How to Heal From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) | Dr. Victor Carrión

(peaceful 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. My guest today is Dr. Victor Carrion. Dr. Victor Carrion is a professor and the vice chair of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford University School of Medicine. He is one of the world's foremost experts on post-traumatic stress disorder, in particular, the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder in children and adolescents, although his knowledge and today's discussion certainly extends to adult PTSD as well. Dr. Carrion is also the director of the Stanford Early Life Stress and Resilience Program, and today's discussion focuses on the psychological and the neurobiological underpinnings of PTSD and which treatments are most effective for PTSD. We focus heavily on a particular therapy called cue-centered therapy that was developed by Dr. Carrion and colleagues that has been shown to offset the triggering by words or events or memories that often are the precursors to PTSD episodes, and this has been shown to be effective in both children and adults. Today's discussion explores the difference between anxiety, stress, and trauma. We talk about how those things, of course, are related, but how they can be separated out to better understand if indeed somebody has trauma and how to best approach the treatment of that trauma. As you'll soon see, what makes Dr. Carrion's work so unique is that it combines the psychological, the neurobiological, but also practical tools such as mindfulness. It relates mindfulness and cognitive behavioral therapy to the underlying biology and what's known about the psychiatry and psychology of PTSD at its different stages depending on the trauma, the age of the person, et cetera. Today, Dr. Carrion clearly explains all of that so that by the end of today's conversation, you'll really understand what PTSD is and is not and of course the best ways to treat it. 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 Eight Sleep. Eight Sleep makes smart mattress covers with cooling, heating, and sleep-tracking capacity. Now, I've spoken many times before on this podcast about the critical need for us to get adequate amounts of quality sleep each night. That's truly the foundation of all mental health, physical health, and performance, and one of the best ways to ensure that you get a great night's sleep is to control the temperature of your sleeping environment, and that's because in order to fall and stay deeply asleep, your body temperature actually has to drop by about one to three degrees, and in order to wake up feeling refreshed and energized, your body temperature actually has to increase about one to three degrees. Eight Sleep makes it incredibly easy to control the temperature of your sleeping environment by allowing you to control the temperature of your mattress cover at the beginning, middle, and end of the night, and it turns out the ability to do so allows you to get the maximum amount of deep sleep, slow-wave sleep, and rapid eye movement sleep at the different stages of the night. I've been sleeping on an Eight Sleep mattress cover for nearly four years now, and it has completely transformed and improved the quality of my sleep. Eight Sleep has now launched their newest generation of the Pod Cover, the Pod 4 Ultra. The Pod 4 Ultra has improved cooling and heating capacity, higher fidelity sleep tracking technology, and even has snoring. If you'd like to try an Eight Sleep mattress cover, go to eightsleep.com/huberman to save up to $350 off their Pod 4 Ultra. 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 BetterHelp. BetterHelp offers professional therapy with a licensed therapist carried out entirely online. I've been doing weekly therapy for well over 30 years. Initially, I didn't have a choice, it was a condition of being allowed to stay in school, but pretty soon I realized that doing regular quality therapy is an extremely important component to overall health. In fact, I consider doing regular therapy just as important as getting regular physical exercise, including cardiovascular exercise and resistance training, which of course I also do every single week. There are essentially three components to excellent therapy. First of all, excellent therapy should provide good rapport with somebody who you can trust and talk to about all issues in your life. Second of all, it should provide support in the form of emotional support or directed guidance or both. And thirdly, expert therapy should provide useful insights, insights that can allow you to do better not just in your emotional life and relationship life, but of course also your relationship to yourself, your professional life, and all of your career and life goals. With BetterHelp, they make it very easy to find an expert therapist with whom you can build all three of these effective components of therapy. If you'd like to try BetterHelp, you can go to betterhelp.com/huberman to get 10% off your first month. Again, that's betterhelp.com/huberman. Today's episode is also brought to us by Waking Up. Waking Up is a meditation app that offers hundreds of guided meditation programs, mindfulness trainings, yoga nidra sessions, and more. I started practicing meditation when I was about 15 years old, and it made a profound impact on my life. And by now, there are thousands of quality peer-reviewed studies that emphasize how useful mindfulness meditation can be for improving our focus, managing stress and anxiety, improving our mood, and much more. In recent years, I started using the Waking Up app for my meditations because I find it to be a terrific resource for allowing me to really be consistent with my meditation practice. Many people start a meditation practice and experience some benefits, but many people also have challenges keeping up with that practice. What I and so many other people love about the Waking Up app is that it has a lot of different meditations to choose from, and those meditations are of different durations, so it makes it very easy to keep up with your meditation practice both from the perspective of novelty, you never get tired of those meditations, there's always something new to explore and to learn about yourself and about the effectiveness of meditation, and you can always fit meditation into your schedule even if you only have two or three minutes per day in which to meditate. If you'd like to try the Waking Up app, please go to wakingup.com/huberman where you can access a free 30-day trial. Again, that's wakingup.com/huberman to access a free 30-day trial. And now for my discussion with Dr. Victor Carrion.Dr. Victor Carrion, welcome.