Not all stress is damage. Small, recoverable challenges can stimulate repair, sharpen capacity, and build resilience. The art is knowing the difference between a signal that strengthens and a load that wears the body down.
Transcript from Why Good Stress Makes You Stronger 🧠 💪 | Dr. Sharon Bergquist on Hormesis, Resilience & Longevity.
This lack of stress is a hidden risk factor, and if we do not course correct, I do not think we will be able to mitigate the harms that we are incurring in as a function of our daily lives. We're going to be talking with Sharon Bergquist. She's an award-winning physician an innovative healthcare leader, a visionary researcher renowned. She was trained at Yale and Harvard Medical School. Her book is called The Stress Paradox. Why you need stress to live longer, healthier, and happier. We highly recommend it. This is a really good one. I needed to rethink the way I was delivering care, and that took me down a path of trying to reverse the causes of disease, not just managing and treating disease. But ultimately, that led me down a path of using lifestyle as medicine. So, whether it's food as medicine, exercise as medicine, social connections as medicine, to realizing that the most powerful levers we have are actually stress. Your thesis is that stress is actually good for us, or at least certain types of stress. Why? And I know that you get there. This episode of the Ready State podcast is brought to you by Laird Superfood. Okay, full disclosure. I may have a sweet tooth. Really? Also full disclosure, I try not to eat past a certain time, and it's tricky for me cuz I'm I eat, and then I'm like a little under calorie, then I'm like, "Just one more little snack." Yeah, because you the quantity of food you eat in a meal is like less than our teenage daughters. So, often times you need a little extra something. But it's not good for me to eat so like before to bed. Like, let me eat just this jar of peanut butter and a chicken. It's less less good. lately, I've been seeing you enjoy this amazing little tea-like beverage. So, one of the things that the Laird family has done is wrapped their arms around my sweet treat need. And they have created a tea, which is a sleep and recovery tea.
sleep and recovery tea. Well, I would say it's like a tea-like item. It is a tea-like item. Yeah. What's nice is that I have this hot beverage, and I think there's a couple things going on. Tart cherry, everyone's heard of recovery and for sleep, it's good. Yeah. Um some chamomile, it's very nice. Lemon balm, and functional mushrooms. This thing is very nice, and what I've been loving about it is that it feels like I have a routine. I reach for this thing, and it's it's helping me with that what's the word? Sugar addiction? Craving? Let me eat late at night. One more snack before I go to bed. What what we used to call it what? Like carb backloading? I think yeah, I think that was a thing we made up in the early aughts. I love is that it's called sleep and recover, and this tea beverage, this hot beverage, is also setting me up cuz my brain knows what comes next. It's a little magnesium in there, it's tasty, and then my brain is like, "You've had the tea. Now go to the bed." Yeah, it just tastes so good, and it's become such a lovely little evening ritual we have at like 8: 30 or 9: 00 at night. Yeah. And we've been sleeping like total champions, so It's not You're not wrong. That has something to do with it. I think there's something to it. If you want to learn more about sleep and recover, go to lairdsuperfood. com / trs, and use code TRS20 for 20% off and free shipping. Dr. Bergquist, welcome to the Ready State Podcast. I am so excited to be here. Thank you so much for having me. So, I was recently lucky enough to meet you at a mindbodygreen event and hear you speak and learn a little bit about your book, and we've since had an opportunity to read it, and we are really excited to have you here because I think there are so many little bits of wisdom that will be really useful and actionable for our audience, and this is just right up their alley. So, thank you so much for being And let me just say one of the things I'm really excited about is sometimes in this language of health optimization, we don't have the lessons and the viewpoint of someone working at high-level
working at high-level medicine, health care with high performers and someone who's simultaneously addressing the realities of a general population medical practice. And so, you're sort of the the spectrum and the fact that you're dealing on either ends of these sort of book ends, I think really frames this for me in such a different way. Well, thank you for saying that and I really appreciate that. I think the full spectrum, I have the privilege of doing clinical work and I have the privilege of being a scientist. I have the privilege of taking care of senior-level executives running global companies and a lot of people that I think um work at a very high level of performance and I have the privilege of taking care of people from so many diverse backgrounds and I've loved the last three decades I've spent in health care cuz it's enabled me to have this 360 view of how our body works and how we can use that information to serve people. You know, often times we get a you know, an expert is describing some aspect of the elephant, right? And you know, and then I have an I talk to an expert who's walked around the elephant many, many times and is familiar with all aspects of the elephant and elephant physiology and really we end up seeing a sort of different application because you know, I think if I use the allegory that Juliette sometimes resents is that we get a we hand a lot of busy people a listical. Like, here is how you're going to run your your crazy life and here you're going to manage the stress and you know, and Juliette's like, are you insane? Like, I am a busy working CEO mom and where and when am I putting all of these practices in? And I think it's easy sometimes when we're talking about you know, building a more robust person who can handle stress to actually fit
who can handle stress to actually fit those things into a real life, you know, cuz you know, I go to the gas station. I guess that's what I'm having for breakfast today, right? So, you know, I think it's really important that I just set this whole conversation up with that viewpoint because I think it's it really enables us to to understand a little bit more of what's essential and how I can implicate that or you know, apply that to yourself. That's right. Yeah. So, doctor, we live in a modern world that is set up for comfort. You know, we sit all day at our offices. We sit a lot generally. I hunt the In-N - Out Burgers. I don't know what you're talking about. Yeah. I gather those things. You know, and and there's a been a which you know, we could have a whole side podcast on how much the phrase bugs me, but there's a you know, a huge focus on self-care. Um and you know, that's common across the internet. And you know, your thesis is that stress is actually good for us or at least certain types of stress. And tell us a little bit more about why and I know that and how did you get there? Yeah, and and why amid your very busy life running a medical practice why this particular subject? Why did this pique your interest to the point where you wanted to write and research a book on this? Yeah, so I practice internal medicine which is focused on first of all seeing the forest through the trees, right? So, I see health from a 50, 000 foot level. Um unlike specialists who may focus on one part and the system needs both, but I think when you see things from the broader umbrella, you can understand how everything affects every other part of the body, and that's one key component. Um you know, you mentioned the term self-care, which
self-care, which I think um really by definition is it's it's actually my my not even about the self, right? It's about how do you become your highest um level of service, right? And that's ultimately the goal. And to me, stress is wellness. Um and I'm going to really unpack that a little bit because it's counterintuitive to what we've been told for a very long time. So, the way I've arrived at this has been through really a long journey of being able to see how what I advise my patients impacts them longitudinally. In my primary care practice, I've been in the same practice for 25 years. I've had the same patients for 25 years. So, it becomes this learning lab of seeing the impact of different things people do over time, and seeing the outcome of it, right? And let me just say that I love hearing that you've been taking care of a person for that long because then being able to observe She She You sort of own all the aspects of their life. Like, that's insane. All the advice you're like, "Okay, that was less less good, maybe more good." You know, and we hear this a lot is that people, you know, it's easy to drop in and and be a expert for 6 weeks, but taking care of someone and seeing the impacts of sort of day-to - day life for 25 years is it's got to be different. It It is wonderful in that you get to see the health journey that people take and you get to see the different paths and the different outcomes, right? Because we know that the chronic diseases that are you know, really robbing us of our health and quality of life and epidemic proportions all start decades before they're manifest at the level of our cells. When we appreciate that what people are
When we appreciate that what people are doing, for example, in midlife is ultimately shaping what happens to them in late life and being able to witness that longitudinally in my patients based on the habits, the mindsets, the behaviors um is really powerful um and you know, I think there are a lot of lessons that you learn along the way. For me early in my career, I you know, was a very well trained to diagnose disease. As most physicians, I felt very comfortable and very competent cuz I had incredible mentors that trained me. And in the first decade of my practice, I felt that I was delivering good care in a very traditional way. I had my patients' blood pressures well controlled, blood sugars well controlled, cholesterol well controlled. Their numbers were fantastic. But because I could see the longitudinal impact of what was still happening to them, I was seeing that over time they were developing more complications despite their numbers being well controlled. For example, if a person has underlying insulin resistance, even if blood sugars are well controlled, the medications we are using are not reversing insulin resistance. And over time that insulin resistance will manifest in neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's and I had one patient where it manifested in cancer and cancer that ultimately became stage four breast cancer and robbed her of being able to spend time with her daughter, um really not being sure if she was able to go to her daughter's college graduation, her daughter being the first generation in this country to graduate. And in my mind, I thought that I needed to offer more. I needed to rethink the way I was delivering care.
way I was delivering care. And that took me down a path of trying to reverse the causes of disease, not just managing and treating disease. And this was now almost two decades ago, so I think there's a lot more interest in this right now in this moment, which tells you how far we've come. Back when I had that light bulb go off, um you were definitely a lone wolf, um and you are trying to change a system and change a culture, so there were a lot more uphill battles, um and I'm thrilled that that has paved the way for this to become such a common conversation. Um but ultimately, that led me down a path of using lifestyle as medicine, so whether it's food as medicine, exercise as medicine, social connections as medicine, to realizing that the most powerful levers we have are actually stress. And that's really where there's new science, because in the last one to two decades, we have been able to understand the impact of stress at the level of our molecules and cells. And there is an entire untold story about how nuanced and sophisticated our stress responses are. And that stress has the ability to regenerate our body, right? This is so powerful. We think of regenerative medicine as these high-tech procedures like we're injecting stem cells in a joint to heal a joint. But when you realize that your lifestyle can regenerate your cells, it changes everything. It makes regenerative medicine accessible to every single person. And and that's really what got my interest because I think this is a complete game-changer in our ability to resist disease, become
in our ability to resist disease, become the highest performing people we can be, live our full potential, slow our aging process, and the list goes on of how powerful this science is. You compare stress to a thermostat. And how do our listeners know or learn what you know, what stress is good stress? What stress is bad stress? And maybe you know, how do we know if the thermostat is too high, too low? How do we frame this for ourselves? Yeah, and how do we know if the thermostat is too high, too low? How do we frame this for ourselves? Yeah, so I think starting with definitions is a very good place to start. So, stress is really anything that challenges your body and your stress response is preparing your body for a challenge. Okay, it's not there to harm you. It is actually there to help you and it's there to help you adapt and survive. Um so, that's kind of stress in in a very basic technical sense and it can be emotional stress, it could be a physical stressor, it can be a mental stressor, but by and large, what they are all doing is challenging your body. And when stress does that, it throws your body out of a natural balance we have called homeostasis. And our body has these feedback mechanisms where we're quickly striving to regain that balance because that balance is the zone where we function optimally. When we reestablish that balance, we either gain resilience or we lose resilience. So, when we encounter stress and recover, we do not go back to the same. And this is what's really amazing, right? Cuz we always think when the stress response is over, we go back to quote back to normal, but we are
quote back to normal, but we are changed. We are always somehow changed epigenetically at the level of our cells and where we net, whether we gain resilience or lose resilience. And that's what differentiates good stressors versus harmful stressors. Good stressors, you go through the challenge in the name of gaining resilience. With harmful or bad stressors, they deplete you and you net in a place where you are more vulnerable, um you are more prone to developing disease, you're less stress resilient, um your body has been weakened by the stressor. There's a concept of antifragility, which is right right in there, which is that word. Right? Which is basically saying that human beings need we'll call it resistance or stress in order to actually become more robust versions of themselves. I don't think many times we think of deadlines or exercise or getting cold as as ways of sort of inoculating ourselves from from further, you know, leverages I try you You I think I mean, I'm going back I was just saw a picture of myself at age 20 in Thailand. And I was in Thailand taking a semester off from school because it was so stressful. And I obviously had been working in Nepal as a river guide and I was so stressed I had to go to Thailand. And I think now I would like to talk to that poor kid and just say you have no idea What stress actually is. So enjoy this this little, you know, at my my thermostat was pretty sensitive back there at age 20 and now at age, you know, plus 50, 51, you know, the things that I can tolerate. Am I in the right way of thinking that, you know, that this sort of habitual exposure is the way way to kind of, you know, smooth seas do not make good sailors?
smooth seas do not make good sailors? 100%. I mean, that is the stress paradox that we need stress to build stress resilience. And it's a complete different way of stress management. I I think of it as stress management 2. 0 because when you think of stress as being purely harmful, the inclination is to avoid stress, deny it, and by eliminate it. And when we do, we do not gain the adaptations to become good at stress. Our bodies work through bioplasticity, which is essentially just saying use it or lose it. When we use stress as a tool, what it does to our body at a very functional and structural level is that it helps us adapt in ways so that when we encounter stress in the future, we're better able to handle it. So when it happens in our brain, we grow pathways through neuroplasticity, um where the synapses or connections between our neurons are better, we grow different ones, we grow new neurons. Certainly, you I think most people are familiar with that idea and what happens in muscle after weight lifting, very similar concept, but it happens at every level of our body and our gut microbiome, and you know, throughout our digestive system, at virtually every part. So, when we avoid stress and remove it from our lives, we can actually get to a point where it is just as harmful as too much stress. So, our relationship with stress is really in a a manner that I think of as an upside down U, um kind of like this inverted U. If you picture the St. Louis Arch, where if stress is on the X axis, when you have too much stress, and if Y is the the Y axis is resilience, you are at a low
axis is resilience, you are at a low point of resilience where it's depleted you. It's kind of taken everything That's what I've burnt out on before, yeah. right. Yeah. it's it's essentially burnout. At the other end of the arch, the other base, is not enough stress, which is a concept called sustress. So, we are very familiar with distress from too much stress, but within the framework of stress, there is now this concept of inadequate stress called sustress. And what we really want is to be at that peak of that inverted U. That is the Goldilocks zone, where stress doesn't just not harm us, we actually paradoxically take off and build resilience, and that's the zone we want to be in. You've talked about something called the comfort conundrum, which I think you've touched on here without using that actual phrase. Yes. But is there sort of a modern luxury that we are all enjoying that is is sort of a trap for us from a stress standpoint? And and maybe there's not just one, maybe there's a thousand, but you know, is there sort of a modern luxury for example that you try to avoid or you're aware that you don't want to fall into this sort of comfort trap, so you don't do this thing? You know, that So, there are multiple and I think, you know, if I had to pick one that I think is probably taking away from our health and vitality more than any other, it is this inclination to be sedentary for prolonged amounts of time, which I know you are very familiar. Here. Yes, exactly. Is that being such a deterrent to our health? Um, but our entire physiology has really adapted to a certain amount of biological stress. And this is stress from the
stress. And this is stress from the science of hormesis, which is the science of good stress. In our hunter-gatherer days, our ancestors had to endure harsh and difficult environments. That involved going long periods of time without food. It involved, you know, periods of explosive high-intensity exercise. It involved mental challenges, how to develop tools, how to hunt prey, how to essentially survive. And part of that was also exposure to heat, exposure to cold, how to work in a tribe and contribute to a part of a larger, you know, group of people so that you are valuable. These were all ways we challenged ourselves. And our physiology, our genes have adapted to needing that certain amount of stress to activate physiologic changes that make us healthier and have helped us not just survive and thrive. And over the last 200 years, largely since the Industrial Revolution, so a little bit longer, we have gradually removed the this these stressors from the fabric of our lives. You know, we have incorporated um food technology that we can now process food. We have added refrigeration, so food is available 24 / 7. You know, we have now all kinds of, uh, you know, tools that make, you know, the need for movement less in our lives. We don't even have to challenge ourselves mentally. We, um, are increasingly, um, getting chat GPT. I mean, one by one, we are removing these stressors, and this lack of good stress is
stress is a hidden risk factor. And if we do not course correct, I do not think we will be able to mitigate the harms that we are incurring in as a function of our daily lives. You, um, you know, I hear this and uh devil's advocate cuz I I want to you know, you work with the whole spectrum of families, individuals. And there are chronic stressors from socioeconomic, you know, being poor, being a person of color in this country, right? This the institutionalized poverty. There's There's a lot of those things which we know have huge epigenetic, I mean, they affect your genome, they affect how you what you're passing on to your children. The the stress state, um, how do you tell someone like that who's in your clinic that like stress is good? And I know you you're food insecure and you're just stoked. I I didn't have health insurance for a long time. Now I have health insurance. Define a little bit for us what you mean and like what where does it start to be actionable because there's been plenty of times where I've been in high performance rooms where I'm like, "Hey, sleep more." And then the people are like, "Yeah, okay." That's never going to happen, right? So we can't just say be stressed and be unstressed. We have to and I know that this whole book is about this and this is your expertise. But how walk us through sort of understanding the framework for someone thinking differently about stress cuz I I do like this shift in in like, "Hey, you know, what doesn't kill me is going to make me stronger." Simultaneously, I'm worried about my family or a sick individual and I'm You know what I mean? Help Help me understand a little bit of where I begin to pivot into behaviors where this feels like I am becoming a more robust person. Yeah, and then I'm so glad you pointed that out because I you know, on the one hand, I think there's a lot of literature that stress can harm
can harm and you know, that is real. But I think what we're talking about here is not adversity. It is mild to moderate stress and there's a lot of low-hanging fruit um that I think most people can implement. A lot of the things I'm encouraging, first of all, are at zero cost um for a person to get less sedentary or incorporate some high-intensity movement can come at no cost and that begins to change a person's health and physiology. For people that are living in food deserts, yes, access to fresh fruits and vegetables are harder, but the key here is that if we just add small bits of things that gently stress your body. In this case, if we can add a legume, if we can add a whole grain, and really just canned beans, you can boil some legumes or lentils. Like, generally, the phytochemicals in plant food have this ability to gently stress our bodies, and they can be safely stored in most regions of the world. Grains are very similar. They're plant-based foods that have this ability. I think that we just need to get out of the mentality that it's all or nothing, right? That we can either, you know, be people who have the luxury to spend all day doing these, you know, protocols of high stress and stacking stress, and it becomes a life of its own, or if we don't have that luxury, that we absolutely cannot be healthier. I think that's the mindset we have to break. Um, and believe it or not, even the mindset we have around stress, that alone changes how your body responds to stress.
how your body responds to stress. So, if we do nothing in this conversation other than share the information of how stress can be beneficial, and if people can hold the notion of potential benefit from stress with the harm, and approach stress with a this can be enhancing in certain that we can kind of delve into some more, that alone, the more stress is enhancing mindset versus stress is harmful mindset, changes your stress reactivity, how your body responds in stressful situations, the actual harm that you incur from stress. So, even a mindset shift, and anyone in any region of the world with whatever resources they have has the ability to change a mindset. This episode of the Ready State podcast is brought to you by our friends at Element. We went through a phase where hypohydration was literally a thing. Like people were like hydrate or die. Got a little crazy. Yeah. We saw people smashing so much water and they were peeing out their electrolytes and they weren't feeling good, right? Always going to the bathroom. So, one of the things that's happened is I think we've stopped talking about that as a fad. Right, that just like the sheer amount of water you drink is a sign of health. Right. But what's happening now is I'm having to remind people to actually hydrate and to put some salt in their water. They're eating better, they're exercising, but I'm like, "Hey, at the very minimum show me you had 2 L of water." It's even more important for people taking GLP-1s. If your family's on GLP-1s, you're probably not drinking enough. You need to drink water. it's the importance is multiplied in the summer months because now we're all playing outside, exercising outside. It's hot. Um there's just, you know, way more reason to add a little bit of electrolyte to your water. So, here is my two-pronged approach for everyone if you struggle. Number one, I drink from a cup that has a big straw.
drink from a cup that has a big straw. So, I have this Yeti cup with a big straw and it I mean, just like in college they're like, "Do not drink your alcohol through a straw."improves your water drinking compliance. 100%. I'm going to go with adherence. Not compliance. I'm not complying with the law. I'm trying to adhere to the law. Okay. Second thing is, when you add Element it tastes so good that it's not a chore to drink. I really like this whole drink plain water like like I'm like fell off the boat. No way, man. This is like I am next level. I can have flavored water. what I've really been enjoying lately? Grapefruit salt. Oh, welcome to the grapefruit club. I love that one. Yeah, you forget sometimes. The old heads I go through a phase with certain flavors and right now I'm in a grapefruit salt phase, and they're just good. grapefruit, orange, or tea. little bit tart grapefruit salt. Amazing. stuff. Um look, everyone, this summer commit to drinking more water. Make it easier, put elements in there, and your tissues are going to feel better. If you're out there playing pickleball, make sure you're hydrating and preloading, and preloading with some salt will change your game. It's one of the things we do with all of our athletes. Let's get some salt on board so you don't suck cuz you're not unsalted. Unsalted equals suckiness. Right now, if you want to suck less, order through our link, and you can get a free sample pack of Element's most popular drink flavors. If you want to party in your mouth, what do you need to do, J? Get some sparkling Element. So good. Threw you under the bus there. Go to drinklmnt. com / trs. We literally drink it every day. This episode of the Ready State Podcast is brought to you by Momentous. I want to explain sort of a three-pronged approach to getting more protein. Yeah, and talk a little bit about the what we've described as the suite of Momentous protein options. Yes. One of my favorites for our athletes is the recovery protein. Why is that? bit more carbohydrate, a few other things in there. Um recently we played we were in the national tournament, one of the
national tournament, one of the universities I work with, national tournament, and we got knocked out in the quarters, like end of the season, but one of our superstars, Hungarian, is outside hitting the recovery protein, getting ready again. I can also add that Lisa, our uh amazing Ready State Podcast producer, loves the recovery protein. Like it's her go-to protein. And I think, and I don't want to speak for her, but I think it's because she just finds it to taste so good and be so ultimately drinkable. And you're really hitting on a really important thing for us as we kind of move down this chain. It's got to be palatable and delicious, otherwise I'm out. And these things are so good. Number two, whey protein. I'm always struggling to get above 200 g protein today, and I know you men out there are be like, "It's so hard to eat all this meat." But I sometimes I struggle to do hit that minimum. But I found that if I do a 40 g bolus of protein, no problem. I hit it and it's so tasty. your protein goals is not just for you. It's difficult for all of us. No, it's just me. Everyone else does it. Lastly, I want to point out that I have a bunch of athletes and even on the teams I work with do not tolerate whey. Yeah, it makes them feel bad, even with the digestive enzymes. We even with the best grass-fed milk that we can get our hands on, right? Because this Momentous is so high-quality, we have a vegetarian protein option, which is so delicious and easy for those athletes. We have plenty of athletes who do not tolerate whey or dairy, even like our friend Heather, shout out, you know who you are. So, what's great is that the vegetarian option should not be discounted, cuz it really ends up being an important protein source for those of us who don't tolerate milk. True fact. If you want to learn more, go to livemomentous. com / trs and use code trs and save up to 35% at checkout. You talk about these five key stressors in your book that we sort of engineered out of modern life, but you know, your
out of modern life, but you know, your theory is that we can reintroduce them. And I would just like to touch more on the first one, which you mentioned a little bit and and that is phytotoxins from plants. And I think this is a bit counterintuitive because I think everybody thinks that plants are just like universally I mean I I would never until I read your book, I would never think of plants and stress in the same sentence. Um Oh, I'll I will make you something spicy tonight. Yeah, well, you're Um and and first of all, I by the way, love what you said about like canned and frozen fruits and vegetables, um, you know, uh one of our favorite friends and nutritionists is EC Sinkowski and she's like, "Hey, not everybody can go to the farmers market and access perfectly organic food and you can still get so much of the benefits from Especially when eating 90% of people aren't eating any fruits and vegetables. Like it's better, you know, frozen, whatever. So, I appreciate you starting and saying that that, you know, that it doesn't always have to be like perfect locally grown organically sourced really expensive food. But, could you just delve a little bit more into this phytotoxins from plants as a stressor and and a good stressor? Especially since right now we're at a time where people are like, "I don't eat vegetables because they're hard on my gut, right?" And I I hear a lot of apologetics. I'm like, "Oh, you don't like to eat fruits and vegetables because you're a grown person and you'd rather have a Frappuccino." You know, and I'm not not saying, you know, I guess I am saying a lot of people have used the fact that these stressors that are built in inherent plants are actually bad for us and we should pull them all out. Yeah, and uh so, I think it'd be helpful to give, um, kind of a framework of some of the hormetic stressors in the book. Um, plant-based toxins are one of them, exercising particularly in high-intensity, exposure to heat and cold, um, fasting, which I really explain as being a circadian fast
explain as being a circadian fast aligned with your biology, and good mental and emotional challenges. And what all of these stressors, um, have in common is that, as I mentioned previously, they can regenerate our cells. At the level of our cells, when we are exposed to these types of stressors, they activate cellular stress responses. What that does is that we have seven cellular stress responses and we can repair DNA through one response being DNA damage response. We can repair proteins and we can um we have two stress responses for that, the heat shock proteins unfolded protein response that makes sure we shape our proteins appropriately in our body and that we escort kind of damage proteins out of our body through the heat shock proteins. And proteins do most of the work in our body. There would be have 20, 000 to 100, 000 proteins that are doing a lot of the functions in our body. So, this is really critical. We have an autophagy response where we have the ability to recycle damaged and old cells um and essentially we have this junkyard of sorts where we can use the scraps for energy and recycle what's salvageable for new cells. We have a sirtuin response which does many things um that help us um kind of become healthier, but one of the key is it helps us create new mitochondria through a process of mitochondrial biogenesis. So, our ability to generate energy in our metabolism improves and we can ramp up our antioxidant defenses and moderate inflammation. And these processes are what ultimately lead to a lot of the symptoms we experience, a lot of the diseases that we're talking about in terms of chronic diseases like diabetes, heart disease, um Alzheimer's, dementia, cancer and
um Alzheimer's, dementia, cancer and they contribute to the aging process. So, when we take on any of these good stressors like plant chemicals, what we are doing is we're turning on our body's ability to repair and heal. We have innate defenses built within our DNA that help us mitigate modern-day damage. So, we're playing our health kind of more on the offense than on the defense. Within that context, phytochemicals are plant chemicals. And what plant chemicals um do is, first of all, they give us the flavor um and the lovely like vibrant colors in our fruits and vegetables, right? That's why you want the colors of your plate. But our phytochemicals have this ability to gently stress our cells and activate the cellular stress responses. So, they can help us heal and repair and trigger autophagy, create new mitochondria. And when you think of our modern world and we incur so much daily damage, you know, we have pollutants, antioxidants that are damaging our cells through oxidative stress, there's inflammation. And we know that that harm has been there either probably things we don't even know yet, right? We just are talking now about microplastics, but there are infinite things that are harming us. And we have this ability to medicate that harm and repair that damage. And when we do, we try and maintain this balance where we're not netting harm, so we are becoming more disease resistant. By not incorporating these good stressors, we are kind of tilting that balance where we're not activating our innate disease defenses. So, by not eating these fruits, these vegetables, not getting the phytochemicals that gently stress our body, we're essentially handicapping ourselves from not utilizing our innate ability to fight disease.
fight disease. And the term phytotoxin, you know, it's it's kind of confusing now because so many things in plants are referred to as toxins, right? So, people refer to, you know, oxalates, the lectins, all these, you know, antinutrients as reasons why we shouldn't eat plants. But first of all, with proper cooking technique, if we're soaking and cooking we can eliminate a lot of these anti-nutrients, but what really happens is that these phytoalexins gently stress us in a very beneficial way and I think that that's the key part. Plants make these toxins to become more stress resistant in their environment so that they can fight drought, that they can um fight, you know, essentially predators, right? They make them as natural pesticides so that insects and and us as humans don't chomp on them. And historically, the more plant food we could eat, the greater our chances of survival. So we adapted ways to become resistant against these toxins by ramping up our stress defenses. And that still happens today as it did for our ancestors. And modern day, the way they gently stress our bodies is a way that helps us fight disease. And if you look at clinical study after clinical study of people eating fruits and vegetables, I mean, right now only one out of 10 people get the recommended five fruits and vegetables a day, right? We're not even close to how much we need. And just meeting that recommendation reduces cancer by 50%. I just I'm thinking back to every time I made Georgia cry by having to eat some vegetable. And I was right. Yes. You're going to eat this veggie, kid, cuz it's good for you. Yes, it's stress inoculation. So my my girls are such badasses. I would love to move on and talk about one of the other stressors you
one of the other stressors you mentioned, which is intermittent fasting. But before I ask an actual question about that, some backstory. You know, we have been in the health and fitness business for 25 years. You know, somewhere around 2016 or 2018, intermittent fasting became all the rage. It was really being used at that point for weight loss. Yeah, it was weight Skip a meal weight loss for adults. Yeah, talk about a fad I mean talk about a fad. It really seemed to have a moment. And then I think a lot of people realized that it wasn't actually serving them that they weren't able to actually eat enough fruits and vegetables in their windows. They weren't getting enough protein. People like Stacy Sims came come onto the scene and say, "Actually, this is really bad for women and can totally disrupt your hormone situation." And so, you know, intermittent fasting is now kind of on the outs. And but one of the things, and I think Kelly's always thinking of this when he mentioned earlier in in we were talking in the pre-roll about how when you write a book, you hope people sort of find the sub themes and ask you about them. Well, one of the sub themes we have in our book in our own nutrition chapter is these two tests. We call one of them a Frappuccino test and one of them a fasting test. And the Frappuccino test is to go in and actually challenge test, right? Let's you know, let's see what happens. Can you handle all this sugar or you going to get spun out? And on the other end of the spectrum, can you not eat for a whole day? And the reason we put it in our book is that our theory is that you know, in many ways people have just become so precious in in at least in this more, you know, health-focused universe become so precious about their diet and things they can and can't eat. You know, our our general theory is that human beings are like garbage dumps and we really should be able to You should be able to eat a Frappuccino once a year and not die. And you also should be able to not eat for a whole day or even 24 hours and also be fine. And so, we took a bit of a different approach there. Although, nobody ever asked us about
Although, nobody ever asked us about that when we were going around talking about Built to Move and we're like, "Nobody's ever asking us about the Frappuccino challenge." Um but I think you have a unique take on intermittent fasting, you know, with that whole backdrop as a unique and important stressor. Could you talk a little bit more about that as a stressor and sort of define your terms. And how how do you recommend people practically do it? Yeah, and and I appreciate that because terms are thrown around and different people mean different things by these terms. When I use the term intermittent fasting, I think of it more as what a normal eating pattern should look like. I look at it from the lens Like I have a snack at 1: 00 in the morning and then again I start eating again at 5: 30 in the morning. Is that what you mean? Like that's a normal eating pattern? We're going to work on that. Um, so you know, I think of it through the lens of hormesis, which is essentially mild to moderate stress followed by recovery. Nothing severe, nothing extreme. Um, our bodies just need to be gently put outside their comfort zone and that needs to be followed by a period of recovery. And here that gentle stress is a period of you know, not going without food. So nutrient deprivation followed by eating really healthy nutrient-dense meals. That is the recovery. And doing that on a daily basis. And the key again here is that for our bodies are made so that we have times where optimized for growth, we have times where optimized for recovery and repair. We need to go at least 12 hours without eating for us to turn on our repair processes. So when we are eating from morning till night, first calorie being that juice or coffee in the morning to bedtime snack,
coffee in the morning to bedtime snack, so average American is eating over a 15-hour plus time span. We are not allowing our bodies to turn on our repair and um kind of healing defenses in a way that is optimized. And so, I think that what we're I'm advocating for is simply allowing our body to do what it's optimized to do. And we have to do that through this pattern of stress, recover, repeat. Um so that the stressor helps us activate these defenses. The intermittent fasting in this pattern above and beyond, you know, conversations we can have on body composition, body weight. What's happening at the level of our cells is when we go this period without food, and we make that metabolic switch to using fat, essentially to using ketones for energy. Ketones are signaling molecules. Signaling molecules communicate information to the rest of our bodies. And it communicates the signal for us to turn on our disease defenses, to turn on these regenerative processes that we have the ability to do. And if we do it just long enough, so a little bit past 12 hours, ideally like an eating in a 10-hour window, fasting for 14 hours, we start to do that healing, and then in the recovery, when we eat, we are preferentially selecting for healthier cells that have gone through a certain amount of recycling, the DNA's been repaired, the proteins have been repaired. Um so, I I'm not advocating for anything that I I we're not built to do. I mean, the key here is that our bodies are actually designed for stress.
bodies are actually designed for stress. We're not designed for comfort. Our entire genome has been shaped in the context of adversity. We are made to be able to go this duration without eating. We are made to endure hard things. And I think that when we, you know, appreciate that that allows our bodies to become fully expressed um in the way that we're optimized to be. I think it just reframes what we think about stress. It reframes what we're calling fasting because this truly is normal eating. And breakfast Yeah. is actually breaking the fast of the night. That makes sense. So, two things uh I I've mentioned this before on the podcast and Lisa, our producer, and I have talked about this a lot in this era where we're all tracking our sleep using aura rings and whoops and garments and, you know, you name it. I've noticed, and this is an N of one, but I have noticed in my own many years But a big N. It's a big N. I've noticed in my many years of tracking my sleep that if I eat late or close to going to bed, my sleep scores are worse than if I have one alcoholic beverage. And neither are great. Um both both impact my sleep scores, but eating late uh is the thing that impacts my sleep scores the most. And so, first of all, what do you think about that? And is that is Do you think part of that is that this is, you know, our body needs to be in a different state and not a completely full state in order to sleep well and recover during sleep. And then, number two, what's the minimum viable dose? Because you're not necessarily saying, you know, have some complex intermittent fasting. Maybe you're saying like once you finish dinner, just don't eat again until you wake up and have breakfast at
until you wake up and have breakfast at like a pretty normal time. Um, what what's sort of the minimum viable dose to get these benefits um from a fasting perspective? Yeah, so there there's two critical parts to this. One is the minimum dose of going past the 12 hours because that is roughly when you make the metabolic switch from using glucose for energy to using fats and our bodies creating the ketones that signal the body that we're in a stressed state and start to activate these disease defenses. The other really critical part and when I said um fasting in a circadian pattern, the critical part is also aligning our eating with our circadian biology so our bodies have a a clock and we are more efficient at breaking down food and digesting food earlier in the day and less so as the day goes on. Our ability to mount an insulin response is lower in the evening because as our melatonin levels rise, our ability to um respond to food with insulin also diminishes. So the same food eaten later in the day um will lead to um more weight gain, metabolic disruption. There are actually studies looking at what happens over time in people who eat late meals, late dinners or snack after dinner. One study that followed 8, 000 people for 4 years found that men who eat late at night or snack after dinner have a twofold higher risk of obesity. In women, it was threefold. So aligning when we eat um in our circadian biology is critical. And like you said, all we have to do is just end eating 2 to 3 hours before bed.
just end eating 2 to 3 hours before bed. And the sleep disruption is a part of that because we have a central clock um which is in our suprachiasmatic nucleus, a part of our hypothalamus made out of about 20, 000 neurons. And that turn like kind of aligns with day and night with light and darkness. But in the the last decade, there's been a discovery that we have peripheral clocks. We have clocks in every organ system, in our microbiome, in our digestive tract. We have clocks in our pancreas, in our liver. These peripheral clocks are actually programmed by the timing of our meals. So, when we eat a late-night meal and our body is actually kind of the central clock is winding down. It's getting dark outside. But we start to eat, our peripheral clocks are getting the signal that, "Hey, wake up. Um we have to now start digesting food." So, you're essentially jet lagging your body. And you are dampening your circadian rhythm, the oscillations in your circadian biology. You're making your body less efficient at its tasks at at its repair task, at its ability to digest food. Um so, I think that alignment will interfere with sleep because you're confusing your body. You are essentially, you know, when your body's getting ready to wind down, when you eat, you're sending it the signal, "Hey, turn on the lights. Wake up. Um it's time to digest food." And that that it's time to party in my mouth, like that ice cream late at night. Yeah. I mean, if you think about it, like if you had a coffee shop and at night, you know, you want to turn off the lights, you want to mop the floors, you want to, you know, clean all the dishes so that the next day you're ready for your customers. And if a customer walks in at 8: 00 p. m. or 9: 00 p. m., you just cleaned up the whole place, but now
just cleaned up the whole place, but now you've got to turn the coffee machine back on, turn everything back on, and you didn't get a chance to finish, you know, putting everything away again. And the next day the customers come, you're just going to be very inefficient the next day. And you do that day after day, and your body just doesn't have a chance to do so much of the housekeeping that it needs to do for health. And And that's what we're doing when we're eating late at night. Amazing. You know, your list here, sort of your big five, I think are really practicable. It's easy to Again, it doesn't, you know, I can stand in a cold shower. I can, you know, make myself, you know, be uncomfortable a little bit. It doesn't cost a lot of money. I can see that that network idea sort of through line idea from your high performance, easy to integrate these practices to, you know, just moms and dads and and kids who are in there. They're like, "Hey, you don't give yourself 12 hours of not eating." Like that's a really reasonable thing. And actually is very consistent with the high-level sports performance recommendations from our friends that like the All Blacks. They're like, "Hey, you have to rest and digest." You can't just be constantly, you know, stoking this little fire. We want to go, you know, um I guess my my question here is as you're looking working with people, you start to recognize that we're not stressing, we're starting maladaptive stress, there's certain behaviors we're not engaged with that are crucial to nudging us in the right direction. What surprised you most? What was the one of the biggest levers you're like, "Whoa, didn't didn't see that coming." Um I I think uh what I think is so powerful or what I think is so easy to under-appreciate is our human potential and just how much we can expand our human potential. Every time we encounter something that just challenges us and we recover from one of these hormetic good stressors, we
one of these hormetic good stressors, we can increase our human potential 20 to 25%. So, this idea of hormesis and anti-fragility has been tested in plants and across different types of exposures and that seems to be fairly consistent. But over time, through a pattern of stress, recover, repeat, we can improve our performance 60 to 90%, which to me is incredibly profound of what we are capable of as humans and how much we leave on the table, how much we don't push ourselves. Uh, so to me that was incredibly eye-opening in in this process and this idea of embracing stress and discomfort is not meant to be a message of be tough or build grit and if it doesn't kill you, it'll make you stronger. It shouldn't kill you. This is really a message of self-love. This is a message of becoming the person you want to be so that you can show up better for other people. And the path to getting there is embracing the discomfort. Like it is okay to have fear. It is okay to feel that jitters when you're in a stress situation. It is okay to dread the discomfort. But acknowledging that and embracing it so that we can become stronger people and live meaningful lives, I I think is really the key that this is self-love. This is not being hard on yourself. I think that's such an important message because I do think it's so counterintuitive in our culture. You know, this idea that adding more stress into your life can actually give you even more capacity as a human is really not what the messaging is out there. The messaging out there is that, you know, we're all doing too much, we're working
we're all doing too much, we're working too hard, and that the way to recover is to like lay on the couch and watch watch Net - Netflix or doom scroll scroll or whatever. And it's super interesting to hear you say basically the opposite that if we actually want to feel better and have more capacity to show up better for our friends and our family and our work and be more creative, that we actually have to purposely add these stresses into our lives. And I, you know, I don't think we're going to get to all five in this conversation today, but I do want to hit on the mental emotional stress. Because I think that's the one where we all just assume it's bad. Like we really sort of have this idea culturally that any mental and emotional stress is bad, and that's not your point of view. And and maybe you could share a story like about how that maybe impacted a patient, an actual patient. so, you know, again, we I think it goes without saying that there is plenty of mental and emotional stress that is disruptive and is negative, but there is also a lot of good mental and emotional stress. So, could you talk us through that a little bit? And just remember, baby, every time I stress you out, you're welcome. That's bad stress. Yeah. Um with the mental and emotional, and this is really the area that I um I'm so drawn to because this is what took me down the path of delving into hormesis. Really, the question that was posed to me was by one of my patients who um is an executive who leads a very hard, stressful life objectively, travels globally, um, very demanding job. And his question to me was, am I going to die young and am I going to get heart disease cuz I, you know, I'm so stressed and or my job is very stressful and you know, my inclination at the time was a simple, um, you know, of course you should cut back or yeah, you should take it easy. And then the reality was A, that would be hypocritical I you know, I may not be traveling
you know, I may not be traveling globally, but I certainly take on a lot of challenges. residency. I Yeah, you know, we we all have hardships and throughout my life I've certainly had my share of challenges. And, you know, and then objectively, he was very healthy, um, and he was happy and energized and was thriving off of his work. So, to tell him not to do what was giving him so much joy and meaning just made me pause and think. And that led to you a series of clinical trials that we did measuring stress and understanding the biochemistry of the stress response and of understanding resilience. Um, so that is really my entryway and why I'm so passionate about this. And the key is, um, several fold. One is that when I'm mentioning that we can become more resilient. I'm talking about the changes in the structure and function of our body. You know, this whole concept of growth through resilience has been understood for so long in a very abstract way. It's been used Psychologically. Yeah, it's big part of, you know, coaching. It's big part part of positive psychology movement. But now we understand what is happening at the level of for example our brain how we are forming pathways that help us remember how we handled stress and part of that is programmed in the biology of our stress response. When we encounter stress we not only release epinephrine and norepinephrine and cortisol and these stress hormones were familiar with we release neurosteroids such as DHEA. They are there to help us remember how we handled stress. We leave these mental breadcrumbs for hours days and even a lifetime after stress exposure that make us better at handling
exposure that make us better at handling stress. And I think how we view the stress again impacts the net effect of that stressor on us and I'll share with you a really cool experiment. This was um and done um on a group of students and they were um preparing for the GREs and this is not our experiment um this is um it done by a different group but essentially they had one group read a paragraph that said you're going to take this test this was a practice test and you're going to feel some stress this is normal but this stress is there to prepare you and you can you know helps you handle the stress and it's normal you will have a better performance and another control group didn't get that paragraph. And the group that was just given that information that this mounting of your stress response is there so you can function better on this test actually had a higher score on the math GRE. Um this was on the practice test and then they waited in real life until the group actually took the GRE and they also scored higher months later on the GRE exam and I think it's so fascinating that you can actually train your mindset and see stressors differently. And I think when people are going through chronic stress, which is the predominant type in our world today, the financial hardship, difficult job situations, I think the key there is that these situations are hard. They are unpleasant, and they certainly can harm. This is in no way saying that that's not there and that's not true. But I think that we can all use these situations to bring out something meaningful. If we just had um a horrible conversation with a partner, it can help us become better at difficult conversations.
difficult conversations. We can take financial hardship, and maybe that can help us learn to budget better. Maybe that helped us, you know, learn to find bargains, learn about investments. Can we take situations that are difficult? You know, I went through a very process when my father was dying, and there was so much grief, and it was so hard to watch. But you also in that moment realize that you're getting a gift. You are seeing what matters most at the end of life, right? And if you just find those gifts and those opportunities, I think that you realize that you can create meaning, and that you cannot separate the experience of discomfort from the meaning, and you cannot live a life of meaning without going through the hard. And I think when you view it that way, you can appreciate that, you know, you can use good stressors to build resilience against these unavoidable stressors, but even finding meaning in those unavoidable chronic stressors reframes how you see stress, and that alone can buffer your stress response and help you get good at stress and use it to your advantage. Amazing. So, if our listeners remember only one sentence about stress at the end of this episode, what would you like that to be? I would like that to be that we are made for stress. We are made to do hard things. It's encoded in our DNA, and if we lean into it, we can become healthier, we can become happier, and we can live longer lives. I I think I can even quote Aliens. That's just the stress talking, man.
That's just the stress talking, man. It really is. I I love this approach because, um, you know, I think Julian and I figured out a long time ago that we were more robust if we became uncomfortable in training and put ourselves in the psychological difficult situations on the river running class five, and that really did I I can talk about and point to aspects of my life that were much easier because I was could handle a stress response. I, you know, I started to be anxious. I was like, "Oh, not as anxious as that or the being on the World Cup." And it really did allow me to perform better in grad school and all these other things. I I love that you wrap all of this up in the title of the book, The Paradox, because it really is so often times counterintuitive to be uncomfortable. There are so many tropes about, you know, uncomfortableness causes growth and we have to get out of your comfort zone, but love how systematic and simple this is to be able to integrate this and that we're talking about this even genetic level of adaptation that we're we're capable of. And as a humanist, I really love that you were like saying, "Hey, you're actually not as awesome as you could be if you were a little bit more stressed." Well, thank you so much. I really appreciate that. And and I hope that this helps people kind of reverse engineer the way we were meant to live by understanding how our thoughts, behaviors, and actions impact our genes. And when we learn to optimally express our genes, we realize that these are just sa - foundational for how we were just meant to live our everyday lives. And and everything I mention in the book is really fairly simple. I think the word stress, you know, certainly has this reaction of it's got to be hard. Um but it's really meant to break it down into everyday actionable things. So, thank you so much for the opportunity to share that. Yeah, and just to, you know, double emphasize that, you know, all of the
emphasize that, you know, all of the practical advice you give in the book is actionable and accessible. Um and, you know, you don't need to be a one-percenter to enjoy the benefits of the things you recommend in this book. So, um highly recommend. Um obviously, people can pick up The Stress Paradox wherever they get their books. Um it's available now and out there. And Kelly and I both really enjoyed it and took away a ton from it. Um and where else can people find you um on social media or the internet? Um you can find me at my website, which is drsharonbergquist. com. Um all as one word. B E R G Q U I S T dot com. On Instagram, um I'm the good stress doctor. Um feel free to reach out and ping me or send me messages. Um and on LinkedIn, I'm also the good uh the good stress doctor, but also Dr. Sharon Hersh Bergquist. Doctor, thank you so much for being here. It was really fun to learn more and have a chat with you today. Thank you so much.
Transcript auto-generated by YouTube. Verbatim — duplicates intentionally preserved.
Exercise, heat, cold, fasting, and focused effort all work through a similar principle. The body receives a manageable stress, responds, and returns stronger if recovery is sufficient.
Stress becomes harmful when it has no completion. Constant pressure, poor sleep, and emotional load keep the system activated without giving it a chance to rebuild.
The best stress is deliberate, measured, and followed by restoration. That is how the nervous system learns capacity without losing trust.
"The useful stress is the one your body can answer."
Choose stressors you can recover from.
Separate deliberate challenge from chronic overload.
Use sleep, breath, food, and connection as the recovery side of resilience.
The practice is not about chasing intensity. It is about creating a signal, then giving the body room to adapt.
