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Hey guys, how you doing? Hope you're having a good week so far. My name is Dr. Rangan Chatterjee and this is my podcast, Feel Better Live. More Today's episode is a bonus New Year's Day episode from myself to inspire you and perhaps get you thinking about life in a slightly different way and reflecting on the kinds of things you might want to focus on this year that will really make a difference to your health and your happiness. Now these end of year episodes and New Year's Day bonus episodes are becoming a little bit of a tradition now. As you might recall, this is exactly what I did last year on Boxing Day 2024 and New Year's Day 2025. I released two bonus solo episodes and the feedback to them was absolutely amazing. So I've decided to do the same thing again this year. Hopefully you might have heard the one I released a few days ago on Boxing Day All About Happiness to celebrate the re release of my fifth book, Happy Minds, Happy Life, which is available in the UK from today in a brand new exciting format with some extra bonus sections. But even if you did not listen to that episode or you haven't got round to it yet, this episode is a standalone episode that does not require you to have listened to that one for this one to make sense. Now, over the course of the week, I've been thinking about what would be the most useful thing that I could share on this New Year's Day episode. And the thing that kept coming up for me is stress. I think that chronic stress is without question the most important thing for us to get our heads around these days. I really do think if I had to choose one thing that is having the most negative impact on the state of our lives, I would say that it's chronic stress. And I think chronic stress is very much misunderstood. The term stress gets used all the time, but I'm not entirely sure that everyone really understands what stress is and how exactly it impacts us. So what I thought I'd do in today's episode is at the start, explain to you exactly what stress is and what impact it can have on your body if you don't actively manage it. And then once I've done that, I'm going to share with you five relatively simple things that you can think about bringing into your life that will help you reduce the impact that stress has on you. Okay? So I hope that sounds good. Hope you're doing something fun or you're out for a walk, or maybe you're on a long drive somewhere. I'm here in my studio. It is a pretty miserable day. Outside. It is dark, it's early morning. As I record this, it's raining. Have come in with a hot drink to keep me company. So without further ado, let's get in to the episode. Okay, the first thing I want to say is that 80 to 90% of what a doctor sees in any given day these days is in some way related to stress. And when I explain to you what the stress response is, I think you will very clearly see how chronic stress impacts every single organ system of the body. Okay, so what is stress? Well, the best way to think about this is that stress is literally there to keep you safe. The stress response gets activated when it thinks you're in danger. So let's go back in time, maybe 50 or 100,000 years ago, and let's imagine we're just getting on with our day. We're hunter gatherers. We're. We're in a small tribe, and we're just doing our thing. And then let's say as you're doing your thing, you notice out of the corner of your eye, a predator approaching the camp. In an instant, your stress response gets activated. And remember what I said before. The purpose of that stress response is to keep you safe. So what happens? Well, all kinds of things start to happen in your body to. To help keep you safe. I won't go through them all because it would take me about two hours to do that. But let me give you a few examples. Your blood glucose starts to go up so that more sugar can get delivered to your brain, which, of course, is gonna help you in an emergency situation. Your blood pressure starts to go up, which helps more oxygen get delivered to your brain, which, again, is going to help you in an emergency situation. Your amygdala, the emotional part of your brain, goes onto high alert, so you're suddenly hypervigilant. You can hear a pinprick sound everywhere around you. This is really, really helpful if you're trying to detect other threats that might be coming at that same time. And something else that a lot of people don't think about is, is their blood. Your blood becomes more prone to clotting. Now, why would it do that? Well, if you were to get attacked by a predator and it was to cut your skin instead of bleeding to death, the fact that your blood is going to clot quickly is something that could potentially save your life. Okay, so I've just mentioned four things there. Blood glucose, your blood pressure, the amygdala, that emotional part of your brain going on to high alert and your blood's propensity to clots. Now here's the big problem in the modern world today. For many of us, dare I say most of us, our stress response is not being activated by wild predators. It's being activated by the state of our daily lives. Email inboxes to do lists, three or four social media platforms we're trying to keep up to date with negative news headlines. Elderly parents we're trying to care for at the same time as looking after our own young children. And the list goes on. For many of us, it's the state of our daily lives that is causing our stress response system to, to get activated. And so those things that help you in the short term start to become harmful in the long term. So let's just go through those four things that I mentioned and see how that plays out. Well, blood glucose going up for a short period of time to help you run away from a tiger. Super useful. If that's happening day in, day out to the state of your life, well, that causes fatigue, it causes belly fat to accumulate and ultimately is going to cause things like type 2 diabetes. Your blood pressure going up delivers more oxygen to the brain. Great if a predator is attacking you, also fantastic. If that's happening in response to your spinning class temporarily that you might do in the gym, in the short term, it's fine. In the long term, if that's happening to the state of your daily life, that persistently elevated blood pressure is going to increase your risk of heart attacks and strokes. Your amygdala, that emotional part of your brain going on to high alert in an emergency situation, there's a predator coming. No problem. If you're walking down a dark street at night and you think someone's following you, you want your amygdala to be on high alert, you want to be hyper vigilant and hear any pinprick sound around you. But if that's happening in response to the state of your daily life, well, that's kind of what we call anxiety. And again with your blood, your blood being prone to clotting is fine in a short term situation, day in, day out, that increases your risk of things like heart attacks and strokes. That's the first thing I really want to help you understand. Stress is not a bad thing. A little bit of stress helps us. It's too much of it that remains unmanaged over a prolonged period of time that causes us the problems. And we now know clearly from the scientific research that chronic unmanaged stress can cause type 2 diabetes. We know that chronic stress is a causative factor in the development of Alzheimer's disease. Not just associated with, but causative. And frankly, you can find evidence that chronic unrelenting stress is implicated in the development of pretty much every single chronic disease that we have. So I'm not saying that to scare you. I'm actually saying that to empower you. If you understand that and realize actually chronic stress isn't something to just complain about with my friends when they say, hey, how are you doing? Yeah, I'm all right. I'm just a little bit stressed. Sure, tell your friends, ask for help, but don't ignore it. Just because it's normal in modern society for many of us to feel stressed doesn't mean it's optimal and it doesn't mean it's not having a serious impact on the state of your life. I'll tell you one thing I've seen time and time again in my career, for many years, I would see a lot of people with autoimmune disease. And one of the things I would do is, is look at their entire life story, find out what has gone on in their life from birth all the way up to the development of the autoimmune symptoms. And I can tell you, in the vast majority of cases, in the six months prior to them getting the diagnosis, there was a significant amount of stress that they experienced in their life. Now, I'm not necessarily saying that chronic stress was the only factor that caused the autoimmune disease, but it was absolutely a contributing factor in a massive way. So this really does need to be taken seriously. But here's the thing, it's not actually as hard as you think it is to start managing this. So yes, it is a massive problem that I think is affecting so many people these days. In fact, maybe, maybe 10 years ago now, the World Health Organization put on their main homepage that stress is the health epidemic of the 21st century. But just think about that. They didn't put that about physical inactivity or our diets or the fact that many of us are chronically sleep deprived. Although these three things, of course, are massive issues. They put it there about stress. So this episode really at the start of the year is to hopefully inspire you to take stress seriously. I mean, think about it. In the modern world, if stress does not take a day off, can we really afford to take a day off from managing stress? And just on a very simple level, if you take a 30,000 foot view on the state of our lives these days. It used to be that downtime was built into the fabric of our lives. First of all, before modern technology and emails, it was very, very hard for many of us to take our work home. You left the office, you went home, you were kind of done. You couldn't still read emails or keep working late into the evening in a way that you can today. So the boundaries that, that have been blurred now or frankly decimated between work life and home life are one of the reasons why these kind of natural periods of recuperation and rest have gone. But just think about something like Sundays here in the uk. I remember as a kid, all the shops were pretty much closed on Sundays. You couldn't go and get your shopping. You know, Sunday was a day of rest. People would chill with their families. You might watch, I don't know, Formula one on a Sunday afternoon on terrestrial TV together. But there was a natural state of relaxation built in to one day of the week. Whereas today that's pretty much gone. There are activities seven days a week. The shops are open seven days a week. And again, there may be benefits of that, but we have to understand that that has come at a cost for many of us. We no longer switch off, so that stress response is chronically being activated. Now, before I outline the five relatively simple ways that you can start to reduce the impact that stress has in your life, I want to share with you another concept that I've been talking to my patients about for years and first wrote about in my 2018 book, the stress Solution. And that's the concept of micro stress doses. My patients over the years have loved this because it really helps them understand how quickly stress can add up and have a negative consequence in their lives. Okay, so what is a micro stress dose? Well, a micro stress dose is a little dose of stress that in isolation you can handle just fine. The problem comes when those micro stress doses accumulate one on top of the other. Now, the reason they become a problem is because all of us have our own unique personal stress threshold. Now, your threshold may be different from my threshold, and our own thresholds might be different on different days. But the concept I want you to really understand is that when you hit your own personal stress threshold, that's when things go wrong. That's when your back goes, or your neck goes into spasm, or you send back a really reactive email to one of your colleagues, or you shout at your kids, right? It tends to happen when you have reached your personal stress threshold. And here's the thing. If you weren't at your stress threshold, that same event from the outside world, that email from your colleague, it wouldn't have the same impact. You wouldn't react. And that's why sometimes we can receive an email, let's say, on a Monday morning when we're really well rested and deal with it absolutely fine and totally calmly. You receive that same email on a Friday afternoon at 4:45pm After a really busy and stressful week. Suddenly you interpret that email completely differently and and you react. It's all to do with your levels of stress. So I contend that many of us these days are being exposed to at least 20 micro stress doses before we've even left our house in the morning. And dare I say it, for some of us, we've been exposed to that many microstress doses before we've left our bed. So let me explain to you how how this might play out. Today's episode is sponsored by AG1, a daily health drink that has been in my own life for over seven years now. The colder months can make it harder to stay motivated. Less sunlight reduce movement and seasonal mood dips can leave people feeling physically and and mentally drained, especially when trying to maintain healthy routines. A lot of us rely on coffee or energy drinks to push through, but these often lead to crashes and poor sleep quality and really are not the best long term solution. AG1 is a daily health drink that can support our energy through its blend of B vitamins, vitamin C and magnesium. These nutrients help reduce tiredness and fatigue while supporting normal psychological and nervous system function. And unlike caffeine, these nutrients actually work with the body's natural energy systems. I know myself that I can feel a significant difference in energy levels on the days where I have taken my AG1. And if you struggle to stay consistent with with energy boosting habits like exercise or prepping food in advance, AG1 could be a simple and effective way to help. For a limited time only, get a free AG1 duffel bag and a free AG1 welcome kit with your first subscription. All you have to do is go to drinkag1.comlivemore and the offer is only available while supplies last. Let's imagine you've had a busy day at work and you got back late and you want to unwind. You don't want to go to bed and switch off, you want to unwind. And so you stay up late watching Netflix and let's just assume that it's got to midnight. You suddenly see your watch and you think, oh man, I've Got to be up at half six tomorrow morning for work. I better go to bed. Okay, so you go to bed, you're fast asleep and now I want to show you just how quickly micro stress doses, or MSDS for short, can build up. At 6:30am you're in a deep sleep and your alarm goes off. Typically for most people, that's on their phones, okay, so you're in a deep sleep, you get jolted out of that. That is microstress dose or MSD number one. You look at the clock and go, oh man, 6:30, I don't wanna get up yet, I'm knackered. You press snooze, you go back to sleep again. Six or seven minutes later, snooze goes off, you're jolted out of that restful state again. That is MSD number two. Then you actually pick up your phone and whilst in bed, whilst feeling a little bit hazy, you open up your email app and you see three or four work emails that you didn't get to the day before and you're like, oh man, I've gotta get to those as soon as I can. MSD number three. Then you go to one of your social media accounts. I see that someone's left you a bit of a nasty comment on your last post. MSD number four. You then turn onto the news and see something tragic that's happened in another country that really affects you emotionally. MSD number five. Now, guys, I'm only at MSD number five and you're probably still in bed. This is probably within 10 minutes of waking up in the morning. And I could keep going, but it is quite reasonable that for some people, the first 20 minutes of their day they've had 10 or 15, what I call micro stress doses. Remember what I said? A micro stress dose is a little dose of stress that in isolation you can handle just fine. Now here's the problem. If you're accumulating 10 or 15 or 20 microstress doses which within the first half hour or hour of waking up, how do you think the rest of your day is gonna go? Because what's happened is this. You have basically got closer and closer to your stress threshold by accumulating all of those stress doses which just add one on top of the other. Now that means you've got less headroom left, you are less resilient. It basically means that it's not going to take long in the day for you to experience another few micro stress doses before you're at your threshold. And this is one of the main reasons why so many people are feeling chronically stressed. They don't realize that they started off their day accumulating these micro stress doses. So of course later on they're going to be reactive, they're going to get annoyed with other people, they're going to feel that they have no time in their life, etc. Etc. A lot of the time is because of how you started your day. So think about that concept of micro stress doses and how that applies in your life. And the two things you can do to prevent this are either number one, stop accumulating so many micro stress doses in the first place. A lot easier said than done, I accept. But secondly, some of these micro stress doses that come into your life are things that you can't do anything about. They're outside your control, they are going to come in. So therefore, if you have the awareness of them regularly throughout the day, you can take pauses to make sure that they don't continue to accumulate. Because let's say at lunchtime you're feeling super stressed. If you go for a 20 minute walk around the block and don't look at your phone at the same time, you'll come back having de stressed a little bit. And so when you start your afternoon, you are further away from your stress threshold than you were when you finished your morning. And so those are really the two key things I want you to think about. Okay? So I hope I've set the scene on stress. You know what it is, what can be the negative impact on us. But then also this context of micro stress doses I hope helps you understand why you might be feeling more stressed than you need to. So as I said at the start, I now want to move on to five simple things that you can think about that I know will help you reduce your levels of stress and therefore directly improve your health and your happiness. Okay, habit number one, have a morning routine. Now here's the thing about morning routines. Every single person has a morning routine, whether they think they do or not. The question is, are you intentional about it? Remember what I just said about microstress doses. If you're someone who typically goes to bed late, wakes up feeling exhausted, uses your phone as your alarm clock, and then whilst you're exhausted, as soon as you get up, you start scrolling through your phone and accumulating micro stress doses and you do that day after day. Well, that's your morning routine. And that morning routine will have a consequence like all of ours do. I really strongly do believe that the way you start your days has a huge impact on the rest of your day. I've experienced this myself and I've seen it with so many patients over the years. And if you're someone who struggles with low mood or anxiety, I really want you to think about how you start each day. What I've learned over the years is that so many of our thoughts and behaviors are downstream from the content we consume. So if you start your day with negative news headlines and negativity on social media and work stress from your email inbox, is it any wonder that you feel that your life is slightly out of control? That you feel negative about yourself, about the state of the world, and that negativity often leads you to feeling stuck and powerless. Though I think it's pretty obvious if you really think about it, that if you start your day with negativity, don't be surprised if the rest of your day continues with negativity as well. So I'm just not sure starting our days in that way is that helpful. Now, will some people be okay? Sure. That's the same with anything. Some people tend to be able to start their days with negativity and still be okay. And if that's you, great. I'm not necessarily asking you to change anything. If you've been listening to me for a number of years or you've watched my TV shows or read my books, you'll know that I don't really like telling anyone else what to do. You know, I don't think it's my right to tell you what to do. What I'm hoping to do is share simple ideas with you that I believe can be helpful. And of course, it requires you to want to experiment with this idea in order to see if it is going to be helpful for you. So morning routines, I think, are really important. As I say, we've all got morning routines, whether we think we do or not. One of the reasons that intentional morning routines really help. Well, I guess there's many reasons, but I would say one of the most important reasons is because you intentionally start your day in a certain state, which means by default you're not accumulating all of those micro stress doses. Just, just think about that for a minute. I painted you a picture about someone who maybe within the first 15 minutes of their day has accumulated 15 microstress doses. Now let's just take 15 minutes and say, well, what else might that person be able to do? Instead, let's just say for argument's sake that instead of that, when you woke up, you were not going to look at your phone. Instead, you were going to do 10 minutes of meditation and maybe five minutes of journaling. It's still taking you 15 minutes. But the benefit of the morning routine, or one of the benefits is that you automatically reduce the accumulation of 15 micro stress doses. So not only have you not accumulated those and are therefore closer to your personal stress threshold, you're probably actually taking yourself further away from your stress thresholds than you were when you started the day. Some people wake up feeling a little anxious or low mood, right? So those things can be inherently stressful for some people. If you start your day infusing calm and positivity into your brain and your mind and your body, that's going to have a massive profound effect. So the question then becomes, what do you do as part of your morning routine? Well, I've spoken about that many times on my podcast. I've written about it in pretty much all of my six books at some point because I think it's so, so important. But ultimately you have to decide what works for you. If you're someone who doesn't have 15 minutes, I would even say to you five minutes can still make a massive difference. And I've seen this over and over again with busy in my practice over the years. Who said I don't have time for a morning routine? I've helped persuade them to try a five minute morning routine and I've just seen transformative improvements in their lives. So I don't really mind what you do, but I would just ask you to think about this year. How do you start every day? Is there something you could do differently? I'm a huge fan of things like breathwork and meditation and journaling. I personally now for many months have been using the Way app by Henry Shucman. You might have heard a conversation I had with Henry a few months ago, I think back in October now when he came on my podcast. Henry is this Zen master from Oxford who now lives and teaches in New Mexico and I think the Way app is one of the best meditation apps I've ever come across. It is simple, it's he's got the most calming voice and there is no choice on that app. If you heard the solo episode I released a few days ago on Boxing Day, 26 December. One of the things I spoke about was eliminating choice in your life where you can too much choice is a stressor and is using up part of our cognitive reserve. One of the things I love about the Way is that there is no choice. You're not paralyzed with what kind of meditation should I do today? Should I do this one? Should I do that one? No, the app does that for you. Your job is to just show up each day and the app will tell you what to do. But I don't really mind what you do. Meditation, breathwork, journaling, even just having a hot drink in silence or sitting in your kitchen in complete silence for five or 10 minutes. Even that can be quite transformative. So. So point number one is think about your morning routine. Habit number two, learn a breathing technique that you can take with you anywhere in life. What do I mean when I say that? Well, I believe all of us should have at least one breathing technique available to us that we can keep around with us in our back pocket wherever we go. That should we ever need it, we can use it. Now, why am I so passionate about this idea? Well, it's because the way you breathe is literally information for your body. A lot of people don't realize that. So if you're feeling stressed, the way you breathe typically will start to change. In fact, there was a study published a few years ago, I think out of UCLA, that showed 80% of office workers change the way they breathe when they're doing email. Now, sure, you might be the 20% who don't, but it's more likely you're in the 80% who do. And this is a really important point to understand. Stress does not just exist in your mind. It also affects your body and your physiology. So when you're feeling time pressured or you've got a lot of emails to get through, or you've got some deadlines, whatever it might be, your breathing starts to change. And usually it will change in three ways. You'll breathe more from your chest than your diaphragm. You'll start to breathe a bit more shallowly than deeply, and your breathing rate will quicken. But the amazing thing is, is you can literally hack your way out of that. Now, I think the term hack has been very much overused, but I think it really works here because if you can intentionally slow down and focus on your breath, you can change those three things immediately. When you're not paying attention and you're breathing fast and shallowly and more from your chest and your diaphragm, you literally send stress signals up to your brain. And your brain then responds by sending stress signals down to your body and it becomes a vicious cycle. But if you have a breath work technique that you can utilize, so let's say a minute or so, instead you can start to send calm signals up to your brain, which in turn will send calm signals back down to your body. Now, there are a ton of breathwork techniques out there, and I'm not particularly attached to any one of them. Right. You have to find the one that works for you, the one that makes you feel good, that you feel you can do. There are quite a few examples on my website. So if you just go to drchatterjee.com and in the search, look at the blog on breathing or in the podcast archive type for breathing, you'll see loads and loads of resources there that will help you on a personal level. One of the ones that I found most effective with myself and with many of my patients is what I call the three, four, five breath. Basically, it's that easy. You breathe in for three, four counts of three, you hold for a count of four, and you breathe out for a count of five. Now, ideally I would say, yeah, do it through the nose and out through the nose if you can, or in through the nose and out through the mouth. But if you can't do that, if nasal breathing is too difficult at the moment, okay, don't stress about that. Do it through your mouth if you have to. The key point with this breath is that whenever your out breath is longer than your in breath, you help to switch off the stress part of your nervous system and promote the relaxation part. Remember, at the start of this episode, I explained to you what the stress response is. Okay. And the case I'm making here is that if you're feeling chronically stressed and that stress response has been activated, we want to do something as soon as we can to bring us back into that relaxation state where the stress response is not being as activated as it was. And I don't really know of a quicker way to do this than with breathing. Now, if the 3, 4, 5 breath technique for you feels too difficult, okay, just drop it down a bit. Go 2, 3, 4. But the key is that the out breath should be longer than the in breath. And I have seen this 3, 4, 5 breath transform the lives of so many people. It's a great way to start the day, It's a great way to end the day. It's a great thing to do at lunchtime if you feel that your micro stress doses have accumulated and you're close to that stress threshold and you know, you don't want to keep accumulating them and getting more and more reactive and stressed throughout the day. Okay. You know, I had a teacher once who literally, at Lunchtime, would go out into his car in the car park and sit there for five minutes doing the three, four fire breath that I taught him. And he said it just had a transformative effect on, on the way his afternoons and evenings went. And that's a key point for me, guys, is that this stuff doesn't need to be hard. You can overcomplicate stress and what you need to do about it, but that just creates more stress in our heads. I'm trying to share with you some really simple things that I know work because they've changed my life and they've changed the life of thousands of my patients. So the key point here is find a breathwork technique that you like and enjoy and you can feel the difference from, and then just know that you've got that with you whenever you need to. I've even had teenagers and students who are nervous before exams do that 3, 4, 5 breath for maybe a couple of minutes before they go into an interview or go into an exam. And. And it makes the world of difference. And just remember, if you're feeling time pressured, One of those three, four, five breaths takes 12 seconds. Five of them takes just one minute. And I can pretty much guarantee if you do that for one minute, you will feel different. Today's episode is sponsored by the Way meditation app. Now, you probably heard me talk about this app over the past few months, and that is because I absolutely love it. Meditation has so many benefits for our physical health and mental well being, but only if we do it. And that's one of the reasons I love the Way so much. It makes it really easy to establish a meditation practice that sticks. One of the most unique things about the Way is that it is a meditation app with no choice. They understand that too much choice is stressful and can lead to procrastination and indecision. And so with the Way, you only ever have one choice, which makes things really easy. Just open the app, follow the path, and your transformation will unfold. Now, there's no question that for me, using the Way has helped me feel calmer, more relaxed, and I would say it's also broadened my perspective on life and what is truly important. The creator of the app is Henry Schuchman, a Zen master with the most wonderful, relaxing voice, who actually was a guest on this podcast a few months ago on episode 590. So if you think 2026 is finally going to be the year when you start and stick to a meditation practice, I'd highly encourage you to check out the Way and to give you a little extra motivation, the way is offering my podcast listeners 30 free sessions to get you started with your practice. That is a fantastic offer. What have you got to lose to take advantage? All you have to do is go to the wayapp.comlivemore to get started and begin your journey towards peace, calm and purpose. Habit number three Stop taking things personally. Okay. This is one that I think people find really, really difficult. And before I get into it, I just want to explain to you why this is so important to me. You might recall that at the start of this episode I shared that many of us misunderstand stress. And one of the big things I think we misunderstand is where stress comes from. Most of us believe that stress is external. Okay, so it's to do with our to do lists or the amount of emails you have to respond to, or things there in your outside world. My boss doesn't treat me well. My boss asked me to do too much. I have too many responsibilities now. Of course, a lot of our stress is external for sure, but not all of it. A lot of stress is internally generated by the way we choose to interact with the world. I really want you to think about that for a minute. A lot of stress these days, as I mentioned earlier, is psychological. It's not from a physical threat. It's from things that are coming into our minds. But not everyone responds to those psychological stressors in the same way. For many people, those things just don't stress them out, which means it cannot just be the thing on the outside that was causing the stress. Part of it is how we interpreted that external event. If you don't interpret it as stressful, it's often not. And the way you interpret events in the outside world is a skill you can cultivate. And it's probably one of the skills I'm most passionate about, about telling people about. Because I know on a personal level, understanding that I get to choose my reality in most situations has had such a powerful effect on me. Honestly, it's one of the reasons why I generally feel so calm and contented these days is because I realize that much of the way I feel comes from how I actually interpret the world around me. So when I say stop taking things personally or try to stop taking things personally, I mean try and change the way you look at these things when they happen. I know this is easier said than done, but even setting the intention that this year you're going to try not to take things personally, that will be transformative and, and even if you can't do it 100% of the time. If you can do it a little bit more than you currently are doing it honestly, you will start to notice a difference. Because the reality is that most people's behavior has nothing to do with you. It is a reflection of their inner state. And when you stop absorbing other people's emotions as your own, you will start to increase your peace, your calm, your contentment immediately. Now, I'll give you a prime example of this. It was literally yesterday morning where I went to play paddle with my son. Now, Padel is a sport I've taken up a few months ago, and I love it. And one of the reasons I love it is because me and my boy go and play as a doubles team. And it's just a way of us hanging out, playing a sport together, chatting. And I really, really appreciate every time I get to play with my son because I, like many people, I'm thinking, oh, man, in a few years time, he may have left home. And so I don't want to look back then and wish that, oh man, I wish he spent more time playing. So literally, I try and play two, three times a week with him basically as much as he wants to. But that was a slight tangent. The point of me trying to share this panel example with you is this. Yesterday we would used to play at 11:30 and we got to the paddle courts at 11:15. Now, at the side of one of the courts, there was some open space and we had previously seen people knocking up there and just warming up. So we thought, ah, well, we got 15 minutes before the game. Let's just go and just hit some volleys to each other there and, you know, just get our touch and warm up before we actually start playing our match at half 11. And after about one minute, this lady suddenly came out from her court quite abruptly, said, you're not meant to be playing here. And I just smiled at her and said, yeah, okay, no problem. Sorry, didn't mean to cause any problems. And we walked back and sat down near our court. What was really interesting for me is that my son was saying, oh, you know, I can't believe she said that. And, you know, all sorts of things. I said, hey, darling, listen, you know, that had nothing to do with us at all. She's probably having a bad day. Maybe she's stressed out on a game. Maybe something's going on in her home life. We have literally no idea. It was honestly nothing to do with us. I don't think we did anything wrong. But of Course, we don't want to do something that is upsetting her, so just put it out of your mind, don't worry about it. And really interestingly, a couple of minutes later, her playing partner walked past us on the way to get some water, said, hey, listen, I'm so sorry about that. I don't know what was going on there. It's not off putting at all. We've had people do this before. Really, really sorry. I said, hey, honestly, it's no problem. We're just happy sitting here and waiting. Now, why is this so important? Well, what could have happened there is when that lady spoke to us in quite a triggered fashion about us putting her off. I could have reacted, I could have got annoyed. I may not have said anything, but I could have stewed about it and sat there with my son and go, oh, man, I can't believe she did that. You know, how. How out of order was that? You know, I can't believe she spoke to us like that. You know, what you're basically doing is creating stress. That's the key point. That situation is only stressful if I choose to make it stressful. But it isn't because I chose not to. I know that had nothing to do with me. So if I choose to take that on and perpetuate it for the next 10, 15 minutes and maybe for the next few hours, that's because I've done that. Now I get this is not always the easiest thing to do. And it does take practice. Hand on heart. I don't think 10 years ago I would have been that relaxed. Okay, I could have got triggered by something like that. But this is a skill you can work on. And the most important thing to understand is that there was an external event that happened. That lady said something to me in a triggered fashion, okay? But there is a space between the stimulus of that lady's words and my response. And if I can work on that space over time and breath work, for example, that I mentioned in the last habit, is a great way of doing this. Over time, it helps you just create space and calm within yourself and presence over time, you can also stop reacting as much as you currently do. So I did not take what she said to me and my son personally, and therefore it wasn't stressful. Now, I totally understand that this is harder to do when it's people close to you, if it's your partner or your children or your mother. I understand that. I am not saying this is going to be easy, but remember this key point that I'm trying to make. Not all stress is external. A lot of stress is internally generated by the way we interact with the world around us. And a lot of that is changeable. So if you're someone who struggles with this, there's a couple of things I just want to leave you with. Number one, don't start necessarily with the people closest to you in your life because that can be hard. Start with the people maybe you don't know. Let's say someone pushes in front of you at the supermarket. You don't know them, they don't know you. You have literally no idea what is going on in their life or the arguments they had before they came to the supermarket. Or perhaps they've just had a divorce or maybe their father has just died. You literally have no idea. But it's probably those things that are causing their behavior. So just practice in those non threatening situations. Now there's one more thing I'll say there. If you don't manage to do that and you do react, that's okay. We're all human, we all make mistakes. But later on that day, try and honestly reflect and say, hey, you know, in the supermarket today, I reacted. I really didn't need to. Why did I react? Again, this is a similar theme to the theme I spoke about in the Boxing Day episode a few days ago. So as I say, start on the simple things. If you don't get it right, that's okay. But try and reflect later on and over time that will change things. And I guess the final thing to say about not taking things so personally is that usually if you're someone who takes things personally a lot, it's probably because there's some deep insecurity within you. Now I want to be really clear. I'm not saying this to make anyone feel bad or to judge you. I'm really not. I used to take things personally, okay? And it's because I wasn't fully secure in who I was. Maybe I hadn't practiced self compassion enough. Maybe I felt there was something missing inside of me. And a good way to know if this might be you is how much are you driven by external validation? How much do you need validation from the world around you in order to feel good? I've shared my own journey with this multiple times on this podcast, so I won't necessarily share it all now. But what you will find is as you require external validation less and less, you actually naturally start to take things personally because you realize that it's not about you and the only reason you were actually taking it personally is because you had a deep insecurity about something. And so it really, really affects you when someone says something to you because you think it's an attack on you, but it isn't. You're interpreting it as an attack on you. And if this is a theme that you feel really applies to you, and it does for most of us, I really would encourage you to check out one of my last two books, Happy Mind, Happy Life, or Make Change at Last. Because I really do cover in those books this concept and how you can get better at it. Habit number four, Practice True prevention. Okay, this is a really interesting one. What I have realized from patients and from podcast listeners, social media followers, people I bump into and chat with on the street, is that a major source of stress in their lives is worrying about their future health. And I completely understand. We know that a lot of people these days are struggling with chronic disease, and I think for some of us, it really hits home when someone close to us in our lives gets sick. It could be a mother or an auntie with Alzheimer's, or a dad or uncle with heart disease, or a friend from school who gets diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. Suddenly it feels real and people can get really, really worried. Now, the problem here is that modern healthcare, for all its benefits, doesn't tend to focus that well on prevention. The way we are trained as medical doctors is very much in a disease centered model. Most of our training is about diagnosing disease and treating that disease and the symptoms of that disease, usually with pharmaceutical drugs. And that can have value, of course, in a lot of different cases. But going back to the point of this habit, if you're worried that you may get sick in the future, at the moment it's not that easy to do something about that. And if you've been listening to my podcast for a while, you will know that you don't just get sick overnight. Type 2 diabetes, for example, starts five to 10 years or so beforehand in your body before you get a diagnosis. Alzheimer's starts maybe 30 to 40 years before you ever get a diagnosis. So changes are happening in your body at a much earlier stage than we actually look for in modern medicine. And that's why I think people get worried. They go and see their doctor. And the doctor, unfortunately, doesn't have that many tools available to practice what I call true prevention. Now, the way I've tried to tackle this for a number of years is to share that information in my books and on this podcast. But then I started to realize that even with that information, people were struggling to make sense of what to do with it. I'll give you a prime example. On many occasions, I have explained on the show, both myself and through talking to a variety of different guests, that your metabolic health is absolutely crucial to reduce your risk of getting Things like type 2 diabetes or heart attacks or strokes or Alzheimer's in the future. And I've spoken to many guests like Ben Bickman recently, Mark Hyman, Robert Lustig, David Perlmutter, and the list goes on about the importance of testing regularly things like fasting insulin, because one of the earliest things to go off in the body many years before you will get a diagnosis is your fasting insulin levels. So I can talk about this on my podcast, and I have. But then people go out there and they can't get it from their doctor or they can't get it from a private provider when they are trying to practice true prevention. And so a few months ago, I decided that I was going to try and do something about it. And I've been quietly working away on something that I am really, really excited about. I have partnered with a group of amazing individuals to create Do Health. Now, Do Health is a personalized health companion that's powered by your biology and your lifestyle. And one of the underlying philosophies behind it is that knowledge is not enough. Health only changes when you act. Now, I have over 20 years of clinical experience seeing tens of thousands of patients, and the truth is, but 80 to 90% of what we struggle with these days is in some way driven by our collective modern lifestyles. But people feel overwhelmed. They're often being exposed to generic health advice that is often conflicting, and they don't actually know what to do next. And even if they do make a change, they often remain confused as to which of those changes are actually working. And that's one of the main reasons why I decided to create Do Health. I also believe that within a few years, this will become, or it stands a chance of becoming, the standard for true prevention within the NHS and in many other countries around the world. With Do Health, we're going to help you understand what your body actually needs, then give you the most important next step to feel better. No guesswork, no overwhelm, just clear, personalized weekly actions mapped to the four pillar framework that I first outlined in my very first book, the Four Pillar Plan. Eat, move, sleep, and relax. So how does it work? Well, it's an app that you download, and when you sign up, you start up with a simple blood test that shows us exactly what your body needs. We do screening bloods right at the start, but mainly we're focused on 11 core biomarkers across the three areas that matter the most for you. Energy, circulation, and inflammation. Now, I mentioned earlier, didn't I, fasting insulin. Fasting insulin is one of those 11 core biomarkers. And I insisted that we give people regular access to this blood test. Now, we're gonna check those 11 core biomarkers three times throughout the year because it's important that you understand what changes in your lifestyle are working and which ones are not. So that's the first part. Okay, we understand your biology by doing your bloods. Secondly, we make recommendations to you based upon your biology and your lifestyle. And the recommendations we make are the things that we believe will have the biggest positive impact on how you feel right now and reduce your risk of getting sick in the future. And the third step is do you get your personalized weekly action plan based upon my four pillar framework, small, doable actions designed to fit around your everyday life. I am so, so excited about this. I don't believe there's anything out there that exists like this. As part of the app, you have access to an AI health coach that has been trained over the past few months on my philosophy around health. Basically everything that's in my books and my podcast, how I see the world, how I see health, that has all been fed into this AI coach, which you will be interacting with as much or as little as you want to. Now, because the theme of today's podcast is all about stress, I want to tell you something that I'm not a fan of. There's a lot of providers now out there who are offering you hundreds and hundreds of biomarker tests. They're saying, you come to us, we'll do this blood test. So we're going to do 200 bloods or 300 bloods. And I'm not convinced that for most people that's the right approach because it becomes confusing and overwhelming. If you look at the science and if you've had enough real life clinical experience as I have, you basically understand that there's only a few things that really matter. So instead of measuring everything and confusing people at DO Health, we're going to focus on the 11 core biomarkers that matter most and over the course of a year are going to help you improve them. And the truth is, if you can get these 11 core biomarkers as good as you possibly can, two big things are going to happen. Number one, you're going to massively reduce your risk of getting sick in the future. Number two, you're going to start feeling better within weeks. More energy, more vitality, more focus. Because good long term health starts with good short term health today. So if you'd like to join DO Health to help you stop guessing and start doing in 2026, you can join our wait list at drchatterjee.com. please know early access spots are limited, so we can make sure we give people the support that they deserve. So if that sounds like the right thing for you, please don't leave it too long. And if you're someone who feels overwhelmed by all the health advice out there and just wants to know what to do next for your body, I believe that you're going to really, really get a lot out of DO Health. As I said already, all you have to do is go to drchatterjee.com do to join the wait list. Now, I believe if you're someone who worries about your future health, I think DO Health is gonna reduce stress for you because you're going to start realizing that, wait a minute, I don't need to wait for 20 years to find out I've got a diagnosis. I can start looking after myself today. I can start seeing what lifestyle changes actually move the needle in these core 11 biomarkers. Now, initially we're only launching this in the UK, but of course over time we will look to expand. And if you can't access DO Health for whatever reason, or you live in a different country and can't have access to it just yet, I really don't want you to worry. I want you to think about this idea that good health in the future starts with good health today. There are things that you can test immediately that really do give you an indication on how you're going to be in the Future. Things like HbA1c, your average blood sugar, homocysteine. That's something that's not commonly done, but we know that high homocysteine levels, for example, are associated with cognitive decline. And you can easily bring them down if you know that they're up. But most people are not testing this fasting insulin. I've already mentioned liver function tests. You can get some of these things done. You know, go and see your doctor, see if they're open. If they're not, listen to some of the podcasts and see what you can get done yourself. Hopefully that will reduce your stress and help you feel that you're actually doing something. And of course, this is the main reason I created Do Health. I basically put together the program that I want for myself. I want to know what those 11 biomarkers are doing for three times a year. Because I know if I can keep them where they need to be, it's highly likely I'm going to stay well for a long period of time. Habit number five Prioritize sleep. Not sleeping enough regularly is one of the biggest stressors on our bodies. It quite literally stresses our bodies out. And we know that sleep deprivation is on the rise. Compared to maybe 60 or 70 years ago, it's thought that humans are sleeping maybe one to two hours less, which is utterly remarkable on an eight hour sleep cycle. That could mean some of us have lost 25% of our sleep. Now when we go to sleep, it's not just about the quantity of time we sleep for, it's also the quality of that sleep. And one of the fastest ways you can reduce stress in your life is by sleeping better. If I would go as far as to say if you're not currently sleeping enough and you are able to make some changes to improve your sleep, out of all the five things I'm mentioning today, this may well be the most important because here's the reality. When you sleep well, life feels completely different. You see the world through different eyes. But when you sleep well, your mood is better, your motivation is better, your physical health is better, you've got more energy, focus and presence. Your ability to resist temptation is much better. Which is quite interesting for any of you who struggle to resist things like sugar or alcohol. Well, we know that when you sleep deprived, your ability to resist that temptation is much lower. So sleeping more helps you with that. When you slept well, you're less anxious. We know, for example, that people who sleep with five hours compared to maybe seven and a half or eight hours a night, that amygdala, which I explained right at the start when explaining the stress response, that emotional part of your brain that can be up to 50% more active when you've only had five hours sleep. So sometimes our anxiety is a direct consequence of the fact that we've not slept. And the things I've already mentioned, like having a morning routine, you're much more likely to stay motivated and actually do that when you've slept better. You're also less likely to take things personally when you slept well. So sleeping better is one of the fastest ways to reduce your stress. And of course, there's many different things that we could be talking about here. And of course I could easily do a 90 minute session here just on sleep alone. There are many conversations I've had on this podcast in the past, maybe I think three. Three now with Matthew Walker two with Professor Russell Foster. Those things are just brilliant episodes. Chock a block full of information on how you can sleep better than you currently do. But the overarching message I want to give you here is that for most people, they are doing something in their daily lives that they do not realize is affecting their ability to sleep at night. Yes, primary sleep disorders like sleep apnoea do exist, which may need some help from your doctor. But most of what people struggle with can be fixed by making some changes to the way that they live. And I just want to give you a quick overview of the things that I've seen over the course of my career. Make the Most Difference Number one, a good night's sleep starts with when you wake up. You want to expose your eyes to natural light as soon as you can after waking up. So as soon as it's light outside, if you can get 15 to 20 minutes natural light exposure. So you could do this by going for a walk or having your morning cup of tea or coffee outside. That helps set your body's daily circadian rhythm so that natural light exposure in the morning helps you sleep better that night. If you can't do it first thing in the morning, don't worry, but do it as soon as you can. Even 20 minutes of outside time at lunchtime can make a difference. Second thing, which a lot of people don't think about is caffeine. They're often thinking about caffeine in the evening, which they know can make them feel alert and reduce the likelihood of them falling asleep. But caffeine hangs around for a long time in your body, and if you're someone who regularly drinks caffeine, I'm not saying don't do it. A lot of us love a good cup of coffee or tea, but just know that it may well be impacting your sleep. For many of my patients who struggle, I will say for a period of time, let's say seven days, try not having caffeine at the 12 o' clock noon. And for some people it is game changing. And for others, I've even gone as far as to say, well, listen, I think caffeine may be playing a role, so why not try seven full days without it? Of course you might have withdrawal symptoms, you might need to taper down slowly, but there's no question that for some people caffeine is playing havoc with their sleep, even if you're just having it in the morning. And one more thing I'll say here is that your tolerance to caffeine can change as you get older. I have had so many patients over the years who've told me, oh, caffeine doesn't affect me. You know, I've been fine in my 20s. I could nail an Americano after dinner and I'd still fall asleep. Sure, great. You may well have done that in your 20s, but I have seen many, many times that as people get older, their tolerance to caffeine changes. Things that they could do when they were younger, they can no longer do. So caffeine is one thing to think about and remember, caffeine does not just come in coffee and black tea. You also get it in herbal teas like green tea. You can also get quite reasonable amounts in dark chocolates. So. So me personally, I will not have dark chocolates after about 3 or 4pm Because I know I can feel the effects of it when trying to sleep at night. And then finally, I would probably say one of the most important things I found over the years for my sleep and for many of my patients is, what are you doing in the one hour before bed? There's many different things you could do, but in essence, what you're trying to do is send your brain signals that the workday of busyness and activity is over. Think about what we might do with kids. If you have ever looked after young kids, what did you do with them before they went to bed? What you probably didn't do was turn a load of bright lights on, get some loud music pumping, and give them a ton of sugar. I know it sounds ridiculous when I say that, but this is sort of what many of us do as adults. For children, we know you need a little routine. You need to dim the lights, lower your voice, read them a story, create the environment that sends their bodies a signal that now's the time to start switching off so I can fall into a deep, relaxing slumber. Well, kids need bedtime routines, but we as adults need bedtime routines as well. And the key thing is, what are you doing? What signals are you sending your body and brain in that one hour before bed? So for me, personally, for many years, I will not have my laptop open in the last hour before bed, particularly because my work is on my laptop. I'll make sure the laptop's shut. I won't be looking at work emails. I will dim the lights in the house or in the room in which I'm sitting. Maybe I'll put a candle on. Maybe I'll put put a little bedside lamp on. Or in the living room downstairs, just a corner lamp so it's nice and dim. I might read a book, I might do some stretches, listen to music, play some cards with my kids. Something that is sending my brain the signal that this is relaxation time. And I can tell you if for an hour, if you can't do an hour, even for 30 minutes before bed, if you can start sending your body relaxing signals rather than activating signals, you're going to massively increase the likelihoods that you're going to be able to fall asleep early on. In this podcast I mentioned the 3, 4, 5 breath or breath work techniques that can be a fantastic thing to do in the evening before bed. Whether it's the 3, 4, 5 breath technique or another one, if you get the right breathing technique done in the evening, even when you get to bed, you can help to switch off the noise in your brain, switch off the stress part of your nervous system, and activate the relaxation parts. So that was a quick overview of sleep, but I really do feel that if you are able to sleep a bit better this year, you will naturally find your response to stress much better. Okay guys, so I can hear it's still raining outside the studio. I hope the weather is much better. Wherever you are in the world listening to this and just remember, a little bit of stress is okay, but chronic stress can be toxic and I believe if this year you make your overarching thought how can I better manage stress in my life? I think you're going to have a fantastic year. The five things I spoke about were having a morning routine, learning a breathing technique that you can take with you in your life, stop taking things personally, practice true preventive health, and finally prioritize your sleep. I genuinely hope you found this podcast interesting. I hope there are some insights there that you can take away and apply into your own life. If you do want to learn more about some of these concepts, I do have six books out there that have been bestsellers all over the world, but I'd probably point you to my most recent two books, Happy Mind, Happy Life, 10 Simple Ways to Feel Great Every Day, which has been re released in the UK today January 1, 2026 in a brand new format. I've got rid of all the pictures, it's lighter, it's more accessible, it's got a gorgeous new cover, a new forward from Oliver Bergman, and a reflective chapter from me. So if you want to learn more about the skill of happiness, how to keep stress low in your life so you can truly thrive. I check out that book. You could also check out another one of my recent books which is Make Change that Lasts nine Simple Ways to Break Free from the Habits that hold you back. All of my books are available as paperback ebooks and audiobooks, which I narrated. I really hope you enjoyed this week's episode. I hope it provides a great springboard at the start of the new year for you to think about your life in perhaps a slightly different way. If you want to keep in touch with my thoughts of what I'm thinking about beyond the ideas that I share in this podcast, I would really encourage you to say sign up for Friday 5, my free weekly email newsletter. Yes, of course I post on social media, but more and more social media is becoming a medium that I'm not so sure about. Algorithms are constantly changing and a lot of platforms are promoting the kind of negative and divisive content that I don't really want to make. And ultimately, if you don't make that type of content content, the platforms are showing your posts to less and less people. So I'm spending more time trying to create positive and uplifting content online for my newsletter community. I share exclusive insights in Friday 5 that I do not share anywhere else, including health advice, inspirational quotes, my comments on new research, and so much more. It's dead easy to sign up and if you don't like it, it's dead easy to unsubscribe as well. So if you want to check it out, it is completely free. All you need to do is go to drchatterjee.com Friday 5 thank you so much for listening. I hope you have a wonderful week and a wonderful year. And before you go, I just want to let you know about an exclusive January offer. If you want to listen to every episode without having to hear any of the adverts, you can do so with an Apple subscription. We're extending the free trial from seven days to 30 days. So if you want to take advantage of this offer and support the podcast and enjoy every single episode advert free for an entire year, just go to the Apple Podcast app and subscribe. Thank you so much for listening. I hope you have a wonderful start to the new year. And always remember, you are the architect of your own health. Making lifestyle change is always worth it because when you feel better, you live more. Sam.