Huberman LabControl Stress for Healthy Eating, Metabolism & Aging | Dr. Elissa Epel
EVERY SPOKEN WORD
150 min read · 30,136 words- 0:00 – 2:17
Dr. Elissa Epel
- AHAndrew Huberman
(instrumental music) Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. Today my guest is Dr. Elissa Epel. Dr. Epel is a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the University of California, San Francisco. She is also the director of the Center on Aging, Metabolism, and Emotions. Dr. Epel's laboratory focuses on stress and the many impacts that it has on our brain and body, both negative and positive. For instance, her laboratory has shown that particular forms of stress change our telomeres, which are a component of the genetic machinery of our cells that impacts how quickly our cells, and therefore we, age. We also discuss exciting work from Dr. Epel's laboratory exploring how stress impacts our behavioral choices, in particular which foods we elect to eat and how we experience those foods. Today you'll learn how stress and your interpretation of your stress impacts the different aspects of your biology and psychology. You'll also learn about several important stress interventions that Dr. Epel's laboratory has explored, including meditation and breathwork can profoundly influence the way that stress impacts your brain and body, both for better or for worse. She's also explored how specific dietary interventions such as omega-3 fatty acid intake impacts stress and our response to stress. And a key and important feature, I believe, of Dr. Epel's work is how stress and stress interventions vary in their effectiveness depending on whether or not the subjects in her experiments are male versus female and their social status. By the end of today's episode, I assure you, you will have a much more thorough understanding of what stress is and how it changes our biology and psychology, as well as the specific stress interventions that are going to be most optimal for you in reducing the negative effects of stress on the aging process and on negative behavioral choices, and also how to leverage stress in order to maximize the positive effects that stress can have on cellular metabolism, mental health, physical health, and performance. To learn more about the work from Dr. Epel's laboratory, as well as to learn more about her books entitled The Telomere Effect and now, more recently, The Stress Prescription, you can find links to those in the show note captions.
- 2:17 – 6:18
Sponsors: Thesis, Eight Sleep, HVMN, Momentous
- AHAndrew Huberman
Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford. It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero-cost-to-consumer information about science and science-related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast. Our first sponsor is Thesis. Thesis makes custom nootropics, and frankly I'm not a fan of the word nootropics because it translates to smart drugs. And as a neurobiologist, I can tell you that our brain has neural circuits and chemicals that underlie, for instance, our ability to focus or to task switch or to be creative. There is no one specific circuit or category of chemicals in the brain that allow us to be smart. Thesis understands this and has developed nootropics that are customized to different types of mental operations. What do I mean by that? Well, they have formulas that can put your brain into a state of increased clarity or focus or creativity, or that can give you more overall energy for things like physical exercise. I often take the Thesis Clarity formula prior to long bouts of cognitive work, and I'll use their Energy formula prior to doing any kind of really intense physical exercise. If you'd like to try your own personalized nootropic starter kit, go online to takethesis.com/huberman. You'll take a brief three-minute quiz, and Thesis will send you four different formulas to try in your first month. Again, that's takethesis.com/huberman, and if you use the code Huberman at checkout, you'll get 10% off your order. Today's episode is also brought to us by Eight Sleep. Eight Sleep makes smart mattress covers with cooling, heating, and sleep tracking capacity. Now, I've talked many times before on this podcast and on other podcasts about the critical relationship between sleep and body temperature. Put simply, in order to fall asleep and stay asleep deeply throughout the night, your body needs to drop by about one to three degrees in its core body temperature. And conversely, waking up involves one- to three-degree increases in your core body temperature. So it's very important that you control the temperature of your sleeping environment, which also includes the temperature of your mattress. That's what Eight Sleep mattress covers allow you to do. So for instance, I tend to run hot during the night, so I have my mattress set to be pretty cool at the beginning of the night and then to get progressively cooler and then warm toward morning when I want to wake up. And in doing this, it's allowed me to really optimize my sleep, meaning I sleep much more deeply and I get far more rapid eye movement sleep than I ever did prior to using Eight Sleep. If you'd like to try Eight Sleep, you can go to eightsleep.com/huberman to save $150 off their Pod 3 cover. Eight Sleep currently ships in the USA, Canada, UK, select countries in the EU, and Australia. Again, that's eightsleep.com/huberman. Today's episode is also brought to us by HVMN Ketone IQ. Ketone IQ is a supplement that increases blood ketones. I think most people out there have heard of the ketogenic diet. However, most people out there, including myself, do not follow a ketogenic diet. Despite not following a ketogenic diet, I make it a point to increase my blood ketones through the use of Ketone IQ. The reason for that is that ketones are one of the brain's preferred sources of fuel. I find that by taking Ketone IQ, I have elevated levels of focus for several hours afterwards. It also allows me to do physical training or mental work fasted, and in addition to that, I focus much better when I take Ketone IQ as opposed to fasted alone. So many people like me find that whether or not they follow a ketogenic diet or a more typical diet, supplementing with Ketone IQ and thereby increasing their blood ketones allows them to do more focused mental work and physical work even when fasted or when a bit hungry. So if you'd like to try Ketone IQ, go to hvmn.com and use the code Huberman to get 20% off your order. Again, that's hvmn.com and use the code Huberman to get 20% off. The Huberman Lab Podcast is now partnered with Momentous Supplements. To find the supplements we discuss on the Huberman Lab Podcast, you can go to livemomentous, spelled O-U-S, livemomentous.com/huberman. And I should just mention that the library of those supplements is constantly expanding. Again, that's livemomentous.com/huberman. And now for my discussion with Dr. Elissa Epel.Dr.
- 6:18 – 12:50
Stress; Effects on Body & Mind
- AHAndrew Huberman
Epel, welcome.
- EEElissa Epel
Thank you.
- AHAndrew Huberman
So great to have you here. We have colleagues in common and topics of interest related to our laboratories in common, so I've got a lot of questions today. I'd love to just kick off by you explaining a little bit about the different forms of stress. You know, we hear stress, stress is bad, stress can kill us, no one likes to feel stressed, et cetera. But as you and I both know, that's not the entire picture. So love for you to just educate us a bit on what stress is and what it isn't, uh, where it can be problematic and where perhaps it can even be beneficial.
- EEElissa Epel
So as a stress scientist, it is a word I use a lot, but it has to be broken down because it has so many different kind of dimensions and meanings. So there's good and bad stress, there's acute and chronic stress, and you know, technically it just means anytime we feel overwhelmed, that we feel like the demands are too much for our resources. So that's kind of a, a very technical way to put it. But really so much of life is about meeting challenges and we're never going to get rid of different stressful situations in life. If anything, they are increasing. And so it really comes down to not the stressors or what happens to us, but really how we respond, the stress response. So that's a distinction that we're still trying to get the field to talk about stress in a more specific way so that we can think about, well, what situations are in your life? They might be difficult ongoing situations like caregiving or work stress or worrying about health, your own or someone's. And then there's, how are you coping with it? So when something happens, we mount a stress response and we recover. And that's beautiful. No harm done. We need that. That's why we're here still alive, is that survival response. It's, it's a problem these days of just, we keep it alive in our head, we keep it alive with our thoughts. Our thoughts are the most common form of stress.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Even though I expected we would get into tools to combat stress a little bit later, since you have now told us that our thoughts are the biggest, um, sort of propagator of internal stress, what, to your knowledge, is the best way or what are the best ways for us to manage overthinking and ruminating on stressful topics?
- EEElissa Epel
Mm-hmm.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Because I certainly experience stress and when I do, I have tools related to, you know, breath work, running, exercise, sleep, uh, non-sleep deep rest. I'm a huge fan of all these sorts of things, but when we succumb to stress and the thinking patterns take over where the gears are turning and they won't stop turning, what does the science tell us about ways to manage those thoughts? Should we work with them in the sense that we try and rationalize, um, or understand the basis of the stress? Or should we try and divert our thinking away? Or is there some other tool that I'm aware-
- EEElissa Epel
Yeah.
- AHAndrew Huberman
... unaware of?
- EEElissa Epel
Yes, yes, both and. (laughs)
- AHAndrew Huberman
Great.
- EEElissa Epel
So I like to bin it in three, um, three categories. So one is we... Well, I'll just say first of all, we have to have some awareness of how our mind works or we're just like, you know, a subject to thinking our thoughts are real, thinking that it's helpful to keep ruminating and problem-solving because that's our tendency is to go toward whatever we think there's threat or risk and to problem-solve that. But you could just be stuck there all day in this kind of threat mode or red mind state, and that's just a shame. We don't need to turn on that stress response all the time. But that's where we are as a society, so that's why I, I wrote The Stress Prescription. Take any survey, even pre-pandemic, and people feel, the majority of people feel an overwhelming amount of stress. So even, um, this past year, 46% of adults report feeling overwhelmed by stress. And then you break it down, you're like, "Ooh, this is really bad for young adults and women and people of color." And we, so we have these, you know, groups that are targeted for marginalization that are feeling an extremely high amount of stress in most of those subgroups. So bottom... Yeah.
- AHAndrew Huberman
W- Wouldn't you argue that most, most everyone is feeling more stress now? Or is it just... Or what do the data say?
- EEElissa Epel
Yeah. So (laughs) I think that, I think that we're... We come with different levels of awareness of our stress, and so when I find someone who really doesn't feel a lot of stress, sometimes I can see right through that and they're just not aware, and sometimes it really is true. They- they're often in a different stage of life and they control their environment a lot and they've been through a lot. I mean, one of the big patterns in the population levels of stress is that the older people are less stressed, period. If you're over 65, you have been through so much, solved so much, you just have a better perspective on life and on stressors. And then our adults, our young adults have like four times the level of stress as our older adults. So, so we do... You know, we don't have to wait till we get older, but there certainly is true wisdom and resilience that comes with age for many people. Um, often we're so used to feeling daily stress from our urban and modern life that we're, we don't notice it. We're just used to it. And so we're going through the day with kind of like clenched hands, and just, you know, for listeners, just even just taking a check-in now and noticing how you might be holding stress in your body, that's a huge clue. It's a huge place where we accumulate tension. So we might not be aware that we're stressed, but we're clenching our hands. And in fact, um...... my taxi driver who drove me here, um, s- let me know that he's exactly that point, that he doesn't realize he's stressed until he realizes that he's tensing his shoulders in his, in his fists. And so great signal. You know, doing a check-in to, like, notice where in our body we're holding stress is step one to releasing it.
- 12:50 – 15:37
Tools: Overthinking & Stress
- AHAndrew Huberman
Mm-hmm. So, um, going back to this notion of overthinking, w- what are the tools that, um, are most efficient for dealing with overthinking or ruminating, uh, when people just sort- can't seem to let go of the thing that's the stressor, uh, thinking about not the stress in their body, but the thing that caused the stress-
- EEElissa Epel
Mm-hmm.
- AHAndrew Huberman
... the difficult conversation, the thing that irked them-
- EEElissa Epel
Yeah.
- AHAndrew Huberman
... on social media-
- EEElissa Epel
Right.
- AHAndrew Huberman
... or in their personal life or professional life-
- EEElissa Epel
Mm-hmm.
- AHAndrew Huberman
... or simply out in the world?
- EEElissa Epel
So I, I wish I had one answer, but I'm going to say lots of strategies tackle that. And so in those three bins, one are top-down strategies of awareness and things that we can say to ourselves, since our beliefs and mindsets can really help us release stress, view stress more positively. The second bucket is, um, not that the mind changes the body, but the body changes the mind, and those are the set of strategies that you tend to use the most, right? Where we're, we're, we're working stress out of the body, we're metabolizing it, we're burning it up, and we get relief. It changes our, you know, amygdala activity and moves us to more an experiential state, where we're more in our somatosensory cortex. And then the third, uh, bucket is change the scene, just getting away from all the stress triggers that we have in our office or in, um, in the city and being in an environment that we find calming. It might even be just, just be a corner of the house, but implanting what I call safety signals. We're just these animals that are conditioned to signals, whether we're aware of it or not. So having s- having things like comforting pets, pictures, smells, music, why not? We need those. They help.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Mm-hmm.
- EEElissa Epel
They add up.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Yeah, I like the idea of having a small physical space, or I, uh, suppose it could be a large physical space, but for most people, uh, who don't have the resources, some small pre-designated physical space that, um, represents a, a safe zone, um, and, uh, creating, or I should say populating that safe zone with things. As you said, um, as a visual neuroscientist originally, I guess now I study stress, um, but, uh, as a visual neuroscientist, we know that photographs are extremely powerful cues for the memory system, especially, uh, actual physical photographs.
- EEElissa Epel
Mm.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Um, and I, I believe there is some work on this that if people keep a photograph of something that draws positive memories, that that photograph actually, if they keep it with them, that it actually can be a positive cue for, um, alleviating stress and just enhancing mood. Um, this is probably done less so nowadays because everyone keeps things on their phones and it's just kind of a scroll through, but, um, in any event,
- 15:37 – 21:23
Acute, Moderate & Chronic Stress, Breathing
- AHAndrew Huberman
you know, w- when we talk about stress, uh, it's clear that there's short-term, medium-term, long-term stress. You studied all these different forms of stress. Um, if you would be so kind as to just, you know, give us an overview of the different forms of stress, uh, how we can learn to recognize those, and then I'd love to transition from there into talking about, uh, some of the work that you've been doing on stress and stress-related eating and stress and how it, uh, relates to aging in particular. But before we do that, um, to get- make sure everyone's on the same page, um, if you could just, uh, pepper our minds with knowledge about stress and all its, um, uh, beautiful and, um, not so beautiful forms.
- EEElissa Epel
(laughs) So when we think about stress, we usually think feeling stress, you know, reporting stress, and that's important. What our body is doing is also important and it's not always related to our minds, so measuring levels of the nervous system and how vigilant we are is another way that we can understand stress. And that's particularly important and interesting because that's how stress gets under the skin and we might not be aware. We might not report stress, but we're still holding tension and being much more s- sympathetically dominated, meaning that we are... our body is vigilant and scanning for cues and we don't feel safe, and so we're mobilizing a lot more energy than we need to. And stress is so expensive to the body. The stress response uses a tremendous amount of energy, ATP, that's made by our mitochondria, and if we have that kind of vigilant stress response on all day, we're just going to feel exhausted, and we all feel exhausted at this stage of the kind of long shadow of the pandemic. And it's really no mystery because we're not good at turning the stress response off, and that's what we want to really focus on is understanding we need to mount a big stress response to cope with things when we need extra energy, but then we can actually let our body relax and we can turn it off, and that's where the rumination comes in. We want to catch ourselves rehearsing and reliving stress or worrying about the next thing and saying, "Right now, I'm safe." And you know, there's the breathing strategies. I'm right with you where those are the most direct and fast path to reducing stress in the body, period.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Yeah. Our colleague, David Spiegel, er, associate chair of psychiatry at Stanford and also a colleague of yours, um, as well, um, has I think said it best, which is that breathing is unique among the functions of the brain 'cause it really originates as a brain function and then extends, of course, to the body, in that it represents a bridge between the conscious and the unconscious because at any given moment, we're breathing and of course-... at any given moment, we can take control of our breathing. There are very few brain circuits that impact the body in that way. Like, I can't suddenly just change what the- my rate of digestion because I decide to, but we can do that with breathing. We'll- we will definitely get into some of the, um, work that you've been doing on breath work. Do you, like... um, I know you have a study that's actually explored the Wim Hof method quite directly, one of the few studies that I'm aware of that's done that.
- EEElissa Epel
Yeah.
- AHAndrew Huberman
So we'll get to that a little bit later. Um, so you describe stress as a- a way that the body and mind mobilize energy.
- EEElissa Epel
Yeah. And I didn't quite answer your question. So there's- there's that acute stress response when everything, every hormone and, um, cell in our body, is having a stress response, and that is allowing us to reorient, focus, problem-solve. It's really beautiful how much we can, um, increase our capacity to do things during stress. And then if it, you know, lasts minutes or hours, we eventually recover, and that is, um, what happens all day in small... you know, to small extents with daily stressors. We don't necessarily get so threatened that we release a lot of cortisol, but our nervous system is going up and down all day. Then there are... then there's kind of moderate stressful events that maybe take days or months to cope with, and what's important there is that noticing, like, right now, am I really coping acutely with something or can I restore? So that kind of daily restoration is very important. And then there are chronically stressful situations that go on for years. Many of us, not all of us but many of us, have those in our life. These are situations, I'll just use caregiving as an example, that we can't change. We- we can't change other people, we can't change certain situations or resources, and we can be thinking about them chronically problem-solving, trying to... wish things were different, or we can use acceptance, radical acceptance strategies and other strategies, to live well with them. And- and so that's a really important strategy for people who feel like their- their life is going to be stressful forever because of X or Y. That- that's not true. You have a harder life, you're going to do more coping, but you can actually be dealing with uncontrollable chronic stress in ways that it's not going to take that toll on your body. I mean, I studied chronic stress and how it accelerates cell aging, and I can tell you, there's so much variance between people. People are so different. So among caregivers, some of them look as biologically young or younger than our controls, people with no identifiable big tough situation in their life.
- AHAndrew Huberman
I love
- 21:23 – 31:04
Stress Benefits, Aging & Cognition; Stress Challenge Response
- AHAndrew Huberman
to hear about the, um, lack of inevitability around aging and stress. Uh, I- I realize that there's a big landscape of- of discussion around aging and stress for us to cover but since you brought it up, um, in one of your papers, uh, there's a beautiful graph, and since a lot of people are listening, not watching, and we don't use visual diagrams for that reason, I'll try and explain this as best I can. Um, you distinguish between optimal aging, typical aging, and accelerated aging. I think everyone, I can imagine, would want optimal aging, right? Certainly not accelerated aging. And what's interesting about this graph in your paper is that while of course it appears that toxic stress, chronically unmitigated stress that makes us feel like we are at the world's mercy or the- other people's mercy, will accelerate aging, turns out that under-exposure to stress leads to more rapid aging than what you describe as ideal amounts of stress. In other words, that no stress is not the answer. Rather, to have some stress is ideal if you want to have so-called optimal aging. Can you maybe explain a little bit about the mechanisms behind that? Um, maybe this is a good opportunity also to, um, tell us about your telomere work. Um, so the questions are, how does one measure optimal versus accelerated aging, and why would it be that some stress is better than no stress when it comes to aging, uh, ideally?
- EEElissa Epel
(laughs) Mm-hmm. So having no stress means we're not really living. Like, we're not engaging in the gifts of life, which are... inevitably have some challenge and risk, and let me give you an example. One study took, um, elderly people who retired, and they... you know, society kind of labels them as, "You're kind of done with your meaningful work in life and, um, you're... you know, you are pretty much not able to contribute to society." I mean, there's so many negative stereotypes that people then kind of embody and then live. Um, and this program brought them to work in schools and tutor young at-risk students, and what happened to them is they went from feeling maybe safe and under-stressed to feeling challenged but generative. They- they were feeling more purpose, they were feeling like they were growing, and they were feeling like their day had more meaning. They had more relationships, they had these caring relationships with the students. The students had all sorts of issues and troubles, drugs and- and maybe not having lunch, poverty, and so they felt the stress of that, but they also saw how much they could help with their support and their tutoring. And in this study, they- they took-... images of the hippocampus, and those who engaged in the program, particularly the men, actually had growth of their hippocampus during this program. So at any stage in life, we can be growing and challenging ourselves, even in our much later years, and growing our brain. And you know more than anyone, like, what does that hippocampal growth mean for their well-being and their cognitive function?
- AHAndrew Huberman
Yeah, it's interesting. The hippocampus, of course, a brain area involved in formation and recall of memories, mostly formation of memories, um, is super interesting because it's so plastic, it's so amenable to the addition of new memories, re- I think the most striking study to me is the one... and I should point out that m- most of the data say that the addition of new neurons is not the main reason for improvements in memory, but it is one of them. Um, but Rusty Gage down at the Salk Institute did a study in the, I think, the early 2000s, where they took terminally ill people and these people agreed to have their bodies injected with a dye that would label new neurons, and then after they died, their brains were processed, um, and they didn't die from the dye injection, by the way, folks. They died from other causes. They were terminally ill. And what they discovered was that even in terminally ill or, or v- and some of these people were, uh, quite old, those people were still generating new neurons, especially in the context of still trying to learn and, and acquire new information. So-
- EEElissa Epel
Wow. Amazing.
- AHAndrew Huberman
... um, of course, they're dead, so they can't apply that information after that-
- EEElissa Epel
(laughs)
- AHAndrew Huberman
... but, of course, none of us can, right? None of the information that-
- EEElissa Epel
Yeah, but why not up to when you die, right?
- AHAndrew Huberman
Absolutely.
- EEElissa Epel
Yeah.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Absolutely.
- EEElissa Epel
So one other example of this.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Please.
- EEElissa Epel
My colleague, Dave Almeida, he measures, you know, daily stressful events in huge national populations, and a small percentage of people report no stressors. And so you wonder, like, uh, what's happening? Are they not engaging in life? Are they really not having stressors? It, it looks like they are... It's not just that they're not getting stressed by things. They're not, they're not really going out and doing much. And what he found is that their level of kind of memory and cognition, their cognitive health, was significantly lower. So you can imagine, the hippocampal-
- AHAndrew Huberman
Mm-hmm.
- EEElissa Epel
... you know, the lack of those, um, neuroprogenitor cells.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Yeah.
- EEElissa Epel
They're just not being stimulated.
- AHAndrew Huberman
It's super interesting. I wasn't aware of that result, so I appreciate you sharing it. I almost have to wonder if it's like exercise, where, you know, so many people, I think now everybody, hopefully, understands that exercise is going to lower blood pressure, reduce resting heart rate, improve, uh, musculoskeletal function and bone density, all that stuff. But that if you took a snapshot of the bodily response during exercise, blood pressure is way, way up. Heart rate is way, way up. Uh, stress hormones are way up. Cortisol is through the roof during a hard workout-
- EEElissa Epel
Yeah.
- AHAndrew Huberman
... and immediately afterwards, and yet that sets in motion a series of adaptations that brings you to a better place most of the time. I almost wonder if stress is the same. Is there any evidence that short bouts of stress, provided that they're managed well, meaning that we don't spend the next 24 or 48 hours ruminating on the stressor, but that we're able to move through the stressor and resolve it in some way, that that's actually beneficial for us because of the mobilization of energy stores and maybe, maybe even changing our threshold for reacting to stressors in the future?
- EEElissa Epel
It's a great question, and it's one that I have been chewing on a- for a while, because we, we know, as you said, that physical stressors, when they're short and repeated, like high-intensity interval training, they are promoting not just aerobic fitness, but stress fitness. People feel less rumination, less depression, less anxiety. So they're kind of tuning up the nervous system. What about psychological stressors? And we'd... We, we know two things. So one is I do think that there is a level of engagement with moderate stressors, that when we are used to them, we get fit and our stress resilience builds, meaning we're less threatened by them. So let me go deep into that. We can... Two people can approach the exact same stressor and one person is having a pretty, um, over-reactive stress response, where they basically are feeling their survival is threatened, so it's high cortisol, high vasoconstriction, and, uh, blood pressure goes up equally in both. But the person who's feeling super threatened, either their survival or their social survival, their ego, their blood pressure went up because of the vasoconstriction. The other person who's viewing the same stressor as, "I can do this. This is a great challenge and opportunity. I have what it takes," those types of thoughts generate a different hemodynamic response, which is actually more cardiac output, so blood pressure's going up, but in this healthier way, more oxygenation to the brain, better problem-solving. They're able to maintain this positive outlook. So we've measured this threat challenge response in many lab studies, and we know lots of things. So if you're having more of the challenge response, at the end of it, you're less inflamed. So just in a lab, within an hour or two, we see that they're, they didn't trigger all that pro-inflammatory response. And their telomeres tend to be longer, which is a measure we can talk more about, but basically, it looks like they have a slower speed of aging.
- AHAndrew Huberman
That is super interesting. You call this a, a stress, uh, challenge response?
- EEElissa Epel
So we could call this kind of a, um, two, to be really simplistic, two types of s- psychological stress response, feeling threatened, like you're gonna fail, you're embarrassed, um, you know, that social pain response we know well that feels terrible, um, but that also that huge stress response when we, you know, we feel it in our stomach. Our heart is pounding. It's just an over-exaggerated response. That response biologically is different and the thoughts that go with it are different, and we recover a lot slower. And then there's the challenge response, which is this, it's more of that kind of...... activated, um, excited response. And the beauty is that there are lots of studies out there done by emotions and social psychologists that tilt people toward the challenge response. We can actually promote that challenge response. And so, when you asked about, like, is it good to have a repeated stress response? Yes, if it's sh- if it's manageable, right? Then we're kind of building the muscle of stress resilience.
- 31:04 – 32:19
Sponsor: AG-1 (Athletic Greens)
- EEElissa Epel
- AHAndrew Huberman
I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge one of our sponsors, Athletic Greens. Athletic Greens, now called AG1, is a vitamin mineral probiotic drink that covers all of your foundational nutritional needs. I've been taking Athletic Greens since 2012, so I'm delighted that they're sponsoring the podcast. The reason I started taking Athletic Greens and the reason I still take Athletic Greens once or usually twice a day is that it gets me the probiotics that I need for gut health. Our gut is very important. It's populated by, uh, gut microbiota that communicate with the brain, the immune system, and basically all the biological systems of our body to strongly impact our immediate and long-term health. And those probiotics in Athletic Greens are optimal and vital for microbiotic health. In addition, Athletic Greens contains a number of adaptogens, vitamins and minerals that make sure that all of my foundational nutritional needs are met and it tastes great. If you'd like to try Athletic Greens, you can go to athleticgreens.com/huberman and they'll give you five free travel packs that make it really easy to mix up Athletic Greens while you're on the road, in the car, on the plane, et cetera. And they'll give you a year's supply of vitamin D3 K2. Again, that's athleticgreens.com/huberman to get the five free travel packs and the year's supply of vitamin D3 K2.
- 32:19 – 37:40
Tool: Shifting Stress to Challenge Response, “Stress Shields”
- AHAndrew Huberman
What are the sorts of things that people (I) can do-
- EEElissa Epel
(laughs)
- AHAndrew Huberman
... in order, including me I should say, um, can do in order to, um, wage that challenge response? Is this, uh, purely based on mindset? Like, instead of saying, "Why me? Why this? Why now? I can't believe this is happening," is it a mental pivot to, "Okay, this is a great opportunity for growth. I don't know how I'm going to manage this, but I'll manage this." Um, you know, "You want to stop me, you got to kill me." type of, type of mindset?
- EEElissa Epel
Yeah.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Is that- is that the- the switch that then the body follows?
- EEElissa Epel
Yes.
- AHAndrew Huberman
'Cause this is an interesting instance where the, uh, most all the stress mitigation work that my lab does is focused on using the body to control the mind, but here we're talking about the mind controlling the body first and then the body following suit, which I find, um, equally fascinating. Um, so are there some specific mental scripts that people follow and are we all able to follow those- those scripts?
- EEElissa Epel
Yes, to some extent we control the script. We can use that script to prepare ourselves going into a stressful situation, and we can use it at any point during the stressor. So, some of us are just wired to have a big threat response, period. Maybe it's, you know, it's, uh, epigenetics we've inherited. Maybe it's tra- early trauma that has shaped us to be ex- have this exaggerated emotional response. And yes, we and others have found that. Trauma sensitizes our emotional stress response so that we are feeling more threatened. But that's okay, because that's the part we can't control and we just have to have a lot of self-compassion and awareness that, "Okay, this is what I do and my body reacts like this, but what happens next?" That's when we can start to use those statements, self-comforting, self-compassion, distancing. There's all sorts of statements that allow us to then recover more quickly.
- AHAndrew Huberman
So, when we want to shift from a, uh, threatened response to a kind of challenge response-
- EEElissa Epel
Mm-hmm.
- AHAndrew Huberman
... are there any data that dictate whether or not we should keep those statements in our head, write them down, say them out loud? I guess what I'm trying to do here is trying to get to a little bit more of the- the meat of the- the actionable-
- EEElissa Epel
Yeah.
- AHAndrew Huberman
... since, uh, since a lot of our listeners-
- EEElissa Epel
So-
- AHAndrew Huberman
... I think will be, um, as I am, very excited about the idea that a mere shift in our mentality about stress can give us the opposite outcome. I mean, before you were talking about vasoconstriction and inflammation and all these bad things, to, um, put it lightly. And then s- in the challenge response to stress, getting the exact opposite.
- EEElissa Epel
Mm-hmm.
- AHAndrew Huberman
More vasodilation, more resources used, and more positive effects on the brain and body.
- EEElissa Epel
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
- AHAndrew Huberman
So what- what are some, um, if y- uh, if you can recall from the papers? If not, that's fine.
- EEElissa Epel
No, no, no. I can give you some statements, yeah.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Um, but I'm just curious what- what those specific, uh-
- EEElissa Epel
Every-
- AHAndrew Huberman
... tools might be.
- EEElissa Epel
Every statement you said, Andrew, is good. It's a good one. The whole trick here is that people need to find the- the strength statements, the stress shields I call them, that fit them, that that feels right, and that they believe. And so they're, uh, you know, I list a bunch of options in chapter three, which is called Be the Lion Instead of the Gazelle. So the, the lion and gazelle are both, you know, high blood pressure, high stress, and the lion's chasing the gazelle, but the gel- the gazelle's having this total threat vasoconstriction response 'cause, um, she might die. Lion might get dinner, right? So it's needing to mount the stress response because it's so excited to get the tasty dinner for, you know, the next few days. And so the lion is having that challenge response. And so we can remind ourselves, be the lion. We, it's- it's not that we're always lion or gazelle. We get to shape that. And so some of those statements are, well, let's say right when- when we're going into it, list your resources. Why have you ever dealt with any situation like this? Remind yourself of past successes. Remind yourself of someone you can call or text or feel supported by. Remind yourself that this outcome is not going to affect your life in 10 years or 5 years. That's a distancing kind of, um, perspective taking. So there's all these strategies and- and you got to use what works for you. Telling yourself, "I got this. I can do it. I can get through it. I have what it takes." Those are all good shields.... and another set is, you know, we... Some of us feel really stressed out by stress. Like, once we get... Feel our heart racing, that leads to, "Oh, no," you know, "This is bad for me." And so rather than, than getting stressed by stress, we actually want to remind ourselves that this stress response is empowering. This is going to help me cope. My body's excited. My body is doing just what it should right now. So that reframing in studies by Wendy Mendez and others, my, my colleagues who do this reappraisal research, they have basically trained people to view stress as positive. During the stressful situations in the lab, people do better. They perform better. They feel more positive emotion, they problem-solve better, they recover more quickly. So pretty powerful stuff.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Yeah, that is powerful stuff. I'm
- 37:40 – 48:55
Stress, Overeating, Craving & Opioid System
- AHAndrew Huberman
wondering if we can talk about the relationship between stress and eating. And I think that's also a great opportunity for us to talk about the opioid system. A lot of people are familiar with the so-called, um, opioid epidemic and opioid crisis, um, you know. Sadly, you know, far too many people are dying of fentanyl overdoses, and we all know about the Oxy, um, Contin epidemic and a-all these people addicted to opioids, and, um, that's not really what this is about. Um, what we're about to talk about is the fact that we have an opioid system within us, that is neurons and other cell types that can redu- excuse me, can release substances into our brain and body that make us feel less pain and make us feel-
- EEElissa Epel
Mm-hmm.
- AHAndrew Huberman
... sedated, but at a healthy level, right?
- EEElissa Epel
Mm-hmm.
- AHAndrew Huberman
And yet, there are a lot of things besides drugs that can activate this opioid system. Um, I think sex o- activates the endogenous opioid system as far as I, I last read. There was a paper out recently. But also food can do it, um, and again, to healthy levels, um, provided the context is healthy, of course. What is the relationship between stress and eating, and eating and the opioid system?
- EEElissa Epel
Mm-hmm. Stress and eating is an interesting one. So most people, when they feel stressed or, you know, I'm just gonna ask you, do you eat more or less when you're stressed?
- AHAndrew Huberman
Less, definitely.
- EEElissa Epel
Mm-hmm.
- AHAndrew Huberman
I feel like I can go two, three days without food when I'm, when I'm really stressed.
- EEElissa Epel
Mm-hmm.
- AHAndrew Huberman
But I came up in a profession where, um, sadly, for me, all-nighters were part of the regular until pretty recently, uh, a couple years ago when I s- just called an end to that. Um, and no, it wasn't just because of procrastination. It was just work overload.
- EEElissa Epel
Yep.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Um, but I can go a long period of time without eating, although I love to eat.
- EEElissa Epel
Mm-hmm.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Uh, so I do point out that I do love to eat.
- EEElissa Epel
And what does the body feel like when you're in that stress state when you're not even hungry? You're kind of shut down in your digestion.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Um, that I have enough energy from my neural resources, from adrenaline.
- EEElissa Epel
Mm-hmm.
- AHAndrew Huberman
And generally, those periods of time when I'm not hungry coincide with a, uh, hyper-focus on the stressor.
- EEElissa Epel
Mm-hmm.
- AHAndrew Huberman
The deadline, whatever it is in life that, that needs tending to.
- EEElissa Epel
Mm-hmm.
- AHAndrew Huberman
And, um, food just doesn't appeal to me as much. It doesn't taste as good, and it's not as enticing.
- EEElissa Epel
Yeah. So we think that your type of, um, body temperament is high sympathetic, and so when you have a big stress response, your digestion is, is pretty much shut down. Like, it's... It would be the opposite. Eating would be the opposite of what your body's telling you to do.
- AHAndrew Huberman
I should... I'm just gonna-
- EEElissa Epel
Yeah.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Uh, forgive me for interrupting. Uh, for those of you hearing sympathetic, we're, uh, we're not talking about sympathy. We're talking about the a- the sympathetic arm of the autonomic nervous system, which is the so-called fight or flight-
- EEElissa Epel
Mm-hmm.
- AHAndrew Huberman
... arm, as opposed to the parasympathetic. In any event, sorry to interrupt, but want to make sure that, um... Sometimes people hear sympathy and then-
- EEElissa Epel
Yeah.
- 48:55 – 54:44
Tools: Breaking Overeating Cycles, Mindfulness
- EEElissa Epel
let me go back to the, the-
- AHAndrew Huberman
Mm-hmm. Please.
- EEElissa Epel
... compulsive eating. So we've, we've, we've, um ... There are some clues about how to break that cycle. So one is, in our weight loss trials or our healthy mindful eating trials, we find that mindful eating is not going to cause a lot of weight loss, period. But the people who benefit most from learning this kind of calm self-regulation where you check in with your hunger, you slow down, you increase your awareness of your body, so interoceptive awareness, that, um, type of skill is really critical for people with compulsive eating. And so in our trials, we find that if they ... People with compulsive eating, if they get that- if they get randomized to the mindful eating, they do better in terms of their insulin resistance and their glucose and their long-term weight loss. So that's one good clue. Another is, uh, the positive stress pathway looks important for breaking the compulsive eating cycle. So exer- h- high-intensity interval training or, you know, maybe, um, some of these other ways that we've be- been talking about to increase the bodily stress in these short-term ways, to metabolize stress in our body, can help with the cravings.
- AHAndrew Huberman
So what would that look like in, in the context of ... Let's say somebody, um, has the opposite phenotype to me. They get stressed and they find themselves reaching for snack food or that they simply can't reach satiety. They just want to eat and eat and eat.
- EEElissa Epel
Mm-hmm.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Um, what are some of the, aside from naltrexone and Wellbutrin and some of these-
- EEElissa Epel
Yeah.
- AHAndrew Huberman
... prescription approaches. Uh, 'cause I always say while I value, certainly value prescription drugs in certain contexts, I always feel like behavior should come first, dos and don'ts, then nutrition, then supplementation, and then if and only if it's still needed, prescription drugs. But that's just my bias based on my observations.
- EEElissa Epel
Pretty reasonable. (laughs)
- AHAndrew Huberman
I like to think so. Uh, it also is a, uh, it starts at a zero cost-
- EEElissa Epel
Mm-hmm.
- AHAndrew Huberman
... um, endeavor. I mean, behaviors require time, but it certainly, um, includes everybody, not just those that have insurance or that live in a particular region of the US or the world. So anyway, um, that's my bias, and at least for the time being, I'm sticking with it. Um-
- EEElissa Epel
(laughs)
- AHAndrew Huberman
It's the basis of a lot of what we talk about on this podcast. But nonetheless, if somebody is, uh, finding themselves in that category of, of binge eating or heading towards binge eating or using food to comfort or alleviate stress, how should they intervene in their own thoughts and behavior?
- EEElissa Epel
We talked about the, the bins. Top-down strategies, changing the body, changing the scene. We need all of those. I mean, the, the compulsive drive to eat is one of our, you know, strongest impulses-
- AHAndrew Huberman
Mm-hmm.
- EEElissa Epel
... if we've developed that pathway. And so the ... We train people, for example, in mindful awareness of separating out emotions from hunger. So they get really wrapped up together. So just labeling how you're feeling, labeling your hun- hunger from one to 10 and figuring out, "Is it r- am I really hungry or is it boredom?" That helps people. And if you do that check-in right before you eat, that helps the most. So that's the top-down mindful check-in. The, uh, other thing we help people do is, like, ride the craving, r- surf the urge. So we deal a lot with soda drinkers. And it is addictive, and there is nothing worse than drinking sugar soda for our body. So we help people by help, um, having them watch their craving pass and m- and knowing that it's a matter of time that they can surf the urge without jumping to consuming. And so that practice helps some people, especially with practice. The push-ups, the taking a walk, the changing the scene, getting a- away from food is always going to be a huge strong strategy if you can get yourself away from it. The, the problem is, as you know, is that the cravings get you to the buffet. They drive you to the, the soda, et cetera. And so just w- you know, creating safe environments, both at home and in the workplace, where you don't have soda is really important. So we tried that at UCSF. My colleagues and I, um, including Rob Lustig, (laughs) the anti-sugar doctor, we just saw the absurdity of being a h- medical center. People come with these chronic diseases, and what are they served in the cafeteria or even at their bedside? Sugared Coke.
- AHAndrew Huberman
In the hospital?
- EEElissa Epel
In the hospital.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Yeah.
- EEElissa Epel
And so my colleague Laura Schmidt, who's, uh, partly responsible for the soda tax, she rallied the, all the, um ... We went top-down to administration but bottom-up to vendors, got rid of all the soda in all of our hospitals and campuses. And we found two things. Number one, people who were heavy drinkers lost weight in the most important place, their waist.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Heavy soda drinkers?
- EEElissa Epel
Mm-hmm.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Mm-hmm.
- EEElissa Epel
So when we took it out of the workplace, they actually ha- their health improved. And number two, those with compulsive eating, they score high on our, our little scale for, um, reward-based drive. It didn't help them. So then we randomized half of them to get some extra boost. We call it motivational interviewing, where we're really supporting them more and helping them, you know, think of goals, like being with their grandchildren, not getting diabetes. And, and that little bit of support helped them tremendously. And so now we are trying to roll that out in, you know, a big controlled trial. But at least 100 hospitals have adopted the, um, stopped selling sugary drinks, because people don't want to be sick, but they can't help it if they have the reward drive and if they have the compulsivity-
- 54:44 – 1:00:51
Soda & Sugary Drinks
- EEElissa Epel
- AHAndrew Huberman
Mm-hmm.
- EEElissa Epel
... and it's right there at work. We're just working against health.
- AHAndrew Huberman
That's super interesting. I, I think that, um, for most of us, we think about soda as the kind of thing that maybe we-... have every once in a while, or that we drank more when we were kids.
- EEElissa Epel
Mm-hmm.
- AHAndrew Huberman
I seem to have lost my appetite for soda at some point. I don't know, te-
- EEElissa Epel
You just know too much. (laughs)
- AHAndrew Huberman
... teen years. May- maybe, or just at some point-
- EEElissa Epel
Yeah.
- AHAndrew Huberman
... I, I, I, uh, I started to feel like there were better alternatives.
- EEElissa Epel
Mm-hmm.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Um, and, you know-
- EEElissa Epel
Like what? (laughs)
- AHAndrew Huberman
Well... Okay, well-
- EEElissa Epel
People want ideas. (laughs)
- AHAndrew Huberman
Yeah, well, full confession, I mean, okay, most of my non-water, uh, beverage consumption is going to be either coffee, um, usually black coffee, or nowadays, I sometimes will throw some ketones in there, not 'cause I'm on a ketogenic diet, but for... I do feel like it makes my, uh, level of focus and cognition better.
- EEElissa Epel
Is that what you were pouring in this morning?
- AHAndrew Huberman
Yeah. I do use it before podcasts and we were prepping for podcasts.
- EEElissa Epel
Cool.
- AHAndrew Huberman
It, it, um... There are good data showing that, uh, we can all utilize ketones as a, as a brain fuel, even if we're not on ketogenic diet.
- EEElissa Epel
Mm-hmm.
- AHAndrew Huberman
That's, um, clear to me based on my experience and the, the data as I see them and understand them. Um, or yerba mate tea, which is just a s- caffeinated, uh, tea from, uh, South America, which I like very much.
- EEElissa Epel
Okay.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Um, however, I am, uh, guilty of drinking the occasional diet soda every once in a while. And I know that, you know, some of my audience will just gasp, "How could I do that?" But we're talking about the occasional Diet Coke.
- EEElissa Epel
Diet soda. Yeah, okay.
- AHAndrew Huberman
The occasional Diet Coke.
- EEElissa Epel
Yeah.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Uh, mostly 'cause I, I don't like the taste of sugary soda. And-
- EEElissa Epel
Mm-hmm.
- AHAndrew Huberman
... I actually really like the taste of diet soda. A- aspartame is a particularly rewarding taste for me.
- 1:00:51 – 1:05:29
Smoking, Processed Food & Rebellion
- AHAndrew Huberman
in my brain. I'm glad you brought up smoking. I don't want to take us off topic. But as long as we're venturing into these general, or I should say more general and yet really important themes around public health and food, you know, s- I learned something interesting about smoking and why so few people now smoke.Um, I always thought that the campaigns around smoking and how terrible it is for us, showing pictures of lungs that are, you know, c-caked with all this tar and like y- you know, cancer and all this stuff, was the effective message. But what I learned was that one of the most effective messaging systems in the, in the battle against smoking was to get young people to stop smoking n- not by telling them that it was bad for them, but by showing them videos of these, um, rich men sitting around tables, cackling about the fact that they're making so much money on the health problems-
- EEElissa Epel
Mm-hmm.
- AHAndrew Huberman
... of other people because of smoking. In other words, what they did is they made being a non-smoker anti-establishment.
- EEElissa Epel
Mm-hmm.
- AHAndrew Huberman
And so I find it very interesting, any time there's something like soda or highly processed foods that are so woven into the establishment-
- EEElissa Epel
Mm-hmm.
- AHAndrew Huberman
... it seems like th- you can, we can tell people until, you know, uh, we're blue in the face about all the health concerns with, with these things, uh, you know-
- EEElissa Epel
Mm-hmm.
- AHAndrew Huberman
... sugar is bad and this is bad, highly processed food is bad, some people might change their behavior, but it seems like for the younger generation, the thing that's most effective is to activate their sense of rebellion.
- EEElissa Epel
Mm-hmm.
- AHAndrew Huberman
This has been true for hund- probably hundreds of thousands of years.
- EEElissa Epel
(laughs)
- AHAndrew Huberman
But it's certainly true in the last hundred years. And let them see that there is a very strong, um, big food, sometimes big pharma, but certainly big food system, that is working against them.
- EEElissa Epel
Mm-hmm.
- AHAndrew Huberman
And that it, in order to take control of their health, actually we want to activate their sense of rebellion-
- EEElissa Epel
Yeah.
- AHAndrew Huberman
... so that they're like, "No. I'm going to take excellent care of myself. I'm not going to fall victim to this monetary scheme."
- EEElissa Epel
Right.
- AHAndrew Huberman
And here, I'm not pointing to any conspiracy.
- EEElissa Epel
Yeah.
- AHAndrew Huberman
I mean this has been seen with smoking-
- EEElissa Epel
Yep.
- AHAndrew Huberman
... this has been seen with a number of different pharmaceuticals.
- EEElissa Epel
Mm-hmm.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Again, not all pharmaceuticals are bad. This is true of, of a number of different aspects of, of kind of, uh-
- EEElissa Epel
Yeah.
- AHAndrew Huberman
... big marketing.
- EEElissa Epel
Absolutely. It's like pull the blinders off. Let people know that we're vulnerable to all the marketing and that there's, there really are suppression of data behind a lot of it. So it ha- it's happening with, um, with eating disorders too. Eric Stice, who's at, at Stanford with you, has been using this method, we call it dissonance, showing people with eating disorders how the food industry has been manipulative and has tried to design foods for addiction, for the highest bang for the buck with dopamine, et cetera. And so that has helped reduce eating disorders in these studies. And it has even helped reduce reward drive. That-
- AHAndrew Huberman
Hm.
- EEElissa Epel
Isn't that amazing, that the dissonance could do that?
- 1:05:29 – 1:06:47
Sponsor: InsideTracker
- AHAndrew Huberman
I'd like to just take a brief moment and thank one of our podcast sponsors, which is InsideTracker. InsideTracker is a personalized nutrition platform that analyzes data from your blood and DNA to help you better understand your body and help you reach your health goals. I've long been a believer in getting regular blood work done for the simple reason that blood work is the only way that you can monitor the markers such as hormone markers, lipids, metabolic factors, et cetera, that impact your immediate and long-term health. One major challenge with blood work however is that most of the time it does not come back with any information about what to do in order to move the values for hormones, metabolic factors, lipids, et cetera, into the ranges that you want. With InsideTracker, changing those values becomes very straightforward because it has a personalized dashboard that you can use to address the nutrition-based, behavior-based, supplement-based approaches that you can use in order to move those values into the ranges that are optimal for you, your vitality, and your longevity. InsideTracker now includes a measurement of apolipoprotein B, so-called apo b, in their Ultimate Plan. Apo b is a key marker of cardiovascular health and therefore there's extreme value to knowing your apo b levels. If you'd like to try InsideTracker, you can go to insidetracker.com/huberman to get 20% off any of InsideTracker's plans. Again, that's insidetracker.com/huberman to get 20%
- 1:06:47 – 1:14:11
Tools: Mindfulness, Pregnancy & Metabolic Health
- AHAndrew Huberman
off. So while we're talking about stress eating, obesity, and, um, here we've also broadened the discussion to include different generations, we're talking about teens and adults, um, I'd love for you to share with us your findings around this study that you did of pregnant women and how stress and pregnancy and different patterns of eating and, uh, physiological changes that people experience during pregnancy-... uh, could you share with us what those findings were? Because I think those are relevant not just to people who are pregnant or planning to become pregnant, but to everybody 'cause I think they shed light on how we manage stress and sometimes how we fail to manage stress.
- EEElissa Epel
Mm-hmm. Yeah. So with overweight and obesity, we know we can't just change calories. It's just not going to work. The next stressful event's going to come along and people will, you know, go back to what their brain is driving them to do, is to, you know, binge on comfort food. And so we've done these interventions with, uh, men and women that show that we can help them regulate using some of these mindful eating strategies, checking in. We wanted to do this with pregnant women because when you have excess weight and you're pregnant, you're really vulnerable to gaining excessive weight during pregnancy, which is not healthy for the mom or the- the- the offspring. So we- we did this study. It took us probably 10 years total to, you know, get the grant and recruit groups of 10 women who are pregnant in the same stage and give them this training in mindful eating, mindful nutrition, stress reduction. And then my colleague Nicki Book- Bush has been following the babies for, I think it's been almost 10 years since then, and here's what we found. First of all, we couldn't stop excess weight gain. The women in the control group gained about... About 60% of them gained excess weight during pregnancy, and same with our mindful group. So maybe it's end of story, you'd stop there and say, "It fails, don't do it." There have been so many beautiful developments in the women who got the training that we just keep our- you know, being shocked by how impactful this stress reduction training was. It was just two months of their life, but- but pregnancy is a very critical period when these women were, uh, changing their habits and they're very motivated to help their baby. So here's what we found. Within that first month of the intervention, they all got this oral glucose tolerance test. So they all got a- they got a blood test to see how well their body was metabolizing food, sugar, and so it's like a prebi- diabetes test. And what we found was that twice as many women in the no treatment control group had impaired glucose tolerance during pregnancy. It's a- it's a common high risk. And half that many women had this in the mindfulness group. So by reducing stress, they improved their insulin sensitivity during pregnancy. So imagine what that's doing to the baby too. Then the- the babies have come out with less obesity, less illnesses in their first year of life, and more of this kind of healthy stress response when they've been stressed out in- in the lab study. And so then t- eight years later, we looked at the mental health of the moms. So right after the intervention, eight weeks later, everyone in our mindfulness stress reduction group felt great. They felt less depressed, they had less stress and less anxiety. That's what you'd expect, right? I mean, they've just gone to a weekly class, they got all this support. But eight years later, they still showed improved mental health. Every year that we measured them, they still looked better. So it's probably one of the longest studies looking at long-term effects of a mindfulness training, and I don't think it was a coincidence that it was during pregnancy. I think this is a very important time to have these skills, and being in a group adds that social support piece that we know is powerful.
- AHAndrew Huberman
That's an incredible result. Uh, could you share with us what the mindfulness intervention was and when it was initiated, when it was stopped? So are we talking about 10 minutes a day of meditation? A- m- as many details as you can possibly give us, because I know, um, even though I don't think I'll ever be pregnant, um, I don't plan on it, and uh- uh-
- EEElissa Epel
(laughs) You never know.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Uh, well, um, yeah, on- high-
- EEElissa Epel
(laughs)
- AHAndrew Huberman
... zero minus one probability in my mind, but anyway. Maybe other people have other ideas for me. But, um, zero minus one probability in my mind, and yet I'm very interested in this mindfulness intervention because it sounds like a very potent one.
- EEElissa Epel
Mm-hmm.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Um, so much so that it's multi- having a multi-generational impact. So how many minutes a day? Um, how many days per week?
- EEElissa Epel
Yeah.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Um, yeah.
- EEElissa Epel
We had them... They met once a week. We- they had little reminder cards. I mean, we need all the reminders we can, you know, Post-its on the fridge, timers on our phone, to do this mindful check-in. And so they were, during the week, doing this check-in, and it was simply, um, a- a mindful check-in, closing their eyes and feeling their body, feeling their- labeling their emotions. So it was mindful breathing, and then it was some movement, and we taught them prenatal yoga, but really any mind-body movement. People like different things. There's qigong, um, there's- there's, um, even just slow walking would have worked. Um, so it was a mindful check-in, breathe, move my body. That's what the reminder car- card said. So close your eyes and look inside, do slow breathing. They also put their hands on their belly and so they felt that they were taking care of their baby, and then more movement. So they- they did increase their walking, and the mindful check-ins are, as we were talking about at the very beginning, I would say necessary but not sufficient. It- we've got to stop during the day and check in and look inside. If we're not aware of where our mind is, we are just subject to the, you know, believing the stressful thoughts, thinking that we need to keep ruminating their sticky thoughts. So the mindful check-in is really important and then I think the breathing, as we've talked about, is- is probably the more direct way that they're influencing the prenatal environment, the uterine environment, to reduce the stress.... in, that the baby's being exposed to. And movement refocuses us from our mind and our ruminative thoughts to the experiences, to what we feel in the body. There's even been a study that showed that overweight people with a lot of cravings, if they do the body scan, that's simply focusing on the body from the head to the toe, you know, just reminding ourselves to focus on each part of the body, breathe into it, release tension, it's very basic and simple. The body scan red- significantly reduced cravings. I mean, to me that's, it's really hard to reduce cravings, so like-
- AHAndrew Huberman
Mm-hmm.
- EEElissa Epel
... just that refocusing on the body took away stress, anxiety, self-referential thoughts, that kind of, our favorite topic, thinking about ourself, thinking negative thoughts about ourself, to relaxing, feeling ease, feeling well-being.
- 1:14:11 – 1:17:28
Body Scan & Cravings
- AHAndrew Huberman
I can't help but ask about what that body scan might have been doing at a little bit more of a me- mechanistic level. Um, some of the listeners might be familiar with these terms, but some won't, so I'll just, um, briefly define them. Uh, we can perceive things in terms of exteroception, or basically paying attention to and focusing on things beyond the confines of our skin, or interoception. I, I realize you know all this, uh, but for their sake, um-
- EEElissa Epel
N- no one really understands interoception. Go for it. (laughs)
- AHAndrew Huberman
Right. So, and interoception, essentially the sensory-
- EEElissa Epel
Yeah.
- AHAndrew Huberman
... the sensory innervation of the, of the internal organs, of our own skin. That includes proprioception and, you know, which is our knowledge or our sense of where our limbs are-
- EEElissa Epel
Yeah.
- AHAndrew Huberman
... where we are relative to gravity, all that stuff. And, you know, it raises th- this body scan result, th- that is, the fact that a brief body scan can reduce cravings, raises this question in my mind which is, is craving a, um, heightened sense of interoception or heightened sense of exteroception? So I could think of one form of craving where, for instance, the donut, again, donuts for me-
- EEElissa Epel
Yep.
- AHAndrew Huberman
... is in front of me and I'm thinking, "That. I want that." And so I'm almost in complete exteroception, but I'm tethered to it. Like, my internal world is tethered to the donut. It's almost like the donut is in control of me briefly.
- EEElissa Epel
(laughs) Yeah.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Okay? And then I eat it. Um, but if I-
- EEElissa Epel
It's hijacked your prefrontal cortex.
- AHAndrew Huberman
It's, it's hijacked everything.
- EEElissa Epel
Yep.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Yeah. And then if I do a body scan, so I'm putting myself in this experiment and it's kind of, uh, uh, a hypothetical scenario, I'm putting myself into this exper- I do a body scan which, without question, is shifting me more towards interoception, right? I- I'm focusing on my skin, my heart rate, all these things, interoception. So I could see how that would draw my attention off of the external stimulus and reduce craving. And that m- makes me wonder whether or not craving is a form of exteroception where our interoception is just exquisitely locked to exteroception.
- EEElissa Epel
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
- AHAndrew Huberman
And if so, you know, 'cause I do think this is a remarkable result, it is very hard to stop cravings. I mean, we had a guest on here, a former colleague of mine at S- at Stanford who's now, uh, the chair of neurosurgery at UPenn, uh, School of Medicine, which is Casey Halpern. I mean, they do, they literally drill down through the skull of people who have binge eating disorder and start stimulating different brain areas because these people are so out of control in terms of their binge eating. I mean, that's the kind of intervention that is considered necessary for a lot of folks who binge eat.
- EEElissa Epel
Mm-hmm.
- AHAndrew Huberman
So here you're telling me a body scan, in some individuals, can reduce that. And I have to wonder whether or not it's, um, somehow breaking that interoceptive, exteroceptive tether.
- EEElissa Epel
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Anyway, um, I'm speculating here, but I'd love your thoughts-
- EEElissa Epel
It's a-
- AHAndrew Huberman
... on, on bin- on craving and binging and breaking binging. Um, do you think that there are behavioral interventions, um, that could be layered on top of body scans? Should we all be doing body scans routinely?
- EEElissa Epel
Yes. Why not? You know, and, and some people aren't gonna like that. Lying down is maybe not comfortable, and so any mind/body activity is gonna do the same. It's gonna be, you know, I think, breaking that link-
- AHAndrew Huberman
Mm-hmm.
- EEElissa Epel
... that you talked about.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Yeah. I, I find this whole interoceptive, exteroceptive balance thing-
- EEElissa Epel
Yeah.
- AHAndrew Huberman
... um, one of the more interesting conversations these days in neuroscience, 'cause we're starting, finally starting to understand what some of the, the circuitries are and they do link to these reward pathways.
- 1:17:28 – 1:23:35
Tool: Meditation & Aging; Meditation Retreats
- AHAndrew Huberman
In any event, um, getting back to the relationship between stress and food, and maybe even just weaving back a little bit to the, uh, opioid system, have there been any long-term studies of stress intervention? You know, in the studies that we do in our laboratory, we get people for a month, they do one intervention, we swap them to another intervention, in a month we analyze data. Takes a couple years to do all that-
- EEElissa Epel
Mm-hmm.
- AHAndrew Huberman
... but we write papers and we move on. Um, sounds like your laboratory has been involved in doing a lot of studies where you're examining people over a very long period of time, even their children. Uh, what can we learn about the long-term outcomes of things like body scans, meditation? And then we'll get into breath work.
- EEElissa Epel
Mm-hmm. There haven't been that many long-term studies of stress interventions, now that you mention it. I think the meditation studies are probably the best example. There are some studies that have either followed people who have, um, taken up meditation, or just these cross-sectional studies where you compare a long-term meditator to someone who's never meditated. And they, they are interesting. I mean, let's talk about the cross-sectional studies. (laughs) You're already, you know, studying someone who s- eats like kale chips instead of potato chips. There's a lot of differences in who decides to be a meditator. We, in terms of the health and biology, we have found that there is slower biological aging, and other people have found that. Um, in these meditation interventions we do, the short-term ones, the inflammatory pathways of gene expression are dampened way down, and cross-sectionally, other people like Elizabeth Hogy have found longer telomeres in the meditators versus the controls. Um, so we, we haven't really found telomere lengthening in our short-term meditation studies, but we do find boosts in-...telomerase activity, which is this enzyme that protects our cell aging, slows our cell aging, rebuilds the telomeres. So those are, um, those are, those are studies that suggest if someone were to continue meditating, they might keep up that slower rate of aging. So there's one study we did, which I think was particularly, um, fun. (laughs) We went to a retreat center where Deepak Chopra leads this one-week transcendental meditation retreat. So people got a mantra and they were, um, focusing for probably eight hours a day on different, uh, yoga, meditation, and reflective exercises. And then we had half the group just walk around the resort, take walks, hear some boring health talks. So that was our control group. And what we found from that study was that in the short run- run, a week later, everyone felt fantastic after the week, right? They weren't allowed to bring their laptop and work, and they, uh, ate this great antiinflammatory diet, an Ayurvedic diet, and then their gene expression pathways were like night and day from day one to the last day. And our model of, um, machine learning model was able to identify people, over 90%, it could say whether they were on day one or day seven. And the difference really emerged over the long run. We went and we followed them about 10 months later, and we found that not everyone felt great. 10 months later, the group who learned meditation still had lower depression, but the control group bounced right back up. And then we looked a little bit further and we saw that people with early adversity benefited the most from the meditation condition.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Oh. What was the meditation condition? Or how long, uh, per day?
- EEElissa Epel
Yeah. It... Well, so they did, they learned transcendental medi- sound, primordial sound meditation, which is similar to TM, where you have a, you have focused attention on your, on a word over and over. But there's also more awareness of the, um, the body.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Mm-hmm.
- EEElissa Epel
And that was, you know, I, I couldn't say how many minutes a day, but it was on and off during the day.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Okay, so repeatedly, but for-
- EEElissa Epel
Yeah.
- AHAndrew Huberman
... a fairly short period of time.
- EEElissa Epel
Yeah.
- AHAndrew Huberman
One week.
- EEElissa Epel
Yeah. Right.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Uh-huh. Yeah, I've never done one of these extended meditation retreats.
- EEElissa Epel
Yeah.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Var-
- EEElissa Epel
Are you interested?
- AHAndrew Huberman
Well, various people in my life have told me that I need to go do-
- EEElissa Epel
(laughs)
- AHAndrew Huberman
... a silent meditation, but they probably were emphasizing the silent part. The, um-
- EEElissa Epel
(laughs)
- AHAndrew Huberman
... uh, still haven't-
- EEElissa Epel
I recommend them.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Yeah.
- EEElissa Epel
I think they're amazing ways to get to know the mind and to really calm the body in ways, like, a, a l- you know, a quantum shift in our level of stress that we don't get... it's very hard to get in short bouts.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Mm. I do a daily meditation practice, but it's a relatively brief meditation practice. I do tend to focus more on things like deliberate cold exposure and breath work and-
- EEElissa Epel
Yes.
- AHAndrew Huberman
... exercise-
- EEElissa Epel
Yeah.
Episode duration: 2:05:50
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