Stress, Hugs, Mental Health, and more - Dan Pardi speaks with Jackie Lamping

Mental Health

The toll of employee burnout has been estimated to cost companies in the US as much as $190 billion every year, and the long-term deleterious effects on health may contribute to as many as 120,000 deaths annually. And new surveys suggest, unsurprisingly, that the coronavirus outbreak may only be exacerbating this situation.

To learn more about the pervasive role of stress in our mind and body, and the problem of managing stress in the era of COVID-19, check out the transcript of the interview where Dan had the opportunity to speak about this problem (and much more!) with Jackie Lamping.

Transcript

Jackie Lamping - 00:11: Hi, everyone. Welcome to today's talk. I am thrilled to be sitting down here with our very special guest, Dan parti. Uh, well, let me see if I can give you a proper introduction here. You specialize in the state of the art of the high performing brain. You have a PhD from Leiden, as well as Stanford. You give talks with VCs like the Mayfield fund. You work with companies like Adobe, Workday, Pandora, um, consulting on how people can deliver optimal performance and as well as how to think about, you know, the modern life stressors that we have to deal with and how to kind of counteract that in order to live our best lives and achieve optimal performance. You also worked with the Navy special warfare helping fighters deliver at elite level performance under very stressful situations. So really, really thrilled to have your perspective here today. Thanks for sitting down.

Dan Pardi - 01:20: Thank you for having me. It's obviously a topic that I love to learn about. Share what I know and it's one of great need now. So I'm glad we were having a conversation

Jackie Lamping - 01:33: Along that point of, of great need it's 20, 20 it's August. We are finding ourselves here in a really, really stressful period of time, whatever your individual situation is, your stress levels are probably going through the roof. There's uncertainty around, um, catching this, this disease there's uncertainty about when we'll be able to quote unquote, go back to normal, there's uncertainty about whether we will ever be able to go back to normal. Yeah. And so I guess my first question to you is under these levels of sustained periods of extremely high stress, what does that do to the body and brain?

Dan Pardi - 02:18: Yes, there are profound, uh, there's a profound influence of psychological stress on the body and the brain. And we know you can look at brain imaging from Holocaust survivors and you see that there is significant structural damage that occurs at particularly reduction in gray matter. Not only that their offspring and their offspring's offspring or their grandchildren have those same structural deficits. Wow. So this is a trans generational effect that can happen from extreme sustained, prolonged, severe stress. And that, you know, you could imagine that the stress that those people experienced persisted well after they felt more safe, the PTSD that they experienced. Uh, there's another study that I think might feel more, um, something that people can relate to. But the study looked at 22 year period and they observed that if people lived in four years of poverty in that time, then they had drastically elevated levels of systemic inflammation in their bodies.

03:27: And when they perform functional tests, physical performance tests, like their grip strength, uh, or sit to stand tests, those are both validated measures that they, they underperformed relative to people that didn't have that sustained stress from financial pressures for that period of time. And they also had issues with their mental performance and cognition. And this is also relevant because 80% of the United States thinks that the future of the United States is a considerable worry and rightfully so, uh, you know, financial and emotional strain from COVID, um, we've handled it less well than other high income countries. So 30% have reported severe sadness and stress in this time. And about a third are dealing with really serious financial stress. So there's 330 million people in the United States. So we're talking about a hundred million people that are currently feeling that strain. If they're going to be able to, you know, put food on the table and have shelter. So it's, uh, right now it's, it's a unprecedented situation for many and stress has a real, uh, physiological consequences that can last a long time, but there are things we can do about it. That's why we're having this conversation.

Jackie Lamping - 04:43: So when you and I were first talking about having this conversation and what were the topics we would talk about, you drew a very intriguing Venn diagram and one of the circles said brain health and the other circle said mental health. And I never really thought about it that way. What, what's your perspective on the difference between brain health and mental health and how they interact?

Dan Pardi - 05:11: Oh, answer this slightly Securitas. But when you introduced me, we talked about brain performance. The, that all falls under the category of health. That as something that has captivated my attention for a long time. So whether my schooling and I consider myself more of a generalist than an expert at any one area, but ultimately that is the game that we are playing, right. We are playing a game where we're trying to figure out how to be healthy across all the factors that matter. And that there isn't really a special, a specialty that does just that. And I wanted to focus on that the mental performance aspect of what I do is really designed to help people tie into a motivational source to help them stay healthy when they don't have a Frank condition or illness that they're dealing with, like diabetes or depression or anything that can be a result of poor health.

06:02: So to come back to your question here, there's really a bidirectional relationship between mental States and physical States of the brain. And we know that for instance, uh, for example, people that are exercising during this period of COVID, they're getting at least 30 minutes of moderate intensity physical activity a day, which is equivalent to a brisk walk. There have 30% reduced risk of experiencing signs of depression and anxiety. And if you do a little bit harder, so more vigorous activity, and you do it for a shorter period of time, so at least 15 minutes or longer, you have a 40% reduced risk of experiencing depressive and anxiety States. And we see that whether the general point here is that putting ourselves under different types of physical stress can build mental resilience. And it's not a complete solution, but any company that is working in the place of mental health, you're automatically a health company too, because otherwise you're dealing with a limited set of tools to solve a problem.

07:05: And you want a complete toolkit because if your anxiety or mental, uh, your depression is really driven by a physical issue. You're not getting a fundamental need that the body has. Then you've lowered the threshold to activate that mental state. And we all have our own dispositions here. Cause some people might develop diabetes and other people might have depression, but we know globally that major depression is the major cause of disability in the world today. And so we're the way I like to describe it is that we are, you know, freshwater fish living in a salt water tank and our energy tank is getting saltier by the day. And that tank is that what I mean by that metaphor is that technology pushes us to live in a way that is unfamiliar. And one of the consequences of our, a lifestyle that doesn't have all the conditions met will be mental States that are, that caused a lot of people's strains. So depression, anxiety

Jackie Lamping - 08:03: At modern health, we talk about the five pillars of mental wellness. And one of those is physical wellness. So we, we definitely are aligned on that. We see the comorbidities and all of that. We think about building a mental health routine and in just the same way that we think about building a physical health routine and working out and, and proactively building that into your day and your week. One of the things that I've noticed personally from being in isolation now is I'm a hugger. I will probably forcibly hug someone, even in a professional setting. I just love to hug it's who I am. I, you know, I gotta, I have to like call it back every once in a while, but, um, I've noticed that I feel more depressed now because they don't have those same interactions. And you know, one of my favorite research studies of all time was, was this study that showed that, um, hugging someone for extended periods of time, 20 seconds or longer released oxytocin in the body and that it was a very beneficial thing to do. So what's your perspective on physical touch, impacting mental health and the fact that now it's fearful to touch? Yes.

Dan Pardi - 09:21: So I can completely relate. I grew up in a family where if you were in close proximity to somebody, you and having a conversation, you would have your arm around them. So that was my experience in growing up too. And, uh, and I'm a hugger as well. I, I, I, it usually feels really good to just embrace somebody in that way. So we do know that being social and being we're a very social creatures and we don't even fully appreciate the impact that it has on, on us. But, um, there are telltale signs of its importance. And you mentioned, uh, the release of oxytocin. So oxytocin is known as a chemical, like the love chemical and for bonding, it's actually a very complex molecule. But one thing that it does is it acts at the fear center to dampen it down. And it also will put us in a state of the parasympathetic tone, which is a more vegetative, calm state.

10:15: And so not only do we have more of those hormones circulating when we are in the presence of people we like and engaging in positive social interaction, but that in itself also will reinforce us putting ourselves back into those social situations in the future. So it's this virtuous cycle. What do we do now? We can't be around folks. And we have surrogates for that, which we don't know how good of a surrogates they are, you know, connecting with people over zoom, connecting with people in some digital format. My feeling is that it's better than nothing, probably not a great replacement. I know that even if I, I need to get out of my house once a day and go for a walk and just be just seeing people feels better than if I were to be in isolation. So for me, I try to monitor my own stress level.

11:08: I know the positive and the positive experience I have physically and mentally just being around folks. And so I've done more to reach out to old friends to say, hi, and check in and have different types of conversations. How are you doing how's life? You know, give me an update and I've even sent messages. Whereas let me, let me update you on me. And cause I know that I have that need to connect. So I would encourage us in this weird time where we can't be around people in a way that we used to, to, to find your surrogates, you know, to, to reach out to people, have real conversations, um, and also find ways to be around people that is respectful of public health guidance. Cause, um, one thing I'll say too is that there is a recent study had come out that showed that the more aware you were of facts of covered the less stressed you were. So knowledge is power. And what that knowledge does is it can reduce your uncertainty. So you want to juxtapose sort of being respectful of this rare time that we're in. And, but also know that if you are adhering to those facts, it can actually be stress-relieving and then figure out the ways that work for you to just have visuals on people in your world and, and connect the way you can.

Jackie Lamping - 12:23: I, uh, I admitted to you before we sat down that, um, I am connecting and getting my hugs by hugging a pillow at night as I go to sleep. And that's that that's soothing for me. Uh, certainly doesn't replace a real human, but, um, you know, you and I connected pretty instantly on, on sleep and the value of sleep and the restorative nature of sleep. And I think it's, you know, pretty, um, pretty often you'll, you'll hear CEOs kind of brag about how little fleet they got or that they can operate at this really high level without a lot of sleep. And for me, I feel the opposite. I would actually list sleep as like my number one hobby. If I have extra time in the day, I would love to just take an hour nap. Um, and I know when I wake up from a great, great night's sleep and I just feel like, I feel like I've aged in reverse and I just feel so fantastic. So as an expert on the brain and sleep what's going on, when we have a great night's sleep, what's what's happening to the body.

Dan Pardi - 13:32: So my relationship with sleep started about 20 years ago, I S I started to work for a company that had a, um, that was in the sleep field. And I instantly fell in love with the science of sleep. It's a window into how health is. We knew it into health in general, but how the brain works and how the body works. And then it's just a, it's a, it's a fascinating subject. I'll never grow tired of it. I'm proud to say that my podcast was radio is the official podcast of the sleep research society and the Canadian sleep society. So it's been cool to be able to have conversations with experts on aspects of sleep from age acceleration. So if you don't get enough sleep, you can actually accelerate the aging process. So interesting to hear you say that you feel like you've aged in reverse with a good night's sleep.

14:18: Um, for me, I've been very interested in aspects of sleep and metabolism. So we know that people that get less than six hours of sleep per night have a 55% increased risk of being obese over time. And we, we know that really all hormones, whether they are appetite hormones, whether it's how your blood glucose is regulated, they all respond to how well you slept the night before. And there's also a process called histories, which is not just your immediate history, but what things have been like for you recently over the last month or weeks. So if you haven't been sleeping very well, you might've gotten a good night's sleep last night, but your physiology is still gonna be reflective of what things have been like recently. So, one other interesting thing about sleep is that it's not, it's not automated that you're going to get a good night.

15:09: Given the uniqueness of our modern world. A lot of times people will try to, uh, get better sleep entirely by what they do within a half an hour of going to bed, or by doing endless amount of environmental design, I'm going to change out my pillows and my sheets. All that stuff can matter. Temperature, bed, comfort. You want a cool, quiet, calm. You want to have a nice sleeping area that you feel safe in, but there are things that are going to affect your sleep. That start from the moment you wake up. So getting bright sunlight in the morning to the types of food that you eat over the day, all of these will feed into different systems that are calculating something called the sleep homeostats, they're paying attention to different body signals that will then lead to how sleepy you feel at night and when and your continuity of sleep.

15:56: So the different stages you get and how disrupted your sleep is. So in a way, sleep is a help behavior, but it's also reflective of your health. So if you're not getting great sleep, then that is actually a signal that your health is off in some way. You're right. That it's been a opinion for a long time that I can, I don't need that much sleep, right? I'm hard charging. I'm serious. Look at bill Clinton. When he gave his inauguration speech, he said, I'm going to stay up day and night working for you. The American and that attitude had been around for a long time. So even Thomas Edison and others, that felt like it was really just a Royal waste of time. And we spend a third of our lives sleeping. So it has to play some meaningful effect on our body. And there's been all sorts of attempts to see if it, how can we truncate it?

16:45: How can we shorten it and not experience any of the, the consequences. And we do know that there is such a thing as short sleepers, but it's extraordinarily rare in our society. A lot of people can accommodate. They acclimate to getting less sleep and they feel that they're fine, but they might not be. They might be indeed accelerating the aging process by doing so. So, you know, it's, it's good to pay attention to how you really feel. And people will respond in different ways too, which is fascinating. So some people might not carry a really significant burden of sleepiness, but their decision making process might change considerable. Interesting. Yeah. So they might take greater risks or more frequent risks. And so imagine if you have a hard charging CEO, that's dealing with huge budgets and they walk into a meeting and completely unsuspecting to them.

17:37: Cause a lot of times these effects can happen beyond our awareness, but they're real. And they make, you know, some decision about, uh, what direction the company should go in that might not have made by that person under a different condition of better sleep. We see that all the time. And so it's hard to, you know, you can do is you can look at what well-controlled scientific studies can tell us, and then you can extrapolate that to what that might look like in real world terms. But the impact of sleep is, uh, is massive. And I think that there is no better brain enhancing, you know, impact than getting great sleep regularly. So what I usually tell people to do is to focus on it for a two or three week period of time. That is your one most important thing that you're doing right now in the hopes that connecting with the feeling will then make you more aware, mindful, and motivated to actually take part in the things that you need to do in your day to then make sure that you get that, that good sleep.

18:32: And part of it is just turning off a ahead of time. So like, you know, meaning like you turn off Netflix, you stop reading your book, you stop engaging in something where you're relaxing and that can be really hard. That can be very hard when you're like, this is my time I've been working all day. I've been dealing with other people's thoughts, issues, whatever, whatever I'm focused on. And now I, this is my time to relax. And one of the first things to go typically is, is lip gloss. So we're getting about three hours less than we were a decade ago on average. And, uh, and that's gonna, that's gonna have consequences in the public health.

Jackie Lamping - 19:07: So we know that behavior changes very hard and it's, it's particularly hard and perhaps impossible for some in the environment we're dealing with right now where there's just extremely high levels of stress. And some people might be feeling this cycle of, well, I didn't sleep because I'm stressed and then now I'm stressed because I didn't sleep. And I know I'm supposed to be sleeping and, and get into a bit of a cycle around that. Yeah. What advice would you give for people right now who want to be building or perhaps rebuilding healthy behaviors and really struggling with that, right.

Dan Pardi - 19:46: Yeah. So we're seeing a major shakeup of patterns. And so if you've been worried about your own pattern slipping from how you were living before to now, it's an opportunity for a bit of a reset. And I think that that can be a good thing, but my perspective on health is that it's also interconnected. There's really own only one effective approach. We look for the special nutrient or the special workout program or the special we want to find the silver bullet that explains everything, right. Ah, that's the reason why things weren't as I expected and we really do need to be generalists and figure out how we can take advantage of no knowledge that exists and make that our average pattern in our life. Now that doesn't mean you need to get things right all the time. And it doesn't mean that you have to work on everything at once, all the, but that is ultimately what we should be after.

20:51: And you do see a lot of what I call trend. Hobbing something will develop some scientific evidence and get known. Um, and then everybody is doing that thing. And then it's accused of being a fad and there's, everybody's doing it and there'll be gives up. And they're on the new fad where a lot of these more scientifically driven fats actually have some merit to them. They're just not complete solutions. And so we end up giving up something that could have been beneficial to opt for going whole hog into the next thing that we hope is going to save us. And it's not an individual's fault for why this pattern is really common, modern society. Doesn't address health in an effective way.

21:38: Our old systems to support health, um, have been sort of calcified. And in, in the sense that in order to disseminate best practices across an entire nation, you have to build processes and systems. And those processes and systems were really built at a different time. They were built at a time with a different understanding of what health was and how to interact with it, where most of it could be addressed with, uh, you know, pharmaceuticals and with diagnostics and surgeries. And so if a doctor only has a few minutes with somebody where does a human get training on how to interact with modernity and all those pressures forces, you know, the, as I like to think of our health is shaped by exposures behaviors, pressures. The pressures is like work life and, and even forces, which I won't get into because those are sort of scientifically complex, but it's like the long tail of evolution and how it influences us across the life history or lifespan.

22:38: But that is what we're, that's what we're dealing with. And we it's treated as though we all know everything, what to do. We just need nudges and tips where we need training. So I think health maintaining health is harder than it seems and totally achievable. We probably won't achieve it with listicles and nudges and things like that, but we can do very complex things. We can navigate complex environments with challenging situations and deadly consequences. We know how to do that in a lot of different disciplines of life, like flying a helicopter or whatnot. We need to spend that same amount of time training people on how to interact with these forces so that we make our tank a little assaulted after tweeting the hundredth, the thousandth study, looking at the powerful impact of certain phytonutrients have on some aspect of our physiology. I had the aha moment that yes, we look for, Oh, curcumin for Sutton, these molecules that are very special things, but when you stand back and you look how distributed that is, there's that basically plant phytochemicals are having an enormously powerful impact on our physiology.

23:54: In fact, I think it's an entire Pharmacopia that we don't, we just have less of those compounds coming into our body than we used to. And that's one of the problems with processed foods. A lot of those were extracted and they were just not getting enough. So when we put them back into the body, it seems like miracles happen. Um, but the value, you know, you always, okay, what was that one phytonutrient and then what was the dose? But the idea there is actually just having like a real high diversity of plant compounds in your, in your diet. If you look, if you look at a hundred gathers, they would eat 20 to 30 different types of day plants

Jackie Lamping - 24:33: Eat the rainbow, right.

Dan Pardi - 24:35: Rainbow. And probably even, I mean, my, I don't necessarily recommend this to everybody, but my personal supplement strategy is I try to eat a very healthy diet, but I then will supplement it with whole plant compounds that I don't eat regularly just to get more diversity into my, into my meals. That is actually in a way emblematic of the bigger picture, which is just how you, you can take any one topic, whether it's cognition or stress or depression. And you can look at the diversity of things that influence it, like, you know, going out and walking in nature has, you know, there was a study in Japan where they had people for 15 minutes in the morning and 15 minutes in the afternoon walk either in a natural forest setting or in an urban setting. And over, only three days, there was significant reductions in blood pressure and heart rate and the people that were in nature,

Jackie Lamping - 25:28: I'm not surprised, not surprised. Yeah.

Dan Pardi - 25:30: And there's a, uh, another interesting study that I came across where there's something called mycobacterium. [inaudible], I'm not sure if I'm pronouncing that last one. Right. But it's a soil-based bacteria. And when given to, in this case, rodents, uh, they had a significant reduction in neuro inflammatory molecules, and then they had, they also showed less signs of harm due to physical stressors. So the bodies was much more resilient after that. And that's just us interacting with nature in an almost unintentional way. So whether you're a Hunter, if you're a Hunter gatherer and you're a former, you're getting that exposure. Right. But if you're living in a beautiful split stair out urban setting, you're not. So the, the amount of input the inputs into our physiology, it's almost, it's really difficult to consider how many there are and how they're impacting us in ways that we don't even really fully understand or appreciate

Jackie Lamping - 26:30: In talking about disseminating this information. Uh, you and I actually met earlier this year at a dinner party where you were, uh, very graciously disseminating some information to all of us about, um, nutrition and, um, even getting into specific vitamins and add a Keens and proteins and how they interact. And, um, I, we were all so incredibly grateful to have you at that dinner to help us understand and help us sort of tweak and tune and improve our own performance. But it also occurred to me that at that dinner, we were probably overindulging and probably more food than we needed to probably move more drink than we needed to certainly having dessert courses and all of these things. And so, as someone who is very well aware of all of the ways that we can be optimizing our behavior and our diet and our nutrition, our sleep, all of these things, how do you allow yourself permission to break the rules?

Dan Pardi - 27:39: You know, I still consider that event a very healthy event. I made new friends. Um, there was a lot of laughter. There was a lot of just positive feelings from that night of meeting new, wonderful people. Uh, I was a little surprised they didn't actually know that that event was going, was going to be somewhat focused on asking me questions. And I loved it, uh, because the tactics of health, all the different details will, will be endlessly fascinating for me for my whole life. I know that, but I'm generally more into the philosophy of health now, which is how does it all come together. But to answer your question, this is the ultra ultra marathons, right? And you really want to have a winning record and not necessarily demand that you win every game, if you will, that having dalliances away from what you might consider more optimal is as a part of a pattern that is healthy.

28:41: And now certain people might want to dedicate themselves for a period of time, for a specific reason to try and do everything right. Oftentimes these are athletes or, uh, even physique athletes, especially like they have to get everything perfect. And I'm okay with that. You know, that, um, if you, if you have something that is really driving you to adhere closely to you think is optimal, that is great, but what I, that's never been, what has been most interesting to me what's been most interesting to me is how do I sustain this over the long go long period where I don't feel that I'm sort of overwhelmed by it and I can't interact with, uh, other aspects of life that I value. And now we can juxtapose sort of a healthy average pattern with the opposite behavior that you see in society, which is detoxing, right, and all forms, which is basically, I'm going to maintain an average unhealthy lifestyle.

29:38: And I'm going to try to absolve my sins, um, over an intense period of a period. You know, whether it's training for a marathon from having sat on a couch for a long time, to doing literally a detox of some sort, uh, at least whatever that means and how it branded, um, to say, all right, I'm going to just not do this for a few days. And then I'm going to go back to my pattern, the general, I think, um, mission we all have that's whether we are aware of it or not is to figure out a healthy pattern that where you are that is characterized your pattern is characterized by involving, uh, as many things that influence our health in the right way as possible. That's your average pattern, and it is a lifetime. It's going to be a, it's a lifetime of commitment.

30:23: I mean, think about how much we change over the lifetime, right? We have different interests, motivations needs. So think about who you were 10 years ago and what drove you then, and 10 years before that, and 10 years before that. And so it's not really just learning a set of rules to follow or a specific sets of facts, but it's figuring out how you can develop capacities to always try to do well in the state that you're in. And that's why I do actually love the idea of mental performance as a, um, something that can lead your health efforts. So the idea is how do I show up every day in my life feeling my best, and you will fail at that. There are days you won't feel your best and not even feel particularly good, but if you have that idea in mind, uh, can you make every day a little bit better and we're leaving so much untapped potential on the table.

31:20: So imagine somebody just picture this individual, who's going to go to work for the next three years. And they're going to grind to get all their things done as best they can. And there are things that they could do to make their themselves better at everything they try and everything they try easier to do. And it's unfortunate to me that we don't get that training to make life a little bit better. And as it goes well beyond just work, it's your social interactions. It's how you interact with your family and hobbies. It's really how you are interacting with life. And we are, we're sort of running at a bit of a deficit just because of these modern forces that are so typical. We don't know that they're off and we don't know that our behavior and our performance is off due to that. It just because it's all, it's so normalized, we might get a sense just given how rapidly things change.

32:12: Now we can see that change a little better than past generations, but, um, that's what I think we all really need is to have more significant training. And for any given period of time, there's going to be different sets of tools that you can use, whether it's trackers or, you know, applications, and that'll continue to evolve, but you want to understand your relationship with those and you want to sort of diversify and you want to always be sort of, you want to be mindful of every day and not get so overwhelmed that you just want to turn it off

Jackie Lamping - 32:45: For me. It's progress, not perfection, right? Yeah. Having some self-compassion over not having to be perfect every day. Yeah, that's right. Fantastic. Thank you, Dan so much for your time for sharing your perspective with us in the modern health family. We really appreciate your time.

Dan Pardi - 33:01: I really appreciate you having me here. Thank you. [inaudible].