EP #101- Discipline, Routine, and Delayed Gratification: The Secrets To Healthy Living with Dr. Ryan Neinstein, Board Certified Plastic Surgeon

(gentle music) You know, health comes through discipline. A lot of people, especially in today's world, think discipline is limiting. I actually feel like it's totally liberating. You know, by going to bed early, by waking up early, reading, exercising, my body and mind are well-tuned for success. Welcome back to another episode of Every Day Indoor Funds, a mental health podcast focused on the importance of finding joy and happiness in daily living. I'm your host, Stella Staphnopoulos, and this week I wanted to explore healthy habits as shared by someone directly in the medical community. Something that I really admire about doctors and physicians and especially surgeons is their ability to work under pressure and stay focused in super high stakes environments. And I think there's a lot of lessons we can learn about staying healthy physically and mentally from someone who actually works in the health and wellness space. So I'm so thrilled to have Dr. Ryan Ninstein on the podcast this week to talk about all of his healthy habits and his perspective of health and wellness as a board certified plastic surgeon. He has an absolutely beautiful practice on the Upper East Side in New York City, which is where we have the opportunity to do our interview in person a few months ago. In this episode, Dr. Ryan talks a little bit about his passion for medicine, why he specifically wanted to get into plastics, his famous surgery called the Mommy Makeover, how he developed it, what it intends to do for moms and how it helps boost their confidence after childbirth, and the ways in which our physical appearance can really impact our mental health and our wellbeing. I am so excited for you guys to hear this episode, but before we dive right into it, a reminder to like, rate, and review this podcast on whichever listening platform you prefer, and follow along every day in Dorfins on Instagram, TikTok, and obviously tune along to the podcast on Spotify, Apple, wherever you listen to your shows, to stay up to date with future episodes, every day in Dorfins events, and more. Hi, Dr. Ryan, thank you so much for coming on to Every Day in Dorfins. - Stella, thank you so much for coming to visit us today to do this live. I mean, eternally grateful, and we can't wait to get going here. - This is a beautiful office, first of all, like walking in, you feel so peaceful and at ease, and I think a lot of people are like stressed to go to the doctors because it's not a very inviting environment, but I can tell that everything here is really intentionally, like placed and presented so that patients feel, like welcomed and calm. - Part of the reason I opened my own place, I had my own vision was that, you know, I go away from the status quo, healthcare should happen for you, not to you, all the normal things that always bothered me about a doctor's office, we've completely removed. It should be a warm, welcoming, you know, nice environment that people want to be at, not half to be at. And that goes from the patients to the staff. We try to create an environment where the staff want to be here. I want to talk more about how you got interested in the medical field. And to give you some context, I, for the longest time, wanted to pursue medicine, actually. I went to Washington University in St. Louis and initially applied as a biology major. And then I never actually ended up pursuing like the pre-med track, but I ended up studying like a combination of philosophy and neuroscience and psychology. So I was always really passionate about health and wellness, but never actually made it to the point of becoming a physician. So can you walk my listeners through your journey of entering the medical space? Sure, on a global picture, I want people to know. Medicine is a noble pursuit. It's one of the greatest decisions I've ever made in my life. You have to be able to have delayed gratification. And most things in life that are great, you need to be able to think of in decades, not months, not weeks, not years. So it's hard for a lot of people to think of the positive being 20 years away. I'm 20 years basically in school from high school until I get to a point where I get to do the thing I actually set out to do. So that takes a certain type of person. And you got to be wired in a certain way. But let me tell you a little bit about my journey. So I grew up in Toronto, Canada. And I'm the grandchild of Holocaust survivors. So it was woven into my DNA to seek a life of purpose, and a life of meaning, and to provide service to others. This was not something that was suggested. This was ingrained. Having limits in discipline and seeking something of meaning. As I was growing up, science became something that made sense to me. The concreteness of it, the ability to read textbooks, answer questions, and they're not being any essentially no objectiveness to it. And when you combine that with the competitive sports, I always played a competitive rugby. When you take the competitive sport aspect and my interest in science and seeking a life of purpose, medicine becomes a natural field. And early on in medical school, I loved. I fell in love with the operating room, everything about it from the lights, the sounds, and the ability to make meaningful impact quickly on someone's life. And so being a surgeon became something that I knew I wanted to do. I did my general surgery at Plastic Surgery in Canada. It came to New York to do subspecialty training in aesthetic surgery. I fell in love not just with the American culture and spirit, but with New York itself. So I never turned back and never went home and met my beautiful wife. And we have two beautiful children. And we love living in New York City. And as the song says, we want to be a part of it. Yeah, no, that's amazing. And I have to ask my dad played rugby in college. And I feel like his body is just screwed up now just from how aggressive that sport is. So how did you actually take care of yourself being a rugby player? Well, I think when you're forced in whatever pursuit, where there's-- whether it's anything physical, where there's a price to pay, if you are not disciplined and a price to pay, if you're not always thinking and strategizing. And that helps me in later in life because I was always disciplined, strategized, and prepared. And yeah, I had never really had any injuries. Good for you. I feel like in rugby, especially it's such an intense sport that it's easy to get injured. And that, of course, can really affect how you play. Some people are drawn into the intensity. They're drawn to the fire. I operate on people every day. I live for it. Yeah, that's what motivates you. It's not an adrenaline junkie. I like intensity. I like something-- things that matter. Things with consequences. If you're not all in. Another thing that I really related to when you were speaking about what drew you into science and medicine was how it's very factual. And something that I really loved about the neuroscience part of my studies and my major was that I could think about this question on what drives human behavior, what motivates people from this bottom-up approach where you're looking at the neuroscience level, at the cellular level, you can actually understand the mechanisms that drive maybe these psychological principles and then more broadly these philosophical theories. And so that's what I found to be really interesting, how those three areas intersected. But speaking more to science and the field of medicine, there's something I guess so liberating to actually have answers. But as a doctor, I'd love for you to speak more to this, but my impression is that doctors have to also ask these really inquisitive questions and they're uncovering some sort of truth through science and through medicine. So how do you navigate maybe some of those ambiguities or uncertainties as a doctor? I personally think in life, people who can navigate gray areas are always the most successful. Because most things in life, if not everything, is a gray area. And the ability to understand human behavior is something we're all seeking. And we all lack that ability. So how do we uncover things that are ambiguous? Well, there's nothing new under the sun. You could read How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. It's about 80 years old. It's one of the main book of the month's clubs we have here. He would talk in there, one of the main tenets of that book. It's not just walk a mile and someone shoes, but can you really try to see the world through the lens of someone else? That's the key to understanding ambiguity, just because you have a disagreement or a difference in opinion or you're unsure of something, why someone did or said something. If you can ask the questions that will lay the foundation for you actually having some sense of perception of the world that the lens which they see the world, that will help you. So I really focus on trying to understand the person to understand the thought process. Luckily, and this comes into play a lot in aesthetics, people's desires, what they're seeking in their change in their change in their body, and why they're seeking. You want those two thought process to be mutually aligned. Because if there's a discontruity, if they want to look a certain way for the wrong, reason or they want to look the wrong way for the right reason that doesn't work. Yeah, can you talk a little bit more about that actually? Because I think it also ties into something that I want to touch on later in the podcast, more specifically around the work that you do as a plastic surgeon. And the ability to really boost your patient's confidence levels. You know, when people are seeking aesthetic surgery in today's age, especially in our practice, you know, we're looking to work with patients, you know, who have emotional control, stability in their life. They're not going through a major divorce, job change, big move. You know, stability is key for the psyche. And any change to the body, you know, as Nietzsche said, you know, the mind thinks through the body. So any change to the body is going to affect the mind. And if you don't remember that, you know, philosophy from our favorite German philosopher, you know, you're going to get into trouble with patients. So it's always important to remember that the body flow, you know, the mind flows through the body. So things have to stay in line. You want to make sure patients are stable and in a good place. And are, you know, genuinely happy in the sense that like they're very happy with themselves. And they know this some limitations, physical, structural, genetic from pregnancy or disease that's just holding them back. And they're not asking you to do something that's unattainable. Yeah, that's such a good point. Like coming at it from the right reasons. And first of all, just having some sort of baseline happiness and contentment with yourself. Because I think especially in today's culture, kids growing up around social media or just social media kind of plaguing our every day, no matter what age you are, it's so easy to fall into this comparison trap. Like I want to look like this person online or I want to be thinner or, you know, whatever the motivation or the desire is. So how do you ensure that the patients that you see are coming from this like grounded point of you or mental state? By doing a few things for very few specific reasons. Like the operation a most known for or most commonly is the mommy makeover are like helping women fix changes to their bodies from their babies. Most of them have never had plastic surgery. They're incredibly, you know, content happy, successful women with multiple children. But their bodies have gone through physical and structural changes. They want to change that for the right reasons. There are, I never hear from these type of patients. You know, I saw this Instagram picture. I want to look like her. I want to look like that. It's, you know, a can't get rid of this skin that's been stretched in torn. My muscles don't work because they've been stretched in torn. My breasts have been deflated because they've been stretched in torn. I would really like to reverse those changes so I can get a sense of self sense of self that I had pre babies and enjoy my life with my husband going forward. I can feel comfortable confident, especially, you know, feeling naked, being interested again, putting on certain types of clothing to go on date night. It's like nobody wants tummy tuck, but everyone wants to feel sexy on date night. Exactly. Yeah, it's a good way to put it. But in terms of a lot of other things I see in the media, I totally stay out of all of that like fads, this, that, the other. Well, there's so much noise on social media. Part of my like wellness philosophy, which comes from like the stoic philosophy is always like limit your inputs. Like when you have a wealth of information, you have a poverty of attention. So I just really make limiting my inputs, limiting my outputs. Like we are, when I, we send out the same message all day, every day. My practice is all in number one on patient experience. We want patients to feel loved to care for, not just before an surgery, but for the rest of their life from our practice and our staff. That's it. We have a very few number of procedures that we do. We care a lot about each other who work here and we care a lot about the patients. We are not jumping on fads. We really limit our inputs. You know, our patients come from around the world, but they're all very similar. People are attracted to people like them. We don't have the, it's like, you know, we have people, you know, literally of all, you know, shapes and sizes from all over the planet, but they share such common, you know, the venn diagram of like emotional and fit traits are like all overlapping. And literally from, you know, India to Paris to Nebraska, you could put all these people together and they'd like be best of friends. You know, one of the thing I'm most proud of is like we have patients who are like a lot of our pins are like evangelists for us. Like they're out there meeting others because they have similar, you know, at different restaurants, events, parmits for his weddings and like they share in the joy of like, you know, how they feel. And that's the real, that's the market, you know, we can come up with whatever clever saying you want and billboards, but like we don't do any that. We create evangelists. We want people to go out there and spread the word because they want to. And that comes from a place of passion and compassion and that's why people want to have surgery here. Can you talk a little bit more about what specifically got you interested in pursuing plastic surgery? A good amount of my friends in college who pursued pre-med or like now just entering med school and from what I've heard, they've changed their mind like so many times with what kind of medicine they want to practice. So how did you ultimately land on plastic surgery? The algorithm that I went through is I wanted to help people and I like science. So I went into medicine. When I went to medicine, I just wanted to become a really good doctor. And then I would like surgery and I wanted to go into different types, you know, I had to pick what type of surgery. Plastic surgery has a unique thing where people come to you, you know, the walking well, you know, they don't need it, they want it, they're committed, they care. And we actually have this unique thing where we can help people be better than where they came in. Most procedures in surgery, best case scenarios, you're, you know, at baselines. You have a disease, a trauma, an infection, and you're just trying to reverse that and you didn't want to be there in the first place. So we have this unique aspect where people choose to come to see us. Yeah, that's a really good point. I've never actually thought about it that way. So maybe it makes the work more meaningful perhaps. Well, no, I don't want to say that it's not meaningful to take care of cancer patients or trauma patients. It's just something that spoke to me. And, you know, when you're hard in mind, tell you something, you got to listen to it. You know, I also want to talk a little bit about your wellness philosophy at large and how your perspective of health and wellness perhaps may have been influenced by pursuing medicine. So can you share with my listeners just first of all how you define what it means to be healthy? Sure. To me, you know, health comes through discipline. And I know I say this often and we talk about it a lot. A lot of people, especially in today's world think discipline is limiting and constraining. I'm not burdened with like stress or anxiety of the things that occupy a lot of other people's lives. You know, through discipline, I know where I'm going to be and know how I'm going to do it. It's not for everyone to get up before in the morning and read and get your mind right and then get to the gym. But to me, discipline has been the most liberating thing. It allows me to show up every day for work in surgery, knowing I'm mentally and physically in this, you know, zen-like state where I'm absolutely prepared for surgery and excited for the opportunity to do my craft. It's interesting that you mentioned discipline because that's something that I think I really learned about as a rower, actually, just being in a very disciplined and rigorous sport. So that really taught me the value of discipline and when you can have that trait, it can permeate into the behaviors that you choose to exhibit to lead a healthier life. It is very difficult to have the discipline to go to bed early and to wake up early. When you do get into a very regimented routine that promotes health and wellness in yourself, you like give your your body and your mind like space for gratitude, space for growth, space for greatness. You can really limit all that external noise, you know, a really fine seeking stillness limiting your inputs and discipline. Like that will put you in a place where you can accomplish things that you can never thought you could accomplish. Yeah, what would you say are some of your strategies that you've used to build more discipline into your life? I mean, going to bed early and waking up early is, you know, just a classic. It allows you, you know, if you, when that alarm goes off at four, you know, if you get, if you put your foot on the floor without hitting this news, you've already, you know, won. Like it's four in the morning and you've already had a win, okay? And then so now you're already off to the races, okay? Once you hit that snooze, you're, you're, it's a negative. It's a loss, okay? So like, I don't think I've ever hit a snooze in my life because I am not starting my day on a negative. The other things, you know, I have found incredible relationships with books. I mean, I have a deep dive, you know, I know, you know, Harry Truman said, not all readers are leaders, but all leaders are readers. I'm enamored with not just like the modern self-help books, but the stories from history. I could read from Sun Up to Sun Down. I, that's something. It gives me a lot of strength knowing that everything I have been through, someone has been through a thousand times over a thousand years and it gives me perspective. You know, don't let success go to your head and don't let failure go to your heart and this too shall pass. This too shall pass is actually one of my favorite quotes. And remember the obstacle is the way and you can't control the outside world. Like really releasing the fact, you know bad things are going to happen to you. People are going to say things, people are going to do things, there's going to be treachery, you know there's going to be lies. You can't control it. And once you just acknowledge that, you realize it doesn't matter. I think it's also a Buddhist principle as well like relinquishing control and not having attachment to things like practicing this principle of non-attachment. You can't control the outside world but you can't control the way you respond to it. An emotional control is probably the number one defining characteristic of a leader if someone asks me because so many times in a day things are going to happen to you, the exact opposite that you would have liked. And if you fly off the handle, you're going to go down a spiral that takes you to an outcome that's going to be negative. Well then I think there's practices like mindfulness meditation to help you better control and regulate your emotions so you don't have that reactivity to when things happen in ways that you don't expect or you don't plan for. So just question, do you wake up every morning whether or not you're operating like at 4 a.m. So when I'm operating it's about 4 4 30 and when I'm not operating it's about 5. And so after you're waking up is the next thing that you do working out? I always read. I got to get the mind going before the body. Yeah. I like to turn that engine on. I don't I wouldn't want someone showing up to operating on me if they haven't you know stimulated their brain before because I want you firing critical thinking. Have you reflexes sharp? I want everything happening at full speed and you know you don't start hitting full speed halfway through an operation. You gotta be ready to go. I mean I really believe you need two two and a half three hours before you operate we operate at 7. I don't want a surgeon rolling out of bed and the first thing they do is you know hey what are we doing today you know none of that. You need to like mentally prepare yourself. You wake up early. You read how long do you typically read for? Maybe like half an hour then I try to clear my inbox as quickly as I can and then it's off to the gym. Then it's off to the gym. What do you like to do to stay active? Well I have a personal trainer that we meet basically every day. 6 a.m. maybe or before? 5.20. So we do that for about 35-40 minutes. That's a quick shower and change and I'm out the door and then I go visit my patients you know while we're at the spirit modern techniques and technology our core principles old world doctrine we go and visit our patients we see them at home house calls every single day. So this is the days that you're not operating in the morning. No before I operate we go see our patients we've had surgery the day before. That's real medicine by the way you go see the patient like you don't need technology but this is one of the benefits in New York City. I know it's not practical everywhere you know that's why most our patients are staying in a hotel or whatever you know within a few blocks go see them check the incisions talk to them see how they're doing how's your pain how's your am I going to the bathroom what's your diet like like well from a patient perspective you it's so comforting I can imagine to really feel that care in like those bedside manners I guess old world old school and all that matters. So after you make your rounds you see your patients then it's operating how long do some of your procedures like typically last. So we never go over six hours safety guidelines say six hours the cutoff so I'm like a five hour guy. And how do you stay focused during such a high stakes intense environment like what's your routine how do you get yourself mentally ready to be in the operating room. I trained I mean like someone who runs five miles every day you know the person who's never run five miles it can't understand how you could run five miles every day but once you've been doing it five thousand times that's your norm and if you stray from that you feel like something is off like when I'm on vacation I feel like something is weird. So it's kind of like rinse and repeat you've done it so many times at this point where it's second nature for you but at least when you were first starting out like how did you build that. You build endurance you know at the beginning you know long surgery is hard and that gets easier. Yeah and I guess there's very much like a protocol and procedure that you follow so it's like second nature at this point. You know a lot of the technique a lot of the procedures we do we write scientific papers on guidelines textbooks. It's very systematic like we want things to be ordered. It's not as much creativity and surgery as people want. It should be more engineering than art in my opinion and the reason I like the systems processes is it allows us to measure things and as you know in business if it's not measured it's not done so we can measure everything which means we can tweak everything. You know one of the keys to being a surgeon. If someone asks you every month like every month you should be able to say for your whole career that you're doing something different in an operation. I'm not saying about you know completely changing everything but like if you're not evolving from your maybe it's your preop you're changing the medications or how many days you don't want them to drink alcohol or how what the preoperative diet vitamins, mineral supplements, post-op massages, intravenous therapy, ozone therapy, whatever you're doing if you're not changing things to try to find a better way I mean you know it's not I can't even wrap my head around that concept but that's why we hyper specialize here you know I want all this intellectual inertia of all these doctors and nurses thinking about the hundred steps of like the three operations we do and how do we improve each of those hundred steps as the as the island of knowledge grows so does the shore of ignorance you know the more you know you know the harder things get but you got to lean into that friction. It's surgery you know people travel all over the world they want they're showing up they want the best like I like the pressure I you know we always say in our office pressure is a privilege yeah and you and I guess for you you thrive under that pressure. A hundred percent pressure is a privilege like I can't imagine a world well I'm not being pressed to do better every single day to me that's just wasting away. I mean I think also pressure can to an extent it can keep you like focused sharp and it can keep pushing you to be the best version of yourself and to keep performing until like the optimal level. We talked a little bit about really your perspective on health and and wellness and staying healthy and staying fit and active but I want to shift gears and talk a little bit more about your perspective on happiness so as you know and as a lot of my listeners know every day in Dorfins talks about you know the importance of finding things in life that bring you happiness and joy and you know throughout the course of my life I've started to recognize how nuanced health is and how related our physical health is to our mental health like you mentioned earlier when you were talking about the motivations behind surgery like if you alter your body that's going to alter your mental state like the physical and the and the mental are so interconnected so with that being said how would you define your philosophy on happiness? Happiness to me is not material goods happiness is not a accumulation of wealth or accumulation of things or even you know awards simple you know the ability to improve others lives the service of others and making a meaningful impact on others lives is the delta change in happiness for me when you see your team members your employees becoming more educated more sophisticated more fit more red everything in their life is getting better because of what you're doing for them or with them that's happiness when you see your children grow up when you you know and they're doing it happily and healthy because of the things you do for them when you see the things the way your patients feel about themselves because of what you did for them so to me happiness is the ability to help others and the more you help others but if everyone just helped everyone I mean I know it sounds corny you know can't ego is the enemy it always has been it always will be and if you can fight that you'll have a more happy life at what point did you realize it was really the sense of altruism and well I think altruism is a tough word because it implies you're not taking anything back because you know what it's okay to be a doctor and be reimbursed like paid to like help people feel better about themselves because you have to understand we live in a world where like you have to buy goods and services food and shelter like but you can at the same time as you're doing something that you know provides for your family help others effective altruism altruism whatever buzz word you want to use I don't think it applies like you can always you know do things that have mutual benefits so at what point did you realize that really like the key to happiness I guess in your words is is through helping others which also has the cyclical effect because it's also helping yourself it's giving you that sense of happiness and feelings of I've just joined your life well I think what I really found was with as my team grew as our employees grew you know I never really taken care of anyone that was like outside of a patient or a family member and then you become you know it's actually responsible for a lot of people's lives and when you make these positive meaningful impacts on their lives It's amazing the feelings of joy you get pure joy not you know endorphin rash from Whatever race cars whatever you want to do to release your serotonin and dopamine This is pure long lasting joy that's like unadultered and it's unbelievable and I think we also tend to Seek like the quick fixes like we're looking for those immediate pleasures Rather than the delayed gratification and I think there's also this really big misconception as well on happiness Where we're often just chasing those quick fixes, but instead not giving ourselves the patience and time to experience True happiness that will actually be sustained in the longer term Well markets familiar said those without purpose seek pleasure So you see people you know partying all the time because they're hiding from you know finding something the Meaningful value in their life to do because it's a lot of work and not everyone likes the work If you can get through it The other side of it will be the greatest thing that ever happened to you and I think you know It's interesting you say that how it's a lot of work and one of my goals with the show is to create a space where People don't see that as work, but instead is Something really exciting to experience like something that they want to lean into When you have work love and love for the people you do and love for what you're doing things are like You're emotionally and spiritually balanced. It's and the hours it takes is it becomes irrelevant Work life becomes imbalanced when you don't have a sense of autonomy You're not respected You're not evaluated then again the number of hours don't matter if he comes there's an imbalance Yeah, someone actually on my show I interviewed a former executive at JP Morgan and she talked about how she doesn't like this concept around work life balance It's in her mind actually Work life integration so finding ways to kind of combine both It's also on a paradigm. It's on a sliding scale at different points in your life I give up my social life too bad. I'm okay with it So we didn't even talk about what time you go to bed if you're waking up 9 9 9 9 30 and what's your like Wine down nighttime routine. I read to my son, you know cat in the hat all that all those good books Have you go to bed and how do you balance? Being a surgeon and also having a family. There's nothing better You know, I know people talk about different athletes or other, you know high-performance people that having relationships get in the way I think like a loving relationship is the way nothing gets in the way I mean you have to have a partner that understands you have to Create a world where balance is what works for you. There's no there's no rules and your wife is also very much in the Health and wellness spaces as fitness and shunters so it's like the nicest Happiest most fun person you will ever meet. I have to ask how did the two of you meet on a yoga retreat in Nicaragua Oh my goodness. Wow And and what happened after that? We're engaged within a few months like you know, it was a classic love story met someone connected and Like we knew we just wanted to spend the rest of our lives together and you know, we didn't have to like It wasn't really much nonsense or you know BS. Wow. Well, I feel like if it's easy then that's it's the right way Yeah, listen, nothing easy, but you know you need to have a little bit of friction We got to crack a few eggs to make it omelet, but that's a good saying. I also I have my certification in yoga actually and I went to Bali to do my teacher training Which was I don't do yoga anymore. I went there to meet girls and I did it That's it done That was your intention to go to the strategy. This is like next level. Okay. This is not like Everyone else playing checkers on playing chess Well, I mean what other what better way honestly to meet some people then then to go on a yoga retreat Which is probably gonna be predominantly women on that tree In a scenic place But aside from of the story of how you met your wife tying back into this theme of of happiness and and purposeful living the central question that I ask every guest That comes on to the show Dr. Ryan is really around like finding things in life that bring joy So my final question to you is what is something that brings you a bit of endorphins every day? For me It's you know when I get home open the door and I see my children smile and knowing when I look at them that I gave Everything and that I gave everything I had that day to the world in the most honest virtuous way that I represented them in a proud manner That is like my endorphin rush. I love that. That's such a special Special way to get your your daily boost of endorphins Where can my followers connect with you and just follow along everything that you're doing? Oh, of course we you can follow me at dr. 9stina on Instagram check us out at 19thlasixordery.com or drop on in 4 west 58th on the 12th floor It's where the dreams are made overlooking Central Park right next to the plaza. Thank you so much Thanks for listening to this episode of everyday endorphins if you liked what you heard make sure to Like, rate, and review this podcast on whichever platform you prefer You can also follow along the everyday endorphins Instagram account to stay up to date with episodes, future events and all things related to mental health Well-being and happiness Don't forget to keep spreading endorphins and find things in life that bring you joy every day until next time