How One Simple Behavior Lowers Heart Rate, Blood Pressure, and Inflammation

0:00 So, what I'm going to tell you right now is so dangerous that I will not take any responsibility of what happens from this moment onward if any of you carry this out. Because you all know that I'm always looking for anti-inflammatory things because coronary artery disease, heart disease is an inflammatory process. So, in my inflammation search, I'm always looking at your diet. I'm always looking at time-restricted feeding. You sometimes inflammatory. at your microbiome. I'm looking at your micronutrients.

0:35 I'm looking at all these things, right? Because they cause inflammation. I'm looking at your fatty liver. I'm looking at your leaky gut. I'm looking at your your chemicals in your body. All these are anti-inflammatory. But I'm coming up with a series now called anti-inflammatory behavior. Because your behavior needs to be anti-inflammatory. Your behavior can be inflammatory. It can be anti-inflammatory. So, what am I talking about here? So, I stumbled upon all this in my research.

1:09 And I found that patients who came into the hospital having open-heart surgery were leaving the open-heart unit earlier when they had a whole bunch of relatives coming in there. And all of them were all over them touching them, kissing them, hugging them, and all that. I'm like And the guy got out of the hospital earlier than those who had only one visitor. Okay? And I also noticed that when patients come into my office and and and they I see a a couple that's that's constantly holding hands and I'm like They're holding hands all the time.

1:43 But then whatever I do for them, they get better. Faster than those who don't. >> >> I also noticed that people who have different ranks of work, whether they work at a high level where they have more more control over the decision-making, etc., etc. They tend to also do better than those who are given the same care, but they are at lower ranks and they have no control over their life. So, all this started making me think about behavioral things that actually translate into your biochemistry and become anti-inflammatory. And then I came across this one, which is very dangerous. And this is the ones that has to do with the C fibers. So, now pay attention here.

2:23 We found out that if you touch my shoulder over here, my brain will register touch. Somebody touched me here. But what we found out, and neuroscience has proven this now, that there are certain fibers here that are called the C tactile fibers. The C tactile fibers are in all of us. All of you have it. Some of you may deny it, but you got it. These C fibers go from the mid arm, over the shoulder, over the front, down to about the waistline, up to your neck over here, and all down your back, all the way down to here. That's it.

2:57 Now, these C fibers, what do they do? They register touch, but not like you touched me. The you don't feel that. And this happened when a lady lost her She had a stroke and she couldn't feel anything. And yet, when you touched her in those areas, she would register saying, "That felt really nice. I felt really safe. I felt very content." These fibers are called the C fibers and they go to different part of the brain. They don't go to your sensory cortex. They actually end up going to a part of your body which controls your emotional center and your paraventricular nucleus in the brain.

3:35 So, when it goes to that portion of the brain, it has a different function. And the function is one that gives you a sense of security, peace, comfort, non-confrontational. Science then went into it and worked out the chemistry of what's actually happening in the body when somebody touches you. It has to be the same temperature. It has to be a light, not a heavy one. So, it's right temperature and it has So, basically, you're talking about another human being.

4:07 Cuz if you put something cold over your chest, you're not going to get that same feeling. So, it turns out that these fibers are present in babies all the way through to the age of till you die. So, they don't attenuate as you get older. They're there all the time. So, in babies, they serve a function because when you cuddle the baby, how come the baby stops crying? How come the heart rate goes down? How come the baby feels comforted? It's because not because the baby's cognizing that, "Oh, yeah, my dad is holding me or a caregiver is holding me." The baby doesn't know anything. The but the baby's brain registers this contact. Do you get it? The C fibers are firing.

4:47 That baby is now registering an afferent coming in which you and I were never taught about. You were never taught about these fibers in your body. I wasn't taught about it. I did so much fellowship. These fibers give the patient that sensation of safety and it turns off the amygdala, which is your danger center. So, it has connections to the amygdala, which turns off that center, and it produces a hormone called oxytocin. >> >> Now, oxytocin gives the patient that sensation of trust, a feeling that I am safe. It turns off your default mode network of danger as well.

5:29 But, it also stimulates serotonin production. Also, when you stimulate this part of the brain, you get endorphins secreted into the patient's body. And also, you get connections to your parasympathetic nerve. So, you remember I always talk about the vagus nerve? Well, all of a sudden, the vagus nerve get fires up. Heart rate comes down. How Heart rate variability goes up. Blood pressure comes down. So, the patients are getting a anti-inflammatory effect. So, what's that got to do with immune cells? Well, when the vagus nerve fires, the acetylcholine has receptors on all your immunocytes as well. So, what happens to your immune system? It calms down. And what does Dr. Jay want with these patients?

6:11 He wants an immune system that's calmed down. So, it has an anti-inflammatory, which has been documented. Your NK cells actually fire better. So, therefore, NK cells are responsible for viruses and cancers. So, actually, those patients get less viruses, and those studies have been done. The people are holding, caressing each other, and you just do that as an experimental group one half, and one half doesn't, and then you give all of them the rhinovirus. That group will not have as bad a cold, or some of them may not even get a cold, and will recover much faster than those who who don't.

6:47 So, these cancer studies have already been done. Plus, if you do blood pressure recordings, heart rate recordings, cortisol levels, serotonin levels, and maybe even sleep, although I cannot say to that, cuz I haven't come across that study yet, but they probably even sleep better. These C fibers are present in all of us. It means that we need to go out and hug somebody. >> >> I told you, don't blame me tonight, okay? >> >> If you get into trouble.

7:20 But, you need to go out and hold somebody, and it's not just a a brief hug. It needs to be sustained. So, the magic number is 20 seconds. 30 seconds is even better, because it takes time for the chemicals to build up in your body. But, what it's trying to tell us is that these fibers don't attenuate over time. A baby needs to be felt comforted without it cognizing that I'm safe. So, nature built in a signal in that baby so the baby starts feeling comforted and feeling good because he can't think like you and me.

7:51 But we as adults can think. But that's our problem. We've become too smart for ourselves. So those if that was the case, then these fibers would have attenuated over time. But the tests have shown that 90-year-olds have the same system built into them as a child. So therefore, whether you're 90 years old or whether you are 9 days old, when you caress each other, hold each other, stimulate those fibers in the upper part of the torso, it produces a physiological reaction in the body and that's been documented. Your endorphin levels go up, documented interleukin-6 levels come down.

8:32 Tumor necrosis factor comes down. These are cytokines. Now, we go through millions of dollars of research to try to get drugs that do the same thing. And here, a hug can do the same thing. It'll bring your interleukin levels down. It'll bring down your tumor necrosis factors. NK cell function gets better. Your cortisol levels come down and you get more vagal nerve stimulation. Your heart rate comes down. Your heart rate variability increases. I I I don't see how I can bottle this up and sell it to people.

9:10 >> >> But on my way out, anyone wants a hug, I'll be standing down there. Thank you so much. >> >> THANK YOU. >> >> SO, IF YOU REALLY LIKED this video, here's another one that I think you'll really enjoy. And if you want to see one of my latest videos, click over here. And of course, don't forget to go to my website where you will see lots of educational resources and find out how you can arrange or book a consultation with me.