STRESSED? These FREE Hacks Lower Cortisol, Heal Your Nerves & Boost Immunity! l Ep #397

Introduction: Free Ways to Manage Stress 0:00

Welcome back to the show, folks. Today's episode is a little bit different than usual. Well, for starters, it's just me. It's bringing to a close one of the busiest, most intense, and in some ways most stressful times of year. And so rather than give you another deep episode on some crazy health and longevity hack, I thought that we would do something a little bit different and talk about some of the ways and strategies that have access to for free that can help us to mitigate the impact of chronic stress.

And if you're like anybody else out there these days, you are too busy, the world is too crazy, there's too much going on, We're doing, doing doing even when it comes to doing all of the incredible health practices and biohacking practices that we've picked up along the way, trying to make it all happen. And here we are at a time of year which is even more intense. trying to manage it all. So I thought that what we would do today is just quickly dip our toe in 10 different free strategies you can use to manager stress.

And we can all agree that if I told you to start doing 10 new things tomorrow, that would stress you out. insanely. And that is not by any stretch what I'm proposing here. What I am saying is in these 10, there may be a few you're already doing. There may something that you can add. If you are doing none of them, then the invitation is to pick one. Pick one thing to start with and then we will build on it. In many ways, I've been promoting this for a while now for the last few months on my social media.

If you follow me on social Media, we've been talking about three free things that you could start doing today to improve your health. And that was a handout that we were sending out to people on Instagram in response to a queue. So now, I mean, i don't even know if these 10 things are exactly the things that we shared, but I'll bet you there's a lot of overlap. And why do we even want to do this? What is it about stress that is such a problem? Because you know, stress is part of life. It's normal part-of-life and anybody, any physiologist will tell you that without stress the human body wouldn't survive.

Nothing in nature would. But the problem is that, we know that chronic stress, is silently what is accelerating aging and it can offset any of the most powerful tools that we have, whether it's a peptide, supplement, practice, whatever it is. If we are living in a chronic state of stress, it can undo the more powerful, the expensive things that are implementing in our lives. We know that chronic untreated stress will shorten telomeres. It will drive inflammation in the body and it'll weaken the immune system by driving immunosenescence, which in and of itself feeds back into that whole inflammation loop.

And now we have a negative loop, So not here to stress you out about this, but really just to give you some actionable, free, easy tools that you can start to implement. And I will also say that even if you bought the latest, greatest gadget, if we're not doing some of these foundational practices, Our gadgets are not possibly likely to work for us. Case in point, not even a gadget. Look at bioregulator peptides. Way back in the day when I released my very first episode with Phil Lawrence on the telomere study that he was conducting with bi oregulators therapy, He was talking about he had about 100 people in his first cohort, and after six months to a year, they were remeasuring telomeres.

So they measured their telomerase before they started taking bioregulators. And then at six month to year they remesured telomear length.

Why Chronic Stress Accelerates Aging 4:00

The beautiful thing is that in the lion's share of cases, everybody's telomares got longer. except for a few people like there. I think there were three people where telomeres did not get any longer. They just stayed frozen. And I remember at the time, and if you listen to that episode, you may remember this. Remember asking Dr. Lawrence, like what happened to these three? Why didn't the bioregulators work for them? And the answer that I got was because stress. These people were under tremendous stress, and so even though these people used bioregulators the exact same way that all the other people use the bi oregulars, in their case, the bio regulators was not able to stimulate the lengthening of telomeres.

maybe they did get benefit because their telomeres didn't get shorter. So their Telomere is held wherever they were, but they didn' get longer. This is just one example to say that if we don't start to layer in some of these easy freebie practices that are so foundational to helping our nervous system calm down, all of the other fancy stuff that we're doing is not likely to give us the benefit that want. What I want to add to that is In interviewing all the people that I've interviewed this year, I would say that there is not a single one who deals in helping people to live longer, healthier lives or people who are dealing with helping, people deal with chronic disease or chronic conditions.

There is no one that did not at some point refer to the need to bring the nervous system back into balance. to get the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system back into a state of balance. So that means we're not constantly operating in a fight or flight state and we can't always operate and rest and digest either. We need a dynamic between the two, we need some tension between those two. to fight or flight for when we need it on occasion, but we can't be living in that state all the time.

And the crazy thing is that, you know, I think a lot of people may be in fight-or-flight without actually realizing it. How's that possible? Well, it's possible because as humans, we normalize whatever our state our condition is and you've probably heard me say this in the past as well where we talk to people when we you know when I was practicing as nutritionist and I would help people and work on their digestion first and we would go after things like bloating and gas or even you, know maybe they they were experiencing joint pain or pain in their body and they wouldn't come in telling me that but when we finally did the work and those things started to abate they would come back and say oh my god i feel so much so amazing my pain's gone away or my bloating's got away they never even had at the And by the time they came in to me, they weren't even registering the bloating was an issue for them.

They had just normalized it. It was just, that's just the way they are. My point is that we could be living in a sympathetic state without actually realizing it and some of the ways we can figure that out. is if you wear a wearable, whether it's an aura ring or a whoop band, whatever the case is, check out your HRV, your heart rate variability. Heart rate variability is a really solid marker of the balance between our sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems. If those HRB numbers are constantly in the tank, That's a sign that you may be operating in a sympathetic state more often than not, and you need to work on that.

You need find a way to reduce whatever that perceived stressor is of the body. Now, we're going to talk about strategies that we can do if you have something going on like a mold infection or a Lyme infection, or heavy metals, the body can perceive those things also as a chronic stressor. And so what I'm going to talk about today is not really going impact those thing, but it will at least impact the things your mindset. It will impact your, your metrics that you can affect. so that if you are doing all these things and it's still not moving the needle, then you know that you're going to have to go see someone, a functional provider, who's going work with you and do some testing to figure out what are the other things that could be driving stress in your system.

Hey folks, I just wanted to take a quick minute to tell you about something that I've created just for you guys, my listeners. I created an amazing holiday gift guide for listeners so that you can get the best Black Friday deals on biohacking tools, supplements, and so much more. They are gifts in different price ranges and once a year price drops on your dream health tech. And no one said you can't show up for yourself. So you get the stuff for friends and family or for your self. All you've got to do is go to natnidam.com forward slash gift guide for the list of Black Friday deals that you just can not miss.

Connection and Volunteering 9:00

This episode is not meant to replace medical advice. None of them are. But hopefully you'll find a couple of tidbits here that can give you some tools and levers that use yourself as you're figuring everything else in your world. So I'm going to make a statement and this goes back to that bioregulator episode I am talking about is that we know and it has been established in studies now that chronic stress silently accelerates aging. it speeds up our aging. So how does it do that? It does that by shortening telomeres, it does by driving inflammation in your body, and ultimately it goes after your immune system.

We know that when we're very stressed, we are more likely to get sick. And that's because those elevated, like the elevated cortisol, the inflammation, all those things inhibit the immune systems. It stops the system of working the way that it needs to. We know that elevated cortisol leads to increased levels of IL-6, an inflammatory marker, and CRP. So if all those things are elevated, the immune system just can't function the way it needs to. And so then, number one, we're more likely to get sick.

Number two, were just accelerating aging. We're aging faster on the inside because the body can renew itself and it can regenerate when it's in this constant state of inflammation and the system's not working properly. Okay, so that's the bad news. The good news is there's lots we can do about this, okay? There's so many things we could do. There is so much we do to avoid living in this constant state of heightened cortisol. We need cortisol, cortisol is a necessary hormone, but when cortisol high all the time, it is what we call a catabolic hormone.

It breaks things down. So we cant be building while cortisol was high. So we need that cortisol to go up when necessary, but then we needed to be able to come back down. Kind of like blood sugar, right? We need blood to to able go to up at times, But it needs to down in a reasonable amount of time so that we don't suffer the damage from the bloodsugar floating around in the bludstream, which we've talked about a lot. We could talk about it again in another day, I promise myself I'm not going down rabbit holes because I want to keep this short and actionable for you folks at a very busy time of year.

All right, so here we go. So we know that there's lots of research around this. We'll link some studies at the bottom of the episode, but mostly what I wanted to do with this episode is keep it a little bit lighter and just give you those 10 things with a bit of reasoning why each one of these 10 thing can be helpful. Once again, I'm going to repeat. I am not expecting you to all 10. It doesn't mean you can't create stacks within the 10, we can talk about that. It means that even if you picked one thing of these that really is calling to you, that resonates for you and you started to implement it tomorrow, it would start you on this journey of learning to mitigate the impact of chronic stress and or even hopefully lowering the stress on yourself.

All right, so number one, connection. We know, we know there's so many studies now that show that, look, We are meant to be pack animals. we are to members of a tribe. Connection is critical to humans. And so meaningful connection to friends, to family, To people who share our interests, who might not even be our friends and family. Meaningful connection ultimately buffers cortisol and improves our mood. And so if you're living far away from friends and family and you are sitting there going, well, what am I supposed to do?

I'm living in Australia. All my friends are in North America. Pick up the phone. Get on WhatsApp. Do video calls. Five minutes a day. is all it takes to establish meaningful connection with someone, right? So if you don't, if that's not enough for you, what do you love? Do you like working out? Go to the, join a gym. Don't wanna join an expensive gym? Find a Y or a community center. Any of these places where you can meet people who share your interests, you will eventually meet the people that you establish a connection.

But at this point, Even the barista, right? The baristas at your local coffee shop, having meaningful connection with people. And this is a hard thing to say to someone who maybe is in a negative spin. I'm going to again, this episode is not replacing any kind of therapy or anything, but this kind like your friend saying, honey, you need to shake it off, walk out the door, go get a cup of coffee, see some people, meet some Human connection is something that we desperately, desperately need to be happy and to thrive.

So figuring out a way to do that is important. Reaching out to friends and family is a great tool, but this brings me to number two.

Doomscrolling, Nature, and Exercise 14:00

If you're in a world where you are for whatever reason separated from the people that you love and you don't have ability to connect with them, volunteer. Volunteering is an incredible way, to, number one, create your own release of endorphins, giving of ourselves to other people is an incredibly powerful way of releasing our own feel-good hormones. And we're giving ourselves other to people. We're also enabling ourselves connect with other because quite often when we volunteer, we end up connecting with people who care about the same things as we do.

So if you care the environment, get online and find maybe there's a group of people that heads down to the local park and cleans up the garbage once a week or a couple of times week, or maybe you want to go volunteer at a shelter for pets or you wanna volunteer and a Shelter for humans or You wanna maybe go serve meals like there's a lot of these where I live there is a program called out of the cold. And they run it in churches and synagogues and they get a bunch of volunteers together to come together in the evenings and have all of these people who have nowhere to go and are needing a hot meal.

They come in for the night and we would serve them as if they were at the finest restaurant. The people, the guests coming in would sit themselves down and We would be running around, bringing them drinks, bring them food. Very often there'd be clothes if people needed some clothes. Anyway, it's a very robust program, very well run. Check it out. Check out your area and see where you can volunteer in an area that is meaningful to you. Right. So for me, feeding people is something that really brings me joy.

In this case, this was a great one for. But for you, it might be volunteering in a shelter or something else. These acts of giving, and we're not talking about giving money here, you're giving of your time and of yourself, these acts giving on their own are incredibly beneficial for us. We experience gratitude from other people, we are being grateful and giving ourselves to other. It is a super powerful hack. So number one was connecting with friends and family, if we can. Number two, volunteering.

This is a big one. Stop scrolling, doom scrolling on your phone. I'm telling you now, there are so many reasons to be doom-scrolling these days. There are many crazy things going on in the world, and I don't care whose side you're on and what the things are that you care about, but the algorithms are designed to feed us the thing that are gonna keep us glued to our screens. And generally speaking, unless you are going towards the comedy line, which frankly you could sit and laugh your butt off, for an hour scrolling, if you're going to do that, that's great, do it.

But if your doom scrolling because the algorithm is feeding you story upon story of the latest crazy horrible thing that is happening in the world, I'm telling you now, take a deep breath, shut it down, step away. step away because that doom scrolling is leading you down a path of chronic stress. Your cortisol is going up. Nothing good is happening here. So I'm your friend. Think of me as your friends or your mother or whoever. Cut the doom scrolling. It's been something that I myself have fallen into over the last couple of years, and I've had to really take an active role in cutting it out.

So we gotta cut it up. Do you need to stay informed about certain things in the world? Yes. do you to be doom-scrolling on your phone? Absolutely not. Just stop. Number four. Nature, getting out in nature drops cortisol. It improves our resilience. There was actually a study that I came across where they were comparing people hanging out purely coniferous trees versus purely broadly deciduous trees and then mixed environments. It was hilarious. I can't remember exactly. If I could find the study again, I'll link it in the show notes.

What is important though is that it is very clear that getting out into nature is unbelievably powerful healing for us humans. So that means go take a walk in a park. If you live in big city, there's got to be a part near you somewhere. Do your best to find a What I didn't find, and I should have looked for this actually, is what if you created a green room in your home? I'll bet you there would be some benefit if had the space, even a small space and you just filled it up with plants and went and sat there.

and did some breath work or some meditation or read a book. I'll bet you there'd be some benefits to that. There's something about being out in nature that it is incredibly powerful, incredibly healing and incredibly balancing for our nervous system. So getting out of nature and there was even a prescription, if you will, from this one meta-analysis, 120 minutes a week drops cortisol 20 to 30%. That's insane. Even drops anxiety. So it's worth it and it is easy and its free. And you could stack things.

You could grab a friend and go for a walk in nature. Guess what? You've now done two things, 10 minutes, 20 minutes. That is all you really need. 120 minutes a week, let's say we divide that by six days, that's 20 minute a day. If you divide it by seven days, it's 15 minutes a day. You could actually use that as your postprandial walk after your biggest meal. What's the value of a postprendial? Walk. Postprandia is a fancy word for saying after dinner. Well, if your big meal is dinner or even lunch, and you go for a 15 to 20 minute walk, And you're doing it with a friend, we're now triple dipping here guys, because we are getting out in nature.

We're getting the benefits of nature, We are mitigating our blood sugar spike from that meal because were going for walk and were stacking it up with the friend. Three things, boom, right there. Talk about a hack, beautiful stack. What else? Exercise. So don't leave. If you're not exercising, this is not about making you feel bad. This is about reminding you that you have to move your body for your own body to be healthy. So if you've not exercised in 40 years or 30 years, or 20 years and you're listening to this.

This is your invitation to start low and slowly get out for a walk. And this is where that stacking with nature is amazing.

Breathwork and Vagus Nerve Support 21:00

Now is the weather is a horrible outside or you can't go out. If you have access to a treadmill. I don't care. Just move your body. Try to do it 30 minutes a day. If you could do that five days a week, I can't even begin to tell you. As a matter of fact, i'm going to invite you if you're a sedentary person right now and you start walking 20 to 30 Minutes a Day at least five Days a Week. I want you and You do this for 30 days. i want to Invite you to message me on Instagram and tell me how do you feel after 30 Days?

Okay. Next, if you aren't sedentary, time to step it up friends, okay? 30 minutes, five days a week of exercise. And if can do two days on top of that, If you can two more days of strength training, your fitness level will change, 100%. So what's the 30 minutes if it's not straining? The 30 minute could be walking, it could brisk walking. It could run walking it, could getting on a bicycle, It can be anything that you want. But it is 30 min of not being sitting down, of moving your body. You could working with bands.

Bands are super cheap. I know I said they would be free. If we're gonna keep it to free, then you're gonna walk, right? But strength training, if you can throw two days a week of strength in there, exercise is, we know that it buffers stress, it lowers our cortisol, It improves our immune resilience, does all the things that we needed to do to keep us healthy. It improve our HRV, so that's the balance between our sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system. it will lengthen our life. especially if you're not over exercising so i'm not going to even talk to people who over exercise well i am i mean to say this to you if your exercising seven days a week and you get more and more more tired with every workout cut it out you need more recovery most people need exercise but if u're over-exercising that will age you just as badly as being set into fully sedentary.

Okay, so we, this is where we want to find a sweet spot. There is such a thing as too much of a good thing when it comes to exercise. Honestly, when a com comes, to almost anything, but definitely get moving. If you're not moving, get, moving if you over exercising, slow down a little bit. Longevity is your goal. All right. What's next? Breathwork. A study I found somewhere, again, I'll see if I can find it again. And they actually showed that breathwork was more effective than mindfulness. I'm not sure why that would be, but I wonder if it's because A lot of people just can't connect to mindfulness, whatever that is, right?

The act of being present. And look, there's a lot a benefit in being in present, but maybe it's because it just not as active as breath work. When I talk about breathwork, and I'm talking about five minutes a day here, you can do it when you're waking up, as you are going to sleep. Those two times could be your breath-work times. It could just be this simple act, of inhaling for four counts, hold for seven, and then exhale for eight. If you can't hold four seven and exhale four eight because that's too long for you, inhale for four, hold five or six counts, then exhales for five to six count.

The point is that you are inhaling, pausing and then the exhale needs to be longer than the inhale and that alone will drop cortisol. That alone, will put you into a more parasympathetic state that will help you to ease into your day. It will also help, you ease out of your, day it's a really nice way to fall asleep. Now, if you're in a very stressful situation, You could do little micro breath work during the day. So let's say you're going in for a presentation and you really nervous about it, or you going into have a conversation with someone that you are very nervous.

Taking a couple minutes, just take a bathroom break, go to the bathroom, take couple of minutes and do this breath. Inhale. hold, exhale a bit longer than the inhale, you will find that it will center you, it'll calm you down, It'll help your cortisol to physically come down which has all those downstream benefits that we've been talking about. You will get benefit from it, all right? So breath work, this doesn't need to add anything to the day. Like I said, when you wake up in the morning, When you open your eyes, if you can't because you've got a small child or you got to dog that needs to get out the door like I do, Maybe that first thing in the morning isn't the right time.

Maybe it's going to be a little later in your morning. But definitely as you're falling asleep, everybody can do this. It's one of the best ways I know to fall asleep. You will bore yourself to sleep literally, but it was also lower your cortisol levels. Another freebie on lowering cortisol, by the way, is something called legs up the wall. I don't know if any of you have heard of this. This is when you're lying on your back and you put your legs at the. Well, I learned this in CrossFit years ago after a particularly exhausting or terrible workout.

They would have a slide with our legs, up-the-wall and that will drop. cortisol levels. So that's something you can do for yourself as well. Okay. Number seven. Vagus nerve stimulation. We've all heard about vagal nerve. The vagus nerve is that big nerve, it's the biggest nerve that goes from the brain. It hits all the organs, its got motor, affects your digestion, your gut motility, and then it brings information back to the state of the nation in your body. That vagus nerve needs to be toned in order for us to have that parasympathetic sympathetic balance.

And it can get into a very tonic state, if you will. Now there's lots and lots of tools out there to manage the vagous nerve. I released a podcast not too long ago about a tool called the ZenBud, which is a really cool intervention, but it'll set you back a few hundred bucks.

Gratitude, Sleep, and Self-Care 27:00

So if don't have a hundred hundred or you want to try a free way to help out your vagus nerve, I have two ideas for you. One is, and this is going to make some of you people laugh, some you will have probably heard of this, humming. Humming, because of the vibration of vocal cords, actually affects the vagous nerve in a very beneficial way and that helps to tone the vagus nerve. Now, you could pair this so you can walk around the house humming, hum while you cook or hum hanging out or reading that in and of itself is going to help the vagus nerve.

Or you could do your breath work and hum. You could meditate and have there are yogic practices where that own right the humming is part of the practice with the breathwork in helping to tone the Vegas nerve so humming as a really cool strategy. The next one very interesting is putting your face in ice water, in very cold water. Now, most people they'll do, they will take a basin of water of cold, water floats, some ice cubes in there and face right in. They're not great for your hair. Tie your head back for the ladies.

So if you don't want to mess up your air, but just putting in your space in the water actually has a very positive impact on the vagus nerve. It's a bit of a complex cascade. it even helps with your body temperature regulation and you don't have to stay in there for long. You just kind of go in calmly, hold for a breath and then come back up. I remember you know what's interesting about this is I remembered as a kid I was always taught as little kid when you wake up in the morning you splash cold water on your face.

Now at the time I know I'd remember thinking oh well this a way to wake-up which it is but interestingly enough whether it was intentional or not this practice alone was way of getting that biggest nerve going first thing in morning. Cool, eh? And you don't even have to take all your clothes off and go for a cold plunge. Cold plunch is a different strategy. You could definitely do that. But right now, I wanted to stick to easy things. And putting your face in cold water definitely feels a lot easier than jumping into a cool tub of water.

Now, if that's in your wheelhouse and you want to do it, by all means, go All right, we're on number eight. This has gotten really big over the years. It's always been really and you will, if you think about it, the people who you know that you can think of who practice this just because that's the way they are, are generally happier, calmer people. And very often they're healthier. That is what my friend Benazati would call vitamin G, and that is to practice gratitude. On December 26th for many of us, We are sitting in an excess of stuff, so gratitude might be easy for us.

It might a little bit harder for certain people if you're having a tougher holiday for whatever reason. Finding even a small thing to be grateful for will pay off in spades. So there have been a multitude of studies that have done where people just speak about something that they're grateful even if they're not really feeling it, but if just articulate something they are grateful for, a small thing, I am grateful that I woke up this morning. I'm grateful to have this amazing book to read. Whatever it is, that act of expressing gratitude comes back into the body as physiological benefits.

So practice gratitude, maybe. And it doesn't have to be a big deal. I remember like there used to Be this five minute journal, and you had to write down three things you were grateful for, which was great for a while. Even one thing, right? Even when you open your eyes, if you opened your eye in the morning and talk about one think you're grateful for, whether it's something that happened yesterday or something you are looking forward to today, or you just feeling grateful that your room is really dark or that it is cold, whatever, that one things will bring you benefit.

And then at the end of the day, what's one that you grateful? If you happen to have a partner, like a life partner Tell each other, what are you grateful for today? What's one great thing that happened today. These things are just beautiful ways to prime the brain for a better night of sleep. And living in a state of gratitude we know is incredibly beneficial for our health and our state-of-mind. So we can start first thing in the morning, and then at the end of the day, we then bring it into our day at little moments during the days.

My co-host, who I do retreats with sometimes, Dasha Maximoff, did a session on microjoys. What are the little micro joys that you can celebrate during a day? Taking a moment in a today to express gratitude or joy about even the smallest thing, keeps us in that state of gratitude and joy. It will show up in your metrics at some point, I promise you. All right, number nine, getting back into more hardcore stuff, sleep. Again, it's a tough time of year for sleep. We're eating late, we're eat big meals, and we have a lot of commitments.

But do whatever you can, the nights that you control, get your sleep! Sleep is the thing that allows our body, our immune system, to function properly. And if our system is functioning properly, automatically help to lower inflammation. It allows our cortisol to come down at night. We will, our body will rejuvenate overnight. Our minds will rejovenated overnight, we will feel more resilient the next day. There are a million reasons why we need to prioritize sleep. we especially need prioritize at this time of year.

So I'm inviting you to not forget about sleep Finally, number 10. Number 10 might be a little tougher in some cases, because again, if it's a time of year where you've got a lot of people in your house you're not used to, or you are in somebody else's house, making time for yourself. So making for time yourself, this could be taking a bath, that could stepping outside into nature for a minute, This could going for walk as part of your exercise plan. This can be reading a book. It could anything that is something that you doing for you.

We often forget about ourselves at these times. We're so busy taking care of other people, meeting other peoples' needs, making sure that everyone's happy and that things are just right. And you know, a lot of people say you're talking to women. I'm talking men and women, honestly, I know a lotta guys who run around trying to make sure everybody's safe. So whether you are a man or a woman listening to this, make that you take a moment for yourself. just to calm yourself down, appreciate yourself, and appreciate something you have.

Take care of yourself. Get into the bath, take a hot shower, have a bath. Whatever it is that allows you to come back to yourself and be present for yourself in this time. All right, that was number 10. All of these things aren't hacks, right? These are firewalls. A lot of this are founded in physiology. all of things is about helping your body to be in a calmer state so that all the other fancy stuff that you're doing at all other times, whether it's peptides or supplements or protocols or medications, whatever it is, everything else will land better if we're the work.

to calm our nervous system and be in a calm state of being, right?

Final Takeaway: Pick One Stress Tool 35:00

Be in the calm State of Being. Wow, Nat, that's so articulate to be able to make fun of yourself. I think I would add number 11 there and comedy would be one of them. Go watch a comedy show. Watch a funny movie. Laugh your ass off. Be silly. These are things that are so incredibly beneficial. So all of those things, and if you can combine them and create stacks for yourself that make sense and that resonate for you, all these things will rival in many cases pharmaceuticals for offsetting stress.

It doesn't mean that if you're on an SSRI for anxiety or depression, you should throw away the bottle, but it does mean if that you start practicing some of these things, there may come a day where you can have a discussion with your doctor about reducing your dose or weaning yourself off. That's my hope for you. My challenge to you is pick one lever today, just one. Whether it's five minute breath or text a friend and reconnect, whatever it is, pick on lever and practice it and do it every day for the next, do something for next week.

See how you feel. Add on another week and another. And when you're ready, maybe add a second one, but start with just on, all right? At the end of the day, in the End, stress doesn't have to shorten your prime stress is going to be there. Stressful things will always be There. But we have the ability to mitigate the effect of that stress and to buffer the Effect of That stress on our physiology. So start small and live long. I hope that you enjoyed this episode. I hoped that your having a wonderful season wherever you are, whoever you're with, whatever you doing.

Thank you so much. We're close enough to the end of the year that I can thank you for making this an incredible year for this podcast. For me, for allowing me to serve you and in serving you to do what I love. And I'm looking forward to an incredibly 2026 with all of you. Happy holidays. and be well. Thank you.