Why “Less Stress” Might Be Killing Your Potential with Dr. Sharon Bergquist 

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1:17This is The Ed Myron Show. Okay, guys, welcome back to the show. So, is stress bad? Is all stress bad? Not all stress is bad. Okay, good. Well, that voice you hear right there is going to answer that question this week. And so that's really what we're going to talk about. It's going to be an interesting journey about stress and how it makes an impact on you and whether some of it is a lot better for you than you think. And so the lady's voice that you just heard is Sharon Berquist. And she's a physician, a researcher, and she's really a pioneer in lifestyle, regenerative medicine is how I would say it.

1:54And she's Yale and Harvard trained. So we know her IQ is higher than mine for sure. But she's got a book out right now that is really interesting called The Stress Paradox, Why You Need Stress to Live Longer, Healthier, and Happier. And for a lot of you, that's kind of a counterintuitive thought, but we're going to hopefully prove that to you today. So Sharon, welcome to the show. Thank you for being here. Oh, thank you for having me. It's an absolute honor and pleasure. And by the way, she's a doctor as well. I'll make sure I give her that grace. So I don't even know where to begin with you. most interviews I do, but let's just start out with this sort of paradox that, you know, everyone in the personal development field is trying to reduce stress all the time.

2:36Make sure you meditate, take your walk, just get away from stress. And I think I'm sort of proof that I'm 54. And I think stress has actually been pretty good for me over the years. So talk about the types of stress, at least to begin, give them the framework, the types of stress that are actually good for us, the not bad? Yeah. So, you know, I think we have really been culturally trained to think of stress as bad. And there's, you know, a lot of history behind that. There's 90 years of science showing how stress harms us. This goes back to really how the concept of stress originated in the medical literature.

3:14A lot of experiments that were, you know, on rats, but showing that stress could really lead to death. It made all these rats sick. And that's how the whole fight or flight concept originated. And the roots of that have really permeated medical literature and so much of the research, myself included early in my career, most of the work I did. And a lot of the message I was sharing is all the different ways stress harms, which, you know, as we all know, is nearly every part of our body is damaged by chronic stress. But what we've learned in the last two decades is that not all stress harms. And in fact, there are types of stress that enrich us.

4:00They help us grow. And the paradox, the counterintuitive part is that we actually need these types of stressors to build our resilience against the chronic stressors that harm us. So while there's a lot of merit to try to curb the stress in our life, to limit it, to draw boundaries around it, what we really want is to optimize the stress in our life. So let's talk about that. You talk in the book about hormesis. You might as well define that for everybody. I know it in the physical term. And then you list, really, let's everybody set the framework for you because you want these stressors. you list really like five good stressors or hormetic stressors.

4:42So what are those? And define hormesis for everybody as well. Yeah. Hormesis is the science of good stress. And it's mild to moderate stress followed by recovery. And it originates from a Greek word to excite. So essentially when we reach this hormetic zone, it's like this Goldilocks zone of stress, we grow and we kind of get enriched. It excites us physiologically where we literally benefit at the level all the way down to our cells. So it's essentially the explanation now, modern day through two decades of now molecular and cell biology that are showing how stress ripples down to really all the way to the molecules and cells in our body.

5:37And this is where we see the divergent effects of the stress that we know. And the ones that are beneficial, the ones that we are adapted to and help us thrive and become more resilient are brief and they're intermittent. So the five that I mentioned in the book are plant phytochemicals. And, you know, that may be a little counterintuitive and we can, all of them are, we can get to that. Yeah, really. When I read the word toxins, I'm like, toxins are good for me? Okay. Yeah. I mean, it's really a long history behind how plants evolved these toxins that can help us understand why they are good for us.

6:17But brief bursts of vigorous exercise are another beneficial stress. I think that one we can kind of relate to more intuitively. Going through periods of food scarcity, like intermittent fasting is another beneficial stressor. Heat and cold, probably the most underutilized, but now it's becoming trendy. And then good mental and psychological challenges. And this one I think is probably where people struggle the most of what makes it good, what makes it harmful. Yeah. Well, we're going to unpack that. So just think about this, but if you're listening, you know, there is a line in your life where, you know, the meditation and the earthing and the grounding and the breathing and all that stuff, there's a line to where it isn't, you've not given yourself ample stress in your life as well.

7:08Like challenging things for your brain and your body matter and a human being not challenged. We've all known this, you're either growing or dying, but literally if you really look at Sharon's work, it basically does tell you, if you're not challenging yourself somehow physically and mentally, you're actually doing harm to yourself. And so we're going to unpack a little bit of this today. You know, Sharon, one of the things that seemed critical to me in reading the work that I've not done a great job of is just overall, I want everyone to hear this part. It's the recovery piece, because if you're like me, I've just stressed myself most of the time and not built in the recovery.

7:48And that is debilitating, right? And so, and I think my audience more trend that way. They don't, they've not built in enough recovery for their bodies and minds and spirits as well. So before we go into the other stuff, just speak to recovery, because that's the second step in making all this stuff work, correct? Absolutely. I mean, you really just encapsulated the crux of how this works. During the stress period, when our body is undergoing stress, Part of the reason it's beneficial is that we go into this stress-resistant mode, and our body is brilliantly designed. In that mode, our cells get the signal that they need to function more efficiently, and we start to perform all these housekeeping functions where we can literally repair damage and do regenerative functions.

8:38We can recycle the damage components. Our cells just start to repair their DNA. They repair their protein. And they set us up so that when we enter the phase of recovery, that we can reconfigure and rewire and essentially build adaptations that help us handle future stress better. And the recovery is key because if you just go through the stress without the recovery, you don't get the time to build the pathways that make you more resilient. and if anything else, you're also just stacking the stress and that cumulative buildup of even a good stress can become harmful, right? So one way to think about this is if you went to the gym to lift weights.

9:27So we all know that when we lift weights, we get micro tears in our muscle and it's in the 24 to 48 hours after weightlifting in that recovery where those kind of damaged muscle cells that are inflamed reconfigure in a way where our muscles develop hypertrophy. They grow stronger, right? And it's the same in every part of our body. The same happens in our brain. When we go through something stressful, let's say public speaking for a lot of people is stressful, right? But the stress response doesn't end when you walk off the stage. For hours to days afterward, your body is actually developing pathways in your brain that help you remember how you handle that stress.

10:16So the next time you are doing that same public speaking, you are better capable. You are literally more resilient. Wow. That explains. I've always wondered why if you do something repetitiously, do you necessarily get better at it? This is in the brain why that actually happens. that's fascinating to me like in many years ago i did one on being really down in the dumps or being in a rut and i said what you need to do is you need to find a challenge you need a physical or mental challenge challenge yourself physically and this has got all this attention like that's what i'm supposed to do when i'm down or lost and i i firmly believe that it gives you a chance to have recovery if you've done some tearing down let me ask you let's go to the reverse just for a second i want everyone to understand this because you're talking about these proteins part of the book that like stood out to me you actually talk about the fact that if you don't get rid of some of these old proteins in your system that you have uncovered or research has uncovered that like it could contribute to early onset or onset Alzheimer's even correct like if you're not and I say this everyone let me phrase it for you if you're aging or you have aging parents and they're not being challenged mentally or physically this could be a real challenge for them so would you explain this like clearing out of the proteins and adding the new ones and how it can impact us maybe in ways that are way more detrimental than most people realize that you should know so you're not just sitting around.

11:39Yeah. So you just hit on so many really important things. I mean, the first thing you said about when you're down in a rut, the way to work your way out of it is to go do something challenging. That's really the whole premise that another approach to being overwhelmed by stress is by taking action. I mean, that is an antidote to chronic stress. That action is empowering. And that sets off a cascade in our body that helps us become energized. It releases a lot of chemicals and neurotransmitters that help us reach this higher state. And as you just said, we know that too much stress harms. And so the natural inclination would be, okay, let me just ratchet down the stress, ratchet down the stress.

12:28And maybe if I get it super low, I'll live forever. And, you know, but the other end is true that not enough stress is just as harmful as too much. And in the new framework of stress, we use this term sustress for inadequate stress. And it's just as harmful as distress. and reason being the old model of how stress was viewed is more like a linear model where you think the amount of stress is proportionate to the harm and that leads us down the path where of course we want the least amount of stress the least amount of harm but one of the biggest blind spots in medicine is that the relationship is more parabolic it's more like an upside down you like if you picture the St.

13:17Louis Arch. And that is why when you are at the too much or too little, you are at the bottom of the arch, right? You're at the point where you're developing the least resilience. You're developing the least of your human potential. But when you are in this sweet spot, you know, kind of Goldilocks range, right in that middle, you're at the peak of that arch. and that is where you want to be. So your kind of explanation of if you're out and down in the dumps, like just go do something, you're saying, hey, get on the part of that curve where your body starts to take off. And the explanation about the proteins and what's that doing.

14:02Yeah. So when we go through any stress, you know, on one level, we're all familiar with this fight or flight response, but our stress response is so much more nuanced and so much more complicated. We have a different set of stress responses at the level of our cells. And when our cells encounter stress, like I mentioned, we do some housekeeping and I frame it as the four R's. We resist damage, we repair damage, we recycle damaged and old components, and we recharge ourselves by creating more energy. And what that does in our cells is, you know, we amp up our innate human ability to have a stronger antioxidant defense to regulate inflammation.

14:50Those are the ways we resist. We repair DNA and protein. And what is really mind boggling is that on any given day, Our DNA incurs about 10 ,000 points of damage. And our body is this incredible machine. We're constantly repairing damage. And we have this DNA damage response and stress activates it. So we are really ramping up this capability to mitigate everyday damage that's happening to our bodies. And the part about the proteins comes in with recycle. So our cells have recycling centers called lysosomes. And when there's old and damaged components like clumped proteins, we can take this over to our recycling center and our body can get rid of the damaged ones.

15:43And if we're also clumped and they're disfigured, we can repair our proteins through heat shock proteins through this unfolded protein response. And if we don't, if we don't activate these stress responses, the clumped proteins start to create mental fog. We're not as good at decision making. It affects our mood, right? Because this is all going on in our brain. If we don't pay attention to those symptoms over time, it can also increase our risk of neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's disease, right? You guys, you got somebody in your family, even yourself. Actually, this isn't age-related.

16:24If you're sedentary or you're not challenged. Also, I want to talk in a little bit, but I want to get specific about a few things, about just doing new things because we can adapt to stress things that then don't stress us the way they used to. So we'll talk about adaptation in a minute because I know a lot of you go, well, I cold plunge. Well, in a little bit here, we'll maybe talk about adaptation because I've got a question about that. But before we go there, I want to talk about, you recommended the books. Now we're going to get kind of tactical, everybody. So imagine it's midnight, you're on the couch, you're scrolling through this new website, hitting the add to cart button, and you decide to check out, but you remember that your wallet or your credit card is in the other room and you don't want to get off the couch.

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18:49So I've always lifted weights. I've got a problem with my back the last couple of years, but I've always lifted weights. I've always gone to the gym for an hour, hour and a half, do some cardio workout, whatever it is. And the last couple of years, my cardiologist and a couple of the other doctors treat me like you need to do more interval training, like shock training, like get your heart rate up, then slow it down, get your heart rate up and then slow it down. And you talk about that in the book. So when we talk about physical training, why in your opinion does interval training or short-term bursts of training somehow potentially benefit us more than just long process of doing something in a duration?

19:28Or did I get that wrong? No, you got it 100 % right. And to me, this is such a missing part of physical activity guidelines. You know, they're all about getting 150 minutes and that's wonderful. I mean, I think that's an admirable goal, but we're leaving out the nuances of how we can optimize our physiology and doing these intervals. The reason that adds so much benefit is because your body perceives it as an acute brief stressor, right? Right. It's sending a signal to your central nervous system that the body's under stress. That is what activates the adaptations. Right. So the more intense the brief stress, the stronger the adaptations.

20:16And if you wanted to get at the biochemical level, what happens is you rapidly deplete your energy stores. that sets off a sensor, a molecular sensor, AMPK, which is kind of like a fuel gauge of when your nutrients are going low and that fuel gauge rapidly gets into the red. AMPK activates PCG1, which is kind of one of these master regulators of our mitochondria. And mitochondria help us create energy in the cell. They're kind of the powerhouse of the cell. So you're rapidly sending a signal that I'm stressed, I'm becoming energy depleted, and your body adapts in a way that says, I'm going to increase my capability to make energy.

21:03You increase mitochondria and you also create mitophagy. It's this selective form of autophagy where our body takes the damaged mitochondria and recycles them so that if your mitochondria are impaired, you can release these free radicals that cause oxidative damage. But if you can repair your mitochondria, you're essentially making clean energy in your body. What happens at a molecular level is really the reason why we need this central nervous system stimulus of stress, followed by recovery. Again, the recovery piece is critical because it's in the recovery that we reset to a new baseline where our parasympathetic nervous system kind of kicks in, right?

21:54So you think of it as, oh my God, it's stress. And so many people are out there saying, oh no, that spikes your cortisol. Don't do it, right? But it's intermittent spikes of cortisol is the pathway to building the adaptations. If you blunt cortisol spikes from exercise, you do not get the hypertrophy and the benefits. what you're really caring for is your baseline level of cortisol right your basal level of cortisol is lowered after that intense bout of exercise so we can't just say oh this is you know good or bad i mean you're raising your heart rate with exercise but you know that doesn't make it harmful you're raising your blood pressure with exercise that doesn't make it harmful right because you know that over time, your heart rate's gonna be lower, your blood pressure's gonna be lower.

22:48So what we're doing is brief spikes of stress so that our baseline level of stress resistance is higher. That's really good. You know, of all the different fitness experts and stuff that've been on the show, that's the best explanation of why that works. Yeah, of course your cortisol level's going up, but it's baseline's gonna drop. Of course your heart rate goes up, but the baseline would drop. And so guys, like if you train and you're in the gym, you know mix in a couple times a week sprints mix in some circuit training do some stuff that challenges you the other thing too is like you've adapted to the way you work out we all go to the gym and see that same person there who trains exactly the same way for the last eight years they look exactly the same as they did before because there's no real stress being put on their body because they've adapted to that routine that way of training and so i and by the way everyone knows, I think walking is great exercise.

23:40There's been these clips that say, of course, walking is great exercise, but maybe on your walk, you know, do some burpees really quick or some jumping jacks or something that gets your nervous system, your heart rate elevated. If you can physically do it, that kind of moves you into this. Um, by the way, and getting back to that parasympathetic state is something I want to talk about in a minute too. The other thing you talk about is hot and cold, which has sort of become the thing lately, right? Like cold plunge, go to the sauna or just cold plunge or whatever it is. I just want to give you the floor on why it is beneficial.

24:11And are there, do you believe you should go from hot to cold, cold to hot? How should you finish? Is that relevant? And, uh, but the whole topic of hot to cold is like, everyone's kind of doing some sauna, some cold plunge, not everybody, but you know what I'm saying? What's the science tell us about it and what should we be doing with it? Right. So really the common thread, um, between exercise, the plant toxins, the heat and cold, is back to this stress, right? They're all just trying to activate these cellular stress responses. And the reason we respond to these stressors goes back to our human history.

24:48I mean, for over 2 million years, the stressors that were inherent in our hunter-gatherer ancestors' life were these types of stressors, right? They had to endure periods of food scarcity. They had to run and escape from predators. They had to hunt and they had to be exposed to the elements, right? We had impermanent shelters. They didn't have air conditioners and heaters. And so our physiology over time has adapted in ways that make us more resilient to these types of stressors. That is how we as a human species have not only survived, but we have thrived in relationship to our environment, right?

25:36And this is the first time in human history where we have disconnected ourselves from this natural rhythm with our environment. And right now, introducing this as we've got to put back in acute stress in our life sounds radical, but this was the norm for 2 million years. our lifestyle today is actually radical, right? So, and this is where the heat and cold fits in. So it sounds like it's trendy and, you know, people are investing in these big ice plunges and everyone's getting a sauna, but the crux is that your body just needs the exposure as a stressor, right? It can be DIY. I'm a real think of things simple, right?

26:24I'm a primary care physician. I take care of people of all walks of life. You know, not everyone can invest in some of these things. And right. So the every day is look, you just 30 seconds of cold at the end of a shower, right? Just take a hot tub, 102 to 104 degrees. All you want to do is send your central nervous system a signal that your body is under stress. And the way you're doing it this time is that we have sensors on our skin that can sense when there's temperature variation. And they send a strong signal to our body when our natural body temperature, which runs, if you are Fahrenheit, it's around 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit, 37 degrees Celsius.

27:11When our core body temperature is threatened from where our body's kind of set point is, we have incredible feedback mechanisms that just kick in to restore that balance. I mean, again, we're so brilliantly designed and this is what's called homeostasis. It's the natural balance in our body. And man, we have redundant overlapping pathways that just jump right in. And the stress response that's triggered as a result of that is where the healing happens. It's in that stress response that all these molecular changes that we're talking about that make our cells healthier start to happen. And we talked about the repair mechanisms and the housekeeping.

27:58But the question probably people have is, well, why the heck should I care about that? Why do I want clean cells or healthy cells that are regenerated? And the answer is because what underpins every symptom that we are experiencing in modern life, every chronic disease and the accelerated aging that we're experiencing all comes down to cellular dysfunction. Our cells are the most fundamental unit of our body. If our cells are unhealthy, we have mitochondrial impairment where we can't make adequate energy. if we can't repair our DNA, if our proteins are damaged, we cannot function. Our brain can't think well.

28:46Our endurance is affected. Our blood vessels get damaged. And over time, that leads to disease and then premature mortality. So this is really assistance biology, kind of root-based type medicine where you are building health from the foundation level on up. Hmm. By the way, everybody, I think part of my recovery process could be listening to Sharon's voice. It's very soothing. Is it you guys like if I'm under stress, I'm just going to play the Ed Milet podcast with Sharon and just listen to her voice because it's very calming. And mine is certainly not. So in the book, Sharon talks about intermittent fasting.

29:27I'm going to cut to the chase on that. She believes in like a 14 hour intermittent fasting window is what she would prefer. I want to challenge you on something bigger than that. I want to talk about fasting in general. And I think over the next two or three years, the thing you're going to hear on everybody's podcast next is going to be fasting, not intermittent fasting, but fasting, you know, one, seven, 10 day type fasts, right. And longer potentially. I want to know your opinion about fasting and the durations of fasting, what the benefits are. And if somebody should be looking into that because I can tell you most people listening to the show, that's not been something covered on most podcasts, but it's in here and it's something I've been really, really contemplating adding to my routine.