We know that gut health plays a crucial role in everything from digestion to immunity, weight management, and even mental well-being. But what does looking after your gut actually look like in practice?

In this episode, I’m again joined by Dr James Kinross a senior lecturer in colorectal surgery and consultant surgeon at Imperial College London, he’s a researcher, and author of Dark Matter, to explore the science behind our gut microbiome—and how we can take actionable steps to support it every single day.

🔍 Key Topics We Cover:

• Should everyone be doing a gut microbiome test?
• Are daily probiotics necessary, or is food enough?
• Can our gut bacteria influence how easily we lose weight?
• What’s the link between stress, mood, and our microbes?
• Does a healthy gut help us live longer?

But rather than just theory, today’s episode is all about practical strategies. We walk through what an ideal gut-health day looks like—from the moment you wake up to your morning routine, commute, meals, work stressors, and even how you wind down at night. Dr. Kinross breaks down:

✔ The best foods to start your day for optimal gut function

✔ What supplements to take (or avoid) for microbiome health

✔ How movement, stress, and even pollution affect your gut

✔ Why gut bacteria plays a role in breaking down food, recycling nutrients, and producing essential compounds

✔ How gut health shifts across different life stages—from newborns to aging adults

We also dive into some big health questions, including:

🧠 The gut-brain connection – how microbes influence serotonin, dopamine, and mood

💊 Post-antibiotic recovery – what to do if you’ve just finished a round of antibiotics

⚖️ Weight control – how gut microbes affect appetite, fat burning, and metabolism

🦠 Cancer risk – why are cases of bowel cancer rising in younger people?

If you’ve ever wondered how to support your gut and why it matters, this is the episode for you.

🎬 Watch the podcast on YouTube here

📱 Download The Doctor’s Kitchen app

🌐 View full show notes, including guest details, on our website

☕️ Try Exhale Coffee here

🥗 Join the newsletter and receive a 7 day meal plan

📷 Follow on Instagram

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What makes a mushroom ‘medicinal’ and are they worth the hype? How do these fungi differ from the everyday varieties we cook with? On this week’s episode of The Doctor’s Kitchen podcast, we’re diving deep into the fascinating world of mushrooms with our expert guest Tom Baxter. 

From Lion’s Mane to Reishi, we’ll explore the unique healing properties of these incredible organisms and what the research reveals about their potential benefits. We’ll discuss their effects on cognitive function, stress, fatigue, and even menopausal symptoms. 

You’ll learn:

🍄 How to source high-quality mushroom products to avoid contaminants

🧑🏽‍🍳 The culinary and nutritional benefits of everyday mushrooms and their environmental impact

🧠 Whether there is evidence that mushrooms can improve mental well-being and support immunity. 

🔎 Whether you’re a skeptic, a mushroom enthusiast, or just curious about these fascinating fungi, this episode is packed with insights to inspire you to add more mushrooms to your diet and daily life.

Tom Baxter is a farmer and founder of The Bristol Fungarium, which produces the UK's first organic certified medicinal mushrooms. Ever conscious of the unfolding ecological collapse that confronts us, Tom made the fateful move away from city life in 2008 to find meaning through working the land. After several educational years establishing his organic vegetable farm and two decades of largely unsuccessful foraging excursions he pivoted from farming and invested everything into creating The Bristol Fungarium, pioneering organic medicinal mushroom production in the UK.

If you’re in the mood for mushrooms, one of my favourite recipes on the doctors kitchen app is the “Cashew Curry with Chickpeas and Crispy Mushrooms” or better still, type in mushroom into the search bar at doctorskitchen.com to see what comes up ;)

🎬 Watch the podcast on YouTube here

📱 Download The Doctor’s Kitchen app

🌐 View full show notes, including guest details, on our website

☕️ Try Exhale Coffee here

🥗 Join the newsletter and receive a 7 day meal plan

📷 Follow on Instagram

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In February 2018, Rebecca Devine, a mum of 4 children, was diagnosed with Glioblastoma (GBM), an aggressive form of brain cancer, and given just 12-15 months to live.

Remarkably in 2025 she’s still here. And today we’re going to talk about her incredible story from diagnosis and treatment, to continual perseverance and ongoing health.

I met Rebecca recently at a small gathering hosted by Dr William Li for the angiogenesis foundation, a non profit whose mission is to beat cancer by targeting blood vessels that feed tumours. And it was there that I first came across her story that I’m privileged to share with you today.

Today we’ll talk about how Rebecca’s first experience with cancer was over 20 years ago when her mother was struck with the same diagnosis, and the emotional and physical journey Rebecca went on since 2018. We’ll talk about her blend of conventional therapy, diet and lifestyle pursuits as well as the novel vaccine based treatment that she currently uses to keep her condition in remission.

Peptide vaccine technology is an emerging immunotherapy strategy aimed at stimulating the immune system to target tumor-specific antigens. GBM, is aggressive and resistant to standard therapies and peptide vaccines hold potential for transforming treatment by leveraging the immune system for tumor-specific targeting.

I also firmly believe that the use of novel treatments combined with Rebecca's tenacity, mindset and unwillingness to give up is the reason why she’s defied all odds and is currently thriving.

🎬 Watch the podcast on YouTube here

📱 Download The Doctor’s Kitchen app

🌐 View full show notes, including guest details, on our website

☕️ Try Exhale Coffee here

🥗 Join the newsletter and receive a 7 day meal plan

📷 Follow on Instagram

🐦 Tweet me

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I spend a ton of time exercising, but more recently I’ve wondered if I can direct my training to be as efficient as possible. If I’m going to spend hours each week on this activity, I want to ensure that I’m extracting the maximum amount of value I can from this time investment.

Coupled with the new perspective of being a father, I’m also interested in staying as fit, healthy and mentally sharp as I can. That’s why at the start of 2024, I decided to invest in a few investigations to determine my level of fitness and direct my training for efficiency.

On the pod today is Mr. Kiran Chopra a highly skilled Sport and Exercise Physiologist who actually performed my investigations that you’ll be able to see on YouTube if you’re interested in seeing me huff and puff, sweating away on a watt bike with my top off.

Kiran specialises in physiological testing, evaluation, and strength as well as reconditioning. He has expertise working with both athletic and non-athletic populations and has a strong research interest in muscular physiology, environmental performance physiology, and blood flow restriction training.

Today we’re going to focus our conversation around 3 tests that he believes are just as useful as cholesterol testing and blood pressure monitoring, which are RMR, Dexa and VO2 Max.

If you’ve never heard of these, don’t worry we’re going to break down what they are and why they’re useful as a guide to what you should be eating and how you should be exercising to keep you strong and fit into your later years. Of course, the first uphill battle is to make exercise a habit, but once you have it as a non-negotiable in your week like myself, the next step would be how to prioritise specific types of exercise to make your training as efficient as possible.

We also talk about protein requirements, how training changes as we age, the effect of exercise on our mitochondria, what we should eat if we train late in the evening and whether fasted cardio is better for fat burning.

🎬 Watch the podcast on YouTube here

📱 Download The Doctor’s Kitchen app

🌐 View full show notes, including guest details, on our website

☕️ Try Exhale Coffee here

🥗 Join the newsletter and receive a 7 day meal plan

📷 Follow on Instagram

🐦 Tweet me

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode, TJ is going to walk us through a single day in the life of your brain through the lens of 4 neurochemicals - dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin, and endorphins. 

From the moment you wake up to the way you wind down at night, TJ will guide us through the incredible influence of our brain chemistry and how simple, everyday habits can reshape our mental and physical health.

TJ’s new book, The DOSE Effect, shares practical tools to unlock the power of your brain chemistry and create a happier, healthier, and more connected life. Available in all good book stores.

We talk about the importance of “fasting” from your phone

The impact of nature on our brains

Push up challenges to boost endorphins

How doing hard things changes our physical brain and can help us stay more disciplined and motivated

Cold and Heat therapies

TJ is a renowned neuroscientist, international speaker, and co-founder of Neurify, an organisation dedicated to transforming mental health through accessible, science-backed strategies. He’s worked with 1000s of people helping them break down the barriers between modern lifestyles and optimal mental well-being.

🎬 Watch the podcast on YouTube here

📱 Download The Doctor’s Kitchen app

🌐 View full show notes, including guest details, on our website

☕️ Try Exhale Coffee here

🥗 Join the newsletter and receive a 7 day meal plan

📷 Follow on Instagram

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Something I’ve become a lot more knowledgeable about after my training as a GP, is cholesterol. It’s probably the most important measurement every primary care doctor should know about, along with measures of metabolic health like weight, insulin resistance and blood pressure, but perhaps the least well understood.

On today's episode we do a deep dive into all things cholesterol and cardiovascular disease with Professor Kausik Ray, Professor of Public Health and Honorary Cardiologist at Imperial College London and President of the European Atherosclerosis Society, and perhaps the most knowledgeable person I could talk to on this subject who has both research and clinical expertise in this area. 

We define exactly what we’re referring to when we say cardiovascular disease (CVD) and atherosclerosis. What that entails and why it’s important, being the leading cause of death globally. 

We discuss the importance of cholesterol in the body. Without cholesterol there is no life. Cholesterol is the precursor to our hormones, it forms the structural components of our cells, and most of our cells are able to create the cholesterol we require hence why there is no nutritional need to consume cholesterol.

And, hopefully at the end of this episode you’ll learn more about why the trifecta of high cholesterol, inflammation and damage to the arteries leads to disease, what blood measurements we should all have to calculate our risk, including apolipoprotein-B containing lipoproteins, Non-HDL and Lp(a), as well as the strategies to reduce risk with drugs and lifestyle.

I’ve done other episodes on specific foods and dietary patterns to reduce cholesterol, but this I think is a necessary episode to give the backdrop to why this is important for everyone to know their numbers.

🎬 Watch the podcast on YouTube here

📱 Download The Doctor’s Kitchen app

🌐 View full show notes, including guest details, on our website

☕️ Try Exhale Coffee here

🥗 Join the newsletter and receive a 7 day meal plan

📷 Follow on Instagram

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Going into 2025, we all want to make changes. But instead of focusing on new goals, and perhaps stacking more habits on top of ones that you’ve already got, or failed at before, maybe it’s time to break free from habits that hold you back? Perhaps this is the reason why you struggle to make changes that last?

On today’s episode,  Dr Rangan and I unpack some of the concepts in his latest book “Make Change that Lasts”, diving into topics like minimal reliance. Rangan questions whether reliance on things like comfort, being liked and even experts, is actually holding us back from our true selves.

You can grab a copy of his book online and in good bookstores.

We explore concepts such as reframing, not taking offence and even the courage to be disliked, which incidentally is the name of one of my favourite books by Ichiro Kishimi, which explains Alfred Adler's philosophy of not living to satisfy the expectations of others.

Dr Rangan Chatterjee is one of the most influential doctors in the UK with over two decades of experience as a GP. He now hosts Europe's biggest health podcast, Feel Better, Live More, he is the author of 5 Sunday Times bestsellers.

I think this is going to be a powerful conversation to hear and I hope you enjoy it!

🎬 Watch the podcast on YouTube here

📱 Download The Doctor’s Kitchen app

🌐 View full show notes, including guest details, on our website

☕️ Try Exhale Coffee here

🥗 Join the newsletter and receive a 7 day meal plan

📷 Follow on Instagram

🐦 Tweet me

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to this quarterly review episode with Sakina, science writer & researcher at Doctor’s Kitchen. Every quarter, we pull together insights from recent expert-packed podcasts into one episode - to make it easier to take action.

👉 Tell us what you think & ask questions here.

Today, we dive into pain, which affects so many of us – whether it’s back pain, joint pain, headaches, IBS or chronic conditions like fibromyalgia and endometriosis. Even menstrual pain, often brushed off as “normal”, can significantly disrupt daily life. This episode is all about giving you tools and ideas to feel better.

 We cover:

• Invisible pain: Why it’s not just in your head and what you can do about it
• Anti-inflammatory foods: Easy swaps to ease pain & what to keep in your kitchen
• Daily wins: How small habits, like a 30-minute walk, can make a big difference
• Beyond willpower: Why healthy eating isn’t just about personal choices and how changes in our food system could make it easier for everyone to eat well

If you want to dive deeper into the full episodes:

• #276 How the immune system, nutrition and mindset affect pain with Prof. Dr Deepak Ravindran
• #271 Why Prescribing Food Could Fix the Healthcare Crisis with Jonathan Pauling

Papers we referenced:

• Chronic pain prevalence: Zimmer et al., Pain. 2022
• Nociplastic pain: Fitzcharles et al., The Lancet. 2021
• Anti-inflammatory diets and pain: Field et al., Pain Medicine. 2021
• WalkBack study: Pocovi et al., The Lancet. 2024

🎬 Watch the podcast on YouTube here

📱 Download The Doctor’s Kitchen app

🌐 View full show notes, including guest details, on our website

☕️ Try Exhale Coffee here

🥗 Join the newsletter and receive a 7 day meal plan

📷 Follow on Instagram

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Dr Mindy Pelz is back on the show talking about what foods to break your fast with, the fat burning potential of specific ingredients and how she thinks about cooking food for health and vitality.

I love talking to various thought leaders across the health and wellbeing space, which is why I’ll speak to a professor of immunology, a psychologist and a chiropractitioner all on the same podcast. You don’t get many people in the nutrition space willing to engage people from other disciplines that they don’t get along with.

I’ll be honest, some of the terminology I hear online like detox, fat burning and immune boosting does get my back up. But it’s also the simple way people think about complex subjects. In a similar vein you still get medical doctors referring to cholesterol as good and bad, which is completely incorrect. So we can’t be too judgmental.

I love chatting with and hanging out with Mindy Pelz, she’s full of energy, motivational and has helped countless women around the world take control of their health. Her new book, “eat like a girl” is a fantastic recipe book that dives into what and how we should be eating whether or not you choose to fast. We also cooked one of her recipes in the kitchen which was awesome.

🎬 Watch the podcast on YouTube here

📱 Download The Doctor’s Kitchen app

🌐 View full show notes, including guest details, on our website

☕️ Try Exhale Coffee here

🥗 Join the newsletter and receive a 7 day meal plan

📷 Follow on Instagram

🐦 Tweet me

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Today we’re diving into how nutrition intersects with the complicated world of pain. Today I have former guest and colleague Prof. Dr Deepak Ravindran to talk to us about how our immune system can impact our perception of pain, the different types of pain patients and how we can do better as medical professionals in the management of chronic pain.

This topic covers IBS, pelvic pain, chronic cystitis, fibromyalgia, migraine, functional gut disorders, long covid and more. Pain cannot be explained by a singular pathway, and I think there is so much we could all learn from Deepak's insights on this topic.

We discuss the different types of pain patients, how the immune system trains our responses to pain, how trauma in childhood can impact our responses to pain and why food plays a pivotal role.

Deepak is Honorary Professor at Teesside University and has worked as an NHS Consultant in Pain management, he’s author of the “Pain Free Mindset” a fantastic book that I recommend to both patients and medical colleagues. His new role is Director of Lifestyle Medicine for a primary care network (PCN) of GP practices in Reading, UK, working upstream to bring these insights early in the chain of pain management.

We talk about the use of fasting, anti-inflammatory diets, the importance of gut supportive diets and key ingredients that could be useful for chronic pain sufferers.

🎬 Watch the podcast on YouTube here

📱 Download The Doctor’s Kitchen app for free*

🌐 View full show notes, including guest details, on our website

*The Doctor's Kitchen App gives you access to all of our recipes, with specific suggestions tailored to your health needs and new recipes added every month. We’ve had some amazing feedback so far and we have new features being added all the time - check it out with a 14 day free trial too.

Do check out this week’s “Eat, Listen, Read” newsletter, that you can subscribe to on our website - where I send you a recipe to cook as well as some mindfully curated media to help you have a healthier, happier week.

🥗 Join the newsletter and 7 day meal plan

📷 Follow on Instagram

🐦 Tweet me

We would love to get your feedback on the subject matter of these episodes - please do let me know on our social media pages (Instagram, Facebook & Twitter) what you think, and give us a 5* rating on your podcast player if you enjoyed today’s episode

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.