B (5:13)

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A (5:26)

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B (5:32)

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A (5:46)

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B (5:50)

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A (5:53)

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B (5:54)

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A (6:48)

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C (8:25)

Thank you, Dan. Happy to be here.

A (8:28)

So let me start with a very basic question that I'm embarrassed to admit I don't actually know the answer to. Although I've used this word in conversation, I don't actually really know what I'm talking about. What is a telomere?

C (8:40)

Okay, so we're diving into the cell. Now, in every single cell in our body, our chromosomes have protective caps at the tips. And these are called telomeres. I didn't know what they were either. They were discovered after we took high school biology, et cetera. They were discovered by one of my colleagues, Elizabeth Blackburn, who won the Nobel Prize for discovering this aging system. In the cell, telomeres and the enzyme that helps them stay healthy called telomerase. Telomeres protect the chromosomes. But what's more interesting and important is that they are sensitive sensors to stress, any type of stress. They don't care. It might be psychological, it might be physiological. They don't like stress. And stress is a threat to them because it might damage our DNA and create all sorts of biological problems. So when we feel stress or when our body is under stress, our telomeres are putting on all of their armor for protection. The enzyme that protects them increases dramatically. It's one of our top priorities to protect our DNA so that we can have healthy aging. So telomeres are the protective caps for our DNA, for our genes. And the genes, they're kind of the unchangeable blueprint for creating every single protein in our body. And so while we can't change our genes, we can change the different proteins that they make through the chemical signals that determines which genes we Turn on as well as through the epigenetics that turns on certain genes and closes other genes.

A (10:34)

Okay, as proof of how little I know what I'm talking about here, I mispronounce telomere. It's going to get even worse. I'm going to ask questions right now where there is really going to prove that I don't know what the I'm talking about. And I say this with a lot of embarrassment because I'm married to a physician and my parents are both physicians, and I still don't understand this stuff, but I'm interested. So every cell in our body has in it a chromosome which I think is synonymous with genes and DNA. And each of these chromos have a protective cap called a telomere. And they are associated with some sort of juice called telomerase. Telomerase. Am I in the market?

C (11:17)

Absolutely. What we need to understand is that in each cell, our chromosomes, which contain our genes, are protected at the tips of them by these caps called telomeres. This is important because not only do they protect our DNA, but they also tend to be responsive to the cellular environment. And they shrink with age. As the cell divides, they shrink, but if we're under a lot of wear and tear stress, they shrink even more quickly. And so now that we know that we have telomeres in every cell and that they're listening to our thoughts, our feelings, they're responsive to our lifestyle, this helps compel us to take care of them. Well, first of all, you're not alone. Most people don't know what a telomere is, and they certainly don't know what the enzyme telomerase does or that it's incredibly important in our longevity. So right there is really eye opening for most walking bodies on this earth. We have this conserved, amazing aging system, or let's say anti aging system. We have telomeres that allow our cells to replicate and be safe. We don't lose our genes as our cells replicate and replicate our genes. And we have this amazing enzyme that actually builds back the telomeres so that they don't shorten too much every time our cells replicate. So we get this beautiful ability to have dividing cells until we die in our brain, in our cardiovascular system, in all of these tissues that we need to replenish. So this is. It's a specific type of aging that we call replicative senescence. Telomeres allow our cells to keep dividing safely. And when our cells get worn down and worn out, the telomere loses that ability gets too Short. And we develop this age cell that can no longer divide. That means we can't replenish our tissue, our hippocampus or the lining of our cardiovascular system, these really important tissues that keep us well up into the 8th, 9th, and 10th decade.

A (13:38)

So I think what you're saying, and this is more ignorance pouring out of my face hole right now, but I think what you're saying is that our cells divide all the time, and, and that's how we keep our tissues fresh. And every time they divide, there is some risk to the telomere. And actually, if you're living the right kind of life, which we will get to, you can protect the telomeres in this division so that we get to what you're calling replicative senescence.

C (14:07)

That is all correct, except for we want to avoid the replicative senescence. The senescence mean it's an old age cell that can't divide anymore. So some of our cel divide, we have non dividing cells.

A (14:20)

I see.

C (14:20)

But they still have telomeres. And it's still important to keep a healthy chemical balance in our cells to keep those telomeres well. But they're especially important in these dividing cells. And when we get toward our 80th decade or so, they get very short. And when they get too short, the cell either dies or it becomes an old senescent cell that starts spewing out inflammation. And then that creates this what we call inflammaging, a major highway for aging where our blood becomes filled with too much inflammation, too many inflammatory cytokines. And that is what we want to think about in our daily life, that we want to keep inflammation down, we want to protect our telomeres.

A (15:09)

I'm going to get to the practical stuff soon, I promise, but I'm just going to ask one more basic question. And I've never understood this inflammation. What does that mean? Why is it a problem?

C (15:19)

Inflammation is incredibly important in the short run. When we have a wound, we want to have a big inflammatory response and bring a lot of blood there and start the immune healing process. And so in the short run, inflammation is part of our protective immune response. In the long run, we don't need inflammation in our blood when we're not wounded or sick. But it can build up. And high levels of inflammation are creating all sorts of signals for cells to age. So for example, cancerous cells love inflammation. And if there's a lot of old senescent cells around with short telomeres, they are creating a really friendly inflammatory environment for cancer to grow and spread quickly.

A (16:14)

Got it. This is all really interesting, and I appreciate your patience with me. So it seems like your basic thesis here is that our cells are listening to our lives. That's your phrase. And it's not just about our genetics. It's not about what was bequeathed to us by our ancestors. It's the decisions we're making moment to moment that will dictate our health span and lifespan.

C (16:43)

Exactly. That is the most important message. Our aging is much more under control than we think. And it comes down to the biology we create each day in our cells, with our lifestyle, with our mindsets, with our stress levels.

A (17:00)

Okay, so what can we do on a lifestyle front to avoid replicative senescence?

C (17:06)

This is what Liz Blackburn and I wrote a 400 page book about. And I will boil it down for you, but I just want to point out that we now know so much about what happens in the aging cell. And so the telomeres are one of the drivers, and they do limit how much our cells can divide and replenish. But there's a whole set, a cast of characters that create cellular aging that are best friends. They're talking to each other, and they influence each other. So when the telomeres get short, they also impact the mitochondria, the battery in our cells, and they dim the battery, they dampen it, so that we are creating less energy. When the mitochondria are damaged, they also send damage signals to the telomeres. And so things go bad together, all of these different aging processes. So we know that from our early work on telomeres, from about 20 years ago, we know that chronic stress, when we go on for years and years or decades without managing stress well, without breaks, this accelerates the rate of aging. This creates rapid telomere shortening and earlier disease. And now we know it dampens down mitochondria so that we feel fatigued, exhausted. Our cells are not able to repair as well.

A (18:32)

I could imagine somebody listening to this being like, well, my life just non negotiably includes immensities of howling stress. I've got 75 children, I got three jobs to pay the bills. My parents are sick, I've got to deal with that. And Trump's the president. And there are several wars raging that are dominating my feed. How am I supposed to take care of my cellular health in this environment?

C (19:00)

That is the big challenge for all of us. And what I like to point out is that the type of stress that we're living in, which is not just our personal stress, Our daily drama. But it's also now existential stress. All of these global and social stressors that visit us every day, we see them on tv, our body vicariously responds to them. So it is a huge challenge. Everybody is under chronic stress or has been under chronic stress to various levels. But the good news is that all of the biology we've been talking about is completely reversible. That we can on a daily basis, restore, restore ourselves, give ourselves breaks, create an anti inflammatory lifestyle so that we are slowing our aging, or at least not letting all of the stressors we're exposed to get under the skin into our cells and accelerate aging. So the good news is that even if we today are listening to this and we have shortened telomeres and more inflammation than we'd like in our cells, we can change that every day matters. And we absolutely know that. We study these lifestyle factors in youth and in midlife and they're very small effects. They just add up over decades. And so eating more fruits and vegetables in a dose response manner leads to much longer telomeres by the time we are 60, 70 or 80. It's these small changes that we can make. They're not huge lifestyle changes that will add up every day, really reduce the stress soup that we tend to live in and promote much more of a rejuvenative and restorative environment for ourselves. So we see these changes immediately when we create a meditative state. When we change people's diet so they're getting a lot of, let's say omega 3s or more of the Mediterranean diet. We see changes in all of these aging factors. We've been talking about inflammation and even telomere lengthening.

A (21:13)

If I'm hearing you correctly, this doesn't have to be some major surgery on our lives. It can be pretty. I'm going to use the term surgical again, but not in a much more specific, targeted way to make little changes. You know, adding an apple in the afternoon instead of a bag of chips or whatever. That again, we're going to get super granular on the things you suggest. But we don't have to start from scratch and redesign our whole lives 100%.

C (21:43)

And it's so important because those are the changes that we can maintain and keep over years and years and not some really crazy fat diet or ketogenic diet. That's most people are never going to keep that for the long run. So the small changes are the big ticket here. That's what we want to do. And we want to focus on some of the Ones that are most important for us personally in terms of our own inflammation and deep restoration. But there are some big levers that I don't want to leave out. So, for example, daily meditation or daily short breaks are critical. But for people who have an opportunity to have an immersive experience and can afford a retreat that is a huge reset, that recalibrates the nervous system, that changes our mental filter. We learn skills on retreat so that we are not just less stress reactive, but we actually know how to go in restorative mode more easily. So I'm a big believer in the power of retreats, for neuroplasticity, for making changes that stay with us and make all of those daily inflammatory behaviors that much easier.

A (23:00)

I'm going to jump in on that in a plus one way. But I'm also going to add, I think, some caveats and context that I imagine you're going to agree with. I am speaking as somebody who literally three days ago just got back from my annual 10 day meditation retreat. So I'm a major proponent and practitioner of meditation retreats. And I get that if you're listening to this and you got a bunch of little kids or a million jobs or a lot of financial stress or whatever, like it's hard to do on the financial stress part, let me just say that centers like the Insight Meditation Society and Spirit Rock both offer scholarships. They're very good about helping people who can't afford it get in. And I would also say that there are shorter retreats. You don't have to do 10 days, you can do one, two, three days. But I just want to recognize that for many people it's hard either logistically or financially, or it's just like psychologically hard to get over the hump to do this thing. So I think what you're saying is, yes, this is a big lever you can pull if it works in your life and you should consider it. But it's not like all or nothing.

C (24:07)

Absolutely. So five minutes in the morning is a critical amount. It's incredible. If you can only do three, do it. But you know, we and other people have been studying what is the minimal amount of minutes of, let's say, meditation that can help you. We just published a study of over a thousand people and simply tested digital meditation and found that even five minutes a day for eight weeks led to really meaningful changes in emotional, well being. Stress, lower depression, lower burnout, more enjoyment and purpose at work, more reward from work. This was a study we did here at ucsf. And amazingly, these Effects lasted for months. We measured people's well being compared to a control group four months later. So when we looked at, well, they were supposed to meditate 10 minutes a day, but on average they meditated five. When we did a sensitivity analysis, five was enough. So anything matters and can help. We can feel less stressed, we can change our nervous system within minutes. So that's the beauty of what we're talking about. We don't necessarily feel a lot of control and power and believe that, but it's true. There is so much data showing that breathing practices are of course, a direct path to changing nervous system activity within minutes, directly influencing the autonomic nervous system, which influences how we feel. But back to the retreats. So there are non commercial retreats, there's nature available to people. They can create their own retreat. Great to do it with people. You know, half day's better than a class and weekend's better than a half day. But I do wanna say I think a sweet spot is three days if you can do that. Because you have a whole day without coming or going. Right. Those bookends are challenging when we are arriving or leaving back to our busy life. So I think of it as like peeling the layers of an onion. And so getting down toward the core is a luxury that does take days, but having a day on either side is really powerful.

A (26:28)

I'm laughing a little bit because I've been doing 10 days for 15, 16 years, almost exclusively with my old friend Joseph Goldstein. And this year he started agitating for me to do 14 days. He'd been making this case for a couple days. And then on the second to last day of my retreat, I went to him and said, you know, this morning I had the clearest sits I've had is like, see, this is why you need to go even longer. So I mean, this is a slippery slope in the healthiest possible way, but.

B (27:01)

It is a slippery slope.

C (27:02)

Yeah, absolutely. I love to see people post retreat. It is the special period. Maybe it's like part two of your retreat, you know, as you retain the and embody the residue of what you are experiencing. I'm just curious what you feel several days from the retreat. How do you feel different?

A (27:22)

That's funny because I was on a zoom with Joseph today on something else and he asked me, you know, how's reentry? And I was like, I love reentry. I love being back in the world of craving, dominating every one of my decisions. He was like shaking his head. You have so much more work to do. Yeah, so I find retreats to be really challenging. It just triggers a bunch of old stuff for me around not having full freedom and I get lonely even though I do it with one of my, my best friends. So I find it very challenging. And so I'm always really happy when it's over and not really thinking much about it once it's over. So I'm probably a bad student in this regard.

C (28:03)

Well, how does your nervous system feel?

A (28:05)

My nervous system feels pretty good. Although I will say I did a phenomenally stupid thing on the Saturday night. So the retreat was supposed to end on a Sunday. I had to text my wife. So and I didn't call or text all week. And she was cool that she has Joseph's number so she could call him if something was up. But I needed to text her about something logistical. That was, I was worrying about something she had to do the next day and did she need help. And then she said yes, I would actually really appreciate that help. And then I knew, okay, the retreat's pretty much over then because I have to get up at 5 in the morning, I need to pack now. And so I basically then let myself see all of my texts and emails.

C (28:45)

Oh wow.

A (28:47)

My nervous system couldn't handle it. I was like up until 4 in the morning because I just couldn't settle after that. So it was just a case study. And mindlessness right at the end. It reminds me of Dr. Mark Epstein, my friend. He has a funny story about ending a 10 day retreat at the Insight Meditation Society and locking his keys in the car.

C (29:07)

Oh, that's great. Yeah. Oh, it's a sensitive period. I mean that story of seeing the flood of emails like that is the prototypical challenge. Right. That's all the demands of the world impinging on you from a vulnerable relaxed state you let down. And I had that experience on my first residential retreat. Coming in as a type A person like ramped up to 10, tried to wrap everything up. Of course you couldn't, you know, with loose ends with life and work and went down to, I would say, you know, two or three on the anxiety and sympathetic nervous system vigilance scale. I mean I had a phenomenal letting go. Eventually on the last day I had my husband and little young son, really at a challenging age, pick me up right at the retreat center and you know, we went into a grocery store and there was all, I just remember the demands coming at me, the rush, the people, the headache started. I got the worst headache that lasted for days. So it's this you know, we have vigilance and we have, our stress response is on a certain level for a reason to match our life and our lifestyle. I always warn people now about like the second half of the retreat, like try not to go right back into the demands, the workday or the emails, right. When you leave, it's a ramp back up, but not all the way up hopefully.

A (30:37)

Yep, yep. Well, I fucked that up. I will say as you're speaking, I, I had a moment on day nine where I had been sleepy most of the retreat. I wasn't making a big deal out of, but I wasn't having the clearest meditations. And I've learned over time not to obsess about like how am I doing or whatever, but it was, you know, definitely there. But on the morning of day nine, I got up and I did two two hour sits, I did a 30 minutes of walking meditation. I had a two hour sit, 30 more minutes and then another two hour sit and then I was going to lunch. I usually skip breakfast and just do lunch and dinner. And as I was walking to lunch, I remember thinking for the first time in memory, I am in no rush. It was a really nice moment. And then a couple of hours later I checked my texts, big mistake.

C (31:31)

Well, okay, so retreat biology, we have to go there.

A (31:35)

Okay, please.

C (31:35)

Retreat biology has been well studied and it's really incredible how when we feel safe, when we're not rushed, when we're having, I'll say, a pretty anti inflammatory day, right? With the diet there and the, the lack of work and the physical rest and then of course the mind rest on and off, right. It's not all cakewalk. Our cells go through a dramatic change in the proteins they make, they shift, they go from stress to restoration. We found a five fold change in gene expression in some of the pathways we studied. So we studied a one week retreat. It was a mantra retreat and this was a randomized controlled trial, so we don't usually do that, but we brought in novices and half of them just stayed at the retreat and had some leisure time. And half of them were eight hours a day training in meditation and reflection and yoga. And we were so sure that we were just gonna see the two groups divide in their biology. The end of the retreat there was this dramatic increase in the cellular activity for mitochondria telomerase, the anabolics, the growth factors. We couldn't believe it. We could distinguish people on day one and the last day of the retreat by like 95%, you know, with some Statistical classifier, knowing which was day one versus which was the rested state. So we call it kind of cell safety or cell restoration. Now that effect that we saw was in both groups exactly equally.

A (33:22)

It makes me feel good about having gone on retreats and it's more evidence for the power of meditation. And my whole job is to be a meditation evangelist.

C (33:30)

The mindfulness meditation retreat, vipassana is different than mantra meditation. And I personally didn't think we would find the powerful effects we did. And I have very tremendous respect for concentration and mantra focused meditation. And it also was a window where it was a door, a gateway for people to go deeper into contemplative practices in general. For those novices that we had brought, we also studied them almost a year later and we found several things. So it wasn't that just being at a retreat center without work had equal effects on everyone. Those who were already experienced meditators showed a very big boost in their telomerase activity, a significant increase. So they benefited more their practice. They come in, they didn't have all of the stresses and tears and oh my goodness, look what my mind does. You know, that the beginners had when they started the meditation retreat, so they benefited more. And that's a common theme across meditation studies that once you have a trained mind, you go right there more quickly and you have more epigenetic restoration, et cetera. But the long term effects showed us that the emotional benefits didn't last. In those who just went to the retreat center but did not train their mind, within a month they bounced back to higher levels of anxiety and depression. And within almost a year they were back to their baseline. So when you go on vacation, you want to think about like, what do I want from this? Do I want a relaxing vacation that's going to wear off more quickly? Do I want to learn new skills, do I want time to have mind training, learn meditation, et cetera. It's really remarkable how different we use the word retreat or vacation for so many different types of vacations. It could be urban and city, or it could be a beach vacation. But really they're dramatically different in the effects on the cellular safety and cellular restoration system. Now, early trauma is something that sets us up for that high level of vigilance on a daily basis. And we and others have found that when we have a lot of early childhood adversity, we go through the day with a different mental filter. We're more sensitive to the typical daily stressors. We feel more threat from them. So in this meditation study and others that we've done since the field has found that the good news for the large number of people who have had a lot of early adversity and are set up for that type of vigilance is that they benefit even more. They benefit more emotionally from retreats from meditation training. In fact, we had a sample of almost a hundred people and we looked at early adversity and mental health and you always see relationships. The more number of adverse events, the higher the level of depression, anxiety. But we do not see that. We saw very weak relationships in regular meditators. And so in a way, they had retrained. Their current experience was no longer shaped by their early trauma.

A (36:51)

That's really powerful. Coming up, the benefits of even five minutes of meditation a day. We'll also talk about breathing practices that increase what's called vagal tone, different states of mind that are crucial for cellular repair, and the role of what Alyssa calls deep rest.

B (37:13)

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A (37:25)

To denim to boots. The quality holds up and the price still blows me away.

B (37:30)

Quint has the kind of fall staples you will wear non stop, like super soft 100% Mongolian cashmere sweaters starting at just 60 bucks. I've got like four of those going to bring those out of the back of the closet to start wearing again now that fall is here.

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Their denim is durable and fits right and their real leather jackets bring that.

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A (38:48)

Right before I walked into my little home studio to record this ad I worked out and then sat in the sauna. And of course after you work out and sit in the sauna, especially in the summer, you need to rehydrate. And one of the products I genuinely enjoy when it comes to hydration is Liquid iv. It's good if you you're working out or even if you're just going to be sitting on the beach and sweating or if you're hitting up a music festival. And now they've got flavors that really feel quite summery. You can capture some sun drenched memories with the Orange Vanilla Dream Hydration Multiplier from Liquid iv. It's a nostalgic vanilla flavor with notes of candied orange and it can help you hydrate better than water alone. Visit liquidiv.com and use the code happier at checkout for 20% off your first order. Just one stick and 16 ounces of water hydrates, as I said, better than water alone. It's powered by Live Hydro Science, an optimized ratio of electrolytes, essential vitamins and clinically tested nutrients that turn ordinary water into extraordinary hydration. Three times the electrolytes of the leading sports drink. Eight essential vitamins and nutrients always non gmo, vegan, gluten free, dairy free and soy free free. Savor the last bits of summer with Liquid IV. Tear poor, live more. Go to Liquid I.com and get 20% off your first order with code HAPPIER at checkout. That's 20% off your first order with the code HAPPIER@LIMIDI.com Let me just go back to the daily meditation practice and your work around the minimum effective dose. Big part of my job is once or twice a month I'm giving speeches where I'm talking about the benefits of meditation. And almost always the first question is something to the effect of what's the least amount I can do and still get all the advertised benefits. And up until this conversation, I had been relying on the data from Amishi Jha, who, you know, the neuroscientist from the University of Miami who I love. And she had found in her populations, which is high stress populations like EMTs and firefighters, folks in the military, that the minimum effective dose was like 12 minutes. That's a lot. I'm delighted now to hear that you've got this new study where you've got support for five minutes because I'd like to be able to tell people the smallest number possible because then it seems less intimidating.

C (41:09)

Right. The real way to answer your question would be to randomize people to different lengths to actually control the length and say at what level do we see the strongest benefits? And our study was more in a statistical way. We found that five minutes was in a sense enough to show the benefits. But we see dose response relationships. Most studies find dose response relationships. So longer is better. We don't know if they're, you know, what's the upper limit? Is it like longer is better? Up to 20 minutes we don't know. But it's not surprising. You know, 12 minutes is reasonable. It takes a long time for the body to settle. I personally in my younger life when I was in red mind, most of the time in a typical day we'll go through mind states and what that means. But five minutes would never have been enough. And the MBSR class was beautiful but it was not life changing. I needed a retreat to actually create deep feelings of safety, release and letting go. I needed the big lover. And so while five minutes might be enough on a daily basis, that's usually after people have had longer experiences. Have a somewhat trained mind.

A (42:26)

I totally believe you. And as an I keep calling myself a meditation evangelist and I think that's actually an accurate description of what I do is that makes the message harder to deliver because there's a non trivial percentage of the people listening to this show who are thinking I'm never doing one.

C (42:43)

Yeah. So in the world of stress and mental health, doing five minutes versus not doing it at all is a world of difference.

A (42:53)

Okay.

C (42:53)

Chronic stress we could define in a sense as rumination or as not feeling safe in the present. It is possibly ruminating about the past, self critical thoughts, worrying about the future, all of the time travel we do, all of the unconscious, holding of expectations and trying to control. These are just unconscious processes we've inherited. This is how our mind works. All of that can be broken up with a five minute breathing practice or possibly five minute meditation practice. Although I'll say for the untrained mind that might be more challenging than directly affecting breathing rate in the autonomic nervous system and experiencing the benefits in that way. So I'm talking about a beginner getting in. Breaking up chronic stress with short practices during the day is absolutely critical. These small changes can have big effects and we don't realize that. So we did talk about dreamy retreats and I think that they are a wonderful way to get to know the mind and to lead to larger changes. But for most people you can experience changes in the mind body complex within minutes with different practices, not the same practice works for everyone. So I think mindfulness meditation is obviously the most popular, the most studied. But there's a tremendous number of practices that will reach and help people that are outside of vipassana meditation.

A (44:28)

Yeah, that's so useful to say and useful to know. You mentioned deep breathing for five minutes. For somebody who's new to that, what are the basic instructions?

C (44:38)

The breathing practices are so colorful and different and the different pranayamas have different effects on our physiology as well as on our subjective experience. And so we've been studying and comparing different types of breathing, those that I call positive stress, that create arousal states, they create stress in the body and alertness. They can also create experiences that take us out of the mind states where we're self focused and we can't stop overthinking or worrying. So they're very powerful to do these hyperventilative practices like Wim Hof breathing and others. But the slow breathing is the easiest, most direct path to feeling ease and joy. And so we've been studying that. We have results showing that this can help with feelings of depression. Stress can increase vitality as well as meditation. Equally well as meditation. And we just published a study showing this. Well, actually we haven't published that one yet. But exercise mindfulness, slow breathing and Wim Hof method work the same. I know it's disappointing. We always want to win, you know, a winner to the horse race. But they will all do the job. People just need to find what they're going to do and practice. So back to the slow breathing. When we can bring our breathing rate to roughly six breaths per minute or less, we are increasing vagal tone. I know your audience is very well educated in polyvagal theory. Thank you. It's such a fundamental system for understanding how to control and reset the nervous system. So why don't we do it more is the question. If we know that five minutes of slow breathing is going to be be able to shift our feelings, be able to give us the break that we need, why don't we do that more? I am interested in your answer. You talk to more people in mental health than anyone I know.

A (46:46)

I'm going to answer that question, but first I'm just going to say just super technically, here's the breathing exercise I do. It's called straw breathing and it qualifies as slow breathing. It's a deep, deep, deep, deep inhale through the nose, as deep as you can make it. And then a slow, like super slow exhale through the mouth with lips pursed as if you're blowing through a straw. And Just repeat as needed. And so if you can do that for. I often do that for a couple minutes at the beginning of my meditations, but I'll also do it if I'm freaking out about anything. And my triggers are many, so I find this very, very useful. Okay. But to answer your question, this is the big question. We know, I think most of us, what we can do. So why aren't we doing it? I'll posit a theory and then you'll tell me if you think it's correct. Because you're the person who knows more than I do. I believe we have not been bequeathed minds by evolution that are well equipped for the steady chopping of wood that it takes to establish a habit, which is a long term goal. Short term goals are what we're wired for. We want quick wins, like getting food, like finding a mate, like avoiding a saber tooth tiger. That's how we evolved. And so habit formation has become diabolically difficult or is diabolically difficult. And therefore the way around it is to set the bar really low and to set up a series of quick wins that allow you over time to get the long term win. How am I doing?

C (48:23)

I couldn't agree more. I think there's a lot of data on how we change and why we don't change that supports that view. And in front of us are the opportunities to do what we can and what we can make a habit. These short practices, they absolutely add up. That's what we're studying now. And we're so lucky to have wearables. And we can actually study the unit of a day as well, and we can see the effects. So the slow breathing, we've studied and find that for people who respond to the slow breathing by having an increase in vagal tone, especially during sleep and especially during deep sleep, they have the biggest benefits to mental health. So we've studied people with depression and that slow breathing. We studied 15 minutes a day because we wanted to see a bigger effect than what's probably practiced, which is more five minutes. And we were incredibly impressed with the effects of on depression, stress, anxiety, the stress response. And we're still studying some of the effects on health and longevity. But the impact of slowing our breathing is something we'll need to like, notice and savor and remind ourselves, you know, set an alarm. I mean, doing it first thing in the morning is important. What you described, the type of slow breathing you do is so beautiful because it incorporates all that we know that promotes good vagal tone. And I know there are different versions of this, but just the breathing out through pursed lips so you have the longer exhalation that triggers the vagus. The breathing becomes more rhythmic and slow. Doing this as an entry to meditation is a fantastic idea. I think that for beginners, either starting with breathing that's very somatic or even doing this after pushups or exercise to also help them settle down and be able to feel their body and sit still can be incredibly helpful.

A (50:28)

I have a question I want to go back to. You said something about red mind earlier and there are several colors for different states of mind that are color coded. I want to hear you talk about it, but just very quickly. You're hearing Alyssa mention the vagus nerve or polyvagal theory. I'll drop some links in the show notes to the episodes we've done on polyvagal theory. But very, very simply, the vagus nerve, it's the wandering nerve, comes down from the top of our body and goes through the thorax. And, and it is very much associated with rest, relaxation, availability, safety. You want your vagal tone to be high and that's kind of the opposite of being in a fight or flight or a high stress state. Okay, so speaking of stress, you've categorized or there is a categorization of four states of mind. You mentioned red earlier, but can you walk us through this taxonomy?

C (51:25)

Yes, absolutely. So in the Telomere Effect book, we devoted one chapter to stress that focused on let's look at the acute stress response and see how we can shape it toward a positive stress response. So people are using all of that fuel and that acute stress response to achieve more without the over exaggerated sense of threat and overwhelm. People were very interested in that. How can I shape the stress response to be positive? That is just one flavor of understanding the stress response and how adaptive it is and how we can shift up and down our nervous system. And so the Stress Prescription was the follow up book that really helped people understand. We're so obsessed with stress and we avoid it and want to have only positive stress. But if we can understand that in a typical day we have at least four states of mind that we experience that are all normal but that we can control more. We can control our nervous system so that we're spending more time in a restorative state and less time in more of the threat stress state. So these states are common states, red, yellow, green and blue that we go through in a day that are a little bit different than the polyvagal theory. In that red state is really A state of overwhelm and freeze, that dorsal vagal response. It is a more extreme stress response. So I'm talking about a typical day and what we tend to go through habitually. Red mind is the acute stress response. It is fight flight. And we can shape it to be more of a positive, energizing experience where we can actually problem solve and perform better. So part of the book is still about threat versus challenge state. So if you imagine like a lion chasing the gazelle, how can we be more like the lion who is having a positive response and not that kind of threat vasoconstriction response. But the other states are more interesting that we pay less attention to. So typically we spend most of our day in a default mold that we call yellow mind states. It's a when nothing stressful is directly in front of us, we don't need to mobilize energy and cope. We still experience stress arousal in our body. We have in our nervous system unconscious feelings of vigilance or unsafety. And we also, of course, have cognitive load, the ruminative mind that tends to dwell on negative things and avoid threat. So yellow mind state is a very common nuanced form of chronic stress. And when I ask people like, where do you spend most of your day? Red mind, yellow mind or more relaxed state? Yellow mind tends to be where most people spend the most minutes of their day. It's not restorative, it's not relaxing, it's rushing around and let's say the opposite of retreat mind, where you're receptive and more easily connect with people. So childhood trauma can also make us live more in yellow mind as a default and more red mind and trauma states of overwhelm and freezing. You might think of yellow mind as like a chronic multisensory overload just from the different the uncertainty, stress, the information overload, multitasking, as well as overt threats. So when we're in yellowmind, we can ask ourselves, do I want to upregulate to a positive stress response to metabolize stress out of my body, or do I want to downshift into a more relaxed state? We have green mind, which is a pleasant state when we're typically engaged in leisure activities. It might be social, might be that we're in nature, but we're usually actively engaged in something. And so that gets us closer to true relaxation. But there is a state that is better for our body and different. Better than green mind, better than true relaxation. And that is deep rest. Deep rest, which I call blue mind, is in its purest form, allowing ourselves to release and let go of control. When do we do this? We do this when we're in a flow state, typically in a mind body practice. Meditation is of course a prototypical example. Yoga nidra is even more the bullseye, where we're actually lying down and our job is to not control our thoughts. So it's a deep state of restoration. Could be focused attention, could be open attention, sound baths, yoga nidra shavasana, sensory experiences, being immersed in music, flowing, our breathing, all of these are the gateways to the body's experience of deep rest.

A (56:29)

Also massage.

C (56:30)

Yes, absolutely. That's a great one. And there's self massage too. I mean, at least with our feet, we can tend to our nervous system that way. So deep rest is a question for all of us. Do we get deep rest during the day and are we getting deep rest at night? So questions for you, Dan. How much do you rest during the day? Is it true rest or how many times a week do you get deep rest? And when you wake up from sleep, how sleepy are you? Do you wake up with an alarm? Do you feel rested? Are you getting enough deep rest? And very technically, deep rest during sleep refers to the deepest restorative state that we experience in our 24 hour cycle in our life, which is slow wave sleep or deep sleep. And that is when our vagal tone is the highest. That is when our body resets its metabolism, and that's when our cells also get the deepest restorative boost. That's when growth hormone and all of the growth factors are at their peak.

A (57:34)

Yeah, I don't know how accurate the apple watch is, but it doesn't indicate that I'm getting a ton of deep sleep.

C (57:40)

Yeah, deep sleep is the new frontier. How can we have more control over our deep sleep? We can't force ourselves to go to sleep. So already there's challenges there, getting to sleep or getting back to sleep, as deep sleep occurs toward the first half of the night. So going to bed earlier is one of the few ways that we can maximize the chances that we get more deep sleep.

A (58:02)

Yeah, I've been actually trying to do that, going to sleep earlier. I'm such an obsessive person and sleep is so counterproductive to obsess over it because it moves you further and further away from the goal. I was at a conference recently, New York Times conference, and Peter Attia and I were talking backstage and somebody came up to us with a camera, was shooting something for social, so she came up to us With a phone. It was actually one of these peloton teachers who I really like and I'm forgetting her name, I really like her. It'll come to me. But she was shooting some things for social media and she asked us, what is one health thing that you've let yourself off the hook on? And I was surprised and relieved to hear Peter say I stopped tracking my sleep. And for me, I don't know, he didn't give his rationale, but for me, the rationale that I projected upon him. And one of the reasons why I've considered not checking my watch in the morning is because, first of all, I'm not even sure how accurate the thing is. And second, obsessing can't help. It can help to have a little bit better sleep hygiene and go to bed earlier, but tracking it, I'm not sure helps.

C (59:11)

It can backfire, of course. And there's orthosomnia. There are people who actually they sleep worse and they develop more anxiety once they start tracking their sleep. To me, it's something worth assessing for a week or two. And just like glucose monitoring, I wouldn't do it all the time, but I've certainly learned a lot by plugging in a continuous glucose monitor and then learning how my body responds, getting some baseline information. That was a shock for me. One of the areas that study is how stress affects eating and glucose and insulin resistance. And really thought that it wouldn't apply to me since I'm one of those people who eats less during stress and I tend to be on the skinnier side and oh no, I mean, I saw beautiful strong peaks of glucose when I had a stressful event. And then if I did some beautiful stress eating or comfort food eating of carbs during that time when my body was full of the corticoids or stress hormones, I saw the most dramatic glucose peak I've ever seen, at least in this particular body in my n of one experiment. So it was incredibly enlightening to know that, well, none of us are immune from becoming insulin resistant when we're stressed. We tend to be able to shift quite quickly into a pre diabetic state if we're having a big stress response and especially if we feed that stress response with simple carbs. So now that I've seen that in my own body, it's been powerful. Even though I've been studying this for years, I write about this response. So I think for some people who need to see, want to see their own data and monitor it, I think that's healthy. And of course you can become an over monitor as well, which is not healthy.

A (60:53)

I remember the name of the peloton teacher. It's Robin Arzon.

C (60:55)

She's amazing. She's my favorite. Yes.

A (60:58)

But back to the stress eating thing. So are you saying that when we're stressed, even though it seems like every cell in our body wants us to reach for the Oreo or the bagel or whatever, we shouldn't do that.

C (61:11)

So I tend to be a donut person or whatever the soft chewy carbs are. That's for me. So there's binge eating, which is really problematic and does take its toll. And we've been helping people with binge eating. We've been doing glucose monitoring with them in our studies. My colleague Rachel Radin leads these. And mindful eating can help regulate binge eating and reduce it. And that's so important because it's creates a tremendous glucose spike to not just overeat, but overeat with the kind of emotional distress that triggers a binge. That's one category that we know we can help with mindfulness, particularly targeted mindful eating practices and mindful stress management.

A (61:59)

One little mantra or wisdom bomb that I drop into my mind occasionally that really helps me with the stress eating is this comes from a woman who I've been really influenced by, Evelyn Tribley, who is one of the co creators of something called intuitive eating, for which there's. It's basically mindful eating, but I would say slightly more sophisticated built out version. And one of the things she asks people to ask themselves is how do I want to feel right now? And so like if I've just had a shitty phone call or an email that's come through and I'm heading to the kitchen to self medicate, that's a great question to ask because all right, do I want to feel worse? Yeah, have some Oreos. And sometimes I do want to feel worse. But actually you know what, I've got a bunch more meetings today. I'm going to have a handful of cashews. You know, I have dessert. I'm really a big believer in not being super strict about food. But you know, in the times where you really don't want to feel worse, it's great to bring that question to mind.

C (62:59)

Yep, I agree. Beautiful example.

A (63:05)

Coming up, how to reframe stress as a challenge and also how to create your own so called stress shields. Keep it here.

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A (65:00)

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C (66:35)

The acute stress response is so beautiful and well orchestrated and we need it. And in fact, when we have a lot of burnout and chronic stress, we're not even able to mount such a good cortisol and glucose response. We tend to more mount an inflammation response. So knowing that our body actually is used to and welcomes the big increases in cortisol and glucose during stress, as well as the sympathetic bursts of norepinephrine, sympathetic activity, all of this energizing fuel also can shape how we think and we can problem solve better. We can feel more positive emotion in the midst of stress. So this is a type of stress response we call a challenge response. For example, when we study caregivers, they're under chronic stress, so they're more prone to the threat response. So they have a bigger cortisol peak earlier, more inflammation and more feelings of threat. Whereas our control group, who has more younger stress response, they feel psychologically more control over the stressor, they feel less threatened, they form more positive emotion, especially after the stressor. I'm talking about a lab stressor and they have less inflammation. And that inflammatory response during stress actually is really important. Even though it's not chronic inflammation, it predicts more vulnerability to depression. So this inflammatory response is another important invisible aspect of the stress response we want to honor and know about. And so the more we can nudge ourselves to have a positive or challenged stress response, the better. Now how do we do that? There are what I call stress shields. There are the thoughts about how we're going to do our resources, how we view the stress response. Those three things that we bring to an encounter shape our stress response. So if we go in feeling, okay, I have these resources, I have this way of dealing with it, I have this much support, I want my stress response to help me. I feel my stress response, it's energizing me, my body's excited. Those types of thoughts about resources and about the benefits of the stress response create a self fulfilling prophecy. We then have more of the challenged stress response where we're able to problem solve and still think more clearly and actually see social cues while we're stressed. We also have more oxygen to our brain. We're having more cardiac output and less vasoconstriction. So there's a biology of the challenge response. And we can nudge that on by saying, bring it on. I feel my heart racing, but this is actually my body being excited, my body preparing me to do well. I need this energy. Those are some of the general ways to bring on the lion and not be the gazelle. But really, we all need our own statements that work for us. So I have a chapter in the Stress Prescription about creating your own stress shields and really having your mantra for those moments. And before you go into those moments.

A (69:55)

Yeah, I've heard one mantra that some people like is this is my body getting prepared to act, or I'm not nervous, I'm excited. You just have to put it in the language that works for you. Given that we're heading toward the end of our time together, I do want to get one more really practical piece of advice for people. One of the other big things you talk about in the Stress Prescription is the idea of controlling what you can and putting down the rest, which is essentially the serenity prayer. In other words, how does one do that?

C (70:26)

Very practically, there are ways to do this with our thoughts, with our body, with visualization. And I like to lead people through a practice called a stress inventory and a visualization that gives us a taste of what it feels like to allow ourselves to stop trying to control what we can't control, in a sense. So one thing that people can try is to either think of something that is a weight, a burden they carry, something that they spend a lot of mental real estate on, and, you know, list some things that are on your stress list. And then we think about, okay, what on this list is something that I can get rid of, delete, or delegate? What are things that I can control? So circle for control. Circle things you can control. And then what are things that I mostly can't control? This is of course, a gray area, but put a box around those things. Those are bricks. We may be carrying a backpack of bricks. And we can't necessarily change these situations. So when we often this is with a loved one we care about and worry about, but we can't control their behavior, their happiness, their health, their addictions. When we think of a situation that is unwanted that we don't have control about. We can practice radical acceptance in different ways. We can in the moment remind ourselves this happened or this is as it is. This is reality. This is how it is right now. And the right now is important because things always can change, but that in the moment, we can actually allow ourselves to close our eyes and visualize ourself taking off the backpack of this heavy brick and putting it down. And so just that visualization with breathing, allowing ourselves to take some big sighs as we release the burden that we carry and have been carrying, this can be very powerful. So as we exhale, we might imagine ourselves putting down the situation in this moment and reminding ourselves we can be lighter in this moment, that we cannot control the situation right now. Another visualization I like to use is drop the rope. So if we think of this brick or this situation as a boulder and we're pulling on the rope and so we're trying to problem solve, we're thinking about this situation a lot. Our hands are tired and chafed. If we can allow our hands to open and drop the rope, that can be very powerful. So people can find their own visualization and revisit it. So I use drop the rope often, particularly in a parenting situation. As parents, there are times when you no longer have control. Of course your child is an independent being, and of course we care so much. So we have this kind of primal trying to problem solve, trying to help. And so dropping the rope for parents is an essential skill. People do that in their own ways, but in the moment, it's a practice, it's a meditation.

A (74:04)

So it doesn't mean you don't give a shit. It just means you recognize I can't change this, so why waste energy trying to?

C (74:14)

Exactly. So we don't stop caring. We may still feel the pain, the sorrow, the worry, but. But we're not allowing ourselves to engage in the useless problem solving, the trying to control what we cannot control. And so by doing that, we do soften the worry, the rumination. Those are just efforts to control because we care.

A (74:41)

Final question. There's so much in both of these books that we didn't get to, so people should go read them. But you conclude the stress prescription with the idea of starting every day full and ending full. What does that mean?

C (74:59)

This is probably one of the most important tips in the stress prescription. Rather than focusing on stress and managing the stressful parts of our life, which is important, we can shift our attention and focus on. On the joy in life. And that circumvents the stress response, it increases our tolerance or our stress resilience, so that our threshold for perceiving stress is higher and we have less of a threat response. So joy and positive emotions are now well studied. And I know you've heard from Barb Fredrickson, one of the kind of founders of really shifting our focus from disease and distress to what is the purpose of joy and positive emotion, and how can we increase those and get on these positive spirals? So practicing when we awake and before we go to sleep, these sensitive bookends of the day, a shift to focus on what is right, not problem solving, not what is wrong, but rather, what am I grateful for? So when we wake up asking yourself one question, it could be, what am I looking forward to? Do I have an opportunity to make someone smile, to increase a positive connection. Going through your day and thinking of people that you might influence. I mean, many of our encounters might be work or transactional, but connecting with someone in a way of feeling common humanity or social effervescence, these are things that we can do in our day, even when we're dealing with tremendous adversity, and they do. Again, just like we can reduce stress, within moments, we can increase our feelings of appreciation, wonder, social connection, purpose, all of those. That's the juice of life. That's what people want most from life. And so when I saw you in Dharamsala, His Holiness had recently completed a documentary called Mission Joy, based on the Book of Joy. And he and his close friend, Archbishop Desmond Tutu had told stories about their lives. And the theme of the stories was not we can overcome adversity, it was how we can be joyous in the midst of tremendous suffering and how we can spread joy and happiness to others. And so His Holiness wanted the message to people that we can control our happiness to get out there to the world. He loved the book and the documentary that was made by Peggy Callahan. But Peggy heard his message to her. He wanted her to spread the science of joy. This is a way that many people understand that happiness is a skill that can be built, that can be developed, that it's not that we're born with a temperament that prevents us from being happy, but rather that it's a practice. And so she called me and asked, can we make a large study that helps people experience joy practices? And can we do this all around the world and spread this in a big way? And of course, they said, well, we know what the practices are. I don't have the social media for a global audience. And of course she said, but His Holiness does and he'll tweet for us. And so we did get the message out about joining our open free study to practice and see what helps you feel positive. And this was a study over a hundred thousand people joined. People can still join if they look up the Big Joy project. It was a collaboration between Peggy's group from Mission Joy, UCSF and UC Berkeley Raider Good Science Center. And we found that all of these practices that have been studied in the lab and in undergraduates and the beautiful work of Sonja Litmiersky and Barb Fredrickson. If we just describe to people a practice and ask them to do it in their daily life, we found significant effects, a boost in positive emotion after the practice. In some cases it lasted till the evening and at the end of the week they felt these increases in emotional well being. And so this is what we mean by start your day full and end full. Replenish by experiencing awe, gratitude, purpose. And most of these are through social connection. They're pro social acts. So for example, do something kind for someone, savor someone's joy, ask them what made them happy recently or something they're proud of. And you know you relive that with them, right? You watch their face as they tell you they are reliving the joy. You're feeling it vicariously. So these are powerful practices and these reduced emotional stress as well. Without even talking about stress or what's stressful. We know that these practices promote this mindset shift and create stress resilience. Sorry, that was a long answer, Dan.

A (80:23)

No, it's okay. But I do want to plug your books for you. The Telomere Effect and the Stress Prescription. We will put links in the show notes to Alyssa's website and the books. Thank you very much for doing this. I really appreciate it.

C (80:38)

Thank you so much. I admire your podcast. I'm honored to be on it.

A (80:41)

It thank you to Alyssa. Awesome to talk to her. Don't forget that today's episode comes with a guided meditation that will help you operationalize all the wisdom from Alyssa and as I like to say, pound it into your neurons. It comes from our teacher of the month, Vinnie Ferraro is going to show you how to reset your nervous system. He'll be doing guided meditations for all of our Monday Wednesday episodes during the month of September. Also, we're now now doing a live meditation and Q and A sessions every week. Now they will happen on Tuesdays at 4 o' clock Eastern. The first will be tomorrow. At September 2nd. Vinnie and I will be teaming up for that one. And I also want to say if you want to practice with me in person, two opportunities coming up. First, on Sunday, September 21st from 1 o' clock to 5 o', clock, I'll be doing a half day retreat with with a great meditation teacher named Leslie Booker who's been on the show before. We'll be doing this at the New York Insight Meditation Center. The workshop is called the Dharma of Depression and Anxiety, which sounds a little dark but actually is incredibly useful. And then coming up in October, I'm going to do a weekend long thing at the Omega Institute in Upstate New York. We call it Meditation Party. I'll be joined by my friends 7A Selassie and Jeff Warren and also this year for the first time, a FOS Sue Jones Corte. That's October 24th through 26th. I'll put links to both of these events in the show notes, so sign up. Finally, thank you so much to everybody who worked so hard on the show. Our producers are Kara Anderson, Caroline Keenan and Eleanor Vasily. Our recording and engineering is handled by the great folks over at Pot People. Lauren Smith is our managing producer, Marissa Schneiderman is our senior producer, DJ Cashmere is our executive producer and Nick folks Thorburn of the Banff Islands wrote our theme. This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Fiscally responsible financial geniuses. Monetary magicians. These are things people say about drivers who switch their car insurance to Progressive and save hundreds. Visit progressive.com to see if you could save Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states or situations.