Navigating Stress: From Threat to Challenge Response

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Dr. Elissa Epel: Control Stress for Healthy Eating, Metabolism & Aging

Huberman Lab

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CHAPTER

Navigating Stress: From Threat to Challenge Response

This chapter delves into the psychological responses to stress, highlighting the difference between feeling threatened and viewing stress as a challenge. It emphasizes the importance of resilience and self-compassion in promoting emotional and physical well-being during stressful times.

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Episode notes

In this episode, my guest is Elissa Epel, Ph.D., professor and vice chair of the department of psychiatry at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF) and the author of a new book entitled "The Stress Prescription." We discuss her work showing how stress impacts mood, eating behavior, mental health, physical health, and aging. She explains stress intervention tools using “top-down” techniques (e.g., radical acceptance, mindfulness, reframing), body-based methods (e.g., breathwork) including the Wim Hof Method, exercise, meditation, body scans, and environmental shifts proven to help people cease unhealthy rumination patterns. We discuss how stress can positively impact psychology and sense of purpose, how stress affects cellular aging, how our narratives of stressful events impact our mood and biology, and how to effectively reframe stress. She explains science-based techniques to break stress-induced cycles of craving and overeating and thereby improve insulin sensitivity and metabolic health. Dr. Epel provides a wide range of tools shown to be effective in reducing stress and improving various aspects of our health.

For the full show notes, visit hubermanlab.com.