The Science of Deep Rest: How Relaxation Calms Stress & Slows Ageing with Dr Elissa Epel #668

34:23So these studies are fascinating on neighborhoods. Things that matter, that come to the top, are feelings of safety, what we call deprivation, neighborhood deprivation. So these measures of how much a neighborhood has things like grocery stores and community resources versus not having these resources. aesthetics is another aspect or the level of green parks and trees is another thing we measure in neighborhoods and uh in some studies that's starting to be measured and being related to cellular aging so this study that i love in hong kong um they compared the suburbs of hong kong which were like literally green hills and a tremendous amount of natural land versus this very dense urban area.

35:22And they looked at city dwellers and they controlled for social economic status, like at the individual level, like education and income, and found that there were significantly longer telomeres in the people that lived in the green area versus the urban area. And of course, there's many studies on urbanization in the brain, the stress response showing that the amygdala is more hyper responsive in people who live in urban areas. Yeah. In terms of practical interventions then, if we just laser focus in on that window before bed, okay, so sleep of course is a great time for the body to restore itself and to rejuvenate itself.

36:06But of course, one of the things that we're talking about that is going to determine what your sleep physiology becomes is what state are you in just before going to bed. In terms of trying to recommend things to the listener who might be thinking, well, I don't sleep particularly well. Normally, I'm sort of in bed just scrolling Instagram and I feel that's relaxing before I go to bed. But let's say that person's thinking, You know, should I be doing something else? What kind of recommendations do you have for people to try and get themselves into Blue Mind before they go to bed? I really admire people who leave their phone in a different room or even a different floor.

36:59Most people are looking at their phone. and we use the screen for so many things that it's very easy to have excuses and then to flip right to social media and to scrolling. And there's no question that even if it's rewarding in the short term and it feels good and it feels time, it's activating threat responses. We're just bombarded by so much information, exponentially more information than our brains are used to, even 10 years ago, just the amount of stimulus. So clearly having this protected period, as you described, two hours is wonderful when you can do that, where you are shutting down the doing mode from work, maybe making a to-do list of what you need to do the next day, not talking about work with people at home, having less blue light, so less screens.

38:03And then what you do with that time, that ritual is so individual and personal. And so I can list off ideas and some of the things I do, but really just having one or two things that your body is conditioned to do is the trick. Because when our body gets the signals, sensory signals, lighting signals, where we are in our house, it starts that wind down process. Like the nervous system is absolutely sensitive to routine order and conditioning. So for example, I will come into our bedroom and set it up by creating a change in lighting. I will put on a aromatherapy diffuser, lavender or, you know, different mixes, but lavender is clearly one of the more relaxing aromatherapy interventions and music.

39:12And so right there, that's a completely different sensory environment. Adding some yoga poses that are restorative or stretches might be part of someone's routine, especially if they haven't moved much that day. You can even do it in bed if you're that tired. You can do forward bends while sitting.

39:37so some of the big guns that I use I love to be technology free but the truth is these biosensors when we benefit from them are a whole new source of information they promote a whole new level of awareness of where our nervous system is at which is otherwise invisible to us we may think we know how stressed we are, but unless we're measuring it, we don't know. Our feelings of stress are not tightly correlated to our nervous system physiology. So that's kind of a foundation of stress science that we need to measure both. And you first asked me, what is stress? So at the subjective level, we all know that what stress feels like.

40:27We may be feeling overwhelmed, worried, alarmed, threatened, anxious, tense. All of those subjective feelings are very important. We need to check in with ourselves and say, what is my level of stress right now? So that's just a tool we don't use enough. That's an immediate check-in. But even more advanced and powerful is getting a layer below those feelings of stress. That first sense of, is my alarm on or off to various extents? The second layer that's much more powerful is emotional granularity. What are the different emotions that I'm feeling right now and why? So that's a deeper dive into data collection about our mind-body state because emotions really inform us about how we're feeling and why.

41:24And by naming it, we tame it. As Dan Siegel says, We name it to tame it. So when we can actually do a quick mindful check-in, what am I feeling in my body? What are the different emotions that might be predominant right now? That check-in is very powerful. That can get us from red or yellow mind closer down to green. Just knowing, just awareness. We're not necessarily going to de-stress ourselves with emotional labeling, but we are going to turn off that alarm, that diffuse, let's say, nondescript alarm that keeps us stressed. Yeah. So, the gadget. So, I use, right now, I've got something on my arm that is something I've recently been trying, which I actually really like.

42:17This is called the Apollo Neuro, and it does give very subtle, gentle vibrations to the body that feel calming to some people. So I'm particularly responsive to this, and you can wear it at night as well. I like to also, during tough periods, use a biofeedback monitor right before bed. So I have it right next to my bed. HeartMath is a really easy one where you, unfortunately, do have to use your phone, but you can look at how your nervous system is responding to your slower breathing. And you can do visualizations, you can imagine warmness or kindness in your heart or other visualizations that allow you to feel release and more of a loving tone, like bringing in kindness, kind thoughts, and love.

43:27and that just softens everything. And you can actually watch this little monitor and see if your vagal tone is increasing. Now there's some proprietary formula for heart math in particular, but in general, what we're trying to do is increase our heart rate variability. You know, the bottom line, Rangan, is just slowing our breathing. If there's just one thing that we all tend to do right before bed that works for most people, It's just slowing the breathing. Yeah. It's crazy, isn't it? To think that something so simple, which is just a body scan, which has been shown, I think, from your research and other people's research to have a profound impact on our stress response and therefore our ability to fall asleep.

44:16But I think the key thing is, is that many of us are so disconnected from our bodies now and our ability to sit with it and sort of understand ourselves. I do think for many people, some kind of external monitor that gives you that feedback so that you go, hey, you know, I know I feel better when I've slowed my breathing down, but oh, I can also see that my nervous system state is different. I really do feel for so many people who struggle to relax and switch off. this could be a game changer and i personally have not tried this stuff before but you're saying you have tried it and you find it very useful i use it on and off so there's this tension between the the reality that if we can be more tuned into our body increase our interoceptive awareness our our reading of the body sensations our awareness of the feelings and signals from our body, that is so powerful.

45:20And we don't need technology to do that if we're being mindful and doing these check-ins. So where are we placing our attention? Right now, if you just tune into your body and notice sensations, tension, this just automatically slows our breathing, right? We just all of a sudden are getting into our sensory world. Very, very powerful. It's almost impossible to be really worried and cognitively stressed and problem solving while at the same time focusing on our breathing or releasing our muscle tension. So shifting to something sensory, it could be nature, petting our dog, tuning it to our body, giving ourself a hug.

46:10big shift. We can do that for free. It's cheap. No technology needed. That's the tool we want. But boy, we need extra help. It's really hard these days. We are so bombarded by stressful things in the world and in our personal lives. I'll accept all the help I can get. So I, you know, I use things like HeartMathManner on and off. I recently had a conversation with Jon Kabat-Zinn, who has been, of course, practicing and teaching meditation most of his, all of his adult life. And I'm a big proponent of aura. I'm also one of their science advisors. So that's my disclosure for measuring stress in the body.

46:52And so I was telling him how exciting it is to be able to, on a daily basis, I look forward to looking at what did my nervous system do during sleep? And what was my stress response when this or that happened? And at the end of the conversation, he said, you know, that's, that's wonderful, but I would never need that because look at this, this is what I've been doing my whole life, this reading my body, you know, and so that enhanced dedication to paying attention to the whole of us and interoceptive awareness is, supersedes and overrides our need for technology, but most of us are not being that mindful and we need that.

47:40Yeah. Could benefit from that help. Although I do want to say, Rangan, that about 30 % of people, that's probably a high estimate, do not benefit from monitoring their sleep. It makes them more neurotic and anxious. So this is definitely not for everyone. What would you say, Alyssa, for people who do have wearables, you know, whatever brand they've chosen to get, what are the key things that you would like them to look at to help them understand the impacts of stress on their bodies? That's a great question. I think wearables are great for increasing our awareness for limited periods where we can actually become aware of how our exercise habits, our sleep times, all of these things are affecting our nervous system.

48:32And for people who love to wear it all the time, I rarely take off my Oura ring. That's fine. But the real goal is to increase the synchrony, the entunement that we have with our body and know what daily interventions, nudges, micro practices help us, and then stop monitoring, right? So once we know, we know. I mean, it's beautiful that you can give yourself this holistic, here's where my mind-body complex is at today. So maybe I want to be more gentle, maybe I need to do more self-care, or maybe I'm ready to like seize the day. That's the goal, really, right? not to depend on wearables. I really feel more strongly about that when we think about glucose monitoring.

49:24Glucose monitoring can drive you absolutely crazy when you put in a continuous glucose monitor and you can see how your glucose responds to everything you do, to your sleep, to every meal, to stress eating. I've been so amused by how dramatic my glucose response to when I haven't had enough sleep and I'm stressed about something and if I eat the wrong thing, boom, I'm like in a pre-diabetic state. So I study that, but seeing that, oh, that happens to me too. It doesn't matter that I'm skinny and that I think I do the right things. We are all vulnerable to these laws of stress physiology. And especially as we age, we're more vulnerable.

50:11We all tend to get a bit more insulin resistant as we age. So the glucose monitoring, I think is an invaluable tool for looking inside. Of course, getting a fasting glucose, as you could describe much better than I can, the knowledge about whether we're pre-diabetic when we wake up after fasting is the most important knowledge, the levels of fasting insulin and glucose. And so that's step one. Everyone should know they're fasting insulin and glucose. But even if you're not pre-diabetic, knowing when you are having huge insulin and glucose spikes because of your dietary patterns or timing of eating is also invaluable.

51:02That's kind of an optimized way of thinking about really promoting metabolic sensitivity and enhanced functioning in our older years. Yeah. Now, I'm just going to answer the rest of your question about what to monitor. Okay, sure. When we look at a biosensor for stress, we're just measuring physiological stress. This has some relationship to our emotional stress, but that correlation is usually pretty weak. So when we look at daily stress, we're looking at arousal from positive things like socializing and activity and engaging in challenging activities even more than it's reflecting emotional stress.

51:51So daily stress, I don't take too seriously when I look at a biosensor. I do like to make sure that I'm not staying in the high arousal zone all day. You want to see a lot of up and down. You want to see that green mind state be present and manifest at different times throughout the day. The nice thing about these wearables is that they're moving more toward longer term monitoring so that we're really focused on what's our trajectory. Are we in a high risk zone with the way we've been sleeping and with the way our nervous system has been working over the last weeks or months. So for example, Aura has a measure called cumulative stress that has been trained on the measure of burnout and chronic stress by people's lived experience.

52:48So they've trained this metric of cumulative stress based on people who are experiencing high levels of chronic stress and burnout. So that's a very valuable and meaningful metric. And we want to try to monitor that in a monthly fashion to make sure that we're staying in a lower risk zone. One thing I did want to talk to you about is your study on mindful eating in pregnancy. I thought it was quite profound because from recollection, there was an impact on blood glucose and also things like cortisol and moods. Could you just walk us through it, what it was and what it found.

53:30Today's episode is sponsored by The Way, the only meditation app with a single long-term pathway. Now, if you've tried other meditation apps before, I am certain that The Way will be the one that will finally help you develop a consistent practice. You see, one of the best things about it is that you are not going to get overwhelmed with different options. You simply open the app and do the next meditation, building up your practice step by step. After a few sessions, you will feel as if you've got your own personal meditation teacher, who of course, is the wonderful Henry Shookman, who has appeared as a guest on this podcast on two separate occasions.

54:18One of my listeners who started using The Way following my recommendation contacted me to say, I have tried so many meditation apps in the past but simply could not make any of them work for me in the long term. However, using The Way has been a complete revelation. I've been using it almost daily for the past three months now and it has had a transformative effect on my life. Now, I personally have been using this app for over six months now, and I absolutely love it. In fact, I love it so much that I have invested in the company to join them in their mission to get more people meditating around the world.

54:59For listeners of my podcast, The Way is offering 30 free days to establish your own meditation practice. all you have to do is go to thewayapp.com forward slash live more to get started. This episode is brought to you in partnership with Airbnb. Now my family and I have been lucky enough to have had some fantastic trips over the years. This summer we're planning to go to Greece and check out some of the beautiful islands there and we've just booked a villa on Airbnb to kick our trip off and I honestly can't wait until the holiday begins. And it did get me thinking. Whilst we are away, our own house will be sitting empty and that feels like a missed opportunity unless, of course, I list it on Airbnb.

55:52You see, if you list your own space on Airbnb while you're away, you could earn a little extra money that you can put towards that house renovation you've been thinking about, a side project, or maybe that extra cash could help you pay for all those delicious meals you'll be eating on holiday or even your car hire. It's really easy to set up and just makes sense to do. So if you've got a trip coming up even a few weeks away, it might be worth asking yourself what your home could be doing whilst you're gone. Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at airbnb.co.uk forward slash host.

56:43We've been very interested in using mindfulness and mindful eating to help people right before they're eating, when they're starting to feel cravings and hungry, to bring in the ability to to determine, is this real hunger? Is this craving about boredom or sadness? Or is it that I really need calories right now and I should have a meal? So just that check-in, interoceptive awareness really, about true hunger versus emotions disguised with hunger. We can easily feel cravings and feelings of hunger when we're stressed. And even sadness can increase cravings and hunger. So we really get mixed signals.

57:37They're very tied up together. Stress and eating. For many people, especially if we have excess weight, stress triggers feelings of desire to eat, but it's not true physiological hunger. And so how do we get below that? How do we really fine tune our ability to determine if it's a good time to eat and to restrain and inhibit overeating? That's not easy. We all struggle with that. We know that it's normal for stress to trigger our strong drive to get dense calories. Sweets and fats definitely are a biological signal for dense calories. So how do we get beyond that? So for years, we've been training people in mindful eating and these mini meditations right before they eat eat to really discern whether they are going to choose to eat and what they're going to choose to eat and how much.

58:54So really helping people in a sense develop some metacognition and control. It helps. Mindful eating helps. It tends to help reduce dysregulated eating and insulin and glucose spikes. And it doesn't necessarily help with weight loss, but it helps with inner health and metabolic health. That's what we care most about. That's what matters most for health, not necessarily what the scale says, but rather how stable our glucose is. We wanted to test if mindful eating could help women during pregnancy, a time when there are very strong cravings and a time when it's very easy to gain excess weight, more weight than is healthy and needed.

59:41So we enrolled some volunteers, women who were already overweight and were early in their pregnancy. We found 200 pregnant women and randomized them in different ways, different groups of 10 to a mindful eating and stress reduction group or to treatment as usual, the control group, which is just their usual medical care. And we found that within that first two-month period when women were getting weekly training together in mindful eating and mindful stress reduction, that their glucose became much more normalized. They had reductions and impaired glucose tolerance during pregnancy than women in the control group.

1:00:37And then we followed these women out through their pregnancy. And my colleague, Nikki Bush, followed the babies for another eight years. And that was quite remarkable because we found that not only did the women benefit in stress and depression and metabolic health, but that every year later, all the way up to eight years later, they remained lower in depression and stress. And their babies came out with more stress resilience in their own nervous systems. When they were stressed out in the lab, they recovered more quickly. And this is incredible hearing that. I mean, so you're essentially taking a cohort of pregnant women, teaching them about mindful eating and more awareness before they eat.

1:01:27Is this physical hunger or is this emotional hunger? And that's having an impact on their glucose control, their stress levels, their mood, which you can see even seven or eight years later, but it's also having an impact on the fetus. And so when the fetus is born and is a baby, the stressed resilience of that child is improved. I mean, this is quite profound, Alyssa, what you're saying. What do you think was going on in that study? I mean, what was the change that occurred that led to all of these quite phenomenal results? Yes, that's the big question. And we absolutely need to study this further to really understand the mechanisms.

1:02:19But we're so excited. We know that the benefit is high of this group training and the risks of it are low or non-existent. And so it's so important for hospitals and healthcare systems to know about not just offering mindfulness for stress reduction, but for this very critical period for pregnant women, that this is potentially creating tremendous neuroplasticity in the mom's brain. And eventually it looks like in the developing fetus, as you said, we just don't know exactly what led to all these benefits. So the mom is creating an intrauterine environment that's healthier, less metabolic stress, less physiological stress in terms of her perceived stress being lower.

1:03:15Her physiological stress is then presumably lower. Her glucose is at a much more healthier level during those months of development. So there was that prenatal priming or period of critical development that may have contributed to some of the offspring benefits. They also came out with less early excess weight in the babies too. It could be that the moms were then using these stress resilience skills as their parenting in those early months when things are so stressful. Yeah. I mean, one thing we do know from other pieces of research is that how stressed a parent is around, you know, well, during pregnancy can impact the child's stress resilience and have a long-term impact on that.

1:04:13And I don't say that to make anyone feel bad, you know, everyone's doing the best they can. Sometimes we do have stressful lives when we're pregnant, but there are some cultures out there who do prioritize rest. Okay, we know, for example, in Denmark, which is regarded as one of the happiest nations in the world, I've spoken to quite a few Danish people before who say, in a lot of the offices, you leave at four. That is alien in the UK. It's even more alien, I would say, in the US. My perception of America is that there is a real go get them work culture, don't stop, don't get much maternity, you know, as soon as you can, let's get back to work.

1:04:57And again, I'm not here to criticize or judge. It's just an observation that different cultures clearly prioritize different things and the different things they prioritize lead to different consequences. Absolutely. And really the culture, the beliefs, the common values that is the most important lever in determining are we a healthy country or a sick country? Yeah. And there is good data now that the shorter work day, the shorter work week can be just as profitable and everyone's happier. Yeah. And healthier. And so the more those studies come out, I think the more businesses will stop this thinking of time as so linear with profit and understanding that human potential and well-being is the real resource to invest in.

1:05:58Yeah. I guess if I zoom out, you've made it clear that acute stress is not inherently bad. We need acute stress to function at our best. At the same time, that chronic, nonstop, unrelenting stress is what ages us faster and increases our risk of all kinds of chronic diseases, including dementia, cancer, autoimmune disease, heart disease, and the like. But with that backdrop, we're thinking about what are the practices that we can do to help reduce that. You mentioned that critical window before bed and how breath work, for example, of slowing your breathing down, doing a body scan can be very helpful.

1:06:42What have you found in terms of the relationship between joy and the stress response? There's a large literature on positive psychology showing that there are many things we can do to boost our positive emotion. And that actually is a shortcut to reducing stress. Boosting positive affect in healthy ways makes us feel stress less. It makes us perceive things as less stressful. And so this is this huge opportunity to boost our well-being without focusing on symptoms of stress and depression. In one study, we decided to test whether these short behaviors that produce bursts of positive affect would produce additive effects over the week.

1:07:36And would they really increase deep well-being, the purpose and meaning and greater intimacy in relationships that people can feel? We call that emotional well-being. And that's almost independent of feelings of stress and depression. We can have flourishing even when we're suffering and struggling with stressful situations or chronic illness or intermittent depression. So we want to boost and focus on these positive aspects of life. and we can increase positive affect within minutes, just like we can reduce stress within minutes. So we tested out a handful of these micro acts of joy, being kind to a stranger, talking with someone about something they experienced recently that they're proud or happy about and really experiencing their joy with them.

1:08:35We had other ways of inducing joy, like gratitude, making a short gratitude list. and we studied this in about 20 ,000 people over a week and anyone can try this platform of micro acts of joy we still are collecting data for our studies so you could just type in the big joy project if you want to try this what we found were several things number one even in this remote massive study, when people read about how to try out this microactive joy, it boosted their positive affect to various extents. But that positive affect often lasted through the evening. When we again measured their feelings of positive and negative emotions, we see lasting effects.

1:09:28And over the week, we see a buildup of joy, this positive cycle where the next day when they woke up, they actually felt a bit more positive than the previous day. So that was a beautiful shift, really, in their baseline emotional tone. And at the end of the week, we found improvements in feelings of altruism and pro-sociality. So this social aspect of joy, helping others, being kind, sending love and kindness, these are very powerful. And they increased how much people felt like they wanted to make sacrifices so that others could live a better life. So that's remarkable, that kind of attitude of altruism, that we could change that just with these small boosts in positive emotion.

1:10:29Yeah. And what a wonderful prescription from a stress researcher or a doctor to say, do things that you enjoy. You know, a lot of the time people think about health as being things that, oh, I've got to not have this and not eat that. And actually, I, like you for many years, have been trying to promote joy. I remember maybe 10 years ago reading a research paper showing us that people who regularly do things that they love are more resilient to stress. And it kind of echoes very nicely with what you just said and what your study is showing. And of course, what I find joyful may be different from what you find joyful.

1:11:09And in terms of that pro-sociality and our desire to be kind and and consider it to the world around us. It just seems to be such an important thing for us all to focus on at a time when the world can sometimes seem quite divided. If we can have fun more and do things that we enjoy more, it's probably going to then magnify out into a more cohesive society because we're going to be nicer to the people around us. Absolutely. I couldn't agree more. I think that the focus on individual health and individual mental health is really limiting us from seeing the potential of actually how the big levers, the big effects are about how we help each other, how we connect with each other.

1:12:09that feeling of safety we're talking about like we can't fully relax unless we feel at least a bit safer is all about social safety do we feel someone has our back do we feel connected is there someone that we can talk to when we feel really in need the final thing i wanted to talk to you about alissa is probably my favorite topic when it comes to stress which is our perception of stress. And one of the reasons I'm so passionate about this is because I feel that some of the quantum leaps in my own well-being and happiness and contentedness have come from my deep realization that most situations in life can be considered neutral, most.

1:13:04and it's really the perception that we choose to take on that neutral event that determines its outcome on us. I know you've done some interesting work showing that our perception of stress quite literally changes the physiology of the stress response which is truly quite remarkable and I think you talk about it in terms of a survival response versus a challenge response. So can you just speak to this area? Because I think there is a feeling out there that an event is either stressful or it's not stressful. But of course, the same event is not stressful in the same degree to every single person.

1:13:47So there is an interaction, isn't there, between the stressor and our internal state that ultimately determines a huge part of whether this is stressful or not. You just described it so well. It is about our perception of whatever is happening out there in our body. It's the story we are telling ourselves. What is our narrative? If we are seeing and embedding a situation with more threat and more danger than is really there, we are driving an excessive and unnecessary stress response. And that tendency to over-attribute danger, threat, is biologically conserved. It is our safety response. So we've got to have a lot of compassion and kindness and humor about the stories we tell.

1:14:49Because we're just, you know, let's say the majority of us are just over-exaggerating threat. And even unconsciously all the time. So just asking ourselves, what is the story right now? And is that true? What are alternative stories? is there, you know, what is the likely outcome here? What is the worst outcome? Just that inquiry, just that curiosity is going to deflate our ability to catastrophize and exaggerate. And so just stepping back and like you said, asking ourselves to take a, you know, realistic assessment of the situation is very powerful. But do you, Rangan, do you have any examples of when you had this realization that things were actually much more neutral than you were seeing?

1:15:54What was like a situation that you were able to reframe or what we say with our jargon, cognitively reappraise? Yeah. I mean, you know, if we had two hours left, I could literally go through a whole series of them because there were just so many. And what I realized at the start, Alyssa, is that initially it can be difficult to do in the moment. So often it would be in the evening where I'd reflect on my day and go, the question I would ask myself actually was, where today did you get triggered, Rangan, by the actions of someone else that were completely outside your control? That was one of the questions I would ask myself.

1:16:40And once you start asking yourself this question regularly, it is amazing how many things you start to find. You go, oh, well, that email bothered me. And, oh, the person in the supermarket who did that started to bother me. And that driver, this is many years ago, right? And then you go, what I would do is I would go, okay, what's a different story you could put onto this situation? Okay, the driver. What else might be going on with that driver? Were they really trying to irritate you? Or maybe it was a busy parent who was up last night with their sick child. Maybe it's someone who's been late for work three times in the last six months, and if they're late again today, they're going to be fired.

1:17:23So all they're trying to do is keep their job, which then pays for their bills and their house. So there's a whole number of things. But why that exercise was so powerful is because I learned cognitively, but also viscerally, that there are multiple interpretations of every single situation. And I can train myself to choose a more empowering interpretation. And initially, you can't do it in the moment. You have to do it. And this is my experience, but over time you realize, oh wow, I'm doing it in the moment now. So the driver who cuts me up now while I'm driving on the motorway, generally speaking, I just smile.

1:18:10And so this goes to a question I had for you actually, which is this idea that our perception changes our physiology, right? Because I've heard you talk before, Alyssa, about this idea that in both situations, your cortisol might be going up. But if you deem it as a threat to your survival, you're going to have your blood pressure go up from vasoconstriction, and the recovery period is going to be very slow from that. Whereas if you interpret it more as an opportunity to learn something or a challenge that you can overcome, yes, your blood pressure goes up, but it goes up from more cardiac outputs, which is a much healthier way for your blood pressure to go up.

1:18:51There's more oxygenation to your brain. You're better at problem solving and you recover quicker. And I thought this is incredible because the stressor is the same. Yes, exactly as you've described. It's really quite phenomenal. And the story we tell ourselves directly determines our physiological response. if we are telling ourselves that we've got this under control, this is something that we will survive regardless of how it turns out, that we have what it takes, that people have our back, we have the resources we need. Any one of these positive or empowering statements will tilt us toward a positive challenge response.

1:19:48We will feel hopeful, excited, enthusiastic, empowered, and more confident. And that means that we are going to be having a more oxygenated response, high cardiac output, high oxygen to our brain, better problem solving, more positive emotion. Wendy Mendez is the researcher who studied this the most in a granular way. If we are feeling these catastrophic thoughts that lead us to mount more of that survival response, we are having the opposite happen. And yes, our blood pressure is going up, but it's going up through the vasoconstriction. We're having less oxygenation. Our perception is literally changing.

1:20:36our attention is narrowed toward threat. We're seeing threat more and we're not able to problem solve and bring the higher powers of our intellect to bear on the problem. And so it changes how we think. It changes our hemodynamics. It changes our neuroendocrine response. The threat response is characterized by that quicker response that's energizing and the faster recovery. The threat response is characterized by a greater cortisol response, that sluggish recovery, and more inflammation. And so think about that. Every day, if we're triggering more of that threat response, that is going to turn into chronic stress and have more of a wear and tear response.

1:21:32It's often helpful for people to think of the lion and the gazelle, right? This is the in nature stress response. The lion's chasing gazelle. Gazelle is having this full-on threat response, thinking my life is in danger and getting ready to be wounded and have that inflammatory and vasoconstriction response to help with that. That lion is having that thrilling challenge response of this is going to be dinner for a week. I'm going to, you know, get so much benefit for the whole pride for this. And so all of these positive emotions and excitement as well. So completely different responses. So the way that we can control that is number one, those empowering thoughts, as you said, bringing on the reminders of why we will survive and how we could do well.

1:22:30But then also framing the body's response as another positive resource. My body is excited. My body is mounting this stress response to help me. My body knows exactly how to cope with this moment. That can reinforce that positive challenge response. So can we say this? The body activates the stress response because there was a threat there. But through training, your perception of that stressor changes and therefore the physiology of how that stress response plays out also changes. Exactly. I mean, that is so, so empowering because I know that this can be trained because I've done it myself. I've helped people train this in them.

1:23:24I also acknowledge that, yes, for some people it can be harder than others. If you've had childhood trauma or you've had real challenges in your life, of course it can be more difficult. But I don't know if you would agree with this, Alyssa, or not, but I would say in my experience, Whatever your starting point is, it is a skill that you can get better at. So you can learn how to change it from whatever your current baseline is. Right, right, exactly. I just love your example also of reappraising at night and being able to then more likely to reappraise in the moment. But we try to load up and go into stressful situations with the resources and the empowering thoughts, But more often than not, our body's going to respond, especially if we've been exposed to a lot of trauma.

1:24:17And so then we're going to be exquisitely sensitive to threat. So it's not so much about controlling that immediate reaction. It's about what happens next. Yeah, I love that. When can we recover? When we change our story and when we focus on changing our attention, right? Focusing on releasing stress in the body, getting into sensory experiences, getting into nature, focusing on gratitude or joy. But this power of reappraisal that you've brought up, it's never too late to change our narrative, to look at things in a different way, to bring the light of curiosity to the situation. Yeah. to look at what good could have come from this as well, what good can still come.

1:25:09So all of those beautiful, open thoughts that we can bring to a stressful situation can happen years later as well, right? Because we hold on to stories and we hold on to stress. So this reappraisal, yes, try to do it before the stressor, definitely try to do it right after but also be willing to look at the big stories that we carry around about those difficult life situations that we have that take up a lot of mental real estate and that cause us a lot of rumination and in a sense extra stress what an empowering message to leave people with at the end of this conversation um alissa i just want to acknowledge for all the work and research you've carried out over the years.

1:25:59Your contribution to this field has been absolutely profound. Your books that I've come across, at least the telomere effect and the stress prescription are so wonderful and are so useful for people. So I just want to express my gratitude to you for everything you've done over the years and for making time to come onto my podcast today. So thank you. Thank you so much, Rangan. It's really such a pleasure. And thank you for helping so many people and let it bless your life and your day.

1:26:32Really hope you enjoyed that conversation. Do have a think about one thing you can take away and apply in your own life and also one thing you could teach to someone else. Remember, when you teach someone else, it not only helps them, it also helps you learn and retain the information. Now, before you go, I just wanted to let you know about something I'm really excited about. On July the 1st, I'm kicking off my first ever 21-day energy reset. It's a simple challenge built around the four pillars of how you feel each day, how you relax, eat, move, and sleep. And if you're someone who's tired of feeling tired, then this challenge is for you.

1:27:18Over 21 days, You'll build simple daily habits that will help you wake up with more energy, feel calmer and clearer, and start to feel like yourself again. Small actions, which will lead to a big change in how you feel. And the best part, you won't be doing it on your own. You'll be doing it alongside other people. And I'll be there with you on the live kickoff call. It's£29.99 to join and you can sign up now at drchatterjee.com forward slash reset. And before you take off, always remember, you are the architect of your own health. Making lifestyle change is always worth it. Because when you feel better, you live more.

1:28:12Thank you.