Sleep is medicine, its deprivation causes diseases: Lifestyle coach Luke Coutinho

What is the meaning of food in a person's life?

Food is energy. So if food is not giving energy, the human body can't function. The quality of food is one of the many reasons for the low energy level. So food is energy which can move into enjoyment. Consuming food without enjoyment will make one unhappy, which will lead to sickness. The relationship with food is very important. Right time and right quantity of food are the fundamentals. Super food and all are the complications. One should first get the fundamentals and basics right.

How would you suggest people in assessing one's health?

Assessment is useless without action. Everyone is inducing fear by taking data, which is useful for right things. I would do Vitamin D3 and B12 tests twice a year while a patient who is already sick may do a test every three months. Maybe a blood test is just an assessment of how the body is working. For people above 35, I would definitely recommend 2D echocardiography once a year and a stress test. Tests are recommended but there are people who overdo tests. If one thinks of getting sick, he/she will get it just by thinking. Assessments are great but they are not everything.

People often struggle to sleep well. How to address that?

Sleep is medicine. Sleep deprivation is the cause of most diseases. There is a direct correlation between sleep, heart disease, cancer, acne and everything else through hormonal imbalance. Hormones are communicators or messengers. If there is a hormonal balance, the right instructions are communicated. If there is a hormonal imbalance, you are communicating or not communicating which is a big problem.

When one is sleep deprived, there is hormonal imbalance, period. For example, weight loss will be a byproduct if the hormones are fixed. Detoxification happens automatically with sleep so that we have dirt in between our eyes, mouth smells and the urge to go to the loo comes (upon waking up). It is foolish to think of detoxifying one's body without sleep. The most powerful detoxification is sleep. Deep sleep detoxifies the brain, period.

Coutinho listens to the guests at the session | Image Credit: Avishek Mitra/IBNS

You must have come across celebrity patients who remain sleep deprived due to their busy schedule but they always look fittest. How do they manage?

What is seen is not always real, remember that. The sleep deprivation can be made up the next night. The body will give signals if it is physically tired. Deep sleep needs fewer hours. We should focus on quality and not the quantity of sleep. Five hours of deep sleep is way more powerful than eight or nine hours of disturbed sleep. Deep sleep helps to wake up faster. The body wakes one up after finishing all its work during sleep. One needs to slow down, relax and stay away from phones before sleeping. It is important to sleep at the right time and select the wake up time. After a few days, one will be able to wake up at the same time without the help of an alarm clock because the sleep time is set by the body.

How can we take small steps or small wins in your words to improve ourselves?

When it comes to small wins, we have to get consistent with something. It's like sleeping well every night. Even if we party one night, we can get back on track from the next night. These are small wins. The same is with food. We should start off getting one meal right, learning how to chew your food, get perfect with that and repeat it with the second and third meals.

If we go on a higher level, technically the more effort one puts into something is a struggle because there is always resistance. Life is supposed to be effortless which I mean is committing to the process and surrendering to the outcome. In the present time, everyone is focussed on trying to control the outcome. No one is in control of the outcome. Between the outcome and goal is a process, the commitment to which is our only job. When one is committed to the process, it is effortless. The process can change many times but still have to be committed to the process.

We see a lot of people resort to social media to vent out their emotional state of mind. How do you suggest using social media which is now very important in various fields?

The problem is not social media but the person using it. One can use social media for knowledge, business or to destroy oneself by becoming a slave to it. People start to compare themselves with others on social media. The problem is never social media, alcohol, good food or socialisation but the person behind all of these. People can use it or abuse it.

(Images by Avishek Mitra/IBNS)