So in today's episode, we're welcoming on Priya Tu, who is a specialist dietician and nutritionist and helps people to heal their relationship with food. Now you might have seen Priya on TV shows such as How to Eat Well for Less, and she's also the author of two books, The Dash Diet and The Complete Low FODMAP Diet Plan. So welcome Priya.

Thank you so much for having me.

Welcome, and it's nice to meet you as well. So it's a bit exciting. Yeah, I've been talking about this for ages and we're so grateful to you for giving up some time for us today because we know how busy you've been. It's taken a little while for us to get to this recording. So yeah, it's great. Thank you.

You're so welcome. I mean, I did have a quick honeymoon in the middle of it all as well, which didn't help.

You did, and it looked amazing on your, social media stories, so I hope you, hope you came back fully refreshed and ready because you've been busy ever since you got back, haven't you?

I have, I have thoroughly recommend Italy though.

It's brilliant. Yeah, it's on our to do list. Yeah, we would love to go. So, let's start it with a little bit of context, just for everybody listening. The whole idea why we wanted to talk to you was We've had several episodes where we've been looking at the topic of mystery driving anxiety. And what we mean by that is we often will have people come to us who've been driving for years and then suddenly out of the blue is the way they describe it. They're driving and then that turns into an anxiety around driving. So we started to explore some of the potential reasons why people might be experiencing anxiety. And so in the past, we've spoken to people about sleep and, about hormones. and emotions and general life stress. And we were really keen to speak to somebody that we trusted about nutrition so that we could find out a little bit more about the possible links between the things that you're eating and drinking and anxiety.

Amazing. Sounds good.

So my first question is, is there any research that's been done that says if you drink this or if you... eat this, this could potentially cause you problems while you're driving. Myth busters almost. Is there anything that says if you do this, this will happen?

I haven't seen anything that's specifically related to driving, but we do know that there are certain things that are going to increase your heart rate and potentially put you more on edge. For example, caffeine is the obvious one, isn't it? If you have too much caffeine, it's going to give you the jitters. You're going to potentially actually feel more anxious and more stressed. Alcohol can have the same effect, although hopefully nobody is drinking and driving. That's not the best thing. Um, but also energy drinks. So sometimes people might give themselves an energy drink in order to have a boost and then we can have that same impact. We've got the caffeine in there that also could make people feel more on edge and have more anxiety and actually feel a bit more nervous after they've had the energy drink. And then I think the other big link would be sugar. So some people. Maybe into the habit of, oh, I'll just have a quick snack to give me a boost. We all want that boost in our energy levels, don't we? And we can sometimes get caught in that trap of having a bit more sugar that causes our blood sugar levels To rise up, we sometimes call this spike, if you think of a sharp peak on a mountain, and then they come crashing back down again because we haven't got the balance of nutrition with the protein, the fat, and the fiber to help stabilize things. And you end up on this sugar roller coaster. And so, you know, if you imagine you've had the sugar in order to give you the energy boost before you get into the car, maybe that gives you a bit of energy. In order to get it going and then 20 minutes later the impact of that sugar is going to wear off and potentially then You're going to get that crash You might then happen to have a cereal bar in your pocket or you know have your car snacks with you Dive into those and that roller coaster could go on So I think that's one thing to be really aware of, that actually nutrition is quite complex, but also we can make it fairly simple that if we stick to a fairly regular eating schedule and we're having a balanced meal and balanced snack, and by that I mean don't just rely on your snack being a banana. But add some nuts into it. So we've got that lovely fruit there. We've also got the protein coming in, which is going to help stabilize our blood sugars. When you're having your meals, you know, make sure you've got your balance of your preferably whole grain carbohydrates. You've got your, your protein, you've got your fruit, vegetables, you've got your fats in there, your healthy fats as well. And that's going to help you in terms of your energy levels, your mood, your concentration, and also that sense of overall wellness. So hopefully those are some tips that might help there.