135: How Stress Impacts Cellular Health

Transcript of Episode 135: How Stress Impacts Cellular Health

With Dr. Daniel Pompa, Meredith Dykstra and Special Guest, Dr. Mary Wingo

Meredith:
Welcome to Cellular Healing TV. This is Episode Number 135, and I’m your host, Meredith Dykstra. Of course, we have our resident cellular healing specialist, Dr. Dan Pompa, on the line, and today we welcome special guest, Dr. Mary Wingo, all the way from Ecuador, so very excited to have Dr. Mary on the call today. We’re going to be talking all about the human stress response. So before we jump in, I’m going to tell you a little bit more about Dr. Mary.

Mary Wingo was born in the United States where she earned a PhD in human stress research from the University of North Texas. In 2014, she emigrated to Ecuador, a tiny country in South America. Living in a new and different society opened her eyes to the unsustainable social, economic, and political costs preventable stress causes in the modern world. Dr. Wingo’s aim is to clearly explain to the public the biological mechanisms behind the stress response, as well as its staggering cost to society. So wow, it’s going to be an interesting conversation. Welcome, Dr. Mary, to the show.

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah.

Dr. Wingo:
Thanks for the warm welcome. Thank you.

Dr. Pompa:
Thank you for being here with this very, very important topic. You said it right in the bio. In today’s world, I believe there is so many different types of stressors that are accumulating. What we call filling people’s buckets, and then, all of a sudden, the symptoms start, at least in this country. Then they start medicating them away only to find that that doesn’t work anymore. They get thrown off the back of the medical treadmill, and often times, they end up coming to our show looking for answers.

This is a—the emotional component, the stress component, is something that we’ve done a lot of shows on because it is often the hidden component to why people still don’t feel well. So you’re going to bring some very, very cutting-edge science to this today, which I’m really excited even to hear for myself because I know this. If we can avoid this stress response in a negative way and keep it positive, we get stronger. Not weaker in disease.

So Mary, I have to start by asking this question. How did you get involved in this topic? I mean, this is a very narrow topic.

Dr. Wingo:
Well, number one, I’ve always been a geek, and when I was a young undergraduate 20, 21 years ago—the topic of biophysiology, or biopsychology, or psychophysiology, it’s where the discipline crosses from a human biology to psychology. This was starting to come into its own back about 20 years ago.

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah.

Dr. Wingo:
And starting to really—they were really starting to understand the dynamics of how the sympathetic nervous response and how the adrenal response, cortisol response, was affected, various health parameters and all that. And it was still in its infancy. But one thing, it was just so fascinating, I mean, compared to any other topic in biology or psychology. Because what we’re talking about is how humans adapt. These—it’ not just stress. It’s these are the basic core mechanisms for which all organisms adapt. Okay?

So this is getting to something that Darwin would love. Darwin, when he was in the Galapagos, he probably wished he understood a little bit better. So these are adaptive mechanisms, and there’s nothing good or bad about them. And what do they represent? What does it represent? It represents—okay, and this is where it gets kind of crazy. It represents two different types of reality that organisms are—have to undergo in order to live in an environment. It  includes the nervous response that contends with cyclical aspects in our environment.

Okay. So the sun’s going to rise. The sun’s going to set. We’re going to usually have our meals at this time. If I’m a woman, I have my monthly cycle. I have my seasons, that kind of thing. Okay? And that composes most of our life. I mean, that—as far as percentage of time, that’s going to be most of our life. Okay?

Dr. Pompa:
Right.

Dr. Wingo:
And we have part of our biology that contends with this. The other part is where the stress response comes in. These are the disruptive elements. These are the novel elements. That, okay, you’re going along with your day, and then, aah, there’s a bear chasing you. And the repetitive cyclical elements cannot process disruptive elements, novel elements. So we evolved, and this is a much newer mechanism than the other mechanism which contends with the cyclical elements. We have evolved the stress mechanism in order to adapt to the environment, and when I mean adapt, I mean actually for the tissues that are stressed become more plastic temporarily. So the tissues can refigure to the new demand of the environment. So it’s a matter of plasticity.

Dr. Pompa:
Right.

Dr. Wingo:
It’s a matter of plasticity, temporary plasticity, hopefully.

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, I mean, adapt or die. I mean, our bodies have the mechanism, obviously, to adapt, and adaptation, when done properly, you become stronger, I mean, even emotionally, for goodness sakes.

Dr. Wingo:
That’s right.

Dr. Pompa:
I mean, physically, everything, you adapt or die, but really, you adapt and become better, and it’s funny, Mary. And I want to keep you going on this topic here, but adaptation is something that I teach my doctors in many different formats. Meaning that it is always adaptation that really is how we fix stuff.

Dr. Wingo:
Oh, it always.

Dr. Pompa:
We force adaptation through periods of fasting.

Dr. Wingo:
Well, no. No. Yeah, absolutely.

Dr. Pompa:
I call it diet variation where we even change the diet, even exercise, change exercise. Even [00:06:35], we—that change forces the body to adapt and become stronger. Go ahead.

Dr. Wingo:
Yes. Until we abuse and employ those mechanisms to the extent that we—no. And the reason is is that the affected tissue that is under extreme abused adaptation becomes successively plastic, and when that happens, you lose structural integrity.

Dr. Pompa:
And real fast—a little bit of delay.

Dr. Wingo:
Dr. Pompa, this is the root—yeah. This is the root of pathology. Yeah.

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah. I was just going to say the perfect example of that—there’s a slight delay here, so we have to work with this because you’re in Ecuador.

Dr. Wingo:
It’s bad, isn’t it?

Dr. Pompa:
The perfect example is exercise. Exercise, we know that you get quickly that—that plasticity’s starting to—you could overtrain, and then you push it too far. And now you don’t adapt, and now you become weaker. Not stronger. And that applies to everything, whether it’s physical, chemical, or emotional. Go ahead.

Dr. Wingo:
Yeah. That is exactly—since we understand, we can conceptualize how athletes work better. I mean, this is fairly obvious. How athletes and how athletes—well, the stress response for any aspect of our adaptation, whether it’s mental or physical, runs the exact same trajectory. The key is, if you want to be stronger, you—okay. So you have three stages. You have alarm stage where you realize that there is a disruption in the environment. Then you have the resistance stage, and then you have the high cortisol, which allows the affected stress tissue to change, do a phase transition, and become more plastic until it figures out what exactly the environment is demanding from it.

Like, for instance, here in the Andes, it’s altitude. So my cardiovascular pulmonary function had to reprogram itself, and that is what our stress mechanisms—that is what they’re made to do. And so a little bit is great. You condition yourself, and you become stronger. But see, the way that we function in modernized society, what we do is we push these mechanisms past their expiration date, and we enter the exhaustion stage where you get, first, tissue dysfunction, and then you get tissue damage, and then you get tissue death. And this is how all disease—every single disease. This isn’t just stress related.

Basically, all diseases manifest in this stage when you’ve fallen out of homeostasis or equilibrium, and you are unable to—you’ve got sea legs, and you’re unable to resolve the stressor. And this is—I mean, it’s actually quite clear. It’s actually quite simple, but this is a way to really clarify probably the most complex topic in science. No joke.

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah. No. I mean, you’re absolutely right. It is exactly the way disease—we break homeostasis. And those that don’t know what that means, it’s simply the body finds balance. And that’s perfect health and perfect balance. That’s what homeostasis is. Our innate intelligence drives for that always. And as soon as we become out of balance, now we start developing sickness and, ultimately, tissue death just like you said, and that is exactly the way it happens every time.

So with that said, okay, great, we know that our bodies go through this if we’re not adapting. And if you’re out there listening to this and you don’t feel well, you’re not adapting to something, whether it’s a chemical stress or physical or emotional stress.

Dr. Wingo:
That’s right.

Dr. Pompa:
So Mary, then what can we do? And I don’t know if we should take this into a physical, emotional, or a chemical conversation, but it is all the same. So what should we do?

Dr. Wingo:
Okay. Well, we could go on for nine hours with this, but I’m going to really try to sum it up. First off, what I want people to really take home is that what type of stress that they’re—because a lot of folks don’t even have the vocabulary. Well, most health professionals don’t have the vocabulary either. But the thing is is that I have determined, over many, many, many years of analyzing this, there are five major stressors that living in a Westernized, modernized society—and this isn’t true of other places like Ecuador or Columbia and probably many other so-called developing countries in the world, so they don’t have the level of stress that we do. I did not realize the extent of this until I came down here, and I experienced this myself.

But there are five major causes of stress. First, okay, is probably what a lot of your listeners relate to. That is the fatiguing of the working memory mechanisms, the executive functioning. That’s your frontal lobe. That’s the part of the brain behind here and behind the eyeballs, and this—now this is something that might be new to you. This is our primary stress response organ, the frontal lobes. It’s not the adrenals. It’s not the fight or flight system. For us humans, it’s our frontal lobes.

Why? Okay. Because with our frontal lobes, we can rationalize. We can plan ahead. We can follow through on very complex tasks. And our frontal lobes, basically, are responsible for how our civilizations across the world have developed. It’s the reason that we are living in buildings, and we’re not living like the animals do, like in a hole or under a tree. And why is this?

Because, okay—so for instance, say you are freezing. You’re cold. You’re outside, and you’re freezing. Okay? Well, an advantage we have over our animal friends is that we can actually change the environment to mitigate our stress. Okay? So if you don’t have much of a frontal lobe, what does an animal do? Well, sympathetic nervous system activates due to the cold, and then there are thyroid hormones secreted, increases metabolism. You have piloerection. That’s the goosebumps. All these mechanisms if you’re the basic animal to try to keep you warm.

But no, we humans have it better. What do we have? We’ve created fire. We’ve created clothes. All these artificial where us having to bend ourselves to adapt to the environment, we can at the environment to meet us. Okay? So the frontal lobes are the primary stress response organ, and I contend that is the adaptive advantage. Okay? If you look at survival, then you have to look at it through light of stress. I mean, this is how human adaptation works. Any questions so far?

Dr. Pompa:
So I get—when you said number one was the fatigue of the working membrane mechanisms, I mean—and I get everything you said kind of after that. But what does that actually mean?

Dr. Wingo:
Okay. Okay. See, one thing that we really do that’s self-destructive in modernized society is that we overtax our cognitive resources.

Dr. Pompa:
Okay.

Dr. Wingo:
This is something—yeah. So the planning, over-planning, over-scheduling, multitasking, always messing with the gadgets, this is always, always—our attention’s always being disrupted and broken, and just we wear it as a badge of honor to just be incessantly busy. And so although this does not seem to affect us maybe in the short run—and maybe we might be really good. We might be paid a lot of money to function in life. In the long period of time, we end up losing a little more. It’s costing us more and families lose their breadwinners because of the overtaxation of our frontal lobes.

Because when we lose our rational thinking and our emotional regulate, then, basically, we’ve lost the as human beings, and the stress gets worse and harder to adapt to them, become more and more vulnerable. And this is root of where all mental illness thinks. Through some sort of stressor of some sort, the frontal lobes become fatigued, through maybe possibly genetics.

Dr. Pompa:
So just to bring—you’re kind of breaking up a little bit, but just to bring—it’ll probably come back. Just to bring it to our listeners and our viewers. What you’re saying is the modern world—and this is number one. Because our frontal lobe—the constant texting, the constant this meeting, that meeting. We’re constantly—things, we did it. All that stimulation, that’s the thing. That’s number one as far as where we’re really getting stressed, and we don’t even realize it. We think it’s just day-to-day. Am I right on that?

Dr. Wingo:
Right. Right. Yeah. This isn’t how our ancestors lived, and this isn’t the way that we function. This isn’t the way that we adapt over the long-term.

Dr. Pompa:
Let me ask you something though. Do our kids have an advantage over us? Meaning that have our kids adapted more? Meaning that can they handle more of the constant texting, the constant stimulation and everything? I mean, do they have any advantage over us because they’ve adapted more? Are they stronger than us who is 50 versus them?

Dr. Wingo:
Well, let me ask you a rhetorical question. How many children are medicated in our society? How many children have psychiatric problems?

Dr. Pompa:
Okay, so…

Dr. Wingo:
And was this common 30 years ago? I mean, just think. Compare it to 20, 30 years ago, and compare it to the children that you see here in Ecuador. Which, I mean, the parents look at you like, what? Medicate my kids? Are you crazy? I mean, they—it’s not even a—kids don’t have ADD down here. They don’t have it. They don’t have it in a way that disrupts society. That forces us to medicate them in order to function, basically, in school.

This was a big surprise for me when I realized this, so no. No. Chances are it’s going to affect society, and this is going to affect functioning. I mean, when 20, 30 years from now, we’re going to really see the fallout. Because if the kids are medicated now, what are they going to be at 45?

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah. That’s horrible.

Dr. Wingo:
Yeah. Right.

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah. I mean, medicating them for this, it’s a shame. Because, really, it’s you’re creating another new stressor on the body, and it’s just insane. And we could go down that road, and I’ll have a block because I’m very emotional on that topic. Okay, number one. Let’s move to number two.

Dr. Wingo:
Okay.

Dr. Pompa:
But number one, as simple as you could put it, what is—before we move to number two. Number one, as simple as you could put it in easy terms for people, bad stressors. We’re talking about the five major stressors. What is it? Sum it up and then…

Dr. Wingo:
Okay. So to sum up number one, the overscheduling, overthinking, overplanning, overscheming, multitasking is very, very toxic, is extremely toxic.

Dr. Pompa:
Okay.

Dr. Wingo:
And in order to truly effectively manage your stress and not just be a statistic, okay, later on not be a walking zombie who dies 20 years early, then you absolutely have to get a handle on this overprocessing.

Dr. Pompa:
Okay. So one tip then, how do we limit number one, one tip?

Dr. Wingo:
Okay. Well, there is a general rule that I can outline, but for the specific tip, you’re going to have to advance those additives. And the more that you pile up—okay. So it’s, if you pile up with stuff and you don’t, and you pile another one on top of that, and you pile of that, you’re introducing the equivalent trauma to whatever tissue is being affected. So if you have—like say you’re in a line of work that requires a high-level performance, you basically have to treat yourself as you would an Olympic athlete. I mean, you got to be immaculate with other areas in your life because there’s just no way around it.

So it’s just like a credit card with a credit limit and 35% interest. And so, yeah, it’s good for using it, but if you keep abusing it, you’ll just make yourself mentally ill. And the ability to work is—yeah. I mean, family breadwinners…

Dr. Pompa:
What you’re saying is you have to have limits. You have to quit working at a certain time. I worry—Meredith, I worry about Warren lately, right? I mean, Warren is the classic number one, right? I’ve been so worried about his stress level. It’s limits. You have to limit it. You have to limit yourself. You have to limit your duties. Okay. Let’s go to number two because we could get stuck there, number two.

Dr. Wingo:
Oh, yeah. That’s what I said. We could go on for hours. Number two is living when you are—like when a person or an animal is forced in an unequal society. So inequality, social inequality is a huge stressor. It’s a huge stressor. Why? Why is this a stressor?

Well, those at the bottom end of the totem pole can’t finagle their way on the top. You can hire minions to cover a lot of your stressful experiences to make sure everything—when you’re at the bottom, I mean, your access to resources are terrible. I mean your access to safe, inexpensive housing, healthcare. You’ve got the worse schedules at work. I mean, you’ll swing shifts, all this other stuff, I mean, the worse access to education.

And so what happens is is that you’re constantly having to be on your toes and vigilant. Well, what does this do? This turns your morphology into a permanently more state. You’re always utilizing these mechanisms to kind of sort out traffic so to speak. And this is especially true with men. Men pretty much feel the effects of being the bottom on the totem pole, and need a—yeah.

Dr. Pompa:
Okay. Wait. Those inequalities, I mean, what comes to my mind is people that are overweight. People that—I mean, obviously, the economic status. I mean, maybe the way you look. I mean, am I on the right track here?

Dr. Wingo:
Well, it’s—okay. For instance, the way that many countries in the modernized society has become, where the resources pool at the top excessively and the rest of us are left stumbling, okay, historically speaking, this is the fodder for revolution. Revolutions occur when you have this phenomenon spread out tens of thousands, or tens of millions, or hundreds of millions of people all experiencing the same desperate levels of stress, just scrambling for resources and always having to adjust. Well, these how revolutions and extreme forms of civil disobedience occur.

Revolutions don’t form in a vacuum. They all form because herds of humans become very irritated. They’re basically fighting for their lives.

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah.

Dr. Wingo:
I mean, when you’re doing it, you’re fighting for your life. I mean, when you have nothing else to lose, you’re fighting for your life.

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah. I see that, right? But here in the United States, we still have—I will say, if you live in the United States, you’re rich, right, different in Ecuador, of course, right? I mean, rich people have garages. It’s like everyone—you can’t say everyone has a garage. Rich people live in homes. I mean, most—everyone lives in a home. Not everybody. My point being is different—the United States different than Ecuador, this is greater in Ecuador than here, but do we still experience it here?

Dr. Wingo:
Okay. If you don’t mind me contradicting you a little bit.

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah. No. No. I’m good with it.

Dr. Wingo:
One out of 30 children in the U.S. is homeless. We’ve got—I don’t know what the statistics is on homelessness. But it’s really damn easy to lose your home, and it’s really damn easy to not have easy access to any type of healthcare, especially in places like Texas. And, oh, let’s see. We don’t have most of our efficient or any transportation. And oh, we have to go deeply in debt to get an education at university.

Now, here in Ecuador, because they have been through the certain circles of hell in their history—I mean, they’ve been through 75 presidents since 1838. They’ve had 20 constitutions, 10 banking days. So they know stress. So guess what? Guess what? There’s healthcare. There’s excellent public transportation. Stuff poor people worry about. And homelessness, guess what, is almost nil. I mean, this is what was shocking me. I’m saying like, golly, you go to Dallas or any city, basically—any city in the U.S., you’re just going to have—I mean, it’s just going to be a problem.

Here in Ecuador, it’s almost zero. I mean, it’s almost nil. So I’m thinking, well, it’s a so-called poor country. I mean, what’s the problem here? I mean, what this does—because there’s been some revolutions, the police know not to our food source, or else the—of course, it’s true in South America. But here in Ecuador, the Ecuadorians will get out in millions and protest. Basically, throw the loud out.

It’s a lot safer society here. It’s safer for women. I’ve never had a problem, traveled by myself, and this is a so-called poor society. It’s like per capita income is 3, or 4, $5,000, depending which statistic. How can they afford this? Well, it’s basically because it’s really not that expensive to provide basic essentials to keep the underclass from leading to stress and cause a revolution.

Dr. Pompa:
I was looking at some statistics, and here’s another stressor, right? More than 40% of the homeless are—have disabilities. Isn’t that sad, right, 40%? So almost half have a disability,. According to this, the National Alliance of—they look at all the numbers here. The number is—they’re saying it’s only 2% of people in the U.S. are homeless, they’re saying.

Dr. Wingo:
Oh, only 2%, so only 6 million people?

Dr. Pompa:
No. Five-hundred thousand, which is—I guess not. They’re saying 2%.

Dr. Wingo:
I don’t believe it. I don’t believe it. I don’t believe a lot of the statistics.

Dr. Pompa:
No.

Dr. Wingo:
I mean, I don’t know. I mean, 1 out of 30 children is homeless. And what, there’s around, what, 65, 70 million children? So you’re talking 2 million children alone that have insecure housing situations. So I’m assuming that it’s probably a heck of a lot more for the adult population.

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah. That was total population.

Dr. Wingo:
I think it’s way under-reported.

Dr. Pompa:
I googled total population.

Dr. Wingo:
Yeah.

Dr. Pompa:
I looked at the same. One was 2.2. One was a little lower, but yeah. So anyway, the point being is that if you’re in that status, the stress is greater.

Dr. Wingo:
Oh, I’m sorry. You cut out. I didn’t hear you.

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah. No. I said the point being, though, that the stress is greater, especially economic status. That’s the point.

Dr. Wingo:
Oh, oh, yeah. I mean, absolutely. Life becomes very treacherous when you’re, especially, homeless, and you’re vulnerable. Humans aren’t meant to be homeless.

Dr. Pompa:
No. No.

Dr. Wingo:
We’re not meant to be—we were meant to have a secure—and if you want to avoid civil unrest and frustrated upset people, then make these simple things very, very easy. It doesn’t take a lot. It doesn’t have to break the bank to satisfy a household’s basic hierarchy of needs at the very bottom. I mean, that’s all it takes is a little bit of security. And all of these problems that are right now with a lot of uppity citizens getting all up in arms….

Dr. Pompa:
Let’s go to the third for the sake of time. So the third…

Dr. Wingo:
Let’s go to the third. Yeah. We can talk about this all day. Well, this is sort of related. This is loss of social capital. Number three is loss of social capital, which has declined precipitously since the revolution. As Americans, we used to be more like the Ecuadorians, very involved, religious, social. We use to be more connected to our neighbors. You used have to model cities where just having -inaudible- makes you more connected. You’re just seeing your neighbors every day.

Well, we have—the structure of our society has disrupted a natural force of human bonding. And add this on top of, okay, you get your college degree, and then you have to move way across the United States or just to get a basic paying job so you can pay your student loans back. So this disrupts communities. People just don’t have economic ability to stay in the place that they were born in. So they’re moving, moving, moving, moving, changing jobs. And social capital often replaces financial capital. And as our society becomes more financial and is more developed, okay, and financialized, it has destroyed a lot of the base of social capital.

Dr. Pompa:
Lost it. Okay. Yeah. You blanked out there for a minute. So is there anything that can be done? How do we avoid that stressor?

Dr. Wingo:
Well, when you’re talking about unequal society and a loss of social capital, this is where activisms—raise a good old raising hell. I mean, this is the intent of the Occupy movements that got crushed. And I was actually part of the Occupy movement, and I saw this myself. And I’ve been part of the protest movement here in Ecuador. Many, many protests I have been to here in Ecuador. It’s a completely different animal.

Dr. Pompa:
So the -inaudible- was, like you said, it was the frontal lobe. And you made a comment that it’s not even your adrenals yet, right?

Dr. Wingo:
Yeah. No.

Dr. Pompa:
So the frontal lobe is the first thing. Now these other ones are activating a chronic adrenal response. Correct? Or I mean, is there another response?

Dr. Wingo:
Yeah.

Dr. Pompa:
Because I do want to get to maybe the biological responses, as far as things we can do about it. Maybe number four and number five we’ll talk about that. So I don’t want to mess up your flow.

Dr. Wingo:
Okay. Well, I’ll just go over real quick.

Dr. Pompa:
Okay.

Dr. Wingo:
And maybe we can do another show, and we can talk about those later at greater in depth. Well, number four is completely different. This is the depletion or the derangement of the human biome. And the human biome are the little critters that have full evolved and existed with us for millions of years in our gut, on our skin, and in our orifices. And the reason why we fly into profound response is that these critters are actually functionally part of our physiology. They perform—they’re the extension, for instance, of our digestive response. They synthesize certain vitamins, and also, they participate in various acts of immune signaling, cellular growth signaling, signaling. I mean, there’s a lot of these covered in very simplified terms in my book. I mean, literally, for instance, if someone took out your kidney and you just had one kidney, your body would enter a stress response to try to make up for the lost function, and that’s we’re seeing. We’re losing function, or do we drain our population of microbes in and on our body? And so we enter a very intense stress response from that.

And then number five, it is kind of related. This is chemical stress in general. We need to realize that a lot of the chemicals that we are around, whether it’s hygiene—whether it’s industrial, whether it’s cleaning agents around the house, whatever, a lot of chemicals have been created in the last hundred years or less, or 50 years, or 30 years. Okay? Glyphosate, Roundup, how old is that, 30, 40 years old max?

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah.

Dr. Wingo:
Well, we have to realize and internalize. We do not have the metabolic machinery to efficiently break these substances down. So guess what happens? We’re exposed to this, body senses a disruption, senses a direct to a potent stress response, a very intense stress response. And this also includes exposure to pollutants of the oil, soil, and water as well. These are responsible for tremendous amount of…

So basically, that is the five. Okay? So in essence, in order to answer your question for the—asked 20, 30 minutes ago. In order to continue and really sufficiently manage, you have to understand these five categories, and then you basically diary. You literally have to list every single one, and you list whatever help your friends, family, therapist, support group, whatever, in order to list every single stress and what category it falls under. And that is really the only way.

I mean, there’s other hacks like piling stresses on top of one another. Another type of—another hack, understanding that our most potent stress are relational stress, stress between other humans. It’s not sitting in traffic. It’s stress, the arguments you have with your family in particular. There’s other little hacks, but really, it all comes down to making a list, doing an itemized list.

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah. I want to raise one point I think that’s—the whole disruption of the human microbiome, it’s—you talk a lot about the microbiome. Glyphosate, obviously, disrupting it huge. And like you said, I mean, it wasn’t really last 30 years, right, I mean, at best. And we see that happening in children, and if 40% of the people homeless are disabled, I mean, you—look at the children today, right, I mean, all the problems, one in five children with learning disabilities. By 2032, one in two kids developing autism if this happens. I mean, come on.

I mean, it’s like if there’s 2.5 homeless children, how sad here in the United States, right? And how many of it is because we have these unhealthy poor families out there. It just—it breaks my heart. We’ve corrupted microbiome. By the way, the microbiome affects this, which ends up affecting your social capitalism.

Dr. Wingo:
Yeah, absolutely.

Dr. Pompa:
It’s just—it’s so sad.

Dr. Wingo:
Absolutely.

Dr. Pompa:
I think this is breaking my heart. I mean, it’s sad.

Dr. Wingo:
Oh, absolutely.

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah.

Dr. Wingo:
Well, can I add a little something to that? This is the reason I wrote this book. It’s obvious, just in our short conversation, we are facing eminent humanitarian -inaudible-. And don’t even get me started on fertility. So I mean, we’re losing population, having kids. You know? So it directly affects fertility. So unless we really get serious about the public policy and really integrate this in public health, there will be eminent humanitarian crash. Not unlike what happened with the inhabitance of the Soviet Union and the fall of the Soviet Union, the public health crisis.

Dr. Pompa:
You’re right. Listen. Right now, we’re in a bad place because, see—and I don’t know if I want to let it go here. But we have both sides are missing…

Dr. Wingo:
Oh, no.

Dr. Pompa:
Both sides are missing this, right? Meaning that if you look at where we’re over vaccinating children. We’re toxifying them, glyphosate and vaccinate them. We’re killing them from a physical standpoint. We’re creating these problems, these stressors that you’re talking about. I mean, it’s like so…

Dr. Wingo:
Exactly.

Dr. Pompa:
It’s going to be hard to change because of the big money that’s now controlling a lot of these things that I just mentioned, but anyways, okay. So let’s talk about some cool things, some cools hacks that we could downregulate our stressors. Here we are dealing with these stressors. What are some cool things that we can do to help us through these stressful times?

Dr. Wingo:
Well, okay. For instance, okay, you need to understand what those five categories of stress are, and in my book, I have attempted to really introduce the vocabulary in not academic terms. The book was heavily edited to take it from the geeky pontificating lingoees that we scientists and professionals are so bad about and that isolates. And a lot of Joe Average, they’re actually very smart people, but they just don’t have our vocabulary. And now that the general person has the vocabulary, just sit down and make a list. And then, just like you would a diet or just like you would if you’re controlling your spending, with the hatchet or with a surgeon’s knife just start cutting, cutting, cutting, cutting, and cutting, cutting.

 

There’s no other way. I mean, there really is not any other way around this. Like I said, you can keep in mind that stress is additive, and that if you’re under a lot of stress, you need to treat yourself. You are a Russian racehorse, or a Ferrari, or an Olympic athlete in training. Okay? You have to -inaudible- the exposure, since relational stress is the most toxic stress, the exposure to toxic relational stress, toxic relationships and, of course, really control the chemicals.

I mean, I’m not talking—stuff maybe even as simple as soap, I mean, really, really. Because we just lather, slather ourselves and expose ourselves to these household—just household and work and occupational chemicals. And you just have to go through each one of these. If you don’t have the social support system, well, understand that you may not live to be a very old age.

Dr. Pompa:
True.

Dr. Wingo:
So this makes a good excuse to become more social. You got to think this is the most complex topic in science, period, but—and ultimately, we like to tell people to do mindfulness—which is very, very important. And in essence, this making a list is just sort of a more clinical structurized form of mindfulness meditation, being mindful. What you’re doing is you’re engaging your frontal lobe to not dissociate and to pay attention to the actual reality in your life, and then when you can do that, you can use your frontal lobe to change things.

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, how—I was just going to say what about those—the mid-brain where we really—how we think about our stressors, right? Meaning that I have gotten much better at looking at things that happen and go, I can choose how to react to them. And I’m not going to choose to react to it in an alarming way. You know what I’m saying? So that’s a different part of our brain, right? We have our medulla that stores these reactions on certain things happen, and we have this thought. But we start to go, oh, wait a minute. I have to choose not to react that way.

And I’ve gotten so much better at that. And now when things happen, so I go you know what? It’s going to work itself out. I mean, I give things to God every day like that. I mean, we’re—how does that fit?

Dr. Wingo:
Well, I’ll kind of share with you something that’s kind of cute about the Latin-American culture is the mañana, the mañana attitude. I’ll get it done tomorrow, which is mañana. That translates—tomorrow is mañana in Spanish, and that means I’m in no hurry to get anything done. I think the people are very, very efficient actually and things do get done, but yeah. It’s a certain attitude. But specifically, specifically, for those people that—in our society that are really afflicted with profound anxiety and mental illness, okay, it all comes down to one regulating the nexus where your thoughts and your fight or flight, okay, the heart pounding, the panic part—the nexus is any type of -inaudible- and specifically paraventricular nucleus, and it’s just conditioned responses. So it’s not permanent.

But ultimately, what it comes down to is increased levels of oxytocin. Because oxytocin, when it happens, run away sympathetic. The problems with mental illness don’t really come with the mental part. It comes with the horrific sensation. So those feelings of panic and insecurity and all that that count being mentally ill, fear, that kind of thing. The really uncomfortable physical states, the tight stomach, tight throat, horrible, well, that can be mitigated by oxytocin.

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah.

Dr. Wingo:
And that’s not necessarily—it doesn’t really necessarily—you can’t just give someone an oxytocin where they can sniff it through their nose. I mean, there’s a little bit of effect, but ultimately is that feeling of safety. Okay? And we’ve mostly got in our cultures a Machiavellian dog-eat-dog world, our sense of the importance of the basic human sense of safety. Okay?

Dr. Pompa:
Mm-hmm.

Dr. Wingo:
And so when you, that is when your oxytocin is functioning, secreting at a proper level enough to dampen the sympathetic nervous response. And so you’re free to think your thoughts with the physiological somatic reaction.

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah. So I couldn’t agree more, Dr. Mary. Then our oxytocin is considered the love hormone, right? And we know that hugging, touching, kissing—and I think that it goes with what you said. If you don’t have a social network, ultimately, that’s going to lower your oxytocin. I mean, just being around people that you love, animals. My dog, I’m telling you. My dog is really escalating the oxytocin. Man, I love these dogs. But anyway, so just telling our viewers on what oxytocin is, are there other ways besides dogs to raise oxytocin, or is that it?

Dr. Wingo:
Whatever it takes to establish the feeling of safety, whatever it takes, whatever it takes.

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah.

Dr. Wingo:
Okay? Because we don’t have our moms there. Our moms weren’t available to program our oxytocin, the physiology, physiological pattern of oxytocin release. I mean, it’s originally from our moms.  A lot of times our mommies weren’t able to do that. Okay? Whatever it takes to feel safe, I mean, at any level. Okay?

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, and by the way…

Dr. Wingo:
So remember, this is how—oh, go ahead.

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah. I was just going to say, by the way, it leads back into the social thing, right? Think about it. It can—in these areas, how many didn’t have fathers? How many have mothers on drugs? How many, you know what I’m saying, were no oxytocin, zero? From the time they were kids, even when their brain is forming before age 7, zero, and then that affects them later in life. I mean, these all feed on another.

Dr. Wingo:
Oh, gosh. Well, are you familiar with work, Adverse Childhood Experiences Study? It’s a huge longitudinal study. It’s, oh, been going on several decades, maybe even three, a long time. And basically, childhood trauma, okay, they ask you ten questions. Stuff like were your parents divorced? Were one of them incarcerated? Were your parents—was there domestic violence? Was one of your parents or more of your parents mentally ill, those kind of questions out of ten?

And what he has found, I mean, a stair step, almost one-to-one correlation. If you’re getting into the realm where you’re answering yes to six of those ten questions, then you’re looking at 20 years shaved off your lifespan. Because you’re seeing an explosion of stress-related diseases that and all but shaved approximately 20 years off of your life. So absolutely, this has got long-lasting effects that affect a person throughout a lifetime, definitely.

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah.

Dr. Wingo:
But it’s not just social. Okay? For instance, I left the U.S. because I found it personally to be too stressful for me. I’m a very, very sensitive person. And I just—I mean, I cured a number of chronic diseases just living here, living in a more equal society. Not taxing out those frontal lobes. Being a bit more human-friendly to you, so—instead of the push it, push it, push it, push it, push it, and limiting your exposure to other types of chemical stressors.

So it’s just not social. And that feeling of safety comes from when you actually regard yourself as a worthy human being, and you do whatever it takes to feel safe, I mean, whatever it takes. Part of it’s social. Part of it’s psychological. Part of it is just self-care of the physical body.

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There’s no doubt. I mean, the clients that I see are—they’re so chemically stressed that it affects their adaptation to their emotional stuff to the point where they can’t even deal with loud noise let alone excitement, even the positive. When I was sick, Mary, I couldn’t even watch a football game, something fun. Because it would—any exposure at all I would go into anxiety because I just—I couldn’t even handle loud noises. That’s how messed up my adaptation process from a pituitary hypothalamus to adrenal access was just destroyed and so many people today.

So you’re right. When you put this all together, in the United States, the chemical, the—all these stressors that you’re talking about, people don’t know that we’re all under, right? And the technology boom, it’s like, oh, my gosh. I mean, we need some biomeds like the oxytocin. Oxytocin, right, I mean, we better start elevating that oxytocin.

Dr. Wingo:
Yeah.

Dr. Pompa:
Suggestions, you’ve given us great ones, but just in the sake of time, we probably only have time for one more, and then Meredith, I’ll turn it back to you.

Dr. Wingo:
Okay. Yeah. Okay. For instance, I mean, all I can do is show you what I learned, say, from the Ecuadorians and from other cultures here. But the favorite word of Ecuadorians, when someone’s getting kind of a little bit torqued up, a little bit—I mean, even—I mean, nothing even what we consider in our cultural but just a little bit sort of out of balance. They’ll go tranquilo, tranquilo. That means okay, calm. Be tranquil.

So there’s this sort of unspoken agreement that people don’t. You don’t have road rage, even though the traffic is absolutely ghastly and dangerous out here. You don’t have road rage. You don’t have people yelling at each other like we do when we get—and you don’t have the violent programming. They import all the, say, Tarantino type flicks. They import from our society. They get their adrenal fix from watching our media. They don’t—I mean, the men love…

Dr. Pompa:
From what? Watching what?

Dr. Wingo:
They get their adrenaline fix from importing media from our culture.

Dr. Pompa:
Wow.

Dr. Wingo:
They get their adrenaline fix because they—for instance, the men all love Lionel Richey and Kenny Rogers. Okay? What do men love in our society? Henry Rollins and Beastie Boys and really aggressive—no. No. The men love the music, for instance, that—usually it’s woman’s music or easy-listening music. I mean, it’s really quite funny. Yeah.

Every step of the way, they’re trying to calm each other down or just be polite and welcoming. Buenos dias. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Greet each other when you walk into a store. Buenos dias. Well, if you don’t do that you’re very poorly mannered. It’s a very polite society.

And let me tell you. They’ve got a really control on illness. They’re just not as sick as we are. You go into the clinics, the socialist’s clinics. So they don’t pay anything, and they’re almost always empty. It’s like the doctor—see, like right now, he’s waiting around, nothing to do. It’s amazing. If you’d see it, you wouldn’t believe it.

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah. You know what’s funny, Mary, is –I would argue. I would argue, though, that if their society started earning more money, their stress level is going to go up. I mean, honestly, because here’s the thing.

Dr. Wingo:
Oh, yeah.

Dr. Pompa:
They’ll import. They’ll create more technology. They’ll have more technology. They’ll start vaccinating more. They’ll start taking more drugs. They’ll start—I mean, it’s like this, right?

Dr. Wingo:
Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And do you see—because Ecuador, in the last—it’s only been 15 years. They’ve come out of, basically, the Stone Age. Where, I mean, they didn’t have internet. I mean, they didn’t have basic infrastructure to—everything…

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah.

Dr. Wingo:
A lot of infrastructures totally cutting-edge new and you do; you’ve got this—30% of the people of the people have got bachelor’s degrees. You’ve got a professional class. And sure enough, that materialistic doctors, lawyers, accountants, that class, professors, they’re just—well, they’re not quite as bad as we are in United States, but that’s when you have the mental illness and these stress related diseases really start to crop up.

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah. Yeah.

Dr. Wingo:
Even more materialistic class.

Dr. Pompa:
And I agree with you. I mean, I see that, right? But here’s the deal. We’re not going to stop humankind from hiding that, right, especially here in, right? I mean, it’s there, right? Okay. So that’s why I keep going back to, okay, what can we do, right? What can we do to make sure we mitigate the stress, and what can we do? And you’ve answered some of that.

More people watching this are going to be like, yeah, great, but I’m not giving up this. I’m not giving up this. I’m not giving up this. I’m not—so what do I do?

Dr. Wingo:
Well, smoking was considered very fashionable and even healthy, right? And that is a very deep part of our culture is the media, the old Benson & Hedges magazine advertisements. It made it—this is what the cool people did. But yet, we were able to change a pattern to epidemic.

Dr. Pompa:
I don’t think using this analogy. I mean, I didn’t want to keep it here. No.

Dr. Wingo:
When it comes down to it, you follow the advice of probably the greatest American philosopher, and that’s Henry David Thoreau. He is the guy that coined “simplicity.” He was the guy—he was the first simplicity movement. And well, he said -inaudible-. Okay? The best parts of technology  across the total package. Really pick out which parts really benefit you the best, and then just give the rest up. I mean, there’s really no other option. I mean, this is what I’ve done. This is what I have done.

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah. I think there’s somewhat…

Dr. Wingo:
I take on the best parts of technology, and then the stuff that causes stress, I have totally eliminated from my life, stress relationships.

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah.

Dr. Wingo:
I don’t have a TV. I mean, there’s a lot of things people can do that make a huge difference when you repeat this over a decade, two decades, that kind of effort.

Dr. Pompa:
I’ve learned that—I agree. I mean, at some level, everybody has to make some decisions and say, okay, I’ve got to give this up. I’ve got to give up TV at night. I’ve got to give up—I mean, it’s true. I mean, and you are going to take massive stress out of your life. I do very well. I do runs that break up my day, when I do certain workouts, when I do this, when I do that, and then it soothes me away from the things that constantly are stressing me. Anyways, that’s for another show, and we’ll end on that. But, Meredith, let me turn it back to you, and Mary, I want to thank you for coming on. Meredith?

Dr. Wingo:
Thank you. This is very stimulating conversation. I really appreciated it.

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah.

Meredith:
Well, thank you so much, Dr. Mary. Thank you, Dr. Pompa. A really interesting conversation and a really important dialogue that we need to have and continue to have as well as social media and a lot of these other technologies start to creep more and more into all of our lives. So we’ll have to continue the discussion, and thank you both so much. Thanks, everyone, for watching Cell TV, and have a great weekend. We’ll see you next week.

Dr. Pompa:
Thank you.

Dr. Wingo:
Okay.

Meredith:
One more thing, Mary?

Dr. Wingo:
I need to plug my website.

Dr. Pompa:
Oh, of course.

Dr. Wingo:
I need to plug my website and my book.

Meredith:
Yes. Thank you. Tell us. How do people find out more about you?

Dr. Wingo:

Okay. Yeah. They can go to marywingo.com, and they can pick up a copy of my book for very, very inexpensively. I want this information to be available to people of all socioeconomic classes. I realize a lot of people are struggling, but they need this information. Any assistance with workshops, or coaching, or say, business consulting, because work stress is one of the biggest sunk costs especially right now that a business can have, they can get a hold of me.

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah.

Meredith:
Awesome.

Dr. Pompa:
Absolutely. You almost forgot that, Meredith. I’m glad she…

Meredith:
I know. I know. I usually—I’m sorry. That was totally my fault. So we’ll definitely put your information on -inaudible-.

Dr. Wingo:
Okay. Oh, it’s a great conversation.

Meredith:
Yes. Yes. It was a really important one to have. So thank you so much for joining the show and, everybody, take care. And thanks for watching, and we’ll see you next time. All right, bye.