Why SAD is Making Britain Miserable

0:00Welcome to Catching Up With The Royals, a brand new show with me Richard Coles. And me, Emily Andrews. Every week we'll be going beyond the headlines, lifting the lid, and what life is really like behind the palace walls. Hello, sir. Good morning. I'm the Sun's new royal correspondent. Oh, he said, look at me up and down. Things are looking up. We'll be diving into the moments everyone's talking about. What does the world owe you if all of a sudden you've handed back your crown? Meghan and Harry can't keep hold of their staff. We'll reveal the secrets of an organisation usually shrouded in mystery and explore defining moments of royal history to see how the past still shapes the monarchy today.

0:38Now, you actually knew Princess Diana. I think one of the ways she acquired power was through that relationship with the present. But before that interview, no-one had really spoken and been so open. Was that a game-changer? So join us every week wherever you get your podcasts, on YouTube and on Saturdays on 5 as we catch up with the royals.

1:01Welcome back to the Unprocessed Truth. And if you're tired of all the noise and the confusion on social media, not knowing who to believe, influencers flip-flopping from one trend to the next, and what really matters for your health, well, you've come to the right place. Because we're going to cut through that noise. We're going to get down to the truth and delve deep into subjects to understand the real nuance and give you real advice. It's going to make a real impact on your health and your life and get you to the truth. Our guest today has built an incredible reputation, explaining how our mindset and our psychology are real game changers when it comes to healthy living.

1:45She's an international speaker, a psychologist and a leading expert in behavioral well-being. Dr. Ritz, how are you? I'm really well, thank you. How are you? Good, thank you for coming in. I'm very excited for this conversation. It's going to be a deep one because it's winter and everyone starts to get moody and grey and miserable around winter. So I think this is going to be a really interesting conversation. But what's going on? Like, can we get into the science first around our biology and when the seasons change and it's getting colder and darker? What's happening to us physiologically? So if we look at it, what's happening to our environment first, and then we take it inwards, we're getting less daylight.

2:28So that's what's happening in our environment. As we go through the season of autumn into winter, we get less daylight. And then what that does is because we're getting less light into our body, it impacts something in our brain called the suprachiasmatic nucleus. So that gets this signal that there's less light. and what that does is is it produces more melatonin so the stop signal for melatonin doesn't go off so we get more melatonin which is why we tend to feel sleepier groggier tired i don't want to get out of bed or i don't want to do those activities that would normally bring me joy or even go out and socialize and see my friends and it also reduces our serotonin and we know that's our feel-good hormone it makes us feel good and so when we have higher melatonin lower serotonin that is then going to impact on our mood our thoughts and our behaviors and this is just happening to everyone because there's less light absolutely it's happening because we're not getting the daylight which helps to regulate our internal body clock wow okay so it's real it's absolutely real it's not winter blues it's not something that you know is in people's minds and sometimes people say i should just be snapping out of it it's absolutely not i think when we can understand the physiological process of what's going on that's what can give us a bit more control so there's like the winter blues and then there is seasonal affective disorder what's the difference there and the kind of distinction between the two because at what point does it over from something we all just naturally biologically experience to actually this being a real issue.

4:08Yeah, and you kind of hit the nail on the head there. I think most of us do experience winter blues from time to time or within the season at some point or another. And seasonal affective disorder is actually a branch of depression. So we'll be seeing symptoms as, you know, loss of pleasure, low mood, lethargy, craving carbs, and, you know, wanting to stay in bed not wanting to socialize and when we see that for an extended period of at least two weeks or more and then when we see it following a seasonal pattern that it starts in the autumn and then it starts to lift in the spring and from a clinical perspective when we can look back and notice has it happened for two years or more that's when we kind of tend to think somebody is experiencing seasonal affective disorder because when we come out of the spring or people that do experience it when they come out of the spring their mood just naturally tends to lift right okay so it's just a much more frequent worse version of the winter blues absolutely yeah yeah essentially and so how would someone self-diagnose or look at that so i think the p the number of people that are actually diagnosed with it from the recent statistics is about one in 15 okay but one I think at the moment one in three people think that they do suffer with seasonal affective so that's quite a high number interesting so more people think they have it than they actually do which is normally the other way around yes and we know that it can affect young people more and that's due to um increased use of screen time or younger adults rather more um increased use of screen time we call it like the social jet lag being out maybe later at the weekends and things like that working from home those sorts of things um and it also can impact women more um and again the research is is you know still in its early stages they think it's linked to estrogen and that hormone in the body um and it especially can impact women um who are in their fertility years oh really interesting so women are more vulnerable and young adults essentially are the ones that are worst affected so we talked about obviously light being a key trigger is there anything else going on that's affecting the mood so dramatically or really is light the only thing because if it's only light there should be a simple solution though if you have a history or a susceptibility to depression anyway then you're likely to have a higher be highly impacted by it okay so all right okay but it's it's really just light yeah so if it is just light that's causing these issues or lack of light is the simple solution just a light therapy or you get these sad lights which can help mimic the sun yeah absolutely so we call them light boxes um the research is still you know in its limited stages but it is something that is recommended and that people can try so in direct sunlight on a nice sunny um you know blue day what we would be seeing is about on average about um a hundred thousand lux that's the intensity of light that we'd be getting on a regular day it's around ten thousand to thirty thousand and on like a cloudy or an overcast day we're getting between like one to five thousand so light boxes they give us ten thousand lux so if we are going to use them it'd be really important that we are next to them near them by them for at least 30 minutes a day to get that daylight to help reset our body clocks and our circadian rhythms awesome so if you're working from home you put it in your home office yeah and you would get a decent amount of extra light that should have an impact yeah um in terms of you know because it's quite a i guess misunderstood topic are there any misconceptions about sat that we need to know and understand it's not in people's heads so it is a real diagnosed mental health condition that people can experience um and it's not something that you can just snap your way out of how i said earlier you know um it's it's about recognizing that the seasons have changed and when they are doing that how do you work with that rather than allowing that to work against you and taking a bit of control back in that sense.

8:40There was some really interesting research done, I think it was last year, that showed that actually in Norway, where the months are darker for longer, they don't have high levels of seasonal affective disorder. And that's because it's the way that they look at the season. So I think like here in the UK, and even just like speaking with a lot of my clients this week, you know, they're talking about this winter season and they're talking about the pressures of work. they're talking about performance, hitting targets, being busy. You know, it's actually quite stressful. Whereas actually in Norway, the way they look at it is they look at the season about rest, reconnection, and nurturing themselves.

9:21So it's not a time where they're overburdening themselves. They're working with the season and they're working to restore themselves. And I just don't believe that we have that narrative here in the UK. That being said, even though we've put it down to light actually what you're saying is light isn't the thing light light plays part of it it's a factor right but if you're saying you can live in norway or iceland where it's but then they're still going outside so that's the difference so lighter can be reflected let's say off the snow right yeah they're still engaging in nature whereas here when it's raining it's cold and miserable what do we want to do lock inside yeah so it's the disconnect between the natural environment and what we're doing almost locking ourselves away almost hibernating as people would say yes and that narrative we give ourselves around that that doesn't work yeah so it's the disconnect then between our natural environment being darker and then we just lock ourselves away go inside and kind of hibernate that's in a way causing this because you can live in a darker climate and not have this yeah and i think it comes back to balance here it's not necessarily like right let's change the script and be outside all the time um you know I think in Scandinavian countries they nap their children outside in the pram you know whatever the weather and I'm not saying that we're necessarily going to replicate that here but I think it's about maybe inviting more of balance into that so somebody's motivation for getting outdoors might be you know and and getting exercise and running during the summer it might be because it's beautiful I want to get outside I want to be in nature so you might not necessarily have those same cues now in this season but what you could do instead is something as simple as right well instead of getting my morning run what I'll do is I'll open the curtains I'll lay my yoga mat by the window and I'll do some stretching there so you're still getting in the same intention you're still giving your brain that same um encouragement that you would do in the summer months but you're just shifting how you would do that interesting because i mean you know we always hear that we should slow down in winter and embrace the season and do all these things but like you touched on from a work perspective everyone's got year-end goals to hit and they're busy organizing the family christmas party or whatever it is so actually we almost ramp up towards the end of the year what are some of the practical ways because you're a mum of two you're a working doctor you know you must have a very hectic busy life how are you slowing down and applying some of this theory to your own life to make sure you get that natural exposure to light and prevent the winter blues I think it's just mapping out what lies ahead and understanding you know how the weather is going to impact my mood how maybe saying yes to all the commitments is going to impact my mood and what I want to do about that so for me it's you know I don't overstretch myself with these commitments um this is also like the fair one of the well no probably the second year we're just going to be doing Christmas the four of us as well going to a pub enjoying it um and it it might not be that you're necessarily buying into your traditional values um or actually that you can change your values as well like you get to write the script of how you want your life to live and we all go through different seasons you know what I experienced a year ago could be very different to what I experience now one of the things that I always do and that I encourage my clients to do is intention setting so every morning when I wake up I set an intention for the day how do I want my day to look and when I have that intention what that does to my brain is I we have something in our brains called the reticular activating system so when you visualize something when you say something to yourself you're more likely to seek it out through your day and so then that aligns back in with your values of what you're wanting to do and how you're wanting your life to look okay so affirmations aren't bullshit absolutely not amazing love that um okay so that's really interesting because it's it's about what you do in the day and those little things micro habits always always about the micro habits because it's not it's yes it is a micro habit but what the micro habit is teaching you is about your relationship with yourself yeah so if i was to say no to you let's say you asked me to do something and i said no the micro habit is no right learning to say no but what is actually going behind it when i say no to you what is that giving me what is that telling my brain it's telling me i'm important i matter my needs matter so that actually when I say yes to you I'm probably going to give you a much better version of myself yeah right that's really powerful for a lot of people pleasers out there yeah me being one of them I'm definitely a recovering people pleaser used to say yes to everything but like you said actually Christmas the exciting thing for me is just staying at home with the family the four of us doing nothing I don't want plans I don't want parties I just want to actually have time to be quiet because they're also they're only young for like such a short time and i remember our first christmas was huge when i had my first one because everybody wanted to be there so then of course it's all the preparations and then you get like that guilt you've bought them all these like gorgeous things all these things to play with and actually you can't even be involved in any of that because you're busy prepping yes and sorting everyone else out yeah yeah and then the kids the first Christmas you never forget your first Christmas with your kids right and that first time you buy them like I don't know eight presents whatever it is and you just you know doesn't even care about them you know they just need one they just need a little thing here or there and we kind of turn it into this thing that it we think it should be but it doesn't really need to be no they just want to spend time with you that's it connection connection it's what it's all about I love that so from a scientific point of view studies on seasonal affective disorder what's like the number one thing you should do the big thing that everyone should do to sort of prevent when you get up when you get out of bed try and get that daylight that's the most important thing you can do so if you can get outside and even just get a 10 minute walk in in the morning I would encourage that if you can't just even stand by your window and I think this is where habit stacking can be really effective here rather than trying to undo habits think about a habit you already have and then add another habit on top of it so let's say you make your morning brew you know coffee tea whatever it might be whilst you're having it stand by the window and have it rather than being on your phone and scrolling and getting that blue light just get some natural light on you I have a question about that though natural light the light you're getting in your eyes that wakes your body up you know stops the melatonin production is blue light isn't it from the sun so then isn't blue light from the phone doing the same thing or how's it different okay I don't have enough research to talk about this it's fine we don't have to go into it yeah if that's just the thing that triggers in my head obviously natural light's always going to be better yeah um like because that's just it's about being connected to our natural environment and it's the disconnect that causes the issue but I just that always crossed my mind yeah I mean it's a great question which I'm actually just gonna research to see I get on the train but so if I look at it from the other perspective what we do know is say like when you're going to bed and you're scrolling and you have that light coming in what we then say is switch it to dark mode on your phone of course yeah to help with the light that you're perceiving because even like an extra hour of 30 minutes on your phone and scrolling can delay the onset of your melatonin by 90 minutes by 90 minutes yeah that's quite a big impact it's quite a big impact yeah and then you see like these funny memes don't you like i'm exhausted so what i'm going to do is i'm going to get into bed and i'm going to scroll on my phone and then i'm not going to sleep for three hours and why is it that when we're absolutely exhausted I just moved house at the weekend and you're like oh congratulations I've been moving house you know from 9am in the morning with two kids packing boxes moving across and then you get into bed and you just somehow are drawn to like I just need 20 minutes to scroll aimlessly yeah like why well you have taught your brain that that's decompression that's what it is and to find another form of decompression at the moment is probably going to be a quite hard work so until the more hard work so until you do until that becomes automatic for you you're going to reach for your phone like imagine if i said to you all right sonna guess what you can read a book before bed an actual book that has pages exactly that's like me and are you left or right-handed i'm right you're right-handed so imagine your left hand has been in a cast and i'm coming today and i'm chopping that cast off and i'm saying hey you can start using your left hand what are you going to do yeah this you're going to be used to using your right right exactly and then you're tired and i'm training you to use your left hand but you're tired you've been moving house all day and i say hey catch what you're going to do catch with your right hand Exactly.

18:59So to do new habits, it takes effort, it takes energy, it takes time. And the more we do it, the more we repeat it, this is neuroplasticity now in neuroscience. The more we repeat it, the more we do it, we are forming new connections in our brain because our brain has the ability to rewire itself and form those neural connections. but we have to show consistency with it and it's not until we keep doing it keep doing it keep doing keep doing it that it moves from our conscious thought to our basal ganglia and that's where the automatic actions are happening a question i'm sure everyone asks you how long does that take to build that habit yeah so it's it's an interesting one again there's a lot of like contradicting research out there um on average it takes around 66 days to form a habit and people can say wow you know i don't have 66 days to do that try see see what happens right and the interesting thing is when you keep trying let's say you stop at day 11 and then you don't pick it back up again for another five days you don't go back to day zero you actually start back where you were no way yeah so i want to break that myth that's insane because everyone gets on it does it for five days yeah misses the weekend because they've been out partying and they're like well it's ruined now i may as well not bother but actually it wasn't a waste of time no you should just pick it up just pick it up that's really encouraging yeah and self-compassion alongside it you know like when you do miss it because the weekend got in the way don't be hard on yourself yeah acknowledge it talk to yourself how you would talk to a friend okay hey bud you missed it try again tonight well and this is the point of habit stacking right is it's really not about one day here or there it's about if you can do it 80 90 percent of the time over the course of the year the days you've missed don't even matter right it's like the foundations you set and how you actually operate in your life which is the most powerful it's amazing it applies to psychology because i talk a lot about kind of habit forming and james clear's atomic habits and oh he's fantastic he's fantastic right but I talk about it from just a food perspective and how you change food habits but actually you can change your mood you can change your psychology you can change everything it relates to everything you know what which is it's quite an interesting thing because um I was talking about it recently like somebody asked me you know what what area do you specialize in in psychology and I said well actually I do bariatric surgery I do cosmetic surgery I do burnout i do resilience i do general adult psychiatry they're a bit like that's quite a lot how do you do oh well actually what what is underneath all of that is micro habits and what's underneath all of that is actually your relationship to yourself so whether it's your relationship to food your relationship to other people your relationship to your work it's coming back to the habits you do and the habits you do are the story you tell yourself about how much you matter interesting that like internal self-talk that everyone has yeah that dialogue that dialogue I mean I'm sure we all do it and have that I should have done this but I should have done that or I just haven't done anything today and you're kind of kicking yourself and it gets worse at night those intrusive thoughts they creep in yeah it gets worse at night and it probably gets worse in winter because you're probably inside without your friends you know more time to think what what are some of the ways you talk to people about how they can improve those kind of self-talk internal dialogues journaling i feel like journaling is such a powerful technique that people can use to rebuild their relationships to themselves when you look at your identity it can often be linked to i don't know if let's say if it was food right if you had a really poor relationship to food it can be linked to then um body image weight loss culture diet culture exercise culture all those sorts of things and when you let's say um go on a weight loss journey as you know as i work in bariatric surgery so i go on a weight loss journey with a lot of people often what will happen is is they will then speak to me afterwards and say gosh i didn't realize how much i lost myself or forgot who i was as a person because i was so fixated on this and so you then have a chance here to really rebuild your identity and rebuild your relationship to yourself and journaling is a fantastic way to do that yeah because you kind of force yourself I find when I'm reading something out loud or speaking it you kind of force yourself to be a bit more positive rather you can say anything internally but when you have to put it out there yeah it's different yeah and and you just become more reflective you become aware as you were saying of that inner voice and that inner dialogue and is it helping you or is it hindering you but going back to the winter blues you said part of it's about you know the british culture of how we see winter do you think you know because i have a perception maybe wrong that the british culture is quite self-deprecating right we always apologize for everything we're like oh you know so do you think actually the british culture is driving some of this yeah I feel like because there is this drive to be productive to be busy to be successful and so when we put that strain on ourselves it works until it stops working and that's often where we see burnout and also why burnout is probably likely to also occur you know during the darker months well actually let's get into that then shall we talk about nutrition and how that plays into it because obviously i run a vitamin business we have an immunity product that has vitamin d in it but when you look deep into the research on vitamin d there are thoughts that you know actually vitamin d is so crucial to our entire body that it's the lack of it in winter that's causing a lot of these issues whether that be low mood but also other you know broader health issues like more people die during winter than they do the summer like just simply put in a quite crude way but you know what are your thoughts on nutrition does nutrition play a part yes nutrition does play a part and actually i'd love to hear your thoughts on it in terms of you know if we know that if we're suffering with seasonal affective disorder we're likely to crave those carbs and then we are probably likely to put on weight during these months I'd love to know from you what would you suggest I've had a relationship with food since playing sport and being a young guy in London where you know you'd want that cheap meal you'd want to go out and just eat McDonald's or do whatever right I've been there with me there was always a bit of negative self-talk around like you do it you have the moment of pleasure or whatever and then there's always like oh god I just I feel like crap I've eaten this rubbish again so there was always whether that was negative self-talk or just the poor quality of food made me feel kind of rubbish or a bit of both yeah I think it always had I always had a bit of a kind of relationship like that with food that was always kind of yeah you'd do it in the moment but then you'd regret it it's a bit like the scrolling at bedtime yeah yeah definitely because sometimes you know I scroll at bedtime and And then you, you know, you go through 20 minutes, you're like, shit, what did I do for that 20 minutes?

26:41That was such a waste. Like I could have done something productive or read a book. And I feel like what you're talking about there is education because you're hungry, you're starving. Right, let me go for something quick. Let me go for the quick fix. And then afterwards, oh, I don't feel good. I don't feel good about it. And so I feel like if we had more education around, okay, if we know this is happening to our bodies in the winter months, what are actually the things we should be reaching for even if we're looking for that quick fix that we might get from something that's fast food how could we get a quick fix from something else that's actually nutritious to our body and giving us the nutrients that we need during this time a hundred percent i mean you know i always talk about the kind of quick cheap meals during the week you've got no time you're stressed but also you're just gonna want a burger sometimes right But how you eat a burger is then really crucial because you can eat a McDonald's and you can most likely will feel crap afterwards.

27:39Or I just always pick up some burgers from my butcher every week, have them in the fridge for that night when I've got no energy. And, you know, great burgers, fry four burgers, whack a bit of cheese on top, lettuce leaf as the bun with some pickles on the side and maybe some kimchi or sauerkraut. Oh, I'm hungry now. dinner's done but fundamentally i've cut out the fries cut out the bun cut out anything that's adding all the ultra processed ingredients into that meal and all of a sudden it's a whole food meal but it still gives me that i just want a burger you know and i haven't got the time to cook so yeah the psychology i think that kind of approach to just making swaps that still give you that absolutely moment of pleasure or feeling i think it's really important yeah and you've gone back to like intention setting there and pre-planning so it's like understanding yeah my intention is to eat healthy and nutritious food even when I'm short of time how can I make that a possibility oh now I know when I go to the butcher actually I'll always just pick up a bag of burgers from the butcher yeah until you've got that queue in place now exactly but so then okay it's Christmas it's chocolate season everyone's reaching for the quality street what do you do because we know obviously there's problems with high sugar foods but typically a lot of people will feel a bit sad or in their winter blooms moment and they just want a cup of tea some biscuits and a lot of sugary high carb foods what would you recommend and how would you kind of help coach people out of that so this is where again i bring that journaling bit into it and let's say you have that chocolate okay rather than being hard on yourself then afterwards and being like come on you should have known better why did you have that chocolate what is wrong with you we're going through this again own it yeah if you're a grown adult just own it you had the chocolate enjoy it chocolate tastes good so just enjoy it let yourself enjoy it and then tomorrow if you want the chocolate again think about what's your one percent improvement with it don't go for the banana it's not got the same sensory experience maybe it's a bar of something that's got chocolate you know bits in it maybe it's um you know a date that you've dipped in chocolate yeah so it's those again micro habits one percent improvements rather than that black and white thinking of you know it has to be this or it has to be that because that's when i tend to see people really start to trip themselves up and then it's easier to just say i'll just go back to my old ways yeah yeah it's those little changes but you talked about cravings what's the psychology behind cravings or is it just pure addiction to serotonin of what the food does to us oh i don't know if i can answer that one actually we don't know yeah we just don't know because it is probably part neuroscience part psychology part something else yeah it's not that's an addictions is an area that's not my area of expertise so i'm just gonna that's fine i was just curious because obviously everyone's addicted to chocolate and then it's mince pies and I love a mince pie and I can't help it it's nostalgic it's Christmas and yeah it's just curious because obviously everyone faces these comfort foods and things that are like working against us in a way when yeah and I think it comes back to balance so again just taking that more like like zooming out on yourself I always call it the helicopter view like zoom out on you living your life and look at it like have you had like mince pies every day for the last four days yes then if you have if you go forward for another four days and have mince pies is that something you want to do if you do who am i to stop you there's probably too much yeah but if you don't if you are then you know becoming more aware of yourself and wanting to change some things and you know do do a few tweaks then what's in your control that you can do about that right and if it's like well i can't go to a social setting and not eat the mince pie like i'm that addicted to it maybe we just then say no to some social settings you know for a couple of days try and bring the balance back what about exercise for seasonal affective disorder yeah again have an impact absolutely because we know that activation is really important for depression depression is all about the hopeless helpless cycle we do less so we feel worse so we do less so we feel worse and we know that when we exercise that makes us feel good um often it's the thought of exercising that's the hardest part but i just say to people keep you know keep cues by you that are going to help you to do that so whether it's just keeping your walking shoes by the front door whether it's having an exercise mat in your bedroom next to your bed every time you see it that will be the cue that tells your brain let's do a bit of exercise and it doesn't have to be big 10 minutes of cardio a day yeah well and a little walk just outside yeah like when you go for your walk make 10 minutes of it a power walk but you said the hopeless helpless cycle yeah is that right that like strikes a chord because i'm sure we've all had those days where i just thought i can't be bothered obviously pre-kids because you just have to get up with them but pre-kids you have those days i'm not getting out of bed today i don't want to do anything go anywhere and then you always just then feel worse again and again and again yeah so you have to somehow break that pattern it's a vicious cycle and it drives the mood lower and lower and lower and sometimes the myth is or the myth is like i'll do things when i feel better and then that doesn't come yeah so then we don't do those things rather than just doing it regardless of how you feel because you'll feel better after absolutely so one of the treatments is something called behavioral activation for depression so it's where we're activating behavior we're doing things that we have stopped doing because it felt too hard to do and what i will say to my clients is is rate your mood before you did it which is often quite low and then rate it after you do it yeah and that's when they start to see the difference you start to see the trigger and then it'll positively reinforce when you keep doing it okay so you talk about this cycle obviously the darker it gets I think the darkest day is in December is it 21st of December something like that yeah where do you see the biggest problems in winter because for me I've lived in the US for a couple of years when you've got Thanksgiving in November Christmas in December it's actually kind of all right the weather's changing but you've got stuff to look forward to but then for me it's the January February march like slog that you've got to get out of where there's nothing going on no nothing to look forward to like do you see it clinically do you see it oh yeah so my busiest times of year are always a september which i think is associated with like going back to school and like the new pencil case the new shoes the new coat and then people have probably gotten over summer and they're like right I'm gonna work on myself now so I get a really high number of inquiries in September and then again in January and often I think it's also linked to the new year new me okay interesting is that a bad thing psychologically it's not a bad thing but again I think what it is it's this push to reinvent yourself and you know people you know they get their gym subscriptions or their new I don't know app that they're following and then they'll do it for a few weeks and then it falls to the back of the bedside drawer again and then it's the negative self-talk and it's the helpless hopeless cycle exactly so yes it can be a long slog but actually I use it as a time to get to know yourself rather than reinventing yourself get to know yourself okay figure out what's important to you what are your values what are your purpose what do you stand for and then how do you do tiny micro things in the day that start to align with that that then give your brain that signal i'm important these things matter to me and you're likely to do it again the next day because Aubrey Marcus has a book called own the day own your life which I love as a title because it really only matters like the new year new me thing I quite like it because it's a line in the sand it's a moment to like change something which is quite cool you've got the whole year ahead of you but then at the same time most people go to the gym for two weeks forget about it and then never do it but actually it's all you have to care about is what you do today and just change that one little thing that puts you in the right direction yes and then just keep doing that every day and it's so simple yeah well it's a bit like dental hygiene right i feel like everybody's got hopefully good dental everyone brushes their teeth every day and we do it because it's automatic yeah it's in our basal ganglia we do it without fail you know we see our tooth well we just have all these cues in the morning so your toothbrush you brush your teeth done go to bed at night brush your teeth done and from a mental health perspective what are you doing for yourself and so that's what I call brain flossing I think I'm going to call my book that brain flossing like what are you doing for yourself that keeps your mental health on par with your dental health interesting that is a good thought and I mean probably is it more important than your teeth probably your brain are probably is more important than your teeth I think it's probably just as important I think that again there's research coming out about like you know your mouth microbiome and how that can impact your gut and your brain so i think it's just as important but i think it may because it's something we can't see you know we don't give it as much attention i was talking to a client recently um who is struggling with severe depression and i said to him i bet if you had a broken leg and i wrote you a prescription for a drug you do something you would do it yeah and he said of course i would do it i won't think twice about doing it so i said it's really interesting that every week you've been talking to me about wanting to do this thing which is swimming for this person's mental health and yet every week when i check in with you it was just impossible to do and i said i wonder if i actually just like could help you to imagine your brain in a cast and needing this prescription of swimming would you do it and then the light bulb went off for him and that was it that was it and then he started swimming well it is an amazing light bulb to think about your brain that way it's like the computer center of your body of you know it's probably the most important organ that takes you through this world yet like you say because it's out of sight it's out of mind and we don't think that we need to work with it get out in the morning get that extra bit of light in do some exercise eat good food to nourish the brain as well i mean you know our brain is mostly made up of fat and water and you need good fats to feed your brain yet you know we've spent probably best part of 20 years from the 80s to the early 2000s avoiding fat because we think it's bad for us right so there's all these things that probably we're just not thinking about it in the right way at all which is then putting us further and further down this path right yeah wild so why is it that in winter we're all craving carbs i think we're just associating it with you know giving us that dopamine hit you know that we get when we eat those carbs it just makes us feel better it feels like that option that we can just go for that's gonna fill us up make us feel good and give us that cozy state that we're really wanting you know that warmth that um comfort and that connection to food okay so really really interesting loads to take away from this i love the brain flossing but what uh say your top three key takeaways for people that they can apply today in their life to help their winter blues so first top tip is when you get up try and get that daylight either stepping outside or getting near a window habit stack with that um set an intention for yourself every morning use a positive affirmation to help you do that and then reflect on your day bring in that awareness you know adjust yourself think about what you need use journaling prompts to help you think about you know what are you grateful for what do you want to improve for tomorrow what's your goal for tomorrow and then using that rhythm to keep driving you the brain loves patterns so when you repeat the same um habit in response to the same cue every day you're going to strengthen that habit loop make it much more easier to follow so no scrolling on the phone at night yes take a bit of time to self-reflect journal yeah yeah and almost like what i would say is like if you can cue putting your phone on charge with maybe just even sitting on your bed and using that as your journaling time or just even deep breathing.

41:14Yeah, the problem is my charger's next to my bed. Yeah, so just put it there. Even if it's there, just put it there. No, because then I can reach it. I need to like put it in a cupboard in a different part of the house. Yeah. I think it's too tempting. It's like they've optimized this piece of technology to just hack our brain attention, right? It's horrendous. All right, so let's finish on a question we ask everyone. What does health mean to you? health to me means the relationship I have with myself because when I'm in tune with that I'm probably living my life in the most healthiest way and if I'm not doing that then I'm likely because I've paid attention to myself likely to make those adjustments amazing it's really important I mean I think we've touched on so many different fascinating things we could go down rabbit holes for hours on but those little that little self-talk that everyone has and just managing that in the right way can just nudge you in the right we could do a whole episode on where it comes from yeah i mean i mean is it us is it something else is it i don't know it's usually our childhood experiences so it is the childhood it is yeah those first six years first six yeah damn well you just go through it don't you we do and you know what even as a parent right you're gonna mess up so own it yeah so I always say you know we're gonna make mistakes we're gonna have ruptures but we can repair them like mistakes are part of being a human so when you teach your kids that then hopefully when they grow up and they're adults they're not having that negative self-talk at night like why did you make that mistake why did you do that why did you do this way I do that it's like oh okay yeah I did that yeah okay I messed up what can I do tomorrow then at the risk of opening up a can of worms which we don't have time for if you have negative childhood talk like or experiences that you think are affecting you today how do you even approach that is it just a case of recognizing it journaling it listening to it so that you just accept it and move on or i feel like that's a good starting point um and then i would really recommend um seeing a professional to work through it um because what we would be then doing in therapy is helping you to form a different voice and recognizing that you have a choice i think lots of times people don't realize they have a choice to speak to themselves differently and it's not until they're sat opposite that therapist that gives them that empathy and that compassion that they're like wow this is new well I love it because actually you have so many cases of kids having traumatic childhoods and going on to be like crazy multi-billionaires and kids who have traumatic childhoods and just can't shake it off and you know it kind of ruins their life to an extent and so it really is down to you and how you accept it and have a choice over what you let it do so i mean america everyone has a psychologist or a therapist and i think it's a great trend we should more and more of us should be having that yeah conversation absolutely so thanks for coming on thank you for having me it was amazing loads of great insights and thank you for listening to the unprocessed truth