back to indexTools for Managing Stress & Anxiety | Huberman Lab Podcast #10
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Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast,
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where we discuss science and science-based tools
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for everyday life.
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I'm Andrew Huberman,
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and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology
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at Stanford School of Medicine.
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This podcast is separate
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from my teaching and research roles at Stanford.
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It is, however, part of my desire and effort
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to bring zero cost to consumer information
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about science and science-related tools
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to the general public.
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In keeping with that theme,
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I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast.
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Our first sponsor is Inside Tracker.
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Inside Tracker analyzes your blood and DNA
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to give you an accurate assessment
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of your health and your biological age.
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There are many things about our health
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that can only be analyzed from blood and DNA tests.
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I've been getting my blood assessed for many years now,
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and about a year ago, I switched to Inside Tracker.
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What I like about Inside Tracker
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is that you get all this information back
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about metabolic factors, endocrine factors, et cetera,
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that are really important to your health.
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But unlike a lot of blood tests
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where you just get all the numbers back
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and it tells you whether or not things are high,
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normal, or low, Inside Tracker also has this really useful
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and really easy-to-use dashboard
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that takes the information for your blood and DNA tests
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and points you toward particular behavioral, nutritional,
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and other sorts of protocols that you can use
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to get the numbers where you want them for your health.
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If you'd like to try Inside Tracker,
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you can go to insidetracker.com slash Huberman,
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and they will give you 25% off any of their programs.
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Again, their programs allow you to assess your health
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from the inside, things that you could just never assess
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from any kind of test that didn't involve blood and DNA.
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And it also has this really interesting feature
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that it can measure your inner age,
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which is based on biology.
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Your chronological age, of course,
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is very informative about your health
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and where you ought to be in terms of health metrics,
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We know people, of course,
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that are in their late 90s who are doing well.
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We know people that are in their 50s who are struggling
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or even in their 20s.
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So blood and DNA are the way to analyze your health.
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That's why I use Inside Tracker.
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So go to insidetracker.com slash Huberman
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to get 25% off any of their products
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and use Huberman at checkout.
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Our second sponsor of today's episode is Helix Sleep.
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Helix Sleep makes mattresses and pillows
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that are ideally suited to your needs
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for the best night's sleep possible.
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I switched to using a Helix mattress
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and Helix pillow this last year,
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and I'm sleeping better than I ever have before.
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The way that Helix mattresses work,
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and the reason they're different,
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is that they are tailored to your individual sleep style.
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Your sleep style can be assessed by going to their website.
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You take a brief two-minute questionnaire quiz,
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ask you questions like, do you sleep on your back
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or your side or your stomach?
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Maybe you don't know,
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maybe you move around a lot during the night.
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It also asks you questions such as,
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do you tend to run hot or wake up cold?
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Things of that sort.
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And then they tailor a particular mattress
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to your sleep needs.
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For me, I matched to the so-called DUSK mattress,
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I sleep better than ever.
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And right now, if you want to try Helix Sleep,
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you can go to helixsleep.com slash Huberman.
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And if you do that,
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you'll get $200 off your order plus two free pillows.
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They also have a great warranty.
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They have a 10-year warranty on their mattresses.
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If you don't like the mattress for any reason,
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they'll pick it up for free from your home.
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And they just make the whole thing really easy to try
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and determine whether or not it's right for you.
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So again, it's helixsleep.com slash Huberman
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to get $200 off and two free pillows on your first order.
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Some of you have asked how you can help support the podcast
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in yet other ways besides just checking out our sponsors.
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We really appreciate the question,
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and we've set up a Patreon account at
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patreon.com slash Andrew Huberman,
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which allows you to donate to the podcast
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at a variety of different levels.
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We have, for instance, the 5HTP,
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which is in honor of serotonin,
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5HTP is the name for serotonin,
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that allows you to donate $5 per month.
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We have the Circadian,
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which as many of you, of course, will know is 24-hour day.
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So you can donate $24 a month if you like.
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You can also pick any value that you want.
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We even have the Costello, which is $10 a month,
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which allows you to support the podcast
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in honor of Costello, the fact that he's 10 years old,
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that he eats 10 pounds of food a day,
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and the fact that he takes 10 one-hour naps per day
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So again, that's patreon.com slash Andrew Huberman
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if you'd like to support the podcast that way.
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Today's episode is going to be all about
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the science of emotions.
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The first month of the podcast,
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we talked about sleep and wakefulness.
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Last month, we were talking about neuroplasticity,
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the brain's ability to change in response to experience.
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And this month, we're going to talk about
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these things that we call emotions.
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We're going to decipher what they are, how they work,
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how we can control them,
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when we might not want to control them.
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There are going to be four episodes on emotions.
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And today, we're going to talk in particular
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about something that most often is called stress.
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You might be thinking, wait, stress isn't an emotion,
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but stress really lies at the heart
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of whether or not our internal experience
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is matched well or not to our external experience
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or the events that are happening to us and around us.
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And as you'll soon see, those converge or combine
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to create what we call emotions.
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Now, I want to be very clear
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that we're going to talk about the biology of emotions.
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We're going to talk a little bit about
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some psychological concepts related to emotion.
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And we are definitely going to talk about tools
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to control what we call stress
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or commonly think of as stress.
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We're also going to clean up some common myths about stress.
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For instance, that stress impairs your immune system.
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That's true in certain contexts.
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And in other contexts,
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stress actually enhances your immune system
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and makes it function better.
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There is going to be a lot of discussion
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about whether or not our internal state,
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whether or not we are alert or calm is good or bad
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depending on the circumstances.
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So where we're headed here is I'd like you to come away
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from today's episode with what I call
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an organizational logic, a framework for thinking about
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these things that typically we just call happy or sad
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or depressed or anxious.
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And I'm going to make sure that you have tools
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that are grounded in physiology and neuroscience
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that will allow you to navigate
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this otherwise complex space that we call emotions
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that will allow you to ground yourself better
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when you're feeling like life is weighing on you
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or you're kind of being pulled by the currents of life
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as well as to support other people,
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whether or not that's in a psychological practice
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if you're a practitioner or you have clients or children
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or spouses really to be able to support other people
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in your environment better.
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And the tools that I'm going to focus on today
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range from behavioral tools.
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We will talk about some of the more valuable
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supplementation tools that are out there.
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And we're going to talk a little bit
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about things like depression, PTSD,
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but we will be devoting entire episodes
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to things like depression, PTSD,
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and even attention deficit and obsessive compulsive disorder
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which believe it or not,
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although this might not surprise many of you,
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have a very strong emotional component.
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It's just not just about compulsive behaviors
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and intrusive thoughts.
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It's also about the emotional load of being in that state.
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So I promise that today we're going to clean up
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a lot of misunderstanding.
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We're going to give you a lot of tools
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and you're going to learn a lot about the biology
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of how your body and brain work together.
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Because if ever there was a topic
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that brought together the brain and body
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or mind-body relationship, it's stress and emotions.
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It's also the positive emotions.
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When we feel something, whether or not we're super happy
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or just feeling kind of pleasant,
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or we are feeling stressed, anxious, and overwhelmed,
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it isn't just in our head, it's also in our body.
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And as you may recall, the nervous system,
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which includes the brain and the eyes and the spinal cord,
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but also all the connections with the organs of the body
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includes the brain and body.
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And those organs of the body,
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your gut and your liver and your spleen,
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they're also communicating with the brain.
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So I look forward to a day in fact,
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when we no longer think about neuroscience
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as just the brain.
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And many neuroscientists now
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also think about the body of course,
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the brain controls the body,
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but the body is also having a very profound
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and concrete influence on the brain.
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I think up until recently,
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people would hear about kind of brain-body
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and always think about mindfulness.
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We're actually not going to talk that much
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about mindfulness at all today.
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Mindfulness is kind of a vague concept in fact.
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When you think about mindfulness,
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it's good to take the opposite.
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What's the opposite of mindfulness would be mindlessness.
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Well, all of a sudden we're into territory
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that isn't really easy for one person
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to describe their experience
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or to help others with their experience.
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Today, we're going to talk about objective tools
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that match the brain-body experience
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or separate the brain-body experience
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in ways that leverage your ability to lean into life better,
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to feel better, literally to just feel better
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about what you're experiencing
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and believe it or not,
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to be able to control your emotions when that's appropriate.
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This isn't about becoming robotic.
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This isn't about trying not to feel human.
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This is actually about being able to lean into life better
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as a consequence of being able to control
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some of your inner real estate,
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this nervous system that includes the brain and body
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and how that nervous system is interacting
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with the outside world.
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So it's to place you in a greater position of power.
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And so let's get started in deciphering what is stress,
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what are emotions and why did I batch stress and emotions
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into one discussion today?
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Okay, so what is stress?
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We hear all the time that stress is bad.
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We hear people saying they're really stressed out.
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You've all presumably heard the arguments or the framework
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that stress is this horrible ancient carryover
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from times in which humans were pursued by animals
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or other human predators.
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And that whenever we feel what we call stress
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or feel stressed out that it's just this unfortunate
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invasion of something that we no longer need in modern life
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that this was designed for when we were being attacked
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by bears or tigers or lions or whatever it is.
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And gosh, what an unfortunate thing.
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And we have so many creature comforts nowadays
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but we have not eliminated this stress.
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Almost as if it was like an organ or a system in our body
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that was bad for us that we're stuck with
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just because of the species that we are.
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But first of all, all species experience stress.
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And I think that it's fair to say,
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even though I wasn't there,
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that yes, in fact, throughout our evolutionary history
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we were vulnerable to animal attack
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and other human attacks on a regular basis
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up until a point where we started developing
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weapons and structures and fire and other things
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that allow us to protect ourselves better
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from those animals and invaders of various kinds.
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But it is entirely naive for us to think that
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in ancient times, ancient times being a kind of loose term
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for previous time, medieval times,
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a hundred years ago, a thousand years ago,
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10,000 years ago, of course there were infidelities.
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Partners cheated, people died.
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In fact, before the advent of phones
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which we're gonna talk about today,
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you can imagine that someone might head off on a hunt
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or to go visit a relative and never come back.
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And you would never know why.
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That would be very stressful.
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So there was psychosocial stress.
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There was a stress of losing loved ones.
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There was the stress of cold, of famine.
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There was the stress probably also of just worry.
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This idea that ancient versions of humans
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a thousand years ago, a hundred years ago didn't worry.
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I think that is entirely inconsistent
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with everything we know about the structure
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of the human brain a hundred years, a thousand years ago.
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So all the problems that we're struggling with existed
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It's just that stress at its core is a generalized system.
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It wasn't designed for tigers attacking us
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or people attacking us.
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It's a system to mobilize other systems
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in the brain and body.
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That's what stress really is.
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It's designed to be generic.
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And that's the most important thing
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that I'd like you to understand today is that the system
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that governs what we call stress is generic.
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It wasn't designed for one thing.
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And that gives it a certain advantage
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in taking over the state of our brain and body
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but it also gives you all of us an advantage
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in controlling it because it's based
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on hardwired biological mechanisms.
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And there are hardwired biological mechanisms
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meaning cells and chemicals and pathways
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and tissues that exist in you right now
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that require no neuroplasticity that allow you
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to put a brake on stress.
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And so we're gonna talk about those.
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So you have a system for stress and you have a system
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for de-stress that are baked into you.
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They were genetically encoded and you were born with them
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and you still have them now.
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So if you're alive and listening
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you have the capacity to control your stress.
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And today I'm gonna talk about ways
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that you can control your stress
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not just by doing some offline practice of meditation
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or breath work or something like that, but real time tools.
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Tools that allow you to push back on stress
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when stress hits in real time.
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This is something that my lab works actively on
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in developing and testing these tools
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and evolving these tools.
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And there are other laboratories that do this as well.
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So let's talk about the stress response.
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And by doing that, you will understand exactly
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why the tools I'm gonna give you work.
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For those of you that are saying, wait
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I just want the tools, just give me a summary.
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Trust me, if you understand mechanism
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you are going to be in a far better position
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to incorporate these tools, to teach these tools to others
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and to modify them as your life circumstances change.
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If you'd like the cheat sheet
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or you just want the one page PDF
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eventually we'll get that stuff out to people
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but it's really important
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to understand the underlying mechanism.
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Okay, so what is stress?
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Well, let's just distinguish between stressors
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which are the things that stress us out
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and stress which is the psychological
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and physiological response to stressors.
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I'm mainly gonna talk about stress
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which is your response to things.
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Let's be clear about what we already know
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which is that stressors can be psychological
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or they can be physical.
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If I put you outside on a cold day without a jacket
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for a very long time, that is stressful.
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If I have you prepare for too many exams at once
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and you can't balance it all with your sleep schedule
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and your other needs for comfort and wellbeing
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like food, rest, sleep, and social connection
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that is stressful.
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So stress, and as I mentioned before is generic
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it doesn't distinguish
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between physical and emotional stress.
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So what happens when the stress response hits?
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Let's talk about the immediate
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or what we call the acute stress response.
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We could also think of this as a short-term stress.
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So you have a collection of neurons, they have a name
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it's called the sympathetic chain ganglia
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and it has nothing to do with sympathy.
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Simpa means together.
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And there's a group of neurons
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that start right about at your neck
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and run down to about your navel a little bit lower.
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And those are called the sympathetic chain ganglia.
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You don't need to memorize that name.
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There will not be a quiz
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but it's important to know that in the middle of your body
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you have a chain of neurons
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that when something stresses us out either in our mind
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or because something enters our environment
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and we see something that stresses us out
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that we don't like heights if you're afraid of heights
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somebody you dislike walks into the room, et cetera
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that chain of neurons becomes activated
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like a bunch of dominoes falling all at once.
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When that happens, those neurons release a neuromodulator
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neurochemical that I've talked about before
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on this podcast called acetylcholine.
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They release that at various sites within the body.
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Now this is important
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because normally acetylcholine would be used
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Actually, every time we move a muscle
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pick up a cup of coffee, write with a pen
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walk down the street, it's spinal neurons
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connecting to muscle and releasing acetylcholine.
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So in the brain, it's involved in focus
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and it muscles is involved in making muscles twitch.
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But if we were stressed
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we wouldn't want all our muscles to contract at once
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because we would just be kind of like paralyzed like this
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in what tonic activation as it's called.
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We wouldn't want that.
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Something called tetanus believe it or not
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because the tetanus toxin will cause that kind of rigor
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of the entire body.
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You do not want that.
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When those neurons are activated acetylcholine is released
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but there are some other neurons
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for the aficionados out there.
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They're called the postganglionic neurons.
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Those ones respond to that acetylcholine
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and then they release epinephrine
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which is the equivalent to adrenaline.
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So we have this system where very fast
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whenever we're stressed, the core of our body
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these neurons down the middle of our body
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release these chemicals.
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And then there's adrenaline or epinephrine
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released at particular organs and acts in particular ways.
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We're going down into the weeds here.
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So just stay with me
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because it's going to make a lot of sense
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and you will appreciate having this knowledge in hand.
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That epinephrine acts in two different ways.
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Some things like the muscles of your legs and your heart
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and other things that need to be active
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when you're stressed, they have a certain kind of receptor
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which is called the beta receptor.
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And that beta receptor responds to epinephrine
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and blood vessels dilate, they get bigger
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and blood rushes in to our legs.
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The heart rate speeds up.
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Lots of things happen that get activated.
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And at the same time that epinephrine activates
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other receptors on certain tissues that we don't need
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the ones involved in digestion, reproduction
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and things of that sort that are luxuries
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for when things are going well
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not things to pay attention to when we're stressed.
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And that binds to other receptors
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that contract the blood vessels.
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So basically the stress response
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this is the key phrase here.
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The stress response A is generic.
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I said that before.
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And B it basically pushes certain systems to be activated
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and other systems to not be activated.
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So the stress response is two-pronged.
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It's a yes for certain things.
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And it's a no you may not right now for other things.
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So that's the key thing to understand
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about the stress response.
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That's why your heart speeds up.
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That's why you feel blood in certain organs
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and tissues of your body, but not in others.
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That's why your throat goes dry
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because it turns out that when you get stressed
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the salivary glands are shut down.
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There's a lot less blood flow to the neurons
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that control salivation.
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And so you're gonna start swallowing.
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You feel like your throat is getting dry.
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There are a lot of different effects.
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I'm not gonna list them all off
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but basically you are activated
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in ways that support you moving.
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So that's the third thing.
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It's first of all, it's generic.
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Second of all, the stress response activates certain things
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and shuts down other features of our body.
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And then it's a sense of agitation
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that makes you wanna move.
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And that's because fundamentally the stress response
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is just this generic thing that says, do something.
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And movement in this case can either be the bias
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to move in terms of action
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or it can be the bias to say something.
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When we are stressed, we are more likely to say something
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that probably we shouldn't say.
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We are more likely to move.
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And if you're trying to suppress movement
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you'll feel that as a tremor.
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You're gonna feel agitated
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and that's because it was designed to move you.
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So this is important because if you wanna control stress
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you need to learn how to work with that agitation.
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I'd like to give you a tool at this point
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because I think if we go any further
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with a lot more science, people are gonna begin to wonder
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if this is just gonna be a kind of standard
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university lecture about the stress response.
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I'm gonna give you more science about the stress response
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but I want to take what we now already know
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about the stress response and use that
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as a framework for thinking about how one might reduce
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or even eliminate the stress response quickly in real time
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should it arise when we don't want it.
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So we're taking the podium
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or we're sitting down at a Zoom call
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and all of a sudden we're feeling flushed.
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We're feeling like our heart is racing.
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We're feeling a little too alert.
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We're feeling a little worked up and we wanna calm down.
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As far as I am aware of the best tools
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to reduce stress quickly, so-called real-time tools
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are going to be tools that have a direct line
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to the so-called autonomic nervous system.
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The autonomic nervous system is a name given
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to the kind of general features of alertness
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or calmness in the body.
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It's typically, it means automatic
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although we do have some control over it.
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Certain what so-called levers or entry points.
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Here's what doesn't work to control stress,
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telling yourself to calm down.
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In fact, that tends to just exacerbate stress.
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Telling someone else to calm down
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also tends to exacerbate their stress.
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If you want to reduce the magnitude of the stress response,
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the best thing you can do
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is activate the other system in the body
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which is designed for calming and relaxation.
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And that system is called the parasympathetic nervous system
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because as I mentioned before,
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the neurons that control stress
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run from about your neck to your navel.
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The parasympathetic neurons, para just means near,
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exist in, they are some of the cranial nerves.
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So it's kind of neck and lower brainstem,
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kind of back of the brain and in the neck
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and in the pelvic area.
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And the parasympathetic nervous system
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is really interesting because especially the cranial nerves,
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the ones that are up in the brainstem and in the neck area,
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those have a direct line to various features of your face.
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In particular, the eyes,
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they control things like eye movements, pupil dilation,
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things of that sort,
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as well as the tongue, the facial muscles, et cetera.
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The parasympathetic nervous system,
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many people don't realize this,
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is the system by which we control the face and the eyes
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and to some extent our airway, the trachea.
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And it's these neurons that reside within the pelvic area.
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Now, the neurons within the pelvic area
link |
are involved in control of the genitals,
link |
the bladder and the rectum.
link |
And those don't have a direct line.
link |
You don't have a direct way to control those.
link |
It actually has to go from brain to spinal cord
link |
and then out to those organs.
link |
Whereas the parasympathetic nervous system
link |
has certain entry points or what I'll call levers, right,
link |
that will allow you to push back on the stress response
link |
in real time and diminish it
link |
and feel more relaxed really quickly.
link |
So I'm going to teach you the first tool now
link |
so I don't overwhelm you with all this academic knowledge
link |
without giving you something useful.
link |
And the tool that, at least to my knowledge,
link |
is the fastest and most thoroughly grounded
link |
in physiology and neuroscience
link |
for calming down in a self-directed way
link |
is what's called the physiological PSI, S-I-G-H.
link |
Now, some of you might have heard me talk about this
link |
on previous podcasts, but I'm going to explain this
link |
in the context of how respiration in general
link |
is used to calm us down.
link |
And it turns out you're all doing this all the time,
link |
but you are doing it involuntarily.
link |
And when you stress, you tend to forget
link |
that you can also activate these systems voluntarily.
link |
This is an extremely powerful set of techniques
link |
that we know from scientific studies
link |
that are being done in my lab,
link |
Jack Feldman's lab at UCLA, and others now that are very,
link |
very useful for reducing your stress response in real time.
link |
And here's how they work.
link |
These days, there seems to be a lot of interest
link |
Breath work typically is when you go and you sit down
link |
or you lie down and you deliberately breathe
link |
in a particular way for a series of minutes
link |
in order to shift your physiology, access some states.
link |
And it does have some utility that we're going to talk about.
link |
That is not what I'm talking about now.
link |
What I'm talking about when I refer to physiological size
link |
is the very real medical school textbook relationship
link |
between the brain, the body,
link |
and the body as it relates to the breathing apparatus,
link |
meaning the diaphragm and lungs, and the heart.
link |
Let's take the hallmark of the stress response.
link |
The heart starts beating faster.
link |
Blood is shuttled to the big muscles of the body
link |
to move you away from whatever it is the stressor is
link |
or just make you feel like you need to move
link |
or talk, your face goes flushed, et cetera.
link |
Heart rate, many of us feel is involuntary,
link |
just kind of functions whether or not we're moving fast
link |
If you think about it, it's not really purely autonomic
link |
because you can speed up your heart rate by running
link |
or you can slow it down by slowing down by your run.
link |
You can move to a walk or lie down,
link |
but that's indirect control.
link |
There is, however, a way in which you can breathe
link |
that directly controls your heart rate
link |
through the interactions between the sympathetic
link |
and the parasympathetic nervous system.
link |
Here's how it works.
link |
When you inhale, so whether or not it's through the nose
link |
or through the mouth, this skeletal muscle
link |
that's inside your body called the diaphragm, it moves down.
link |
And that's because the lungs expand,
link |
the diaphragm moves down.
link |
Your heart actually gets a little bit bigger
link |
in that expanded space.
link |
There's more space for the heart.
link |
So I'm not talking about your emotional heart
link |
getting bigger, I'm talking about your actual
link |
physical heart getting a little bit bigger.
link |
And as a consequence, whatever blood is in there
link |
is now at a lower volume or moving a little bit more slowly
link |
in that larger volume than it was before you inhaled.
link |
Okay, so more space, heart gets bigger,
link |
blood moves more slowly, and there's a little group
link |
of neurons called the sinoatrial node in the heart
link |
that registers, believe it or not, those neurons
link |
pay attention to the rate of blood flow through the heart
link |
and send a signal up to the brain
link |
that blood is moving more slowly through the heart.
link |
The brain then sends a signal back to the heart
link |
to speed the heart up.
link |
So what this means is if you want your heart to beat faster,
link |
inhale longer, inhale more vigorously than your exhales.
link |
Now, there are a variety of ways that one could do that,
link |
but it doesn't matter if it's through the nose
link |
or through the mouth.
link |
If your inhales are longer than your exhales,
link |
you're speeding up your heart.
link |
If your inhales are more vigorous,
link |
so even if your inhales are shorter than your exhales,
link |
you are speeding up your heart rate.
link |
Now, the opposite is also true.
link |
If you want to slow your heart rate down,
link |
so stress response hits,
link |
you want to slow your heart rate down,
link |
what you want to do is again capitalize on this relationship
link |
between the body, meaning the diaphragm
link |
in the heart and the brain.
link |
Here's how it works.
link |
When you exhale, the diaphragm moves up,
link |
which makes the heart a little bit smaller.
link |
It actually gets a little more compact.
link |
Blood flows more quickly through that compact space,
link |
sort of like it's just a pipe getting smaller.
link |
The sinoatrial node registers
link |
that blood is going more quickly,
link |
sends a signal up to the brain,
link |
and the parasympathetic nervous system,
link |
some neurons in your brainstem,
link |
send a signal back to the heart to slow the heart down.
link |
So if you want to calm down quickly,
link |
you need to make your exhales longer
link |
and or more vigorous than your inhales.
link |
Now, the reason this is so attractive
link |
as a tool for controlling stress
link |
is that it works in real time.
link |
This doesn't involve a practice that you have to go
link |
and sit there and do anything separate from life.
link |
And we are going to get to emotion.
link |
Emotions and stress happen in real time.
link |
And so while it's wonderful to have a breathwork practice
link |
or to have the opportunity to get a massage
link |
or sit in a sauna or do whatever it is that you do
link |
in order to set your stress controls
link |
in the right direction,
link |
having tools that you can reach to in real time
link |
that require no learning,
link |
I mean, I had to teach it to you, you had to learn that,
link |
but it doesn't require any plasticity
link |
to activate these pathways.
link |
So if you're feeling stressed,
link |
you still need to inhale, of course,
link |
but you need to lengthen your exhales.
link |
Now, there's a tool that capitalizes on this
link |
in a kind of unique way, a kind of a twist,
link |
which is the physiological psi.
link |
The physiological psi was discovered in the 30s.
link |
It's now been explored at the neurobiological level
link |
and mechanistically in far more detail
link |
by Jack Feldman's lab at UCLA,
link |
also Mark Krasnow's lab at Stanford.
link |
And the physiological psi is something
link |
that humans and animals do
link |
anytime they are about to fall asleep.
link |
You also do it throughout sleep from time to time
link |
when carbon dioxide, which we'll talk about in a moment,
link |
builds up too much in your system.
link |
And the physiological psi is something
link |
that people naturally start doing
link |
when they've been crying
link |
and they're trying to recover some air or calm down,
link |
when they've been sobbing very hard,
link |
or when they are in claustrophobic environments.
link |
However, the amazing thing about this thing
link |
that we call the diaphragm, the skeletal muscle,
link |
is that it's an internal organ
link |
that you can control voluntarily,
link |
unlike your spleen or your heart or your pancreas,
link |
where you can't just say,
link |
oh, I want to make my pancreas
link |
turn out a little more insulin right now.
link |
I'm just going to do that with my mind directly.
link |
You can't do that.
link |
You could do that by smelling
link |
a really good donut or something,
link |
but you can't just do it directly.
link |
You can move your diaphragm intentionally, right?
link |
You can do it anytime you want,
link |
and it'll run in the background
link |
if you're not thinking about it.
link |
So this incredible pathway that goes from brain to diaphragm
link |
through what's called the phrenic nerve,
link |
P-H-R-E-N-I-C, phrenic.
link |
The phrenic nerve innervates the diaphragm.
link |
You can control anytime you want.
link |
You can double up your inhales or triple up your inhales.
link |
You can exhale more than your inhales,
link |
whatever you want to do.
link |
It's such an incredible organ.
link |
And the physiological side
link |
is something that we do spontaneously,
link |
but when you're feeling stressed,
link |
you can do a double inhale,
link |
nnnn, nnnn, nnnn, nnnn, nnnn, nnnn, nnnn, nnnn, nnnn,
link |
Now, I just told you a minute ago
link |
that if you inhale more than you exhale,
link |
you're going to speed the heart rate up,
link |
which would promote more stress and activation.
link |
Now I'm telling you to do a double inhale exhale
link |
in order to calm down.
link |
And the reason is the double inhale exhale,
link |
which is the physiological side,
link |
takes advantage of the fact that when we do a double inhale,
link |
even if the second inhale is sneaking in
link |
just a tiny bit more air,
link |
cause it's kind of hard to get too deep inhales back to back
link |
you do big, deep inhale and then another little one
link |
The little sacs in your lungs, the avioli of the lungs,
link |
your lungs aren't just two big bags,
link |
but you've got millions of little sacs
link |
throughout the lungs that actually make the surface area
link |
of your lungs as big as a tennis court.
link |
It's amazing if we were to just spread that out.
link |
Those tend to collapse as we get stressed
link |
and carbon dioxide builds up in our bloodstream.
link |
And that's one of the reasons we feel agitated as well.
link |
So, and it makes us very jittery.
link |
I mean, there's some other effects of carbon dioxide
link |
I don't want to get into,
link |
but when you do the double inhale exhale,
link |
the double inhale reinflates those little sacs of the lungs.
link |
And then when you do the long exhale,
link |
that long exhale is now much more effective
link |
at ridding your body and bloodstream of carbon dioxide,
link |
which relaxes you very quickly.
link |
My lab in collaboration with David Spiegel's lab,
link |
David's the associate chair of psychiatry at Stanford
link |
are doing a study right now,
link |
exploring how physiological size
link |
and other patterns of breathing done deliberately
link |
can modulate the stress response
link |
and other things related to emotionality.
link |
Those work are ongoing.
link |
I want to be clear, those studies aren't done,
link |
but it's very clear from work in our labs,
link |
from working with Jack Feldman's lab and others,
link |
that the physiological sigh is the fastest hardwired way
link |
for us to eliminate this stressful response in our body
link |
quickly in real time.
link |
And so I'm excited to give you this tool
link |
because I think most people have heard
link |
that mindfulness and meditation is good,
link |
exercise is good for us,
link |
we all need to be getting enough sleep, et cetera,
link |
And when you find yourself in a position
link |
where you are more alert and activated
link |
than you would like to be,
link |
regardless of whether or not the stressor
link |
is relationship-based or it's financial
link |
or it's physical or anything like that,
link |
you can look to the physiological side
link |
because it bypasses a very important feature
link |
of how we function,
link |
which is that it's very hard to control the mind
link |
especially when we are in heightened states of activation.
link |
When we are very alert or very sleepy,
link |
it is very hard to use these so-called top-down mechanisms
link |
of intention and gratitude and all these things
link |
that are really powerful tools
link |
when we are not super activated and stressed
link |
or not super tired.
link |
But when we are anywhere in the range
link |
of very alert and stressed to very sleepy,
link |
physiological sides are a powerful way
link |
of bringing our level of so-called autonomic activation,
link |
which just means our level of alertness down.
link |
And so whether or not it's in line at the bank
link |
or whether or not you're wearing a mask nowadays
link |
or you're not, whatever the conditions may be
link |
where you're at and your needs,
link |
when you're feeling stressed,
link |
the physiological side done just one to three times,
link |
so it'd be double inhale, exhale,
link |
double inhale, exhale, maybe just two times,
link |
will bring down your level of stress very, very fast.
link |
And as far as I know,
link |
it's the fastest way to accomplish that.
link |
An important note about the physiological side
link |
or exhale emphasized breathing
link |
for lowering the stress response, many people worry
link |
that their heart rate does not come down fast enough.
link |
I want to tell you,
link |
you do not want your heart rate to reduce very fast.
link |
There's actually something called the vasovagal response
link |
where people will stand up
link |
or they'll get up in the middle of the night
link |
to use the bathroom and then all of a sudden they'll collapse,
link |
That's because the heart rate was reduced too much.
link |
Some people will see blood
link |
or they'll see something really troubling and stressful
link |
and they'll pass out.
link |
That's an over-activation
link |
or an acceleration of the calming response.
link |
They're not so stressed
link |
that they kind of fall off the cliff of stress.
link |
They get so stressed that the rebound mechanism
link |
for calming themselves down goes too high, too fast.
link |
They calm down too fast and they collapse and faint.
link |
that if you're going to use the physiological side
link |
or exhale emphasize breathing to calm down,
link |
that your heart rate will take about 20 to 30 seconds
link |
to come down to baseline.
link |
And you may need to repeat
link |
the physiological side a few times.
link |
So that's an important note
link |
about the use of breathing to control levels of stress.
link |
The other thing is that
link |
when you decide to look to the body to control the mind,
link |
it does something else that's very powerful.
link |
When you are stressed in your mind and body,
link |
so you're feeling really agitated, activated and worried
link |
and you use a tool like the physiological sigh
link |
or exhale emphasize breathing,
link |
you will notice that then your brain and your mind
link |
becomes more available
link |
for controlling the stress response and reacting to it,
link |
which is great because the sweet spot in life is to be,
link |
provided you're not trying to sleep,
link |
is to be alert and calm.
link |
And so that's the idea is to be alert and calm
link |
and to bring you back into that sort of plane of alertness.
link |
For those of you that have trouble sleeping
link |
or just relaxing through the day,
link |
the physiological side can be repeated
link |
for 10, 15 cycles if you like.
link |
Some people find that it actually puts them to sleep.
link |
So if they lie down and they're reading
link |
and they do too many of these,
link |
that actually can put them to sleep.
link |
And what you'll find is that most breath work protocols,
link |
the kind of stuff that's done away from real life
link |
that you set aside time
link |
and decide to do quote unquote breath work,
link |
most of that works such that if you're doing inhales
link |
that are longer and more vigorous than exhales,
link |
it tends to be activating and alert you.
link |
And if you're doing exhales that are longer
link |
or more vigorous than the inhales,
link |
it tends to put you to sleep.
link |
And many of the protocols that are out there
link |
from laboratories and that populate the internet
link |
and wellness sites and whatnot,
link |
if it's exhale-emphasized breathing,
link |
oftentimes has been used as a tool
link |
for trying to teach people to fall asleep.
link |
Physiological side is a little different.
link |
It's designed to be used in real time.
link |
Just think of it as just kind of in your kit
link |
of things that you can do as life happens
link |
and as you need to react to life.
link |
A note about nasal versus mouth breathing.
link |
There's a plethora of information out there now
link |
because of James Nestor's book,
link |
Breath, the New Science of a Lost Art,
link |
which came out this last year, excellent book,
link |
as well as Jaws, which is from Sandra Kahn,
link |
Paul Ehrlich with a forward by Jared Diamond
link |
and Robert Sapolsky.
link |
So a collection of people from Stanford,
link |
Jared Diamond's not at Stanford, but the rest are.
link |
And some heavy hitters on that book,
link |
which is about the benefits of nasal breathing.
link |
And in many cases, nasal breathing is more advantageous
link |
than mouth breathing for all sorts of things,
link |
cosmetic features of the face, especially in kids,
link |
warding off infection, et cetera.
link |
With the physiological side, the best way to do it
link |
would be double inhale through the nose,
link |
exhale through the mouth.
link |
But if you can't and you can only do that
link |
through your mouth, just do it through your mouth.
link |
If you want to do all through your nose,
link |
do it through your nose.
link |
This anchors back to some underlying neurology
link |
So for those of you that want to know,
link |
you have two breathing centers,
link |
one that's involved in rhythmic breathing
link |
for inhales followed by exhales,
link |
followed by inhales, followed by exhales.
link |
The so-called pre-Botzinger nucleus
link |
named after a bottle of wine
link |
and discovered by Jack Feldman at UCLA.
link |
And a nearby nucleus called the parafacial nucleus
link |
also discovered by Jack Feldman at UCLA.
link |
And the parafacial nucleus is involved
link |
in anytime you double up the inhales
link |
or double up the exhales.
link |
It was designed so that you could breathe
link |
while you're speaking, because you can't always go
link |
inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale when you're speaking.
link |
So I tell you this not to overwhelm you with knowledge,
link |
but just know that when you double up your inhales
link |
or you double up your exhales,
link |
you are activating this parafacial nucleus
link |
and it has other cool effects
link |
because it's located near the neurons
link |
that control the face.
link |
It also has a tendency to relax the jaw.
link |
There's some interplay between the neurons
link |
that control the speaking stuff
link |
and the stuff for your tongue.
link |
So all of a sudden, when we do this physiological side,
link |
we tap into neural circuitry
link |
that allows us to speak more clearly,
link |
to control the muscles of the face and jaw.
link |
Maybe that means not saying certain things
link |
when we're stressed and just generally to relax.
link |
And so this brings us back to the neuroscience
link |
of this parasympathetic nervous system,
link |
this calming system that's been genetically encoded into us
link |
that we all have regardless of who our parents are,
link |
which is that the neurons that control all this stuff,
link |
the face, the eyes, et cetera, are all working together.
link |
And that's why when we get stressed,
link |
it's hard for us to speak or we tend to jitter
link |
and these kinds of things,
link |
just like all the neurons that cause stress
link |
in the center of the spinal cord are working together
link |
to get our body activated.
link |
Okay, a lot of science today.
link |
You've now got the physiological sigh as a tool.
link |
You know that exhale-emphasized breathing
link |
will slow your heart down
link |
and inhale-emphasized breathing will speed your heart up.
link |
So let's think about something now.
link |
Let's think about stress
link |
from not whether or not it's acute or chronic,
link |
whether or not it's good for us or bad for us,
link |
but on three different timescales,
link |
because then we can arrive at what this is all about
link |
as it relates to emotions,
link |
because trust me, this has everything to do with emotions
link |
and whether or not you're functioning well emotionally
link |
or you're not functioning well emotionally,
link |
whether or not you're coping or not coping.
link |
So those are typically psychological terms
link |
and psychological discussions.
link |
We are entering this through the portal of physiology,
link |
the stuff of medical textbooks,
link |
and we will arrive at the psychology soon,
link |
but I really want you to understand the difference
link |
between the three kinds of stress
link |
on three different timescales,
link |
short-term, medium-term, and long-term,
link |
and what it's good for and what it's bad for.
link |
I think we've all heard that stress is bad for us.
link |
We've seen these pictures intended to frighten us,
link |
and indeed they are frightening.
link |
You see the nice really plump brain on the left.
link |
It says healthy or control,
link |
and then you see the brain that says stressed above it
link |
on the right, and it's like withered,
link |
or we see that the hippocampus,
link |
an area involved in memory is smaller,
link |
people that are stressed.
link |
We see that the Alzheimer's brain is made worse by stress,
link |
that people who have a predisposition of schizophrenia
link |
when they get stressed,
link |
higher incidence of schizophrenic episodes.
link |
You hear that addicts will relapse when they're stressed.
link |
I mean, okay, we get it, and it's very important,
link |
but I think we've all heard now so many times
link |
that stress is bad, but in that conversation,
link |
unfortunately it's eclipsed some of the really positive
link |
things that stress does for us in the short term.
link |
So stress can be short-term, medium-term, or long-term.
link |
Long-term stress is indeed bad
link |
for all the reasons I just mentioned and many others,
link |
but what's never actually been discussed
link |
is what stress is so terrific for,
link |
positive for in the short term,
link |
and I think we tend to overlook the important question,
link |
which is what is short-term and what is long-term?
link |
No one ever bothers to tell us what is chronic,
link |
what is acute, right?
link |
Is it five minutes?
link |
Is it for the duration of final exams
link |
or is it for the duration of a senior thesis in college?
link |
No one actually draws boundaries around this stuff
link |
or even general guidelines,
link |
and so it's become a bit of a mess, frankly,
link |
to try and decipher this whole space around stress,
link |
so I'm going to try and clean some of this up for you
link |
based on what we know from the scientific data.
link |
First of all, acute stress.
link |
When the stress response hits,
link |
that is good for your immune system.
link |
I know that might be a tough pill to swallow,
link |
but it's absolutely true.
link |
In fact, stress often comes in the form
link |
of bacterial or viral infection,
link |
and the stress response is in part organized
link |
to combat bacterial and viral infection.
link |
There are pathways from the same brain centers
link |
that activate these neurons in your spinal cord
link |
to make you feel like you want to move.
link |
There are other neurons in your brain
link |
to activate things like your spleen,
link |
which will deploy killer cells to go out and scavenge
link |
for incoming bacteria and viruses
link |
and try and eat them up and kill them,
link |
so short-term stress and the release of adrenaline
link |
in particular or epinephrine,
link |
same thing, adrenaline epinephrine,
link |
is good for combating infection,
link |
and this to me is just not discussed enough,
link |
so that's why I'm discussing it here,
link |
and it relates to a particular tool
link |
that many of you ask about,
link |
but I don't often get the opportunity to talk about
link |
in such an appropriate context.
link |
It's not that it's ever inappropriate to talk about,
link |
but what I'm about to talk about now
link |
is the use of, again, respiration, breathing,
link |
to somewhat artificially activate the stress response,
link |
and that will accomplish two things, okay?
link |
I'll return to medium and long-term stress,
link |
but I want to say short-term stress is good
link |
because the dilation of the pupils,
link |
the changes in the optics of the eyes,
link |
the quickening of the heart rate,
link |
the sharpening of your cognition,
link |
and in fact, that short-term stress
link |
brings certain elements of the brain online
link |
that allow you to focus.
link |
Now, it narrows your focus.
link |
You're not good at seeing the so-called big picture,
link |
but it narrows your focus.
link |
It allows you to do these,
link |
what I call duration path outcome types of analysis.
link |
It allows you to evaluate your environment,
link |
evaluate what you need to do.
link |
It primes your whole system for better cognition.
link |
It primes your immune system to combat infection,
link |
and that all makes sense when you think about the fact
link |
that famine, thirst, bacterial infections,
link |
viral infections, invaders,
link |
all of this stuff liberates a response in the body
link |
that's designed to get you to fight back
link |
against whatever stressor that happens to be,
link |
psychological, physical, bacterial, viral.
link |
Again, the stress response is generic.
link |
The tool takes advantage of the fact
link |
that when adrenaline is released in the body
link |
from the adrenals,
link |
it has the effect of also liberating
link |
a lot of these killer cells from the immune organs,
link |
in particular from the spleen, but from elsewhere as well,
link |
and interactions with the lymphatic system
link |
that combat infection.
link |
The way this works in the real world
link |
is best captured by a study that can be mapped back
link |
to so-called Wim Hof breathing.
link |
Now, Wim Hof breathing is so named after
link |
the so-called Iceman Wim Hof.
link |
Wim, of course, being this Dutch,
link |
I think he is self-titled Daredevil,
link |
and indeed he has many, many Guinness Book of World Records
link |
for things like swimming under icebergs,
link |
and going up Kilimanjaro in his shorts,
link |
and crossing the desert without water, et cetera,
link |
things that are quite dangerous
link |
if you don't know what you're doing.
link |
And Wim obviously survived, or I'm telling you he survived.
link |
But there are two components to a sort of breathing protocol
link |
that he developed that was based also
link |
on what's called TUMO breathing, T-U-M-M-O.
link |
So before Wim, there was TUMO breathing.
link |
And many people call this now super oxygenation breathing,
link |
although the breath work aficionados will probably say,
link |
well, it's not super oxygenation
link |
because you're also blowing off a lot of carbon dioxide.
link |
What I'm talking about here,
link |
regardless of whether or not it's called Wim Hof, TUMO,
link |
or super oxygenation is rapid deliberate breathing.
link |
So it's deliberate hyperventilation.
link |
Why would somebody want to do this?
link |
Well, deliberate hyperventilation done for maybe 25 cycles.
link |
So inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale.
link |
Typically it's done in through the nose,
link |
out through the mouth,
link |
although sometimes it's just through the mouth.
link |
If you do that for 15 breaths, 20 breaths, 25 breaths,
link |
you will feel very alert.
link |
People who have anxiety will feel anxious.
link |
They might even have an anxiety attack.
link |
However, we need to ask why that kind of breathing
link |
And it's because that pattern of breathing,
link |
rapid movements of the diaphragm
link |
will liberate adrenaline from the adrenals.
link |
So it's the release of adrenaline.
link |
I mentioned that Wim is also called the Iceman.
link |
Well, that's because he actually discovered
link |
this pattern of breathing somewhat.
link |
And again, it maps back to Tummo breathing
link |
by going into cold water.
link |
When you go into cold water, that too is a stressor
link |
and you liberate adrenaline in response to cold water.
link |
So if you get into an ice bath or a cold shower,
link |
you will immediately release adrenaline from your adrenals.
link |
Now, there are all sorts of things related to this
link |
about psychological control and stress thresholds
link |
that we'll talk about.
link |
But I really want people to understand
link |
that when adrenaline is released in the body,
link |
you are in a better position to combat infections.
link |
And so whether or not you breathe very quickly
link |
in these cycles of 25 breaths,
link |
and regardless of what you call it, doesn't matter,
link |
adrenaline is released.
link |
If you take a cold shower, adrenaline is released.
link |
If you go into an ice bath deliberately,
link |
and even if you do it non-deliberately,
link |
adrenaline is released.
link |
You are mimicking the stress response.
link |
And that adrenaline serves to suppress or combat
link |
incoming infections.
link |
And this was beautifully shown in a study
link |
that was published in a very fine journal,
link |
The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
link |
It's literally called
link |
Proceedings of the National Academy of USA
link |
to distinguish it from other proceedings
link |
of other national academies in other countries.
link |
The way the experiment went is that people were injected
link |
with endotoxin, or in some cases,
link |
they were injected with a bacterial wall
link |
that mimics infection.
link |
It gives you a fever.
link |
It makes you feel nauseous.
link |
It makes you feel sick.
link |
It is not pleasant.
link |
Half of the people did a particular pattern of breathing
link |
that looked very much like the pattern of breathing
link |
I described a moment ago of doing 25 deep inhales
link |
and exhales, followed by an exhale holding their breath,
link |
then repeating, 25 inhales, exhales holding their breath.
link |
So this would look something like this,
link |
or if you're listening, it sounds like,
link |
25, 30 times, you'll start feeling heated up.
link |
You'll start feeling the adrenaline response.
link |
You're liberating adrenaline in your body.
link |
Then exhale, hold your breath for 15 seconds,
link |
And then typically after doing three or four rounds of that,
link |
they would inhale very deeply and hold their breath.
link |
Now I want to emphasize,
link |
never, ever, ever do this anywhere near water.
link |
People have passed out so-called shallow water breath out.
link |
Don't do it in the bathtub, do it in the hot tub.
link |
Don't do it before swimming.
link |
Please don't do it anywhere near water.
link |
Please don't do it at all
link |
unless you get clearance to do it from your doctor,
link |
because there are some pulmonary effects and whatnot.
link |
And the breath holds should definitely not be done
link |
by anyone that has glaucoma or pressure concerns
link |
But these repeated cycles of breathing
link |
that liberate adrenaline allowed the group
link |
that did that protocol to essentially experience
link |
zero symptoms from the injection of this E. coli,
link |
which is remarkable.
link |
They had much reduced or no symptoms.
link |
They didn't feel feverish.
link |
They didn't feel sick.
link |
They weren't vomiting, no diarrhea, which is remarkable,
link |
but makes total sense when you think about the fact
link |
that the short-term stress response
link |
that what's typically called the acute stress response
link |
is designed to combat all stressors.
link |
In fact, were you to cut yourself very deeply
link |
while out on a hike in the woods.
link |
The other thing that would happen
link |
is that there would be a rapid inflammation response.
link |
And we always hear inflammation is bad.
link |
Inflammation gives us Alzheimer's.
link |
Inflammation is the worst thing.
link |
But the swelling is associated,
link |
the inflammation is associated with the recruitment
link |
of things like macrophages or microglia,
link |
if it's a neural tissue, cells in our brain and body
link |
whose job is to act like little ambulances
link |
and rush to that site and clean it up.
link |
And indeed the inflammation response looks horrible.
link |
It sounds horrible, but it's a great thing in the short term
link |
you want to have that tissue marked as in trouble
link |
and you want the body and brain to react to it.
link |
So if you're getting peaks in stress from time to time
link |
throughout your day or throughout your week,
link |
you are in a better position to combat infection.
link |
You are in a better position to heal your wounds,
link |
Many great things happen in the stress response.
link |
Now, of course the stress response
link |
isn't always super intense.
link |
Sometimes it's milder.
link |
Sometimes it allows us to just focus on something
link |
as we have a deadline that can feel stressful.
link |
But that's one of the reasons
link |
you procrastinators out there,
link |
people always ask me what can be done for procrastination?
link |
What can be done for procrastination
link |
is you can understand what's happening,
link |
which is that you are self-imposing stress
link |
because stress acts like a drug.
link |
It is a powerful nootropic.
link |
I get asked about nootropics.
link |
The most powerful nootropic or smart drug is stress.
link |
It's the concern of failure.
link |
It's the desire to do well.
link |
It's the impending deadline.
link |
It's the, oh my gosh, I have to do this thing now
link |
or I'm going to fail.
link |
That is the best nootropic you will ever find.
link |
That combined with a good night's sleep,
link |
which we'll talk about,
link |
but we spend a whole month on sleep
link |
so I don't want to backtrack too much, okay?
link |
So short-term stress, great.
link |
The key is to be able to turn the stress response off
link |
when you're done, when you don't want that.
link |
In fact, let's just really tamp down the relationship
link |
between the short-term or acute stress response
link |
Many of us are familiar with the experience
link |
of work, work, work, work, work,
link |
or taking care of a loved one,
link |
or stress, stress, stress, stress,
link |
then we finally relax.
link |
Maybe we even go on vacation.
link |
Like, oh, now I'm finally going to get the break
link |
and then we get sick.
link |
And that's because the adrenaline response crashed
link |
and your immune system crashed with it.
link |
So please understand this.
link |
Now, many of you might say, well, how long?
link |
Is it three hours?
link |
A lot of you out there that really like specificity,
link |
it will vary for everybody.
link |
I would just kind of use a rule of thumb.
link |
When you are no longer able to achieve good sleep,
link |
what good sleep means to you,
link |
and please see the episodes on sleep
link |
if you want more about tools to sleep.
link |
When you are no longer able to achieve good sleep,
link |
you are now moving from acute stress to chronic stress.
link |
You need to be able to turn the stress response off.
link |
If I have one wish,
link |
well, I have many wishes for this lifetime,
link |
but if I have one wish today that I hope will permeate
link |
and spread out there is this idea that we need
link |
from a young age, but even as adults and forever,
link |
we need to learn how to turn off our stress response.
link |
Physiological sigh is one.
link |
If we're going to activate our stress response intentionally
link |
by ice baths, cold showers,
link |
cyclic hyperoxygenated breathing,
link |
AKA Tummo breathing or Wim Hof breathing,
link |
we also need to learn how to press the brake, okay?
link |
So let's think about the stress system.
link |
It knows how to activate itself.
link |
Now we're talking about a way of deliberately activating
link |
your stress system in order to combat infection.
link |
I do this from time to time.
link |
I might feel a tickle in my throat
link |
or like I'm getting kind of run down.
link |
I will do this kind of breathing, I do.
link |
I will take 25 or 30 breaths, exhale, hold my breath.
link |
25, 30 breaths again, exhale,
link |
hold my breath for about 15 seconds.
link |
25, 30 breaths again, exhale,
link |
hold my breath for 25 or 30 seconds,
link |
then a big inhale and I hold my breath
link |
until I feel the impulse to breathe.
link |
Again, I feel it safe for me.
link |
I've run it by my doctor, so it's fine.
link |
You should not do this unless it's right for you,
link |
Some people like the ice bath.
link |
I rarely do the ice bath.
link |
Some people like cold showers.
link |
I like hot showers.
link |
So I take hot showers, but I do this kind of breathing.
link |
Again, they are all having more or less the same effect
link |
of increasing adrenaline
link |
which allows you to combat the infection
link |
because you're activating the immune response.
link |
Okay, so now let's talk about medium-term stress.
link |
Medium-term stress is going to be stress
link |
that lasts anywhere from several days to several weeks.
link |
We might think of that as long-term stress.
link |
There are times in life
link |
where we are just dealing with a lot.
link |
This particular quarter, I happen to be directing a course.
link |
I'm doing the lab, I'm doing this.
link |
I enjoy all these things immensely,
link |
but I'm kind of near my threshold.
link |
I'm near the point where any additional thing,
link |
like I couldn't log onto a website the other day
link |
and it felt like the most intense thing in the world
link |
at that moment and I kind of laughed at myself.
link |
Fortunately, I caught it,
link |
but that typically wouldn't be my response
link |
under conditions where I wasn't pushed to threshold.
link |
What is this medium-term stress?
link |
What is stress threshold?
link |
Well, stress threshold is actually our ability
link |
to cognitively regulate what's going on in our body.
link |
So we've all hear so much about
link |
we need to unify our mind and body.
link |
We need to be at one with our mind and body
link |
or now I realize I'm kind of poking fun
link |
at some of the new agey language.
link |
But the reason I poke fun is not because
link |
I don't think it has value, but it has no specificity.
link |
What does that mean?
link |
I mean, I think I'm always in my body.
link |
I've never fortunately looked across the room
link |
and seen my arm over there or my leg over there.
link |
I'm connected to my body.
link |
There actually is a syndrome
link |
where people feel disconnected from their limbs.
link |
This is a real clinical condition.
link |
These people actually will seek out amputation.
link |
They will try and convince doctors
link |
to amputate certain portions of their body.
link |
It's a really terrible thing for people
link |
that have and it relates to a change in central maps
link |
in the brain, believe it or not.
link |
Most of us want to keep our limbs,
link |
whichever ones we happen to have.
link |
And most of us feel one in mind and body
link |
so much so that when stress hits,
link |
we feel it in our mind and body.
link |
A lot of stress inoculation,
link |
a lot of managing medium-term stress
link |
on the timescale of weeks or maybe even a couple months.
link |
So we're not talking about years of stress.
link |
A lot of that has to do with raising our stress threshold.
link |
It's about capacity.
link |
And there are very simple tools,
link |
excellent tools that will allow us
link |
to modulate our capacity for stress.
link |
And they look a lot like the tools I just described.
link |
They involve placing oneself deliberately
link |
into a situation where our adrenaline is increased somewhat,
link |
not to the extreme.
link |
And then when we feel flooded with adrenaline
link |
and normally we would panic,
link |
it's about cognitively, mentally, emotionally,
link |
calming ourselves and being comfortable
link |
with that response in our body.
link |
So unlike trying to unify the mind and body
link |
and make it all calm or make it all alert,
link |
this is about dissociating mind and body in a healthy way.
link |
And what would this look like?
link |
Well, this is something I actually do as a practice
link |
because I mentioned before,
link |
you can use physiological size.
link |
In real time, you can use
link |
the cyclic hyperoxygenation breathing to combat infection
link |
if you're feeling kind of run down.
link |
And there's also a way in which you can use things
link |
like cold showers or if you exercise
link |
and you bring your heart rate up very high,
link |
you kind of go into that high intensity realm
link |
where your heart is beating a little bit harder
link |
than you're comfortable with.
link |
And that you're just, you feel,
link |
some people think it's lactic acid.
link |
No one can agree on this, what the burn is,
link |
whether it's lactic acid or it's buildup of hydrogen
link |
I don't want to get into that,
link |
but we're all familiar with the intense feeling
link |
of your muscles kind of burning
link |
because you're working very hard physically.
link |
The key in those moments is to learn to relax the mind
link |
while the body is very activated.
link |
And what that tends to do,
link |
there's a limited amount of research on this,
link |
but what that tends to do is it tends to create a situation
link |
where what once felt like a lot feels manageable.
link |
You've raised your stress threshold or your stress capacity.
link |
One way that you can do this, and this is kind of fun,
link |
if it's approved by your physician
link |
and you're able to do this,
link |
you can bring your heart rate up.
link |
You could do this through an ice bath
link |
if that's your thing or a cold shower
link |
or cyclic oxygenation breathing,
link |
or you could sprint or you could go hard on the bike,
link |
whatever it is that brings your heart rate up.
link |
And then what you want to do
link |
is you want to actually try and calm the mind
link |
while your body is in this heightened state of activation.
link |
And the best way that I'm aware to do that,
link |
again, goes back to physiology, not psychology.
link |
When we are stressed, our pupils dilate.
link |
The effect of that pupil dilation
link |
is to create tunnel vision.
link |
It literally narrows our view of the visual world.
link |
We no longer see in panorama.
link |
And there's some other effects as well,
link |
but that's because the visual system
link |
through this cranial nerve system that I described before
link |
is tethered and is part of this autonomic nervous system.
link |
By deliberately dilating your gaze,
link |
meaning not moving your head and eyes around,
link |
but by deliberately going from tunnel vision
link |
to broader panoramic vision,
link |
literally seeing more of your environment all at once,
link |
you don't have to do what I'm doing,
link |
which is not blinking, you're welcome to blink,
link |
but it means deliberately dilating your gaze
link |
so that you can see yourself in the environment you're in.
link |
It creates a calming effect on the mind
link |
because it releases a particular circuit in the brainstem
link |
that's associated with alertness, AKA stress.
link |
Now, this is very powerful.
link |
If you're running, for instance,
link |
and you're at max capacity or close to it,
link |
or you're kind of hitting like 80, 90% of maximum
link |
on the bike and you dilate your gaze,
link |
what you'll find is the mind can relax
link |
while the body is in full output.
link |
And this relates to work that in various communities,
link |
people are working with this in the sports community,
link |
military communities, et cetera,
link |
but it's a form, not really of stress inoculation,
link |
it's more about raising stress threshold
link |
so that the body is going to continue to be
link |
in a high alertness, high reactivity mode, high output,
link |
but the mind is calm.
link |
And so this isn't about unifying mind and body,
link |
this is actually about using body
link |
to bring up your level of activation,
link |
then dissociating,
link |
not the clinical dissociation kind of disorders,
link |
but dissociating the mental or emotional response
link |
from what's going on in your body.
link |
And over time, so if you do this a couple of times,
link |
you don't have to do this every workout,
link |
but if you do this maybe once a week or so,
link |
you start being comfortable
link |
at these higher activation states.
link |
What once felt overwhelming and like a lot of work
link |
now is manageable, it feels tolerable.
link |
So that's for navigating medium term stress.
link |
Now there are other tools as well,
link |
but we don't want to go over 90 minutes
link |
because 90 minutes is one ultradian cycle.
link |
I always try and keep these podcasts
link |
to one ultradian cycle in case you haven't noticed
link |
so you can derive maximum benefit from them
link |
based on ultradian cycle principles of learning.
link |
So I don't want to go into every little bit of this
link |
and I want to make sure we get to emotions,
link |
but I want to emphasize that these medium term stressors
link |
of, oh, it has been a hard month or hard week
link |
or Stanford's on the quarter system,
link |
so 10 weeks or semester,
link |
that becomes more manageable when we train ourselves
link |
to be calm of mind when our body is activated.
link |
And if you haven't noticed,
link |
most of the tools I'm describing today
link |
are nothing like the sort of, okay, sit and do meditation.
link |
I'm not, I'm actively avoiding saying the words NSDR,
link |
non-sleep deep rest.
link |
I talked a lot about those tools
link |
during the months on sleep and neuroplasticity.
link |
And of course they're wonderful for replenishing
link |
your ability to lean into effort, to learn, to focus.
link |
Please do try and check out NSDR protocol,
link |
see if they're right for you.
link |
The margins for safety I think are enormous.
link |
You're basically just listening to a script.
link |
We have links to them in previous captions.
link |
I've talked to them on various podcasts before.
link |
We can provide them again.
link |
But today I'm really talking about tools
link |
so that you can learn to dance with stress,
link |
to in the short term, reduce that stress response
link |
a little bit if you feel it's too uncomfortable.
link |
In the medium term, to be comfortable
link |
at these heightened levels of activation
link |
because life is going to continue to come at you.
link |
We can't pick the stressors,
link |
but we need to be able to function at a higher capacity
link |
And then there's long-term stress.
link |
Now long-term stress is bad.
link |
You do not want adrenaline up in your system
link |
for a very long time.
link |
In fact, ideally you would have your stress go up
link |
various times throughout the day,
link |
but it would never stay elevated
link |
and it would never prevent you
link |
from getting a good night's sleep.
link |
Now that isn't realistic, okay?
link |
I would say for me, three, four nights out of the month,
link |
no matter what I do, I take on too much
link |
or something happens and life is life
link |
and I don't get the best night's sleep
link |
that I would like to get.
link |
For many of you, it's 30 nights per month.
link |
For some of you, it's zero nights per month
link |
and congratulations to you zero nights per month people.
link |
If you are managing your sleep really well every night,
link |
that is fantastic.
link |
You really want to be able to fall asleep at night,
link |
stay asleep for most of the night
link |
and if you get up, go back to sleep
link |
for as long as you need to in order to feel rested.
link |
That's what I define as a healthy relationship to sleep.
link |
Check out the episodes on sleep
link |
if you want tools to be able to accomplish that.
link |
We can all accomplish that, it can be done
link |
and there are tools to do it, zero cost tools.
link |
Okay, so let's talk about long-term stress.
link |
Earlier I talked about how breathing
link |
can modulate heart rate through this loop
link |
that includes the brain
link |
and the parasympathetic nervous system.
link |
I don't think I mentioned this
link |
and I want to make sure that I mentioned
link |
that breathing controlling heart rate
link |
through the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system
link |
is the basis of what's called HRV, heart rate variability.
link |
And we know that heart rate variability is good.
link |
You don't want your heart rate chronically elevated
link |
or chronically low.
link |
A lot of people think,
link |
oh, I want a really nice low heart rate
link |
and indeed if you're in shape,
link |
the stroke volume of your heart will be greater
link |
and you can have a nice slow heart rate.
link |
Years ago when I was running regularly,
link |
I think my heart rate was down to like 50 or 60
link |
or something like that.
link |
That's great but, and now it's higher than that
link |
because I'm running a little bit less
link |
but everyone needs to determine what's right for them
link |
but you don't really want your heart rate
link |
to be chronically low or chronically high, both are bad.
link |
We know that chronic stress, elevated stress
link |
and especially in the so-called type A personalities
link |
creates heart disease, leading killer
link |
for in most every country, but in particular in the US
link |
because of the way that adrenaline
link |
impacts those blood vessels are constricting
link |
and some and dilating others.
link |
It's just that kind of hypertension,
link |
chronic hypertension is just bad.
link |
And so chronic stress truly is bad.
link |
I want to really make that clear
link |
because I emphasized a lot of what some
link |
of the positive effects of stress
link |
but you want to be able to tamp down your stress
link |
You also want to be able to modulate your stress
link |
and your emotional relationship to stress
link |
in the body in the medium term
link |
but by no means do you want to be stressed out
link |
all the time chronically for months and months
link |
and months and years on end.
link |
The best tools, the best mechanisms that we know
link |
to modulate long-term stress
link |
might surprise you a little bit.
link |
First of all, there are going to be the things
link |
that don't surprise you, which is everyone knows
link |
getting regular exercise, getting good sleep,
link |
using real-time tools to try and tamp down
link |
the stress response, et cetera.
link |
That's all going to be really useful.
link |
The data really point to the fact that social connection
link |
and certain types of social connection in particular
link |
are what are going to mitigate or reduce long-term stress.
link |
And this is a particularly important issue nowadays
link |
where we have all these proxies or surrogates
link |
for social connection.
link |
We're online and texting with people a lot
link |
so we can feel connected.
link |
People are like the plane's about to take off
link |
and everyone's texting each other.
link |
Whether or not they have fear of flying or not,
link |
they're like, okay, see you, love you, hate you,
link |
whatever it is that they're trying to communicate to people.
link |
Then plane lands, everyone phones out,
link |
see you, love you, hate you.
link |
Let's hope it's fewer hate yous.
link |
But everyone has this kind of need to stay connected
link |
Humans are incredibly social creatures.
link |
Now, there is a way to look at this whole business
link |
of social connection,
link |
not from just the kind of wishy-washy, new agey perspective.
link |
And I want to point out that sometimes I'll say
link |
wishy-washy, new agey.
link |
I have nothing against that.
link |
My goal here is always to put scientific data
link |
and some neurochemistry on things
link |
so that for those of you that are into
link |
wishy-washy, new agey stuff,
link |
you also can arm yourself with some arguments
link |
for the members of your family and your life
link |
that maybe aren't so tuned into the typical language
link |
around those practices.
link |
Like, oh, connection is really key.
link |
We all get oxytocin.
link |
Actually, did you know that connection between individuals
link |
rarely causes the release of oxytocin?
link |
Oxytocin is released in very particular circumstances
link |
like post-orgasm, baby and mother, milk let down.
link |
It's associated with kind of really intense
link |
kinds of pair bonding things of mother and child,
link |
also father and child, but especially mother and child
link |
because it's relationship to the lactation system.
link |
Couples post sex, these kinds of things
link |
that were reflect deep kind of layers of our biology.
link |
And oxytocin is not just released when we walk in
link |
and pat the dog on the head,
link |
or we see somebody and we give them a hug
link |
and hey, great to see you, fist bump.
link |
That's not a situation for oxytocin.
link |
The way to think about social connection
link |
and how it can mitigate
link |
some of the long-term effects of stress
link |
is really through the systems of neuromodulation
link |
like serotonin and through blocking certain things
link |
that are really bad for us when we feel socially isolated,
link |
things like tachykinins.
link |
So let me explain what these are.
link |
Serotonin again is a neuromodulator.
link |
Neuromodulators are a little bit like playlists
link |
They tend to amplify or bias the likelihood
link |
that certain brain circuits and body circuits
link |
are going to be activated and that others will not.
link |
Serotonin generally, and I realize I'm speaking
link |
very generally here, but it generally gives us feelings
link |
of wellbeing at very high levels.
link |
It makes us feel blissed and it tends to make us feel
link |
like we have enough in our immediate environment.
link |
This is why some of the side effects of antidepressants
link |
that elevate serotonin and actually can help a lot of people
link |
with depressive symptoms.
link |
But the side effects associated with drugs
link |
that increase serotonin tend to be reduced affect.
link |
They tend to kind of blunt affect or make people feel
link |
like their libido is lower, desire goes down
link |
because the body has so much serotonin
link |
and the brain has so much serotonin
link |
that one feels like they have enough.
link |
But serotonin, pharmacology aside
link |
or taking antidepressants aside, topic for another time,
link |
serotonin tends to make us feel good.
link |
When we see somebody that we recognize and trust,
link |
serotonin is released in the brain.
link |
And that has certain positive effects on the immune system
link |
and on other systems of neural repair and synapses
link |
and things that really reinforce connections in the brain
link |
and prevent that long-term withering of connections.
link |
So serotonin is tied to social connection.
link |
Now, social connection can take many forms.
link |
As many of you know, I am very attached to my dog.
link |
I hope he's attached to me.
link |
He's asleep most of the time, so I don't know.
link |
And even if he was awake,
link |
I don't really know what I would ask him,
link |
but he seems more or less to be attached to me as well.
link |
And there's no scientific evidence
link |
that it has to be human-human attachment.
link |
I do have attachments to humans as well,
link |
but you can have attachments to other people.
link |
Some of those can be romantic attachments.
link |
Those could be familial attachments
link |
that are non-romantic, friendship, pets,
link |
even attachments to things that just delight us.
link |
One of the things that really can mitigate
link |
against the long-term negative effects
link |
of chronic long-term stress
link |
isn't just having fun.
link |
We hear all this stuff.
link |
You need to play and have fun.
link |
That can be a little bit of a tough concept,
link |
especially for the hard-driving people
link |
or people that are stressed,
link |
but having a sense of delight,
link |
a sense of really enjoying something that you see
link |
and engage in, witness or participate in,
link |
that is associated with the serotonin system.
link |
And certainly play is one of those things,
link |
social connection of various forms.
link |
Those are things to invest in.
link |
Some people might say,
link |
well, nobody wants to be my friend
link |
or nobody wants to engage socially anymore.
link |
I'll be the first to admit social connection
link |
and friendship and relationships of all kinds
link |
to animals or humans or inanimate objects takes work.
link |
It takes investment.
link |
It takes time in not needing everything
link |
to be exactly the way you want it to be.
link |
I have a friend who struggles with this
link |
and oftentimes the conversations just circle back
link |
to the fact that when you want social connection,
link |
you often have to be more flexible.
link |
You have to eat on other people's schedules.
link |
Sometimes you have to eat things
link |
you don't necessarily want to eat the most in that moment
link |
or stay up a little later or wake up a little earlier.
link |
Social connection is something that we work for,
link |
but it is incredibly powerful.
link |
I want to, of course, tip my hat to,
link |
it's only appropriate to call him the great Robert Sapolsky,
link |
my colleague who I'm fortunate to know at Stanford,
link |
of course, has talked about this quite a lot.
link |
So I want to acknowledge Robert's incredible work
link |
and discussions around this.
link |
You can look up those materials online
link |
and his wonderful books.
link |
But primates, and we are primates, we are social species.
link |
And as Robert has said many times before,
link |
never before in any primate history,
link |
but in particular in human history,
link |
have we interacted with so many strangers at a distance
link |
when we are not really connected to them.
link |
So finding just a few people, even one,
link |
or an animal or something that you delight in,
link |
believe it or not, has very positive effects
link |
on mitigating this long-term stress,
link |
on improving various aspects of our life
link |
as it relates to stress and emotionality.
link |
So that's the social connection part.
link |
The other thing is that social isolation that goes too long
link |
is associated in everything from flies, believe it or not,
link |
to mice and humans with this molecule, tachykinin.
link |
Tachykinin is a molecule that makes us more fearful,
link |
paranoid, and impairs our immune system.
link |
And so tachykinin is like this internal punishment signal.
link |
It's like our body and our brain telling us
link |
you're not spending enough time
link |
with people that you really trust.
link |
You're not spending time doing things that you really enjoy.
link |
And I often think about tachykinin for myself
link |
because I'm pretty hard driving.
link |
I have a lot of pursuits.
link |
I also have a lot of wonderful people
link |
and an incredibly wonderful bulldog in my life.
link |
But there are times when I can be so goal-directed
link |
and so in motion and trying to accomplish everything
link |
that I sometimes forget about tachykinin.
link |
And I like to remind myself so much
link |
so that I actually have a little post-it above my desk
link |
that says tachykinin to remind me
link |
that tachykinin is this very sinister molecule
link |
that starts being secreted
link |
when we are not socially connected enough.
link |
And this is why long meals with friends or family
link |
where there are, we'll talk about phones in a moment,
link |
but where there's no intrusions, or even if there are,
link |
just feeling like we are connected suppresses tachykinin.
link |
And tachykinin is something you really want to avoid
link |
because chronic isolation, chronically high tachykinin
link |
that's associated with long-term stress
link |
really depletes so many good functions of our brain and body
link |
and promote so many bad ones, including irritability,
link |
paranoia, fear, et cetera,
link |
that is really something to avoid.
link |
And so I want to highlight tachykinin as something to avoid.
link |
I don't want to completely disregard oxytocin.
link |
It's just that oxytocin has been built up a lot in the media
link |
and really serotonin works on much faster timescales.
link |
Now, how do you know if you're making serotonin?
link |
You don't know in the moment,
link |
but you can learn if you pay attention
link |
to kind of recognize these feelings of comfort,
link |
trust, bliss, delight, and those are not weak terms.
link |
Those are not associated just with psychological terms.
link |
They are every bit as physiological
link |
as the movement of your muscles
link |
or the secretion of adrenaline.
link |
And many people focus now on gratitude.
link |
Gratitude is a little bit subjective
link |
and here we're moving from some objective
link |
to kind of subjective things,
link |
but recognizing and in particular writing down
link |
things that you're thankful for,
link |
however small they may seem,
link |
does seem to have a positive effect on the serotonin system.
link |
Now, there are a plethora of things
link |
that will also impact wellbeing
link |
and allow you to modulate your long-term stress,
link |
reduce the likelihood that you'll engage in long-term stress
link |
and we don't have time to go into all of these,
link |
but of course, finding the diet and nutrition
link |
that's right for you, the exercise schedule,
link |
that's right for you, the sleep schedule, all that,
link |
but do not underemphasize the social connection part, please.
link |
As well, there are some compounds
link |
that are not antidepressants,
link |
although if you need antidepressants
link |
and a clinician prescribes them to you,
link |
please follow their advice if that's what's right for you.
link |
There are compounds that are not prescription compounds
link |
that can modulate the stress system
link |
and sometimes because of the way that life is,
link |
we just don't have the opportunity to control life
link |
and to control our response to stress
link |
and at least for myself,
link |
I can only talk about my own experience,
link |
I've found it useful in times of chronic stress
link |
to start modulating some of the neurochemistry
link |
related to the stress response in order to help.
link |
Now, if a doctor prescribes you Pregnisone
link |
or prescribes you some other hormone or something,
link |
that's important, but what I'm talking about now
link |
are non-prescription things,
link |
you should check out examine.com, this free website,
link |
which will allow you to put in any supplement
link |
and evaluate that supplement with,
link |
they provide links in the so-called human effect matrix
link |
to PubMed, it tells you the exact subjects they were done in
link |
it was a post-menopausal women, was it kids,
link |
was it normal adults, was it people with autism, et cetera.
link |
Check out that site for any and all supplements
link |
you're considering or taking, I highly recommend it,
link |
I have no relationship to them,
link |
I just think it's a wonderful site
link |
that's curated all this important information,
link |
but some of these compounds are effective enough,
link |
they can kind of take the edge off
link |
and I'll use them periodically myself
link |
and so I just thought I'd mention them
link |
since there are a number of you that are interested in them,
link |
the three I wanna focus on
link |
and one that I think you need to be cautious about
link |
that I've mentioned before include Ashwagandha,
link |
funny name, but that's what it's called,
link |
L-theanine or theanine it's often called and melatonin.
link |
Let's talk about melatonin first,
link |
melatonin I talked about during the month on sleep,
link |
melatonin is a hormone secreted from the pineal
link |
in direct relationship to how much darkness you are in,
link |
not emotional darkness, but light suppresses melatonin,
link |
melatonin helps you fall asleep,
link |
it doesn't help you stay asleep,
link |
I personally do not recommend supplementing melatonin
link |
because it's supplemented typically at very high levels,
link |
one to three milligrams or even more,
link |
that is an outrageously high dose,
link |
it's super, super physiological compared
link |
to what you normally would make,
link |
it also has a number of potentially negative effects
link |
on the reproductive axis and hormones there,
link |
some people can take it without problems if you like it
link |
and that's your thing, fine,
link |
I just wanna cue to the fact that there can be issues,
link |
you should check on examine.com, talk to your doctor,
link |
especially in kids because melatonin suppresses
link |
the puberty response in a number of species,
link |
enough about the negative things of melatonin
link |
except that people who take too much melatonin chronically,
link |
oftentimes when they're taking it to sleep
link |
or for whatever reason,
link |
yes, it can reduce anxiety and stress,
link |
but it also can reduce the output of the adrenals
link |
to the point where it can become problematic,
link |
now, a note about adrenal burnout,
link |
there is actually no such thing as adrenal burnout
link |
under normal conditions,
link |
the adrenals have enough adrenaline
link |
to support 200 years of stress for better or for worse,
link |
the concept of adrenal burnout has origins
link |
in the work of Nobel Prize winner, Hans Selye
link |
who actually discovered
link |
what he called the general adaptation syndrome,
link |
he discovered a lot of things about stress,
link |
he did some phenomenal work that turned out to be true,
link |
that we have stressors, there's something called distress,
link |
he talked about eustress, which is positive stress,
link |
eustress has never really caught on
link |
in the kind of more general discussion,
link |
but he had this theory that if stress went on long enough
link |
that you would eventually reach a phase called exhaustion
link |
and that turned out to be wrong,
link |
although many of you may feel exhausted after chronic stress
link |
there isn't really a physiological exhaustion that happens
link |
and that eventually got picked up
link |
and ran with the general public
link |
and they talk about adrenal burnout,
link |
too much coffee, adrenal burnout, you hear all this stuff,
link |
there is no such thing as adrenal burnout,
link |
the adrenals don't burn out,
link |
there is something however called adrenal insufficiency
link |
syndrome, which is a real physiological problem
link |
where some people have very impaired adrenals
link |
and they can't produce adrenaline
link |
and melatonin taken at very high levels
link |
for periods of time that are too long
link |
can cause suppression of the cortisol
link |
and epinephrine release from the adrenals
link |
and can create a kind of pseudo
link |
adrenal insufficiency syndrome,
link |
so beware melatonin for that reason,
link |
please, I alone can't get rid
link |
of the phrase adrenal burnout,
link |
I'm not trying to give a hard time
link |
to anyone who feels burnt out or exhausted
link |
but it is for other reasons,
link |
it is not because the adrenals are burnt out
link |
unless you happen to have adrenal insufficiency syndrome,
link |
so I'm not a fan of melatonin for a lot of reasons,
link |
now I've mentioned several,
link |
the other is L-theanine, I've talked about L-theanine
link |
which provided it's safe for you
link |
can be taken 100 milligrams or 200 milligrams
link |
about a 30 minutes or 60 minutes before sleep,
link |
it can enhance the transition to sleep
link |
and depth of sleep for many people,
link |
it increases GABA, this inhibitory neurotransmitter
link |
in the brain, it tends to turn off
link |
our forebrain a little bit
link |
or reduce the activity of our kind of thinking systems
link |
and ruminating systems help people fall asleep,
link |
that's for sleep but theanine has also been shown
link |
for people that are chronically anxious
link |
or chronically stressed to, if you look at the studies,
link |
I have a large collection of studies in front of me right now
link |
if you want to see those links,
link |
I know if you want those, go to examine.com,
link |
put in theanine, they link to, for instance,
link |
it is known to significantly increase relaxation,
link |
there are four studies listed there with PubMed links,
link |
it is known to have a minor effect on anxiety
link |
but eight studies have shown that
link |
which I think is a fairly large set of studies,
link |
some of them in great journals,
link |
it also can reduce task completion anxiety,
link |
so anxiety related to task completion,
link |
not good for the procrastinators perhaps
link |
but for those of you that are chronically stressed,
link |
it can increase attention a little bit,
link |
it can reduce blood pressure a little bit,
link |
improve sleep quality, et cetera,
link |
it definitely has a notable effect on stress,
link |
two studies in particular
link |
that it can notably reduce the effects of stress,
link |
so there's a lot there, it also has effects on insomnia,
link |
on some blood lipid profiles
link |
and so go to examine.com and check it out
link |
but this is one reason why I supplement theanine for sleep
link |
but if I'm feeling like I've been under a lot of stress
link |
and I'm not managing my stress very well
link |
with the short-term and medium-term tools
link |
that I talked about earlier,
link |
I might start taking a little bit of theanine
link |
especially in the late afternoon
link |
which is when I tend to start to feel
link |
like I haven't gotten enough done
link |
and the day is kind of carrying on
link |
and so you can blunt the response to stress a little bit
link |
which is why a lot of companies
link |
are now putting theanine into energy drinks,
link |
I am not a big fan of most energy drinks,
link |
most of them have taurine
link |
which I know some of you wrote to me and said,
link |
oh, taurine is great for all these reasons,
link |
taurine also has effects on the microvasculature
link |
that at least for me were not good,
link |
it caused bursting of microvasculature in my sclera,
link |
in my eyes, which is why I'm not a fan
link |
of any energy drink that has taurine or taurine generally
link |
but that's just me, you have to decide for you,
link |
I'm sure the comment section,
link |
there'll be a couple taurinistas out there that will say,
link |
but I love taurine, great,
link |
keep the taurine companies in business
link |
but it's not for me and I'd like people to know
link |
that it may or may not be for them.
link |
The other supplement that can be very useful is ashwagandha,
link |
ashwagandha is known to lower anxiety and cortisol,
link |
there is six, there are, excuse me, six studies
link |
that collectively show reductions in cortisol
link |
which is cortisol is typically associated
link |
with waking up in the morning, which is good,
link |
that's a healthy brief cortisol bump that goes away
link |
provided you're getting your light at the right time of days
link |
at right correct times of day, like morning and evening
link |
but you don't want cortisol chronically elevated,
link |
that's associated with all the bad stuff about stress,
link |
there's a very strong effect of ashwagandha,
link |
you can find dosages at examine.com,
link |
they report in across six studies,
link |
14.5 to 27.9 reduction in cortisol
link |
in otherwise healthy but stressed individuals.
link |
Now, I don't know about kids,
link |
you have to look at what it says on various supplements,
link |
most things here are being done in adults
link |
so please check carefully but this is great,
link |
I mean, the opportunity for me anyway
link |
to be able to take something that can help me
link |
reduce my cortisol so that I don't get
link |
some of the long-term effects of stress
link |
and I'm not gonna take ashwagandha year round,
link |
I would only do this if I was feeling like
link |
I wasn't managing my short and medium term stress well
link |
so I don't take it on a regular basis,
link |
I do take it when I'm in these times
link |
when things are particularly stressful.
link |
It has, there are five other studies
link |
that show reduced stress so that's not cortisol measurements
link |
but things like fatigue, cognitive impairment, et cetera.
link |
It does lower total cholesterol
link |
which may or may not be good or bad for you up to 10%
link |
so some people don't want their cholesterol lowered,
link |
some people might.
link |
Cholesterol, we'll talk about this in a month on hormones
link |
but cholesterol is the molecule
link |
from which testosterone and estrogen
link |
and cortisol for that matter are synthesized
link |
so you don't wanna get your cholesterol so low
link |
then there are all sorts of negative effects
link |
but you don't want it too high either.
link |
Mild effects in good clinical studies
link |
on reducing depression probably associated
link |
with the effects on stress and some other things as well.
link |
So ashwagandha is something I use from time to time,
link |
it's kind of interesting.
link |
L-theanine, I rarely will use those during the daytime
link |
except under conditions
link |
where I'm feeling chronically stressed.
link |
So check out the human effect matrix on examine.com.
link |
Again, a phenomenal website.
link |
I think I've sent them a few emails before
link |
that's the only exchanges I've ever had with them
link |
but I just think it's wonderful
link |
that they put together this resource.
link |
Otherwise, we'd be stuck mining PubMed.
link |
They've collated the papers from PubMed
link |
with links to PubMed, so terrific resource.
link |
So social connection and some supplementation,
link |
of course, diet, exercise, sleep for long-term stress.
link |
And now we are finally in a position to talk
link |
about what we have set out to do from the beginning
link |
which is spend the month on emotions.
link |
It was very important that we discuss stress
link |
and we discuss in the context of short,
link |
medium and long-term stress,
link |
that we discuss tools for short-term,
link |
medium-term and long-term control.
link |
I don't really want to say mitigation of stress.
link |
Stress is going to happen
link |
but our ability to modulate and control stress
link |
in real time, offline, using tools such as respiration,
link |
using tools such as dilation of gaze,
link |
using tools like social connection, maybe some supplements.
link |
Certainly take care of your sleep and nutrition
link |
Again, tons of resources and information
link |
in the sleep episodes.
link |
So you can look there.
link |
We will do a month on hormones, on exercise, et cetera.
link |
But let's talk about emotions
link |
because in subsequent episodes,
link |
we're going to talk about OCD.
link |
We're going to talk about depression.
link |
We're going to talk about mania.
link |
We're going to be talking about dopamine
link |
and all sorts of things.
link |
But at the core of emotions is this question,
link |
what is an emotion?
link |
Well, it's complex.
link |
There isn't a single brain area
link |
for any one of these things that we call emotions.
link |
My framework, and I think the modern science,
link |
both psychology and neuroscience is pretty well aligned
link |
with what Lisa Feldman Barrett has talked about.
link |
Now, Lisa's at Northeastern University.
link |
She runs a big lab there.
link |
She's a world expert in emotion.
link |
She's written two books that are really wonderful.
link |
One is How Emotions Are Made, which was her first book.
link |
The second one is Seven and a Half Facts About the Brain.
link |
It's a wonderful book as well.
link |
It came out more recently.
link |
I hosted Lisa on an Instagram Live once.
link |
Maybe we'll get her here on the podcast if we're lucky.
link |
We don't agree on everything
link |
about the neuroscience of emotions,
link |
but I subscribe to most everything that I've heard Lisa say,
link |
in particular, the fact that emotions are context dependent,
link |
there's a cultural dependence, et cetera.
link |
I look at things mainly through the lens of physiology
link |
and neuroscience at kind of low level circuitry.
link |
And one way to think about emotions
link |
that I think is consistent,
link |
and I think Lisa would generally approve,
link |
I can't speak for her,
link |
but I would hope she would generally approve
link |
of this description is that when our internal state
link |
of stress or calm matches the demands on us
link |
or is mismatched from the demands on us,
link |
we tend to interpret those as good or bad.
link |
Let me give you an example.
link |
If I am feeling very anxious, very stressed inside,
link |
and I have a lot to do, that doesn't feel good,
link |
but it's really no different than if I'm very tired
link |
and I have a lot to do because there's this mismatch.
link |
I'm not in the right internal state.
link |
My internal state isn't correct rather
link |
to meet the demands that are being placed upon me.
link |
So in both cases, whether I'm too tired
link |
or I'm too stressed to do what I need to do,
link |
the valence, meaning the value that I assigned to that is,
link |
I don't feel good.
link |
It's not a good situation and I don't feel good.
link |
Now I might call it stressed, I might call it anxious,
link |
I might call it worried, might call it a number of things,
link |
but it's not good.
link |
However, when I'm tired and I want to fall asleep,
link |
well then I feel good because that's what the demand is.
link |
I need to go to sleep and I'm tired.
link |
If I'm wide awake and I need to fall asleep,
link |
then that's not good.
link |
And then the brain tends to go down the direction
link |
of interpreting the situation as a bad one.
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So while the discussion around emotions is far more nuanced
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and more elaborate than this,
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one way to think about your relationship to emotions
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is whether or not your internal state
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is matching the demands that are upon you.
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So in that way, we don't really place so much value
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on whether or not we're feeling alert or sleepy.
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We only place value on whether or not that alertness,
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whether or not it's full-blown stress or not,
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or our sleepiness, whether or not we're falling asleep
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or just a little bit drowsy,
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whether or not that matches the conditions that we face.
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And it's a useful framework to have.
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And it's the reason in part
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why I spent this last hour and a half or so
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talking about stress and how to control stress.
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One reason we did that
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is because I think it's a valuable opportunity
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to learn some tools and understand stress
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and really learn how to take control of stress,
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which I think we could all benefit from doing,
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regardless of age.
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The other reason is that when you start to understand
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that you have this kind of seesaw system in your body,
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this autonomic nervous system
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that takes you from alert and calm to stressed,
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to full-blown panic, it has that capacity,
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or from sleepy and drowsy to passing out tired
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to God forbid, let's hope never, but a coma, right?
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That you're basically on this seesaw all the time.
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And where you are on that seesaw of alertness or calmness
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positions you to be in better reaction
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to the demands that you face,
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whether or not the thing that you face
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is a need to fall asleep or to listen quietly and not react.
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You now know, for instance,
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that if your job is to take feedback,
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maybe you're going in for a job evaluation,
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or you're in a relationship
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where there was a call for a discussion
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and somebody needs to talk to you about something
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and we need to talk about something,
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you're going to them like,
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oh goodness, this is going to be rough.
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Learning to reduce that stress response a little bit
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so that you are in a position to hear the information better
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and remember from a previous episode,
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if you close your eyes,
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you'll be able to actually focus on the information better.
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There's your permission to not look someone directly
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in the eye while they talk to you
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if you really want to hear what they have to say.
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You will be able to modulate that stress response
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and lean into life better.
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You will be able to react to things in a more effective way
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and to not be reactive.
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And this is really one of the important things to me anyway,
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is that so much of the language around psychology,
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which I think is a wonderful field,
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but pop psychology in particular is,
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be responsive, not reactive.
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Well, great, but then how does one do that?
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Well, one does that by modulating
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their short-term stress response in real time,
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not by saying, hold on, I need to meditate,
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hold on, I need a massage,
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and then I can have this conversation
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by modulating the reactivity in real time.
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How does one, for instance, be mindful,
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which is a beautiful concept, but how are you mindful?
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Well, I don't know, when I'm moving through my day,
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a lot of times I'm just trying to get things done.
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And as soon as I start monitoring and seeing what I'm doing
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and kind of third-personing what I'm doing,
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it actually takes me out of the effectiveness
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and experience of what I'm doing.
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So for me, sometimes that mindfulness,
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that observer as they call it,
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is something that doesn't help me, it actually hinders me.
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What's important to me is to be able to work and focus
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and then to be able to disengage,
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to be able to do a non-sleep deep rest
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or to be able to still fall asleep,
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even though I've been working hard until 9.30
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to put my head down at 10 o'clock
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and be out cold sleeping by 10.02.
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That's possible if you can learn
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to control this stress response.
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And to do that, we can't use the mind to control the mind,
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And so a lot of the people being grumpy
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or anxious or depressed, a lot of that,
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provided it's not for some underlying neurochemical reason
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that's chronic, a lot of that comes from being
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poorly rested, from overworked,
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from feeling like the world is bearing down on us.
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And so rather than take a subjective view of this,
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I take the view of objective physiology.
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What can we do that's anchored to these neuronal systems
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in our body, in our brain, in our eyes,
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in our diaphragm, et cetera, and look to those as tools,
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levers that we can pull on and push
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and maneuver through life in a way
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where we start to feel like we have some agency,
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we actually have some real control
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because we're controlling the internal landscape.
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So I think that ought to set the stage
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for where we're headed next, which is to talk about
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all the things that you normally think of
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when you think of emotions, like happiness,
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like awe, like joy, and we will get into some of that.
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But all of that rests firmly on the foundation
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of this thing we call the autonomic nervous system,
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this stress modulation, this calming modulation system.
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And again, whether or not you're activated or you're calm
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is not good or bad, it depends on the situation.
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Certainly when you want to fall asleep,
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being activated isn't good.
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When you have work to do, being activated is great.
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So I hope today you were able to take
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a slightly different view of this thing that we call stress,
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not just see it as evil, but see it as powerful and useful
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in certain contexts, great for us in certain contexts,
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and problematic in other contexts,
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and as well to think about the various tools
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that I've presented that can allow you to adjust
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and modulate your internal levels of alertness or calmness
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so that you can lean more effectively into life,
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which includes sleep and social connection
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and the work you have to do.
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And of course acknowledges that the events in the world
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are beyond our control.
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What's in our control is how we react to them.
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Something that's commonly said in the wellness
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and self-help and psychology world,
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but for which there often aren't as many concrete tools
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that we can really look to and trust in real time.
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And of course there are other tools out there as always.
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I'll say it, I strive to be accurate,
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but I'll never be exhaustive.
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I might have exhausted you.
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I might've cured your insomnia with this discussion today,
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but in all seriousness,
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my goal is to bring you tools and information
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so that you can manage better through life.
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So thanks so much.
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I very much want to thank all of you
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for your support for the podcast.
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It's really been wonderful.
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If you've subscribed to the podcast on YouTube,
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Apple or Spotify, or maybe even all three, terrific.
link |
If you haven't, please do subscribe on YouTube,
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Apple or Spotify, or maybe even all three,
link |
which would be wonderful.
link |
On Apple, you can leave a five-star review
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if you think we deserve that,
link |
as well as a comment reviewing us.
link |
If you have suggestions,
link |
if you have questions regarding the content of the podcast
link |
or things that you'd like us to cover in the future,
link |
please put those in the comment section on YouTube.
link |
As well, if you could recommend the podcast to friends,
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family members, coworkers that you think would benefit
link |
from the information, maybe even send them the links
link |
if you like, that's tremendously helpful.
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Today, as in previous episodes,
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I've touched on some things
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as they relate to supplementation.
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As always, I always cover a lot of tools
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that are zero cost tools
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that don't involve ingesting anything at all,
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But I mentioned some supplements
link |
that I particularly find useful.
link |
With supplements, it's a complicated landscape often
link |
because many supplement companies don't put in the bottle
link |
what they say is in the particular product.
link |
We've partnered with Thorne, T-H-O-R-N-E,
link |
because Thorne is a supplement company
link |
that we know to have the highest levels of stringency.
link |
It's used by the Mayo Clinic,
link |
it's used by all the major sports organizations
link |
for that particular reason
link |
and because their quality standards are exceptionally high.
link |
If you'd like to try any supplements
link |
and see the ones that I take,
link |
you can go to Thorne, T-H-O-R-N-E.com
link |
slash the letter U slash Huberman.
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And if you do that, you'll get 20% off
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anything that's listed there on my page,
link |
as well as any of the supplements that Thorne sells.
link |
So that's Thorne, T-H-O-R-N-E.com
link |
slash the letter U slash Huberman
link |
to get 20% off anything that Thorne sells.
link |
In addition, if you want to follow us on Twitter,
link |
we're there at Huberman Lab or on Instagram, Huberman Lab.
link |
I also do some content on Huberman Lab,
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a little neuroscience post.
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Some are reposted clips from the podcast.
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Others are unique content
link |
that you won't find on the podcast.
link |
So you can follow us at Huberman Lab.
link |
Also, if you like, check out our Patreon,
link |
patreon.com slash Andrew Huberman.
link |
And most of all, and as always,
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really appreciate your time and attention today.
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I hope you practice some of the tools
link |
if they're right for you.
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I hope you think hard about stress
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and how you can control your stress.
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And above all, as always,
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thank you for your interest in science.