Nick Hall Story

It was really an evolving process. I grew up my first decade in England after World War II, and my playground were the buildings that had been bombed, the rubble that remained, burnt-out airplanes that had been shot down. I suppose the seed was planted that there is often no way that you can predict what's going to I heard stories of the various cousins, uncles who never came back from the battlefield. My mother was a big influence as well. Her job during the war was to provide entertainment in the bomb shelters. She was a pianist, sung and danced routines, that sort of thing. And she spoke at length about the days she'd wake up wondering how many of her neighbors had made it through the, through the night. So at a very early age, I came to realize that life can be short and you have to basically live each day to the hilt. There may be no tomorrow, but at the same time, be responsible about it. My jobs entailed stress, wrestling alligators, walking rattlesnakes. Went to work for the Office of Naval Research, training whales and dolphins as part of a stress-related communication study. And eventually went on to university to get formal training. So the jobs I had were exposing me to stress as well as enabling me to observe how animals responded. I received an undergraduate degree in psychology, a doctorate in neuroendocrinology, and postdoctoral training in tumor immunology. Conveniently, I found that I had all the syllables to do research in psychoneuroimmunology. And that's what I did for years, studying the ways that the brain communicates with the entire body and the feedback signals that come back, including from the immune system.

It's incredible how the whales were the ones who inspired you at the beginning of your journey, but of course also your personal life experiences that have pushed you along this path.

I must say, Izzy, I I didn't set out to do this. I had opportunities that arose. I took advantage of them. And at some point it all gelled and off I went. When I used to teach, I found that after a major exam, when students had been preparing probably for a week beforehand, there was no point in introducing complicated new material for at least 2 or 3 days. They needed that time to recover. So I would basically first day review the exam and then maybe give an overview of what was coming up. In fact, some fairly recent research, and in the last 5 years, has revealed that when people go out into a wilderness environment, it takes about 3 days to clear the brain of all the clutter, the memories of the things that need to be done by a certain deadline, the things that didn't turn out the way they had been predicted. So when a person first arrives in that scene without their cell phone, without access to the internet, it actually increases their anxiety. But then after the second day, they've already processed the information associated with the workplace, and it's being replaced with trees, nature. What are we going to do tomorrow? Which hike are we going on? By the third day, in fact, it's called the three-day effect. You don't give a shit about what happened two days ago. Sure. Now you've replaced those memories that are being processed with things that don't associate with the unpredictable. Right. One size never will fit all in biology and especially medicine. There are differences. In what triggers stress in a man versus a woman. Women find any change in your relationship as being more stressful than a man who will find something that affects achievement. His favorite sports team lost the game, big match. The, he lost his job. Whereas for a woman, it's going through a divorce or losing a loved one. Now, I'm not saying that it's all black and white. There's tremendous overlap.

Is that because of social effects or biological?

Probably biological. Because young girls use language at a greater rate than boys. They engage in facial gazing. They learn to recognize from body language, facial expressions, what a person's intent is. They associate a smile with love and warmth. Boys could care less. A little girl is far more likely to be conciliatory. If there's an argument about what they're going to do, what game they're going to play, a girl is more likely to say, what do you say we do this? What do you think, Mary, Linda? Whereas a little boy, if he doesn't like the way the rules are going, grabs his bat and ball and goes home. A little girl will make eye contact with her mother or father. Before going on a slide or doing something for which permission might be granted. A little boy, just the opposite. Mother could be shaking her head, don't you dare jump off that diving board, and that's his cue to go ahead and do it. Again, we are all on a continuum. There are tall people, short people, wide people, narrow people, blue-eyed, brown eyes, you name it. And we are all, we're all on that continuum somewhere, but in general, when you control for all the variables. A woman's brain is programmed after it's been marinated in estrogen and progesterone to develop in one direction, while a man's brain that's been blasted in testosterone is going to go another.

It's incredible. So the hormones play a big role in this.

Huge role. Mm-hmm. Huge role. In the early days, it was thought that if you engaged in guided imagery, If you participated in the right types of activities, if you relaxed, if you engaged in positive thinking, you could make that disease melt like a snowball on a hot stone. And so we've already made that transition. And the key role for psychoneuroimmunology, and I think this is where the developments are going to be in medicine, is in the prevention of disease. Stress doesn't cause disease. It doesn't cause anything. What stress does is create a chemical environment in the body to make it easier for something else to do the dirty work. A virus causes the infection, not stress. But what stress will do is in some cases, especially chronic stress, will lower the immune system, enabling that virus to take hold. And a person may have a genetic disposition for a certain type of heart abnormality, but as long as that gene is not activated, everything's going to be all right. But stress could be an activator or a deactivator of other types of disease. The microbiota is huge. If I was starting over again in graduate school, I would focus on microbiology. And the role of the bacteria that lives within us. Mm-hmm. We've always known they were there, but we always thought the gut bacteria were involved in helping us to digest fiber and things that the human can't do. The understanding that certain types of bacteria can be correlated with the expression of depressive symptoms and other mood changes is huge. I read somewhere, I don't know how you would know this, but 90% of the genome of the human body is bacteria. Only 10% is human.

What advice do you have for the reader who is struggling with potential stress or burnout in their daily lives?

First of all, you have to do two things. There's the perception, the image that you have in your mind of what's happening. And the way that your beliefs, your past experience, are helping shape that image. So you've got to do something to get rid of that trigger. Something has happened in your personal life, in your professional endeavors, that has caused this stress. So if you can change your perception, maybe your expectations, maybe your interpretation is totally wrong. Maybe it is correct. In which case, thinking about things that have happened in the past that might have been worse. And you know what? I survived that. I can survive this. At the same time, the brain is monitoring what's happening throughout the whole body. It's now known that there are receptors lining the blood vessel that respond to heart rate, to blood pressure, transmitting these signals back to the brain and areas of the brain that are not just involved in regulating the heart. So years ago, Walter Cannon, Claude Bernard, others would argue, where does stress come from? Are you running away because you're afraid, or are you afraid because you're running away? And the answer is yes. And we now know it's the perception begins process, but then your physiological response The outpouring of hormones, the changes in heart rate, respiration rate contribute to. So you've got to do two things. One that changes the perception, one that addresses the physical symptoms. Herb Benson's progressive muscle relaxation, for example. Uh, for me, going for a walk, I get bored to tears. Meditating, I've tried it, doesn't work for me. I experience the same changes that those who do research in the area experience when I go out riding my bicycle. Go out on the trails or go out in the Gulf of Mexico in my kayak, away from people. Just, that's how I unwind. So I'm doing something physical, which a lot of people would say, well, that's not relaxing. Well, no, I don't need to relax. That's how I get it. And so recognizing what works for another person is not necessarily what's going to work for you.

Thank you, Nick.

Thank you, Izzy.

Fantastic.