Chatbots, like ChatGPT, are powerful tools for running your business, saving time, and boosting productivity. But let’s make one thing clear: the practitioner is the expert, not the chatbot. ChatGPT can assist you with a variety of tasks, but it’s not here to create nutrition protocols or replace your professional expertise. Instead, it’s a flexible assistant that, when used wisely, can make your business run smoother and faster. Here’s how to use ChatGPT effectively and responsibly in your practice, with a special focus on managing memory, separating chats, and ensuring privacy.


Why ChatGPT Can Transform How You Run Your Business

ChatGPT is a fantastic tool for streamlining workflows, drafting content, and organizing resources. For example, I use it regularly to:

  • Draft and Edit Content: From blog posts to email newsletters, ChatGPT organizes my thoughts and speeds up content creation.
  • Streamline Communication: Quickly generate responses to FAQs or draft emails.
  • Organize Workflows: Build templates for onboarding new clients or managing social media calendars.
  • Learn New Skills: Serve as a personal tutor for troubleshooting WordPress, coding fixes, and other technical challenges.

But the real magic lies in effectively managing memory and separating chats for specific purposes—which ensures clarity, privacy, and relevance. Let’s dive into how to do this.


How ChatGPT Stores Info

Before diving into how to manage memory, it’s helpful to understand the two ways ChatGPT can store information: saved chats and memory.

  • Saved Chats: Chats are session-specific and can be exported or revisited. This is a great option for project-specific details or information you want to reference later without cluttering memory.
  • Memory: If enabled, memory allows ChatGPT to retain preferences and workflows across sessions for greater efficiency. You can enable, disable, or manage memory through settings.

Additionally, you can choose not to allow your data to be used for training the language model (LLM), adding another layer of privacy. To adjust this setting:

  1. Go to Settings > Data Controls.
  2. Toggle off the option labeled something like “Allow Chat Data to Train Models.”
  3. Confirm your choice to ensure your interactions are excluded from training datasets.

This ensures your conversations are not used to improve the broader model and remain entirely private. This ensures your interactions remain private and are not included in training datasets.


1. Managing Memory

Before diving into memory, it’s essential to distinguish between how ChatGPT handles chats and memory:

  • Chats: When you interact with ChatGPT in a single session, the AI has “100% recall” of everything shared within that chat. It uses this information to provide coherent and contextually relevant responses. However, this recall is session-specific and ends when the chat closes unless the chat is saved for future reference.
  • Memory: Memory, when enabled, allows ChatGPT to retain preferences, workflows, and other details across sessions. This feature is distinct from saved chats and requires thoughtful configuration and regular review to ensure it remains relevant.

For example, saving details like branding guidelines or preferred writing styles in memory can save time, but project-specific notes may be better suited for saved chats, keeping memory streamlined.

The memory feature in ChatGPT allows it to retain details about your preferences and ongoing projects across sessions. This is incredibly useful, but it would benefit from thoughtful management:

How to Enable or Adjust Memory Settings

  1. Go to Settings (click your profile or the menu in the lower-left corner).
  2. Navigate to Personalization > Memory.
  3. Toggle memory on or off, and manage stored information by reviewing and deleting entries as needed.

When to Use Memory

  • Save business-wide preferences, like your tone of voice or branding guidelines.
  • Retain workflows or recurring tasks, such as how you structure newsletters or organize onboarding processes.

What to Avoid Saving in Memory

  • Project-specific details that are already captured in saved chats.
  • Any sensitive information or data you won’t need long-term.

Pro Tip: While memory is a great tool, it’s not perfect. Be prepared to repeat reminders if ChatGPT defaults to overused phrases or concepts (e.g., my frequent reminders to avoid calling everything a “game-changer”!).


2. Using Chats Strategically

Separating chats by purpose or project ensures better organization and helps you get the most out of ChatGPT without cluttering memory. Here’s how to approach it:

Save Project-Specific Chats

  • Use saved chats for ongoing projects, like creating a chatbot for your website or capturing FAQs you field from clients.
  • Export chats if needed for future reference or training GPT models.

Separate Topics

  • Create separate chats for distinct areas of focus, such as:
  • General business questions.
  • Specific conditions or therapies (e.g., digestive health, autoimmune protocols, hormonal balance).
  • Researching and discussing specialty topics (e.g., micronutrient therapies, functional lab interpretations, emerging dietary trends).
  • Client education materials that reference sourced information (e.g., using Perplexity.ai or ChatGPT’s for easy validation, verification, and credibility).

Benefits of Separating Chats

  • Keeps context clear and reduces the risk of mixing unrelated details.
  • Helps you revisit past conversations without digging through irrelevant topics.

3. Adjusting Privacy and Data Settings

How to Control Data Sharing

When you set up your ChatGPT account, you likely chose whether to allow your chats to train OpenAI’s language models. You can adjust this anytime:

  1. Go to Settings > Data Controls.
  2. Toggle the setting for sharing chat data on or off.
  3. If you opt out, your data will remain private and won’t be included in OpenAI’s training datasets.

Important: If you handle sensitive information, such as client data, it’s best to opt out of data sharing for added peace of mind.


4. Privacy and Best Practices for Practitioners

Avoid Inputting Protected Health Information (PHI)

Even if ChatGPT is secure, it’s not HIPAA-compliant. Never input:

  • Client names or identifiers.
  • Health histories or lab results tied to an individual.

Proceed with Caution for Health Information

While ChatGPT can provide general insights on lab results or conditions, always validate its responses. Chatbots are prone to “hallucinations”—inaccuracies that could lead to mistakes if unchecked.

Pro Tip: Use ChatGPT to brainstorm or draft educational content, but leave clinical decision-making to your expertise.


5. Quick Tips for New Users

One of the coolest ways ChatGPT helps me is by remembering my preferences for specific formatting, like using H3 headers for posts. This makes it easy to cut and paste directly from the canvas mode into my WordPress editor, which itself is a huge time-saver for drafting and organizing longer content. If you’re working on blog posts, newsletters, or other structured documents, leveraging this feature can streamline your workflow significantly.

  • Start Small: Use ChatGPT for one task, like drafting social media posts or organizing FAQs.
  • Leverage Memory: Save preferences and workflows that apply across projects.
  • Use Saved Chats: Keep detailed, project-specific conversations organized and distinct from memory.
  • Review Regularly: Periodically check memory and data-sharing settings to ensure they align with your needs.

Final Thoughts

ChatGPT is a powerful assistant that can simplify your business tasks when used thoughtfully. By understanding how to manage memory, separate chats, and protect privacy, you can maximize its value without compromising your professional standards.

If you have more questions or want to learn how to integrate ChatGPT into your practice, explore the Practitioner’s Toolbox for additional resources.

Anne Stephenson, MS CNS


Nutrishify Founder • Simplifying success for nutrition pros with smarter tools and actionable resources.