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in this box is a real preserved human brain named Betty and I think you should
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hold it oh my God it's wet and now we're going to go through all the tools and
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tricks to make your brain as healthy as it could be are you ready Wendy Suzuki
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the neuroscientist and professor at New York University whose firsthand research on the brain is helping to improve
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memory learning and higher cognitive abilities in humans let me start with exercise all the research shows the more
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you exercise the more change in your brain we notice every drop of sweat
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counted and the best kind of exercise that you can do is what about things
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that we consume food drink and alcohol if it's on the meditarranean diet go ahead
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[Music] coffee and then my memory is not great most people feel that but there's four
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things that you can do to make memories stick number one is is it true that if we have less friends then our brain will
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shrink yes loneliness damages the brain can you say if someone's in love in the brain yes in the side here a lot of the
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reward areas are activated doesn't that mean then that if we don't fall in love the love part of my brain gets smaller
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and would that make it more difficult to love in the future that's a great question so Wendy do you have any brain
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routines absolutely so every morning I like to oh and then I do the most powerful tool that you can do to protect
00:01:26
your brain from aging and neurodegenerative disease states which is
00:01:31
we've just hit 6 million subscribers on the D Co um so me and my team would like to do something we've never done before as little thank you and we're calling it
00:01:38
The dire of coo subscriber raffle and here is how it works every episode this month we're going to pick three current
00:01:44
subscribers at random and we'll send one of you a 1,000 voucher one of you tickets to come and watch the D SE
00:01:50
behind the scenes live with our team and one of you will have a 10-minute phone call with me to discuss whatever you want to talk about if you're a
00:01:57
subscriber you're in the raffle thank you from the bottom of my heart for allowing me to do something that me and
00:02:03
my team love doing so much it is the greatest honor of my lifetime and I hope it I hope it continues uh off into the
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Future Let's get to the [Music]
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episode you just said to me that much of your work is focused on making sure people have big fat fluffy brains yes
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why does that matter it matters because a big fat fluffy brain brain is a
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healthy brain and my whole first book healthy brain happy life was about how I
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learned to use all the tools and tricks and magic of neuroscience and psychology
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to make my brain work better and I so needed it at that moment my life got
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better I got happier it is a pathway to a happy life I think having a very
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healthy big fat fluffy brain do you think people appreciate the importance of that that brain no I think they
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ignore it all the time and I think that is part of my uh
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part of my message to everybody that that the human brain that is the one in your head right now is the most complex
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structure known to human kind not Einstein's brain not Marie K's brain but
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the one in your head and when you think about that it gives you more of a self
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appreciation of all of the computations that is taking for me to see you and
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appreciate your face and be able to remember your face next time I see you when I go to my diary of a CEO podcast
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and and choose an episode all of that is is such a complex structure um you start
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to appreciate your own kind of brain functioning more I think that's a very important thing to do why don't we
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appreciate our brains because we appreciate a lot of other things yeah we spend a lot of time on our like our
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muscles yeah our ABS yeah I think that that's a great analogy and
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part of my goal is to kind of shift the focus from focusing on certain body
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parts to focusing on what our brain is doing for us what it can do for us and
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what we can do to change your environments to get to that big fat fluffy brain to get it healthy to get it
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happy to get it growing if I achieve a big fat fluffy brain how would my life be different I'm
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saying me Steve Bart I'm I'm a podcaster I'm I'm an entrepreneur relationships I've Got Friends girlfriend family how
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would I show up differently if I was able to make my brain big fat and fluffy yeah so uh let me start with the two
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areas that we know respond really really well to things like meditation and
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exercise those two brain areas are the hippocampus critical for long-term
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memory your ability to form and retain new long-term memories and for facts and events and the second brain area is your
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prefrontal cortex right behind your forehead critical for your ability to shift and focus attention um it's
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important for your personality for decision making can you show me on there there's a you brought absolutely I brought a human brain you have bring
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that you have a model of a brain as well I have a model of the brain okay let's start with the model of the
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brain so here is a model of the human brain so there's a front part and a back
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part this front part is right behind our forehead that's the pre Al cortex
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critical for the ability to shift and focus attention also a part of the brain
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that is very responsive to what you bring into your life exercise actually
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really helps the prefrontal cortex meditation helps area 10 of the prefrontal cortex which is right in the
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very front right here the second brain area that you will benefit from when you
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make your brain big and fat and fluffy is a structure called the hippocampus which is which is very deep in this
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lobe deep in this lobe right here which is the temporal lobe the hippocampus
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hippocampus means seahorse and the hippocampus is critical for your ability
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to to form and retain new long-term memories for facts and events you have one on the right and you have one on the
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left so for you Superstar podcaster what do you need to do you need to remember
00:06:24
all the details of that guest that you're sitting in front of you need to be able to focus what did say what do I
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want to uh ask next and how do I want to come back to those things that is a combination of what your prefrontal
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cortex is doing for you and your hippocampus is doing for you so I submit
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that you when you do these things that we know from Neuroscience it are going
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to make your prefrontal cortex and your hippocampus big and fat and fluffy you will be better at doing your job as a
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podcaster I am better as a dean and a professor of Neuroscience and and
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teaching in class for example is where I'm using my prefrontal cortex in my hippocampus the most most of us would
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benefit from these things that make our brains big and fat and fluffy was there a point in your life where you had a
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personal Epiphany or Revelation about the brain that made you so passionate about the subject absolutely absolutely
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so this story starts when I was in the middle of getting tenure um at New York
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University so it takes six years uh you have six years to P prove yourself as a scientist and do something
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groundbreaking and if you don't you're fired so no big deal no pressure there
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and I decided to only just work work work work I didn't have a lot of social interactions I was just working and I
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just just threw myself into work and uh I was getting burnt out and um I decided
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to go on a river rafting trip to Peru by myself because I had no friends so i' go
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on the river rafting trip and and it's great it's beautiful we're river rafting we're we're camping on Aztec burial
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sites and it is just spectacular um but I realized that I'm the weakest person
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on this trip and when I got back after this wonderful you know two weeks in
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Peru I said I never want to feel like the weakest person on a trip like that again and it was so great to to be
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moving and to be exercising so I decided I'm going to go to the gym and I'm going to continue this physical activity at
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the gym and somehow it stuck I had I had let myself go not no exercise at all and
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when I started going to the gym regularly I noticed that that great mood
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that I found in Peru every day during the river rafting trip stayed with me I think everybody in my lab loved it when
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I was going to the gym and I started to notice not only I got stronger I was
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feeling better that mood boost that I got from physical activity was so
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powerful but then one day this you asked me about this Revelation I had it was
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one day I was sitting in my office riding a grant which is usually
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something that I have to do very regularly but usually something that I'm pulling my hair out it's so hard it's
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very competitive I'm competing against Nobel laurates for the same pot of money
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and I had this thought that went through my mind which was gosh writing went well
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today I I'd never had that thought before ever in my I'd been there for five years at at NYU writing grants and
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so um I um I thought oh maybe maybe I'm just having a good day I'm feeling good
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but I realized that the um the writing seemed to have been getting a little bit
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better over time I had noticed it a little bit if I think about it and the only thing I had changed in my life was
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regular physical activity inspired by that trip to Peru
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and so I'm a neuroscientist I went to the literature and I asked well what do we know right now about what exactly
00:10:05
exercise is doing and it showed at that moment in time about 10 15 years
00:10:12
ago that exercise can improve your mood exercise actually makes your memory work
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better and exercise improves the function of your prefrontal cortex and I
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thought wow that that is amazing but the last part of the story
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was was that when all of this was going on this was after this day of realizing
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gosh something's you know my writing is better and um maybe it's exercise um I
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got a call from my mom who said that my father wasn't feeling well and that he
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had gotten lost driving back from the coffee shop that he drove to every day
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every afternoon for the last 20 years and the hippocampus that structure
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critical for memory is particularly important important for spatial memory and as an expert in the hippocampus as I
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am I knew that that was a Telltale sign of dementia and maybe Alzheimer's
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dementia but as I talked to my father and of course we went and got him a neurology appointment I saw that
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everything that seemed to be improving in me that is memory Focus completely
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and very very suddenly uh diminished in him his memory was terrible he couldn't
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focus he was also very depressed because he could notice how poor his memory was
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and I think those things together what I was noticing in myself about the physical effects of U the effects of
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physical activity on my own brain function and seeing my father go through which what uh what was a really
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precipitous loss of his cognitive functions that turned out to be Alzheimer's
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dementia made me think that the power of physical activity needed to be explored
00:12:03
more deeply and by me I I was waking up in the morning thinking about what can
00:12:09
we what can I do to better understand how physical activity could be used not just for me for my students can they
00:12:15
study better can they learn better can it help maybe not my father I wasn't sure whether exercise could help my
00:12:21
father at that point but as people age that was the Revelation that I had that
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made me actually switch my research Focus from memory function to
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understanding the effects of physical activity on the brain all of this is rooted in
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a fact that was once not considered a fact which is the idea that our brains can change shape yes yeah this idea of
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brain plasticity I only really learned about this a couple of years ago because I think I like many people didn't realize that like muscles my brain
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changes shape based on what I do yes and also what I consume yes I guess yes what
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is the evidence or the studies that we have that proves our brains do change shape yeah that's such a great question
00:13:06
and uh it takes me back to the first day of my freshman year at UC Berkeley when I walked into the classroom I didn't
00:13:13
know it at the time but the classroom of the professor that discovered brain plasticity her name is Marian diamond
00:13:20
and she uh was the very first female PhD in neuroanatomy that UC Berkeley ever
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gave um I walked into her classroom in the 80s when I went to college but she
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discovered this in the late 1960s um when it was thought as you said
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that the adult brain can't change at all there's absolutely no evidence for it and that was true at the time she
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thought I don't think that's true let's let's do a simple experiment let's try
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and um uh look at the effects in two randomly grouped set of rats one that
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lives in what they would consider an enriched environment what would be an enriched environment
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well for her it was a rat cage full of toys that got changed out all the time lots of other rats to play with and um
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lots of lots of activity I think of it as the Disney World of rat cages and she
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compared the brains of those rats to rats that she raised in kind of a shoe box a smaller environment they got free
00:14:21
food and water all the food and water they could eat and drink but maybe only one other rat and no toys now if the
00:14:27
adult brat they were all the same age they were adults if the if the adult brain didn't change then there should be
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absolutely no difference between the brains raised in Disney World and the brains raised in the shoe box but she
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found that the the brains of those rats raised in the Disney World of rat cages
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the outer covering of the brain the outside of the brain here uh I'm pointing to the outside of this brain
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model here called the cortex it was actually thicker she was she was a
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neuroanatomist and she showed that the thickness of this outer covering actually grew what does that mean there
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were more synaptic connections there in not in the whole brain in certain brain
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areas that made sense the visual cortical area there was much more visual
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stimulation in the Disney World of rat cages the motor areas were thicker the somata sensory the touch areas were
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thicker because they were interacting in a much more complex way with their Touch
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system and that was the first demonstration the adult brain could change and that it would actually make
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the cortex of the brain grow and now we know what is it about the Disney World
00:15:39
of rat cages you know um is it the toys should we all be playing with toys later
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study showed that you get almost identical effects just by giving rats a
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running wheel physical activity is doing all of that has the potential to change
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all of that in the rodent brain and now in the human brain didn't they find something similar with um London taxi
00:16:04
drivers I always hear this I thought it was like a wasn't sure if it was true or like a rumor but no no no it's
00:16:10
absolutely true that is a different form of brain plasticity which is something
00:16:15
that we all do and my students do hopefully very well which is learning so can learning the Streets of London which
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are I can't remember the the the number of different streets that London taxi cab drivers have have to learn to pass
00:16:30
the famous test called the knowledge but I do remember that it takes them four
00:16:35
years to study for this test it is intense uh um knowledge you have to
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learn all the lawful ways to get from all the big landmarks to be a certified
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London taxi cab driver and what uh my colleague El Eleanor Maguire uh
00:16:53
professor of neuroscience at University College London did is she followed w be
00:16:59
London taxi cab drivers during their four years of the knowledge this test
00:17:05
for London taxi cab drivers knowing that half of them were going to fail they
00:17:10
they were not going to make it and so she tested them at the beginning and asked how is your memory uh and how big
00:17:16
is your hippocampus identical for all all of the uh wannabe London taat cab
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drivers before they started she scanned their brains yeah she scanned their brains and she tested their memory okay
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behaviorally then they go through half of them drop out they don't become London tax cab
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drivers and half of them become certified London taxic cab drivers after successfully learning all of this now
00:17:41
let's see how big is your hippoc campus and how good is your memory the people that passed the test and became London
00:17:48
tat cab drivers the posterior part of their hippocampus which is the part we know is important for it with posterior
00:17:54
is back towards the back of the head the posterior part of the hip of Campus which is kind of a cigar shaped
00:18:00
structure that goes from the front part of the brain to the back part of the brain that back part of the brain was
00:18:07
significantly bigger in those London successful London taxi cab drivers
00:18:12
compared to the failed London taxi cab drivers and the memory of the successful
00:18:20
London taxi cab drivers were now superior to the memory of the wannabe
00:18:25
London TX cab drivers that failed so that is example of how intense learning
00:18:32
in a particular part of the brain um uh we know the posterior hippocampus is absolutely involved in spatial learning
00:18:39
uh that can change the actual structure and the function how much of a difference can we make I'm 31 years old
00:18:46
now yeah so if I got serious about my brain health yeah how much of a
00:18:52
difference could I realistically see you know I'm trying to figure out if it's worth it yeah if it's worth caring about
00:18:59
my brain is is there any evidence within the literature within studies that have been done that show if I start now even
00:19:06
though I'm like 30 31 years old my life will be different in the future in the areas that I care about profoundly if I
00:19:13
start caring about my brain let me be very very um um concrete
00:19:20
here the answer is absolutely yes first I'm going to give you results of a study in people that are 65 and older so
00:19:27
studied people that are 6 65 and older and asked what is the probability of
00:19:33
getting dementia in the next six years depending on the level of activity that you have just right now physical
00:19:40
activity physical activity and they measured it in how many walks you take per week and if you took three walks a
00:19:48
week or more you were 30% less likely to
00:19:53
develop Dementia in the next 5 years so ooh 30
00:19:59
% uh less likely to develop dementia my father passed away of Alzheimer's
00:20:04
dementia that makes me sit up and take notice but the but the thing that should
00:20:09
make you as a 31-year-old uh really sit up and take notice is the larger
00:20:15
correlations that show that the longer you have regular physical activity in
00:20:20
your life the longer you're able to Stave off dementia the more active you
00:20:26
are over your lifetime um that first study shows that it's never too late to
00:20:31
start you can start walking regularly which is doable when you're uh perhaps at that age but the longer you stay
00:20:39
active the bigger and fatter and fluffier your brain will be why does
00:20:44
that make sense so one key piece of information that I haven't told you yet
00:20:49
is that we know that physical activity is releasing a every single time you
00:20:55
move your body you releasing a whole bunch of neuro chemicals in your brain
00:21:00
some of them make you just feel good serotonin dopamine noradrenaline endorphins yeah I feel good if I go out
00:21:07
for a walk I feel better than if I had been sitting here for eight hours but the other thing that gets released every
00:21:12
single time is growth factors I like to call it a bubble bath of neurochemicals that happens every time you move your
00:21:20
body what that growth factor does is it goes directly into your hippocampus and
00:21:26
it helps brand new cells grow GR in your hippocampus the hippocampus is only one
00:21:31
of two total brain areas where new cells can grow that's not the same as synapsis
00:21:37
which are Connections in the cells that are already there but the hippocampus can grow new cells and this is really
00:21:43
important because many people know that the hippocampus is attacked first in
00:21:49
Alzheimer's dementia and so exercise is not going to eliminate that disease
00:21:55
state but if you start with a huge fluffy hippocampus it's going to take that disease that much longer to
00:22:02
actually damage enough of your hippocampus so that you start seeing those telltale signs of memory
00:22:08
impairment that comes with Alzheimer's disease and and dementia in general same
00:22:13
thing with their prefrontal cortex your prefrontal cortex can grow with uh physical activity that's not neurons but
00:22:20
new synapses can grow age and neurod degenerative disease states can damage
00:22:26
cells but also take away synapses I've got two questions on that so the first is about dementia and Alzheimer's do we
00:22:32
know what's causing it no we still don't know no and there's not good drugs
00:22:39
unfortunately right now there's a lot of links to lifestyle choices though right yes absolutely and so of course from
00:22:48
based on what I just said my number one most powerful tool that you can do to
00:22:54
protect your brain from aging and neurodegenerative disease States is start walking why do I start with that
00:23:01
because everybody can walk you don't need to buy any new fitness outfits just
00:23:06
go out and walk more and then they say oh well do I have to become a marathon runner that could help too but everybody
00:23:13
can walk and from that study that I mentioned in the 65y olds 30% reduction
00:23:20
in um the probability of getting Alzheimer's with just walking you said that if I go and start walking and I do
00:23:27
exercise my prefrontal cortex will grow which is the decision- making center
00:23:32
right yes so does that mean then that if I am somebody who is very sedentary I
00:23:38
don't do much physical activity that my decision making will be worse compared to what it could be with the same person
00:23:44
if they're active yes I mean that there is that potential brain plasticity and
00:23:50
the Neuroscience of brain plasticity tells us that absolutely with physical activity uh you have great potential to
00:23:57
improve the function of your prefrontal cortex and I must specify a little bit
00:24:02
uh the main function that is um that has been shown to be particularly sensitive
00:24:07
to regular physical activity is um shifting and focusing your attention so being able to um listen to me while you
00:24:15
might be paying attention to uh the AV guy that might be telling you something right now so to be able to do that
00:24:21
effectively uh that that is one of the things that we know is helped with regular physical activity focus and
00:24:26
attention that kind of thing okay you talked about memory as well is that does that exist in the prefrontal cortex as well uh there's a form of memory working
00:24:33
memory uh which is kind of scratch Pad memory it's a Memory that um when we used to have to remember telephone
00:24:39
numbers that that ability to remember a Sev digigit at least in the United States telephone number it's different
00:24:45
from long-term memory formation which is memory for facts and events uh that is
00:24:50
dependent on the hippocampus I feel like my memory is not great most people feel
00:24:56
that why is my memory not as good as other people because I I noticed this
00:25:03
when I I was with my friend in um Thailand many years ago I think I was 21 years old and we could like leave the
00:25:09
house and go on our little mopeds for about an hour yeah and he could navigate us back home without needing satav or
00:25:16
Google Maps and if I go three minutes down the street I'm lost and I always wondered why that was is it and then
00:25:22
even with names and stuff I would always he's my best friend he still is one of my best friends for for seven eight years we ran a business together and he
00:25:29
would remember every name of every person and I couldn't I wouldn't and so I'd always T to him and say what was
00:25:35
that person's name again what's that you know and I always wondered why my memory he seemed to have this incredible memory and mine seems to be pretty
00:25:43
rudimentary I would argue that um yeah everybody has parts of their memory that
00:25:48
aren't as good as they want but also other forms of memory that they're very
00:25:53
good at so I would guess I've only just met you today that you're memory for
00:25:59
stories and storytelling and story progress is excellent because it has to
00:26:04
be for the job that you do I bet you it's much better than your friend that can navigate back not everybody has a
00:26:11
perfect memory in all the different dimensions and and it's like our personality some people have a wonderful
00:26:17
sense of humor and others don't um it is about how our brains are wired which is
00:26:22
defined both by nature and nurture our genes and you know if I if I went to uh
00:26:28
stand up comedy class I would probably get funnier but um uh but there's probably a limit to my funniness
00:26:34
compared to other people so there's different types of memory yes in your book you talk about there being I think
00:26:40
is it three different types of memory in total that are formed in the hippocampus there's lots of different names for
00:26:46
forms of memory in the hippocampus um but I like to describe it as the hippocampus is critical for our memory
00:26:53
for facts and and events um also called declarative memory or COG itive memory
00:26:59
uh another form of memory that's dependent on a completely different structure is motor memory the memory
00:27:05
that you uh use to learn how to play tennis or pickle ball or whatever you're playing and it's not declarative I can't
00:27:11
declare how I do a backhand in in in tennis but it is in your motor functions
00:27:17
and and this is dependent on the striatum a motor related structure and then there's the prefrontal cortex
00:27:23
dependent on that working memory or scratch Pad memory keeping things in mind so um you and I are both trying to
00:27:30
remember what we've just said so we can we can link it to things that we might say in the future one of things that I
00:27:36
found really interesting both as a marketeer but also as a podcaster and as someone that's making a lot of content
00:27:42
and trying to get people's attention was as I was reading through your work it became quite clear to me that there's a
00:27:48
bit of an overlap between memory and attention in in many respects because absolutely you were talking about these
00:27:53
four things that make facts or events memorable yes and many of those things are things that I think about as a
00:28:00
marketeer when I'm trying to get someone to you know engage with something click on something buy something yeah what are
00:28:05
those four things okay can we go through them absolutely so I like to say there
00:28:10
are four things that make memory stick and this is after 25 or 30 years
00:28:16
studying the hippoc campus and and how memories work number one is obvious repetition okay you you remember things
00:28:22
with repetition number two not as obvious Association the hippocampus is
00:28:28
an associative structure it Associates one thing with the other uh for example
00:28:33
your name and your face so I'm I've just met you and I I will remember your name and your face now but it also helps you
00:28:41
remember things like who's married to each other associating the husband with the wife uh have you heard of The Memory
00:28:48
Palace uh yes yes so this is a technique that has been used for many many ages uh
00:28:55
to help remember things and it is a strategy where you picture a spal
00:29:02
location that's very familiar to you like your childhood home when you need to remember a list of items you take an
00:29:10
imaginative walk through that very familiar environment and place those items in particular locations in the
00:29:18
environment that is associating something really familiar your childhood home you know every corner of it with
00:29:25
the new thing you need to remember and that works uh and has worked for memory champions for many years because the
00:29:32
hippocampus Associates things together that's number two Association number
00:29:38
three is novelty we remember novel things I've never been to this
00:29:43
particular Studio ever before in my 26 years in New York and Brooklyn so this
00:29:48
is a novel thing and I I will remember coming here uh to do this podcast with you our brains and this is where it
00:29:56
interacts with the attention system our attention system focuses on things that
00:30:01
are novel why because it could be dangerous if I've seen it things over
00:30:06
and over and over again I don't notice them they go into the background it's not going to hurt me any you know it's
00:30:12
not it's not going to cause me any danger cliche that's why cliche doesn't work in marketing exactly yeah and so
00:30:19
but something novel oo that really uh perks people up I use that in my
00:30:24
teaching all the time surprise students uh with uh an element of what you want
00:30:30
them to learn and they will remember it better but the fourth one which is so powerful and we know it intuitively we
00:30:38
understand this intuitively is emotional resonance makes things more memorable we
00:30:45
remember the happiest and the saddest things in our lives because that
00:30:51
emotional resonance is solidifies those memories where does that come from it
00:30:56
comes from a structure called the amydala that sits right in front of the hippocampus right in the front of the
00:31:01
temporal lobe right here and the hippocampus is right behind it amydala me means almond it's an almond shaped
00:31:08
structure and it sits right in front of um the kind of tube shaped structure that is the hippocampus behind it and
00:31:15
the amydala is kind of infusing uh the hippocampus and kind of getting giving
00:31:20
it a little jolt when it's emotionally resonant either really happy or really
00:31:26
sad you brought with you what you've told me is a real human brain yes I did now I'm
00:31:34
not sure if you're just whining me up but we're talking here about novelty and surprise and that's right things you'll
00:31:40
never forget an emotional resonance correct and as you're saying that I was conscious that over in the corner of the room it appears that there's a human
00:31:46
brain in a box so Jack is just bringing the human brain in yes I've never seen a
00:31:52
human brain before you've never seen that's why I brought you gloves so you can hold it if you like if you like do
00:31:59
you have permission to if there is a human brain in this box and you're not winding me up did you have to get
00:32:04
permission from the owner of that brain so um this was purchased uh lawfully um
00:32:13
by my department the center for neural science at New York University so it is lawfully ours to use as a teaching tool
00:32:22
and it does bring enormous novelty to any situation that I go into and makes
00:32:28
people really think about their brain in a new way which is why I bring it what is in that box in this box is a real
00:32:37
preserved human brain named Betty was the person who used to own
00:32:44
that brain called Betty no we don't know the name of the person I named this
00:32:49
brain Betty so can can you tell if it's a man or a woman no I can't ah man men
00:32:55
and women brains not different at all they are but in very very very subtle ways that we wouldn't be able to tell
00:33:00
just looking at the the outside of the brain like this okay I'm ready are you ready I think
00:33:06
so okay so I'm going to open the Hat Box no way is that I'm
00:33:14
going pull out are you joking is that really a brain it is a real preserved
00:33:21
human brain there it is frontal lobe frontal
00:33:28
lobe occipital lobe for vision occipital lobe back there and in this brain I
00:33:35
don't know if you can see it from over there if I pull apart the two hemispheres you can see how
00:33:41
deep the the folds of the brain the surface is folded in that deep into the
00:33:49
brain which expands the surface area of the outside of the cortex the rat cortex
00:33:56
is flat there's no folds humans and elephants and dolphins have lots of
00:34:04
folds they have much higher capacity for computation because of the folds that
00:34:10
you see in this brain it's smaller than I was expecting really half the people say it's smaller half the people say wow
00:34:16
that's that's enormous interesting is that the the color of a brain the color of the brain is darker than the real
00:34:23
brain if we opened up my head right now um because of the form alahh the the
00:34:29
preservative chemical that this has been sitting in for at least 26 years this brain has been in my department for ever
00:34:37
since I got here 26 years ago I feel like I probably should hold it I think you should hold
00:34:48
it oh my God sweat
00:34:54
yes so I mean that that has that defined this person's whole life how they saw
00:35:03
felt smelled uh heard and thought about the
00:35:08
world just right there in your one hand in your right hand it's crazy to think
00:35:13
that this little thing is oh it's different underneath yes it's crazy to
00:35:18
think that this little thing this little that's the start of the spinal cord right there that you're pointing at
00:35:25
and there's stuff at the underneath at the back this that is the cerebellum uh brain structure critical for fine motor
00:35:33
movement um so we wouldn't be able to walk smoothly if you have damage in your
00:35:38
cerebellum isn't it interesting that like everything as you say everything
00:35:43
this person worried about every thought every memory every relationship all of
00:35:48
their education the school they went to the university everything they saw and remembered and all of their trauma y and
00:35:58
their anxiety and maybe their depression everything they went through
00:36:04
even their last days before they died is like captured in this little ball of like tofu yep sits in my hand an entire
00:36:12
human being's existence it's true what they watched on TV their favorite movie their favorite number color everything
00:36:19
is in this tiny little bowl of tofu it's true
00:36:27
oh gosh it is amazing and actually in real life firm tofu is the consistency
00:36:34
of of the brain I often bring in a um you know a block of of firm tofu um when
00:36:41
I demo this for students in addition to Betty do you remember the first time you
00:36:46
saw a human brain I do did it change how you think about your own brain it
00:36:52
changed my life because I was like I want to study that that is the coolest
00:36:59
thing that I've ever seen in my whole life and I want to study that and I want
00:37:05
to be just like her and um and so it it really like okay now I I decided this is
00:37:12
what I want to do and it was it was it was
00:37:18
life-changing I say that because we you know at the start of this conversation we said that most of us don't appreciate our brain a lot of people don't even
00:37:24
realize it's there but the minute I had a brain scan one day and that brain scan
00:37:29
really changed my life because seeing my own brain for the first time it was the push that I needed to start caring more
00:37:36
about how my decisions and behaviors are impacting it so let's talk about how I can make that ball of tofu in my head
00:37:41
super healthy super big fat and fluffy you talked about exercise earlier on but we didn't really dig dig into exactly
00:37:48
what you mean by exercise because exercise I think is multifaceted and definition what kind of exercise should
00:37:54
I be doing to make my ball of tofu in my head great yeah optimal mhm well all the
00:38:02
research shows that the best kind of exercise that you can do is anything
00:38:07
that gives you aerobic activity that is getting your heart rate up so that that
00:38:13
goes for you know power walking will get your heart rate up soccer so many different things name your activity so
00:38:20
many people want to say oh my favorite activity will that work and I always just say is it is your heart rate up
00:38:26
when you're doing it if the answer is yes then yeah that that works great we know that that level of aerobic activity
00:38:32
is critical because that's going to release that growth factor maximally to get into your hippocampus uh that will
00:38:39
grow those new brain cells how much so um I have an answer to that so um we did
00:38:46
two different experiments in my lab one in um low-fit people people that are really not exercising very much at all
00:38:53
less than 30 minutes um um in the last three three weeks you you've uh moved
00:38:59
your body and um we asked what could we see any behavioral Improvement in your
00:39:06
memory function from your hippocampus or your uh ability to shift and focus attention if we ask you to move your
00:39:13
body in an aerobic way for two to three times a week and we collaborated with a spin class so clearly very aerobic and
00:39:21
what we found was in those people that did successfully do two to three times a
00:39:27
week of 45 minute aerobic activity their mood got significantly better their
00:39:33
memory function got better and their ability to shift and focus attention got
00:39:38
significantly better so that gives a little bit of a guideline for low-fit people two to three times a week can
00:39:45
start to give you some of those some of those cognitive changes but you don't
00:39:50
look low fit so let me let me answer the question you're about to ask me with like what about me I I exercise pretty
00:39:56
regularly and um how much how much do I need so to answer that question we went
00:40:02
to another spin studio and we said look we're going to give you free classes you could exercise as much as you want in
00:40:09
this in this um at this studio and uh um go up to seven times a week and the
00:40:16
control was just stay the same you know you they were they were working out twice a week at at the studio control
00:40:21
was the other group that were you were testing them against yes exactly and so what we found was
00:40:28
basically every drop of sweat counted the more you exercise the more change in
00:40:34
your brain we noted both your hippocampal function prefrontal function and mood if you you were already getting
00:40:42
benefit you know you're already going twice a week but the more you did the more brain changes you got so that that
00:40:50
doesn't give the formula that I would like but we were heading in that direction which is part of one of the
00:40:55
questions that I want to answer but I love to leave people with the idea that every drop of sweat counts for building
00:41:03
your brain into the big fat fluffy brain that you really want and then in the real world again
00:41:10
making it super um real for people yeah how how does that change how I show up
00:41:17
yeah if you allow it to should have a beautiful effect on your mindset um that
00:41:23
your mindset around um how often should I take wake up an 30
00:41:31
minutes early and do that walk before I start my day or accept the the
00:41:36
invitation to go uh walk the dog with with a neighbor um it's not an obligation it is something that you're
00:41:43
doing for yourself it is going to have direct benefits on that ball of tofu as
00:41:48
you call it in your head it's going to make it work better and and I mean I
00:41:53
think the most immediate thing that I benefit from every single day say is the mood boost that you get from that
00:42:00
serotonin dopamine nor adrenaline that gets released every time you move your body I always think that because obviously I do a lot of podcasting and
00:42:07
it's I'm super reliant on my brain being attached to my mouth and sometimes I notice that it's not you know what I
00:42:12
mean like sometimes I'm not articulate I can't get my thoughts together whatever yes and I always try and figure out the correlation between what I did that day
00:42:18
when I have a good day versus a bad day and I've from from your and also I speak on stage sometimes so I've often asked
00:42:25
myself because I saw Tony Robbins the speaker one day on a trampoline before he goes up on stage I ask myself okay
00:42:32
should I be doing a workout in my green room before I go up on stage for a big talk or presentation you think I should
00:42:38
oh yeah absolutely what's the basis of that in science and a science uh it's the basis is that immediate effect so
00:42:45
there's three key effects that we know happen every time you move your body first one is mood you're going to get
00:42:51
your dopamine your serotonin up um second is focus and attention so so as
00:42:57
single workout isn't going to make more synapses in your prefrontal cortex but the prefrontal cortex uses dopamine and
00:43:04
so um it's clear that even a single workout can make your prefrontal cortex
00:43:09
work better in terms of focus attention also very important anytime you're speaking and the third is reaction time
00:43:15
your reaction time it you know motor your you're you're working your motor cortex when you move your body and your
00:43:22
response and reaction time is significantly shorter after a even a single workout compared to if you just
00:43:29
don't work out and sit sit um alone so great great things to do a great thing
00:43:35
to do before you you stand up and speak what about
00:43:41
coffee I I'm trying to figure out if coffee is good for my brain bad for my brain I've had a couple of mixed
00:43:48
messages around the impact it might be having yeah you know caffeine is a
00:43:53
stimulant and uh people respond to that kind of stimulant uh in different ways
00:43:59
overstimulation with caffeine is is not good for your your ability to put words
00:44:04
together you know this is where I turn to a a main theme in in my book healthy
00:44:10
brain happy life with this which is self-experimentation for you how what
00:44:16
can you titrate your coffee to see what level of coffee is best for whatever
00:44:23
your podcast or you're giving a talk the other thing that can work similarly to coffee that that I've
00:44:30
started uh and that I do every morning is um hot cold contrast showers because
00:44:35
that cold that you shower on yourself after the heat um stimulates adrenaline
00:44:42
in you a natural adrenaline o it wakes you up and okay it was painful the first
00:44:49
kind of few times I tried it but then you get addicted to it and I have forgotten to do it and gotten back in
00:44:56
the show hour just to douse myself with cold water because I feel better when I
00:45:02
do that for for you know first thing in the morning so lots of different things that one can explore with okay on the
00:45:09
other side of the coin then what are some of the central behaviors that people do that destroy their
00:45:16
brain well sedentary behavior is one of them um not getting enough sleep is
00:45:24
critical we haven't talked about sleep yet sleep is so important for normal
00:45:29
functioning of the brain I like to scare my students by saying that um you know
00:45:35
in torture situations if you deprive a person of sleep for too long they literally die they they they die you
00:45:42
cannot function if you are deprived of sleep for too many hours in a row it's
00:45:47
that critical yet we don't we we happily you know watch too much Netflix at night and and and and get only five hours of
00:45:54
sleep when we could have had eight so um what's happening exactly why is it so important well there's um there's so
00:46:01
many different things I'm going to I'm going to say two one is that we know that in regular um um healthy sleep
00:46:10
there is activity in the hippocampus that helps you strengthen the memories that you have formed in that previous
00:46:17
day it's called consolidation and it's so important if you shorten that if you don't get enough you are not
00:46:23
consolidating your normal everyday memories and second it is uh the time
00:46:29
during sleep when all the metabolites all that garbage that your brain is producing because all biological cells
00:46:36
produce garbage it get kind of um cleaned up um through the cerebral spinal fluid that that is flowing
00:46:43
through your brain and if you do not get enough sleep you build up garbage metabolites in your brain it's like you
00:46:50
have a gunky brain and do you feel like I feel like I have gunk in my brain when I don't sleep enough that is exactly
00:46:56
what is what is happening when you think about um things that we consume you know like food and drink and alcohol and all
00:47:04
these kinds of things is there is there anything that if I'm trying to have an optimal brain I should be yeah having or
00:47:09
not having yeah well so um I think the most evidence is around the benefit of
00:47:18
the Mediterranean diet which is basically all healthy uh um kind of
00:47:23
organic not organic but nonprocessed is the word I was trying to think of things
00:47:29
to eat that are very very colorful there is so much evidence about how good that
00:47:34
is generally for the brain that that is my go-to like what should I eat well is
00:47:41
it on the Mediterranean diet if it is then go ahead if it's too processed only
00:47:46
do it just a little bit is it true that if we have less friends if we have less
00:47:51
strong relationships if we're lonely yeah then our brain will shrink and is more prone into dementia and Alzheimer's
00:47:58
and things like that yes we are social creatures and um there are uh really
00:48:05
powerful studies that have shown the correlation between the number of social connections that we have including just
00:48:11
saying hello to the Barista at Starbucks it's not a close friendship that you
00:48:17
develop over 30 years it's it's just how many people you interact with and greet
00:48:22
and Longevity the more people you are regularly interacting with the longer
00:48:28
you are living overall longevity but if you go into brain health absolutely it's
00:48:34
also very very healthy for you it also brings happiness so uh friend and
00:48:40
colleague of mine um Robert wallinger uh studied um what makes people happy the
00:48:45
study started in the 20s 1920s in Harvard and after all of those many many
00:48:51
many decades the answer is what brings happiness is a strength of your Social
00:48:58
connections so it makes you happier it makes you live longer and and uh yes loneliness on the on the um flip side
00:49:05
causes stress uh long-term stress that that damages the brain and uh yeah in
00:49:11
the long term can can make it smaller and uh less healthy do you have any
00:49:16
brain routines like like a morning routine for your brain absolutely so every morning I like to wake up and I do
00:49:23
a um tea meditation which is a meditation over the brewing and drinking
00:49:28
of tea and this is after many years of yo-yo meditating I knew meditation was
00:49:33
good but I just couldn't really get into it and um I was introduced to this form
00:49:39
of meditation um from uh by a monk who who invited me to Tea and and just did
00:49:46
this silent meditation outside in a beautiful location and the ritual and
00:49:52
the um um the sequence of Brewing drinking seeping uh re starting over again kind
00:50:00
of kept me in kept me in the flow and so I start with about a 45 minute tea
00:50:05
meditation uh then I do about a 30 minute workout I try and do cardio strength sometimes I do yoga sometimes I
00:50:11
just do Mobility um and then I have breakfast and then I go to work oh and then I I do
00:50:17
that H hot cold contrast shower is also something very helpful for my brain
00:50:22
health because it it really does in me that adrenaline boost that I get just
00:50:28
energizes me and I love that feeling at the beginning of the day just going back to that question because I want to close off on it as well the the idea of what
00:50:34
would I have to do to destroy my brain so no sleep yeah I'm GNA be sedentary
00:50:39
yeah I'm GNA have no friends yeah and smoking smoking is very bad for your
00:50:45
health and and your brain okay um alcohol alcohol I mean yes long-term
00:50:52
alcohol can cause significant and named Brain disas diseases um moderation even
00:50:59
moderation now Studies have shown is not very good and the reason why it's not good is that alcohol disrupts your sleep
00:51:06
even though people drink it to to go to sleep faster the sleep is much more
00:51:12
superficial and is not deep and it's not the healthy sleep so that is uh not good
00:51:18
overall for your for the for Sleep um depth and and health and therefore brain
00:51:24
health I'm going to eat a processed diet to hurt my brain and I'm not going to have a lifestyle that is novel because
00:51:33
we talked about learning right yes so I'm not going to learn anything new all of these things should shrink that
00:51:39
little you're not going to be mindful also does mind is there is there evidence that being mindful which is
00:51:45
like meditation and being in the moment helps the brain it does uh there's
00:51:50
beautiful studies showing brain plasticity um in the areas that are
00:51:56
important for focused attention meditation the practice of meditation is basically a practice of um enriching the
00:52:03
function of your prefontal cortex so you can focus on that object either the breath or or um loving kindness is is a
00:52:11
form of meditation so yes there there's been studies that brain changes um occur
00:52:17
in long-term meditators that are that are absolutely beneficial what if I'm on social media all the time because isn't
00:52:24
that good for me because I'm going to be seeing lots of new things all the time and I'll be learning lots of new things so isn't if I sat on a on a screen for
00:52:31
seven hours a day is that good for my brain social media does that take you away from real people and interacting
00:52:37
with real people yes okay then then it's modulated by that the same thing there's
00:52:44
a difference and I think your brain knows it and um look there's there's
00:52:49
enormous amounts of evidence showing that the increase in use of social media
00:52:55
um especially in young kids uh correlate with huge increases in depression and
00:53:01
anxiety levels particularly in young girls so when when kids started getting
00:53:07
the smartphones and started to spend more and more seven hours a day on social media that's when the anxiety and
00:53:14
depression went up that's for young kids I use social media as well as a tool for
00:53:20
business that is a little bit different I'm not 13 years old and you're not 13 years old so so you know there there's
00:53:27
some warnings I think that need to go into into that but but let me let me be
00:53:32
clear no it's not the same social media is not the same as social interactions
00:53:38
face Toof face with people are you are you concerned about what social media is doing to our brains yes because we you
00:53:44
know I we hear those stats around you know young young girls are struggling most with social media and we think to
00:53:49
ourselves well that's because there's a lot of like comparison and all these kinds of things and there's a lot of like toxic messaging and such but
00:53:57
if we think about the physiological consequences of social media what it's actually doing to our brains at a
00:54:02
chemical level yeah what what would you as a neuroscientist guess is that like is the
00:54:08
physiological harm to the brain not the sort of psycholog I'm thinking about like not the psychological okay oh my God she's more this than me but like the
00:54:15
physiological harm but the psychological harm causes stress stress releases
00:54:21
stress hormone that goes into the brain that at too high and too constant a level can start to First damage
00:54:28
connections and then kill cells so it's it's intertwined um there and that that
00:54:34
is part of of what is happening um you can't you know pull one one away from
00:54:40
the other because all you know we social media is designed to kind of it's like pulling the slot machine handle I pull
00:54:45
down on the feed and I get ping oh look there's a nice picture and oh ping there's notifications and comments Etc
00:54:51
it's that con you know I think about the constant they say there's constant dopamine here
00:54:56
they refer to is it a dopamine hit is that's what happening when we're being stimulated by social media or a slot machine yes and is there is there any
00:55:03
harm in just a constant dopamine hit all day every day well I would not I'm going to answer that question by saying I
00:55:10
would not want to be addicted to gambling that gambling is addictive it
00:55:16
it's hard to get away you you you lose all these other things that we just decided were all good for you including
00:55:22
sleep including social connections um including exercise and I think that's
00:55:27
part of what social media is doing for our young kids is not good that they're not joining teams outside to be social
00:55:34
and interactive in uh in that kind of now it seems like an oldfashioned way
00:55:40
but it's very very powerful way for development um and brain health I think
00:55:46
I'm addicted to my phone and I I often ask myself is that is that a problem and from what you said
00:55:53
it sounds like the problem is what I sacrifice yeah through that like addiction to that device yes is that
00:55:59
that the issue the issue is I sacrifice social connections maybe movement yeah you know although I do work out every
00:56:05
day but the brain is smart enough to know that there's no substitute for real human connections absolutely absolutely
00:56:14
and that's going to make me what I'm trying to I I need you to help me scare
00:56:20
me out of this phone addiction that I think I have but I know many other people have as well
00:56:26
so that is going to limit your potential for brain growth for for brain
00:56:32
plasticity it is going to limit your possibility for for you
00:56:39
know not to be dramatic but joy in in your life there's different kinds of joy that you have in in real
00:56:47
person-to-person social interactions that it feels pretty good on social media if you get lots of likes and you
00:56:53
know um but it's not the same and and um I would I would say that to scare
00:57:00
yourself out you're going to have to bite the bullet and do a twow week phone
00:57:07
detox what would that do to you how would you feel I just could never imagine such a thing well which is a
00:57:15
real shame isn't it really because I just think about like my ancestors and my parents they must they must think I'm so strange but it's just the just the
00:57:22
way that like when my phone dies I'm like it's like I'm like nervously waiting for it to come back on I'm like
00:57:28
staring at it like oh my God like what am I going to do with myself like uh and I remember those studies they did on
00:57:34
people where they gave them the choice of either sitting alone with their own thoughts or giving themselves an
00:57:40
electric shock and a huge amount of people in that study actually would rather give themselves an electric shock
00:57:46
than just sit alone with their thoughts because it's some kind of stimulation that's kind of how I think I am now like
00:57:51
I don't know what I'd do without my phone it's really sad I know there's people listening to me now that think I'm an absolute like
00:57:56
I'm really sad but it's just the N it's the truth you know and um I do wonder what it's doing to my
00:58:02
brain but I think you're right I think it's actually what it's doing to my like my life yeah the joy the connections the
00:58:09
being being there to experience things and um I mean that point that you made
00:58:15
is a very profound one um the the not wanting to be alone with your thoughts
00:58:22
is the core of meditation can you be be alone with your thoughts and focus on
00:58:29
something something organic usually the breath but also a thought like loving
00:58:34
kindness um that is a very powerful practice to do and it and it's hard I
00:58:39
find it hard too um and I actually notice I find it harder when I'm when
00:58:45
I'm using social media and when I'm using my phone more um but I feel most creative and most
00:58:53
imaginative when I do practice that that is being alone with my thoughts what
00:59:00
comes into mind um how how does my own imagination work which is very much
00:59:06
dependent on the hippocampus as well it's putting together all these things in your memory and new and interesting
00:59:12
ways that are unique for you or unique for me and it doesn't work the same if
00:59:17
you are stimulating your brain with social media all the time you um I mean you wrote a book that kind of speaks to
00:59:23
what we're talking about here you wrote a book about anxiety yes yes I did 2021 yeah I think the the US version is
00:59:29
called good anxiety isn't it slightly different title in the US in the UK yeah why did you write a book about
00:59:35
anxiety I wrote a book about anxiety because I started to notice my
00:59:41
students getting much more anxious than they ever used to be and this was before
00:59:46
the pandemic I mean I I I had the idea to write this book in 2018
00:59:53
2019 and so first I noticed in the the students they were getting so stressed out before finals they never did that
00:59:59
before so so many accommodations they were asking for and I'm like what's going on here but then I realized it
01:00:06
wasn't just them like I'm getting more anxious as well my friends are more anxious and I really wanted to dive into
01:00:13
that I didn't want to be anxious in that way uh because part of me was like oh I'm just New Yorker I'm just anxious all
01:00:19
the time right because that's what New Yorkers are no this has changed and we
01:00:25
forget that before the pandemic there was there was still global warning warming there was still political issues
01:00:30
that that lots of people including me and all of my students were worried about and that was the impetus for for
01:00:37
trying to dive in and ask well I made my life happier with exercise what what is
01:00:44
the approach when it's anxiety and not clinical anxiety I did not have clinical anxiety and the vast majority of my
01:00:50
students didn't have clinical anxiety they had what I called everyday anxiety just worried about the things that are
01:00:57
going on in the world and there were just more things to be worried about is that normal is that human that is human
01:01:03
absolutely but is it human in the in is the quantity in which we experience it
01:01:09
human uh I think it is I mean because I think about my ancestors I go they they probably I don't know I always imagine
01:01:15
my ancestors kind of I don't know just chilling you know like but they didn't have they didn't have global warming
01:01:20
where the ocean is about to you know get sucked up in plastic and and the the
01:01:26
ozone is gonna come come down no worries like that at all but the everyday
01:01:31
anxiety for me is like emails and what's up well by everyday
01:01:36
anxiety I mean the anxiety that people are feeling today that is not at the
01:01:42
clinical level so all the things that we just me mentioned global warming and wars in multiple places in the world all
01:01:49
of that contributes to the higher level of anxiety and your ancestors in mine
01:01:55
went through two world wars but and that was anxiety-provoking no question about
01:02:00
it but they weren't also all the other things that were um you know
01:02:05
contributing to it including the higher than you know extremely high anxiety and
01:02:11
suicide levels of our young people that are you know that strongly linked to
01:02:17
social media so that's that's another element what did you find then when you started uncovering and trying to go on
01:02:23
this search of figuring out you know the the nature of anxiety and what we can do about it did you first find that you're
01:02:29
right in your hypothesis that it is increasing yeah yeah how much do you know how
01:02:35
much um you know it it shifted over the time that I wrote and published the book
01:02:40
because I started in 2018 and then it was published in the middle of the pandemic in 2021 where anxiety levels
01:02:47
went up approximately 20% worldwide so
01:02:52
um but the social media anxiety uh um that is going up in girls even more than
01:02:58
20% and that's kind of in parallel so I I actually don't know how to um integrate those two levels but they're
01:03:05
both going in the same direction why are women young women becoming more anxious
01:03:12
and suicidality amongst that age group is rapidly increased you know I think that um it's
01:03:21
it's that comparison that that is so easy to do and I see it in my my own
01:03:26
work at the University that when I was going to college I had no idea what rank
01:03:32
I was in in number in the application but they could see that immediately they know exactly what number they are in
01:03:39
each and every class they take in their whole High School class in the in their
01:03:44
application to to the five schools that they applied to or 10 or 15 now that they're applying to that gives a much
01:03:52
higher level of stress when you know those numbers immediately um that we never had so so there are
01:03:58
stresses like that that that um they're they're experiencing more information yeah more it's funny because more social
01:04:07
connection but it's when I say social connection I don't mean real world social connection I mean more followers and likes and more people that can
01:04:14
message me and tell me something and DM me or comment on my thing right more noise yeah the volume's increased which
01:04:20
is seems to be driving more anxiety where do we experience anxiety where from a physiological standpoint point
01:04:26
where is anxiety CU it feels like it's in your chest yeah so anxiety is kind of a fullbody experience and um anxiety is
01:04:36
um strongly linked with the stress response so um an anxiety-provoking
01:04:42
situation you you um meet somebody that you uh you know had a big fight with
01:04:48
before Oh I'm anxious I might have to speak to that person before uh that launches that launch is the stress
01:04:57
response um that is um dependent on What's called the sympathetic nervous
01:05:02
system and so this is where it becomes full body so what happens when your fight ORF flight system is activated
01:05:09
your heart rate goes up your respiration goes up your um irises get get bigger so you can see everything and look out for
01:05:16
that that annoying person that you're worried about um and blood is shunted from your digestion and reprodu
01:05:22
reproductive organs towards your muscle so you can fight or run away that's what all of our ancestors evolved to protect
01:05:29
us from not not the social media post but um the lion or the Tiger that could
01:05:36
come and attack us so it made sense for that kind of stressor or that kind of
01:05:41
threat unfortunately our body's doing the same exact thing when the nasty DM
01:05:48
comes in from somebody I wasn't sure who it is but they're saying something really bad about something I care about a lot and we get this stress response we
01:05:56
get anxious because of that and uh somebody asked me does that mean our brain is not very smart and the answer
01:06:02
is our our our stress and our threat system is not very smart it isn't differentiating between the line that
01:06:08
could physically kill us and the DM that might wound our pride but but will not
01:06:15
kill us but it causes the same kind of um stress response and anxiety response
01:06:22
what do I do about that you have to learn how to turn the volume of your own anxiety down and part of that is I'm not
01:06:30
saying you have to not look at your DMs and not look at or or not look at soci social media there's lots of ways to
01:06:37
turn your anxiety down we've already talked about uh some of those approaches
01:06:42
exercise immediately decreases anxiety and depression levels and there you
01:06:47
don't even have to get aerobic 10 minutes of walking can significantly decrease your anxiety and depression
01:06:53
levels that is a powerful tool that everybody can use right right here right now breath meditation did you know that
01:07:02
breath meditation that is deep breathing um it's the oldest form of meditation
01:07:09
why because equal in opposite to that fight ORF flight response that everybody
01:07:14
seems to know about is the rest and digest part of your nervous system called the parasympathetic nervous
01:07:20
system that calms you down it slows your heart rate down slows your respiration rate down and shuns blood from your
01:07:27
muscles towards your digestion and reproductive organs so you can do those weekend rest and digest kinds of things
01:07:36
well everybody should be asking well do I have that system yes everybody has
01:07:41
that system everybody has a parasympathetic nervous system how do I activate that the best and most
01:07:46
effective way that you can activate that right now is take three deep breaths
01:07:51
because that's the only thing you have conscious control over that can launch all the rest of that parasympathetic
01:07:58
activity slowing your heart rate I can't slow my heart rate by thinking about it can I take three deep slow breaths right
01:08:05
now absolutely and monks hundreds if not thousands of years ago realize that that
01:08:11
is the thing that I can do immediately to slow my slow my stress response down
01:08:16
it's very very powerful sadness sadness sadness is um can be linked with anxiety
01:08:26
and um you know sad list like anxiety is something that people I think would like
01:08:32
to kick out of their lives and just never have anymore at all if I could get rid of
01:08:38
sadness and anxiety I would be the happiest person alive but would you because my argument
01:08:45
in good anxiety my book good anxiety is that these prickly emotions these
01:08:51
difficult emotions like anxiety like sadness are really really valuable because
01:08:58
they're they're focusing us on things that we should be paying attention to specifically anxiety it is a warning
01:09:05
system oh there's that person oh you didn't have a good interaction you you need to pay attention now should it
01:09:11
throw you into a an anxiety attack perhaps not use some of these techniques
01:09:16
um like like deep breathing and going for a walk but it is a warning system
01:09:22
and why is this valuable here's why it's valuable it's valuable because when you
01:09:28
know what you are worried about your fears that your anxiety focuses you on
01:09:36
it actually tells you about what you hold most dear in your life and that is
01:09:42
something that we should all really want to know so if you're a people pleaser um
01:09:48
you are doing lots of things to maybe too many things to please people but that means that you care
01:09:56
about personal interaction and I start with this one because I'm a peop pleaser and I realized that people pleasing
01:10:03
response and the anxiety that it does evoke is reminding me that what's very
01:10:10
very valuable to me is that interaction with people I care about that that's a
01:10:15
beautiful thing I value that in my life in my personality I'm going to let you in on a
01:10:22
little secret what is in the diary of a COO Cup this cup that sits in front of me when I interview these people
01:10:28
sometimes for 3 hours and sometimes three people a day and the answer is this perfect head I invested in the
01:10:34
company on Dragon's Den and since then they've gone from an idea to the fastest growing energy drink in the UK it is a
01:10:42
mat energy drink and it is absolutely delicious but that's not why I choose to drink it on this podcast the reason I
01:10:48
choose to drink it is because it gives me what I call all day energy I don't get the same crashes that I used to get
01:10:54
with other energy drinks if you're in the middle of a conversation or you're in the middle of a talk on stage or in the boardroom the last thing you want to
01:11:00
do is have a crash you don't want Jitters and you need focus and that is
01:11:05
why they now sponsor this podcast not only is it delicious but it gives me a significant competitive Advantage if you
01:11:11
haven't tried it go down to a Tesco go to a waitrose or go online and use the code diary 10 at checkout and you'll get
01:11:18
10% off and when you do try it let me know how you get on do you think we could see love in the brain can you see
01:11:25
if some some 's in love in the brain if we scan the brain of someone that's in love when they're interacting with their partner could we see that um yes in fact
01:11:32
they have Scan people who are in the throws of of uh um romantic love and
01:11:39
people that are in um you know many years into a loving
01:11:45
relationship and there are uh lots of reward areas that get activated when
01:11:50
you're scanning the brain um of somebody that that you know is in the throws of deep romantic love that is in the first
01:11:56
few weeks you can't get enough of the person you're with them all the time you can't stop thinking about them a lot of
01:12:02
the reward areas are are activated uh a lot of the social interaction areas
01:12:08
including the insula uh part of the brain right in the side here just just
01:12:13
uh in the uh area near the ear deep into the cortex get gets activated doesn't
01:12:19
that mean then that if we don't fall in love if we don't have those feelings that that part of our brain might shrink
01:12:25
because if you know they say often things like you you use it or you lose it they say neurons that fire together
01:12:31
wi together if I'm not in love if I'm not if I don't have those social connections will the love part of my brain get smaller and would that make it
01:12:38
more difficult to love in the future that's a great question I think that um
01:12:44
that study has not been done but absolutely if uh uh if you don't use
01:12:50
that part of the brain um you will not you know gain the function and so yeah
01:12:55
not not using your love part of your brain is is not a nothing that I would ever recommend some people I guess don't
01:13:02
have a choice well I guess they have a choice in the sense that they can do
01:13:09
things they have optionality but for whatever reason some people don't find love it's just an interesting observation because in all other parts
01:13:15
of the brain you have to like do you mean romantic love romantic love Yeah but but you know there's all sorts of
01:13:21
different kinds of Love deep friendship um it's actually what I was going to say
01:13:27
is that um they tried to look at the difference between romantic love and
01:13:32
maternal love or paternal love and it turns out that longterm relationships
01:13:38
like romantic relationships of marriages that last for many years start out of course in this romantic phase but it
01:13:46
turns into more of a maternal paternal
01:13:51
um pattern when you go farther and farther along that that is a win that is
01:13:57
not something wrong with your brain um I think love does evolve over time and
01:14:04
there's many different kinds of Love beyond the Romantic Hollywood you know uh and Disney kind of
01:14:11
uh uh form of love so you can see the honeymoon phase in the brain yes and then you can see the more mature love I
01:14:18
guess yes in the brain interesting oh the I guess the the opposite of love
01:14:25
I guess might be hate but I think when another sort of thing that people might think of as the opposite of Love would
01:14:32
be rejection or heartbreak and through all of our Lives we encounter heartbreak in many forms we encounter romantic
01:14:38
heartbreak but also other forms of heartbreak as I read through your story I I I I could see moments in your story
01:14:44
where you encountered various types of heartbreak yes grief yeah you talked about your father passing away from
01:14:51
Alzheimer's yes well he had a heart attack he had Alzheimer's dementia when he passed away he he died of a heart
01:14:59
attack and just three months after your dad's death your younger brother died of an unexpected heart attack age 50 yes
01:15:06
and you say in your book good anxiety in chapter four you say the death was unfathomable
01:15:12
yeah as someone who studied the brain and therefore has a really strong
01:15:17
understanding of the physiology of the human mind yeah and has also written a book about anxiety so you
01:15:25
have this sort of two-pronged approach towards understanding feelings and emotions yeah in those
01:15:31
moments what did you come to understand about the nature of emotion the most intense emotions and how how they
01:15:39
Captivate Us and how we can find our path through the jungle yeah I like that word that I used
01:15:45
it was unfathomable um um both of those losses at at the same
01:15:53
time it it was hard to process and I remember the waves of grief that would
01:15:59
come over it wasn't constant it would it would it would be like wave so I I I
01:16:04
have one and then it would recede and I felt a little bit better but then unexpectedly it would come again and um
01:16:11
I'd never thank goodness experienced that before and um it was in the middle
01:16:18
of writing the book good anxiety and I I put it aside uh because I couldn't write
01:16:23
when I was going through this this terrible grief and and had to do something that I'd never ever had to do
01:16:30
and actually was my biggest fear um unnamed biggest fear in my life was um
01:16:37
to have to give a eulogy I I have a fear of uncontrollable crying in public and
01:16:45
I'd always been afraid of of eulogies and I never had to give a eulogy and I
01:16:51
had to give this eulogy for my for my brother um um another unfathomable how
01:16:57
could that be happening and um I I got I got through that and um I
01:17:07
learned something in the process and I remember working out to try and make
01:17:12
myself feel feel better during this time and um the instructor said about the
01:17:20
workout with great pain comes great wisdom
01:17:25
and I just glommed on to that that message because I was feeling
01:17:30
great pain what was the wisdom like I need to find some wisdom what what is that
01:17:36
wisdom and I realized because I had to say something at this eulogy that the
01:17:42
wisdom was that on the other side of that unfathomable grief that I was
01:17:49
feeling the only reason why I was feeling that unfathomable grief is
01:17:54
because because of the deep love that I had that it started with so if I didn't
01:17:59
love them as much I wouldn't have as deep a grief so in fact the grief and
01:18:05
the the the depth of it was a sign of the love that I had for
01:18:13
them and that that was the wisdom that I found and that was the Solace that I found and
01:18:20
that was a message that I gave in that eulogy
01:18:25
and um and then I became obsessed with the flip side of these awful emotions
01:18:32
that we all go through grief is this one because I had to go back and finish this book good anxiety how was I going to do
01:18:40
that the book was transformed by that event because I realized that if I could
01:18:46
find the wisdom and the the power um of the most horrible emotion
01:18:54
I'm going to say grief what is the flip side of anxiety what is the gift what is the superpower
01:19:01
that comes from anxiety and I needed to find gifts and superpowers and that's
01:19:08
why the book got written in that way and I I name superpowers that come from
01:19:14
anxiety that was that was heightened after after this terrible event but I
01:19:21
found them and I used them all the time it was therapeutic actually how did it change you the loss
01:19:27
of your brother and your father in such a short period of Time how are you a different person because of those two
01:19:33
events you realize that everybody's going to feel these
01:19:40
emotions sometime in their life and I can bring more empathy and
01:19:49
compassion to those experience for others and I I remember I I never wanted
01:19:55
to talk to people that had a loss I never knew what to say I knew I was
01:20:00
going to say something wrong I just had no idea I felt lost and um and it is I do feel wiser I
01:20:10
feel like I have more empathy I have more
01:20:16
knowledge can I ask you a question if if if there was a pill yeah that you could
01:20:22
take to not feel the grief in the moment when you were in the
01:20:29
throws of that grief would you have taken it and in hindsight now would you
01:20:36
have taken it look I I know I'm not a pill taker I
01:20:43
I wasn't clinically I didn't feel like I'm oh I can't you know go about my life it was
01:20:51
it was a terrible emotion but I I didn't feel completely debilitated with it
01:20:56
other other people do maybe they would take the pill I would not take the pill and
01:21:02
after the lessons that I learned from going through those emotions absolutely I would not take the pill and and that
01:21:09
was part of the lesson of writing this book that
01:21:14
anxiety is critical for us because anxiety and sadness and and
01:21:21
anger are critical to help us appreciate those joyous
01:21:28
moments if of Our Lives if we had no grief no sadness no anger
01:21:34
ever then every day would you know it would just be mundane but it gives that
01:21:40
value I mean our highest Highs are extra high because we know those lows and and
01:21:47
that also is probably how this grief that I experienced affects me I I appreciate I appreciate the the good
01:21:54
times even more as a neuroscientist who understands the brain and the systems and then sort of neural Pathways and all
01:22:01
this stuff and how we think and does that leave much room for
01:22:06
spirituality and those kinds of things are you spiritual I am and what does
01:22:12
what you know because when some people think about spirituality they think they think it's the opposite of Neuroscience
01:22:20
they think yes if I spoke to some people some people that I know they think of that the decisions and the feelings and
01:22:27
the energies are outside of our body not going on in this ball of tofu and then some like
01:22:32
hardore people scientists will will explain all of our experience through this ball of tofu yes where do you sit
01:22:40
so um I've evolved over time so um when I was a young scientist I no
01:22:47
spirituality no religion everything can be described by science like I have
01:22:53
prove it prove it to me I want to you know see the data I happily went through
01:23:00
um that phase for many many years of my life until I realized or I didn't even
01:23:07
realize I think I needed something more in in my life and and then I realized
01:23:15
first there was a need there was a then there was a realization well can I really prove that the only thing that is
01:23:24
true is that what I what I can prove what if
01:23:29
there are things Beyond um proving in the in the
01:23:34
scientific method and I think there are things that
01:23:39
uh in the spiritual realm in the religious realm um that absolutely could
01:23:45
be true could be true could be true that cannot be solved cannot be proven with
01:23:52
the classic scientific method things that you believe yes what makes you believe them cuz on
01:24:00
one hand you said you kind of want to which is an element of that yeah but as a I'm interested as a scientist as a
01:24:06
neuroscientist yeah you must have been trained to be able to explain that's how you pass the exam so you get you must be
01:24:12
able to explain why you have these beliefs do you in that part of your life do you just kind of say I've I've felt
01:24:18
it is that the no it's uh well part of it yes I I I do feel it but it was the
01:24:27
realization that the scientific method in my opinion is not the endall
01:24:33
and be all that I thought it was when I was a young scientist can you prove that
01:24:38
these other Realms don't exist and if they exist in ways that cannot be proved
01:24:45
in in a scientific method well maybe your scientific method is wrong is that is that a possibility have you had an
01:24:51
experience that made you believe in another Realm have I had an experience um I have uh in my academic
01:25:02
way I have studied texts that
01:25:08
are the oldest texts that we know um uh the Bible and I was raised in a um
01:25:16
actually was a half Christian half Buddhist um family and uh but my my
01:25:24
my core belief was uh uh Christianity and so yeah I I I I go to church I I
01:25:33
really appreciate the power um that that religious beliefs bring to my
01:25:42
life it actually really decreases my anxiety and that's not the only reason why I did I just I I wasn't look
01:25:49
searching for an anti- anxiety kind of um uh solu
01:25:55
but I was looking
01:26:03
for maybe something more than the scientific method in my
01:26:09
life we're going in One Direction as a society like more I told you I'm basically addicted to my phone screens
01:26:16
loneliness yeah um less connection less friends less people we can turn to in a
01:26:21
time of Crisis according to all the studies and as we go further and further down that road I think it's making it
01:26:27
more obvious of what's at the end the other end of the street yeah and it's robbing us of something at a really deep
01:26:33
level then I think I'm noticing more and more as I grow older I think that's actually why I want to have kids now because I think I'm in search of that
01:26:39
greater meaning or purpose in my life beyond just like making more money or just you know all the superficial stuff
01:26:46
yeah you you said to me before we started speaking that you're thinking a lot about Community I am why because I
01:26:52
think it is a bomb to students and to everybody and um I
01:26:58
think those those events that we can create that bring people together and talking to each other and learning about
01:27:04
each other are joyous events and um I see it in the in in me and in the
01:27:11
students that come to these events it is clear that that is um something that
01:27:17
that is a little bit unfamiliar to students right now but um has an immediate effect so what is the one
01:27:24
thing we haven't spoke about regarding Betty the brain over there in the corner but the brain in front of you the most
01:27:29
important thing about the brain that we didn't discuss you
01:27:36
know you only have one and um we have an
01:27:41
opportunity every single day to make
01:27:47
it as healthy as it could be I my I watched my father pass away with
01:27:52
Alzheimer's dementia and um um we have elderly people in my family as well
01:28:01
and it motivates me even more to to keep my brain healthy to make as many friends
01:28:09
as I can to have as many connections as I can uh because I want to be as happy as I can be for the rest of my life and
01:28:15
I want to have um and I want to have a big fat fluffy brain so um you only have
01:28:21
one and um there are things you can do right now now today to make it
01:28:29
stronger Wendy thank you so much thank you for the way that you deliver I think is
01:28:36
um is so deep rooted in a really undeniable passion and you you're on a real mission to make other people live
01:28:44
better lives and I think that's something that deserves to be highly commended it's it's so apparent in
01:28:49
everything you do that you're so focused on helping others in a way that I don't always see
01:28:54
um and that comes from I you know reading through your story I can see the pivotal moments throughout your story that sent you on that mission and I do
01:29:00
describe it as a mission these two books are fantastic you wrote the book in 20 or you published it in 2015 called
01:29:06
healthy brain happy life and then your second book which came out in America called good anxiety which is a
01:29:12
phenomenal book that really helps to reframe how we think about anxiety I think that reframing helps us experience
01:29:18
it differently but also shall I say dare I say be grateful for the signal the lessons that it's there to teach us the
01:29:24
wisdom that it gives us we have a closing tradition on this podcast where the last guest leaves a question for the next guest not knowing who they're
01:29:30
leaving it for question left you is in this book oh what do you think is the best quality
01:29:38
of humanity
01:29:43
ooh compassion and what does that mean compassion means
01:29:59
feeling feeling for the um um the
01:30:04
experience of others both good and bad so I can experience your joy compassionately and I could experience
01:30:10
your grief compassionately I think that is because I've been thinking so much
01:30:16
about connection and community that um function of uh or
01:30:22
emotion of comat is uh really top of mind for me Wendy
01:30:28
thank you thank you [Music]
01:30:39
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01:30:45
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