Health is Wealth (Wellbeing, Diet and Stress) – IC055

Teaser:
Incredible the number of individuals who are vitamin D deficient in this country. So I vitamin D test all of my surgical patients. We have a finger prick, point of care blood tests that we do ahead of the surgical appointment. I would probably say in my patient cohort, 75% are vitamin D deficient. The digital connection that we have with people is like a junk connection, like junk food and the real interpresonal relationship that we have with people is like whole food and whole connection.

Jaz’s Introduction
I agreed to record this episode with Simon a few weeks ago, right? And so it’s amazing how life works, the funny different ways that life works. Because when we agreed on the topic of health and wellness in dentistry, I did not know that two weeks later, I would have a spontaneous pneumothorax, aka a lung collapse, just a few weeks later. And actually, it has completely shaken my life to the core. I’m okay. I’m a little bit short of breath. I have appointments left, right, and center, CT scans, just trying to figure out, piecing it together, why did this happen?

And sometimes when something like this happens, it really gives you an opportunity to evaluate your life. And oh my goodness, there’s been so much evaluation happening in the last eight days. And this episode just came such a wonderful time for me personally as well speaking to Dr Simon Chard our guest today because he is so into nutrition and health and well being and the advice he has to share with us all is so key so foundational and I encourage you to listen the entire way.

You should not miss it. Some of the gems, especially right at the end, are absolutely beautiful. Even if you just take away one thing from this episode, I think you can implement it and improve your health and well being. So you have a better career, a longer career, better health, better relationships, and of course a more fulfilling life and career.

So these are all things that we talk about in this episode. From sleep hygiene, to our diet, to the importance of interpersonal relationships. This podcast episode is full of book recommendations. Me and Simon really connected on all these different books that we like and so we share them.

So what I’ll do is in the show notes, if you scroll down, especially from the Protrusive Guidance app, I’ll just put all those books that we recommend. The most recent one, so a couple that I’m listening to at the moment and every month on the Protrusive Guidance community, I ask you guys, what are you guys reading at the moment?

I can’t believe how many of you are reading dental textbooks. Come on guys. Okay. It’s important. I get it, but I like to know about what non clinical thing are you reading? It’s really important to just not always read clinical dentistry. I want to see you guys reading and listening to non clinical stuff as well.

So the two that I’m listening to this month is Hold On To Your Kids, right? And this is so important because the book talks about how the children of today, if they don’t feel the attachment and connection with their parents, then you know where they’re going to get that attachment void from? They’re going to get it from their peers.

And nowadays, the way society is built up is that actually, we are sort of driving this culture, whereby kids turn 11, 12, 13 and instead of looking to their parents, they are looking to their peers, and it’s like the blind following the blind. So, Hold On To Your Kids by Gabor Maté and the other author I forgot, but really enjoying listening to that, and oh my goodness, The 5 Types Of Wealth.

I’m just into chapter 2 at the moment, I’m listening to it on my commutes. It has just come at such a wonderful time for me. Because of this whole lung collapse issue, I’ve been really reevaluating my life. And so the five types of wealth talks about, okay, one of those types of wealth is financial wealth.

But if it constantly working and chasing that, you are ignoring the four other types of wealth. So let’s see if I can remember this. Okay. So the other types of wealth, which are the most important, the financial one is fifth, because more money does not equal more happiness. We know that already. It does equal more happiness when you are at poverty, right?

If someone is really struggling financially, right? And you inject more money in their life, that will improve their happiness. But once you get to a certain level, It doesn’t matter. You can triple it, quadruple it, 10x it. It’s not going to make your happiness sustainably better for the long term. So that’s why the financial wealth is the last type of wealth.

The other four types of wealth, which are so important that this book covers so far. And again, I haven’t listened to it all. I’m just listening to it. I just want to share it with you because I’m just in the moment. I’m thinking about my health. I’m thinking about the different types of wealth. It’s just brilliant.

And I’ll put that in the show notes and they are time worth. The other one is social wealth, your relationships, the quality of the relationships in your life. And the next two are physical wealth, of course, and mental wealth. Okay. So yes, you can say physical health or mental health, but actually swapping the word health for wealth is really powerful because it gets you to remember that actually this is a type of wealth.

If you want to live a wealthy life, it’s not about just the finances. That’s just one part of being wealthy. If you are poor in those other four, then my friend, you are not wealthy. So anyway, I’ll put those book recommendations in the show notes and you are in for a treat. We cover such a wide array of things.

I really do enjoy these non clinical episodes and I hope you enjoy them too. This one’s not eligible for CPD, but listen, that shouldn’t matter. This is all about your health, longevity. This episode will do wondrous things for your life. So please listen on. I’ll catch you in the outro.

Main Episode:
Dr. Simon Chard, welcome to the Protrusive Dental Podcast. For those of you who don’t know, Simon was up early in the gym, 5. 45, he’s now here recording me. He’s one of these super productive people, and so we want to tap into Simon and think, how do you get everything done? It’s a question that people ask me a lot, and I look at you, Simon. Actually, you know what, what I like to do, Simon, is I like to remember my first encounter of an individual, right? =So every time a guest comes on nowadays, I like to remember the first time someone came my radar and any idea when that might be for you when you came my radar, do you know?

[Simon]
I don’t know. No.

[Jaz]
It was way before even qualifying. It was at students, right? There was an essay prize, British Endodontic society. Right?

[Simon]
Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

[Jaz]
I think I’ve got like third place or second place, right? You got first place. That’s when you annoyingly came in my radar. Do you remember this?

[Simon]
I remember the prize. Yeah, it was the hearty prize.

[Jaz]
That’s the one. That’s the one.

[Simon]
Certainly the highlight of my endodontic career, which is finished very early in my progression. But yes, I went to the pan specialist conference, as the prize for winning that. Yeah, no, that’s a great memory. I didn’t realize that how funny.

[Jaz]
And then I saw you at like BACD and I saw the wonderful things that you did BACD. And then in, with CEREC training, and not that I ever did it, but I just saw you doing some great things early on. And now you’ve just pivoted in a really fascinating way that I’d love to share your story. Like you are a practice principal as well as having real babies and children and family and stuff. You have the baby of parlor and everything you’re doing there. So I’ll let you give your introduction, tell us about yourself and where you are today in the position that you hold and all the different hats that you wear Simon.

[Simon]
Yeah, sure. So, firstly, thanks for having me. It’s my first time on here. It’s a pleasure to be here. I would like to start off by saying primarily I’m a father and a husband. Those things are what I hold core to who I am. Professionally, I would describe myself as a general dentist, but certainly sub specialized down into cosmetic and implant dentistry.

More and more implants nowadays. I’m the past president of the British Academy of Cosmetic Dentistry. As I say, I’m the co founder and CEO of Parla Oral Care, which is a wellness and sustainability focused oral care brand, which is in Sainsbury’s, Waitrose, Boots, Ocado, started as a side hustle, but has rapidly become a very, very large proportion of my day to day activities.

[Jaz]
We were all rooting for you on the dragon’s den. So we saw that. That’s good.

[Simon]
Oh, thank you. Yeah. And then, yes, so I put on my dental practice with my wife, Megan. So we’ve got a seven surgery, multidisciplinary practice, regular dental down in Surrey. And then more latterly, I always like to follow my passions and my sort of moving towards my life mission statement, which I’m sure we can come to later on.

But I saw as you’ve already touched on, I’m a real health and wellness obsessive in my own personal life, and it’s had hugely positive impacts on how I am able to be as productive as I am, and my general mental state, as well as my physical condition, being focused on health and wellness. And so I saw the study back in 2020, from mental protection showing that over 50% of the professional want to leave as a result of their personal well being.

And I thought those figures were shocking and very, very sad and I’m very passionate about our profession and I think there’s unfortunately a lot wrong with it, but I felt that this area was an area that I could maybe offer something unique and different in education around building a life around dentistry to be resilient. Both in body and in mind. So that’s been my more recent focus with regards to the dental growth retreat.

[Jaz]
Interesting stat there with dental protection. The other one that’s noteworthy, obviously we have an international audience here, but the BDA, which is the British Dental Association, it had like something like, it was 18% or nearly 1 in 5 had thoughts about and we’ll just say it taking their own life, right? I’m sorry to everyone to go in this direction, but it’s important that we address it head on because this was a publicly published and this was a fact because this is what we think. And who knows if it’s more or less than that, but that’s the best data we have on that.

And that was absolutely shocking when I came across it. Well, it’s shocking because it’s gruesome. It’s shocking because it’s worrying for everyone, right? That, that high percentage, but it’s one of those sadly things that it’s not surprising with the kind of world we live in. And every time I record an episode, it’s always a pleasure to talk about this wellness topic, right?

Because I often get messages saying Jaz, I love all your clinical stuff. But honestly, keep making the interference costs, because somewhere down the line, if it just helps one person to reevaluate their life, right? Then it means so much to me. And I’m so glad that you’re in this space, but I remember this one story.

So I’m just want to quickly share is, was like a family dinner, like a wider family dinner. And I’m like the only dentist there, everyone is in business, import, export, that kind of stuff in like the Afghani Sikh community that I’m part of, and the guys are talking around and they’re talking about stress and managing day to day stress.

And they all go around, and they’re like, Oh yeah, my supplier’s gotta pay me, and this, that, and the other. That’s the kind of conversation they’re having. And they look at me like, Oh, Jaz, but you’re a dentist. That doesn’t sound stressful. And I, that day, I went home really angry. I was like, how dare they say that, right?

But then I remembered that actually, one day, I remember saying to my cousin, and I was in America at the time, I was at the McDonald’s, right? And they had this thing. If the person serving you doesn’t smile, you get free fries or something. It was actually a real thing in America, right? And I’m being the douche I was at age 17.

I said, Oh, you didn’t smile. And the manager gave me some free fries. Okay. And I remember thinking that they are working at McDonald’s, not stressful. And then it really, it literally took me back years and years. I thought, well, I can’t believe I said that about someone working at McDonald’s because I’m sure at that time, even they were super stressed.

And so stress is one of those perceived things that we all have, but especially in dentistry. So that’s a roundabout way of asking you, Simon, why do you think our profession is in this state that the dental protection was able to publish that? Right? That BDA was able to publish that. And we know what makes a job stressful. What do you think has particularly increased it now that we’re in 2025?

[Simon]
Well, I mean, it’s very, very multifactorial, of course. It’s also very unique to the individual. But I think as a profession, if we talk about the actual job to start with. It’s obviously a very intense environment. You have people coming to see you who arrive with an anxious energy, and we do mirror the energy that is shown to us on a regular basis.

On top of that, we then have to carry out a job which I often relate to painting a Picasso in a 4×4 driving through some sand dunes, in that you’re going to do something with an immense amount of detail and accuracy on a moving target, which is not easy. And then if the results of that Picasso in the 4×4 are anything other than perfect, and without any failure at all, then you have this hugely high degree of litigation, which we see across even the best of clinicians.

I constantly see people who I look up to clinically, and I’ve seen their work, and I’ve seen them on podiums, and they’ve been top of their game for decades, getting these litigation cases against. Now, obviously, we need to be regulated, we need to make sure patient safety is of the utmost importance.

But when you see time and time again, individuals that you know, you’ve known them as a person and you and you’ve seen clinician. You can kind of tell that, like, it’s probably the system’s a bit broken there. So we have this fear of litigation over us as a profession. We have this very difficult working environment where we’re dealing with people who are not necessarily in their best frame of mind when they come to see us.

And then obviously, if you’re a business owner. You then have all of the normal stresses of business ownership just to layer on top of that, which is even more complicated. So there’s physical strain, there’s emotional strain, and there’s legal strain as well. So I think all of that compiles into the situation that you rightly point out, which is that suicidal ideation level in our profession is ridiculously high.

It’s an ongoing joke, or it’s not a joke, definitely not a joke, but it’s ongoing rhetoric within our profession. Oh, second highest risk of suicide. It’s almost like we say with our patients as like a bit of a offhand comment, but it’s really not something that we should be willing to accept as a profession.

I mean, we still see individuals that we know and care about. And I’m sure you’ve had this in the last few years. I certainly have lost friends and mentors to this which is very very sad, but it just keeps on happening. We’re not doing anything about it. We’re accepting it and that’s the thing that I just think we’ve got to do something and it takes all of us talking about it.

It takes people on Podcasts like this letting people know that they’re not alone and letting people know that there are other people that are going through the similar troubles and thankfully, there’s charities like ConfiDental and those sort of charities where people can go and speak to if they’re having these sort of suicidal ideation or really in a quandary.

But yeah, it’s very much a multifactorial thing. And I mean, we can talk about the more general macro issues as well post Covid with regards to loneliness and that sort of thing, which is also playing a big part, especially in younger demographics.

[Jaz]
I like how you approach this angle of the kind of energy that we see in our patients. Like you said, patients are anxious and nervous. It kind of bleeds onto us, right? And so it reminds me of when I was at the BACD recently, I remember being at the dinner and I was sat next to this like young dentist and his girlfriend was with him, non dentist. And she was actually a therapist.

She was actually a therapist, right? For people’s mental health. And what she shared with me was really profound. Because, you’re mentioning how we see these patients, they have their problems, they have their anxieties, and we have to, as a dentist, we kind of have to be like a little bit of a therapist, like a little bit of a counsellor for our patients, right? And then the profound thing that she said to me is that it is a requirement in her profession as a therapist to have a therapist. Did you know that?

[Simon]
I didn’t know that, no.

[Jaz]
I didn’t know that, but to me, as someone who, I pretty much dedicate my Mondays to seeing TMD patients for my sins, right? And I love to help them, but it is extremely emotionally and I hate the word say is draining for me.

It can get another reason. I limited it just to Mondays where I’m the highest energy because I can’t possibly do that all day every day for the rest of my career. It’s going to be a fast track to not a good place. So it made me realize that. Wow. Yeah, that is so true. And I probably would benefit from therapy from having to be a therapist for my patients in a way.

And so that was really an awakening moment for me. And so have you come across like any ways that dentists can access therapy? Do you think in the space that you’re in, you’re very well read up and explored into this wellness and mental health space in dentistry. Do you think that dentists should be having some sort of a therapist or is there sort of a sign that, okay, perhaps we should be talking to someone, talking therapy?

[Simon]
Well, I think there’s an argument that everyone would benefit from some therapy. We’ve all had experiences in our life, challenging experiences, especially in childhood, which play out in the way that we carry ourselves in adulthood. For me, I’ve certainly utilised therapy. It’s been very powerful for me.

Just to be transparent, my sister had cancer when I was seven. She had a bit of bone cancer that meant she was inpatient for six months up in Stanmore, and then she had 23 operations throughout the rest of her childhood as a result of it. Thankfully, she survived thanks to the NHS, and now has a third child on the way.

But that certainly had a negative impact on me. I say negative, it’s an impact on me, which has had both positive and negative outputs. And I’m sure given the number of people that you’ve spoken to on your podcast, certainly when I was running my podcast a few years ago, almost everyone who I spoke to, and these were very, very successful individuals, had some form of childhood incident that had led to their, what would be perceived as success in their professional lives.

And these negative incidences in childhood certainly can have positive and negative impacts. But we all have challenges. And I think just like going to the gym is a way to create a resilient body. We need a mental gym of a certain kind. Now, whether that’s therapy for you or it’s meditation or breath work, we need to create some space to consider our thoughts.

And give our brain a chance to build those muscles in the same way that we do at the gym. Because when that acute period of stress or even acute chronic stress over a more prolonged period presents itself, which it naturally will do in our lives as humans, but also as dentists, when you have this really, really intense, surgical issue or something like that for example.

If you’ve built up that mental resilience already through training ahead of the incident, you’re going to be in a much better position to manage that situation. Simple answer to your question. I think that probably all of us would benefit from some therapy.

[Jaz]
And the strategies like therapy is one strategy that we can employ. And I like the idea that you’re encouraging that rather than wait for that toxic acute stress moment to then consider it that actually we can nip it in the bud right when you’re having, you’re noticing patterns that, okay, maybe not sleeping well, or there are some certain things stressing you out, or you feel as though you need some help to have better coping strategies, day to day.

The acute men’s stress hasn’t yet happened, but then to avoid that or to better manage that. Right? We should be having some sort of help and therapy is one way that we can get that. So I’m glad we can encourage that and talk about that. There’s lots of online institutions available, I think. Is it BetterHelp? Is that one?

[Simon]
BetterHelp. Yeah, that’s the most-

[Jaz]
So I’ve seen ads for that and that looks really good. And the other strategies I use is, like you said, exercise, right? And just having time away from the clinic, exercise. And for a lot of people, that is the same thing. For me, I love to book my holidays a year in advance.

I just know when my downtime is. Like a lot of dentists, we’re commonly, we’re waiting to get stressed and be like, Oh my God, I need a holiday. But then actually you’ve got patients books for the next six weeks. You can’t actually take that whole day. And so that’s the worst way to live.

Unfortunately for me, eight days ago, I had a spontaneous pneumothorax. So my left lung collapsed eight days ago. And so I’m no longer going to Dubai next week for half term with the family, which is something we organized 10 months ago when I saw the x ray of my chest. Okay. And I saw the collapsed lung.

I wasn’t upset about the pain. I wasn’t upset about the shortness of breath. I wasn’t upset about time of work I was just upset about the loss of opportunity to have make these memories with my children, my family at a very special age and the five and two, I’m sure you can relate very much. But as everyone’s saying to me that Jaz, your health is everything, you get through this, you get better.

And then at least you’ll have memories to make in the future rather than if you worry about that now. And so, sometimes like the financial markets, you have these corrections. And I do believe that in life, we also have these very corrective moments, right? And they really make you re evaluate your life.

For the last eight days, I’ve been re evaluating my life. So this podcast came at a really good time, Simon, right? And it really made me think about all things. And so sometimes things just come at you at the right time. So this episode now, chatting with you is the right time for me, because I’m in that really, in that frame of mind.

Someone who, you know, they’ll be scrolling through podcasts, right? They’ll see an episode about temporizing veneers. And then suddenly they say, Oh, you know, mental health. And then, that’ll be the right time for them to listen to this conversation, right? And listen to the strategies that you’re going to share with us.

And so sometimes things do come at the right time. So hopefully for those who are on the right time right now, can you share the strategies that you advise? That can help be it preventive, be it acute management. What are the different strategies that we should be employing as dentists to make sure that we stay mentally fit and resilient?

[Simon]
Yeah, sure. I hope you’re okay. I didn’t realize that you seem in very good health and energy given that circumstance. So yeah, so for me, as I say, as dentists, we’re very good, as you say, with focusing in on the clinical details, must upskill myself in all these clinical skills, but we fail many times in the core parameters of life.

And so the way I’ve structured this, because obviously I’m a dentist, I’ve got a nice little dental acronym, which is SMILE. It’s part of a broader thesis, which is called Great SMILE. Great is more towards building fulfillment in your career, but we can touch on that later, maybe. But for SMILE, it basically stands for Sleep, Mindfulness, Intake, Love and Exercise. And those pillars for me, if you can get those in balance. around your dental life, you’re going to be a much more resilient individual to be ready for whatever life throws at you.

[Jaz]
Are we going to go through each of the letters? It’d be nicer to maybe touch on each one of those.

[Simon]
Yeah, absolutely. So, obviously sleep is the pillar of everything really. We know from our physiology training back in the day that natural killer cells go to work and clean up the body while we’re asleep. The impact on our stress resilience from having both good duration of sleep, as well as a good quality of sleep, as well as a consistent sleep schedule, is very well proven in the research now.

Listen to anything from someone like Matt Walker, who’s one of the preeminent scientists in this sector. Sleep needs to be a big focus. Good quality sleep starts with a good quality evening routine. I like to talk about the 3-2-1 ratio for the pre bed routine, so you want to be trying to keep your food at least three hours before bedtime, not always easy, especially with kids, water, liquid about two hours before bedtime, and then any technology at least one hour before bedtime.

And so if you sort of have a bit of a structure there as to when you start shutting components of your day to day life down, you get a much better sleep situation. You also need to control your sleep environment. So I personally wear an eye mask, which is from Whoop. I talk about this a lot. It’s really lame.

But if you’ve tried my mask before, you might just find them not very comfortable or you don’t really get on with them. Try the Whoop one. It is a little bit more expensive. It’s brilliant. I can’t sleep without it.

[Jaz]
That is a top tip. I’m going to check that out. I mean, Whoop I’ve heard great things about on, when the lady from Whoop appeared on Steven Bartlett’s podcast, and she talked about the impact of consistency on sleep, right?

That, really important thing is that the shift workers are the people who have the worst health outcomes because they’re constantly changing what time they’re awakening and sleeping. So having that consistency is so key. Simon, share your, I mean, you don’t have to share this personal, but like your sleep scores.

And now that you have, what kind of scores? I think Whoop, I’ve never used Whoop. I’m relying on my less sophisticated Samsung Galaxy health. And I like to look at my sleep score. I like to look at my, like, how much REM sleep did I get? How much deep sleep? I don’t obsess over it, but it’s a nice little dashboard of, of how am I doing in the sleep domain of health? So what kind of sleep scores are you achieving?

[Simon]
Well, like you, I have three young kids, so, the predictability of a solid block of seven to nine hours of sleep is challenging, but I’m normally around the sort of 80% mark. I do drink alcohol still occasionally, and it’s very evident on Whoop when you do drink alcohol, the impact that has on your sleep and your sleep architecture.

I’m very fastidious about the amount of time I spend in bed. I control the controllables, and so I know that my sleep allowance will be broken by one of my children at least. At the moment my two youngest, my youngest is almost one, my second, my middle child is about to turn four, so my four year old is coming into the bed basically every night, my baby is obviously crying on a regular basis, so it’s never going to be perfect, but as I say, I make sure that I’m in bed normally by 9pm at the latest.

Which is why I wouldn’t take one of your late night recordings. And obviously, as most people know about me, I wake up early and work out. So I wake up about five. So that normally gives me a good solid block of sleep. And I’m pretty consistent with that as a general rule. Now, I’m not Brian Johnson.

I don’t continue that into the weekend with regards to excluding social events in the evening. As I’ve already mentioned, friends and families is most important to me. And so, having that social calendar is very important as a relatively extroverted individual. That’s my focus when it comes to sleep.

I also make sure I don’t have any caffeine after midday. So the quarter life of caffeine is 12 hours. So whenever your last coffee is, it will have an impact on your sleep quality. Even if you don’t feel that it does, I’ve never had a trouble with sleep latency. I fall asleep very, very easily, but in a endeavor to improve the quality and the depth of my sleep, I exclude caffeine after midday.

I do have about four double espressos before midday. So as I’ve already mentioned, I’ve got very young kids and I love coffee. But after that point, I stick to something softer. So, yeah, that’s-

[Jaz]
Just before we continue to the next letter, but just on the topic of caffeine, once, sometimes you go into a rabbit hole and so reading about caffeine and how it works and stuff. So the ideal time to have coffee would be not straight after you wake up. It’s an hour afterwards. You want to let the, some sort of biochemistry to happen naturally before you start introducing the caffeine.

[Simon]
The adenosine, receptors.

[Jaz]
There you are. You’re a very clever man, right? So all the good stuff happening in your brain. So you have it an hour afterwards which is good. And then yes, have the next one a couple hours after, or, or soon. And then after a certain point, like you say, midday’s a great rule of thumb, stop it. And so I’ve been employing that as well, and I think that works really well for me and I would vouch for that.

Great. So sleep is such an important thing. It’s one of those things that we all know we should be doing, but it’s sometimes it takes a conversation, a reminder, a book, why We Sleep by Matthew Walker, which the whole summary of the book is steep, is super important. Guys, please do it. Let’s talk about the next letter, my friend.

[Simon]
Yeah, absolutely. So M stands for Mindfulness. So this is a broader terminology to cover things like meditation as well as mindfulness or breath work. And meditation for me is something that I’ve been doing now, God, probably for 10 years, I would guess. I tried all sorts of different apps and systems.

And at the moment I’ve settled on using the Waking Up app from Sam Harris. So if anyone’s interested in try to build the habit of meditation, because building that consistency is, I think, the hardest thing in meditation. Then I would try their 30 day introductory course that I found to be very, very useful.

And I did that 30 day course probably a couple of years ago now, and now I use his daily guided meditation every day. And so why meditation? Well, the research in meditation is incredibly robust. People may think it’s woo woo. It’s not at all, it’s as effective as exercise with regards to its reduction in mental health issues.

They actually show that after eight weeks of consistent meditation on MRI scans, they can show that the amygdala reduces in size just after eight weeks. So the amygdala, obviously, our sort of fight and flight fear center, where a lot of our negative emotions stem from actually reduces inside after just eight weeks.

So the neurochemical and neuroanatomical impacts of meditation are really profound. For me personally, I found that it has a very good acute stress reduction impact. And it also has a chronic stress reduction impact. And I love things like that. Something, same with exercise, which we’ll come on to later on, but anything that gives me an immediate positive reinforcement and that I know is going to give me a long term positive reinforcement as well, I think is a really great habit to try and build into your life.

Now, people say they don’t have enough time. I meditate normally for 10 to 15 minutes a day on the guided meditation. You can toggle it up or toggle it down depending on how long you’ve got. I calendarize this into my diary. Because again, I think that the consistency of meditation is where people fall down.

Doing it only when you’re stressed doesn’t really work. You need to build that daily habit. And so I calendarize it and I calenderize it at 145. So when I’m in the clinic, all of my team know when I’m going off to my facial aesthetics room or oscillation recovery room, I’m going to go meditate. And so, I remove myself from the hum and buzz of the surgery and have those 15 minutes, which I find to be really, really rejuvenating.

I used to worry about not having a coffee at 2 p. m. after lunch. Now I find that meditation re energizes me for the afternoon session. And that’s very, very powerful. I don’t know, do you meditate at all?

[Jaz]
I use Balance app and I use it at night before sleeping, which helps me to have a nice sleep basically. You recently commented on one of my Instagrams about your favorite book, our mutual favorite book, The Almanack of Naval Ravikant. And one of the things he says is try and do it before sleep or during sleep. So that, in case you mess up the meditation during your sleep, well, at least you fell asleep.

If it didn’t fall asleep, well, you just meditated, which is a nice introduction. It was like nice, easy gateway drug into full on meditation. What you were really saying here, Simon is you are appealing to or satisfying the spiritual health as well, because meditation is form of embedding spirituality.

Now, for some people, Simon, like for example, our Muslim colleagues will play pray five times a day, okay? Our Sikh colleagues have their rituals of prayer and then prayer time and that kind of stuff. And meditation for me is very much like a deep thing, whereby it’s like, one of my religious colleagues, they say, I’m praying.

I feel good. I feel relaxed. Meditation is totally a form of that. You don’t have to be religious. And by meditating, you are appealing or appeasing your spiritual side. So super important. That’s the M which is Mindfulness. What’s the I, which is Intake, but is that diet?

[Simon]
Just to jump back on to meditation and mindfulness for two seconds, I completely agree with regards to the prayer and meditation side of things. I think for those individuals that don’t have a religious faith, they shouldn’t push away the concept of spirituality because we all need a spiritual component to our lives, whether that’s an individual religion or it’s your own view on on the world. But I think it’s really, really important. The other thing I just wanted to jump on there was you said mess up around meditation.

And obviously I love me about so I would never say anything against them. But the concept of messing up and meditation is a fallacy. And it’s where I see most people fall down. They say, oh, I’ve got a really busy brain. I can’t meditate. I just start thinking about other things. People need to realize that actually the process of becoming aware that you are thinking about something and then coming back to the breath or whatever the type of meditation that you’re doing, a mantra or something, that concept of awareness.

That is meditation, like that’s all you need to do so you actually can’t mess it up because even if your brain does get busy and you realize it, you then come back to the breath, you’re then meditating and over time you will be more in control of your brain and therefore you’ll find that you have less of those incidences. So, just wanted to jump on that point quickly, but yes, so moving on to I. So I kind of crowbarred this letter in, to make sure that my SMILE acronym works.

[Jaz]
It works though!

[Simon]
It does work.

[Jaz]
‘Cause it covers liquids and solids.

[Simon]
So yeah, so everything that we imbibe obviously has a huge impact on our physiology and our physiology has an impact on our psychology as Tony Robbins has a classic quote saying. And so, yes, intake is a big, big part of mental health as well. Loads of really, really robust studies looking at this, the PREDIMED study, the SMILE study, all looking at the impact of our diet on our health. Huge reduction in anxiety and depression associated with a high quality diet. I don’t like to dive down the diet rabbit hole too much. And-

[Jaz]
Because that is so polarizing, isn’t it? It’s so different, very, very passionate vegans. You have very, very passionate carnivores. I have my own theory. I’d love to share in a moment, but I’d love to hear what does Simon do?

Because I look at you as someone who you’re very clever. You’re very well researched. I feel like you’ve done your homework, right? And before you make a health decision about yourself, you’ve checked out all the facts and you’ve done what works well for you. In the dental world, when I’m unsure about handling of dental materials, I’ll message Chris O’Connor and I’ll ask him, dude, what do you do?

And whatever he does, I will do basically. I look at some people, I think, okay, they’re really clever. Whatever Alan Burgin is doing, whatever Chris is doing, I’m going to just do what they’re doing. And so I’m looking at you like, okay, fine. I wonder what approach Simon has taken because if someone like Jordan Pearson, he’s gone full carnival, right.

The last time I saw, right. And so I’m thinking, hmm, there’s got to be something to it. If someone so clever has done that. Prav Solanki is someone I really admire in the health space. He is a massive faster. He’s a huge on fasting, which I adopted as well in my life, which I’m probably going to guess that you have as well. But he’s a vegan and he went through a keto phase as well. So it’s just nice to know, okay, what have people internalized and what works for them? Because it’s different for everyone.

[Simon]
Absolutely. I think that’s the most important point. What works for me doesn’t work for another person. Even with things like fasting, there’s huge gender disparities with regards to the impact of fasting on the body.

Something that Megan, my wife and I talk about quite a lot, but my view to diet. I like to keep it very, very simple, so I call it Whys, so W H Y S, so the core pillar is W, whole food. It’s as simple as that. I try to go as close to the raw ingredient as I can do, and I try and avoid anything that has multiple ingredients bound together in a pre packaged environment.

So, I would much rather make my own bolognese sauce from more ingredients than go to a Dolmio where inevitably they’ve used rapeseed oil and they have got a load of other stabilizers and preservatives in that environment. Now, I know from my experience with Parla, obviously we’re sold in supermarkets, that I don’t think there’s enough restrictions on products and suppliers who sell into these supermarkets as to the types of ingredients that they can put into their products.

I think it’s relatively lapsed. There are certain regulations in place, but just because it’s in the supermarket doesn’t mean that it’s good for you. And so, my big focus, whether you’re a vegan or a carnivore, is get as close to the source as possible. And talking of source, make sure that your sourcing is as good as possible as well.

So for me personally, I am a omnivore. Anyone that’s followed me on social media knows that I love steak and I go to my local farm shop where the steak is sourced from the local area, it’s grass fed, and I make sure that it’s of the highest, most quality. Now, not everyone can do that because those steaks are very expensive, comparatively, but I would, for example, 20 pounds.

A chicken from Tesco’s for their cheapest chicken is two pounds. How can there be such a disparity in the price of those? Now, there’ll be inflation in the farm shop, I’m sure, for the experience. But similarly, the quality of the experience of that animal, as well as the quality of the experience of actually the output, will be very, very different.

So whole food is number one, and the sourcing of that whole food. HY stands for hydration. So I think that we’re vastly dehydrated as a species. There you go. I’ve got mine here. And not wanting to sound like too much of a podcast bro, but I do love Eloments. Eloments tea is how it’s spelt, which is a hydration sachet, which has potassium, magnesium, and sodium in it.

I drink that every morning. That’s the first thing I do when I wake up. I have this, basically, which is a liter with one of those sachets in it. And I found that actually rehydrating a huge impact on my clinical performance. So I would find in the afternoon, especially towards the end of the day, I would start getting a headache. I would get a bit tired. And actually, when I started using this rehydration sachet, just one a day, I found that actually all of those symptoms pretty much completely evaporated.

[Jaz]
I haven’t heard of that. I’ll check it out. Thank you.

[Simon]
Oh, it’s brilliant. Oh, it tastes incredible as well. Very, very clean ingredient there. And yes, it’s a great product. There’s other ones out there. Humantra, there’s a lot of other similar brands, but The Eloment Tea, which is the original American brand, I found to be really, really good. Their orange salt, especially, it’s very good flavor. So, that’s H Y and then S is just supplementation.

So as I say, I tried to eat a very broad diet, high in fiber, high in protein. I have about two grams of protein per kilogram of body weight, and that’s quite a lot. But then anything that I can’t find in a well-balanced diet, I supplement for. So my main supplement recommendations are vitamin D3 with K2.

So I use a sublingual spray from a company called Bare Biology. incredible the number of individuals who are vitamin D deficient in this country. So I vitamin D test all of my surgical patients. We have a finger prick point of care blood test that we do ahead of the surgical appointment. I would probably say in my patient cohort, 75% are vitamin D deficient.

Or certainly sort of low. And obviously, vitamin D, some of you get some from diet, but largely converted in your skin. And obviously, we don’t get very much sunshine in this country. We spend our life indoors. And so we’re not getting enough vitamin D. And obviously, the darker your skin is, the less the sun is penetrating through it, and therefore, the less conversion of vitamin D as well.

So I recommend everyone to supplement vitamin D. Has to be vitamin D3 with K2. You need K2 for absorption. You also need magnesium for absorption. So I use a product called Magnesium Breakthrough which is sort of a broad spectrum magnesium. There’s different types of magnesium, which have different roles.

That is helps with sleep as well. Again, a lot of us magnesium deficient. And so that’s a really easy one that I take before bed. And then Omega three, I use, again,  Bare Biology, Omega three, you need to be careful with the sourcing of your Omega three, because you want to make sure that it’s been well vetted.

The bare biology one doesn’t give you those horrible fish burps, which I used to find with some of the Omega threes out there. So I really liked that product. And then a good quality whey protein I take. Obviously if you’re vegan, then making sure your protein levels from a plant based source is really important. And what else do I take? AG1 I take every day as well, which is, are you familiar with AG1?

[Jaz]
Oh, I thought it was green. Is that from Huel or is that different? Because I know Huel do a green.

[Simon]
Huel have their own greens product based off AG1 basically. I wouldn’t be able to compare the two, but AG1, it’s basically just a broad spectrum sort of super greens type product. Has pre and probiotics in it as well.

[Jaz]
It’s like powder that you put into smoothie and stuff, right? Is it like that?

[Simon]
That’s it, yeah.

[Jaz]
It’s nice to have recommendations is like, as I look to you, you’ve gone deep into this, which is great. And I’m going to look into magnesium now. I’m going to look into the omega three that I’m taking at the moment. So that’s really, really good, good tip there. One book I could recommend to everyone is, Metabolical by Robert Lustig. Have you come across this book? I’ve never heard this One. So one of the dentists in the community, Tom, recommended this Tom Levine from the U S, it’s got a fantastic chapter on dentistry.

It’s actually got really, really good chapter on dentistry as well. It’s really well rounded. And it is all about how the very first principle, the W, whole foods about just like the book, ultra processed people, the big message is if it has a nutrition label on it, you probably shouldn’t be having it right.

And try and I love the fact that they say, try and go as raw as possible. So definitely me and my family home, I’ve been making this change more and more in the last few months to make sure that we are reducing our processed food intake and and I think for my children as well I really look at the kind of junk that kids have access to and trying to reduce that process. So metabolical I’ll put the in the show notes plus there’s anything that Simon recommends. I’ll put that show notes as well. Next one was L.

[Simon]
Yes. So L stands for Love and interestingly, love is reflective of basically your interpersonal relationships. And I mentioned the Great SMILE as a total acronym before great being the fulfillment arm of what we talk about on the retreat. The only thing that sits in both camps. is your relationships with other human beings. And this is one of the reasons that I wanted to create a physical, in person event, as opposed to just something online. Because our interpersonal relationships have never been poorer as a society. We’ve never been more connected as a human species. But we’ve never felt so alone.

And that is based on the research. If you look at, they did a big, big study back in 2022, looking at how lonely people felt and the impact it was having on their personal well being. And what they showed was in the youngest demographics, so in the 18 to 24 year olds, they found that around 60 percent of them self reported that their loneliness was having a negative impact on their personal well being.

Whereas the 65 plus age bracket, who you would have thought are getting older, their friends are dying, etc, etc. Not that 65 is that old, but these, you tend to see a downward curve of interpersonal relationships as you get older. They self reported only 25% of them were experiencing loneliness.

So, that to me was really, really shocking. 18 to 24 year olds, your most, for me, I was out all the time. I remember talking Monday night, Tuesday night, Wednesday night. It was the most social period of my life. And so I found that really, really worrying. And certainly if you look at the research on being lonely, if you’re self reporting as lonely, it has such a negative impact on your longevity, on your health.

But clearly on your mental health, it’s as bad as smoking 15 cigarettes a day for your longevity. And it is so, so important. And I’ve heard this brilliant thing yesterday from Sahil Bloom, which I don’t know if I could describe it any better.

[Jaz]
No way! You’re listening to, are you reading Five Types of Wealth?

[Simon]
I’ve just bought it. Yeah.

[Jaz]
Dude, I was going to actually recommend it on this podcast with you, man. I’m loving it so far. Absolutely loving it so far.

[Simon]
Yeah. And I was literally reading it last night before I went to bed. But it’s amazing. The clearly we’re very similarly minded individuals because a lot of the stuff we talked about in there is exactly the stuff. This book’s just been released so I didn’t read it first and then made the retreat but it’s very very similar stuff and he said that the digital connection that we have with people is like a junk connection, like junk food and the real interpersonal relationship that we have with people is like whole food and whole connection and I just think that’s such a beautiful way to describe it because we think that they’re the same.

It’s like junk food and whole food. Oh, they’re the same. They’re both food. They both look like food. They both taste like food. But actually, the impact on our body is so vastly different. And we are, by our nature, a tribal species. That’s how we’ve managed to out compete all the other species on this planet, is by working together and learning from each other and telling stories to each other and working as a network.

And so, that’s why we react so viscerally and it has such an impact on us when we receive negative feedback online and those sort of things, because if you were rejected by the tribe back in our ancestral times, then you would die. Whereas if you were kept within the tribe and kept safe, then that’s where you would thrive.

And so this personal relationship piece, I think, is so, so important. And More and more nowadays, we need to be creating the time and the space to do it because we can be so guilty. The whole premise of Sal’s new book is that we’re also focused on money and we’re not focused on the elements of life, which are really the most important.

And that’s why I start with who are you, what do you do with, actually I’m a dad and I’m a husband first, because those are the relationships that have obviously caught my circle. But, we need to be creating a life where we do emphasize the connection with other individuals, whether it be friends or family, or even our colleagues.

I mean, I see so many colleagues just on their phones, just head down at lunchtime, as opposed to actually Interacting with each other, whereas I see my older team members at the practice, like my dad, for example, who still works there, just very much head up, engaging, and I think that’s one of the reasons why we’re seeing more and more mental health issues in dentistry is that actually we’re going so into ourselves and into our devices.

When actually we should be engaging with others. So yes, the love side of things or the interpersonal relationships, I think is vital to our mental resilience and it’s something that we need to make the space on. If we have time, I would love to talk about my value based calendar idea, which I think is one of the best things that we do on the retreat.

It basically looks at your calendar. So we have a blank calendar, which I’ve arbitrarily broken up into 35 time blocks across the week day daylight hours. So we sort of leave the evening and sleep onwards as a given, but looking at your calendar and let you physically look at your calendar and go back and write out what your calendar is currently.

And then we block out each of the different activities into various buckets. So it’ll be friends and family. It’ll be spirituality, it’ll be fitness, it’ll be work. all these different categories and then basically tally it up and see, you say that you care about friends and family. You say you care about fitness.

You say you care about mindfulness. Well, let’s see what the numbers show about actually how you’re living your life, because that is really how we’re going to tell what is most important to you? And if you’re working six days a week and you’re not having time for friends and family and not having time for exercise, well, guess what?

Your output is going to be in 10 years. Yes, you might have a great profession, but you’re not going to have those interpersonal relationships. You’re not going to be healthy and without your health. What? What is there? So that I think is, I mean, it’s something people can do at home. As I say, we do it collaboratively on the retreat.

We all do our existing calendars. Then we go blank slate right now. Yeah. Look at your calendar and actually, and Megan and I do this all the time, like we’re discussing a new opportunity that Megan’s got on the cards at the moment. And I’m like, right, let’s go back into our calendar. And she literally did this to me.

She showed it to me in the sauna the other night. I was like, let’s go show me what your time blocks are like with this new opportunity. And she’s like, right, I’ve got this, this and here I’ve got, I’m going to block this out for the kids here. I’ve got this, this and this is so practical. And it really will have such, I think it’s probably the thing that people can take away the most from the conversation today is if they do that activity, live consciously instead of unconsciously, it’s such a powerful thing to do. And I just think it gives you so much control over what your life looks like. You’ve already mentioned that you do from the sounds of it, a value based annual calendar with regards to getting your holidays locked in and then getting over and building everything else around them. I do a very similar thing. Yeah. It’s really, really powerful. So, have a look at your calendar and see what it looks like.

[Jaz]
Totally. Because everyone knows we should be doing all those things, exercising, prioritizing sleep, but to know and not to do is not to know, right. It’s implementation is the, really the magic of it. And to just pause and audit your life is so powerful. And to use that calendar approach is really good because that is actionable. That is day to day management that can have future repercussions. So absolutely love that. And going back to. The L of love, so, so key and two things that reminded me of is my colleague, George Andre Cardoso.

He said this wonderful thing to me when I was in Portugal with him. He also is just very much like you, Simon, things that he believes in. I just, love the guy so much. And he told me that Jaz, life is not about the destination. It’s not even about the journey. It’s about the people along the way.

And so it just highlights that about interpersonal connections. And then one of my favorite books, Outliers, by Malcolm Gladwell, the first chapter about the power of community, right? And how in these communities where they have a good, tight knit community, that the health outcomes were better overall.

And that was really eye opening all those years ago when I read that. I’m just going to get you to now just do E and then we’re going to just talk about your retreat as well. Cause it’s sounding really, really cool. Like a really cool exercise. And I know we spoke about Instagram. I would love to come to one of your retreats one day, but at that phase of life, I am with the kids, but never say never, and for some people that might work out actually, but just tell us about the E of SMILE so we just complete the chain.

[Simon]
Absolutely. Yeah. So E stands for Exercise. Exercise obviously one of the the most powerful tools in our armamentarium with regards to physical and mental health. As Peter Attia said, if it was a drug it would be the most potent and most ubiquitously used drug that we would all be doing.

But unfortunately as it requires activity and input, it’s less used than it should be. And so I break up my exercise recommendations into four pillars. So we have stability, we have strength, we have anaerobic and we have aerobic. Those are the pillars recommended by Peter Attia with regards to longevity and health span.

And that’s a big, big focus of mine. And so I’ve built out my personal exercise routine based on those. So has anyone that follows me on social media will know I work out every morning. I share my workout every morning because I think that firstly, it’s accountability for me. But also I get so many lovely messages from people saying that it’s inspired them to get out and work out and waking up at 5am and working out every day is the most powerful change that I’ve made to my life, full stop, end of story.

It’s made such an impact on my mental health, on who I believe I am, on my physical strength, on how I feel, on my lower back pain, on all these things that can be just sort of a low grade issue in our lives. And so my weekly routine, as I say, is split amongst these different types of exercise. So I do Brazilian Jiu Jitsu first thing Monday morning, I then do strength training, I then do a high intensity workout, I do a Zone 2, sort of long distance, low heart rate run or Peloton, and then I’ll do a sort of shorter Zone 5 which is sort of a very high intensity workout. That’s all with a view to improving my body’s resilience to stress and also improving my longevity and health span as well. So as I say again, consistency is the most important variable here. It doesn’t matter what you do, it just matters that you do something.

That’s why I work out every day. Some people say, do you not need a rest day? Because I vary the types of workout that I’m doing. I don’t need a rest day because my Brazilian Jiu Jitsu training is very, very different to my strength training, which is very different to my long distance running. And so, the variability gives me rest in different physiological systems, I guess, for want of a better term, but obviously exercise being good for you is a trite conversation because everybody knows that. But again, I just need to reinforce the importance of it with regards to your disease prevention as well. I mean, reduction in cardiovascular disease, obviously, reduction in diabetes, reduction in Alzheimer’s, reduction in cancer risk, reduction in anxiety, depression.

I mean, the list goes on and on. And actually, if you look at the study showing the impact of exercise on depressed individuals versus SSRIs, it’s vastly better than antidepressants with regards to its efficacy against depression.

[Jaz]
This is why for my TMD patient, Simon, I prescribe a 10 minute walk every day. It’s just people who are in the rut of chronic pain, they really get into these bad habits of not exercising, even just a walk, right? Because it’s so debilitating for them. But just getting to do 10 minutes walk a day is a very nice, easy way to get them into exercising, get them moving again.

And this is all so powerful, the power of movement. And I’m very, very glad that you shared the whole SMILE with us. Before I invite you to tell us about your very cool retreat, just one burning question I have, which I know people can be thinking, right. Father of three, Parla, principal, health and fitness obsessive in a good way.

Cause you know, I always say to my wife, right. That look, there’s so many things that could have been addicted to, right? It could have been drugs, it could have been this and the other, but just be grateful that I’m doing all these good things in life. So let’s be grateful for that. Let’s celebrate that. Okay. How do you fit it all in?

[Simon]
Well, I mean, firstly, I have my value based calendar and so I’m very strict with my timeframes and the things that I value are the things that go into my calendar and I have my core values and my life mission statement written in the notes on my phone. I looked at all of the opportunities that are presented to me through the filter of those two things, as well as and again, Sahil’s, I think, also talks about a very similar concept, which is quite amusing, which is this whole, I call it a hundred year old mindset. He calls it 80 year old. I’ve got obviously longer aspirations for my lifespan than this. But it comes down to lying on your deathbed, age 100, looking back at your life.

How would you wish that you’d lived your life in that retrospective manner? And that’s how I look at all of the activities that I carry out and all of the new opportunities that are presented to myself. As I say, I have the time to do all of these things because they’re all things that fill me up emotionally.

They’re all things that bring me more towards my purpose of my life mission statement. And therefore, as again, as Neval says, I think when you’re doing work that other people see as work, but that you see as play, it doesn’t feel like work to you. And so you can do more. So things like Parla, for example, yes, of course, it’s had its challenges.

God, it’s been so much harder than I was expecting it to be. But I’m also so, so passionate about the project. And I feel like it’s got that sweet spot of doing good. And being unique and building and growing and these are all things that are really, really core to who I am. So, that I think is how I’m able to do so much is that the things that I’m doing, I’m not doing them for purely financial reasons.

Of course, finances are important and I need to be able to provide for my family. And I like to go on holiday a lot and things are getting more and more expensive nowadays. But, that’s not the only thing that drives me and therefore I think I’ve got a lot more energy to put into these things.

[Jaz]
It’s about being, like you said, just purposeful about what you commit to and then has to, the main thing you said is being aligned with your mission state and aligned with your value based calendar. So these are all things I imagine that people, when they come on retreats, they get to experience and go through. So, I think you have one coming up. I’d like to open up the mic to just say, look, tell us about, invite us to your retreat. Where is it? What do you have planned? I personally want to say that I’m a big fan of these kinds of things.

The last one I was invited to by Andre Cardoso, again, I couldn’t go, family situation, this one as well. I can’t wait to take my family to a retreat where it’s focused about all these such important things. Like how many clinical courses do we go on, right? We go on so many clinical courses. And I’m always, always advocating for every clinical course you do, go on a non clinical one, which is why I’m more than happy to shine a light on the retreat you have planned. Please tell us more.

[Simon]
Oh, that’s very kind. So yeah, so the next retreat is on the 19th to the 21st of March. So next month it is at the beautiful Wilderness Reserve in Suffolk, which is, I think, 15, 000 hectares. We have the exclusive use of this beautiful converted barn called the Chapel Barn. There’s 15 rooms all around this courtyard.

There’s a wild swimming lake on the site. It’s got its own pool and sauna and all these sort of things. And the focus with the event and the reason that I built it is really to give a space for individuals to, again, be conscious about the way that they’re living their lives. So to give them the tools and the frameworks based on evidence, based on research, not just based on my own experiences to make the changes that they want to see in their life.

So whether it be to have a more fulfilling career and they’re in a rut in their career, and they don’t know why they’re doing what they’re doing. I see this so much in dentistry because so many people got into dentistry because their parents told them it was a good profession or because they thought it was going to make them loads of money.

And then they’re five years in, they’re 10 years in, they’re like, what am I doing? I’m not even enjoying this. So taking a step back to reevaluate why they’re doing what they’re doing, instead of just following their peers and creating a life that, that fills them up and gives them a real purpose. I know why.

So building up around that, we call that a vision for victory. That’s the first part. The second phase is building a resilient body and mind. So that’s health and mindfulness and stress resilience, as we discussed today. So we go into that sort of smile and put him in a lot more detail. And then we also have Jamie Clements, who’s an incredible breathwork coach, probably the best one in the country. He comes in and does a workshop for us, which is brilliant and gives us some tools where we haven’t touched on breathwork that much today, but tools that can, again, manage acute stress as well as improving our long term resilience to stress.

And then Angela Foster, who was my health and performance coach for many years, brilliant international speaker, especially health and stress for professionals. She used to be a solicitor herself, so she’s very, very well versed in burnout and all those sorts of things, which again is a huge leap, large issue in our profession.

So she comes in and gives us a talk on stress management. And then finally, day three is all around implementing and accountability. So we go through all of the tools to implement the habits and the identity based habits, which is a topic that I’m really passionate about, to implement all of the things that we’ve spoken about over the first two days.

So it’s very much building up towards, right, how am I going to implement this into my life? And there’s a lot of fun as well. Obviously the wild swimming is always a bit of a highlight. It’s going to be in March, it’s going to be cold than it was last year in September. But yeah, if people are interested, then feel free to send me a DM at Dr. Simon Chard as my handle. Or, check out Dental Growth Retreat on socials or on my website, simonchard.com.

[Jaz]
Amazing. And like I said, guys, if you’re not doing enough nonclinical, I’m hoping you’ve resonated a lot with Simon today. I thought this be a half an hour conversation. We’ve gone for an hour. I was learning a lot from you.

A lot of it was validation, which I love. I love the importance of validation. But some new things I’m going to check out based from you, different frames. So Simon, thanks for sharing your time with us, sharing your journey. Your expertise. And I think you’re doing a great thing does this focus on health and wellness and dentistry is much needed.

I welcome it. And I think I’d love to promote more of what you’re doing. So definitely check out what in the show notes guys, I put Simon’s website for the retreat, also his Instagram. And if you liked it, please send a message on Insta. Tell him how good this was and what changed. I would love you to comment below.

What changed? What’s one thing in a read? What’s one supplement you can say? What’s one thing in change by sleep, whatever one change they can do. I’d love to read it. If you comment below. Simon, thank you so much for coming on today.

[Simon]
Thanks for having me Jaz.

Jaz’s Outro:
There we have it guys. Thank you so much for listening all the way to the end. There is no CPD for this one. There’s no CE credits for this one, but I’m hoping, I’m really hoping that you gained a lot. Are you going to subscribe or listen to a book that we recommended? I can take on one of the Simon’s health tips or supplement tips or whatever. Anything you do that is actionable from this podcast, I think will actually greatly impact you in a positive way for your health and well being.

If you have that warm, fuzzy feeling inside you, then please don’t just keep it inside you, share it. Please share this episode. It’s how the podcast grows and how we’re able to impact more dentists and how Team Protrusive, my beloved Team Protrusive, who I’m so grateful for, to edit and publish and do all those wonderful things to make sure that I can have time with my family and stuff.

So together as a team, we can do more. Do check out Simon Chard’s links, I’ll put those in the show notes. And thanks again for tuning in. I’ll catch you same time, same place next week. Don’t forget to subscribe. Bye for now.