Rangan Chatterjee, MD On Quelling Stress, Cultivating Intimacy & Reinventing Health Care

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“My mission is to help 100 million people feel fantastic by restoring them to optimal health.”

Rangan Chatterjee

Today we’re going to talk about stress.

In proper doses it’s actually beneficial, promoting resilience — both physical and mental.

But for most people, that dose isn’t proper. Instead it’s chronic — excessive, persistent and unrelenting. In fact, elevated levels of social and emotional stress have come to define our daily experience, leading the World Health Organization to qualify our chronic relationship with stress as “the health epidemic of the 21st Century”.

Left untreated, it’s an incessant strain that promotes low libido, poor memory and weight gain. Ultimately it can lead to heart disease, depression, autoimmune disorders, premature aging and a litany of other serious and deleterious health conditions.

This week’s guest has seen the perils of chronic stress first hand. A UK-based medical doctor, he found himself increasingly treating patients suffering from the downstream implications of living with this malevolence. It prompted him to ask, why is this happening?

His name is Rangan Chatterjee, MD. He decided to find answers to this question — and do something about it.

If that name sounds familiar, perhaps it’s because you caught him on the BBC, starring in Doctor in the House. Perhaps you read his bestselling book, The Four Pillar Plan, released in the United States under the title How To Make Disease Disappear. Or maybe, just maybe, you caught RRP 376, our popular first conversation from July of 2018 that launched our friendship.

For those unfamiliar, Dr. Chatterjee is a pioneer in the field of progressive, functional medicine. Widely regarded as one of the most influential doctors in the UK, he is double board certified in internal medicine and family medicine and holds an honors degree in immunology. An in-demand lecturer, he created the very first “Prescribing Lifestyle Medicine” course accredited by the Royal College of General Practitioners in London.

In addition, he hosts the popular Feel Better, Live More podcast (which I’ve appeared on twice) and has been widely featured on an array of prominent media outlets like the The New York Times, BBC, Forbes, The Guardian, The Financial Times, and many others.

The focus of today’s conversation is also the subject of Rangan’s latest book, The Stress Solution — an important primer on how chronic stress can lead to disease, along with strategies, tools and lifestyle changes proven to protect against and reverse its toxic effects.

This is a conversation about the very nature of stress. What creates it. The health implications it produces. The many simple things you can do to alleviate it — and it’s varied ill effects.

More specifically, we discuss Rangan’s direct experience fielding patients with chronic stress — and the science-based strategies he deployed to ameliorate the condition and reverse it’s negative consequences.

We talk about the critical role sleep, meditation and mindfulness practices play in combating stress. And how human touch, intimacy and connecting with nature can assuage it’s impact.

We cover breathing techniques. Disconnecting from our devices. Carving out “me time”. The importance of finding passion — and infusing your life with purpose.

Lastly, we dig into Rangan’s new found love for Swimrun (I’m taking a wee bit of credit for that one Dr. C!).

You can watch it all go down on YouTube. And as always, the conversation streams wild and free on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

I think we can all benefit from de-stressing ourselves this holiday season. Both fun and important, my hope is that you listen keenly — and put Dr. Chatterjee’s prescription into action.

Peace + Plants,