The 7 Energy Vampires Stealing Your Life - How To Sleep Better & Be Happier | Dr. Rangan Chatterjee

When you don't

sleep

well, all aspects of

your

life

worsen, mood, relationships, concentration, focus, how much we eat, and in the long term, lack of

sleep

increases the risk of premature death and increases the risk of death. chances of suffering from almost all the chronic diseases that we have studied. I have been a doctor for over two decades so far and have cared for tens of thousands of patients, but what I have seen time and time again is people engaging in behaviors that they don't realize are sabotaging the quality of their

life

. When I can help them improve the quality of their sleep, they immediately feel a change in their

energy

and vitality, so in this video I want to share with you some of the common things I have seen my patients do at night without them realizing it. has negatively impacted the quality of

your

sleep.

The first thing I want to talk about is what I call liquid stress. So what is liquid stress? Well, in that category I put drinks that contain caffeine and alcohol. Now I understand that many people consume these drinks and enjoy these drinks. but I think it's very important to understand the potential impacts they could have on sleep, so let's start with caffeine. Now we all metabolize caffeine slightly differently, which basically means we all have a different tolerance for how much caffeine we can handle. However, in my experience, many people consume too much for their own needs and that has a negative impact on their sleep.

Here's the problem: if you drink too much caffeine at the wrong times, it negatively affects your sleep, meaning you wake up the next day. You feel tired and you need more and more caffeine to get you through, so it becomes a really vicious cycle that can be very difficult for people to get out of, especially if they have to function during the day, now that we think about the compounds in the body and how quickly they are broken down and then eliminated, we often talk about something called the half-life of the compound, well the half-life of caffeine is about 6 hours now.

I appreciate that we are all slightly different and that exact amount will depend on your genetics, but let's imagine that for all of us it is 6 hours, well what that means is that if you leave your office at noon and order a large coffee at your local coffee shop, It means that at 6:00 p.m. 6 hours later, half of the caffeine in that drink is still circulating in your body and brain and it means that at midnight, a quarter of the caffeine you consumed at 12:00 is still circulating in your body and brain now for many Of us who know we are sensitive to caffeine, we wouldn't even dream of having a quart cup of coffee at night before bed or a half cup of coffee at 6:00 p.m.

So with that knowledge, you now have the power to think: Wow, that could be a problem for me! You see, a lot of people will say, well, look, I've been F. I've been having a 3:30 p.m. cup of tea or cup of coffee throughout my working life, why would it suddenly be affecting me now? This is something I've seen many times, people were able to tolerate a certain dose of caffeine for a period of time, but then at some point. They can't anymore and I think there are several potential reasons for this. You may have heard me talk about stress in the past and I talk about stress thresholds, this idea that we can accumulate a certain amount of stress, but when we reach that threshold that's when things start to go wrong and often I think about caffeine in relation to thresholds.

I've seen before that when patients are, let's say, under low levels of stress, life is pretty calm, not a lot happens in their personal life. Feeling calm and in control, they can often tolerate a little caffeine C, perhaps in the late afternoon at 4:00 p.m. Let's say, but when the stress load in your life starts to build and rise it's almost as if you no longer have the ability to deal with that caffeine. I've seen this enough times to know that this is a real thing, so the reason I bring this up is if you're someone who has trouble sleeping and you've told yourself a story that caffeine isn't appropriate here because in the past you were absolutely fine with caffeine in the afternoon.

I just want to clarify. I invite you to consider that perhaps things have changed and the only way you would really know is to eliminate it correctly, so if that is you, what I would recommend is that for at least 7 days you consume the caffeine that you are going to consume. Take it in the morning so before noon and just pay attention to what's going on and then if you're not sure what you could do call the turkey and cut it all up for a week or two and see what happens now if you're going to do it. call Turkey, you may have withdrawal symptoms, people may feel bad mood, very tired, headaches, their emotions may be quite turbulent, it may cause problems in relationships, so you should be careful before adopting a approach like this, for most people and in the past, when I reduced my own caffeine consumption, I did it very, very gradually because if I stopped abruptly, you can have a lot of symptoms, so what I'm trying to make clear is that caffeine is a psychoactive stimulant, it is the most consumed psychoactive. stimulating on the planet and if you look around you, any urban environment, now, any airport, any shopping center, any urban center, any town, what do you see, a surplus of coffee shops and don't get me wrong.

I love sitting in a coffee shop with a nice long black guy working a little I enjoy the vibe, the atmosphere, but I think if we take a step back we have to ask ourselves what has happened in society where we have so many coffee shops, you know what's happening, You know what your relationship is like. With caffeine you can function without it. Do you agree that much of society is too dependent on caffeine? What's really interesting is that many people who consume caffeine regularly will tell you that they need caffeine to function well it helps them think

better

it helps them be more cognitively sharp and yes there is some data to support this but it is very big but There was a study from the University of Bristol from 2010 that actually seems to conclude that caffeine only helps our cognitive performance if we are a habituated caffeine drinker, basically if you are If you are used to drinking caffeine regularly, then the reason why you feel a boost in the morning is because you're suffering withdrawal symptoms and all the caffeine does is bring you back to the kind of level where caffeine-free drinkers now exist all the time.

I don't think it's simple. I think there is some evidence to support that a little caffeine can improve our cognitive performance in certain situations and sports performance. That being said, what I want to do is help empower people. I want to help. Now you understand the impact that caffeine could have on the quality of your sleep if you eliminate it for a week or reduce it to only drinking it in the morning for a week and find that you are sleeping

better

and your

energy

is gone. up and you have more vitality and more focus and your relationships are better, then you are empowered with that information, then you can choose what you want to do, you can say wow, I really like feeling like this or you can go, although I am feeling better I really miss those cups of extra coffee I was drinking and in general, I prefer to drink them.

Only you can make that decision. I just want to help you understand the impact it could be having on you and me. In my experience, I have seen many patients who told me that caffeine was not having an impact on their sleep health, but when they reduced it to only taking it in the morning, they all quit smoking and soon realized what was happening. Now doing scientific research on caffeine and its impact on our sleep is pretty clear. It shows us that caffeine can prolong sleep latency, which is the time it takes to fall asleep. It can reduce total sleep time.

It can reduce sleep efficiency and worse. and perceived sleep quality, but again it is important to remind them that this is a dose-dependent effect. Many people are absolutely fine with a small dose of caffeine sometime in the morning, so I'm not trying to say that you should give it up. I ask that you pay attention to the impact it could have on your sleep. What's with those people who say I'm absolutely fine? I can have a double espresso after dinner at 9:30 p.m. and I fall asleep completely fine, look, it's impossible for me to comment on every situation, but the scientific research the ibr looks at this seems to suggest that even if you can fall asleep after drinking, say, a double espresso at night. that the quality of your sleep may not be as good if you hadn't and, again, I think one of the best ways to evaluate that is to ask ourselves, you know, when we wake up in the morning, how we feel, what's our Energy like: What are our relationships like?

Does anyone around me tell me that I'm a little moody? Of course, all of these things may have other reasons behind them, but if we're trying to evaluate our sleep in general terms, it's not really the number of hours. that we should worry too much. Yes, in general, most people seem to need between seven and nine hours, but some people seem to be fine with 6 and a half hours. Some people need a little more and again, you can ask yourself these questions in Do you know that in the morning I woke up feeling refreshed? Can I wake up at around the same time without needing an alarm?

All of these things help give you an idea of ​​the quality of your sleep, so when we think about caffeine it's not just about coffee and black tea, you should think about green tea, it contains caffeine, even decaffeinated coffee has small amounts of caffeine. Dark chocolate may contain caffeine. I know it personally. I am quite sensitive to caffeine. I will consume caffeine, but alone. in the morning, if I have dark chocolate in the afternoon, I can often feel it in bed at night, so keep in mind that caffeine hides in different kinds of places and if you are trying to improve your sleep, then try Being more conscious of your intake is usually a very good idea now.

The other form of liquid stress I often think about when it comes to sleep is alcohol. Many people consume alcohol as a way to relax at night and many people will tell you that it helps them fall asleep. asleep now, although it is impossible to say what happens in each individual situation, as a general rule, we need to stop thinking of alcohol as a sleep aid. Alcohol is actually a sedative and sedation is not the same as sleep. It's easy to bet on sleep. but if you observed both states in a sleep lab you would see a completely different picture with your brain waves.

Sedation is where your brain cells have turned off. Sleep is where hundreds of thousands of brain cells coordinate their activation. It is a very different process. So, in my experience as a doctor, many people who have difficulty sleeping do so because of their alcohol consumption. Can we say that any amount of alcohol will affect a person's sleep? I don't think we can say that one bit. A bit like caffeine, there are genetic tendencies at play here. I also believe that, like caffeine, the amount of stress in your life also affects how quickly and easily you can metabolize alcohol and back in the days when I used to drink alcohol, I often found that a glass of red wine in half of a work week when there was a lot of stress and I was quite tired would have a fairly negative impact but that same glass of red wine if I were on holiday somewhere disconnected from work with my family would have very little impact, so I think it is impossible to analyze these things in isolation for the rest of your life, context seems to matter a lot, but if we look directly at what scientific research shows us about the effects of alcohol.

Our Sleep Most research suggests that alcohol affects our sleep in the following ways: First, it fragments sleep, so basically, when you consume it, you may feel like you've had a good night's sleep, but you wake up feeling exhausted and This is often because you woke up multiple times during the night, your sleep was much lighter than usual, and because you are often unaware of those increased awakenings, you often don't make the association and think that It had nothing to do with alcohol. but it was the alcohol that caused sleep fragmentation, which is why you feel so tired the next day.

Alcohol also has a negative impact on a type of sleep we call REM sleep, rapid eye movement sleep, also known as deep sleep, and that's a particularly important part. of your sleep cycle, a lot of sleep researchers call it emotional first aid because it's the part of the sleep cycle where we really process the difficult experiences that happen during the day, so that's really very important and if we look at society and We see how many people today are struggling with theirmood, with depression, with a feeling of anxiety, that is the reason why alcohol consumption reduces REM sleep, which as I just mentioned is emotional first aid, it could absolutely be contributing on a broader note, we know that when people are sleep deprived, their perspective on the world is more negative, the tired brain remembers more negative experiences than the well-rested brain, so improving the quality of your sleep is one of the fastest ways to change your experience of the world.

Look, a lot of people will tell me yes. doc, I get it, but I really enjoy a glass of wine at night, just before I go to bed, it relaxes me, it's a moment for me, it's a little reward, now I understand all those things and I understand that there may be some associations powerful. with certain things like alcohol and again, I'm not trying to say that you have to give up what I'm trying to say is that I know that for many people, consuming alcohol at night negatively affects their sleep and that poor sleep has a negative impact on their quality of life, so I'm just trying to help you understand that you may want to reexamine your relationship with alcohol and if you insist on using it. in the evening, if you say no, that's part of my life, I urge you to consider whether you could bring it forward in the evening, for example, if you had a glass of red wine at 5:00 p.m. m. as opposed to 10 p.m.

The truth is that the glass of red wine at 500 p.m. will have less impact on your sleep than the 10 p.m. one because when you go to bed a part of it will have already been processed and metabolized, although you have to be careful if you start drinking at 5:00 p.m. It could lead to consuming even more drinks, it could lead to more snacking, etc., etc., there are always knock-on effects, but the real point to remember is that if you're going to take it at night, the earlier, better when it comes to your sleep. So there's a lot of reasons to put a little thought into how much alcohol you're consuming and when, and just approaching this whole fluid stress thing.

I understand that many people enjoy drinks that contain caffeine. Many people enjoy drinks that contain alcohol. Not really. I don't want to be here telling you what to do with your life; You are absolutely capable of choosing what is right for you, but what I have seen time and time again is that people simply do not realize the impact these drinks are having on their sleep and My hope is to help you understand that you can reset your relationship and consume them if you wish in a way that helps you and does not harm you, now there is something else in the night that can have a negative impact on our sleep.

It's something that a lot of people find controversial and it's the idea of ​​whether we should sleep in the same bed as our partner now do you have a partner? Do you sleep in the same bed as them? Do you sleep in separate rooms? It's really interesting if you look at the research on this, there was a study in England that found that one in four people in a couple got up during the night and went to another room and another study I looked at showed that when a person moves there is a 50% chance your partner will wake up or sleep worse, so why?

In some cultures this is such a controversial idea and I think the word culture here is actually very important here in the UK and I'm sure I know that since I was in America. This idea that a romantic partner should not share their bed at night is often met with disdain. In fact, I know a close friend who I talked to about this recently and he said no way, man, if my wife and I stop sleeping in the same room, that's the From the beginning to the end it's really interesting because if you drift away here, I think people are afraid that if they don't sleep in the same bed that it says something about the quality of their relationship, but I think that's a very short-sighted way to look at this.

What effect does lack of sleep have on us? Okay, not sleeping well has many implications. We feel more tired. We have less empathy. We are less likely to show compassion. We are more moody. We are less able to resist temptation. Our lifestyle behaviors are poorer. These things happen or after sleeping badly, now just think about how you want to present yourself to your partner. Well, I imagine most of us want to be full of energy, we want to be patient, we want to be full of empathy, we want to be full of compassion, we want to be watching. after ourselves, but a bad night's sleep can wreak havoc on that, so I think a lot of couples, if they have the space and the space, I appreciate that not everyone does, but if they do, sometimes it's best to sleep in different beds if both partners are sleeping well at night on their own then I think the way they show each other is going to fundamentally change now of course here in Western cultures there is often a concern about Intimacy, what does it mean if you don't sleep in the same place? bed as your partner, but I think this really is a cultural idea because intimacy can mean many things, spending time together, hugging, opening up, being vulnerable, yes of course sex can be part of intimacy, but even in couples who sleep in separate beds, I can think of Many patients who have done this over the years, intentionally create time for that intimacy in their relationship, sleep in separate beds at night, sleep better, present themselves in a much more better and then intentionally set aside and schedule time for intimacy.

There are many ways to look at this, of course, if you sleep in the same bed as your partner and everything is going well and your sleep is good, of course there is no reason to change that, but if not, it may be a simple way To change things now there are many cultures around the world where it is actually quite normal that there are certain cultures in Asia where a mother sleeps with the children and the father sleeps somewhere else in many European countries and I realized this when I was in In hotels there may be a double bed, but there were two different duvets, so even if people are in the same bed, they both have their own duo and there is a broader point here about sleep, which is that many of us prefer sleeping at a different temperature than our partner and as a general rule it doesn't apply in all cases, but from what I've seen, men tend to prefer it a little cooler, women tend to prefer it a little warmer, so maybe if you sleep in the same place. bed, but you both got a different duvet, maybe with the right clothes for you and how they light your temperature well, that could be a very useful way to try to make sure you both sleep well, of course, if your partner snores or sleeps. makes you nervous getting up several times during the night to go to the bathroom, that can be disturbing, so I think we really need to get away from this idea that not sleeping in the same bed as our partner means that something is wrong in our relationship, in many cases it can even improve our relationships and I think it is very important for me to emphasize that not everyone can sleep in a different place than their partner if they really want to, of course, you need space, you need space, you need another bed, you need another place in the house if you don't have it, it may not be possible and of course that can make it really challenging and if that's you and you have difficulty sleeping in the same bed as your partner, maybe a different duvet could help, maybe an eye. mask maybe some earplugs there's even quite a bit of new technology on the market today, if you're interested, where people can place devices under the mattress that keep one side of the bed at a different temperature than the other side, There are all kinds of innovations in this space, but I recognize that even with the best intentions for some people this is going to be really complicated.

There's another thing I've commonly seen that negatively impacts our sleep and, frankly, our overall rest these days is the nature of the activities we engage in. Of course, what we're doing now before we go to bed for most people who work conventional hours would be at night and the reason I've been thinking about this is because I've seen a lot of patients over the years. years who really felt like they were sleeping pretty well, well, so I said yeah, I'm getting seven or eight hours of sleep. I'm going to bed. I am falling asleep. I wake up fine, but it's not that they were tired, they just didn't feel mentally refreshed.

I think there is Here's a subtle difference that I have noticed on many occasions: they think they are sleeping well, but they feel mentally fatigued, and usually when I observed what these patients were doing in the hours before going to bed, I found that they were doing things very similar to what they did during the day, so in the modern world we can continue working. Can't we work until dinner time? We can stop and have dinner and then we can get back to our computers and continue working. And I've come to think of this as a one-dimensional life experience rather than a three-dimensional one. what do I want to say with that?

I believe our bodies and minds need variety. If you work all day, you take a break for dinner. and then you're working again at night you're stimulating the same part of your brain okay it's one dimensional but we now know from a lot of scientific research that making art being creative these things awaken different parts of our brain and in many many ways They act as a form of rest for our bodies, so when people think about sleep, I think that yes, it is a kind of rest for the body and of course it is also a little bit of rest for the mind, but I think that in This modern world where we are constantly stimulated I don't think we are giving our minds enough rest, so sleep is rest for your body, but at night you should also think about rest for your mind.

Now there are many ways you can do this right for me. in my life, right? Much of my life is based on non-fiction content, facts, science, talking to people on my podcast, and often in the evenings I also read more non-fiction books to keep my knowledge up to date and prepare for my next guest on podcast, but a few months ago I started experimenting with well, what happens if I don't read nonfiction at night? Instead I read fiction, not only did I feel like the quality of my sleep improved, I also felt mentally different in the morning, so I just want you to think about that for a moment: What do you do in your days and what do you spend your afternoons doing? ?

Is it the same or is it different? Of course, I understand. Sometimes we have to work in the afternoons and not. You think all the time that you are necessarily a problem, but if you think you are, your life has become too one-dimensional. Everything feels the same. Everything is related to the same types of content. The same types of work. I encourage you to think about what you could do. something different tonight. I bet you'll find that you'll wake up feeling different. I've experienced it myself and seen it with many of my patients, so what kind of things could you be doing?

Sorry to interrupt to make sure you are. taking action after watching this video. I've created a special free guide to help you improve your sleep and reduce fatigue. In my clinical experience, most people who have difficulty sleeping are unconsciously doing something in their daily life that is negatively impacting their ability to sleep at night, so in this free guide I share with you five of my best tips that I have ever learned. I've seen it transform the lives of many of my patients, so if you want to get this guide, all you have to do is click. in the link in the description box below, it will depend on what you do during the day, but it could be reading books, playing the guitar or piano and singing, it could be learning a language, it could be writing a children's story or a fictional story, right, we all have different passions and I think there's something here where we live these one-dimensional lives rather than the rich tapestry of three-dimensional experiences that is available to us and I don't think we're having this conversation enough when it comes to rest, You know that sleep is a form of rest, but it's not the only form of rest, and I think if you can broaden your life experience, changing what you do at night might even be a puzzle.

In fact, you might think you know that here in the UK it wasn't long ago that it was the Christmas holidays and in this country many offices close for a couple of weeks, people spend time with their families, play board games, do homework. kind of fun stuff we've been doing for decades but we don't do it regularly life has become so serious for so many people these fun hobbies creativity art comedy watching comedy in the evenings that's something I started doing a lot recently I thought I was okay, I'm going to see some comedians tonight. I laugh, look at the world in a different way, and wake up feeling more refreshed.

So if you think this might apply to you, why don't you try it and see what happens when you do something? different at night when you access adifferent part of your brain at night and pay attention to how it feels the next morning. Something else that I think many of us recognize negatively affects the quality of our sleep is screen time at night. You've probably heard about this, you probably know it yourself, but you still find yourself lying in bed at night with that smartphone scrolling, even though you've told yourself you're not going to do that and I get it, it's really, really tempting. , because? that for some of us our screen use at night is negatively impacting our sleep, there are a variety of different reasons, one has to do with light exposure, if we think about our bodies and we think about something called Cadia biology , this idea that Our bodies function on these 24-hour daily Cadian rhythms.

Okay, if we think that one of the fundamental modulators of that rhythm is exposure to light during the day and minimal exposure to light at night. Well, that's what we've always had, we would wake up. with the sun we would be outside most of the day and in the afternoon the sun would set, it would be dark and we could have a campfire, but that has almost changed in the modern world where we spend much of the day. Indoors, so we don't get much light exposure during the day and too much at night, which can be very confusing for us.

The Cadian rhythm is one of the reasons why nightscapes can have a negative impact for some people. Your sleep is because it works in complete opposition to what your body's Cadian rhythm wants. One of the things that light exposure does at night is alert us, so it keeps us awake, it stimulates us, which can make it harder for us to fall asleep. Of the other problems I think with screen use at night, especially if these are smartphones is that if we are in a relationship, let's say with another person, we can often be in the same physical space as them, but in our minds we are a million miles apart, we could be in the same room in the same bed, so physically in the same space, but mentally we are in our own selected worlds, so we think we spend time together, but we don't really.

This is true, and many relationships are negatively affected by our addiction. I dare say it's our addiction to screens, so I think there are several reasons why screen use can be problematic at night if not moderated. One of the other reasons has to do with overstimulation. Okay, what are you doing on that screen? Are you relaxing? Are you disconnecting? Are you doing something different from what you did in the day or are you doing more of the same? Are you checking work emails in bed? Are you arguing on social media? Are you consuming negative content or news headlines?

The mind is that you know what the inputs are that you are putting into your mind and I have said it before, but I think it is worth repeating if you have difficulty sleeping and you lie in bed sometimes thinking about all the negativity that exists in the world. and you just saw the news. I'm not sure watching the news at night before going to bed is a good idea. I think for most people watching the news at night is a very bad idea when it comes to the quality of your sleep now there are many more reasons I could talk about when it comes to screen use at night but On a personal level, one thing I decided to do a little over a week ago is turn off my smartphone every night at 6:30 p.m.

Now I get it, not everyone is going to be able to do that for a variety of different reasons. They may need to stay in touch. They may need to be on call for work, perhaps to do with children or family members. I understand it the way I avoid that in my own life is that I still have a landline, so I turn off my smartphone and my immediate family and close friends have my landline number, which means that if someone really needs reach me, you can just pick up the phone. and call me on my landline, but it means that for me it's a really easy way to tune out all the noise of work in the outside world and I have to be honest, it's been absolutely transformative.

I mean, first of all, if that phone goes off at that time I find that I am much more present at night. I find that when I'm reading a book at night, which is what I really like to do at night, with a dim light, I sit there reading. I thought I wasn't getting distracted when my phone was still on, even if I was trying to avoid looking at it, you know, every now and then, while you're reading a book, you just go and pick it up and see what's going on in the world or in Instagram or whatever and I'm always interested in my patients looking at the root cause of the problems, what's the biggest Upstream license that I can help them activate, which automatically takes care of multiple Downstream behaviors and I have to say for me.

Turning off my smartphone at 6:30 p.m. It feels like one of those big Upstream levers that I press and it automatically changes the trajectory of my night. I recognize that not everyone can do this. I want to make that super super clear, but if you can, if you can. I feel like there's another way people can contact you if they need it. I don't know, maybe it's worth a try. You see with all these things. I want you to experiment. I want you to discover a way in which you can live in harmony with him. modern world because sometimes it can be difficult and I get it, these phones can be great, there is a lot of great information about them, but that's also where the problem comes.

See, it's hard to turn it off when you know it's on the other end of that phone. it's any movie you want to watch, any social media post you want to see or your photos or your friends available on T, whatever it is, it's hard to resist, it's not because you're weak, it's because it's the nature of these devices. So I think any way that you can think about resetting your relationship with your screens at night, and I've seen this time and time again and I've experienced this, it's going to absolutely have an impact on your health and if all you do is charge your phone.

Outside of your bedroom, even what I've seen has a transformative impact on the lives of so many people, the simple reality is that if your smartphone is on your bedside table, it's very difficult to resist looking at it both at night and also if you wake up use the bathroom at night, if you see that phone there, there is a great temptation to look at it and we know that light exposure between 10 p.m. and 4:00 a.m. m., if you do it regularly, you can wreak havoc on your body. Cadian rhythm, but we also know from other research that if your phone is nearby and you're not looking at it, you're literally using willpower and cognitive reserve to not see and look properly, so it's not neutral to have it there, there's actually a cost real and the reality is that for a lot of people this is a life-changing move right now, if you're thinking, oh, I'd love to do that, but my phone is my alarm clock.

I humbly suggest you think about purchasing an alarm clock. You can get them really cheap online now and 10 or 15 years ago, that's what everyone did. Honestly, I believe in an alarm clock if you need an alarm to go out to work instead of your smartphone can be absolutely transformative. Another thing I see that really negatively impacts the quality of our sleep at night is overstimulation and of course we just mentioned screens and smartphones and yes they contribute to overstimulation but just think about what our lives they can do. It will often be like these days, especially at night, with technology, smart homes, beeps, notifications, lights, different noises, sounds, they stimulate us all the time.

I mean, a lot of us these days struggle with sitting in silence and just being in peace, resting, and I found that if you think about analog at night instead of digital, I think you'd be surprised at the kind of impact that can have in your health. Most of the overstimulation we get comes from digital products, our TV, our smartphone, our laptop, our iPad, whatever it is, that's where the stimulation comes from and we almost want to calm that stimulation down at night, especially in the moment before we go to bed, that means we want to quiet the light, the noise, the pings, the sounds we want. keep calm, I want to silence everything and I think analog is a beautiful way to do it, so when I say analog, what do I mean?

Well basically things that aren't on devices, okay, playing cards is analog, reading a book instead of reading an article online. true, when reading a book where you feel the pages, you turn them, you get texture in your hand, you have a real-life physical connection with a product. I think in music, of course, you can access music digitally and I think that's completely fine, but in the evening, let's say you've been stimulated a lot during the day visually okay. Could you close your eyes? Rest your eyes to stop the stimulation and put on some music and listen to that music, hopefully music that you enjoy without also checking your emails.

We also look at Instagram or that's happening, it's one of the things that turns off my smartphone at 6:30 p.m. every night it has given me I am intentionally choosing to say I don't want my chest to be guarded the world is doing what the world is doing right now I don't want to know I am choosing I am taking control of the situation it says no now the world can do what what the world wants to do now I'm connecting with my wife I'm connecting with my kids and I'm connecting with myself so think about analog activities that could potentially replace your digital with a journal at night, you know, journaling is something I'm a big fan of.

Keeping a journal can help us reflect on our day. Develop self-awareness. Helps improve our sleep. It can help stop rumination and anxiety about the things we can't. Changing the day can be a very helpful practice and two questions I love to have my patients ask themselves every night is what went well today and what can I do differently tomorrow. Two very simple questions that, if asked regularly, can help you make changes in your life in a very compassionate and non-judgmental way, so think about replacing digital with analog at night and pay attention to how that does it. feel.

I hope you found those suggestions helpful. Remember that the quality of your sleep determines in many ways. the quality of your life, so pick one or two, you don't have to do them all, pick the ones that appeal to you, try them, pay attention to how you feel and hopefully very soon your life will start to change. Can't. Let's say there was a particular time, but I remember over a period of years things were coming up and the whole diet and nutrition thing wasn't enough to help my patients, just nutrition is a big movement, sorry, I say diet and nutrition, I mean nutrition and movements. which is basically what polarizes the whole health discussion and it's just about food, it's about movement, those things are important, but I realize that for a lot of patients they just weren't enough, yeah, so I guess there's a couple of things in my practice.

I've noticed one particular patient that I saw, I still remember very clearly, right, he had type two diabetes. I think he was probably in her 40s or 50s. She had type two diabetes. He watched my TV show. I had read. some of my blogs, he had read other health blogs on the Internet and thought, "Wow, maybe I can do something with my diet to help me with my type two diabetes," so he moved on to what most people would call a diet Low carb, okay? I say most people would say I'm not a fan of that term and the reason I'm not a big fan of that term even though a lot of my friends use it is because I think it's very simplistic.

We've demonized fat for many years and I think we're potentially doing the same thing with carbs now, unless we've become a little more connected with a little more nuance, but this guy went on what you would call a low-carb diet and He really reduced his refined and processed carbs were fantastic and he was starting to get an improvement in his blood sugar. Now I was doing this, you know, reading information on the Internet. He was getting stronger and making a change, but he was getting frustrated because his blood sugar was off. It wasn't going down anymore, it had plateaued and he was trying to reduce his carbs even more to find out oh it must be, I must, I must not be doing it right, I need to reduce more, yes, and of courseanyway it ends at my door, it ends.

I'm in my clinic and he says Hi, look Dr. Chat G. I've been doing this. I am still taking Met Foran, which is a blood sugar medication. I really have my sugar under control, but I can't get it. lower and it frustrates me and I was looking at his life and I thought, hey man, this guy is stressed, he's a busy executive, he works late every night, he doesn't sleep well, there are all kinds of other things going on and, in fact, I think who is stressed. he tries harder trying to cut carbs even more, so, you know, I spent a little bit of time trying to understand what was going on and it was pretty clear to me that stress was the main problem, but he resisted.

I said, look, we really have to do it. Work on his stress levels when he is stressed, that will increase his blood sugar level. I don't think this is a diet problem anymore. I think this is a stress problem. He's made some big changes to his diet, well done, but by concentrating too much on that area you're missing the bigger picture, yes, so all he had to do was a few simple things. I helped him over the course of a few weeks turn off his work computer for an hour before bed. I mean, I was literally. writing work emails in bed because he had a lot to do, he resisted at first so I started with 10 minutes and then gradually he started to feel the difference, he went up to an hour and he was killing it at the gym too.

What I mean by this is that he was a busy executive who worked hard and ran a lot, you know, he was always on the go, when he went to the gym, he went to a very intense spin class and I said, hey, look, I think are you tired. your body is exhausted what I would love for you to do is yes, she will exercise, but maybe let's work on yoga for a few weeks, really work on a type of exercise that restores you and doesn't exhaust you now. not against turning correctly, but rather it's about the correct way to exercise and move in the context of the rest of your life, so he resisted a little, but agreed, so he basically turned it off before going to the bed and reduces the technology I teach him. some breathing techniques like one called the three four five breathing technique when you inhale for three, hold for four, exhale for five and he switched from spinning classes to yoga within 6 to 8 weeks, his blood sugar It started to go down and maybe six to 12 months later he was back to normal, he didn't change his diet and I told him that you can actually eat more carbs than you currently do, just relax a little bit and eat more whole food carbs.

I think you are on the right track. Too extreme for what you need, so that's just one. I have a lot of stories, but that's a case where I thought, hey, it's not just about food and movements, for me there are two other important pieces, sleep, which obviously you. You're an expert in the whole Wellness space, but sleep is a big problem, but I think stress is a problem that people, as you've already said, people don't talk about it enough, that's why I wrote the book. I want to give stress the time it deserves so that people start taking this seriously and you know, to give you another example, Sean, what happens every January right in the US and the UK, what is it dealing with? what do people do?

They are trying to reduce sugar consumption. They are trying to reduce alcohol consumption. Now this is the question if in January if you say to yourself, hey, look, I have this is the year I'm going to do it this is the year I'm going to get my life back on track I'm cutting back on sugar this time I'm going to cut back. my alcohol consumption what I see happening in my clinic is this for a week, people use willpower, they are fine, they can do it two weeks, they can be fine, even 3 weeks, they can be fine, but then they start to come back to their existing behaviors and I see that we often use alcohol we often use foods and things like sugar to calm the stress in our life so if I don't deal with the underlying stress in their life I can't change the behavior so look , I don't like to give these things a range of importance.

I think food, nutrition, movement, sleep, stress are important, but if people listen to this podcast and they've tried to change their nutrition and they can't do it, maybe Maybe it's because they are using foods to help deal with stress. I love your life, yes, it is very powerful and I think all those components that you just mentioned depend on the time of year it depends on the day it depends on the person it depends on so many factors it is unique and it really is an An interesting type of EB and flow . You know sometimes other things will get more attention than others, but stress, and I'm so glad you brought this up, that you're popularizing this conversation about it because it gets overlooked now that you mentioned something about change.

Some things with your lifestyle, not with food and with your help to keep your blood sugar level up and down, first of all, how exactly can stress affect our blood sugar level? Yeah, look, Sean, that's a fantastic question and I think the best way to answer it is. to really explain clearly and concisely what the stress response is, the stress response is fundamentally there to keep us safe, that's ultimately what it's there for, so let's go back 2 million years ago, 2 million years ago. years we would be in our hunter-gatherer communities. in our tribes, it's okay, we go about our business, we do whatever we are doing, if a wild predator approaches like a lion, then suddenly we start changing what happens, we are afraid, we think, okay, there is a predator attack, there is a predator approaching.

In an instant our stress response is activated, what happens is that a series of physiological changes are activated. When that happens, the blood sugar level begins to increase, because then more glucose can reach the brain, which It is what is needed in an emergency situation. your blood pressure begins to rise so that more oxygen can reach your brain, which will help you get away from the lion right in your amygdala, which is the emotional part of your brain that activates in high alerts, so you are very attentive to all situations. threats around you, that's an appropriate response when you're in danger, your blood, your blood starts to become more likely to clot, that's great because if that lion attacks you and they cut you up instead of bleeding to death, your blood It's going to clot and that will save your life, so in the short term these things are super useful.

The problem today is that many of us have our stress responses activated not by wild predators but by our daily lives, by our email inboxes, by our to-dos. lists of competing demands from two working parents, one of them trying to rush home to pick someone up to take them to sports class, elderly parents we may have to care for, for many of us our bodies react the same way , that's why those things that work so beautifully Well, in the short term, like if your blood sugar level increases, if that happens day and day in your life, that will lead to a lack of energy, it will lead to obesity and type 2 diabetes, because stress increases blood sugar level, that's the reason.

Isn't it just food, isn't it just movement, as you yourself know it? Sean, lack of sleep raises blood sugar, but everyone keeps talking about food when we need to expand that conversation, blood pressure is a big issue these days again. I showed people how blood pressure - increasing blood pressure if you're running away from a line is appropriate if you're at the gym and you're doing a spin class your blood pressure will go up that's an appropriate response to a factor stressful in the short term. It's these things that are becoming long-term, that's where the problem arises and that emotional part of your brain, the amygdala that I told you about, that goes on high alert when you're stressed, is an appropriate response if a predator is attacking you.

You're in downtown Los Angeles tonight and it's dark and you think someone might be following you. You want your emotional brain to be on high alert. You want to be hypervigilant, but if that happens day and day in your email inbox, that's what we call anxiety. The stress response, once we understand it, we begin to realize that studies show that 90% of what a doctor sees on a given day may in some way be related to stress, which is a remarkable number. , yeah, yeah, you know, this is a big transition for you. I talk about these MSDS directly, these microdoses of stress because I immediately have the thought, well, those are little things, you know, the email inbox, the rush to get my son to his practice, but they're all those things combined as if it were not a line. in your own way, but it adds up, it is absolutely like that and you know this, I remember for sure when I sat down to write this book I was trying to figure out how to simplify stress, how to really convey it in a very simple and non-judgmental way.

What are you talking about because I think we ignore stress a little bit. We talk about it all the time. We know we're a stressed culture, but I'm not sure what that means. Many of us don't know. what it means and what we can do about it. The way I simplify it is that the first thing we need to say is that we all have our own right personal stress threat threshold and that will vary. Yours may be different from mine. It can even vary. day to day, depending on how we sleep and all kinds of different things, and I say it's that threshold that's important when you reach your threshold, that's when things start to go wrong, so how can I explain it even more well?

Let's say we have two types of stress, we have the right macro doses of stress and these are the really traumatic things that can happen, you know this could be physical abuse, this could be a pain, this could be a relationship breakup, ya You know, these things are what I call macro stress, they're big hits of stress that we need to process and we may need to see someone to help us with that, but what I'm mainly talking about is the opposite of what they are. these microstress doses or as I call them in the book, these MSDS?

What is an MSD? An MSD, as you have just demonstrated, is a small dose of stress that in isolation we can handle without problems. I have to pick up my children. I need to run there and bring them without any problem. It's when they start to add up on top of each other, they bring you closer and closer to your own personal stress threshold and when you reach your threshold that's when things go wrong it's when your back hurts it's when an innocent friend of your boss suddenly turns becomes problematic is when we fight with our partners or yell at our children because we've reached our threshold it wasn't necessarily the last stress or in our life that's what caused that, you know, the straw that broke the camel's back, is the final piece that brings us to our threshold and I maintain that many of us leave our house in the morning having been exposed to 10 or 15 micro doses of stress, so give you an example.

What is a common scenario these days? A common scenario is that people are stressed at work, they come back late, they don't want to go to sleep because they want to relax, they want some time to themselves, so they stop watching Netflix, okay, and then one episode turns into two, which becomes three. I understand I've done this before. I'm not judging people for doing this, but let's say you go to bed at midnight because I finally feel like hey, I've untangled myself from the day and I have to get up at 6:30 tomorrow to go to work so you're going to the bed okay, you set the alarm for 6:30 so you go to bed and come on you assume you're in a deep sleep right, you're in a deep sleep, your alarm goes off at 6:30 in the morning, boom, that's a micro stress for number one because that brought you out of your deep sleep, you look at your phone, Look at it and see, ah, I have a little more time, let me snooze the snooze, you snooze it 6 minutes later again, the alarm goes off, microstress dose number two, so what could you do?

Could you go, ah, let me look. my phone I quickly check the email, oh man there are three emails from work from yesterday that I didn't respond to. I need to do it today. MSD number three, then you quickly go to Instagram and see, oh man, why does that person have to attack me? for my last post, they are bothering me a little. MSD number four, then you realize, oh man, I've been in bed for half an hour doing this stuff. I'm going late to work. I need to get up and pull out MSD number five and you can quickly see how, before we even leave the house in the morning, we have received 15 micro doses of stress.

Why is a problem? Because it means you are now much closer to your own personal stress. threshold, thatIt means it won't be long in the day before you realize it and before you turn around so you know my approach isn't just about reducing the stress in your life because you know I get it, some people have lives. super stressful, maybe I can't reduce all the stressors in your life, you know, if you're a single mom with two kids and you work two jobs, you know what a significant amount of stress is in your life, even if you can't eliminate it.

You can making yourself more resilient by reducing the amount of doses of microstress that you've been exposed to, but also with some simple techniques that we can all use, so I don't know, I think microstress is something that's really taking off in the world. People in the UK really like that as an idea to help them identify and think about stress, yeah, yeah man, so powerful, uh, reminds me of weapons of mass destruction, you know, weapons of mass destruction , you know these microdoses of stress in the way they influence our lives and what it is. It's cool that for years I've been talking about a different version of this and I call it your general stress load and this is the first time I've seen it in book form and you detail how everything can be taken. place and you just put so much stuff on top of you and you don't even realize it and we're really putting ourselves at a disadvantage before we even start the day a lot of times and it's so fascinating and if I could and this is the first time it's been said niggle on the show By the way, what did I say nigle?

British term, yes, and this is us, even before you came here. I was telling my guys, my team, and I thought, yeah, he's going to have a cool accent, let's get ready for it, you know, man, thank you so much for sharing that and if you could, I'd like to talk about it before we go on, just to point out something important that obviously and just for you to talk about this stress. It's not all bad, yes, of course, it also has its 100% advantages. And I think we all need to be very careful when we talk about stress and it's a good reminder for me that not all stress is bad, stress is normal.

You need stress to perform and function it's the right kind of stress in the right dose at the right time you know if you have it if you love your job let's say and you sleep adequately you know it and your job is stressful it may not have much of an impact you may be thriving you can thrive on that stress it's like most things a little is good too much is problematic and I try to illustrate it in a graph in the book to really help people understand it but I don't I don't know we can take an example, um, yeah, what's a typical example from normal life?

A cup of coffee, right, a lot of people use caffeine, uh, to help them. Now we can discuss whether it is helping them or not. That's a separate conversation, but I think we know. The feeling that those of us who are used to drinking caffeine sometimes need a cup or two to get us going properly, so that's a little bit of that caffeine stress, if it helps you perform, it helps you be in the mood. right state, too much if you have a couple of cups plus two three more many of us know that feeling we start to feel nervous we start to feel anxious it's like diminishing returns, you see, I mean, it's like the right amount can take you to the area, too much becomes problematic to take.

It's scientific, uh, cortisol, which is stress, which is the main stress response hormone in the body, a little bit of cortisol, so if you have to give a public speaking event or someone listening to this has to present it to your team at work and they get a a little nervous a little bit of cortisol like if you feel a little stressed it helps you perform well you think more clearly you can get things out of your memory much more effectively but too much stress and your brain fry and you literally can't think and you can't perform, it's about the right amount of stress and I think you know what a little bit of cortisol does, it helps your brain work super well what does too much cortisol do?

It kills the nerve cells in the hippocampus of your brain, which is the memory center of your brain and look, I'm not saying this to scare people, but we now know that chronic stress is the cause of the development of Alzheimer's disease. , right, it's not something we think about, you know, yes, we worry about it, but we don't think about how our daily actions can affect Alzheimer's. There are many other factors to consider as well, but chronic stress is. one of those and here's the problem with Alzheimer's: it doesn't develop overnight, you don't even get it, like just a year before you have symptoms.

Alzheimer's disease starts 20 to 30 years before it reaches the brain, so I worry when I see this Chronic Stress Society when I see the World Health Organization C emphasizing the 21st century health epidemic and you see the research about this with Alzheimer's. I am concerned that many of us are living these busy, overloaded lives that we lead. Stress is taken for granted and we don't realize the impact it is having not only on our short-term health but also on our long-term health. Yes, that is very true for me. When I think of beneficial stress, I immediately think of exercise.

We know our body needs adaptation, but when we continually get stressed and don't recover from stress, that's when things break down and you share the book so brilliantly that stress can actually do the same thing. You can strengthen your brain, but too much stress. Many of these microdoses or even a macrodose of stress can change our brain, literally change the structure of our brain, the performance of our brain in a negative way and make us hypersensitized. more stress, yeah, so can you talk about that? I think it was like feedback or something. It's a feedback loop.

Look at all these things. You have to understand that the brain is always responding to the information you give it. It is always adapting. The more stress you have, the more chronic and unrelated your stress will be. Your brain will adapt to be able to function in that environment, but it doesn't do a good job, I mean, when I talk about what the brain does, how stress affects the brain um, I think something really useful, a really practical way to Seeing it that I think people will resonate with is this whole idea of ​​downtime, so I think one of the big problems that I see in society is that we've lost downtime. downtime has been slowly eroding every moment of the day has been stolen from us if we have nothing to do we pick up our phones now we are absorbing we are reading new information we are learning new things we are reacting to what is happening around us if we are here in Santa Monica recording this well, if you were here, I think 10 years ago and you walked into a cafe, or a bar, or a restaurant, or whatever.

Let's say in a cafeteria and there is a line. I bet you 10 years ago people would be looking around, they would be daydreaming, they might bump into a friend or a co-worker, they might be looking at the cakes and they would think I'm I'm going to have this day, I'm going to tough it out, but they, they, they would turn off a little bit if you enter one, if we leave it, now we went to the nearest coffee shop and you. Check out the line What is everyone doing on their phones? We're on our phones, right, we're on our phones and you might ask why that's a problem.

The reason it's a problem is because your brain needs downtime, so we used to think, Sean, like that. when we disconnect a task in front of us our brain fell asleep, but that's not true, we have realized in recent years when we disconnect there is a part of our brain called default mode Network or dmn that goes into overdrive, so what Is that part of the brain good? It does a lot of things, but it does two things: it helps you solve problems and be more creative, so this is the exact reason why many of us have our best ideas. when we go for a walk or we're in the shower, I mean, I have some of my best ideas in the shower, why is that?

Because, since you've turned it off, your brain tries to solve the problems for you, right? That makes sense. Yes, absolutely, and it's so powerful and downtime that we don't see the problem with always being on our phones properly and always consuming information, your brain needs downtime to thrive and that's why I want to say it so badly, even when I walk into a Many companies, big companies, talk about employee well-being and one of my top tips is to have a technology-free lunch break, even if it's just for 15 minutes. Put your phone in the drawer. Go out to walk.

It sounds very simple. He did a different show last year for ITV in the UK about stress and as part of that show we had to follow three people and we measured their stress levels literally over three days, minute by minute, and we were following what they were like. doing and how it affected their stress levels, we did something called heart rate variability monitoring, which I think you've covered before on the podcast and essentially high HRV, so high heart rate variability is something Well, it means that your body is able to cope and adapt to the stress around it.

A low reading when your heartbeat looks a lot like a metronome is actually a bit problematic, it suggests that we have had too much stress on our body and mind. body is not able to cope with it and adapt now to a particular person, right? I guess he was around 40, from what I remember, a 40 year old guy, he was a manager at his local company and he took his job very seriously, very, very seriously, he came in early, he worked. during lunch he stayed late, he went home when he went home to relax, he drank more alcohol than he wanted to, it was affecting his relationship with his wife, it was affecting his sleep and he wanted help now that he could see in his work days in the ones you looked at his stress readings, they would start to increase throughout the morning at lunch time because he didn't take a break, they would continue to increase when he left the house, he had had a huge build up of stress and that would affect his relationship and impact his alcohol habits.

All I asked you to do, Sean, was this. I told him, listen to what I love for you to do at lunchtime. Put your phone in your drawer for 15 minutes and go for a walk. I can do that well, he goes and does it for about a week, the next week we go back to tracking everything that happens. You see on those work days, their stress levels rise in the morning, like before, at lunch time, they go back down to baseline, reset and in the afternoon they barely rise to the same level, so what It means that?

That means when he goes home he has a knock-on consequence, so look objectively with the data. I have seen a big difference, but what is more interesting to me. It is subjectively what he thinks what he feels not what the technician says the doctor says I feel like a different person I have more energy I am more productive in the afternoon Now I leave earlier than before I intend to finish. I'm leaving home early. I am drinking less alcohol and am now closer to my wife after a 15 minute lunch break. I'm very interested in making health accessible to people, as I think wellness has become.

A lot of people think that's great, but it's expensive, it's inaccessible. Each of us has the opportunity to have a 15-minute technology-free lunch break every day, and I guarantee that if people are skeptical, try it for seven days and see the difference, just because. That's the kind of story you can think about, but your brain is your default networking mode. He wants to help you. You want to be more creative. He wants to help you solve problems. But you can't do it unless you give it. It's some downtime to make sure you're taking action after watching this video.

I've created a free breathing guide that will help you reduce stress, calm your mind, and increase your energy. In this guide, I share with you six really simple breathing practices that work right away. Even just a minute a day will start to make a big difference in receiving your free guides. All you have to do is click the link in the description box below. It's so valuable that the problem is that it's too simple. I know it's too simple and listen, there was a and I mentioned it in a previous episode, especially if a lot of people who listen to the show want to perform at a high level in all areas of their lives and if we're talking about that job performance, if you're Speaking of harnessing that creativity like you mentioned and solving problems, the idea that not pushing ourselves and punishing ourselves instead of disengaging seems counterintuitive, but here's the thing and it was at Stanford University where they discovered that just a simple 15-minute walk from 11 to 15 minutes increased something called divergent thinking, which is this thinking outside the box by 60% for the test subjects you know, just going outside and going for a walk,so that advice about unplugging and what I've done personally in my own life is because you have to do this consciously if I'm in a line literally people are looking I'd like to put the phone away because it's easy it's like a slot machine in your pocket and just being there, being present when you get on an elevator, especially if there are other people in the elevator, you know, it's a little strange, gra, I just make myself present, you know, and I take advantage of those little opportunities and one of the great things that uh since we moved because before I lived in the woods it was like I was complete I never know if an animal is going to run at me um but now I live in a neighborhood so I'll go for a 10-a walk minute twice a day and that's the only thing I incorporate into my days to really unplug and I have some great ideas when I do it, do you run out of your fun?

Absolutely, yes, absolutely and in fact, I want to make this statement. it's dangerous if you're walking if you're walking and there are cars and all that stuff and you have headphones on to listen. I want you to listen to me by the way, but I just want you to be safe too. I know I saw someone, it was yesterday morning or this morning, it was this morning and they were running, they put their pods in the airpods and they just ran and there were cars coming and going down the street. as a brother, you know, you could take a little time, you know, and just zone out and that will help your brain.

I didn't know about that study from Sanford University that's so interesting to me that it was only 11 to 15 minutes and I. I suspect a lot of that is due to this default mod network that we've been talking about because it helps you be more creative and you know when I go into similar companies and these big tech companies to talk to them about employee well-being. there's a tendency to go yeah I want to perform better what supplement do I need to take you know what do I need to do what extra thing do I need to put into my life to be able to perform and often it's just about getting something out and it's like we're living in this culture now, isn't it?

So? I love Santa Monica right, I've been here for about 10 days, you go to all the stores here, you can't in all the stores, but you can grab a lot of them. supplements you can buy a coffee it can be an activated coffee you can get a shot um the latest kind of brain boosting supplement right I get all that I love all that stuff right don't get me wrong I'm I'm. I'm interested in the research behind all that, but let's break it down. Yes, turn off your phone for 10 minutes a day. You'll get a lot of those brain-enhancing benefits just by doing that.

It is free and accessible. You know, I know. I said this, but I take it very seriously. I have worked with us rich and wealthy patients. I have also worked in disadvantaged communities for years and am very passionate about the fact that our health is too complicated and that there should actually be good quality health advice available. to everyone, and in fact, if we can simplify and show you that every single thing I've recommended in my book is free, yes, sure, you can buy apps to help you do certain things if you want, but almost everything else is free, which means we really just need to get the information and we have to pick one thing and that's it, you know, I'm going to try that little thing for the next seven days and re-evaluate it, so the advice you give to people I would say yes.

Why not imitate what the sea does for 10 minutes twice a day? Go for a walk without your phone. Do it for seven days and see the impacts on your well-being, on your energy but also on the relationships around you. I think something else and this. That's why a quarter of the book on stress is about relationships and taking this downtime type thing and not turning it off is one of the reasons why a lot of our relationships are under strain these days and there are a lot of reasons, but one of them. The thing is that even if we are with the people we love, let's say our partner, boyfriend, girlfriend, wife, or our friends or our children, physically geographically, we are in the same place, mhm, but you know where I'm going with this in your head. you know we're distracted by our phones we're a million miles apart you got a cliche now that husband and wife are lying in bed together the whole society is complaining about people not having enough sex and libido is a big problem, The cliché is that you are physically together in the same bed, but you could be millions of miles away because you are both together.

By watching your own personalized feeds, you know your own personalized Netflix channels, you no longer connect in the same way and I think it's a serious problem, so I love technology as much as anyone, right, but I think we? I just have to be conscious and say, hey, maybe I go for a walk twice a day without my phone, maybe like at dinner time, we have a rule where we don't have phones there so we can connect and they ring so simple these things were in the culture until about 15 years ago we did them naturally, that's how quickly things have intensified and I think we almost have to go back to how we lived 15 or 20 years ago and many of these Stress problems in They will actually be greatly reduced in the book.

It covers some very specific areas that you talk about. In these four sections, the relationships between purpose, body and mind and some very practical things, but the one that really stood out to me and the one that started the book. He was talking about how purpose relates to stress and this was immediately fascinating to me. I thought yes, that's the thing, but can you explain why you felt it was important to include it in the book? Yeah, look, the science is pretty clear, like having Not having a sense of purpose in life is associated with much poorer health outcomes, across multiple conditions.

It is associated with much less happiness. Lower income levels. Many things are associated with not having a sense of purpose in our lives and I believe that fundamentally it is a life that has no meaning or purpose is inherently a stressful life. We can talk about all the other things, but really not have a reason to get up in the morning and not know where you're going with your life. I think it's incredibly. stressful now I appreciate that even just saying that can sound stressful to someone if they hear it and say yeah, okay, but I don't like my job, I don't like where I live, what can I do about it? that and that's why I started the book with this because I think it's probably one of the most important things and yes, of course, breathing exercise, meditation, nature, all those things are important and I cover them all.

I give practical advice in them, but I think The gathering and purpose piece is probably the most important and I think it's one of the freshest, it's a new idea that people can latch on to and that's why Sean, a few years ago I came across this Japanese concept, have you seen it before me? I was on Facebook and one of my friends posted uh, they said these four circles are right in these four different circles and where they intersect in the middle is your guy, that's how the Japanese live, it's their way of living in your life, so you have meaning. and the purpose and the four things are this: you need to find one thing in your life that you are good at and that pays you the money that you love and that the world needs and I thought, okay, that was great, I like it, I would like that. a bit. kind of gross in my life, right, but then I used this concept with my patients and I talked to them about it and for a lot of them they just found it too intimidating, they found that yeah, that sounds great, but how am I going to get it?

There it is, and in fact, on the UK book tour in January, I remember I gave a big talk in London and in the Q&A at the end, a Japanese student raised her hand and said, "Look at the chassis, I'm very familiar with iyy, it's part of my culture but I found it very stressful my whole life it's an impossible ideal for me to live up to what I mean, it's great if you can achieve it, but many of us don't feel that we can and so I created a new framework in the book called The live framework to help people start to find meaning and purpose It's called the live framework L Ive L for love I for intention V for vision and E for commitment now not necessarily. we need to get into the whole thing, but I think the first one is super interesting to people and I think it will really shed some light on their lives, so it's about passion, so the research tells us this. , Sean tells us. that regularly doing the things we love makes us more resistant to stress M, yes, but on the contrary, being chronically stressed makes it very difficult for us to experience pleasure in everyday things, so it works both ways, so passion is a big part of meaning and purpose, it's a big part of stress, it's a big part of health.

I had a patient maybe a year ago, a 52-year-old guy, right, he was the CFO of a local plastics company to me and he came to see me and it was him. He was married, he was married, he had two kids, he had a good job, he lived in a pretty decent house, you know from the outside, his life was good, but he came to see me, said Dr. Chasty, look, some days it's hard for me to get up. the bed in the morning. My motivation went down a bit. I feel a little bored with things.

Is this what depression is? So we were chatting. I started trying to understand what was going on in his life. I ran some tests and blood tests. They were all normal and I said: look, how is your work? Is it okay? I mean, I don't really enjoy it, but I have to do it. You know, I have a mortgage. I have a family to feed. That's why I do it. my job I said well, how's your marriage? Yeah, so I don't really see my wife much. Yeah, I guess that's okay. Very, very indifferent and I said: You know?

Do you have any Hobbie? I said I don't really have any hobbies I'm too busy I said what about weekends? weekends you know I have to do all the housework housework I have to take the kids to their sports classes no I don't have time, dog, for hobbies. I said, Okay, have you ever had a hobby? Yeah, you know, when I was a kid, when I was a teenager. I loved train games. I said, Okay, do you have a train set at home? Yeah, I have one in the Attic, but I haven't seen it in years, it's probably Dusty and you know, he has cobwebs.

I said, look, what I'd love for you to do when you get home tonight is take the train now. I fully appreciate that this is probably not the advice I expected from his doctor, but that's the advice I gave him anyway. I didn't see him for a few weeks and that's not unusual, we just have so many patients that we can't follow them all for more than 3 months. Later, I just finished my morning clinic. I was in the parking lot about to do some home visits for older patients who can't come to the practice and I ran into his wife.

I said, hey, look, how's your husband doing? She said oh. Man, Dr. Chass, I just want to thank you. I feel like I have the guy I married again. He comes home from work. He plays with his toy set in his train set. He's on eBay buying collectibles and subscribed to likes. monthly magazine now I thought, okay, that's great. I felt very well. I still hadn't seen him three months later. I was looking at my clinic list and his name was on it. He had had a blood test and was coming to see me for the results, so I said: Hi, how are you doing compared to six months ago?

Doctor said. I feel like a different person. Life is good. I have energy. I feel motivated and am concentrating much better. I said, "Okay, great, how's your work?" I love it now. I'm really getting a lot out of my job. How is your relationship with your wife? So good. It's the best it's been in years. So Sean. I'm going to ask you a question. Did that guy have a mental problem? health problem I mean, he certainly he had symptoms that would be consistent with a mental health problem. You know, he could have diagnosed him with something like depression, potentially, yes, but that's not what he really had a passion deficiency in his life and when we corrected his passion. deficiency when he corrected his passion deficiency not only does he feel better about himself now that the job he didn't like so much he is enjoying it and getting more out of it now his relationship is starting to improve and that is why I am so passionate about passion Yes, of course, We talk about health, we talk about how many vegetables we eat, we talk about the workouts we do or don't do and of course that's important, but I want people to give passion the same priority that they will give it. to the amount of vegetables they have on their plate, right, it's very important, so the recipe I give people is: can you give yourself a dose of pleasure every day, even if it's just for five minutes?

It could be reading a book and going for a walk. Listening to a podcast, right? It could be, you know, it could be coming home from work, turning on your computer, going to YouTube, finding your favorite comedian andlaugh for five minutes. I don't care what it is, but that's my challenge to everyone listening to this. podcast, can you give yourself five minutes of pleasure and passion every day and the second request you would make to the audience? I know that's your audience, but if you don't mind, my request that I would make is to think about when was the last time you did something in your life that you really love, something that you not only did to post on social media, but something that you did because it makes you feel good, if it hasn't been in a while, that's fine, but I would suggest today at Some point you look at your calendar, make some calls and schedule it in your diary.

Passion is important for your health. It is as important, I would say, as any other component of your health. Absolutely thank you, thank you, thank you. This could be skating. this could be hello Hooping, this could be, you know, walking your dog, this could be basketball, when we think about purpose, we tend to immediately jump to what we do for a living, for our job, yeah, and you end up to set a great example of what he does. something he loved was fed by his work and found the Great Love there too, so keep that in mind because we all have the opportunity to start this today, but I think it's a matter of giving ourselves permission to do something that we love and that's crazy, We have to say that, but it's like today we are so distracted and so busy, but I tell you that right now there are people who are much busier than you and who are much

happier

because they have given.

They themselves have permission to do something that they love, yes, and you know, the reason I share these examples is that I really want to make health accessible to people. I don't want people to think, oh you know, the meaning and purpose are pretty high, there's a lot of them. People can feel like it's quite unattainable, depending on where your life is currently at right now, that idea of ​​having meaning and purpose can be quite stressful to think about and I think passion is a beautiful entry point because you don't need to. change. anything else, just start putting a little bit of passion into your daily life and what you will find is that it starts to feed you, it starts to nourish you and over the next few weeks, over the next few months, other things in your life will start to become clearer. and it's like a chain effect, you don't have to go from zero to hero, you don't have to suddenly quit your job, find your dream job, you know, find your dream partner, your dream house, that's not it.

It's what I. I'm talking about taking these little steps and the little steps will take care of the big steps later yeah yeah man this is really good and I really want to illustrate this point here and how purpose and passion translate into your real health and tangible. I wasn't planning on sharing this, but I sent it to someone today and I just had a conversation with him that he's actually Eric Thomas ET, who was on the show recently and this was a new study and this was published. a really new study, this is crazy, where do you hear this new study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association jamama current open that found that people who did not have a strong life purpose that for them was defined as a self? -organizing a life goal that stimulates goals for them is a very tangible way to have a purpose in mind and this is what they found: these people who did not have a strong life purpose were more likely to die than those who had a strong life purpose. specific life purpose. life purpose and dying specifically from cardiovascular disease, here's how it translated: The study included 7,000 American adults ages 50 to 60 and found that people without a strong life purpose were more than twice as likely to die in the Over the course of the four-year study period compared to those who had one, this is crazy, so again, this is not causation, but it is a very interesting correlation and it is something that matters, you know, because we are talking about invoke something that generates stress. solution and today we understand, thanks to you, how harmful stress can be, so we have to incorporate something we love, give yourself permission not only for your own mental health, well-being and happiness, but literally this can protect your life, yes, Sean, please.

Send me that study too. I would love to see you after this podcast. It sounds super, super interesting. The point that also came to mind when they were describing it is that you know, guys, look, I guess a lot. people will listen to your show and try to get advice about their well-being. They want to improve the way they feel. Improve your diet. Improve other aspects of your health. What you will find is that when you start pursuing your regular passion, you will find it becomes easier to make those other decisions, you will find it easier to choose healthy foods because it nourishes such a crucial part of us that we will actually feel less need to compensate and In fact, relieving the stress in our lives with sugar and chips, you know what I mean?

It's like everything is connected and hey, could there be? I wouldn't say that an easier but more inspiring tip to do something you love well, it's not that you have to do something you don't like, we're asking you guys to do something you love, whatever it is, whatever it is. some weird stuff too, if you're really into the Smurfs, you know, my man was on trains and that just lit up his life, twerk classes, whatever, you know, um, I can't believe I just said that, but you I know the movie just came out so Jennifer Lopez came to mind, scream, so if you're trying to do a pole dancing class, you like shoes and you just want to study all the Jordans and there's just There So many things that could speak to the soul if it's music, just allow yourself to add it every day.

This is so amazing, so one of the things you talk about in the book and this was a really interesting study that you noticed and I want. To speak, I think this is one of the most powerful tools that we have access to that we are not using. Is it a 2012 study that noted that if we change the way we think about a stressful event we can improve our physical health? and also the way our brain reacts to these doses of micro stress and what the study was. The group of people who did not reframe their stress was compared to the study participants who reframed their micro-stress doses by thinking about them differently due to stress.

Micro stress doses happen to everyone, but when reframed they had lower blood pressure, higher attention levels, and even improved the efficiency of their heart muscles. It's crazy, it's crazy and that's why I'm a big fan of daily reframing practices to get people to see us. We have something called negativity bias as humans, right, this is probably what kept us alive and survived for so long. You know, we always direct our attention to the negative so you know at the end of the day if you've had a stressful day. and on a busy day and you think about it negative things often come up or you know what happened or someone ignored me in the hallway at work or you know whatever someone bumped into me at the cafe and was rude or the waitress was that night, whatever it is, we go back to the negative and there are so many beautiful things that you can do at night that don't take a lot of time and that can reframe the day for you and like you said with that study. when you reframe it, it actually changes the way your brain processes things, so I tell you one thing I do, Sean, with my family, I eat when I'm at home and I make it a big priority that I'm obviously a La in this moment, but when I'm back in the UK and I'm at home, we all sit down and have dinner together and there's no technology there, it's a big thing for us and we play a little game and the game we play is that everyone has to go around the table and answer three, well, before it was three questions, now it's five questions, but I'll start with the three questions to keep it super simple.

What have I done today to make someone else happy? What has anyone else done today to make me happy and what have I learned today? It's such a powerful game. In fact, I thought it would be very good for my children, but it's actually very good for my wife and me too because you, you, very quickly start to reframe the day when you start to look at the positive things and there are positive things in Every day we can begin to train our mind to look for them, so the practice consists of training ourselves every day to start looking at positive things a few months ago.

My daughter said hello dad, you know, today at school Annabelle opened the door for me when we were leaving at lunch time, you know, that's a small thing. I am very hopeful that what I am doing will not only improve my own health, but I am also modeling for my children. I hope they really are stars for learning daily. Let's start looking at the positive aspects that happen in everyday life. That's a game people might find useful. You have had a negative experience during the day. A great way to reframe it is to repress it, like if you start writing it down and it's really hard to be as critical of yourself as when you keep it in your head. head, we can do it, we can make it into something big, as soon as you start writing it down you start realizing how ridiculous some of the self-deprecating behavior can be, sometimes it sounds, it just sounds silly when you write it down and it can start to be a lot more rational otherwise, you can try to do it.

This is another tip for people if they struggle with negative experiences and can't disconnect from them, and these practices also help improve our quality of sleep, which is good. I know, but another is to imagine that you are a commentator of your life, as if you were a fan of a sports game that people are watching, there is a commentator, right? Here you also call them commentators, yes, you are a commentator, imagine you are. commenting on your life, so let's say you had your boss, there was a meeting with your boss and something negative happened in your own head, you can turn this into something that never was, but if you pretend to be a commenter and also write. below you say "okay", so I came to that meeting.

Actually, my boss was very tired. He is not performing well today CU. His children didn't do very well. That's why he's tired. That's why he didn't look at me and didn't give me any attention it wasn't because of the way I was feeling look some of these boobs may resonate with people some of them won't choose the ones that do resonate with you I will say that that gratitude practice that I practice with my family is fantastic a lot of my friends now sometimes we play it with my friends when we go out to dinner we play it together it sounds a little, it sounds a little Californian right, but it's great and it's so powerful yeah I love it.

If you enjoyed that video, I think you'll really enjoy this one, where I outlined five powerful ideas that will improve your life immediately. I have discovered, over two decades of medical practice, that these are the tips and techniques that really move needles.