For nearly twenty years Dr. Shriram Nene repaired hearts in American operating theatres. His debut book, 21 Days to Good Health, is already an Amazon India No. 1 bestseller in its category, and it makes the case for preventive healthcare: fewer patients on the table, more people well.
A surgeon’s success is counted in what he manages to mend. For Dr. Shriram Nene, a career spent among hearts has produced a different ledger, one kept for the people who never need him.
On the last evening of October, in the Durbar at Taj Palace, New Delhi, he set out the logic of that ledger before a gathering that included Admiral Dinesh Tripathi, Chief of the Naval Staff; Amitabh Kant, India’s former G20 Sherpa; and Ghazal Alagh, co-founder of Honasa Consumer. The occasion was the Delhi launch of 21 Days to Good Health, his first book, which had reached No. 1 in Amazon India’s Health, Wellness and Nutrition category within three days of publication. In conversation with Shereen Bhan of CNBC-TV18, he moved from the operating room to the science of preventive healthcare, and on to a question larger than any single patient: whether a nation’s wellbeing ought to be a national priority.
“Our greatest opportunity is to help people live healthier lives before they ever need those interventions.”
The long way round
Nearly two decades of cardiac, thoracic and vascular surgery in the United States gave Dr. Nene an unobstructed view of chronic and preventable disease, and of what it asks of the families who live alongside it. His account of those years turns on a single matter, which is timing. “As a surgeon, I spent years treating people when disease had already taken hold,” he says. “I realized that while we can perform extraordinary interventions to save lives, our greatest opportunity is to help people live healthier lives before they ever need those interventions.”
In 2011 he moved to India with an ambition to bring medicine, media, technology and innovation together and to make health knowledge and services easier to reach. That ambition has a home in Pathfinder Health Sciences, which he founded, and in the digital platforms through which he argues for care that is proactive, personalised and grounded in evidence. The book gathers those threads into a single volume for the general reader: a surgeon’s experience, translated into a guide a household can use.
Twenty-one days
The wellness shelf is a loud place, full of contradictory counsel, fashionable diets and the promise of quick repair. Dr. Nene’s book keeps a lower voice. It is built on five pillars, each familiar, each meant to be read in relation to the others. Nutrition asks for balanced, informed and sustainable choices. Movement asks for exercise to be woven into ordinary days. Sleep and recovery are treated as the foundations of long-term health, stress and mindset as a question of resilience, and connection and purpose as the relationships, communities and daily meaning without which the rest remains incomplete. Together they describe health as something wider than the absence of disease, a state at once physical, mental, emotional and social.
The twenty-one days of the title are offered with similar restraint. There is no promise of transformation, only a place to begin: a short span in which to notice one’s habits, act on them, and allow the useful ones to settle into routine. “We often underestimate the extraordinary power of ordinary daily choices,” Dr. Nene says. “You don’t need to change everything overnight.”
A country’s habit
His ambition, though, is national. Lifestyle-related and chronic diseases are placing mounting demands on Indian families and on the health system, and Dr. Nene would like the response to begin earlier, with people who have the knowledge, tools and motivation to choose well each day. Medical advance and innovation matter to him, and so do education, prevention, personal responsibility and collective action. “Good health should not be a privilege, a luxury or something we think about only when we become ill,” he says.
The book’s early rise up the Amazon rankings he reads as a sign of appetite. “People are ready to prioritize their health and take action.” What he hopes will follow is a movement of readers who look out for one another. “Imagine a nation where we encourage each other to make healthier choices, where prevention becomes a way of life, and where good health becomes a shared responsibility,” he says.
The book has travelled to Mumbai, Hyderabad, Bengaluru and now Delhi, and is meant to travel further, across India and, in time, beyond it. His advice for anyone unsure where to begin is the one he offered that evening. “Start with one small step, repeat it consistently and build from there,” he says. “The goal isn’t perfection. It’s progress.”
The book
21 Days to Good Health by Dr. Shriram Nene, published by Rupa Publications. Available on Amazon India. The Delhi launch was held at Taj Palace, New Delhi, with HSBC India as event partner.
The author
Dr. Shriram Nene is a cardiothoracic and vascular surgeon, healthcare innovator, entrepreneur and author, and the founder of Pathfinder Health Sciences. After nearly two decades of surgical practice in the United States he moved to India in 2011. 21 Days to Good Health is his first book.
