¶ Resilience, Stress, and Longevity
Welcome back to the event . Our guest will be speaking on resilience and stress , and you're going to learn how both of these play a critical role in our longevity when you stay till the end . Our presenter for this discussion is a friend as well as an international recognized expert in resilience and optimal functioning .
He's also associate professor at the UCLA School of Medicine and we're delighted to have him with us on the program . Let's go ahead and jump on in . Hey , Steve , welcome to the show show . This is so much fun . Hey , good to be with you , rob .
Yeah , we've done a lot of these together , I know I know well , I'm so excited to hear about resilience and and stress and how they contribute to longevity . But but first , maybe a question always comes up a lot with stress is that in our audience a couple people have asked it goes wait , is stress good or is stress bad ?
And then you know it comes down to like one kind of stress is good , acute stress is good , One kind of stress is bad . How can that be ? Well , first of all , what is stress and how can it have such different effects ?
Yeah , I actually in my book I have that as one of the titles is stress good or bad ? And I say , yes , it's good and it's bad . But stress is an evolutionary defense survival mechanism . It helps us survive .
Unfortunately , or fortunately actually fortunately we don't have the same level of survival needs that our hunter-gatherer ancestors that , moment by moment , had to worry about either fighting for survival or running for survival . So they had this fight or flight mechanism that served them very well . But today we have that same , that very same survival mechanism .
So there's a mismatch . So we mobilize for fight or flight and then most of that energy we have to hold in and it creates an imbalance , what we call autonomic dysregulation syndrome , because we're continually activating that stress response , activating our bodies , but we don't give ourselves the opportunity to recover .
We don't give ourselves the opportunity to turn down the activation and then turn up the recovery branch of the nervous system . So there are aspects of stress that serve us . It helps us focus better , it helps us be more motivated . So we need a certain amount of stress , a certain amount of activation , to be at our best .
The problem is , there's this window where , if you look at the curve , yes , we need a certain amount for best performance . But we have that window of best performance and when we go past that too much stress , too much accumulation of that activation , accumulation of that activation performance and our health starts to fall by the wayside .
You mentioned an important concept autonomic dysregulation . Can you unpack that a little bit for us so that we make sure everybody understands that .
Yes , it's a very important concept and it's at the heart of whether you're in good relationship with stress or not . So we have two branches to the nervous system the sympathetic branch that activates , to stress , to danger , to performance , and the parasympathetic that helps us recover after a stressful experience .
And so what you want to be able to do is balance those two branches of the nervous system , those two mechanisms , so that you're recovering and you're staying in a place of sustainability . You know , we talk about sustainability of the planet , of the earth , but there's sustainability of our own biology , right , and so we want those to be in balance .
And for most of us , we keep ramping up the stress and we don't recover . So , for example , so , for example , worry is a good example of the use of our energy that gets wasted , right . So we worry and our bodies don't know that , whether the thing we're worrying about is really going to happen or not .
But our bodies mobilize because our bodies don't want to take the risk , right . So we think is this going to happen , Is that going to happen , or why is this ? And our bodies mobilize and we're continually using up the resources of our body . So we want those two to be in balance .
So when you finish a stressful experience , you want to say to yourself , you want to remind yourself okay , let me take a break . Even a short break after a stressful experience helps to reset that balance was talking about an interesting concept .
They were saying that experiences in themselves are sort of neutral and the stress is primarily from the meaning that we assign to the experience . And they use the guy walking in the rain and he's he's worrying because his house is leaking , his clothes are all wet and he's , you know , autonomically dysregulated . He's stressed out . It's a negative experience .
Another person walking in the rain is feeling my God , this rain , it's so beautiful , it's warm , it's replenishing the earth and he's just smiling , glowing . It's a loving experience . Is that the right way to look at it or are we missing something there ?
No , I think it's exactly right . Of course there's certain things that are inherently stressful , but what you're pointing out is our perspective , our interpretation , our mindset is a very important aspect of whether stress hurts you or whether you become resilient .
So the example I give , which is a more common one , is you see someone walking toward you , you know , and they sort of disregard you , and you walk on and you worry did I say something wrong to this guy that he's upset with me and now you've created stress .
Someone else might say you know , joe must have got up on the wrong side of the bed today , or maybe he has a toothache or something like that , but we don't attribute it to ourselves .
So interpretations , evaluations of situations can be , as you say , more neutral and we don't have a stress response , or we experience them as create , as some kind of danger , and then we have a stress response .
You know , one of the things that is so important in this area and I see it more and more when we don't address some of the hurts and wounds of childhood , we can get triggered in the present as an adult , and what happens a lot is there's something in our environment that triggers old hurts , old wounds , and we start to feel a little bit of anxiety , a
little bit of activation . And we start to feel a little bit of anxiety , a little bit of activation . Now that activation has nothing to do with what's going on today , but yet we feel this feeling in our body . That's an indication of danger .
And then we start scanning our environment to see where the danger is and we assume there is a real danger and it maintains in the present that triggered reaction that has nothing to do with anything in the present Follow . So , yeah , this is the source of a lot of anxiety and worry today and it has nothing to do what's going on right now .
It has to do what we carry in our bodies that get triggered . And now we notice attention and we assume it has to do with some present danger , because that's our instinctual mechanism . But it's really a result of something that we're carrying unfinished business from the past .
It's sort of like . At one hand , it's a valuable survival skill . If my hand is burned on a fire , I scan the environment going forward for fires anywhere or flames , and I stay away from them as a healthy response .
On the other hand , and I stay away from them as a healthy response On the other hand , if I had a negative relationship with a redheaded person , subconsciously I may scan the environment , you know , in a very simplified thing , and if I see someone with red hair , I may project on them those kinds of things .
Now we always hear people talk about the default mode network in our brains . Is that related to this process of projecting the past onto the future and doing this ?
Yes , yes it is . And so before I was talking about an evolutionary mismatch between the environment we live in and the stress response that we've , that we still have from our hunter-gatherer ancestors . The same mismatch occurs developmentally . So we're born and we're learning to cope with our environment .
We're learning how to survive in our environment , but we adapt to our childhood environment . We adapt primarily to the little small family we grow up in . That's our model of the world and perhaps the immediate community around that world and perhaps the immediate community around that .
So we adapt to that and then to a great extent our adaptation freezes to that environment . And why does it freeze to that environment ? Because that's survival learning and that goes in very deeply .
So messages of being inadequate , messages of not being good enough , get further reinforced , because the way we approach the world as an adult or as we're growing up and as an adult is we look for what validates those messages and we dismiss what doesn't validate , and so it perpetuates the lessons of childhood , and that's why change is difficult .
And you know , in my book that's the key idea that I want to get across is how you change those old imprinted messages , and that's why change is so difficult for all of us .
Well , that's such an important message . So it's almost like , if I let me get see if I get this right , like if I have a childhood where I am hurt all the time and I construct a reality of the world as a very dangerous , hurtful place , then as I go out in my life as an adult , I will validate that by seeing hurtful things .
And , yes , I will find those hurtful things and or not necessarily find them , but I will only recognize the hurtful things , things , and I'll maybe ignore the loving , beautiful things that are there that I would have seen if I had a different childhood experience .
Right , yes , exactly we , and it's unfortunate it's actually a survival mechanism as well . You know , if we , if we grow up in an environment that's dangerous , then we expect , as an adult , there to be dangerous , and so it's a instinctual survival mechanism to look for those dangers .
But it doesn't allow us to sort of reboot our ability to adapt based on new experiences and what's really true in the present .
And so that becomes very important to find ways of letting of not being anchored by those lessons of the past and to be more open to seeing the world anew , like through a child's eyes , so to speak , so that you can relearn how this world actually works .
And it turns out that when you focus on the negative , your brain actually becomes sensitized to the negative . If you focus on the positive , guess what your brain gets sensitized to the positive and determines which direction you go moment by moment in your life .
So it's possible . It's fascinating .
¶ Neuroplasticity and Resilience Building
I love the work on actually visualizing this mechanism in the brain . I guess they do it with functional MRI or something . They found this default mode network which projects , you know , for better or worse , the past . It filters the future through the past and , like you say , it's a survival mechanism . It's healthy , but it can also be unhealthy .
And now that they've seen that , they're beginning to uncover different tools to turn off the default mode network or turn it down for short periods of time to let people reprogram their view of reality . And yeah , can you talk about that a little bit ?
Yeah , so we can create windows of neuroplasticity . Neuroplasticity is neuroplastic . It's actually engaging your brain to make new and different connections . So you can think of creating a network in your brain based on lessons of childhood .
It's like you're walking up to this forest and there's all of this bush , but there's one path that's clearly cut and of course , you're going to go to that path and that's the network that gets continually reinforced in our brain , the default network .
Now , in order to create new neuroplasticity , you have to go over there to someplace else and you have to take out your machete and you have to start hacking away . In a sense , you have to have a new focus . Your mindset has to . You have to intentionally shift your mindset to what you want to achieve .
What you want to accomplish and to see the world in a more positive way and to see yourself in a more positive way . And it's difficult because your brain wants to keep going to that path that's nicely developed and easy to walk on , the old pattern , the old path , and we have to go over here and we have to keep hacking away .
But after a while , if you stay with that intention , if you wake up every morning with an intention to be positive , an intention to focus on what's possible as opposed to what's difficult .
After a while , that new path you'll be creating a new path there and if you stay consistent , the old path will start to grow weeds and it will be more difficult to go through .
So every moment in our lives here's the key message Every moment in our lives , we have a choice and that choice is to stay on the path that's easier , but the old path , or to go wait a second . This isn't getting me what I want in life . This isn't taking me where I want to go .
Let me go over here with intention , because I know if I stay focused here , I'll get to something good in my life . My life will be better . Every moment we have the choice and it's hard to recognize because the old pattern is so automatic . We do it all , we do it all the time , but we have to go wait a second time out . Let me stop that .
It's not taking me where I want to go . Let me go over here .
So , other than willpower and sort of waking up in education and learning about it and then making a decision which is great , you know if we can do that , what are other strategies , alternatives to that or in addition to that , to sort of amplify the effectiveness of it ?
Right . So , by the way , we're not born with willpower we develop it , just like we're not born with self-confidence we build it . Okay , so all of these things are the function of the choices we make moment by moment willpower success in our lives depends on .
There's a saying easy choice , difficult life , difficult choice , easy life , and it fits for what we're talking about right here . So there are components to becoming more resilient . One is this mindset that I'm talking about , which is a positive mindset , which is a mindset of embracing challenge rather than shrinking from that .
So , for example , a lot of times , people that I work with will say OK , I guess I have to do that , and I say wait a second . If you're going to do it , embrace it , it'll make a difference in your success . So it's attitude .
It's the attitude of I want my life to be better and I'm going to do whatever it takes to make that happen , and that's , and that kind of idea of uh develops trust in yourself and all kinds of positives . But it's a moment by moment process .
One other thing I want to say is that , because of this imbalance between stress and recovery , it's so important for everybody to practice some form of relaxation on a daily basis , practice some form of relaxation on a daily basis .
That's what activates the recovery branch of the nervous system , and we lose a lot of that ability over time because of the imbalance that's where insomnia , sleep problems , originate from . That's an early sign that your nervous system is dysregulated , that you have too much stress .
So there are a lot of pieces to the puzzle , but the good news is that as you grow resilience that curve that I talked about earlier , where there's this window of activation where you have the best performance and then it drops off the more resilient you are , the more you push that curve further out , the more stress you can handle before either performance or
health drops off . So that's the resilience advantage .
Yeah , it sounds very similar to kind of or at least some of the things that I experienced with my patients about sugar . You know it's , most people understand now . You know how harmful sugar is and it's bad for them heart disease you know all this stuff and they can understand it .
But it's , it's a matter of the willpower and and for some patients , no matter how much they steal themselves , it's not enough just to read the articles or to have someone you know harangue them about it and they , for these people , they may need to get in a coaching program where they in a community where they have not quite AA , but they , they do the whole
thing . Support , support , yeah , and and then for some of those people it's not even enough . They need pharmaceuticals .
So they'll , they'll go to low dose naltrexone , which is a , an addiction medicine that's used for all sorts of substance addiction , which also interestingly happens to work for sugar , and it also happens to increase longevity , which is an interesting . It's a whole nother conversation just from the longevity effects . But for I wonder for this are there ? Are there ?
I guess I'm trying to lead you into the pharmaceutical and also the things with like , basically with meditation , where you could turn off the default mode network and suddenly , you know the voices are a little quieter in the past in the world .
You look at it with new eyes , or with the psychedelics , of course , classically turning off the default mode network with the PTSD people who you know . It's a classic case of the world . The past experiences really shouldn't define their future . But are those valid , do you think , or what do you think of those ?
Well , first of all , I want to thank you for being my support about getting off sugar . Rob Ranging me about sugar .
I rang myself about it .
It had a positive impact . Yeah , I think if you're opening the window of neuroplasticity , so some psychedelics appear to be doing that . But meditation does quiet the default mode , Biofeedback does quiet the default mode . So using some of these techniques are very helpful also in opening up this window of neuroplasticity .
Are there any other techniques we should think about for that ? In there you mentioned a bunch of broad ones .
I guess Any others we should think about so practicing a relaxation , a visualization on a daily basis , the whole notion of creating affirmations . Affirmations are what I refer to as as-if statements . So whatever your goal is if it's to get off sugar , that could be a goal you create an as if statement , as if you've already achieved the goal .
So your brain doesn't know the difference . So when you continually repeat and meditate on these statements , you're essentially creating neural connections in your brain , almost as if you're got your machete out there . And you're essentially creating neural connections in your brain , almost as if you're got your machete out there and you're hacking this new path .
So it contributes to setting the stage for new , laying down new pathways in your brain . So I have my clients write three or four affirmations that they read throughout the day for the achievement of the goals that they are wanting . Again , the statement is written and spoken as if it's already achieved . So that's another very helpful approach .
¶ The Nine Pillars of Resilience
So this resiliency and I love your book , by the way , we were talking about that Again , it's the best book I've ever read on that subject but the resilience , it's almost a resilient mindset right that addresses so many of these problems we've been talking about today stress , longevity , all these factors , I mean it seems like such a good , good thing .
What's the biggest obstacle ? Why isn't everybody adopting this mindset and resilience ? What's the pushback or what's the problem that most people face ?
So , rob , I actually have an entire chapter in my book on people's resistance . So and I'll give you we we spoke about the two mismatches , but I'm going to give you another interesting reason why we all have resistance . Think about all of your successes in your life , and I guarantee that every one of them Was associated with stress In our lives .
When we achieve something that's a goal and we feel successful , it's usually brought about through certain stressful events . A test we're taking an important speech , we're making an important meeting , we're doing a time pressure on something we have to produce All of our successes are paired with stress .
One of my early mentors was Donald Hebb , who actually coined the phrase neurons that fire together wire together , and so we've got this association between success and stress . Okay , that's the big one of the biggest sources of resistance we have . We're not going to control something that's leading us to success .
In fact , we're going to unconsciously look for stressful experiences because of their association . So it further emphasizes how intention is so needed .
One of the things I've done in my book is I've created this construct of the path and you basically step onto the path which leads you to success when you follow my nine pillars of resilience and success , and so you know what it takes to get onto the path and stay on the path .
But , like all of us , we're going to fall off the path , and so it's okay that we fall off the path . It's normal , it's natural . But you want to be able to take the steps that put you back off the path . It's normal , it's natural , but you want to be able to take the steps that put you back onto the path .
So it normalizes the mistakes of falling off the path . It normalizes what happens to all of us falling back into old patterns . The key is that you recognize it and then you step back onto the path , and so the approach is designed to deal with people's resistance , which is present so much of the time , but keeping the eye on the prize being on the path .
Yeah , your book . The title is the Nine Pillars of Resilience the Proven Path to Master Stress , slow Aging and Increase Vitality . I had the pleasure of reading a pre-publication copy and it's a masterpiece . It's great . I can't recommend it highly enough . I think it's coming out in June 2024 . But I highly recommend it to everyone . Who is this book for ?
Who would benefit from this book ? Steve ?
I don't know anybody who could not benefit from it , because I don't know anybody who isn't struggling with some aspect of stress , who isn't struggling with some aspect of stress , who isn't struggling with the complexities of life and all the demands that are on us in our own lives , and then all the things that are going on in the bigger world that are outside
of our control . So you want to have a plan , you want to have a program for learning to cope with all of what's thrown at us every day of our lives and learn how to , most importantly , learn how to be within this mix of stresses and complexity from a place of balance and equanimity . Okay , so it's not about just coping and getting through .
It's about being able to do it from a place of calm and balance , and that's the goal of my book is to help people be able to be in this difficult world . Help people be able to be in this difficult world , the stressful world , but to find the place of calm within it and to source yourself from that place of calm .
So I think it's for anybody that has physical symptoms . It's anybody who's dealing with emotional stress . By the way , when we are having difficulty with stress , our brains don't function as well because our brains shift away to the survival levels and away from the frontal cortex , which is where we do our best thinking .
So there are multiple reasons why it's so important for people to learn to be more resilient , have their brains function better and have their bodies function better .
Yeah , I mean you get the message . I love this book and it's the great thing about it too for me was it takes . It takes you through on a step by step approach to things . That that so simple . Even I can follow it . You know it's like it's because this is a complicated subject .
You know we've talked about a lot of the different , you know ins and outs of it over the last 40 minutes , but this book really reduces it to steps and I like that . You know I'm either on the path or I'm not on the path . It makes it very clear and sometimes you know those simple choices makes it easier to do those things .
So one of the things I want to offer your audience , which is a great first step , is my resilience assessment booklet . Step is my resilience assessment booklet . In it I explain the nine pillars of resilience . I go through my model , but I also have a brief questionnaire that people can take .
They can self-score and from it they can derive their resilience profile so they can see how they stand on each of the nine pillars of resilience .
Great , that's great . We'll include it as a bonus with this session . Well , this has been wonderful . Steve , how could people follow you on social media and maybe you can tell them your website ? We'll include it in the notes also , but for people who are listening , it'd be great to hear it also , but for people who are listening , it'd be great to hear it .
So the website is Dr Stephen Sidoroff Stephen with a PH and DR , and I am on Instagram , facebook , so you could look for me on all of those platforms as well .
Well , this has been a great conversation , steve . I always enjoy this , and thank you so much for this great book . I recommend it for everybody
¶ Exclusive VIP Pass Bonus Package
. I think you could pre-order it now and it'll be out shortly , and thanks also for the great work that you do , steve .
Thanks , Rob . I appreciate having the conversation with you . You're a great interviewer , by the way . I appreciate having the conversation with you .
You're a great interviewer . By the way , I want to thank Steve for joining us today and sharing his amazing knowledge with us all . Remember that Dr Sideroff is giving a bonus that he mentioned to our VIP pass members .
So if you still haven't claimed your VIP Pass to access the recordings , transcripts , mp3s and our must-have bonus package , you can get it now by clicking the button on this page to upgrade before it's too late . Remember that when the event is over , recordings and all the bonuses go away . So make sure you claim your VIP Pass before it's too late .