Feel Better, Live More with Dr Rangan Chatterjee - #214 Powerful Daily Habits to Reduce Stress and Anxiety

Episode Date: November 3, 2021

This week’s episode is a special compilation episode all about stress: what it is, where it comes from, and what we can do to manage it better in our lives. Even before the events of the past 20 months, we were living in the middle of a stress epidemic. For many years now, the World Health Organization has been calling stress, the health epidemic of the 21st century. Many of us think that we can get away with burning the candle at both ends forever. But the reality is very, very different. Stress impacts every single organ of the body and chronic stress is at the root of many modern chronic diseases. On my podcast, I have had the great pleasure of talking to some of the leading thinkers and scientists across the globe and this week my team and I have put together some of the very best bits from previous episodes to give you actionable tips that I hope help you live a happier, more fulfilling, and stress-free life. This episode includes clips from: Episode 41 – Dr Rangan Chatterjee and Dr Ayan Panja Episode 28 - Rich Roll Episode 183 - Greg McKeown Episode 95 - Claudia Hammond Episode 113 - Brian MacKenzie Episode 124 - James Nestor Episode 109 - Kelly McGonigal Episode 2 - Michael Acton-Smith Episode 80 - Dhru Purohit Thanks to our sponsors:   https://www.calm.com/livemore   https://vivobarefoot.com/livemore   http://www.athleticgreens.com/livemore   Show notes available at https://drchatterjee.com/214   Support the podcast and enjoy Ad-Free episodes. Try FREE for 7 days on Apple Podcasts https://apple.co/3oAKmxi. For other podcast platforms go to https://fblm.supercast.com. Follow me on https://www.instagram.com/drchatterjee Follow me on https://www.facebook.com/DrChatterjee Follow me on https://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.

Stress is endemic in the modern world. I can't necessarily remove the stresses that are in people's lives, but what I can do is give them some tools that they can apply that are going to help reduce the impact. Hi, my name is Rangan Chatterjee. Welcome to Feel Better Live More. live more. Hello, thank you for joining me on my podcast. And this week we have a very special compilation episode all about stress, what it is, where it comes from, and what we can each do to manage it better in our lives. Now, even before the events of the past 20 months, we were living in the middle of a stress epidemic. For many years now, the World Health Organization has been calling stress the health epidemic of the 21st century. And I think the way that we are living our collective modern lives is actually causing us a lot of problems, not only for our health,

but also for our happiness. Many of us think that we can get away with burning the candle at both ends forever, but the reality is very, very different. Now, if you've followed me for a while, you will know that my second book, which came out three years ago, was called The Stress Solution and I went into detail on this entire topic. Now interestingly, I am seeing lots of social media posts at the moment about my Stress Solution book which is really surprising because it came out almost three years ago and on reflection, I think there is something about the times in which we are currently living that is resulting in the content within that book feeling so relevant to so many people. And in many ways, this was the stimulus for my team and I to put together this compilation episode. Now on my podcast, I have the great pleasure of talking to

some of the leading thinkers and scientists across the globe. And what my team and I thought we'd do this week is put together some of the very best bits from previous episodes, all relating to the topic of stress. Now, some previous podcast favorites appear on the show today, including Rich Roll, Greg McKeown, James Nestor, Brian McKenzie, Kelly McGonigal, and Claudia Hammond. And I've got to say, I do think this is a really, really interesting episode. I enjoyed listening to it after my team had put it together. And my hope is that it helps you reframe stress so that you can live a happier, more fulfilling,

and stress-free life. We start this week's special compilation episode with a clip from episode 41 where I was in the hot seat as my good friend and fellow medical doctor Dr. Ayan Panjshir interviewed me about my book The Stress Solution. We talk about the causes of stress and why certain types of stress can have long-term consequences for our health. consequences for our health. Is all stress bad for us? No, not at all. A little bit of stress is very good. It turns us into the best version of ourselves. You know, it becomes superhuman in many ways when we are a little bit stressed. It's when that stress becomes chronic and it doesn't get switched off and there's just that low-grade stress every single day, that's when something that is a helpful response suddenly becomes harmful. I think a useful way for people

to think about this is to rewind back millions of years ago when our stress response evolved. Our stress response evolved to keep us safe. So two million years ago, we might be getting attacked by a wild animal. And therefore, if we saw that that was likely to happen, or we felt that that was imminent, our stress response would kick into gear. So, a series of biological and physiological processes would kick in into our body, which would help keep us safe. So, for example, sugar would pour into our bloodstream so that we could run faster. Brilliant. Our emotional brain would go on to high alert.

So we'd be vigilant for all threats that also be present at the same time. So they're appropriate physiological responses. Exactly. They were there to help us. We release a bit of cortisol. Cortisol is one of the body's stress response hormones. A little bit of cortisol makes us think more sharply. We all know that feeling of when we've got a test or an exam or a presentation to give at work, a little bit of stress actually helps you perform better. That's a good thing. But those things that I just mentioned, if those

things aren't switched off after an hour or two, if those things become longstanding and they're there every day, suddenly a helpful response becomes harmful. So sugar pouring into your bloodstream, great to help you run away from a lion. Not so good if it's happening every single day because that will lead to weight gain, high blood pressure, and ultimately type 2 diabetes. Your emotional brain being on high alert, so you're vigilant for any threat that's around you, brilliant in the short term to keep you safe. But if that's going on day in, day out, that's what we call anxiety. A little bit of cortisol helps your brain think clearly. Too much cortisol starts to kill nerve cells in your hippocampus, the memory

center of your brain. If you're running away from a lion, the last thing you need to do is to be able to chill out and procreate. Why is stress such a big driver of low libido? Because if you're stressed, having a libido is not a priority for the body. And it's the same thing with gut problems. When you're running away from a lion, you don't need your gut functioning well. You need to switch off your gut because it's not essential. And then you think about all the gut problems that you're seeing every day, that I'm seeing every day, including Irritable Bowel Syndrome. And we now know that stress is a key, key player there. And so stress impacts every single organ of the body. It can be for better and it can be for worse. So I think each and every single one of us has our own unique

personal stress thresholds, and it will vary from day to day, depending on what else we've got in our lives. And why I think that's so important is we can deal with multiple stress hits up to a point, or we can cope, we're quite resilient. But once we get near that threshold, and particularly when we go over, that's it. It's as if all the balls we've been juggling suddenly all fall down onto the floor. We overreact to things. We get overly emotional. Little things become big things. We can't think clearly. We all recognise that feeling. So let's take a typical day in the life of someone today. The alarm goes off. We're in a deep sleep and we turn over. Our phone is usually the alarm. So the alarm is blaring. That's jolted

us out of our deep sleep. We look at the phone. We've got a big jolt of blue lights into our eyes. We might see a notification from the gas company saying your gas bill is due. And bit by bit, you just get these hits of what I call micro stress doses. The notification from the gas company that you need to pay the bill, the three WhatsApp messages you've not replied to, the people who keep emailing you to say, hey, you're not replied to my last two emails. It's all these little hits that come day in, day out that if you leave the house and actually you've had six or seven or 10 or 15 MSDs, these micro stress doses before you've left, you're going out facing the

world much nearer your stress threshold than you would have been otherwise. And that will mean you're more prone to getting frustrated with your work colleagues, more prone to getting short tempered, more prone to having road rage on the way to work rather than actually living in a much calmer state. I think pretty much all of us can resonate with a day like that. Stress is endemic in the modern world. I can't necessarily remove the stresses that are in people's lives, but what I can do is give them some tools that they can apply that are going to help reduce the impact.

When we consider stress, we don't usually think about meeting and purpose, but living a life that's devoid of purpose is inherently stressful. My next guest is also a good friend of mine. He's a fellow podcast host. It is the one and only Rich Roll. And in this clip from episode 28 of my podcast, he explains why finding your purpose in life and taking some time out for yourself can significantly reduce our perception of stress and have a positive impact on the quality of our lives. I think if you don't know what your why is, then you need to start figuring it out for yourself. Because if you don't know your why, why are you doing the things that you're doing, then you're probably not living your life intentionally or as mindfully as you could be. And I know what that's like, because I lived that

way for a long time. And I will say that when I was newly sober, journaling was a very huge part and continues to be a huge part of that connection process. So it began for me with getting a book called Artist's Way by Julia Cameron, which is an amazing program for unlocking. It's technically for unlocking creativity for people that are like writers, but it's really about creating a greater connection with yourself and what makes you tick. And one of the practices in that program is something called morning pages, which entails just getting a journal out every morning. First thing in the morning, you write three pages,

whatever comes to your mind. You could just write, I hate journaling. I hate journaling. Why am I doing this? This is stupid. Whatever it is, just get out and start writing in this free form kind of way. And what it does is over time, it starts to unlock aspects of your unconscious mind that really start to put the pieces together that help you answer that question about your why. And I think when you begin to do that, the skies start to clear

and you get a better sense of the best direction for you. You cannot be of maximum service to others, to your family members, to your kids, to your partner. To yourself. Unless you take care of yourself. And so as selfish as that may sound, it's actually the most selfless thing that you can do. It's why when you get on an airplane, they tell you if you're an adult, you put the oxygen mask on before you put it on the child. You have got to tend to yourself before you can tend to others. And when you develop healthy habits around that

self-care, you become a better example to those in your life that you care about, and you become a more productive example. And I think that process of investing in yourself contributes to greater self-esteem that has a ripple effect that will positively impact you in every aspect of your life. So my call to action is to make a commitment to yourself. The way that I can get myself to feel more alive is to carve out time and protect time to do things that I enjoy, first of all. You know, in my case, it happened to be fitness oriented and that turned into ultra endurance. In, you know, the listener's case, it could be anything. It could be painting. It could be standup comedy. It could be model trains. It could be anything. But I think it's really important no matter how busy your life is

to exercise self-care by making sure that you, um, that you do something that you, that you love. And if you don't know what you love, try to remember the things that you enjoyed doing as a kid. What were you naturally drawn to? I mean, that's what brought me back into swimming and running. I think that's really important. And I think it's really important to step outside your comfort zone and challenge yourself to do something that scares you.

And it doesn't have to be some big deal. Even if you're extending yourself outside your comfort zone a little bit, I think it's important. And I think you'll find it to be incredibly gratifying. And I think it also fuels resilience and an openness to more change. And if you can kind of walk that path a little bit, I think the universe expands, it opens up for you.

We're so caught up in the details and minutiae of our material lives. And like I said earlier, I think most of us are living reactively. We're not taking the time to really reflect on what's most important. And my experience, and again, this is just my experience, when I prioritize my connection with something greater than myself, which can be of your own definition, my life takes on greater meaning. When I ensure that I am prioritizing service to others,

when I am connecting through meditation and mindfulness practices, this weird equation takes place where everything in my life starts to make sense and work more freely. So that doesn't necessarily make sense in a logical, rational way. There's a weird inverse relationship with time that takes place where the more I invest in meditation, mindfulness, service, you can call it prayer. I don't really call it prayer,

but engaging with a relationship with a power greater than myself. The more time I spend doing that, the less time I need for everything else. And everything seems to get done better and things work out the way that they should. Many of us are living really busy lives and find ourselves in a constant state of overwhelm. So how do we learn to take some time out for ourselves? Well, coming up shortly is the award-winning broadcaster and author Claudia

Hammond explaining why rest is so important for our mental health and why we shouldn't feel guilty about taking some downtime. But first, I share a clip from episode 183 with the author of two exceptional books, the writer Greg McKeown. In this next clip, Greg explains what we can all do to avoid burnout. And we start with an excerpt from his second book, Effortless. Strangely, some of us respond to feeling exhausted and overwhelmed by vowing to work even harder and longer. It doesn't help that our culture glorifies burnout as a measure of success and self-worth. The implicit message is that if we aren't perpetually exhausted, we must not be doing enough. Greg, I think that says it all. There's this constant pressure. It's almost like a monkey

on your back. If you stop, if you want to just chill out and smell the roses, listen to the birds, there's something at the back of you. I don't know if it's modern technology, but there's something that's constantly talking to us saying, no, you shouldn't stop. You should be doing more. And of course, that's leading to burnout, isn't it? And of course, that's leading to burnout, isn't it? Yeah, exactly. I mean, if you said succinctly, burnout is not a badge of honor. It's something we have got to... Maybe we can't take responsibility for the whole society, but individually, we can say,

look, I'm done playing that game. We've been sold a bill of goods. we can say, look, I'm done playing that game. We've been sold a bill of goods. And it's time to take responsibility for this and to recognize that we can protect the asset, that we need to protect the asset that is us, that we need to be careful not to just thoughtlessly get into these Zoom, eat, sleep, repeat cycles where people barely know even what day it is. It is literally endless. Days just seem to flow into each other. There's no sense of boundaries. Whatever boundaries existed before the pandemic, and I don't think there were many boundaries there dividing work and personal life and health. But whatever they were, now I think they're completely obliterated.

And this is why people say, well, I'm not working from home. I'm living at work. That tells you where things were, where the balance of power was before. And it's just accelerated now. So we have to do some things to try to avoid this just burnout as a lifestyle that we can reclaim our life, take our life back and say, let's say, for example, let's start with having a done for the day list where you say, I'm not just going to have an endless to-do list and I'm not going to have my inbox be my default to-do list so that, again, it just is perpetually flowing to us. I'm actually going to make a list at the beginning of the day. These are the things that really

matter today. And when I'm done with them, I'm done. I'm not going to carry on after that. I'm going to create space after it to relax, to recuperate so that I can slingshot into the next day and feel that energy because we've got a good rhythm of life going on. The challenge, I think, is to treat competing priorities as somehow equally valuable. It's where you start to say it's all essential, it's all important, it's all a priority. I mean, this is one of my favorite little tidbits of research, but the word priority came into the English language in the 1400s. And according to Peter Drucker, it stayed singular for the next 500 years. So it wasn't until the Industrial Revolution where people started speaking with no sense of irony at all, saying, here are my 34 priorities.

And they all have to be I can have it all. You know, if everything is if I treat everything as important, then it will all work out. And in fact, life isn't even close to, you know, that doesn't approximate reality at all. even close to, you know, that doesn't approximate reality at all. What is far closer to reality is that a few things are essential and almost everything is trivial noise. And so it's more like waking up, you know, you've, you've, you've spent your whole life thinking you were in a, and I don't say this in any way disparaging, but you're in a, you think you're in a coal mine and, and, and you've lived your life in that way. It's just productivity, get more stuff done.

And then you wake up and you say, I've never been in a coal mine. It's all the time. It's been a diamond mine. And so actually my whole job is different than I thought it was. The whole job of life is different. It is to actually explore what is essential. Find those diamonds. That's the most important thing. All the rest doesn't matter. Find those things, invest in them, protect those things. from anything like a long-term perspective, they recognize that only a few things matter. At the very end of people's lives, when they're looking at the totality of their life, they don't say, oh my goodness, I wish I'd spent more time on email. Oh, I wish I'd spent more time on social media and so on. No one thinks that. No one says that. They can see with a bit more perspective, a few things mattered. If we're waiting for our to-do list to be done in order to rest, well, we're never going to end up resting. Yeah, we're going to wait

forever. And I think one thing people need to do is to accept that their to-do list will never be done. Things come along and need to be done. So we will never get to the end of those lists and we just need to accept that lists are always there. What I think is interesting is that we feel so busy now and we'll say this is a 21st century thing. But if you look at time use surveys, people used to also be just as busy say in the 1950s. People didn't have loads more spare time then. But it doesn't feel like that. It feels as if we are busier than ever and constantly under pressure. And I think there is various reasons for that. I think partly it's that pressure. And I think there is various reasons for that. I think partly it's that work and non-work can start to cross over a bit now, partly because of the technology that allows us to be on call all

the time or feel on call all the time. And I think even if your boss isn't emailing you at 10 at night, they could. And there's that sense that they could. And it's a bit like if you talk to people who are air stewards on call or doctors on call who've got a day at home, maybe doing nothing in theory, they say they can't quite rest because they know that they could be called at any moment. And I think in one way, we've, in a way, we've all got into that position a bit. So is rest a very individual pursuit? recommend people do in the book is to find their own combination of activities, to find their own prescription for rest, if you like, for the activities that work for them. And of course, rest hasn't got to mean sitting around doing nothing. So 38% of people in this big study that I was part of told us that they found walking restful, even though that involves activity. 15% found exercise restful and 8% said running was something that's restful. So

it doesn't have to mean inactivity and just sitting still doing nothing, which most people find really hard actually. One of the biggest changes I've made is prescribing myself 15 minutes of gardening whenever I'm working at home. And so I love gardening and it's, for me, it's the thing that makes me relax straight away. You know, I can go out there and start deadheading things or playing around. I've got a tiny, tiny greenhouse that just I can stand in and it makes such a difference. I can feel a wave of calmness come over me. Now it won't be gardening for everybody. You know, some people hate gardening. So it's a question of finding that different thing that can do that for you. And now when I'm working at home,

I prescribe myself 15 minutes of rest when I should be working, if you like. And I decide I'm not going to feel guilty about this. This is for my mental health and so that I can work and do the things I want to do. And it's good for me and I'm going to do it. And I take that time and I do it. And it's been amazing. Do you think that there's something about, is there some sort of power, the fact that you're prescribing it for yourself? So you may have been doing the same activity anyway, but by framing it through the lens of, oh, this is now restful time for me and my mind and my body, do you think it has additional benefits or do you think it actually helps, makes us feel good that actually, oh, I didn't think I was resting, but actually maybe I am.

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Usually, they offer my listeners a one-year supply of vitamin D and K2 and five free travel packs with their first order. But until the end of January, they are doubling the five free travel packs to 10. And these packs are perfect for keeping in your backpack, office or car. If you want to take advantage of this limited time offer, all you have to do is go to drinkag1.com forward slash live more. That's drinkag1.com forward slash live more. I think it makes us feel good because we can notice it. Because another thing you can do is to notice that there might be more small restful moments in your life than you think, particularly

for people who are really busy. And of course, people, you know, caring who are say working and caring for small kids and perhaps caring for older relatives as well, or for somebody who's not well, it's very, very hard for them to get breaks at all. But what people can do is try to notice those small restful moments that there might be. And to reframe wasted time as arrested time. So if you come home to yet another of those, sorry, you were out cards on the doorstep, and then you go down to the sorting office and there's a massive queue. And if you're me, you're really annoyed and thinking, oh, it's just so annoying. I've got a queue and I don't even know what it is. But maybe instead, on a different day, if somebody said to you, you can have 10 minutes now in the middle of your busy

day to do nothing at all. You can just stare at the world go by. Would you like that? You'd probably say, oh, yes, please. I'll take that. Thank you. I'd love 10 minutes to do nothing. Thank you very much. So what we need to do is to then think, well, this is my 10 minute break. So I'm going to stand here. I'm not necessarily going to, you know, not going to go straight to my phone and look at my emails. I'm just going to stare at everything going on around and look at everyone else in the queue, maybe chat to somebody in the queue and that it's okay. And so it's noticing other moments and reframing those as rest as well and seeing how much rest can you find. Yeah, I like that. I love that about reframing those wasted moments as rest.

And I think that will make us feel good. And I think there is a thing about the permission to rest as well. And it's been really striking already. But the questions people have asked at events where I've been talking about rest is people are saying that they knew they liked having a hot bath or whatever it was that they found restful or reading or these different activities that people said. They knew they liked that, but they hadn't realized that it was okay to do that. And they, it's almost as if I I've said, well, the evidence says it's okay. So it's okay. And now you can do it now. Of course you can just do it anyway. You know, people haven't got to wait for me to say it's all right to do something, but I think it's really interesting

that we feel guilty. And so in our, in our study, 9% of people said that they felt guilty whenever they arrested because they felt they shouldn't be because there are always things to be done and they wanted to be better and get all their things done. But maybe we shouldn't, you know, we should protect our own mental health. Can you remember the days when a phone was just a device for making calls? Of course, technology has so many benefits, but today I think our phones can be responsible for an overload of information. In this next clip, we hear again from Rich Roll as he talks about the importance of having

time alone with our thoughts and why we all need discomfort in order to grow. When I think about life, when I think about health, when I think about what people are struggling with these days, and if someone was to ask me what I think the number one problem in society is, I think it's solitude. I think it's the fact that we have no downtime, we have no space. I think one of the negatives that technology has done for all this positive is one of the negatives is I don't think the negative that's been spoken about enough, which is the fact that it, any bit of downtime we previously had has been stolen from us. I want you to think about this for a moment. I'm older than you, but I think one thing that we, we share in our general age bracket is that to the extent that we are the same general generation, we are the last crop of people who know what it's like to live in a pre-internet world and now live in a fully connected world.

and now live in a fully connected world. Our childhood was marked by periods of boredom where we had to go out of our way to figure out creative ways to entertain ourselves. Like the amount of energy that you would have to exude with your imagination to figure out how to spend time was extraordinary. Fast forward to the 12-year-old now or the 10-year-old or the eight-year-old, they have to exert even more energy to not be distracted, to find boredom,

to find stillness. And I think it cannot be overstated how profound a change that is. And I'm not sure that we really appreciate the extent to which that's going to change the course of humanity, because what is that person going to look like in 20 or 30 years when they're an adult, it's going to be a very different type of being. And I think now, more than ever, we're in a crisis of presence in that we never have to be by ourselves ever again, ever, ever. You have to go out of your way to find a moment of stillness. And who was it who said, you know, all of man's suffering can be boiled down to his inability to spend, you know, time alone with himself? I mean, we don't ever have to be alone with ourselves. struggling with this because of how different my life is now from when I wrote my first book. Now there's so many more things vying for my attention. And a lot of those are driven by technology that you have to move heaven and earth to create boundaries around that to carve out

a few moments of quiet because you're expected to be, you know, accountable and in communication at every given moment of your waking day. I agree that I don't think we recognize the gravity of this. I think when we, you know, we're missing a lot of the big picture when we talk about even things like food and sugar, for example, as important as they are, when you understand where a lot of our behaviours come from, this whole idea of these underlying stressors in our life and how we then use our certain behaviours to compensate for them, I think a lack of downtime is one of the biggest stressors. Because if you can't sit alone with your thoughts and you always need distraction, well, you're going to use distraction, whether it's social media, whether it's Netflix, whether it's food, right? So how much of unhealthy food intake

is driven by an inability to sit and be alone? I think a lot. Yeah. I mean, I think emotional eating is a condition that's underappreciated. It's easy to dismiss that like, oh, I'm addicted to whatever kind of food. But, you know, I think most people's compulsive eating behaviors and patterns are a function of this unconscious drive to change their emotional state, like this reflexive, um, need to not feel whatever they're feeling, you know? And I think if you, if somebody was to do a food journal and, or, or, or to posit the question, like, how come I always like, you know, end up, you know, face planning in the Haagen-Dazs, you know, three times a week at midnight or whatever. Like if you were to journal, like what, what happened to you emotionally that day? Like

there's triggers for these things, like something emotional you're feeling, you're experiencing some kind of emotion that maybe you're not even consciously aware of or completely in touch with that is compelling you in an unconscious way to behave in a certain way to change that emotional state so that you can feel different. So whether it's drugs and alcohol or food or the phone or whatever else is, it's all the same thing. It's all the same thing. It is a, you know, addictive predisposition to alter your emotional state and avoid having to confront, you know, a feeling or an emotion and an inability because of the way we're hardwired to understand that feelings are just that, they're feelings. Like when we have an uncomfortable feeling or a fear impulse or

something like that, you know, we're hardwired through our amygdala, which we talked about earlier, to think that we're in peril, we're going to die, right? And we're hardwired through our amygdala, which we talked about earlier, to think that we're in peril, we're going to die, right? And we're going to act accordingly to redress that. But the truth is, it's just an emotion. You're not going to die. And if you can develop the wherewithal to sit with it, to be in that discomfort, you will come to understand one fundamental aspect of emotions, which is that they are constantly in flux and they are not static and it will change and it will pass. But it is only through the willingness to weather through that discomfort that you can become connected to that. And I think we're in a culture right now where nobody wants to be uncomfortable

for a minute. And everything about society is oriented around luxury and comfort and convenience. And the idea of having to tolerate even a moment of discomfort is considered something that we're trying to transcend. And yet deep within us, we have a deep need to be in discomfort in order to grow. And I think that's why you're seeing like Spartan races and ultra endurance, like there's, if it's all about luxury and comfort and, you know, a padded bank account, then why are all these people showing up to climb in the mud, you know, on a cold Sunday morning? It's because as human beings, we're willing to be in discomfort, the more resilient we become, the more alive we

feel and the more connected to the planet, to ourselves and to each other we learn to be. Next up is human performance specialist, Brian McKenzie. Back in episode 113, Brian explained how we can use the power of our breath to become more present and help us deal with the stresses and constant stimuli of modern day life. A lot of people these days are suffering with the effects of stress,

the consequences of being chronically stressed and not actually adequately recuperating from that. And everyone's looking for the hack, you know, what can I do to keep my life super, super busy, but what can I do that's going to somehow magically de-stress me? And it's fascinating for me that breathing could well be one of the simplest and one of the most accessible things to all of us, yet it's something that very few of us are actively looking at and actively practicing. Yeah. Why do you think that is? I think we've moved ourselves far enough away from inside out understanding that outside in has become our go-to default. I look at my phone

for an answer to something, right? I'm on social media for things, for answers to things. I look at heart rate monitors for things. I look, you know, it continues to add up on the outside in trying. So we're missing the, there's a big variant in that. Like there's a big variation in that because to understand how you feel, you have to go in, you have to go to the base layer of what's going on. And at the fundamental layer of all of this is breathing. And so actually taking the time to actually reorganize and feel things, you know, people are so stressed out and it's like, that's all just a conceptualization. That's just story.

That's just a narrative. We are designed to handle stress at very high output. And maybe, and I'm stealing this from a friend of ours, David Bidler, but maybe it's not that we have a disorder. a friend of ours, David Bidler, but maybe it's not that we have a disorder. Maybe it's not that, you know, anxiety and all this stress is, is actually, maybe this is just a natural reaction to the amount of stimulus to the stimulus that we're taking in from the outside and not paying attention to things from the inside. Because when I, I've met and worked with a lot of high level people, whether athletes, executives, whoever, right? The people that are functioning the highest

are shutting out everything else. They're in their environment and what they're in, like the conversation you and I are having right now. I'm not thinking about the drive that I've got to go do, except right now when I say that, right now I'm distracting myself. And so this is where the context of things starts to happen. And then I start to overload more because I'm in an environment I should be paying attention to, and I'm not feeling what's going on with that and present in that situation. And so breathing is that thing that I can go and bring myself right back and stop a lot of the physiological ramifications of that stuff. If we were still out there, meaning still out in nature, still trying to survive, right?

Like cave people, right? people right like we wouldn't even need to be worrying about breathing because we'd be existing in a natural environment responding to that natural environment in the way that it that we should have right versus putting ourselves into places where comfort and convenience and the illusion of safety becomes this very um it it encompasses entire life. A lot of people listening to this will probably be thinking, well, you know, it's all very well moving out to nature, but I don't have access to that. And so why the breath really fascinates me, because I've worked in many different areas. I've looked after affluent patients. I've also looked after very deprived patients. And I guess breathing is free. Breathing is accessible to

everybody. And then what that naturally lends itself to is if you have control over your breath, even if you are living in an inner city where there is a lot of noise around you, and there's a lot of inputs that you are constantly having to fight off, well, at least you have a tool like a shield where you can use for your body to help you survive in that environment. This is where that hack world has to come in if we're existing in these places, right? Is we have to actually start to hack things and breathing is one of those hacks. Breathing is information. And in this next clip from episode 124, the science journalist and author James Nestor explains why the way that we breathe is so important for the way that we feel and the state of our minds.

By changing the way in which you breathe, you can actually change how your mind is processing thoughts and feelings and emotions. We can almost induce a feeling of anxiety and panic by changing the way that we breathe. Of course we can. And if anyone wants to do that, you can start breathing in this very unhealthy way right now you will stimulate a sympathetic response and that's easily measured so i thought this was interesting as well um at ucsf which is very close to my house university of california san franc Francisco. Dr. Margaret Chesney had worked for decades on National Institutes of Health Research, looking into something called continuous partial awareness, also known as email apnea. And what she had found was that when we sit down at our desks in the morning,

one estimate says that 80% of office workers do this. We open up our email, got Zoom on, got Twitter on. Oh my God, I have 60 emails. We stop breathing. We just stop breathing and then we go. So she called it email apnea because we're so distracted and stressed out by what's going on. If you think about when you're extremely, let's say there's a tiger coming around the corner here of my house, what am I going to do? I'm going to be silent because that is a reflex reaction to be very

scared, to be silent so you don't become prey. And once it's on, once the fight is on, be silent so you don't become prey. And once it's on, once the fight is on, I'm going to breathe a ton to get more energy to my body, to feed more energy to my brain and heart and other essential muscles to get me out of that situation or to fight off that thing. But we do the same thing unconsciously at work. Even though there's no tiger around, even though there's nothing threatening us, our sense of threat has become so sensitized that so many of us will stop breathing or start breathing completely dysfunctional. And she's found that if you do this for long enough, it can have some of the same effects on us as sleep apnea. By that, I mean neurological disorders, physical problems, again, spiking blood glucose, adrenaline. And it's just something so few of us are aware of.

And I was wearing a pulse ox and all these different measuring what happened. Every morning, I put the stuff on and sit down. my breathing would go to hell every single morning. And I realized that, you know, that's probably a reason why around 1130, I'd get, I used to get the slight headache, used to feel kind of fatigued. It was still morning time and I wasn't full of energy. And so by just switching your breathing, again, you can allow your body to work so much more efficiently. As a a society we're probably over breathing okay can we individually practice a little bit every day where we sort of slow that down so we we know that this this slower breathing we know how it affects us and we know that most of

us are breathing too much and too often dr patricia gerbarg and and Dr. Richard Brown, who's at Columbia, have used this for people with anxiety and depression, even bulimia and anorexia. All of these different maladies that you would think wouldn't have anything to do with breathing. But these populations traditionally breathe way more than they should. They're constantly stressed out. And it's completely touching to see these people be reacquainted with their breath because they've completely lost control of it over decades. And just to take a slow and steady breath in, a lot of them instantly freak out because it's way too slow to them.

They associate that with an attack. But once they acclimate to it, this might take a session or two to really get this down. You watch this transformation occurring. You just watch the stress just lift from their faces. My next guest is Kelly McGonigal, a US research psychologist, lecturer at Stanford University and bestsellingselling author in this next clip from episode 109 kelly describes how movement can help us combat stress and how regular exercise has the power to change our moods and our brain chemistry we know very well that exercise helps make us more resilient to stress.

Yeah. So, okay. So how exercise helps us with stress, it is both on that short term. So if you're feeling stressed out, you're feeling anxious or angry, it's going to change your brain chemistry in a way that gives you more hope and more energy. That's like, that's the common denominator. That's the feel better effect. But also we know that people who are regularly active, it actually changes the structure and the function of their brains in ways that basically teaches the brain how to be resilient to stress and also more sensitive to joy. So you're going to have an increased availability of dopamine and endocannabinoid and endorphin receptors.

Your brain is basically going to say, oh, I guess we can experience joy and meaning in life and hope and optimism. So let's just be ready for it in a way that increases people's mood and joy in a much more generalized way. But the one thing I wanted to make sure we talk about, I mentioned it once, myokines, which I think is the most exciting area of research in terms of how exercise affects stress resilience and mental health. So just in the last decade or so, biologists have realized that our muscles are basically an endocrine organ. And just like your pituitary gland, your adrenal glands, they can synthesize and pump out proteins and peptides into your bloodstream that affect every system of your body. So your muscles will manufacture these proteins and peptides. They basically release them into

your bloodstream when you contract your muscles in a regular and continuous way. So any form of exercise, any form of movement. And some of these proteins and these chemicals, so they're called myokines, which just means set into motion by your muscles. Some of them kill cancer cells. Some of them reduce inflammation. Some of them are good for your immune function. They're good for your cardiovascular health. Some of them help you regulate blood sugar.

So a lot of scientists now think myokines are the reason that exercise is good for your health. But what I'm so fascinated by as a psychologist is some of these myokines are the reason that exercise is good for your health. But what I'm so fascinated by as a psychologist is some of these myokines have their strongest effects on your brain. So let's say you go for a walk or you're lifting weights and your muscles are pumping these chemicals out into your bloodstream that can cross your blood-brain barrier. And in your brain, their primary effect is to act as an antidepressant and to change the structure of your brain in ways that make you more resilient to stress, whether that's changes to your hippocampus or your prefrontal cortex. And some of the first researchers who wrote about this called them hope molecules.

It's like your muscles are manufacturing hope molecules when you exercise. And this to me is like the miracle of the human form. The idea that your muscles can manufacture antidepressants and they will deliver them to your brain when you exercise. And it's all of your muscles. So if you can't use your legs, you can use your arms. If you can't use your arms, maybe you can brace your core. If you can move any muscles, your muscles will release these chemicals that support your health and support your brain resilience. And it's something that you can choose. In the book, you beautifully go through a lot of the research around this, about how

being sedentary in itself will make you low and depressed. And I think there's a statistic, if I remember it right, that the amount of steps you need to take on a daily basis in order to not get anxious or depressed or something like this is 5,649. Yeah. So let me explain what the study is. explain what the study is. Before we get back to this week's episode, I just wanted to let you know that I am doing my very first national UK theatre tour. I am planning a really special evening where I share how you can break free from the habits that are holding you back and make meaningful changes in your life that truly last. It is called the Thrive Tour. Be the architect of your health and happiness. So many people tell me that health feels really complicated, but it really doesn't need to be.

In my live event, I'm going to simplify health and together we're going to learn the skill of happiness, the secrets to optimal health, how to break free from the habits that are holding you back in your life, and I'm going to teach you how to make changes that actually last. Sound good? All you have to do is go to drchatterjee.com forward slash tour, and I can't wait to see you there. This episode is also brought to you by the Three Question Journal, the journal that I designed and created in partnership with Intelligent Change. Now, journaling is something that I've been recommending to my patients for years. It can help improve sleep, lead to better decision making and reduce symptoms of anxiety and depression. symptoms of anxiety and depression. It's also been shown to decrease emotional stress, make it easier to turn new behaviours into long-term habits and improve our relationships.

There are of course many different ways to journal and as with most things it's important that you find the method that works best for you. One method that you may want to consider is the one that I outline in the three question journal. In it, you will find a really simple and structured way of answering the three most impactful questions I believe that we can all ask ourselves every morning and every evening. Answering these questions will take you less than five minutes, but the practice of answering them regularly will be transformative. Since the journal was published in January, I have received hundreds of messages from people telling me how much it has helped them and how much more in control of their lives they now feel. Now, if you already have a journal or you don't actually want to buy a journal,

that is completely fine. I go through in detail all of the questions within the three-question journal completely free on episode 413 of this podcast. But if you are keen to check it out, all you have to do is go to drchatterjee.com forward slash journal or click on the link in your podcast app. So this was a study that took people who were a little bit more active than your average American, not like super exercisers. I think they were averaging something like 9,000 steps a day when they started the study. And then they asked them to reduce their daily step count to what is typical for the average American, so around 5,000, and to not exercise. So if you have the chance to exercise on purpose, don't. And in this study, after about a week of reducing your activity count to the

average American, 88% of people were reporting symptoms of depression. Nearly everyone had less energy, more anxiety, more stress. They reported a 31% decrease in meaning in life. And so, you know, the way that I take that study, and there are other studies showing this too. Can I just clarify? So you're saying these are active people. Relatively active people, yeah. Okay, so they're roughly getting 9,000 steps a day.

When they go down to around 5,500. Which actually is not just the American average. That's pretty much the worldwide average. So they go down and you're saying there was a stat, I think you just mentioned, 88% of them are feeling depressed. Yes. And they're reporting a decrease in meaning in life

and satisfaction with life. And so this is fundamentally exactly what you're talking about. Movement is engaging with life. Stop moving and you start to disengage with life. So I do think that that study suggests it's possible that the lifestyle that is becoming more prevalent around the world is actually inducing depression and a decrease in satisfaction in life. There are many reasons that when you become less active, you're changing your metabolism, you're changing your brain chemistry, and you're changing your mood in such profound ways.

Coming up shortly, it's the co-founder of the meditation and mental wellness app, Calm, Michael Acton-Smith. Now, Michael admits that he wasn't initially convinced about trying meditation until he researched the science. But first, in my chat with Ian Pancher, I reveal what I consider to be the most important thing that I do in my own life to help me reduce stress and feel calmer and more content. What's the one thing for you in your life that's changed your stress levels during the course of

this year? I'd probably have to say it's something that I've managed to engage in now for probably over two months, maybe three months now. You know, after having tried for donkey's years to make this a regular practice and it's a morning routine. You know, I have tried, but sometimes I'd get up and go, yeah, I mean, that's great. I don't really have 15 minutes now to spend. I could just get through my emails quickly before the kids wake up and I have to give them breakfast. You know, I've really started to prioritize the first, certainly the first 15 minutes of my day. Sometimes it's 35, 40 minutes, depending on my schedule, but I will wake up early. My phone will be on airplane modes and I will basically do a meditation on the app

Calm. And sometimes I'll be 10 minutes, sometimes I'll be 15 minutes. So I'll sit and do that. I then do some movement practice. So very light things. It could be some yoga stretches. It could be some ankle mobility. And then I try and finish off with something positive, whether that's reading something positive or whether it's doing something called affirmations. And what's really interesting is that I try and get up before my kids, but they're often down for the affirmations and we say something positive together. So, often I'll sit there with my daughter, we'll hold hands together positive together. So often I'll sit there with my daughter, we'll hold hands together and we'll say, okay, I'm happy, I'm calm, I'm stress-free. I'm happy, I'm calm, I'm stress-free. I will do that for about a minute or two. And you know, at the end of that minute or the end of the two

minutes, she's got a big smile on her face. I've got a big smile on my face and I feel like a million dollars. And you know, that may sound quite dramatic or quite a lot of different things to do. It doesn't have to be as complicated as that. It doesn't have to be as long as that. It can simply be five minutes of sitting in silence. The key thing I think really is not to get the phone on, not to put the laptop on. Because I really do feel that once you start down that path, your downtime becomes very limited. You just start the day with noise. That is probably the most impactful thing I do. Those 10 or 15 minutes in the morning have benefits for the rest of the day. I was super stressed. I wasn't eating well.

I was sleeping really badly. I had headaches all the time, was just exhausted. And a friend took me aside and said, why don't you try meditation? And I wasn't in the right mindset. I was like, go away. That sounds ridiculous. I had these preconceived ideas that meditation was religious or woo-woo or a little bit weird. I'd have to get dressed up in weird outfits and whatnot. But I did something I'd never done before. I took myself off on a solo holiday and I started to research meditation. I read the science behind it. I read some amazing books and a light bulb went on and I realized that there was incredible neuroscience behind meditation. This wasn't woo-woo. This was real. This could really rewire your brain in many ways. So that was the moment when I realised, wow, I want to devote the next many, many years of my life to

helping spread this incredibly simple but valuable skill. I think you've really touched on something very important, which is one of the obstacles I see with my patients to doing meditation, which I'm a huge fan of, is the preconceptions that it might be religious, they might have to sit cross-legged somewhere, they might have to say a mantra over and over again. And I think it can be a bit off-putting for people. You know, the term meditation or even mindfulness often gets used interchangeably these days. And for me, it's really a practice of stillness. And I think in our modern busy world, it's never been more important than having that pause button. What did you find yourself when you

first started meditating that convinced you of the benefits? I found it really difficult. I'll be honest. I think a lot of people do. The mind does not like to switch off. It's constantly whirring and swirling away. So even sitting down just for a few moments, my mind would just fill with all sorts of thoughts and ideas. And one of the triggers that helped me reframe it and think about it in a new way was that meditation is like going to the gym. You know, we lift weights to strengthen our muscles. And by meditating, we're strengthening the attention muscle in our mind. We sit, and it's not about clearing the mind and zenning out. I think that's a misconception. Whenever thoughts come, which they will, we acknowledge them, and we gently

move them away and go back to focus on a constant, such as our breath. And then new thoughts will flood in, and we'll do the same thing, and and again and again. And that repeated practice, that's what it is, a practice, helps strengthen that attention muscle and brings so many different benefits to our everyday life when we're not meditating. So that was key for me, thinking of it more as almost mental fitness and been hugely valuable for many different areas of my life. You have to go slowly at first. You know, you wouldn't, if you're trying to run a marathon, you don't start by running 10 or 20 miles training. You get off the sofa and maybe you walk around the block. And I think the same is true of meditation. Even just breathing

consciously and being aware of your breath for a few seconds is a good place to start. In the Calm app, we encourage 10 minutes every morning, but even that can take a little bit of time for people to work up to. So for me, it was just very gently beginning with a few minutes and then lengthening from there. When I posted about meditation via apps before on social media, some people have said, you don't need an app to meditate. That's part of the problem. And look, I think you've got to meet people where they're at. The device and the technology is not the problem. That's merely a tool. It's how we use it that matters. And by learning to meditate, by being more mindful, we can use our phones and our devices the way we want. Rather than being yanked around on autopilot, we become masters of our devices

rather than slaves to them. The average person checks their phone over a hundred times a day. Now, I guarantee most of those times will be on autopilot. Far better to do it consciously, when we want, how we want, where we want. And again, when you have that control over your device, it improves your life in traumatic ways. I used to go to bed every night doing emails and then would check social media and like an hour would fly by and I'd find it tricky to switch my mind off unsurprisingly. My dreams would be filled with tweets and Instagram posts. And so now I never use my phone in bed. And when I wake up in the morning, it's hard to do, but I make sure I don't check Twitter

or WhatsApp or emails until I've left the house. And it's incredible the difference it makes going into the shower, not thinking about, you know, why my last Instagram post only got four likes. Again, just daydreaming, thinking, just starting the day in a much lighter way is really powerful. The next clip is from episode 80 of the podcast with my good friend, Drew Prydz. When we feel overwhelmed, it's really easy to forget to make time to catch up with our friends. But as Drew explains, human connection is so important for our nervous system and our sense of well-being. individuals, but actually don't feel like they have one person that's a best friend and men even more susceptible to this. I saw a YouGov study that a survey that came out of the UK and almost one fifth of men say they have no close friend. Like that is crazy to think

because friendships, connections, deep, meaningful relationships, they impact every aspect of our life from our health to our happiness. I mean, you had Dan Buehner on your podcast and talking about the blue zones. One of the key factors in the blue zones is not what they eat. It's how they live and these deep, meaningful relationships that are there and how that plays into the sense of connection and belonging in life. Every area of our life is touched by friendships, but just like stress, because it's not always obvious, it goes overlooked. Yeah. I mean, those blue zones in Okinawa, they have this concept called Moai Mates. I think it's five friends that these guys have for life, that they're there to help emotionally, physically when you need physical

help, financially. They're basically five close people who are there for you for life. You know you've got that tight group to rely on. And you just shared a very alarming statistic about how many men don't even have one friend or someone. And it sort of echoes that we talk about loneliness. We talk about this loneliness epidemic that is fast spreading throughout the world, which is slightly ironic as we're living in this super connected culture, certainly super digitally connected culture. You know, one of my favorite sections that you wrote about inside of your book was the

chapter on touch. The section on touch is so beautiful because you make the argument for, and you present the science to actually support it, that we live in a society now through a combination of a bunch of different factors. Touch is not as part of our daily life as it once was. And what are the impact of those things? And how can sometimes just a small amount of regular touch with our partner, with our friends, our colleagues, even sometimes with strangers, dramatically improve our health and prevent us from building up stress that's there, right? And I would argue in that same way that deep, meaningful friendships, what's the value of sitting down in the morning, going to coffee with

a friend and saying, you know what? I've had a really tough week and this is what's on my mind. And even if that friend doesn't give you advice, just them listening profoundly lets your nervous system know that you are not alone. And that's why I'm raising the alarm when it comes to having us check in and saying, just because you're surviving, doesn't mean necessarily that you're thriving in your life. We finish with some great advice from Kelly McGonigal on how we can use movement to reset our mind and body and why spending time in nature is so important for our mental well-being. If you are thinking about adding movement into your life, one thing I like people to think about is that it is a reset. It's an immediate reset for your mood and your brain chemistry. And so to think about when in your life you want to flip that switch and get a reset

and like set an appointment for yourself to move. For me, because of my temperament, like I wake up anxious. I don't wake up like, you know, birds singing. I wake up, I'm like, oh bleep, I have to get up and do this again. So for me, I exercise first thing in the morning, even though I don't want to, because I know that that's a reset for me. And I really encourage people to think, if you know that exercise is a reset, it's going to make you the best version of yourself to start to think about putting any dose of movement into that. And the other thing I would say is so many people get an immediate benefit from moving outdoors. If you are somebody who thinks you don't like to exercise, if there's any natural environment where you feel safe in, and it doesn't have to be the wilderness,

it could be any green space, to spend time outdoors will often be the most powerful way for people to immediately connect to the psychological benefits of movement. Really hope you enjoyed that special compilation episode. As always, do have a think about one thing that you can take away and start applying into your own life. I really do think that learning to manage our stress levels better is one of the most important things to learn. So many people are struggling with this at the moment. So please do consider sharing this

episode with the people in your life who you think will benefit. And if you want to learn more about this topic, as well as a whole host of simple, practical things that you can do each day to help you feel calmer and more content, please do check out my book, The Stress Solution. It's been out for a few years now. It's available all over the world in paperback, ebook, and as an audio book, which I am narrating. Now, before you go, I just want to let you know about Friday Five, my weekly newsletter that contains five short doses of positivity to get you ready for the weekend. And in a world of endless emails, it really is delightful that so many of you tell

me it is one of the only weekly emails that you actively look forward to receiving. It usually contains a practical tip for your health, a book, article, or video that I've been reading or watching, a quote that's caused me to stop and, article or video that I've been reading or watching, a quote that's caused me to stop and reflect, basically anything that I feel would be helpful to share. If that sounds like something that you would like to receive each Friday, you can sign up for free at drchatterjee.com forward slash Friday five. If you enjoyed listening to the show today, please do consider leaving a review on Apple Podcasts. Thank you so much for listening.

Have a wonderful week. And please do press follow on whichever podcast platform you listen on so you can get notified when my latest conversation comes out. Always remember, you are the architects of your own health. Making lifestyle changes always worth it because when you feel better, you live more.