255: The Psychology of Fasting and Longevity
Dr. Raj Persaud
Ashley:
Hello, everyone. Welcome to Cellular Healing TV. I’m Ashley Smith. Today, Dr. Pompa is speaking with Dr. Raj Persuad about the psychology of fasting and longevity. They’re discussing so much from living longer to relationships and explaining what exactly the psychology of longevity is. This is a really stimulating episode where not only will you learn a lot, but you may also find yourself laughing quite a bit. Our guest, Dr. Raj has quite the sense of humor.
Dr. Raj Persuad is a psychiatrist with a huge interest in longevity. He has consulted with the premier research and training institutions for psychiatry in Europe. Dr. Raj also has a podcast called, Raj Persuad in Conversation, which includes a lot of complementary information on the latest research findings in mental health plus interviews with top experts from around the world. You can read more about Dr. Raj and find his links in our show notes.
This episode of CHTV has been brought to you by Fastonic. This oral stable molecular hydrogen supplement assists in fasting, shows promise in anti-aging, encourages post-workout recovery, mitigates oxidative stress, inflammation, and many other triggers for disease and imbalance. Curious to try molecular hydrogen for yourself? Our CHTV audience can check it out at getfastonic.com. Let’s get started and welcome Dr. Pompa and Dr. Raj Persuad to the show. This is Cellular Healing TV.
Dr. Pompa:
Dr. Raj, welcome to Cell TV.
Dr. Raj Persuad:
It’s great to be here. I’m really looking forward to it.
Dr. Pompa:
By the way, from—all the way from London. It’s midnight your time. Am I right on that?
Dr. Raj Persuad:
That’s right. I’m not suffering from insomnia or anything. It’s just the only time I could get to talk to you. It’s midnight here in London in the UK. It’s raining. It’s freezing.
Dr. Pompa:
I have to say where I am in Park City, it’s 30 degrees, snowing. We have a lot of snow on the ground. Par for the course what you would think from where we both live. I have to say, with a resume like yours, okay, I don’t even know where to begin. The top, what a study. I heard you’re number 17 in beach tennis.
The question was going to be—let them make your resume by the way. We were talking about that prior. The question is this. Out of all of those things, I’m sure Ashley talked about some of them, but not nearly the amount that are on your resume. Really, it’s very impressive. I have to ask the question: what are you most proud of besides the beach tennis?
Dr. Raj Persuad:
It’s a good question. I’m proud of being a psychiatrist, but I think that psychiatry has got a very strange reputation with the public. Psychiatrists tend to be viewed not as the most effective doctors. People are a little bit pessic about the idea that psychological problems like depression and anxiety can really be helped. I don’t know whether that applies in the US, but certainly here in the UK.
Whereas, if you’ve got some kind of physical problem, most people are very optimistic that medicine and going to the doctor can be helped. I take a very optimistic view over most mental health problems. I’m really positive about the idea that most psychological problems like anxiety and depression can be treated effectively. I think I’m most proud of my books that try to promote that idea.
The thing that I did a lot of work in and was very privileged to work with a guy called Professor Gerald Russell. He was a professor of eating disorders here in the UK. I worked at perhaps what’s regarded as like the equivalent of Johns Hopkins here in the UK, the Maudsley Hospital for Psychiatry. He was a top eating disorder specialist. Now, he discovered the disorder referred to as bulimia nervosa. Many people have heard of anorexia nervosa.
For any doctor to discover a disease is an incredible achievement. I was his senior lecturer for many years. He wrote the definitive paper about bulimia nervosa in 1979. A lot of people don’t realize of how recent it is that disorder was actually first discovered. I’m really interested in the link between eating, diet, health, and longevity, and the psychology of longevity.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, I want to get into every one of them. Many people watching this because we have—we attract a lot of health seekers. They have anxiety. They have sleep disorders. They have depression; all of the things. They have eating disorders. We have people here struggle with diets. I want to get into all of those subjects and especially living longer because that is something that I believe we’re all interested in.
At least, put it this way, living longer healthy. Before we get into those topics, how did you get into this? You could have been the average psychologist or better than average with your pedigree. Psychologist, meaning that you could have been sitting doing what most psychologists do and [00:05:19] changed you.
Dr. Raj Persuad:
I was an unusual psychiatrist in that I cannot prescribe medication. I’m much more interested in psychological approaches. Given my interest in beach tennis and lawn tennis, I play lots of sports.
Dr. Pompa:
Okay, hold on. Before we go on, we keep making the jokes, but before we got on, folks, he said—I was commenting about this resume of his being amazing. He said, well, one thing that wasn’t added is he’s number 17 in the UK in beach tennis. This is his new hobby. Then his wife said, “Well, how many people actually play it, 15?” Just like a wife. We’re making fun of his new hobby, but it sounds like he’s pretty athletic, too. Go ahead, sorry to interrupt, but we keep joking and we didn’t bring them in on the joke.
Dr. Raj Persuad:
I think there’s an important point, which is doctors have to walk the walk; not just talk the talk. All therapists you go to see, you should as a patient, does this therapist look like they’re enjoying life? Does this look fit and healthy? Many doctors look really unfit, look really exasperated with life. I don’t think that’s—no matter how many diplomas you have, what top medical school you’ve been to, you’ve got to walk the walk. You’ve got to have—you have to be inspiring by the way you lead your life.
I think most patients don’t find many doctors inspiring. I think medical school and the medical school training doesn’t emphasize that element. It emphasizes technical skills, technical ability. I actually think health is all about a philosophy of life. You have to have an appetite for life and a passion for life. Those are things you don’t get from medical school. I’m a strong believer, you’ve got to walk the walk; not just talk the talk.
I have this huge array of hobbies and interests, many of them to do with sport. My wife, of course, thinks I have too many hobbies and interests and too many sports. The point is, you have to really engage and enjoy life. There’s a lot of evidence that is a key predictor of longevity as well. There’s no point in just wanting to live long; you’ve got to have a reason you want to live long, things you want to do with your life. That promotes longevity.
Dr. Pompa:
By the way, and not to throw you off course here, but I read book that proved just that I believe. It was about the concentration camps. Victor Frankl, the meaning—it starts with the meaning for life, remember? What he found was the people who lived through the concentration camp, they had a reason to live. The ones that lost their reason to live were the ones who died. The ones who lived when they shouldn’t have lived literally just had a reason to your point.
Dr. Raj Persuad:
The key point about that—it’s a very important point. Victor Frankl’s book is forgotten now, Man’s Search for Meaning. Back in the ‘60s, it was one of the biggest selling books. The US Library of Congress rated it one of the most influential books of the 20th Century. One of the profoundly important points, it didn’t matter what your purpose was.
Dr. Pompa:
That’s right.
Dr. Raj Persuad:
It wasn’t saying you had to be religious or spiritual or whatever it was you were into; the point was you had to have a purpose. That’s the significant point I think which is often forgotten. Again, he was a psychiatrist. He survived the concentration camps. His key point was one of the most potent things that medicine can give people is purpose. I think we’ve forgotten that with our embracing too much of the technical-biological aspect of help.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, so beach tennis became your thing to live longer. I’m joking of course. Okay, let’s pull it in though. Is this your approach? Is this your approach to every health condition? Do you have different approaches? Anything you want to start into here, but let’s hear your approach because obviously, it’s very different.
Dr. Raj Persuad:
Let’s take an example. A classic example is a lot of people want to lose weight. They come, and you say to them, well, why do you want to lose weight? They don’t realize that the reason is important. I like to describe the most effective period when women, in particular, are most likely to lose weight. I call this the wedding dress syndrome. I don’t know if that happens in the US, but here in the UK, a woman is getting married. There is a wedding date. Usually, there’s a dress she wants to get into.
That date may be six months into the future. What’s really interesting is most women hit the target weight they need to get into that dress. Now, why is it they are so effective in achieving their goal at that moment in their lives, but then relatively speaking, often ineffective at weight loss goals at other phases of their life? Let’s unpack what I call the wedding dress syndrome.
First of all, there’s a date; there’s a very specific date. You’re going to have to hit the weight target at that date. You can’t change the date. You can’t say a week before the wedding, okay guys, I’m not fit enough to get into the dress, so we’re backing off the date by a few months. Having a specific date, a specific target, a specific number, being very specific about your goal rather than just saying, I just need to lose weight, having a number you have to hit is very important, have a reason you want to hit it.
These women going down the aisle, there’s a public humiliation element if you don’t hit that target weight. That massive consequence, the public humiliation is really powerful as a motivator. If you unpack all the ingredients in what I call the wedding dress syndrome, and you try to use those ingredients in the rest of your life, you’re more likely to hit health and weight goals.
Let’s go back to beach tennis. I became much fitter and lost weight when I took up beach tennis because everyone else playing beach tennis, they all play it wearing bikinis. They look gorgeous. You don’t want to be the fat one standing out on the beach tennis courts. There’s a public humiliation element to why I got much fitter as a result of being involved in beach tennis.
Also, I’m a competitive guy. I want to win. Because of that, I became fitter. In other words, there was a better purpose involved in helping me to lose weight and becoming fitter than just a general sense of I just want to lose weight. I just want to be fit. Being specific about your purpose and thinking hard about your purpose is key I think in helping people achieve their goals.
Dr. Pompa:
I agree. Now, what about eating disorders? This is in my mind, there’s a trauma that happens earlier in life and it can create this thing around—talk about that because we have many viewers.
Dr. Raj Persuad:
Yes, well, eating disorders are incredibly common. They’re getting commoner. One of the theories is that there’s a public image pressure through social media, Hollywood promoting very thin ideals. There’s a new eating disorder that men are suffering from called bigorexia. Men are bulking up. They’re using steroids. They’re going to the gym. They’re getting anxious about not being big in terms of like a big—
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, I actually interviewed a guy on Cell TV about that, orthorexia. He had the disease. He says still struggles from it, but he has it under control to your point.
Dr. Raj Persuad:
Yes, again, where people are going wrong is having a weight target. Wanting to look thin just because of the way it looks I think is the wrong reason. The desire to be fit and desire to have a lifestyle—again, where people are going wrong is they’re not understanding what a healthy lifestyle means. If you go on a crash diet for a few weeks, you may be successful in losing weight temporarily, but if you return to an unhealthy lifestyle basically your body shape will go back—going back to what it is.
It’s about changing your life, having a lifestyle approach, which is a more enduring way to actually lose weight. [00:13:10] about why do you want to be fit? Going back to my example of beach tennis, I want to be fit because for two or three times in the week, I’m on a court. It matters if I’m not fit. Having specific, clear reasons that fit in with your overarching life purpose is the key to actually effective weight loss and being fit.
Dr. Pompa:
To play devil’s advocate, I think people would say, gosh, I do have a good reason; they think this. It could be beyond just looking good. It could be a very emotional reason, but yet, they still struggle. How would you deal with that person?
Dr. Raj Persuad:
A famous philosopher called Nietzsche who became a little bit unpopular because he was associated with right-wing philosophies made a famous point. He said, whenever someone tells you they have the goal of something like I have the goal to lose weight, what they’re really telling you is they don’t want to do that thing; they know they ought to do that thing. Basically, you don’t have to set the goal for anything you really desire to do.
If you’re going to a party tonight, and you want to go to the party, you don’t say if you’re going, I have the goal of getting to the party. Nothing’s going to keep you from that party. What Nietzsche is saying is when people say they want something, are they really being honest with themselves about what they want? Embedded in the word want is what sacrifice are you willing to make to get this thing that you say that you want?
A lot of people come to my clinic, and they say, I want to lose weight. When I start describing the sacrifices they have to make in order to lose weight, they start to row back. They go, no, no, no; I don’t want to make that sacrifice. I don’t want to make that sacrifice. What they’re really saying is they haven’t understood what the word want means. Anytime anyone tells you they want something, you immediately say to them, well, what sacrifice are you willing to make to get it. If they can’t list the sacrifices, they haven’t understood what the word want means. Embedded in the word want is the things I’m willing to go without to achieve my goal.
I think goal clarity is a huge part of what psychology and psychiatry are about. People say they want stuff, but actually, they’re suffering from goal conflict. For example, you want to lose weight, but you don’t want to feel hungry. Hello, there’s goal conflict there. You’ve got to resolve the goal conflict in order to achieve your goals.
Dr. Pompa:
Do you help people do that, resolve those? Because that can be difficult.
Dr. Raj Persuad:
Yes, well, again, a good little exercise to do that I advocate is called the perfect day exercise. Just to run over what that is, you say to someone, I want you to describe to me what your most perfect day would look like? I’m going to give you a blank check. You could spend any amount of money. You can do anything you like. You can be with anyone. If on your perfect day, you’re going to wake up with the Queen in Buckingham Palace, tell me about that. I don’t care how crazy it is.
What happens very interestingly, when people describe their perfect day, right at the end, you say to them, hang on a second. You just told me for example that you really wanted to be thin, but perfect day, you described five meals that you had. You did not describe a lifestyle that looked like—I had a client who had a good going Class A drug habit, illegal drug habit. He told me he wanted me to give up these drugs. I asked him to describe his perfect day.
Every second out of his perfect day, he’s taking drugs. I think the perfect day exercise helps clarify what people really want. If you say to people, tell me what you really want, they actually tell you what they think they ought to want. If you go through the perfect day exercise, and people describe their perfect day, they’re caught off guard. You’re coming at it from slightly obliquely and they reveal what they really want. I tell you a really interesting thing. When people describe their perfect day, they often leave out being with their husbands and wives.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, see; the perfect day.
Dr. Raj Persuad:
I say, what happened to your husband or wife?
Dr. Pompa:
I’ve got to say though, I was thinking of my perfect day with my wife. Here’s the thing though.
Dr. Raj Persuad:
That’s a good first date question by the way. On a first date with someone, ask them to describe their perfect date.
Dr. Pompa:
That’s a good idea.
Dr. Raj Persuad:
By the way, the rules are you’ve got to start in the morning. Where would you wake up? Where’s the perfect place to wake up? You’ve got to explain something as well. After they describe the perfect day, if you try to tinker with the day, throw something in, take something out. Then they go, actually that day is better than the day I described. You then say to them, well, then that didn’t describe the perfect day. The perfect day is a day that can’t be improved.
It’s a wonderful exercise for achieving goal clarity. It’s great fun. It’s quite wicked actually for married couples to do it with each other if they don’t quite reveal first of all what the perfect day exercise is really about. What it’s really about is what actually makes you happy as opposed to what you claim or say ought to make you happy.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, no, I get that part. Okay, but let’s go back to the drug guy. How do you change that? Meaning that what made him happy was when he was on the drugs and for who knows what reasons for that. The point is, what do you do with that? Here’s what makes him happy is because his brain only knows happiness for that moment that he feels that moment of whatever that he feels on that drug. What do you do with that?
Dr. Raj Persuad:
First of all, what do most people do in medicine? I think I’m barking up the wrong tree. Is they use rational disputation, rational debate. The reality is by the time people come to see me if they’re struggling with a bad habit, if rational disputation was going to work, it would have worked. You’ve got to get into self which I think is emotions. Strong emotion drives people.
A classic example would be someone says, I want to give up smoking and they haven’t given up smoking. They come to you and they’ve got a bad cough. You say to them, I’m really worried that this could be cancer. I’m going to order a chest x-ray. They’ve given up smoking before they get to the path lab where the x-ray is going to be done because they’ve become scared. You’ve motivated the powerful emotion of terror. There is no more powerful emotion than terror and anxiety.
I think doctors back away from that because they don’t want to cultivate, create anxiety in patients. The reality is, if a patient really wants to stop something, you’ve got to harness powerful emotions. The most powerful emotion of all is being scared. That’s why usually people give up a bad drug habit after they’ve got the sack from work or their wife has left them. Oh, it’s a bit too late. At that moment, strong emotion’s in play. I think strong emotion is the key thing that has to be activated. Doctors are afraid of doing it.
Dr. Pompa:
If I got out, people say, Dr. Pompa, how do you stay so disciplined in what you do? The answer’s simple; it’s the fear of getting sick again. I was very sick. Sorry about that. My dog’s excited. This happens on Cell TV. That’s what happens when you do it from where your dog lays all day long.
The fear of going back to the way I was is—I can’t even comprehend it. The fear drives me. There’s some pleasure drive there, too. Meaning that I love being able to function in my 50’s at such a high level. I mountain bike. No doubt, that’s correlated into the lifestyle. There’s some pleasure that drives, but I would say the big driver is the fear of getting sick again.
My sickness actually worked to my advantage. People watching this that are sick, it could be the greatest advantage of all. The emotions are the drivers. With that, how do we use it? How do we bring it to our viewers and say okay, the person that’s trying to eat better through the holidays, or whatever it is, trying to lose the weight that they hate, how can we harness to the very things that are going to really change our brain?
Dr. Raj Persuad:
Okay, these are excellent questions. You gave a clue when you said one of the reasons why you are fixated, it’s not just about the fear of becoming ill again, but you have goals, goals to do—you mentioned you like mountain biking. You have to have goals that are incompatible with the bad habit. One great way if you don’t already have those goals is take up a new goal or a new project which is incompatible with a big, old smokier. Get them to take up running. Because if you start running, you can’t keep running and smoke at the same time. It’s just not possible. Eventually, what will happen is you’ll give up the smoking as you get into running.
You need a goal that’s incompatible with the bad habit, a goal that really grips you. Then eventually, you’ll give up the bad habit. With me and the sports that I do, they’re the things that keep me on the go. Another key point of course is discipline. You’re a disciplined person. What you’re looking for is people’s history of discipline in the past. When were they at their most disciplined? Why was that?
Usually, it was when they had goal clarity. When they were studying for a degree for example and they were frightened of failing the degree. You can use those past examples to try to bring it forward to where they are at the moment. They need goals that come back to overarching purpose in life. We [00:22:27] discussing, you have—just talking to you, I can see you have a strong sense of purpose, things you want to do with your life. That’s really crucial to healthcare. I think the healthcare industry neglects that point.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, well, the healthcare is not set up to be knee to knee with people and actually even—they’re in, they’re out. Here’s the drug; we’re out. Let’s talk about before we talk about the psychology of longevity which I want to get to, but let’s talk about what so many people have today: anxiety and sleep problems. How does all this tie into those?
Dr. Raj Persuad:
In order to help people with anxiety, you’ve got to start doing something which is very not fashionable in the psychiatric world but ask them what is anxiety. Get them to label the phenomenon correctly. That goes back to what is an emotion. When you ask people questions like, what is an emotion, they get a bit stuck. Emotions are things that we experience.
People understand evolutionary basis of emotions because emotions have three main components, which is the experience of the emotion, what it feels like to have the emotion. Then there’s physiology, the second key component in play. When you’re very anxious, you feel your heart beating fast. You feel sweaty. You feel jangly nerves because there’s physiology in play which shows that there’s an evolutionary purpose to emotions and biology to emotions.
The final key point is all emotions are a push or a pull towards a behavior. You go into a bar. You see an attractive member of the opposite sex. Your eyes lock across the bar. You feel a [00:24:00] of love or lust. That emotion leads you to want to walk over to that person and start talking to them.
All emotions lead to a behavior. That’s the ultimate purpose of emotion. What we have to do is get people to understand, why are you anxious. What role is it playing in your life? Because that anxiety is actually leading you to avoid something. Anxiety is therefore about danger.
We evolved to feel anxiety because when you’re walking across the African [00:24:28] years ago as a caveman, and a lion started bounding towards you, a big surge of anxiety adds some viable value. It made you turn and run away. The crucial [00:24:39] of the modern Western world is there’s no lions and tigers roaming the streets of London; yet, people are still anxious in the modern world. It’s because lions and tigers have been replaced by social dangers. They’re anxious about being ostracized. They’re anxious about finding themselves isolated. They’re anxious about being rejected.
You have to start by asking people, what is the lion or tiger? What are you scared of? Where’s the danger? You’ve got to transition the conversation away from the experience of emotion to the definition of what’s the danger. Because if it really is dangerous, then you should run away. If it’s not dangerous, you need to confront that danger.
That’s the analysis in my argument is that you have to go through with people. Get them to label the phenomenon correctly that’s going on in their heads. Then get them to figure out what is the danger? Is it really dangerous? Ultimately, confronting the danger is what leads to performing an action, performing a behavior rather than taking drugs is the correct way to handle these adverse emotions.
Dr. Pompa:
Is there a psychology around sleep? Because I know that for me there was for a bit. When I was sick, I had mercury toxicity. It drove my endocrine system: adrenaline, cortisol were not right, physiologically I wasn’t right. I’d be up in the middle of the night. Then even when I got well, if I thought that might—if I woke up, I would literally anchor back to that feeling. It wasn’t a physiological thing anymore; it became a psychological battle. How does that work as far as psychology and sleep?
Dr. Raj Persuad:
I want to go onto that, but before I answer that, can I ask you how did you overcome your sleep problem in your opinion?
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, it became as my brain got the mercury out of it, I started—my endocrine system started normalizing honestly. Then my adrenals stopped having to rescue my brain because of an endocrine disaster. As the toxins came out, my sleep came back.
Dr. Raj Persuad:
I think you became less anxious as well. I think your general anxiety levels came down.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, no doubt. My anxiety, everything went like this as my toxicity came out. To my point, even when I was well later, if I would sniff, if I would anchor to something like that because I feared going back, I could almost put myself in that state again psychologically.
Dr. Raj Persuad:
Yeah, okay. There are many reasons why people have sleep problems. I’m only going to pick one of them. One of them paradoxically is people are afraid of not sleeping. Because they’re afraid of not sleeping, they get themselves into a state which makes it less likely they’ll sleep.
One of the things you have to do is, first of all, do what we call psychoeducation; educate people about sleep. Stick a normal person who sleeps normally in a sleep laboratory and study them, what you find is the average person without suffering from a sleep problem or insomnia wakes up about four times on average every night. All that happens though is they wake up, realize they’re awake, turn around, go back to sleep again. That waking up is normal and usually transient because most people are relaxed about finding themselves awake in the middle of the night.
Now, we come to an insomniac. An insomniac is terrified of not sleeping. They’re terrified of not sleeping because they have a view that not sleeping will lead to a disaster the next day. They think it will be catastrophic if they haven’t sleep because the next day will be a wipeout. They won’t be able to—
Dr. Pompa:
I started down that road, thinking. It works.
Dr. Raj Persuad:
Yeah; what happens now with an insomniac is they go to sleep. Then they do the usual transient wake up thing that every normal person is doing. They suddenly realize they’re awake. Now, they get anxious about being awake. They’re in a hyper-aroused state. As a result, it’ s more difficult to go back to sleep.
The paradox at the heart of this chronic insomnia is to help the patient become paradoxically less anxious about being awake. To do that, going back to the lion or tiger, where’s the danger to be less afraid of the idea of not sleeping leading to a disaster the next day. In other words, they have to stop being worried about the idea there’s going to be a catastrophe if they haven’t slept. You can point out that the body will naturally deliver enough sleep left to its own devices. If I set up heavy drilling machinery next to your bedroom and started drilling very loudly day in, day out, for the first course, you’d stay awake; there’s no doubt about that. By the time we hit the 72nd hour, sleep will get delivered. Your body will deliver sleep despite your best effort to stay awake.
One of the other things we say is the body has a natural way of delivering sleep sooner or later. You just need to relax about the idea that your body left to its own devices will deliver sleep no matter what efforts are made around you to keep you awake. We’re trying to get people to be more relaxed about whatever happens in terms of delivery of sleep. Once they get more relaxed about that, the insomnia gets cured. Again, you should be able to do this without drugs. I'm really against the idea of drugs as a treatment for sleep problems.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, I'm with you. Dr. Raj, I love you, man. You're brilliant. Hey, do you do any—for people watching, do you do any Skype or phone type of stuff? Do you work with people virtually at all?
Dr. Raj Persaud:
Yeah, in the modern world. A lot of my patients fly in to see me in London, but then fly back out to the Middle East, the Far East, the US, L.A., New York. Often, even though I've met them physically, to continue the treatment we'll do it by the phone, via audio, by the internet like we're doing we're doing at the moment.
These days, modern therapists have to work that way, particularly with clients who are traveling all over the world. Also, mental health crisis can occur at any time. My client might be in Hong Kong, have a panic or some description, needs to contact me immediately to do some kind of treatment. I do do this via phones and so on all over the world.
Dr. Pompa:
You're brilliant. What are your books? Let's get [00:31:03] some of your books.
Dr. Raj Persaud:
My first book was called Staying Sane, which was all about basically how to look after your mental health, how to be resilient without needing to go and see a psychiatrist and a psychologist. I think the idea that mental health means you've got to go and see someone, I’m against. I agree that sometimes when people are ill they need to go and see someone, but I want to promote people to be resilient without the need to go and see a therapist or become dependent on the therapist.
Then I wrote a book called The Motivated Mind, which is about how to achieve your goals whatever your goals might be. It might be to get a pay raise. It might be to lose weight. It was a psychology of goal setting and attaining goals. I wrote book called Simply Irresistible: The Psychology of Seduction, which is about the idea that you can be skilled in relationships, and you can learn to be better at relationships.
It was a moment of epiphany in one of my clinics. A female patient said to me, “Dr. Persaud, I don't need Prozac, I need a boyfriend.” I realized that actually a lot of human unhappiness arises out of relationships, or not having a relationship, or being in the wrong relationship, or feeling isolated. I wrote this book, which is how to have relationships and viewing relationships a bit like how you can become skilled at relationships.
I've got to tell you a story. When the publishers first commissioned the book from me, I was very excited. I rang my wife. I said, “Darling.” I spoke to her on the phone. I said, “Darling, the publishers have asked me to write their next book on seduction.” There was a long silence. I said, “Darling, are you still there?” She said, “Yes, but why you/” which I thought somewhat harsh. That’s what wives are for, bringing us down to earth.
Dr. Pompa:
It's like the tennis thing. [00:32:52] 15 or 17?
Dr. Raj Persaud:
That's right.
Dr. Pompa:
I want to meet your wife.
Dr. Raj Persaud:
Yeah, she keeps me in check. Anyway, so Simply Irresistible: The Psychology of Seduction, the TED talk, which has had over 1.5 million views, which is also a bit about the subject. People can watch that on YouTube. My very last book was called The Mind: A User’s Guide. I wrote that as the editor with a [00:33:18] psychologists, psychiatrists here in the UK. It's a comprehensive view of mental health.
You could pick a chapter, let’s say, on substance abuse, or eating disorders, and get up to speed very quickly whatever problem you're worried about. Maybe your daughter's got an eating disorder, your son may be abusing drugs. You want to get to speed quickly on finding out the latest information about that. That book is a great book for the public, called The Mind: A User's Guide.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, that's great. I have to ask you about this too because this is how we were connected, the psychology of fasting. Fasting is something that I teach, preach, and do. Psychology of fasting?
Dr. Raj Persaud:
The evidence is increasingly the case. If there's one thing you're going to do that's going to lengthen your life more than anything else, it is fasting, but fasting under special conditions. It's got to be done by someone like yourself explaining how to fast. Obviously, [00:34:12] fast too much, and you become anorexic or you starve yourself. You will actually shorten your life span. It's a technically important skilled thing to do.
The evidence is looking at experiments they did with rats and all sorts of other animals that the best thing—the most powerful thing you can do of all the things you can do is actually to intermittently fast. You will know more about the actual technical aspect of that. The problem is that we think the reason why biologically that works is because we evolved hundreds of thousands of years ago to survive in an environment where food was an unreliable thing. Our body adapted to that.
Whereas the modern world, where food is coming at us very reliably, is actually extremely unusual conditions [00:35:00] the body [00:35:01] strictly is not adapted to. If we stuck us back into the primitive world where we were forced to fast, that would be fine. The trouble is the key point in the modern western world is you're going to have to resist temptation.
You're going to have to use psychological discipline to impose fasting. Some people can do that relatively easily, but a lot of people struggle with that. This comes back to some of the things we were talking about: how to motivate people, how do people have goals. The key point is how to make people optimistic about the idea they can do it. They often start off very pessimistic, and they say, I can't do this.
I think it's about the notion that to fast you have to choose to fast. There's going to be powerful, human motivation involved because most people don't believe they can do it. That lack of confidence puts them off having a go. I'm interested in what you think about that, whether you think there's an important psychology to it.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, no doubt. One of the things we deal with, you're right, some people go at it with oh my gosh, you can fast five days without food? They thought they would die. You're right. You have to educate people as fact that—we had somebody in my seminar at 120 days, really. There's a process. We typically start people a fasting mimicking diet is a very good place to start somebody because they can comprehend eating less for many days.
From there, many of them will evolve into really going, “Oh my gosh. it's actually pretty easy. My hunger went away in three days.” The next fast, they can do a pure water fast if they desire. It is. It's just starting them where they are, and just change the way they think. Then interviewing people on shows like this that have fasted, and then they realize, oh, okay, well, if they can do it. They had all the symptoms I had. I can do it.
Yeah, so I mean it's just a process of like you said. Then here's the thing. You're right. You have to give them the reason why. What is the reason? I find that people with severe health conditions are far greater the fast. It takes them one person that says, “I fasted, and I feel better.” I'm going to fast. Their reason is I've got to get my life back. The average healthy person, it's a little harder because I feel fine. Why would I go without food? Unless they have a goal [00:37:15] if you will, healthy, which brings me to the next topic, what is the psychology of living longer, or longevity?
Dr. Raj Persaud:
I want to come back to that, but isn't there a pain barrier, in your opinion, people that will get through. Actually, it was really interesting that once they succeed at fasting they feel better. It actually delivers a kind of high, which is a better high than you can get from most things. Once people have had it and got to that, and that promised land a bit, over the pain barrier if I can call it that, maybe that's the wrong word.
Then you've got converts. You don't really have to persuade them anymore. I think [00:37:48] psychology around that because one of the reasons people are eating is they're comfort eating. It delivers a quick fix in terms of whatever they're upset about and low about. They're often eating for emotional reasons. Fasting will deliver a better antidepressant effect than that short-term food hit that they're going for. I don't know what you're opinion is on that.
Dr. Pompa:
You're right. Fasting brings you a psychological breakthrough. Oh my gosh, I just—I thought I needed food. I thought it was comforting me. I felt better without it. [00:38:17] psychological breakthrough. Then a physiological breakthrough is about day three in a fast [00:38:22] you're hungry. Your body starts feeding from its own flesh and tissue, the bad stuff [00:38:28].
There's a physiological breakthrough. It's shown that food addictions, these bad habits, etc. People, after a fast, have the greatest chance of breaking bad habits and continuing healthy diets. I believe the reason for that statistic is there's a psychological and a physiological breakthrough.
Dr. Raj Persaud:
Yeah, okay, so let's talk a bit about the link between emotions, and psychiatric, and psychological problems, and longevity, the couple of studies that have come out recently that I'm very interested in. One is a study looking at the fact that people who smoke cigarettes—everyone knows that smoking cigarettes is not a great idea and will shorten your lifestyle. On average, if you're a moderate to heavy smoker, you're taking 10 years off your life. That comes as no surprise to most people. If you had a friend who was smoking, you'd say to them, listen, I don't know if you're aware of this, but it's not good for you, and you get a—
Dr. Pompa:
Let me add one more problem to that. My father who smoked for fifty years, his famous saying was—I'll just say it, “Son of a bitch, I'm going to die from something anyway.” He was an old Italian. I'm going to die from something anyway, so I'm going to enjoy my life. If you told my father that it's going to take 10 years off his life, he would say, “I don't care because I'm going to enjoy my life.”
My father's mantra then became, “Sone of a bitch, if I had known I was going to live so damn long, I would have taken better care of myself.” The point is is ten years didn't fret him. If he would have known he had to suffer 15 on the back side, which he did, he wasn't able to golf, he had emphysema, he ended up with lung cancer. That was the really scary part. Yes, it takes ten years off your life, but don't be my father. The problem is it gives you a horrible ending to the last 10, 20 that you have.
Dr. Raj Persaud:
That's a very important point, which leads on to this coining of this new term juventology, J-U-V-E-N-T-O-L-O-G, which is the idea is not just to live long, but to live long in an undisabled, healthy, youthful manner. It's about prolonging youth, not just living to a really old age. There's no point. The interesting scientific approach, now, is how do we prolong youth rather than just live for a long time.
Your dad had many years of disability, I think, towards the end. There's no point to that. There's no point just adding years that are disabled and suffering. What you want is to add years of fitness, healthy years. That's the longevity you and I are discussing. That's the goal. Going back to the point about the cigarette smoking study, which found on average people lose ten years. What's really interesting is when they looked at psychiatric disorders like depressing, anxiety, schizophrenia, those disorders took more than ten years off your life.
Think about that. If someone is suffering from low mood and anxiety chronically, they often just leave it because they believe that emotional suffering is something you can't do anything about. If you were to say to someone, listen, you might as well take up smoking if you're going to continue to be anxious and depressed because it's going to take more years off your life than actually if you took up smoking, people might be a little bit more galvanized and motivated to fix those emotional sides to their life.
In other words, low well-being, low happiness, psychological disorders, being anxious, being depressed will shorten your lifespan. that's the latest research finding. If you want to live a long and healthy life, fix the emotional disorders in your life as well. Aim for better [00:41:45] well-being because you'll live longer. If you stick with being anxious and depressed and tolerate that, you might as well be smoking cigarettes because it will take at least ten years off a life.
Dr. Pompa:
It's interesting because someone, recently, I heard make the argument about—they were talking about the little bit of wine, right. If you have a glass or two of wine, it loosens you up. You automatically have more fun. They said they believe that that [in reality] is the key to why wine is linked to longer life, healthier life because it makes you a little more jovial. It engages you. It adds this social component to your dinner [00:42:20] etcetera. I thought, hmm, maybe there's truth to that. Of course, I want to think it's the resveratrol or the proanthocyanidin, but in fact it could be the social aspect if that study's correct.
Dr. Raj Persaud:
Actually, very interesting you should mention that because that leads me [00:42:36] I want to talk about. A famous study published in the Mayo Clinic Proceedings, a famous prestigious academic journal, recently published, based on a big cohort called the Copenhagen Heart Study. They looked at leisure interests and pursuits. I'm slightly biased here because the sport that [00:42:52] delivered just most years [00:42:55] sport I play. It's not beach tennis.
Dr. Pompa:
I was going to say beach tennis again?
Dr. Raj Persaud:
No, it's lawn tennis. Ordinary tennis played on a hard court, added on [00:43:04] average [00:43:06] lawn tennis, or hardcore tennis, added on an average ten years to their life. Badminton was a few years less than that. What was really interesting was [00:43:17] because tennis is quite a sociable sport. People play tennis, then they normally have a cup of tea afterwards, or they hang out afterwards. Badminton came second.
Soccer came third. Solitary sports like cycling, running, being in the gym, were further down the list. They added only two or three years to your life. One of the theories is it's a sociable element that seemed to be a very important part, not just the exercise element in adding years to life. I thought that was really interesting. I wonder what your opinion would be about it.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, I mean, again, looking at what I was saying [00:43:51] with a little bit of wine makes people more social. The theory was that's really what extends the life. [00:43:57] I've read if you isolate people they die. Animals, the same way. When you isolate so they die. It's as important as food. We have to be social. The more social life, things going on in your life, the better it is, the healthier you are. Yeah, I mean I think there's massive truths [00:44:22].
Dr. Raj Persaud:
The other really interesting thing about that is that we tend to be interested in, and attracted to, and want to hang out with happy people. Again, there's a link between being depressed and negative as a person, having a difficult personality, and not being so popular socially. There's maybe an interesting point which is that the more sociable people are not just adding to their life because of the sociability element, which I agree with you is important.
To be sociable, you have to be a fairly upbeat, positive person. It tends to draw people towards you. If you're more isolated, there's something about your personality that may have led to that. We're not sure what the key, underlying variable is with sociability, but maybe there's something about having a sunny disposition, which is the key mediating variable that is crucial. Obviously, having friends means you tend to be more active, you tend to go and hang out with them as well. We're not exactly sure what the variable is, but sociability seems to be extremely important.
Dr. Pompa:
There's the studies, too, when they look at the people who live long, and they have a pretty massive social network and outreach. We look at communities, cultures that live long, they're all very [00:45:33] cultures. I have a Life magazine over here, and that's one of the things that they concluded. They looked at all the blue zones. The social aspect, actually, was a bigger deal than I wanted to give credit for. I was hoping for other things, but that was a big deal.
Dr. Raj Persaud:
Yeah, so I think that I'm going back to the point—it's not worth just wanting to live longer, you have to have things you want to do with your life, things if you want to hang out with people, you want to be with people. I think there's another very interesting theory about the link between well-being and longevity, which is we know that up until about the age of 40, for reasons that are not entirely clear, maybe to do with evolution and genetics, most people are physically pretty fit.
Getting past 65, most people have some kind of physical disorder by that age. We're not quite sure why that is. What is this [00:46:26] that's going on at aging? I have a theory that it's something to do with purpose. Up until about the age of 40, people have all sorts of purposes. They want to have a family, they want to have kids, they're pursuing their career.
Usually, around middle age, people start to get a bit disenchanted about purpose. They become disillusioned. They realize they're not going to be the CEO of Goldman Sachs, actually. They have to think through the change in ambition and goals. You had children, they didn't end up being the track star that you hoped they were going to be, etcetera. The ages between 40 and 65 are often ages of reappraisal and disappointment very often. I think handling that psychologically is really important.
Dr. Pompa:
Let me bring the physiological and the psychological together as we see [00:47:07] of doing it from a why people start breaking down in their 50s and especially your mid-60s. You look at the viability of their stem cells. Their number of stem cells dropped. I mean, that's measurable. Stem cells is how you heal from injury. Stem cells is why your body's not developing osteoarthritis, wear and tear, all of it. It's how your arteries keep healing.
When we look at that, I have his book right over there, and it's The Biology of Belief, Bruce Lipton. Our thoughts, to your point, actually determine the epigenetics and [00:47:44]. Our thoughts, we know, drive cellular process [00:47:50] behavior. Our thoughts are our cells and therefore our health. That's the connection between the two. You can keep what you're saying, the thoughts, the drive, the hope.
Everything that we know makes you successful in anything, even live longer. If you can keep that, you can keep viable stem cells available and therefore logical healing. Anyways, I'm just connecting the psychology with the physiological
Dr. Raj Persaud:
Having drive, we're discussing the body, but having a plan. You see, people don't often have a plan. I'll take that back to the book I wrote on The Psychology of Seduction about the notion of having a plan in relationships. Again, people don't like this idea because they think it's slightly manipulative and strategic in their view of relationships. They think when it comes to relationships, you should “just be yourself.” In the book that I wrote when I argued—
Dr. Pompa:
It depends on yourself.
Dr. Raj Persaud:
Yeah, that's right. I argued that if you understood the psychology of relationships, I made this very bold claim that you could make anyone fall in love with you if you understood the rules and the laws of attraction.
Dr. Pompa:
That was a big seller.
Dr. Raj Persaud:
Yeah. You're right. The BBC here in Britain read this claim. They said, “We're going to test this claim. We're going to send you speed dating.” In the US, you have this thing called speed dating as well where you go to a club or a bar. You have three minutes to talk to someone. Someone rings a bell, blows a whistle, you've got to move on to the next person.
Dr. Pompa:
You did this. They made you do it.
Dr. Raj Persaud:
They made me do it. I'm going to get to that bit in the story in a minute, but I'm just going to explain for people who may not know what speed dating is, pretending they don't know. Darling, I have no idea what he's talking about.
Anyway, so speed dating, someone blows a whistle after three minutes, and then at the end of the meeting, you write down who you want to see again for friendship, who you want to see again for romance, and who you never want to see again. You get some rather brutal feedback on how attractive you were found. [00:49:55] said to me, “We're going to test your theory that you can make anyone fall in love with you. We're going to send you speed dating.” When I told my wife this, we're going to go speed dating, she said, “This is a really bad idea.” Why? “Well, suppose no one chooses you.” I said, “Thanks for the vote of confidence.” She said, “You don't understand. If no one chooses you, then I look like a [00:50:22] I ended up with you.” I had to say to her, “It's not all about you, you know.”
When we went speed dating, I was chatting with some of the guys before the exercise started. I said to them, “What's your plan? What's your strategy?” They just looked at me blankly and they said, “We're just going to be ourselves.” I said to them, “Have you ever wondered why you're single, because you're being yourself. Time to be someone else.” Here's a very quick rundown of one theory about relationships, which is a useful plan to have [00:51:02] relationships.
Dr. Pompa:
Woah, the results, please.
Dr. Raj Persaud:
I'll tell you that in a minute. I'm going to keep you dangling.
Dr. Pompa:
Okay, all right, as long as you're doing that.
Dr. Raj Persaud:
I'm going to keep you dangling. You can divide relationships into three key phases, attention, interest, maintenance. This is a very powerful model for not just friendships, but romance, but also business relationships. Attention, interest, maintenance, three different phases requiring three different sets of skills. If you're going to be the consummate expert at relationships, you have to know which phase you're in and adapt yourself to the correct skills. The attentions phase is you walk into a bar. You see an attractive member of the opposite sex or maybe the same sex—
Dr. Pompa:
Eye contact—
Dr. Raj Persaud:
Your eyes meet across the bar. They have your attention, and hopefully you've got their attention. The attention phase is where someone becomes really salient to you, and they come out of the environment, and you're locked onto them. We all know some people who are great at getting attention.
Now, you go over and start talking to them—and the attention phase will last a few seconds, hours, maybe a few days. you go over and start talking to them, and now we're entering the interest phase. You have my attention, but are you interesting? Are you [00:52:16] to know? There's some people that are great at getting our attention, but you go over and try and talk to them, shoot me in the face now. You're really boring or tedious.
Then, finally, after the interest phase, you get to the maintenance phase where you're thinking after a few months I want to commit to you, I want to try and make this work. Now, we all know people who are wonderful people. We think they're fantastic. We don't know why they're single. Those people are great at the maintenance, they're reliable, they're honest, they're loyal, but they're not doing attention and interest really well. You walk into a bar, and you wouldn't notice them.
The key point here, if you really want to be very good at relationships, understand different skills are required depending on the phase. Having a plan, this is a plan I'm discussing. I think having a plan is a much better framework and structure in terms of how to proceed with relationships. Now, let us [00:53:13] married and have been for the last ten years, or 15 years. You may think, I don't need to know this attention, interest, maintenance thing. I've galloped towards maintenance [00:53:22]. You are not.
My point is this, all great long-term relationships last many decades. You have to be constantly cycling through attention, interest, and maintenance. You've got to get your wife's attention again in a novel, unexpected way. If you don't do that, if you don't constantly cycle through this attention, interest, and maintenance thing, someone else will come along and get her attention. That will be dangerous.
This model is a great, clear structure that helps people start relationships, but helps people continue relationships. Now, whether you—at least it's a plan. I think people need a plan because it leads to better drive. It leads to better movement forwards than the let's just be ourselves plan. Again, I'm interested in your opinion.
Dr. Pompa:
I find what the result, first, before I share my opinion. [00:54:14] to do.
Dr. Raj Persaud:
Oh, I see, about the speed dating. Yeah, so I met, I think, it was nine women. By the way, my wife came along because she was really anxious about me doing really badly. When we got out of the cab to get into the club, I took my wedding ring off. She said, “What are you doing?” I said, “I can't go speed dating wearing a wedding ring. It looks sleazy.”
Dr. Pompa:
Your wife was rooting for you for her own sake.
Dr. Raj Persaud:
That's right.
Dr. Pompa:
[00:54:41] nine women interested in him.
Dr. Raj Persaud:
In between each girl, my wife would pull me aside and go, “You're doing this all wrong.” It was very sweet. She was very keen. I got [00:54:55] at least one woman. The first woman I met, I said to her, “So where are you from?” We're in London, England. She said, “I'm from Turkey.” I said, “So what kind of guy are you looking for?” She said, “I'm looking for a passport.” She obviously wanted to meet someone to get naturalized.
Dr. Pompa:
You had that. Okay, so that's one.
Dr. Raj Persaud:
I had that. Score one. A couple of quick things, remember, because we were talking about the psychology of attraction, so the truth because it's a psychology experiment, I'm going to throw a test question at you. In the three minutes you have with a woman, as a man, what are the key things women want to know?
I know this is going to sound a bit sexist, but the psychological research will back me up on this one. They want to know what a guy does for a living. If you were playing fast and loose with the truth, and you only had three minutes, and you were taking part in an experiment. You wanted to maximize female attraction [00:56:02] profession, or the best job to say that you have?
Dr. Pompa:
I don't know.
Dr. Raj Persaud:
Sorry?
Dr. Pompa:
I don't know.
Dr. Raj Persaud:
You're going to have to do better than that. [00:56:13].
Dr. Pompa:
I hope a doctor because that's what I am, right?
Dr. Raj Persaud:
Right.
Dr. Pompa:
Is that not the right answer?
Dr. Raj Persaud:
You're [00:56:19] bars a lot. I can tell. Okay, so doctor's not bad, but why are you thinking a doctor will maximize female attraction?
Dr. Pompa:
I think a man that's going to be successful. A woman, intuitively, and again not to sound sexist, intuitively, they're looking for someone who's able to take care of them. I guess if we were in the stone ages, they'd be looking for a man who could shoot a bow and arrow pretty well, right? I mean [00:56:45].
Dr. Raj Persaud:
Again, the research indicates that the women are looking for three aspects of character in a man. They're looking for intelligence. That's the number one thing. Maybe a doctor signals intelligence. They're looking for status, someone who people look up to. They're also looking for resources. We call resource allocation because resources like you described a man who is a successful hunter hundreds of thousands of years ago will provide resources and be able to look after the woman and any children that she may have.
In the modern [00:57:20] into things like income. If you're thinking [00:57:23] being a doctor's not a bad one. I'm going to push you a little bit because I went further. I'm going to tell you what I said in a minute, but I picked a particular specialty. What's the best specialty to say for a doctor?
Dr. Pompa:
Oh, boy, I don't know. How about a surgeon, brain surgeon, neurosurgeon?
Dr. Raj Persaud:
Not bad. What I said—I said I was a pediatric heart surgeon.
Dr. Pompa:
Ah, so now you're tapping into their children [00:57:53].
Dr. Raj Persaud:
Ah, yeah, you see, Machiavellian manipulative, psychological strategy. I said I was a pediatric heart surgeon, and I spent my day mending [00:58:05].
Dr. Pompa:
Now you're heart—you're caring too, and you're smart, and you're successful. Yeah, you're—because this was a test that the BBC put you up to, you're okay to lie just to see the fact that it works. That one worked well.
Dr. Raj Persaud:
Yeah, so I said that I was a pediatric heart surgeon. I said I spent my day mending tiny, broken little hearts. I'm not proud of the second bit, but my wife was anxious about me, so I had to bring out the big guns. I think when I do that experiment with most women, compared to most professions that men say, the pediatrics [00:58:40] to go down well.
Dr. Pompa:
Now let's bring it to reality. You can't lie. If you're a plumber, you've got to say the word, “I'm a plumber.” Now you've got to build it a different way. You see what I'm saying.
Dr. Raj Persaud:
You see, let's go back to the fact that women are—the number one thing women are looking for is IQ for intelligence. One of the things that in the old lonely-hearts columns was the acronym that people put down was GSOH, good sense of humor. The theory in psychology is a man who displays good sense of humor is actually inadvertently expressing intelligence, unwitting.
It is one of the reasons women are attracted to that on a subconscious level. They're drawn to intelligence as displayed in that way. A plumber's still got a good chance if you can demonstrate intelligence. If you can demonstrate intelligence by being witty and clever with word play, then [00:59:37] an experiment we did on British television. I ran it on a show where we did a lonely-hearts column.
We showed a picture of some people. Then we did a blurb underneath the picture. The blurb said things like, “Come with me on a date. We're going to go to the Caribbean. We're going to swim in the blue Caribbean Sea.” We asked viewers to rate how attractive they found that blurb, and how attractive they found the picture above it.
With the second condition of the experiment, we used exactly the same blurb. We just changed one word. Instead of saying, “Come with. We're going to go to the Caribbean. We're going to swim in the blue Caribbean Sea,” we said we’re going to swim in the Azure Caribbean Sea. Azure, being a word for blue, it means blue. It's a short word almost the same length as blue.
We thought it would be below conscious awareness. Most people reading it wouldn't have spotted it. It's only a one-word change. Azure is a rare word for the word blue. There is some evidence that if you use rare words, i.e. you show your vocabulary is quite sophisticated, that signals intelligence in an extremely powerful, unconscious way.
Dr. Pompa:
As a dyslexic, I'm out here. See, now I'm scoring really low. I'm like, okay, I can't remember the obscure words. I can't remember the average, normal, average words, let alone the obscure words. Go ahead. Finish you point.
Dr. Raj Persaud:
I would suggest some word lists at night. It might help you sleep as well. Anyway, we ran the experiment. Sure enough, azure made a significant difference to how attractive that person was found. It worked. Ever since that experiment, whenever I'm talking to—tend to casually drop the word azure into the conversation in the hope that it will have an effect.
Dr. Pompa:
Your wife's looking at you, going—
Dr. Raj Persaud:
Yes, that's right. In your dreams.
Dr. Pompa:
[01:01:35] only knew what you were up to. [01:01:37] how we got on this conversation. How did we get on this conversation? You drew me in, man. You have the ability, see. You drew me into this. [01:01:47].
Dr. Raj Persaud:
We discussed having a plan. We're saying that having a plan's important, even a plan in relationships, even the plan in a conversation. Having a plan over your day, having goals for the day, having a plan for the week. We're saying that's the key thing. I brought it back to a place where people don't think you should have a plan. They don't think you should have a plan when it comes to relationships. Actually, even in relationships, it's a good idea to have a plan.
Dr. Pompa:
Let's bring it all full circle. If you want to live longer healthy, you better have a plan. That's rule number—just having a plan will get you there. You have to keep interest, hope, or like you said [01:02:28] something even. We may not have the plan to be the big CEO or whatever it is, but you better make a new plan to keep your interest.
Dr. Raj Persaud:
Yeah, have goals. Also, you need high quality information. Where are you going to get high confirmation on the latest research? Go for people who've got some kind of qualification, people who have studied the thing formally in some sense, I think. Also people [01:02:53], people who look like they're enjoying life, they just know the technical stuff. Be a [01:02:59] information.
The internet is awash with information, most of it is very low quality. People can get sent down the wrong pathway as a result. Be critical of the information that you’re getting. Have a way of judging whether it's good information or bad information. Try things out and see whether they work or not. Certainly have a go at various things. Look at a viable plan, and look for plans that have evidence behind them, I think. I'd be interested in your opinion.
Dr. Pompa:
We are at time already. You and I could just keep chatting. I'm going to have to bring you out to—when you're in the US, we're going to get together. Dr. Raj, you're a brilliant guy. I love talking to you. How do people reach you? Do you have a website? How do they find you [01:03:47]?
Dr. Raj Persaud:
You can find me by typing—the website, it's rajpersaud.com. They can find me on YouTube. I've got an app. There's a free app you can download on iTunes and Google Play called Raj Persaud in Conversation. It's me interviewing top experts in mental health. It's completely free, and it has a lot of information on it. It's an audio-only podcast app, so you can download me interviewing some of the best experts on all aspects of mental health from all over the world. Anyway, thank you for having me on your show. It's been great talking to you. I like your azure shirt.
Dr. Pompa:
You drew me in, man. It was the word, azure, I guess. I don't know what it was. I hope to have you at one of our future seminars too and again on the show.
Dr. Raj Persaud:
Thanks, good-bye.
Ashley Smith:
That's it for this week. I hope you enjoyed today's episode, which was brought to you by Fast Tonic Molecular Hydrogen. Please check it out at getfasttonic.com. We'll be back next week and every Friday at 10am eastern. We truly appreciate your support. You can always find us at podcast.drpompa.com. Please remember to spread the love by liking, subscribing, giving an iTunes review, or sharing the show with anyone you think may benefit from the information heard here. As always, thanks for listening.
