Welcome to the huberman Lab podcast, where we discuss science and science based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and Ophthalmology at Stanford school of medicine. Today. My guest is dr. Alia crumb, dr. Crumb is a tenured professor of psychology at Stanford University and the founder and director of the Stanford mind and body lab. Her work focuses on mindsets. How, what we think. And what we believe shapes, the way that our physiology
Our biology reacts to things like what we eat or stress or exercise indeed as you will soon learn from my discussion with dr. Crumb, what you believe about the nutritional content of your food changes? The way that food impacts your brain and body to a remarkable degree. And the same is true for mindsets about exercise and stress and even medication for instance, recent work from dr. Crumbs laboratory shows that what we believe about the side effect profiles of different drug treatments were different behavioral treatments.
It's has a profound impact on how quickly those treatments work and the effectiveness of those treatments. I just want to mention one particular study that just came out from a graduate student in dr. Crumbs laboratory Lauren, how h0w e showed that how kids react to a treatment for peanut, allergies can be profoundly shaped by whether or not. Those kids were educated about the side effects of the treatment such that if they learned that the side effects were a byproduct of a treatment that would help them. And they learned a little bit about why those side effects.
Rose and that the side effects might even help them in route to overcoming their peanut allergy had an enormous impact on how quickly they move through the treatment and indeed, how much they suffered. Or in this case did not suffer from those side effects and that is, but one example that you will learn about today as we discuss, what mindsets are the number of different mindsets that exist, and how we can adopt mindsets that make us more adaptive more effective, allow us to suffer less and to perform better in all aspects of life. I personally,
Find the work of dr. Olea crumb to be among the most important work being done in the fields of biology and psychology and the interface of mind-body. Everything that she's done up until now in published and indeed the work that she continues to do, has shaped everything within my daily routines within my work routines within my athletic routines. And we probably shouldn't be surprised by the fact that dr. Come works on all these things. She was not only an incredibly accomplished tenured research professor. She's also a clinical psychologist and she was also a division 1 athlete and in
Leet gymnast at one period in her life, so she really walks the walk in terms of understanding what mindsets are and applying them in different aspects of life. I'm sure you're going to learn a ton from this conversation, as did I and Come Away with many many actionable items that you can apply in your own life. In fact, as we March into today's conversation, you might want to just put in the back of your mind. The question. What is my mindset about blank? So for instance, ask yourself? What is my mindset about stress? What is my mindset about food? What?
Does my mindset about exercise? What is my mindset about relationships of different kinds? Because in doing that, you'll be in a great position to extract the best of the information that dr. Crump presents and indeed to adapt. Those mindsets in the way. There's going to be most beneficial for you before we begin. I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford. It is however, a part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to Consumer information about science and science related tools to the general public in keeping with that theme. I'd like to thank the sponsors.
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For the record, it's Alia Chrome, but you go by Ali. Correct? That is correct.
Doctor. Ellie Chrome or just a
lie? Okay. Great. Well, I've been looking forward to talk to you for a long time, just to start off, you know, you talked a lot and worked a lot on the science of mindsets. Could you define for us? What is a mindset and what sort of purpose does it serve?
Of course. Yeah mindsets have been described or defined in a lot of ways we Define.
Says core beliefs are assumptions that we have about a domain or category of things that Orient us to a particular set of expectations explanations and goals. So that's kind of jargony and it little I can distill it down for you. So mindsets are an assumption that you make about a domain. So, take stress. For example, the nature of stress. What's your sort of core belief about that?
And mindsets that we've studied about stress. Our do you view stresses? Enhancing good for you? Or do you view it as debilitating and bad for you? Those mindsets? Those core beliefs, Orient are thinking they change. What we expect will happen to us. When we're stressed, how we explain the occurrences that happen or unfold. When we're stressed, and also change our motivation for what we engage in when we're stressed. So we have mindsets about many things, mindsets about stress, mindsets about
Says Carol dweck's work has shown mindsets about food, mindsets about medicine. You name it? It's sort of distilling down those core assumptions, that really shape and Orient, our thinking and
action. I've heard you say before that mindset simplify life in some way by constraining, the number of things that we have to consider. And it sounds to me, like, we can have mindsets about many things, as you said, what are some different mindsets. I think many people are familiar with our colleague. Carol dweck's notion of growth.
Get that. If we're not proficient, it's something that we should think about not being proficient. Yet that we are on some path to proficiency. But what are some examples of mindsets and how early do these get laid down, or do we learn them from our parents? Maybe if you could just flush it out a bit for us, in terms of what used what you've observed in? Your own science are your own life even?
Yeah, sure. So, I think it's important with with Carol dweck's work. A lot of people kind of get focused on growth motivation and all these things.
But her work really originated from thinking about what she called us implicit theories or core beliefs about the nature of intelligence or ability, right? So, do you believe that your Baseline levels of intelligence or your abilities are fixed, static set throughout the rest of your life, or do you believe that they can grow and change? Now? Those are over simplified generalizations about
About the nature of intelligence and the reality is as it always is complex, and it's a bit of both and it's all the things. But as humans, we need these simplifying systems to help us understand a complex reality. So those assumptions that we jump, 20 intelligence is fixed or intelligence is malleable. They help us to simplify this complex reality, but they're not inconsequential and consequential, right? They matter and shaping her motivation and as
He has shown, if you have the mindset that intelligence is malleable, You're motivated to work harder to grow your intelligence. If you have a setback and you're learning, you think, okay. There's something there that I can grow and learn and build from. If you have the mindset that it's fixed. You know, why work harder at math. If you don't think you're good at it, so, you know, in retrospect, it's pretty clear how these mindsets can affect our motivation. What our work has and to do is to expand
And the range of mindsets that we are studying focused on and also understand and expand the range of effects that they have. So by and large, we focused on mindsets in the domain of health and health behaviors. So I mentioned in mindsets about stress. We've also looked at mindsets about food and healthy eating. So do you have the mindset that foods that are good for you? Healthy foods are disgusting and depriving, or do you?
Of the mindset that healthy foods are indulgent and delicious. Now, you know, it could be a variety of different foods, you might have different thoughts about different healthy foods, but generally people at least in our culture, and in the west have this view that stress is debilitating, healthy foods, are disgusting and depriving. And those mindsets, whether or not they're true or false, right? Or wrong. They have an impact, and they have an impact, not just through the motivational mechanisms that dweck. And others have said,
Studied. But as our lab is started to reveal. They also shape physiological mechanisms by changing what our bodies prioritize and prepare to do. So those are just two examples, mindsets about stress, mindsets about food. We've looked at mindsets about exercise. Do you feel like you're getting enough or do you feel like you're getting an insufficient amount to get the health benefits? You're seeking mindsets about illness. Do you view? Can
Or as an unmitigated catastrophe or do you view cancer as manageable or perhaps, even even an opportunity? We've looked at mindsets about symptoms and side effects. Do you view side effects, as you know, sign that the treatment is is harmful or do you view side effects as a sign that the treatment is working? Again. These are sort of core beliefs or assumptions you have about these domains or categories, but they matter because they're shaping their
Resizing and simplifying the way we're thinking, but they're also shaping what we're paying attention to what were motivated to do. And potentially, even how our bodies
respond. Yeah. I'd love to talk about this notion of how our mindset shaping, how our bodies respond. And maybe, as an example, this if you could share with us this, now famous study that you're, you've done with a milkshake study. If you wouldn't mind sharing the major, you know, Contours of that study, and the results. Because I think,
Extremely impressive, and they really speak to this interplay between mindset and Physiology.
Certainly. Yeah. This was a study that Iran as a graduate student at Yale University. I was working with Kelly, Brownell and Peter Salve, Peter Sullivan done. A lot of work on really coining the term, emotional intelligence, studying
the presence of he's now the
president of yeah, he's done. He's done well for himself and for the University and society and Kelly, Brownell who was doing a lot of research on food and obesity and I had
Um, in doing some previous work on mindsets about exercise and Placebo effects, and exercise, and was in this sort of Food domain and this emotions and Food domain. And it really occurred to me, that there was a very simple question that hadn't been probed yet. And that was do our beliefs, about what we're eating. Change our body's physiological response to that food holding constant, the objective nutrients of that thing. So that question,
Might sound outrageous at first, but it was it's really not outrageous. If you're coming from a place of having studied in depth, Placebo, effects of placebo effects. Are this Row in medicine, at least for this sort of robust emanate demonstration in which simply taking a sugar pill. Taking nothing under the impression that it's a real medication. That might relieve your asthma, reduce your blood pressure and boost your immune system can lead to those.
Geological effects, even though there's no objective nutrients and we have more evidence on Placebo effects than we have for any other drug. Because of, because of the clinical trial process in which all new drugs and medication are medications, are required to outperform a placebo effect. So we have a lot of data on the placebo effect. Now, you know, when we can get Nuance there, we don't have a lot of data comparing the placebo effect to doing nothing, which is important for a
Learning mindset, affects our belief effects, from sort of natural occurring changes in the body. But anyways, going back to this question. It was like alright, we've moved from you know medications solving our health crises to Behavioral Medicine solving, our health crises increase people's exercise, get them to eat better to what degree are these things influenced by our mindsets? Our beliefs about them. So, to test this question, we ran a seemingly simple.
Study this was done at the Yale Center for Clinical and translational research and we brought people into our lab under the impression that we were designing different milkshakes with vastly different metabolic concentrations nutrient concentrations that were designed to meet different metabolic needs of the patrons of the hospital. Right? So you're going to come in. You're going to taste these milkshakes and we're going to measure your body's physiological response to them. This was a within subjects design.
And so it was the same people consuming two different milkshakes. Two different time points separated by a week. And at one time point, they were told that they were consuming this really high fat, High caloric, indulgent milkshake. It was like a bit 620 Cal super high, fat, and sugar. The other time point, they were told that it was a low-fat low-calorie, sensible, sort of diet Shake in reality. It was the exact same shake. It was right in the middle is like
And calories moderate amount of fats and sugars. And we were measuring their bodies. Got peptide response to this shake. And in particular. We are looking at the hormone ghrelin. So, as you know, ghrelin hunger and medical experts called the hunger hormone Rises and ghrelin Signal, you know, seek out food and then theoretically, in proportion, the amount of calories, you consume ghrelin levels. Drop signaling to the brain. Okay, you don't, you can you don't need to eat so much anymore.
And stop eating and also revving up the metabolism to burn the nutrients that were just ingested. What we found in this study was that when people thought they were consuming, the high-fat high-calorie. Indulgent milkshake in response to the shake. Their ghrelin levels dropped at a three-fold rate stronger than when they thought they were consuming the sensible shake. So essentially their bodies responded as if they had consumed more food. Even though,
Was the exact same shake at both time points. So this was really, you know, interesting and important for two reasons. Really one was that it was to my knowledge one of the first studies to show any effects of just believing that you're eating something different on your physiology. Lots of Studies have shown that believing, you're eating different things, changes, your taste, you know, and you're even your satisfaction and fullness after. But this shows that it has a metabolic or a
Component but the second piece was really important as well. And especially for me. This was one study that really transformed the way I think about how I approach eating and that was the manner in which it affected. Our physiology was somewhat counterintuitive. So I had gone in thinking the better mindset to be in when you eat is that you're eating healthy, right? Like, you know, just makes sense like Placebo effects. Think you're healthy. You'll be healthy, you know, but that was a fart.
Too simplistic way of thinking about it. And in fact, it was the exact opposite because thinking that they were eating, when these participants thought they were eating sensibly their bodies, left them still feeling physiologically hungry, right? Not satiated, which could potentially be corresponding to slower metabolism and so forth. So, if you're in the interest of maintaining or losing weight, what's the best mindset to be in its to be in a mindset that you're
Indulgently that you're having enough food that you're getting enough and at least in that study. We showed that has a more adaptive effect on ghrelin
responses. So interesting and especially interesting to me as a neuroscientist who has worked on aspects of the nervous system that are involved in conscious perception, like vision and you know motion and color perception and so forth, but also our lab has worked and is increasingly working on autonomic functions that are below.
You are conscious detection, in this case, a lie about how much something this milkshakes contain affected. A subconscious process because I have to imagine that the ghrelin pathway is not one that I can decide. Oh, you know, this particular piece of chocolate is going to really reduce my ghrelin because it's very nutrient rich. As opposed to one. If you told me that a different piece of chocolate, for instance, is low calorie or sugar-free chocolate or something, that sort the ghrelin pathway. However, it
Based on your data that the ghrelin pathway is susceptible to thoughts, which is incredible. But then again, there must be crossover between conscious thought and these subconscious or kind of autonomic Pathways. So it's really remarkable. It raises a question that I just have to ask because increasingly, so I'm involved in, you know, online discussions and you know, social media and one of the most barbed wire topics out.
There. And that's being generous, is this topic of which diet or nutrients are best. You've got people who are strictly plant-based. You've got people who are omnivores, you got people, who are carnivores, you have every variation you have intermittent fasting. Also called time restricted, feeding, and it seems like once a group and a plugs into a particular mode of eating that they feel works for them for whatever reason, energy-wise, mentally. Maybe they're looking at their blood profiles. Maybe they're not. But once they feel that it's sort of
It works for them. Each Camp seems to tout all the health benefits and how great they feel, could it be that mindset effects are involved there, that people are finding the nutritional program that they feel brings them the most enrichment of life, but also nutrients. And that their health really, is Shifting in a positive direction, but not necessarily because of the food constituents, but because of the community and the ideas and the
reinforcement, and the belief that this is the right,
Way of doing something. I think 100%, I 100% in has something to contribute. You know, I don't want to, I'm not going to weigh in on the debate, which is what I will, most certainly weigh in on is, is the notion that look going back to the placebo effect. Right? We have a outdated understanding of what that is, which is based on this randomized, control trial, you compare a drug to a placebo if the drug works better than the placebo, you say.
Eight, the drug works. If the drug doesn't outperform the placebo, you say the drug doesn't work. That's really over. Simplified. It's a good test for this specific efficacy of the drug. It's not a good test for understanding, the total impact of that drug because in the reality of things, you know, if a drug out performs a placebo then you know, you start prescribing it. But you the reality is that the total effect of that drug is a combined product of the
Cific chemical, you know, attributes of that drug and whatever is going on in the placebo effect, which is, you know, at least from our perspective. It's beliefs its social context and it's your body's natural ability to respond to something. So, you know, that's in the placebo effect example, the same is true for everything we do or consume. So when it comes to what diet you're eating both are true. It does matter.
For what it is and it matters what you think about that diet and what others around you in an our culture, think about that diet because those social contexts inform our mindsets. Our mindsets interact with our physiology in ways that produce outcomes that are really important. So let's not get dualistic and say, you know, it's either all in the mind or not in the mind. Let's also not be unnecessarily combative and say. Oh,
To be all plant based or, you know, keto or whatever. It's all of those things are a combined product of what you're actually doing and what you're thinking about. If you believe in it, if you don't, if you're skeptical or you know, in some cases you think you should be needing a certain way and then you don't live up to that, it might have even an adverse effect because of the Stress and Anxiety associated with that.
Very interesting along the lines of belief effects, as
We call these belief. Affects your mind. Yeah, is there a difference between these what I'm calling belief effects and Placebo effects. I mean, our Placebo effects distinctly different from mindset affects, or they more or less the same
thing. They're they're related. So I think Placebo effects, you know, maybe should be reserved for the, you know, conditions in which you're actually taking a placebo, which is in active substance when you get out of that, sort of placebo forces.
Drunk, you know, realm and you start looking at, you know, Placebo effects. I use quotes with my hands here in Behavioral Health. The term kind of becomes confusing because you're not, you know, in the milkshake study. We didn't give people a placebo milkshake, right? We just changed what they believed about it. So how I like to think about it, is that Placebo effects, as they're traditionally, construed are made up of three things. It's the social context mindsets are beliefs and
And the natural physiological processes in the brain and body that can produce the outcomes. And so we could just call them belief effects because the beliefs are triggering the physiological processes and the beliefs are shaped by the social context. Does that make sense? It makes sense?
Yeah. Yeah. There was a paper a year or two ago published in science. Science magazine about brain regions involved in psychogenic Fever that if people
Or you can actually do this in animal models, to think that they are sick. You get a genuine, One, Two, Three Degree increase in body temperature, 313 degrees Fahrenheit, increase in body temperature is pretty pretty impressive. Yeah, and I guess plays into, you know, symptomology generally. So I'm a Believer in belief effects.
It's also. And I just say that, you know, the term that we use in the in our field is nocebo effect for that which is sort of the placebos ugly stepsister, you know, it's when
Have beliefs cause negative consequences. So you are told you will have, you know, it's, it's very well demonstrated that when people are told about certain side effects. They're far more likely to experience those side effects when people think that they're sick or going to get sick, sometimes that can create, you know, the physiological symptoms and you know, there's there's, you know, various debates that. It's not only that physiology changes. It's also that your
And changes. So, we're experiencing things like fatigue and headache and upset stomach all the time. And then when you take a drug and somebody says you're going to feel fatigue and headache, you start noticing that you're tired and have headaches and attribute it to the drug. So some of the mechanisms are attention and some of them are real changes in physiology.
Love for you to tell us about the hotel workers study. Yeah, sure. You get asked these questions all the time, but I find these just these results. Also,
amazing. Yeah. No, I think this is a really good example of this phenomenon, right? That the total effect of anything is a combined product of what you're doing and what you think about what you're doing. So, this was a study that I ran with Ellen Langer Way back when I was an undergrad. Actually, we started this study.
Ellen, Langer is a professor of psychology at Harvard and she's done a lot of really fascinating work on her flavor of mindfulness, which is distinct from a more, you know, Eastern mind, you know, Buddhist sort of mindfulness-based work. And she, you know, she actually was the one who said to me originally. I was an athlete at the time. I was ice hockey player and I was training constantly and, and one day, I'll never forget it.
I said, you know, you know, the benefit of exercise is just a placebo, right? And I was like, well that's outrageous Ellen's for Ellen's Ellen's known for, for saying, very provocative. But also very wise things and that statement really got me thinking about that. So we designed the study together and that was to look at, you know, how would you study if exercised the benefits of exercise were a placebo? How would you even test that? Because you know, what does it mean to give a placebo exercise? We sort of flipped it on its head and we found
And a group of people who were getting a lot of exercise but weren't aware of it that they were right. So this we settled on group of Hotel housekeepers. So these are women working in hotels who were on their feet all day long, pushing carts, changing, Linens, climbing stairs, you know, cleaning bathrooms vacuuming. It was clear that they were getting Above and Beyond, at least the surgeon general's requirements, at that time, or which were to accumulate
30 minutes of moderate physical activity per day, but what was interesting was when we went in and surveyed them and ask them. Hey, how much exercise do you think you're getting a third of them? Said zero? Like, I don't get any exercise and the average response was like a three on a scale of 0 to 10. So, it's clear that even though these women were active. They didn't have that mindset, right? They had the mindset that their work was just work hard to make.
Thankless work that led them to feel tired and you know in pain at the end of the day, but not that it was good for them that it was good exercise. So what we did was, we took these women and we randomize them into two groups and we told half of them that their work was good exercise. This, in this case. It was true factual information. We oriented them to the surgeon general's guidelines. We oriented them to the benefits that they should be receiving and then we had measured them previously on.
Their physiological metrics like weight and body fat and blood pressure and we came back four weeks later and we tested them again. And what we found was that these women even though they hadn't changed anything in their behavior. At least that was detectable to us. They didn't work more rooms. They didn't start, you know, doing pull-ups or push-ups and between cleaning hotel rooms. As far as I'm concerned. They didn't report any changes in their diet, but they had benefits to their health. So they lost
Wait, they decrease their systolic blood pressure by about 10 points on average and they started feeling better about themselves than their bodies and and their work, not surprisingly.
It's amazing. How should we take conceptualize that result in light of all of our efforts to get more out of exercise, right? Because earlier you mentioned it from the milkshake study and our perceptions about nutrient density that you know, it's
A little bit the right message that actually a little bit counterintuitive that if you think, oh, this is very low, calorie nutrient sparse than it's good for me in the context of losing weight, for instance, but it turns out the opposite is true because as you as you told us the the body responds differently, when you think something is nutrient dense and can actually suppress hunger more. So in light of this result, if I were to say, okay, I'm my current understanding of the literature. Is that getting somewhere between
In 50 and 180 minutes per week of cardiovascular exercise. It's probably a good idea for most people. If I tell myself that it's not just a good idea, but that it's extremely effective in lowering, my blood pressure and maintaining healthy weight, etc. Etc. According to these results. It will have an enhanced effect on those metrics. Is that right?
Definitely. So this is a really important point because what this reveals is that we have to be more thoughtful and how we go about
debating people to exercise or teaching people about the benefits. Our current approach is just to basically tell people large, you know, here's what you need to get. Here's what you need to get good for, you know, to get enough benefits to receive the enough exercise to receive the health benefits. The problem with that approach is that most people aren't Meeting those benefits. Yet aren't Meeting those requirements yet. And the risk with that.
Is that? Well the intention with that is to motivate them because you know, Public Health officials think. Well if I just tell people you need to get more exercise because it's good for you. They'll do it. We know now that that doesn't work that these these guidelines are not motivational. They don't change our behavior. And what our work adds to that is that not only is it not motivational. It also creates potentially a mindset that, you know, makes people worse off than they were without.
Knowing about the guidelines. So again, It's Tricky. I'm not saying that mindset is everything. Certainly exercise is good for us and use is helpful for us. It's one of the things we have the best data on. So I'm not saying, oh, exercises, all Placebo. What I am saying is that we need to be more mindful about. How do we motivate people to exercise? But how do we help people to actually reap the benefits of the exercise? They are already doing now Octavius.
Who is a grad student in my lab ran? A number of interesting studies along this. These lines one in which she looked at three nationally, representative data sets which had this interesting question in them, which was how much exercise do you get relative to others? Do? Get about the same a little more, a lot more. Do you get a little less or a lot less? Right. So, you know, the audience that your listeners, you could all answer this and then
In in these datasets what she did was she had, you know, pulled from data that tracked, death rates over the next 21 years and a couple interesting things revealed themselves one, was that the correlations between these perceptions of exercise relative to others and people's actual exercises measured through accelerometer data, as well as more rigorous sort of. What did you do today? Kind of data those don't correlate watch it all belong.
Well, people lie, but I'll miss perceive they misperceive and or, you know, who's to say? It's misperceiving. There's just Everything's Relative, right? If you're used to do triathlons. Very seriously. So if you were to ask me now, I feel like I'm totally inactive right because I'm not doing anything near what I used to. And if that's my focus set, right? I feel like I'm not exercising much. But if I think about, you know, compared to other people given what I know about, you know, naturally.
National representative statistics and I could feel like, oh, I'm getting a lot, right? So you can see how these perceptions are just decoupled from objective reality. And what we found in these studies is that that one question mattered in some cases more than objective activity, but in all cases, controlling for objective activity and predicting death rates and in some in one of the samples,
Was a 71 percent higher risk of death rate, you know, if people rated themselves as feeling like they were getting less activity than others. So yeah, that's a big deal. It's a big deal and I again, you know, that study is cross sectional. Longitudinal it was not experimental but, you know, combined you these really sort of, you know, Cole last to say, hey, this is important to write like let's figure out ways to be active.
And get people active. But let's also not make people feel horrible about themselves. When they're not getting enough and going back to the the hotel study. Again. I mentioned I did that at a time when I was a was a division, one ice hockey player. At the time. We were training all the time and I, I was in an unhealthy mindset about that. I never felt like I was getting enough, I would, you know, come off a two-hour practice into a weightlifting session and then I would get on the elliptical for 30 minutes because
thought I had to do that. Also my teammates who were with me at the time could have tested that. And so, that study was really helpful for me to realize that I needed to pay attention, not just to what I was doing. But also take care of my mindset about that. And and and I think the essence is, how do you get people to feel like they're getting enough? It's a sense of enoughness that really
matters. I can see the Dilemma because you don't want people thinking that that exercise and
it's positive effects are so potent that they can get away with a three minute walk each day and that they're good because most likely they are not, but again, you don't want them to be. So back on their heels psychologically, that they don't even do that or that they never exceed that by very much, but it seems like the message from the milkshake study and what we're talking about. Now, in terms of exercise would be to really communicate.
General public, that, that food has a potency even healthy foods, have a potency to give us energy to fuel our, you know, immune system and endocrine system, Etc. And that exercise has a remarkable potency. And that, that potency can be enhanced by believing in or understanding that potency is that an accurate way to State it
totaled. That's exactly right. And that's where I really feel like we need to push and what I try to do in our
Our research just to not just show. Oh mines that matters isn't that interesting but it's it's both matter, right? Both exercise and what you think about it matter both what you eat? And how do you think about what you eat matter? And so we really as individuals and as a society need to work on it. What is the right way to cultivate both behaviors and mindsets? About those behaviors that serve us and in the food context, this again, that milkshake study really?
Changed me on a personal level because I had been somebody who was constantly trying trying to restrain my eating, right? And you know, I wanted to maintainer, you know, lose weight look fit. And so I felt was like, well I should dye it, I should have low calorie, low carb low, this low that put up what that was doing was putting me into this constant mindset of restraint. And what that study suggested was that that mindset was potentially counteracting.
NG any benefit, right? Or any objective effects of the restraint and diet because my brain was saying, okay, you're straining, maybe my body was, you know, responding to that, but the brain was also saying, eat more food, stay hungry cuz you need to survive. And so the answer isn't. Oh, we'll throw everything into the wind and just drink and diligent milkshakes all day long. The answer is eat, healthy foods.
You know based on the latest science and what we know to be true about nutrients in our body's response to them, but try to do. So in a mindset of indulgence, a mindset of satisfaction, a mindset of enjoyment, right? That is really the trick and that's what I at least try to do in my own
life. I love that and as I get more involved in the end of public facing Health Communications, I this comes up again and again, you know, how should we conceptualize our Behavior? How should we think about all these options?
That are offered to us. And I am excited that the potency of mindsets are coming through again. And again, so I have a question about this. I don't know if the this study has ever been done but a lot of these mindset affects our something that years ago. I felt I did vis-à-vis sleep because I was in graduate school and as a postdoc and even as an undergraduate, I had so much work to do that. I decided I would sleep when I was dead in quotes, not a good idea from what we know. However,
I found that a couple nights of minimal sleep or even an all-nighter, and I could do pretty well. Eventually it would catch up with me, has there ever been a study exploring, whether or not the effects of sleep deprivation can be impacted by these mindset? Affects, because over the years. I keep learning more and more about how much sleep I need. And I've really emphasize lie, but I do feel much better when I'm getting it, but as new parents know, or students know where athletes know, where anyone that lives, a normal life find sometimes that
They don't get a good night's sleep, would believing that. We can tolerate that and push through it and function just fine. And then it's not going to kill us or give us Alzheimer's. Could that help us deal with a with a poor night's sleep or even 2 or chronic sleep
deprivation. Certainly. I would I would guess there's been one study to my knowledge that's tested that Dragon. Awe and colleagues, and they looked at, they had people come in and they gave them sort of a, I think it was a sham.
Sort of EEG test to sort of figure out the how, you know, this was done a number of years ago. Now we actually have no devices to test this, but there's with this sham test and then they gave people fake feedback about the quality of their sleep. And you know, how had had been the night before and they also asked the participants how they felt about their sleep. And essentially what they found was that the this sham feedback.
As if they were told that they had gotten lower quality, sleep led to deficits and variety of cognitive tasks, and that was sort of decoupled from their actual, you know, qualities of sleep. At least a self-reported. So, that's one study that attest to this. I think, certainly, I mean, I would, you know, I would bet a lot of money. I haven't run those myself, but that your mindsets can push around your, you know, cognitive functioning.
Effects of sleep, but once again, it's not all or nothing right there are real important benefits of sleep and how far we can push around that through our mindset is an open question
that the result that you mentioned is really interesting because a lot of people use these sleep trackers. Now, they're using Rings or wristbands. In fact, my lab has worked pretty closely with a company. They supplied us data on how well people are sleeping and you get a score. People get their score back when they see that score. They might think based on these results.
Results, uh, my sleep, my recovery score. My sleep score was poorer, I shouldn't expect much for myself today, or I it make sense that my memory would be going for this reason. And I'll probably lose a few friends for saying this, but hopefully I'll gain a few as well. That's why I like to just do it. Subjective score for myself. If I wake up in the morning, I just decide. Okay. Did I sleep? Well or not? I don't like seeing a number. I don't like getting a readout from a device. That's me. I know a lot of people like it and they can be very useful but gosh it seems that these beliefs.
Facts are weaving in at all levels. I'd love for us to talk about stress because your lab has worked extensively on this. And if you would, could you tell us at some point about the study that you've done about informing people about the different effects of stress, but also if there's an opportunity, some takeaways about how we could each conceptualize stress in ways, that would make, it serve us better as opposed to harm us and our mental.
And physical
performance. Great. Yeah, so I had, you know, I'd come off the heels of doing some research in exercise and diet and finding these provocative and also counterintuitive effects of is with respect to like how we should try to motivate people. Right? And and you know, I was I was thinking about this and this, you know, grouping of going from, you know, medicines is to saving us to behaviors to saving us and
How those behaviors might be influenced by mindsets. The obvious next thing to think about with stress, right? Because it's like, okay. Well you want to be healthier and fix your diet, fix your exercise and stress less. And you know, so I started doing some digging into the nature of stress and a couple things were clear. One was that the public health message was very clear, right? That stress was bad, right unmitigated and harm harmful.
On our health, our productivity, our relationships, our fertility, our cognition. You name it, right? The messages that were out there by and large over simplified messages focused on the damaging consequences of stress, but as you know, if you actually dive deeper into the literature on stress and the origins of stress, what you find is that, you know, the literature like most literature. There's not so clear-cut and in fact, there's a large amount of
Evidence to support the fact that the experience of stress, meaning, encountering, adversity or challenge in one's goal related efforts, does not have to be debilitating. And in many cases, the body's response was designed to enhance our ability to manage at those moments. Right? So some research showing that stress Narrows our Focus increases, our attention speeds up the rate at, which were able to process information. There was some research.
Search out there showing this phenomenon of physiological toughening the process by which the release of catabolic hormones and the stress response recruit or activate anabolic hormones, which help, as you know, build our muscles, build our neurons, to help us grow and learn. And there was a whole body of emerging research on post-traumatic growth, or this phenomenon in, which even the experience of the most traumatic stressors, the most chronic and enduring stressors.
Could lead not to destruction. But in fact, the exact opposite to an enhanced sense of connection with our values connection to others sense of joy and passion for living. And so, you know, I found that to be interesting and you know my work since then has been not to try to argue that stress is enhancing and not debilitating but try to point out that the true nature of stress.
Is a paradox. The true nature of stress is manifold and complex and lots of things can happen. But to question, what's the role of our mindset about stress in shaping our response to stress? So some work had already been done looking at your perception of the stressor, right? It said you view a stressor like a challenging exam or a health diagnosis as a challenge or a threat and that had shown pretty convincingly that
View stressors more as a challenge less, as a threat that your brain and body responds more more adaptively. What our question was was to take the sort of psychological construal, One Step higher and abstraction. So not just the stressor, but the nature of stress, right to you, you know, I at that core level. Do you view stress as something that's bad, is going to kill us and therefore should be avoided or do you view some stresses natural?
And something that's going to enhance us. And so we set out to design, a series of studies to test the extent to which these mindsets about stress mattered. We first, this again, was with Peter Salve and Shawn achor. Originally, we designed a measure to test people's mindsets, about stress simple questions, like what extent do you believe or agree? Or disagree with statements, like stress, enhances my performance and productivity.
S, heightens, my vitality, and grow things like that. And we found in a number of correlational studies that, that more enhancing stress mindset, was linked to Better Health outcomes, better well-being, and higher performance. So then we set out to see if we could change people's mindsets. And in our first test of this, we decided to do so by creating these multimedia films, that showcased research and
If dotes facts about stress, all true, but oriented towards one mindset or the other, right? So you can imagine one set of film showed basically the messages that were out there in the public health context, the other showed. Hey, you know, stress is, you know, stress has been linked to these things. But in fact the body's stress response was designed to do this. Did you know, it could do that. And we had empowering images like LeBron James making the free throw in the final minute.
Is missing it, right? So, all of these things are true, you know, possibilities, but oriented to two different mindsets about stress.
So, either people saw a video that basically made it seem like stress will diminish. You crush, you reduce you or a video very similar stress will grow you bring out your best and maybe even take you to heightened levels of performance that you've never experienced
before. Exactly exactly. So yeah, examples in the sports. We also had like true leaders emerge.
And the moments of greatest stress, you know. Churchill and so, all those examples are out there for both, the enhancing nature and the debilitating nature and our question was does orienting people two different mindsets change how they respond to stress. So this study was done in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. We worked with UBS a company Financial Service Company that was undergoing pretty massive amounts of layoffs. So these employees were
About being laid off, they were taking on more pressure. It was just a tough time and we randomize them into three conditions. And this was all pre-work before getting a training on stress. But the three different conditions, some watched no videos, some watched the stress will crush you videos and some watched the stress could enhance you videos. And what we found was that just, you know, it was a total of nine minutes of videos over the course of the week led to change.
Has in their mindsets about stress, which led to changes in their physiological symptoms associated with stress. So people who watch the enhancing films had fewer back aches, muscle tension, and so Omnia, racing, heart and so forth. And they also reported performing better at work compared to those who watch the debilitating videos. Now, interestingly. We didn't make anyone worse with the debilitating videos that which is, which is good. We had, we had told that
IRB we didn't expect that because that message was already out there. That's what they were already seeing that wasn't new to them. It was more this enhancing perspective that turned out to be inspiring.
I love that study. And I do we both have friends and ties in the Special Operations community, Through just sort of happenstance and we can maybe we'll get into that a little later, but a good friend from that Community, always says, you know, there are only three ways to go through life at any
Moment which is either back on your heels flat footed or forward Center of mass. And I said, well, well, what's the key to forward Center of mass? And he said it stress is what places you in forward Center of mass, meaning leaning forward and into Challenge. And I know that you've actually looked at that community and it does really seem like, that's a mindset that either, they have going in or that they cultivate through the course of their training. But this notion that stress is what puts us in Forward. Motion is true physiologically, right? I mean, adrenaline's major role is to place us in,
A moment of or biases towards action. That's why we tremble. It's it would the body trying to initiate action. But actually, this is probably a good opportunity. If it was, if there's anything interesting to extract from the study on on SEAL Teams. What was
it? Yeah. I know I loved working with with the seals at one of the interesting things we found. So at the, we had, we've studied this, you know, measured this mindset in several different populations and in every single one that we have tested.
So far, the average had been on the debilitating side of the scale. So just saying stress is best stress is bad, right? And, you know, you know, like with measures of growth and fixed mindsets about intelligence. Attends people are in the middle, but oftentimes have a more positive mindsets about intelligence. That was not the case with stress. It's still not the case of trying to get the message out there except for this group of Navy SEALs. So they were actually recruits so people who were going through
Training in order to become Navy Seals and we found that they on average had stresses enhancing mindset. Perhaps not surprisingly, right? If you're going in to devote your whole life to being a Navy SEAL. You must have some inclination, that stress is a source of strength for you. But what we found with them, we measured this at the beginning of their basic training of buds training and then looked at how, well, they succeeded through that program. So as
You know, this is an extremely rigorous program, you know, at the time it was only like ten or twenty percent of the oil is trainees. Make a
real shifted. Yeah, sometimes. No Matt. No matter how hard pressures on the community change that the numbers are still about on average about
15%? Yeah. Wow. So what we found was that our measure predicted that rate. So people who even within that range had a more stresses enhancing mindset. We're more likely to complete training, become a
They also had faster obstacle course times, and they were rated by their peers more positively. So, you know, again, let's break this down, right? This doesn't mean and other people get me, people get this wrong. Sometimes. They think that I'm saying that a stress is enhancing. Mindset means, you should like stress, right? Well, maybe seals do but that's not what we're saying, right? Having a stresses enhancing mindset. Doesn't mean the stressor is a good thing, right? It does.
Don't mean it's a good thing that you have to go into combat and it's not pretty right. It doesn't mean that getting diagnosed a cancer. Diagnosis is a good thing or being an abject poverty is a good thing. These are not good things, but the experience of the stress associated with that, the challenged, the adversity that experience can lead to and enhancing outcomes with respect to not just our cognition, but our health, our performance and our well-being.
So that mindset. Right? How does that work? Right. Well, it works through a number of different Pathways one is that it changes fundamentally what we're motivated to do. So if you you know, just imagine we're stressed about something maybe a global pandemic for Professionals for instance, you know, and you think that stress is bad, then what's your motivation? Right? Your motivation is to. Well first you get worried about the stress.
Right now. Not only do you have the pandemic, you're stressed about the stress of the pandemic but s is, your reaction is typically to do. One of two things. It's either to freak out and do everything you can to make sure that this doesn't affect you, you know, negatively or to check out and say, oh, it's not a big deal. I'm going to deal with it. I, you know, you're basically in denial. So people who have a stresses debilitating mindset and we've shown this, in our research, tend to go to one of the other of those extremes they freak out or they check out. Why? Because of stress is bad. You need to either
Get rid of it and deal with it or or it needs to not exist. Right? If you have a stress is enhancing mindset, the motivation changes, right? Then the motivation is. How do I utilize the stress to realize the enhancing outcomes? What can we do here right to learn from this experience to make us stronger fitter, you know have better science and treatments for the future deep in my relationships with others and prove, you know.
My priorities and so forth, right? So the motivation changes the effect around it changes. It doesn't make it easy to deal with, but we've shown in our research is that people who have a stresses enhancing mindset, have more positive effect, not necessarily less negative affect and a potentially changes physiology. We have a few studies that show that people who are, you know, inspired to adopt more enhancing mindsets have more moderate cortisol response.
And they have higher levels of DHEA levels in response to stress. So more work needs to be done on the physiology. But I'd love your take on. Yeah, I think in isms through which that's possible.
Yes. And DHA, of course, as an anabolic hormone in both men and women very interesting because we had a guest on this podcast. He actually is a, he's a PhD scientists who runs the UFC Performance Training Institute. His name is Duncan French, and his
Graduate work at UConn stores was very interesting. It was in exercise science and Physiology what he showed was that. If you could Spike the adrenaline response, I think they did this through first-time Skydive or something like that. That testosterone went up. Now, this spits in the face of everything that we're told about stress and testosterone levels, right? And this is also been looked at in females with estrogen. Although of course, there's estrogen and testosterone, both males and females, but that's how they did.
Sign the study. So turns out that at least in the short term that a very stressful event can raise anabolic hormones. And I think that people forget at a mechanistic level, that adrenaline is epinephrine and epinephrine is, derived biochemically derived from the molecule dopamine. If you look at the pathway and even just Google it and go images. You'll see that epic adrenaline is made from dopamine and dopamine and these anabolic hormones, have a very close. They're sort of close cousins. They work together.
In the pituitary and hypothalamus. So it makes sense that one could leverage stress toward growth and towards anabolism as opposed to cannibalism, which is NOT saying cannibalism as an eating other people. But catabolic catabolic processes, as I guess, the right way, to refer to it, but what's again, remarkable to me is that all of these brain structures, that control, dopamine epinephrine testosterone and estrogen, they're all thought to be in the subconscious. Meaning below are our ability to flip.
Switch and turn them on or off and yet mindset seem to impact them. So, I all that to say that there's a clear mechanistic basis by which, this could all work. And. And so, I'm on the one hand. I'm surprised because they, these are incredible results. On the other hand. I'm not surprised because there's a physiological substrate there that could readily, explain
them. Yeah, and I think, I think figuring out exactly how it works is really, you know, we should
do that. We should do the collaborate. We've got common.
Friends in both departments, so we should we should do it
while but I did want to mention I, you know, the way, the way I think about mindset and again, I think we need to study this. I'm not a neuroscientist. So I haven't looked at this, but this is something we could do. But the way I think about mindset is that it's mindsets are kind of a portal between conscious and subconscious processes. They operate as a default setting of the mind, right? So, if you know,
Sort of programmed in there, you have stress equals bad, right? That is going to, you know, couldn't that? That's going to be something maybe caution conscious, right? But it doesn't have to be conscious, right? You don't people don't have to know their mindsets about stress until they're asked, really? It's, that's been programmed in through our upbringing through Public Health messages and through media and other things. And it kind of sits there is an assumption in the brain and the Brain.
Rain is then figuring out how should it respond to this situation? And if the Assumption, the default, the programming is, stress, is bad, that's gonna through our subconscious trigger all the things that's like, okay. Well, I need to like, you know, rev up the things that protect me versus rev up, the things that helped me grow. And so that's at least how I think about it. And what's cool about it. Is that because it operates as a sort of
Portal it communicates with more, you know, subconscious physiological processes, but it can also be accessed through our Consciousness, right? So just talking about this, right, for your listeners there, now invited to bring their stress mind, sets up to the Consciousness and say, what is my stress mindset? How am I thinking about stress? Can I reprogram that? Can I start to think about it as more enhancing, that takes a little bit of a conscious work?
Tension Ali. But then once you do that, it can that can kind of operate in the background influencing how your body responds and you don't have to say, okay. I'm stressed. I better tell my, you know, anabolic hormones, right? That doesn't work, that way. No, but these mindsets can help with the translational process.
I love the idea that mindsets are at the interface between the conscious and subconscious. And I think there's there's a lot to unpack there but
It clearly is the case that the mindset they sort of act as heuristics, right? And as we talked about earlier, they can limit what the number of things to focus on. Because one thing that is really stressful, is trying to focus on everything all the time. I mean, trying to navigate the public health around anything. The public health information around anything is kind of overwhelming. As you mentioned for stress, you see a lot in the stresses will crush you and then you can also find evidence that stress will grow you.
How should we the listeners, think about stress? And what's the most adaptive way to think about stress? And should we talk about our stress? Should we not talk about our stress? Is there a short list of ways that we can cope with stress better? Or maybe I should be careful with the word cope. Is there a way that we can leverage stress to our
advantage? Great. Yeah, and that's an important important Nuance in your language, which is people of
By and large come from a place of, how do you manage stress? How do you cope with it? Which implies, how do you fight against it that case fight against Rogers, yoga classes
and yeah fight against it?
And yeah, the real challenge is, how do we leverage it? How do we utilize it? How do we work with it? And yeah, I have a lot of thoughts on this. The first and most most important thing is to clarify, our definition of stress. So I think people,
People often associate that the stress, my negative stress mindset is so Insidious that now, people Define stress with its negative consequences. So the first step is to decouple that and to realize that stress is a neutral right yet to be determined effect of experiencing or anticipating adversity in your goal related efforts. So, let me unpack that a little
Are you can be in the midst of it or you could just be worried about something happening. That's one aspect second is adversity or challenge. So something that's working against. Yeah, but the third piece is critical and that is in your goal related efforts. What that means is that we only stress about things. We care about things that matter to us. So, this is really important, right? Because stress is
Linked with it's the other side of the coin of things we care about, right? And so I think that's the first thing to realize write that as humans we stress because we care and we don't stress about things, we don't care about. So the simplified example, I like to use is, you know, if Johnny was failing school.
That wouldn't stress you out. Unless Johnny, was your son or you were Johnny. Are you really cared about the educating the Johnny's of the world? Right? It only becomes stressful to the extent that you care about it. So, why are we trying to fight or run away or hide, or merely cope with our stress? Or you know, overcome it through our massages when the stress is connected to the things we care about. So then the question becomes, okay, if that's
It's true. How can I better utilize or leverage or respond to the inevitable? Stresses that we're going to experience? I'm not saying go out and seek out more stress. What I am saying is that you're going to experience stress. If you have any cares or values or passions and most all of us do. And so then what do you do? And we've developed a three step approach to adopting a stresses enhancing mindset and briefly. It's the
first step is to just acknowledge that your stress to own it. See it be mindful of it. The second step is to welcome it. Why would you welcome it? You welcome it because inherently in that stress is something you care about. So you're using it as an opportunity to reconnect to what is it that I care about here. And then the third step is to utilize the stress response to achieve the thing you care about.
Not spend your time money effort, energy trying to get rid of the stress. Does that make sense extensions? And I
love it as somebody who's laboratory studies the physiological effects of stress, the effects that impressed me the most are for instance, the narrowing of visual attention that then drives a capacity to parse time more. Finally, which then drives the capacity to process information faster. It's almost like a superpower, right? And
Yes, it can feel uncomfortable often. But I love the idea that acknowledging it, embracing it, and then understanding its power and leveraging that power I think is in it. What I like so much about that framework is that the stress response is very generic. We unlike the relaxation response. We don't actually have to train up the stress response. So we all kind of get this as a as a freebie and then it sounds like it's a question of what we end up doing with
that, right?
On cellular a father of stress at himself as a nonspecific response, right? So it's, it occurs. It's what you're doing with it. It's how you're channeling it. And yeah, like we talked about before, what most people do is they stress about the stress, which then over exacerbates it, or they check out from the stress, which leads to depression and anhedonia because by checking out from stress, you're also checking out from the things we care
about and substance abuse. Exactly like Aliana Lemke who also we had the good.
I am having as a guest on this podcast, talked a lot about this that, you know, so much of substance abuse because she runs the addiction Clinic over on the med side of Campus, takes over people's lives because of this increased ability to to find a solution to the stress that then eventually becomes its own stress or and its own problem. Well, I love that that mindset and framework and love for you to tell us just a bit.
About what you're up to right now. And what's most exciting to you? Now if you are able or willing to talk about some of the work, that's on the way, I saw a brief mention of something on your Publications website of a paper about influencers, online influencers and nutrition at that might not be the main thrust of what you're up to. But if you're able to tell us about it, sort of interesting given that a lot of the communication in and around this podcast, takes place through social media, and I've kind of launched into this.
Get. Now, we're constantly bombarded with health information and an influencers termite in even known till a couple of one could argue one way or the other, but the so what is the deal with influencers? Are they doing something good for health information or they ruin are they ruining the landscape and don't try and protect my feelings known as I now know, that stress is actually an asset.
Yes. Well, I you know,
That work is part of a body of work that we've been sort of venturing into, which is to understand where do these mindsets come from? Right. And I mentioned, sort of Public Health entities as one source of say our mindsets about stress, but I think that our mindsets are influenced by four different sources. First is our upbringing, how our parents talked about, you know, things like when we're stressed or food or other things.
Second is culture and media. So movies, you know, podcasts Nat and now social media. Third is influential others. So what doctors say to us or close friends or peers and fourth is your conscious choice. So, you know, we talked about that a little, you do have we have, as humans have the ability to be mindful of, and to change our mindsets.
But you know, the social media and influence our stuff has been in part an attempt to understand. Where do our mindsets about things like healthy foods, come from and Brad. Turn walled. Who was a former grad student in my lab has done a series of really interesting studies on this showing that you know, if you rate the nutritional quality of the, you know, top grossing movies in the last 20 years. Are you look at the Instagram accounts of all the most influential people?
On Instagram, what you and you analyze the nutrition content of what they're eating. What he's shown is that, you know, depending on the study 70 to 90% of those movies are influencers, would fail the legal standards for advertising in the UK. So they're putting out their nutrition contents that are, you know, maybe not surprisingly, but undeniably unhealthy. And, you know, to me that's
That's interesting and important. It shows that we're kit. Where are we getting this mindset? That, you know, those unhealthy foods are pleasurable, desirable. What's maybe even more interesting than that, is, some of the work that he and others, in our lab have done to show that the ways people are talking about the foods. They're eating really matter to. So, generally, what we found is that when people talk about unhealthy Foods, they use language that
Connotes, a sense of excitement, fun. Sexiness danger Indulgence. Basically anything? Good and
desirable gender should be like cookies, cakes. Hi sugar. Sorry. Yeah, really
unhealthy. Truly unhealthy Foods or yeah, that's actually of the objective. What help means is challenging. But yeah, high-fat
high-sugar. I think there's pretty good agreement. Now that excessive sugar. Yeah isn't
good and highly processed.
Yes. I'm process accessories.
I think there's General consensus. I'm sure someone will if you're going to come after anyone. Come after me. I'll Stand me.
But on the other hand, when people are talking about, if they do which you know, healthy foods aren't portrayed in media. They aren't portrayed by influencers, rarely, ever. And when they are, they're often talked about with language, that conveys a sense of deprivation. It's, you know, it's nutritious but it's it's sort of boring. It's bland. It's like every time the whole, it's the post holiday. Exactly.
Right. Hmm, and this is really important because, you know, you're doing all this work, try it, you know, and others are doing all this work. Trying to inform people about what actually is good for them. And meanwhile, there's this, you know, hurricane of other, you know, Force. That's telling people that seeping into our minds, that sure those might be good for you. But those foods are not fun, or sexy, or indulgent, or desirable in any way, shape, or form, right? And it fits all
also paid advertising for fast foods and sugary Beverages, and other things. So it's not surprising that we have this mindset. That healthy foods are the less desirable thing to eat because of those cultural and social forces. What our work has just tried to do is to reveal that, you know, quantify it as a way to say. Alright, let's maybe be a little bit more mindful about how we talk about healthy foods and could, you know, if you're a movie producer?
Can you be a little bit more mindful to Showcase healthy and delicious foods? And have the characters talk about him in ways that are more appealing. There's a lot of room for people who produce this content to have an impact, not just on, you know what people do, but what they think about the foods they're
eating. It's really interesting. I hadn't thought about until now but it makes sense. That any food that's packaging can be sold is can be woven into a film or
Noted by a celebrity influence or not a health influencer per se, but celebrity influence our because they'll get paid, right? It's part of the the ecosystem that allows them an income and it feeds back on sales to the company and whereas things that can't be commoditized. It's it's more difficult, right? It's hard to the whoever makes oranges and sells oranges is an unlikely to promote oranges in a celebrity post or in a movie because
Oranges can be purchased from many many sources that there's no identifiable source of, of oranges as there is with a packaged food, for instance.
Yeah, but the interesting thing we found in those studies is that it wasn't driven by promoted content or branded content. There's some of that certainly and yeah, all of the promoted and branded content is usually for processed high sugar foods, but 90% or more of these foods that they were showing, we're not promoted.
Adore branded. And so there's a lot of flexibility in what, you know, these producers are influencers could show on their media. Although it goes both ways, right? It's not just the producers and the influencers responsibility. The public is reacting to this and we showed to that people respond more positively there. More likes on posts about unhealthy Foods. So it's a, it's a yeah.
It's a sort of a distasteful and in neck it, you know, it's a distasteful culture around healthy eating and we really have a lot to do to change
it. Yeah. Well, it's dopamine circuits through and through just that the site of some fact, a very calorie dense. Extremely tasty food drives, those dopamine circuits, and for, and I realize that there are people out there who derive the same sort of or similar levels of pleasure from
Healthy foods, and that's a wonderful thing. If one can accomplish that. So we just need more of. That is what it sounds like.
Yeah, exactly. And that's what's really inspiring to me. At least, is that it is possible, right? I mean, people think oh well, vegetables are just inherently less tasty than ice cream and it's like, well, that's not necessarily true. Also, it doesn't have to be a competition, right? I don't have to get my three year old to hate ice cream in order for it or like broccoli. There's a lot more I can be doing to help shape a more positive approach.
Oriented indulgent mindset around healthy, nutritious, vegetables, and fruits and other Foods, right? In addition to having her like ice cream, right? And that's totally
fine. Sounds like a really interesting study when it's published. Please let me know. And I'll I
think it was actually released this week. Oh, great. Yeah. We'll be sure to
get em Internal Medicine. Jama internal. Okay, great Journal. I will definitely talk about it on social media and elsewhere. Sounds very interesting. What else are you up to lately?
That's my favorite question to ask any scientist or colleague. By the way, is what do you most excited about lately? What, what, what do you up late thinking about and getting up early thinking
about? Yeah, so hands down the thing. I'm most excited. Well, I guess there's so many things, the thing that I'm most into right now, we're doing the most work in is, you know, I started by getting inspired by Placebo effects and medicine. I did a long stint in Placebo or belief like effects in Behavioral Health.
And now we're moving back into medicine. So really interested in looking at how we can work with active drugs and treatments to make them better and make the experience of them better by instilling different mindsets. So one study we did along those lines. We worked with kids or undergoing treatment for food allergies. So allergies to peanuts. For example, this was with Carrie Nadeau. Who's the head of the Stanford Allergy Center here?
She has a great treatment for food allergies. Basically kids take gradually increasing, doses of the thing. They're allergic to like peanuts and over the course of six or seven months, these kids become, you know, less reactive to peanuts. And the problem with that treatment is it's really difficult because they're having all sorts of negative symptoms and side effects. These kids are getting itchy Mouse and upset.
Stomach, they're puking and it's scary because they're literally eating the thing that they've been told might kill them. Right? And what we did in this study was we attempted to improve the experience and outcomes of that by reframing mindsets about the symptoms and the side effects. So as it was being conducted before, the kids were told look, these side effects are just an unfortunate byproduct of this treatment and you have to sort of a
For them to get through it, but what we found in our conversation with Carrie was that the reality of those side effects was not so - in fact, they were mechanistically linked to the body, learning how to tolerate peanuts or the allergen. And so what we did was we worked with in a trial, they were all getting the treatment, but half of them were helped to see this more positive mindsets, that symptoms and side effects from this treatment.
We're a positive signal that the treatment was working and their bodies were getting stronger. And what we found was that that mindset led to reductions in anxiety. Fewer symptoms. When at the highest Doses and most interestingly of all they had better outcomes. So based on immune markers, that were a sign of the allergic tolerance, those who had this mindset throughout had better outcomes to the treatment. So that's just one example, I think, you know, my goal is really
To move us beyond the placebo versus drug, you know, mindset versus Behavior to get to a place where we can blend them together and maximize the benefit of these treatments. So we're doing a lot of studies like that. You know, how can we improve treatment for cancer with different mindsets? We've done some work recently with the covid-19 vaccine and symptoms and side effects. So that's what I'm really passionate about.
About
right now.
It is incredible. I can't wait to read that study. Is that one out? Or yes, on the way? Okay. Well, then I will also read and communicate with you and then about that said, who knows? Maybe you would come on Instagram and do a little Instagram live talk to make sure that I don't screw up the delivery and that we can hear it direct from the person who ran the study. I find this issue of side effects. Really interesting. I don't take a lot of prescription drugs, but recently I was prescribed a few and
the list of side effects is you know, it's incredible and it just goes on and on and on I realized some of that is legal protections. I it's hard for me to believe that they're actually expecting anyone to read those because you need a high-powered microscope to read this print is truly fine print. But I did realize that in Reading over the side effects that you prime 1 Prime is themselves to experience those side effects. And so now I just rip up the side effects thing and or the sheet and just throw it away. I just take it as recommended.
Do you think it works in the other direction to where if an effective medication is supposed to have result, a b, or c and you are told again and again, how effective it is for that treatment, that it could amplify the effect. So in other words, it's not it's strictly a placebo, right? It's not nocebo. As you described before but that perhaps at a lower dose. I given medication could have a Amplified effect or at a appropriate dose if you will.
It could have a super physiological effect has that ever been demonstrated
to some degree? I think where it gets tricky is for a long time. People thought the effects of placebos were expectancy based. So you expect to get a benefit and that benefit occurs. There's certainly some some truth to that. But I think the mindset approach is more powerful because it helps us understand the mechanisms, right? So if if you just expect that you're
Your blood pressure will go down that you know, what are the mechanisms through? Which that expectation would lead to your blood pressure going down with it's hard to even understand that, right. But if you have the mindset that you're in, good hands, that this is being taken care of that. This is not, this illness is not going to kill you. Write that you're being treated. Well, then you can start to unpack.
You know, the mechanisms through which blood pressure could be relieved, maybe it's anxiety reduction. Maybe it's changing. The, you know, the sort of anticipation of what their the prioritization of what the body needs to focus on. And so I really think that, you know, the work of the future needs to be on getting more sophisticated about what is the mindset that we're instilling? When we say something will work, or it won't work. And how do we understand the mechanisms through? Which that changes?
Geology, so, I answer your question. I think that that could be true, but it depends on what actually is the mindset. You're
revoking. I know you're a parent and to the other parents out there, but also the kids and people who don't have kids. What is the best way to learn and teach mindsets? I mean, clearly a conversation like this informs me and many other people out there about mindsets and how we can adopt them. But it also seems to me that
If we have the opportunity to teach mindsets and really cultivate certain mindsets that the world would be a much better place. Yes, how does one go about that? Given that there were kids and we are all being bombarded with conflicting information. All the time. How do we anchor to a mindset?
Yeah, and you're getting at my other major passion right now, which is what we're calling. Our lab meta mindset working on this with Chris Evans and others and that is
How do we consciously and deliberately change our mindsets? And the first step is really simple and that's just to be aware that you have them that the world, your beliefs aren't sort of an unmitigated reflection of reality. As it objectively is, they are filtered through our interpretations. Our expectations are Frameworks and simplifications of that reality. And as you know, your work and then your as you know, so well.
Well, they're all of most of what goes on in our brain. As an interpretation of reality, mindsets are just the simplified core assumptions about things. And the first step is to realize that we have them. The second step is to start to think about what the effects of those mindsets are on your life to sort of play out the story, right? Okay. I have this mindset. That's dresses. Debilitating. How is that making me feel? What is that leading me to do is this?
Set helpful or harmful. The question isn't is the mindset right or wrong because you can find evidence for or against it, you know, we can fight about it till where, you know, exhausted. The question is, is it helpful or harmful? And then, you know, you can go about seeking out ways to adopt a more useful mindsets. So, you know, we've been doing a lot of work on how to actually do that. How do you consciously change it? Sometimes it's really simple.
I think in cases where we don't have a lot of Prior experience, like the kids with allergies who are getting treatment. They they didn't have any other mindsets about symptoms. So we just got had the luxury of setting it right when it comes to healthy food. I think we have a it's harder to change people's mindsets because we have a lot of baggage, weighing us down as a parent for me. I guess. My number one piece of advice is to lie.
Enough trying to get your kids to do certain things and focus more on, helping them to adopt more adaptive mindsets. So, you know, I'm by no means an expert at this. But I'm just testing it with my own
child real time. But the real kind of
experiment. Yeah, it's how do I, you know, how do I resist the urge to force my child to eat her dinner so that she can have her dessert, right? Because that's the real orange. No, you need to do.
That because that when you start thinking about it in terms of mindset, you realize, oh, that's just reinforcing to her. That the desert is the exciting, fun thing to have and this thing that I have to do, must be horrible. So horrible, that my, you know, my parent is forcing me to do it, right? So it's letting go a little bit of the behavior, the objective reality, and really thinking about the subjective reality and focusing on adaptive mindsets.
So, my goal, as a parent has been to try to help her instill, a healthy mindset about eating, that healthy foods are indulgent and delicious. That the experience of stress is inevitable that it's, it's natural and that it can help. Going through stressful experience can help her learn grow and become a more connected and happier individual and, you know, with exercise and physical activity. We haven't really gotten to that yet, but we will with
Yeah, it's great. I wrote down and I'm going to keep this in the front of my mind. Going forward to continually ask. What is the effect of my mindset about X and just to evaluate that about exercise about food, about school, about stress about relationships, about relationship to self Etc and to really think about that in a series of layers. So you think that would be a useful exercise
definitely and I and you know and your work speaks of this time in the mindful, it's not. I would yeah. Really are
Against people getting dogmatic about their mindset also write like, oh I need to have the right mindset. And if I don't have the right amount, you know, it's like okay mindset is a piece of the puzzle. It's a piece of the puzzle. That's really empowering because we have access to it and we can change it but it is just one piece of the puzzle. So treat yourself like a scientist. Look at your life. Look at your mindsets, see what serving you see what isn't find more useful, adaptive and empowering mindsets.
And live by
those. Love it now.
In one version of this kind of discussion, I would have asked the question. I'm going to ask next at the beginning, but I'm going to ask it now close to the end, which is your a unique constellation of accomplishment and attributes. And I only know, a subset of them. Of course, today's the first time that we've met in person, even though I've known your work for a long time, and we're colleagues across campus. So, you run your laboratory where you do research, you were also a athlete and you
City, a serious athlete. And then you're also a clinical psychologist. Is that right?
So I was trained as a clinical psychologist. So my PhD is in Clinical Psychology, and I did you know all my pre and post internships with stress and Trauma.
Do you see patients or did you see
patients did? Yes, I don't anymore.
Okay, that's a very unique constellation of practitioner and researcher. So what what are the mindsets that you try and adopt?
Out on a regular basis in as a consequence or in relation to those things or athlete. Researcher clinician, you know for yourself. As you move through, life. Do you have an overarching mindset that all challenges good or do you have any kind of central mindsets that help you navigate through was, it has to be a pretty complex set of daily routines given everything that you juggle, but I think that people like you are unique in that you
Of that. You have the inside knowledge of how this stuff works and you've also existed in these different domains. And I know a lot of listeners have a more athletic slant to their life, or a more cognitive or somewhere raising kids are. Some people are just, you know, are doing any number of things. So this is where I think it would be useful for people to hear of got, what do you do? This is what I'm
asking. Yeah. Well, it's certainly true in my case, that research is me search everything that I study, as an
Actual has come from my own experience or my own failings writing. When I was, you know, really intensely exercising and training. Those were the questions. I asked when I was dealing with eating and, you know, concerns about my weight. Those were the questions I asked when I was stressed about my dissertation, I decided to do my dissertation on stress, really, you know? Now, I think we're in the midst of a global pandemic. It's, you know,
What, how can our mindsets be useful here? You know, so I, you know, I don't think there's a obvious answer to your question other than The Guiding Light for me, has been an undercurrent of understanding that our mindsets matter. I think I got that very clearly and deeply as a child, both through my experiences as an athlete, you know, I know many of your listeners are athletes. Any athlete knows that you can be the same.
I'm physical being from one day to the next one moment to the next and perform completely differently. Just depending on what you're thinking. I was a gymnast growing up and if you can't visualize, if you can't see something in your mind that you have no chance when you get up there on the balance beam, right? And I also, my father was a martial artist, a teacher of meditation. So this kind of mind-body work was baked into me from an early age. And I think, what I've done recently is to try to
It scientifically and more importantly, to figure out how can we, how can we do better with this? Right? How can we, you know, we're all talking about AI taking over the world and Technology this and all the personalized medicine that and it's like we have done so little relatively. So little with the human resource, our human brains that the, you know, the potential for which
Is so great and we've done almost nothing, you know, take the placebo effect. We know a lot about what it is. We've done, almost nothing to leverage that in medicine consciously and deliberately. So my what keeps me going? What gets me through the hard times, it's just that burning question of what is going on here. And what more can I do with the power of my
mind? Well, I and millions of other people are so grateful that you do this work. It's so important.
And it's truly unique. Tell us where people can learn more about your research where they can find you online. I'm going to try and persuade you to take more of a social media, presence going forward, but whether or not it's I succeed in that effort or not. Where can people find you? Ask questions? Find your papers. Learn more. I'd love to have you back for a conversation in the future. But in the meantime,
yeah. No, it's really. It's been such an honor getting to chat with you on. Just you, you have such an impact on the world and I look forward, I hope
We can do some science together. Also. Absolutely. Yeah, we're all our papers and materials and interventions are housed on our website, MBL dot stanford.edu. We also have a link there to that takes you to Stanford, spark, which stands for social psychological answers to real world questions. We have a lot of toolkits on that website, including a toolkit for this rethink stress approach of acknowledging.
And utilizing your stress and then I guess I'm on Twitter only across I don't do much there, but maybe I will start to.
Well, those are all great resources. We will provide links to all of those for our listeners and viewers and also hoped in to convince you to write a book or many books in the future. The world needs to know about this, but thank you so much for taking time out of your exceedingly. Busy schedule to talk to us about these ideas. I learned so much. I'm going to
To definitely think about what is the effect of my mindset about blank and every category of life and really just on behalf of everybody and myself. Thank you so
much. Yeah. Thank you. And I guess I just want to end by saying, I think this work is really the tip of the iceberg of what can and should be done. And so I really invite your, you your listeners and all, you know, anybody who's inspired by this work, if they want to share stories or want to partner on a
Shinto, please. Reach out.
Great. Well and the comment section on YouTube is a great place to do that as well. You will hear from them. Great. Thank you so much Alex.
Thank you.
Thank you for joining me for my conversation with dr. Alia crumb. I'm guessing by now. You can appreciate the enormous impact that mindsets have on our biology and our psychology and how those interact at the level of mind and body. If you'd like to learn more about dr. Crumbs work, and perhaps even be a
research subject in one of their upcoming studies on mindsets. You can go to MB l dot stanford.edu there. You will also see a tab for support where if you like, you can make a tax-deductible donation to support the incredible research that dr. Crumb and her colleagues are doing if you're learning from and or enjoying the huberman Lab podcast, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. That's a terrific zero cost way to support us. In addition, please subscribe to us on Apple and Spotify, and on Apple. You have the opportunity to leave us up.
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In makes in closing. I'd like to thank you once again for joining me for my discussion about mindsets with Doctor Alia crumb. And as always, thank you for your interest in science.
