Episode Details

“There are so many things that I would like to see in the future, including the outcomes of research into it. For instance, things like Tinder and the ways that young people find their partner for life. It's my impression from my broad network that very view of these digitalized friends or partner apps work simply because there are so many things that are important, in touch and smell and the direct nonverbal communication of the body also that you don't see in all these things, that's so extremely important. So I think that many of these apps will simply not survive. That's my optimistic view, again, because young people will learn that this is not the way that they get to the important things in life.

I think that from my perspective as a stress researcher, young people should engage in training themselves with meditation and think hard about what they want later in life. Not everything is about earning money. And I would like to see young people in schools be more in contact with nature. Go outside and see what nature does for you. I mean, for us. When I was younger it was so natural to go outside and play in the green. In this little village where I live, there are many places where the kids can play, but we never see them. In the last 20 years, we never see them outside. That cannot be good. They should go outside not only for their mental health, which reduces stress, but also to learn what nature does for their immune system when they play outdoors. And the other is to refrain from so much social media. It's so important. We have to get them off of their smartphones to learn to deal with the real world and find real friends.”

Dr. JF Brosschot is a professor of health psychology at Leiden University. He is one of the first to show that stress affects the immune system. Through his research of psychophysiological mechanisms of stress in daily life, while researching stress as a worldwide epidemic, Brosschot also recognizes the importance of where all this stress stems from and why this is happening. Now, his specific inquiry of how unconscious and prolonged physiological stress responses affect our mental and physical well-being has opened up the conversation to mental health and its tangible effects.

www.universiteitleiden.nl/en/staffmembers/jos-brosschot

www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast