Speaker 1: Good everyone, Sam here.
Speaker 2: So this week I am taking off overseas with my
Speaker 2: biggest little girl, Evie, taking her to New York to
Speaker 2: look at some university courses or college courses they call
Speaker 2: them over there, which means for you, we're going to
Speaker 2: go back and look at some of my favorite episodes,
Speaker 2: and I'm sure that some of your favorite episodes, or
Speaker 2: perhaps some that you've missed altogether.
Speaker 1: One of those was with one of my absolute favorites.
Speaker 2: Doctor Joanna McMillan, who joined us earlier this year, and
Speaker 2: we spoke was a great conversation about how you fuel
Speaker 2: your mind for better cognitive performance. It really was a
Speaker 2: great conversation. Highly recommend checking that one.
Speaker 1: Out if you missed it or as a refresher.
Speaker 2: And then we're going to head to doctor Libby Weaver,
Speaker 2: who is going to speak about what happens when we
Speaker 2: overload our mind, which then turns into stress.
Speaker 1: I think at this time of.
Speaker 2: Year it's cold, our next holiday or next break might
Speaker 2: not be just around the corner. It feels like we've
Speaker 2: got a massive load on us, you know, school holidays,
Speaker 2: everything's sort of going on. So giving some advice from
Speaker 2: experts far more knowledgeable than me on how to take
Speaker 2: care of our brain.
Speaker 1: I thought was really.
Speaker 2: Apt timing to learn about taking better care of our brains,
Speaker 2: particularly when things just become a bit overwhelming and a
Speaker 2: bit full on. These are two fantastic experts to get
Speaker 2: some really practical advice on how to take care of
Speaker 2: your brain, particularly stressful.
Speaker 1: Middle part of the year. So make sure you have
Speaker 1: a listen. This is the wood life. Let's get into
Speaker 1: it for our listeners that don't know.
Speaker 2: Joanna is one of Australia's best nutrition scientists. She's an
Speaker 2: author and she's got this incredible audio book called Mindful,
Speaker 2: which is with f U double L And that's as
Speaker 2: I hear Joanna part of a series, so it's Mindful
Speaker 2: and releasing in May is Heartful, which.
Speaker 3: Yes, the one that I've just recorded and is coming
Speaker 3: out very soon. That's heartful. What sweet for a healthier heart?
Speaker 2: So let's let's talk about actually how food makes us feel.
Speaker 2: And you know, the first question I wanted to ask
Speaker 2: you was about sugar.
Speaker 1: You know, what is.
Speaker 2: This sugar crash or this three pm pick me up
Speaker 2: that everyone sort of craves and why is that happening
Speaker 2: to many of us? And what foods can we consume
Speaker 2: to best to best combat this, well, I think the.
Speaker 3: First thing to really do because I see so much
Speaker 3: confusion around the word sugar, because I think, you know,
Speaker 3: with this sort of messaging that's gone on about sugar's bad,
Speaker 3: sugar's toxic, sugar sys. To a scientist, sugar is at
Speaker 3: its fundamental level, we've got the most simple sugars and
Speaker 3: that includes glucose that runs in your bloodstream. Now, if
Speaker 3: you didn't have glucose running in your bloodstream, you're dead.
Speaker 3: So the idea, I mean, it just is so scientifically
Speaker 3: nonsensical to anyone who's even studied high school chemistry to
Speaker 3: think that, you know, saying sugar is toxic.
Speaker 4: What people really mean by talking.
Speaker 3: About sugar is the refined table sugar, which is actually
Speaker 3: mostly sucrose, but sometimes it's high fructose corn syrup or
Speaker 3: I mean, there's you know, there's a multitude of different
Speaker 3: ways that refined sugars are added into two foods. That's
Speaker 3: the thing that's the problem. And then we've got the
Speaker 3: discussion that then gets confused with it, which is about
Speaker 3: control of your own blood sugar, which is the glucose
Speaker 3: in your blood. And we do know that if you've
Speaker 3: got type two diabetes and you've got poorly controlled blood
Speaker 3: glucose levels, that is enormously bad for your health and
Speaker 3: it puts you risk of a whole load of other
Speaker 3: chronic conditions. So control of blood glucose is very, very important,
Speaker 3: and even for those of us who don't have diabetes
Speaker 3: of any sort, and so it's really important for all
Speaker 3: of us to avoid big blood glucose spikes, and we
Speaker 3: want to try to allow our body to have very
Speaker 3: gentle rises and falls. It's normal for your blood glucose
Speaker 3: to rise after meals that contain carbohydrate in particular, that's
Speaker 3: where most of it's going to come from. These are
Speaker 3: normal rises and falls, so it's not about not having
Speaker 3: any rise. Glucose is the fuel for your brain. It's
Speaker 3: the primary fuel for your brain, and your brain uses honestly,
Speaker 3: about twenty five percent of the glucose that's running through
Speaker 3: your blood across the day. You know a quarter of
Speaker 3: that at least is going to fuel in your brain,
Speaker 3: especially if you're really using your brain. So it's worth
Speaker 3: sort of recognizing that. And you know, lots of your
Speaker 3: listeners are also exercisers. If you're doing exercise of any
Speaker 3: kind of intensity. You want to have some glucose there.
Speaker 3: You know that's going to fuel. You can't use that quickly,
Speaker 3: so you want to be able to have that glucose
Speaker 3: at you're disposable to do some of those particularly tougher workouts.
Speaker 3: The differentiation has to come from what's the problem with
Speaker 3: these highly refined sugars. Now, if I take a piece
Speaker 3: of fruit, that sugar is bound up in plant cell walls,
Speaker 3: along with a bunch of different nutrients. There's what we
Speaker 3: call the food matrix. So your body has to break
Speaker 3: down those plant cell walls to get at the sugar.
Speaker 3: There's usually lots of fiber, nutrients, antioxidants, all sorts of
Speaker 3: other stuff there, So that takes time, and the sugars
Speaker 3: are then absorbed nice and slowly up into your bloodstream,
Speaker 3: and then you make use of all those nutrients. It's
Speaker 3: a complete food package. It's a very different thing. If
Speaker 3: I take the plant, and you can get sugar from
Speaker 3: all sorts of different plants. It might be sugar cane,
Speaker 3: sugar beet, it might be from a parsnipper, from whatever,
Speaker 3: and you extract the sugar and you get rid of
Speaker 3: everything else. That's in the plant, so you don't have
Speaker 3: any fiber, you don't have any nutrients. You've simply extracted, processed,
Speaker 3: and refined the sugar on its own, and then you
Speaker 3: have that or you have it added, you know, when
Speaker 3: it's added ubiquitously into so many other foods, and that
Speaker 3: becomes a problem because you don't have that full food package.
Speaker 3: And it's not just the problem of the sugar. You know,
Speaker 3: often we point the finger at sugar, but actually it's
Speaker 3: the foods and drinks that have too much of that
Speaker 3: added sugar in it that usually also have the process fats,
Speaker 3: the refined starch, the wrong you know, low nutrient density,
Speaker 3: way too many calories per bite of the food.
Speaker 4: So we get these really.
Speaker 3: Energy dense, moorish, highly palatable foods that make us want
Speaker 3: to eat them more. So we're really talking you know,
Speaker 3: junk foods and package snacks.
Speaker 4: They've got the.
Speaker 3: Scientifically designed combination of salt, sugar, fat, crunch, you know,
Speaker 3: to make them so moorish, so we overeat them, but
Speaker 3: they're not giving us the nutrients that we need. So
Speaker 3: it's really those foods. So rather than pointing the finger
Speaker 3: of brame, I feel at sugar is one. You've got
Speaker 3: to really differentiate between what are naturally present sugars in
Speaker 3: foods like fruit, even raw honey. I mean, honey's been around.
Speaker 3: If you want a paleo food, honey is a true
Speaker 3: paleo food. These are foods that are generally really good
Speaker 3: for us, and it's.
Speaker 4: Those ultra process foods.
Speaker 3: And that's where research science has moved towards talking about
Speaker 3: ultra process foods or upfs, instead of this sort of
Speaker 3: point in the finger, blame it transfats or gluten or
Speaker 3: sugar or whatever we individually pick out. It's the ultra
Speaker 3: process foods that are ultimately the problem.
Speaker 2: And so do you. I mean, you've given a really
Speaker 2: good explanation for what people need to look out for.
Speaker 2: But even when you are listing the different ways sugar
Speaker 2: is added into package products and the clever ways that
Speaker 2: the food manufacturers label them as you know, corn syrup,
Speaker 2: and so you know they've got twenty five different meanings
Speaker 2: because they don't write sugar deliberately, because they don't want
Speaker 2: you to go through the ingredient list and think it's
Speaker 2: full of sugar, because it's full of all these other things.
Speaker 1: You don't really understand what they are.
Speaker 2: What are your top tips for our listeners who don't
Speaker 2: have your background or even my background.
Speaker 1: Is it as simple as donated events in a packet?
Speaker 3: Yeah, well it's not as it's not as hard core
Speaker 3: is saying you can't have anything in a packet. Look,
Speaker 3: if we could have a perfect world, we'd all still
Speaker 3: be hunting and growing our own veggies and hand chooks
Speaker 3: in the backyard.
Speaker 4: But look, we don't have lives like that.
Speaker 3: Most of us now live in cities rather than in
Speaker 3: the country, and we have to be able to buy
Speaker 3: our food and we can use modern I you know,
Speaker 3: I'm a scientist.
Speaker 4: I want to be able to.
Speaker 3: Use modern science, modern technology, modern ways of preserving food
Speaker 3: to make it easier for me to follow a healthy diet. So, yes,
Speaker 3: you can have some canned produce. Frozen produce is fantastic.
Speaker 3: You don't have to use chemical preservatives and things when
Speaker 3: you're freezing foods. So, but you just have to look
Speaker 3: for one of the right foods to be able to
Speaker 3: so canned legings, can tomatoes, canned sweet corn, these things
Speaker 3: are great and the foods are highly nutritious. Frozen veggies,
Speaker 3: frozen berries, you know these sorts of things are absolutely brilliant.
Speaker 3: You know, I don't object to, you know, packets of pasta,
Speaker 3: but make your own sauce and make your and you
Speaker 3: can buy good sauces, but it's generally it's so easy
Speaker 3: to make your own ingredients. So use some level of
Speaker 3: these kind of convenience foods. But the best advice I
Speaker 3: can give when it comes to a food in a
Speaker 3: packet is read the ingredients list. And you hinted at
Speaker 3: this there when you said, oh, if you read the
Speaker 3: ingredients list and there's stuff there that it's clearly not
Speaker 3: a food. And there's loads of these ingredients that you
Speaker 3: think that sounds like it should be in the pharmacy,
Speaker 3: not in the supermarket, the foedback, it's probably not that
Speaker 3: great a choice. Whereas if you can identify, oh, this
Speaker 3: has got a list of ingredients, it's bread that's got flour,
Speaker 3: serdo culture, some salt and water, maybe some olive oil
Speaker 3: in it, that's a great bread. Whereas if it's a
Speaker 3: bread that's got sugar in it, which doesn't happen much
Speaker 3: in Australia. It's mostly sort of from breosh breads or
Speaker 3: burger buns, you know, and you can and read the
Speaker 3: ingredients and it's got preservatives and it's got you know,
Speaker 3: flour improvers, and then suddenly you're recognizing, okay, this is
Speaker 3: getting further away from what would be a more traditional food.
Speaker 2: What about fats? Good fats, bad fats? And what's sort
Speaker 2: of the simplest way to explain do you do? You
Speaker 2: find is to explain that to people that allows them
Speaker 2: to make bitter choices.
Speaker 3: Well, one of the best things that's happened over the
Speaker 3: course of my career from when I was an early dietitian,
Speaker 3: low fat diets were you know, really in thing, and
Speaker 3: it was really difficult to get people to even consider
Speaker 3: eating an avocado or you know, nuts were out.
Speaker 4: And again it was because of that can't exist.
Speaker 2: Fat was fat, and fat was a yeah.
Speaker 4: And fat made fact. That was just the assumption because.
Speaker 3: Nobody was really stepping back and looking at the big picture.
Speaker 3: And actually the recognition of good fats has come partly
Speaker 3: from the heart health understanding, understanding that these good fats
Speaker 3: in your diet actually have a really good effect on
Speaker 3: your blood cholesterol profile. And when I say profile, I
Speaker 3: mean it's your total cholesterol doesn't tell you very much.
Speaker 3: You need to know the breakdown of the of the
Speaker 3: way that the different cholesterol and other fats are being
Speaker 3: carried in your diet, in your in your blood story.
Speaker 3: But it's also come from the recognition of fat is
Speaker 3: a huge part of your brain.
Speaker 4: Your brain is a very.
Speaker 3: Fatty tissue and it's and it's got concentrated levels of
Speaker 3: the long chain a Mega three fats that we get
Speaker 3: from things like oily fish. So I think it's a
Speaker 3: combination of the heart health understanding and the brain health
Speaker 3: understanding that oh, hang on, we need these really good
Speaker 3: fats in our diet, and these really long chain omega
Speaker 3: threes for example. Although we can make them from short
Speaker 3: chain of mega trees from some plant foods for example,
Speaker 3: like walnuts and chi and fla seed, we're not.
Speaker 4: Very good at doing it.
Speaker 3: So there's been this recognition that will actually, you know,
Speaker 3: these are essential fats for us to have our optimal health.
Speaker 3: And then we've got the impact of now understanding the
Speaker 3: impact of fat on digestion, metabolism and even glycimic induction.
Speaker 3: And when you've got some good fats there in the meal,
Speaker 3: it slows down digestion absorption. We've also got fat soluble antioxidants.
Speaker 3: That's relatively new research suddenly realizing, well, we can eat
Speaker 3: a raw carrot, but you're not going to absorb that
Speaker 3: beta caroteene unless you've drizzled some oil on your salad
Speaker 3: or you've roasted that carrot the oven and got the
Speaker 3: fats going into there so that the fat soluble carotenoids
Speaker 3: can then be absorbed.
Speaker 4: So and we've got fat soluble.
Speaker 3: Vitamins of course, so we suddenly have this recognition that
Speaker 3: will hang on, not all fats are bad, and then
Speaker 3: we've got this sort of progress of nutrition science starting
Speaker 3: to understand and the principles are exactly the same as
Speaker 3: for sugar. That when you get those fats mostly in
Speaker 3: their whole food form or from things like extra virgin oliveil,
Speaker 3: that's really just the freshly squeezed juice of the olive.
Speaker 3: A very different scenario to highly processed seed oils, which
Speaker 3: I know are a little controversial because you've got many
Speaker 3: dietitians that will tell you there's no problem with those,
Speaker 3: but I'm not one of them. To me, those are
Speaker 3: ultra processed foods. So these kind of fats, avocado, nuts,
Speaker 3: and seeds, oily fish, you know, and some of the
Speaker 3: other fats that are found in these whole foods are
Speaker 3: generally really good for us. And extra virgin olive oil
Speaker 3: is head and shoulders above. There is just a different
Speaker 3: category of food to most other kind of oils. Avocado
Speaker 3: oil is probably one that comes close but doesn't have
Speaker 3: the same sort of pattern of polyphenols and other are
Speaker 3: phytoin nutrients that.
Speaker 4: Are there in the oil.
Speaker 3: So these are foods that we definitely should be including
Speaker 3: in our diet.
Speaker 2: Talk about that sort of food brain connection and why
Speaker 2: it's so important, And do you tend to agree that
Speaker 2: I feel like we miss it a bit, like it
Speaker 2: doesn't get spoken about as much, does it.
Speaker 4: I entirely agree it doesn't.
Speaker 3: And it's only in recent years, even in research circles,
Speaker 3: you know, you know, my early career, we sort of talked.
Speaker 3: We understood that diet had some role to play in
Speaker 3: brain perform and it's certainly long term brain health in
Speaker 3: terms of your risk of dementia. And there was some
Speaker 3: understanding of diet was important in things like depression and
Speaker 3: other mood disorders that nobody could really even in research circles,
Speaker 3: it wasn't really understood the mechanisms, you know, was it
Speaker 3: to do with nutrients? Was it to do And now
Speaker 3: I think there's been this sort of explosion in research
Speaker 3: and interest in research, so therefore that stimulates more research
Speaker 3: that we've got a much better understanding of what those
Speaker 3: mechanisms are. And I say this in my introduction to
Speaker 3: Mindful that you know, we used to think of the
Speaker 3: brain and many people still do this's just elusive thing.
Speaker 3: It's what makes your personality exactly influence over it, and
Speaker 3: that can be further from the truth. You know, it
Speaker 3: of course it is involved in your in your personality
Speaker 3: and what makes you you, but it also is like
Speaker 3: any other organ in your body, it requires nutrients. It
Speaker 3: requires fuel to function at its best. You know, nothing
Speaker 3: affects your brain more than being dehydrated as a very
Speaker 3: simple tool, you know, making sure that you're staying well
Speaker 3: hydrated is absolutely key for your brain performance. So now
Speaker 3: we've we've you know, got to a stage where we
Speaker 3: still don't understand every connection to the brain, but we
Speaker 3: now understand it is partly the nutrients. So the brain
Speaker 3: needs specific nutrients. It needs iron for example, it needs iodine,
Speaker 3: iodines and nutrient that's really flown under the radar unless
Speaker 3: you're pregnant, because it's been recognized iodines essential for brain
Speaker 3: development in the fetus, but then also in young infants.
Speaker 3: So we've suddenly seen, oh, well, if you're taking a
Speaker 3: pregnancy supplement, you'll see that they've all got iodine in
Speaker 3: them now. But other than that sort of around pregnancy
Speaker 3: and young children, I being largely ignored. But actually we
Speaker 3: know iodine deficiency lowers your IQ.
Speaker 4: When you think of it like.
Speaker 3: That, you go, oh, my goodness, you actually your nutrition
Speaker 3: is so important. And then we've got you know, the
Speaker 3: long chain amegas refats. We've got a whole lot of
Speaker 3: research studies now showing long chain omegas rays and a
Speaker 3: combination of bigrot vitamins is essential for your brain health
Speaker 3: going forward and can reduce your risk of cognitive decline
Speaker 3: as you get older.
Speaker 4: So there's these.
Speaker 3: Nutrients that are clearly really really important. And then we've
Speaker 3: got the fuels. Your brain is a huge I always
Speaker 3: call it a greedy, a glucose greedy organ because it
Speaker 3: uses up so much of the glucose in your blood.
Speaker 3: It can also use ketones, so I know people doing
Speaker 3: ketogenic diets are going to argue that well, ketones are
Speaker 3: really important for the brain. There's some elements of truth
Speaker 3: in that, but that's that becomes especially important if your
Speaker 3: brain has some sort of disorder like epilepsy, or it's
Speaker 3: even being researched for things like chronic migraines that can't
Speaker 3: be treated, and that might be a situation where brain cells.
Speaker 3: One of the hypothesis is those brain cells are in
Speaker 3: some way malfunctioning and not able to use glucose as well.
Speaker 3: So therefore the secondary fuel of ketones might become important
Speaker 3: and then your brain's working better. But whether that has
Speaker 3: any impact on healthy people is another matter. So for
Speaker 3: most of us, if your brain's healthy, it wants glucose,
Speaker 3: It runs well in glucose.
Speaker 4: But you want a nice steady stream of.
Speaker 3: Glucose going into your blood fueling your brain. And mentioned hydration,
Speaker 3: and you mentioned exercise.
Speaker 4: You know, it's one thing.
Speaker 3: I've got a great slide I put up when I
Speaker 3: do this a corporate talk about brain performance. And there's
Speaker 3: a brilliant slide of a scan of a brain showing
Speaker 3: activity in the brain before and after just doing a
Speaker 3: brisk walk or you know, running up and down the
Speaker 3: stairwell in your office, or you know, just stimulating your
Speaker 3: brain because it gets blood flow glowing and you see
Speaker 3: the brain light up.
Speaker 4: So if you've got to get your.
Speaker 3: Brain powered up, or you're feeling in a slump and
Speaker 3: you've got that three o'clock slump, head outside and have
Speaker 3: a quick walk. Also, getting some sunlight's going to be helpful.
Speaker 2: Thank you so so much. You're an absolute gym. I
Speaker 2: appreciate you so much.
Speaker 5: Thanks.
Speaker 2: Our guest today is an absolute expert when it comes
Speaker 2: to talking to women, particularly women in their thirties, forty
Speaker 2: fifties and sixties, is none other than doctor Libby Weaver,
Speaker 2: who let me just read these credentials out because wowsers
Speaker 2: a nutritional biochemist, thirteen yes one three thirteen times best
Speaker 2: selling author books like The Energy Guide, Women's Wellness Wisdom,
Speaker 2: and Rushing Woman Syndrome. Libby Weaver, Welcome to the WOODLFE
Speaker 2: and thanks so much for joining us.
Speaker 5: Oh it's a pleasure, Sam, thanks for having me join you.
Speaker 2: I love how you talk about dealing with stress. Our audience.
Speaker 2: Of course, we have men that listen to the show
Speaker 2: and they will absolutely benefit from this chat, I have
Speaker 2: no doubt about it. But our audience would be sort
Speaker 2: of eighty percent women, and through my twenty eight program,
Speaker 2: which is one of those bikini body programs, it's you
Speaker 2: know women particularly you know, late twenties sort through to
Speaker 2: late fifties, early sixties. Even where would you like to
Speaker 2: start with how you've been able to help this particular
Speaker 2: demographic from a stress dealing with stress perspective.
Speaker 5: Thank you, that's so generous. So I originally studied nutrition
Speaker 5: and dietetics and then did honors and then did a
Speaker 5: PhD in biochemistry. So there's lots of geeky signs in
Speaker 5: my background. But since then, I've worked with people one
Speaker 5: on one for over twenty years. And I've combined fourteen
Speaker 5: years at university with twenty plus years of working one
Speaker 5: on one with people to create a three pillar approach
Speaker 5: where I look at the biochemistry, and nutrition and emotions.
Speaker 5: So stress comes into all three of those categories. So,
Speaker 5: for example, when we go into a stress response, obviously
Speaker 5: our two main stress hormones are adrenaline and cortisol. They
Speaker 5: activate a part of the nervous system, the sympathetic nervous system,
Speaker 5: which is essentially the fight or flight response. And I'm
Speaker 5: sure or most of your listeners know this stuff, but
Speaker 5: it's a part of the autonomic nervous system, so we
Speaker 5: can't instruct it, we can't boss it around. And when
Speaker 5: we go into that fight or flight response, there's no
Speaker 5: problem with that as long as we can come out
Speaker 5: of it and activate the other branch of our nervous system,
Speaker 5: which is the parasympathetic nervous system, the calm arm. So
Speaker 5: we want to be a really healthy person just swings
Speaker 5: between those two branches. And the challenge I find, particularly
Speaker 5: for a lot of women today's they get stuck in
Speaker 5: the fight or flight response. They get stuck with that
Speaker 5: sympathetic nervous system activation. And I wrote a book in
Speaker 5: twenty eleven called, which I can't believe is twelve years ago,
Speaker 5: but I wrote a book in twenty eleven called Rushing
Speaker 5: Woman Syndrome, basically describing this and the health consequences of
Speaker 5: always living in a rush and always living with the
Speaker 5: perception that everything is urgent and that there's a huge
Speaker 5: amount of pressure, and the way that activates the sympathetic
Speaker 5: nervous system, which is the fight or flight response, and
Speaker 5: how there's no problem with that if we spend a
Speaker 5: bit of time there, but when we're really healthy, we
Speaker 5: can swing into that fight or flight response, that sympathetic
Speaker 5: nervous system activation, and then come out of it and
Speaker 5: activate what I call the green zone, the parasympathetic nervous system,
Speaker 5: which is a really calm arm. And the challenges that
Speaker 5: I was seeing with more and more of my female
Speaker 5: clients was that they were stuck in that sympathetic nervous
Speaker 5: system and then all of the health consequences that that
Speaker 5: was driving. So obviously, when we're really stressed, it disrupts
Speaker 5: our sleep, it changes the fuel preferences for the body,
Speaker 5: so it's a lot harder for us to use body
Speaker 5: fat efficiently is a fuel we use primarily glucose. We
Speaker 5: then crave sugar when we're producing a lot of stress hormones.
Speaker 5: It disrupts our blood ability to regulate our blood glucose.
Speaker 5: We can end up experiencing insulin resistance and all of
Speaker 5: the concerns that then come with that. So the list
Speaker 5: is kind of endless. But Sam, I'm one of those
Speaker 5: people who wants to follow absolutely everything to the last,
Speaker 5: take it as far as I can get right to
Speaker 5: the heart of something. And in twenty nineteen I wrote
Speaker 5: a book called The Invisible Load where I wanted to
Speaker 5: change the conversation around stress, and I very much wanted
Speaker 5: to acknowledge that there was very real and genuine stress
Speaker 5: in the world and in people's lives. But there's also
Speaker 5: a huge amount of stress that we create for ourselves
Speaker 5: because of how we think, and that's the part we
Speaker 5: can change. So I'm always really curious about the beliefs
Speaker 5: people have, and it was partly why I wanted to
Speaker 5: write The Invisible Load and change the conversations we were
Speaker 5: having about stress, so that instead of it being this
Speaker 5: thing we've got to manage, we look at what it
Speaker 5: really is. So, just as an example, before I wrote
Speaker 5: that book, I ran some focus groups with women and
Speaker 5: the youngest group they were aged eighteen to twenty five,
Speaker 5: and I asked them for their two biggest stresses, and
Speaker 5: by far and away, in all the eighteen to twenty
Speaker 5: five year old groups, it was body image and social media.
Speaker 5: And when I share that with older audiences, they don't
Speaker 5: understand it. So I hear them laugh, I hear them
Speaker 5: tut tut. It's just so familiar to them. How can
Speaker 5: social media be stressful? So when I asked the group
Speaker 5: aged thirty five to fifty five what stressed them out.
Speaker 5: One of the most common things that came out was
Speaker 5: running late. Now, if you think about running late, it's
Speaker 5: not in and of itself stressful. What makes that stressful is,
Speaker 5: you know, or we might be going to we might
Speaker 5: be going to a conference, and we don't want to
Speaker 5: miss the first speaker. So there can be a bit
Speaker 5: of fomo in running late, But mostly what stresses us
Speaker 5: out about running late is that we're stressed about what
Speaker 5: the person who'll be on the receiving end of our
Speaker 5: running late is going to think of us. So if
Speaker 5: we can realize that, if we get really worked up
Speaker 5: and recognize that we're stressed, instead of just sitting in
Speaker 5: the stress and reciting to yourself, I'm so stressed. I'm
Speaker 5: so stressed, if you can pause and think, Okay, what
Speaker 5: is this really about? I can see that I care
Speaker 5: very much what my boss or one of my colleagues
Speaker 5: thinks of me. And the reason that inside is helpful
Speaker 5: is it changes how you then show up. So instead
Speaker 5: of bursting into the meeting really stressed and letting that
Speaker 5: permeate the group, you might have a conversation with your
Speaker 5: colleague or your boss at the end and say, look,
Speaker 5: I'm so sorry I was late. It's really important to
Speaker 5: me that you know that I value my job. I
Speaker 5: work as hard as I can, I try to be
Speaker 5: as efficient as I can. They're just going to welcome
Speaker 5: your dedication and your commitment with that conversation and thank
Speaker 5: yousitive yeah exactly, and then the stress that the person's
Speaker 5: experiencing completely dissipates because you've named what it really is.
Speaker 5: So the older group, they don't understand why social media
Speaker 5: is stressful because they use social media to catch up
Speaker 5: with their friends in Perth when they live on the
Speaker 5: East Coast, or they watch funny dog videos, so it's entertainment,
Speaker 5: whereas for the younger group, it's one of the ways
Speaker 5: they obtain approval from others. And so part of what
Speaker 5: I try to help people explore or consider when they
Speaker 5: feel really stressed, is is it real or genuine stress
Speaker 5: or is it coming from your perception that others are
Speaker 5: either disapproving of you in the moment or that they
Speaker 5: will be disapproving of you if you don't do X
Speaker 5: y Z. Because that's coming from our thinking and we
Speaker 5: can change that and it's quite game changing when we
Speaker 5: start to see that a lot of our rushing, a
Speaker 5: lot of our stress comes from the fact that we
Speaker 5: care about others. Absolutely, it comes from a beautiful place,
Speaker 5: from a beautiful heart. But we don't just care about others.
Speaker 5: We actually also care what they think of us, and
Speaker 5: that's we've got to dig into that to really change
Speaker 5: our stress response.
Speaker 2: And you mentioned this, you said, you know, we're in
Speaker 2: the sympathetic nervous system where it's all we're all flighty
Speaker 2: and stressed. And the idea is when we're in a
Speaker 2: healthy space, we can get into what you call the
Speaker 2: green zone, and we can flip into the parasympathetic If
Speaker 2: that doesn't happen naturally, if we're not good at flipping
Speaker 2: from our bad zone to our good zone, what are
Speaker 2: some things that we can do from within to get
Speaker 2: us into that zone.
Speaker 5: Yes, very much so, sad so, because the sympathetic nervous
Speaker 5: system and the parasympathetic nervous system, so the red zone
Speaker 5: and the green zone for ease of remembering, because they're
Speaker 5: part of what's called the autonomic nervous system. Which all
Speaker 5: people need to understand about that is that you can't
Speaker 5: boss it around, you can't instruct it. We can't be
Speaker 5: sitting there with bucket loads of adrenaline zooming through our blood,
Speaker 5: sitting at our computer with six hundred unopened emails and
Speaker 5: having had four coffees already in the morning, with all
Speaker 5: the adrenaline behind that. We can't just sit at our
Speaker 5: desk and go, oh, just chill out, man, you know
Speaker 5: it's all good. You can't override it with your thoughts.
Speaker 5: So the only thing that science has currently shown that
Speaker 5: allows us to influence getting out of the red zone
Speaker 5: and into the green zone is extending the length of
Speaker 5: our exhalation. So I think it's partly why things like
Speaker 5: yoga and other breath focus practices have become so popular.
Speaker 1: Does that work proactively and reactively?
Speaker 4: Look?
Speaker 1: Does that yes?
Speaker 5: So when it's a genuine threat to your life. So
Speaker 5: if a car drives out in front of you and
Speaker 5: you've got a slam on your brakes, it's not going
Speaker 5: to pull you out of that quicker, but your recovery
Speaker 5: will be quicker. So where it's really beneficial is if
Speaker 5: you watch a little baby breathe. They breathe in and
Speaker 5: out through their cute little nostrils, and their little belly
Speaker 5: goes up with their belly expands with the inhalation and
Speaker 5: then it shrinks back towards their spine when they exhale,
Speaker 5: So that's obviously diafromatic breathing. And when we breathe in
Speaker 5: that way, we communicate to every cell in our body
Speaker 5: that we're safe, because we wouldn't be able to breathe
Speaker 5: like that if our life was truly in danger, because
Speaker 5: the idea of short, shallow breaths is that it increases
Speaker 5: blood pressure. It diverts the blood away from our digestive
Speaker 5: system to our periphery, to our arms and our legs,
Speaker 5: because that allows us to do the fight or flight response.
Speaker 5: But you can hear in what I've just said that
Speaker 5: digestion is compromised when we're in the fight or flight response.
Speaker 5: And certainly in Australia, one in five women have irritable
Speaker 5: bowel syndrome and food plays a role in that very much,
Speaker 5: But so does this stress response, and I don't think
Speaker 5: that's talked about enough. And then of course it changes
Speaker 5: the fuel that you're going to use in that moment.
Speaker 5: It shifts your preference away from using fat as a
Speaker 5: fuel to primarily using glucose because that's your fast burning fuel.
Speaker 5: That's the one that's going to give you the fast
Speaker 5: energy to get out of the danger your body thinks
Speaker 5: it's in and you need all of that to happen
Speaker 5: if your life's literally in danger. But the problem with
Speaker 5: modern life, obviously is that we might have high circulating
Speaker 5: levels of adrenaline and be in this red zone in
Speaker 5: the sympathetic nervous system activation. We might be in that
Speaker 5: place because we've had a few coffees, because block your
Speaker 5: ears everyone, Caffeine leads us to produce adrenaline. Our perceptions
Speaker 5: of pressure and urgency can lead us, obviously to produce adrenaline.
Speaker 5: Now I'm not saying for a second that there aren't
Speaker 5: things that aren't urgent.
Speaker 4: Of course there are.
Speaker 5: If you get a phone call from school that your
Speaker 5: child's been injured, that's urgent. You want to get there
Speaker 5: as quickly as you can. But what a lot of
Speaker 5: us do is we've made what we get to do
Speaker 5: each day full of pressure and urgency, and we forget that.
Speaker 5: We can choose to see it in a different way.
Speaker 5: Even though it might be a busy day, it might
Speaker 5: be a jam pack day. We can choose to see
Speaker 5: that as something that we've got to live it with intensity,
Speaker 5: or we can just do it and execute it and
Speaker 5: live it and actually enjoy it. So we forget though
Speaker 5: that we get to choose that. And then the third
Speaker 5: big area that leads us to produce adrenaline is worrying
Speaker 5: what consciously or unconsciously, worrying what other people think of
Speaker 5: us in the light that we just spoke about a
Speaker 5: moment ago. So to the tools to get us out
Speaker 5: of the red zone and into the green zone. Some
Speaker 5: people do really well when they decrease what's activating the
Speaker 5: red zone caffeine, exploring perceptions of pressure and urgency, and
Speaker 5: really diving into that inner work of worrying about seeking
Speaker 5: the approval of others basically, and then other people they
Speaker 5: don't want to look at that. They would rather just
Speaker 5: become a lot more breath aware, and so then you
Speaker 5: live a lot more from that place of diafromatic breathing,
Speaker 5: longer exhalations, and then you notice it very quickly when
Speaker 5: you've come out of it when it's not necessary. So
Speaker 5: you might be in a board meeting and you think, oh,
Speaker 5: I've gone into this heightened response. Okay, I can slow
Speaker 5: my breathing down because I'm safe I'm just worried, you know,
Speaker 5: about some feedback on possibly about to get but I'm
Speaker 5: actually really safe, so I'll communicate to that to my
Speaker 5: body through my breath.
Speaker 2: Thank you so so much. What's your website called? Just
Speaker 2: for people if they want a bit more information, give
Speaker 2: yourself a plug.
Speaker 5: Thanks Sam, It's doctor Libby dot com.
Speaker 2: Doctor Libby, thanks so much for joining us on the
Speaker 2: Woodlife and speak to you soon.
Speaker 4: It was a joy.
Speaker 2: Thanks hep, Sam, thanks as always so much for listening.
Speaker 2: Please please, please, as always let me know if there's
Speaker 2: any topics that you would like to discuss, any experts
Speaker 2: you would like us to interview. Leave us a little
Speaker 2: voice note. There's a link in the show notes. I'll
Speaker 2: chat to you next week.