Real Advice on How You Could Handle Stress Better and Be Less Depressed
Also, you would get your ass handed to you in Olympic table tennis
Eat the right things and handle stress better
Your guts are connected to your brain. I mean, obviously there’s a big highway between the two full of chest and neck and spine but scientists are learning more and more about how the makeup of the gut microbiome is full of indicators of mental health. Some new research has been conducted at UCLA by Dr. Aparna Church, who is our guest on the podcast this week. Dr. Church has found that people who handle stress with resiliency have a common signature in their guts.
So we talk with her about, among other things, about the chicken and egg question about that. Does it mean that people who are naturally resilient to stress form a certain biome OR does it mean that people who have that specific assemblage of microorganisms form more stress resiliency?
Also, what can we be doing to get one of those cool stress force field kinds of guts? Like, can we be eating certain things that can make us more chill? She says it all comes down to variety. You should be eating a wide spectrum of fruits and vegetables and grains to make your abdominal city as diverse and culture rich as it can be. Hear what else you can do by tuning in.
John, you keep talking about TMS. WHAT IS IT?
I realized in last week’s episode with Mike Doughty that we kind of breezed through the mention of TMS treatment. This week, I go in a lot deeper to let you know exactly what transcranial magnetic stimulation is, how it works, how effective it is, and the different types of TMS that are available.
Admittedly, the process sounds, medical term here, bonkers:
Then the fun starts. The magnetic woodpecker comes to life. Magnetic pulses are delivered in very rapid succession, on off on off on off on off, I can’t talk fast enough for how these things come in. That goes on for some predetermined number of seconds, then the woodpecker stops for a while, some other predetermined number of seconds. Then it fires up again. Back and forth like that. A whole session generally lasts in the neighborhood of 20 minutes. It shouldn’t hurt but you’ll definitely notice it. You can’t really listen to stuff on headphones but they might put something on TV for you to watch, with subtitles. Nature documentaries or something serene.
Then you go to like 35 more sessions just like that. And by the time it’s all over? There’s a good chance your depression will feel better. Or perhaps be in total remission! But not a 100% chance. And there is no real universal agreement on how likely it is that you’ll be helped.
Also in this episode, Dr. Church talks about fecal transplant procedures and uses the term “crapsules”, which I had to stop the interview and laugh about.
Meditation helps student mental health
If you’re an adult, please don’t think of elementary school as a stress-free place. It’s not. Grade pressure, social pressure, and just the harsh learning curve of figuring out how to be a person in the world, it’s all a lot you know?
But taking the time to just have some goddamn serenity seems to make a difference for young people. The Associated Press reports on a meditation and mindfulness program in use in Atlanta-area schools.
Nationwide, children in schools that serve mostly students of color have less access to psychologists and counselors than those in schools serving mostly white students.
The Inner Explorer program guides students and teachers through five-to-10-minute sessions of breathing, meditating and reflecting several times a day. The program also is used at Atlanta Public Schools and over 100 other districts across the country.
Teachers and administrators say they have noticed a difference in their students since they’ve incorporated mindfulness into their routine. For Aniyah Woods, 9, the program has helped her “calm down” and “not stress anymore.”
Imbalance of cognitive labor hurts women’s mental health
Domestic labor, the function of operating a household, usually falls disproportionately on women. But now there’s research that the cognitive part, the thinking part of that labor, which falls EVEN MORE on women than men, is having a harmful effect on mental health.
Darby Saxbe, professor of psychology at the University of Southern California (USC), used an example of summer camp. The cognitive labor is researching camps, comparing rates, filling out the forms, and scheduling the camp week.
“All of the kind of organizational work versus, the daily work of taking the kid to and from camp,” Saxbe told Salon.
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“We found that while mothers did more of the overall domestic labor than their partners, the division of cognitive labor was particularly gendered, such that women’s share of cognitive labor was more disproportionate than physical household labor,” the researchers wrote in the study, published in the journal Archives of Women's Mental Health. “We found that cognitive labor was associated with women’s depression, stress, burnout, overall mental health and relationship functioning.”
No, you couldn’t score a point off an Olympic table tennis player
You’d lose. You’d get your ass completely kicked.
Everywhere they go, the world’s best table tennis players meet strangers who believe they can hold their own against them. They tell them that they play “Ping-Pong,” too. They wonder aloud what the score would be, or even who would win. They suggest that they should play sometime.
This, alas, is the table tennis players’ cross to bear.
“You’ll meet someone, and their first reaction is, “I bet I can beat you, let’s play,’” Zhang said, laughing. “I don’t think you’d really say that to anyone in another sport. If you saw Michael Phelps, I don’t think you’d say, ‘I bet I can beat you in a race.’”
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Zhang, who graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, with a degree in psychology, said she was often challenged by “frat guys” at school who thought they could keep up. Every now and then she would oblige them in a rec room on campus.
“I’d hustle them a little, give them a little,” she said, “and then destroy their egos.”
How things used to be vs. how they are now, which is different on Sleeping with Celebrities
Laura Merli is an acclaimed comedian and TikTok celebrity. Sarah Hester Ross is a comedic musician who has appeared on America’s Got Talent, because she’s from America and has talent. Like so many of us, they are older now than they have ever been but they do remember how things used to be before. Back when they were younger. Travel with them to dreamland on a boat made of memories of clunky home computers, affordable movie tickets, and perfect sugar cookies.