Stressed? Overwhelmed? Tired? Eat, Sleep and Live Better with Dr Rangan Chatterjee
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This episode was recorded on Camaragal land. Hi guys, and welcome back to another episode of Life Uncut. I'm Brittany. And I'm Keisha. And today we're going to talk about something that affects every single woman I know, every single person I know, but today we are really going to hone in on women.

Think about the last time you spoke to a friend. When did you run into somebody and say, hey, how are you going? And they answered with, I am great. I've been having so much fun lately. I'm super relaxed. I'm loving my life. It's not often that you hear that response. The most common response is,

Overwhelmed. Stress. Flat out like a lizard drinking. Can't sleep. Running around chasing my tail. Running around after the kids. Anxiety is high. Haven't had a day off in weeks. I feel like that is the most common response. I do too. And I just feel like even within myself...

I just have this constant feeling of not being able to quite catch my tail, like not being able to quite catch up. You know, we joke a lot about the whole, oh, this week's been really stressful, but don't worry, next week will be better. But then we just keep on saying that time after time after time. And next week's worse. Exactly. And stress is something that I think we are all experiencing to such a large extent, but none of us

really have particularly easy and simple ways to break that stress down and to reduce it in our lives. And that's why today's guest is the wonderful Dr. Rangan Chatterjee. Now, he is a practicing medical doctor. He's got over two decades worth of experience

He is also a writer. He's written over six books. He's hosted TV shows for over a decade, and he has one of the most popular podcasts in the world in the health and wellness category. It is called Feel Better, Live More. And I think we all underestimate just how much stress affects our lives and affects our body.

mentally, spiritually, physiologically, the whole kit and caboodle. And the best thing about Dr. Chatterjee is he really breaks it down to make it simple. It's not complex. He wants to make it palatable because he genuinely cares about changing people's lives. So from your 23 years practicing medicine, what do you think are some of the most common issues women are facing? I know from the outside, from people in my life and myself included, I feel like burnout and overwhelm are the things that seem to be consuming everyone's lives. Yeah.

Yeah, I would agree. I think stress, fatigue, burnout, overwhelm seems to be the symptom of the day, right? I mean, you're asking for women. I think a lot of men feel that as well, but specifically with women, I would say absolutely. That is a huge issue. I think it's getting worse. And I think we're looking at it the wrong way, actually. One thing I've realized over my 23 years of practice now is that

Stress doesn't just come from the outside. We think it does. We think stress is only to do with what we have going on. I've got to do this. I've got to do that. I've got to pick this person up. I've got to do that. My boss has asked me to do this. That is true. Those things are all stressors. At the same time, I would say for most of us, the majority of stress we experience is generated by ourselves.

What do I mean by that? This was probably the key learning in my life a few years ago, which is probably the number one reason why I generally feel calm, happy, content, generally in control of life, even though I have a busy life.

Because I realized that we have the power with our minds to frame every situation. We can take what I call a victim mindset to life. And I say that with compassion. I honestly do. I'm not blaming anyone for that. Or we can say what I call the architect mindset to life, where we understand that we get to frame every single situation. And so...

You know, it's something that until you get it, it seems like what you're talking about, right? But I'll tell you how I got this. One of the most powerful conversations I've ever had on my own podcast, which has been running for seven and a half years now, is with a 93-year-old lady called Edith Eager.

Now, when I spoke to her, she was 93 years old and she was telling me about her childhood. Now, when she was 16 years old, she got taken to Auschwitz concentration camp with her sister and both her parents were murdered within two hours of getting there. Right. She's a 16 year old young, you know, young lady, 16.

And two hours after her parents have been murdered, she's asked to dance and perform for the senior prison guards. And you know what she said to me? She said, Rangan, listen, I never forgot the last thing my mother said to me. My mum said to me, Edith, never ever forget. Nobody can take from you the contents that you put inside your own mind. So she then tells me when I was dancing in Auschwitz,

I wasn't actually dancing in Auschwitz. In my mind, I was in Budapest Opera House. There was a full orchestra playing. There was a full house. There was beautiful music. It was wonderful. And I'm thinking, your parents have been murdered. You're literally in a death camp and you're reframing this in your mind. And there's many things she told me, but the final word she said to me, which relates to your question is, she said this, she said, Ronken, I have lived in Auschwitz

And I can tell you the greatest prison you will ever live inside is the prison that you create inside your own mind. Wow. And I'll tell you, Brittany, Keisha, the penny dropped for me that day. I thought, that's what we all do. We go around the world and the car driver cuts us up and we get stressed and angry. And we feel that it was the car driver that made us stressed and angry.

But it isn't actually. It's our response to the car driver that's making us angry. I relate to that so much. And I've spoken about this and we wrote about it in our book. But I spent a month with this Buddhist monk. And the one thing, the big takeaway that I took from his learnings was that

Your whole life and quality of life depends on your reaction to the given situation. It's not the situation because that's happened regardless. You can't change it, but you can change the way you think about it. You can change the way you deal with it and you can change the way you move on. And I still try to put that into practice now. I even had road rage this morning on the way here. And then I had to stop myself for a second and think, why am I so angry? I can't change what is happening right now.

Yeah, that is such a beautiful example. And there's so many things there. First of all, even if we know this stuff, it doesn't mean we won't still do it, right? So as you said, you had road rage this morning. But you're at least aware now that actually, you know what, I was generating that stress. Like it wasn't the driver. It was actually me. I didn't need to. That's the key learning for people because...

Why I'm so passionate about this idea is, yes, it relates to your contentment and your happiness, but it also relates to your health, right? And this is the big thing I try to outline in my latest book, Make Change at Last. I try to say, guys, the reason why we're struggling to make change is that

that actually last in the long term and we keep trying to think why can't I give up sugar? Why can't I do this? Why can't I do that? Is I think we forget about internal stress. So let's use the car driver as an example, right? So everybody's

We all know that feeling when we're driving our car and someone cuts us up and that we might start shouting or going, you know, stupid driver, shouldn't have a license. Whatever story, whatever our version of that is. What we do in that moment is we're creating internal emotional stress. That internal emotional stress is not neutral. You will have to neutralize it in some way or another. And how do most of us try and neutralize it? Sugar.

caffeine, alcohol, two, three hours sort of doom scrolling on Instagram, whatever it might be. Those things are a response to the stress that we created by the way we interacted with that neutral situation. And once we learn to go, wait a minute, maybe I can train myself to not go mad every time a driver comes into my lane because I used to be that guy.

And I'm not anymore. I've become aware, first of all, and little by little by practice, I couldn't do it. And that night I was like, ah, Ranga, you know what? You did it again today, didn't you? Next time you don't need to act like that. Just like if you're going from the sofa to a 5K, we understand that you can train your body physically, but you can also train your mindset physically.

And so going back to your original question, loads of women are struggling with stress, overwhelm, fatigue. I'm not at all saying there aren't external stresses on women. There absolutely are. But what I'm also trying to say is that actually a lot of the stress in our lives is by the way we look at the situation. And if we learn to look at situations differently, often we won't feel as stressed.

Dr. Chatterjee, something that I've heard you speak about before that is kind of related to this whole mindset shift around food in particular, like you just mentioned, a lot of us seem to struggle with the whole sugar craving, the whole like it gets to a certain part of the evening and we scurry away into the kitchen and we'll find whatever we can in the pantry or in the freezer or in the fridge.

because we're just trying to kind of feel something that we describe as a sugar craving. What's your take on emotional eating and why is it that, especially when we're fatigued, we're burnt out and we're stressed, so many of us are kind of turning to this little buzz that we're trying to get over nighttime before we go to bed? Yeah, it's a great question. And I think, again, this is the big missing piece when we talk to people about

food or improving the way that they eat, people are eating not just for physical hunger, they're eating for emotional hunger as well, right? And if you're eating for emotional hunger, you don't need another diet bot telling you about the principles of healthy eating, right? You already kind of know that. You need to understand what are these internal triggers that

One of the exercises that I love and I've been doing with my patients for years is called the three Fs or the freedom exercise. Okay. So the three Fs are feel, feed and find. Okay. So next time someone...

is on their sofa at 9:00 PM in the evening. And even though they had a full meal at eight o'clock, they feel like some ice cream. I'm not saying that's ever happened to you guys. It was literally me last night. I was just thinking this is me last night. Just in case this applies to anyone. Okay. The 3F exercise can be really, really powerful. Okay. So you're sitting on the sofa. You've got an urge to have ice cream. Okay. The first step. So I say, have a little pause before you go and get the ice cream out of the freezer.

Just ask yourself, what am I actually feeling? That's the first F. Okay. Is this physical hunger? No, I kind of ate an hour ago. Is this emotional hunger? Am I tired? Am I stressed? Have I just had a row with my partner? You know, has the children's bedtime gone on too long? Whatever it might be, what am I really feeling? Then go get the ice cream and have it if you want to. Okay. The next time it happens, you go through the first F again. What am I feeling? And then you go to the second F.

How does food feed the feeling? So the second F is feed. So you've identified the feeding as stress. And then you go, oh, well, when I have my ice cream, in the short term, at least, I feel less stressed. Ah, okay. So that's why I'm eating. I'm like, I'm feeling stressed and ice cream makes me feel better. Okay, great. The next time it happens, you then go to the third F. So you again go through the process. What am I feeling? I'm feeling stressed.

How does food feed the feeling? Oh, the ice cream makes me feel less stressed.

The third F is find. Now that I know the feeling, now that I know how food feeds the feeling, can I find an alternative behavior to feed that feeling? So what you're going to say, can you find, can I find the food? Can I find the treat? Can I find the thing that's going to satisfy my cravings? Well, you could apply it like that. Or you could go, okay, so I feel stressed. I normally go to ice cream.

What else can I do to manage that stress? Okay, let's say you like yoga, for example, right? You could put on YouTube and go, actually, I'm going to do five minutes of yoga, right? You could identify that, you know what? I'm not at any time to myself today, right? I've just been on Zoom calls. And so ice cream was a way of just treating myself. Okay, how could you treat yourself in a different way? Ah, okay.

Maybe I'll run myself a bath and nourish myself in a slightly different way. If it's loneliness that's causing you to eat, as it is for many people, they feel a bit isolated or lonely, instead of going to the ice cream, what else could you do? Well, if you live with someone like your partner or a flatmate, you could go and talk to them. If you don't, you could pick up your phone. You could phone a friend. You could phone one of your parents if they're still alive or whatever it might be. And I know it sounds super simple,

But I have used these 3S with patients for years and it can often be life-changing because, you know, your question was, why do we do this? A lot of the time we're not conscious of why we're doing this. We get the urge and before we know it, the spoon's in our mouth, right? With ice cream in it. And

All this exercise does, it just starts to give you a little bit of a gap between the stimulus, which is I want to eat something and your response, which is the ice cream. And the more you just create a little gap there, the more you start to understand yourself. And once you understand why you're going to that behavior,

right you've automatically changed your relationship with that behavior even if you go to it in the future you'll know you know i'm managing stress here by eating this ice cream and it means you're for most people they're less likely to do it once they're tuned in to why they're actually engaging in that behavior so again it's a simple exercise that you can apply to food you can also apply

to alcohol or three hours scrolling TikTok or Instagram. You can, it's a very simple, you know, will it work for serious addictions? No, probably not. But at the same time, for many of us, when we've got these behaviors that we're really trying to cut back on, it can be a very powerful exercise.

How much do you think willpower comes into play? And having said that, do you think willpower is something that you can learn? I even say this last night. Yesterday, you mentioned if you're really stressed, you want to eat. Yesterday, I was really stressed. I'd been crying in the day. I'd had a whole lot of things. Got to nighttime and I bought 22 Easter eggs, big ones.

And I started to eat them because I was like, I want my hit. Started to eat them. Couldn't stop. And then there was a complete disconnect with my brain and my body. My brain was literally saying, stop eating them. Like, stop it now. Put what is in your hand down. And then I couldn't do it. And then I said to myself, at least chew slower. And I could not. That's what I said. I was like, enjoy the egg that is in your mouth. And I could not. Yeah.

I could not. My mind was being like, slow it down, enjoy the moment. And then I just was like a guzzle guts. And I thought, what is happening there? Why is this huge disconnect happening between my brain and my body? Were you stressed at the time? Is that what you said? Oh yeah. Through the roof. Yeah. Yeah. And you know, stress causes a disconnection, right? Because when you are stressed, you're,

it literally changes the way you experience the world, right? So when you're stressed, your physiology completely changes, right? You're not expansive. You're not compassionate and empathetic, looking at the other perspective. Your whole focus comes in when you're stressed. You're looking for problems. You feel a bit tense, anxious, hypervigilant. That's natural because stress ultimately is your body saying that it thinks that it's in danger, right? And that's the problem these days is that

Our stress response has been activated not by wild predators. It's been activated by the state of our daily lives, by our email inboxes, by our multiple social media channels we're trying to keep up to date with or whatever it might be, right? And our body responds in a different way. But that's the key point, Brittany. You have to understand that actually,

stress literally changes your physiology so you know you're saying there's a disconnect there yeah there is a disconnect there that's literally what is going on right so instead of beating yourself up about that it's like recognizing oh wow okay when I get really stressed and you know let's say yesterday happens again in two weeks right and

Is there anything you can learn from yesterday, what you didn't do, for example, that you could have done that could help you have less stress if a similar day happens in two weeks? Yeah. I mean, absolutely. Firstly, I wouldn't buy the Easter eggs on special. Secondly, I would probably do Pilates. Yeah. But also, did you take a break in the day, right? Were you just powering through and the stress just accumulated? Because

That's another thing. Often when we're busy and we're stressed, we don't take breaks. And all those breaks, even a five-minute walk, can help reduce stress levels, reduce stress levels, so you're less likely to get to your threshold. And at your threshold is when you buy the 22 Easter eggs, right? You don't buy it when you're just a little bit stressed. You buy it when you're right at your threshold. So

Again, I don't believe in the concepts of wasted time anymore, right? In the sense that we spend time that has a consequence. And if we can learn from how we spent our time, it wasn't a waste. So your stressful day yesterday could be a very powerful teaching moment for you. You could be like, oh, wow. So I've still got that tendency when I'm really stressed to go and buy 22 Easter eggs. How might I not?

have that much stress in my life if the same events happen next time? Could I take a walking break? Could I do a bit of meditation halfway? Or when I'm commuting home, instead of listening to the news, I'm not saying you did that, but could I put on some relaxing music for five minutes or put on a meditation app and just reset? It's not as hard as we think it is once we're aware of what's actually driving our behaviors.

On this concept of relaxation, I think a lot of us, I mean, particularly for women in our age categories, they've got a lot on their plates. A lot of them will be raising young children. A lot of them will still have full-time jobs. And even for us who don't have kids, like I feel as though my day is just go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go. I get to the very end of the day. I shut the laptop and I try to get to sleep.

And the concept of relaxation is one that we've had many conversations about things like toxic productivity and how we are not meant to be trying to fit every single minute and every hour of our day to be the most productive that we can. And relaxation is something that I feel quite uncomfortable with. Guilty. Yeah, I think it is guilt. And there's definitely a discomfort when I'm taking time, you know, time that I would say would be time out to try and

put myself into a relaxed state

And it almost creates like a bit of a cycle for me where I'm like, okay, I know that relaxation is necessary so that I can get good sleep and so I can feel good and maybe so that I can be good tomorrow. But then when I'm actually trying to do the things that relax me, I feel guilty about the fact I'm not using the time more efficiently. Is this something that you see a lot like in your clinical practice? Oh yeah, especially with women. I've seen this for years. In fact, in my first book, I wrote about this and I actually said in that book that it's

One thing I've heard from female patients over the years, time and time again, is when I talk to them about me time and some time each day for, you know, one of the things I would often say to them is, you know, can you find 10 minutes a day where you do something unashamedly for you, not for your partner, not for your kids, something that just you want to do?

And often if I was able to persuade them and inspire them to go, no, this is really important. Give it a try. They would come back and say, you know what, doc, you gave me permission to relax. And it was a really interesting phrase I heard because I thought, I never thought my job as a doctor was to give anyone permission to do anything. But I do find that it's particularly with women. They would often describe to me exactly what you just said. I've seen definitely with mum's

loads of times and I appreciate both you said that you know you don't have kids so that's not necessarily the reason why but what I'll often say to them is look if you're not if you're feeling guilty about this what I often encourage them to do is what is it you would love to do like absolutely love

Not, you know, I want, I need to do this because it's going to help me relax. I need to do my meditation. All right, forget all that for a minute. What would you love to do? That sounds like fun because we know from the research that regularly doing things that you love makes you more resilient to stress. And at the same time being chronically stressed, um,

makes it harder for you to experience pleasure from those things that you used to love. And so I remember this one patient, she was a four, I think she was 44 years old and she was a mother and she had Crohn's disease, inflammatory bowel disease, which is on the rise. Unfortunately, there's many reasons for that. But unfortunately,

I said to her, look, I really want you to take 15 minutes each day for yourself. I want you to do something that you love. And literally for her, it was getting into salsa dancing, right? She'd always wanted to do that, but she never thought she could justify the time. She was doing stuff for her husband, doing stuff for her children, doing stuff for her community. She never felt that.

yeah, actually I'm worth it. It's okay to have 15 minutes a day for me. And just doing that for four weeks, her symptoms, her symptoms from Crohn's disease went down by over 50%. Wow. And you know, didn't cure it just to be clear, but it was much more manageable for her because her stress levels went down. And so, you know, and I think what better prescription to get from your doctor than do something that you love, right? This could be

Dancing. It could be playing your guitar if you're into playing guitar. It could be singing in your kitchen, dancing in your kitchen. It could be watching your favorite comedian on YouTube for 10 minutes and laughing. But I often find that's a simpler and easier way to get into relaxation sometimes than

and it can be very effective. Dr. Chatterjee, your book, The Four Pillar Plan, How to Relax, Eat, Move, and Sleep Your Way to a Longer, Healthier Life. What a great name for a book because everybody wants that. Let's talk about the four pillars and how did you decide that these were going to be the specific special four? Well, so the four pillars of health that we have the most control over and have the most impact on our health are food,

movement, sleep, and relaxation. And what I say in that book, and I still maintain to this day, is that you don't need perfection in any one of the four pillars, but you need balance amongst all four. Okay? You need to think about those four. And I think a really helpful piece of advice for anyone listening to this right now is to ask yourself,

In which of these four pillars do I need the most help? Most of us intuitively know that if you ask, you know, food, movement, sleep and relaxation,

which one is our kind of weak area? What happens if you have two? Well, let's come to that. If you've identified that actually this one's really bad, right? I would say you're much better off making one change in that weak area rather than trying to strengthen your favorite area and your strong area a bit more. So what I would often see is people...

Let's say people who are really interested in nutrition. Their diet is already, let's say, 85% good. They're obsessed with taking the diet from 85% good to 90% or 95% good, but neglecting the fact that they're only sleeping five hours a night.

And I'm like, you know what? Keep your diet where it is. A little bit of sugary stuff at the weekends. Fine. Don't stress about that. I would much rather you focus on bringing that five hours of sleep up to five and a half hours or to six hours if you can. Yeah, sure. Seven hours if you can. But, you know, just a little bit of improvement. I found over the years that it's much more effective to strengthen your weakest pillar. Yeah.

So I think it's a very simple thing for people to ask themselves, which pillar do I need the most work in? And pick one thing in that area where you can start to make it better. In response to your question, if you find there's two areas, well, the first thing I'd say is which one is weaker, if you know. And if you don't know, I would say, yeah, put your attention on those two. Don't worry about the other two pillars. Just go, these two really need a lot of attention at the moment. I don't know, let's say it was stress and sleep, for example.

You know, you say, OK, what's one thing I can do each day to help me de-stress? And what's one thing I can do that's going to help me sleep better?

And just focus on those things. I think that where we really get into trouble is where we try and make loads of changes in all of these four pillars and we end up doing nothing. Britt, what do you reckon you'd struggle with the most? Sleep's definitely mine, 100%. And that's actually something that I wanted to chat to you about. Obviously, men and women are wired very differently. How do these pillars or sorry, which category or which pillar itself affect

affects women and men differently? Yeah, that's a great question. I would say stress.

Okay. Is probably one of the big ones where you see, I think it's the thing that affects so many of us these days, you know, the world health organizers say that stress is the health epidemic of the 21st century. I would say the way that we can often manage stress and the way we look at stress can be quite different. I think women absorb a lot of the stresses off the world around them into their bodies. I think, you know, it really relates to what you said before about this guilt, right?

I think women very much are wired to want to, you know, look after the world around them, you know, nurture. And I think the way modern society has changed where there is so many things to do and so many pressures is

I think it probably adversely affects women more than men. And we know that women, for example, get higher rates of autoimmune disease than men and stress is a big part of that. In fact, Dr. Gabor Mate, trauma expert, he calls women, I think, modern society's stress absorbers, which is really interesting. He says there's all this stress in the modern world and women seem to be

I'm not saying men have no stress to be clear, but I do think women are quite unique with how they take that stress on and how much it affects their bodies. I feel like we internalize it more.

I think so. Yeah, very much so. And often don't vocalize it. Whereas, you know, you can't say men and women, we're all different within that. But broadly speaking, I think men can be better at compartmentalizing things and just moving on. Actually, I'll leave that in its slot there. And I can move on to a different part of my life and not think about that. Whereas I

Certainly my experience with seeing patients over the years is that women don't do that in the same way. I think potentially people can learn to do that, but I think men more naturally tend to do that. I always think food, we can think about differences between men and women. And again, these are just broad generalizations. Broadly speaking, a lot more men tend to thrive on fasting plans than women.

Right. That doesn't mean women can't fast. Just to be clear, I've got many female patients over the years who thrive on a certain form of fasting. What do you mean when you say thrive? Do you mean that they have the results thereafter or that they actually feel better and have better physical health? Both really. Both. Because I think there is this narrative now that fasting is...

may be okay for men, but it isn't something women should do. I agree, broadly speaking, that men and women deal with this stuff differently. I think fasting can be a stressor on the body, right? It is a stressor on the body. So if you're already experiencing lots of stress, and we've just mentioned how women may be internalized stress in a different way to men, it's

Fasting can be an additional stress and tip them over. I have seen that as well. But I do think broadly speaking to that sort of general question, what do men and women respond differently to? I think the way they deal with stress, I think can be quite different, but also the way that they deal with fasting can be very different as well. A lot of this is cultural in the sense that, you know, these things are quite punchy areas of people to talk about, right? But the

There is a lot of pressure on women these days, I think. And I'm saying this as a man. This is what I've observed with patients, what I've observed with my wife and her friends. Let's compare to, I don't know, 50 years ago, right?

Just to be clear, I'm not saying we should be going back to the way things were 50 years ago. On the record. I'm just, just to be super clear, life 50 years ago for all the potential negatives, in some ways it was simpler, right? People knew what their role was, whether we agree with those roles or not. Those roles were quite well defined in many cultures. And I think those well-defined roles led to a simplicity and

and potentially lower stress. Whereas I think one of the risks or one of the unintended consequences of all the increased opportunity now that women are getting compared to 50 years ago, and I'm not even saying it's as good as it should be, I'm just saying compared to 50 years ago, what I find is that, yeah, women are working now. They're doing great jobs. They're starting amazing businesses.

Yet if and when they choose to have children, they still feel that maternal instinct of being the carer, being the nurturer, being the one who wants to look after the kids. So 50 years ago,

perhaps broadly speaking, their focus could just be on that. Whereas now the focus is I'm still trying to run my business. I'm still trying to crush it on Instagram. And I'm also trying to look after the kids. That is a lot to contend with, right? And I don't think this has been planned. I'm saying this as an unintended consequence, but I think it's something we need to wrestle with as a society. I think we need to wrestle with this idea. It's like, are we putting too much on women's plates?

how can we change that? But also to defend men here, and I'm a man saying this, but I also do believe that men are also struggling with the new gender roles, right? Men are also struggling with, well, what is my role now? Like I remember my dad was never, ever at a school play, a school performance, like dad works, right? Dad's job was to earn the money to feed us all.

Whereas I remember when my kids were young, I had a busy job, but I still felt huge pressure. And I wanted to be at my children's performances. I wanted to be at school at 2 p.m. to watch them play.

read out a recital, whatever it might be. And again, I'm not complaining, right? I'm not complaining at all. But I do think it's interesting. And I don't, I think we need to have honest conversations about how our roles have changed. And it's okay to say, actually, we're struggling with this. And I think saying that we struggle with this doesn't mean we want it to go back. And it doesn't mean we're being sexist. It

It just means, hey, this is a real problem. Let's come together and try and figure out how we might move forward with this. Did that all make sense? Absolutely. I also think what plays in here is the way we now live, right, is quite alien to how we used to live. So the nuclear family, for example, is a modern invention.

For most of human evolution, we did not bring up kids by ourselves in nuclear families. It was in tribes. It was in communities. And so this has a real consequence. Now, everything has plus points and negative points. Pretty much everything in life, there's an upside and a downside. So one of the upsides of many people will say now is we have independence. We can move away from

get a really good job, go to the city, have all this opportunity that we didn't have in the past. Great. That's an upside. Downside is we've often moved away from our

parents, our siblings, our community, the people who knew us, the people who would support us. So the consequence of nuclear families is so many couples, their relationships are under huge stress after they have kids. You know, I've seen it with a lot of my friends. I've seen it with countless patients and

And it's not that the people don't love each other. It's just, it's too much for two. And this is on the assumption that there's two parents living together, which of course much of the time isn't the case. But if two parents are working and then they have children to look after and they have no support nearby, then,

that is full on you have no time to nourish your relationship you know so you know the partners become distant they start niggling with each other that in and of itself creates stress right and so I think the only way we get to the solution is by honestly identifying what is the root of this problem and understanding that I don't think we were designed to do all this by ourselves because

That I think is one of the root causes of why there's so much sort of stress going on and why we're struggling with these new roles. On this topic of stress...

I think for me, the first thing that is affected when I feel stressed is that I'm not able to get as good quality sleep. And I think that that is something that probably everybody experiences. But another thing that I think is specific to women is that these hormonal fluctuations that we go through, whether that be, you know, throughout a time of life or even a time of the month, I mean,

I mean, I guess I'm sample study of one. But I've definitely experienced different sleep patterns and the quality of sleep that I'm able to get. I feel like it changes over the course of like my menstrual cycle and throughout different periods of my life.

What are those changes? How are they affecting, you know, firstly our stress levels and how are they affecting our ability to get good quality sleep? When you mentioned the cycle there, the menstrual cycle and how in different stages of the cycle you feel different levels of stress and different amounts of sleep.

That is normal. Okay. That's completely normal. You know, your body is hormonally different throughout the menstrual cycle. That's one of the key differences between women and men. We operate on these 24 hour cycles. Women operate on, you know, traditionally this more 28 day cycle. Of course, there's a bit of variation there, whether it's 28 days or 26 or 30, 31. But, you know, broadly speaking, that's a massive difference between men and women. And I actually remember I spoke to Dr. Mindy Peltz on my podcast about

maybe three years ago, she was just breaking down the different stages of a female cycle and how a woman might want to eat differently at various times. She was, you know, I remember very clearly, she was saying, you know, the week before the periods, she was saying, actually, you know, most women do crave carbs and it's okay to actually indulge and have those carbs in that week.

but at the start of the cycle, you may not as much. So if you do want to change your diet and go lower carb, for example, then that's the time to do it. But we also discuss in that conversation that

Let's say in a heterosexual couple, for example, let's say a man and a woman, right? The benefits of actually being quite open about what stage on someone's cycle someone is. I think for many years we've thought, well, it's not the man's business. What's going on with a woman's menstrual cycle? But we were just hypothesizing, well, might it create more harmony in relationships if

The other partner, whether it's a man or woman, frankly, it doesn't really matter, knew that actually, yeah, at this point, you know, I'm not sleeping as well. I'm a bit more moody. I'm craving carbs, you know,

actually, then you know at those points, actually, let's say if that was my wife, for example, and I knew, okay, this is the week leading up to a period and she's struggling with her sleep. With that knowledge, I can be more patient. I can try to not take things personally and go, oh, this is hormonal. She's struggling with this. And I think increasing that communication over these things

I actually think, while some people may say it's an infringement of privacy and it's no one else's business, fine. I'm not here to tell what everyone should or shouldn't do. I just think it's quite a nice thing to think about

actually might that be helpful and it's certainly since that conversation my wife and I do communicate about this kind of stuff and I would say it's really really helps because I have a much better understanding of where she is in her cycle and how that also affects her and therefore affects our relationship do women need more sleep than men

As a rough generalization, I would say in my experience, I would say yes, right? That seems to be the case, but I can't say it's the case for everyone, right? You just can't. We're all individual. We're all different. So I can't say that every woman needs more sleep than every man, right?

But as a broad principle, I do think women tend to thrive on a little bit more sleep than men. Certainly again, this is again an N equals one, but in my own marriage, I would say my wife absolutely needs more sleep than me, a good hour a night more sleep than me. And it's very noticeable in

if she's not getting that. And I don't mean that in a derogatory way, just to be really clear. I'm just genuinely, I'm just defending my wife there. I'm not saying anything negative. It's just, I think we would both agree she does need more sleep than me. And that's certainly what I've seen with my patients. There was an interview that you did with Dr. Gable Maté. And for me, it was so powerful. And it was something that really changed the way I think. And it was sort of around sleep.

You know, he's in his late 60s and it was around if you had to go back and do something differently in your life, what would you do? And it was really powerful when I watched it. And he talked a lot about he would do everything differently and he would spend more time sitting in joy and things that, you know, his family and the things that mattered to him because he just thought he had to work, work, work.

For me, I really took a lot away from that conversation and I've been thinking about it a lot. Out of all the conversations you've had over the years and all the incredible people you've had the chance to speak to, is there something or someone or a piece of advice that has really stuck with you and changed the course of the way that you think and act? Yeah, he wishes he'd played more, right? For all his success, for all his expertise, for all the fact that he's invited all over the world to speak and he's sold a squillion books, right?

he again has regrets. He wishes he'd lived life differently. He wishes he'd played more. And that goes back to what I said earlier on about passion, right? Doing things that you love, that you enjoy is really good for you. It helps you become more resilient to stress as well. So I think too much of the health conversation these days is about deprivation and restriction, right? We don't talk enough about joy, right?

doing things that you love is good for you, right? It's really good for you. And actually it's something I wish we would talk about a lot more. And actually when I come on tour to Australia this summer, I will absolutely be talking about this and the benefits of more joy and passion in your life. So I've had four conversations with Gabba on my podcast over seven years, and they've all touched me in different ways. But if you say, what was the conversation? What was the piece of advice that,

that has had the most impact is what I started the show with, right? It's my conversation with Edith Eger that I re-released recently for an episode 500 special. That conversation changed me. It fundamentally changed who I was because not only did she say those magical words, you know, Rangan, I've lived in Auschwitz and I could tell you the greatest prison you will ever live inside is the prison that you create inside your own mind.

But it literally, you know, I remember coming out of that conversation and I said to my videographer, I'm not the same person anymore. Like I am not the same person anymore. The way I view myself in the world has fundamentally changed because for me, understanding that in a death camp, she could reframe her experiences. It just really powerfully taught me that, oh, Rangan, you know what? Even on your worst day, you're not in a death camp.

So if she can reframe her experiences in Auschwitz, you can reframe them in your own life. And that single realization has changed the way that I experience life. It's changed the way I experience stress. And if I'm ever struggling, I go, what's the other perspective here? How can I take a different perspective on the situation, which would mean it would not be as stressful. So I've had over 500 conversations. Many of them have left a profound effect on me, but

But if you make me choose, it would still be that conversation with that 93-year-old lady, Edith Eger. What a beautiful and powerful woman. That's so special. Thank you so much for joining us today. We are so grateful to be chatting to you from the other side of the world, but we might not have to chat to you from the other side of the world for very long because you are coming to visit us in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane in July. We are going to have links to Dr Rangan Chatterjee's social media, podcast and tour in our show notes below.

Thank you, thank you, thank you so much for joining us. Guys, thank you very, very much. I really enjoyed my chat and I cannot wait to be in Australia this summer. So we're coming for a family holiday and those three dates and we cannot wait. Well, if you have some time in Sydney, we'd love to show you around and if you would like to have a chat in person. I mean, I don't necessarily want to make you work more on your family holiday, but if you've got the time, we would love to have you in here. Hey, well, listen, let me check it out. And if so, yes, I'll see you guys in Sydney. I look forward to it. We would love that. Take care, guys. Bye-bye.