The Liz Moody Podcast - Your Stress Survival Guide: 6 Experts, One Powerful Playbook

Starting point is 00:00:00 If you wake up already stressed out, if your brain will not shut up at 2 a.m. If every little thing just feels like a lot or you're moving through your days feeling overwhelmed and overstimulated, I feel you. I am there with you. I think a lot of us are these days. And if you're listening to this episode around the holidays when we are fighting our way through coughing, airport crowds and hanging out with family members who are just so excellent at pressing our buttons, this episode is going to hit especially hard. We have had hundreds of the world's leading experts on the Liz Moody podcast, and today I have pulled their very best tips to help you alleviate your stress right now. We are getting into the gut. We're getting into our hormones.

Starting point is 00:00:43 We're getting into neuroscience and habit science. These are small science-back shifts that are going to make a difference today. First up, surprise, you're going to hear directly from me. Stress is exhausting, and I needed to make some big changes to get my energy back. So in this episode, nine hidden reasons that you're tired all the time and what you can do to reduce it. Most of us are steeped in these little tiny moments of stress from the moment that we wake up until the moment that we go to sleep. And each one on their own might not seem like much, but together they create this potent chemical concoction that is just sapping our brain of energy all day long. And some of these we cannot control.

Starting point is 00:01:31 shit happens. But some, some, we can. For instance, I used to constantly leave the house eight minutes before I had to be somewhere that Google Maps said was a 10-minute drive away. And then I would spend the entire drive anxious and trying to make up time because I was inevitably running late. So I have started leaving five minutes earlier and instead of cursing at red lights, I am calm. I am peaceful for the entire drive. I know. You're getting really deep insights here. Leave for things a little bit early. But so many of us don't do these really simple things. And I think it's because we underestimate the impact that stress has on our health in the short and in the long term. We're just like, oh, I can be stressed for this 10-minute drive. That's not a big deal. But actually, that stress is

Starting point is 00:02:23 sapping our energy. It's making us feel awful. And it is increasing our. And it is increasing our risk of everything from cancer to autoimmune disease. I say this not to scare you, but so that we can all actually treat stress seriously because it is a big deal and it has real effects now and in the future. Start by just paying attention. Just do an audit of the times that you feel stressed throughout your day. What are you doing? Can you start to identify some of those micro-stressers? Oh, I procrastinate on tasks, then they hang over me for hours instead of just spending the two minutes that it would actually take to do them. Oh, I never have healthy meals or snacks plan. So my blood sugar drops and I get hangary. This is a really big one that I was guilty of. Now I have carrots and hummus at the ready

Starting point is 00:03:13 all of the time. And I just reach for that when I start to get that like blood sugary, hangary feeling. Oh, I scroll on social media or I read my news app and my heart rate gets super elevated. Oh, I am late all of the time. So do that audit and see if there are some small tweaks. These do not have to be big. Remember, mine are like leaving five minutes earlier and keeping carrots and hummus in my fridge. We're not trying to add more stress to our lives. But do the audit and then see if there's some small tweaks that you can do to mitigate some of those moments. This is technically a micro-stressor, but it deserves its own call-out because the research on this is wild. You are suppressing emotions. Suppressing emotions requires constant cognitive energy.

Starting point is 00:03:58 In fact, this is crazy. Studies show that overthinking negative experiences can be as exhausting as actual physical labor. You know that email with your boss that you're stewing over? You know that fight that you had with your partner that you haven't quite let go of? You know that conversation with your friend that you keep thinking back on and wondering if she took what you were saying in exactly the way that you meant it? each one of those is like a hole in your bucket and you're just leaking all over the place. It is no wonder that no matter how many self-care rituals you do, you cannot really fill your cup. Your brain has a really hard time telling the difference between a thought that you are

Starting point is 00:04:38 imagining and a situation that is actually happening. So every time you replay a conflict, your stress hormone spike, keeping you in a constant low-grade fight or flight mode. And here is the kicker. Suppressing emotions doesn't just make you tired. It weakens your immune system. It disrupts digestion and it messes with your sleep. One study from the University of Texas found that people who regularly suppress emotions have higher levels of inflammation and are more prone to burnout. So what do you do instead? I'm going to give you some action tips. This is the Liz Moody podcast after all. Step one, label the emotion. There's research from UCLA that shows that simply naming how you feel reduces amygdala activity and helps you

Starting point is 00:05:24 process whatever you're feeling. And here's a tip from Dr. Susan David. She is a Harvard psychologist. She was on the podcast and she shared this and I absolutely loved it. Get as specific as possible with the emotion that you're naming. Being able to specifically articulate how we're feeling increases our emotional agility, which increases our ability to process and handle our emotions. Her trick for this is to come up with two other emotions for every emotion that you're feeling.

Starting point is 00:05:52 So if you're feeling stressed, maybe it is also overwhelmed. Maybe it is frustrated. Are you sad or are you lonely or maybe angry? So just throughout your day, whenever you're feeling these emotions, try to name them and then try to come up with two other specific ways to describe the thing that you're feeling. And then step two, move your feelings. body. Studies show that even a 10-minute walk helps your brain process emotions faster by activating the prefrontal cortex and releasing endorphins. This is such a cool hack and I think that it's a

Starting point is 00:06:29 huge missing part of the emotion processing cycle for many of us and why many of us feel stuck in our emotions. It's actually something that they talk about at Hoffman, which is that therapy retreat that I went on. You need to move these emotions through your body. They also talk about it with grief a lot. Movement is hugely important for processing emotions, and a lot of us just skip right over that step. And then the last step is just to express that emotion somehow. It could be in therapy, which I obviously think is wonderful, and it's how my entire family makes a living. But we get huge benefits just from the act of disclosure. You know the trick of like asking your partner or your friend, do you want me to problem solve or just to listen? Or like the flip side of that,

Starting point is 00:07:13 when you are trying to give advice and they're just getting more and more annoyed because they really just wanted to have somebody listen. It turns out, just that process of sharing what we are going through is incredibly helpful for our brains. So you just listening, that is doing wonders. That is an action unto itself. So name your emotions, get specific, and then talk about them with your friends or a therapist or a partner. Or you can even journal. That counts as disclosure. too, and it really, really works. Our next tip comes from Dr. Jenny Tate's, author, therapist, and professor of psychiatry at UCLA. This episode, science-backed hacks to majorly reduce stress when the world gets overwhelming

Starting point is 00:07:56 is quite literally jam-packed with all of the tips that you are probably looking for this week. So go give it a listen when you are done here. I will link it in the show notes. What's one thing that we could all eliminate that would eliminate a lot of stress from our lives other than what we've talked about. Overthinking is a huge one. We spend so much time overthinking, like something is stressful for us. We dreaded ahead of it happening. Then we experience it.

Starting point is 00:08:21 And then we replay it endlessly for, like, much longer than it took. So overthinking would be a huge one. That is the way we torture ourselves, create stress in our body, and lose sleep, all of those things, like make it harder to cook tomorrow. What can we do to snap out of an overthinking cycle? This is a really sneaky habit. And there's a lot you could do. and like the things that work for one person might not work for another. And so I go through 10

Starting point is 00:08:44 ways to break free of overthinking. And like between the 10, I'm very sure that something is going to work. But it's a lot of decision trees around what you need in the moment. So if you're overthinking about something that actually really mattered to you, like someone really betrayed you or is there something that you're going through that really deserves reflection. Writing about that for 20 minutes over like four days actually reduces you thinking about it and allows you to like go deeper and actually like process and if you give it your singular focus and dive deeper into your feelings, then you actually work through those feelings. And so people like college students that are asked to write about the worst thing that happened to them that keeps coming up in their mind well past

Starting point is 00:09:24 it happening. If they write about it, they have reductions in anxiety and depression even six months later after just a few days of writing. And so if something actually deserves further exploitation, and further explore it rather than just have it like a news ticker constantly running in your mind. If there's something that's like the mental equivalent of spam, like, I'm a loser, no one likes me, it's just not helping you and there's no merit to thinking about it. You could play with your thoughts. A lot of us take our thoughts so seriously, but what if you like saying the thought? I'm a loser to the tune of do you believe in magic? I mean, just it loses it staying. And just also to be really clear, this needs to be like an upbeat song, not like certain songs.

Starting point is 00:10:04 or like really like bonnie ver song like nine inch nails or something that's really like depressing like when you do that it takes the sting out of it and you just quickly realize this is just something my mind does when I'm about to go somewhere important that like I'm nervous about socially how I'm going to connect with people my mind haunts me with it so I think there's different things for different situations and I just want people to know that even if you feel like you're a professional overthinker there are treatments I've interviewed a lot of the experts that have developed some of these treatments to share some of those tips in the book to really help there's specific specifically like a therapy called rumination focus cognitive therapy. Ed Watkins is the developer of that. So two questions on that. First of all, when you're writing about something that you're dwelling on, that you're ruminating on, are you using specific prompts? Or you just writing whatever comes to mind? You are using specific prompts. Okay. Could you share maybe one or two? Sure. And there are different prompts for different situations, but write in full detail about what happened, how it affected your life in the past, how it's currently affecting your life. So each day you have different focal points. And is it important to get to a place of how I wish this was impacting my life or some sort of positive twist on the whole thing or no? There's different experts that have different kind of instructions, but you could write if you like look back on it and we're going to change how things went, like look back at an argument and revisit it from like the lens of someone that really wants the best for both parties involved, how they might see it. Like almost what would your wise self do in that situation? Yeah, because then it helps you tomorrow.

Starting point is 00:11:30 Like, oh yeah, I thought that person was really. dismissive of me, but no, they were actually just in their own head and not really aware rather than malicious. And then secondly, I feel like a big rumination that I do is, I wish I'd said this, I wish I'd done this. I went to a party and I said something and then I'm like, oh, was that the right thing to say? Did they take that the right way? Or I'll do a podcast and I'll be like, you didn't ask this question, this question and this question. You dumb person. Would the singing trick be helpful for that kind of thing? Would I be like, you didn't ask the right questions? I love that you're asking this, Liz, because I think it's so.

Starting point is 00:12:02 helpful for listeners to hear that like even someone that has a top podcast has these thoughts. And so I think even just the shared humanity of it all is so helpful. You could sing that song, but I would even be interested in you doing like loving kindness meditation. Like I know that after a social thing, I beat myself up thinking I should have asked a better question or I said the wrong thing. Rather than going into the weeds of that, I'm just going to notice that that's what my mind does because I deeply care about connecting with people. And instead of getting into that, I'm going to say, may I be happy? May I be healthy? maybe safe. So you could do loving kindness meditation, which is really powerful. And if you keep feeling like, oh my gosh, I keep forgetting the questions that I want to ask, and this happens repeatedly. A huge tool to stop ruminating is problem solving. Okay, like maybe I'll have a cue card or I realized this happens to me all the time embarrassingly. But I sometimes forget people's names, especially if there's like people that I met once and in a big group setting at like a big cocktail party. And so before I'm about to see them again, I make sure I'm like, okay, what's that person's wife's name? that guy's name? Remind me this person just so I don't have a faux pa of like stumble and like,

Starting point is 00:13:08 you know, need to introduce someone to someone else. And so you could do good problem solving. I love that you mentioned that because I do think that there's this divide with stress with do I add in more practices. Do I add in more tools? Am I doing this meditation and this breathwork in the moment? Or am I restructuring, reformating my life, which is sort of what we were talking about earlier. Like when is this a signal that something needs to change, whether it's I get a new job, I bring some cue cards to an interview. I plan some questions before I go to a party. And when is this? Just like, this is an emotional thing. You need to deal with the emotions in the moment. So I really like that your tips and techniques span both of those directions. Yeah, it's all about acceptance and change. And the more you aren't beating yourself up, the more you can focus on your question. So how can we like lose what's not working and add in what's going to help? What would you say to somebody who says the absolute best thing that I do to relieve my stress every day is to have a glass of wine at the end of the workday. I understand that that is so tempting and I can understand why that physically relaxes you. And also we know that wine is not

Starting point is 00:14:13 great for sleep. And even a couple of glasses of wine can significantly affect sleep quality. And for a lot of people, it can affect our behaviors like we might not be able to access wise mind after we've had a drink. It's important to have like a diverse range of options. So maybe you do that on a Friday night. But it's helpful to have like a whole. host of things that you can do other nights of the week. And I don't want everyone to hate me, but I would say the same thing is true about cannabis. A lot of people think that smoking a joint is like a great way to unwind after a stressful day. But the biggest thing that people want these days is motivation. And there's such a huge link between using cannabis and draining your motivation and not being able to

Starting point is 00:14:53 think as quickly and sharply, which is what we need to do when we're stressed. Some of the ways that people most typically cope with stress, whether it's taking anti-anxiety medication, Xanax or Klonopin, which 30 million Americans take, which actually also really slows us down and can even lead to cognitive decline after long-term use to cannabis, to drinking. Even patients in mind that are not alcoholics have found that not drinking just opens up so many more opportunities for them. They wake up earlier. That leads to like being able to work out in the morning.

Starting point is 00:15:22 It creates a virtuous cycle to let go of, and I just want people to expand their minds of I don't need anything outside of myself. I am my best pharmacy. I love that. Let's say we want that physiological response, though. Like when you drink the glass of wine, when you take a hit of that joint and you're just like, ugh, or the take the Xanax, you feel your body having this really physical response. What is a stress reset that gets us the closest to that experience? A body scan, like tensing and releasing your muscles. Like I can tense my forehead. Release. Notice the difference between tension and relaxation. Tense my lips. Release. Notice difference between tension and relaxation. with each inhale and exhale, relaxing my forehead, my lips, tensing my shoulder, going down. I'm like not a napper at all. Like, that's not me. I, like, feel like I have caffeine in my veins.

Starting point is 00:16:10 And I did this at a professional training, and I, like, literally fell asleep in minutes. Like, I had to pair up with another professional. And we led each person through the body scan. This is incredibly physically relaxing, just tensing and releasing. If you don't want to tense, even just bringing your full attention, you could do this now with me, to, like, your left toes and, like, sending your breath into your body. your left toes one at a time and then sending your breath to your left calf and then really releasing any tension there without even tensing just noticing it and like sending air into that

Starting point is 00:16:41 part your left thigh drop down to the right toes and we would do this very slowly but there's a lot of things even just very simply breathing in for five and out for five with your mouth closed so this is called coherent breathing and this slows our breathing down significantly we typically breathe about 18 breaths per minute. This slows it to about a third of that. So six breaths per minute. And it creates like a sense of physical tranquility. And all of these things, again, this is not going to be the same as something that we're taking that's going to knock us out quickly. But we're creating this priceless feeling of accomplishment and self-efficacy. And these things are really accessible. And like these things really work. We think we're so stressed. I need something big. But actually

Starting point is 00:17:31 the smaller things can make the most profound impact. I am so excited for you to hear you. hear this advice from Katina Bajaj, from an episode where I interviewed her about how the real cure for burnout is not rest, it's creativity. I was literally blown away when interviewing Katina, a creative health scientist. It shouldn't feel revolutionary that being fun and creative combat stress, but in this society, in the world that we live in, it unfortunately is. So listen for the science behind why and how you can implement creativity as a surprising cure for burnout in your own life. When we're talking about our health and our wellness, we are talking about one specific type of creativity, which is something called mini C creativity. This is creativity that's just purely meaningful to

Starting point is 00:18:19 you. It's not maybe the viral videos or even, you know, a beautiful painting that you might do in your free time. It's the process and the integration of understanding how we exist in the world. So when we're engaging in minici creativity, we're not really showing it to anyone. This is something that we're doing in our alone time and our private time. And so the research is actually really clear that this type of creativity impacts our well-being in so many ways that we really don't talk about in our world. First, it impacts our emotions and our mental health. Second, it impacts our cognition and our brain health, our long-term brain health. And third, it impacts our capacity to flourish and thrive.

Starting point is 00:19:09 So it not only is reducing our stress, but it's broadening our perspective. It's helping us access awe and wonder. And it's also really making our brain dense, helping us improve our neuroplasticity and the strength of our brain for the long term. What are examples of mini C creativity, like in a day-to-day life? I like to break it down into three different forms of creativity. The first one is creative expression, which I think we all know. That is like paint by next. Yes. Okay. Yeah. And I even like to go broader than that. It could be picking out your outfit and being really intentional about what you're wearing and putting on your body. It could be dancing in your room. Any way that you are connecting your mind and body that doesn't even need to use words that is expressing. yourself in the physical world. Okay. So that's one. The second is creative thinking. So this is where we connect the dots in new and different ways. And a lot of times this is what we're doing right now, like a deep conversation, experiencing novelty, learning something new. Even if you're

Starting point is 00:20:20 listening, you're doing something that is mini-see creative. And the third is noticing and appreciating beauty. So I think this is something that gets overlooked so often in our world. but it's really being able to savor to observe the beauty in big ways and small around you. And then what that does is start to proactively help us experience awe and wonder and a sense of interconnectedness. So many people feel stuck and I feel like unalive right now. How does creativity help with that? This is like the reason that I got into creative health in the first place. I too was experiencing not just burnout, but kind of this broader sense of disillusionment and

Starting point is 00:21:07 lack of purpose and really finding myself in this place where no other well-being pools were helping me get to this kind of deeper root of my own struggles. And what I found was that when I started to turn to creativity and this mini-C form of creativity writing in my journal on the subway, noticing a flower for a little longer than maybe just, you know, pounding to my office. I, this is not scientific, but I like to say that it defrosted my brain. Like, it started to wake me up to these parts of life that we just completely overlook. And there's actually some research on this. There was a study that came out in 2016 where scientists wanted to understand what kind of leads to work really.

Starting point is 00:21:57 burnout and how maybe we could begin to combat it. And one of the things that they found was that people who bring curiosity and engagement into any task at work. So that creative mindset, right, end up becoming less exhausted and they perform better at work. And overall, over time, they increase their psychological resilience. So if we can find those pockets of creativity and curiosity throughout our day, then I think that's a wonderful way to start to increase that autonomy and freedom and engagement, no matter where we are instead of like completely abandoning our job as it might stand. Can you ground that in reality for me a little bit?

Starting point is 00:22:43 Like what might that look like on a day-to-day basis? Yes, the study was quite kind of abstract, right? What they were saying was, can you think curiously when you're answering an email instead of just turning it out and kind of being robotic in that. What I think is really important that's an added layer to this is bringing some of your mini-C practices, mini-C creativity practices into your workday. So something that I personally do is something that we call it Daydreamers, your creators' cognitive offload. So after a meeting that feels extremely intense and overwhelming to me. You know, normally I would just jump on to the next thing, turn out my next

Starting point is 00:23:27 emails, go into another meeting. But as I began studying this, what I found is really powerful, and we see this, you know, in the data that we have, is taking time to offload and externalize some of those emotions and stressors ends the stress cycle. So we are able to show up with a bigger, perspective to the next thing that we need to do. We're a lot less stressed. And we also have started to warm up that way of thinking creatively. So I think that it doesn't need to be that you just approach your job in a creative way, which can feel weird to implement. But you can also bring some of those mini-C practices into your life at work to help you start to separate out work versus your creativity and then show up with a more creative perspective.

Starting point is 00:24:19 Can you share a few more of those ways that we can concretely close those stress cycles? Because I saw a video that you did online about this and you were like, we're perpetually trapped in these stress cycles because we're never closing them out, which is why we all feel low-key stressed all the time. And I was like, I relate to that. Yeah. So tell me why we feel low-key stressed all the time and tell me how we can stop feeling low-key stressed all the time. When we think about what burnout really is and what these prolonged experiences of stress are, it's that we have not. not been able to close out the physical and biological stress cycle that builds up in our bodies and our brains when we are exposed to something stressful. So what we used to do in ancient times is we would experience something that was stressful, whether it was a lion running towards us or it was something that interpersonally we felt was stressful. And we would close that out by doing something physical. We would shake it off. We might run. We also might do a dance or can't or sing. We had a lot of creative rituals that we did. But today, we don't do any of that. We continue to let these experiences of stress build up in our body without truly closing them out. And then ultimately,

Starting point is 00:25:39 what that leads to is burnout. So what we can start to do is use something like creativity as a way to close out that stress cycle and then also begin to expand our perspective and really be able to incorporate new ways of seeing the world. So I think that mini-see creativity is one of the best ways to deal with that because it connects our mind and body, oftentimes if we're expressing ourselves in a physical way. And also, we don't need to always use words to describe how we're feeling. I think that we have entered a world where we are really cognitively heavy, right? We talk about our feelings all the time. We talk about, you know, what's stressing us out. But that doesn't actually close the stress cycle. And also, sometimes we don't have the right word.

Starting point is 00:26:35 to describe exactly how we're feeling. So when we use forms of physical creative expression, whether it's dooding on the side of your page, doing a cognitive offload exercise, or even dancing between your meetings, that is able to close that stress cycle and then also expand us into a more creative way of seeing the world without needing to describe any of the things that show up.

Starting point is 00:26:59 Do we need to be connecting the thing that we're stressed about to the creative expression? Like, do we need to be thinking, I hate my boss is we're like doing our dance or no? Honestly, love that. I think like that might serve a lot of different health things and I might take that away for myself. But no, we don't. I think that what's really cool about creativity is that regardless of skill, background, experience, how inspired you feel, et cetera, the true act of doing it literally reduces

Starting point is 00:27:33 cortisol in our body and shifts us into a parasympathetic nervous system, which is our rest and digest, our relaxation, right? Something that's interesting about your question, though, is that being able to integrate and process our experiences is still extremely helpful. That is like the icing on the cake. And I think that that's something that we often forget about when we're going to a paint-and-sip studio and we're like, great, yay, I feel so much less stressed in the moment. But if we really want it to be a long-term thing, being able to use creativity as a way to make meaning to process exactly what our boss said that is helping us or making us feel stressed out is really the way that we are going to make a lot deeper change.

Starting point is 00:28:22 But it definitely is not a thing that we have to do in order for it to have an impact. So what would that look like? Would that look like going to talk therapy session and then dancing it out? Yeah. Like, what's the ideal prescription here? To connect the experience that you're having with the creative expression that you're doing. So that process focus and then integration. And so let's just stick with the cognitive offloading example.

Starting point is 00:28:46 One of the things that we often recommend is I just had a meeting that was so incredibly stressful to me. Right. I need to offload and externalize these feelings. You could totally just like doodle mindlessly and that's great. But what we recommend is turning those feelings into a pattern. So you might be able to not be able to explain exactly what happened, but you might feel really angry. And what you want to do is just draw in complete straight lines and get rid of that anger. You don't need to know what the anger means, why it really is showing up for you at this point. But being able to start to tie in the process

Starting point is 00:29:28 of creating and the actual integration and meaning making is a really beautiful way to start build up this muscle. So it's like, what am I feeling as I'm going through whatever this creative expression is? Yes, that's a great way to start. When it comes to wellness, you're going to get the best results by focusing on the big needle movers. A lot of us spend a lot of time trying to optimize that last 1%, which creates a ton of stress and it actually doesn't help our health that much. At the top of the needle mover list, sleep. And one of the best ways to optimize your sleep is to optimize your mattress, which is why I love avocado green mattress so much. First of all, this mattress is so comfortable. I have the one with the pillow top,

Starting point is 00:30:12 which is medium firm, and it's just a dream. I miss it when I travel. It's better than even the fanciest hotel beds. Having a mattress that supports your joints and your body and feels good is going to help you get more sleep and better quality sleep. But then, on top of the that. Avocado mattresses are made with certified organic cotton, wool, and latex, and they are made safe and green guard gold certified. They're also Okotech certified, which is the gold standard. I look for it in any mattresses, sheets, or towels that I buy, which means the materials have been rigorously tested for harmful substances. You can actually look for the Okotech standard 100 label right on the product, and I love this part. It includes a traceable certificate number and the name of the

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Starting point is 00:31:34 yourself and caring for the planet do not have to be separate things. You can get up to 20% off organic mattresses and more by shopping Avocados President's Day Sale right now at avocadosgrinemattress.com. That is avocadogreenmatress.com, no code needed. When you think about strength and resilience, like your ability to feel energized, to recover well, to stay strong as you get older. What do you think that actually comes from? Most people say working out or good nutrition, and yes, of course that matters. But there is a biological foundation underneath all of that that most people are completely overlooking.

Starting point is 00:32:12 I have been diving deep into this lately with the team at timeline and what I've learned has genuinely shifted how I think about my own health. Every single movement that your body makes, every step, every workout, every muscle contraction, depends on energy produced at the cellular level. And at the center of that is your mitochondria. Here is the thing that nobody tells you, certainly nobody told me, starting around age 30,

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Starting point is 00:32:52 we're trying to do harder workouts, and those things do help. But timelines research suggests that we also need to be supporting the cellular machinery underneath, and that is exactly what their supplement, mitopure does. It contains urolithin A, which helps your body clear out damage mitochondria and support healthier ones so that your cells can produce energy more efficiently. Because this is happening to your cells, it's going to impact your entire body, your immune system, your muscles. One study found that taking mitopure increase,

Starting point is 00:33:22 muscle strength by 12% in four months with no change in exercise routine. It's going to impact your energy, your sleep, your skin, your cell health impacts all of this, and urolithin A keeps your cells healthy. Timeline has done over 15 years of research and testing on this one product urolithin A, which, by the way, most of us lack the gut bacteria to synthesize naturally. That's why many of us need to supplement it to get the benefits. This has become a staple supplement for me. It is my top way to support how I want to look and feel as I age. Support yourselves and how you age with mitopure gummies from Timeline. Visit Timeline.com slash Liz and save up to 39% on your mitopure gummies. That is timeline.com slash Liz. I very rarely get genuinely excited about

Starting point is 00:34:12 skincare, but this is one of the most innovative products that I have come across in years and I'm so obsessed with it. I've been telling all of my friends to get it, so now I need to tell you guys. Here's some science first. Your skin isn't just getting older. It's being actively broken down by something called senescent cells. These are cells that have stopped functioning but refused to die. They sit there releasing inflammatory signals, breaking down your collagen, degrading your skin barrier, and accelerating every visible sign of aging. Scientists call them zombie cells and as they accumulate, they are one of the primary drivers of how old your skin looks and feels. The team at one skin, a group of female longevity researchers and PhDs spent five years testing over 900 peptides

Starting point is 00:34:56 to figure out how to help reduce the accumulation of senescent cells. And they finally landed on it. OSO1, the first peptide scientifically studied to reduce skin's biological age at the molecular level. OSO1 goes in and it clears out the senescent cells so it helps skin function like healthier, younger-looking skin. It is not masking the signs of aging. It's not targeting one thing.

Starting point is 00:35:20 It is actually rolling the clock back at a cellular level. I've been using the face moisturizer for almost six months now, and I love it so much. It feels amazing. It goes on really smoothly. It's not tacky at all. And I actually see a difference, which I just feel like is never the case with skincare. You want to always like see a real difference. And you're kind of like, do I?

Starting point is 00:35:40 Do I? And this I genuinely do. Because it's clearing the senescent cells, it doesn't just target one thing. So my skin looks firmer. it looks glowier. The texture feels dramatically smoother. And I feel like you can see that too. I also love the body moisturizer. It dries down really quickly, which is always a pet peeve of mine with moisturizers. I hate that like sticky feeling when you go to put your clothes on. This does not do that. But it does moisturize really, really well. And then again, I'm reducing

Starting point is 00:36:07 my skin's biological age. I am not making it just look younger. I am making it actually younger. OneSkin has four peer-reviewed clinical studies and over 10,000 five-star reviews. The data backs everything up. For a limited time, get 15% off with code Liz at oneskin.c.com slash Liz. Again, that's 15% off at oneskin.com with code Liz. If you've been following this podcast for a while, you know how determined I am to find ways to relieve my own stress. Every tip we ever hear from an expert, I actually try.

Starting point is 00:36:46 my own life. For this episode, I shared all of the hacks that I have tried and which ones worked the most to reduce my stress. There's lots more great stuff in the episode, so make sure that you listen to the entire thing after you're done here. I also haven't heard anyone talk about this, but I have been thinking about it a lot lately. I think this is one of the reasons why social media feels so terrible. We are co-ruminating with the entire world about all. all of the terrible things going on all over the world. We are essentially entering depressive states with millions of strangers on a daily basis, which like that doesn't sound like it feels good. And my experience of it is not that it feels very good. Which brings me to the single phrase

Starting point is 00:37:37 that's probably helped my stress more than anything else in the entire world. Action is the antidote to anxiety. There are a few reasons why this works from a neuroscience perspective. When we are stressed, we are in that fight or flight response. Our amygdala essentially hijacks our brain so that our prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for rational thought and planning and decision making, that goes offline. So we get trapped in this loop of everything is awful and there are no solutions, literally just because of the way that our brain gets stuck firing. Taking even small actions, requires our brain to engage our prefrontal cortex, the planning part of our brain, which essentially tells the amygdala, like, I got this. You can stand down. So you stop that stress

Starting point is 00:38:25 loop and you literally switch into a different mental state. Taking any action also releases dopamine, which motivates us to take more action and it restores a sense of agency, the idea that our actions matter. This is always what I think about when people tell me they have to follow all these news sites so they can be an engaged citizen. I'm like, no, you are actually making yourself a worse citizen because you are trapping yourself in a stress state that isn't bearing any results. It doesn't help starving children or broken families for you to sit and feel awful about the situation or talk to all of your friends about how bad it is or post little infographics on your Instagram stories. Many, many of us are actually demotivating ourselves to take action and

Starting point is 00:39:12 robbing ourselves of our agency by being over informed by keeping ourselves stuck in that fight or flight mode. We'll get back to taking action in a second, but a micro tip that has hugely helped my stress that is very related to what we're talking about right now is that I have specific sources that I check my news for and I do it early in the day so it does not mess with my sleep currently because I know you guys are all going to ask. I like Sharon McMahon. I like Ezra Klein's podcast. I like the free press. I like the National Review. I like Heather Cox Richardson's newsletter. I keep the list intentionally pretty short and I intentionally keep it covering a pretty broad spectrum of viewpoints. And the biggest, biggest thing that I cannot emphasize enough is I stop

Starting point is 00:39:59 after I read or after I listen to this list. So I know what's going on in the world. And I've consumed a pretty diverse set of perspectives about what's going on, but I am not doom scrolling on social media or reposting infographics and videos that I have not fact check so much of these things that people are posting. They are not, they're like seeing them. They're feeling an emotional, visceral response. And then they are reposting them without checking or verifying the source material, which just, oh, it's, it drives me crazy. And also then people DM me and they're like, why aren't you posting this thing? And I'm like, well, because I validated it and it wasn't accurate. It wasn't accurate and I'm not going to share misinformation or disinformation to the best of my ability on my social media.

Starting point is 00:40:43 Also, on social media, I am rarely scrolling. I am mostly checking in with accounts that inspire me or make me feel the way that I want to feel. Our brains cannot handle the biggest tragedies of the world entering our consciousness before we have brushed our teeth. Also sandwich between like a meme, a fashion video and then these tail. terrible things happening in the world. Our brain is not wired to process that. Not consuming news in that way does not make you less of a good citizen. That's a little rant, a little, a little aside, but it has actually really helped with my stress level. So I would encourage you to try that to just curate a small list of news sources and check them very intentionally so that the news is not

Starting point is 00:41:29 finding you. You are finding the news. But back to action. Obviously, if you can take any action about the actual things that are stressing you out. That's the best case scenario. That's amazing. So if a work project is stressing you out, truly just get started on the project by doing the tiniest, easiest task first. I promise you will feel so much better. Write one line of the presentation.

Starting point is 00:41:55 Send one email that you've been avoiding. Just start setting up your nursery that you've been procrastinating on or cleaning out your closet. If you're stressed about layoffs, refresh your resume, set up a networking date, call your congressman if you are stressed about a political issue. This is a micro tip, but one of the things that has helped me the most with my financial stress, which is a really big point of stress for me, has been figuring out how much money I actually need to live the life that I want.

Starting point is 00:42:26 Because until we know what that amount is, the answer is always more. And I mean truly the life that I want, not the life that I want. I see people living on Instagram. I took some time with this. I really sat and thought about it. Zach did too, and we compared our answers because obviously we're living our lives together. But I wrote down my top five priorities in terms of lifestyle. And then I researched to figure out how much they specifically cost.

Starting point is 00:42:50 Like how much actually is my dream house? How much is my actual dream vacation? What do I spend on food in an ideal month? And I cannot recommend doing this enough because, again, until we have, have those numbers, we are just on the treadmill of consumerism and we are being told constantly that we should want more and more and more. And then after we were aligned on that list, we worked with financial planner to figure out how much we needed to make and how much we needed to save, to bring that life to reality. And having a concrete plan around all of it has alleviated

Starting point is 00:43:25 so much stress for me. So bottom line, if you can directly take even the smallest, tiniest action around the thing that is stressing you out, you will feel so much better. But this is where it gets really interesting. What I love about action being the antidote to anxiety is that any purposeful, goal-directed action actually engages our prefrontal cortex. So any action will decrease our stress, even if this is so critical, it's so interesting. Our brains are so fascinating. But the action will work even if it is not directly related to the,

Starting point is 00:44:03 thing that is stressing us out. So you can be stressed about climate change and you can organize your sock drawer and you will feel better. What is the smallest plan that you can execute? Can you clean a room? Can you make an appointment that you've been putting off? Can you return packages? I love returning packages. I feel like I'm making money somehow. Can you follow a recipe and make an interesting dinner? What I will often do is the second thing first. So I will do an unrelated action because sometimes when I'm stressed, I get so stuck in that amygdala loop that I don't even know what action will help. So if I'm sitting there and I'm like stressed about my career and I'm like, oh, I want to take an action related to my career that will help me alleviate the stress. I don't even know what action to take.

Starting point is 00:44:45 So instead, I do the unrelated action first. So I will do a workout or I'll make a meal or I'll declutter a drawer. And then when my thinking brain is turned back on, I will see if I can come up with actions more directly related to the source of my stress. But when I am stressed, I'm always thinking what is any purposeful action that I can take right now. Dr. Julie Smith is arguably one of the most well-known therapist around these days. You've likely seen her on social media where she has millions of followers or you've read one of her best-selling books. In this episode, your trickiest mental health questions finally answered.

Starting point is 00:45:24 She dives into common causes of stress and anxiety and exactly what we can do to help ourselves set real boundaries and feel better. I do think it's one of the biggest fallacies that scrolling is a break or something that is restful in any way. Because if you pay any attention to how you feel when you stop scrolling, it is usually very agitated, very wound up, maybe a little listless. It is almost never, oh, I feel really rested, relaxed, and restored. And yet I feel like so many of us reach for our phones to feel rested, relaxed, and restored at the end of a long day. Often when I talk about stress with people, I talk about taking back those in-between moments. Because a lot of people can't make these drastic life changes.

Starting point is 00:46:04 You know, you can't just go and live on the beach. No, but you can take back all those in-between moments that we have filled with things that trigger stress response. If you have 20 minutes between meetings, are you checking your emails and not really doing anything with them? Or how about you go and, you know, sit in your car, recline the seat, close your eyes for 10 minutes, or listen to a guided meditation, or some calming music,

Starting point is 00:46:28 or call a friend and have a laugh together, or your choices in those moments can really make the difference. Because even though it's only 20 minutes, if you've had 10 minutes of closing a rise or non-sleep-deep relaxation, you're going to go into your next meeting ready to go and much more revived than you would if you were, you know, hammering some emails. Other than addiction, why are we not making those choices? I do feel like at this point in the world, we know in a general sense what will make us feel good and yet day after day so many of us are not choosing that thing on a moment to moment basis.

Starting point is 00:47:02 Yeah, I think the whole system at the moment is set up in the opposite direction, isn't it? It's surprisingly really because you think when email came along, it was this sort of like, wow, it's going to make everything so much easier, all the other technologies as well. Apparently we're going to make life easier. And to a degree they do, but what they've also done is just shift expectation. You used to get into the office and there would be a pile of mail and you would go through it. And then that was done for the day. and then you could get on with the actual job that you needed to do.

Starting point is 00:47:28 Whereas now, if you don't reply to an email in 20 minutes, people are like, where are you? What are you doing? And it's sort of, I'm not sat there waiting to be needed or spoken to. But we are the first generation that's having to deal with this as well. So we are the big experiment, right? We have to aware and insightful of how it's affecting us, whether or not that's what we want in our lives and then make these really difficult decisions that feel like they're against the grain. culturally to say, actually, this is how I'm going to set it up. You know, I will be on email

Starting point is 00:47:59 first thing in the morning, like, or the end of the afternoon or both or whatever. And then in between, I'm going to be doing my actual job so I won't be doing that and, you know, kind of setting those boundaries that once people know what the deal is for you, they'll go with it. But it does take that real confidence and assertiveness, I think. This was another thing that I heard from listeners a lot, which is my work life is draining me and I want to set these boundaries that will protect my energy. But the economic climate's really unstable. I'm afraid of layoffs. What do I do? Yeah. I've heard this way too much about even when people ask for kind of flexibility and stuff with families and parenting and then are made to kind of fear for their jobs because it's a competitive

Starting point is 00:48:42 environment and things like that. And sometimes that is a reality for people. And the thing is with stress and everything being too kind of full on. Some people are able to have situations where they are able to make those big decisions about whether they want to be there or not. You know, if this company is set up in this way and this is how they treat people, do I want to work here? Some people have that option to go and do something else. Other people get kind of stuck in an industry or something where, or, you know, they've got bills to pay, children to feed, and it's a lot more difficult. And in those situations, I think then it becomes about those kind of smaller moments of, okay, if at the moment this is how it is and I can't control it, what can I control? Let's come back to

Starting point is 00:49:30 how can I maximize my own wellness and health while I'm in this chapter. And it might be about preparing for moving on and retraining or something like that in your own time or it might be about doing what you can to cope with stress outside of work and doing really healthy things that are going to help you deal with it while it's a difficult time. But it's not realistic to just suggest to everybody that they can change it because sometimes the biggest stresses are the ones that we can't really change. And so our best move there is maybe to be actively looking for a plan, a way out, something like that, things we can change that our control and also in the moments that we can control them. We are doing whatever we can in those moments. Yeah. And at least have a supervisor

Starting point is 00:50:13 back in the early days who you said, always used to say push it where it moves, push it where it moves. And that has rung true for the rest of my career really where a lot of people will stand at a closed door and keep wondering why it doesn't open. But what you have to do is start turning in different directions and seeing, well, where are my options here? The more you explore, the more you will gather information about which of those options are right for you. And some of them won't be and some of them will be depending on you and your situation and what, you know, what the limitations are around you. You have to explore them and a sense of agency is so crucial to good mental health. So that idea that if this isn't right, I have the capacity to kind

Starting point is 00:50:54 of explore my options and think through what would be better for me. A sense of agency is something that a lot of people are struggling with right now, particularly in the US, many, many, many people wrote into me and said, my biggest mental health issue right now is not feeling safe in the way that our country is going and not feeling aligned with the political climate and feeling completely powerless in the face of that. If we feel powerless in terms of these greater things that we cannot change and that are scary, what do we do with those feelings? I think with all those situations, when you start to feel overwhelmed, you have to draw your horizon. You have to draw your horizon. and inward and focus on the immediate situation that you're in. And I think the tendency is with

Starting point is 00:51:41 the way that world is today, we have these 24-hour news channels and, you know, you can have constant notifications come up on your phone or something new that's happened or it's the same thing that's happened, but someone's put it in a different light and given a different clickbait title and it's all alarming and it's all scary. And you can torture yourself with that all day, every day, all night, every night if you wanted to. So we have to be so clear on where we're putting our attention. And when we talk about that sense of agency, I think when you're looking at everything as a whole

Starting point is 00:52:16 and things that you perhaps can't control at the moment because there's no vote to use, that's when you feel out of control and you don't feel that sense of agency and you feel just overwhelmed. And the way that we come back to a sense of agency is to come back to the area of your life that you can control. and if you have ideas about how your community should be set up

Starting point is 00:52:40 and how people should treat each other or things like that, you have agency to become a really functional member of that community and you can do really positive things within that community and affect real lives. It might not be a huge number of lives, but they still matter. I think draw your horizon right in and look at what is the next foot that you can put forward in which direction is best for that to go and focus on the people that you know and love and the people that you care for in your community. Remember how earlier on we talked about stress

Starting point is 00:53:14 impacting sleep and energy? Well, guess what else it impacts? If you said focus, you are right. The next episode we're going to hear from proven brain hacks to get more done in less time, breaks down how stress rewires your brain and exactly what you can do to fix it. Decreasing our stress levels can not only help with rebuilding our focus over time, it can increase our ability to focus in the moment. Meaning, if you are having a hard time focusing, you can do any activity that decreases your stress and you'll bring your prefrontal cortex back online. And it also works chronically. Continuous stress over time literally reshapes the brain so that you're more likely to respond to situations with fear and anxiety and more stress.

Starting point is 00:54:02 Meaning, if you are regularly stressed, that work email is going to be way more likely to stress you out. But it works the same way in reverse. Stress relieving activities reshape your brain in a way that when you get that same email, you're going to be more likely to assess the threat and treat it accordingly. I have been doing this podcast for over five years now with nearly 400 episodes under my belt and one theme comes up again and again. Stress relief isn't optional. It has to be a core part of our wellness practice. I often treat stress like something that I'll deal with after everything else is handled. Like once I've optimized my schedule and crossed everything off my list, then I'll make time for stress relief. Like it's some sort of luxury.

Starting point is 00:54:48 But the truth is, working on stress is what gives us the time and energy to do everything else. It needs to move up on the priority list. Way up. I have a whole podcast about all of the stress-relieving hacks that I've tried over the years and the ones that actually worked. I can link it for you in the show notes. But since I know that you are busy, I know that you're stressed, I'm going to give you a two-part prescription. I promise if you do both of these things, you will experience a noticeable decrease in your stress levels pretty quickly. Okay, number one, when you feel stressed, when you feel that tight chest or that racing heart, put your hand on your belly and breathe through your nose into your belly. Do that three times. There's a ton of science

Starting point is 00:55:32 behind the power of breathwork and this is literally the easiest way to do it. You're basically tricking your body and your brain into thinking that you're safe. Do it right now. Just breathe in through your nose all the way so that you feel your belly expand under your hand. It feels silly because it is so small, but it makes a palpable, palpable difference. This is also one of my favorite tricks to get those acute stress-relieving focus benefits. If I feel like my brain is all over the place, I'm opening a ton of different tabs, I'm opening slack and then forgetting why I opened it, I stop and I take a few deep breaths right into my belly. And as my acute stress goes away, I find myself way more able to focus. And number two, read before bed instead of being on your phone or watching TV.

Starting point is 00:56:18 a paperbook, a Kindle, just not an LED screen. Reading is essentially a form of meditation that's been found to decrease stress levels. So you're decreasing your stress and rewiring your brain that way. And then having decreased stress unless blue light is going to make you sleep better, which is going to have a hugely positive impact on your overall stress levels. So just try those two things. I promise they make a huge difference. The number one rule of habits is to make the things that you want easy. and the things that you don't want harder. Yet so many of us want to eat healthier,

Starting point is 00:56:53 but so few of us actually take the steps to make eating healthier easier. That's where Marley Spoon comes in. What I love about this company and what's different than all of the other companies out there that are doing stuff in the same arena, is that you can customize your choices based on the effort that you want to put in. So if you want them to send you ingredients, so you can make your own 20-minute meal and get into your chef energy, they'll send it to you to all be in perfect portions,

Starting point is 00:57:18 so you eliminate waste. Great, that's sorted. But they also have meals that you can just heat up. They have ready-made breakfast, which is always such a tough time of day to get a healthy meal in. They have grab-and-go snacks. Everything is made from farm-fresh produce

Starting point is 00:57:32 with high-quality proteins, and you can select by dietary preferences, including Mediterranean diet, which is the top diet that doctors on this podcast recommend. Also, things like gluten-free, dairy-free, low-sodium, anything that you need. The food is so good and it's so gourmet. me feeling like you feel like you're at a nice restaurant. We're talking like chicken Milanese with a

Starting point is 00:57:51 crunchy cucumber arugula salad or everything bagel salmon with truffle chive potatoes. My favorite recent meal was the creamy lemon chicken tray bake. I had one of those moments where I looked at my plate and I was like, wait, I made this and so quickly, like so easily. It's just so little effort for so much reward. Marley Spoon just makes eating well feel easy instead of stressful. And honestly, that is everything. This new year, fast track your way to eating well. with Marley Spoon. Head to Marley Spoon.com slash offer slash Liz Moody for up to 25 free meals. That is right, up to 25 free meals with Marley Spoon.

Starting point is 00:58:28 That is Marley Spoon.com slash offer slash Liz Moody. So remember to get the offer slash Liz Moody for up to 25 free meals. If you have headaches, allergies, brain fog, skin irritation, or you've been dealing with hormone issues, you are especially going to want to listen to. to this ad. Every single thing that I just listed has been linked to chemicals and household cleaners. One study found that regular use of cleaning sprays was associated with a lung function decline comparable to smoking 10 to 20 cigarettes per day. Synthetic fragrances are a well-documented migraine trigger and a number of studies have linked ingredients in common household cleaners to fertility issues,

Starting point is 00:59:12 thyroid dysfunction, mood changes, and more because of their impact on our endocrine systems. Luckily, you can just make one simple swap and you can eliminate all of those risk factors that you get from common household cleaners. Branch Basics makes cleaning products that are plant and mineral based, completely fragrance-free, and made safe certified, meaning they are screened against thousands of known and suspected harmful chemicals. And best of all, you literally use one product, but you mix it with different amounts of water to make your kitchen spray, your bathroom cleaner, your laundry detergent, your produce wash, your glass cleaner, literally everything. It does not smell. It does not give me headaches. It does not give me rashes or itchiness from clothes because you are. Remember, we're using this for laundry. We're using this for

Starting point is 00:59:56 literally everything. And it works so well. Everything gets so clean. And I know that I'm protecting myself from all of those long-term issues too. And I'm protecting my kittens who are much tinier than me. So anything they're exposed to has a much greater impact on their little tiny systems. And they're running around on their little paws and then they're licking them. So I'm protecting them too. Branch Basics is now available at Target, Target.com, Amazon, and branchbasics.com, so it's easier than ever to make the switch. And if you want to grab their premium starter kit, you can use code Liz Moody for 15% off

Starting point is 01:00:31 at branchbasics.com. That's code Liz Moody for 15% off the premium starter kit at branchbasics.com. And when they ask you where you heard about us, please make sure to mention the show. That is branchbasics.com and use code Liz Moody. I'm genuinely confused how master class gets literally the absolute top people in every single field to teach every single one of their classes. I use it when I want to learn things directly like the cooking class from Thomas Keller has all of the wisdom that you would normally have to go to culinary school for. But also, I'm being honest, this is like a use case I don't hear a lot of people talking about. I'll just watch it for entertainment when I want to do something that's far more interesting than scrolling.

Starting point is 01:01:13 Christina Aguilera taught me to sing, Shan Boudrum's art of mastering confidence, sex appeal class. It's 10 out of 10. There's menopause classes with leading doctors. There's script writing with Mindy Kaling. Literally, you name it. They're on masterclass. And it is such a good way to get off your phone, but have something that's like not quite as long or hard to get into as a TV show or a movie and that it just keeps you entertained and interested. And you are learning. There are over 200 classes from the world's best, all for just $10 a month when billed annually. and you get unlimited access to every class on the platform so you can learn at your own pace whenever you want on your phone, your computer, or even in audio mode like a podcast.

Starting point is 01:01:53 If you're looking to stop scrolling and start consuming entertaining content that makes you feel excited and helps you learn, Masterclass is it. And the best part, every membership comes with a 30-day money-back guarantee so you can start learning risk-free. Right now our listeners get an additional 15% off any annual membership at Masterclass.com that's 15% off at masterclass.com slash Liz Moody, masterclass.com slash Liz Moody. Lauren Papanos is an RDN specializing in functional endocrinology who sat down with us a few

Starting point is 01:02:28 times to get into goodies like hormones, diet, and exercise. In this particular episode, what social media gets wrong about hormones, a guide to what's real and what's BS, we get deep into cortisol, aka your stress hormone. Listen up for functional easy ways to balance your cortisol and keep stress in line. Okay. Let's get into cortisol, which is another huge topic of conversation online. Can you explain cortisol to me like I'm five years old? Yes.

Starting point is 01:02:54 So cortisol is what we call our stress hormone. We have several stress hormones, but it's our main one that's released from our adrenal glands. Our adrenal glands are located just right on top of our kidneys. And they regulate mineral control and fluid balance. And then they also regulate our fight or flight. So if your body being in run from a tiger or in a rest and digest, like a calm and rested sleeping type state. So there's a lot of talk out there about like high cortisol being so problematic, right? Cortisol in the acute setting is actually very good for us.

Starting point is 01:03:25 We need it. Like you are going to release cortisol during exercise. That's how you get an adaptation. That's how you get stronger and fitter from exercise. So we want some cortisol. It's also anti-inflammatory. That's why when people have inflammation, they're given prednisone, which is basically like artificial cortisol because it helps reduce inflammation in the body.

Starting point is 01:03:43 It's when we have chronically elevated cortisol that we see issues where it almost does the opposite effect. It actually degrades us. It breaks down our immune system. It helps our body store more energy. It doesn't mobilize energy. So it can be really problematic when it's in chronically elevated levels. I think that the big issue is that people call it cortisol dysregulation or like high cortisol

Starting point is 01:04:08 really I think we should be calling it like HPA axis dysregulation, which I know isn't as sexy sounding and more sciencey. But really that's what we're talking about is we're talking about the HPA axis, which is our hypothalamus pituitary axis that's in our brain. So basically how our brain is talking to the rest of our body, that is dysregulated. It's not working in the normal rhythms and there's not the adequate levels of hormones being released at the times that they should be. That's really what we're referring to when people are talking about cortisol. being so problematic. And cortisol is part of that, but not all of it? Correct. Yes. Yeah, cortisol drives the HPA axis, though. Do you think that cortisol dysregulation or HPA access dysregulation is as prevalent as social media would lead us to believe? I think that it is,

Starting point is 01:04:54 but it's not always high cortisol. That's the issue. And I get messages all time, people, they're like, well, what about if I have low cortisol? And I'm like, you're right. Nobody ever talks about low cortisol. And the reason why is because low cortisol happens after high cortisol. So the way that we treat it is almost the same as you would treat like high cortisol right. So with any system in the body, the body works in overdrive. And then it's like, I'm tired. I need to take a nap. And then it doesn't work as efficiently as it should.

Starting point is 01:05:20 The same thing that happens with like diabetes development is like your body's producing a lot of insulin. And then the pancreas is like, I'm tired. I can't keep doing this. And then diabetes develops. It's the same thing that happens with low cortisol is that you've been in a chronically high cortisol state. And then now you're in a low cortisol state to where you're not making any cortisol. And that's generally when people.

Starting point is 01:05:38 people feel the most symptomatic. That's usually when they think they have cortisol problems, but it's not high cortisol. They have low cortisol, but that's when they feel all the fatigue and the depression and all the mood-related symptoms. What are some of the symptoms that are actually real signs of this dysregulation? Because online, there's so many that people talk about. Yeah. So both high and low are going to cause some similar symptoms, but generally the big one is going to be waking up in the morning feeling totally flat, feeling like you cannot get out of bed. That's usually a there's low cortisol in the morning time. Because cortisol is that hormone that wakes you up.

Starting point is 01:06:13 Think of like cortisol as just being sunshine, right? When you see sun, when your pineal gland behind your eye gets exposed to sun, that's what signals to make cortisol. So if we're not seeing sun, then there's not going to be adequate cortisol production happening in the morning time. And then as your day goes on, cortisol should really drop off at its lowest point in the evening. And then that's what should signal to our body to make melatonin to help with sleep and recovery

Starting point is 01:06:34 and such. So if you're noticing that you don't feel that jolt, of energy in the morning, you probably have inadequate levels of cortisol. If you feel like in the evening time, you are not ready for bed. You are wired but tired. You probably are dealing with high cortisol levels. Or if you're waking up a lot in the middle of the night, especially like the classical 2 to 4 a.m. That can be because there's cortisol dysregulation that's going on. A lot of times people will say that they also feel like super flatlined at around 3 p.m. That can also be an issue because naturally our cortisol drops quite a bit there and then it kind of comes back up. But if you're noticing that

Starting point is 01:07:08 that's just super noticeable for you. There's probably some cortisol dysfunction happening. And then there can be more severe symptoms like hair loss, anxiety, irritability, fast heart rate, and then all of the hormone, like sex hormone, thyroid symptoms. Because if your cortisol is out of balance, it's going to cause issues with estrogen production, progesterone, testosterone, thyroid hormones, all of those hormones downstream. Cortisol does increase visceral fat accumulation, which is the fat that's around your organs.

Starting point is 01:07:35 So you're going to notice it in the abdominal area. Generally speaking, if your weight gain has really been in that one area, like in your abdominal area, or you're noticing that maybe you used to store fat in like your legs and lower body, your arms, but now it's starting to be redistributed towards your stomach. That's likely a cortisol response. And if we are listening and we're like, check, check, check, I have this visceral fat. I am tired but wired. All these things.

Starting point is 01:08:01 Do we treat these different things differently? Or are they treated all by getting your system back into a regulated state? Yes. It would mostly be through getting our system back into a regulated state and looking at where can the room for improvement be? Is it like maybe there's nutritional low-hanging fruit that's causing the cortisol dysregulation? Because what you eat and when you eat has a huge impact on cortisol production. Is it like the exercise you're doing or the balance of when you're exercising versus when you're sleeping? Is it sleep that we need to address?

Starting point is 01:08:28 You know, there's so many areas that can be explored within that that are going to impact cortisol, that it may be one area that you really need to hone in on or it might be accumulation of multiple. Let's chat through some of those rough plan. Can you give us ideally what we should be eating, ideally how we should be moving, what type of movement maybe we should be avoiding, and then any other lifestyle habits we should be addressing? Definitely. So we talked earlier about the importance of blood sugar, and that's going to be a big one for cortisol because there's like two things that increase cortisol. That's our body being under stress, psychological stress, physical stress, right? And then our body being in a low blood sugar state. So our body naturally has to make cortisol. And it's going to do it at the

Starting point is 01:09:06 expense of every other hormone because it's a survival hormone. And our body makes it mainly to keep blood sugar levels regulated so that we never get into a really low blood sugar state because we would die if we were really low blood sugar. So when our blood sugar gets really low, our body releases more of that cortisol. So just by working on regular eating patterns where you're not going more than six hours, you're making sure that when you're eating that it is creating a healthy blood sugar response, that's a really good way to support your cortisol rhythms. Also making sure that you're getting adequate minerals. The adrenal glands are, like I mentioned, they also regulate mineral corticoid production. So minerals and vitamin C are incredibly important for your adrenal function. Wait, can we

Starting point is 01:09:46 stop there? Because there's a cortisol cocktail that's really viral online. And it's basically coconut water, orange juice, and then electrolytes or sea salt. So is that why? Because it's basically vitamin C and electrolytes. Exactly. Yeah. And your adrenals are really rich in those. Vitamin C is actually most concentrated in your adrenal glands. And then when your body's making more cortisol, you actually release more minerals and sodium into your urine. So you become depleted. And then you need those to then make adequate hormones. And so then the whole feedback loop essentially gets impacted. Wait, so do you approve of the cortisol cocktail? I do. But I think it needs a few tweaks to it. If you had to create like a dream cortisol like drink or snack though, and you could use anything,

Starting point is 01:10:28 what would you say? I do this for clients all the time. And we usually will base it off their mineral level so I'll see like where they're deficient and then I'll create like their own little mineral beverage for them but generally I would say across the board it would have cream of tartar for the potassium it would have a salt so I like to use Celtic salt for people that have Hashimoto's because it doesn't have any iodine and iodine can be really inflammatory to the thyroid but for individuals that don't have Hashimoto's then something like Redmins or a different type of unrefined salt is fine and then you can use a mineral complex of some sort so there's like some different liquid brand options or capsules that you can use alongside of it.

Starting point is 01:11:03 I do a mineral complex, like as a capsule, and then the vitamin C source, so like half of a lemon to be able to get that vitamin C in there and then eight ounces of water and just mix it together. Okay. And then are there any other food or beverages that you feel like we should be adding in or eliminating for this ideal cortisol plan? Not really foods that you need to be adding in, but just like I said, make sure that you've got good stable blood sugar with how you're pairing your foods together and don't eliminate carbs because carbohydrates do lower cortisol.

Starting point is 01:11:30 So yeah, you don't want to go crazy with them to where they're causing this dysregulated blood sugar response. But if you're eating them within the right balance of your meal, they are actually going to suppress cortisol. Okay. And then exercise. There's a lot of confusion about what impact different types of exercise have on our cortisol levels. So can you clear it up? Yeah. So exercise in general is going to create a cortisol response because exercise is a physiological stressor.

Starting point is 01:11:52 And it's a good stressor. But it does create a cortisol response because of that. And that's how you get the adaptation. So it really depends on the type of exercise you're doing. doing from the literature, we know that the higher and the intensity, the more cortisol, which intuitively makes sense, right? Like if you've done a Soul Cycle class, you're like, yes, my cortisol is through the roof right now. It's pretty intuitive to know what's causing more that cortisol response. Generally, more of your resistance training and higher intensity

Starting point is 01:12:15 interval training is going to create more of a cortisol response. And then more aerobic-based exercise creates less of a cortisol response. Is that high cortisol response bad, though? Is it like a hormesis effect where it's a good stressor because it's brief and we want that? or is it bad because we want to keep our cortisol levels less or more balanced? It can be okay. It can be like the hormosis response like you're mentioning. The big thing is what's happening after? Like are you getting back into the parasympathetic, the low cortisol state?

Starting point is 01:12:44 Because a lot of people aren't. They're like finishing their workout at 5 a.m. They haven't eaten. So they're like adding more cortisol to the mix. And they're getting done with the workout, rushing to work, not eating again for another couple of hours, adding coffee to the mix, right? Yeah. So it really is about the environment.

Starting point is 01:12:58 And then also the frequency. So if you're doing something high intensity every day like that, that's going to cause more of this adrenal dysfunction than if you're dosing it here and there one or two times per week and you're allowing adequate recovery. It's all about that recovery. The recovery is really where all the magic happens for exercise. If you could wave a wand and have us eliminate some habits that we all commonly do, what would you say? And don't just say I like stop stressing because we're all trying and it's really hard. And I would never say that because that's one of my biggest pet peeves is when people say, just reduce stress because it's like, well, that would be nice.

Starting point is 01:13:30 If you know how, though, do tell us. Because, like, I would love to know. I just always say control the controllables when it comes to that, you know, because our body doesn't know the difference between stress. So, like, the things we can control is what we eat and how nutrition creates a stress response, like, our workouts. We can control those things, you know? We can control, like, the family, the work stress.

Starting point is 01:13:48 So those are more of the uncontrollables. And so when those are out of whack, then reduce the other areas that are in your control. And it's like always this ebb in this flow between that stress. response. Are there any stress relieving practices that you've seen in your own clients have had an outsized result? I would say the biggest one is getting outside. I think that's probably the most profound effect on people's stress response, like just taking a quick break because I think so often, either A, we are inside all day and we're not getting that sun exposure or B, you're just like going constantly from one thing to the next. One of the best piece of advice that a therapist ever gave

Starting point is 01:14:23 me was to create more buffer in my day. And it's been something I've taken with me and I'll take it to the grave. But because I'm such like an efficiency person, I'm always like, oh, well, let me stack all these things on top so that I can get done quicker. All that did was just create more of like an anxiety rush in my body. And so then now it's like, okay, I'm going to give myself 10 extra minutes than I think that that's going to take at my slowest. And yeah, it sometimes stinks because you're sitting there with like nothing to do. But how much does when you have nothing to do slow your heart rate down and force you back into that parasympathetic state. I had Alyssa Apple, who's one of the world's leading stress experts on the podcast, and I asked her what was the lowest hanging fruit that we

Starting point is 01:15:00 could all do to, like, eliminate a source of stress in our life. And she said rushing. She was like, we put rushing on ourselves by the way that we schedule our lives. Can we give ourselves more of that buffer and will feel a profound effect? Is there anything that you feel like people should know about cortisol or this HPA axis that we haven't talked about, especially things that people could do that would have a noticeable impact at home? The big. The big. thing that I think people don't think about as it comes to cortisol is that the people that struggle the most with cortisol and HPA access dysregulation are the people that are under-eating and over-exercising. We cannot reduce our cortisol response if we don't address those

Starting point is 01:15:37 two areas. We have to be looking at ways to better balance how much we're eating, when we're eating throughout the day, and how much exercise that we're doing or your cortisol dysregulation is never going to get any better. The next episode that we're going to hear a little bit from is called I've been having a hard time lately. And it's probably one of my most vulnerable episodes to date. This last year has been one of the most difficult, emotional and stressful years that I have had in my life. I am not one for toxic positivity in myself out of things. So in this episode, I share the habits and tools that I have been relying on to keep myself moving forward with a clear headspace. Your brain doesn't check a scoreboard.

Starting point is 01:16:22 before it decides whether to release stress hormones or activate your nervous system. From a mental health and neuroscience perspective, pain is pain and your body responds accordingly. When your brain interprets something as threatening or overwhelming or emotionally painful, it triggers a real stress response. Cortisol floods your system, your bite or flight mode activates, and your entire nervous system reacts even if somebody else's situation seems worse on the outside. Research clearly shows that it is not the situation itself that causes emotions, but how your brain interprets that situation. That is why two people can go through the same experience and have completely different emotional reactions.

Starting point is 01:17:05 Your brain filters everything through your personal history, your past trauma, your beliefs, your fears, your emotional triggers. So if your system is responding, it is not fake, it is not dramatic, it is not overreacting. It is real. Your emotional pain is valid because your brain and your body are experiencing it as real. And understanding that, making space for that is key to healing. So when I feel my absolute worst, I double down on checking off the basics. Am I hydrated? Did I get outside for my cirque walk?

Starting point is 01:17:41 Did I move my body today? Ideally, that movement is a bit more active, walking a lot, or doing some strength training. Personally, strength training has made a huge. huge difference in my mood. Like the day I do it, I will feel notably mentally better than if I don't do it on that day. I also start every single day with two huge glasses of water with electrolytes. I make sure that I'm eating protein. I'm getting my veggies. I am fueling my body instead of skipping meals or grazing on whatever is easiest. But this is the key part. I do not wait to feel motivated. I rely on my routine. I build structure around these habits. I create accountability.

Starting point is 01:18:20 because I know that I cannot fully trust myself in these times in my life. My morning routine starts with the water and then I get outside, even if it's just one loop around the block. I don't have to do more than that, but I do have to do that. And then I head to the gym at the same time every single day. And I have been planning as much as possible to go with friends or to go with Zach because honestly, I am way more likely to flake out on myself than on somebody else. That accountability makes all of the difference.

Starting point is 01:18:52 The way I see it, we are basically just big plants. We need sunlight. We need water. We need nutrients. If we do not give ourselves those things, we start to wilt no matter how much inner work or therapy or mindset stuff that we're doing. So this is me watering the plant first. When I feel my lowest, I tend to focus on all of the things that are out of my control.

Starting point is 01:19:16 And then I spiral about how I lack the power. to make my life better, which is the opposite of what our brains need. This is what I remind myself of when everything feels out of control. The next time that you feel overwhelmed by everything going on in the world, remember that study after study after study has shown the mood-enhancing effects of having agency. And we really do have so much agency, but it's about shifting your focus from what's out of your control to the things that are in your control, the things that you have agency over. And that feeling of agency is going to transfer over. It's like a magic trick, but one that's been backed by centuries of psychology research.

Starting point is 01:19:54 Beeling agency over little things, things unrelated to whatever you are actually scared or depressed over, rewires your brain in a way that makes you feel less scared, more empowered, less depressed about the bigger things, the things that were the real problem in the first place. So if this is you right now, ask yourself, what agency do you have? Again, it does not need. need to be related to the actual reason that you do not feel good. If you are going through a breakup, your agency does not need to be around relationships. Maybe your agency is helping your friend with a work problem. Maybe it is cleaning your house. Maybe it's volunteering. Any agency is going to create this chain reaction in your brain that's going to make you feel so, so much better. In this episode,

Starting point is 01:20:41 I was joined by UCLA professor and renowned neuroscientist and gastroenterologist, Dr. Emmerin-Mayer. We got into how to rewire your gut and brain to reduce stress. And this is one of my favorite tips that he shared. There's these circuits within the brain that generate emotions. And then they also, they're linked to what we call the central autonomic networks that generate signals that go back to the body. So anytime anybody experiences a negative emotion that will be mirrored in the gut. So I read this in your book. And I always like, I kind of had a vague sense of like, yeah, my stomach hurts when I'm stress or blah, and you're like, no, on a physiological level, your gut is mirroring what's going on in your brain. Yeah, and it's actually fairly specific what emotion it is. You know, so it's different

Starting point is 01:21:28 for the fear response or anger, so fear response that inhibits your stomach and stimulates the end. So the two parts of your dehydract that are most susceptible to these influences is the proximal part, so the esophagus and the stomach and the end of your intestine. That receives. strongest inputs. So that's why I have these symptoms, you know, what's now called functional dyspepsia or symptoms that are referred to the upper G.I. Tract often reflect an inhibition of gastric contractions. And on the other hand, with anger, you know, you get the opposite. You get this really strong. And all this has been measured in experiments. Wait, so with anger, you get really strong gastric contract? So where you feel like you need to poop when you're angry?

Starting point is 01:22:16 No, so gastric, so it's the upper part. So you feel like, you know, cramps in your upper part of your stomach. And with anxiety and stress, it's the lower part. You know, there's an urge to have a bowel movement or diarrhea. Yeah. That's so my first time I did my first event on my book tour. I was doing like a one woman show and they were actively introducing me and I turned to my husband and I was like, I really need to poop. And he was like, you can't go poop. Like they're actively introducing you for hundreds of people and I was like, no, I really need to, but I think that was just my anxiety. Yeah, that was anxiety. And I did the show and it was great. Yeah, well, so this is all why you say you shouldn't eat while you're stressed, correct? I mean, always trying to sort of go back in evolution and in history. So food intake in general, particularly with once cooking became part of human interactions, it was a social event, sitting together, being relaxed, feeling good. with animals a little bit different when you see when a lion catches an animal

Starting point is 01:23:17 and then they fight over it and with the other lions. But with humans it's pretty clear. It's a social event and that's a very important point to come back to you and a feel-good event and it puts your stomach in its default digestive mode, increased vagal tone, parasympathetic balance and minimum

Starting point is 01:23:38 amount of the sympathetic influence which is the stress part of your autonomic nervous system. So there's studies like, you know, with the Mediterranean diet. I now use the term Mediterranean lifestyle and not diet because I believe, and there's evidence from studies that a big part of the benefit of the Mediterranean diet is that social interactions when you eat something. We have experienced this many times traveling in Italy, in summertime, everybody sits outside and spends some of the same.

Starting point is 01:24:10 the whole evening together, not just once going up for dinner. It's like, that's the lifestyle. You know, everybody's outside and together. Yeah, and there's studies now that suggests that that's more important than what people actually eat during that time. You think that we're over-indexing on the food part and we're under-indexing on the social and the slowing down and the lifestyle part? Yeah, I've come to the conclusion. It's a real holistic view of gut health that it's a it's influenced obviously by the brain. We know a lot of studies about the negative ones, you know, the stress, anxiety, anger.

Starting point is 01:24:48 Much fewer studies on the positive dimensions of brain states, like relaxation, meditation. There's some studies, so we actually did one with mindfulness-based stress reduction, which did have an effect on symptoms and brain-got interactions. But in general, I mean, I would say that the science really supports that idea that multiple factors contribute. What impact does eating while you're stressed have on how you're digesting the food,

Starting point is 01:25:17 how you're assimilating the food, on your gut health, on your brain health, on all of that? Yeah, so just imagine when you stress these signals from the brain, mainly the autonomic nervous system, you know, the stress branch, the sympathetic and the peer-sympathetic, the more relaxed part, they get activated. You have a much more strong sympathetic tone. it changes like pretty much every dimension of your gut function, you know, from contractions, regional transit, how fast things go empty from the stomach, empty through the small intestine, how long they stay in the colon.

Starting point is 01:25:57 So each of those are affected by the stress level. And then you have also the, you know, the cortisol, which we know less about, even though people always talk about cortisol levels, the fight and flight stress rate, but it's not So we're not in the fight-in-flight response. In general, it's a very different kind of stress. It's that chronic sustained stress level that not necessarily goes along with an increased cortisol level, but it does go along, our studies have shown,

Starting point is 01:26:26 with an increased level of gene expression of the sympathetic nervous system that changes all these gut functions. It also, you know, it stimulates acid secretion, it changes blood flow, it changes the immune cells in your gut, it changes the microbes. The microbes have receptors on their surface that respond to the sympathetic nervous system, neurotransmitters, no epinephrine. So if you're stressed, your microbes know that.

Starting point is 01:26:58 And there's a change in their gene expression and a change in their behavior. So if you have any potentially harmful bacteria in your gut, they will you attack your gut more likely under a stressful situation. So imagine when you're eating and you're stressed, your gut is completely different. And it's not the minor stress that's important. It's the real, as I said, this chronic, what we call, allostatic load, you know.

Starting point is 01:27:29 And a lot of people are in that condition. A lot of people. Yeah. So what advice would you give to somebody listening? Let's say they are struggling with, gut issues or they're trying to prevent brain health issues down the road or they are dealing with brain health issues. Would you say that having some sort of stress management practice is a really important part of that prevention or treatment strategy? Yeah, I would say that would pretty be

Starting point is 01:27:54 number one that I would say. Wow. There's so much scientific data that supports that. It affects the microbiome. Just as diet has a negative effect on the microbiome. So stress does a same thing. And if both of them act together, you have the perfect storm. Microbes are under stress from two sides, from the brain, from the stress system, and from an unhealthy diet, an inflammatory diet. That's what a lot of people now in the U.S. are under in that situation. Are there lifestyle factors that you think have an outsized effect on our gut microbes and our brain health, either in a positive way or a negative way? Yeah. So exercise, physical. exercise, there have been studies on that, so mild to moderate but regular aerobic exercise

Starting point is 01:28:44 has a positive effect on the health of the microbiome. High-performance exercise has a negative effect. That's perceived by the body and the brain and the gut as a stressor. And you see exactly the same changes you would see with a severe psychological trauma. You know, you get increased permability or leakiness, inflammation, diarrhea. If you're a severe psychological, with trauma, you know, you get increased permability or leakiness, inflammation, diarrhea. If you do these things like marathon running, which is obviously become very popular, it's good for your mental well-being, I think, but it's not beneficial for your physical health or your gut health. I would say clearly a benefit through stress reduction and probably through other mechanisms as well that we

Starting point is 01:29:29 incompletely understand. I mean, there are studies also on long-term meditators that have shown an effect on the gut microbiome. Do you meditate? I try to, you know. I do sort of simple things like autogenic training or progressive muscle relaxation, which is sort of a cheap way of doing meditation. In phases in my life where I've done it more regularly in the Zen Center at the in downtown LA. But with our lifestyles, it's hard to do it.

Starting point is 01:30:04 But the research bears out that it is beneficial. Yeah, but then there's a strange thing. You know, if you look at the life expectancy, I mean, I always like to go back to real life examples, just like in Italy and in Parma. The life expectancy of monks is not higher. If anything, a lot of them die at an earlier age. This may have to do to other factors.

Starting point is 01:30:25 I mean, living in high altitude in the Himalek. layers may not be the healthiest thing. But the meditation by itself does not guarantee that you've become a centenarian. That's interesting. I think of it though is like because our daily lives are so stressful, we need to figure out some way to mitigate that, whether it's meditation or reading or the community time, like all these things we've talked about. But like to not have something to deal with the fact that modern life is really stressful is problematic. Yeah. And so once you, you recognize it and you realize the health implications of this allostatic load. I think that gives you motivation to, you know, to, and both the regular average exercise

Starting point is 01:31:09 and the meditative, the contemplative practices. And I would include everything, even the short periods of abdominal breathing. I would count into this. Or like dinner with your friends. Dinner with your friends. Yeah. Like to back to what we talked about at the beginning. Like that is an important health practice and we need to be talking about it as such. And with that, I will send you off into your airport security lines and preheated ovens. What I would love for you to do right now is to write down one tip that you just heard and just experiment with using it throughout the week. Just one tip. I promise it'll be worth it when you find yourself able to relax and enjoy this time of year a little bit more.

Starting point is 01:31:51 This podcast exists to help you create your happiest, healthiest life using science-back tips and tricks that actually work. If that sounds like your kind of thing, I would love if you hit that follow or subscribe button. New episodes drop every Monday and Wednesdays are short solos where we'll get into exactly how and where to use the tips that you learn on this podcast in your everyday life and I'll share my personal stories of actually applying them. And then Wednesdays, I sit down with some of the world's leading experts, the world's top scientists and doctors to unpack the science behind living well. You can find all of the my favorite partner codes from research back supplements that actually work to the skincare that I

Starting point is 01:32:29 swear by to the workouts that I do every single day at Liz Moody.com slash codes. Supporting our partners keeps the show free for you and it helps you save money on products that I truly love and use myself. I love you guys. Enjoy your feast. Try to savor your time with your loved ones as best as you can. I really, really hope that these tips and tricks that we shared in this episode help. And I will see you on the next episode of the Liz Moody podcast. Oh, just one more thing. It's the legal language. This podcast is presented solely for educational and entertainment purposes. It is not intended as a substitute for the advice of a physician, a psychotherapist, or any other qualified professional.

The Liz Moody Podcast - Your Stress Survival Guide: 6 Experts, One Powerful Playbook

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