Stress
Episodes
In this clip, Dr. Mark Mattson delivers an overview of the research investigating the effects of intermittent fasting on female and stress hormones.
In this clip, Dr. Mark Mattson describes the importance of incorporating rest, recovery, and refeeding into one's routine.
In this clip, Dr. Ashley Mason describes how mindfulness, a cognitive behavioral strategy, can help mitigate harmful behaviors like overeating and smoking.
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In this clip, Dr. Mark Mattson delivers an overview of the research investigating the effects of intermittent fasting on female and stress hormones.
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In this clip, Dr. Mark Mattson describes the importance of incorporating rest, recovery, and refeeding into one's routine.
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In this clip, Dr. Ashley Mason describes how mindfulness, a cognitive behavioral strategy, can help mitigate harmful behaviors like overeating and smoking.
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In this clip, Dr. Ashley Mason describes how cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia helps people take control of their thoughts to improve their sleep.
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Dr. Mark Mattson discusses how stress is essential to human survival and how exercise and intermittent fasting induce stress to promote health.
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Dr. Rhonda Patrick answers audience questions on various health, nutrition, and science topics in this Q&A session.
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In this clip, Tim Ferriss and Dr. Rhonda Patrick discuss acute versus chronic inflammation and how supplemental antioxidants can negate some of the benefits of exercise.
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In this clip, Wim Hof gives us some insight into how his fascination with the cold originally began.
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Dr. Elissa Epel identifies several biohacks that show promise as strategies to reduce stress and lengthen telomeres.
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Drs. Rhonda Patrick and Jari Laukkanen discuss the benefits of sauna use in terms of cardiorespiratory fitness and mood.
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Dr. Guido Kroemer describes how fasting associated with sickness behavior is critical to surviving infection.
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Dr. Matthew Walker discusses how anxiety affects sleep and identifies ways to manage that stress to improve sleep.
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Dr. Elissa Epel describes how toxic stress modulates telomere length.
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Dr. Elissa Epel discusses the mechanisms of healthy aging and the associations between stress, telomere length, addiction, eating, and metabolic health.
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Sleep Brain Alzheimer's Cancer Obesity Aging Performance Depression Immune System Stress Circadian Rhythm Behavior DementiaDr. Matthew Walker discusses the role of sleep in immunity, creativity, and aging.
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Epigenetics Vitamin D Nutrition Exercise Aging Metabolism Sleep Diabetes Telomeres DNA Damage Stem Cells Stress Melatonin Vitamin E Genetics 23andMe Heat Stress Autophagy Autism Folate Sauna AntioxidantOur genes influence the way we absorb and metabolize micronutrients. Nutrigenomics looks at the influence genetic variation has over micronutrient absorption/metabolism and the biological consequences of this dynamic relationship.
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Systemic inflammation is an important mechanism that research shows may have a very interesting relationship with depression.
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Rhonda explains chronic stress's impact on brain, gut, immune system, and aging. Meditation buffers and improves cognitive and biological aging.
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Sauna Exercise Brain Aging Hormones Performance Insulin Resistance Depression Stress Heat Stress MuscleDr. Rhonda Patrick discusses how conditioning the body to heat stress through sauna use, called "hyperthermic conditioning" may cause adaptations that increase athletic endurance (by increasing plasma volume and blood flow to heart and muscles) and potentially even muscle mass.
Topic Pages
News & Publications
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Chronic stress inhibits autophagy—the brain's recycling system—but restoring its functionality yields rapid antidepressant effects. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
In small doses, stress can sharpen focus and improve resilience, but chronic stress gradually erodes emotional stability, increasing the risk of major depressive disorder. A recent study found that autophagy—the brain’s recycling and housekeeping system—helps maintain emotional stability by removing old or damaged proteins.
Researchers explored how short-term and long-term stress influenced autophagy in mice and investigated whether antidepressant drugs could restore this process. Employing genetic techniques, the researchers selectively inhibited or enhanced autophagy in a region of the brain called the lateral habenula and then monitored how the animals reacted to stress.
They found that acute stress activated autophagy, while chronic stress inhibited it. When autophagy ceased functioning properly, stress-related behaviors increased. However, restoring autophagy—even briefly—produced rapid antidepressant-like effects. Drugs commonly used to treat depression also reactivated autophagy in this brain region. Additional experiments indicated that autophagy helps regulate brain cell activity by breaking down excess glutamate receptors, which are often overactive in depression.
These findings suggest that disrupted autophagy in the lateral habenula plays a central role in how chronic stress contributes to depression. Learn more about autophagy in this episode featuring Dr. Guido Kroemer.
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Breathing exercises reduce stress and improve mental health. www.news-medical.net
Breathwork improves mental health, a new study shows. People who practiced breathwork reported less anxiety, depression, and mental stress, regardless of how frequently they engaged in the practice.
Researchers reviewed the findings of 12 randomized controlled trials that investigated the effects of breathwork on stress. The breathwork techniques were presented in person, remotely, or via both.
They found that slow-breathing exercises improved participants' mental health, regardless of how the techniques were presented. Participants who practiced breathwork reported having less anxiety, depression, and mental stress, compared to those who did not practice breathwork. Surprisingly, the researchers didn’t identify a dose-response effect with breathwork, aligning with other findings in which just a single breathwork session reduced anxiety.
Breathwork is an umbrella term that refers to various breathing exercises and techniques. Evidence suggests that breathwork improves heart rate variability and promotes resilience to stress. People often engage in breathwork as part of general relaxation practices, yoga, or meditation. Learn more about the benefits of meditation in this audio episode featuring Dr. Rhonda Patrick.
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Exercising, drinking coffee and having sex are triggers that raise rupture risks for brain aneurysm, retrospective study finds. (2011) www.sciencedaily.com
From the article:
Calculating population attributable risk – the fraction of subarachnoid hemorrhages that can be attributed to a particular trigger factor – the researchers identified the eight factors and their contribution to the risk as:
-Coffee consumption (10.6 percent)
-Vigorous physical exercise (7.9 percent)
-Nose blowing (5.4 percent)
-Sexual intercourse (4.3 percent)
-Straining to defecate (3.6 percent)
-Cola consumption (3.5 percent)
-Being startled (2.7 percent)
-Being angry (1.3 percent)
“All of the triggers induce a sudden and short increase in blood pressure, which seems a possible common cause for aneurysmal rupture,” said Monique H.M. Vlak, M.D., lead author of the study and a neurologist at the University Medical Center in Utrecht, the Netherlands.
Risk was higher shortly after drinking alcohol, but decreased quickly, researchers said.
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Although physical activity had triggering potential, researchers don’t advise refraining from it because it’s also an important factor in lowering risk of other cardiovascular diseases.
“Reducing caffeine consumption or treating constipated patients with unruptured IAs with laxatives may lower the risk of subarachnoid hemorrhage,” Vlak said. “Whether prescribing antihypertensive drugs to patients with unruptured IAs is beneficial in terms of preventing aneurysmal rupture still needs to be further investigated.”
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Retirement may not provide relief from work-related hypertension, increasing the risk for diseases such as aneurysms. (2009) www.sciencedaily.com
Hypertension is diagnosed when blood pressure on the artery walls is consistently too high. This condition can eventually damage cells of the arteries' inner lining, leading to angina, heart attack, stroke, aneurysm, kidney failure and other serious health problems.
“People’s occupations during their working years can clearly be a risk for hypertension after they retire,” said senior study author Paul Leigh, a professor with the Center for Healthcare Policy and Research and the Department of Public Health Sciences at UC Davis. “The body seems to have built up a stress reaction that takes years to ramp down and may last well beyond age 75.”
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What they found with retirees was consistent with studies of those who are currently employed: higher-status occupations are associated with less hypertension than lower-status occupations.
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Unlike executives and professionals like architects and engineers, Leigh explained, workers in positions such as sales, administrative support, construction and food preparation have little control over decision-making, are under pressure to get a specified amount of work done in a certain amount of time and may feel inadequate about their positions in the workplace hierarchy. Consequently, their stress levels tend to be higher, which can lead to high blood pressure and, eventually, hypertension.
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Bipolar disorder patients experience generalized impaired cellular resilience and broad reductions in BDNF that may contribute to the disease www.sciencedaily.com
From the article:
Effective neuronal plasticity also depends on neurotrophins, which are regulatory factors that promote development and survival of brain cells. Brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) is the neurotrophin mostly found in the brain. It has been extensively investigated in bipolar disorder patients and has been suggested as a hallmark of bipolar disorder. Indeed, some studies have shown that the levels of BDNF in the serum of bipolar disorder patients are reduced whenever patients undergo a period of depression, hypomania, or mania. Other studies have shown that regardless of mood state, bipolar disorder patients present reduced levels of BDNF. Overall, changes in BDNF levels seem to be a characteristic found in bipolar disorder patients that may contribute to the pathophysiology of the disease.
Immediate early genes:
Immediate early genes (IEGs) are a class of genes that respond very rapidly to environmental stimuli, and that includes stress. IEGs respond to a stressor by activating other genes that lead to neuronal plasticity, the ability of brain cells to change in form and function in response to changes in the environment. Ultimately, it is the process of neuronal plasticity that gives the brain the ability to learn from and adapt to new experiences.
One type of protein produced by IEGs is the so-called Early Growth Response (EGR) proteins, which translate environmental influence into long-term changes in the brain. These proteins are found throughout the brain and are highly produced in response to environmental changes such as stressful stimuli and sleep deprivation. Without the action played out by these proteins, brain cells and the brain itself cannot appropriately respond to the many stimuli that are constantly received from the environment.
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in a previous study done by the group in 2016, one type of IEG gene known as EGR3, that normally responds to environmental events and stressful stimuli, was found repressed in the brain of bipolar disorder patients, suggesting that when facing a stressor, the EGR3 in bipolar disorder patients does not respond to the stimulus appropriately. Indeed, bipolar disorder patients are highly prone to stress and have more difficulties dealing with stress or adapting to it if compared to healthy individuals. What the research group is now suggesting is that both EGR3 and BDNF may each play a critical role in the impaired cellular resilience seen in bipolar disorder, and that each of these two genes may affect each other’s expression in the cell. “We believe that the reduced level of BDNF that has been extensively observed in bipolar disorder patients is caused by the fact that EGR3 is repressed in the brain of bipolar disorder patients. The two molecules are interconnected in a regulatory pathway that is disrupted in bipolar disorder patients,”