Welcome to my blog!
Psychiatrist and psychotherapist, with interest in lifestyle medicine, will write about strategies to improve health. I believe that the way we approach life and our lifestyle choices have a direct impact on health.
We can all take steps to improve our well-being.
Early life experiences impact how we see ourselves and build relationships. We develop our identity through life experiences and react to the world based on our learned internal schemas. Unconsciously, we chose one path over another. But this doesn’t mean that change is not possible. We can learn to identify automatic, unconscious choices and take steps towards making our own choices based on reality, not the past.
Daily habits and social conditioning determine our overall health and mindset. Many chronic diseases are preventable and linked with our diet and lifestyle choices. When diagnosed with a chronic illness, changes are harder to make – but not impossible. Still, we can take steps to maintain or improve health and increase our longevity. Poor physical health increases the risk of poor mental health and vice versa, so it’s essential to look after ourselves holistically.
Mental and physical health care needs to include a whole person approach, with interventions aimed at mindset, root causes exploration, lifestyle and social circumstances (to name a few). It also needs to be adapted to the personal and cultural circumstances and make sense to the individual.
In this blog, I will share articles and learnings from my personal and professional life aimed at improving health and overall happiness.
I work in the NHS, but the articles and experience shared in this blog represent my own opinions, not the ones of my employer.
This blog will serve as information only. Please see your health professional for more tailored recommendations.
Recent posts
Pros and Cons for Choosing Medical Psychotherapy as Higher Training in the UK
Post relevant for psychiatry trainees / residents in the UK How do you get into training? Medical Psychotherapy (MP) is one of the specialties in higher training in psychiatry and the recruitment is through the same national process as any other specialty. The way things stand now, there are no plans to change it towards
Why are so many people overweight or obese?
Is it the fat? Is it the sugar? Is it the calories? Is it the lack of movement? The ultra processed food? The poverty, stress? Maybe genes or family history? Or everything combined. I will go through a few of the theories and the pros and cons for each. The responses below were generated by
Why is emigration not a good idea and better to avoid?
Content This is not a scientific study about migration but is a story based on personal experience and on what I learnt from other people. It may resonate with other people who migrated for “economic reasons”, meaning that their life was not at risk in the birth country, but they decided to move for a
What’s the easiest way to improve your health?
Content This is written for people who lack time, both to read and to improve their health, but would still like to make some changes towards health. I will write as “basic rules” in a quite direct way. Rule 1 – walk at least 7000 steps a day, ideally around 10000 Exception: physically unable to
Can we trust chatGPT as a psychiatric diagnosis tool?
Summary What is chatGPT?Trial of how it works in psychiatry – interaction “psychiatrist”(AI) and patientTrial of how it works as an interaction “psychiatrist” to psychiatrist There has been a lot of public and media attention about chatGPT. Although it’s not the first use of artificial intelligence (AI), what sets it apart is the large amount
Is strength training helpful for mental health?
What you will be reading about: IntroductionHow can strength training be helpful for mental health?Strength training as trauma therapyHow to do it? Introduction It seems common knowledge that running, walking and spending time in nature benefit mental and physical health. I wrote previously about my journey into running. (link here) It makes sense to think about