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[@hubermanlab] Essentials: Science of Mindsets for Health & Performance | Dr. Alia Crum

· 6 min read
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@hubermanlab - "Essentials: Science of Mindsets for Health & Performance | Dr. Alia Crum"

Link: https://youtu.be/alVWRl_X_AA

Short Summary​

Number One Action Item/Takeaway:

Actively cultivate a "stress-is-enhancing" mindset by acknowledging, welcoming, and utilizing stress to achieve your goals, rather than viewing it solely as a debilitating force to be avoided.

Executive Summary:

Dr. Crum discusses the power of mindsets – core beliefs that shape expectations and physiological responses – focusing on stress, food, and exercise. Adopting a "stress-is-enhancing" mindset can improve health, well-being, and performance by shifting focus from avoiding stress to leveraging it for growth and goal achievement. The key is to acknowledge the stress, welcome it as a signal of something you care about, and then utilize it to accomplish that goal.

Key Quotes​

Here are five direct quotes from the transcript that I found particularly insightful:

  1. "We define mindsets as core beliefs or assumptions that we have about a domain or category of things that orient us to a particular set of expectations, explanations, and goals."

  2. "The total effect of anything is a combined product of what you're doing and what you think about what you're doing."

  3. "People get this wrong sometimes. They think that I'm saying that a stress is enhancing mindset means you should like stress. That's not what we're saying. Right? Having a stresses enhancing mindset doesn't mean the stressor is a good thing. Right? It doesn't mean that getting diagnosis is a good thing or being in abject poverty is a good thing. These are not good things. But the experience of the stress associated with that, the challenge, the adversity, that experience can lead to enhancing outcomes with respect to uh not just our cognition, but our health, our performance, and our well-being."

  4. "The way I think about mindset is that it's mindsets are kind of a portal between conscious and subconscious processes. They operate as a default setting of the mind."

  5. "The first step is to decouple that and to realize that stress is a neutral right yet to be determined effect of experiencing or anticipating adversity in your goal related efforts...What that means is that we only stress about things we care about and we don't stress about things we don't care about."

Detailed Summary​

Here's a detailed summary of the YouTube video transcript, presented in bullet points:

Key Topics:

  • Mindsets: The core beliefs or assumptions we hold about a domain that influence our expectations, explanations, and motivations.
  • Impact of Mindsets: How these assumptions simplify life but also shape our physiology, motivation, and behavior.
  • Examples of Mindsets: Stress, food (healthy eating), exercise, illness, and side effects of treatments.
  • Physiological Effects of Mindsets: How our beliefs about something (e.g., food) can change our body's response to it.
  • Placebo and Nocebo Effects: How positive and negative beliefs, respectively, can impact physiological outcomes.
  • Leveraging Mindsets: How we can consciously reprogram our default settings to lead a more adaptive and fulfilling life.
  • Mindsets About Stress: How viewing stress as enhancing rather than debilitating can improve health, well-being, and performance.

Arguments and Information Discussed:

  • Defining Mindset: Mindsets are core assumptions that orient us to particular expectations, explanations, and goals within a specific domain. For example, viewing stress as either enhancing or debilitating.
  • Mindsets Simplify Reality: They constrain the number of things we have to consider, acting as simplifying systems.
  • Growth Mindset: Discussion of Carol Dweck's work on the belief that intelligence or ability is malleable vs. fixed.
  • Impact on Motivation: The belief that intelligence is malleable motivates harder work.
  • Expanding Mindset Research: The video discusses mindsets related to stress, food, exercise, and illness, not just intelligence.
  • Milkshake Study: A study where participants consumed the same milkshake but were told it was either a high-fat/high-calorie indulgent shake or a low-fat/low-calorie sensible shake. Results showed that when participants believed they were consuming the "indulgent" shake, their ghrelin levels (hunger hormone) dropped more significantly. The body acted as if more food was consumed.
  • Counterintuitive Finding: Thinking you're eating sensibly (healthy) may leave you feeling less satiated.
  • Diet and Mindset: Different dietary approaches (plant-based, omnivore, keto, etc.) often have strong advocates. The video suggests that mindset (belief in the diet) plays a significant role in perceived and potentially actual health benefits, aside from objective dietary factors.
  • Nocebo Effect: When negative beliefs cause negative consequences, such as experiencing side effects of a medication merely because you were told you would.
  • Hotel Worker Study: Housekeepers were getting exercise at work but did not perceive it as such. When informed their work was good exercise, they experienced health benefits (weight loss, blood pressure decrease), even without changing their behavior.
  • Stress as Debilitating vs. Enhancing: The video challenges the oversimplified public health message that stress is always bad. It argues that stress responses can be designed to enhance our ability to manage challenges and adversity.
  • Physiological Toughening: The release of catabolic hormones can activate anabolic hormones, helping us build muscle and neurons.
  • Post-Traumatic Growth: Traumatic stressors can lead to enhanced connection with values, relationships, and a sense of joy for living.
  • Mindset Intervention: A study showed that watching videos that framed stress as enhancing led to fewer physical symptoms (backaches, insomnia) and improved work performance compared to watching videos framing stress as debilitating.
  • Motivation and Mindsets: A debilitating mindset leads to freak out or check out, while an enhancing mindset triggers a motivation to use the stress to achieve the enhancing outcomes.
  • Hormonal response to stress: Some studies show that people who are inspired to adopt more enhancing mindsets to stress have more moderate cortisol responses and higher levels of DHEA in response to stress.
  • Leveraging the stress response: Three-step approach of acknowledging the stress, welcoming it, and utilizing it.
  • Defining Stress: Decoupling the negative consequences from the word 'stress' and defining stress as a neutral yet to be determined effect of experiencing or anticipating adversity in your goal related efforts.
  • Mindsets as a Portal: Mindsets operate as a default setting between conscious and subconscious processes and can influence physiological responses.
  • Role Model Mindsets: Experiences as an athlete and meditation practices were used to explain how mindsets mattered and continue to be part of Aaliyah Crum's way of living.
  • Leveraging Placebo Effects: The video suggests leveraging placebo effects consciously in medicine.