back to indexDr. Alia Crum: Science of Mindsets for Health & Performance | Huberman Lab Podcast #56
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Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast,
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where we discuss science and science-based tools
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for everyday life.
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I'm Andrew Huberman,
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and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology
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at Stanford School of Medicine.
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Today, my guest is Dr. Alia Crum.
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Dr. Crum is a tenured professor of psychology
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at Stanford University and the founder and director
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of the Stanford Mind and Body Lab.
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Her work focuses on mindsets,
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how what we think and what we believe
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shapes the way that our physiology,
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our biology reacts to things like what we eat
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or stress or exercise.
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Indeed, as you will soon learn
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from my discussion with Dr. Crum,
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what you believe about the nutritional content of your food
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changes the way that food impacts your brain and body
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to a remarkable degree.
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And the same is true for mindsets about exercise
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and stress and even medication.
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For instance, recent work from Dr. Crum's laboratory
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shows that what we believe about the side effect profiles
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of different drug treatments
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or different behavioral treatments
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has a profound impact on how quickly those treatments work
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and the effectiveness of those treatments.
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I just want to mention one particular study
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that just came out from a graduate student
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in Dr. Crum's laboratory, Lauren Howe, H-O-W-E,
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showed that how kids react to a treatment
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for peanut allergies can be profoundly shaped
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by whether or not those kids were educated
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about the side effects of the treatment,
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such that if they learned that the side effects
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were a by-product of a treatment that would help them,
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and they learned a little bit
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about why those side effects arose
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and that the side effects might even help them
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in route to overcoming their peanut allergy,
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had an enormous impact
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on how quickly they move through the treatment
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and indeed how much they suffered
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or in this case did not suffer from those side effects.
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And that is but one example that you will learn about today
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as we discuss what mindsets are,
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the number of different mindsets that exist,
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and how we can adopt mindsets
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that make us more adaptive, more effective,
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allow us to suffer less
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and to perform better in all aspects of life.
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I personally find the work of Dr. Alia Crum
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to be among the most important work
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being done in the fields of biology and psychology
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and the interface of mind-body.
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Everything that she's done up until now and published,
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and indeed the work that she continues to do,
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has shaped everything within my daily routines,
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within my work routines, within my athletic routines.
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And we probably shouldn't be surprised
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by the fact that Dr. Crum works on all these things.
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She was not only an incredibly accomplished
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tenured research professor,
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she's also a clinical psychologist,
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and she was also a division one athlete
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and an elite gymnast at one period in her life.
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So she really walks the walk
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in terms of understanding what mindsets are
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and applying them in different aspects of life.
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I'm sure you're going to learn a ton from this conversation
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as did I, and come away with many, many actionable items
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that you can apply in your own life.
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In fact, as we march into today's conversation,
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you might want to just put in the back of your mind
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the question, what is my mindset about blank?
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So for instance, ask yourself,
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what is my mindset about stress?
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What is my mindset about food?
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What is my mindset about exercise?
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What is my mindset about relationships of different kinds?
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Because in doing that, you'll be in a great position
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to extract the best of the information
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that Dr. Crum presents,
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and indeed to adapt those mindsets
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in the way that is going to be most beneficial for you.
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Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast
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is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford.
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It is, however, part of my desire and effort
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to bring zero cost to consumer information about science
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and science-related tools to the general public.
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In keeping with that theme,
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I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast.
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And now my conversation with Dr. Alia Crum.
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Great to have you here.
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For the record, it's Alia Crum, but you go by Ali, correct?
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Well, I've been looking forward
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to talking to you for a long time.
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Just to start off, you've talked a lot
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and worked a lot on the science of mindsets.
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Could you define for us what is a mindset
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and what sort of purpose does it serve?
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Mindsets have been described or defined in a lot of ways.
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We define mindsets as core beliefs
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or assumptions that we have about a domain
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or category of things that orient us
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to a particular set of expectations,
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explanations, and goals.
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So that's kind of jargon-y.
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I can distill it down for you.
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So mindsets are an assumption that you make about a domain.
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So take stress, for example, the nature of stress.
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What's your sort of core belief about that?
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And mindsets that we've studied about stress are,
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do you view stress as enhancing, good for you,
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or do you view it as debilitating and bad for you?
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Those mindsets, those core beliefs orient our thinking.
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They change what we expect will happen to us
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when we're stressed, how we explain the occurrences
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that happen or unfold when we're stressed,
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and also change our motivation
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for what we engage in when we're stressed.
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So we have mindsets about many things,
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mindsets about stress, mindsets about intelligence,
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as Carol Dweck's work has shown,
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mindsets about food, mindsets about medicine, you name it.
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It's sort of distilling down those core assumptions
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that really shape and orient our thinking and action.
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I've heard you say before that mindsets simplify life
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in some way by constraining the number of things
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that we have to consider.
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And it sounds to me like we can have mindsets
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about many things, as you said.
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What are some different mindsets?
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I think many people are familiar with our colleague,
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Carol Dweck's notion of growth mindset,
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that if we're not proficient at something
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that we should think about not being proficient yet,
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that we are on some path to proficiency.
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But what are some examples of mindsets
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and how early do these get laid down
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or do we learn them from our parents?
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Maybe if you could just flesh it out a bit for us
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in terms of what you've observed in your own science
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or your own life even.
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Yeah, sure, so I think it's important with Carol Dweck's
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work, a lot of people kind of get focused
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on growth motivation and all these things.
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But her work really originated from thinking about
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what she called as implicit theories or core beliefs
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about the nature of intelligence or ability, right?
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So do you believe that your baseline levels of intelligence
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or your abilities are fixed, static, set
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throughout the rest of your life?
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Or do you believe that they can grow and change?
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Now, those are oversimplified generalizations
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about the nature of intelligence.
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And the reality is, as it always is, complex
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and it's a bit of both and it's all these things.
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But as humans, we need these simplifying systems
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to help us understand a complex reality.
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So those assumptions that we jump to,
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oh, intelligence is fixed or intelligence is malleable,
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they help us to simplify this complex reality,
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but they're not inconsequential, right?
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They matter in shaping our motivation.
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And as she has shown, if you have the mindset
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that intelligence is malleable,
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you're motivated to work harder to grow your intelligence.
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If you have a setback and you're learning, you think,
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okay, there's something there that I can grow
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and learn and build from.
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If you have the mindset that it's fixed,
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why work harder at math
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if you don't think you're good at it?
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So in retrospect, it's pretty clear
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how these mindsets can affect our motivation.
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What our work has aimed to do is to expand
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the range of mindsets that we are studying, focused on,
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and also understand and expand the range
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of effects that they have.
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So by and large, we focused on mindsets
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in the domain of health and health behaviors.
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So I mentioned mindsets about stress.
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We've also looked at mindsets about food and healthy eating.
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So do you have the mindset that foods that are good for you,
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healthy foods are disgusting and depriving?
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Or do you have the mindset
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that healthy foods are indulgent and delicious?
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Now, you know, it could be a variety of different foods.
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You might have different thoughts
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about different healthy foods,
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but generally people, at least in our culture in the West,
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have this view that stress is debilitating,
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healthy foods are disgusting and depriving.
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And those mindsets, whether or not they're true or false,
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right or wrong, they have an impact.
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And they have an impact
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not just through the motivational mechanisms
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that Dweck and others have studied,
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but as our lab has started to reveal,
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they also shape physiological mechanisms
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by changing what our bodies prioritize and prepare to do.
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So those are just two examples, mindsets about stress,
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mindsets about food.
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We've looked at mindsets about exercise.
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Do you feel like you're getting enough?
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Or do you feel like you're getting an insufficient amount
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to get the health benefits you're seeking?
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Mindsets about illness.
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Do you view cancer as an unmitigated catastrophe?
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Or do you view cancer as manageable
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or perhaps even an opportunity?
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We've looked at mindsets about symptoms and side effects.
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Do you view side effects as a sign
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that the treatment is harmful?
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Or do you view side effects
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as a sign that the treatment is working?
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Again, these are sort of core beliefs or assumptions
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you have about these domains or categories,
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but they matter because they're shaping,
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they're synthesizing and simplifying the way we're thinking,
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but they're also shaping what we're paying attention to,
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what we're motivated to do,
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and potentially even how our bodies respond.
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Yeah, I'd love to talk about this notion
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of mindset shaping, how our bodies respond.
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And maybe as an example of this,
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if you could share with us this now famous study
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that you've done with a milkshake study,
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if you wouldn't mind sharing the major contours
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of that study and the results,
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because I think they're extremely impressive
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and they really speak to this interplay
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between mindset and physiology.
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This was a study that I ran as a graduate student at Yale.
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I was working with Kelly Brownell and Peter Salovey.
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Peter Salovey had done a lot of work
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on really coining the term emotional intelligence,
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He's now the president of Yale, right?
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He's now the president of Yale, yes.
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So he's done well.
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He's done well for himself
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and for the university and society.
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And Kelly Brownell, who was doing a lot of research
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on food and obesity, and I had come in
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doing some previous work on mindsets
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about exercise and placebo effects and exercise
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and was in this sort of food domain and this emotions
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and food domain, and it really occurred to me
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that there was a very simple question
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that hadn't been probed yet.
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And that was, do our beliefs about what we're eating
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change our body's physiological response to that food,
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holding constant the objective nutrients of that thing?
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So that question might sound outrageous at first,
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but it was, it's really not outrageous
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if you're coming from a place of having
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studied in depth placebo effects.
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Placebo effects are this, in medicine at least,
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are this sort of robust demonstration
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in which simply taking a sugar pill, taking nothing,
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under the impression that it's a real medication
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that might relieve your asthma,
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reduce your blood pressure, boost your immune system,
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can lead to those physiological effects
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even though there's no objective nutrients.
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And we have more evidence on placebo effects
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than we have for any other drug
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because of the clinical trial process
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in which all new drugs and medications are required
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to outperform a placebo effect.
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So we have a lot of data on the placebo effect.
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Now, you know, we can get nuance there.
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We don't have a lot of data comparing the placebo effect
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to doing nothing, which is important
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for distilling mindset effects or belief effects
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from sort of natural occurring changes in the body.
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But anyways, going back to this question,
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it was like, all right, we've moved from, you know,
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medications solving our health crises
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to behavioral medicine solving our health crises,
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increase people's exercise, get them to eat better.
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To what degree are these things influenced
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by our mindsets or beliefs about them?
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So to test this question, we ran a seemingly simple study.
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This was done at the Yale Center for Clinical
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and Translational Research.
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And we brought people into our lab under the impression
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that we were designing different milkshakes
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with vastly different metabolic concentrations,
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nutrient concentrations that were designed
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to meet different metabolic needs
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of the patrons of the hospital, right?
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So you're gonna come in,
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you're gonna taste these milkshakes,
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and we're gonna measure your body's
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physiological response to them.
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This was a within subjects design.
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So it was the same people consuming
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two different milkshakes, two different time points
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separated by a week.
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And at one time point, they were told
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that they were consuming this really high fat,
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high caloric, indulgent milkshake.
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It was like 620 calorie, super high fat and sugar.
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The other time point, they were told that it was a low fat,
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low calorie, sensible sort of diet shake.
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In reality, it was the exact same shake.
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It was right in the middle.
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It was like 300 calories,
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moderate amount of fats and sugars.
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And we were measuring their body's gut peptide response
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And in particular, we were looking at the hormone ghrelin.
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So as you know, ghrelin, hunger,
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medical experts call it the hunger hormone,
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rises in ghrelin, signal, seek out food.
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And then theoretically, in proportion
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to the amount of calories you consume,
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ghrelin levels drop, signaling to the brain,
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okay, you don't need to eat so much anymore,
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you can stop eating, and also revving up the metabolism
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to burn the nutrients that were just ingested.
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What we found in this study was that
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when people thought they were consuming
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the high fat, high calorie, indulgent milkshake,
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in response to the shake, their ghrelin levels dropped
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at a threefold rate stronger than when they thought
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they were consuming the sensible shake.
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So essentially, their bodies responded
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as if they had consumed more food,
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even though it was the exact same shake at both time points.
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So this was really interesting and important
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for two reasons, really.
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One was that it was, to my knowledge,
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one of the first studies to show any effects
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of just believing that you're eating something different
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on your physiology.
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Lots of studies have shown that believing
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you're eating different things changes your taste,
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you know, and even your satisfaction and fullness after,
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but this shows that it has a metabolic
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or a physiological component.
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But the second piece was really important as well,
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and especially for me, this was one study
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that really transformed the way I think
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about how I approach eating, and that was the manner
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in which it affected our physiology
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was somewhat counterintuitive.
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So I had gone in thinking the better mindset to be in
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when you eat is that you're eating healthy, right?
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Like, you know, it just makes sense.
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Like, placebo effects, think you're healthy,
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you'll be healthy, you know?
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But that was a far too simplistic way of thinking about it,
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and in fact, it was the exact opposite,
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because thinking that they were eating
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when these participants thought they were eating sensibly,
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their bodies left them still feeling physiologically hungry,
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right, not satiated, which could potentially
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be corresponding to slower metabolism and so forth.
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So if you're in the interest of maintaining
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or losing weight, what's the best mindset to be in?
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It's to be in a mindset that you're eating indulgently,
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that you're having enough food, that you're getting enough.
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And at least in that study, we showed that
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has a more adaptive effect on ghrelin responses.
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So interesting, and especially interesting to me
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as a neuroscientist who has worked on aspects
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of the nervous system that are involved
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in conscious perception, like vision and, you know,
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motion and color perception and so forth,
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but also our lab has worked and is increasingly working
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on autonomic functions that are below
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our conscious detection.
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In this case, a lie about how much something
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these milkshakes contain affected a subconscious process,
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because I have to imagine that the ghrelin pathway
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is not one that I can decide, oh, you know,
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this particular piece of chocolate
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is going to really reduce my ghrelin
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because it's very nutrient rich, as opposed to one,
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if you told me that a different piece of chocolate,
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for instance, is low calorie or sugar-free chocolate
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or something of that sort.
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The ghrelin pathway, however, it seems based on your data,
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that the ghrelin pathway is susceptible to thoughts,
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which is incredible.
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But then again, there must be crossover
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between conscious thought and these subconscious
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or kind of autonomic pathways.
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So it's really remarkable.
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It raises a question that I just have to ask
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because increasingly, so I'm involved in, you know,
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online discussions and, you know, social media.
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And one of the most barbed wire topics out there,
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and that's being generous,
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is this topic of which diet or nutrients are best.
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You've got people who are strictly plant-based,
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you've got people who are omnivores,
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you've got people who are carnivores,
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you have every variation, you have intermittent fasting,
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also called time-restricted feeding.
link |
And it seems like once a group kind of plugs into
link |
a particular mode of eating that they feel works for them,
link |
for whatever reason, energy-wise, mentally,
link |
maybe they're looking at their blood profiles,
link |
maybe they're not,
link |
but once they feel that it sort of, it works for them,
link |
each camp seems to tout all the health benefits
link |
and how great they feel.
link |
Could it be that mindset effects are involved there,
link |
that people are finding the nutritional program
link |
that they feel brings them the most enrichment of life,
link |
but also nutrients,
link |
and that their health really is shifting
link |
in a positive direction,
link |
but not necessarily because of the food constituents,
link |
but because of the community and the ideas
link |
and the reinforcement.
link |
Yeah, and the belief that this is the right way
link |
of doing something.
link |
I think 100%, 100% it has something to contribute.
link |
You know, I don't want to,
link |
I'm not going to weigh in on the debate.
link |
What I will most certainly weigh in on
link |
is the notion that,
link |
look, going back to the placebo effect, right,
link |
we have a outdated understanding of what that is,
link |
which is based on this randomized control trial.
link |
You compare a drug to a placebo.
link |
If the drug works better than the placebo,
link |
you say great, the drug works.
link |
If the drug doesn't outperform the placebo,
link |
you say the drug doesn't work.
link |
That's really oversimplified.
link |
It's a good test for the specific efficacy of the drug.
link |
It's not a good test for understanding
link |
the total impact of that drug.
link |
Because in the reality of things,
link |
if a drug outperforms a placebo,
link |
then you start prescribing it,
link |
but the reality is that the total effect of that drug
link |
is a combined product of the specific chemical attributes
link |
of that drug and whatever's going on in the placebo effect,
link |
which is, at least from our perspective,
link |
it's beliefs, it's social context,
link |
and it's your body's natural ability
link |
to respond to something.
link |
So that's in the placebo effect example.
link |
The same is true for everything we do or consume.
link |
So when it comes to what diet you're eating,
link |
It does matter what it is,
link |
and it matters what you think about that diet
link |
and what others around you in our culture
link |
think about that diet,
link |
because those social contexts inform our mindsets.
link |
Our mindsets interact with our physiology
link |
in ways that produce outcomes that are really important.
link |
So let's not get dualistic and say,
link |
it's either all in the mind or not in the mind.
link |
Let's also not be unnecessarily combative
link |
and say, oh, it should be all plant-based
link |
or keto or whatever.
link |
All of those things are a combined product
link |
of what you're actually doing
link |
and what you're thinking about.
link |
If you believe in it, if you don't,
link |
if you're skeptical or in some cases,
link |
you think you should be eating a certain way
link |
and then you don't live up to that,
link |
it might have an adverse effect
link |
because of the stress and the anxiety associated with that.
link |
Along the lines of belief effects,
link |
can we call these belief effects or mindsets?
link |
Is there a difference between these,
link |
what I'm calling belief effects,
link |
and placebo effects?
link |
I mean, are placebo effects distinctly different
link |
from mindset effects or are they more or less the same?
link |
So I think placebo effects maybe should be reserved
link |
for the conditions in which you're actually taking a placebo
link |
which is an inactive substance.
link |
When you get out of that sort of placebo versus drug realm
link |
and you start looking at placebo effects,
link |
I use quotes with my hands here, in behavioral health,
link |
the term kind of becomes confusing
link |
because you're not, you know, in the milkshake study,
link |
we didn't give people a placebo milkshake, right?
link |
We just changed what they believed about it.
link |
So how I like to think about it is that placebo effects
link |
as they're traditionally construed
link |
are made up of three things.
link |
It's the social context, mindsets or beliefs,
link |
and the natural physiological processes
link |
in the brain and body that can produce the outcomes.
link |
And so we could just call them belief effects
link |
because the beliefs are triggering
link |
the physiological processes
link |
and the beliefs are shaped by the social context.
link |
Does that make sense?
link |
Yeah, there was a paper a year or two ago
link |
published in Science Magazine
link |
about brain regions involved in psychogenic fever
link |
that if people, or you can actually do this
link |
in animal models too, think that they are sick,
link |
you get a genuine one to three degree increase
link |
in body temperature,
link |
one to three degrees Fahrenheit increase
link |
in body temperature, which was pretty impressive.
link |
And I guess it plays into, you know,
link |
symptomology generally.
link |
So I'm a believer in belief effects.
link |
Well, it's also, and I would just say that, you know,
link |
the term that we use in our field
link |
is nocebo effect for that,
link |
which is sort of the placebo's ugly step-sister, you know,
link |
it's when negative beliefs cause negative consequences.
link |
So you are told you will have, you know,
link |
it's very well demonstrated
link |
that when people are told about certain side effects,
link |
they're far more likely to experience those side effects
link |
when people think that they're sick or going to get sick,
link |
sometimes that can create, you know,
link |
the physiological symptoms.
link |
And, you know, there's, you know, various debates
link |
that it's not only that physiology changes,
link |
it's also that your attention changes.
link |
So we're experiencing things like fatigue and headache
link |
and upset stomach all the time.
link |
And then when you take a drug and somebody says,
link |
you're going to feel fatigue and headache,
link |
you start noticing that you're tired and have headaches
link |
and attribute it to the drug.
link |
So some of the mechanisms are attention
link |
and some of them are real changes in physiology.
link |
I'd love for you to tell us about the hotel workers study.
link |
I know you get asked these questions all the time,
link |
but I find these, just these results also amazing.
link |
Yeah, no, I think that this is a really good example
link |
of this phenomenon, right?
link |
That the total effect of anything is a combined product
link |
of what you're doing and what you think about
link |
what you're doing.
link |
So this was a study that I ran with Ellen Langer way back
link |
when I was an undergrad, actually, we started this study.
link |
Ellen Langer's a professor of psychology at Harvard
link |
and she's done a lot of really fascinating work
link |
on her flavor of mindfulness, which is distinct
link |
from a more Eastern, Buddhist sort of mindfulness-based
link |
And she actually was the one who said to me originally,
link |
I was an athlete at the time, I was a ice hockey player
link |
and I was training constantly and one day,
link |
I'll never forget it, she said, you know,
link |
you know the benefit of exercise is just a placebo, right?
link |
And I was like, well, that's outrageous.
link |
Ellen's known for saying very provocative,
link |
but also very wise things.
link |
And that statement really got me thinking about that.
link |
So we designed this study together and that was to look at,
link |
you know, how would you study if exercise,
link |
the benefits of exercise were a placebo,
link |
how would you even test that?
link |
Because, you know, what does it mean
link |
to give a placebo exercise?
link |
So we sort of flipped it on its head
link |
and we found a group of people who were getting
link |
a lot of exercise, but weren't aware of it,
link |
that they were, right?
link |
So this, we settled on a group of hotel housekeepers.
link |
So these were women working in hotels
link |
who were on their feet all day long, pushing carts,
link |
changing linens, climbing stairs, you know,
link |
cleaning bathrooms, vacuuming.
link |
It was clear that they were getting above and beyond
link |
at least the surgeon general's requirements at that time,
link |
which were to accumulate 30 minutes
link |
of moderate physical activity per day.
link |
But what was interesting was when we went in
link |
and surveyed them and asked them,
link |
hey, how much exercise do you think you're getting?
link |
A third of them said zero, like I don't get any exercise.
link |
And the average response was like a three
link |
on a scale of zero to 10.
link |
So it's clear that even though these women were active,
link |
they didn't have that mindset, right?
link |
They had the mindset that their work was just work,
link |
hard, maybe thankless work that led them to feel tired
link |
and in pain at the end of the day,
link |
but not that it was good for them,
link |
that it was good exercise.
link |
So what we did was we took these women
link |
and we randomized them into two groups
link |
and we told half of them that their work was good exercise.
link |
In this case, it was true factual information.
link |
We oriented them to the surgeon general's guidelines.
link |
We oriented them to the benefits
link |
that they should be receiving.
link |
And then we had measured them previously
link |
on their physiological metrics like weight
link |
and body fat and blood pressure.
link |
And we came back four weeks later and we tested them again.
link |
And what we found was that these women,
link |
even though they hadn't changed anything in their behavior,
link |
at least that was detectable to us,
link |
they didn't work more rooms,
link |
they didn't start doing pull-ups or push-ups
link |
in between cleaning hotel rooms as far as I'm concerned.
link |
They didn't report any changes in their diet,
link |
but they had benefits to their health.
link |
So they lost weight,
link |
they decreased their systolic blood pressure
link |
by about 10 points on average.
link |
And they started feeling better about themselves,
link |
their bodies and their work, not surprisingly.
link |
That's amazing, how should we conceptualize that result
link |
in light of all of our efforts
link |
to get more out of exercise, right?
link |
Because earlier you mentioned it from the milkshake study
link |
and our perceptions about nutrient density,
link |
that it's a little bit, the right message
link |
that actually a little bit counterintuitive,
link |
that if you think, oh, this is very low calorie,
link |
nutrient sparse, then it's good for me
link |
in the context of losing weight, for instance.
link |
But it turns out the opposite is true
link |
because as you told us, the body responds differently
link |
when you think something is nutrient dense
link |
and can actually suppress hunger more.
link |
So in light of this result, if I were to say,
link |
okay, my current understanding of the literature
link |
is that getting somewhere between 150 and 180 minutes
link |
per week of cardiovascular exercise
link |
is probably a good idea for most people.
link |
If I tell myself that it's not just a good idea,
link |
but that it's extremely effective
link |
in lowering my blood pressure
link |
and maintaining healthy weight, et cetera, et cetera,
link |
according to these results,
link |
it will have an enhanced effect on those metrics.
link |
So this is a really important point
link |
because what this reveals is that we have to be
link |
more thoughtful in how we go about motivating people
link |
to exercise or teaching people about the benefits.
link |
Our current approach is just to basically tell people
link |
writ large, you know, here's what you need to get.
link |
Here's what you need to get good for, you know,
link |
to get enough benefits to receive the,
link |
enough exercise to receive the health benefits.
link |
The problem with that approach is that
link |
most people aren't meeting those benefits yet
link |
or aren't meeting those requirements yet.
link |
And the risk with that is that,
link |
well, the intention with that is to motivate them
link |
because, you know, public health officials think,
link |
well, if I just tell people you need to get more exercise
link |
because it's good for you, they'll do it.
link |
We know now that that doesn't work,
link |
that these guidelines are not motivational.
link |
They don't change our behavior.
link |
And what our work adds to that is that
link |
not only is it not motivational,
link |
it also creates potentially a mindset that, you know,
link |
makes people worse off than they were
link |
without knowing about the guidelines.
link |
So again, it's tricky.
link |
I'm not saying that mindset is everything.
link |
Certainly exercise is good for us and use is helpful for us.
link |
It's one of the things we have the best data on.
link |
So I'm not saying, oh, exercise is all a placebo.
link |
What I am saying is that we need to be more mindful about
link |
how do we motivate people to exercise,
link |
but how do we help people to actually reap the benefits
link |
of the exercise they are already doing?
link |
Now, Octavia Zart, who was a grad student in my lab,
link |
ran a number of interesting studies along these lines.
link |
One in which she looked at three
link |
nationally representative data sets,
link |
which had this interesting question in them,
link |
which was how much exercise do you get relative to others?
link |
Do you get about the same, a little more, a lot more?
link |
Do you get a little less or a lot less, right?
link |
So, you know, the audience, your listeners,
link |
you could all answer this.
link |
And then in these data sets,
link |
what she did was she had, you know,
link |
pulled from data that tracked death rates
link |
over the next 21 years.
link |
And a couple interesting things revealed themselves.
link |
One was that the correlations between these perceptions
link |
of exercise relative to others
link |
and people's actual exercise is measured
link |
through accelerometer data, as well as more rigorous,
link |
sort of, what did you do today kind of data.
link |
Those don't correlate much at all.
link |
Well, people lie, but also- Or misperceive.
link |
They misperceive and, or, you know,
link |
who's to say it's misperceiving?
link |
There's just, everything's relative, right?
link |
If you're, I used to do triathlons very seriously.
link |
So if you were to ask me now,
link |
I feel like I'm totally inactive, right?
link |
Because I'm not doing anything near what I used to.
link |
And if that's my focus set, right,
link |
I feel like I'm not exercising much.
link |
But if I think about, you know,
link |
compared to other people, given what I know about,
link |
you know, national representative statistics,
link |
then I could feel like, oh, I'm getting a lot, right?
link |
So you can see how these perceptions are decoupled
link |
from objective reality.
link |
And what we found in these studies is that
link |
that one question mattered,
link |
in some cases more than objective activity,
link |
but in all cases, controlling for objective activity
link |
and predicting death rates.
link |
And in some, in one of those samples,
link |
it was a 71% higher risk of death rate,
link |
you know, if people rated themselves
link |
as feeling like they were getting less activity than others.
link |
That's a big deal.
link |
And again, you know, that study is cross-sectional,
link |
longitudinal, it was not experimental.
link |
But, you know, combined these really sort of, you know,
link |
coalesced to say, hey, this is important too, right?
link |
Like, let's figure out ways to be active
link |
and get people active,
link |
but let's also not make people feel horrible
link |
about themselves when they're not getting enough.
link |
And going back to the hotel study,
link |
again, I mentioned that I did that at a time
link |
when I was a Division I ice hockey player at the time.
link |
We were training all the time,
link |
and I was in an unhealthy mindset about that.
link |
I never felt like I was getting enough.
link |
I would, you know, come off a two-hour practice
link |
into a weightlifting session,
link |
and then I would get on the elliptical for 30 minutes
link |
because I thought I had to do that also, you know?
link |
My teammates who were with me at the time
link |
could attest to that.
link |
And so that study was really helpful for me
link |
to realize that I needed to pay attention,
link |
not just to what I was doing,
link |
but also take care of my mindset about that.
link |
And I think the essence is how do you get people
link |
to feel like they're getting enough?
link |
It's a sense of enoughness that really matters.
link |
I can see the dilemma
link |
because you don't want people thinking
link |
that exercise and its positive effects are so potent
link |
that they can get away with a three-minute walk each day
link |
and that they're good because most likely they are not.
link |
But again, you don't want them
link |
to be so back on their heels psychologically
link |
that they don't even do that
link |
or that they never exceed that by very much.
link |
But it seems like the message from the milkshake study
link |
and what we're talking about now in terms of exercise
link |
would be to really communicate to the general public
link |
that food has a potency,
link |
even healthy foods have a potency to give us energy,
link |
to fuel our immune system and endocrine system, et cetera.
link |
And that exercise has a remarkable potency
link |
and that that potency can be enhanced
link |
by believing in or understanding that potency.
link |
Is that an accurate way to state it?
link |
Totally, that's exactly right and that's where I really feel
link |
like we need to push and what I try to do in our research
link |
is to not just show, oh, mindset matters,
link |
isn't that interesting?
link |
But it's both matter, right?
link |
Both exercise and what you think about it matter.
link |
and how you think about what you eat matter.
link |
And so we really as individuals and as a society
link |
need to work on what is the right way to cultivate
link |
both behaviors and mindsets about those behaviors
link |
And in the food context, this again,
link |
that milkshake study really changed me on a personal level
link |
because I had been somebody who was constantly
link |
trying to restrain my eating, right?
link |
I wanted to maintain or lose weight, look fit
link |
and so I was like, well, I should diet,
link |
I should have low calorie, low carb, low this, low that.
link |
But what that was doing was putting me
link |
into this constant mindset of restraint.
link |
And what that study suggested was that that mindset
link |
was potentially counteracting any benefit, right?
link |
Or any objective effects of the restrained diet
link |
because my brain was saying, okay, you're restraining,
link |
maybe my body was responding to that
link |
but the brain was also saying, eat more food,
link |
stay hungry because you need to survive.
link |
And so the answer isn't, oh, we'll throw everything
link |
into the wind and just drink indulgent milkshakes
link |
The answer is eat healthy foods, right?
link |
Based on the latest science and what we know to be true
link |
about nutrients and our body's response to them.
link |
But try to do so in a mindset of indulgence,
link |
a mindset of satisfaction, a mindset of enjoyment, right?
link |
That is really the trick and that's what I at least
link |
try to do in my own life.
link |
I love that and as I get more involved
link |
in the public facing health communications,
link |
this comes up again and again.
link |
How should we conceptualize our behavior?
link |
How should we think about all these options
link |
that are offered to us?
link |
And I'm excited that the potency of mindsets
link |
are coming through again and again.
link |
So I have a question about this.
link |
I don't know if this study has ever been done
link |
but a lot of these mindset effects are something
link |
that years ago I felt I did vis-a-vis sleep
link |
because I was in graduate school and as a postdoc
link |
and even as an undergraduate, I had so much work to do
link |
that I decided I would sleep when I was dead in quotes.
link |
Not a good idea from what we know.
link |
However, I found that a couple nights of minimal sleep
link |
or even an all-nighter and I could do pretty well.
link |
Eventually it would catch up with me.
link |
Has there ever been a study exploring whether or not
link |
the effects of sleep deprivation can be impacted
link |
by these mindset effects?
link |
Because over the years, I keep learning more and more
link |
about how much sleep I need and I've really emphasized sleep
link |
and I do feel much better when I'm getting it.
link |
But as new parents know or students know or athletes know
link |
or anyone that lives a normal life finds sometimes
link |
that they don't get a good night's sleep.
link |
Would believing that we can tolerate that
link |
and push through it and function just fine
link |
and then it's not going to kill us or give us Alzheimer's,
link |
could that help us deal with a poor night's sleep
link |
or even two or chronic sleep deprivation?
link |
Certainly, I would guess.
link |
There's been one study to my knowledge that's tested that.
link |
Dragana and colleagues and they looked at,
link |
they had people come in and they gave them sort of a,
link |
I think it was a sham sort of EEG test
link |
to sort of figure out how, you know,
link |
this was done a number of years ago.
link |
Now we actually have devices to test this
link |
but theirs was this sham test and then they gave people
link |
fake feedback about the quality of their sleep
link |
and, you know, how it had been the night before.
link |
And they also asked the participants
link |
how they felt about their sleep and essentially
link |
what they found was that this sham feedback,
link |
if they were told that they had gotten lower quality sleep,
link |
led to deficits in a variety of cognitive tasks
link |
and that was sort of decoupled from their actual,
link |
you know, qualities of sleep, at least as self-reported.
link |
So that's one study that attest to this.
link |
I think certainly, I mean, I would, you know,
link |
I would bet a lot of money, I haven't run this myself
link |
but that your mindsets can push around your, you know,
link |
cognitive functioning, physiological effects of sleep.
link |
But once again, it's not all or nothing, right?
link |
There are real important benefits of sleep
link |
and how far we can push around that through our mindset
link |
is an open question.
link |
You know, the result that you mentioned
link |
is really interesting because a lot of people
link |
use these sleep trackers now.
link |
They're using rings or wristbands.
link |
In fact, my lab has worked pretty closely with a company
link |
they supply us data on how well people are sleeping
link |
and you get a score.
link |
People get the score back and when they see that score,
link |
they might think based on these results,
link |
oh, my sleep, my recovery score, my sleep score was poor.
link |
I shouldn't expect much for myself today
link |
or it makes sense that my memory would be going
link |
for this reason and I'll probably lose a few friends
link |
for saying this, but hopefully I'll gain a few as well.
link |
That's why I like to just do a subjective score for myself.
link |
If I wake up in the morning, I just decide,
link |
okay, did I sleep well or not?
link |
I don't like seeing a number.
link |
I don't like getting a readout from a device.
link |
I know a lot of people like it and they can be very useful,
link |
but gosh, it seems that these belief effects
link |
are weaving in at all levels.
link |
I'd love for us to talk about stress
link |
because your lab has worked extensively on this
link |
and if you would, could you tell us at some point
link |
about the study that you've done about informing people
link |
about the different effects of stress,
link |
but also if there's an opportunity,
link |
some takeaways about how we could each conceptualize stress
link |
in ways that would make it serve us better
link |
as opposed to harm us
link |
in our mental and physical performance.
link |
Yeah, so I had come off the heels of doing some research
link |
and exercise and diet and finding these provocative
link |
and also counterintuitive effects with respect
link |
to how we should try to motivate people, right?
link |
And as I was thinking about this and this grouping
link |
of going from medicines to saving us,
link |
to behaviors to saving us and how those behaviors
link |
might be influenced by mindsets,
link |
the obvious next thing to think about was stress, right?
link |
Because it's like, okay, well, you wanna be healthier,
link |
fix your diet, fix your exercise and stress less.
link |
And so I started doing some digging
link |
into the nature of stress and a couple things were clear.
link |
One was that the public health message was very clear, right?
link |
That stress was bad, right?
link |
Unmitigated and harmful on our health,
link |
our productivity, our relationships, our fertility,
link |
our cognition, you name it, right?
link |
The messages that were out there by and large
link |
oversimplified messages focused
link |
on the damaging consequences of stress.
link |
But as you know, if you actually dive deeper
link |
into the literature on stress and the origins of stress,
link |
what you find is that the literature,
link |
like most literatures is not so clear cut.
link |
And in fact, there's a large amount of evidence
link |
to support the fact that the experience of stress,
link |
meaning encountering adversity or challenge
link |
in one's goal-related efforts,
link |
does not have to be debilitating.
link |
And in many cases, the body's response was designed
link |
to enhance our ability to manage at those moments, right?
link |
So some research showing that stress narrows our focus,
link |
increases our attention, speeds up the rate
link |
at which we're able to process information.
link |
There was some research out there showing this phenomenon
link |
of physiological toughening, the process by which
link |
the release of catabolic hormones and the stress response
link |
recruit or activate anabolic hormones,
link |
which help, as you know, build our muscles,
link |
build our neurons to help us grow and learn.
link |
And there was a whole body of emerging research
link |
on post-traumatic growth or this phenomenon
link |
in which even the experience of the most traumatic stressors
link |
and the most chronic and enduring stressors
link |
could lead not to destruction,
link |
but in fact to the exact opposite,
link |
to an enhanced sense of connection with our values,
link |
connection to others, sense of joy and passion for living.
link |
And so, you know, I found that to be interesting.
link |
And, you know, my work since then has been not to try
link |
to argue that stress is enhancing and not debilitating,
link |
but try to point out that the true nature of stress
link |
The true nature of stress is manifold and complex
link |
and lots of things can happen.
link |
But to question what's the role of our mindset about stress
link |
in shaping our response to stress?
link |
So some work had already been done looking at
link |
your perception of the stressor, right?
link |
So do you view a stressor like a challenging exam
link |
or a health diagnosis as a challenge or a threat?
link |
And that had shown pretty convincingly
link |
that when you view stressors more as a challenge,
link |
that your brain and body responds more adaptively.
link |
What our question was was to take the sort of
link |
psychological construal one step higher in abstraction.
link |
So not just the stressor, but the nature of stress, right?
link |
Do you, you know, at that core level,
link |
do you view stress as something that's bad,
link |
is going to kill us and therefore should be avoided?
link |
Or do you view stress as natural
link |
and something that's going to enhance us?
link |
And so we set out to design a series of studies
link |
to test the extent to which these mindsets
link |
about stress mattered.
link |
We first, this again was with Peter Salovey
link |
and Sean Aker originally.
link |
We designed a measure to test people's mindsets
link |
about stress, simple questions like
link |
what extent do you believe or agree or disagree
link |
with statements like stress enhances my performance
link |
in productivity, stress heightens my vitality and growth,
link |
And we found in a number of correlational studies
link |
that that more enhancing stress mindset
link |
was linked to better health outcomes,
link |
better wellbeing and higher performance.
link |
So then we set out to see if we could change
link |
people's mindsets.
link |
And in our first test of this, we decided to do so
link |
by creating these multimedia films
link |
that showcased research, anecdotes, facts about stress,
link |
all true, but oriented towards one mindset or the other.
link |
So you can imagine one set of films showed
link |
basically the messages that were out there
link |
in the public health context.
link |
The other showed, hey, stress has been linked
link |
to these things, but in fact, the body stress response
link |
was designed to do this.
link |
Did you know it could do that?
link |
And we had empowering images like LeBron James
link |
making the free throw in the final minute
link |
versus missing it, right?
link |
So all of these things are true possibilities,
link |
but oriented to two different mindsets about stress.
link |
So either people saw a video that basically made it seem
link |
like stress will diminish you, crush you, reduce you,
link |
or a video, very similar, stress will grow you,
link |
bring out your best and maybe even take you
link |
to heightened levels of performance
link |
that you've never experienced before.
link |
So yeah, examples in the sports.
link |
We also had like true leaders emerge
link |
in the moments of greatest stress, you know, Churchill.
link |
And so all those examples are out there
link |
for both the enhancing nature and the debilitating nature.
link |
And our question was, does orienting people
link |
to different mindsets change how they respond to stress?
link |
So this study was done in the wake
link |
of the 2008 financial crisis.
link |
We worked with UBS, a company, a financial service company
link |
that was undergoing pretty massive amounts of layoffs.
link |
So these employees were stressed about being laid off.
link |
They were taking on more pressure.
link |
It was just a tough time.
link |
And we randomized them into three conditions.
link |
And this was all pre-work before getting a training
link |
on stress, but the three different conditions,
link |
some watched no videos,
link |
some watched the stress will crush you videos,
link |
and some watched the stress could enhance you videos.
link |
And what we found was that just, you know,
link |
it was a total of nine minutes of videos
link |
over the course of the week led to changes
link |
in their mindsets about stress,
link |
which led to changes in their physiological symptoms
link |
associated with stress.
link |
So people who watched the enhancing films
link |
had fewer backaches, muscle tension,
link |
insomnia, racing heart, and so forth.
link |
And they also reported performing better at work
link |
compared to those who watched the debilitating videos.
link |
Now, interestingly, we didn't make anyone worse
link |
with the debilitating videos, which was good.
link |
We had told the IRB we didn't expect that
link |
because that message was already out there.
link |
That's what they were already seeing.
link |
That wasn't new to them.
link |
It was more of this enhancing perspective
link |
that turned out to be inspiring.
link |
I love that study.
link |
And I know we both have friends and ties
link |
in the special operations community
link |
through just sort of happenstance.
link |
And we can, maybe we'll get into that a little later,
link |
but a good friend from that community always says,
link |
you know, there are only three ways to go through life
link |
at any moment, which is either back on your heels,
link |
flat-footed, or forward center of mass.
link |
And I said, well, what's the key to forward center of mass?
link |
And he said, stress is what places you
link |
in forward center of mass,
link |
meaning leaning forward and into challenge.
link |
And I know that you've actually looked at that community
link |
and it does really seem like that's a mindset
link |
that either they have going in or that they cultivate
link |
through the course of their training.
link |
But this notion that stress is what puts us in forward motion
link |
is true physiologically, right?
link |
I mean, adrenaline's major role is to place us
link |
into a moment of, or bias us towards action.
link |
That's why we tremble.
link |
It's the body trying to initiate action.
link |
But actually this is probably a good opportunity.
link |
If there's anything interesting to extract
link |
from the study on seal teams, what was it?
link |
Yeah, no, I loved working with the seals.
link |
One of the interesting things we found,
link |
so we've studied this, measured this mindset
link |
in several different populations.
link |
And in every single one that we have tested so far,
link |
the average had been on the debilitating side of the scale.
link |
People just saying stress is bad.
link |
Stress is bad, right?
link |
And, you know, it's like with measures of growth
link |
and fixed mindsets about intelligence,
link |
people are in the middle,
link |
but oftentimes have a more positive mindsets
link |
about intelligence.
link |
That was not the case with stress.
link |
It's still not the case.
link |
I'm trying to get the message out there,
link |
except for this group of Navy SEALs
link |
where they're actually recruits,
link |
so people who were going through basic training
link |
in order to become Navy SEALs.
link |
And we found that they, on average,
link |
had stress as enhancing mindset,
link |
perhaps not surprisingly, right?
link |
If you're going in to devote your whole life
link |
to being a Navy SEAL, you must have some inclination
link |
that stress is a source of strength for you.
link |
But what we found with them,
link |
we measured this at the beginning of their basic training,
link |
with BUDDS training, and then looked at
link |
how well they succeeded through that program.
link |
So as you know, this is an extremely rigorous program.
link |
You know, at the time it was only like 10 or 20% of-
link |
Trainees make it through.
link |
The numbers have never shifted from about that.
link |
No matter how hard pressures on the community change,
link |
the numbers are still, on average, about 15%.
link |
So what we found was that our measure predicted that rate.
link |
So people who even within that range
link |
had a more stress-enhancing mindset
link |
were more likely to complete training, become a SEAL.
link |
They also had faster obstacle course times,
link |
and they were rated by their peers more positively.
link |
So, you know, again, let's break this down, right?
link |
This doesn't mean, and people get me,
link |
people get this wrong sometimes.
link |
They think that I'm saying
link |
that a stress-enhancing mindset means
link |
you should like stress, right?
link |
Well, maybe SEALs do.
link |
But that's not what we're saying, right?
link |
Having a stress-enhancing mindset doesn't mean
link |
the stressor is a good thing, right?
link |
It doesn't mean it's a good thing
link |
that you have to go into combat and it's not pretty, right?
link |
It doesn't mean that getting a cancer diagnosis
link |
is a good thing or being in abject poverty is a good thing.
link |
These are not good things.
link |
But the experience of the stress associated with that,
link |
the challenge, the adversity,
link |
that experience can lead to enhancing outcomes
link |
with respect to not just our cognition,
link |
but our health, our performance, and our wellbeing.
link |
So that mindset, right, how does that work, right?
link |
Well, it works through a number of different pathways.
link |
One is that it changes fundamentally
link |
what we're motivated to do.
link |
So if you, you know, just imagine
link |
we're stressed about something,
link |
maybe a global pandemic, for example,
link |
for instance, you know, and you think that stress is bad,
link |
then what's your motivation, right?
link |
Your motivation is to, well, first you get worried
link |
about the stress, right?
link |
Now, not only do you have the pandemic,
link |
you're stressed about the stress of the pandemic.
link |
But second is your reaction is typically
link |
to do one of two things.
link |
It's either to freak out and do everything you can
link |
to make sure that this doesn't affect you,
link |
you know, negatively, or to check out and say,
link |
oh, it's not a big deal, I'm not gonna deal with it.
link |
You know, you're basically in denial.
link |
So people who have a stress and debilitating mindset,
link |
and we've shown this in our research,
link |
tend to go to one or the other of those extremes.
link |
They freak out or they check out.
link |
Why, because if stress is bad,
link |
you need to either get rid of it and deal with it
link |
or it needs to not exist, right?
link |
If you have a stress-enhancing mindset,
link |
the motivation changes, right?
link |
Then the motivation is how do I utilize the stress
link |
to realize the enhancing outcomes?
link |
What can we do here, right, to learn from this experience
link |
to make us stronger, fitter, you know,
link |
have better science and treatments for the future,
link |
deepen my relationships with others,
link |
improve, you know, my priorities, and so forth, right?
link |
So the motivation changes, the affect around it changes.
link |
It doesn't make it easy to deal with,
link |
but what we've shown in our research
link |
is that people who have a stress-enhancing mindset
link |
have more positive affect, not necessarily less
link |
negative affect, and it potentially changes physiology.
link |
We have a few studies that show that people who are,
link |
you know, inspired to adopt more enhancing mindsets
link |
have more moderate cortisol response,
link |
and they have higher levels of DHEA levels
link |
in response to stress.
link |
So more work needs to be done on the physiology,
link |
but I'd love your take on the mechanisms
link |
through which that's possible.
link |
Yes, and DHEA, of course, has an anabolic hormone
link |
in both men and women.
link |
Very interesting because we had a guest on this podcast.
link |
He actually is a PhD scientist
link |
who runs the UFC Performance Training Institute.
link |
His name is Duncan French, and his graduate work
link |
at UConn Storrs was very interesting.
link |
It was in exercise science and physiology.
link |
What he showed was that if you could spike
link |
the adrenaline response, I think they did this
link |
through first-time skydive or something like that,
link |
that testosterone went up.
link |
Now, this spits in the face of everything that we're told
link |
about stress and testosterone levels, right?
link |
And this has also been looked at in females with estrogen,
link |
although, of course, there's estrogen, testosterone
link |
in both males and females,
link |
but that's how they designed the study.
link |
So it turns out that at least in the short term,
link |
that a very stressful event can raise anabolic hormones.
link |
And I think that people forget at a mechanistic level
link |
that adrenaline is epinephrine,
link |
and epinephrine is derived, biochemically derived,
link |
from the molecule dopamine.
link |
If you look at the pathway and even just Google it
link |
and go images, you'll see that adrenaline
link |
is made from dopamine, and dopamine
link |
and these anabolic hormones have a very close,
link |
they're sort of close cousins.
link |
They work together in the pituitary and hypothalamus.
link |
So it makes sense that one could leverage stress
link |
toward growth and towards anabolism as opposed
link |
to cannibalism, which is not saying cannibalism
link |
as in eating other people, but catabolic processes
link |
is I guess the right way to refer to it.
link |
But what's again, remarkable to me is that all
link |
of these brain structures that control dopamine,
link |
epinephrine, testosterone, and estrogen,
link |
they're all thought to be in the subconscious,
link |
meaning below our ability to flip a switch
link |
and turn them on or off.
link |
And yet mindset seemed to impact them.
link |
So all that to say that there's a clear mechanistic basis
link |
by which this could all work.
link |
And so on the one hand, I'm surprised
link |
because these are incredible results.
link |
On the other hand, I'm not surprised
link |
because there's a physiological substrate there
link |
that could readily explain them.
link |
Yeah, and I think figuring out exactly how it works
link |
is really, you know.
link |
We should do that.
link |
We should do that.
link |
We should collaborate.
link |
We've got common friends in both departments,
link |
so we should do it.
link |
I just wanna mention, you know, the way I think
link |
about mindset, and again, I think we need to study this.
link |
I'm not a neuroscientist, so I haven't looked at this,
link |
but this is something we could do.
link |
But the way I think about mindset is that it's,
link |
mindsets are kind of a portal
link |
between conscious and subconscious processes.
link |
They operate as a default setting of the mind, right?
link |
So if, you know, if sort of programmed in there,
link |
you have stress equals bad, right?
link |
That is gonna, you know, that's gonna be something
link |
maybe conscious, right?
link |
But it doesn't have to be conscious, right?
link |
People don't have to know their mindsets about stress
link |
until they're asked, really.
link |
That's been programmed in through our upbringing,
link |
through public health messages, and through media,
link |
and other things, and it kind of sits there
link |
as an assumption in the brain,
link |
and the brain is then figuring out
link |
how should it respond to this situation.
link |
And if the assumption, the default,
link |
the programming is stress is bad,
link |
that's gonna, through our subconscious,
link |
trigger all the things that's like, okay, well,
link |
I need to like, you know, rev up the things that protect me
link |
versus rev up the things that help me grow.
link |
And so that's at least how I think about it.
link |
And what's cool about it is that because it operates
link |
as a sort of portal, it communicates with more,
link |
you know, subconscious physiological processes,
link |
but it can also be accessed through our consciousness, right?
link |
So just talking about this, right, for your listeners,
link |
they're now invited to bring their stress mindsets
link |
up to the consciousness and say,
link |
what is my stress mindset?
link |
How am I thinking about stress?
link |
Can I reprogram that?
link |
Can I start to think about it as more enhancing?
link |
That takes a little bit of a conscious work potentially,
link |
but then once you do that,
link |
that can kind of operate in the background,
link |
influencing how your body responds.
link |
And you don't have to say, okay, I'm stressed.
link |
I better tell my, you know, anabolic hormones.
link |
That doesn't work that way.
link |
But these mindsets can help with the translational process.
link |
I love the idea that mindsets are at the interface
link |
between the conscious and subconscious.
link |
And I think there's a lot to unpack there,
link |
but it clearly is the case that the mindsets,
link |
they sort of act as heuristics, right?
link |
And as we talked about earlier,
link |
they can limit what the number of things to focus on.
link |
Because one thing that is really stressful
link |
is trying to focus on everything all the time.
link |
I mean, trying to navigate the public health
link |
around anything, the public health information
link |
around anything is kind of overwhelming.
link |
As you mentioned for stress,
link |
you see a lot in the stresses will crush you,
link |
and then you can also find evidence
link |
that stress will grow you.
link |
So how should we, the listeners, think about stress?
link |
I mean, what's the most adaptive way to think about stress?
link |
And should we talk about our stress?
link |
Should we not talk about our stress?
link |
Is there a short list of ways
link |
that we can cope with stress better?
link |
Or I should be careful with the word cope.
link |
Is there a way that we can leverage stress to our advantage?
link |
Great, yeah, and that's an important nuance
link |
in your language, which is,
link |
people have, by and large, come from a place
link |
of how do you manage stress?
link |
How do you cope with it?
link |
Which implies, how do you fight against it?
link |
Vacation, massages, yoga classes, and yeah.
link |
Fight against it or check out from it, right?
link |
And yeah, the real challenge is how do we leverage it?
link |
How do we utilize it?
link |
How do we work with it?
link |
And I have a lot of thoughts on this.
link |
The first and most important thing
link |
is to clarify our definition of stress.
link |
So I think people often associate,
link |
the stress mind, negative stress mindset,
link |
that now people define stress
link |
with its negative consequences.
link |
So the first step is to decouple that
link |
and to realize that stress is a neutral, right,
link |
yet to be determined effect
link |
of experiencing or anticipating
link |
adversity in your goal-related efforts.
link |
So let me unpack that a little more.
link |
You can be in the midst of it
link |
or you could just be worried about something happening.
link |
That's one aspect.
link |
Second is adversity or challenge,
link |
so something that's working against you.
link |
But the third piece is critical
link |
and that is in your goal-related efforts.
link |
What that means is that
link |
we only stress about things we care about,
link |
things that matter to us.
link |
So this is really important, right,
link |
because stress is linked with,
link |
it's the other side of the coin
link |
of things we care about, right?
link |
And so I think that's the first thing to realize, right,
link |
that as humans, we stress because we care
link |
and we don't stress about things we don't care about.
link |
So the simplified example I like to use is,
link |
you know, if Johnny was failing school,
link |
that wouldn't stress you out
link |
unless Johnny was your son or you were Johnny
link |
or you really cared about
link |
the educating the Johnnies of the world, right?
link |
It only becomes stressful to the extent
link |
that you care about it.
link |
So why are we trying to fight or run away or hide
link |
or merely cope with our stress
link |
or, you know, overcome it through our massages
link |
when the stress is connected to the things we care about?
link |
So then the question becomes, okay, if that's true,
link |
how can I better utilize or leverage
link |
or respond to the inevitable stresses
link |
that we're going to experience?
link |
I'm not saying go out and seek out more stress.
link |
What I am saying is that you're gonna experience stress
link |
if you have any cares or values or passions
link |
and most all of us do.
link |
And so then what do you do?
link |
And we've developed a three-step approach
link |
to adopting a stress-enhancing mindset.
link |
And briefly, the first step is to just acknowledge
link |
that you're stressed, to own it, see it, be mindful of it.
link |
The second step is to welcome it.
link |
Why would you welcome it?
link |
You welcome it because inherently in that stress
link |
is something you care about.
link |
So you're using it as an opportunity to reconnect
link |
to what is it that I care about here?
link |
And then the third step is to utilize the stress response
link |
to achieve the thing that you care about,
link |
not spend your time, money, effort, energy,
link |
trying to get rid of the stress.
link |
Does that make sense?
link |
As somebody who's laboratory studies
link |
the physiological effects of stress,
link |
the effects that impress me the most are, for instance,
link |
the narrowing of visual attention
link |
that then drives a capacity to parse time more finely,
link |
which then drives a capacity to process information faster.
link |
It's almost like a superpower.
link |
And yes, it can feel uncomfortable often,
link |
but I love the idea that acknowledging it, embracing it,
link |
and then understanding its power and leveraging that power,
link |
I think is in, what I like so much about that framework
link |
is that the stress response is very generic.
link |
Unlike the relaxation response,
link |
we don't actually have to train up the stress response.
link |
So we all kind of get this as a freebie.
link |
And then it sounds like it's a question
link |
of what we end up doing with that.
link |
And Hans Selye, father of stress, said himself,
link |
it's a nonspecific response, right?
link |
So it occurs, it's what you're doing with it.
link |
It's how you're channeling it.
link |
And yeah, like we talked about before,
link |
what most people do is they stress about the stress,
link |
which then over-exacerbates it.
link |
Or they check out from the stress,
link |
which leads to depression and anhedonia,
link |
because by checking out from stress,
link |
you're also checking out from the things we care about.
link |
And substance abuse.
link |
Our colleague, Anna Lemke, who also,
link |
we had the good fortune of having as a guest
link |
on this podcast, talked a lot about this,
link |
that so much of substance abuse,
link |
because she runs the addiction clinic
link |
over on the med side of campus,
link |
it takes over people's lives
link |
because of this increased ability to find a solution
link |
to the stress that then eventually becomes
link |
its own stressor and its own problem.
link |
Well, I love that mindset and framework.
link |
I'd love for you to tell us just a bit
link |
about what you're up to right now
link |
and what's most exciting to you now.
link |
If you are able or willing to talk about
link |
some of the work that's on the way,
link |
I saw a brief mention of something
link |
on your publication's website of a paper
link |
about influencers, online influencers and nutrition.
link |
That might not be the main thrust of what you're up to,
link |
but if you're able to tell us about it,
link |
sort of interesting,
link |
given that a lot of the communication
link |
in and around this podcast takes place through social media.
link |
And I've kind of launched into this landscape now
link |
where I'm constantly bombarded with health information
link |
and influencers, a term I didn't even know until a couple.
link |
Well, one could argue one way or the other,
link |
but so what is the deal with influencers?
link |
Are they doing something good for health information
link |
or are they ruining the landscape?
link |
And don't try and protect my feelings.
link |
Because I now know that stress is actually an asset.
link |
Yes, well, that work is part of a body of work
link |
that we've been sort of venturing into,
link |
which is to understand where do these mindsets come from?
link |
I mentioned sort of public health entities
link |
as one source of, say, our mindsets about stress.
link |
But I think that our mindsets are influenced
link |
by four different sources.
link |
First is our upbringing,
link |
how our parents talked about things
link |
like when we're stressed or food or other things.
link |
Second is culture and media.
link |
So movies, you know, podcasts, and now social media.
link |
Third is influential others.
link |
So what doctors say to us or close friends or peers.
link |
And fourth is your conscious choice.
link |
So, you know, we talked about that a little.
link |
You do have, we have, as humans,
link |
have the ability to be mindful of
link |
and to change our mindsets.
link |
But, you know, the social media and influencer stuff
link |
has been, in part, an attempt to understand
link |
where do our mindsets about things
link |
like healthy foods come from?
link |
And Brad Turnwald, who is a former grad student in my lab,
link |
has done a series of really interesting studies on this,
link |
showing that, you know, if you rate the nutritional quality
link |
of the, you know, top grossing movies in the last 20 years,
link |
or you look at the Instagram accounts
link |
of all the most influential people on Instagram,
link |
what you, and you analyze the nutrition content
link |
of what they're eating, what he's shown is that,
link |
you know, depending on the study,
link |
70 to 90% of those movies or influencers
link |
would fail the legal standards for advertising in the UK.
link |
So they're putting out their nutrition contents
link |
that are, you know, maybe not surprisingly,
link |
but undeniably unhealthy.
link |
And, you know, to me, that's interesting and important.
link |
It shows that where are we getting this mindset
link |
that, you know, those unhealthy foods
link |
are pleasurable, desirable.
link |
What's maybe even more interesting than that
link |
is some of the work that he and others in our lab have done
link |
to show that the ways people are talking about
link |
the foods they're eating really matter too.
link |
So generally, what we found is that
link |
when people talk about unhealthy foods,
link |
they use a language that connotes a sense of excitement,
link |
fun, sexiness, danger, indulgence,
link |
basically anything good and desirable, right?
link |
This would be like cookies, cakes, high sugar.
link |
Sorry, yeah, sorry.
link |
Just really unhealthy.
link |
Like truly unhealthy foods or, yeah,
link |
that's actually the objective,
link |
what health means is challenging,
link |
but yeah, high fat, high sugar.
link |
I think there's pretty good agreement now
link |
that excessive sugar isn't good.
link |
And highly processed.
link |
Yeah, highly processed excessive sugar.
link |
I think there's general consensus.
link |
I'm sure someone will, if you're gonna come after anyone,
link |
come after me, I'll stand behind that statement.
link |
But on the other hand, when people are talking about,
link |
if they do, which, you know,
link |
healthy foods aren't portrayed in media,
link |
they aren't portrayed by influencers, rarely ever.
link |
And when they are, they're often talked about
link |
with language that conveys a sense of deprivation.
link |
It's, you know, it's nutritious, but it's sort of boring.
link |
Recovery from the holidays.
link |
Sort of the post-holiday reset.
link |
And this is really important because, you know,
link |
you're doing all this work trying, you know,
link |
and others are doing all this work trying to inform people
link |
about what actually is good for them.
link |
And meanwhile, there's this, you know, hurricane of other,
link |
you know, a force that's telling people,
link |
that's seeping into our minds that, sure,
link |
those might be good for you, but those foods are not fun
link |
or sexy or indulgent or desirable
link |
in any way, shape or form, right?
link |
And it's also paid advertising for fast foods
link |
and sugary beverages and other things.
link |
So it's not surprising that we have this mindset
link |
that healthy foods are the less desirable thing to eat
link |
because of those cultural and social forces.
link |
What our work has just tried to do is to reveal that,
link |
you know, quantify it as a way to say,
link |
all right, let's maybe be a little bit more mindful
link |
about how we talk about healthy foods.
link |
And could, you know, if you're a movie producer,
link |
can you be a little bit more mindful to showcase healthy
link |
and delicious foods and have the characters talk about them
link |
in ways that are more appealing?
link |
There's a lot of room for people who produce this content
link |
to have an impact, not just on, you know, what people do,
link |
but what they think about the foods they're eating.
link |
It's really interesting.
link |
I hadn't thought about it until now,
link |
but it makes sense that any food that's packaged
link |
and can be sold can be woven into a film
link |
or promoted by a celebrity influencer,
link |
not a health influencer per se,
link |
but a celebrity influencer because they'll get paid, right?
link |
It's part of the ecosystem that allows them an income
link |
and it feeds back on sales to the company.
link |
And whereas things that can't be commoditized,
link |
it's more difficult, right?
link |
It's hard to, whoever makes oranges and sells oranges
link |
is unlikely to promote oranges in a celebrity post
link |
or in a movie because oranges can be purchased
link |
from many, many sources.
link |
There's no identifiable source of oranges
link |
as there is with a packaged food, for instance.
link |
Yeah, but the interesting thing we found in those studies
link |
is that it wasn't driven by promoted content
link |
or branded content.
link |
There's some of that, certainly,
link |
and yeah, all of the promoted and branded content
link |
is usually for processed high-sugar foods,
link |
but 90% or more of these foods that they were showing
link |
were not promoted or branded.
link |
And so there's a lot of flexibility
link |
in what these producers or influencers could show
link |
on their media, although it goes both ways, right?
link |
It's not just the producers
link |
and the influencers' responsibility.
link |
The public is reacting to this and we showed too
link |
that people respond more positively.
link |
They're more likes on posts about unhealthy foods.
link |
So it's a, yeah, it's a sort of distasteful
link |
and it's a distasteful culture around healthy eating
link |
and we really have a lot to do to change it.
link |
Yeah, well, it's dopamine circuits through and through,
link |
just the sight of some very calorie-dense,
link |
extremely tasty food drives those dopamine circuits.
link |
And I realized that there are people out there
link |
who derive the same sort of or similar levels of pleasure
link |
from healthy foods and that's a wonderful thing
link |
if one can accomplish that.
link |
So we just need more of that is what it sounds like.
link |
Yeah, exactly, and that's what's really inspiring
link |
to me at least is that it is possible, right?
link |
I mean, people think, oh, well, vegetables
link |
are just inherently less tasty than ice cream.
link |
And it's like, well, that's not necessarily true.
link |
Also, it doesn't have to be a competition, right?
link |
I don't have to get my three-year-old to hate ice cream
link |
in order for it to like broccoli.
link |
There's a lot more I can be doing to help shape
link |
a more positive, approach-oriented, indulgent mindset
link |
around healthy, nutritious vegetables
link |
and fruits and other foods, right?
link |
In addition to having her like ice cream, right?
link |
And that's totally fine.
link |
Sounds like a really interesting study.
link |
When it's published, will you just let me know and I'll-
link |
Yeah, I think it was actually released this week.
link |
Oh, great. I will be sure to-
link |
JAMA Internal Medicine.
link |
JAMA Internal, okay.
link |
I will definitely talk about it on social media
link |
Sounds very interesting.
link |
What else are you up to lately that's,
link |
my favorite question to ask any scientist or colleague,
link |
by the way, is what are you most excited about lately?
link |
What are you up late thinking about
link |
and getting up early thinking about?
link |
Yeah, so hands down the thing I'm most excited,
link |
well, I guess there's so many things.
link |
The thing that I'm most into right now,
link |
we're doing the most work in is, you know,
link |
I started by getting inspired
link |
by placebo effects in medicine.
link |
I did a long stint in placebo or belief-like effects
link |
in behavioral health.
link |
And now we're moving back into medicine.
link |
So I'm really interested in looking at
link |
how we can work with active drugs and treatments
link |
to make them better and make the experience of them better
link |
by instilling different mindsets.
link |
So one study we did along those lines,
link |
we worked with kids undergoing treatment for food allergies,
link |
so allergies to peanuts, for example.
link |
This was with Kari Nadeau,
link |
who's the head of the Stanford Allergy Center here.
link |
She has a great treatment for food allergies.
link |
Basically, kids take gradually increasing doses
link |
of the thing they're allergic to, like peanuts.
link |
And over the course of six or seven months,
link |
these kids become, you know, less reactive to peanuts.
link |
And the problem with that treatment
link |
is it's really difficult
link |
because they're having all sorts of negative symptoms
link |
These kids are getting itchy mouths, an upset stomach,
link |
they're puking, and it's scary
link |
because they're literally eating the thing
link |
that they've been told might kill them, right?
link |
And what we did in the study
link |
was we attempted to improve the experience
link |
and outcomes of that by reframing mindsets
link |
about the symptoms and the side effects.
link |
So as it was being conducted before,
link |
the kids were told, look,
link |
these side effects are just an unfortunate byproduct
link |
of this treatment,
link |
and you have to sort of endure them to get through it.
link |
But what we found in our conversation with Kari
link |
was that the reality of those side effects
link |
was not so negative.
link |
In fact, they were mechanistically linked to the body
link |
learning how to tolerate peanuts or the allergen.
link |
And so what we did was we worked within a trial,
link |
they were all getting the treatment,
link |
but half of them helped to see this more positive mindset,
link |
that symptoms and side effects from this treatment
link |
were a positive signal that the treatment was working
link |
and their bodies were getting stronger.
link |
And what we found was that that mindset
link |
led to reductions in anxiety,
link |
fewer symptoms when at the highest doses,
link |
and most interestingly of all, they had better outcomes.
link |
So based on immune markers
link |
that were a sign of the allergic tolerance,
link |
those who had this mindset throughout
link |
had better outcomes to the treatment.
link |
So that's just one example.
link |
I think my goal is really to move us beyond
link |
the placebo versus drug, mindset versus behavior,
link |
to get to a place where we can blend them together
link |
and maximize the benefit of these treatments.
link |
So we're doing a lot of studies like that,
link |
how can we improve treatment for cancer
link |
with different mindsets.
link |
We've done some work recently with the COVID-19 vaccine
link |
and symptoms and side effects.
link |
So that's what I'm really passionate about right now.
link |
I can't wait to read that study.
link |
Is that one out or on the way?
link |
Okay, well then I will also read and communicate with you
link |
and then about that study, who knows,
link |
maybe you would come on Instagram
link |
and do a little Instagram live
link |
to make sure that I don't screw up the delivery
link |
and that we can hear it direct
link |
from the person who ran the study.
link |
I find this issue of side effects really interesting.
link |
I don't take a lot of prescription drugs,
link |
but recently I was prescribed a few
link |
and the list of side effects is, you know, it's incredible.
link |
I mean, it just goes on and on and on.
link |
I realized some of that is legal protections.
link |
It's hard for me to believe that they're actually
link |
expecting anyone to read those
link |
because you need a high powered microscope
link |
to read this print, it's truly fine print.
link |
But I did realize that in reading over the side effects
link |
that you prime, one primes themselves
link |
to experience those side effects.
link |
And so now I just rip up the side effects thing
link |
and or the sheet and just throw it away.
link |
I just take it as recommended.
link |
Do you think it works in the other direction too?
link |
Where if an effective medication
link |
is supposed to have result A, B or C
link |
and you are told again and again
link |
how effective it is for that treatment,
link |
that it could amplify the effect.
link |
So in other words, it's not strictly a placebo.
link |
It's not nocebo as you described before,
link |
but that perhaps at a lower dose,
link |
a given medication could have a amplified effect
link |
or at a appropriate dose, if you will,
link |
it could have a super physiological effect.
link |
Has that ever been demonstrated?
link |
To some degree, I think where it gets tricky is
link |
for a long time people thought the effects of placebos
link |
were expectancy based.
link |
So you expect to get a benefit and that benefit occurs.
link |
There's certainly some truth to that,
link |
but I think the mindset approach is more powerful
link |
because it helps us understand the mechanisms, right?
link |
So if you just expect that your blood pressure will go down,
link |
what are the mechanisms through which that expectation
link |
would lead to your blood pressure going down?
link |
It's hard to even understand that, right?
link |
But if you have the mindset that you're in good hands,
link |
that this is being taken care of,
link |
that this illness is not going to kill you, right?
link |
That you're being treated well.
link |
Then you can start to unpack the mechanisms
link |
through which blood pressure could be relieved.
link |
Maybe it's anxiety reduction.
link |
Maybe it's changing the sort of anticipation
link |
or the prioritization of what the body needs to focus on.
link |
And so I really think that the work of the future
link |
needs to be on getting more sophisticated about
link |
what is the mindset that we're instilling
link |
when we say something will work or it won't work?
link |
And how do we understand the mechanisms
link |
through which that changes physiology?
link |
So to answer your question, I think that that could be true,
link |
but it depends on what actually is the mindset
link |
I know you're a parent,
link |
and to the other parents out there,
link |
but also to kids and people who don't have kids,
link |
what is the best way to learn and teach mindsets?
link |
I mean, clearly a conversation like this informs me
link |
and many other people out there about mindsets
link |
and how we can adopt them.
link |
But it also seems to me that if we have the opportunity
link |
to teach mindsets and really cultivate certain mindsets,
link |
that the world would be a much better place.
link |
How does one go about that?
link |
Given that we're kids and we are all being bombarded
link |
with conflicting information all the time,
link |
how do we anchor to a mindset?
link |
Yeah, and you're getting at my other major passion
link |
right now, which is what we're calling in our lab,
link |
I'm working on this with Chris Evans and others,
link |
and that is how do we consciously
link |
and deliberately change our mindsets?
link |
And the first step is really simple,
link |
and that's just to be aware that you have them,
link |
that the world, your beliefs,
link |
aren't sort of an unmitigated reflection of reality
link |
as it objectively is.
link |
They are filtered through our interpretations,
link |
our expectations, our frameworks,
link |
and simplifications of that reality.
link |
And as your work and as you know so well,
link |
most of what goes on in our brain
link |
is an interpretation of reality.
link |
Mindsets are just the simplified core assumptions
link |
And the first step is to realize that we have them.
link |
The second step is to start to think about
link |
what the effects of those mindsets are on your life
link |
to sort of play out the story, right?
link |
Okay, I have this mindset that stress is debilitating.
link |
How is that making me feel?
link |
What is that leading me to do?
link |
Is this mindset helpful or harmful?
link |
The question isn't is the mindset right or wrong?
link |
Because you can find evidence for or against it.
link |
We can fight about it till we're exhausted.
link |
The question is is it helpful or harmful?
link |
And then you can go about seeking out ways
link |
to adopt more useful mindsets.
link |
So we've been doing a lot of work
link |
on how to actually do that.
link |
How do you consciously change it?
link |
Sometimes it's really simple.
link |
I think in cases where we don't have
link |
a lot of prior experience,
link |
like the kids with allergies who are getting treatment,
link |
they didn't have any other mindsets about symptoms.
link |
So we just had the luxury of setting it, right?
link |
When it comes to healthy food,
link |
I think it's harder to change people's mindsets
link |
because we have a lot of baggage weighing us down.
link |
As a parent, for me, I guess my number one piece of advice
link |
is to lighten up trying to get your kids
link |
to do certain things and focus more on helping them
link |
to adopt more adaptive mindsets.
link |
So I'm by no means an expert at this,
link |
but I'm testing it with my own child.
link |
In real time, the real kind of experiment.
link |
It's how do I resist the urge to force my child
link |
to eat her dinner so that she can have her dessert, right?
link |
Because that's the real urge.
link |
It's like, no, you need to do that.
link |
Because when you start thinking about it
link |
in terms of mindset, you realize,
link |
oh, that's just reinforcing to her
link |
that the dessert is the exciting, fun thing to have.
link |
And this thing that I have to do must be horrible,
link |
so horrible that my parent is forcing me to do it, right?
link |
So it's letting go a little bit of the behavior,
link |
the objective reality,
link |
and really thinking about the subjective reality
link |
and focusing on adaptive mindsets.
link |
So my goal as a parent has been to try to help her
link |
instill a healthy mindset about eating,
link |
that healthy foods are indulgent and delicious,
link |
that the experience of stress is inevitable,
link |
that it's natural and that it can help,
link |
going through stressful experience can help her learn,
link |
grow, and become a more connected and happier individual.
link |
And with exercise and physical activity,
link |
we haven't really gotten to that yet,
link |
but we will with time.
link |
I wrote down, and I'm going to keep this
link |
in the front of my mind going forward,
link |
to continually ask,
link |
what is the effect of my mindset about X?
link |
And just to evaluate that, about exercise,
link |
about food, about school, about stress,
link |
about relationships, about relationship to self, et cetera,
link |
and to really think about that in a series of layers.
link |
So you think that would be a useful exercise?
link |
And you know, and your work speaks to the,
link |
I mean, the mindful, it's not,
link |
I would, yeah, really urge against
link |
people getting dogmatic about their mindset also, right?
link |
Like, oh, I need to have the right mindset.
link |
And if I don't have the right, you know, it's like, okay.
link |
Mindset is a piece of the puzzle.
link |
It's a piece of the puzzle that's really empowering
link |
because we have access to it and we can change it.
link |
But it is just one piece of a puzzle.
link |
So treat yourself like a scientist.
link |
Look at your life, look at your mindsets,
link |
see what's serving you, see what isn't.
link |
Find more useful, adaptive, and empowering mindsets
link |
and live by those.
link |
Now, in one version of this kind of discussion,
link |
I would have asked the question I'm gonna ask next
link |
at the beginning, but I'm going to ask it
link |
now close to the end, which is you're a unique constellation
link |
of accomplishments and attributes.
link |
And I only know a subset of them, of course,
link |
because today's the first time that we've met in person,
link |
even though I've known your work for a long time
link |
and we're colleagues across campus.
link |
So you run your laboratory where you do research.
link |
You were also an athlete in university, a serious athlete.
link |
And then you're also a clinical psychologist.
link |
I was trained as a clinical psychologist.
link |
So my PhD is in clinical psychology.
link |
And I did, you know, all my pre and post internships
link |
with stress and trauma.
link |
Do you see patients or did you see patients at that time?
link |
I did, yes, I don't anymore.
link |
Okay, that's a very unique constellation
link |
of practitioner and researcher.
link |
So what are the mindsets that you try and adopt
link |
on a regular basis as a consequence
link |
or in relation to those things,
link |
sort of athlete, researcher, clinician?
link |
You know, for yourself, as you move through life,
link |
do you have an overarching mindset
link |
that all challenge is good?
link |
Or do you have any kind of central mindsets
link |
that help you navigate through, you know,
link |
has to be a pretty complex set of daily routines,
link |
given everything that you juggle.
link |
But I think that people like you are unique
link |
in that you have the inside knowledge
link |
of how this stuff works.
link |
And you've also existed in these different domains.
link |
And I know a lot of listeners have a more athletic
link |
slant to their life or a more cognitive,
link |
or some are raising kids or some people are just,
link |
you know, are doing any number of things.
link |
So this is where I think it would be useful
link |
for people to hear, what do you do?
link |
This is what I'm asking.
link |
Yeah, well, it's certainly true in my case
link |
that research is me-search, right?
link |
Everything that I study as an intellectual
link |
has come from my own experience or my own failings, right?
link |
And when I was, you know, really intensely exercising
link |
and training, those were the questions I asked.
link |
When I was dealing with eating and, you know,
link |
concerns about my weight, those were the questions I asked.
link |
When I was stressed about my dissertation,
link |
I decided to do my dissertation on stress, right?
link |
You know, now I think we're in the midst
link |
of a global pandemic.
link |
It's, you know, how can our mindsets be useful here?
link |
You know, so I, you know, I don't think
link |
there's a obvious answer to your question
link |
other than the guiding light for me
link |
has been an undercurrent of understanding
link |
that our mindsets matter.
link |
I think I got that very clearly and deeply as a child,
link |
both through my experiences as an athlete.
link |
You know, I know many of your listeners are athletes.
link |
Any athlete knows that you can be the same physical being
link |
from one day to the next, one moment to the next,
link |
and perform completely differently
link |
just depending on what you're thinking.
link |
I was a gymnast growing up, and if you can't visualize,
link |
if you can't see something in your mind,
link |
then you have no chance when you get up there
link |
on the balance beam, right?
link |
And I also, my father was a martial artist,
link |
a teacher of meditation, so this kind of mind-body work
link |
was baked into me from an early age.
link |
And I think what I've done recently
link |
is to try to understand it scientifically,
link |
and more importantly, to figure out
link |
how can we do better with this, right?
link |
How can we, you know, we're all talking about AI
link |
taking over the world and technology this
link |
and personalized medicine that, and it's like,
link |
we have done so little, relatively so little
link |
with the human resource, our human brains,
link |
that the potential for which is so great.
link |
And we've done almost nothing, you know,
link |
take the placebo effect.
link |
We know a lot about what it is.
link |
We've done almost nothing to leverage that in medicine,
link |
consciously and deliberately.
link |
So my, what keeps me going,
link |
what gets me through the hard times
link |
is just that burning question of what is going on here
link |
and what more can I do with the power of my mind?
link |
Well, I and millions of other people are so grateful
link |
that you do this work.
link |
It's so important and it's truly unique.
link |
Tell us where people can learn more about your research,
link |
where they can find you online.
link |
I'm gonna try and persuade you to take more
link |
of a social media presence going forward,
link |
but whether or not I succeed in that effort or not,
link |
where can people find you?
link |
Ask questions, find your papers, learn more.
link |
I'd love to have you back for a conversation in the future,
link |
but in the meantime.
link |
Yeah, no, it's really, it's been such an honor
link |
getting to chat with you on just,
link |
you have such an impact on the world
link |
and I look forward,
link |
I hope we can do some science together also.
link |
Absolutely, absolutely.
link |
Yeah, all our papers and materials and interventions
link |
are housed on our website, mbl.stanford.edu.
link |
We also have a link there too,
link |
that takes you to Stanford SPARK,
link |
which stands for Social Psychological Answers
link |
to Real World Questions.
link |
We have a lot of toolkits on that website,
link |
including a toolkit for this rethink stress approach
link |
of acknowledging, welcoming, and utilizing your stress.
link |
And then I guess I'm on Twitter, oleacross.
link |
I don't do much there, but maybe I will start too.
link |
Well, those are all great resources.
link |
We will provide links to all of those
link |
for our listeners and viewers.
link |
And I also hope to convince you to write a book
link |
or many books in the future.
link |
The world needs to know about this,
link |
but thank you so much for taking time
link |
out of your exceedingly busy schedule
link |
to talk to us about these ideas.
link |
I learned so much.
link |
I'm going to definitely think about
link |
what is the effect of my mindset about blank
link |
in every category of life,
link |
and really just on behalf of everybody and myself.
link |
Thank you so much.
link |
And I guess I just want to end by saying,
link |
I think this work is really the tip of the iceberg
link |
of what can and should be done.
link |
And so I really invite you, your listeners,
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and anybody who's inspired by this work
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if they want to share stories
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or want to partner on a collaboration to please reach out.
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Great, well, and the comment section on YouTube
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is a great place to do that as well.
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You will hear from them.
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Thank you so much, Allie.
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Thank you for joining me for my conversation
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with Dr. Alia Crum.
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I'm guessing by now you can appreciate the enormous impact
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that mindsets have on our biology and our psychology
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and how those interact at the level of mind and body.
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If you'd like to learn more about Dr. Crum's work
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and perhaps even be a research subject
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in one of their upcoming studies on mindsets,
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you can go to mbl.stanford.edu.
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There you will also see a tab for support,
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where if you like, you can make a tax deductible donation
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to support the incredible research
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that Dr. Crum and her colleagues are doing.
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If you're learning from
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and or enjoying the Huberman Lab Podcast,
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please subscribe to our YouTube channel.
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That's a terrific zero cost way to support us.
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In addition, please subscribe to us on Apple and Spotify.
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And on Apple, you have the opportunity
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On YouTube, you also have the opportunity
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to leave us questions and comments in the comment section
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You can also make suggestions about future guests
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Please also check out our sponsors mentioned
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at the beginning of this episode.
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That's the best way to support this podcast.
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We also have a Patreon.
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It's patreon.com slash Andrew Huberman.
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And there you can support the podcast
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at any level that you like.
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If you're not already following us on Instagram
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and on Twitter, we are Huberman Lab
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at both Instagram and Twitter.
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And there I teach neuroscience in short form,
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sometimes videos, sometimes text slides.
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Some of that information overlaps
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with what you find on the podcast.
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Some of it is distinct from what you find on the podcast.
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On previous episodes of the Huberman Lab Podcast,
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I often discuss supplements.
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While supplements aren't necessary or used by everybody,
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many people derive tremendous benefit from them.
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An important consideration when using supplements
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is that they be sourced from the highest quality sources.
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For that reason, we partner with Thorne, T-H-O-R-N-E,
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because Thorne supplements use the highest quality
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ingredients and the greatest degree of precision
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in terms of what's listed on the bottle
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is actually what you will find in their products.
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And that is not true for all supplement companies.
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If you'd like to see the supplements that I take,
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you can go to Thorne, that's thorne.com
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slash the letter U slash Huberman.
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And you can get 20% off any of those supplements.
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In addition, if you navigate into the Thorne site
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through that portal, thorne.com slash U slash Huberman,
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you can also get 20% off any of the other supplements
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that Thorne makes.
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In closing, I'd like to thank you once again
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for joining me for my discussion about mindsets
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with Dr. Alia Crum.
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And as always, thank you for your interest in science.
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And I'll see you in the next one.