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Dr Rangan ChatterjeeDr Rangan Chatterjee

How Kindness Can Boost Your Immune System and Make You Happier | Dr David Hamilton

The world is changing and people are feeling scared. What we regard as normal has been completely flipped on its head. What we need now more than ever is kindness.

Dr. David HamiltonguestDr. Rangan Chatterjeehost
Mar 25, 20201h 37mWatch on YouTube

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Transcript

  1. 0:00 – 1:15

    Empathy in healthcare: measurable boosts to immune response

    1. DH

      There was a study on over 700 patients with symptoms of the cold or flu. They had to give the doctor a score between zero and 10 on the empathy that they showed, and those who scored the doctor a perfect 10 out of 10, their immune response to the same condition was 50% higher than everyone else.

    2. RC

      Yes.

    3. DH

      And it, and it just came down to empathy. How you feel then is physically affecting your, the function of your immune system.

    4. RC

      I think that's the key, isn't it? It's not just in your head, it's changing things biologically, physiologically. [upbeat music] David, welcome to the Feel Better, Live More podcast.

    5. DH

      Thank you. I'm so excited. [laughs]

    6. RC

      I, I'm excited to talk to you. It's, um, you know, we've had a few back and forths-

    7. DH

      Yeah, yeah

    8. RC

      ... trying to get this sorted and then, uh, you know, we, we figured this out, what, 48 hours ago?

    9. DH

      Pretty much, yeah. Less than that, I think. [laughs]

    10. RC

      Less than that, yeah. It was a case of, "Hey, you're gonna be at Life Lessons."

    11. DH

      Yeah.

    12. RC

      "I'm gonna be at Life Lessons-"

    13. DH

      Yeah

    14. RC

      ... on Saturday." Um-

    15. DH

      So we're both so prepared for this, aren't we? [laughs]

    16. RC

      [laughs] Well, look, I'm hoping that as we catch up-

    17. DH

      Yeah

    18. RC

      ... and I inquire about your work, which frankly I've been super fascinated with for a long time, uh, hopefully the listeners will also get carried a- along with that curiosity.

    19. DH

      Nice.

    20. RC

      Certainly that's my hope.

    21. DH

      Oh, mine too. Good.

  2. 1:15 – 2:24

    From Dunblane to tennis leagues: a personal window into mindset and training

    1. RC

      Fantastic. So you've come down from?

    2. DH

      Dunblane, central Scotland. Uh, famous laterally for Andy Murray and Jamie Murray, the tennis players, and obviously for the school shooting several years ago.

    3. RC

      Yeah.

    4. DH

      Really lovely, lovely place, Dunblane. You know, I took up tennis when I moved there in my mid-40s. I'd never played tennis before, so.

    5. RC

      Because of the Murray brothers?

    6. DH

      Because of the Murray broth- See, it's frowned upon if you don't, if you're fit and healthy and you don't play tennis, it's kind of frowned upon, you know? [laughs] So I picked up-

    7. RC

      That's amazing, is it? Yeah

    8. DH

      ... picked up a racket for the first time in my mid-40s, and I was awful, you know?

    9. RC

      And now?

    10. DH

      Well, I'm, I'm working up through the leagues. So I've been doing a lot of mental exercises, visualization, a lot of training and stuff. So I, I love it, you know?

    11. RC

      Oh, fantastic.

    12. DH

      Play, play three, four times a week maybe.

    13. RC

      That's so interesting that this small town-

    14. DH

      Yeah, yeah

    15. RC

      ... Dunblane, uh, I wonder if we compare the tennis participation rates in Dunblane, you know, the home of Andy and Jamie Murray-

    16. DH

      Mm-hmm

    17. RC

      ... or certainly the former home of them-

    18. DH

      Mm

    19. RC

      ... uh, with the rest of the United Kingdom, I wo- [laughs] I wonder-

    20. DH

      [laughs]

    21. RC

      ... if, uh, if it's artificially skewed upwards.

    22. DH

      Probably. Definitely. You know, it, it's a really thriving tennis community.

    23. RC

      Yeah.

    24. DH

      I love it. Yeah.

    25. RC

      Oh, fantastic. Well, you mentioned a couple of things there, uh, which we'll probably come to-

    26. DH

      Mm

  3. 2:24 – 2:46

    Leaving pharma: a career pivot driven by mind-body curiosity

    1. RC

      ... later on. Um, but David, I think I'm really fascinated by your journey.

    2. DH

      Mm.

    3. RC

      So you started working in the pharmaceutical industry-

    4. DH

      Yeah

    5. RC

      ... and now you don't.

    6. DH

      Yeah.

    7. RC

      Right? So why don't you start by saying what you do now, and then sort of share a bit of that story. What happened, and how did you end up here today?

  4. 2:46 – 6:07

    Childhood catalyst: helping his mother through mental strategies

    1. DH

      Yeah. So what I, I, I basically write books on, that really broadly cover the different ways that your mind and emotions and your behavior has physical effects, you know, health-giving effects o- on the body. So I've written a, a series of books on it. I give a lot of talks on it, and, uh, really my interest in that, in fact if I wind back even further, my interest in the pharmaceutical industry was the placebo effect. But the interest in that actually was born when I was a l- uh, when I was about 11 years old. My mum had postnatal depression, and she was suffering terribly, and it, and it wasn't really understood. This was in the mid-'70s, after my youngest sister was born. I've three sisters. My youngest sister was born in mid 1976. Postnatal depression was not well understood at the time, and my mum, uh, didn't really get the right treatment. In fact, the, the, the psychiatrist she was sent to, to see said, "Give yourself a shake." But asking a woman with postnatal depression to give herself a shake, uh, is like asking someone with a broken leg to run it off, I suppose. And my mum really, it, it really ha- shattered her self-esteem, and she start- she would feel really low about herself and like she's just not a strong person, and, and she, so she suffered terribly for a few years. And as a young child, I could tell my mum was struggling, and I didn't really know what was wrong. And I remember one day, I'd only just started secondary school, and this might sound really corny, right? I don't know if I bumped my bag off the, off the shelf, but a book fell off the shelf, and it was called The Magic Power of Your Mind, and I'm just 11 years old. Magic Power of Your Mind, Walter German, and I thought, "I've got, I bet that could help my mum." So I just took it, I put it in my bag, and I didn't know you're supposed to join a library, [laughs] you know-

    2. RC

      Right

    3. DH

      ... get the little yellow card stamp. But it, it totally helped my mum. It didn't, you know, cure depression in a day, but it gave her tools and strategies like what we now call mindfulness. It gave her those kind of things that helped her navigate a course through the difficult times. So as I grew up in my teenage years, my mum would often use affirmations, and she would do meditation, and she was, she'd say things like, "I can do it. It's all in the mind. Mind over matter." So having these conversations with my mum, it's no surprise that my interest started, was, became the power of the mind and what your mind can do, and the, the effect your mind has on your body. So when I ended up working in the pharmaceutical industry, developing drugs for cardiovascular disease and cancer, most of my colleagues would be celebrating when you hear that one of the drugs that we've participated in is working. But I, I was so fascinated with how many people were improving on placebos, and it was so interesting to me, and I think because my mum had learned about w- mental strategies that could help her a little bit navigate that course through some of those difficult days. So that was my-- So I was so fascinated after four years of really my own mini research projects, just reading and learning everything I could, I decided to resign because I th- my passion then was to educate people on, to write and to speak, to educate on how we can harness this overall effect, you know, to, to improve our health and to, you know, make life a little bit better for us.

    4. RC

      Yeah. And many thanks for sharing that. It, it is a fascinating story. When your mum was unwell-

    5. DH

      Mm

    6. RC

      ... and you brought home that book Uh, about the power of the mind-

    7. DH

      Yeah

  5. 6:07 – 9:02

    Science training without losing the thread: forgetting, then reigniting the passion

    1. RC

      ... you know, how old were you, and what were you interested in at school at that time?

    2. DH

      I was 11 years old. My ma- I'd just started secondary school, so, but my main, my, my passion, I guess, at school, if you could call it a passion when you're 11, was mathematics. And so when I went to high school, it was maths and science was my big things.

    3. RC

      Yeah.

    4. DH

      I, I really, I, I [laughs] use the word I hated English. And it's funny, you know, if someone had said to me as a child, "You will write lots of books one day," I'd have laughed at them. You know, "Me? Writing books?" Pfft. 'Cause it was just maths and sciences-

    5. RC

      Yeah

    6. DH

      ... all I was interested in.

    7. RC

      Well, that's, that's interesting because you picked up that book, if you remember, at the age of 11.

    8. DH

      Mm.

    9. RC

      Now, look, my kids aren't yet 11. My, my, my son's 9.

    10. DH

      Mm.

    11. RC

      And I'm sort of gonna guess that 11 is still at that age where still naive enough-

    12. DH

      Yeah

    13. RC

      ... to kind of believe in stuff-

    14. DH

      Yeah, yeah

    15. RC

      ... and, um, have faith, let's say. And I'm just wondering, you know, as you got through your education and, you know, studied science more and more to a higher and higher degree, uh, did you ever start to get skeptical about the importance of the mind? Because it's not really something we're taught at school, it's not something we're taught in science-

    16. DH

      No

    17. RC

      ... it's not something we're taught at medical school.

    18. DH

      No.

    19. RC

      And a lot of your work now is showing the beautiful science that actually exists around kindness, around the placebo, around the power of the mind. So I'm super fascinating-

    20. DH

      Mm

    21. RC

      ... did you go through this period of skepticism somewhere and then come out the other side, or what happened?

    22. DH

      Uh, surprisingly, not so much. What I would say is I just forgot about it.

    23. RC

      Yeah.

    24. DH

      You know, you get so, I mean, I, I, I, I got so engrossed in my, my degree. You know, I did chemistry, then my PhD was organic chemistry, and you get so engrossed in it that I actually just forgot, really. I remember reading a Norman Vincent Peale, The Power of Positive Thinking, when I was halfway through my PhD, and it almost reminded me of the passion I had. And I remember, you know, I was literally in the middle, in my sec- middle of my second year of my PhD, and all of a sudden, ignited, reading this book ignited my passion. It was the memory I had of, [exhales] "I'm so interested in, in, in..." You know, at the time, the book was just about positive thinking, but it wasn't just about positive thinking. My, I, I, I looked at that as n- not just about positive thinking, that I'll say positive things and positive things happen. It was more about the attitude that you are bringing to situations to change how you felt about something, and that's the message I got. And I thought, "This, this is what I love." And, and so during my PhD, I started to really dream, daydream, I suppose, that one day I would write a book about the mind. And I'd no idea what I would write about. M- me, right? [laughs] I mean, even at the time, the idea of writing. But it just seemed like something I knew I had to do one day.

  6. 9:02 – 13:36

    Reframing placebo: belief, empathy, and the brain’s own chemistry

    1. RC

      So you're working for a pharmaceutical company. You're there with your team, with your colleagues, trying to develop drugs-

    2. DH

      Mm

    3. RC

      ... that are designed to help people. You know, you said something about the placebo effect, which I find super interesting. So, um, you know, for people who are not familiar, um, the way we often analyze drugs is we do something called a randomized control trial. So, you know, very, very crudely speaking, you take two groups of people. Um, you know, let's say there's 200 people there, and you're testing a drug for blood pressure. And 100 people get the drug for blood pressure. 100 people don't. They get just a, a sugar pill. Is that right?

    4. DH

      Yep.

    5. RC

      And then you see who has, um, you know, has there been a statistically significant, uh, increase or, or benefit in one of the groups, i.e., the group who's taken the drug, ideally-

    6. DH

      Yeah

    7. RC

      ... I guess, if, if that's what you're studying.

    8. DH

      Yeah.

    9. RC

      And it's done because often placebo has been, certainly my interpretation of this, uh, as a medic, is that, oh, if it's just the same as placebo, then the drug doesn't work-

    10. DH

      Mm-hmm

    11. RC

      ... is, is the very simplistic explanation. And if it's beyond that, to a certain degree, we're like, "Okay, this drug actually works." It's beyond the kind of placebo thing-

    12. DH

      Yeah, yeah

    13. RC

      ... right? In, in, in almost a derogatory way.

    14. DH

      Mm.

    15. RC

      But nonetheless, if you think about it, even if in that hundreds, let's say that group who don't get the drug, 100 people who've got blood pressure or high blood pressure, if 10 of them get better on taking the placebo, and 20 get better on taking the pharmaceutical drug, well, the placebo's still doing something, right?

    16. DH

      Yeah.

    17. RC

      And is that what, is that what happened with you? You thought, "Hold on a minute. Well, how can we explain that?"

    18. DH

      Pretty much. A- and, and seen it, because, because I was a chemist so close to building the, the drug. I mean, literally, organic chemist like me, it's like adults who play with Lego blocks. But instead of using, s- taking Lego blocks of different shapes and sizes and assembling them into shapes, we take building blocks of different shapes and sizes called atoms, but the principle is the same, sticking them together. So I was so close to the actual, the chemistry of it, and I just found it so fascinating that large numbers of people were improving on the placebos. And I remember asking my colleagues, and they would just dismiss it, "Oh, it's just a placebo effect."

    19. RC

      Just a placebo.

    20. DH

      And it was a sweeping movement of the right hand. Even left-handers. It just, I think you learn it on your first day, it's just a placebo effect. And I came to realize that nobody actually understood it at all. They had no idea how it really worked. So that's why, out of curiosity, I, I wanted to understand what happens. And now we actually understand that for a number of different conditions, when a person believes they're receiving a drug, the brain produces its own natural substances to deliver what they expect. So for example, if someone takes a, a, a painkiller, a placebo, but they think it's a painkiller, then, and it works. Depending, it can work really, really well depending on the language or empathy used by the person who suggested they take it. But what the reason why it works isn't just, as my colleague said, "It's, it's not really, they're not getting better, they just think they're getting better." But in actual fact, believing that this is a drug caused their brain to produce natural versions of morphine. So morphine's an opiate. We have our natural versions, and they're called endogenous opiates, meaning they're endogenous to you. They belong to you. So the brain produces endogenous opiates because you believe something. So the pa- the reduction in pain, for example, isn't just all in the mind. It's a real physical change caused by real chemical changes in the brain. Produced by what you expect is supposed to happen when you take this little pill. And it was that type of thing, realizing there's a scientific basis for belief, and it, it was building the evidence, and yeah, I spent hours in the library in the, in the company just researching, gathering all the papers I could find, and it was just so interesting, and I thought, "No one really knows about this." Professionals, laypeople don't really understand.

    21. RC

      Did, did, did we almost not want to know about it because it didn't fit our societal narrative that we're trying to find new and better technologies, whether it's a drug, whether it's another treatment that's gonna help? But it can't just be the power of positive thinking, right? I mean-

    22. DH

      Yeah, yeah

    23. RC

      ... I guess you, you find what you're looking for, right? So if people aren't looking for that, it's easy to, you know, diminish it and just think, you know, it doesn't matter. And I, I've gotta say, you know, I think still as a medical profession, I don't think we take the placebo seriously enough. Um-

    24. DH

      Mm.

  7. 13:36 – 20:50

    Empathy, recovery speed, and the “Mother Teresa effect” on sIgA

    1. RC

      I mean, what do you think? You know, do you think things have changed in the last 10, 20 years?

    2. DH

      It's definitely changing. I, I think when I, I left the pharmaceutical industry, you know, back in 1999, so just over 20 years ago, and it, it's definitely changing. M- people are far more aware of it or of the way in which even the way you talk to someone, how that can make them feel. In fact, there was a study on, on, on doctor visits, over 700 patients with symptoms of the cold or flu, and they were p- they participated in, it was called a CARE study, consultation and relational empathy, and they secretly had to give the, the, the doctor a score between zero and 10 on the empathy that they showed for during that, that visit. And those who scored the doctor a perfect 10 out of 10, their immune response to the same condition was 50% higher than everyone else.

    3. RC

      Which is-

    4. DH

      And it, and it just came down to empathy.

    5. RC

      Yeah, I mean-

    6. DH

      How it made them feel. And what you're seeing is how th- how you feel then is physically affecting your, the function of the immune system.

    7. RC

      And I think that's the key, isn't it? That it's, it's not just in your head. It's changing things biologically, physiologically.

    8. DH

      Absolutely.

    9. RC

      Uh, and Dave, when I hear that, it reminds me of something that I often say. I've said it, you know, to the public before. I've said it when I, when I teach doctors, um, that the number one skill for any healthcare professional for me is their ability to connect-

    10. DH

      Absolutely

    11. RC

      ... a- and then secondly to that, communicate with the person in front of them. For me-

    12. DH

      Totally

    13. RC

      ... that trumps knowledge-

    14. DH

      Yep

    15. RC

      ... any day of the week, and I've just seen that time and time again, and that sort of fits in with what you're saying, right? That if-

    16. DH

      It's empathy

    17. RC

      ... it's empathy. If you feel, as a human being, if you feel heard, if you feel listened-

    18. DH

      Absolutely

    19. RC

      ... it, it does something. You know, A, you're more receptive to hearing what comes next.

    20. DH

      Mm.

    21. RC

      So I always say [laughs] it's connection first, education second-

    22. DH

      Yeah

    23. RC

      ... because when you've connected with them and they feel heard by you, they're open to listening to what you have to say.

    24. DH

      Absolutely.

    25. RC

      Whereas if you just go charging in and say, "Look, you need to lose weight and get to the gym a bit more," you know what? You know, this is why a lot of people say, "Oh, d- patients don't do what we ask them to do."

    26. DH

      Yeah.

    27. RC

      Well, I think the reason they don't ask, they don't do what we ask them to do as a profession is because a lot of the time we're not communicating it in a way that makes sense to them and, and, and actually deeply connects with them.

    28. DH

      I know, and it's, it's, that deep connection has tremendous physical effects. In f- in fact, one of the, one of the side effects, I suppose, of feel, that feeling connected or feeling good about it is affectionately known as the Mother Teresa effect. Uh, I think it was a study, I think it was at Yale or one of the other big American universities. They got a, over 100 people to watch a video of Mo- a 15-minute video of Mother Teresa on the streets of Calcutta, uh, demonstrating care and compassion to a, to homeless people, and at the end of the study, their levels of a little immune antibody in the saliva called SIGA went up by about 50% for no reason other than just watching the video, and it stayed elevated for an hour or two afterwards, and that's because for the hour or two afterwards, they were still talking about, "Didn't, remember that part when Mother Teresa, she sat down beside that old, really elderly gent, and they didn't say a word. She just sat beside him. She took his hand and laid her head against his shoulder just so that he wouldn't feel alone at that time." And just that emotional bonding experience of watching them on that video spiked the immune system. It just lifted that little antibody level.

    29. RC

      So, so it's not just the person who received that, it's also if you're watching that-

    30. DH

      Absolutely. It's watching it as well. 'Cause it comes down to how it makes you feel. If you can feel a sense of connection from being the person who f- in this case, is delivering kindness or compassion, being on the receiving end or watching someone else, whether it's live or even on a video, it has more or less the same effect.

  8. 20:50 – 23:06

    Touch, oxytocin, and social wiring: why connection changes physiology

    1. RC

      Yeah, I find, I find the idea that it's not just the giver but the receiver or the watcher also gets a biochemical change. And, um, I, I don't know if you're familiar with someone called Professor Francis McGlone.

    2. DH

      No.

    3. RC

      Uh, I interviewed him on the podcast about a year ago. Uh, he helped me actually write, uh, the chapter on touch in my second book-

    4. DH

      Oh

    5. RC

      ... The Stress Solution. He's, he's one of the world's leading researchers in touch, basically.

    6. DH

      Mm. Lovely.

    7. RC

      And he's done some incredible... You, you should check it out actually because it's completely aligned-

    8. DH

      Mm

    9. RC

      ... with a lot of the work that you do.

    10. DH

      Oh, cool.

    11. RC

      Um, and he talks about, you know, these two different kinds of touch nerve fibers. You've got one which is the fast one, which simply tells you where you've been touched.

    12. DH

      Mm.

    13. RC

      You know, if I touch you-

    14. DH

      Yeah

    15. RC

      ... on your forearm, you know, oh-

    16. DH

      You can feel it, yeah

    17. RC

      ... Rangan's just touched me on my forearm. But if you stroke someone on the forearm-

    18. DH

      It's-

    19. RC

      ... it does something completely different.

    20. DH

      Absolutely.

    21. RC

      And well, I, I mean, his, his work has shown that it's a different kind of nerve fiber. It's called the, the CT afferent that goes up to the, a different part of the brain, the emotional brain. And when you-

    22. DH

      Yeah

    23. RC

      ... when you get that stroke, oxytocin levels go up.

    24. DH

      Mm.

    25. RC

      Blood pressure goes down.

    26. DH

      Absolutely.

    27. RC

      Heart rate goes down.

    28. DH

      Yeah.

    29. RC

      Natural killer cells, which are part of your immune system, go up-

    30. DH

      Amazing. [laughs]

  9. 23:06 – 25:19

    Bonding with animals: oxytocin, eye contact, and heart-related outcomes

    1. DH

      See, see actually, you, you mentioned the animal thing. I, I love animals. I lost my dog a few years ago. He, he had bone cancer. He was only two years old as well. A- and so I'd started looking at the links between bonding with animals and oxytocin, and one of my favorite statistics, uh, that I got out of that research is the chances of a second heart attack within 12 months in someone who's had one already, if they have a dog, it's 400% less. And it's not just through the exercise, it's through a lot of it. Some of it is through the, the oxytocin generated through the bonding. Front page of Science, you know, one of the top-ranked me- science journals in the world. Front page, uh, about 10 years ago, picture of a yellow Labrador, and in this study, they compared people with a good relationship with dogs versus people with a not so good relationship. The way they quantified it is they videoed them, and they watched them interacting with the dogs, and if someone made frequent eye contact and sustained the eye contact for a few seconds, they were called long gazers. So they were defined as good relationships. If they made eye contact less frequently and not quite as long, then they were called short gazers, so not as good relationships. So after 30 minutes of interacting, amazingly, oxytocin levels had increased by about 350% in the human and nearly doubled in the dog for doing nothing other than warm, playful interactions, rubbing the tummy, just warm interactions. You get the same thing with humans, but, uh, w- the reason that I mentioned it is because you mentioned dogs there, and I love animals. And, and, and amazingly, a- and that, I believe, is one of the main reasons, the main contributors outside of exercise to the cardiovascular benefits, 'cause oxytocin has tremendous cardiovascular benefits.

    2. RC

      Well, well, let's expand on that because- That is a novel concept for people that, um, the sort of things you're talking about, uh, human touch, connection-

    3. DH

      Mm

    4. RC

      ... uh, stroking, you know, all, all these kind of, I guess, what we would call the softer-

    5. DH

      Yeah

    6. RC

      ... components of health. You're saying alongside physical exercise, physical activity is the most important thing for your cardiovascular health? I don't think many people would be familiar-

    7. DH

      Yeah

    8. RC

      ... with that as an idea.

  10. 25:19 – 27:58

    Kindness as the physiological opposite of stress: a cardio-protective lens

    1. DH

      Yeah, just, just warmth and connection. Be- because they produce oxytocin. So you can f- you can create that sense through generosity and kindness, compassion, empathy, all of, anything that generates that sense of warmth and connection, we, we know produces oxytocin. But what's interesting is all the research showing the physiological effects of, I call it the kindness hormone, really to distinguish between stress hormones. 'Cause physiologically, in many ways, it, kindness is the opposite of stress in terms of how it makes you feel. I mean, if you ask anyone, what's the opposite of stress? Most people say, "Oh, it's peace," or, "It's calm." But that's not technically the opposite of stress, that's the absence of stress. Physiologically speaking, if you look at the physical effects of stress, and you look at the physical effects of the feeling that you get through kindness, which is warmth and connection, then they're physiologically opposite. Even psychologically, there's some studies showing that s- you know, emotionally, we get the opposite effects. 'Cause, 'cause many of the s- the physical effects of stress are not because of a situation, but because of how you feel when you're in that situation. 'Cause two people could be r- stuck in traffic, and one person's feeling stressed, and they're producing adrenaline and cortisol. The other person's feeling relaxed. They're not producing much at all. So it's not necessarily the traffic, it's how you feel. So if, the feelings of stress generate stress hormones. But when you be kind, and those feelings you get of warmth and connection, they generate oxytocin. I call this the, I call it a kindness hormone to make that distinction that it's a physical hor- it's a hormone that gets produced because of how you're feeling in that moment, which you initiate through empathy, compassion, touch, emotional warmth, any, any s- any of these soft behaviors. And, and understanding this explains a, a large body of research that we knew the, the trend in the past, but we didn't know why it worked that way. For, for example, why people with better quality relationships have better cardiovascular systems, why things like hostility and aggression is correlated with higher levels of hardening of the arteries. We didn't know why that is, but now the evidence seems to suggest that, you know, aggression and hostility, for example, reduce levels of the kindness hormone, oxytocin. And therefore, we, we take away a vital part of cardio protection, 'cause oxytocin's now dif- now called a cardio protective hormone, meaning it protects the cardiovascular system, and one of the ways it does it is to, to reduce blood pressure. So, so I, I love explaining it in that sense, that it's physically the opposite of stress because of how it makes you feel.

    2. RC

      Yeah.

    3. DH

      So you can feel that way through being the giver, being the receiver, or being the person who's watching a nice moment taking place.

    4. RC

      Yeah, David, my, my mind is blown.

    5. DH

      [laughs]

  11. 27:58 – 38:23

    Loneliness, love, and development: why bonding matters across the lifespan

    1. RC

      This is, um... Yeah, this is so fascinating. So fascinating, and I'm drawing all kinds of connections in my head over things that I've been talking about for years, things that I've noticed with patients, and this is filling in a few more gaps, and it's all starting to knit together. Um, you know, you may have seen the study, I think it was published three or four years ago, which suggested that the feeling of being lonely is as harmful as smoking-

    2. DH

      Absolutely

    3. RC

      ... 15 cigarettes a day.

    4. DH

      Yeah. Incredible.

    5. RC

      It's incredible, but then when you try and make the case that, uh, oxytocin might be the cardio protective hormone, then suddenly it's all starting to, to make sense. But I guess we have to, we have to look at things on an evolutionary or through an evolutionary-

    6. DH

      Mm

    7. RC

      ... lens, really-

    8. DH

      Yeah

    9. RC

      ... to try and figure this out right. Like I said, you know, why would evolution put these touch receptors on our back? Well, to promote social contact, you would think.

    10. DH

      Is nature rewarding you, saying, "Yes, more of this, please. I will make you healthy. Keep doing that"?

    11. RC

      Yeah.

    12. DH

      Yeah. In fact, you know, the, the, the gene for oxytocin, uh, the, the oxytocin receptor gene, actually, it's one of the oldest in the human genome. It's about 500 million years old, uh, and four days. No, not four days. [laughs] No. Uh, it's 500-

    13. RC

      [laughs]

    14. DH

      About 500 and... Crap joke. Apologies to the listeners. I couldn't resist it. But, uh, but 500 million years old. What that sa-

    15. RC

      [laughs]

    16. DH

      ... that tells you is it's vital for the survival of all species. I mean, all-

    17. RC

      Yeah

    18. DH

      ... all warm-blooded species have an oxytocin or a oxytocin similar system. In humans, it's integrated itself during those hundreds of millions of years into almost all important, meaningful systems in the body. Even the growth of heart muscle cells in children. If children are loved and cared for, then as well as that producing human growth hormone, it also produces oxytocin, which helps to facilitate the growth of heart muscle cells, neurons, kidney cells, liver cells, skin cells. Uh, and that's why children who are deprived of love and affection, they ha- they end up, uh, I guess psychologists, I think they call it psychosocial dwarfism. They end up a lot smaller than their genetic potential because levels of growth hormone and oxytocin are suppressed through the lack of love and compassion and care.

    19. RC

      Yeah. A- absolutely, and then there's the study with the Romanian orphage- orphanages-

    20. DH

      Absolutely

    21. RC

      ... where, where kids, you know, were fed and watered, but they didn't get touch.

    22. DH

      Yeah.

    23. RC

      And the ones who didn't get any, any touch have got higher instances of all the autoimmune problems-

    24. DH

      Absolutely

    25. RC

      ... behavioral problems.

    26. DH

      Yeah.

    27. RC

      And it, it all marries up that we're a social species. We are, you know, um, we, we, we've evolved to be connected to each other, but now we're, frankly, more connected to our devices [laughs] -

    28. DH

      I know

    29. RC

      ... than we are to other humans. Um, so if you show your smartphone compassion, and you touch your smartphone-

    30. DH

      [laughs]

  12. 38:23 – 45:15

    Processing anger and stored emotion: expressive writing and hardened arteries

    1. RC

      Um, what happens when we get angry? Like w- well, I know from a stress perspective in the sense that the stress hormones, and I have seen, um, anger that we hold onto-

    2. DH

      Mm

    3. RC

      ... for years and resentments-

    4. DH

      Yeah, yeah

    5. RC

      ... it is toxic.

    6. DH

      Yeah.

    7. RC

      It can absolutely raise your blood pressure.

    8. DH

      Yeah.

    9. RC

      And I've got a few patients of mine who I couldn't get their blood pressure down with medication, with, uh, diets, with lifestyle changes in a way that I would always, you know, I would always go for nutrition-

    10. DH

      Mm

    11. RC

      ... and lifestyle first until they started to let go of anger-

    12. DH

      Yeah

    13. RC

      ... that they were holding onto.

    14. DH

      Yeah, yeah.

    15. RC

      Um, is that something you're familiar with?

    16. DH

      Yeah. Uh, I mean, I, I, I think it's better to get it out than in. I mean, sometimes people say, uh, y- you shouldn't be angry, but you need to get it out. There's got to be some way of venting. You know, I'm not advocating, you know, you know, being unkind to people. Uh, what I, what I mean is if you, if you've got pent up and stored up anger, it's better out than in. In fact, I read a, a book recently called Expressive Writing by a professor called James Pennebaker, and he pioneered a lot of the work on releasing anger and trauma in the, in the body by simply spending 15 or 20 minutes a day writing continuously for that time on four consecutive days-

    17. RC

      Yeah

    18. DH

      ... about your emotional trauma or something that happened, and you basically outline what happened, how you felt, how it's affected your life kind of thing. Just some way, just one, that's the basic structure to vent, and sometimes you can swear, and you could anger out and... But, but the idea, the act of expressing it gradually has an amazing effect 'cause in one of the studies, they, they found that their immune response to an endotoxin was significantly higher than those who hadn't done the expressive writing. So the immune system is becoming more, um, robust-

    19. RC

      Okay

    20. DH

      ... as a consequence of expressive writing.

    21. RC

      And, and, and that's incredible. And, uh, for people listening who're not familiar with what an endotoxin is, um, you know, one way of describing it is that inside your gut, um, we've got lots of different bacteria, you know, trillions of bacteria a- and other organisms, and, you know, we very simplistically, um, consider them to be good and bad, which is far too simplistic. Um, but essentially some of them, those, those bacteria are called what we call gram-negative, and on their coats, you've got something called lipopolysaccharide, or LPS. It's a lot of sugar, um, that basically is fine if it stays in your gut. But if it sort of goes through from the gut into your bloodstream, that's where it can be pro-inflammatory, and that's cause all kinds of problems in your brain-

    22. DH

      Mm

    23. RC

      ... in your joints, with your blood sugar. So that's what an endotoxin is. Um, and you know, what you're saying there about how it can alter your immune response i- is pretty incredible.

    24. DH

      Simply just by doing expressive writing.

    25. RC

      Yeah.

    26. DH

      And they found a lot of other studies that they even tracked students over the course of a year, and they tracked, they had enough students to get a, a statistically significant result and tracked the number of, of visits to the medical center. And they found that those who did the expressive writing had significantly lower need to visit the medical center-

    27. RC

      Yeah, I mean-

    28. DH

      ... having just got anger and hurt and, and trauma out their system a little bit.

    29. RC

      Y- you gotta process it in some way.

    30. DH

      Yeah.

  13. 45:15 – 50:49

    Body-mind feedback loops: movement, muscles, and emotion regulation

    1. DH

      I know. Uh, 'cause, you know, one of the things I, I, I've noticed is we think of an, a feeling, an emotion as just something in our minds, but there's actually four components to it. You can't really disentangle an emotion or a feeling from your brain chemistry and body chemistry. You also can't disentangle it from your autonomic nervous system, nor can you disentangle a feeling from your muscles. I mean, you, you don't smile when you're happy because you remember to smile. It's a reflex reaction because the, the zygomaticus major muscle that pulls your lips into a smile is, is connected in some way to the h- say, call them the happy centers of the brain. Similarly, when you feel stressed, you don't remember to tense your jaw and tense your neck. It, it's a reflex reaction. So what happens is how we feel gets expressed out in the muscles, but it goes the other way as well. You know, what you do with your body. One of the best ways I've ever found to reduce feeling, momentary feelings of stress is to move my body, get up, rather than l- sitting down and breathing, sh- uh, softly. I'll get up and move, but an artificially slow pace. And using this fact, emotion isn't just a feeling, it's connected to your, it's part of your, how it shows up in your muscles. If you move your body in an artificially slow way, and even talk artificially slowly, obviously, if you're at a meeting, you're [laughs] not gonna do that. But in your, on your own, it's almost like your brain hears, "I've got this. I must feel pre- quite relaxed."

    2. RC

      Yeah.

    3. DH

      And I think that works because, you know, long before language, language is, what, 15,000 years old, give or take a wee bit. But long before language, our ancestors communicated through body language and gesture. If they, they wanted to express themselves, they used their body to, to express. So, so what happened is that it became this really strong relationship between physical expression and how the person feels. So it's really ... So, so in that way, what you find is how you feel gets sh- shows up in your muscles, but how you move your muscles and your body shows up in how you feel, and it's a two-way street. So you can use your body, like exercise, movement, for example, to, to help change how you feel in the moment kind of thing.

    4. RC

      You know, I spoke to a lot of, um, therapists recently who, you know, work on people's bodies, whether it's a sports massage-

    5. DH

      Mm

    6. RC

      ... therapist, um, or whatever kind of therapist. But they will tell you that you can feel, or they can feel, particularly when they've been doing it for a period of years-

    7. DH

      Yeah

    8. RC

      ... they said, "I can tell what's going on in that person's life."

    9. DH

      Mm.

    10. RC

      "I can feel how stressed they are-"

    11. DH

      Wow

    12. RC

      "... from the tone of their muscles and how their body feels." Now, look, that's not my skill set, so I can't.

    13. DH

      Me neither. Yeah.

    14. RC

      But it's really interesting to hear that. Um-

    15. DH

      Yeah

    16. RC

      ... and I guess, David, you know, as you're telling me, you, you know, the, these stories and this research, you know, I keep thinking back to you, as you say, 20 years ago in the pharmaceutical industry, and, you know, these things that we're talking about, we often say are the softer, uh, characteristics of being a human, the softer science to medicine or whatever. You know, we, we, in some ways, we're being a little bit derogatory about them. Like almost-

    17. DH

      Mm

    18. RC

      ... as if we feel a need to soften it.

    19. DH

      Yeah.

    20. RC

      Like quite literally.

    21. DH

      Yeah.

    22. RC

      Whereas this, you know, it's not quite as, um, you know, uh, as, as, as robust as, you know, what's the oxygen level of the blood as it pumps out of the heart.

    23. DH

      Mm.

    24. RC

      You know? Or is it? Because is it just a perception? Because you're a scientist by training, and you're a scientist by degree. You've got an org- uh, PhD in organic chemistry.

    25. DH

      Yeah.

    26. RC

      You know, this is pretty hardcore, yet you are now talking with confidence, with knowledge about the science of kindness, of compassion, of touch, of visualization. You know, what do your former colleagues think of what you're doing now? Do they, do they know? Do, are you still in touch with them?

    27. DH

      I'm in touch with a, a couple of them, uh, who are actually w- greatly supportive. You know, 'cause I, I find even when I worked in the pharmaceutical industry, it wasn't that people were so skeptical about things. They just didn't know. Most of the stuff I talk about, they just didn't know. A- and it's not like ... I, I think we, we often have this perception if someone is educated in a particular way, then they must know everything about everything.

    28. RC

      Yeah.

    29. DH

      A- and it's, you know, many, many people are specialized in their own particular field. And, and I, I learned when I was there that nobody had any idea about the placebo effect, despite the fact we see it in the, the data, the drug trial data every day. But no one actually knew anything about it. So can- The colleagues that I'm still in touch with, I think some of them probably think it's a bit kind of woo-woo. But most of them that I'm, that I've been in touch with over the years are greatly supportive. In fact, they're so fascinated by it.

    30. RC

      Yeah.

  14. 50:49 – 59:19

    Visualization and neuroplasticity: training the brain without physical movement

    1. RC

      Um, there's a lot of research on that, isn't there, about, well, yes, how, how influential our minds are over our bodies.

    2. DH

      Mm.

    3. RC

      But I think I've read in one of your blog posts on your website about, um, I think it's a research paper about if you imagined flexing your finger-

    4. DH

      Yeah

    5. RC

      ... right, for 15 minutes a day-

    6. DH

      Yeah

    7. RC

      ... for what, three months was it?

    8. DH

      Three months, yeah.

    9. RC

      Yeah, what happened?

    10. DH

      Yeah, so, so what happened, uh, just, just to, to go back a step-

    11. RC

      Yeah, back up. Sure

    12. DH

      ... yeah. Uh, so, uh, a professor at Harvard, very famous neurologist called Alvaro Pascual-Leone, did a study where he got volunteers to play a sequence of five notes on a piano. So they basically put their hands flat on a table and went plunk, plunk, plunk, plunk, plunk, plunk, plunk, with each of, with a thumb, index finger, middle finger, ring finger, pinky finger, up and down a scale for two hours on five consecutive days. Now, that is not fully two hours. That's tiring. You might do, like, a minute of plunk, plunk, plunk, then a couple of minutes rest, a minute, couple of minutes rest. But for two hours, they had their brains scanned every day on the region connected to the finger muscles, and it underwent significant change. We now call that neuroplasticity. So it massively changed in, inside, by about 30 to 40 times. And that's fair enough. It's what you now expect from repetition of movement. But while they were doing that, a separate group of people put their hands flat on the table, closed their eyes, and imagined that they were playing the five notes. No movement. It's called kinesthetic imagery, and what that means is you imagine how it feels as if you were really doing it. You're not necessarily seeing it. You could see it if you want, but the key is to imagine the feelings as if you really are moving your finger muscles, but you're not. They had their brains scanned every day, and the same region of their brain had also changed by 30 to 40 times. And if you put the brain scan side by side, you cannot tell the difference between those who played the notes with their fingers, those who played the notes in their mind. So that's given birth to a lot of research, including the little finger research that was, I think that was done at the Cleveland In- the Cleveland Institute in the States. And what they did, got volunteers to do 15 extensions and contractions. You know, scientists have to really nail the, tell you exactly. It's like f- extend the little finger 15 times and contract it. Extend it, contract it 15 times, 20 seconds rest. 15 times, 20 seconds rest. 15 times, 20 seconds rest. Like, 15 reps at a time for quarter of an hour for three months. And they got 53% stronger. While they were doing that, a separate group of people closed their eyes, hands flat on the table, in kinesthetic imagery. They imagined they were doing the 15 extensions and contractions, but no movement at all. They got 35% stronger, 'cause this was f- at the start and the end of the study, they put their finger in a machine and lifted a wee set of weights up to see how strong they were. So by just imagining that you'd moved your finger, they'd got 35% stronger versus 53. Now, someone skeptical when I first talked about this said, "Ah, it wasn't 53% like those moving the finger," but it also wasn't zero. Here is 35% improvement in strength for doing nothing at all other than imagining the feelings as if you really were moving your fingers.

    13. RC

      Yeah, it's, it's just incredible, and then it makes me think of the untapped potential we all have within us-

    14. DH

      Mm

    15. RC

      ... that, you know, we're, we're looking at in a particular component of health, let's say.

    16. DH

      Mm.

    17. RC

      Um, you know, one thing I try and do on this podcast is to broaden out that conversation around health to say there are so many different factors that play a role. But what you're saying, David, really is really gonna be very profound for a lot of people, that our minds, how we visualize things, they can absolutely play a difference in our body.

    18. DH

      Absolutely.

    19. RC

      A- and, you know, it's incredible t- the idea that visualization works. So, 'cause I, I, I wasn't familiar with some of that research, um, but I've always done it myself.

    20. DH

      Mm.

    21. RC

      And I've always talked about it with my patients.

    22. DH

      Mm.

    23. RC

      And I've always said, "Look, if the top athletes in the world visualize so that they can have peak performance-

    24. DH

      Mm

    25. RC

      ... in their chosen activity or their race, well, you kind of want peak performance in your own life."

    26. DH

      Absolutely.

    27. RC

      Right? Whatever that means to you.

    28. DH

      Yeah.

    29. RC

      So why would you not use that tool? Oh, it's good enough for Tiger Woods and Michael Phelps, but it's not good enough for me.

    30. DH

      Mm.

  15. 59:19 – 1:04:30

    A lived example: using action observation and visualization to transform tennis performance

    1. RC

      It really is super, super interesting. Um, you know, you mentioned at the start that you came down from Dunblane.

    2. DH

      Mm.

    3. RC

      And you sort of gave a little hint there that you took up tennis-

    4. DH

      Yeah, yeah

    5. RC

      ... 'cause everyone around you was playing tennis.

    6. DH

      Yeah.

    7. RC

      And so you've taken it up in your 40s, and you thought you weren't very good. But now you're playing through the leagues, and you mentioned visualization.

    8. DH

      Yeah, yeah.

    9. RC

      And then I clocked that. I thought, "Okay, well, what's going on there?"

    10. DH

      Yeah.

    11. RC

      So, David, tell us how you're gonna be playing at Wimbledon next year.

    12. DH

      Yeah. Well, I, I, I might, I might go the year after. [laughs] But, no, here's the thing. I, I-

    13. RC

      So, and take us back to when you started and what happened, when you started. Just take us through that journey.

    14. DH

      Yeah. So I, I, I started playing tennis. In Dunblane, most people in, in the leagues have been playing since they're children. At very latest, since they're teenagers. Very unusual for someone to start playing for the first time in their mid-40s. So I started to really enjoy it, 'cause I realized it was quite scientific. The coach would, every Wednesday night, there's coaching, and the coach would say, "This is how you hold the racket. And if you turn it at an angle and, and lift the, the racket from low and move it to high, you, you, you put top spin on the ball, and it keeps it in the court." And I thought, "This is quite scientific." So I thought, "Oh, this is great fun." I, I was very resistant to playing tennis but thought, "I'm gonna do this." So I joined the league systems, and for two years, I was officially the second-worst tennis player in Dunblane. [laughs] Officially. A- and, and, and I say second-worst. There's like three or four league seasons per year. They last a couple of months. I think there's four a year we do. They last a couple of months, and at the bottom, there's usually me, second bottom, for two years. So that was like eight league, eight-box league seasons, right at the bottom, second bottom. And the only reason I wasn't bottom is because you get a point for showing up. So it's not like football and the, the, and the, the Premiership, where you get three points for a win, one point for a l- a draw, nothing for a loss. In Dunblane box leagues, to encourage you to play, you get one point for showing up, four points for a win, et cetera. So I got, I always got six points for playing six matches, uh, 'cause it's four leagues of seven players. So anyway, so for two years, my average losing margin was 6-love, 6-1. I hadn't won a ga- I hadn't won a single, uh, set of tennis in two years in the box leagues. And I was getting a bit demoralized, and I thought, "You know, I've helped to coach people, athletes. I've golfers. I've, I've, you know, from time to time explained how visualizations works, how you would apply it to your life, et cetera." I thought, "Why don't I try this?" So it was exactly four weeks to the next box league season, and I thought, "I'm gonna science this up. I'm gonna do it." So I decided I would pick the serve, and I picked the, one of the most difficult serves. Do you know what? In all of sports, the tennis serve is the second-most complex move in all of sports. Most people think it's, you know, how- Surely not. The, the number one is the pole vault. The reason why it's so complex is because most people think you just hit the ball with a flat racket, but in actual fact, a pro will turn the racket side on and face the opposite way, and rotate their body and sweep the racket at an angle over or up through the ball depending on what kind of serve they want. And there's a serve called the kick serve that's very, very difficult. And I thought, "I'm gonna visualize." So I decided, uh, I'd visualize 10 serves to one side and 10 serves to the other side every day. Within two days of visualization, couldn't do it. It was so difficult. And, uh, and the reason why is because you need to have what's called a mental representation. You need to know what you're imagining. It's okay. When I talked about the study with stroke, they, they were using imagining things that th- they were familiar with, like reaching for a glass of water. If, uh, you've never done a tennis serve, you can't visualize it correctly. So I used a little trick of neuroscience called action observation. In many ways, not only can your brain not distinguish between whether you're doing something or imagining it, your brain can't really distinguish much between whether you're doing something, imagining, or watching someone else doing it, providing you watch repetitively. It's called action observation. Gets a lot of research now in, in sports science. So I obtained a video from Andy, of Andy Murray doing, serving. I cut it down to about five seconds, and I watched it 3,000 times [laughs] . That's how we activate action observation. Not in one go. I printed out a little table in Microsoft Word. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. Week one, week two, week three, week four. So I'd f- I had roughly 30 days to do this. So I watched it 100 times a day for 30 days just on replay, and that's just conditioning the brain circuits as if you're visualizing. And then after a couple of days, my mental representation was absolutely crystal clear. I could see a professional kick serve, crystal clarity in my mind. So then after the second or third day, 10 visualizations of hitting the serve to one side, 10 to the other. Once a week, I went down to the court, hit a few balls. Anyway, to cut a long story short, I won the league [laughs] . I literally went from having never won a set to winning the division. Then I won the next division without dropping a set, so then I was up to the second division. And all that w- so I went from the fourth to the third to the second. That's when you're getting into the really much tougher players who've been playing literally since childhood. Uh, and I'm not trying to impress anyone, but just to impress upon you that my improvement was in large part related to the volume of visualization, the fact that I'd used this visualization of a particular shot repetitively.

  16. 1:04:30 – 1:08:20

    Applying visualization beyond sport: public speaking, confidence, and identity

    1. RC

      Yeah, I mean, just so incredible. Look, I'm trying to think about the listener who is thinking, "Okay, I don't wanna be a sportsman. I've no interest in tennis." Um, I don't know, but they might be, I don't know, nervous about public speaking.

    2. DH

      Mm.

    3. RC

      And they've got to present someone next week-

    4. DH

      Yeah

    5. RC

      ... or in front of their colleagues.

    6. DH

      Yeah.

    7. RC

      So can we say that if they are scared of public speaking, for a week leading up to the event, they can, every evening in bed or just, you know, sitting down in a quiet space, visualize walking onto that stage, what it feels like, who is in the audience, what the, I don't know, what the smell will be like? I don't know. Is this something-

    8. DH

      Exactly

    9. RC

      ... that we can all use in our own lives for whatever we want to achieve?

    10. DH

      Exactly. In fact, y- y- you hit the nail on the head there because the way to do it, uh, the way to apply this to, say, public speaking, if you have a fear of that or even if you, if there's someone you feel nervous around, for example, i- is you visualize from that moment, let's say you're on the sta- you're getting up from the stage, your name's called, and what you're visualizing, uh, you've gotta pay attention to, as you're imagining, pay attention to how your shoulders feel, pay attention to your gait, how fast you're walking, pay attention to your facial muscles. And what you're actually doing is you've got to visualize your, the movement of your body 'cause that's what the brain wires in. The brain will wire that repetitive movement of the body as if you're really doing it. So you're not-- Many people think if you want to visualize public speaking, just they go right to the end and see a standing ovation. But in actual fact, what I'm suggesting is you visualize the, your physical body, the way you would move your body if you feel, "I've got this. I've got something I can't wait to tell them. I'm feeling relaxed. I'm feeling confident." And so visualize the entire movement of your body, how you hold and move your body as you get to the stage, and then visualize the first opening two or three lines. So you're literally paying attention to your body. Similarly, if you're visualizing, you know, let's say someone who makes you feel nervous, maybe it's your boss at work or something, then normally what you would do is your body would tense up, and y- your speech would be affected. So visualize moving up towards your, your boss, your supervisor, and visualize your body being relaxed, your ba- your spine being straight, your shoulders relaxed, your head up. Visualize your rate of breathing, paying attention to your physical organism, how you hold and move your body, and that's what the brain wires in as if you're really doing it. So if you do that for a week leading up to the presentation or the meeting with the boss, then you'll find your brain will have wired enough that that might go into default and might go into an automatic or certainly it would be easier-

    11. RC

      Yeah

    12. DH

      ... to be like that than had you not done the visualization.

    13. RC

      Yeah, and I, I think for me, there's probably an added bonus there, which is apart from your brain now being there, and by the time you rock up to that event, your brain feels, "I've been here before."

    14. DH

      Yeah.

    15. RC

      I, I think it has another purpose, which is you are proactively doing something to prepare. You're not-

    16. DH

      Yeah

    17. RC

      ... stressing and worrying-

    18. DH

      Absolutely

    19. RC

      ... and getting anxious.

    20. DH

      Yeah.

    21. RC

      You're going, "Okay, cool. That's gonna be nerve-wracking, but I can do something each day now that's gonna get me stronger for that event."

    22. DH

      Yeah. It, it, it's, it's an amazing feeling because I, I think many people in society do feel disempowered. Like, uh, you know, like we, we don't know what to do to improve ourselves. And I think just giving that little b- it gives you confidence. It, it boosts your self-esteem, and you suddenly feel, "I'm, I'm in control," or, or, "I am controlling more of this than I ever thought. I am this kind of person that can do that." And it, it does wonders for your identity, your-

    23. RC

      Yeah

    24. DH

      ... your self-esteem, and it, it's, it's a happiness tool as well. But it gives you more energy, psychological energy, just, "I can do this."

    25. RC

      Yeah, for sure.

    26. DH

      "I am this person."

  17. 1:08:20 – 1:14:41

    The five side effects of kindness: happiness, heart health, aging, relationships, contagion

    1. RC

      So David, you've written about the five side effects of kindness-

    2. DH

      Yeah

    3. RC

      ... right? Which I think is a lovely, lovely idea, particularly with someone with a background in the pharmaceutical industry. [laughs]

    4. DH

      Yeah, I wanted to, I, I wanted to turn round side effect. Yeah, 'cause, well, a side effect isn't just a negative side effect of a drug. It's anything that happens alongside the thing that you're intending to do.

    5. RC

      Yeah. Well, that, I guess, you know, anything we do in life has a consequence. Any drug you take has a consequence-

    6. DH

      Mm

    7. RC

      ... that all effects, I guess if it's the effect we want, we call it the [laughs] therapeutic effect.

    8. DH

      Yeah, yeah.

    9. RC

      If it, if it's the effect we don't want-

    10. DH

      It's, it's-

    11. RC

      ... it's a side effect, right? [laughs]

    12. DH

      Yeah. [laughs]

    13. RC

      So I guess it's, it's, it's just how we phrase these things.

    14. DH

      Yeah, yeah.

    15. RC

      Um, but let's go into that. I think it's an interesting idea. So what are the five side effects of kindness?

    16. DH

      So number one, kindness makes you happier. Number two, kindness is good for the heart. Number three, kindness slows aging. Number four, kindness improves relationships. And number five, kindness is contagious. There you go, five side effects of kindness.

    17. RC

      I love that. And there's science behind all of that?

    18. DH

      Absolutely, be- behind all of it. In fact, the happiness stuff has been well studied. Typically, what you do is you compare people intentionally doing acts of kindness versus people in a r- a control group who are not do- who are just behaving as normal. And you can track the happiness levels before and after. Uh, and, and you can do it a number of different ways. But in almost all of those studies, you see net gains in happiness, or people who d- be- who do more kindness generally tend to be typically happier. So you, so what you see is kindness actually improves happiness. Another thing it does is it reduces stress at the same time. Uh, the, the heart stuff i- is principally through the action of the kindness hormone, through being kind, if it produces a sense of warmth and connection. What I, what I did with that chapter is I, I just tracked the different physical effects in the heart and the cardiovascular system and, you know, even to do with inflammation and oxidative stress as you practice kindness because of how it makes you feel. The, the, the slowing aging stuff is interesting because there's a number of processes of aging, a number of different ways that aging occurs. Uh, but one of them is, is something called oxidative stress or the-

    19. RC

      Yeah

    20. DH

      ... production of free radicals. I- in one study I cited, one scientist was look- were looking at the rate of, of oxidative stress in skin cells, and they found that if you introduce the kindness hormone through the skin cells put under stress, the levels of oxidative stress were substantially less. And there's similar research looking at how the kindness hormone, I, I like to call it the kindness hormone-

    21. RC

      I love it

    22. DH

      ... I love it. How it, it, it has quite a substantial body-wide effect on oxidative stress, which is one of the processes o- of aging. It's just one of a number.

    23. RC

      I mean, kindness reducing the aging process, that is profound. And I, I love the fact that you call it the kindness hormone. Uh, oxytocin, which is also called the cuddle hormone or the cuddle chemical.

    24. DH

      The hug drug. [laughs]

    25. RC

      The hug drug. But you know, it's, in many ways it's, it's all kind of pointing to the same conclusion, which is when we are around other people who support us and we support them, when we're in our tribe, basically-

    26. DH

      Mm

    27. RC

      ... we feel good.

    28. DH

      Yes.

    29. RC

      Our body changes. Our genetic expression changes. We reduce things like inflammation and oxidative stress and immune dysfunction. These things which actually, those three things probably drive most chronic diseases-

    30. DH

      Mm

  18. 1:14:41 – 1:21:15

    Kindness as a ripple effect: spreading through social networks and daily interactions

    1. RC

      Um, you said that kindness is contagious.

    2. DH

      Yeah.

    3. RC

      Can you explain?

    4. DH

      Oh, no, th- this is actually what, this is w- uh, I was going to say this is my favorite, but I've got so many favorites. [laughs] See, I get carried away sometimes. But, but-

    5. RC

      You sound like me.

    6. DH

      Yeah.

    7. RC

      I'm, I'm the same. This is why this conversation could keep going on and on-

    8. DH

      [laughs]

    9. RC

      ... unless we start thinking about wrapping it at some point.

    10. DH

      Yeah.

    11. RC

      But, but fire away.

    12. DH

      Well, so a study, uh, uh, between Harvard and Yale, they, they looked at, they did a clever little business game simulation. A l- a lot of these studies are done in little simulations. You, you, you create a game, a- and what you're secretly measuring is kindness or cooperative behavior. A- and what they found is if you be kind to someone, then because of how that person feels, they call it elevation, that person feels either connected to you or they feel l- uplifted, or they feel grateful. It doesn't really matter. It's a, it's a feeling that, a changed feeling. That person will likely be kind or kinder to someone else because of how you made them feel. Now, that person now is at one social step from you, or one degree of separation, but that person will be kind or kinder to someone else because of how they were made to feel, and that's at two degrees of separation. But then that person will be kind or kinder to someone else at three degrees of separation, or three social steps. But that isn't real practice because in reality, given the average amount of interconnectedness, amount of interactions that we have in any one day, you might well probably say that if you be kind to someone, if you f- if you were to follow them around, which hopefully you don't do, but [laughs] we don't do. But if you were to follow a person around with a camera, you would probably find that the person you've just helped will be kind or kinder to five people over the course of the rest of the day because of how you made them feel, given the average amount of interconnection. But those five people will be kind or kinder to five more, and now we're at two social steps, 25 people. But each of those five people will be kind or kinder to five further people, which is 125 at three social steps. So you really have this ripple effect, just like you drop a pebble in a pond, and the wave goes out in all directions. And a lily pad at the opposite side of the pond goes up and down, and it, it doesn't know why it's going up and down, but it's going up and down because of the wave. But the same is happening to lily pads at the other side of the pond. The wave goes out in all directions. So what this research shows is that kindness spreads out in all directions. So it's not just one person that you help, but it ripples out in all directions. And if you were to track it that way, you would probably find somewhere, given the average amount of social interaction most people have, you probably find around about 125 people, probably more given a densely populated area, are benefiting from every single time you do, even say something nice. You pay a compliment. You help someone. You hold a door for someone. It sounds so s- you know, preposterous, so simple, but I, I put it to, to listeners that if you ever feel small, if you ever feel that you don't contribute, you don't make a difference, you're doing it every single day, even with the little things that you don't think matter, but they matter to the person that you've helped, who will then spread it out by, to three social steps.

    13. RC

      Yeah. David, I, I mean, I absolutely love things like this. Um, it, it makes me think of in this, in, in this time where many of us feel powerless to make a change, and we don't like the way society is heading, it, it reminds me of that phrase, is, I don't know if it's Gandhi. I can't remember who it is. Um, be the change you want to see in the world.

    14. DH

      Yeah.

    15. RC

      This is putting it right back in our own court, saying, "Hey, you know what? Be kind to someone each day-

    16. DH

      Mm

    17. RC

      ... and that will ripple out." That is something we can all do. And you know, we say it's for that other person, even if it doesn't make us feel good, but the, the reality is it does make us feel good.

    18. DH

      Mm.

    19. RC

      You know, compare the difference when you go into a coffee shop and order your coffee and take it and go on with your day compared to when you actually take it, um, say something nice to the person, to the barista. "Hey, you, thanks so much. I really appreciate that. Hey, you made me a great one yesterday. I hope this one's as good. You know, anyway, have a good day."

    20. DH

      Yeah.

    21. RC

      Whatever it is, it, they've got a smile on their face.

    22. DH

      Yeah.

    23. RC

      They, they have probably are being sort of shocked out of the, maybe the tedium that they were feeling trying to make, you know, 100 coffees in an hour.

    24. DH

      Mm.

    25. RC

      Uh, but you feel good as well.

    26. DH

      Yeah.

    27. RC

      And that does, in your own life, spreads your, to, to, to, you know, to your other interactions. But it reminds me a bit of, um, what, something Andy Ramage said to me. I, I had him on I think in November.

    28. DH

      Mm.

    29. RC

      He's, um, he set up this thing at this company, uh, One Year No Beer.

    30. DH

      Oh, yeah.

  19. 1:21:15 – 1:33:51

    Teaching kindness in public, workplaces, and schools: making it tangible for children

    1. RC

      ... so, so much. David, you say you spend a lot of time teaching these days.

    2. DH

      Mm.

    3. RC

      Um, who do you teach, and what do people say at the end of some of your courses?

    4. DH

      A, a very, a very mixture. Uh, mostly general public. Uh, oftentimes, I mean, professional people, you know, in, in NHS will come along to some. I've spoken to, uh, NHS a couple of times. I, I do corporate speaking. I talk to different companies. A- and the, what I tend to talk to them about is kindness is the opposite of stress.

    5. RC

      Yeah.

    6. DH

      And here's why, and here's how. Give a little tools. At conferences, workshops. I mean, last night I did a lecture in Glasgow on the mind-body connection, and just g- you know, a couple of hundred people come along and, and I do like a 90 minutes. So I do quite a lot of that, 90 minutes just giving a talk and try to make it entertaining. Keep you- people there for 90 minutes, I've got to throw in a few jokes here and there. But so I do a lot of that kind. So it's different kind of audiences, but it's, it's really people who have an interest in learning about the mind-body connection, or learning about how kindness is, um, good for your health and can make a difference in the world.

    7. RC

      Yeah. I guess I can see the value for adults. I can see the value for everyone, frankly.

    8. DH

      Mm.

    9. RC

      I can also really see value for children, um, that if we instill this in our kids in society-

    10. DH

      Yeah

    11. RC

      ... and they grow up knowing the importance of it, experiencing the importance of it, um, doing it and practicing it regularly-

    12. DH

      Yeah

    13. RC

      ... you just can fast-forward that five, 10 years into society, what then-

    14. DH

      Yeah

    15. RC

      ... happens to society.

    16. DH

      I know.

    17. RC

      Um, and you know, I, I guess in a couple of weeks I'm actually giving a talk at my children's school-

    18. DH

      Oh, lovely

    19. RC

      ... um, for Mental Health Week there. And it's gonna be around the Feel Better in 5 plan, because I think that five minutes on your mind, five minutes on your body, five minutes on your heart each day, I think it's the perfect wellbeing plan for any one of us-

    20. DH

      Absolutely

    21. RC

      ... but particularly for children.

    22. DH

      Yeah.

    23. RC

      Um, you know, in schools, you know, they wanna, they wanna introduce wellbeing into schools, but everything either costs too much or takes too long. You know, everything in that is, only takes five minutes-

    24. DH

      Mm

    25. RC

      ... and it's free. Um, and I haven't started to think about it yet. I think the talk's in about 10 days, but I need to talk for about half an hour to kids and make it engaging for-

    26. DH

      Yeah

    27. RC

      ... kids between the ages six and 11. And obviously I won't talk about all kinds of things with them, but I think kindness, uh, there are a couple of kindness practices in the, in, in the plan.

    28. DH

      Mm.

    29. RC

      Um, uh, but certainly on the back of this conversation as well, I really feel that that might be a nice thing to talk about. Have you spoken about it much with kids?

    30. DH

      Yeah, I've, I actually about a dozen times I've gone into schools. Usually kinda local, like, like one of my friends is a teacher in an aut- an autism specialist, uh, unit, uh, near Glasgow. And, and I've been into his school about four times, I think. And then I, I did one of the, couple of, one of the local schools in Dunblane where I live. I did another couple of schools, my niece's school. Uh, and but each time I've gone in, I did one at Mental Health Week actually for-

  20. 1:33:51 – 1:37:46

    Closing practices: the 7-Day Kindness Challenge and where to find more

    1. RC

      ... based upon my knowledge and my experience. Well, David, look, I have absolutely loved chatting with you today. Um, you've written a lot of books. If you were gonna direct people listening to this to one book, just get going on their David Hamilton [laughs] journey, uh, what, what do you think is the best starting point for them?

    2. DH

      Uh, well, possibly The Five Side Effects of Kindness.

    3. RC

      Yeah

    4. DH

      Simply because we, you mentioned that, you know, that it's a good starting point, but also how your mind can heal your body. Is it one all about the mind-body connection? I cover a few different subjects.

    5. RC

      Yeah. Oh, we'll link to all of your books in the show next session.

    6. DH

      Yeah

    7. RC

      I'll also link to some really, really good blogs, um, on David's website that are well worth reading. They're short. They won't take you long, so do check out the show notes, uh, page for this episode to, to, uh, to, to sort of have access to those. Um, David, this podcast is called Feel Better, Live More. When we feel better in ourselves-

    8. DH

      Mm

    9. RC

      ... we get more out of our lives.

    10. DH

      Yeah

    11. RC

      And you're very clearly saying that when we're kinder to other people, when we're more compassionate to other people, we and they get more out of their lives.

    12. DH

      Yeah.

    13. RC

      And my goal with this podcast is to inspire each and every listener to take action, to do something. Not just hear all this great information and go, "Hey, that's pretty cool," but actually turn that inspiration into action. So I wonder if you could leave my listeners with some of your very top tips, things that they can think about-

    14. DH

      Mm

    15. RC

      ... applying into their own life immediately.

    16. DH

      Well, how about why I often find people enjoy is the 7-Day Kindness Challenge, and you've got to do an act of kindness every day for seven days, but there's three ground rules. The first one is you can't count the same thing twice. So for example, if you start on a Monday, and you make someone a breakfast in bed or a cup of tea or something, you can do that again during the week, but it only counts the first time, so you can't count it the other day. So you've got to do seven different things. Another ground rule is at least once, you gotta push yourself a little bit. Push yourself out of your comfort zone a little bit. Uh, and the number three is at least one of those acts of kindness must be completely anonymous. No one must ever know what you did, or if something was done, no one must ever know that it was you that did it, and that takes yourself or the need for recognition out of the equation. So that's the ground rules. So 7-Day Kindness Challenge, something different every day. Push yourself out your comfort zone at least once, and one thing has to be completely anonymous.

    17. RC

      Man, I, I literally [laughs] love that so much. I think what we'll do is, our podcast episodes go out Wednesday, 1:00 PM, and so we'll put it out, and then I think on the Monday after, I'll probably launch on my social media channels a 7-Day Kindness Challenge along with you-

    18. DH

      Yeah

    19. RC

      ... and see if we can put some of that into practice-

    20. DH

      Fantastic

    21. RC

      ... and inspire-

    22. DH

      Yeah

    23. RC

      ... lots of people to get going with that.

    24. DH

      Yeah

    25. RC

      And then that can spread to their networks and their networks. So-

    26. DH

      Eight degrees of separation

    27. RC

      Yeah, so let's start-

    28. DH

      Yeah

    29. RC

      ... a kindness revolution together.

    30. DH

      That'd be amazing. Yeah.

Episode duration: 1:37:51

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