Record Live Podcast

 

 Hi there everyone. I'm Jared. And I'm Zanita. Let's go live.

 Hello everyone. Welcome back to another week of record live. Last week we had an awesome conversation with Dr. Nick Hall, neuroscientist and stress expert and author of the book, the Stress Recovery Effect, powerful Tools to Reduce Anxiety, stress Less, and Perform Your Best. Now, Nick, when we were recording our last conversation, you had a storm hit. And a bit was happening,  service was cut out, and you disappeared. Now, I would love to know how someone who studies stress and speaks about stress often responds to a situation like this. Are you calm and collected or are you appropriately distressing out?

Well, we have power outages here in Florida frequently, especially during the summertime with thunderstorms and even during hurricane season. Um. Without a direct hit, we have problems like that. So we're just used to it and we have all the provisions. We keep extra food, canned foods, things that don't need to be refrigerated on hand.

Now normally we have warning that storm yesterday came in quite unexpectedly, and I must say my greatest stressor was without electricity and the router being out, not being able to communicate with you and let you know what was happening and why I suddenly disappeared. I was afraid, maybe I said something had offended her.

Or you might think that of me. So, the power being out there. We've done that so many times. It's not, we have a generator, it's not even an issue, but the consequences. And I had another meeting I was supposed to go to after we had done the interview, which I ended up not making. But it was all fine.

I did wonder if you'd gotten sick of the conversation, but I trusted that it was not Okay. Not

at all. Not at all.

Um, now, Nick, last week we talked about what stress actually is and how it affects us physically and mentally. But I imagine that a lot of people still approach stress in ways that aren't super helpful.

What do you think that most people get wrong when it comes to managing their stress?  

Well, I think. Too many people focus on the stress itself. I may think that stress is something outside of them. It's lurking around a corner. It's in the car next to them on the highway, and they just have to get rid of that stress.

They have to get rid of that trigger when in fact, the problem is really the impact that the emotions they experience. Having on their physiological response and their ability to do the things they need to be doing. And that can include their productivity at work. It can include, say, doing things with their family, but it can also impact sleep, your eating habits.

And so I think what's really important is to focus more on the consequences of a stress. What can I do to prevent that from happening rather than try and get rid of a stress, which is going to be an impossible task. And you, you don't want to do that. As I told you last week, is stress is inevitable and it's actually in some ways beneficial.

If you don't have enough stress, you're gonna be brought to tears. You just want to have, not have too much and. Create some sort of balance between stress and recovery. Mm-hmm. So focusing on the consequences rather than what might be giving rise in any particular circumstance.

Mm-hmm. So taking like a proactive approach to it rather than just dwelling on it.

Exactly.

Yeah. I think to quote you, in your book you said that stress is absolutely necessary for a healthy body and mind, which is not what most people typically think of when they feel stressed.

Well in moderation of course, like everything, so,

yeah. Yeah. Now, in your book, and we touched on this last week as well, you mentioned lifestyle strategies, practical things we can do ahead of time to kind of strengthen our resilience.

Which I feel like many people wait till they hit rock bottom or  they're on the brink of burnout to, um deal with their stress. But what are some of those lifestyle strategies that we can do ahead of time when things are kind of going okay.

Well, one of the strategies that Dick and I strongly recommend in the book is to train your body to deal with stress automatically.

And again, the idea is not to get rid of a stress. The idea is to reduce its intensity so that it doesn't overwhelm you in whatever endeavor you are embarking on. For example, we will encourage our athletes to keep, train their body to recover. And it's a conditioning response based upon heart rate.

And I think a lot of people have heard of Ivan Pavlov, the way he paired the sound of a bell, a metronome, all sorts of things actually with the sight and smell of meat, thereby. Able to elicit salivation and gastric secretions in dogs. Upon just ringing the bell, it's called classical conditioning.

Well, a person can actually do the same thing with their body and condition their recovery from stress to how their body normally responds. Now, typically, most people, probably all people. The sympathetic nervous system is activated in the brain. When you perceive a threat or something unexpected happens that causes your heart rate to go up, blood pressure to increase, you need to get oxygen and glucose to the cells or the body so they can function, engage in that fight flight response, if you will.

And so heart rate goes up pretty much automatically, and what you want is for that heart rate to come down. Not all the way. 'cause after all, you're in a situation where you need your mental facilities and maybe muscles to run away. Mm-hmm. But you don't want it to be so high that it overwhelms you and you can train your heart rate to come down.

And thereby all the things that control the heart rate through exercise. You do that by exercising at a moderate level. Let's say right around, 10, 20% below your maximum heart rate, which is the highest it'll go no matter what you're doing. A lot of people don't wanna bother to push themselves, and it probably wise to do that in a doctor's office anyway, because if you do have an underlying heart condition and you don't want to push yourself to the limit and unexpectedly find out that there was some medical condition that.

Probably should have kept you from doing that. So to subtract your age from 220, it assumes everybody's the same, which of course we're not. But it gives you sort of a ballpark figure. Mm-hmm. So let's say a person's maximum heart rate, and just to make the math easily easy, let's say it's 100, and most people would probably be, depending on their age, it's gonna be less or it might be higher.

So let's go with a hundred. You start working out. You bring your heart rate up to maybe 110, and when your heart rate comes up to 110, you slow down long enough for it to come down to 90, and then you go back again. Except this time you might go up to 120 beats per minute, and then when you hit 120, you slow down until it comes down to 80, and when you go back and you might hang around at a hundred.

For a while. It, I, its up to you. Now, if you think about this visually, if you think about this on a chart, your heart rate is going up, that's stress, and then it's coming down. That's recovery. And so you're literally train your heart rate to come down. After it goes up, the heart rate becomes the equivalent of Pavlov's, be.

The heart rate going up, that is the heart rate coming down is the equivalent of a dog salivating. So you've literally trained your body to respond when your heart rate goes up. Now we could care less about heart rate and what we're concerned about all is all the chemistry in the brain associated with the stress response.

And that is what you're training, you're training stress to recover. Now, of course, exercising on a treadmill, running in a park is not the same as having an altercation with someone in the workplace. It's not the same as getting cut off by a large truck on the highway. It is, it doesn't have the same emotional component, but you know, it's a start because the physiology is pretty much the same.

It a world renowned chess player, for example, will have the same rise in heart rate as a person getting ready to run a sprint. Interesting. And so the physiology is going to be the same whether you are your anger is building up over an incident or whether you're very fearful. Hmm. I call it cross stressing.

You gotta be careful how you explain that. The people who understand. But it's basically you. You learn how to recover from one form of stress, in this case exercise, and the body sort of learns to apply it to other forms of stress that you might not have control over.

Yeah, that's interesting. This might appeal this kind of activity to someone who owns a fit watch or who is quite athletic, for someone who doesn't fit that category or isn't gonna go buy one of those, how can they push their heart rate in that way or know when to push their heart rate?

That's an excellent question. You don't need a heart rate monitor. They can be very expensive. The cheap ones probably not all that accurate. It doesn't really matter. You don't need it. You can use the conversation rules. Mm-hmm. And when you are exercising at a point where you can carry on a conversation, but you'd rather not, you're out there with a friend, you're question, you are, you're retired, trying to pretend that you are fine, you're not, you overdoing it.

And so you tend to speak in short sentences and, take a quick, deep breath in between. You're in the aerobic zone, a good place to be, especially for cardiovascular training. If you push yourself up to the maximum, or as you get close to it, you're going to what's called anaerobic metabolism. And that means your body is not taking in enough oxygen to maintain all of your biological systems at the optimal level.

And this is reflected in the fact that you cannot speak. You're so outta breath. You can't get enough air in to put together a sentence. So when you reach that point, you're in the anaerobic zone. And so you push yourself up towards that and then you allow yourself to come down. But you can talk again, and you can do that by exercising the gym.

You can do it by walking up and down stairs. You can do it by just speeding up your pace. You really don't need to worry about your heart rate or any of that stuff at all. I just said that because, you know, it impresses people to realize there's science behind it. This is something that a highly trained athlete would probably do in a very meticulous way.

But for the average person just training their body to recover from stress, the idea is to create the, recreate these waves of stress and recovery in the form of exercise. It's not gonna hurt you, it's gonna benefit you cardiovascularly and in other ways too. And it's something you control. You can stop whenever you feel like it.

And so in that regards, it's not the same as the type of stress we experience in the real world, but physiologically it's doing exactly the same thing.

What about when people are already in the thick of it, when, those lifestyle strategies are perhaps too late or they haven't planned for that? What can we do in the moment?

One of the really exciting fields of study in the context of stress is something that I think our ancestors took advantage of without understanding exactly what was happening. And that is just go outside, go out into a green space, sit under a tree, and there's a lot of research that's been intensified since the Coronavirus Pandemic and people really had no choice but to go outside. They had to social distance. They got sick and tired of being in indoors all day. And so they took to be outdoors. There are a number of reasons why this is thought to be beneficial, and first of all, the exercise itself is going to put demands on the body for more nutrients, oxygen, for example, glucose, which for cortisol releases and even a very short walk outside.

Can trigger the relaxation response because when cortisol is triggered, some beta-Endorphin is released. The word endorphin means quite literally endogenous morphine. You're giving yourself a, basically a drug, a natural drug produced in your brain. That is going to have a calming effect. And of course just the mere act of going outside, there's going to be a distraction from your normal worries.

You are going to probably engage in a small amount of exercise at least, and that helps burn off some of the stress related tension in your muscles and sunlight. Activate circadian rhythms. Circadian means about the day about the sun. There are certain chemicals that rise and fall throughout the 24 hour cycle.

There are ultradian rhythms within the day. There are even rhythms when we sleep 90 to 110 minutes. If we go from delta to slow wave to rapid eye movement sleep, these rhythms exist all the time. They are triggered by sunlight. Sunlight is actually what activates them. And a lot of people who work the night shift who don't get the normal exposure that the body is designed to be, experiencing have all kinds of issues physically and mentally compared with people who are able to entrain their routines to the natural rhythms.

Mm-hmm. There's something else that's extremely interesting. That is the idea that fractals are involved. Now, a fractal is a self repeating pattern and at different scales. So if you think of a tree and a branching pattern, and it repeats itself, not exactly of course, but from a trunk to the lens to the Twix.

Or think of a coastline and the jagged edge. It looks very similar, but not exact, whether you are focusing in or whether you are looking at it moving out. And they're everywhere in nature. They're in clouds, they're in mountains, rivers, in plants, and even the patterns of waves. And so the research suggests that.

Over the millennium. As humans have evolved, our brain is better able to predict and process visual information. When these patterns are present, there's less effort involved in processing the information compared with the very j. Patterns that we have in an urban environment, the straight lines, the right angles and the geometric symbols that you see in architecture.

And there is evidence that being exposed to these types of patterns can actually reduce stress by up to 60%. Huh. So just sitting under a tree staring at branches, I mean, the popular evidence suggests is that that something that simple might be beneficial. You think of the gardens of Babylon, going back in antiquity.

Mm-hmm. The gardens that were invested in in England. Back in the, well, probably going back to the Middle Ages, they were done for a practical reason. They just sensed that this was good. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. I think there's a quote that says nature itself is the best physician.

Yeah.

I haven't heard that, but I agree wholeheartedly. Exercise in nature. That's it. I think that's probably a panacea for just about everything. In fact, do you know that doctors in the United States now and perhaps in Australia too are actually prescribing exercise with their patients?

Yeah. Yeah. I've heard this    prescribing exercise and looking at blue and green.

It's awesome. Um, you mentioned something in your book that I think is a really practical tool. It's that when you find yourself approaching a stressful situation, you ask yourself.

These three peas. And my, my boyfriend has actually told me that his mom did this with him and his siblings as a kid. He said that she used to give them this little pea pod with three peas in it, and they would put it in their pocket, and when they found themselves approaching a stressful situation.

They would ask themselves three questions. Is it personal, is it permanent, and is it pervasive? And he said that it was really helpful because it helped him to like check himself or you know put things into perspective. But what other tools can help reframe things. Because I feel like that's an important step.

Like sometimes we put too much energy into things or we catastrophize something that isn't really a huge problem.

And this is something that Marty Seligman, these psychologists, wrote about in his book, learned Optimism. And it is people who believe that what's happening to them is all encompassing, affects every part of their life is pervasive.

It's permanent. Exactly what your boyfriend, uh, mother who's obviously very wise, recognized. There, there are similar questions that I will have a person ask to try and get their response under control to keep the emotion from bouncing from one part of the len brain, the emotional brain to another part, like a ball in a pinball machine.

And that is to stop and say, okay, my, my response is what I'm doing is my reaction. Is the emotion I'm experiencing this extreme anger, this extreme fear, is it really justified? Um that's the first question. The second one is, is it serving a useful purpose? Is it really going to make any difference? The third one is, does it make me feel good?

Now, I don't mean that in a hedonistic way, not a pleasurable way, but does it feel right? Intuitively. Do I have any doubts about this? And then I tell people, if your answer to any one of those questions is yes, then chill. You know, just do something else. Get over it. The fact is though, the answer to the question doesn't really matter that much.

What's important is asking those types of questions. Your boyfriend's mother advising him to use a model of a p, which is brilliant, is is great approach. All the questions I just posed or similar questions because oftentimes people don't pause and they have a reaction. The fight flight response kicks in and before they know it, they've dug themselves into a situation even deeper, and it's gonna take more recovery to get out of it.

And so asking those questions slows things down. Uh, research has shown too that when people just talk about what's bothering them to other people or even just talking to themselves or they write out what happened, they describe everything that led to the stress, uh, their response to it, how they feel.

Just writing about that can help reduce fair level of stress. And so. I think the key thing is to use some technique, whatever work would work best for you in the circumstance that is going to basically, slow down pause, give yourself time to reflect.

Yep. That's great. Now we've had some, questions come in from people. So we might just go through these. So the first question is, uh, when I feel really stressed, I naturally start doom scrolling on my phone. It doesn't make me feel much better, so I dunno why I'm drawn to it, but I feel like I can't help myself from doing it.

And what is it they're doing on their phone?

Um, they said doom scrolling. So just scrolling constantly, basically. Oh, just

doing, looking at things. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Well, first of all, that's not the solution. I I, that I

feel like I, I can relate to this though. I feel like I've been stressed and it's like, I don't know.

I don't know what it is, but

I think it goes back to the Puritan work ethic. You know, I've, I've gotta be doing something, I've gotta be working. I can't be just sitting here. And so it's, I dunno what to do, because of the circumstances around me. So I'll just grab my phone, I'll start looking at things.

Now, I can't say for sure without knowing more details about what the nature of a stress was, but I suspect that would be at least a part of the reason when in fact, doing nothing is not a bad situation. It could also be a distraction. There's nothing wrong with worrying. There's nothing wrong with being a little anxious.

These are natural responses. They help get us out of situations. Worrying is nothing more really than higher processing. You're basically evaluating the situation, you're analyzing it, trying to come up with a solution. The problem is not the worrying. The problem is when the worrying interferes with what you need to be doing.

And so my advice would be to sit there, put the phone away, get that out of sight, and instead just sit down somewhere, not your favorite place. You don't want to condition your favorite place for the worry cycle. And just to give yourself, okay, I've got 10 minutes. I'm gonna sit here and I'm gonna ruminate over what's happened and I'm gonna try and come up with a solution.

And so I, I think. There's nothing wrong with thinking things through. I think what a lot of people try to do is escape the stress all by doing something very, very different. But chances are, if a person is scrolling through the news, all they're doing. Is unpacking other people's stressors and disasters around the world.

Yeah, for sure. All right, next question is, why do some people handle stress better than others? My sister and I have had a pretty similar life around the same age, but I get stressed very easily. It's almost like it's wired into me. Nothing seems to bother her. On the other hand, why is this?

Well. The way a person responds to stress is going to be influenced by their genetic blueprint.

What kind of DNA they have things that might actually have happened to them in utero before they were even born. Things that happened to mom. Early experiences. Huge. Um, there are children who grow up in stressful environments. Who end up having all sorts of mental issues stemming from it. But there are others who learn to become optimistic and you, you could, you, you can't always tell which, what exactly is it that shapes one response as opposed to another?

Uh, I'll give an example of my mother who as a teenager, lived through the Blitz in London during World War ii. Now, I think she was seven. She was 18. 17, 18. She had a job at an oil company in London. And when it was fought that the invasion of England was inevitable, the women and children were encouraged to go over to Ireland.

And I think the idea was that's if the English, the country is wiped out, at least there'll be a breathing disgust, stock of women and the children to repopulate the island. She refused to go. She said, no, no, my company needs me. She stayed in London and I've got tape recordings of interviews that I did with her.

You know, what, what was it like, why did you do this? Her job? Everybody had a job at the time. Was the leading entertainment in the tube stations, the air raids, shelters. She dragged an old piano down there, which she played. And dad, they had sing-alongs and there were some nights she said, I just didn't feel like going out of tired.

I just stayed in bed and listened to the planes fly over. Well, she survived that. Hmm. And as a result, and lots of other people in her generation did as well. And those people, I think learnt a sense of resilience that enabled them to handle, just develop anything afterwards. They had experienced adversity, they had survived, and as a result, whatever came along.

Well, I, I lived through the blitz. I can handle anything. Yeah, I saw this when I was down in, Grenada. I was working for National Geographic at the time when the revolution broke out. There was an American medical school down there at the time and when the revolution occurred, you know, the American students who had never experienced anything like this were completely panicked. The expatriates who lived there, the Brits for Canadians, people from South Africa who immigrated there were unfazed by it. Oh, it was annoying. The cricket match is not on the radio. Uh, now the, the revolutionaries have taken it over and they pretty much went about their normal lives. And that happened too when the Americans invaded the island.

Well, they called it the intervention, um, the, the panic when the 82nd Airborne arrived. Uh, and I was down there during that time. It was, uh, palpable. The people who experienced adversity in the past, they, yeah. Been there, done that. They were almost entertained by watching what was happening around that.

Interesting. Yeah. Now, at the same time, there were people in my mother's generation who were probably neighbors who had severe post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of what they witnessed an experience. So going back to your question, how do you tell it? It's hard to say. No, two people are the same.

Yeah, some people have had high threshold for stress. They become air traffic control pad traffic workers. They sign up for the military, they go into combat, and this is what they thrive on. Other people become part rangers. They have a very low threshold for stress. They get all the stress they need by reading a Stephen King novel or watching a scary movie on tv.

So I, I can't answer the question. I'm not sure if anybody can, except that there are so many variables.

Mm. Yeah. I think in your book you talk about there's a number of factors, including relationships, personal history, utero, what happens there. Um, yeah, yeah. That, that contribute to that level. Um, okay. Next question is, is it wrong to feel stressed or anxious as a Christian, does it show a lack of faith?

Well, if a person believes it does, then the consequences are gonna be the same. There's gonna be a certain amount of, I suppose, guilt. Hmm. Um, I, I certainly don't think it does. I, I think that the fact that you might have, you know, questions does not necessarily reflect the lack of faith. I think that God gave us these complex brains to engage in critical thinking.

And to question things including the nature of Christianity, the theology. No, I think that this is certainly not anything to be feeling guilty about. Now there was a time of course, when if you got sick, it was felt to be due to the wrath of God. You did something that offended the gods. You had performed some transgression that you were being punished for. But we've gone past that and I think religion can be a valuable tool. It would be a shame if a person felt that they had done something to interfere with the ability to fully utilize that resource through such beliefs.

  This next question I find quite relatable. 'cause I feel like I've heard this advice before. She said, um, recently I went to my doctor about an issue and he asked me if I was stressed. Of course, I said yes, and he advised that I lower my stress. I can't currently change what is happening in my life. So what do I do when the stresses of life are unavoidable and are impacting me physically?

Okay. Um, well first of all, I would. Respectfully disagree with that doctor. Okay, sure. I, I, I do have an MD that is an honorary md. My degree was from medical school, but I have no business giving any medical advice. I'm not qualified to do so. However, I would argue that it is not the stress that needs to be reduced. It is to introduce more periods of recovery. Stress is not the problem. Stress is actually a stimulus for growth. For mental, physical, emotional, spiritual. The analogy would be an athlete. An athlete doesn't lie on the couch and rest before a major competition.

As they're training, they push themselves, they stress their muscles, which increase the number of cells, their ability to endure greater amount, amounts of force, and that takes them to the next level. And then from there, they stress themselves again and they go to the next level. But in between. They recover, they allow that muscle to rest.

And depending upon which muscle group it is, it may take different ti different amounts of time. So there will vary, be their exercises. Well, the same is true of stress in other forms as well. Stress is, uh, stimulus for growth, but that growth actually occurs during periods of recovery. The person you spoke about.

Obviously, uh, felt that the problem was due to, excessive stress, high levels of stress. I would argue that when stress is unabated by recovery, it doesn't matter what the level is, there are gonna be consequences. And the advice I would give is to do something that's equal and opposite to what's causing the stress.

Yeah. And by equal and opposite. I mean, if your stress is due, do, due to being on your feet all day, too much going on, too much responsibility, never get time to take a break, then after work is over, you need to sit down and get in sauna, get a massage, do some meditation. Go for a nice quiet walk.

On the other hand, if your stress is due to boredoms. You're doing the same repetitive task day in and day out, and there's no meaning to it for you and you're stuck in this job, then you need to go home and do some exercise, do some competitive sports, get into a tennis team. Even community theater.

Where you have to memorize lines and experience the stress of a curtain opening up and am I gonna fall off the stage? Am I going to forget my lines? So there are some people who actually need to deal with their issues by introducing more stress into their life, not trying to reduce it. And I would argue that would apply to most people.

You don't reduce the stress. What you do is take some time to balance it with recovery. Now there's for Rob, a single mom holding down two part-time jobs. When are you gonna have the time? They say money can't buy happiness. Well, that may be true, but what money can buy is vacation times.

What money

can buy is recovery time.

Yeah.

And that can be a real struggle for people who are having, budget issues working from paycheck to paycheck. You just don't have the time. Yeah. And is fine for us to talk about. Oh, we'll just find the time. No, you, you've gotta be practical

For sure. I think we spoke about this a bit more in the first conversation and you mentioned, those recovery moments will look different for everyone. So for you, that's kayaking for some people. Yeah. That might be gardening or just taking a few moments to breathe. So I guess it's about finding what works for you, what recovers you personally.

Yes, I think the the worst thing a person can do is pick up a book, including the book Dick and I wrote and say, oh, it says here on page 84, I should do this or that.

And well, that might be fine for one person, but another person might feel very uncomfortable doing that. I can't relax getting a massage. I tried it once. After 10 minutes, I was bored with tears thinking about all the things I could be doing. Yeah. I'd rather be out on my bicycle or going for a long walk.

That's how I get my relaxation. Yeah. And so, no one size doesn't fit all. And so they should look at the options no matter what book they're reading or what program they're listening to, and treat the options presented to them the same way they would a restaurant menu. Well, what do I feel like? What, you know, what, what do I like?

And out of all the options, exercise, deep breathing, yoga, going for a walk, you name it. And say, alright, what I enjoy doing this sort of thing and I've got friends and I like to do these sorts of things with, now I'll make that my recovery.

Hmm. Yeah. It's about figuring out what works for you. Mm-hmm.

Right. Mm-hmm.

You have liked what you've heard, we have a special offer. You can grab the Stress Recovery effect from the adventist book center.com and if you use the code record live, you can get 10% off. So yeah, it's an awesome book. I've really enjoyed it so far, and really enjoyed talking to you, Nick. So thanks again for coming on.

Well, thank you very much for having me on. I've really enjoyed the discussion. It's gotten me thinking about some things too.

Wonderful. All right. Until next time everyone. We'll see you next week on Record Live. Thanks again, Nick.

Thank you.