Turn Down Stress. Turn On Healing & Transform Your Genes

Hello, everybody. Welcome. Today's presentation on stress, inflammation and distress. We're going to learn about the connection, prevention and treatment implications. I'm your host, Dr. Donnelly Snipes. Today we're going to talk about this connection between stress and inflammation. How inflammation and epigenetic changes, that's changes in our DNA expression, impact mental and cognitive health as well as aging and will identify tools to reduce stress and inflammation. Last week we focused a lot on the science and the problems. This week we're going to touch on the science, but we're really going to focus on the solutions and the reason for doing that. The reason for touching on the science again in this video is to make sure that people understand that our emotions may be automatic reactions, but those are based on prior experiences and encoding and cognitions as well as the status of everything else in our body. We all know that. Well, not all. Most people, when they are physically well rested, they're not in pain, everything's just chugging along. They can tolerate a lot more emotionally than if they are exhausted. If they're in pain, they're sick. So when our body is under stress, it triggers the stress response. And remember last week we talked a lot about stress being like a bucket and our, our stress tolerance is the bucket and stress is the water that goes in the bucket. Well, when we're under physical stress, we've already sort of filled the bucket up a quarter of the way, a half of the way, so we don't have much room left for additional types of stressors before we start feeling overwhelmed. Stress is what happens when there's an imbalance in any piece of life. Physical imbalances, interpersonal distress, emotional distress, cognitive stress, imbalances, challenges like attention, concentration and environmental stress. Stressors cause epigenetic changes. Now remember, epigenetic changes is not actually changing the DNA. It's changing which genes in the DNA sequence are turned on and which genes are turned off. Kind of like switches on a control panel. Stressors that cause epigenetic changes trigger increases in cortisol, glutamate, dopamine and blood sugar and alters thyroid and gonadal hormone availability. And, and all of those things alter your neurotransmitter balance. So when we're under stress, we see changes in every, if you will, department in the body. One of the things that we need to do is when we are trying to improve our epigenetic profile, if you will, slow aging, slow in inflammation is look as what's causing that stress and what is perpetuating that inflammation. For A lot of people, not just older adults, not just people who have baggage, if you will, but for a lot of people, most people these days, we have an imbalance in our autonomic nervous system in that we, our parasympathetic, our rest, digest and repair is weaker than our sympathetic nervous system, which is our fight or flight. So our body has more difficulty turning off the fight or flight response. Think of a teeter totter or a seesaw, whatever you call it, where you are. If you've ever tried to do that with, as an adult, with one of your children, obviously a little 40 pound, you know, preschooler is not going to be able to counter the weight of a grown adult. And that's kind of what we're looking at with our autonomic nervous system. We, what we can do is we can start strengthening that vagal tone, strengthening our parasympathetic nervous system. And yes, it's a nerve and no it doesn't strengthen like a muscle, but we can learn to manually override our stress response and activate that rest, digest and repair. Persistent stress produces inflammation and circadian rhythm disruption. These are bad, mega bad. This further increases the stress response. When our body recognizes that there's inflammation, it says hey, you're vulnerable, you're kind of broken somehow. There's problems that are inflamed when you are tired or your circadian rhythms are out of balance so your hormones are not secreting at the right time. Again, the body recognizes that as a stressor and says hey, you're not on your AAME today. So that's a little bit stressful and it triggers the stress response so you can be more hyper vigilant to threats that may come your way. Since you're not a hundred percent wants to make sure that you're kind of protecting yourself over time. When we have a persistent stress response because of news, politics, world events, family stuff, illnesses, trauma, whatever, you know, I, I bring up the first few things because those little stressors each time you get stressed, it's a, it's a drop in the bucket as, as they say, and that bucket gets filled pretty quickly. Over time, the autonomic nervous system becomes imbalanced and that stress response is just roaring. The gut microbiome is altered. Cortisol stops suppressing inflammation. So then you have runaway inflammation throughout your whole body. Inflammatory cytokines persist, so those molecules that cause inflammation just keep on floating around. The, the gut becomes leaky, so the junction between the cells in your, in your gut become looser and some of the Toxins actually can leak out into your body. There's in increased A1C and insulin resistance, Sleep is impaired, cellular aging increases and neurotransmitters and hormones become imbalanced. And all of these feed in on each other. When your gut microbiome is altered, that's a stressor. So that's going to trigger the stress response, trigger cortisol. When all of those things are going on and you're stressed, it's going to alter your microbiome. So unfortunately, sometimes we get stuck in this negative lo and we've got to act proactively manually. If you will override our stress response and start making choices about how we're going to use our energy and what is worth adding to our stress bucket. The science behind how vagal tone improves epic your epigenetic profile. We want to rebalance the autonomic nervous system and reduce our sympathetic dominance because reducing sympathetic dominance reduces upstream pressure that sustains FKBP 5. That's one of your genes. Demethylation and pro inflammatory expression. Shifting epigenetic marks to our more regulated set point. Basically what it's saying is when we are less stressed, that particular gene that promotes inflammation is not going to be active. If you will reduce sympathetic dominance, reduced stress leads to lower oxytocin, oxytocin methylation, which means oxytocin becomes more available. Methylation tends to suppress and demethylation tends to activate. So it leads to lower suppression, less suppression of oxytocin, which increases vagal tone. Oxytocin is a wonderful thing. Greater lifetime stress and sustained sympathetic or HPA activation has been linked to accelerated epigenetic aging, accelerated aging of our cells in our body because we've got so much oxidative stress and our body can't clear it out quick enough. And that is leading to systemic inflammation which is perpetuating the stress response. So what do we do? Rebalance the ans, End of story. Done. No, we're really not done. That is a whole lot easier said than done. What can we do? Biofeedback is wonderful and if you've taken my classes before, a lot of these are going to seem really common. You, you're like, yeah, we've heard that it's important working with clients, working with people to help them figure out what techniques work best and what will they do biofeedback now? I love my polar heart rate monitor and doing high intensity interval training. Love it. I love to see my heart rate go real up really fast and then come down really fast. That's not for everybody. Some people would find that absolutely dreadful. You can get one of those pulse ox meters that you put on your finger that monitors your pulse and have the person walk around the room, walk around the living room, whatever, get their heart rate up a little, sit down, and then practice slowing their breathing until they get their heart rate back down. They're not focusing on their whole body or anything. They just, they're exercising, then they're slowing it down. You're turning on the stress response just a little bit, and then you're turning it off. And as they get better at this, when they start feeling stressed, they can put the monitor on their finger and the pulse ox monitor and they can practice, you know, taking a couple breaths or whatever it is that they do in order to relax and get their heart rate to slow down and their breathing to slow down. That can be really helpful at work. For example, I have a lot of people that I've worked with that keep a pulse ox monitor in their desk drawer. And when they start feeling stressed, they just pull it out. And that gives them visible, tangible feedback that, hey, I'm turning on my, my relaxation response. Yoga is really good for some people. Now, people with a trauma history, yoga may be too body centric, but it is good for people who can handle it. Because you are focusing on your body, you're focusing on holding a pose, it becomes a little uncomfortable, but you're breathing through it. Instead of stressing out and tensing up, you're breathing into it, which can be very helpful. Addressing cognitive distortions can be very helpful. And not exactly sure why I put that one there, but hey, rebalancing the autonomic nervous system does mean addressing those cognitive issues that get you spun up, like mind reading, assuming you know what other people are thinking. And we're going to talk more about cognitive distortions when we get down to cognitive strategies. Auricular vagus nerve stimulation. Auricular means your ear. Now they have ear clips for TENS units that can stimulate the vagus nerve. I have shared with you, and I don't have it on my desk anymore. The there's a device called, called the Holist H O O L E S T that is like a handheld TENS unit, basically, and it's a vagus nerve stimulator. You put the two electrodes right there and it produces a mild stimulation. It's not nearly as strong as a TENS unit, but you can feel it up through the auricular branch and a little bit into the trigeminal branch. Of the vagus nerve that can help slow. Slow you down. One of the other things that it does when you're focusing on the stimulation of your vagus nerve, you're not focusing on whatever it is that's stressing you out. So it provides a little bit of distraction as well. The other thing you can do for auricular vagus nerve stimulation is put one finger on the tragus, which is the little flap on your ear, and one finger behind your ear and and gently rub only hard enough to make the skin move, not hard enough to push down the tragus. And that will stimulate the vagus nerve. The vagus nerve has a branch that goes to the ear, but it also has connected to the trigeminal nerve, which goes into the face when we smile and when we eat and sing and talk, it can activate the trigeminal nerve and that triggers the vagus nerve. So there are a lot of things that we do orally, if you will, that can help trigger the vagus nerve downregulation skills. You want to use your abcds Acceptance. I'm going to accept what's going on right now. When I'm rebalancing the ans. I've got my little pulse ox monitor on my finger. I'm going to be like, okay, I'm going to accept it is what it is. Then I'm going to breathe, slow my breathing in whatever way that's comfortable for me because that will slow my heart rate and further trigger the relaxation response. I will show compassion to myself to the degree I can. I will try to show compassion for others as well to the degree that I can and still feel safe. And we're going to talk about that later. I may engage in distraction sometimes crap just can't be addressed. You've got to wait to find out about your test results. You've got to wait to find out what your spouse meant when they said, we need to have a talk tonight. You've got to wait for something. So sometimes temporary distraction is useful, healthy distraction. It doesn't mean avoiding the problem. It means taking a break from it because there's nothing you can do about it right now, and then coming back to it when you can either address it or get into your wise mind and creating safety. If you don't feel safe, no matter how much you're accepting and breathing, if you don't feel safe, you're not going to be able to fully relax. So it's important to create an environment of safety. If you're in Your office. Maybe that means locking your door and taking your phone off the hook. If you are out somewhere, maybe that means going to the bathroom so you can just have a minute by yourself. Maybe it means calling your best friend on the phone and saying, hey, I'm having a minute, whatever safety looks like. But if you don't feel safe, you're not going to be able to effectively relax. Now let's go back up to breathing really quick. We've talked about a lot of ways to slow breathing. Box breathing is when you breathe in for four, hold for four, exhale for four, hold for four and repeat. Some people find that works really well. They like the fours, they're focusing on counting. It's not a body scan. So people who have trauma histories aren't often as triggered by that. But it still can be triggering for some people that have, have a history of dissociation. So that's not for everybody. Blowing bubbles and I always talk about these things, but I've never actually brought one. Blowing bubbles is something that you can do and as an adult may look a little weird, but. And of course I'm not going to get to blow bubbles right now. So in order to do that I had to control my breathing. I was breathing in and then I was doing a slow, controlled breathing out. And that can be something you can do by yourself. It's something that kids love to do if they're having, if they're getting stressed out, you know, maybe let them go outside, maybe they're stressed out at the doctor or something. Let them go outside, blow bubbles for a minute and then come back in for other people. If you can chew it, bubble gum can serve the same purpose. Chew the, chew the gum, blow the bubble, see how big you can make it before it bursts. That has to be a slow, controlled breath. Blowing balloons. This is something that again, especially if you're a kid, you can get away with doing anywhere. So sitting in the doctor's office, little Johnny is getting know, really stressed out about having to go see the doctor, give him a balloon to blow and let him blow it up. Blowouts, those things that you get at parties that roll up and then blow out when you blow into them. You can get them so they're noiseless. And I highly suggest that because I find the noise annoying. But you can get noiseless blowouts that kids can use. Singing especially loudly or humming. When you hum, not only are you, you're stimulating, you're vibrating all of that area that the trigeminal nerve is coming out into and that can help slow your breathing. You're also going to control your breathing. When you're humming, playing a harmonica, you can also do that too. But not a lot of people are going to whip out their harmonica and just start playing. Exercise. Now, I have two asterisks by this. Because you're like, exercise takes your heart rate up. Well, yes, but there's a theory called bioenergetics that says when we get stressed, our energy starts bubbling. Sorry, starts bubbling up. And when you use your large muscles, it brings your energy back down. Another way of thinking about it is when you're sitting still and your heart is going like this, your body's like, okay, that doesn't compute. There must be something wrong, because my. The heart is going fast, but the body is not moving. When you get up and you move your body, the heart rate and the, the breathing and the in the body start to get in sync again. And the brain's like, okay, the heart rate's up because we're moving. I get it. And then a lot of times you can sit back down. I find a lot of people have successful if when they start getting stressed out, their heart rate starts get going up, they. They go into the stairwell and walk up and down the stairs once or twice. Doesn't have to do it a bunch of times. Once or twice. For a lot of people, that gets their heart rate up enough. And then when their body starts relaxing after or coming down from that aerobic exercise, it sinks back up again. So the breathing and the heart rate are in sync with the effort that the body is exerting. So acceptance of the moment, slowing the breathing by whatever means necessary, showing compassion for yourself and others to the extent you can, maybe saying to yourself, you know, that person, maybe that person can't do any better, or, you know, I am doing the best I can right now. That may be helpful. Distracting when necessary. When the issue can't be completely addressed, distracting can also help bring down the heart rate and trigger that relaxation response, trigger that parasympathetic nervous system. Because instead of focusing on the snake that is in the jogging path, you're focusing on something else over here. And your. You intentionally turn your attention away from the threat and your body recognizes that as, oh, I guess I don't need to worry about that. And you quit perseverating on it. The more you look at the snake, the more you worry about the snake, the more you feed that anxiety, the more spun up the stress response is going to get. Every cell in the body contains Circadian clock genes. Who knew? These genes coordinate the 24 hour oscillations in metabolism, hormone release and immune and neural activity. Like every department in a factory has different schedules which coordinate the production of the factory's goods. Thinking about, you know, some big factory, I don't know, that makes something complicated. And each department has their own job. But sometimes one department has to work over, like maybe the cleaning department works overnight so they can make sure that everything, the main machines are maintained and everything's cleaned and ready for the crews when they come in for first and second shift. First shift has a certain set of things they need to do to get everything ready for second shift to do their job. And that's how our body works as well. Well, and when our circadian clocks get off, it's like staff members are showing up whenever they want to to do their job, IR irregardless of their shifts. And that throws the whole factory out of sync. Unstable melatonin secretion, that is our sleep hormone, prevents demethylation and an a a steelation of antioxidant and mitochondrial genes. Okay, Remember, methylation suppresses demethylation, wakes them up. So when we have unstable methylate melatonin secretion, those genes that are responsible for antioxidant functions supporting DNA repair and cellular detoxification, they don't turn on, which is a problem because that means that oxidative stress just sits in there, which contributes to inflammation and brain fog and everything else. Unstable circadian rhythms produce ongoing stress, which leads to sustained cortisol exposure and disrupts the normal timing of epigenetic processes. Please remember that circadian rhythms are not the same as sleep. Sleep does have a circadian rhythm. Sleep does help set the circadian rhythm. But circadian rhythms are the ebb and flow of, of every hormone and everything that goes on in your body, including saliva production of all things. Over time, when circadian rhythms stay unstable, this d dysregulation can result in hypermethylation or super suppression of the glucocorticoid receptor gene. Our cortisol receptors, which reduces nr3c1mrna expression and decreases glut corticoid receptor availability. So over time. You know, we've talked about the flat to the furious before. It's actually a change in the genes. When your body is exposed to stress for long enough, it results in hypermethylation or really suppressing those cortisol receptors because the body says we can't run this hot for this long, so we're not going to pay attention. To that cortisol, and we start to see reduced numbers as well as reduced sensitivity of cortisol receptors, which are our glucocorticoids. Fewer receptors weaken the negative feedback on the HPA axis, allowing cortisol levels to remain elevated and chronic. HPA axis dysregulation, not what we want. Desynchrony of the circadian clock via irregular eating or sleeping disrupts the coordination of neurotransmitter synthesis and turnover. For example, 5ht, which is your serotonin, most of it is manufactured first thing in the morning when our cortisol is highest and we're getting ready for the day. So if our circadian clocks get out of whack, then everything starts getting out of whack, including 5 HT is serotonin, DA is dopamine, and NE is norepinephrine. And when those are out of whack, sogo glutamate, GABA and acetylcholine hormone secretion rhythms of cortisol, insulin, leptin, melatonin, and thyroid hormones all get thrown out of whack. Which is why a lot of people on shift work are never sure if they're hungry or not. Because those hunger and satiation hormones aren't being secreted at any given time. The body doesn't know when to secrete them. Epigenetic modulation of genes modulating those systems are also disrupted. So those genes that are supposed to show up for first shift and, you know, leave in the afternoon. If you're thinking about workers, that's not happening. So we have this dysregulation of when switches get turned on, when workers show up to do their job. Together, these shifts alter neuronal excitability, neuroplasticity, and emotional regulation. All right, so back to foundational strategies. What do we do about the science? Circadian rhythms are so important. And as a clinician for, you know, the first 20 years of my career, I was oblivious to how important sleeping, feeding, and circadian rhythms were in the recovery of the overall individual, including their ability to regulate their emotions. So for circadian rhythms, we've got to look at cortisol management. We if somebody is trying to go to sleep, they're not going to do that as effectively if their cortisol is high. What increases cortisol? Stress, any kind of stress, Caffeine stress, stomach ache stress, work stress, any kind of stress. So we need to help people figure out how they can down regulate towards the end of the day in order to lower their cortisol. Gentle Movement like slow walking, stretching, those sorts of things actually can help reduce cortisol to some extent as well. But a lot of the cortisol management for a lot of the people I work with comes down to regulating their cognitive and emotional stress as well as their caffeine intake. Routine is so important. And we've talked about this with circadian rhythms before. Activity, light and temperature. The particular activities that help set and maintain your circadian clock are eating, eating at about the same time every day, really important. Especially if you're resetting your circadian clock, sleeping, going to bed and waking up about the same time every day and making sure you're getting at least seven hours of quality sleep. Really important. And socializing. Now, socializing is not one that comes up in the literature a lot, but they have shown. And we all know if you are up hanging out with your friends at 10 o' clock at night and you're supposed to be going to bed at 10 o', clock, you're often not feeling very sleepy because you've got other people around and you're doing daytime activities, if you will. So paying attention to what kind of activities you're engaging in and setting a sleep routine can be super helpful to cue your body in on when to reduce cortisol, when to secrete melatonin, when you're going to sleep, and then once you get those things kind of in alignment, your body will start recognizing when it when you're supposed to be eating. Light we need bright light in the morning and darkness at night. We've belabored that in other videos, so I'm not going to spend a lot of time on that. But getting that early morning dose of bright sunshine and making sure to reduce blue light, including from mobile devices, at least an hour, preferably two hours before bed at night, you can get apps that on your phone, on your mobile devices, on your computer and even on your television that turn on night mode, which blocks a lot of the blue light and temperature supposed to be warm in the daytime when we're active and cool at night when we hibernate. And by regulating that so we have circadian rhythms. Rhythms mean a change. We do this in the day and this at night and this in the day and this at night. It's not something that's consistent because those changes cue your body for what it's supposed to do. When it's cool and dark and you're in bed, your body does different things than when it is bright and you're up and around and, and it's warm outside. Even a single night of sleep loss alters DNA methylation and gene expression. Even a single night of sleep loss increases stress and alters our epigenetic profile. Sleep misalignment disrupts the normal daily rhythms of core clock genes in humans. So if you're sleeping when you don't think you're supposed to be sleeping, then everything gets thrown out of whack. It would kind of be like in a factory all of a sudden switching everything. So everybody's coming in three hours later and nobody's used to that. They're like okay, well what I used to have to be done by noon, I'm supposed to have done now by, by three and it just gets really confused. So sleep misalignment is when you're sleeping, but it's not sleep time. People on shift work are sleep misaligned. My husband was on midnight shift for many, many years and he would sleep during the day and that is, and he was up all night when it was dark and his body just never figured out exactly what to do with that. Sleep loss shifts immune signaling towards a pro inflammatory profile linking sleep disruption to disease risk as inflammation goes up. Well, as stress goes up, inflammation goes up and the risk of most diseases go up. That's why we see more heart disease and other things in law enforcement and, and fire rescue because they are often very sleep misaligned and sleep deprived which causes stress on the body. They've actually, well, I guess it's been about 25 years now. They started recognizing heart disease as a work related injury for those professions. Circadian disruptions is linked consistently with mood disorders through its effects on endocrine, immune and neurotransmitter timing. What do we do about sleep? Well, I found or I made a new mnemonic for you. Neutrals Naps keep them to less than 45 minutes. This helps prevent triggering your body to think it's time to sleep. Ergonomics will help reduce pain and if you're comfortable when you're sleeping, you're not going to toss and turn as much so your sleep quality is going to be better. Urinating, don't do it at night. Try to limit your consumption of water and fluids to earlier in the day. And try to go to the bathroom before you go to bed at night. Just get any little last bits out so hopefully you can sleep. If you're having consistent problems, do consult a doctor because sleep fragmentation is just as detrimental as not getting enough sleep temperature. Have it cool at night, warm in the day. Make sure You've got that routine. Allergens, even if they're not waking you up, if you're coughing half the night because your cat allergies are acting up, it's disrupting your sleep quality, which is causing stress on the system. Light, Reduce as much of it as possible. I woke up this morning and it felt like I was on the strip in Las Vegas because this the. The moon was incredibly bright shining into my window. Even moonlight is too much light. So if you are comfortable with it and you need to, using a sleep mask can be very helpful. And then the last one is sanctuary. I didn't know what else to call it. I needed an S. Make sure that the environment is not too noisy and disrupting you. Waking you up where you're startled because you're hearing car alarms go off or whatever. Using pink or brown noise in background noise can help drown some of those out. If you live in an apartment complex or in the city, stress, reduce it before bed as much as possible. I mean, if we could turn off our stress, we all would, but. So I'm not expecting people to completely turn it off, but acknowledging I'm not going to do these things two hours before bed because I know there's a good chance it's going to stress me out. And safety. Make sure when you're sleeping, you feel safe. If you're worried that somebody's going to bust into your room, lock the door if whatever it is that may cause you to feel unsafe. I have one cat right now. When I shut the door and don't let them in the room, he gets very angry about 2:00 in the morning. I guess that's when he gets the zoomies and he will reach under my door and he'll shake it. It sounds like somebody's trying to bust into my room. So I've had to start using a doorstop to keep him from shaking it because he was scaring the bejesus out of me every night. And I'd wake up and I'm like, okay, I'm in my house, I'm safe. I know what that is, but. But it still startled me. And that's triggering that stress response. So circadian rhythms, sleep strengthening that parasympathetic nervous system. Those are all things that every person can do. Nutrition and hydration are also important. Dehydration increases physiological stress. So through increased sympathetic activity, when we get stressed because we're dehydrated, our body goes, oh, this is bad. Our body's 80% water and we're Running dry, not good. So we have the stress response. We also, when we don't have enough fluid to flush all this stuff out, we start having impaired kidney and liver function and reduced toxin clearance, which again increases stress on the body. All of this leads to increased inflammation and activation of the stress response. Nutritional epigenetics research shows that diet quality is associated with changes in DNA methyl methylation in people of every age. And what they mean by diet quality is if you're eating an inflammatory diet, high in saturated fats, high in ultra processed foods, high in sugar, that things that increase inflammation, it's going to trigger the activation of inflammatory genes and suppress the activation of anti inflammatory genes. And the opposite is true. If you eat an anti inflammatory diet, your anti inflammatory genes are turned on. Hydration is important. Encourage people to try different things. Whether it's they're trying teas that are infused, water that's infused with fruits like cucumber or I guess cucumber is a vegetable now. Cucumbers are fruit anyway, I digress. Encouraging people to hydrate. Keep a water bottle with you, keep a cup of ice water with you at all times, preferably filtered water so you're not getting the microplastics and the chlorine and the fluoride and all that other stuff that can put stress on your body. Anti inflammatory diets are not that complicated. They're low in saturated fats, so not a whole lot of really heavy oils and fried foods. They're low in refined sugars like white sugars. They're low in ultra processed foods, your, your white flour, things that don't have fiber in them, they're low in juices and things that are high in sugar and devoid of fiber. We want to, if we're having sugar, we want to have fiber and preferably protein with it. We want to make sure that people are getting enough in the way of fruits and vegetables, your colorful foods which have different types of antioxidants and eating foods that are high in what we call methyl donors, folate, B12 and choline. B12 is only found in animal products and enriched or fortified nutritional yeast. So vegans need to be very cognizant of how much B12 they're getting. And folate and choline are pretty ubiquitously available. Beef, milk, eggs, quinoa, lentils, those are things that can be helpful. Making sure you're getting enough colored foods. Three, three colors on your plate at each meal is a good guideline. Increasing your intake of omega 3s, especially if you're eating an American diet and eating fiber rich foods which the fiber feeds the gut bacteria, that's and probiotic foods like fermented sauerkraut, yogurt, kimchi, kefir, those sorts of things. In terms of relationships, there's another area. We've got a lot of stress. Secure attachment and healthy interpersonal relationships promote oxytocin release and receptor activation. Remember oxytocin, it is our survival hormone, our, our. Well it's the hormone that helps us protect ourselves. We bond and we protect those we're bonded with. Secure attachment activates that. So people who are securely attached are actually more receptive to oxytocin when it's released. Nurturing relational experiences, especially in early in life, appear to reduce oxytocin methylation, creating a system more responsive to oxytocin. So when we look back at some of the Bolby studies and attachment research and stuff, we start to recognize that people who had secure attachment early in life had more receptive oxytocin genes throughout their life which shaped their perception of social interactions differently than those who have low oxytocin. Oxytocin is also a wonderful anti inflammatory and it suppresses micro microglial active activation and pro inflammatory cytokine release in the brain. When we have neuroinflammation, we have all kinds of problem, problematic diseases as well as brain fog. In terms of self esteem, when we're talking about relationships, we want to talk about intra as well as interpersonal. Self compassion activates the same neural networks as when giving compassion to others leading to oxytocin release even in solitude. For people who feel safe providing themselves self compassion, if they've been taught that that's wrong, then that may trigger anxiety. So we need to know that the person we're telling you know, give yourself self compassion, that that's not actually going to trigger their stress response because they've always been told compassion equals weakness. Oxytocin is a context dependent modulator that coordinates both affiliative safety, responsive and defensive caregiving. Affiliative safety means we're stronger in groups. Defensive caregiving is mama bear. So one of the phrases that I found in the research was that oxytocin is actually our tend and befriend neuro neurotransmitter or hormone oxytocin and securely attached individuals enhances self esteem by reducing amygdala activation. So those people who have more receptive oxytocin receptors have less social anxiety, less fear of rejection and have an improved perception of self efficacy. And interpersonal warmth compared to those who have less oxytocin receptor availability. What do we do? Heal our attachment strategy. Even if people had crappy attachment, insecure attachment, attachment, trauma, whatever you want to call it as a child, it doesn't mean they're doomed. We can develop secure attachment with ourselves, with our adult selves. Knowing that, you know, now that I'm a big person, I can take care of myself. When I was 6, I couldn't. So yeah, I relied on others. But now as an adult, I can be consistent, attentive, responsive, encouraging and safe for myself. I can govern what environment that I'm in and I can protect myself. But we need to encourage people to start engaging in this. Turn off the autopilot consistently. Be mindful of how they're feeling, what their needs are. Spend time proactively paying attention. Spending time paying attention to themselves, figuring out what they like, what they want to do, being responsive to their own needs. When they start getting stressed out, when, when they're happy to celebrate their happiness. But being responsive instead of just suppressing it, ignoring it, focusing on the next thing they got to get done. Being encouraging and safe, accepting, loving of themselves, even when they make mistakes. Because they will. When we start having the secure attachment with ourselves, then we stop fearing that others are going to reject us quite as much. And we can start developing healthier relationships that are not desperately seeking approval and attachment. We're saying, I got this. I'd like to be affiliating with others, but I can choose. I can be. Being alone is safer than being with somebody who is unhealthy. For individuals high in self criticism, self reassurance or self compassion may trigger a threat system. Activating your amygdala and and rather than soothing so telling yourself everything's going to be okay or you're good enough, you're smart enough, and gosh darn it, people like you. That may actually trigger the threat system in people who don't believe it. So encourage people to find mantras and distress tolerance scripts to use that they believe and that help them feel safe and empowered. Not just things that they think they should be saying. Encourage them to explore, trying for to forgive and accept self and other forgiving meaning. Accepting what happened and choosing not to continue to tie energy up in the past. Choosing to use that energy instead to learn how to stay safe from similar things in the future and move forward and help them define and nurture positive relationships. A lot of people who have a history of dysfunctional relationships have no clue what a Healthy relationship might look like for them. Chronic stress, trauma, anxiety and depression produce epigenetic modifications in genes involved in the stress response, immune regulation, neuroplasticity and neurotransmission. So not only do we have more difficulty regulating our emotions, but we have more difficulty with neuroplasticity, thinking sort of outside the box and problem solving. People with depression have altered methylation patterns in glucocorticoid receptor genes impacting HPA axis sensitivity and neuroendocrine regulation. People with depression have too much, often have too much cortisol have having gone through their system and a lot of times they've gotten to the point where those glucocorticoid receptors, those corticoid receptors are hyper methylated, they're super silenced, so the body just doesn't respond. Now you're thinking, well cortisol's the stress hormone, that's good, right? No, cortisol is our let's take action, let's get out of bed hormone. We need a little bit of it, just not a lot of it. And when our receptors are less receptive, then it's hard to get motivation, the energy to do anything which starts to look like depression. Anxiety and depression are strongly associated with pro inflammatory cytokines, compromised blood, brain barrier permeability so it's easier for toxins to get into the brain and micro, microglial activation, that's activation of the inflammatory parts of our brain. So is this the chicken or the egg? Did the mood issue come first? Was somebody anxious or depressed first or did the inflammation come first? Maybe it was systemic inflammation from an autoimmune disease. Maybe it was stress and inflammation from inadequate sleep or poor nutrition that triggered an inflammatory response, altered the neurotransmitter and hormone balance, altered the body's ability to or the person's ability to regulate their emotions and started leading towards anxiety and depressive symptoms. So what do we do? Emotional strategies, emotional labeling. Before we even get into emotional intelligence, people need to be able to label their emotions. Anger. What does it feel like? How do I know when I'm angry? What's the sensation? Anger. What's the purpose? When I get angry, that's my body saying there might be a threat. Based on prior experiences, I'm thinking there might be a threat or I've got no frame of reference so I'm a little anxious and feeling like there's a threat. So labeling the purpose of the emotion but recognizing that it's a might be. Feelings are not facts. Feelings are possible expectations. And then the triggers helping people identify. Okay, I know what anger feels like. I know the purpose of anger. Now what triggers anger in me? Identify the top three things that really grind your gears and trigger anger and have people start recognizing their triggers for anger. Once they start recognizing that, then they can start dealing with it. Then we move to emotional intelligence. You identify the feeling. So I know I'm feeling angry because I know what it feels like and I know its purpose. I'm going to down regulate so I can get into my wise mind because when we're in fight or flight, we don't think clearly. So I'm going to get into my wise mind and then I'm going to explore what triggered this feeling in this situation. What solutions are available. Then I'm going to act using my energy in the best way to address this situation, to move toward my rich and meaningful life. And I'm going to assess it in an hour or a week or whatever. And if the decision I made was not the right one, I'll try something else. Emotional activation. Now this one's more fun. Curiosity. Optimism. Happiness. Laughter. Relaxation. Encouraging people to actually intentionally try to activate these things. Curiosity. I find the best way to do it is to spend time with kids or if you don't like hanging out with kids, Puppies. Puppies are very curious too about what these smells are. But kids are really especially, you know, three to six years old, they've got a lot of questions and they're curious. Reawakening that sense of curiosity and wonder. Optimism. 20 minutes a day, 23 hours and 40 minutes of the of of the day. You can be as grumpy as you want, but 20 minutes of the day focusing on what is going well. Then the rest of the time you can focus on what's not going well if you want to. But they've shown that that actually helps tamp down the stress response and help activate the parasympathetic nervous system. The rest repair and digest when the person feels like everything is not going horribly. Solution Other solutions Unhooking. Think about having literal hot potato in your hand. What are you going to do if you've got this hot potato? You're going to either address it by getting oven mitts to hold this hot potato so it doesn't burn you or you're going to let it go cuz you don't want it, you don't want to get burned so you're just going to release it and we need to unhook from our feelings. I'm feeling I'm having the feeling that I'm angry right now. I'm having the thought that this is hopeless right now. Now, what am I going to do with that feeling or that thought? It's my hot potato. Am I going to address it? Is there, does it require my energy or is it not worth my energy? Dialectics, accepting the good and the bad parts of the situation, as well as the parts you can control and the parts you can't control. Encouraging people to look at both sides often helps them feel less powerless, less hopeless, because they're acknowledging there are certain things I can do and there are certain things that are going well, even though it may feel like everything is a disaster and distraction. Take a break from the unchangeable. Turn your attention to a good book or something else for a minute. Because if it's unchangeable, maybe you are really distressed over a loved one who just passed away. Okay, well, you can't change that. And grief is oppressive. Sometimes it's okay to distract yourself and take a break from it and just lose yourself in a book or a movie or going on a run or whatever it is, and then you can come back to it. That grief is still going to be there, but it gives your body a break. Because grief and anger and anxiety, that's like running. And sometimes when you're running, you need to take a break and rest for a minute in terms of cognition and epigenetics and I know we're running really short on time, so I'm just going to breeze through this. Stress produces low grade inflammation in the body and brain, leading to synaptic dysfunction. Dysfunction in the way our nervous system communicates neurotoxicity and altered neurotransmission, which lead to brain fog, poor concentration and cognitive deficits. Activation of the HPA axis essentially disengages our amygdala and our emotion processing areas from our prefrontal cortex, our executive functioning and thinking areas. Because we're trying to survive and get away from the hungry lion, we're not analyzing everything. Chronic cortisol reduces synaptic density in the prefrontal cortex. So chronic stress actually shrinks the part of your brain that's responsible for executive functioning. Do you want to do that? But when people are saying, I can't let go of this, I can't do this, I have to be stressed, we want to say, well, what can you let go of? Because you're making a choice. By choosing to hold on to this and steep yourself in this anger, you're frying brain cells and shrinking your brain. Stress induced microglial activation releases and inflamma inflammatory cytokines which further suppress neuroplasticity and long term potentiation. Stress can be defined as an emotional state or a state of systemic imbalance in any of the pieces of life. When under emotional stress, the brain plays more attention to the threats, making the world seem more dangerous and increasing emotional stress. When under physical stress, the HPA axis is still activated. Perceiving the organism is vulnerable, increasing the perception of threat and distress. Encouraging our clients to participate in mindfulness activities to be aware of what their thoughts are and the feelings facts in this context at this time and help them identify and address cognitive distortions with fitcat facts in this context at this time and PNP possibility and probability. So all or nothing thinking this is the worst thing ever. The world is ending. All or nothing. Well, I guess that's also catastrophizing. You never do this and you always say that. Well, let's think about exceptions based on the facts in this context at this time. Do the facts support my assertion that you never do this or you always say this? Probably not. Jumping to conclusions, often without sufficient facts. So what are the facts in this context at this time? You see where we're going with this mind reading? I know you're thinking that I'm a bad person. What facts do I have to support that? I'm assuming I don't know what you're thinking. I can't read your mind. The availability heuristic is when you think something is more dangerous than it really is because it's more prominent in your mind. Like plane crashes. Lots of planes fly and never crash, but we hear about the ones that do. So it makes it seem like plane crashes are much more dangerous or plane travel is much more dangerous. Encourage people to evaluate and restructure, if appropriate, their core beliefs. What they tell themselves about themselves and the world can maintain this undercurrent of distress and anxiety and helplessness. So have them evaluate those thoughts and decide whether they think they're accurate or not. Encourage them when they're feeling stressed out about something to argue the opposite to promote cognitive flexibility and recognize rejection of thoughts is not necessarily rejection of the person. In terms of environmental stress, toxins, pain and over or under stimulation all trigger the stress response which triggers stress linked epigenetic changes in the environment, reducing stress at at work ergonomics. Make sure you've got a good setup so you're not in pain, you're not getting neck pain or shoulder pain. Back pain in bed. Make sure your ergonomics are good so you can sleep comfortably through the night when you exercise. Oh my gosh. Use good form. It drives me crazy at the gym when I see people throwing weights around and using poor form. But you know people are going to do what they're going to do. Good ergonomics reduces injury, reduces pain, reduces inflammation Simplify your environment when possible, even if it's not cluttered. If it is a busy environment, it may feel over stimulating since in your senses. Eliminate toxins as much as possible. Air purifiers, water filters, Try to choose foods and cosmetics that are as natural as possible. Reduce plastics. If you have to use plastics, make sure they are BPA free and avoid using nonstick cookware that has the PFOAS in them. You know those are some simple steps you can take. There's a lot more you can do, but those are simple ones. And then manage your sensory input and triggers like light, sound, smell and temperature. Adding amounts that are comfortable for you, adding sensory stimulation, colors, smells, sights that are pleasant, empowering, happy for you and eliminating the distressful ones. Under stress, people's DNA is naturally in an inflammatory arrangement. Healthy lifestyle choices can reduce systemic inflammation which will help rebalance the body factory, reduce physical stress and will have positive downstream impacts such as improving neurotransmitter, balance, hormone balance, anxiety and depressive symptoms. Are there any questions?