Speaker 1: I really like to focus on what we can do
Speaker 1: now today, and that's all we can control. Welcome to
Speaker 1: the one you feed throughout time. Great thinkers have recognized
Speaker 1: the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like garbage in,
Speaker 1: garbage out, or you are what you think ring true,
Speaker 1: and yet for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen
Speaker 1: or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy,
Speaker 1: or fear. We see what we don't have instead of
Speaker 1: what we do. We think things that hold us back
Speaker 1: and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking.
Speaker 1: Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort
Speaker 1: to make a life worth living. This podcast is about
Speaker 1: how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction,
Speaker 1: how they feed their good wolf. Yeah, thanks for joining us.
Speaker 1: Our guest on this episode is Dr Alyssa Epple, a
Speaker 1: health psychologist focusing on stress pathways. For the past fifteen years.
Speaker 1: She has studied stress in the lab and in the
Speaker 1: field using naturalistic stressors and associations with an early aging syndrome.
Speaker 1: Dr Apple studied psychology and psychobiology at Stanford University and
Speaker 1: clinical and health psychology at Yale University. She also completed
Speaker 1: an n i M A funded postdoctoral fellowship at UCSF,
Speaker 1: where she has stayed on as faculty in the Department
Speaker 1: of Psychiatry. Her new book is The Telomere Effect, A
Speaker 1: Revolutionary Approach to Living Younger, Healthier, Longer. Our sponsor on
Speaker 1: this episode is health i Q. To see if you
Speaker 1: qualify and get your free health quote, go to health
Speaker 1: i q dot com. Slish wolf Or mentioned the promo
Speaker 1: code wolf when you talk to a health i Q agent.
Speaker 1: And here's the interview with Dr Elissa Apple hi alas So,
Speaker 1: welcome to the show. Thank you so much. Eric. Your
Speaker 1: book is called The Telomere Effect, A Revolutionary Approach to
Speaker 1: Live in Younger, Healthier, and Longer. And it's a fascinating
Speaker 1: book to me because really a lot of it talks
Speaker 1: about how the choices we make emotionally about our thought
Speaker 1: patterns in our lifestyle directly affects our biology in a
Speaker 1: very clear and measurable way. So we'll jump into that
Speaker 1: in just a moment, but let's start like we normally
Speaker 1: do with the parable. There's a grandmother who's talking with
Speaker 1: her granddaughter and she says, in life, there are two
Speaker 1: wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One
Speaker 1: is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and
Speaker 1: bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf,
Speaker 1: which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And
Speaker 1: the granddaughter stops and she thinks about it for a second,
Speaker 1: and she looks up at our grandmother and she says, well, grandmother,
Speaker 1: which one wins? And the grandmother says, the one you feed.
Speaker 1: So I'd like to start us off by asking you
Speaker 1: what that parable means to you in your life and
Speaker 1: in the work that you do. I think it's profound.
Speaker 1: I love it that your show is titled after it.
Speaker 1: It just reminds us of how much of our life
Speaker 1: experience is constructed by us, how much control we have
Speaker 1: over choosing what we experience. So you know, whether it's
Speaker 1: internal things, negative or positive thoughts and feelings and experiences
Speaker 1: or things that happen to us, we all have bad
Speaker 1: and good all the time. And this question of what
Speaker 1: are we going to choose to focus our attention on
Speaker 1: is just so critical can't be understated, because where we
Speaker 1: decide to put our attention is what we experience, what
Speaker 1: determines how much we're going to remember positive or negative
Speaker 1: experiences and of course build on them and capitalize on them.
Speaker 1: So it just says so much about really our our
Speaker 1: psychological power to choose our story in a way, yep.
Speaker 1: And your book is really fascinating because it talks about
Speaker 1: the implications of choosing that story and what that looks like.
Speaker 1: There's a great quote that you say early in the
Speaker 1: book from a researcher by the name of George Bray,
Speaker 1: and this really gets to kind of what you said
Speaker 1: in the intro about things aren't necessarily fixed. We have
Speaker 1: a tendency to think of genetic traits as being like, well,
Speaker 1: I have this genetic trait. And his phrase was, jeans
Speaker 1: load the gun and environment pulls the trigger. And that
Speaker 1: environment is not just our physical environment, but but our
Speaker 1: mental environment as well. Absolutely exactly. It's just so easy
Speaker 1: for us to feel that our health is to termined
Speaker 1: for us, you know, by our family history and buy
Speaker 1: our genes. And what we know is that at least
Speaker 1: of the variance and whether we die early, whether we
Speaker 1: get sick early from this or that, is our behavior.
Speaker 1: And of course what shapes our behavior. Much of that
Speaker 1: is our psychological experience, our volition and taking a step
Speaker 1: back from that, it's our social environment, our neighborhoods, our relationships.
Speaker 1: So there's all these factors that we can try to
Speaker 1: shape to be, you know, a better life for us
Speaker 1: and for those around us that we have control over.
Speaker 1: So we control our aging much more than we ever
Speaker 1: thought we could. We we can see how people's different
Speaker 1: experiences on a daily basis are associated with some of
Speaker 1: the biological aging that they undergo. Well, let's jump into
Speaker 1: the book in a little bit more detail. What is
Speaker 1: a telomere? So people liked to think of telomeres as
Speaker 1: the tips at the ends of their shoelaces. So if
Speaker 1: you think of those plastic agglets at the ends of shoelaces,
Speaker 1: and you think of your shoelaces as the genes the
Speaker 1: DNA that makes us who we are, and then at
Speaker 1: the very tips are these protective caps still made of DNA,
Speaker 1: but not not genes. And it's very these caps are
Speaker 1: very important to protect our genetic code from any damage
Speaker 1: from fusions. And as ourselves divide, these protective caps get
Speaker 1: shorter and shorter. So there's something that happens to all
Speaker 1: of us with age, which is tilma shortening. And when
Speaker 1: they get to a critical shortness, the cells become old
Speaker 1: and they cannot divide any longer, and they tend to
Speaker 1: become pro inflammatory, So they not only can't do whatever
Speaker 1: job they were supposed to do, like fighting infections for
Speaker 1: talking about immune cells, but then they start wreaking habit
Speaker 1: on our health by secreting inflammation into our blood. So
Speaker 1: we really want to keep tilomere's long and sturdy and
Speaker 1: stable throughout our lifespan. And the good news is that
Speaker 1: while that genetics determine some of how long our tilomeres are,
Speaker 1: it looks like our lifestyle and social factors and nutrition,
Speaker 1: all of these factors are also shaping our telomere length.
Speaker 1: Telomere is the correct pronunciation is that it yes, So
Speaker 1: it sounds like the longer telomere is a better one
Speaker 1: for us. And that that there's lots of studies from
Speaker 1: reading the book about different things that cause us to
Speaker 1: have a longer or shorter telomere, and we can talk
Speaker 1: through what some of those are. But one of the
Speaker 1: things I thought was really interesting in the book was
Speaker 1: it says that it's been suggested that telomere length maybe
Speaker 1: the holy grail for cumulative welfare can you talk a
Speaker 1: little bit about that. Yes, that was an animal researcher
Speaker 1: Dr Bateson titled that, as you know, part of his paper,
Speaker 1: and it was just such a provoc kind of thought.
Speaker 1: And then it turns out there's some data to support that.
Speaker 1: So what telemeres are associated with so many different factors
Speaker 1: in human lives. All the exposures that we're exposed to
Speaker 1: from our environment from chemicals, are social environment, our psychological state,
Speaker 1: our health behaviors, and they all kind of add up
Speaker 1: to shape the rate of how quickly our tilemere shortened.
Speaker 1: And when we think about, you know, can we take
Speaker 1: a person or an animal and measure their talmars and
Speaker 1: what does that tell us about their life history? And
Speaker 1: you know, it's hard because telemers are affected by so
Speaker 1: many things, including genetics, we can't make really accurate direct predictions.
Speaker 1: But in general we can look at the tilmar length
Speaker 1: of a person and find that it's associated with their history.
Speaker 1: They're kind of cumulative history of adversity, all of the
Speaker 1: really difficult things that happened to them. And you know,
Speaker 1: there's a few studies on this. Now even a stronger
Speaker 1: effect is what happens to us in childhood turns out
Speaker 1: to be really important in shaping our telomere length as adults.
Speaker 1: So you know, it's a critical period of growth and vulnerability.
Speaker 1: So we really want to protect children from toxic stressors
Speaker 1: like poverty and violence and neglect, because those are the
Speaker 1: factors that really imprint on telomeres. Now, Dr Bateson was
Speaker 1: asking about animals and animal welfare and suggesting, why don't
Speaker 1: we apply this to animals and really look at the
Speaker 1: quality of their life, you know, especially those who are
Speaker 1: We control their environments that they grow up in, and
Speaker 1: they could be in factory farms, it could be in
Speaker 1: more humane conditions, and their telomeres might tell us a
Speaker 1: clue of their welfare. So this is not science that's
Speaker 1: kind of out on the edge. This is pretty well
Speaker 1: known robust science. You wrote the book with Elizabeth Blackburn,
Speaker 1: who is a noble laureate. So this idea of telomeres
Speaker 1: and their length and how that affects our overall health
Speaker 1: and the things that can improve those this is pretty
Speaker 1: robust science, right, It is robust. I can tell you
Speaker 1: where there's questions and controversy to what's robust is that
Speaker 1: there are so many studies showing that the length is
Speaker 1: predicted the length matters, so in midlife, for example, shorter
Speaker 1: telomeres statistically predict getting diseases of aging, kind of across
Speaker 1: the diseases, earlier cancers and exception. So it turns out
Speaker 1: for some cancers, longer tilomeres put us up more risk
Speaker 1: of these cancers. There is a question of what is
Speaker 1: this just kind of a factor that you know, changes
Speaker 1: with age like so many things in our body, or
Speaker 1: is it causing aging? Is it really a mechanism? And
Speaker 1: so that's been a question for a long time, and
Speaker 1: now we know that it is definitely at least a
Speaker 1: small causal part of our aging. And we know that
Speaker 1: from these genetic studies we call them and deali in
Speaker 1: randomization studies. So people who have the genes for longer
Speaker 1: tilomeres are less likely to get early heart disease or
Speaker 1: Alzheimer's dementia. Got it. I'm stepping way out of my
Speaker 1: knowledge zone here, But do telomeres have anything to do
Speaker 1: with whether or not genetic mutation occurs? So it's a
Speaker 1: good question, and most of us have common genes for telomeres.
Speaker 1: They might be you know, code for short or long timers,
Speaker 1: but there they don't make a big difference. And then
Speaker 1: there are some people who have these rare genetic mutations
Speaker 1: that cause them to have very short telomeres, so, you know,
Speaker 1: maybe half the amount of telomerase, the enzyme that protects
Speaker 1: telomeres as normal people. And so we have learned from
Speaker 1: those very sad genetic conditions that people do tend to
Speaker 1: develop some you know, pretty severe health problems like bone
Speaker 1: marrow failure, and they tend to die much earlier in life,
Speaker 1: and they tend to transmit very short telomeres to their offspring.
Speaker 1: And one thing that's so interesting is that while they
Speaker 1: might transmit the genes, the mutated genes to some offspring,
Speaker 1: other children don't get the mutation, but they still inherit
Speaker 1: the short telomeres. And what that means is that we
Speaker 1: don't have just genetic transmission, which always occurs, but we
Speaker 1: have an epigenetic or direct transmission of tilmarlink. If mom
Speaker 1: and dad are very short tilmeres, it appears that's passed
Speaker 1: on through the sperm and egg to what the child
Speaker 1: ends up with. This episode is sponsored by health i Q.
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Speaker 1: And here's the rest of the interview with Alissa Apple.
Speaker 1: Let's talk briefly. You mentioned it earlier, talk about the
Speaker 1: role of inflammation both in our overall health and then
Speaker 1: how that ties to telomeres. So inflammation is really important.
Speaker 1: We think that it's one of the major kind of
Speaker 1: highways of aging of how our body's age. So when
Speaker 1: we're cut, we want to have a big inflammatory response
Speaker 1: to help us heal. But what we don't want is
Speaker 1: a slow drip of in flammation in our blood as
Speaker 1: we age, and we call that inflamm aging. And that's
Speaker 1: what happens. When our tissues get old and we call
Speaker 1: them senescent. They start secreting these inflammatory factors and that
Speaker 1: builds up. It comes from fat and uh, from immune cells,
Speaker 1: from bone. There are many tissues and cells that start
Speaker 1: secreting prone flumtoris side of kinds. So when this builds up,
Speaker 1: it's feeding all of our body and organs and tissues
Speaker 1: and it's creating a fertile ground for diseases such as cancer.
Speaker 1: So we want to be doing things to reduce inflammation,
Speaker 1: like having an anti inflammatory diet. Now that sounds fancy,
Speaker 1: and if you look at what's anti inflammatory, it's simply this.
Speaker 1: It's a whole food, high fiber diet. It's like the
Speaker 1: Mediterranean diet versus eating a lot of things like red meat,
Speaker 1: processed meat, soda, a lot of refined carbs. Those are
Speaker 1: going to be promoting inflammation in our body. It's always
Speaker 1: interesting to me. There's so much noise about diet and
Speaker 1: so many different approaches and all that, but it seems
Speaker 1: like there are a couple of key principles that everyone
Speaker 1: agrees on, like eat less processed foods and eat foods
Speaker 1: that are closer to being whole foods. And then there's
Speaker 1: some variations beyond that. But at least that seems to
Speaker 1: be consistent. I could not agree more. I think that
Speaker 1: everyone is confused, and you know, we've got some real
Speaker 1: issues and nutrition research, and one is conflicts of interest.
Speaker 1: If you look at the different sides battling, you often
Speaker 1: have food industry funding the side that says sugar doesn't
Speaker 1: cause disease, et cetera. Yeah, I agree, it is. It
Speaker 1: is confusing. I just I always like when I can
Speaker 1: find a point of common ground among a bunch of
Speaker 1: different positions, because then I can go okay, well that
Speaker 1: I can at least probably you know, count on to
Speaker 1: some degree. And I think, you know, these nutritional basics
Speaker 1: that you just summarize so well, they add up across
Speaker 1: what ever we're looking at. We know it's this, you know,
Speaker 1: it's this high antioxidant, high inflammatory diet, let's say Mediterranean
Speaker 1: diet that causes less of a glucose and insulin spike,
Speaker 1: so when it's less processed, we have a better, more
Speaker 1: stable metabolic response. This is the response that's better for
Speaker 1: the heart, it's better for the brain, and it's better
Speaker 1: for the telomeres. So it lines up very nicely to
Speaker 1: be a strong consistent story about biomarkers and early aging
Speaker 1: as well as diseases of aging. These are all fed
Speaker 1: by the high glycemic, high carb high meat diet, and
Speaker 1: the opposite can help prevent them. So it is not new.
Speaker 1: People want the new exciting trend, but really, you know,
Speaker 1: eating well means going to the store, buying the fresh
Speaker 1: produce and trying to have less of the tempting you
Speaker 1: know what we call comfort food, not abstinence, but just
Speaker 1: less of it. You know, we do these studies trying
Speaker 1: to help people with our very understandable food drives. Right,
Speaker 1: we get hooked on the highly palatable food. So we
Speaker 1: use mindfulness skills and we try to help people deal
Speaker 1: with those creating so that they can make the choices
Speaker 1: they want to be making excellent. Let's talk about depression.
Speaker 1: Depression comes up in several places in the book, and
Speaker 1: you sort of summarize it up by saying the arrow
Speaker 1: likely points in both directions. With depression, short telomeres may
Speaker 1: proceed depression, and depression may speed up telomere shortening. So
Speaker 1: what do we know about depression and telomeres? Yes, this
Speaker 1: is a great question and it just shows the complexity
Speaker 1: of the mind body connection, how how factors moved together.
Speaker 1: So what we know is that when people have longer
Speaker 1: depression and untreated depression without antidepressants or therapy, their tiomeres
Speaker 1: tend to be shorter in a dose response fashion. So
Speaker 1: it looks like depression is causing faster wear and tear
Speaker 1: on our seal aging. But then we also know that
Speaker 1: there are you know several studies that show that that
Speaker 1: people at risk of depression before they're ever depressed, tend
Speaker 1: to have shorter telomeres. So a colleague, Ian Gottlieb, showed
Speaker 1: this with young girls. They were at risk of depression,
Speaker 1: their mothers were depressed, they've never been depressed, and when
Speaker 1: he looked at their stress response, they were they had
Speaker 1: exaggerated emotional and cortisol responses to stress, and they had
Speaker 1: shorter telomeres already no depression, and the bigger their cortisol response,
Speaker 1: the shorter their telomeres. So we know that stress can
Speaker 1: kind of promote shorter telomeres as well as vulnerability to depression. Um,
Speaker 1: so it may be that the telomeres came before the depression.
Speaker 1: It may be that the animal studies suggests that shorter
Speaker 1: telomeres in the brain and the campus put the rats
Speaker 1: at risk of depression. And when they can boost up
Speaker 1: the hippocampus with telomeras, they're more resistant to depression. So
Speaker 1: there's all sorts of bidirectional pathways and just to to
Speaker 1: add an even another wild card. In one recent study
Speaker 1: when researchers compared people with depression to people without depression,
Speaker 1: so cases and controls. They found that the people with
Speaker 1: depression were more likely to have this gene that causes
Speaker 1: short telomeres. So, all of a sudden, now we're looking at,
Speaker 1: you know, possible genetic predisposition to have short telomeres and
Speaker 1: to have depression. Interesting, it's a complicated web, and I think, um,
Speaker 1: you know, these are hard to pass out in humans.
Speaker 1: We need to study people, you know, in a in
Speaker 1: a sense kind of across the lifespan and the next
Speaker 1: generation and look at the genetics at the same time
Speaker 1: as we look at their actual telomeres. Yeah, and we're
Speaker 1: going to transition now into talking about what things people
Speaker 1: can do that can help increase telomere length. And interestingly,
Speaker 1: they're the very same things that people would do to
Speaker 1: deal with depression, to deal with and anxiety. So it
Speaker 1: may be a little chicken and egg, but the good
Speaker 1: news is we don't have to have the answer in
Speaker 1: order to do the things that are beneficial. And so
Speaker 1: the thing that I think is so fascinating about this
Speaker 1: a lot of the concepts that we're going to talk
Speaker 1: about in a minute here are are going to be
Speaker 1: things that we cover on the show fairly regularly and
Speaker 1: reminders are always great for these things. What I loved
Speaker 1: about your book though, and I think this this one
Speaker 1: line really sums it up. It says we can change
Speaker 1: the way that we age at the most elemental, cellular level.
Speaker 1: So everything that we're about to talk about are really
Speaker 1: good strategies that we've also seen in studies that are
Speaker 1: truly working at a cellular level. And I think that's
Speaker 1: such an interesting thing to take these these ideas that
Speaker 1: we think, well, that works, makes my mind better, makes
Speaker 1: my mood a little bit better, and recognize that we're
Speaker 1: really able to measure these things the effect of them
Speaker 1: at a true biological level. So let's start is something
Speaker 1: called the challenge response. Can you tell me a little
Speaker 1: bit about what the challenge responses and how that helps share?
Speaker 1: So one of the areas of research that we've been
Speaker 1: doing that but looks at the acute stress response is
Speaker 1: trying to look at how people approach a stressful situation
Speaker 1: in different ways, and a natural, evolutionary based way is
Speaker 1: when we feel our survival is threatened, physical survivor vival,
Speaker 1: our physical survival is threatened, or our social survival if
Speaker 1: our ego is threatened, and we feel like we're going
Speaker 1: to be embarrassed, humiliated, or fail. This triggers a threat
Speaker 1: response in the body, characterized by high cortisol and uh
Speaker 1: kind of the autonomic nervous system VASO constricts those patterns
Speaker 1: of reactivity. If we have them over and over over time,
Speaker 1: they are causing more wear and tear on our body.
Speaker 1: They're making us more vulnerable to stress induced diseases of aging.
Speaker 1: So what the kind of antidote to that is. Of course,
Speaker 1: we're all going to experience stressful events, little ones and
Speaker 1: big ones, and what we can do is try to
Speaker 1: respond with a good strong stress response and recover quickly.
Speaker 1: And that profile is going to be related to slower aging. Now,
Speaker 1: how do we cause our stress response to recover quickly?
Speaker 1: Will think about you know, number one, when you approach
Speaker 1: a stressful event, you want to remind yourself that the
Speaker 1: stress response is your friend. It helps you cope, and
Speaker 1: it energizes you, and it helps you problem solve better.
Speaker 1: So just those thoughts of rethinking the stress response in
Speaker 1: a positive weight can help our body have a more
Speaker 1: helpful stress response. We call it the challenge response. Stronger
Speaker 1: crediac output and more adrenaline than cortisol, So we want
Speaker 1: to have positive challenge response, and then once the stressor
Speaker 1: is over, it's very easy to ruminate about it. We
Speaker 1: call this perseverative thinking. We continue to think about it
Speaker 1: long after its past. That keeps up a stress response.
Speaker 1: But we can actually try to notice that we're ruminating
Speaker 1: and let the situation go and have a quicker psychological recovery,
Speaker 1: which leads to a quicker physiological recovery. So just you know,
Speaker 1: close up looking at your stress response, you know, how
Speaker 1: are you feeling? You can cope with the situation, and
Speaker 1: once it's over, can you help it end with a
Speaker 1: crisp ending, you know, take a walk at social support,
Speaker 1: um do something to cut down on rumination. Now, there's
Speaker 1: other things we can do to boost our stress resilience,
Speaker 1: like exercise, like getting enough sleep. These things are actually
Speaker 1: related to less rumination. So ruminative thinking is natural habit
Speaker 1: that many of us have that we can kind of
Speaker 1: can't notice and try to nip in the bud more
Speaker 1: than we do ruminations an old friend. Around these parts,
Speaker 1: there are a couple of these that fall under the
Speaker 1: category in my mind of perspective of getting a different
Speaker 1: perspective on things. Which I always think is so helpful.
Speaker 1: And one of them is called linguistic self distancing. Can
Speaker 1: we talk about that. Yeah, that's researched by colleagues of
Speaker 1: mine Um aus Aitic and Ethan Cross. And so what
Speaker 1: they've shown is that when they bring people into the
Speaker 1: lab to kind of relive a stressful situation, if they
Speaker 1: help them take perspective on the situation the person, the
Speaker 1: person actually looks much more stress resilient. So they can
Speaker 1: do visual distancing, they can watch the situation on a
Speaker 1: movie screen. They can do linguistic distancing. They describe and
Speaker 1: replay it, talking about their responses in a third person
Speaker 1: a very analytical way that actually reduces their emotional response,
Speaker 1: gives them perspective. Um, they can do time distancing, and
Speaker 1: they can ask themselves is this situation really going to
Speaker 1: affect me in five years? Usually the answers no. So
Speaker 1: while it seems like a crisis at the moment and
Speaker 1: our bodies responding as as as if our survival depends
Speaker 1: on it, when we remind ourselves that we are this
Speaker 1: really in the big picture, doesn't make a difference, right,
Speaker 1: and we shouldn't sweat the small things. This helps people
Speaker 1: rapidly recover from the stressful situation. So it's helpful just
Speaker 1: to kind of take a step back and you know,
Speaker 1: realize it's not about avoiding stress. Stress is inevitable. We
Speaker 1: all are going to face challenges that are unpredictable that
Speaker 1: come up at different times in life, and it's really
Speaker 1: about coping with it in a way that doesn't amplify
Speaker 1: the stress in our mind and continue it the whole
Speaker 1: day even while we're you know, sleeping, we can be
Speaker 1: more kind of vigilant and arouse, and really there's always
Speaker 1: the next moment when we're not coping, when when an
Speaker 1: immediate crisis is over, when we can find peace in
Speaker 1: that moment and we can be finding you know, joy
Speaker 1: even though we might be dealing with a terrible chronic situation.
Speaker 1: So there's always momentary relief and momentary absorption into the
Speaker 1: moment that is so important for our bodies and respite
Speaker 1: from chronic stress. Yeah, I love the time distancing. You
Speaker 1: don't even have to go out to five years. I
Speaker 1: think a lot of times I'm like, well, this matter
Speaker 1: in five hours, five days, five weeks, and in a
Speaker 1: lot of cases, I'm getting upset about something that in
Speaker 1: five hours, I probably won't remember, like being stuck in
Speaker 1: traffic or other things. So time distancing is a great one.
Speaker 1: And what you were saying there about the stress response
Speaker 1: reminds me of some studies I read where it's not
Speaker 1: so much the stress that's the problem, but what we
Speaker 1: think the stress is going to do to us also,
Speaker 1: so our belief in what stress does has some of that,
Speaker 1: and that gets to the challenge response. Instead of thinking
Speaker 1: this is awful, I'm stressed and boy, it's gonna have
Speaker 1: so many bad effects on me to look at it
Speaker 1: as okay, this is, as you mentioned, priming my body
Speaker 1: or or getting me focused, and and even that thinking
Speaker 1: of it differently just lessens the impact that it has. Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: it's beautiful. Is there anything that you think we should
Speaker 1: talk about before we wrap up. We've got just a
Speaker 1: few minutes left, and I want to make sure there's
Speaker 1: anything that you want to cover that I get that
Speaker 1: in there, Eric, I would love to hear from you
Speaker 1: any reflections on the parable and what that's like to
Speaker 1: hear different interpretations and sound bites of it every day
Speaker 1: over time, and how you think it relates to this book. Well,
Speaker 1: you turn the tables on me here, you're not supposed
Speaker 1: to answer a question with a question. I think is
Speaker 1: the phrase, um. It's interesting. The way I think it
Speaker 1: relates to the book is kind of as I mentioned
Speaker 1: a little bit earlier, that you know, the parable is
Speaker 1: about making choices. To me, it's it's heart. And I
Speaker 1: think the reason it's a parable is because it you
Speaker 1: hear it and you almost immediately understand it on one
Speaker 1: level what it means. You're like, Oh, it means that
Speaker 1: I have to make choices and decisions what I do
Speaker 1: with my you know, my thoughts, my behavior, and my
Speaker 1: emotions to the extent that I can work with those things,
Speaker 1: I should. And I think that the part of the
Speaker 1: book that I loved was that you're covering a lot
Speaker 1: of the same ground as far as the things that
Speaker 1: you do to work with your thoughts, your stress, your emotions.
Speaker 1: But I really love when it's that concrete ties it
Speaker 1: back to biology. And I also love that a lot
Speaker 1: of what you're showing is that these telomere lengths can
Speaker 1: be modified, so it we're not just if I just
Speaker 1: if I have shorter telomeres doesn't mean that I'm doomed, right,
Speaker 1: I'm not doomed. I can actually do things in my
Speaker 1: day to day life. I can I can choose to
Speaker 1: feed the good wolf, and that will improve those telomere lengths.
Speaker 1: And so that we have a choice in what we do,
Speaker 1: and not only do we have a choice, that choice
Speaker 1: actually makes a difference. Beautiful, you said it so well.
Speaker 1: That is a huge theme of the Tilmer story. And
Speaker 1: you know, and how our aging is so malleable. Lots
Speaker 1: of people like to know what their tilmar length is
Speaker 1: and and there's nothing wrong with that. I don't know
Speaker 1: how you know, the tests aren't necessarily that accurate yet, um.
Speaker 1: And I'm the I'm the type of person who I
Speaker 1: don't really want to know mind, because I know where
Speaker 1: I've been and they're probably short. And I really like
Speaker 1: to focus on what we can do now today, and
Speaker 1: that's all we can control. And so really, even if
Speaker 1: someone has very short telomeres because they've had a lot
Speaker 1: of childhood hardship, that's not worth measuring them to see that,
Speaker 1: because what matters is that what they do today can
Speaker 1: be changing up that system, can be increasing the telomeries,
Speaker 1: can be reducing the ox save stress and the inflammation.
Speaker 1: These are things we can control. Yeah, that's a great point.
Speaker 1: I was going to ask can people measure their own?
Speaker 1: But I agree with you in general, I don't think
Speaker 1: that's a particularly useful approach. It's much more about what
Speaker 1: can I do now to improve that situation. Although it
Speaker 1: would be great to see a lengthening over time so
Speaker 1: that you knew that what you were doing was having
Speaker 1: an impact, right right, And I think eventually we might
Speaker 1: get there with more you know, accurate and frequent measurements,
Speaker 1: and that would be you know, if someone is starting
Speaker 1: at you know, a pretty intensive program for health improvement,
Speaker 1: in some way, it would be an interesting experiment to
Speaker 1: look at PrePost yep, yep exactly. So one final question,
Speaker 1: you've talked about telomeraise. Did I say that when right
Speaker 1: close tolomerase alome raise all right as a chemical that helps?
Speaker 1: And is there treatments that we think are forthcoming? It's
Speaker 1: a good question. I don't have a good answer. We
Speaker 1: just don't know enough yet. We do know that at
Speaker 1: least from observational studies, we know the talomerase tends to
Speaker 1: be higher well, for example, smoking decreases it and being
Speaker 1: physically active increases it. And we know from a few
Speaker 1: intervention studies that it looks like we can boost the
Speaker 1: telomerase with mind body activities like meditation and che gong,
Speaker 1: and so that's super safe and no no side effects there.
Speaker 1: And then there are supplements on the market and they
Speaker 1: just simply haven't been well tested by unbiased parties for
Speaker 1: any long term periods. So it's just a little bit
Speaker 1: of a question mark about what the risk benefit ratio
Speaker 1: is of those kind of over the counter products to
Speaker 1: increase telomeries. And and the risk is nothing to take
Speaker 1: lightly because if you have too much tilomeris, if you're
Speaker 1: prone to cancer, and if a tilomeris supplement could kind
Speaker 1: of push you over that threshold, then you are more
Speaker 1: at risk of cancer. So it's it's a possibility, is
Speaker 1: all I'm saying. Yeah, Well, thank you Alyssa so much
Speaker 1: for taking the time to come on. I've I loved
Speaker 1: the book and I'm glad we got a chance to
Speaker 1: sit down and talk about it. Thanks so much, Eric,
Speaker 1: wonderful questions and hopefully something I've said is helpful to
Speaker 1: some of your listeners. All right, take care, take care,
Speaker 1: Thank you so much. Okay, byeye, if what you just
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