Vital Sings: The Science of Stress

Premieres: July 27, 2020.

Sanjay Gupta: 00:22

Hard to believe, but 2015 is coming to a close. The holidays are a time for family and friends and also, for a lot of  people, a time for stress. This is Vital Signs. I’m Dr. Sanjay Gupta. You know the feeling. Your heart starts to pound. You might start to sweat. The fight or flight response is kicking in. It’s a safety mechanism for our bodies when we feel threatened or in danger. John Thurman felt that way on September 11, 2001. He survived the terrorist attack on the Pentagon, but the trauma stayed with him. John found a way to manage his post-traumatic stress disorder,  and he’s now helping others do the same.

John Thurman: 01:09

Exhale, fold forward. Inhale, reach your arms and gaze up to the ceiling. Exhale, stand in tadasana. Inhaling, arms up.

Sanjay Gupta: 01:18

This looks like your typical yoga class. Students focusing on their practise, the teacher providing instruction.

John Thurman: 01:27

And then release. Counter-twist to the right.

Sanjay Gupta: 01:30

But this isn’t just any class, and John Thurman isn’t just any instructor. Welcome to Noon Yoga at the Pentagon.

John Thurman: 01:40

Your lips sealed, spreading energy throughout your … It was in my family, a long history of my father, my grandfather, my uncle, and other people being in the Army.

Sanjay Gupta: 01:52

A graduate of West Point, the United States military academy, John served in the Army, first in Germany during the Cold War,  then in Saudi Arabia during the first Gulf War. After nearly a decade in the field, John was stationed at the Pentagon in Washington, DC.

John Thurman: 02:10

You come in, turn on your computer. You go to meetings. You’re coordinating. You’re working on projects. I would never have guessed that something would happen there.

Sanjay Gupta: 02:23

On September 11, 2011, John went to work like any other normal day.

John Thurman: 02:29

The first news that I had that day was that my sister, Julie, had just broken her water. We had actually had communication that morning. Then, New York had happened, and I was just streami ng it. Streaming on the computer was a new thing in 2001, and I was just watching it, because I had some work that I wanted to do, when what, to me, seemed like a bomb went off.

Sanjay Gupta: 03:01

At 9:37 a.m., a hijacked passenger plane struck the western side of the Pentagon as part of a coordinated terrorist attack against the United States. John’s office was located on the second floor, right above where the plane hit the building.

John Thurman: 03:18

I remember everything. I was very fortunate in that I didn’t get hit by any ceiling tiles. First, it felt like a bomb. Then, it felt like an earthquake.  Because we were in this small room, no windows, we were immediately plunged into pitch darkness. I tried to get to so     me of my colleagues that I knew that were in the room. We were, at that point, having to crawl on the floor, because it was now full of smoke. Hot, very hot, air. You took your face off the floor, and you couldn’t breathe. It was singeing the back of your throat. There was a back  door that I was able, eventually, after about 20 minutes, get to. Then, some colleagues were able to take me from there to the health clinic, and then from there to Arlington Hospital.

Sanjay Gupta: 04:15

John was treated for severe smoke inhalation. He spent a week in the hospital, returning to work a few weeks later, though not immediately to the Pentagon, because his offices were destroyed. He was healing physically, but not mentally.

John Thurman: 04:31

Certainly, signs of PTSD very early. Terrible trouble sleeping. The doctors that I was seeing were prescribing drugs to help me sleep or prescribing drugs to help stay calm, and they weren’t working. The first time I was back in the building, I could still smell that kerosene smell, which was unnerving.  It’s interesting how different sensory things play.

Kathleen Hall: 05:04

Our stress is also mitigated by our five senses. That’s why we have the five senses. They are the stoplight. They’re the traffic light of how we take in information at every level.

Sanjay Gupta: 05:15

Kathleen Hall is the founder and CEO of the Stress Institute. After years of working on Wall Street, she left the corporate world to focus on stress.

Sanjay Gupta: 05:24

You mentioned you lived the Wall Street life, and it seems, to me, and I don’t know what you think,  but stress was a badge of honour for some time. If you were more stressed, you were working harder, you were striving more, you were more ambitious. It became equated with success. Is that where stress really started to become more common? How did we get to this place? 

Kathleen Hall: 05:44

I agree with you. We all grew up where my father worked 20 hours a day, and we never could ask him questions or do anything because … I love what you just said. It was a badge of honour. The doctors in our community never saw their families. They were gone all the time.  So we did, we grew up in an ethos of almost a manic stress, and that was success. The father of stress, of course, is Hans Selye, which would be back in 1936. He was the one that first started studying it. When we talk about definitions of stress, his was it’s just our reaction to change, basically. It’s a healthy, good thing. For an example, if you and I didn’t react to change, we wouldn’t be alive right now, because that’s the way our bodies are made. We’ve made stress  into this … It’s really a neutral word, but we’ve made it into this negative word.

Sanjay Gupta: 06:35

For John Thurman, the stress and trauma of the attack stayed with him long after the event. He was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, PTSD. PTSD can occur when the brain’s natural fight or flight response becomes damaged or changed after trauma. Symptoms include flashbacks, nightmares, depression. For John, the weeks and months after 9/11  were a struggle, especially at night.

John Thurman: 07:03

I was thrashing around. I was crawling out of my bed in my sleep, reliving the event. Then, it just plays throughout. You feel like there’s a wet blanket over you, and you feel like things are just really heavy is the way. It’s difficult  in your relationships, personal relationships, relationships with coworkers. Fatigue. Just going into the office and suddenly feeling just incredibly tired.

Sanjay Gupta: 07:44

Out of the 125 people killed inside of the Pentagon that day, 26 of them worked on John’s team. Along with the PTSD, he says, survivor’s guilt weighed heavily on his mind.

John Thurman: 07:56

The physical recovery and the mental recovery, so as you  become more physical resilient, you’re able to maybe mask things a little bit. One of the doctors said, “You West Pointers are very good at putting things in boxes and then putting that box on a shelf.” PTSD can be something of a bit of a time bomb waiting to go off.

Sanjay Gupta: 08:21

John had survived the attack, but his fight was just beginning. A suggestion from a friend would introduce John to an age-old practise  that would change everything for him. It’s just before the holidays, and New York’s Grand Central Station is bustling. You could say that for most people, this is one of the most stressful places in one of the most stressful cities. Or you could choose to view it another way.

Kelly McGonigal: 08:46

Sometimes you might be someplace like this, where it feels like frantic energy, because everyone is trying to get to someplace that they care about. One of the things that I’m really interested in is how do we find a way to actually accept and embrace that energy rather than feeling like when I’m in a place like  this, there’s something wrong, and it should be calm? My definition of stress is it’s what happens when something that you care about is at stake. It’s what happens in your brain and in your body that helps you rise to the challenge when something that you care about is on the line.

Sanjay Gupta: 09:15

Kelly McGonigal is a psychologist and the author of a book called The Upside of Stress. Her work has flipped the script on stress.

Kelly McGonigal: 09:24

Everyone’s heard of the fight or flight response is one way that your body and brain can respond to stress. Actually,  you have this whole repertoire of different stress responses. Fight or flight, that’s sometimes when you feel really threatened, maybe overwhelmed, and you go into a mode of just sort of immediate survival. You can also have a stress response called a challenge response, and that’s the kind of stress response that gives you courage, that makes you willing to take positive risks, that really helps you perform under pressure, and it’s a healthy stress response. It’s good for your cardiovascular system. It’s good for your immune system. You can also have what psychologists call a tend and befriend response,  which is a stress response that makes you want to connect with others, that makes you better able to connect with others. It’s one of the reasons why we know that stress can often strengthen relationships, because stress can drive us to connect and to care. When we do that, that’s also good for our health.

Kyle Dietrich: 10:19

Are you all done with the peppers for the moment?

Lennon Flowers: 10:22

Yeah. Can I move them?

Kyle Dietrich: 10:22

Can I set them somewhere else?

Lennon Flowers: 10:24

Yeah.

Sanjay Gupta: 10:24

Connecting with others is the idea behind an organisation called The Dinner Party.

Kyle Dietrich: 10:29

That’ll be pretty, I promise.

Sanjay Gupta: 10:31

In Washington, DC, Lennon Flowers and Kyle Dietrich are busy in the kitchen. The topic of conversation at these parties is typically taboo, but that’s exactly the point.

Speaker 7: 10:44

I’m wet, but it’s really nice to meet you.

Sanjay Gupta: 10:47

Each of the guests are connected through a shared experience of loss.

Lennon Flowers: 10:53

Kyle, where’s that paprika?

Sanjay Gupta: 10:55

Lennon is one of the co-founders of The Dinner Party. She lost her mom to lung cancer  eight years ago.

Lennon Flowers: 11:01

I think the mark of any Dinner Party is not necessarily did people cry and was that real or did people laugh and was that real, but you should see laughter and you should see tears. It’s a space where people have a level of self-permission to show up with whatever’s surfacing for them.

Sanjay Gupta: 11:19

Kyle lost his mother two years ago to lymphoma. He’s hosting the dinner tonight.

Speaker 8: 11:26

Hello.

Lennon Flowers: 11:27

Hello. How are you?

Sanjay Gupta: 11:29

In total,  Lennon says there are 102 Dinner Party tables around the world and counting.

Kelly McGonigal: 11:35

Dinner Party is an organisation that was born out of the sense of isolation, of being alone in a loss or in a suffering. I think this is such a perfect example of what it means to embrace stress. They’re not saying there’s anything good about the death of their loved ones. That would be a ridiculous statement. What they’re saying is they believe that it’s possible to create something good when they choose to acknowledge the reality of the stress and the suffering and to harness our natural human capacity to let stress or suffering become a catalyst for social connection, to strengthen communities.

Lennon Flowers: 12:12

Yes. Eventually, ties go back to …

Sanjay Gupta: 12:16

Word of this table spread through friends and friends of friends. The group focuses on young adults in their 20s and 30s who are used to getting a standard reaction when the topic of death comes up in conversation.

Lennon Flowers: 12:29

The reaction that I’ve always found was the kind of deer in headlights effect. For me, personally, it had been about three years when we sat down for our first Dinner Party since my mom died, and in all of that time, I’d become really good at avoiding that topic, because I wanted to avoid making someone else uncomfortable with my story.

Kyle Dietrich: 12:48

So there’s a menu, in case you didn’t see it.

Sanjay Gupta: 12:50

This table has been meeting now for a year and a half, and the connections here are obvious. Each guest at the table  shares a bit of their stories.

Ariana Sarar: 13:02

My dad died on December 18 of last year.

Kyle Dietrich: 13:07

That’s my birthday.

Ariana Sarar: 13:10

Yeah. Short of a year. He had a heart attack suddenly and didn’t expect it.

Drew Bennett: 13:18

Drew, and my father died of a stroke, a sudden stroke, a little over two years ago.

Sanjay Gupta: 13:26

Nearly everyone around the table lost a parent as a young adult.  Alex lost his mom to a long battle with breast cancer a year and a half ago. Rachel’s father passed away from early onset Alzheimer’s. Jessa lost her dad in a motorcycle accident on the way to work one day. Sarah lost her sister to a heroin overdose.

Sarah M.: 13:48

It’s kind of interesting seeing where my story fits in at this table, because she was kind of a strange mix. She’d been an addict since she was 12, so I  had like a slow loss, where it’s hard to have hope when someone’s so deep in that kind of addiction. We were really close, which is great. I’m really happy for that.

Jessa Boehner: 14:13

So, I went to college. I knew Sarah in college, so I found out from her about The Dinner Party, which is great. Actually, the first time I came was the one-month anniversary of my dad passing away, and I’ve been here every time. It’s weird. Also, we had the last one on his birthday, so it  seems to fall on some of these dates. It’s been great to have this space where everyone understands that grief is not a linear process, and whatever you need to say, just feel totally comfortable, if you need to just cry or joke about it. So it’s been kind of a great experience.

Katherine C.: 14:48

I think it’s good to be able to say, “Here’s how I want to be. I want people to interact with me right now in this hard moment.” Now I have friends just say, “Is this a moment where you want me to be there all the time, or you want me to just check in on the phone?”  People are very … I feel like I’ve taught-

Drew Bennett: 15:05

You’ve trained them well.

Katherine C.: 15:06

I have trained people well.

Lennon Flowers: 15:08

Oh, such a good shot.

Sanjay Gupta: 15:10

Of course, this group wishes they had come together under different circumstances, but they can’t change the past. Instead, they celebrate the lives of those they lost together. That’s what keeps them coming back every month.

Speaker 14: 15:24

I feel like when you’re in a space with other people who haven’t experienced loss, then if it ever  comes up, that becomes the defining thing. It’s nice to be in a place where it can come up and then go away and then come back up and just say whatever you need to say.

John Thurman: 15:42

Sun Salutation A, inhale arms up. Exhale, fold forward.

Sanjay Gupta: 15:48

Letting go was what John Thurman was trying to do. He lost 26 of his colleagues at the Pentagon on September 11, 2001. A survivor of the attack, he was suffering from PTSD.  Next, what John found to help him and what we can all do to manage stress in our own lives. In ways you might not even realise, stress is impacting your body and your health. Stress can cause headaches, muscle tension, anxiety, chest pain, fatigue. It can impact your mood and your behaviour, like overeating or excess alcohol consumption. High levels of stress for prolonged periods of time is also linked to heart disease, diabetes, obesity,  and high blood pressure. Look, we can’t avoid stress, but we can manage it. Kathleen Hall has some healthy practises we can all incorporate into our daily lives.

Kathleen Hall: 16:41

If you learn one thing in life, everything you have is right where you are. Find things that bring you home to yourself. For an example, this is a picture of us, the four of us, on our stairs. The minute, no matter what I’m doing, if I’m thinking about money or a contract that didn’t come in, I can go to that and smile and remember what’s important. Then,  a lot of people, whether you’re working at home, working at work, this is an organic lavender eye mask, and a lot of my clients, who are CEOs and run companies, have these in their top drawer in a Ziploc bag. What they’ll do is they’ll close the door for five minutes, put this over their eyes, which keeps it dark for a moment. You smell the organic lavender. We have great studies that show it lowers your blood pressure, lowers your heart rate, immediately calms the body and mind and soul.

Kathleen Hall: 17:27

Get your favourite picture. This happens to be our farm up in the mountains.  You do this for your mouse. Do anything. It can be your golden retriever. If you’re a birder, it can be your favourite bird. This is big. Please start your family out with mindfulness and talking about stress. This says family, and you can put your family picture. Have your children choose their favourite picture, not you. This is called a concern box, and you keep this in your family room. This has got paper in it right here, and this has got a pencil. During the busy week, and everybody’s busy, teach your children and yourself that  you write down what you’re worried about. Something simple like buy inexpensive flowers and keep them in your desk, keep them at your house. When people see flowers at our house, they go, “Oh my gosh, what a luxury.” It’s not a luxury. We have Harvard studies that show that it increases happiness by as much as 40%. It helps with depression.

Sanjay Gupta: 18:21

For John Thurman, who survived the attack on the Pentagon on 9/11 and was struggling with post-traumatic stress disorder, it would be yoga that would change everything for him.

John Thurman: 18:32

I had doubts, but I was willing to try anything. Taking drugs to sleep, taking drugs to just everything. Like I said, it felt very wet blanket. I was willing to try anything. Pretty fast, within a few weeks, was feeling some of the benefits, as I said.

Sanjay Gupta: 18:57

Yoga is scientifically proven to help reduce stress. For John, the biggest  benefit was a reduction in what he calls the mind chatter he was experiencing with PTSD. For the first time in a long time, he felt relaxed.

John Thurman: 19:12

I think it’s successful in the PTSD because it helps you achieve mental sharpness and focus. That combined with the ability to work with your breathing exercises, pranayama, and then eventually you’re heading towards meditation.  It’s that meditation and that mental stillness that was able to really help find those benefits that I was looking for.

John Thurman: 19:41

All right, let’s come to a nice, easy seated position. Sitting up tall, spines long, shoulders-

Sanjay Gupta: 19:47

John benefited from yoga so much, he took a teacher training class to deepen his understanding.

John Thurman: 19:53

Inhale and exhaling.

Sanjay Gupta: 19:58

Eventually, John decided to pursue yoga full-time.  In 2013, he left the Army.

John Thurman: 20:05

For me, as a teacher, what is it that you want to do with your yoga? For me, it was twofold. One was to bring yoga to men in general, because predominantly, the practitioners in yoga are women here in the US. I think a lot of guys are figuring out that, as I mentioned before, this is hard. It’s a good workout. You get your cardiovascular on. You’re  building strength, but you’re building flexibility and length in your muscles. The other one was to specifically bring it to service members and to veterans.

Sanjay Gupta: 20:41

Now, he teaches a weekly yoga class at the Pentagon, the very place that started this entire journey for him.

John Thurman: 20:48

I have anywhere from 40 to 50 people that come every Thursday at noon, which I think is a big statement. When you look at someone who’s working at the Pentagon, to give an  hour of their time plus they have to have 15 minutes, 20 minutes before to come, get changed, roll out their mat, get ready, then 15, 20 minutes to clean up and make it back, so they’re giving you at least an hour and a half of their time, probably an hour 45 of their time of the day. I think that’s a big statement in and of itself.

John Thurman: 21:22

Inhale, rise up.

Sanjay Gupta: 21:25

John says his class is a mix of active and retired military as well as civilians. The VA estimates  as many as 20% of veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan are suffering from PTSD.

John Thurman: 21:38

Downward-facing dog.

Sanjay Gupta: 21:42

In a move to cut down on prescription pain medications, the US Veterans’ Health Administration has started incorporation yoga into alternative therapy programmes to treat PTSD. It worked for John.

John Thurman: 21:55

I’m excited about it. I think one of the things out of 9/11  and the fact that I have been able to become resilient and recover and live my life is that I have a responsibility to do that for people that lost their lives on that day. You have a responsibility to live and be well.

Sanjay Gupta: 22:21

It’s a responsibility, John reminds us, we all share in common. As a new year kicks off, you should try making Kelly McGonigal’s Mindset Reset on Stress one of your resolutions.  Stress is a sign of a meaningful life, so let’s start living it that way. For Vital Signs, I’m Dr. Sanjay Gupta wishing you a happy and healthy 2016.

END