Category Archives: Karan Raj

This NHS Doctor’s Sleeping Hack Can Make You Fall Asleep Within Minutes

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If you suffer from insomnia or even just have occassional bouts of being unable to sleep, you’ve likely tried every trick in the book.

From sleepy girl mocktails to magnesium supplements, sometimes the sleep just isn’t coming and you’re left wide awake in bed counting down how many hours of sleep you’d get if you fell asleep riiight… now.

It’s unbearable and knowing the health impacts of losing sleep such as mental health problems and even diabetes doesn’t do much to make you feel more rested.

However, according to one NHS surgeon, there is something we don’t do enough and it actually works as a ‘biological power off button’.

How to fall asleep faster, according to a health expert

Dr Karan Rajan, an NHS surgeon, social media creator and all-round health expert revealed that there is a sort of ‘Spotify shuffle’ we can do to help ourselves doze off faster.

In a recent Instagram reel he said: “If you’re struggling to fall asleep, this is the biological equivalent of holding down the power button.

“When you’re in bed, it’s easy to get into repetitive, disrupting thought patterns. This can trigger a stress response which keeps you awake, the more you’re awake, the more unwanted thought patterns you get, meaning less sleep.”

However, he revealed that a sleep hack named ‘cognitive shuffling’ can break this cycle by taking away your active cognitive effort (overthinking.)

Dr Rajan said: It’s the human brain version of pressing shuffle on your mind Spotify playlist.”

How to do cognitive shuffling

First, choose a word. The word that Dr Rajan chose was aptly “bedtime”.

From there, for each letter of that word, think of another word starting with that letter and visualise it.

So, for example, for the letter ‘B’, you could choose words like bear, brace, bones, bench.

Keep doing that until you’re out of words or bored and then move on to the next letter.

Dr Rajan urges that you visualise these words too as it simulates micro-dreams.

He said: “This trick helps to calm racing thoughts, so if your sleep software is malfunctioning, it’s worth giving it a go.”

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The Simple Reason Why You’ve Been Storing Your Cheese Wrong

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Have you found that no matter how well you seal plastic food bags, cheese always tends to go off inside of them very quickly?

Yes, me too. I find myself reaching for the cheese a couple of days later, only to see that it’s suddenly inedible.

Well, it’s not because we haven’t sealed them effectively, according to one medical expert. It’s much more simple than that and in part comes down to the types of cheese we’re having.

Dr Karan Rajan explained in a recent TikTok video that if you’ve been wrapping your cheese in food bags, you’ve been setting yourself up for failure.

How to properly store cheese

So if, like me, you thought that most foods could be refrigerated in the same way, this will be a cold awakening. (Sorry.)

Dr Rajan explained: “Once you finish gobbling your cheese like a hungry little rat, try and avoid putting your cheese in a plastic bag. Especially softer cheeses which have a higher water content.”

These include Havati, Mozzarella, and Gouda.

He said: “This is because moisture can get trapped in the plastic bag and cover the cheese surface. This provides a breeding ground for bacteria and mould — and not the tasty kind.”

Instead, Dr Rajan recommends using cheese paper, which actually is a thing, yes. Alternatively, parchment paper is a good choice, too.

If you are still keen to use plastic bags, Dr Rajan recommends first wrapping the cheese in wax, parchment or cheese paper before placing it inside of the bag.

Fortunately, harder cheeses like Parmigiano can withstand plastic bags no problem.

He did also point out that you could just eat the food very quickly, ‘for science, of course’ and to reduce food waste.

Of course.

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If You’ve Ever Wondered Why You Fart More On Planes, This Is For You

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We don’t talk enough about the sensory experiences on flights. The popping ears, the flip of the stomach as take-off happens, the vast array of confined noises all happening at once… it’s a lot.

However, the one sensation that we really don’t talk enough about is just how much more gassy we are when we’re thousands of feet in the air. It’s fine, you don’t have to say it out loud, we’re saying it for you.

There’s something so cruel about experiencing excessive gas when you quite literally can’t escape the situation but it really is normal and if you experience this, you’re not alone.

In fact, according to Dr Karan Rajan, it’s pretty much unavoidable.

Why you need to fart more on planes

In a reel posted on Instagram, the doctor explained that because the cabin pressure decreases which leads to the air inside of your intestines increasing by up to 30%.

Then, since your colon has limited space and can only expand so much, a natural consequence is to release the fumes. While you can try to hold farts in, not only is that going to leave you feeling uncomfortable, it’s also almost impossible on a flight.

This is because the pressure of the gas travelling down will take over the integrity of your anal sphincter, and some stinky fumes will make their way out. Sorry.

If you’ve ever wondered why the food on planes is very carb-heavy, this is why. Low fibre foods are less likely to leave you quite so gassy.

However, Dr Rajan assures, the filters in flight air conditioners are actually charcoal and they can absorb a lot of the smell. If you do worry about farting too much or just have a sensitive stomach, he recommends avoiding high FODMAP foods such as onions, garlic, seeds, and some kinds of breads as well as eating slowly to aid digestion.

Plus, you can take comfort in knowing this can happen to everyone so you won’t be the only gassy passenger.

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The 3 Major Reasons Why Women Get Much Worse Healthcare Than Men

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Following a TikTok user pointing out that her partner received more aftercare following his vasectomy than she did after giving birth, Dr Karan Raj stepped in to explain why women are still getting the short straw when it comes to healthcare, and specifically pain relief.

Dr Raj said that this is down to a combination of systemic unconscious bias, a lack of research, as well as a failure to acknowledge biological differences in how women process pain.

All of that has led to pain being dismissed, misdiagnosed or undertreated which can have lethal consequences.

Love. That. For. Us.

Why women’s healthcare still falls behind

The surgeon added that despite advances in healthcare, women are diagnosed ‘significantly’ later across over 700 diseases and in some cases, such as endometriosis, waiting up to 10 years for diagnosis.

Frustratingly, he also revealed that sometimes, women’s pain is wrongly attributed to psycological causes and the word ‘hysteria’ was only removed from the American Psychiatric Association’s DSM classification.

Additionally, women’s health and specifically pain-focused research is less likely to be studied in clinical trials which makes effective treatment difficult to find.

He admitted that to this day, we don’t know how women metabolise and react to various pain medications or how women experience or manifest pain.

Finally, he said that because there are so many knowledge and gender gaps when it comes to women’s pain, “It’s imperative that we treat the pain the patient has, not the pain we think the patient should have.”

How to advocate for yourself at the doctors

According to the period health experts at Clue, these are the best ways to advocate for yourself at a doctor’s appointment:

  • Be prepared and assertive. Write a list of symptoms to discuss with your doctor and on the day, , give the doctor the facts about your symptoms and don’t downplay your symptoms
  • Ask questions. For example, if you don’t feel that your doctor has considered alternatives, simply say, “is there anything else it could be?”
  • Try to not be pressured into treatment that you don’t want to do. It’s normal to need a second opinion and listening to your own thoughts and feelings matters, too
  • Take notes at your appointment to ensure that you remember everything that’s said and can refer back to them in future appointments
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