Dr. Elissa Epel: Control Stress for Healthy Eating, Metabolism & Aging

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

00:00:02.260 | where we discuss science and science-based tools

00:00:04.900 | for everyday life.

00:00:05.900 | I'm Andrew Huberman,

00:00:10.060 | and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology

00:00:13.060 | at Stanford School of Medicine.

00:00:14.940 | Today, my guest is Dr. Alyssa Epple.

00:00:17.400 | Dr. Epple is a professor of psychiatry

00:00:19.300 | and behavioral sciences

00:00:20.540 | at the University of California, San Francisco.

00:00:23.180 | She is also the director of the Center on Aging,

00:00:25.940 | Metabolism, and Emotions.

00:00:27.720 | Dr. Epple's laboratory focuses on stress

00:00:29.920 | and the many impacts that it has on our brain and body,

00:00:32.760 | both negative and positive.

00:00:34.880 | For instance, her laboratory has shown

00:00:36.380 | that particular forms of stress change our telomeres,

00:00:39.880 | which are a component of the genetic machinery of our cells

00:00:42.800 | that impacts how quickly our cells and therefore we age.

00:00:46.080 | We also discuss exciting work from Dr. Epple's laboratory,

00:00:49.120 | exploring how stress impacts our behavioral choices,

00:00:51.840 | in particular, which foods we elect to eat

00:00:54.180 | and how we experience those foods.

00:00:56.800 | Today, you'll learn how stress

00:00:58.080 | and your interpretation of your stress

00:01:00.380 | impacts the different aspects of your biology and psychology.

00:01:03.660 | You'll also learn about several important stress

00:01:05.620 | interventions that Dr. Epple's laboratory has explored,

00:01:08.380 | including meditation and breath work

00:01:10.440 | can profoundly influence the way

00:01:11.920 | that stress impacts your brain and body,

00:01:13.900 | both for better or for worse.

00:01:15.860 | She's also explored how specific dietary interventions,

00:01:18.640 | such as omega-3 fatty acid intake,

00:01:21.160 | impacts stress and our response to stress.

00:01:24.000 | And a key and important feature, I believe,

00:01:26.080 | of Dr. Epple's work is how stress and stress interventions

00:01:29.600 | vary in their effectiveness,

00:01:31.460 | depending on whether or not the subjects in her experiments

00:01:34.000 | are male versus female and their social status.

00:01:37.680 | By the end of today's episode,

00:01:38.920 | I assure you, you will have a much more thorough

00:01:40.920 | understanding of what stress is

00:01:43.240 | and how it changes our biology and psychology,

00:01:45.960 | as well as the specific stress interventions

00:01:48.160 | that are going to be most optimal for you

00:01:50.360 | in reducing the negative effects of stress

00:01:52.760 | on the aging process and on negative behavioral choices,

00:01:56.200 | and also how to leverage stress

00:01:58.100 | in order to maximize the positive effects

00:02:00.120 | that stress can have on cellular metabolism,

00:02:02.520 | mental health, physical health, and performance.

00:02:05.240 | To learn more about the work from Dr. Epple's laboratory,

00:02:07.960 | as well as to learn more about her books,

00:02:10.120 | entitled "The Telomere Effect,"

00:02:12.000 | and now more recently, "The Stress Prescription,"

00:02:15.000 | you can find links to those in the show note captions.

00:02:17.720 | Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast

00:02:20.400 | is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford.

00:02:22.900 | It is, however, part of my desire and effort

00:02:25.020 | to bring zero cost to consumer information about science

00:02:27.580 | and science-related tools to the general public.

00:02:30.380 | In keeping with that theme,

00:02:31.440 | I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast.

00:02:34.180 | Our first sponsor is Thesus.

00:02:36.160 | Thesus makes custom nootropics.

00:02:38.180 | And frankly, I'm not a fan of the word nootropics

00:02:40.320 | because it translates to smart drugs.

00:02:42.560 | And as a neurobiologist, I can tell you

00:02:44.660 | that our brain has neural circuits and chemicals

00:02:46.600 | that underlie, for instance, our ability to focus

00:02:49.200 | or to task switch or to be creative.

00:02:51.800 | There is no one specific circuit or category of chemicals

00:02:55.080 | in the brain that allow us to be smart.

00:02:56.900 | Thesus understands this and has developed nootropics

00:02:59.800 | that are customized to different types of mental operations.

00:03:03.460 | What do I mean by that?

00:03:04.440 | Well, they have formulas that can put your brain

00:03:07.080 | into a state of increased clarity or focus or creativity,

00:03:11.880 | or that can give you more overall energy

00:03:14.000 | for things like physical exercise.

00:03:16.480 | I often take the Thesus clarity formula

00:03:18.600 | prior to long bouts of cognitive work,

00:03:21.040 | and I'll use their energy formula

00:03:22.720 | prior to doing any kind of really intense physical exercise.

00:03:26.380 | If you'd like to try

00:03:27.220 | your own personalized nootropic starter kit,

00:03:29.080 | go online to takethesis.com/huberman.

00:03:32.200 | You'll take a brief three-minute quiz,

00:03:33.920 | and Thesus will send you four different formulas

00:03:36.180 | to try in your first month.

00:03:37.860 | Again, that's takethesis.com/huberman.

00:03:40.320 | And if you use the code Huberman at checkout,

00:03:42.120 | you'll get 10% off your order.

00:03:44.220 | Today's episode is also brought to us by Eight Sleep.

00:03:47.080 | Eight Sleep makes smart mattress covers

00:03:48.840 | with cooling, heating, and sleep tracking capacity.

00:03:51.800 | I've talked many times before on this podcast

00:03:53.720 | and on other podcasts about the critical relationship

00:03:56.460 | between sleep and body temperature.

00:03:58.760 | Put simply, in order to fall asleep

00:04:00.880 | and stay asleep deeply throughout the night,

00:04:03.140 | your body needs to drop by about one to three degrees

00:04:05.860 | in its core body temperature.

00:04:08.040 | And conversely, waking up involves one to three degree

00:04:11.120 | increases in your core body temperature.

00:04:13.400 | So it's very important that you control the temperature

00:04:15.360 | of your sleeping environment,

00:04:16.460 | which also includes the temperature of your mattress.

00:04:18.720 | That's what Eight Sleep mattress covers allow you to do.

00:04:21.320 | So for instance, I tend to run hot during the night,

00:04:23.360 | so I have my mattress set to be pretty cool

00:04:25.900 | at the beginning of the night,

00:04:26.880 | and then to get progressively cooler

00:04:28.400 | and then warm toward morning when I want to wake up.

00:04:30.740 | And in doing this, it's allowed me

00:04:32.000 | to really optimize my sleep.

00:04:33.520 | And I sleep much more deeply

00:04:34.920 | and I get far more rapid eye movement sleep

00:04:36.840 | than I ever did prior to using Eight Sleep.

00:04:39.180 | If you'd like to try Eight Sleep,

00:04:40.440 | you can go to eightsleep.com/huberman

00:04:42.820 | to save $150 off their pod three cover.

00:04:45.820 | Eight Sleep currently ships in the USA, Canada, UK,

00:04:48.580 | select countries in the EU, and Australia.

00:04:50.760 | Again, that's eightsleep.com/huberman.

00:04:53.480 | Today's episode is also brought to us by HVMN Ketone IQ.

00:04:57.600 | Ketone IQ is a supplement that increases blood ketones.

00:05:01.440 | I think most people out there

00:05:02.360 | have heard of the ketogenic diet.

00:05:04.200 | However, most people out there, including myself,

00:05:06.440 | do not follow a ketogenic diet.

00:05:08.340 | Despite not following a ketogenic diet,

00:05:10.220 | I make it a point to increase my blood ketones

00:05:12.520 | through the use of Ketone IQ.

00:05:14.400 | The reason for that is that ketones

00:05:15.900 | are one of the brain's preferred sources of fuel.

00:05:18.480 | I find that by taking Ketone IQ,

00:05:20.560 | I have elevated levels of focus

00:05:22.080 | for several hours afterwards.

00:05:23.920 | It also allows me to do physical training

00:05:26.080 | or mental work fasted.

00:05:27.980 | And in addition to that,

00:05:29.200 | I focus much better when I take Ketone IQ

00:05:31.960 | as opposed to fasted alone.

00:05:33.520 | So many people like me find that

00:05:34.900 | whether or not they follow a ketogenic diet

00:05:36.780 | or a more typical diet,

00:05:38.380 | supplementing with Ketone IQ

00:05:39.920 | and thereby increasing their blood ketones

00:05:42.000 | allows them to do more focused mental work

00:05:44.240 | and physical work, even when fasted or when a bit hungry.

00:05:47.380 | So if you'd like to try Ketone IQ,

00:05:48.860 | go to hvmn.com and use the code Huberman

00:05:51.920 | to get 20% off your order.

00:05:53.600 | Again, that's hvmn.com and use the code Huberman

00:05:56.680 | to get 20% off.

00:05:57.960 | The Huberman Lab Podcast

00:05:59.100 | is now partnered with Momentus Supplements.

00:06:00.940 | To find the supplements we discuss

00:06:02.260 | on the Huberman Lab Podcast,

00:06:03.480 | you can go to Live Momentus, spelled O-U-S,

00:06:06.120 | livemomentus.com/huberman.

00:06:08.680 | And I should just mention that the library

00:06:10.060 | of those supplements is constantly expanding.

00:06:12.240 | Again, that's livemomentus.com/huberman.

00:06:15.400 | And now for my discussion with Dr. Alyssa Epple.

00:06:18.440 | Dr. Epple, welcome.

00:06:19.880 | - Thank you.

00:06:20.940 | - So great to have you here.

00:06:22.180 | We have colleagues in common

00:06:23.940 | and topics of interest related to our laboratories in common.

00:06:27.760 | So I've got a lot of questions today.

00:06:29.480 | I'd love to just kick off by you explaining a little bit

00:06:33.040 | about the different forms of stress.

00:06:34.920 | You know, we hear stress, stress is bad, stress can kill us.

00:06:37.600 | No one likes to feel stressed, et cetera.

00:06:39.860 | But as you and I both know, that's not the entire picture.

00:06:43.240 | So I'd love for you to just educate us a bit

00:06:45.540 | on what stress is and what it isn't,

00:06:48.640 | where it can be problematic

00:06:50.500 | and where perhaps it can even be beneficial.

00:06:52.620 | - So as a stress scientist,

00:06:56.060 | it is a word I use a lot, but it has to be broken down

00:07:00.700 | because it has so many different kind of dimensions

00:07:04.340 | and meanings.

00:07:05.180 | So there's good and bad stress.

00:07:06.440 | There's acute and chronic stress.

00:07:09.060 | And, you know, technically it just means

00:07:11.140 | anytime we feel overwhelmed that we feel like

00:07:14.560 | the demands are too much for our resources.

00:07:17.980 | So that's kind of a very technical way to put it.

00:07:20.640 | But really so much of life is about meeting challenges

00:07:25.480 | and we're never going to get rid of

00:07:28.380 | different stressful situations in life.

00:07:30.520 | If anything, they are increasing.

00:07:32.500 | And so it really comes down to not the stressors

00:07:36.820 | or what's happens to us, but really how we respond,

00:07:40.580 | the stress response.

00:07:42.100 | So that's a distinction that we're still trying to get

00:07:44.920 | the field to talk about stress in a more specific way

00:07:48.060 | so that we can think about,

00:07:49.180 | well, what situations are in your life?

00:07:51.960 | They might be difficult, ongoing situations

00:07:54.580 | like caregiving or work stress,

00:07:56.900 | or worrying about health, your own or someone's.

00:08:01.900 | And then there's, how are you coping with it?

00:08:06.460 | So when something happens,

00:08:08.260 | we mount a stress response and we recover.

00:08:10.900 | And that's beautiful, no harm done.

00:08:13.580 | We need that.

00:08:14.420 | And that's why we're here still alive

00:08:16.100 | is that survival response.

00:08:17.860 | It's a problem these days of just,

00:08:20.980 | we keep it alive in our head.

00:08:22.500 | We keep it alive with our thoughts.

00:08:23.780 | Our thoughts are the most common form of stress.

00:08:27.240 | - Even though I expected that we would get into tools

00:08:30.220 | to combat stress a little bit later,

00:08:32.200 | since you have now told us that our thoughts

00:08:35.380 | are the biggest sort of propagator of internal stress,

00:08:39.640 | what to your knowledge is the best way

00:08:43.660 | or what are the best ways for us to manage overthinking

00:08:48.660 | and ruminating on stressful topics?

00:08:50.860 | Because I certainly experienced stress.

00:08:53.460 | And when I do, I have tools related to breath work,

00:08:56.900 | running, exercise, sleep, non-sleep, deep rest.

00:09:00.900 | I'm a huge fan of all these sorts of things.

00:09:03.060 | But when we succumb to stress

00:09:05.360 | and the thinking patterns take over

00:09:08.500 | where the gears are turning and they won't stop turning,

00:09:10.920 | what does the science tell us about ways

00:09:12.980 | to manage those thoughts?

00:09:15.100 | Should we work with them in the sense

00:09:17.520 | that we try and rationalize

00:09:19.940 | or understand the basis of the stress

00:09:23.940 | or should we try and divert our thinking away

00:09:26.540 | or is there some other tool that I'm unaware of?

00:09:28.660 | - Yes, yes, both and.

00:09:31.300 | So I like to bin it in three categories.

00:09:35.900 | So one is we, well, I'll just say, first of all,

00:09:39.820 | we have to have some awareness of how our mind works

00:09:43.760 | or we're just like a subject

00:09:47.380 | to thinking our thoughts are real,

00:09:49.340 | thinking that it's helpful to keep ruminating

00:09:51.900 | and problem solving because that's our tendency

00:09:54.480 | is to go toward whatever we think there's threat or risk

00:09:58.140 | and to problem solve that.

00:09:59.600 | You could just be stuck there all day

00:10:01.200 | in this kind of threat mode or red mind state.

00:10:04.160 | And that's just a shame.

00:10:05.600 | We don't need to turn on that stress response all the time,

00:10:10.600 | but that's where we are as a society.

00:10:12.940 | So that's why I wrote the stress rescription.

00:10:16.420 | Take any survey, even pre-pandemic and people feel,

00:10:20.800 | the majority of people feel an overwhelming amount of stress.

00:10:24.880 | So even this past year, 46% of adults report

00:10:29.880 | feeling overwhelmed by stress.

00:10:32.500 | And then you break it down and you're like,

00:10:33.740 | ooh, this is really bad for young adults

00:10:36.060 | and women and people of color.

00:10:38.500 | So we have these groups that are targeted for marginalization

00:10:42.720 | that are feeling an extremely high amount of stress

00:10:46.740 | in most of those subgroups.

00:10:48.340 | So bottom, yeah.

00:10:49.180 | - Wouldn't you argue that most everyone

00:10:51.800 | is feeling more stressed now?

00:10:53.020 | Or is it just, or what do the data say?

00:10:55.420 | - Yeah, so I think that we're,

00:10:59.560 | we come with different levels of awareness of our stress.

00:11:05.100 | And so when I find someone who really doesn't feel

00:11:08.340 | a lot of stress, sometimes I can see right through that

00:11:12.460 | and they're just not aware.

00:11:14.060 | And sometimes it really is true.

00:11:15.940 | They're often in a different stage of life

00:11:17.700 | and they control their environment a lot.

00:11:20.300 | And they've been through a lot.

00:11:21.760 | I mean, one of the big patterns

00:11:25.460 | in the population levels of stress

00:11:28.780 | is that the older people are less stressed, period.

00:11:33.600 | If you're over 65, you have been through so much,

00:11:37.020 | solved so much, you just have a better perspective

00:11:39.940 | on life and on stressors.

00:11:41.460 | And then our adults, our young adults have like four times

00:11:44.620 | the level of stress as our older adults.

00:11:46.940 | So we do, we don't have to wait till we get older,

00:11:49.980 | but there certainly is true wisdom and resilience

00:11:52.620 | that comes with age for many people.

00:11:54.740 | Often we're so used to feeling daily stress

00:12:00.380 | from our urban and modern life that we don't notice it.

00:12:04.260 | We're just used to it.

00:12:05.100 | And so we're going through the day

00:12:06.220 | with kind of like clenched hands and just, you know,

00:12:09.260 | for listeners, just even just taking a check in now

00:12:12.200 | and noticing how you might be holding stress in your body.

00:12:16.700 | That's a huge clue.

00:12:18.100 | It's a huge place where we accumulate tension.

00:12:21.160 | So we might not be aware that we're stressed,

00:12:23.300 | but we're clenching our hands.

00:12:24.780 | And in fact, my taxi driver who drove me here

00:12:29.260 | let me know that he's exactly that point

00:12:35.580 | that he doesn't realize he's stressed until he realizes

00:12:39.460 | that he's tensing his shoulders and his fists.

00:12:42.020 | And so great signal, you know, doing a check-in

00:12:44.780 | to like notice where in our body we're holding stress

00:12:47.500 | is step one to releasing it.

00:12:49.680 | - So going back to this notion of overthinking,

00:12:53.380 | what are the tools that are most efficient

00:12:56.620 | for dealing with overthinking or ruminating

00:13:00.360 | when people just can't seem to let go of the thing

00:13:04.820 | that's the stress or thinking about not the stress

00:13:07.860 | in their body, but the thing that caused the stress,

00:13:10.580 | the difficult conversation, the thing that irked them

00:13:13.540 | on social media or in their personal life

00:13:15.500 | or professional life or simply out in the world?

00:13:18.620 | - So I wish I had one answer,

00:13:22.380 | but I'm gonna say lots of strategies tackle that.

00:13:25.140 | And so in those three bins, one are top-down strategies

00:13:28.660 | of awareness and things that we can say to ourselves

00:13:31.540 | since our beliefs and mindsets can really help us

00:13:36.540 | release stress, view stress more positively.

00:13:38.900 | The second bucket is not that the mind changes the body,

00:13:42.940 | but the body changes the mind.

00:13:44.120 | And those are the set of strategies

00:13:45.540 | that you tend to use the most, right?

00:13:47.340 | Where we're working stress out of the body,

00:13:50.300 | we're metabolizing it, we're burning it up

00:13:52.740 | and we get relief, changes our amygdala activity

00:13:56.880 | and moves us to more an experiential state

00:13:59.800 | where we're more in our somatosensory cortex.

00:14:02.380 | And then the third bucket is change the scene,

00:14:05.900 | just getting away from all the stress triggers

00:14:09.700 | that we have in our office or in the city

00:14:14.700 | and being in an environment that we find calming.

00:14:19.480 | It might even just be a corner of the house,

00:14:21.360 | but implanting what I call safety signals,

00:14:24.400 | we're just these animals that are conditioned to signals,

00:14:27.040 | whether we're aware of it or not.

00:14:28.640 | So having things like comforting pets,

00:14:32.480 | pictures, smells, music, why not?

00:14:36.400 | We need those, they help, they add up.

00:14:38.960 | - I like the idea of having a small physical space,

00:14:42.200 | or I suppose it could be a large physical space,

00:14:44.280 | but for most people who don't have the resources,

00:14:46.720 | some small predesignated physical space

00:14:49.380 | that represents a safe zone and creating,

00:14:54.380 | or I should say populating that safe zone with things,

00:14:58.580 | as you said, as a visual neuroscientist originally,

00:15:02.080 | I guess now I study stress,

00:15:04.060 | but as a visual neuroscientist,

00:15:06.380 | we know that photographs are extremely powerful cues

00:15:09.740 | for the memory system,

00:15:10.860 | especially actual physical photographs.

00:15:13.680 | And I believe there's some work on this

00:15:17.740 | that if people keep a photograph of something

00:15:20.340 | that draws positive memories,

00:15:22.260 | that that photograph actually, they keep it with them,

00:15:24.700 | that it actually can be a positive cue

00:15:26.580 | for alleviating stress and just enhancing mood.

00:15:30.540 | This is probably done less so nowadays

00:15:32.260 | because everyone keeps things on their phones

00:15:33.900 | and it's just kind of a scroll through,

00:15:35.580 | but in any event, when we talk about stress,

00:15:39.860 | it's clear that there's short-term,

00:15:43.420 | medium-term, long-term stress.

00:15:45.000 | You studied all these different forms of stress.

00:15:47.400 | If you would be so kind as to just give us an overview

00:15:51.460 | of the different forms of stress,

00:15:54.140 | how we can learn to recognize those,

00:15:57.700 | and then I'd love to transition from there

00:15:59.700 | into talking about some of the work

00:16:01.820 | that you've been doing on stress and stress-related eating

00:16:04.220 | and stress and how it relates to aging in particular.

00:16:07.660 | But before we do that,

00:16:09.200 | to make sure everyone's on the same page,

00:16:11.500 | if you could just pepper our minds

00:16:13.540 | with knowledge about stress in all its beautiful

00:16:17.000 | and not so beautiful forms.

00:16:19.660 | - So when we think about stress,

00:16:24.620 | we usually think feeling stress, reporting stress,

00:16:27.260 | and that's important.

00:16:28.280 | What our body is doing is also important

00:16:30.880 | and it's not always related to our mind.

00:16:32.580 | So measuring levels of the nervous system

00:16:35.540 | and how vigilant we are is another way

00:16:38.100 | that we can understand stress.

00:16:39.980 | And that's particularly important and interesting

00:16:42.140 | because that's how stress gets under the skin

00:16:44.900 | and we might not be aware, we might not report stress,

00:16:47.300 | but we're still holding tension

00:16:49.140 | and being much more sympathetically dominated,

00:16:53.120 | meaning that our body is vigilant and scanning for cues

00:16:57.900 | and we don't feel safe.

00:16:59.180 | And so we're mobilizing a lot more energy

00:17:02.300 | than we need to.

00:17:04.360 | And stress is so expensive to the body.

00:17:08.060 | The stress response uses a tremendous amount of energy, ATP,

00:17:13.060 | that's made by our mitochondria.

00:17:16.080 | And if we have that kind of vigilant stress response

00:17:18.900 | on all day, we're just gonna feel exhausted.

00:17:21.020 | And we all feel exhausted at this stage

00:17:22.740 | of the kind of long shadow of the pandemic.

00:17:24.980 | And it's really no mystery

00:17:26.300 | because we're not good at turning the stress response off.

00:17:29.340 | And that's what we wanna really focus on

00:17:31.800 | is understanding we need to mount a big stress response

00:17:34.580 | to cope with things when we need extra energy,

00:17:37.820 | but then we can actually let our body relax

00:17:41.900 | and we can turn it off.

00:17:43.220 | And that's where the rumination comes in.

00:17:44.900 | We wanna catch ourselves rehearsing and reliving stress

00:17:48.740 | or worrying about the next thing, saying right now, I'm safe.

00:17:52.580 | And there's the breathing strategies, I'm right with you,

00:17:55.500 | where those are the most direct and fast path

00:17:59.740 | to reducing stress in the body, period.

00:18:02.260 | - Yeah, our colleague, David Spiegel,

00:18:04.800 | our associate chair of psychiatry at Stanford

00:18:07.080 | and also a colleague of yours as well,

00:18:10.260 | has I think said it best,

00:18:13.140 | which is that breathing is unique

00:18:14.880 | among the functions of the brain

00:18:16.960 | 'cause it really originates as a brain function

00:18:19.100 | and then extends of course to the body

00:18:20.700 | in that it represents a bridge

00:18:21.980 | between the conscious and the unconscious

00:18:24.860 | because at any given moment we're breathing.

00:18:27.620 | And of course, at any given moment,

00:18:30.060 | we can take control of our breathing.

00:18:31.860 | There are very few brain circuits

00:18:34.500 | that impact the body in that way.

00:18:36.260 | Like I can't suddenly just change my rate of digestion

00:18:39.200 | because I decide to, but we can do that with breathing.

00:18:42.340 | We will definitely get into some of the work

00:18:45.500 | that you've been doing on breath work in particular.

00:18:47.780 | I know you have a study that's actually explored

00:18:49.680 | the Wim Hof method quite directly.

00:18:51.260 | One of the few studies that I'm aware of that's done that.

00:18:53.900 | So we'll get to that a little bit later.

00:18:56.100 | So you describe stress as a way

00:18:59.660 | that the body and mind mobilize energy.

00:19:02.300 | - Yeah, and I didn't quite answer your question.

00:19:04.220 | So there's that acute stress response

00:19:06.620 | when everything, every hormone and cell in our body

00:19:11.120 | is having a stress response

00:19:13.220 | and that is allowing us to reorient, focus, problem solve.

00:19:18.220 | It's really beautiful how much we can increase our capacity

00:19:22.900 | to do things during stress.

00:19:24.580 | And then if it lasts minutes or hours,

00:19:28.740 | we eventually recover.

00:19:30.460 | And that is what happens all day

00:19:35.180 | in a small, to small extents with daily stressors.

00:19:38.980 | We don't necessarily get so threatened

00:19:40.760 | that we release a lot of cortisol,

00:19:42.640 | but our nervous system is going up and down all day.

00:19:45.020 | Then there's kind of moderate stressful events

00:19:49.080 | that maybe take days or months to cope with.

00:19:52.820 | And what's important there is that noticing like right now,

00:19:56.420 | am I really coping acutely with something or can I restore?

00:20:00.900 | So that kind of daily restoration is very important.

00:20:03.100 | And then there are chronically stressful situations

00:20:06.300 | that go on for years.

00:20:07.740 | Many of us, not all of us,

00:20:09.340 | but many of us have those in our life.

00:20:11.220 | These are situations,

00:20:13.340 | I'll just use caregiving as an example,

00:20:15.260 | that we can't change.

00:20:17.780 | We can't change other people.

00:20:20.080 | We can't change certain situations or resources.

00:20:23.320 | And we can be thinking about them,

00:20:28.320 | chronically problem solving,

00:20:30.320 | trying to wish things were different,

00:20:33.320 | or we can use acceptance, radical acceptance strategies

00:20:36.960 | and other strategies to live well with them.

00:20:40.240 | And so that's a really important strategy

00:20:42.680 | for people who feel like their life

00:20:47.680 | is going to be stressful forever

00:20:49.840 | because of X or Y, that's not true.

00:20:52.900 | You have a harder life, you're gonna do more coping,

00:20:55.220 | but you can actually be dealing

00:20:58.620 | with uncontrollable chronic stress

00:21:01.020 | in ways that it's not gonna take that toll on your body.

00:21:04.940 | I mean, I study chronic stress

00:21:06.480 | and how it accelerates cell aging.

00:21:07.620 | And I can tell you,

00:21:08.620 | there's so much variance between people.

00:21:10.840 | People are so different.

00:21:11.820 | So among caregivers,

00:21:13.060 | some of them look as biologically young or younger

00:21:16.620 | than our controls.

00:21:17.900 | People with no identifiable big tough situation

00:21:21.140 | in their life.

00:21:21.980 | - I love to hear about the lack of inevitability

00:21:26.840 | around aging and stress.

00:21:28.760 | I realized that there's a big landscape of discussion

00:21:32.820 | around aging and stress for us to cover,

00:21:34.480 | but since you brought it up,

00:21:37.000 | in one of your papers, there's a beautiful graph.

00:21:39.900 | And since a lot of people are listening, not watching,

00:21:41.920 | and we don't use visual diagrams for that reason,

00:21:44.980 | I'll try and explain this as best I can.

00:21:47.540 | You distinguish between optimal aging,

00:21:51.920 | typical aging and accelerated aging.

00:21:54.420 | And I think everyone I can imagine

00:21:56.660 | would want optimal aging, right?

00:21:58.580 | Certainly not accelerated aging.

00:22:00.720 | And what's interesting about this graph in your paper

00:22:03.460 | is that while of course it appears that toxic stress,

00:22:07.280 | chronically unmitigated stress

00:22:10.740 | that makes us feel like we are at the world's mercy

00:22:15.220 | or the other people's mercy will accelerate aging.

00:22:19.080 | It turns out that underexposure to stress

00:22:21.800 | leads to more rapid aging than what you describe

00:22:25.080 | as ideal amounts of stress.

00:22:28.100 | In other words, that no stress is not the answer,

00:22:33.100 | rather to have some stress is ideal

00:22:35.400 | if you want to have so-called optimal aging.

00:22:38.460 | Can you explain a little bit

00:22:39.920 | about the mechanisms behind that?

00:22:42.580 | Maybe this is a good opportunity also to tell us

00:22:45.220 | about your telomere work.

00:22:46.600 | So the questions are,

00:22:50.340 | how does one measure optimal versus accelerated aging?

00:22:54.740 | And why would it be that some stress is better

00:22:57.760 | than no stress when it comes to aging ideally?

00:23:02.380 | - So having no stress means we're not really living.

00:23:07.580 | Like we're not engaging in the gifts of life,

00:23:11.620 | which inevitably have some challenge and risk.

00:23:15.260 | And let me give you an example.

00:23:17.260 | One study took elderly people who were tired

00:23:21.780 | and society kind of labels them as you're kind of done

00:23:26.660 | with your meaningful work in life

00:23:28.460 | and you are pretty much not able to contribute to society.

00:23:33.460 | I mean, there's so many negative stereotypes

00:23:36.660 | that people then kind of embody and then live.

00:23:39.180 | And this program brought them to work in schools

00:23:43.060 | and tutor young at-risk students.

00:23:46.460 | And what happened to them is they went

00:23:49.100 | from feeling maybe safe and under-stressed

00:23:52.340 | to feeling challenged, but generative.

00:23:57.340 | They were feeling more purpose.

00:23:59.740 | They were feeling like they were growing

00:24:02.120 | and they were feeling like their day had more meaning.

00:24:06.100 | They had more relationships.

00:24:07.900 | They had these caring relationships with the students.

00:24:11.820 | The students had all sorts of issues and troubles,

00:24:15.340 | drugs and maybe not having lunch, poverty.

00:24:18.460 | And so they felt the stress of that,

00:24:20.680 | but they also saw how much they could help

00:24:23.220 | with their support and their tutoring.

00:24:25.220 | And in this study, they took images of the hippocampus

00:24:29.860 | and those who engaged in the program,

00:24:32.160 | particularly the men, actually had growth

00:24:34.820 | of their hippocampus during this program.

00:24:36.940 | So at any stage in life, we can be growing

00:24:40.620 | and challenging ourselves even in our much later years

00:24:43.620 | and growing our brain.

00:24:45.460 | And you know more than anyone,

00:24:47.260 | what does that hippocampal growth mean for their wellbeing

00:24:50.780 | and their cognitive function?

00:24:53.020 | - Yeah, it's interesting that hippocampus, of course,

00:24:55.060 | a brain area involved in formation and recall of memories,

00:24:59.360 | mostly formation of memories.

00:25:01.300 | It's super interesting because it's so plastic.

00:25:03.300 | It's so amenable to the addition of new memories.

00:25:06.780 | I think the most striking study to me is the one,

00:25:10.800 | and I should point out that most of the data say

00:25:13.420 | that the addition of new neurons is not the main reason

00:25:16.200 | for improvements in memory, but it is one of them.

00:25:19.620 | But Rusty Gage down at the Salk Institute did a study

00:25:22.140 | in the, I think the early 2000s,

00:25:24.260 | where they took terminally ill people

00:25:27.120 | and these people agreed to have their bodies injected

00:25:29.420 | with a dye that would label new neurons.

00:25:32.780 | And then after they died, their brains were processed

00:25:36.460 | and they didn't die from the dye injection, by the way,

00:25:38.860 | folks that died from other causes, they were terminally ill.

00:25:41.620 | And what they discovered was that even in terminally ill

00:25:44.820 | or, and some of these people were quite old,

00:25:49.620 | those people were still generating new neurons,

00:25:53.520 | especially in the context of still trying to learn

00:25:55.980 | and acquire new information.

00:25:57.600 | So of course they're dead,

00:25:59.820 | so they can't apply that information after that.

00:26:01.580 | But of course, none of us can, right?

00:26:02.820 | None of the information that-

00:26:03.660 | - Yeah, but why not up to when you die, right?

00:26:05.660 | - Absolutely, absolutely.

00:26:06.500 | - So one other example of this,

00:26:08.140 | my colleague Dave Almeida,

00:26:09.380 | he measures daily stressful events

00:26:11.860 | in huge national populations

00:26:13.700 | and a small percentage of people report no stressors.

00:26:17.420 | And so you wonder like, what's happening?

00:26:19.360 | Are they not engaging in life?

00:26:20.580 | Are they really not having stressors?

00:26:22.380 | It looks like they are,

00:26:24.740 | it's not just that they're not getting stressed by things,

00:26:26.620 | they're not really going out and doing much.

00:26:29.320 | And what he found is that their level of kind of memory

00:26:32.860 | and cognition, their cognitive health

00:26:35.540 | was significantly lower.

00:26:37.680 | So you can imagine the hippocampal,

00:26:40.100 | the lack of those neuro progenitor cells,

00:26:44.260 | they're just not being stimulated.

00:26:47.020 | - It's super interesting.

00:26:47.900 | I wasn't aware of that result,

00:26:49.200 | so I appreciate you sharing it.

00:26:50.340 | I almost have to wonder if it's like exercise

00:26:52.340 | where so many people,

00:26:55.380 | I think now everybody hopefully understands

00:26:57.700 | that exercise is going to lower blood pressure,

00:26:59.780 | reduce resting heart rate, improve musculoskeletal function

00:27:03.340 | and bone density, all that stuff.

00:27:05.380 | But that if you took a snapshot of the bodily response

00:27:07.840 | during exercise, blood pressure is way, way up,

00:27:11.140 | heart rate is way, way up, stress hormones are way up,

00:27:14.900 | cortisol is through the roof

00:27:16.340 | during a hard workout and immediately afterwards.

00:27:18.780 | And yet that sets in motion a series of adaptations

00:27:21.100 | that brings you to a better place most of the time.

00:27:23.840 | I almost wonder if stress is the same.

00:27:25.980 | Is there any evidence that short bouts of stress

00:27:29.700 | provided that they're managed well,

00:27:31.540 | meaning that we don't spend the next 24 or 48 hours

00:27:35.160 | ruminating on the stressor,

00:27:36.420 | but that we're able to move through the stressor

00:27:38.140 | and resolve it in some way,

00:27:39.740 | that that's actually beneficial for us

00:27:41.780 | because of the mobilization of energy stores

00:27:43.960 | and maybe even changing our threshold

00:27:46.940 | for reacting to stressors in the future?

00:27:50.060 | - It's a great question.

00:27:51.220 | And it's one that I have been chewing on for a while

00:27:54.540 | because we know, as you said, that physical stressors,

00:27:57.820 | when they're short and repeated,

00:27:59.620 | like high intensity interval training,

00:28:02.120 | they are promoting not just aerobic fitness,

00:28:06.120 | but stress fitness.

00:28:07.240 | People feel less rumination, less depression, less anxiety.

00:28:10.660 | So they're kind of tuning up the nervous system.

00:28:13.420 | What about psychological stressors?

00:28:15.740 | And we know two things.

00:28:18.500 | So one is, I do think that there is a level of engagement

00:28:22.460 | with moderate stressors that when we are used to them,

00:28:27.180 | we get fit and our stress resilience builds,

00:28:30.220 | meaning we're less threatened by them.

00:28:32.300 | So let me go deep into that.

00:28:34.440 | Two people can approach the exact same stressor

00:28:38.220 | and one person is having

00:28:40.980 | a pretty overreactive stress response

00:28:44.120 | where they basically are feeling

00:28:46.100 | their survival is threatened.

00:28:47.260 | So it's high cortisol, high vasoconstriction,

00:28:50.480 | and blood pressure goes up equally in both,

00:28:53.300 | but the person who's feeling super threatened,

00:28:56.080 | either their survival or their social survival, their ego,

00:29:00.260 | their blood pressure went up

00:29:01.340 | because of the vasoconstriction.

00:29:03.200 | The other person who is viewing the same stressor as,

00:29:06.580 | I can do this, this is a great challenge and opportunity.

00:29:10.100 | I have what it takes.

00:29:11.740 | Those types of thoughts

00:29:13.100 | generate a different hemodynamic response,

00:29:15.340 | which is actually more cardiac output.

00:29:18.380 | So blood pressure is going up, but in this healthier way,

00:29:20.940 | more oxygenation to the brain, better problem solving.

00:29:24.280 | They're able to maintain this positive outlook.

00:29:26.820 | So we've measured this threat challenge response

00:29:29.100 | in many lab studies and we know lots of things.

00:29:31.700 | So if you're having more of the challenge response,

00:29:34.540 | at the end of it, you're less inflamed.

00:29:36.680 | So just in the lab, within an hour or two,

00:29:39.280 | we see that they didn't trigger

00:29:40.980 | all that pro-inflammatory response.

00:29:43.180 | And their telomeres tend to be longer,

00:29:45.140 | which is a measure we can talk more about,

00:29:47.020 | but basically it looks like they have

00:29:50.140 | a slower speed of aging.

00:29:54.260 | - That is super interesting.

00:29:55.100 | You call this a stress challenge response?

00:29:58.940 | - So we could call this kind of a two,

00:30:02.260 | to be really simplistic,

00:30:03.360 | two types of psychological stress response,

00:30:07.020 | feeling threatened, like you're going to fail,

00:30:09.800 | you're embarrassed, that social pain response we know well,

00:30:13.900 | that feels terrible, but also that huge stress response

00:30:17.860 | when we feel it in our stomach, our heart is pounding.

00:30:22.520 | It's just an over-exaggerated response.

00:30:25.080 | That response biologically is different

00:30:27.760 | and the thoughts that go with it are different

00:30:30.320 | and we recover a lot slower.

00:30:31.940 | And then there's the challenge response,

00:30:33.780 | which is this, it's more of that kind of activated,

00:30:38.780 | excited response.

00:30:41.100 | And the beauty is that there are lots of studies out there

00:30:44.600 | done by emotions and social psychologists

00:30:47.380 | that tilt people toward the challenge response.

00:30:50.400 | We can actually promote that challenge response.

00:30:52.820 | And so when you asked about like,

00:30:54.580 | is it good to have a repeated stress response?

00:30:58.420 | Yes, if it's manageable, right?

00:31:01.060 | Then we're kind of building the muscle of stress resilience.

00:31:04.500 | - I'd like to take a quick break

00:31:06.020 | and acknowledge one of our sponsors, Athletic Greens.

00:31:08.940 | Athletic Greens, now called AG1,

00:31:11.380 | is a vitamin mineral probiotic drink

00:31:13.740 | that covers all of your foundational nutritional needs.

00:31:16.640 | I've been taking Athletic Greens since 2012,

00:31:19.340 | so I'm delighted that they're sponsoring the podcast.

00:31:21.540 | The reason I started taking Athletic Greens

00:31:23.140 | and the reason I still take Athletic Greens

00:31:25.220 | once or usually twice a day

00:31:27.200 | is that it gets to be the probiotics

00:31:29.120 | that I need for gut health.

00:31:30.800 | Our gut is very important.

00:31:31.900 | It's populated by gut microbiota

00:31:34.460 | that communicate with the brain, the immune system,

00:31:36.220 | and basically all the biological systems of our body

00:31:38.620 | to strongly impact our immediate and long-term health.

00:31:42.260 | And those probiotics in Athletic Greens

00:31:44.120 | are optimal and vital for microbiota health.

00:31:47.940 | In addition, Athletic Greens contains

00:31:49.500 | a number of adaptogens, vitamins, and minerals

00:31:51.420 | that make sure that all of my foundational

00:31:53.300 | nutritional needs are met, and it tastes great.

00:31:56.760 | If you'd like to try Athletic Greens,

00:31:58.220 | you can go to athleticgreens.com/huberman,

00:32:01.600 | and they'll give you five free travel packs

00:32:03.580 | that make it really easy to mix up Athletic Greens

00:32:05.900 | while you're on the road, in the car,

00:32:07.180 | on the plane, et cetera.

00:32:08.460 | And they'll give you a year's supply of vitamin D3K2.

00:32:11.880 | Again, that's athleticgreens.com/huberman

00:32:14.580 | to get the five free travel packs

00:32:15.940 | and the year's supply of vitamin D3K2.

00:32:19.040 | What are the sorts of things that people, I, can do

00:32:23.580 | in order, including me, I should say,

00:32:25.700 | can do in order to wage that challenge response?

00:32:30.660 | Is this purely based on mindset?

00:32:32.700 | Like, instead of saying, why me, why this, why now?

00:32:36.660 | I can't believe this is happening.

00:32:38.280 | Is it a mental pivot to, okay,

00:32:41.300 | this is a great opportunity for growth.

00:32:44.100 | I don't know how I'm going to manage this,

00:32:45.540 | but I'll manage this.

00:32:46.800 | You know, you want to stop me,

00:32:49.220 | you got to kill me type of mindset.

00:32:51.380 | Is that the switch that then the body follows?

00:32:55.540 | 'Cause this is an interesting instance

00:32:56.860 | where most all the stress mitigation work that my lab does

00:33:01.860 | is focused on using the body to control the mind.

00:33:04.120 | But here we're talking about

00:33:04.960 | the mind controlling the body first

00:33:06.880 | and then the body following suit,

00:33:08.620 | which I find equally fascinating.

00:33:11.300 | So are there some specific mental scripts

00:33:14.240 | that people follow and are we all able

00:33:18.260 | to follow those scripts?

00:33:20.140 | - Yes, to some extent, we control the script.

00:33:23.500 | We can use that script to prepare ourselves

00:33:26.440 | going into a stressful situation.

00:33:28.680 | And we can use it at any point during the stressor.

00:33:31.120 | So some of us are just wired

00:33:33.220 | to have a big threat response period.

00:33:35.140 | Maybe it's, you know, it's epigenetics we've inherited.

00:33:38.500 | Maybe it's early trauma that has shaped us

00:33:41.140 | to have this exaggerated emotional response.

00:33:44.240 | And yes, we and others have found that.

00:33:45.880 | Trauma sensitizes our emotional stress response

00:33:49.580 | so that we are feeling more threatened.

00:33:51.700 | But that's okay because that's the part we can't control.

00:33:54.400 | And we just have to have a lot of self-compassion

00:33:57.900 | and awareness that, okay, this is what I do.

00:34:01.200 | My body reacts like this, but what happens next?

00:34:05.300 | That's when we can start to use those statements,

00:34:08.780 | self-comforting, self-compassion, distancing.

00:34:11.860 | There's all sorts of statements

00:34:12.940 | that allow us to then recover more quickly.

00:34:16.020 | - So when we want to shift from a threatened response

00:34:22.220 | to a kind of challenge response,

00:34:24.080 | are there any data that dictate whether or not

00:34:28.100 | we should keep those statements in our head,

00:34:31.340 | write them down, say them out loud?

00:34:33.420 | I guess what I'm trying to do here

00:34:34.340 | is trying to get to a little bit more

00:34:35.540 | of the meat of the actionable, since a lot of our listeners,

00:34:40.380 | I think we'll be, as I am, very excited about the idea

00:34:43.940 | that a mere shift in our mentality about stress

00:34:46.740 | can give us the opposite outcome.

00:34:48.540 | I mean, before you were talking about vasoconstriction

00:34:50.340 | and inflammation and all these bad things,

00:34:54.200 | to put it lightly.

00:34:56.100 | And then in the challenge response to stress,

00:34:59.880 | getting the exact opposite, more vasodilation,

00:35:02.240 | more resources used and more positive effects

00:35:05.060 | on the brain and body.

00:35:06.380 | So what are some, if you can recall from the papers,

00:35:10.220 | if not, that's fine.

00:35:11.060 | - No, no, I can give you some statements.

00:35:11.900 | - But I'm just curious what those specific tools might be.

00:35:14.860 | - Every statement you said, Andrew, is good.

00:35:17.660 | It's a good one.

00:35:18.620 | The whole trick here is that people need to find

00:35:21.580 | the strength statements, the stress shields, I call them,

00:35:25.960 | that fit them, that feels right and that they believe.

00:35:28.900 | And so I list a bunch of options in chapter three,

00:35:33.580 | which is called be the lion instead of the gazelle.

00:35:36.540 | So the lion and gazelle are both high blood pressure,

00:35:39.700 | high stress, and the lion's chasing the gazelle,

00:35:42.220 | but the gazelle's having this total threat

00:35:44.820 | vasoconstriction response 'cause she might die.

00:35:48.260 | Lion might get dinner, right?

00:35:50.620 | So it's needing to mount the stress response

00:35:52.440 | because it's so excited to get the tasty dinner

00:35:55.980 | for the next few days.

00:35:57.820 | And so the lion is having that challenge response.

00:36:00.900 | And so we can remind ourselves, be the lion.

00:36:04.260 | It's not that we're always lion or gazelle.

00:36:06.220 | We get to shape that.

00:36:08.100 | And so some of those statements are,

00:36:10.140 | well, let's say right when we're going into it,

00:36:13.180 | list your resources.

00:36:15.020 | Have you ever dealt with any situation like this?

00:36:17.480 | Remind yourself of past successes.

00:36:19.760 | Remind yourself of someone you can call or text

00:36:22.780 | or feel supported by.

00:36:24.700 | Remind yourself that this outcome is not gonna affect

00:36:27.900 | your life in 10 years or five years.

00:36:29.760 | That's a distancing kind of perspective taking.

00:36:33.600 | So there's all these strategies

00:36:35.060 | and you gotta use what works for you.

00:36:37.500 | It's telling yourself, I got this, I can do it.

00:36:39.740 | I can get through it.

00:36:40.980 | I have what it takes.

00:36:42.300 | Those are all good shields.

00:36:44.660 | And another set is, some of us feel really stressed out

00:36:48.660 | by stress.

00:36:49.500 | Like once we feel our heart racing,

00:36:51.840 | that leads to, oh no, this is bad for me.

00:36:56.340 | And so rather than getting stressed by stress,

00:37:00.120 | we actually want to remind ourselves

00:37:02.120 | that this stress response is empowering.

00:37:05.400 | This is going to help me cope.

00:37:08.080 | My body's excited.

00:37:10.060 | My body is doing just what it should right now.

00:37:13.640 | So that reframing in studies by Wendy Mendez and others,

00:37:18.040 | my colleagues who do this reappraisal research,

00:37:20.640 | they have basically trained people

00:37:22.400 | to view stress as positive.

00:37:24.280 | During the stressful situations in the lab,

00:37:27.220 | people do better.

00:37:28.980 | They perform better.

00:37:30.080 | They feel more positive emotion.

00:37:31.640 | They problem solve better.

00:37:33.280 | They recover more quickly.

00:37:34.820 | So pretty powerful stuff.

00:37:37.360 | - Yeah, that is powerful stuff.

00:37:39.380 | I'm wondering if we can talk about the relationship

00:37:41.720 | between stress and eating.

00:37:43.720 | And I think that's also a great opportunity

00:37:45.880 | for us to talk about the opioid system.

00:37:47.660 | A lot of people are familiar

00:37:48.740 | with the so-called opioid epidemic and opioid crisis.

00:37:53.060 | Sadly, far too many people are dying of fentanyl overdoses.

00:37:57.880 | And we all know about the OxyContin epidemic

00:38:01.720 | and all of these people addicted to opioids.

00:38:03.800 | And that's not really what this is about.

00:38:06.940 | What we're about to talk about is the fact

00:38:10.140 | that we have an opioid system within us

00:38:13.260 | that is neurons and other cell types

00:38:16.100 | that can reduce, excuse me,

00:38:17.580 | can release substances into our brain and body

00:38:20.020 | that make us feel less pain and make us feel sedated,

00:38:23.100 | but at a healthy level, right?

00:38:25.420 | And yet there are a lot of things besides drugs

00:38:28.960 | that can activate this opioid system.

00:38:31.700 | I think sex activates the endogenous opioid system.

00:38:34.580 | As far as I last read, there was a paper out recently,

00:38:37.220 | but also food can do it.

00:38:39.460 | And again, to healthy levels,

00:38:41.580 | provided the context is healthy, of course.

00:38:43.840 | What is the relationship between stress and eating

00:38:47.700 | and eating and the opioid system?

00:38:50.080 | - Stress and eating is an interesting one.

00:38:54.140 | So most people, when they feel stressed,

00:38:57.300 | or I'm just gonna ask you,

00:38:58.980 | do you eat more or less when you're stressed?

00:39:01.500 | - Less, definitely.

00:39:02.940 | I feel like I can go two, three days without food

00:39:05.620 | when I'm really stressed.

00:39:07.460 | But I came up in a profession where, sadly for me,

00:39:11.760 | all-nighters were part of the regular

00:39:14.380 | until pretty recently, a couple of years ago,

00:39:16.540 | and I just called an end to that.

00:39:18.740 | And no, it wasn't just because of procrastination.

00:39:21.900 | It was just work overload.

00:39:23.680 | But I can go a long period of time without eating,

00:39:26.260 | although I love to eat.

00:39:27.620 | So I do point out that I do love to eat.

00:39:30.340 | - And what does the body feel like

00:39:31.540 | when you're in that stress state,

00:39:32.860 | when you're not even hungry,

00:39:33.860 | you're kind of shut down in your digestion?

00:39:36.860 | - That I have enough energy from my neural resources,

00:39:39.620 | from adrenaline.

00:39:41.100 | And generally those periods of time when I'm not hungry

00:39:44.740 | coincide with a hyper-focus on the stressor,

00:39:49.460 | the deadline, whatever it is in life that needs tending to.

00:39:53.700 | And food just doesn't appeal to me as much.

00:39:57.240 | It doesn't taste as good and it's not as enticing.

00:39:59.580 | - Yeah, so we think that either your type

00:40:03.100 | of body temperament is high sympathetic.

00:40:06.660 | And so when you have a big stress response,

00:40:09.180 | your digestion is pretty much shut down.

00:40:11.980 | Like it would be the opposite.

00:40:13.660 | Eating would be the opposite

00:40:14.620 | of what your body's telling you to do.

00:40:16.540 | - I'm just going to forgive me for interrupting.

00:40:18.620 | For those of you hearing sympathetic,

00:40:20.780 | we're not talking about sympathy.

00:40:21.920 | We're talking about the sympathetic arm

00:40:23.960 | of the autonomic nervous system,

00:40:25.060 | which is the so-called fight or flight arm

00:40:27.300 | as opposed to the parasympathetic.

00:40:28.500 | In any event, sorry to interrupt,

00:40:29.740 | but want to make sure that sometimes people hear sympathy

00:40:32.880 | and then I think emotional sympathy.

00:40:35.060 | I like to think I have that too, but okay.

00:40:37.420 | So I tend to lean more towards the sympathetic,

00:40:41.140 | meaning more alertness arousal

00:40:44.740 | on the seesaw of the autonomic nervous system.

00:40:46.820 | - And I'm a high sympathetic reactor.

00:40:49.700 | I lose weight when I go through,

00:40:51.540 | like writing my dissertation.

00:40:52.840 | I looked like a skeleton at the end.

00:40:55.020 | But that's not what most people complain about.

00:40:57.340 | It's not weight loss.

00:40:58.280 | Most people complain about overeating or binge eating

00:41:01.140 | when they're emotional, when they're stressed.

00:41:02.940 | And so that's the more common pattern.

00:41:05.640 | And that looks different

00:41:09.340 | both in the brain and biologically.

00:41:11.340 | And so what it looks like is that the stress response

00:41:16.340 | is driving cravings and also let's say high insulin

00:41:21.820 | or an insulin resistant state.

00:41:24.340 | And what goes along with that

00:41:26.100 | is tending to be overweight or have obesity.

00:41:28.820 | And so just by whether it's through conditioning

00:41:32.540 | or genetics, having that kind of larger body

00:41:36.100 | with a big stress eating temperament, that is a challenge

00:41:39.580 | in life.

00:41:40.420 | And I've been, you know, I've worked with people

00:41:42.620 | with different eating conditions, eating disorders,

00:41:44.940 | binge eating, and it is a, what's hard about it

00:41:49.940 | is number one, it's very common in normative

00:41:52.860 | to just feel like you can't feel satiated.

00:41:57.780 | So it's this compulsive eating tendency

00:41:59.640 | that stress brings you to.

00:42:01.640 | And so what it means, we measure this,

00:42:05.980 | it's very easy to measure.

00:42:06.820 | It means that people feel like they can't control

00:42:09.760 | their eating, they don't get full.

00:42:11.520 | They think about food a lot.

00:42:15.580 | And so stress kind of exacerbates that tendency.

00:42:18.480 | And that is a, you know, it's a common phenotype.

00:42:21.440 | Like we've studied it and maybe 50% of people

00:42:23.800 | with obesity have that.

00:42:25.600 | Do lean people have that?

00:42:27.300 | Some, not many, like less than 20%.

00:42:30.380 | But what they also have is this tremendous kind of diet,

00:42:34.020 | what we call dietary strain or control over their eating.

00:42:36.280 | So they're able to not overeat,

00:42:40.860 | even though they're thinking about food a lot.

00:42:43.840 | So that's, that is, you know, that explains that unusual

00:42:47.300 | body of someone who's really more,

00:42:51.540 | still has those compulsive traits.

00:42:54.000 | So why does this matter?

00:42:56.280 | This makes it really hard to eat well,

00:42:59.160 | 'cause when you're stressed,

00:43:00.560 | you're craving the comfort food, the high fat,

00:43:03.140 | high sugar, high salt, depending on your temperament.

00:43:07.340 | And that is, that means with repeated bouts of stress,

00:43:12.260 | you're just gonna be gaining weight,

00:43:13.540 | and particularly in the intra-abdominal area.

00:43:16.000 | That's what we've seen.

00:43:16.840 | We've seen it cross-sexually.

00:43:18.080 | We've seen it in rat studies and mice studies.

00:43:20.940 | And now we've seen it in people.

00:43:22.420 | And many, for about 10 years, I studied this.

00:43:24.600 | And the question was, is what's happening in people

00:43:27.320 | the same thing that's happening in mice?

00:43:28.800 | If you stress them out and you give them Oreos,

00:43:31.440 | the mice develop binge eating.

00:43:33.580 | They get really compulsive and they get this, you know,

00:43:36.280 | terrible metabolic health profile, metabolic syndrome,

00:43:39.460 | where their round, you know, their belly fat

00:43:43.380 | basically expands like a cushion.

00:43:45.520 | And that's 'cause that's this really good,

00:43:47.580 | immediate source of energy during stress.

00:43:49.360 | So like, we're really well-wired to,

00:43:51.680 | if our body thinks we're under chronic stress,

00:43:53.700 | we're gonna store stress fat or abdominal fat,

00:43:56.540 | so we can just mobilize that in a second.

00:43:58.980 | And then the second question we've asked is,

00:44:01.360 | can you reverse that with different interventions?

00:44:04.160 | Can you block the compulsive eating?

00:44:07.040 | So I can tell you what we found there.

00:44:09.860 | But the opioid system that you mentioned

00:44:11.520 | is certainly involved.

00:44:13.240 | And in studies with people,

00:44:16.940 | lean people and people with obesity,

00:44:18.900 | my colleague, Rajita Sinha at Yale,

00:44:21.280 | has basically found that when you stress them out,

00:44:24.520 | people with obesity are having a different reward response.

00:44:29.480 | And the more insulin resistant they are,

00:44:32.840 | the more their reward center lights up during stress.

00:44:36.240 | - And what's causal there?

00:44:38.560 | Like, what's the chicken, what's the egg?

00:44:40.120 | So, 'cause I can imagine these were people

00:44:42.300 | that at one time were not obese who got stressed.

00:44:46.100 | The opioid system reacted in a particularly potent way

00:44:53.080 | to food, and they were able to clamp their stress,

00:44:56.240 | and so then they become binge eaters

00:44:58.520 | in the context of stress.

00:45:01.200 | And that leads to insulin insensitivity.

00:45:04.280 | - Exactly.

00:45:05.120 | - I could also imagine that they were insulin insensitive,

00:45:07.920 | therefore they need to eat more

00:45:09.120 | in order to feel kind of an increase in satiety,

00:45:14.040 | as we know this now, based on brain and body mechanisms.

00:45:18.960 | And then that set off a cascade of things leading to obesity.

00:45:23.280 | Not that it necessarily matters, but what's causal?

00:45:27.060 | Do we know if stress-

00:45:27.900 | - Oh, I think it really does matter.

00:45:29.100 | I think there's been a mistake of kind of confounding

00:45:32.900 | all obesity with food addiction and metabolic disease,

00:45:37.900 | and it's completely heterogeneous.

00:45:39.520 | So I think it's the developmental path

00:45:41.400 | that you're describing, which is that there's a tendency

00:45:45.300 | toward having a bigger reward response

00:45:48.760 | and hunger during stress.

00:45:50.960 | So it becomes a way of coping, a lifestyle,

00:45:53.120 | and that is a pathway toward obesity.

00:45:56.600 | And so some obese people

00:45:59.500 | have a dysregulated stress response, but not all of them.

00:46:03.420 | I mean, it really is a certain type of person.

00:46:06.040 | So that's why we target people with cravings.

00:46:09.440 | In all of our intervention studies now,

00:46:11.240 | we wanna know who has more of the compulsive eating type,

00:46:15.080 | because they need a different set of skills

00:46:18.560 | to cope with stress and to lose weight if that's their goal.

00:46:23.560 | - There's a drug, I'm sure you're familiar with naltrexone,

00:46:26.680 | which can block the opioid receptor.

00:46:28.760 | It's used to block the opioid receptor

00:46:30.960 | in the context of different types of addiction.

00:46:33.020 | Have people tried to use naltrexone

00:46:35.160 | in the context of binge eating,

00:46:36.440 | and does it help people lose weight?

00:46:37.920 | Because it presumably reduces

00:46:41.240 | some of the rewarding properties of food.

00:46:44.240 | - That's one of the very few drug combinations

00:46:47.320 | that has been used for binge eating.

00:46:48.540 | So it was a combination of naltrexone and wellbutrin.

00:46:51.840 | And I'm not sure at this moment

00:46:53.160 | how much that's favored for binge eating,

00:46:56.060 | but certainly the early trials showed

00:46:57.840 | that it really does damp down on the compulsive eating.

00:47:00.760 | - Interesting, so is that a commonly prescribed kit

00:47:04.440 | of drugs now for obesity?

00:47:06.240 | I know there's a lot of excitement nowadays

00:47:07.580 | about these semaglutide analogs,

00:47:11.760 | because they do seem very effective in blocking hunger,

00:47:14.240 | especially in type 2 diabetics.

00:47:15.740 | I don't know if you're familiar with it,

00:47:16.720 | but there's all the rage,

00:47:18.720 | mostly because people saw the before and after photos

00:47:20.760 | of Elon, he had his shirt off on a boat,

00:47:22.840 | and there were some not so nice comments made about him.

00:47:25.360 | And then sometime later, he was quite a bit lighter,

00:47:28.000 | and he announced that he had been taking

00:47:30.040 | one of these semaglutide agonists.

00:47:32.480 | - Yeah, I really hope that we come up

00:47:35.520 | with safe and effective drugs.

00:47:38.200 | And one thing to think about is that the challenge

00:47:43.200 | that we all have, particularly if we're prone to obesity,

00:47:46.360 | is the toxic food environment,

00:47:48.040 | and particularly the refined sugar.

00:47:49.600 | And regardless of what we're on metformin

00:47:52.640 | or one of these drugs, we override it with our diet.

00:47:55.320 | And really, the improved nutrition is the only way

00:47:59.020 | to solve it as a public health problem.

00:48:00.640 | I mean, the drug companies are saying everyone should be,

00:48:03.040 | everyone with a certain BMI

00:48:04.200 | should be on one of these new drugs,

00:48:05.480 | and it's just rubbish,

00:48:06.920 | and it's not going to lead to long-term health.

00:48:10.000 | - Well, I know you have a colleague there at UCSF,

00:48:13.680 | Dr. Robert Lustig, who's been talking about

00:48:16.000 | sugars and hidden sugars for years

00:48:17.800 | and the problems with that,

00:48:18.920 | and we don't want to demonize sugar

00:48:21.120 | as the only cause of the obesity epidemic,

00:48:24.060 | but it's certainly one of them.

00:48:25.160 | At least that's my belief, according to the data.

00:48:27.520 | - Yes, and Rob is the biggest proponent

00:48:30.040 | of helping people understand the big problem and the root

00:48:34.680 | is in the processed food and the sugar,

00:48:37.040 | and that the drugs don't touch that.

00:48:39.200 | We just, we override effects of any drugs with our diet.

00:48:43.400 | And so it's been a losing battle really

00:48:48.400 | because of the force of big food and big pharma.

00:48:54.660 | So let me go back to the compulsive eating.

00:48:57.920 | So there are some clues about how to break that cycle.

00:49:01.840 | So one is in our weight loss trials

00:49:05.200 | or our healthy mindful eating trials,

00:49:07.560 | we find that mindful eating

00:49:11.000 | is not gonna cause a lot of weight loss period,

00:49:13.560 | but the people who benefit most from learning

00:49:16.440 | this kind of calm self-regulation

00:49:18.780 | where you check in with your hunger, you slow down,

00:49:22.380 | you increase your awareness of your body,

00:49:25.160 | so interoceptive awareness,

00:49:27.440 | that type of skill is really critical

00:49:32.440 | for people with compulsive eating.

00:49:35.180 | And so in our trials, we find that if they,

00:49:37.800 | people with compulsive eating, if they get that,

00:49:39.640 | if they get randomized to the mindful eating,

00:49:41.920 | they do better in terms of their insulin resistance

00:49:44.940 | and their glucose and their long-term weight loss.

00:49:47.580 | So that's one good clue.

00:49:49.080 | Another is the positive stress pathway

00:49:52.800 | looks important for breaking the compulsive eating cycle.

00:49:55.800 | So high intensity interval training,

00:49:58.560 | or maybe some of these other ways

00:50:01.400 | that we've been talking about

00:50:03.600 | to increase the bodily stress in these short-term ways

00:50:06.560 | to metabolize stress in our body can help with the cravings.

00:50:10.640 | - So what would that look like in the context of,

00:50:12.800 | let's say somebody has the opposite phenotype to me.

00:50:15.460 | They get stressed

00:50:16.300 | and they find themselves reaching for snack food

00:50:18.300 | or that they simply can't reach satiety.

00:50:20.680 | They just want to eat and eat and eat.

00:50:22.880 | What are some of the,

00:50:24.040 | aside from naltrexone and wellbutrin

00:50:25.760 | and some of these prescription approaches,

00:50:28.040 | 'cause I always say while I value,

00:50:30.660 | certainly value prescription drugs in certain contexts,

00:50:33.060 | I always feel like behavior should come first,

00:50:35.160 | dos and don'ts, then nutrition, then supplementation,

00:50:39.400 | and then if and only if it still needed prescription drugs.

00:50:42.340 | But that's just my bias based on my observations.

00:50:44.720 | - Pretty reasonable.

00:50:45.880 | - I like to think so.

00:50:47.120 | It also is a, it starts at a zero cost endeavor.

00:50:51.520 | I mean, behaviors require time,

00:50:53.280 | but it certainly includes everybody,

00:50:56.240 | not just those that have insurance

00:50:58.160 | or that live in a particular region of the US or the world.

00:51:00.960 | So anyway, that's my bias.

00:51:03.500 | And at least for the time being,

00:51:04.600 | I'm sticking with it.

00:51:06.280 | It's the basis of a lot of what we talk about

00:51:07.780 | on this podcast.

00:51:08.620 | But nonetheless, if somebody is finding themselves

00:51:12.600 | in that category of binge eating

00:51:15.360 | or heading towards binge eating

00:51:16.560 | or using food to comfort or alleviate stress,

00:51:20.060 | how should they intervene in their own thoughts and behavior?

00:51:25.000 | - We talked about the bins, top-down strategies,

00:51:28.440 | changing the body, changing the scene.

00:51:30.160 | We need all of those.

00:51:31.060 | I mean, the compulsive drive to eat

00:51:33.800 | is one of our strongest impulses

00:51:36.840 | if we've developed that pathway.

00:51:38.700 | And so we train people, for example,

00:51:42.640 | in mindful awareness of separating out emotions from hunger.

00:51:47.460 | So they get really wrapped up together.

00:51:48.960 | So just labeling how you're feeling,

00:51:50.860 | labeling your hunger from one to 10,

00:51:53.280 | and figuring out, am I really hungry or is it boredom?

00:51:56.820 | That helps people.

00:51:57.660 | And if you do that check-in right before you eat,

00:52:00.160 | that helps the most.

00:52:01.360 | So that's the top-down mindful check-in.

00:52:04.120 | The other thing we help people do is like ride the craving,

00:52:09.120 | surf the urge.

00:52:11.640 | So we deal a lot with soda drinkers and it is addictive.

00:52:16.640 | And there is nothing worse

00:52:18.960 | than drinking sugar soda for our body.

00:52:21.260 | So we help people by having them watch their craving pass

00:52:26.260 | and knowing that it's a matter of time

00:52:30.880 | that they can surf the urge without jumping to consuming.

00:52:34.840 | And so that practice helps some people,

00:52:37.040 | especially with practice.

00:52:39.100 | The pushups, the taking a walk, the changing the scene,

00:52:42.400 | getting away from food

00:52:44.440 | is always gonna be a huge, strong strategy

00:52:47.160 | if you can get yourself away from it.

00:52:49.460 | The problem is, as you know,

00:52:51.640 | is that the cravings get you to the buffet.

00:52:53.680 | They drive you to the soda, et cetera.

00:52:57.080 | And so just creating safe environments,

00:53:00.160 | both at home and in the workplace

00:53:01.400 | where you don't have soda is really important.

00:53:03.400 | So we try that at UCSF.

00:53:05.480 | My colleagues and I, including Rob Lustig,

00:53:08.520 | the anti-sugar doctor,

00:53:10.520 | we just saw the absurdity of being a medical center.

00:53:14.840 | People come with these chronic diseases

00:53:17.120 | and what are they served in the cafeteria

00:53:19.720 | or even at their bedside?

00:53:21.820 | Sugared Coke.

00:53:22.720 | - In the hospital. - In the hospital.

00:53:24.640 | And so my colleague, Laura Schmidt,

00:53:27.160 | who's partly responsible for the soda tax,

00:53:30.440 | she rallied all the...

00:53:34.140 | We went top down to administration,

00:53:35.920 | but bottom up to vendors,

00:53:37.560 | got rid of all the soda

00:53:38.680 | in all of our hospitals and campuses.

00:53:40.800 | And we found two things.

00:53:42.160 | Number one, people who were heavy drinkers

00:53:46.880 | lost weight in the most important place, their waste.

00:53:50.960 | - Heavy soda drinkers? - Mm-hmm.

00:53:52.920 | So when we took it out of the workplace,

00:53:55.200 | they actually, their health improved.

00:53:57.760 | And number two, those with compulsive eating,

00:54:02.240 | they score high on our little scale

00:54:04.200 | for reward-based drive.

00:54:06.600 | It didn't help them.

00:54:09.660 | So then we randomized half of them to get some extra boost.

00:54:14.320 | We call it motivational interviewing

00:54:15.600 | where we're really supporting them more

00:54:17.520 | and helping them think of goals

00:54:19.720 | like being with their grandchildren, not getting diabetes.

00:54:22.520 | And that little bit of support helped them tremendously.

00:54:27.360 | And so now we're trying to roll that out

00:54:29.820 | in a big controlled trial.

00:54:32.160 | But at least a hundred hospitals have adopted

00:54:35.000 | the stop selling sugary drinks

00:54:38.300 | because people don't want to be sick,

00:54:40.080 | but they can't help it if they have the reward drive.

00:54:43.160 | And if they have the compulsivity

00:54:44.720 | and it's right there at work,

00:54:45.840 | we're just working against health.

00:54:47.820 | - That's super interesting.

00:54:49.900 | I think that for most of us,

00:54:53.300 | we think about soda as the kind of thing

00:54:55.500 | that maybe we had every once in a while

00:54:57.760 | or that we drank more when we were kids.

00:54:59.300 | I seem to have lost my appetite for soda at some point.

00:55:02.460 | - You just know too much. - Teen years.

00:55:04.400 | Maybe, or just at some point I started to feel

00:55:07.600 | like there were better alternatives.

00:55:09.340 | And you know- - Like what?

00:55:11.660 | - Well, okay, well- - People want ideas.

00:55:13.520 | - Yeah, well, full confession.

00:55:14.580 | I mean, okay, most of my non-water beverage consumption

00:55:18.840 | is going to be either coffee, usually black coffee,

00:55:23.240 | or nowadays I sometimes will throw some ketones in there,

00:55:25.780 | not 'cause I'm on a ketogenic diet,

00:55:27.180 | but for, I do feel like it makes my level of focus

00:55:30.660 | and cognition better.

00:55:31.500 | - Is that what you were pouring in this morning?

00:55:32.460 | - Yeah, I do use it before podcasts

00:55:34.580 | and we're prepping for podcasts.

00:55:36.180 | There are good data showing that we can all utilize ketones

00:55:42.040 | as a brain fuel, even if we're not on ketogenic diet.

00:55:44.980 | That's clear to me based on my experience

00:55:47.660 | and the data as I see them and understand them.

00:55:50.800 | Or yerba mate tea, which is just a caffeinated tea

00:55:55.580 | from South America, which I like very much.

00:55:58.040 | However, I am guilty of drinking the occasional diet soda

00:56:03.240 | every once in a while.

00:56:04.320 | And I know that some of my audience will just gasp,

00:56:06.680 | how could I do that?

00:56:07.520 | But we're talking about the occasional diet coke.

00:56:09.000 | - Diet soda. - The occasional diet coke.

00:56:11.100 | Mostly 'cause I don't like the taste of sugary soda.

00:56:13.940 | And I actually really like the taste of diet soda.

00:56:16.360 | Aspartame is a particularly rewarding taste for me.

00:56:19.560 | And as a consequence, I try and avoid drinking it more than,

00:56:23.920 | I might have a can of diet coke once a month maximum,

00:56:28.660 | usually on a plane or something like that.

00:56:30.460 | So that's the extent of it.

00:56:32.400 | But if I have the choice between a really great coffee

00:56:35.780 | and a soda, it's going to be coffee.

00:56:37.420 | Or yerba mate in a soda, it's going to be yerba mate.

00:56:40.500 | Or food and soda, I'm going to eat instead.

00:56:43.220 | And so that's me.

00:56:44.380 | But I do recall, as a teenager,

00:56:47.060 | soda was kind of a default.

00:56:48.440 | You would just kind of go to the soda fountain

00:56:50.080 | and fill the drink.

00:56:50.920 | It felt like such a rewarding thing.

00:56:52.860 | And I think the reason we're drilling into this more deeply

00:56:55.640 | is it sounds to me based on what you said earlier

00:56:57.420 | in my read of the literature,

00:56:58.920 | also brings me the idea that drinking sugar

00:57:03.660 | in the form of liquid is one of the worst things

00:57:05.780 | that we can do in terms of our bodily regulation

00:57:08.060 | of insulin and glucose.

00:57:09.380 | I don't want to use the words empty calories

00:57:12.700 | because that's kind of a loaded phrase,

00:57:14.020 | but it is essentially empty calories.

00:57:15.480 | It doesn't involve-

00:57:16.320 | - Well, it's harmful calories.

00:57:17.140 | They're not empty.

00:57:17.980 | - Yeah, I mean, there are no amino acids in there.

00:57:19.480 | There are no essential fatty acids.

00:57:20.920 | And there aren't many carbohydrates

00:57:22.220 | that you can really utilize for long-term bouts

00:57:25.220 | of mental or physical work.

00:57:26.580 | So do you view soda as one of the worst,

00:57:31.580 | certainly not the best,

00:57:34.660 | but one of the worst culprits out there?

00:57:36.580 | I mean, it is really prominent,

00:57:37.740 | especially nowadays also we should include energy drinks.

00:57:40.340 | A lot of kids, especially males, by the way,

00:57:42.940 | it's almost, this is crazy.

00:57:44.580 | It's almost 95% of energy drink consumption is males.

00:57:49.580 | - Interesting.

00:57:50.620 | - And I don't know what it is.

00:57:51.820 | Maybe it's the packaging

00:57:52.820 | or how the marketing has been pitched.

00:57:55.240 | But by the way, as soon as I say that,

00:57:56.860 | someone will be in the YouTube comments

00:57:58.140 | telling me that that's completely false,

00:57:59.540 | but we can point you to the data.

00:58:01.660 | So what are your thoughts on sugary drinks

00:58:03.540 | and what that's doing?

00:58:04.600 | Do you think this is a reaction

00:58:07.880 | to how much stress people are experiencing?

00:58:09.980 | Is this like people's attempt to inoculate their stress,

00:58:13.540 | or is it simply that it tastes good and it's easy to consume

00:58:15.940 | and it's relatively inexpensive?

00:58:18.200 | - People have not, and we have not really studied

00:58:21.920 | the sugary drinks in the same way we have studied

00:58:25.780 | the comfort food and the binge eating.

00:58:27.980 | And so my guess is that it is part of a stress response,

00:58:32.980 | but even more than that, it's part of the hedonic cycle.

00:58:38.840 | So when you get the sugar,

00:58:40.900 | especially if it's packed with caffeine,

00:58:42.660 | that's gonna be a more addictive drink,

00:58:44.580 | you get this really feel-good response right away.

00:58:49.420 | And then you get the low and it's the hedonic withdrawal,

00:58:53.480 | so which is this, you actually feel bad

00:58:56.340 | when it's been a while since you've had it.

00:58:58.680 | And so then it drives the compulsivity.

00:59:01.020 | You want it again because you wanna,

00:59:02.720 | not 'cause you wanna feel good,

00:59:03.560 | you wanna get rid of feeling bad.

00:59:05.380 | So that's what happens with both food addiction,

00:59:07.940 | and we think that happens with sugary drinks.

00:59:09.860 | Now, let me tell you that when you asked,

00:59:12.900 | is a sugary drink one of the worst things

00:59:14.920 | we can do for our health?

00:59:16.260 | Yes, because sugary food doesn't go to our brain

00:59:21.260 | as quickly as a liquid sugar, a sugary drink.

00:59:25.560 | So think about cocaine and crack.

00:59:28.260 | Crack goes to the brain immediately

00:59:30.580 | and it's that much more addictive.

00:59:32.460 | That's how we think of liquid sugar.

00:59:34.740 | The view on sugar, I think is starting to change.

00:59:38.020 | And I think in the years to come,

00:59:39.420 | provided folks like you and Dr. Lustig

00:59:42.540 | continue to be vocal about it, which I hope you will,

00:59:46.680 | I think it's gonna shift things quite a bit.

00:59:49.940 | I look at it a little bit like trans fats.

00:59:52.380 | You know, when I was growing up, people ate margarine

00:59:54.180 | and now like trans fats are banned in many cities.

00:59:57.760 | It's kind of incredible how these things

00:59:59.180 | have changed over time.

01:00:01.820 | And it requires an effort, not just on social media,

01:00:04.300 | but podcasts and I think also lobbying our politicians,

01:00:09.300 | really getting them to understand

01:00:11.420 | just how pernicious this stuff is.

01:00:13.420 | - There's a lot of social norms that go into like,

01:00:15.780 | what's good for all of us as a group or community

01:00:19.740 | and what's personal choice.

01:00:21.140 | It's very fiery.

01:00:22.500 | You know, I've heard a colleague talking about

01:00:24.960 | how bringing junk food or soda to work

01:00:27.820 | is like passive smoking.

01:00:29.200 | You're like, you're bringing something

01:00:30.480 | and that's gonna pollute other people's health

01:00:32.100 | and you shouldn't do it.

01:00:33.020 | So that's much more edgy

01:00:34.860 | and people will fight them on that.

01:00:37.040 | But the basic reality is, yeah,

01:00:40.340 | we're gonna eat the donuts if they're in front of us.

01:00:42.400 | And so it is much more considerate to bring a bowl of fruit.

01:00:46.540 | - I do love a good donut.

01:00:47.580 | - Oh, me too, that's my weakness.

01:00:50.260 | - A certain circuit in my brain.

01:00:51.780 | I'm glad you brought up smoking.

01:00:52.940 | I don't want to take us off topic,

01:00:54.040 | but as long as we're venturing into these general,

01:00:56.780 | or I should say more general and yet really important themes

01:00:59.420 | around public health and food.

01:01:01.980 | Yes, I learned something interesting about smoking

01:01:04.640 | and why so few people now smoke.

01:01:06.980 | I always thought that the campaigns around smoking

01:01:11.980 | and how terrible it is for us,

01:01:13.580 | showing pictures of lungs that are, you know,

01:01:16.140 | caked with all this tar and like, you know, cancer

01:01:18.900 | and all this stuff was the effective message.

01:01:21.620 | But what I learned was that

01:01:23.260 | one of the most effective messaging systems

01:01:25.660 | in the battle against smoking

01:01:28.380 | was to get young people to stop smoking,

01:01:31.180 | not by telling them it was bad for them,

01:01:33.460 | but by showing them videos of these rich men

01:01:38.460 | sitting around tables,

01:01:40.100 | cackling about the fact that they're making so much money

01:01:42.660 | on the health problems of other people because of smoking.

01:01:45.220 | In other words, what they did is they made

01:01:47.220 | being a non-smoker anti-establishment.

01:01:50.780 | And so I find it very interesting

01:01:52.060 | anytime there's something like soda

01:01:54.420 | or highly processed foods

01:01:55.720 | that are so woven into the establishment,

01:01:57.960 | it seems like we can tell people

01:02:00.900 | until we're blue in the face

01:02:03.660 | about all the health concerns with these things.

01:02:06.580 | You know, sugar is bad and this is bad.

01:02:08.220 | Highly processed food is bad.

01:02:09.620 | Some people might change their behavior,

01:02:11.260 | but it seems like for the younger generation,

01:02:13.260 | the thing that's most effective

01:02:14.340 | is to activate their sense of rebellion.

01:02:16.500 | This has been true for probably

01:02:18.060 | hundreds of thousands of years,

01:02:19.240 | but it's certainly true in the last hundred years.

01:02:21.640 | And let them see that there is a very strong big food,

01:02:26.640 | sometimes big pharma, but certainly big food system

01:02:29.900 | that is working against them.

01:02:31.440 | And that in order to take control of their health,

01:02:34.200 | actually we want to activate their sense of rebellion

01:02:36.720 | so that they're like,

01:02:37.560 | no, I'm going to take excellent care of myself.

01:02:39.220 | I'm not going to fall victim to this monetary scheme.

01:02:41.460 | And here, I'm not pointing to any conspiracy.

01:02:43.420 | I mean, this has been seen with smoking.

01:02:44.700 | This has been seen with a number of different pharmaceuticals.

01:02:46.940 | Again, not all pharmaceuticals are bad.

01:02:48.980 | This is true of a number of different aspects

01:02:51.500 | of kind of big marketing.

01:02:53.500 | - Absolutely, it's like pull the blinders off,

01:02:55.500 | let people know that we're vulnerable to all the marketing

01:02:59.340 | and that there really are suppression of data

01:03:02.340 | behind a lot of it.

01:03:03.180 | So it's happening with eating disorders too.

01:03:07.140 | Eric Stice, who's at Stanford with you,

01:03:09.320 | has been using this method, we call it dissonance,

01:03:12.980 | showing people with eating disorders

01:03:16.100 | how the food industry has been manipulative

01:03:18.340 | and has tried to design foods for addiction

01:03:22.660 | for the highest bang for the buck with dopamine, et cetera.

01:03:26.200 | And so that has helped reduce eating disorders

01:03:29.340 | in these studies.

01:03:30.660 | And it has even helped reduce reward drive.

01:03:34.220 | Isn't that amazing that the dissonance could do that?

01:03:37.260 | - So interesting.

01:03:38.360 | Yeah, I think what it's telling us is that

01:03:40.460 | few things are as strong as the no, I won't,

01:03:45.140 | I refuse to your response in terms of changing behavior,

01:03:48.800 | especially when there's something to push against.

01:03:50.920 | So it's not just a battle with ourselves.

01:03:52.540 | I want the soda, but I'm not going to drink it.

01:03:54.780 | It becomes a, well, I want it, but I want it

01:03:57.040 | because you are making me think I want it.

01:03:58.920 | I don't actually want that.

01:04:00.420 | So I don't know, maybe this is getting me back

01:04:03.000 | into my teenage mindset, but I think a sense of rebellion,

01:04:05.780 | provided it's in the direction of health,

01:04:08.060 | one's own health and the health of others, of course,

01:04:10.640 | can be a positive thing.

01:04:11.680 | - Yeah, well, we do that with the mindful eating.

01:04:13.640 | We really, we have them bring in the junkiest processed food

01:04:16.240 | they can think of, like a Twinkie,

01:04:17.980 | and eat that really slowly and mindfully.

01:04:21.880 | And few people finish it and they're like,

01:04:23.740 | that actually wasn't nearly as good as the picture of it

01:04:26.400 | and the idea of it.

01:04:27.520 | And so it's like that reward predictive error

01:04:30.960 | that you've talked about where they think the brain

01:04:35.140 | is driving them to have it because of the advertising

01:04:37.800 | and their expectation that they'll feel good.

01:04:40.240 | But if they're really paying attention,

01:04:42.320 | it's a very disappointing experience.

01:04:45.480 | Versus we also have people savor a piece of good chocolate,

01:04:48.860 | whichever they like, milk or dark.

01:04:50.400 | And that experience teaches them to eat slowly

01:04:54.620 | and really enjoy small amounts of rewarding food

01:04:58.460 | so that they're not, they don't need to feel full and binge.

01:05:01.620 | - Oh, so interesting.

01:05:02.820 | Dark or milk chocolate?

01:05:05.340 | - Dark. - Yeah, likewise.

01:05:07.420 | I actually like the 100% chocolate.

01:05:09.220 | There's one brand of Venezuelan chocolate that's 100%,

01:05:12.300 | which sounds, it might sound awful,

01:05:13.880 | but it's actually quite good.

01:05:16.160 | I think that was the first time I could actually taste

01:05:18.240 | the real elements of chocolate.

01:05:20.320 | - Interesting, yeah, that is not rewarding.

01:05:22.200 | It's way too bitter for me.

01:05:23.120 | I need the mouthfeel, you know, give me some fat in it.

01:05:26.360 | - Oh my, well, yeah, it's hard to find, but it's out there.

01:05:29.700 | I'd like to just take a brief moment

01:05:31.260 | and thank one of our podcast sponsors,

01:05:33.100 | which is InsideTracker.

01:05:34.400 | InsideTracker is a personalized nutrition platform

01:05:37.060 | that analyzes data from your blood and DNA

01:05:39.640 | to help you better understand your body

01:05:41.200 | and help you reach your health goals.

01:05:43.080 | I've long been a believer in getting regular blood work done

01:05:45.360 | for the simple reason that blood work

01:05:47.480 | is the only way that you can monitor the markers,

01:05:49.720 | such as hormone markers, lipids, metabolic factors, et cetera,

01:05:52.800 | that impact your immediate and long-term health.

01:05:55.520 | One major challenge with blood work, however,

01:05:57.640 | is that most of the time,

01:05:59.160 | it does not come back with any information about what to do

01:06:01.880 | in order to move the values for hormones,

01:06:04.120 | metabolic factors, lipids, et cetera,

01:06:05.980 | into the ranges that you want.

01:06:07.420 | With InsideTracker, changing those values

01:06:09.880 | becomes very straightforward

01:06:11.040 | because it has a personalized dashboard that you can use

01:06:13.980 | to address the nutrition-based, behavior-based,

01:06:17.000 | supplement-based approaches that you can use

01:06:19.760 | in order to move those values into the ranges

01:06:21.900 | that are optimal for you, your vitality, and your longevity.

01:06:24.920 | InsideTracker now includes a measurement

01:06:26.660 | of apolipoprotein B, so-called apoB, in their ultimate plan.

01:06:30.320 | ApoB is a key marker of cardiovascular health,

01:06:32.960 | and therefore, there's extreme value

01:06:34.720 | to knowing your apoB levels.

01:06:36.720 | If you'd like to try InsideTracker,

01:06:38.120 | you can go to insidetracker.com/huberman

01:06:40.860 | to get 20% off any of InsideTracker's plans.

01:06:43.200 | Again, that's insidetracker.com/huberman

01:06:46.080 | to get 20% off.

01:06:47.560 | So while we're talking about stress, eating, obesity,

01:06:51.880 | and here, we've also broadened the discussion

01:06:55.040 | to include different generations.

01:06:56.400 | We're talking about teens and adults.

01:06:58.440 | I'd love for you to share with us your findings

01:07:00.600 | around this study that you did of pregnant women

01:07:04.040 | and how stress and pregnancy and different patterns of eating

01:07:09.040 | and physiological changes

01:07:11.840 | that people experience during pregnancy.

01:07:14.440 | Could you share with us what those findings were?

01:07:15.960 | Because I think those are relevant,

01:07:17.040 | not just to people who are pregnant

01:07:18.500 | or planning to become pregnant, but to everybody,

01:07:20.840 | 'cause I think they shed light on how we manage stress

01:07:23.860 | and sometimes how we fail to manage stress.

01:07:26.360 | - Yeah, so with overweight and obesity,

01:07:29.160 | we know we can't just change calories.

01:07:32.060 | It's just not gonna work.

01:07:33.220 | The next stressful event's gonna come along,

01:07:35.260 | and people will go back to what their brain

01:07:38.340 | is driving them to do, is to binge on comfort food.

01:07:41.320 | And so we've done these interventions with men and women

01:07:45.840 | that show that we can help them regulate

01:07:48.120 | using some of these mindful eating strategies, checking in.

01:07:52.020 | We wanted to do this with pregnant women

01:07:54.900 | because when you have excess weight and you're pregnant,

01:07:58.320 | you're really vulnerable

01:07:59.320 | to gaining excessive weight during pregnancy,

01:08:01.920 | which is not healthy for the mom or the offspring.

01:08:05.480 | So we did this study.

01:08:08.080 | It took us probably 10 years total to get the grant

01:08:12.240 | and recruit groups of 10 women

01:08:16.320 | who are pregnant in the same stage

01:08:18.360 | and give them this training in mindful eating,

01:08:21.400 | mindful nutrition, and stress reduction.

01:08:23.840 | And then my colleague, Nikki Bush,

01:08:26.560 | has been following the babies for,

01:08:29.600 | I think it's been almost 10 years since then.

01:08:32.360 | And here's what we found.

01:08:34.680 | First of all, we couldn't stop excess weight gain.

01:08:37.960 | The women in the control group gained about,

01:08:41.200 | about 60% of them gained excess weight during pregnancy

01:08:43.520 | and same with our mindful group.

01:08:44.960 | So maybe it's end of story,

01:08:46.680 | you'd stop there and say it fails, don't do it.

01:08:49.000 | There have been so many beautiful developments

01:08:52.440 | in the women who got the training

01:08:54.640 | that we just keep being shocked

01:08:57.840 | by how impactful this stress reduction training was.

01:09:01.240 | It was just two months of their life,

01:09:02.860 | but pregnancy is a very critical period

01:09:06.060 | when these women were changing their habits

01:09:09.640 | and they're very motivated to help their baby.

01:09:11.740 | So here's what we found.

01:09:13.640 | Within that first month of the intervention,

01:09:15.680 | they all got this oral glucose tolerance test.

01:09:17.600 | So they all got, they got a blood test

01:09:19.240 | to see how well their body was metabolizing food, sugar.

01:09:24.240 | And so it's like a pre-diabetes test.

01:09:26.840 | And what we found was that twice as many women

01:09:29.680 | in the no treatment control group

01:09:32.020 | had impaired glucose tolerance during pregnancy.

01:09:34.440 | It's a common high risk.

01:09:37.200 | And half that many women had this in the mindfulness group.

01:09:42.200 | So by reducing stress,

01:09:44.400 | they improved their insulin sensitivity during pregnancy.

01:09:47.800 | So imagine what that's doing to the baby too.

01:09:51.040 | Then the babies have come out with less obesity,

01:09:55.360 | less illnesses in their first year of life,

01:09:58.780 | and more of this kind of healthy stress response

01:10:02.000 | when they've been stressed out in the lab study.

01:10:05.800 | And so then eight years later,

01:10:08.400 | we looked at the mental health of the mom.

01:10:10.240 | So right after the intervention, eight weeks later,

01:10:12.360 | everyone in our mindfulness stress direction group

01:10:14.740 | felt great.

01:10:15.580 | They felt less depressed.

01:10:16.640 | They had less stress and less anxiety.

01:10:18.660 | That's what you'd expect, right?

01:10:19.660 | I mean, they'd just gone to a weekly class.

01:10:21.260 | They got all this support.

01:10:22.880 | But eight years later,

01:10:24.000 | they still showed improved mental health.

01:10:27.100 | Every year that we measured them, they still looked better.

01:10:31.280 | So it's probably one of the longest studies

01:10:34.340 | looking at long-term effects of a mindfulness training.

01:10:36.960 | And I don't think it was a coincidence

01:10:38.680 | that it was during pregnancy.

01:10:39.620 | I think this is a very important time to have these skills.

01:10:43.200 | And being in a group adds that social support piece

01:10:46.640 | that we know is powerful.

01:10:48.400 | - That's an incredible result.

01:10:49.840 | Could you share with us

01:10:50.680 | what the mindfulness intervention was

01:10:53.000 | and when it was initiated, when it was stopped?

01:10:55.300 | So we're talking about 10 minutes a day of meditation,

01:10:58.040 | as many details as you can possibly give us,

01:10:59.880 | because I know,

01:11:01.320 | even though I don't think I'll ever be pregnant,

01:11:03.560 | I don't plan on it.

01:11:04.580 | - You never know.

01:11:06.620 | - Well, yeah.

01:11:07.940 | Zero minus one probability in my mind,

01:11:12.400 | but anyway, maybe other people have other ideas for me,

01:11:14.740 | but zero minus one probability in my mind.

01:11:17.680 | And yet I'm very interested

01:11:20.440 | in this mindfulness intervention

01:11:23.340 | because it sounds like a very potent one.

01:11:25.620 | So much so that it's having a multi-generational impact.

01:11:28.880 | So how many minutes a day, how many days per week?

01:11:33.360 | We had them, they met once a week.

01:11:36.080 | They had little reminder cards.

01:11:37.440 | I mean, we need all the reminders we can.

01:11:39.880 | Post-its on the fridge, timers in our phone

01:11:42.800 | to do this mindful check-in.

01:11:44.760 | And so they were during the week doing this check-in

01:11:48.560 | and it was simply a mindful check-in closing their eyes

01:11:53.560 | and feeling their body, labeling their emotions.

01:11:58.920 | So it was mindful breathing.

01:12:01.080 | And then it was some movement.

01:12:03.160 | And we taught them prenatal yoga,

01:12:05.680 | but really any mind-body movement,

01:12:07.520 | people like different things.

01:12:08.680 | There's Qigong, there's even just slow walking

01:12:13.680 | would have worked.

01:12:15.760 | So it was mindful check-in, breathe, move my body.

01:12:20.760 | That's what the reminder card said.

01:12:24.340 | So close your eyes and look inside, do slow breathing.

01:12:29.340 | They also put their hands on their belly.

01:12:30.880 | And so they felt that they were taking care of their baby

01:12:34.800 | and then more movement.

01:12:36.760 | So they did increase their walking.

01:12:39.580 | And the mindful of check-ins are,

01:12:43.840 | as we were talking about at the very beginning,

01:12:46.180 | I would say necessary, but not sufficient.

01:12:48.400 | We've got to stop during the day

01:12:50.460 | and check in and look inside.

01:12:52.080 | If we're not aware of where our mind is,

01:12:54.560 | we are just subject to believing the stressful thoughts,

01:12:58.820 | thinking that we need to keep ruminating.

01:13:00.720 | They're sticky thoughts.

01:13:02.240 | So the mindful check-in is really important.

01:13:04.560 | And then I think the breathing, as we've talked about,

01:13:07.480 | is probably the more direct way

01:13:10.760 | that they're influencing the prenatal environment,

01:13:13.760 | the uterine environment to reduce the stress

01:13:17.240 | that the baby's being exposed to.

01:13:20.440 | And the movement refocuses us from our mind

01:13:23.280 | and our ruminative thoughts to the experiences,

01:13:27.720 | to what we feel in the body.

01:13:29.200 | There's even been a study that showed

01:13:31.680 | that overweight people with a lot of cravings,

01:13:34.440 | if they do the body scan,

01:13:36.080 | that's simply focusing on the body from the head to the toe,

01:13:39.640 | just reminding ourselves to focus on each part of the body,

01:13:43.680 | breathe into it, release tension.

01:13:45.600 | It's very basic and simple.

01:13:47.340 | The body scan significantly reduced cravings.

01:13:51.620 | I mean, to me, it's really hard to reduce cravings.

01:13:55.240 | So just that refocusing on the body

01:13:58.920 | took away stress, anxieties, self-referential thoughts,

01:14:02.180 | that kind of our favorite topic, thinking about ourself,

01:14:05.160 | thinking negative thoughts about ourself,

01:14:07.040 | to relaxing, feeling ease, feeling wellbeing.

01:14:10.620 | - I can't help but ask about what that body scan

01:14:14.160 | might've been doing at a little bit more

01:14:15.640 | of a mechanistic level.

01:14:17.840 | Some of the listeners might be familiar with these terms,

01:14:20.260 | but some won't, so I'll just briefly define them.

01:14:23.560 | We can perceive things in terms of exteroception

01:14:26.600 | or basically paying attention to

01:14:28.360 | and focusing on things beyond the confines of our skin

01:14:30.720 | or interoception.

01:14:31.820 | I realize you know all this, but for their sake-

01:14:34.920 | - No one really understands interoception, go for it.

01:14:37.240 | - So an interoception, essentially the sensory innervation

01:14:40.600 | of the internal organs, of our own skin,

01:14:43.400 | that includes proprioception, which is our knowledge

01:14:46.100 | or our sense of where our limbs are,

01:14:47.600 | where we are relative to gravity, all that stuff.

01:14:50.360 | And it raises this body scan result,

01:14:54.240 | that is the fact that a brief body scan can reduce cravings,

01:14:58.560 | raises this question in my mind, which is,

01:15:00.600 | is craving a heightened sense of interoception

01:15:04.160 | or heightened sense of exteroception?

01:15:05.760 | So I could think of one form of craving where,

01:15:07.720 | for instance, the donut, again, donuts for me,

01:15:10.620 | is in front of me and I'm thinking that, I want that.

01:15:13.520 | And so I'm almost in complete exteroception,

01:15:16.080 | but I'm tethered to it.

01:15:17.120 | Like my internal world is tethered to the donut.

01:15:20.160 | It's almost like the donut is in control of me briefly.

01:15:23.520 | Okay, and then I eat it.

01:15:25.460 | But if I-- - It's hijacked

01:15:27.120 | your prefrontal cortex.

01:15:28.440 | - It's hijacked everything, yeah.

01:15:30.240 | And then if I do a body scan, so I'm putting myself

01:15:33.080 | in this experiment and it's kind of a hypothetical scenario,

01:15:37.240 | I'm putting myself into this experiment.

01:15:38.320 | I do a body scan, which without question is shifting me

01:15:43.320 | more towards interoception, right?

01:15:45.480 | I'm focusing on my skin, my heart rate, all these things,

01:15:47.840 | interoception, so I could see how that would draw

01:15:50.160 | my attention off of the external stimulus

01:15:53.000 | and reduce craving.

01:15:54.600 | And that makes me wonder whether or not craving

01:15:57.480 | is a form of exteroception where our interoception

01:16:02.480 | is just exquisitely locked to exteroception.

01:16:07.480 | And if so, 'cause I do think this is a remarkable result.

01:16:10.440 | It is very hard to stop cravings.

01:16:11.920 | I mean, we had a guest on here, a former colleague of mine

01:16:14.600 | at Stanford who's now the chair of neurosurgery

01:16:16.680 | at UPenn School of Medicine, which is Casey Halpern.

01:16:20.660 | I mean, they literally drill down through the skull

01:16:23.780 | of people who have binge eating disorder

01:16:25.340 | and start stimulating different brain areas

01:16:27.640 | because these people are so out of control

01:16:29.380 | in terms of their binge eating.

01:16:30.260 | I mean, that's the kind of intervention

01:16:31.700 | that is considered necessary for a lot of folks

01:16:34.500 | who binge eat.

01:16:35.660 | So here you're telling me a body scan in some individuals

01:16:38.820 | can reduce that, and I have to wonder whether or not

01:16:40.700 | it's somehow breaking that interoceptive,

01:16:43.580 | exteroceptive tether.

01:16:45.460 | Anyway, I'm speculating here, but I'd love your thoughts

01:16:47.940 | on craving and binging and breaking binging.

01:16:51.620 | Do you think that there are behavioral interventions

01:16:56.340 | that could be layered on top of body scans?

01:16:58.620 | Should we all be doing body scans routinely?

01:17:01.060 | - Yes, why not?

01:17:02.580 | And some people aren't going to like that.

01:17:04.040 | Lying down is maybe not comfortable.

01:17:07.040 | And so any mind-body activity is going to do the same.

01:17:10.340 | It's going to be, I think, breaking that link

01:17:13.940 | that you talked about.

01:17:14.980 | - Yeah, I find this whole interoceptive, exteroceptive

01:17:17.940 | balance thing, one of the more interesting conversations

01:17:21.180 | these days in neuroscience, because we're finally

01:17:23.660 | starting to understand what some of the circuitries are,

01:17:25.980 | and they do link to these reward pathways.

01:17:28.340 | In any event, getting back to the relationship

01:17:30.940 | between stress and food, and maybe even just weaving back

01:17:33.740 | a little bit to the opioid system,

01:17:36.160 | have there been any long-term studies of stress intervention?

01:17:41.700 | You know, in the studies that we do in our laboratory,

01:17:43.460 | we get people for a month, they do one intervention,

01:17:45.800 | we swap them to another intervention,

01:17:47.400 | and in a month, we analyze data.

01:17:49.240 | It takes a couple of years to do all that,

01:17:50.700 | but we write papers and we move on.

01:17:52.960 | Sounds like your laboratory has been involved

01:17:55.860 | in doing a lot of studies where you're examining people

01:17:58.100 | over a very long period of time, even their children.

01:18:00.660 | What can we learn about the long-term outcomes

01:18:04.060 | of things like body scans, meditation,

01:18:06.100 | and then we'll get into breath work?

01:18:08.500 | - There haven't been that many long-term studies

01:18:11.940 | of stress interventions.

01:18:14.540 | Now that you mention it, I think the meditation studies

01:18:17.120 | are probably the best example.

01:18:19.100 | There are some studies that have either followed people

01:18:22.740 | who have taken up meditation,

01:18:25.580 | or just these cross-sectional studies

01:18:27.100 | where you compare a long-term meditator

01:18:29.360 | to someone who's never meditated.

01:18:31.520 | And they are interesting.

01:18:33.840 | I mean, let's talk about the cross-sectional studies.

01:18:36.540 | You're already studying someone who eats like kale chips

01:18:40.140 | instead of potato chips.

01:18:40.980 | So there's a lot of differences

01:18:42.020 | in who decides to be a meditator.

01:18:44.040 | In terms of the health and biology,

01:18:49.660 | we have found that there is slower biological aging,

01:18:53.660 | and other people have found that.

01:18:55.840 | In these meditation interventions we do,

01:18:57.640 | the short-term ones,

01:18:59.380 | the inflammatory pathways of gene expression

01:19:03.180 | are dampened way down.

01:19:05.440 | And cross-sectionally, other people like Elizabeth Hoggi

01:19:08.660 | have found longer telomeres in the meditators

01:19:11.220 | versus the controls.

01:19:13.420 | So we haven't really found telomere lengthening

01:19:16.260 | in our short-term meditation studies,

01:19:18.340 | but we do find boosts in telomerase activity,

01:19:22.420 | which is this enzyme that protects our cell aging,

01:19:25.340 | slows our cell aging, rebuilds the telomeres.

01:19:28.660 | So those are studies that suggest

01:19:33.620 | if someone were to continue meditating,

01:19:35.840 | they might keep up that slower rate of aging.

01:19:39.000 | So there's one study we did,

01:19:40.920 | which I think was particularly fun.

01:19:44.720 | We went to a retreat center where Deepak Chopra

01:19:47.800 | leads this one-week transcendental meditation retreat.

01:19:50.820 | So people got a mantra and they were focusing

01:19:53.860 | for probably eight hours a day on different yoga,

01:19:58.520 | meditation, and reflective exercises.

01:20:01.000 | And then we had half the group just walk around the resort,

01:20:05.980 | take walks, hear some boring health talks.

01:20:09.460 | So that was our control group.

01:20:11.220 | And what we found from that study

01:20:13.140 | was that in the short run, a week later,

01:20:16.740 | everyone felt fantastic after the week, right?

01:20:20.020 | They weren't allowed to bring their laptop and work,

01:20:22.100 | and they ate this great anti-inflammatory diet,

01:20:25.660 | an Ayurvedic diet.

01:20:27.100 | And then the gene expression pathways

01:20:29.020 | were like night and day from day one to the last day.

01:20:32.260 | And our model of machine learning model

01:20:36.280 | was able to identify people over 90%.

01:20:38.660 | It could say whether they were on day one or day seven.

01:20:41.440 | And the difference really emerged over the long run.

01:20:44.260 | We went and we followed them about 10 months later,

01:20:47.780 | and we found that not everyone felt great.

01:20:51.340 | 10 months later, the group who learned meditation

01:20:54.780 | still had lower depression,

01:20:56.580 | but the control group bounced right back up.

01:20:59.100 | And then we looked a little bit further

01:21:00.380 | and we saw that people with early adversity

01:21:02.860 | benefited the most from the meditation condition.

01:21:06.140 | - Oh, what was the meditation condition?

01:21:08.940 | How long per day?

01:21:10.460 | - Yeah, well, so they did,

01:21:12.340 | they learned transcendental, primordial sound meditation,

01:21:15.940 | which is similar to TM,

01:21:17.220 | where you have a focused attention on a word over and over,

01:21:22.300 | but there's also more awareness of the body.

01:21:26.700 | And that was, I couldn't say how many minutes a day,

01:21:31.560 | but it was on and off during the day.

01:21:34.340 | - Okay, so repeatedly,

01:21:35.840 | but for a fairly short period of time, one week.

01:21:38.420 | - Yeah, right.

01:21:39.740 | - Yeah, I've never done

01:21:40.580 | one of these extended meditation retreats.

01:21:42.340 | - Are you interested?

01:21:43.420 | - Well, various people in my life have told me

01:21:44.920 | that I needed to go do a silent meditation,

01:21:46.920 | but they probably were emphasizing the silent part.

01:21:51.140 | I recommend them.

01:21:52.420 | I think there are amazing ways to get to know the mind

01:21:55.240 | and to really calm the body in ways like a quantum shift

01:22:00.240 | in our level of stress that we don't get.

01:22:03.700 | It's very hard to get in short balance.

01:22:06.100 | - I do a daily meditation practice,

01:22:08.060 | but it's a relatively brief meditation practice.

01:22:10.040 | I do tend to focus more on things like deliberate

01:22:12.380 | cold exposure and breath work and exercise and sunlight

01:22:15.780 | and all the things I talk about on the podcast.

01:22:17.620 | But I'm certainly not averse to doing a longer meditation.

01:22:21.780 | Are all of these TM meditations,

01:22:25.420 | are they silent meditations?

01:22:26.820 | And they range from what, two days to a week, is that?

01:22:31.700 | - Well, the retreats, you can always find a retreat

01:22:34.180 | that's half a day, one day, a week, two weeks.

01:22:37.140 | So you don't go right into a two week, you work up to it.

01:22:39.900 | So the longest I've ever done

01:22:40.900 | is a two week silent meditation retreat.

01:22:44.520 | And that was after 10 years of doing yearly shorter retreats.

01:22:49.320 | And then when you, I think it would be too hard

01:22:52.960 | and stressful if you haven't been able to,

01:22:56.160 | I mean, meditation would be stressful

01:22:57.320 | if you think that you're failing at it.

01:22:59.380 | And so you need to have kind of developed the skill

01:23:03.480 | a little bit before you go on the retreats.

01:23:05.400 | And so lots of classes can do that in online.

01:23:07.920 | But I think the short bouts every day are,

01:23:10.480 | that is what is the most important message for people,

01:23:12.880 | for managing daily stress.

01:23:14.520 | And that's in the stress prescription,

01:23:16.760 | it's very much about how we can do short daily nudges

01:23:21.400 | to reduce our stress arousal.

01:23:23.480 | So breathing is one of the best body-based examples

01:23:27.120 | of getting right there, but there are other ways.

01:23:29.160 | So being in nature, that's a really strong stimulus,

01:23:33.000 | an environment that sends all sorts of safety signals to us.

01:23:37.240 | - Yeah, certainly it's not an either or,

01:23:39.060 | but it seems like nowadays, a lot of the discussion

01:23:41.680 | that used to be had around meditation

01:23:43.380 | and its ability to evoke neuroplasticity

01:23:45.640 | and things of that sort has shifted over to

01:23:47.880 | an increased focus on psychedelics,

01:23:51.760 | is the common theme on this podcast.

01:23:53.260 | But it just seems like in taking the pulse of social media

01:23:56.720 | and the landscape out there,

01:23:57.560 | there's so much excitement about psilocybin,

01:24:00.360 | both in microdose and macrodose and MDMA

01:24:02.680 | and some of the other trials that are out there,

01:24:05.720 | that many people are starting to forget

01:24:08.760 | the incredibly rich and vast literature supporting the use

01:24:12.340 | of even brief meditation practices for reshaping the mind.

01:24:15.680 | So I'm glad that we're talking about meditation.

01:24:17.840 | - But I mean, even going into plant medicine experiences

01:24:22.620 | is enhanced if you have a little bit of training

01:24:25.120 | in how to, in metacognition,

01:24:27.360 | how to view the mind and thoughts.

01:24:29.320 | You can observe the whole experience

01:24:31.160 | with that much more kind of calmness, skill and wisdom,

01:24:35.020 | knowing this is just the mind doing these cool things.

01:24:38.080 | So it's not, they're not separate.

01:24:39.920 | And then I think that the psilocybin experiences

01:24:42.800 | enhance daily meditation.

01:24:44.960 | So they really go well together.

01:24:47.600 | - Yeah, and then just as a little editorial on psychedelics,

01:24:52.560 | what's interesting, I think, about the clinical data

01:24:55.100 | is that we think of the psychedelic journey

01:24:58.360 | as the time in which all the changes occur

01:25:00.560 | because it has all these properties of hallucinations

01:25:03.080 | and altered thinking, et cetera,

01:25:04.600 | that acts as kind of a gravitational pull

01:25:07.080 | around our ideas about what psychedelics do.

01:25:10.040 | But it's actually in the window after the psychedelic journey

01:25:12.920 | that the actual rewiring of the brain takes place.

01:25:14.820 | So when people talk about integration afterwards,

01:25:17.280 | they're not just talking about the few hours

01:25:19.140 | where they're parachuting back down

01:25:21.040 | to typical consciousness, let's call it that,

01:25:25.820 | but that there's these long,

01:25:27.020 | perhaps even weeks or month long tail of plasticity.

01:25:30.360 | And that's actually when most of the rewiring is happening

01:25:32.680 | and which I find really interesting,

01:25:34.720 | which is not unlike meditation

01:25:36.200 | where, sure, in one bout of meditation,

01:25:38.080 | you might see an adjustment or rewiring of the brain,

01:25:40.640 | but at least from the book "Altered Traits,"

01:25:43.120 | which I'm a big fan of,

01:25:44.860 | talked about these daily repeated short meditations

01:25:47.480 | or these longer TM retreats, as they're sometimes called,

01:25:51.340 | in inducing this big-time brain plasticity.

01:25:54.900 | All right, well, now I'm going to have to do it,

01:25:56.920 | and I'll report back to everybody what my experience was,

01:25:59.360 | although I might do it silently.

01:26:00.960 | I'd love to talk a little bit

01:26:03.640 | about some of the other health metrics

01:26:05.400 | that you've explored,

01:26:06.320 | not just in the context of mindfulness,

01:26:08.360 | but I'm particularly intrigued by a graph here.

01:26:12.720 | I'm showing my really nerdy side.

01:26:14.360 | There's a graph in one of your papers.

01:26:15.880 | It's the Picard paper, 2018.

01:26:18.040 | We will provide a link to this in the show note captions

01:26:20.680 | if people want to take a look,

01:26:21.900 | but it essentially describes the relationship

01:26:23.900 | between mitochondrial health and mood

01:26:26.800 | in the context of people

01:26:29.280 | who have different type of mood tendencies.

01:26:32.080 | If you would be willing to just kind of describe

01:26:35.120 | the top contour of that study

01:26:36.740 | and some of the points that you find most interesting.

01:26:39.800 | I think it's a fascinating study,

01:26:41.160 | and I'm so glad you did it,

01:26:42.960 | but I'll let you tell us about it.

01:26:44.560 | - Yeah, we've done these in-depth studies

01:26:46.780 | where we are looking at people

01:26:48.500 | under a lot of daily demand, caregivers,

01:26:51.200 | and then we look at normal people,

01:26:53.800 | parents of neurotypical children

01:26:56.040 | who still have a lot of stress,

01:26:57.220 | but we then ask,

01:26:59.040 | do people under chronic stress have accelerated aging?

01:27:03.360 | So we look at telomeres, epigenetics, mitochondrial health,

01:27:06.020 | and then what explains those who look really good,

01:27:09.800 | who look resilient and don't look vulnerable?

01:27:12.720 | And so then we can find out like,

01:27:14.040 | what's the magic sauce in the day

01:27:15.600 | that protects them from chronic stress?

01:27:17.520 | So Martin Picard, my colleague who has been obsessed

01:27:21.640 | with mitochondrial health as a pathway

01:27:24.960 | to understanding both stress and really health and disease,

01:27:29.040 | he has developed a way to measure

01:27:31.600 | the mitochondrial health in humans.

01:27:33.640 | So we can measure a bunch of enzymes

01:27:36.040 | and then we can adjust it for how many mitochondria we have.

01:27:38.560 | So we have this really nice index

01:27:40.520 | we can get from the blood.

01:27:42.680 | And in this study of young mothers

01:27:47.160 | who had either typical children or children with autism,

01:27:51.720 | we found that the caregiving moms

01:27:55.280 | had significantly lower or dampened mitochondrial activity.

01:28:01.480 | What that means is they can't produce as much energy.

01:28:05.640 | So if they're feeling more exhausted

01:28:08.560 | from the chronic stress, we know why.

01:28:10.760 | I mean, it really is a, it was quite dramatic.

01:28:13.600 | Martin commented some of those low levels

01:28:16.040 | even looked like people with some genetic reasons

01:28:18.680 | to have low mitochondrial activity.

01:28:21.400 | But here's the beauty of that study.

01:28:23.080 | We then get to look within their day at their mood

01:28:26.800 | and ask, well, what about the caregivers

01:28:28.800 | who have really great mitochondrial enzymes

01:28:32.640 | and thus should be making a lot of ATP?

01:28:36.240 | They had more positive emotions,

01:28:38.840 | both waking up and in the evening,

01:28:40.800 | but especially in the evening.

01:28:42.600 | And what's so interesting in that

01:28:43.960 | is all of these daily diary studies of stress and mood.

01:28:48.320 | One of the things we know that matters for long-term health

01:28:52.440 | is how positive you feel at night.

01:28:55.800 | So especially on a stressful day.

01:28:57.400 | So at the end of a stressful day,

01:28:59.120 | can you muster some feelings of content,

01:29:02.480 | ease, confidence, joy?

01:29:04.920 | Do you have any of that?

01:29:05.960 | Or has it just wiped out your positivity?

01:29:08.480 | And so for people who feel either lower negative

01:29:13.280 | or higher positive,

01:29:14.880 | they tend to have better health trajectories.

01:29:17.640 | So like a decade later, less depression,

01:29:19.640 | less heart disease, less early death.

01:29:22.400 | So that's why we care so much about daily moods.

01:29:25.320 | And in our study, it looks like the daily mood

01:29:28.480 | was really quite correlated with the mitochondria levels

01:29:31.840 | that same day.

01:29:33.040 | And we measured mood like days away from that,

01:29:36.000 | it was much less correlated.

01:29:37.520 | So that's just our first study on this,

01:29:39.800 | but it really leads us to think that our mitochondria

01:29:42.960 | are sensitive to our thoughts and our feelings,

01:29:47.000 | probably on a daily basis.

01:29:49.520 | - Incredible.

01:29:50.680 | So for those of us that find ourselves in it

01:29:53.680 | in a state of chronic stress,

01:29:56.320 | and here I'm talking about the kind of stress

01:29:57.840 | that you mentioned before,

01:29:59.240 | which is there is unlikely to be a simple solution.

01:30:04.240 | Like we're just going to be grappling with this thing.

01:30:06.960 | And you mentioned the words radical acceptance,

01:30:09.680 | which I'd like to drill into a little bit too.

01:30:12.320 | 'Cause this is a theme in the self-help literature.

01:30:14.760 | And it's a theme in that now I think

01:30:16.880 | in the formal psychology literature,

01:30:19.520 | I actually was talking to a dialectical psychology expert

01:30:24.520 | recently, I think that's the correct title.

01:30:27.840 | - Dialectical behavioral therapy?

01:30:30.200 | - Correct, yeah.

01:30:31.040 | - That's a common, great one.

01:30:32.920 | - Yeah, you're correct.

01:30:34.360 | I was grasping and that's correct.

01:30:37.240 | And they were talking about some of the misconceptions

01:30:40.400 | about radical acceptance,

01:30:42.320 | because I think a lot of people hear the words

01:30:44.440 | radical acceptance, at least this is what they told me

01:30:46.740 | and think, oh, that means that you have to just accept

01:30:49.120 | what is and deal with it.

01:30:50.800 | There's another form of radical acceptance,

01:30:52.420 | which is I radically accept the fact

01:30:54.160 | that I'm not going to deal with this, right?

01:30:55.960 | I'm going to walk away from it.

01:30:57.320 | But what you're talking about is chronic stress

01:30:59.800 | of the sort that really the stressor,

01:31:03.280 | the fact that a very close relative or family member

01:31:08.160 | is dealing with a lifelong condition,

01:31:10.880 | or the fact that we can't extract ourselves

01:31:14.840 | from a situation, that we are not in full agency

01:31:17.880 | to remove the stressor,

01:31:19.520 | that radical acceptance of that fact

01:31:24.240 | then can ratchet into an understanding of, okay,

01:31:28.620 | and yet there are tools that we can use

01:31:30.360 | to not just offset the negative health effects,

01:31:32.360 | but maybe even thrive in the context of this,

01:31:34.760 | essentially turning what initially was thought of

01:31:37.120 | as a curse into a blessing,

01:31:38.520 | at least biologically speaking.

01:31:40.080 | What are the data around the practices

01:31:45.200 | that can help make that conversion possible?

01:31:49.240 | I realize there's a lot of psychological work

01:31:50.940 | that needs to be done.

01:31:51.780 | Ongoing people need coping mechanisms, support groups.

01:31:55.840 | Always better to have more social support

01:31:57.400 | than less, of course.

01:31:58.900 | But are we, again, talking about

01:32:03.080 | a daily mindfulness practice,

01:32:05.480 | or is it daily mindfulness of a certain type?

01:32:08.800 | What do we know about best practices

01:32:10.740 | for mitigating these essentially non-negotiable stressors?

01:32:15.220 | - It's a great question, and it's not a quick answer.

01:32:22.300 | I think it is partly how we view life

01:32:25.540 | and our purpose in our own life.

01:32:29.660 | What's this game that we were born into?

01:32:32.840 | And even just the idea that bad things shouldn't happen

01:32:35.800 | sets us up for vulnerability to feel victimized,

01:32:39.100 | to feel like we can't accept bad things that have happened.

01:32:44.100 | So just stepping back and asking everyone listening,

01:32:49.820 | do you have a situation in your life

01:32:53.480 | that is unwanted and you can't change?

01:32:56.820 | It could be small, it could be huge.

01:33:01.080 | How much time do you spend thinking about this?

01:33:07.480 | The more we spend time trying to problem solve or worry

01:33:12.400 | or just wishing things were different,

01:33:14.740 | the more we are creating a chronic stress state.

01:33:20.280 | And so just even taking that first kind of step back

01:33:27.440 | to get perspective on what are the situations in my life

01:33:30.520 | that stress me out and which of these can I circle those

01:33:34.480 | that I can't change?

01:33:36.500 | They're on my list, so they're on my mind.

01:33:38.840 | They're still upsetting.

01:33:40.600 | They haven't receded it in the background,

01:33:42.220 | they haven't gone away.

01:33:43.380 | Just that recognition of this isn't gonna go away

01:33:46.660 | is incredibly powerful because we can, as I say,

01:33:51.660 | put the baggage down and give ourselves some relief

01:33:56.940 | and some freedom from the big space it holds

01:34:01.000 | in our mind and in our body.

01:34:03.180 | And this is not a one-time thing, it's a practice.

01:34:05.860 | Radical acceptance is something we practice over and over

01:34:09.220 | to help us loosen our grip on unwanted situations,

01:34:13.980 | on letting them control our wellbeing

01:34:17.040 | and taking up this mental real estate

01:34:20.220 | that's so precious, our attention.

01:34:22.340 | So there are statements that we can say that help us

01:34:28.260 | and there are a few metaphors.

01:34:34.400 | So I'm an expert at this because I'm a caregiver

01:34:38.500 | and I often need to refocus

01:34:42.580 | from wishing things were different,

01:34:44.600 | trying to solve things to really radical acceptance

01:34:49.600 | of this is how things are right now, this is the reality.

01:34:54.600 | And by just reminding ourselves

01:35:00.140 | that there is freedom within that,

01:35:01.940 | that there are things that you can do,

01:35:04.100 | you can actually live better,

01:35:06.800 | live well with these situations.

01:35:09.120 | So let me tell you what we found from our caregivers.

01:35:11.400 | We measure where their mind is at night.

01:35:13.640 | We ping them and we say, in the last five minutes,

01:35:16.980 | how much have you been wishing things were different?

01:35:20.240 | How much have you been engaged and focused

01:35:22.820 | in what you're doing right before we pinged you?

01:35:26.160 | And just those two questions tell us so much

01:35:30.820 | about that person's wellbeing.

01:35:33.280 | So people, and actually, yes, the caregivers

01:35:36.980 | are doing more of what I'll call suffering,

01:35:40.980 | wishing things were different,

01:35:42.520 | not being present for their lives.

01:35:44.360 | But regardless of that difference,

01:35:46.540 | whether people are a caregiver or not,

01:35:48.940 | this negative mind-wandering state

01:35:51.040 | of not being present for your evening,

01:35:54.700 | wishing things were different instead of being engaged,

01:35:57.740 | predicts more unhappiness.

01:36:01.500 | It predicts shorter telomeres.

01:36:05.320 | So it suggests that it's a pattern

01:36:08.380 | that has gone on for days, months, and years

01:36:11.780 | that has been wearing on them.

01:36:13.760 | And so some of the metaphors

01:36:17.080 | that I think are helpful for this

01:36:19.200 | are thinking of yourself,

01:36:21.640 | think of this unwanted situation,

01:36:23.220 | and think of how you're pulling a rope

01:36:26.800 | that's attached to a brick wall.

01:36:29.600 | And you're doing that because you care.

01:36:33.140 | You want things to be better for yourself or this person

01:36:36.140 | or a group.

01:36:39.700 | I mean, it's something you're passionate about.

01:36:42.680 | And so you're pulling and pulling,

01:36:44.180 | and every day you're pulling.

01:36:45.180 | And you can't move that brick wall.

01:36:47.540 | So the only thing that's happening

01:36:49.300 | is that you're chafing your hands,

01:36:51.180 | that chronic tension.

01:36:53.220 | What if you just drop the rope?

01:36:58.820 | I say that to myself, "Drop the rope."

01:37:02.260 | When I start getting going

01:37:04.140 | on trying to solve unsolvable problems,

01:37:06.480 | the brick wall's still there, it's never gonna move,

01:37:09.360 | yet my hands are free.

01:37:11.240 | And so I can be freed up to live in the ways

01:37:15.500 | that I do have control over,

01:37:17.180 | to do things that help around the edges.

01:37:19.840 | So I was just talking with someone

01:37:21.700 | who's just so concerned about their aging parents

01:37:25.040 | and them not getting the care they need,

01:37:28.060 | not taking care of themselves.

01:37:29.540 | Things aren't going well.

01:37:31.060 | But there was so little that they could do

01:37:33.620 | to help their parents.

01:37:34.980 | And so by dropping the rope for them

01:37:38.460 | meant realizing there were things they could do,

01:37:41.260 | being present, being loving,

01:37:43.180 | doing the little bit of care that they could from a distance

01:37:48.340 | was all they could do.

01:37:49.680 | And that's enough.

01:37:51.220 | That loving presence is like a gift

01:37:54.620 | that we don't realize that we always have that to give.

01:37:58.400 | - Where do you think the tendency

01:38:00.740 | for us to try and pull on brick walls comes from?

01:38:03.620 | I mean, it's so non-adaptive.

01:38:05.760 | And I've also heard it stated that people do this

01:38:10.740 | in the reverse direction to, meaning in time,

01:38:14.040 | trying to control the past through current behaviors,

01:38:18.020 | as well as try and control the future.

01:38:20.020 | - So give me an example of that.

01:38:23.020 | - Yeah, this is something I learned from a guest we had

01:38:25.420 | on here, Dr. Paul Conte, he's a psychiatrist

01:38:27.740 | who, extremely skilled psychiatrist

01:38:30.100 | who wrote a book on trauma,

01:38:31.220 | which I think is the best book on trauma, frankly.

01:38:34.620 | And he talked about how the limbic system

01:38:37.460 | that engages these fight or flight responses

01:38:40.540 | has no sense of time.

01:38:42.040 | And that's why developmental scripts get reactivated,

01:38:45.720 | in particular parent-child or caretaker-child neural circuits

01:38:51.700 | that were engaged in those relationships

01:38:53.340 | when we were really young,

01:38:54.660 | get reactivated in adult relationships.

01:38:56.660 | I mean, in some sense, it doesn't make any sense,

01:38:59.620 | like why wouldn't the human mind have separate circuits

01:39:01.480 | for adult, like romantic attachment

01:39:03.300 | versus child-parent attachment?

01:39:04.640 | This is all sounding very Freudian,

01:39:05.900 | and yet when you look at the neural imaging,

01:39:08.680 | it's like you get one set of circuits

01:39:10.500 | for understanding of relationship.

01:39:12.340 | Of course, you adjust according to context

01:39:13.880 | and they get repurposed.

01:39:15.060 | You don't just set that aside, say that was for childhood.

01:39:17.780 | What he said was that the limbic system

01:39:20.540 | and the stress system, when it's activated,

01:39:24.860 | distorts our perception of time.

01:39:27.460 | And that this is what he was saying leads to the,

01:39:32.140 | what's sometimes called the repetition compulsion.

01:39:33.860 | People try and will repeat the same,

01:39:36.680 | place themselves into mildly

01:39:39.100 | to severely traumatic circumstances over and over again,

01:39:42.860 | despite the presence of a trauma.

01:39:44.940 | It doesn't have to be childhood trauma.

01:39:46.180 | You think, well, that doesn't make any sense.

01:39:47.540 | It's like the most illogical thing in the world.

01:39:49.060 | Like you get burned on the stove

01:39:50.220 | and you keep going back to the stove.

01:39:51.940 | And the idea is that these circuits,

01:39:54.120 | when they get activated,

01:39:55.100 | really engage entire cognitive scripts.

01:39:58.900 | They make it very hard to escape.

01:40:00.260 | It's like it pulls you into a story

01:40:01.740 | that is exquisitely hard to get away from.

01:40:05.660 | And so that this repetition compulsion

01:40:07.460 | is an attempt to try and rewrite the story.

01:40:09.860 | And this is a theory, not just a Freudian psychology,

01:40:12.740 | but a kind of modern trauma

01:40:13.980 | and neuroscience-informed trauma therapies.

01:40:16.580 | In any event, as you described,

01:40:19.620 | this pulling on a brick wall,

01:40:21.420 | I find it a very compelling image

01:40:24.100 | and one that makes total sense to try and drop the rope,

01:40:29.100 | as you describe it,

01:40:30.380 | because of the incredibly high energetic demand

01:40:33.280 | that pulling on that rope represents.

01:40:34.600 | As you said, it's sort of a way of diverting resources

01:40:39.180 | towards something that has no conclusion, right?

01:40:43.060 | And in dropping the rope,

01:40:44.200 | you can divert those resources towards other things.

01:40:46.940 | So I was just curious, again,

01:40:48.960 | I wasn't consulted the design phase

01:40:50.680 | and I'm assuming you weren't either,

01:40:51.680 | but I wonder what in us as scientists,

01:40:55.840 | I'm just kind of doing the Gedanken experiment here.

01:40:58.140 | I wonder what in us as human beings compels us

01:41:01.160 | to try and change what we, the unchangeable.

01:41:04.440 | - We really, really, really love control.

01:41:12.560 | And we want to control the future,

01:41:15.880 | not just because it makes us feel powerful and happy,

01:41:19.160 | but because then we can relax.

01:41:22.680 | If we know what's gonna happen next, if it's predictable,

01:41:25.800 | we're that much happier.

01:41:28.960 | We're not vigilant and looking ahead

01:41:31.120 | and being prepared for what might happen.

01:41:34.200 | So let me ask you that.

01:41:35.220 | So I have two whole chapters in the stress prescription.

01:41:38.760 | One is on uncertainty and one is on control.

01:41:42.080 | And these drive us crazy until we can somewhat master

01:41:46.920 | and understand how little control we have

01:41:50.060 | and how much uncertainty there is and will always be.

01:41:53.440 | So let me ask you this.

01:41:54.760 | If you couldn't plan your day tomorrow

01:41:56.900 | and you wanted to know with certainty what your plans were,

01:42:03.060 | what was gonna happen, how much ease and relaxation

01:42:08.060 | would you feel at the not knowing

01:42:11.420 | what's gonna happen tomorrow?

01:42:12.560 | - Very little.

01:42:14.000 | - So like on a one through 10 scale,

01:42:15.880 | how much would that drive you crazy tomorrow?

01:42:18.780 | - Tomorrow is a Saturday, so I'm a little more flexible.

01:42:21.740 | - On Monday.

01:42:22.580 | - Oh no, Mondays are mine.

01:42:26.160 | I own Monday.

01:42:27.000 | No, I'm kidding.

01:42:27.820 | I'm just kidding.

01:42:28.660 | I love Mondays.

01:42:29.500 | It's always been my favorite day of the week.

01:42:31.000 | Even when I was in school.

01:42:34.400 | Yeah, that would be a six, six out of 10.

01:42:39.380 | And that's not unusual.

01:42:42.360 | And we have a scale to measure how comfortable people are

01:42:45.520 | with certainty.

01:42:46.680 | And what we already knew was that being comfortable

01:42:51.520 | with uncertainty is a beautiful but rare resilience factor.

01:42:55.760 | People who tolerate uncertainty have much less anxiety

01:42:59.800 | and depression.

01:43:00.720 | And when stressful things happen,

01:43:02.640 | they get over it more quickly.

01:43:03.920 | So we measured this during the pandemic.

01:43:06.000 | And what we found was that intolerance of uncertainty,

01:43:10.700 | pretty strongly predicted pandemic,

01:43:13.080 | anxiety, PTSD, depression, and distress about the fires,

01:43:18.080 | the climate situation in California.

01:43:21.560 | So this is interesting.

01:43:23.580 | I mean, is this like a fixed personality

01:43:25.720 | and we're just stuck with our rigidity

01:43:28.420 | around wanting certainty?

01:43:30.100 | Or is this something that we like a muscle that we can build?

01:43:33.860 | So I think it's the latter.

01:43:36.920 | And I think there are practices we can do

01:43:39.580 | that help us feel ease with the uncertain future.

01:43:44.180 | Some of these mindful check-ins,

01:43:46.760 | noticing that we are carrying around uncertainty stress

01:43:50.600 | is one way.

01:43:52.960 | And then reframing uncertainty

01:43:55.820 | as the beauty of the mystery of life

01:43:59.880 | and the freedom that we can feel when we realize

01:44:04.340 | we don't control tomorrow.

01:44:06.460 | We just go with it and we do our best

01:44:09.980 | and what delight there is in just viewing things

01:44:13.900 | with curiosity and just seeing what emerges.

01:44:16.740 | So even just our posture,

01:44:18.060 | well, here's an exercise for dealing with uncertainty.

01:44:21.060 | Instead of like kind of that alert posture

01:44:23.700 | when we're like trying to take it all in

01:44:25.300 | and predict the next second and like just lean back

01:44:30.000 | and take some slow breaths.

01:44:33.040 | We know that's gonna help orient us

01:44:35.680 | and realize that we can actually face time in that way

01:44:38.940 | by letting it come to us and receiving what happens.

01:44:43.940 | And that's a completely different body stance

01:44:48.320 | than our usual go mode during the day.

01:44:51.200 | And that's just a way of saying,

01:44:54.000 | I am in a receptive mode

01:44:56.720 | and I'm going to just be curious about what arises.

01:45:01.000 | And so I actually learned that on a meditation retreat

01:45:03.680 | because I tend to be type A

01:45:06.160 | and I leave a retreat going from like very relaxed

01:45:08.840 | to like that leaning forward tense of like,

01:45:12.080 | where's the to-do list?

01:45:13.640 | And so carrying with me that posture of like,

01:45:16.680 | just see, let time unfold as it will

01:45:22.600 | without trying to control things.

01:45:24.240 | - It's really interesting.

01:45:26.200 | It gets right to the heart of something

01:45:27.240 | that I spent a lot of time thinking about

01:45:28.840 | in the context of stress management

01:45:31.900 | and also just general thriving,

01:45:35.160 | which is that I think that about half of the messages

01:45:39.480 | that we get related to stress and mind-body interventions

01:45:43.720 | relate to adopting this forward center of mass.

01:45:48.680 | This idea of, okay, stress can give us early dementia,

01:45:53.680 | stress can limit our sleep,

01:45:54.920 | stress can impair our cognition,

01:45:56.480 | or stress can make us more resilient.

01:45:59.520 | Stress can activate all sorts

01:46:00.920 | of positive anti-inflammatory pathways as well,

01:46:03.480 | that the mindset matters.

01:46:04.600 | And here I'm doing a terrible job of it,

01:46:07.280 | but I'm trying to scrape off and capture the top contour

01:46:11.760 | of the beautiful work of my colleague, Dr. Aaliyah Crum,

01:46:15.240 | who's been on this podcast

01:46:17.980 | and is a huge fan of her work as well.

01:46:20.580 | And that mindset matters because it shapes physiology

01:46:24.440 | for sure, her data point to that.

01:46:27.540 | So there are these kind of forward center of mass

01:46:29.720 | type approaches, and these are abundant on social media.

01:46:34.200 | Different people come to mind.

01:46:37.760 | Different archetypes really have emerged,

01:46:41.020 | millions and millions of followers

01:46:42.720 | that are the archetypes of when challenge arises,

01:46:45.920 | you smash into it, you go through it, right?

01:46:48.840 | And then on the other hand,

01:46:52.100 | there are these stress mitigation techniques,

01:46:54.180 | both mental and physical, body-oriented, mind-oriented,

01:46:57.340 | et cetera, that are more of the sort that you described

01:46:59.880 | that are, they're not being back on your heels, so to speak,

01:47:04.740 | like letting things bulldoze you,

01:47:06.800 | but are more of this receptive mode

01:47:09.420 | and have more of an awareness mode.

01:47:11.380 | - Exactly.

01:47:12.220 | - And I think that since here we are at the table

01:47:15.600 | to researchers who focus on these issues a lot,

01:47:19.620 | do you think it's fair for us to adopt

01:47:22.980 | a sort of a general framework and model

01:47:24.920 | that perhaps people can adopt for themselves if they like,

01:47:27.300 | that of course it's not an either or,

01:47:30.080 | but that having both of these in one's kit of tools

01:47:33.500 | could be valuable?

01:47:35.320 | Because one is less energetically demanding,

01:47:38.960 | but of course offers less opportunity for agency,

01:47:42.520 | or at least apparently so, that's the leaning back.

01:47:44.640 | And then the other is,

01:47:46.620 | certainly gives an opportunity for agency,

01:47:48.940 | but we know from a hundred years or more of psychology

01:47:52.460 | and psychiatric literature,

01:47:54.120 | and from the emerging literature on stress mitigation,

01:47:56.920 | that it's work.

01:47:59.860 | It's not something that is without a cost.

01:48:02.680 | It can get you far better results

01:48:05.040 | than it were you to just let stress bulldoze you,

01:48:08.100 | but that it's work.

01:48:09.360 | And so we have to emphasize that work

01:48:12.020 | in very deliberate ways.

01:48:14.080 | - Exactly, I couldn't agree more.

01:48:16.360 | It's work, when we know it's productive, we should work.

01:48:20.400 | And when we know there's a brick wall, we should let go.

01:48:23.560 | So I think of it, I like this forward mass idea.

01:48:25.900 | I think of it as you muscle it and or you release it,

01:48:30.720 | and we need both.

01:48:32.200 | And so that letting go is a really important wise,

01:48:36.760 | discerning way to mitigate stress in the right situations

01:48:41.460 | in the right time.

01:48:42.580 | And we can't muscle through everything, right?

01:48:44.960 | So another way I like to think about it

01:48:46.580 | is just the waves of life.

01:48:48.780 | Like, I mean, we are in an ocean and we have small waves,

01:48:52.480 | we have big waves.

01:48:53.400 | Some of these tidal waves are gonna hit all of us,

01:48:56.080 | the global stressors, the climate disasters that will come.

01:48:59.940 | And so when we're not in the middle of a wave,

01:49:02.940 | which is when we need to muscle it, we're between waves.

01:49:06.880 | How much control do we have to fight the tide there?

01:49:12.660 | Some.

01:49:13.940 | It's not black or white.

01:49:15.420 | We can't fight a rip tide,

01:49:18.400 | we need to go the direction of the tide,

01:49:21.820 | but we can have some control on our direction.

01:49:25.740 | And it kind of goes back to our colleague,

01:49:28.940 | Robert Sapolsky's very biologically based idea of us having,

01:49:33.380 | he's a little bit extreme with a no free will.

01:49:36.100 | We are influenced by all of these things around us,

01:49:40.380 | as well as all of our biological,

01:49:43.980 | I'll say brilliant evolutionary animal instincts.

01:49:49.980 | So given all of that,

01:49:52.200 | we have some deterministic forces on us.

01:49:57.200 | And within that, we get to ease up between the waves

01:50:02.660 | when we can, we get to change our direction.

01:50:05.560 | We're always gonna be hit by the next wave.

01:50:07.920 | And so it's this skillful surfing or navigating

01:50:12.180 | that we can do better when we realize,

01:50:16.240 | when we control things, when we can truly feel safe

01:50:19.780 | and have ease versus when we need to kind of gently paddle.

01:50:23.320 | - What do you think is the value of journaling

01:50:28.740 | and placing one's own narrative on stressful circumstances,

01:50:32.820 | especially these non-negotiable circumstances?

01:50:35.520 | Again, I'm fascinated by these

01:50:36.860 | because I think it's a category of stress

01:50:38.380 | that's not often talked about and yet is so prominent.

01:50:42.260 | So people will say, okay,

01:50:43.540 | dealing with short-term stress.

01:50:44.500 | Okay, well, I would say like use physiological size

01:50:47.420 | or raise your stress threshold.

01:50:48.680 | And we'll get back to that in a little bit

01:50:50.780 | as it relates to the work you're doing with breath work.

01:50:52.820 | But so many stressors are gonna take a year or five years.

01:50:57.740 | We don't know the uncertainty that you mentioned earlier

01:51:01.580 | or the certainty that this is gonna go on forever.

01:51:05.340 | And so for people that are listening to this

01:51:10.340 | and want to start to adopt practices,

01:51:14.520 | do you think that spending some time creating a written

01:51:20.140 | or a spoken narrative is helpful?

01:51:22.540 | I mean, we hear this, but are there any data

01:51:24.820 | that support the use of journaling as a tool?

01:51:27.820 | I seem to recall that there are a few studies out there,

01:51:30.160 | but I can't remember exactly.

01:51:32.180 | Yeah, definitely creating a coherent narrative

01:51:36.620 | is critical to our ability to make sense,

01:51:40.900 | find meaning, find resolution,

01:51:43.380 | have a social identity around our lived experience,

01:51:47.220 | what happens to us.

01:51:48.220 | So narrative is kind of everything, right?

01:51:50.660 | In stress research, it's not what happens to us,

01:51:53.100 | it's how we're interpreting it

01:51:54.180 | and how we're responding to it.

01:51:57.680 | And I've heard you say the exact same thing

01:51:59.800 | when you've talked about what is stress.

01:52:01.860 | It's really what narrative we're creating around it.

01:52:04.620 | So I think a narrative of purpose,

01:52:06.900 | fill in the blank about what's meaningful to you,

01:52:10.380 | but that is why we're different than just

01:52:13.500 | the rats that we study or the monkeys.

01:52:17.780 | They have these amazing stress responses

01:52:21.640 | that we have them too, and we can't control that,

01:52:25.620 | but we have the ability to do this projection to the future,

01:52:29.300 | to ask what is our purpose in life,

01:52:31.300 | to see and know that we are going to die

01:52:35.740 | and we can have some control over how we live

01:52:39.860 | and maybe even how we die and how we want to be remembered.

01:52:42.980 | That is so beautiful.

01:52:44.640 | That helps us rise above this being monkeys in clothes.

01:52:48.260 | - I'd love before we wrap for us to return to this question

01:52:54.180 | about breath work and the study that you're doing.

01:52:56.920 | I've known about your work for a very long time,

01:52:58.820 | admired it for a very long time.

01:53:00.100 | And one of the things that excited me

01:53:02.820 | about being able to sit down with you today

01:53:04.140 | is that our laboratories studied breath work,

01:53:07.020 | your laboratory studying breath work.

01:53:08.360 | And I know that you've been doing a study

01:53:12.100 | on the so-called Wim Hof method,

01:53:15.020 | which I'll let you familiarize our listeners to.

01:53:17.580 | Some of them are familiar with the Wim Hof method,

01:53:19.460 | others are not.

01:53:20.300 | I think a lot of people think of Wim

01:53:21.660 | in terms of his role as the ice man

01:53:23.660 | 'cause of cold exposure.

01:53:24.860 | But of course he has breath work practices

01:53:27.220 | that mirror things like Tummo breathing and other things.

01:53:31.480 | But maybe you could tell us a little bit

01:53:33.140 | about what you're doing there

01:53:34.340 | and what you're interested in discovering.

01:53:36.300 | I realize it's too early to give us the results,

01:53:38.160 | but hopefully we'll come back and do that another time.

01:53:41.060 | But what is the study?

01:53:43.280 | What motivated the study?

01:53:44.700 | And maybe I can convince you to give us a little teaser

01:53:47.440 | of what you're discovering.

01:53:48.460 | - So for many years, I mean, I think my first paper

01:53:54.980 | when I was a graduate student with Boost McEwen

01:53:57.460 | was about this idea of positive physiological stress.

01:54:01.860 | And so I've always been wanting to really understand

01:54:06.320 | what's positive stress, how can we induce it?

01:54:08.940 | And instead for too many years,

01:54:11.600 | I've been studying the dark side,

01:54:13.220 | toxic stress, trauma, caregiving,

01:54:15.820 | and how that can take a toll on the body

01:54:18.860 | without the right resilience and resources.

01:54:21.520 | And now I'm very excited about the opportunity

01:54:26.520 | to just focus on different ways that we can stress out

01:54:34.580 | our body and mind in short-term bursts

01:54:37.780 | that might promote stress resilience.

01:54:40.000 | And the body-based strategies are concrete, they're quick,

01:54:44.660 | they're also my favorite strategies.

01:54:49.060 | I probably have internalized a lot of the mindsets

01:54:51.600 | and the things that I've learned from meditation.

01:54:53.880 | And what I feel the biggest bang for the buck is,

01:54:56.800 | you know, if I'm waking up like super jittery

01:55:00.860 | with a big stress response because of X or Y,

01:55:04.080 | it is actually something like a HIIT type workout

01:55:08.480 | or taking the dogs for like a really brisk walk

01:55:10.680 | or like burning up that energy in my body

01:55:13.340 | is a very big effect size for me personally.

01:55:18.220 | Everyone has their, you know, different ways

01:55:20.580 | that they can see the biggest shifts in daily stress.

01:55:25.540 | So I've been looking for ways to create positive stress

01:55:28.500 | besides exercise, we all know about exercise.

01:55:30.820 | And I met Wim Hof at a meeting

01:55:34.380 | where we talked kind of back to back.

01:55:38.280 | And so we hadn't, I had kind of heard something about,

01:55:41.660 | you know, crazy ice man climbing up the Himalayas.

01:55:44.080 | I really hadn't.

01:55:44.920 | - I think he has 27 or more world records

01:55:48.060 | for that sort of thing, yeah.

01:55:49.880 | - So he, so I got to hear,

01:55:51.940 | I got to do the breathing with him during this conference

01:55:55.700 | and I just felt like elation afterward.

01:55:58.060 | I was like, what was that?

01:55:59.940 | And then he heard about telomeres and he was like,

01:56:02.500 | I need to know if my method is affecting cell aging.

01:56:05.420 | He loves research.

01:56:06.900 | And so we, he helped us design a study

01:56:10.740 | that we've been working on at UCSF

01:56:12.940 | with my colleagues, Wendy Mendez and Eric Prather.

01:56:16.420 | It's been many years and it's funded

01:56:18.080 | by the John W. Brick Foundation,

01:56:20.780 | which is very focused on what are non-drug ways

01:56:24.540 | that we can help mental health.

01:56:26.740 | So it was a very good fit for all of us to come together,

01:56:29.100 | design the study.

01:56:30.300 | And we have been basically comparing low arousal,

01:56:35.300 | relaxation methods, mindfulness, slow breathing

01:56:38.920 | to positive stress, exercise and Wim Hof method.

01:56:42.980 | And one of the things that we've learned in a big way

01:56:46.780 | is that regardless of whether we're creating

01:56:49.460 | deep states of ease or hermetic stress in the body,

01:56:53.520 | that short-term burst of either aerobic activity

01:56:56.340 | or the extreme breathing, people feel better, period.

01:57:01.220 | So three weeks later after this experiment

01:57:03.500 | of doing their practice every day,

01:57:05.420 | they were either randomly assigned

01:57:06.920 | to the high arousal or the low arousal,

01:57:09.380 | the level of stress, anxiety and depression

01:57:11.700 | fell dramatically in everyone.

01:57:14.460 | So many paths to changes in stress.

01:57:18.860 | There are probably very different physiological pathways

01:57:22.540 | and we can talk about that more

01:57:25.140 | when we get to really look in depth

01:57:28.900 | at our physiological data as well as our blood-based data.

01:57:32.180 | But what we do know is that the Wim Hof method

01:57:35.820 | did create daily positive emotion that increased over time,

01:57:40.660 | just like your study on sighing.

01:57:43.980 | And so even though there are different mechanisms,

01:57:46.020 | they were selectively boosting feelings of positivity.

01:57:50.620 | I love that.

01:57:51.660 | You know, that's very unusual

01:57:53.460 | to get a very selective positive effect.

01:57:56.100 | - Super interesting.

01:57:57.820 | I can't wait to hear more about the data.

01:58:00.320 | So I gather, and by the way, no is a perfectly fine answer.

01:58:04.040 | I gather that you're not gonna tell us about

01:58:05.800 | whether or not there are telomere changes yet,

01:58:08.260 | or maybe that's not possible to detect

01:58:11.780 | in this kind of short-term study.

01:58:13.480 | - So what we're going to look at,

01:58:16.220 | we don't really think that telomeres

01:58:19.340 | can change very quickly and telomerase may.

01:58:23.820 | So we're gonna look at mitochondrial enzymes, telomerase,

01:58:27.220 | and gene expression patterns.

01:58:29.120 | And as you know, we can look at many different mechanisms

01:58:32.560 | and pathways with gene expression patterns,

01:58:34.460 | especially with these new kind of assays

01:58:37.020 | where you can look at, you know,

01:58:38.940 | 7,000 different proteins like the somalogic.

01:58:43.940 | And so we'll get to see, well, what's the pattern?

01:58:46.700 | You know, did we really change patterns of acute stress

01:58:49.140 | with these different types of stress resilience interventions

01:58:52.980 | and in terms of the physiological reactivity,

01:58:56.120 | there are ways that we can

01:58:59.780 | examine both the stress response system,

01:59:04.900 | the sympathetic nervous system and the parasympathetic

01:59:07.380 | response system.

01:59:08.660 | And I will tell you that

01:59:10.860 | while we're still preparing the results,

01:59:12.820 | there were very different profiles

01:59:15.300 | from the different interventions

01:59:17.100 | that make us think that there's a lot of specificity,

01:59:20.820 | even though everyone feels better,

01:59:23.060 | the way that they got there is very different,

01:59:25.500 | the ways that we're impacting both

01:59:27.140 | the nervous system and the brain.

01:59:28.740 | - Incredible.

01:59:30.720 | And I have to say,

01:59:32.100 | when I heard that you were studying Wim Hof Method,

01:59:33.920 | I was positively delighted

01:59:37.380 | because I find that there are so few

01:59:42.380 | serious researchers in the realm of modern science

01:59:48.120 | that are both explorers and then take what they've,

01:59:51.540 | you know, gleaned from those explorations

01:59:53.940 | and then take it to the laboratory

01:59:55.380 | and put rigor on those and really try and parse mechanism

01:59:59.100 | with, of course, all the open-mindedness

02:00:01.060 | to whatever the outcome happens to be, right?

02:00:02.900 | I mean, good science involves

02:00:04.780 | not necessarily asking questions alone,

02:00:06.660 | but raising hypotheses and being comfortable

02:00:09.540 | for those hypotheses to be correct or not correct.

02:00:12.620 | And I find your work to be just so incredibly

02:00:15.700 | creative and brave in that way.

02:00:17.560 | And I love the way that you've meshed

02:00:19.360 | different aspects of your own personal journey

02:00:22.300 | into these different practices.

02:00:23.500 | I don't know what came first,

02:00:24.460 | the science of the practices, but I have my guesses,

02:00:28.100 | but I must say it's very refreshing

02:00:32.940 | and I think it's exactly what the world needs right now

02:00:37.380 | in terms of tools for mental health and physical health,

02:00:40.460 | because far too many studies try and isolate variables

02:00:45.460 | without understanding a larger context of like,

02:00:47.620 | what are the different types of stressors?

02:00:48.940 | And clearly you're addressing that.

02:00:50.340 | Or, you know, there's this thing, breath work,

02:00:52.300 | that some people might think,

02:00:53.120 | oh, you know, the Iceman Wim Hof,

02:00:54.980 | it's really esoteric and, you know, kind of crazy.

02:00:58.300 | I'm certainly not saying that, but you say,

02:01:00.620 | well, what are the critical elements from that

02:01:02.680 | that we might be able to extract

02:01:03.980 | to understand this positive eustress phenomenon?

02:01:06.500 | So I just, I want to, first of all, just say thank you

02:01:09.780 | for doing the incredibly important work you do.

02:01:12.180 | - And thank you.

02:01:13.020 | I mean, we were so delighted to see the paper you did

02:01:16.520 | with David Spiegel and to know

02:01:18.480 | that you're pursuing this path.

02:01:19.900 | And it's very reassuring with your rigor

02:01:24.820 | and your, you know, depth of background.

02:01:26.840 | I agree with you.

02:01:28.000 | These are the types of studies we need.

02:01:29.660 | Releasing the inherent power of rejuvenation

02:01:34.660 | that's in our body is, it's relatively untapped

02:01:39.260 | in these rigorous controlled studies.

02:01:41.540 | And we just can't reduce inflammation with a drug.

02:01:45.340 | We can't reduce stress with a drug.

02:01:47.120 | We desperately need to learn how to use, you know,

02:01:50.020 | the whole range of the nervous system from the acute stress

02:01:53.140 | to the deep relaxation to heal and to promote

02:01:57.460 | these healthy resilient states.

02:01:59.660 | - Couldn't agree more.

02:02:00.940 | And UCSF is very, very fortunate to have you.

02:02:04.800 | And should they ever forget that,

02:02:06.080 | please come to Stanford instead.

02:02:07.560 | Maybe we can recruit you away from UCSF.

02:02:09.720 | And I'm here, I'm being friendly to my colleagues at UCSF,

02:02:12.600 | but they better treat you right or else we're coming for you.

02:02:15.840 | And I also just want to thank you for taking the time today

02:02:19.580 | to share this information.

02:02:21.000 | Also, you've written wonderful books.

02:02:22.500 | We will provide a link to the newest one.

02:02:24.100 | And I'll, of course, cue people to that

02:02:26.520 | because it sounds like a very rich source of information

02:02:29.660 | and actionable tools that people can take

02:02:31.660 | in terms of mitigating stress.

02:02:33.460 | And I love the idea that there's this discussion

02:02:36.320 | about certainty and control to elements

02:02:39.980 | that are very prominent in my life, better or for worse.

02:02:44.260 | [laughing]

02:02:45.600 | - All of us, all of us.

02:02:46.780 | - Yeah, and so really thank you for the work you're doing.

02:02:49.420 | Thank you for taking the time to share that work through books

02:02:52.580 | and through podcasts and especially today on this one.

02:02:54.980 | I know I speak on behalf of many, many people

02:02:58.740 | and I just really want to extend my gratitude.

02:03:00.620 | - Thank you so much.

02:03:01.460 | And thank you for your podcast.

02:03:04.860 | - Well, it's a labor of love and it's days like today

02:03:07.200 | and discussions like this that make it worthwhile.

02:03:09.220 | So thank you. - Thanks, Andrew.

02:03:11.220 | - Thank you for joining me for today's discussion

02:03:13.040 | all about stress, aging and metabolism with Dr. Alyssa Apple.

02:03:17.220 | Hope you enjoyed the conversation as much as I did.

02:03:19.620 | If you'd like to learn more

02:03:20.500 | about Dr. Apple's laboratories work

02:03:22.460 | or if you'd like to learn about her books

02:03:23.940 | such as the telomere effect and the stress prescription

02:03:26.980 | please see the links in the show note captions.

02:03:29.420 | If you're learning from and or enjoying this podcast

02:03:31.780 | please subscribe to our YouTube channel.

02:03:33.580 | That's a terrific zero cost way to support us.

02:03:36.180 | In addition, please subscribe to the podcast

02:03:38.420 | on Spotify and Apple.

02:03:39.980 | And in addition on both Spotify and Apple

02:03:42.180 | you can leave us up to a five-star review.

02:03:44.500 | If you have questions for me

02:03:45.740 | or topics you'd like me to cover on the Huberman Lab Podcast

02:03:48.640 | or guests that you'd like me to consider inviting

02:03:50.500 | on the Huberman Lab Podcast

02:03:51.980 | please put that in the comments on YouTube.

02:03:54.140 | I do read all the comments.

02:03:56.180 | In addition, please check out the sponsors mentioned

02:03:58.500 | that beginning and throughout today's episode

02:04:00.340 | that's the best way to support this podcast.

02:04:02.580 | Not so much on today's episode

02:04:04.060 | but on various previous episodes

02:04:05.440 | of the Huberman Lab Podcast we discuss supplements.

02:04:08.140 | While supplements aren't necessary for everybody

02:04:10.040 | many people derive tremendous benefit from them

02:04:12.100 | for things like enhancing sleep, focus and hormone support.

02:04:15.120 | The Huberman Lab Podcast is proud to have partnered

02:04:17.020 | with Momentous Supplements.

02:04:18.400 | If you'd like to hear more about the supplements

02:04:20.140 | discussed on the Huberman Lab Podcast

02:04:21.880 | please go to livemomentous.com/huberman.

02:04:25.880 | Again, that's livemomentous.com/huberman.

02:04:28.580 | If you're not already following the Huberman Lab Podcast

02:04:30.800 | on social media, we are Huberman Lab on Instagram,

02:04:34.200 | Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

02:04:36.180 | And on all those places, I focus on material

02:04:38.860 | that somewhat overlaps with content

02:04:40.580 | from the Huberman Lab Podcast

02:04:41.780 | but often is distinct from the content

02:04:43.640 | covered on the Huberman Lab Podcast.

02:04:45.100 | So again, it's Huberman Lab on all social media channels.

02:04:48.100 | For those of you that haven't already subscribed

02:04:49.900 | to our so-called neural network newsletter,

02:04:51.960 | this is a completely zero cost monthly newsletter

02:04:55.060 | that has summaries of podcast episodes

02:04:57.260 | and so-called toolkits.

02:04:58.620 | Toolkits are lists of about a page to two pages long

02:05:02.520 | that give the critical tools for instance

02:05:04.980 | for optimizing sleep or for neuroplasticity

02:05:07.020 | or deliberate cold exposure or deliberate heat exposure,

02:05:09.340 | optimizing dopamine.

02:05:10.380 | Again, all available to you at zero cost.

02:05:12.740 | You simply go to HubermanLab.com,

02:05:14.760 | go to the Menu tab in the corner,

02:05:16.760 | scroll down to Newsletter.

02:05:18.000 | You provide us your email.

02:05:19.000 | We do not share your email with anybody.

02:05:21.160 | And in addition to that, there are samples of toolkits

02:05:24.420 | on the HubermanLab.com website, again, under Newsletter,

02:05:27.760 | and you don't even have to sign up to access those.

02:05:29.940 | But I think most people do end up signing up

02:05:31.320 | for the newsletter

02:05:32.160 | because it's rich with useful information

02:05:33.920 | and again, completely zero cost.

02:05:35.760 | Thank you again for joining me for today's discussion

02:05:37.780 | with Dr. Alyssa Epple,

02:05:39.160 | all about stress, aging, and metabolism.

02:05:41.740 | And last, but certainly not least,

02:05:43.860 | thank you for your interest in science.

02:05:45.660 | [upbeat music]

02:05:48.240 | (upbeat music)

Dr. Elissa Epel: Control Stress for Healthy Eating, Metabolism & Aging | Huberman Lab Podcast

Chapters