Thea Singer, author of “Stress Less: The New Science That Shows Women How to Rejuvenate the Body and the Mind,” explains to Dr. Oz how we can alter our perception of stress in the world and learn coping mechanisms to improve our health. She also discusses how different types of stress affect different areas of our lives, and the simple ways to stress-proof our brains. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
But what she found in looking at the brain scan was that those who had more social support, their brains actually reacted differently.
The pain center in their brain, which reacted to both physical and emotional pain, was less reactive in those who had social support.
So essentially, by having social support, they express proof their brain.
Hey, everyone.
I'm Dr. Oz, and this is the Dr. Oz Podcast.
We'll see you next time.
Welcome to the show.
Lisa's will be here in the studio in New York City.
We're joined by Tia Singer.
She's a science writer.
She's done a lot of work looking at what's going on in the world around us.
You know, big history, contributing to O Magazine, Natural Health, Body and Soul, you know, wonderful periodical history.
And she's a writer, but before that, she was a modern dancer with several Boston-based companies.
Dance Critics in 1985. Before we get into the science of stress, let's talk about the stress of being a dancer.
How did you transform yourself from being a dancer into a science writer?
Well, actually, I studied literature in college, and so I always knew that I wanted to be a writer.
And I'd also done gymnastics as a kid, and so when I got older, I graduated from college, I thought this was the time to try to dance.
I also find that there's really a very close correlation between the way dancers think, or I thought as a dancer, And the way that I am able to translate scientific material for the general public, we think in images, and that's a great way for me to explain what I'm seeing and to criticize dance, and it's also a great way to explain science.
The book that you've written, Stress Less, it focuses on the science of stress.
And there's lots of books out there about stress.
What has compelled you to take the time to write a book?
Because I know it takes a lot of time to write a book.
A really lot of time to write a book.
I had seen a study done by Nobel Prize winner Elizabeth Blackburn And health psychologist, she's at UCSF, Alyssa Eppel.
And what they were looking at was not so much the fact that stress can make us sick.
There have been a lot of books out there, a lot of material, a lot of talk about the diseases that stress puts us at risk for, such as cardiovascular disease, immune disorders.
But what these two scientists were looking at was how stress can actually make us old, all the way down to ourselves.
And that just really turned me on, and I wanted to explore it as far as I could.
We'll help us through that a little bit because you're talking about telomeres.
We have discussed telomeres in the show in the past, but I would love with the imagery that you use in the book to help you to get everyone to understand what this is really about.
Okay.
Telomeres are the little tips on our ends of our chromosomes.
Our chromosomes lie inside the nucleus of our cells.
They look like two worms crossed at the middle.
Our DNA rests on them, the very substance of our being, so it really needs to be protected.
And on the ends of the chromosomes are little caps.
These are called telomeres.
Think about the little plastic tips on the ends of shoelaces.
They keep the shoelaces from fraying.
Well, the telomeres do essentially that for our DNA and our chromosomes.
They protect it.
Now, when the cells divide, not all cells divide, but many do.
Immune cells do.
Skin cells do.
The telomeres of the daughter cells are a little tiny bit shorter than those of the parent cells.
And this is why scientists look at telomere length as a marker of biological aging.
When we're younger, when we're babies, we have longer telomeres in general.
When we're older, they are shorter.
People who have particular diseases have shorter telomeres.
So it's a great marker of biological aging.
We have lots more questions to get to.
But first, let's take a quick break.
You make the argument that it's not stress per se with the perceived stress.
And again, I think most of the listeners are aware there's a difference between the two, but what does that exactly mean to you, especially someone who's spent some time studying this?
That's a really fantastic point.
Think about it.
There's really no such thing as objective stress.
You're sitting in a traffic jam.
I'm sitting in a traffic jam.
How do we react to it?
We might react the same.
We might react very differently.
We can't change external circumstances.
There are things that are out of our control.
And when we think things are out of control, that's when we feel stressed.
We feel overwhelmed.
But what we can do is we can change the way that we see things.
We can't change those things, perhaps, but we can change the way we see them.
And in the study that Liz and Elissa did, they looked at moms who are caregivers of chronically ill children.
This is an incredibly stressful circumstance, a kind of no-exit You know, circumstance.
And they gave a test to these moms, which I also have in my book, called the perceived stress scale to see at what level of stress they perceived themselves as being at.
And what they found was really remarkable.
Those who perceived themselves as being under the most stress had shorter telomeres by the equivalent of 10 years than those who perceived themselves as being under the least stress.
So what we want to work on is how we can alter our own perception.
Of stress.
Our perceptions of the world.
We want to change our perceptions of how we see events.
Say we're back in that traffic jam, right?
Well, I can sit there and I can tear my hair out, or I can do some meditative diaphragmatic breathing, and what will happen then is the circumstance will stop looking as dire as it did look before when I was panting.
Some of it, I gather, is the different kinds of stress.
If you're in physical stress, someone's putting a needle into you or putting a biopsy forceps into you, it's going to be a little different than if it's psychological stress.
You're worried about the kids getting home safely in the snow versus a challenge stress versus a threat stress.
You talk about those a little bit.
Can you explain to us how the human brain copes with different forms of stress?
Yes, that's a really good point.
People always think stress and they hear negativity in their brains.
Actually, stress Can be good for us.
Acute stress.
Challenge stress.
That's very good for us.
As Bruce McKeown, who is a stress guru at the Rockefeller University, told me, without stress we'd be dead.
Exercise is a form of acute or good stress.
So is challenging our brains.
So, a recent study has shown with rats, sex can actually be a form of challenge stress and actually spur our brain cells to grow more.
What happens is when...
Let me hear that again.
I'm making sure my wife Lisa is listening because she's on the air.
So, just for all the male listeners out there, they have an experiment now showing that in rats, a stressful experience like sex can promote brain cell growth?
Yes.
The scientist's name is Elizabeth Gould and she's at Princeton.
And she's been studying neurogenesis, the birth of new brain cells, for quite a long time.
But a recent study came out, I actually wrote about this on the Huffington Post, in which she looked at rats and looked at sexual activity and found that those who had more sexual activity, which is a form of acute stress, actually had new brain cell growth as opposed to those who were, you know, just kind of hanging out and not really...
Having fun.
So it can make a difference.
Now when we get into trouble is when we're in a situation where the stressors do not let up.
That means we are constantly bathing our cells and our organs in these stress hormones.
That's when we really get into trouble.
So by performing particular activities and interventions, exercise, meditation, ways that we can essentially change our minds We can change what was a threat stress into a challenge stress based on the way that we're observing it.
And I'm saying one more time, the difference between a threat stress and a challenge stress?
A threat stress is when we are in the stressful circumstances chronically or it keeps repeating and repeating and repeating.
We're totally freaked out, but it doesn't go away.
Think about a rollercoaster ride.
That's very brief.
And that's acute stress.
That's exciting.
But if you were going to be on a rollercoaster ride for three days, you would be experiencing then threat stress.
You would fear for your life.
Got you.
Got you.
All right.
So, again, for a lot of listeners out there, the question becomes, how are you really coping with stress?
And I think some of that comes up in the book when you talk about the stress profile.
Again, we're talking to T.R. Singer, the author of Stress Lesson, a new science that shows women how to rejuvenate the body and the mind.
Talk to us a little bit about the stress profile that you outlined.
What I have in the book are various tests introduced in chapters.
For instance, I have the perceived stress test for people to take.
I have a test on debt stress, testing your debt stress.
We certainly know that that's a huge issue these days.
I have a test at the end of the book that looks at how resilient people are, a test looking at our levels of social support.
And what people can do, what I've tried to do in this book, is not give any strict regimen, not said, this is how you have to march to my drummer.
It's basically, here are some options.
Here are ways that you can reduce your stress and slow your aging, and you get to pick and choose, it's kind of a Chinese menu approach, about what works for you.
Because remember, what's really important is that we put ourselves in the seat of control.
That's when we feel less stress.
So people can form their own stress profile based on these various tests.
So a big part of dealing with stress is obviously resilience, and you outlined that actually in the conclusion of this book with one of your quizzes.
I'm going to go through these questions for everybody.
Lisa, you ready?
I'm ready.
I'm posing to my wife.
Hi, Lisa.
Hi.
I tend to bounce back quickly after hard times.
One is strongly disagree.
Five is strongly agree.
So if you think it's true, say five.
If you think it's absolutely wrong, say one.
Are you asking me?
Yes.
I tend to bounce back quickly after a hard time.
I'll say three.
Three.
What does that mean, Tia?
If she said a five, if she said, I really, really bounce back quickly, it's not a problem to have bad times in my life.
What would that mean about her?
Okay, well, here's the thing.
These are scientifically validated tests, so you need to go through all the questions with her to really assess her levels of resilience.
But the fact is, if she is saying, I bounce back quickly, that's a good indicator that she's really resilient.
Hey, we all fall down, we get up, you know, those dolls, those snowman dolls, you know, you push them over, they come back up.
That's really what it's all about.
And there are things we can do to increase our resilience.
For instance, social support is a huge way to reduce stress and really help us look at the world differently.
There was a study done out at UCLA in which the scientists took a look at, rated, had people rate their levels of social support over a period of time, and then she put them in a brain scan.
And she had them play this.
It was kind of a video game.
And they thought they were going to be an equal player, but what happened was the other players, the animated players, were actually leaving them out.
This is a stressful circumstance.
You're being rejected.
But what she found in looking at the brain scan was that those who had more social support, their brains actually reacted differently.
They were the pain center in their brain, which reacts differently.
to both physical and emotional pain was less reactive in those who had social support.
So essentially, by having social support, they stress-proofed their brain.
So there are many things that we can do to help with our Reducing stress and building up our own resilience.
And again, there's a quiz about social support, and I'll give you one or two of the questions just so the audience can understand them.
In general, how many people do you feel close to?
And that gives you a choice of zero to five, and there's some caveats on this.
These are people, friends or family, with whom you feel at ease, who can talk about private matters, and can call on for help.
The options here range from zero to five or more.
Is there a number that's sort of magical that you should keep in mind of people that you should have some closeness to?
No, there's no magical number, but studies have shown that those who have more than four people who they consider having close relationships with over a period of time, they have lower mortality rates.
It's really quite amazing when you look at this graph and see numbers of social contacts that And then, you know, on one part of the graph and on the other side is mortality rate.
So it really makes a huge, huge difference.
Whether, you know, you're feeling stressed, you feel things are out of control, you pick up that phone, you go visit a friend, don't start texting, that's not going to do it for you, neither is email.
But somewhere where you're really getting involved and tossing that ball of conversation back and forth, that's going to really make a difference.
There's a lot more to come after the break.
Well, you make the comment about the digital world and how it actually may not be quite as impactful in dealing with our stress.
Is that why you argue that middle-aged people are more stressed out today than they have ever been in the past?
Is that why the baby boomer generation is at particular risk?
Oh, no, no, that's not why.
I mean, us baby boomers, you know, we...
Something new comes in, we learn how to do it, so we consider ourselves pretty tech-savvy.
But the reason that we are so stressed out, and I'm among them, and interestingly, many of the scientists I talk to were also baby boomers, we're so stressed out because middle age is a really tough time.
We start to realize our own mortality.
Our physical selves are not what they used to be.
Binge on that chocolate cake one night?
Can't fix it by the Boca Burgers and the egg whites the next day.
You need to continue doing that for several days.
So we're feeling more vulnerable from the get-go, and that makes us more susceptible to everyday stressors.
We're also in a position where we're caregivers.
We're not just caregivers of our children, though.
We're also caregivers of our aging parents.
And this is an incredible, stressful circumstance, you know, the sandwich generation being caught betwixt and between.
There's also the financial pressures are unbelievable.
The baby boomers are, you know, we're heading toward retirement and there's nothing there.
We have an empty pot, basically.
We're trying to save for our own retirement and our kids' education, particularly as many of us have children older.
So we're really in an incredibly, incredibly stressful situation.
Yeah, but yeah, just to play this out a little bit, I mean, the generation before us had to suffer through a world war where they lost loved ones.
They lived in an era where there was a real risk of nuclear holocaust, certainly a much more visible threat, palpable threat than a 9.5% unemployment rate.
You know, 100 years ago, they had the continued famines.
Polio was a major illness, smallpox epidemics, cholera epidemics.
I'm not sold.
On the argument that the boomers, and I was the youngest year of the boomers.
I was born in 1960. I'm not sure that it's purely about external existence.
I think a lot of the reason that the boomers are stressed out is they had different expectations for their lives.
As we all grow older, that disappears sometimes.
Well, that's a piece of it, I would agree, because we were boomers, especially...
Baby boomer women, we were going to be super women and we were going to do everything well, and then invariably now we're at midlife and we're finding, oh no, I've fallen short.
And so we're very, very hard on each other.
But remember, it's not just a question of external circumstances.
We're talking about, you know, our emotional response to personal events.
If people are dying in a war, I mean, it's horrendous.
It's awful.
But the fact is, if you have a parent who dies, you're going to be really sunk into the depths.
That's going to really reach to the core of your being even more so.
So I'm basing this basically on some studies that have been out there.
I mean, obviously, you know, famine, wars, those are incredibly difficult circumstances.
But when you think back to the 50s, you know, like my parents, People basically had a lot of blinders on.
Denial is a very powerful thing.
So the circumstances, there might have been outrageous things going on, but people might not have been internalizing them to the same extent.
Well, then again, pushing it a little bit.
The other thing that was different, again, I remember my parents teaching me how to put my head under the desk if a bomb went off.
And they would never tell me that it was for a nuclear bomb.
They would say it was an air raid.
If there were bombs overhead, that can be bombs.
There's going to be one bomb.
Now, how old were you when that was going on?
Probably four, five, six.
I remember being in school and very young and doing air raids drills, which I suspect you may remember as well.
Yes.
Well, we had those too.
It was ridiculous.
We had to get under our desks.
Or we had to go out in the hall and we had to face the lockers and put our heads down.
Absurd.
It was the whole Red Scare thing.
And I actually remember the Cuban Missile Crisis.
I was in sixth grade.
That was when we were talking...
The nuclear bombs, and I remember it distinctly, and I was terrified.
I was 11 years old, and somehow I'd heard there was this bomb that was going to come up from Cuba, and it was going to wipe out everything in its path.
I was living in New Jersey, so I felt like I was kind of in the direct line of fire.
And yeah, that's incredibly, incredibly stressful.
There's no question about that.
But President Kennedy, bless his soul, actually, you know, he handled the Cuban Missile Crisis and it did not go on for three years.
You know, people have been unemployed now for two, three years.
They don't know they might be losing their homes.
So we have to remember duration as well.
And this is not a hard and fast rule.
You know, there's stressful circumstances, certainly, and people react to this stress with their stress hormones rising every single decade that there is.
But I think the demands we're putting on ourselves and what we're doing inside of our heads has gotten really extreme these days.
