How To Get Well and Stay Well: 6 Healthy Habits We All Need To Know with Dr Gemma Newman (Re-release) #625

19:35Dr Gemma Newman:that's where it would be so helpful if we had and in an ideal world we would have psychotherapists as well as doctors on site and we'd have physiotherapists and we'd have you know, perhaps yoga teachers, we'd have all of these resources available to people so that they can actually have a full body, mind, soul kind of reboot because they are connected. And I think for me, it's about understanding our, how do I put this? I think our physical body, our mental body, our energetic body. It's all one body. It's us. It's our body-mind connection. It's the whole thing. And we don't yet have enough data to say that one intervention is going to be the thing.

20:31Dr Gemma Newman:It's going to be the fix because there are so many different root causes. But it's about understanding that deep down there are so many influences on our physical, mental, emotional, psychological, spiritual well-being. And I think the fact that we are multifaceted, multi-dimensional humans is key to understanding how we can actually help ourselves feel better where our own blind spots are.

20:58Dr. Rangan Chatterjee:Yeah. Well, let's talk about your gloves framework. yes okay so in your new book you outline your gloves framework yeah would you call it a framework

21:11Dr Gemma Newman:yes i mean it's my acronym i suppose people can remember what's important and then i've got a three-point framework at the end to make it super simple so people can actually practically take it

21:23Dr. Rangan Chatterjee:away i love stuff like that because i know what it's like when you're trying to come up with frameworks and simplify them at the end when you simplified it to this power of three i thought that is good I like that you know it's a really simple but very powerful concept so why don't you start by telling us what gloves stands for and that perhaps you could explain the case of Millie where you came up with that as an idea yeah so I mean what I want to do is help

21:49Dr Gemma Newman:people understand the simple things that they can do to feel better that are free and gloves stands for gratitude, love, outside, veggies, exercise and sleep. Now, the reason that I put gratitude and love at the beginning, obviously, they're the first two letters of love. So that helps. But it made sense to me because I wanted people to understand that our way of being, feeling and doing is vital to making decisions about our health that benefit us, each other and the planet. And so that's why they're front and centre. And the V in veggies, that essentially incorporates nutrition and the power of plants on our plate.

22:33Dr Gemma Newman:And the O for outside encompasses just the power of plants outside in nature and what that means for us, our bodies, mental, physical health, and obviously exercises, movement, but it also incorporates breathing techniques because as I mentioned to you before our physiology can be shifted through movement which then gets to our brain in a different way than ruminating does or in telling ourselves we should feel a different way does so the physical aspect is vital and sleep of course so these are the other six regions that I think we all would need to know more about and then really dialing it down to those three practical things at the end is a way of just making it more straightforward for people to remember.

23:16Dr Gemma Newman:So when I was thinking about what makes us healthy, I actually had a patient who is a healthcare practitioner. She was a nurse and she came in to see me. She had a latex glove allergy. And I use gloves all the time at work, like many of us do, for intimate exams and for a variety of procedures and things like that. And so of course she did work as well. And she was having terrible eczema on her hands. And so during the consultation, it could have been relatively straightforward. In fact, you know, I gave her some emollients, I gave her some steroid creams.

23:46Dr. Rangan Chatterjee:Can you say emollients are if people don't know that term?

23:49Dr Gemma Newman:Yeah, so it's basically a type of moisturising cream that you can get prescribed from your doctor, which will help you to moisturise your skin and keep it well nourished. And a steroid cream helps to reduce inflammation in the skin as well. And you use those short term. And basically told her to avoid latex gloves. obviously she could use non-latex gloves and off she would have gone and that would have been enough she's a busy woman she just wanted her creams and off she goes but I did ask her a few other questions and what struck me is that in her medical history she had she had some other things she had asthma she also had seasonal hay fever so she had a tendency towards what we call atopy which is where you know you have all of these kinds of allergic conditions that can somehow interact with each other and tend to run in families.

24:40Dr Gemma Newman:And she also had some thyroid dysregulation as well. So I was just asking her a little bit more about her lifestyle, because I know that so many of the nurses that I've worked with historically have, you know, it's hard, you know, you're working long shifts, you're not necessarily looking after yourself. And she was quite young. She was partying at weekends, she was living in a house share. And she was just telling me, well, I do tend to stay up late at weekends, I tend to go out and And I do a little bit of drink with my girls and, you know, I have a good time, but I'm really struggling to keep up my energy for shifts.

25:13Dr Gemma Newman:And I said, well, tell me a bit more about your day to day routine. And that's actually really useful often is to get people to talk about what an average day looks like for them. And she says, well, I'll just, you know, I'll drag myself out of bed. I'll grab a coffee and a croissant on the way to work and then I'll grab a ham and cheese sandwich at the canteen. I'm too busy to stop and I'll get a takeaway when I get home because I'm too tired to cook. and I do a little bit of scrolling on socials because I want to catch up with what my friends are up to. I watch a bit of Netflix and I go to bed and the whole routine starts again.

25:43Dr Gemma Newman:I was like, okay. And I said, is there anything in there that you feel like has been affecting you in terms of your physical or mental health? She said, well, I have been struggling with sleep, to be honest, and I've not been prioritising it and I'm really tired a lot of the time. I said, okay. So we talked it through and the important thing is she came up with the things that she thought she could do to make her lifestyle feel a bit easier for her so she was the one that said okay well what I can now do after our chat and I've been thinking about how I'm going to look after myself I'm going to start doing a bit of batch cooking on a Sunday with my in my flat share I'm going to start doing a bit of cooking for myself and see if I can batch cook for a couple of days in the week so then I don't have as many takeaways I said okay that's a good good plan and she said the other thing I'm going to do is I'm going to go to bed I'm going to set my alarm and go to bed an hour earlier than I have been and make sure I get up at the same time because we talked about sleep hygiene and things like that.

26:32Dr Gemma Newman:I said, okay, great. And she said, the other thing that I can do, because I told her about how when you're eating on the go, you're not necessarily digesting it so well. She'd been having a bit of bloating as well. She said, okay, I'm going to sit down and I'm going to eat breakfast and lunch whilst sitting. I said, okay, those are the three things that you can do. That's great. And off she went. And it was amazing actually, because a few months later when I saw her, obviously she'd stopped using latex gloves so that, you know, her hands had got better, but her asthma had got a lot better as well she was having less of her inhalers she needed far less of her inhalers and her skin in general was great and she didn't have so much in in terms of her hay fever either so there's a lot of other things in her life that seem to have got better and i couldn't have said to her you know your other issues are going to resolve because i couldn't know that for sure and there was no way of knowing that but for her it was actually really powerful because she realized the importance of small wins done consistently i think she realized little habits that you think aren't going to make much of a difference if you persist with them over

27:32Dr. Rangan Chatterjee:time they they really can build up it's a really powerful story if someone's listening and going okay Gemma I get that like she's looking after herself but how has that helped her eczema or her asthma or her hay fever, how would you explain it?

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30:01Dr Gemma Newman:The first thing I can say to that is I certainly didn't tell her that that would happen because I couldn't possibly know that it would. But what we do know is that when we have allergic or immune issues, they can be influenced by our ability to sleep. They can be influenced by our ability to digest our food properly and they can be influenced by stress. and little things like, for example, just sitting down and eating whilst enjoying the food, chewing it slowly, that gets your digestive enzymes moving. It gets the amylase in your mouth able to actually start to digest the glucose in your food.

30:44Dr Gemma Newman:And so you're actually able to really take the time to digest all the nutrients, get them assimilated. And that's important for a healthy and functioning immune system. yeah so it's things like that that you can't say this is you know exactly why it happened but you

30:59Dr. Rangan Chatterjee:can you can get clues yeah and when you see it time and time again you know that there's something going on there if you see it enough times and i think one of the other problems i believe in terms of how we're taught to practice medicine is because the scientific method is reductionist by its very nature that's how we tend to you know figure out what is moving the needle here you You know, oh, you've got 100 patients with atopic eczema. Let's give 50 a steroid cream and the other 50 don't get it. Let's assess, does it work or not? Great. It's a very good way of assessing things like that.

31:36Dr Gemma Newman:Yeah. And it's important.

31:38Dr. Rangan Chatterjee:And it is important. But sometimes because I think we, it's not that we overvalue that. It's just that we undervalue the other elements because we know that sleeping better will directly improve the health of your immune system. We know the amount of natural killer cells in your body changes depending on how much sleep you get. Natural killer cells are this part of our immune system that helps to fight our bacteria and viruses. And the point is that sleep, digesting her food better because she's sitting down and her digestion's working, these things really do move the needle, even though people will probably feel that they won't.

32:18Dr Gemma Newman:Yes, it's so true. But this and this is the other thing as well, you know, it's true for habits that help us as well as habits that harm us. You know, so if I was to go grab myself a donut and have a donut for breakfast every day for a week, it's probably not going to make much difference to my overall health. But if I was to consistently do that every morning for a year, I think everybody would probably understand that it would have some form of impact on my long term health. and you know if I was to take French lessons for six hours I'm not going to be able to speak fluent French but if I practice French for an hour once a week for 10 years then I would most definitely have a much greater chance of actually being able to speak French so it's about understanding the cumulative effect of the little things that we do every day both things that help and things that harm.

33:08Dr. Rangan Chatterjee:So the case of Millie with her gloves helped you with your acronym gloves. It did. Which I love.

33:15Dr Gemma Newman:It's like a mini epiphany. It's a mini epiphany.

33:17Dr. Rangan Chatterjee:So let's go through it and look, you know, gratitude, love, outside, vegetables, exercise, sleep. I'm really fascinated with, well, all of them really, but the first three, gratitude, love and outsides. I think those are things that are not spoken about enough in relation to health. I don't think doctors speak or think about these things enough when it comes to health. And I'm delighted that you are, you know, highlighting the importance of these things in your new book.

33:49Dr Gemma Newman:Let's start with gratitude what is it and why is it so powerful so gratitude is a process whereby you recognize what you have learned from the experiences in your life and you recognize moments of beauty that you can see and feel around you at least that's how i would define it and one of the things that strikes me when I see patients is that as I mentioned before life is hugely challenging and there's many things that we don't have to feel grateful for or can't even imagine ourselves feeling grateful for. Tragedy is around the corner for all of us and that sounds really quite a negative thing to say but it's also true I think the the gamble of actually living a life fully means that we will have to experience tragedy too.

34:52Dr Gemma Newman:And for me, it's about understanding what it is that we can learn from those moments and how we can actually bring a bit more light and a bit more self-compassion to the times when we really struggle. And sometimes, you know, when people hear about gratitude practices, they think, oh, well, that's for the people who are rich or wealthy or don't have any problems in their life, or that's for the people that nothing's gone wrong for. But my perception is that it's for everybody. And when we can connect with ourselves with gratitude and self-compassion, it means that we're far more likely to be able to connect with other people in that space as well.

35:38Dr Gemma Newman:and from that space we can then elevate ourselves and other people so it's really a way of recognizing our shared humanity yeah i like your definition jemma i think

35:54Dr. Rangan Chatterjee:one of the ways many of us think about gratitude is you know to write down or to think about things that they they're grateful for in their life right you know i'm grateful for the roof over my head. I'm grateful that I can afford to feed my family, whatever it might be. And you include that in your definition, but there's a bit more to it, isn't there? The way you describe it. And if we think about the case of Jay and his headaches, the way he looked at his life, his relationship with his father, the way he took the emotion out, and then you helped to guide him to look for those learnings. Well, that's gratitude as well, isn't it?

36:34Dr Gemma Newman:Yes. And that's a way of helping the emotions that we feel to have validation, but also helping them to actually bring further meaning to our lives rather than in a way what we tend to do is externalize that emotion. So if something's gone wrong or if we feel betrayed by somebody or if we feel let down by somebody, it's actually quite hard for us to process. Well, what is it that we've learned about ourselves and what can we feel grateful for? That doesn't come naturally, but it's one of the key ways in which we can actually learn something from what we go through and give to others. and yeah it's not something that's really talked about a lot but I think it's actually really crucial to getting and staying well physically and emotionally.

37:23Dr. Rangan Chatterjee:What happens in the brain when we express gratitude?

37:27Dr Gemma Newman:Well we go through a process where see the part of our brain that's responsible for excess rumination that tends to light up when we are in a negative cycle of thinking and the parts of our brain that light up when we're in a more sort of grateful state of thinking are also the ones that light up when we do other things like physical movement and we get a good sleep and things like that so it's about igniting that part of our brain that allows us to be more present in the moment as well and again that's very hard to do if your brain is racing away into the future or worrying about things that have happened in the past or worrying about what's going to happen next.

38:12Dr Gemma Newman:So yeah, it's about allowing the brain to completely relax and allowing you to be completely present in the moment. And then that process then allows you to think more about, well, feeling gratitude.

38:28Dr. Rangan Chatterjee:If someone is in a lot of pain at the moment or they're suffering with a chronic disease if they were to say to you Gemma look I get this but my life's really tough I'm in pain I'm in agony I can't do the things that I want to do in life what have I got to be grateful for what would you say to them I say I hear you and I understand

38:58Dr Gemma Newman:because I do understand. I see it all the time at work. I see it with lots of people, you know, they've, they've really had it tough. And I think what I would say is they need to feel better for themselves. They, they need to feel like they've got the love in themselves that will allow them to move forward. And I think when we hold on to a lot of the negative things that have happened to us, it's hard for us to move forward. And when it comes to things like pain, we actually have more of a sensation of physical pain when we're feeling low. And when we're feeling gratitude, that physical pain sensation can be diminished.

39:54Dr Gemma Newman:So it can improve our physical health when we let go of some of these negative ruminations. And there is some study evidence on that as well. So even things like gratitude journaling, it's not just for people who are feeling great or things are going well for, it actually helps people who are low in mood. There was a really interesting study where there were people who were going through counselling and they had the opportunity to write gratitude letters. Another group had the opportunity to write down the things that were bothering them. And another control group was just having the psychotherapy counselling.

40:34Dr Gemma Newman:And what they found within the study period was that the, I think that the gratitude journaling and the writing down things that were bothering them was both a four week process, but they were followed up after that. And I think for a maximum of 12 weeks. And what they found was that the group who did the gratitude journaling and the gratitude letters experienced a greater improvement in their mental health than those who did the counselling alone and also who wrote down some of their problems. So what I think is really interesting is when you understand some of the study evidence that we have, then in effect, when you're suffering from pain and when you're feeling low, it's probably the very best time to really reflect on how these things could help you.

41:21Dr. Rangan Chatterjee:Yeah, there was another study I think you popped in that chapter to do with pain. Was it a 16 % reduction in pain?

41:28Dr Gemma Newman:Yes, that's right. 16 % reduction in pain perception. And that's huge. You know, if you think about all the things that you want to try and do to improve your physical health, especially, you know, we don't necessarily like the idea of relying on painkillers as much as we do. But if we can do something that endogenously improves our pain perception by up to 16%, that's worth trying.

41:49Dr. Rangan Chatterjee:The word perception is interesting, isn't it? Our perception of pain, because that word really shows us and signifies that pain is not a static thing. You either have it or you don't. There is a perception of that pain, right? It creates a little bit of separation between us and the pain. And that's not to say to anyone that pain doesn't exist. Of course it does. About a year ago or so, I spoke to Dr. Howard Shubiner on this podcast, a really popular episode about how to treat chronic pain naturally. And he shared with me the research that actually the part of the brain which experiences physical pain is the same part of the brain that experiences emotional pain.

42:38Dr Gemma Newman:Yes.

42:39Dr. Rangan Chatterjee:And then you tie that up with what you've just been talking about and how if we can make, if we can enhance our meaning of certain things, or reframe the meaning of certain things, that can lower the emotional tension within us, which it kind of makes sense, could also change our perception of physical pain, doesn't it?

43:01Dr Gemma Newman:Yes, absolutely. It really can. And that doesn't mean that what we're experiencing is in our minds, not at all. It just means that when we have the part of our brain that experiences physical pain as the same as the emotional pain, then if we can lower the emotional pain, then our pain perception of the physical pain can also potentially be diminished. And that's a really lovely thing to know, because again, it allows us a little bit of a sense of autonomy, because there's so many things that we can't control. And there's so many circumstances that we have no ability to shift in the present moment.

43:41Dr Gemma Newman:And it could be things like family responsibilities or the job that we have right now, or the ill health that we're experiencing at the moment. But if we can reflect on ways that we can actually minimise our emotional pain or our emotional response to the pain that we're feeling, then that is a step towards self-determination for our health. And that is something that is so valuable for our self-esteem as well. In the section on gratitude, you wrote about imagination and visualisation.

44:16Dr. Rangan Chatterjee:and right at the start of this conversation when I asked you about one of the most common reasons if not the most common reason why people struggle to really make long-lasting change in their lives I think you mentioned that that actually people cannot imagine themselves as a different person they can't imagine what it would be like to be well or be that different person, be that person who's calm and non-reactive and is forgiving. So tell me what's so good about imagination, visualization, mental rehearsal, what does that do? And does that tie into the answer that you gave me right at the start?

44:57Dr Gemma Newman:Yes, it does because visualization is a powerful way of helping you to imagine the better future that you currently cannot see. And if you allow space for visualization, it doesn't have to be a sort of a mumbo jumbo or a woo woo thing. It's literally opening up your mind to possibility. And what we tend to do day to day, our day to day habits are the things that drive our thoughts and the things that then drive our actions. right so if we can allow space for different habits or different thoughts or different actions then the only way to really start to imagine that is through the power of visualization and you don't have to do one thing first you could do whatever resonates with you so one person might find that actually if i just change this one daily habit that's going to maybe help me open my mind a little bit more whereas other people find it useful just to go all out on a potential visualization of what they could imagine their future being or their future health circumstance being.

45:58Dr Gemma Newman:And then that can allow them the ideas that come from changing their habits. So it doesn't have to be one way.

46:06Dr. Rangan Chatterjee:I just love this whole approach, Gemma, that you take to health. This idea that we've all got different starting points. And I don't know about you, but one of the biggest problems I see online when it comes to the conversation about health is the belief that there's one way. We often fall into the trap of believing that, let's say, for example, you've heard me talk about these four pillars of health before, food, movement, sleep, and relaxation, right? Let's say you found the change long lasting through food. Food was your entry point in. People fall into the trap of believing, well, that's everyone's entry point in because it was for me.

46:52And I think because, you know, we've been doctors for two decades, over two decades,

47:00Dr. Rangan Chatterjee:the two of us together.

47:01Dr Gemma Newman:We've been doing this a long time. We've seen a lot of people.

47:03Dr. Rangan Chatterjee:We realize that actually there is no one right way that works for everyone. Someone's going to want to change their habits first. That's going to help them then imagine the possibilities, whereas someone else will go, oh, I can't do that. Let me do the imagining first. and that will take me to the habits.

47:20Dr Gemma Newman:Yeah, exactly. So it really depends on the person. But it does work and there is some study evidence to suggest that it really can improve your ability to imagine that better future and then obviously go ahead and do it. There was one study I read about muscle strength, which was fascinating. So they got, let me try and get this right now. Yeah, they got three groups of people in the study and one group were told to flex their muscles as though they were doing it in real time. So as though they were seeing themselves flex their muscles in real time. I think it was 15 minutes a day, five days a week.

48:02Dr Gemma Newman:And another group were told that they had to see themselves from a distance as though they were watching a movie flexing their muscles for 15 minutes, five times a week, I think it was. And then the final group had no visualization and it was only in the group that were visualizing themselves flexing their muscles in real time that they actually saw an improvement in their muscle strength even though none of the groups had actually moved a muscle but the one that had imagined themselves doing it in real time were the ones that actually experienced a significant change in their ability to yeah to move the muscles in terms of the muscle strength.

48:40Dr. Rangan Chatterjee:Yeah there is quite a bit of research on this, the power of visualization. And what I often say to people who are skeptical is, I say, well, okay, let's just think about some of the best athletes on the planet. Exactly. Right?

48:53Dr Gemma Newman:Yeah. Most of them, or a lot of them, I should say, actively engage in visualization.

49:01Dr. Rangan Chatterjee:There's many golfers who the night before a big round are in beds. They are literally imagining every single shot on their round, what shot shape it will be, what the wind might be doing, what their body shape will be. And as you sort of also talk about in your book, you know, there's not that much difference between what's imagined and what's real in the brain, right?

49:26Dr Gemma Newman:The brain perceives it very similarly.

49:28Dr. Rangan Chatterjee:Very similar. Ed Moses, the hurdler, I was, because I'm writing on similar stuff in my next book, I've been researching this recently. Ed Moses, one of the greatest hurdlers of all time, he would often before a race not often in every race is what he would do he would be on the track lying down next to one of the hurdles whilst his competitors are warming up he's just lying there motionless and he is literally imagining the starter gun going off how he's going to feel what's going to happen the wind through his body he imagines the precise 13 steps that he takes between every single hurdle. And he has said in many interviews that he only felt ready to race once he'd gone through that process.

50:17Dr Gemma Newman:It's fascinating.

50:18Dr. Rangan Chatterjee:It's very fascinating.

50:20Dr Gemma Newman:And you know, Muhammad Ali, with his future history, would visualise each fight and he would plan exactly when he would deliver the knockout punch. And at one point, he used to say it before he would do the fights. And then I think, I don't know if it was to do with the gambling that happens before a fight, but he was told to stop doing that. So I remember a story where he visualized the fight and he wrote down a piece of paper inside his glove when he was going to take the final punch, which would be the knockout punch and would end the fight. and then of course during the fight it all went as he visualised it to do and then he threw his gloves out to the audience and then he told the person who caught the glove reach into the glove, reach into the glove so the person reached into the glove and opened up the piece of paper and it said exactly when he was going to knock out

51:14Dr. Rangan Chatterjee:It's like a magic trick

51:15Dr Gemma Newman:I know, and he called it future history that's what he used to call it

51:19Dr. Rangan Chatterjee:Yeah, I love that So let's bring that back to a person who's struggling, right? They hear about Ed Moses, they hear about Muhammad Ali, and they go, okay, great. These guys are elite athletes. What the hell's that got to do with me? I just want to feel a little bit healthier.

51:36Dr Gemma Newman:Well, the beauty of visualization is that it's free and available to everyone. And it doesn't have to be a sporting feat. It doesn't have to be something that changes the world. You could visualize yourself feeling just that little bit better than you do today and what that might look like for you and what that would involve in terms of your day-to-day routines how they would play out slightly differently and what decisions you might make that day based on feeling just ever

52:03Dr. Rangan Chatterjee:so slightly better than you do now do you do any visualization on a daily basis i do but what's

52:09Dr Gemma Newman:interesting about me and i don't know if um i'd like to ask you about how you visualize as well because I'm sure you must do a little bit of it yourself. So I want to hear from you. But for me, I don't tend to very easily form images in my brain. For me, it's more colours and it's more feeling. I'm not as visual a person as many. So I actually find it quite hard to form images. But when I imagine something for myself, then I will tell it to myself and I will embrace the feeling of it. So for me, it's about getting into the feeling of what that is. For me, gratitude is really at the heart of a lot of the things that I do.

52:56Dr Gemma Newman:And that's what's most powerful for me. And from a personal level, for me, that replaces the need to visualize. And it's quite nice because then it allows some of the benefits of visualization for those who don't easily see in their mind's eye. it's about getting into the emotion of the desired thing rather than having to see it yeah I love that so tell me about you okay so

53:24Dr. Rangan Chatterjee:I have a few daily practices that you know as per the word daily I do every day or I certainly try to one of them is journaling right so I'm a huge fan of journaling I think I've written about journaling in every book that I've written so far, I think it's that important for so many people, no matter what they want to achieve, no matter what their goals are. And I basically have a process each morning where I answer three questions. Now, the third question would come under the umbrella of visualization. So the third question that I ask myself each morning is, what quality do you want to show the world today?

54:14Dr. Rangan Chatterjee:So that's the question, but the thought goes before the question, which is, which are previous behaviors that I don't want to repeat anymore? How do I want to show up when I see my wife, when I'm interacting with my children, when I'm on a call with my team? who do I want to be? And then in my journal, I answer the simple question, what quality do you want to show the world today? Now, it's a singular question because I could put loads and loads of qualities down that I would like to be able to embody to the world. But I think there's a real benefit in choosing one. It means that's where your focus is for that day.

54:53Dr. Rangan Chatterjee:So this morning, for example, what did I write? I wrote, I want to show the world compassion today. And I will imagine, well, what does a compassionate person look like? Well, if someone barges you in the coffee shop or goes in front of you, you know, don't react, just be kind. If someone, you know, cuts you up in the car today as you're driving about and going to pick your kids up, let's say, you know what? Don't react. Just be compassionate and try and see it from their side. When Gemma comes to the house later to record a podcast, she's traveled a long way. She's probably really excited about her new book.

55:37Dr. Rangan Chatterjee:This is the first podcast she's recording for it. You know what? Be really compassionate. Make her feel at home. Make her feel welcome. Make her feel as though you really value what she has put in her book and the fact that you get the opportunity to have a conversation with her. Now, what's really powerful about that is that I would like to think that I'm a pretty compassionate guy anyway. But what that practice does for me is it brings it into sharp focus every morning. So if I'm having a bad day, if work's getting on top of me, if I haven't slept well, or there's been an emergency in the family or with my mum's care or something, the fact that I have set the intention that morning and written it in my journal, it makes it infinitely more likely that I'm not going to fall into old patterns and I'm going to show the quality of compassion.

56:34It doesn't mean it always happens, but I think we often think, oh, you know, I want to be a

56:39Dr. Rangan Chatterjee:compassionate person. We listen to a podcast once a week and then we get on with our lives and we We don't bring the learning into sharp focus on a daily basis. So that question that I ask myself each day, I think has been transformative. I've been recommending it to patients for ages, so I know that they find it useful. So that's how I think I do visualization each day. Does that come under the definition of visualization for you?

57:09Dr Gemma Newman:That comes under, for me, a mindful approach to living. And I actually talk about something super similar in my book, because I think one of the, so the gratitude and love chapters combine things like visualization and an understanding of our values. and sometimes living a life of purpose can feel really challenging because we don't always necessarily know well what do I want to give the world who do I want to be in the world what do I want to achieve you know who do I want to help it's too difficult too complex a question so in the book and exactly as you've described there are just a couple of simple questions you can ask yourself every day, which really help you to narrow down, well, what is my purpose?

57:58Dr Gemma Newman:And your purpose on this day was to show up as the most compassionate person that you could be. And you did that very well, by the way. I felt very welcome when I came in and I felt very valued and it was wonderful. And I think when it comes to finding purpose, it can feel like a massive task because we don't always necessarily know what we want to do with our lives. But if you ask yourself a similar question, so in my chapter there, I talk about the two questions you can ask yourself is what is my most important value today? And what can I do today that will honor that value? And it's exactly the same premise as what you've just described that you do each day.

58:42Dr Gemma Newman:Because finding purpose isn't some big grand gesture. It's about showing up every day as the kind of person that you want to be. And once you are more familiar with what values are important to you, it becomes infinitely easier to show up as that kind of person.

59:00Dr. Rangan Chatterjee:I really love that Gemma. Again, two really fantastic questions that are free to answer. They don't take long to answer, but they can have a profound impact, especially when repeated day after day.

59:17Dr Gemma Newman:Exactly. And one of the things that I mentioned in the book, which is really interesting as an exercise, is the concept of really embedding it in your psyche by making a code word. So if you've spent the time to figure out what your values are, or at least maybe the top three that you want to bring in for that day, or perhaps even as a theme in your life at the moment, creating a code word that reminds you of those values can be even more powerful. because it gives you a lot more of a personal connection to it. So let me explain.

59:51Dr. Rangan Chatterjee:Is this where your husband's polar bear comes in?

59:53Dr Gemma Newman:Yes.

59:54Dr. Rangan Chatterjee:I remember reading that. I looked at that over and over again because I thought, I don't really have a code word for my values. And it made me think about what that might be.

1:00:04Dr Gemma Newman:I mean, I can explain it a little bit more because our listeners probably have no clue what we're talking about.

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1:02:11Dr Gemma Newman:Basically, when you have a value that's important to you, creating a memory or a moment where you really channeled that value can be really helpful. so yeah the polar bear so my husband decided that when he was thinking about his values family was was top on his list and being a good dad so he thought well how do I actually connect with that value so that I remember even more viscerally what it would be like to be a good dad today and he has this memory of when they were younger the boys they used to play these games together where he would pretend to be a polar bear and our youngest son would climb underneath and our oldest son would climb on top and they would, you know, he would basically be on all fours crawling around the house, pretending to be a polar bear.

1:02:57Dr Gemma Newman:And they would be the little baby polar bears and they'd be looking for food and playing. And it was just a really sweet thing that they used to do. And so for him, it was polar bears. And for me, when I thought about one of my code words, so for me, compassion has been a really important value. And I thought, how do I, do I have a code word for compassion? And it hit me when I was thinking about it, because I learned a Jikoden Reiki practice, which I do on myself every day. And when I was learning about Jikoden Reiki, it's a Japanese practice. I was learning more about the goddess Huan Yin, goddess of compassion.

1:03:37Dr Gemma Newman:And she was actually worshipped originally in both sexes, male and female originally, but she turned into a goddess. So whenever you go somewhere where you may see statues of Buddha, you may see a female form. That's Huan Yin, a goddess of compassion.

1:03:53Dr. Rangan Chatterjee:How do you spell that?

1:03:54Dr Gemma Newman:Q-U-A-N-Y-I-N, Huan Yin.

1:03:58Dr. Rangan Chatterjee:Okay.

1:03:59Dr Gemma Newman:And yeah, it really allowed me to channel my compassion because when I perform Reiki on myself, it's a form of self-compassion. And when I perform Reiki on others, it's a way of giving love to them in a compassionate way. So that's where I decided that my code word was going to be Huan Yin.

1:04:20Dr. Rangan Chatterjee:I imagine your patients really like you, don't they, Gemma? Well, I think some of them

1:04:25Dr Gemma Newman:do. Most of them, I hope. But yeah.

1:04:29Dr. Rangan Chatterjee:I know it's hard to answer that yourself, but you strike me as someone who's very kind and compassionate, very caring, which is ultimately what I think everyone wants from any of their relationships, but in particular relationship with a healthcare professional.

1:04:46Dr Gemma Newman:Yeah. I think that's important for so many of my patients just to feel listened to, to feel as though somebody actually cares about what they're going through. Yeah. Why do you think that much of the time we hear these days and for many years,

1:05:04Dr. Rangan Chatterjee:that a lot of patients will say, I don't feel heard by my doctor. I felt that they were ignoring me. Why do you think that's the case?

1:05:13Dr Gemma Newman:I think in terms of the doctor, it comes from a place of overwhelm. Because we are living in a time where there are more and more pressures on doctors and more and more paperwork for them to fill out and more and more external pressures that make them feel as though they can't give the time that they would otherwise give. I don't think every doctor comes at it with an attitude where they want to help people, but most of them do. Most of them did. And when you go through a period of feeling professionally and emotionally exhausted, you can't give what you used to give. And I think a lot of doctors are going through that right now.

1:06:00Dr Gemma Newman:they just can't give what they're used to because they feel depleted that's the same in any

1:06:06Dr. Rangan Chatterjee:relationship isn't it if we are depleted ourselves it's very hard to be the partner that we would ideally like to be the the parents the friends yeah the son the daughter whatever it might be

1:06:20Dr Gemma Newman:it's hard isn't it yeah it's really hard and you know when you're when you're trying to work from a a cup that's only half full and you're just pouring out more and more out, then you're empty. And I think a lot of doctors feel empty. And of course, a lot of patients feel empty. So we've got two empty people coming to a situation, it's not going to necessarily end as well as you want it to. Now, of course, there's no substitutes for seeing a professional who's trained and

1:06:54Dr. Rangan Chatterjee:can be there and listen and help guide you but we can also be pretty good at guiding ourselves I think and sometimes I think we undervalue that and that's where I think let's say a book like your new one can be so helpful for people because let's say you can't get a doctor's appointment let's say that even when you do it feels very rushed yeah because whatever pressures might be going on in that practice or that doctor's life whatever it might be I don't say that with any judgment. It's just a matter of fact that that's how many people feel and that's their experience. I think that we have outsourced so much of our inner wisdom and expertise to other people and even to healthcare professionals.

1:07:41Dr. Rangan Chatterjee:I really, really feel that. I feel that we as humans are capable of so much more once we take back that ownership and go, you know what? Yeah, I would have liked to see that doctor. It would have been great if I got an appointment with that one rather than that one, right? Because that's how many patients feel. But I didn't. You know what? Let me empower myself. Let me figure out what I can do. Do you share that perspective or do you see it differently?

1:08:10Dr Gemma Newman:I think it's about using every single tool that we have at our disposal. And I wrote, get well, stay well, because I wanted patients to feel like they had to see their doctors less. And you're absolutely right. The pressures are a lot more than ever before. And we also have, we have a global syndemic of problems, right? We have increasing rates of heart disease, increasing rates of cancer, increasing rates of autoimmune diseases. We also have increasing rates of infectious diseases because of the way that our food industry is, and the whole agriculture industry is. We've got an awful lot of synergistic issues that kind of feed into each other that are causing a lot more issues with chronic disease than perhaps we've seen for a very long time.

1:09:00Dr Gemma Newman:And so having something that you can actually use to empower you a little bit more on your own health journey is so vital. Now, perhaps more than ever before. And yes, I would love for people to feel as though they've got a little bit more control. And that's why I wrote the book because I want people to feel like they don't have to see their doctor as often because you know they're generally a lot more well than they would have been otherwise.

1:09:24Dr. Rangan Chatterjee:Let's skip L for the moment and go to O which is outside. We'll get back to L because it's great but you sort of touched on outside a little bit already when you mentioned I think the studies of or one of the studies of what happens when we go out into nature. Let's go right to the top. Why did you give an entire one of your six letters over to outside? And what do you mean by outside?

1:09:49Dr Gemma Newman:So the reason is we are part of nature. And as humans, we're so good at separating ourselves from nature because we think we're above it, but we are it. So for me, it's integral to understanding how we can actually bring more health and vitality into our lives. Because if we focus on being outside in nature and having an appreciation for nature then it also I think helps us to be more mindful of how we interact with nature and support it and sustain it for future generations. So for me it had multiple layers of significance because often it's only in truly appreciating the power of nature in the natural world that we can actually treasure it and experience the health benefits as well.

1:10:33Dr Gemma Newman:So yeah.

1:10:34Dr. Rangan Chatterjee:You started off that section with another powerful case study there's many powerful case studies in the book, but there was, I can't remember his name, but it was a chap who essentially was close to burnout or was at burnout, but a little bit of nature helped to create, my interpretation of reading that case study was that it created a bit of space in his life. It gave him a bit of perspective, which allowed him to then go and make changes.

1:11:03Dr Gemma Newman:Yeah, absolutely. And I think, so for, we called him Alan in the book, all the names have been changed for confidentiality. But for him, it was, he was one of these people who was working from home. And he was always at the computer. And there was a lot of expectation that he would answer emails straight away, and that he would be on for every meeting. And he was, he didn't have time, he felt, to go outside. He didn't have time to go anywhere. He was just basically at home in the office, constantly working. And he got to the point where he literally fell to his knees and started sobbing because he was completely overwhelmed.

1:11:40Dr Gemma Newman:And so his wife said to him, go and see the doctor. I've got to try and sort this out. And interestingly, there were just a few things that were required to help him feel less overwhelmed. Creating boundaries around his personal time was important. because you don't have to be there to answer emails 24 7 and nobody should really expect that especially not in a job that's not necessarily a life or death situation but also the power of nature like you say even because a lot of people you spend so many time so much time on our screens we get a lot of eye strain we get a lot of sort of blurry vision and even just being able to look out into the distance for a little while actually shifts that that visual focus and allows our parasympathetic nervous system to kick in a little bit more gives us more of a sense of calm even changing it's literally a way of seeing the wood for the trees being able to change your perspective from looking at something very close up with a monitor that's emitting a lot of blue light to being able to look out into the distance as far as you can into the horizon just letting your eyes relax it's actually a great way of allowing your parasympathetic nervous system a chance to kick in and seeing scenes in nature also does that there's some great studies actually on being able to relax your body and mind just by looking at images of nature which is so exciting because you think to yourself even if you don't feel like you even live anywhere close to something that remotely looks like a tree or a bush or a patch of grass just being able to see that image is powerful in and of itself and there's also great studies on people recovering from hospital stays where they had a room with a view to the outside where you might be able to see a hospital courtyard, for example.

1:13:24Dr Gemma Newman:They reported faster recovery times, less need for analgesia post-operatively. It's amazing the impact it can have on our physical health and recovery just being around nature. And there are so many different examples of that. I alluded to some of the studies done on so-called forest bathing where you can log walks in nature. I think there was a group of gentlemen walking in the forest, 90 minutes, same 90 minutes in urban settings, but the forest settings, they were able to record lower blood pressure, lower pulse rate, an ability to actually improve their physiology by walking in one place over another.

1:14:07Dr Gemma Newman:And there's lots of reasons for that, lots of potential reasons that I would postulate. um phytonstein's been one you mentioned our natural killer cells it's amazing there was one study on women i think it was four hours of walking in the forest over two days they were able to boost their natural killer cells by 40 percent um just by walking in you know in an

1:14:28Dr. Rangan Chatterjee:outdoor setting yeah you mentioned some of the the research on the forest bathing i remember when that book came out i think it was called is it shirin yoku yes that's the name came out i think I think 2017, 2018, something like that. And, you know, the professor was, I remember reading about all that research about phytoncides and how trees emit these chemicals out.

1:14:52Dr Gemma Newman:These organic compounds.

1:14:53Dr. Rangan Chatterjee:Yeah, and what it does to the human immune system.

1:14:55Dr Gemma Newman:Yeah, it's incredible.

1:14:56Dr. Rangan Chatterjee:It's phenomenal. What about nature's impact on our mental wellbeing?

1:15:03Dr Gemma Newman:Yeah, so again, we have some great evidence to suggest it really helps to reduce activity in the parts of the brain that's responsible for rumination. The subgeneral prefrontal cortex is less activated when we go out in nature. And I think that's fascinating because it shows us that not only can we have potential reductions in blood pressure, reductions in heart rate, but we can actually see the changes and the shifts in our own brains when we go outside.

1:15:31Dr. Rangan Chatterjee:I think we all intuitively know that, don't we?

1:15:34Dr Gemma Newman:Yes.

1:15:34Dr. Rangan Chatterjee:Like we know.

1:15:35Dr Gemma Newman:It's nice to have the studies though as well.

1:15:37Dr. Rangan Chatterjee:100 % I agree. I think it just, the science there is so wonderful because it reminds us of what we already know. I mean, whoever has felt worse after a walk out in nature?

1:15:52Dr Gemma Newman:Yeah.

1:15:52Dr. Rangan Chatterjee:Like I'm sure it has happened.

1:15:54Dr Gemma Newman:Well, you know, you might chip over, you might have a hip injury, but yes, you know, basically.

1:15:59Dr. Rangan Chatterjee:But I think we all know that, okay, it's hard to separate out movement from that, of course, because we know that let's say going for a 30 minute walk will literally change your internal state you will feel differently afterwards what's really powerful about some of the studies you quoted there was that they did actually compare a walk in an urban setting and a walk in a natural setting and there are enhanced benefits exactly in a natural setting yeah I love that tip um of looking out into the horizon and I think it's just so useful particularly in the screen dominant culture now a lot of us don't think about what that's doing to our eyes and the tension in our eyes to just have near vision yeah all day every day and how literally the tension in your eye muscles will change um certain muscles will elongate yeah if you look at a horizon you know you look out to the distance and this is one of the things which people i think don't realize also when they're often it's when they're on holiday but it frankly it can be not on holiday, any natural setting, you tend to have more of a peripheral vision than a focus vision.

1:17:09Dr. Rangan Chatterjee:And that in and of itself will help to activate the relaxation part of your nervous system, just your eyes alone.

1:17:15Dr Gemma Newman:Just your eyes. And there is a survival advantage to that as well. Because we can understand the survival advantage of your fight or flight, your sympathetic nervous system being an overdrive. There is an immediate avoidance of danger when you're in that particular state. But there are long-term survival advantages to being able to engage your parasympathetic nervous system as well. And that's where shifting your vision is one very powerful way to do that. It's so interesting because you automatically know, okay, well, you're going to obviously avoid being eaten by a tiger if you are in fight or flight.

1:17:51Dr Gemma Newman:But if you're able to engage your parasympathetic nervous system, there are studies to show that there are long-term survival advantages because that allows you to be able to create more of a sense of community. Having happiness in your life is another way of connecting with others. And we know that social connections are vital for reducing long-term loneliness, reducing isolation and improving longevity. So there is actually a long-term survival advantage to that as well.

1:18:21Dr. Rangan Chatterjee:What about water? Where does water come in here?

1:18:24Dr Gemma Newman:Well, there's so much research about the so-called blue mind and the power of water. There was a great study where they took people looking at tanks of water, just literally looking at a tank of water with nothing in it. And that improved the mood of the people in the study. Their mood was improved more, the larger the amount of biodiversity in the tank. So, you know, when they started to add little fishes and plants and things like that, then it provided further mood boosting effects. But what was fascinating was even just looking at water was incredibly enough to be able to boost the mood of the people in the study.

1:19:05Dr Gemma Newman:And we know that water itself has a lot. I mean, you know, there's about 60 % of our bodies made of water, 70 % of the landmass of Earth. It's really important. and there's so many different things I could say I mean the electrons as well in water so a lot of people don't really understand why it's important to just walk on the grass barefoot but the same thing can be true of walking by the seafront you know being able to take in the electrons from the body of water that you are walking near is actually really amazing as well for your body. It's like an energetic advantage. And it's a way of actually being able to experience an electron transfer, if you like, because if you think about any electrical circuit, from a big power grid to a house to even the simplest electrical appliance, they all have an earthing ability to be able to avoid having an electric shock.

1:20:06Dr Gemma Newman:So it's the same thing in a way when we put our feet on the ground. We're getting electrons from the Earth because they are present in the Earth. The Earth has a big reservoir of electrons from things like thunderstorms and other electrical activity. And the Earth is one big grounding globe, if you like. And being able to tap into that is actually really quite helpful. And yeah, I think there are definite benefits, but it would be great to have more study evidence on that. but it's free and why not why not walk on the grass barefoot yeah the very least it connects you to nature exactly reminds you yeah that's what i do you know in my garden i'm you know

1:20:47Dr. Rangan Chatterjee:i'm lucky to have a garden and even in the cold and damp almost every day i would say if not quite every day i will go barefoot on the grass yeah it's just what i do i mean i live barefoot anyway i'm a huge fan of um the importance of being barefoot as much as possible for our gaits, for our posture, for our foot strength. And for me, it's a natural extension to then go and try and do that on the grass when I have the, you know, the luxury of having a garden where I can actually do that.

1:21:18Dr Gemma Newman:Yeah, absolutely. I think I'm going to have to take off my shoes and socks after this and go walk on your grass. I've got big boots on.

1:21:24Dr. Rangan Chatterjee:You've got some big boots. You're very disconnected from the grounds at the moment.

1:21:27Dr Gemma Newman:I am. But this is the funny thing, you know, the last hundred years or so, we are all wearing these kind of rubber-soled shoes, which, you know, they're good insulators. So we're not getting those electrical charges either.

1:21:39Dr. Rangan Chatterjee:Huge amounts of benefits for nature. For that person who is living in an urban setting and is thinking, Gemma, this all sounds wonderful, but I don't have, you know, these huge swathes of nature nearby. I live on an urban street. there's flats across the road from me this peripheral vision ain't happening for me because if I look out my window all I see is another building yeah what do you say to that person

1:22:07Dr Gemma Newman:I think it's possible to get some of those benefits wherever you are and it's being mindful of allowing you to bring those benefits in so even if you can have a little you know pot of herbs in your kitchen that might be quite a nice way of bringing nature in and you can use those for cooking as well. Having a computer screensaver that's a scene of nature is a way of actually bringing the natural world into your home. Having a pet perhaps as well is another way of doing it if you're somebody that is a pet lover or an animal lover. That's another nice way of bringing nature into your home. Houseplants, fantastic.

1:22:47Dr Gemma Newman:Just bringing nature into your home in that way is very visually pleasing and also has a potential to reduce the amount of certain bacteria and moulds in the house. So yeah, that's another great advantage.

1:23:01Dr. Rangan Chatterjee:I noticed your eyes go to the right there. I'm looking at all the studio plants.

1:23:05Dr Gemma Newman:You've got a lot of lovely plants and they always say never trust a doctor whose plants are dying. Luckily, yours all look well and truly alive.

1:23:12Dr. Rangan Chatterjee:The ones that are on shot are all looking quite alive at the moment. Yeah. I'll be honest, like we as in this studio, we've made a real effort to make it as natural as possible. You know, even the woods that we've used on the walls, the plants. Yeah. You know, it's really interesting. I remember as a kid, mum and dad would really look after their houseplants. I wasn't interested at all. And it was only when we converted this into the studio for the podcast and put the plants in that I've taken real ownership of these plants. Like I, you know, I tend to them, I'll check on them regularly. I'll take them out into the garden on a nice day to get some air.

1:23:56Dr. Rangan Chatterjee:And it's, I don't know, it's really connected me to even this podcasting space. And I know that sounds really out there, but I don't know, it's really meant something to me to do that.

1:24:08Dr Gemma Newman:Yes, it brings me great joy to see my houseplants flourishing. and I give them a little shake every now and then for a little bit of hormetic stress because otherwise you know if they're just there without the wind blowing through their tendrils then you know they may suffer so I am the same I love I love my house plants and it brings me a lot of satisfaction and joy and I think it's a lesson for us all to think well you know you can value something that doesn't necessarily have a central nervous system you don't have an obvious sort of connection or relationship with, but it's another living thing.

1:24:43Dr. Rangan Chatterjee:You mentioned purpose before, and purpose can be this really big, great thing that we can stress out about. What is my life purpose? Or it can be a real micro purpose. You know what? That's a living plant. It's my job to look after it. And that has value.

1:25:01Dr Gemma Newman:100 % it has value. Oh my goodness. Let me share something with you. There's a parable that an Italian psychiatrist came up with. And it's the parable of the three stonecutters. And they were building a cathedral in the 14th century. And the three stonecutters were asked about their jobs. And the first stonecutter replied bitterly that he was cutting up big chunks of rock and that he would be cutting up big chunks of rock every day, every single day for the rest of his life until he died. And that was his job. And he didn't seem very happy about it. The second stonecutter was asked, well, what do you think about your job?

1:25:43Dr Gemma Newman:How do you feel about being a stonecutter? He said, I am thrilled to be a stonecutter because it means that every day I'm doing something that requires my skill and that allows me to earn money for my family and to create a beautiful home filled with love. And then the third stonecutter was asked, well, what do you think about your job? And he said, I am thrilled again to be a stonecutter because for me, what this means is that I am building a temple to the divine. I am building something that's going to outlive me and that will be a place of worship and prayer for generations to come. This place is going to stand for a thousand years.

1:26:23Dr Gemma Newman:And I have been a part of that, which means that I will live on in this beautiful cathedral. And all three men doing exactly the same thing and all three men had very different perspectives about what it was that that brought them

1:26:39Dr. Rangan Chatterjee:it's such a great story it illustrates so much i think the most powerful thing is that it's possible to reframe anything yeah that's honestly gemma hand on heart the biggest change, the biggest realization I've had in my entire life, I would say, is that everything's a story. Everything. And we have the autonomy to create better stories once we realize that it is a story. Now, just to be clear, I am not denying that really awful things happen. I get that. but it is the story that we put on top of that event that ultimately determines its long-term

1:27:36Dr Gemma Newman:impact on us yes it really does and the interesting thing about the stories we tell ourselves is that when we when we feel awe and when we feel inspired by somebody else more often than not that feeling comes from where they have actually managed to inspire us through their suffering because that feeling of awe is something that we can get internally or externally it can come from looking at an incredible sunset or a star you know star-filled sky or it could be when you're in a big stadium listening to music that you love pumping and everybody's dancing that you could feel a sense of awe externally, or you could feel it internally when you imagine or remember how it feels to look at your newborn baby's palm or how it feels to have been there for someone that you love who was going through bereavement or miscarriage or whatever it is.

1:28:36Dr Gemma Newman:That sense of awe towards somebody else almost invariably happens when they've actually been through something and when they've inspired you through that thing. And that's so powerful.

1:28:50Dr. Rangan Chatterjee:Can you think of an example in your own life when you experienced awe and that it then inspired you?

1:29:00Dr Gemma Newman:I think there are so many different people who I've felt inspired by. And the first is my mother, because she had me when she was very young. She was 19, just turned 19. And she was on her own. and it's very hard to be a single parent it's very hard to raise someone with love when you don't have any resources but she did and I mean I suppose I shouldn't go into my entire life story my dad was on the scene they did get married in the end and they had a um a life together for a while. But I think back at what it must have been like for her as a teenager, not knowing where to turn, not having any support, not having anyone to look after this little thing and have to every day show up with love.

1:30:09Dr Gemma Newman:I get quite emotional thinking about it because she did that for me and she loved me. And I know how important it is even just to have one single caregiver in your life that showed you love how how amazing that is for our brain development you know babies there's about between 700 and a thousand synaptic connections happening a second in that first year of life and love is the the biggest key to that synaptic development in babies and i had that from her and i just that that fills me with immense awe well thank you for sharing that first of all

1:30:45Dr. Rangan Chatterjee:Just hearing that story has inspired me. I don't know your mother, never met her. But just hearing that and then you think about what parents all over the world in all different kinds of challenging situations are doing for their kids. If people are struggling and they forget how much they've done, just any parent out there, just remember what you've done for your kids. Yes. That's pretty incredible.

1:31:15Dr Gemma Newman:It is. It's incredible.

1:31:17Dr. Rangan Chatterjee:Even if you think your life is horrible and you're struggling and there's bills to pay and there may well be, in terms of your GLOVES acronym, the G of gratitude, we can look at us as parents, most of us, and go, yeah, you know what? I'm doing an all right job with my kids. I'm still showing them love.

1:31:37Dr Gemma Newman:Yeah.

1:31:37Dr. Rangan Chatterjee:That's gratitude, right?

1:31:39Dr Gemma Newman:Exactly. That is gratitude. That is it. And it's very powerful.

1:31:44Dr. Rangan Chatterjee:When did you experience that with your mum? Did you have that realisation as a teenager or has it come since you became a mother? I had that realisation very young because I, well, I obviously knew a little bit about

1:32:01Dr Gemma Newman:what happened when I was born and I was not expected. I was a surprise, you know, I wasn't planned. And so feeling the amount of love that I got from my mum, I felt very loved throughout my childhood and having an awareness that she was, somebody was suffering in a lot of ways. She didn't know she was going to make ends meet. You know, she had a lot of emotional turmoil going on and knowing that she loved me through it all was, was just a lovely feeling that I had from a very young age. I have to say though, I think for a lot of people, it's only when you become a parent that you realise what your parents actually did for you.

1:32:38Yeah, for sure.

1:32:40Dr Gemma Newman:Which is a shame for a lot of parents out there who, you know, will perhaps not have grandchildren. That's okay. But I think, yeah, I appreciated it from a much younger age because I guess I was just able to imagine what it would be like. Also to be in my teenage years, imagining, okay, now I'm a teenager. Now I'm the age that my mum was when she had me. I'm very glad I didn't have to do that. You know, there's another thought that came to me early on. I was able to go to university and she was not. Gemma, whenever I talk to you, I'm struck that there's a lot of wisdom inside of you.

1:33:20Dr. Rangan Chatterjee:And, you know, as I mentioned to you, I think there's a huge amount of wisdom in your new book. But I've always had this sense, even the first time you came on this podcast, that you got a lot of important things in life really early. You were aware of that sort of deep love as a child. You had a near-death experience that we spoke about last time in the swimming pool from Recollection when you were about seven. And I always remember that because you had no fear. You told me that you felt calm and serene. Putting all of that together,

1:34:04Dr. Rangan Chatterjee:would you agree that you seem to have had these kind of insights and wisdom at a young age compared to others? Or would you see it a bit differently? I think we all, this is a deep

1:34:20Dr Gemma Newman:question. I think my perception of why we're here on this planet may be very different from other people's perceptions of why we're here. Some people feel as though there is no reason for us to be here. Some people feel as though we have to have a grand purpose. We have to have a big thing that we do. But I fundamentally feel the reason for our existence is to be love and give love to other people and truly to understand that that is all that we are we are love and I think everybody goes through a very different journey to get to that point but that's where I feel that's why I feel we're really here

1:35:10Dr. Rangan Chatterjee:love is the second letter in gloves there's a whole chapter a beautiful chapter that you've and about love what is love it's defined in so many ways by so many different religious traditions

1:35:30Dr Gemma Newman:and everyone has a different idea about what it means how it's expressed but for me it fundamentally is an awareness of our connectivity and an awareness of how we can all make a difference to the lives of other people, but we just don't necessarily always realize that. So in the love chapter, I talk about self-love as a way of improving our health, that self-compassion, but also about how in giving love to others, we also elevate their health. Because I do believe we're all healers of ourselves and of each other. And I feel so emotional for some reason. I feel like this is, I think because this is, I feel this is the real core of my mission in life is because we're all healers.

1:36:28Dr Gemma Newman:We just don't realise it. I chose a career in medicine because I wanted to help people, yes. But we all heal each other through the stories we tell ourselves and each other and through compassion for ourselves and each other. And that's why love is so important is because it is the root of, I believe, a lot of our healing. In that section, you wrote about forgiveness and I'm a, can you be a fan of forgiveness?

1:36:59Dr. Rangan Chatterjee:I feel I'm a fan of forgiveness. Like I've dived into the research like you have. I think it is such an undervalued component of our health. I honestly don't think people realize how much energy they are using to hold on to resentment.

1:37:18Dr Gemma Newman:Yes.

1:37:18Dr. Rangan Chatterjee:Even in really traumatic situations and you've got to be very sensitive with how you talk about this and I do understand that people have experienced really awful trauma. How do you see forgiveness and what are the health benefits for us of engaging in forgiveness practices?

1:37:39Dr Gemma Newman:So for me, I think the love chapter, I wanted to include forgiveness because I've seen how resentment can really eat away at health. I've seen that in my patients. And also I think many of us have seen it in loved ones too. Certain things that happen to us, We have no control over the ways in which certain people have treated us. It can really consume our hearts. And in so doing, it is something that we punish ourselves with. It's a form of self-punishment. and so what I wanted to really touch on in the book is if we can understand that forgiveness is a gift that we truly give to ourselves it's not for the person we forgive and whether that sounds cliched or not I don't know but it is very true and there's a lot of research around how forgiveness really does elevate our personal health and so it's a beautiful gift it's a gift that we can give to ourselves and in allowing ourselves a bit more peace, allowing ourselves a feeling of lightness.

1:38:53Dr Gemma Newman:And again, it's about not necessarily even having to come up with lessons that we've learned or ways that it's improved us. No, it's just about letting go actually. It's about release because it's important to feel the emotions that we feel, but it's also important to be able to let them go. And I think in letting go, you don't have to make them right. You don't have to make it okay what happened. You don't have to, you know, change anything about what your day-to-day life even looks like. But in letting go, you've given yourself the greatest gift because it then allows you the opportunity to finally have a sense of freedom in your heart and ability to actually put a lot more of your energy into feeling good and lifting yourself and other people.

1:39:43Dr. Rangan Chatterjee:You know, I love it. These things are huge. And why I think they often get neglected is because people, you can't measure them as easily as you can measure your blood sugar, right? You know, you can change your diet and see your average blood sugar, your HbA1c go down. Oh yeah, you know. But it's harder for people to do that with something like forgiveness. Fred Luskin at Stanford University, for example, you know, on the Stanford Uni research project on forgiveness, they have shown that people who are able to forgive have lower blood pressure, right? Better immune system function. They're happier.

1:40:27Dr. Rangan Chatterjee:There's all kinds of things that that research has shown. People don't realise in my experience that actually holding on to emotional pain and resentment is literally tension, hypertension in your body. Yes, that's a really

1:40:42Dr Gemma Newman:eloquent way of putting it. Absolutely. Oh my goodness. Yeah. So I have a patient who would come and see me for many years and she had an arranged marriage and she grew up in a time at which that was very normal and in a culture in which that was very normal. And she had a husband who had other relationships outside of the marriage and she resented him greatly for this, but she didn't feel as though she could change anything. She was very resigned to her fate and she'd come and see me week after week. She had a lot of all over body pains. She had a lot of issues with pain, physical pain from all different places.

1:41:29Dr Gemma Newman:And ultimately we would, we would come back to her situation at home and how she felt a lot of deep resentment towards her husband, but she didn't feel that she could change it. And this is just the way things were. And she just had to live with it. And she didn't think that he really loved her. How could he, if he'd been doing this. And so it went on. And then after a while, she was diagnosed with breast cancer and she had to go to the hospital regularly for a variety of appointments. And she was having various therapies. I think she also had surgery. And what I started to notice when I was consulting her about her cancer was that a lot of her other all over body pains began to disappear.

1:42:16Dr Gemma Newman:And I said to her, how are you feeling? This is a very grueling treatment process. You have a lot going on. How are you feeling? And she said, I'm feeling a lot better actually. I said, really? With everything that you're going through, you're feeling better than you did before? She said, yeah. I said, why? I really didn't understand what was going on. And she said, well, you know my husband takes me to all my appointments and he makes me cups of tea and he told me that you know if I was to die he wouldn't know what he would do without me and I see now that he loves me and that he always did love me I said oh okay I said are you going to talk to him about how you've been feeling you can talk to him about this he said no need I have no need because now I know he loves me and that's all I needed to know

1:43:13and I learned a lot from her because in that moment I realized that her needs were being

1:43:19Dr Gemma Newman:fulfilled in a very different way to what I had anticipated and I would say you know when it comes to relationships of course it's important to communicate and when you have a situation where you feel betrayed it's vital often to be able to talk about your feelings and come to an understanding of each other's boundaries and how the relationship's going to move forward and so on but she she just knew she in the instant that she offered her forgiveness she didn't have

1:43:44Dr. Rangan Chatterjee:to say a word yeah that is a brilliant case and you just said it jemmy you said it's it's vital often to talk and communicate about what has happened, right? Often, not always.

1:43:59Dr Gemma Newman:Not always.

1:43:59Dr. Rangan Chatterjee:Right? And that's what that case taught you. I think it's what it taught me when I read it, because it goes back to what we were talking about earlier on, Gemma, about as humans, we get biased by our own experiences. So we think we know what someone else should do in that situation because we know what we would do in that situation. And I would say most of the great doctors I know, and I'd absolutely include you in that, are very good to know what they don't know and are very open to learn. You can only do that if you're secure in yourself. Because if your identity is tied up in, I'm a doctor and I know everything because I was taught and I have to show that to my patients, which I do think is an issue in our profession.

1:44:57Dr. Rangan Chatterjee:You can often be scared to acknowledge what you don't know. And the story is so powerful because her husband had cheated on her in the past in her marriage. She felt disempowered. She didn't like her life, but she was resigned to it. She gets sick with cancer and her husband is caring for her, making her cups of tea, telling her how much she loves her, taking her to a hospital appointment. And for her, I'm not repeating what you just said, but it's so powerful. That was enough. She didn't need to interrogate and excavate the past and say, look, I want to talk about what happened five years ago.

1:45:38Dr. Rangan Chatterjee:I know you were with that woman. And people listening may be pushing back and going, well no you can't move on without that well wait a minute that lady for her she is able to move on without that it's really powerful isn't it it is and it i think it shows the power of

1:46:00Dr Gemma Newman:just being able to um realize that everybody's got different needs when it comes to well what does it take to actually forgive? Where does that even come from? And again, it's about stories. Some people say, well, once there's been a breach of trust in a relationship, that's it. It's over. It doesn't have to be something like infidelity in marriage. It could be anything. It could be a friendship. It could be a work relationship. Some people think very black and white about these things. But I think from what I've seen over all of the years I've been practicing is that a lot of the stories we tell ourselves about what's required, what's needed, it is all just a story.

1:46:46Dr Gemma Newman:And if we can come back to our heart and what our heart needs, then the rest of our wellness can follow from there. But it's only in really sitting with yourself that you can start to kind of unpick a little bit of that.

1:47:01Dr. Rangan Chatterjee:If someone's listening, Gemma, and they go, okay, I get it. There's benefits of forgiveness. I hear the story you just shared, but you don't know my life, right? This thing happened to me. Let's use something, you know, related to what we've just been talking about. My husband cheated on me and I cannot forgive him. How would you have that individual think about this process?

1:47:29Dr Gemma Newman:I think this process is challenging because it brings up a lot of the feelings that we have about our worthiness. And I think that sense of self-worth is one of the reasons why people make decisions that they regret. And it's a challenge because there are so many different paths to creating good relationships in our lives. And I think psychotherapy is really important as well, by the way. I think that's very much undervalued. I think I would love for everybody to be able to have regular psychotherapy every week to be able to talk through how they feel, what it means. But when it comes to your own struggle, if it's an infidelity in a marriage or some sort of betrayal in a friendship or in another relationship, you have to come back again to what your heart wants and also the boundaries that you want to put in place for yourself.

1:48:30Dr Gemma Newman:Because if you have an abusive relationship where there's a certain element of either emotional or physical or psychological abuse, then it's important that you actually have an awareness of that because again sometimes you can be very unaware you could be in a relationship and it could be extremely damaging to your self-worth and psyche but you don't quite realize because you're so subsumed in it yeah um so assuming that that's not the case assuming that you are not in a particular relationship which is damaging to your sense of self-worth and self-esteem then in all honesty i think anything's possible because it comes from what your heart actually wants and we sometimes think that what our heart wants is based on societal expectations and what other people think and what we've done before and who we've been before but none of that is necessarily true yeah the problem in our lives when we are unable to

1:49:32Dr. Rangan Chatterjee:forgive is that one-time event lives on inside of us every day it's true right so let's say a partner cheated on another partner five years ago by still holding on to that resentment and pain you know that event is still active today the event was in the past that happened five years ago, but we are maintaining its presence in our lives with our inability to let go.

1:50:06Dr Gemma Newman:Yeah.

1:50:07Dr. Rangan Chatterjee:And I know you've got some exercises in the book to help people with that. The phrase for me that has helped me forgive more than anything else is if I was that person, I'd be doing exactly the same thing as them.

1:50:21Dr Gemma Newman:Yeah.

1:50:22Dr. Rangan Chatterjee:I've spoken about it a couple of times on the podcast in the past. I wrote a chapter on that phrase in my last book because it has changed my life because it is basically saying if I was that person with their childhoods, the bullying they had, with their self-worth, with the toxic first boss they had, with their previous relationships, if I was that person, I would be behaving exactly the same as they did. It doesn't mean that the behavior is right. It doesn't mean that we should put up with it or tolerate it, but it helps me lead with compassion first. And if you can lead with compassion and acceptance first, forgiveness gets a whole lot easier.

1:51:04Dr Gemma Newman:Absolutely. I think that is the absolute, and that's what we talked about before, isn't it? It's wonderful how it's come full circle. It's about self-compassion. Because I think if you can go through life with compassion for yourself, it makes it much easier to have compassion for other people in a way. Not that it has to be a prerequisite, because I think sometimes we can be more harsh with ourselves than our harshest critic could be of us, which is another big part of the human psyche. And in fact, that's something I talk about in the book as well. You know, the self-talk that we have in our minds, you know, for some people, it's relentless.

1:51:38Dr Gemma Newman:It's a relentless adversary. And they're in your own head. I mean, how exhausting is that? To have to live with an adversary like that in your head all the time, saying negative things about you.

1:51:51Dr. Rangan Chatterjee:Gemma we've covered the glowing gloves pretty well G-L-O not so much on the vegetables exercise and sleep but people can read more about that in the book as I say I think you've covered some of the most important aspects of healing that don't get enough attention and I'm really pleased that you've done that I think it's going to help so many people in terms of people who feel inspired by what they've heard today and want to start making changes i know you have this kind of plan at the back of the book to help people with this power of three yeah make it super simple yeah but maybe let's finish off with that so that people can actually take something quite tangible and practical and start using it to improve how

1:52:39Dr Gemma Newman:they live basically yeah so i mean that's one of the joys of writing the book was that i came up with so many practical tools. And what's beautiful is the power of three is something that is very important, I think, for the human psyche because it's the smallest possible number that we can make a pattern out of. And the human brain loves patterns. So it's used in advertising. It's used everywhere. It's used in sentence structure. I can think of loads of examples, you know, Goldilocks and the three bears. Aladdin has three wishes. Ad campaigns, Snap, Crackle and Pop. London Underground. see it say it sorted you know australian sunscreen you know what is it slip slap slop we think in threes and so i thought well let's let's make this super simple and i i put the principles of the six healing health habits into three which was plants peace and purpose the three p's the three p's and what is p-e-a-s right on brand for you yes exactly Exactly.

1:53:42Dr Gemma Newman:And so I wanted to incorporate some very practical tips. So things like, oh, for example, there's so many, but tapping, we didn't really talk about tapping and the emotional freedom technique, but that's a lovely thing that people can implement.

1:53:55Dr. Rangan Chatterjee:Do you want to just outline tapping? What is it?

1:53:57Dr Gemma Newman:Yeah, it's a lovely physical tool that combines psychological techniques with a physical action that helps you to recalibrate the way you're thinking about a certain struggle. So it allows you to imagine a certain thing you're going through and scale it on one to ten. And then you just use a simple tapping technique and a mantra to help you feel as though that problem is diminishing. It touches on certain pressure points in the body, but it is a combination of physical and psychological therapy.

1:54:35Dr. Rangan Chatterjee:Can you give us an example and demonstrate? All right.

1:54:37Dr Gemma Newman:So say, for example, you had a physical pain in your body. You'd rate it from one to 10. One being mild, 10 being excruciating. And you might say a phrase to yourself about that pain. So, for example, you might say, even though I have this pain, I love and accept myself. as an example. And then you use the tapping to repeat the phrase, either out loud or in your own head. And so you start off here at the side of the hand and you tap with one or two fingers and you say, even though I have this pain, I love and accept myself. And you can repeat the tapping or you can repeat the phrase maybe a couple of times, seven, eight taps, and then you do it in three places on your head.

1:55:29Dr Gemma Newman:So you do it above your eye. Even though I have this pain, I love and accept myself. You could do it on the side of the eye, on both sides or one. Even though I have this pain, I love and accept myself. You do it below the eye next. Even though I have this pain, I love and accept myself. Do it on the upper lip. Repeat the phrase, even though I have this pain, I love and accept myself. Below the lip, on the chin, you repeat the phrase. And then lastly, you do it underneath your rib cage. So you do it to the side where your bra strap is, if you're a lady. And then you do it on the top of your head as your last point, even though I have this pain, I love and accept myself it's a very simple sequence of movements that you can go through once or twice or however many times you want to and then you can rate the pain again from 1 to 10 or the problem doesn't have to be a physical pain it could be a problem that you're struggling with and then eventually you should notice that your rating of the pain or the problem starts to diminish and it's a really calming exercise

1:56:44Dr. Rangan Chatterjee:can people do that for other things

1:56:46Dr Gemma Newman:that aren't you know related to physical pain absolutely it's a psychological tool so it could be for anything it could be if you're struggling in your relationship or if you're struggling with a problem at work or if you're struggling with um well anything really you can just come up with a phrase that helps you to accept the problem and accept yourself the connection between the mind

1:57:09Dr. Rangan Chatterjee:in the body yeah exactly the physicality of it i know many people have spoken about eft in the past um i know many people have shared with me they've had huge benefits from eft and tapping i should say do you cover any of the science in your book i do i do there's a lot of

1:57:30Dr Gemma Newman:science in the book so obviously from our conversation people are getting a lot more in the way of storytelling but there's hundreds of references pertaining to each and every one of the things that you've talked about, which I would love. Even on tapping? Even on tapping. Yeah. It's a lovely way of actually being able to combine the physical and the mental. So yeah, I'm a big fan.

1:57:52Dr. Rangan Chatterjee:Yeah. And again, if it appeals to you and it's something you want to do, great. It's free. If it doesn't, okay, fine. You don't have to do it. There's other things, right? Exactly. So this power three, plants, peace and purpose, how does someone use that in their life?

1:58:06Dr Gemma Newman:so what i've done is i've created a template where people can either get well or stay well so if you're struggling with both please yeah exactly both so if you're struggling with a health condition i give people a few examples of some of the practical tools be it the meaning maker exercise or the tapping techniques or some of the recipes why they're useful for particular health conditions um i also talk about how you can bring nature into the home specific tools that you can use in terms of breathing exercises, top tips for good sleep, top tips for shift workers. There's so many different things that I've put in there as practical tools.

1:58:47Dr Gemma Newman:And also the stay well tips. So I've got different categories. So for example, more vitality or more energy, as well as things that people might be suffering with. So for example, you know, low mood. I cover all of those different things and give suggestions. So these do not replace anything that you might be getting from your doctor or from another healthcare provider, and it doesn't replace psychological therapies, but it's in addition to anything else that you've tried. And it's lovely to be able to give people examples because people feel a bit lost sometimes. They think, I don't actually know which of these things I can try.

1:59:22Dr Gemma Newman:Well, I've given them examples. So three examples for three things, and they all go through the get well examples and the stay well examples. So hopefully can't go wrong.

1:59:31Dr. Rangan Chatterjee:Yeah, I think it's going to be hugely helpful for so many people. Thank you very much for writing it. I know it's been a labour of love over a number of years.

1:59:39Dr Gemma Newman:It feels to me,

1:59:43Dr. Rangan Chatterjee:compared to your first book, which was also great and has helped loads of people, this one feels different. It feels that this one was the book from your heart.

1:59:52Dr Gemma Newman:Yes.

1:59:53Dr. Rangan Chatterjee:When I read this, I feel, yeah, this is Gemma's soul coming out in this book.

1:59:58Dr Gemma Newman:Yes, I feel as though this, yeah, you're absolutely right. It's my heart and soul in this book. I wanted people to truly understand some of the things that haven't really been talked about much before that really affect our health. And I wanted them to be able to actually feel empowered. And I think that is the key to it. I'm so passionate about it. So thank you for seeing that. Not at all.

2:00:23Dr. Rangan Chatterjee:Final question, Gemma. We've spoken about a lot of different themes and concepts today. for that person who is struggling in their life who has tried before who's got on a particular program and felt the improvement but has slipped back again and thinks that real change ain't happening for me i'm stuck here it doesn't matter what i try nothing ever seems to work what are your final words to them got to come back to self-compassion

2:01:06Dr Gemma Newman:there's no point beating yourself up about things that have happened before for me in the book what i've done is i've really tried to help hold people by the hand through some of the changes that they might want to make and there's sections in there for when you fail when you perceive that you failed, when you have setbacks, when things go wrong, when you feel as though you're back to square one, you're not because every single part of the journey that you've had so far has brought you to this place. And that is the key. I think looking at it with complete self-compassion and thankfulness for every single thing that you've tried before.

2:01:49Dr Gemma Newman:How amazing is it that somebody has cared enough about their health and their life to want to make a difference and to try something new? That's what they need to focus on, that they've been willing to try.

2:02:02Dr. Rangan Chatterjee:Gemma, love the book, love the conversation. That's coming on the show.

2:02:07Dr Gemma Newman:Thank you, Rangan. I very much love talking to you always.

2:02:14ways.

2:02:16Dr. Rangan Chatterjee:Really hope you enjoyed that conversation. Do think about one thing that you can take away and apply into your own life. And also have a think about one thing from this conversation that you can teach to somebody else. Remember when you teach someone, it not only helps them, it also helps you learn and retain the information. Now, before you go, just wanted to let you know about Friday 5. It's my free weekly email containing five simple ideas to improve your health and happiness. In that email, I share exclusive insights that I do not share anywhere else, including health advice, how to manage your time better, interesting articles or videos that I've been consuming, and quotes that have caused me to stop and reflect.

2:03:02Dr. Rangan Chatterjee:And I have to say, in a world of endless emails, it really is delightful that many of you tell me it is one of the only weekly emails that you actively look forward to receiving. So if that sounds like something you would like to receive each and every Friday, you can sign up for free at drchatterjee.com forward slash Friday Five. Now, if you are new to my podcast, you may be interested to know that I have written five books that have been bestsellers all over the world, covering all kinds of different topics, happiness, food, stress, sleep, behavior change, movement, weight loss, and so much more.

2:03:39Dr. Rangan Chatterjee:So please do take a moment to check them out. They are all available as paperbacks, ebooks, and as audiobooks, which I am narrating. If you enjoyed today's episode, it is always appreciated if you can take a moment to share the podcast with your friends and family, or leave a review on Apple Podcasts. Thank you so much for listening. Have a wonderful week, And always remember, you are the architect of your own health. Making lifestyle change is always worth it. Because when you feel better, you live more.

2:04:21Thank you.