Feel Better, Live More with Dr Rangan Chatterjee - #103 Coronavirus Special: How To Manage Anxiety In The Face Of A Global Pandemic with Dr Judson Brewer

Episode Date: March 22, 2020

CAUTION ADVISED: this podcast contains swearing. As the world goes into lockdown to help manage the global pandemic of Coronavirus, many people are feeling anxious. This is a bonus conversation that I have recorded to help people deal with the anxiety that they are currently experiencing. Many people feel scared and helpless, which is completely understandable. In this episode, I speak to the behavioural neuroscientist and psychiatrist, Judson Brewer, who will help you understand how to keep your cool in these stressful times. We discuss what exactly fear and anxiety is, what happens in the brain when you start to feel anxious and, importantly, how you can break the anxiety cycle with some simple, practical exercises. We discuss breathing, physical activity, creative pursuits and much more, as well as how calmness is a skill that you can get better at, if you take the time to practice it. I think you will find this an incredibly useful podcast to help navigate the crazy world we are living in at the moment. Show notes available at drchatterjee.com/103 Follow me on instagram.com/drchatterjee/ Follow me on facebook.com/DrChatterjee/ Follow me on twitter.com/drchatterjeeuk DISCLAIMER: The content in the podcast and on this webpage is not intended to constitute or be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your doctor or other qualified health care provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have heard on the podcast or on my website. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

And so there's a ton of uncertainty out there that is raising everybody's anxiety. And on top of that, we have something that we didn't have in 1918, which is social media. So, you know, you can contain a virus by making sure that you stay six feet away from people, you know, wash your hands, all those things. But for social contagion, which is the passing of affect or emotion from one person to another, you can sneeze on somebody's brain from anywhere in the world. Hi, my name is Rangan Chastji, GP, television presenter and author of the best-selling books, The Stress Solution and The Four Pillar Plan. I believe that all of us have the ability to feel

better than we currently do, but getting healthy has become far too complicated. With this podcast, I aim to simplify it. I'm going to be having conversations with some of the most interesting and exciting people both within as well as outside the health space to hopefully inspire you as well as empower you with simple tips that you can put into practice immediately to transform the way that you feel. I believe that when we are healthier, we are happier because when we feel better, we live more. Hello and welcome back to a bonus episode of Feel Better Live More. My name is Rangan Chastity, I am your host and this is episode number 103. So guys, how are you doing? Things seem a little

crazy at the moment, don't they? You know, I see a lot of people at the moment who are scared and feeling anxious and I totally understand it. You know, I'm generally a positive person and I really am convinced that we will get through the next few months if we all start working together and thinking of each other. Yes, the way we're having to live our lives at the moment feels very different but this time will pass and I would really urge you all at this moment, yes, to take sensible precautions but also to try and stay as positive as you can. There's a lot out there that you cannot control but there's plenty that you can. And I really want to urge you guys to focus on the things that you can control every single

day. Now, we're all dealing with this global pandemic in different ways. I, for one, have started to dramatically increase my output on social media and on mainstream media to really try and communicate positive and clear messages at this time. Many of you I know will be dealing with the current situation in your own way and no doubt will have your own particular and unique challenges. As I've already mentioned, many people are feeling scared and anxious at the moment. People who already suffer with anxiety are feeling a lot worse. And people who don't tend to suffer with anxiety are now starting to get that feeling on a daily basis. So what I've decided to try and do is release this bonus episode,

which is basically all about how to manage the anxiety that is hitting many of us as a result of the situation with the latest coronavirus. So I managed to get a hold of a brilliant guest for today. His name is Judd Brewer. Now, Judd is a behavioural neuroscientist, and he is a psychiatrist, as well as the Director of Research and Innovation at Brown University's Mindfulness Centre.

And he's also Associate Professor of Psychiatry, as well as Behavioural and Social Sciences at Brown's Medical School and School of Public Health. Now unlike my usual podcasts which have always been done face-to-face this one has been recorded over Skype due to the current situation and the need to practice social distancing and of course that means the audio quality is probably not quite as good as usual but I think we've done a pretty good job and I don't think you will notice too much of an issue in that department. In this conversation, you will learn what exactly fear and anxiety is, what happens in the brain when you're starting to

feel anxious, and then importantly, how you can break that cycle of anxiety with some simple, practical exercises. We cover breathing techniques, mindfulness techniques, physical activity, creative pursuits, as well as how we can get better at calmness if we practice it. Now, I really hope you find this conversation useful and helpful. I've got to say, I really enjoyed chatting to Judd just a couple of days ago, so I'm looking forward to hearing what you guys think of this episode. Now, before we get started, I do need to give a very quick shout out to some of the sponsors of this podcast who are essential in order for me to continue to put out regular episodes like this one. Athletic Greens continue their support on

my podcast. Now, Athletic Greens is one of the most nutrient-dense whole food supplements that I've come across and contains vitamins, minerals, prebiotics, and digestive enzymes. Now, as you know, I do prefer that people get all of their nutrition from food, but I recognize that for some of us, this is not always possible.

So if you are looking to take something each morning as a bit of an insurance policy to make sure that you are meeting your nutritional needs, I can highly recommend it. For listeners of this podcast, if you go to athleticgreens.com forward slash live more, you will be able to access a special offer where you get a free travel pack box

containing 20 servings of Athletic Greens, which is worth around 7070 with your first order. You can check it out at athleticgreens.com forward slash live more. Now, on to today's conversation. So Judd, welcome to the podcast. Thanks for having me. Not at all. So look, you are a psychiatrist, you're a behaviour behavioral neuroscientist, and I recently saw a brilliant article you wrote in the New York Times about how we can all get on top of our anxiety at the moment. So I'm really excited that you've made a bit of time because I think my listeners are going to really, really enjoy what you have to say. Before we start,

can I ask where are you at the moment? I'm at home in Massachusetts. I work at Brown University, but both our classes moved online and they actually closed my lab down right now. We can't do fMRI studies or any in-person studies. So I am working from home, probably like everybody else in the world. Yeah, well, I'm interested right at the top of this because things are going to quickly become out of date with coronavirus stories because depending on where we live there's different recommendations from public health bodies you know certainly in the UK at the moment the government have strongly recommended that we avoid non-essential travel non-essential contacts people who can work from home should work from home and people who are deemed to be in the high-risk group for contracting coronavirus, like people over the age of 70 or people with underlying

medical conditions, have been advised to self-isolate. What's going on with you in your state at the moment? Pretty similar. Brown had a confirmed case over the weekend, this last weekend, and so they've asked all the students to clear out of campus as quickly as possible. For my clinic, we already started doing telemedicine. I did my first telemedicine visit last Thursday with one of my patients and the health insurance companies have been doing a great job of changing all their billing codes over. So I think I'll be doing that for the near future. Yeah, great. It's super interesting because for me, I've had a rule on the podcast that I generally will only do face-to-face conversations for a number of reasons. I think the quality of the

conversation is often better. The quality of the audio and video is often better. But you know, we're living in crazy times at the moment. Things are changing. We're all having to adapt. And really, that's the point of doing this conversation. We're doing it over Skype. And I really want to see if we can get some practical tools for people who are really struggling and feeling anxious at the moment. So just to kick off, I thought I might ask you, in your country, in my country, all around the world, people are feeling anxious. Is it not normal to feel anxious, given the current climate? I don't know anybody who's not feeling anxious right now.

But I think it's really important to understand some subtle differences that can make all the difference in how we deal with this stuff. So I think of fear as being a very healthy response. It helps us survive. And fear can actually help us learn how to avoid danger in the future. You know, if you walk out into a street and you see a car coming at you, you quickly jump back on the sidewalk and you learn, hey, you know, look both ways before crossing the street. We call that negative reinforcement. It's reinforcement learning. It's well, it's actually evolutionarily conserved all the way back to sea slugs. So, that's a very, very well-known learning process. On top of that primitive brain, we evolved this prefrontal cortex, which is involved in thinking and planning. And this is where anxiety comes in. So, to think and plan, we actually need information. We need

accurate information so that we can plan for the future. And the way we plan is by simulating future scenarios based on previous scenarios. So there are two things happening right now. And this isn't just coronavirus. This is just a good example of this. The first is, you know, we've in most of us in our, if not all of us in our lifetimes, don't remember the last real pandemic that was out there. 1918, I believe the Spanish flu. Yeah. Right. So this isn't, the last real pandemic that was out there. 1918, I believe, the Spanish flu. Yeah, right. So this isn't this is a completely new thing for us. So we can't

simulate, oh, last time this happened, right. So with the flu, it's seasonal flu, we kind of know what to do, because it doesn't generally mutate it to a point where it's super contagious or more deadly than it is. It's still deadly, but we deal with it. Here, we've got this emerging virus where we don't know what its characteristics are yet. We're starting to learn more and more about it. So there's that uncertainty around what this thing is. And there's also uncertainty about how to deal with it because we haven't really had a worldwide pandemic before. So you take fear, which is a healthy survival response, you add it together with uncertainty, and you get anxiety.

Okay, does that make sense? So that's what I hope people can understand is that anxiety is not actually that helpful, because it makes our prefrontal cortex, our thinking part of our brain go offline. So fear is actually healthy, It's adaptive. Anxiety, not so much. Yeah, that's super helpful, Jed, I think. And if we look at this a slightly different way, I mean, I really like what you said about the flu, because that's predictable. We have it each year. We sort of have a program running already that we know, you know, it's winter, we get cold, we get sniffles, you know, it doesn't feel, there's no unknown there, I guess. But if we just go out anxiety, because obviously we can look at it in the context of what's going on currently. But let's pretend this was a few weeks ago, and coronavirus hadn't hit certainly the mainstream news across the world

as it has now. An, anxiety was already pretty common in modern society, even before this pandemic. So is there a difference between the anxiety a lot of people were facing day to day, just a few weeks ago, and the anxiety people are now facing the pandemic, because I'm seeing that a lot of people who were already anxious, their anxiety has gone out of control now, and people who were not anxious are now feeling anxious. It's as if the volume knob has gone up a notch. Yeah, I think that's a good way to look at it. So, you know, if you look at it's got to hit a certain threshold, I'm just making this up. But, you know, let's say there's some arbitrary threshold for anxiety. And most of us are so far down below that, that if something stressful happens,

it doesn't hit the anxiety, you know, the anxiety meter, the anxiety, anxiometer doesn't hit red, you know, and so it's like stress, we're stressed, but generally, you know, we're stressed by something. And when we get that something taken care of, that's that stress or anxiety meter goes down a bit. Here, we've all you can think of it as that threshold has gone down. But more realistically, that our baseline has all gone up. And so there's a ton of uncertainty out there that is raising everybody's anxiety. And on top of that, we have something that we didn't have in 1918, which is social media. So, you know, you can contain a virus by making sure that you stay six feet away from people, you know, wash your hands, all those things. But for social contagion,

which is the passing of affect or emotion from one person to another, you can sneeze on somebody's brain from anywhere in the world. So if we go online, and our anxiety is already up a bit, and then we see, you know, somebody else worrying about this or that, you know, we see empty grocery shelves or something like that, then that can push that social contagion, you know, that social contagion can push our anxiety up even higher above that threshold. And then we can go and spread that to other people. So we freak out, we call somebody else and like, oh, there's no toilet paper at the store. And then they're freaking out. And then they're calling their friends and you know and then there's a there's a panic pandemic so to speak yeah yeah that's that's a really interesting

point because you know at the moment there's i won't say a nice symmetry there's there's a there's a really bizarre sort of uh similarity between what's going with the virus and what's going on with panic and anxiety because the virus is contagious, hence all these measures that are being taken, as you say, hand washing, social distancing, non-essential contact, all these things are helping to reduce the spread of a very contagious virus. But what you're saying is anxiety and panic is also contagious. And it is one of those things where if you went, I was actually, I spoke to someone about this this morning. They said, I wasn't too worried about all the supermarket stuff, you know, but then I went in just to do my weekly shop. And I couldn't, I saw the empty shelves.

And so I was starting to feel panicked. So I need to get stuff in case I can't get things in a few weeks. And you can put the news on and the government will say, guys, don't panic. Supply is not an issue. If everyone just sticks to their normal shopping habits, we'll be absolutely fine. But the problem is that people are already panicked. And I don't know how you actually stop that, really. Right. And so that's a really good point you can think of the stock market it actually has a fear index and it

of nobody is surprised that it has surpassed the 2008 financial meltdown you can think of this as the consumer toilet paper index where you know it's like we nobody has on their shopping list nine months worth of toilet paper right that's not on my shopping list i'm sure it's like, nobody has on their shopping list nine months worth of toilet paper, right? That's not on my shopping list. I'm sure it's not on yours. But we go in the store and we're like, run on toilet paper, and then scarcity hits, scarcity mode, where our brain's like, oh, no, there's not enough X to go around. We panic, and then we pile our cart high, and then we pass that social contagion to the next person that walks in the store and sees us it feels like in some ways we're kicking in some primitive reflexes you know we many of us are i appreciate not everyone in the world but certainly here in the uk where i live

or where you live i'm guessing that for many of us, we've not lived through scarcity, right? We, you know, if you have the financial means, which of course everyone doesn't, but if you have the financial means, you can pretty much get whatever you want, whenever you want it. And therefore, having to come to terms with scarcity on any level, whether it's scarcity in the supermarkets, on any level whether it's scarcity in the supermarkets scarcity in the sense that we can't go out and sit in a cafe and have a cup of coffee with a croissant in the way that we might have been four weeks ago these things that i sort of feel are these primitive survival reflexes that are kicking in that actually of course it's no surprise that people are panic buying because ultimately if they don't also if you add into this this general political mistrust that has been out there for the last building for the last

few years well people actually certainly don't believe what they're being told by their elected politicians is it not just a perfect storm where people don't believe it they don't think there's going to be food supplies and this social contagion of panic and anxiety is just spreading yes absolutely these are just our basic survival mechanisms that kick in when our thinking brain And this social contagion of panic and anxiety is just spreading. Yes, absolutely. These are just our basic survival mechanisms that kick in when our thinking brain goes offline. Yeah. So what turns anxiety into panic?

Is there a difference between anxiety and panic? Yeah, I'm terrible at definitions. And as a psychiatrist, I should know these better. But basically, you can think of panic as anxiety gone wild, right? So, we can have anxiety, but our brain can think a little bit. But when we're really panicked, we can't think at all. Our prefrontal cortex completely goes offline. And I think included in some of the dictionary definitions include, you know, unthinking behavior. Like we do this, these really crazy unthinking uh unthinking

behaviors because we can't think i think it's i think it's actually in the definition of panic yeah please i was just going to say clinically i see this in my patients with panic disorder so for example and it's interesting panic disorder is when we panic about panic or worry about panic. So, I'll give you an example. I have a patient in my clinic who I just saw via telemedicine on Thursday who came in because he was very, you know, he's just referred to me for anxiety and he walked in the door and I could see that he was just visibly anxious. And when he sat down and I took his history, he basically described how when he was driving down the highway, he would have this thought come into his head where, oh, I'm in a speeding bullet. I could kill somebody at any moment. And so this thought triggered him to get worried. Oh, no, I'm going to kill somebody. And then he started to form this reactive behavior to try to cope, which was he stopped driving on the highway. And he formed full blown panic disorder because he started worrying about

having future panic attacks. Does that make sense? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. You mentioned just before that the prefrontal cortex that you know, that newer part of the brain that is involved with logical thought rational decision making that goes offline when we get what passes a threshold with anxiety so i think that's useful for people to understand because without that um i'd appreciate you're the psychiatrist but my perception of that is is that if your prefrontal cortex is offline, you simply can't make those logical and rational decisions. And so by understanding that, I mean, that doesn't help us in that moment, does it? In that moment where we're feeling really anxious, and we can't make logical and rational decisions, the knowledge that our prefrontal cortex is offline, I think might be a little bit helpful,

but then I guess we need some practical tips as well. Yeah, so practically speaking, did you learn this in medical school? So when somebody has a heart attack, I learned that the first thing that I was supposed to do was take my own pulse. Did you learn that? But you probably learned something similar. Yeah, that's interesting. Yeah. The idea is if I rush in to, oh no, you know, a patient coded, right? You know, somebody had a heart attack. If I rush in like, oh no, you you know, a patient coded or, you know, somebody had a heart attack. If I rush in like, oh, no, you know, I got to I got to help.

I could actually add to the problem. I could do unthinking behaviors. But the idea is if I take my own pulse, it gives me a chance to calm down and say, OK, you know, take it. So the proverbial pulse taking is really just taking a couple of deep breaths to literally calm our nervous system. So if we take some deep breaths and calm ourselves, it allows our prefrontal cortex to come back online, right? And when our prefrontal cortex can come back online, then we can go in and run the code and actually help the person that's having a heart attack instead of making things worse.

So that's, I think that's such a key point. So basically what you're saying is that when we're feeling anxious, unless we pause, unless we almost put a break in this kind of feed forward cycle that's about to play out, there's nothing we can, well, it's very hard to stop once it started.

Whereas just by, as you say, taking your pulse, which again, that might be helpful for people in this situation. Because what I like about it is it's tangible it's something that they can do right I guess as a medic I know how to take a pulse so for me I feel okay that's cool because in what it's going to do it's if I'm feeling anxious if I do it now it will help bring me to my body I start to feel you know I'm doing it at the moment. And I guess, it doesn't matter what it is, right? But it's something to break the cycle. Is that what you're saying? Yeah. And I would say it matters somewhat what it is. So if we go and distract ourselves

elsewhere, you know, we go and check social media or something like that, we can actually go into a place where people are socially sneezing on us, right? So that's not a good idea to kind of help us calm down. And that's it. We can come back to that later. I think people are getting addicted to checking the news right now. And we can talk about why that is. But the idea is to ground ourself in our direct experience, right? And so, taking your own pulse is a felt sensation. And it actually helps to organize or focus our awareness on something tangible. And we can even get curious, huh, what is my pulse right now? And that curiosity helps us also open up so that we can break that panic cycle and bring our prefrontal cortex online. I can give a concrete.

So there's taking our own pulse. Taking a few deep breaths is also very, very helpful. I had somebody in one of my meditation groups that I used to lead at Yale where he had trouble paying attention to his breath because there are areas of anxiety right in his chest. So, he used this simple mantra, feel your feet. He would tell himself to simply ground his awareness in his feet. And it would help him bring awareness to something tangible. But for him, it literally felt grounding because his feet were usually on the floor or the ground. So people can try that as well. It's just like simple thing, feel your feet. Okay, what do my feet feel like? A news

anchor that I was talking to yesterday, he was literally wiggling his toes on camera. And I watched him go from like, oh, you they're uh it was a pretty rough time in the in the studio where they're all worried about getting sick themselves and he actually smiled for the first time in that interview so something really simple like that yeah i really i think this is very very useful for people so look let's say the mind and the body is separate which i don't think they are actually on many levels. Let's not say they're separate. Yes, okay, so they're linked.

So, okay, so the mind and body are linked, connected. You know, maybe they're actually the same thing if you're depending on how macro you want to go on this. But if we're saying that in your mind that when you start to get anxious, your prefrontal cortex, the thing in the front that's going to help you make rational decisions, we're saying that that's going to start to switch off and your emotional brain is going to take over. Yes. So it sounds as though what you're saying is that

if we do something that brings us into our body, whether it's taking our pulse, focusing on our breath, where that's coming in through the nostrils, are we feeling it in the abdomen or the chest or feeling, you know, our feet on the ground, something, it just helps to, you know, almost reset things and allows a bit of time for your prefrontal cortex to come back online. That makes a lot of sense to me. Makes a lot of sense. Good. And I'll give you some data to back it up. Are you ready? I am. So my lab's been studying an app-based mindfulness training called Unwinding Anxiety. And it's amazing, digital medicine is just going to take off right now because it's got to, where app-based therapeutics are going to be utilized a lot more because you don't get contagion from your phone. utilize a lot more because they're not you don't get contagion from your phone. So my lab's been doing a couple of studies with this unwinding anxiety app. And we first did a study with anxious physicians. Okay. One reason we did it with them was that they they report that they really don't

have time for anything outside of themselves. And then I don't know about you, but I learned in medical school, you know, that we have to be the martyrs, we have to be taking care of everybody else, and we'll take care of ourselves later. But that leads to burnout and anxiety. So we check to see, you know, could we just have people try this 10 minutes a day of training and see if it would work. And we actually found that we are ready for this, we got a 57% reduction in clinically validated anxiety scores, the GAD-7, in anxious physicians in three months. The paper was just accepted for publication. So we replicated that.

That was our pilot study. We replicated that with people with generalized anxiety disorder. Same app, Unwinding Anxiety. We had a control group where people were getting their usual medical care or that plus the app. 63% reduction in anxiety. And if you're probably familiar with the number needed to treat, right? So for anybody that doesn't know, it's basically how many people do you need to give a treatment to before one person benefits. So the higher the number, the worse the treatment is. For medications for anxiety, it's 5.15, according to the Cochrane reviews.

And for this Unwinding Anxiety app, it was 1.6. Wow. So literally, almost out of every one and a half people who try it, one people benefits, which is a staggering success rate. What exactly are they doing on the app? So it gives them short daily training so videos animations and importantly in the moment exercises in the moment does that mean when you're feeling anxious you can pull up the app and it's going to help you do some of these things that you're talking about yes absolutely so for example there's a breathing exercise in the app that literally it's got this uh this orb that when you press on it and you breathe in, it starts to expand.

And then when you breathe out, you tap on it when you're ready to breathe out. So it brings your awareness visually and tactilely and also into your direct experience. You tap on it when you breathe out and you do that a couple of times. And then it also calculates your breathing rate. So not only does it help you really pay conscious, aware, aware attention to your breathing, but it also can give you some data, some feedback. So we do we have these short trainings, about 10 minutes a day, 30 core modules, and then more on top of that. And then these short daily exercises, layered in with that are these formal meditation practices, if people want to do that, but really the the informal

practices we'd found with a study we'd done on smoking where we got five times the quit rates of gold standard treatment it was these actual short in the moment exercises that were most helpful i mean that's that's incredibly powerful for people because one of the reasons i wanted to get this interview in with you and push it out quite quickly probably we're going to push this out tomorrow because if i can get it edited, and well, I'm not going to edit it, but if I can get it ready to put out in time, it's because I think people are desperate for tips at the moment

on how they can feel less anxious. What is the name of the app? Is that something that people can download? Yeah, it's available in iTunes, or both Android and Apple phones. It's called, it's called unwinding anxiety. Unwinding anxiety.

And people can find that. We'll also, I'll also link to it in the show notes page for this episode. Yeah. They can just go to my website, drdrjud.com. And there's a link to the app and a lot of information about it right there as well. Yeah.

Fantastic. Now, as you were describing that, I was thinking about my kids. Now I've got a couple of questions around kids. So, do kids respond or do kids get anxious in a different way from adults? And I think there's multiple things to talk about with children, because I think a lot of children are feeling anxious at the moment, which is hardly surprising given what's going on. But I also, I suspect that what they hear that, you know, whether it's their teachers,

the adults they're surrounded by, their parents, how their parents are around them will probably influence them quite a lot. So I've been very, very careful as much as I can to be very mindful of the language being used around them at the moment. Because I think we can really determine how they look at this situation. So that's one area I wanted to talk about. But the second area was about breaking that cycle. Now, after the kids were, I can't remember which

day it was this week, but I got the table tennis table out from the garage. And I've noticed that my son sometimes will just go and pick up the table tennis bat and just, you know, do a few like knocks, you know, five, ten times. And it just made me think in terms of when we're feeling anxious, I don't think he's feeling anxious. I don't think he's doing it for that reason. But you mentioned breathing. You mentioned feeling your feet. You mentioned all these other things. all these other things. Could something as simple as, you know, tapping a ball on a table tennis bat, for example, could that take you out of your mind into your body a bit, and then start to reset

things? Yeah, absolutely. So one thing with kids that I just want to point out is I think they are, they are very susceptible to social contagion. So kids, so they're very susceptible, but they also brush it, you know, they let go of things probably more quickly than adults do. We tend to stew on things. It's like dogs that when they get in a stressful situation, they shake and then they're done. I think kids are better at doing that than adults. So that's one thing we have to keep in mind. And it goes back to taking our own pulse. And you just described how you're already doing this. It's really important as parents

for people to make sure that they are staying calm and relaxed so that they don't pass that social contagion onto their kids. And there's also actually a really nice, simple mindfulness practice that parents can do with their kids that probably helps the parents calm down

even more than the kids, which is this simple mindful breathing practice called the five finger breathing. Are you familiar with this? No, I mean, hey, I discuss all kinds of breathing settings, but I always love to hear new ones. So you take one hand, right? And I'll just describe this so that listeners who aren't watching this can understand. So you take one hand and you take your your index finger with your other hand, and you start at the base of your on the outside base of your pinky and then as you breathe in you trace up the side uh the lateral aspect the side of your pinky and then as you breathe out you trace down the medial or the other side of your pinky breathe in trace up your ring finger breathe out trace down your ring finger. Breathe up, breathe in, trace up your middle finger.

Breathe out, trace down your middle finger. Let's do one more. Breathe in, trace up your index finger. Breathe out, trace down your index finger. And so we can do that with our whole hand and then repeat. But even just one cycle is tremendously helpful for bringing that tactile sensation together with visual, together with feeling the breath coming in. That is, you know, you just mentioned that, but that was what I was going to say back

to you is what's incredible about that exercise is that it hits so many senses at once. So it's very hard not to have your mind, you know, switched off is the wrong term, but it's really hard not to switch or turn the volume down up there because you've got all these things to focus on. Right. And it's, I can imagine if I'm going to maybe try that with my kids around the dinner table tonight, because it's such a beautiful exercise that they're tracing out their finger and they're feeling it. And sometimes that might be a bit more engaging with them than say, oh, right, let's take a deep breath now, for example, like, you know, what does that mean, even for some people? So think of it this way, our brain only has a certain amount of random access memory, right. And so what we do is if you if you use up all that RAM, so seeing,

feeling, you know, feeling your finger, feeling your breath, seeing your finger, that actually uses up that memory in your brain. So it crowds out any of this background noise of our mind trying to freak out. Yeah. Does that make sense? Yeah, absolutely. I think that's a very, very practical tip for people. What are some other things that we can do with our kids? You know, I love gratitude games for

example i think uh grassy games and what i love about them even more is that they can be done particularly at time like this where many adults many parents are working from home their kids now you know from friday this week uk schools are closing um so you're gonna have these very you're gonna have these very you're going to have these very potentially complex environments where adults are trying to work from home kids are maybe trying to do their schoolwork from home people are not getting out tension's going to mount up people are going to maybe start um you know infringing on other people's personal space and you can actually see apart from the anxiety about what's going on in

in life at the moment you can essentially see how this is going to start causing a lot of relationship issues and a lot of pressure and a lot of tension yes uh my wife and i are trying to negotiate that right now we're both college professors uh you know we now both have to teach online uh you know and we both have meetings and other things. And I'm trying to record these daily videos to put out on YouTube to give people information. And we are navigating a whole lot, you know, and I can only imagine what it's like for people with a bunch of kids in the house. Yeah, exactly. But you know, but I don't want to be defeatist about this. Yeah, I was gonna say, let's talk about some pragmatic things we can do. So one of the videos I just put out a couple of days ago was around how to kind of spread connection

as a instead of contagion, let's put it that way. And so it's really helpful for us to just take some time, my wife and I are actually doing this is to make sure we schedule time with each other, not just Oh, yeah, we're here together. So of course, we're going to see each other, that's really different than saying, you know what, I'm going to block everything off. I'm going to put away my technology. I'm not going to look at social media. We're just going to spend time together. We actually read, there's this wonderful book called The Boy, the Mole, the Dog, and the Horse by Charlie McKeezy. I think we're reading together in bed. It's beautiful, beautiful. So, it's really helpful to take some time together.

And even just throughout the day, it's really helpful to just purposefully go up to our kids or our spouse or whatever and just, you know, look at me and remind them that we love them. Yeah. And give them a big hug. You know, you can talk about all the science about how that's helpful. You know, you can talk about all the science about how that's helpful. And the other thing I put in my video is if we have pets, we can take a moment to cuddle with our pets. I'll demonstrate this right now. So here's somebody that's been listening in on our interview.

Does she like it? Is she interested? I think he's getting it. This is Ananda. So he's getting it. So we can cuddle with our pets. And what I would love to see is a silver cloud or a silver lining to this is that people go out and adopt pets or even foster pets, right? You don't have to make a long term commitment. But there are lots of pets in need. They don't they don't spread coronavirus. So for folks that you know, that don't have a lot of physical contact with others, they can go and adopt or even foster a pet. What a great way to help the animals that are in need and also to help them feel more connected. So that's my plug. No, I love that.

I think that's a really, really great suggestion. And I think for some people, it will be something they haven't thought about, and it might be something that they find incredibly beneficial. And I know this podcast has got a lot of new listeners over the past year but i think in the first year i released a podcast with a chap called professor francis mcglone he's one of the world's leading uh researchers in touch and the science of touch he helped me with a chapter actually that i wrote in my in my second book called the stress solution all about the impulsives of human touch and how we are a social species and we're meant to be together and touching other people, which is, of course, one of the most challenging things at the moment is that those

sort of things that we require, those fundamental human components, you know, touching other people, being around other people, that's what's being limited from us. So how can we get those benefits? Sure. You can do it with your family if you're all isolated together. You know, there's no problem with touching each other and hugging and, you know, and, you know, snuggling up with your other half on the sofa. But yeah, pets, why not pets, you know? And we, the research does show that not only does, it's the same with humans the benefits are there not only for the touch giver the receiver of touch also you know both of you get benefits which is um which is really great and i think pets are a wonderful suggestion particularly people at that way inclined so they've obviously are going to be able to look after them not just for the duration

of their next few weeks and months but beyond beyond that. But I think that's a really, really nice suggestion. Judd, some people are feeling anxious, or they're acting out in quite a stressed out way, yet they don't think that they are. I'll be careful how much I say about this in terms of where this has come from. But I know this from personal experience, but also from chatting to other people and chatting to patients that sometimes maybe people in their lives who they love are behaving quite stressed, but don't realize that they are. Just taking a very quick break in the conversation to give a shout out to some of the sponsors of today's show. So many of you will probably have been on the fence about trying meditation. You will have heard

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offering a special limited time promotion of 40% off a Calm premium subscription at calm.com forward slash live more. That's 40% off unlimited access to Calm's entire library and new content is added every week. Get started today at calm.com forward slash live more. That's calm.com forward slash live more. Is this something you're familiar with and are there any tips you can give for people to kind of check in and see like are they anxious or not yeah i'm laughing because um my wife just bought a pair of socks that came in the in the mail yesterday that say on the side, bitch, I am relaxed. So she and I make a joke of, you know, we're, we're, we're not necessarily, um, the most calm,

but we might not be noticing it. You know, when we're caught up in the middle of something, of course, it's going to be hard to notice when we're caught up in it because we're caught up. So, what we can do there, the first thing I would say is, this is common sense, but I still see people do this all the time. You know, when somebody looks anxious, somebody else comes in and they want to help and they say, oh, just relax. What does that do? That makes us more anxious because it points out it's one, somebody telling us to do something. I don't like people telling me what to do. And the other thing is, it's kind of pointing out right in the middle of when we're in a tough situation that we're in that tough situation. So, it's kind of, it's tough. You know, it can actually exacerbate the situation.

So, what we can do there is one, recognize when we're going into helper mode, this can even be a habit loop, right? Somebody, if I just take a trigger, a behavior and a reward where somebody sees somebody else anxious, that's the trigger, their behavior is to go in and tell them to do something. And the reward is that they want themselves to, they feel better because they're like, oh, I did something, even though it might actually make things worse. So the first thing I would say is recognize when you're in a helper habit loop and see if you can step back and realize, oh, this probably isn't that helpful. What happened last time I did it? Well, they bit my head off. Okay, let me remember that and try not to do that again. So if we can recognize that helper habit loop, then we can step back, take our own pulse, see if we can step back take our own pulse see if we can be patient and then also see if there's something going on that they need so this often people get um their anxiety can go up when they are uh food deprived when they don't have enough food so we can just check and be like um you know can i can i fix you something to eat or something like

not that instead of saying hey hey, you're stressed. So if we can figure out what the conditions are that are contributing to somebody's anxiety, instead of saying, hey, stop doing that, we can actually be helpful. And one of the best ways to be helpful is simply to be present with them, not try to do anything but be present and maybe just give them a hug yeah i'm gonna um i think i'm gonna try and hammer home this point because i think this is something that not only have i experienced myself but i think many people are going to experience

over the coming weeks and months it's going to be what if let's say in a relationship or in a family someone's going to have a different anxiety threshold to somebody else so there's always going to be that sort of slight mismatch where someone around you is probably more anxious than you and you know that that desire to help people means we're going to go in try and fix it for them i wonder if there's a male female sort of kind of almost program that tends to run more, you know, and I would guess that, and of course, this isn't the case in all cases, this isn't always the case, but, you know, I would tend to say men tend to be quite fixing in terms of wanting to, you know, if their other half, let's say, is struggling, you know, try and fix the problem, provide a solution,

whereas something I've I've actually uh had to learn um is that I've been married is actually sometimes you know my wife doesn't want a solution she just wants me to listen listen hear what she has to say and be present with that and that's something that I think I found quite hard initially but I've as you say if you if you see it enough times ago, when the last time I did this, did it help the situation? And you go, actually, no, it's not that helpful. But I think the other thing that's helpful for people is going back to what you said at the start, Judd, which is that, remember, when someone's feeling anxious, this prefrontal cortex is starting to switch off. So at that point, you try to come in with rational explanations, it's probably just

going to be bounced off, isn't it? Surprise! It didn't work. Yeah. So give them a hug, just being present. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's a very helpful tip.

And also, it can be helpful for folks to see if they're starting to get in stress habit loops. So for example, that patient that I mentioned earlier who had panic disorder and also had generalized anxiety disorder, he was also 180 pounds overweight. And I actually had sent him home with my Unwinding Anxiety app and said, just start mapping out your own habit loops around anxiety. He came back two weeks later. And the first thing he said to me was, oh, I lost 14 pounds. And I was a little shaken because I was like, I didn't think we were talking about weight loss right now. And he said, yeah,

I realized that I was eating as a way to cope with my anxiety, and it wasn't helping. So I stopped doing it. And there's actually a meme out there on the out there right now where people are like, yeah, I'm either going to gain 100 pounds or lose 50, depending on how what my stress coping response is, right, the natural response to stress is anorexia, where we, you know, our blood goes from our stomach to our muscles, so we can run. So some people are going to deal with this through, you know, not eating, but other people are going to deal with this through stress eating. So you know, you can think of that, you know, we get anxious, that's the trigger, the behavior is to stress eat. and then the result is that we become overbeat overweight or in this guy's case really obese so over the course of the next six months so this guy had hypertension he had fatty

liver all this because of his obesity he lost about 97 pounds and i was walking out of a class one day at the school of Public Health at Brown, which is in Providence, Rhode Island on this relatively busy main street. And I was walking out of class and this guy, this car pulls up to the curb and this guy rolls down this window. It's my patient.

And I was looking at him like, you're driving? And he's like, yeah, I'm an Uber driver now. So not only, that was like, wow. So not only can, if we can map out these habit loops, we can also not add extra habit loops to this. And we actually we've done some studies with this app called eat right now, where we can actually help people map out the road, the reward or lack of reward value that comes when they stressy. reward value that comes when they stressy. And within 10 times of people really bringing awareness, conscious awareness to this, and seeing, oh, this isn't actually helping me, it significantly reduces the reward value. And reward value is what ultimately drives behavior in our brain, thinking brain or not, that's what drives behavior. I'll give it a concrete example with smoking, smoking is the same thing.

So with people that want to quit smoking, using our smoking program, the first thing we have them do is smoke a cigarette while paying attention. And I don't know if you ever smoked, but they realize that cigarettes really don't taste very good. And so that reward value drops pretty quickly and it's hard for them to go back and be like wait this is isn't this supposed to be pleasurable but what it does is it updates the reward value that they probably sat down as a teenager when they were trying to rebel or be cool at school or whatever and they just lock that in and they're just smoking habitually well when you bring your awareness to that it helps that part of our brain called the orbital front and cortex update that reward value so that they see, oh, it's not actually

that rewarding, which then opens up the space for what I call the BBO, the bigger, better offer. So with food, the bigger, better offer is stopping when we're full. It actually doesn't feel better to overeat than it does to stop when we're full. And anybody can try that out themselves. better to overeat than it does to stop when we're full. And anybody can try that out themselves. The other bigger, better offer there is there's less self-incrimination, guilt, shame, all this stuff when people don't, you know, when they're, as compared to when they're overeating. With anxiety, it's really interesting because we can substitute the bigger, better offer of curiosity. And we teach curiosity in our program, where it helps people just be curious. Oh, here's anxiety. Where do I feel it in my body? And

anybody can do this at home right now. If they feel anxiety, they can ask, okay, ready? Yeah, you probably don't feel any anxiety. So just just play along with me. So go to where you feel anxiety in your body the most right now, or stress or whatever, and ask yourself, is it more on the right side or the left side? Or is it more in the front or is it more in the back? You know, so what quadrant is it in? And what does it feel like just to be curious about that question because it doesn't matter where it is but that helps us tap into our inherent capacity to be curious which is similar to this five finger breathing so we're bringing awareness in to and

trying to answer a question that we don't know the answer to. And it brings up what's called interest curiosity so that we can actually start to let go of that anxiety and unwind right there. I don't know what your experience was like, but that's one of the things we do as a core practice in the Unwinding Anxiety app. Yeah, no, Judd, I think, you know, I think it's a brilliant tip. I was doing that exercise along with you

and I noticed that, because I'm pretty good with my stress levels by and large, but these are challenging times. They are. Things are shifting quite a lot and there's work dynamic, family dynamic, all kinds of things are shifting at the moment. And I feel it in my upper right back.

So when I, as you were doing that I was trying to pay attention I could feel it there and I was also trying to just see oh what happens if you sort of let that go it's just it's just I guess what you're talking about there's a theme throughout this conversation which is awareness right yes yes how do you become aware like what you what you mentioned with your patient who ended up losing weight, something I've seen as well. It's, you know, I think that's one of the big missing pieces in the whole discussion around weight loss.

We're so keen to tell people what they should be eating. But I kind of think most people know, by and large, there can be a little bit of debate on the 10, 20%, but by and large, people sort of know. So the question isn't what you're eating, it's why you're eating it. And more often than not, in the culture we're living in, for many people, it comes from stress. It's their way of coping with stress and anxiety is to eat. And so I think that's super, super useful, actually. And I do think if people can come into their bodies a little bit more, it will help them manage the, you know, the coronavirus induced anxiety, but all the other anxieties in their life beyond that. Absolutely. You know, it's funny that

you mentioned that because in our Eat Right Now app, we actually have three things that we have people pay attention to. So bring awareness to why, what is driving you to eat? Am I stressed? Am I anxious or am I actually hungry? To the what, what am I going to eat? Am I going to dive into the pint of ice cream or am I going to eat something healthy, right? And then how, how am I eating? Am I paying attention as I'm eating or am I just eating mindlessly? So when we pay attention to all of those things, we can let go, okay, I'm stress eating. Well, let me go give my spouse a hug instead of stress eating because that's going to be more helpful.

What am I eating? The why, what am I eating? Am I going to ice cream or something healthy? Does the ice cream just give me a sugar rush and make me get emotionally charged and crash? And then the how, even if we go to the ice cream, if we pay attention as we eat and we ask ourselves a simple question like, how little is enough?

With each bite, we're like, is this enough? Is this enough? It's shocking how many people realize, you know what? Just by simply paying attention as I eat, it's much easier not to overeat. I don't have to force myself to stop. I simply realize, oh, I think this is enough. So on that theme of paying attention, I think let's bring in news and social media. So as the world out there is changing so rapidly, or we perceive it to be changing rapidly a lot of us myself included you

know are you know looking at the news um we're turning to social media quite a lot to see if we get an update on what's happening and um it's interesting before in the show you said you were talking to some tv presenters recently and i've i've been on already twice this week on bbc breakfast news and bbc radio and it's interesting because i've really this week on BBC Breakfast News and BBC Radio. And it's interesting because I've really, this week has been, you know, it's funny for me, like, I felt a real deep sense of public service this week. I felt, you know, a lot of people turn to our main national broadcast of the BBC at this time. And I feel, yes, if I've got the opportunity to go on there and try and provide some clear, positive advice to the nation, I feel like a deep, like a strong public service feeling towards that. I sort of feel I want to go and do that. I think it's an

important role to go and do at the moment. But there is a lot of stress there. You know, the procedures are different. You know, there's not much contact uh we're sitting further away from each other on the sofa i saw that yesterday yeah they're like oh i can't sit there because the other newscaster was just there i'm gonna sit over here yeah and there is and people are feeling quite stressed in the in the news and media cycle because they also know that they've got an important role to provide news to the whole country that's rather people are concerned for their own health they're concerned for their family's health on their partner's health back at home so i do think this

is affecting everyone in some way um but i had a had a point to make that i've just forgotten now and it's probably reflective of what's going on that was it social media and news right so if awareness is key then do many of us try and escape sort of coming into our body by if we're feeling anxious or nervous, we're sort of just moving that external focus away onto the news or onto social media rather than bringing it back inside ourselves? Yes. Yeah. And so I actually just put out a five minute YouTube video on why, you know, why news is like a casino. So the one people can go watch that. But the one liner on this is that we need information to survive, right? And we need information to plan. So the news and everybody else is trying to get that information out to people as quickly as possible. But it's not going to come all the time, right? It's not going to come every five minutes. So if we check the news and nothing happened, check the news, nothing happened, check the

news, nothing happened, check the news, nothing happened, check the news, bam, big headline. That sounds a lot like a slot machine in the casino, right? You didn't win, didn't win, didn't win, won the jackpot. And this is exactly the strongest form of learning known in all of science. It's called intermittent reinforcement, which is just a fancy term for giving people random rewards. If people knew exactly when they were going to win the jackpot, the casinos wouldn't make the money that they do.

It's not that the newscasters are trying to do this. They just don't know when the next breaking story is going to hit. So if we're constantly going on the news to see when we're going to win the jackpot, of course, we're going to form the habit or even addiction of checking the news. But the simple thing we can do is really, it's actually really simple. We can ask ourselves, when's the last time I checked the news, right? And say, hey, you know, I checked five minutes ago, why don't I just set a couple of limits where I'm going to check the news three times a day, right? Three times a day is probably plenty for most of

us, if not all of us. And that way, we know every time probably these days, every time we go on to the news, there is going to be something that's that's updated. So we don't get that random reinforcement, there's gonna there's always going to be something to pay attention to. As that news starts to calm down, we can start dialing back and say, okay, I'm going to check it twice a day. I'm going to check it once a day so that we don't get that random reinforcement and then get addicted to checking the news.

It's really relatively simple. We just have to know how our minds work. Yeah, I mean, it's interesting to hear your recommendation. I've been talking to people saying, look, check it once or twice a day, like at a set time. Um, but yeah, you know, people may want to check it more, I guess, whatever, however much you're watching it now, um, maybe put it back by half and maybe it might be a good way because even that's going to help move you in the right direction. Um, so let me just add one thing, because we can actually hack our brains this way. So if our brains learn and act out of value, reward value, we can ask ourselves, when

we check the news, what did I get from this? Did it make me scroll more? Did I get more anxious? Did it actually help me do something tangible? So that we can see, wait a minute, it wasn't that rewarding, you know, by my frequency of checking every, you know, Q five minute checks was not that helpful. If we can, so we can see how that's not that helpful, right? And that helps us really dial in and kind of tap into that very basic learning mechanism that helps us see, wait a minute, it's not that rewarding to go on the news, then we can compare that to, okay, I got some work to do. What happens when we just put all of our devices away and just do some deep

work for an hour or two? I have to tell you, that feels pretty good to me. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I think brilliant, brilliant advice. And I guess I would just just before we move on from the news, I would suggest and I wonder what your views are on this, that you don't check the news first thing in the morning as soon as you get up. Although there's a tendency to do it because it's like, what's developed overnight? Is there, you know, with our new guidelines now, I totally get it. This is like smoking, right? When somebody smokes cigarettes and they're addicted to nicotine, when they sleep, their nicotine levels go down in their blood. So their first morning cigarette is the one they're jonesing for the most. So it's

like our blood levels of news have dropped overnight. Suddenly we're feeling deprived. And the first thing in the morning, we want to go smoke our new cigarette. Yeah, it's really interesting. Normally, I don't look at phones or television in the morning for a good hour, hour and a half. I mean, hardly ever watch television. And I've got to say, my behaviour's changed. Even if I think about this morning, I went down and made myself a hot drink and I thought, I'm going to drink this in front of the news. I never do this sort of behaviour. It's just something I haven't done in a long, long time. I probably did as a kid. It's probably what my parents did. But it's something I've sort of unconditioned out of my life

over a number of years. But I guess we're all feeling that at the moment, aren't we? That we want to go and check and see what happens. So I would say, from my perspective, I would say to people,

even if it's five, ten minutes where you do something like some breathing or some journaling, a little workout, something first, before you go and check the news, I think will just help give

you a bit of calm and get everything sort of just calmed down and working more efficiently and and hack your brain this way and say what's it like when i do some meditation or i actually consciously drink my coffee with no distractions and how does that compare to when i quickly drink my coffee when i'm watching the news do i I even taste it? Yeah. And that can help us find that bigger, better offer in just doing one thing and doing it really well. Yeah, I love that. I love that. That's the thing we've covered before on the podcast. But I think it's a really, really nice tip for people, you know, and people will find they drink more coffee and more tea than they need to, which can potentially increase anxiety at this time, all that caffeine going around your system,

because we're not tasting it. We're just doing it while we're doing other things. But maybe if you give yourself five minutes to just sit and enjoy every single taste of that coffee or tea or whatever it is you like to drink, you may be satisfied after one and not need that extra pot. So I would also echo, please don't watch your news before you go to bed. It's probably not going to put your subconscious mind in the right place to have deep, relaxing sleep. So I'd say earlier in the evening,

if you do have to watch it in the evening. Okay, super, super useful. We've not mentioned anything like yoga or exercise or anything like that. Is that something you talk about? Is that something you'd recommend for people when they're feeling anxious? Oh, absolutely. And so the way I think about this is that when anxiety is really strong, it can be really hard to just kind of sit down and meditate. This is certainly the case for me. So this is a time to check in with our energy level and meet that energy level. Like if somebody is, you know, is talking a very high voice or a loud voice, it's hard to talk quietly because they won't hear you. So we raise our voice to match them. In the same way, if our energy level is high with anxiety, you know, we

say, okay, I'm going to go and sit and meditate. You know, it's like, does not compute, you know, because my body doesn't want to sit. So that's when we can do some walking meditation, where we're consciously bringing awareness. I love to walk out in nature. So for folks that have access to nature, go outside, look at the trees, get fascinated, get curious about what the leaves look like, what the bark looks like, what the flower, you know, if flowers are growing or coming up, look at all of that stuff. That can be really helpful. Yoga can be really helpful. Yoga can be really helpful. Mind, you know, as we bring awareness, don't do it just to do the poses, but to really bring awareness to the poses. So that again, you're using up that that brain bandwidth. So you're,

you know, your, your back of your mind thinking around anxiety is not there. And exercise, I'm sure you've talked about this a gazillion times, exercise by itself is already really good for immune boosting and health functions. But that can also match the energy level when we're anxious. I try to get out and exercise every day. It's not an option for me not to. it's going to be even more important than usual at the moment. In these times that we're living in, you've got to move your body every single day. And again, I would say to people, it doesn't have to be complicated. And a lot of gyms are closed,

which of course is part of these whole measures to reduce the transmission of the virus, which I'm completely supportive of. I think these measures are necessary. But even dancing, if you're at home with a whole family of kids, dance, get the skipping rope out and skip. which I'm completely supportive of. I think these measures are necessary. But even dancing, you know, if you're at home with a whole family of kids, dance, you know, get the skipping rope out and skip, you know, potentially we could come out of this, many of us, as fit as we have ever been.

You know, we really could. If we do these things each day, we could literally, you know, our health and wellbeing on so many levels could be better than before if we pay attention to those small things that we can do at home each day. John, I want to talk about something just before we finish off about, I think it's something I read in the New York Times article. I think it

was a theme that made me think to ask you this question. Can we practice being calm? And if we practice being calm more and more, does that help us day to day? The short answer is yes. The slightly longer answer is, even, you know, like that breathing exercise that I mentioned from our unwinding anxiety app, you know, simple breathing practices where we're consciously paying attention to our breath, or like you mentioned, five minutes of meditation in the morning, if our energy level matches that, we can practice that. And importantly, after we do those things, even if it's like three breaths, or just taking our pulse for 10 seconds, it's really important afterwards to ask ourselves, what was that like, right? Because reward based learning is based on rewards, not based on the behaviors themselves so if we're if we're anxious that's the trigger and we take some deep breaths that's the behavior

and then we there's this reward of calming down if we don't actually pay attention to that and lock that into our memory that's not going to drive us to do it in the future but if we lock it in and say wow that was really helpful or gratitude practice like you talked about earlier if we check in afterwards and we're like, how do I feel now? When we start to see that the calm is actually there, that we're less anxious, one, we see tangible change. Two, it helps our brain lock that in as, wow, this is the bigger, better offer than going and watching the news or whatever.

And so that helps our brains naturally incline us in that direction. So I like the simple phrase, short moments many times, right? That's how we create new habits. And that's also how we can create the new habit of being calm. Short moments many times throughout the day, whether it's being calm, taking some breaths, whether it's being kind, right? Just looking our loved ones in the eyes for 10 seconds, or being connected, like just, you know, calling a friend and saying, Hey, I'm just thinking about you. Yeah, you know, calm,

kind, and connection. Those are all bigger, better offers than anxiety and panic. It's a no brainer. Yeah, I love what you've just said so much. And this is literally kind of what my last book was was all about was these little fiveminute things that people can do. You know, it's all based on behavior science. It's kind of like, and I really would love people to do a lot of these things at the moment that you're talking about that they've heard on this podcast before. So then I should plug your book. Read his book.

No, you haven't. Hey, look, it's, you know, and your new book is fantastic as well. And it's, I don't think it's about that for any of us. It's about trying to give people some really practical tips that they can use. And the point of me bringing that up was to say, just really to echo what you said, it doesn't have to be a big, long session, like a one-hour meditation or a one-hour breathing practice. long session, like a one hour meditation or a one hour breathing practice, even a few minutes done regularly throughout the day, when you tap into that awareness afterwards, I think that's going to have more impact for people. And I think that's the key message we're trying to get across, isn't it? Here, here, you don't have to buy a book, you don't have to download an app,

you know, if you want to, I mean, this is where I'm sure your book gives people all the information. So if they want to really dive into the information, and our apps can give people systematic training, but anybody can just listening to this podcast can put these things into play right now. Yeah, right. Exactly. So Jed, look, this, the way we typically finish off when I'm face to face with someone is that I asked for some practical tips at the end. I know you've already given some, but the podcast is called Feel Better, Live More. When we feel better in ourselves, we get more out of life. That's never been more apt than I think in the times we're living in today.

So just to finish off, can you summarize some of your top practical tips for people so they can finish listening to this and start implementing them immediately to improve the way that they feel? Yeah. So I would say the first thing to do is know how your mind works, right? And so we've actually put out a bunch of short animations to help people understand this stuff on my website, just the drjudd.com website. We'll link to all of that as well, for sure. So people can, if they want to learn more about how their mind works, we've put out some very digestible animations. I'll be putting out daily YouTube videos to help people understand this.

So that's one of the pieces. The second piece is, you know, we talked about some very simple practices. So taking your own pulse, right, which is basically, you know, taking a couple of deep breaths and noticing what that feels like afterwards. We also talked about doing practices with our kids by finger breathing, right? So we can do that ourselves also talked about doing practices with our kids by finger breathing, right? So we can do that ourselves. We can do that with our kids. We also talked about cuddling. So giving our family members hugs, giving cuddling with our pets, going and adopting or fostering a pet. I'm going to put another plug in for that. And all of these come together based

on two tenets. One, awareness. If we're not aware of what we're doing, we're going to keep doing it. So if we're not aware that we're constantly checking the news, we're going to keep doing it and it's going to become an addiction. Two, so with awareness, we can start to see what's not rewarding, whether it's overeating or worrying or whatever. And then we can bring in that bigger, better offer. What is more rewarding? Calm, kindness, connection. And then rinse and repeat. Short moments many times.

Short moments many times throughout the day. That's how we develop this new habit. And I hope that we come together as a world and collectively, collectively see how much more rewarding connection is than division let's go through this together and let's come out the other end a more connected world so i had really really inspiring words uh thank you so much for making time to come on i think a lot of people are going to find it incredibly practical, incredibly useful for them and their families. Judd, if people want to stay

in touch with you on social media, are you active on social media? And if so, which are the best channels to get you on? I wasn't that active, but I'm actually, I think like you, I feel very motivated to do what I can to help. And since I'm at home, so I'm now, I now have a YouTube channel, just Dr. D R J U D. I'm on Twitter at Judd Brewer at J U D B R E W E R. Uh,

we have an Instagram account. I think it's called Dr. Judd. Um, somebody else takes care of that one for me. Uh, and I'm on Facebook as well. Uh,

so people can find me there. Well, Jed, look, stay well, uh, all the best to you and your wife and your wider community. And we'll talk again soon for sure.

Thank you. Thank you. That concludes today's episode of the Feel Better Live More podcast. I really do hope you found that episode useful. I think that understanding what is going on in our brains when we feel anxious can be really, really helpful. As always, please do

have a think about one thing that you heard in that conversation that you think you can start to apply in your everyday life. I loved that fiveinger breathing exercise and I've already started trying it with my kids and it's absolutely fantastic. More than ever before, please do consider sharing my podcast, particularly this podcast that I've just released with your community, with your friends, with your family. I've been putting out weekly podcasts

for over two years now with the goal to empower as many people as possible to be the architects of their own health. Now all the things I've previously spoken about on this podcast and written about in my three books have never been more important to apply in our own lives than now. Paying attention to the little things you do every day in your own lifestyle is not only going to help you support your body's immune system, it will also help to make you more resilient to all the stresses that we are currently facing and are likely to face in the coming weeks and months. If you want to learn more about Judd, please do go to the show notes page on my website for this episode. It's

drchastity.com forward slash 103. You're going to find links to his website, his app, his books, as well as that New York Times article that we mentioned in the conversation that he recently wrote. Over the coming days, I'll also be adding to the show notes section. I'll put some links there to trusted resources online for the coronavirus pandemic and Twitter accounts that I think are reliable and well worth following at the moment for accurate information. Now many of you have been asking me on social media, on email, what you can do to look after yourselves at this time of social distancing and increased isolation. I've really thought hard about this and from the bottom of my heart,

the framework that I outlined in my last book, Feel Better in 5, is literally perfect for the times in which we live. If you live by yourself, it's going to help provide a framework for you to apply in your everyday life. But if you live with other people, if you've got kids, families, it's perfect to do with other people and really will make a massive difference. Now, guys, this is not an effort to get you to go out and buy my book, right? I'm going to walk you through the framework right now. The idea is simple, right? Each day, especially if you're staying at home, think about three areas to health, mind, body, and heart, okay? And we'll spend five minutes each day on your mind, which is your mental health, five minutes a day on your bodies, which is your physical health and five minutes a day on your

heart. Right. And so mental health stuff can be breathing, journaling. It can be getting outside in nature. It can be doing something creative. The five minute on your body can be anything. It can be, you know, dancing with your family. It can be skipping. It can be going out in the garden. It can be lifting weights for five minutes, something to move your body each day. And then the heart piece is really, really important at the moment. Heart is all about human connection. And as many of us have been cut off from actually getting together with our friends and family, you've got to make an extra effort at the moment to stay connected. You can use FaceTime, Skype. You can, you know, send random texts to people in your contact list, messages of kindness, whatever it is. I've got my

kids writing letters at the moment to their grandparents, you know, old school letters, but really make an effort on that. So I really hope you find that framework useful. I know many of you have got the book and there's plenty of examples of what you can do there. So if you're stuck for ideas, please do get that off the shelf and take a look. But I really, really do think it's going to be helpful. You may also want to go back through the podcast and listen to episode 92, where Ayan Panja interviewed me about the framework in that book. So that might give you a few more ideas on how you can use that at the moment if you don't already follow me on social media please do at the moment particularly instagram i'm trying to put out loads of relevant content

for you all and i'm jumping on instagram lives every other day to try and answer your questions and i know many of you have got questions and you're really really confused unfortunately this one did not work for youtube because the sky Skype recording didn't actually record my side of the video. So we'll put a few clips on YouTube, but the whole conversation won't be there. But please do remember all of my other conversations are. So if you've got friends and family who are looking to watch some interesting and insightful content over the coming days and weeks, please do head over to my YouTube page and check it out. If you do enjoy the weekly shows, again, now more than ever,

please do get a review on Apple Podcasts or whichever platform you listen to podcasts on. It will really raise the visibility of this podcast. People are searching out podcasts at the moment. A lot of people are moving over to podcasts. Please help me spread the word because I really do think the information in this conversation and all the previous conversations is going to help a lot of people. I really appreciate your support. Got to say a huge thank you to my entire team for working around the clock to get this episode out quickly. That is it for today. I will be back this Wednesday with a really, really good episode on kindness. How kindness is good for your immune system. How contagious kindness is. I think you're going to absolutely love that one. That's going to be

episode 104. It's going to come out this Wednesday at 1pm. As per usual, and as always, remember, you are the architects of your own health. Making lifestyle changes is always worth it. Because when you feel better, you live more. I'll see you next time. Thank you.