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Summary of Huberman Lab Podcast Episode: Master Stress for Healthy Eating, Metabolism & Aging with Dr. Elissa Epel

Podcast: Huberman Lab
9 min. read

— Description —

Discover how stress impacts your brain and body, and learn effective strategies to manage it From finding the right stress shields to understanding the link between stress and obesity, this content offers valuable insights Explore techniques like breathwork, journaling, and body scans to increase resilience and find comfort in uncertainty

Take control of your stress and improve your overall well-being.

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Master Stress for Healthy Eating, Metabolism & Aging with Dr. Elissa Epel

Table of contents

Key Takeaways

Introduction

Understanding Stress

Different Forms Of Stress

Stress, Aging, & Shifting Mentality About Stress

Relationship Between Stress And Eating

Stress, Pregnancy, & Shifts In Eating Patterns

Results Of Long-term Studies Of Stress Interventions

Mitochondrial Health & Mood

Articles, Books & Other Resources

Key Takeaways

  • Stress and your perception of stress impact your brain and body
  • Managing stress is about finding the ‘stress shields’ that fit them, feel right, and they believe – for example, breathwork, reminding yourself of past successes, distance from stress, calling on confidant, etc.
  • Stress can lead to obesity and insulin resistance: there’s a tendency to a greater reward response from food – the more insulin resistant you are, the more your reward center lights up during stress
  • Cravings hijack the prefrontal cortex – body scan draws attention inward toward interoception and away from external stimulus
  • At our core, we want to know with certainty what’s going to happen and control our future – being comfortable with uncertainty is a huge stress resilience factor
  • Tips to navigate stress: journal to create a coherent narrative; practice radical acceptance, learning when to paddle and when to give into the wave; practice breathwork and body scans to increase interoception and reduce exteroception; use exercise to burn negative energy and improve stress resilience

Introduction

  • Elissa Epel, Ph.D. (@TelomereEffect), professor and vice chair of the department of psychiatry at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF) and the author of a new book entitled The Stress Prescription. Her research focuses on how psychosocial and behavioral factors, such as meditation and positive stress, can slow aging.
  • Andrew Huberman and Elissa Epel discuss how stress impacts mood, eating, mental and physical health, and aging. They also dive into stress interventions to optimize health, breathwork, positive and negative sides of stress, and much more.
  • Host: Andrew Huberman (@hubermanlab)

Understanding Stress

  • Stress can be beneficial and problematic depending on the type, context, etc.
  • Stress is broadly defined as anytime the demands are too much for our resources
  • We will never get rid of stress but we can control how we respond
  • “Our thoughts are the most common forms of stress.” – Dr. Elissa Epel
  • First of all, we need awareness of how our mind works – the majority of people feel overwhelmed by stress
    • Young adults feel stress more than people 65+
  • Recognize how you hold stress in your body – for example, do you clench your fists? Tense your shoulders?
  • Tips to manage stress and negative thinking patterns:
    • Top-down strategy: beliefs and mindsets can help us release stress and use stress more positively – what you tell yourself matters
    • “The mind doesn’t change the body, the body changes the mind.” – Dr. Elissa Epel
    • Change the scene: get away from stress triggers and go to a place that makes you calm (whether this is a physical space, pictures in the house, pet, etc.)

Different Forms Of Stress

  • Our body is vigilant in scanning for stress cues – the stress response is exhausting to the body because we have to mount a big response but we aren’t good at turning it off without intervention
    • Tip: at any moment we can take control of our breathing (more on this later)
  • Acute stress response: every cell and hormone is undergoing a stress response to allow us to increase capacity and focus
  • Moderately stressful events take days or months – here it’s important to notice whether you are coping acutely with something or whether you can take time to restore
  • Chronic stressful situations go on for years and maybe can’t be changed, such as caregiving – here we want to use radical acceptance strategies to live well again without toll on the body

Stress, Aging, & Shifting Mentality About Stress

  • Toxic, chronically, unmitigated stress will accelerate aging – but – a life with no stress will also induce rapid aging and reduced cognitive health (because of lack of stimulation)
  • Having no stress means we’re not really engaging in life
  • Physical stressors (like exercise) promote aerobic fitness and stress fitness; people who exercise feel less rumination, less depression, less anxiety
  • Psychological stressors can also build stress resilience – you can tilt your body towards a “challenge-response” where you are in an excited but calmer state as opposed to a “threat response”
  • Trauma sensitizes emotional stress response
  • Remind yourself that stress response is empowering, the body is doing just what it should

Relationship Between Stress And Eating

  • Our opioid system (neurons in our brain and body) helps us feel less pain
  • People fall into two categories when it comes to stress and eating: overeaters or undereaters
    • Overeaters (more common): stress response drives cravings and insulin resistance state, people can’t control eating and think about food a lot
    • Under eaters: highly sympathetic, digestive system shuts down, more alertness and arousal
  • With repeated stress most people gain weight: the body stores stress fat and crave consuming foods high in fat, sugar, and processed – particularly in people with obesity
    • The more insulin resistant you are, the more your reward center lights up during stress
  • Compulsive eating: mindful eating won’t cause a lot of weight loss alone but people benefit from learning calm, self-regulation, checking in with hunger, slowing down
  • Naltrexone and Wellbutrin have been shown to clamp down on food cravings and obesity but we really need to address nutrition for long-term health
  • “We override effects of any drug with our diet.” – Dr. Elissa Epel
  • Tips if you binge eat to comfort or alleviate stress: change the scene, separate emotions from hunger and label emotions (is it hunger or boredom?), ride the craving wave and watch it pass (know it’s short-lived), take a walk, get away from food and create safe environments
  • The lowdown on sugary drinks: when you get the sugar, you get a feel-good response which triggers compulsivity because you want to get rid of feeling bad
    • Remember, drinking sugar is really the worst form for your body because liquid goes to your brain immediately
  • Dissonance: showing people how the food industry has been manipulative has changed behavior out of anti-establishment sentiment

Stress, Pregnancy, & Shifts In Eating Patterns

  • When you start pregnancy with excess weight, you’re particularly vulnerable to gaining much more
  • Stress reduction training during pregnancy helped women improve insulin sensitivity during pregnancy and for years following
    • As a result, babies came out with less obesity, less illness in the first year, and improved stress response over the first year
    • 8 years later babies and moms still faired better than a control group
  • Elements of mindfulness intervention: close eyes, feel body and label emotion, breathe, move the body, put hands on the belly to feel breathing
    • A body scan removed the stress, anxiety, and food cravings
  • Cravings hijack the prefrontal cortex – body scan draws attention inward toward interoception and away from external stimulus

Results Of Long-term Studies Of Stress Interventions

  • Slower biological aging in meditation interventions and dampened inflammatory pathways
  • Boosts in telomerase activity
  • Improvement in gene expression pathways
  • Transcendental meditation retreats ranging from 2 days to 8 days have long-lasting effects – the most important message is short bouts every day are key
  • Nature is a strong stimulus for stress reduction
  • The window after the psychedelic journey is where the most rewiring and adjustments in the brain take place
  • Intolerance of uncertainty induces stress, anxiety, and a lack of resilience
  • Early research using the daily Wim Hof breathing method created positive internal emotions sustained over time

Mitochondrial Health & Mood

  • Some people look better under chronic stress than others
  • Caregiving moms who have dampened mitochondrial activity means they can’t produce as much energy and feel exhausted
  • Caregivers who have better mitochondrial activity produce greater ATP (energy), even at the end of the day which is a predictor of health trajectory
  • Our mitochondria are sensitive to thoughts and feelings on a daily basis
  • Radical acceptance strategies for mitigating non-negotiable stressors:
    • Mindset – ask yourself how much time you spend wishing things were different and recognize it won’t go away, releasing the space it’s taking
    • Measure where your mind is at night – ask yourself, (1) how many times you’ve wished things were different in the last five minutes; (2) how much have you been engaged and focused in what you’re doing?
    • Wishing things were different shortens telomeres
    • Tell yourself to drop the rope: instead of tugging on a rope attached to a brick wall you want to move and chafing your hands, just drop the rope and accept the wall won’t move
  • The stress system distorts our perception of time and we try to rewrite the story by re-engaging again and again
  • Why do we try to change the unchangeable: we want to control the future so we can relax

Articles, Books & Other Resources

  • Articles
    • The geroscience agenda: Toxic stress, hormetic stress, and the rate of aging (Ageing Research Reviews)
    • THE IMPACT OF MEANINGFUL VOLUNTEER ENGAGEMENT IN AGING ADULTS: THE BALTIMORE EXPERIENCE CORPS TRIAL (Innovation in Aging)
    • Potential role for adult neurogenesis in the encoding of time in new memories (Nature Neuroscience)
    • The mindful moms training: development of a mindfulness-based intervention to reduce stress and overeating during pregnancy (BMC Pregnancy and Childbirth)
    • Can Meditation Slow Rate of Cellular Aging? Cognitive Stress, Mindfulness, and Telomeres (Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences)
    • A Mitochondrial Health Index Sensitive to Mood and Caregiving Stress (Biological Psychiatry)
    • Embodying Psychological Thriving: Physical Thriving in Response to Stress (Journal of Social Issues)
    • Brief structured respiration practices enhance mood and reduce physiological arousal (Cell Reports Medicine)
    • Stress and telomere shortening: Insights from cellular mechanisms (Ageing Research Reviews)
    • Neurogenesis in the adult human hippocampus (Nature Medicine)
    • Impact of the Baltimore Experience Corps Trial on cortical and hippocampal volumes (Alzheimer’s & Dementia)
    • Effects of a Mindfulness-Based Intervention on Distress, Weight Gain, and Glucose Control for Pregnant Low-Income Women: A Quasi-Experimental Trial Using the ORBIT Model (International Journal of Behavioral Medicine)
  • Books
    • The Telomere Effect: A Revolutionary Approach to Living Younger, Healthier, Longer
    • The Stress Prescription: Seven Days to More Joy and Ease (The Seven Days Series)

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