Niraj Naik, known internationally as The Renegade Pharmacist, joins me on today's show. Niraj is a qualified pharmacist but after witnessing the side effects his patients experienced for pharmaceuticals, not to mention his own health challenges, Niraj embarked on a journey of profound self-healing and education. Our conversation covers a broad range of topics, but there are two questions that he asks everyone that I think is incredibly powerful. The question of having to do something or wanting to do something.

Selected Links from the Episode

Niraj Naik - The Renegade Pharmacist website

Unstress episode with Dr Rosalba Courtney on breathing

Unstress episode with Aaron Mckenzie on movement

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Dr. Ron Ehrlich: Hello and welcome to “Unstress”. My name is Dr. Ron Ehrlich. If you are a regular listener of this podcast you must know breathing well is important. I identify breathe as one of the five pillars: sleep, breathe, nourish, movement and thought. As a framework for building resilience. The secret to living a longer life is to keep breathing for as long as you can. Okay, no big deal. But the secret to living a healthier life physically, mentally, emotionally is to breathe well and to use the breath consciously which can really improve a lot.

My guest today is Niraj Naik, known internationally as the renegade pharmacist. I'm going to let him tell that story. But my conversation with him covered a broad range of questions and listen out for two questions he asks of everybody which I think are quite powerful about having to do something or about wanting to do something. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this conversation I had with Niraj Naik.

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Welcome to the show, Niraj.

Niraj Naik: Hi, Ron, I’m glad to be here.

Dr. Ron Ehrlich: Now, Niraj, you've embarked on a journey of profound self-healing. I mean education and yoga and holistic health. You face some health challenges yourself. You're a pharmacist, you're a musician. Can you share with our listener what got you to this point where you are now described as a renegade pharmacist? You'll have to define that one for us. And who worldwide have been key drivers on that journey?

Niraj Naik: Certainly, well, that's right, I'm now kind of known around the world as the renegade pharmacist but I was actually a real qualified community pharmacist working in the community in the UK and that's where I got my big insight into the health care system in the UK and how it's not really serving the public anymore in a way it was maybe originally intended to. So, what happened was I was really on a search to help my patients get better and I just witnessed so many people going away with shopping bags full of drugs every month and it was just incredibly depressing.

So, what happened was I had what I call I had if you ever saw the movie The Shawshank Redemption where the guy escapes from jail right and he's I have falsely imprisoned and all that stuff and it has got a dramatic ending. Well, I wrote actually, I remember I wrote this article that summed up how I managed to escape the corporate world which I was in which was I call it the Walmart Redemption because it was really – that's where I really just witnessed what was going on in the corporate world. I happened to climb all the way up the top of Walmart as during the UK. I was working in the head office, the corporate head office. And I came up with this novel concept of giving shopping lists for patients who are on various health conditions.

I mean now we know so much about diet and nutrition and things all that but back then we're talking 2010 it was still quite an underground kind of knowledge. people really in the mainstream still didn't really understand how the impact of food and things on diabetes and things that. And by simply changing people's diet by giving them healthy shopping list I had amazing results with g...