The Exercise Neuroscientist: The Shocking Link Between Exercise And Dementia! Coffee Is Destroying Your Brain! Our Brains Have Been Hacked! – Dr Wendy Suzuki

0:00:06 In this box is a real preserved human brain named Betty and I think you should hold it.
0:00:13 Oh my god it’s wet. And now we’re going to go through all the tools and tricks to make your
0:00:19 brain as healthy as it can be. Are you ready? Wendy Suzuki, the neuroscientist and professor
0:00:24 at New York University. The first hand research on the brain is helping to improve memory,
0:00:28 learning, and higher cognitive abilities in humans. Let me start with exercise.
0:00:35 All the research shows the more you exercise the more change in your brain we notice. Every drop
0:00:42 of sweat counted and the best kind of exercise that you can do is. What about things that we consume?
0:00:46 Food, drink, and alcohol? If it’s on the metatrain diet go ahead. Coffee.
0:00:53 And then my memory’s not great. Most people feel that but there’s four things that you can do
0:00:59 to make memories stick. Number one is is it true that if we have less friends then our brain will
0:01:04 shrink? Yes loneliness damages the brain. Can you see if someone’s in love in the brain? Yes in the
0:01:10 side here a lot of the reward areas are activated. Doesn’t that mean then that if we don’t fall in
0:01:13 love the love part of my brain gets smaller and would that make it more difficult to love in the
0:01:20 future? That’s a great question so. Wendy, do you have any brain routines? Absolutely so every
0:01:26 morning I like to. Oh and then I do the most powerful tool that you can do to protect your
0:01:33 brain from aging and neurodegenerative disease states which is. Congratulations Diroverseal
0:01:39 Gang. We’ve made some progress. 63% of you that listen to this podcast regularly don’t subscribe
0:01:46 which is down from 69%. Our goal is 50%. So if you’ve ever liked any of the videos we’ve posted
0:01:50 if you like this channel can you do me a quick favor and hit the subscribe button. It helps this
0:01:54 channel more than you know and the bigger the channel gets as you’ve seen the bigger the guests
0:02:07 get. Thank you and enjoy this episode. You just said to me that much of your work is focused on
0:02:14 making sure people have big fat fluffy brains. Yes. Why does that matter? It matters because
0:02:22 a big fat fluffy brain is a healthy brain and my whole first book Healthy Brain Happy Life was
0:02:29 about how I learned to use all the tools and tricks and magic of neuroscience and psychology
0:02:37 to make my brain work better and I so needed it at that moment. My life got better. I got happier.
0:02:44 It is a pathway to a happy life I think having a very healthy big fat fluffy brain. Do you think
0:02:49 people appreciate the importance of their brain? No. I think they ignore it all the time
0:02:57 and I think that is part of my message to everybody that the human brain that is the
0:03:03 one in your head right now is the most complex structure known to humankind. Not Einstein’s
0:03:11 brain not Marie Curie’s brain but the one in your head and when you think about that it gives you
0:03:18 more of a self-appreciation of all of the computations that is taking for me to see you and
0:03:25 appreciate your face and be able to remember your face next time I see you when I go to my diary of
0:03:33 a CEO podcast and choose an episode. All of that is such a complex structure. You start to appreciate
0:03:38 your own kind of brain functioning more. I think that is a very important thing to do.
0:03:41 Why don’t we appreciate our brains? Because we appreciate a lot of other things.
0:03:49 We spend a lot of time on our muscles. Yeah our abs. I think that that’s a great analogy
0:03:56 and part of my goal is to kind of shift the focus from focusing on certain body parts to
0:04:03 focusing on what our brain is doing for us what it can do for us and what we can do to change
0:04:08 our environments to get to that big fat fluffy brain to get it healthy to get it happy to get it
0:04:16 growing. If I achieve a big fat fluffy brain how would my life be different? I’m saying me Steve
0:04:21 Bartlett. I’m an entrepreneur. I’m an entrepreneur. I’m in relationships. I’ve got friends, girlfriend,
0:04:26 family. How would I show up differently if I was able to make my brain big fat and fluffy?
0:04:33 Yeah so let me start with the two areas that we know respond really really well to things like
0:04:40 meditation and exercise. Those two brain areas are the hippocampus, critical for long-term memory,
0:04:44 your ability to form and retain new long-term memories and for facts and events, and the
0:04:49 second brain area is your prefrontal cortex right behind your forehead. Critical for your ability
0:04:54 to shift and focus attention. It’s important for your personality for decision making.
0:05:00 Can you show me on there? I brought a human brain. You have a model of a brain as well.
0:05:02 I have a model of the brain. Okay let’s start with the model of the brain.
0:05:12 So here is a model of the human brain. So there’s a front part and a back part. This front part
0:05:18 is right behind our forehead. That’s the prefrontal cortex, critical for the ability
0:05:25 to shift and focus attention. Also a part of the brain that is very responsive to what you bring
0:05:31 into your life. Exercise actually really helps the prefrontal cortex. Meditation helps area 10
0:05:37 of the prefrontal cortex which is right in the very front right here. The second brain area that you
0:05:44 will benefit from when you make your brain big and fat and fluffy is a structure called the hippocampus
0:05:51 which is which is very deep in this lobe, deep in this lobe right here which is the temporal lobe.
0:05:58 The hippocampus, hippocampus means seahorse and the hippocampus is critical for your ability
0:06:03 to to form and retain new long-term memories for facts and events. You have one on the right
0:06:10 and you have one on the left. So for you, superstar, podcaster, what do you need to do? You need to
0:06:15 remember all the details of that guess that you’re sitting in front of. You need to be able to focus.
0:06:20 What did they say? What do I want to ask next? And how do I want to come back to those things?
0:06:25 That is a combination of what your prefrontal cortex is doing for you and your hippocampus is
0:06:32 doing for you. So I submit that you, when you do these things that we know from neuroscience,
0:06:36 it are going to make your prefrontal cortex and your hippocampus big and fat and fluffy,
0:06:43 you will be better at doing your job as a podcaster. I am better as a dean and a professor
0:06:49 of neuroscience and teaching in class, for example, is where I’m using my prefrontal cortex and my
0:06:55 hippocampus the most. Most of us would benefit from these things that make our brains big and
0:07:00 fat and fluffy. Was there a point in your life where you had a personal epiphany or revelation
0:07:08 about the brain that made you so passionate about the subject? Absolutely, absolutely. So this story
0:07:15 starts when I was in the middle of getting tenure at New York University. So it takes six years.
0:07:20 You have six years to prove yourself as a scientist and do something groundbreaking. And if you don’t,
0:07:28 you’re fired. So no big deal, no pressure there. And I decided to only just work, work, work, work.
0:07:34 I didn’t have a lot of social interactions. I was just working and just threw myself into work.
0:07:42 And I was getting burnt out. And I decided to go on a river rafting trip to Peru by myself
0:07:47 because I had no friends. So I go on the river rafting trip and it’s great. It’s beautiful. We’re
0:07:55 river rafting. We’re camping on Aztec burial sites. And it is just spectacular. But I realized that
0:08:01 I’m the weakest person on this trip. And when I got back after this wonderful, you know, two weeks
0:08:08 in Peru, I said, I never want to feel like the weakest person on a trip like that again. And it
0:08:13 was so great to be moving and to be exercising. So I decided I’m going to go to the gym and I’m
0:08:20 going to continue this physical activity at the gym. And somehow it stuck. I had, I had let myself
0:08:28 go, not no exercise at all. And when I started going to the gym regularly, I noticed that that
0:08:34 great mood that I found in Peru every day during the river rafting trip stayed with me. I think
0:08:40 everybody in my lab loved it when I was going to the gym. And I started to notice not only I got
0:08:47 stronger, I was feeling better, that mood boost that I got from physical activity was so powerful.
0:08:52 But then one day this, you asked me about this revelation I had. It was one day I was sitting
0:08:59 in my office writing a grant, which is usually something that I have to do very regularly,
0:09:04 but usually something that I’m pulling my hair out. It’s so hard. It’s very competitive. I’m
0:09:09 competing against Nobel laureates for the same pot of money. And I had this thought that went
0:09:17 through my mind, which was, gosh, writing went well today. I’d never had that thought before
0:09:25 ever in my, I’d been there for five years at NYU writing grants. And so I, I thought, oh,
0:09:30 maybe, maybe I’m just having a good day. I’m feeling good. But I realized that the,
0:09:36 the writing seemed to have been getting a little bit better over time. I had noticed it a little
0:09:42 bit if I think about it. And the only thing I had changed in my life was regular physical
0:09:49 activity inspired by that trip to Peru. And so I’m a neuroscientist. I went to the literature
0:09:52 and I asked, well, what do we know right now about what exactly exercise is doing?
0:10:02 And it showed at that moment in time, about 10, 15 years ago, that exercise can improve your mood.
0:10:08 Exercise actually makes your memory work better. And exercise improves the function
0:10:15 of your prefrontal cortex. And I thought, wow, that, that is amazing. But the last part of the
0:10:20 story was that when all of this was going on, this was after this day of realizing, gosh,
0:10:27 something’s, you know, my writing is better. And maybe it’s exercise. I got a call from my mom
0:10:34 who said that my father wasn’t feeling well and that he had gotten lost driving back from the
0:10:42 coffee shop that he drove to every day, every afternoon for the last 20 years. And the hippocampus,
0:10:48 that structure critical for memory, is particularly important for spatial memory. And as an expert
0:10:55 in the hippocampus, as I am, I knew that that was a telltale sign of dementia and maybe Alzheimer’s
0:11:02 dementia. But as I talked to my father, and of course we went and got him a neurology appointment,
0:11:10 I saw that everything that seemed to be improving in me, that his memory focused completely and
0:11:17 very, very suddenly diminished in him. His memory was terrible. He couldn’t focus. He was also very
0:11:25 depressed because he could notice how poor his memory was. And I think those things together,
0:11:30 what I was noticing in myself, about the physical effects of the effects of physical activity on
0:11:38 my own brain function, and seeing my father go through what was a really precipitous loss of
0:11:45 his cognitive functions, that turned out to be Alzheimer’s dementia, made me think that the
0:11:53 power of physical activity needed to be explored more deeply. And by me, I was waking up in the
0:11:59 morning thinking about what can I do to better understand how physical activity could be used,
0:12:03 not just for me, for my students. Can they study better? Can they learn better?
0:12:08 Can it help? Maybe not my father. I wasn’t sure whether exercise could help my father at that
0:12:16 point. But as people age, that was the revelation that I had that made me actually switch my research
0:12:23 focus from memory function to understanding the effects of physical activity on the brain.
0:12:31 All of this is rooted in a fact that was once not considered a fact, which is the idea that
0:12:36 our brains can change shape. It’s this idea of brain plasticity. I only really learned about
0:12:40 this a couple of years ago, because I think I, like many people, didn’t realize that like muscles,
0:12:47 my brain changes shape based on what I do. And also what I consume, I guess. What is the evidence
0:12:51 for the studies that we have that proves our brains do change shape? Yeah, that’s such a great
0:12:58 question. And it takes me back to the first day of my freshman year at UC Berkeley. When I walked
0:13:03 into the classroom, I didn’t know it at the time, but the classroom of the professor that
0:13:09 discovered brain plasticity. Her name is Marion Diamond, and she was the very first female PhD
0:13:16 in neuroanatomy that UC Berkeley ever gave. I walked into her classroom in the 80s when I went
0:13:23 to college, but she discovered this in the late 1960s. When it was thought, as you said,
0:13:28 that the adult brain can’t change at all, there’s absolutely no evidence for it. And that was true
0:13:35 at the time. She thought, “I don’t think that’s true. Let’s do a simple experiment. Let’s try and
0:13:43 look at the effects in two randomly grouped set of rats. One that lives in what they would
0:13:48 consider an enriched environment. What would be an enriched environment?” Well, for her,
0:13:53 it was a rat cage full of toys that got changed out all the time, lots of other rats to play with,
0:14:01 and lots of lots of activity. I think of it as the Disney World of rat cages. And she compared
0:14:06 the brains of those rats to rats that she raised in kind of a shoe box, a smaller environment.
0:14:11 They got free food and water, all the food and water they could eat and drink, but maybe only
0:14:18 one other rat and no toys. Now, if they were all the same age, they were adults, if the adult brain
0:14:22 didn’t change, then there should be absolutely no difference between the brains raised in Disney
0:14:30 World and the brains raised in the shoe box. But she found that the brains of those rats raised in
0:14:35 the Disney World of rat cages, the outer covering of the brain, the outside of the brain here,
0:14:42 I’m pointing to the outside of this brain model here, called the cortex. It was actually thicker.
0:14:48 She was a neuroanatomist, and she showed that the thickness of this outer covering actually grew.
0:14:53 What does that mean? There were more synaptic connections there, not in the whole brain,
0:14:59 in certain brain areas. That made sense. The visual cortical area, there was much more visual
0:15:04 stimulation in the Disney World of rat cages. The motor areas were thicker. The somatosensory,
0:15:09 the touch areas were thicker because they were interacting in a much more complex way
0:15:17 with their touch system. That was the first demonstration the adult brain could change,
0:15:25 and that it would actually make the cortex of the brain grow. Now we know, what is it about the
0:15:31 Disney World of rat cages? Is it the toys? Should we all be playing with toys? Later studies showed
0:15:40 that you get almost identical effects just by giving rats a running wheel. Physical activity
0:15:46 is doing all of that, has the potential to change all of that in the rodent brain and now
0:15:51 in the human brain. Didn’t they find something similar with London taxi drivers? I always hear
0:15:58 this. I thought it was true or like a rumor. No, no, no. It’s absolutely true. That is a different
0:16:03 form of brain plasticity, which is something that we all do. All my students do, hopefully,
0:16:10 very well, which is learning. Can learning the streets of London, which are, I can’t remember
0:16:18 the number of different streets, that London taxi cab drivers have to learn to pass the famous test
0:16:24 called the knowledge, but I do remember that it takes them four years to study for this test.
0:16:32 It is intense knowledge. You have to learn all the lawful ways to get from all the big landmarks
0:16:39 to be a certified London taxi cab driver. What my colleague, Eleanor McGuire, a professor of
0:16:47 neuroscience at University College London, did is she followed wannabe London taxi cab drivers
0:16:54 during their four years of the knowledge, this test for London taxi cab drivers, knowing that half
0:17:00 of them were going to fail. They were not going to make it. She tested them at the beginning and
0:17:07 asked, how is your memory and how big is your hippocampus? Identical for all of the wannabe
0:17:11 London taxi cab drivers before they started. She scanned their brains. She scanned their
0:17:18 brains and she tested their memory behaviorally. Then they go through, half of them drop out,
0:17:24 they don’t become London taxi cab drivers, and half of them become certified London taxi cab drivers
0:17:29 after successfully learning all of this. Now, let’s see how big is your hippocampus
0:17:35 and how good is your memory. The people that passed the test and became London taxi cab drivers,
0:17:40 the posterior part of their hippocampus, which is the part we know is important for it,
0:17:45 with posterior is back towards the back of the head. The posterior part of the hippocampus,
0:17:49 which is kind of a cigar shaped structure that goes from the front part of the brain to the back
0:17:57 part of the brain, that back part of the brain was significantly bigger in those successful
0:18:05 London taxi cab drivers compared to the failed London taxi cab drivers and the memory of the
0:18:12 successful London taxi cab drivers were now superior to the memory of the wannabe London
0:18:19 taxi cab drivers that failed. That is an example of how intense learning in a particular part of
0:18:25 the brain we know the posterior hippocampus is absolutely involved in spatial learning.
0:18:31 That can change the actual structure and the function. How much of a difference can we make?
0:18:39 I’m 31 years old now. Yeah. So, if I got serious about my brain health, how much of a difference
0:18:44 could I realistically see? You know, I’m trying to figure out if it’s worth it. Yeah. If it’s worth
0:18:50 caring about my brain, is there any evidence within the literature, within studies that have been
0:18:56 done, that show, if I start now, even though I’m 31 years old, my life will be different in the
0:19:04 future in the areas that I care about profoundly if I start caring about my brain? Let me be very,
0:19:11 very concrete here. The answer is absolutely yes. First, I’m going to give you results of a study
0:19:18 in people that are 65 and older. So, studied people that are 65 and older and asked what is the
0:19:24 probability of getting dementia in the next six years, depending on the level of activity that
0:19:29 you have. Just right now. Physical activity. Physical activity. And they measured it in how
0:19:38 many walks you take per week. And if you took three walks a week or more, you were 30% less likely
0:19:49 to develop dementia in the next five years. So, 30% less likely to develop dementia. My father
0:19:55 passed away of Alzheimer’s dementia. That makes me sit up and take notice. But the thing that
0:20:02 should make you as a 31-year-old really sit up and take notice is the larger correlations that
0:20:09 show that the longer you have regular physical activity in your life, the longer you’re able
0:20:16 to stave off dementia. The more active you are over your lifetime. That first study shows that
0:20:22 it’s never too late to start. You can start walking regularly, which is doable when you’re
0:20:28 perhaps at that age. But the longer you stay active, the bigger and fatter and fluffier your
0:20:34 brain will be. Why does that make sense? So, one key piece of information that I haven’t told you
0:20:42 yet is that we know that physical activity is releasing a whole, every single time you move
0:20:47 your body, you’re releasing a whole bunch of neurochemicals in your brain. Some of them make
0:20:53 you just feel good. Serotonin, dopamine, noradrenaline, endorphins. Yeah, I feel good. If I go out for a
0:20:58 walk, I feel better than if I had been sitting here for eight hours. But the other thing that gets
0:21:03 released every single time is growth factors. I like to call it a bubble bath of neurochemicals
0:21:11 that happens every time you move your body. What that growth factor does is it goes directly
0:21:16 into your hippocampus and it helps brand new cells grow in your hippocampus. The hippocampus
0:21:23 is only one of two total brain areas where new cells can grow. That’s not the same as synapses,
0:21:28 which are connections in the cells that are already there. But the hippocampus can grow
0:21:34 new cells and this is really important because many people know that the hippocampus is attacked
0:21:42 first in Alzheimer’s dementia. And so exercise is not going to eliminate that disease state.
0:21:48 But if you start with a huge fluffy hippocampus, it’s going to take that disease that much longer
0:21:53 to actually damage enough for your hippocampus so that you start seeing those telltale signs
0:22:00 of memory impairment that comes with Alzheimer’s disease and dementia in general. Same thing with
0:22:06 their prefrontal cortex. Your prefrontal cortex can grow with physical activity. That’s not neurons,
0:22:13 but new synapses can grow. Age and neurodegenerative disease states can damage cells, but also take
0:22:18 away synapses. I’ve got two questions on that. So the first is about dementia and Alzheimer’s.
0:22:26 Do we know what’s causing it? No. We still don’t know. No. And there’s not good drugs,
0:22:31 unfortunately, right now. There’s a lot of links to lifestyle choices there, right? Yes,
0:22:39 absolutely. And so, of course, based on what I just said, my number one most powerful tool that
0:22:46 you can do to protect your brain from aging and neurodegenerative disease states is start walking.
0:22:51 Why do I start with that? Because everybody can walk. You don’t need to buy any new fitness
0:22:56 outfits. Just go out and walk more. And then they say, “Oh, well, do I have to become a
0:23:02 marathon runner?” That could help, too. But everybody can walk. And from that study that
0:23:09 I mentioned in the 65-year-old, 30% reduction in the probability of getting Alzheimer’s with
0:23:15 just walking. You said that if I go and start walking and I do exercise, my prefrontal cortex
0:23:21 will grow, which is the decision-making center, right? Yes. So, does that mean, then, that if I
0:23:25 am somebody who is very sedentary, I don’t do much physical activity,
0:23:31 that my decision-making will be worse compared to what it could be with the same person if they’re
0:23:37 active? Yes. I mean, that there is that potential. Brain plasticity and the neuroscience of brain
0:23:44 plasticity tells us that absolutely with physical activity, you have great potential to improve the
0:23:51 function of your prefrontal cortex. And I must specify a little bit. The main function that has
0:23:58 been shown to be particularly sensitive to regular physical activity is shifting and focusing your
0:24:04 attention. So, being able to listen to me while you might be paying attention to the AV guy that
0:24:10 might be telling you something right now. So, to be able to do that effectively, that is one of the
0:24:14 things that we know is helped with regular physical activity. Focus and attention, that kind of thing.
0:24:18 Okay. You talked about memory as well. Does that exist in the prefrontal cortex as well?
0:24:23 There’s a form of memory working memory, which is kind of scratch pad memory. It’s a memory that
0:24:28 when we used to have to remember telephone numbers, that the ability to remember a seven-digit,
0:24:33 at least in the United States, telephone number, it’s different from long-term memory formation,
0:24:38 which is memory for facts and events that is dependent on the hippocampus.
0:24:42 I feel like my memory is not great. Most people feel that.
0:24:50 Why is my memory not as good as other people? Because I noticed this when I was with my friend
0:24:56 in Thailand many years ago, I think I was 21 years old, and we could like leave the house and go on
0:25:03 our little mopeds for about an hour and he could navigate us back home without needing sat-nav or
0:25:07 Google Maps. And if I go three minutes down the street, I’m lost. And I always wondered why that
0:25:11 was. And then even with names and stuff, I would always, he’s my best friend. He still is one of
0:25:17 my best friends for seven, eight years. We ran a business together and he would remember every
0:25:21 name of every person, and I couldn’t. I wouldn’t. And so I’d always tell him and say, “What’s that
0:25:26 person’s name again? What’s that?” And I always wondered why my memory, he seemed to have this
0:25:32 incredible memory and mine seems to be pretty rudimentary. I would argue that everybody has
0:25:39 parts of their memory that aren’t as good as they want, but also other forms of memory that
0:25:46 they’re very good at. So I would guess, I’ve only just met you today, that your memory for stories
0:25:53 and storytelling and story progress is excellent because it has to be for the job that you do.
0:25:57 I bet you it’s much better than your friend that can navigate back. Not everybody has a perfect
0:26:03 memory in all the different dimensions. And it’s like our personality. Some people have a wonderful
0:26:09 sense of humor and others don’t. It is about how our brains are wired, which is defined both by
0:26:17 nature and nurture, our genes. And if I went to stand-up comedy class, I would probably get funnier.
0:26:21 But there’s probably a limit to my funniness compared to other people.
0:26:23 So there’s different types of memory. Yes.
0:26:28 In your book, you talk about there being, I think, is there three different types of memory
0:26:33 in total that are formed in the hippocampus? There’s lots of different names for forms of
0:26:39 memory in the hippocampus. But I like to describe it as the hippocampus is critical for our memory
0:26:46 for facts and events, also called declarative memory or cognitive memory. Another form of memory
0:26:51 that’s dependent on a completely different structure is motor memory, the memory that you
0:26:57 use to learn how to play tennis or pickle ball or whatever you’re playing. And it’s not declarative.
0:27:04 I can’t declare how I do a backhand in tennis, but it is in your motor functions. And this is
0:27:09 dependent on the striatum and a motor-related structure. And then there’s the prefrontal cortex,
0:27:16 dependent on that working memory or scratch pad memory, keeping things in mind. So you and I are
0:27:20 both trying to remember what we’ve just said so we can link it to things that we might say in the
0:27:25 future. One of the things that I found really interesting, both as a marketeer, but also as
0:27:30 a podcaster and as someone that’s making a lot of content and trying to get people’s attention,
0:27:35 was as I was reading through your work, it became quite clear to me that there’s a bit of an overlap
0:27:40 between memory and attention in many respects, because you were talking about these four things
0:27:46 that make facts or events memorable. And many of those things are things that I think about
0:27:50 as a marketeer when I’m trying to get someone to engage with something, click on something,
0:27:56 buy something. What are those four things? Can we go through them? Absolutely. So I like to say
0:28:03 there are four things that make memory stick. And this is after 25 or 30 years studying the
0:28:09 hippocampus and how memories work. Number one is obvious repetition. You remember things with
0:28:17 repetition. Number two, not as obvious, association. The hippocampus is an associative structure.
0:28:23 It associates one thing with the other. For example, your name and your face. So I just
0:28:28 met you and I will remember your name and your face now. But it also helps you remember things
0:28:34 like who’s married to each other, associating the husband with the wife. Have you heard of the memory
0:28:42 palace? Yes. Yes. So this is a technique that has been used for many, many ages to help remember
0:28:50 things. And it is a strategy where you picture a special location that’s very familiar to you,
0:28:58 like your childhood home. And when you need to remember a list of items, you take an imaginative
0:29:03 walk through that very familiar environment and place those items in particular locations
0:29:10 in the environment. That is associating something really familiar, your childhood home. You know
0:29:16 every corner of it with the new thing you need to remember. And that works and has worked for
0:29:21 memory champions for many years because the hippocampus associates things together.
0:29:29 That’s number two, association. Number three is novelty. We remember novel things. I’ve never
0:29:35 been to this particular studio ever before in my 26 years in New York and Brooklyn. So this is
0:29:41 a novel thing and I will remember coming here to do this podcast with you. Our brains and this is
0:29:48 where it interacts with the attention system. Our attention system focuses on things that are
0:29:54 novel. Why? Because it could be dangerous. I’ve seen things over and over and over again. I don’t
0:30:00 notice them. They go into the background. It’s not going to hurt me. It’s not going to cause me
0:30:07 any danger. That’s why cliche doesn’t work in marketing. Exactly. But something novel, that
0:30:16 really perks people up. I use that in my teaching all the time. Surprise students with an element of
0:30:22 what you want them to learn and they will remember it better. But the fourth one, which is so powerful
0:30:30 and we know it intuitively, we understand this intuitively, is emotional resonance makes things
0:30:37 more memorable. We remember the happiest and the saddest things in our lives because
0:30:42 that emotional resonance solidifies those memories. Where does that come from? It comes
0:30:47 from a structure called the amygdala that sits right in front of the hippocampus, right in the
0:30:52 front of the temporal lobe right here. And the hippocampus is right behind it. Amygdala means
0:30:58 almond. It’s an almond-shaped structure and it sits right in front of the kind of tube-shaped
0:31:05 structure that is the hippocampus behind it. And the amygdala is kind of infusing the hippocampus
0:31:12 and kind of giving it a little jolt when it’s emotionally resonant, either really happy or
0:31:20 really sad. You brought with you what you’ve told me is a real human brain. Yes, I did. Now,
0:31:25 I’m not sure if you’re just winding me up, but we’re talking here about novelty and surprise.
0:31:29 That’s right. Things you’ll never forget and emotional resonance. Correct. And as you’re
0:31:32 saying that, I was conscious that over in the corner of the room it appears that there’s a
0:31:38 human brain in a box. So Jack is just bringing the human brain in. Yes. I’ve never seen a human
0:31:44 brain before. That’s why I brought you gloves so that you can hold it if you like. If you like.
0:31:50 Do you have permission to, if there is a human brain in this box and you’re not winding me up,
0:31:58 did you have to get permission from the owner of that brain? So this was purchased lawfully
0:32:06 by my department, the Center for Neuroscience at New York University. So it is lawfully ours
0:32:14 to use as a teaching tool. And it does bring enormous novelty to any situation that I go into
0:32:18 and makes people really think about their brain in a new way, which is why I bring it.
0:32:26 What is in that box? In this box is a real preserved human brain named Betty.
0:32:34 Was the person who used to own that brain called Betty? No, we don’t know the name of the person.
0:32:39 I named this brain Betty. So can you tell if it’s a man or a woman? No, I can’t.
0:32:45 Oh, men and women brains not different at all. They are, but in very, very subtle ways that
0:32:49 we wouldn’t be able to tell just looking at the outside of the brain like this.
0:32:58 Okay, I’m ready. Are you ready? I think so. Okay, so I’m going to open the hat box.
0:33:04 No way is that real. And I’m going to pull out. Are you joking? Is that really a brain?
0:33:14 It is a real preserved human brain. There it is. Funtal lobe, frontal lobe,
0:33:21 occipital lobe for vision, occipital lobe back there. And in this brain, I don’t know if you
0:33:27 can see it from over there. If I pull apart the two hemispheres, you can see how deep
0:33:36 the folds of the brain, the surface is folded in that deep into the brain,
0:33:44 which expands the surface area of the outside of the cortex. The rat cortex is flat. There’s no
0:33:53 folds. Humans and elephants and dolphins have lots of folds. They have much higher capacity
0:33:58 for computation because of the folds that you see in this brain.
0:34:01 It’s smaller than I was expecting. Really? Half the people say it’s smaller. Half
0:34:07 the people say, wow, that’s enormous. Interesting. Is that the color of a brain?
0:34:13 The color of the brain is darker than the real brain. If we opened up my head right now because
0:34:19 of the formaldehyde, the preservative chemical that this has been sitting in for at least 26 years,
0:34:25 this brain has been in my department for ever since I got here 26 years ago.
0:34:29 I feel like I probably should hold it. I think you should hold it.
0:34:50 Oh my God, it’s wet. Yes. That defined this person’s whole life, how they saw, felt,
0:34:57 smelled, heard, and thought about the world just right there in your one hand, in your right hand.
0:35:03 It’s crazy to think that this little thing is, oh, it’s different underneath.
0:35:06 Yes. It’s crazy to think that this little thing, this little…
0:35:12 That’s the start of the spinal cord right there that you pointed at.
0:35:15 And this stuff underneath at the back. That is the cerebellum,
0:35:19 brain structure, critical for fine motor movement.
0:35:25 So we wouldn’t be able to walk smoothly if you have damage in your cerebellum.
0:35:31 Isn’t it interesting that everything, as you say, everything this person worried about,
0:35:37 every thought, every memory, every relationship, all of their education, the school they went to,
0:35:46 the university, everything they saw and remembered, and all of their trauma and their anxiety and maybe
0:35:52 their depression, everything they went through, even their last days before they died is like
0:35:59 captured in this little ball of like tofu that sits in my hand, an entire human being’s existence.
0:36:01 It’s true.
0:36:05 What they watched on TV, their favorite movie, their favorite number, color,
0:36:07 everything is in this tiny little ball of tofu.
0:36:10 It’s true.
0:36:14 Oh, gosh.
0:36:22 It is amazing. And actually, in real life, firm tofu is the consistency of the brain.
0:36:29 I often bring in a block of firm tofu when I demo this for students,
0:36:31 in addition to Betty.
0:36:33 Do you remember the first time you saw a human brain?
0:36:35 I do.
0:36:37 Did it change how you think about your own brain?
0:36:44 It changed my life because I was like, I want to study that.
0:36:50 That is the coolest thing that I’ve ever seen in my whole life.
0:36:52 And I want to study that and I want to be just like her.
0:36:59 And so it really like, okay, now I decided this is what I want to do.
0:37:04 And it was life-changing.
0:37:07 I say that because at the start of this conversation,
0:37:09 we said that most of us don’t appreciate our brain.
0:37:11 A lot of people don’t even realize it’s there.
0:37:16 But the minute I had a brain scan one day and that brain scan really changed my life
0:37:18 because seeing my own brain for the first time,
0:37:23 it was the push that I needed to start caring more about how my decisions
0:37:24 and behaviors are impacting it.
0:37:28 So let’s talk about how I can make that ball of tofu in my head super healthy,
0:37:30 super big fat and fluffy.
0:37:31 You talked about exercise early on,
0:37:35 but we didn’t really dig into exactly what you mean by exercise
0:37:38 because exercise I think is multifaceted in this definition.
0:37:46 What kind of exercise should I be doing to make my ball of tofu in my head great, optimal?
0:37:52 Well, all the research shows that the best kind of exercise that you can do
0:37:58 is anything that gives you aerobic activity that is getting your heart rate up.
0:38:01 So that goes for power walking.
0:38:02 We’ll get your heart rate up.
0:38:04 Soccer, so many different things.
0:38:06 Name your activity.
0:38:09 So many people want to say, oh, my favorite activity, will that work?
0:38:13 And I always just say, is your heart rate up when you’re doing it?
0:38:16 If the answer is yes, then yeah, that works great.
0:38:19 We know that that level of aerobic activity is critical
0:38:23 because that’s going to release that growth factor maximally
0:38:27 to get into your hippocampus that will grow those new brain cells.
0:38:28 How much?
0:38:31 So I have an answer to that.
0:38:34 So we did two different experiments in my lab.
0:38:40 One in low fit people, people that are really not exercising very much at all,
0:38:46 less than 30 minutes in the last three weeks you’ve moved your body.
0:38:53 And we asked, could we see any behavioral improvement in your memory function
0:38:57 from your hippocampus or your ability to shift and focus attention?
0:39:03 If we ask you to move your body in an aerobic way for two to three times a week,
0:39:07 and we collaborated with a spin class, so clearly very aerobic.
0:39:12 And what we found was in those people that did successfully
0:39:16 do two to three times a week a 45 minute aerobic activity,
0:39:22 their mood got significantly better, their memory function got better,
0:39:26 and their ability to shift and focus attention got significantly better.
0:39:30 So that gives a little bit of a guideline for low fit people.
0:39:35 Two to three times a week can start to give you some of those cognitive changes.
0:39:38 But you don’t look low fit.
0:39:40 So let me answer the question you’re about to ask me.
0:39:41 You’re like, what about me?
0:39:43 I exercise pretty regularly.
0:39:46 And how much do I need?
0:39:50 So to answer that question, we went to another spin studio,
0:39:53 and we said, look, we’re going to give you free classes.
0:39:58 You could exercise as much as you want at this studio
0:40:01 and go up to seven times a week.
0:40:04 And the control was just stay the same.
0:40:07 They were working out twice a week at the studio.
0:40:09 Control was the other group that you were testing them against.
0:40:10 Yes, exactly.
0:40:17 And so what we found was basically every drop of sweat counted.
0:40:22 The more you exercise, the more change in your brain we noted,
0:40:25 both your hippocampal function, prefrontal function and mood.
0:40:30 If you were already getting benefit, you’re already going twice a week.
0:40:34 But the more you did, the more brain changes you got.
0:40:38 So that doesn’t give the formula that I would like,
0:40:40 but we were heading in that direction,
0:40:43 which is part of one of the questions that I want to answer.
0:40:46 But I love to leave people with the idea
0:40:50 that every drop of sweat counts for building your brain
0:40:52 into the big, fat, fluffy brain that you really want.
0:40:59 And then in the real world, again, making it super real for people,
0:41:03 how does that change how I show up?
0:41:05 Yeah, if you allow it to,
0:41:08 should have a beautiful effect on your mindset,
0:41:18 that your mindset around how often should I wake up 30 minutes early
0:41:20 and do that walk before I start my day,
0:41:25 or accept the invitation to go walk the dog with a neighbor.
0:41:28 It’s not an obligation.
0:41:30 It is something that you’re doing for yourself.
0:41:34 It is going to have direct benefits on that ball of tofu,
0:41:36 as you call it, in your head.
0:41:38 It’s going to make it work better.
0:41:41 And I mean, I think the most immediate thing
0:41:44 that I benefit from every single day
0:41:46 is the mood boost that you get
0:41:48 from that serotonin dopamine noradrenaline
0:41:50 that gets released every time you move your body.
0:41:52 I always think that because obviously I do a lot of podcasting
0:41:56 and I’m super reliant on my brain being attached to my mouth.
0:41:58 And sometimes I notice that it’s not.
0:41:58 You know what I mean?
0:41:59 Like sometimes I’m not articulate.
0:42:01 I can’t get my thoughts together, whatever.
0:42:03 And I always try and figure out the correlation
0:42:04 between what I did that day,
0:42:07 when I have a good day versus a bad day.
0:42:08 And I’ve, from you on,
0:42:10 and also I speak on stage sometimes,
0:42:11 so I’ve often asked myself,
0:42:15 because I saw Tony Robbins, the speaker one day,
0:42:17 on a trampoline before he goes up on stage.
0:42:19 I asked myself, okay,
0:42:21 should I be doing a workout in my green room
0:42:23 before I go up on stage for a big talk or presentation?
0:42:25 You think I should?
0:42:26 Oh yeah, absolutely.
0:42:27 What’s the basis of that in science?
0:42:28 In your sense?
0:42:31 It’s the basis is that immediate fact.
0:42:34 So there’s three key effects that we know happen
0:42:36 every time you move your body.
0:42:37 First one is mood.
0:42:39 You’re going to get your dopamine, your serotonin up.
0:42:42 Second is focus and attention.
0:42:46 So a single workout isn’t going to make more synapses
0:42:47 in your prefrontal cortex,
0:42:50 but the prefrontal cortex uses dopamine.
0:42:54 And so it’s clear that even a single workout
0:42:56 can make your prefrontal cortex work better
0:42:57 in terms of focus and attention.
0:42:59 Also very important anytime you’re speaking.
0:43:01 And the third is reaction time.
0:43:06 Your reaction time, motor, you’re working your motor cortex
0:43:07 when you move your body.
0:43:10 And your response in reaction time
0:43:14 is significantly shorter after even a single workout
0:43:18 compared to if you just don’t work out and sit alone.
0:43:21 So great, great things to do,
0:43:23 a great thing to do before you stand up and speak.
0:43:25 What about coffee?
0:43:30 I’m trying to figure out if coffee is good for my brain,
0:43:31 bad for my brain.
0:43:35 I’ve had a couple of mixed messages around the impact
0:43:36 it might be having on my brain.
0:43:39 – Yeah, you know caffeine is a stimulant
0:43:42 and people respond to that kind of stimulant
0:43:44 in different ways.
0:43:46 Ovestimulation with caffeine is not good
0:43:50 for your ability to put words together.
0:43:54 You know, this is where I turn to a main theme
0:43:56 in my book “Healthy Brain, Happy Life”
0:43:59 which is self-experimentation.
0:44:04 For you, what can you titrate your coffee?
0:44:08 To see what level of coffee is best for whatever,
0:44:10 your podcast or you’re giving a talk.
0:44:14 The other thing that can work similarly to coffee
0:44:17 that I’ve started and that I do every morning
0:44:20 is hot cold contrast showers.
0:44:23 Because that cold that you…
0:44:26 that you shower on yourself after the heat
0:44:31 stimulates adrenaline in you, a natural adrenaline.
0:44:35 Ooh, it wakes you up and okay, it was painful.
0:44:37 The first kind of few times I tried it.
0:44:41 But then you get addicted to it and I have forgotten
0:44:43 to do it and gotten back in the shower
0:44:46 just to douse myself with cold water
0:44:49 because I feel better when I do that
0:44:51 for, you know, first thing in the morning.
0:44:55 So lots of different things that one can explore with.
0:44:57 Okay, on the other side of the coin then,
0:44:59 what are some of the central behaviors
0:45:01 that people do that destroy their brain?
0:45:07 Well, sedentary behavior is one of them.
0:45:10 Not getting enough sleep is critical.
0:45:12 We haven’t talked about sleep yet.
0:45:17 Sleep is so important for normal functioning of the brain.
0:45:19 I like to scare my students by saying
0:45:22 that, you know, in torture situations,
0:45:25 if you deprive a person of sleep for too long,
0:45:26 they literally die.
0:45:28 They die.
0:45:31 You cannot function if you are deprived of sleep
0:45:33 for too many hours in a row.
0:45:34 It’s that critical.
0:45:35 Yet we don’t…
0:45:38 We happily, you know, watch too much Netflix at night
0:45:40 and get only five hours of sleep
0:45:42 when we could have had eight.
0:45:44 So what’s happening exactly?
0:45:46 Why is it so important?
0:45:48 Well, there’s so many different things.
0:45:50 I’m going to say two.
0:45:55 One is that we know that in regular healthy sleep,
0:45:58 there is activity in the hippocampus
0:46:01 that helps you strengthen the memories
0:46:03 that you have formed in that previous day.
0:46:05 It’s called consolidation.
0:46:06 And it’s so important.
0:46:08 If you shorten that, if you don’t get enough,
0:46:12 you are not consolidating your normal everyday memories.
0:46:16 And second, it is the time during sleep
0:46:18 when all the metabolites,
0:46:21 all that garbage that your brain is producing,
0:46:24 because all biological cells produce garbage,
0:46:28 it gets kind of cleaned up through the cerebral spinal fluid
0:46:30 that is flowing through your brain.
0:46:32 And if you do not get enough sleep,
0:46:35 you build up garbage metabolites in your brain.
0:46:37 It’s like you have a gunky brain.
0:46:38 And do you feel like…
0:46:41 I feel like I have gunk in my brain when I don’t sleep enough.
0:46:43 That is exactly what is happening.
0:46:46 What when you think about things that we consume,
0:46:51 like food and drink and alcohol and all these kinds of things,
0:46:53 is there anything that if I’m trying to have an optimal brain,
0:46:56 I should be having or not having?
0:47:01 Yeah. Well, so I think the most evidence
0:47:06 is around the benefit of the Mediterranean diet,
0:47:10 which is basically all healthy, kind of organic,
0:47:14 not organic, but non-processed is the word I was trying to think of.
0:47:17 Things to eat that are very, very colorful.
0:47:21 There is so much evidence about how good that is,
0:47:24 generally, for the brain that that is my go-to.
0:47:26 What should I eat?
0:47:28 Well, is it on the Mediterranean diet?
0:47:30 If it is, then go ahead.
0:47:33 If it’s too processed, only do it just a little bit.
0:47:36 Is it true that if we have less friends,
0:47:38 if we have less strong relationships,
0:47:42 if we’re lonely, then our brain will shrink
0:47:45 and is more prone to dementia and Alzheimer’s and things like that?
0:47:52 Yes, we are social creatures, and there are really powerful studies
0:47:54 that have shown the correlation
0:47:57 between the number of social connections that we have,
0:48:00 including just saying hello to the barista at Starbucks.
0:48:04 It’s not a close friendship that you develop over 30 years.
0:48:08 It’s just how many people you interact with and greet.
0:48:09 And longevity.
0:48:13 The more people you are regularly interacting with,
0:48:16 the longer you are living.
0:48:17 Overall longevity.
0:48:20 But if you go into brain health, absolutely.
0:48:22 It’s also very, very healthy for you.
0:48:25 It also brings happiness.
0:48:28 So a friend and colleague of mine, Robert Wallinger,
0:48:32 studied what makes people happy.
0:48:35 This study started in the ’20s, the 1920s in Harvard.
0:48:39 And after all of those many, many, many decades,
0:48:42 the answer is what brings happiness
0:48:45 is the strength of your social connections.
0:48:46 So it makes you happier.
0:48:47 It makes you live longer.
0:48:52 And yes, loneliness on the flip side causes stress,
0:48:56 long-term stress that damages the brain.
0:49:01 And yeah, in the long term, can make it smaller and less healthy.
0:49:03 Do you have any brain routines?
0:49:05 Like a morning routine for your brain?
0:49:06 Absolutely.
0:49:11 So every morning, I like to wake up and I do a tea meditation,
0:49:15 which is a meditation over the brewing and drinking of tea.
0:49:18 And this is after many years of yo-yo meditating.
0:49:20 I knew meditation was good,
0:49:22 but I just couldn’t really get into it.
0:49:26 And I was introduced to this form of meditation
0:49:31 from by a monk who invited me to tea
0:49:34 and just did this silent meditation outside
0:49:36 in a beautiful location.
0:49:43 And the ritual and the sequence of brewing, drinking, seeping,
0:49:48 starting over again kind of kept me in the flow.
0:49:52 And so I start with about a 45-minute tea meditation.
0:49:55 Then I do about a 30-minute workout.
0:49:56 I try and do cardio strength.
0:49:57 Sometimes I do yoga.
0:49:58 Sometimes I just do mobility.
0:50:02 And then I have breakfast and then I go to work.
0:50:06 Oh, and then I do that hot cold contrast shower
0:50:09 is also something very helpful for my brain health
0:50:11 because it really does in me.
0:50:15 That adrenaline boost that I get just energizes me.
0:50:17 And I love that feeling at the beginning of the day.
0:50:18 Just going back to that question,
0:50:19 because I want to close off on it as well,
0:50:22 the idea of what would I have to do to destroy my brain?
0:50:23 So no sleep.
0:50:25 I’m going to be sad and tree.
0:50:27 I’m going to have no friends.
0:50:29 And smoking?
0:50:32 Smoking is very bad for your health.
0:50:33 And your brain.
0:50:35 Okay, alcohol?
0:50:37 Alcohol.
0:50:40 I mean, yes, long-term alcohol can cause significant
0:50:43 and named brain diseases.
0:50:46 Moderation, even moderation now,
0:50:48 as studies have shown, is not very good.
0:50:50 And the reason why it’s not good
0:50:53 is that alcohol disrupts your sleep.
0:50:56 Even though people drink it to go to sleep faster,
0:51:00 the sleep is much more superficial and is not deep.
0:51:02 And it’s not the healthy sleep.
0:51:09 So that is not good overall for sleep, depth and health,
0:51:11 and therefore brain health.
0:51:14 I’m going to eat a processed diet to hurt my brain.
0:51:19 And I’m not going to have a lifestyle that is novel,
0:51:20 because we talked about learning.
0:51:21 Right, yes.
0:51:22 So I’m not going to learn anything new.
0:51:25 All of these things should shrink that little…
0:51:28 You’re not going to be mindful also.
0:51:31 Is there evidence that being mindful,
0:51:33 which is like meditation and being in the moment,
0:51:34 helps the brain?
0:51:35 It does.
0:51:39 There’s beautiful studies showing brain plasticity
0:51:44 in the areas that are important for focused attention.
0:51:46 Meditation, the practice of meditation
0:51:50 is basically a practice of enriching the function
0:51:51 of your prefrontal cortex.
0:51:53 So you can focus on that object,
0:51:59 either the breath or loving kindness is a form of meditation.
0:52:04 So yes, there’s been studies that brain changes occur
0:52:07 in long-term meditators that are absolutely beneficial.
0:52:09 What if I’m on social media all the time?
0:52:11 Because isn’t that good for me,
0:52:13 because I’m going to be seeing lots of new things all the time
0:52:14 and I’ll be learning lots of new things.
0:52:18 So isn’t, if I sat on a screen for seven hours a day,
0:52:20 is that good for my brain, social media?
0:52:23 Does that take you away from real people
0:52:25 and interacting with real people?
0:52:26 Yes.
0:52:29 Okay, then it’s modulated by that.
0:52:30 Is it not the same thing?
0:52:32 There’s a difference, and I think your brain knows it.
0:52:38 And look, there’s enormous amounts of evidence showing
0:52:41 that the increase in use of social media,
0:52:43 especially in young kids,
0:52:48 correlate with huge increases in depression and anxiety levels,
0:52:50 particularly in young girls.
0:52:55 So when kids started getting the smartphones
0:52:58 and started to spend more and more seven hours a day
0:52:59 on social media,
0:53:02 that’s when the anxiety and depression went up.
0:53:04 That’s for young kids.
0:53:07 I use social media as well as a tool for business.
0:53:08 That is a little bit different.
0:53:12 I’m not 13 years old, and you’re not 13 years old.
0:53:14 So there’s some warnings, I think,
0:53:16 that need to go into that.
0:53:19 But let me be clear.
0:53:20 No, it’s not the same.
0:53:24 Social media is not the same as social interactions
0:53:26 face-to-face with people.
0:53:29 Are you concerned about what social media is doing to our brains?
0:53:30 Yes.
0:53:33 Because we hear those stats around young girls
0:53:34 are struggling most with social media,
0:53:36 and we think to ourselves,
0:53:38 well, that’s because there’s a lot of comparison
0:53:39 and all these kinds of things,
0:53:41 and there’s a lot of toxic messaging and such.
0:53:45 But if we think about the physiological consequences
0:53:46 of social media,
0:53:49 what it’s actually doing to our brains at a chemical level,
0:53:53 what would you as a neuroscientist guess?
0:53:56 Is the physiological harm to the brain?
0:53:57 Not the sort of psychological,
0:53:58 I’m thinking about, not the psychological,
0:54:00 okay, oh my God, she’s more this than me,
0:54:03 but the physiological harm.
0:54:06 But the psychological harm causes stress.
0:54:10 Stress releases stress hormone that goes into the brain
0:54:13 that at too high and too constant a level
0:54:17 can start to first damage connections and then kill cells.
0:54:20 So it’s intertwined there.
0:54:22 And that is part of what is happening.
0:54:27 You can’t pull one away from the other.
0:54:30 Because social media is designed to kind of,
0:54:31 it’s like pulling the slot machine handle.
0:54:33 I pull down on the feed and I get ping,
0:54:34 oh look, there’s a nice picture.
0:54:38 And ping, there’s notifications and comments, et cetera.
0:54:40 It’s that, I think about the constant,
0:54:42 do they say there’s constant dopamine hit?
0:54:43 Yeah.
0:54:44 They refer to, is it a dopamine hit?
0:54:46 Is that what’s happening when we’re being stimulated
0:54:48 by social media or a slot machine?
0:54:48 Yes.
0:54:51 And is there any harm in just a constant dopamine hit
0:54:52 all day, every day?
0:54:56 Well, I would not, I’m going to answer that question by saying,
0:54:59 I would not want to be addicted to gambling.
0:55:02 That gambling is addictive.
0:55:03 It’s hard to get away.
0:55:06 You lose all these other things that we just decided
0:55:09 were all good for you, including sleep,
0:55:12 including social connections, including exercise.
0:55:15 And I think that’s part of what social media is doing
0:55:16 for our young kids is not good.
0:55:20 That they’re not joining teams outside to be social
0:55:25 and interactive in that kind of,
0:55:27 now it seems like an old fashioned way,
0:55:30 but it’s very, very powerful way for development
0:55:32 and brain health.
0:55:33 I think I’m addicted to my phone.
0:55:38 And I often ask myself, is that a problem?
0:55:40 And from what you’ve said, it sounds like the problem is
0:55:44 what I sacrifice through that like addiction to that device.
0:55:45 Yes.
0:55:46 Is that, that the issue?
0:55:50 The issue is I sacrifice social connections, maybe movement.
0:55:50 Yeah.
0:55:52 You know, although I do work out every day,
0:55:55 but the brain is smart enough to know that
0:55:58 there’s no substitute for real human connections.
0:55:58 Absolutely.
0:56:00 Absolutely.
0:56:03 And that’s going to make me what I’m trying to,
0:56:06 I need you to help me.
0:56:10 Scare me out of this phone addiction that I think I have,
0:56:11 but I know many other people have as well.
0:56:17 So that is going to limit your potential for brain growth,
0:56:20 for brain plasticity.
0:56:24 It is going to limit your possibility for,
0:56:29 not to be dramatic, but joy in your life.
0:56:33 There’s different kinds of joy that you have in real person
0:56:36 to person social interactions that,
0:56:39 it feels pretty good on social media if you get lots of likes
0:56:41 and you know, but it’s not the same.
0:56:47 And I would, I would say that to scare yourself out,
0:56:50 you’re going to have to bite the bullet
0:56:54 and do a two week phone detox.
0:56:56 What would that do to you?
0:56:57 How would you feel?
0:56:59 I just could never imagine such a thing.
0:57:02 Well, which is a real shame, isn’t it really?
0:57:05 Because I just think about like my ancestors and my parents,
0:57:07 they must, they must think I’m so strange,
0:57:10 but it’s just the, just the way that like when my phone dies,
0:57:13 I’m like, there’s like, I’m like,
0:57:14 nervously waiting for it to come back on.
0:57:15 I’m like staring at it.
0:57:17 Like, oh my God, like, what am I going to do with myself?
0:57:21 Like, and I remember those studies they did on people
0:57:24 where they gave them the choice of either sitting alone
0:57:27 with their own thoughts or giving themselves an electric shock
0:57:29 and a huge amount of people in that study
0:57:31 actually would rather give themselves an electric shock
0:57:33 than just sit alone with their thoughts
0:57:36 because it’s some kind of stimulation.
0:57:37 That’s kind of how I think I am now.
0:57:39 Like, I don’t know what I’d do without my phone.
0:57:40 It’s really sad.
0:57:41 I know there’s people listening to me now
0:57:43 that think I’m an absolute like, I’m really sad,
0:57:45 but it’s just the, it’s the truth, you know?
0:57:48 And I do wonder what it’s doing to my brain,
0:57:49 but I think you’re right.
0:57:52 I think it’s actually what it’s doing to my like, my life.
0:57:57 The joy, the connections, being there to experience things.
0:58:03 I mean, that point that you made is a very profound one.
0:58:08 The not wanting to be alone with your thoughts
0:58:11 is the core of meditation.
0:58:13 Can you be alone with your thoughts
0:58:18 and focus on something, something organic, usually the breath,
0:58:21 but also a thought like loving kindness.
0:58:24 That is a very powerful practice to do.
0:58:25 And it, and it’s hard.
0:58:26 I find it hard too.
0:58:30 And I actually, I notice I find it harder when I’m,
0:58:34 when I’m using social media and when I’m using my phone more.
0:58:41 But I feel most creative and most imaginative
0:58:43 when I do practice that.
0:58:46 That is being alone with my thoughts.
0:58:47 What comes into mind?
0:58:51 How does my own imagination work,
0:58:54 which is very much dependent on the hippocampus as well.
0:58:57 It’s putting together all these things in your memory
0:59:00 in new and interesting ways that are unique for you
0:59:01 or unique for me.
0:59:05 And it doesn’t work the same if you are stimulating your brain
0:59:07 with social media all the time.
0:59:09 You, I mean, you wrote a book that kind of speaks
0:59:10 to what we’re talking about here.
0:59:12 You wrote a book about anxiety.
0:59:12 Yes, I did.
0:59:14 At 2021.
0:59:14 Yeah.
0:59:17 I think the, the U.S. version is called Good Anxiety, isn’t it?
0:59:17 Yeah.
0:59:19 It’s a slightly different title in the U.S., in the U.K.
0:59:19 Yeah.
0:59:23 Why did you write a book about anxiety?
0:59:26 I wrote a book about anxiety because I started to notice
0:59:30 my students getting much more anxious than they ever used to be.
0:59:33 And this was before the pandemic.
0:59:39 I mean, I had the idea to write this book in 2018, 2019.
0:59:42 And so at first I noticed in the students
0:59:45 they were getting so stressed out before finals.
0:59:46 They never did that before.
0:59:48 So, so many accommodations they were asking for.
0:59:51 And I’m like, well, what’s going on here?
0:59:53 But then I realized it wasn’t just them.
0:59:55 Like, I’m getting more anxious as well.
0:59:56 My friends are more anxious.
0:59:59 And I really wanted to dive into that.
1:00:02 I didn’t want to be anxious in that way.
1:00:05 Because part of me was like, oh, I’m just New Yorker.
1:00:06 I’m just anxious all the time, right?
1:00:08 Because that’s what New Yorkers are.
1:00:10 No, this has changed.
1:00:12 And we forget that before the pandemic,
1:00:15 there was still global warming.
1:00:17 There was still political issues that lots of people,
1:00:20 including me and all of my students, were worried about.
1:00:25 And that was the impetus for trying to dive in and ask,
1:00:29 well, I made my life happier with exercise.
1:00:32 What is the approach when it’s anxiety?
1:00:34 And not clinical anxiety.
1:00:35 I did not have clinical anxiety.
1:00:38 And the vast majority of my students didn’t have clinical anxiety.
1:00:40 They had what I called everyday anxiety.
1:00:44 Just worried about the things that are going on in the world.
1:00:46 And there were just more things to be worried about.
1:00:48 Is that normal? Is that human?
1:00:50 That is human, absolutely.
1:00:51 But is it human in the–
1:00:54 Is the quantity in which we experience it human?
1:00:57 I think it is.
1:00:58 I mean–
1:00:59 Because I think about my ancestors.
1:01:00 I go, they probably–
1:01:02 I don’t know. I always imagine my ancestors kind of,
1:01:03 I know, just chilling.
1:01:04 You know, like–
1:01:07 But they didn’t have global warming
1:01:11 where the ocean is about to get sucked up in plastic.
1:01:14 And the ozone is going to come down.
1:01:16 No worries like that at all.
1:01:19 But the everyday anxiety, for me, is like emails.
1:01:21 And WhatsApp.
1:01:25 Well, by everyday anxiety, I mean the anxiety
1:01:29 that people are feeling today that is not at the clinical level.
1:01:31 So all the things that we just mentioned,
1:01:35 global warming and wars in multiple places in the world,
1:01:39 all of that contributes to the higher level of anxiety.
1:01:42 And your ancestors in mind went through two world wars.
1:01:45 And that was anxiety-provoking.
1:01:47 No question about it.
1:01:50 But they weren’t also all the other things
1:01:53 that were contributing to it,
1:01:55 including the higher than, you know,
1:01:59 extremely high anxiety and suicide levels of our young people
1:02:04 that are, you know, strongly linked to social media.
1:02:06 So that’s another element.
1:02:08 What did you find then when you started uncovering
1:02:10 and trying to go on this search of figuring out,
1:02:14 you know, the nature of anxiety and what we can do about it,
1:02:16 did you first find that you’re right in your hypothesis
1:02:18 that it is increasing?
1:02:19 Yeah. Yeah.
1:02:20 How much? Do you know how much?
1:02:25 You know, it shifted over the time that I wrote
1:02:28 and published the book because I started in 2018,
1:02:31 and then it was published in the middle of the pandemic
1:02:37 in 2021, where anxiety levels went up approximately 20% worldwide.
1:02:41 So, but the social media anxiety,
1:02:45 that is going up in girls even more than 20%.
1:02:47 That’s kind of in parallel.
1:02:51 So I actually don’t know how to integrate those two levels,
1:02:53 but they’re both going in the same direction.
1:02:58 Why are women, young women, becoming more anxious
1:03:03 and suicidality amongst that age group is rapidly increased?
1:03:08 You know, I think that it’s that comparison
1:03:10 that is so easy to do.
1:03:14 And I see it in my own work at the university
1:03:16 that when I was going to college,
1:03:21 I had no idea what rank I was in number in the application,
1:03:23 but they could see that immediately.
1:03:25 They know exactly what number they are
1:03:26 in each and every class they take
1:03:28 in their whole high school class,
1:03:32 in their application to the five schools
1:03:36 that they applied to or 10 or 15 now that they’re applying to.
1:03:39 That gives a much higher level of stress
1:03:44 when you know those numbers immediately that we never had.
1:03:48 So there are stresses like that, that they’re experiencing.
1:03:50 More information, more…
1:03:54 It’s funny because more social connection,
1:03:55 but when I say social connection,
1:03:56 I don’t mean real world social connection.
1:04:00 I mean more followers and likes and people that can message me
1:04:03 and tell me something in BME or comment on my thing,
1:04:06 more noise, the volumes increased,
1:04:08 which seems to be driving more anxiety.
1:04:10 Where do we experience anxiety?
1:04:13 From a physiological standpoint, where is anxiety?
1:04:14 Because it feels like it’s in your chest.
1:04:20 So anxiety is kind of a full body experience.
1:04:26 And anxiety is strongly linked with the stress response.
1:04:29 So an anxiety provoking situation,
1:04:35 you meet somebody that you had a big fight with before.
1:04:36 Oh, I’m anxious.
1:04:38 I might have to speak to that person before.
1:04:46 That launches the stress response that is dependent
1:04:49 on what’s called the sympathetic nervous system.
1:04:51 And so this is where it becomes full body.
1:04:55 So what happens when your fight or flight system is activated?
1:04:58 Your heart rate goes up, your respiration goes up,
1:05:00 your irises get bigger.
1:05:02 So you can see everything and look out for that,
1:05:04 that annoying person that you’re worried about.
1:05:07 And blood is shunted from your digestion
1:05:10 and reproductive organs towards your muscles.
1:05:12 So you can fight or run away.
1:05:16 That’s what all of our ancestors evolved to protect us from.
1:05:22 Not the social media post, but the lion or the tiger
1:05:23 that could come and attack us.
1:05:27 So it made sense for that kind of stressor or that kind of threat.
1:05:32 Unfortunately, our body’s doing the same exact thing
1:05:37 when the nasty DM comes in from somebody I wasn’t sure who it is,
1:05:40 but they’re saying something really bad about something I care about a lot.
1:05:44 And we get this stress response, we get anxious because of that.
1:05:48 And somebody asked me, does that mean our brain is not very smart?
1:05:52 And the answer is our stress and our threat system is not very smart.
1:05:56 It isn’t differentiating between the line that could physically kill us
1:06:02 and the DM that might wound our pride, but will not kill us.
1:06:08 But it causes the same kind of stress response and anxiety response.
1:06:09 What do I do about that?
1:06:14 You have to learn how to turn the volume of your own anxiety down.
1:06:18 And part of that is, I’m not saying you have to not look at your DMs
1:06:21 or not look at social media.
1:06:24 There’s lots of ways to turn your anxiety down.
1:06:28 We’ve already talked about some of those approaches.
1:06:33 Exercise immediately decreases anxiety and depression levels.
1:06:35 And there, you don’t even have to get aerobic.
1:06:40 10 minutes of walking can significantly decrease your anxiety and depression levels.
1:06:45 That is a powerful tool that everybody can use right here right now.
1:06:47 Breath meditation.
1:06:51 Did you know that breath meditation, that is deep breathing,
1:06:55 is the oldest form of meditation?
1:07:00 Why? Because equal and opposite to that fight or flight response
1:07:05 that everybody seems to know about is the rest and digest part of your nervous system
1:07:09 called the parasympathetic nervous system that calms you down.
1:07:12 It slows your heart rate down, slows your respiration rate down
1:07:17 and shunts blood from your muscles towards your digestion and reproductive organs.
1:07:21 So you can do those weekend rest and digest kinds of things.
1:07:26 Well, everybody should be asking, “Well, do I have that system?”
1:07:28 Yes, everybody has that system.
1:07:29 Everybody has a parasympathetic nervous system.
1:07:31 How do I activate that?
1:07:35 The best and most effective way that you could activate that right now
1:07:38 is take three deep breaths.
1:07:41 Because that’s the only thing you have conscious control over
1:07:45 that can launch all the rest of that parasympathetic activity slow in your heart rate.
1:07:48 I can’t slow my heart rate by thinking about it.
1:07:52 Can I take three deep, slow breaths right now? Absolutely.
1:07:56 Monks, hundreds, if not thousands of years ago, realize that.
1:08:02 That is the thing that I can do immediately to slow my stress response down.
1:08:03 It’s very, very powerful.
1:08:05 Sadness.
1:08:06 Sadness.
1:08:12 Sadness can be linked with anxiety.
1:08:20 Sadness like anxiety is something that people, I think, would like to kick out of their lives
1:08:24 and just never have any more at all.
1:08:27 If I could get rid of sadness and anxiety, I would be the happiest person alive.
1:08:29 But would you?
1:08:37 Because my argument in “Good Anxiety,” my book, “Good Anxiety,” is that these prickly emotions,
1:08:41 these difficult emotions like anxiety, like sadness,
1:08:47 are really, really valuable because they’re focusing us on things that we should be paying
1:08:50 attention to, specifically anxiety.
1:08:51 It is a warning system.
1:08:52 Oh, there’s that person.
1:08:54 Oh, you didn’t have a good interaction.
1:08:56 You need to pay attention.
1:09:00 Now, should it throw you into an anxiety attack?
1:09:01 Perhaps not.
1:09:05 Use some of these techniques, like deep breathing and going for a walk.
1:09:08 But it is a warning system.
1:09:11 Why is this valuable?
1:09:12 Here’s why it’s valuable.
1:09:20 It’s valuable because when you know what you are worried about, your fears that your anxiety
1:09:27 focuses you on, it actually tells you about what you hold most dear in your life.
1:09:31 And that is something that we should all really want to know.
1:09:37 So if you’re a people pleaser, you are doing lots of things to maybe too many things to
1:09:44 please people, but that means that you care about personal interaction.
1:09:46 And I start with this one because I’m a people pleaser.
1:09:55 And I realized that people pleasing response and the anxiety that it does evoke is reminding me
1:09:59 that what’s very, very valuable to me is that interaction with people.
1:10:01 I care about that.
1:10:02 That’s a beautiful thing.
1:10:06 I value that in my life, in my personality.
1:10:09 I’m going to let you in on a little secret.
1:10:12 What is in the diary of a CEO cup?
1:10:16 This cup that sits in front of me when I interview these people, sometimes for three hours
1:10:18 and sometimes three people a day.
1:10:19 And the answer is this.
1:10:20 Perfected.
1:10:22 I invested in the company on Dragonstone.
1:10:28 And since then they’ve gone from an idea to the fastest growing energy drink in the UK.
1:10:32 It is a matcha energy drink and it is absolutely delicious.
1:10:34 But that’s not why I choose to drink it on this podcast.
1:10:38 The reason I choose to drink it is because it gives me what I call all day energy.
1:10:41 I don’t get the same crashes that I used to get with other energy drinks.
1:10:44 If you’re in the middle of a conversation or you’re in the middle of a talk on stage
1:10:48 or in the boardroom, the last thing you want to do is have a crash.
1:10:51 You don’t want jitters and you need focus.
1:10:53 And that is why they now sponsor this podcast.
1:10:57 Not only is it delicious, but it gives me a significant competitive advantage.
1:11:01 If you haven’t tried it, go down to a Tesco, go to a Waitrose or go online
1:11:05 and use the code diary 10 at checkout and you’ll get 10% off.
1:11:07 And when you do try it, let me know how you get on.
1:11:10 Do you think we could see love in the brain?
1:11:12 Can you see if someone’s in love in the brain?
1:11:14 If we scan the brain of someone that’s in love
1:11:16 when they’re interacting with their partner, could we see that?
1:11:25 Yes. In fact, they have scanned people who are in the throes of romantic love
1:11:31 and people that are in many years into a loving relationship.
1:11:36 And there are lots of reward areas that get activated
1:11:40 when you’re scanning the brain of somebody that is in the throes
1:11:43 of deep romantic love that is in the first few weeks.
1:11:44 You can’t get enough of the person.
1:11:45 You’re with them all the time.
1:11:47 You can’t stop thinking about them.
1:11:51 A lot of the reward areas are activated.
1:11:57 A lot of the social interaction areas including the insula part of the brain
1:12:02 right in the side here, just in the area near the ear,
1:12:05 deep into the cortex gets activated.
1:12:08 Doesn’t that mean then that if we don’t fall in love,
1:12:11 if we don’t have those feelings, that that part of our brain might shrink?
1:12:16 Because they say often things like you use it or you lose it.
1:12:18 They say neurons that fire together, wire together.
1:12:21 If I’m not in love, if I don’t have those social connections,
1:12:23 will the love part of my brain get smaller?
1:12:26 And would that make it more difficult to love in the future?
1:12:28 That’s a great question.
1:12:33 I think that that study has not been done, but absolutely.
1:12:40 If you don’t use that part of the brain, you will not gain the function.
1:12:44 And so, yeah, not using your love part of your brain
1:12:47 is nothing that I would ever recommend.
1:12:50 Some people, I guess, don’t have a choice.
1:12:56 Well, I guess they have a choice in the sense that they can do things.
1:13:00 They have optionality, but for whatever reason, some people don’t find love.
1:13:01 It’s just an interesting observation,
1:13:03 because in all other parts of the brain, you have to like…
1:13:04 Do you mean romantic love?
1:13:05 Romantic love, yeah.
1:13:09 But there’s all sorts of different kinds of love.
1:13:13 Deep friendship, it’s actually what I was going to say,
1:13:20 is that they tried to look at the difference between romantic love and maternal love,
1:13:22 or paternal love.
1:13:24 And it turns out that long-term relationships,
1:13:29 like romantic relationships of marriages that last for many years,
1:13:31 start out, of course, in this romantic phase.
1:13:38 But it turns into more of a maternal, paternal pattern
1:13:41 when you go farther and farther along.
1:13:43 That is a win.
1:13:45 That is not something wrong with your brain.
1:13:50 I think love does evolve over time,
1:13:52 and there’s many different kinds of love
1:13:59 beyond the romantic Hollywood and Disney kind of form of love.
1:14:01 So you can see the honeymoon phase in the brain.
1:14:01 Yes.
1:14:04 And then you can see the more mature love, I guess.
1:14:05 Yes.
1:14:06 In the brain, it’s interesting.
1:14:12 I guess the opposite of love, I guess, might be hate.
1:14:18 But I think when another sort of thing that people might think of as the opposite of love
1:14:20 would be rejection or heartbreak.
1:14:23 And through all of our lives, we encounter heartbreak in many forms.
1:14:27 We encounter romantic heartbreak, but also other forms of heartbreak.
1:14:30 As I read through your story, I could see moments in your story
1:14:34 where you encountered various types of heartbreak, grief.
1:14:38 You talked about your father passing away from Alzheimer’s.
1:14:39 Yes.
1:14:40 Well, he had a heart attack.
1:14:44 He had Alzheimer’s dementia when he passed away.
1:14:45 He died of a heart attack.
1:14:48 And just three months after your dad’s death,
1:14:51 your younger brother died of an unexpected heart attack each 50.
1:14:55 You say in your book Good Anxiety in Chapter 4,
1:14:58 you say the death was unfathomable.
1:14:58 Yeah.
1:15:04 As someone who studied the brain and therefore has a really strong understanding
1:15:11 of the physiology of the human mind and has also written a book about anxiety.
1:15:14 So you have this sort of two-pronged approach towards understanding feelings and emotions.
1:15:22 In those moments, what did you come to understand about the nature of emotion,
1:15:25 the most intense emotions and how they captivate us
1:15:28 and how we can find our path through the jungle?
1:15:31 Yeah, I like that word that I used.
1:15:33 It was unfathomable.
1:15:42 Both of those losses at the same time, it was hard to process.
1:15:45 And I remember the waves of grief that would come over.
1:15:49 It wasn’t constant, it would be like waves.
1:15:52 So I have one and then it would recede and I felt a little bit better.
1:15:55 But then unexpectedly it would come again.
1:16:02 And I’d never, thank goodness, experienced that before.
1:16:06 And it was in the middle of writing the book Good Anxiety.
1:16:12 And I put it aside because I couldn’t write when I was going through this terrible grief
1:16:16 and had to do something that I’d never, ever had to do.
1:16:19 And actually it was my biggest fear.
1:16:24 Unnamed biggest fear in my life was to have to give a eulogy.
1:16:31 I have a fear of uncontrollable crying in public
1:16:34 and I’d always been afraid of eulogies.
1:16:40 And I never had to give a eulogy and I had to give this eulogy for my brother.
1:16:44 Another unfathomable, how could that be happening?
1:16:55 And I got through that and I learned something in the process.
1:17:01 And I remember working out to try and make myself feel better during this time.
1:17:10 And the instructor said about the workout with great pain comes great wisdom.
1:17:18 And I just glommed on to that message because I was feeling great pain.
1:17:19 What was the wisdom?
1:17:21 Like I need to find some wisdom.
1:17:22 What is that wisdom?
1:17:27 And I realized, because I had to say something at this eulogy,
1:17:35 that the wisdom was that on the other side of that unfathomable grief that I was feeling,
1:17:40 the only reason why I was feeling that unfathomable grief
1:17:43 is because of the deep love that I had that it started with.
1:17:48 So if I didn’t love them as much, I wouldn’t have as deep a grief.
1:17:58 So in fact, the grief and the depth of it was a sign of the love that I had for them.
1:18:06 And that was the wisdom that I found and that was the solace that I found
1:18:10 and that was a message that it gave in that eulogy.
1:18:20 And then I became obsessed with the flip side of these awful emotions that we all go through.
1:18:25 Grief is this one because I had to go back and finish this book, Good Anxiety.
1:18:26 How was I going to do that?
1:18:33 The book was transformed by that event because I realized that if I could find the wisdom
1:18:42 and the power of the most horrible emotion, I’m going to say grief,
1:18:45 what is the flip side of anxiety?
1:18:46 What is the gift?
1:18:49 What is the superpower that comes from anxiety?
1:18:53 And I needed to find gifts and superpowers.
1:18:56 And that’s why the book got written in that way.
1:19:05 And I name superpowers that come from anxiety that was heightened after this terrible event.
1:19:09 But I found them and I used them all the time.
1:19:12 It was therapeutic, actually.
1:19:15 How did it change you, the loss of your brother and your father in such a short period of time?
1:19:19 How are you a different person because of those two events?
1:19:28 You realize that everybody’s going to feel these emotions sometime in their life.
1:19:38 And I can bring more empathy and compassion to those experiences for others.
1:19:44 And I remember, I never wanted to talk to people that had a loss.
1:19:46 I never knew what to say.
1:19:48 I knew I was going to say something wrong.
1:19:49 I just had no idea.
1:19:50 I felt lost.
1:19:56 And it is, I do feel wiser.
1:20:00 I feel like I have more empathy.
1:20:02 I have more knowledge.
1:20:04 Can I ask you a question?
1:20:11 If there was a pill that you could take to not feel the grief,
1:20:17 in the moment when you were in the throes of that grief,
1:20:18 would you have taken it?
1:20:22 And in hindsight now, would you have taken it?
1:20:28 I know I’m not a pill taker.
1:20:35 I wasn’t clinically, I didn’t feel like, oh, I can’t go about my life.
1:20:43 It was a terrible emotion, but I didn’t feel completely debilitated with it.
1:20:44 Other people do.
1:20:45 Maybe they would take the pill.
1:20:46 I would not take the pill.
1:20:52 And after the lessons that I learned from going through those emotions,
1:20:54 absolutely I would not take the pill.
1:21:04 And that was part of the lesson of writing this book, that anxiety is critical for us.
1:21:14 Because anxiety and sadness and anger are critical to help us appreciate those joyous
1:21:16 moments of our lives.
1:21:24 If we had no grief, no sadness, no anger ever, then every day it would just be mundane.
1:21:27 But it gives that value.
1:21:32 I mean, our highest highs are extra high because we know those lows.
1:21:38 And that also is probably how this grief that I experienced affects me.
1:21:41 I appreciate that, the good times even more.
1:21:47 As a neuroscientist who understands the brain and the systems and then sort of neural pathways
1:21:53 and all this stuff and how we think, and does that leave much room for spirituality?
1:21:56 And those kinds of things.
1:21:57 Are you spiritual?
1:21:57 I am.
1:22:04 And what does, because when some people think about spirituality, they think it’s the opposite of
1:22:06 neuroscience.
1:22:10 They think, if I spoke to some people, some people that I know, they think of
1:22:15 that the decisions and the feelings and the energies are outside of our body, not going
1:22:17 on in this ball of tofu.
1:22:23 And then some like hardcore people, scientists, will explain all of our experience through
1:22:24 this ball of tofu.
1:22:24 Yes.
1:22:25 Where do you sit?
1:22:29 So I’ve evolved over time.
1:22:37 So when I was a young scientist, no spirituality, no religion, everything can be described by
1:22:41 science, like I have to prove it, prove it to me.
1:22:43 I want to see the data.
1:22:51 I happily went through that phase for many, many years of my life until I realized,
1:22:58 I didn’t even realize, I think I needed something more in my life.
1:23:02 And then I realized, first there was a need.
1:23:04 There was a, then there was a realization.
1:23:14 Well, can I really prove that the only thing that is true is that what I can prove?
1:23:21 What if there are things beyond proving in the scientific method?
1:23:28 And I think there are things that in the spiritual realm, in the religious realm,
1:23:32 that absolutely could be true.
1:23:33 Could be true.
1:23:33 Could be true.
1:23:40 That cannot be solved, cannot be proven with the classic scientific method.
1:23:41 Things that you believe?
1:23:41 Yes.
1:23:45 What makes you believe them?
1:23:50 Because on one hand you said, you kind of want to, which is an element of that.
1:23:51 Yeah.
1:23:55 But as a, I’m interested as a scientist, as a neuroscientist, you must have been trained
1:23:56 to be able to explain.
1:23:57 That’s how you pass the exams.
1:24:00 You must be able to explain why you have these beliefs.
1:24:02 Do you, in that part of your life, do you just kind of say,
1:24:05 I’ve, I’ve felt it.
1:24:06 Is that the-
1:24:11 No, it’s, well, part of it, yes, I do feel it.
1:24:19 But it was the realization that the scientific method, in my opinion, is not the end all
1:24:23 and be all that I thought it was when I was a young scientist.
1:24:27 Can you prove that these other realms don’t exist?
1:24:33 And if they exist in ways that cannot be proved in, in a scientific method,
1:24:35 well, maybe your scientific method is wrong.
1:24:37 Is that, is that a possibility?
1:24:39 Have you had an experience that made you believe in another realm?
1:24:42 Have I had an experience?
1:24:50 I have, in my academic way, I have studied
1:25:01 texts that are the oldest texts that we know, the Bible, and I was raised in a,
1:25:06 actually, it was a half-Christian, half-Buddhist family.
1:25:14 And, but my, my, my core belief was Christianity.
1:25:18 And so, yeah, I, I, I go to church.
1:25:29 I, I really appreciate the power that, that religious beliefs bring to my life.
1:25:32 It actually really decreases my anxiety.
1:25:34 And that’s not the only reason why I did.
1:25:40 I just, I wasn’t looking, searching for an anti-anxiety kind of solution.
1:25:54 But I was looking for maybe something more than the scientific method in my life.
1:25:59 We’re going in one direction as a society.
1:26:02 Like more, yeah, I told you I’m basically addicted to my phone.
1:26:06 Screens, loneliness, less connection, less friends,
1:26:09 less people we can turn to in a time of crisis, according to all the studies.
1:26:14 And as we go further and further down that road, I think it’s making it more obvious of
1:26:16 what’s at the end, the other end of the street.
1:26:20 And it’s robbing us of something at a really deep level that I think I’m noticing more and more
1:26:21 as I grow older.
1:26:26 I think that’s actually why I want to have kids now, because I think I’m in search of that greater
1:26:30 meaning or purpose in my life beyond just like making more money or just, you know,
1:26:32 all the superficial stuff.
1:26:36 You said to me before we started speaking that you’re thinking a lot about community.
1:26:36 I am.
1:26:37 Why?
1:26:43 Because I think it is a balm to students and to everybody.
1:26:48 And I think those events that we can create that bring people together
1:26:52 and talking to each other and learning about each other are joyous events.
1:26:59 And I see it in me and in the students that come to these events.
1:27:07 It is clear that that is something that is a little bit unfamiliar to students right now,
1:27:09 but has immediate effect.
1:27:13 What is the one thing we haven’t spoke about regarding Betty,
1:27:15 the brain over there in the corner, but the brain in front of you.
1:27:18 The most important thing about the brain that we didn’t discuss.
1:27:24 You know, you only have one.
1:27:35 And we have an opportunity every single day to make it as healthy as it could be.
1:27:40 I watch my father pass away with Alzheimer’s dementia.
1:27:45 And we have elderly people in my family as well.
1:27:53 And it motivates me even more to keep my brain healthy,
1:27:59 to make as many friends as I can, to have as many connections as I can.
1:28:02 Because I want to be as happy as I can be for the rest of my life.
1:28:05 And I want to have a big fat, fluffy brain.
1:28:08 So you only have one.
1:28:13 And there are things you can do right now today to make it stronger.
1:28:19 Wendy, thank you so much.
1:28:22 Thank you for the way that you deliver.
1:28:26 I think is so deep rooted in a really undeniable passion.
1:28:31 And you’re on a real mission to make other people live better lives.
1:28:34 And I think that’s something that deserves to be highly commended.
1:28:39 It’s so apparent in everything you do that you’re so focused on helping others
1:28:40 in a way that I don’t always see.
1:28:43 And that comes from, you know, reading through your story.
1:28:46 I can see the pivotal moments throughout your story that sent you on that mission.
1:28:48 And I do describe it as a mission.
1:28:49 These two books are fantastic.
1:28:52 You wrote the book in 2000 or you published it in 2015 called
1:28:54 Healthy Brain, Happy Life.
1:28:57 And then your second book, which came out in America called Good Anxiety,
1:29:02 which is a phenomenal book that really helps to reframe how we think about anxiety.
1:29:05 And I think that reframing helps us experience it differently.
1:29:09 But also, shall I say, dare I say, be grateful for the signal,
1:29:11 the lessons that it’s there to teach us, the wisdom that it gives us.
1:29:15 We have a closing tradition on this podcast where the last guest leaves a question
1:29:16 for the next guest, not knowing who they’re leaving it for.
1:29:19 The question left for you is in this book.
1:29:25 What do you think is the best quality of humanity?
1:29:31 Compassion.
1:29:34 And what does that mean?
1:29:36 Compassion means
1:29:53 feeling for the experience of others, both good and bad.
1:29:59 So I can experience your joy compassionately and I could experience your grief compassionately.
1:30:04 I think that is because I’ve been thinking so much about connection and community,
1:30:13 that function of or emotion of compassion is really top of mind for me.
1:30:15 Wendy, thank you.
1:30:16 Thank you.
1:30:41 [Music]