76 - Hacking your Health with Dr. Alka Patel Transcript
H = Hannah Harvey
A = Dr. Alka Patel
H 0:13
Hello, and welcome to Happily Ever After. It's me, Hannah. And today I'm joined by Dr. Alka Patel, who is a lifestyle (I’m reading this from your bio) medicine physician, longevity coach, podcaster, and multi award winning international speaker. Thank you so much for coming on.
A 0:33
That’s lovely. Thank you for that lovely introduction.
H
You're very welcome. I literally can't wait to speak to you because one of the main reasons we've been hooked up is because a friend of mine was saying you've got to speak to Dr. Alka because I was struggling with burnout.
A:
Right?
H:
And she was telling me that you've basically completely transformed your life and your career because of this. So she was saying that like your career and chasing the letters after your name, and everything that kind of led to burnout for you? Is that right?
A 1:07
Gosh, you're taking me back a few years. And burnout is such an interesting topic because it affects us all in very, very different ways. And yeah, certainly for me, going back nearly a decade now. It affected me physically. So I woke up in a hospital bed with surgery and tubes everywhere. And this is all just on the back of a simple fever, simple fever that I got- this is pre-COVID days, but I ignored it. Because I was so driven by what I needed to do for my work, needed to be there for other other people.
So what I did was sort of neglect that element of my own self care, I chose to go to work with a fever of 40 . I had prescriptions to do, results to check, letters to review, waiting room full of full of people. And then that kind of whipped me, sort of just ended up shutting down my kidneys shutting, down my liver, ended up hospitalised and I didn't have any resilience is the key thing. I didn't have that fight in me. So that impact of burnout of the go, go, go, go go meant when I really needed my internal resources, I just didn't have them.
And I didn't know at the time, Hannah that this was burnout. All I knew was that I was weak. And I was breakable. And I was incapable, it felt like a real failure. But now, I can call it burnout. But most people don't want to admit any of that. I didn't want to admit any of that. I was just you know, high flying professional career woman, I thought I was thriving you know, there's that fine line between passion and thriving and then just crashing. And I thought I was at a peak, I thought I really was thriving. But that's what often happens with burnout. We just kind of don't see it coming. But we really realise is we all just need a pause and then you will see it. There's so many signals, timetabling your days so you can squeeze more into it, you know, clock watching sacrificing sleep, not asking for any help.
Having that kind of you know, I can do it all I'm really independent. And then you skip meals and you kind of don't sleep when you have these like micro sleeps when you're driving. There's so much information so much signalling that's telling us to take a pause, step back. And we’re- because we're designed to oscillate not go go go.
So that was a really tough time for me. And I was very close to dying, I had near death experiences, all those things we hear about seeing the light, etc. We don't believe them because someone else says it. I had that. And I remember my children coming to see me on my birthday, actually, when I when this all happened to me.
And I had this sense of feeling I can let go, you know, there's so much love around you, you're going to be fine without me. And I was ready because my body had given up I couldn’t- I just didn't have the energy or even the will to keep going. So I do think this is an unfamiliar story for people. But I think for me now, I've got this burnout scar. I’ve got a physical scar as well as all those sort of emotional memories to remind me of what really, really matters. And it is that chatter of my children and restful sleep and energising activity and fresh air. And that was what then led me to kind of have a big pivot in the direction that my life this was going. So yeah.
H 4:27
Oh my goodness. When you do- so I'm a yoga teacher. And when you do yoga teacher training, or certainly on the one I did, we did a death ceremony. So it's like you're taken to that point of like, like what you literally just said, there's that moment of peace. Where you’re like, okay, I know I'm going. So what are the things that really matter in that moment. And it is bizarre, like you literally can feel yourself going there and being like, Wow, all the things I was obsessing about and they literally don't matter. And it’s like you had that.
A 5:08
Totally. But you know, I think, like the reality is, is it's so hard to disconnect from that, isn't it? Because we still chase those things.
H
Yeah
A
Despite knowing connection matters, and love matters. And it's not all about money, we say these things, but still in our day to day, so many of us still chase that success, or we chase that validation. Or we remain driven. And I think that is part of being human. Because although we're called human beings, there's a big part of us that is human doings we have a drive to do.
And that's part of you know, maybe it's part of evolution and progressing the species. But it's that kind of oscillation between being and doing that is so important, that is so challenging in this sort of 24/7, Always on world that we're living in now.
H 6:01
100% It's like, everything you're talking about there, before you had your death ceremony was doing, doing, doing external, external, external. And we're kind of brought up to be like that. And to do that. It's modelled all around us. I don't know about you, but I didn't have a lot of like watching my parents, like, taking time out, I suppose we would do things like going for walks. But yeah, certainly on a day to day basis, it was, you know, a school teacher and a professor at a university kind of thing. That's like one of those 24/7 jobs.
A 6:51
And I add, that's not too dissimilar. I saw my parents working incredibly hard. But they were working so I could have life advantages. And, you know, we also sometimes do that for our children, we did it for our children. So they have even more life advantages than we've had.
It's all that sort of progressive nature, which in a way is great, because I think we do need to fuel by moving forward. But there's also this big craving to step out as well. I remember as well, on my 50th birthday. So you know what it's like when you hit these decades. And everyone is that all about the party. Like where's the party? How are we going to celebrate? And I had a craving to step out. And I ended up saying no party, and I went off on some solo travel, I went to the mountain, I had this real calling to get into the mountains. So when to Andalusia in Spain, and I went into seven days of complete silence, so it didn't speak. And in my- in the beginning, you said, you know, I'm an internationally recognised speaker. So a speaker who doesn't speak, it's just like, unheard of, but that kind of stillness and being able to listen to my own sounds really embedded a sense of- again, back to where, where I want to go in my life, what matters to me, What difference do I want, want to make, and we sometimes need that stillness in order to even hear those echoes of our own voices. Because we sometimes don't want to hear what feels like it's the truth.
H 8:18
I think that's kind of twofold. Like, if you're doing doing doing, everything's outside of yourself, everything's, you know, it's pretty obvious what you're doing. If you slow down and get in your own body, two things can happen. One is you discover you're not doing anything that you want to be doing. And the other is you find something scary.
A 8:40
Right?
H
Yeah. Or maybe I don't want to do that. Because I am actually numbing out and I'm trying- specifically trying not to hear what's going on inside because there's stuff I don't want to deal with.And it's scary.
A 8:56
Yeah, yeah. But there is a lot to be said for that. I call it innate intuition. So where my work has now taken me is into a very different space from being a busy GP. So I've moved from what I like to call drug pusher to life healer. And I guess it kind of needs a bit of explaining. So as a GP you have 10 minutes with with a patient and the quickest thing you could do is give them a drug and then we've got depression, here’s a drug, feeling tired, here’s a drug, got diabetes, here's a drug. And I realised that that wasn't helping people. Yeah, it's sort of sick care society, sick care system. Great. It does a great job when you're really sick. But what about health, where is health?
And I do believe that we do have this very innate intuition in terms of knowing how to heal and how to optimise our health and how to be at the peak of our health and stay there, but it does get drowned out by by everything else. So we need to look at what is this everything else around us in this world that we're living in right now. We're living in the technological age, right? We're living in the age of tech. So what I now do is I blend that innate intuition with what I call transformative technology. And when you merge them together, you get this explosion of personalisation of really starting to understand and being driven by information and data about yourself in terms of how can I be at my peak of my health, because if you're not at the peak of your health, everything else is going to take is going to kind of not be at its best either.
So I was really thinking about bringing those two modalities together, and getting excited about health and having more fun with with your health. And that's what I love focusing on now because of that experience of reconnecting with my intuition. And what's important innately. We know innately, we know how to eat, and move and sleep and connect and feel. But then how do you drive yourself to do that in a very, very noisy world? Well, how about we use technology to actually enable us. Let there be our tools, rather than it being something that we’re being led by, we should be leading the tools that we have access to.
H 11:14
So you're talking like an app type thing?
A 11:18
Oo! I'm talking about more than that. So we're in this age now where we can have access to so much personal data about us. So I do things like metabolic testing. So things like looking at, you know, all your vitamins, all your nutrients, how are you making energy? Because life is energy? Right? We talk about things like time management, but really what we're doing is wanting to manage our energy. Without energy there is no human, there is no, there is no us. So how do you make sure that you don't have those energy crashes in the day that stop you being able to do the doing that you want to want to do, and there's a lot around that around sort of nutrition and etc, isn't there.
But I also do think, your genetic profile and how you’re made as a human being like, now we can access that information. You know, 30 years ago, we couldn't now we've unmasked the whole human genome to a really personal level. So when I test that, it's very, very interesting. I ran the London Marathon last year. And what was really exciting about that, for me is I did some genetic profiling on myself and discovered that I've got genes for endurance, so that for me, genetically, I'm programmed to be able to keep going.
H
Wow
A
I’ve got that in terms of endurance, and I'm less programmed, just way I’m made, for strength. But just that knowledge whilst I was running the marathon, when I had felt times when I was flagging, gosh, you know, how much longer to go. I was like, you're made for this woman, you can do this, you're made for it. Because I knew my genetic profile. So simple things like that. Just knowing, right? Just helps you keep going
H
Yeah!
A 12:56
it was, it was amazing. But more than that, when I talk about kind of devices, as well, as I talked about data, and talk about devices, things like putting on an aura ring, for example, and tracking your sleep, tracking your body temperature, knowing what to do with that information. I put glucose monitors on clients. So we can kind of really kind of metabolise really well. Things like putting on this pair, this pair of blue blocker glasses, you know, they're like, pretty groovy.
H
Oh nice!
A 13:24
We underestimate the power of light, and we really don't give reverence to the power of light. And so, you know, exposing and not exposing yourself to light at certain periods of time, makes a huge difference to your rhythms, to your energy, to your productivity, to performance, your focus. So bring all of these things in together, and get you to that level that you feel good. And you change your physiology, take control of your health don't just become a kind of passive recipient of what might be what might be a one day wake up with diabetes or wonder why you've got that heart attack or think you've got heart problem and then ignore it. So really taking kind of control, hacking as such, which I love talking about your health. So you become the kind of Master of it by using the tech by using your intuition by building and creating kind of lifestyle on longevity habits. And the added benefit with all of this is that you reverse ageing.
H 14:26
Right? This is amazing. Firstly, my word for the year is compassion. Because I've been in therapy and my therapist was like your drive voice and your threat voice is very healthy. Like, that's how I get myself to do everything. So I was told that I don't have a very strong compassion voice. So whenever I do anything for my body that should be deemed as this is good for you, I it comes from a place of threat, and drive and not compassion.
So that's why my my word for the year is compassion and it's brought me back full circle to being like you need to nourish your body. That's the compassionate thing to do, you need to move your body. That's the compassionate thing to do, that kind of thing. So what you're saying there really kind of reminded me of that. And the fact that if we can come at it from a place of this is really good for you, and receive that love from yourself and not be like you're doing this because you've been lazy for all of Christmas. You know, that kind of, the threat voice and from a place of this is really important. And it's important for you and your family. And it will absolutely get the best out of you. That's the place that I want to come at it from. But I'm totally fascinated about this idea of being able to optimise what you have, and to reverse ageing.
A 16:28
And I love what you just said there Hannah, because this is again about tapping into your values. And whenever I asked my clients questions, like what matters to you, what are your values, it's often the kind of blank stare because we haven't given ourselves the choice, the chance and the opportunity to reconnect compassionately with that level of kindness to ourselves to really understand what does drive me, what kind of human do I show up as in the world.
And that level of kind of self compassion is so important. But I think there's also this sense of having, awe and amazement at what your body can do, like, you know, whether that's I've just gone out and felt the wind in my hair, or do you know what, I've just run a 5k. Or I've just said that we're going to stretch even further than I could last weekend, oh my god, I can do this. Like, this is an this is amazing.
When I talk about technology, I mean, look at this piece of tech. This body that we, that we house everything in it is incredible. I think when you go through life, really thinking about the incredibleness of life that we have, and the vessel that we've got to enable us to live that you really start to, like you say, love yourself, really, really love yourself. So even with things like pain, so I put my back out at the moment. And I'm annoyed with myself that I've done that. But I'm also so grateful that my body is giving me that signal of pain so that I know what I need to do next for myself, because if it didn't give me that signal, then what would happen continue to break down. So even appreciating that there's a lot of people who live with physical pain. But we've got to use our signals to guide us and let them act as our sort of Northstar like, what is this pain telling me? You know what, it's telling me to just slow down or it's telling me that I need to stretch more is telling me like, don’t sit in your chair all day whilst you're working and on Zoom calls, stand bit more. So when you start to tune in like that, again, you will automatically put your compassionate arm around yourself, don’t you?
H 18:37
Yeah. Where abouts in your back, is it?
A 18:41
Left lower back.
H
Try doing some abs
A
Are you going to give me a yoga pose.
H
Do some abs, we always say you need to engage your core, because that helps support the lower back. I mean, you know, all this
A 18:55
No, and you're spot on. I was at the gym this morning. And it was exactly that, like I couldn't do any kind of hip thrusts to because all of that was so weak and the core was connected to that. And I could completely feel that as I was trying to trying to do that. So I will take your advice Hannah, absolutely. Thank you.
H
You're very welcome. Now tell me how to be younger.
A 19:20
How can you be younger? So first of all, it's knowing where you're at now, that part of all of this kind of, you know, data that I'm talking about and thinking about, what information, what informatics can you get from your body? The first thing, of course, is to know how old you are. Right? So if you want to be younger, like actually, how old are you? And again, the thing most people do is talk about their chronological age. So the numbers of sunrises and sunsets you've seen, and that really isn't a true representation of your age because we- the ageing process is on a velocity. It's a speed thing. So you can now measure and this is again amazing time that we're living in. You can now measure your biological age. So that is the first thing I'm a real advocate of just understanding that number for yourself, it's one number, but it's very telling. And once you've got that number, you'll know which direction you want to sort of take that in.
So I've seen many, many people, you know, in their 30s, and their 40s, with biological ages of 67/77. And that shock reaction, it's like, it's like a grief reaction. There's there's denial, initial kind of denial and disbelief, and then this sort of anger about it. And then this looks like you know what, I can do something about this. And it's focusing on on your lifestyle, really thinking about, so things like that we know can help to reverse ageing. What's really important to think about is stress. So we talked about burnout at the beginning
And stress, we often view very, very negatively, and when it is very chronic, yes, and it's ongoing, and it's relentless. It does have very, very negative impacts on your health. But we also need to put our bodies under stress in order to trigger our survival genes. So we've got these lovely families of genes that get activated in a scarcity and get deactivated in abundance. So if you're, for example, eating all day long.. We’ve got access to food now that's so easy, our ancestors didn't they didn't eat all day long. We now potentially can, then your body's not really in survival mode. Whereas if you do something like intermittent fasting, eating within what I like to call a time connected window, so you connect your eating with time, then your body is like oh, I don’t have food coming at me all day long, I'm gonna switch on these survival genes and those then reverse your biological age. So that's a really, really lovely way of getting into a pattern of eating. And it's also about trusting your body. So whenever you know I talked about this and teach this, it's like trust your liver, your liver knows what to do in order to keep you energised, you're not going to collapse and feel de energised if you don't eat every two hours. Or if you don't eat when you wake up. Or if you don't have a you know, a late dinner. Your liver knows how to make energy for you just trust it. But let it get used to it, let it get used to your patterns, because we're governed by these circadian rhythms aren't we, the sort of sunset sunrise like the sort of day clock. So we've got to learn to how to tune into that. So how do you reverse ageing- one) if you're not already, really think about some time connected eating, there's a way to do that.
H
Do you have a time period that you prefer? Like 8 till 8 or?
A 22:31
Yeah, for me, I'm in a rhythm of 12 to eight. So I wake up and I have a glass of lemon water. So I have half a pint of lemon water. And then I- usually mornings I that's when I kind of like to exercise and wake my, wake my body up. And then I don't eat my first meal until midday. I'm not craving I'm not hungry. I'm just ready by them.
H 22:58
Will you drink coffee or?
A 23:01
No, I'm not, I'm not a coffee drinker. Used to love tea and I do have coffee. It's not that I don't have it could have it later. But I'm not someone who needs to wake up in the morning. Oh my god, where's my coffee? I can't wait possibly wake up without coffee. And if that is you- really think about why is that? What's going on with your sleep? Is kind of something to really think about prioritising because the biggest way to age is to sabotage your sleep. So if you want to reverse ageing, prioritise your sleep, we know that people die early, if they haven't slept, you know, if you're getting five, six hours sleep at night, and it's continuously that or less, you are shedding years off your life, there's plenty of research and data to support that. So you've got to kind of find your bite point, please don't go less than 6 hours. 6, 7, 8, 9. You know, there's a sweet spot somewhere in there. Again, I love to be guided by data. But if you haven't got access to that, you know really think about am I reaching for that morning coffee? Might be something off with my sleep? Am I kind of you know, feeling a crash in the middle of the day? What's that about? Maybe that's related to my sleep?
So I think I mean, coffee is fine. Caffeine has got some really great benefits as well. So the caffeic acid in, in coffee has got some very, very strong sort of immune response benefits as well. So it's, it's a good thing to drink, but it's thinking about the timing, and how much as well. So yeah, kind of, my timing is sort of 12 till till eight. I used to be- oh my God, the one thing I love is eating in bed.
H 24:36
When you wake up?
A
No at night, at night. So that's something I've had to kind of shift significantly. There's kind of, I, when I grew up, as I was growing up, my mum would always bring me breakfast in bed. So eating in bed for me was something super comforting.
H
Yeah
A
It takes me right back when I was was really little. So I've always had that and so I'd kind of, as an adult getting into bed at night, and having something to eat just felt so comforting. So that's something I've worked really hard to break that that association with. Every now and again, my sort of husband leaves a little chocolate on the pillow. So I’m kind of like come on, you know?
H
Awww
A 25:20
It's a very cute, it's a very cute gesture. So that's really sweet. But no, otherwise, that's, that's the one thing I've kind of in my 12 to eight, is that foraging at night, that, for me has been kind of more difficult, but I'm used to it now. You know, it's less so and but you know, sometimes when you feel like doing something that's out of your normal rhythm, do it. You know, sometimes that pressure of denying yourself something is less compassionate, it takes away from that kind of kindness to to yourself. So yeah, of course, sometimes I will eat in bed. And sometimes I'll have that chocolate from my pillow. I think life, you know, we need to be able to be really, really flexible with it too much rigidity, also kind of adds stress and physiologically doesn't do any good, particularly from a longevity perspective, as well.
H
So some stress is good, other stress is not?
A 26:11
Yeah, oh, absolutely. And again, you've got to find your bite points. So again, monitoring, knowing, how do you know? Even going to the gym or exercising, most people go, you know, go further, faster, lift more like beat get even more weights, more is better. More is not always better.
Specifically, from an ageing perspective, you've got to hit that, you know, that Goldilocks spot, not too much, not too little, but just the right amount. And you can only do that really by tracking, really by again, you know, tracking your day to tracking your information. And using all of that to your advantage, we've got to use this time to our advantage.
So yeah, that kind of less is more is also an important phenomenon.
H
Yeah. And especially, I guess you need to know what kind of person you are like and what's teetered into addiction and something that you're heavily reliant upon. You know, like, say, for example, you were addicted to eating in bed, you might go- for me to stop doing this, like, it has to be a flat no. No chocolates on pillows, because it'll send me straight back there.
A 27:15
Yeah, yeah. And that's really interesting you saying that. Because lots of people are all or nothing.
H
I’m all or nothing.
A 27:24
Yeah, and I think I'm pretty all or nothing, as well, you know, I can, I can rarely just have one sweet from a packet. Like before I know it, the whole things devoured. So I'd rather not have them. And I'm always saying this to my mum, as well, like her love language is food, and she'll bring all sorts of goodies into the house. And I’m like please don't bring it into the house. Because if it's in the house, the only one is going to devour it is me. So it’s about controlling that environment around you that's really important as well. So yeah, when I, I once, I didn't tell you this little story. But after my burnout, that kind of period of discovery. I had a calling to get on a plane, and go and do some voluntary work. Just felt like I needed just that space.
So I went off to India, where- I didn't speak the language in the particular part that I went to, and I was looking after, talking about death, I was looking after people at the end of their life out there and learn an incredible amount and met a man who was 106 years old. And this is where my connection to longevity and lifestyle kind of really got embedded because how did he do that. And it was all about connecting and social connection, feeling of belonging, being part of something, moving all the time, eating in the right way, and sleeping and all those kind of natural things already talked about. And that's what I wanted to bring back to the UK when I when I came here.
But the reason I brought this up now was when I got on the plane, I got on the plane eating meat. And when I got off the plane, I got off a vegetarian, and I haven't eaten any meat since then. I've been a vegetarian now for sort of nearly over five years now. And it had to be all or nothing for me it wasn't you know, meat free Monday, it was either I'm gonna just go all in or I'm all out. I started thinking I'd be a bit of a flexitarian and you know, kind of have meat when I wanted it or not wanted it. Didn't want to put any impose any kind of rigidity, but realised that I don't actually even want it anymore and just stopped. And that was my all or nothing.
H 29:32
So do you feel like that's a good route for everyone to take? Or is it just something that you felt was good for you?
A 29:40
Yeah. Not for everybody. I think some people do need a transition. So you know transitioning to say a more plant slant to eating more plant based slant is great. You know, start by changing one thing, change your milks. Just see how that feels. That kind of approach, if that's something that's you know, important for you for your family. Or start with, you know, one day, as you're adding increased diversity of vegetables and beautiful colours onto your, onto your plate and having no meat and you know, just kind of those transitions are important for some people.
Things like alcohol as well, some people do need to be all or nothing. And you mentioned kind of just know your personality, have a conversation with somebody to kind of unravel that. And others, you know, they do well, just by reducing just by being more mindful, make kind of active active choices being really intentional.
And I think that comes back to what we talked earlier about values. You know, what are your values and how are you going to show up with those in the world is really, really key. So, yeah, I think everything has to be individualised, you know, there is no one route for everybody at all. There's no one design fix all,
H
Definitely. But just going back to the meat thing, do you think we to cut it out of our diets as a rule? Or is it just more about creating more space for vegetables?
A 31:03
A bit of both. So again, I would say you know, the stronger plant slant that you can have, the better for your health. But be guided by your own- making sure you're meeting your nutritional needs, we're still talking about carbohydrate, fat, and loss of meat, of course, is saturated fat, affects your heart health, affects all sorts of things, even how you cook meat, they released something called AGES, which is advanced glycation end products. And- I know!
H
That doesn’t sound good.
A 31:37
And, and it isn't because the AGES also age, they start to impact on your, on your DNA on your immune system and your ability to sort of repair. So lots of negative effects from just the way that you even cook meat, let alone everything that happens from from eating it. So I am an advocate of a stronger plant slant. I do think we need to add diversity and have more vegetables. I do a lot of gut health testing, as well. And when you look at now, when people talk about the microbiome, that’s the bacteria that are in our gut, because they're all there for a reason. And so we need to feed them in order for them to be able to fuel us. So if we're not giving them the right substrate that they're going to be able to feast on, then we're doing ourselves a disservice and missing out on all of their byproducts, which are again, super important for brain health, cognitive performance, focus, for example. So there's a lot a lot there.
We could do a whole conversation about your gut, as well. But, but yeah, I am a strong advocate for that. But I also believe we need to meet people where they are. So it's one that on that journey. This isn't about alienating you, it's not about restricting you. This is about you kind of connecting with how you eat, when you eat, and why you eat. Do you eat to live or live to eat?
H 33:01
Wow, this has been absolutely fascinating. I was gonna ask if you could finish off by kind of giving us maybe like three tips that we could start doing now which will have a positive and lasting impact on well-being and longevity.
A 33:19
Oo! three tips. Okay, so I think we've touched on on a few things.
The first thing I would say is know where to start. Because when it comes to where in my lifestyle do I start- We talked about a lot already Hannah. Is it my sleep? Is it my food? Should I kind of you know, make sure I'm exercising? And it gets so overwhelming. So my first tip is- If you’re feeling overwhelmed, know where to start. And the reason I say this is because I've already also created a tool that can help you know where to start. So I call it my LQ test. So it's a little bit like the IQ for your cognitive intelligence and your EQ for your emotional intelligence. This is your LQ for your lifestyle. So it's just a simple question. It's on my website, dralkapatel.com , and it looks at key factors in your lifestyle that affect longevity, and affects your health. And it will tell you by the way you answer the questions where to start looking. So if it highlights sleep is where you need to start then start there. Deal with the big big ones. So that's my first tip is, know where to start. Don't guess where to start? Absolutely find out.
And then three things that I always talk about when it comes to longevity are sugar, sleep and stress. So three things are very, very key. So if we start with sugar, again, has a huge impact on your metabolism, insulin, hunger, weight, heart health, all sorts of things. So really look at processed foods, hidden sugars and be conscious and mindful of minimising those.
So that's the first thing that I suggest. And then if you can, and want to, very happy for people to contact me, put a CGM on but a continuous glucose monitor on it's a game changer. I think it's one of the biggest things for the 2024. And really starting to track your sugar responses. You and I can eat the same bowl of pasta and have a totally different response. It doesn't mean we should go around saying no carbs, carbs are evil, you know, we shouldn't be doing that, we should really understand your own profiling. So but all the hidden sugars, all of us should absolutely be kind of minimising for sure, tracking or no tracking. So that's the kind of sugar.
Sleep, I've already said, is avoid that scroll on socials, like you know, one, well, one more episode of Netflix, I promise, it's just one more. So you know, again, be really mindful of getting in good quality sleep. And if you are waking up unrefreshed, if you're reaching for that morning coffee, if you're having a crash kind of mid morning, it's a real signal to you to tell you to prioritise your sleep.
So that's super important and use the light to help that because some people might say, but I want to sleep, but I can't sleep. Get out in the morning light, even if you spend 60 seconds out in the daylight first thing in the morning because the body needs to know the differential between night and day in order to kind of trigger your melatonin in the right hormone. So step out into the morning light, let the body know that it's daylight. And don't just be under office lights or home lights all day. And then at nighttime, go the opposite, you know really dim out, don't have all that blue light coming at you, from your phones, your gadgets, and if you want some groovy glasses, then that's going to be..
H
Yeah, I want those.
A 36:50
And then the third thing was was stress of course. So I want to talk about stress in a positive light. So if you haven't already shifted, think about shifting into intermittent fasting, as we spoke about, there's lots of other ways. Breath control, breath holds, ice bath, sauna, infrared lights, there's lots of other ways. But we've talked about intermittent fasting, so it'd be a good way to start.
So if that's not something you're familiar with, just start by having breakfast, an hour later, or having dinner an hour earlier. Let yourself get used to that. And then just continue to shift until this just feels comfortable and part of your lifestyle. So don't go all or nothing on this one. Just start gradually and allow yourself to get used to that as well. So those would be my Yeah, three key tips.
H
That's amazing. Thank you so much. Absolutely fascinating conversation. And I feel like that's really doable as well. Like it's that idea of we can be consistent. And introducing something that's doable every day rather than being like I've got this mountain to climb.
A 38:02
Exactly. Small starts big impact, can be huge. It's all about habits, you know, just get into this beautiful rhythm where so much just feels automatic, and easy. And the way to make that happen is those 1% increments and just start slow and build.
H
Lovely. Oh, thank you so so much for coming on and chatting to me today. I really appreciate it. And we will link to your L test.
A
LQ Test
H
LQ test. That’s it. Yeah. amazing Okay, thank you so much.
