Essentials: Tools for Managing Stress & Anxiety

0:00:05 Welcome to Huberman Lab Essentials, where we revisit past episodes for the most potent
0:00:11 and actionable science-based tools for mental health, physical health, and performance.
0:00:16 I’m Andrew Huberman, and I’m a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford
0:00:17 School of Medicine.
0:00:22 Today’s episode is going to be all about the science of emotions.
0:00:28 And today, we’re going to talk in particular about something that most often is called
0:00:30 stress.
0:00:35 You might be thinking, wait, stress isn’t an emotion, but stress really lies at the
0:00:43 heart of whether or not our internal experience is matched well or not to our external experience
0:00:46 or the events that are happening to us and around us.
0:00:53 And as you’ll soon see, those converge or combine to create what we call emotions.
0:00:58 I’d like you to come away from today’s episode with what I call an organizational logic,
0:01:03 a framework for thinking about these things that typically we just call happy or sad or
0:01:06 depressed or anxious.
0:01:11 And I’m going to make sure that you have tools that are grounded in physiology and neuroscience
0:01:16 that will allow you to navigate this otherwise complex space that we call emotions that will
0:01:23 allow you to ground yourself better when you’re feeling like life is weighing on you or you’re
0:01:28 kind of being pulled by the currents of life as well as to support other people, whether
0:01:34 or not that’s in a psychological practice if you’re a practitioner or you have clients
0:01:39 or children or spouses, really to be able to support other people in your environment
0:01:40 better.
0:01:45 And as you may recall, the nervous system, which includes the brain and the eyes and
0:01:50 the spinal cord, but also all the connections with the organs of the body includes the brain
0:01:51 and body.
0:01:58 And those organs of the body, your gut and your liver and your spleen, they’re also communicating
0:02:00 with the brain.
0:02:05 So I look forward to a day, in fact, when we no longer think about neuroscience as just
0:02:09 the brain and many neuroscientists now also think about the body, of course, the brain
0:02:15 controls the body, but the body is also having a very profound and concrete influence on the
0:02:16 brain.
0:02:20 Today, we’re going to talk about objective tools that match the brain body experience
0:02:27 or separate the brain body experience in ways that leverage your ability to lean into life
0:02:32 better, to feel better, literally to just feel better about what you’re experiencing.
0:02:37 And believe it or not, to be able to control your emotions when that’s appropriate.
0:02:38 Okay.
0:02:39 So what is stress?
0:02:41 We hear all the time that stress is bad.
0:02:44 We hear people saying they’re really stressed out.
0:02:46 What is stress?
0:02:49 Stress at its core is a generalized system.
0:02:54 It wasn’t designed for tigers, tigers attacking us or people attacking us.
0:02:58 It’s a system to mobilize other systems in the brain and body.
0:03:01 It wasn’t designed for one thing.
0:03:06 And that gives it a certain advantage in taking over the state of our brain and body, but it
0:03:14 also gives you all of us an advantage in controlling it because it’s based on hardwired biological
0:03:20 mechanisms and there are hardwired biological mechanisms, meaning cells and chemicals and
0:03:27 pathways and tissues that exist in you right now that require no neural plasticity that
0:03:30 allow you to put a break on stress.
0:03:32 And so we’re going to talk about those.
0:03:34 So let’s talk about the stress response.
0:03:39 And by doing that, you will understand exactly why the tools I’m going to give you work.
0:03:45 For those of you that are saying, wait, I just want the tools, just give me a summary.
0:03:49 Trust me, if you understand mechanism, you are going to be in a far better position to
0:03:53 incorporate these tools to teach these tools to others and to modify them as your life
0:03:55 circumstances change.
0:04:02 Let’s be clear about what we already know, which is that stressors can be psychological
0:04:05 or they can be physical.
0:04:11 If I put you outside on a cold day without a jacket for a very long time, that is stressful.
0:04:16 If I have you prepare for too many exams at once and you can’t balance it all with your
0:04:20 sleep schedule and your other needs for comfort and well-being like food, rest, sleep and
0:04:24 social connection, that is stressful.
0:04:26 So what happens when the stress response hits?
0:04:30 Let’s talk about the immediate or what we call the acute stress response.
0:04:33 We could also think of this as a short-term stress.
0:04:39 So you have a collection of neurons that start right about at your neck and run down
0:04:41 to about your navel a little bit lower.
0:04:45 And those are called the sympathetic chain ganglia.
0:04:50 When something stresses us out, either in our mind or because something enters our environment,
0:04:55 that chain of neurons becomes activated like a bunch of dominoes falling.
0:04:56 All at once.
0:04:58 It’s very fast.
0:05:02 When those neurons are activated, acetylcholine is released, but there’s some other neurons
0:05:04 for the aficionados out there.
0:05:06 They’re called the postganglionic neurons.
0:05:11 Those ones respond to that acetylcholine and then they release epinephrine, which is the
0:05:14 equivalent to adrenaline.
0:05:19 So we have this system where very fast, whenever we’re stressed, the core of our body, these
0:05:24 neurons down the middle of our body release these chemicals and then there’s adrenaline
0:05:29 or epinephrine released at particular organs and acts in particular ways.
0:05:34 Some things like the muscles of your legs and your heart and other things that need
0:05:40 to be active when you’re stressed, they have a certain kind of receptor, which is called
0:05:42 the beta receptor.
0:05:46 And that beta receptor responds to epinephrine and blood vessels dilate.
0:05:49 They get bigger and blood rushes into our legs.
0:05:52 The heart rate speeds up.
0:05:53 Lots of things happen.
0:05:54 They get activated.
0:06:00 And at the same time that epinephrine activates other receptors on certain tissues that we
0:06:01 don’t need.
0:06:08 The ones involved in digestion, reproduction and things of that sort that are luxuries
0:06:12 for when things are going well, not things to pay attention to when we’re stressed.
0:06:14 So the stress response is too pronged.
0:06:19 It’s a yes for certain things and it’s a no you may not right now for other things.
0:06:24 That’s why you feel blood in certain organs and tissues of your body, but not in others.
0:06:29 But basically, you are activated in ways that support you moving.
0:06:35 And that’s because fundamentally, the stress response is just this generic thing that says,
0:06:37 do something, you’re going to feel agitated.
0:06:39 And that’s because it was designed to move you.
0:06:45 So this is important because if you want to control stress, you need to learn how to work
0:06:48 with that agitation.
0:06:54 I’d like to give you a tool at this point because I think if we go any further with
0:06:58 a lot more science, people are going to begin to wonder if this is just going to be a kind
0:07:01 of standard university lecture about the stress response.
0:07:07 If you want to reduce the magnitude of the stress response, the best thing you can do
0:07:14 is activate the other system in the body, which is designed for calming and relaxation.
0:07:18 And that system is called the parasympathetic nervous system.
0:07:23 And the parasympathetic nervous system is really interesting because especially the
0:07:29 cranial nerves, the ones that are up in the brainstem and in the neck area, those have
0:07:35 a direct line to various features of your face, in particular the eyes, they control
0:07:40 things like eye movements, pupil dilation, things of that sort, as well as the tongue,
0:07:42 the facial muscles, etc.
0:07:46 So I’m going to teach you the first tool now, so I don’t overwhelm you with all this academic
0:07:49 knowledge without giving you something useful.
0:07:56 And the tool that, at least to my knowledge, is the fastest and most thoroughly grounded
0:08:01 in physiology and neuroscience for calming down in a self-directed way is what’s called
0:08:04 the physiological Psi, S-I-G-H.
0:08:11 What I’m talking about when I refer to physiological size is the very real medical school textbook
0:08:19 relationship between the brain, the body, and the body as it relates to the breathing
0:08:24 apparatus, meaning the diaphragm and lungs, and the heart.
0:08:26 Let’s take the hallmark of the stress response.
0:08:28 The heart starts beating faster.
0:08:32 Blood is shuttled to the big muscles of the body to move you away from whatever it is
0:08:35 the stressor is or just make you feel like you need to move or talk.
0:08:37 Your face goes flushed, etc.
0:08:42 There is however a way in which you can breathe that directly controls your heart rate through
0:08:46 the interactions between the sympathetic and the parasympathetic nervous system.
0:08:48 Here’s how it works.
0:08:55 When you inhale, so whether or not it’s through the nose or through the mouth, this skeletal
0:09:00 muscle that’s inside your body called the diaphragm, it moves down, and that’s because
0:09:04 the lungs expand, the diaphragm moves down.
0:09:07 Your heart actually gets a little bit bigger in that expanded space.
0:09:09 There’s more space for the heart.
0:09:15 As a consequence, whatever blood is in there is now at a lower volume or moving a little
0:09:21 bit more slowly in that larger volume than it was before you inhaled.
0:09:25 More space, heart gets bigger, blood moves more slowly, and there’s a little group of
0:09:31 neurons called the sinoatrial node in the heart that registers, believe it or not, those
0:09:37 neurons pay attention to the rate of blood flow through the heart and send a signal up
0:09:41 to the brain that blood is moving more slowly through the heart.
0:09:46 The brain then sends a signal back to the heart to speed the heart up.
0:09:53 What this means is if you want your heart to beat faster, inhale longer, inhale more
0:09:57 vigorously than your exhales.
0:09:59 The opposite is also true.
0:10:03 If you want to slow your heart rate down, so stress response hits, you want to slow
0:10:05 your heart rate down.
0:10:10 What you want to do is again capitalize on this relationship between the body, meaning
0:10:12 the diaphragm and the heart and the brain.
0:10:13 Here’s how it works.
0:10:19 When you exhale, the diaphragm moves up, which makes the heart a little bit smaller.
0:10:20 It actually gets a little more compact.
0:10:24 Blood flows more quickly through that compact space.
0:10:29 The sinoatrial node registers that blood is going more quickly, sends a signal up to the
0:10:34 brain and the parasympathetic nervous system, some neurons in your brain stem, send a signal
0:10:38 back to the heart to slow the heart down.
0:10:45 If you want to calm down quickly, you need to make your exhales longer and or more vigorous
0:10:47 than your inhales.
0:10:53 The reason this is so attractive as a tool for controlling stress is that it works in
0:10:54 real time.
0:10:57 This doesn’t involve a practice that you have to go and sit there and do anything separate
0:10:58 from life.
0:11:03 The physiological side is something that people naturally start doing when they’ve been crying
0:11:08 and they’re trying to recover some air or calm down when they’ve been sobbing very hard
0:11:11 or when they are in claustrophobic environments.
0:11:15 However, the amazing thing about this thing that we call the diaphragm, the skeletal muscle,
0:11:18 is that it’s an internal organ that you can control voluntarily.
0:11:23 So this incredible pathway that goes from brain to diaphragm through what’s called the
0:11:26 phrenic nerve, P-H-R-E-N-I-C phrenic.
0:11:29 The phrenic nerve innervates the diaphragm.
0:11:30 You can control any time you want.
0:11:33 You can double up your inhales or triple up your inhales.
0:11:38 You can exhale more than your inhales, whatever you want to do, such an incredible organ.
0:11:43 The physiological side is something that we do spontaneously, but when you’re feeling
0:11:52 stressed, you can do a double inhale, long exhale.
0:11:55 Now I just told you a minute ago that if you inhale more than you exhale, you’re going
0:11:59 to speed the heart rate up, which would promote more stress and activation.
0:12:03 Now I’m telling you to do a double inhale, exhale in order to calm down.
0:12:10 And the reason is the double inhale, exhale, which is the physiological side takes advantage
0:12:14 of the fact that when we do a double inhale, even if the second inhale is sneaking in just
0:12:18 a tiny bit more air because it’s kind of hard to get two deep inhales back to back.
0:12:22 You do big deep inhale and then another little one sneaking it in, the little sacs in your
0:12:26 lungs, the avioli of the lungs, your lungs aren’t just two big bags, but you’ve got millions
0:12:30 of little sacs throughout the lungs that actually make the surface area of your lungs as big
0:12:31 as a tennis court.
0:12:32 It’s amazing.
0:12:38 If we were to just spread that out, those tend to collapse as we get stressed and carbon
0:12:43 dioxide builds up in our bloodstream and that’s one of the reasons we feel agitated as well.
0:12:48 But when you do the double inhale, exhale, the double inhale reinflates those little
0:12:49 sacs of the lungs.
0:12:55 And then when you do the long exhale, that long exhale is now much more effective at
0:13:00 ridding your body and bloodstream of carbon dioxide, which relaxes you very quickly.
0:13:05 When you’re feeling stressed, the physiological side done just one to three times.
0:13:10 So it’d be double inhale, exhale, double inhale, exhale, maybe just two times will bring down
0:13:14 your level of stress very, very fast.
0:13:17 And as far as I know, it’s the fastest way to accomplish that.
0:13:21 Be aware that if you’re going to use the physiological side or exhale, emphasize breathing to calm
0:13:27 down, that your heart rate will take about 20 to 30 seconds to come down to baseline.
0:13:30 And you may need to repeat the physiological side a few times.
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0:15:20 So let’s think about something now.
0:15:25 Let’s think about stress from not whether or not it’s acute or chronic, whether or not
0:15:30 it’s good for us or bad for us, but on three different time scales, because then we can
0:15:34 arrive at what this is all about as it relates to emotions.
0:15:39 But I really want you to understand the difference between the three kinds of stress on three
0:15:44 different time scales, short-term, medium-term, and long-term, and what it’s good for and
0:15:45 what it’s bad for.
0:15:49 I think we’ve all heard that stress is bad for us.
0:15:53 We’ve seen these pictures intended to frighten us, and indeed they are frightening.
0:15:56 You see the nice, really plump brain on the left.
0:16:00 It says “healthy” or “control,” and then you see the brain that says “stressed” above
0:16:05 it on the right, and it’s like withered, or we see that the hippocampus, an area involved
0:16:07 in memory, is smaller.
0:16:08 People there are stressed.
0:16:12 I think we’ve all heard now so many times that stress is bad.
0:16:18 But in that conversation, unfortunately, it’s eclipsed some of the really positive things
0:16:21 that stress does for us in the short-term.
0:16:25 When the stress response hits, that is good for your immune system.
0:16:29 I know that might be a tough pill to swallow, but it’s absolutely true.
0:16:36 In fact, stress often comes in the form of bacterial or viral infection, and the stress
0:16:43 response is in part organized to combat bacterial and viral infection.
0:16:49 So short-term stress, and the release of adrenaline in particular, or epinephrine, same thing,
0:16:54 adrenaline epinephrine, is good for combating infection.
0:16:58 And this, to me, is just not discussed enough, so that’s why I’m discussing it here.
0:17:04 And it relates to a particular tool that many of you ask about, but I don’t often get the
0:17:07 opportunity to talk about in such an appropriate context.
0:17:11 It’s not that it’s ever inappropriate to talk about, but what I’m about to talk about
0:17:20 now is the use of, again, respiration, breathing to somewhat artificially activate the stress
0:17:23 response, and that will accomplish two things, okay?
0:17:28 I’ll return to medium and long-term stress, but I want to say short-term stress is good
0:17:32 because the dilation of the pupils, the changes in the optics of the eyes, the quickening of
0:17:38 the heart rate, the sharpening of your cognition, and in fact, that short-term stress brings
0:17:41 certain elements of the brain online that allow you to focus.
0:17:45 Now, it narrows your focus, you’re not good at seeing the so-called big picture, but it
0:17:50 narrows your focus, it allows you to do these what I call duration path outcome types of
0:17:51 analysis.
0:17:54 It allows you to evaluate your environment, evaluate what you need to do.
0:17:57 It primes your whole system for better cognition.
0:18:01 It primes your immune system to combat infection, and that all makes sense when you think about
0:18:10 the fact that famine, thirst, bacterial infections, viral infections, invaders, all of this stuff
0:18:16 liberates a response in the body that’s designed to get you to fight back against whatever stressor
0:18:21 that happens to be, psychological, physical, bacterial, viral, again, the stress response
0:18:23 is generic.
0:18:30 The tool takes advantage of the fact that when adrenaline is released in the body from
0:18:36 the adrenals, it has the effect of also liberating a lot of these killer cells from the immune
0:18:41 organs, in particular from the spleen, but from elsewhere as well, and interactions with
0:18:47 the lymphatic system, that combat infection.
0:18:53 The way this works in the real world is best captured by a study that can be mapped back
0:18:56 to so-called Wim Hof breathing.
0:19:01 Now Wim Hof breathing is so named after the so-called Iceman Wim Hof.
0:19:07 There are two components to a sort of breathing protocol that he developed that was based
0:19:13 also on what’s called TUMO breathing, T-U-M-M-O, so before Wim there was TUMO breathing, and
0:19:19 many people call this now super oxygenation breathing, so it’s deliberate hyperventilation.
0:19:21 Why would somebody want to do this?
0:19:26 Well, deliberate hyperventilation done for maybe 25 cycles, so inhale, exhale, inhale,
0:19:32 exhale, inhale, exhale, that pattern of breathing, rapid movements of the diaphragm will liberate
0:19:34 adrenaline from the adrenals.
0:19:40 When adrenaline is released in the body, you are in a better position to combat infections.
0:19:45 And so whether or not you breathe very quickly in these cycles of 25 breaths, and regardless
0:19:48 of what you call it, doesn’t matter, adrenaline is released.
0:19:51 If you take a cold shower, adrenaline is released.
0:19:57 If you go into an ice bath deliberately, and even if you do it non-deliberately, adrenaline
0:19:58 is released.
0:20:06 It’s mimicking the stress response, and that adrenaline serves to suppress or combat incoming
0:20:07 infections.
0:20:10 And this was beautifully shown in a study that was published in a very fine journal, the
0:20:16 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences for the U.S., it’s literally called Proceedings
0:20:20 of the National Academy of USA, to distinguish it from other proceedings of other national
0:20:24 academies in other countries.
0:20:32 The way the experiment went is that people were injected with endotoxin, or in some cases
0:20:36 they were injected with a bacterial wall that mimics infection.
0:20:39 It gives you a fever, it makes you feel nauseous, it makes you feel sick.
0:20:41 It is not pleasant.
0:20:45 Half of the people did a particular pattern of breathing that looked very much like the
0:20:51 pattern of breathing I described a moment ago of doing 25 deep inhales and exhales followed
0:20:56 by an exhale holding their breath, then repeating 25 inhales, exhales holding their breath.
0:21:02 So this would look something like this, or if you’re listening, it sounds like 25, 30
0:21:04 times, you’ll start feeling heated up.
0:21:05 You’ll start feeling the adrenaline response.
0:21:11 You’re liberating adrenaline in your body, then exhale, hold your breath for 15 seconds,
0:21:12 and then repeat.
0:21:16 Now I want to emphasize, never, ever, ever do this anywhere near water.
0:21:19 People have passed out so-called shallower water breakout.
0:21:20 People have died.
0:21:24 All unless you get clearance to do it from your doctor, because there are some pulmonary
0:21:27 effects and whatnot, and the breath holds should definitely not be done by anyone that
0:21:31 has glaucoma or pressure, you know, concerns for the eyes.
0:21:37 But these repeated cycles of breathing that liberate adrenaline allowed the group that
0:21:43 did that protocol to essentially experience zero symptoms from the injection of this E.
0:21:45 Coli, which is remarkable.
0:21:47 They had much reduced or no symptoms.
0:21:49 They didn’t feel feverish.
0:21:50 They didn’t feel sick.
0:21:54 They weren’t vomiting, no diarrhea, which is remarkable, but makes total sense when
0:21:57 you think about the fact that the short-term stress response, that what’s typically called
0:22:02 the acute stress response, is designed to combat all stressors.
0:22:05 Many of us are familiar with the experience of work, work, work, work, work, work, or
0:22:09 taking care of a loved one or stress, stress, stress, stress, stress, then we finally relax.
0:22:12 Maybe we even go on vacation, like, oh, now I’m finally going to get the break, and then
0:22:14 we get sick.
0:22:18 And that’s because the adrenaline response crashed and your immune system crashed with
0:22:19 it.
0:22:21 So please understand this.
0:22:24 Now many of you might say, well, how long is it?
0:22:25 Two hours?
0:22:26 Is it three hours?
0:22:29 A lot of you out there that really like specificity, it will vary for everybody.
0:22:31 I would just kind of use a rule of thumb.
0:22:36 When you are no longer able to achieve good sleep, what good sleep means to you, please
0:22:40 see the episodes on sleep if you want more about tools to sleep.
0:22:45 When you are no longer able to achieve good sleep, you are now moving from acute stress
0:22:46 to chronic stress.
0:22:48 You need to be able to turn the stress response off.
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0:24:28 Okay, so now let’s talk about medium term stress.
0:24:34 Medium term stress is going to be stress that lasts anywhere from several days to several
0:24:35 weeks.
0:24:36 What is stress threshold?
0:24:44 Well, stress threshold is actually our ability to cognitively regulate what’s going on in
0:24:45 our body.
0:24:53 A lot of stress inoculation, a lot of managing medium term stress on the time scale of weeks
0:24:58 or maybe even a couple months, so we’re not talking about years of stress.
0:25:01 A lot of that has to do with raising our stress threshold.
0:25:08 It’s about capacity and there are very simple tools, excellent tools that will allow us
0:25:14 to modulate our capacity for stress and they look a lot like the tools I just described.
0:25:20 They involve placing oneself deliberately into a situation where our adrenaline is increased
0:25:28 somewhat, not to the extreme, and then when we feel flooded with adrenaline and normally
0:25:35 we would panic, it’s about cognitively, mentally, emotionally calming ourselves and being comfortable
0:25:37 with that response in our body.
0:25:39 And what would this look like?
0:25:44 You can use the cyclic hyperoxygenation breathing to combat infection if you’re feeling kind
0:25:51 of run down and there’s also a way in which you can use things like cold showers or if
0:25:55 you exercise and you bring your heart rate up very high, you kind of go into that high
0:25:59 intensity realm where your heart is beating a little bit harder than you’re comfortable
0:26:00 with.
0:26:07 The key in those moments is to learn to relax the mind while the body is very activated.
0:26:11 One way that you can do this and this is kind of fun, if it’s approved by your physician
0:26:15 and you’re able to do this, you can bring your heart rate up, you could do this through
0:26:19 an ice bath if that’s your thing or a cold shower or cyclic oxygenation breathing or
0:26:23 you could sprint or you could go hard on the bike, whatever it is that brings your heart
0:26:24 rate up.
0:26:28 And then what you want to do is you want to actually try and calm the mind while your
0:26:31 body is in this heightened state of activation.
0:26:36 When we are stressed, our pupils dilate, the effect of that pupil dilation is to create
0:26:37 tunnel vision.
0:26:42 It literally narrows our view of the visual world, we no longer see in panorama.
0:26:46 And there’s some other effects as well, but that’s because the visual system through this
0:26:51 cranial nerve system that I described before is tethered and is part of this autonomic
0:26:53 nervous system.
0:26:57 By deliberately dilating your gaze, meaning not moving your head and eyes around, but
0:27:04 by deliberately going from tunnel vision to broader panoramic vision, literally seeing
0:27:08 more of your environment all at once, it creates a calming effect on the mind because it releases
0:27:14 a particular circuit in the brainstem that’s associated with alertness, aka stress.
0:27:16 Now this is very powerful.
0:27:20 If you’re running, for instance, and you’re at max capacity or close to it, or you’re
0:27:25 kind of hitting like 80, 90% of maximum on the bike, and you dilate your gaze, what you’ll
0:27:29 find is the mind can relax while the body is in full output.
0:27:34 And this relates to work that in various communities, people are working with us in the sports
0:27:39 community, military community, et cetera, but it’s a form, not really a stress inoculation,
0:27:45 it’s more about raising stress threshold so that the body is going to continue to be in
0:27:51 a high alertness, high reactivity mode, high output, but the mind is calm.
0:27:56 And so this isn’t about unifying mind and body, this is actually about using body to
0:28:03 bring up your level of activation, then dissociating, not the clinical dissociation kind of disorders,
0:28:07 but dissociating the mental or emotional response from what’s going on in your body.
0:28:10 And over time, so if you do this, you know, a couple of times, you don’t have to do this
0:28:16 every workout, but if you do this every maybe once a week or so, you start being comfortable
0:28:18 at these higher activation states.
0:28:24 What once felt overwhelming and like a lot of work now is manageable, it feels tolerable.
0:28:28 So that’s for navigating medium term stress.
0:28:30 And then there’s long term stress.
0:28:32 Now long term stress is bad.
0:28:36 You do not want adrenaline up in your system for a very long time.
0:28:42 In fact, you ideally, you would have your stress go up various times throughout the day,
0:28:46 but it would never stay elevated and it would never prevent you from getting a good night’s
0:28:47 sleep.
0:28:53 We know that chronic stress, elevated stress, and especially in the so-called type A personalities,
0:28:59 creates heart disease, leading killer for in most every country, but in particular in
0:29:00 the US.
0:29:04 But by no means do you want to be stressed out all the time chronically for months and
0:29:08 months and months and years on end.
0:29:14 The best tools, the best mechanisms that we know to modulate long term stress might surprise
0:29:17 you a little bit.
0:29:21 First of all, there are going to be the things that don’t surprise you, which is everyone
0:29:26 knows getting regular exercise, getting good sleep, using real time tools to try and tamp
0:29:28 down the stress response, et cetera.
0:29:31 That’s all going to be really useful.
0:29:38 The data really point to the fact that social connection and certain types of social connection
0:29:44 in particular are what are going to mitigate or reduce long term stress.
0:29:50 This is a particularly important issue nowadays where we have all these proxies or surrogates
0:29:52 for social connection.
0:29:54 We’re online and texting with people a lot.
0:29:57 Everyone has this kind of need to stay connected to one another.
0:30:00 Humans are incredibly social creatures.
0:30:04 The way to think about social connection and how it can mitigate some of the long term
0:30:11 effects of stress is really through the systems of neuromodulation like serotonin.
0:30:13 Serotonin again is a neuromodulator.
0:30:15 Neuromodulators are a little bit like playlists in the brain.
0:30:20 They tend to amplify or bias the likelihood that certain brain circuits and body circuits
0:30:24 are going to be activated and that others will not.
0:30:27 Serotonin generally gives us feelings of well-being at very high levels.
0:30:31 Serotonin makes us feel blissed and it tends to make us feel like we have enough in our
0:30:32 immediate environment.
0:30:38 When we see somebody that we recognize and trust, serotonin is released in the brain
0:30:43 and that has certain positive effects on the immune system and on other systems of neural
0:30:49 repair and synapses and things that really reinforce connections in the brain and prevent
0:30:51 that long term withering of connections.
0:30:55 Serotonin is tied to social connection.
0:30:57 Social connection can take many forms.
0:31:00 Some of those can be romantic attachments, those could be familial attachments that are
0:31:07 non-romantic, friendship, pets, even attachments to things that just delight us.
0:31:12 Having a sense of delight, a sense of really enjoying something that you see and engage
0:31:18 in, witness or participate in, that is associated with the serotonin system.
0:31:22 And certainly play is one of those things, social connection of various forms.
0:31:23 Those are things to invest in.
0:31:27 I’ll be the first to admit, social connection and friendship and relationships of all kinds
0:31:31 to animals or humans or inanimate objects takes work.
0:31:32 It takes investment.
0:31:37 It takes time in not needing everything to be exactly the way you want it to be.
0:31:42 Social connection is something that we work for, but it is incredibly powerful.
0:31:48 Finding just a few people, even one or an animal or something that you delight in, believe
0:31:55 it or not, has very positive effects on mitigating this long-term stress, on improving various
0:31:59 aspects of our life as it relates to stress and emotionality.
0:32:01 Now how do you know if you’re making serotonin?
0:32:06 You don’t know in the moment, but you can learn if you pay attention to kind of recognize
0:32:12 these feelings of comfort, trust, bliss, delight, and those are not weak terms.
0:32:16 Those are not associated just with psychological terms.
0:32:20 They are every bit as physiological as the movement of your muscles or the secretion
0:32:21 of adrenaline.
0:32:25 I’d like to take a quick break and thank our sponsor, 8Sleep.
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0:32:41 of your sleeping environment is correct.
0:32:45 And that’s because in order to fall and stay deeply asleep, your body temperature actually
0:32:49 has to drop by about one to three degrees, and in order to wake up feeling refreshed
0:32:53 and energized, your body temperature actually has to increase about one to three degrees.
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0:33:57 Now there are a plethora of things that will also impact well-being and allow you to modulate
0:34:02 your long-term stress, reduce the likelihood that you’ll engage in long-term stress.
0:34:08 There are compounds that are not prescription compounds that can modulate the stress system,
0:34:12 and sometimes because of the way that life is, we just don’t have the opportunity to
0:34:15 control life and to control our response to stress.
0:34:19 The three I want to focus on, and one that I think you need to be cautious about that
0:34:26 I’ve mentioned before, include ashwagandha, alfionine, and melatonin.
0:34:28 Let’s talk about melatonin first.
0:34:32 Melatonin is a hormone secreted from the pineal in direct relationship to how much
0:34:37 darkness you are in, not emotional darkness, but light suppresses melatonin.
0:34:38 Melatonin helps you fall asleep.
0:34:40 It doesn’t help you stay asleep.
0:34:47 I personally do not recommend supplementing melatonin because it’s supplemented typically
0:34:52 at very high levels, you know, one to three milligrams or even more that is an outrageously
0:34:53 high dose.
0:35:00 It also has a number of potentially negative effects on the reproductive axis and hormones
0:35:01 there.
0:35:02 The other is alfionine.
0:35:07 I’ve talked about alfionine, which provided it’s safe for you, can be taken 100 milligrams
0:35:11 or 200 milligrams, about a 30 minutes or 60 minutes before sleep, it can enhance the transition
0:35:14 to sleep and depth of sleep for many people.
0:35:17 It increases GABA, this inhibitory neurotransmitter in the brain.
0:35:21 It tends to turn off our forebrain a little bit or reduce the activity of our kind of
0:35:25 thinking systems and ruminating systems help people fall asleep.
0:35:29 But the anine has also been shown for people that are chronically anxious or chronically
0:35:31 stressed to significantly increase relaxation.
0:35:36 It is known to have a minor effect on anxiety, but eight studies have shown that it definitely
0:35:38 has a notable effect on stress.
0:35:42 The other supplement that can be very useful is ashwagandha.
0:35:45 Ashwagandha is known to lower anxiety and cortisol.
0:35:46 This is great.
0:35:50 I mean, the opportunity for me anyway to be able to take something that can help me reduce
0:35:55 my cortisol so that I don’t get some of the long-term effects of stress and I’m not going
0:35:56 to take ashwagandha year round.
0:35:59 I would only do this if I was feeling like I wasn’t managing my short and medium term
0:36:01 stress well.
0:36:02 So I don’t take it on a regular basis.
0:36:07 I do take it when I’m in these times when things are particularly stressful.
0:36:12 So social connection and some supplementation, of course, diet, exercise, sleep for long-term
0:36:13 stress.
0:36:20 So I hope today you were able to take a slightly different view of this thing that we call stress,
0:36:24 not just see it as evil, but see it as powerful and useful in certain contexts, great for
0:36:29 us in certain contexts, and problematic in other contexts, and as well to think about
0:36:35 the various tools that I’ve presented that can allow you to adjust and modulate your
0:36:40 internal levels of alertness or calmness so that you can lean more effectively into life,
0:36:44 which includes sleep and social connection and the work you have to do.
0:36:49 And of course, acknowledges that the events in the world are beyond our control.
0:36:53 What’s in our control is how we react to them, something that’s commonly said in the wellness
0:36:59 and self-help and psychology world, but for which there often aren’t as many concrete tools
0:37:02 that we can really look to and trust in real time.
0:37:06 As always, really appreciate your time and attention today.
0:37:09 I hope you practiced some of the tools if they’re right for you.
0:37:14 I hope you think hard about stress and how you can control your stress.
0:37:18 And above all, as always, thank you for your interest in science.
0:37:20 (upbeat music)
0:37:23 (upbeat music)