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Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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You're listening to Life Kit from NPR. Hey everybody, it's Marielle. We all get stressed, right? And one thing I've learned through our reporting at Life Kit is that while it's really important to ground yourself in these moments, that's not where the work ends.
Because if you're constantly having these days where your fight or flight response is triggered, there's probably a reason, some underlying cause of your stress. It could be your health or the health of someone you love. It could be a relationship that's falling apart or the fact that you can't pay rent or a fear for your safety.
These are things that never quite go away. So that fight or flight response is always on at a slow hum in the background.
That's Dr. Aditi Narukar. She's an internal medicine physician at Harvard, and she wrote a book called The Five Resets. The Five Resets has been laid out to be a roadmap. A roadmap to recovering from chronic stress. Because stress doesn't just make us feel terrible in the moment. It can also have ongoing effects on our bodies.
It puts us at higher risk for heart disease, high blood pressure, and strokes. And it can also increase inflammation in our bodies and weaken our immune systems. NPR health correspondent Ritu Chatterjee talked to Dr. Narukar. And on today's episode, they're going to walk us through these five resets and how they can help you live a healthier, less stressful life.
The surreal horror film Back Rooms is a smash. The director is a 20-year-old YouTuber and it's based on his popular web series. Why is this online phenomenon taking off at the box office? We get into it on NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour. Listen via the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.
Aditi says a key part of lowering one's stress is finding ways to rest and recover.
Rest and recovery are not just nice to have luxuries.
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Chapter 2: What are the underlying causes of stress?
They are essential for our brains and bodies and particularly for the biological features of our brains and bodies to thrive.
Now, if you're already stressed and overwhelmed, you might be thinking, I have no time for rest and recovery. Or the idea of adding one more thing on my plate, even if it's to ultimately lower stress, makes me feel even more overwhelmed. Well, that's exactly how most of Aditi's former patients felt when they came to see her. Take, for example, a patient she calls Wes.
Wes is a single dad of three. He works two jobs, and his doctors had told him that it's important for him to lose weight because he has high blood pressure, is slowly starting to develop high cholesterol, and... may develop diabetes down the road.
She says Wes knew he had to change his diet, but he just couldn't do it because he was living in survival mode.
He would wake up early in the morning, take care of his children, which was his first priority. He would rush out the door. He would get to his first job. Then, between jobs, he needed to eat.
And so he'd swing by a drive-thru on his way to his second job and grab a burger and fries.
And it was easy, fast, and cheap. Then he would go on to his next job and he would finish that and he would come home exhausted, fatigued. Having done the best he possibly could, he would go to sleep, he would wake up, and he would do it all over again.
Wes is like a lot of people. His circumstances were tough. didn't have the money or the time to join a gym or take a long vacation, although I'm sure he'd have enjoyed that. But Aditi's resets are small adjustments to people's daily lives that have been shown to lower stress levels. So she began helping Wes with her first reset, which is also our first takeaway.
It's called finding your most goal.
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