June 24, 2024 • 9 mins
Dan Pronk part one: Author and speaker who tried and failed to be a professional triathlete, so studied medicine on an army scholarship, passed selection for the SAS and served on over 100 combat missions in Afghanistan. He talks to Jamie Mackay about what dairy farming has in common with being in the military.
Dan Pronk part two: The key note speaker at SIDE talks to Jamie Mackay about the problems with alcohol when it comes to stress; how cell phones may be interrupting your sleep, and why being grateful can help build resilience.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Well, our first keynote speaker at the side conference this
morning was an absolute cracker, doctor Dan Pronk. He talked,
amongst other things, about stress and here's a bloke who
knows a weave it about stress because he did four
tours of Afghanistan or the Australian sas Stan. You're a
public speaker now, a media celebrity. Tell me how you
(00:20):
got into this gig after being in the sas.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Yeah, look, thank you kindly.
Speaker 3 (00:26):
It's been privileged to be outside and thanks for having
me on the show. The ultimately it boils down to
this realization that stress is stress and resilience is resilience.
And so spend a lot of time when I got
out of the Army reflecting on my time and what
kept us resilient under stress, and then over time that
evolved into that realization that this is broadly applicable. How
(00:48):
stress affects humans is pretty predictable, and how we build
and maintain resilience is the same key strategies no matter
what your stress is.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
You've had a wonderfully interesting life and we'll come back
to Afghanistan. But you had a crack at being a
professional triathlete.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
What happened.
Speaker 3 (01:03):
Just wasn't good enough, plain and simple. So I chased
that dream out of school. It was my ambition out
of school to race on the professional triathlon circuit, and
I showed a bit of promises at junior, but the
reality was I got into it, did it for about
four or five years on the Gold Coast, was training
with the best in the world, but just simply wasn't
good enough. So the harsh realization came in my early
(01:25):
twenties that that wasn't going to be a viable career, which,
with hindsight, thankfully led to medicine and the military.
Speaker 1 (01:31):
Yeah, and I'm wondering, just guessing your own you might
have competed against a couple of Kiwis. I'm just throwing
it out there.
Speaker 3 (01:38):
Yes there was a couple of pretty impressive Kiwis and
still is.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
But yeah, I did. We had a couple in a
training team.
Speaker 3 (01:44):
Yep.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
All right.
Speaker 1 (01:45):
Hey, so you tailored your talk on speech to the
dairy industry, and you made the point that dairy farming
is a high stress life. And I think any job
where you've got to get out of bed really early,
have sleep shoe, and then you have to obviously work, long,
long days as stressful.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (02:04):
Absolutely, And once again there's direct parallels there, I think
between the military and the farming community, particularly dairy farming
with regards to often socially isolated. You're out on the farm,
high pressure environment, lots of factors completely outside of your control,
such as the weather, global economics, what's going on globally
(02:25):
in the dairy industry. All of these things affect your
livelihood and there's not much you can do about them,
but it all drives this stress response, and we need
these strategies to be able to mitigate that stress and
build resilience against it. So absolutely, the farming industry, dairy farming,
hugely stressful lifestyle.
Speaker 2 (02:43):
Yeah, you talked.
Speaker 1 (02:44):
About things like mindfulness and meditation. Has the average Kalkocky
got time for that sort of stuff?
Speaker 3 (02:50):
Look, I think we all do, and that's a common excuses.
I don't have time for this. And the reality is,
when it comes to these interventions, the science tells us
as little as ten to twelve minutes done most days
of a practice like mindfulness or meditation has a huge
difference to reducing your overall chronic stress load, building resilience,
and so I challenge anyone to argue that they have
(03:14):
ten or twelve minutes a day. And if you do,
have a look at your screen time use on your
phone and have a look how many hours have gone
into that today. And that's often where you can find
your ten or twelve minutes if you're struggling.
Speaker 1 (03:24):
Yeah, are you also talked about sleep, diet, and exercise.
They can all be challenging for busy dairy farmers or
farmers or people in their own business.
Speaker 3 (03:36):
Yeah, for sure, or for yeah, anyone, You're right, sleep, diet,
and exercise, it's a no brainer. But they're very important
when it comes to managing stress, building resilience. And it's
not about doing huge things. It's not about you know,
these crash diets or running marathons or sleeping ten hours
a night. It's small things done regularly to just make
sure you're looking after yourself from a diet and exercise perspective.
(03:58):
And then, once again, small things done well regularly to
get better length and quality of sleep is what makes
a huge difference over time.
Speaker 1 (04:05):
Welcome back to the side conference, Part two of my
discussion with this morning's keynote speaker, doctor Dan Pronk. We
talked about a sleep, diet and exercise. We talked about
cell phones, blue screens at night. You talked about alcohol.
Eighty one percent of dairy farmers are described as being
problematic drinkers. I'm amazed at that number is so high.
Speaker 3 (04:28):
Look, that was one study that I came across the Yeah,
but it just highlights this tendency for certain cultures and
military was no different to lean on alcohol as a
coping strategy. And we know that alcohol does reduce anxiety,
it does help us calm a racing mind, it can
help us get to sleep, and it's quite socially acceptable
(04:51):
in Australia New Zealand cultures to drink and say I
think it seems obvious that alcohol would be a hallmark
a stressful existence.
Speaker 1 (05:00):
Screens you talked about those. It was interesting a dairy
farmer came up to you afterwards to ask you a
question about it. He said, as what's watching or doing
social media on a phone late at night? She gets
to sleep and then wakes up at two o'clock in
the morning and can't get to sleep again.
Speaker 2 (05:14):
Yeah, not surprised there at all.
Speaker 3 (05:16):
The couple of things with cell phone used before bed
one is what's called blue light. So any of us screens, computers, TVs,
tablet's phones pump this blue light through our eyes and
it affects our brain by reducing the release of a
hormone called melatonin, which is normally released under low light conditions.
It helps us feel sleep. You get to sleep, get
good quality sleep. So if you're pumping blue light into
(05:39):
your eyes by staring at your phone or screens in
the hours before bed, it stops that melotone and release
affects you sleep. But the other thing is particularly social media,
is really stimulates your brain. So the social media algorithms
very deliberately designed to stimulate your brain and to cause
the release of different chemicals in your brain to opamine, glue,
to mate that ramp your brain. So the blue light
(06:01):
exposure and the stimulus of social media before bed is
a recipe for bad sleep.
Speaker 1 (06:07):
How important is gratitude being grateful for things in your life?
This was another major thing that you pointed.
Speaker 3 (06:13):
Out, hugely important, And the reality is we're not as
humans wired to be grateful, where we suffer from a
thing called negativity bias. We overvalue the negative, we scan
for threat and this has kept us alive throughout human
evolution focusing on the negative and anticipating bad things. And
if we deliberately choose to focus on the positives, we
(06:34):
can switch off some of that stress response. So it
sounds odd, but we need to force ourselves to focus
on the good in your life and have a gratitude practice,
just a simple act of maybe writing down two or
three things you were grateful for that day, if you
have dinner at a dinner table, going around the.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
Table, what were you're grateful for?
Speaker 3 (06:51):
But what this does is very powerful when it comes
to the chemicals in your brain. It reduces the stress
chemicals but increases some of the feel good mood regulating
chemicals like serotonin. So a simple gratitude practice is very
important to regulate stress and build resilience.
Speaker 1 (07:06):
You showed us some fairly stirring footage I guess of
invading compounds in Afghanistan, and you talked about a simple
breathing exercise before you were about to go into battle,
full battle, not knowing whether you'd come out the other end.
And I jokingly said to you afterwards, does it work
for golf? Does the sixteen second breathing exercise work in
(07:27):
every field?
Speaker 2 (07:29):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (07:29):
Absolutely, so that pattern of breathing is often called box breathing.
So deep breath in for four seconds, hold your breath
for four seconds, breathe out for four hold your breath
for four So that sixteen second cycle of box breathing
works by switching off your body's acute stress response. So
it reduces the amount of adrenaline being released in a
high stress scenario where it winds you back down almost instantly.
Speaker 2 (07:52):
And so we used to use it in the military.
Speaker 3 (07:54):
Certainly surgeons use it, professional athletes use it. It'll absolutely
work on the golf course. Is a great strategy for
the parents out there when their kids are getting a
bit rowdy and they feel themselves getting a bit stressed
to be able to calm yourself down, be a better
version of yourself, to have a more balanced interaction with
your kids.
Speaker 2 (08:11):
But yeah, it's applicable across the board.
Speaker 1 (08:13):
I got one more question for it. It relates to these
tourer duties in Afghanistan. How do you bury the demons
of losing comrades and mates over there, Because, as I said,
some of the footage you showed us was pretty confronting today.
Speaker 2 (08:25):
Look, it's a great question and everyone's different.
Speaker 3 (08:28):
It's certainly, and I think it's not about burying those
demons so much as accepting and learning to live with
those demons, looking for the silver lining to some of
the traumas. So this concept called post traumatic growth, which
is not about kind of ignoring the fact that these
bad things happened, but looking at where are the positives
(08:48):
in here, because once again they can be overlooked and
overshadowed by the negatives. So I think it's a combination
of doing a lot of deep personal reflection, but equally
being supported by good peace for me around me, with
my wife, my family, mental health professionals, so tapping into
external sources of support as well as being kind to
(09:09):
yourself and taking the time making the effort to process
these events and try and make sense of them.
Speaker 1 (09:15):
Well, doctor Dan Pronk was a wonderful presentation this morning.
Free plug time. You've just got a new book out.
It's called The Resilience Shield available in New Zealand.
Speaker 2 (09:23):
Yeah, look it is.
Speaker 3 (09:24):
So Resilient Shield is available through Australia New Zealand book
retailers or online through bookshops like Amazon and the like.
And so yep, Resilient Shield was what I touched on today.
And then there's the Combat Doctor. Well, I've got this
my free plug time. Combat Doctor is another book that
I've put out there, which just is my autobiography of
getting into the military, into special operations, and out the
(09:46):
other side.
Speaker 1 (09:47):
That is a great story. That is doctor Dan Pronk,
keynote speaker here on morning one of the South Island
Dairy event at Lincoln University.
Well, our first keynote speaker at the side conference this
morning was an absolute cracker, doctor Dan Pronk. He talked,
amongst other things, about stress and here's a bloke who
knows a weave it about stress because he did four
tours of Afghanistan or the Australian sas Stan. You're a
public speaker now, a media celebrity. Tell me how you
(00:20):
got into this gig after being in the sas.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Yeah, look, thank you kindly.
Speaker 3 (00:26):
It's been privileged to be outside and thanks for having
me on the show. The ultimately it boils down to
this realization that stress is stress and resilience is resilience.
And so spend a lot of time when I got
out of the Army reflecting on my time and what
kept us resilient under stress, and then over time that
evolved into that realization that this is broadly applicable. How
(00:48):
stress affects humans is pretty predictable, and how we build
and maintain resilience is the same key strategies no matter
what your stress is.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
You've had a wonderfully interesting life and we'll come back
to Afghanistan. But you had a crack at being a
professional triathlete.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
What happened.
Speaker 3 (01:03):
Just wasn't good enough, plain and simple. So I chased
that dream out of school. It was my ambition out
of school to race on the professional triathlon circuit, and
I showed a bit of promises at junior, but the
reality was I got into it, did it for about
four or five years on the Gold Coast, was training
with the best in the world, but just simply wasn't
good enough. So the harsh realization came in my early
(01:25):
twenties that that wasn't going to be a viable career, which,
with hindsight, thankfully led to medicine and the military.
Speaker 1 (01:31):
Yeah, and I'm wondering, just guessing your own you might
have competed against a couple of Kiwis. I'm just throwing
it out there.
Speaker 3 (01:38):
Yes there was a couple of pretty impressive Kiwis and
still is.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
But yeah, I did. We had a couple in a
training team.
Speaker 3 (01:44):
Yep.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
All right.
Speaker 1 (01:45):
Hey, so you tailored your talk on speech to the
dairy industry, and you made the point that dairy farming
is a high stress life. And I think any job
where you've got to get out of bed really early,
have sleep shoe, and then you have to obviously work, long,
long days as stressful.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (02:04):
Absolutely, And once again there's direct parallels there, I think
between the military and the farming community, particularly dairy farming
with regards to often socially isolated. You're out on the farm,
high pressure environment, lots of factors completely outside of your control,
such as the weather, global economics, what's going on globally
(02:25):
in the dairy industry. All of these things affect your
livelihood and there's not much you can do about them,
but it all drives this stress response, and we need
these strategies to be able to mitigate that stress and
build resilience against it. So absolutely, the farming industry, dairy farming,
hugely stressful lifestyle.
Speaker 2 (02:43):
Yeah, you talked.
Speaker 1 (02:44):
About things like mindfulness and meditation. Has the average Kalkocky
got time for that sort of stuff?
Speaker 3 (02:50):
Look, I think we all do, and that's a common excuses.
I don't have time for this. And the reality is,
when it comes to these interventions, the science tells us
as little as ten to twelve minutes done most days
of a practice like mindfulness or meditation has a huge
difference to reducing your overall chronic stress load, building resilience,
and so I challenge anyone to argue that they have
(03:14):
ten or twelve minutes a day. And if you do,
have a look at your screen time use on your
phone and have a look how many hours have gone
into that today. And that's often where you can find
your ten or twelve minutes if you're struggling.
Speaker 1 (03:24):
Yeah, are you also talked about sleep, diet, and exercise.
They can all be challenging for busy dairy farmers or
farmers or people in their own business.
Speaker 3 (03:36):
Yeah, for sure, or for yeah, anyone, You're right, sleep, diet,
and exercise, it's a no brainer. But they're very important
when it comes to managing stress, building resilience. And it's
not about doing huge things. It's not about you know,
these crash diets or running marathons or sleeping ten hours
a night. It's small things done regularly to just make
sure you're looking after yourself from a diet and exercise perspective.
(03:58):
And then, once again, small things done well regularly to
get better length and quality of sleep is what makes
a huge difference over time.
Speaker 1 (04:05):
Welcome back to the side conference, Part two of my
discussion with this morning's keynote speaker, doctor Dan Pronk. We
talked about a sleep, diet and exercise. We talked about
cell phones, blue screens at night. You talked about alcohol.
Eighty one percent of dairy farmers are described as being
problematic drinkers. I'm amazed at that number is so high.
Speaker 3 (04:28):
Look, that was one study that I came across the Yeah,
but it just highlights this tendency for certain cultures and
military was no different to lean on alcohol as a
coping strategy. And we know that alcohol does reduce anxiety,
it does help us calm a racing mind, it can
help us get to sleep, and it's quite socially acceptable
(04:51):
in Australia New Zealand cultures to drink and say I
think it seems obvious that alcohol would be a hallmark
a stressful existence.
Speaker 1 (05:00):
Screens you talked about those. It was interesting a dairy
farmer came up to you afterwards to ask you a
question about it. He said, as what's watching or doing
social media on a phone late at night? She gets
to sleep and then wakes up at two o'clock in
the morning and can't get to sleep again.
Speaker 2 (05:14):
Yeah, not surprised there at all.
Speaker 3 (05:16):
The couple of things with cell phone used before bed
one is what's called blue light. So any of us screens, computers, TVs,
tablet's phones pump this blue light through our eyes and
it affects our brain by reducing the release of a
hormone called melatonin, which is normally released under low light conditions.
It helps us feel sleep. You get to sleep, get
good quality sleep. So if you're pumping blue light into
(05:39):
your eyes by staring at your phone or screens in
the hours before bed, it stops that melotone and release
affects you sleep. But the other thing is particularly social media,
is really stimulates your brain. So the social media algorithms
very deliberately designed to stimulate your brain and to cause
the release of different chemicals in your brain to opamine, glue,
to mate that ramp your brain. So the blue light
(06:01):
exposure and the stimulus of social media before bed is
a recipe for bad sleep.
Speaker 1 (06:07):
How important is gratitude being grateful for things in your life?
This was another major thing that you pointed.
Speaker 3 (06:13):
Out, hugely important, And the reality is we're not as
humans wired to be grateful, where we suffer from a
thing called negativity bias. We overvalue the negative, we scan
for threat and this has kept us alive throughout human
evolution focusing on the negative and anticipating bad things. And
if we deliberately choose to focus on the positives, we
(06:34):
can switch off some of that stress response. So it
sounds odd, but we need to force ourselves to focus
on the good in your life and have a gratitude practice,
just a simple act of maybe writing down two or
three things you were grateful for that day, if you
have dinner at a dinner table, going around the.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
Table, what were you're grateful for?
Speaker 3 (06:51):
But what this does is very powerful when it comes
to the chemicals in your brain. It reduces the stress
chemicals but increases some of the feel good mood regulating
chemicals like serotonin. So a simple gratitude practice is very
important to regulate stress and build resilience.
Speaker 1 (07:06):
You showed us some fairly stirring footage I guess of
invading compounds in Afghanistan, and you talked about a simple
breathing exercise before you were about to go into battle,
full battle, not knowing whether you'd come out the other end.
And I jokingly said to you afterwards, does it work
for golf? Does the sixteen second breathing exercise work in
(07:27):
every field?
Speaker 2 (07:29):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (07:29):
Absolutely, so that pattern of breathing is often called box breathing.
So deep breath in for four seconds, hold your breath
for four seconds, breathe out for four hold your breath
for four So that sixteen second cycle of box breathing
works by switching off your body's acute stress response. So
it reduces the amount of adrenaline being released in a
high stress scenario where it winds you back down almost instantly.
Speaker 2 (07:52):
And so we used to use it in the military.
Speaker 3 (07:54):
Certainly surgeons use it, professional athletes use it. It'll absolutely
work on the golf course. Is a great strategy for
the parents out there when their kids are getting a
bit rowdy and they feel themselves getting a bit stressed
to be able to calm yourself down, be a better
version of yourself, to have a more balanced interaction with
your kids.
Speaker 2 (08:11):
But yeah, it's applicable across the board.
Speaker 1 (08:13):
I got one more question for it. It relates to these
tourer duties in Afghanistan. How do you bury the demons
of losing comrades and mates over there, Because, as I said,
some of the footage you showed us was pretty confronting today.
Speaker 2 (08:25):
Look, it's a great question and everyone's different.
Speaker 3 (08:28):
It's certainly, and I think it's not about burying those
demons so much as accepting and learning to live with
those demons, looking for the silver lining to some of
the traumas. So this concept called post traumatic growth, which
is not about kind of ignoring the fact that these
bad things happened, but looking at where are the positives
(08:48):
in here, because once again they can be overlooked and
overshadowed by the negatives. So I think it's a combination
of doing a lot of deep personal reflection, but equally
being supported by good peace for me around me, with
my wife, my family, mental health professionals, so tapping into
external sources of support as well as being kind to
(09:09):
yourself and taking the time making the effort to process
these events and try and make sense of them.
Speaker 1 (09:15):
Well, doctor Dan Pronk was a wonderful presentation this morning.
Free plug time. You've just got a new book out.
It's called The Resilience Shield available in New Zealand.
Speaker 2 (09:23):
Yeah, look it is.
Speaker 3 (09:24):
So Resilient Shield is available through Australia New Zealand book
retailers or online through bookshops like Amazon and the like.
And so yep, Resilient Shield was what I touched on today.
And then there's the Combat Doctor. Well, I've got this
my free plug time. Combat Doctor is another book that
I've put out there, which just is my autobiography of
getting into the military, into special operations, and out the
(09:46):
other side.
Speaker 1 (09:47):
That is a great story. That is doctor Dan Pronk,
keynote speaker here on morning one of the South Island
Dairy event at Lincoln University.
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