Transcript: 

Welcome everyone. It's Dr. April Jasper. I'm the editor of Optometric Management magazine and I also have my own column, OD to OD. I want to introduce you to my latest article, which is "Open Your Eyes and Eliminate Bad Stress Starting Now." What really triggered this to be something I wanted to write about is that there's been a lot going on in life and I have a feeling most of you could say the same thing. And what's easy to let happen when you have challenges in life or even just obstacles—you can call them whatever you want—is to let those challenges and obstacles become moments of stress that can create a lot of challenge that is unnecessary.

And so as you think about how you can eliminate stress and therefore also avoid burnout—another topic that you can listen to Dr. Dori Carlson and I talk about—it is first important to recognize what stress is. I had a time in my life where I honestly didn't know what stress is. If you would have asked me if I was ever stressed out, I'd say absolutely not. Everything's awesome. And I had no idea that underneath what was going on and all that I was dealing with, I did have stress.

So think of stress this way. You have chronic stress, which is not something you want, which is consistently nagging at you behind the scenes, underneath everything that's going on in your life. And then you have the stress—which I love to mention—that is actually the stress that is good stress. It's the stress that is kind of your fight or flight response. And that's what triggers you to run when you're scared or to fly when you see something's coming that you need to get away from. So that kind of stress is not the one that I'm saying to avoid. You can't help that. It happens and you respond to it. But one of the things we can think about and another way that this all came to pass for me is I had a very dear friend that invited David and I to an event. We went to this event and the speaker was talking about brain health and how we can continue to age better and have better brain health. And what's cool is that a lot of the things he suggested were very similar to the ones that I've read about many times in the research I've done on Blue Zones.

The expert in that area is Dan Buettner, and if you go to Netflix, you can watch a whole series on the Blue Zones. But here it is. Are you ready? These are the things you want to be thinking about to avoid bad stress and have better aging and therefore live a better life. One, challenge your brain and continue to learn. I don't know what your passion is in learning, but whatever it is, maybe you can switch it from optometry or health care to antiques or golf or tennis or football. Challenge your brain to continue to learn.

And then the other thing you want to do to manage stress—one of the big things—is that you need to learn to say no to things that are not important. Don't be like I was in the past where anything anybody asked me, I felt like, "Oh my gosh, they must need me terribly. I'm going to say yes." Even when the reality was, it wasn't that type of situation, and I'm no good to anybody if I'm drained and unable to function. So say "no" to the things that are not important.

Next, I want you to get a good night's sleep at least 7 hours, and you need to cool your house to at least 69°. Some of the experts are saying 68°, 67°, because that's when you get the best sleep. I know that sounds crazy. You're listening to me thinking I'm full of it, but there's true research.

And then 2 more things I want to bring up before we close. One is to socialize with people who care about you. Don't just go out to dinner with anybody. I mean, you can if you want, but I want you to really spend time with people that care because being together, you know what it's like. You might not want to go, you might say no at the beginning. But then what happens? You say yes, you go, you do it, and you come home, and you go, "Wow, I'm so glad I went. I feel so much better." Socialize with people who care about you and are going to lift you up.

And then the final thing, eat light and eat well. That Thanksgiving dinner that tastes so good when you eat it, and then you feel miserable afterward, imagine if we do that every single time we eat a meal. Don't do it. Eat light and eat the right foods. And believe it or not, these things are tried and true. These things will make a difference. And here's the danger of not following this path. It has been found—and you can see it even in the Netflix series when they talk about the Blue Zones—that those original Blue Zones, there are 2 of them that are critically in danger of being taken off the list.

And the reason for that is that the younger generations following the path of their parents and their grandparents, they're adopting the Western ways, which aren't always the best thing. And so they're learning how to eat poorly. They're learning how to be stressed. They're learning how not to do the things that we need to do to eliminate the stress in our lives.

So thank you for reading the articles. We appreciate you so much. Hopefully these little tidbits that we're going to start bringing to you help to encourage you to go back and read the full article, and even better, go to the authors that we quote and talk about in a lot of the articles on OM and read what they have to say as well. I appreciate you. Thanks for being here with me and see you next time.

Be sure to also check out April's podcast, the Dr. April Jasper Show.