Health Podcast with Connie Sellecca: Chess and Longevity; Touch Matters; Microburst Workouts

In this episode we feature:

An interview with Psychologist and author Dr. Michael Banissy.

Play chess for a longer life.

Eat more fruit to save your heart.

Don’t share your pills!

And more ways you can improve your health today! 

For more information, and to sign up for our private coaching, visit tesh.com

Our Hosts:
John Tesh: Instagram: @johntesh_ifyl facebook.com/JohnTesh
Gib Gerard: Instagram: @GibGerard facebook.com/GibGerard X: @GibGerard

Transcript

Unknown: 0:08

Hello and welcome to another episode of the podcast. I'm Gib Gerard. Today we have another special intelligence for your health with Connie Celica. Edition of the show featuring an interview with none other than psychologist and author, Dr Michael Vanessa, so we're really excited to bring this to you. So without further ado, here is intelligence your health with Connie selika, all we need to lower our risk of death from heart attack and stroke is to eat one piece of whole fruit a day. That's according to the British Medical Journal. It says 10s of 1000s of deaths could be prevented every year if we all ate one piece of fruit a day. The magic is in the fiber and nutrients that fruits provide. There's a scientific reason why we have a hard time falling asleep in hot weather. Dr Michael Decker from the American Board of Sleep Medicine says it's because the difference between your body temperature and the temperature of the room is too small. The optimal difference is about 30 degrees. So since normal body temperature is roughly 98 degrees Fahrenheit, the ideal room temperature for sleep is about 68 degrees. Dr Decker says that helps our core temperature dip, which ignites our sleep hormones. But if you can't cool your bedroom down enough at night, get ahead of sunshine in the middle of the day, it will boost your body's nighttime production of sleep inducing hormones. A study found that people who got 15 minutes of strong sunlight a day, anytime between 11am and 1pm slept 35% more soundly on hot nights. That's because exposure to the most potent UV rays doubled the brain's production of the sleep inducing hormone melatonin in the hours leading up to bed. So get 15 minutes of sunlight between 11am and 1pm every day, and if you can set your bedroom thermostat to 68 degrees at night Coming up, we'll talk to psychologist and touch expert, Dr Michael banasi. He'll explain why touches, including everything from hugs to handshakes, form the social glue that helps us stay healthy from the day we're born. But first, would you believe that men are worse than toddlers when it comes to eating fruits and vegetables? It's true. Preschool age children consume an average of 12 different types of fruit and vegetables each week, but the average man only eats half that amount. In fact, the average man only eats a measly 1.2 portions of fruit and vegetables a day. Maybe that's why 48% of the women questioned admitted using stealth health tactics to trick their partners into eating more produce. The most popular tactics involved covering vegetables with cheese or cream sauce, hiding them in soup, blending them into smoothies or simply lying about the ingredients in meals. It's a well known fact, people who are physically fit live longer, so it's no surprise that elite athletes like Olympians are more likely to live to a ripe old age than the average person. But it turns out that people who excel in mental sports like chess live longer too. That's according to a recent study at Australia's University of Melbourne. The researchers examined the survival rates of more than 16,000 Olympic medalists and international chess grand masters over a 60 year period. The result both the physical and mental athletes lived about eight years longer, on average, than the general population. Researcher Philip M Clark believes chess players live as long as Olympic athletes, partly because of the mental benefits of strategic thinking, plus, like world class athletes, a celebrated Grand Master gets a huge boost in social status, which has been shown to increase lifespan too. So would you like to live as long as an Olympic athlete? Eat right, get regular exercise and work toward becoming an expert in a mind sport like chess, poker or even competitive video gaming, and you will be good for an extra eight years of life. Okay, listen to this, don't loan your prescription pills to family and friends. 36% of North Americans do, but you could be harming more than helping. One out of every four people who borrows pills has an adverse reaction and ends up needing to see a doctor anyway. The most commonly shared drugs are antibiotics, prescription pain pills and antidepressants. Today, our guest is Dr Michael banasi. He's a professor of Psychological Science at the University of Bristol in the UK, and he's also the author of a new book called Touch matters, which explores the science behind one of our most basic senses. And touch, Dr Battersea says it impacts our lives in ways we often overlook. Yeah. I mean, I think touch really is one of our most underappreciated senses, and some of that is because of the vast array of impacts it can have. You know, from building the bonds we've others that are vital to our social lives, through to impacting on our health and well being, and even down to our workplace performance, our team performance. Touch cuts across all walks of life and has this very huge role that often we might just overlook day to day, because, you know, we just, we seem to touch so naturally, but we we rarely stop and actually think about just how important it can be to help us connect with the world around us, and speaking of connecting and bonding with others, your book talks about how we all need touch, literally from the day we're born. Can you tell us more about that? So from birth, touch is essential to our development and our well being. And studies on newborn babies and their parents have shown that engaging in care giving forms of touch can lead to things like less crying and shorter hospital stays in the infants, they can also do things like lower the levels of anxiety and things like depression sometimes in the parents and even adults benefit from engaging in touch with others. You know, these kind of simple, supportive, tactile behaviors, like a hug from a partner. They can do things like reduce stress and anxiety, they can lower blood pressure, they can boost our immune system. And all of this comes back to the fact that touch acts a bit like a social glue. So when we're touched in a caring way, we release hormones which are connected to social connection, social well being, often called the love hormones, hormones like oxytocin, these are hormones that can bond us to one another, and they can also calm us, and this is why touch is such an important part of our social lives. Today, we're talking to psychologist and touch expert, Dr Michael banasi. He was just saying that touch plays an essential role in keeping us healthy, partly by boosting our immune system. And I asked him to share some of the science behind how something as basic as a hug or holding hands might do that. There's multiple ways in which touch can be helpful. So one way is you can see release of hormones like oxytocin, and you can also see modulation of our parasympathetic nervous system. So our parasympathetic nervous system is the, effectively, our nervous system that brings our body back to baseline, following things like stressful states. So it's kind of trying to bring us to a state of relaxation and normal and so touch has, you know, a number of routes to do that. One is through things like caregiving touch, so gentle caresses on our body, but even something like a kind of moderate pressure massage can change our parasympathetic nervous system. So these are some of the ways touch can play a role. But there's also other ways. I mean, there's also just the more emotional meaning of touch. So, you know, just having somebody hold our hand, for instance, that might be reassuring, that might provide some form of comfort. It might give us the idea that someone in the world cares about us and wants to be there to support us, and this idea of touch acting like a socially supportive gesture has also been shown to benefit our health and well being, particularly in relation to things like the immune system function to turn your mood around. Experts say you should not only hang out with a friend who always seems happy go exercise with them too. So go for a hike or take a yoga class and put your mat next to theirs. Because when we can smell the sweat of positive people, their chemicals influence us and activate positive feel good, brain chemicals in us. In fact, in a study at Utrecht University in the Netherlands, people exposed to the sweat of happy people smiled more themselves, and those who were exposed to the sweat of negative people frowned more. Today's medical term eyelid myocymia, it's the fancy name for eye twitching, which is something we've all experienced at some point, and while it's annoying, ophthalmologist, Dr Neil Miller says eye twitching is almost always harmless. In fact, even if the twitching becomes chronic, it's rarely bad for our health. Dr Miller says the twitching is caused by the misfiring of a nerve, usually due to stress, fatigue, eye strain, or having too much caffeine. That's why the condition almost always goes away on its own within a few minutes to a couple of weeks. However, there are some common sense tricks to help a sudden eye twitch go away sooner. For example, if your eye twitching starts after several nights of tossing and turning, try getting back on a normal sleep schedule. Also try replacing your energy drinks and sodas with water to help cut down on caffeine, because caffeine and alcohol stimulate our nervous system in a way that can magnify eye twitching and find ways to reduce stress any way you can. By the way, as we get older, you. It is common to experience twitching in both eyes simultaneously, and for that, doctors may prescribe drugs, including an injection similar to Botox to help relax facial muscles. And that's today's medical term, eyelid My chemia coming up. We'll hear more from psychologist Dr Michael banasi, author of touch matters, and he'll answer this question exactly, how long should we hold a hug to experience health benefits? But first, if you're getting anything waxed from your lips to your legs, how can you make it hurt less? Schedule an appointment in the morning. Research at the National Institute of Mental Health found people are significantly less sensitive to pain in the morning than in the afternoon. That's because our cortisol levels are higher. Not only will you feel less pain, but you'll cut down on any stinging, redness and swelling. Same goes for guys getting their chest or back waxed. Do it in the morning, there's one thing you should never do after getting a new tattoo, go swimming. It could make you seriously ill. That's because a fresh tattoo is an open wound made from hundreds of tiny punctures, which creates hundreds of points of entry for infection, causing bacteria. Take the case of a 31 year old man who went swimming in the Gulf of Mexico five days after getting a tattoo, he developed serious infections in his skin and his blood, and despite being hospitalized and treated with high powered antibiotics, he died. Dr Michelle s Green is a dermatologist at Lenox Hill Hospital, and here's what she says about staying safe after getting a tattoo, first, to reduce your infection risk, keep your tattoo bandaged for at least 24 hours after that, wash your tattoo several times a day, gently pat it dry and cover it with a thin layer of antibiotic ointment for five days. Finally, avoid swimming or soaking in water of any kind for at least two weeks after getting a tattoo, that means no bathtub, hot tub, pool, river, pond or ocean, and stay out of the water for three weeks if the tattoo is on your foot or hand, because they take longer to heal. Okay, listen to this. How many Americans have optimum cardiovascular health? Only a measly 7% that's according to the American College of Cardiology. You already know what will make it better. But let's review. Get 30 minutes of moderate exercise most days of the week, eat plenty of fruits and vegetables. Get seven hours of sleep a night. Don't smoke and get plenty of omega three fatty acids from fish and nuts. Also de stress. Hang with friends. Volunteer your time and don't have more than one alcoholic drink a day. Back with more health intelligence from psychology professor Dr Michael banasi. His latest book is touch matters. In it, he says that if you're not getting enough physical contact in your life, you run the risk of becoming touch hungry or touch deprived. So I asked Dr banasi what people should do if they're not getting enough touch in their lives. Yeah, well, I mean, I think touch hunger is a really, I mean, it's a really serious thing for us to think about, because we did a study in early 2020 of around 40,000 people worldwide, and we found that, you know, the vast majority of people were saying they weren't getting enough touch in their lives. And other researchers have shown that when we feel touch hungry and we don't get touch in our lives like that, this can lead to things like greater loneliness. It has mental health implications, and, you know, can also impact to a degree, physical health, given the benefits the touch normally can bring there. So what can we do? Well, it's really thinking about touch substitutes, I suppose, if you haven't got someone around to give you a hug, for instance, some of the work on hugging and stress has shown that just giving yourself a self soothing touch like a self hug, can actually confer similar benefits. So people who hug themselves can, you know, sometimes reduce their stress responses in a stressful situation. But there's other things as well. I mean, something like taking up gardening. You know, gardening involves physical touch for activities like planting, weeding and pruning, and you know, if you if you join a community garden, you know, then you're also going to build potential social connections that could be useful. People mind it to stroke a pet. So even these days, you can now get these robotic pets that actually act almost like touch substitutes. And again, the data is showing engaging with those robotic pets, stroking them can confer similar benefits as when people physically touch pets themselves back with more health intelligence from psychologist and touch expert, Dr Michael banasi, and have you ever wondered if there's such a thing as a perfect hug? Well, Dr banasi admits there's no one size fits all answer that applies to everyone. I. But scientists have come up with some clues, including the ideal duration of a hug. There's ongoing research to try to look at what ingredients make a great hug. And there's so many different varieties in this. So, you know, some people go for the criss cross hugs. That's where kind of arms cross. Some people go for the bear hug, but from the back hug. I mean, I don't necessarily think that any one of those hug styles is necessarily the perfect way, but the thing that a lot of people focus on are things like the duration of hugging. And there are studies out there now that have looked at what happens if you give someone like a short one second hug, or if you give them a five second hug or a 10 second hug, where are the preferences? And where do you start to see benefits on things like people feeling calmer and stuff like this, and you start to see some of that coming in from about five seconds upwards. The studies tend to stop at 10 seconds. So we don't quite know what the too long hug is yet, but you know, compared to a very brief hug, like a one second hug, you know, something more like a five second hug is probably going to give you a nicer experience, so that might confer some more benefits from day to day. Is not just men, whose hair gets thinner with age. By age 52 out of three women have thinning hair too. So what can you do about it? Get more omega three fatty acids in your diet. Experts say getting three servings a week of shrimp, tuna, salmon or mackerel can increase your hair strength and thickness by 38% that's because seafood contains essential Omega threes and selenium and copper, which speed the repair and replacement of hair follicles and boost the body's natural production of keratin, the protein in the hair shaft, so hair is thicker more intelligence for your health. From psychologist Dr Michael banasi, if you'd like to know more about him or his latest book, touch matters, check out banasi.com that's spelled b, a, n, i, s, s, y, and there's some research showing that physical touch in the workplace can actually make us more effective and productive. So I asked Dr banasi To explain the connection, yeah. So touch cuts across all walks of life, so even something as simple as a handshake or a fist bump, these types of activities have been shown to build trust and, in some cases, greater team cohesion. So you know, one study on professional basketball teams found that teams who showed more touches, like, I don't know, kind of team huddle hands, where you put your hands in fist bumping and high fiving, these things at the start of a sporting season, the teams that showed more of those went on to win more games as the season unfolded. And people seem to think this is because, you know, when we have these kind of short, kind of brief, tactile interactions that are gestures of connection, and, you know, trust and teamwork, that actually some of these things might then play out into other behaviors like performance in the workplace. Are you getting surgery soon, but worried about having a big scar afterward, like Frankenstein's monster? The Mayo Clinic says the key to reducing scarring is to protect your wound from the sun, because even minimal exposure to sunlight can cause darker pigmentation within a scar, which is what turns a barely visible one into something out of a horror movie. So for the first few days after surgery, experts say, clean the wound carefully and coat it with petroleum jelly, which aids healing. Then cover the area with clothing. And even if you're covered up, use sunscreen too, that will help protect the scar from the sun's UV rays, which can penetrate through clothing. And you'll need to protect the area for at least six months for best results. Here's an email I received at Connie at intelligence for your health.com It comes from Stephanie Dykstra, who writes, why do I sneeze on really sunny days? Stephanie, you have what's called a photic sneeze reflex, also known as sun sneezing. About a third of the population will sneeze occasionally when they come out of a dark environment into daylight or if they squint into sun. Most experts think Sun sneezing occurs when there are crossed wires in the brain, so to speak, a sneeze is usually triggered by an irritation in the nose, which is sensed by the trigeminal nerve, the main nerve in the face, and this nerve is in close proximity to the optic nerve, which will sense a sudden flood of light entering your eyes, and as the optic nerve sends a signal to constrict your pupils, the trigeminal nerve may be accidentally triggered that makes the brain mistake the sudden light for an irritant in the nose, which triggers a sneeze. It's also linked to a gene passed down from parents to kids, and that's why the photic sneeze reflex is being studied more now, because epileptic seizures and migraines can also be triggered by light, and there may be a genetic link there to help scientists better understand the connection. Okay, listen to this if you've been using the same bottle of sunscreen since last summer. More you need to buy a new one. That's because, over time, sunscreen can destabilize and lose its power, plus the active ingredients may become less evenly distributed, so you may not get even coverage when you slather it on. So go buy a new bottle. Do you think you could sprint all out for 20 seconds? That may be the key to losing more weight and getting into shape faster than any other exercise plan. It's called a micro burst workout. Researchers at McMaster University came up with it, and here's how to do it. Go all out for 20 seconds, rest for two minutes, then repeat that cycle two more times, add it up and your total cardio time is just one minute. That might sound pointless, but when a group of people did a micro burst workout every day for three months, they burned 48% more calories than people who did less intense workouts for a full hour a day. The micro burst group also had significantly better heart health and a lower risk for diabetes. The reason because intense exercise triggers our cells to burn fat more efficiently, plus, the more intensely we exercise, the more muscle we build, which is proven to help us burn up to 200 extra calories per day. And you can apply this micro burst science to almost any form of cardio, from running to biking to jumping rope, that magic recipe again, go all out for 20 seconds. Rest for two minutes, then repeat that cycle twice. More intelligence for your health. From Dr Michael banasi, a professor of Psychological Science at the University of Bristol in the UK. And have you noticed that a growing number of devices like your smartphone now come with touch screens that seem to pulse and vibrate depending on how you use them. Well, those touch screens are using something known as haptic technology, and according to Dr banasi, there's a ton of new research that suggests this technology can be used to make us happier and healthier, the idea of haptic technology, and the idea of almost kind of how we can introduce touch in our lives through technology, I think, is the big new frontier of both wellness and of technology more broadly. The reason for this is if you think about someone like virtual reality, being able to being a virtual world and feel like you're present, one of the most important things in that process is not just what you see and you hear, but it's what you feel, our sensations of feeling, whether that's, I don't know, feeling a keyboard under your fingertips, or whether that's if you're holding a bat and You're about to swing the bat, you know that it's so critical to how we perceive the world that people have really got to find ways to make that feel right when you're in a virtual world. And so there's a huge amount of work looking at that now. There's also a huge amount of work looking at this idea of haptic wellness, and that's that's very much about, how can we use touch technology, I don't know, like a watch that vibrates on our wrist. How can we use that to actually bring benefits to people's health and their well being? And one of the ways people do this is by, for instance, using vibrations to vibrate at a frequency or a rate that can induce these feelings of almost like a slow breathing or slow heart rate, which are consistent with having the best anxiety and doing this actually does lead to benefits like that. So haptic wellness, haptic technologies, I think they're huge opportunities for kind of, I suppose, gadgets and but not just gadgets, but also, you know, I suppose general kind of daily activities moving forward. That's it for our show today, our special intelligence for your health with Connie Selig, edition of the podcast, I'm Gib Gerard. Don't forget to rate comment and subscribe on Apple podcast. Spotify, wherever you get your podcast. It helps us out a lot. And also, you can reach out to us on social media. All of our links are listed down in the show notes. We try to respond to every DM, every mention of the show, because ultimately, we do the show for you guys, so thank you so much for listening. You.