Stress: The Science of Chilling Out

Stress! We’re all feeling it. And besides just feeling crappy, we’re also told that stress can wreak havoc on our bodies. The internet has a million solutions: vagus nerve stimulators, deep breaths, or a hot sauna! If that doesn’t work, maybe a cold plunge? But what does the science say about all this — what works to lower our stress? And is it really THAT bad to be stressed out? We dive into the research to find out, with psychology Professor Mark Seery, psychology Professor Jeremy Jamieson, and anatomist Dr. Theresa Larkin. Find our transcript here: https://tinyurl.com/ScienceVsStress In this episode, we cover: (00:00) We’re all stressed out! (02:37) Is stress that bad for us? (13:55) A healthier stress response (22:32) How our vagus nerves are involved in stress (25:57) Can we “hack” our vagus nerves? (30:42) What else can relieve stress? This episode was produced by Meryl Horn, with help from Michelle Dang, Rose Rimler, and Ekedi Fausther-Keeys. We’re edited by Blythe Terrell. Wendy Zukerman is the executive producer. Fact checking by Erica Akiko Howard. Video editing and sound by Bobby Lord. Music written by Bumi Hidaka, Peter Leonard, Emma Munger and Bobby Lord. Thanks to the researchers we spoke to for this episode including Professor Julie Vašků, Dr. Christopher Austelle, Professor Daryl O'Connor, and Dr. Jennifer Wild, as well as Humdinger Studios in Melbourne. And thanks as well to Humdinger Studios in Melbourne. Science Vs is a Spotify Studios Original. Listen for free on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also find us on YouTube, TikTok and Instagram. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:00Wendy Zukerman?

  Hi, I'm Wendy Zukerman and this is Science Versus, the show that pits facts against feeling frazzled.

• 0:12Wendy Zukerman?

  Today on the show, stress. It's everywhere. We're all feeling it. It's like we're swimming in stress.

• 0:19Speaker 01

  Does life just like stress anybody else out? I feel like every [bleep] five minutes there is something going on that have to pay a fire. I like want to throw in the towel. Like I just, I'm like, that's it.

• 0:29Wendy Zukerman?

  We're hearing more and more that stress isn't just bad for our mental health. But if we experience too much of it, it can screw with our whole body.

• 0:36Speaker 02

  We're talking about sleeve disruptions, headaches and muscle tension, digestive issues, low energy and fatigue.

• 0:43Speaker 03

  No living organism was created to sustain these levels of chronic stress for an extended period of time.

• 0:51Wendy Zukerman?

  But don't stress because online, people say they have the solution, the thing to chill us out. So one thing that's blowing up right now are these devices that can stimulate a very specific place on our body.

• 1:11Wendy Zukerman?

  Holy crap.

• 1:14Wendy Zukerman?

  It's kind of nice, honestly. Oh, yeah. They're not telling vibrators, although maybe that could work. This is a vagus nerve stimulator. It is all over the internet and it is just the latest in a long line of these tips and tricks that people say can relieve our stress. They're telling us to buy a cold plunge tank, to use a sauna, or even sign up for a breathing class.

• 1:41Speaker 02

  Inhale.

• 1:44Speaker 02

  This time we're going to let out a sigh.

• 1:50Wendy Zukerman?

  So today we are gonna inhale the science of stress and exhale a podcast. We're going to find out how bad is stress really? What is it doing to our bodies? And what are the science-approved ways to de-stress and regulate our nervous system? When it comes to stress, a lot of us are ready to

• 2:13Speaker 01

  throw in the towel.

• 2:15Wendy Zukerman?

  But then there's science.

• 2:20Wendy Zukerman?

  Science versus stress is coming up just after the break.

• 2:30Speaker 04

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• 3:15Speaker 04

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• 4:02Speaker 05

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• 4:37Wendy Zukerman?

  Welcome back. Today on the show, we are looking into the science on stress. I am super excited to get to know the science here. And the only person who could tell it to us is the incredibly stressed-out senior producer, Merrill Hawn.

• 4:54Speaker 06

  Yep, I could definitely use some science on stress. So I was excited to dive into.

• 5:00Wendy Zukerman?

  I was joking, I was joking. How are your stress levels right now?

• 5:03Speaker 06

  I mean, they're like terrible, like everybody's.

• 5:06Wendy Zukerman?

  Okay.

• 5:06Speaker 06

  So yeah, I definitely wanted to know like what actually works and how bad is this really? Because I had heard that it's like, you know, on top of just feeling like crap, it's also going to destroy my body to be stressed out. So I wanted to see like, what is the evidence there?

• 5:22Wendy Zukerman?

  Yeah, 100%, 100%. Because the word on the street is definitely, every time we feel stressed, every time your heart rate elevates just a little, you gotta regulate, chill yourself out, go jump in some cold body of water.

• 5:37Speaker 06

  Mm-hmm.

• 5:38Wendy Zukerman?

  First question, is that true? Is all stress really that bad for us?

• 5:44Speaker 06

  So yeah, I started diving in and right away I came across some stuff that was pretty surprising. So like, there is this study done by this guy.

• 5:53Speaker 02

  My name is Mark Siri. I'm a professor in the psychology department at the University of Buffalo.

• 5:58Speaker 06

  And so let me tell you about what Mark did.

• 6:00Wendy Zukerman?

  Yeah.

• 6:01Speaker 06

  So he wanted to see how living through like really stressful life events affects our mental health. Like, how much does being exposed to hard stuff take a toll on us mentally?

• 6:12Wendy Zukerman?

  Great.

• 6:12Speaker 06

  And, you know, lucky for him, he had access to this really amazing dataset to help answer this. So they asked about 2,000 people about all these really stressful things that had happened to them over their lives.

• 6:26Speaker 02

  Serious illness or injury to oneself or a loved one, exposure to combat, being divorced yourself, your parents being divorced, death of a loved one.

• 6:35Speaker 06

  Pretty terrible things.

• 6:36Speaker 02

  Terrible, absolutely, yes. Major negative life events.

• 6:41Speaker 06

  And then they gave people a checklist. So it had 37 of these things and people could check off what's happened to them. And then they also asked them about their mental health. Things like life satisfaction, symptoms of depression and anxiety. And then they looked to see whose mental health was worse. And one finding was pretty obvious right away.

• 7:02Speaker 02

  The people who are at a high level of adversity, they on average are the worst off across all these outcomes.

• 7:08Speaker 06

  So if you've had a ton of these really hard things happen to you, they are feeling the worst.

• 7:13Speaker 02

  Exactly right, exactly right.

• 7:14Speaker 06

  Not surprising.

• 7:15Speaker 02

  Yes, it does make sense. But the really interesting part then is comparing people who are at zero adversity to people who are at like some adversity.

• 7:22Speaker 06

  Huh.

• 7:23Speaker 02

  And the people who were at zero were not the best off.

• 7:25Speaker 06

  Ah.

• 7:26Speaker 02

  They were actually worse off than the people who had experienced some adversity.

• 7:32Wendy Zukerman?

  That actually makes sense to me.

• 7:34Speaker 06

  Yeah, how come?

• 7:35Wendy Zukerman?

  Um, I'll give you a sort of obvious example. The other day, I had a really nasty stomach bug. It was so bad. My stomach pain was off the charts. I was crying. The physical pain was so bad. And after it, it kind of went away within a couple of hours. And all this week, my stress levels have been way lower than normal. I'm like, I'm healthy.

• 8:05Speaker 06

  Huh.

• 8:06Wendy Zukerman?

  I'm alive. I can eat ice cream again. There's something about you go through a difficult time, you know you can survive it, you're proud of yourself, you know, depending on obviously what happened to you. And you do come out the other side, as many songs have told us, stronger, I think. And that is just a stomach ache for a couple of hours, a terrible thing like what these people have experienced. I could imagine that, do we want to call it a glow, lasting a little longer? Is that what Mark has found?

• 8:43Speaker 06

  Um, sort of. He actually thinks that it's basically like you're building up resilience.

• 8:48Wendy Zukerman?

  Yes.

• 8:49Speaker 06

  Um, sort of like exercise, he thought, like, we need to work out our stress response to get good at stress.

• 8:56Speaker 02

  It's very much analogous to developing physical fitness. Like, if you never work out, if you never put your body through a physical stressor, you have zero opportunity to develop physical fitness.

• 9:08Speaker 06

  So, yeah, maybe getting exposed to these big stressful things helps our body get better at responding to other stressful stuff without, like, totally overwhelming us.

• 9:16Wendy Zukerman?

  Okay, so it's not just putting pain in context, which was how I was thinking about it. It's actually your stress response gets better and better with each stressor, potentially up to a point?

• 9:30Speaker 06

  It could be both. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's actually a sweet spot was like four awful things happening to people.

• 9:35Wendy Zukerman?

  Oh, gosh.

• 9:36Speaker 06

  So you don't want to go too high either.

• 9:37Wendy Zukerman?

  Uh huh.

• 9:38Speaker 06

  Um, but yeah, some stress seems like it, or some big stressful things seems like it actually makes us more resilient. And he actually tested that in a separate experiment. He, like, brought people into the lab to see if they were basically tougher if they had experienced stressful stuff in the past.

• 9:54Wendy Zukerman?

  What did he do?

• 9:56Speaker 02

  We asked them to put their hand in ice cold water for as long as they could stand and then report, how painful is this? Uh, tell us at the end their level of what's called situational catastrophizing, like, I thought this was never going to end.

• 10:10Speaker 06

  Have you done this by, by the way?

• 10:11Speaker 02

  I have. And I do not prefer to do it. My hands get cold if I'm, like, rinsing kale under the cold water faucet, so.

• 10:20Wendy Zukerman?

  Okay, so the people who had been through some level of, of trauma, these terrible things in their lives had happened, they could cope with this painful exercise better than others?

• 10:33Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah. The people, they asked people, you know, to do that same checklist, and the ones who had experienced some, you know, adversity, uh, experienced less physical pain than those that didn't go through anything like that, and they catastrophized less.

• 10:47Wendy Zukerman?

  Interesting.

• 10:48Speaker 06

  And then there's also animal experiments that back this up, too. So does this, all this research change the way that you, like, go through life?

• 10:58Speaker 02

  Yeah. You know, it's a good question. Honestly, um, it's helpful to know this stuff, because like how I explain you the meaning of this work is not that, oh, yeah, you should seek out to break some bones.

• 11:09Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 11:09Speaker 02

  Like, these are bad things, and you don't need to seek them out. But invariably almost, they do happen to people. But what this work says is that, you know what, at some point in the future, this actually does have the potential to be a net positive for you. I personally, I find that to be really comforting.

• 11:30Speaker 06

  Yeah, so bottom line, science actually does kind of support the whole, like, whatever doesn't kill us makes us stronger.

• 11:36Wendy Zukerman?

  So Mark was talking about these kind of terrible singular stressful events that hit. You break a bone, someone you love dies, and how your body responds to that. But what about kind of day-to-day stress, just the relentlessness of life? What do we know about what that does to the body?

• 11:59Speaker 06

  Yeah, so the way that scientists kind of think about this is that our bodies are totally made to deal with stressors here and there. So it's not like every time you get stressed out by something and you, you know, your heart starts beating faster. It's not like that's a bad thing. We want to, like, eliminate that altogether.

• 12:18Wendy Zukerman?

  Right. You don't need to jump in some cold water or anything. Our body can deal with that.

• 12:22Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 12:23Wendy Zukerman?

  Yeah.

• 12:23Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah, our body can deal with that. And then if it recovers, then you'll be okay.

• 12:26Wendy Zukerman?

  Yeah.

• 12:27Speaker 06

  But we know that if you don't have, like, time and space to, like, recover, and the stressors just are, like, happening again and again and again and again.

• 12:35Wendy Zukerman?

  Yes.

• 12:36Speaker 06

  That can add up and take, like, a toll on your body. And the way we know this is by studying, um, groups of people who experience a ton of stressors, like, if you're taking care of someone who's sick or disabled, if you've been abused, if, you know, you live in a low-income neighborhood, if you experience racism, there's all these, like, signs that in these kind of situations where you might experience stress day in and day out, we can see this kind of bigger effects.

• 13:05Wendy Zukerman?

  So what happens in your body when you have this relentless stress?

• 13:09Speaker 06

  So one, um, thing that we think is going on is it does mess with your cortisol system.

• 13:15Wendy Zukerman?

  Yeah.

• 13:15Speaker 06

  So, so it's like normal for, for cortisol to be high at the start of the day, since it helps us wake up, um, but, and then maybe you'll, like, experience little bursts of it during the day as the stressful stuff comes up.

• 13:28Wendy Zukerman?

  Uh huh. You can, you can literally measure that, right, in studies? They'll get people to do stressful things, and you see the cortisol spike.

• 13:34Speaker 06

  Mm-hmm.

• 13:34Wendy Zukerman?

  And then it should go back down. Is that the idea?

• 13:36Speaker 06

  It should go back down.

• 13:37Wendy Zukerman?

  Yeah.

• 13:37Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah. Um, and so the system kind of turns itself off after you've dealt with that stressful thing. The little cortisol spigot is like, okay, stressor's gone, I'm going to turn it off now.

• 13:48Wendy Zukerman?

  Yeah.

• 13:48Speaker 06

  But studies have found that when stress is incessant, that system gets dysregulated. So the cortisol spigot is, like, turning on too much, or not enough, or at the wrong times of day. And, you know, that is what's bad, and that can up your chance for cardiovascular disease or depression and anxiety.

• 14:09Wendy Zukerman?

  And can you feel that? I, as you're describing it, I-

• 14:13Speaker 06

  I do know what one is happening to you.

• 14:15Wendy Zukerman?

  Yeah, yeah, because I sort of, I feel like the times in my life where I have been overwhelmed with stress, I do feel like I'm just, like, vibrating at a higher frequency throughout the day, and, and things will, will trigger me much faster.

• 14:32Speaker 06

  Mm-hmm.

• 14:33Wendy Zukerman?

  Is that the response you're talking about?

• 14:35Speaker 06

  I was trying to find, like, what are the signs for, like, when you've reached this point of chronic stress?

• 14:40Wendy Zukerman?

  Right.

• 14:40Speaker 06

  And even though there's no, like, for sure signal that's like, yes, you are chronically stressed now, one of the things that reviews say to kind of look out for is feeling irritable or overwhelmed a lot. So maybe that's what you're describing, yeah. And like, that kind of changes in mood.

• 14:55Wendy Zukerman?

  Yes.

• 14:56Speaker 06

  Uh, feeling down, having trouble going to sleep, like, those are kind of some of the clues that, um, tell us that you might be heading into a kind of chronic stress land. And then there are other things that happen kind of in the moment.

• 15:09Wendy Zukerman?

  Uh huh.

• 15:10Speaker 06

  When we're feeling, um, stressed out, um, so like, your, your heart rate will get, um, faster, your breathing gets faster. Um, but then sometimes you get into this particular stress response that's, that's bad. It's called the threat response, where even though your heart is pumping blood faster, it can't get out to your limbs and your brain more easily because your blood vessels don't dilate. And so that's part of the way we think it's kind of bad for us, because, like, the blood isn't getting where it's supposed to go.

• 15:41Wendy Zukerman?

  Wow. Because so it's just totally dysregulated. The systems that are supposed to be, you know, heart pumps, blood vessels dilate, that something's just all gone haywire with this stress response.

• 15:54Speaker 06

  Yeah. But what's interesting is that there is another way. There is another stress response that doesn't seem like it's as bad as that. So that whole process that I just described.

• 16:05Wendy Zukerman?

  Yeah.

• 16:05Speaker 06

  It's, you know, it's not inevitable. Um, so I talked about this with Jeremy Jamieson. He's a professor of psychology at the University of Rochester. And he told me that he noticed firsthand that people can have, like, more helpful stress responses back when he was a football player in college.

• 16:23Speaker 07

  You would see your teammates before a game who'd be, like, really amped up. And so there, the stress response was seen as like a supportive thing for their performance.

• 16:31Speaker 06

  So like, yeah, we can do this. Yeah, yeah, I want that stress response. So in this case, you know, your body actually, when you think you're prepared to take on the challenge, this, you have this different thing happening in your body called the challenge response. And in that case, your blood vessels will dilate. You'll, you know, your, your, your, everything opens up and the blood gets to where it's supposed to go. And so, yeah, Jeremy told me, like, what happens in this case?

• 16:58Speaker 07

  Body's like, great, I will do things, help get you all the resources you need to take that stressor on. As you see dilation of the blood vessels, you see more blood going out the periphery, you see production of anabolic hormones. It's all these performance and health supportive responses. So the aim is like, I want you to take, I want you to approach the stressor because you think you can handle it.

• 17:17Speaker 06

  So your body is like, go, go, go, like, you can do it.

• 17:20Speaker 07

  Go get it.

• 17:22Wendy Zukerman?

  So sometimes I do have that response to stress. So can, it's not as if one person will always be [BLEEP] by stress and another person will always be charged by it. The same person can have two different responses.

• 17:36Speaker 06

  Yeah. And then one, one key thing about, like, the way these two responses are different.

• 17:41Wendy Zukerman?

  Yes.

• 17:42Speaker 06

  Is that we think your body might less, make less cortisol when you're having that good one and more of other hormones like testosterone.

• 17:49Wendy Zukerman?

  Less cortisol. Oh, how interesting. It's a stress response, but you don't have cortisol spikes. Instead, you have testosterone spikes?

• 17:59Speaker 06

  Well, not, you still make some cortisol, but the ratio is different. Yeah, you make less cortisol, we think, and more testosterone when you're having, like, the, the good stress response, which would be kind of, it's a performance enhancer, right?

• 18:13Wendy Zukerman?

  Yeah, interesting.

• 18:14Speaker 06

  It can help us do more things. It gets cleared out of the body faster. Here's Jeremy.

• 18:18Speaker 07

  And so once the stressor's dealt with, you go back to baseline. You go back to hormone synthesis very quickly.

• 18:24Speaker 06

  And, yeah, so, so Jeremy wanted to see, like, can we teach people how to have that testosterone-fueled, like, Captain America, challenge response?

• 18:33Wendy Zukerman?

  Oh, okay.

• 18:34Speaker 06

  Instead of feeling the, like, the scary, you know, ah, I'm not ready.

• 18:37Wendy Zukerman?

  Yes.

• 18:38Speaker 06

  Um, so, yeah, he did a study where he basically taught people that stress can be helpful, like, you know, stress isn't the enemy. Um, so they got over 300 community college students, and before a big math test, they gave some information to teach them about basically what we've been talking about, how stress itself isn't necessarily bad. And so when they felt it coming on during the test.

• 19:04Speaker 07

  Hey, your hands are sweaty, your heart's racing, great. You pump blood around the way you need to. That's good.

• 19:09Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 19:09Speaker 07

  And so I think when people see that, it's like, oh, this is fuel now for me. And this is what I'm, this is how I can support myself in this performance setting. You take something that was seen as this hindrance, and now it's seen as something that's resourceful to you.

• 19:21Speaker 06

  So instead of, like, instead of trying to do the math test despite the stress happening in your body, try to, like, use the stress?

• 19:29Speaker 07

  Yeah. You lean into it. You use it. It's a resource.

• 19:33Wendy Zukerman?

  Wow, you can control it? You're not just a puppet to whatever your cortisol is doing? You can actually direct that energy?

• 19:42Speaker 06

  That's what Jeremy wanted to test.

• 19:44Wendy Zukerman?

  Okay.

• 19:44Speaker 06

  So they had some people learn this technique of like, try to use this, you know, feeling.

• 19:49Wendy Zukerman?

  Yeah.

• 19:50Speaker 06

  It's not necessarily that thing.

• 19:51Wendy Zukerman?

  Ride the wave. Yes, yes, yes.

• 19:53Speaker 06

  And then they also had a control group where they just told people to ignore the stress.

• 19:57Wendy Zukerman?

  Okay.

• 19:58Speaker 06

  And then they looked to see what happened.

• 20:00Wendy Zukerman?

  Uh huh.

• 20:01Speaker 06

  And they found that the students who learned this like lean into your stress technique, um, they did better. Like fewer of them dropped the course. They were about 15% more likely to pass the class than the students who got the just ignore it advice. Uh, that was across a couple of different studies with different groups of students. And their bodies made relatively more testosterone and less cortisol than the other students.

• 20:25Wendy Zukerman?

  That's an inspirational stress story, Meryl. That you can, you can try to redirect it. And it, and it's as simple as just being aware that I'm in stress mode. Do, do, do, do, do, do. Ride it, ride it.

• 20:42Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 20:43Wendy Zukerman?

  That's, that's kind of what we're supposed to do in.

• 20:45Speaker 06

  Yeah, there's another study that did something even simpler. So, uh, my favorite one on this got about a hundred people to do something else, so they weren't preparing for a math test, but it was something else.

• 20:56Wendy Zukerman?

  Yeah.

• 20:57Speaker 06

  Uh, do you wanna, do you wanna guess?

• 20:59Wendy Zukerman?

  Pub, public speaking?

• 21:01Speaker 06

  Uh, it was karaoke, actually.

• 21:02Wendy Zukerman?

  Ah, okay, okay. So I just love to get people up there talking, doing public speaking karaoke.

• 21:08Speaker 06

  That's true.

• 21:08Wendy Zukerman?

  Even better, even better. Okay, did they give them the songs or they got to pick?

• 21:13Speaker 06

  They didn't get to pick. No, they made everybody sing Journeys Don't Stop Believing.

• 21:17Wendy Zukerman?

  Oh, no. This is scientists really putting themselves on the line. You know, they would have had to listen to that song. People kill that song over and over again. How many people you say were in this study?

• 21:29Speaker 06

  It was about a hundred.

• 21:30Wendy Zukerman?

  A hundred, don't stop believing.

• 21:33Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 21:34Wendy Zukerman?

  Okay, okay.

• 21:36Speaker 06

  Not surprisingly, when people found out they had to do this, their hearts started beating faster. And so they all showed a stress response.

• 21:43Wendy Zukerman?

  My heart is beating because I'm worried you're gonna ask me to do it. I'm all, I'm there, I'm there.

• 21:49Speaker 06

  Well, but then beforehand, the researcher assigned some people to say something out loud. Like, I am excited. And then other people had to say something else, like, I am anxious. And she found that the ones who said, I am excited, they felt more excited. And not only that, they actually sang the song better than the people who said they were anxious.

• 22:12Wendy Zukerman?

  Wow.

• 22:13Speaker 06

  They were less off key and they were more accurate when they sang, don't stop believing, according to this like software program that they use to analyze people's responses.

• 22:21Wendy Zukerman?

  This makes me think, you know, when people today, they don't like science, they don't like facts. And you know what I want to tell them, Meryl?

• 22:29Speaker 06

  Don't stop believing.

• 22:30Wendy Zukerman?

  Yeah, that's right.

• 22:35Wendy Zukerman?

  So if you're not having to sing Journey.

• 22:39Speaker 06

  Um.

• 22:40Wendy Zukerman?

  Oh, can you use, can you really use this in day to day life?

• 22:45Speaker 06

  Jeremy is like hopeful that this could actually help people more generally, even not specific to like preparing for a, like a bench. But

• 22:53Wendy Zukerman?

  Yeah.

• 22:53Speaker 06

  Like he did a pre-print where he enrolled people who might be vulnerable to chronic stress. So these were high schoolers in like a low income, mostly black community who went to a really challenging high school. And he taught them this, you know, stress can be positive.

• 23:09Wendy Zukerman?

  Yeah.

• 23:09Speaker 06

  Use it mindset.

• 23:10Wendy Zukerman?

  Yeah.

• 23:10Speaker 06

  And it seemed like it helped them too. Like just generally on their most stressful days, they felt better about themselves and their cortisol was lower.

• 23:18Wendy Zukerman?

  Uh huh.

• 23:19Speaker 06

  So he thinks that it can just like generally be helpful.

• 23:23Wendy Zukerman?

  Wow.

• 23:23Speaker 06

  And obviously I, I don't want to make it seem like all you have to do is change your mindset and all of, you know, your stresses will melt away.

• 23:32Wendy Zukerman?

  Yes.

• 23:32Speaker 06

  You know, there's a reason people are stressed out. Um, the, yeah, this isn't gonna fix like the causes of stress for a lot of people.

• 23:40Wendy Zukerman?

  Yep.

• 23:41Speaker 06

  Um, and then there's also just situations where using this approach probably wouldn't be a good idea in the first place. Like if you're having panic attacks, Jeremy mentioned like, you probably don't want to like lean into the stress in that case, right? You want to lower your stress.

• 23:56Wendy Zukerman?

  Right. But maybe as you're going through your day, maybe this tool can help with little moments to make your day a little bit better. That's the idea.

• 24:06Speaker 06

  Yeah, exactly.

• 24:08Wendy Zukerman?

  Okay, after the break, I want to look at that orgasm device, Meryl.

• 24:12Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 24:13Wendy Zukerman?

  What the hell was that person doing?

• 24:15Speaker 06

  The orgasm device after the break.

• 24:18Wendy Zukerman?

  Coming up.

• 24:28Speaker 08

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• 25:58Speaker 11

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• 26:34Wendy Zukerman?

  Welcome back. Today on the show, we are talking about the science of stress. And now we are jumping into this device. There's a bunch of them online. I'm getting advertised all over the shop.

• 26:48Speaker 06

  I started seeing these ads too. Um, and just generally stuff about the vagus nerve everywhere.

• 26:54Wendy Zukerman?

  Everywhere. The internet just discovered the vagus nerve. Tell us about the vagus nerve for those who don't remember from anatomy class.

• 27:04Speaker 06

  Yeah, so, so I talked to Teresa Larkin, who, um, is an associate professor and anatomist at the University of Wollongong in Australia and.

• 27:12Wendy Zukerman?

  Wollongong.

• 27:14Speaker 06

  Wollongong, sorry, Australia.

• 27:16Wendy Zukerman?

  Wait, you can't say Wollongong.

• 27:21Speaker 06

  Wollongong? Is that it?

• 27:28Wendy Zukerman?

  Forget it. Tell me about her.

• 27:30Speaker 06

  She's really into the vagus nerve, which by the way, it should actually be nerves because we have two of them.

• 27:37Wendy Zukerman?

  Oh.

• 27:38Speaker 12

  Honestly, I will refer to it as such a beautiful nerves. It's, it's, it's left and right, but they are just beautiful nerves.

• 27:47Wendy Zukerman?

  Um, so why are they, why are they beautiful?

• 27:50Speaker 06

  Well, Teresa has actually, um, cut open cadavers and, and looked at them. So let me let her tell you.

• 27:56Speaker 12

  They're very prominent and they're quite glistening. They're, you know, this white yellow.

• 28:02Wendy Zukerman?

  Ooh.

• 28:03Speaker 12

  Really important nerves.

• 28:06Speaker 06

  One reason she's so into these nerves and thinks they're so beautiful is just like how extensive they are throughout the body. So I sent you a picture. If you go to the link.

• 28:17Wendy Zukerman?

  Yes.

• 28:17Speaker 06

  Um, open that link up.

• 28:21Wendy Zukerman?

  Ooh. Wow. Because vagus means wandering.

• 28:28Speaker 06

  Yes.

• 28:29Wendy Zukerman?

  Right?

• 28:29Speaker 06

  Yes, exactly.

• 28:30Wendy Zukerman?

  It wanders throughout your body.

• 28:31Speaker 06

  They, the nerves like start at your brainstem. So kind of like the back of your neck. And then they go down and really start branching all through the chest and um, the gut. And then they go all the way down to the colon, touching tons of organs along the way.

• 28:46Wendy Zukerman?

  Uh huh. Yeah, wow. And so does stimulating it reduce stress?

• 28:53Speaker 06

  Well, that, there is a logic to that because we know that these nerves are really important just generally when it comes to stress. Um, like they kick in just naturally when your body is kind of coming down from stress. So here's how Teresa put it.

• 29:08Speaker 12

  Chronic stress is not good. And the antidote are the vagus nerves. Like they literally are.

• 29:16Wendy Zukerman?

  Hmm, in what way?

• 29:18Speaker 06

  So when we have a big stress response and then it's passed, these nerves can trigger a like chill out response, which has its own tagline.

• 29:27Speaker 12

  Rest, digest, restore. So if we just break those down, we can really think about the rest slows down our heart rate. It slows down our breathing rate.

• 29:38Speaker 06

  So when our body decides it's time to chill out now, your vagus nerves help slow down the heart, you know, get the gut moving again, reduce inflammation. So they kind of take the brain's instructions that it's like, ah, it's time to chill out now. And then they spread word to the rest of the body on like how to, how to do that.

• 29:57Wendy Zukerman?

  So then do these vagus nerves stimulators work?

• 30:03Speaker 06

  Um, so yeah, let's, let's like unpack the science here because first we, we do have devices that stimulate the vagus nerve that are FDA approved for other conditions. Um, so not stress exactly. Uh, here's Teresa.

• 30:17Speaker 12

  So some people have implantable vagus nerve stimulators. So through a surgery, they will have this stimulator put under the skin in their chest and it will stimulate the left side of the vagus nerves. And they've been approved for um, treatment resistant depression, some epilepsy.

• 30:35Speaker 06

  The science is actually a little bit mixed. Like even though it's FDA approved in some studies, it didn't actually work that well for, for those conditions.

• 30:42Wendy Zukerman?

  Uh huh.

• 30:43Speaker 06

  Um, and then there are the vagus nerve stimulators that you cannot, you and I can just like buy online.

• 30:48Wendy Zukerman?

  Right.

• 30:49Speaker 06

  That like go over the neck. Those can be pretty pricey. They can cost hundreds of dollars. Um, and I, but I did find a study looking at those for stress and it seemed pretty promising at first.

• 31:00Wendy Zukerman?

  Really?

• 31:00Speaker 06

  So.

• 31:00Wendy Zukerman?

  At first?

• 31:01Speaker 06

  They had people, yeah. So they had people do some stressful stuff, like solving some annoying math problems.

• 31:09Wendy Zukerman?

  Uh huh.

• 31:10Speaker 06

  And they found that zapping their necks with this thing seemed to lower their stress after. And there are some other studies, uh, seeming like it might help for like PTSD or claustrophobia.

• 31:21Wendy Zukerman?

  Uh huh.

• 31:22Speaker 06

  But then I scrolled down to the conflict of interest section on some of these papers. And a lot of the time, the researchers doing these studies are getting funding from the companies that make the devices, the vagus nerve stimulators.

• 31:36Wendy Zukerman?

  Okay, yeah.

• 31:37Speaker 06

  But the, the main reason that I got, you know, over these stimulators is because when I was talking to scientists about this, they were like, we actually have a way of stimulating the vagus nerve for free without these devices. That has more evidence behind it.

• 31:52Wendy Zukerman?

  Oh, okay. What do you do?

• 31:53Speaker 06

  Yeah. So like one way that you can do this is just by breathing in a particular way. So do you want to try it with me?

• 32:01Wendy Zukerman?

  Oh, yeah, of course.

• 32:03Speaker 06

  Yeah. So all to simulate your vagus nerve, just, just try this.

• 32:07Wendy Zukerman?

  Okay.

• 32:08Speaker 06

  So take a big breath in.

• 32:12Speaker 06

  And then slow breath out.

• 32:18Speaker 06

  And as you do that, the, the vagus nerves are doing two things. So the first is this.

• 32:25Speaker 12

  So taking a slow breath will stimulate the vagus nerves and tell them to tell the brain, we are safe.

• 32:33Speaker 06

  So, uh, one thing I haven't told you about the vagus nerves is that most of them, 80% of them are actually made of fibers which take in information from the body and report back to the brain, like how the body's doing basically.

• 32:48Wendy Zukerman?

  Uh huh.

• 32:49Speaker 06

  And so we think that um, because some of these nerve fibers are in the lungs, they can kind of sense when we're doing this like big, slow breath out. And so the idea is that, you know, you take the big exhalation and then the vagus nerves notice and tell your brain like, oh, she's feeling safe. And then the brain also uses the vagus nerves to relax you even more by like slowing down the heart and doing those things we talked about earlier. And you know, when I did this with Teresa, I feel like I could actually feel my heart rate slowing down during those like long, slow exhales. Like that's where your heart rate is like slowing down. So Teresa says to try to have your exhales a little bit longer than the inhales

• 33:33Speaker 06

  if you really want to like feel this.

• 33:35Speaker 12

  So one of the easiest things people can do is just a breathe in for four, but a breathe out for five.

• 33:42Speaker 06

  And there is some science backing up the idea that breath work, like the slow paced breathing is pretty good at reducing stress.

• 33:49Wendy Zukerman?

  Uh huh.

• 33:50Speaker 06

  Like there is a big meta-analysis that looked at ways to help with your cortisol. Um, so it compared dozens and dozens of studies and it found that relaxation techniques like those that had people do breathing exercises, um, that was one of the things that worked the best.

• 34:06Speaker 12

  In the same way that multiple little stresses can happen in a day and build your stress, build your stress, build your stress, you know? You're trying to get into the car and then your clothes get caught on something that's stuck and then you can't open it. When we do the opposite, it's, it also adds up, you know? Some nice breathing when we are waiting for the kettle to boil. Some nice breathing when you're in the car, some nice breathing before the meeting starts. All of these things help to lower the baseline stress level.

• 34:33Speaker 06

  Then by the way, the other big thing that that meta-analysis found that worked uh, the best was mindfulness and meditation. So there's some evidence for, for that stuff too.

• 34:43Wendy Zukerman?

  Okay, so breathing, stimulating the vagus nerve for free, not buying these devices. That's one little trick up our sleeve to help with our stress response. Hearing a lot about going to the sauna, cold plunges, these kinds of things. Where is the data at today on that?

• 35:07Speaker 06

  Yeah, I looked into, to both of those, to saunas, cold plunges, and neither had amazing evidence when it came to stress.

• 35:14Wendy Zukerman?

  Yeah.

• 35:15Speaker 06

  Like for saunas, there was one study saying that it can reduce anxiety, but there was no control group in that study.

• 35:23Wendy Zukerman?

  Uh huh.

• 35:24Speaker 06

  For cold plunges, there were some studies that said maybe it could lower some stress hormones, but it was kind of weird because the effect only showed up at 12 hours after the cold plunge, but not at any of the other time points they looked at.

• 35:38Wendy Zukerman?

  Smells like pee hacking a little.

• 35:41Speaker 06

  Yeah, it wasn't totally convincing. But then what's interesting about this stuff is that both of these kind of get at this cool idea that is science backed.

• 35:51Wendy Zukerman?

  Uh huh.

• 35:51Speaker 06

  Which is, so stressing out your body can leave you feeling more relaxed later. And the area where there are by far the most studies on that is exercise.

• 36:04Wendy Zukerman?

  Exercise, I was gonna say, yeah.

• 36:06Speaker 06

  So let's, let's talk about that.

• 36:07Wendy Zukerman?

  Yeah, okay. Take me through it.

• 36:09Speaker 06

  Cause like you, I mean, you might know that like exercise is basically a form of stress. Like if you think about it, when you're in the middle of a jog, your body's like, all right, we're doing this, your heart is pumping, your breathing is faster, your muscles are getting more blood, all that jazz. It's basically a stress response, right?

• 36:25Wendy Zukerman?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 36:27Speaker 06

  But then you, you hit your like mileage goal or kilometer goal and, and you can stop. It's over, you're safe, you're okay.

• 36:35Wendy Zukerman?

  Yeah.

• 36:35Speaker 06

  Um, so here's Teresa.

• 36:38Speaker 12

  So I think one of the best things about things like exercise is that it has an endpoint. You stop that stress. So then your body's like, oh, we've just got the signal that we've stopped. So then it can, sympathetic goes down, stress goes down, vagus nerves go up.

• 36:54Wendy Zukerman?

  So where does Teresa like to run around?

• 36:58Speaker 06

  You mean, like...

• 37:01Wendy Zukerman?

  Wuling.

• 37:02Speaker 06

  Because she's... Well, don't make me say it again.

• 37:07Wendy Zukerman?

  Sorry, I'm just... I'm just trolling you.

• 37:11Speaker 06

  And so, yeah, like, you know, the idea is that maybe this goes back to that resilience point that we talked about earlier. You're helping your body learn how to like go back down after being stressed.

• 37:21Wendy Zukerman?

  Hmm.

• 37:21Speaker 06

  And one systematic review of 31 studies found that doing exercise, you can see these reductions in cortisol afterwards. And there was recently a randomized controlled trial that found exercise can help people who got panic attacks. So people had fewer and less severe panic attacks after doing an exercise program for 12 weeks.

• 37:41Wendy Zukerman?

  All right, Meryl, here's what I've learned about stress.

• 37:45Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah. What have you learned? We're ready to wrap up.

• 37:48Wendy Zukerman?

  It's not necessarily a bad thing and you can try and use it to

• 37:54Wendy Zukerman?

  to get that challenge response to inspire you, but it can, as we've all felt, it can also be completely overwhelming. Our cortisol may be running wild and at times like that you may be vulnerable and see someone online look like they're having an orgasm from a vagus nerve device. But don't get sucked in. Just pick up a vibrator instead. No, don't get sucked in.

• 38:23Wendy Zukerman?

  Try to breathe slowly out. Try to exhale. If you can, try and do some exercise and also try and be kind to yourself because stress does suck.

• 38:37Speaker 06

  Yeah, sure.

• 38:38Wendy Zukerman?

  That's what... How do I do?

• 38:41Speaker 06

  Yeah, that's great. 10 out of 10.

• 38:43Wendy Zukerman?

  Great.

• 38:44Speaker 06

  Wendy, there is one more thing, one final study that I want to tell you about. And this one's about cute animals. And I know how much you love studies about cute little animals.

• 38:55Wendy Zukerman?

  Oh, God. I mean, what are they doing to the animals? I feel worried about them.

• 38:59Speaker 06

  Don't worry. So legitimate concern for science, but no, in this case, they want to look at whether just petting a furry friend can help with stress.

• 39:09Wendy Zukerman?

  Okay.

• 39:10Speaker 06

  And so, yes, a lot of studies have looked into this and some of them find that, yeah, this can work.

• 39:14Wendy Zukerman?

  This is the phrase furry friend.

• 39:16Speaker 06

  You don't like...

• 39:18Wendy Zukerman?

  Are you talking about a pet? Is that a dog or a cat or a hamster?

• 39:22Speaker 06

  Well, so, yeah, in this, this particular study, they were comparing a real rabbit and then a toy rabbit.

• 39:30Wendy Zukerman?

  Okay.

• 39:30Speaker 06

  And then they got a real turtle and a toy turtle.

• 39:33Wendy Zukerman?

  Okay.

• 39:34Speaker 06

  And then they had people pet these guys and then they checked their anxiety levels before and after. Do you have any guesses for which worked?

• 39:42Wendy Zukerman?

  For the turtle? I would say the turtle was less stressed when it wasn't petted. I don't think a turtle likes being petted.

• 39:48Speaker 06

  Oh, we need to know how the turtle felt. No, we're talking about, I don't, they don't measure the stress responses in the turtles, only the people.

• 39:56Wendy Zukerman?

  God.

• 39:57Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 39:59Wendy Zukerman?

  I think people liked petting the rabbit better.

• 40:02Speaker 06

  Right. So, yeah, the, the real rabbit worked for sure.

• 40:05Wendy Zukerman?

  The real rabbit? The toy rabbit too?

• 40:09Speaker 06

  No.

• 40:11Speaker 06

  So the real rabbit and the real turtle worked, but not the toy rabbit or the toy turtle. And the researchers concluded, quote, "It was the quality of being alive rather than the texture of the object that produced the effect."

• 40:26Wendy Zukerman?

  Scientists are such robots sometimes. It was the quality of being alive. Don't pet a table.

• 40:35Speaker 06

  Yeah. Find anything that's alive.

• 40:38Wendy Zukerman?

  Anything that's alive. Get consent and pet them. Yeah.

• 40:42Speaker 06

  Yes.

• 40:44Wendy Zukerman?

  Thanks, Meryl.

• 40:45Speaker 06

  Thanks, Wendy.

• 40:46Wendy Zukerman?

  That's Science vs. How many citations are in this week's episode?

• 40:50Speaker 06

  We have 63 citations.

• 40:53Wendy Zukerman?

  63 citations.

• 40:54Speaker 06

  So if you want to look at all the research that went into this episode, go to our show notes and then follow the links to the transcripts.

• 41:00Wendy Zukerman?

  Excellent. This episode was produced by Meryl Horn with help from Michelle Dang, Rose Rimla and Aketi Foster-Kees. We're edited by Blythe Terrell. Wendy Zukerman, that's me, is the executive producer. Fact checking by Erica Akiko Howard. Video editing and sound mix by Bobby Lord. Music written by Bumi Hidaka, Peter Leonard, Emma Munga and Bobby Lord. Thanks to all of the researchers that we spoke to for this episode, including Professor Julia Vaschku, Dr. Christopher Ostel, Professor Daryl O'Connor and Dr. Jennifer Wild, as well as Humdinger Studios in Melbourne. Science vs. is a Spotify Studios original. Listen to us for free wherever you get your podcasts. You could also find us on YouTube,

• 41:41Wendy Zukerman?

  TikTok and Instagram. So come and say hello. Let us know what you thought of the episode. I'm Wendy Zukerman. Back to you next time.

• 41:54Speaker 11

  When fall comes back around, there's a sense of a reset. And new pieces from Lululemon's fall drop are an inspiration to push your goals and elevate your routines. As your calendar fills, easy to layer styles meet the demands of your day. And as you challenge yourself to try even more, versatile sets transition with you. The Lululemon fall lineup brings new levels of comfort and confidence, whether you're starting something fresh or starting something over. Check out the latest arrivals in store and on lululemon.com now.

• 42:25Speaker 13

  This episode is brought to you by State Farm. No two football players are exactly alike, and the same is true off the field. That's why State Farm gets to know you so they can help personalize coverage for your life and budget. And like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.