Table of Contents

• Chronic stress is stealing your money

• Quick recap of how stress messes everything up

• Keep reading, bro

• How chronic stress changes your brain

• How to heal after years of chronic stress damage

• Spread the love, bro

• 4 life-changing products for stress relief

  • Vielight

  • Magnesium L-Threonate

  • Brain Supplement

  • Reading recommendation: Buddha’s Brain

Chronic stress is stealing your money

Last week we talked about how minor stressors can add up to chronic stress that causes emotional reactivity and cognitive decline.

When we are reactive and dumber, we fail to see business opportunities and we mishandle social interactions that could blossom into enriching relationships.

How does stress do that to us? Scientists have known for decades that stress lowers our cognitive capacity. That’s related to a concept called “cognitive resources.”

You can think of it like running a business. You have your capital, and your goal is to use your capital to make your business profitable.

If you have to spend 90% of your budget on putting out fires, you won’t have much leftover for marketing, hiring employees, etc. Your cognitive resources work the same way. The more fires your brain needs to put out, the less resources you have to make money and build the life of your dreams.

So what do we do about it? Well, it turns out these changes are related to an ancient biological system called the Endocannabinoid System (ECS). In humans, the ECS helps us:

• sleep

• learn

• forget

• heal

• recover from stress

• many more things too

Before we go any farther, we need to understand that chronic stress messes up our ECS.

If chronic stress messes up our ECS, then to maximize our health, wealth and relationships, we have to heal our ECS.

By the end of this newsletter, you will have the tools you need to put an end to chronic stress and heal your ECS.

Last week, we discussed how chronic stress can cause disease. One of the little-known ways that modern life can add up to chronic stress is through sleep debt, which is caused by the cumulative effect of losing an hour of sleep here and there.

P.S. All this stuff was meant to be part of last week’s email, but we got a little carried away and the email got cut off for being too long. - Editor

Quick recap of how stress messes everything up

To understand why chronic stress messes up our earning potential so much, we have to know about a field of science called “psychoneuroimmunoendocrinology” - which is a long way of saying that your mood, your neurotransmitter levels, your immune function, and your hormonal system all impact one another.

The ECS “represents a microcosm of psychoneuroimmunology or mind-body medicine.” Basically, your ECS is a bridge through which your mood can impact your immune system, or your hormonal levels can impact your mood.

Here’s a quick breakdown of what we need to know about the ECS:

• The ECS is a system of fat-based signals that control how your brain and body works.

• It includes receptors (think locks), fat-based endocannabinoids (think keys), and enzymes that produce and breakdown these endocannabinoids (eCBs).

• When eCBs bind to receptors on neurons, they can reduce the release of neurotransmitters.

The ECS is involved in all sorts of bodily functions and states:

• Sleep 

• Inflammation

• Your immune system

• The pain you feel in your body

• The good feeling you get from exercise

• How stressed out you get in life

Keep reading, bro

How chronic stress changes your brain

Chronic stress can give you brain fog through neuro-inflammation, and it can change your brain and ECS to make you more emotionally reactive and cloud your thinking. Here’s how you fix it.

Bear with us here. We need to go over a little neuroscience to unlock the secrets to healing chronic stress. - Editor

Our conscious experience is related to our brain state. But one tiny area of our brain has an outsized impact on our daily experience: the amygdala.

The amygdala is a part of your brain that is often thought of as your “fear center.”

The reason why this tiny area of your brain is so important is that ALL sensory information travels through this area of your brain - specifically a part of the amygdala called the basal lateral amygdala (BLA) - where it is processed before being sent out to the emotional processing area of your brain.

What does that mean? How is sensory information “processed” in your BLA?

Let’s imagine a club with a long line of guests waiting outside and a bouncer guarding the door. The club represents your conscious experience. The bouncer is your BLA, and all the things that you see, hear, and feel are the guests (the “sensory information”).

The BLA bouncer either roughs up the guests when they enter or he compliments them. As a result, the guests come in grumpy or happy.

If they are all grumpy, your conscious experience isn’t fun: you have brain fog, or anxiety, or you can’t focus and relax. If the guests are happy, your conscious experience is the opposite. You feel relaxed, energetic, clear-headed, on-the-ball.

In other words, the information stays the same, but how the information is processed in the BLA affects how you feel.

What does all this have to do with the ECS?

Well, let’s imagine that if the bouncer is stoned, then he compliments all the guests as they enter the club. It turns out that in a healthy individual, your BLA has an incredible density of eCB receptors (specifically a type of eCB receptor called the CB1 receptor).

Researchers have found that “eCB signaling in BLA constrains activation of the stress response and anxiety.” That means when your BLA has lots of CB1 receptors, sensory information is down-regulated in a way that makes you feel good and relaxed.

The problem is that chronic stress causes resorption (disappearing) of CB1 receptors in the BLA. Less CB1 receptors means less signaling.

With less CB1 signaling, the sensory information gets roughed up by the bouncer/BLA before it enters the emotional processing part of your brain.

This is how chronic stress messes up your ECS. The end result is that you feel anxious, or reactive, or mentally foggy - depending on the person and situation. So how do we stop chronic stress, heal from chronic stress, and restore our healthy ECS function?

How to heal after years of chronic stress damage

Many people find that exercise or fun social interactions are the most effective ways to relieve stress. Social interaction reliably increases eCB levels, which decreases stress ratings and just feels good. Similarly, exercise bolsters eCB levels - which is the little-known cause of the “runner’s high.” 

To heal after chronic stress and revitalize your ECS, you need to move your body. Exercise increases levels of the bliss molecule, makes your CB1 receptors more sensitive, and increases genetic expression of CN1R, which means you build more CB1 receptors in your BLA.

There’s one more thing. Cold exposure has been found to dramatically increase CB1 receptor density in the BLA. That’s why people who regularly do cold exposure are (ideally) clear-headed and emotionally regulated.

Spread the love, bro

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4 life-changing products for stress relief

Note: Amazon links are affiliate links. Use code LONGEV for a 10% DISCOUNT on any Vielight order.

- Sam Bachvaroff | Editor-in-Chief

Vielight

Vielight is a rare company in that they have produced a device that has already changed the medical world, and which is currently available to consumers without a prescription. 

The Vielight device is being used in clinical trials for neurological issues such as Alzheimer's, traumatic brain injury, Parkinson’s, Autism, PTSD & Long Covid.

I have used the Vielight Alpha for myself and my clients to help heal post-concussion symptoms, age-related cognitive decline, depression, anxiety, and OCD. 

The Vielight transmits Near-Infrared energy (NIR) through the skull onto specific areas of the brain. This NIR is absorbed by mitochondria in neurons, stimulating wide-ranging processes that effectively make the neurons act like they are young and healthy. 

While the $1799 price tag is significant, if mine breaks, I will promptly buy another, and it is something I will make sure my parents always have around as well. You can use code LONGEV for $179.90 or 10% off your Vielight order.

Magnesium L-Threonate

Magnesium L-Threonate works rapidly to give me a cool, even-keeled stress-relieving effect. It was invented in 2009 by a team of neuroscientists at MIT in their search for substances that could improve cognitive function. Mag Threonate crosses the blood brain barrier and is known to relieve “subjective anxiety in subjects prone to mental stress.”

Brain Supplement

Eating brain is known to support neurological health due to its rich Omega-3 fat content. In times of glut, prehistoric peoples would harvest large numbers of animals and consume only the brain and a few choice cuts of muscle meat. I swear by the Heart & Soil brain and bone marrow supplement for some extra support during times of stress.

Reading recommendation: Buddha’s Brain

There is something about this book written by two neuroscientists who are also practicing Buddhists that just unlocks your understanding of mindfulness. They discuss the science behind mindfulness, exploring the idea that the Buddha was born a normal person, but his habits and epiphanies shifted his brain state in a way that made him the Buddha.

Thanks for reading! See you next week.