Science Vs - Self-Care: Can You Hack Your Mood?

Episode Date: October 5, 2023

Can plunging into an ice bath make us feel happier? What about gratitude journaling? We’re digging into some of the quirkiest self-care hacks around the internet to find out what the science says �� and whether you should add them to your routine. We talk to environmental physiologist Dr. Heather Massey, counseling psychologist Prof. Joel Wong, and social psychologist Dr. Juliana Schroeder.  This episode does mention depression. Here are some crisis hotlines:  United States: US National Suicide Prevention Lifeline  988 (Online chat available); US Crisis Text Line Text “GO” to 741741 Australia: Lifeline 13 11 14 (Online chat available) Canada: Canadian Association for Suicide Prevention (See link for phone numbers listed by province) United Kingdom: Samaritans 116 123 (UK and ROI) (Online chat available) Full list of international hotlines here  Find our transcript here: https://bit.ly/ScienceVsSelfCare In this episode, we cover: (00:00) Chapter 1: Trendy self-care hacks (02:13) Chapter 2: Ice baths: How our body reacts (07:40) Chapter 3: Can cold plunges help with depression? (12:41) Chapter 4: The risks of ice baths (16:24) Chapter 5: Does gratitude journaling make us happier? (20:39) Chapter 6: How does gratitude work? (26:29) Chapter 7: When self-care isn’t just about yourself … This episode was produced by Michelle Dang, with help from Wendy Zukerman, Nick DelRose, Joel Werner, and Rose Rimler. We’re edited by Blythe Terrell. Fact checking by Carmen Drahl. Mix and sound design by Bumi Hidaka. Music written by Bobby Lord, Bumi Hidaka, Emma Munger, Peter Leonard, and So Wylie. Thanks to everyone we spoke to for this episode – especially Professor Megan Azad. And special thanks to the Zukerman Family and Joseph Lavelle Wilson.  Science Vs is a Spotify Studios Original. Listen for free on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Follow us and tap the bell for episode notifications.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, I'm Wendy Zuckerman and you're listening to Science Versus. Today on the show, we are pitting facts against self-care. The internet these days is littered with self-care hacks that promise to make you feel like a better you. People say that by jumping into ice cold water, they feel incredibly happy. Cold plunging has certainly caught on. From celebs to everyday athletes taking a dip into frigid water.

Here we go, here we go. Oh! Oh yeah. Oh! Don't be aware of getting a cold. It's great for everybody. So that's cold plunges. But if you're not into that,

some say that writing a gratitude journal is so powerful that it can rewire our brains. Gratitude will change your f***ing life. I've said it and I'm going to say it again. Gratitude is the attitude. Today, we are exploring the science behind some of the buzziest self-care ideas. And so, of course, for the show, I had to give them a go. I jumped in cold water. If I could make a sound effect for my legs right now, it would be... I wrote a gratitude journal.

That's how I feel. Oh my gosh, this feels icky. To write a gratitude journal for my own self-care. And you know what? I found something about myself that I never expected. I actually feel so much better. Am I about to become a self-care person? When it comes to self-care, there's a lot of...

Getting the f***ing cold. But then, there's science. Science vs. Self-Care is coming up just after the break. it's really not important to me to have a lot of things to show off fancy cars you know a giant home those things are just not part of who I am but I've been coached and I've learned through my advisor that it's not one size fits all. Everyone has their own preferences. Everything that I do with Edward Jones is tailored to who I am. Edward Jones, we do money differently. Visit edwardjones.ca slash different. What do Mattel, Banana Republic, ButcherBox, and Glossier all have in common? They power their businesses with Shopify.

Shopify is the most innovative and scaled commerce platform on the planet that also happens to have the best converting checkout on the planet. And that's no industry secret. That's Shopify. Learn more at shopify.com slash enterprise. Welcome back. Today on the show, we are talking about self-care. Is there any science behind it? Michelle Dang, our producer here, has been looking into this. Hey, Michelle. Hey, Wendy. Hey, Wendy. So, Wendy, are you into self-care? No, I am not into self-care. That was a long pause.

It shouldn't be. No, I have made fun of self-care in private. But I've never actually looked into the science of it. And I will say that the past few months have been quite stressful for me. And so I would love some ways to not be so stressed and to feel better. Are you ready? I'm ready. I'm ready. So where do we begin? All right. So the first one we're looking into today is ice baths. This trend actually involves all kinds of cold water stuff, including cold showers.

I'm really excited we're looking into this because they're everywhere right now. Here's what I have heard. They are amazing for your mind and body. They just make you feel great. They can cure depression. Everyone should be doing them. You're a wimp if you don't do it because the science is so clear on this. Get in the water, basically. This is the vibe I'm hearing from the internet. So, is it true? So, I found the perfect person to dive into this.

Her name is Heather Massey from the University of Portsmouth in the UK. And you should know that Heather is not unfamiliar to cold herself. Yeah, I'm a cold water swimmer. So I have been in really quite chilly water. So the coldest water I've been in is water that is 0.2 degrees Celsius. 0.2 degrees. Okay, so for our American friends, this is 32 degrees Fahrenheit or just cold. That's really cold. I wasn't in it for very long and I don't advise it. Yeah, so Heather was selected to represent Great Britain at the Ice Swimming World Championship in 2017. Ice Swimming Championship.

Oh, okay. So this scientist likes cold water. She actually has a small pool in her lab that makes things super cold. And she has people get into it so she can see what happens to their body. So what has she found in her cool pool? Yeah, so Heather told me about what happens to your body once you get into that cold water. There are actually some reasons why it might give you a mood boost. So when you get into the cold water, your body gets this huge response called

the cold shock response. As soon as you get in, you feel a big, an urge to take a big deep breath in. And then you get this rapid breathing response, a hyperventilation. It peaks after about the first 30 seconds. And we notice after that, that it starts to wane. Now it might take between 90 seconds to three minutes to pass. But alongside that change in your breathing, you're also going to experience changes in your blood pressure and also a big increase in your heart rate as well. Yeah, she describes it well, right?

You know, that feeling of, oh my God, oh my God, get out of the water. Right. So, you know, that stimulation certainly wakes you up a bit, but it can also set up this whole hormonal cocktail that could make people feel a bit giddy. Just like there was this study that had 10 men sit in water that was about 14 degrees Celsius or 57 degrees Fahrenheit. And they had them sit there for an hour.

And what they found was something kind of surprising. This cold water immersion actually boosted their dopamine levels in their blood. So, you know, dopamine, one of our feel-good hormones. And in this study, it actually went up by 250% compared to where they started. Wow. Wow. That's for an hour just sitting in this cold, cold water. Which is quite a long time. Yeah. They also found a boost in another chemical called noradrenaline. It went up by 530%. And when they checked their bloods an hour later, these chemicals had started to drop off, but they were still higher than before jumping into the cold. Now this paper of 10 dudes gets talked about a lot in the ice bath

world, but we don't really know if everyone will get these huge spikes. Heather says there could be something here though. So these are all hormones that have a big impact on our mood. We also get big changes in brain blood flow as well. And different parts of the brain have different activity levels once we've been in the cold water. So all of these things happening may be mood altering. And we see other potential benefits too, like in the cold water. So all of these things happening may be mood altering. And we see other potential benefits too. Like in the immune system, you can see upticks in certain immune markers like T cells and B cells.

Oh, cool. So, you know, even though these changes are temporary, it's super interesting. Yeah. So changes in the blood of these important hormones sounds promising. What do we know about how it affects our mood? Yeah. So changes in the blood of these important hormones sounds promising. What do we know about how it affects our mood? Yeah. Because there's kind of all these claims out there that it makes us feel great and

might even be able to help with depression. Yeah. So the current buzz is on ice baths and cold showers. We don't have a lot of research there with mental health. Oh. What we do have, though, are studies on cold water swimming. Oh, okay. Like Heather and her team did this one study where they looked at around 60 people

who signed up for a 10-week cold water swimming course. And what they did was compare their mood and well-being to their friends and family who sat on the beach. Don't picture Hawaiian suns with gorgeous white, sunny beaches. It was raining. It was quite windy. And so we didn't actually think we would see many changes in people's mood and well-being. Okay. What did they find? What they found was that the swimmers did get a mood boost and that it was a bigger increase compared to those people who just chilled on the beach. And when we surveyed them at the final survey point,

at the end of that last session, they were still very, very excited, very active, very engaged. So really a really positive experience for them. Now, other cold water swimming studies have found stuff like this too, that cold water swimming can make you feel less tense and less stressed. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. I guess like, I don't know. Those studies, I don't find that convincing to say that this can help people with their depression because someone who signs up for a cold water swimming study, like A, wants to get in the water and B, there's so many reasons why you might get a mood boost from

being in this big group of people where you all want to jump in the water together and you're so proud of yourselves that you've done it and you've achieved something. To me, I'm not jumping to, oh, we have a cure for depression. You totally hit the nail. Heather says that all can be a part of this. You've developed a common interest with people. There's a social side to it. So those are the cold water studies. And then Heather did tell me about this interesting anecdote, or I guess it was a case study, where Heather's team worked with a woman who had really nasty depression. She was on a lot of medication for depression, and she felt that it really wasn't working for her. So she did say she would try anything.

They had her try cold water swimming with the swim coach once or twice a week, and it really seemed to make a difference. Gradually, over the course of that summer, she, in consultation with her doctor, reduced her medication because her symptoms of depression had reduced. And by the end of the summer, she was not taking any medication for her depression. Oh, wow. But that, of course, is just one person. So if you want to hear another anecdote

from another person, I have found that I do actually like jumping into cold water. Do you? No, no, not at all. I have access to an incredibly cold swimming pool and I have been jumping into it and I really like it. And I get that, I get those, that, that giddy feeling you were describing. Um, uh, but I will say that I have tried to get friends to, to jump into the pool too, um, who are going through like tough times. And I'm like, maybe it'll make you feel good. Like it makes me feel, and they'll just be like, nope, absolutely not. Like not interested.

And it has made me wonder, like, do we have, because a lot of the studies you've been talking about seem to be people who wanted to go into the water, but do we have studies, like randomized control studies, where they've just like pulled people out and actually seen it gives mood boosts to everyone, or, you know, many different kinds of people, not just those who are like, woohoo, let's get in the water. Yeah, Yeah. I totally see your point. We don't have that evidence yet. Right. But the science is headed there. So, you know, Heather's working on a randomized control trial right now. And what they're doing is randomizing people with depression symptoms to take a cold water swimming course on top of their regular treatment.

And she actually told me it's early, but they've already been seeing a benefit come through. Though until we get more data, Heather's stamped on the point many times that we're not at the point where science can say that this works for everyone. And there are physiological reasons why it probably won't work for everyone. Oh, what are they? It might actually be quite painful for some people to do it, where their nerves at the surface of the skin, cold receptors, get more of a nasty jolt from the cold. Basically, you can imagine that it's like having lots of pins and needles. And it's that painful for some people.

Interesting. It's funny because I feel like the way that this is talked about online or even just like over beers is that if you're sensitive to the cold, that's a code word for you're a wimp. But actually, there are physiological reasons why it's different for some people. Right. And, you know, there's other possible bad stuff too that people should watch out for before doing this. Like there's this thing called non-freezing cold injury where you can actually get nerve or blood vessel damage from being too cold or wet for too long.

Ooh. So Heather's seen it in friends who swim in icy water, and it can look pretty gnarly when it first happens. It's pretty horrific. Their hand, the whole hand is swollen up. So it looks like a bit of a cartoon hand. So rather than, you know, their fingers got very, very puffy and very big, and they could barely bend their fingers.

They were in quite a lot of pain as a result of it as well. And sometimes this pain can stick around. Some people even get permanent damage. Oh, man. Heather says what's also a bit yikesy about this is that it can be different from one person to the next because people's bodies get cold at different rates. So this means that the temperature or time that could give you this non-freezing injury could be totally different

for you than for me. We don't know what the dose of cold is that's required. We don't know. It might be for some people that it could be a four-minute ice bath. It could be in other people. It could be in 15-degree water. Yeah, that's 59 Fahrenheit. Yeah, that's not that cold. Yeah. It's way warmer than an ice bath, that's for sure. Also, you know, jumping into cold water can change your heart rate pretty rapidly. So it's not recommended for people with heart conditions to just plunge in there. So, you know, as for all of this stuff on socials, that's like, get in the water. Heather's like, that's not what the science says yet. It's not an activity that we should prescribe to people. If people want to try it, then let them have the opportunity to try it. But it's not something we should say, it's worked for me, so it's going to work for you. And just one more quick thing. When you're on TikTok, you often hear this set of instructions to do 11 minutes a week.

11 minutes, right? But that comes from a study that was on brown fat and metabolism. When it comes to mental health, we don't have any sort of numbers like this yet. That makes sense. So if you're going to, if you want to give it a go, be careful. What are we looking at next, Michelle? Yes. Get ready, Wendy. We are going to be looking into gratitude journaling.

I'm so skeptical of this, I have to say. Just give it a shot. We'll see. I'm ready. What do Mattel, Banana Republic, ButcherBox, and Glossier all have in common? They power their businesses with Shopify. Shopify is the most innovative and scaled commerce platform on the planet that also happens to have the best converting checkout on the planet. And that's no industry secret.

That's Shopify. Learn more at Shopify.com slash enterprise. Welcome back. Today on the show, we are looking into the science of self-care. So far, Michelle Dang, our producer, has told us about the science of ice baths, which although they feel nice for me, the science is pretty... Yes. And next up, we're looking at gratitude journaling. My biggest problem with journaling is why aren't we calling it writing a diary? I had this whole

theory that the bro fluences of the world didn't want to say they wrote a diary because it sounds like something a 13-year-old girl does. So they were like, I journal, I journal. It's the same thing for all those, whether you put a little lock on it or not. Okay, well, I guess there is a bit of a difference because you can write a diary about any old thing, like the soggy muffin you had for breakfast or adorable dog that you saw in the park, Wendy. Okay, maybe that wasn't for you.

But that's not the type of journaling the internet is really buzzing about right now. There's a bunch of hoopla over this particular kind of journaling. It's called gratitude journaling. And it's where you really focus on the things that you're grateful for. Okay. Yeah. So Joel Wong, a psychologist from Indiana University, Bloomington,

told me that a big thing with gratituding. That's not a verb. I'll give you journaling. You can't have gratituding. No, give me gratituding, please. Okay, fine. When you're writing these gratitude journals, Joel told me that the first thing to think about is what he calls the three A's. So awareness. Oh yeah, this thing is good. And the second one. There's appreciation,

which is that you deepen your valuing of that goodness. It's like, oh yeah, what is it good? What's good about it? And finally, there's attribution. So who did this good thing for me? Aha. So instead of saying, I appreciate this coffee that I'm drinking, you say, I appreciate the person who made this coffee. Is that right? Yes, you got this. Okay, so does all this awareness, appreciation, and attribution going to make us happier? That's the claim, right?

That all this like gratitude, I was just about to say gratituding, gratitude journaling is going to make us happier. Does it? So to find this out, several years ago, Joel did this study on gratitude letter writing. They looked at a group of people who were seeking therapy

and they mostly had like a mix of anxiety and depression. Okay. So Joel split these folks into different groups. Like in one group, they had them do three sessions of gratitude letter writing. Basically writing a letter to someone they haven't properly thanked and telling them specific things that person has done for them

and how it made them feel. Another group was a control where they didn't have them do any writing at all. Okay. And so what did they find? Did it help? Yes, actually. The gratitude letters did help.

At the start, they had evaluated everyone on the scale that's used to measure depression. And after a month, the gratitude letter writers were doing better than the other people in the study. Those who were in the gratitude condition had slightly better mental health compared to the others. And the interesting thing was that the effect grew even slightly larger at three months. Yeah. When they checked in three months later, they saw that the effect was still there and had even grown a little bit. Really? That feels alarming from just three sessions of gratitude. What? Yeah. I mean, not every study finds this.

Like, others see the effects fade in a couple of weeks. But there is one study that found it can last up to six months. And a recent meta-analysis looked at around 25 studies on gratitude writing and says the evidence here suggests that writing messages of gratitude or gratitude journaling can increase happiness, at least temporarily. Wow. Okay. So how does it work? Ooh, yes. One of the more interesting findings was answering the question, why? Joel, a man after my own heart. Why? Why? Yes. He's done one of the few studies to tackle this. So the one thing I haven't told you yet is that there was this other arm in the study that just did expressive writing,

kind of like just writing a diary. Okay. So the soggy muffins and cute little dogs, whatever. Well, they were asked specifically to write about stressful experiences, and it didn't work as well as gratitude letter writing. Oh, okay. So he looked for clues as to why the gratitude journaling might have worked better, and he did this by digging into the kinds of emotional words that people were writing. They used computers to tally up the percentage of positive words people wrote, like love and happy, versus the negative words like sad and angry. And what they found was that the gratitude group, it wasn't that they were writing more positive words. It's actually that they wrote less negative words.

So it's almost like the gratitude was shifting. I mean, it's a little bit speculatory, but it's almost like the gratitude letter writing was shifting people's attention away from the negative. And of course, in expressive writing condition, they were delving into the negative emotions. And that's not what I would have expected. I thought it would be like, you know, gratitude would boost the positive. So they were less negative, not more positive. Yes. So that's the crux here. It's like maybe what's making you happier is not

trying to focus on being happy, but actually being less negative. Oh, interesting. It's also linked with being more empathetic. And studies have shown it can change your relationships with people, for example. It sort of makes you less of a jerk. I see. In the plain words. So in a strange, yes. One study found that people were practicing gratitude journaling, they were less of a jerk at work. What?

How did they know that? So Jill's talking about a study that got 200 people from one company to Gratitude Journal for 10 days. And then they asked co-workers to evaluate their jerkness by answering survey questions like, how often in the last two weeks has your co-worker criticized another co-worker? And how often has your co-worker shut others out of the conversation? Right, that's jerky behavior. Then yeah, they looked at what these coworkers had rated them and ta-da,

gratituding had reduced jerkiness. What's fascinating is that researchers also show that gratitude extends beyond your original benefactor to you want to do something good for other people too. So once you open your world to the cheesiness of gratitude, you become more empathetic and less negative. Yes. And Joel says even spending just a little bit of time each day thinking about what you're grateful for can help too. So I thought maybe we should give this all a shot.

Wait, you want us to write a gratitude journal? Yes. I think we should take kind of like the bigger dose and write a gratitude letter. Uh-huh. I mean, I've just heard the signs. I should be excited about this. You've got to do it for basically 20 minutes at a time. And write to someone that you feel like you haven't thanked enough. Like now?

Like right now? Yes. And then make a little voice memo about how you feel. Okay? So, see you in 20 minutes. Okay. Let's start. This first one is to my mom.

We'll start simple. Thank you for all the times you've cooked macaroni and meatballs. Dear mom, thank you for everything it's too cliche thank you for teaching me not to care what strangers think of me the pho that you cook is to die for making me know that i am loved for indulging in Costco pastries with me and always being down for ice cream. Gratitude, live and done. I think it did put me in a good mood. It really distracted me from the things I was stressing out about. It made me feel like I am ready or want to do more for her. I think just going through all the lovely things that someone has done for me just makes the work stuff not matter that much.

And I feel better. Okay. Hey, Michelle. Hey, welcome back. Thank you. Isn't that my line? Yes, that was. All right.

All right. So you got me on gratitude journals. Okay, what's next? If you're about to ask me to like light some candles and have a manicure, like this, we are done. If manicuring… Don't worry. Don't worry.

Okay. So next, we're going to jump into, you know, our last hack of the day. Okay. And I thought it was interesting when putting together this episode thinking about the term self-care. You know, you usually think about stepping away, having some time to yourself, being on your own. Self-care, yes. But one thing that scientists are looking at is how much it can actually matter for us to be interacting with other people for

our well-being. And you know, there's all this talk that we're also in some kind of loneliness epidemic. Right. Particularly in the U.S. The U.S. Surgeon General just this year has kind of raised this alarm. So to learn more about loneliness and what we can do about it for self-care, I talked to Juliana Schroeder. She's a behavioral scientist from the Berkeley Haas School of Business, and she studies how people interact and perceive each other. And part of her interest in loneliness comes from this bummer of a time in her own life. I felt like just unbearably lonely. I would be commuting into work.

I felt as though I was just floating outside the train, looking through the window at myself. So Juliana told me that in the U.S., this loneliness stuff is a real problem. Like one survey found around a third of U.S. adults said they're experiencing loneliness almost all the time. Oh, wow. And in that survey, over half of young adults and even mothers with young children reported, quote, miserable degrees of loneliness. Miserable degrees of loneliness. They said that in the report. Yeah, yeah. And there's a lot of research that has shown that loneliness is associated not just with really bad mental health issues, but also with physical health concerns. So yeah, there is this 2015 meta-analysis that gets pointed to a lot that found that loneliness is associated with dying earlier. And some of

that might be because you don't have someone around to call a doctor, for example. You just don't have a social support network. But there's also just something about loneliness that is bad for our physical health and of course, mental health. So, you know, how can we fix that? Right. Can self-care or social care do it? Yeah, it's a great question. Because in the research, we know that your friends and family are really important. Like studies find that people who frequently hang out with friends and family report better mental health. Okay. Okay. But what if like you don't get along with your family and you don't have a lot of friends? Like then what do you do? Yes. So Juliana was like, hey, what about strangers? They're all around us. What would happen if we just started talking to these strangers that we're surrounded by?

So back in 2010, Juliana started doing experience to study just this. She kind of borrowed from her own life and set up these studies on trains. So in one study, they kind of scoped out a train station in Chicago and went up to people who were on their own. They recruited them for the study and... We randomly assigned people to connect with a stranger. Oh, wow. So they just took people on the train station and said, hey, you want to be involved in a study? Go talk to that other person. So they didn't pair them up with people. station and said, hey, you want to be involved in a study, go talk to that other person.

So they didn't pair them up with people. They just set them off with a specific set of instructions, actually. So they told them to find out something interesting about the stranger and to also tell them something about themselves and told them that the longer the conversation, the better. Is this, is this like your worst nightmare, Michelle? I would probably reject participating in the study. Sorry, I'm on my way. Gotta go. Yes. Anyway, they also gave everyone an envelope with a post-experiment survey to take with them. Here's what they found. For the group that talked to the randos on the train, they ended up chatting for about 14 minutes on average. And...

People were reporting that they had a much more pleasant commute. It brought them more happiness, less sadness to have that conversation with a stranger. Huh. That's very delightful. Yeah, yeah. it felt good. They felt better than people in Juliana's study who weren't chatty sallies, you know, just sat in silence.

And this is kind of the opposite of what we expect. People imagine it would totally suck, me included. But for the people who actually went out and tried this, this isn't what happened. And so how much better did people feel? I can't imagine that this is some like blockbuster drug that Juliana has just created talking to strangers. Yeah. I asked Juliana how strong the results of these studies are. And it's not huge. Like in the studies, it's a small to medium effect. But you should know that Juliana and other researchers have found similar results in different places.

Like they've done these kind of studies on more trains, but also buses, coffee shops, waiting rooms. And they find that people feel good after these conversations, whether they're short or long. So does Juliana do this more often now that she's actually done the science on it? Yeah, actually, it wasn't until after the data came in that she started doing it herself. And then I said, okay, like now I'm convinced I'm going to try it, you know, and I'm still like kind of cautious, but I do, I push myself now, you know, every time I'm in a context, I'm thinking, you know, I'm kind of bored or this just isn't that enjoyable. I'm like, okay, you know what? This is a perfect time to try out the research and to try talking to someone. Okay. Okay. So if we zoom out to everything that we've talked about today,

jumping into cold water, writing gratitude journals, chatting to randos on the street, it's looking like all of this stuff actually could help us out. It give you a little boost, a little mental boost on potentially a kind of crappy day or on a good day. Yeah, there is science on all of this self-care stuff that we can point to. Do you think there's anything you're going to keep doing? Yeah. Yeah, I actually do.

I will be jumping into cold water more often. It will be something I think about when I'm stressed and overwhelmed, even just a cold shower. As I'm walking around in my day, I will be thinking about little moments that I could be having with strangers. Just little moments, just being mindful that like that can just be a little boost. So thanks, Michelle. Yeah.

This has been great. Thank you, Michelle. Yeah. This has been great. Thank you, Wendy. Thanks. That's Science Versus. Oh, and Michelle. Michelle, you still there? Yes. Yes.

How many citations in this week's episode? This week, we have 77 citations. 77. And for people who don't know what we mean when we say we have all these citations, it means you could go and find a transcript of this podcast with links to all of the studies that Michelle has been talking about. So Michelle, if people want to find this transcript, where should they go? Find them over in our show notes. My brain is pretty fried.

I'm just like a little overwhelmed. So I'm going to take a cold shower. Ready? Go. Okay. Okay. Oh, I'm back. Okay. Okay, but I am

more of that. I actually feel so much better. Self-care. Oh, my God. Am I about to become a self-care person? Who am I? This episode was produced by Michelle Dang, with help from me, Wendy Zuckerman, Nick Delrose, Joel Werner and Rose Rimler.

We're edited by Blythe Terrell. Fact-checking by Carmen Drahl. Mix and sound design by Bumi Hidaka. Music written by Bobby Lord, Bumi Hidaka, Emma Munger, Peter Leonard and So Wiley. And thanks to everyone that we spoke to for this episode, especially Professor Megan Azad. Megan, thank you so much for telling us all about your self-care story.

It was so helpful as we were building this episode. Also, thanks to the Zuckerman family and Joseph LaBelle Wilson. I'm Wendy Zuckerman. Back to you next time.