Dr. Elissa Epel: Control Stress for Healthy Eating, Metabolism & Aging

Huberman Lab

Scicomm Media

Science, Health & Fitness, Life Sciences

4.8 • 26.2K Ratings

🗓️ 3 April 2023

⏱️ 126 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In this episode, my guest is Elissa Epel, Ph.D., professor and vice chair of the department of psychiatry at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF) and the author of a new book entitled The Stress Prescription. We discuss her work showing how stress impacts mood, eating behavior, mental health, physical health, and aging. She explains stress intervention tools using “top-down” techniques (e.g., radical acceptance, mindfulness, reframing), body-based methods (e.g., breathwork) including the Wim Hof Method, exercise, meditation, body scans, and environmental shifts proven to help people cease unhealthy rumination patterns. We discuss how stress can positively impact psychology and sense of purpose, how stress affects cellular aging, how our narratives of stressful events impact our mood and biology, and how to effectively reframe stress. She explains science-based techniques to break stress-induced cycles of craving and overeating and thereby improve insulin sensitivity and metabolic health. Dr. Epel provides a wide range of tools shown to be effective in reducing stress and improving various aspects of our health. For the full show notes, visit hubermanlab.com. Thank you to our sponsors AG1 (Athletic Greens): https://athleticgreens.com/huberman Thesis: https://takethesis.com/huberman Eight Sleep: https://eightsleep.com/huberman HVMN: https://hvmn.com/huberman InsideTracker: https://www.insidetracker.com/huberman Supplements from Momentous https://www.livemomentous.com/huberman Timestamps (00:00:00) Dr. Elissa Epel (00:02:17) Sponsors: Thesis, Eight Sleep, HVMN, Momentous (00:06:18) Stress; Effects on Body & Mind (00:12:50) Tools: Overthinking & Stress (00:15:37) Acute, Moderate & Chronic Stress, Breathing (00:21:23) Stress Benefits, Aging & Cognition; Stress Challenge Response (00:31:04) Sponsor: AG-1 (Athletic Greens) (00:32:19) Tool: Shifting Stress to Challenge Response, “Stress Shields” (00:37:400 Stress, Overeating, Craving & Opioid System (00:48:55) Tools: Breaking Overeating Cycles, Mindfulness (00:54:44) Soda & Sugary Drinks (01:00:51) Smoking, Processed Food & Rebellion (01:05:29) Sponsor: InsideTracker (01:06:47) Tools: Mindfulness, Pregnancy & Metabolic Health (01:14:11) Body Scan & Cravings (01:17:28) Tool: Meditation & Aging; Meditation Retreats (01:23:35) Meditation, Psychedelics & Neuroplasticity (01:26:02) Mitochondrial Health, Stress & Mood (01:29:49) Chronic Stress & Radical Acceptance, “Brick Wall” (01:37:57) Tool: Control, Uncertainty (01:45:25) Stress Management, “Skillful Surfing” (01:50:25) Narrative, Purpose & Stress (01:52:49) Breathwork, Wim Hof Method, Positivity & Cellular Aging (02:03:11) Zero-Cost Support, YouTube Feedback, Spotify & Apple Reviews, Sponsors, Momentous, Social Media, Neural Network Newsletter Title Card Photo Credit: Mike Blabac Disclaimer

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Welcome to the Uberman Lab podcast where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life.
0:08.6	I'm Andrew Uberman and I'm a professor of neurobiology and
0:12.2	Ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. Today my guest is Dr. Alyssa Eppel.
0:17.2	Dr. Eppel is a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the University of California, San Francisco.
0:22.8	She is also the director of the Center on Aging, Metabolism and Emotions.
0:27.5	Dr. Eppel's laboratory focuses on stress and the many impacts that it has on our brain and body both negative and positive.
0:34.6	For instance her laboratory has shown that particular forms of stress
0:38.0	change our telomeres which are a component of the genetic machinery of ourselves that
0:42.9	impacts how quickly our cells and therefore we age. We also discuss exciting work from Dr. Eppel's laboratory
0:49.2	exploring how stress impacts our behavioral choices in particular which foods we elect to eat and how we experience those foods.
0:56.5	Today you'll learn how stress and your interpretation of your stress
1:00.3	impacts the different aspects of your biology and psychology.
1:03.3	You'll also learn about several important stress interventions that Dr. Eppel's laboratory has explored including meditation and breath work
1:10.0	can profoundly influence the way that stress impacts your brain and body both for better or for worse.
1:15.6	She's also explored how specific dietary interventions such as omega-3 fatty acid intake impacts stress and our response to stress and
1:23.5	a key and important feature I believe of Dr. Eppel's work is how stress and stress interventions vary in their effectiveness
1:31.4	depending on whether or not the subjects in her experiments are male versus female and their social status.
1:37.3	By the end of today's episode I assure you you will have a much more thorough understanding of what stress is and how it changes our biology and psychology
1:45.7	as well as the specific stress interventions that are going to be most optimal for you in
1:50.1	reducing the negative effects of stress on the aging process and on negative behavioral choices and also how to leverage stress in order to maximize the positive effects that stress can have on
2:00.9	cellular metabolism, mental health, physical health and performance.
2:05.0	To learn more about the work from Dr. Eppel's laboratory as well as to learn more about her books entitled The Telemere Effect and now more recently the stress
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Scicomm Media, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Scicomm Media and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.