Tools for Managing Stress & Anxiety

00:00:00.000 | - Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast,

00:00:02.280 | where we discuss science and science-based tools

00:00:04.900 | for everyday life.

00:00:05.920 | I'm Andrew Huberman,

00:00:10.160 | and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology

00:00:13.360 | at Stanford School of Medicine.

00:00:15.300 | This podcast is separate

00:00:16.500 | from my teaching and research roles at Stanford.

00:00:18.880 | It is, however, part of my desire and effort

00:00:21.040 | to bring zero cost to consumer information

00:00:23.160 | about science and science-related tools

00:00:25.560 | to the general public.

00:00:27.440 | In keeping with that theme,

00:00:28.640 | I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast.

00:00:31.840 | Our first sponsor is Inside Tracker.

00:00:34.520 | Inside Tracker analyzes your blood and DNA

00:00:37.920 | to give you an accurate assessment

00:00:39.880 | of your health and your biological age.

00:00:42.900 | There are many things about our health

00:00:44.520 | that can only be analyzed from blood and DNA tests.

00:00:47.720 | I've been getting my blood assessed for many years now,

00:00:50.360 | and about a year ago, I switched to Inside Tracker.

00:00:53.460 | What I like about Inside Tracker

00:00:55.080 | is that you get all this information back

00:00:57.360 | about metabolic factors, endocrine factors, et cetera,

00:01:00.920 | that are really important to your health.

00:01:02.720 | But unlike a lot of blood tests

00:01:04.380 | where you just get all the numbers back

00:01:05.660 | and it tells you whether or not things are high,

00:01:07.560 | normal, or low, Inside Tracker also has this really useful

00:01:11.120 | and really easy-to-use dashboard

00:01:13.500 | that takes the information for your blood and DNA tests

00:01:16.560 | and points you toward particular behavioral,

00:01:19.320 | nutritional, and other sorts of protocols

00:01:21.600 | that you can use to get the numbers

00:01:23.160 | where you want them for your health.

00:01:25.680 | If you'd like to try Inside Tracker,

00:01:27.760 | you can go to insidetracker.com/huberman,

00:01:31.000 | and they will give you 25% off any of their programs.

00:01:34.320 | Again, their programs allow you to assess your health

00:01:36.560 | from the inside, things that you could just never assess

00:01:39.560 | from any kind of test that didn't involve blood and DNA.

00:01:43.040 | And it also has this really interesting feature

00:01:45.520 | that it can measure your inner age,

00:01:47.080 | which is based on biology.

00:01:48.700 | Your chronological age, of course,

00:01:50.280 | is very informative about your health

00:01:52.140 | and where you ought to be in terms of health metrics,

00:01:54.740 | but people vary.

00:01:55.860 | We know people, of course,

00:01:56.840 | that are in their late 90s who are doing well.

00:01:59.540 | We know people that are in their 50s who are struggling

00:02:01.960 | or even in their 20s.

00:02:03.160 | So blood and DNA are the way to analyze your health.

00:02:05.800 | That's my belief.

00:02:06.640 | That's why I use Inside Tracker.

00:02:08.380 | So go to insidetracker.com/huberman

00:02:11.200 | to get 25% off any of their products

00:02:14.060 | and use Huberman at checkout.

00:02:16.700 | Our second sponsor of today's episode is Helix Sleep.

00:02:19.960 | Helix Sleep makes mattresses and pillows

00:02:22.460 | that are ideally suited to your needs

00:02:24.920 | for the best night's sleep possible.

00:02:27.520 | I switched to using a Helix mattress

00:02:29.400 | and Helix pillow this last year,

00:02:31.880 | and I'm sleeping better than I ever have before.

00:02:34.580 | The way that Helix mattresses work,

00:02:36.640 | and the reason they're different,

00:02:37.720 | is that they are tailored to your individual sleep style.

00:02:41.320 | Your sleep style can be assessed by going to their website.

00:02:44.200 | You take a brief two-minute questionnaire quiz,

00:02:47.160 | ask you questions like, do you sleep on your back

00:02:49.240 | or your side or your stomach?

00:02:50.480 | Maybe you don't know,

00:02:51.320 | maybe you move around a lot during the night.

00:02:53.560 | It also asks you questions such as,

00:02:55.360 | do you tend to run hot or wake up cold?

00:02:58.160 | Things of that sort.

00:02:59.300 | And then they tailor a particular mattress

00:03:02.000 | to your sleep needs.

00:03:03.360 | For me, I matched to the so-called DUSK mattress,

00:03:06.540 | and I love it.

00:03:07.480 | I sleep better than ever.

00:03:09.020 | And right now, if you wanna try Helix Sleep,

00:03:12.060 | you can go to helixsleep.com/huberman.

00:03:15.120 | And if you do that,

00:03:16.400 | you'll get $200 off your order plus two free pillows.

00:03:20.160 | They also have a great warranty.

00:03:21.260 | They have a 10-year warranty on their mattresses.

00:03:23.660 | If you don't like the mattress for any reason,

00:03:25.820 | they'll pick it up for free from your home.

00:03:28.000 | And they just make the whole thing really easy to try

00:03:31.580 | and determine whether or not it's right for you.

00:03:33.200 | So again, it's helixsleep.com/huberman

00:03:36.440 | to get $200 off and two free pillows on your first order.

00:03:41.060 | Some of you have asked how you can help support the podcast

00:03:43.920 | in yet other ways besides just checking out our sponsors.

00:03:47.520 | We really appreciate the question,

00:03:49.080 | and we've set up a Patreon account

00:03:51.120 | at patreon.com/andrewhuberman,

00:03:54.720 | which allows you to donate to the podcast

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00:03:58.880 | We have, for instance, the 5HTP,

00:04:01.880 | which is in honor of serotonin,

00:04:04.260 | 5HTP is the name for serotonin,

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00:04:34.920 | So again, that's patreon.com/andrewhuberman

00:04:38.120 | if you'd like to support the podcast that way.

00:04:40.360 | Today's episode is going to be all about

00:04:43.640 | the science of emotions.

00:04:46.580 | The first month of the podcast,

00:04:47.960 | we talked about sleep and wakefulness.

00:04:51.440 | Last month, we were talking about neuroplasticity,

00:04:54.600 | the brain's ability to change in response to experience.

00:04:57.840 | And this month, we're going to talk about

00:05:00.420 | these things that we call emotions.

00:05:02.960 | We're going to decipher what they are, how they work,

00:05:06.920 | how we can control them,

00:05:08.520 | when we might not want to control them.

00:05:10.740 | There are going to be four episodes on emotions.

00:05:15.320 | And today, we're going to talk in particular

00:05:18.400 | about something that most often is called stress.

00:05:22.940 | You might be thinking, wait, stress isn't an emotion,

00:05:26.120 | but stress really lies at the heart

00:05:28.860 | of whether or not our internal experience

00:05:32.060 | is matched well or not to our external experience

00:05:36.020 | or the events that are happening to us and around us.

00:05:39.180 | And as you'll soon see, those converge or combine

00:05:43.220 | to create what we call emotions.

00:05:46.340 | Now, I want to be very clear

00:05:47.740 | that we're going to talk about the biology of emotions.

00:05:50.960 | We're going to talk a little bit about

00:05:52.220 | some psychological concepts related to emotion.

00:05:55.120 | And we are definitely going to talk about tools

00:05:58.160 | to control what we call stress

00:06:00.280 | or commonly think of as stress.

00:06:01.800 | We're also going to clean up some common myths about stress.

00:06:04.580 | For instance, that stress impairs your immune system.

00:06:08.500 | That's true in certain contexts.

00:06:10.480 | And in other contexts,

00:06:11.560 | stress actually enhances your immune system

00:06:13.500 | and makes it function better.

00:06:15.480 | There is going to be a lot of discussion

00:06:18.440 | about whether or not our internal state,

00:06:21.040 | whether or not we are alert or calm,

00:06:23.540 | is good or bad depending on the circumstances.

00:06:26.360 | So where we're headed here

00:06:28.660 | is I'd like you to come away from today's episode

00:06:31.720 | with what I call an organizational logic,

00:06:34.620 | a framework for thinking about these things

00:06:37.460 | that typically we just call happy or sad

00:06:39.700 | or depressed or anxious.

00:06:41.720 | And I'm going to make sure that you have tools

00:06:44.460 | that are grounded in physiology and neuroscience

00:06:47.240 | that will allow you to navigate

00:06:49.120 | this otherwise complex space that we call emotions

00:06:52.720 | that will allow you to ground yourself better

00:06:55.780 | when you're feeling like life is weighing on you

00:06:59.500 | or you're kind of being pulled by the currents of life

00:07:02.560 | as well as to support other people,

00:07:04.760 | whether or not that's in a psychological practice

00:07:06.960 | if you're a practitioner

00:07:09.020 | or you have clients or children or spouses,

00:07:12.680 | really to be able to support other people

00:07:14.360 | in your environment better.

00:07:16.440 | And the tools that I'm going to focus on today

00:07:19.160 | range from behavioral tools.

00:07:21.220 | We will talk about some of the more valuable

00:07:24.000 | supplementation tools that are out there.

00:07:26.520 | And we're going to talk a little bit about things

00:07:29.240 | like depression, PTSD,

00:07:31.900 | but we will be devoting entire episodes

00:07:34.760 | to things like depression, PTSD,

00:07:37.060 | and even attention deficit and obsessive compulsive disorder

00:07:40.080 | which believe it or not,

00:07:41.880 | although this might not surprise many of you,

00:07:44.080 | have a very strong emotional component.

00:07:46.360 | It's just not just about compulsive behaviors

00:07:49.600 | and intrusive thoughts.

00:07:50.520 | It's also about the emotional load of being in that state.

00:07:54.220 | So I promise that today we're going to clean up

00:07:57.560 | a lot of misunderstanding.

00:07:59.780 | We're going to give you a lot of tools

00:08:02.120 | and you're going to learn a lot about the biology

00:08:05.760 | of how your body and brain work together.

00:08:08.500 | Because if ever there was a topic

00:08:10.860 | that brought together the brain and body

00:08:13.380 | or mind-body relationship,

00:08:15.660 | it's stress and emotions.

00:08:18.020 | It's also the positive emotions.

00:08:19.440 | When we feel something, whether or not we're super happy

00:08:23.140 | or just feeling kind of pleasant,

00:08:24.960 | or we are feeling stressed, anxious, and overwhelmed,

00:08:28.920 | it isn't just in our head, it's also in our body.

00:08:32.360 | And as you may recall, the nervous system,

00:08:35.500 | which includes the brain and the eyes and the spinal cord,

00:08:38.400 | but also all the connections with the organs of the body

00:08:41.700 | includes the brain and body.

00:08:43.500 | And those organs of the body,

00:08:45.980 | your gut and your liver and your spleen,

00:08:48.900 | they're also communicating with the brain.

00:08:52.140 | So I look forward to a day, in fact,

00:08:54.000 | when we no longer think about neuroscience

00:08:56.680 | as just the brain.

00:08:57.780 | And many neuroscientists now also think about the body,

00:09:00.260 | of course, the brain controls the body,

00:09:02.240 | but the body is also having a very profound

00:09:05.340 | and concrete influence on the brain.

00:09:08.140 | I think up until recently,

00:09:11.260 | people would hear about kind of brain-body

00:09:13.820 | and always think about mindfulness.

00:09:15.220 | We're actually not gonna talk that much about mindfulness

00:09:17.340 | at all today.

00:09:18.320 | Mindfulness is kind of a vague concept, in fact.

00:09:21.380 | When you think about mindfulness,

00:09:22.820 | it's good to take the opposite.

00:09:24.140 | What's the opposite of mindfulness would be mindlessness.

00:09:26.540 | Well, all of a sudden we're into territory

00:09:28.500 | that isn't really easy for one person

00:09:31.460 | to describe their experience

00:09:32.980 | or to help others with their experience.

00:09:35.140 | Today, we're gonna talk about objective tools

00:09:37.240 | that match the brain-body experience

00:09:39.980 | or separate the brain-body experience

00:09:42.740 | in ways that leverage your ability

00:09:45.420 | to lean into life better, to feel better,

00:09:48.600 | literally to just feel better about what you're experiencing

00:09:51.580 | and believe it or not,

00:09:53.420 | to be able to control your emotions when that's appropriate.

00:09:56.340 | This isn't about becoming robotic.

00:09:58.220 | This isn't about trying not to feel human.

00:10:00.660 | This is actually about being able to lean into life better

00:10:03.940 | as a consequence of being able to control

00:10:06.060 | some of your inner real estate,

00:10:08.140 | this nervous system that includes the brain and body

00:10:10.400 | and how that nervous system

00:10:12.180 | is interacting with the outside world.

00:10:13.860 | So it's to place you in a greater position of power.

00:10:16.660 | And so let's get started in deciphering what is stress?

00:10:20.180 | What are emotions?

00:10:21.540 | And why did I batch stress and emotions

00:10:24.180 | into one discussion today?

00:10:26.700 | Okay, so what is stress?

00:10:27.860 | We hear all the time that stress is bad.

00:10:30.700 | We hear people saying they're really stressed out.

00:10:34.040 | What is stress?

00:10:35.700 | You've all presumably heard the arguments or the framework

00:10:40.380 | that stress is this horrible ancient carryover

00:10:44.540 | from times in which humans were pursued by animals

00:10:47.360 | or other human predators.

00:10:49.480 | And that whenever we feel what we call stress

00:10:52.780 | or feel stressed out,

00:10:54.180 | that it's just this unfortunate invasion

00:10:57.100 | of something that we no longer need in modern life,

00:11:00.020 | that this was designed for when we were being attacked

00:11:02.820 | by bears or tigers or lions or whatever it is.

00:11:05.900 | And gosh, what an unfortunate thing.

00:11:08.420 | And we have so many creature comforts nowadays,

00:11:11.140 | but we have not eliminated this stress.

00:11:13.780 | Almost as if it was like an organ or a system in our body

00:11:16.340 | that was bad for us that we're stuck with

00:11:18.980 | just because of the species that we are.

00:11:21.460 | But first of all, all species experience stress.

00:11:25.040 | And I think that it's fair to say,

00:11:28.720 | even though I wasn't there,

00:11:30.360 | that yes, in fact, throughout our evolutionary history,

00:11:34.820 | we were vulnerable to animal attack and other human attacks

00:11:39.540 | on a regular basis up until a point

00:11:41.820 | where we started developing weapons and structures and fire

00:11:45.260 | and other things that allow us to protect ourselves better

00:11:47.620 | from those animals and invaders of various kinds.

00:11:50.860 | But it is entirely naive for us to think

00:11:54.340 | that in ancient times,

00:11:57.480 | ancient times being a kind of loose term for previous time,

00:12:00.420 | medieval times, 100 years ago, a thousand years ago,

00:12:03.660 | 10,000 years ago, of course there were infidelities, right?

00:12:07.940 | Partners cheated, people died.

00:12:10.540 | In fact, before the advent of phones,

00:12:12.820 | which we're gonna talk about today,

00:12:15.420 | you can imagine that someone might head off on a hunt

00:12:18.560 | or to go visit a relative and never come back

00:12:20.740 | and you would never know why.

00:12:22.020 | That would be very stressful.

00:12:23.420 | So there was psychosocial stress.

00:12:25.340 | There was a stress of losing loved ones.

00:12:27.380 | There was the stress of cold, of famine.

00:12:30.120 | There was the stress probably also of just worry.

00:12:33.120 | This idea that ancient versions of humans

00:12:37.580 | a thousand years ago, a hundred years ago didn't worry.

00:12:39.900 | I think that is entirely inconsistent

00:12:42.500 | with everything we know about the structure

00:12:44.040 | of the human brain a hundred years, a thousand years ago.

00:12:47.200 | So all the problems that we're struggling with

00:12:50.220 | existed forever.

00:12:53.260 | It's just that stress at its core is a generalized system.

00:12:58.060 | It wasn't designed for tigers attacking us

00:13:01.140 | or people attacking us.

00:13:02.520 | It's a system to mobilize other systems

00:13:05.300 | in the brain and body.

00:13:06.820 | That's what stress really is.

00:13:08.020 | It's designed to be generic.

00:13:09.780 | And that's the most important thing

00:13:11.360 | that I'd like you to understand today

00:13:12.580 | is that the system that governs what we call stress

00:13:15.260 | is generic.

00:13:16.900 | It wasn't designed for one thing.

00:13:19.300 | And that gives it a certain advantage

00:13:22.780 | in taking over the state of our brain and body.

00:13:25.220 | But it also gives you, all of us,

00:13:28.020 | an advantage in controlling it

00:13:30.240 | because it's based on hardwired biological mechanisms.

00:13:34.560 | And there are hardwired biological mechanisms,

00:13:38.020 | meaning cells and chemicals and pathways and tissues

00:13:40.920 | that exist in you right now

00:13:43.280 | that require no neuroplasticity

00:13:45.780 | that allow you to put a brake on stress.

00:13:48.980 | And so we're gonna talk about those.

00:13:51.040 | So you have a system for stress

00:13:52.700 | and you have a system for de-stress

00:13:54.500 | that are baked into you.

00:13:56.740 | They were genetically encoded

00:13:58.400 | and you were born with them and you still have them now.

00:14:01.840 | So if you're alive and listening,

00:14:03.920 | you have the capacity to control your stress.

00:14:06.500 | And today I'm gonna talk about ways

00:14:08.380 | that you can control your stress,

00:14:09.900 | not just by doing some offline practice

00:14:12.420 | of meditation or breath work or something like that,

00:14:14.820 | but real-time tools,

00:14:16.600 | tools that allow you to push back on stress

00:14:19.140 | when stress hits in real time.

00:14:21.260 | You know, this is something that my lab works actively on

00:14:23.920 | in developing and testing these tools

00:14:25.580 | and evolving these tools.

00:14:27.500 | And there are other laboratories that do this as well.

00:14:30.940 | So let's talk about the stress response.

00:14:33.100 | And by doing that,

00:14:34.600 | you will understand exactly why the tools

00:14:36.980 | I'm gonna give you work.

00:14:38.380 | For those of you that are saying,

00:14:40.760 | "Wait, I just want the tools, just give me a summary."

00:14:43.860 | Trust me, if you understand mechanism,

00:14:45.920 | you are going to be in a far better position

00:14:48.020 | to incorporate these tools, to teach these tools to others,

00:14:50.940 | and to modify them as your life circumstances change.

00:14:54.440 | If you'd like the cheat sheet,

00:14:55.980 | or you just want the one-page PDF,

00:14:57.820 | eventually we'll get that stuff out to people,

00:14:59.420 | but it's really important

00:15:00.820 | to understand the underlying mechanism.

00:15:03.380 | Okay, so what is stress?

00:15:05.280 | Well, let's just distinguish between stressors,

00:15:07.980 | which are the things that stress us out,

00:15:10.640 | and stress, which is the psychological

00:15:14.100 | and physiological response to stressors.

00:15:17.180 | I'm mainly gonna talk about stress,

00:15:18.640 | which is your response to things.

00:15:21.240 | Let's be clear about what we already know,

00:15:23.480 | which is that stressors can be psychological,

00:15:28.400 | or they can be physical, okay?

00:15:30.640 | If I put you outside on a cold day without a jacket

00:15:34.160 | for a very long time, that is stressful.

00:15:37.040 | If I have you prepare for too many exams at once,

00:15:40.680 | and you can't balance it all with your sleep schedule

00:15:42.960 | and your other needs for comfort and wellbeing,

00:15:45.400 | like food, rest, sleep, and social connection,

00:15:47.660 | that is stressful.

00:15:48.680 | So stress, and as I mentioned before, is generic.

00:15:52.600 | It doesn't distinguish between physical

00:15:56.700 | and emotional stress.

00:15:58.220 | So what happens when the stress response hits?

00:16:00.340 | Let's talk about the immediate,

00:16:02.060 | or what we call the acute stress response.

00:16:04.720 | We could also think of this as a short-term stress.

00:16:07.840 | So you have a collection of neurons.

00:16:10.980 | They have a name.

00:16:11.980 | It's called the sympathetic chain ganglia,

00:16:14.020 | and it has nothing to do with sympathy.

00:16:15.880 | Simpa means together, and there's a group of neurons

00:16:20.240 | that start right about at your neck

00:16:22.240 | and run down to about your navel, a little bit lower,

00:16:25.360 | and those are called the sympathetic chain ganglia.

00:16:28.780 | You don't need to memorize that name.

00:16:30.440 | There will not be a quiz, but it's important to know

00:16:32.820 | that in the middle of your body, you have a chain of neurons

00:16:36.060 | that when something stresses us out, either in our mind

00:16:39.500 | or because something enters our environment

00:16:41.640 | and we see something that stresses us out

00:16:43.240 | that we don't like heights if you're afraid of heights,

00:16:45.440 | somebody you dislike walks into the room, et cetera,

00:16:48.560 | that chain of neurons becomes activated

00:16:52.840 | like a bunch of dominoes falling all at once.

00:16:56.060 | It's very fast.

00:16:57.760 | When that happens, those neurons release a neuromodulator,

00:17:03.500 | neurochemical that I've talked about before

00:17:05.180 | on this podcast called acetylcholine.

00:17:07.480 | They release that at various sites within the body.

00:17:11.360 | Now, this is important because normally acetylcholine

00:17:14.060 | would be used to move muscles.

00:17:15.980 | Actually, every time we move a muscle,

00:17:17.640 | pick up a cup of coffee, write with a pen,

00:17:19.800 | walk down the street, it's spinal neurons connecting

00:17:23.600 | to muscle and releasing acetylcholine.

00:17:25.400 | So in the brain, it's involved in focus

00:17:27.280 | and at muscles, it's involved in making muscles twitch.

00:17:30.240 | But if we were stressed, we wouldn't want all our muscles

00:17:32.560 | to contract at once because we would just be paralyzed

00:17:35.180 | like this in what tonic activation as it's called.

00:17:38.280 | We wouldn't want that, something called tetanus,

00:17:40.480 | believe it or not, because the tetanus toxin

00:17:42.200 | will cause that kind of rigor of the entire body.

00:17:45.000 | You do not want that.

00:17:46.040 | When those neurons are activated, acetylcholine is released,

00:17:50.520 | but there are some other neurons

00:17:52.040 | for the aficionados out there.

00:17:54.060 | They're called the postganglionic neurons.

00:17:56.080 | Those ones respond to that acetylcholine

00:17:58.400 | and then they release epinephrine,

00:18:00.860 | which is the equivalent to adrenaline.

00:18:03.540 | So we have this system where very fast,

00:18:06.360 | whenever we're stressed, the core of our body,

00:18:08.760 | these neurons down the middle of our body

00:18:10.240 | release these chemicals and then there's adrenaline

00:18:13.800 | or epinephrine released at particular organs

00:18:17.220 | and acts in particular ways.

00:18:18.900 | We're going down into the weeds here, so just stay with me

00:18:21.440 | 'cause it's going to make a lot of sense

00:18:22.680 | and you will appreciate having this knowledge in hand.

00:18:25.360 | That epinephrine acts in two different ways.

00:18:29.260 | Some things like the muscles of your legs and your heart

00:18:34.240 | and other things that need to be active

00:18:36.220 | when you're stressed, they have a certain kind of receptor,

00:18:40.400 | which is called the beta receptor

00:18:43.540 | and that beta receptor responds to epinephrine

00:18:45.740 | and blood vessels dilate, they get bigger

00:18:48.580 | and blood rushes in to our legs.

00:18:50.980 | The heart rate speeds up.

00:18:53.000 | Lots of things happen, they get activated.

00:18:55.300 | And at the same time, that epinephrine activates

00:18:59.160 | other receptors on certain tissues that we don't need,

00:19:02.740 | the ones involved in digestion, reproduction

00:19:06.200 | and things of that sort that are luxuries

00:19:09.100 | for when things are going well,

00:19:10.680 | not things to pay attention to when we're stressed

00:19:13.320 | and that binds to other receptors

00:19:15.600 | that contract the blood vessels.

00:19:17.800 | So basically the stress response,

00:19:19.900 | this is the key phrase here, the stress response,

00:19:21.940 | A is generic, I said that before

00:19:24.360 | and B, it basically pushes certain systems to be activated

00:19:30.340 | and other systems to not be activated.

00:19:33.160 | So the stress response is two-pronged.

00:19:35.320 | It's a yes for certain things

00:19:37.240 | and it's a no, you may not right now for other things.

00:19:40.140 | So that's the key thing to understand

00:19:41.640 | about the stress response.

00:19:42.640 | That's why your heart speeds up.

00:19:43.980 | That's why you feel blood in certain organs

00:19:46.880 | and tissues of your body, but not in others.

00:19:49.080 | That's why your throat goes dry,

00:19:51.040 | because it turns out that when you get stressed,

00:19:54.800 | the salivary glands are shut down.

00:19:56.620 | There's a lot less blood flow to the neurons

00:19:59.320 | that control salivation.

00:20:01.200 | And so you're gonna start swallowing.

00:20:02.720 | You feel like your throat is getting dry.

00:20:04.580 | There are a lot of different effects.

00:20:05.720 | I'm not gonna list them all off,

00:20:07.000 | but basically you are activated

00:20:09.760 | in ways that support you moving.

00:20:12.240 | So that's the third thing.

00:20:13.640 | First of all, it's generic.

00:20:14.600 | Second of all, the stress response activates certain things

00:20:17.640 | and shuts down other features of our body.

00:20:19.720 | And then it's a sense of agitation

00:20:22.280 | that makes you wanna move.

00:20:23.960 | And that's because fundamentally the stress response

00:20:27.040 | is just this generic thing that says, do something.

00:20:30.600 | And movement in this case can either be the bias to move

00:20:33.600 | in terms of action, or it can be the bias to say something.

00:20:38.520 | When we are stressed, we are more likely to say something

00:20:41.880 | that probably we shouldn't say.

00:20:43.600 | We are more likely to move.

00:20:46.120 | And if you're trying to suppress movement,

00:20:47.560 | you'll feel that as a tremor.

00:20:49.600 | You're gonna feel agitated

00:20:50.840 | and that's because it was designed to move you.

00:20:53.300 | So this is important because if you wanna control stress,

00:20:57.700 | you need to learn how to work with that agitation.

00:21:01.180 | I'd like to give you a tool at this point

00:21:05.340 | because I think if we go any further

00:21:08.040 | with a lot more science, people are gonna begin to wonder

00:21:11.060 | if this is just gonna be a kind of standard university

00:21:13.140 | lecture about the stress response.

00:21:14.780 | I'm gonna give you more science about the stress response,

00:21:17.380 | but I want to take what we now already know

00:21:19.780 | about the stress response and use that as a framework

00:21:24.540 | for thinking about how one might reduce

00:21:28.540 | or even eliminate the stress response quickly in real time

00:21:32.400 | should it arise when we don't want it.

00:21:34.100 | So we're taking the podium or we're sitting down

00:21:36.380 | at a Zoom call and all of a sudden we're feeling flushed.

00:21:39.960 | We're feeling like our heart is racing.

00:21:41.640 | We're feeling a little too alert.

00:21:43.200 | We're feeling a little worked up and we wanna calm down.

00:21:47.640 | As far as I am aware of, the best tools

00:21:52.400 | to reduce stress quickly, so-called real-time tools

00:21:56.900 | are going to be tools that have a direct line

00:22:00.600 | to the so-called autonomic nervous system.

00:22:02.760 | The autonomic nervous system is a name given

00:22:05.040 | to the kind of general features of alertness

00:22:07.660 | or calmness in the body.

00:22:09.220 | It's typically, it means automatic,

00:22:11.220 | although we do have some control over it,

00:22:12.800 | certain what so-called levers or entry points.

00:22:16.020 | Here's what doesn't work to control stress,

00:22:18.660 | telling yourself to calm down.

00:22:20.420 | In fact, that tends to just exacerbate stress.

00:22:23.140 | Telling someone else to calm down

00:22:24.460 | also tends to exacerbate their stress.

00:22:26.480 | If you want to reduce the magnitude of the stress response,

00:22:31.320 | the best thing you can do is activate the other system

00:22:35.460 | in the body, which is designed for calming and relaxation.

00:22:39.680 | And that system is called the parasympathetic nervous system

00:22:43.720 | because as I mentioned before,

00:22:45.080 | the neurons that control stress

00:22:46.400 | run from about your neck to your navel.

00:22:48.680 | The parasympathetic neurons, para just means near,

00:22:51.520 | exist in, they are some of the cranial nerves,

00:22:54.680 | so it's kind of neck and lower brainstem,

00:22:57.440 | kind of back of the brain and in the neck,

00:22:59.460 | and in the pelvic area.

00:23:01.520 | And the parasympathetic nervous system

00:23:03.840 | is really interesting because especially the cranial nerves,

00:23:07.780 | the ones that are up in the brainstem and in the neck area,

00:23:11.840 | those have a direct line to various features of your face,

00:23:16.180 | in particular, the eyes.

00:23:18.000 | They control things like eye movements,

00:23:19.640 | pupil dilation, things of that sort,

00:23:22.680 | as well as the tongue, the facial muscles, et cetera.

00:23:25.800 | The parasympathetic nervous system,

00:23:27.360 | many people don't realize this,

00:23:28.840 | is the system by which we control the face and the eyes,

00:23:32.400 | and to some extent our airway, the trachea.

00:23:34.740 | And it's these neurons that reside within the pelvic area.

00:23:40.440 | Now, the neurons within the pelvic area

00:23:42.160 | are involved in control of the genitals,

00:23:45.380 | the bladder, and the rectum.

00:23:47.600 | And those don't have a direct line.

00:23:50.440 | You don't have a direct way to control those.

00:23:52.740 | It actually has to go from brain to spinal cord

00:23:54.660 | and then out to those organs.

00:23:56.120 | Whereas the parasympathetic nervous system

00:23:58.660 | has certain entry points, or what I'll call levers, right,

00:24:02.680 | that will allow you to push back on the stress response

00:24:05.360 | in real time and diminish it

00:24:07.480 | and feel more relaxed really quickly.

00:24:09.280 | So I'm going to teach you the first tool now

00:24:11.520 | so I don't overwhelm you with all this academic knowledge

00:24:13.840 | without giving you something useful.

00:24:15.940 | And the tool that, at least to my knowledge,

00:24:19.180 | is the fastest and most thoroughly grounded

00:24:23.920 | in physiology and neuroscience

00:24:25.480 | for calming down in a self-directed way

00:24:28.400 | is what's called the physiological PSI, S-I-G-H.

00:24:32.240 | Now, some of you might've heard me talk about this

00:24:34.200 | on previous podcasts, but I'm going to explain this

00:24:36.960 | in the context of how respiration in general

00:24:40.380 | is used to calm us down.

00:24:42.880 | And it turns out you're all doing this all the time,

00:24:44.600 | but you are doing it involuntarily.

00:24:47.040 | And when you stress, you tend to forget

00:24:49.180 | that you can also activate these systems voluntarily.

00:24:52.420 | This is an extremely powerful set of techniques

00:24:54.960 | that we know from scientific studies

00:24:57.500 | that are being done in my lab,

00:24:58.560 | Jack Feldman's lab at UCLA, and others now

00:25:01.400 | that are very, very useful

00:25:04.400 | for reducing your stress response in real time.

00:25:07.280 | And here's how they work.

00:25:08.480 | These days, there seems to be a lot of interest

00:25:10.960 | in breath work.

00:25:12.180 | Breath work typically is when you go and you sit down

00:25:15.140 | or you lie down and you deliberately breathe

00:25:17.440 | in a particular way for a series of minutes

00:25:19.960 | in order to shift your physiology, access some states,

00:25:22.600 | and it does have some utility that we're going to talk about.

00:25:25.360 | That is not what I'm talking about now.

00:25:27.900 | What I'm talking about when I refer to physiological size

00:25:30.920 | is the very real medical school textbook relationship

00:25:35.860 | between the brain, the body,

00:25:39.560 | and the body as it relates to the breathing apparatus,

00:25:43.020 | meaning the diaphragm and lungs, and the heart.

00:25:46.280 | Let's take the hallmark of the stress response.

00:25:48.580 | The heart starts beating faster.

00:25:50.160 | Blood is shuttled to the big muscles of the body

00:25:52.000 | to move you away from whatever it is the stressor is

00:25:55.460 | or just make you feel like you need to move or talk.

00:25:57.720 | Your face goes flushed, et cetera.

00:26:00.040 | Heart rate, many of us feel is involuntary,

00:26:03.260 | just kind of functions whether or not we're moving fast

00:26:05.580 | or moving slow.

00:26:06.420 | If you think about it, it's not really purely autonomic

00:26:09.520 | because you can speed up your heart rate by running

00:26:11.940 | or you can slow it down by slowing down, by your run.

00:26:15.800 | You can move to a walk or lie down,

00:26:17.760 | but that's indirect control.

00:26:19.800 | There is, however, a way in which you can breathe

00:26:22.180 | that directly controls your heart rate

00:26:24.040 | through the interactions between the sympathetic

00:26:27.160 | and the parasympathetic nervous system.

00:26:29.600 | Here's how it works.

00:26:31.340 | When you inhale,

00:26:33.440 | so whether or not it's through the nose or through the mouth,

00:26:36.800 | this skeletal muscle that's inside your body

00:26:40.120 | called the diaphragm, it moves down.

00:26:43.280 | And that's because the lungs expand,

00:26:44.920 | the diaphragm moves down.

00:26:46.320 | Your heart actually gets a little bit bigger

00:26:49.040 | in that expanded space.

00:26:50.420 | There's more space for the heart.

00:26:51.800 | So I'm not talking about your emotional heart

00:26:53.340 | getting bigger.

00:26:54.180 | I'm talking about your actual physical heart

00:26:55.920 | getting a little bit bigger.

00:26:56.840 | The volume grows.

00:26:57.880 | And as a consequence, whatever blood is in there

00:27:00.900 | is now at a lower volume

00:27:03.880 | or moving a little bit more slowly in that larger volume

00:27:07.160 | than it was before you inhaled.

00:27:10.440 | So more space, heart gets bigger, blood moves more slowly,

00:27:13.320 | and there's a little group of neurons

00:27:15.040 | called the sinoatrial node in the heart that registers,

00:27:20.040 | believe it or not, those neurons pay attention

00:27:22.200 | to the rate of blood flow through the heart

00:27:24.480 | and send a signal up to the brain

00:27:27.260 | that blood is moving more slowly through the heart.

00:27:30.620 | The brain then sends a signal back to the heart

00:27:33.340 | to speed the heart up.

00:27:35.180 | So what this means is if you want your heart to beat faster,

00:27:38.820 | inhale longer, inhale more vigorously than your exhales.

00:27:43.820 | Now, there are a variety of ways that one could do that,

00:27:48.560 | but it doesn't matter if it's through the nose

00:27:50.140 | or through the mouth.

00:27:50.980 | If your inhales are longer than your exhales,

00:27:52.800 | you're speeding up your heart.

00:27:54.820 | If your inhales are more vigorous,

00:27:56.220 | so even if your inhales are shorter than your exhales,

00:27:58.560 | you are speeding up your heart rate.

00:28:00.920 | Now, the opposite is also true.

00:28:02.440 | If you want to slow your heart rate down,

00:28:04.360 | so stress response hits,

00:28:05.960 | you want to slow your heart rate down,

00:28:08.240 | what you want to do is, again,

00:28:10.800 | capitalize on this relationship between the body,

00:28:13.560 | meaning the diaphragm in the heart and the brain.

00:28:15.760 | Here's how it works.

00:28:16.600 | When you exhale, the diaphragm moves up,

00:28:20.440 | which makes the heart a little bit smaller.

00:28:22.720 | It actually gets a little more compact.

00:28:24.240 | Blood flows more quickly through that compact space,

00:28:27.580 | sort of like it's just a pipe getting smaller.

00:28:30.500 | The sinoatrial node registers

00:28:32.240 | that blood is going more quickly,

00:28:33.620 | sends a signal up to the brain,

00:28:36.080 | and the parasympathetic nervous system,

00:28:38.280 | some neurons in your brain stem,

00:28:40.160 | send a signal back to the heart to slow the heart down.

00:28:44.180 | So if you want to calm down quickly,

00:28:46.700 | you need to make your exhales longer

00:28:49.820 | and/or more vigorous than your inhales.

00:28:53.200 | Now, the reason this is so attractive

00:28:55.240 | as a tool for controlling stress

00:28:57.640 | is that it works in real time.

00:29:00.400 | This doesn't involve a practice

00:29:01.920 | that you have to go and sit there

00:29:03.320 | and do anything separate from life.

00:29:05.320 | And we are going to get to emotion.

00:29:07.200 | Emotions and stress happen in real time.

00:29:09.960 | And so while it's wonderful to have a breath work practice

00:29:12.720 | or to have the opportunity to get a massage

00:29:15.000 | or sit in a sauna or do whatever it is that you do

00:29:17.300 | in order to set your stress controls in the right direction,

00:29:20.600 | having tools that you can reach to in real time

00:29:22.920 | that require no learning.

00:29:24.360 | I mean, I had to teach it to you, you had to learn that,

00:29:26.800 | but it doesn't require any plasticity

00:29:28.280 | to activate these pathways.

00:29:29.660 | So if you're feeling stressed,

00:29:31.200 | you still need to inhale, of course,

00:29:32.840 | but you need to lengthen your exhales.

00:29:35.580 | Now, there's a tool that capitalizes on this

00:29:40.160 | in a kind of unique way, a kind of a twist,

00:29:42.960 | which is the physiological psi.

00:29:44.640 | The physiological psi was discovered in the '30s.

00:29:47.200 | It's now been explored at the neurobiological level

00:29:50.480 | and mechanistically in far more detail by Jack Feldman's lab

00:29:53.980 | at UCLA, also Mark Krasnow's lab at Stanford.

00:29:57.820 | And the physiological psi is something that humans

00:30:01.100 | and animals do anytime they are about to fall asleep.

00:30:04.640 | You also do it throughout sleep from time to time

00:30:08.080 | when carbon dioxide, which we'll talk about in a moment,

00:30:10.280 | builds up too much in your system.

00:30:12.260 | And the physiological psi is something

00:30:14.280 | that people naturally start doing when they've been crying

00:30:17.120 | and they're trying to recover some air or calm down,

00:30:20.160 | when they've been sobbing very hard,

00:30:22.060 | or when they are in claustrophobic environments.

00:30:24.440 | However, the amazing thing about this thing

00:30:27.480 | that we call the diaphragm, the skeletal muscle,

00:30:29.360 | is that it's an internal organ

00:30:30.780 | that you can control voluntarily,

00:30:32.320 | unlike your spleen or your heart or your pancreas,

00:30:36.200 | where you can't just say,

00:30:37.020 | "Oh, I want to make my pancreas

00:30:38.200 | "turn out a little more insulin right now.

00:30:39.580 | "I'm just going to do that with my mind directly."

00:30:41.680 | You can't do that.

00:30:42.520 | You could do that by smelling

00:30:43.400 | a really good donut or something,

00:30:44.860 | but you can't just do it directly.

00:30:46.720 | You can move your diaphragm intentionally, right?

00:30:50.640 | You can do it anytime you want,

00:30:51.880 | and it'll run in the background

00:30:54.020 | if you're not thinking about it.

00:30:54.920 | So this incredible pathway that goes from brain to diaphragm

00:30:59.160 | through what's called the phrenic nerve, P-H-R-E-N-I-C,

00:31:02.720 | phrenic, the phrenic nerve innervates the diaphragm.

00:31:05.880 | You can control anytime you want.

00:31:07.360 | You can double up your inhales or triple up your inhales.

00:31:09.800 | You can exhale more than your inhales,

00:31:11.960 | whatever you want to do.

00:31:13.600 | Such an incredible organ.

00:31:14.800 | And the physiological sigh

00:31:16.920 | is something that we do spontaneously,

00:31:18.720 | but when you're feeling stressed,

00:31:20.640 | you can do a double inhale,

00:31:22.860 | [inhales]

00:31:25.280 | [exhales]

00:31:27.520 | long exhale.

00:31:28.420 | Now, I just told you a minute ago

00:31:29.900 | that if you inhale more than you exhale,

00:31:31.900 | you're going to speed the heart rate up,

00:31:33.600 | which would promote more stress and activation.

00:31:36.100 | Now I'm telling you to do a double inhale exhale

00:31:38.400 | in order to calm down.

00:31:40.040 | And the reason is the double inhale exhale,

00:31:43.000 | which is the physiological sigh,

00:31:44.860 | takes advantage of the fact

00:31:47.560 | that when we do a double inhale,

00:31:48.960 | even if the second inhale is sneaking in

00:31:50.780 | just a tiny bit more air,

00:31:52.220 | 'cause it's kind of hard to get two deep inhales

00:31:54.080 | back to back.

00:31:54.920 | You do big, deep inhale,

00:31:55.760 | and then another little one sneaking it in.

00:31:57.800 | The little sacs in your lungs, the avioli of the lungs,

00:32:00.680 | your lungs aren't just two big bags,

00:32:02.080 | but you've got millions of little sacs

00:32:03.780 | throughout the lungs

00:32:04.920 | that actually make the surface area of your lungs

00:32:07.020 | as big as a tennis court.

00:32:08.640 | It's amazing if we were to just spread that out.

00:32:11.080 | Those tend to collapse as we get stressed,

00:32:14.160 | and carbon dioxide builds up in our bloodstream,

00:32:17.320 | and that's one of the reasons we feel agitated as well.

00:32:20.340 | So, and it makes us very jittery.

00:32:22.760 | I mean, there's some other effects of carbon dioxide

00:32:24.600 | I don't want to get into,

00:32:25.720 | but when you do the double inhale exhale,

00:32:27.960 | the double inhale reinflates

00:32:29.720 | those little sacs of the lungs,

00:32:31.120 | and then when you do the long exhale,

00:32:33.760 | that long exhale is now much more effective

00:32:36.920 | at ridding your body and bloodstream of carbon dioxide,

00:32:40.280 | which relaxes you very quickly.

00:32:42.560 | My lab in collaboration with David Spiegel's lab,

00:32:46.120 | David's the associate chair of psychiatry at Stanford,

00:32:49.100 | are doing a study right now,

00:32:50.540 | exploring how physiological size

00:32:53.000 | and other patterns of breathing done deliberately

00:32:55.640 | can modulate the stress response

00:32:57.320 | and other things related to emotionality.

00:32:59.240 | Those work are ongoing.

00:33:00.620 | I want to be clear, those studies aren't done,

00:33:02.700 | but it's very clear from work in our labs,

00:33:06.200 | from working with Jack Feldman's lab and others,

00:33:09.000 | that the physiological sigh is the fastest hardwired way

00:33:14.000 | for us to eliminate this stressful response

00:33:17.480 | in our body quickly in real time.

00:33:19.640 | And so I'm excited to give you this tool

00:33:22.300 | because I think most people have heard

00:33:24.700 | that mindfulness and meditation is good,

00:33:26.240 | exercise is good for us,

00:33:27.360 | we all need to be getting enough sleep, et cetera,

00:33:29.560 | but life happens.

00:33:30.920 | And when you find yourself in a position

00:33:33.240 | where you are more alert and activated

00:33:35.180 | than you would like to be,

00:33:36.240 | regardless of whether or not the stressor

00:33:38.000 | is relationship-based or it's financial

00:33:41.280 | or it's physical or anything like that,

00:33:44.980 | you can look to the physiological side

00:33:46.900 | because it bypasses a very important feature

00:33:50.260 | of how we function,

00:33:51.100 | which is that it's very hard to control the mind

00:33:53.900 | with the mind,

00:33:54.800 | especially when we are in heightened states of activation.

00:33:59.400 | When we are very alert or very sleepy,

00:34:01.740 | it is very hard to use these so-called top-down mechanisms

00:34:05.080 | of intention and gratitude and all these things

00:34:08.800 | that are really powerful tools

00:34:10.700 | when we are not super activated and stressed

00:34:13.600 | or not super tired.

00:34:15.300 | But when we are anywhere in the range

00:34:17.800 | of very alert and stressed to very sleepy,

00:34:20.560 | physiological sides are a powerful way

00:34:22.840 | of bringing our level of so-called autonomic activation,

00:34:25.840 | which just means our level of alertness down.

00:34:28.200 | And so whether or not it's in line at the bank

00:34:29.980 | or whether or not you're wearing a mask nowadays

00:34:32.440 | or you're not, whatever the conditions may be

00:34:35.600 | where you're at and your needs,

00:34:37.320 | when you're feeling stressed,

00:34:39.300 | the physiological side done just one to three times,

00:34:42.340 | so it'd be double inhale, exhale, double inhale, exhale,

00:34:44.600 | maybe just two times,

00:34:46.040 | will bring down your level of stress very, very fast.

00:34:50.840 | And as far as I know,

00:34:51.660 | it's the fastest way to accomplish that.

00:34:54.160 | An important note about the physiological side

00:34:57.320 | or exhale-emphasized breathing

00:34:59.440 | for lowering the stress response.

00:35:02.160 | Many people worry that their heart rate

00:35:06.560 | does not come down fast enough.

00:35:08.620 | I want to tell you,

00:35:10.360 | you do not want your heart rate to reduce very fast.

00:35:13.560 | There's actually something called the vasovagal response

00:35:16.220 | where people will stand up

00:35:17.320 | or they'll get up in the middle of the night

00:35:18.360 | to use the bathroom,

00:35:19.200 | and then all of a sudden they'll collapse, they'll faint.

00:35:22.260 | That's because the heart rate was reduced too much.

00:35:24.800 | Some people will see blood

00:35:26.120 | or they'll see something really troubling and stressful

00:35:29.640 | and they'll pass out.

00:35:30.800 | That's an over-activation

00:35:33.400 | or an acceleration of the calming response.

00:35:35.520 | They're not so stressed

00:35:36.440 | that they kind of fall off the cliff of stress.

00:35:39.140 | They get so stressed that the rebound mechanism

00:35:41.900 | for calming themselves down goes too high, too fast.

00:35:45.600 | They calm down too fast and they collapse and faint.

00:35:48.400 | And so be aware that if you're going to use

00:35:50.440 | the physiological side or exhale-emphasized breathing

00:35:53.020 | to calm down,

00:35:54.480 | that your heart rate will take about 20 to 30 seconds

00:35:57.420 | to come down to baseline.

00:35:59.280 | And you may need to repeat the physiological sigh

00:36:01.440 | a few times.

00:36:02.260 | So that's an important note about the use of breathing

00:36:06.120 | to control levels of stress.

00:36:08.160 | The other thing is that when you decide to look to the body

00:36:13.160 | to control the mind,

00:36:15.520 | it does something else that's very powerful.

00:36:17.580 | When you are stressed in your mind and body,

00:36:19.840 | so you're feeling really agitated, activated, and worried,

00:36:23.060 | and you use a tool like the physiological sigh

00:36:26.040 | or exhale-emphasized breathing,

00:36:28.060 | you will notice that then your brain and your mind

00:36:30.820 | becomes more available for controlling the stress response

00:36:33.760 | and reacting to it,

00:36:34.840 | which is great because the sweet spot in life is to be,

00:36:38.620 | provided you're not trying to sleep,

00:36:39.900 | is to be alert and calm.

00:36:41.640 | And so that's the idea is to be alert and calm

00:36:43.560 | and to bring you back into that sort of plane of alertness.

00:36:47.460 | For those of you that have trouble sleeping

00:36:50.420 | or just relaxing through the day,

00:36:52.480 | the physiological side can be repeated

00:36:54.680 | for 10, 15 cycles if you like.

00:36:57.360 | Some people find that it actually puts them to sleep.

00:36:59.920 | So if they lie down and they're reading

00:37:01.840 | and they do too many of these,

00:37:03.000 | that actually can put them to sleep.

00:37:04.280 | And what you'll find is that most breath work protocols,

00:37:07.240 | the kind of stuff that's done away from real life

00:37:09.620 | that you set aside time

00:37:10.960 | and decide to do quote-unquote breath work,

00:37:13.480 | most of that works such that if you're doing inhales

00:37:17.520 | that are longer and more vigorous than exhales,

00:37:19.260 | it tends to be activating and alert you.

00:37:20.840 | And if you're doing exhales

00:37:22.200 | that are longer and more vigorous than the inhales,

00:37:24.380 | it tends to put you to sleep.

00:37:25.360 | And many of the protocols that are out there

00:37:27.560 | from laboratories and that populate the internet

00:37:30.900 | and wellness sites and whatnot,

00:37:32.560 | if it's exhale-emphasized breathing,

00:37:34.120 | oftentimes it's been used as a tool

00:37:35.920 | for trying to teach people to fall asleep.

00:37:37.980 | Physiological side is a little different.

00:37:39.460 | It's designed to be used in real time.

00:37:40.760 | Just think of it as just kind of in your kit of things

00:37:43.140 | that you can do as life happens

00:37:46.160 | and as you need to react to life.

00:37:48.320 | A note about nasal versus mouth breathing.

00:37:49.960 | There's a plethora of information out there now

00:37:53.240 | because of James Nestor's book, "Breath,"

00:37:55.240 | The New Science of a Lost Art,

00:37:57.380 | which came out this last year, excellent book,

00:37:59.440 | as well as "Jaws," which is from Sandra Kahn, Paul Ehrlich,

00:38:03.200 | with a foreword by Jared Diamond and Robert Sapolsky.

00:38:07.600 | So a collection of people from Stanford.

00:38:09.600 | Jared Diamond's not at Stanford, but the rest are.

00:38:11.960 | And some heavy hitters on that book,

00:38:13.920 | which is about the benefits of nasal breathing.

00:38:16.560 | And in many cases, nasal breathing is more advantageous

00:38:19.040 | than mouth breathing for all sorts of things,

00:38:20.780 | cosmetic features of the face,

00:38:22.160 | especially in kids, warding off infection.

00:38:25.160 | Et cetera.

00:38:26.400 | With the physiological side,

00:38:28.280 | the best way to do it would be double inhale

00:38:29.960 | through the nose, exhale through the mouth.

00:38:31.640 | But if you can't,

00:38:32.480 | and you can only do that through your mouth,

00:38:33.880 | just do it through your mouth.

00:38:34.880 | If you want to do it all through your nose,

00:38:36.360 | do it through your nose.

00:38:38.320 | This anchors back to some underlying neurology

00:38:41.040 | or neuroscience.

00:38:43.280 | So for those of you that want to know,

00:38:44.720 | you have two breathing centers,

00:38:46.080 | one that's involved in rhythmic breathing

00:38:47.940 | for inhales followed by exhales,

00:38:49.380 | followed by inhales, followed by exhales,

00:38:50.860 | the so-called pre-Botzinger nucleus,

00:38:53.420 | named after a bottle of wine and discovered

00:38:55.620 | by Jack Feldman at UCLA,

00:38:57.020 | and a nearby nucleus called the perifacial nucleus,

00:38:59.540 | also discovered by Jack Feldman at UCLA.

00:39:02.620 | And the perifacial nucleus is involved

00:39:04.900 | in any time you double up the inhales

00:39:06.620 | or double up the exhales.

00:39:07.840 | It was designed so that you could breathe

00:39:09.740 | while you're speaking,

00:39:10.880 | because you can't always go inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale

00:39:13.100 | when you're speaking.

00:39:14.140 | So I tell you this not to overwhelm you with knowledge,

00:39:17.000 | but just know that when you double up your inhales

00:39:19.460 | or you double up your exhales,

00:39:20.500 | you are activating this perifacial nucleus,

00:39:22.700 | and it has other cool effects.

00:39:25.020 | Because it's located near the neurons

00:39:27.020 | that control the face,

00:39:28.500 | it also has a tendency to relax the jaw.

00:39:30.740 | There's some interplay between the neurons

00:39:32.180 | that control the speaking stuff

00:39:34.660 | and the stuff for your tongue.

00:39:35.840 | So all of a sudden, when we do this physiological side,

00:39:38.220 | we tap into neural circuitry

00:39:40.040 | that allows us to speak more clearly,

00:39:42.600 | to control the muscles of the face and jaw,

00:39:44.740 | maybe that means not saying certain things

00:39:46.400 | when we're stressed,

00:39:47.940 | and just generally to relax.

00:39:50.100 | And so this brings us back to the neuroscience

00:39:53.520 | of this parasympathetic nervous system,

00:39:55.580 | this calming system that's been genetically encoded into us

00:39:59.960 | that we all have, regardless of who our parents are,

00:40:02.540 | which is that the neurons that control all this stuff,

00:40:05.060 | the face, the eyes, et cetera, are all working together.

00:40:09.460 | And that's why when we get stressed,

00:40:11.040 | it's hard for us to speak,

00:40:12.120 | or we tend to jitter and these kinds of things,

00:40:14.060 | just like all the neurons that cause stress

00:40:15.980 | in the center of the spinal cord

00:40:17.020 | are working together to get our body activated.

00:40:19.740 | Okay, a lot of science today,

00:40:20.980 | you've now got the physiological side as a tool,

00:40:23.240 | you know that exhale-emphasized breathing

00:40:24.780 | will slow your heart down,

00:40:26.780 | and inhale-emphasized breathing will speed your heart up.

00:40:31.260 | So let's think about something now,

00:40:33.660 | let's think about stress

00:40:35.620 | from not whether or not it's acute or chronic,

00:40:38.700 | whether or not it's good for us or bad for us,

00:40:40.220 | but on three different timescales,

00:40:42.380 | because then we can arrive at what this is all about

00:40:46.280 | as it relates to emotions,

00:40:47.640 | because trust me, this has everything to do with emotions

00:40:51.260 | and whether or not you're functioning well emotionally,

00:40:53.740 | or you're not functioning well emotionally,

00:40:55.400 | whether or not you're coping or not coping.

00:40:57.420 | So those are typically psychological terms

00:40:59.580 | and psychological discussions.

00:41:00.940 | We are entering this through the portal of physiology,

00:41:03.600 | the stuff of medical textbooks,

00:41:05.180 | and we will arrive at the psychology soon,

00:41:08.360 | but I really want you to understand the difference

00:41:10.100 | between the three kinds of stress

00:41:12.980 | on three different timescales,

00:41:14.440 | short-term, medium-term, and long-term,

00:41:16.960 | and what it's good for and what it's bad for.

00:41:19.900 | I think we've all heard that stress is bad for us.

00:41:23.180 | We've seen these pictures intended to frighten us,

00:41:26.460 | and indeed they are frightening.

00:41:27.620 | You see the nice really plump brain on the left,

00:41:30.700 | it says healthy or control,

00:41:32.140 | and then you see the brain that says stressed above it

00:41:35.260 | on the right, and it's like withered,

00:41:37.480 | or we see that the hippocampus,

00:41:39.080 | an area involved in memory is smaller,

00:41:41.480 | people that are stressed.

00:41:42.820 | We see that the Alzheimer's brain is made worse by stress,

00:41:46.320 | that people who have a predisposition of schizophrenia

00:41:48.400 | when they get stressed,

00:41:49.240 | higher incidence of schizophrenic episodes.

00:41:52.380 | You hear that addicts will relapse when they're stressed.

00:41:55.560 | I mean, okay, we get it, and it's very important,

00:41:58.460 | but I think we've all heard now so many times

00:42:00.540 | that stress is bad, but in that conversation,

00:42:04.660 | unfortunately, it's eclipsed

00:42:07.020 | some of the really positive things

00:42:08.960 | that stress does for us in the short-term.

00:42:11.940 | So stress can be short-term, medium-term, or long-term.

00:42:14.700 | Long-term stress is indeed bad

00:42:16.700 | for all the reasons I just mentioned and many others,

00:42:19.460 | but what's never actually been discussed

00:42:20.980 | is what stress is so terrific for,

00:42:23.860 | positive for in the short-term,

00:42:26.200 | and I think we tend to overlook the important question,

00:42:29.980 | which is what is short-term and what is long-term?

00:42:32.680 | No one ever bothers to tell us what is chronic,

00:42:34.820 | what is acute, right?

00:42:36.060 | Is it five minutes, is it five days,

00:42:37.920 | is it for the duration of final exams,

00:42:40.140 | or is it for the duration of a senior thesis in college?

00:42:43.780 | No one actually draws boundaries around this stuff

00:42:46.300 | or even general guidelines,

00:42:48.060 | and so it's become a bit of a mess, frankly,

00:42:51.980 | to try and decipher this whole space around stress,

00:42:54.500 | so I'm going to try and clean some of this up for you

00:42:57.180 | based on what we know from the scientific data.

00:42:59.540 | First of all, acute stress.

00:43:03.260 | When the stress response hits,

00:43:04.740 | that is good for your immune system.

00:43:07.020 | I know that might be a tough pill to swallow,

00:43:08.740 | but it's absolutely true.

00:43:10.860 | In fact, stress often comes

00:43:14.020 | in the form of bacterial or viral infection,

00:43:17.280 | and the stress response is in part organized

00:43:21.700 | to combat bacterial and viral infection.

00:43:24.660 | There are pathways from the same brain centers

00:43:27.700 | that activate these neurons in your spinal cord

00:43:30.940 | to make you feel like you want to move.

00:43:32.940 | There are other neurons in your brain

00:43:35.320 | that activate things like your spleen,

00:43:37.540 | which will deploy killer cells to go out

00:43:40.060 | and scavenge for incoming bacteria and viruses

00:43:42.820 | and try and eat them up and kill them,

00:43:45.500 | so short-term stress and the release of adrenaline

00:43:49.700 | in particular or epinephrine, same thing,

00:43:51.880 | adrenaline epinephrine, is good for combating infection,

00:43:56.880 | and this to me is just not discussed enough,

00:43:59.260 | so that's why I'm discussing it here,

00:44:00.960 | and it relates to a particular tool

00:44:02.820 | that many of you ask about,

00:44:04.940 | but I don't often get the opportunity to talk about

00:44:07.820 | in such an appropriate context.

00:44:09.900 | It's not that it's ever inappropriate to talk about,

00:44:12.940 | but what I'm about to talk about now

00:44:14.280 | is the use of, again, respiration, breathing,

00:44:18.620 | to somewhat artificially activate the stress response,

00:44:23.620 | and that will accomplish two things, okay?

00:44:26.400 | I'll return to medium and long-term stress,

00:44:28.020 | but I want to say short-term stress is good

00:44:30.540 | because the dilation of the pupils,

00:44:32.980 | the changes in the optics of the eyes,

00:44:34.620 | the quickening of the heart rate,

00:44:36.160 | the sharpening of your cognition,

00:44:37.860 | and in fact, that short-term stress brings certain elements

00:44:41.460 | of the brain online that allow you to focus.

00:44:44.120 | Now, it narrows your focus.

00:44:45.300 | You're not good at seeing the so-called big picture,

00:44:47.640 | but it narrows your focus.

00:44:48.980 | It allows you to do these,

00:44:50.700 | what I call duration path outcome types of analysis.

00:44:53.180 | It allows you to evaluate your environment,

00:44:54.740 | evaluate what you need to do.

00:44:56.420 | It primes your whole system for better cognition.

00:44:59.460 | It primes your immune system to combat infection,

00:45:02.180 | and that all makes sense when you think about the fact

00:45:04.460 | that famine, thirst, bacterial infections, viral infections,

00:45:09.460 | invaders, all of this stuff liberates a response in the body

00:45:14.340 | that's designed to get you to fight back

00:45:17.240 | against whatever stressor that happens to be,

00:45:19.500 | psychological, physical, bacterial, viral.

00:45:22.580 | Again, the stress response is generic.

00:45:25.340 | The tool takes advantage of the fact

00:45:28.340 | that when adrenaline is released in the body

00:45:32.860 | from the adrenals, it has the effect of also liberating

00:45:36.580 | a lot of these killer cells from the immune organs,

00:45:40.140 | in particular from the spleen, but from elsewhere as well,

00:45:43.100 | and interactions with the lymphatic system

00:45:45.580 | that combat infection.

00:45:47.260 | The way this works in the real world is best captured

00:45:53.500 | by a study that can be mapped back

00:45:56.460 | to so-called Wim Hof breathing.

00:45:58.940 | Now, Wim Hof breathing is so named

00:46:01.180 | after the so-called Iceman Wim Hof.

00:46:04.140 | Wim, of course, being this Dutch,

00:46:07.020 | I think he is self-titled daredevil,

00:46:09.260 | and indeed he has many, many Guinness Book of World Records

00:46:12.740 | for things like swimming under icebergs

00:46:14.940 | and going up Kilimanjaro in his shorts

00:46:17.400 | and crossing the desert without water, et cetera,

00:46:22.400 | things that are quite dangerous

00:46:24.680 | if you don't know what you're doing,

00:46:26.700 | and Wim obviously survived, or I'm telling you he survived,

00:46:30.780 | but there are two components to a sort of breathing protocol

00:46:34.500 | that he developed that was based also

00:46:37.620 | on what's called TUMO breathing, T-U-M-M-O.

00:46:40.180 | So before Wim, there was TUMO breathing,

00:46:42.500 | and many people call this now super oxygenation breathing,

00:46:46.180 | although the breath work aficionados will probably say,

00:46:49.400 | well, it's not super oxygenation

00:46:50.940 | 'cause you're also blowing off a lot of carbon dioxide.

00:46:53.820 | What I'm talking about here, regardless of whether or not

00:46:56.540 | it's called Wim Hof, TUMO, or super oxygenation,

00:46:59.580 | is rapid deliberate breathing.

00:47:02.740 | So it's deliberate hyperventilation.

00:47:04.780 | Why would somebody want to do this?

00:47:06.900 | Well, deliberate hyperventilation done for maybe 25 cycles.

00:47:11.300 | So inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale.

00:47:14.140 | Typically it's done in through the nose,

00:47:15.580 | out through the mouth,

00:47:16.400 | although sometimes it's just through the mouth.

00:47:18.680 | If you do that for 15 breaths, 20 breaths, 25 breaths,

00:47:23.580 | you will feel very alert.

00:47:24.940 | People who have anxiety will feel anxious.

00:47:27.760 | They might even have an anxiety attack.

00:47:30.320 | However, we need to ask why that kind of breathing

00:47:34.260 | feels that way.

00:47:35.240 | And it's because that pattern of breathing,

00:47:37.000 | rapid movements of the diaphragm,

00:47:39.700 | will liberate adrenaline from the adrenals.

00:47:42.280 | So it's the release of adrenaline.

00:47:44.420 | I mentioned that Wim is also called the Iceman.

00:47:46.740 | Well, that's because he actually discovered

00:47:49.280 | this pattern of breathing somewhat.

00:47:51.380 | And again, it maps back to TUMO breathing

00:47:55.780 | by going into cold water.

00:47:57.260 | When you go into cold water, that too is a stressor

00:47:59.680 | and you liberate adrenaline in response to cold water.

00:48:02.820 | So if you get into an ice bath or a cold shower,

00:48:05.020 | you will immediately release adrenaline from your adrenals.

00:48:09.000 | Now, there are all sorts of things related to this

00:48:11.640 | about psychological control and stress thresholds

00:48:13.800 | that we'll talk about.

00:48:15.140 | But I really want people to understand

00:48:16.680 | that when adrenaline is released in the body,

00:48:18.620 | you are in a better position to combat infections.

00:48:22.960 | And so whether or not you breathe very quickly

00:48:25.280 | in these cycles of 25 breaths,

00:48:27.680 | and regardless of what you call it, doesn't matter,

00:48:30.100 | adrenaline is released.

00:48:31.280 | If you take a cold shower, adrenaline is released.

00:48:33.840 | If you go into an ice bath deliberately,

00:48:36.620 | and even if you do it non-deliberately,

00:48:39.640 | adrenaline is released.

00:48:40.820 | You are mimicking the stress response.

00:48:43.020 | And that adrenaline serves to suppress

00:48:47.040 | or combat incoming infections.

00:48:49.780 | And this was beautifully shown in a study

00:48:51.600 | that was published in a very fine journal,

00:48:53.660 | the "Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences"

00:48:55.660 | for the US.

00:48:57.100 | It's literally called

00:48:58.360 | "Proceedings of the National Academy of USA"

00:49:00.620 | to distinguish it from other proceedings

00:49:02.560 | of other national academies in other countries.

00:49:04.860 | The way the experiment went

00:49:08.460 | is that people were injected with endotoxin,

00:49:13.260 | or in some cases they were injected with a bacterial wall

00:49:17.500 | that mimics infection.

00:49:19.240 | It gives you a fever.

00:49:20.240 | It makes you feel nauseous.

00:49:21.300 | It makes you feel sick.

00:49:22.140 | It is not pleasant.

00:49:24.020 | Half of the people did a particular pattern of breathing

00:49:27.180 | that looked very much like the pattern of breathing

00:49:29.140 | I described a moment ago

00:49:30.340 | of doing 25 deep inhales and exhales,

00:49:33.780 | followed by an exhale holding their breath, then repeating.

00:49:36.860 | 25 inhales, exhales, holding their breath.

00:49:39.380 | So this would look something like this.

00:49:40.620 | Or if you're listening, it sounds like,

00:49:42.020 | [inhales and exhales]

00:49:44.300 | 25, 30 times, you'll start feeling heated up.

00:49:46.920 | You'll start feeling the adrenaline response.

00:49:48.500 | You're liberating adrenaline in your body.

00:49:50.000 | Then exhale, hold your breath for 15 seconds,

00:49:53.640 | and then repeat.

00:49:54.760 | And then typically,

00:49:55.640 | after doing three or four rounds of that,

00:49:57.360 | they would inhale very deeply and hold their breath.

00:49:59.640 | Now I want to emphasize,

00:50:00.960 | never, ever, ever do this anywhere near water.

00:50:03.740 | People have passed out so-called shallow water breath out.

00:50:07.060 | People have died.

00:50:07.900 | Don't do it in the bathtub, don't do it in the hot tub.

00:50:09.440 | Don't do it before swimming.

00:50:10.640 | Please don't do it anywhere near water.

00:50:12.000 | Please don't do it at all

00:50:13.120 | unless you get clearance to do it from your doctor,

00:50:15.360 | because there are some pulmonary effects and whatnot.

00:50:17.440 | And the breath holds should definitely not be done

00:50:19.300 | by anyone that has glaucoma

00:50:20.480 | or pressure concerns for the eyes.

00:50:23.540 | But these repeated cycles of breathing

00:50:26.480 | that liberate adrenaline

00:50:28.280 | allowed the group that did that protocol

00:50:31.240 | to essentially experience zero symptoms

00:50:33.620 | from the injection of this E. coli, which is remarkable.

00:50:37.680 | They had much reduced or no symptoms.

00:50:39.720 | They didn't feel feverish.

00:50:41.000 | They didn't feel sick.

00:50:41.900 | They weren't vomiting, no diarrhea, which is remarkable,

00:50:44.540 | but makes total sense when you think about the fact

00:50:47.240 | that the short-term stress response

00:50:48.760 | that what's typically called the acute stress response

00:50:51.080 | is designed to combat all stressors.

00:50:54.380 | In fact, were you to cut yourself very deeply

00:50:58.360 | while out on a hike in the woods,

00:51:00.360 | the other thing that would happen

00:51:01.880 | is that there would be a rapid inflammation response.

00:51:06.340 | And we always hear inflammation is bad.

00:51:08.340 | Inflammation gives us Alzheimer's.

00:51:10.020 | Inflammation is the worst thing.

00:51:11.540 | But the swelling is associated,

00:51:13.900 | the inflammation is associated with the recruitment

00:51:16.680 | of things like macrophages

00:51:19.200 | or microglia if it's a neural tissue,

00:51:21.680 | cells in our brain and body

00:51:23.720 | whose job is to act like little ambulances

00:51:26.240 | and rush to that site and clean it up.

00:51:28.080 | And indeed the inflammation response looks horrible.

00:51:30.540 | It sounds horrible,

00:51:31.760 | but it's a great thing in the short term.

00:51:33.760 | You want to have that tissue marked as in trouble

00:51:38.760 | and you want the body and brain to react to it.

00:51:41.720 | So if you're getting peaks in stress from time to time

00:51:44.520 | throughout your day or throughout your week,

00:51:46.100 | you are in a better position to combat infection.

00:51:49.640 | You are in a better position to heal your wounds,

00:51:52.640 | physical wounds.

00:51:54.180 | Many great things happen in the stress response.

00:51:57.100 | Now, of course, the stress response

00:51:58.560 | isn't always super intense.

00:52:00.160 | Sometimes it's milder.

00:52:01.720 | Sometimes it allows us to just focus on something

00:52:03.600 | 'cause we have a deadline that can feel stressful,

00:52:05.420 | but that's one of the reasons

00:52:06.640 | you procrastinators out there,

00:52:08.000 | people always ask me,

00:52:09.760 | what can be done for procrastination?

00:52:12.080 | What can be done for procrastination

00:52:13.480 | is you can understand what's happening,

00:52:15.680 | which is that you are self-imposing stress

00:52:18.740 | because stress acts like a drug.

00:52:21.000 | It is a powerful nootropic.

00:52:22.620 | I get asked about nootropics.

00:52:24.100 | The most powerful nootropic or smart drug is stress.

00:52:27.440 | It's the concern of failure.

00:52:29.260 | It's the desire to do well.

00:52:31.040 | It's the impending deadline.

00:52:32.560 | It's the, oh my gosh, I have to do this thing now

00:52:34.740 | or I'm going to fail.

00:52:35.580 | That is the best nootropic you will ever find.

00:52:38.140 | That combined with a good night's sleep,

00:52:39.880 | which we'll talk about,

00:52:40.960 | but we spend a whole month on sleep,

00:52:42.180 | so I don't want to backtrack too much, okay?

00:52:44.700 | So short-term stress, great.

00:52:47.500 | The key is to be able to turn the stress response off

00:52:51.580 | when you're done, when you don't want that.

00:52:54.000 | In fact, let's just really tamp down the relationship

00:52:57.920 | between the short-term or acute stress response

00:53:00.000 | and infection.

00:53:01.120 | Many of us are familiar with the experience

00:53:02.840 | of work, work, work, work, work,

00:53:04.080 | or taking care of a loved one,

00:53:05.640 | or stress, stress, stress, stress,

00:53:06.880 | then we finally relax.

00:53:08.040 | Maybe we even go on vacation,

00:53:09.600 | like, oh, now I'm finally going to get the break,

00:53:11.320 | and then we get sick.

00:53:12.760 | And that's because the adrenaline response crashed

00:53:15.420 | and your immune system crashed with it.

00:53:18.340 | So please understand this.

00:53:20.740 | Now, many of you might say, well, how long?

00:53:22.820 | Is it two hours?

00:53:23.760 | Is it three hours?

00:53:24.600 | A lot of you out there that really like specificity,

00:53:26.340 | it will vary for everybody.

00:53:28.100 | I would just kind of use a rule of thumb.

00:53:31.780 | When you are no longer able to achieve good sleep,

00:53:34.740 | what good sleep means to you,

00:53:36.340 | and please see the episodes on sleep

00:53:38.000 | if you want more about tools to sleep.

00:53:40.380 | When you are no longer able to achieve good sleep,

00:53:43.660 | you are now moving from acute stress to chronic stress.

00:53:46.300 | You need to be able to turn the stress response off.

00:53:49.460 | If I have one wish,

00:53:50.920 | well, I have many wishes for this lifetime,

00:53:52.440 | but if I have one wish today

00:53:54.840 | that I hope will permeate and spread out there

00:53:57.960 | is this idea that we need from a young age,

00:54:00.620 | but even as adults and forever,

00:54:03.100 | we need to learn how to turn off our stress response.

00:54:05.580 | Physiological sigh is one.

00:54:08.140 | If we're going to activate our stress response

00:54:09.880 | intentionally by ice baths, cold showers,

00:54:12.860 | cyclic, hyperoxygenated breathing,

00:54:14.940 | AKA Tummo breathing or Wim Hof breathing,

00:54:17.360 | we also need to learn how to press the brake, okay?

00:54:21.020 | So let's think about the stress system.

00:54:23.060 | It knows how to activate itself.

00:54:25.140 | Now we're talking about

00:54:26.500 | a way of deliberately activating your stress system

00:54:29.500 | in order to combat infection.

00:54:30.780 | I do this from time to time.

00:54:31.940 | I might feel a tickle in my throat

00:54:33.420 | or like I'm getting kind of run down.

00:54:35.580 | I will do this kind of breathing, I do.

00:54:38.260 | I will take 25 or 30 breaths, exhale, hold my breath.

00:54:42.460 | 25, 30 breaths again, exhale, hold my breath

00:54:45.000 | for about 15 seconds.

00:54:46.780 | 25, 30 breaths again,

00:54:48.200 | exhale, hold my breath for 25 or 30 seconds,

00:54:50.260 | then a big inhale and I hold my breath

00:54:52.060 | until I feel the impulse to breathe.

00:54:54.320 | Again, I feel it safe for me.

00:54:56.360 | I've run it by my doctor, so it's fine.

00:54:58.240 | You should not do this unless it's right for you,

00:55:00.760 | but I do this.

00:55:01.600 | Some people like the ice bath.

00:55:03.520 | I rarely do the ice bath.

00:55:05.340 | Some people like cold showers.

00:55:06.560 | I like hot showers.

00:55:08.060 | So I take hot showers, but I do this kind of breathing.

00:55:10.180 | Again, they are all having more or less the same effect

00:55:14.220 | of increasing adrenaline

00:55:16.060 | which allows you to combat the infection

00:55:19.380 | because you're activating the immune response.

00:55:21.420 | Okay, so now let's talk about medium-term stress.

00:55:24.460 | Medium-term stress is going to be stress

00:55:26.540 | that lasts anywhere from several days to several weeks.

00:55:31.540 | We might think of that as long-term stress.

00:55:33.380 | There are times in life

00:55:34.540 | when we are just dealing with a lot.

00:55:37.220 | This particular quarter, I happen to be directing a course.

00:55:39.940 | I'm doing the lab.

00:55:40.900 | I'm doing this.

00:55:42.080 | I enjoy all these things immensely,

00:55:44.020 | but I'm kind of near my threshold.

00:55:46.600 | I'm near the point where any additional thing,

00:55:49.460 | like I couldn't log onto a website the other day

00:55:51.140 | and it felt like the most intense thing in the world

00:55:54.060 | at that moment and I kind of laughed at myself.

00:55:55.900 | Fortunately, I caught it,

00:55:57.240 | but that typically wouldn't be my response

00:56:00.060 | under conditions where I wasn't pushed to threshold.

00:56:02.180 | What is this medium-term stress?

00:56:03.860 | What is stress threshold?

00:56:05.220 | Well, a stress threshold is actually our ability

00:56:09.740 | to cognitively regulate what's going on in our body.

00:56:14.020 | So we've all hear so much about

00:56:16.180 | we need to unify our mind and body.

00:56:18.420 | We need to be at one with our mind and body.

00:56:21.660 | Now I realize I'm kind of poking fun

00:56:23.420 | at some of the new agey language,

00:56:24.620 | but the reason I poke fun is not because

00:56:26.580 | I don't think it has value, but it has no specificity.

00:56:29.160 | What does that mean?

00:56:30.000 | I mean, I think I'm always in my body.

00:56:31.940 | I've never fortunately looked across the room

00:56:33.880 | and seen my arm over there or my leg over there.

00:56:36.320 | I'm connected to my body.

00:56:38.020 | There actually is a syndrome

00:56:39.060 | where people feel disconnected from their limbs.

00:56:41.700 | This is a real clinical condition.

00:56:43.500 | These people actually will seek out amputation.

00:56:45.760 | They will try and convince doctors

00:56:47.060 | to amputate certain portions of their body.

00:56:49.220 | It's a really terrible thing for people to have

00:56:51.640 | and it relates to a change in central maps in the brain,

00:56:56.340 | believe it or not.

00:56:57.200 | Most of us want to keep our limbs,

00:57:00.520 | whichever ones we happen to have.

00:57:02.020 | And most of us feel one in mind and body,

00:57:04.700 | so much so that when stress hits,

00:57:06.220 | we feel it in our mind and body.

00:57:07.940 | A lot of stress inoculation,

00:57:10.860 | a lot of managing medium-term stress

00:57:13.760 | on the timescale of weeks or maybe even a couple months.

00:57:17.640 | So we're not talking about years of stress.

00:57:19.780 | A lot of that has to do with raising our stress threshold.

00:57:24.420 | It's about capacity.

00:57:26.580 | And there are very simple tools,

00:57:29.060 | excellent tools that will allow us

00:57:31.060 | to modulate our capacity for stress.

00:57:34.180 | And they look a lot like the tools I just described.

00:57:37.620 | They involve placing oneself deliberately

00:57:40.740 | into a situation where our adrenaline is increased somewhat,

00:57:44.520 | not to the extreme.

00:57:46.340 | And then when we feel flooded with adrenaline

00:57:49.300 | and normally we would panic,

00:57:52.420 | it's about cognitively, mentally, emotionally,

00:57:56.200 | calming ourselves and being comfortable

00:57:58.620 | with that response in our body.

00:58:00.500 | So unlike trying to unify the mind and body

00:58:03.140 | and make it all calm or make it all alert,

00:58:05.420 | this is about dissociating mind and body in a healthy way.

00:58:09.280 | And what would this look like?

00:58:10.940 | Well, this is something I actually do as a practice

00:58:13.060 | because I mentioned before,

00:58:14.960 | you can use physiological size.

00:58:16.320 | In real time, you can use

00:58:18.940 | the cyclic hyperoxygenation breathing to combat infection

00:58:22.140 | if you're feeling kind of run down.

00:58:24.340 | And there's also a way in which you can use things

00:58:27.340 | like cold showers, or if you exercise

00:58:30.800 | and you bring your heart rate up very high,

00:58:32.540 | you kind of go into that high intensity realm

00:58:34.700 | where your heart is beating a little bit harder

00:58:36.980 | than you're comfortable with.

00:58:38.780 | And that you're just, you feel,

00:58:40.940 | some people think it's lactic acid.

00:58:42.380 | No one can agree on this, what the burn is,

00:58:45.020 | whether it's lactic acid or it's buildup of hydrogen

00:58:47.420 | or whatever.

00:58:48.240 | I don't want to get into that,

00:58:49.080 | but we're all familiar with the intense feeling

00:58:51.180 | of your muscles kind of burning

00:58:52.700 | because you're working very hard physically.

00:58:56.140 | The key in those moments is to learn to relax the mind

00:59:00.140 | while the body is very activated.

00:59:02.300 | And what that tends to do,

00:59:04.260 | there's a limited amount of research on this,

00:59:05.740 | but what that tends to do is it tends to create a situation

00:59:08.820 | where what once felt like a lot feels manageable.

00:59:13.420 | Okay, you've raised your stress threshold

00:59:15.500 | or your stress capacity.

00:59:17.220 | One way that you can do this, and this is kind of fun,

00:59:19.560 | if it's approved by your physician

00:59:21.940 | and you're able to do this,

00:59:23.200 | you can bring your heart rate up.

00:59:24.620 | You could do this through an ice bath if that's your thing

00:59:26.860 | or a cold shower or cyclic oxygenation breathing,

00:59:29.540 | or you could sprint or you could go hard on the bike,

00:59:32.360 | whatever it is that brings your heart rate up.

00:59:34.700 | And then what you want to do

00:59:36.300 | is you want to actually try and calm the mind

00:59:38.660 | while your body is in this heightened state of activation.

00:59:41.500 | And the best way that I'm aware to do that,

00:59:44.420 | again, goes back to physiology, not psychology.

00:59:47.540 | When we are stressed, our pupils dilate,

00:59:51.100 | the effect of that pupil dilation

00:59:53.340 | is to create tunnel vision.

00:59:54.740 | It literally narrows our view of the visual world.

00:59:56.940 | We no longer see in panorama.

00:59:59.140 | And there's some other effects as well,

01:00:01.620 | but that's because the visual system

01:00:03.060 | through this cranial nerve system that I described before

01:00:05.700 | is tethered and is part of this autonomic nervous system.

01:00:10.080 | By deliberately dilating your gaze,

01:00:12.900 | meaning not moving your head and eyes around,

01:00:14.740 | but by deliberately going from tunnel vision

01:00:18.060 | to broader panoramic vision,

01:00:20.260 | literally seeing more of your environment all at once.

01:00:22.880 | You don't have to do what I'm doing, which is not blinking.

01:00:24.660 | You're welcome to blink.

01:00:26.180 | But it means deliberately dilating your gaze

01:00:28.520 | so that you can see yourself in the environment you're in.

01:00:31.760 | It creates a calming effect on the mind

01:00:33.680 | because it releases a particular circuit in the brainstem

01:00:36.280 | that's associated with alertness, AKA stress.

01:00:40.100 | Now, this is very powerful.

01:00:41.900 | If you're running, for instance,

01:00:43.340 | and you're at max capacity or close to it,

01:00:45.840 | or you're kind of hitting like 80, 90% of maximum

01:00:48.460 | on the bike, and you dilate your gaze,

01:00:51.580 | what you'll find is the mind can relax

01:00:53.240 | while the body is in full output.

01:00:55.400 | And this relates to work that in various communities,

01:00:58.780 | people are working with this in the sports community,

01:01:00.820 | military communities, et cetera,

01:01:02.380 | but it's a form, not really of stress inoculation.

01:01:05.780 | It's more about raising stress threshold

01:01:08.300 | so that the body is going to continue to be

01:01:11.140 | in a high alertness, high reactivity mode, high output,

01:01:15.240 | but the mind is calm.

01:01:17.000 | And so this isn't about unifying mind and body.

01:01:19.520 | This is actually about using body

01:01:22.200 | to bring up your level of activation,

01:01:24.040 | then dissociating,

01:01:25.580 | not the clinical dissociation kind of disorders,

01:01:28.880 | but dissociating the mental or emotional response

01:01:31.960 | from what's going on in your body.

01:01:33.160 | And over time, so if you do this a couple of times,

01:01:36.380 | you don't have to do this every workout,

01:01:37.960 | but if you do this maybe once a week or so,

01:01:40.440 | you start being comfortable

01:01:42.040 | at these higher activation states.

01:01:43.940 | What once felt overwhelming and like a lot of work

01:01:46.880 | now is manageable, it feels tolerable.

01:01:50.500 | So that's for navigating medium term stress.

01:01:53.540 | Now there are other tools as well,

01:01:54.920 | but we don't want to go over 90 minutes

01:01:56.900 | 'cause 90 minutes is one ultradian cycle.

01:01:58.720 | I always try and keep these podcasts to one ultradian cycle

01:02:00.920 | in case you haven't noticed.

01:02:02.080 | So you can derive maximum benefit from them

01:02:05.000 | based on ultradian cycle principles of learning.

01:02:07.780 | So I don't want to go into every little bit of this

01:02:10.600 | and I want to make sure we get to emotions,

01:02:11.980 | but I want to emphasize that these medium term stressors

01:02:16.360 | of, oh, it's been a hard month or hard week,

01:02:18.680 | or Stanford's on the quarter system,

01:02:20.940 | so 10 weeks or semester,

01:02:23.240 | that becomes more manageable when we train ourselves

01:02:27.400 | to be calm of mind when our body is activated.

01:02:31.800 | And if you haven't noticed,

01:02:33.840 | most of the tools I'm describing today

01:02:35.480 | are nothing like the sort of, okay, sit and do meditation.

01:02:38.960 | I'm actively avoiding saying the words NSDR,

01:02:41.460 | non-sleep deep rest.

01:02:42.460 | I talked a lot about those tools

01:02:44.120 | during the months on sleep and neuroplasticity.

01:02:47.080 | And of course, they are wonderful

01:02:49.000 | for replenishing your ability to lean into effort,

01:02:51.560 | to learn, to focus.

01:02:53.180 | Please do try and check out NSDR protocol,

01:02:56.100 | see if they're right for you.

01:02:57.120 | The margins for safety I think are enormous.

01:02:59.000 | You're basically just listening to a script.

01:03:01.140 | We have links to them in previous captions.

01:03:03.240 | I've talked to them on various podcasts before.

01:03:04.780 | We can provide them again.

01:03:06.280 | But today I'm really talking about tools

01:03:08.320 | so that you can learn to dance with stress,

01:03:10.800 | to in the short term, reduce that stress response

01:03:14.400 | a little bit if you feel it's too uncomfortable.

01:03:16.240 | In the medium term, to be comfortable

01:03:18.120 | at these heightened levels of activation

01:03:19.420 | because life is going to continue to come at you.

01:03:21.920 | We can't pick the stressors,

01:03:24.260 | but we need to be able to function

01:03:26.400 | at a higher capacity often.

01:03:28.700 | And then there's long-term stress.

01:03:30.640 | Now, long-term stress is bad.

01:03:32.700 | You do not want adrenaline up in your system

01:03:35.360 | for a very long time.

01:03:36.720 | In fact, ideally you would have your stress go up

01:03:41.240 | various times throughout the day,

01:03:42.920 | but it would never stay elevated

01:03:44.720 | and it would never prevent you

01:03:45.640 | from getting a good night's sleep.

01:03:46.880 | Now that isn't realistic, okay?

01:03:48.760 | I would say for me, three, four nights out of the month,

01:03:53.280 | no matter what I do, I take on too much

01:03:55.560 | or something happens and life is life

01:03:57.780 | and I don't get the best night's sleep

01:03:59.820 | that I would like to get.

01:04:01.240 | For many of you, it's 30 nights per month.

01:04:03.840 | For some of you, it's zero nights per month.

01:04:05.880 | And congratulations to you zero nights per month people.

01:04:09.160 | If you are managing your sleep really well every night,

01:04:11.360 | that is fantastic.

01:04:13.120 | You really want to be able to fall asleep at night,

01:04:15.960 | stay asleep for most of the night.

01:04:17.200 | And if you get up, go back to sleep

01:04:18.560 | for as long as you need to in order to feel rested.

01:04:20.400 | That's what I define as a healthy relationship to sleep.

01:04:23.600 | Check out the episodes on sleep

01:04:25.020 | if you want tools to be able to accomplish that.

01:04:27.200 | We can all accomplish that.

01:04:28.360 | It can be done.

01:04:29.600 | And there are tools to do it, zero cost tools.

01:04:32.200 | Okay, so let's talk about long-term stress.

01:04:35.460 | Earlier I talked about how breathing can modulate heart rate

01:04:40.460 | through this loop that includes the brain

01:04:42.740 | and the parasympathetic nervous system.

01:04:44.920 | I don't think I mentioned this

01:04:46.000 | and I want to make sure that I mentioned

01:04:47.660 | that breathing controlling heart rate

01:04:50.240 | through the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system

01:04:52.840 | is the basis of what's called HRV, heart rate variability.

01:04:57.040 | And we know that heart rate variability is good.

01:05:01.160 | You don't want your heart rate chronically elevated

01:05:04.160 | or chronically low.

01:05:05.840 | A lot of people think,

01:05:06.680 | "Oh, I want a really nice low heart rate."

01:05:08.980 | And indeed, if you're in shape,

01:05:10.600 | the stroke volume of your heart will be greater

01:05:13.200 | and you can have a nice slow heart rate.

01:05:16.800 | Years ago when I was running regularly,

01:05:19.640 | I think my heart rate was down to like 50 or 60

01:05:21.860 | or something like that.

01:05:22.700 | That's great, but, and now it's higher than that

01:05:26.000 | because I'm running a little bit less,

01:05:27.300 | but everyone needs to determine what's right for them.

01:05:30.700 | But you don't really want your heart rate

01:05:32.440 | to be chronically low or chronically high.

01:05:34.960 | Both are bad.

01:05:35.800 | We know that chronic stress, elevated stress,

01:05:38.880 | and especially in the so-called type A personalities

01:05:42.520 | creates heart disease.

01:05:44.080 | Leading killer for in most every country,

01:05:47.240 | but in particular in the US.

01:05:49.880 | Because of the way that adrenaline

01:05:52.240 | impacts those blood vessels of constricting

01:05:54.560 | and some and dilating others,

01:05:57.160 | it's just that kind of hypertension,

01:05:59.200 | chronic hypertension is just bad.

01:06:01.360 | And so chronic stress truly is bad.

01:06:03.760 | I wanna really make that clear

01:06:05.600 | because I emphasized a lot of what

01:06:07.720 | some of the positive effects of stress,

01:06:09.440 | but you want to be able to tamp down your stress

01:06:12.800 | in real time.

01:06:14.020 | You also wanna be able to modulate your stress

01:06:16.200 | and your emotional relationship to stress in the body

01:06:18.840 | in the medium term,

01:06:20.180 | but by no means do you want to be stressed out all the time,

01:06:23.060 | chronically for months and months and months

01:06:25.060 | and years on end.

01:06:27.880 | The best tools, the best mechanisms that we know

01:06:32.080 | to modulate long-term stress

01:06:34.040 | might surprise you a little bit.

01:06:35.640 | First of all,

01:06:38.600 | there are gonna be the things that don't surprise you,

01:06:40.200 | which is everyone knows getting regular exercise,

01:06:42.600 | getting good sleep,

01:06:44.520 | using real-time tools to try and tamp down

01:06:46.720 | the stress response, et cetera.

01:06:48.260 | That's all gonna be really useful.

01:06:50.080 | The data really point to the fact that social connection

01:06:56.040 | and certain types of social connection in particular

01:06:59.280 | are what are going to mitigate or reduce long-term stress.

01:07:04.120 | And this is a particularly important issue nowadays

01:07:06.920 | where we have all these proxies or surrogates

01:07:10.280 | for social connection.

01:07:11.840 | We're online and texting with people a lot

01:07:14.080 | so we can feel connected.

01:07:15.480 | People are like the plane's about to take off

01:07:17.180 | and everyone's texting each other,

01:07:19.160 | whether or not they have fear of flying or not,

01:07:20.740 | they're like, okay, see you, love you, hate you,

01:07:23.240 | whatever it is that they're trying to communicate to people.

01:07:25.920 | Then, you know, plane lands,

01:07:28.800 | everyone phones out, see you, love you, hate you.

01:07:30.760 | Let's hope it's fewer hate yous.

01:07:32.440 | But everyone has this kind of need

01:07:34.380 | to stay connected to one another.

01:07:35.720 | Humans are incredibly social creatures.

01:07:38.360 | Now, there is a way to look at this whole business

01:07:40.620 | of social connection,

01:07:41.960 | not from just the kind of wishy-washy, new agey perspective.

01:07:45.880 | And I wanna point out that sometimes

01:07:47.240 | I'll say wishy-washy, new agey.

01:07:49.080 | I have nothing against that.

01:07:52.340 | My goal here is always to put scientific data

01:07:55.560 | and some neurochemistry on things

01:07:58.160 | so that for those of you that are into

01:08:00.560 | wishy-washy, new agey stuff,

01:08:01.920 | you also can arm yourself with some arguments

01:08:04.440 | for the members of your family and your life

01:08:07.960 | that maybe aren't so tuned into the typical language

01:08:10.840 | around those practices.

01:08:11.960 | Like, oh, connection is really key.

01:08:13.840 | We all get oxytocin.

01:08:15.040 | Actually, did you know that connection between individuals

01:08:18.000 | rarely causes the release of oxytocin?

01:08:20.320 | Oxytocin is released in very particular circumstances

01:08:23.380 | like post-orgasm, baby and mother, milk let down.

01:08:28.380 | It's associated with kind of really intense

01:08:31.660 | kinds of pair bonding things of mother and child,

01:08:34.180 | also father and child, but especially mother and child

01:08:36.280 | because it's relationship to the lactation system.

01:08:39.620 | Couples post sex, these kinds of things

01:08:42.780 | that were reflect deep kind of layers of our biology.

01:08:46.940 | And oxytocin is not just released

01:08:49.380 | when we walk in and pat the dog on the head

01:08:52.280 | or we see somebody and we give them a hug

01:08:53.840 | and hey, great to see you, fist bump.

01:08:56.280 | That's not a situation for oxytocin.

01:08:58.900 | The way to think about social connection

01:09:00.520 | and how it can mitigate

01:09:02.540 | some of the long-term effects of stress

01:09:04.740 | is really through the systems of neuromodulation

01:09:07.900 | like serotonin and through blocking certain things

01:09:12.900 | that are really bad for us when we feel socially isolated,

01:09:16.600 | things like tachykinins.

01:09:17.780 | So let me explain what these are.

01:09:18.780 | Serotonin again is a neuromodulator.

01:09:21.020 | Neuromodulators are a little bit like playlists in the brain.

01:09:23.820 | They tend to amplify or bias the likelihood

01:09:26.460 | that certain brain circuits and body circuits

01:09:28.320 | are going to be activated and that others will not.

01:09:31.700 | Serotonin generally,

01:09:33.340 | and I realize I'm speaking very generally here,

01:09:36.060 | but it generally gives us feelings of wellbeing

01:09:38.120 | at very high levels.

01:09:39.020 | It makes us feel blissed and it tends to make us feel

01:09:42.020 | like we have enough in our immediate environment.

01:09:44.640 | This is why some of the side effects of antidepressants

01:09:47.420 | that elevate serotonin and actually can help a lot of people

01:09:49.820 | with depressive symptoms.

01:09:51.240 | But the side effects associated with drugs

01:09:54.220 | that increase serotonin tend to be reduced affect.

01:09:57.700 | They tend to kind of blunt affect

01:09:59.080 | or make people feel like their libido is lower.

01:10:03.020 | Desire goes down because the body has so much serotonin

01:10:06.980 | and the brain has so much serotonin

01:10:08.140 | that one feels like they have enough.

01:10:10.300 | But serotonin, pharmacology aside,

01:10:13.300 | or taking antidepressants aside topic for another time,

01:10:18.100 | serotonin tends to make us feel good.

01:10:20.040 | When we see somebody that we recognize and trust,

01:10:22.380 | serotonin is released in the brain.

01:10:25.240 | And that has certain positive effects on the immune system

01:10:29.140 | and on other systems of neural repair and synapses

01:10:32.860 | and things that really reinforce connections in the brain

01:10:35.460 | and prevent that long-term withering of connections.

01:10:38.380 | So serotonin is tied to social connection.

01:10:41.600 | Now, social connection can take many forms.

01:10:43.620 | As many of you know, I am very attached to my dog.

01:10:46.580 | I hope he's attached to me.

01:10:48.280 | He's asleep most of the time, so I don't know.

01:10:50.180 | And even if he was awake,

01:10:51.320 | I don't really know what I would ask him,

01:10:52.560 | but he seems more or less to be attached to me as well.

01:10:56.940 | And there's no scientific evidence

01:11:00.180 | that it has to be human-human attachment.

01:11:02.700 | I do have attachments to humans as well,

01:11:04.980 | but you can have attachments to other people.

01:11:08.200 | Some of those can be romantic attachments.

01:11:10.120 | Those could be familial attachments

01:11:12.040 | that are non-romantic, friendship, pets,

01:11:15.560 | even attachments to things that just delight us.

01:11:18.780 | One of the things that really can mitigate

01:11:21.180 | against the long-term negative effects

01:11:23.820 | of chronic long-term stress isn't just having fun.

01:11:27.620 | We hear all this stuff, you need to play and have fun.

01:11:30.180 | That can be a little bit of a tough concept,

01:11:31.820 | especially for the hard driving people

01:11:33.260 | or people that are stressed, but having a sense of delight,

01:11:36.780 | a sense of really enjoying something that you see

01:11:39.720 | and engage in, witness or participate in,

01:11:42.840 | that is associated with the serotonin system.

01:11:46.100 | And certainly play is one of those things,

01:11:47.980 | social connection of various forms.

01:11:49.480 | Those are things to invest in.

01:11:51.180 | Some people might say, well, nobody wants to be my friend

01:11:54.320 | or nobody wants to engage socially anymore.

01:11:57.460 | I'll be the first to admit social connection and friendship

01:12:00.020 | and relationships of all kinds to animals or humans

01:12:02.760 | or inanimate objects takes work.

01:12:05.780 | It takes investment.

01:12:06.780 | It takes time in not needing everything

01:12:10.080 | to be exactly the way you want it to be.

01:12:12.020 | I have a friend who struggles with this

01:12:13.620 | and oftentimes the conversations just circle back

01:12:16.640 | to the fact that when you want social connection,

01:12:19.280 | you often have to be more flexible.

01:12:21.360 | You have to eat on other people's schedules.

01:12:22.920 | Sometimes you have to eat things

01:12:23.880 | you don't necessarily want to eat the most in that moment

01:12:26.120 | or stay up a little later or wake up a little earlier.

01:12:28.440 | Social connection is something that we work for,

01:12:30.560 | but it is incredibly powerful.

01:12:33.060 | I want to of course tip my hat to, it's only appropriate

01:12:37.960 | to call him the great Robert Sapolsky, my colleague

01:12:40.160 | who I'm fortunate to know at Stanford,

01:12:43.040 | of course has talked about this quite a lot.

01:12:44.640 | So I want to acknowledge Robert's incredible work

01:12:47.700 | and discussions around this.

01:12:48.920 | You can look up those materials online

01:12:50.640 | and his wonderful books.

01:12:52.120 | But primates, and we are primates, we are social species.

01:12:56.360 | And as Robert has said many times before,

01:12:58.780 | never before in any primate history,

01:13:02.800 | but in particular in human history,

01:13:04.220 | have we interacted with so many strangers at a distance

01:13:07.300 | when we are not really connected to them.

01:13:09.680 | So finding just a few people, even one or an animal

01:13:13.960 | or something that you delight in, believe it or not,

01:13:17.120 | has very positive effects on mitigating

01:13:20.780 | this long-term stress, on improving various aspects

01:13:24.080 | of our life as it relates to stress and emotionality.

01:13:26.880 | So that's the social connection part.

01:13:29.460 | The other thing is that social isolation

01:13:31.880 | that goes too long is associated in everything from flies,

01:13:35.700 | believe it or not, to mice and humans

01:13:37.520 | with this molecule, tachykinin.

01:13:39.520 | Tachykinin is a molecule that makes us more fearful,

01:13:44.360 | paranoid, and impairs our immune system.

01:13:48.200 | And so tachykinin is like this internal punishment signal.

01:13:51.860 | It's like our body and our brain telling us

01:13:53.940 | you're not spending enough time with people

01:13:55.720 | that you really trust.

01:13:56.580 | You're not spending time doing things that you really enjoy.

01:13:59.480 | And I often think about tachykinin for myself

01:14:01.760 | because I'm pretty hard driving.

01:14:03.000 | I have a lot of pursuits.

01:14:03.880 | I also have a lot of wonderful people

01:14:05.720 | and an incredibly wonderful bulldog in my life.

01:14:08.900 | But there are times when I can be so goal-directed

01:14:11.600 | and so in motion and trying to accomplish everything

01:14:14.440 | that I sometimes forget about tachykinin.

01:14:18.200 | And I like to remind myself so much

01:14:19.600 | so that I actually have a little post-it above my desk

01:14:21.840 | that says tachykinin to remind me

01:14:23.780 | that tachykinin is this very sinister molecule

01:14:26.160 | that starts being secreted

01:14:27.900 | when we are not socially connected enough.

01:14:31.120 | And this is why long meals with friends or family

01:14:34.520 | where they're, we'll talk about phones in a moment,

01:14:36.480 | but where there's no intrusions, or even if there are,

01:14:39.060 | just feeling like we are connected suppresses tachykinin.

01:14:43.000 | And tachykinin is something you really want to avoid

01:14:45.900 | because chronic isolation, chronically high tachykinin

01:14:50.560 | that's associated with long-term stress

01:14:52.360 | really depletes so many good functions of our brain and body

01:14:56.160 | and promote so many bad ones, including irritability,

01:14:59.280 | paranoia, fear, et cetera,

01:15:01.660 | that is really something to avoid.

01:15:03.400 | And so I want to highlight tachykinin

01:15:05.120 | as something to avoid.

01:15:06.300 | I don't want to completely disregard oxytocin.

01:15:09.420 | It's just that oxytocin has been built up a lot in the media

01:15:12.160 | and really serotonin works on much faster timescales.

01:15:15.560 | Now, how do you know if you're making serotonin?

01:15:17.360 | And you don't know in the moment,

01:15:18.920 | but you can learn if you pay attention

01:15:21.020 | to kind of recognize these feelings of comfort,

01:15:23.800 | trust, bliss, delight, and those are not weak terms.

01:15:28.460 | Those are not associated just with psychological terms.

01:15:31.200 | They are every bit as physiological

01:15:34.740 | as the movement of your muscles

01:15:36.300 | or the secretion of adrenaline.

01:15:38.060 | And many people focus now on gratitude.

01:15:41.400 | Gratitude is a little bit subjective

01:15:43.320 | and here we're moving from some objective

01:15:45.360 | to kind of subjective things,

01:15:46.500 | but recognizing and in particular writing down

01:15:49.740 | things that you're thankful for,

01:15:51.500 | however small they may seem,

01:15:53.900 | does seem to have a positive effect on the serotonin system.

01:15:57.760 | Now, there are a plethora of things

01:15:59.280 | that will also impact wellbeing

01:16:00.880 | and allow you to modulate your long-term stress,

01:16:04.920 | reduce the likelihood that you'll engage in long-term stress

01:16:07.840 | and we don't have time to go into all of these,

01:16:09.200 | but of course, finding the diet and nutrition

01:16:11.120 | that's right for you, the exercise schedule

01:16:12.700 | that's right for you, the sleep schedule, all that,

01:16:15.220 | but do not underemphasize the social connection part, please.

01:16:20.140 | As well, there are some compounds

01:16:23.200 | that are not antidepressants,

01:16:25.320 | although if you need antidepressants

01:16:26.940 | and a clinician prescribes them to you,

01:16:28.560 | please follow their advice if that's what's right for you.

01:16:32.260 | There are compounds that are not prescription compounds

01:16:35.440 | that can modulate the stress system.

01:16:38.200 | And sometimes because of the way that life is,

01:16:40.600 | we just don't have the opportunity to control life

01:16:43.760 | and to control our response to stress.

01:16:45.800 | And at least for myself,

01:16:47.220 | I can only talk about my own experience.

01:16:48.920 | I've found it useful in times of chronic stress

01:16:51.700 | to start modulating some of the neurochemistry

01:16:53.920 | related to the stress response in order to help.

01:16:57.040 | Now, if a doctor prescribes you Pregnisone

01:16:59.700 | or prescribes you some other hormone or something,

01:17:03.340 | that's important.

01:17:04.180 | But what I'm talking about now are non-prescription things.

01:17:07.480 | You should check out examine.com, this free website,

01:17:11.280 | which will allow you to put in any supplement

01:17:13.400 | and evaluate that supplement.

01:17:15.040 | They provide links in the so-called human effect matrix

01:17:17.820 | to PubMed.

01:17:18.900 | It tells you the exact subjects they were done in.

01:17:21.180 | It was a post-menopausal women.

01:17:22.420 | Was it kids?

01:17:23.460 | Was it normal adults?

01:17:24.540 | Was it people with autism, et cetera?

01:17:27.280 | Check out that site for any and all supplements

01:17:29.480 | you're considering or taking.

01:17:30.760 | I highly recommend it.

01:17:32.000 | I have no relationship to them.

01:17:33.680 | I just think it's a wonderful site

01:17:35.000 | that's curated all this important information.

01:17:37.460 | But some of these compounds are effective enough.

01:17:41.320 | They can kind of take the edge off

01:17:43.240 | and I will use them periodically myself.

01:17:46.040 | And so I just thought I'd mention them

01:17:47.280 | since there are a number of you that are interested in them.

01:17:48.740 | The three I want to focus on

01:17:49.960 | and one that I think you need to be cautious about

01:17:52.560 | that I've mentioned before include ashwagandha.

01:17:57.220 | Funny name, but that's what it's called.

01:17:59.900 | L-theanine or theanine it's often called and melatonin.

01:18:03.300 | Let's talk about melatonin first.

01:18:04.700 | Melatonin I talked about during the month on sleep.

01:18:06.880 | Melatonin is a hormone secreted from the pineal

01:18:10.060 | in direct relationship to how much darkness you are in,

01:18:12.740 | not emotional darkness, but light suppresses melatonin.

01:18:16.420 | Melatonin helps you fall asleep.

01:18:17.820 | It doesn't help you stay asleep.

01:18:19.180 | I personally do not recommend supplementing melatonin

01:18:23.720 | because it's supplemented typically at very high levels,

01:18:27.320 | one to three milligrams or even more.

01:18:30.440 | That is an outrageously high dose.

01:18:32.640 | It's super, super physiological

01:18:34.440 | compared to what you normally would make.

01:18:36.040 | It also has a number of potentially negative effects

01:18:39.200 | on the reproductive axis and hormones there.

01:18:42.860 | Some people can take it without problems.

01:18:44.400 | If you like it and that's your thing, fine.

01:18:46.500 | I just want to cue to the fact that there can be issues.

01:18:48.480 | You should check on examine.com, talk to your doctor,

01:18:50.880 | especially in kids because melatonin suppresses

01:18:53.340 | the puberty response in a number of species.

01:18:55.880 | Enough about the negative things of melatonin

01:18:57.620 | except that people who take too much melatonin chronically

01:19:01.480 | oftentimes when they're taking it to sleep

01:19:04.760 | or for whatever reason,

01:19:05.900 | yes, it can reduce anxiety and stress,

01:19:08.440 | but it also can reduce the output of the adrenals

01:19:11.240 | to the point where it can become problematic.

01:19:13.440 | Now, a note about adrenal burnout.

01:19:16.560 | There is actually no such thing as adrenal burnout

01:19:20.340 | under normal conditions.

01:19:21.680 | The adrenals have enough adrenaline

01:19:23.740 | to support 200 years of stress for better or for worse.

01:19:28.060 | The concept of adrenal burnout has origins

01:19:31.360 | in the work of Nobel Prize winner, Hans Selye,

01:19:34.680 | who actually discovered

01:19:36.240 | what he called the general adaptation syndrome.

01:19:38.100 | He discovered a lot of things about stress.

01:19:39.880 | He did some phenomenal work that turned out to be true,

01:19:42.960 | that we have stressors, there's something called distress.

01:19:46.060 | He talked about eustress, which is positive stress.

01:19:48.040 | Eustress has never really caught on

01:19:49.680 | in the kind of more general discussion,

01:19:52.640 | but he had this theory that if stress went on long enough

01:19:56.300 | that you would eventually reach a phase called exhaustion.

01:19:59.520 | And that turned out to be wrong,

01:20:02.440 | although many of you may feel exhausted after chronic stress,

01:20:05.820 | there isn't really a physiological exhaustion that happens.

01:20:08.680 | And that eventually got picked up

01:20:10.720 | and ran with the general public

01:20:12.600 | and they talk about adrenal burnout,

01:20:14.120 | too much coffee, adrenal burnout.

01:20:15.700 | You hear all this stuff.

01:20:16.680 | There is no such thing as adrenal burnout.

01:20:18.240 | The adrenals don't burn out.

01:20:20.080 | There is something, however,

01:20:21.140 | called adrenal insufficiency syndrome,

01:20:23.160 | which is a real physiological problem

01:20:25.560 | where some people have very impaired adrenals

01:20:28.120 | and they can't produce adrenaline.

01:20:29.440 | And melatonin taken at very high levels

01:20:32.160 | for periods of time that are too long

01:20:34.000 | can cause suppression of the cortisol

01:20:36.020 | and epinephrine release from the adrenals

01:20:37.600 | and can create a kind of pseudo

01:20:40.880 | adrenal insufficiency syndrome.

01:20:43.480 | So beware melatonin for that reason.

01:20:47.640 | Please, I'm trying,

01:20:49.220 | I alone can't get rid of the phrase adrenal burnout.

01:20:52.880 | I'm not trying to give a hard time

01:20:55.260 | to anyone who feels burnt out or exhausted,

01:20:57.600 | but it is for other reasons.

01:20:59.140 | It is not because of the adrenals are burnt out

01:21:01.240 | unless you happen to have adrenal insufficiency syndrome.

01:21:03.680 | So I'm not a fan of melatonin for a lot of reasons.

01:21:06.640 | Now I've mentioned several.

01:21:07.480 | The other is L-theanine.

01:21:08.540 | I've talked about L-theanine,

01:21:10.200 | which provided it's safe for you,

01:21:12.600 | can be taken 100 milligrams or 200 milligrams

01:21:15.200 | about a 30 minutes or 60 minutes before sleep.

01:21:17.200 | It can enhance the transition to sleep

01:21:19.140 | and depth of sleep for many people.

01:21:20.880 | It increases GABA, this inhibitory neurotransmitter.

01:21:24.360 | In the brain it tends to turn off our forebrain a little bit

01:21:27.380 | or reduce the activity of our kind of thinking systems

01:21:29.800 | and ruminating systems help people fall asleep.

01:21:32.620 | That's for sleep.

01:21:33.560 | But theanine has also been shown

01:21:35.800 | for people that are chronically anxious

01:21:37.240 | or chronically stressed to,

01:21:38.920 | if you look at the studies,

01:21:40.280 | I have a large collection of studies

01:21:41.480 | in front of me right now.

01:21:42.520 | If you want to see those links,

01:21:43.880 | I know if you want those,

01:21:44.720 | go to examine.com, put in theanine.

01:21:46.920 | They linked, for instance,

01:21:47.920 | it is known to significantly increase relaxation.

01:21:50.360 | There are four studies listed there with PubMed links.

01:21:52.800 | It is known to have a minor effect on anxiety,

01:21:55.140 | but eight studies have shown that,

01:21:57.780 | which I think is a fairly large set of studies,

01:22:00.440 | some of them in great journals.

01:22:02.560 | It also can reduce task completion anxiety.

01:22:05.920 | So anxiety related to task completion,

01:22:07.980 | not good for the procrastinators perhaps,

01:22:09.720 | but for those of you that are chronically stressed,

01:22:11.440 | it can increase attention a little bit,

01:22:12.720 | it can reduce blood pressure a little bit,

01:22:14.440 | improve sleep quality, et cetera.

01:22:17.040 | It definitely has a notable effect on stress,

01:22:19.000 | two studies in particular,

01:22:21.240 | that it can notably reduce the effects of stress.

01:22:24.120 | So there's a lot there.

01:22:26.080 | It also has effects on insomnia,

01:22:27.960 | on some blood lipid profiles.

01:22:29.560 | And so go to examine.com and check it out.

01:22:32.240 | But this is one reason why I supplement theanine for sleep.

01:22:35.240 | But if I'm feeling like I've been under a lot of stress

01:22:37.760 | and I'm not managing my stress very well

01:22:39.740 | with the short-term and medium-term tools

01:22:42.140 | that I talked about earlier,

01:22:43.120 | I might start taking a little bit of theanine,

01:22:44.880 | especially in the late afternoon,

01:22:46.120 | which is when I tend to start to feel like

01:22:48.660 | I haven't gotten enough done

01:22:50.140 | and the day is kind of carrying on.

01:22:52.000 | And so you can blunt the response to stress a little bit,

01:22:54.760 | which is why a lot of companies

01:22:56.780 | are now putting theanine into energy drinks.

01:22:59.240 | I'm not a big fan of most energy drinks.

01:23:02.620 | Most of them have taurine,

01:23:04.240 | which I know some of you wrote to me and said,

01:23:05.620 | "Oh, taurine's great for all these reasons."

01:23:07.680 | Taurine also has effects on the microvasculature

01:23:09.760 | that at least for me were not good.

01:23:11.120 | It caused bursting of microvasculature

01:23:12.880 | in my sclera, in my eyes,

01:23:14.800 | which is why I'm not a fan of any energy drink

01:23:17.180 | that has taurine or taurine generally.

01:23:20.300 | But that's just me.

01:23:21.140 | You have to decide for you.

01:23:22.160 | I'm sure the comment section,

01:23:23.260 | there'll be a couple taurinistas out there that will say,

01:23:25.680 | "But I love taurine."

01:23:26.520 | Great, keep the taurine companies in business,

01:23:29.060 | but it's not for me.

01:23:30.200 | And I'd like people to know

01:23:31.400 | that it may or may not be for them.

01:23:33.940 | The other supplement that can be very useful is ashwagandha.

01:23:37.340 | Ashwagandha is known to lower anxiety and cortisol.

01:23:41.300 | There is six, there are, excuse me,

01:23:43.640 | six studies that collectively show reductions in cortisol,

01:23:47.600 | which is cortisol is typically associated

01:23:49.560 | with waking up in the morning, which is good.

01:23:51.360 | That's a healthy, brief cortisol bump that goes away

01:23:54.160 | provided you're getting your light at the right time of days

01:23:56.800 | at right correct times of day, like morning and evening.

01:24:00.160 | But you don't want cortisol chronically elevated.

01:24:02.240 | That's associated with all the bad stuff about stress.

01:24:05.400 | There's a very strong effect of ashwagandha.

01:24:09.300 | You can find dosages at examine.com.

01:24:12.080 | They report across six studies,

01:24:14.280 | 14.5 to 27.9 reduction in cortisol

01:24:18.660 | in otherwise healthy but stressed individuals.

01:24:22.460 | Now, I don't know about kids.

01:24:23.760 | You have to look at what it says on various supplements.

01:24:26.760 | Most things here are being done in adults,

01:24:28.760 | so please check carefully, but this is great.

01:24:31.400 | I mean, the opportunity for me anyway

01:24:33.460 | to be able to take something that can help me reduce

01:24:36.360 | my cortisol so that I don't get some

01:24:38.460 | of the long-term effects of stress,

01:24:39.880 | and I'm not going to take ashwagandha year round.

01:24:41.880 | I would only do this if I was feeling

01:24:43.200 | like I wasn't managing my short and medium term stress well.

01:24:46.320 | So I don't take it on a regular basis.

01:24:47.760 | I do take it when I'm in these times

01:24:50.280 | when things are particularly stressful.

01:24:52.660 | It has, there are five other studies

01:24:54.680 | that show reduced stress,

01:24:57.440 | so that's not cortisol measurements,

01:24:59.160 | but things like fatigue, cognitive impairment, et cetera.

01:25:03.420 | It does lower total cholesterol,

01:25:05.620 | which may or may not be good or bad for you, up to 10%.

01:25:09.720 | So some people don't want their cholesterol lowered.

01:25:11.700 | Some people might.

01:25:13.100 | Cholesterol, we'll talk about this in a month on hormones,

01:25:16.060 | but cholesterol is the molecule

01:25:17.740 | from which testosterone and estrogen,

01:25:19.540 | and cortisol for that matter, are synthesized.

01:25:21.740 | So you don't want to get your cholesterol so low

01:25:23.740 | then there are all sorts of negative effects,

01:25:25.620 | but you don't want it too high either.

01:25:27.820 | Mild effects in good clinical studies

01:25:30.020 | on reducing depression probably associated

01:25:32.720 | with the effects on stress and some other things as well.

01:25:35.880 | So ashwagandha is something I use from time to time.

01:25:39.060 | It's kind of interesting.

01:25:40.400 | L-theanine, I rarely will use those during the daytime

01:25:44.840 | except under conditions

01:25:45.940 | where I'm feeling chronically stressed.

01:25:47.440 | So check out the Human Effect Matrix on examine.com.

01:25:50.280 | Again, a phenomenal website.

01:25:52.280 | I think I've sent them a few emails before.

01:25:54.820 | That's the only exchanges I've ever had with them,

01:25:56.900 | but I just think it's wonderful

01:25:57.940 | that they put together this resource.

01:25:59.320 | Otherwise we'd be stuck mining PubMed.

01:26:01.440 | They've collated the papers from PubMed

01:26:04.800 | with links to PubMed, so terrific resource.

01:26:07.620 | So social connection and some supplementation,

01:26:10.520 | of course, diet, exercise, sleep for long-term stress.

01:26:14.040 | And now we are finally in a position to talk

01:26:17.760 | about what we have set out to do from the beginning,

01:26:21.240 | which is spend the month on emotions.

01:26:24.180 | It was very important that we discuss stress

01:26:27.080 | and we discuss in the context of short, medium,

01:26:29.360 | and long-term stress,

01:26:30.600 | that we discuss tools for short-term, medium-term,

01:26:33.900 | and long-term control.

01:26:35.960 | I don't really want to say mitigation of stress.

01:26:38.040 | Stress is going to happen,

01:26:39.060 | but our ability to modulate and control stress

01:26:42.160 | in real time, offline, using tools such as respiration,

01:26:46.520 | using tools such as dilation of gaze,

01:26:48.320 | using tools like social connection, maybe some supplements.

01:26:50.880 | Certainly take care of your sleep

01:26:53.240 | and nutrition and exercise.

01:26:56.320 | Again, tons of resources and information

01:26:58.840 | in the sleep episodes.

01:27:00.280 | So you can look there.

01:27:01.100 | We will do a month on hormones, on exercise, et cetera.

01:27:05.140 | But let's talk about emotions

01:27:06.720 | because in subsequent episodes,

01:27:09.840 | we're going to talk about OCD.

01:27:11.640 | We're going to talk about depression.

01:27:13.000 | We're going to talk about mania.

01:27:14.920 | We're going to be talking about dopamine

01:27:16.640 | and all sorts of things.

01:27:17.520 | But at the core of emotions is this question,

01:27:22.340 | what is an emotion?

01:27:23.760 | Well, it's complex.

01:27:24.920 | There isn't a single brain area

01:27:26.280 | for any one of these things that we call emotions.

01:27:29.000 | My framework, and I think the modern science,

01:27:31.740 | both psychology and neuroscience is pretty well aligned

01:27:36.740 | with what Lisa Feldman Barrett has talked about.

01:27:41.560 | Now, Lisa's at Northeastern University.

01:27:43.200 | She runs a big lab there.

01:27:44.360 | She's a world expert in emotion.

01:27:46.520 | She's written two books that are really wonderful.

01:27:48.520 | One is "How Emotions Are Made," which was her first book.

01:27:51.360 | The second one is "Seven and a Half Facts About the Brain."

01:27:55.560 | It's a wonderful book as well.

01:27:56.800 | It came out more recently.

01:27:58.140 | I hosted Lisa on an Instagram Live once.

01:28:00.180 | Maybe we'll get her here on the podcast if we're lucky.

01:28:03.440 | We don't agree on everything

01:28:05.040 | about the neuroscience of emotions,

01:28:06.360 | but I subscribe to most everything that I've heard Lisa say,

01:28:11.040 | in particular, the fact that emotions are context dependent,

01:28:15.120 | there's a cultural dependence, et cetera.

01:28:17.520 | I look at things mainly through the lens of physiology

01:28:19.880 | and neuroscience at kind of low-level circuitry.

01:28:23.080 | And one way to think about emotions

01:28:25.740 | that I think is consistent,

01:28:27.160 | and I think Lisa would generally approve,

01:28:28.880 | I can't speak for her,

01:28:29.700 | but I would hope she would generally approve

01:28:31.020 | of this description is that when our internal state

01:28:34.440 | of stress or calm matches the demands on us,

01:28:38.980 | or is mismatched from the demands on us,

01:28:41.260 | we tend to interpret those as good or bad.

01:28:44.500 | Let me give you an example.

01:28:46.280 | If I am feeling very anxious, very stressed inside,

01:28:51.280 | and I have a lot to do, that doesn't feel good,

01:28:55.720 | but it's really no different than if I'm very tired

01:28:59.280 | and I have a lot to do because there's this mismatch.

01:29:01.440 | I'm not in the right internal state.

01:29:04.360 | My internal state isn't correct, rather,

01:29:06.280 | to meet the demands that are being placed upon me.

01:29:08.820 | So in both cases, whether I'm too tired or I'm too stressed

01:29:11.900 | to do what I need to do, the valence,

01:29:14.320 | meaning the value that I assign to that is I don't feel good.

01:29:18.300 | It's not a good situation and I don't feel good.

01:29:20.880 | Now, I might call it stressed, I might call it anxious,

01:29:23.040 | I might call it worried,

01:29:24.860 | might call it a number of things, but it's not good.

01:29:26.720 | However, when I'm tired and I want to fall asleep,

01:29:31.160 | well, then I feel good because that's what the demand is.

01:29:33.480 | I need to go to sleep and I'm tired.

01:29:35.080 | If I'm wide awake and I need to fall asleep,

01:29:37.600 | then that's not good.

01:29:38.640 | And then the brain tends to go down the direction

01:29:42.180 | of interpreting the situation as a bad one.

01:29:44.520 | So while the discussion around emotions is far more nuanced

01:29:48.260 | and more elaborate than this,

01:29:50.420 | one way to think about your relationship to emotions

01:29:52.780 | is whether or not your internal state

01:29:54.620 | is matching the demands that are upon you.

01:29:57.520 | So in that way, we don't really place so much value

01:30:01.380 | on whether or not we're feeling alert or sleepy.

01:30:03.800 | We only place value on whether or not that alertness,

01:30:06.760 | whether or not it's full-blown stress or not,

01:30:09.020 | or our sleepiness, whether or not we're falling asleep

01:30:11.500 | or just a little bit drowsy,

01:30:13.000 | whether or not that matches the conditions that we face.

01:30:16.560 | And it's a useful framework to have.

01:30:18.380 | And it's the reason in part

01:30:20.000 | why I spent this last hour and a half or so

01:30:22.920 | talking about stress and how to control stress.

01:30:25.800 | One reason we did that

01:30:26.700 | is because I think it's a valuable opportunity

01:30:28.500 | to learn some tools and understand stress

01:30:30.640 | and really learn how to take control of stress,

01:30:32.560 | which I think we could all benefit from doing,

01:30:34.480 | regardless of age.

01:30:35.960 | The other reason is that when you start to understand

01:30:38.180 | that you have this kind of seesaw system in your body,

01:30:40.640 | this autonomic nervous system

01:30:42.200 | that takes you from alert and calm to stressed,

01:30:45.780 | to full-blown panic, it has that capacity,

01:30:48.220 | or from sleepy and drowsy to passing out tired

01:30:53.220 | to God forbid, let's hope never, but a coma, right?

01:30:57.300 | That you're basically on this seesaw all the time

01:31:00.600 | and where you are on that seesaw of alertness or calmness

01:31:03.840 | positions you to be in better reaction

01:31:08.340 | to the demands that you face,

01:31:10.740 | whether or not the thing that you face

01:31:12.200 | is a need to fall asleep or to listen quietly and not react.

01:31:15.200 | You now know, for instance,

01:31:16.920 | that if your job is to take feedback,

01:31:19.840 | when maybe you're going in for a job evaluation

01:31:21.640 | or you're in a relationship

01:31:23.400 | where there was a call for a discussion

01:31:26.300 | and somebody needs to talk to you about something

01:31:28.240 | and we need to talk about something,

01:31:29.500 | you're going to them like,

01:31:30.340 | "Oh goodness, this is going to be rough."

01:31:33.040 | Learning to reduce that stress response a little bit

01:31:35.280 | so that you are in a position to hear the information better.

01:31:39.940 | And remember from a previous episode,

01:31:41.380 | if you close your eyes,

01:31:42.220 | you'll be able to actually focus on the information better.

01:31:44.800 | There's your permission to not look someone directly

01:31:46.700 | in the eye while they talk to you

01:31:47.620 | if you really want to hear what they have to say.

01:31:49.900 | You will be able to modulate that stress response

01:31:53.340 | and lean into life better.

01:31:55.060 | You will be able to react to things in a more effective way

01:31:59.020 | and to not be reactive.

01:32:00.980 | And this is really one of the important things to me anyway,

01:32:04.800 | is that so much of the language around psychology,

01:32:07.700 | which I think is a wonderful field,

01:32:09.360 | but pop psychology in particular is,

01:32:11.340 | be responsive, not reactive.

01:32:13.180 | Well, great, but then how does one do that?

01:32:15.100 | Well, one does that by modulating

01:32:16.540 | their short-term stress response in real time,

01:32:19.120 | not by saying, hold on, I need to meditate,

01:32:21.300 | hold on, I need a massage

01:32:22.540 | and then I can have this conversation

01:32:23.700 | by modulating the reactivity in real time.

01:32:27.020 | How does one, for instance, be mindful,

01:32:30.380 | which is a beautiful concept, but how are you mindful?

01:32:32.980 | Well, I don't know, when I'm moving through my day,

01:32:34.900 | a lot of times I'm just trying to get things done.

01:32:37.360 | And as soon as I start monitoring and seeing what I'm doing

01:32:40.900 | and kind of third-personing what I'm doing,

01:32:43.040 | it actually takes me out of the effectiveness

01:32:44.740 | and experience of what I'm doing.

01:32:45.820 | So for me, sometimes that mindfulness,

01:32:47.860 | that observer as they call it,

01:32:49.440 | is something that doesn't help me, it actually hinders me.

01:32:52.200 | What's important to me is to be able to work and focus

01:32:54.560 | and then to be able to disengage,

01:32:56.540 | to be able to do a non-sleep deep rest

01:32:58.580 | or to be able to still fall asleep,

01:32:59.940 | even though I've been working hard until 9.30

01:33:02.400 | to put my head down at 10 o'clock

01:33:03.760 | and be out cold sleeping by 10.02.

01:33:08.040 | That's possible if you can learn

01:33:09.580 | to control this stress response.

01:33:12.000 | And to do that, we can't use the mind to control the mind,

01:33:15.000 | we need tools.

01:33:16.060 | And so a lot of the people being grumpy

01:33:19.600 | or anxious or depressed, a lot of that,

01:33:23.160 | provided it's not for some underlying neurochemical reason

01:33:25.780 | that's chronic, a lot of that comes from being

01:33:28.420 | poorly rested, from overworked,

01:33:30.860 | from feeling like the world is bearing down on us.

01:33:33.140 | And so rather than take a subjective view of this,

01:33:36.600 | I take the view of objective physiology.

01:33:39.080 | What can we do that's anchored to these neuronal systems

01:33:42.520 | in our body, in our brain, in our eyes,

01:33:44.420 | in our diaphragm, et cetera, and look to those as tools,

01:33:47.380 | levers that we can pull on and push

01:33:49.400 | and maneuver through life in a way

01:33:51.200 | where we start to feel like we have some agency,

01:33:53.060 | we actually have some real control

01:33:54.400 | because we're controlling the internal landscape.

01:33:56.980 | So I think that ought to set the stage

01:33:59.600 | for where we're headed next, which is to talk about

01:34:01.800 | all the things that you normally think of

01:34:03.500 | when you think of emotions, like happiness,

01:34:06.000 | like awe, like joy, and we will get into some of that.

01:34:09.000 | But all of that rests firmly on the foundation

01:34:13.100 | of this thing we call the autonomic nervous system,

01:34:15.260 | this stress modulation, this calming modulation system.

01:34:19.540 | And again, whether or not you're activated

01:34:21.440 | or you're calm is not good or bad,

01:34:23.700 | it depends on the situation.

01:34:25.820 | Certainly when you want to fall asleep,

01:34:27.080 | being activated isn't good.

01:34:28.220 | When you have work to do, being activated is great.

01:34:30.820 | So I hope today you were able to take

01:34:34.240 | a slightly different view of this thing that we call stress,

01:34:37.780 | not just see it as evil, but see it as powerful and useful

01:34:40.700 | in certain contexts, great for us in certain contexts,

01:34:43.740 | and problematic in other contexts,

01:34:45.860 | and as well to think about the various tools

01:34:47.900 | that I've presented that can allow you to adjust

01:34:51.280 | and modulate your internal levels of alertness or calmness

01:34:55.020 | so that you can lean more effectively into life,

01:34:57.420 | which includes sleep and social connection

01:35:00.060 | and the work you have to do.

01:35:01.800 | And of course acknowledges that the events in the world

01:35:05.380 | are beyond our control.

01:35:06.820 | What's in our control is how we react to them.

01:35:08.900 | Something that's commonly said in the wellness

01:35:11.180 | and self-help and psychology world,

01:35:13.760 | but for which there often aren't as many concrete tools

01:35:17.040 | that we can really look to and trust in real time.

01:35:20.100 | And of course there are other tools out there.

01:35:21.900 | As always, I'll say it, I strive to be accurate,

01:35:25.780 | but I'll never be exhaustive.

01:35:27.420 | I might have exhausted you.

01:35:28.820 | I might've cured your insomnia with this discussion today,

01:35:32.300 | but in all seriousness,

01:35:33.540 | my goal is to bring you tools and information

01:35:35.940 | so that you can manage better through life.

01:35:38.580 | So thanks so much.

01:35:40.260 | I very much want to thank all of you

01:35:41.820 | for your support for the podcast.

01:35:43.820 | It's really been wonderful.

01:35:45.740 | If you've subscribed to the podcast on YouTube,

01:35:48.480 | Apple or Spotify, or maybe even all three, terrific.

01:35:51.280 | If you haven't, please do subscribe on YouTube,

01:35:54.140 | Apple or Spotify, or maybe even all three,

01:35:56.440 | which would be wonderful.

01:35:58.020 | On Apple, you can leave a five-star review

01:36:00.540 | if you think we deserve that,

01:36:01.820 | as well as a comment reviewing us.

01:36:04.980 | If you have suggestions,

01:36:06.580 | if you have questions regarding the content of the podcast

01:36:10.140 | or things that you'd like us to cover in the future,

01:36:11.820 | please put those in the comment section on YouTube.

01:36:15.540 | As well, if you could recommend the podcast to friends,

01:36:19.020 | family members, coworkers

01:36:20.340 | that you think would benefit from the information,

01:36:22.140 | maybe even send them the links if you like,

01:36:24.600 | that's tremendously helpful.

01:36:26.700 | Today, as in previous episodes,

01:36:28.820 | I've touched on some things

01:36:30.360 | as they relate to supplementation.

01:36:32.180 | As always, I always cover a lot of tools

01:36:34.040 | that are zero cost tools

01:36:35.780 | that don't involve ingesting anything at all,

01:36:38.180 | behavioral tools.

01:36:39.700 | But I mentioned some supplements

01:36:41.340 | that I particularly find useful.

01:36:43.100 | With supplements, it's a complicated landscape often

01:36:46.880 | because many supplement companies don't put in the bottle

01:36:50.300 | what they say is in the particular product.

01:36:54.620 | We've partnered with Thorne, T-H-O-R-N-E,

01:36:58.320 | because Thorne is a supplement company

01:37:00.660 | that we know to have the highest levels of stringency.

01:37:03.140 | It's used by the Mayo Clinic.

01:37:05.020 | It's used by all the major sports organizations

01:37:07.340 | for that particular reason

01:37:08.460 | and because their quality standards are exceptionally high.

01:37:11.340 | If you'd like to try any supplements

01:37:13.420 | and see the ones that I take,

01:37:14.620 | you can go to thorne.com/theletteru.

01:37:18.620 | And if you do that, you'll get 20% off

01:37:23.620 | anything that's listed there on my page,

01:37:27.980 | as well as any of the supplements that Thorne sells.

01:37:30.220 | So that's Thorne, T-H-O-R-N-E.com/theletteru/huberman

01:37:35.220 | to get 20% off anything that Thorne sells.

01:37:40.520 | In addition, if you want to follow us on Twitter,

01:37:42.980 | we're there at Huberman Lab or on Instagram, Huberman Lab.

01:37:46.160 | I also do some content on Huberman Lab,

01:37:48.540 | little neuroscience posts.

01:37:49.580 | Some are reposted clips from the podcast.

01:37:51.520 | Others are unique content

01:37:53.640 | that you won't find on the podcast.

01:37:55.420 | So you can follow us at Huberman Lab.

01:37:57.540 | Also, if you like, check out our Patreon,

01:37:59.480 | patreon.com/andrewhuberman.

01:38:02.020 | And most of all, and as always,

01:38:04.740 | really appreciate your time and attention today.

01:38:07.240 | I hope you practice some of the tools

01:38:09.140 | if they're right for you.

01:38:10.040 | I hope you think hard about stress

01:38:12.100 | and how you can control your stress.

01:38:14.940 | And above all, as always,

01:38:17.700 | thank you for your interest in science.

01:38:19.500 | (upbeat music)

01:38:22.080 | (upbeat music)

Tools for Managing Stress & Anxiety

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