Huberman #10 - Tools for Managing Stress & Anxiety

Problems that cause stress have existed forever - stress was not designed for some of them, i.e. the system that governs stress is generic.

There is also a system for destress - you have the capacity to control your stress, there are tools to push back on stress in real-time.

What is stress? A psychological and physiological response to stressors (things that stress people, could be physical or mental). Stress does not distinguish between physical and mental stress.

When stressed, epinephrine (eq to adrenaline) is released at particular organs which acts in particular ways:

• Muscles that need to be active when stressed like leg muscles, heart, and the blood vessels dilate (get bigger) and we get blood rushing to legs, higher heart rate etc.
• Muscles that do not need to be active like ones in digestion, reproduction etc. have their blood vessels contracted.

In short, stress response activates muscles that need to active when stressed, and deactivates other muscles which are more of a luxury in a stressed situation.

The stress response says to you "DO SOMETHING". This movement can be a bias for some action or say something - when stressed we are more likely to say something we are not supposed to. To control stress, you need to learn how to work with this agitation.

If feeling a bit too alert,stressed etc. just before public speaking or something, telling yourself to calm down does not work. Instead, its better to activate the other system in the body designed for calming and relaxation - the parasympathetic neurvous system. Tool in this situation : the physiological sigh - double inhale and long exhale. This is done naturally when crying for example. The aim is to slow heart rate down. In general, make exhales longer and/or more vigourous than inhales.

(If your inhales are longer than exhales, you are speed up for heart 27:50)

The physiological sigh is the fastest known way to eliminate stressful response in realtime. The thing is life happens, and it is hard to control the mind with the mind especially when we are in heightened state of activation.

Stress can do positive things in the short term - when stress response hits, it is good for your immune system. Stress often comes in the form of bacterial/viral infection. Key is to turn off the stress response when done.

The following protocol : 25 deep inhales and exhales, followed by exhale, holding breath for 15 seconds, and start with 25 deep inhales and exhales again and so on for 3-4 rounds, then inhale very deeply and hold breath (NEVER do this near water, including bathtub, shower etc.) releases adrenaline which suppresses incoming infections - a PNAS study showed this protocol resulted in 0% symptoms in people injected with an endotoxin which makes you feel naseous, sick etc.

Concern of failure, desire to do well, impending deadline is the best neutropic (smart drug) alongside sleep.

When you are no longer achieve to get good sleep, you are going from acute stress to chronic stress.

We really need to learn how to turn off our stress response.

There are 3 types of stress:

• Short term.
• Medium term (several days to several weeks, maybe a few months).
• Long stress (this is really bad).

A lot of managing medium term stress has to do with raising stress threshold, i.e. the capacity for stress. This involves putting yourself deliberately into a situation where adrenaline is increased (not to the extreme), and when feeling flooded with adrenaline, then cognitively/mentally/emotionally calming ourselves and be comfortable with this response, i.e. disassociate mind and body in a healthy way. This means learning to relax the mind, while the body is very activated. This creates a situation where what once felt like a lot, feels manageable. In general, the tool is to do something that brings your heartrate up, and try to calm your mind in this situation. A specific tool: deliberately going from tunnel vision to panaromic vision (i.e. dilate gaze).

Tackykinin: Molecule associated with social isolation gone for too long. Feeling like we are connected suppresses this. Chronically high tackykinin depletes many good functions of the brain and body, and promotes bad ones like irritability, fear, paranoia etc. Do not underemphasize the social connection part.

Writing down things you are thankful for have a good effect on serotonin.

One way to think about emotions - when internal state of stress/calm is matched or mismatched from the demands on us, we interpret it as good or bad.