Fresh Take: Dr. Greg Hammer on the Winter Blues—and How Mindfulness Can Help

0:00This episode is brought to you by Peloton. Break through the busiest time of year with the brand new Peloton Cross Training Tread Plus. Powered by Peloton IQ. With real-time guidance and endless ways to move, you can personalize your workouts and train with confidence. Helping you reach your goals in less time. Let yourself run, lift, sculpt, push, and go. Explore the new Peloton Cross Training Tread Plus at OnePeloton.com. Hey everybody, welcome to Fresh Take from Wet Fresh Hell, laughing in the face of motherhood. This is Amy. Today I'm talking to Dr. Greg Hammer, a recently retired professor at Stanford University School of Medicine, a pediatric intensive care physician, pediatric anesthesiologist, and a wellness and mindfulness lecturer.

0:46Greg has been a visiting professor and lecturer on wellness at institutions worldwide. Today, we're going to be talking about the winter blues and about his latest book, A Mindful Teen, Helping Today's Teenagers Thrive Through Gratitude, Acceptance, Intention, and Non-Judgment. Welcome, Greg. Wonderful to be with you. So let's start with the winter blues. Everybody knows what they are. We're soaking in it, as we like to say. We all feel it. But why? Why does this happen? Why does winter make us more prone to these feelings? I think really there are several reasons. One is that we just don't get enough sunlight in many cases, depending on where we live, of course, to some extent.

1:27And light is so important. When I moved to California from Chicago, I actually was just taken aback by the brilliance of the light here, the brightness of the blue in the sky and the brilliance of the green all around me. And I realized how important light is. And especially to me, I'm somebody who's very much affected by my surroundings, visual as far as sound, etc. So I think one issue in the winter is that we just don't get enough sunlight. Light is a very interesting physical phenomenon, actually. Our visual spectrum goes from violet on the short wavelength end to red on the long wavelength end.

2:10Beyond that, it's infrared, which we don't see, and ultraviolet, which we don't see. Blue light, as many people know, is very activating. And that's why people wear blue light blocking glasses when they're looking at a computer screen, especially at night when they don't want to be activated. So the absence of blue light may, in fact, rob us of that activation. So many people recommend in the morning, expose yourself to sunlight or ambient light if possible. Red light, on the other hand, is calming. It activates our parasympathetic nervous system. It's used by professional teams for healing and fatigue and so on, these so-called red light therapy devices.

2:53So light is very important. I think the relative diminution in the amount of light we're exposed to in the winter is one factor that may trigger feelings of sadness. There are lots of other reasons, I think, as well. One is the holidays, I think, can be sad for many people. They may remind us of lost loved ones. I know it's that way for me to some degree. And also there's a lot of expectation at holiday time that things are going to be merry and wonderful. And if they're not, there's often somewhat of a disappointment. I think the sunlight hours being diminished also may interfere with our sleep.

3:30Darkness actually activates melatonin, which makes us sleepier. So you might think that sleep would not be a problem. But in fact, some people just are thrown off by the change in hours, especially when we change the clocks from daylight savings time to standard time. There's actually an increased incidence of cardiac events like heart attack and stroke temporarily with the change in times. And it can be disruptive to people as well as just the shortened days and lengthened nights. So our sleep hygiene may be interrupted. And, you know, many people don't get much exercise in the winter. or perhaps they're runners or people who cycle and so on, and they don't get outside much, they don't go for walks.

4:12My Apple Watch doesn't lie. It's so different in the cold weather than in the nice weather. It's true. Yes. So I think that sleep, exercise, and nutrition are the keys to our physical well-being, and that very much affects our mental well-being. And when one of those three essential ingredients is disrupted, maybe the sleep, maybe the exercise, they're so tightly interrelated. When we're not sleeping well, we're fatigued. We have hormonal changes that affect our appetite. We may crave sweet foods. I can tell you after a night on call, there's nothing like one of those seized chocolates that reside at the nursing station donated by a grateful family.

4:51So our eating habits may deteriorate when we're somewhat sleep deprived or just a lack of exercise. Exercise promotes good sleep. When we're not exercising, we may not sleep as well. So things can really kind of get off the rails in the wintertime for many people for lots of reasons. And when it comes to teenagers, sleep and nutrition is things that are, they're usually running on a deficit. Speaking for my own teenagers, maybe not eating the best things or even being offered the best things at school, not getting enough sleep default and exercise during season or when it's nice, as you say, And then when the cold weather is off and that all leads to, we all know, oh, we need more sleep.

5:32We need to, I really should, blah, blah, blah. But the idea that it really does compound and start to affect one's mental health at this time of year is something I think we all know it to be true, but we should have waved it away. Does that make sense? And it's much more serious than that. Absolutely. And as you suggested, teens are already sleep deprived. They probably need more sleep than adults and they probably get less sleep than adults. For a number of reasons. They're staying up late with social media. They've got lots of homework. They've got after-school activities and then have to delay starting their homework.

6:06You know, they're chatting with friends, etc. So again, I think the relationship between sleep, exercise, and nutrition affects teens as much as it does the rest of us. And when they're not getting enough sleep, their eating habits may be altered and getting off the track a little bit and not getting enough exercise, they're fatigued, they're busy, etc. So yes, I think these things are just tremendously important. You know, fortunately, once we identify the drivers of winter blues, we can address what some of the remedies may be. Which in your work is primarily mindfulness, that that's an approach that all of us should be considering.

6:43Why is that so hard to, well, I'll speak for myself, I'll speak for adults. Why is it like, yeah, yeah, I should be eating better. Yeah, yeah, I should be more mindful, whatever that means, right? Why is it something that is so useful and feels very good to do for ourselves and yet we set aside? What is that resistance about? You know, I'm not a psychologist or a psychiatrist, as you know, but I think this is a fascinating area, which may be a whole separate topic, but we do things that are good for us. We feel better, we're energized, etc. And yet we tend to shy away from a lot of those things.

7:15So something that may not take very long, that improves our mental health, just as things improve our physical well-being, sleep, exercise, and nutrition, we tend to diminish them and the importance of those elements in our lives and set them aside. Why do we do that? I don't know. I mean, I think maybe one reason is we think we don't deserve to be happy. Many of us are very self-critical. This is a whole issue in my mindfulness meditation practice, which is called the gain practice. The N in gain is non-judgment because we are overly judgmental and often in a negative way because we have a negativity bias.

7:54We tend to remember and focus on the negative and not the positive. And so we're very judgmental and often in a negative way of others, the world, and I think most notably, certainly in my case, ourselves. And so I think maybe we're down on ourselves and this kind of gets into a self propagating cycle where we're feeling a little bit badly about ourselves. We're overly self-judgmental. And then we do things like binge eating and not exercising and staying up late watching something streaming on our laptop, exposing ourselves to all kinds of blue light and staying up way too late. Things we know are not good for ourselves, but we set aside some of those really healthy habits.

8:38So why do we do that? I don't know. I do think it may have something at least to do in part with how self-judgmental we are. And when we feel badly about ourselves, we often just get in this very negative feedback loop or positive feedback loop with negativity. Well, that's really interesting. And it's another very human instinct, I think, to see things in other people more clearly than we do in ourselves, right? So I would certainly say that there's times that my teenagers, my cranky teenagers, and their moodiness, you know, and they're stomping around the house all day is running the house. Of course, that could be true for their parents as well.

9:13Absolutely. I'm talking to Dr. Greg Hammer. When we get back, we're going to talk about the gain method and mindfulness and what that all really, really means. For some of us, tax season is one of the only times that we look at our finances fully. And And once it's over, well, that was terrible. And it is completely understandable not to want to think about it for another whole year. But using Monarch and being intentional with your finances in an ongoing way helps you see where your money is going and how you can put your refund to best use. We are here to tell you, simplify your finances with Monarch.

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13:25And why is that so important? Because we tend to be very distracted by the past and the future. We have a hard time being present. I think these are two of our ways of thinking that seem to be hardwired into our brains that are deleterious. One, as I said, we have a negativity bias. We tend to remember the negative and forget the positive. That's certainly the case with me. I look back over my career. What do I remember? I remember the bad outcomes, things I could have changed if I'd done something differently, even just a few minutes beforehand. I don't remember the lives that I saved. And the second thing is in terms of the way our brains are wired that is deleterious for our mental well-being is that we're very distracted.

14:07We have a hard time being present. If we just close our eyes and try to focus on our current sensations, things we may hear, a car going by in the distance, the pressure of the chair against our body, we'll very quickly start to drift into thinking about something that happened yesterday. Maybe we're embarrassed about something we said or didn't say or do, or we may drift into thinking about the future, like the list of things I have to do later or something else that may generate anxiety given our negativity bias. So it turns out that I really believe happiness is in the present moment. If we think about our happiest moments, maybe walking through the forest.

14:46I know this applies to me. I just love being in nature and feeling the soft footfall on the forest floor full of pine needles, the aroma that generates the sunlight cascading through the treetops, the canopy 100 feet above us. These are times when we're happy, when we're very focused on the present. It could be making love with a partner. We're not really thinking about yesterday or tomorrow, hopefully. So happiness really resides in the present, and yet we have a hard time sitting there, being there. And so mindfulness practice, again, gives us tools to be more present. The second aspect of Dr.

15:22Kabat-Zinn's definition of mindfulness, awareness of the present moment on purpose. Why on purpose? Because our natural tendencies, the way our brains are wired, are not to be present, as I said. And so we want to really experience the fullness of the present moment, which, by the way, is the only moment we ever really experience. The past and the future are just sort of memories and thoughts. So if we want to spend more time in the present, we have to have a plan. You know, it's just like with our physical well-being. We need a plan with regard to our sleep hygiene if we're going to really sleep well.

15:55We need a plan with regard to our exercise regimen if we want to be in good shape physically. We need a plan in terms of the way we eat. So we have to have a plan or intention. And the I in GAIN, G-A-I-N, which is an acronym for gratitude, acceptance, intention, and non-judgment is in there because intention is so important. We have to have a plan. And the third ingredient in Dr. Kabat-Zinn's definition of mindfulness is non-judgment. We're overly judgmental, and as I said, often in the negative way of others, the world, and notably ourselves. So a mindfulness practice really focuses on things that will help make us happier.

16:35That's really all the almost 8 billion of us on the planet want is to be happier. I'm reading more about all of this myself and starting to understand that the happiness comes from the present, not from the like, stop thinking bad things, think happy things, right? It isn't I'm imagining myself on a fluffy cloud. It is I'm feeling the chair underneath me. It is the acceptance of what is, not why am I not feeling happy right now, that that's not the way to go. You mentioned acceptance. That's the A in gain. So, you know, I try to distill things as a professor and a teacher and just for my own way of understanding things.

17:10I try to distill things into their simplicity, acronyms that have three or four elements. More than four, I probably won't remember it. Less than three. That's just initials. I'm probably leaving something out. Yes, exactly. So I came up with GAIN, which I, after a lot of thinking about it, I think really the four pillars of happiness have to do with gratitude, acceptance, intention, and non-judgment. And we could dissect those further, but I think that really is inclusive. If you have a mindfulness practice, if you're sitting down to really try to focus on the present moment, do you move through these four things during that mindfulness practice?

17:48Or are these sort of words to live by, or is it a little bit of both? Oh, absolutely both. So the GAIN practice I created really as something that can be done in as little as three minutes. So who doesn't have three minutes? Like I tell my trainees, set your alarm the night before three minutes earlier than you would otherwise get up in the morning. So if you have to get up at 5.30, set your alarm for 5.27 and go to bed three minutes earlier. So this just sort of underscores, first of all, it gets our intention started for this practice in advance. And who doesn't have three minutes? I think it's kind of humorous when you think about it.

18:25I mean, if we're not going to do something that helps us, that takes three minutes, again, it begs the question of why are we not taking better care of ourselves and doing the things that make us happier? So the practice is simply we get up in the morning, we open the blinds, there may or may not be sunlight. We do our morning hygiene thing, and then we find a comfortable place to sit. And it starts like other forms of meditation, and this is really mindfulness meditation, with the breath. So we close our eyes. We breathe in deeply and slowly, purposefully, intentionally, if you will, maybe to a count of three through our nose, filling our chest and abdomen, pausing to a count of three, and then in a controlled fashion, just letting go of the breath through our nose or mouth to a count of four.

19:09So we just do this a few times. If each count is one second, then three plus three plus four is 10 seconds, and we're breathing six times a minute, which seems like inadequate, but it's really not at all. In fact, this deep breathing opens our lungs, it activates the vagus nerve, an important part of our parasympathetic nervous system. It's calming, lowers our heart rate and blood pressure. And then we do, as you mentioned, we do a self-guided tour of those four elements. So we may ponder for 30 or 45 seconds that for which we're grateful. You know, gratitude is so intrinsically part of happiness.

19:45You can imagine somebody who's poor and happy or physically challenged and happy, but it's hard to even imagine somebody who's ungrateful and happy. So let's really kind of breathe, and this is all linked to the slow, deep, deliberate breathing. Let's really breathe into things for which we're grateful, even just having a roof over our head, running hot water, things we take for granted, the ability to take a hot shower, food on the table, the loved ones in our lives. Things could certainly be a lot worse. So let's sit and breathe and sort of breathe into this gratitude. And then as we continue the slow, deep, deliberate breathing, we do an acceptance practice.

20:27So here we might identify an experience or a feeling that is uncomfortable or even painful. I lost my son at the age of 29, eight years ago. So this always comes to me first. And I actually take this experience and the pain associated with it and sit with it, breathe into it. Actually imagine opening my chest, opening my heart, bringing this painful experience into my heart and sitting and breathing into it, relaxing the muscles in my body. This is acceptance. And if we ask ourselves the question, can I live with this pain forever? Eventually the answer will be yes. And then we transition to the I in gain, which is intention.

21:06You know, an example of this might be, let's just focus on our current physical sensation. So the pressure of the chair against our body, the sound of a passing airplane or automobile, something we may smell or we may hear the hum of our central heat, for example. Let's just focus today for five seconds. Maybe next week we can do it for 10 seconds before our mind starts to drift. And if our mind drifts toward the past and future, let's just be the observer of that and gently bring it back to the present moment. And then as we continue our slow, deep, deliberate breathing, we think of non-judgment.

21:42Here, for example, we might picture an image of the Earth, apparently suspended in space, one of these beautiful NASA images, and it occurs to us that the Earth is lovely, but it really doesn't possess the qualities of goodness or badness. It's neither good nor bad. And so it only makes sense that I being of the earth, just the person that I am, neither good nor bad. I am neither good nor bad. And we link this to our slow, deep, deliberate breathing. I am simply the person I am, neither good nor bad. And we just sit with this for 15, 20 seconds even. And then we return to pure focus on the breath again, just for another 30 seconds.

22:20And then we slowly open our eyes and we're ready to go out in the world. I mean, what an amazing experience. and what a gift for us to get to do that for three minutes a day. And I'm still stuck on why, why do I not, why do I know I'm supposed to do this and not begin each day with it? But it's an incredible practice and one I'm just starting to make part of my life. I wanted to talk a little bit about the mindful teen and we'll talk more after the break, but your new book is about how teens can bring this in. And when you were saying about, I am neither good nor bad, I am just who I am, I thought, wow, the teenager in my life could really hear that right now.

22:55There is so much perceiving of the self the way other people see you or might see you or the thing that somebody may have said. There's so much construction of the self that's about what other people think. It's easy to roll your eyes at it when you're outside of it and be like, oh, that's how teenagers are. But it's, I think, incredibly stressful and sometimes painful when you are living that way, it occurs to me. I think that's the reason why a lot of us look back on our teenage years and think, boy, I really don't want to go through that again. Because we are so self-judgmental and we do use how we think others perceive us.

23:29And we might not even be correct in what other people think. But I think the overarching idea is to just sort of de-emphasize what other people think and just be the best version of ourselves that we can be. I'm talking to Dr. Greg Hammer. His latest book is called A Mindful Teen. When we come back, we're going to talk about how we can walk the teenagers in our lives towards some of these ideas and practices. If you want to wake up with skin that looks even better than before you went to bed, reach for Osea Skin Care. I mean seconded. Osea's clinically tested formulas are designed to deliver visible results.

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