What You Don't Know About Stress Could Kill You

Mostly we are today talking about stress, its effects on us, and ways to manage stress, because that ties into this week's video all about stress and the future of stress management. Really and um, it's an important deal. So I guess first we need to kind of look at just what is stress? What do we how do we define that, and what does it do to us, especially in the short term. Yeah, that's funny. Everybody knows what stress is, but you kind of be hard pressed to define it.

It's kind of like consciousness, right, and one of those one of those concepts that as you start to define it, you realize, oh wait, it's this thing that everyone knows, but it's hard to put into words. Really, you can describe it physiologically. It's certain things are happening to your

body when you have a stress response. Essentially, it's it's your body's reaction to any sort of perceived threat or perceived any moment where your body feels like it needs to prepare itself physically for something that's going to be demanding. And unfortunately, our you know, our genetics don't really have a button that says like, you know, this, this test that I'm studying for isn't a tiger that is actually

going to eat my face. And so we have a very similar response to physical stresses and mental stresses, and yeah, the body doesn't have a way of differentiating the different types of stressors that we could encounter. Now we should be fair, Actually you do, and it's your brain and you do have a way of telling a difference. But the point is that things that are not actually a big threat to you are still going to trigger some

of that response. Yeah, may of it. I probably would have a much bigger stress response if Lauren suddenly pulled out a knife and thrust it at me, then, if you know, I would just to say suddenly forget all the research I didn't before this and be like, oh, well, you know the question. The question is what if what if Lauren pulled a knife on you, and at the same time you received an email from the head of how Stuff works saying we need to talk and make

sure you clear out your desk. Those those two things would give you quite a bit of stress early on, even though one is is actively and physically threatening you at this moment. By the way, Lauren with a knife not something you want to encounter. I mean, she's I don't really need knives. My elbows are sharp, like that's true, that's true. And plus she has a cutting wit anyway. So so let's get back to talking about what stress

is in our way of reacting to it. It really is kind of a survival mechanism, you know, like you were saying, Lauren, this whole being attacked by a tiger thing. It's part of the fight or flight response. Yeah, there's a chemical we need to talk about, the big one. It's called cortisol. Yeah, there's another one called adrenaline, and that also plays a factor obviously in the stress response.

And these are these are both hormones that are released by our body whenever our brain starts to think, this is a situation that needs to have uh, this particular reaction, and in general, what this reaction does is it prepares you for something that's about to happen right then and there. So in certain situations, like a tiger, you spot a tiger in the woods and you realize you need to get the heck out of Dodge. I don't know why there's a tiger and Dodge, but you've got to get

out of there. The tigers wielding a knife at the tiger is wielding a knife and threatening your job. This is this is the worst dresser that we can imagine. Son, Get out of done. So yeah, you you Your body starts to to react and you get you begin to have responses like your your senses start to sharpen. You begin to really be able to focus on certain things

while filtering out lots of other information. So when you're under stress, you might be keenly aware of the stressor I mean everything from your sense of sight and hearing, as well as your sense of smell. These things can all be really focused. But it also means that you are filtering out anything that would your brain would think is, well, that's not gonna threaten me, So we're just not going

to even pay attention to that, which is interesting. That's why people can react to situations very quickly but not necessarily have a lot of recollection of everything that was going on at that moment um. It also means that your muscles get ready to react. Your heart rate starts to increase, your breathing rate starts to increase. They're trying to oxygenate your brain and your muscles right right right, Get you ready to move. Moving is what you need to do. Write either either to fight or to to

run to the fight or flight. Our buddies over at stuff. You should know this is one of their favorite phrases. Anyone who had listened to that podcast, especially from the beginning, that was like their go to phrase for early episodes was fight or flight response. And so we're talking about here now there are different types of stressors. Uh that that this isn't necessarily something that's discussed at length in scientific literature, but there's the concept of distress versus you stress.

So you stress is this this is considered to be uh useful and uh that it's something that you are capable of handling. It can get you excited about something, it can it can really get you focused on something. So let's say that our boss comes in and says, hey, guys, we've got this opportunity for a brand new show and we want you to be a part of it. Assuming that that's something that we would like to do. Then we wind experience. You stress, We get excited about it.

Our body starts to respond, but it's not a negative experience, and that's you stress with an EU, and then distress would be the more negative type, something like the boss coming and says, we gotta you know, we gotta talk numbers, and they're just not where we want them to be. Then we start, you know, your stomach sinks, you know exactly or distress. Um, yeah, so we start, you start to feel uh, negative impact there. So stressors do not

automatically fall into you stress or distress. They are completely dependent upon not only the individual. So something that I find exciting, Joe might discover is not something he wants to do and it actually fills him with distress. For example. Uh, and maybe all three of us feel the same way about this. Who here, and do you guys enjoy roller coasters. Sure, yeah, not really. So you just don't care though, or do

you actively not like being on a roller coaster? You know, I wouldn't freak out like I'd get on one, but it's just not lot of fun, gotcha? Got you? All? Right? Well, well let's assume that we have a fourth person in here who just does not They are terrified of roller coasters. For them, the idea of getting in line to go on a roller coaster is just it's it's bad. Yeah,

it's bad. They're experiencing negative levels of stress. Lauren and I we might love roller coaster, so we're all excited and pumped up and ready to go, and and it's you know, it's again different for us, and it may be different for an individual depending upon the context. There might be a roller coaster that you lead me up to and I take one look at and I think this thing should have been condemned thirty years ago, and I might be filled with distress. Not you stress in

that situation. So it's not something that we can easily say all of this example is you stress, and all of this is distress. So all the things we've been talking about so far have been examples of what we might say is acute stress, like a specific stressor causes you to have a reaction in that moment, and and it's related to a specific period of time. But what if you were somebody who really hated roller hosters and your whole life is kind of like you're near the

back of a line waiting for roller coasts. So essentially what you're talking about is is chronic stress the idea of encountering stress on a regular basis, perhaps even a daily basis. So for example, people who absolutely despise their jobs. You know, I know that I've had jobs in the past where I just every day I would wake up, I would have to motivate myself to go to work because I did not like what I did. I might like the people I worked with, but I didn't like

the work I was doing. Uh, that of course does not apply. Right now, I got a dream job that I'm very happy about, but back in the day, not so much. And um, and that can be something that is a real uh difficult time for for a person to to deal with. I mean, you're encountering this level of stress, this this feeling of anxiety that you experien arians whenever stress is hitting you, but it's a prolonged experience. It's a chronic experience. This is a problem, and it's

a problem right now. It's been a problem forever. But it's one of those things we're really aware of. It's more than just the fact that it's unpleasant, though it's apparently really bad for your health. Well, yeah, I mean, let's let's look at some of the common reactions people

have when they are under stress. Here, there's a couple of different ways you can look at their three big categories that people tend to fall into when they're reacting to negative levels of stress, particularly over more than just you know, a momentary encounter. Uh. That is to get really keyed up and overly emotional and irritable and angry. I call that turning into hot spur from King Henry the fourth part one. These are all gonna have Shakespearean references.

Then there's uh, you get withdrawn into yes, withdrawn depressed. You get have low energy or you have very little expression of emotion. I call that Antonio from Merchant of Venice. Okay, but then you have frozen where you are unable to act or respond. You are agitated, but you are essentially emotionally paralyzed. Obviously Hamlet, right, so I tell you, I

mean Shakespeare he was really good at somewhere. No, no, the Shakespearean Well, I mean the reactions, the categories I took from from research, but the EXPERI characters, No, that was me. Well, I mean he was, he was very good at the human experience and expressing that. Right, So I mean kudos to him anyway. Other problems that are associated with stress include things like you can have problems with memory, so you can have problems forming and retaining

memories while you're undergoing stress over a prolonged period. Concentration is another issue, so while you might have a really sharp focus in the short over a longer period chronic stress can hurt your concentration. You can have issues with judgment where you start making bad decisions because you're feeling so much pressure that you just want to relieve it,

so you're not really considering what the consequences of your actions. Maybe. Uh, you can start suffering physical aches and pains from muscle tension and other issues of these hormones can really start to wreak havoc, especially like cortisol. If you have heightened cortisol production over a whild that can actually damage your muscles. It can cause to an even bone loss if you have heightened levels over a prolonged period of time. Uh. Nausea.

I mean there's other gastro intestinal issues such as diarrhea. Pleasant experience. Anyone who's ever had like that stressful feeling where they're just like, I have got to find a rest room and just hide for the next two hours. Uh. Loss of sex drive often accompanied when you have diarrhea. I would assume, Uh, there changes in eating habits, so you might start to over eat or you might stop eating. Uh, changes in sleeping habits where you are having insomnia you

have trouble getting sleep. Then it can lead to behavioral issues like procrastination where you just you know, even though you're feeling more and more stress about the fact that you need to do more stuff, it actually causes you to not act and you end up making it worse over time. Uh. You can develop a reliance on drugs to relieve the symptoms, whether that's a prescription, which you know, some people the stress they experience, medication maybe the best

approach for them to manage their stress. But there's a lot of self medicating that goes out out there, and not just with prescription drugs, but with things like recreational drugs or alcohol or tobacco or even coffee. Yeah, this kind of stuff where you're you're relying heavily on some other substance to help relieve the tension and stress. That's

your experience. And then they're just developing nervous habits, stuff that like biting your nails, things that uh, you know, it's kind of these these compulsions that you can develop as a result of enduring stress over a long time. And a lot of these I'll tie back into. I mean, when you're starting to talk about um sleep loss and uh and and fatigue and things like that, that's going to start affecting everything else in your life. Um, it's a it's going to affect your um, your immune system.

And and when you're sick, that's another stressor. I mean, because you know you can't you can't function, and yeah, yeah, you can have auto you can develop autoimmune diseases. You can develop you can well if you're if you have an overeating problem that can lead to obesity. You can suffer from depression, you can have uh, you can even

develop heart disease because of this, um. And you know, things like skin conditions, you can you can either end up well really you can exacerbate existing skin conditions like exima. So the stresses, I mean, it's a really powerful thing. The really terrifying one for me, if I can share this one, is that um uh, they've they've found that stress is linked to psychoses and and triggering things like schizophrenia that that don't on set until your your early adulthood.

That if if you know, given you know, if you take two identical twins and and one developed schizophrenia, the other one only has a chance of developing it even though they're genetically identical, because because the environment and the stressors in your life are so important to uh, to the development of the disease. Yeah. So, so, I mean, clearly stresses is pretty rough on on people. And and it may be rough not just on the person who's

experiencing the stress, but perhaps even to their offspring. Right. Yeah, there's this concept now known as epigenetic inheritance. Um and that's kind of a mouthful, but it means literally on top of the genes genetics. Yeah, um, And so to

explain epigenetics. Basically, it's the concept that without changing your d N A, without changing the code that makes up your body, um, environmental factors can make changes in the way that code is expressed right right, because your your RNA is is continually um picking what genes are turned on and turned off based on a lot of different stuff. And this is a completely normal process, not just due

to stress, but right. So, so you can have you've got DNA and all your cells and that's the building blocks for making you so but certain genes in there can be turned on, turned off, can be told to express themselves into different proteins at different points in your life and um, you know, due to uh, you know whatever whatever needs doing. Huh. And so one of these things that can cause epigenetic changes is stress, um and that that can change the way your DNA is manifest.

But also what some people are saying now is that might not be just for you, that those epigenetic changes might be able to pass on through say a sperm cell, to your offspring or even your grandchildren. Uh. This isn't proven yet, by the way, but there's a lot of research to indicate this might be the case. Right, And What's what's going on here is a process called methylation

inside your genes and that is UM. These these methyl groups UM will mark a particular gene to to just turn it off to just be like you sit down and and uh and there's you get a time out and in some cases of permanent time out and UM and it was you know that There's been an argument for a really long time about whether or not UM those markers can be passed on to a sperm and egg cell at all UM and and furthermore, you know, whether they would be wiped out during the fertilization process

and UM. And there is currently some evidence UM study out of yeah, the University of Cambridge that was published in late that showed that UM a tiny number of genes and UM mass germ cells the that's the sperm and the egg uh survived into the next generation like like two thirty three out of some thousand, which sounds

really tiny, but it's still it's still there. I mean yeah, interesting. Yeah, And so this is interesting because it ties into older concepts like Lamarckian is um if you'll ever heard of this. Lamarckian is um was the idea that uh that that you could take a characteristic developed or learned by the adult, and that adult could pass it on to their children just by birth. Um, that was before we understood genetics,

and now we know that that's essentially not true. Or you know the concept that if um, you know, if you work out and you have a really big bicep, that your child is not necessarily going to have a really big right, or that you are a capable king of England that your child. No, seriously, the entire monarchy system is based upon this concept. Well, that could be based on the idea well, I mean, excluding divine right

and stuff like that. That was also you could argue that there was some kind of genetic idea there that they didn't know about genetics. No, but I think I think the same sort of armchair born although I guess it was an armchair approach. It was more of a

throne approach a time. But yeah, the idea that learned or or adapted characteristics could be passed on, that's that's not so much true through the d n A. You're not altering your genome by doing that, but you can make these epigenetic changes and it's very possible, and lots of experts think that you can pass them on and maybe not, maybe not permanently. The studies that I've seen, um that have shown that traits are passed down to

at least one or two generations, um in mice. These are not human studies, um are I have shown that that the results peter out after about two generations. I haven't seen anything that has gone on longer than that. Yeah, but I explains the millennials. A lot of these are these tests they've done on mice are related to stress, right right, Yeah, Yeah, that's that that that's the the main thingy, the science thingy tie in. Yeah, the main variable, yes,

thank you. Yeah. So like that, they'll expose say, male mice to u nic chronic stress something you know, preventing them from from being in a in a social group or something like that, thrending the mouse jobs. Yeah, and then they have those mice mate with females, and sure enough the offspring they produce show increased levels of stress and difficulty difficulty dealing with stress responses. Yeah, so let's let's talk now. I'm starting to get stressed out by

this whole conversation. Really, we might need to start talking about ways of managing stress in the way to relieve stress. And uh, you know, there's been a lot of work that's been done in this some of it has been you know, um, not necessarily held up against scientific rigor, although several approaches have. But it's there are ways to manage stress without necessarily going down the route of medication, although again that might be appropriate depending upon the circumstances

of the individual. Um, you know, there are some things that are you know, really body chemistry issues that no amount of deep breathing techniques are necessarily going to address. Well, we should certainly say that it's not all environmental. Some people are just prone distressed, right, genetically predisposed, pre predisposed predisposed distress. And uh, and those people are very likely the people who are need to seek a medical response,

right right, So it's or at least a combination of therapies. Right, Well, we don't we just don't want to suggest that there's any one way that you know, all you have to do is just take a little moment for yourself and you'll be fine. It's more complicated in that, although for for many people doing just that can help a great deal. So, um, first I wanted to mention something along the lines of along the less scientific approach. Uh so, so clearly everything

from stress management. I mean, this is a big deal. We all have stress in our lives, and we're perhaps more aware of that now than we've ever been before. And uh and you know, it's an unpleasant experience, and a lot of our time and effort tends to be dedicated towards creating as pleasant an experience as we can possibly manage at any given time. If you're not if you're not constantly worried about survival, if that rory has taken away from you, then comfort becomes one of your

big drivers for a lot of us. Anyway, some people I guess like discomfort, but I'm not one of those. I'm one of the people who I want my life to be as comfortable as possible. So that means that there's been a lot of time, effort, and money spent and on finding ways to make stress kind of go away. In some cases, it's more like a marketing thing where someone's trying to sell some goofy device or treatment that magnets. Yeah, magnets, that's a good one. They won't don't listen to anybody

who tells you that magnets are going to reduce your stress. Now, here's the here's the thing, is that that because stress because of stress in the way stress uh works on our bodies, in the way that our our counter stress reactions work. Relaxation essentially, the way relaxation works is if you find something that relaxes you technically, that's helpful. That's

what's helping you manage stress. It doesn't you know whether or not you it's because you believe that it has some sort of mystical or spiritual property to it doesn't necessarily matter. The plassybo effect in um in mental health studies is I mean, you know, again, if if you're not working with an intrinsic chemical imbalance, which which is affecting you in a very specific way, it can absolutely work out for you. Yeah. Well, even if it is

affecting you. Interesting, that's you know what that would be in a very interesting podcast. Because the placebo effect is so complex, it goes well beyond just the whole mind over matter thing. Placebo effect can actually affect people like placebo effet can affect animals because they their behavior can change based upon the behavior of the people who are administering the placebo to the animal. Right, It's it's pretty

crazy stuff. Anyway, getting back to this, one of the things I was looking at was while the concept of electro diagnostic tools, these this is a whole range of wou that's what we usually call it. It's it's quack science. It's not even science really, it's just quackery. And it's the idea of a device detect some sort of vague energy and balance in a person. Yeah, I was gonna say, I hope you're not talking about skin conductance tests, because those have been used in a lot of cases to

determine physiological structure. It can determine a physiological response. I'm talking about more vague than that, Like your energy is out of alignment, your key points are are blocked, and you need to have some blockage removed from your ch otherwise you're just having chi backups up the yen yang. So we gotta undo the yen yang and get that chieflow. And that's all ridiculous and there's no scientific basis for it now, scientifically speaking, Lauren is Lauren's qualifying. It's ridiculous,

is what Jonathan says. Um So, but no, this is this is there is no scientific basis, so they like, for instance, acupuncture. Some people find acupuncture to be very relaxing, which means that as a relaxation technique it's perfectly valid. Right. It means that they are relaxing, that is being uh, it's countering the stress response. They are there for relieving stress. Now, acupuncture as a method of practicing medicine has no real

scientific backing to it at all. In fact, any reputable scientific study shows that if you were to follow the traditional process of acupuncture, where you are applying the pens to very specific points on the body, the meridians, where you're trying to align the energy flow, that that has no effect compared to someone who is trained well enough to know how to place the needles, but is not

placing them in any particular place. And I think it's worth being fair to these traditions, we should say, yet, you know, it's possible that someday we could discover that, oh well, actually there is something to acupuncture. But yeah, I agree with you. As of yet, there's nothing to do it. I've find it. I find it highly unlikely that there is this vaguely described energy that flows through us that someone has discovered and yet there is no evidence for it. Whatso, yeah, I do as well, because

otherwise incredible luck philosophical prudence here. All right, that's fair. I will admit I am. I am a complete hardcore skeptic. Uh and that should should such evidence arrive as to suggest that there is more to it than just this relaxation response, then I would be I would be intellectually dishonest to deny that. Of course, I just really don't expect that to happen. Of course, it's interesting. For some people the relaxation response is enough. Like we were just saying, well,

that's the thing is that actually do it for you? Really? Like that's that's the thing is that the relaxation response is really what I think is helping people. Now, how you get that relaxation response really depends upon your own personal approach and what you prefer, and that can be anything from just taking some very simple exercises like deep breathing, uh and in a in a quiet space, you know,

just kind of taking some time just for yourself. Mindfulness is definitely a good, um, a good proven exercise of of just you know, choosing what you are and are not being stressed about actively at that point, while we're getting into these uh, these sort of pseudo scientific, pseudo spiritual realms, I do think it's worth mentioning that there is some good data that says meditation actually can reduce

stress relies, right. And I think though that meditation is almost more of the ritualistic approach to employing relaxation techniques, and it does have other elements to it, but they really just fall really in line with simple relaxation techniques. Now, that doesn't mean that meditation is bad or that you shouldn't do it, or that it's not it's not effective.

It is effective, but it's it's you know, I think it would be it could be, depending again on your personal preferences, just as effective for you to have an unstructured approach to relaxation as meditation. Meditation does, however, provide a particular approach to relaxation. Meditation, I mean, there's there are, there are some of some of some of them are very unstructured, right Yeah. But and again it's it's not

like it's not like meditation. You know, everything from yoga to UH to even transcendental meditation can be very relaxing for you if that's something that you find really helps pull the stress away. So really, at this point, we're saying, you find the activity that helps you let go of stress, and that is your relief of stress. It's kind of you know, it's it's autology. I mean, you know, you're like, but but it really it really is. That's the case.

So it doesn't necessarily mean that, you know, you don't say that that meditation has no merit. You might say that this particular form of meditation doesn't seem to really fit with the way you view the world. That's perfectly fine. It may work very well for someone who their views do align that way and that's why they find it relaxing. So in that sense, I think that any any approach where you are going into it thinking this is something I am doing in order to relax myself, and this

is how it works for me. I think that's perfect for the way you want to relieve stress. If you go beyond that, too, this thing also allows me to conquer the world through my amazing mental powers. Then I get a little antsy, But as far as stress goes, I totally I totally go into that. Okay, So I mean, you know, it's it's no, it's it is what it is,

but it's it. You know, I certainly have used meditation techniques to UH to relieve stress in the past, so it's not like I would look down upon anyone for

using similar techniques for themselves. You know, there's UH. There was something I read that was in interesting and suggesting that it wasn't even just the in the moment effects, you know, the physiological effects of the meditation session, but that the cumulative effects of say mindfulness meditation on your psyche might actually have a long term UH correlation, at

least in the decrease in the stress. So I think I read a UC Davis study saying essentially that that mindfulness by ranking mindfulness, which could be achieved through mindfulness meditation, is sort of a long term effect of what you do in these sessions was correlated with lower levels of cortisol and UH and lower stress in general. But they don't know there's it's necessarily a causation, right shut sure,

it's related. UM. And you know, any time that you're that you're controlling your own breathing, you can strengthen your respiratory system, which is definitely part of that entire whole body, uh being less sick and sleeping good and stuff like that. And these these changes like things like eating well and trying to make sure you get enough sleep and uh taking time to relax, these are things that can certainly

impact your long term levels of stress. UH. Being able to recognize what what stressors are the ones that affect you also very helpful so that you can recognize when you are entering into a stressful situation and start to you know, prepare yourself for it and know that you say things to yourself like, yes, this is a stressful situation, but it's completely within my capability to handle, and it may mean that you need to do something like either

change the stressful situation if that's within your power, or yourself from it, or if that's within your power. If that's not, then you start to say, all right, well, I cannot avoid the stressful situation, but I can at least be aware of and perhaps even alter my react action to it so that it is a useful reaction, not something that's just going to make it even more

difficult for me to get through this stressful situation. So there's one thing that I think we should touch on that, as far as I know, has a really good scientific pedigree in dealing with stress. And that's exercise certainly, right, Yeah, exercise both while you are in the process of exercising and uh and and for a little while afterwards. UM

reduces the production of stress hormones like adrenaline and cortisol. Um, and can increase the production of endorphins, which are you know, kind of natural painkillers and um, feel good, feel good body drugs. Um. Well that makes sense to me. I mean, obviously I'm no doctor, so tell me if I'm wrong, because you're a doctor. But if you're you're the doctor

between the three of us, I think. Well, I mean, if if cortisol and adrenaline are supposed to prepare you for an athletic response to the tiger drawing a knife on you, then obviously it would seem that what your body is needs to do to get rid of those

extra hormones is to enact that athletic response. Well. Um, and I mean you know anyone who um you know, if if you're a runner and you hit that runners high, Um, that is that is those endorphins that I was talking about, That that your system is just being gleefully flooded with UM. And and there is a little bit of UM adrenaline

involved in working out. But but by exercising frequently, your body learns how to regulate the production of those stress hormones more efficiently and so UM, so you know, it will be a little bit less of a burst. If something bad does happen, then you might otherwise have UM

you know. For furthermore, UM exercising will make you sleep more deeply, which helps prevent some of those um uh you know, poor immune responses that you can get and uh uh And also I mean sleeping more deeply also means that you are you are actually being able to to deal with the stress over time, because as if you're not sleeping, if're not sleeping, well that just starts to add to the stress, which means that you have this growing avalanche of stress that is hitting you each day,

and each day is a little worse than the day before. It kind of reminds me of that scene in Office Space where he says, you know, every day is the worst day of your life, and then the next day is even worse, So therefore that becomes the worst day of your life. So every single day is the worst day of your life at that point. That's kind of how people feel when they're overwhelmed by stress and they have these factors coming in, especially if they have insomnia.

I mean, it's one of those things that just it accumulates each day. So being a yeah, well, I mean, but that's it's very much. When I saw that part of the movie, even though he was just talking about his experience of going to work and also his relationship with his girlfriend at the time, when he's talking about that kind of stuff, I'm thinking, that is a great expression of what long term stress feels like. Every day is the worst day of your life or is flogging

Molly would say, it's been the worst day since yesterday. Uh. Exercise also well um uh. If you do it regularly, lower your your your blood pressure and improve your cholesterol account um, you know, reduce your blood sugar. UM. Blood sugar for those of you who are not hypoglycemic and don't have to think about this all all the time, is when you when your blood sugar drops um, very very sharply and very suddenly. It is kind of physiologically

identical to having an anxiety attack. UM. I both kind of experienced this, yeah, and and so so if you you know, diet um improving your diet eating you know, more vegetables, more fiber, more lean meats. Um, you know, getting getting the right balance of nutrients for your body. And that is not necessarily what the balance is for anybody else. So you know, pay attention and work it

out for yourself. Um, which I know is not is not the friendliest in vice and being able to uh to to visit with a doctor or nutritionists can be of great help. It can, it can, but um, but but all of that can also absolutely decrease your stress levels excellent. Well you know, I mean, I'm sure all of us here have dealt with periods of our life where we went through a great deal of stress in

one way or another. And uh, you know, I, like I said, I certainly think that anything that you find that relaxes you where you're not hurting yourself or someone else is a good thing. So I highly recommend, you know, trying out different approaches and finding what works for you to relieve stress levels so that you don't experience this kind of chronic stress, which is really a tough thing to be in. I mean, I can think of there was a six month period where I was out of work.

Uh that by the end of it, I was really in bad shape. And uh, if I had not found ways to relieve that stress, I'm sure that I would have been an even worse shape. So certainly something to look into if you are dealing with these kind of issues. So a lot of the things we have just been talking about have been things that require your initiative. And you know, I'm all for self reliance and and having

a personal initiative, but sometimes that's hard, right. I'm kind of interested in what things we could think about, uh doing that could sort of ambiently reduce our stress in a way that we don't have to think about or work hard on personally, or there ways of just creating environments that help reduce stress automatically. I think any environment that has a distinct lack of knife wielding tigers would help. Yeah,

I would. I would imagine that you know that that that relatively um peaceful environments, you know, one of the ones that are more or less quiet, perhaps have growing things. Um well, I mean it does know sudden noises. It doesn't help that our office has a guy with a burlap sack and a chainsaw, you know, running around constantly. I find that very relaxing personally. Yeah. Uh, Well, here's one thing I found out about and I thought this

was really interesting. You could look to geometric patterns, geometric patterns, geometric patterns to reduce stress. Now, this is from based on a paper published in the journal Leonardo. It was by the physicist Richard Taylor, and it was published in two thousand and six. It was called Reduction of Physiological

Stress using Fractal Art and Architecture. And I thought this paper was really interesting because it talked about how apparently our brains respond to certain geometric patterns in a way that reduces stress. Um. So he cites a NASIS study that had been done years before, I think in nineteen six that had people performing different mental tasks, so they'd have to do creative thinking or mental arithmetic, or solve

a logic problem. And the variable they altered was what these people were looking at when they had to do these tasks. Now, one of the things was a certain nature scene, and then there was a different nature scene that showed like a tree on a savannah, and then there was this artificial, synthetic kind of pattern of lines and what they found was that one of these one of the nature scenes, the savannah tree, significantly lowered the

stress these people were feeling. They tested stress in between these uh these exercises by galvanic skin conductance so UM and that's been used in other studies to test physiological stress before UM and what they discovered was that this savannah try really lowered people stress levels compared to the other sites, and that seemed interesting. UM. And one thing he looked at was the fractal patterns that were manifest

in these different images. So what are fractal patterns. Well, so you imagine Euclidean geometry and that's the normal geometry we think of like triangles and circles, then love crafty and geometry. Yeah, it's not not very cathulu shaped. Um. But then when we start thinking about things that are cathulu shaped, like Caula exactly, he's so fractal. Well, you start talking about fractal geometry, and this is a concept

that's really interesting. Essentially, fractal geometry is something that it shows patterns that reproduce at any level of resolution, So you can keep zooming in and you'll see the same patterns emerged no matter how far you zoom in or zoom out, and you could think about how fractal patterns actually manifest a lot in nature like we noticed them. If you look at patterns of branches on trees in the forest, um, you get really close and you see the same kind of patterns in the veins of the

leaves and the small eiggs. And then you zoom back out and you see the branches, and you zoom further out and you see the forest itself, the same patterns emerged. You can see the same thing in like mountain crags. So you zoom in on one specific little crag and it's the same kind of shape as a mountain as a whole. Yeah, the pebble is overall um. And it turns out, according to this research, we really like looking at this stuff. We find fractal plat patterns inherently pleasing.

If you've ever watched any video of a Mandel broad set, as it just continuously zooms further and further into the fractal pattern, you might have experienced this. And one thing Taylor finds in his paper is that in this NASA study with the with the physiological response to looking at these different images, the image that people had the greatest stress reduction from was showing the most fractal geometry, and showed he essentially, so there's a way of thinking about

fractal things called D values. And so you can imagine a picture that's just got a line across the middle, and he says, that would have a D value of one. And then you can imagine a picture that's completely black, uh, instead of just the one black line, and that's a two. And so fractal D values are expressed between one and two. And he found that mid range D values between like one point three and one point five were the ones

that people liked the best. And so there's actually a way of determining geometric patterns that can help people reduce the stress they feel when they've got, you know, just going on. So uh, he he suggests, well, what if we think about incorporating this into architecture, because the fact of these geometric patterns showed up whether we're looking at nature or whether we're looking at paintings or just any

shapes whatsoever. So what if you could build buildings that had these pleasing fractal patterns that made people feel less stress or just paint jobs, right, yeah, whatever wallpaper or the big one I thought about is in our digital displays. I mean you look at your Microsoft word layout. There's a lot of Euclidean geometry. It's boxes and stuff like that.

And if that blue background was instead of pleasing fractal pattern like yeah Jackson Pollock kind of thing, or a bunch of forest branches, that could actually have a potentially

really important and positive effect on our stress lest calming effect. Yeah. Interesting, So I you know, one way you could think about it is will we live in these sort of fractal metropolis is well along those same lines, there's something that this this almost falls more in the WOU category in a way, just simply because it's unsupported by by any real scientific study that I've seen. But the idea of

binaral beats. Have you has heard about these? Oh? I've heard. Yeah, I don't know what to deal with that is so binarial. It means that you're getting frequencies in in both ears. Now, the actual um effect of binarial beats was discovered by a guy named Heinrich ville Helm Dove back in the

mid nineteenth century. So now the effect is that he discovered that if you played a certain if you played frequencies in one ear in a different set of frequencies and another ear, you would actually perceive interference beats the same way you would if those beats were actually physically

being made at that time. Like the combination of these two frequencies that you are perceiving would create the perception of beats that aren't physically really there, but they would if you know, if you were to create them physically, they would be it would sound the same to you. So that was pretty much the extent of his discovery. He did not suggest that these would be somehow capable

of creating specific reactions in your brain. However, today you've got a growing population of people who have made claims that these sort of beats could create different experiences, everything akin to a deep relaxation to euphoria, as if you were experiencing some form of high from a recreational drug. And uh, there doesn't seem to be really any verifiable

scientific evidence for that those claims. That doesn't mean that they that it won't one day exist, but right now there doesn't seem to be anything that along the lines. In fact, a lot of the studies I've seen, or at least a lot of the initial response I've seen, seems to suggest that there's more about the power of suggestion being going on here than any kind of actual

physiological response. That being said, it may be that listening to some of these tones, which are really they tend to be in the very low frequency range, so very deep tones, that listening to them can some for some people at least help them, uh when they are trying to meditate, so it can be an aid. So, you know, it's an interesting concept. It's similar to what you're talking about, using the your sense of sight to look at something

very specific that will have a calming effect. In this case, it's listening to something that would have been engineered to have a calming effect on you. The question, though, is does it really have a demonstrable physiological effect beyond some people just find it relaxing to listen to, as opposed to there being the relaxation is being induced in some way. Um, we don't have all the information there, so we can't

really draw a conclusion. And uh, you know, again, it may turn out that this is something that under scientific study proves that hey, there's something to this beyond Uh, some claims that people have made and it goes beyond the power of suggestion. Uh, I just haven't seen anything

that supports that yet. But it's another interesting approach of the idea of catering to your senses in a way to induce calming and relax station because, like you said, you know, sometimes you're in a situation where you can you could tell yourself, I need to relax a thousand times not necessarily helpful when that tiger with a knife is firing you. Yeah. Well, that's one of the big problems, isn't it that we just even though we know we should relax, we often don't have the presence of mind

to do it. And uh there. So there's another thing that I thought was interesting, is I wonder to what extent technology could help you, Like, can you have a relaxation app? Now these things already exist, actually tons of apps. You can buy the calm down app, you know, but they all rely on you, right right, They tell you take a time out, and then well they rely on

they rely on you to activate them. Right. You have like like I'm feeling stressed out, I need to hit the I'm feeling stressed out button, right but we often just don't have the presence of mind to do that, right,

I went till we're at full panic mode. Yeah, I wonder if a there there could be a situation where, you know, you buy a special mouse that has galvanic skin conductance on the buttons and it tests your stress right there, and it can give your computer like, well, even though he doesn't know it, he's this stressed out right now, you need to kick in the calm down app.

I'm just flashing back to a specific episode of The I T. Crowd where they had a stress test machine and and uh and and Moss and Roy just decided that that was their opportunity to test the machine as opposed to using the machine to test their stress. They would watch someone using it and then they would try to stress the person out just to watch the needle

move back and forth. Good times. Well, you know, I certainly hope if any of you out there listening have had issues with stress in the past, or maybe you're currently having problems with stress, you know, take some of the stuff that we've said into consideration, try some different relaxation techniques. You know, it may be that you need to look at things like your sleep schedule, you're the your diet, and and you know, consulting a physician is

not a bad idea. Yeah, I was gonna say the best thing to do is not listen to us, probably but talk to your doctor. Well again again, if it's if it's one of those things where you're just like, oh man, I'm just I'm tense, that's one thing. If it's if it's medically you know, a medically uh something that needs to be addressed by medicine, obviously, go see

a physician. I mean it's you know, if it's something where you're just kind of like, I'm tired of being tense all the time, then it may just mean that you need to get more sleep, eat better, and exercise a bit and take some time to relax. That definitely sounds easier than it is. I mean, I know that their ties when I get home and I think where did all my time go? But but it is important and if you're able to do that, then it can

really help out a lot. And again, you know, consult a physician if you are experiencing chronic stress and and and chronic health problems that might be related to stress. This is important stuff. So um, that wraps up this discussion. Guys, we we want you to be part of our conversation here. Make sure that you email us with any comments or suggestions you might have for future episodes. That is FW thinking at discovery dot com and go to www. Dot fw thinking dot com to check out all the videos,

the blog posts, podcasts. We've got a lot of cool links up there. We think you'd be really interested in them, so go check those out and we will talk to you again really soon. For more on this topic in the future of technology, visit forward thinking dot com brought to you by Toyota. Let's go Places,