Why Am I Always Tired? | Dr. Rupy Aujla on Circadian Rhythms, Hormones & Burnout

Teas and herbs. That's like the free medicinal giveaway. Fill up your spice cabinet like it's your medicine cabinet. That's how I see it.

The coffee has got, like I said, 20,000 studies looking at the inflammation potential of coffee. As long as you're not consuming too much that's disrupting your sleep. Quality teas, Matcha hibiscus. These are all great ingredients that we should be sipping away during the day as a source of polyphenols that reduce inflammation.

It's such an easy anti inflammatory approach. You can take them just like we're sitting here right now. Wherever you go, I have to pause this episode to share something that's completely transformed how I feel every single day. And it all starts in my gut. I'm talking about Pendulum's Metabolic Daily and I'm genuinely obsessed. 88% of Americans are metabolically unhealthy. And so much of that comes down to our gut microbiome. If you're constantly battling afternoon energy crashes and sugar cravings and that sluggish feeling after meals, Metabolic Daily can change everything. This isn't your typical probiotic. It contains live Achromansia municiphila. It's an incredible next generation strain that most of us are deficient in. It literally strengthens your gut lining and helps your body metabolize sugars and carbs so much more efficiently. What I love most is how it makes me feel. My energy is sustained throughout the day. My. I'm not constantly thinking about my next snack and I actually feel a little bit more full faster. It's like my body finally learned how to work with the food instead of against it. Plus my digestion has never been better. What sets Pendulum apart is the science. They were founded by PhD scientists and doctors with the Mayo Clinic as their first investor. They're the first company in the US to bring live Akkermansia to market using DNA sequencing in an oxygen free facility. I'm so selective about supplements that I recommend and Metabolic Daily has earned a permanent spot in my routine and recommendation to my clients. Go to pendulumlife.com and use code Mona M O N A for 20% off all Pendulum membership first orders. That's pendulumlife.com with code Mona. Your gut and your energy levels will thank you. Hi everyone who's joining us live. Welcome to Rooted in Wellness. I've got a very special guest who's traveled from far. I've been waiting to meet you for a long time. Welcome Dr. Rupee.

Thank you so much. This is awesome. I don't know where I'm looking for the live, but is it over there?

Over here? Over here you can land a point whenever you look at a camera.

This is amazing. This is so cool.

Yeah, it's so cool to be able to connect with people, maybe a new audience live and typically who might not listen to a podcast.

Yeah.

So we're going to dive into so many things. You and I have so much in common. I've followed you for so long and just so inspired not only by your ethnic background and, you know, our synergy there, but the foods that you cook and the way that you speak about food as medicine has always been inspiring.

So that's amazing.

As we were kind of talking about before the podcast, this podcast is really about ancient wisdom in our modern world and how we can all become more rooted in ourselves, but also in our inner wisdom to heal. So the first question I typically ask people is like, tell me two or three things that help you feel more rooted in who you are.

Well, I think a lot's changed for me over the last year because I've. Well, my wife gave birth to our son. I've got an eight month old. And I think prior to my son I would have said, you know, it's my morning routine. It's like getting sun in the morning. It's like. But actually I think it's starting the day with calm energy before the chaos begins. And so just getting, getting up before he's awake and actually just going in with a really strong intention that I'm going to be super calm today and I'm going to not be rocked by you know, the sort of the things that just come from left field, whether that's because of, you know, having a newborn, whether it's because of an email, whether it's because of something at work, whatever it might be, I'm just not going to be disrupted. I'm just going to get into a flow state. And I've, I'm honing this skill out of, you know, the sort of chaos that comes with having a newborn for the first time. So it's like a privileged position to be. And I'm just trying to reframe my experience to. For it to be a lot more positive and a lot more learning for me. So I would say that's definitely something that keeps me rooted. It's starting the day with an intention to be super calm and to take ownership of exactly what I want to experience in this day, no matter what comes my. Whether it's a traffic jam, like I experienced in the way here, for example, instead of getting rocked by that, I'm sort of like, I'm rooted.

It's a superpower in L. A. Yeah.

You have to deal with it. The second thing I think, that keeps me rooted is my diet. It's my food. It's not just the power of nutrients and ingredients and sourcing the best possible food. It's the pleasure of cooking and enjoying food. And I think sometimes in the conversation around wellbeing and biohacking, it becomes much more of a functional tool. And I think it should be as flavorful as it is functional. And so what I like to do with the way I talk about food and I prepare food is actually sort of blend the two together. So I'm not just talking about the functional benefits of food. I'm also talking about the flavorful elements, the pleasure, sharing of food. This is all medicinal in its nature. That would be the second thing. And the third thing has to be movement for me. So on this trip, so I've been here for three weeks, my routine of going to the gym and getting out and exercising has been somewhat disrupted because, you know, traveling with a baby, traveling with my wife, lots of things going on. I got ill in the first week, as you know. So that has been like, a bit of a. An issue that I've been dealing with over the last couple of weeks. But generally, movement in the morning, whether it is yoga, stretching, some sort of movement that just gets me energized for the day. I, like, honestly, I have to have that. I feel that in my. This might be tmi. I don't know what your brain is like.

I talk about bowel movements every day.

Oh, yeah? Okay, great. So, you know, if I don't exercise and I don't have a healthy dose of exercise in the week, I get constipated. And it's like a signal to me. It's like, oh, yeah, and constipate because I haven't moved. So, you know, movement for me is very much part of my life. I have to do some sort of strength training or stretching or aerobic exercise. Zone 2 training is something that I'm really getting into over the last couple of years as I just turned 40. You know, there's tons of science around mitochondrial health and. And how it's important to ensure that you're stressing your muscle in different ways. So it's not just about bulking or muscle quality. It's also about the efficiency of the muscle. So, yeah, so that I would say those would be my Three. I mean, I could talk to you about loads of other things, but those are the three things that I would say come to mind when it comes to the strongest pillars for me in terms of keeping my health on track.

I love it. Asking that question to people, especially who've gone through any type of a healing journey, because everyone always comes back to changing the state of their body first. Like they understand their internal ecosystem needs to be in a certain functioning, calm state of being in order for everything else to work. And you did something beautiful there, which I don't want to miss. For people who you connected movement with lack of bowel movement where most people today were so accustomed partially because of society and doctors. Symptom fix, symptom fix instead of not symptom. What's the cause? What could be the issue behind it? And doing that investigation.

Yeah.

Needs to be part of our language in today.

Yeah. And you know what? I think that was part of my functional medicine, lifestyle medicine training, because I didn't think I was taught how to make that connection at medical school. No disrespect to the medical schooling system. I think it serves a very good purpose. But I don't think I learned the basics of root cause medicine or really thinking wider and just increasing the aperture of the lens that I look at patients. If it wasn't for thinking about upstream causes of things like constipation. Because like you alluded to, we think of diagnosis, solution, guideline, take this drug, do this intervention. Okay, that, and let's go to the next one. Rather than thinking about all the wider causes and the differentials behind constipation itself as. As an example, let's dive into that.

And I have to say that's probably what excited me most about finding your page, is that you're a medical trained doctor. Right. Um, but you have this beautiful Instagram platform called the Doctor's Kitchen.

Yeah.

So can you talk to us about your background as a medical doctor and like seeing firsthand that disconnection that you mentioned?

Yeah, absolutely.

And what got you here?

Yeah, so I've been a doctor for 15 years. I trained in general practice, but I've also done emergency medicine ITU whilst I was in Sydney and the uk. I've done a nutrition degree. I have a master's in nutrition. I was nutritional medicine. I did that a few years ago now. And I've done functional medicine training as well. But my origin story is very similar to yours. So your audience will know, like how you took yourself to an ashram after having multiple Cardiac interventions. My origin story was when I became a junior doctor. So this is back in 2009, three months into the job, you can imagine, high stress lifestyle, night shifts, eating terrible food, tons of learning on the job. So the stress of that was, was humongous. During a long stint of shifts, I started suffering from palpitations. Lo and behold, BLEEP taken off me. I told my, my registrar at the time, my boss, I said, would you mind filling my pulse? Like, I think I'm going a bit fast. And she, you know, to her credit, straight away, well, like I was admitted, I was taken to the cardiac ward. I put, I had a cardiac monitor attached to me. It was bond or atrial fibrillation. Exactly the same arrhythmia that you had.

Wow.

Going at 200 beats per minute, up and down. Luckily, I wasn't having an ischemic event. I didn't have any issues that required me to have an electrocardioversion, which is what you see in the movies and the series where they put the panels on. My blood pressure was stable, I was fine. I wasn't having chest pain. But what I thought was going to be a one off actually led to me having these episodes two to three times per week with no obvious triggers, no obvious cause. My weight was fine, I was previously unwell, I wasn't a drug taker, I wasn't having excessive alcohol. I wasn't even drinking caffeine back then actually, so, or coffee or tea. So my journey actually right at the start of my medical career as a junior doctor, also sort of paralleled with me being a patient and actually having that sort of this, this weird scenario where I was both a patient and a doctor. And so I got to experience what it was like, like the embarrassment, the indecision, the, just the, the, the misunderstanding of like what was going on with my body. And I, you know, I was chatting to some of the world's best cardiologists. No one could figure this out.

And the fear behind it too. Like, it's your heart, you're so young, you're dealing with this.

Yeah. And as a, you know, as the trained medic, I knew what their risks were. You know, when your blood, when you, when your heart is pumping irregularly, your blood becomes sticky, for want of a better term. And the stickiness can throw off clots and these clots can go anywhere and go to your brain, causing a stroke and go to your gut, causing gut ischemia. It can, you can have a heart attack. There's loads of issues that can go wrong. And then when they're offering you the procedure, which is relatively safe to be fair, and that was a low risk of recurrence, although actually the recurrence is a lot higher than we previously thought 15 years ago, it's therein lies a whole bunch of potential issues, side effects. You can perforate the heart, you can cause death. Like there's loads of issues with loads of potential side effects. And at no point on my journey did anyone address lifestyle, diet. And even as a conventional trained medic, I thought anyone who suggested that was completely out of their mind. And the person who did was my mom, who isn't a medic, isn't, you know, in any way sort of scientific. She's just an Indian mum. And she was the one who suggested I should really think about my diet and lifestyle before I entertain having an ablation, which is what you ultimately had. And just for that, for the listener and viewers, and ablation is where you put a guide wire through a large vessel, it goes into the heart and then you burn an area on the pulmonary vein to stop these misfiring cells, which was the potential cause of what was going on. Although every single test I had was completely negative and normal. So it was just sort of like, okay, finger in the air, let's do this and let's see if it sort of stops it. But I was on all the drugs, like similar drugs to you, I think, a beta blocker, an anti arrhythmic to use when I was having these episodes. And so sorry, I'll get off this.

Where you've been all my life. You're the guest that I've been searching for. Thank you.

So I started doing the diet lifestyle stuff. So out when series in the morning, in came sort of leftovers and, and quick breakfast that I would make from, from scratch. I stopped eating from the hostel canteen, which is just like baked beans and cheese and, you know, all this kind of stuff. And I started bringing in my, my own lunches and I would cook from scratch instead of just grabbing a pasta on my way from work. I tried to optimize my sleep as best as I could, given that I was doing night shifts and all the rest of it. I started doing yoga and a bit more breathwork and within about a year, because I was fastidiously tracking when and what potential triggers there might have been for my AF episodes which were lasting anywhere between 24 and 36 hours, really long episodes. And you know, it's like you just feel like you're going to pass out. You feel like you've got a headache. You feel like, you know, super unwell. And then you take the medications, you.

Feel even worse, you feel completely lethargic. The opposite end, you feel like you need to lie down and not move.

And I'll never forget that frustration of being a patient, being given the solution and still being dissatisfied, because as a doctor, I knew this is the right thing to do, Quote, unquote, the right thing to do. But as a patient, I was like, this is horrible. This isn't the way to live. I'm 24. All my colleagues are fine. They're all doing night shifts. They're all, like, you know, dealing with the stresses. I just felt very vulnerable and, like, not like I didn't belong in this covert profession of being a medic. So my identity was having a bit of crisis as well. But over this period of making these changes, my AF episodes went from 2 to 3 per week to 0. And therein lies sort of the questions as a conventionally trained scientist, like why on earth this is possible? Why wasn't I taught this in medical school? And then I just started learning from there on, so I maintained my sort of medical practice. So I went into general practice and I. Which is what you guys call family medicine over here. I was going to specialize in surgery, but then I opted to do this instead because I wanted to learn about lifestyle medicine and the gut microbiota and inflammation and why breath work has its impact on our nervous system and, you know, leaning into some of the principles of ancient medicine that you've since learned about. And I probably was privy to with my parents growing up because they were watching the, you know, the, The. The guru, the ashram on tv, doing breath. What are these guys doing? This is complete rubbish. But now I'm like, oh, no, there's a lot of science behind this. Now we're just sort of getting up to speed with things that theologically, over, you know, generations, over millennia, cultures from all over the world have come to. And so I just love looking at modern medicine through the lens of traditional practices. And to be clear, there are some practices that can definitely be left alone in the sort of, you know, traditions of. Of bygone. But there are also lots that we can explore that are aligned with. With how we've evolved as human beings. And I just think applying an evolutionary lens and a traditional lens to modern medicine is a really good exercise because there are some. Some absolute gems in there.

Absolutely. What a powerful story. Who could have thought all of that Synergy. And we were the same age also.

Yeah.

And how incredible of your mother. What a gift for her to just have that insight for you is my mom who's doing the same thing too, because of her arthritis.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And like you, my understanding and you know, all these ancient rituals, we would go see these gurus in basements and do these like hour long breath work situations, like, yeah, yeah, enough, I don't want to do that anymore. But now, you know, like so many, we need this backed by science and there's more of an understanding there and I just want to own in. So you did not have the ablation, you got off the beta blocker medication through these and it took you some time at self discovery, right?

Yeah, definitely. I felt better along the way, but I was definitely fearful of actually having an episode and then throwing off a clot. And then. So I did this with a lot of trepidation. I remember I was seeing someone at the time who was very conventionally minded and she just thought I was absolutely crazy. You know, I remember her marching me down to the anticoagulation clinic, which I don't know if you were anticoagulated before your ablation, but it's where you. You're loaded up on warfarin, which is quite an old medication. Yeah, yeah. So back in the day when you probably had your ablation, we were doing a procedure that required patients to be anticoagulated because the procedure itself can lead to clots forming. We have newer techniques now and your methods which use more modern anticoagulants that don't require that. But I remember, like, just the disappointment from her and some of my other medics when I was going against conventional wisdom and, you know, even throughout my journey doing the Doctor's Kitchen, which was never meant to be a brand, by the way, it was just a cute name that I was like, oh, I'm gonna do these recipes. I call it the Doctor's Kitchen. I'm sure it'll be fine. And then now it's become my identity, my brand. So that was never like the plan for me. But I remember even throughout my whole career, this idea of talking about food as medicine and sort of creating a parallel to traditional medicine and Eastern medicine, even talking about ayurvedic medicine has been very uncomfortable for a lot of my colleagues to see. And I've definitely had a lot of backlash around that. But I think now, you know, in this 2025, a lot more people coming around to it, and there's a lot of friends of, you know, mutual friends of ours that are talking about this who are both medics and they understand that the power and the, and the wisdom of, of previous teachers and scholars.

Yeah. It's a very slow transition and I'm always shocked today. And here's the beauty about what's happening right now is we're putting all the science around these ancient rituals and even something around stress management. Right. And I think that a lot of people, and maybe perhaps a lot of the colleagues that you had who are just so. Right. Brain, they need data, data, data, data, stat, stat. Proof, proof. And like, maybe by the time we hit that threshold, they'll finally come around. Because you didn't have any nutrition training at that time. Right. So thank goodness, like with your mom's just had insight around that. Right. It's probably something that she had grown up with.

Yeah, yeah.

And I know the kind of Dr. Collie friend that you're speaking to, that same type, and it still exists today. So every year I'll go in for like an annual cardiovascular checkup. And this last time at a big organization here in the U.S. the cardiologist said, well, Mona, you know, the drugs that we have today are different than the drugs that you were on when you were in your 20s and was like, no, well, Mom, Mona, if it gets worse, then the surgery that we have today is still very different than. It's like, you're still pushing this. I just told you a whole story around how I healed myself. The takeaway for that is for listeners to really just ask questions because the person on the other end, God bless them, this isn't ever about hating people in that kind of modern healthcare system. But there's education that's still based on a very antiquated point of view. And I think it's just profound having a doctor like you out in the world who's like, hey, you know, I have the same training as you and here's what I'm seeing, here's what I'm learning.

And you know, I love actually being able to play both roles almost. It's. It's like I love leaning into the sort of intuition and the n of one experimentation and, you know, figuring out what works best for me as an individual. Because the last thing that I would want to insinuate is if you just do these things, then you can get rid of anything. You can get rid of your type 2 diabetes, you can reverse cancer, you can reverse your ablation. I think work for what worked for me was through self discovery. In the same way, what worked for you as well. And I would encourage people to think about that through that lens rather than the traditional conventional lens, which is you have this diagnosis, ergo you need to take these drugs or do these interventions, whether it be surgery or otherwise. And this is how we fix you. And that's a very sort of, a very sort of narrow, naive way of looking at how we treat conditions and how we ultimately get people to experience healing if they need to, or protect their health. Which I think is, you know, another area which we traditionally haven't done well within conventional medicine. So yeah, no, I love playing this both roles because especially when I did my nutrition masters that I recently completed in nutritional and it's called nutritional medicine. It's where you go into the big studies and the data and you look at the quality of evidence stuff and I think it's really important to have a handle on that but not be completely beholden to that because otherwise you just wouldn't do anything. Because there isn't studies looking at, you know, green chlorophyll water for example, or like, you know, the exact dose of caffeine or actually caffeine is probably different because there's 20,000 studies on coffee, especially now. Yeah, yeah. But you know, other sorts of teas or mushrooms for example, which I, there's a lot of evidence for at the moment, but nowhere near as, as much as coffee. But you know, there's definitely potential for these different things. And also the ancient healing practices that we haven't got any studies for, you know, like third eye massage or certain types of diabetic practices or tcm, like it's, it's really, really interesting. And also this concept of the belief effect, so we know how strong the placebo effect is and the nocebo effect. So you know, if you were to tell me, okay, oh, by the way, I forgot there's cyanide in here, I might immediately start having symptoms because of what you've just suggested to me. And it's a very well recognized phenomena. The same thing could be said of the belief effect of like how we feel a certain pill or treatment or food or dietary pattern is going to have the impact on us. This needs to be studied even more so because it's super powerful. It is really powerful. Whether you're looking at this from the lens of a scientist who's beholden by, you know, evidence based medicine or whether you're looking at this from someone who believes in traditional healing methods, this practice, this sort of idea of belief Effects is massive and it could be revolutionary for a lot of people.

Oh, I couldn't agree with that more. And again, I think if we were to look back at ancient Buddhist temples and monks and stuff like that, they understood the power of the mind. Whether they were fasting for extended periods of time or surviving on air or focusing on a guru, whatever it was. I think that what they were trying to prove is the power of the mind over the physical body. Right. So with this insight and obviously the education that you do for the people who might be finding you, who are Western trained and you've got this education, we of course, is like nutritional science and people getting their master's in nutrition, and yet we still see nutrition as sort of soft science.

Yeah, right.

And I'm with you, like even becoming a nutritionist myself. And I wish if I could go back in time, all of those doctors, it's never that linear approach that you were mentioning. You know, I can imagine for both you and I, maybe it had something to do with our nervous system regulation. I know for me, it had a lot to do with my blood sugar regulation. At the same time, my lifestyle, my circadian rhythm, the fact that I was completely off my side. Like, there was so many things that was contributing to that. And for listeners, like, whatever symptom you're suffering from, if it's heart palpitations or whatever imbalance or dis ease, they never show up overnight. Right. We've got to do the investigation to see, like, what were the symptoms that were or the systems in the body that were being compromised. So do you see even an evolution of this soft science becoming.

I definitely see that. I definitely see this sort of soft science becoming a lot harder, particularly with people recognizing the impact of the microbiota, because you can think about this through the lens of drugs as well. So the reason why some people are sensitive to a very typical pharmaceutical, like paracetamol, I think you guys call it acetaminophen here, or even a blood pressure medication can be in part explained by genetics, but it can also be in part be explained by the composition of your gut microbiota. And this is something that no one was really thinking about 10, 15 years ago, certainly not in the sort of practicing conventional medicine space, that there was actually a difference in effects because of someone's microbiota composition. And when I think about my own experience of reversing atrial fibrillation, I ponder this similar sort of ideas as you as to what system was I optimizing or which systems was Optimizing that actually led to resolution of my, of my condition and in, in, in, in a way it was multiple. So by doing breathwork and trying to optimize my sleep, I was optimizing my cortisol system. I was living more in alignment with my circadian rhythm, which is this rough 24 hour cycle by which all biological systems operate on. And you know, your body has its own secondary rhythms. Your pancreas cell, your gut cell, your brain, it's usually sort of master regulated by an area in the brain called the scn, the super cosmetic nuclei. But you know, it can, you can have shifts, particularly if you do night shifts, which I was doing.

Right.

So there's one side of the, the issue, the microbiota. So because I was having a largely refined carbohydrate diet with cereals and sandwiches and pasta, it probably wasn't feeding my microbiota to the best of my ability, which meant that the bacteria population was out of balance. And even though we have pathogenic bacteria in our, in our gut, they can live there and thrive and actually contribute to the community as long as they don't overpopulate. And unfortunately they tend to overpopulate when we have refined starches and sugars in our diet, which I was having a lot of. So when I started eating more fiber was I, and I had no way of testing this because I wasn't doing my gut microbiota testing then. But did I create a more balanced and favorable gut microbiota picture by having fruits and legumes and nuts and seeds and all the rest of it? Probably in, by, by virtue of doing that I was probably reducing my inflammation levels because my gut barrier was probably more intact. I had less leakiness, I had less activation of my immune system. That was inappropriate. And so my inflammation level was probably improved. The axis that links my gut to my brain probably helped me with my stress levels whilst I was doing, you know, these crazy shifts and all the rest of it while I was learning on the job, my blood glucose regulation was probably improved as well. Was I flooding my body with more phytonutrients that actually have a direct anti inflammatory effect? Like we know, you know, things like seaweed as an example, dark green leafy vegetables that was consuming a lot more of nuts and seeds that have fatty acids, I was having fatty fish a lot more often. These contain resolvins that are anti inflammatory. So definitely that as well. And then you know, I was consuming less products that would have been damaging to my gut barrier in the, in the form of ultra processed foods that have additives and emulsifiers that we know now through the lens of modern science are net negative for us. Yeah, so there's so many ways in which you can, I can sort of look back at my own experience and explain and you know, detoxification was probably improved as well because I was having lots more rascal vegetables. So there's so many ways in which I can explain my own experience. I think ultimately it comes back to putting your body in the best environment you can. And you know, the four pillars that come to mind are nutrition, sleep, emotional health and, and exercise. And if you just align those, I mean this, there's definitely community and purpose, which I think are also just as important as, as those pillars. But if when you align those, your body has this like innate intelligence, it just knows what to do. Give it the right nutrients, give it the right fuel, put it in the right environment and it can create a sense of balance or homeostasis in its internal environment such that your symptoms can improve. That's my sort of thesis of my experience and also what I see as a, what I did see as a practicing physician and you know, my reading of the literature thus far in nutrition.

No more silence suffering. It's like a lot of the symptoms that you're talking about, I think a lot of people out there are still suffering with. But it's funny, no matter the type of doctor that comes in here, we're kind of learning that there's some foundational truths when it comes to healing. Right. Setting an internal ecosystem to optimize what's happening within us or the harmony, I guess that we can say to awaken that intelligence. And you know, it's funny, we're still so lost in this world of health and wellness, but we're talking about feeling a little bit more of a sense of peace. Optimizing your sleep, taking in nutrient dense foods, more fiber, more phytonutrients and phytochemicals. Whether we're talking about heart palpitations or cardiovascular disease or diabetes or cancers, the foundation really is like this foundational truth. Would you agree?

100%. I mean, I say this over and over again because people ask me go, what do I eat for pcos? Order menopause or whatever. I'm going to tell you the same thing. It's really optimizing the nutrients that you're lacking and introducing the nutrients that you know, you're, you just, you're just not providing your body with. And I mean, the reason why I wrote the book Healthy High Protein is because I feel a lot of people are actually lacking good quality sources of protein, their diet. And that becomes even more important as we get older and even more important postmenopausally. And if you exercise regularly, which I imagine a lot of your community do, but also like the, the fats, the distribution of fiber, the distribution of different sort of phytonutrient rich ingredients, these are all things that we all need to be consuming and most people just aren't getting enough.

You got it.

And that's the sort of problem that I'm trying to address with making healthy eating easier, more enjoyable, pleasurable. Like, this is what we need to be leaning to. And that's why I try and make it fun by just doing cooking shows, you know, and just doing cooking books. And rather than it being like really heavy nutrition dense, like academic focused work, which I love doing as well. Like, I do that on my podcast and we just talk to researchers all day long about nutrition. But when it comes to the practical element, I think that's what we need to lean into after this saying, like, the science is complex, the solutions are simple. The implementation, that's the hard stuff.

Absolutely.

Because the science of the microbiota and mitochondrial health around kinds of super, super complex, you know, I don't, I can't pretend to understand half of it. The solution is really simple. It's just like, eat more fruits and vegetables, have nuts and seeds, eat on time, exercise, go to bed. The implementation of that, given how caretaker lives are, the access to food, financial insecurity, all these different things, this is what makes it really hard. And this is where I want to spend most of my time.

Oh, I love it. Let's make it just go viral. Right? And really it's an issue of modernization. Right. When I work with people, the greatest obstacle is the sense of stress that they feel or the lack of time, which is just a reallocation that needs to happen. And if we see that this is something that's consistent throughout society, and gosh, if it was amplified by doctors and the medical community and stuff like that, then I think we're on track for becoming the new norm.

Yeah.

And like, just remember the culture that you come from. You and I come from this beautiful South Asian, even my Danish side, actually, whatever culture, there was like more of an emphasis around a gathering for food and nourishment and the time that it took to cook and the ritual around sitting with your neighbors and your family and stuff like that. We're really breaking away from that when, like, food keeps us alive, people.

Totally. Yeah.

Right. There's so much more wisdom behind it beyond the intelligence of what you're consuming.

Absolutely. And I think a lot of people forget because the Mediterranean diet is sort of heralded as one of the most impactful diets. It's like the healthiest in terms of cardiometabolic health. And when I say cardio metabolic, I'm talking about reducing the risk of cardiovascular disease and improving one's metabolic health, such that, you know, you have a lean body mass and you maintain muscle health as you age. But a real core tenant of the Mediterranean way of eating, which is the way I describe it, is not the food itself. It's not even Mediterranean flavored. It's not, it's not that element. It's actually the, the act of sitting and eating together as part of a community.

Yeah.

And it's very hard to adjust for that and to capture that in trials, particularly randomized, controlled trials looking at the Mediterranean diet because it's hard enough to get them to eat the food, let alone eat it with someone. But I think it's a real core tenant of the observational studies where they look at Mediterranean diets and Mediterranean style eating patterns, particularly in places like Spain and Greece and, you know, Italy, where it's just the part of the culture. And I think we're unfortunately eroding that because of the attractiveness of convenience. So the fact that you can get food and it's healthy food delivered to your door, you don't have to cook it, you have to do anything. You save time. Everything's about saving time. These are hacks, like, to make your cooking. Part of the beauty of food is actually the cooking process. It's the, the dopamine release that you get when you cook a healthy, hopefully nourishing and delicious meal for your family. Like, part of the enjoyment for me isn't just cooking. The food is actually. I actually cooked with a friend of mine yesterday who's, who's in L. A as well. And part of the enjoyment was just literally just seeing the smile on her face.

Yeah.

You know, and just eating with my wife and one of her friends was there. And like, that's, that's nourishment in itself. It's not just the fact that I cooked a really good salad, some frozies on the side and some roasted white beans. It was like the, the, the, the setting environment, you know, the, the set scene. And what is it? I think there's a saying within the psychedelic mushroom community. Where it's about the, the, the setting and the intention and the scene that actually is very important for the experience itself. Yeah, exactly. So. So I think it's really important to bring that to everything, whether it's exercise or nutrition or. Yeah. The emotional connection piece of it.

It's a full in love language for me.

Right.

Just being nourished that way from someone that you love. I can't wait for the day. I have a feeling this is my memory of the ashram. When we go to eat at the ashram, there's no screens, you're sitting in a really calm setting outside in nature with other people connecting.

Yeah.

And everyone takes in a moment to just like acknowledge the effort that went into the food, where it comes from, how it was cooked, the prayer and the blessing that was given to it also. And you literally digest that. So I can't wait for the day where even, you know, with the medical community we can kind of understand what your vibration is or your frequency in that state. And I'm sure that with practice you can get to a point where whether you're having your morning gratitude practice or sitting in stillness with loved one eating, the state of your body can actually be put into that same frequency which is healing in and of itself.

Yeah, yeah. I think the biomarkers that we currently have today are fairly crude to explain the magnitude of effect of something that we colloquially call energy or vibration. Right. And you know, if I was to think about it with my sort of like medical hat on, what happens when you take screens away and you are doing breathwork or you're doing prayers before you start eating? Well, a lot of things are happening, so your cortisol level is definitely lower. Your attention is very much on the texture and the enjoyment of the food. Everything slows down. You're not having dopamine effects from, you know, being stimulated by a digital device whilst you're consuming food. For example, your, your eating rate would slow, which means that your gastric emptying will, would, would improve. You're chewing, your chewing increases, which means that you're going to actually extract more nutrients from whatever you're consuming. So when you think about it from that perspective, you know, you could measure the cortisol level, you could measure your blood glucose level, you can measure your HSCRP in that moment, you can measure other markers of inflammation. But I don't think we've got to the point where we can actually measure vibration or energy and stuff. And I think it's more of a feeling that you have and I think you want to put yourself in that right state, particularly when you're doing something as important as nourishment.

You got it. So important. Let's go back to your journey. The concept that fascinates me is this concept of culinary medicine. And this is a big part of. You've written a few books now.

Yeah, this is my fifth book.

So talk to us about the evolution when you recognize that it is about the information of the food, but also the enjoyment. I want to call out for people who haven't seen Dr. Rupee's page. You really do make cooking and eating and food combining and using herbs and spices something that is quite simple and we really complicate it. Right. We think that it takes a lot of effort, a lot of time that gotta be looking up recipes. And you know, for a lot of my clients, introducing one new recipe a month is like a big deal to them. But again, it's just breaking down a belief that they have to be complicated in those things. So do you see this as being part of an evolution that people are going to get to instead of just eating clean, like they're going to understand the nourishment and the medicine that comes with it?

I really hope so. I think like I like to break it down. I think when I started my career and I wrote my first couple of books, I was overcomplicating the already overcomplicated science. So I started talking about food through the lens of mitochondrial health and chrono nutrition and epigenetics or nutrigenomics, which is how like food can switch on and off certain genes. And I think whilst that's all fascinating, people just want the basics and they want to understand like how they can actually put that like complex nutrition into practice easily and conveniently. Which is why I think my focus on Instagram and YouTube and through my newsletter and the Dr. Kitchen app is just making it as simple as possible. So introducing new ingredients, things like things that are in seasonal because they obviously have a lot more phytonutrients, things that are organic because there is a difference in the thousands of chemicals that make up all these different ingredients, as much as you can afford. So yeah, my focus is definitely trying to simplify and just getting people to not be scared of recipes and actually introducing things into repertoire. We did some, some interviews with customers of the, of the app and one of the things that really surprised me because I thought people were downloading and using the app because they love the education and the science and the fact this got Proof, actually, most people were just like, it's because it just gives me healthy eating inspiration. Like, I can go on the app, I could choose a recipe and that looks nice and like, everyone loves it. Even, like, my husband, who doesn't eat meat and like, we, we cook a vegetarian meal. I'm like, yeah, that's what it's about. That's actually what it's about. So I love, like, that aspect of it, and I think that's what I need to lean into more. And, like, instead of satisfying my ego of, like, knowing as much as I can about nutritional medicine, it's actually just about being as helpful as possible to the end user or the consumer of the content that's out there that we put out. And then culinary medicine is a concept that was actually pioneered in the US So I made contact with some of the medical schools that had started a culinary medicine, culinary medicine program as part of the medical curricula at Tulane, Columbia and Harvard. I think this in like 40American medical schools. In the UK, we had zero. Like, there was no concept of culinary medicine. And the, the, you know, to even dare call it culinary medicine is pretty phenomenal.

Right.

So I remember early in my career is around 2017, 2018. I was like, I'm just going to bring it to the uk. So I met with all the directors and stuff. We learned all about their curricula. We try to get it like, like for, like in the UK didn't work. So we basically had to build the curriculum from scratch. I worked with dietitians, chefs, a bunch of medical schools. We're currently in three medical schools, which is, I want to say, 10 of all medical schools. Yeah. So we've got a long way to go. Like a huge sort of uphill battle. But we get medical students relatively early in their medical career to cook alongside culinary students. Dietitians, they learn about food, they learn how to start conversations.