The Patient Paradox Amy O'Flaherty + Fergus Kerrigan

You spend 227,760 hours, 9490 days, 26 years of your life sleeping, that’s a lot of time - surely we should at least try be good at it. Sleeping is a critical biological phenomon that enables the body and mind to restore itself. It’s essential for brain function, mood, hormonal balance, memory, immunity and preventing disease. Today we are speaking with sleep expert Stephanie Romiszewski. Stephanie is a sleep physiologist and trained in Behavioural Sleep Medicine. She started her career in America, working on a team at Harvard conducting experiments on circadian rhythm and blue light, she also worked on a sleep research project with NASA. 

Since then Stephanie has worked with the NHS in the UK, diagnosing and treating people with sleep disorders. More recently she founded the Sleepyhead Clinic, a sleep treatment centre and sleep education training service for medical professionals. She has also founded RE:SLEEP, a digital platform to deliver personalised sleep programmes. 

Stephanie regularly features on the BBC, Channel 4 and advises top organisations including Holland & Barrett and Deliveroo.

Today’s podcast is a must listen if you are someone struggling with your sleep or are looking to optimise it. We discuss why we sleep, how to get yourself out of sleep rut and why doctors need to up-skill themselves on sleep science.

You'll find Stephanie on Instagram or at The Sleepy Head Clinic.




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Do you find yourself working long hours but not getting a lot done, scrolling social media a few seconds after you started another task, reading a book and half way through the page you realise your mind is somewhere else and you need to start again?

The attention span of humans is contracting. Time spent focused on a single task has gone from 120 seconds in 2004 to 44 seconds today. Todays guest is Patrick Mc Andrew the Founder and CEO of HARA. He helps ambitious professional and entrepreneurs around the world regain control of their minds. HARA puts people through its Momentum Mind Program to train the mind to focus deeply , think clearly and recover. Patrick is a highly educated deep thinker and provides brilliant insight on how we can define our true values in life, how we can create space for the things we value. He also shares practical advice you can take into your daily routine to dial up your focus and get more of the things you want done.

If you'd like to connect with Patrick you'll find him at https://www.patrickmcandrew.co/


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In this episode we speak with Nutritional Therapist Claire O'Brien about some of the most common gut issues she sees in her clinic and steps that you can take if you think you have a gut issue that you cannot seem to resolve. Claire takes a scientific approach to everything she does, so we took this opportunity to ask her about food and drink myths we've been told to find out the truth about their impact on our health - we're talking coffee, energy drinks, nut milks and more.



If you'd like to connect with Claire you can contact her via her website or Instagram.


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Traditionally the worlds of physical health and mental wellbeing have always been treated in silo. But people living with chronic illness, stress or trauma know that until we consider both aspects and how they relate, we can never truly heal. This is where Dr Sula Wingassen's work comes in. She specialises in improving your physical symptoms and functioning through psychology. Sula has developed research-backed practices to help those experiencing IBS, Chron's, colitis, UTIs, endometriosis and so much more. But this episode isn't just for the chronically ill. We explore the role of the mind body connection in us all, our social environment as an influence and we explore the topic of self-sabotage.



If you'd like to connect with Dr Sula, you'll find her on Instagram or visit her website.


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We breathe in and out about 20,000 times a day without even thinking about it. In the last five years our social media feeds have been filled with so called breathwork experts who say we’re not breathing correctly, and that if we do learn to breathe correctly or engage in the practice of breathwork that we can transform our health and experience benefits like improved mood, better sleep, and improved immune function to name just a few. 

In this episode we speak to our friend Niall O Murchu who has spent most of his life helping others to better their health and he is one of Ireland’s only certified Wim Hof instructors. He has many other strings to his bow as a herbalist, cacao ceremony facilitator, he practices shemanic healing, reiki. He’s author of the best-selling book ‘Blissful Breath’ and his second book ‘The Power of Cold’ has just launched. 

If you’ve ever been a skeptic of breathwork or been on the fence about whether you should try it or not, this episode is for you.



16:35 - The breath + stress

22:42 - Breathwork versus Meditation

33:00 - Breathing through a crisis

43:00 - The cold






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In this first episode of the Patient Paradox Podcast hosts Amy O'Flaherty and Fergus Kerrigan share with us their motivation for launching the podcast, their plan for future episodes and their personal and professional journeys into the world of health.



1:10 - Fergus' 9 months of poor health

7:00 - Leaving the corporate world to create Ethos

11:20 - The reason for launching the Patient Paradox podcast

14.00 - "Stress is the epidemic of the 21st Century"

21:50 - Amy's experience with a nutritional therapist

25:30 - Are you really healthy?



If you enjoyed the first episode of the Patient Paradox podcast please like and subscribe to get notified when the next episode is released.



Keep up to date with Amy + Fergus on Instagram.  


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