Live More Happy pt 1 - 041

SPEAKER A The following program presents principles designed to promote good health and is not intended to take the place of personalised, professional care. The opinions and ideas expressed are those of the speakers. Viewers are encouraged to draw their own conclusions about the information presented. Welcome to healthy living. I'm your host, Margot Marshall. Happiness it's something we all seek. My guest today will be sharing scientifically proven ways to lift your mood and your life. Stay tuned. SPEAKER B Healthy Living is a production of 3ABN Australia television focusing on the health of the whole person, body, mind, and spirit. You'll learn natural lifestyle principles with practical health solutions for overall good health. SPEAKER A If you're seeking a proven plan for vibrant living, you've come to the right place, because my guest today, Dr. Darren Morton, will be sharing foundations of emotional wellness. Welcome, Darren. You have a passion for vibrant living. What got you? SPEAKER B Oh, look, I think even as a tiny little tot, I was always passionately interested in what does it take to really live well, to really be thriving in life, I suppose. And so that interest from Wee Little guy has grown into, I suppose, my career path. And now I'm based at Avondale College of Higher Education. I'm the course coordinator for postgraduate studies in lifestyle medicine. But, yeah, I'm just passionately interested in what can we do? What does it take to really live well? SPEAKER A And you started at such an early age. I'm interested that a little kid would actually be thinking like that. That's just something that's always been with you, then. SPEAKER B Yeah, it has. And in fact, that's a large part of the reason I was so attracted to Christianity, because I think there's some really powerful foundations in there as well. SPEAKER A Yes, that's right. And you've actually written a book about this that's passionate. SPEAKER B Okay, I have. So here's the big news. My new book that's come out, and it's called Live More Happy and the Byline is scientifically proven Ways to lift your mood and your life. SPEAKER A Well, that's very good. It's always nice to know that there's some good foundation underneath, not just ideas or pop psychology or anything like that. SPEAKER B Yeah, absolutely. And that's very important to me. Obviously, I've got many PhD students, so I'm very much immersed in that scientific space. And I think there's just a massive need for an increased awareness of the kind of things that I share in the book, and I'd love to share some of those today. SPEAKER A Oh, well, yes. We're just waiting to hear from you. SPEAKER B Fantastic. SPEAKER A Go right ahead. SPEAKER B Well, I want to set the scene by a statistic that just troubles me greatly, and that is that we know that today in Australia, about one in ten Australian adults are taking an antidepressant each day. Now, I'm not against medications, but what for me that's a sign is that people are struggling. As they say, feeling down is on the up. We know that in the past decade, those levels of, say, antidepressant use have doubled. It's even worse in the United States. About one in eight adults in the United States are on antidepressant medications. So what for me, that says is there are people are really struggling with how they feel. What we know that your emotional state, your emotional well being, is just so foundational to living your best life. SPEAKER A Well, it is, isn't it? I mean, yes. What more can you say? Exactly right there. SPEAKER B So what fascinates me is that we now know that there are very well established, evidence based, scientifically proven things that you can do to lift how you feel, to lift your mood and your life. And so can I share some with you? Go. Yes. SPEAKER A What's number one? SPEAKER B All right, here's number one. Food feeds your mood. Now, what we know is that there is a strong connection. I mean, this is not really rocket science, this part, because we all know that if you go and you don't eat the right kind of foods and you eat too much of it, you walk away feeling like that wasn't so good. You obviously don't feel so great. But what the science is starting to show is there's a very strong connection between the amount of, say, fruits and vegetables, or more specifically, whole plant based foods that people consume and their levels of happiness. SPEAKER A Is there anything that fruit and vegetables aren't good for? SPEAKER B That's right. Exactly. Well, some of the science behind this is fascinating, though. In a very large study conducted in the UK involving about 80,000 people, they actually found that there's a dose response relationship. So in non science speak, what that means is that essentially, the more fruits and vegetables that you consume on a given day, the more happy that you are likely to be. SPEAKER A Well, do you want to hear something really sad? And this is really bad only one in 20 Australians are getting enough fruit and vegetables. SPEAKER B That's correct. SPEAKER A One in 20. SPEAKER B Yeah. SPEAKER A So there's that correlation. SPEAKER B Yeah. Well, in that large study conducted in the United Kingdom, they actually found that about eight serves of fruit and vegetables seems to be the ideal. Or beyond that, you still get added benefits, but the bulk of the benefits are gained by about eight serves. But here's the question that the researchers struggled with after they conducted that study. They found this association between people who are eating more fruits and vegetables are happier. But what's the causality there? Is it just that people who are happier tend to eat more fruits and vegetables, or is it the other way around? And so there was a fascinating study conducted by researchers from New Zealand. New Zealand. They do some great stuff at times, but what they actually found is that they monitored people's intake of fruit and vegetables and then mapped their happiness and they followed it over extended period of time. And what they were able to identify is that it was indeed the consumption of fruits and vegetables that were driving how they felt. But what's interesting is that, in the words of the researchers, the results of what they call lagged analysis. Now, what this means is that when people consume more on fruit and vegetables one day, they were actually happier the day after. SPEAKER A Okay? SPEAKER B Now, this is intriguing, and we now think we know why that's the case, and it really enters in the book. I talk a lot about this, so if you want to learn more about this, you can read my book. But what we know is that one of the most exciting frontiers of medical research is the gut microbiome, or the gut microbiota, these bugs in your gastrointestinal tract. And we know that they exist right at the end of your gastrointestinal tract. Now, a gastrointestinal tract, by the way, is about sort of 30 meters long. So it's very long. And we know that you need high fiber foods to go all the way. High fiber foods make it all the way to the end of your GI tract where they feed this bacteria that we know is profoundly influential on our mood state. Actually, there's a link between our guts and particularly our emotional brain, so much so that they're now saying that your gut is considered to be your second brain, which is intriguing. SPEAKER A So when we get a gut feeling, there's a bit of science. SPEAKER B There's a journal article that came out not long back, and it was titled, that Gut Feelings. SPEAKER A Okay. SPEAKER B Because of this link there. So, look, strategy number one is food feeds your mood. And so to promote emotional well being and happiness, we need to start eating more plants. That's the takeaway message there, right? So I could talk more about that, but I want to tell you some other ones. SPEAKER A So what's the next here's? SPEAKER B Number two, motion creates emotion. You see. Now, I have a very strong background in the area of exercise. In fact, my PhD was in sort of an exercise physiology related topic, and I've been in the business for many, many years of trying to encourage people to be more physically active. But what we're discovering and there are huge benefits associated with that, obviously, we know that when people are more physically active, they have less chronic diseases like heart disease and diabetes and all the rest of it. But what we're discovering is that being more physically active is incredibly good for your emotional brain. The part of your brain responsible for how you feel is powerfully influenced by movement. In fact, you have the estimates are you have about six to 10 million tiny little nerves distributed throughout your body. SPEAKER A Let me see if I can get this right. Is it proprioceptors? SPEAKER B Oh, that makes my heart sink. Wow. Well done. Well done. You've done your research. SPEAKER A Yes, I have. SPEAKER B Yeah. These proprioceptors we know that are distributed throughout your body feed information up to your emotional brain. And so this is why when you move in an uplifting way, it actually makes you feel better. And this is why also if you don't move or you actually even posture yourself in a sort of depressed way, that will actually perpetuate that feeling as well. SPEAKER A Wow. SPEAKER B So motion creates emotion. SPEAKER A That's incredible. SPEAKER B It is incredible. Now it is so powerful. We now know, and there are studies to demonstrate this, that if you take people so we actually know that being more physically active prevents depression. But we know that even if you take people who are depressed and then get them to move more, in other words, just to stimulate these proprioceptors in a positive way, it actually can lift that depression as well as antidepressant medications can. SPEAKER A So they're equal, equal, equal. SPEAKER B And so the studies have actually shown this. So one of the studies that I've just got on the screen there is showing that the efficacy of exercise in patients seems generally comparable with patients receiving. SPEAKER A Antidepressant medication and no side effects or no bad ones. SPEAKER B Well, that's right, there are side effects, but they're all good ones. They improves your sleep, improves a whole other and helps control body weight and a whole host of other things as well. This is the part that really excites me though, because I'm not excited enough yet, as you can tell. The thing that really excites me about this is that we know that just moving for ten minutes is enough to essentially lift the ten minutes. Ten minutes. So you can see on this slide here, one of the studies actually found that improvements in vigor, fatigue and total mood occurred after just ten minutes of physical activity. SPEAKER A That's interesting. Fatigue. You would not expect that if you're tired, you wouldn't expect to get more energy from spending some energy. SPEAKER B It's incredible, isn't it? You touch on a really interesting point because often when I hear people say oh, I get to the end of the day and I'm just so exhausted. And I say so what did you get up to during the day? Expecting to hear them say that I'm a manual laborer and I've been swinging an axe all day. And they say oh well, I had to sit on the train and go to work and then I got to work and I sat in front of my computer and had to it's often these sedentary behaviors that perpetuate this feeling of fatigue. SPEAKER A I think that might be the clue. I was just talking to someone this morning who drove 9 hours to come into state. SPEAKER B Yes. SPEAKER A And they're very tired. And I said why is it? I said, I know myself. You travel and you get tired and that's really the answer, isn't it? SPEAKER B That's right. And it's because these proprioceptors distributed throughout your body when you're sitting in this sort of state, they're actually feeding that information to your emotional brain and so your brain goes, okay, then. And that creates that feeling. So motion creates emotion, and the fact that it can occur within just ten minutes. Ten minutes is very powerful. SPEAKER A That seems really doable. I mean, we hear things like 10,000 steps and half an hour minimum and so on, but ten minutes to get a measurable benefit, a noticeable benefit, you feel like I could do that. SPEAKER B Exactly. SPEAKER A I think it's achievable not just in terms of maybe how you're feeling about it, but in terms of time. You think, I could do ten minutes? I've got ten minutes. I can do that and maybe do a few of them. SPEAKER B Yeah. And what I love about that message is that if I say to someone, I can actually show you something that will make you feel better within the next ten minutes, that's a powerful message, isn't it? SPEAKER A It is powerful. And probably there's no medication that can maybe work that fast, is there? SPEAKER B Well, there might be. SPEAKER A Might be things, that's right. But most things might take longer than that. SPEAKER B Absolutely. So I think that's a really compelling message. So some of the tips so food feeds your mood. We know that motion creates emotion, but there's more. SPEAKER A There's more. SPEAKER B And the next tip that I have and I talk about this in one of the chapters of the book I call blue and Green should often be seen. Now, why I say that is that what we are seeing within the scientific literature is just this overwhelming evidence that people who immerse themselves in uplifting blue and green. I'm talking about open spaces, outdoor environments, sky and grass. Yeah, that's right. The blue and green all about you, that they are more emotionally resilient, more emotionally up. Some of the studies that are coming out in this space, we actually know that if you take someone in a hospital situation and they just have a window view of a green space outside, that they take less pain killing medication, they have shorter hospital stays. SPEAKER A Wow. SPEAKER B So it's very, very powerful. But in a really fascinating study that was conducted by, once again, New Zealand. SPEAKER A Researchers you're not from New Zealand. SPEAKER B No, I'm not, but I'm a good plug today. SPEAKER A Yeah, you are. SPEAKER B They have done some great work. What they did in the capital of Auckland, some researchers actually mapped how much blue and green space. So sort of natural parks and environments like that that were close to people's homes. And then they looked to see how it influenced the prevalence of depression and anxiety amongst the people. And what they discovered was this, and I find this fascinating. For every 1% increase in close proximity to green space, there was a 4% reduction in depression and anxiety. SPEAKER A Now, would that be considered significant? What would that be on significant? SPEAKER B Absolutely. Well, you think about it, if that's a 1% increase in the access to you go up 10%, all of a sudden we've got a 40% reduction. SPEAKER A Oh, that's huge. SPEAKER B It's huge. And we're only just beginning to understand what it is about blue and green space outdoor environments that are so beneficial for us. SPEAKER A I don't think we were ever meant to be cooped up in a concrete jungle. It's so unnatural, isn't it? SPEAKER B It is. And it's not rocket science, really, when you think about, but what we've stumbled on, and what I find this absolutely captivating, is that it seems that natural light is incredibly powerful. In terms of influencing our emotional state and our emotional wellbeing, what we know is that the part of your brain responsible for how you feel. It's your limbic system. We know that that's actually influenced by how much bright light or the intensity of the light that your eyes are exposed to. Now, I'm not talking about staring at the sun. I'm just talking about in any sort of area, there is light sort of hitting your eyes from various different angles. Now, what we now believe, scientists believe is that you need about 10,000 lux. Right now, lux is just a measure of the intensity of light. But you probably need about 10,000 lux for at least 30 minutes a day to be emotionally well. Okay, now we know. SPEAKER A How would you achieve that? SPEAKER B Well, that's a great question. I'm glad you asked. Let me just say this for a moment. What we know is that people who don't get enough natural or enough light intensity exposed to their eyes are far more prone to a whole range of sort of what we call affective disorders or low mood, depression, anxiety and stress. Where we see that happening very commonly is in countries of high latitude, like up in Alaska and some of these places where during the winter months, very low lighting. And what you actually find in that, there's actually a condition they call Sad, which is Sad, seasonal Affective Disorder. We know that people who have insufficient light exposure, they experience, as I said, anxiety, depression, very high rates of suicide. Which is tragic. SPEAKER A Isn'T it, when you think just for something like light that's there something light. SPEAKER B Now, I want to come back to this because, as I said, what we estimate that you probably need about 10,000 lux for 30 minutes each day. Now, what we know is that in an indoor space, right, so this is even a brightly lit indoor environment, there is probably a maximum of about 500 lux. SPEAKER A Oh, that's a long way short. SPEAKER B It's a long way short, isn't it? If you start doing the sums now, you step outside, on an overcast day, there is probably a minimum of 2000 lux. SPEAKER A Okay? SPEAKER B On an overcast on an overcast day, on a bright, sunny day outside, you're probably being exposed to about 100,000 lux. SPEAKER A That's a huge difference. SPEAKER B It's a massive difference. You wouldn't detect this. You wouldn't pick this up. But this is the reality. In fact, do you know that even on a bright sunny day in the shade. Right. Because once again, this is not talking about staring at the sun, this is just the natural light that you're immersed in. We know that in the shade, on a bright sunny day, there's probably about 25,000 lux. SPEAKER A Wow. Two and a half times as much as you need. SPEAKER B Exactly. So what this shows is that in order for us to be emotionally well, if you're spending all your time indoors, you're probably not going to achieve it. You need to get the light right. And so one fascinating study that was just conducted came out just a little while back by researchers from the University of Colorado. They actually put little devices on people to track how much light they were being exposed to throughout the course of the day. And what they discovered is that during an average day, and obviously people duck outside every now and then, but they spend most of their time indoors, they were exposed to an average of about 750 lux throughout the course of the day. You can see it's a long way shy of the 10,000 mark. After then, what they did is they took these same people camping for the week in winter. So this is winter camping. Now what would you expect? I won't ask you because that's you. SPEAKER A Could ask me winter, but based on what you no, I don't know. SPEAKER B Average throughout the course of the day, 10,200 lux in winter. In winter. So all they've taken is people from their normal living environment to that winter camping, and they had in their normal environment, 750 lux on average. Now winter camping, 10,200 lux. So you can see they're ticking the box in terms of getting that adequate stimulation. What's intriguing, the people all reported high levels of mood, improved sleep patterns, a whole host of other benefits that go along with that. SPEAKER A Yeah. So that 2000 has me puzzled then. If it's a cloudy day, I think you said, or an overcast today yes. They'd only get 2000. SPEAKER B Yeah, it's correct. SPEAKER A So this wintertime, they must have still. SPEAKER B Had some yeah, the sun breaks through. It wasn't its head through at times. SPEAKER A Well, it does in winter. I mean, they're not all overcast days. SPEAKER B Yeah, that's right. SPEAKER A That's fantastic. SPEAKER B Yeah. So blue and green should often be seen Maybe I even should change the title of my chapter to Bright. Blue and green should often be seen okay. So, yes, these are things that we can do. I mean, a lot of these things are not hard. Well, the food feeds your mood, the motion creates emotion. Blue and green should often be seen. SPEAKER A If it's blue, it would be bright. SPEAKER B That's right. I thought I'd name the chapter wrong, so let me share some other ones. One of my other chapters. I've called Rest to feel your best. Now, what we now know, and there are many studies indicating this, is that when you are sleep deprived. Your brain is actually geared for negativity. We know that when we do studies that involve these things called functional MRIs, where we put people in brain scan machines and then we flash images up before them. If it's an adversive image and they're sleep deprived, their brain just lights up like a Christmas tree. Much more so than if they're not sleep deprived. And what's really intriguing is we know that, as I said, the brain is geared for negativity in all manner of ways. Can I conduct a little experiment with the viewers? SPEAKER A Yes, go ahead. SPEAKER B Okay, so I'm going to flash up some words on this screen, and I want you to remember them as many as you can. I'm going to give you 10 seconds. SPEAKER A Me or the viewers? SPEAKER B Viewers and you. Here we go. Ready, set, go. SPEAKER A What do I have? SPEAKER B 10 seconds? Memorize as many of these words as you can. SPEAKER A Well, where are they? SPEAKER B Here they come. Okay, there we go. I'll just supply some background music. Dong dong dom dom dom dom dom dom. I'm a really bad singer. All right, time's up. Let's take that off for a SEC. Okay, ask the viewers, how many can you remember? We won't put you on the spot. SPEAKER A I'll have a go. We smile and happy and calm. SPEAKER B Okay, we'll stop there because you just answered that beautifully. I'm wondering which words you could remember there, because what I didn't tell you, if I show you this image here, which is the next image? Some of those words are actually positive words calm, smile, love, happy. Which were the ones that you remembered? Some are negative, like grief, crash, alarm, angry. And then others are just sort of benign. So they're tree, water, carpet. SPEAKER A Okay, so don't get any points for car? SPEAKER B No. Well, there was no points involved, but here's the takeaway message. What we know is that if you are sleep deprived, you are two and a half times more likely to remember the negative words. SPEAKER A Isn't that interesting? SPEAKER B Isn't it? Well, you know what I love is that you just remembered all the positive ones. SPEAKER A Oh, I'm so pleased and well rested. SPEAKER B Isn't this intriguing that we know that sleep has a huge impact on your emotional well being? Many people are struggling with their sleep, and I could talk a lot about this and we don't have the time to do it, but you can read about it once again in my book. But one tip I would like to offer is that blue screens, screens at nighttime, actually emit a light that tell our emotional brain to wake up. And so this highly prevalent use of screens in late hours of the day are actually doing a great disservice for us in terms of our sleep. SPEAKER A Yes, we hear that a bit. So it's probably not news, but it's difficult, actually, because one way or another, if it's not the TV, it might be the computer or whatever it's become very much part of what people do. SPEAKER B Absolutely. SPEAKER A And how much before you go to sleep, are you meant to be free. SPEAKER B Of that kind of well, that's a great question. What we know is that blue light, so you don't pick it. You can't really pick it. It's not to the naked eye, although your eye is detecting these things. But what we know is that when you step into a naturally lit environment, particularly in the morning time, it actually has a blue tinge to the light. And so from a design perspective, what that tells our brain is that, oh, wait a SEC, blue light, that means morning time. It's time to rise and shine. And so this is why we know that. But what actually happens over the course of the day, particularly at the end of the day, the spectrum of the light changes to more of a red yellow tinge. And red yellow tinge doesn't have that wake up effect on our brain. It actually has a slowdown it's time to rest. SPEAKER A Isn't that marvelous? SPEAKER B It's marvelous. SPEAKER A Isn't that incredible? SPEAKER B Well, what's intriguing is that you actually. SPEAKER A Wouldn'T expect that, would you? It's the same sun that's getting up that's going down. SPEAKER B Yes. SPEAKER A And yet that changes. I think that's yes. SPEAKER B And what's interesting is, historically our source of light after dark was actually firelight. And so we know that firelight is a red yellow tinge. And so it's actually very calming for us. In fact, what I learned long ago is it's not enough just to write books because people learn from that, but often they don't put these things into practice. So I've actually developed a program that accompanies the book and we have challenges where we learn about the information and then we say, let's test it and see if it works for you, if it's helpful to you. And one of the challenges for the week that we look at rest to feel your best, I actually encourage people to spend a night by firelight. SPEAKER A That'd be beautiful. SPEAKER B It is. SPEAKER A I've been to campfires not of ages and ages, but it's lovely. And I've just found you don't even need any entertainment. You don't have to have any agenda. You can sit around a fire and talk to people and just be there and just look at the fire. It's incredible how it could be. SPEAKER B Yes. SPEAKER A Just so interesting. Well, calming. Yes. SPEAKER B We know that people who spend just two nights, like go camping once again, I love camping. SPEAKER A Sort of get that idea. SPEAKER B You get an idea. But we actually know that spending two nights in a row in a Camp fire environment will radically reset what we call people's biorhythms or the circadian rhythms. SPEAKER A Is that right? SPEAKER B Yeah. And we actually see that very quickly people start to shift their sleeping patterns when they are only in a naturally lit in terms of Camp Fire light at night. SPEAKER A Well, I'm impressed to think that, like, you say ten minutes of exercise was enough to help to lift mood. SPEAKER B Yes. SPEAKER A And now you're saying just two nights yes. In camping and having that's not a lot. I mean, that's a weekend. SPEAKER B That's right. And it is a weekend. That's exactly correct. SPEAKER A People could do that. SPEAKER B Yes. Well, and even if you don't have access to a safe place to light fires, just candlelight at your home. SPEAKER A Okay. SPEAKER B And we often do that. Sometimes of an evening we'll just have once a week, we'll actually pick a time, we light candles and it has the same effect. SPEAKER A So it's a beautiful thing, two beautiful solutions to that. Because sleep is a massive problem. SPEAKER B It is a massive problem. Do you know what though? It's not just sleep. In the chapter where I talk about rest to feel your best, what we now know is that people that life is just so fast paced 24/7 that people need time out from that. And so actually, I found there's a fascinating study that was done that's called Death Rests a While. And this was done on Jewish populations who practice this Sabbath where they have this whole 24 hours period off guilt free. And what you actually find is that the death rates on Sabbath drastically fall away. SPEAKER A Isn't that interesting? SPEAKER B And so I actually promote one of the other challenges in the program that I have and I talk about in the book, is the importance of just taking one day out guilt free, just to reprioritize and put first things first. We actually now know there are several studies showing that your emotional state actually fluctuates quite predictably over the course of a week. And some of these studies, and I've got a slide here that I'll just show you, that the researchers have actually found that there is a happiest day of the week. Believe it or not, it's Saturday. On Saturdays. We tend to find people have the lowest amount of negative emotions and the. SPEAKER A Highest amount and they've actually identified that day. SPEAKER B They've identified that. SPEAKER A Darren, that's just fantastic. But we do need to wrap up now, if you'd just like to do a little recap. SPEAKER B Yeah, look, I'm really passionate about people knowing there are things they can do to feel better. Food feeds your mood. Motion creates emotion. Blue and green should often be seen. And rest to feel your best. These are some physical things we can do, but there are psychological strategies we can use as well. And perhaps I can share them next session. SPEAKER A Oh, we will very much look forward to that. Thank you so much. And if you'd like to watch our programs on demand, just go to our website, 3abnaustralia.org.au and click on the watch button. We'll see you next time for the rest of Darren's research. Thanks, Darren. SPEAKER B You’ve been listening to a production of 3ABN Australia Television.