How Kindness Can Boost Your Immune System and Make You Happier | Dr David Hamilton

there was a study on over 700 patients with symptoms of the cold or flu they had to give the doctor a score between 0 and 10 on the empathy that they assured and those who scored the doctor a perfect 10 retain the immune response to the same condition was 50% higher than everyone else and it just came down to everything how do you feel then it's physically effecting unit the function of the immune I think that's the key isn't it it's not just in your head it's changing things biologically physiologically David welcome to the field where I live more podcasts thank you I'm so excited I'm excited to talk to you it's you know we've had a few back and forth trying to get it sorted and then you know we figured this now what 48 hours ago pretty much it less than that I think less than that yeah okay so hey you're gonna be a wife I says I want to be a wife lessons on Saturday so what's so prepared for this well I'm hoping as we catch up and I inquire about your work which frankly I've been super fascinated with it for a long time hopefully the listeners will also get carried along with that curiosity's only that's my hope I'll make two good fantastic so you've come down from Dunblane Central Scotland they famous latterly for and Amaury and Jamie Murray the tennis person officer for the school shooting several years ago yeah really love a lovely place Dunblane yeah I took up tennis when I moved there and my mid forties had never played tennis before so it caused off the Murray brother cause of the money but yes from the point if you don't if you're fat and healthy and you don't play tennis is can I throw in the point that's amazing is that yeah picked up a racket for the first time in my mid forties and I was awful no now but I'm working up through the league so I've been doing a lot of mental exercises visualization a lot of training and stuff I love it three four things are so interesting about this small town yeah Dunblane I wonder if we compare the tennis participation rates in them blame you know the home of Andy and Jamie Murray or certainly the former home of them with the rest of the United Kingdom I will if it's artificially skewed upward probably definitely you know it's a really thriving tennis community yeah fantastic well you mentioned a couple things there which will probably come soon later on but David I think I'm really fascinated by your journey mm-hmm so you started working in the pharmaceutical industry and now you don't yeah right so why do you start by saying what you do now and then sort of share a bit of that a story what happened and how did you end up here today yes so what I basically write books on that really broadly cover the different ways that your mind and emotions and your behavior has physical effects your health giving effects on the body so I've read a series of books and I give a lot of talks on it and it really my interest and the fight that for went back even further my interest and the pharmaceutical industry was the placebo effect but the interest in that actually was born when I was a when I was about 11 years old my mum had postnatal depression and she was suffering terribly in it and it wasn't really understood this was in the mid seventies after my youngest sister was bought three sisters my youngest sister was born in 1976 postnatal depression was not well understood at the time and my mum I didn't really get the right treatment in fact the the the psychiatrist she was sent to to see said give yourself a shake but asking a woman with postnatal depression to give herself a shake is like asking someone with a broken leg to run off I suppose and my mom really it really had shattered her self-esteem and she started she would feel really low about herself and like she's just not a strong person and and so she suffered terribly for a few years and as a young child I could tell my mom was struggling and I didn't really know what was wrong and I remember one day I'd only just started secondary school and this may sound really corny right I don't know if I bumped my bag off that off the shelf but a book fell off the shelf and it was called the magic power of your mind and I'm just 11 years old magic power of your mind Walter Germain another I've got a bet that could help my mom so I just took it I put it in my bag and I didn't know you're supposed to join Oliver a yellow card stamp but it totally helped my mom it didn't you know cure depression in a day but it gave her tools and strategies like what we know called mindfulness I gave her those kind of things that helped her navigate a course through the difficult times so as I grew up in my teenage years my mom would often use affirmations and she would do meditation and she was she say things like I can do it it's all in the mind mind over matter so having these conversations with my mom it's no surprise that my interest started was became the power of the mind and what your mind can do in them they affect your mind tires on your body so when I ended up working in the pharmaceutical industry developing drugs for cardiovascular disease in cancer most of my colleagues would be celebrating when you hear that one of the drugs that we've participated in is working but I I was so fascinated with how many people were improving with placebos and it was so interesting to me and I think because my mom had learned about mental strategies that could help her a lot or but navigate that course through some of those difficult days so that was my so I was so fascinated after four years of really my one many research projects just reading and learning everything I could I decided to resign because I thought my passion then was to educate people on to write and to speak to educate on how we can harness this overall effect in order to improve our health and to you know make life a little bit better for us yeah and we found so sharing that it is a fascinating story when your mum was unwell and you brought home that book about the power of minds you know how old were you and what were you interested in at school at that time I was 11 years old my me I just started secondary school said but my main my passion I guess is skill if you could call that passion when you're 11 was mathematics and so when I went to high school it was maths and science twas my bag things I really I used what I hated English and it's funny you know if someone had said to me as a child you will write lots of books one day I'd have laughed other you know me right in boots because it was just maths in science it's all I was interested in but that's that's interesting because you Pixar that book of humor the age of 11 mmm now look my kids aren't yet 11 my son's 9 and I'm so gonna guess that 11 is still at that age where some naive enough yes you kind of believe in stuff have faith let's say and I'm just wondering you know as you got through your education and you know studied science more and more to a higher and higher degree did you ever source get a skeptical about the importance of the minds because it's not really someone with source of school it's not something we're taught in science it's not something with tools at medical school and a lot of your work now is showing the beautiful science that actually exists around kindness around the placebo around the power of the mind so I'm super fascinating that you go through this period of scatter sysm somewhere and then come out the other side or what happened surprisingly it not so much what I would see is I just forgot about it yeah you know you get saw I mean III got so engrossed in my my degree you know I did chemistry then my PhD was organic chemistry and you get so engrossed in it that I actually just forgot really I remember reading a norman vincent peale the power of positive thinking when I was halfway through my PhD and I almost reminded me of the passion either I remember you know I was literally in Medellin my second middle of my second year of my PhD and all of a sudden ignited reading this book ignited my passion it was the memory I had of I'm so interested in and in you know at the time the book was just about positive thanking but it wasn't just about positive thinking my III I looked at that isn't not just about positive thinking that I'll say positive things and positive things happen it was more about the attitude that you were bringing to situations to change how you felt about something and that's the message I got I thought this is what I love and and so during my PhD I started to really dream day dream I suppose that one day I would write a book about the mind and had no idea what I would write about me right you know even at the time the idea of writing but it just seemed like something I knew I had to do one day so you're working for a pharmaceutical company you're there with your team with your colleagues trying to develop drugs that designed to help people you know you said so about the placebo effect which finds super interesting so you know for people who are not familiar the way we often otherwise drugs is we do something called a randomized control trial so you know very very crudely speaking you take two groups of people you know let's say there's 200 people there and you're testing a drug for blood pressure and a hundred people get the drug for blood pressure hundred people though they get just a sugar pill so rights yep and then you see who has you know has it been a statistically significant increase or or benefit in one of the groups ie the group who's taking a drug ideally I guess if that's what you're studying and it's done because often placebo has been certainly my interpretation of this as a medic is that oh if it's just the same as placebo then the drug doesn't work is the very simplistic explanation and if it's beyond that to a certain degree we like okay this drug actually works it's beyond the kind of placebo thing right an almost a derogatory way but nonetheless if you think about it even if in that hundreds let's say that group you don't get the drug a hundred people who've got blood pressure or high blood pressure if ten of them get better on taking the placebo and twenty get better on taking the pharmaceutical drug well the placebo is still doing something right yeah and it's not what is that what happened with you you thought a whole in a minute well how can we explain that pretty much and seen it because because I was a chemist so close to building the drug I mean literally organic chemists let me it's like adults who've played with Lego blocks but instead of using taking Lego blocks of different shapes and sizes and assembling and mentorships we take building blocks of different shapes and sizes called but the principle is the same stacking them together so I was so close to the actual the chemistry of it and I just found it so fascinating that large numbers of people were improving on the placebos and I remember asking my colleagues and they were just dismiss it or it's just a waters of the sea and it was a sweeping movement of the right hand even lifetime that just I think you learn on your first day is just the placebo effect and I came to realize that nobody actually understood it I told no idea how really what to that's why curiosity I I want to understand what happens and no we actually understand that for a number of different conditions when a person believes the receiving a drug the brain produces its own natural substances to deliver what they expect so for example if someone takes a painkiller placebo what they think is a painkiller then and it works depending it can work really really well depending on the language your empathy used by the person who suggested to take it but what the reason why works isn't just as my colleague said it's it's not really they're not getting better they just think they're getting better but an actual fact believing that this is a drug caused their brain to produce natural versions of morphine to morphine's an opiate we have our natural versions and they're called endogenous opiates meaning that endogenous to you that belonged to you so the brain produces endogenous opiates because you believe something so the pic the reduction in pain for example isn't just all in the mind it's a real physical change caused by real chemical changes in the brain produced by what you expect is supposed to happen when you take the slow fell and it was that type of thing realizing there's a scientific basis for belief and it was building the evidence and yeah I spent hours in the library and the company just researching gathering all the papers I could find and it was just so interesting and I thought no one really knows about this professionals lay people don't really understand did we almost not want to know about it because it didn't fit our societal narrative that we're trying to find new and better technologies whether it was a drug whether it's another treatment that's gonna help but it cannot just be the power of positive thinking right I mean I guess you you find what you're looking for right so if people aren't looking for that it's easy to you know diminish it and just think it doesn't matter and I I've got to say you know I think still as a medical profession I don't think we take the placebo seriously enough and I mean what do you think you know do you think things have changed in the last 10 20 years it's definitely changing I think when I I left the pharmaceutical industry you know back in 1999 so just over 20 years ago and it's definitely changing me people are far more aware of it or of the way in which even the way you talk to someone how that can make them feel fact there was a study on on doctor visits over 700 patients with symptoms of the cold or flu and they were participated and it was a called a care study consultation and relational empathy and they secretly had to give the the doctor a score between zero and 10 on the empathy that they assured for during that that visit and those who scored the doctor a perfect 10 out of 10 the immune response to the same condition was 50% higher than everyone else and it just came down to empathy yeah how it made them feel and what you've seen is how them how you feel then is physically a fitting unit the function of the immune system I think that's the key isn't it that it's it's not just in your head it's changing things biologically physiologically absolutely okay well I hear that it reminds me of something that I often say I've said it you know to the public before I've said it when I want to teach doctors the number one skill for any health care professional for me is their ability to connect absolutely and then secondary to that communicate with the person in front of them for me that trumps knowledge yep any day of the week and I've just seen that time and time again and that sort of fits in with what you're saying right there is empathy is empathy if you feel as a human being if you feel heard if you feel listened absolutely it does something you know a you're more receptive to hearing what comes next so I say it's connection first education second yeah because when you've connected with them and they feel heard by you they're open to listening to what you have to say if you just go charging in and say look you need to lose weight gets the gym a bit more you know what you know this is why a lot people say patients don't do what we ask them to do yeah well I think the reason they don't ask they don't do what we ask them to do as a profession is because a lot of the time we're not communicating it in a way that makes sense to them and and actually deeply connects with their an or and it's a deep connection has tremendous physical effects in fact one of the one of the side effects I suppose of feel that feeling connected or feeling Gudivada is affectionately known as a mother Teresa effect I think it was a study I think it was a year and one of the other big American universities they got over a hundred people to watch a video of a 50 minute video of mother Teresa when the streets of Calcutta a demonstrating gear and compassion to a homeless people and at the end of the study their levels of a lot of immune antibody in the saliva called siga went up by about 50% for no reason other than just watching the value and it stayed elevated for an hour or two afterwards and that's because for the over of two afterwards that we're still talking about didn't remember that part when mother Teresa she sat down beside that oh really elderly gent and they didn't say a word she just sat beside him she took his hand and laid her head against his shoulder just so that he wouldn't feel alone at that time and just that emotional bonding experience of watching them on that video spiked immune system it just lefted that little antibody level so it's not just the person who received that it's also if you're watching it's watching it as well because it comes down to how it makes you feel if you can feel a sense of connection from being the person who in this case is delivering kindness or compassion being on the receiving end or watching someone else whether it's live or even on a video has more or less to see me I guess you know that could be why you'd have you watch a really good film that really moves you in connection you feel like crying or you feel like you've reconnected with it yeah I think that's been studied but I wear house actually there was a clip of them of Oprah Winfrey during the time of the Oprah show and she was she forget with the exact nature of the clip but she was really changing people's lives and it was something to do with a skill teacher in her class and what people watching that were moved to tears and felt so uplifted and it produced high levels of what I call the countless hormone oxytocin it's also called the bonding hormone the hugging the cuddle chemical but it produced high levels of that simply by feeling and moved and inspired by watching like a five-minute clip from from what used to be the Oprah Winfrey Show yeah I mean it's really incredible and this is right at my street honestly this is this is becoming clearer and clearer to me as every year passes since I qualified for medical school and I and I gained more experience and more to see more patients this for me is the missing link in healthcare that not everything can be quantified with just blood results and test results and just so do this do that there's just something deeper and that that is something that for me is what it means to be human being because whether we're patients or you know we're not a patient we're all humans and there are some fundamental truths for him as were social beings we like to be connected with others what you said last secretary or siga is so interesting to me I've also studied immunology and the people wondering what srj is we all know about the immune system which helps you know fight off infections and viruses and bacteria and all kinds of things and a lot of your immune system may be 70% or so the immune system at safe as he is in and around your guts which is super interesting and that's called your mucosal immune system and the primary the main sort of defense molecule offer is srts a Cuidad yes it's a thing that that can go up with this kind of one schoiar compassion being practiced yes out there there were studies aren't there abouts recovering quickly from colds I think and the flu when what was something to do with compassion yeah I think that there's some research looking at the more compassion that let's see a doctor feels for as part of this relational and if they study that the people who had scored the doctor the highest and other words the interpretation of that as they felt less than two and they felt connected and more you know warm and connected with with the doctor the recovery rate was about 50% faster in everywhere else it really just came down to how much empathy how much of a connection was initiated by the doctor my was incredible there's that amazing yeah they recovered fifty percent faster compared to people when when there was no way or there wasn't enough contact and and connection and and during the consultation yeah I find I find the idea that it's not just the giver but the receiver or the watcher also gets a biochemical change and then if you familiar with someone called professor Francis magloan I interviewed him on the podcast about a year ago he helped me actually write the chapter on touch in my second one stress solution he's one of the world's leading researchers in touch basically looking and he's done some incredible check it out actually because it's completely aligned and with a lot of the work that you do and he talks about you know these two different kinds of touch nerve fibers you've got one which is the fast one which simply tells you where you've been touched you know if I touch 24 I'm you know I'll feel it wrong has just touched me on my forum but if you stroke someone on the forearm it does something completely differently and well I mean here's his work is shown that it's a different kind of nerve fiber it's called the the CT afferents that goes up to the different part the brain the emotional brain and when you when you get that scrotes oxytocin levels go up blood pressure goes down heart rate goes down natural killer cells which are part of your immune system go up amazing 50 to 70 percent so we're seeing a similarity but also that most of those see tactile afferent nerve fibers so that that's slow in nerve fibre that tells that gives you that nice warm cuddly feeling most of them are on your upper back and your shoulder yeah so what's first thing about that is is that why would a evolution put something like that on a very hard to access place well his view in my view is that well it must have been there to promote that sort of social connection so you would have to be with someone to stroke you there yeah and so the touch giver you know gets just as many benefits as the touch receiver people who've got a pets you know stroking your pet makes you feel good but it also makes your feel good but this is not just in your head or what feels good right as you're showing and as Francis McGrail has shown it changes things by chemically and for me it's fascinating it's the same hormone oxytocin so no I mean what do you make of that you see actually you mentioned the animal thing I love animals I lost my dog a few years ago he had borne count there was only two years old as well and so I started looking at the lengths between bonding with animals and oxytocin and one of my favorite statistics that I got out without research is the chances of a second heart attack within 12 months and someone who's had one already if they have a dog it's 400% less and it's not just through the exercise it's through a lot of it some of it is through the oxytocin generated through the bonding front page of science you know one of the top-ranked met their science journals in the world front page about ten years ago picture of a yellow Labrador and in this study they compared people with a good relationship with dogs versus people with a not-so-good relationship the way they quantified as they videoed them and they watched them interacting with the dogs and if someone made frequent eye contact and sustained the eye contact for a few seconds they were called long gazers so they were defined as good relationships if they made eye contact less frequently and not quite as long than they were called short gaze or so not as good relationships so after 30 minutes of interacting singly oxytocin levels increased by about 350 percent and the human and nearly doubled and the dog for doing nothing other than warm playful interactions Robin the Tommy just warm and tonight you get the same thing with humans but who's not I mentioned that is because you mentioned dogs here and I love animals and and amazingly and that I believe is one of the main reasons the main contributors outside of exercise to the cardiovascular benefits because oxytocin has tremendous cardiovascular benefits well let's expand on that because that is a novel concept for people that's the sort of things you're talking about human touch connection stroking you know all these kind of I guess what we would call the softer yeah components of health you're saying alongside physical exercise physical activity is the most important thing for your cardiovascular health I don't think many people would be familiar with as an idea just just warmth and connection but because they produce oxytocin so you can fit you can create that sense through generosity and kindness compassion empathy all of anything that generates that sense of warmth and connection we know produces oxytocin but what's interesting is all the research showing the physiological effects of I call it the kindness hormone really to distinguish between stress hormones because physiologically in many ways a kindness is the opposite of stress in terms of how it makes you feel I mean if you ask anyone what's the opposite of stress most people say I was P so let's calm but that's not technically the opposite of stress that's the absence of stress physiologically speaking if you look at the physical effects of stress and you look at the physical effects of the feeling that you get through kindness which is one fan connection then their physiological opposite even psychologically there's some studies showing that you know emotionally we get the opposite effects because many of this the physical effects of stress are not because of a situation but because of how you feel when you're in that situation because two people could be sucking traffic in one person's feeling stressed and they're producing adrenaline cortisol the other person's feeling relaxed they're not producing much at all so it's not necessarily the traffic it's how you feel so the feelings of stress generate stress hormones but when you be kind and those feelings you get of warmth and connection they generally oxytocin I call s them I call a kindness hormone to make that distinction that it's a physical hot as a hormone that gets produced because of how you're feeling in that moment what you initiate through empathy compassion touch emotional warmth any any slightly soft behaviors and an understanding this explains a lot body of research that we knew that the trend in the past but we didn't know why it worked that we have for example why people with better quality of relationships have better cardiovascular systems why things like hostility and aggression is correlated with higher levels of hardening of the arteries we didn't know why that is but now the evidence seems to suggest the you know aggression hostility for example reduced levels of the kindness hormone oxytocin and therefore we take away a vital part of cardio protection because oxytocin is no death no called a cardio protective hormone meaning it protects the cardiovascular system one of the ways it does it is to reduce blood pressure so so I love explaining it in that sense that it's physically the opposite of stress because of how it makes you feel so you can feel that way through being the giver being the receiver or being the person who's watching a nice moment taking place at every mark my mind is blown this is yeah this is so fascinating so fascinating and I'm drawing all kinds of connections in my heads over things I've been talking about for years things I've noticed with patients and this is filling in a few more gaps and it's all sorted to knit together you know you may have seen the study I think was published three or four years ago which suggested that the feeling of being lonely is as harmful of smoking 15 cigarettes a day credible it's incredible but then when you try and make the case that auto Tosun might be their cardioprotective hormone this I think it's all starting to make sense but I guess we have to we have to look at things on an eeveelution airy or through an evolutionary lens too early yeah to try and figure this out right like I said you know why would eeveelution put these touch receptors on back well to promote social contacts you would think as niche and rewarding you sin yes more of us please I will make you healthy keep doing that yeah yeah in fact you know the the the gene for oxytocin a the the oxytocin receptors gene actually it's one of the oldest and the human genome is about 500 million years old and for days number four days crowd your apologies to the listeners I couldn't resist it but a but 500 million years old what that say that tells you is it's vital for the survival of all species I mean all one body species have an oxytocin re oxytocin similar system and humans its integrated itself during those hundreds of millions of years and to almost all important meaningful systems in the body even the growth of heart muscle cells and children have children are loved and cared for then as well as that producing human growth hormone also produces oxytocin which helps to facilitate the growth of heart muscle cells neurons kidney cells liver cells skin cells and that's why children had deprived of love and affection they end up guess I called you something they call it psychosocial dwarfism the end up a lot smaller than their genetic potential because levels of growth hormone and oxytocin are suppressed to the lack of love and compassion again yeah absolutely and then there's the study with the Romanian orphan orphanages where where kids you know were fed and watered but they didn't get touch yeah and the ones who didn't get any any touch have got higher instances that order autoimmune problems or behavioral problems and it it all marries up there where social species we are you know we've evolved to be connected to each other but now we're frankly more connected to our devices I know then we are the humans so if you show your smartphone compassion and you touch your smartphone does it also release oxytocin well do you know I made me think there I was I was joking I'm not gonna pull out a research study no I wasn't I was gonna pull out the film cast away with Tom Hanks okay and I you know remember it was Wilson he called that was a kookn or a football I called it Wilson I have not seen that anyway well can't use the Cherokee's videoing this in the background is nodding his head so Tom Hanks caster leaves on a desert island for years and he made a connection I'm sure it was an old bossed football or a coconut or something but he made it end to something that he wanted about any spoke to as if it was a person give a face and he and he called it Wilson and it cared so much for that one day when I got swept you see he was devastated it was grief it was loss and I think if you can bond even with you know make a joke of it hugging a tree it doesn't matter if you can bond with even in that case an inanimate object doesn't matter it's as long as you feel I'm making like obviously not going to bond with a smartphone but in general if you can like a child bonding with a doll for example with a you know a teddy bear it something that you feel you can bond with it's that bonding itself that releases the oxygen so we're wired to bond and to connect yeah I love that and you know the idea of a child with that teddy or even this film and inanimate objects and and again yeah I what start out a slight joke actually if you think about it well technically you probably could bond with your smartphone if you gave it that kind of deep love care and annotation but I guess we're not doing that always the I'd even seen that most people laugh at that because we use our smart phones well let's see you were to paint a wee smiley face on it and and maybe something happened to you that you know that the only thing you had was a smartphone you just made a connect maybe that that was your way of communicating with the world and you were all alone all of a sudden you would have a connection with the smartphone that's definite from just setting on the turbine tuck in looking at your emails so so I guess in some ways well in many ways yes what's all my connection but we're talking also about intentional living and we're talking about being present and being mindful because that's really what that connection is isn't it if you're all sort of building up that relationship with another person or another object or a teddy you're intentionally doing it maybe speaking to it before you guys'll add your and and as you said before it's about the feeling that changes inside you that actually leads to a lot of those biochemical changes yeah so it's it's the you know I often suggest the people that meet countless a practice practice thinking cane thoughts about people you know if you find yourself about to see something about someone stop for a minute and even just make an attempt you know not gonna do all the time but some of the times make an attempt to think I wonder if that person's struggling in their life right now I know I'm talking about that behavior yesterday but I wonder if they're struggling right now you never know I wonder if that that man or woman is a good parent I wonder what their relationship worth with appeals and just change the dialogue and what that does it introduces empathy and introduces a definite way of thinking and not always successful but oftentimes it'll make you feel a little bit more kind towards the person I think if we develop little practices then kindness becomes a habit so that it's the go-to it's the first thought is the compassionate thought the cane thought and then the way that what you speak to people the way in which you interact with people becomes ghent more gentle and more warm because it becomes a habit and that I think becomes your way and I'm speaking from experience here because I I have completely changed as a person in the land during the time that I've been really working on the mind-body connection but particularly when I've been focused on kindness I wasn't no I wasn't I wasn't meaning as a horrible person but relative I have made large gains I guess and I guess the quality of person that I've become and I've become gentler more compassionate more gain I cry a lot more I don't know if that's related to it but I'm much softer than I was maybe ten years ago and it and it's a consequence of my awareness of what kindness and compassion is and what it does for us yeah you can cultivate this as a feeling as a practice and I think for many firsts we we sort of feel that I'm just not kind person or you know that's not me and it almost feels a little bit of force but I think you can force it a little bit and actually make it and turn it into your reality and it's something you know it's something that I talk about all my kids loads is this idea of being kind and we played this gratitude game every dinner time that I've mentioned on this podcast for so I don't need to mention the exact nature of that game again but sometimes we do add it on a question to say well what have I done today whatwhat kind thing have I done today and we go around we have to think about it and we once did that for about three weeks every day Wow and you know I think initially was a bit tricky is I'm not sure not sure you know if there was a bit of resistance to it but after a while it's really started embed in and I think the kids were super excited to tell mummy and daddy at the time what kind thing they did today and so it almost I guess in some ways it's sort of playing back to what you're saying at the start which we're going to explore is the power of our minds on our bodies like you can almost practice the kind of person you want to become and you can become it absolutely I'm just like no one's ever become an Olympic champion by going to the gym once I run around the block once it because it's a practice so anything that you do to get better as something that you practice so I think when you practice being kind us how us amazing game that you play with the kids actually and event just have you noticed that as the you do that you play that game that they've become more likely to became because you're looking for something to talk about 100% yes it's very hard you know it's not a scientific study where I can peel out every little component in it but something has changed yeah and you know again for me you know I'd like to think I was a kind and compassionate person anyway but I think being aware of this and actually positively trying to cultivate that all my children is also upskilling me in that area as well and I noticed that a lot in my interactions now on social media and that you know even when someone we should very rare these days but if someone's left their a snotty comments or says something to attack me you know it doesn't really bother me anymore I look at it with kindness and compassion at home I wonder what's going on in your day you've probably taken that out on me that's you know in my head and I really it's you know there's a scientific argument to it but even if there wasn't it just feels like the right thing to do and it feels nice and you sleep better and you don't get agitated as much exactly I think that whole idea that that the kindness is the opposite of stress is it it's a really beautiful con sense what happens when we get hungry like we're on it from a stress perspective says of the stress hormones and I have seen anger that we hold on to for years and resentments yeah yeah it is toxic it can absolutely raise your blood pressure and I've got a few patients of mine who I couldn't get that blood pressure down with medication with diets with lifestyle changes in a way that I would always you know it always go for nutrition lifestyle first and till they started to let go off anger that they were holding on saying yeah it's not something you're familiar with yeah I mean I I think it's better to get out than end I mean some of these people say you shouldn't be angry but you need to get oh there's got to be some way of venting you know I'm not advocating you know you know being unkind to people what I mean is if you if you've got paint up and stored up anger that's better and if I read a book recently called the expressive writing by a professor called James pennybaker and he pioneered a lot of the work on releasing anger and trauma and the body by simply spending 15 or 20 minutes a day writing continuously for that time on four consecutive days about your emotional trauma or something that happened and you basically outline what happened how you fail how it's affected your life can I think just some way I just want that's a basic structure to vent and sometimes you can swear you could anger but the idea of the act of expressing it gradual has an amazing effects in one of the studies the D found that their immune response to an end of toxin was significantly higher than those who hadn't done the expressive ranks of the immune system is becoming more robust as a consequence of expressive remember that's incredible and for people listening you're not familiar with what an endotoxin is you know one way of describing it is there inside your guts we've got lots of different bacteria you know trillions of bacteria and other organisms and you know we very simplistically consider them to be good and bad which is far too simplistic but essentially some of them those those bacteria called what we call gram-negative and on their codes you've got a something called lipopolysaccharide or LPS it's a little sugar that basically is fine if it stays in your gut but if it sort of goes through from the gut into your bloodstream that's where it can be pro-inflammatory and that's caused all kinds of problems in your brain and your joints with your blood sugar so that's what an endotoxin is and you know what you're saying there about how it can alter your immune response it's by doing expressive writing yeah there phone a lot of other studies that even tracked students over the course of a year and they tracked that enough students to get a a statistically significant result and tracked the number of visits through the Medical Center and they found that those who did the expressive writing had significantly lower need to visit the Medical Center I mean having just got anger and hearten and trauma go to process it in some way and actually this whole British characteristic of stiff upper lip you know keep it inside I think it is incredibly problematic yeah because that anger that energy really has to go somewhere and weird whistling blows give em a sound that it gets stored in your body and it can enhance muscle tightness and all kinds of things that people are trying to stretch out but actually often it's unprocessed emotions that I've seen in my own life I've seen my own flexible the ink reprove dramatically not by stretching every day but by releasing some emotions I'd held on stage which is simply incredible you know and you know because if we doing then it's possible to start fretting the cardiovascular starts I mean when it wanted I guess one of my favorite titles over of a study is called marital conflict relations and coronary artery calcification or CAC for sure hey and thank you what most people can work it without means marital conflict relations and coroner after the calcification scientist took 150 MIT couples put them in a room one couple of time asked them to discuss marital topics for for half an hour and the the videotaped them and the scored displays your language and displays of of kindness and compassion and gentleness and patience and they also scored anger and hostility and aggression and all these kind of things like that so you've got a whole spectrum from the real fado hostile aggressive an in a frequent expressions of anger to the other side which is really people we save are softer people a gentler much more compassion and kindness and empathy and touch also and one of the most amazing cemeteries I've ever come across in science when I see a cemetery in was symmetrical one thing on the other the group who had high levels of hostility aggression and anger expressing which you may see a hardened people did high levels of hardening of the arteries and the other group who were softer people did normal what you would call soft arteries when you when you a controlled in the study for diet and exercise smoking drinking etcetera the only difference really was how you behaved in that half an hour and that was taken as a proxy for normal behavior that half an hour slice was taken as a proxy for this is probably how you are a large part of the time and so what you can see there is if we don't get our system it can end up having serious negative consequences yeah and I think we all need to find ways to process those feelings that wind us up anger frustration too much stress you know exercise can be a great way of burning it off and letting it go even I say to people you know if you have time you know do one minute a star jumps as hard as you can you know you literally are burning off an absolutely and that stress to a certain degree another tip that she a friend of mine gave me he uses it himself I have tried it a couple of times it's like if someone makes you mad oh you get frustrated with something and write an email back to them but don't press on yeah I can tell you it is it is incredibly beneficial because as you've already demonstrated some of the research you've you've cited there's something about the act of not just keeping it going around your mind going around your body youyou aren't processing it in some way you you're writing it out you're talking about you that is processing yeah you know and it's we shouldn't underestimate mmm how you know how valuable simple tools like this really are I know because you know one of the things I I've noticed is we think of an a feeling a tone motion it's just something in our minds but there's actually four components to it you can't really disentangle an emotion or a feeling from your brain chemistry in body chemistry you also can't disentangle it from your autonomic nervous system nor can you disentangle a feeling from your muscles I mean you don't smile when you're happy because you remember to smile it's a reflex reaction because the the zygomaticus major muscle that pulls your lips into smell is is connected in some way to the they call them the happy centers of the brain similarly when you feel stressed you don't remember to tense your jaw and tense your neck it's a reflex reaction so what happens is how we feel gets expressed on the muscles but it goes the other way as well you know what you do with your body one of the best ways I've ever found to reduce feeling momentary feelings of stress is to move my body get up rather than what's sitting down and breathing it softly I'll get up and move but an artificially slow piece and using this factor emotion isn't just a feeling it's connected to you it's part of your how it shows up in your muscles if you move your body and an artificially slow way and even talk artificially slowly obviously if you're not meeting if you cannot really do that but you're on your own it's almost like your brain here's I've got that sound must feel pretty quite relaxed yeah and I think that works because you know long before language language is what fifteen thousand years old that give or take a wee bit but long before language your ancestors communicated through body language ingestion if they they want to express themselves they use their body to express so so what happened is that became this really strong relationship between physical expression and how the person feels so it's really so in that way what you find is how you feel gets shows up in your muscles but how you move your muscles and your body shows up and how you feel and it's a two-way street so you can use your body like exercise movement for example to to help change how you feel in the moment kind of thing you know I supposed to a lot of therapists recently who you know work on people's bodies whether it was a sports massage therapist or whatever kind of therapists but they will tell you that you can feel or they can feel particularly within it for a period here is that I can tell what's going on of that person's life I can feel how stress they are from the tone of their muscles and how their body feels now look that's not my skill set so icons but it's really interesting to hear that yeah I guess David you know as you're telling me you know the these stories and this research you know I keep thinking about to you as you said 20 years ago in the pharmaceutical industry and these things that were talking about we often say oh the softer characteristics have been a human the softer sides to medicine or whatever you know we we in some ways were being a little bit too rocketry about them like almost as if we feel a need to soften it like quite literally where's this you know it's not quite as you know as as robust as you know what's the oxygen level of the blood as it pumps out of the hearts you know or is it because is it just a perception because you're a scientist by training are you a scientist by degree you've gotten all HD in organic chemistry yeah this is pretty hardcore yet you are now talking with confidence with knowledge about the science of kindness of compassion of touch of visualization you know what do you perform Akalis think of what you're doing now today do they know are you still in touch with them I'm in touch with a couple of them they're actually greatly supportive you know cuz I I find even when I worked in the pharmaceutical industry it wasn't that people were so skeptical about things they just didn't know most of the stuff I talked about they just didn't know and it's not like I think we often have this perception if someone is educated in a particular way then they must know everything about everything and it's you know many many people are specialized in their own particular field and I learned when I was there that nobody had any idea about the placebo effect despite the fact we see it and the date of the drug trial data every day but no one actually knew anything about it so the colleagues I'm still in touch I think some of them probably think is a bit can I worry but most of them that I'm that I've been in touch with over the years are greatly supported in fact they're so fascinated by isn't less I mean I no idea for example that you know a few like you mentioned visualization that f you visualize moving your body then in some ways your brain processes that as if you're actually doing it I remember telling one of my former colleagues that what really go to the brain scans and short of amazing and it's not that yeah I think skepticism is sometimes a product of just not knowing yeah it just doesn't sound possible it's not that you know it just doesn't sound because never had anything it's not within your frame of references or the education model which you've been taught it never came into that exactly so therefore there probably is a natural skepticism yeah but as you say the way to change that is to give them the science in a way that they already understand it ago Hey look did you know that and III agree most people would be like oh that is so interesting there's a lot of research on that isn't there abouts well yes how how influential our minds are over our bodies but I think I've read in one of your blow posts on your website about I think it's a research paper about if you imagined a flexing your finger right for 15 minutes a day yeah for what 3 months was it three months yeah yeah what happened yes so what happened just just to go back a step yeah backups sure they saw their a professor at Harvard very famous neurologist called Alvaro Pascal the one dead a study where he got volunteers to play a sequence of five notes on a piano so that basically put hands flat on a table and went plonk plonk plonk plonk with each it with a thumb index finger middle finger ring finger pinkie finger up and down a scale for two hours on five consecutive days now that it's not fully two hours that's tiring you make do like a minute of problem they're a couple of minutes rest a minute a couple of minutes rest but for two hours they had their brain scanned every day or in the region connected to the finger muscles and underwent significant change we know call that neural plasticity so it massively changed in size thirty to forty times that's fair enough it's what you know expect from repetition of movement but while they were doing that a separate group of people put their hands flat on the table close their eyes and imagined that they were playing the five North no movement is called kinesthetic imagery and what that means as you imagine how it feels as if you were really doing it you're not necessarily seeing it you could see if you won but the key is to imagine the feelings is if you really are moving your finger muscles but you're not they get their brain scanned every day and this same region of their brain had also changed by thought 80 40 times and if he put the brain scans side-by-side you cannot tell the difference between those who played the notes with her fingers those have played the notes in the mind so that's given birth to a lot of research including the little finger research that was I think that was done at the Cleveland and the Cleveland Institute in the States and what they did got volunteers to do 15 extensions and contractions you know scientists have to really kneel they tell you exactly it's like extend a lot of fingers 15 times and contract extender contract 15 times 20 settings rest 15 times 20 settings rest 15 times twice things right like 15 reps a time quarter of an hour for three months and they got 53% stronger while they were doing that a separate group of people cause that ice hands flat on the table in kinesthetic imagery the imagine they were doing the fifty and extensions and contractions but no movement at all they got thirty five percent stronger because that's mr. fool and to start an end of the study they put their finger in a machine and lefty that we set weights up to see how strong they were so by just imagining that you'd moved your finger they've got thirty five percent stronger versus fifty three know someone skeptical when I first talked to it that said I wasn't fifty three percent like those moving the finger but also wasn't zero he does thirty five percent improvement and strength from doing nothing at all other than imagining the feelings as if you really we're moving your fingers yeah it's it's just incredible and then it makes me think of the untapped potential we all have within us that's you know we're looking at a particular component of health let's say you know one thing I try and do on this podcast is too broad it out that conversation around how to say there are so many different factors that play a role but what you're saying David worthy is we're gonna be very prefer for a lot of people that's our minds how we visualize things they can absolutely play a difference in our body absolutely and you know it's incredible to the idea that visualization were so because I I I wasn't familiar with some of that research but I have always done it myself and I've always talked about it with my patients and I've always said look if the top athletes in the world visualize so that they can have peak performance in their chosen activity or their race well you kind of want Pete performance in your own life absolutely right whatever that means to you so why would you not use that tool oh it's good enough for Tiger Woods and Michael Phelps but it's not good enough for me it doesn't really make any sense does it and I know that many pro golfers visualize the night before they play they literally are visualizing being on the tee the exact shot shape they want their ball to make what their club they're gonna play in that so gonna visualize it all the way until it goes and I remember reading stuff like this and while the emaan when I did get in to go off a few years back I would often do that on a Friday night before my rounds I would actually visualize and you don't want it makes a difference in there and I think this end plays into this whole idea that can the brain tell the difference between vivid imagery and reality and it doesn't seem to and in fact those there's a number of related studies in almost different fields that tell me that mean for example it's more obvious if you think of stress your brain doesn't really know the difference between whether you're in a stressful situation or whether you're thinking about anticipating or remembering similarly your brain produces you used to sell produce the kindness hormone oxytocin whether you're being kind watching it or even close near eyes and thinking about and feeling the same feelings you don't have to be there with movement in fact he taught all the old top sports people even there's even studies on rehabilitation from stroke and there's even been a meta-analysis recently gold standard statistical analysis that looked at all the studies of stroke and they found a typically people have had a stroke would do sex weeks of physiotherapy sessions any studies and it wasn't people had just had a stroke one study or one of the patients 14 years ago and everyone does physiotherapy but half of them in addition to the physiotherapy at the end of the session they do 30 minutes or so of visualization where they have to visualize repetitively movements that they are familiar with so imagine reaching for a glass of water taking a drank put in a bite down imagine reaching drank and repetitively and in all of the studies those who do visualization on top of physiotherapy recover much faster and much more in that sex week period than those who just do a physiotherapy alone so there's a number of different ways the brain isn't distinguished and even eating was studied by a professor Kokiri more wedge found that looking at the way that the brain is appetite I think it's leptin it produces in there yeah that suppresses appetite when you've eaten a certain amount and they found that if a person was just imagining eating so they they got people to imagine eating lots of sweets or lots of cubes of cheese versus just a little amount of sweets at a low amount of cubes of cheese and they found that the more the person imagined eating the motor activated that I'm full part of the brain and that appetite was suppressed and it and the paper they reported that the difference between real and imaginary even when it comes to eating seems to be a bit kind of bloody so that could almost be a strategy for people who struggle with food cravings guessing may you know something it's worth trying yeah like what happens if um you've got a craving for that chocolate and you think about it and you imagine it on your tongue and that you're eating it and you imagine it's sort of going down your esophagus into your tummy and that warm feeling what I've not tried that with patients as a strategy but why not yeah what's the downside right I'm wondering I cuz I thought I that's a thought quite a lot and I'm wondering because the body responds to further damage early and I'm I'm I don't know the answer to us but I wonder if imagining eating chocolate will affect blood sugar I don't know I I really don't know or will not be fascinated saying it would be fascinating to test it it might be better not so much for food cravings but a few for losing weight imagine eating your dinner before you eat and then imagine eating something healthy at least maybe produce something healthy but at least sort of suppress your appetite so you might find yourself eating less i III don't know the answer but I've thought about it a little bit it really is super super interesting you mention the start there you came down from Dunblane and you sort of gave a lot of hint there that's you took up tennis yeah is everyone around use playing tennis yeah as he's taken up in your four C's and you thought you weren't very good but now you're playing through the leagues and you mentioned visualizations and I caught though I thought okay well what's going on there so David tell us how you're going to be playing it with more than that yet yeah well I'm I'm a I'm a quitter year after but though here's the thing and take us back to when you started and what happened when you started just take a service or I I started playing tennis and and Blaine most people and in the leaks have been playing since their children very latest sense of teenagers very unusual for someone to start playing for the first time and then med forties so I started to really enjoy it because I realized it was quite sankt I think the coach would every Wednesday night their coaching and the coach would say this is how you hold the racket and if you turn an angle and and left the the racket from law and move it to high you you put topspin on the ball and it keeps it in the court and I thought ice is quite scientific so I thought this is great fun I was very resistant to playing tennis but thought I'm gonna do this so I joined the league systems and for two years I was officially the second worst tennis player and then played professionally and then sa second worst was like three or four league seasons per year lasts a couple of months for a year we do in the last a couple of months and at the bottom is usually me second bottom for two years so I was like eight league eight box League seasons right the bottom second bottom and the only reason I wasn't bottom is because you get a point for showing up so it's not like football and the and the the Premiership where you get three points for a wine one point for a draw nothing for a loss end and blame box leagues to encourage you to play you get one point for showing up four points fella when etc so I got I always got sex points for playing sex match he said because it's the four leagues of seven players so anyway so for two years my average losing margin was sex love sex one I hadn't won again I hadn't want a single a set of tennis and two years in the box leagues and I was getting a bit demoralized and I thought you know I've helped to coach people athletes of golfers of you know from time to time explained how virtualization is what's how you better ply it to your wife except I thought why don't I try this so it was exactly four weeks to the next box League season and I thought I'm going to sign us up I'm gonna do it so I decided I would pack the serve and I packed them one of the most difficult served you know and all of sports the tennis serve as the second most complex move in all of sports most people think it's you have sherlyn or the number one is a pole vault the reason why it's so complex is because most people think you just hit the ball with a flat racket but in actual fact a pro bolt on the racket side on and face the opposite way and rotate the body and sweep the racket an angle over on up through the ball depending on what can I serve the one and the staff called the kick serve that's very very difficult and I thought I'm going to virtualize so as I say did advise 10 serves to one side and 10 serves to the other side everyday within two days of visualization couldn't do it was so difficult and and the reason why is because you need to have what's called the mental representation you need to know what you're imagining it's okay when I talked about the study with stroke the they were using imagining things that they were familiar was like reaching for a glass of water if I you've never done a tennis serve you can't visualize it correctly so I used a lot of track of neuroscience called action observation in many ways not only can your brain not distinguish between whether you're doing something or imagining your brain can't really distinguish much between whether you're doing something imagining or watching someone else doing it providing you watched repetitively it's called action observation gets a lot of research known and sports science so I obtained a video from Andy of Andy Murray doing serving I cut it down about 5 seconds and I watched it 3,000 times when he that's wholly active the action observation not in one go I printed out a lot of table and Microsoft what Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday week 1 week 2 week 3 week 4 side roughly 30 days to do this so I watched it a hundred times a day for 30 days just on replay and that's just conditioning the brain circuits as after your visual eyes and then after a couple of days my mental representation was absolutely crystal-clear I could see a professional texture of crystal clarity and my mind so then after the second default day ten visualizations have hurt himself to one side tenth another one so we commit down to the court a few balls anyway to cut a long story short I won the league I letter went from having never won a set to winning the division then I won the next diversion without dropping I say so then I was up to the second diversion and all that with so went from the fourth to the thought to the second that's when you're getting into the really much tougher players who have been playing laterally since childhood and I'm not trying impress anyone but just to impress upon you that my improvement was in large part related to the volume of visualization the fact that I'd used this visualization of a particular shot repetitively yeah I mean just so incredible well I'm trying think about the listener who is thinking okay I don't wanna be a sportsman I'm no interesting tennis I don't know but they might be I don't know nervous about public speaking and they've got to present someone next week or in front of their colleagues yeah so can we say that if they are scared of public speaking for a week leading up to the events they can every evening in bed or just you know sitting down in a quiet space visualize walking onto that stage what it feels like who is in the audience what the I don't know what the smell will be I don't know is this something that we can all use in our own lives for whatever we want to which is exactly if I get the nail on the head there because the way to do it the way to apply this to see public speaking if you have a fear of that or even if you if there's someone you feel nervous around for example is you visualize from that moment let's say you're under state you getting up from the stage your name is called and what you're visualizing you've got to pay attention to as you're imagining pay attention to how your shoulders feel pay attention to your gait how fast you're walking pay attention to your facial muscles and what you're actually doing is you've got to visualize you the movement of your body because that's what the brain wires and the brain will wire that repetitive movement of the body as if you're really doing it so you're not many people think if you wanted facial eyes public-speaking just they go right to the end and see a standing ovation but an actual fact what I'm suggesting as you visualize the your physical body the way you would move your body if you feel I've got this I've got something I can't wait to tell them I'm feeling relaxed I'm feeling confident and socialized the entire movement of your body how you hold and move your body as you get to the stage and then visualize the first opening two or three lines so you're literally paying attention to your body similarly if your you know let's see someone to makes you feel nervous maybe we should boss at work or something then normally what you would do is your body retains up and your speech would be affected so visualize moving up towards your your boss your supervisor and visualize your body being relaxed your butt your spine being straight your shoulders relax your head up visualize your rate of breathing paying attention to your physical organism how you hold and move your body and that's what the brain wires then as if you're really doing it so if you do that for a week leading up to the presentation or the meeting with the boss then you'll find your brain will have wired enough that that might go into default and might want an automatic or certainly it would be easier yeah to be like that then had you not done the visualization yeah I think for me that's probably an added bonus there which is apart from your brain now being there and by the time you rock up to that events your brain feels I've been here before I think it has another purpose which is you are proactively doing something super pair you're not yeah stressing and worrying and getting anxious okay okay cool that's gonna be nerve-wracking but I can do something each day now that's going to get me stronger for that events yeah it's an amazing feeling because I think many people in society do feel disempowered like yeah like we we don't know what to do to improve ourselves and I think just given that little bug it gives you confidence it boosts your self-esteem and you suddenly feel I'm I'm in control or I am controlling more of this than I ever thought I am this kind of person that can do that and there's wonders for your identity your self-esteem and it's it's a happiness tool as well but it gives you more energy psychological energy just I can do this yeah for sure I am this person so David you've read about b5 side effects of kindness right which I think it's a lovely lovely idea particularly with someone with a background in the pharmacy but I wanted to tone bone say defect yeah say defect doesn't just a negative side effect of a drug it's anything that happens alongside the thing that you're intending to do yeah well I guess you know anything we do in law as a consequence any drug you take has a consequence that all the facts I guess if it's the effect we won we call it the therapeutic effect if it's the effect we don't want it's a side it's it's it's just how we phrase these say yes but let's go with I think it's an interesting idea so what are the five side effects of kinds of number one kindness makes you happier number two kindness is good for the heart number three countless laws aging number four kindness improved relationships and number five kindness is contagious there you go five side-effects of kindness I love that and there's science behind all of that absolutely behind all of it in fact the happiness stuff has been well studied typically what you do is you compare people intentionally doing acts of kindness versus people in a control group who not do her just behaving as normal and you can track the happiness levels before and after and you can do it a number of different ways but in almost all of those studies you see net gains and happiness or people who beat them who do more kindness generally tend to be typically happier so you so what you see is kindness actually improves happiness another thing it does is it reduces stress at the same time that the heart stuff is principally through the action of the kindness hormone through being kind if it produces a sense of warmth and connection what I wanted with that chapter as I just tried to definitely physical effects and the heart and the cardiovascular system you know even to do with inflammation and oxidative stress as you practice kindness because of how it makes you feel the the slowing aging stuff is interesting because there's a number of processes of aging number of different ways the aging or cars but one of them is as something called oxidative stress on production of free radicals and one study I cited when scientists was look we're looking at the rate of of oxidative stress in skin cells and they found that if you introduced the kind of hormone through the skin cells put under stress the levels of oxidative stress were substantially less and the similar research looking at how the Cain miss horn where I would call it the Cain I love it it has quite a substantial body wide effect on oxidative stress which is one of the processes of Aging it's just one of an army kindness reducing the aging process that is profound and I love the fact that you call it the kindness hormone oxytocin which is also called the cuddle hormone or the cuddle chemical the hug drug the hug hug they you know it's in many ways it's all kind of pointing to the same conclusion which is when we are around other people who support us and we support them when we're in our tribe basically we feel goods our body changes our genetic expression changes we reduce things like inflammation and oxidative stress and immune dysfunction these things which actually those three things probably drive most chronic diseases and I'm back or inflammation oxidative stress and immune dysfunction and we're saying that simply being around people we love who who am pathetic who were kind of a compassionate it has profound impacts on all the best it's incredible I mean really it really is incredible in fact can I suggest another aging study recently scientists were tracking a Tibetan Buddhist practice called the loving-kindness medically say you think of people you cared about in your life and other people or anyone in your life and you say things like in your mind may you be happy may you be well may you be safe may you be at peace or something a lot there's different versions but so may you be happy may be well may you be safe may be peace in its repetition of that for yourself loved ones even difficult people all life and it's a repetition and and it's been known for a while that that generates a system-wide anti-inflammatory effect it it impacts part of the nervous system that controls something called the inflammatory reflex a so it basically improves what's called vagal tone which is like muscle tone but but talking about a part of your nervous system their impacts and inflammation and they found that practice caused I would action in the inflammatory response to stress but a recent study looked at the rate of biological aging by measuring the length of telomeres yeah you know some telomeres you probably explained before the aglet little plastic shoe least caps called Aglets and the rate of loss of telomeres is is proportional to the rate in which the person is aging at that time and so they compared the control group with a group doing mindfulness meditation what a group doing may you be happy may you be well may be safe maybe a piece of what a version of the loving-kindness meditation and they found they measured though the length of loss of telomere after six weeks of normal just no practice at all that's your baseline and then the it measured mindfulness meditation they found a lot of slowing of the loss but they found no measurable loss at all in that sex week period of those who did the loving-kindness they may be happy maybe and and it seems to be that the a possible explanation is an anti-inflammatory effect in the vicinity of the the telomeres which or you might think of as a decluttering of the environment around the DNA which allows it to the pier itself better I mean it is just incredible and it's you know puts a huge smile on my face hearing things like this because it's it's just a nice thing to hear right it's it's great when the things that make us feel good as human beings also do good yes for us right that's that's kind of win-win all rounds and you said that kindness is contagious yeah can you explain oh no this is actually what this is what I was going to say this is my favorite but I've got so many favorites so you don't get carried away something but but some like me I'm glad to say this is why this conversation could keep going on and on unless we start thinking about wrapping it at some point but fire away so study a between Harvard and Yale the the Aleut they did a clever little business game simulation a lot of these studies are done in little simulations you you create a game and what you're secretly measuring is kindness or cooperative behavior and what they found is if you became to someone then because of how that person feels they call it elevation that person feels either connected to you or they feel uplifted or they feel grateful it doesn't really matter it's as a feeling that changed feeling that person will likely be caned or kind out to someone else because of how you made them feel now that person now is that one social step from your one degree of separation but that person will be caned or came there to someone else because of how they were meant to feel that's two degrees of separation but then that person will be cane to attainder to someone else at three degrees of separation or three sources thought but that isn't real practice because unreality given the average amount of interconnectedness Merve interactions that we have in anyone do you mate well probably see that if you became to someone if you if you were to follow them around which hopefully you don't do but we do but if you were to follow a person Roma the camera you would probably find that the person you've just helped will be kind or came there to five people over the course of the rest of the day because of how you made them feel given the average amount of interconnection but those five people will be caned or kinder to five more I know but at to source of stats twenty five people but each of those five people will be caned or kinder to five for other people which is 125 at three social steps you really have this ripple effect just let you drop a pebble and a pond and the wave goes out in all directions and I'll only pad that the opposite say to the pond goes up and down and it doesn't know why it's going up and down but it's gone up and down because of the wave but the same is happening to lily pads at the other side of the pond the wave goes out in all directions so what this research shows is that khane spreads out in all directions so it's not just one person that you helped but it rappers are in all directions and if you were to track it that way you would probably find somewhere given the average amount of social interaction most people have you probably find around about 125 people probably more given a densely populated area are benefiting from every single time you do even say something nice you pay a compliment you help some of you hold the door for somewhat sense so you know proposes so simple but I I put it to the listeners that if you ever feel small if you ever feel that you don't contribute you don't make a difference you doing it every single day even with the little things that you don't think matter but the matter to the person you've helped who will then spread oh but the three social steps yeah me neither absolutely love things like this it makes me think of in this in this time where many of us feel powerless to make a change and we don't like the way society is heading it reminds me of that phrase is benefits can thing I can't remember who is be the change you want to see in the world this is putting it right back in our own Court saying hey you know what be kind to someone each day and that will ripple out that is something we can all do and you know we say it's for other person even if it doesn't make us feel good but it does make us feel good you know compare the difference when you go into a coffee shop and order your coffee and take it and go on with your day compared to when you actually take it say something nice to the person to the barista hey look thanks so much we really appreciate that hey view may be a great one yesterday I hope this one's as good you know anyway have a good day whatever it is they've got a smile on the face yeah they they have probably have been sort of shocked out of them maybe the tedium that they were feeling trying to make you know 100 coffees in an hour but you feel good as well and that does in your own life spread to your would sit sit you know to your other interactions but it reminds me a bit of what something Andy Ramage said to me I had him on I think in November he is he set up this thing this company one year no beer oh yeah yeah it was a really fun podcast I had with him actually great conversation and he he was citing some of the research I think is from Nicholas Christakis I'm familiar with about the power of social networks and how even something like obesity can spread up social networks to get goes to three degrees of separate the point is everything you're sort of saying and we'd be discussing today is about community it's about strong human connections about how you treat those people around you can ripple into so many more people and I think that's a very inspiring and empowering message for all of us no matter you know where we are in life or what we're trying to achieve yeah absolutely i think i think it really all comes down to I've said this many times it really all comes down to kind interactions you know you know you know what's the point in not being kind yeah you know it sounds like a really silly thing to see but I try to see the world that way I try I don't always succeed I think with wait but only human we're just trying to do the best we can but I think if we make an effort to be a kind person a decent person it makes you feel better it makes that person feel but it just strengthens social bonds and then you think you find that communities just seem to work a little bit better people tend to work a little bit better groups work a little bit better when we're making an effort to be kind and it diffuses situations I realized you know if you're really kind to someone it's pretty hard for them to start you know getting angry and resentful at you it's it's it really we respond to the signals were getting in the environment around us right we respond even things are going on physiologically we don't even realize and so I think the way you treat other people is really gets reflected back on yourself so so much don't you say you spend a lot of time teaching these days who do you teach and what do people say at the end of some of your courses a very a very mixture they mostly general public a oftentimes I mean professional people you know in any NHS or come along to something I've spoken to NHS a couple of times I do corporate speaking I've talked to different companies and the what I tend to talk to them about is kindness as the opposite of stress and here's why and here's how you give a little Tools 8 conferences workshops I mean last night I did a lecture in Glasgow on the mind-body connection then just get you know 100 people come along and and I do like a 90-minute so I do quite a lot of that 90 minutes just giving a talk and try to make it entertaining compute people there for 90 minutes I've got it through enough few jokes here and there but so do a lot of that came so it's different kinda audiences but it's really people who have an interest in learning about the mind-body connection or learning about how kindness isn't good for your health and can make a difference in the world yeah I guess I can see the value for adults I can see the value for everyone frankly I can also really see value for children and that if we instill this in our kids in society and they grow up knowing the importance of their experiencing the importance of it doing it and practicing it regularly you just can fast for without five ten years into society what then happens to society and you know I guess in a couple of weeks I'm actually giving a talk at my children's school for mental health week there and it's gonna be around the feel better and five plan because I think about five minutes on your mind farm it's on your body farm it's in your heart each day I think it's a perfect well-being plan for any one of us that sickly for children yeah you know in schools you know they want to they want to introduce well-being into schools but everything either cost too much or takes too long you know everything in that is only takes five minutes and it's free and I haven't started to think about it yeah I think the talks in about ten days but I need to talk about half an ounce of kids and make it engaging for kids between the age of six and eleven and obviously I won't talk about all kinds of things with them but I think kindness there are a couple of Connor's practices in the in in the plan but certainly on the back of this conversation as well I really feel that that might be a nice thing to talk about how do you spot about it much with kids yeah actually that about a dozen times I've gone into schools usually can a local like like one of my friends is a teacher and an autism specialist unit a New Glasgow and I've been into has school but four times are thinking you know dad one is a couple one of the local schools and Dunblane where I live I did on our couple a school as my nieces school and but each time I've gone in I did one at Mental Health Week actually for a mental health week for another you're kind of local and usually the kids are about to start on them or they're in the middle of a kindness project where the teachers have designed a little thing worth of to learn about kindness the the be kind of to understand what kinda says and so they've got little things up in the board little pictures that they've drawn about what they've done and so the whole project is to learn about what kindness says and how do you do it but notice how it makes you feel and notice how it affects that other person's behavior and then depending on the age of the kid understanding a little bit more about it and and so I tend to come in because it's just novel having someone else and I bring in my books and I bring in all the international translations like the Japanese version the Romanian version the French and the Italian version and the kids just love having something to antipas around while I talk about canes because they all want to know you'll find us yourself they wanna know about you as well I mean the went out the first time I did open for questions expecting a question about kindness or age or you next question what color's your car you know but it's just it's just so nice that the cat's just one in orbit either being kind already because they want to know about you as well as about the kindness of the stuff so III I've really enjoyed doing it I mean there's a great sense and I'm already thinking about how to apply them you know some of those things I always say you can learn from everyone you come in certain concept whether you there's always a learning there and even that idea of giving stuff out where they're almost getting excited and wanting to engage with you I find that interesting I probably think about what I can do about that any particular stories you've heard from kids are they or stories that you've said that they really resonate with yeah about kindness it what what I've found really inspiring is particularly when I went into one of the the autism unit because join my friend John's been really pushing kindness have got me in the wall actually is dr. Jameson kindness although it's not a lovely thing to be pushing in society you're a kindness pusher yeah it's really lovely you know if I feel part of the fauna children it won't have I've gone and but every time I go when when the kids see me come and someone goes and opens the door and then that they're telling me what they've done what they've been doing and you hear things like what held the door one person really inspired me said I decide when such-and-such a boy was was not being very mean I decided not to push him down and and that was a girl who who was known for pushing people down and and it was such a beautiful thing that she stopped for a moment and decided to be kind and said but she was totally aware that that's what she did and I felt myself getting quite murder but what you might think as a sample at all most people wouldn't even notice it I know that she pushed people on the bus and she decided to stop and understood that being kind is not responding in that way another I just it really melted actually did you make a point with kids of teaching them birds yes it's a nice thing to do for that other person but it's also good for you yeah because I think that's gonna be a message that resonates with the kids absolutely and frankly adults because we're just big kids or I hope that you know if you want don't want to do X it's good for other people because it's good for yourself and no an actual fact that that's something that's been a big part of all of the kindness projects that I've went into the school to talk during that kindness week for example it a big part of it pushed by that you know pushed along by the staff is how it makes you feel the importance have also been came to yourself I'm not a plug my books are in but Lady Gaga bought one in my books and and she bought it for all of our staff and it was one of my kindness books and her mum in her office reached that charity Born This Way Foundation reached out to me and we had a few conversations Cynthia mom Santa Gemma not and I did a few Yente of a couple of en I've used and I went over to the u.s. to New York last year and it invited me to participate and a kindness project and one of the things Born This Way Foundation does is the Gwen to skills and they help children to understand what kindnesses and so I mean over than what happened as the kids at the school and long had was coming up to Christmas time they do some of their own Christmas Alone's to buy presents for the children of women staying in a temporary homeless shelter so these kids wouldn't get presents otherwise and the all these kids at the school had used their own allowance that said to the parents you know can can we take some of my allowance and could I buy this fire truck for such as all this game of something for such-and-such and I when I write we arrived at the school Cynthia and I and some of the team the whole corridor was filled with hundreds of presents then the kids took the presence one hour time and they took them on and they felt an entire yellow school bus with all these president then the presents were driven away no part of the project was know what happens next the cat part of the project know was the kids were had to lay them and discussed maybe the write down of the debate but they have to learn about the consequences of what they've done the difference that that makes in the lives of these children who maybe wouldn't have got presents who are the children of women and homeless shelters but also to notice how did you feel when you did that and how did you feel when you land that that makes the difference for them so the whole so part of what they do is get involved in these kind of projects that are really taking it right end to children's hearts and minds so that they understand not just academically what kinda says but how does it make you feel and notice uh and I think that it makes a huge difference to the kind of person that you become because you start to notice this feels a lot better than arguing on Twitter for example yeah I mean I really like that particular that idea of noticing how you feel this one ever mentioned that gratitude practice early one in the episode but I didn't go and expand upon but let me just tell you what that what that what that game looks like because the podcast has got a lot of new lesser slope you won't be familiar with it but essentially for a number of years now our evening dinner in the chassis households my wife and myself and my two kids sit down we have dinner and at some point during dinner we play this gratitude game where we all have to answer three questions what have I done today to make somebody else happy what has somebody else done to make me happy and what have I learned today now what's incredible is that it's changed the dynamic of our mealtimes has changed the energy and people come in really stressed or rushing around you know suddenly the dynamic just changes you sort sir connects you start to find out things about your your family members and your kids and your wife that you wouldn't otherwise have learned if it wasn't in that setting yeah but what's really interesting is I you know my kids are seven and nine now so I'm guessing we started playing I don't know five and three or six and four something like that I can't quite remember now but my kids have started bringing their own questions so there's now five questions in the game and we don't always play all five it depends how tied a facet everyone is but we definitely do at least three but one of the questions that economy if it was my son of my daughter he brought in was I think it was my daughter much think she said it says daddy why we had another question so when you did something to make someone else happy how did you feel right so the fourth question is it's going back to the first question and and it came from my kids how do you feel and it just just what you said they're noticing how you feel when you do an ounce of kindness that's almost and I think that's a really important part to sort of lock in that emotional lock it and I like that lock and lock in that feeling yeah just sort of look Cherie in that feeling oh you know I felt it made me feel good when I held the door open for my classmate you know whatever is and I think that's a that's a really really important component to anything in life frankly but particularly these sort of things you know you know that what you're doing for your children is altering the course of the life in a really positive way I wish that I learned about kindness the way what you're doing the way some schools are doing it I wish our school had for example done a kindness project instead of us learning later I think what you do know for your kids will shape positively shape the course of the life because it's conditioning is locking that feeling in and is conditioning the quality of person of people that they will become as the author that will have a amazing impact on the health but also in the quality of the relationships and what they end up doing in the world and I you know I it's such a beautiful thing to teach your kids about being cane but locking and how it makes you feel because then it becomes I understand this because I feel it yeah I'm not just something you're saying what you do that should do that I get this because this is how I feel it's not it's not just something that daddy told me to do gonna feel it yeah locked and I feel it I feel it here Wow amazing what a teaching for your children you really appreciate you saying that because I think like all parents I'm just simply trying to do the best I can for them based upon my knowledge and my experience with a look I have absolutely loved chatting with you today you've written a lot of books if you were gonna direct people listen to this to one but just get going on there David Hamilton journey what do you think is the best starting point for them a well possibly the five side effects of kindness yeah simply because we you mentioned that you know that it's a good starting point but also how your mind can heal your body is that one all about the mind-body connection I cover a few different subjects yeah oh we'll link to all the ebooks on the show net session I'll also link to some really really good blogs on david's website that home well-worth women they're short and won't set you long so do check out the show notes page for this episode to sort of have access to those David this podcast is called feel better live more when we feel better in ourselves we get more out of our lives and you're very clearly saying that when we're kinder to other people or when we're more compassionate to other people we and they get more out of their lives and my goal with this podcast is to inspire each and every listener to take action to do something not just hear all this great information I go hey that's pretty cool but actually turn inspiration into action so I wonder if you could leave my listeners with some of your very top tips things that they can think about and I'm flying into their own life immediately oh ho but why I often find people enjoy is the 7-day kindness challenge and you've got to do an act of kindness every day for seven days but there's three ground rules the first one is you can't count the same thing twice so for example if you start on a Monday and you make someone a breakfast and Bay they're a cup of tea or something you can do that again during the week but it only counts the first time so you can't count it the other day so you've got to do seven different things another ground rule is at least once gonna push yourself a little but push yourself your comfort zone a little bit and the number three is at least one of those acts of kindness must be completely anonymous no one must ever know what you did or if something was done no one must ever know that it was you and that takes yourself or the need for recognition out of the equation so that's a ground rule so seventy Kanis challenge something definitely everyday push yourself out a comfort zone at least once and one thing has to be completely anonymous I literally love that so much I think what we'll do is a podcast have Cisco out Wednesday 1:00 p.m. and so we'll put it out and then I think on the Monday after I'll probably launch on my social media channels a seven-day carnage challenge along with you and see if we can put someone that'll inspire lots of people to get going with that yeah and then that can spread so then that works and then network so degrees of separation is revolutions together yeah yeah we'll do that we'll do that definitely David look really I have so enjoyed this conversation if people want to catch up with you on social media where can they find you yeah I'm Instagram a David Hamilton PhD from a mouthful to remember a similar that same handle on Facebook as well and my website is dr. David Hamilton comm fan say I will link to everything in the show net section David look looking forward to seeing you at life lessons tomorrow thank you so much for joining me and I think the best way to sign this episode off is maybe happy maybe well maybe safe may have peace fantastic you

Channel: Dr Rangan Chatterjee

Views: 57,877

Keywords: The Four Pillar Plan, NHS, GP, Four Pillar Plan, lifestyle medicine, the stress solution, feel better in 5, feel better live more, fblm, health, paleo, wellness, drchatterjee, rangan chatterjee, how to make disease disappear, low carb, vegan, keto, podcast, apple podcast, obesity, type 2 diabetes, joe rogan, sleep, jay shetty, health advice, richroll, therichrollpodcast, kindness, stress, oxytocin, relationships, contagious, fear

Id: 2F2g-6lPftI

Length: 97min 51sec (5871 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 25 2020