Mastering Stress & Anxiety Copy
This episode explains what stress is, and how it recruits our brain and body to react in specific ways. Huberman describes the three main types of stress, and how two of them actually enhance the function of our immune system, making us less vulnerable to infections. He reviews tools that allow us to control our stress in real-time, as well as tools to prevent long-term stress, burnout and stress-induced illness and anxiety.
Key Takeaways
High level takeaways from the episode.
Protocols
Science-based tools and supplements that push the needle.
Source
We recommend using this distillation as a supplemental resource to the source material.
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Tools for Managing Stress & Anxiety
Huberman Lab Podcast #10
This episode explains what stress is, and tools to manage and modulate stress in real-time.
Full Notes
Overview
Stress is a fundamental physiological response in all animals and modern humans — it’s just as important to us today as it was in our evolutionary history. The main difference is the contexts in which it’s activated.
Stress is a generalised, generic physiological system needed to mobilize other systems and circuits in the brain. It’s a hardwired biological mechanism involving specific cells, chemicals, tissues and pathways.
When your internal state doesn’t match the external environment, we will feel stressed and anxious – we’ll sense that the situation is bad. I.e. feeling alert when going to sleep is bad, feeling tired when needing to be productive is bad.
Stress can be categorized into short, medium, and long-term stress.
Not all stress is bad – in fact transient short-term stress can have positive effects on focus, cognition and the immune system. However, long-term chronic stress nearly always has a negative impact on health.
If we can learn how to control the stress response, we can lean into life better — we can respond to events in an effective way and not be reactive. We’ll be able to focus on work and then disengage.
The Stress Response
The stress response involves a chain of neurons that release acetylcholine and epinephrine, which prepares the body for action.
This leads to dilation of blood vessels, increased heart rate, decrease in blood flow to salivary glands.
It shuts down certain functions that are unnecessary during times of stress, i.e. digestion and reproduction.
Causes agitation, in order to make us move, through action or speech.
Parasympathetic Nervous System
To reduce stress, we should focus on reducing alertness or increasing calm, by activating the parasympathetic nervous system.
The parasympathetic nervous system has certain levers that can be used to reduce stress quickly.
It’s best to avoid telling ourselves or others to ‘calm down’ — this tends to exacerbate stress.
Acute short-term stress
Can be caused by both physical and psychological stimuli. Activates the release of adrenaline via the sympathetic autonomic nervous system, making you more likely to say something, move, or tremor.
Stress can be a powerful nootropic and short-term activation can actually be beneficial.
Rapid deliberate breathing (hyperventilation) can be used to feel very alert, by increasing adrenaline. May also increase anxiety.
Activating short-term stress can assist with procrastination by springing us into action.
Acute stress is good for the immune system and is normally activated in response to bacterial/viral infection – a response organized to combat this.
‘Wim Hof Breathing’ has been proven to activate ‘killer cells,’ a particular kind of immune cell stored in the spleen and other lymphatic system organs.
Medium term stress + Stress Threshold
Medium-term stress is stress that lasts several days to several weeks.
With medium-term stress, you begin to pass your stress threshold – the point at which you lose the ability to use your mind to regulate what’s going on in your body.
You’re at your capacity for stress, and new stress can uncharacteristically push you over the edge.
Huberman gives the example of having a lot going on this quarter, and he was having trouble logging into a website the other day and getting very frustrated — which, because he was maybe at his stress threshold, he wasn’t able to regulate the way he normally would.
To prevent this, we want to increase our stress threshold.
This involves placing yourself into situations where adrenaline is increased (not to an extreme), recognizing this threshold, and training yourself to become comfortable with that response in the body.
Essentially, being relaxed in the mind when the body is hyperactivated – so that what once felt like a lot feels manageable.
Examples of activating practices to combine with protocol:
- Cycling hyperoxygenation
- Cold showers/ice bath
- Intense excercise
Long Term Stress
When you struggle to achieve good sleep, you begin to move from acute/medium-term stress to chronic stress.
At this point, other techniques are needed to turn off the stress response and press the brakes.
Chronic stress is bad, despite short term transient stress providing benefits.
- Focus on life-style changes
- Regular sleep
- Exercise
- Real-time tools to dampen stress
- Social connection – boosts release of serotonin (neuromodulator involved in sense of content) and reduces release of tachykinin (neuromodulator involved in sense of fear and paranoia)
Oxytocin is actually only released in very particular circumstances — post-orgasm with couples, baby and mother, baby and father.
Nasal Breathing + Clarity in Speech
Nasal breathing has been found to have many benefits:
- Cosmetic effects
- Ward off infection
- Stress reduction
Recommended reading:
- James Nestor — “Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art”
- Sandra Kahn, Paul Ehrlich’s — “Jaws,”
When we’re stressed, it can be difficult to speak properly. Our neurons become activated and can cause us to jitter.
Exhale-emphased breathing through the nose allows us to slow our heart rate down and thus, speak more clearly and confidently.
Melatonin
Melatonin helps us fall asleep, but does not help us stay asleep.
Huberman doesn’t recommend supplementing with melatonin because doses can be very high in relation to the amount the body naturally produces.
This potentially leads to negative effects on reproductive hormones.
Taking too much melatonin consistently can also reduce adrenal output, leading to anxiety and stress.
Consult with a doctor before supplementing with melatonin — especially true for children, as it can suppress puberty.
Myth of Adrenal Burnout
Hans Selye, Nobel Prize winner, discovered the General Adaptation Syndrome — how distress and eustress (positive stress) affects us.
Many of his findings on stress have proven to be true.
He had a theory called adrenal burnout — that if stress went on long enough, you would eventually reach a phase of exhaustion.
However, this has proven to be wrong. There isn’t a physiological exhaustion that happens after chronic stress. The adrenals have enough adrenaline to support 200 years of stress.
Huberman emphasizes that adrenal burnout is a myth.
There is something called adrenal insufficiency syndrome, where the adrenals are impaired and can’t produce adrenaline.
High amounts of melatonin taken consistently over time can cause suppression of cortisol and epinephrine released from adrenals, which can create a pseudo adrenal insufficiency syndrome.
