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Record Live is a conversation about life, spirituality and following Jesus in the Seventh-day Adventist Church.
Hi there everyone. I'm Jared. And I'm Zanita. Let's go live.
Hello everyone. Thank you for joining us on Record Live. I'm thrilled about today's guest we have with us Dr. Nick Hall, a medical science and expert on stress and its effects on the body. And Nick has worked with the FBI, with Microsoft, with National Geographic and the One and only Advent Health, and he recently co-authored the book, the Stress Recovery Effect with Dick Tibbits who wrote Forgive to Live. So thank you so much for joining us today, Nick. It's great to have you on.
Well, thank you for inviting me. Looking forward to it.
Yeah, me too. I think a lot of people probably resort to stress tools and tips when they're on the brink of burnout. So hopefully this will be helpful for people who are not, only currently stressed, but who will experience stress later in their lives.
But stress is obviously such a big issue. I've heard a statistic recently that said at the time about 70% of people will report that they are stressed. But before we dive into all your research and your tips, I would love to know what kind of inspired you to write a book about stress in the first place?
Well, I've had an interest in stress for a very long time. I had a summer job when I was a teenager, which happened to be wrestling alligators and milking rattlesnakes at a tourist attraction in South Dakota, in the Black Hills of America. And. It was obviously a stressful occupation. We did get bitten occasionally, those of us who did this.
And it was the realization when the rattlesnake is shaking its tail, that it was not a warning. It was actually the equivalent of a human's hand trembling with fear because we stand erected. Uh, it turns out they were more frightened of me than I was at them, and I was just curious about that.
And I went on to university and majored in psychology to learn a little bit more about it.
Mmm
I did a two year stint with the American Navy, the Office of Naval Research Training Whales and Dolphins, as part of the stress related communication study. And I've always done things that have been a little bit risky.
Led an expedition with the National Geographic in the West End is, was down in Grenada when the revolution broke out in 1979, St. Vincent, when the volcano erupted, and then when the American invasion took place and actually seemed to rather enjoy it. It was, you know, I'm reluctant to use the word fun in situations that were a bit dicey, but nonetheless, really, really enjoyed it.
And what I realized is that I just naturally had acquired the ability to just handle it, not that it interfered with what I had to do at the moment. And eventually, uh, met up with Dick Tibbits, who has been official, an administrator at Advent Health for many, many years. That was his profession. And we realized that he was dealing with stress in the workplace.
Nobody goes into a hospital, uh, voluntarily. They go in there because things have changed in their life.
Healthcare
workers are under a lot of stress. So he was interested in it. From that perspective, I was interested in it from having worked in stressful occupations and we were actually asked by Advent to write this book.
So it came about as a combination about each their personal interests at various stages. We had advise people on how to handle adversity and well, the book has been combination of that venture.
Hmm. Very cool. I'm, I'm curious to know if your interest in, I guess, extreme activities, and I don't know, being able to hand those big stresses has helped you in the more normal stresses that people face, whether it's like being busy or, I don't know, unexpected illnesses or whatever that has come up in your life.
Yeah. Yes it does. Because there are certain common nominators. It doesn't matter whether it's interpersonal stress and altercation with your boss, for example, whether it's a breakdown in a marriage, whether it's getting cut off on the highway by a large L, the fact is there are certain things that are common to all of them.
Number one is not having control over the situation. Another factor is the inability to predict when is this going to be over, and then lacking any sense of optimism that things will ever get better. And so it doesn't matter what it is precisely that's happening, that gets rise to these different feelings.
The outcome is going to be an emotion. It might be fear, it might be anger, it might be sadness. And that's where we all react pretty much the same way. A lot of the intervention strategies that Dick and I speak about in the book are really designed to control the emotion, how the emotion comes about, what stimulates it, what the trigger is, uh, doesn't really matter because after it begins, that's where we're all the same.
And whether in my case it was getting bitten by an alligator or whether it's an FBI agent who finds himself in a rapidly failing situation, whether it's one Dick clients, um, doing hair raising things on motorbikes and races. It all comes down to the emotion and the impact the emotion has on our physiological response and our ability to perform.
Yeah. I think before we go further into the conversation, it'd be good to talk about what actually stress is, because I think sometimes people get confused with, the various words that are thrown out, whether it's anxiety or burnout. Can you, can you kind of break that down for us?
Not easily. Okay. The word stress is probably one of the most misused words as you've implied. True in the biological behavioral literature. It's used as a
noun.
Uh, it's used as a verb, it's used as an adverb. I remember once being in Brussels, early in the days of psycho immunology, which is my specialty field in science, it's the study of how the brain, the immune system, interfaces with each other, the role of emotions, the role in triggering illnesses or exacerbation illness.
And one of the first things that happened. People from all over the world were at this convention, and the convener of it said, all right, let's start out by coming up with a definition of stress that we can all agree to.
Mm-hmm. Well,
the physicist there said, well, it's the pressure, on an airplane wing or the bridge, a buttons, it's the physical strain that you experience.
And the psychologist said, well, no, no. Uh, we, we think in terms of depression, anxiety responses, uh, the heart, specialist, the cardiologist, the physiologists in the audience, no, no, no. You gotta think about the autonomic nervous system and the impact it has on blood pressure and heart rate. And we probably wasted at least, 20, 30 minutes arguing over how it should be defined.
The convener in exasperation finally threw up his hands. He said, look, let's just leave it at this. We all know what stress means to us. Let's just go on and talk about how we can research and study the impact it is having on the body, what the mechanisms are. And once we know that, then we can talk sensibly about how to intervene and do something differently.
Now, what I can tell you in general is there are two phases of a stress response. There is what is referred to as the perception of an event, a threat, for example, that might give rise to the emotion of fear. But that perception is now going to give rise to an emotion. And that emotion in turn is going to increase your heart rate, your blood pressure, it's going to cause an outpouring of various chemicals, cortisol, epinephrine, for example.
And then these things are gonna feed back to the brain and potentiate the whole thing. Now the question now, so there's a perception of the event, the trigger. What gets rise to it. And then there's the physiological response. The question that's been posed for many, many years, and well over a hundred years now, is, which comes first, which is the chicken, which is the egg, the horse, the cat.
Does the emotion come first and give rise to the response, or does the response give rise to the emotion? The answer to that question is the resounding yes. They both apply. Okay. And uh, so you know, are you running away because you're afraid or are you afraid because you find yourself running away? And it turns out, as I said, there's that initial perception of a threat, but then the changes that occur within the body, the physiology itself, the biology, these feedback to the brain, and they potentiate the whole thing.
So you have this vicious circle. Now short term stress is actually very beneficial. It's what we call acute stress, that momentary incidents and within a few minutes is over. It's measured in minutes, maybe in an hour or more. The type of stress that causes a lot of problems for people even can exacerbate some diseases, is what we refer to as chronic stress.
You work in a job that you hate, but you have to stay there because you need the money and there's not much else available at the time. You find yourself in a toxic relationship and there's no escape from that. The children are happy in school. You are supporting a number of people you can't leave, and, well, I don't have to go into detail as to what would happen in some of these relationships if they broke up.
So you find yourself exposed to the same stress. Measured now in months, maybe even years, that's called chronic stress. That is the type of stress that would be associated with a higher likelihood of being diagnosed with a disease, cancer, heart disease. Now, I wanna make one thing very clear. Stress really doesn't cause anything What stress cause.
What stress does is create an environment within the body, making it easier for other things to do the dirty work. So as a genetic underpinning, underpinning to just about everything that happens in the body, the DNA that you have is going to set the stage for the responses throughout the body. And there are a number of other things that can impact your likelihood of getting disease, a change in the immune system, the exposure to a virus.
And so all of these things, it's like playing the lottery. You've gotta have a genetic predisposition to something. You've got to have a new I shouldn't say abnormality, but a state of immunity that's gonna make you more susceptible to infection, where it has to be the exposure, having nutrition, what you eat, the amount of exercise, all these things go into the mix.
What stress does is add to the environment within the body, the extra cortisol, the extra adrenaline that makes it easier for all of these things to do the dirty work. And that's essentially what stress is doing.
Yeah. Complex. You mentioned in your book, and you've listed off a few of them just now, that stress can cause anxiety, depression, fatigue, memory loss, emotional eating, low motivation, manic activity, anger, health issues, lack of focus, a whole host of things really that contribute to, and I know when I get stressed, I typically break out like eczema flareups.
It's like my body reacts in that way. Obviously we've mentioned that not everyone has control over the situations that are happening in their life. If someone is having these physical reactions to stress, or psychological reactions to stress, is there ways to, um, tend to those while the stressful thing is still in your life?
Yes. However, there is no set recipe that's going to work for everybody.
Hmm.
One size never, has, never will fit all in biology and medicine. And so you have to first of all, start by examining what is the nature of the stress? Is it a physiological stressor? Have you been injured in a car accident?
Is the stress due to a sprained ankle that happened when you were out walking? Or is it purely mental? Is it the fact that you take your work home with you at night and you're fuming over that, unfair treatment that you experienced in the workplace, but you can't say anything because you'll be put on the night shift for the rest of your life, or you'll lose your salary or whatever. So the stress hall doesn't really matter. One of the things that Dick and I talk about and we emphasize in this book is. The fact that stress is not really the problem. We tend to label stress as being something bad. We've gotta get rid of it. And there are Everly books out there proclaiming that if you follow this advice, you can eliminate all of these stresses that's causing your problems, and they will melt like a snowball on a hot stove.
Well, first of all, you've gotta realize that stress is know. You're gonna be surprised here. It's good for you.
Yeah, you've gotta have
a certain amount. And it starts when we're born. It's the stress of being born, the head being crushed in the pelvic canal, the body being squeezed in there, uh, coming out of this nice, tranquil environment
and
not a care in the world.
And all of a sudden, you lose your lungs. The first time you scream out, you start crying, and that triggers the operation of the lungs. The blood starts flowing across the heart. So circulation begins, you no longer have another placenta connecting you. And so that major stress signal basically sets the stage for the completion of a lot of physiological processes.
And the fact is stress is a stimulus for growth. It's during periods of recovery when that growth actually occurs. And so the problem I think that most people have is not the stress per se. It's not too much stress, it's not enough recovery.
Mm-hmm. And
then the recovery itself has to be something equal and opposite to what caused the stress.
And that's not an original thought. So Isaac, third, law of thermodynamics, for every action there has to be an equal and opposite reaction. That's all I'm saying. And so if your stress is to, to working in a triage unit in a hospital. And you're on your feet all day. You barely have time to take a break for lunch and just fit the environment changing rapidly, then yes, go home and you know, sit in a sauna or get a massage.
Get a massage, meditate. If however, your stress is due to standing on an assembly line, doing the same boring, repetitive task day in, in and day out, getting very little feedback about how well you're doing now your stress is due to, well, I shouldn't use the word stress, but, your problems are actually secondary to little stress.
You need to go home and do, engage in some sort of a sports activity. Competitive sign up for community theater. Uh, experience the stress of having memorized some lines on stage and worry about am I gonna flub it? And so that's what I mean by equal and opposite. For me, the way I do it, and this might help people understand what I'm talking about here, is I speak for a living.
I taught anatomy and physiology to medical students. I did research as well in various universities for many, many years before I turned to teaching. And when I was doing that, I was traveling not only America, but maybe multiple trips to Australia, to England, to various countries in Europe teaching continuing medical education courses, providing updated information about stress, what it does to the body so that they could maintain the nurses and doctors who came, could maintain their licenses.
So. Uh, these were six hour programs and I'd have to start at nine o'clock. There'd be a 10 20 break, three break for lunch. I had to be careful and make sure that everything was on point. Every bit of information I had to have three references to document that this is something that doctors could use.
That was to get accreditation from the agencies. I had to make sure that I finished on time, otherwise the coffee would get cold. And I had to be careful, not make a mistake, because if I said something incorrectly that was wrong, I could be sued if the healthcare professional acted on it. For me, recovery is going out in the Gulf of Mexico in my kayak, not for an afternoon, but for maybe a week or a month.
And I belong to an organization called Water Tribe. We stage these 300 mile races down through the Ade A Swamp in Florida, down the coast of Florida. We have a 1200 mile race that we do that takes a month. Or I go out and ride my bicycle across America. I just got done with a ride down the Mississippi River.
And for me, that's recovery. I'm not talking to the cows alongside the road. The fish don't care what they have to say. I can't predict what's going to happen the next day. Weather's gonna change. It's gonna be a constant challenge. And so for me, that's equal and opposite to what I do most of the time.
And I'm outdoors. I'm not inside. I'm not interacting with people. So when you say what can people do, it's going to be highly variable. And that's why in the book we don't talk about a specific recipe. Yeah. Rather we treat it as a menu in a restaurant. And you know, these are the things that you can do that you can pick from, depending upon your temperament.
Your lifestyle, what fits into your schedule.
And we also divided into those things that you need to be able to do to deal with the stress immediately. Let's let this in the bud before things escalate versus those things that you can do to build up your resilience. So it's less likely that when a stress all occurs that you will unravel at the scenes.
Yeah. Okay. So what I'm hearing is there's certain things you can do to kind of counter that stress in your life. So for you by acting or maybe for someone that's running or gardening or whatever it is. And then there's certain things we can do to build resilience for when stressful events come up.
Okay. Cool. What might some of those resilient things look like then? Is that like lifestyle choices?
You, you mentioned emotional eating.
Hmm.
And that's, um, it really is a tricky subject because we know that certain foods and not just highly processed foods, which are very good at this, will actually make you feel good.
For example, a lot of people when they've had a really rough day, will be more likely to select a meal that is high in carbohydrates. My headquarters are at a place called Salate Resort near Tampa, Florida. And the chefs, the managers, were always paying attention to what people were ordering on the menu.
And there would always be a certain number of entrees that were protein based, and then there'd be another set of al trays that were pasta and carbohydrate based. And one of the things we notice is that during times of stress, when the world trade towers, for example, were attacked during the very great recession, COVID, during these times, more people wanted carbohydrates.
And of course there should be restaurant four restaurants on property. They would adjust the menu to make sure that they had what people were asking for. Hmm. Uh, during COVID, uh, know, the university, the students were really stressed out. They, they had to start taking classes online 'cause we couldn't go into the same room.
And there was a grocery store adjacent to the campus and you couldn't buy ramen noodles. They just ran out of all the spaghetti and anything that was carbs. Well, here's why. There's a chemical in the brain called serotonin. It's a neurotransmitter. And when it drops down below a certain level, it can result in depression.
There are serotonin reuptake inhibitors, Prozac as a prime example. In the first, which raise, well, they don't really increase production of serotonin, but they prolong the amount of time the transmitter can remain at the receptor and do its thing. And so the precursor is tryptophan. Another was an amino acid.
So you gotta get the tryptophan into the brain in order to be converted into the serotonin. So what carbohydrate does is changes the physiology in such a way, making it easier for the tryptophan to get into the brain.
Hmm.
Now you've gotta have a little bit of protein, and that's the source of the tryptophan.
Now, sorry, I went into a little bit of detail, probably more than your listeners are really interested in, but I wanted to say that so you know that I'm not making this up. Okay. It was Dr. Richard Whitman at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who did exquisite experiments in laboratory analyst showing how the ratio of 90% hydrate at 10% protein is exactly what you, you need.
They've written a number of books. His husband and wife team, uh, she's a neurop pharmacologist and he's a neuroscientists, and they came up with recipes for people. So you think, you know, spaghetti and meatballs or spaghetti and tofu if you're a vegetarian for protein, sauces and vegetables as well as s So you, you can pick and choose, but that ratio is what you need to increase your serotonin and they sometimes refer to as comfort foods. 'cause that's what people turn to under stress.
Hmm. Which
is what the chefs at the restaurants I was talking about have discovered.
Yeah.
We know the science behind it. Now highly processed foods very often and the reason is because they contain chemicals that stimulate pleasure receptors in the brain and reduce, well, it's another dopamine which they activate.
And so you feel good. And so you want to eat more and more. And if you're feeling depressed, that's the type of food you're going to overdo. And there often sugary foods, uh, it, it is a real problem that really the trigger of the obesity epidemic, not only in America, but I think it's taking off around the world.
Yeah, we'll definitely get more into practical stuff in the next episode for anyone who is watching, we are gonna do two episodes with Nick. Um, but I wanna move on to, you talk about, in your book, about the different kinds or the different types of stress. And you mentioned that there's psychological stress, relational stress, and spiritual stress.
Now this is a, a podcast where we talk about faith a lot, so I'm kind of interested in that spiritual stress element. 'cause I feel like psychological and relational kind of makes sense. But what are you referring to when you talk about spiritual stress? Is that like people who have doubts? Is that onions and prayers? Is that people who are picking apart their ideas or their beliefs? What, what is that?
Well, yes, I mean, you've touched on a multitude of things that could fit into that category, but certainly people who question their faith. When tragedy happens, and yeah, I can, how could God have allowed this to happen to me or to my friend?
And so that sort of thing. And I think religion plays a very important role in especially the ability to handle adversity. I mentioned previously that having a sense of control is, important. And I remember speaking to an audience once and a lady came up to me and she said, I don't want to have control.
I want the doctors to make all the decisions for me. I'm afraid that if I make decisions about she had cancer, if I'm giving options, I might choose the wrong one. I want somebody else to tell me what to do. And it was the first time I'd been, I had that response. But I started thinking about it, and especially in the context of religion, and I realized that you may not want control yet in her case, she wanted her doctor to have control, but in other cases, knowing that a higher power has control
Yeah.
And actually be the source of that control that prevents a person from feeling helpless.
So, I think that a person who would start doubting that, if that's what they've been relying on for most of their life, if they were raised in a environment where that was being theology, then yes. That could be a major source of stress for them.
Hmm. Yeah. I know some people find themselves, um, in stressful situations. Difficult periods of life where they're constantly praying and don't get any answers, and people keep telling them, give it to God. Don't worry about it. But I feel like the stress can heighten as time goes on and they don't hear responses.
But in your research, has Faith helped people deal with stress in better ways or has it helped them to cope better?
Well, a lot of people have approached this from the standpoint of looking at the correlation between prayer
and
prayerfulness and longevity as well as disease outcome.
And I know that Advent Health, for example, has a very large department of chaplains. And I think that, um, obviously they would be doing that. Unless they saw positive outcomes. The problem is how do you subject this to experimental analysis?
Yeah.
Because each person is slightly different. There are different religions, there are different circumstances, and so there's definitely a correlation between prayer prayerfulness, religiosity, the rituals associated with attending church and improved outcomes.
But you could argue that, well, only healthy people can make it to church. Maybe that's why people who are religious, uh, healthier, that, you know, that would be a correlation.
Mm-hmm. Showing
cause, showing cause and effect is tricky. My opinion is if something works for people as it's clearly does, who cares how it works? Yeah. Is it through divine intervention? Is the belief that a higher power is helping to give the person a sense that they're doing something that they, a confident is going help?
It doesn't really matter. I firmly believe that absence of evidence should never be construed as evidence of absence.
And just
because we are not clever enough to design the experiment to show definitively yes, there's a cause effect here, doesn't mean that it doesn't exist. One of these days we may have the technology, the ability to show that.
So I firmly believe that if it works for somebody, then it doesn't matter how. And I think that enough people in certain communities who do engage in, in a lot of. Prayerfulness, uh, Loma Linda, California. They're some of the longest lived people on the planet.
It's one of a handful of communities around the world where the life expectancy far exceeds the average. And that's fine.
Well that's about all we've got for this conversation. But like I said, we've got part two of this conversation coming where we'll be looking at more practical things and yeah, answer questions that people have sent in about stress.
You found this episode helpful, please share it with your friends and families. And if you've liked what you've heard so far, we have a special offer for you. You can grab a copy of the Stress Recovery Effect from the Adventist book center.com au and use the code record live for 10% off your order.
So thank you again, Nick, and we'll talk to you again soon.
Thank you.