Podcast Transcription: Your 2026 Body Blueprint — Part 6: How Sleep, Stress, and Lifestyle Shape How You Age
Ted Ryce: So how do sleep stress and our lifestyle factor into longevity? I don't know about you, but I've always felt like the research on exercise on diet is a lot more clear about how those things affect our longevity, affect how we age. The prevention of those four big diseases when it comes to what most, what kills most people, which are heart disease, cancer, metabolic disease, and dementia. 

So today I'm gonna do my best to dive into three often overlooked factors in longevity, sleep, stress, and lifestyle, because there's some really important. Information here that I've learned over the years. I never used to focus on sleep, stress, and lifestyle in terms of like social connections, right? So we're gonna get into those areas today, and I want you to stick with me because some of what I'm gonna share is probably gonna surprise you. 

In fact, I'm gonna reveal the number one, according to longevity. Science outside of the physical stuff, there's one thing that predicts longevity better than even your VO two max. So we're gonna get into all that and more. Let's break down the science. I'll share some real world examples for you, and most importantly, give you practical takeaways to apply in your life. 

So let's talk about sleep. We've all heard the saying, oh, sleep when I'm dead. But skimping on sleep might actually bring that day closer. Now, the science behind this isn't quite as, let's say, clear as. Nutrition and exercise, but what we're starting to learn is that quality sleep is not a luxury. It's a biological necessity for longevity and peak performance. 

So we're gonna be talking about how sleep impacts your metabolism, hormones, recovery, appetite, and even pain. Because if you're over 40, there's a good chance that you got some aches and pains. And it's always interesting when I talk to my clients who are dealing with injuries where we get them to start sleeping better and they start feeling better. 

So let's get into it. One thing I want to ask you is, have you ever noticed how you crave junk food after a bad night's sleep? That's not just in your head. Lack of sleep causes powerful changes in your metabolism and hunger signal. And hunger signaling. In fact, a meta-analysis from King's College London found that when people were sleep deprived, they ate an average of 385 extra calories the next day. 

So that's like sneaking an additional lunch into your diet. And guess what? They weren't hungry for. Superfood salads and kale shakes and. Eating broccoli and chicken. They wanted, they wanted more rewarding food. So junk food, pizza, hamburgers, dessert. 

So what's really important about this is because. Burning more calories doesn't magically happen with less sleep. Those 300 and extra, those extra 385 calories per day over time, that can easily lead to weight gain, increased body fat, and poor health. So why do we eat more? When we're tired? We're so, why do we eat more when we're tired? 

Sleep loss messes with hormones like ghrelin and leptin, which control hunger and satiety. It also makes our brains reward centers extra responsive to food. That's why you want the junk food, the hamburger, the, the high calorie, high fat, high carb, highly processed things that make our brains light up. So in plain terms, when you're low on sleep, that donut suddenly looks irresistible. 

To make matters worse, ongoing sleep deprivation by itself can elevate blood sugar and insulin resistance and set the stage for type two diabetes. So if fat loss or healthy weight maintenance is your goal, which. If you're like most Americans, that should be your goal. Getting enough sleep might be the secret sauce that you're missing. 

It. I, I can think of so many instances of clients where I coach them. I, I saw that sleep was a big issue. I coach them on how to improve their sleep without, you know, necessarily spending more time. 

All of a sudden they started losing weight because it's helps control your appetite and also make you more active. So let's talk about hormones in sleep. Sleep is deeply tied to our hormones, including hormones that stress us out and make us feel strong. For example, cortisol. Which I'm sure you've heard of before, it's your body's primary stress hormone, and it's meant to peak in the morning and decline at night. 

So if you've ever felt like weight, you've woken up and you're just super low, energy could be a cortisol problem, or if you feel like you're exhausted, but you're also wired. That can be high cortisol at night or you fall asleep, but you wake up and you wake up again. It can be high cortisol, so sleep deprivation essentially keeps your foot on the stress pedal. 

A lack of sleep raises cortisol levels, which can, again, it doesn't. I wanna be really clear here. I want you to listen. Cortisol doesn't make you fat, but it does. Influence your hunger. It also, there's some evidence showing that it can preferentially store fat in your midsection. It can increase blood pressure and increase your risk for heart disease, mental illnesses like anxiety and depression, and even skin. 

On the flip side, a solid night of sleep naturally lowers cortisol, helping you wake up more refreshed and less stressed. And what's really important here is you can get into a cycle where you have this elevated, this has happened to me, by the way. That's how I know it. I went through a period of time where I was super wired at night, then I'd sleep like crap, which would make my. 

Cortisol levels higher. And then I just got into a cycle where I was having trouble sleeping and, and I had to work very hard and do a bunch of things to bring my stress levels back down. My physiological stress levels, and we'll talk about this a bit later when we mentioned stress. But we're not talking about like how tough you are mentally here. 

We're talking about when your physiology gets outta control. So let me know if that rings a bell for you and we'll get more into, you know, how to deal with that in the stress section. And also, if you're concerned about vitality and longevity, testosterone is another hormone that's influenced by your sleep. 

What we know so far is most, uh, a lot of hormone release. In fact, uh, testosterone happens during sleep. In fact, a famous University of Chicago study found that young men who only slept five hours per night for one week drop their testosterone levels 10 to 15%. And that's young, healthy guys. If you're over 40, you've got age working against you. 

The older you are, the less healthy you are. Okay? We can just call it like that. We can just say it straight like that. And if you're not doing all the things that you should be doing. For example, you have a belly, you have a high, hes resting heart rate because you don't do that much cardiovascular exercise. 

Your blood work's a bit of a mess. What is it gonna do to a guy over 40 who's got a belly who skips workouts because he prioritizes, um, work, work meetings? Who doesn't sleep that well, who probably drinks a little bit too much? What's it gonna do to you? Well, a hormonal decline in testosterone not only affects mood and libido, but it can affect your muscle mass if it gets low enough, your strength and bone density. 

So you've got to, what, what I tell my clients is like, if you want to feel and perform like you're super human, you must realize first that you're only human. And there's no, like, maybe you could get, you can get away with so many things when you're younger, but as you get older, you have to dial this in more. 

In fact, most of what I hear from guys complaining about age, it's their bad habits, their physiology. In their twenties, they could get away with their bad habits, but as they've gotten older, they can't get away with it anymore. The habits catch up with the biology. And biology is king here, right? So it's not just testosterone. 

Other longevity related hormones like growth hormone, also depend on sleep. It, uh, from from the research we have the majority of growth hormone, which is important for muscle repair. Fat burning tissue healing is revert. Is released during slow wave sleep. So as one sleep researcher put it, sleep is the greatest legal performance enhancing drug that most people are neglecting. 

So during deep sleep, your body is busy repairing muscle and balancing hormones like doing all this stuff. So short, short, changing your sleep is going to disrupt your hormones, uh, slow your recovery from exercise, weaken your immune system, and make you want to eat more high calorie foods. So if you're working out and simply just dealing with the stresses of life, think of sleep as the ultimate reset, right? 

It's your built-in recovery system. High quality sleep is like. Putting your, or plugging in your phone and charging it again. And, um, you know how like some people kinda run with their phone, always running outta energy? Well, that's what it's like when you're sleeping poorly. So it's not even that you feel grogginess. 

So it's not even that you feel groggy and you make up for it with caffeine or even taking the creatine, the high dose creatine we talked about in the nutrition episode. But it will affect you. It will catch up to you, it you are still gonna run at a deficit making decisions and it's gonna affect your performance. 

So reacher. Research confirms that athletes and high performers recover faster and perform better with sufficient sleep. So don't think of recovery from exercise that is just about protein shakes and stretching. Sleep is where the magic happens. 

And a lack of sleep doesn't just leave you physically tired, it leaves you more sensitive to pain as well. And. This is called central sensitization, and basically that means poor sleep can turn up your body's pain, dial, making pains, feel, let's say louder, feel more extreme, right, more pronounced, and studies even show that a single all-nighter conduce. 

Studies even show that even a single all-nighter can induce a state of generalized hyperalgesia. So heightened pain, sensitivity, and increased anxiety levels the next day. And if you do that all the time, it's gonna impair your natural pain inhibition pathways and lowers your pain threshold, creating this vicious cycle where pain. 

Makes it hard for you to sleep. And then lack of sleep amplifies pain. So if you have nagging back aches or shoulder aches or other chronic pain, improving your sleep is one of the most effective and underrated pain relief strategies. And again, I've been in periods where this has happened to me. And I ha you, you have to get yourself out of it. 

And it can be very hard if you're in this cycle of poor sleep to, to just like, well, I'm just gonna go to bed earlier. And then you lie in bed and you can't go to sleep. So we'll be talking about, um, some strategies here in a bed, especially when it comes to managing stress that are gonna help you put your nervous system back into balance and. 

Get you better sleep. And the last thing that we need to talk about is cognitive recovery. So your brain uses sleep to take out the trash. And I mean that kind of literally, you've probably heard of the glymphatic system and how it clears metabolic waste out of your brain during deep sleep. So this is another thing. 

So if you wanna. Ward off dementia and avoid that plaque buildup that is associated with dementia, Alzheimer's, et cetera. Sleep is crucial. So let's talk about some sleep basics here. What is commonly referred to as sleep hygiene. So the first one is stick to a schedule. It's really important to go to bed and wake up at the same time every day, even on weekends. 

Um, there is some nuance here if you are in sleep debt and, uh, you, the, the more recent research has showed you can. Improve your sleep debt by sleeping more. But as a general rule though, you wanna wake up and go to bed at the same time. This consistently reinforces your circadian rhythm, otherwise, AKA, your internal clock. 

And it'll make it easier to fall asleep at night and wake up in the morning. So if you're going to bed at different times, especially on the weekend, it's going to, it's gonna hurt you. And what ends up happening is, have you ever been jet lagged? You flew from LA to Miami, or Miami to la, or you flew to Europe or to Asia. 

I've made a lot of international flights with big time differences and it kicks your butt. So. Uh, when you stay up and, and go to bed at different times, just because of social reasons, it causes the same type of shift that jet lag does. In fact, in, in fact they call it social jet lag. Another important thing, and this one again, takes no. 

This. This one's probably the easiest sleep hack is create a sleep sanctuary. So make your bedroom a cave of comfort. In other words, keep it cool, dark, and quiet. So research shows the ideal bed temperature is around 65 to 68 degrees. Of course, you gotta dial it in for you. And of course you've got to also deal with. 

Uh, if you're married or, or in a relationship where you sleep in the same room, in the same bed, you've got to, you've gotta kinda negotiate there. But a cool room helps your core body temperature drop, which is a trigger for sleep. In fact, if you've ever had trouble sleeping and you knew it was like, oh, I'm so hot right now. 

Maybe you had a big meal before you went to bed and you're just. Laying in bed and you're just feeling so hot, you gotta take the covers off. Like that's an example. Another thing is eliminate light sources, blackout curtains, get 'em put in your room. Eye mask. I use earplugs. You can use a white noise machine. 

I don't personally like those, but I use earplugs almost every night to sleep. Unless I'm in a place, like for example, when I was in the hotel room. In Austin, Texas recently, the hum of the AC was loud enough and let's say calming enough to where it blocked out the noise, but also didn't stop me from falling asleep. 

And really important. Do your best Toban screens and electronics from the bedroom. We know that blue light or exposure to artificial light at night can be, can throw off your, your circadian rhythms. Okay? So in fact, that brings us to the next point, which is mind your evening light exposure. So it brings us to the next point, which is mind your evening light exposure. 

Uh, in fact. What you want is to get bright light in the morning. Natural light in the morning. So having a coffee outside or sitting on the porch. I, I know it's hard depending on what part of the world you're in, what part of the country you're in, what part of, you know, what season you're in. I'm actually back in Brazil right now, so it's summer. 

So it's a little bit rainy, but it, it's still quite sunny most days and I make sure I get on the balcony. In fact, I just went out on the balcony a little bit before doing this episode. So morning sunlight acts like a cup of coffee. If your body clock, it tells your brain that it's time to wake up. It boosts alertness and it's one of the most powerful things that you can do, and it helps with melatonin release at night. 

Conversely at night, avoiding bright lights, especially LED lights is crucial. I would do a deeper dive and, and, uh, create some sleep episodes where we talk about the different types of lighting that you can use in your house. But for now, just be clear that, you know, you want to dim the lights at night. 

You want to, um, avoid having LED lights in your home. Yes, they look very beautiful and bright in, in some ways, but it, it's just too powerful. Um, so think about it this way. Using light at night, whether it's from your phone. Have you ever noticed how bright your phone is, by the way? And if you've ever, I mean, you've never done this. 

I've never done this, right? If you've turned it on in a very dark room, you're like, whoa, this is, there's a lot of light coming out of, uh, this phone. So it's like shining a mini sun. In your eyes and it tricks your brain into thinking it's daytime, it suppresses melatonin. So again, consider dimming your devices using blue light filters after sunset. 

Or maybe even a screen curfew. I'll be on, I'll be straight with you. I watch a series or a movie almost every night, but instead of the big TV that I have in my room, I watch it on my MacBook and I keep the lights, you know, the dimmer switch on your computer. I keep the lights as low as I can. Okay. And it makes a big difference. 

Another thing to do is wind down and relax. It's really hard. It. Let's say you're returning email and or doing an intense workout, and then you're like, okay, time to go to bed. Then you lay in bed and it just doesn't happen. It's really good to establish a pre sleep routine to shift your body into sleep mode. 

So things that I've used and, and coached my clients with is, um, doing deep breathing. I really like for my clients, most of the time what I tell 'em to do it, it's like if you're struggling to fall asleep, you're just not tired, go and do some stretching or yoga. And when I say yoga, I don't mean the more intense isometric holds like warriors pose or whatever. 

Do some stretching, deep breathing combined together. It will help calm you down. Then you can go back and try to fall asleep. Um, you can take a hot shower. There's some research on it. Personally, I find that hot shower tends to raise my core temperature too easily and I don't get that rebound that you're supposed to get. 

Uh, but it's something you can try because there is research backing it up. But the key here is just to avoid work emails. Arguing online, anything that gets your mind racing or arguing with your partner or your kids. Treat this wind down time as sacred and it's your, you know, it's your way of setting yourself up for recovery. 

And I would even say this. If your house is a stressful house, meaning the interactions with the people in your house are stressful, it's really important that you lead the way and create more calmness so that you can fall asleep. Yes. Is that easy? No, but especially if you're already like, how do I even get myself into this stressful situation? 

Right? Or maybe one of your kids is having an issue and they're staying up too late and playing video games, whatever it is. But, um, do your best to create peace in your home during the day. Good vibes. Peace equals calm, nervous system. Calm nervous system means you fall asleep. And the last thing is watch out for the sleep saboteurs. 

So we're talking about caffeine and alcohol. Caffeine has a half-life around five to six hours. Uh, I'm not really gonna go into what that is. It just means it stays in your system for a really long time. So I don't have coffee beyond noon. Now, the other day I had a coffee at 2:00 PM because Yeah. And I paid for it. 

I did not sleep well. Uh, so you have to be very careful. There's nothing wrong with coffee unless. There's nothing wrong with coffee unless you start noticing that it makes you more irritable or causes some disruption with your sleep. And if you are laying in bed and you're like, I'm not particularly stressed out. 

I'm not in a bad mood or right, but I feel a bit edgy, ask yourself, how many coffees did you have? That day or how many, you know, energy drinks or whatever you're into, whatever caffeine, uh, containing things that you've ingested, and how late did you have 'em? That's why it's also really important to avoid pre-workouts because it, it will keep you wired for a long time. 

Some of us don't have any problems falling asleep or staying asleep with caffeine, although I did read some research that. Even for those people who are quote unquote fast metabolizers of caffeine, it still might be affecting your sleep architecture in a negative way. So sleep architecture, by the way, if you've never heard of that, it's the phases of sleep that you go through in the night. 

So there's different phases, deep sleep, REM, sleep, light sleep, right? So, um, it, it can affect. How much time you spend in deep sleep in REM? Sleep. So alcohol. Look, alcohol is terrible for your health. I say that with no judgment. I drink, I like wine, and I like a Brazilian cocktail called Nias. They're really good, but alcohol is terrible for you, right? 

You, it, it doesn't mean you have to stop drinking. It doesn't mean you can never drink, but just understand that every time you do drink, you are, you're, let's say you're debiting part of your health, right? And you'll have to put it back. Okay, if that's even possible. So alcohol might knock you out faster, but it wrecks your sleep quality. 

Uh, we know this from studies, it causes lighter sleep, so it messes with that sleep architecture. Uh, you can wake up, you can wake up to use the bathroom. So if you drink, do it moderately. And really what you want to do is you. Wanna keep your drinks to two drinks per week. Now that's super low, almost not worth doing, right? 

If you're a drinker. But just keep that in mind. The closer you can stay to two drinks per week, not per day, per week, the better off you're gonna be. And one thing that has really helped my clients with drinking and, uh, alcohol, I'm sorry, drinking and understanding the effects of alcohol and sleep is some type of sleep tracker. 

My clients, when they have a few drinks, they go to bed and then they look at their Aura stats the next day. And see that the resting heart rate was 10 beats higher than usual. It's like, oh, this is not, this is really taken away from my health. So if you do drink, drink as little as possible and try to finish your last drink at least three hours before bed, right? 

For me, that doesn't work. If I have a, a drink one, uh, uh, three hours before bed, it's still not long enough. So by doing this, you're gonna set yourself up for deeper sleep. And you'll notice it everywhere in your life, your cravings will diminish, your mood will lift, your workouts will improve, and life will just feel a bit easier. 

So again, sleep is that legal performance enhancing drug that people are just not paying attention to. So let's talk about stress. Oh wow. Stress in Americans, we all live in a culture that glorifies stress as the price of success, especially if you're an entrepreneur, executive, or high achiever. You might wear stress like a badge of honor or long hours high pressure. 

I can handle anything, and so I wanna be really clear here. Um, chronic stress just isn't a mental state. It's not about you being mentally tough or not mentally tough enough because if you die from a heart attack because your stress was unchecked and your blood pressure was high, yeah. Okay. So your, you're, you're mentally tough to the point where you kind of, uh, unintentionally committed suicide. 

Right. Okay. So that's not what we're after. Chronic stress. I'm gonna say it again, isn't just a mental state, it's a physiological state that left if that, if left unchecked can burn down your physical health and your mental health. Again, it, it's not about being mentally weak, it's about being smart. Even the toughest special operator, the toughest Navy seal, they have to recover and reset the toughest athlete high perform. 

Let me tell you something. I've, uh, I haven't worked with that many professional athletes. It, it just wasn't my thing. But I was connected with athletic trainers and other people overseeing. Um. The, the training of professional athletes. Most notably, uh, I knew the head athletic trainer for the Miami Heat and when I went to the gym and had a conversation with him during the game, 'cause I actually don't, like I got, I get in VA used to get invited to all these games, uh, at the Miami Heat and I just didn't care. 

Right. But while I was there one time I got taken into the gym and had a conversation with the head athletic trainer. So they spend most of their time recovering. They spend most of their time recovering. Almost want to go on a tangent here and talk about how right athletes, million dollar athletes focus a lot on recovery, and million dollar executives and entrepreneurs think that recovery is weakness. 

Okay. Need to shift and realize, like you, you have to, if you're stressing yourself, you have to think like you're an athlete, even though you're an office athlete. Right. So again, let's define, let's, let's rewind a bit and define stress. So there's mental, emotional stress, like work deadlines, financial worries, family conflicts, and there's physical stress. 

I got sick while I was in Texas. Uh, that's an example of physical stress, poor sleep, or even excessive exercise, and they often go hand in hand, both mental, emotional and physical stress. So stress activates your sympathetic fight or flight nervous system, right? Heart rate goes up, blood pressure rises, cortisol and adrenaline flood your system. 

In the short term, this is the type of response that can save your life. Thinking about slamming the brakes in your car to avoid a crash. Thank God we have this response, but when it's on all the time, things start breaking down. Inflammation increases high blood pressure, damage to your arteries, fat gain, especially visceral belly fat gain, and even impairing your immune system brain function. 

So the tricky part here is that generally speaking, humans are notoriously bad at self-assessing stress. High achievers even more so, we get used to operating under high stress and, and, and it's kind of normalized. So I've had even had clients tell me, I don't feel stressed. I'm fine. I thrive under pressure. 

It's like, well, why is your blood pressure one 50 over. 90 then because it's obviously you're, you're not thriving. Why did your dentist give you some special thing to put in your mouth? Because you're grinding your teeth at night. So how do we get an objective read on stress? Well, it's from looking at biomarkers and metrics. 

I love my, our ring, but you can use, there's a lot of things you can use here. So. Uh, to track this resting heart rate. Again, I'm gonna talk about the ordering. I don't have a financial in case you're new to this podcast. I don't have any financial relationship with them, but I use it all the time. In fact, I do have some issues with them, uh, but uh, 'cause they keep, anyway, I'm not gonna go off on a, a tangent, but no, wearable is perfect. 

But the aura is quite good. So is the Garmin. I don't really like whoop, but you could use a whoop. I've had clients use one, use them. So resting heart rate. If your heart is beating faster than normal at rest, it could be a sin of stress or under recovery. Here's the thing, it's not about what your heart rate is doing today. 

It's like the trend. What does your heart rate do? What? What is your resting heart rate most of the time? And when it starts creeping up five or 10 beats, you know that your strain, right? So chronic stress can elevate resting heart rate over time, as can worsening cardiovascular fitness. So the best way to bring down your resting heart rate is to manage your stress and focus on aerobic exercise, and we can see how well you're doing both of those by tracking resting heart rate. 

Blood pressure is another one. High blood pressure is a classic outcome of sustained stress, so stress triggers something called vasoconstriction. It's when your blood vessels tighten and heavier heartbeat. So if you're seeing readings above one 20 over 80, right? This is, it's too much. You want it under one 20 over 80. 

So if you're in one 30 over 80, consistently, eh, stress management should definitely be on your radar, as you should be asking yourself about aerobic exercise. And I often have my stress clients measure their blood pressure at home and they're surprised that they see a difference on really stressful days. 

Another one that's less common but becoming more popular is heart rate variability has become a popular metric with fitness wearables. My aura, uh, measures heart rate variability, and it's the tiny variations. In time between heartbeats, for example. So many people it's like, oh, my heartbeat's like a metronome. 

Like it's just constantly beating at the same rate. But that's not what happens. Um. In fact, when there's higher heart rate variability, more variability in between beats, it generally means that your nervous system is responsive and in a good state, not always. There's some nuance here that we're not gonna get into, and we're talking about trends here. 

Not on a like, oh, hey, my HRV is high today. I'm in a good relaxed parasympathetic state. No, it's about the general trend. And a low HRV indicates dominance of that fight or flight sympathetic system. So in essence, heart rate variability provides personal feedback on your stress and recovery balance. So it's something I monitor with clients, but I spend more time focusing on. 

Uh, resting heart rate, although I, I do pay attention to heart rate variability to it's worth paying attention to. And of course there is cortisol levels that we can measure, and cortisol can be measured via blood, saliva, or even hair. Most people don't need to worry about this unless you're feeling like out of control. 

Stress. Or really struggling with weight loss, I might do this. Uh. So healthy cortisol follows a curve. It's high in the morning, low at night. Stressed people might have chronically elevated cortisol throughout the day, or a disrupted rhythm, so it's low in the morning. So you're, you're like, oh man, I'm dragging, need more coffee. 

But then at night you're like, wired. We've talked about that earlier. That's a disrupted rhythm. So, um, some of my clients have done four points, saliva, cortisol tests, and we see patterns like flat, high. Right, cor, cortisol is stuck high all day or inverted low in the morning, high in the evening. So it's something that you can do. 

Uh, it's, it's not something I do with my clients unless I feel stress is a major factor. So the big point here is that stress is not just in your head. It's great to be mentally tough. You need to be mentally tough If you're an entrepreneur, high performer. And it's great that you can tell yourself that you can handle anything, but as you get older, you need to be more in the zone, more in flow, more working with your biology than against it. 

So your body could be silently giving up on you and you're not paying attention. So make sure you are. 

Tracking this stuff, especially if you're listening to this part of the episode and saying, you know what? I do feel like I'm a bit trust. So let's talk about some strategies now. Um, 

there's two ways of dealing with stress. I really like to say this upfront. One is dealing with the symptoms of stress. So that would be like I was feeling I got into a fight or, or I'm getting a divorce. I've coached a lot of guys going through divorce. I'm getting a divorce, so I went for a run and now I feel better. 

So what you're doing there is you're managing the symptoms of stress. Another way of doing that is I, I, I'm stressed out about the divorce, so I went drinking. Right. I started drinking again, that's another way of managing the symptoms of stress, but in a way that kind of creates more physiological stress and does all the things that we talked about earlier, disrupt your sleep, et cetera. 

Um, and you can also fix the root cause of stress. An example of this is I had a client of mine. And she is running a business and she was having some issues with some personnel issues. She had some people, uh, issues with the people who were working for her, and she was telling me, oh, but I do meditation. 

And it's, you know, meditation helps me so much. And, uh, meditation, you know, I, I meditate every day and it helps me so much. And at first I was just like, yeah, but why do you feel the need to meditate so much? Like, what's going on? And when she told, when she talked to me, she um, explained that she was. Going through this challenge with her employees and as a result, it was creating a lot of stress. 

So, and she wasn't seeking help to fix it, and she wasn't adequately fixing it on her own. I, and so what I said was, look, it's great that you're meditating, but what we really want here is to manage the symptoms of stress while looking for the solution to the root cause. So hopefully that hits home with you. 

So, uh, dialing into what the root cause is right is, is gonna be different for everyone. So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna give you some quick wins for calming down. Now, when I first deal with a client who stress, my first recommendation is deep breathing exercises because it can change the game. 

So deep breathing exercises is always my first recommendation. One of my favorite exercises is simply breathing in for five seconds and out for five seconds. And if you do this just for three minutes, five minutes, you'll see a significant difference. How you feel and anxiety and your stress levels. 

In fact, if you measure your blood pressure or even heart rate, you can slow your heart rate down. You can lower your blood pressure. It's literally telling your nervous system, Hey, we're safe. You can chill now. Right? And the best part, you can do it anywhere, anytime, even in your car. Okay? You can. In fact, while you're listening to me, take a few breaths, five seconds in, five seconds out, and notice how fast you can get your physiology and notice how fast you can get your physiology and notice how fast you can get your physiology to shift just with some deep breathing exercises. 

The next one is meditation and mindfulness. Now. Look, I don't like to, I meditate every day. In fact, I did it today. It's deep breathing on steroids. And it depends on the type of meditation that you do. Of course, and I, I don't wanna get into that, but research consistently shows that regular ME meditation can lower stress hormone levels, improve markers of wellbeing. 

In fact, in one study after a three month meditation retreat, participants who who practice mindfulness lowered their cortisol significantly. And another study in Germany found that six months of daily meditation practice reduced participants' cortisol by 25% when they measured hair samples. So this is pretty strong. 

Now, of course, it's a big ask. Uh, I, I don't tell clients typically like, oh, go do meditation. 'cause what ends up happening is people try meditation. They're like, oh, I'm doing this wrong, and then they quit. You really need to be trained to do meditation the right way. Now you can use an app, go for it. 

Headspace, I started with Headspace. Calm, waking up. They're all good, but just understand that. The best meditation training is gonna be through learning it from someone who's really good with it. Otherwise, just lay down in a dark room or sit wherever you can and just practice on breathing in for five seconds and out for five seconds. 

And the last thing is some type of deep recovery practice. So massages, float tanks. Acupuncture. It almost doesn't matter what you use, although I'm partial to float tanks. What matters most is that you feel a difference. And there's even some research that shows a 45 minute massage can lower cortisol levels by up to 31%. 

Now it's a 45 minute massage. And, um, you gotta, you know, pay a hundred, 150 bucks, 200 bucks, whatever it is. And let me tell you, uh. I've had a lot of massages. I lived in Thailand a couple years where $10 could get you an hour. And I used to, I've, I've had hundreds of massages and I'll tell you, um, a couple things. 

Like they can change the game, but they're highly dependent on the person giving you the massage and how you are. Some people don't like to be touched. Uh, and, but if you've ever, I've had a couple of my clients say, you know what? I don't really feel a good. Difference from massage. So, um, I asked him try out some other things like float tank therapy, or you might call it sensory deprivation therapy. 

And then also try out, um, you know, whatever you want, really, acupuncture, which I don't necessarily recommend. But it's, you know, if you're, if you're, if you're into it, go for it. So other honorable mentions here, yoga, Tai Chi, Qigong, spending time in nature, or even just taking a longer walk. Uh, those can really move the needle. 

So let's talk about the final one here. We're gonna talk about the power of social connection and environment. So what we know is that a lack of meaningful social relationships can increase the risk of death by 50% or more. It's really crazy, right? All cause mortality. You heard it. It it's like people who are chronically isolated or lonely, they're. 

Far more likely to die prematurely than those with strong friendships or strong ties with their family. And it, what's really interesting is the impact of social isolation. So two things. Social, social isolation is when you are not around people, right? There's no one around. And then there's loneliness where you, you might be around people, you may. 

Not be around people, but a lot of people feel lonely even though they're in a family and there's, you know, four people in it and they live all live in the same house. So, and um, it's a big deal. In fact, the Surgeon General of the United States recently stated that loneliness has the same effect on mortality as smoking 15 cigarettes a day. 

So why is this so deadly? Well, there are a few theories. Psychologically loneliness can trigger chronic stress and depression, and we've already talked about stress, right? Cortisol, inflammation. But there's also a behavioral aspect where uh, people who are isolated might not have others encouraging healthy habits or noticing that they're unwell. 

Um, and biologically humans we're. Pack animals we're, we're designed, if you will, to be in groups. And so being alone is a survival threat. Uh, and on the flip side, it's been found that strong social connections are a longevity booster. Studies of the blue J, studies of the Blue Zones regions. In other words, regions with the highest concentrations of people living to 100 and beyond consistently find that social networks and frequent social engagements. 

It, it's a big factor in these people who live to a hundred and beyond. Correlation isn't causation, but if you start to put together all the evidence here, um, you can start to see. Okay, this is important. So I would ask you right now, like, how many close friends do you have? How's your relationship with your partner? 

Do you have a partner? Are you, um, divorced? And you know what? You're in a situation where you're like kind of done with dating because you're turned off. Like all of that matters, right? And just know. You, you're probably not gonna be healthy even if you eat all the right things, even if you take all the supplements and do the HIIT training and the low intensity cardio and lift the weights right, and do the ply metrics. 

If you're missing on this side of your life, you still might struggle with health issues and you still might struggle with mental health issues. So another thing that I think is really important is how your tribe affects your habits. In other words, there's habits are contagious. So beyond the direct effects of loneliness or having great connections, there's another fascinating aspect lifestyle where we become more like the people we surround ourselves with. 

Our habits, good or bad, are contagious through our, so Are Contagious through our social networks. And there was this great 32 year longitudinal study out of Harvard and University of California San Diego, which looked at traits like obesity and how they spread through networks of friends and family and even. 

Acquaintances. So if a close friend of yours becomes obese, your risk of obesity increases by 57%, and it didn't even matter if your friend lived far away, the distance was irrelevant. It was the social tie that mattered, not the environment, which is super weird. I, I, you know, I would love to hear more about that if I could ever get Nicholas Kki, the head researcher. 

Who did a great Ted talk, by the way, on this many years ago, uh, to, to explain what he, what they think is going on, and it gets even spookier. So friends of friends had had an effect too. So if your, if a friend of your friend, someone you might not even know directly became obese, your likelihood of obesity went up by 20%. 

And even at three degrees of separation. So a friend of a friend of a friend, it was about 10%. Now, beyond that, the effect faded, but it's like ripples in a social pond. The your strongest and direct contacts influence. Influence you the most, but then you have these friends of friends and even friends of friends of friends, right? 

So the take home message here is that obesity isn't contagious like a virus, but there's something going on when you're hanging out with people who have bad habits or good habits. You end up doing the same. Now again, correlation, not causation. And he even found this applies to other habits too, like smoking, drinking, exercise, and even happiness. 

So again, the the name of the researcher by behind the study, Nicholas Krysta, also showed that happiness spreads in social networks. So being around upbeat people makes you more likely to be upbeat. I gotta tell you, I, I feel like I'm pretty upbeat, but as since I've been living in Brazil, these people are just culturally upbeat and I've shifted more towards being that way than I was in Miami, where you're not that upbeat in Miami. 

You know, people who are on vacation in Miami or upbeat where people who have just moved there. But if you've been there for a while, it's a, it's a, you know, a bit of a, a tough environment in some ways. So what can we do with this information? Audit your social circle. You don't have to drop all your friends who have unhealthy habits because friendship is deeper than that. 

And, and we already talked about how friendships, social connections play a role in longevity too. But maybe you can start shifting the trends in a more positive direction. For example, uh, we. For example, a group of people I hung out with when I was living in Mexico, instead of going to happy hour and getting drunk, we go to the spa and do sauna, cold plunges, steam rooms, hot tubs. 

So I so try to. Recruit accountability buddies. There's probably someone, for example, one of the things I told my clients, it's like in, in the holidays, there's probably someone who wants to go for a walk who feels like they ate too much too, and they're willing to do something about it, but they don't feel like they have a, you know, someone to go with. 

And so lead the way, be a leader, and that's how you. 

And that's how you can harness and that's how you can harness the power of social contagion for good. And you can also, I mean, that's why coaching works so well. If I, uh, can throw a shameless plug, people work with me. It's like my standards for what's, for what I expect. And also what I believe is way different. 

So many of my clients don't even believe they can lose a significant amount of weight. It's like, what are you talking about? That's a minimum amount of weight that we're gonna lose while working together. And they're often incredulous at first, and it's just like, wow. Now they start believing it. Um. But of course I only work with highly successful folks. 

I mean, that's what, what my business is. I, I produce this free podcast. So if you're in a situation where you're, you know, maybe not interested in coaching or can't afford it financially, joining communities that embody the lifestyle that you want, go join a running club. Um, go. Go to the yoga class, join a meditation group, right? 

Go join jujitsu. You can, you might get injured, but you'll get in good shape and you'll make a lot of friends. Um, so yeah, and always remember it's quanti and always remember quality over quantity. Spend less time online. Start connecting with people, start being more active with. Curating the people you hang out with. 

Oh, I'm gonna finish this up. Uh, but one thing I wanna leave you with is I had a client of mine, rich, who said, wow, I was at Yellowstone Park and I met this guy in his seventies, and he was just an inspiration to be around. And it's like, man, why don't you schedule those things? I, I help my clients schedule. 

Things with their, uh, uh, with their friends or like, like you have to put things in your calendar that help you feel like, you know what? I've got great things going on in life. It's not just about the weekly grind of work and kids, and then. Squeezing in exercise and eating right and all this stuff that ta Ted talked about in this series. 

It's not just about that. Make sure you're doing things that shift you into a really high state, um, and that it's not just going to Mexico and, and. In an all inclusive resort and getting trashed for a week. Okay, look, if you want to do that, that's okay, but that's not gonna help you in any way. It's gonna take away from you. 

And again, I'm not saying to never do it, but if you're, if you got a belly, if you're not locked in on your health, you should not be doing that stuff, okay? It's kind of like you don't want to spend money when you're broke, and if you're outta shape, you're kind of broke in terms of what you can afford to do with. 

Negative things that have a negative effect on your health. Okay, so that is a wrap for today's episode. I hope you got a lot out of this episode. It was a bit longer. And listen, I'd love to hear your experiences.  

Have you noticed a difference in your life when you improve your sleep or manage your stress better or changed your circle of friends or having an accountability partner? Um, hope you got a lot out of this, and in the next episode, next and final episode, we'll talk about how to put it all together. Until then, have a great one and speak soon.