Why “Less Stress” Might Be Killing Your Potential with Dr. Sharon Bergquist

The Hidden Stress That’s Sabotaging Your Body and Mind What if the real reason you're stuck, sick, or stressed isn't just your schedule—but the way your nervous system is wired to survive, not thrive? In this life-changing conversation with Dr. Sharon Bergquist—a leading internal medicine physician, researcher, and founder of the first integrative health center at Emory University—we go deep into the science of whole-person health. And I’m telling you: this will shift how you think about stress, healing, and what it really takes to feel well. Dr. Bergquist breaks down the truth about how chronic stress, trauma, and even low-grade inflammation are quietly wrecking your health behind the scenes—even when you're eating right and exercising. We’re not talking about surface-level tips here. This is about the deep work that affects everything: your immune system, mental clarity, metabolism, energy, and even how fast you age. And the wild part? Most people don’t even realize how much stress their body is carrying until it’s already showing up as symptoms. We talk about how early childhood adversity changes your biology, why mindset alone isn’t enough to heal, and how you can actually retrain your nervous system to shift out of fight-or-flight and into a state of calm, clarity, and repair. Dr. Bergquist shares practical steps you can start today—from breathwork and emotional regulation to purpose-driven habits—that work with your body, not against it. This isn’t just a medical conversation—it’s a blueprint for resilience. Because if you're chasing peak performance but ignoring your internal state, you’re driving with the brakes on. Dr. Bergquist calls it “healthspan”—living longer and better. And that starts with how you manage your stress, how you process pain, and how you learn to feel safe in your own body again. Key Takeaways: Why chronic stress is one of the biggest threats to your long-term health How early life adversity can silently shape your health trajectory The link between emotional trauma, immune dysfunction, and aging How to activate your parasympathetic nervous system and promote healing Simple, science-backed strategies to improve your healthspan starting today The difference between treating symptoms and building true resilience If your body has been telling you something’s off—or if you just know it’s time to feel good again—this episode is your roadmap. — Max Out. 👉 SUBSCRIBE TO ED'S YOUTUBE CHANNEL NOW 👈 → → → CONNECT WITH ED MYLETT ON SOCIAL MEDIA: ← ← ← ➡️ INSTAGRAM ➡️FACEBOOK ➡️ LINKEDIN ➡️ X ➡️ WEBSITE Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Ed Mylett?

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• 0:45Ed Mylett?

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• 1:03Speaker 01

  This episode is brought to you by Michelob Ultra. Good times mean competitions between you and your friends, like seeing who can throw some pigskin the farthest or rush the field the fastest. Winner gets an Ultra. Because it's not just a superior light beer, it's also giving fans superior access to their favorite sporting events. Superior is worth playing for. Visit michelobultra.com/superioraccess to enter. Enjoy responsibly. Copyright 2026 Anheuser Busch InBev Michelob Ultra Beer, St. Louis, Missouri.

• 1:36Ed Mylett?

  This is The Enmired Show.

• 1:40Ed Mylett?

  Okay, guys, welcome back to the show. So is stress bad? Is all stress bad?

• 1:46Speaker 02

  Not all stress is bad.

• 1:48Ed Mylett?

  Okay, good. Well, that voice you hear right there is going to answer that question this week. And so that's really what we're going to talk about. It's going to be an interesting journey about stress and how it makes an impact on you and whether some of it is a lot better for you than you think. And so the lady's voice that you just heard is Sharon Berquist, and she's a physician, a researcher, and she's really a pioneer in life. Lifestyle regenerative medicine is how I would say it. And she's Yale and Harvard trained, so we know her IQ is higher than mine for sure. But she's got a book out right now that is really interesting called The Stress Paradox. Why You Need Stress to Live Longer, Healthier, and Happier. And for a lot of you, that's kind of a counterintuitive thought, but we're gonna hopefully prove that to you today.

• 2:32Ed Mylett?

  So Sharon, welcome to the show. Thank you for being here.

• 2:35Speaker 02

  Oh, thank you for having me. It's an absolute honor and pleasure.

• 2:39Ed Mylett?

  And by the way, she's a doctor as well. I'll make sure I give her that that grace. So I don't even know where to begin with you. Most interviews I do, but let's just start out with this sort of paradox that, you know, everyone in the personal development field is trying to reduce stress all the time. Make sure you meditate, take your walk, just get away from stress. And I think I'm sort of proof that I'm 54 and I think stress has actually been pretty good for me over the years. So talk about the types of stress, at least to begin, give them the framework, the types of stress that are actually good for us, not bad.

• 3:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, so, you know, I think we have really been culturally trained to think of stress as bad. And there's, you know, a lot of history behind that. There's 90 years of science showing how stress harms us. This goes back to really how the concept of stress originated in the medical literature. A lot of experiments that were, you know, on rats, but showing that stress could really lead to death. It made all these rats sick and that's how the whole fight or flight concept originated. And the roots of that have really permeated medical literature and so much of the research.

• 3:53Speaker 02

  Myself included, early in my career, most of the work I did and a lot of the message I was sharing is all the different ways stress harms, which, you know, as we all know, is nearly every part of our body is damaged by chronic stress. But what we've learned in the last two decades is that not all stress harms. And in fact, there are types of stress that enrich us. They help us grow. And the paradox, the counterintuitive part, is that we actually need these types of stressors to build our resilience against the chronic stressors that harm us.

• 4:33Speaker 02

  So while there's a lot of merit to try to curb the stress in our life, to limit it, to draw boundaries around it, what we really want is to optimize the stress in our life.

• 4:45Ed Mylett?

  Hmm. So let's talk about that. You talk in the book about hormesis. You might as well define that for everybody. I know it in a physical term. And then you list, really, let's everybody set the framework for you because you want these stressors. You list really like five good stressors or hormetic stressors. So what are those? And what is, define hormesis for everybody as well.

• 5:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, hormesis is the science of good stress. And it's mild to moderate stress followed by recovery. And it originates from a Greek word to excite. So essentially, when we reach this hormetic zone, it's like this Goldilocks zone of stress, we grow and we kind of get enriched. It excites us physiologically where we literally benefit at the level all the way down to our cells. So it's essentially the explanation now, modern day, through two decades of now molecular

• 5:46Speaker 02

  and cell biology, that are showing how stress ripples down to, really, all the way to the molecules and cells in our body. And this is where we see the divergent effects of the stress that we know. And the ones that are beneficial, the ones that we are adapted to and help us thrive and become more resilient are brief and they're intermittent. So the five that I mentioned in the book are plant phytochemicals. And you know, that may be a little counterintuitive and we can, all of them are, we can get to that.

• 6:22Ed Mylett?

  Yeah, really, when I read the word toxins, I'm like, toxins are good for me? Okay, that's interesting.

• 6:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, it's really a long history behind how plants evolved these toxins that can help us understand why they are good for us. But brief bursts of vigorous exercise are another beneficial stress. I think that one we can kind of relate to more intuitively. Going through periods of food scarcity, like intermittent fasting is another beneficial stressor. Heat and cold, probably the most underutilized, but now it's becoming trendy. And then good mental and psychological challenges. And this one, I think, is probably where people struggle the most of what makes it good, what makes it harmful.

• 7:10Ed Mylett?

  Yeah, well, we're going to unpack that. So just think about this, everybody, if you're listening, you know, there is a line in your life where, you know, the meditation and the earthing and the grounding and the breathing and all that stuff, there's a line to where it isn't, you've not given yourself ample stress in your life as well, like challenging things for your brain and your body matter. And a human being not challenged, we've all known this, you're either growing or dying. But literally, if you really look at Sharon's work, it basically does tell you if you're not challenging yourself somehow physically and mentally, you're actually doing harm to yourself. And so we're going to unpack a little bit of this today. You know, Sharon, one of the things that seemed critical to me in reading the work

• 7:52Ed Mylett?

  that I've not done a great job of is, just overall, I want everyone to hear this part, it's the recovery piece. Because if you're like me, I've just stressed myself most of the time and not built in the recovery, and that is debilitating, right? And so, and I think my audience more trend that way. They don't, they've not built in enough recovery for their bodies and minds and spirits as well. So before we go into the other stuff, just speak to recovery, because that's the second step in making all this stuff work, correct?

• 8:25Speaker 02

  Absolutely, Ed. I mean, you really just encapsulated the crux of how this works. During the stress period, when our body is undergoing stress, part of the reason it's beneficial is that we go into this stress resistant mode and our body is brilliantly designed. In that mode, our cells get the signal that they need to function more efficiently and we start to perform all these housekeeping functions where we can literally repair damage and do regenerative functions. We can recycle the damaged components. Our cells just start to repair their DNA, they repair their protein, and they set us up so that when we enter the phase of recovery,

• 9:10Speaker 02

  that we can reconfigure and rewire and essentially build adaptations that help us handle future stress better. And the recovery is key because if you just go through the stress without the recovery, you don't get the time to build the pathways that make you more resilient. And if anything else, you're also just stacking the stress and that cumulative buildup of even a good stress can become harmful. Right? So, one way to think about this is if you went to the gym to lift weights. So, we all know that when we lift weights, we get micro tears in our muscle.

• 9:52Speaker 02

  And it's in the 24 to 48 hours after weightlifting, in that recovery, where those kind of damaged muscle cells that are inflamed reconfigure in a way where our muscles develop hypertrophy, they grow stronger. Right? And it's the same in every part of our body, the same happens in our brain. When we go through something stressful, let's say, um, public speaking for a lot of people is stressful. Right? But the stress response doesn't end when you walk off the stage. For hours to days afterward, your body is actually developing pathways in your brain that help you remember how you handled that stress.

• 10:35Speaker 02

  So the next time you are doing that same public speaking, you are better capable, you are literally more resilient.

• 10:43Ed Mylett?

  Wow, that explain. I've always wondered why if you do something repetitiously, do you necessarily get better at it? This is in the brain why that actually happens. That's fascinating to me. Like, many years ago, I did one on being really down in the dumps or being in a rut. And I said, what you need to do is you need to find a challenge. You need a physical or mental challenge, challenge yourself physically. And this has got all this attention like, that's what I'm supposed to do when I'm down or lost? And I firmly believe that it gives you a chance to have recovery if you've done some tearing down. Let me ask you, let's go to the reverses for a second. I want everyone to understand this because you're talking about these proteins. Part of the book that like stood out to me, you actually talk about the fact that if you don't get rid of some of these old proteins in your system that you have uncovered or research has uncovered that,

• 11:28Ed Mylett?

  like, it could contribute to early onset or onset Alzheimer's even, correct? Like, if you're not, and I say this, everyone, let me phrase it for you. If you're aging or you have aging parents and they're not being challenged mentally or physically, this could be a real challenge for them. So would you explain this, like, clearing out of the proteins and adding the new ones? And how it can impact us, maybe in ways that are way more detrimental than most people realize, that you should know, so you're not just sitting around?

• 11:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, so you just hit on so many really important things. I mean, the first thing you said about when you're down in a rut, the way to work your way out of it is to go do something challenging. That's really the whole premise that another approach to being overwhelmed by stress is by taking action. I mean, that is an antidote to chronic stress. That action is empowering and that sets off a cascade in our body. That helps us become energized. It releases a lot of chemicals and neurotransmitters. That help us reach this higher state.

• 12:37Speaker 02

  Um, and as you just said, you know, we know that too much stress harms and so the natural inclination would be, okay, let me just ratchet down the stress, ratchet down the stress and maybe if I get it super low, I'll live forever. And, you know, but the other end is true that not enough stress is just as harmful as too much. And in the new framework of stress, we use this term suss stress for inadequate stress.

• 13:05Ed Mylett?

  Yeah.

• 13:05Speaker 02

  And it's just as harmful as distress. And reason being, the old model of how stress was viewed is more like a linear model. Where you think the amount of stress is proportionate to the harm. And that leads us down the path where of course, we want the least amount of stress, the least amount of harm. But one of the biggest blind spots is medicine in medicine is that the relationship is more parabolic. It's more like an upside down you, like if you picture the St. Louis Arch. And that is why when you are at the too much or too little, you are at the bottom of the arch. Right. You're at the point where you're developing the least resilience.

• 13:49Speaker 02

  You're developing the least of your human potential. But when you are in this sweet spot, you know, kind of Goldilocks range, right in that middle, you're at the peak of that arch. And, and that is where you want to be. So your kind of explanation of if you're out and you know, down in the dumps, like just go do something. You're saying, hey, get on the part of that curve where your body starts to take off.

• 14:16Ed Mylett?

  Hmm.

• 14:17Speaker 02

  And the explanation about the proteins and what's that's doing. Yeah. So.

• 14:23Speaker 02

  When we go through any stress, you know, on one level, we're all familiar with this fight or flight response, but our stress response is so much more nuanced and so much more complicated. We have a different set of stress responses at the level of our cells. And when our cells encounter stress, like I mentioned, we do some housekeeping and I frame it as the four Rs. We resist damage, we repair damage, we recycle damaged and old components, and we recharge our cells by creating more energy. And what that does in our cells is, you know, we amp up our innate human ability to have

• 15:06Speaker 02

  a stronger antioxidant defense to regulate inflammation. Those are the ways we resist. We repair DNA and protein. And what is really mind boggling is that on any given day, our DNA incurs about 10,000 points of damage. And our body is this incredible machine. We're constantly repairing damage and we have this DNA damage response and stress activates it. So we are really ramping up this capability to mitigate everyday damage that's happening to our bodies. And the part about the proteins comes in with recycle. So our cells have recycling centers called lysosomes.

• 15:50Speaker 02

  And when there's old and damaged components like clumped proteins, we can take this over to our recycling center and our body can get rid of the damaged ones. And if we're also clumped and they're disfigured, we can repair our proteins through heat shock proteins, through this unfolded protein response. And if we don't, if we don't activate these stress responses, the clumped proteins start to create mental fog, we're not as good at decision making, it affects our mood, right? Because this is all going on in our brain. If we don't pay attention to those symptoms, over time, it can also increase our risk

• 16:34Speaker 02

  of neurodegenerative disease. It's like Alzheimer's disease, right?

• 16:40Ed Mylett?

  You guys, you got somebody in your family, even yourself. Actually, this isn't age-related. If you're sedentary, or you're not challenged. Also, I want to talk in a little bit, but I want to get specific about a few things, about just doing new things, because we can adapt to stress things that then don't stress us the way they used to. So, we'll talk about adaptation, everybody, because I know a lot of you go, "Well, I cold plunge." Well, in a little bit here, we'll maybe talk about adaptation, because I've got a question about that. But before we go there, I want to talk about, you recommend in the books, these are, now we're going to get kind of tactical, everybody. This episode is sponsored by Ro. A lot of people assume GLP-1's cost a fortune, and that assumption keeps them from even looking into treatment. Ro helps people find a more affordable path to FDA-approved GLP-1 treatment. Ro wants to help people lose

• 17:25Ed Mylett?

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• 18:08Ed Mylett?

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• 18:49Ed Mylett?

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• 19:15Ed Mylett?

  So I've always lifted weights. I've got a problem with my back the last couple of years, but I've always lifted weights. I've always gone to the gym for an hour, hour and a half, do some cardio workout, whatever it is. And the last couple of years, my cardiologist and a couple of the other doctors at treatment are like, you need to do more interval training, like shock training, like get your heart rate up, then slow it down, get your heart rate up, and then slow it down. And you talk about that in the book. So when we talk about physical training, how, why is it, why in your opinion, does interval training or short term bursts of training somehow potentially benefit us more than just long process of doing something in a duration? Or did I get that wrong?

• 19:56Speaker 02

  No, you got it 100% right. And, and to me, this is such a missing part of physical activity guidelines. You know, they're all about getting 150 minutes and that's wonderful. I mean, I think that's an admirable goal, but we're leaving out the nuances of how we can optimize our physiology and doing these intervals. The reason that adds so much benefit is because your body perceives it as an acute, brief stressor, right? It's sending a signal to your central nervous system that the body's under stress. That is what activates the adaptations, right? So the more intense, the brief stress,

• 20:39Speaker 02

  the stronger the adaptations. And if you wanted to get at the biochemical level, what happens is you rapidly deplete your energy stores. That sets off a sensor, a molecular sensor, AMPK, which is kind of like a fuel gauge of when your nutrients are going low. And that fuel gauge rapidly gets into the red. AMPK activates PCG1, which is kind of one of these master regulators of our mitochondria. And mitochondria help us create energy in the cell. They're kind of the powerhouse of the cell. So you're rapidly sending a signal that I'm stressed, I'm becoming energy depleted.

• 21:22Speaker 02

  And your body adapts in a way that says, I'm going to increase my capability to make energy. You increase mitochondria and you also create mitophagy. It's this selective form of autophagy where our body takes the damaged mitochondria and recycles them so that if your mitochondria are impaired, you can release these free radicals that cause oxidative damage. But if you can repair your mitochondria, you're essentially making clean energy in your body. What happens at a molecular level is really the reason why we need this central nervous system stimulus of stress, followed by recovery.

• 22:07Speaker 02

  Again, the recovery piece is critical because it's in the recovery that we reset to a new baseline where our parasympathetic nervous system kind of kicks in, right? So you think of it as, oh, my God, it's stress. And so many people out there saying, oh, no, that spikes your cortisol. Don't do it. Right? But it's intermittent spikes of cortisol is the pathway to building the adaptations. If you blunt cortisol spikes from exercise, you do not get the hypertrophy and the benefits. What you're really caring for is your baseline level of cortisol, right?

• 22:49Speaker 02

  Your basal level of cortisol is lowered after that intense bout of exercise. So we can't just say, oh, this is, you know, good or bad. I mean, you're raising your heart rate with exercise, but you know, that doesn't make it harmful. You're raising your blood pressure with exercise. That doesn't make it harmful, right? Because you know that over time, your heart rate is going to be lower. Your blood pressure is going to be lower. So what we're doing is brief spikes of stress so that our baseline level of stress resistance is higher.

• 23:22Ed Mylett?

  That's really good. You know, of all the different fitness experts and stuff that have been on the show, that's the best explanation of why that works. Yeah, of course, your cortisol level is going up, but its baseline is going to drop. Of course, your heart rate goes up, but the baseline would drop. And so, guys, like if you train and you're in the gym, you know, mix in a couple of times a week sprints. Mix in some circuit training, do some stuff that challenges you. The other thing too is like you've adapted to the way you work out. We all go to the gym and see that same person there who trains exactly the same way for the last eight years. They look exactly the same as they did before because there's no real stress being put on their body because they've adapted to that routine, that way of training. And so I, and by the way, and everyone knows, I think walking is great exercise.

• 24:05Ed Mylett?

  There's been these clips that say, of course, walking is great exercise, but maybe on your walk, you know, do some burpees really quick or some jumping jacks or something that gets your nervous system, your heart rate elevated, if you can physically do it. That kind of moves you into this, um, by the way, and getting back to that parasympathetic state is something I want to talk about in a minute too. The other thing you talk about is hot and cold, which has sort of become the thing lately, right? Like cold plunge, go to the sauna or just cold plunge or whatever it is. I just want to give you the floor on why it is beneficial. And are there, do you believe you should go from hot to cold, cold to hot? How should you finish? Is that relevant? And, uh, but the whole topic of hot to cold is like everyone's kind of doing some sauna, some cold plunge. Not everybody, but you know what I'm saying?

• 24:50Ed Mylett?

  What's the science tell us about it and what should we be doing with it?

• 24:54Speaker 02

  Right. So really the common thread between exercise, the plant toxins, the heat and cold is back to this stress, right? They're all just trying to activate these cellular stress responses. And the reason we respond to these stressors goes back to our human history. I mean, for over two million years, the stressors that were inherent in our hunter gatherer ancestors' life, where these types of stressors, right? They had to endure periods of food scarcity. They had to run and escape from predators. They had to hunt and they had to, you know, be exposed to the elements, right? That we had impermanent shelters.

• 25:39Speaker 02

  They didn't have air conditioners and heaters. And so our physiology over time has adapted in ways that make us more resilient to these types of stressors. That is how we as a human species have not only survived, but we have thrived in relationship to our environment, right? And this is the first time in human history where we have disconnected ourselves from this natural rhythm with our environment. And right now, introducing this as we've got to put back in acute stress in our life

• 26:19Speaker 02

  sounds radical, but this was the norm for two million years. Our lifestyle today is actually radical, right? So, and this is where the heat and cold fits in. So it sounds like it's trendy, um, and you know, people are investing in these big ice plunges and everyone's getting a sauna, but the, the crux is that your body just needs the exposure as a stressor, right? It, it can be DIY. I'm a real think, think simple, right? I'm a primary care physician. I take care of people of all walks of life, you know, not everyone can invest in some of these things. And, right? So the everyday is, look, you just 30 seconds of cold at

• 27:04Speaker 02

  the end of a shower, right? Just take a hot tub, a hundred and two to a hundred and four degrees. All you want to do is send your central nervous system a signal that your body is under stress. And the way you're doing it this time is that we have sensors on our skin that can sense when there's temperature variation and they send a strong signal to our body when our natural body temperature, which runs if you are Fahrenheit, it's around 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit, 37 degrees Celsius. When our core body temperature is threatened from where our body's kind of set point is.

• 27:44Speaker 02

  We have incredible feedback mechanisms that just kick in to restore that balance. I mean, again, we're so brilliantly designed and this is what's called homeostasis. It's the natural balance in our body and man, are we have redundant overlapping pathways that just jump right in. And the stress response that's triggered as a result of that is where the healing happens. It's in that stress response that all these molecular changes that we're talking about that make our cells healthier start to happen. And we talked about the repair mechanisms and the housekeeping, but you, the question

• 28:27Speaker 02

  probably people have is, well, why the heck should I care about that? Why do I want clean cells, right? Or healthy cells that are regenerated? And the answer is because what underpins every symptom that we are experiencing in modern life, every chronic disease and the accelerated aging that we're experiencing, all comes down to cellular dysfunction. Our cells are the most fundamental unit of our body. If our cells are unhealthy, okay, we have mitochondrial impairment where we can't make adequate energy. If we can't repair our DNA, if our proteins are damaged, we cannot function. Our brain can't think well.

• 29:12Speaker 02

  Our endurance is affected. Our blood vessels get damaged and over time that leads to disease and then premature mortality. So this is really assistance biology, kind of root based type medicine where you are building health from the foundation level on up.

• 29:34Ed Mylett?

  By the way, everybody, I think part of my recovery process could be listening to Sharon's voice. It's very soothing, isn't it, you guys? It's like, if I'm under stress, I'm just going to play the Ed Mylett podcast with Sharon and just listen to her voice because it's very calming and mine is certainly not. So in the book, Sharon talks about intermittent fasting. I'm going to cut to the chase on that. She believes in like a 14 hour intermittent fasting window is what she would prefer. I want to challenge you on something bigger than that. I want to talk about fasting in general.

• 30:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 30:04Ed Mylett?

  And I think over the next two or three years, the thing you're going to hear on everybody's podcast next is going to be fasting, not intermittent fasting, but fasting, you know, one, seven, 10 day type fasts, right? And longer potentially. I want to know your opinion about fasting and the durations of fasting, what the benefits are, and if somebody should be looking into that, because I can tell you, most people listening to the show, that's not been something covered on most podcasts, but it's in here. And it's something I've been really, really contemplating adding to my routine. So talk to us about fasting in a longer window and your thoughts about it.

• 30:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, so I'll start off by saying that there fasting is essentially extending your overnight fast. And you can do it in a number of ways. You can do it in time restricted eating, which is a daily pattern of eating in a certain time window. And then fasting, you can do it with alternate, alternate day fasting. You can do a prolonged fast like you're talking about. And we don't have head to head studies comparing one to the other. So I don't think anybody can claim superiority. What we do know is that there are different outcomes depending on what you want to accomplish out of fasting.

• 31:26Speaker 02

  The longer durations get into a deeper level of autophagy. And I think people who advocate for the longer duration are really focused on the benefits of autophagy. So if you think about fasting as a stress, again, this is the common thread. When your cells sense stress from not getting nutrients coming in, the first thing they're going to do, so we're talking now the metabolic switch that happens after 12 hours, where you switch from using carbohydrates or glycogen stores. We can store about 12 hours worth of carbs in our body.

• 32:07Speaker 02

  And after 12 hours, we have this molecular switch to using fat, which our body converts to ketones for energy.

• 32:16Speaker 02

  Well, the first thing that happens when our body gets the signal from ketones, um, which kind of go around the body as a signaling molecule and tell our body, "Hey, we're under stress. Hey, we're under stress. Batten down the hatches. Start conserving energy. We're not getting nutrients coming in." The first thing is your cells start to use the energy they have more efficiently, right? So we improve our insulin sensitivity so that the next time food is around, we can uptake more of that sugar. Okay, and that's one of the ways it reduces our risk of diabetes, improves our metabolic health. Um, do the same with how we utilize fats.

• 32:56Speaker 02

  So the first step in the process is we become metabolically more efficient. If your body senses, "Hey, I'm not getting nutrients, and I'm already functioning pretty efficiently. Like, I've already kind of turned on that level of response." The next thing is that your cells are like, "Oh, my goodness, I have to start using what I already have." And that's when it triggers autophagy. It's kind of, it's from a term meaning self-eating. That's the root of autophagy, where it's almost like cannibalism.

• 33:30Ed Mylett?

  Yeah, right. Self-induced cannibalism.

• 33:33Speaker 02

  At a cellular level where your cells are like, "Oh, my goodness. Let me see. There's some old cells here. They're just using up energy. These old cells aren't contributing much, so I'm just gonna destroy these old cells, and I'm gonna recycle their parts and put them to younger cells, because they're more efficient. Um, and if they're not salvageable, I'm just gonna use up the energy." I mean, that's what autophagy is. It's like a deeper level of housekeeping. And the longer we stay in this state, the more we do this. And when we recover, whether it's from a short fast or a long fast. We are essentially regenerating healthier cells, right? Because we've done all this housekeeping.

• 34:18Speaker 02

  And now that we're in recovery and we've started eating, we enter this growth mode, right? Our cells can either be repairing or they can be growing. We, you know, either build up or break down. We cannot be in both phases. But when we switch, that molecular switch goes back when we eat, then we start to grow and proliferate these healthier cells. And what's really remarkable is there are studies coming in now saying that, okay, if someone, for example, has type one diabetes, and we know in type one diabetes, the pancreatic islet cells can't produce insulin, that the regenerative power of these prolonged fasts can be so incredible

• 35:00Speaker 02

  that they can actually start to regenerate some of those pancreatic islet cells.

• 35:04Ed Mylett?

  Really?

• 35:05Speaker 02

  Incredible. I mean, so there's a lot of room to expand on this type of research. We're at a very preliminary point. But the people who are advocating for these prolonged fasts are looking at this incredible regenerative power, right? That we have. You know, regenerative medicine for people who've heard the term that may not be familiar is, is really the future state of where we're going in healthcare. We're using our body's own machinery to regenerate our cells. So one example I think people have heard of is injecting stem cells into a joint. And that is using our body's ability to help stem cells grow

• 35:50Speaker 02

  into whatever type of cell, they can differentiate into any cell. But we're using our cells' own capability and we're regenerating the cells. And that's what we're doing with fasting. You know, it's not future state. The, the reason I feel it's so important for us to reincorporate these beneficial stressors that we have kind of taken out of the fabric of our lives is this is how we regenerate our cells, present day.

• 36:22Speaker 02

  Without a high cost, I mean, every person on the planet can do this because there's no price tag associated with limiting the time interval in which you eat.

• 36:33Ed Mylett?

  That's a fact, because I could tell you when I was new in business, I certainly fasted involuntarily when I was an entrepreneur because there wasn't enough food around. By the way, Andrea, my sister, who's type one diabetic, I hope you're listening today. It's worth knowing this, this information.

• 36:50Ed Mylett?

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• 37:33Ed Mylett?

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• 38:18Ed Mylett?

  I feel great and I bring energy to the entire day. Go to IM8health.com/ed10 right now, or click the link in the description and use code ED10 for a free welcome kit, five free travel sachets, plus 10% off your order. That's code ED10 at IM8health.com/ed10. Code ED10 at IM8health.com/ed10. These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. Can I ask you a theoretical question?

• 38:52Speaker 02

  Of course.

• 38:53Ed Mylett?

  Because you know that Sharon's gonna be able to take this and turn it into something that she can prove scientifically. So you talk in the book about comfort zones. It has to be the oldest topic in all of personal development. So I usually don't go there, right?

• 39:06Speaker 02

  Right.

• 39:07Ed Mylett?

  However, you hit it like you do with everything from a totally different angle. And so when you're putting yourself past the space in which you're comfortable in a task, you used public speaking earlier, starting a speech, or for me, it's anything socially. To be really honest with you, like going to a large social gathering. Talk just, I want to just throw the topic to you about comfort zones and let you tell us how that might be one of the good types of stress.

• 39:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, so, you know, I think for a very long time, as you've said, this notion of, yeah, just put yourself past your comfort zone. That's how we grow. It's growth through adversity, right? That's kind of been the mantra of positive psychology of a lot of, even philosophy for hundreds of years. What we know now is what is the molecular fingerprint of doing that? What is the molecular fingerprint of embracing inconvenience? We are taking the concept of resilience from this kind of mushy, ill-defined way to explaining at a cellular level, how are bodies getting rewired when we are doing these things?

• 40:18Speaker 02

  So it's not just a personal belief system or a code of living. This is fundamental biology, right? And so this Goldilocks zone that we've referred to, this kind of sweet spot of where we take off, happens when we push just a little bit past our comfort zone, but not so much where we get overwhelmed. And that is different from person to person.

• 40:51Speaker 02

  And that right now is the most fascinating area of stress research right now. How can we push where we can handle more and keep pushing? And this pattern of stress, recovery, repeat, stress, recovery, repeat, is the blueprint of how we can all handle more stress? How we can shift that Goldilocks zone to a higher and higher amount? Where we can adapt to higher levels of stress? That's building resilience.

• 41:25Ed Mylett?

  Are you saying so? And maybe I'll have you, I'll push you on that a little bit, so I understand it better. So is what you're saying that you want to be challenging yourself to an extent, but not to the point of overwhelm?

• 41:37Speaker 02

  Correct.

• 41:37Ed Mylett?

  Is that what you mean? Is that what you're saying? And like, what would that look like? Can you give me any random example? I'm just trying to think of how I'm processing what you're saying. How do I know? You know, I push myself to where I'm challenged, but I'm not overwhelmed? And, and if I'm wrong about that, correct me too.

• 41:51Speaker 02

  Yeah. Um, so, you know, hormesis, I think sometimes is incorrectly um, referred to as what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. And, and it shouldn't kill you. We're talking about mild to moderate stress. Okay. And if we go back to the weightlifting example, if you have not been in a gym and you say today's the day and you go and the first thing you do is you see someone bench press 200 pounds, you're like, I'm going to do that. Okay, you're going to injure yourself.

• 42:27Speaker 02

  Whereas if you say, look, I'm going to start with five pounds, recover, build adaptations for my muscles stronger, then do 10 pounds, build adaptations, my muscles stronger and work my way, stress, recovery, stress, recovery to 200 pounds. You are pushing your own adaptations to a point where you can handle stronger stress. And that happens to us mentally and psychologically. When it's in our brain and how we handle stressful situations, we refer to it as stress inoculation. When we encounter stress, cortisol, when it's in a mild to moderate range, so something that is challenging, but not overwhelming, right?

• 43:09Speaker 02

  Where it's exciting and stimulating with a little bit of uncertainty, but, but not to the point where it's fearful. We have cortisol attached to certain receptors in our brain, particularly in the hippocampus, which is our learning and memory center. And that mild to moderate amount of cortisol sends a signal to our neurons where to grow our synapses. That's the part of our neurons that connect one neuron to another. And we can have hundreds and thousands of synapses. So we have 86 million neurons. I mean, I'm sorry, billion neurons. And we can create connectivity between them.

• 43:51Speaker 02

  So the mild to moderate stress is strengthening the communications, the connections between our brain cells. And when we undergo severe stress, so something traumatic, cortisol in excess attaches to a different receptor in our hippocampus, the glucocorticoid receptors. They actually prune those connections. So the same happens where there's this Goldilocks range. We're taking our brain from like this old DSL network and we can get like this 5G network, right? If we do this in mild, moderate recovery, mild, moderate recovery. But when we undergo trauma, we are pruning those networks. We are actually damaging the brain cells.

• 44:36Speaker 02

  So that's how it applies to psychological stress.

• 44:39Ed Mylett?

  Speaking of trauma, tell everybody a little bit about your upbringing and background and how maybe it sort of correlates to this work. Because I think when you hear somebody that's brilliant, you know, you have to wonder why they have a passion for this type of work as well. So I think probably her life story a little bit, you guys are going to surprise you. It's probably not what you think you're about to hear. So just share just quickly, if you would, your background and how it correlates to the work. Because I think it's, it's very insightful and very explanatory as to why you're so good at this.

• 45:09Speaker 02

  Well, thank you. Yeah, so I lived in Tehran, Iran. I was born in Iran. And in 1979, if people remember, the Iranian Revolution.

• 45:21Speaker 02

  The Shah had left Iran in January and overnight, there was just pandemonium. And for a lot of religious and political reasons, our safety was threatened. And we were the last plane to leave before Khomeini came. And 12 hours later, all the airports were shut down.

• 45:43Speaker 02

  And we came to the United States. For me, I mean, English is the fourth language I learned. I remember my English teacher in ninth grade used to tell people, I taught her English. I mean, I taught her English.

• 45:59Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 46:00Speaker 02

  You know, and I went on to be the valedictorian and went to college in med school. And somewhere in there, you know, I think I have had the seeds of trying to understand, what is it that makes us live to our potential? How is it that some people grow resilient under a certain set of circumstances? And others don't. And this became such an obsession and passion for me because I believe that every one of us has this potential, limitless potential. And it is part of the gift we've inherited in our DNA.

• 46:41Speaker 02

  That is what these good stressors and the cellular stress responses are teaching us, that we all have a conserved set of genes that respond to adversity in a way that makes us stronger. It's just that some of us don't know how to summons that capability. And that is what I hope to share. Because I want every person to be able to not just, you know, grit, tough it out, but use stress strategically.

• 47:14Speaker 02

  In the, kind of with the goal of raising their potential, right? Like in the service of becoming a more capable person. Because to me, good stress is hope. It's freedom. It's empowerment. Cause I, I've been in the same medical practice for 25 years. I will be the first person to tell you the health system's not going to save you. You have got to do the work yourself. You have to be the steward of your own health. And the same key that unlocks your resilience to the stressors that you are handling today is the same key that unlocks your health and your longevity.

• 47:58Ed Mylett?

  Oh, wow. That's incredible.

• 48:05Speaker 01

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• 48:34Ed Mylett?

  Yeah, I have a theory about it. And my theory is the recovery piece, I think, is the key. And I think so, and I want to ask you about that. Um, I think that everyone has tried to put themselves out of their comfort zone or done something stressful. And then if they didn't have the tools to recover, process it, what to take the right meaning away from it, recuperate and grow from it. If you don't have that part of it, then you resist doing it again. And if you miss it two or three times, then you're like, well, that's just something I'm not going to do because I didn't get any of the growth from it. I didn't get any of the benefit from it. And it seems to me, at least the top people that I work with, athletes or CEOs, the part of it that they seem to get is they have found their way to recover, not just physically,

• 49:17Ed Mylett?

  but emotionally and mentally, taking the right meanings from the events. You also work with a lot of elite athletes and CEOs. What do they know about stress that most people don't?

• 49:29Speaker 02

  I think that, I mean, there are a couple of components to this because it's partly the type of stress and partly planning for recovery. The recovery piece, I think that we can all do a better job of strategically planning for recovery.

• 49:48Ed Mylett?

  Yeah.

• 49:49Speaker 02

  If you know that you are going to be traveling across different time zones globally. So as you mentioned, I, one of my hats is I'm a medical director of an executive health program. So we take care of the top executives, like global executives. And oftentimes they're in different time zones. They have inordinate stress, I mean, managing huge teams. But the key is they are very good at strategically planning for some recovery. It may be, hey, this weekend, I'm going to go to a home I have that is in a secluded

• 50:27Speaker 02

  island or in a secluded spot where I can completely just unwind, detach, let my levels of these stress hormones just kind of all down-regulate and then go at it again. You have got to strategically plan that. Where if there's a big project or a deadline and hey, we're gonna do this big sales pitch and okay, all of you know, these hormones and your chemicals are just circulating at a high level. After that, do not plan to get on a plane and go to the next thing, right? Just say, you know what? That evening, I'm gonna go for a long walk in nature.

• 51:12Speaker 02

  I am just going to just enjoy this connection with this incredible, like, natural world that I live in. And that resets your stress level. It actually reduces your cortisol. So you've got to do things that help you bring that cortisol down when you've gone through these like peak moments of peak performance.

• 51:36Speaker 02

  If you can break up that stress, you're taking what could be a chronic stress, right? If you're going from stress to stress to stress, you're making it brief and intermittent. You're mitigating the harm and you're maximizing the benefit.

• 51:51Ed Mylett?

  Oh gosh, I just, that's a strange flash right there when you were talking. I have no idea why this just flashed to me. But I always just say what I'm thinking, I was thinking of all the moms, the moms right now. It's just, I haven't, it just came to me and I'm thinking of the overwhelming stress on mothers all the time, you know, that, you know, I hate to say this, but then don't take this the wrong way dads, but it's a little different, I think with a mom, most of the time. I'd say in general, that's a general statement, not all dads, but I mean, they, it's all the time. And I just think about the fact that you see so many of these moms that just, they never recover.

• 52:31Ed Mylett?

  They never get a chance to get their recovery time and, you know, decompress to some extent. And I just hope all you moms listening to this, hear what we're saying here. You're really literally killing yourself if you're not recovering. You're not as cognitively or emotionally as effective as you could be for the people that you love the most by grinding all the time. You gotta get a break somehow. If it's a walk to the park or something, I mean, and they go, you go ahead, hey, you gotta. It's, it make you a better mother, it'll make you a better CEO, it'll make you a better athlete. And you know, the question was phrased for athletes and CEOs, but for some reason, when I, when you were answering, I was thinking of all the moms, just for whatever reason.

• 53:11Ed Mylett?

  My flight yesterday, I had a mom in the seat across from me, traveling with her probably six month old alone. She was alone and the baby was crying the whole flight. She was doing everything she could to try to calm the baby down, to comfort the baby, but also she was worried about all the other people up where we were sitting. And then afterwards, she's got all these bags in the bassinet and I'm like, my gosh, just, and it was just like an hour of her life, it was a one hour flight. And then I'm just thinking about the day to day life of a mom, you know? And I don't know, I'm getting emotional thinking about my own mom, just, I don't think I appreciated as a child, the stress my mother was under with four children all that time, you know? My dad got to escape, go play golf, you know, my dad got to go to work, you know, and.

• 53:57Ed Mylett?

  Anyway, just thinking of you moms, sorry. I've got two more questions for you because I don't want to finish without pieces of the paradox and pieces of the strategy. Are there particular plants that you recommend? I know the answer to this, but I want them to hear this that should be in our diet and or around us and why?

• 54:14Speaker 02

  Plant toxins is a very confusing term. And I'm advocating for a particular type of toxin that are phytochemicals, natural plant chemicals that plants make as a response to the stress in their environment. So plants make phytochemicals when they're exposed to UV light, drought, us as humans or even any kind of insect trying to eat them. And phytochemicals are what give plants their natural colors, like the vibrant colors, the reason we have to eat the colors of the rainbows because there's so many phytochemicals, right? They are the antioxidants, they are the anti-inflammatories, they are the anti-tumor part of plants. Very different from man-made toxins, you know, that are in the pesticides.

• 54:58Speaker 02

  I mean, nobody's going to say, hey, yeah, we need more of those toxins. But over time, because our ancestors had to subsist on as many different edible plants as they could for their own survival to get the most chloric intake, they had to adapt to sub-lethal amounts of some of these poisons or toxins that the plants make. Bodies became more resilient and they adapted to being able to eat a greater variety so they could survive. That stress response that makes them more resistant, it amps up their antioxidant response, their capacity, is what's activated by these phytochemicals.

• 55:38Speaker 02

  And some of the ones that you may be familiar with are like curcumin is on the list, there's veratrol. I'm not going to say, go drink red wine. You can get it from grapes or pistachios, dark chocolate, for example. Ferulic acid, which is in coffee, allicin, which is in leeks and onions and garlic, luteolin, which is in most fruits and vegetables, genisteine, which is in soy. There, I mean, at least a dozen that we know work hormetically, meaning that when we eat these plant foods, it's not like we're saying, oh, we're eating this amount of antioxidants and I need to eat more, so I total more antioxidants. What's really happening is

• 56:23Speaker 02

  The plant food is activating our own antioxidant system. We are so dependent on these plants to activate our stress response so that we become more resilient in our natural environment. As we're saying every day, you know, we're incurring all kinds of damage to ourselves. I mean, modern life has introduced a lot of things that harm cells, pollutants, you know, smoke, et cetera, processed foods. And we are eating plant food or exercising all the things we're talking about because we're trying to mitigate that harm, right? So if you think about your cells as a bank account, all these factors that are harming our cells are like taking money out of that bank account.

• 57:07Speaker 02

  And if you completely, you know, go bankrupt, you develop a disease. But when we're doing these good stress behaviors, we're making deposits into that bank account, right? We're making an investment in our body. We're making an investment in our resilience. And, and plant food is a big part of that.

• 57:26Ed Mylett?

  You guys, this has been so good today. I just, I can't get over it. But I've, I've never read a book that stipulates good, stress is good. And here's the good stressors. Let me ask you this last question. Someone's just in general, they just came into the podcast at the very end and they said, I am stressed out of my mind right now. The last thing I want to do is add more stress to my life. And you would just say what to this person who says they are so stressed? What would you just say to them in general? I bet you're going to get asked this question on a book tour for sure by some guest in the audience or something. So what would you say to them?

• 58:00Speaker 02

  I, I would say that if you reframe your relationship with stress, you'll realize that adding ones that align with your belief system and are meaningful to you, create this cascade where you are literally changed. Where, you know, stress is the input, but you're investing in your future brain, where you literally can create epigenetic changes, where you can handle stress better in the future. So by owning how you want your future brain to look like, you're shape shifting your

• 58:40Speaker 02

  brain and your entire biology in a way where you are going to be able to handle the stressors. So. People who think I'm so overwhelmed are working out of this kind of fear-based restriction mindset where the only option is to retreat and do less. And I really want people to advocate abundant mindset where we're going to add, we're going to take control, and we're going to work on this component of resilience so that we're capable of handling more. Because as you've said several times, our bodies work in this use it or lose it way, right? This is called bioplasticity. The less we use it, the more we lose it.

• 59:21Speaker 02

  And we are now in an era where we're adapting to becoming less capable because we're not activating these gifts that we've been given to build our resilience. I mean, this is hardwired in every one of us. So I want people to shift their approach to, you know, it's not yes stress or no stress or too much or too little, but is it the right kind of stress? And to, you know, and some stress will find you, there's no question. I mean, some stress is just unavoidable and life happens, unfortunate things happen. But you can always add good stress as a strategy because good stress is deliberate, it's a

• 1:00:05Speaker 02

  choice, and you get to pick what kind. And you have to trust that we were made to do hard things. Our genes are not made for abundance. Our genes are made for hardship. And the more we lean into ease, the more we lean into comfort, the more we're silencing this primordial way that we were wired to thrive and survive in our environment. And I think we have to embrace this because we need a major course correction for the direction our mental health and our physical health is going. And this is the blueprint to getting to that other side where we are stronger, where we

• 1:00:49Speaker 02

  are more capable, we're healthier, and we're thriving.

• 1:00:53Ed Mylett?

  Here, I asked you the last question. You gave me like the perfect TED Talk. That was like a perfect explanation of like the book and your work right there. This was so good today. Golly, I'm glad we did this. Thank you. I love this.

• 1:01:08Speaker 02

  It's been a pleasure.

• 1:01:10Ed Mylett?

  Oh, boy, this was so good. And you challenged me today as well, which I love. Guys, three things really quick. You ready? Make sure you're on my email list, at mylet.com. Go put your email in there. Number two, if you're around and you're on Apple listening to this, write a review. And lastly, go get Dr. Sharon Bergquist's book, The Stress Paradox: Why You Need Stress to Live Longer, Healthier, and Happier. And there's a lot more in the book than what we even covered today. So God bless you all. Max out.

• 1:01:42Ed Mylett?

  This is the Ed Myron Show.