Women In Wellness: Dr Madhavi Gupta of Best Nest Wellness On The Five Lifestyle Tweaks That Will Help Support People’s Journey Towards Better Wellbeing
An Interview With Candice Georgiadis
Protect your sleep. You can just feel the immediate effects one or two bad nights of sleep has on you: quicker temper, brain fog, lack of focus, frustration, and low physical energy. Chronic poor sleep affects immunity, metabolism, healthspan, and lifespan.
As a part of my series about women in wellness, I had the pleasure of interviewing Madhavi Gupta.
Madhavi Gupta, M.D. is the co-founder and co-CEO of Best Nest Wellness. Prior to Best Nest, Dr. Gupta was a practicing board-certified neurologist, where she won The People’s Choice Award as a favorite doctor three years in a row. She holds a degree in Biochemistry and Humanities from MIT, completed her Neurology residency in New York City, and did her fellowship at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital.
Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Our readers would love to “get to know you” better. Can you share your “backstory” with us?
My journey to Best Nest Wellness is from an unexpected place. I’m a neurologist with a further specialization in headache and I was from a world that believed allopathic or conventional medicine was the only option. I’ve always been passionate about brain health. But it wasn’t until I had my second baby that my passion turned into purpose.
Just seconds after birth, my doctor noticed our baby was different. Lively, healthy, and energetic, my beautiful baby boy was born with Down Syndrome.
From that moment on, my eyes were opened to a whole new world. He gave me a brand new perspective about love, life, and health. And he strengthened my resolve to provide the very best I could for my family. I made it my life’s mission to help other moms do the same.
Finding high-quality supplements formulated with the brain in mind was nearly impossible. So, using my knowledge of neurology and natural medicine I decided to create my own.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you started your career? What were the main lessons or takeaways from that story?
Shortly after Ajax was born, I did a continuing education workshop about working with brain-injured children at the Family Hope Center in Philadelphia. It was eye-opening even for a board-certified neurologist.
Historically, parents with kids with severe brain-injury (Down Syndrome, cerebral palsy, etc) were told there’s not much you can do…Your child will never [walk, read, write, etc.]. So, they were institutionalized with little stimulation.
Stimulation and input is so important, especially during 0–7 years, when the brain is developing faster than any time in a person’s life. Input includes nutrition, physical/sensory stimulation, and intellectual stimulation. And nutrition is always at the top of that list. In other words, you can take in the sensory and intellectual stimulation and process it better if your nutrition is sound.
The biggest takeaway is that the brain is malleable, especially in those early years, even in the womb. Take advantage of that time to focus on healthy nutrition and sensory and intellectual input. That’s the key to reaching your potential. And, what we learned to do with Ajax actually applies to all children, and even to adults. We now know better how important epigenetics is…How we can affect our genetic expression through nutrition and lifestyle.
Can you share a story about the biggest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
Let’s jump to our main focus. When it comes to health and wellness, how is the work you are doing helping to make a bigger impact in the world?
I believe our children’s future is our greatest concern and that healthy nutrition is a human right. And, we all face the challenge of the cost, complexity, and efficacy of conventional medical care for families. With Best Nest Wellness, we are helping moms and families make informed decisions by providing education, guidance, and healthy solutions.
We want to make you smarter about your decisions and choices, which is why we connect you with relevant and researched information and authorities in their fields.
We make Transparent, pure, and proprietary supplements backed by clinical, developmental, and behavioral science. We focus on helping families during the many stages of creating and raising families. We specialize in brain development and we focus on methylated vitamins to support the brain.
This brings everything full circle…By focusing on nutrition as the foundation — creating educational channels and nutritional supplements to support families — we are helping people reach their full potential and help families soar.
Can you share your top five “lifestyle tweaks” that you believe will help support people’s journey towards better well-being? Please give an example or story for each.
Make a habit of moving your body. This can be as little as taking a walk for 15–30 min a day. Make it achievable. One tip to make the habit is to attach it to something else in your day. For example, my husband does his workouts when our son has his daily screen time.
Protect your sleep. Study after study has found powerful associations between insufficient sleep and adverse health outcomes. Think of sleep as a life insurance policy. One tweak is to aim for the same bedtime each night. Circadian rhythms are responsive. Sticking with the same bedtime will train your body to wind down. A routine helps — dim lights, in bed, read. And, of course, reduce stimulation from social media, email, or work.
There’s no one-size-fits-all eating style or diet. Keto, vegan, low-carb, no-carb, intermittent fasting, etc. All provide some sort of guardrails that have benefits. But what works for you may not work for me. Nutrition is a journey and it takes time to figure out what works for you. For me it has been a long journey and I’m still learning. Also, what worked for your 30-year-old self isn’t what works for your 50-year-old, premenopausal self.
Balance goal setting with being kind to yourself. Whether it’s weight, muscle, flexibility, brain health, or health biomarkers you are trying to affect, setting goals and setting up guardrails is key. Getting specific and writing those goals down raises your chances of achieving them even more.
But, be kind to yourself along the way. No one benefits from beating themselves up. This is a journey.
Multivitamin to bridge nutritional gaps. Taking a multivitamin is like insurance. It bridges gaps across a wide range of nutrients that you may be missing from your diet because, let’s face it, we’re all busy. We always encourage food first, especially in the form of whole foods. But, supplements address those gaps that may result from nutrient-depleted soil, eating in smaller time windows (intermittent fasting), and busy schedules. This is especially helpful for kids who are picky eaters and may not be getting enough micronutrients.
If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of wellness to the most amount of people, what would that be?
A movement that provides education and resources to empower people to make informed decisions about their health, along with healthy solutions such as supplements or functional foods. Kind of like Best Nest Wellness 🙂
What are your “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me Before I Started” and why?
I wish someone had told me that allopathic or conventional medicine is not the only option. You reap more health benefits once you strike a balance between conventional medicine and lifestyle.
Start feeding your brain when you’re young. With kids, those first 0–6 years are incredibly important, as the brain and neural connections are in high growth mode and are highly flexible. Even as young adults, we can set the stage for our later years by adopting healthy nutrition, sleep, exercise, and stress habits.
It’s not too late to form healthy habits. Although feeding your brain when you’re young is important, what we do today is still so effective. Observational studies show that those who adhered to four or five specified healthy behaviors (about 150 minutes per week of exercise, not smoking, light alcohol consumption, whole foods diet, engaging in cognitive stimulation regularly) were found to have a 60% lower risk of Alzheimer’s.
Protect your sleep. You can just feel the immediate effects one or two bad nights of sleep has on you: quicker temper, brain fog, lack of focus, frustration, and low physical energy. Chronic poor sleep affects immunity, metabolism, healthspan, and lifespan.
You will likely up your health game when you have your first child.
Birthing my daughter was the most empowering transformation I have ever gone through. You could say I had two births that day: I birthed my daughter and I birthed my new self. After all, I created, grew, and brought life to this human being! I wanted to protect her, nurture her, and provide her with the very best that I could give her. I learned so much about nutrition at that point in my life. To me, “best” means achieving our highest potential, physically, intellectually, and emotionally. “Best” also means high-quality, convenient, and as natural as possible.
Thank you for these fantastic insights! We wish you continued success and good health.
Women In Wellness: Dr Madhavi Gupta of Best Nest Wellness On The Five Lifestyle Tweaks That Will… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.