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Written by The Thriva Editorial Team
23rd Sep 2026 • 42 minute read

We talk about resilience all the time, and yet that term still seems elusive. What does it mean in biological terms? Is it a sense? A neurological process? An emotion? Can we get better at being resilient? And more importantly: can we use resilience as a tool to live better and longer?

Show notes

In this episode, Greg and Charlie sit down with Dr Elaine Lee, Professor of Molecular Biology and Applied Genetics at the University of Connecticut, where she also directs the Human Performance Laboratory. Elaine's research focuses on the physiology and genetics of resilience: how our bodies respond and adapt to stress, and how we can enhance our capacity to cope with it. Her work spans exercise, heat stress and human performance, and she has a particular interest in translating the science into tools for everyday life. This is why we wanted her to join us on The Method.

In our science segment today, Elaine explains how resilience works in our body. It doesn't just mean "bouncing back", but getting better at coping. Greg and Elaine discuss the concept of hormesis: the idea that by microdosing stress, we could train our bodies to recover better and handle more next time. Elaine also delves into the science of heat acclimation and the remarkable changes the body undergoes when exposed to heat regularly. We then discuss how softer and less biology-oriented factors like relationships or positive self-talk can play their part too.

In the practice segment, Elaine, Greg and Charlie get into what this means for daily life. Including:

  • Why recovery matters to build better resilience day-to-day (21:32)
  • Signs that you're pushing your body beyond its stress capacities (24:00)
  • How to use a wearable to enhance resilience (27:22)
  • How to build heat tolerance using a sauna or steam room if you've never tried it before (28:34)

Finally, in the experience section, we turn to your listener questions. We hear from listeners who are trying to bring more mindfulness into a busy life, who are trying to make new habits stick, or who need advice to better prevent or recover from burnout.

If you'd like to send us your health questions for future episodes, you can email us a voice note or write in at themethod@thriva.co

Mentioned in today's episode

Transcript

Elaine: I think the way that I think about, building resilience is to evaluate. And say, what are the things that I can do to support myself with habits, behaviours changes. The answer is not to work harder. It's to find ways to let yourself recover so that you will become tougher and more resilient on the other side. Like, I can't get rid of my kids, I can't get rid of my job, right? It's gonna be what it is, and sleep deprivation is a part of that experience. But I have to find ways to recover so that I can have my, you know, I say to my kids, you fill your bucket and, and biologically yeah, you fill your bucket, you recover so that you can handle more, handle the same thing that you've been dealing with.

Charlie: Hello, friend.

Greg: Hello.

Charlie: How are you?

Greg: How's resilient Charlie?

Charlie: Very resilient, although not too resilient today, bit sleepy, but we move. I am literally consuming coffee in front of your face in an attempt to wake myself up, and I did go climbing quite early this morning, so I, I'm partly to blame for the fact that I'm tired.

Greg: You making progress.

Charlie: Loads of progress. I'm getting so much better. I know. Although my hands are paying for it. Look, they're, oh, you probably can't see. But

Greg: I

Charlie: they're calloused. Yeah. I was a bit gutted actually when I was in Canada. We went surfing and I was in the sea so long 'cause I was just having such a good time that the salt water made my hands all soft and smooth and I was fuming about it 'cause I've worked hard to get these all. Yeah. Hard skinned.

Greg: I think most people would feel the other way

Charlie: I know everyone was looking at me like, are you all right? Like you're raging. 'cause you've got really soft hands but now when I go back climbing my hands are gonna tear. But no, they've toughened back up

Greg: The reason that I mention resilience is because that is the subject of today's episode. Charlie, what does the word resilience mean to you?

Charlie: um, I would probably say adaptability or ability to adapt to a scenario, whatever that scenario is. I think.

Greg: What about if you're thinking about your body, would you think about it the same way?

Charlie: Possibly, I think in a sporting context or climbing or hiking, maybe your, your body's ability to yeah, adapt to what you're asking it to do, but maybe also speed in which you recover. Or in a work environment, like a stressful day. It's not just maybe about expecting your body to constantly do more and more and more, maybe about how you handle that situation yeah. What about you? How do you think about resilience?

Greg: I thought about it a lot last year 'cause I gave a talk about resilience sleep And in that, I used an analogy that several people have used previously, but it was likening resilience to an elastic band. And so if, whatever the challenge is, is within your current capacities, if you are resilient, then you might stretch a bit, but you'll snap back to where you were previously.

But if the challenge exceeds your current capacities, then the band would be deformed into a new shape. It would no longer function the way that it did before. And we can liken that to say, exercise, where if you do something that's hard, it's within your capacities, then you will bounce back to a similar state to how you were previously.

You'd actually in some ways get better, but if it was too much, then you might get sick. Maybe you get cold for instance. Or you might get an injury. We can apply that to different capacities. Like your immune function.

For instance, if you were challenged with a virus it might be beyond what your immune system could tolerate and then the result would be something chronic. And a lot of people had that during the COVID Ovid 19 pandemic, where they ended up with these.

Ailments that they weren't anticipating. They seemed quite unrelated to the virus, but the virus really exposed the flaws in their system. And I think what is true for most of us is that we have quite big reserves of some capacity. So you, Charlie, you have good cardiovascular function, good physical endurance capacity, you're welcome and good strength too, because you do your climbing and so on.

But maybe there are some other capacities that aren't quite so strong for you. And so I think for each of us, it can be helpful to do a kind of a needs analysis, almost imagining like a spider diagram where you've got these different capacities and you realise, well, for me, good on the endurance stuff, but I'm not so good on the strength stuff.

And then you can target some of those capacities where you haven't got as much reserve. So yeah, those are my high level thoughts about resilience. But I think it's a really interesting subject. So who do we have with us today to educate us about resilience?

Charlie: So today we are joined by Elaine Lee, who is a professor of molecular biology and applied genetics at the University of Connecticut, where she also directs the human performance laboratory. Her research focuses on the psychology and genetics of resilience, looking at how our bodies respond and adapt to stress, and how we can improve our ability to cope with it. She works across areas including exercise, heat stress, and human performance with a aim of translating the science into practical ways to improve health and resilience. Should be a good chat.

Greg: You have a song for this week?

Charlie: uh,

Greg: Oh,

Charlie: God, resilience. Um, Master Google. Songs about resi, songs about resilience.

What we think is gonna come up here. tub thumbing by C jumble lumber,

Greg: Tub thumping. I get knocked down, but I get up again. What an absolute

Charlie: yeah, there we go. Or I'm still standing. I'm still standing. Better than I ever was looking like a true survivor.

Greg: I picked Tub thumping. I just think it's a great name, and the band have an even better name.

Charlie: Trumbo. Womba. Yeah.

Greg: that's nineties music at its best.

Charlie: There we go. Okay, so that, that's the theme for this week. I get knocked down, but I get up again. You're never gonna keep me down.

Greg: wonder if Elaine is a Chu Waba fan.

Charlie: I am.

Greg: She looks like one to me.

Charlie: Maybe let's not lead with that

Greg: To compliment. Okay.

Charlie: Yeah, maybe we'll save that for the end. Shall we bring her in?

Greg: Yes.

Charlie: Hi, Elaine. It's lovely to meet you. We're going to start with the science of today's topic, and we've talked briefly about resilience on the method before, but when we're talking about resilience in the context of today's episode, how would you define.

Elaine: So when we think about resilience, scientifically, I think, we're talking about the ability to recover from stress And that stressor can be anything that is a stimulus, right? So an exercise bout itself, for example. And your resilience to that, or, a night of sleep deprivation.

But, I think generally speaking resilience is about adaptability and the ability to overcome something that's challenging and then be exposed to something else. And I like to think about the words tolerance, adaptation, toughness, perseverance, like those kinds of words I think really all are encompassed in this concept of resilience. Whether you're talking about science or day-to-day life.

Greg: So what you're getting out there is that there's both a physical component to it, but also a mental one.

Elaine: Yeah, I think there's a measurable aspect when we think about the physical and the mental is kind of the consolidation of the whole experience of managing an acute stress or multiple stressors at once, and then repeated stressors over the course of a week, even within a day and so on.

Greg: And this is something we'll return to in a future episode, but it does seem that somebody's mentality will actually influence their physical responses to a stressor. Elaine? I think a lot of us are interested in resilience because we want to be healthy for as long as possible. I've heard you speak about how your interests crossed over between resilience and longevity over the course of your scientific career. Would you say that it's generally true that resilience and longevity go hand in hand?

Elaine: No, I think they're very intertwined, and I'm going to make even more precise. This concept of longevity when we think about resilience is when you build resilience, you're talking about quality of life extending. So it's not just the years of life that you have that longevity concept, but it's also the health span that you can extend, for the time that you're alive and that's directly related to your resilience.

Greg: One concept that I think is helpful and very relevant to us now is known as hormesis. It's a fancy word. It's been studied most by a guy named Edward Calabresi. But the core idea is that a low dose or modest dose of something stressful helps defend your body against similarly stressful ti in the future.

So if you think about resilience as being a bit like bouncing back, imagine your body is like an elastic band. There's something that that stresses it or stretches the band and then it snaps back into shape. This would be a bit like the band becoming tougher. but there's a question about whether this could be true of things that people would otherwise think are toxic.

So take the example of alcohol. Could it be that a low dose of alcohol which is toxic is actually something that stimulates our bodies to become more resilient? Do you have any thoughts about that?

Elaine: My short answer to that question is not really. I have a lot of thoughts about hormesis. I spent a lot of time in my postdoctoral research studying this concept in animal models, and I, and I teach a lot in this area the thing that is nuanced is that you have to distinguish the, tolerance, building exactly as you described it, toxic damaging versus something that you can overcome.

So I'll give a, a really good example, is when we think about climate change and pollution, right? You are not able to, easily recover from things like cigarette smoke exposure or air pollution. And this is something that our athletes are facing a lot right now, right? If you go outside at certain times of the year, you're exposed to toxins. And the answer to that, is certainly not to, you know, smoke a little bit of a cigarette and then go out and exercise.

But in fact, what we're doing is we're trying to build resilience by behavioural changes. By building habits and being thoughtful about what you're doing and when you're doing it and where you're doing it. You can also think about, resilience and recovery processes, cellularly, right?

Like a proper diet, proper sleep if you know that you're going to compete or train in an area where there is a lot of air pollution. And so like I said, there's a little bit of nuance and certainly yes, you can build tolerance to cold exposure. You can build tolerance to high intensity exercise, durations of exercise. But when you're thinking about things like toxins, alcohol, air pollutants, and so on, it's a different kind of concept.

Greg: Some of these stresses that are more evolutionarily novel, like cigarettes, the things that our body just haven't been exposed to and therefore haven't developed adaptations to tolerate. You mentioned climate change. You've got deep expertise in the science of heat exposure and dehydration as stresses.

In England, people are just out of the hottest summer on record record, 162 heat waves and two drops of rain nationwide. And for many of us, that was very challenging in part because a lot of buildings in the UK just aren't made for that climate. They're frankly made for a climate that no longer exists. And so since some of your work's focused on heat acclimation, how our bodies adapt to better cope with heat stress in the future, what are some of the most important changes that take place in our bodies in response to regular heat stress that let us better cope with heat in the future?

Elaine: Um, so I, I just wanna expand it before I go into the physiology, is I think we're also thinking about, when you describe what happened in Europe this summer, with the climate and weather stressors,, there are levels of cultural systemic changes and habits and behaviours and access to resources that are really important to mitigate, minimise exposure. on top of that when we think about our bodies. If we become acclimated or acclimatised to heat exposure or exercise or physical activity in a hot and humid environment, we are changing the kinds of physiological processes are happening in our body.

So at rest, we're not really as concerned with heat loss, heat dissipation. And so we're not actively sweating, for example, while we're sitting in a temperate environment. But when we are acclimatised we actually have changes that from the brain to the sweat glands. There's a quicker ramp up time, a better detection system, and a more robust response.

So you sweat earlier much more in terms of sweat volume and the amount of sweat. And then it also changes the sweat composition because I think your body somehow knows that you're sweating more and is trying to protect what is released in sweat that you might need, right?

So electrolytes, for example, are not lost as much when you're acclimated. And so that's just one component. But the other big changes are that your cardiovascular system becomes more adapted because you have increased demands for circulation of your blood to dissipate heat, and, you have changes in the vasculature. So blood vessels are dilating at the skin. That's why you, for example, will get red in the face if you're exercising. But in acclimated individuals, that process is happening, more frequently and to a greater degree in resting conditions and then during easy exercise.

So I think I would sum it up to say really everything is prioritised to dissipate heat, and so it's a really interesting model to study resilience too, because it's kind of how we work, right? And it's just like if we thought about, for example, managing an infection, it's the same kind of concept.

Charlie: And some of your work has looked at whether men and women respond differently to heat stress. Are there any meaningful differences between the two, and if so, what are they and how does that look?

Elaine: It's a really interesting question, and, we've been studying this specific question for about six years now with our collaborators, Doug Casa and the Cory Stringer Institute. We don't exactly know, what all the biological sex-based differences are and I think there's a lot of misinformation that puts labels to that one sex is better than the other or more efficient.

And I can easily say that that's not the case we can at the very least say that men and women are different, and some of them have to do with anatomy, like across the general population. So for example, body surface area and body size and muscular mass are things that are just generally different between men and women, males and females, right?

But they're not like built into the DNA so that every single woman is smaller than every single man. What we're seeing is that the differences among individuals are related to body size, fitness maybe metabolic differences. But, um, I don't think there's any real data to say that. Women are less efficient. I think the, The things that claim that there are differences related to the menstrual cycle, I can say that we don't see that in any of our data. And I think there's lots of good scientific reviews out there that've shown that, the small changes that you see in fluctuation in temperature over the course of a month aren't really putting women at risk.

And I really hammer home that message every time I have a chance to communicate because I think that it's a little bit of fear mongering and a little bit of misinformation when it comes to heat tolerance and resilience between men and women.

Greg: You spoke earlier about some of the changes in our bodies that take place during heat acclimation, and this raises another interesting idea, which is that adapting to one stressor like heat could help you deal with other stresses.

So in this case, exercise, are there any particular stimuli? Could be exercise, could be heat, stress, could be something else that you think have very widespread positive effects on resilience, and therefore could be things that listeners might try.

Elaine: Yeah, when we talk about heat exposure through sauna or cold immersion like we see with ice bath immersions or cold exposures that people are pursuing. Hypoxia treatments, altitude exposures. These are things that athletes, for example and just general population are using a lot to, toughen themselves, right? In lots of different ways to build that mental toughness, to tolerate pain, to hopefully improve exercise performance, um, so I think that of the things that I just described are really hot right now in terms of what people are focusing on. Like, like the ice bath, the cold plunges, the things that you do every day that are hopefully helping you build tolerance mentally to pain and discomfort. And then you know, as a side benefit, it may help you be more resilient to the stressor that you experience during the day or manage sleep deprivation and things like that.

But I think there are other things that are really helpful to building resilience strategies that have to do with how you approach your daily life, right? So for example, one of the things that we know that's so interesting about resilience and longevity is the most powerful thing is connection with people.

So it's funny because it takes me away from my physiology and biological research, but the truth is we know that the longest lived communities have really supportive relationships and tightly connected cultures of daily life. And that can help you withstand a lot of psychological stress and be resilient to all the things that you manage during your day.

And, it can translate to physical things like exercise training and competition and motivation. So I think there's a lot of. Really cloudy connections that we don't fully understand. This is a topic that I'm obsessed with as like a young mom who's building a career, like building a business, doing all the things and trying to take care of myself you know, it's, it's regular exercise. It's behavioural things like managing my sleep biggest thing. Um, and then kind of softer less, uh, biology and kind of tough things like having supportive relationship, practising positive self-talk. You know, like different things like that that collectively with your ice baths and your hyperbaric chambers and all that are gonna build resilience.

Greg: Just take the kids in the chambers too.

Elaine: Yeah, or just let them climb all over me and see how long I can tolerate a little bit more each day. Right? There's hormesis.

Greg: Kids, the ultimate hormetic stimulus.

Elaine: Yeah.

Greg: Elaine, before we move on to the next section, I'm just gonna try and summarise what you've covered so far. You define resilience as the ability to recover from stressful stimuli and you emphasise tolerance, adaptation and toughness. Resilience and health span tend to go hand in hand.

Hormesis, we spoke briefly about is the idea that modest doses of stressful stimuli can make us more resilient. That is true of things like exercise, like heat exposure, like cold exposure, like some chemicals found in certain plants. It's probably not true of things like alcohol and cigarettes and air pollution.

However. And you spoke a bit about cross adaptation between stresses exercises, particularly powerful resilience booster, but other stressful stimuli can also boost resilience. In general, the implication is that if we can challenge our bodies in one way, then that can help us be more resilient. In general. You also emphasise that relationships matter too and make everything a bit easier.

Charlie: So we're now gonna move on to how we can apply the science of resilience to our everyday lives so that we can improve how we feel and function. So to start, if someone is already dealing with quite a lot of stress, either physically or mentally, should they be looking to add more stress to build resilience, or is there a point where they first need to focus on their capacity to cope with what's already on their plate?

Elaine: I, I think the, the answer is that you don't need to necessarily add more stress in order to build resilience, but I think sometimes it's about building in recovery time and rest time So one of the things that we're studying that's so interesting, is behind a different way of thinking about heat acclimation or exercise training it's not only about providing the stimulus and rising to that challenge, it's also about building and recovery so that you can repair, at the physiological tissue level.

And that's just as important to building toughness, right? So if you are an incredibly stressed person with a massive load, we're not asking you to become more tough despite everything that's going on by adding more stress. But rather, to carve out some recovery time so that you can be more resilient long term. I think the way that I think about, building resilience is to evaluate. The situation, the context for that person, and say, what are the things that I can do to support myself with habits, behaviours changes. And so for the decathlete, you might not take anti-inflammatory drugs to deal with the soreness and help you be at the starting line But you can improve the quality of your diet. You can take antioxidant supplements or, consume more antioxidant rich foods, and that's gonna help build your resilience

So I think the sum up for the individual is there are situations in which you can't manage the stress load. You can't control it.But I think The answer is not to work harder. It's to find ways to let yourself recover so that you will become tougher and more resilient on the other side. Like, I can't get rid of my kids, I can't get rid of my job, right?

It's gonna be what it is, and sleep deprivation is a part of that experience. But I have to find ways to recover so that I can have my, you know, I say to my kids, you fill your bucket and, and biologically yeah, you fill your bucket, you recover so that you can handle more, handle the same thing that you've been dealing with.

Greg: That's why you need the hypoxic chamber at home. You can just lock the

Elaine: Yeah, maybe I'll just numb myself to the experience. That's not what I recommend at all, but

Charlie: Yeah, don't do that.

Elaine: know. Yeah.

Charlie: So just on that, are there any signs that you are sort of pushing yourself too much? You know, if you're pushing beyond what your body can currently cope with, would there be any physical or mental signs that people could be aware of?

Elaine: Yeah, I love this question because this is a huge part of like the pie chart of what we're studying in our lab. It's this awareness of yourself. Um, and I think I'll start with the abundance of wearable devices that are out there and the apps that have algorithms that connect to data like your heart rate or give you various scores of wellness or readiness and things like that. I do think that there is a place for those tools to be incorporated in a person's life in daily living to give you some sort of objective anchor to match with your subjective feeling. Like, I feel good, but this score's not good. And then three days later I feel worse and this score is deteriorating.

So it was able to, with some sensitivity, this wearable device detect my resilience. And I think that, they're not perfect and that's why we're really trying to study better how well these devices and apps and algorithms can predict how well you are feeling.

But we can't only rely on how we feel and how we think 'cause I mean, I'm sure you know your audience, you yourselves, me, myself, you know, you've woken up in the morning and you feel fairly well rested and there's like one horrible email and your whole morning is like totally devastated because you were exhausted and you didn't really realise it until you received even a small challenge, right?

And so that's like the athlete who feels okay and you start working out, but you can't for some reason raise the intensity or work as long as you did previously. And there's this inability to detect that with just how you think you feel. So I think that there's a place for devices to help you, really be mindful and kind of self-reflective about, the tasks that you do and how you're performing compared to times when it's really good and when it's really bad. And to just notice the patterns in yourself that takes a lot of thoughtfulness about your own experience every day. I think.

Charlie: Yeah, I actually stopped wearing my wearable as much as possible. 'cause I found I'd wake up, I'd feel fine, I'd be halfway through my day, and then it would tell me I had a terrible night's sleep and it was awful. And it almost gets in your head and then you start thinking, oh, maybe I am tired. I'm really tired. I, I need a good night's sleep tonight. And then you're thinking about sleep and then before you know it, you can't sleep. And it just sort of triggers this whole sort of spiral. When actually had I not won the watch, I'd have probably just gone about and done my normal day and gone to bed at the same time and slept fine.

Elaine: A balance. I mean, it does tie you to your phone or your device in some ways. And I'll fully admit, I don't wear a device all the time because it's just not comfortable. I'm, I feel like I'm gonna get stuck to it and constantly looking at my wellness score, my readiness score and thinking, overthinking it too much. But, I think it's a balance of noticing your own patterns and being aware of them and tr trying to attribute them to what's going on in your life.

And at the same time, as much as we can using objective tools that give us an indication that we might be creeping into burnout phase or lesser readiness score or something like

Charlie: Yeah. Me and Greg have briefly spoken about, I sent quite a famous popular wearable back. 'cause it was telling me at like seven o'clock, you're tired, you need to get to bed. And I was still on the motorway trying to get home from work. I was like, this just isn't, it's not practical in day-to-day life. The intention's great, I'm sure, but in reality it just, yeah, it just absolutely wasn't for me.

Elaine: And I think that it's important to say that this device is not gonna dictate what I do.

It cannot, right? I mean, sometimes it says you're not ready, but you still have to go to work. Right? And that's not a thing. So, it's just like, I still have to go to work, I still have to feed my kids. I still have to exercise and do the things that I need to do, but what about my life leading up to this point where this device is telling me I'm not well or ready? So it's a shift to feeling like it dictates what you must do in a situation where you cannot control that versus just taking the information for what it is and doing your best to say like, how can I problem solve and use this data to somehow change something that will make me more resilient?

Charlie: So just to jump back to heat exposure, so let's just say we had someone who was reasonably healthy and active and wants to build up their tolerance to heat, and they have access to a sauna or a steam room if they've never really used either before, where would you suggest they started?

Elaine: I wanna say that you don't need an expensive sauna or steam room to heat acclimate and get the benefits from it., so I'm not, I wouldn't say I would give a specific protocol. I'll give guidelines. 'cause that's what I would do for anybody coming to me professionally. You want to find some way, to raise your body temperature.

We're at 37 degrees C baseline, right? And most of the goals of heat acclimation protocols are trying to raise that core body temperature safely to like 38, 39, 39 0.5, even in some extreme cases degrees Celsius for about 30 to minutes to an hour.

And do that repeatedly, right? Daily is right now what the traditional protocols recommend. And what you'll find is that if you're able to track that with a wearable devices that you'll see that the first day that you walk into the sauna, your temperature will rise very quickly and it will stay elevated for a little bit longer after you leave the sauna or after you stop exercising in that heat chamber or in the outside, in the hot and humid environment.

And the second day, the third day, the fourth day, about the fourth or fifth day, what you'll see is your temperature doesn't rise as quickly. And it comes back down more quickly. And so you can use these signs to help you build and monitor safely the protocol that you'll use to, um, induce adaptation. And so that's kind of the guidelines that I would give for folks. And certainly at the University of Connecticut and the Cory Stringer Institute. They spend a lot of time providing documents and recommendations for specific protocols.

And so as long as you have a reputable source and you're monitoring, you have safety things in place, um, I think that yeah, generally you can use any of these to individualise and customise the experience.

Greg: Just very briefly, Elaine. My understanding is that the core temperature has a daily rhythm, so your core temperature is lower when you wake in the morning than it is in say, the late afternoon, which is typically around the time that it's at its peak.

Should the target temperature depend on time of day? Should you think about it in terms of what your temperature is at baseline, and then add a number to your baseline, say.

Elaine: Um, in my opinion, no, because when you're talking about even half a degree to a degree Celsius fluctuation over the course of a day, if you look at continuous data, core temperature data, it's fluctuating all day long. And like from a biological standpoint, the nervous system is managing dynamically just like at your fingertips and in your skin and in your legs and arms, constantly, just as it is your gut temperature and your brain temperature to protect that.

So I wouldn't say that you can shoot for lower because you're a little bit cooler in the morning, or vice versa. If you're warmer, you're shooting for warmer. as long as you're hydrated and well fed and you're in a healthy state I think the target, it doesn't change because of your daily fluctuations.

Greg: It's about time to move to the experience segment. We're gonna answer some listener questions. Hear about your trials and tribulations out in the wild related to what we're talking about today. Just a reminder, if you'd like us to answer the questions on your mind, there is a way you have to sing them and record yourself singing them, and then send them into us.

Or you could just send a voice note via email to the method@thriver.co and we'll include it in a feature guest episode or in one of our q and As. We've got some great questions from you all this week, so let's get to them.

Charlie: So the first of our listener questions is a voice note from Tamar in London around how to add mindfulness into a busy life.

Tamar: Hi, it's Tamar from London. I have a question about alternatives to meditation. I've previously had a really good experience building a regular meditation practise, and I've found this has helped me, build a lot of emotional resilience. Um, understand myself, show up as a sort of calm person in day-to-day, busy life, um, and take a sort of step back from the sort of reactive nature of modern life.

Um, but right now I have a small child and a busy job and some hobbies that aren't meditation, and it's just not something that I want to spend the amount of time, uh, on that I have done previously. So I'm interested to know if there are any tips or tricks for including, um, meditation, like practise into other activities, and if there's anything that you could advise someone that doesn't want to sort of go deep on this right now to, to bring to day-to-day life to get similar benefits. Thanks so much.

Elaine: Yeah. This is, This is so relatable, right? It's all of our experiences, especially, parents. So when we think about mindfulness exercises and building that in to build psychological and or physical resilience, sometimes we fall into the trap of thinking it has to be like this massive thing that we pursue, that takes a lot of time or has to be done a certain way.

But I think that, you can build in mindfulness in little ways, habits throughout your day, and it can be very impactful and it doesn't have to be this big programme that you pursue. And so I'll give you a couple examples. Breathing exercises and implementing that throughout your day can have a big impact potentially on your physiology.

And I think that building in that moment of relaxation and breathing into your day when there are pockets of time that you can do that. And doing that as frequently as you can is a practise of mindfulness in a way. You know, breathing exercises, like short periods of reflection. Meditation doesn't have to be like a drawn out thing that's a session in the morning and complete isolation. I think, prayer, journaling and quiet reflection are areas to build that in, in diverse ways depending on the situation and day and what you can do without having to engage in some sort of like, rigorous meditation schedule and programme. So I, I hope that helps, kind of provide some structure and options.

Charlie: Um, our next question is from Renee about small habits.

Renee: Hi, I'm Renee, and I was wondering for people who are quite all or nothing, how do you build habits that survive days when you can't do the full version?

Elaine: This, you know, everything is like, we're all human, right? I am an all or nothing like as a former rower, it was like, go harder or go home was what we said to each other before and after practise. I'm a Virgo too. Like it's just built into me. And I would say from my personal experience, but also some of the things that we've been talking about with research is it's when we talk about mindfulness and building in recovery to build resilience, to give yourself that time to recover when you can't manage the load and it is not possible to increase the load in order to become more tough.

I think we're talking about changing your expectations and accepting that it, it can't be all or nothing, but it can still be very impactful. And I'm gonna give you one example of an area of research that I find very interesting and that we've become, um, focused on through a postdoc in my lab is, minimal exercise and exercise snacks.

So I don't know if your audience is very familiar with this, but there's this whole area of research that says you don't need to engage in this, like massively stressful endurance exercise every day. Resistance training three to five times a week, to build all the benefits of exercise into your life for resilience and for health and for physical fitness, right? When you can't, you can still have exercise snacks. You can in a sedentary job get up and, I'll give you an example. My postdoc is this 80 pound kettlebell next to his desk. And yes, he will be writing a grant or writing a paper and have to sit at his desk for four hours, but he will get up every 20 minutes and do some kettlebell swings.

And so I think that's a great, real life example of it. It's not an all or nothing, but it is so hugely impactful and I think paying attention to the outcome and seeing that it's having an effect can change the mindset around it has to be all or nothing. And so, there's certainly ways that you can do that at your work and in, at your home and your daily life.

Charlie: I think exercise snacks might be my new favourite term. I've never heard that before.

Elaine: Oh yeah. It is, it is our favourite thing. I mean, there are days because as I get higher up in my job too, I find that my job is more sedentary. And there was one day where I got up and, you know, the wearable, told me very, you know, shamefully, I felt like that I had only done 237 steps in eight hours, right?

So that was like me going to the bathroom, just down the hall and coming back. And of course you have to take away the shame and blame 'cause you're not like, oh my God, I'm an exercise science professor, and I only did 2, 237 steps. But the idea is like, I could have built in different ways to take that break.

And it, it doesn't have to be all or nothing in terms of like, I'm going hard, harder or going home, sitting at my computer writing, like I could take 20 minutes and if you search on PubMed and scientific literature. Now exercise snacks is a term, it's a technical term that we're using now to think about minimal exercise.

Greg: A friend of mine who was an academic used to say that he could tell where he was in the grant writing process according to how Shaggy's beard was 'cause self-care just fell by the

Elaine: hygiene number of steps, anything.

Charlie: The final voice note is again from Renee actually around the early warning signs of burnout.

Renee: Hi there, I was just wondering, um, if you are someone who tends to push through stress until you suddenly crash, what are the earlier warning signs to look out for?

Elaine: So, um, I think that's, there's a combination of physical and psychological kind of indicators of developing burnout. And like physically, you'll see burnout manifest as like a persistent fatigue and exhaustion, so it's more than usual and not recovering. I think you'll see reduced performance if you're doing a physical activity that has an outcome that you can track.

So, for example, if you have a typical run that you do, the pace is slower. It's harder to maintain a certain goal pace that you have been able to before. The duration is reduced. You're, you're not able to go as long or as hard in any sort of physical effort.

But I think a lot of the signs come with, psychological things like, many individuals I think who experience burnout report, like increased irritability, and less of a tolerance for challenges in your day, right? I think I, I gauge my level of potential burnout based on like how fast I get angry with an annoying email at work, right?

Like, that is an indicator that you're not able to be resilient to like maybe anything at this time. Um, you're gonna see changes in sleep, right? Inability to sleep with anxiety and so on. Um, and difficulty concentrating, emotional detachment, like a withdrawal from your social network. So many different signs, I think that collectively show that you're physically, physiologically, emotionally, psychologically, have reached your limit for what you can tolerate. And you need recovery to be able to tolerate the next thing. and some individuals manifest really, you know, um, serious physical symptoms like headaches, muscle tension, things that are, associated with lack of recovery and ability to manage the load at work or at home or in, other parts of your life.

So I think we're talking about not ordinary tiredness. I think we're talking about prolonged symptoms. And that's to pay attention to say like, I'm not just dealing with one bad day in a poor recovery, but I'm dealing with something that's very persistent.

Charlie: And just linked to that, our final question from Lauren in Surrey asks, I've heard a lot of people say it can take months or even years to recover from burnout. Is this true? And what can you do to heal from burnout?

Elaine: Yeah, I think it can, and we're talking about burnout, but we're also talking about, in my world, exercise training, like under recovery, over training. It's, it can take a very long time to recover because we're talking about structural systemic things in your life and aspects of the ways that your health is managed that require a significant change, right?

So you can't just like make up for a long period of sleep deprivation with like a couple good nights sleep.

And it's not just about the physical physiological recovery, it's also about changing things in your system so that it doesn't persistently happen, can happen again and again and again. And that's true with anybody, right? Like just your daily life or an athlete or, um, anyone. I think, periods of your life may be very hard, in different contexts or by episodes or things that happen in your life, trauma or experiences. And so you have to think about those periods of your life and say, I need more recovery because x, y, and Z is something that I went through, right? And honour that. And that's really important. So, the short answer is it can take a very long time to recover from burnout physically and psychologically, but even longer than that, is to change the vulnerability to that because of the way your life is and your work is, and things like that. So it's, it's really paying attention to all that as you're recovering and trying to get out of it. I think that's just even aside from the science is just the human part of resilience.

Greg: To tie up the episode. Elaine, what's one thing that you'd like our listeners to take away from today's podcast?

Elaine: I think the science is really compelling for sure, but everything that I've done in my work shows me a very simple idea about human resilience. You have to care about yourself and do things that will protect your health. And yes, some of that means building toughness and challenging yourself, but most importantly, it also means respecting recovery and rest.

And I think a lot of the research is focused on how can we make you tougher or what supplements can we give you to withstand this horrible thing, but rest and recovery and sleep are so important. And, respecting that part of it equally, I think is gonna really help people change their levels of tolerance and resilience long term.

Charlie: Great. Thank you so much, Elaine. It's been wonderful to chat to you. We will of course, link to all of your work on the podcast notes.

Elaine: Hey, thank you very much. Thanks for having me. I really appreciate this opportunity.

Greg: Thanks, Elaine.

Greg: Charlie, take it away with your takeaways.

Charlie: take her away. I felt quite a bit from her today actually. My notepad's quite full. Quite liked that she'd mentioned resilience is dynamic. It's both physical and mental. And resilience and longevity are intertwined. Uh, exercise. Love that, that featured so much. I should be pretty resilient with all the exercise I'm doing, but them, I'm a risking burnout. Who knows? I don't think I am. I think I'm all right. Um, but the most powerful tool is connection with people and the, psychological improvements it can have on stress and motivation. so yeah. Nice that you mentioned that. And the importance of recovery. Very, very important for us. Maybe I could bring the appetiser back. Oh yeah.

Greg: back the appetiser.

Charlie: Elaine said recovery. So two hour naps in the afternoon are back.

Greg: Well, that's what your whoop band was telling you anyway, while you're driving at.

Charlie: driving. Just go to sleep now. Okay. I'm sorry. I've got to leave my desk. Whoops. Told me I've got to have a nap. What are your takeaways from today?

Greg: Other than what you mentioned, I think: two themes. One is the overlap between mental and physical stress. You have to account for both. So if you're experiencing a really hard time psychologically, your tolerance for physical activity is going to go down. And the other is just considering the importance of context and how that changes over the course of your life.

Elaine's very busy. She's got young kids, she's writing grants, she's publishing scientific papers. And that is a different circumstance from where she might be in 30 years time as a retired person with grown up kids and more time on her hands. And you have to account for that. Obviously, you have to factor in things like age two, but just because something works for one person or one stage of your life, one season of your life, it doesn't mean that you're gonna get the same effects at a different time.

Charlie: Context.

Disclaimer: This information is for general educational purposes only and isn't a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always speak with a qualified healthcare professional first if you have concerns about your health.

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