Lessons on Health from the Animal Kingdom & How to Manage Your Emotions

Summary

Podcast Summary: "Lessons on Health from the Animal Kingdom & How to Manage Your Emotions"

Something You Should Know
Host: Mike Carruthers | OmniCast Media
Episode Release Date: February 6, 2025
Guests:

• Dr. David Agus: Medical Oncologist, Author of Animal Nature's Lessons for a Long and Happy Life
• Ethan Cross: Professor at the University of Michigan, Author of Managing Your Emotions So They Don't Manage You

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Introduction

In this enlightening episode of Something You Should Know, host Mike Carruthers delves into two captivating subjects: the invaluable health lessons we can learn from the animal kingdom and effective strategies for managing our emotions. By featuring experts Dr. David Agus and Ethan Cross, Carruthers ensures listeners gain practical insights to enhance their health and emotional well-being.

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Segment 1: Lessons on Health from the Animal Kingdom

Guest: Dr. David Agus
Timestamp: 04:53 - 27:48

Dr. David Agus, a renowned medical oncologist and biomedical researcher, explores how studying other species can unlock secrets to human health and longevity. His discussion underscores the profound connections between animal biology and potential medical breakthroughs.

Elephants and Cancer Prevention

At [06:29], Dr. Agus shares a fascinating observation from a safari in Africa:

"Elephants rarely get cancer. They have 20 copies of the p53 gene, the guardian of the genome, compared to our single copy." [06:29]

This genetic advantage allows elephants to effectively repair DNA errors caused by inflammation, significantly reducing cancer incidence despite their large size and long lifespan. Dr. Agus suggests that understanding and potentially replicating this mechanism in humans could revolutionize cancer prevention.

Dogs and Emotional Health

Dr. Agus highlights the emotional benefits of owning a dog:

"When you look in your dog's eye, your oxytocin goes up and so does theirs. This hormone lowers blood pressure, reduces anxiety, and fosters a sense of calm." [12:26]

Pets provide regular oxytocin boosts, promoting relaxation and reducing stress. Additionally, the structured routines that come with pet ownership—such as consistent meal times and daily walks—mirror healthy human behaviors that contribute to overall well-being.

Rhinoceroses and Nutrition

Discussing dietary insights from rhinoceroses, Dr. Agus explains how changes in their diet enabled successful breeding in captivity:

"Switching from soy protein, which contains estrogenic phytoestrogens, to non-estrogenic protein sources allowed rhinos to breed successfully in zoos." [14:26]

This example emphasizes the importance of a varied and natural diet for humans, cautioning against processed foods and excessive consumption of any single type of food component.

Dolphins and Alzheimer's Disease

At [17:50], Dr. Agus draws parallels between dolphins and humans concerning Alzheimer's:

"Dolphins have an equivalent to human Alzheimer's, which correlates with insulin signaling. They manage their insulin through social connections and exercise, offering insights into preventing cognitive decline." [17:50]

He cites AI-driven studies indicating that the shingles vaccine may reduce Alzheimer's risk by nearly 50%, highlighting the potential of existing medications in mitigating neurodegenerative diseases.

Pigs and Pain Management

Dr. Agus discusses altruism in pigs and its effect on pain perception:

"Altruistic behavior in pigs, such as sharing food, significantly raises their pain threshold, demonstrating how kindness can influence physical well-being." [20:46]

This finding suggests that social interactions and altruistic behaviors in humans could similarly enhance pain management and overall health.

Ants and Disease Prevention

Examining ant behavior, Dr. Agus notes:

"Queen ants, despite sharing genetics with worker ants, live much longer by avoiding exposure to pathogens. Their isolation strategies during illness prevent disease spread, a concept that mirrors effective human pandemic responses." [20:46]

He underscores the importance of individual health behaviors in protecting community health, drawing lessons applicable to human societal practices.

Concluding Insights

Dr. Agus emphasizes the potential of translational research—applying animal biology to human medicine—to extend healthy lifespans and prevent diseases typically associated with old age. He advocates for preventive strategies inspired by animal behaviors, such as managing inflammation and fostering social connections.

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Segment 2: How to Manage Your Emotions

Guest: Ethan Cross
Timestamp: 31:14 - 51:34

Ethan Cross, an esteemed professor and author, shares his expertise on emotion regulation. He breaks down the nature of emotions and provides actionable strategies to help listeners manage their emotional responses effectively.

Understanding Emotions

At [37:43], Cross defines emotions as evolutionary tools designed to help navigate the world:

"Emotions are like software programs that activate a set of coordinated responses—physiological, cognitive, and behavioral—to help us respond to various situations." [37:43]

He differentiates between emotions and feelings, clarifying that feelings are the subjective experiences resulting from emotional responses.

Internal Shifters: Tools Within

Cross introduces three internal tools for managing emotions:

1. Sensation:

   • [38:54] "Engaging your senses—through sight, sound, touch, or smell—can nudge your emotions in a desired direction. For example, listening to calming music can alleviate anxiety."

2. Attention:

   • [41:52] "Directing your focus away from distressing thoughts or towards constructive activities can help manage intense emotions. Flexibility in attention is key."

3. Perspective:

   • [41:52] "Reframing your situation by adopting an objective viewpoint or considering how you'll feel in the future can transform your emotional experience."

External Shifters: Tools Outside

While Cross primarily focuses on internal mechanisms, he acknowledges the role of external factors, such as social support, in emotional regulation.

Strategies for Emotional Management

Cross outlines practical strategies for both negative and positive emotion management:

• Managing Anxiety:

  • [32:29] "When facing anxiety, I engage a calming music playlist, reframe my thoughts by recalling past successes, and occasionally seek support from emotionally intelligent friends."

• Enhancing Positive Emotions:

  • [48:15] "Cultivating positive experiences through activities like helping others and experiencing awe can amplify happiness and buffer against negative emotions."

He emphasizes the importance of personalized approaches, noting that different techniques work better for different individuals and situations.

Positive Emotions and Their Benefits

Cross highlights the undervaluation of positive emotions in emotional management:

"While negative emotions often receive more attention, cultivating positive emotions like awe can broaden our perspectives and enhance overall well-being." [48:15]

He encourages listeners to actively seek and savor positive experiences, which can lead to sustained happiness and improved mental health.

Frameworks for Automatic Emotional Shifting

Addressing real-time emotional challenges, Cross advises developing frameworks to trigger emotional regulation tools automatically:

"Preparing in advance for situations that might provoke intense emotions ensures that you can respond effectively without being overwhelmed in the moment." [46:34]

This proactive approach helps individuals maintain composure during high-stress scenarios, such as road rage incidents or public speaking.

Concluding Insights

Ethan Cross reiterates the significance of emotional intelligence and regulation in achieving personal and professional success. By leveraging both internal and external tools, individuals can enhance their emotional resilience and lead more fulfilling lives.

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Final Thoughts

This episode of Something You Should Know offers a compelling blend of biological insights and psychological strategies to empower listeners in their pursuit of better health and emotional well-being. Dr. David Agus illuminates the potential of animal-inspired medical advancements, while Ethan Cross provides practical techniques for mastering emotional responses. Together, their expertise equips audiences with the knowledge to transform their lives profoundly.

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Notable Quotes:

• Dr. David Agus at [06:29]:
  "Elephants rarely get cancer. They have 20 copies of the p53 gene, the guardian of the genome, compared to our single copy."

• Dr. David Agus at [12:26]:
  "When you look in your dog's eye, your oxytocin goes up and so does theirs. This hormone lowers blood pressure, reduces anxiety, and fosters a sense of calm."

• Ethan Cross at [37:43]:
  "Emotions are like software programs that activate a set of coordinated responses—physiological, cognitive, and behavioral—to help us respond to various situations."

• Ethan Cross at [48:15]:
  "While negative emotions often receive more attention, cultivating positive emotions like awe can broaden our perspectives and enhance overall well-being."

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Resources Mentioned:

• Dr. David Agus's Book: Animal Nature's Lessons for a Long and Happy Life
• Ethan Cross's Book: Managing Your Emotions So They Don't Manage You

For more detailed insights and further exploration of these topics, listeners are encouraged to check the show notes for links to the guests' books and additional resources.

Transcript

[Mike Carruthers]

Today on something you should know. What are the chances you'd get a raise just by asking? Higher than you think. Then amazing medical discoveries we've learned from other animals and AI.

[Dr. David Agus]

What we just learned from AI was that the shingles vaccine, which is a vaccine to prevent shingles that we classically do in our country after age 50 looks like it may reduce Alzheimer's by almost 50%. Pretty powerful observation.

[Mike Carruthers]

Also our Are you suffering from tech neck? It comes from looking down at your phone and proven ways to manage your emotions when they're starting to get out of hand.

[Ethan Cross]

Music's a really easy way to shift your emotions in a particular direction. The shifts aren't always long lasting, but if you need a kick in the butt, so to speak, music can be a pretty neat and tidy mechanism of intervention.

[Mike Carruthers]

All this today on something you should know.

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[Mike Carruthers]

Something you should know, fascinating intel, the.

[Ethan Cross]

World'S top experts, and practical advice you.

[Mike Carruthers]

Can use in your life today. Something you should know with Mike Carruthers. You know, when I think about all the times during my career that I wanted to ask for a raise and didn't because I figured the answer was going to be no. Boy, am I sorry I didn't ask. Hi, welcome to Something you should know. We start today with a survey that was conducted by a compensation research company called PayScale, and they found that 75% of workers who asked for a raise in their current field got one. The survey found that 44% of the workers who asked for a raise got the raise they wanted, and 31% got something, even if it wasn't for the total amount they asked for. Only one in four workers who asked for a raise got nothing in return. The big lesson here is that you should ask. Only 43% of the 31,000 workers that PayScale surveyed had even asked for a raise in their current field. And the lowest paid workers are often the least likely to ask for a raise. Generally speaking, the more money you make, the better the chance that you will get the raise. Still, it doesn't hurt to ask. You may be surprised by the answer, and that is something you should know. You are about to be amazed at what science is learning from other animal species that can help human health and longevity. Things like why elephants almost never get cancer, but humans get it a lot. Or how pigs cope with pain. There's a whole list of these things that I'm about to discuss with my guest, Dr. David Agus. He is a medical oncologist and one of the world's leading doctors and pioneering biomedical researchers. He's the founding CEO of the Ellison Medical Institute and a professor of medicine and engineering at the University of Southern California. He is author of the book of Animal Nature's Lessons for a long and happy life. Hey doctor, welcome to something you should know.

[Dr. David Agus]

Thank you so much. Excited to be here.

[Mike Carruthers]

So I get the fact that it's interesting and curious the way other animals deal with and somehow avoid certain illnesses and conditions. But besides the fact that it's interesting and curious and may be helpful to humans one day, why is this important for us to be talking about?

[Dr. David Agus]

You know, very simply is that our goal today, every single person on this planet wants to live better, longer, healthier. The way we could take shortcuts is learning from other species. We've all been on the earth a million years, us and the other species. There are things they've adapted to in ways they've done it to hack their own system that we can learn from and benefit to ours.

[Mike Carruthers]

And a really clear example that that illustrates what you're talking about would be what?

[Dr. David Agus]

So I'm walking with my family on a safari in Africa, coolest trip ever. And an elephant walks by and I say to the guide, hey, they must get lots of cancer. They're 40 to 50 times bigger than us, 40 to 50 times more cells. They're in the sun all day and he looks at me and say, elephants don't get cancer. And when you look, elephants have 20 copies of a gene called p53, the guardian of the genome. We have one copy. And what that gene does, is it correct? Error in DNA from inflammation. So here's a remarkable clue for us. First of all, we can recapitulate that we could prevent all cancer. But in the short run, we have to take ways to downregulate inflammation.

[Mike Carruthers]

Elephants never get cancer.

[Dr. David Agus]

Elephants rarely get cancer. So you would think that with so many cells and so many divisions, they have much more cancer than us, and they don't. And it's really interesting. Part of the reason is that we have children until 20s and 30s, and then actually evolution said, I don' Care about you because I care about who has good kids. In fact, if you die of cancer, heart disease, etcetera, it brings more food and housing to the next generation. Well, elephant females give birth until their sixth decade. Dominant males protect the herd until the day they die. And so they couldn't afford to get cancer. And we can, right? Cancer rarely happens in kids, but it happens as we enter our later years. And here's a way that we could potentially prevent it.

[Mike Carruthers]

But how do you take what you just said about elephants and put it in people?

[Dr. David Agus]

Well, first is you do all the research about P53, and that's ongoing. But today we say, hey, listen, what it's doing is correcting errors in DNA that came about from inflammation. So how can we downregulate inflammation in our lives today? Well, there's a simple way. The class of drugs called statins, that's the Lipitor, the crestors of the world. While they do lower cholesterol, the real mechanism is down modulating inflammation. And if you look at the studies, it actually reduces cancer. And then you look for sources of inflammation in your life and you want to avoid them. And so it sounds simple, it's actually more complex, but it's doable today. You know, take another crazy example. Do you have a dog?

[Mike Carruthers]

Yeah, I do.

[Dr. David Agus]

Your dog sleeps all day. And the reason is your dog doesn't get deep sleep. If it got deep sleep, you could walk right by it and do something to the herd or whatever they were bred to protect. Your first night in a hotel, you sleep like a dog because you don't recognize the surroundings and you go, oh, my gosh. Your body says, hey, I don't want to have deep sleep. Because I don't recognize these surroundings and it's dangerous. Something could happen to me. So when I travel, I bring my pillowcase from home, so I have my, my sensory, my, my smell and my feel from home. I use my iPhone as my clock from home, so I have a visual cue also and I get more deep sleep. So I've kind of learned from the dog how to do the opposite, in a sense, when I travel because I don't want to sleep like a dog when I go to a hotel.

[Mike Carruthers]

Going back to the elephant. If what you said is true, then why doesn't everybody take a statin like Lipitor every day?

[Dr. David Agus]

Well, there was an amazing study in Europe, in the uk, where they actually took a town and they took everybody and they divided them in half. They did no blood draws, and they put them on a baby. Aspirin and a statin, two ways to downregulate inflammation. And what they showed is the people on placebo who got a pill, they didn't know what it was, lived shorter than the people on the statin and the aspirin who lived much longer. So all of a sudden there's real data there. You know, we're in health. If I tell you to go on a pill where you're not going to feel differently and it's going to help you in 10 or 20 years, you roll your eyes at me. We don't have a near term readout. And so it's been very difficult to get compliance and to get people to do them. You know, there's a new generation of statin equivalents, drugs that lower inflammation and cholesterol, that, that literally are a shot once a year. It's a technology called Sirna. They're FDA approved and they could downregulate the pathways to lower cholesterol a year at a time. Obviously dramatically helps with the compliance, but that's been part of the problem.

[Mike Carruthers]

But does aspirin work? The daily, low dose aspirin?

[Dr. David Agus]

Well, listen, aspirin's 2,000 years old. In three large randomized studies with over 100,000 people, what it did was reduce the overall death rate, not the incidence, the death rate of cancer by 30%, heart disease by 22% and stroke by 17%. And obviously there was a benefit there. There's been newer data out showing that if you take aspirin for four years, starting at a later age, that there was no benefit. And increased bleeds, and there's no question there's increased bleeds, but you need to take it for six years. To see the benefit on cancer and people who don't start aspirin until really late, there's normally a reason for that. And so if you look at the ground, very powerful, not everybody should be on it, but it's a discussion to have with your doctor. Hey, listen, if you have a family history of pancreatic cancer or colon cancer, you get about a 50% reduction in those cancers by taking a baby aspirin every day.

[Mike Carruthers]

But you got to take it earlier in life. You can't wait till you're 80.

[Dr. David Agus]

Yeah, you got to start earlier. And that's where the real benefit is. And the risk of bleeding is much slower. Listen, an 89 year old, they fall a lot, so risk of bleeding is high. A 40, 50, 60 year old don't and it's different. That being said, if aspirin is 2000 years old, why don't we have a gen 2.0 of aspirin that has the anti inflammatory parts but doesn't have the bleeding parts? You know, unfortunately there's no patent on aspirin, so there's been no pharma working on this. I wish they would.

[Mike Carruthers]

You mentioned dogs, and I never knew that about sleeping, but I imagine there are other things we learn from dogs. And since people have them in their home, I'd love to hear that.

[Dr. David Agus]

You know, there's a hormone called oxytocin. It's the love hormone. When you look in your dog's eye, your oxytocin goes up and so does theirs. And when oxytocin goes up, your blood pressure goes down, you feel more relaxed, you get a sense of calm, anxiety goes away. And so we all need these bursts of oxytocin in our life, and dogs can provide it. And then there are the little things they do to our schedule. Right. Dogs like to eat the same time every day, which by the way, is what we as humans were made to do and is much healthier for us. So you get up in the morning, you walk. The dog walking is good. The regular times a day, hopefully that tends to your own meal time and you have companionship. What you look at in every study of health outcomes, longevity is people with companionship do better. Dogs with their oxytocin bursts are an amazing form of companionship.

[Mike Carruthers]

So let's pick an animal that people don't have much connection with, like a rhinoceros or something like that. What can we learn from him or her?

[Dr. David Agus]

Well, first of all, that was a big assumption. Some people have connections to rhinoceri or rhinoceroses I'm not even sure which one it is. But, you know, the rhinoceroses were unfortunately captured much for their horns because there was these notion that it can affect sexual potency and other things, even though it' not true. And so they were endangered. So several zoos tried to breed rhinoceros in captivity and it didn't work. And everyone was getting very nervous that this species, which literally looks and acts like a dinosaur, would be extinct. Then they noticed that, you know, racheros are big, they eat a lot of food. So zoos don't have a lot of resources. They were feeding them basically soy protein. And soy has estrogenic components. It acts like the hormone. Estrogen is what we call a phytoestrogen, a plant source of estrogen. So when they change the source of protein to a different source of protein that didn't have the estrogenic parts, all of a sudden they were able to breed rhinos in captivity. And what we clearly see is that, you know, eating natural food is tremendously important, but too much of anything can have unintended consequences. And in this case, phytoestrogens, if you feed a child soy milk, they will develop breast buds. The breast will be slightly enlarged compared to a child who's not because of the estrogenic components. So it really begs to look at what we eat. And we were made to eat a varied diet. We're made to eat real foods, so not processed food. And we're made to eat either two or three meals a day, you choose, with nothing at all in between.

[Mike Carruthers]

We're talking about what animals, other creatures, can teach us about the science and medicine of human health and longevity. And My guest is Dr. David Agus. He's author of the book the Book of Animal Nature's Lessons for a Long and Happy Life. I'm really excited to have Factor back as a sponsor. Factor provides delicious chef made gourmet meals right to your door. And just to be clear, this is not a box of ingredients that you have to make. These are not frozen meals. These are fresh, fully prepared meals ready to heat and eat in two minutes. And they're so good. I first had Factor Meals delivered to me. It's been a few years now and everyone in the house has loved them. What's really special about Factor meals is they're dietitian approved and the variety is impressive. There are 40 options across eight dietary preferences on the menu each week. And you can choose from preferences like Calorie, Smart, Protein plus, or keto. What kind of meals are they well, I think you'd find these pretty tasty. Chicken Florentine with spinach and garlic chili cauliflower, Cajun spiced salmon and shrimp garlic pork tenderloin. It's like a gourmet restaurant and this is going to make it easy for you to try. Eat Smart with Factor get [e-mail] something50off and use code something50OFF to get 50% off your first box plus free shipping. That's code [e-mail] something:50OFF to get 50% off plus free shipping on your first box. And I'll put that code in the show notes to make this simple, I.

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[Mike Carruthers]

So, doctor, people talk a lot about dolphins, that they're very smart, that they have human like qualities. What medically, what can we learn from dolphins?

[Dr. David Agus]

Yeah, dolphins are pretty interesting because they're the only creature that we know of that has what is an equivalent to human Alzheimer's disease. And what we see in the dolphins is it correlates to insulin signaling. And we know that's also true in adults and humans is that when insulin signaling is off, type 2 diabetes happens. It's very hard to modulate sugar. And when your sugar goes up in your blood, you have to maintain what we call the same osmosis Molality. So fluid goes in to dilute out the sugar, and your blood vessels get stress, and it affects your brain and other parts of your body. Dolphins can actually modulate their insulin signaling, and they do so through a connectivity with others. And they do throw as part of their daily life. They do it with exercise, they do it with social connections. And we certainly have to learn with that, right? You see, when people have very few social connections, they actually tend to be higher body mass index, they tend to eat more. They don't have the controls that they do when they're with other people. They actually normally exercise less and do less. And obviously these are generalizations, but it's something we concern. Get a load of this. Totally an aside with Alzheimer's. What we just learned from AI was that the shingles vaccine, which is a vaccine to prevent shingles that we classically do in our country after age 50, looks like it may reduce Alzheimer's by almost 50%. So we knew Alzheimer's was plaques in the brain. Now we're learning that it's an infection of a neuron, in this case caused by the virus shingles, the chickenpox virus that can lead to the plaques. Pretty powerful observation.

[Mike Carruthers]

Well, that's a rather amazing statistic. And what I find even more amazing is that I've never heard of this before, that the shingles vaccine has that much effect on Alzheimer's disease. Like, why isn't this being screamed from the mountaintops?

[Dr. David Agus]

So the way these studies are done is, you know, your electronic health records are, you know, bags of words. And with AI now and these large language models, we can convert that to structured data and do analysis. So in three separate studies, this was observed. So nobody could ever do a randomized trial over 30 years and say, you get shingles vaccine, I'll give you placebo. See what happens. We had to pull data and say, who got the shingles vaccine, who didn't? Let's make sure they're equal in terms of their weight, where they live, how old they are, et cetera. And see the observations. And it certainly was a very important observation. It didn't necessarily prove causality, but it was a hell of an association from something that's already on the market, already reckoned, or recommended for everybody over the age of 50. And it certainly is something that I acted on, and I hope others do also.

[Mike Carruthers]

So you pick. You pick an animal that maybe I wouldn't think of or people wouldn't think of, or one that really kind of floored you when you. When you did the research on this. That would surprise me.

[Dr. David Agus]

All right, so the pig, you know, the pig is something obviously we make fun of all the time. You live in a pig pen and et cetera. So they studied the pig. And what was really interesting is they studied their pain response. And so when pigs had pain, they would squeal and they would run. Run away from it. But what they showed is when a pig had altruism, when it was able to share its food with others, the pain threshold went up dramatically. And it was a staggering observation that altruism, sharing things, being kind to others, actually changed our pain threshold and how we responded to pain. Pretty wild, if you think about it. And then get a load of this. You know, the queen ant, which is, you know, the same genetic. She gives birth to all the worker ants. Well, she lives 42 years. The worker ant lives six months. Same genetics, dramatically different lifestyle. That queen ant doesn't go out into the wild, doesn't get exposed to bacteria, viruses, doesn't do manual labor to get inflammation, harm things, and she lives much longer. The ants, if you get sick and you're an ant, you stay outside the colony for three days. And if you get better, you go back. If you don't, you die outside the colony and you don't spread that virus or that bacteria to others. Well, look what happened during this pandemic, right? Your behavior. If you had a virus, if you had COVID 19, and you came home and hugged your kids, you could spread it to them. If you stayed away from them, you didn't. So the notion that the behavior of one affects all is really something that we should have and could have observed in the ants and learned from very strongly.

[Mike Carruthers]

Well, one of the things that's different between most species and humans is our mental capacity. We have the ability to contemplate our own death. We worry about the future, we lament about the past. How does that play into this?

[Dr. David Agus]

You know, what was amazing to me of sitting there in Africa on safari, which, you know, was a privilege to be there, is that every creature is looking over its shoulder and worried, right? That lion is worried that somebody will eat his cub. The elephant, you know, is worried that its baby will be, you know, taken by somebody else. That antelope is worried about the lion. They're all worried about something.

[Ethan Cross]

Something.

[Dr. David Agus]

You know, we as humans have basically built ourselves a zoo, right? We live in our house. We have our security system. We've tried to take away that worry, that stress from our life by living in a zoo. And it's a really amazing observation. Never used to be like that. But we've evolved as humans to create our own zoo in a sense, and.

[Mike Carruthers]

That'S a good thing.

[Dr. David Agus]

It's hard to tell, right? I mean, when you look at one of the correlates to living long with your brain intact, so slowing cognitive decline, it's getting uncomfortable. Every year you delay retirement, you reduce the incidence of Alzheimer's by 3%. And over several decades, that's an enormous percentage reduction. You don't use it, you lose it. So you need to be uncomfortable, but you need to control it. Right? We worry about things. If your dog, you know, something happened to it doesn't worry. Animals don't necessarily carry that worry forward and stress them. They worry in the moment, but they don't carry it forward like we do. We don't have the ability of disconnecting like they do. And so our worry can cause stress. You're worried all the time. Basically, you lose that stress response. You know, Michael Jordan played well in practice, in the game, he was amazing and very different because he had an adrenaline response that he can respond to. That lion has a basal level of fear, but when something happens, it goes up and they perform. Like you hear about the people lifting the car off the baby when their adrenaline web. Well, if you're always stressed at a very high level, you don't have that adrenaline push. Many of the new devices, the Apple Watch, the Oura rings and others measure something like heart rate variability, which is actually a surrogate for that. And you can measure do you have that adrenaline response or not? Very important for athletes or anybody who wants to perform.

[Mike Carruthers]

What about the animals that are somewhat similar to us, chimps, gorillas? What do we learn from them?

[Dr. David Agus]

So, you know, talking to, you know, some of the experts in those, they talk to me about child rearing. There are three types of gorillas, right? There's one who says to their kid, hey, do whatever you want. Fall out of the tree. Get beate. I'm just going to go about my daily life. Those kids have a relatively short life expectancy. Then there are the parents who don't let the kids, you know, get into any fights. When they start to climb the tree, they pull them down. Those kids are always followers and never leaders. Then there's the kids who the mother looks at them, you know, with the corner of their eye. And once they get to a certain level in the tree, they bring them down. They let them start to get in the fight, but when it gets too aggressive, then they intervene. Those are the kids who know how to deal with conflict, know how to take some risk and become the leaders. So what's amazing is, is that Jane Goodall can look at a pack and identify who will be the next leader by their parenting behaviors.

[Mike Carruthers]

Well, doesn't it seem overall though that one of the reasons that we're having so many of the health problems that we have is we're living a lot longer than we do did 3, 4, 500 years ago. And the longer you live, the more things can go wrong.

[Dr. David Agus]

Yeah, but if you look at the mummies in the Egyptian time, most of them died of cancer or they died of heart disease. And so they're dying of the same things and they died at a much earlier timeframe. We're living longer. We're still dying of heart disease and cancer. But you're right, we portend for longer. But the key is right. Yeah, I really think we can stop most disease at an early age. So all of us can go to our 9th or 10th decade and die of something until the 1950s you could die of. But it was made illegal after that, something called old age. Ever since the mid-1950s. A death certificate needs a cause of death and old age isn't a cause of death anymore. I want to go back to dying of old age. Right. You don't want to die at age 50 of pancreatic cancer. You don't want to have a heart attack at age 53. What you want to do is live till there's general engineering failure, until your quality of life at that point starts to go down, which is normally the end of the 9th or 10th decade. And live quality until you get there. And I believe you can if you do the preventive strategies, many of which we can learn from the animal kingdom.

[Mike Carruthers]

Well, I can't imagine anyone listening for the last 20 minutes who hasn't heard something rather remarkable that they never knew before about the medicine and science of human health. I appreciate you sharing that. My guest has been Dr. David Agus. He is a medical oncologist and the name of his book, well, he's written several books, but the one that we've been talking about today is the book of Animal Nature's Lessons for a Long and Happy Life. And there's a link to that book in the show notes. Dr. Thank you. Appreciate you being on today.

[Dr. David Agus]

Thank you so much. Talk to you soon.

[Mike Carruthers]

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[Dr. David Agus]

You.

[Mike Carruthers]

Know we have had several experts on this podcast talk about the risks of being overweight and the heavier you are and the longer you remain that way, the more substantial the risks. But losing weight on your own? Well, that is so difficult and often unsuccessful. Hers is changing the weight loss game and making weight loss actually achievable. Hers offers a weight loss program with personalized solutions including compounded GLP1 weekly injections featuring the same active ingredient as Ozempic and Wegovy, or oral medication kits all at one low cost with compounded GLP1 injections starting at $165 a month with a 12 month plan paid up front for new subscribers. Your initial online visit is free, so start right [e-mail] that's F O R H E R S.comSYSK for your personalized weight loss treatment options. Forhers.comSYSK hers weight loss is not available everywhere. Compounded products are not FDA approved or verified for safety, effectiveness or quality. Prescription required restrictions apply. Wegovy and Ozempic are not compounded. Actual price depends on product and plan purchased. How many times have you heard the phrase manage your emotions? And we've all seen people who are amazingly good at managing their emotions in difficult situations. And we've all seen people completely lose it. It like the guy who screams at the store clerk or gets in a road rage incident. Those would be examples of not managing your emotions very well. But certainly the ability, the skill to manage your emotions better is one we could probably all sharpen up a bit. Here to help is Ethan Cross. He is one of the world's leading experts on emotion regulation. He's an award winning professor at the University of Michigan. His work has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the New Yorker, and the New England Journal of Medicine. He's author of a book called Managing youg Emotions so they Don't Manage youe. Hi Ethan, welcome to something you should know.

[Ethan Cross]

Thanks for having me. It's. It's a delight to be here.

[Mike Carruthers]

You know, maybe it's partly because everybody's got their phone camera going and there's cameras everywhere that we see more. We see more incidents of people not handling their emotions very well. And I don't know if the problem is getting worse or not or what is your sense. Where are we with the world's population managing their emotions?

[Ethan Cross]

I think we all have something to learn about this topic. I think it's one of the big problems we face as a species. It's something that we struggle with. When I'm talking about not managing our emotions effectively, I'm talking about our emotions getting triggered either too intensely or for too long. And how do you know what that means? We have goals for how we want to live our lives. And if our goal is to not feel a particular way and we find that our emotional experiences are lasting outside of that bandwidth, so to speak, too intense or too long or maybe even too short or too little, those are typically cues that we want to manage or shift those emotions.

[Mike Carruthers]

So can you give me an example of that?

[Ethan Cross]

Sure. I have a very important presentation coming up. I feel a little bit of anxiety about it, which is adaptive because the anxiety that I feel is motivating me to focus on the task at hand, to prepare for it, to make sure I do a good job. But over time, as the minutes go on and the hours, the anxiety begins to metastasize, it gets bigger. I start going into worst case scenarios and it lasts longer than is actually useful. That would be a context in which I would want to manage that emotional response. Let me give you one other example. In the opposite direction. Something really great happens. My kid has a real success in their life life. And I hear about it, I experience some happiness, but then the happiness quickly fades. And maybe I want to savor that emotional experience because it makes me feel good and I want to feel good more than I'm currently feeling. That would also be a context in which I would want to shift my emotions.

[Mike Carruthers]

Yeah, well, people, I think, don't think much about managing positive emotions. It's the negative ones that, that seemed to get in the way. And your example just then of the anxiety of having to give a presentation is a pretty common one, whether it's in school or at work or whatever. And so what do you do to manage it?

[Ethan Cross]

Well, I do a few different things. And I want to preface, before I tell you what I do, which I happily will, I want to share with you and everyone who's listening, different tools work for different people in different situations in the same way that we have likely have different Exercise routines for maintaining our fitness. And there are multiple routes to becoming physically fit. We're increasingly learning that that is also true for our emotional lives when it comes to being emotionally fit. So with that little bit of a disclaimer out of the way, what I do to manage my anxiety, typically, I'll first engage one of my senses. I've got a. A music playlist that is very effective for calming me down or sometimes even pumping me up and getting excited. And both of those emotional shifts work against the anxiety. I will often reframe what I'm experiencing. I will remind myself of the fact that I've done hundreds, if not thousands of presentations and they've all gone well. So I'm broadening my perspective there, and I'm getting out of this, what if this happens?

[Mike Carruthers]

What if?

[Ethan Cross]

And instead I'm reminding myself, well, the what if virtually never happens. If the anxiety is really intense, I will often call up one of my emotional advisors. These are people who are really skilled at not just hearing me out, listening and learning to what I'm going through and empathizing with me, connecting with me emotionally in a way that communicates to me that they really, really care about me, but they're also really useful for helping me look at that bigger picture. And that's an invaluable resource I possess. So those are a couple of the things that I would typically do. I might sprinkle in a walk outside in a safe, natural setting at times. And at other times, I might also distract myself for a circumscribed period of time, immerse myself in something else that has nothing to do with. With the thing I'm worried about, to allow myself to come back to the task at hand with a little bit of freshness.

[Mike Carruthers]

Well, isn't that what all of those things you just suggested do they take you out of your head, overthinking about your presentation and get you to focus on something else?

[Ethan Cross]

Not exactly. First of all, they take different routes to doing that, number one. But. But just to give you some counterexamples there, when I'm listening to music, I often will listen to music in the background when I'm working on something. So I'm still focusing there on the task at hand. But I have this sensory experience that is shifting my emotions really outside of my awareness and doing it relatively effortlessly, distracting myself by focusing on something else entirely. That's a real attentional shift.

[Dr. David Agus]

Now.

[Ethan Cross]

I. I'm just not thinking about the issue at hand, and that's giving me some mental Space. But when I'm looking at the bigger picture, once again, I still have the experience I'm concerned about in full view. It isn't a focus of my attention, but I am reframing. I'm changing the way I think about it. Now when I go to speak to another person, they are certainly helping me reframe it. So there's over overlap there. But the added benefit I get when I talk to someone else is that it's sometimes a lot easier for us to reframe when other people guide us through it than when we try to do it ourselves.

[Mike Carruthers]

Since emotions are such a big deal and such a big part of our life and drive a lot of our behavior and thinking, maybe we should describe or have you explain what emotions are.

[Ethan Cross]

It's a great question. It's something that scientists actively study. I like to think of emotions as tools. So these are tools that we evolved to help us navigate the world. You can think about emotions as like these little software programs that get loaded up in particular situations. And these are programs that activate what we call a loosely coordinated set of responses. What I mean by that is when you experience an emotion, your physiology may start to shift. So if we stick with anxiety, you might start to experience a kind of fight or flight response. You have to go to the bathroom, your palms start to sweat. Emotions capture our cognition or how we think as well. So when I experience anxiety, it zooms me in. It focuses me in on the problem at hand, so I'm focusing really intently on it. It. Emotions also can influence our motor behavior or our facial displays. So, Mike, can you often tell when someone is sad, for example, by the look on their face?

[Mike Carruthers]

Sure, of course.

[Ethan Cross]

Right. So this is a loosely coordinated set of responses. I say loosely because it's not the case that all three of those things always get triggered every time you experience an emotion. But they tend to hang together. And the whole idea here is that we evolve the capacity to experience these emotions because they help us. So anxiety focuses us in on potential threats, allowing us to prepare for them. Anger as another example. Anger is something we experience when we perceive that our view of how things should work is violated. And there is the opportunity. Opportunity to fix the situation we experience. Anger. What about sadness? How on earth could sadness be useful? Well, we tend to experience sadness when. When we experience some change in. In our. Our way of understanding ourself or the world. Something happens that challenges that worldview and there's nothing you can do or nothing you think you can do to actually fix it. So the loss of a loved one, getting fired. Right now, your view of yourself and the world is forever changed. You can't bring that person back. You can't get that new job. So we experience this emotion that motivates us to introspect, to turn inward, to start doing that important thinking work that we need to do, to start reframing our lives and our place in this world. This sadness experience also motivates us to slow down physiologically, like just kind of pull back and withdraw. But it also does something quite beautiful, if you ask me. Which is, it leaves this. It gives off this kind of alarm signal to everyone in our network in the form of a sad facial display that communicates to other people that, hey, don't leave me alone for too long because I am social and I need some connection, so check up on me at times. Which is why when you see someone with a sad facial expression, you often want to help them. So that's what emotions are. They're different. People often wonder, what's the difference between emotion and a feeling. I like to point out that feelings are the subjective part of an emotional experience. If you think about what happens when you are physically ill, there are lots of things happening in your body that you have no awareness of. But what you typically are aware of is your fever, right? The feelings of chills and the sweats. That's a component of physical illness that you become aware. Feelings are that subjective component of an emotional response. It's like the temperature you experience when you're physically ill. Is that helpful for emotions?

[Mike Carruthers]

Yeah. And you know, what I'd like to do now is get into some of your tools that you talk about to help people manage their emotions.

[Ethan Cross]

I like to divide the world of tools into six buckets, three of which exist inside you. These are tools that you can use wherever you are, really. These are what I call internal shifters. And then there are some shifters. Shifter being shorthand for a tool you use to shift your emotion. There are some external shifters that exist outside of us. What are the three internal shifters? The first one is sensation, our sensory experiences. I think this is a shifter that we all have lots of intimate experiences with but don't avail ourselves of in the heat of the moment. So when I'm talking about sensory experiences, I'm talking about things like sight, sound, touch, smell. You know, if you walk through an airport, the international duty free section, you know, I think of that as an emotion regulation store because there's so many perfumes and colognes that are smelled. I think about why do we put those on? We put those on to manage the way other people feel about us, right? A pleasant sounding, a pleasant scent instantly elicits a type of emotional reaction. So much so that many hotels actually work with scentologists. I'm making up that name. There is a technical name that is eluding me right now, but they work with folks to create these bespoke smells that they then pipe through the ventilation of the hotels to provide people with this positive emotional experience when they're in their facility. That's one way you could shift your emotion. Another thing you could do is music. If you ask people, as experimenters have, hey, why do you listen to music? Approximately 100% of participants will tell you, I listen to music because I like the way it makes me feel. But if you then ask people, hey, the last time you were angry, anxious or sad, what did you do to manage your emotions? Only between 10 and 30% of participants report listening to music. Music's a really easy way to nudge your emotions, to shift your emotions in a particular direction. The shifts aren't always long lasting, but if you need a kick in the butt, so to speak, to shift out of a particular emotional response, music can be a pretty neat and tidy mechanism of intervention. Another kind of internal shifter are is attention. So where are you pointing your attentional spotlight? Are you thinking about the thing that is driving the emotional response or are you looking away from it? It's not as simple as on or away. Sometimes the best ways of managing our emotions is to be flexible. And we don't often talk about this. We often talk about avoidance, not thinking about stuff as toxic, when in fact, what we see in lots of research is that people who are flexible actually end up doing pretty good. So if I get into an argument with my partner, rather than trying to fix the situation in the heat of the moment right after the emotions are triggered, I might take a day or two off from thinking about it and then come back to it later on when temperatures have diminished. And it's a lot easier for us to think reasonably about this experience. The third internal shifter is perspective. I think we hear a lot that you should change the way you think to change the way you feel. But it's not always so easy to do that. And the good news here is that we possess tools to make it easier for us to reframe our circumstances. Those tools often involve taking a step back and thinking about what we're dealing with with from a more distanced, objective perspective. You can use language to help you do this, use your name in the second person pronoun you, to try to coach yourself through a problem. All right, Ethan, how are you going to deal with this? We usually use the word you when we're thinking about and referring to other people. It's a lot easier for us to give advice to other people than it is to ourselves. So when you use the word you to refer to yourself, that automatically shifts your perspective, putting you into this, this more adaptive advice giving mode. We can also jump into our mental time travel machines to think about how we're going to feel about something down the road. We've experienced all sorts of really tough things in our lives, most of which have come but eventually gone. And we lose sight of that in the heat of the moment. So thinking about how you're going to feel about what you're currently grappling with down the road can also be useful.

[Indeed Sponsor]

So let me ask you this though.

[Mike Carruthers]

You had mentioned, you know, take a step back, get perspective. A lot of times I think people get pulled in by their emotions quickly in kind of a knee jerk way. Road rage would be a good example of that. Those people don't seem like they're in a really good place to take a step back, get some perspective because they're so angry.

[Ethan Cross]

Well, that's a great observation. So step one, you got to learn about what these different tools are. And once you do, then what you can do is you can start using frameworks, simple frameworks for enhancing the likelihood that you will use these tools when you most need to use them and that you'll activate them automatically without thinking, you know, the situation that you just described is not a trivial one. We often get dealt curveballs that we're not prepared for. And in the moment it can be really hard to figure out what to do because our emotions are striking and are triggered so intensely. It's precisely in those situations that we want to have plans that prepare us for what to do.

[Mike Carruthers]

I want to spend just a few moments on positive emotions. And you had used an example of what if you were feeling really good about something and you'd want to maybe keep that going for a while. Because I don't think people think you can do that, that positive emotions aren't really a problem and they come when they come and they feel great and then you move on. But talk a little bit more about that, because I find that really interesting.

[Ethan Cross]

One of the most impactful findings I've come across in psychology is the idea that bad is stronger than good. Good losses loom larger than gains. The bad stuff in life just kind of sticks out a whole lot more strongly than the good stuff draws our attention. And I think it's why we often think about it more when it comes to managing our emotions. Because the bad stuff, part of the reason it's so useful for us is it doesn't feel good. We want to minimize it as much as possible, but that doesn't mean we should ignore the positive side of our lives or that we need to be, be passive in terms of our positive experiences. You can absolutely cultivate positive experiences. So I gave you a couple of examples before. Well, actually, before I give you more examples, let me further say you should try to cultivate positive experiences if that's something you want to do. Some people have the goal of being kind of even keeled and just, just Buddha, like if you will, and homeostatic. They don't want to get too high or too low. And if that's your goal, great, follow through with that goal. Other people want to experience positive emotions more frequently. And if that's your goal, then the cool thing is you've got tools to help you achieve that goal. So certainly savoring, immersing yourself in negative, in positive past experiences or family, fantasizing about potential, potential future eventualities, that's one thing you could do to amplify positivity. Another thing you could do to make yourself feel better about stuff is to help other people. This is my actual favorite finding right now. In psychology there's a lot of research which shows that one of the best ways to make yourself feel better, to make yourself feel good about things, do something good for someone else. I think there's just something really wonderful about that, how it's win, win for everyone involved. Maybe the last one I'll slip in there is. Awe is an emotion, a positive emotion that has a lot of value because when you experience this emotion of awe, it's an emotion we experience when we're in the presence of something vast and seemingly indescribable, like a beautiful mountain view. Or sometimes you experience awe when you're in a, you have a social experience like being, you know, singing in unison at a, at a sporting event or a lot of people who are religious experience awe when they pray. This is a very positive experience that helps broaden our perspective. It makes us realize that there's, there's more to the world than just us that feels good. And it can also help you manage your negative emotions as well.

[Mike Carruthers]

Well, you've certainly put some intel and some strategy behind the idea of managing your emotions. And I really appreciate you sharing that. I've been speaking with Ethan Cross. He's one of the world's leading experts on emotion regulation and he's author of a book called Managing youg Emotions so they Don't Manage youe. And there's a link to that book in the show notes. Ethan, great, great conversation. Thanks for coming on.

[Ethan Cross]

All right, thank you so much. I appreciate you having me on.

[Mike Carruthers]

There is a condition, it's a real condition called tech neck and it is the result of tilting your neck to look down at your phone or your tablet or your laptop. When you text, read or surf the web. Tilting your neck like that puts an unnecessary strain on your spine. According to research published in the National Library of Medicine, when you stand upright, the average head places about 10 to 12 pounds of force on the cervical spine. But with just a 15 degree tilt in your neck, that weight increases to 27 pounds and a 60 degree tilt turns into 60 pounds. That extra spine stress can lead to early wear and tear on your spine and might even cause you to have to have surgery down the road. The other thing, and we've talked about this a million times before, is if you carry your phone around everywhere and put it down on all kinds of surfaces, it's getting covered in germs, which then transfers to your hand when you pick it up. And there on your hand is who knows what, which is just a reminder to keep your phone clean and wash your hands regularly. And that is something you should know. If you enjoyed this episode of Something you should Know, it would be great if you would share that opinion with a rating and review on whatever podcast app you listen on. Apple, Podcasts, Spotify, they pretty much all have a very easy way to leave a rating and review. It only takes a minute and we'd appreciate it. I'm Micah. Thanks for listening today to something you should know.

[Laura Cathcart Robbins]

Hi, I'm Laura Cathcart Robbins and I am the host and creator of the podcast Only One in the Room. Every week, my co host Scott Slaughter and I invite you to join us and lose yourself in someone's incredible Only One story. We talk to real people dealing with issues like infertility, the death of a loved one, human trafficking, and women who fake it. Oh, and we want to be fair, so we talk to celebrities, too. Emmy winners like actor Jon Cryer, supermodels like Amber Valletta, and rock stars like Ryan Dusick. Everyone is invited to share their only one story with our listeners. With 21 seasons and counting. We guarantee you that only one in the room has a story that you'll connect with. This podcast is for anyone who has ever felt alone in a room full of people. Which is to say that this podcast is for everyone. Download only one in the room on Apple or Spotify today. If you are caught up in the Barbenheimer frenzy, if you love ranking the Mission Impossible films, if you are just an all around movie fan, I have a podcast for you. Hello, I'm Amy Nicholson. I'm a film critic who writes for the New York Times and I'm also the co host of Unspooled, the ultimate movie podcast. Each week my co host Paul Scheer and I unspool famous films to see if they are truly all time classics. From the original 1984 Karate Kid to Children of Men to more recent pictures to do yes to Citizen Kane, we cover it all. Listen to Unspooled wherever you get your podcasts.