Andrew Huberman - Elissa Epel

1) Dr. Elissa Epel, a stress scientist who discusses the different types of stress, including acute and chronic stress, and the importance of managing our response to stressors, rather than the stressors themselves. She notes that our thoughts are a major source of stress, and presents three techniques to manage overthinking and rumination: gaining awareness of our thought patterns, rationalizing or understanding the basis of the stress, and diverting our thinking to a different topic.

2) Dr. Epel suggests various techniques for dealing with stress, including awareness, changing thought processes, using physical strategies to work stress out of the body, and changing the environment. Populating a safe space with comforting items such as pets, pictures, smells, and music can trigger a sense of safety within the body and help release accumulated tension.

3) Elissa discusses the different forms of stress and how they affect the body. Stress can be both mental and physical, and the body's response to stress can be measured by the level of vigilance of the nervous system. Stress mobilizes energy in the body, which can be helpful in acute situations, but chronic stress can lead to exhaustion. Breathing techniques can be an effective way to reduce stress in the body, as breathing is one of the few brain functions that can be consciously controlled.

4) Elissa discusses the different strategies people can use to manage chronic stress, which can lead to cell aging. She notes that acceptance, problem-solving and radical acceptance are some of the strategies people can apply to live with stressful situations better. The conversation steers towards optimal versus accelerated aging, and the mechanisms behind why the latter occurs when there's no stress. Dr. Epel cites a study involving retired elderly citizens that found that challenging oneself rather than avoiding stress can help enhance brain function and stimulate growth of the hippocampus.

5) Elissa discusses studies conducted by Rusty Gage at the Salk Institute where terminally ill patients had their bodies injected with a dye to label new neurons, and after their deaths, it was discovered that even in terminally ill and older individuals, new neurons were still being generated, especially in the context of learning and acquiring new information.

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6) Elissa talks about the two types of stress response: threatened and challenge response. The threatened response is an exaggerated response to stress that affects our biological and recovery processes, whereas the challenge response is an activated and excited response. She mentions lots of studies that tilt people towards the challenge response, and we can promote more stress resilience by building the muscle of the challenge response. Trauma sensitizes our emotional stress response, but we can use statements such as self-compassion and distancing to allow us to recover quickly.

7) By viewing the stress response as empowering, reframing it positively, people can perform better in stressful situations. Elissa discusses the relationship between stress, eating habits, metabolism, and body weight. She explains that our body's stress response shuts down digestion and drives cravings, particularly for high-fat, high-sugar, and high-salt foods. This leads to repeated weight gain,particularly around the abdominal area, which is associated with metabolic syndrome. People with obesity tend to develop compulsive eating tendencies and have a different reward response during stress, with the more insulin-resistant individuals showing more activity in their reward centers.

8) Elissa discusses ways to intervene in one's thoughts and behavior to combat binge eating or using food to comfort oral leviate stress. She recommends training oneself in mindful awareness of separating emotions from hunger, labeling feelings and hunger on a scale from one to ten. She also suggests riding out the craving urges, taking up activities like push-ups, or taking walks that reduce stress levels, changing environments where one can be exposed to unhealthy food, and creating safe environments both at home and in the workplace where sugary drinks are yet to be sold.

9) Dr. Huberman discusses his beverage consumption with Dr. Elissa Epel. Dr. Epel shares that most of her non-water beverage consumption is coffee, sometimes mixed with ketones, and yerba mate tea. Whileshe admits to drinking the occasional diet soda, typically only once a month, she prefers the taste of non-sugary drinks. The two discuss the dangers of sugary drinks and how they contribute to addictive behavior. While the data on sugary drinks are not as conclusive as those on comfort food and binge eating, Dr. Epel asserts that consuming sugary drinks can be detrimental to one's health since liquid sugar, much like cocaine or crack, goes to the brain immediately and can become addictive.

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10) Elissa discusses a study she conducted on pregnant women and stress management. The study aimed to help expectant mothers regulate excessive weight gain during pregnancy by using mindfulness and stress-reduction methods. While the study didn't stop excess weight gain, the stress-reduction training was impactful for the women. Those in the mindfulness group had twice as much insulin sensitivity and half the number of women had impaired glucose tolerance compared to the control group. Babies in the mindfulness group also had less obesity and fewer illnesses in their first year of life.

11) Elissa suggests that craving may be a form of extra reception where our interoception is locked to external stimuli, and this can be broken by redirecting attention towards interoception. She also discusses the relationship between stress and food, and the long-term effects of stress interventions such as meditation. While there haven't been many long-term studies of stressinterventions, she notes that meditation studies have found evidence of slower biological aging, dampened inflammatory pathways, and boosts in telomerase activity, which could lead to a slower rate of aging if continued.

12) Elissa describes a study in which a group of participants were split into two groups, one of which learned meditation while the other acted as a control group that did not meditate. In the short run,both groups felt great after a week of eating an anti-inflammatory diet and participating in health talks. However, the group that learned meditation still had lower levels of depression 10 months later, especially those with early adversity. Meditation was found to help people calm their bodies and get to know their minds, and short bouts of daily meditation can help reduce stress arousal.

13) Elissa discusses the concept of integration after a psychedelic journey and how the actual rewiring of the brain takes place in the months following the experience, much like meditation. She also describes a study where mitochondrial health was measured in young mothers who were either caregivers of neurotypical children or children with autism. The study found that care givers had significantly lower mitochondrial activity, which correlated with lower positive emotions.

14) Elissa discusses the concept of radical acceptanceas a means of dealing with chronic stress that arises from situations beyond our control. She explains that by recognizing the situations we cannot change and accepting them for what theyare, we can free ourselves from the mental and physical burden of chronic stress

15) Dr. Epel also explains how the limbic system engages fight-or-flight responses, has no sense of time and can distort our perceptions of it, leading to the repetition compulsion. This distortion effect can lead people to continually place themselves in slightly to severely traumatic circumstances, despite knowing that the outcome will not change.

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16) According to Dr. Epel, both approaches have their benefits, and it is important to have both in one's toolkit. However, she emphasizes the importance of recognizing that stress mitigation is work that requires deliberate effort, and that it is not always possible or productive to muscle through stressful situations. She suggests thinking of life as a series of waves, some of which are tidal waves that cannot be fought. Instead, we need to go with the tide, but we can still have some control over our direction between the waves.

17) Elissa discusses her research study funded by theJohn W Brick Foundation, which compares low arousal relaxation methods, mindfulness slow breathing, positive stress exercise, and the Wim Hof method.The study found that regardless of whether individuals were practicing high arousal, low arousal, or deep relaxation methods, they had a significant reduction in stress, anxiety, and depression after three weeks of practice. The Wim Hof Method was found to create selective positive effects, and while they are still preparing the results, they found that the interventions and pathways impact the nervous system and brain in different ways.