the cell, energy production, nerve cells, and sort of energy levels as well. So let me do a quick recap because I'm just trying to keep these six in my head. So you talked about Omega 3, Omega 6, magnesium, zinc, and then you talked about Vitamin B and C. Absolutely, absolutely. Fabulous. So these are the six important micronutrients that you must get every day. And the reason why I talk about this is because our diets have become more restrictive, right? We typically eat the same six or seven things. The quality of our produce has diminished because of chemicals being pumped in and all the other stuff that we don't need to get into right now, but we're all fully aware of. And we're not eating seasonal. We're not eating organic anymore. And we're moving away from a plant-based diet to a very animal and their products-based diet. So it's very important we get these six aspects. And so a healthy supplement, a nutritional supplement is an effective way. So I put these pills into my body because I know they're important. So it's a technique of biohacking. And honestly, I have 17 that I take every day, but I won't go into all the 17 now. We'll start with the six to begin with. But there are simple things, beetroot and red spinach. If any runners are watching this, beetroot and red spinach has been shown to increase your running performance, not even the efficacy. Your running performance by between six to 8%. Very simple things. So every time before I go for a run, I have a simple juicer machine like I'm sure a lot of our viewers have, and I put apple, beetroot, carrot, ginger, mint, and red spinach. These six things. And I put it into a juice and I put it as a shot before I go on a run. And as I was saying, the science is so amazing. These simple things can make subtle and important changes to our lives. And so I've constantly been trying to figure how can I do more and more of these biohacking along the way to achieve more performance? Yeah. Another question is around intermittent fasting. So a number of people talk about intermittent fasting. The New York Times talks about it being very effective. And a lot of people sort of say that you can not only remove excess fat from the body, but also it reverses a lot of things like diabetes, which is one of the most prominent diseases in India as the diabetic capital of the world. What is your take on intermittent fasting? So in chapter seven of the book, Abhijit, I talk about the mitochondria. The mitochondria is a small organelle that resides inside our cell. It used to actually be an external organism and over our period of evolution, we engulfed it and we found so much value that we actually kept it. And now it sits in almost every single type of cell which exists inside of the body. It produces the energy currency, ATP, adenosine triphosphate. That's the energy that your cells require to burn oxygen and basically create life. So I talk about mitochondria. The entire chapter is dedicated to mitochondria because I'm fascinated by this tiny organelle. But the interesting thing with mitochondria is you can manipulate its number and its productivity, how it works, efficiency through intermittent fasting. And you spoke rightly about the impacts that it can have on the management of certain lifestyle disorders, obesity, metabolic syndrome and diabetes mellitus. But what is so fascinating right now and where a lot of my current research is looking at and I'll be doing more literature creation around this is this idea of human longevity. As we move from this concept around just thinking about lifespan to thinking about health span, how can we extend the number of years to improve the quality of our years. And it appears that intermittent fasting may actually play a very important role in this. There's a fantastic piece of work called Blue Zones which was covered many years ago. Natural Geographic has a wonderful documentary about it. And they looked at the six civilization pockets around the planet where the overall average number of ages is roughly around 100. So they have a very high probability of centerines that live there. And these are as disparate as Okinawa in Japan to South America. Japan. Yeah, exactly. So six different places. What they found, what was common amongst them is that they purposefully restricted the number of calories that they ate in a day. Right? The Japanese have this concept and I must get the pronunciation right. Hari Hachi Bu. I think I've said it right. It means I hope you eat until you're only 80% full. Right? Not similar like India. You go to a wedding or a function. You've got stuff going down. It's the converse that we have here. But in Japan, they say, I hope you eat until you're only 80% full because your body, when it is under a certain degree of restrictive calorie intake for a limited period of time. Not every day. I'm not saying we need to starve ourselves. But intermittent fasting has been shown to be effective because you are creating a metabolic hit for a limited period of time that streams line the cells. It alters the fuel consumption within the body. And as I said, it's unlocking things that we're learning about every single day. It's just, it's really fascinating. And there's an incredible scientist, Peter Sinclair. I think his surname is definitely Sinclair. I'm not sure about his first name, but he's recently published a book called Lifespan. And it's, it's, it's, I'm currently reading it. And it's a fascinating piece of work on, on the medical literature around this topic. Yeah. So, so Marcus, just, you know, for the benefit of those people who come in late, would you, would you be kind enough to just show the cover of your book and so that people can, you know, sort of look at that. It's called at the human edge. I've read, I've not reached the seventh chapter. So I haven't sort of reached that. But fascinating book, which talks about how people in different kinds of extreme conditions, you know, whether it's, you know, Everest or space or scuba diving, Marina trench, the desert, all of that. I mean, it's really extreme situations and how the body can change. And what do we learn about managing our own selves? I just really found that fascinating. And, you know, of course this video is going to be there on all these sites that you are watching it on. So you can also go back and look back at all this advice that is there in terms of whether it's intermittent fasting or the kind of six nutrients that you should be putting, but I'm still trying to wrap my head around the fact that, you know, three kilograms of creepy crawlies inside you. I mean, that is like really, you know, how many trillion, did you say how many trillion a hundred trillion cells exist? Yeah. Gosh, we stand no chance, you know, because the number of cells is just one is to 20. So that's amazing. Yeah. So, you know, so this is where, okay, there's somebody who again wants you to repeat the name of the book. So just hold it up. There you go. You need to, you know, give this gentleman a special discounted rate for the book. I'm going to go back to asking you another question about, you know, here is this whole thing of what do we do about managing mental health? I'm equally concerned about that and we have the last 10 minutes of our conversation. I'd like to be able to really take away some things that you and I can do, you know, to take care of our mental health because of the fact this isolation, you know, I personally believe that I draw a lot of energy by meeting people. So, you know, there are all these conferences that are meetings and all that that I go through every single day online, you know, we are doing this online. There's an advantage, you know, geography is no longer constrained, et cetera, et cetera. But I think personally, I like to meet people, you know, and shake the hand and sort of look into their eyes and talk to them and, you know, share a meal with them. There is a tremendous benefit. I personally miss it. Is that me? Is there a reason for that? What does it do to human beings when we are deprived of human contact? No, absolutely. You know, we are social mammals. We are something that we share with so many primates as well, this construct of a community, language, culture, shared values. These are all things which are very important to us. And even if we look at the way we communicate with one another, 90% of communication is non-verbal. It's physical cues and these different aspects, even mirror neurons, right? People who look at the study around empathy and compassion. That's part of your brain firing that recognizes something in another human being and then you're adjusting yourself to that. So it's completely understandable why so many people are facing this challenge right now. I think a lot of that in addition to the lockdown is also the great uncertainty. There's a theory in human performance, which I speak about in the last chapter on mind over matter, which is called the central governor theory of change, which is where the body has an interesting fail-safe mechanism where the brain can override the signals it sends to the physical body to tell it to slow down and stop when it perceives there to be a danger. This is why when you're running a marathon, for example, typically, or any long distance, defined as more than 10 kilometers, typically about 65 to 70% of the way in, you have those thoughts in your brain, like, I should slow down, I'm tired, do I really want to do this? And anyone can perceive that in any other types of physical pursuit that they do. But what's interesting to note is whilst the body is trying to protect itself, at some point it lifts that and typically towards the end of a race, you actually see that your performance or your split, as we say in running times, is the fastest because there's something that goes on and you look at this and I went through four and a half million data points, there was a study that looked at four and a half million runners around the world and the same pattern is seen in every single marathon distance event around the world. It's ubiquitous to human beings. But what the difference is with this and the reason I bring this up to your question, Abhiji, is when you do not know what the final line is, what your distance that you're going to cover is, that mechanism breaks down and human spirit of endeavor collapses. James, Victor Frankl spoke about this in his book, Man's Search for Meaning. He who has a vital effort can survive anyhow that will. Exactly, exactly, exactly. So it's the same concept. So I think this has been a big problem for us during this period of time because after that initial honeymoon phase finished as we were talking about earlier, we don't know where the finish line is. Even today I was just reading and so I had my first vaccine shot a few days ago and today the South Africa government has just made an announcement that they may be looking to sell their entire stockpile of AstraZeneca vaccines because it's shown to not be as effective as we thought against the South Africa strain or possibly even the Kent strain in the United Kingdom. Now we are constantly playing catch up, right? It's going to take us at least three months to go back and figure out a new spike protein for the new vaccine, then produce it, roll it out. So for a lot of people in our minds, whether you're a business leader, whether you're someone who works from home, we don't know where that finish line is. So understandably, that level of uncertainty and stress that it's putting on our system is at levels that we've never been challenged with before nor do we know how to deal with it. So this is a very important phase for all of us around the world and I remind people that one in one of us has faced or will face over the next few months some form of mental health challenge. It used to be one in three in India before the lockdown began. It's now almost certain one in one and I feel that the first way of overcoming this is to rebrand mental health, right? When I talk about physical well-being, even the conversations that we've shared today, it's about incredible pursuits, right? Breaking through the finish line, reaching the summit, man stepping foot on Mars. When we talk about mental well-being, it's a person with a head in the hands. It's a melancholic Wagner background, right? It's grays, it's blues, it's blacks. What if we rebrand mental health? What if we sell a different story, a story where we celebrate our differences, where we expand inclusion and diversity to also embrace a conversation around mental health as well and therefore through the stories change the way that we view this as a potential condition and hopefully address the stigma which is the elephant in the room. So that's I think the first thing that people like you and I can do even on platforms like this is change the narrative, sell a new story. You talked about biohacks. What are some of the hacks we can use to be able to manage our mental health better in a situation like where we are? What are some two or three easy things to do that we can look at? I think the first theme is self-care and self-love is not selfish, right? I think that's an important thing for us all to get our heads around. Particularly leaders, we like to put everyone else first. We put the needs of the organization first. We put the needs of the family first. We put the needs of society first. But it's important for us as, you know, folks used to say put the oxygen mask on to help other people, right? So that's the first message, right? Let's enhance the self-love coefficient that exists in our world. And through that, we will have empathy. We will discover for ourselves that an investment in ourselves, physical, mental, and emotional is important. We won't look at it as an expense item on time. It will be an investment in our time. And there we can start to make changes. And I think the big change that we should all be more cognizant of is restructuring the opportunities for us to enhance our relationships, right? If you can't do it physically because you're either living on your own or you have elderly parents and you're acting as a shield, as you said, let's see how we can leverage the digital platforms to hack some of it. And I don't mean just call someone up and do a work call because that's transactional. Organize a coffee date with someone over Zoom or have a dinner meal together or a glass of wine or, by the way, tannins are great for, it's a biohack as well. It improves longevity. Red wine has been shown to do so. But just one glass. This is the biggest thing that you've shared. So you're saying just one glass and not just because it's healthy, you can have more of that. No, that's not what you are recommending. Exactly, exactly. Let's be careful. Anything too good in excess is bad for you. Everything in moderation. But jokes aside, I think we should we should now get smarter about how we're leveraging technology to our advantage. Yeah. And I would say cheers to that. Thank you so very much, Marcus. It was just incredible. I remember we met the first time, you know, when both of us were doing some work for Thrive, which is in Auffington's organization. It was lovely to have met you. And I'm so glad that we've had a chance to, you know, come back and talk about this. And hopefully some of the things that we have talked about have been beneficial to everyone. And if they want to reach you, is there an email that you can share or a Twitter handle that you can share? Absolutely. Absolutely. All my social handles are at docdocmranny, that's my surname, R-A-N-N-E-Y. So at docmranny, that's LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram. And my email is also the same, docmrannyatgmail.com. I welcome you to reach out and I'd be happy to engage. Brilliant. And thank you very, very much once again. And my own social handles are all listed there. It's just my first name, last name together. It's spelled that. Brilliant conversation. Marcus, it's such a delight as always. And I loved your book. I am recommending that people do take a look at it. It's something that you will always benefit from. Thank you once again. And see you soon next week for yet another interesting chat on dreamers and unicorns.