Tools for Managing Stress & Anxiety | Huberman Lab Essentials

00:00:00.000 | - Welcome to Huberman Lab Essentials,

00:00:02.320 | where we revisit past episodes

00:00:04.380 | for the most potent and actionable science-based tools

00:00:07.560 | for mental health, physical health, and performance.

00:00:10.320 | I'm Andrew Huberman,

00:00:12.640 | and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology

00:00:15.840 | at Stanford School of Medicine.

00:00:17.560 | Today's episode is going to be all about

00:00:19.960 | the science of emotions.

00:00:22.520 | And today, we're gonna talk in particular

00:00:25.600 | about something that most often is called stress.

00:00:30.160 | You might be thinking, wait, stress isn't an emotion,

00:00:33.320 | but stress really lies at the heart

00:00:36.060 | of whether or not our internal experience

00:00:39.280 | is matched well or not to our external experience

00:00:43.240 | or the events that are happening to us and around us.

00:00:46.400 | And as you'll soon see, those converge or combine

00:00:50.440 | to create what we call emotions.

00:00:53.160 | I'd like you to come away from today's episode

00:00:55.680 | with what I call an organizational logic,

00:00:58.600 | a framework for thinking about these things

00:01:01.440 | that typically we just call happy or sad

00:01:03.680 | or depressed or anxious.

00:01:05.680 | And I'm going to make sure that you have tools

00:01:08.440 | that are grounded in physiology and neuroscience

00:01:11.200 | that will allow you to navigate

00:01:13.120 | this otherwise complex space that we call emotions

00:01:16.720 | that will allow you to ground yourself better

00:01:19.760 | when you're feeling like life is weighing on you

00:01:23.440 | or you're kind of being pulled by the currents of life,

00:01:26.520 | as well as to support other people,

00:01:28.720 | whether or not that's in a psychological practice,

00:01:30.920 | if you're a practitioner,

00:01:32.960 | or you have clients or children or spouses,

00:01:36.640 | really to be able to support other people

00:01:38.320 | in your environment better.

00:01:40.320 | And as you may recall, the nervous system,

00:01:43.440 | which includes the brain and the eyes and the spinal cord,

00:01:46.340 | but also all the connections with the organs of the body,

00:01:49.640 | includes the brain and body.

00:01:51.440 | And those organs of the body,

00:01:53.920 | your gut and your liver and your spleen,

00:01:56.840 | they're also communicating with the brain.

00:02:00.080 | So I look forward to a day, in fact,

00:02:01.920 | when we no longer think about neuroscience

00:02:04.600 | as just the brain.

00:02:05.720 | And many neuroscientists now also think about the body,

00:02:08.200 | of course, the brain controls the body,

00:02:10.180 | but the body is also having a very profound

00:02:13.280 | and concrete influence on the brain.

00:02:15.840 | Today, we're going to talk about objective tools

00:02:18.000 | that match the brain-body experience

00:02:20.760 | or separate the brain-body experience

00:02:23.480 | in ways that leverage your ability to lean into life better,

00:02:28.100 | to feel better, literally,

00:02:29.760 | to just feel better about what you're experiencing,

00:02:32.340 | and believe it or not,

00:02:34.160 | to be able to control your emotions when that's appropriate.

00:02:37.160 | Okay, so what is stress?

00:02:38.300 | We hear all the time that stress is bad.

00:02:41.140 | We hear people saying they're really stressed out.

00:02:44.160 | What is stress?

00:02:46.020 | Stress at its core is a generalized system.

00:02:49.400 | It wasn't designed for tigers attacking us

00:02:52.480 | or people attacking us.

00:02:53.860 | It's a system to mobilize other systems

00:02:56.660 | in the brain and body.

00:02:57.920 | It wasn't designed for one thing.

00:03:00.320 | And that gives it a certain advantage

00:03:03.760 | in taking over the state of our brain and body,

00:03:06.240 | but it also gives you, all of us,

00:03:09.040 | an advantage in controlling it

00:03:11.240 | because it's based on hardwired biological mechanisms

00:03:15.560 | and there are hardwired biological mechanisms,

00:03:19.020 | meaning cells and chemicals and pathways and tissues

00:03:21.920 | that exist in you right now

00:03:24.300 | that require no neuroplasticity

00:03:26.780 | that allow you to put a brake on stress.

00:03:29.980 | And so we're going to talk about those.

00:03:31.840 | So let's talk about the stress response.

00:03:34.000 | And by doing that,

00:03:35.500 | you will understand exactly why the tools

00:03:37.880 | I'm going to give you work.

00:03:39.280 | For those of you that are saying,

00:03:41.680 | "Wait, I just want the tools, just give me a summary."

00:03:44.760 | Trust me, if you understand mechanism,

00:03:46.800 | you are going to be in a far better position

00:03:48.920 | to incorporate these tools, to teach these tools to others,

00:03:51.840 | and to modify them as your life circumstances change.

00:03:55.680 | Let's be clear about what we already know,

00:03:57.920 | which is that stressors can be psychological

00:04:01.920 | or they can be physical, okay?

00:04:05.080 | If I put you outside on a cold day without a jacket

00:04:08.580 | for a very long time, that is stressful.

00:04:11.480 | If I have you prepare for too many exams at once

00:04:15.120 | and you can't balance it all with your sleep schedule

00:04:17.400 | and your other needs for comfort and wellbeing

00:04:19.840 | like food, rest, sleep, and social connection,

00:04:22.100 | that is stressful.

00:04:23.900 | So what happens when the stress response hits?

00:04:26.040 | Let's talk about the immediate

00:04:27.760 | or what we call the acute stress response.

00:04:30.420 | We could also think of this as short-term stress.

00:04:33.520 | So you have a collection of neurons

00:04:36.600 | that start right about at your neck

00:04:38.600 | and run down to about your navel, a little bit lower.

00:04:41.720 | And those are called the sympathetic chain ganglia.

00:04:45.160 | When something stresses us out, either in our mind

00:04:48.280 | or because something enters our environment,

00:04:50.480 | that chain of neurons becomes activated

00:04:52.540 | like a bunch of dominoes falling all at once.

00:04:55.760 | It's very fast.

00:04:57.820 | When those neurons are activated, acetylcholine is released,

00:05:00.840 | but there are some other neurons

00:05:02.360 | for the aficionados out there.

00:05:04.380 | They're called the post-ganglionic neurons.

00:05:06.400 | Those ones respond to that acetylcholine

00:05:08.720 | and then they release epinephrine,

00:05:11.180 | which is the equivalent to adrenaline.

00:05:13.880 | So we have this system where it's very fast.

00:05:16.680 | Whenever we're stressed, the core of our body,

00:05:19.100 | these neurons down the middle of our body,

00:05:20.560 | release these chemicals.

00:05:22.360 | And then there's adrenaline or epinephrine

00:05:25.580 | released at particular organs and acts in particular ways.

00:05:29.200 | Some things like the muscles of your legs and your heart

00:05:33.160 | and other things that need to be active

00:05:35.160 | when you're stressed,

00:05:36.720 | they have a certain kind of receptor,

00:05:39.340 | which is called the beta receptor.

00:05:42.480 | And that beta receptor responds to epinephrine

00:05:44.660 | and blood vessels dilate.

00:05:46.860 | They get bigger and blood rushes in to our legs.

00:05:49.920 | The heart rate speeds up.

00:05:51.940 | Lots of things happen that get activated.

00:05:54.240 | And at the same time,

00:05:55.960 | that epinephrine activates other receptors

00:05:59.820 | on certain tissues that we don't need,

00:06:01.680 | the ones involved in digestion, reproduction,

00:06:05.160 | and things of that sort that are luxuries

00:06:08.040 | for when things are going well,

00:06:09.640 | not things to pay attention to when we're stressed.

00:06:12.100 | So the stress response is two pronged.

00:06:14.240 | It's a yes for certain things

00:06:16.160 | and it's a no you may not right now for other things.

00:06:19.120 | That's why you feel blood

00:06:21.000 | in certain organs and tissues of your body,

00:06:22.960 | but not in others.

00:06:24.180 | But basically you are activated

00:06:26.960 | in ways that support you moving.

00:06:29.520 | And that's because fundamentally the stress response

00:06:32.640 | is just this generic thing that says, do something.

00:06:35.800 | You're going to feel agitated

00:06:37.040 | and that's because it was designed to move you.

00:06:39.520 | So this is important because if you want to control stress,

00:06:43.880 | you need to learn how to work with that agitation.

00:06:47.380 | I'd like to give you a tool at this point,

00:06:51.560 | because I think if we go any further

00:06:54.240 | with a lot more science,

00:06:55.400 | people are going to begin to wonder

00:06:57.260 | if this is just going to be a kind of

00:06:58.440 | standard university lecture about the stress response.

00:07:01.640 | If you want to reduce the magnitude of the stress response,

00:07:05.580 | the best thing you can do is activate

00:07:08.800 | the other system in the body,

00:07:10.280 | which is designed for calming and relaxation.

00:07:13.960 | And that system is called

00:07:15.720 | the parasympathetic nervous system.

00:07:18.120 | And the parasympathetic nervous system

00:07:20.440 | is really interesting because especially the cranial nerves,

00:07:24.400 | the ones that are up in the brainstem

00:07:26.760 | and in the neck area,

00:07:28.460 | those have a direct line to various features of your face,

00:07:32.800 | in particular, the eyes.

00:07:34.600 | They control things like eye movements, pupil dilation,

00:07:38.060 | things of that sort,

00:07:39.280 | as well as the tongue, the facial muscles, et cetera.

00:07:42.280 | So I'm going to teach you the first tool now,

00:07:44.560 | so I don't overwhelm you with all this academic knowledge

00:07:46.880 | without giving you something useful.

00:07:48.960 | And the tool that, at least to my knowledge,

00:07:52.220 | is the fastest and most thoroughly grounded

00:07:56.940 | in physiology and neuroscience for calming down

00:07:59.700 | in a self-directed way

00:08:01.420 | is what's called the physiological PSY, S-I-G-H.

00:08:05.460 | What I'm talking about when I refer to physiological PSYs

00:08:08.460 | is the very real medical school textbook relationship

00:08:13.420 | between the brain, the body,

00:08:17.100 | and the body as it relates to the breathing apparati,

00:08:20.580 | meaning the diaphragm and lungs, and the heart.

00:08:23.820 | Let's take the hallmark of the stress response.

00:08:26.140 | The heart starts beating faster.

00:08:27.700 | Blood is shuttled to the big muscles of the body

00:08:29.540 | to move you away from whatever it is the stressor is,

00:08:32.980 | or just make you feel like you need to move or talk.

00:08:35.260 | Your face goes flushed, et cetera.

00:08:36.920 | There is, however, a way in which you can breathe

00:08:39.300 | that directly controls your heart rate

00:08:41.160 | through the interactions between the sympathetic

00:08:44.260 | and the parasympathetic nervous system.

00:08:46.700 | Here's how it works.

00:08:48.460 | When you inhale,

00:08:50.560 | so whether or not it's through the nose or through the mouth,

00:08:53.940 | this skeletal muscle that's inside your body,

00:08:57.240 | called the diaphragm, it moves down.

00:09:00.420 | And that's because the lungs expand, the diaphragm moves down.

00:09:04.300 | Your heart actually gets a little bit bigger

00:09:06.160 | in that expanded space.

00:09:07.540 | There's more space for the heart.

00:09:09.060 | And as a consequence,

00:09:10.220 | whatever blood is in there is now at a lower volume

00:09:15.000 | or moving a little bit more slowly in that larger volume

00:09:18.280 | than it was before you inhaled.

00:09:21.340 | Okay, so more space, heart gets bigger,

00:09:23.180 | blood moves more slowly,

00:09:24.460 | and there's a little group of neurons

00:09:26.140 | called the sinoatrial node in the heart

00:09:29.460 | that registers, believe it or not,

00:09:31.660 | those neurons pay attention

00:09:33.300 | to the rate of blood flow through the heart,

00:09:35.620 | and send a signal up to the brain

00:09:38.380 | that blood is moving more slowly through the heart.

00:09:41.740 | The brain then sends a signal back to the heart

00:09:44.460 | to speed the heart up.

00:09:46.300 | So what this means is if you want your heart to beat faster,

00:09:49.940 | inhale longer, inhale more vigorously than your exhales.

00:09:54.940 | Now, the opposite is also true.

00:09:58.880 | If you want to slow your heart rate down,

00:10:00.800 | so stress response hits,

00:10:02.400 | you want to slow your heart rate down.

00:10:04.680 | What you want to do is, again,

00:10:07.220 | capitalize on this relationship between the body,

00:10:10.000 | meaning the diaphragm and the heart, and the brain.

00:10:12.200 | Here's how it works.

00:10:13.040 | When you exhale, the diaphragm moves up,

00:10:16.880 | which makes the heart a little bit smaller.

00:10:19.160 | It actually gets a little more compact.

00:10:20.660 | Blood flows more quickly through that compact space.

00:10:24.200 | The sinoatrial node registers

00:10:25.940 | that blood is going more quickly,

00:10:27.320 | sends a signal up to the brain,

00:10:29.780 | and the parasympathetic nervous system,

00:10:31.980 | some neurons in your brainstem,

00:10:33.860 | send a signal back to the heart to slow the heart down.

00:10:37.880 | So if you want to calm down quickly,

00:10:40.400 | you need to make your exhales longer

00:10:43.520 | and/or more vigorous than your inhales.

00:10:46.900 | Now, the reason this is so attractive

00:10:48.940 | as a tool for controlling stress

00:10:51.320 | is that it works in real time.

00:10:54.100 | This doesn't involve a practice that you have to go

00:10:56.380 | and sit there and do anything separate from life.

00:10:58.860 | The physiological side is something

00:11:00.420 | that people naturally start doing when they've been crying

00:11:03.260 | and they're trying to recover some air or calm down,

00:11:06.300 | when they've been sobbing very hard,

00:11:08.180 | or when they are in claustrophobic environments.

00:11:10.580 | However, the amazing thing about this thing

00:11:13.620 | that we call the diaphragm, the skeletal muscle,

00:11:15.500 | is that it's an internal organ

00:11:16.920 | that you can control voluntarily.

00:11:18.460 | So this incredible pathway that goes from brain to diaphragm

00:11:22.700 | through what's called the phrenic nerve,

00:11:24.140 | P-H-R-E-N-I-C, phrenic.

00:11:26.780 | The phrenic nerve innervates the diaphragm.

00:11:29.440 | You can control it anytime you want.

00:11:30.900 | You can double up your inhales or triple up your inhales.

00:11:33.340 | You can exhale more than your inhales,

00:11:35.500 | whatever you want to do.

00:11:37.140 | It's such an incredible organ.

00:11:38.340 | And the physiological side is something

00:11:41.180 | that we do spontaneously.

00:11:42.260 | But when you're feeling stressed,

00:11:44.200 | you can do a double inhale.

00:11:46.440 | [inhales]

00:11:48.940 | [exhales]

00:11:51.060 | Long exhale.

00:11:51.960 | Now, I just told you a minute ago

00:11:53.440 | that if you inhale more than you exhale,

00:11:55.440 | you're going to speed the heart rate up,

00:11:57.140 | which would promote more stress and activation.

00:11:59.660 | Now I'm telling you to do a double inhale exhale

00:12:01.940 | in order to calm down.

00:12:03.580 | And the reason is the double inhale exhale,

00:12:06.540 | which is the physiological sigh,

00:12:08.400 | takes advantage of the fact

00:12:11.100 | that when we do a double inhale,

00:12:12.500 | even if the second inhale is sneaking

00:12:14.180 | in just a tiny bit more air,

00:12:15.780 | 'cause it's kind of hard to get

00:12:16.720 | two deep inhales back to back.

00:12:18.260 | You do big, deep inhale,

00:12:19.260 | and then another little one sneaking it in.

00:12:21.340 | The little sacs in your lungs,

00:12:23.100 | the alveoli of the lungs,

00:12:24.220 | your lungs aren't just two big bags,

00:12:25.620 | but you've got millions of little sacs

00:12:27.340 | throughout the lungs

00:12:28.460 | that actually make the surface area of your lungs

00:12:30.560 | as big as a tennis court.

00:12:32.180 | It's amazing.

00:12:33.140 | If we were to just spread that out.

00:12:34.360 | Those tend to collapse as we get stressed

00:12:37.480 | and carbon dioxide builds up in our bloodstream.

00:12:40.640 | And that's one of the reasons we feel agitated as well.

00:12:43.720 | But when you do the double inhale exhale,

00:12:45.960 | the double inhale reinflates

00:12:47.720 | those little sacs of the lungs.

00:12:49.120 | And then when you do the long exhale,

00:12:51.760 | that long exhale is now much more effective

00:12:54.920 | at ridding your body and bloodstream of carbon dioxide,

00:12:58.280 | which relaxes you very quickly.

00:13:00.700 | When you're feeling stressed,

00:13:02.680 | the physiological sigh done just one to three times.

00:13:05.740 | So it'd be double inhale, exhale,

00:13:07.080 | double inhale, exhale, maybe just two times

00:13:09.440 | will bring down your level of stress very, very fast.

00:13:14.220 | And as far as I know,

00:13:15.060 | it's the fastest way to accomplish that.

00:13:17.120 | Be aware that if you're going to use the physiological sigh

00:13:19.680 | or exhale emphasize breathing to calm down,

00:13:22.520 | that your heart rate will take about 20 to 30 seconds

00:13:25.460 | to come down to baseline.

00:13:27.360 | And you may need to repeat the physiological sigh

00:13:29.480 | a few times.

00:13:30.520 | So let's think about something now.

00:13:32.880 | Let's think about stress from not whether or not

00:13:36.520 | it's acute or chronic,

00:13:37.920 | whether or not it's good for us or bad for us,

00:13:39.440 | but on three different timescales,

00:13:41.640 | because then we can arrive at what this is all about

00:13:45.520 | as it relates to emotions.

00:13:47.040 | But I really want you to understand the difference

00:13:48.800 | between the three kinds of stress

00:13:51.640 | on three different timescales,

00:13:53.120 | short-term, medium-term, and long-term,

00:13:55.640 | and what it's good for and what it's bad for.

00:13:58.320 | I think we've all heard that stress is bad for us.

00:14:01.600 | We've seen these pictures intended to frighten us,

00:14:04.860 | and indeed they are frightening.

00:14:06.000 | You see the nice, really plump brain on the left

00:14:09.120 | says healthy or control.

00:14:10.560 | And then you see the brain that says stressed above it

00:14:13.660 | on the right, and it's like withered.

00:14:15.880 | Or we see that the hippocampus,

00:14:17.480 | an area involved in memory is smaller.

00:14:19.880 | People that are stressed.

00:14:21.100 | I think we've all heard now so many times that stress is bad

00:14:24.920 | but in that conversation,

00:14:27.120 | unfortunately, it's eclipsed

00:14:29.480 | some of the really positive things

00:14:31.420 | that stress does for us in the short-term.

00:14:34.180 | When the stress response hits,

00:14:35.680 | that is good for your immune system.

00:14:37.920 | I know that might be a tough pill to swallow,

00:14:39.680 | but it's absolutely true.

00:14:41.760 | In fact, stress often comes in the form

00:14:45.520 | of bacterial or viral infection.

00:14:48.200 | And the stress response is in part organized

00:14:52.600 | to combat bacterial and viral infection.

00:14:55.680 | So short-term stress

00:14:58.000 | and the release of adrenaline in particular or epinephrine,

00:15:01.600 | same thing, adrenaline epinephrine,

00:15:03.440 | is good for combating infection.

00:15:07.080 | And this to me is just not discussed enough,

00:15:09.400 | so that's why I'm discussing it here.

00:15:11.120 | And it relates to a particular tool

00:15:12.980 | that many of you ask about,

00:15:15.080 | but I don't often get the opportunity to talk about

00:15:18.000 | in such an appropriate context.

00:15:20.080 | It's not that it's ever inappropriate to talk about,

00:15:23.120 | but what I'm about to talk about now

00:15:24.440 | is the use of, again, respiration, breathing,

00:15:28.780 | to somewhat artificially activate the stress response.

00:15:33.780 | And that will accomplish two things, okay?

00:15:36.560 | I'll return to medium and long-term stress,

00:15:38.160 | but I want to say short-term stress is good

00:15:40.720 | because the dilation of the pupils,

00:15:43.160 | the changes in the optics of the eyes,

00:15:44.780 | the quickening of the heart rate,

00:15:46.320 | the sharpening of your cognition.

00:15:48.020 | And in fact, that short-term stress

00:15:49.840 | brings certain elements of the brain online

00:15:52.700 | that allow you to focus.

00:15:54.280 | Now, it narrows your focus.

00:15:55.440 | You're not good at seeing the so-called big picture,

00:15:57.800 | but it narrows your focus.

00:15:59.140 | It allows you to do these,

00:16:00.840 | what I call duration path outcome types of analysis.

00:16:03.360 | It allows you to evaluate your environment,

00:16:04.880 | evaluate what you need to do.

00:16:06.580 | It primes your whole system for better cognition.

00:16:09.620 | It primes your immune system to combat infection.

00:16:12.360 | And that all makes sense when you think about the fact

00:16:14.600 | that famine, thirst, bacterial infections,

00:16:19.600 | viral infections, invaders,

00:16:21.800 | all of this stuff liberates a response in the body

00:16:24.480 | that's designed to get you to fight back

00:16:27.400 | against whatever stressor that happens to be,

00:16:29.660 | psychological, physical, bacterial, viral.

00:16:32.740 | Again, the stress response is generic.

00:16:35.520 | The tool takes advantage of the fact

00:16:38.480 | that when adrenaline is released in the body

00:16:42.020 | from the adrenals,

00:16:44.560 | it has the effect of also liberating

00:16:46.720 | a lot of these killer cells from the immune organs,

00:16:50.280 | in particular from the spleen,

00:16:51.600 | but from elsewhere as well,

00:16:53.280 | and interactions with the lymphatic system

00:16:55.740 | that combat infection.

00:16:57.420 | The way this works in the real world

00:17:01.880 | is best captured by a study

00:17:04.840 | that can be mapped back to so-called Wim Hof breathing.

00:17:09.120 | Now Wim Hof breathing is so named

00:17:11.360 | after the so-called Iceman Wim Hof.

00:17:14.080 | There are two components to a sort of breathing protocol

00:17:17.160 | that he developed that was based also

00:17:20.280 | on what's called TUMO breathing, T-U-M-M-O.

00:17:22.860 | So before Wim, there was TUMO breathing,

00:17:25.160 | and many people call this now super oxygenation breathing.

00:17:28.920 | So it's deliberate hyperventilation.

00:17:30.900 | Why would somebody want to do this?

00:17:33.060 | Well, deliberate hyperventilation done for maybe 25 cycles.

00:17:37.440 | So inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale.

00:17:40.280 | That pattern of breathing,

00:17:41.280 | rapid movements of the diaphragm

00:17:44.000 | will liberate adrenaline from the adrenals.

00:17:46.520 | When adrenaline is released in the body,

00:17:48.400 | you are in a better position to combat infections.

00:17:52.720 | And so whether or not you breathe very quickly

00:17:55.040 | in these cycles of 25 breaths,

00:17:57.440 | and regardless of what you call it, doesn't matter,

00:17:59.840 | adrenaline is released.

00:18:01.040 | If you take a cold shower, adrenaline is released.

00:18:03.600 | If you go into an ice bath deliberately,

00:18:06.380 | and even if you do it non-deliberately,

00:18:09.400 | adrenaline is released.

00:18:10.580 | You are mimicking the stress response.

00:18:12.760 | And that adrenaline serves to suppress

00:18:16.800 | or combat incoming infections.

00:18:19.540 | And this was beautifully shown in a study

00:18:21.360 | that was published in a very fine journal,

00:18:23.440 | the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

00:18:25.400 | for the US, it's literally called

00:18:28.200 | Proceedings of the National Academy of USA

00:18:30.360 | to distinguish it from other proceedings

00:18:32.300 | of other national academies in other countries.

00:18:34.700 | The way the experiment went is that people were injected

00:18:40.880 | with endotoxin, or in some cases they were injected

00:18:45.120 | with a bacterial wall that mimics infection.

00:18:48.600 | It gives you a fever.

00:18:50.000 | It makes you feel nauseous.

00:18:51.060 | It makes you feel sick.

00:18:51.900 | It is not pleasant.

00:18:53.760 | Half of the people did a particular pattern of breathing

00:18:56.920 | that looked very much like the pattern of breathing

00:18:58.880 | I described a moment ago of doing 25 deep inhales

00:19:02.900 | and exhales followed by an exhale, holding their breath,

00:19:06.000 | then repeating, 25 inhales, exhales, holding their breath.

00:19:09.140 | So this would look something like this,

00:19:10.380 | or if you're listening, it sounds like [inhales and exhales]

00:19:14.040 | 25, 30 times, you'll start feeling heated up.

00:19:16.680 | You'll start feeling the adrenaline response.

00:19:18.280 | You're liberating adrenaline in your body.

00:19:19.760 | Then exhale, hold your breath for 15 seconds,

00:19:23.400 | and then repeat.

00:19:24.400 | Now, I want to emphasize, never, ever, ever do this

00:19:27.120 | anywhere near water.

00:19:28.520 | People have passed out, so-called shallow water blackout.

00:19:31.840 | People have died.

00:19:32.680 | Please don't do it at all unless you get clearance

00:19:34.500 | to do it from your doctor,

00:19:35.920 | because there are some pulmonary effects and whatnot,

00:19:38.000 | and the breath holds should definitely not be done

00:19:39.840 | by anyone that has glaucoma or pressure concerns

00:19:43.000 | for the eyes, but these repeated cycles of breathing

00:19:47.040 | that liberate adrenaline allowed the group

00:19:49.800 | that did that protocol to essentially experience

00:19:53.240 | zero symptoms from the injection of this E. coli,

00:19:56.880 | which is remarkable.

00:19:58.220 | They had much reduced or no symptoms.

00:20:00.280 | They didn't feel feverish.

00:20:01.560 | They didn't feel sick.

00:20:02.440 | They weren't vomiting, no diarrhea, which is remarkable,

00:20:05.100 | but makes total sense when you think about the fact

00:20:07.800 | that the short-term stress response,

00:20:09.320 | that what's typically called the acute stress response,

00:20:11.640 | is designed to combat all stressors.

00:20:14.760 | Many of us are familiar with the experience

00:20:16.480 | of work, work, work, work, work,

00:20:17.700 | or taking care of a loved one,

00:20:19.280 | or stress, stress, stress, stress, stress,

00:20:20.520 | and then we finally relax.

00:20:21.660 | Maybe we even go on vacation.

00:20:23.240 | Like, oh, now I'm finally going to get the break,

00:20:24.920 | and then we get sick,

00:20:26.360 | and that's because the adrenaline response crashed

00:20:29.040 | and your immune system crashed with it.

00:20:31.960 | So please understand this.

00:20:34.360 | Now, many of you might say, well, how long?

00:20:36.440 | Is it two hours?

00:20:37.380 | Is it three hours?

00:20:38.220 | A lot of you out there that really like specificity,

00:20:39.960 | it will vary for everybody.

00:20:41.920 | I would just kind of use a rule of thumb.

00:20:43.960 | When you are no longer able to achieve good sleep,

00:20:46.920 | what good sleep means to you,

00:20:48.520 | and please see the episodes on sleep

00:20:50.200 | if you want more about tools to sleep.

00:20:52.580 | When you are no longer able to achieve good sleep,

00:20:55.860 | you are now moving from acute stress to chronic stress.

00:20:58.480 | You need to be able to turn the stress response off.

00:21:01.560 | Okay, so now let's talk about medium-term stress.

00:21:04.640 | Medium-term stress is going to be stress

00:21:06.700 | that lasts anywhere from several days to several weeks.

00:21:11.420 | What is stress threshold?

00:21:12.820 | Well, stress threshold is actually our ability

00:21:17.340 | to cognitively regulate what's going on in our body.

00:21:21.140 | A lot of stress inoculation,

00:21:24.020 | a lot of managing medium-term stress

00:21:26.940 | on the timescale of weeks or maybe even a couple months.

00:21:30.820 | So we're not talking about years of stress.

00:21:34.100 | A lot of that has to do with raising our stress threshold.

00:21:37.620 | It's about capacity.

00:21:39.760 | And there are very simple tools,

00:21:42.240 | excellent tools that will allow us

00:21:44.220 | to modulate our capacity for stress.

00:21:47.380 | And they look a lot like the tools I just described.

00:21:50.820 | They involve placing oneself deliberately

00:21:53.900 | into a situation where our adrenaline is increased somewhat,

00:21:57.700 | not to the extreme.

00:21:59.520 | And then when we feel flooded with adrenaline

00:22:03.620 | and normally we would panic,

00:22:05.620 | it's about cognitively, mentally, emotionally,

00:22:09.380 | calming ourselves and being comfortable

00:22:11.820 | with that response in our body.

00:22:13.620 | And what would this look like?

00:22:15.140 | You can use the cyclic hyperoxygenation breathing

00:22:18.900 | to combat infection if you're feeling kind of run down.

00:22:22.220 | And there's also a way in which you can use things

00:22:25.180 | like cold showers, or if you exercise

00:22:28.660 | and you bring your heart rate up very high,

00:22:30.420 | you kind of go into that high intensity realm

00:22:32.580 | where your heart is beating a little bit harder

00:22:34.860 | than you're comfortable with.

00:22:36.860 | The key in those moments is to learn to relax the mind

00:22:40.840 | while the body is very activated.

00:22:43.080 | One way that you can do this, and this is kind of fun,

00:22:45.420 | if it's approved by your physician

00:22:47.820 | and you're able to do this,

00:22:49.060 | you can bring your heart rate up.

00:22:50.460 | You could do this through an ice bath if that's your thing,

00:22:52.720 | or a cold shower, or cyclic oxygenation breathing,

00:22:55.380 | or you could sprint, or you could go hard on the bike,

00:22:58.220 | whatever it is that brings your heart rate up.

00:23:00.420 | And then what you want to do is you want to actually try

00:23:03.540 | and calm the mind while your body

00:23:05.180 | is in this heightened state of activation.

00:23:07.380 | When we are stressed, our pupils dilate.

00:23:10.100 | The effect of that pupil dilation

00:23:12.340 | is to create tunnel vision.

00:23:13.740 | It literally narrows our view of the visual world.

00:23:15.920 | We no longer see in panorama.

00:23:18.140 | And there's some other effects as well,

00:23:20.600 | but that's because the visual system

00:23:22.060 | through this cranial nerve system that I described before

00:23:24.700 | is tethered and is part of this autonomic nervous system.

00:23:29.060 | By deliberately dilating your gaze,

00:23:31.880 | meaning not moving your head and eyes around,

00:23:33.740 | but by deliberately going from tunnel vision

00:23:37.020 | to broader panoramic vision,

00:23:39.260 | literally seeing more of your environment all at once,

00:23:41.940 | it creates a calming effect on the mind

00:23:43.820 | because it releases a particular circuit in the brainstem

00:23:46.420 | that's associated with alertness, aka stress.

00:23:50.240 | Now, this is very powerful.

00:23:52.060 | If you're running, for instance,

00:23:53.480 | and you're at max capacity or close to it,

00:23:55.980 | or you're kind of hitting like 80, 90% of maximum

00:23:58.620 | on the bike and you dilate your gaze,

00:24:01.720 | what you'll find is the mind can relax

00:24:03.400 | while the body is in full output.

00:24:05.540 | And this relates to work that in various communities,

00:24:08.940 | people are working with this in the sports community,

00:24:10.980 | military communities, et cetera.

00:24:12.540 | But it's a form, not really of stress inoculation.

00:24:15.940 | It's more about raising stress threshold

00:24:18.440 | so that the body is going to continue

00:24:20.980 | to be in a high alertness, high reactivity mode,

00:24:24.420 | high output, but the mind is calm.

00:24:27.140 | And so this isn't about unifying mind and body.

00:24:29.680 | This is actually about using body

00:24:32.340 | to bring up your level of activation,

00:24:34.180 | then dissociating,

00:24:35.740 | not the clinical dissociation kind of disorders,

00:24:39.040 | but dissociating the mental or emotional response

00:24:42.120 | from what's going on in your body.

00:24:43.300 | And over time, so if you do this a couple of times,

00:24:46.540 | you don't have to do this every workout,

00:24:48.100 | but if you do this every, maybe once a week or so,

00:24:50.580 | you start being comfortable

00:24:52.200 | at these higher activation states.

00:24:54.100 | What once felt overwhelming and like a lot of work,

00:24:57.040 | now is manageable, it feels tolerable.

00:25:00.660 | So that's for navigating medium term stress.

00:25:04.260 | And then there's long-term stress.

00:25:06.200 | Now, long-term stress is bad.

00:25:08.260 | You do not want adrenaline up in your system

00:25:10.900 | for a very long time.

00:25:12.260 | In fact, ideally, you would have your stress go up

00:25:16.780 | various times throughout the day,

00:25:18.460 | but it would never stay elevated

00:25:20.260 | and it would never prevent you

00:25:21.200 | from getting a good night's sleep.

00:25:22.380 | We know that chronic stress, elevated stress,

00:25:25.620 | and especially in the so-called type A personalities,

00:25:29.260 | creates heart disease,

00:25:30.820 | leading killer for in most every country,

00:25:34.000 | but in particular in the US.

00:25:36.560 | But by no means do you want to be stressed out

00:25:38.760 | all the time chronically for months and months and months

00:25:41.440 | and years on end.

00:25:42.560 | The best tools, the best mechanisms that we know

00:25:48.460 | to modulate long-term stress

00:25:50.400 | might surprise you a little bit.

00:25:53.280 | First of all, there are going to be the things

00:25:55.760 | that don't surprise you,

00:25:56.600 | which is everyone knows getting regular exercise,

00:25:58.980 | getting good sleep, using real-time tools

00:26:02.200 | to try and tamp down the stress response, et cetera.

00:26:04.640 | That's all going to be really useful.

00:26:06.480 | The data really point to the fact that social connection

00:26:12.420 | and certain types of social connection in particular

00:26:15.680 | are what are going to mitigate or reduce long-term stress.

00:26:20.480 | And this is a particularly important issue nowadays

00:26:23.320 | where we have all these proxies or surrogates

00:26:26.680 | for social connection.

00:26:28.100 | You know, we're online and texting with people a lot.

00:26:30.640 | Everyone has this kind of need

00:26:31.960 | to stay connected to one another.

00:26:33.280 | Humans are incredibly social creatures.

00:26:36.140 | The way to think about social connection

00:26:37.760 | and how it can mitigate

00:26:39.800 | some of the long-term effects of stress

00:26:42.000 | is really through the systems of neuromodulation,

00:26:45.140 | like serotonin.

00:26:46.600 | Serotonin, again, is a neuromodulator.

00:26:48.860 | Neuromodulators are a little bit like playlists in the brain.

00:26:51.660 | They tend to amplify or bias the likelihood

00:26:54.300 | that certain brain circuits and body circuits

00:26:56.140 | are going to be activated and that others will not.

00:26:59.540 | Serotonin generally gives us feelings of wellbeing

00:27:02.580 | at very high levels.

00:27:03.500 | It makes us feel blissed.

00:27:05.420 | And it tends to make us feel like we have enough

00:27:07.820 | in our immediate environment.

00:27:09.100 | When we see somebody that we recognize and trust,

00:27:11.460 | serotonin is released in the brain.

00:27:14.300 | And that has certain positive effects on the immune system

00:27:18.220 | and on other systems of neural repair and synapses

00:27:21.900 | and things that really reinforce connections in the brain

00:27:24.580 | and prevent that long-term withering of connections.

00:27:27.460 | So serotonin is tied to social connection.

00:27:30.660 | Now, social connection can take many forms.

00:27:32.900 | Some of those can be romantic attachments.

00:27:34.840 | Those could be familial attachments

00:27:36.740 | that are non-romantic, friendship, pets,

00:27:40.260 | even attachments to things that just delight us.

00:27:43.380 | Having a sense of delight,

00:27:45.300 | a sense of really enjoying something that you see

00:27:48.260 | and engage in, witness, or participate in,

00:27:51.360 | that is associated with the serotonin system.

00:27:54.620 | And certainly play is one of those things,

00:27:56.500 | social connection of various forms.

00:27:58.020 | Those are things to invest in.

00:27:59.660 | I'll be the first to admit social connection and friendship

00:28:02.180 | and relationships of all kinds to animals or humans

00:28:04.940 | or inanimate objects takes work.

00:28:07.940 | It takes investment.

00:28:08.980 | It takes time in not needing everything

00:28:12.280 | to be exactly the way you want it to be.

00:28:13.780 | Social connection is something that we work for,

00:28:15.860 | but it is incredibly powerful.

00:28:18.380 | Finding just a few people, even one, or an animal,

00:28:22.260 | or something that you delight in, believe it or not,

00:28:25.420 | has very positive effects

00:28:27.780 | on mitigating this long-term stress,

00:28:30.620 | on improving various aspects of our life

00:28:32.940 | as it relates to stress and emotionality.

00:28:35.660 | Now, how do you know if you're making serotonin?

00:28:37.500 | You don't know in the moment,

00:28:39.020 | but you can learn if you pay attention

00:28:41.140 | to kind of recognize these feelings of comfort,

00:28:43.940 | trust, bliss, delight.

00:28:45.700 | And those are not weak terms.

00:28:48.580 | Those are not associated just with psychological terms.

00:28:51.320 | They are every bit as physiological

00:28:54.860 | as the movement of your muscles

00:28:56.420 | or the secretion of adrenaline.

00:28:57.860 | Now, there are a plethora of things

00:28:59.380 | that will also impact wellbeing

00:29:00.980 | and allow you to modulate your long-term stress,

00:29:05.020 | reduce the likelihood

00:29:06.100 | that you'll engage in long-term stress.

00:29:08.240 | There are compounds that are not prescription compounds

00:29:11.420 | that can modulate the stress system.

00:29:14.280 | And sometimes, because of the way that life is,

00:29:16.580 | we just don't have the opportunity to control life

00:29:19.740 | and to control our response to stress.

00:29:21.380 | The three I want to focus on,

00:29:22.580 | and one that I think you need to be cautious about

00:29:25.160 | that I've mentioned before,

00:29:26.860 | include ashwagandha, l-theanine, and melatonin.

00:29:31.860 | Let's talk about melatonin first.

00:29:33.620 | Melatonin is a hormone secreted from the pineal

00:29:36.780 | in direct relationship to how much darkness you are in,

00:29:39.440 | not emotional darkness, but light suppresses melatonin.

00:29:43.120 | Melatonin helps you fall asleep.

00:29:44.520 | It doesn't help you stay asleep.

00:29:45.880 | I personally do not recommend supplementing melatonin

00:29:50.440 | because it's supplemented typically at very high levels,

00:29:54.040 | you know, one to three milligrams or even more.

00:29:57.160 | That is an outrageously high dose.

00:29:59.360 | It also has a number of potentially negative effects

00:30:02.520 | on the reproductive axis and hormones there.

00:30:06.080 | The other is l-theanine.

00:30:07.180 | I've talked about l-theanine,

00:30:08.820 | which provided it's safe for you,

00:30:11.220 | can be taken 100 milligrams or 200 milligrams

00:30:13.820 | about a 30 minutes or 60 minutes before sleep.

00:30:15.860 | It can enhance the transition to sleep

00:30:17.760 | and depth of sleep for many people.

00:30:19.500 | It increases GABA, this inhibitory neurotransmitter

00:30:22.980 | in the brain.

00:30:23.800 | It tends to turn off our forebrain a little bit

00:30:26.020 | or reduce the activity of our kind of thinking systems

00:30:28.440 | and ruminating systems help people fall asleep.

00:30:30.940 | But theanine has also been shown for people

00:30:33.540 | that are chronically anxious or chronically stressed

00:30:35.660 | to significantly increase relaxation.

00:30:37.520 | It is known to have a minor effect on anxiety,

00:30:39.820 | but eight studies have shown that.

00:30:41.540 | It definitely has a notable effect on stress.

00:30:43.580 | The other supplement that can be very useful is ashwagandha.

00:30:46.980 | Ashwagandha is known to lower anxiety and cortisol.

00:30:50.880 | This is great.

00:30:51.720 | I mean, the opportunity for me anyway,

00:30:53.660 | to be able to take something

00:30:55.400 | that can help me reduce my cortisol

00:30:57.840 | so that I don't get some of the long-term effects of stress.

00:31:00.100 | And I'm not going to take ashwagandha year round.

00:31:02.080 | I would only do this if I was feeling like

00:31:03.520 | I wasn't managing my short and medium-term stress well.

00:31:06.520 | So I don't take it on a regular basis.

00:31:07.960 | I do take it when I'm in these times

00:31:10.520 | when things are particularly stressful.

00:31:12.560 | So social connection and some supplementation,

00:31:15.440 | of course, diet, exercise, sleep for long-term stress.

00:31:19.040 | So I hope today you were able to take

00:31:22.480 | a slightly different view of this thing that we call stress,

00:31:26.000 | not just see it as evil,

00:31:27.160 | but see it as powerful and useful in certain contexts,

00:31:30.080 | great for us in certain contexts,

00:31:32.000 | and problematic in other contexts.

00:31:34.080 | And as well to think about the various tools

00:31:36.120 | that I've presented that can allow you to adjust

00:31:39.520 | and modulate your internal levels of alertness or calmness

00:31:43.240 | so that you can lean more effectively into life,

00:31:45.640 | which includes sleep and social connection

00:31:48.320 | and the work you have to do.

00:31:50.040 | And of course, acknowledges that the events in the world

00:31:53.620 | are beyond our control.

00:31:55.060 | What's in our control is how we react to them.

00:31:57.120 | Something that's commonly said in the wellness

00:31:59.420 | and self-help and psychology world,

00:32:02.000 | but for which there often aren't as many concrete tools

00:32:05.280 | that we can really look to and trust in real time.

00:32:08.240 | As always, really appreciate your time and attention today.

00:32:11.920 | I hope you practice some of the tools

00:32:13.840 | if they're right for you.

00:32:14.760 | I hope you think hard about stress

00:32:16.800 | and how you can control your stress.

00:32:19.640 | And above all, as always,

00:32:22.400 | thank you for your interest in science.

00:32:24.040 | [upbeat music]

00:32:26.620 | (upbeat music)

Tools for Managing Stress & Anxiety | Huberman Lab Essentials

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