What You Don't Know About Stress Could Kill You

What is stress's effect on the body? What are some long-term effects of stress? What are some ways to deal with stress?

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Forward Thinking. Hey there, everyone, and welcome to Forward Thinking,
the podcast that looks to the future and says, I'm
addicted to stress. That's the way that I get things
done when I'm not under pressure. That I sleep too

(00:21):
long and I hang around like a bum, and I
think I go in nowhere and that makes me nervous.
I'm John and Strickland, I'm Lauren vocal Ban, and I'm
Joe McCormick. And they are staring at me and stunned silence.
Mostly we are today talking about stress, its effects on us,
and ways to manage stress, because that ties into this

(00:42):
week's video all about stress and the future of stress management.
Really and um, it's an important deal. So I guess
first we need to kind of look at just what
is stress? What do we how do we define that,
and what does it do to us, especially in the
short term. Yeah, that's funny. Everybody knows what stress is,
but you kind of be hard pressed to define it.

(01:05):
It's kind of like consciousness, right, and one of those
one of those concepts that as you start to define it,
you realize, oh wait, it's this thing that everyone knows,
but it's hard to put into words. Really, you can
describe it physiologically. It's certain things are happening to your
body when you have a stress response. Essentially, it's it's
your body's reaction to any sort of perceived threat or

(01:25):
perceived any moment where your body feels like it needs
to prepare itself physically for something that's going to be demanding.
And unfortunately, our you know, our genetics don't really have
a button that says like, you know, this, this test
that I'm studying for isn't a tiger that is actually
going to eat my face. And so we have a
very similar response to physical stresses and mental stresses, and yeah,

(01:51):
the body doesn't have a way of differentiating the different
types of stressors that we could encounter. Now we should
be fair, Actually you do, and it's your brain and
you do have a way of telling a difference. But
the point is that things that are not actually a
big threat to you are still going to trigger some
of that response. Yeah, may of it. I probably would

(02:15):
have a much bigger stress response if Lauren suddenly pulled
out a knife and thrust it at me, then, if
you know, I would just to say suddenly forget all
the research I didn't before this and be like, oh, well,
you know the question. The question is what if what
if Lauren pulled a knife on you, and at the
same time you received an email from the head of

(02:36):
how Stuff works saying we need to talk and make
sure you clear out your desk. Those those two things
would give you quite a bit of stress early on,
even though one is is actively and physically threatening you
at this moment. By the way, Lauren with a knife
not something you want to encounter. I mean, she's I

(02:58):
don't really need knives. My elbows are sharp, like that's true,
that's true. And plus she has a cutting wit anyway.
So so let's get back to talking about what stress
is in our way of reacting to it. It really
is kind of a survival mechanism, you know, like you
were saying, Lauren, this whole being attacked by a tiger thing.
It's part of the fight or flight response. Yeah, there's
a chemical we need to talk about, the big one.

(03:20):
It's called cortisol. Yeah, there's another one called adrenaline, and
that also plays a factor obviously in the stress response.
And these are these are both hormones that are released
by our body whenever our brain starts to think, this
is a situation that needs to have uh, this particular reaction,
and in general, what this reaction does is it prepares
you for something that's about to happen right then and there.

(03:43):
So in certain situations, like a tiger, you spot a
tiger in the woods and you realize you need to
get the heck out of Dodge. I don't know why
there's a tiger and Dodge, but you've got to get
out of there. The tigers wielding a knife at the
tiger is wielding a knife and threatening your job. This
is this is the worst dresser that we can imagine. Son,
Get out of done. So yeah, you you Your body

(04:05):
starts to to react and you get you begin to
have responses like your your senses start to sharpen. You
begin to really be able to focus on certain things
while filtering out lots of other information. So when you're
under stress, you might be keenly aware of the stressor
I mean everything from your sense of sight and hearing,

(04:25):
as well as your sense of smell. These things can
all be really focused. But it also means that you
are filtering out anything that would your brain would think is, well,
that's not gonna threaten me, So we're just not going
to even pay attention to that, which is interesting. That's
why people can react to situations very quickly but not
necessarily have a lot of recollection of everything that was
going on at that moment um. It also means that

(04:48):
your muscles get ready to react. Your heart rate starts
to increase, your breathing rate starts to increase. They're trying
to oxygenate your brain and your muscles right right right,
Get you ready to move. Moving is what you need
to do. Write either either to fight or to to
run to the fight or flight. Our buddies over at stuff.
You should know this is one of their favorite phrases.

(05:09):
Anyone who had listened to that podcast, especially from the beginning,
that was like their go to phrase for early episodes
was fight or flight response. And so we're talking about
here now there are different types of stressors. Uh that
that this isn't necessarily something that's discussed at length in
scientific literature, but there's the concept of distress versus you stress.

(05:32):
So you stress is this this is considered to be
uh useful and uh that it's something that you are
capable of handling. It can get you excited about something,
it can it can really get you focused on something.
So let's say that our boss comes in and says, hey, guys,
we've got this opportunity for a brand new show and
we want you to be a part of it. Assuming

(05:53):
that that's something that we would like to do. Then
we wind experience. You stress, We get excited about it.
Our body starts to respond, but it's not a negative experience,
and that's you stress with an EU, and then distress
would be the more negative type, something like the boss
coming and says, we gotta you know, we gotta talk numbers,
and they're just not where we want them to be.

(06:14):
Then we start, you know, your stomach sinks, you know
exactly or distress. Um, yeah, so we start, you start
to feel uh, negative impact there. So stressors do not
automatically fall into you stress or distress. They are completely
dependent upon not only the individual. So something that I

(06:35):
find exciting, Joe might discover is not something he wants
to do and it actually fills him with distress. For example. Uh,
and maybe all three of us feel the same way
about this. Who here, and do you guys enjoy roller coasters. Sure, yeah,
not really. So you just don't care though, or do
you actively not like being on a roller coaster? You know,

(06:56):
I wouldn't freak out like I'd get on one, but
it's just not lot of fun, gotcha? Got you? All? Right? Well,
well let's assume that we have a fourth person in
here who just does not They are terrified of roller coasters.
For them, the idea of getting in line to go
on a roller coaster is just it's it's bad. Yeah,
it's bad. They're experiencing negative levels of stress. Lauren and

(07:17):
I we might love roller coaster, so we're all excited
and pumped up and ready to go, and and it's
you know, it's again different for us, and it may
be different for an individual depending upon the context. There
might be a roller coaster that you lead me up
to and I take one look at and I think
this thing should have been condemned thirty years ago, and
I might be filled with distress. Not you stress in

(07:38):
that situation. So it's not something that we can easily
say all of this example is you stress, and all
of this is distress. So all the things we've been
talking about so far have been examples of what we
might say is acute stress, like a specific stressor causes
you to have a reaction in that moment, and and
it's related to a specific period of time. But what

(08:01):
if you were somebody who really hated roller hosters and
your whole life is kind of like you're near the
back of a line waiting for roller coasts. So essentially
what you're talking about is is chronic stress the idea
of encountering stress on a regular basis, perhaps even a
daily basis. So for example, people who absolutely despise their jobs.

(08:23):
You know, I know that I've had jobs in the
past where I just every day I would wake up,
I would have to motivate myself to go to work
because I did not like what I did. I might
like the people I worked with, but I didn't like
the work I was doing. Uh, that of course does
not apply. Right now, I got a dream job that
I'm very happy about, but back in the day, not

(08:44):
so much. And um, and that can be something that
is a real uh difficult time for for a person
to to deal with. I mean, you're encountering this level
of stress, this this feeling of anxiety that you experien
arians whenever stress is hitting you, but it's a prolonged experience.
It's a chronic experience. This is a problem, and it's

(09:07):
a problem right now. It's been a problem forever. But
it's one of those things we're really aware of. It's
more than just the fact that it's unpleasant, though it's
apparently really bad for your health. Well, yeah, I mean,
let's let's look at some of the common reactions people
have when they are under stress. Here, there's a couple
of different ways you can look at their three big
categories that people tend to fall into when they're reacting

(09:31):
to negative levels of stress, particularly over more than just
you know, a momentary encounter. Uh. That is to get
really keyed up and overly emotional and irritable and angry.
I call that turning into hot spur from King Henry
the fourth part one. These are all gonna have Shakespearean references.

(09:52):
Then there's uh, you get withdrawn into yes, withdrawn depressed.
You get have low energy or you have very little
expression of emotion. I call that Antonio from Merchant of Venice. Okay,
but then you have frozen where you are unable to
act or respond. You are agitated, but you are essentially

(10:13):
emotionally paralyzed. Obviously Hamlet, right, so I tell you, I
mean Shakespeare he was really good at somewhere. No, no,
the Shakespearean Well, I mean the reactions, the categories I
took from from research, but the EXPERI characters, No, that
was me. Well, I mean he was, he was very

(10:34):
good at the human experience and expressing that. Right, So
I mean kudos to him anyway. Other problems that are
associated with stress include things like you can have problems
with memory, so you can have problems forming and retaining
memories while you're undergoing stress over a prolonged period. Concentration
is another issue, so while you might have a really

(10:57):
sharp focus in the short over a longer period chronic
stress can hurt your concentration. You can have issues with
judgment where you start making bad decisions because you're feeling
so much pressure that you just want to relieve it,
so you're not really considering what the consequences of your actions. Maybe. Uh,
you can start suffering physical aches and pains from muscle

(11:20):
tension and other issues of these hormones can really start
to wreak havoc, especially like cortisol. If you have heightened
cortisol production over a whild that can actually damage your muscles.
It can cause to an even bone loss if you
have heightened levels over a prolonged period of time. Uh. Nausea.
I mean there's other gastro intestinal issues such as diarrhea.

(11:44):
Pleasant experience. Anyone who's ever had like that stressful feeling
where they're just like, I have got to find a
rest room and just hide for the next two hours. Uh.
Loss of sex drive often accompanied when you have diarrhea.
I would assume, Uh, there changes in eating habits, so
you might start to over eat or you might stop eating. Uh,

(12:08):
changes in sleeping habits where you are having insomnia you
have trouble getting sleep. Then it can lead to behavioral
issues like procrastination where you just you know, even though
you're feeling more and more stress about the fact that
you need to do more stuff, it actually causes you
to not act and you end up making it worse

(12:29):
over time. Uh. You can develop a reliance on drugs
to relieve the symptoms, whether that's a prescription, which you know,
some people the stress they experience, medication maybe the best
approach for them to manage their stress. But there's a
lot of self medicating that goes out out there, and
not just with prescription drugs, but with things like recreational

(12:51):
drugs or alcohol or tobacco or even coffee. Yeah, this
kind of stuff where you're you're relying heavily on some
other substance to help relieve the tension and stress. That's
your experience. And then they're just developing nervous habits, stuff
that like biting your nails, things that uh, you know,
it's kind of these these compulsions that you can develop

(13:14):
as a result of enduring stress over a long time.
And a lot of these I'll tie back into. I mean,
when you're starting to talk about um sleep loss and
uh and and fatigue and things like that, that's going
to start affecting everything else in your life. Um, it's
a it's going to affect your um, your immune system.
And and when you're sick, that's another stressor. I mean,

(13:34):
because you know you can't you can't function, and yeah, yeah,
you can have auto you can develop autoimmune diseases. You
can develop you can well if you're if you have
an overeating problem that can lead to obesity. You can
suffer from depression, you can have uh, you can even
develop heart disease because of this, um. And you know,
things like skin conditions, you can you can either end

(13:56):
up well really you can exacerbate existing skin conditions like exima.
So the stresses, I mean, it's a really powerful thing.
The really terrifying one for me, if I can share
this one, is that um uh, they've they've found that
stress is linked to psychoses and and triggering things like
schizophrenia that that don't on set until your your early adulthood.

(14:20):
That if if you know, given you know, if you
take two identical twins and and one developed schizophrenia, the
other one only has a chance of developing it even
though they're genetically identical, because because the environment and the
stressors in your life are so important to uh, to
the development of the disease. Yeah. So, so, I mean,

(14:40):
clearly stresses is pretty rough on on people. And and
it may be rough not just on the person who's
experiencing the stress, but perhaps even to their offspring. Right. Yeah,
there's this concept now known as epigenetic inheritance. Um and
that's kind of a mouthful, but it means literally on

(15:01):
top of the genes genetics. Yeah, um, And so to
explain epigenetics. Basically, it's the concept that without changing your
d N A, without changing the code that makes up
your body, um, environmental factors can make changes in the

(15:21):
way that code is expressed right right, because your your
RNA is is continually um picking what genes are turned
on and turned off based on a lot of different stuff.
And this is a completely normal process, not just due
to stress, but right. So, so you can have you've
got DNA and all your cells and that's the building

(15:42):
blocks for making you so but certain genes in there
can be turned on, turned off, can be told to
express themselves into different proteins at different points in your
life and um, you know, due to uh, you know
whatever whatever needs doing. Huh. And so one of these
things that can cause epigenetic changes is stress, um and
that that can change the way your DNA is manifest.

(16:04):
But also what some people are saying now is that
might not be just for you, that those epigenetic changes
might be able to pass on through say a sperm cell,
to your offspring or even your grandchildren. Uh. This isn't
proven yet, by the way, but there's a lot of
research to indicate this might be the case. Right, And

(16:26):
What's what's going on here is a process called methylation
inside your genes and that is UM. These these methyl
groups UM will mark a particular gene to to just
turn it off to just be like you sit down
and and uh and there's you get a time out
and in some cases of permanent time out and UM

(16:47):
and it was you know that There's been an argument
for a really long time about whether or not UM
those markers can be passed on to a sperm and
egg cell at all UM and and furthermore, you know,
whether they would be wiped out during the fertilization process
and UM. And there is currently some evidence UM study

(17:09):
out of yeah, the University of Cambridge that was published
in late that showed that UM a tiny number of
genes and UM mass germ cells the that's the sperm
and the egg uh survived into the next generation like
like two thirty three out of some thousand, which sounds
really tiny, but it's still it's still there. I mean yeah, interesting. Yeah,

(17:33):
And so this is interesting because it ties into older
concepts like Lamarckian is um if you'll ever heard of this.
Lamarckian is um was the idea that uh that that
you could take a characteristic developed or learned by the adult,
and that adult could pass it on to their children
just by birth. Um, that was before we understood genetics,

(17:57):
and now we know that that's essentially not true. Or
you know the concept that if um, you know, if
you work out and you have a really big bicep,
that your child is not necessarily going to have a
really big right, or that you are a capable king
of England that your child. No, seriously, the entire monarchy
system is based upon this concept. Well, that could be

(18:18):
based on the idea well, I mean, excluding divine right
and stuff like that. That was also you could argue
that there was some kind of genetic idea there that
they didn't know about genetics. No, but I think I
think the same sort of armchair born although I guess
it was an armchair approach. It was more of a
throne approach a time. But yeah, the idea that learned
or or adapted characteristics could be passed on, that's that's

(18:40):
not so much true through the d n A. You're
not altering your genome by doing that, but you can
make these epigenetic changes and it's very possible, and lots
of experts think that you can pass them on and
maybe not, maybe not permanently. The studies that I've seen,
um that have shown that traits are passed down to
at least one or two generations, um in mice. These

(19:02):
are not human studies, um are I have shown that
that the results peter out after about two generations. I
haven't seen anything that has gone on longer than that. Yeah,
but I explains the millennials. A lot of these are
these tests they've done on mice are related to stress,
right right, Yeah, Yeah, that's that that that's the the

(19:22):
main thingy, the science thingy tie in. Yeah, the main variable, yes,
thank you. Yeah. So like that, they'll expose say, male
mice to u nic chronic stress something you know, preventing
them from from being in a in a social group
or something like that, thrending the mouse jobs. Yeah, and

(19:42):
then they have those mice mate with females, and sure
enough the offspring they produce show increased levels of stress
and difficulty difficulty dealing with stress responses. Yeah, so let's
let's talk now. I'm starting to get stressed out by
this whole conversation. Really, we might need to start talking
about ways of managing stress in the way to relieve stress.

(20:05):
And uh, you know, there's been a lot of work
that's been done in this some of it has been
you know, um, not necessarily held up against scientific rigor,
although several approaches have. But it's there are ways to
manage stress without necessarily going down the route of medication,
although again that might be appropriate depending upon the circumstances

(20:26):
of the individual. Um, you know, there are some things
that are you know, really body chemistry issues that no
amount of deep breathing techniques are necessarily going to address. Well,
we should certainly say that it's not all environmental. Some
people are just prone distressed, right, genetically predisposed, pre predisposed

(20:46):
predisposed distress. And uh, and those people are very likely
the people who are need to seek a medical response,
right right, So it's or at least a combination of therapies. Right, Well,
we don't we just don't want to suggest that there's
any one way that you know, all you have to
do is just take a little moment for yourself and
you'll be fine. It's more complicated in that, although for

(21:07):
for many people doing just that can help a great deal. So, um,
first I wanted to mention something along the lines of
along the less scientific approach. Uh so, so clearly everything
from stress management. I mean, this is a big deal.
We all have stress in our lives, and we're perhaps
more aware of that now than we've ever been before.

(21:29):
And uh and you know, it's an unpleasant experience, and
a lot of our time and effort tends to be
dedicated towards creating as pleasant an experience as we can
possibly manage at any given time. If you're not if
you're not constantly worried about survival, if that rory has
taken away from you, then comfort becomes one of your

(21:50):
big drivers for a lot of us. Anyway, some people
I guess like discomfort, but I'm not one of those.
I'm one of the people who I want my life
to be as comfortable as possible. So that means that
there's been a lot of time, effort, and money spent
and on finding ways to make stress kind of go away.

(22:10):
In some cases, it's more like a marketing thing where
someone's trying to sell some goofy device or treatment that magnets. Yeah, magnets,
that's a good one. They won't don't listen to anybody
who tells you that magnets are going to reduce your stress. Now,
here's the here's the thing, is that that because stress
because of stress in the way stress uh works on

(22:34):
our bodies, in the way that our our counter stress
reactions work. Relaxation essentially, the way relaxation works is if
you find something that relaxes you technically, that's helpful. That's
what's helping you manage stress. It doesn't you know whether
or not you it's because you believe that it has
some sort of mystical or spiritual property to it doesn't

(22:55):
necessarily matter. The plassybo effect in um in mental health
studies is I mean, you know, again, if if you're
not working with an intrinsic chemical imbalance, which which is
affecting you in a very specific way, it can absolutely
work out for you. Yeah. Well, even if it is
affecting you. Interesting, that's you know what that would be

(23:17):
in a very interesting podcast. Because the placebo effect is
so complex, it goes well beyond just the whole mind
over matter thing. Placebo effect can actually affect people like
placebo effet can affect animals because they their behavior can
change based upon the behavior of the people who are
administering the placebo to the animal. Right, It's it's pretty

(23:38):
crazy stuff. Anyway, getting back to this, one of the
things I was looking at was while the concept of
electro diagnostic tools, these this is a whole range of
wou that's what we usually call it. It's it's quack science.
It's not even science really, it's just quackery. And it's
the idea of a device detect some sort of vague

(24:03):
energy and balance in a person. Yeah, I was gonna say,
I hope you're not talking about skin conductance tests, because
those have been used in a lot of cases to
determine physiological structure. It can determine a physiological response. I'm
talking about more vague than that, Like your energy is
out of alignment, your key points are are blocked, and
you need to have some blockage removed from your ch

(24:25):
otherwise you're just having chi backups up the yen yang.
So we gotta undo the yen yang and get that chieflow.
And that's all ridiculous and there's no scientific basis for
it now, scientifically speaking, Lauren is Lauren's qualifying. It's ridiculous,
is what Jonathan says. Um So, but no, this is

(24:47):
this is there is no scientific basis, so they like,
for instance, acupuncture. Some people find acupuncture to be very relaxing,
which means that as a relaxation technique it's perfectly valid. Right.
It means that they are relaxing, that is being uh,
it's countering the stress response. They are there for relieving stress. Now,

(25:09):
acupuncture as a method of practicing medicine has no real
scientific backing to it at all. In fact, any reputable
scientific study shows that if you were to follow the
traditional process of acupuncture, where you are applying the pens
to very specific points on the body, the meridians, where

(25:31):
you're trying to align the energy flow, that that has
no effect compared to someone who is trained well enough
to know how to place the needles, but is not
placing them in any particular place. And I think it's
worth being fair to these traditions, we should say, yet,
you know, it's possible that someday we could discover that,

(25:51):
oh well, actually there is something to acupuncture. But yeah,
I agree with you. As of yet, there's nothing to
do it. I've find it. I find it highly unlikely
that there is this vaguely described energy that flows through
us that someone has discovered and yet there is no
evidence for it. Whatso, yeah, I do as well, because
otherwise incredible luck philosophical prudence here. All right, that's fair.

(26:18):
I will admit I am. I am a complete hardcore skeptic.
Uh and that should should such evidence arrive as to
suggest that there is more to it than just this
relaxation response, then I would be I would be intellectually
dishonest to deny that. Of course, I just really don't

(26:38):
expect that to happen. Of course, it's interesting. For some
people the relaxation response is enough. Like we were just saying, well,
that's the thing is that actually do it for you? Really?
Like that's that's the thing is that the relaxation response
is really what I think is helping people. Now, how
you get that relaxation response really depends upon your own
personal approach and what you prefer, and that can be

(27:00):
anything from just taking some very simple exercises like deep breathing,
uh and in a in a quiet space, you know,
just kind of taking some time just for yourself. Mindfulness
is definitely a good, um, a good proven exercise of
of just you know, choosing what you are and are
not being stressed about actively at that point, while we're

(27:23):
getting into these uh, these sort of pseudo scientific, pseudo
spiritual realms, I do think it's worth mentioning that there
is some good data that says meditation actually can reduce
stress relies, right. And I think though that meditation is
almost more of the ritualistic approach to employing relaxation techniques,
and it does have other elements to it, but they

(27:45):
really just fall really in line with simple relaxation techniques. Now,
that doesn't mean that meditation is bad or that you
shouldn't do it, or that it's not it's not effective.
It is effective, but it's it's you know, I think
it would be it could be, depending again on your
personal preferences, just as effective for you to have an
unstructured approach to relaxation as meditation. Meditation does, however, provide

(28:10):
a particular approach to relaxation. Meditation, I mean, there's there are,
there are some of some of some of them are
very unstructured, right Yeah. But and again it's it's not
like it's not like meditation. You know, everything from yoga
to UH to even transcendental meditation can be very relaxing
for you if that's something that you find really helps

(28:33):
pull the stress away. So really, at this point, we're saying,
you find the activity that helps you let go of stress,
and that is your relief of stress. It's kind of
you know, it's it's autology. I mean, you know, you're like,
but but it really it really is. That's the case.
So it doesn't necessarily mean that, you know, you don't

(28:54):
say that that meditation has no merit. You might say
that this particular form of meditation doesn't seem to really
fit with the way you view the world. That's perfectly fine.
It may work very well for someone who their views
do align that way and that's why they find it relaxing.
So in that sense, I think that any any approach

(29:15):
where you are going into it thinking this is something
I am doing in order to relax myself, and this
is how it works for me. I think that's perfect
for the way you want to relieve stress. If you
go beyond that, too, this thing also allows me to
conquer the world through my amazing mental powers. Then I
get a little antsy, But as far as stress goes,

(29:37):
I totally I totally go into that. Okay, So I mean,
you know, it's it's no, it's it is what it is,
but it's it. You know, I certainly have used meditation
techniques to UH to relieve stress in the past, so
it's not like I would look down upon anyone for
using similar techniques for themselves. You know, there's UH. There

(29:58):
was something I read that was in interesting and suggesting
that it wasn't even just the in the moment effects,
you know, the physiological effects of the meditation session, but
that the cumulative effects of say mindfulness meditation on your
psyche might actually have a long term UH correlation, at

(30:19):
least in the decrease in the stress. So I think
I read a UC Davis study saying essentially that that
mindfulness by ranking mindfulness, which could be achieved through mindfulness meditation,
is sort of a long term effect of what you
do in these sessions was correlated with lower levels of
cortisol and UH and lower stress in general. But they

(30:43):
don't know there's it's necessarily a causation, right shut sure,
it's related. UM. And you know, any time that you're
that you're controlling your own breathing, you can strengthen your
respiratory system, which is definitely part of that entire whole body,
uh being less sick and sleeping good and stuff like that.

(31:05):
And these these changes like things like eating well and
trying to make sure you get enough sleep and uh
taking time to relax, these are things that can certainly
impact your long term levels of stress. UH. Being able
to recognize what what stressors are the ones that affect
you also very helpful so that you can recognize when

(31:28):
you are entering into a stressful situation and start to
you know, prepare yourself for it and know that you
say things to yourself like, yes, this is a stressful situation,
but it's completely within my capability to handle, and it
may mean that you need to do something like either
change the stressful situation if that's within your power, or

(31:49):
yourself from it, or if that's within your power. If
that's not, then you start to say, all right, well,
I cannot avoid the stressful situation, but I can at
least be aware of and perhaps even alter my react
action to it so that it is a useful reaction,
not something that's just going to make it even more
difficult for me to get through this stressful situation. So
there's one thing that I think we should touch on that,

(32:11):
as far as I know, has a really good scientific
pedigree in dealing with stress. And that's exercise certainly, right, Yeah,
exercise both while you are in the process of exercising
and uh and and for a little while afterwards. UM
reduces the production of stress hormones like adrenaline and cortisol. Um,
and can increase the production of endorphins, which are you know,

(32:34):
kind of natural painkillers and um, feel good, feel good
body drugs. Um. Well that makes sense to me. I mean,
obviously I'm no doctor, so tell me if I'm wrong,
because you're a doctor. But if you're you're the doctor
between the three of us, I think. Well, I mean,
if if cortisol and adrenaline are supposed to prepare you
for an athletic response to the tiger drawing a knife

(32:57):
on you, then obviously it would seem that what your
body is needs to do to get rid of those
extra hormones is to enact that athletic response. Well. Um,
and I mean you know anyone who um you know,
if if you're a runner and you hit that runners high, Um,
that is that is those endorphins that I was talking about,
That that your system is just being gleefully flooded with UM.

(33:20):
And and there is a little bit of UM adrenaline
involved in working out. But but by exercising frequently, your
body learns how to regulate the production of those stress
hormones more efficiently and so UM, so you know, it
will be a little bit less of a burst. If

(33:40):
something bad does happen, then you might otherwise have UM
you know. For furthermore, UM exercising will make you sleep
more deeply, which helps prevent some of those um uh
you know, poor immune responses that you can get and
uh uh And also I mean sleeping more deeply also
means that you are you are actually being able to

(34:02):
to deal with the stress over time, because as if
you're not sleeping, if're not sleeping, well that just starts
to add to the stress, which means that you have
this growing avalanche of stress that is hitting you each day,
and each day is a little worse than the day before.
It kind of reminds me of that scene in Office
Space where he says, you know, every day is the
worst day of your life, and then the next day
is even worse, So therefore that becomes the worst day

(34:24):
of your life. So every single day is the worst
day of your life at that point. That's kind of
how people feel when they're overwhelmed by stress and they
have these factors coming in, especially if they have insomnia.
I mean, it's one of those things that just it
accumulates each day. So being a yeah, well, I mean,
but that's it's very much. When I saw that part
of the movie, even though he was just talking about

(34:46):
his experience of going to work and also his relationship
with his girlfriend at the time, when he's talking about
that kind of stuff, I'm thinking, that is a great
expression of what long term stress feels like. Every day
is the worst day of your life or is flogging
Molly would say, it's been the worst day since yesterday. Uh.

(35:09):
Exercise also well um uh. If you do it regularly,
lower your your your blood pressure and improve your cholesterol
account um, you know, reduce your blood sugar. UM. Blood
sugar for those of you who are not hypoglycemic and
don't have to think about this all all the time,
is when you when your blood sugar drops um, very

(35:29):
very sharply and very suddenly. It is kind of physiologically
identical to having an anxiety attack. UM. I both kind
of experienced this, yeah, and and so so if you
you know, diet um improving your diet eating you know,
more vegetables, more fiber, more lean meats. Um, you know,
getting getting the right balance of nutrients for your body.

(35:50):
And that is not necessarily what the balance is for
anybody else. So you know, pay attention and work it
out for yourself. Um, which I know is not is
not the friendliest in vice and being able to uh
to to visit with a doctor or nutritionists can be
of great help. It can, it can, but um, but
but all of that can also absolutely decrease your stress
levels excellent. Well you know, I mean, I'm sure all

(36:13):
of us here have dealt with periods of our life
where we went through a great deal of stress in
one way or another. And uh, you know, I, like
I said, I certainly think that anything that you find
that relaxes you where you're not hurting yourself or someone
else is a good thing. So I highly recommend, you know,
trying out different approaches and finding what works for you

(36:35):
to relieve stress levels so that you don't experience this
kind of chronic stress, which is really a tough thing
to be in. I mean, I can think of there
was a six month period where I was out of work.
Uh that by the end of it, I was really
in bad shape. And uh, if I had not found
ways to relieve that stress, I'm sure that I would

(36:56):
have been an even worse shape. So certainly something to
look into if you are dealing with these kind of issues.
So a lot of the things we have just been
talking about have been things that require your initiative. And
you know, I'm all for self reliance and and having
a personal initiative, but sometimes that's hard, right. I'm kind

(37:17):
of interested in what things we could think about, uh
doing that could sort of ambiently reduce our stress in
a way that we don't have to think about or
work hard on personally, or there ways of just creating
environments that help reduce stress automatically. I think any environment
that has a distinct lack of knife wielding tigers would help. Yeah,

(37:42):
I would. I would imagine that you know that that
that relatively um peaceful environments, you know, one of the
ones that are more or less quiet, perhaps have growing things.
Um well, I mean it does know sudden noises. It
doesn't help that our office has a guy with a
burlap sack and a chainsaw, you know, running around constantly.
I find that very relaxing personally. Yeah. Uh, Well, here's

(38:04):
one thing I found out about and I thought this
was really interesting. You could look to geometric patterns, geometric patterns,
geometric patterns to reduce stress. Now, this is from based
on a paper published in the journal Leonardo. It was
by the physicist Richard Taylor, and it was published in

(38:26):
two thousand and six. It was called Reduction of Physiological
Stress using Fractal Art and Architecture. And I thought this
paper was really interesting because it talked about how apparently
our brains respond to certain geometric patterns in a way
that reduces stress. Um. So he cites a NASIS study

(38:48):
that had been done years before, I think in nineteen
six that had people performing different mental tasks, so they'd
have to do creative thinking or mental arithmetic, or solve
a logic problem. And the variable they altered was what
these people were looking at when they had to do
these tasks. Now, one of the things was a certain

(39:10):
nature scene, and then there was a different nature scene
that showed like a tree on a savannah, and then
there was this artificial, synthetic kind of pattern of lines
and what they found was that one of these one
of the nature scenes, the savannah tree, significantly lowered the
stress these people were feeling. They tested stress in between

(39:31):
these uh these exercises by galvanic skin conductance so UM
and that's been used in other studies to test physiological
stress before UM and what they discovered was that this
savannah try really lowered people stress levels compared to the
other sites, and that seemed interesting. UM. And one thing

(39:53):
he looked at was the fractal patterns that were manifest
in these different images. So what are fractal patterns. Well,
so you imagine Euclidean geometry and that's the normal geometry
we think of like triangles and circles, then love crafty
and geometry. Yeah, it's not not very cathulu shaped. Um.

(40:15):
But then when we start thinking about things that are
cathulu shaped, like Caula exactly, he's so fractal. Well, you
start talking about fractal geometry, and this is a concept
that's really interesting. Essentially, fractal geometry is something that it
shows patterns that reproduce at any level of resolution, So

(40:36):
you can keep zooming in and you'll see the same
patterns emerged no matter how far you zoom in or
zoom out, and you could think about how fractal patterns
actually manifest a lot in nature like we noticed them.
If you look at patterns of branches on trees in
the forest, um, you get really close and you see
the same kind of patterns in the veins of the

(40:58):
leaves and the small eiggs. And then you zoom back
out and you see the branches, and you zoom further
out and you see the forest itself, the same patterns emerged.
You can see the same thing in like mountain crags.
So you zoom in on one specific little crag and
it's the same kind of shape as a mountain as
a whole. Yeah, the pebble is overall um. And it

(41:21):
turns out, according to this research, we really like looking
at this stuff. We find fractal plat patterns inherently pleasing.
If you've ever watched any video of a Mandel broad set,
as it just continuously zooms further and further into the
fractal pattern, you might have experienced this. And one thing

(41:42):
Taylor finds in his paper is that in this NASA
study with the with the physiological response to looking at
these different images, the image that people had the greatest
stress reduction from was showing the most fractal geometry, and
showed he essentially, so there's a way of thinking about

(42:03):
fractal things called D values. And so you can imagine
a picture that's just got a line across the middle,
and he says, that would have a D value of one.
And then you can imagine a picture that's completely black, uh,
instead of just the one black line, and that's a two.
And so fractal D values are expressed between one and two.

(42:25):
And he found that mid range D values between like
one point three and one point five were the ones
that people liked the best. And so there's actually a
way of determining geometric patterns that can help people reduce
the stress they feel when they've got, you know, just
going on. So uh, he he suggests, well, what if

(42:46):
we think about incorporating this into architecture, because the fact
of these geometric patterns showed up whether we're looking at
nature or whether we're looking at paintings or just any
shapes whatsoever. So what if you could build buildings that
had these pleasing fractal patterns that made people feel less
stress or just paint jobs, right, yeah, whatever wallpaper or

(43:12):
the big one I thought about is in our digital displays.
I mean you look at your Microsoft word layout. There's
a lot of Euclidean geometry. It's boxes and stuff like that.
And if that blue background was instead of pleasing fractal
pattern like yeah Jackson Pollock kind of thing, or a
bunch of forest branches, that could actually have a potentially

(43:33):
really important and positive effect on our stress lest calming effect. Yeah. Interesting,
So I you know, one way you could think about
it is will we live in these sort of fractal
metropolis is well along those same lines, there's something that
this this almost falls more in the WOU category in
a way, just simply because it's unsupported by by any

(43:55):
real scientific study that I've seen. But the idea of
binaral beats. Have you has heard about these? Oh? I've heard. Yeah,
I don't know what to deal with that is so binarial.
It means that you're getting frequencies in in both ears. Now,
the actual um effect of binarial beats was discovered by
a guy named Heinrich ville Helm Dove back in the

(44:17):
mid nineteenth century. So now the effect is that he
discovered that if you played a certain if you played
frequencies in one ear in a different set of frequencies
and another ear, you would actually perceive interference beats the
same way you would if those beats were actually physically
being made at that time. Like the combination of these
two frequencies that you are perceiving would create the perception

(44:40):
of beats that aren't physically really there, but they would
if you know, if you were to create them physically,
they would be it would sound the same to you.
So that was pretty much the extent of his discovery.
He did not suggest that these would be somehow capable
of creating specific reactions in your brain. However, today you've

(45:02):
got a growing population of people who have made claims
that these sort of beats could create different experiences, everything
akin to a deep relaxation to euphoria, as if you
were experiencing some form of high from a recreational drug.
And uh, there doesn't seem to be really any verifiable

(45:26):
scientific evidence for that those claims. That doesn't mean that
they that it won't one day exist, but right now
there doesn't seem to be anything that along the lines.
In fact, a lot of the studies I've seen, or
at least a lot of the initial response I've seen,
seems to suggest that there's more about the power of
suggestion being going on here than any kind of actual
physiological response. That being said, it may be that listening

(45:50):
to some of these tones, which are really they tend
to be in the very low frequency range, so very
deep tones, that listening to them can some for some
people at least help them, uh when they are trying
to meditate, so it can be an aid. So, you know,
it's an interesting concept. It's similar to what you're talking about,
using the your sense of sight to look at something

(46:12):
very specific that will have a calming effect. In this case,
it's listening to something that would have been engineered to
have a calming effect on you. The question, though, is
does it really have a demonstrable physiological effect beyond some
people just find it relaxing to listen to, as opposed
to there being the relaxation is being induced in some way. Um,

(46:34):
we don't have all the information there, so we can't
really draw a conclusion. And uh, you know, again, it
may turn out that this is something that under scientific
study proves that hey, there's something to this beyond Uh,
some claims that people have made and it goes beyond
the power of suggestion. Uh, I just haven't seen anything
that supports that yet. But it's another interesting approach of

(46:54):
the idea of catering to your senses in a way
to induce calming and relax station because, like you said,
you know, sometimes you're in a situation where you can
you could tell yourself, I need to relax a thousand
times not necessarily helpful when that tiger with a knife
is firing you. Yeah. Well, that's one of the big problems,

(47:16):
isn't it that we just even though we know we
should relax, we often don't have the presence of mind
to do it. And uh there. So there's another thing
that I thought was interesting, is I wonder to what
extent technology could help you, Like, can you have a
relaxation app? Now these things already exist, actually tons of apps.
You can buy the calm down app, you know, but

(47:39):
they all rely on you, right right, They tell you
take a time out, and then well they rely on
they rely on you to activate them. Right. You have
like like I'm feeling stressed out, I need to hit
the I'm feeling stressed out button, right but we often
just don't have the presence of mind to do that, right,
I went till we're at full panic mode. Yeah, I
wonder if a there there could be a situation where,

(48:02):
you know, you buy a special mouse that has galvanic
skin conductance on the buttons and it tests your stress
right there, and it can give your computer like, well,
even though he doesn't know it, he's this stressed out
right now, you need to kick in the calm down app.
I'm just flashing back to a specific episode of The
I T. Crowd where they had a stress test machine

(48:23):
and and uh and and Moss and Roy just decided
that that was their opportunity to test the machine as
opposed to using the machine to test their stress. They
would watch someone using it and then they would try
to stress the person out just to watch the needle
move back and forth. Good times. Well, you know, I
certainly hope if any of you out there listening have

(48:45):
had issues with stress in the past, or maybe you're
currently having problems with stress, you know, take some of
the stuff that we've said into consideration, try some different
relaxation techniques. You know, it may be that you need
to look at things like your sleep schedule, you're the
your diet, and and you know, consulting a physician is
not a bad idea. Yeah, I was gonna say the
best thing to do is not listen to us, probably

(49:06):
but talk to your doctor. Well again again, if it's
if it's one of those things where you're just like,
oh man, I'm just I'm tense, that's one thing. If
it's if it's medically you know, a medically uh something
that needs to be addressed by medicine, obviously, go see
a physician. I mean it's you know, if it's something
where you're just kind of like, I'm tired of being
tense all the time, then it may just mean that

(49:27):
you need to get more sleep, eat better, and exercise
a bit and take some time to relax. That definitely
sounds easier than it is. I mean, I know that
their ties when I get home and I think where
did all my time go? But but it is important
and if you're able to do that, then it can
really help out a lot. And again, you know, consult
a physician if you are experiencing chronic stress and and

(49:50):
and chronic health problems that might be related to stress.
This is important stuff. So um, that wraps up this discussion. Guys,
we we want you to be part of our conversation here.
Make sure that you email us with any comments or
suggestions you might have for future episodes. That is FW
thinking at discovery dot com and go to www. Dot

(50:11):
fw thinking dot com to check out all the videos,
the blog posts, podcasts. We've got a lot of cool
links up there. We think you'd be really interested in them,
so go check those out and we will talk to
you again really soon. For more on this topic in
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