Feel Better, Live More with Dr Rangan Chatterjee

If there were a health marker guaranteed to shape your happiness, your health and your children’s wellbeing, wouldn’t you want to optimise it?

According to today’s guest there is: your relationships. And in this episode, the world-renowned couples’ therapist Terry Real reveals the one skill he believes matters more than any other for lasting love – while showing you exactly how to use it.

Nicknamed ‘the turnaround guy’, Terry has spent decades helping couples who’ve tried it all find their way back to connection. His latest bestseller Us: Getting Past You and Me to Build a More Loving Relationship, features a foreword from one-such happy customer, Bruce Springsteen. Terry’s unconventional yet hugely successful approach, Relational Life Therapy (RLT), has trained thousands of therapists worldwide. He believes a good therapist should take sides, and that lasting change often means helping someone come down from grandiosity, not just raising them up from shame.

This is one of those conversations that blends big, new ideas with nuggets of advice you’ll be itching to put into practice. We discuss how expectations of love and romance have changed over the generations – and why so many of us are trying to build modern, intimate partnerships using skills we were never actually taught. And Terry explains why the real measure of a strong relationship isn’t how rarely you argue, but which of your ‘three selves’ you use to do it.

He introduces the idea of the adaptive child, an old survival pattern that hijacks our behaviour the moment we feel threatened, and explains how learning to recognise it can transform the way we handle conflict. We also discuss the patriarchy and the need to move beyond it for humankind – but this is not about blaming men or women, rather showing how both can and must shift to help each other and the world.

So, what is that one skill we need for lasting love? Terry calls it repair, and his bold idea is that it’s not a two-way conversation. When someone we love is hurt or upset with us, our job is not to explain ourselves, but to help them feel heard first. The ability to repair, more than the ability to swerve an argument altogether, is what determines relationship success – and, crucially, he reveals how to do it. It’s a simple reframe, and one that could change how you handle your very next disagreement.

Whether you are single, married, co-parenting, or navigating a difficult patch with someone you care about, this conversation is full of practical strategies you can start using today. I have a feeling you’ll want to share this episode, so everyone you love can do the same.

The Thrive Tour: Transform Your Health and Happiness, a live show: Book Your Tickets https://drchatterjee.com/live



Thanks to our sponsors:

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Show notes https://drchatterjee.com/679



DISCLAIMER: The content in the podcast and on this webpage is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your doctor or qualified healthcare provider. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have heard on the podcast or on my website.
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What if the most courageous, compassionate thing you could do in life, was to learn how to be with yourself? It’s a powerful, perhaps surprising idea put forward by today’s guest.

Today’s Bitesize is from episode 387 of the podcast with Gelong Thubten - Buddhist monk, meditation teacher and author of the fantastic book 'A Handbook for Hard Times: A Monk’s Guide to Fearless Living’.

Thubten became a monk back in 1993 after suffering from severe physical and mental burnout whilst following his dream of becoming an actor in New York City.

We begin by talking about distraction and addiction, two states that are very closely linked. He explains that when we distract ourselves by scrolling, overeating, or drinking for example, we’re pushing away emotional pain or discomfort - even if we may not realise it. But the discomfort is really in the pushing. If we can learn instead to sit with what’s making us uncomfortable, those emotions start to transform.

Thanks to our sponsor ⁠⁠⁠https://thewayapp.com/livemore

Show notes and the full podcast are available at drchatterjee.com/387

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DISCLAIMER: The content in the podcast and on this webpage is not intended to constitute or be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your doctor or other qualified health care provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have heard on the podcast or on my website.

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Could the food you ate yesterday already be reshaping your gut, your immune system and your risk of chronic disease? This week’s guest says yes, and he’s spent his career demonstrating why that matters so much.

Dr Will Bulsiewicz is an award-winning gastroenterologist and the author of the new book, Plant Powered Plus. And few people can explain the science of gut health as clearly, or as compassionately, as Will does in this conversation. If you think you already know everything there is to know about digestion, fibre and plant foods, this episode will change your mind – and deliver a great deal more.

Will has identified four nutrition ‘workhorses’ that feed and protect our guts and, unsurprisingly, fibre is one of them. We get into the specifics of how the fibre we eat turns into short-chain fatty acids like butyrate, which Will describes as the most anti-inflammatory substance he has ever come across. He makes the case for fibre as the true longevity nutrient. We talk about resistant starch, found in cooled potatoes and green bananas, and why it feeds a completely different part of your gut microbiome to other fibres. Will shares the research behind the ‘30 plants a week’ target, and why he thinks the exact figure matters far less than most people assume. And he covers the importance of polyphenols, healthy fats and fermented foods.

There’s a fascinating section on the different ways our gut microbiomes are shaped by our closest relationships, including some research findings even Will found surprising. We bust some myths around the term ‘leaky gut’. And we discuss why he no longer sees Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis as straightforward autoimmune conditions, but more like the immune system turning against the microbiome.

Will is refreshingly honest about the limits of diet alone. He talks candidly about the patients he could not help through nutrition or medication, and about a period in his own life when food became a coping mechanism for something he wasn’t able to face. It is a reminder that lasting health often asks more of us than simply eating better.

Whether you’re new to the topic of gut health or well acquainted, this episode brings a new perspective. It’s packed with valuable and actionable moments – and it’s one you’ll come back to again and again.

The Thrive Tour: Transform Your Health and Happiness, a live show: Book Your Tickets https://drchatterjee.com/live



Thanks to our sponsors:

https://heights.com/livemore

https://hellolingo.com/livemore

https://thewayapp.com/livemore

https://drinkag1.com/livemore



Show notes https://drchatterjee.com/677



DISCLAIMER: The content in the podcast and on this webpage is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your doctor or qualified healthcare provider. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have heard on the podcast or on my website.
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When we think about improving our health, we often think about changing our diet, increasing how much we move, improving the quality of our sleep and lowering stress, but how many of us think about ‘working’ on our vision?

Every day, many of us experience symptoms like brain fog, fatigue, headaches or poor concentration – and never realise that our eyes might be playing a central role.

In today’s Bitesize, pioneering neuro-optometrist Dr Bryce Appelbaum explains why our visual system is about far more than simply how well we can see. Many of us don’t realise just how much our vision influences how we think, feel and perform.

We explore the surprising connection between vision and stress, and Bryce shares some simple, practical exercises we can all use today to better support our visual system and our wider health.

Show notes and the full podcast are available at ⁠https://drchatterjee.com/576⁠

Thanks to our sponsor ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://drinkag1.com/livemore⁠

Support the podcast and enjoy Ad-Free episodes. Try FREE for 7 days on Apple Podcasts ⁠⁠⁠https://apple.co/feelbetterlivemore⁠⁠⁠

For other podcast platforms go to ⁠⁠⁠https://fblm.supercast.com.⁠

DISCLAIMER: The content in the podcast and on this webpage is not intended to constitute or be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your doctor or other qualified health care provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have heard on the podcast or on my website.

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Why does struggling for something make it more satisfying? And why can getting what you want leave you feeling flat? In this episode, I sit down with Arthur Brooks, one of the world's leading voices on the science of happiness, for a conversation that might change how you feel about your life.

Arthur is a professor at Vanderbilt University, senior fellow of Harvard Business School and bestselling author of multiple books, including new title, The Meaning Of Your Life. He walked away from a successful career when he realised that despite a happy marriage, strong faith and good income, he struggled to feel happy. That personal reckoning led him to years of research into what really makes people thrive – and in this conversation, he shares the framework he developed to explain it.

Using an analogy from nutrition science, Arthur describes happiness as requiring three macronutrients: enjoyment, satisfaction and meaning. We talk about why so many high achievers get the first one wrong. Suffering and struggle, he says, aren’t obstacles to a fulfilling life but essential ingredients of it – hence removing all friction from our lives can leave us feeling empty rather than content.

We also get into goals, and why reaching them tends not to deliver the lasting happiness we expect. Arthur calls this the arrival fallacy, and understanding might change how you approach your next big challenge.

On relationships, Arthur shares research showing that the healthiest marriages are not the ones with the least conflict, but the ones with the most honesty. We talk frankly about what that has looked like in our own marriages, what we can all learn from our parents when it comes to happiness, and the best (and easiest) way to send a positive message to our children. Arthur also shares what he’s learned about presence, faith and love from his relationship and his daily practices.

We explore the difference between solitude and loneliness and how levels of social connection can be individual. And I hope you’ll pay attention to the section on why leisure needs to be treated as seriously as work.

This is a warm, honest and personal conversation with someone who’s spent decades studying happiness – but who’s candid about how hard he’s worked to feel it himself. By reframing happiness as a direction not a destination, I think it could be a life-changing listen for you.



The Thrive Tour: Transform Your Health and Happiness, a live show: Book Your Tickets https://drchatterjee.com/live



Thanks to our sponsors:

https://exhalecoffee.com/livemore

https://boncharge.com/livemore

https://drinkag1.com/livemore



Show notes https://drchatterjee.com/675



DISCLAIMER: The content in the podcast and on this webpage is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your doctor or qualified healthcare provider. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have heard on the podcast or on my website.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices