Think Thursday: The Neuroscience of Deep Breathing and Emotional Resilience

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Hey, welcome to think Thursday. From the alcohol minimalist podcast, think Thursday is all about your beautiful, brilliant human brain. We're talking neuroscience. We're talking behavior change. We are talking about your mindset. Are you ready to get started? Let's go.

Hello and welcome to think Thursday from alcohol minimalist. These episodes are all about brain health. They are about neuroscience, and they are about your mindset. And today's episode, it's dropping on Thursday, October 31 so Happy Halloween. But more importantly, I wanted to talk about really remaining calm and helping us be less stressed today. Because let's face it, if you live here in the United States right now, there is a lot going on and with the upcoming election next week and all the uncertainty that surrounds it, many of us are feeling kind of an extra edge of stress and potentially some anxiety and worry about what's next.

And so I wanted to offer something simple and accessible to help manage that tension, a practice that's literally proven to reduce stress, build emotional resilience and support overall brain health. And so, you know, emotional resilience and brain health, these are things we talk about all the time around here, because they are ultimately what helps us create the habits that we want to have in our lives and to stop or break those unbreakable habits that are no longer serving us, like for many of you, your your drinking habits, right? That's why you're here.

I really have a very deep interest in neuroscience and in understanding how my brain works, and it's one of the reasons that I feel like that's kind of what helped me create this peaceful relationship with alcohol that I have, was really diving into that and so understanding how important our how important our beautiful, brilliant brains are, how much agency we have in becoming more emotionally resilient that is so important to me. And so that's what really again, a part of why think Thursdays are so important to me. And today we're going to talk about a practice that works to reduce stress, build that emotional resilience, and, again, support brain health, and I'm actually talking about deep breathing now, research shows that just a few minutes of focused breathing each day can shift our brain into a calmer, more resilient state, and it helps us to respond to Stress in ways that truly serve us.

So in today's episode, we're going to dig into the neuroscience behind deep breathing, and I'm going to share a simple technique that you can use anytime you're feeling tense or overwhelmed, which may happen, especially in the upcoming week. And so let's take a collective deep breath. You Beth and dive in. All right, so let's start by breaking down how deep breathing actually helps us when we're feeling that heightened sense of anxiety. You probably are familiar or you've heard about the amygdala and the stress response starts in the amygdala, which is the part of our brain that reacts to potential threats. When it kicks in, the amygdala releases cortisol, a hormone that, in short bursts, helps us respond to that immediate stress, but over time, increased levels of cortisol can leave us feeling drained and edgy, especially when we have a continual stress response, right? And a 2017 study actually published in frontiers in psychology shows that deep breathing actually reduces cortisol levels, it's helping us calm that brain, the brain's alarm system, and it activates our prefrontal cortex, which, of course, we know is the part of the brain that is responsible for all of our logical thinking, our reasoning, and it's what helps us control our impulses.

So by taking those deep breaths, we are calming down that lower brain and actually helping us activate that higher brain. We are taking that literal step back. We are taking a breather, and we are staying calm even when external stress is high. And over time, this practice actually rewires the brain. Okay? It's that neuroplasticity making it even easier to stay steady when life feels like it is in, you know, overdrive, right? So it's a practice that not only helps you in the moment, but over time, with practice, with repetition, you will actually be rewiring your brain, and that is incredibly important right now. The next part of deep breathing is that it's really one of the best ways to handle any kind of uncertainty. Well, handling any kind of uncertainty is the way that we do it, is by building up emotional resilience. Right when we become more emotionally resilient, we can handle life's ebbs and flows, and it's our ability to stay balanced when things get challenging and deep breathing is one of the simplest and most effective ways to strengthen resilience because it activates our parasympathetic nervous system, also known as rest and digest.

This system calms our body and mind by slowing our heart rate and lowering our blood pressure, it essentially is bringing us out of again that high alert and stress phase and back into balance. In 2018 researchers, publishing in the frontiers in human neuroscience, found that regular slow breathing exercises significantly increased heart rate variability. Heart rate variability is a measure of how well the body can handle stress. A higher HRV is linked with better resilience and the ability to bounce back more easily. Now you know, who doesn't need a little more extra bounce back, especially right now, right for any of us wanting to create a peaceful relationship with alcohol, a peaceful relationship with ourselves, or just navigating stress better in general, deep breathing is actually a really powerful way to create and and reinforce that, that the emotional resilience from a neuroscientific and parasympathetic level, all right, the parasympathetic nervous system is incredibly important when you are talking about regulating that, that you know emotional response, right?

And so deep breathing, again, helps us access our prefrontal cortex. Let's talk about dopamine for a minute. All right, you've heard me talk about dopamine in the past. It's that feel good. Chemical in the brain and dopamine is released every time that we do something that feels rewarding or satisfying, which is why it plays such a big role in habit formation, right? It's why we definitely, if we are somebody that has developed a habit of drinking to try to cope with stress and anxiety, it's because we have created a dopamine loop, and dopamine and alcohol does. How does release dopamine in the brain as well during stressful times? We might, you know, feel pushed towards habits that give us that quick dopamine boost, like drinking, like checking the news, like scrolling social media, like maybe even a healthier routine, like exercise, like those. Those are great. Those are better coping mechanisms, right? Or taking, for me, taking a warm bath. But deep breathing gives us a more sustainable way to create that sense of satisfaction. Yes, deep breathing actually can increase dopamine levels. A 2019 study in the Journal of neurotransmission showed that deep breathing exercises can increase dopamine levels, and it creates a natural and positive feedback loop in the brain. So when we use deep breathing regularly, we can actually train the brain to experience calm as a reward

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over time, with practice, with repetition, right? None of this happens on the first time. Well, actually, like I said, even in that moment, for our parasympathetic nervous systems, deep breathing is gonna, you know, it's something that you're going to get a benefit from right away, but over time and with practice and with repetition, you are actually training your brain, rewiring those neural pathways...