The Stress Solution with Dr. Rangan Chatterjee

In this day and age, stress is unavoidable. Every single day-- in fact, every single hour--

we're bombarded with a tsunami of information

social media posts, emails, and endless to-do lists. But what if I told you that you could switch off the stress response and put yourself in that thrive state in just a few seconds? Well, you can!

NARRATOR

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee is on a mission to change the way we manage stress.

DR. CHATTERJEE

Whether they come from the technology in your life or they're just the standard stresses that come with being a husband, a wife, a parent, a boss or an employee, there's not a day that goes by without you experiencing plenty of micro stress doses.

NARRATOR

Focusing on the four pillars of your life-- purpose, relationships, body and mind-- Dr. Chatterjee uses the latest research to teach you how small, intentional changes can have a huge impact on your overall health in The Stress Solution. Hello, my name is Dr. Rangan Chatterjee, and for the last 20 years, I've been a medical doctor helping my patients live happier, healthier lives. And over the course of my career, it's become really clear to me that the majority of what I see as a doctor is in some way related to our collective modern lifestyles. That means the way we're living our lives is absolutely impacting the way that we feel. So, what's the biggest problem I see? Without any doubt, it's stress. 90% of what an MD like me sees in any given day is in some way related to stress. You see, stress affects every organ system in the body. And it can cause a wide range of different problems, such as anxiety, depression, and insomnia. It can contribute to hormonal imbalances, high blood pressure, heart attacks, strokes, burnout, Alzheimer's disease and autoimmune conditions. It can even be the driving force behind obesity and type 2 diabetes. I'm going to share with you the steps that you can take to manage the stress in your life. Most of my recommendations take only five minutes or less, and they're deceptively simple-- but don't underestimate them. They're remarkably effective and have the power to transform your life. These days, there seems to be more and more pressure on us as individuals and less and less support. I call these individual portions of stress "micro stress doses"-- a small dose of stress that in isolation we can handle just fine, but when they add up, one after the other, they start to build up, and bit by bit, they bring you closer to what I call your personal stress threshold. Whether they come from the technology in your life or they're just the standard stresses that come with being a husband, a wife, a parent, a boss or an employee, there's not a day that goes by without you experiencing plenty of micro stress doses. Let me take you through a typical day in the life of one of my patients, Alexandra. She's a working mum, and she got to bed at around 1 AM last night, and in the morning,

her smartphone wakes her up at 6

45. Micro stress dose number 1. She looks at the time and thinks she can manage another few minutes in bed, so she puts her alarm on snooze. Seven minutes later, the alarm goes off again. That's stress dose number 2. She looks at her phone, she opens up her emails and sees three work emails she forgot to take care of the day before. Number 3. She checks Facebook, and sees a colleague enjoying a beautiful sunrise on a Greek island and feels her own life is rubbish in comparison. That's number 4. She then looks at the clock and realizes that she's running really late for work, so quickly jumps out of bed. Number 5. She gets a text message from her phone provider telling her that her bill is ready to view. That's number 6. Her husband then tuts at the pinging of her phone. Number 7. She then realizes her son has still not got out of bed. That's number 8. And now feeling really frustrated, she shouts up at him to get moving. Micro stress dose number 9. I'm gonna have to stop Alexandra's typical day after just 11 minutes, as she's already experienced 9 micro stress doses in her day. Now, if I was to list every stress dose that she suffers over an entire day, it would probably take more than our entire hour together. So, you get my point. These micro stress doses are constantly flying at us from all directions, even when it seems that nothing especially stressful is happening to us. Now, while none of us can avoid them completely, this program is gonna show you how to deal with their effects more successfully and, ultimately, how to orientate your life in such a way that you'll experience far fewer of them in the first place. So, what exactly is stress? Well, to understand this, we need to go back in time. Imagine yourself 2 million years ago, you were a hunter-gatherer, getting on with your day-to-day business in your small tribe. Now imagine, you see a wild predator, like a lion, starting to approach. In an instant, your stress response gets activated, and your body's biology starts to change. Your blood sugar starts to rise so you can run faster. Your heart rate and blood pressure would go up, so more oxygen can be delivered to your brain. Your blood would become more prone to clotting, so that if that lion was to attack you and cut you, you wouldn't bleed to death! Your amygdala, which is the emotional center of your brain, would go on high alert so you would be hyper vigilant to all the threats around you. You see, this is the point of your stress response, it's there to keep you safe, when it thinks that you're in danger. The problem today is that for many of us our stress response is not being activated by wild predators, it's being activated by our daily lives-- our to-do lists, email inboxes, news feeds, the fact that we may have to work far away from our family or have elderly parents and young children to take care of. These stress responses can be really helpful in the short term-- if we really are in danger-- but they harm us in the long term. So now, I'd like you to think about your nervous system as having two parts-- a stress state, when your body thinks it's under attack-- and a thrive state, when your body feels safe. Now, we've evolved to live most of the time in the thrive state, punctuated by brief moments of stress. The big problem in modern society is that we're surrounded by stress triggers we haven't evolved to cope with, which continually activate our stress response. This can have serious consequences for our health. But what if I told you that you could switch off the stress response and put yourself in that thrive state in just a few seconds? Well, you can! And one of the ways in which you can do this is by paying attention to your breath. Most of us when dealing with stress will start to change our breathing pattern. We breathe more from our chest than our diaphragm, our breath becomes more shallow and the rate at which we breathe increases. But the good news is you can easily hack this by changing the way you breathe. If you start to breathe more slowly and more consciously, you can send messages to your brain that you're not in danger and that the world around you is safe. One of my favorite breaths, and one that I've used successfully for years with my patients, is what I call the 3-4-5 breath. It's really simple. You breathe in for 3... you hold for 4... and you breathe out for 5. Not only is it simple to do, it's really effective as well. In fact, why not do it along with me right now? I want you to breathe all the way out... and then I'll count you through. Breathe in for 1...2...3. Hold for 1...2...3...4. And breathe out now for 1...2...3...4...5. How do you feel? Do you feel a bit calmer? Did you yawn? Many of us can feel a difference with just one 3-4-5 breath that only takes a few seconds. This can help you when you're feeling anxious, it can help you switch off before bed, it can even be great for teams in companies to do at the start of a meeting to help with focus and concentration. So many of my patients have found it really, really useful. But what I love the most is that it works and it's completely free. In the next hour we're going to look

at the four pillars of your life

purpose, relationships, body and mind. Each one represents a stress super highway that you probably need to get under control. The first pillar, meaning and purpose, is often not spoken about in the context of health, but it's fundamental to living a happy and fulfilled life. In the second pillar we'll look at our relationships and how the modern world is affecting them and putting them under strain. The third pillar deals with stress as it manifests in the body, poor diet, taking the wrong kind of exercise and keeping unhealthful daily routines. And in the fourth and final pillar, we're going to look at how 21st century living is tormenting our minds and giving us no respite. Importantly, each stress super highway works both ways. A lack of meaning in our lives stresses us out, but too much stress makes it harder to find meaning. A lack of nurturing relationships causes stress, but stress itself can damage relationships. Abusing our bodies with poor lifestyle choices is a significant stressor, yet stress makes it harder for us to make those beneficial lifestyle choices in the first place. And not prioritizing the health of our minds will absolutely raise our stress levels, and vice versa. So, let's begin with Pillar 1. Purpose. When we consider stress, we don't usually think of meaning and purpose. But living a life that's devoid of these qualities is inherently stressful. Let me tell you about my 53-year-old patient, Brian. Now, he was the CEO of a plastics company; he worked hard and he made really good money. He came to see me feeling low and depressed, so I asked him about his life. He said he didn't particularly enjoy his job. He did it to feed his family and pay his mortgage. When I asked him about his marriage, he said "Yeah, it's so-so, but I hardly get any time to spend with my wife." I asked him if he had any hobbies, and he laughed at me! "Hobbies! I don't have time for hobbies. I'm too busy." So I asked him to think about what hobbies he had as a kid or as a teenager. And he told me that he used to love toy train sets, and when I asked him if he still had one, he said, "I think so. It's probably somewhere in the attic." I asked him to go home that evening and get his train set out and start playing with it. Because I felt he had a lack of passion in his life. A few months later, I bumped into his wife in my clinic car park, and I asked her about Brian. She had a big smile on her face and she said, "I've got the person I married back again! He plays with the train set when he comes home every night, and he's always on eBay searching for collectors' items, and now he subscribes to a monthly magazine! The thing is, Doctor, he's now happier, he's more content, and he's more loving with me." Did Brian really have depression or did he actually have a passion deficiency in his life? Research shows us that regularly doing something you love makes you more resilient to stress-- yet, at the same time, being stressed all the time makes it harder to experience pleasure in day-to-day things. I want you to give yourself a daily dose of pleasure! Even five minutes will make a difference. It could be playing with a train set like Brian, or it could be reading a book, dancing to music, listening to an inspiring podcast or watching your favorite comedian online-- whatever works for you. This is a crucial question that every one of us needs to ask. Are we just trying to be what other people-- parents, spouses and bosses-- want us to be? Or are we living our lives authentically? Do we even know ourselves well enough to answer that question? If not, we need to ask ourselves, "Why do I deal with stressful events the way that I do? Is it really me acting this way, or am I mirroring my father, my colleagues or maybe a friend I look up to? Which of these behaviors do I want to change?" These are not easy issues to tackle, and you can spend your whole life trying to get to the bottom of them. But that's OK, because, clich as it is, it also happens to be true that life is a journey. Discovering ourselves is a huge part of that journey. A good place to begin is to ask what we want for ourselves. The French call this your raison d'tre, or "reason for being." Ask yourself, why do you bother to get up in the mornings? Is it to get started on your to-do list? Or do you purposely want to get up because you're keen to achieve certain things? So often the poor lifestyle choices people make, such as too much sugar or drinking too much alcohol, have their deepest origins in them not being in touch with their true purpose. If you work in a job you hate with colleagues you don't like and a commute that drains and enrages you, is it any wonder that, as soon as you're back home on Friday, you open that bottle of wine and reach for that chocolate bar? I could talk to you about alcohol and sugar being bad for you, and it might make a difference for a week or even a month or two. But if drinking too much alcohol or eating unhealthily are compensation for the lack of purpose in your life, you're always going to struggle. So, here's how we deal with that; The 3 Habits of Calm that I'm about to take you through will help you to create time and space in your life for meaning and purpose. The first habit of calm is what I like to call "Affirmations for Breakfast." Now, an affirmation is a short, powerful, and positive statement of intent that you repeat regularly, which helps you talk to your subconscious mind, programming in what you want out of your life. They have helped many of my patients lower their stress levels and improve their day-to-day lives. Your affirmation should have meaning for you. It can be as broad

as the one my wife used to use

"I'm happy, I'm calm, I'm stress free."

Or it can be more specific

"I help my patients live happier, healthier lives." Say the affirmation out loud for 1 to 2 minutes, and, as you say it, really picture yourself as that person. I'd recommend you try and do this at the same time every day to help it become a part of your daily routine. The second of my 3 Habits of Calm is Reframing the Day. Now, most of us, at some point in our lives, have spent far too long ruminating over stressful events from our day. Rumination is when you dwell on situations that you find distressing and replay them over and over again in your mind. In the short term, it may feel as though this is helping; but, in the long term, it will be damaging, as you'll be training your emotional brain to become more powerful. This leads to stress and anxiety. You can try reframing a stressful episode from your day using these three tips. Firstly, write it down. This will immediately help you gain a more rational and distant viewpoint. Secondly, think about changing your perspective. For example, if someone suddenly drove in front of you on your way to work, perhaps they'd not slept enough the night before because their young child was feeling unwell, or maybe they were running late for work and are scared about losing their job. My third tip for reframing is to replay the event as if you were an observer. Imagine yourself as a sports commentator narrating the situation. Call yourself "he" or "she" or give yourself a different name. This really helps you to take a less me-focused view and can really help reduce stress and anxiety. The third, final and most important habit of calm is all about gratitude and is something my wife, two kids and I practice every single day. In my 20 years as an MD, I've seen it change and even save many of my patients' lives, all with just 3 simple questions... after this. Welcome back. Previously we were talking about programming our brain for success by practicing what I call the 3 Habits of Calm. The first habit was Affirmations for Breakfast, where you feed your brain positive information on a daily basis by repeating a short affirmation. The second habit was about how you can avoid ruminating on negativity by reframing your day. And now it's time for the third and final habit of calm that I'm going to teach you-- The Gratitude Game. Gratitude is the antidote to rumination, and it's been shown to help reduce stress, anxiety and help improve sleep and mood. This Gratitude Game is something that I play with my family around the dinner table every night, and it's a fantastic way to focus our attention away from the negative and towards all of the positive things that happen in our daily lives. All you have to do is answer three simple questions! What have you done today to make someone else happy? What has someone else done today to make you happy? And what have you learned today? Three simple questions that can be very, very effective. Recently when playing, my daughter said to me that one of her friends at school had made her happy as she held the door open for her while she was carrying some books. And for me, I feel as if I'm helping my kids cultivate a really important life skill that will help them immeasurably as they get older and begin to be exposed to many of the stresses in the modern world. This game is not just for those with families, of course. It works just as well with friends, partners or even by yourself. Which brings me on to relationships. We're all living ultra-connected lives. In our pockets we have tiny technological miracles through which we can communicate instantly with anyone on the planet. We're blessed to have such amazing power at our fingertips. We've never been so connected to the rest of the human race. At least, this is what we're constantly told. But I don't buy it. So many of the stress-related problems I see in my surgery have as a root cause a chronic lack of connection. This lack of connection is a major stressor in our lives and is having a devastating effect on many of our relationships. Feeling disconnected and lonely is now thought to be as harmful as smoking 15 cigarettes per day, and people who feel lonely are 50% more likely to die earlier and 30% more likely to have heart attacks and strokes. One of the most powerful yet underrated things that we can do to help connect us with others is to focus on human touch. Humans are mammals, and touch is part of our deepest mammalian systems. It's the very first sense we develop as a fetus. Being touched as a child helps form vital nerve pathways and feeds our emotional connections. And a lack of touch can have devastating consequences. Studies on humans confirm the primal importance of physical touch. Members of basketball teams who have more hands-on interactions with each other perform better, ending up higher in their leagues. If a waiter taps you on the shoulder as they give you the bill, you tip more. And researchers at University College of London found that affectionate touch reduces feelings of social exclusion, which is one of the most painful experiences a human can have. Human touch can slow down our heart rate, lower our blood pressure and reduce our cortisol levels. It even raises the levels of a type of cell called natural killer cells, which are part of our body's immune system. Now, these cells help us fight off threats, such as infections, viruses and cancer. And even beyond the data, we know how good we feel when we get a hug. I'd like you to keep a touch diary to discover just how many times you give and receive gentle, warm, affectionate human touch. Tally your total by the end of the first week. By the end of week two, double it. Then, by the end of the month, triple it. Why don't you try and hug someone close to you every day? If you have children, make an effort to hug them at every opportunity. If you have an elderly friend or parent, try to ensure some level of physical touch. You could even book yourself in for a massage. So many of us are "too busy" for this kind of simple intimacy. In a love relationship, familiarity often leads to complacency. Have you ever worked from home all day on your computer, and when your partner walks in, you barely lift your head up from the screen? Or perhaps it was the other way round! Have you ever come in from a long day at work and when you walk in, your partner barely says a word or lifts their head up from the television? I've seen these scenarios in my patients time and time again, and it's heartbreaking. This's why I created an exercise that I call the 3-D greeting! Greet your partner or even your friends in 3 dimensions, with your eyes, your touch, and your voice. It's simple. When you greet someone, make eye contact. Ensure there's some form of touch-- like a handshake or a hug-- and say a few meaningful words. The 3-D greeting has transformed my own marriage. When I greet my wife like this first thing in the morning, our relationship feels different. I feel less stressed, more connected and more loved. And the effect lasts throughout the day and into the evening... and it only takes 15 seconds! So now you have tools which will help you instill a strong sense of meaning and purpose in your life, and tools to help nurture your most important relationships. Now I'm going to give you tools to help nourish your body, and in fact you'll find that doing the right thing for your body is the most powerful thing that you can do for your mind. Scientific studies are only just beginning to reveal the powerful link between food and our mental well-being. In 2017, a landmark study was published called the SMILES trial-- patients with depression, who were already undergoing treatment, were split up into two groups. Now, one group was put on a Mediterranean diet, rich in oily fish, lean meats, fruits, vegetables, whole grains and nuts. The other group didn't change their diet but instead were given social support. Now, 12 weeks later, an incredible 32% of the patients who changed their diet had achieved remission in their depression, compared to only 8% in the other group. This was an amazing result and one of the first studies to show that your diet could be used to treat depression. So, what can we learn from that trial? Well, one of the key learnings is the importance of diversity in our diets. I want you to increase the variety of plant foods in your diet. Aim for around 30 different ones each month. It's not as hard as you think, I promise. Try eating a variety of different vegetables, colorful fruits, such as blueberries and cherries, and foods such as beans and legumes. Try it and see how you feel! And if you're not used to eating this amount of fiber each day, I would suggest you build up slowly to allow your gut-- and your gut bugs-- time to adapt! What I'm about to say might seem a little surprising after we've spent so long discovering how damaging stress can be, but a little bit of stress can actually be a good thing. It's actually via our stress response that exercise transfers many of its benefits to the body. For example, we stress our muscles at the gym, and they grow back stronger. But exercise is also one of the best ways to pull yourself out of a damaging stress state that's been caused by too many of those micro stress doses that I told you about earlier. Research has shown that regular physical activity teaches our stress response system how to recover more efficiently and helps us reorganize our brains to be more resistant to stress. And, over time, regular exercise will help you bring down the levels of stress hormones, such as cortisol and adrenaline, and reduce inflammation. I'd like you to do a form of stress-busting exercise every single day. Physical activity is the perfect antidote to stress. Stress doesn't take a day off, so neither should physical activity. It can be as simple as a 10-minute walk at lunchtime, a high-intensity interval session or a long one-hour jog. You choose! The key is to move your body every day, in any way you like. Importantly, pay attention to how you feel afterwards to ensure that you start to tune in with your body and how you're feeling. Try and make sure that you're doing the right kind of activity that's in harmony with the rest of your lifestyle. And if you're struggling for time, try just one minute of intense activity. It will help your body burn off the stress that has built up in your system. It could be 20 press-ups, some jumping jacks or even a brisk walk. Try it next time you feel anxious or stressed and pay attention to how you feel afterwards. I guarantee that you'll notice a difference. Now let's turn our attention away from more exertion and instead, let's focus on rest. Getting a good night's sleep is one of the best ways to fight stress, but all too often patients who struggle to balance all of the stressful obligations in their life report poor quality sleep. If you've had a bad day, rather than sitting on the sofa eating pizza, washing it down with a half bottle of wine and staying up late into the evening on social media, I'd like you to gorge yourself on a generous portion of extra sleep. In 20 years of seeing patients, I can tell you that most people who are struggling with their sleep are doing something in the day that they don't realize is affecting their ability to sleep at night. So, let me introduce you to my Perfect Body Clock Routine. Although it may be challenging to stick to this routine every single day, the more elements of it you manage, the more you'll be living in harmony with your body clock and the fewer stress signals you'll be sending to your body. Tip 1. Wake up at roughly the same time every day, even at the weekends. If you had a late night, I'd urge you still to wake up at the same time, but allow yourself a nap later on. This helps you keep in sync with your body's daily rhythm. Tip 2. Expose yourself to at least 20 minutes bright, natural light every morning. This will help you sleep at night by helping you set your circadian rhythm. A huge part of getting our circadian rhythm moving to the right beat is about getting the right light at the right time. This means exposing ourselves to as much light as possible in the mornings and as little as possible in the evenings. Tip 3. Enjoy your caffeine before noon. Caffeine is a stimulant and hangs around in the body for a long time. If you go to your local caf and buy a large latte at 12 PM, half of it will be going around your brain at 6 PM, and a quarter will be going around your brain at midnight! Limiting your caffeine intake to the morning can make a huge difference to your sleep quality. Tip 4. Exercise in the earlier part of the day. If you do vigorous exercise within two to three hours of going to bed, it can activate your body's stress hormones and push your body clock back, which makes it harder for you to fall asleep. Experiment for yourself to find out the latest time that you can exercise without it affecting your sleep. Tip 5. Eat dinner as early as possible. Evidence is growing that an earlier dinnertime is better for multiple different health parameters such as our body weight, blood sugar balance, and stress levels. I recommend that you try to finish eating two to three hours before going to bed. For example, if 10 o'clock is your bedtime,

try to finish your evening meal by 7

00. You may find this tricky at first if you're not used to it, but stick with it. Within one or two weeks of starting, you will find that your body gets used to this change. Patients often report back to me that symptoms such as heartburn, indigestion and sleep quality improve as well. Tip 6. Minimize your exposure to blue light in the evening. Turn off electronic devices, such as laptops, smartphones and tablets, around 90 minutes before going to bed, if you can. This is because in the evening, as it gets dark, a hormone called melatonin is released by the pineal gland, which is located deep inside our brain. Now, we thought for many years that melatonin was simply there to help us fall asleep, but it's now known to have multiple effects on the body. It switches off oxidation-- that's a type of rusting process that can become harmful if it's not kept in check-- and helps to dampen down inflammation. But many of us are messing up the timing of our melatonin secretion by exposing ourselves to unnatural light, not least from smartphones and other electronic devices, which are typically held close to the face. Several studies have found that device use before bed can reduce the amount of melatonin you release by more than 50%. If there was a drug that had such a huge and potentially damaging side effect, there'd be warnings printed all over the packet.

Tip 7

Set an alarm for bedtime. Many of us have an alarm to get up in the morning, but we don't think to do the same thing for our bedtime. Getting more sleep helps you lower stress levels, reduce anxiety, and helps you feel calmer and more in control. Simply prioritizing your bedtime can be life-changing for many patients. So, put an alarm on one hour before your ideal bedtime. This is your signal to switch off and will be your daily reminder that it's time to start winding down for sleep by doing something relaxing.

Tip 8

Have a hot bath or shower in the hour before bed. When you get in, all your blood comes to the surface of your body, so that when you step out, your core temperature starts to drop. Back in the past, when we were out on the savanna, our body temperature starting to drop was a sign that it was nighttime and time to rest and sleep. Remember, getting a large dose of relaxing sleep is one of the most effective ways to take you out of stress state and launch you into thrive. Tip 9. If you have a partner, try to enjoy at least three minutes of intimacy before bed. This could be as simple as holding hands or hugging your partner. Feeling close and connected with a loved one really helps us lower our stress levels, which in turn can help our sleep quality. Now, we all know that looking after our bodies with the right food and movement is important, but we don't think in the same way about nourishing our minds. We need to give our mental health the same daily care we give our physical health. Just as bodies need fuel, our minds need stillness, yet the thought of relaxing our minds is often seen as laziness. My patients constantly thank me for giving them permission to relax. I wish they felt they could give themselves such permission. In the next part of the program, I'm going to walk you through some simple strategies to help avoid some of the biggest micro stress doses that are being fired towards your mind, and as you may have guessed, a lot of it comes from the small devices

we carry around with us everywhere

our cellphones. Now, technology is not inherently bad, but the overuse of gadgets and the Internet can add more stress to our lives. How can unplugging help us reconnect with ourselves and others? I'll let you know after this. During the last hour, we've discussed how identifying your purpose, investing in relationships, and nourishing your body help you reduce stress, which in turn leads to calmer and happier lives. But many of my patients also complain about not being able to switch off... at night, the weekend, or even when they're on vacation. Much of that is due to technology and our dependence on it. 21st century living is harming our minds. We're filling our heads with stressful information, bombarding ourselves with noise and light. Infinite distractions vie for our attention. We think nothing of continually drowning our thoughts in news articles, status updates, health blogs, text messages, notifications or emails. This information overload is playing havoc with our mental health. I'm going to provide you with a road map so that you can get the best out of tech without it stealing the best out of you. I'll also provide some of the simplest yet most mind nourishing strategies of all. The purpose of this powerful piece of technology, the cellphone, has started to blur. Today phones are less of a voice-to-voice communication device and more of a beautifully engineered jack-in-the-box, crammed with harmful micro stress doses. You pick it up, turn it on, and they fly at your head by the dozen. That slim rectangle of metal, silicon and glass has got to be responsible for more daily stress doses than anything else in your life. I'm not against the technology itself. It's incredibly powerful and can do a lot of good. But with great power comes great responsibility, and I think the vast majority of us-- and I include myself-- are shirking it. In doing so, we're primarily harming ourselves. One of the reasons this kind of tech creates an abnormal level of stress is because human attention is naturally drawn to the negative. Our brains want to keep us alive, and it's much more important that they notice and process signals of potential threat than those of reward. But we're simply not built to deal with such constant interpersonal stressors. Humans have evolved to live in tribes of up to 150 people, yet the average number of Facebook friends is 338. Over on Twitter, the average number of followers is 707. Our social networks are already too big for us to sensibly cope with. Adding weight to the problem is the fact that when people are online they become disinhibited. In a human tribe, interactions would have been face to face, and the ramifications of being disrespectful would often be serious. But now, anyone who's had a bad day can get home and offload their aggression by becoming a brave keyboard warrior, virtue-signaling to the hundreds of people they're connected to. Put these two phenomena together, and you get a very familiar yet entirely toxic situation. When you put a baby picture up on Facebook and receive 23 lovely messages telling you what a gorgeous child that you have, you feel great. But all too often you'll get one snipy comment telling you that you're holding your child in the wrong way! Your attention will go straight to that one comment, and that's where it will stay. You'll ruminate on it and process it for a long time, because signals that something is wrong in your social world are naturally alarming to the brain. It has to make absolutely sure there's no danger in the information. Rumination is another form of stress that's great in short doses but damaging over the long term. As you heard in part one of the program, learning how to reframe a negative experience can be a very powerful way of reducing stress and improving the way that you feel. But what about if you could reduce how many of those negative experiences you get exposed to in the first place? Well, you absolutely can, by resetting your relationship with technology. Now, there are many different ways that you might want to do this, but my 7-Day Digital Detox has proved transformative for many of my patients. So, why not give it a try? On Monday, switch off all notifications on your phone. Tuesday, unsubscribe from redundant email lists. On Wednesday take emails off your phone. Thursday, put your phones and other devices in a box at meal times. On Friday, try to switch off all technology 90 minutes before bed. And on Saturday try and have two device-free hours, and then on Sunday, see if you can have an entire screen-free day. Don't worry if you can't manage all of this. Even just switching off notifications on your phone can have a huge effect on your well-being. I did this myself three years ago, and it was life-changing! You might be struggling to imagine that it's possible to have a half day or even a full day without your phone! You may even be panicking, but like all stresses, those that come from your online life can have a major impact on your brain. Think about your brain as having two major parts. Your rational brain, which is involved with self control and making sound decisions, and your emotional brain, which is the primitive part of your brain involved with feelings like fear and other emotions. Taking back control of your online life will feed the growth of your rational brain and calm down your emotional brain. One part of your rational brain is an area called the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. Now, that part of the brain is thought to be involved in our ability to exercise self control and make rational decisions. People who suffer with chronic work stress tend to have a smaller dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, which means they've got a reduced ability to self regulate. But that's incredible and it's a constant reminder that our brain is always adapting and responding to the information that we give it. We know that if you damage the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, people can become more prone to depression. By controlling the way that we interact with our digital worlds, you can exercise this part of your brain and reinforce your ability to make rational decisions and exert self control. What's the opposite of sitting down and staring at your phone for hours and allowing yourself to be sucked in to its vortex of endlessly moving pixels? Nature. Getting outside into the open air is the antidote to technology. You see, nature is expansive, it forces you to look outwards, while technology encourages you to gaze inwards. Being in nature tells your brain and body that you're in a restful place, while your smartphone produces an abundance of information that tells your brain you're in a realm of anxiety and pressure. Nature is profoundly good for us

for a simple but easily forgettable reason

We're a part of it. Humans are members of the animal kingdom. We've evolved in nature over the course of millions of years. That's why most of us feel such a deep connection to the open air. There are many studies that confirm the multitude of benefits of spending time in nature, including improved mental focus, reduced stress levels, reduced anxiety, and improved job satisfaction. Results like these resonate deeply with most of us. We feel their truth intuitively. We've all felt that inner sense of peace and well-being we get from wandering the lush paths of a forest or playing on a sandy beach. And yet, by 2050, it's thought that as much as 70% of the world's population is going to be living in an urban environment. With increased urbanization come poorer health outcomes, including increased levels of mental illness. I'm seeing more and more patients in my surgery who I believe are suffering from a brand-new diagnosis-- a deficiency of nature. I think one of the main benefits of nature is that it helps us put some distance between the noise of daily life and ourselves. It encourages us to look beyond ourselves. Even the simple sound of birds singing or waves crashing can be unbelievably relaxing. One study examined the stress responses of people in a doctor's waiting room. Some listened to silence, some to classical music and some to the sound of waves. Those who listened to the waves experienced the greatest calming effect. It reduced their pulse rate and their perception of stress. I have many patients who have improved their mental health, their sleep quality, their anxiety and their mood simply by getting a daily dose of nature. Even if you can't get into nature, science has shown that looking at nature can enhance your recovery from a stressful experience. There was some research done at the University of Essex in the United Kingdom which has shown that people who are exposed to a nature scene have less signs of stress in their body, compared to a group that is exposed to an urban image. So, why not take a pause right now and set your phone lock screen to a beautiful picture of nature so that every time you're tempted to look at your phone, you get a little fix! In the same way that being in the presence of nature can be calming, studies of brain activity reveal that being surrounded by mess is physically taxing. The brain uses resources and energy to ignore distractions and untidiness. This is why it's harder to concentrate when you have a messy desk or a computer that's crammed with open windows and old documents. Clutter can begin to take over entire rooms and even houses. One of my colleagues has just hired a new cleaner. He was mortified when the cleaner saw the downstairs spare room, as it was full of junk, cardboard boxes and kids' toys. When he told her how embarrassed he was, she surprised him by saying, "Don't worry, I see this in every house I go into. Everyone has a dumping room." So here are four tips to help you declutter your life. Number 1. Choose to only keep things that give you pleasure. Number 2. Keep only the clothes that you actually wear. Many top CEOs are well known for wearing the same clothes every day to work, to help them conserve their mental energy for the important decisions they need to make. 3. Throw away sentimental things. Of course, this is only when you're ready to let go. I recently threw out my late father's shirts, which I had been keeping in my wardrobe since he died. I realized that I had no reason to hold on to them anymore. I looked at them, fondly remembered my dad wearing them, and happily gave them to the charity shop. And tip number 4, take photos sparingly. In the pre-digital world, we would take care over each photo we took. But with the advent of smartphones, we take tens of photos each time we want to capture something. Try and be more mindful about how many photos you take, and if you do take more than you needed, ensure that you go through them and only keep the photos that you love. Now, often clutter builds up because our minds are cluttered, and the more of the techniques in this program that you're able to apply in your own life, the less cluttered your mind will be, which in turn, will help you declutter your physical space more easily.

Let me ask

Do you breathe mostly through your nose or through your mouth? You see, you can compare your nose to a water filter. It works by passing the air you breathe through multiple layers of clever filters. There are fine hairs inside your nostrils that trap particles such as dust and pollutants, ridges called turbinates which help control the humidity of the air and enzymes within the nasal passages that kill microbes such as viruses. The adenoid glands, which sit on the roof of the mouth, right at the back where the nose meets the throat, produce immune cells that help fight infection. Breathing through your nose is one of the first and finest defenses that we have against the outside world. Breathing through the nose is also anatomically more correct. It means we don't utilize our shoulder or neck muscles, which weren't designed to help us breathe for long periods and can become sore. It also automatically encourages the diaphragm to go down. And if all that weren't enough, nasal breathing has also been shown to increase activity in the hippocampus, which is the memory sensor of the brain, and the amygdala, which is the part of the brain responsible for regulating emotions and dealing with fear. This suggests that nasal breathing could well be a significant part of the strategy to combat stress and increase resilience. And if you are able to take a breath through your nose, why not try it right now with my 3-4-5 breath that you learned about earlier in the program. Breathe in for 3... hold for 4... and now breathe out for 5... How do you feel? At the beginning of this program, you may recall that I said the presence of stress in our lives creates more stress. Often we feel so overwhelmed, we don't know where to start. But the best way to start is not by viewing it as one huge job to tackle but realizing that you can break it down into a series of tiny actions. I hope our time together has expanded your view of what stress is and where it lives in your life. Micro stress doses are coming at you from all directions, pretty much all of the time. I can't eliminate all of them for you, but I can make you more resilient to them. My advice is to start small. Not every intervention I talked about in this program is going to be relevant to you and your life. But some of them will be. I'd like you to pick at least one intervention which, when you first saw it, truly resonated with you. One that really struck a chord deep within and made you think, "I could do that right now." You see, your world is not defined by the programs you've watched or the books you've read-- it's defined by your actions. That simple intervention is your first step.