#737 - Dr Karan Rajan - Debunking The Internet’s Biggest Health Myths
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Hello, friends, welcome back to the show. My god is doctor Karen rogan. He's a surgeon, clinical lectur at the university of sunderland and an author. A lot of health advice can be extremely difficult to verify.

Does this actually make me healthier? Is IT grounded in science or wimsey? Thankfully, there are real doctors who we can ask that can determine science fiction for medical fact. Expect to learn why you shouldn't hold in your thoughts, what doctor Karen wishes. More people understood about digesting.

Why the best pro biotics, often aunt, found in the supplement section, what a day in the life of a surgeon is actually like, why ibs is on the rise, what you can actually die from a broken heart, and much more. This monday, alex homos joins me again for a huge three hour long episode. This was the most shared episode of all of twenty twenty three among the wish, so you do not want to miss this one.

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But now, ladies and gentleman, please welcome doctor Karen Roger.

Why should you never hold? In a fact.

you know, what patient did once asked me this, and this was an inspiration for me to make a statement or explanation about this. And, you know, thoughts is a gas. You know, it's a chemical. It's a bunch of chemicals.

And when you hold in a fought, there's a percentage of that fought vapor, which you defuse through the walls of the colon, through the walls of the interesting and eventually will go to your bloodstream and all the blood circulates and eventually goes to the logs where the waste products are. Then x hailed out. So there's a tiny percentage of your thought which if you hold IT in, go to your blast stream, go to the lungs and then be excel ed out.

so you will have you're onna breathe instead of fighting. If you don't.

you exact what? So you will literally without the fumes, if you hold in. It's physiology in science.

science, baby, this is what we here for. Uh, I always thought this, where does the gas from burbs come from? And why does IT never go away? You know, like you keep needing to bub over and over again. So if i'm not adding any gas in, that is like gas 的 breathing somehow。

Uh, a lot of the verbs are a by product with this couple of ways, A A byproduct of s wallowing. So if you chew a lot of gump, your swaling a lot of air, you drink a lot of sodas and physic drinks, you again, insole a lot of air and the sort of carbonated gas that you in. interesting.

And lastly, there will be a percentage of gas that your bacteria or the various microbes es in your gut will produce, and they can make the make their way upstream, as IT were. And there could also be a result of acid reflux as well. If you have acid reflux, there is a basically a floppy thinker between where your stomach attaches to the first of your smaller and testing, and you get reflux of some of the gases and juices and yet to the excessive bury yeah IT does seem.

you know, you've eaten a little bit too much or a little bit too quickly and a little bit full, like if this is just not stopping or just keep on working and over again, it's just gonna en until I guess i've my stomach c levels finally .

settled down yeah and there's actually a couple of hormones. Uh one hormones in particular called cockin and call A C, C K for short. And C C K actually delays gastric empty and slows down how much your stomach empties into your small and test so that homer is increased if you eat foods that are high in fat or spicy food.

So if you eat spicy food, the chemical caption in spicy foods or chili actually increases the production of C, C, K, calluses to kin. So there's more stomach content and there's more likelihood you can burp or have reflux. Same with fatti foods, similar, C, C, K production, more, burping more.

presumably with the spicy food, that is because your body doesn't want to transport too much of a very spicy thing through your digestive system too quickly. And with fat sum similar.

yeah. So it's just the nature of the fat molecules which slowed down digesting. So IT has more time to your body. But the case with chili is different, captain, our body react so weird to captain in so many different ways.

So cap, saying, is processed by our bodies essentially as sometimes a toxin, because IT irritate the cells and your body doesn't realize it's just spicy food. IT doesn't have a spicy recept. You only have receptions for, you know, sweet, sour, umm, I and savery spice is not a receptor.

So IT actually interprets that as heat because caption trigger and stimulates the heat receptors. So IT thinks something is burning inside. So I wants to play like, oh, hang on, i'm not gone to let you digest and IT stays up there. And so our body is a bit of a flame dd machine, you know yeah.

that's interesting. What do you think or what do you wish that more people knew about how digestion works?

So if you think about digesting, most people just think about the stomach. People would assume that the stomach digest everything like a big blender or a washing machine, and then that it's done, right? And the soft gus, the food pipe is just like A A big waste pipe.

Everything goes down. But actually the stomach doesn't really have much to say in digesting. The digesting mostly I occurs in the small, in testing.

And you've got a number of organs inside your absent, from the goal blood to the pancreas to the liver, and all of these various organs actually into plain interconnect with each other. And each step in that factory line of digestion is as crucial as the last one. It's not just the stomach.

In fact, the stomach is essentially a mixing bowl with things are mix together. And it's later on, the enzymes and the bacteria and everything kick in to really have a role to play in your digestion. So actually, digestive health, or got health, as people love to talk about that health these days, is more than just one part. You know, the sum of the parts is the real thing here.

What's I I keep reading about? I B S being on the rise. Gluten intolerance being on the right food. Food intolerance is increasing. What do you think is going on from your perspective?

So I B S I S will about syndrome is surprisingly quite common. And a lot of people think I B S is one thing. It's an umbrella term.

Ibs has lots of different subtypes. People can have things called ibs c, ibs d were actually, they are trigger by different foods. And one person's ibs trigger, for example, a type of commented food, can be non trigger ing for someone else.

And we don't really a hundred percent understand the courses of ideas because we don't really understand the human body to its fullest potential. And certainly, there is the interplay between the microbiome and what are the symptoms and manifestations of ibs. And with that in mind, the rise for ibs.

Why is that happening? Certainly, there is a huge role to play in the microbiome. We know that the microbiome is influenced by the diets we in.

Just so certainly, we are having increased number of ultra process foods, which can influence the microbiome negatively, maybe a more sedentary lifestyle. We know that lower exercise, more, less, less sleep. Again, these factors can have a role to play in negatively influencing the microbial. And all of these things can trigger a number of digestive issues. And I B S L tubal syndrome is one of them.

What's your thoughts on pro biotics? And called from supplements prebiotics, all of that stuff.

So I think there's a lot of these buzz was thrown out these days prebiotics post biotics, pro biotics and as a surgeon who deals with bald cancer, a lot of intensity issues, I have perhaps prescribed biotics, medical great probiotics two or three times in my entire career. Probiotics, the ones you can go to supermarket, pick up off the shelf, know yahoo done on whatever is for the average person.

It's not going to make a huge difference because the strains contained within these mostly unregulated off the counter or of the refrigerator section supplements they and not going to be present in high enough concentrations or bacteria units to actually have a significant role to play is just like pissing in the wind. And they're going to be effective enough in colonizing your god, which is what you want them to do. They will be wiped out by your digestive processes, the stomach acid, and they won't be able to compete or integrate with the existing bacteria that are in your gut.

Actually, you can get more of a benefit from probiotic rich foods, foods that have natural live microorganism caffeine combo, a greek yogurt, live yogurt which has strains um things like that you know sw crowd pickled vegetables. These are more effective than supplements. Supplements do work for a narrow range of conditions, rare types of pediatric um gestate inal issues. Someone's had anti biotic associated dia post uh bil surgery sometimes. So IT does work for a very limited scope of things yet.

Interesting I am. I went to a political fountain life in dallas here in taxes about four months ago, and they're a preventative medicine clinic. And IT is full body on my I hot and geography in CT scan had a an hour and twenty minute MRI of everything, a baLance can, good microbiome analysis, full body decks to scan everything, everything, everything, everything.

Then they run all of that through A A ton of A I to try and work out predictive factors when all of this data is put together. And that is a training set that training everybody else is at such, such a. And I found IT really instructive.

Thankfully, there was nothing dangerous or whatever in the but they did find for me a little bit of leaky gut syndrome and that was something that again like you know I like that didn't exist ten years ago. I never even heard anyone say that ten years ago. Um so since then I think I ve been using A A classroom product uh armrests which is actually really like uh and just trying to change up the date. But dude, Cathy is like just upgraded yog drink. It's IT for the people that do not kind of like a milk, like a thick milkshake I guess yeah .

like a father ted shake.

But IT doesn't taste for mental like for mental makes you think it's gonna kind of so like gone of milk, but it's not you can get some really, really nice ones and I massive fans, some team caffeine as well for the the system.

And you can't make IT at home. It's relatively easy to make at home. If you've got some cafe that you have bought over the council or you bought from a supermarket. If you save some of the cafe, you can use some of the old cafe to make a new batch from home when you get a bit of milk or something like that, and you add the old cafe to that and leave IT to the end overnight, and you've got a new batch of cafe.

I'm funny. Yeah, that's like a pineapple. I chop the head off IT turn IT upside down. New Grace of another paper.

Do you mention that the fact that euro, a surgeon, I think most people's understanding of what a surgeon does will be from some combination of doctor strange and like A, I don't know, twenty four hours and A N A. What is the reality of a typical day as a surgeon? Like .

reality of a typical day? So I would wake up around five thirty, and I am in work by around seven, seven, fifteen, because the work starts probably forty five minutes to an out before the actual survey happens. I need to go see the patients, review their scans, can send the patients.

So take them through what the tail, tell them about the risk of the Operation. And then, you know, that's not counting the night before or the day before me reviewing all of their information, their medical charts, their records to make sure I know the exact steps of what i'm going to do for that patient. Specifically, they may have some complicating factors, and it's also essentially running simulations about the surgery the next day before surging, just like an athlete wood plan, whatever root you're going to take, how they to combat an opponent.

It's sort of running through how I got to combat that strange anatomy for this patient. And on the day of the surgery as well, it's again, sort of briefly before knife to skin, thinking exactly what i'm gonna do. And I see that the sort of, uh, algorithm in my head, a tree of different consequences.

If this happens, I do this. If that happens, I do this. And, you know, have you seen the queens gambit? No.

I haven't, but I know that I should watch IT.

So there is weird scene in the quiz z gambit. Uh, SHE. Essentially, this produces chess player seize all the outcomes SHE illuc inmates, the outcomes on the wall of all the chess pieces, moving in different ways, in a somewhat, slightly less genius way than that.

I'm visiting, what's onna happen if I do that? If I cut that there and IT goes wrong, what can happen? How do I avoid that? So i'm running all these simulations and algorithms at a very basic level in my head.

And, you know, you just keep doing that renton repeat again and again again, and the surgery doesn't really end once you close off the skin. The surgery only ends once the patient goes home and is well for a few days because complications can happen, you know anywhere from during the surgery to ten days post up. So there's never really respite. We are like, okay, everything's gone well.

wow. yeah. What are the most intense and long surgery? Is the E.

O, what's the thing where it's on the docket? E, do right. OK. I need a couple of extra caffeine pills before I get .

started with this. Uh probably um when you have to do bow surgery, when someone's got bow blockage or bow obstruction and they've had multiple previous surgeries when I read someone surgical history and they've had lots of previous abdominal surgery, that basically means it's gonna several hours of Operating because they're very likely to have lots of scar tissue, what we call editions. And these editions are cobwebs of Scott issue that lined the abon and it's a forest in there and you have to slowly unpick all the scar issue and that is quite fraught with danger because you can accidentally nick a bit of in testing and then you need to fix that and you can take literally ten, twelve out sometimes and that is okay. This is a big deal.

wow. Is that the longest that you've done twelve us ah the longest sojer .

have ever done was probably closer to fifteen hours. And I was probably one on the worst days of my life as well. I miss my birthday, miss my birthday dinner with my parents from is around nine A M till midnight is when I Operated and IT was when I was assisting my boss years ago.

Uh, we essentially removed everything inside the person's provis. We removed their blood, their always their rectum, the usual a their summer tissue in their palefaced lining. And I just took forever fifteen hours. IT was brutal.

What a fantastic way to .

spend your birthday. And right, and I couldn't even on scrub to tell my .

parents i'm not gonna there course. Yes, you don't even. I mean, that got to be.

I need a bathroom break. You got to hold IT in for fifty hours. I need, you've got to be hydrate. Is someone come over with a little square water, a bottle like you are? Look, yeah.

they do. They are. They will come over under your surgical mask and they'll put a straw under there and you drink IT. And occasionally they will lift your mosque down and maybe people hero or something in just to keep your .

entry level .

nutrition for the year exact.

Yeah, how funny, man. yeah. We had a when we were flying from dubai to vancouver, when I was until with James, the videographer that James brought with this E. T. His birthday began when we departed dubai, so he had a thirty six hour birthday, which is the opposite of you, but he also got seventeen of those thirty six hours flying on a plane. So things around about exactly what's in the truth about you're good having more seaton in in IT, more feel good chemicals, being more determined of your mood than your brain is what sort of real.

But there is a lot of new ones behind got brain access or the got microbiota a brain access. You got, as you know, produces a lots of serotonin. You know, eighty percent or more serotonin is produced in your guard, but that serotonin doesn't cross the blood brain barrier, so that serotonin produced in the gut doesn't directly influence your mood.

So they're on certain food that you eat, which will produce serotonin, which will then improve your mood. However, that cereal, tony, which is producing the god, has a role to play in how well you digest food. Its paradol is and contract ability sort of coordinates the contraction of the intestine.

But the food you eat can influence, either positively or negatively, your. And those got microbes, and those got microbes can, as a by product of whatever you do to them, can then release certain neurotransmitters, which can then induce neurochemical signals via the vegas, now the information highway between your gotten brain, which can then influence your mood. So in the future, my prediction is that we will come up with specific medications, cause psychotic ocs, which you can eat or you can supplement, which will directly influence your mood because of their .

impact on the micro bio L M. A. Karen.

Uh uh if the energy is listening or watching, I know but yes, you know uh, there will be I think for consumer grade for the average person, I think we're probably about ten fifteen years away from that.

I remember a very traumatic new yeah eve when I was working at one of our events in manchester. So is at the birdcage. We'd sold this thing out. It's about two and half hours to drive back home. And I noticed about an hour into the event, maybe half nine. I was being really short with everyone, super snappy, very agitated, and I took myself to one side and had a word with myself, what's wrong with you? Like, what's going?

As I was doing that, I got a text from my business partners saying, mate, i'm trapped in the toilet in a rather event, which was in riverside in newcastle he says, I like it's not good if things aren't pretty for me right now and I turned out that there was no a virus going round at his son's first birthday party that we d both attended a day before and I thought or no, this isn't good so i'm two and a half hours from home, only one hour into a six hour event that i'm event managing and my business partner a way he's in newcastle strapped to a toilets so he he's definitely can't can't even help the people in you us a little on the guy it's in manchester so i'm like right now i'm going to be in for the long hall here and then other stuff happened to when I think back to some of the things I had to try fix in my nightlife career. We booked this guy for new years eve to come and play. It's very among sd j.

It's very highly a high demand period, obviously charge of the and before he came through, we'd asked, do you have a microphone because we need this majority got his own. Pa, yeah. And he arrived now, said, I might just bring your own microphones.

Y said, yep, yep. Got IT here. And I started talking to him.

What, through my teeth of not wanting to throw up or ship myself? Yeah, I start talking him about an hour before I was I R IT make, can we start to spin up some of the what we would call drops so him like one hour until new year thirty minutes? And ah I don't use the mike hang.

I asked to, could you bring your microphone? Yes, I can bring my own microphone, but i'm not A D, J, D uses the mike, that will. Alright, so and that happened. And then do we the power thing that set off all of the pyrotechnics that wasn't working. So I had to connect two, nine vote batteries together like that, like IT one into the other to get sufficient votes to like and i'm short cutting like trying .

like doing something yeah to try and .

set off all of this stuff at countdown. I'm doing the countdown and then anyway I drove home ah and the two and a half hours like pint into my seat, desperately trying to not throw up and then got home. He was the worst way to start new year. But my point to that disgusting story, my point is my mood knew that was something up way before I did. I know I took myself to one side to say why you being so short, like, what's up with you? And if I ever have a little bit of sort of indigestion or some sort of digestive discomfort, the first thing that goes, and the last thing that comes back is my mood.

Absolutely no. Interestingly, you have found this interesting, uh, the university of cork, they did these, a fecal microbial transplant studies where basically shit transplants, where they took the microbial from someone who is clinically depressed, and transplant ted that into a Normal mouse, and that mouse of the period of time was observed to display signs and symptoms of depression. They repeated the same thing with a human who had autism, confirmed autism, transferred the fecal microbial to another Normal mouse that didn't have any conditions, and then that mouse, that road and study, started display science and symptoms of autism, uh, which is fantastic. So that shows you how well connected the god is to our mood and the brain.

That's incredible. That's a while. I I have a friend here in Austin who is a like poop donor, a very highly paid podner.

So he's had to go through, I think, four stages of screening, uh, genetic testing, uh, lifestyle, diet, scrutiny, all this stuff. But they he sends off, he literally shits money. Yeah, he sends this. Often they recaptured and people use IT to help with the a digesting and and i'm not i'm doing what is this is a positive that they do what they literally be eating pook anyway.

So you can actually get um powder pop s that you are just like if IT in d capture or IT can be inserted as an animal or during a code Oscar py, they can actually put that microbiome in the code on for you, which we do medically a for inflammatory about disease treatment, we use poor transplants. D nh.

you might have used one of my friends. He might have imported IT from yeah Austin, texas. And I could have been inserted by you.

Your friend is a unicorn because, you know, that's the point. Not one percent of people are the golden purposes i've heard and a incredibly likeable .

tive i've heard yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And he had to go through all of these tests. Now he makes I mean, is like a successful business guy.

I'm not going to say who it's like a guy like a lot that is that yeah did literally shades money. I absolutely crazy. All right. So I talked about digestive and another horseman of the health apocalypse, sleep.

A lot of conversations on the show about sleep, the doctors, thw Walker's book and a massive fan of that, and that kind of really red held me on the importance of of focusing on sleep. But what is some of the other things? What are some of the less unknown things that you wish more people were focused on now or understood about sleep in its impact?

Yeah, is similar to you. I mean, I took a greater interest on sleep because of the negative consequences of my own sleep early on in my career as a doctor. So definitely that you know Sparked an interest in looking into the research and evidence.

And now there's a sort of fallacy that everyone needs to sleep eight hours. The eight hours sleep myth, everyone thinks, okay, you've gotta sleep this month of hours. And that drives a certain degree of sleep and health anxiety when you don't hit eight hours.

And we have within every cell in our body clock genes and clock proteins, which determine how much individual sleep you need as directed by your individual DNA. 所以 your required sleep maybe seven， seven hours or seven and half hours. Mine maybe six and a half or eight and a half.

I think there is a spectrum in which most of the population lies somewhere probably between six, six and a half and eight, eight and a half. The mass concentration will be in there. There will be some outliers who may get by philological on five thousand and some may need nine hours.

Uh but certainly the eight hour one size fitz's sleep dogma is incorrect. actually. That's been proven by science .

the likelihood that you have that actual gene mutation where you can survive. And I think it's like closer to four, three, three and a half hours sleep. I remember reading this a while ago.

The likelihood you hope is a lot of people go, oh, no, i'm sure I haven't had my testing done, but you know I am fine, four hours sleep on sweet man. The likely od that you have that mutation is the same likelihood as you being hit by lightning twice. That's the same number of people that have got that .

particular gene muto gene mutation very much yeah D E C two gene mutation. Supposedly mongo thatch had IT nica tesler had IT .

I think what's IT Polly? Facially, I think or buy faizi SHE slept.

oh yeah. So sort of into chunks of sleep. That's how well Victorians a sleep as well.

They would have a Normal sleep during the night, and then they would briefly wake up in the early hours of the night to do work. And then they would sleep again. Uh, but the by physic sleep pattern is not unusual.

And the modern version of the by pyy sleep pattern is probably what happens in a lot of meditation in countries where they have siestas. Because if you look at our twenty four hour cycle, there is a natural deep in energy and fatigue arises post Brantly. So after some lunch or some food, around twelve, one o'clock, there is a deep.

And energy level is also a slight deep in our temperature levels because our sleep is very closely linked to temperature. So actually, if you do have a nap around twelve, one, two P M, that is fine. And that's in keeping without Normal physiology. So nap or science.

have you got any idea about why my mood is so disregard ted when I wake up from a nap? And j how long do nap? Um I would guess with these ones i'm talking like more than fifteen minutes.

I'm actually getting into into a proper sleep cycle. Um does mean a couple of times we did IT on toy. You know when we're trying to just grab sixty minutes here or there because we know we're going to get straight up to this thing, but there is a few times what I mean, James would wake up.

We didn't want to speak to anyone with thinking, god, I got to get up on stage and actually be liable and whatever and you do after a little bit of time, people bringing you out of yourself. But I I certainly notice in myself that if I not, I wake up and my mood can be very discomposed later. So is that the .

kind of like a groggy, slightly hungry a feeling you're describing?

yeah. And then IT IT tends to actually impact kind of my my potiphar's energy as well. And there's, I would say, kind of an electric feeling to my body that that sort of anxious in some regards .

maybe yeah I think whenever have experiences that if five overreached the apple on read the nap, is that sleep inertia feeling where perhaps you've gone into two deep a sleep cycle or sleep face. And when you wake up, you judging yourself from the depths of a deeply sleep cycle. So there's not that gradual, gentle awakening that you'd have if you naturally woke up, and that sleep inertia where there's still some sleep hormones culling, slightly stressing anxiety, really equal emotion.

What's your protocol for naps? All that I know is once you push IT pass, suppose that you want to, you push, you pass about twenty to twenty five minutes. You're really getting into this is actually sleep and not an nap. And if you're going to do that, if you can try and hit ninety so you can get yourself into and back out of a phase. I missed anything.

No that absolutely but on I mean I am if I nap on a weekend, for example, that's the main time I have to nap um ninety minutes would be when I go to because I want something that substantial enough that would help me consolidate my memory, make me feel refresh, ed, at the end of IT. And I find it's easier to stick to nineteen ninety minutes then go in and out of twenty minutes because for me my sleeping due time is longer if I told, if I told myself I was gonna p for twenty minutes, IT would take me too long to actually get into the nap. First of all, the ninety minutes .

is preferable for the, yeah, my sleep latency been all over the place this year. I don't know what IT is. I think a lot of people feel this as well. You know, if you're busy during the day and even if you try do the digital detox thing, that three, two, one rule I think is really nice actually, if you familiar with that three.

two, one ah, is that the three hours before bed, two hours before bed yeah .

yeah so three hours before bed, stop eating. Two hours before bed, stop drinking. One hour before bed, stop using screens, which is unna that screens have been placed in with food and hydration is like united, Mandatory bottom of maza hierarchy of needs that people have.

Um I think that's been really great and it's so funny. Like I know that mean healthcare stuff is kind of a bit cheesy and it's almost a little bit juvenile and simplifying things down, but that's what helps people retain principles. So yes, I would I would .

maybe sometimes if you're really struggling with sleep at a ten before the three two for the coffee, because the half life of coffee is upwards of eight hours. So if you were a habit of coffee, drink up. You know you are having cups of coffee at two, three P M, and your bet time is eleven. P M is still likely to be a decent percentage and concentration tion of coffee in your bloodstream when you're going to bed, which is gonna diregus ate, you sleep.

I'm a fast cafe metabolic that came out from some of the test that I did. And I get stealth caffeine on an evening time by ordering a diet coke, forgetting and a day cocoa. And it's I think it's only maybe forty five makes of caffeine is not very much. But if you're not two of those back that's not far off and espresso and and I just done but yeah I can feel the man and he's another thing right. Is there any evidence between phases of the moon and quality of sleep?

Um I think the evidence there for that that's published that I I ve not seen any evidence linking the two.

Certainly, if there are times when the moon is more luminous and brighter than usual and you don't have black out curtains and the moon is shining through your window so there's enough light getting into your room that's affecting your sleep, potentially you could see mechanistically where they could be a way that that would affect you sleep. But if you're in a black out room, you got black out curtains, which you are iconic. Do i'm not influenced by these external lightning? Ces, so no.

you would think the same thing. Uh, and yet there's been a few times where it's everything is Normal routine as as Normal and I can't get to sleep until three or three thirty in the morning. And there was A A day when we were all in dubai, everybody sleep was right.

People that we been with, people that we hadn't been with, people who have gone to about eight o'clock, people who have gone to Better two in the morning, everyone was fucked. And sure, in a full moon. So i'm non conspiratorial when IT comes to the horse copes thing.

But I reckon, I think there might be something that one of the thing I was having a conversation with a friend this weekend who's A D J. And we were talking about hearing and improving and protecting your hearing. Is there anything that people should be aware of when IT comes to that?

You know the the heels, which helps us transducer and then in basically translate the sound waves into electrical signals, which are brain and interprets sound. Those are directed by the hair sales in our is and maybe about sixteen thousand hair cells. You are born with all the hair sales you never have once you destroy them, that is IT uh, and they detect various frequencies.

So you know that feeling where you go to, I don't know, a cricket match or a tennis match, concert or very busy place where is is constant hum. And then you go somewhere quiet and there's that ringing feeling in your is that is your hair sales being bent by the sounds and they are kind of unbending. That is that sound and that's the process you are experiencing.

And if you party hard for long enough, you know nike clubs and loud music all the time, if you're in a band, you're singing, you going to concerts, you can long term damage those heels. Are those old rockers of the sixty seventies and eighties. They've got a lot of hearing impairments.

Like olios borne is essentially death because he never wore. Those are plugs that would protect his hearing. And that is the risk with these heels, where, you know, unexpected sources can damage those. And once they gone, there is no, you know, reprove at all .

that wild. At my old business partner, my former business partner, dave, had a hearing assessment done and I think he had lost fifteen db off the bottom and and and ten db off the top end. So he he's really dimension hearing from we stood inside or outside nightclubs for a decade in half and he's still going.

And none of us had nicely molded plagues that would not be a fuck on to take out when we went outside and whatever. And now you can get custom molded ones with a tiny little filters, I V A little throw that fills us through. So that IT means that if you do go outside to go and speak to people, you can still look quite easily here what they're saying without it's sounding like you're under water.

Yeah, but yeah, yeah. I do. I mean, thinking back to my nightlife career and some of the sound books that we to be in and D. J. Would just want more monitors.

They want to hear, with full richness, what's happening out in the club, also their party, that with the boys are, they got like chicks in the boot of, they don't want you to be. Well, why can't we hear the music out there? Why is the only coming through your headphones? Oh, don't worry about that. I'm actually protecting a hearing like that's not a big rockstar thing to say um yeah, what was that thing about plucking your nose has speaking of has inside your head yeah .

so when you got different types of nose hair, you've got the deeper, longer vibrating y um and you've got all the types of nose hair and they do a lot of jobs. And the main jobs of the nose hair, apart from looking out of place, is that they actually filter microbes, dust particles and potentially infectious causing agents getting into your delicate moist in airlines, ings your airways.

And when you pluck those, you obviously increased risk of things getting in and your removing that filter system that's there. But actually, you can increase the risk of micro abortions every time you plug something, just like when you pluck a hair on your hand or somewhere else, you create a small opening, a mico Operation or a micro o cut, through which things can creep in bacteria from your skin, in a staff of a caucus species from your skin, can creep inside the bloodstream. And that region of your face, the triangle on your face, from the bridge of, you know, to the tip of your top lip, and a triangle which forms there, as actually known as the danger triangle, where there's a very close association between the drainage, the Venus, the vein drainage to your brain and the nose as well and there's something known as the cabinet sinus. And if you get a blood stream infection in the cabinet sinus, that can lead to all sorts of very horrible things like many enjoy clots um and in rare cases death, although that is quite rare. I mean the average person blocking their nose is not to die, but it's not a zero percent chance of that happening.

I was in divide to do that live show couple of weeks ago, and I needed a haircut. So I spoke to one of my friend's George, who lives up there, and I said, who who usually does your hair? So he sends this go over.

And he was like, you know, perfectly like, nicer and q see or whatever, but also was a boxer. So he was like, kind of hard court. He is from lithium.

Interesting check, interesting in check. But he had gone full hab b mode with the so she's getting the little like the wax, putting the wax on the on the inside of the the eyebrows. She's got wax in the ears, like doing the wax in the ears and the wax wax in the nose, and she's like pulling IT out.

Uh, that that was a real, a real experience. So maybe not to be done again. And if I do have my hair cut from her, I can actually say, my doctor a, do not. My doctor, a doctor told me i'm not allowed to have this done because of my feb release or whatever IT .

was called vibray. Yeah, you got to protect the viBrant.

am. Am trying my best. What about people who can do need to deal with pain more effectively? Have you got to any tips for how people can can deal with IT?

You know, a lot of the time in the clinic, I see people with chronic abdominal pain or other other sorts of chronic pain. And i've found anew tally and actually looked at up and its evidence space as well. When you explain something to someone, explain how something works.

For example, in the case of pain, if you explain to a person why they're getting pain, the scientific, physiological reason why they're getting IT, that simple act of them, understanding their pain actually increases their pain through hold and low as their pain perception as well, was almost like a jet mind tric. You know, you just you almost dump en down their pain. And the interesting thing about pain is that there isn't a direct collet just between tissue trauma and amount of pain that you will a because a lot of the pain is modulated by what you think.

So is someone is getting an injection or you know, a vaccine, whatever they're getting. If you asked them to look away from the injection that will illicit less pain, then you watching the injection go into your skin. So again, that is visually, you're not getting the signals and that's dumpling down your pain perception.

Because you're not getting the visual input, there are lots of things that you can do mentally to dampen down the pain. There was an interesting case report from many years ago of some a person who was admitted to the emergency room like a doctor wrote this case report up. He sees a man in the emergency room and he's he worked in a construction site and he's got a big nail that's going through his boot and presumably scaring his foot so he's screaming in agony like I got this nail and my going through my foot, i'm bleeding.

I'm gna die. And what they do is they remove the boot, first of all, to see, you know, the damage. And cy, what happened? And IT turns out the nail is not going anywhere.

There is foot IT stopped to buy the boot itself. So actually his foot is completely fine. Just that perception of IT was going through was enough to cause that pain.

And it's almost like a placido and noble effect that you creates in your head about pain. So in a similar to cold water exposure, initially, IT may be painful because you're expect acting IT to be horrible. But if you expect IT to be nice and you could enjoy IT, you can actually improve that experience.

There's something interesting about cold exposure island from huberman, that is, you can be relaxed when you get into the tub and that will make your experience much more enjoyable than being stressed about IT. But what you actually want to try to list, IT, is that stress. So his advice is to go in with a sense of aggression as opposed to a sense of relaxation.

So for me, my favorite way to do IT is to just slowly sort of lower myself in, get up to my neck, put my hands in, and then just very gently put through my nose and countdown from one hundred eighty. If anyone wants to know how to actually stain about a cold tub for three minutes, just count down from one hundred and eight IT will be difficult between sort of one fifty and sixty, then after the first bit find, and then after that, you find as well. But what he's saying is that part of the cascade of responses that he wants to have happen, or that would be optio to have happen, is something that a little bit more fear based and a sort of activating, I suppose. We did N A D, we did A N A D drip this week. So me, James, of my house mate, zack, have you done one?

You know what that feels like? I'm not done what i've given A N A D to someone but not have not had IT myself.

okay. So it's not very comfortable anyone that had IT will say it's not it's not an enjoyable experience at the time. It's a very unique category of pain.

So um they give you is a zoo l friend zo fran anti anti notion okay yeah um so they give me that because you can sometimes get nauseous with IT. Um it's a unique category of pain because it's one that you think or know is making you Better and it's one that is not associated with damage. And this time bounded.

So you know that as soon as that bags finished, it's done, you know that you're doing IT in service of you being Better. And it's not because something snapping or breaking or going to going to be be ruptured or whatever. So your relationship in the story, the italian ourself about the pain is very unique, is not many category of discomfort that can be like that.

And you got ta pain in your stomach. Oh my god, like it's it's my appendix. It's gonna low or whatever. But yeah, I just I really enjoy from a mindfulness perspective, I really enjoyed playing with that sensation.

What does this mean to me? What's the story i'm telling myself about this pain? Like how can I find more intrigue in this sensation is a very unique opportunity for me to be able to see this and not layer IT with fear and concern and worry and stuff like .

that interest in that, that certainly fear will amplify your pain perception. So you yourself, it's hard to do. But I know, especially people dealing with chronic pain n, but you can up regulate or down regulate your perception of pain depending on how you put your spin on IT.

That's interesting. What about I health? How can people keep .

their eyes health optimized? Well, I health now more than ever, there's you could say there's a my opie epidemic, a short side, this epidemic because people are just on screens on all the time. And when you're on screens all the time, laptops, mobile phones, tvs, whatever you've got watches in a smart watches, our eyes, the muscles which help our eyes focus on nearby objects are constantly activated.

And that actually, over time, changes the shape of the idol, uh you know becomes less round and more rugby shaped. And this can affect long term. I have causing ice strain, I fatigue.

Um so I I genuinely think people do need to look up from screens a lot more. I know it's really ironic are saying this and not having conversation by all health because you know being virtually having a chat. But yeah I think we are we are addicted to smart phones in constant training down and you know, wearing a ezor.

What is a good protocol for people to try offset that?

You me personally, I ve spent a lot of hours reading, revising for surgical exams of the years and put pouring over, you know, textbooks and various things. And i've found that just breaking IT up and doing something called the twenty, twenty, twenty.

So every twenty minutes you have a break from whatever you doing, uh and you you know just twenty minutes and you get up and you look somewhere twenty feet away and then you go back into IT off another twenty minutes and just giving yourself a bit of a break. You know, every twenty minutes you should have some sort of eye break, uh, where you are defocusing your eyes. You're not so intently focused on one thing and you look into the distance, into a horizon, into a broader vista or a broader view, allow your eyes is almost, you know, d focus and defocusing your eyes. And looking at a broader picture helps to activate the parasympathetic nova system where you sort of down regulating your stress response. Because when you are focused on something, whether it's closely looking at a page on a piece of paper or closely looking at a moving object that's close to you, that is some sort of stress response your address in is Spike at that point and defocusing offsets that somewhat.

One of my favourite triggers is to remember that you have all of this on the outside of your vision and if you're looking at something or anything, and a really easy parasympathetic activation is to just allow your focus kind of ease out onto the sides, even if you're remaining focused on what's in front of you being shot, but allowing the width of your own vision to kind of come into view and to be a part of your like silence network, I guess you'd say, and that's just so nice. It's such a lovely trigger that and a nice slow breath out is about this quick of a way to just i'm down regulated and yeah and and .

what exactly what you've describing there is known as opposite flow. So you know when your cycling uh around and you're constantly seeing both what's in front of you but also all these things passing you or if you're taking a hike through nature, you've got this broad VISA. So you've got both the combination of a broader view and it's a moving broadview as well, which further stimulates the paris to take nervous system.

Does something about natural eye movement down regulating a middelhoff sponge, isn't there?

I I I think, I mean, i'm no expert specifically on the eye, but in the eye, and the retina is part of the brain. So there are a lot of things to do, the eye that directly impacts the brain. And you know, I have no, I wouldn't be surprised if there were certain trigger or certain types of movements that did influence your perception or fear or anything like that as well.

I think object flow is probably one of the big movies for what i'm talking about. But I seem to remember learning from human man again, that does something specific that cause as you you're moving through an environment, things are coming past you and you're looking from left to right. And I remember he is so cool, man, when you test stuff in your own life and then science comes along, I guess science was probably already there.

You just didn't know about if someone comes along and informs you about the science and years and years old doing this morning walk thing. And sometimes i'd wake up and i'd feel a little bit kind of ancient in my body, in my mind. I'd have thoughts just speculating in a way that I didn't want. And i'd find that after fifteen minutes of the same looper used to doing newcastle, I get back and I just feel a lot Better like the world was kind of, the world was a bit rosier and, uh, I remember just really enjoying that experience to the point where I think the morning walk is the most consistent thing I i've done from a habitual perspective over the last maybe ten years and uh then yeah hero optic flow and this sort of down regulation of the a make dealer and I oh well, that was maybe part of what I was feeling.

Yeah absolutely. And and I think the routine is key as well. I mean, that sounds like when you went on your morning walk in newcastle, there was a moment where you are by yourself, uh, just with your own thoughts.

And I think sometimes the act of just doing nothing helped to Spark creativity. And it's a it's a form of mindfulness, whether you acknowledged or are just being with your own thoughts. And you know, is quite coming.

What about slowing cognitive decline? I know that alzheimer's, parkinson's, dementia, general cognitive decline in this kind of another hot topic at the moment. What's the eighty twenty from that?

yeah. I mean that as a doctor, that is genuinely one of the diseases that scares me the most. I used to think IT was cancer, and as someone who deals with cancer and with all cancers and other types cancers, I think the human race has gained some sort of would hold in the fighting against cancer with various trials and medications that we've got coming out.

But alzheimer's still seems to be the outpost that we haven't quite got to yet. And figuring that out, although there are some interesting trials about monopole and anti bodies, which can reverse potential alzheimer's, revert, you know, our brains are all slowly turning to mush, whether we like the fact or not. How can we slow down the decay? And and for me, it's very basic things that we need to start setting into our habits now because the clinical signs of alzheimer, they don't start until maybe are in your sixties, seventies and eighties, but the first seeds are planted in your late teens, twenties and dirty.

So our sleep habits notoriously bad when people are in the teenage years or twenties, and sometimes even thirties, especially nowadays with netflix and various streaming services, and less tiktok, the schoolhouse les. So poor sleep and chronic poor sleep can prevent the amount of brain wash that happens during those sleeps cycles. You know, we have this, the read response fluid wish.

What is watches the brain of, uh, all the toxic protein build up that doesn't happen in such an efficient way if you don't sleep well. And those toxic proteins, the ammo loyd beter packs and the tell proteins can accumulate and actually call europe to generation over time. Same thing with if you don't exercise enough, you don't get enough regular blood flow to the brain.

Um again, diet has a role play as we know the microbial, its interaction with the brain and the gut that has a role to play, but also social contacts as well. If you look at these blue zone areas where people live to one hundred centenarians and sometimes even longer, they have great social networks and social contacts, you know, where humans are social creatures. So we crave, on a physiological level, some degree of a network, loyalty and community as well.

One of my friends, john y, talks about a the keystone decisions. He called them getting a dog is a keystone decision for him. It's a an individual decision. Downstream from that, there are turn of other things that end up coming along for the ride.

So you going to get more steps in and you're sleeping, wake cycles going to be up and you're going to have to have next journal centavo because something else is dependent on you. So on a soul, and I think that, you know, pushing to spend as much time on the evening, trying not to eat on your own, trying not to eat with the screen, you know, really relatively simple rules, three, two, one row. You know, this is something easy for me to follow.

John Stevenson and told me about this this year. He has a role where every meal that he has on the evening time has to be with someone and has to be with somebody even if he's going to like call on the phone, uh, with these ipods, know whatever. So because you in the house, in his own, our travel, whatever and yeah, you know it's such a keystone decision to think downstream from the relationships that you have.

What if you got well, you're out of your own head. You're talking a little bit more. You're probably eating more slowly, even from a digestive perspective.

Maybe the person you would say, say, say, what did we go for a walk and you go, oh yeah, what did we go for a walk and going for a walk after you ve eating fantastic for digestion insula a sea blood, blood. Uga, ah, yeah, that's that's a that's a big one. Finding finding people that you can does I mean, going around the internet the moment that guys can't eat lunch without youtube ban.

So this dude, phones were out of battery. He's absolutely starving, but he has to wait for the phone to boot back up before he can start the lunch, which is already in front of him. But it's IT it's it's to mean because it's true. P because of how many people can't choose to eat in front of screens. And i'm you know, in my less discipline days I do to yeah and if you if you .

look at a lot of these military an cultures and even um you know those who of asian cultures, african cultures, they're all about big shared meals, right whether it's lunch, breakfast or dinner. You've got the elders of the family, the grandparents, you've got the mother and father, you've got the grandchildren, you've got uncles. And it's like a big, big where everyone is there with each other.

And even in um japan, in okay hour, the island of okinawa know you ve got people you know who are friends with each other for decades, you know their friends for over fifty years and they have these little tribe called the aai and you know they help each other when they are in financial struggles, emotional struggles, stress in their lives. So that support network, even something as simple as just a meal with someone, has a in a significant huge impact on your health. And this is, you know, not just wish you was SHE brow science.

If you actually look into the evidence of companionship and heartbreak, when someone loses someone they loved, they can actually die of a broken heart. And this is called tackled sobs, cardio biopathogen. Your heart changes in a way where IT causes such a significant, that, that huge negative event in your life. So you, I don't know, wife, fifty years, passing away, the flood of stress response chemicals, a drennan quarters, all in very many other things, has such a huge impact on your physiology of your, that IT causes the type of a heart attack. And you die of literally a broken heart.

That's wild. My mom, my mom and dad's dog, two years ago, two years or three years ago, I can't remember um passed away um IT was super and and there was two dogs, one that was ill, another one that was old within five days I think, or ten days of the first one dying, the second one who died as .

well but they go, yeah can ship in an increasing stress.

all of that. What about stress? You know, it's kind of, again, another buzzword that people thrown around. What when I think .

about IT is I understand .

the churring ic. Stress is the thing that we need to be concerned about. The stress in small doses is that but how do people know if they are stressed on a daily basis after a while? That's just life to you.

you know yeah I think you know it's interesting. So a lot of people do think that maybe stress is just a psychological state. That is something to do with your mind.

And you you'll obviously be stressed if you feel bad or whatever. But actually, stress invoke of physiological responses. Well, stress effects.

So many different organ systems are, for example, stress can cause break out of very skin conditions. They can accept ate a lot of skin conditions like x ma da rose asia. You can get uh aconites out with stress. You can just regulate, you're guta as well. We know the brain and the guta intricate connected in into twin. So if someone's got certain types of inflaming bow disease, like outside of colitis or chrome, or even ulto balls in drome states of stress can cause diary, or in some cases the other way, and cause constipation or abdominal pain, a lot of auto immune conditions, like remote authorities, stress worsens the symptoms of that. So actually, every organ system you look out from your immune system when you're stressed, the number of natural killer cells, the type of White cells which help you, fights of cancer and viruses, actually plumet if you stressed, because stress itself is an imo oppressive response.

What's that? I remember reading about this that during periods of high stress, it's often, people sometimes don't get ill, but that as soon as the stress finishes, as soon as they hand in the decision, as soon as they complete the project for work, they rebound and find that they get incredibly ill. Have you got any idea about what the mechanism is that working?

Now if I had to have an educated guess, that would probably be some sort of compensatory response by your body that 就是 needs to survive。 You is on survival mode where you know um you hear these reports of people being in accidents and somehow they've manage to lift the car so someone's leg can be pulled off from the car.

They display superhuman strength for that particularly scenario and that can be explained by increased amounts of stress response chemicals. I suspect that would be something similar in the case of, you know, you're facing a deadline or chasing a deadline and that stressed response keeps you a float, but actually you're about to break and as soon as that event is over, you are broken and those cracks they start to appear. That's what I .

would yeah, I think it's not I seem to remember that wasn't far off you. It's kind of like a protracted homes is response thing that you've got going on with regards to the lifting cars off of children and legs and stuff like that. Another interesting thing that is sound like science fiction but we have a um like a rate limit on what our brain will allow our muscles to do because if our brain just allow our muscles to do whatever they wanted, you would snap your shit significantly more frequently than we end.

I brush in a kill ly three years ago so I know frequently we um but yet and if you think ety hotel is really cool story you heard him him tell the story about when he first live fit five hundred key los so going for the dead lift world record and he talks about the fact that he for in however long before in his warm up routine envisioned a car on his daughter and he walks out and, you know, does this thing but he gets, he does this one left IT takes ten seconds, I guess, to do this thing and he's immediately put on A A ventilator is blood pressures off the child, heart rate through the loop. His ice turn blue. People going, look at the video of him. He's got, he hasn't blue wise. If you go to watch the video of him is ice turn blue is crazy so yeah, those single, formative extreme to the stress driven, a journey controlled instances of people doing stuff, wild shit comes out of them.

Yeah, I think you know you're rights. I mean, there is a certain degree of stress that we need. And that whole misses that you mention.

It's the same as when you eating vegetables, right? A lot of people talk about, there are various biz, all people online who talk about how vegetables are bad for you. You should cut them out because they contain anti nutrient or defense chemicals in the plants. And yes, they do. And technically, at a very microscopic level, they are poisonous for us because those defense chemicals do poisonous. But actually, it's such a small amount that is actually beneficial for us because IT is that process of whole misses, just like cold exposure, that small amount of stress ease beneficial for us and allows the body to respond to that and eventually grow over time and improve.

Talk to me about the role of all in well being.

I, yeah. So I mean, this is another thing which can hope to offset or delay neurotic generation and brain atrophy. And it's just that profound sense of potentially doing something new, seeing something new and just experiencing new things.

And that is all he doesn't have to be. Always, you need to go and see a wonder of the world. I can literally be you going out into nature and being exposed to all, and being inspired by something, by someone, something, and act, uh, either yourself for seeing something else. And you know, these are all positive. Emotions which ultimately are good for you so .

strange to think about all as an emotion and no one talks about IT people about all manner of emotions but dread even dread which is kind of I guess in some ways the opposite of all um people talk about that I think it's kind of been as anxiety or fear or or whatever um but yeah all just IT needs like we need to make all great again it's need bra a part of my garden in between we have two houses here and in between the main house and the other house i'm working through this, this really clear view of the night sky.

He was so clear in Austin here last night, even just that tiny little bit of looking up at the sky. So lovely is is just again the same as that I went on a morning walk and IT made me feel Better. I can't explain the mechanism. I don't know why is this, just woo luck. Ultimately, if IT makes you feel good and you know that it's not destructive, it's not making you feel good because it's crack or because it's IT process foods, I like just like recent repeat yeah all .

of these things if you really look into IT and you boil IT down to something and you want something tangible to labor, that as it's a meditation experience, it's uh it's a form of mindfulness or bringing calm to your body, right? Uh, whether you're just walking like, you know you you walking routine morning walk in newcastle or looking at that night sky IT is a form of not focusing on nothing， but also focusing on everything at the same time.

That is the art of mindfulness, and that is what you're doing sometimes unintentionally, when you odd by something. Nothing else is in your field of focus. Just accept that one or inspiring act.

Elia government, let's bring this one home. Why should people go? They want to keep up to date with you and check out all of the stuff that you ve got.

Uh, you can check me out. I'm like a virus. I'm everywhere I am on youtube, instagram, tiktok, facebook, wherever you wanna me.

New book as well.

Yeah, this book may save your life. You know, we cover a lot of the things we talk about here and hopefully more to hopefully save life.

Amazing turn. I appreciate you. Thank you much.

Thank you, Chris.