Something You Should Know - What You Never Knew About Your Blood But Should & How To Conquer Burnout?

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Starting point is 00:00:27 Download June's Journey now on Android or iOS. Today on Something You Should Know. If you have a connected car, there are some things you should be concerned about. Then, what you never knew about your blood. For example, that getting a transfusion can be a real risk. In general, if you don't have to get a transfusion, and I can tell you that most of the times you don't, you will avoid all of the negative aspects associated with a transfusion, which in essence is a transplant.

Starting point is 00:01:00 Also, the everyday surfaces you want to make sure you don't touch. And burnout. It's a big problem. What causes it and how do we tackle it? If we tackle one thing immediately, I would say it would be managing unsustainable workloads because it is the leading cause. There's five other root causes, but overwork being the number one is a substantial and important place for us to tackle.

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Starting point is 00:02:03 Fascinating intel. The world's top experts. And practical advice you can use in your life. Today, Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers. Hi, and welcome to Something You Should Know. If you have a car that was made in the last several years, you have, most likely, a connected car. And in many ways, that's a good thing. With a connected car, automakers and vendors can send and receive information directly with the car. What could be wrong with that?

Starting point is 00:02:37 Well, a couple of things, according to automotive journalist Peter Bohr. He says one automaker wanted to charge an $18 a month subscription just to turn the seat heaters on in their customers' cars. And if the customers didn't pay for it, they wouldn't switch on the seat heaters, even though the seat heaters were already in the car and the customers had already paid for it. Another carmaker offers its electric vehicle customers acceleration boost software for a subscription of $1,200 a year. Don't pay it, you don't get the acceleration boost. These kind of subscriptions make carmakers a lot of money. Mercedes-Benz earned more than a billion dollars in these subscription fees last year.

Starting point is 00:03:22 Customers tend not to like them. And there are some other possibilities that don't sound too pleasing. Say you miss a car payment or two. The manufacturer could just turn off your car. And that is something you should know. In all the discussions I've ever had

Starting point is 00:03:42 about health, I've never heard anyone say anything about taking better care of your blood. Blood? I've always figured that the blood running in my veins is just in there running in my veins and doesn't need a whole lot of attention from me except for the occasional blood test. But the blood itself wasn't something to take care of. And if you needed blood, like, say, in an operation, well, you just go get a transfusion and that's that. But what if blood from a transfusion isn't so great? You're about to hear some amazing things about your blood you've likely never heard before from Dr. R.E.A. Shander. Dr. Shander is Emeritus Chair at the Department of Anesthesiology, Critical Care Medicine, Pain Management, and

Starting point is 00:04:32 Hyperbaric Medicine at Englewood Hospital in New Jersey, and he has a whole host of other impressive medical credentials like that. He's also one of the authors of a book called Blood Works, What Every Person Needs to Know Before They Are a Patient. Hi, doctor. Welcome to Something You Should Know. Thank you, Mike. So maybe let's start with what blood is. What is it?

Starting point is 00:04:54 Why is it there? Why do I have it? Well, I'm going to start with what is blood. And most of us know that there are solid organs like a brain, the heart, the kidneys, etc. Blood is an organ, but it's a liquid organ, and it is a fascinating organ. The reason it's so fascinating is because it has multiple functions. It does a lot of different things. First of all, it sustains life by delivering oxygen and getting rid of acid, which is a byproduct.

Starting point is 00:05:24 In addition to that, just like any other organ, we need to take care of it. And most of us are really not aware of the fact that it requires maintenance. So how much blood do I have? The quick answer is that every individual, as you know, has different size so that the volume or the amount of blood that's circulating in your veins and arteries varies. But in essence, for adult, we're talking about probably about two gallons of blood circulating in your arteries and veins, and that's enough. Now, we fluctuate up and down because it's a liquid. Again, if you're dehydrated and you're not drinking enough, you what have you done for your blood lately? It doesn't come up.

Starting point is 00:06:27 It's not a topic. So what is it that people should be doing for their blood and how would you be doing that? You know, that's a very insightful question. That's a great question because many people are just not aware. They're not aware that blood requires the maintenance. The one fascinating thing about the blood is that this is one of the only organs that actually regenerates. If you lose blood and you have enough iron or vitamins, you can rebuild that organ back

Starting point is 00:07:00 without having any transplant or transfusionusion you could do it all on your own and to do that we need to make sure that the nutrients that blood requires are sufficient namely iron if you don't have enough iron on board your blood is going to be weak if you will it's not going to function as well as if it does have the iron and we can replenish iron very easily so this is one way of if you will maintain your blood health is by looking to see how much iron you have many people can become what we call symptomatic, meaning they'll have some symptoms, and you could be tired, it may be difficult to concentrate, all this due to the fact that your iron is low,

Starting point is 00:07:52 and you have what we call anemia, meaning the blood count is also reduced. So if you were to stop people on the street, what would you guess, how many of them have low iron in their blood? Is it is it uncommon what so if you if you're stopping people on the street and let's look at this from a global point of view because it could be any street in the world overall we have about 8 billion people on this planet right now of which more than 3 billion have some level of anemia, meaning low blood. And majority of those have to do with the fact that there is low iron. In the U.S., we know that patients who go for surgery, as an example, about 4 out of 10 people have low iron and low

Starting point is 00:08:43 blood. And do they tend to have something in common? Do they tend to be elderly people? Do they tend to be young people? Do they tend to be smokers? I mean, what do they have, or is it just random? Well, it doesn't discriminate. It's anywhere from young. Actually, the number one population, meaning the number one group of people who have low blood and also low iron, happen to be children below the age of five and women. Women who are both in their childbearing years as well as elderly women. As you increase with age, the likelihood of men having low iron and low blood also increases. But it is across the board. And the reason people have low iron in their blood is diet primarily? It could be diet. The other way that we lose iron is through bleeding. And bleeding can occur,

Starting point is 00:09:43 of course, we think of trauma. In hospitalized patients, we think of the blood drawing that gets done, you know, for testing. That is a big draw of iron also. So bleeding from trauma, bleeding from parasites, some parasites can also cause bleeding. Kidney disease also causes your gut to lose iron. So there are many ways that we can lose iron. I want to make sure I understand. When you say low blood, do you mean low volume of blood? I mean low cells, red cells in your blood.

Starting point is 00:10:25 Anemia is the term. So again, in very simple terminology, this means that the number of red cells, which really are the main component of blood, are low. You don't have enough. Well, I guess I don't understand the difference between low blood and low iron. Isn't it the same thing? No, it's not, Mike. And that is a source of confusion.

Starting point is 00:10:51 You need iron to maintain the blood red cell count or to have the normal amount of red cells. You need iron for that. You can have the normal amount of red cells and still be deficient, still have a low iron in your body because you're not taking enough. It takes time between the body recognizing that it has low iron to actually now reduce the number of red cells that are in your body. So the initial reduction of iron can occur without losing red cells. But if it continues for a long period of time, then you're going to have a reduction in your red cells or low blood. So is blood like a closed loop in a healthy person, for example, the blood you have when you're five, is it the same blood you have when you're 55?

Starting point is 00:11:51 Because you haven't bled out, you haven't had transfusions, it's a closed circuit, so it just stays there? Or does it come and go? The actual components, meaning the cells that are in your blood, change over a few months. They completely change. And the reason is they regenerate themselves. So the blood constantly is turning over using the same nutrients that are in your body, such as iron B12, but they're all new cells. And when you're 55, you may still have a normal blood count and you still require the nutrients, but those cells are only about three months or so old and they keep regenerating themselves. So it is a closed loop in one way, but it's also a closed loop that keeps regenerating itself over time.

Starting point is 00:12:50 I want to talk about transfusions in a moment here, because what you have to say I think will surprise a lot of people. I'm talking with Aryeh Shander. He is a medical doctor and one of the authors of the book, Bloodworks, What Every Person Needs to Know Before They Are a Patient. Bumble knows it's hard to start conversations. Hey. No, too basic. Hi there. Still no.

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Starting point is 00:14:21 Absolutely not. Having normal amount of blood in your body regulates your daily activity. It really helps you in terms of getting through the day. If your blood is low, you're going to be fatigued. You're going to also at times could be also confused. There is information out there showing that productivity is reduced if they don't have the proper blood count. So you want to have a normal blood count. Bleeding is not a good thing. And as a matter of fact, what you want to also do is, and I mentioned early on, is you want to maintain the blood, keeping it healthy.

Starting point is 00:15:03 But what about giving blood is that it sounds like that's not a good thing well the giving of blood or donation of blood is actually regulated meaning it's a small amount of blood that bees is taking it's a bag of blood that's being taken from you and you can replenish that pretty easily. And as you know, there's also you can't donate blood every day. You have to have weeks in between donation of blood because you will build your blood back as I already mentioned it regenerates. That's not a bad thing. In many ways it's thought of as being philanthropic. The question of course is now you, if you're going to receive that blood as a patient, you're receiving somebody else's blood.

Starting point is 00:15:52 And I'm sure you and our audience know that transplanting any organ is associated with all sorts of treatments and medications to suppress your own body reaction to a new organ that's coming from someone else. So the actual transfusion of the blood that's being donated really has to be thought of more than once before we do that. And unfortunately, in healthcare, we have been used to just looking at somebody who has low blood, and instead of looking to see why, is it iron, is it B12, is it inflammation, we just reach for the blood that's available as a transfusion, and we know that that's been associated with worse outcome. Now, it doesn't mean for everyone that there is a bad outcome, but in general, if you don't need, if you don't have to get a transfusion, and I could tell you that most of

Starting point is 00:16:52 the times you don't because you can actually treat the blood and make it regenerate by providing the nutrients that it needs, you will avoid all of the negative aspects associated with a transfusion, which in essence is a transplant. And what's typically the worst that's going to happen? What are these negative outcomes? They can be anything from infection, kidney, damaging kidney. It could also be associated with clotting, and the clotting can be in the brain, it could be in the heart, or it could be in your legs or arms. So the list is long, including the fact that some patients don't survive the transplant or the transfusion. Well, that comes as a surprise to me. I mean, I've thought, I think most people think that transfusions are a relatively benign procedure, that there isn't a whole lot of risk to it, and that it's fairly routine and simple.

Starting point is 00:17:52 Well, unfortunately, it's still routine, as I mentioned, that people still reach for that as a simple way of raising the number of cells by giving somebody else's blood. But in fact, we know that this is associated with negative outcomes, as we call it, or if you will, with complications. How often does it result in negative outcomes? Is it, you know, one in 10 or one in 10 million? No, it's not one in 10 million. And it's very difficult to quantitate. It's actually when we try to measure that it's clearly more in the one to ten than it is in the one to a million. There are some people who need the blood because the bone marrow which makes the blood and that's inside your bones, the bone marrow if that is affected by cancer or by chemotherapy, as an example, you're not going to be able to make blood, you're not going to be able to replenish

Starting point is 00:18:51 that blood. And those individuals, unfortunately, to survive require repeated transfusions. So we try to avoid giving people blood today. That's called sort of a restrictive approach to transfusion. And to do that, we need to identify that your blood is healthy before you go to surgery and making sure that you have plenty of it, meaning that your iron stores are there, that your vitamins are there, that the blood count, the amount of blood that's in your body is actually sufficient to go through surgery, that even if you bleed through surgery, you will be able to replenish it. But isn't it also just a volume problem?

Starting point is 00:19:34 In surgery, you're going to lose, you cut somebody open, they start to bleed all over the place, that you need to replenish the volume of blood. No matter how healthy the patient's blood is, if it's all on the floor, it's not doing them much good. Well, interestingly, we try not to get her on the floor anymore, Mike. What we do is we collect that blood and return it to the patient at the bedside. So we have ways of collecting the blood sterilely, which is your own blood, and giving it back to you.

Starting point is 00:20:06 It's called CellSaver. So that machinery is available for surgeries where there is considerable amount of blood being lost. The volume, though, as you mentioned, can be replaced. You don't have to give blood to replace the volume. You can use sterile water that has electrolytes in it to to sustain the volume the circulating volume in the patient what about the idea I've heard of like if you were going to go in for surgery that you would pre-donate your own blood is that is that a thing it was a thing during the hepatitis C and HIV epidemic.

Starting point is 00:20:46 We don't do this anymore, Mike, routinely. There may be a few areas in the country where people are actually insisting on doing it. However, if you're going to pre-donate your blood, you're going to have a low blood count going into surgery. And what we know is that when you end up in surgery with a low blood count, not only will you get your blood that you stored away, but you're more likely to get blood also from someone else. So it doesn't stop you from receiving blood from someone else. Actually, there's a higher risk of you receiving blood from someone else if you, what we call pre-donate the blood, meaning donating the blood before surgery. Because somebody would make a mistake and give you someone else's blood,

Starting point is 00:21:34 or once you get your blood, then when that runs out, you then get somebody else's blood? The latter is more common, although there are always mistakes being made, but they're very rare, but still, that's a risk. So, if you're thinking of going to surgery and your blood is healthy, the likelihood is you're not going to need a transfusion. However, if you go to surgery, something happens, and you lose a lot of blood, you're probably better off getting the blood that's been tested and available which is again donated blood from someone else than doing a pre donation but last question about transfusions and understanding that there are risks to getting transfused blood from somebody

Starting point is 00:22:22 else but it at some point does the risk end or is it a long-term risk for the rest of your life because you got a pint of blood 20 years ago? We have been asking this question for quite a while and we really don't have a definitive answer. I could tell you that we know that if you get organs such as blood from someone else, there are going to be proteins from the donor that may circulate or may affect your own blood for years. But we really don't know what the impact is in terms of your health overall over a long period of time. So I imagine if you wanted to know how healthy your blood was, you would take a blood test.

Starting point is 00:23:12 So what would you ask for? What would you tell the doctor? So there are two components. One of them is what's in the red cell is something called hemoglobin, and that's what gives actually the red cell the color red. So a hemoglobin level is probably a good test to have, but that comes in a battery of tests called a CBC or complete blood count. And it looks at all of the elements in the blood because you also have red cells, you have white cells, and you have platelets in your blood, including also other clotting factors.

Starting point is 00:23:48 So the CBC allows us to or the complete blood count allows us to look at all of the cells in your blood. Well, I know you're on a campaign to inform the public about blood and the health of their blood. And this has been really interesting to hear and I hope helps spread the word. Dr. Aryeh Shander has been my guest. He is a medical doctor, emeritus chair of the Department of Anesthesiology, Critical Care Medicine, Pain Management, and Hyperbaric Medicine at Englewood Hospital in Englewood, New Jersey. And he is one of the authors of the book, Blood Works, What Every Person Needs to Know Before They Are a Patient. And there's a link to that book at

Starting point is 00:24:29 Amazon in the show notes. This is an ad for better help. Welcome to the world. Please read your personal owner's manual thoroughly. In it, you'll find simple instructions for how to interact with your fellow human beings and how to find happiness and peace of mind. Thank you and have a nice life. Unfortunately, life doesn't come with an owner's manual. That's why there's BetterHelp Online Therapy. Connect with a credentialed therapist by phone, video, or online chat. Visit betterhelp.com to learn more.

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Starting point is 00:25:38 I'm so burned out. We hear about people being burned out at work, or just in general. So what is burnout? Where does it come from? How do you prevent it? How do you get rid of it if you have it? Well, here to dive deep into the topic of burnout is Jennifer Moss. Jennifer is an award-winning journalist, public speaker, and author of the book, The Burnout Epidemic. Hi, Jennifer. Welcome to Something You Should Know. I'm so glad to be here. Thanks for inviting me.

Starting point is 00:26:08 So is burnout an objective thing? Like, here are the traits of burnout, and if you have these, you have burnout. Or is burnout just a self-diagnosed feeling? If you feel burned out, you're burned out. It's a bit of both. You know, one of the things that I think is most important for people to know is that self-care isn't the cure for burnout. So the way that we think about burnout and the way we've been addressing it and defining it for a long time

Starting point is 00:26:36 has been pretty much all wrong. And so my goal has been to kind of help people understand the new definition of burnout and understand the symptoms and recognize that it's institutional stress. So it's our companies, it's our organizations, it's our institutions that are playing the biggest role in burning us out versus us as individuals managing it or being responsible for it. And so what is this new definition of burnout? Well, the WHO defined it in 2019, which is interesting because it was pre-pandemic. They had been studying it with the International Labor Organization for several years and really

Starting point is 00:27:17 looking at the impacts of overwork particularly. And they found that over a meta study of six years that around 750,000 people, workers die from overwork alone every single year. And so they came up with this definition that burnout is unmanageable stress or institutional stress at work, specifically at work. And it shows up in three major signs, signs of high level of depletion. It shows up in lack of efficacy in our work or disengagement, and then a sense of cynicism. And there's six root causes of burnout as well, which are institutional. But again, they made this definition and made sure that they added to their international classification of diseases. But they also said this is not life stress.

Starting point is 00:28:10 This is specifically institutional workplace stress left unmanaged. So when you talk to people about burnout, do you get a lot of false positives and false negatives? And what I mean is, do people often say I'm burned out when they're not really? And do you often get people denying that they're burned out when they clearly are? Absolutely. I mean, there's lots of environments that we work in, especially certain sectors where if you say you're burned out or claim that you're burned out, then there's a lot of ramifications. There's still a ton of stigma around it. The fact that even there was a WHO definition in 2019, I mean, that's only a few years old. And it seems like burnout is this new thing, but it's been around for a long time. And

Starting point is 00:28:56 yet most people haven't been able to label it really until this last couple of years. And we still have this expectation on leaders, for example, that they're supposed to be stoic, they're not supposed to show any vulnerability. So this idea of them, you know, burning out, when for a long time, we just thought, it means you're not doing a good enough job, or you're not doing well enough in your job, or you don't care enough about your workplace, you're not going above and beyond. That is holding people back from actually being able to put up their hand and saying, I'm burned out. And also people just haven't, there's not enough people that realize and

Starting point is 00:29:37 recognize when they are burning out themselves too. So they don't know how to identify it and treat it. So how do we identify it? If I think I might be burned out, what should I be looking for? We need to be looking for those signs and symptoms of burnout, as I mentioned with the WHO definition, but there's more to that. I mean, you can see it in, like I said, that depletion and exhaustion is the first thing that you would recognize, but it's not just I'm tired. It's this feeling of not being able to get up in the morning. You're just completely exhausted at the end of the day. And sometimes by two or three, you feel like you can't focus or concentrate.

Starting point is 00:30:14 You're not doing any of the things that you used to love to do. You're not spending time on your hobbies. You're not hanging out with your friends or having dinner with your family. That level of depletion is usually what then leads you into this next level, which is feeling ineffective at work. So one of the things with chronic stress and burnout is you, you know, you start to make mistakes in your job, you start to show up late, you leave early, you're physically, you know, ill, you have symptoms like your stomach starting to hurt, or you're not sleeping as well. And, you know, ill, you have symptoms like your stomach starting to hurt or you're not sleeping as well.

Starting point is 00:30:46 And, you know, that really, for me, is this kind of underperformer myth. We think that people that were once high performing all of a sudden, you know, don't care about their work, they're disengaged. But it really is a sign and symptom of burnout when we start to be less effective in our jobs. And then that final piece is that cynicism or that hopelessness, like you can't change anything. And we start to see people using language like always and never, language of permanence. So it's always going to be like that.

Starting point is 00:31:15 It's never going to change. I can't do anything about it. What's the point? You know, that kind of language is really telling that you don't feel like you have any control over the situation. And that, when we have all those three kind of working up to that point, of language is really telling that you don't feel like you have any control over the situation. And that, when we have all those three kind of working up to that point, that's when we are worried about people or ourselves just hitting the wall. I imagine that certain industries, certain jobs lend themselves to burnout more than

Starting point is 00:31:40 others. What are some of the big burnout industries? Healthcare is at the top of the most burnout sectors. We see that in teaching more likely to see more burnout in that group. Right now, we're seeing a lot in those production focused environments like sales and law, people that are working for clients that they're working 60, 70 hours a week or more in some environments, you're working 100 hours a week. That's where we see larger groups of people burning out. And latest data is in healthcare, for example, in between 60 to 67% of those nurses and physicians still claiming that they are highly burnout, but they are likely to leave their job in the next six months. And so that's one of the things that we need to be careful of is if we're burning people out because of institutional stress.

Starting point is 00:32:40 But wait, when you say we're burning people out because of institutional stress, it's hard for me to really understand what that means. Do you mean that the institution by its own nature just stresses people out and causes this burnout? And if so, I mean, how do you fix it? What does an institution look like that isn't burning out its people? It looks like paying people fairly. It looks like making sure that people have manageable workloads. And it doesn't mean that you can't have periods of time where you're working more or there's a busy time. It's making sure that when you can to give people the time off that they need to have productive rest, you know, making sure that you're not emailing people at midnight and expecting them to have an answer for you right then and there or have a project finished by the next morning. Reducing inefficiencies like meeting fatigue. We have an increase of 252% more Teams meetings alone. I mean, the fact that that's just Teams meeting, imagine how many more Zoom meetings we're having. Why do we have to meet so much? Why do we have to be so ineffective

Starting point is 00:33:49 with our time so that we're working on our evenings and weekends? There's so many different areas where we're not paying attention. Right now, we're seeing more disconnection and loneliness. And the way that we're working right now remotely for a lot of people, especially our younger workforce, is not working out that well. And like I'm just mentioning a couple of those instances, but these are preventable things. These are preventable actions that we can take that can solve for it. I mean, a great example is Shopify, where they did a calendar purge and saved 350,000 hours from their employees, you know, meeting times. Like they basically said it was like hiring 150 people into the organization. And they did it in a way that was very productive. So we can solve these problems.

Starting point is 00:34:38 It's just that a lot of organizations don't know where to start, or they don't really care. What did Shopify do? They did a calendar purge, which was really exciting. And there's a lot of organizations that are doing this now where they're thinking, how do we create less efficiencies in meetings and reduce meeting fatigue? And what they did is they said, we're going to make it so that we take all of your recurring meetings off the calendar and make it so that if you have to have a meeting, it's between certain times and certain days are off. And you, you know, any meeting over 50 people has to happen on Wednesday between 11 and 5,

Starting point is 00:35:18 just really kind of strict management of people's calendars. And they actually created code. So they had a bot that went in and just stripped everyone's, you know, meetings that were kind of inefficient or recurring means off their calendar. And what happened is they found after, you know, this experiment that they had saved 350,000 hours and they had so basically given that time back. And then they said it was the equivalent of hiring 150 people and the amount of kind of efficacy and productivity and time that their employees got back from meeting inefficiencies. I imagine it's not a one size fits all solution that the different industries, different organizations would need different approaches to solve the burnout problem. And so what are some of the specific approaches?

Starting point is 00:36:10 A lot of people are testing the four-day work week, and it's going really well in some instances. But I interestingly just had a conversation with a leader who was part of OC Tanner, and they were testing the four- day work week in a factory setting and they tried it for a few months. That's what their employees wanted. And it really didn't work very well for them. It was an experiment that failed. And so they had to recognize, okay, this isn't really going to work for this group for a

Starting point is 00:36:38 lot of reasons and barriers, but they tested it and then they're going to try something else and other things came out of that experiment and data. And I think that's what organizations need to recognize is that you can jam the toothpaste back in the tube. We've totally changed. We've collectively experienced this mind shift. And so it's okay to let go of old ways of behaving. And even if we try new ways and they don't work, that's fine too. We'll probably learn something really valuable that came came out of that. Is there, generally speaking, one thing that if you had to go after one thing to help mitigate this whole burnout problem, what is the one thing? If we tackle one thing immediately, I would say it would be managing unsustainable workloads because it is the leading cause. There's five other root causes, but overwork being the number

Starting point is 00:37:32 one is a substantial and important place for us to tackle. But doesn't it not, I guess, well, I guess I am being devil's advocate here, but doesn't it seem odd that you've got this problem that nobody has solved? Well, it makes you think that it's not solvable, that no matter what you fix, then people are going to start complaining about something else, and that, well, now we've got to fix this, that burnout can never go away because of just kind of the nature of work, and to keep trying to chase it seems at some point it's like, okay, you know, there's not much more we could do. It is a complex problem to solve.

Starting point is 00:38:12 And I do get that. I get asked to join, you know, tech companies all the time because they're going to create a silver bullet solution to solving for burnout. But it's not totally hopeless. There's lots of ways that we can solve for it. And a lot of it just boils down to organizations that are doing a really good job with human-centered leadership and empathetic leadership. And the whole kind of basis of trying to fix burnout or reducing it greatly. I mean, we're never going to completely fix burnout, but we can reduce it

Starting point is 00:38:44 greatly. And the organizations that I see that are doing a good job of it are the ones that are really listening, actively listening to what people need and being transparent about what they can and cannot do, because it's not an expectation that every manager and leader is going to do everything that employee wants. But they're actively listening to sort of the big issues and saying, this is what we can tackle. And the thing that they're doing that's different is that they're not just taking in all the survey data, asking people to answer these questions for them, and then pretending that they never asked them, not doing anything with it. It's those folks that are saying, okay, well, this is the big thing that came up and this is what we can do and this is how we can tackle it. Bear with us. We're going to try to solve for this

Starting point is 00:39:29 problem. It's for the organizations like Shopify, for example, they are looking at these big rocks and doing what they can in these very testable ways to try to improve it. And, you know, for example, Hewlett Packard, when you looked at how their employees responded in the pandemic because of this, this, you know, open communication that they had, their trust and leadership scores were through the roof. They were, you know, 93% and employee engagement was very high and job satisfaction was very high. So we might not be able to eradicate burnout, but in very simple and actually very inexpensive ways, we can solve for it. So very specifically, because you talked about it, but when companies address the problem, I don't even know if they're addressing a problem, but they're trying to create a employee-friendly atmosphere. So they do things like, you know, have a chef and they bring in a masseuse and they have, you know, free snacks and they have a place where you can go and,

Starting point is 00:40:39 you know, listen to raindrops. And is there evidence that that does anything or is that just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic? It kind of sounds good and it top of the ice cream, right? But I say that there's a lot of people that are given ice cream as the only option when what they really need is to be offered water. And so that, you know, that constant delivery of this, you know, this ice cream to say, here, let's fix these problems that are really quite larger than that. They're mental health issues. They're feeling chronically overworked and stressed. You can't solve that with those perks. And that's where we look at upstream interventions and strategy at burnout prevention. And then we look at the perks as very different things, but they've been bundled together for a very long time. And those perks are good. I mean, they're nice extras,

Starting point is 00:41:49 but they won't motivate your people unless you've handled those other underlying issues first. Don't you think too, though, that there are some lines of work that, you know, if you're prone to burnout, maybe, you know, maybe you shouldn't be an ER doctor. Maybe you shouldn't be a, you know, fill in the blank. But there are inherently some jobs that are so stressful that burnout is inevitable. And the only way to stop the burnout would be to, you know, not do the job. But somebody's got to do the job. soup, this recipe for disaster. Because, you know, type A perfectionists are very driven, and they have a hard time managing their own self care. And so self care is still important, we need to model it, we need to take care of ourselves. But when you're this type A high performing person, where you're very much like an all or, you know, all or nothing kind of mindset, what happens is that is a person that's driven to

Starting point is 00:43:08 these types of jobs. So physicians, for example, high, high rates of burnout, high likelihood that they are perfectionists. Same anytime that you're looking to do school for that kind of investment of your time, investment of money, there's a whole sunk cost mindset too when you get there. It's difficult for someone that has been in school for eight years, has gone through that kind of rigor, and then you still have to go in and you've spent another three years in the hospital before you can even move on to becoming a full-fledged doctor, there's a point where you don't want to ever go back to starting fresh. And that means that you're going to stay in an environment that you're unhappy in for a very long time. There's kind of a joke in healthcare amongst doctors, for example, that if you see sabbatical

Starting point is 00:44:02 written on their CV, that really it just meant that they were burned out and they were taking a year off pretending to be on sabbatical or doing research, but really they just needed a year to regroup because they were so exhausted. So you're absolutely right. There's groups that are attracting these types of people that are also more likely to burn out. Do most people, do you think, just in your experience, do people who are burned out know it? If they know the labeling of what burnout is, they tend to recognize it more in themselves. But it often is still felt like, I should be able to figure this out. Why haven't I figured this out? And maybe I should just take a couple days off next week,

Starting point is 00:44:55 and that'll solve it. Or maybe I just need to manage my time better. I'm probably bad at time management. We tend to reflect that it's our fault often. And so we don't really look at it seriously. And I think as well, the term burnout is so nebulous and it's had kind of a bad reputation for a long time. And it's only been in the last few years that we've really started to take it seriously that people are recognizing that those symptoms are important for us to recognize. But in many cases still, and maybe why I'm so passionate about getting people to understand

Starting point is 00:45:31 the definition of burnout, is that we are struggling with a problem that we can't solve by ourselves. And if we don't, the impact is very serious and we should be getting help when we start to recognize the signs. Well, it's good to get some focus, some clarity on what burnout actually is because people use the term a lot. I'm so burned out, but now I get a sense of what it really is and the real cause. I've been speaking with Jennifer Moss. She's an award-winning journalist and speaker, and she is author of the book, The Burnout Epidemic. If you'd like to check that book out at Amazon, there is a link to it in our

Starting point is 00:46:10 show notes. Thank you, Jennifer. Thanks, Mike. It was so great to be here. Thanks again for having me. Since COVID, we've probably all gotten a little more careful about germs and spreading germs and what we touch. And we've all been warned about germs on things like shopping carts and doorknobs. But a study has analyzed and found some more germ hotspots that are very common in U.S. metropolitan areas. Here are some of the places that turned out to be high risk for illness-causing bacteria. Gas pump handles, mailbox handles, escalator rails, ATM buttons, parking meters and kiosks, crosswalk buttons, and vending machine buttons. Charles Gerba, professor of microbiology at the University of Arizona,

Starting point is 00:47:03 said the tests underscore the importance of maintaining good hand hygiene, noting that most of us don't realize how many germs we're exposed to in just everyday life. And that is something you should know. I would love it if you would talk up this podcast to people you know and ask them to listen. We always appreciate getting new listeners. I'm Mike Carruthers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know. every week designed to entertain and engage and, you know, possibly enrage you. And don't blame me, we dive deep into listeners' questions, offering advice that's funny, relatable, and real. Whether you're dealing with relationship drama or you just need a friend's perspective, we've got you. Then switch gears with But Am I Wrong?, which is for listeners who didn't take our advice and want

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Starting point is 00:48:22 It's the perfect way to kick off your weekend. So if you're looking for a podcast that feels like a chat with your besties, listen to Don't Blame Me, But Am I Wrong on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday. Hi, this is Rob Benedict. And I am Richard Spate. We were both on a little show you might know called Supernatural.

Starting point is 00:48:47 It had a pretty good run, 15 seasons, 327 episodes. And though we have seen, of course, every episode many times, we figured, hey, now that we're wrapped, let's watch it all again. And we can't do that alone. So we're inviting the cast and crew that made the show along for the ride. We've got writers, producers, composers, directors, and we'll of course have some actors on as well, including some certain guys that played some certain pretty iconic brothers.

Starting point is 00:49:15 It was kind of a little bit of a left field choice in the best way possible. The note from Kripke was, he's great, we love him, but we're looking for like a really intelligent Duchovny type. With 15 seasons to explore, it's going to be the road trip of several lifetimes, so please join us and subscribe to Supernatural then and now.

Something You Should Know - What You Never Knew About Your Blood But Should & How To Conquer Burnout?

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