Your Personal Paleo Code: The 3-Step Plan to Lose Weight, Reverse Disease, and Stay Fit and Healthy for Life (29 page)

Biofeedback is a process of becoming aware of the body’s physiological functions. Specialized sensors deliver information about blood pressure, heart rate, skin temperature, and muscle tension, which the participant uses to learn to modify his or her physiological response to stress.

Biofeedback has been shown to significantly reduce stress and anxiety in groups of people who are highly stressed, such as nursing students and physicians. It has also been shown to reduce chronic pain associated with stress, to improve sleep in soldiers in combat zones, and to lessen preoperative anxiety in children with cancer. In the past few years, low-
cost, portable biofeedback devices have been developed that work with smartphones and tablets. (Emwave2, BioZen, and Quantum Life are examples.) This is perhaps the easiest and most accessible way to learn biofeedback.

There are a number of supplements that support the HPA axis and help with stress management. However, don’t be tempted to think you can simply take the supplements and ignore all of the behavioral and lifestyle changes I’ve discussed in this chapter. That won’t work. Supplements can be an important part of a stress-management program, but they should never be seen as a substitute for making the necessary changes to reduce the amount of stress you experience.

Please see my website for additional stress-management techniques, including links to free instructional audio recordings that you can download.

Notes for this chapter may be found at ChrisKresser.com/ppcnotes/#ch14.

Complete the quiz below and use the answer key to determine your pleasure and connection score.

I have a close friend or confidant that I regularly confide in.

Points
: 1

I am in a committed, loving relationship.

Points
: 2

I have a strong social-support network.

Points
: 2

I enjoy regular touch and physical contact (for example, massage, sex, or partner dancing).

Points
: 1

I listen to music that inspires or relaxes me on a daily basis.

Points
: 1

I have supportive family around me.

Points
: 1

I play an instrument and practice or make music at least twice a week.

Points
: 1

I engage in activities that make me laugh out loud at least three times a week.

Points
: 1

I have a good sense of humor and tend not to take life too seriously.

Points
: 1

I volunteer for an organization or cause I believe in.

Points
: 1

I have a dog, cat, or other pet.

Points
: 1

I have one or more friends to confide in about personal matters.

Points
: 1

I set aside time to play, exercise, or interact with my pet at least three times a week.

Points
: 1

TOTAL

Total Points
: 6+

What Your Points Mean
: You’re likely doing well with pleasure and connection.

Your Personal Paleo Code
: Complete the
Your Personal Paleo Code
3-Step program. No additional personalization is required.

Total Points
: 3–5

What Your Points Mean
: You may benefit from more focus on pleasure and connection.

Your Personal Paleo Code
: Complete the
Your Personal Paleo Code
3-Step program, and add the recommendations in this chapter.

Total Points
: 0–2

What Your Points Mean
: You are likely suffering from a lack of pleasure and connection.

Your Personal Paleo Code
: Complete the
Your Personal Paleo Code
3-Step program, and add the recommendations in this chapter. This should be a major focus for you, and ignoring this area may stand in the way of improvement elsewhere.

For the vast majority of our species’ history, humans lived in tight-knit, extended family or kin groups with regular social contact. Like all other primate species, we’re inherently social animals: we thrive when we feel a sense of connection and belonging, and we suffer when we feel isolated and alone.

Socially isolated people have a higher risk of disease and death even after controlling for traditional risk factors like physical health, smoking, and alcohol consumption. By contrast, having a positive social-support system has been shown to extend life span and improve cardiovascular, endocrine, immune, and mental health. Unfortunately, both the quality and quantity of social relationships in the industrialized world is decreasing. Humans have gone from living primarily in extended-family or tribal units to living in single-family or even individual units; they are more mobile and thus less likely to put down roots; they get married later; and they have more dual-career families. Perhaps most disturbing, over the past two decades, the number of Americans who report having no close confidants has increased threefold and is now the rule rather than the exception.

This is ironic in a world characterized by electronic hyperconnectivity. Never before have people been able to communicate with such speed and ease. A written message that used to take weeks if not months to travel from one end of the world to the other can now be sent in less than a second, and social media allows everyone to interface with more people in a month than he or she would have met in an entire lifetime just a few hundred years ago. Yet the findings given above suggest that, despite these increases in technology and global connectivity, people are becoming more—rather than less—socially isolated.

Like social connection, pleasure is not only part of our species’ cultural heritage but also essential to our health. The experience of pleasure releases powerful chemicals that promote health and prevent disease. Pleasure protects against the harmful effects of stress; it strengthens and regulates the immune system and improves mood. In many ways, pleasure is the
antithesis
of stress.

Yet in our increasingly busy and hectic world, many people have difficulty finding time for pleasure. Though leisure time has actually increased over the past forty years, much of those hours are devoted to distraction, not pleasure. Distraction and pleasure might seem similar on the surface, but they’re fundamentally different. Distraction is something that prevents you from giving full attention to yourself and your life. Pleasure is almost exactly the opposite. When you experience pleasure, you are more fully present to life, more grounded in your body, more alive and aware. While there’s a time and place for distraction, it shouldn’t be substituted for pleasure. Unfortunately, statistics suggests that this substitution is what’s happening today. The average American now devotes half of his or her leisure time each day to watching television, and computer activities like checking e-mail and using social media are also on the rise.

Social connection and pleasure are vital to everyone’s health and well-being, and we’ll all benefit from bringing more of each into our lives.

In
chapter 14
we talked about how chronic stress contributes to everything from insomnia and anxiety to obesity and heart disease. Scientists have devoted vast amounts of attention to understanding the mechanisms of the fight-or-flight response. They’ve found that when a person is faced with stress, the sympathetic nervous system triggers a cascade of physiological changes that result in increased blood flow and spikes in adrenaline levels.

But there’s another nervous system response that’s just as important as fight-or-flight to human survival and yet is often ignored in the scientific literature and in mainstream articles about stress. Humans are designed not only to deal with stress and challenges but also to enjoy life, to relax, to bond, and to heal. This is the parasympathetic state, often referred to as the rest-and-digest or calm-and-connect response. It produces the opposite biochemical effects on the body as the fight-or-flight
response does: heart rate and respiration slow down; blood pressure drops; blood flow to the digestive tract, skin, and reproductive organs increases; and stress hormones decrease.

Both fight-or-flight and calm-and-connect are essential to life. We need the ability to meet challenges and mobilize our physical and mental resources to take action. But we also need to digest food, replenish our energy stores, and heal ourselves. It’s likely that these different systems were in a state of relative balance in our Paleo ancestors. Imagine a day of mostly relaxing, interacting with others, and gathering food or building shelters. This might be punctuated by an acutely stressful event, such as a hunt or an encounter with a predator. But it would likely be followed again by more rest-and-digest or calm-and-connect time, such as gathering around a fire and feasting on the day’s hunt. Human beings adapted to this balance of pressure and calm, stress and relaxation, sympathetic and parasympathetic stimulation.

Unfortunately, most of us today do not have this balance. In modern times, fight-or-flight is rarely a temporary state that quickly passes. Instead, it’s an almost continuous reaction to the excessive demands placed on us by modern life. Worrying about money, watching upsetting news, being skipped over for a promotion, and driving in traffic may not literally threaten your survival, but your body reacts as if they do. All of these elicit the exact same physiological fight-or-flight response, only to a lesser degree.

Stress is the antithesis of pleasure: it feels unpleasant, raises heart rate and blood pressure, weakens the immune system, and makes people sick. And if stress is the antithesis of pleasure, it follows that one of the best ways to fight stress is with pleasure.

The reactions of the human nervous system are relatively black-and-white. Either you’re experiencing stress, and the sympathetic nervous system (fight-or-flight) is activated, or you’re in a state of relative ease, and
the parasympathetic nervous system (rest-and-digest) is activated. This suggests that if you’re experiencing pleasure, you’re not experiencing stress, and it explains why pleasure is such a powerful antidote to stress.

Endorphins are the body’s feel-good chemicals. They have similar structures and effects as opium, the poppy-derived narcotic that has been used for thousands of years to induce euphoria and reduce pain. Endorphins are responsible for intensely pleasurable experiences like orgasm and the runner’s high some people experience with exercise. In fact, animal research has shown that endorphin levels can be up to eighty-six times higher after animals experience multiple orgasms. But endorphins are released, albeit at lower levels, in more mundane daily activities as well, such as when you’re playing with a pet, watching a funny movie, listening to your favorite music, visiting a favorite place, or connecting with loved ones. In addition to counteracting stress hormones and improving mood, endorphins also:

In other words, endorphins don’t just make us feel good; they improve our health and protect us from disease. This explains why experiences that bring pleasure—such as warm, caring touch, listening to music, and interacting with pets—are associated with a greater sense of well-being as well as longer life spans.

For almost two million years, humans lived in tight-knit extended-family or tribal groups. They had regular daily contact with family members and others they were close to, and they had an inherent sense of community
and belonging. Yet today, most people in the industrialized world live either alone or with only the immediate family.

Throughout this book we’ve discussed the idea that there’s a mismatch between our current diet and lifestyle and the one humans adapted to. The decline in the quality and quantity of close relationships and social connection is yet another way that this mismatch manifests in the modern, industrialized world. And while you might suspect that diet and other lifestyle factors, like sleep and exercise, would have a far greater impact on health than social support, research suggests otherwise. A landmark study published in 2010 involving over three hundred thousand participants found that social support was a stronger predictor of survival than physical activity, body mass index, hypertension, air pollution, alcohol consumption, and even smoking fifteen cigarettes a day! The researchers found that people with adequate social relationships had up to a 90 percent greater likelihood of survival than those with poor or insufficient relationships. This is likely a conservative estimate, because this study didn’t take the
quality
of relationships into account, and previous studies have shown that negative relationships actually
increase
the risk of death. Had the researchers examined the effects of positive relationships separately, the percentage almost certainly would have been higher.

There are several theories to explain why social support is so important to health. One theory is that social relationships help buffer the effects of chronic stress by providing emotional and other forms of support. Another theory holds that social relationships directly influence health through their effect on physiology, behavior, and mood. Whatever the case, it’s likely that a hormone called oxytocin is involved.

Oxytocin plays a critical role in both the causes and the effects of positive social interaction, and it is associated with a general feeling of mental and physical well-being. Oxytocin stimulates a sense of calm, improves trust, reduces fear, and enhances the desire to connect with others. (Some even refer to it as the tend-and-befriend hormone.) It is secreted during sex, caring touch, nonverbal expressions of love, eye contact, and mother-infant bonding, including during breast-feeding. Studies
have shown that men and women who report great support from their partners have higher oxytocin levels than those who don’t; other studies indicate that administering oxytocin encourages close and intimate contact. By contrast, low levels of oxytocin are associated with social isolation, cardiovascular disease, psychiatric problems, and decreased quality of life.

A lack of social support also causes harm in ways that don’t directly involve oxytocin. For example, lonely people have higher blood pressure and heart rates and greater amounts of atherosclerosis than people with adequate social support. They also suffer from more inflammation, insomnia, infectious disease, cancer, depression, and stress. People who are more socially integrated have lower serum levels of proteins associated with inflammation, like C-reactive protein (CRP) and interleukin-6 (IL-6); are less likely to experience cardiovascular disease and infection; and have longer life spans.

Most people recognize the inherent value of pleasure and social connection, but my guess is that few realize how important these things are to physical health and longevity. Yet the studies we’ve covered in this chapter suggest that, together, pleasure and social connection may have as much of an influence on well-being as the food people eat, how much exercise they get, and how well they sleep. With this in mind, let’s explore some ideas for how to bring more pleasure and connection into your life.