Manage Stress and Become Resilient, with Dr. Stephen Sideroff

Our bodies have a limited amount of energy, and our bodies are always making choices of where they spend that energy. We could spend that energy into defend and protect, which is where we go to when we're under stress. Or it can go into healing and maintenance and growth.

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Hello and welcome to the five Journeys Feel Freaking Amazing podcast. I'm Wendy Trubo, one of your hosts. This is Edward Levitan. And we have an amazing guest today who's going to talk about so stress. Dr. Steven Sidoroff is an internationally recognized psychologist, executive medical consultant, and expert in resilience, stress management, addiction, neurofeedback, and longevity, which is, I think, what we're all really committed to. He's also an associate professor, Department of Psychiatry and Bio, Behavioral Sciences and Rheumatology at the Geffen School of Medicine at ucla. Stephen, welcome. I'm so psyched to talk about this because I think all of us can attest to that we're experiencing stress.

Well, it's a pleasure to be here. I've been looking forward to it since we talked about this a few months ago at a 4M. So, yes, great.

It's very exciting.

Well, let's first define stress, because I think everybody only thinks about stress as your boss yelling at you, your spouse, your kids. But I think it's bigger than that. Right. So what is the definition? Let's talk about that.

So stress is any really demand on us to respond, react, to, make an adjustment to what's going on in our lives. We try and stay in a place of balance. Stress is anything that pushes us off of that balance. It's anything that makes a demand upon us. And stress could be good. You get a promotion at work, you have a baby, you get married. These are positive stresses. And that's what makes dealing with it more complicated, because it isn't all bad. It's good as well.

Talk to me about how stress impacts our health span.

Sure, sure. Well, there are many channels, many avenues by which stress impacts health span. One, for example, is autonomic dysregulation. And my colleagues and I have actually proposed a new diagnostic code, autonomic dysregulation syndrome, as the Underlying root cause of what most people go to see the doctors for, whether it's GI problems, whether it's neurological problems. We know that this autonomic dysregulation, where we're turning on the sympathetic branch of the nervous system without going into the parasympathetic recovery, triggers a whole cascade of processes that lead to all kinds of physical symptoms. So these shorten our health span. These cause more and more dysregulation, in which we feel worse and worse. We have lower energy. It impacts energy, it impacts metabolism, it directly affects the andrea in our cells, which affects how we use and have available energy. So these links are all there, and they all lead to a shortening of our health span.

I think we should. I think we. I'd like to make this real for people, meaning I. I believe that humans act when things are what I'll call bad enough. You hit the wall, you hit the bad enough point. And so if you're listening to this podcast, you might be thinking, okay, do I need to make a change in my stress? Well, yes, you're human, you live on this earth, and you probably have too much on your plate. So, yes, you need to make a change. But how do you know when it's bad enough? You know, I would say weight gain, that kind of comes out of nowhere and isn't associated with a hormonal change in your life. You know, you're not going through menopause or perimenopause, and all of a sudden you gain weight. What are some other signs?

I would ask the audience, have you used the word or heard the word stress in your life in the last 48 hours? And I imagine most people would say yes. I mean, any survey shows that, that upwards of 70, 80% of the population find stress as their number one problem. So you could notice it because you feel stressed out. Your body doesn't feel the way you would like it to feel. It feels uncomfortable in certain ways, maybe vibration in your chest, maybe upset stomach. GI kinds of problems are all the result of stress headaches. Just physical tension. Overreacting in situations is another indication of stress. Suddenly, things that you used to enjoy don't bring you the same level enjoyment. You're distracted. All of these are indications that stress is having an impact on you. But I will suggest that given all of what's going on in our world today, that you have to be living on Mars to not be affected by all of these stresses. So if you don't notice it, then there's something that you're not paying attention to that you need to be paying attention to. That's for starters, where all everybody has to find their own way that it's impacting them and then decide that I don't want to live this way anymore. And realizing that if you don't do something about it, it will only get worse. These symptoms are signals to you that something isn't working right. There's some way that you're not in a place of balance. And so if you don't address it, whatever is causing you to be out of balance is going to keep engaging with you and causing you to get more and more out of balance. And the symptoms and the signals to you are going to keep getting louder and louder until there's some point where you're going to have to respond to it as when you hit the wall, when you hit rock bottom. But the goal is for you to realize sooner than that because the longer you go, the more difficult it is to recover. The more you throw your body out of balance, as I'm referring to it, the more difficult it is to restore balance.

The thing I'll say just for the viewers, not only is it, it's also high cholesterol, because high cholesterol, some of it's genetic, some of its diet, but good 30, 40 is stress. So. And we can tie it to autoimmune disease, cancer, things like that make stress, makes it worse. So it's not just psychological issues, it's your physical issues. So I just want to make sure that it's. That loop is tied. Because I believe, like you said, if your mind has a challenge, it will tell you in words. If your body has a challenge, it tells you in ouchies. And if you don't listen, the ouchies become stronger and stronger.

Yes. So, I mean, we now have literally thousands of studies showing the impact of stress on physical health as well as mental and emotional. So the data is very clear. It's there whether it's impacting cortisol levels, whether it's impacting inflammation, whether it's impacting neuroinflammation and impacting the functioning of the brain, as well as directly impacting aging. We know that stress shortens our telomeres, which is an important measure of how well or fast or slow we're aging. So the evidence is very clear. It's all there in all of these different areas.

Okay. If we all want an amazing health span, not just a lifespan, but a true health span filled with vitality, vibrance, true health, that managing stress Is one of those foundational behaviors that will alter the body's ability to absorb nutrients, digest food, remove toxins, be in balance, sleep properly so that you can again, detox and repair. Why does it matter is because if you are overly stressed, you will shut down detox, absorption, digestion, and mess up your gut, which of course throws off the whole body. I think a lot of women are, are kind of like an all or nothing in an all or nothing group, you know, that, that it's got to be good, it's got to be right. They're not going to do it halfway. How does, how does that impact our ability to deal with stress? Right. Like if we're just like, we got to do it. Right. Well, that's a stressor right there.

Yeah. So that approach, that mindset, that perspective amplifies our stress. Because as soon as it has to be a certain way, even if it's good or perfect, that puts more pressure on us. Putting more pressure on us increases our stress. You want to have a perspective in which you're doing your best, but then you want to be more accepting of the result. A lot of our stress comes from our judgments and our fear that we're not going to meet either our expectations or somebody else's expectation.

Yeah, I know Tony Robbins talks about the only time you're going to be stress free is when you're six foot, six feet under. Every other time we all have stress, and it's really, how do we deal with it and our response to it? Not necessarily if we have it, because.

You definitely have it. You all have it.

Right? Right. So, yes. So it's, it's your, your mindset. So first of all, one of the first things I teach people about stress is you want to embrace the challenges of your life rather than shrink from them, because that in and of itself helps you with your stress. When you embrace. When you say, okay, I'm going to deal with this challenge, you are feeling more in control. And control is an important variable in terms of how well you deal with stress. The more you feel a sense of you're in control, the more you, the better you handle stress.

Haven't they shown they've studied employees and found that the less agency you have and the less control you have over your job, the more at risk you are of chronic diseases, bad outcomes, being unwell as a result of the stress from having no agency and control. So that's so marked.

Yes. So that, that's a very important fact in the work setting. That is a very important Variable in terms of how much stress people experience is how much control they feel they have in their work setting.

So, I mean, I always have a challenge with. Of course, we. We can all say we should go towards the stress and we should embrace the stress. And we all have pretty bad habits. Most of us have learned pretty bad habits of not doing that. So how do we actually go from a habitual state of avoiding stress, avoiding pain, avoiding unpleasantness, and therefore add the stress to, wow, this is a really cool challenge. I'm psyched to do it.

So, like, reframing it.

Yeah. How do you actually reframe it so that the body, like one, can actually do it? Because just talking about it, it's not usually enough.

Yeah. So, I mean, I think the bigger question is how do we move out of our old bad habits into new, healthy habits? Which is really at the key of all of this, is new learning. And the first step is to realize that we've learned some habit patterns from our childhood that really don't serve us, and we can. And so it's important for each of us to identify all of those things that we do in our lives that really is not in our own best interest. And kind of shrinking from a challenge would be one of them. Because when we shrink from a challenge, we're actually sending ourselves a message. We're telling ourselves, I don't think I can handle this situation. That message to ourselves results in more situations being scary. To us, scary translates into stress. It has to do with our sense of capacity, how we feel we can handle. The only way that you are going to develop the sense that I can handle situations is by engaging in them. Well, if I'm going to engage in them, I might as well take the mindset of embracing that engagement rather than doing it reluctantly, which is where many of us come from. Yeah, I have to do this or I should do this. And we then do it. But then the memory of that experience stays as something in which, well, it was anxiety provoking, it was difficult, it was uncomfortable. If, on the other hand, we start out with how I approach this situation will actually make a difference in my life. If I have the mindset that I'm going to engage in this process because I want to figure out how to do it better and better, then when we look back on it, we remember how well we handled it, not that it was stressful, not that we went into it with anxiety, then we carry a more positive memory of it moving forward.

I have the opposite problem. I know for myself, we go Into a sauna. I do cold showers or a cold plunge.

It's all him.

I'm not doing the cold plunge, fasting things that I on purpose, stress my body. And my thought is either whether if I'm gonna have. I'm definitely gonna have stress throughout the day. So either I'm going to do it purposefully and create my own stress and as exercises stress or, or the cold plunge or whatever else, or the universe is going to create stress for me. So there is positive stress.

It's a good point. And, and when you challenge yourself, and that's a stress, but it's a. It's a manageable challenge. You engage in that challenge. Your brain and your body are learning, they are adapting to some new lessons. And that improves your brain and your body's resilience. It's making your brain and body more able to do further adaptations, further adjustments. The goal when you're dealing with the stress is to be able to adapt to it, to adjust to it. It's when we pile too many stresses on top of each other that we go beyond the limits of the body's healthy response. You're talking about how consciously engaging in certain stresses and certain challenges can actually challenge the brain and the body to adapt and adjust, which literally improves your brain and body's ability to. To make future adaptations and adjustments. And that's an aspect of resilience. So it's not about eliminating all stress, which is impossible, but it's about having a balance in your life. So we can begin by talking about how our bodies have a limited amount of energy, a limited amount of resources, and our bodies are always making choices of where they spend that energy. We could break it down into a very simple dichotomy. We could spend that energy into defend and protect, which is where we go to when we're under stress. Or it can go into healing and maintenance and growth, which is what the energy is available for when we're not stressed. So if we're always stressed, then we're always putting our bodies into the defend, protect mode. And there's little energy for the body to go into healing and maintenance. I mean, the body's making a choice. Do I send blood to my muscles for fight or flight, or do I send it to the kidneys so that my kidneys can do a good job of detoxifying my blood? And those are choices that unconsciously are going on all the time. And that's why stress is good. But it needs to be balanced by time where you're recovering from that stress where you're giving your body the opportunity to restore, to maintain and to heal.

There we go.

Really cool. I think this is amazing, Steven. Thank you.

Where can people find you? How can they connect with you?

So my, my website, Dr. Stephensideroff.com they can also find me on social media, Dr. Sidoroff or Dr. Stephen Sidorov. I'm on Instagram and Twitter and Facebook so people can find me in a lot of different places. In fact, what I would like to offer to your audience, I have a booklet, resilience assessment booklet and it gives my model of resilience. It describes each of the components and it also gives a questionnaire that people can take and self score and they can get their profile along my nine pillars of resilience.

That's fantastic. We'll put that in the show notes then.

Yeah, they can email me@cidaroffcla.com edu and I'm happy to send that out to them.

That's fantastic. Thank you. So Steven, thank you for being here and for the listeners. Thanks for listening to another episode of the feel freaking amazing Five Journeys podcast. Our guest today is Dr. Steven Sidoroff and you can see his information in the show notes. It's all about resilience and stress. Thank you for being here.

Thank you. It's a pleasure.

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