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

Life is hugely challenging. Tragedy is a real corner for all of us. The gamble of actually living a life fully means that we will have to experience tragedy too. 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. Hey guys, how you doing? Hope you're having a good week so far. My name is Dr. Rongan Chatterjee and this is my podcast, Feel Better Live More. What is it that really makes us healthy? Is it regular trips to the doctor, a swift diagnosis, and medicine when we need it? Or do we need a more holistic approach? Well, today's guest believes it is the latter. Dr. Gemma Newman has been a family doctor in the NHS for 20 years. She's regularly invited to speak and teach all over the world and is incredibly passionate about treating mind, body, and spirit as one. And this forms the basis of her brand new book Get Well, Stay Well, the six healing habits you need to know. Now like me, Gemma increasingly found that her conventional medical training wasn't yielding positive results for many of her patients. So she decided to take a more open-minded approach, studying nutrition, psychotherapy, and a range of other holistic methods and combined them with her conventional medical practice. And very soon, she began to see radical transformations in the health of her patients. It's this holistic method that Gemma explains in her new book Using the acronym GLUBS, which points to six key areas of life, we can address if we want to get well and stay well. There are ways of thinking, being and doing that should be front and center in our lifestyles. And of course, we discuss them all during today's conversation. Crucially, Gemma believes that the first step in any effective lasting behavior change is finding self-compassion. And her approach will help you trust your inner wisdom and feel more in control. And in a world where wellness often comes with a hefty price tag, her suggestions are all completely free. Gemma is someone who I have a lot of respect for. She's knowledgeable, she's articulate. But what I like the most is her warm heartedness and a kindness. So you've been a practicing medical doctor for around two decades now. Okay, you've seen many, many patients. Yes. In your view, what's the biggest reason for people to struggle with making changes? So I think in all my years, I've seen... I mean, as a GP, I'm still working in the NHS, I'm sort of partnering in the NHS. I see everything and everyone from young babies through to elderly vulnerable. And I think probably one of the biggest barriers is self-compassion, is where they are unable to see a better version of their future or themselves, because they have been so used to seeing themselves and their lives in a certain way. And then trying to change that self-perception, I think, is actually something that is incredibly challenging. When did you come to that realization, would you say? It took a while. I think as an idealistic young medic, I just thought, well, we've got all the protocols and we've got all the systems. All I need to do is tell patients what we can offer them and what we can do and then everything's going to get better for them. And obviously, over the course of a long career, you start to notice where, even if you do have what you believe to be the right solution for someone, it's not necessarily something that they perceive is achievable, practical, desirable. And so it took a while to get there, but I think what helped me get there was a real emphasis on just listening. Because when you listen to a patient's story, or the story that they have told themselves either about their illness or their past or who they are, you can really begin to understand where those challenges come up for them and where they're coming from. Yeah, I completely agree, Gemma. One of the reasons why I love the new book, well, stay well so much is because it very much echoes my views on health. The sort of things I've realized, like you through listening, through seeing patients, not necessarily from reading research papers, although of course that's important and you cover all of that in the book. Oh, yes. Hundreds of references. Yeah, so there's a lot of that. But there's also something about hearing people's stories. And it's interesting, you said something about the stories that they're telling themselves. Now, the story we tell ourselves is the most powerful story, right? And that's the one that often we can't tell. Like we don't know that story often, but people around us, our partner, our children maybe, our friends and our doctors, if they are, if they have the time and the desire to really listen, it's often quite obvious that other people, isn't it? Yeah, I think we're all prone to personal blind spots. And I myself included in that, I think it's actually really hard to reflect on how certain decisions that we made about ourselves in the world when we were very young impact how we see the world later and then what we experienced later. And that is a hard challenge. I had a patient I remember seeing who came in to see me with headaches. And he said, everything's great. I've got a great life. I've just had a newborn baby. I'm really happy with him and my wife and my job and everything's fantastic. Why have I got these headaches? And we talked it through. And listening, I thought, he feels like everything's perfect and he's frustrated. But it was only when we realized through various questioning, it was attention headache. We ruled out anything else that was more serious. And the mainstay is usually pain relief. But for him, he was like, I don't want to be popping pills all the time. What's wrong with me? Why am I getting these? And he was really wanting to fix it. But he also didn't really know where it was coming from. And so it was only when we just took the time and I said to him, look, tell me a little bit more about other relationships in your life. What's going on for you? And that was when he kind of realized that he was estranged from his dad. And he had been for about a year. And his dad, therefore, had never met his baby. And he kind of realized after talking it through that, that was one of the main things that was in his subconscious mind, something that he hadn't really thought about. But there was probably affecting him in some way. And so we went through all the treatment options. And he said, look, I don't know if this is affecting my headache or not, but it's interesting that it's come about at a similar time. And it might explain why I've been drinking maybe a little bit more than I normally would. And it might explain why I've been staying up a bit later than I normally would. And I said, let's try something. So we did something called the Meaning Maker exercise, which I talk about in the book. And it's about the story we tell ourselves and how it affects our bodies and minds. So in his case, I said, look, how do you feel about your dad at the moment? And he said, I feel betrayed. I feel used. I feel like he's not the man I thought he was. And I said, OK, all right, just take a step back a minute. Let's write down together the events of what actually happened in that relationship without any emotional attachment to it for now. So it can literally just be the events and not the good, not the bad. Not what you think it means, just what happened. And he wrote down that my father asked me for money. And he wrote down that my father had debt and he didn't tell me. Those are the two facts that he came up with after sort of really trying to bring it all down to what he felt was most important in terms of an objective fact. I said, OK, now what you can do, now that we've taken the emotions out of it, what do you feel like your great forefore that you learnt after having to go through all of this and have all these feelings come up? Is there anything that's happened in you that you're proud of? Is there anything that's happened in you that you feel grateful for? And he said, well, actually, I feel like this has really helped me to understand the importance of honesty and relationships, which is something I hadn't reflected on before. And I said, great, you can write that down. And he said, and I also feel like my son becoming a father, I've realised how hard it must have been for him when we were growing up because I'm feeling that there's a lot of things that I'm struggling with right now that maybe he struggled with too. I said, OK, great. And he was able to come up with maybe two or three other things that he was grateful for about himself that he'd learnt after all of the things that he went through in this. And so we left it at that. And I gave him some treatments and he went away. And then when I saw him again a few months later, he let me know that his headaches had got better and that he really appreciated the opportunity to actually reflect on some of the things that he was grateful for, even though there was a lot of struggle and pain. And interestingly, he didn't need to let his father know. He didn't actually want to have his father back in his life at that point. But just the very act of writing these things down, it gave him a lot more peace and it gave him a lot more acceptance. Yeah, it's a great story. That's Jay and the book isn't there. Yeah. Yeah, I circle that story. So I think there were so many key learning points for all of us from it. The first one for me is that he came into see you with a symptom. That symptom was headaches. Yeah. And so our training, in my view, and perhaps you could share your perspective on this, is really about trying to first of all rule out anything mega serious, i.e. cancer, or something like that. Got to make sure there's nothing life threatening going on. Yeah, again, not to say the attention headache and the pain which you're experiencing each day and the impact on your life is not serious. But the red flags, the red flag events, we're trying to first of all rule out. Yeah. Once we've done that, my perspective is that we're trying to put that patient in a box somehow. We want to give them a label. Right? So in this case, a label is you have tension headaches. Usually, and depending on the interest of the doctor and the desire of the doctor and the time that they may have, it may be, you know, there may be a bit of an investigation. It's that, well, what might be causing this? But often, I would say there's a medication given, say, these are your headaches. There's nothing serious. That will help you. Hmm. Whereas what you've done is something quite different. You have managed to help him look a bit deeper. It sounds like he was interested as well to try and get to these root causes. And the root cause that you found together with him is not the typical root cause that doctors would look for. No. It's emotional. It's like the stories, right? He's telling himself the pressure, the stress of his relationship with his father, that is showing up in his body as tension headaches. Some people will go, well, how does that work, Jammah? Yeah. So it's an interesting one, isn't it? I would say that so much of our emotional state plays out in our physical bodies. And I think sometimes our body tries to talk to us when we're not even consciously aware sometimes about what's going on in the mind. And that's something that has always fascinated me. And I think it's also, as an aside, one of the reasons why physical ways of releasing energy are so good for us psychologically and emotionally as well. So, you know, things like yoga have been shown to be beneficial for people with PTSD, for example. And other physical therapies exercise, the amazing benefits of exercise for our mental health. It's because our body and mind are intimately connected, you know, through the gut brain access, through our skin, through our heart. There's so many different ways in which there's that connection with our emotional world and our physical world. And it's something that I think is hard for doctors to talk about because it's different for every person. And there'll be different stories for every person. And there'll be different physical manifestations for every person. And I also want to say that it's not that our physical problems are caused by our mental problems. I don't want people to get that impression from what I'm saying today. I think that there is so, I would say that with chronic diseases, people have a really hard time. There is a lot of prejudice out there and there is a lot of negativity. And life can be really hard. Life is challenging. Living is just hard in and of itself. And none of us escape that. You know, we all will experience grief. We all will experience grief, whether it's a loss of a loved one, a loss of our self identity, a loss of our income, a loss of a close relationship. Life is really challenging. And I think giving ourselves the opportunity to reflect on how that affects our body and mind is so important. Yeah. It's interesting. You say one of the reasons why it might be challenging for healthcare professionals is that there's different causes in different people. And this is something I'm really, really passionate about getting this idea out to people is that you could have 10 people that say with tension headaches like J-Had, right? But there could be 10 different reasons. Whereas I feel very strongly that we're taught this model that, oh, this is a tension headache. Now let's give the treatment for the tension headache. But actually that model is really, really myopic in my view because 10 people can have 10 different reasons with J. It was in some way related to the stress and quite literally the tension being induced in his body and his mind to do with the relationship with his father. But if I had a tension headache at some point, it could be to do a completely different reasons. It could be overwork or not sleeping enough for dehydration. Yeah. Any number of things. So our model of diagnosis and treatment whilst super useful for many conditions, often for these more chronic conditions, leaves quite a lot left on the table, doesn't it? It does. And I think that's where people are also quite vulnerable to trying things that are very expensive, trying things that they think, okay, well, maybe if I haven't managed to get answers from my doctor, I will try X, Y, Z treatment or thing, which I will shell out hundreds of pounds on that may help me. And I think there is a big gap between the known of the medical model and what doctors are able to categorically say is true based on research and the lived experience of our patients. And there's a big chasm sometimes between the two in which people can be very vulnerable. And so I think for me, it's really about trying to understand what a person needs at that time in their life and help them to reflect on what has happened in the past, but not in a kind of nasal gazing way as though all my problems are caused by my parents or all my problems are caused because I was bullied at school or all my problems are caused because I was kicked out of this job. But it's more just an understanding of how each of the events of our lives have shaped our opinions of what the world is and who we are. And then having that awareness allows us to open our minds and hearts to other ways in which we can approach the challenges of our life. And those ways can all be potentially free. Like in the book, I talk about so many free things that people can do that they can experience that they can feel that doesn't actually cost them a thing. You mentioned before that the mind and body are hugely connected. And then you mentioned and you were very keen to make sure people don't misinterpret and then think, oh, what are you saying that my physical symptoms are in my heads? Yeah. Which is of course not what you're saying at all. But I think more and more, Gemma, I really, we reflect on this recently. This idea that mind and body are even separate. I like you right about them being connected. But more and more I think they're not just connected. They're one and the same. They are. We can't even separate them. Like if you're having issues in your mind, it will show up in your body and vice versa. And then the fact that we even have to say, you know, physical health and mental health as if they're separate things. And I understand why, you know, there's been big big movements in the public domain online for many years now to raise awareness of mental health because, you know, for many years, health was dominated by physical health. We're trying to bring mental health up and give it parity with physical health. But the problem is, is a more and more, I think, by separating these things out, we're causing problems. We're having to justify a very similar thing that you said, which is, you know, I guess through Jay, the tension in his life was contributing to his headaches. And I also often talk about it like this because you don't want to offend anyone. You don't want anyone to get the wrong impression. But you can't separate the two, can you? No, you can't. And I think 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, you know, one intervention is going to be the thing. 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 wellbeing. 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. Yeah. Well, let's talk about your gloves framework. Okay. So in your new book, you outline your gloves framework. Yep. Would you call it a framework? 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 away. I love stuff like that because I know what it's like when you're trying to cover frameworks and simplify them at the end when you simplified it to this power three, I thought that is good. I like that. It's a really simple but very powerful concept. So why don't you start by telling us what gloves stands for. And 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 people understand the simple things that they can do to feel better, they're 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 gloves that 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 make a decision about our health that benefit us each other and the planet. And so that's why they're front and center. And the V in veggies, that essentially incorporates nutrition and the power of plants on our plate. And the O for outside encompasses the power of plants outside in nature and what that means for us, our body is mental, physical health. And obviously, exercises movement, but it also incorporates breathing techniques because doesn't mention two 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 the 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 people to remember. So when I was thinking about what makes us healthy, I actually had a patient who was a healthcare practitioner, she was a nurse. And she came in to see me, she had a latex glove allergy. And I used gloves all the time at work, like many of us do, I fit 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 ex-mariner hands. And so during the consultation, it could have been relatively straightforward. And in fact, you know, I gave her some emolients, I gave her some steroid creams. Can you smell emolient salt? I think people don't know that term. Yeah, so it's a basically a type of moisturizing 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 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 have all of these kinds of allergic conditions that can somehow interact with each other and tend to run in families. And she also had some thyroid dysregulation as well. So I was just asking you a little bit more about her lifestyle because I know that so many of the nurses that I've worked with historically have have, you know, it's hard, 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 I do a little bit of, you know, I drink with my girls and, you know, I have a good time. But I'm really struggling to keep up my energy for shifts. 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 then 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 start again. I was like, okay. And so 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. That's 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 little 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 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 so the other thing I'm going to do is I'm going to go to bed. I'm going to set my alarm, 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. 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's 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 while 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, you know, her hands are got better. But her asthma, her 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 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 time, they really can build up. It's a really powerful story. If someone's listening and going, okay, do I get that? Like, she's looking after herself. But how was that helped her ex-smur or her asthma or her hay fever? How would you explain it? Today's episode is sponsored by The Way. I have tried so many meditation apps over the years, but I've never come across one as good or as effective as The Way. I've been using it most mornings for many months now and I absolutely love it. I find it a fantastic way to start off each day and it has really helped me feel calmer, relaxed and more present. In fact, I love this app so much that I recently decided to invest in the company and join them in their mission to get more people meditating. I believe that more people meditating will help create a more compassionate world. 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To take advantage, all you have to do is go to the wayapp.com forward slash live more to get started. I begin your journey towards peace, calm and purpose. 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 you know, 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. And so you're actually able to really take the time to digest all the nutrients, get them assimilated. And that's important for healthy and functioning immune system. So it's things like that that you can't say this is exactly why it happened, but 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 figure out what is moving the needle here. 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. Yeah. And it's important. And it's 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. Yeah. You know, we know the natural killer cells in your body changes depending on how much sleep you get. Natural killer cells are this, you know, part of our immune system that helps to fight your bacteria and viruses. And the point is 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. 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 from 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. So the case of Millie with her gloves helped you with your acronym gloves. It did. It's like a mini epiphany. It's a mini epiphany. 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 highlighting the importance of these things in your new book. 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 learnt 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 are many things that we don't have to feel grateful for, or can't even imagine ourselves feeling grateful for. And tragedy is over the corner for all of us. And that sounds really quite a negative thing to say, but it's also true. I think the gamble of actually living a life fully means that we will have to experience tragedy too. 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 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. Well, 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. And from that space, we can then elevate ourselves and other people. So it's really a way of recognising our shared humanity. Yeah. I like your definition, Gemma. I think one of the ways many of us think about gratitude is to write down or to think about things that 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, or that's gratitude as well, isn't it? 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 learnt 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. What happens in the brain when we express gratitude? 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. 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. 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. Because I do understand. I see it all the time at work. I see it with lots of people. They've really had it tough. And I think what I would say is they need to feel better for themselves. 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. 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. So it can improve our physical health when we let go of some of these negative rumination. 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 counseling. 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 counseling. And what they found within their 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 counseling 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. Yeah, there was another study. I think you popped in that chapter to do with pain. Was it a 16% reduction in pain? Yes, that's right. A 16% reduction in pain perception. And that's huge. If you think about all the things that you want to try and do to improve a physical health, especially, we don't necessarily like the idea of relying on pain killers as much as we do. But if we can do something that in dodgingously improves our pain perception about to 16%, that's worth trying. The word perceptions, 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. Yeah. 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 Schubert out on this podcast. I've 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. Yes. 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 we frame 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? Yes, absolutely. It really can. And that doesn't mean that what we're experiencing is in our minds. No. 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. And it could be things like found irresponsible abilities 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 minimize 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 grass-tied, you raise about imagination and visualization. And why is it the source 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 in to the answer that you gave me right the start? 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 are day to day habits and the things that drive our thoughts and the things that then drive our actions. 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 changed 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. And then that can allow them the ideas that come from changing their habits. So it doesn't have to be one way. I just love this whole approach to having you take to health. This idea that we've all got different starting points. And I thought 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 know, 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. And I think because, you know, we've been doctors for two decades over two decades, the two of us together, we've seen a lot of people. 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 where someone else will go, oh, I can't do that. Let me do the imagining first. And that'll take me to the habits. Yeah, exactly. So it really depends on the person. But it does work. And there is some study evidence that suggests that it really can improve your ability to imagine that better future. And then, 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. 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 with the ones that actually experienced a significant change in their ability to move the muscles in terms of the muscle strength. 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 said, well, okay, let's just think about some of the best athletes on the planet. Exactly. Yeah. Most of them or a lot of them, I should say, actively engage in visualization. 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? Well, the brain perceives it very similarly. Very similar. Ed Moses, the herdler, I was because I'm writing on similar stuff on my net book. I've been researching this recently. Ed Moses, one of the greatest herdlers 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 herdors, 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 herdler. And he has said in many interviews that he only felt ready to race once he'd gone through that process. It's fascinating. It's very fascinating. And you know, Muhammad Ali with his future history would visualize each fight, and he would plan exactly when he would deliver the knockout punch. And at one point, this was, 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 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 there was, and then of course, during the fight, it all went as he visualized it to do. And then he threw his gloves out to the audience. And then, and then he got told the person who caught the glove, like reach into the glove, reach into the glove. So the person reaches the glove and opened up the piece of paper. And it said exactly when he was going to knock out. It's like a magic trick. I know. And he called it a future history. That's what he used to call it. 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. 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 so slightly better than you do now. Do you do any visualization on a 30 basis? I do. But what's interesting about me and I don't know if 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 colors and it's more or feeling like 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. That for me, gratitude is really at the heart of a lot of the things that I do. And that's what's most powerful for me. And for 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. It's a time about you. Okay. So 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? 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 want to call with my team? Who do I want to be? Yeah. 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 lows and lows 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. So that's where your focus is for that day. 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 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 put your kids up, let's say, you know, well, don't react. Just be compassionate and try and see it from their side. When Gemma comes to the house later to the Gordon podcast, she's traveled a long way. She's probably really excited about her new book. 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 a 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. It doesn't mean it always happens. But I think we often think, oh, you know, I want to be a compassionate person. We listen to a podcast once a week and then we get on with our lives and we don't 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 visualisation each day. Does that come under the definition of visualisation for you? 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 visualisation 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 to 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? 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 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. Yeah. I really love that, Gemma. Again, two really fantastic questions that are free to answer. Yes. They don't take long to answer, but they can have a profound impact, especially when repeat a day after day. 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, well, 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. Is this where your husband's polar bear comes in? Yes. I remember reading that. I don't look 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. I mean, I can explain it a little bit more because I listen to probably have no clue what we're talking about. Today's episode is sponsored by AG1, a daily health drink that has been in my own life for over seven years. 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And the best thing, of course, is that all this goodness comes in one convenient, tasty, daily serving. For listeners of my podcast and for a limited time only, get 10 free travel packs plus a free welcome kit, including shaker, canister, and scoop. When you sign up for a monthly subscription at drinkag1.com, forward slash live more. 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 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, he would basically be on all fours crawling around the house pretending to be a polar bear 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, well, 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 jikiden raky practice, which I do on myself every day. And when I was learning about jikiden raky, it's a Japanese practice. I was learning more about the goddess Hwanyin, of goddess of compassion. And she was actually worshiped 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 Hwanyin, goddess of compassion. And you spell that? Q-u-a-n, y-i-n, Hwanyin. Okay. And yeah, it really allowed me to channel my compassion because I, when I perform raky on myself, it's a form of self-compassion. And when I perform raky 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 Hwanyin. I imagine your patience really like you, don't they, Jama? Well, I think some of them do most of them I hope. But yeah. I know it's hard to answer that yourself, but you, 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. Yeah, I think that's important for so many of my patients, just to feel listened to, to feel that those 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, 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? 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. 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. They just can't give what they used to, because they feel depleted. That's the same in any 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 parents, the friends, the son, the daughter, whatever it might be. It's hard, isn't it? Yeah, it's really hard. When you're trying to work from a cup that's only half full and you're just pouring out more and more out, then you're empty. I think a lot of doctors feel empty. 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. Of course, there's no substitutes for seeing a professional who's trained and 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 that's a book like your new one can be so helpful for people, because let's say you can't get doctor's appointment. Let's say that even when you do, it feels very rushed, 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 to even to healthcare professionals. 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. Would it be 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? 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. 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 doctors as often because they're generally a lot more well than they would have been otherwise. 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 touch 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? 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 and the natural world that we can actually treasure it and experience the health benefits as well. So yeah. 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. 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 email 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. And so his wife said to him, go and see the doctor, 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 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 some 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. They reported faster recovery times less need for analgesia postoperatively. It's amazingly 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 is 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. And there's lots of reasons for that, lots of potential reasons that I would postulate. Fight and Scythe being 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%. Just by walking in an outdoor setting. Yeah, you mentioned some of the research on forest bathing. I remember when that book came out. I think it was called Syrin Yoku. Yes, that's the name for the Japanese. I think 2017, 2018, something like that. The professor was, I remember reading about all that research about fight and size and how trees emit these chemicals out. Organic compounds. Yeah, and what it does to the human immune system. Yeah, it's incredible. It's phenomenal. What about nature's impact on our mental well-being? 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. Very good. It's less activated when we go out in nature. 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. I think we all intuitively know that, don't we? Yes. We know. It's nice to have the studies there as well. 100%. I agree. I think the science there is so wonderful because it reminds us of what we already know. Whoever has felt worse after a war count and nature. I'm sure it has happened. You might chip over, you might have a hip injury, but yes, you know, basically. But I think we all know that it's hard to separate out movement from that, of course, because we know that, let's say, again, for 30-minute walk, we'll literally change our 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 in a natural setting. I love that tip of looking out into the horizon. 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 or day every day and how literally the tension in your eye muscles will change. Certain muscles will elongate. If you look at a horizon, you look at it to the distance. 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 frankly, it can be not on holiday, any natural setting. You tend to have more of a peripheral vision than a focus vision and that in and off itself will help to activate the relaxation part of your nervous system, just your eyes alone. Just your eyes and there is a survival advantage to that as well. 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, well, you're going to obviously avoid being eaten by a tiger if you are in fight or flight, 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. There is actually a long-term survival advantage to that as well. What about water? Where does water come in here? 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 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. We know that water itself has a lot, there's about 60% of our bodies made of water, 70% of the landmass of earth, it's really important. There's so many different things I could say. 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 sea front. 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. 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 thunder storms 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 walk on the grass barefoot? Yeah, the very least it connects you to nature reminds you. That's what I do, you know, in my garden, 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 the importance of being barefoot as much as possible for our gates, for our posture, for our foot strength. For me, it's a natural extension. So 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. 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. You've got some big boots. You're very disconnected from the grounds of the way. I am. But this is the funny thing, you know, the last hundred years or so, we are all wearing these kind of rubber-sold shoes, which, you know, they're good insulators. So we're not getting those electrical charges either. 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, these huge suites of nature nearby, other one on urban streets. There's flats across the road from me. There's 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? 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 screen shaker that's a scene of nature is, you know, it's a way of actually bringing natural world into your home. Having a pet, perhaps as well as another way of doing it if you're somebody that is a pet lover, an animal lover, that's another nice way of bringing nature into your home. House plants, fantastic. You know, 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 moulds in the house. So yeah, that's another great advantage. I noticed your eyes go to the right there and looking at all the studio plants. You've got a lot of lovely plants and they always say, never trust a doctor whose plants are dying and luckily you as all look well and truly alive. The ones that are on shore 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, that, you know, it's really interesting. I remember as a kid, mum and dad would really look after the house plants. 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. 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. Yes, it brings me great joy to see my house plants flourishing. And I give them a little shake every now and then for a little bit of a more of a more of a more ticked 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, oh, you know, you can value something that doesn't necessarily have a central nervous system. You don't have an obvious sort of connection relationship with, but it's, it's another living thing. It's, you know, you mentioned purpose before. And purpose can be this really big, you know, great thing that we can stress out about, you know, what is my life purpose? Yeah. Or it can be a real micro purpose. Like, you know what, that's a living plant. That's my job. So look after it. And that has value. 100% it has value. Oh my goodness. Let me, 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 stone cutters. And they were building a cathedral in the 14th century. And the three stone cutters were asked about their jobs. And the first stone cutter 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 stone cutter was asked, well, what do you think about your job? You know, how do you feel about about being a stone cutter? He said, I am thrilled to be a stone cutter 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 stone cutter was asked, well, what do you think about your job? And he said, I am thrilled again to be a stone cutter 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. 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. 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, Jemma Handonhart, 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 impact on us. Yes. It really does. And the interesting thing about the stories we tell ourselves is that 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-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 babies, 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, 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. Can you think of an example in your own life when you experienced awe and that's it then inspired you? 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 her 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 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 life together for a while. But I think back 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. 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 amazing that is for our brain development. You know babies, there's about 700 and a thousand synaptic connections happening a second in that first year of life. And love is 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, just hearing that story has inspired me. I don't know your mother, Levin Metter. 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. It is. It's incredible. 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 thinking of all right job with my kids. Yeah. I'm still showing them love. Yeah. That's gratitude, right? Exactly. That is gratitude. That is it. And it's very powerful. Where did you experience that with your mum? Did you have that realization as a teenager or has it come since you became a mother? I had that realization very young because I obviously knew a little bit about what happened when I was born and I was not expected and I was a surprise. I wasn't planned. So feeling the amount of love that I got from my mum, I felt very love throughout my childhood and having an awareness that she was, somebody was suffering a lot of ways. She didn't know she was going to make ends meet. She had a lot of emotional turmoil going on and knowing that she loved me through it all 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. Yeah. For sure. Which is a shame for a lot of parents out there who, but 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, 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. There's another thought that came to me early on. I was able to go to university and she was not. Jepa, whenever I talk to you, I'm struck that there's a lot of wisdom inside of you. 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 where the 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're about seven. I always remember that because you had no fear. You told me that you felt calm and serene. Putting all of that together, would you agree that you seem to have had these 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 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. 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. Love is the second letter in glubs. There's a whole chapter, a beautiful chapter that you've written about love. What is love? It's defined in so many ways by so many different religious traditions. Everyone has a different idea about what it means, how it's expressed. But for me, 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 realise that. 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. I feel so emotional for some reason. I feel like this is, I think because I feel this is the real core of my mission in life, is because we're all healers. 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. 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. Can you be a fan of forgiveness? I feel I'm a fan of forgiveness. I've died into the research like you have. I think it is such an undervalued component of our health. I honestly don't think people realise how much energy they are using to hold on to resentment, even in really traumatic situations. 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? 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. I think many of us have seen it in loved ones too. Certain things that happened to us, we have no control over the ways in which certain people have treated us. It can really consume our hearts. In so doing, it is something that we punish ourselves with. It's a form of self-punishment. 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, whether that sounds cliché or not, I don't know, but it is very true. There's a lot of research around how forgiveness really does elevate our personal health. It's a beautiful gift. It's a gift that we can give to ourselves, in allowing ourselves a bit more peace, allowing ourselves a feeling of lightness. 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. 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 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 your 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. 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 can change your diet and see your average blood sugar, your HBA will see go down, you go, oh yeah, you know, but it's harder for people to do that with something like forgiveness. Fred Luskin at Stanford University, for example, on the Stanford Uni Research Projects on Forgiveness, they have shown that people who are able to forgive have lower blood pressure, right? Better immune system function. They're happier. There's all kinds of things that that research has shown. People don't realize in my experience that actually holding on to emotional pain and resentment is literally tension, hyper-tension in your body. Yes, that's a really eloquent way of putting it, absolutely. Oh my goodness, yes. So I'm 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 was entered him greatly for this but she didn't feel that she could change anything. She was very resigned to her fate and she would come and see me week after week. She had a lot of all-overbody pains. She had a lot of issues with pain, physical pain from all different places and ultimately 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 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 all-overbody pains began to disappear and I said to her how are you feeling? This is a very grueling treatment process. You know 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 if I was too 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 and I learned a lot from her because in that moment I realized that her needs were being 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 is going to move forward and so on but she just knew she in the instant that she offered her forgiveness she didn't have to say a word. Yeah that is a brilliant case and you just said it Gemma you said it's vital often to talk and communicate about what has happened often not always not always and that's what that case taught you I think it's what it taught me when I read it it's because it goes well to what we were talking about early one 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 were doing that situation and I would say most of the great doctors I know and I'd absolutely include you in that. A very good to know what they don't know and a very open to learn you can only do that if you're securing 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 you can often be scared to acknowledge what you don't know. Yeah and the story 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 a cup of tea telling her how much she loves her taking it to a hospital appointments and for her and I'm 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 I know you are with that woman I know and people listening may be pushing back and going well no you you can't be them 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 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 um and you know for again it's about stories like some people say well once there's been um a breach of trust in a relationship that's it it's over and doesn't have to be something like infidelity and marriage it could be anything it could be a friendship it could be a work relationship you know 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 watch required what's needed it is all just a story and if we can come back to our heart what is 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 un-pick a little bit of that if someone's listening Jemma and they go okay I get it there's benefits of forgiveness I hear the story just sheds but you don't know my life right this thing happened to me let's 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 I think 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 certainly 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 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 could 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 realise because you're so subsumed in it yeah 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 is 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 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 part of 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 yeah and I know you've got some exercise and they're brought 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 yeah I spoken about it a couple 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 yeah you can lead with compassion and acceptance first the Guinness gets a whole lot easier absolutely I mean 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 it's 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 it's a relentless adversary and they're in your own head and how exhausting is that yeah to have to live with an adversary like that in your head all the time saying negative things about you gentlemen we've covered the glowing gloves pretty well GLO not so much on their 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 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 if you 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 think of loads of examples you know the gold you locks and the three bears Aladdin has three wishes ad campaign snap crackle and pop London underground see it say it sorted you know Australian sunscreen you know as it slips lap slop yeah we think in threes and so I thought well let's let's make this super simple and I put the principles of the six healing health habits into three which was plants peace and purpose for three peas the three peas and what is P E A S right on brand for you oh yes exactly 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 do you want to just outline tapping what is it yeah it's 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 the so that problem is diminishing it touches on certain pressure points in the body but it is a combination of physical and psychological therapy can you give us an example and demonstrate all right so say for example you had a physical pain in your body and you'd rate it from one to ten one being mild ten 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 so you do it above your eye even though I have this pain I love and accept myself you can 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 to 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 ribcage so you do it to the side where your brush drop is if you're a lady and then you do it on 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 one to ten 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 you're rating of the pain or the problem started to diminish and it's a really calming exercise can people do that for other things 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 and 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 a huge benefit from EFT um and tapping I should say do you cover any of the science in your book or I do I do there's a lot of 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 yeah pertaining to each and every one of the things that you've talked about which I love even on tapping yeah it's a it's a lovely way of actually being able to combine the physical and the mental so yeah I'm a big fan yeah 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 parathy plants peace and purpose how does someone use that in their life 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 the physicality 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 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 like there's so many different things that I've put in there as practical tools 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 some time do they think I don't actually know which of these things I can try 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 you can't go wrong 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 labor of love over a number of years it feels it feels to me compared to your first book which was also great and it helps loads of people this one feels different it feels that this one was the book from your heart yes when I read this I feel yeah this is Gemma's soul coming out in this book yes I feel as though this yeah it's my you're absolutely right it's my heart and soul in this book I wanted people to truly understand some of the things that 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 final question Gemma we've we're speaking 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 it's slipped back again and thanks that we'll change it happening for me I'm stuck here it doesn't matter what I try nothing ever seems to work what do you find a word for them gotta come back to self compassion 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 whole 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 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. Gemma love the book love the conversation that's coming on the show. Thank you Morgan I very much love talking to you always. 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 only helps them it also helps you learn and retain the information. Now before you go just wanted to let you know about Friday five 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'd be consuming and quotes that have caused me to stop and reflect and I have to say in a world of endless emails it really is delightful that many if 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 dot to chatgeat.com forward slash Friday five now if you want new to my podcast you may be interested to know that I have written five books that have been best sellers all over the world covering all kinds of different topics happiness food stress, sleet behavior change and movement weight loss and so much more so please do take a moment to check them out they are all available as paperbacks ebooks and as audio books 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 all either of you on Apple podcasts thank you so much for listening have a wonderful week and always remember you are the architects of your own health making lifestyle changes always worth it because when you feel better you live more you