Dr. Zynul Khan has supported elite athletes on sports teams in Trinidad and Tobago, and has served his community as an emergency medicine physician.  His experience witnessing both ends of the physical spectrum showed him that the same principles that support optimal performance can be utilized by anyone looking to restore their health, albeit with different goals and intentions in mind.

Dr. Khan puts aside the ‘doctor speak’ to make his habit upgrades manageable, and supports his private clients in building on their progress to achieve their healthiest weight and to live a healthier life.

In this episode we discuss:

• The shock of treating patients suffering from diseases decades earlier than typically found
• Seeing a friend’s life transformed with basic lifestyle interventions
• Dr. Khan’s four Pillars of Health
• The impact of stress on obesity and physical health
• Confusing nutrition messaging, and what myths have been debunked
• Why a ‘cheat day’ shouldn’t be considered cheating
• How a healthier body changes its cravings and preferences
• Tracking the true cause of imbalance or disease, and why it might be different that you expect
• The simplest mindfulness practice that anyone can integrate
• Improving sleep routines to restore your ehealth

Contact Dr. Khan to receive his free ebook and to learn more about his upcoming online programs to transform your health with do-able lifestyle modifications.

Susi Vine: I’m so glad you are here with us this week for my conversation with Dr. Zynul Khan. His career as a physician started out in sports and emergency medicine and his experience with those patients in addition to situations, arising from his own personal and experiences that he was seeing friends having have brought him to be passionate about addressing the epidemics that we are facing in obesity and diabetes.

He’s got some great solutions that he’s ready to share with us in this conversation and the programs that he’s developing to guide people in the path to taking back control of their wellbeing and resetting the clock so they can return to help. I know you’re going to get a lot of this conversation.

Thanks again for joining us today

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Welcome back. I am so happy to have you with me this week to welcome Dr. Zynul Khan to the show. Dr. Khan is a sports and exercise medicine physician who has focused his career on the treatment and prevention of non-communicable diseases and lifestyle diseases such as diabetes and obesity. Using the methods learned in exercise medicine and has extensive training and experience working with sports teams and athletes such as the Trinidad, Trinidad and Tobago national hockey team and Guyana Olympic association.

Dr. Khan has developed courses that help those struggling with diabetes and obesity to achieve their healthiest weight, and want to challenge themselves to live a healthier lifestyle. Thank you for joining me, Dr. I’m so happy to have you with me today. 

Dr. Zynul Khan: Thank you for having me on. Thank you for bringing me on your show is such a pleasure to be here as Suzy.

Susi Vine: Well, I’m fascinated by your work history and experience to be able to work with athletes of this caliber and in so many different places. I’d love to hear a little bit about your journey to where you are and your focus as you have it. 

Dr. Zynul Khan: All right. So for me a little background, I’ve been working in sports and exercise medicine for the last 10 years.

I initially started off working with swimmers and then slowly graduated to working with boxing. And eventually he got to travel with on multiple teams to things like the Commonwealth games the Pan-American fandom games. On multiple times I got to go to big countries like India. And Scotland with traveling with the trailer and Tobago national teams.

Unfortunately, I never got to go to the Olympics, which well, hopefully it will happen soon enough. But during that time I also, and my second thing, I was working as an emergency physician in the emergency department, intranet, tobacco, and. That’s where I learned a lot of my emergency training. I was able to apply it to sports medicine, but while working in emergency departments, I encultured some.

Disturbing things I would say. So I’ll tell you a story. One night I go to work usual nights, nights schedule get an a 10:00 PM at night. You’re working until 8:00 AM in the morning. I walk into my department and now I’m a mid-level management. So we call us registrars. So I’m one of the senior doctors on the floor.

And I take over from my Odyssey senior doctor. And as I’m taking over for him, I look over his shoulder and there’s this yoga. Lying in the ICU bay of the emergency departments now, as it says, ICU intensive care units. So that means that you are very sick to end up in that bay, but it’s Yama is like 25 years old and I’m looking at him going, what is a 25 year old dude doing in my ICU unit?

So the first thing I go to in my mind is a usual things that happens in 20 five-year-olds. Was he in a car accident? Did he have some kind of violent acts happening? Like he was in a fight. Or did he ingest something or try to commit suicide? The most common causes of death in young people under the age of 25.

So I look over and I look at my colleagues. I go, what’s up with this guy? And he said the most shocking thing I’ve heard. I heard that evening. He had a heart attack. He was twenty-five. Twenty-five years old, but what other things stood out about this young man? To me, it was, he was morbidly obese. He weighed 350 pounds at the age of 25.

And that’s why he had a heart attack. That stood up, that stood up with me all evening. Every time it was on the Florida. And at night, every time I was doing something, my eyes always went to that young man. And I always wondered what could I have done to stop this from happening to him to stop that heart attack now in the being a doctor, I know that he is just cut his life short by 20.

Having a heart attack at such a young age he’s twenty-five years old, you should be altered the girls. He should be hanging out with the boys. He should be getting into trouble. He should be, I dunno, figuring out his career, not laying in a hospital bed with a heart attack. I need a triple vessel bypass disease that got me thinking about managing diabetes, managing obesity.

Well, first obesity and. That’s where I started looking at what I’m doing in sports medicine and going, how can I apply this to these people? And that’s the birth of my course, defeat diabetes. And from there, the next step I went to was one of my best friends, sorry. Comes up to me and he goes, xylitol. I have a problem.

He’s like, they call me for short rides. He goes, I have. He’s like I’m 35. I’m diabetic. My blood pressure is through the roof and I’m overweight. I’m stressed out because I have a business and it’s killing me. I’m not sleeping. And my blood sugar is totally out of control. And if you’d ever not know what the HBA one C is, is a test that tests your diabetic control over a period of three months.

So it tells you how well you’ve been doing.

Sorry. Okay. Sorry. Yes that’s. Okay. 

Susi Vine: So you were just saying, it tells you how you’ve been. 

Dr. Zynul Khan: Yes. So it tells you how I’ve been doing over the last, probably the last few months, which is three months or longer, right on my friend’s HBO was at a normal, normal HB A1C is 6.5 or a hundred. My friend was delivered right.

Ridiculously high. And he comes to me. He goes, I need to have. No, he remembers we’ve had conversations in the past where I told him anytime you want to help, you know, to adjust your diet, to get exercising as long as he’s like, this is what I do. So karma will talk and we’ll see if we can create something for you.

And he comes to me, he’s like my mom died when she was young and I’m afraid I’m going down that road and I’m not going to be able to see my kids grow up. So I went okay. Of course, one of my best friends I’ve got to. So we started on a journey. This was some four years ago, over a period of three months, we were able to convert his HB A1C to less than 6.2.

It was fascinating because I’m driving on my car on my way home and he calls me up and I’m on a speaker phone and he tells me, Hey, he’s like, I just got back for a test results. My HBS is once he is 6.2, I was so happy. I had to stop the chiropractor to decided a roadside. Right. And I’m like, I’m celebrating my car.

He’s like, what are you so happy? I was like, we just cause you to take control of your life. Don’t you see the amazing thing of that. And that was when I saw that I could use sports medicine to really make a difference in people’s lives and really give them a way. To take control. And what will you use to take control?

We changed his diet and his eating habits. We train, she has his exercise habits. We looked at his stress management and we manage the sleep. Suddenly he’s sleeping better. He is less stressed out or his workplace are running his business and he’s taking control of his diabetes. And what people don’t know about stress is stress causes a rise in cortisol, cortisol sense every other hormone in your body.

Out of work. And that is what that, and you many people don’t know that people have actually had heart attacks, which just stress alone, right? They, it is recognized as one of the number one causes of heart attacks. And we have had CEOs and people who have been healthy their whole lives. And because they’re so stressed as they get to give himself a heart attack.

So all of those things do contribute and I believe diabetes as a whole is a lifestyle. And my thing is, if it’s a lifestyle disease, then why are you not managing your lifestyle? Why are you not changing the things that led to that lifestyle being that way? And the same thing applies to obesity. Obesity is not a disease of you just suddenly one day, decide to pick up your wrist.

Now there are medical conditions that can cause. Right, but there are far and in between, they’re not that common. So the majority of people are there. It’s something you’re doing in your life that causes you to be obese. And that’s where the rum of my of what I do comes in. And that’s where my passion was born.

Right. And I realized I love helping people. Why not give people the thing I know what’s. Which is sports and exercise medicine, and I’ve dived it’s exercise medicine, and I’ve seen what it can do, and I love what it can do for people. So that’s my passion to try to help 10,000 diabetics change their lifestyles, take control of their blood sugar.

And instead of having diabetes rule their life, their rule, their diabetes, right. And that’s where I am in my, in my realm of management. 

Susi Vine: I love it. And at just 35 years of age, he could have been overwhelmed. He could have given up on his aunts. He could have been discouraged by what his doctors were telling him and thought it was beyond his control.

And you absolutely gave him back that feeling of empowerment. So important, because I feel like in the way that Western medicine has kind of trained people to just do what the doctor tells you, when not to ask questions, it’s so easy for us to get pigeonholed and here’s the medications, here’s what you can expect, you know, make your plans.

Right. And it’s really heartbreaking. And to your point, too, in terms of causes of obesity There are so many factors. And so I appreciate your pointing out. There can be health conditions that might cause this to happen. Stress can be an impact as well. Stress changes the way that well that we crave food, but that we store fat and carry it on our bodies.

And then the way that we carry fat on our bodies affects our stress levels. It’s one of those cycles that can be very difficult to break. And also some toxins, some chemicals in our environment can also have an impact. So to your point, There are things that are within our control. And when we keep looking, when we get curious and say, what can we do?

How can we bring back our power? We’re really taking back the wheel and giving ourselves the opportunity to write a new story moving forward. And that’s why I love what you’re doing. You’re giving these people a new, a new, a whole new option, a whole new story that some other medical care practitioners might say.

You’ve got to reframe your expectations and you’re really opening their expectations and giving them a whole new potential that they may have never considered before. 

Dr. Zynul Khan: Yes. And that’s true, but here here’s another aspect of it that we never considered. It’s confusing ferry is massively confusing. So I’m in my course, I teach people on one of the things I show them.

Was the potato versus the sweet potato. And we heard, we always hear these great, these, these amazing, confusing messages about, about nutrition. The one is one of the most common, the, one of the most common one we notice is the egg and how the egg has been vilified and suddenly he’s a hero. And then he’s vilified again.

And the study, he’s a hero and you know, you could eat this part, but not that part, but this part is okay now because we discovered it’s okay. But I know it’s one of those, but look at the sweet potato potato, I saw a graphic about Facebook did where on one of my groups who were to talk about weight loss and so on, they put up a potato next to a sweet potato.

And on this graphic, they didn’t give, they give you all the nutritional values of both, but on the sweet potato side, it says seven grams of sugar and a potato side. It says one gram of sugar, no, any person who is not into big nutrition and who’s not a nutrition. Whereas I’ve been studying nutrition for awhile.

Well, automatically you’re confused by that. I’d say, well, the potato is good for me. Why am I, why am I worried about why to tell them to eat sweet potatoes? What does potato look so much better? The sweet potato, but what that graphic is not saying is what are the type of sugars that exist in those two things.

One has very simple sugars and one has very complex sugars. The sweet potatoes for the fiber things. You can’t break down something called. Right. You got your body is, does not possess the ability to break it down. Right. It’s what it does help you to go to the bathroom. Easier. You hear it on, on commercials for, for the elderly drink more fiber, right?

And that’s what a sweet tea has. So seven grams of sugar is seven grams of carbohydrates. Not sure. But it’s carbohydrates that are really complex carbohydrates. So you can’t break down the sweet potatoes, all simple sugars. If yes, it has fiber, but it has more simple sugars. Dan does. Doesn’t the potatoes you use and you, your body acts is more accessible to the sweet potatoes pivots.

Than the sweet potato. So yes, the Sweetwater is way better for you, but that you can see how confusing that is. And interestingly, right under the picture, somebody commented and said tackle this, but that’s because I’m going to go buy my bag of potatoes. Right. And I’m like, oh no, no, no, not the potatoes.

Susi Vine: Right? Exactly. And the beta carotene, the other phytonutrients that are available and sweet potatoes that are not present in regular petite. And it is, we try to simplify the standard of comparison. All sugar is bad, not getting into what are complex carbohydrates versus simple. Right. All and yeah, exactly.

The whole carbohydrate conversation that’s going on right now. And I’ve seen people embrace a ketogenic diet, not understanding that it’s a therapeutic way of eating. It’s not amazing. Plan and finding themselves in situations what their health. And so it can be difficult, you know, to your point. I appreciate your understanding and I’m sure your clients do too.

And your patients. Empathizing how confusing it can be because there’s always the latest information, the latest new expert on the field, and then the misinformation, because anything that anybody posts on social media can be passed around, you know, in some avenues that’s being more closely watched and in many aspects, it has not, it’s really kind of 

Dr. Zynul Khan: open season.

And what most people don’t recognize is the food industry is not. I like the drug industries. This is massively regulated. The food industry and the supplement industry are not regulated. Everybody thinks it is. They have a minimum amount of what they have to put in something and that’s all, so they don’t have to do anything, but put that minimum or that put whatever else they want to.

So so that, that raises a lot of, a lot of confusion and I can see where the average person is. No, what do I eat? What, what is good for me? What is not good for me? So I believe in, I always believe in giving body to people and in my, in my studies and my research, I looked at so many different diets.

I’ve seen the Mediterranean, the dash, the pop, I would call it a diet. I probably read about it somewhere. Right. And all of them have one on the line or one set or the life principles. Right. But one of them, number one, things we know today, it is not that cholesterol is a major cause of heart disease. But carbohydrates and inflammatory response caused by carbohydrates causes heart attacks, and the same thing applies with diabetes and obesity.

It’s the carbohydrates you’re taking in and the type of carbohydrates that are causing you to beat at me. So one person might come around and say, but doesn’t doesn’t plan to have carbide. Doesn’t like, let us have coverage. Yes, it does. But it’s in a form of cellulose. You can’t break down. Cellulose.

Coles can break down cellulose, but cows have four stomachs. They have the ability to do that. They have. And you’ve heard of chewing the card, right? That’s because Carlos didn’t shoo shoo all night to break down to keep breaking dog that say those. If we were to do that with our teeth, we would have mill teeth.

Right? So as I said, take what sheep and goats and all these herbivores, they have the ability to do that. Some animals have stolons in their stomach and the store, just the grind. The the saddles are to break it down so they can get value for. We don’t have that ability. So yes, leafy vegetables has carbohydrates in the form of sailors.

So, but the type of carbohydrates you eat coming from the different whole foods is what makes the difference. So my one thing is decrease the carbohydrates, and there’s an easy way to do that. Pick one meal every day, just one meal, breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Let’s say you do breakfast central dinner.

Some people don’t, but even if you don’t pick that one meal, even if anything. And decrease the carbohydrate that by 50% by half, but you, that when you think about it, he said, but I could be eating less and I’ll be hungry. Don’t take that half of the carbohydrates and replace it with fruits and vegetables.

So you’re not eating less, you’re eating the same amount, but no, you have a whole foods that are healthier for you, provide you with more nutrients, right. And you’re not having. And I tell people, like I tell my students, my clients, if you feel hungry after taking all the carbohydrates from not adding enough fruits and vegetables, add more fruits and vegetables, don’t eat the carbohydrates.

Leave that aside, try to, we give it to the dog. They will enjoy it. Eat added. You take more of those gorgeous fruits and vegetables I put as anybody’s right and eat more of it. Right. And if you want, if you want to be, feel full, faster, going want to feel full longer, add olive oil or vinegar retrospectives, or and I always say, don’t go low fat because if you go low fat, what are they replacing the fat with?

No extra fat. Isn’t the problem, right? If fat isn’t the problem. And it isn’t the cause of heart disease. Why are we going low fat, no sugar. Yeah. But if you’re replacing the fat, what are you placing with? And usually it’s not necessarily sugar, but it’s something that makes it taste better. That’s bad for you.

So that fact is that they didn’t need the lose it, so they have to replace it. So don’t go low fat, right? Use oil, use a healthier, you know, olive oil, peanut oil. If you have peanut allergies, please do not use peanuts or. All right. I need to stay that outright, but coconut oil, I mean, there’s so many wonderful, not oils out there and add it to your fruits and vegetables.

And as a medium, the fruits of the become a medium to add to the oils, to your diet, and then you get brain. Suddenly you’re taking the omega fatty acids and you’re more alert. Your brain is not firing faster. Right. And that’s what those are bigger. Fatty acids is just energy for the brain, but it helps to breathe to work better.

And suddenly you’ve more alert. The fog disappeared. Right. And that’s how you get your bigger five years as a theater. So there’s two things I just give you 50% less carbs. I put more oils. And while suddenly you’re eating healthier, simple as that. Yes. And it’s easy 

Susi Vine: to see how people can get confused and overwhelmed because.

We, we tend to over-simplify things, right? So carbs are bad. Therefore vegetables with carbohydrates. Can’t be good. However, to your point, that fiber and that cellulose is so important, it slows our digestion. It helps us absorb more of the nutrition and feel more satiated. We don’t feel as hungry when we’ve got the fiber to fill our digestive system so important.

And the, the balance of fats. Exactly for years, fats were vilified. I know that’s something that there are people in my family who are very still mindful about and feel guilty about eating the egg because isn’t that. But you know, but there’s so much Krishan in the bell. It’s exactly. And I use that analogy too, when talking about stress, there’s good stress and bad stress, just like there’s good cholesterol and bad cholesterol.

In all things, we can find a balance when we start to get really oversimplifying things. That’s when we’re really missing out on the important D. 

Dr. Zynul Khan: But the thing is the thing is Suzy. What we say is bad cholesterol, good cholesterol. It’s not necessarily bad and good cholesterol. It’s just your molds. They have.

So for instance, they say HDL is a backup is a good cholesterol. Having a high level of HDL can can, you know, really boost your immunity. But if you have too much of it, it actually causes you to be susceptible to viruses where it’s an infection. So you have too much ADL. It has its bad sides too. So everything has a say.

My first is the next thing I always talk about is drinking water or hydrating. So if you’re eating healthier foods, you need to hydrate more. Why? Because they require more water for the digestion. Whereas carbohydrates. So you don’t have to hydrate as much. So you’ll notice you get more touristy when you eat healthier foods, where, how do your whole foods, right?

So you need to drink more water, right? But if you drink too much water, you can go to the other side of something called diabetes Insipidous, which is a, is not a former diabetes is a misnomer in the name. But what is talking about is your, is your kidneys shutting down because it’s getting too much water and it’s filtering out too much of the.

Right. And that causes a major problem, right? Where you get hypo nitremia, which means your sodium levels are too low. And that is a problem. If you drink too much water, it has a bad effect. So water has its own side effects. So everything has a side effect. So moderation is a key is a word of today’s moderation.

I live in moderation and you’d be great. Right. I always tell my, I tell my clients all the time, my students. Then life is about living and loving and enjoying life. So if you like eating cake and I was at a, a session a few weeks ago where we were talking about one of the, one of the person said that he loves the burger king hamburgers, and I was telling them, you know, what, why are you kid?

Why are you suffering yourself from not eating any burger king on hamburgers? No, I don’t. I’m not promoting burger king in any way, but I’m saying hamburgers instead of say hamburger, but if you like humble, There’s no reason you can’t have a hamburger once a month or once every two weeks. Right? Because that one hamburger will not cause any major harm.

No, if you’re eating a hamburger every day, that’s different from using it once every two weeks. So if you like cake or you like that bowl of ice cream, right? Why are you, why are you suffering yourself and keeping away from it? You can have a bowl of ice cream, but don’t have it every day. You don’t reward yourself.

I hate the term cheat day because I say, who are you cheating on? 

Susi Vine: Right. The guilt that comes along with that is the hardest thing to deal with. Oh, all over. Why did I fail again? Yes. I agree. Cheat day needs to be retired. 

Dr. Zynul Khan: Yeah. Then you’re cheating on you. You’re not cheating on anybody else. Who are you cheating?

You’re not cheating, but that right there, they’re eating healthy. You’re not cheating on the dog. He doesn’t care. He just loves you because. All right. You’re cheating on you. So instead of calling it a cheat day, cultural reward, I’m not a reward day reward. So have your ice cream with that day and enjoy it, sits and fully and enjoy the flavor.

You know, enjoy the taste that one ice cream will not harm you. Yes. Your blood sugar might go up a little bit, but if you are maintaining your blood sugar all the time, that little. It’s not enough. I always tell people your blood sugar goes up and down. Lettuce is a sinusoidal rhythm. Nothing is a straight line, but if you’re taking medication, guess what medication is as straight line.

How is that controlling? Anything? When you’re going up and down, I said, there’s a language group, right? So. Now to get that sinus rhythm, your body has to be decided. So your days have too much. That’s why lifestyles is a big thing. Right? Lifestyle changes is the method of management. And in sports medicine, we have seen that you can actually send your diabetes into remission by changing your lifestyle.

I will, I will give a small number and it’s only because of the. The chance of doing that with medication is 0.01%. So one in 100 million people or 1 million people will get going through remission using medication. What am I call these words as far as she is? And she said, it’s quoting her. And one of my daughter’s sports medicine doctors in the UK, she says I’m actually being generous with that number.

It’s actually more like this. So lifestyle can actually send you to remission. It could decrease your medication. You can get a better way of life and take control. I want the things I tell about my pain, my students is that you reach a point where you stop worrying about checking your blood sugar, because you know, it’s normal because you’re eating correctly.

Right? And when you get into the habit of it, you stop thinking about. So here’s the thing. When you brush your teeth in the morning, it’s a good habit, right? Does it, do you ever remember brushing your teeth? Honestly, this brushing it, 

Susi Vine: right? We do it on autopilot. 

Dr. Zynul Khan: Yeah. When you drive to work, do you remember getting to work or the route you took?

No, because there’s a habits have been there forever when you’ve eaten healthy. Those are habits of deer that you don’t know you do. Right. And you have these habits built up. So you’ve got to break. And I call it breaking, breaking loop. Right? Perfect. 

Susi Vine: Breaking the loop. Yes. Yes. 

Dr. Zynul Khan: And that’s what, that’s what I do, but I don’t do that to the first week of my program.

You get out in the night, the fifth week, then we talk about breaking the loop. Why? Because you’ve already broken to them. I know I showed you. I show you you’ve broken the loop. So we talk about, we’ve talked about nutrition. We talk about hydration. Let’s see. Yeah, so that’s that there is healthy eating.

Susi Vine: Beautiful. I love it. And really it comes down to some very basic principles. And so you mentioned the dietary aspect, food, nutrition. I think that even the word diet has become loaded, but it means simply a system of eating. So we’re not saying you have to feel like you’re on a diet for the rest of your life.

Building new healthier habits of eating. And so movement is also an aspect. And then we’re going to make time and come back to sleep and stress because obviously I’m a fan of getting into stress, but let’s explore how exercise and moving our bodies. And maybe for people who this is some new territory, not all of us are very active people.

Dr. Zynul Khan: I started early off providing I’m an exercise specialist, right? So I’m exercise medicine. So movement is my. Right. But movement is also very easy, right? Not at Morton. Dave, not in, not at mercy from Scotland. She says the best way to get it activity is to walk. She says, just walk, let’s get up and walk.

You’re moving. That’s all you’re doing. Walking. What faster increase your heart rates. She’s like, there’s nothing more special about it. There’s nothing, no secret. There’s no secret sauce that you have to Troy, that’s a make at work. So I say to people, here’s an easy way to get. Pick two days in your week.

Now you have seven days, seven days. Can you find two days, two days to just start moving and here’s there’s, here’s something else you could do. Pick an exercise. You like to do. Don’t pick something you hate. You’re not going to do it. So if you’d like to run, run, if you’d like to walk, walk, if you like to ride, right.

If you’d like to pull dance pole dance. It’s perfectly okay. In his movements, one person says to get healthy, they started doing one push-up everyday. They started with one. And what I would say it start with 30 minutes, a day of exercise. That’s a recommended 30 minutes a day everyday, but here’s how you start with that.

And here’s a secret that I want to share with you. You don’t have to do 30 minutes out or not. You can break it up 10 minutes, three times a day. It’s still 30 minutes. If you’re not good at math, 10 minutes by tree is 

Susi Vine: 35 

Dr. Zynul Khan: minutes, six times a day, 30 minutes, 20 minutes, 10 times a day, 30 minutes, one minute, 30 time today, still 30 minutes.

All of it is still exercise. And here’s your only thing you need to do. Increase your heart rate and you don’t have to increase it. Like you have to go red in the face to increase it. No, you don’t have to be sweating bullets to say that you’ve increased your heartbeat. No. Increasing your heart rate means just walking a little faster.

You feel it raise up, you start a feed pumping a little faster, right? That is increasing your heart rate. That’s it? There’s no secret exercise. Exercise is as simple as. So 30 minutes a day, two days a week, start with two the next week, do three the next week, the four, but rest in between always rest. But when I say rest, I don’t mean light on the couch and bad jokes.

I mean, active rest lighter. I’m going to grow open up a YouTube video of yoga or some colleague static stretch or something. Tai Chi and stretch. Let your body just open it. Mm. And all of a sudden you’re moving, you’re feeling more flexible. And here’s the thing. When you start to move, your body wants to move more.

When you start to eat healthier, your body wants to eat healthier. Suddenly going into a place with fried foods becomes OD enticing. You don’t enjoy the, smell it to you, or I don’t. Right. You taste food with too much sugar in it and you go, wow, this is super sweet. I can’t. All of a sudden, your body is telling you, you don’t want that.

Why those are the natural protections, your body already possesses, but you have been suppressing them for so long that they no longer work for you. So you, by eating out here, exercising, you reactivate them by drinking more water. And I never say, just drink water. I say, drink liquids. So tea is a liquid coffee.

Is that. Milk is a liquid. Now, if you’d like to Sentara, don’t go drinking. Please. Coconut water, water, soda, water, aerated waters flavored waters. You can take a banana peel and drop it in your water and get a flavored water. It’s so simple. Is that going back to those expensive ones? Take a Berry and just drop it in.

Leave it in there for half an hour. And you have a very favorable. Those are all hydrating liquids and you just need three to five liters a day of it. The more, the hotter it is, the more and simple to do this bottle is 500 MLS of water. Five half a liter of water. I walk around with this all day and refill it.

Guess how much water I drank today? I’m already at treaters. I have a cup of coffee, right? 50 milliliters of, of, of coffee. 550 milliliters just distract as easy as that. While on this call, I did I get up and go use the bathroom? No. Why? Because my body is used it all up. You don’t urinate more because you’re drinking more.

You’re in it because you try to take this entire fabric on donuts. But if you’re drinking consistently all day, you don’t move unit more. No more than you use. All right. So there’s three aspects. You don’t treat things that has given you hydro. Nutrition carbohydrates add exercise. The simple, simple, simple, 

Susi Vine: and simple is doable.

It takes a little bit of effort. I love the term activation energy when you’re starting to change things that takes a little more remembering, you know, set reminders for yourself, give yourself some motivation, keep yourself on track and it becomes easy so quick. So, what is it for a long that you have to feel like you’re committing to this new habit?

Things become habit very, very quickly, especially when it’s things that our body naturally craves. 

Dr. Zynul Khan: So I know you’re excited to talk about stress. 

Susi Vine: All right, let’s talk about stress. It really does impact so many different aspects of our body function and it impacts sleep. So if you want, we can take a quick detour down the sleep lane, or we can come back to that.

But yeah, I really think it’s important for people to recognize that we can change the way we handle stress. It isn’t kind of by design or genetic or the way we’re wired is the way it is. Like we have some options and how we let stress show 

Dr. Zynul Khan: up. Agreed, agreed. And and I think stress and sleep go hand in hand.

If you’re stressed, you’re not sleeping. If you’re not sleeping, you’re stressed. True. True. Right. So insomniacs are very stressed out. Right. But people who have big businesses are not sleep on our stress or the work, I probably don’t see. Right. So they must go together. And that’s why I put stress and sleep together.

No, they’re two separate things, but if you’re managing one usually becomes easier to manage the order. Right. And this is just my, my opinion. And I’ve seen this happen where people had started managing their stress. I don’t have a Sunday getting a night’s sleep. I think that’s the thing. If you start exercising, you start eating healthier or you start putting in those brain foods, you start hydrating, you realize you start sleeping better.

Right? All of a sudden your sleep patterns start to improve. So talk to me about that. Stress as soon as you rightfully said, it affects every part of your body. Now, everybody, I think one of the things about mainstream medicine is that we’ve gotten a little too focused on the pathology that the individual has aspects.

And then we have the super specialties and I don’t get me wrong here. They’re amazing people who are in depth. You have the cardiologist who specifically looks at your heart rhythm, right? You have the neurologist who actually focuses on one part to your brain. You will have the orthopedic surgeon who only works in your hand.

And I recently found out there’s an orthopedic surgeon who only works in your thumb. That’s his whole specialty, that your thought, right. But. The thumb is connected to here. It’s connected to the wrist. It’s corrected to the elbow. It’s connected to the shoulder as a sport stops. Whenever you go into our offices and you say, Hey, doc, Monday is hurting.

You will notice we will go and check your ankle. We’re going to check your hip. We’re going to check your back and you look at us. You go, doc, what are you doing? I will tell you to take off your clothes. You go, but why is mine? And you go, I’ll go. Don’t worry. We’ll get there. I have a friend who’s been complaining of the problems for years.

Right. And I have, we did an MRI. He wanted the MRIs. I kept telling him what is wrong with your knee? Something else is happening. He had a slipped disc and it was affecting his knee, the symptoms. He was getting his, his knee. So we, as we link everything together, your brain is connected to your body. Yes.

The stress that you happening is affecting all of you. So you may be having neck pain. You may be having back pain. You may be having nosebleeds, or you may getting a ringing in your hairs and they’re all stress-related and you remove the stress and they go away. So when you’re stressed, it’s not just you thinking, oh, I’m just getting a headache or something like that, or you’re feeling overwhelmed or you feel too tired at the end of the day.

So managing your stress. A very important part of your health. And if you’re not doing it, as you said already, or you’re going to give yourself a heart attack. So how do we manage stress? I start off with one thing again, just one thing, breathe. Just grieve. Now here’s the technique. Do you have eight seconds in your day?

Could you possibly find it seconds in your day? I’m sure it’s somewhere. You just wasted eight seconds 

Susi Vine: thinking you couldn’t possibly find eight seconds. 

Dr. Zynul Khan: You just did just thinking about it. You just wasted it seconds for eight seconds and that’s the length of a deep breath, right? A normal breath is five seconds.

Three seconds out, two, three seconds or two seconds in a normal breath. Now how do we notice? Because we’ve studied it solo. People have sat with timers with hundreds of people on tying the breaths. So we know the length of a breath right now. Why is 55 seconds? It’s actually, it varies from person to person, but we use a standard six, right?

Everything in medicine has a reach, right? Whenever you get, go to the doctors say you between here and here. Okay. So it’s seconds in a day. Take one. But don’t just pick one, but not just take a breath, concentrate on the temperature of that breath, just the temperature and do it. Just try it. Try no for eight seconds.

Why? Listen to this, take one deep breath, concentrated only the temperature and feel how your body and your mind feels. I did a study with one of my patients. And I asked her, how do you feed afterwards? She’s like my shoulders, relax.

It’s seconds on our shoulders. Relax. And she was tense in her shoulders. She didn’t know she was tense in the shoulders until they relaxed. You can repeat that as often as you want your boss annoys you, your dog is bothering you. The child is talking too much. You just want a second and piece eight seconds.

A problem is bothering you. Take a dig, take a deep breath and suddenly your mind relaxes and you see a solution that sets you just learn how to manage stress, right? You just did mindfulness just there. That is a meditation technique. You just meditate. Does meditation. Yes. Does it sound difficult? All of a sudden you’re thinking, hold on.

Did you just mention meditation, but that’s really hard, but he just told me I just meditated. Wow. 

Susi Vine: And if that, then what could be possible. And I love that you’re illustrating that we tend to over-complicate things that exercise. Is moving starts with walking is however you want to divvy up 30 minutes across the total of your day.

As you work up to it, that mindfulness is tuning into your breath and start with one. And I love the invitation to see what that can grow into, because I know that these things are habit, forming that as we do them, just like drinking water and eating food, that’s healthier for us. The more we do it, the more our body craves it.

Dr. Zynul Khan: Yes. That’s like one of my one of my oldest is he came into my course fast four weeks in and he goes yeah, I know you’re telling me that, you know, stick with you and do the things I’m showing you how to do it. And don’t go too far ahead, but can I start moving more? Is it okay for me to do extras?

He says, because I was sitting in front of TV and I felt like doing pushups. All right. I know. Yeah, because that’s what your body does. It tends to move more right now. What I tell people also is buy a fitness tracker this year. A P a research paper came out at the beginning of the year that finally confirmed what we already.

That wearing a fitness tracker. It increases your likelihood to be fit, to walk more. It motivates you to do more because you keep looking at a watch and you see 2000 steps and you go, I could do better. I need to see 3070. Well, I could do better. And in one day you make 8,000 steps. You go, whoa, I can do it a thousand steps.

And then suddenly you want to do a thousand steps every day because you just did it and you go, how did I do that? And that. People we like to check ourselves, we do it all the time. We’re on our phones. You can’t see that kind of get Facebook or Instagram to see if anybody responded to your post. So having a tracker does the same thing and it’s already wired into our brains to do it because we’ve been doing it for so long.

So why not take advantage of what we’ve already learned and do something positive? 

Susi Vine: So true. And I find mine and I just started wearing one regularly, a few months ago. I love what it does to improve my. Because now that I see, you know, I have a garment and it tells me the deep sleep versus light versus REM sleep like, oh, what is, what is affecting this?

Can I track back through the day? Was it the extra movement or the lack of movement? You know, what had me up a couple of times through the night and I’ve heard people say, well, maybe fitness trackers, build anxiety, right. Get us a little too dialed into the ins and the outs. And like you said, We are cyclical beings.

Everything has a rhythm and a flow. We’re not always going to be when it says we’re low stress. In fact, that heart rate variability is really important than a sign of health to put ourselves into stress and come back into rest. And so I thank you for pointing that out. I think that fitness trackers are easy to get ahold of and very beneficial because they increase our curiosity and help us recognize what serves us on what does not.

Dr. Zynul Khan: Yeah. And they’re, they’re so unused to be the finished rockers were unattainable and often very expensive nowadays are so cheap. I mean, they all connect to your phone, right? With free apps. It’s not a, you have to pay for the app anymore. And as you said, it does add it at least in to sleep. How does it affect a shark or healthy sleep?

And you’re noticing something about your sleep. So when you, when we talk about sleep, sleep hygiene is a very important part of our lives and sleep is probably your best healer. And people don’t seem to take advantage of it. Right? Some people take a lot of advantage of it and some people take very different.

Not everybody has different sleep rhythms. Some people sleep four hours. Some people need eight hours. Some people need 12. Some people sleep at cats. They need to sleep 16 hours in a day in order to keep, to keep themselves going. Everybody’s different. But what stays the same is the high-tech. Well, and one of the things we mean by hygiene, you brush your teeth because it’s T2 hygiene.

You floss because of hygiene, right? Hygiene is not about staying clean. It’s about those habits to lead to a healthier gums, healthier teeth, same thing with sleep. You wouldn’t help your sleep and simple things to do to get healthier steepness things like turn off the device half an hour. Before you go to bed, take off the full turn off the computer.

Take off the TV. Don’t binge watch Netflix, right? Yes. It’s available. We are home all the time and it’s COVID season. You have nowhere to go in some places I can turn it on. We can’t, nothing is open, right? We’re still close. We still have a curfew at 9:00 PM. So at 9:00 PM you’re home. So guess what we’re doing?

Binge watching Netflix. Turn off the TV, take the TV out of your bedroom. So here’s the thing. We created an amazing energy source and lighting source called led lights. This save energy. Yeah, the motor of energy at early light uses is I think the Towson times less than a standard fluorescent book. I’m not, you can’t quote me that I’m not an educator.

Sorry, not my thing, but I’ve been told as very energy efficient, not as a physics term that says energy has to go somewhere. Energy is never lost. It’s changed. It changes from one form to the next, whereas that led lights, putting that extra in. Where’s it going guess? Where into you? It’s going into your eyes and was keeping your brain up.

It’s transferring that wonderful energy savings and giving it back to you because it goes nowhere else. It has to go somewhere. It’s going into you. So led lights, although they’re wonderful. Had to provide so much, they produce a lot of blue lights and blue lights. Is the cause of why people stay awake longer nights.

So turn off the device, switch off the led lights and put on attitudes. Yellow lights, not a fluorescent yellow, red, and one was even a first in your life. What does dim lights are? Dim lights, like a nightlight or something you used for your kids? Why don’t you use. Okay. If you’re like me, I like to read my kids a little bit before I fall asleep.

And I showed one of my, one of my students say what my Kindle looks like at night. And during the day you can’t see it. It is in dark board and it it’s dimmed all the way though. But during the day, honestly, I wake up in the morning. I have to look and see if my phone is on because the candle is still on and it’s so dark.

I can’t see it. But at night it’s it’s actually quite bright, right? I fall asleep in five to 10 seconds. I’ve been reading the same page on my Kindle for the last four weeks. And it’s not on this, that the tiniest lettering, I’m talking about 10 lanes and I can’t get through 10 lines because I keep falling asleep.

Lord, damn it all the way though, if you can’t use a book, read a book, right? The turn off half an hour before, just turn off the light. A little bit, half an hour before, right? Have a conversation with your husband, your wife, your girlfriend, your boyfriend, your kid, your dog, your cats. You know, if you have mice, I have some stretching.

Excellent. Excellent points. Exercise makes you sleep. Everybody thinks it’s the Ottawa. Yeah, everybody thinks is to we that if you exercise again, hyperactive, but it wouldn’t be up later. No metaphase exercise. You go take the workshop. You light on the bed.

Because your body wants to rest. It’s telling you again, your body tells you it has all these beautiful signals it does. 

Susi Vine: And when we tune into it, then we can start to hear them. We have so much other input coming in on all channels that it’s easy to miss those messages. And the more things we do to serve our bodies, the more it speaks to us.

And the more audible that those messages. Yes. Beautiful. We could obviously go on all day. You and I could, could just go volumes together. Tell people how they can work with you. I’m excited about the program that you’re sharing. And even though you’re out on this beautiful island, you can work with people just about anywhere.

These. 

Dr. Zynul Khan: Yes. So when I started my program, I was trying to do it from my local people to, because Trinidad has a 40% diabetes rates and we have a 56% overweight and obese population. In fact, motor publishes are with obese than normal and considered a 30% are children, right? And the adult population is 57% all the way.

So I saw, I saw a problem. I have, I have a solution. I created a solution. I wanted to give it out. But I have discovered in order to reach more people, I can’t just stay with internet. So I created an online course. I went to learn how to do it now as a doctor, we don’t want any of this. So it was a massive learning curve for me over the last year.

And my course is now fully online. It’s called the diabetes. I have two courses, defeat diabetes, and healthy with a recipe. The target of course, diabetics in one side and people who are overweight or obese. Right. And I have them one night I will share as they are all those started to grow and started to build and they’ll started building websites and all that stuff.

It’s all in production. I’m sharing my free ebook with, with sheriffs, with Susie that she can see and say, show to the community. And to that ebook, you will be your Java email list and you’ll learn about my course and when it’s going to be launched and so on. But email us is not just to tell you what the course is to give you quality information that you can apply everyday.

I’m all about giving, right? I’m all about giving value. Every single time I speak to people, I’m all about sharing my knowledge and sharing it in a way that you understand not adopted. Right. They, you know, you absorb it as much as you want. It’s there for you. If you don’t get it today, maybe you’ll get, it’s more something that doesn’t resonate with you everyday.

I started learning how to do an online course and it took me six months to realize what teacher was teaching me, right. What he was saying and what he was talking about six months later, I’m doing the same, the same session with him again. And for the first time it made sense six months. So same thing with diets, nutrition, and I don’t like the word anti dieting.

I it’s a no five term. I’ve heard it a few times that people say I do anti diabetic and I had to go, I had to go. I didn’t even know it was term. I had to go look it up and I don’t like it. Right? Because it’s sharing the wrong message. Dieting is not bad. It’s not about four, four letter word. It’s not the effort, 30 F bomb or whatever you want to call it.

It is not about. What we’re doing is verifying that we need to stop that eating healthy is a better word is a better term, eating healthy and having healthy habits are better, but that I think is all bad. There’s those anti-diabetics shares a roll message of saying no dietary is bad for you. Grades anti diabetic is a good term 

Susi Vine: that we can get behind.

Dr. Zynul Khan: Yeah, I feel is a good thing. Because obesity has so many problems that only on your own, just your, your diabetes or hypertension or heart disease, but your joints, right? Your, your joints can’t take that much weight. Right? You can’t walk, you can’t move, right? Yep. Your organs surrounded by this horrible fat, right.

Your brain is slower because it’s not getting right. I know you’re suffering from all these audit diseases that you didn’t have before. You’re you’re, if you’re female, your periods are off, right? You’re your meal, your notice your, the beetle is gone. Why is that? Right? It’s all linked. It’s all together. So obesity doesn’t just affect much like stress affects so many things.

Obesity is a form of stress, right? It’s creating stress. On psychological stress because every time you look in the mirror, plus the way you’re thinking, I hit myself. You can try to convince yourself, you love yourself. He is looking at them, subconsciously agree. I hate myself. That’s creating stress that is creating a negative, which leads to more negative and more negative.

And we are so. My free book for your community. And then they can think, and of course I will post I’ll send you like like LinkedIn and everything. So I’ll send you my LinkedIn link. And as I grew, and as I get the websites and everything going well, fascinating news building. Oh, this is so 

Susi Vine: exciting. Yes, we can get reminders and 10 to your tips, wherever we are viewed love technology.

So I shared 

Dr. Zynul Khan: the app and everything with you. As soon as belts, I put it all up at air. And even if it comes up on what they dressed as sheriff to keep it still servers. 

Susi Vine: Absolutely. Our. Updates. So whenever you’ve got new information, we’ll make sure that’s current in our show notes. So whenever people pick up this episode, they’ll be able to connect with you and find out what is available.

What’s coming down the line because I know you’re a force of energy and momentum and these creative juices are flowing. So I’m excited to see what is available now, but also what’s coming together in the year ahead. So I’m so grateful for your time, Dr. Z. Thank you for joining me today. 

Dr. Zynul Khan: It’s awesome.

Being here, Susie. Thank you for having me. It’s been a pleasure to share my message to shut up, to tell people there is help. And there are solutions that you don’t have to be alone, 

Susi Vine: right? Exactly. There are solutions. Don’t let it be overwhelming. Just choose one thing. One thing to get started on and start turning that tide.

Beautiful. Thank you for your words and inspiration. I appreciate you have a wonderful day and take good care of. You too. 

Dr. Zynul Khan: Lovely. Being fun, talking to you. Thank you.