I’m an A&E consultant: the changes you can make for a longer, healthier life

Joining Dr Louise Newson on the podcast this week is A&E consultant Professor Rob Galloway, who talks about his career to date and pressures facing the health service.

He also shares the nutrition and exercise changes he’s made in his own life that have improved his physical and mental health, as well as his top tips on living healthier for longer.

You can follow Professor Galloway on X @DrRobgalloway

Click here for more about Newson Health.

Transcript

Dr Louise Newson: [00:00:11] Hello. I’m Dr Louise Newson. I’m a GP and menopause specialist, and I’m also the founder of the Newson Health Menopause and Wellbeing Centre here in Stratford-upon-Avon. I’m also the founder of the free balance app. Each week on my podcast, join me and my special guests where we discuss all things perimenopause and menopause. We talk about the latest research, bust myths on menopause symptoms and treatments and often share moving and always inspirational personal stories. This podcast is brought to you by the Newson Health Group, which has clinics across the UK dedicated to providing individualised perimenopause and menopause care for all women. So I’ve been looking forward to this podcast for quite a long time and now it’s happening. So I’ve got with me Dr Rob Galloway, who is an A&E consultant, ex standup comedian, someone who’s transformed his life and really thinking about medicine in a different way to maybe when he qualified. And I certainly think about medicine. I think about my training. I think about so many things I didn’t do right as a junior doctor that I didn’t think about because I didn’t know. And I’ve spoken about some of this on my podcast before, but I’m 54 and I’m really committed to improving health of as many people as possible in as many different ways as possible. And this podcast is one of those ways. So I’m very excited to introduce you to my guest today. [00:01:48][97.3]

Dr Rob Galloway: [00:01:49] Thank you very much for having me, for inviting me. [00:01:50][1.5]

Dr Louise Newson: [00:01:50] So can you just give a very potted history like who you are and what you do and what you’re doing now? [00:01:56][5.2]

Dr Rob Galloway: [00:01:56] So I’m Professor Rob Galloway. I’m an A&E consultant down in Brighton and work at Brighton and Sussex Medical School. I’ve been a doctor since 2001, essentially it was my third choice career. I did a couple of awful stints a stand up comedian, failed completely, so I also wanted to be a footballer. But I was rubbish so basically the two things I wanted to do, I couldn’t do. So I went into medicine, but I got attracted to A&E because number of reasons. One, I like the excitement. Anyone who knows me knows I’ve probably got undiagnosed ADHD, which I probably think is a superpower rather than an illness, and I get bored incredibly easily. But also I had some altruistic view that I wanted to help the most vulnerable in society and it is the most vulnerable in society who comes to A&E. And so I trained as an A&E consultant, also trained as an intensive care consultant, and spent 13 years as a consultant working full time for the last 24 years. And it’s made me reflect the last few years has made me reflect, so at the beginning of my career I was quite academic. I’ve written a couple of textbooks on critical praise on how to assess the evidence for certain things. I’d also had a little foray into other things, so I’d written a book about what it was like working out and called In Stitches: the Highs and Lows of Life of an A&E doctor. I’m wrote under a pseudonym Dr Nick Edwards because don’t want to get sacked at the time. And I also work as the medical advisor for Brighton Football Club and I’m very interested in patient safety. So I have an article every couple of weeks with the Daily Mail and I run patient safety courses. I’ve always had this eclectic career, but over the years I’ve concentrated on two things the clinical work, patient safety and also workforce. So I’ve set up different systems for workforce for the junior doctors, but all of it was to create staff and create systems so that we could look after patients when they became unwell. So if someone fell over, I could know how to block their broken hip if they’re in pain, refer them to orthopedic doctors if they were having a diabetic crisis, how to treat that? And I in all honesty, during my late 20s and 30s, I worked incredibly hard to get lots and lots and lots of qualifications. I’ve got lots of letters after my name, probably to the detriment of my wellbeing in all honesty. And so I got a lot more letters than friends and I was probably not top of my game, please don’t think I’m arrogant, but I knew how to look after very unwell people. When I worked at a trauma centre and I was providing good care. But the last few years I’ve gone through a transition in my life. I went through a difficult time. Eight years ago, my dad, or seven years old, my dad died. I went through a divorce. I was quite down. I was on antidepressants. I was overweight as unhealthy. And it was going through that time I also realised that actually what good was I doing at work because however much effort we put in to keep the NHS going, the more and more, because I was managing the workforce, the more and more staff I put into the systems, the more and more medicines we prescribed. The health wasn’t getting better, the waits were getting worse. And I work in A&E I can see the current westernised system has utterly failed. Yeah, I’m about to do a late shift tomorrow and then a set of night shifts. The last time I was at work, there’s 36 people in a corridor. This is not 36 people just waiting to be seen, this is 36 people in a corridor for hours and hours who have been seen by doctors, they’ve had treatments started, but they’re waiting to go to bed. The demands are just way greater than what we can… as a soiety. And if you look for the first time in society, life expectancy is going down. But it’s not just life expectancy, it’s health span is getting worse. [00:05:18][201.8]

Dr Louise Newson: [00:05:18] Yeah. [00:05:18][0.0]

Dr Rob Galloway: [00:05:19] And it made me realise that actually everything I’ve been doing is possibly been wrong and I possibly wasted the last 24 years. And it made me reflect. And that’s the journey I’ve been going on. [00:05:27][8.3]

Dr Louise Newson: [00:05:28] And it’s so interesting because we’re very reactive in medicine. And I think when I was doing A&E many, many years ago, I enjoyed it. But I’m not like you. I don’t like the uncontrolled nature of someone coming in really sick and I like to be really calm and in control. So I found that quite difficult. But I love, being a medic means that you are exposed to all sorts of people from all sorts of life, which I think is such a privilege and I still do now. I love working in areas of deprevation. I’ve been doing a lot of work in prisons recently and I just love it. I think it’s there’s so much we can give back. But medicine, as I used to know, is very reactive. It’s like playing ping pong. You’re just firing, firing, firing, and you’re treating the condition. And then more and more over the years, partly because I’ve got older, but my knowledge has really improved about inflammatory diseases, how we reduce inflammation in the body. And I know you’re really interested in it too. I didn’t know that clinical depression, osteoporosis are inflammatory diseases, and I also didn’t know that we are less healthy as we age and this whole life span versus health span is so different, especially actually for women. Most of us as women spend the last ten years of our life in ill health. And even as a doctor, as a GP, I used to visit nursing homes, care homes, sheltered accommodation every single time I visited, and it was 90% of the times women. Did I ever once think about their hormones? Never. I would love to go back in time Rob because all those UTIs urinary tract infections didn’t even think about giving them even just a bit of local hormone that we know there’s evidence reduces urinary tract infections. But then, you know, people with total body pain, people with confusion, people with palpitations didn’t even think about hormones. But we’re not trained to do that, are we? [00:07:30][121.9]

Dr Rob Galloway: [00:07:30] No, I think we’ve got a medical model which is very much pharmaceutical led. There is a treatment, there’s a drug you can prescribe, and this is the protocols were given. Similar to you, or opposite to you. I love the chaos, the crisis going on. I couldn’t do your job because I just can’t stand just a single issue medicine. I mean, I like the chaos of someone who’s had a heart attack. Then someone comes with a trauma, then someone’s down trying to stab me. That something gets me excited at work. But the thing which you know that after a while you think, are we doing the right thing by always treating patients? Are we doing the right thing by saying, right, this is what you need? But actually, should we stand back and remove a call, a riskitician or we actually doing the right thing for the patient by organising another CT scan? Or should we step back and say, are we doing too much medicine? Are we giving another antidepressant, antihypertensive, anti-cholesterol drug? Is there other things we should be doing? But crucially, what I’ve realised from all my experience is actually so much of what I see is preventable and the amount of money we’re pumping into hospital it’s in the wrong place. If there’s one thing I could prescribe and to everybody, it would be exercise because exercise is an anti depressant. It’s, the evidence for exercise is, I would say, better than for sertraline, not for severe depression, but for mild depression like I had. So I was put on sertraline because I, I think I had a response to misery, a normal response to misery rather than severe depression. But exercise is such a good thing. But what I did is I went to the GP asking for sertraline. [00:09:08][97.8]

Dr Louise Newson: [00:09:09] Well, you didn’t know. [00:09:09][0.5]

Dr Rob Galloway: [00:09:09] Because I was so fixed on that medical model, but things like exercise so good for depression, for reduction of cancer, for the reduction of diabetes, for Alzheimer’s, we forget how important that is. Then there’s diet and I’ve lost about ten kilos by just looking at what I eat, I used to eat just dreadful food. I used to think nothing of having it in a Mars bar, packet of crisps during my lunch break, you know, at work. The hospitals are such an unhealthy, environment, you cannot eat healthy food because the most of the vending machines just sell variations of awful ultra processed food. The way we manage health has to be done from the very beginning, every department in the country, every politician needs to look at their different areas and how we can promote health. I took my kids so the leisure centre the other day to go swimming. I tried to get them some some food. The only food at a leisure centre was awful ultra processed food. And this is the bastions of health, leisure centres, and I couldn’t feed them healthily. So what to have, you know, we’ve got to do everything to promote good health and prevention because we all facing this rise and rise and rise in cost of ill health. Society can’t afford it. We’ve got one life. We need to not waste it by getting ill. And that’s why people need to invest in their own health rather than just accepting illness. We need to invest in our own health. Do you really need to go to another work meetings? Do you really need to send that other email or would you be better off at 6:00 in the morning going for a run? And that’s something I’ve started to tell myself. [00:10:39][89.6]

Dr Louise Newson: [00:10:40] I think you’re absolutely right, and I’ve certainly become more selfish as I’ve got older. I carve time in my week to do yoga and make my own lunch because otherwise I can’t get it when I’m here because I’m too busy. And then I could eat something. But I’m lucky and not lucky that I get quite bad migraines. So if I don’t eat healthily, it will trigger a migraine. So I’ve always got that to tell me, but a lot of people haven’t. They can just eat what they like when they like, but it catches up. But also part of our training is not looking holistically. It’s looking at which drug for which treatment. And I know obviously all I do is hormones, but they affect every single organ in the body. So today I’ve seen a patient who’s been given antidepressants by the psychiatrist. She’s been given blood pressure treatment and treatment for her fast heartbeat from the cardiologist. She’s been given painkillers because she’s been diagnosed with fibromyalgia. They’re talking about statins because her cholesterol’s up. But she’s also 48 and her periods have nearly stopped and she’s perimenopausal. So in medicine, we did get taught, I know I did, treat the underlying cause, but no one is looking at the common denominator. And medicine’s become more siloed, hasn’t it, with time? [00:11:48][68.2]

Dr Rob Galloway: [00:11:48] And it’s also become what as well as the hormones what else is underlying for all those things? Is it obesity, I don’t know your patient obviously, is there anything with diet? There is obesity, you know as well as the hormones. Is there something that… [00:12:00][11.5]

Dr Louise Newson: [00:12:00] Is definitely together, absolutely. And often when people’s hormones are balanced, they’re like, you know what Dr Newson, I’m getting up in the morning, I’m going for a run. I’m going for a little, you know, and going outside because most of us are inside the whole time. And I’m going outside. I’m talking to my friends. I’m having a cup of herbal tea rather than some, I don’t know, fizzy drink. And it’s those little things. [00:12:23][22.3]

Dr Rob Galloway: [00:12:23] Which also society has become too medicalised. Everyone scared of going outside in the sun, you’ll get skin cancer. But actually sunlight is so good in preventing depression and preventing inflammation. All these things we need to think about that we’ve just become. [00:12:36][13.2]

Dr Louise Newson: [00:12:37] Forgotten. [00:12:37][0.0]

Dr Rob Galloway: [00:12:38] Forgotten. And when I look back at, you know, the medical model I was taught until about five years ago, I would teach, in all honesty, was based on drugs and operations are the solution, I can’t remember any nutrition training I had. Nutrition training I had was incorrect because it talked about the dangers of fats rather than the dangers of processed food and too many carbs and sugars and crisps and that sort of thing. But I remember as a junior doctor, a medical student, we were taken out constantly by drug reps. So I would get my good meals by going to restaurants with a drug rep. And so that subliminal, I’d sit there for ten minutes and think, I’m not gonna listen to them. But actually that subliminal message and… [00:13:15][37.0]

Dr Louise Newson: [00:13:16] You do because I’m a bit older than you and I remember when omeprazole came out, which is a PPI, proton pump inhibitor, and it was game changing. And we went to Granada Studios because I was in Manchester and I’d never been before because we were students actually. And any doing any trips was a big thing when we didn’t really go to those sorts of trips. So we went to Granada Studios, a whole tour. We felt really privileged because we weren’t even doctors, we were medical students and I remember having such a great time, but it was still drip fed, drip fed acid is bad, acid is bad. Can’t have acid in your stomach. This is really good. And we were like, ooh wait till we start prescribing. These sound really interesting. And now we’re trying to get people off some of these drugs. You know, don’t get me wrong, they have a role, but they’re not something we should be just giving to everybody. [00:14:02][46.3]

Dr Rob Galloway: [00:14:03] And they have significant, there are risks for them. And what we don’t teach in medicine is to think about number need to treat how many patients, the ones in front of us, like with the same condition, do I need to treat to save one life? And then what are the harms of that? So you’ve got people who’ve got a slightly higher raised cholesterol. You may need to treat hundreds of people like that person in front of you with statins to save one stroke or one heart attack over ten years. But the side effects of those medications are massive. And then when we think about, we also are far too quick to organise diagnostic tests sometimes so we don’t think about number need to investigate how many patients in front of me with this condition do I need to investigate to save a life? So a really good example is, we’ve got any person from a nursing home who comes in with a fall and it’s standard protocol. You know, if they’ve banged their head, they’ve got some bruising, got some confusion, we’d get a CT head, which is fine, but actually, how many CT heads do you need to save a life? Because most of these patients wouldn’t go for an operation anyway. We are treating our own anxieties and our own risk of being sued, and that’s one of the problems. We’ve got defensive medicine rather than being riskiticians. We’ve become too protocolised and we’ve not thought about the bigger picture and thought about the person. We think about illness, not people. [00:15:22][78.9]

Dr Louise Newson: [00:15:22] Yeah, I think so too. And so many times I’ll say to patients, I will only do a blood test or a scan if it’s going to change my management. You are more than just a number and sometimes it can be quite hard for them to understand that. But once they realise that, obviously, then if they don’t get better, we will consider if they need a scan or a test or a referral or something else. But it is also this multi-pronged approach that I think so much in medicine we think we’ll give a treatment and then see if it works, but actually will give a treatment, but also we’ll talk to you about your lifestyle. And actually, I did an Instagram live the other day just about exercise. And I’m not an exercise specialist. I am honestly not incredibly fit, but I do yoga regularly for my mental health, my physical health as well. And I was just talking generally about moving, not always exercise, just doing something. And somebody that messaged me the next day and say, Dr Newson because I listen to your chat I got up at six and went for a walk, thank you so much. And I’m like, Yes, come on. That’s brilliant, isn’t it? [00:16:27][65.1]

Dr Rob Galloway: [00:16:28] I don’t think you don’t need an exercise specialist to necessary… about exercise. You just need to do something you enjoy. If you enjoy playing tennis, play tennis, if you enjoy going for a run, go for a run. Just make sure you get out and exercise. The other thing is, people forget, is how important weights are. And it’s not just aerobic running and cycling. It’s actually physical, you know, lifting weights. And that’s, you know, if you want to lose weight, it’s about diet and it’s about improving your muscle. You won’t be about to run yourself out of into a diet. It’s about building up the muscle because that increases your metabolic rate and that makes it easier to lose weight. Plus it’s the diet. And so it’s the weights as well as the aerobic exercise, which is so important. [00:17:05][37.6]

Dr Louise Newson: [00:17:07] And one of the things I really worry about is frailty. I’ve spoken about before this osteosarcopenia. So loss of bone mass, muscle mass and just general… more likely to trip over the carpet, more likely to have a break, you know, more than I but all these factors that especially elderly women are coming into hospital with. [00:17:29][22.3]

Dr Rob Galloway: [00:17:30] The number of ladies I see who postmenopausal their bones are brittle and they fall over, they break their hips. Now, it is such an awful condition because it’s not necessarily the hip breaking which is the problem. It’s a sign of how unwell they are. And then there are things you can do to prevent it. Now I am on vitamin D and K2, which is a tablet I take every single day just to improve my bone density. And because I’ve got into this, I got a DEXA scan to look at my bone mass and my mass, and I’m in the top 95% of the population of my age group, the bone mass. And it’s not that that’s too high. Probably 50% is too low because that’s what the average person is. But I don’t want to break my hip when I’m older because I know what a death sentence that means. And so it’s about making sure your vitamin D levels are high enough. I don’t know any harms, if you take the standard amount, virtually no harms, obviously if you overdose and take too much there is vitamin D toxicity, but if you just take the standard amount in the vitamins not cause any harms, then exercise that makes a massive difference. And then we’re you know, you’re the expert in terms of hormones. That’s not my area at all. But I do know that one of the, it is such a danger that someone breaks the hip, tragedy. [00:18:39][69.8]

Dr Louise Newson: [00:18:40] Yeah, but we’ve known actually since 1941. So when Professor Albright first noticed that hormones are very good at building bone. And so one of the first indications for HRT actually was for osteoporosis, both treatment and prevention. But then since the bisphosphonates and other drugs have come on, they’ve obviously a lot more expensive. Lots of drug companies make them. And so that’s been pushed out and pushed out. And they, of course, have a role. But actually, again, treat the underlying cause. If they’re post-menopausal, the low oestrogen has contributed to their thinning of the bone, then give back the oestrogen to help build the bone. But we found out last year with a number of fractures, fragility, fractures in women, only 0.15% of these women were prescribed HRT. That is nothing, is it? [00:19:32][52.4]

Dr Rob Galloway: [00:19:32] Yep. And even before we become perimenopausal, you can do all the other things, like with a vitamin D way before you get there to do everything you can and these that’s just know bone fractures are just an example of all the things we can start doing to try to improve our health span. Because ultimately that’s the only way the health service should go, is in trying to improve health span. And, you know, we’ve got to have that mindflip. We’ve got to have that mindflip. Otherwise the health service won’t be there for us when we really need it for some awful accident or illness that isn’t preventable, we need to get rid of as much preventable unwellness as possible. So a really good example is type two diabetes. It’s such a killer. It causes strokes, heart attacks, cataracts, blindness, everything. But actually, instead of just treatment with more and more medications, you can diet your way out of type two diabetes, not type one, not when you need the insulin injections if you’re young, but an obesity-related type two diabetes. Basically go on a virtually no carb diet, it’s not harmful at all, do it with a dietician. You completely change your body’s relationship with insulin and you stop becoming diabetic and you can add years and years and years of quality life to yourself by just lifestyle changes. And then you combine those lifestyle changes with the treatments you need, and people’s health can be utterly transformed. [00:20:52][79.9]

Dr Louise Newson: [00:20:53] And it’s interesting. So before I left general practice, I had a few patients who finally started listening because it’s hard to make changes it, it really is, to lifestyle when you’ve had certain food choices ingrained in you. But they did start and I had a few men actually who would transform, but it meant they came off their antihypertensive, they came off their statins, they reduced their type two diabetes medication, they stopped their antidepressants and they felt so well as well. But that’s not great for Big Pharma, though, is it Rob? There is this sort of thing about the money. When I look at some of the turnovers of these big pharmaceutical companies, the turnover for some of these drug companies is actually in billions, not millions, isn’t it? [00:21:38][45.3]

Dr Rob Galloway: [00:21:39] It’s not good for profits if people stop being diabetic because they need a lot less of all those medications. And actually, we should be investing our money in longevity clinics, in wellbeing clinics. You know, I had a meeting today with the place called for the Wellbeing Pharmacy in Hove, it’s a private pharmacy where they’re starting to do a lot of wellbeing checks, longevity clinics, exercise performance tests and they’ve got a great set up to look at how to improve longevity, improve the health span. And actually if some of that investment was moved that way rather than to treatment the impact could have been massive and I can signpost anybody wants to email me, drrob galloway@gmail.com and I can signpost you to the pharmacy who do these type of things but there’s just so much good which can come from it. [00:22:26][47.3]

Dr Louise Newson: [00:22:26] Yeah, absolutely. No one’s ever too young to start making changes, but the other side is no one’s too old. I think there are quite a few people who think, Well, I’ve always been like this. It’s really difficult and certainly I’ve had some great responses to people in their 70s and 80s who’ve made very simple changes to their lifestyle, usually by a combination of changing their diet, maybe not having as many biscuits with their cup of tea in the afternoon, but also just walking up the stairs rather than using the lift or walking to the bus stop or the next bus stop rather than the first one nearest to the house. And those little things really can be transformational to future health. [00:23:03][36.1]

Dr Rob Galloway: [00:23:04] I completely agree. So I’m involved in a company called Healthy for Longer. It’s about trying to move physical exercise into carers. And when carers go to patient’s homes and also into nursing homes, residential homes, instead of just making the patient a cup of tea, getting them to actually do 15 minutes of exercise. And so this small startup company called Healthy for Longer, the impact they could have on patients is unbelievable. It genuinely is unbelievable because we’ve made a series of exercise videos and the carers are trained into primary health, personal trainers. It’s all evidence based things and I have advised on what access to do and they get these patients who are normally sedentary don’t move, they’re getting weaker and weaker to start lifting weights, start doing simple exercises, and then actually the number of falls goes down, the mental wellbeing goes up. And it’s that type of attitude, that’s where the money needs to be, and that’s when the investment needs to be. And that’s where, you know, you do that. Then for a year, you wouldn’t necessarily need to send them from their home into a nursing home. You won’t need that dependent care. We create that different attitude. It can make such a big difference. [00:24:08][64.9]

Dr Louise Newson: [00:24:09] So how are we going to do this? Is anyone at the forefront of this? [00:24:12][2.8]

Dr Rob Galloway: [00:24:13] The problem is it’s not sexy. What I used to be interested in, I still am, I’m an A&E consultant, you know, a lot of my colleagues work in the helicopter emergency service. They jump out of helicopters, and save people’s lives who’ve had a car accident. That’s quite sexy. Doing a angiogram when someone’s having a heart attack, it’s quite sexy doing CPR, you know? But actually, what we’re talking about, not being rude, is pretty dull. You’re not going to have 24 hours in Louise’s clinic as a TV programme. You’re not going to have 24 hours in longevity. You’re not going to have the new Casualty to be based on someone going through right, this is your risk factors. Why don’t you do, take that, why don’t you take this, why don’t you stop smoking, why don’t you drink less, why don’t you lose weight, why don’t you go and speak to Louise about hormones, because that’s quite dull. What we need to do is make it interesting, get people excited about it, because I’m an older father. I’ve got, I’m 47, I’ve got five kids. My youngest one is three months. I want her to, I can’t cope. I’m struggling to be honest and I am utterly exhausted. But I don’t want my baby daughter to have a 65 year old dad who then dies from stress and a heart attack. I would live to 100. I won’t live to 100 when I’m active and well. And it’s biologically possible. We’ve got a modern society which has got antibiotics and has got clean water, and that’s what used to kill people. And you know, it used to be wars, trauma and infections used to kill people. We’ve got over that Now what kills people is dementia, is diabetes, cardiovascular and cancer. But a lot of that is preventable by lifestyle things. And so actually, I think, you know, I want to live longer to be able to still provide for my family, still work, be interested, do things that excite me because I find life exciting. I want to live longer, healthier. That, to me is exciting, is as exciting as what I used to think it was exciting. And so that’s how we do it. We get people excited. We get a movement of people interested in that holistic way, rather thinking your quacks who are mad, to show the evidence behind it. And you can only do evidence-based medicine. Everything we have to do has to be evidence based. And a lot of people always, and talk about you can only do something if there’s a randomised controlled studies showing it. I always practice best available evidence based medicine. Now, there’s a difference in evidence based medicine and best available evidence based medicine. So there is no randomised controlled studies which show smoking is dangerous. It’s observational studies. We know from observational studies that it’s dangerous. The people who fund the best, you know, what you call the gold standard for groceries are often pharmacy companies or pharmaceuticals. But actually double blind placebo controlled trials and in things like acupuncture, there has been some show they it can work. You know, we can see these differences of a more holistic ways of working, can make a difference. You know, it’s going to be hard to show a randomised controlled study in the dangers of ultra processed food because I would not want to be in the control group who get ultra processed food. But so observational studies will have to show the dangers. But we need to make this patient centric view sexy rather than that individual treatments and the exciting things sexy because then we can really make that transformation of what our NHS needs and what we as individuals need. [00:27:27][193.9]

Dr Louise Newson: [00:27:27] I certainly agree, and some of it doesn’t need huge evidence because a lot of it is common sense as well. You know, and I think we’re forgetting common sense. You know, I grew up in the 70s and we had street parties for the Jubilee in 1977. And I was looking at some photos recently and there was no one overweight. Everyone was lean. Everyone was, but our food was very different. Everything we did was very different. So we have to just go back to basics as well and think about what we’re eating, what we’re drinking, how we’re moving, and that will make a huge difference. So there’s a lot we’re going to do. Even if we do all this. Rob, you will still have a job. People will still have accidents. People will still have heart attacks and strokes. [00:28:08][41.1]

Dr Rob Galloway: [00:28:09] Absolutely. And I want to be there for unpreventable things because at the moment we are utterly overwhelmed. And I can’t, I’m providing treatment, not care, because care is treatment with dignity. I no longer provide dignified care because the NHS, in all honesty, is failing. The medical model that we’ve grown up with, that I’ve taught, that I, has been part of my psyche has failed. And it’s only the last few years when I’ve gone through my own transition of, you know, I was unwell with Crohn’s and depression. My Chron’s is so much better now. I’ve changed my diet. I know I still get anxious, but my upset about things was cured by 5k run every day. You know, I’ve gone through my own journey in how I’ve transformed my health. I think I know I’m stressed because I’ve got five kids and I do night still, but I’m still maintaining a vaguely healthy balance because I’ve relooked at myself. I want to look at the whole population of the people I treat and the current model has failed, is failing. And we can’t just tweak the status quo. We are in an absolute health crisis. And what we mustn’t do is waste a good crisis. We’ve got to use this crisis to transform the health of our population. And it’s a once in a generation opportunity at the moment. [00:29:21][72.6]

Dr Louise Newson: [00:29:22] So right and such a wonderful way to end. But before we end, I always ask for three take home tips and these are going to be quite easy actually. Three things that we can all do because I know however healthy we are, we can always do better. So three things that we can all do that will help keep us healthier for longer. [00:29:41][18.5]

Dr Rob Galloway: [00:29:42] I think number one is think about what you want to be like in 20 years time, 30 years time with your grandchildren. Do you want to lift up your kids and fly them around? Do you want to be able to lift up a suitcase and go on holiday with them? If the answer is yes, then you need to invest in your health. Like you invest in shares you need to invest in health. So can you run 100 metres with your kids? Can you pick up their suitcase and take them on holiday? Can you lift them over your shoulder and fly them in the air? Are you going to be there for your grandchildren’s 18th birthday? Once you realise what your answer is, then everybody knows the answers. Because I could say, number one, stop smoking. Number two, do some exercise. Number three, eat healthy. You know that, so that would be my number one tip. Think about where you want to be. Number two, make things easy to live healthily. So I have a chocolate addiction. I’m utterly obsessed. I love chocolate. And the first thing is I just try never to buy it now in the house. But the third thing is, I say to my kids, If you ever see me eating chocolate, I can guarantee you I will give you £15. I don’t like losing money and I have a fine system. If they catch me eating chocolate or crisps or awful fizzy drinks, I’ll pay that fine. So make it create an environment where it is easy to live healthy. So make habits. So get up in the morning. First thing to do, have some water, go for a run before you do anything or get up. Just make it into a habit. Because if you’re outside of the habit, you won’t do it. So number one, have an am. Number two, have a habit and just trying to think of number three, you didn’t give me any warning for this so if I haven’t thought of a third one. Come back to me. I’ll think of the third thing. [00:31:30][108.6]

Dr Louise Newson: [00:31:31] Well, I think I think number three is empower yourself with information, actually. And make choices that are right for you. [00:31:38][7.0]

Dr Rob Galloway: [00:31:39] I think the days of saying you can’t do it. You can because even though things are hard, it is very hard. You know, ultra processed food is cheaper. It is probably sometimes cheaper to drive than to buy a new bicycle and cycle. But there are things we can do. And so we need to realise where we want to go. We need to make those habits easy. And we need to believe that we can make a difference because actually, we can. [00:32:03][24.2]

Dr Louise Newson: [00:32:04] Perfect. Very good. So thank you so much for your time. I know you’re going off to do more work, but I really appreciate you cramming in this space so we can educate and make people think differently about their health and disease prevention as well. So thanks so much for your time today. [00:32:19][15.8]

Dr Rob Galloway: [00:32:20] Pleasure. Thanks for having me. [00:32:21][0.7]

Dr Louise Newson: [00:32:25] You can find out more about Newson Health Group by visiting www.newsonhealth.co.uk and you can download the free balance app on the App Store or Google Play. [00:32:25][0.0]

ENDS