How To Stop Overthinking Things You Can’t Control With Dr Hannah Critchlow

0:00Our brains, they basically evolve as a prediction machine to create your sense of reality and to predict what's happening so that it can react to the world in real time. Mind wandering, which we do 25 to 50 % of the day. Wow, that makes me feel better. Yes! Today on the show. Dr. Hannah Critchlow, a renowned British neuroscientist, best-selling author, and broadcaster known for demystifying the human brain. One thing I find really interesting about the brain uncertainty is breakups. When you form a bond with a close partner, you're actually forming almost a transactive memory bank with them. You're starting to rely on that other person for the brain benefits that they bring to the table.

0:43Suddenly, if you don't have that person around anymore, you've lost almost an external hard drive that previously you had. Your brain actually no longer has that resource that it was once relying on in order to create a better life. There was a study that was done by this wonderful professor who's called Ray Dalen. He gave a group of volunteers the opportunity to either sit for 10 minutes or so with the 50 % probability that they would receive an electric shock or they could have the certainty of receiving the same electric shock then. So they wouldn't have to wait, not knowing. And what he found was the vast majority actually volunteered to receive that electric shock straight away because they didn't want to sit with the uncertainty of not knowing whether it was coming or not.

1:30With AI, is it making our brains slower? Like, do you think it's changing our brains?

1:39The last two years, I have kept a secret from you. And it's this. It's my new book, Healthy Shouldn't Be This Hard. And I think it is a problem that we are all feeling. And I was feeling it so much that I wrote a book on it. Now, if you've been a guest of this podcast for a while, you know that I am all about kindness, self-compassion, but when I dug into the research of this, my mind exploded. The connection between the mind and body is so integral, but we completely miss out on all the conversations on health, on how we speak to ourselves, and that is such a driving factor on how our food responds to what we eat to, the choices that we make, and we are so overwhelmed right now in the$8.5 trillion industry that is the wellness industry, which is predicted to be by 2027 so if you need a helping hand if you want a new way to live and be well then buy my new book healthy shouldn't be this hard out on may the 28th but you can pre-order it now i'll pop the link below in the show notes and i would love if you could support me on this and I honestly think it will support you too.

2:48Hannah, why do our brains not like uncertainty? Ah, now that is a very good question and it's a good one to start this conversation off with. I wasn't quite sure what to expect, I have to say, with this interview. I had a lot of uncertainty and ambiguity. I didn't quite know where this conversation was going to go. and in order for me to cope with that I need to take some measures so that my brain can keep up so that it can be flexible and agile in terms of how it's going to respond to this particular environment where I don't know what's going to happen. Now the one thing that all of us know is that we're going to face uncertainty on a day-to-day basis or even a minute-by-minute basis you know we don't know what the next 30 minutes are really going to bring we don't know what the next day is going to bring let alone the next year or the next decade there's a huge amount of uncertainty in our world and our brains even though they've basically evolved as a prediction machine that's how they operate right they have evolved in order to use your past experiences to try to create a prism of perception to create your sense of reality and to predict what's happening and then take shortcuts in information processing so that it can react to the world in real time um and as a result of that when we're faced with anything where a new situation or lots of change within our environment then our brain struggles right there's a lot of noise coming in and it's saying, hang on a second, you know, we can no longer operate with this prediction machine kind of template that we've built up.

4:38We're going to have to start literally making new connections in our mind to have a huge amount of agility and flexibility so that we can create new ways of thinking so that we can respond to the world accordingly. And in order for our brains to do that, it actually requires a huge amount of mental and almost physical activity within the brain. It's kind of like going for a really hardcore workout, right? But in your mind. So if we were to peer into any of our brains when we were faced with a really uncertain or ambiguous environment, you'd see huge amounts of plasticity occurring in the brain, lots of flexibility, new connections forming as we're trying to make sense of what's going on around us, as we're trying to learn and soak up information from this new world so that we can learn how to respond accordingly.

5:29And it's that flexibility that is really tricky for us to manage. Right. And there was a study that was done by this wonderful professor. He's called Ray Dolan and he's based in University College London. And what he found was that he gave a group of volunteers the opportunity to either sit for 10 minutes or so with the 50 percent probability that they would receive an electric shock. or they could have the certainty of receiving the same electric shock then so they wouldn't have to wait not knowing and what he found was the vast majority of his kind of volunteers actually volunteered to receive that electric shock straight away because they didn't want to sit with the uncertainty of not knowing whether it was coming or not and you can see this in other paradigms as well whether there's like a financial kind of um a financial what's the word hit i was thinking about similar to that you mentioned in your book which we're going to talk about the 21st century brain long-term evidence suggests that the threat of losing a job can be more harmful to health than unemployment itself yeah which feels quite similar to what you're saying like just knowing that you are unemployed you can kind of deal with because you can move forward but knowing if your job's coming or going that constant uncertainty creates so much anxiety that it's worse than actually losing your job yeah exactly so what they found out was that you know these lab experiments of participants receiving an electric shock or not or receiving a financial hit or not can be translated into the real world and you can see in populations that they've studied particularly in america when they've got a threat or an uncertainty of whether they're going to lose their job in the next year or two they're not quite sure whether the company's restructuring and whether that is them that's going to actually you know take the hit then actually the stress of that and when they measure this with physiological factors and also asking people how they feel is actually much worse than what happens when people actually do get that email saying I'm sorry but we've had to let you go.

7:40I attended TED earlier this year and I found myself in conversations with the founders of No Watch. You've probably seen me wear something on my wrist and lots of you have messaged me asking me what this is. It looks like a classic watch but it's actually quietly tracking something much more meaningful, your autonomic nervous system. This is the system that governs everything from how you respond, from excitement to anxiety, calm to overwhelm. Most wearables just give you a score but if you're anything like me that score can sometimes make you feel worse, like you're already behind before your day even begins.

8:16No watch works differently. There is no judgment and there is no dopamine chasing dashboard. It simply reflects what your body is already experiencing and also helps you notice what it might be missing. It gives you minute by minute timeline of your stress responses and your recovery. The recovery is the most important part and is the part that no one talks about and it is often the most revealing marker of our long-term health. In just five days it calibrates to your body and it builds your personal health fingerprint. You can try for free now for 30 days and if you use the code lwbw you can also get 15 off if you want to understand your body not just through performance but through self-awareness then this is where i'd begin um so our brains have actually evolved not just to um you know help us to survive in environments and to see threats and protect ourselves but our brains seem to have evolved to actually fear uncertainty, to find it very uncomfortable, to find it very threatening, just the possibility that there might be change occurring actually causes quite a reaction within most of us, where we struggle to think, oh gosh, you know, how am I going to handle this?

9:28So we know that from neuroscience, right? And we know that to be true. We can see it in ourselves, maybe when we're faced with lots of changes in our life, or when we look at our friends or family, if they're facing a threat of change. So knowing that, is there anything that we can do, right, to help our brains to deal with this uncertainty? Because as I said earlier, it's, you know, a part of life. You know, we have to have tolerance for it. And I actually go to, I've just come back from Stockholm where I was presenting at a meeting and I talked about this very topic. And at the end of the session, I basically asked a volunteer to come and join me on stage to face uncertainty I didn't explain what was going to happen I said is there anyone who'd be bold enough to come and join me on stage and I um and someone came up up to join me they were lovely uh they looked very nervous and um and I said uh so what I've got here is actually a little electric shock panel seems that neuroscientists like to electrically shock other people there's a theme going on here going on here yeah yeah so I um electrically shocked his um and I'm not going to name him uh electrically shocked him on his most sensitive nerve in the body which is the ulnar nerve so you know when you hit your funny bone oh yeah it's not funny is that it's not funny yeah why is it called the funny bone it is not funny it's not funny so the ulnar nerve runs all the way down from the shoulders to the hands and uh it basically allows us to move our hand and I um electrically shocked his funny bone so downstream or upstream of the hand, downstream of the brain.

11:06And when I switched the on button, we did an audience countdown. The guy basically started waving, he couldn't control his hand. And so he started waving, contracting and relaxing all the muscles in his hand. So he was waving at the audience. And then the relief in his face, he was just smiling at everybody, the whole audience was laughing. So going from this face where he was like, I'm going to go on stage, I'm going to put myself out there you know I'm gonna you know it is an uncertain situation I don't know what's gonna happen uh and then he did uh you know continue to play play with it uh but he was obviously quite nervous and then suddenly he was just beaming at the audience laughing and waving at everyone and I was like well this is what happens you know um if you put yourself out there if you try and face these uncertain situations then you might be able to connect with other people make new friends and actually it's important that we don't just get stuck in a almost a rut of habits in our behavior or in a negative loop it's really important for us that we challenge ourselves with new situations with new scenarios with meeting new people that might have very different ideas to us right all of that can be very challenging very uncertain but it helps us to keep our nervous system, our brain, active and agile so that we can actually have new ideas, so that we can innovate and problem solve.

12:35And it's key, it's fundamental for our species' ability to survive. So if we look back in our species' history, right, what we can see about Homo sapiens is that of all of the hominoids, and I might be pronouncing that wrong, but of all of the Homo species that have existed, we're the only ones that have actually survived and populated the entire planet and all right you know there might be a lot of people that say gosh yeah but look at the mess we're making of our own species and of the planet but if we just take a step back from that and think well what is it about our species that has been so fundamental to our success compared to other homo species and it's really it's thought to be our drive to explore to go and move from one land mass to go and think i want to go and explore and go and see what's over the horizon there i'm going to build a ship right i'm going to build some kind of tool a buoyancy raft that's going to take me over there because i really want to go and see what's over there i'm not certain what's going to be there you know there's a huge amount of ambiguity i don't even know whether i'll survive but I'm going to go with my friends and we're going to go and explore we're going to face that uncertainty in the world and and and then we'll we'll meet others perhaps and we'll be able to learn from them we'll be able to connect with them and we will be able to think in new ways ideas we'll be able to hop from mind to mind and we'll be able to innovate develop new tools different tools and evolve as a species and so it's that ability of ours to have an imagination that actually and a kind of a mindset that okay there's going to be change in the world but I'm kind of driven to explore I'm driven to face that ambiguity and uncertainty and try and see possibility there yeah and try to make the most of it and try to connect with others and learn and drive our species forwards and if you look that's been the basis of our species success to date and moving forwards quite a lot of scientists believe that we're actually undergoing a massive evolutionary shift massive transition where we're being compelled to develop all of these new technologies that are allowing us to explore as never before right we're allowed to share our views via social media in an instant we've got all these different perspectives and we're you know able to look at a wealth of information on the internet we're able to see that there's more data out there there's more uncertainty out there there's new ways of looking at the world and we can constantly learn from it and that's what's going to underpin our species success into the future if we really lean into that ambiguity and uncertainty and start to see possibilities you know obviously be careful as well don't be really massively gung-ho yeah but but to not be frightened of it so okay now i've kind of like that's the bigger picture right yeah but going back to sorry is there a place where it can be too much uncertainty because i think if you have stability in certain areas and there's part uncertainty that can make sense what if there's just so much uncertainty in your life that someone's listening to this thinking sounds great but like i don't feel that way right now yeah yeah because the problem is it can be overwhelming yes right and and this is and and this is really getting to the crux of the matter okay so that's the bigger picture of why uncertainty is something that we have to be able to deal with but then all right well how do we apply this to our real our day-to-day lives so that we can um so there's something in the region of 11 million bits of data that enters our senses every second and we're only consciously aware of something like 40 bits of data per second so it's a really small minuscule proportion and so it's very helpful for us to make habits in a routine so that we don't have to process extra information all the time and so that we don't feel so overwhelmed and so and we see this in study after study time after time if you create habits in your daily life if you create some kind of structure that can help you to then when a new uncertainty arises in the environment that's out of your control to be able to be prepared for it and to be able to respond accordingly so for example what I do is I create certain habits right in my day-to-day life um I go for my morning run right as early as possible I get some blue light there I get the endorphins um I'm making use of that morning cortisol peak in order to get outside I don't listen to any podcasts or anything whilst I'm doing my exercise I just go for a run outside in nature no music no music and I just let my mind wander right so my mind is kind of just gently wandering and just kind of resting wherever it's going to rest there's no goal for this run other than to just spend a bit of time outside doing a bit of exercise and we know that that's very good also for neurogenesis which is the birth of new brain cells in a particular area of the brain called the hippocampus which is involved in learning and memory and navigating the world and so that simple habit that I have of going from a bit of morning exercise actually helps prepare my brain so that when I'm faced with ambiguity and uncertainty during the day I've literally got new nerve cells in my hippocampus the seat of the brain region that's involved in our ability to imagine new scenarios and to learn and to think in new ways right I've got the neural constructs for that already in my brain from that daily habit of going for a run and in order to make sure I do that I actually leave my running gear on the back knob of my uh like bedroom door yeah Yeah, yeah, yeah.

18:41So even if I wake up and I'm like, oh, my gosh, it's so grey outside. It looks miserable. I'm not going to get any blue light. Like, do I actually want to do this? I'm like, OK, I've got my running gear is there. I'm going to go do it. Yeah. So that's, you know, a simple thing that I do. I've got some other things that I do that some of my friends really take the mickey out of. Tell me. so I have so I find it quite um I find it quite daunting sometimes going to give a keynote speech so for example yesterday it was to 1 800 people um and you know I'm going to do all these different environments these different places different audience demographics different purposes for the keynote right that have got to slot into programs um and the event organizers have put huge amounts of work into curating these events right so it's important that I show up and I I feel I feel the pressure right and I have to perform uh and there's a lot that can there's a lot that is beyond my control in those environments right in fact all of it I haven't yeah all of it It's not in my control.

19:52It's not in my control at all. So what I do control is I go for my morning run. Yeah, every single time. And I have a set uniform that I wear. So when I get up on stage, I know that I'm this particular Hannah and I'm going to perform in in like, you know, with neuroscience for this event. so I've got a very particular pair of hot pink pants that I wear uh and a couple of blue tops that I wear and you know sometimes I wear my purple pants too but I've got a really particular outfit and I know how I feel in that outfit I know how I walk in that outfit I know that's quite known actually I had Ali Abda on here who was a very big YouTube creator around productivity and he told me the story that he wears his glasses when he's performing because it becomes a different version of him and I think it was Beyonce she has like an alter ego when she goes and stays she calls herself something else yeah yeah yeah so I put just I'm a particular I've got my hat on right yeah and my friend's just like oh you're still wearing the pink hat pink trousers Hannah I'm like yep it's my uniform it's my uniform for work that's how I show up to perform in that particular you know role so your brain's registering this as a different perception of you that maybe can't be as hurt I don't know that maybe doesn't see like the full Hannah and this is like just the work Hannah I don't know whether it's because you're putting yourself in quite a vulnerable position right up on stage yeah so is it is it like it's your shield of uniform I think it's literally I think it might be um i know how it feels in that particular uniform i don't have to think about what else to wear i can concentrate on the content for that particular event right i don't have to consider anything else or worry about how it might affect me but it's so it's a habit that i've anchored and i've anchored that habit yeah so the two habits of you know exercising in the morning wearing a particular work uniform putting that hat on so that that is the habit that's the and that creates the familiar familiarity for me say that correctly that word either yeah in uncertain situations yeah it's a situation i can't control in that event like for that event you know it's the organizers you know is i've got no idea what questions are coming in from the audience um i've got no idea how the volunteers are going to react to particular because I do lots of demonstrations on stage I've not you know really it's the audience and the event kind of feeling that sways how that talk is going to go so the only thing really that I can control that I can anchor as you say is what clothes I'm putting on how yeah how I'm going to feel how I will feel in the in that particular material in that outfit and so you know that's what I do and the rest of the time I'm like in my running gear that's the other uniform that I have I've got this dress as well you're like creating these moments where you're like hey these things are out of my control but when I think about uncertainty I think speaking on stage everyone's gonna so well not everyone because some people absolutely love it but a majority of people feel really overwhelmed and might take a beta blocker before they go on so they can calm down or have breathing rituals or whatever that is but I think so many people can relate to that moment of feeling especially 1 ,800 people incredible well done thanks you know I always think before I go on stage I'm god I'm gonna wet myself you know I never have yeah but I get I do get quite nervous your brain goes to the worst case scenario right imagine if you wet yourself on stage that would be hyper embarrassing yeah most wellness products are built for someone with four hours sleep to spare and a cold plunge in their garden Dion is built for the rest of us it's a day-to-night system formulated by medical doctors designed around your body's natural rhythms.

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24:36But I think about uncertainty, so I think about hierarchy of needs, right? when I think about certainty and I think we need shelter and we need food and and we need you know a place to live we kind of think about as we go up the job which we mentioned at the beginning is kind of one of those things to give us financial security and to make sure that we can have a house and things like that one thing I find really interesting about the brain and uncertainty is breakups oh gosh yeah so that has a huge impact and I was I was yeah I was gonna touch a touch on this next um so the way that my younger son handles uncertainty when we're traveling together for example that's a big situation when you know there's a lot of uncertainty because you're traveling from place to place visiting friends and family or going on holiday and so there's a lot of uncertainty and ambiguity in the environment there and a lot of change in structure yeah um And so what I make sure that I do to help support him, he doesn't seem to need a uniform for this.

25:42Although he does pick his own clothes, he does change them. So that's nice. But I touch him a lot. So I hold hands with him. And I noticed that he says, I love you, mum, quite a lot when we're moving environments and the familiarity is gone. So he needs that extra kind of support. Yeah, yeah. And we do, we actually do quite a lot of singing together because I think he finds that soothing. Right. And listening to music. So again, these are the types of things that you can really easily bring into your day to day life to help you to then cope with uncertainty when it inevitably will crop up. Yeah.

26:24In your environment. Another thing that I do that I find incredibly useful that you can easily translate into day to day life is box breathing. So, you know, breathing in for four seconds, breathing out for four seconds, breathing in for four seconds, and breathing out for four seconds.

26:46In the shape of a box. Yeah. Just go, like, a few times around the shape, and it helps to calm down the nervous system. It gives you a little bit of a pause time, almost, so that you can start to think, okay, your brain can catch up with this new information. so that it can start to think how am I going to process this right because I've got to create a new way of processing this new information yeah I don't have to just use my existing template in my neural circuitry so when it comes to breakups then why is that such a big one because I think about all of these things but I think some of the biggest grossing episodes we've ever had on the show comes down to breakups I think it's a universal experience and I even know in your book it was kind of near the end chapter and you went to your doctor and were so stressed with finishing your PhD and you weren't sleeping and you were procrastinating and in the end she was like get rid of the unhelpful boyfriend eat well get some sleep and just focus on this and you were like it was sound advice and it worked yeah but interestingly when I was reading that I was thinking did she go through uncertainty with her breakup how was she feeling because I think it's a universal uncertainty that we all face because I think when we look at like socioeconomic status we're all on different levels right everyone connects to different things within their life whether it's their job or the home but I think the one thing that we all feel connected to is a bad heartbreak yeah yeah so there's and the brain that is very uncertain right you go from being with one person to not how to talk to me about that and the brain so I did actually cover this in my prior book joined up thinking the science of collective intelligence and I am going to sound like a little bit of a cold clinician I think it would be a polite way of putting it here buckling myself up hey guys I am very bad at asking for this but I wanted to stop for just one minute and ask a huge favor if you want to hear more diverse conversations from female voices such as myself I would love if you could hit subscribe we work so hard on this show to bring you some of the best guests in the world and having a female voice sometimes gives a different perspective and I really want to elevate more of that on this channel so please hit subscribe if that's important to you as it is to me um oh god so this is uh like this is as an aside um emotional intelligence number one predictor for how satisfied you are with life and also your academic success right emotional intelligence is so important fundamental skill for us humans to have so that we can connect with each other um and uh medical students this is where my mind was kind of linking up medical students in america are actually being told that they have to do humanities subjects it's kind of obligatory for them to do humanities subjects so that they read fiction books so that they can actually exercise their emotional intelligence because then they have to kind of immerse themselves in someone else's character and go through a journey with them and it helps to develop their emotional intelligence and empathy skills which researchers are concerned that medical students might not have emotional intelligence or empathy skills unless they do actually exercise them and you can train them up anyway so yes I did in fact go to my GP when I was struggling to finish my PhD, I was kind of feeling overwhelmed, right?

30:23There was a huge amount of uncertainty in whether I was going to pass my Viva. You know, I should have had confidence in myself and it was all absolutely fine. But also what was I going to do next? What was I going to do once I'd finished my Viva? Where was I going to be? So there was, you know, I kind of almost didn't want to finish because I didn't want to face that uncertainty. So I went to the GP and I asked her for advice. um i think she had a huge amount of emotional intelligence uh and she judged the situation very well she actually said to me um she was german she said it in a very germanic kind of way very like you know clear cut and on point and she said to me um are you about to commit suicide hannah this weekend because it's friday today do you think that you are in such a state that you know you're going to take your own life and i looked at her and i said no i don't think i am thankfully I don't feel like that I don't feel that bad and she was like no I don't get the impression that you are going to do that either that's good okay I'm not going to put you in for an emergency hospital visit then she said so what can you do right to help yourself to help calm yourself down she said I think your boyfriend is a bit of a distraction I think get rid of him and I think do some exercise to try and manage your stress and I think you then need to just work out a routine where you can focus and think clearly so that you can finish your book and so I actually shifted things around and started working into the night so doing exercise during the day and working a little bit later into the night so there was no distractions and that was sound advice from the GP I did dump my boyfriend this was a while ago right it was in the 20s in my 20s and I'd had a bit of a discussion with her about some of the problems with the relationship to be honest I'm not entirely sure I should have gone to my GP with this one but it was all linked anyway uh so which was a difficult decision because I'd actually been going out with him for a couple of years um and he was you know he's a nice guy uh but actually ultimately it was the right thing for both of us he's very he's very happy now in a very you know settled um position in life and I'm happy as well so it was the right decision um and I managed to finish my PhD in great time and it was you know it was all a success and everything uh but what happens when you know we're going through a breakup and it's not because we have to ultimately because the relationship because we need to do something else um you know what happens within our nervous system when we're losing that closeness that we've experienced with someone else well there's this idea that um when you form a bond with someone else a close partner uh you're actually forming almost a transactive memory bank with them so there's a number of ways that you bond uh and it helps to calm it can help you to calm down your nervous system to help you feel connected to help you feel happy um but also you kind of almost without even consciously being aware of it you're starting to rely on that other person for the brain benefits that they bring to the table right so they might be really good at finding places to go where you can have fun and then you might be really good at organizing the logistics behind it and together that makes great adventures had with minimal faff right and so you without even sometimes being fully aware of this you start to rely on each other for each other's skills that create this bigger better whole and then suddenly and there's been studies that have been done in the lab to prove this suddenly if you don't have that person around anymore you've got to actually start doing that cognitive work yourself you can't rely on them and so many neuroscientists believe that this is actually what in part grief is you've lost almost uh an external hard drive you've lost a bit of cognitive power that previously you had and we've been driven to be this very sociable species that form bonds we form friendships with one another and we form partnerships with one another and if that friendship or is that if that partnership is broken up if it's severed through death or through the relationship breaking down your brain actually no longer has that resource that it was once relying on in order to create a better life right and it's not a bad thing that we rely on other people that we rely on in the brains it's you know it's all give and take right but when suddenly that is lost it can feel you know like it's literally loss you know you've lost that extra resource in a similar way you know if you have to go without your phone for a little bit you've you're you're losing that extra cognitive resource right and that can also make you feel a bit on edge um I mean you you don't get the same degree of grief perhaps you'd hope um but there's a similar feeling of a kind of like I've lost something where is my you know where is my calendar my my extra memory my extra resource yeah that helps me to achieve things in life you know that extra tool and i have just called a partner a tool there yeah well i guess you kind of are because you kind of create a household together and you work together and you i don't know i guess it's i think we are sociable creatures and i think when you that's why i think breakups can feel so difficult for so many people so like in that space what is it that as a neuroscientist when you look at this that you advise to replace that transactional memory because there's no point wiping it no because then that's very sad at the same time right you're like wiping all and all those things give you so much different experiences and different versions and also i guess like different reflections on yourself yeah which is also i think really powerful but how do you get out of that flux of uncertainty or worry or the move forward yeah a friend gave me some incredible advice uh she said you know when I'd gone through uh I think I can't remember exactly what scenario it was but I was feeling particularly upset about something and um she said Hannah you know it's actually quite reasonable it's quite rational for you to feel upset right now I think just give yourself a particular time period that you think is sensible maybe it's a week maybe it's three weeks you know and just say I'm allowed to feel loss I'm allowed to actually not perform as well as I usually expect myself to I'm allowed to feel sad that's a completely normal reaction my emotions are telling me that I've lost something and that that's okay all right so just sit with that and try to learn from it and give yourself that time period where it's okay to feel that grief you don't need to justify yourself you don't need to continue to achieve the things that you don't need to really achieve so give yourself that period and then you know in terms of moving forwards um make sure that your brain is in you know we talk about we always talk about our bodies being in this you know good physiological state right feeling fit and having muscles and having resilience in our bodies yeah so that our joints will keep working into our 60s right so that we've got enough muscle so that we can lift things or you know we can go on that beautiful hike in the holidays right we need to have that really good strength so that we can enjoy life and operate with life but the same thing is true of the brain right so what can we do to keep our brains agile and nimble able to do all of the this like mental gymnastics so that it can cope with uncertainty so it can cope with changes so it can cope with loss well you need to have that flexibility within the brain so again anything that you can do to help foster that the exercise in the morning making sure that you try to sleep at night as well because that helps to consolidate what you've learned during the day so that you can wake up with a almost a different framework right yeah you know you can you can keep changing you can keep growing rather than be stuck in a negative loop of rumination you actually you've got this brain that is able to have resilience so that it can learn and change in response to all these different things that are going on in the environment so sleep we know intuitively that's that's something that we need um and then also a subject very close to your heart uh again it's a subject you know it's something that we know into intuitively to be true right but making sure that we are fueling our brains intelligently right so our brains use like 20 percent of our daily energy quota they use oh gosh i haven't got the figures to hand but it's like something like 4.7 million molecules of atp a second and that's your energy that's your energy molecule atp for the day yeah it's like the currency for energy so instead of like you know a pound system it's like atp is the energy system that helps your brain to operate and your body to operate and there's these beautiful little structures called mitochondria that live in our nerve cells and there's thousands of them in each nerve cell and they're busy busy busy working creating all this atp this energy so that our brain can have that nimbleness and do all of that activity to create electric signals that zip across our brain allowing us to think and um yeah so we need to make sure that we're fueling those mitochondria properly that we're feeding them with the right things and our brain with the right things so that it can operate properly so you know as well as i do and we all know what that fuel is it's so interesting that at that moment the brain can be like i don't want to do that or like i don't feel right in doing that i'm just putting it out because i just know people are going to be like well I know all of this stuff but I can't seem to do it yeah yeah yeah and the problem is is that you know if you are feeling a bit glum if you are feeling overwhelmed with stuff it is exceptionally easy to just reach for the donuts isn't it or the chocolate or whatever it is or the glass of wine or the glass of wine whatever it is that um you know your your go-to is and the problem is is that then actually that affects the gut microbiome to and it feeds particular bacteria in your gut which then send a signal up to your brain saying i want more of that feed me feed me and so then instead of feeding your brain so that you can sleep well forwards and sleep well and yeah and move forwards with this change and navigate all of this in an intelligent way you're just feeding all these microbes in your gut the bad ones right not the good ones yeah yeah so it's good to have a balance and so and there's even been studies that have been done by a guy called dennis berdikoff he's based in zurich and he's been looking at essential amino acids so the building blocks for proteins and you can't produce all of these essential amino acids within your own body so sorry you can't produce all of the amino acids so there's some essential ones that you have to get through your diet and if you are not eating enough of these essential amino acids these building blocks for proteins the kind of basic units for your brain and for your body then there's these orexin nerve cells in your brain orexin they're called orexin o-r-e-x-i-n they're in the hypothalamus and they basically sense the nutrient level in your body and in your brain they're like these sensing nerve cells and if they sense that you haven't eaten the proper proteins in your diet or enough of them they will literally kind of wake you up and say wake up come on you need to go foraging you need to go hunting to go and get a little bit of i don't know deer or rhino or whatever it is back in the day please don't have rhino so please don't have rhino so it doesn't have to be deer or rhino sorry i'm being a little bit flippant but you know back in the day you know on the savannah that's that that's the system that made sure that we were feeding our bodies and brains so that we could survive right and so you literally wouldn't you weren't able to sleep okay uh if you hadn't eaten the nutritional fuel that you needed to keep your body operating and your brain operating properly um so what particular essential amino acids are kind of useful uh in this scenario so things like for example if i know that i'm quite nervous i've got you know a big event the next day i've got no idea how it's going to go you know i'm feeling i care about it right i'm feeling anxious because i care about it because i'm emotionally invested in it uh i can't sleep i know i've heard all of this you know you've got to sleep it's so important for your brain you won't be able to learn or remember the next day makes you more anxious yeah that's right yeah this happened to me last night i just got off a train from you from paris and i'd had two mad days and i was like doing all the research on the way back and then I got in and it's that wired but tired where you're like there's so much happening in your mind and I'm like right I need to go to bed now and I just lay there and I'm like you have to sleep because you've only got seven hours and you have to sleep now and it just gets worse and the clock ticks down and you wake up or like you don't even get to sleep and it's like yeah I've got five hours now nothing worse and it's funny you like beat yourself up I'm like I'm doing all the things that I should be doing but I've just not wound my own brain down yes yeah yeah yeah well unfortunately that is very much a thing yeah and I think something that we can all you know relate to probably all of us yeah relate to that yeah yeah uh I certainly can so what I do is I basically I listen to Dennis Burdikoff's kind of research and I open my fridge and I look for an egg that might be there or some chicken or some cottage cheese or some quinoa would quinoa have quinoa has all your amino acids yeah yeah yeah Yeah, so and that will basically, I have a big plate of that.

44:39And I usually that helps me to go to sleep. Wow, that's so interesting, because a lot of people will say, well, you shouldn't eat before bed, because then you know, all your blood is going to your gut to help digest your food. I think that's the most important thing. I think it's about intuitively trying these different things and knowing there's not one prescription. Did you hear my stomach rubble? I heard, yeah, just thinking about the egg, the quinoa and the cottage cheese in one go. that was a bit beetroot that i put in there as well in my imagination delicious it was so good uh yeah so you know that works for me and perhaps it's a placebo effect i don't know but it you know that's what i do and it always works for me wow that's really fascinating yeah well so i can't remember what we were talking about i think we're talking about breakups and then we went i don't know how we got onto this but we were talking about the things to help you get through the breakups so you were saying oh mitochondria well yeah you're doing physical activity is really important and then understanding about sleep is really important and then obviously nutrition is really important through these and these are the things to be really aware of when you're looking at nutrition and why so i think that's so helpful because i think one universally like when we all struggle with uncertainty a lot of us can also feel quite loneliness in that moment um the thing that i loved about the start of your book was you spoke about emotional intelligence and I think that is such an important one to talk about because I think we all speak about IQ and we all want to show how smart we are and we all want to like you know study more and listen to more podcasts and digest loads more information and feel like we know loads of stuff but actually the thing I think that's got me most far in life is understanding other people and I think this what I love about the show is that I can meet so many different people and take on so much information but also different characters that sit in front of me and I learn a lot about that and there was a really interesting study that came out recently I don't know if you've heard about it but it was about people that looked at loneliness and empathy and people that were more lonely had less empathy and people that were less lonely had more empathy yes showing you that kind of well that kind of in my brain and then that empathy can be learned by being around other people um and i was like wow that's quite fascinating when we think about emotional intelligence because sometimes we think about self-development work as like just being on our own and doing all this interpersonal growth but actually the brain feels like it needs a lot of connection to like understand what empathy is as well at the same time so how important is emotional intelligence for our brain and what really like how would you describe emotional intelligence people that are listening because it's also quite a broad term so that's a really good set of questions um i would define my define emotional intelligence as our ability to understand our own emotional state uh and to understand that our emotions influence our decision making and to listen to that information and to regulate it where necessary but also to use it as a guiding force and then also being able to be aware of other people's emotional state and to have an understanding that they might be coming at a situation with a different a different set of experiences right they've lived a different life and so they might be perceiving the situation in a different way yeah so having the empathy having the insight to understand that actually someone else feels perhaps differently to us and they're contributing information that is still important and to actually be aware that their emotional state might be different and to think well how can I help that person what can I do to help move this situation forwards um and these skills in emotional intelligence and empathy are actually as i think i mentioned earlier on the number one predictor for how uh satisfied we are in our lives as we go through life but also the number one predictor for our academic success right so it's not iq that's so important it's emotional intelligence and empathy levels so it's been incredible isn't it right so we've been told oh you've got to do really well on these exams right you've got to kind of increase your iq iq is like our ability to reason to have logic uh to be rational right that's the important things the pinnacle for human intelligence right okay well we might have emotions but those emotions kind of make us hysterical or sloppy right and so actually those emotions are there to be quashed or ignored and we try to ignore other other people's emotions as well because you know we're all about logic and reason it's it's complete fallacy right so actually we're finding out more and more how important emotional intelligence and empathy is how it's underpinned our individual success but also our species success um and luckily it's a it's a trait that can be trained in all of us right so in all of us we can help increase our emotional intelligence how and empathy right so number one the number one way is uh i think you will love this uh it is showing a little bit of self-compassion right so spending a little bit of time listening to our own emotions and just thinking okay i'm feeling upset about this situation um why is that you know it's okay to feel upset i am feeling upset that's okay i don't have to ignore it i maybe i need to acknowledge that and give myself a treat you know or take myself out for a walk to process things yeah give yourself a bit of grace yeah yeah yeah yeah and if you start practicing that with yourself you might start noticing it in other people as well and then going back to this idea that reading fiction the simple act of getting lost in a great book you know good i love that advice because that's something i really need to take on I love a good Miriam Keyes.

50:49Is it Miriam Keyes? Am I pronouncing her name right? I love the chick flick novels, right? You get lost in these fantastic worlds. Yeah. Or, you know, Lord of the Rings, whatever it is that you want to get lost in, whatever worlds you want to get lost in, and just reading at that slightly slower pace. Yeah, so you're really imagining the characters. It's not that films or radio have produced these characters for you, but your mind is actually creating the voices. What if you struggle to concentrate on that? Then have a look at your environment and just think, what is it about my environment that is making me struggle to focus and concentrate?

51:29Or maybe I just need to give another book a go. Read the first, I think the rule of thumb is read the first 50 pages, I think. And if you're really struggling to focus, maybe get a different book. Because the idea here is that you really get immersed in the world. You really love it. So, you know, read what's a really good book that I love that I've read time and time and time again. Ah, The Rosie Project. Right. So it's about this genetics. It's about this genetics professor. And he just gets himself in. He says, yeah, it's I'll leave it for your listeners. It's about a genetics professor who is very scientific.

52:07We'll get people to put comments in the section of their favorite fiction book. Yes. Yeah, yeah. That's a really good idea. yeah yeah that's a great idea um uh yeah so just getting yourself lost in other people's lives right uh helps to enhance our empathy levels and our ability to think about other people and imagine other situations and scenarios yeah um and there's some wonderful really quite recent studies looking at what happens when we connect with one another so when we're really connecting and we're working together well when we're learning from each other right when we might still be having a little bit of differences of opinion but it's not descending into conflict yeah right we're actually able to discuss that difference of opinion with emotional intelligence and empathy and actually adjust our perception of the world and learn from each other um and innovate with ideas hopping from mind to mind then there's this beautiful thing that you see in the brains of people as they're doing that their brain waves start to synchronize they become physiologically aligned so the electrical activity within your brain when you're communicating and working with someone else if you if you're doing it and you feel like you know when you feel like you're on the same wavelength or you're in step with each other right it's because those brain waves are literally becoming physiologically aligned with one another it's incredible and you can even use this brain wave synchronicity to predict how well a group is working together and how well they'll be able to problem solve.

53:41You can even get a group of people, strangers, in a room, get them to work together and not only predict how well they're working together, but also predict who the leader of the group is going to be based on brain synchronicity within 30 seconds of the group starting to work together. So the leader will end up having a higher degree of brain synchronicity with the other members. so they're kind of falling into step with the other individuals but they're also helping to lead that synchronicity and so that brain synchronicity that ability of ours to connect on a electrical level with other people helps us to learn helps us to navigate situations and helps us to innovate and problem solve and then going back to your kind of initial kind of conversation about loneliness and connection and emotional intelligence you can even see with the older population right so part of the problem particularly well for all of humans at the moment is that it's thought that we're going through a little bit of a loneliness epidemic where we're not connecting with one another as much and perhaps that's because we haven't been thinking about how we can train our emotional intelligence um but you can actually see that as an individual ages uh the degree to which they will age healthily and stay active socially can be predicted by their brain synchronicity years prior and you can actually see whether they might be at risk of um dementia for example yeah based on their ability to synchronize brain waves with other people so there's simple things that we can do to help that brain synchronicity so looking each other in the eye directly uh we can also um exercise together and sing together wow i love that yeah just dance together dance together yeah yeah so dance together singing together um and there's another one what is it oh this is a lovely one if we're in a positive mood then we're much more likely to sync up with other people and connect with them and then there's also lovely studies looking at how we don't just connect with other people using our brains but also our nervous system within our periphery so there's loads of nerves in the gut and in the heart and these nerve cells send signals up to the brain via the vagus nerve and quite often people don't know just live in their own heads right and they don't listen to that gut feeling or heart flicker and that heart flicker or gut feeling is kind of nerve cells they're sending lots of information saying hang on a second there's some extra information from people around you from the outside world that maybe you should take account of and um uh yeah so that that information helps to guide our behavior we should listen to it and we should practice listening to that peripheral nervous system that's so called embodied cognition i think that's so important would that connect something like intuition exactly yeah yeah it's that interceptive ability sometimes called that intuition yeah yeah and it's important yeah i don't think many of us listen to that because i think it's hard to know whether it's anxiety or intuition right and it's like sometimes we think we know what's good for us but our body is trying to tell us a different answer yeah and our brains can be so powerful they can override these signals that we have which is known as you said intuition yeah how do we distinguish that well i think first of all by thinking what do you know what all of these emotions that we have whether it's envy disgust anger um anxiety sadness grief you know all these spectrum of emotions that we experience have all evolved for a reason right and they they shouldn't be quashed they should actually be taken on board um and a lot of that information as well from other people you know all the cues that other people are giving off it helps for us to not only be aware of our own emotions but others emotional states and as i said a lot of that information is being carried within our peripheral nervous system and so we can get into practice of listening to that information a little bit more effectively and there's a wonderful just set of experiments that's been done by an amazing researcher called professor sarah garfinkel she's now based at university college london and she got some people and she got them to just exercise quite vigorously uh for maybe 30 seconds and um and then just to spend a bit of time listening to that heartbeat so tuning into that nice strong heartbeat and the beat the heart is beating strongly now because you've just done a bit of you know 30 seconds of star jumps or burpees or whatever so you can really tune into it And just spending a bit of time each day listening to your heartbeat, listening to the information in your body so that you can start training yourself to think not just with your head, not just with your conscious awareness, but taking on board some of that extra information as well.

58:53and that's thought to be linked to our ability to understand and listen to our own emotions so that we don't get too overwhelmed by it we don't get too overwhelmed when we've been kind of filtering out any emotional information prior and then you know suddenly it's just it's so much that is my stomach is really going i was thinking about the nerve cells in the gut and then I was also thinking about it's so intuitive your body's like and I'm now gonna give a cue to let you know that you can't miss me on this yeah exactly I think that's a cue to let you know that there's also a really cool study that I want to tell you about about altruism oh yes tell me okay so yeah so basically Sarah found that if you spend a little bit time listening to your nervous system oh yeah sorry not Sarah Ann Sarah Garfinkel I would love if i could claim this but i did wasn't he and um uh yeah so basically spending a little bit of time tuning into that information so that you don't get overwhelmed and so that you it can help you with that interceptive ability and that emotional intelligence yeah and then also being able to pick up on information on the emotional states of people around you well i guess this connects a lot to emotional regulation right which i think is such a hard one for many people and I think about this for people that maybe have ADHD people that may be going through perimenopause menopause they all you know I have a lot of friends that are saying like one minute I'm up one minute I'm down I feel like I've lost who I am what advice do you have for people that can suffer with emotional regulation yeah it can be very difficult for us to regulate our emotions especially in an always-on society right where we're constantly being fed lots of information from the outside world and it's very easy to get overwhelmed by that and there is a lot of uncertainty in the outside world right and so going back to this idea that we're prediction machines so i think first of all rather than just ignoring our emotions as we've previously been perhaps told to do definitely in britain yeah sorry the americans are right better the brits are repress repress yeah repress keep calm and carry on yeah yeah which is you know that's uh you know sometimes a very sensible strategy right but i think also it's very important that we take a bit of time to listen to our emotional state and so take a bit of time to just go for a nice walk by yourself on a regular basis to just check in with yourself you know how am i feeling uh what's going on what do i think of this situation preferably go and do that in nature uh because that's helps to induce something called alpha waves which is the really slow rhythmical electrical oscillations in the brain that are associated with calm thinking and also being able to creatively problem solve so that you can think calmly and uh kind of if you've got some kind of maybe your emotions are there maybe you're feeling upset maybe you're feeling angry maybe you're feeling disappointed maybe you're feeling rage right take yourself out and i'm going to sound like a hippie here but you know take yourself out for a nice walk in nature listen to that try and think through question why is that you're feeling that why are you having that emotional reaction is it because the other person has wronged you is it because of something to do with your past experiences.

1:02:28Maybe it's a combination of the two. So, okay, now you need to use your alpha waves that are predominant because you're in this calm, relaxed state and you're walking in nature to help you think of a solution for how you're going to get yourself out of this. How you're going to kind of problem solve, how you're going to communicate with a person or how you're going to change your situation so that you don't feel like this anymore. the alternative is to just get absolutely smashed on wine or like you know or whatever it is that you want to do so but that isn't a great way to deal with you know things like that yeah um because actually it affects your decision making and your ability to learn from experiences so you know see I find that when I drink if I'm sad or stressed so my usual reaction when I used to be stressed maybe going back 10 years ago was I'm really stressed or I feel really overwhelmed whatever and I'll have a glass of wine that was my natural reaction now I know if I go to do that I am so much more unregulated like it actually doesn't calm me down oh god no it actually doesn't make me feel better and like I actually feel worse but I think it was like such a habit and also a habit of society like when anything went wrong my friends would be like let's have a glass of wine and you'd be like okay um that's what you do and that's what you do but now it's weirdly I do the complete opposite like whenever I feel sad I never want to reach for a glass of wine because I know that makes me feel so much worse it does make you feel so much worse and what it does is it actually removes the inhibit so your brain's got this balance of excitatory and inhibitory nerve cells in the brain and um when you've had a glass or two of wine um or any alcohol uh then it basically removes that gabarurgic um inhibitory effect is that the GABA hormone which makes you anti-anxiety hormone or not it's kind of a chemical the neurochemical in the brain uh that basically puts the brake, brakes on you acting in an impulsive way sometimes.

1:04:36And so then suddenly your brain is much more filled with those excitatory nerve cells. You haven't got the inhibitory breaking effect. And so you can act in a much more impulsive, unregulated way. Right. So although you're drinking wine to try and help yourself deal with things, unfortunately it can result in behavior that exacerbates the problem yeah and we've all known that haven't we we've all known that we've all we've all made odd decisions after a glass or two of wine we've all interacted in a way that we perhaps normally wouldn't yeah um and you know sometimes it can be quite freeing not to have that gabarurgic inhibitory control but in the long term not great yeah well then you're suppressing it more right it kind of becomes a build-up so something i found really interesting i'm gonna have to do this while i'm speaking to you about it because i want to see if i can show the listeners what i'm talking about in case they have no idea what i'm about to say oh can i also go back to this altruism microbe thing okay you do that at some point and if i'm looking at this it's because i'm getting something up okay so there's this wonderful study by hilt plasman at uh incid university sabon and he basically took a hundred volunteers and uh took half of them gave them some pre and probiotics uh and then analyzed them to see how they behaved with others including strangers right so they had no kind of emotional investment in these other people and what they found was that those that had the pre and probiotics so they had a really nice diverse community of microbes in their gut that were happily sending signals to the brain in the way that I'd talked about kind of before then they basically were much more likely to act in a altruistic and less selfish way wow so having this like really nice healthy gut sends signals to the brain to make you actually want to be nice to people in the world isn't that mind-blowing mind-blowing and so like but that just to me like emphasizes everything about the interconnectedness of our body yes yeah so all this processed food right this nutritional shit that we're eating making us worse it's making us worse it's making us like um you know so if we you know go for a meal of i don't know i don't want to say i don't want to get sued by a particular company but you know so yeah so if we're highly ultra processed meal ultra processed meal uh accompanied by lots of alcohol what's going to happen is we're going to say the wrong thing do the wrong thing and upset people and we also uh are not going to think with other people in mind so we're basically isolating ourselves our emotional intelligence has gone right downhill because of what we've ingested amazing i mean it doesn't surprise because what's interesting so you've started this with the brain right your career part of what we're talking about now i've started my career with food yes so but the funny thing that's happened to me is that i started with food and ended up at the brain yes because i was like there's just it's just not the full answer there's got to be more and i was getting frustrated one with myself but also with just the rhetoric of like if you eat this or you do this one thing like you'll get to where you want to go and we've kind of forgot the main mechanism that runs the whole thing which is the engine which is the brain and it's so funny that you started with the mechanism of the engine and then you're like oh wait also all of these things influence the brain yeah yeah yeah it's basically so our brain uses so much energy right so we need to feed it intelligently so that it can operate intelligently so that we live uh an intelligent fulfilling life yeah yeah okay so this is the next thing i was looking at um so lots of things have gone around in the last few years on why two people will see the same image differently and i think this also shows like why do people perceive things differently you were saying again like perception is like our own interpretation of maybe past events so the duck and the um the duck and the rabbit so it's this so I'm just going to hold this up now to the camera because I just thought you were going to show the dress that's the other one yeah but then you didn't put it in the book so I thought maybe that's me making it up and she's going to take me down and say no it's only these things but the dress is the other one that I was thinking of so there was the white and gold dress so I'm going to put this up to the camera if people are looking on youtube or spotify so i'm interested to see whether people see what do you use do you see both do you see a duck or rather because i see a duck panos what do you see um i i see a duck but i can see both you can see both can you flip between the two quite interchangeably yeah yeah so would you say that you're very creative i guess so yeah Yeah, yeah.

1:09:27So those people that can flip between the two versions of the duck and the rabbit rapidly at will, generally speaking, much more creative. Interesting. And so they see, you know, through uncertainty and ambiguity, because it's not clear which one it is, right? Your brain is just kind of landing on one animal. But being able to flip between the two. Where's the rabbit? To see the different interpretations. I'm obviously not. I thought I was quite creative being a dyslexic, but obviously not. see I see the duck I see a beak and a head and an eye might also be the location where you are so if I hold it to you for you okay if you see oh should I hold it to the camera so that's that's the little rabbit's nose that's the eye and that's the little ears flucking back oh yeah yeah I can see it now yeah yeah now now oh now it flips now you can flip between the two i can okay but i immediately see a duck what was the first thing you saw a duck yeah oh yeah i can see it now that's very so what so this means that if you see both quite quickly you're potentially more creative is that does it also mean you're better at problem solving well if you're able to flip between the two interpretations it's linked to being able to tolerate ambiguity and uncertainty and to creatively problem solve your way through it which is not a bad skill to have is it it's not a bad skill but now i'm like oh no is that not me panos you're fine um i mean he was sitting at a particular like you know i will put it down to that but i'm sure you are very creative and so and that was i remember the white is it the white and gold dress the white and blue dress i can't remember which one it was but again that went viral on the internet yeah and everyone was like well i see this kind of but i see that kind of i actually saw a bit of both in that one so that one that's been linked to whether you're a morning person or a night owl no so if you're more likely to wake up and see the bright morning blue sky then you're more likely to see a particular version of it because your eyes have adjusted to that particular wavelength really yeah that was one that was one hypothesis but this is but you know there's even the idea you know if i wrote down a six here yeah so if I write this down here what do you see show me again I'm kind of drawing it here with my finger what do I see yeah well I would see a six and a nine you'd see a nine yeah because it's kind of like written from your yeah so from your perspective that's clearly a nine right from my perspective I'm like it's a six it's definitely a six and this is what I tell my son I say look you know this is exactly as soon as he'd learned numbers I was like you know he was starting to he started learning about the facts right the facts of the world that you're taught with um a very particular education system and in some ways that was decreasing his flexibility in his mind so i remember him and his friend arguing about something or other and both of them could be right and so i just drew i got them to stand on either side and i said what's this i said look see you're both right it depends what perspective you're coming from whether you're a morning person or a night owl whether you hang around with rabbits more than ducks this is true yeah I think I hang around with ducks more than rabbits oh there we go this is I don't know this is a very good picture but this is the dress was this the dress image I think so yeah yeah that's it is it blue oh hang on is it blue black black and blue or gold and white yeah so depending on what you see will reveal whether you might be more like a morning person or an eye towel and i'm sorry i can't remember which way it is i'm seeing more blue and i would say i'm more of a i see i see more gold and white panos really see this just fascinates me the difference i'm not see you black and blue oh there we go so but we're both right we're all right we're all right you're two truths at the same time but there's been lovely studies that have been done by um chris and utah frith they're an amazing team and they found that teamwork is dream work they found that each one of us has got a slightly biased uh account of the world right due to the genes that we've had and due to the experiences um that we've had and the genes that we've been given from my mum and dad we have a very individual circuitry in our brain right that processes information to create our sense of reality and each one of us takes biases they take shortcuts in their information processing and when you actually start to get a group of people communicating together about what they see in the world and how they should problem solve then actually if they're really working well their brains are synchronizing uh then you start to cancel out each other's biases so that then everybody sees a much more accurate representation of the world and so from that more accurate idea of the world you can then start problem solving and innovating with ideas hopping from mind to mind pretty cool hey really cool so shows how important maybe maybe even shows how important team sports are yes yeah yeah so well that helps helps with brain synchronization and then going back to your original question on like 15 minutes ago or 20 minutes ago on loneliness yeah and emotional intelligence um yeah so we also know that if you are lonely um if you feel isolated uh and if the data suggests that perhaps you are isolated um a you probably don't exhibit the same amount of brain synchronization with other people you're probably going to be feeling a little bit sad as well um and you're talking about having decreased emotional intelligence but actually it also predicts um how your mitochondria are functioning the powerhouse of the cells yeah so if you're feeling you know really quite stressed really quite sad really quite lonely and not connecting with others then you can see that in mitochondrial health wow yeah and it's still it's not entirely understood what the relationship is so we know that when people are feeling stressed or upset then a couple of days later their mitochondrial health decreases so there's a funny relationship between which way it goes and if you feel like you're connecting with others then it seems to help boost your mitochondrial health wow so there's such a thing as like you know someone's giving off good energy you know so it's like oh do you know what i love so i love being in my you know one of my best friends company she is such good energy yeah she's probably having this a wonderful impact right she's synchronizing brains with you she's kind of like she's all positive she's um smiling and feeling all positive and it's probably boosting your mitochondrial health simply interacting with them so do you think like parts of our modern world then you know I think about the younger generation and becoming you know they are more lonely now than the older generation and I think about smartphones and I think about one thing we have to talk about is AI you know I even think about therapy so people go to therapy to speak to some human that sits in front of them and can connect to them and see them and help them understand themselves and now we have a whole generation going towards ai for therapy ai to speak to that as opposed to a doctor quickly to try and get all their information also we have people now building you know we can see that one to two people can build a billion dollar company today they don't need a team anymore like we're having all of these wild moments where artificial intelligence is now even interrupting our relationships people are even becoming in love with their ai and having bonding relationships like you'll say that there was a person the other day who told me that their friend that lived in new york she was single um you know in her late 30s and she was like i just really want to settle down now i really want to find a good guy and she met this guy and he seemed great seemed quote unquote whatever normal is but you know like a good guy and halfway through the conversation he said how do you feel about um me having a relationship with an ai because i need to tell you i'm also in a loving relationship with an ai and she kind of obviously i mean i don't know what her reaction was but like i can imagine her reaction thinking wow i thought i finally found someone quote unquote who was a normal man and then but basically has already got a relationship with his ai and this is like you know they're very convincing because they tell you everything you want to hear so they can be sycophants can't they you can basically train them to be complete sycophants that just tell you exactly what you want to hear and massage your ego exactly so like we're having so we're living in a world where we're like connected to devices more than ever before but not just for information for now you know quote unquote empathy and like understanding you and seeing you and telling you all the things you want to hear how is that affecting our brains well i think yeah yeah i think first of all and this sounds doom that's fine i really don't want it to be too full no it's good you've got to ask these questions right you've got to be horizon scanning and saying well how can how can we use these incredible tools that human species have developed in a intelligent way yeah right so you've got to be aware of the pitfalls um and having a sycophantic relationship with AI who just agrees with you and massages your ego isn't the way for you to ultimately move forwards in life I just think a lot of people are I honestly think in like 10 years a lot of people will have AI relationships I really do

1:19:45I really do I can see a lot of people are struggling to find relationships and I think it's going to become a companion for them i i think that is a possibility in the same way that perhaps a lot of people are using tech you know they're getting lost in video games they're getting lost in you know before it used to be television so in socrates day he was really concerned about the written word how it would change people's ability to communicate with each other and debate and discuss and he thought that the written word should be something that we perhaps we don't embrace we don't use you know so I think every era of humanity has been characterized by new tools new technologies that we've created out of our human brains right and we have to think about how are we going to use them intelligently for the success and happiness of ourselves and also our descendants um and i think ai offers great potential right so the example that i often give my favorite examples because i work in biotech uh or biology you know so i'm gonna give like geeky maybe these are geeky examples right these are proper geek out examples but i love the fact that um a group of scientists in mit in 2019 so ages ago really in the age of technology yeah that's ancient that's ancient that's like socrates time isn't it um so they used ai to develop a new molecule uh that had antimicrobial uh that had basically antibiotic characteristics that that the microbes around weren't resistant to because there's this growing problem of antibiotic resistance right so they because humans knew that this was a big problem because we're oversubscribing antibiotics uh because you know we're all trotting around the globe kind of passing contagious diseases.

1:21:45Everyone was like, oh my gosh, okay, we need to stop prescribing all of this. We need to stop giving them to all the farm stock. And I'd say that that is still an issue, that it's over prescription, over use. But what they found using AI is that actually there's a new, they use the AI to trawl through massive database to find a new mechanism of action for antimicrobial kind of resistance, antibiotic action. and at first they had no idea how this molecule that ai found worked like humans had no idea that this was a mechanism of action so they had to reverse engineer it back to figure out exactly how it worked but somehow ai had used the chemical signature of everything in its database put all this information together and was able to innovate and problem solve in a way that humanity hadn't been able to so it opened the doors of perception it opened up a new way of looking at this problem that humans hadn't properly considered tim gilliams he's um a guy who i did my phd around the same time at cambridge university with he was in neurochemistry and he knew he could see that there's a lot of people that have got rare diseases that um you know they're occurring at such a low incidence that traditional pharmaceutical companies wouldn't they couldn't research them right because it they were just there was no financial incentive for them to yeah even if they found a solution such a low incidence of people were affected by it that there was you know no point investing to take a drug to market using traditional approaches and so what tim did was he got ai to trawl through all of the protein data all of the dna data all of the microbiome data all of the metabiome data all of that data right and just set it off on a task and said you know come up with a new drug for this rare disease and um one particular success he's had with it is with nf1 which is a particular type of cancer of the nervous system it's very rare and it's incredibly painful so poor children get it and they get um neural neuroblastomas right yeah and then you know eventually they will they'll have quite a painful life and they'll die and traditionally there's no treatment for it um and uh he managed to find a new drug based on the signatures again no idea no idea why ai was saying here's your target and here's your here's your here's your molecule uh and then um he basically was able to reverse engineer why this molecule which had already been fda approved so it was in the library of molecules that had already passed fda approval and they were known to be non-toxic to humans so he was able to quickly put it through the clinical trials and it's you know being used by children now and having massive impact interestingly do you know how we figured out what how it was working the mode of action no it was via the mitochondria that makes sense it was via the mitochondria that makes sense they are crucial they're critical yeah as yeah my book talks about mitochondria quite a lot yeah and the energy yeah so going back to ai um and there's parallels actually with ai and mitochondria but anyway um going back to ai you know these tools can be used intelligently they can be used to open our kind of perception they can help us to innovate but we need to use them intelligently we don't just need to use them to you know create a cat avatar of ourselves so that we can share it on social media for example um and you've also got to think about the environmental cost of using ai right each search uses something like i don't know 10 liters of water is it and the electricity usage for each AI wow the data processing kind of data I have no idea oh gosh yeah yeah so it's a phenomenal amount of energy so at the moment all of this computational power this use of AI that the general population is doing every time they're doing a search you know the environmental cost is huge but what's happening in our brains with AI is making our brains slower like are we reducing our critical thinking i mean that's what i worry about okay right yeah am i like outsourcing to to my critical thinking every day to ai when i'm like i really should be doing this critical thinking for myself is it reducing our brain capacity is it changing our brains like i have no idea that's what i'm asking you it's exactly it's how you use it right so there was a study that went around the global news it was really picked up by the press and it was published it's an mit study it's the mit study yeah yeah so it came out a few months ago didn't it and there was basically an image of somebody who uses use chat gpt i think he was uh and there was just no activity in the brain pretty much right yeah and then compared to somebody who had actually written an essay by themselves without using any tools yeah and uh there was like oh the brain was like you know active there was it was you know full of activity lit up um and everyone and you know the headline basically that the press reported was like this is what chat gpt does to our brains it kills the activity and it makes us stupid i remember saying that and i saw the headline Yeah, yeah.

1:26:48Well, I have to say that the study is an important study. You know, it's good that it's been done, but there were massive limitations, which the authors themselves talk about in the original research. So, for example, they took a very, it was a very small study. There was just, you know, a handful of participants. And in each group, they asked people to do four iterations of tests. So for the first three ones, you were asked to produce an essay on a particular topic. I can't remember what the topic was. one group used chat gpt the other group used pen and paper and had to you know think about this essay and research it use critical thinking use critical thinking yeah yeah and they did three iterations of that three trials of that and then they asked the ai group to suddenly go over to just doing it with pen and paper now what happens is if you ask anybody to do a task risk then the first trial they might not do quite so well second trial they'll improve that's what we do our human brains learn we've got that flexibility thanks to the mitochondria we've got that nimbleness we're fueling our brains properly right so we're able to think our way through a problem and we're able to do better the next time third time we're flying we've got this we feel confident you know the uncertainty of the environment has gone we're not kind of questioning everything quite as much yeah in that same way and we're focusing in on the bits that we have to question so if we've taken a group that hasn't been basically gone through that trial and error process they're not kind of practiced at it and then asking them to do something that they haven't done for a while then obviously they're not going to be quite as good right you know so and and there was a very very small number of people in that study so there were limitations with the study and i just want to kind of go back to what was happening I mean it was an important study that was done but follow-up research is required if we go back to what the situation was like in the 1970s when the calculator came into the mainstream in classrooms right so suddenly students there had this ability to do some addition do some multiplication do some division long division right with this new tool that had been invented some of students just used the tool to write boobless upside down on the calculator yeah yeah so did i we all did didn't we but there's other ways of using that tool right and um and we were trained in that and actually what happened wasn't that we eroded our mathematical ability actually what happened is the educational system went hang on a second uh what we need to do is raise the bar of expectation increase the complexity of the problems that we're going to give these students so that actually they can achieve much more complex things.

1:29:32And we still need to make sure that at primary school, they're able to have that basic arithmetic, kind of arithmetic. I'm tired. Basic arithmetic. What's that word? I'm sorry, I'm getting a bit tired and hungry. And so that's kind of really what's happened. Right. Yeah, I would argue. And I would say that, you know, we've developed this new tool now with LLMs. Brilliant tool. Right. Absolutely brilliant. We need to figure out how we can increase the complexity of the problems that we solve. Right. We need to raise the bar, raise the expectations so that we are actually still doing all the mental gymnastics and we're using our brains intelligently.

1:30:15The critical part, right? Yeah. But do you think it's changing our brains? Look how I said that with so much fear in my face. I love AI. I say that's why. Tell me, honestly. I think it's a great tool. You know, I think it's a great tool. But not changing our brains. Well, I think anything. Our brains, this is what I was doing my PhD in, right? So I was staring down the microscope at synaptic plasticity, at how our brains adapt to our environment. How we learn from the tools that are in our environment, from the people around us, and how that impacts our perception of the world and how we interact with it.

1:30:59Right. We do that all the time. Okay. Right. And if you take an example of social media, right, this new tool that's been developed fairly recently, we know from some highly dubious unethical experiments that if you change the feed of individuals' news feeds to either a positive or negative slant, so it's either filled with like doom and gloom or it's filled with positivity then actually people will mirror that and reflect it right usually you're not part of a big or you would hope that you are not part of a big experiment an unethical propaganda experiment so you just be i think the point here is to be very conscious of curating your environment yeah to the to the maximum extent that you can so what do you want to have in your environment to help your brain to flourish and that's going to be different for each person yeah right um similarly how are you going to use ai how are you going to curate it so that you still are maximizing that incredible innate human intelligence that you have available to you so maybe there's only certain times that you use AI maybe there's times that you go technological you know you're completely free you're going for that nice walk in nature you've got nothing with you yes you can't be disturbed you've got that time for that mind wandering which apparently we we do like 20 25 to 50 percent of the day wow that makes me feel better yes and it's like it's fundamental that imagination that kind of mind wandering without a particular goal fundamental for brain health and for it acts as like an incubator for ideas so it helps to increase your creativity amazing how does you distinguish whether it's a duck or rabbit that is something that you can mind wander on yeah so is technology altering our brain we undoubtedly undoubtedly right um it depends how you use it on how it's going to alter your brain so what do you think are the most important skills then i mean there's so much here so we kind of i'm just going to like recap everything we started with uncertainty on how uncertainty is such an important predictor actually for i guess your overall brain health like actually if you can sit with uncertainty and become comfortable with uncertainty that actually that's a really good thing for your brain not detrimental yeah tolerate it and even just lean in and think oh my gosh be curious uncertainty creates possibilities creates possibilities become curious with that I guess is the word that I'm thinking of right and how important it is to support that uncertainty with fitness with movement with mindfulness I guess mind wandering nutrition and allowing yourself to actually have these lifestyle interventions that can support your brain as Lisa Felber and Barrett taught me about body budgeting where you know making sure that your brain has enough resources so if you're extracting some from like a bad night's sleep you're making sure that you're putting it back in and refilling it up so you're not just constantly extracting the things to making sure you're keeping it level um breakups can be very difficult because that creates a massive level of uncertainty but allowing yourself these things to support you is really key trying to make sure that i've got all this in because there's a lot that we're going through how important emotional intelligence is within the capacity that actually your emotional intelligence is maybe more important than your iq a better predictor of your actual intelligence and how we need to lean more into that lean more into empathy reading fiction novels um and actually being more connected to others because that can also really really help with emotional intelligence and how all of our perceptions are different and creativity is a really important part of that lens um and how important it is to have emotional regulation so taking time for yourself is really important asking yourself these questions um and then thinking about how important the mitochondria is with the energy within our bodies to support our brain and that goes with all the things that we were just speaking about um and that ai isn't the doom end actually it can be a useful tool and how the japanese actually use it and integrate it into their society and how that actually can maybe coexist with us but we've got to be making sure that we're still referring back to our critical thinking yeah and you know this yeah that's an incredible summary that was great i loved it yeah i loved it uh and you haven't even been making notes i made no notes i'm just wow your mitochondria are very very active the bioenergetics in your brain are clearly doing all the nimble agility trying to figure out what i'm saying and make a coherent pattern of it No.

1:35:58So, you know, we are living during very exciting times, right? There's an overwhelming times as well, right? There's a lot of change going on. And perhaps we have, we just think, gosh, if I just hide, if I just hide away, maybe, and just, you know, and try and that's how I deal with all of this is by just hunkering down, which some of us might feel that we want to. in the end if we continue to do that that's not going to be very helpful for our own mental health and our own well-being and our own brain health or for our species because each of us has got something to really offer other humans right yeah we really do and what's the point in our you know what's the point in our existence um well it's really it's to help our species survive and thrive into the future so being present you know in this age of ai we could all just start to hunker down and outsource all of our problems outsource all of our you know intelligence to this new tool or and i think this is actually what will happen we'll start to value those skills that have been very much overlooked previously our ability to connect within one another our ability to learn from one another and to create to innovate and to problem solve um well it was interesting because at this conference this weekend that i just went to there was a moderating session that i went to about machines in the world and about robotics and ai and we all had to go around and introduce ourselves and say are you fearful that ai or robotics will take your job in the next 10 years and when it hit me i had to say well i hope one because live well be well has become known as you know who i am sarah like i've become a person that people know of the last five years so they know my way of thinking and maybe my views and maybe that's why they follow the show but also these are human conversations that we're having and if ai replace the human conversation like what do we have left yeah like for me that's so important because you're using two critical minds at this point to kind of cross-pollinate information and distribute and think about different ways of and i might yeah ai could take my job ai could pretend it's me and and speak but like doesn't that then just lose the whole human concept i think if we look back at what's happened just five six years ago right the pandemic which we all forgot about i'm sorry i'm bringing it up i'm bringing it up no but we shouldn't have forgotten about it because it's such a big part of our lives there was a huge amount of uncertainty there right um and you know there was a huge amount of mandated isolation basically a severance of human connectivity um the positive from that is that new tools new technologies like zoom and teams sprung up and we're able to have meetings with people across the globe you know in a way that previously you know we didn't really consider as something that was possible and actually that's a great way to share information and to help organize things right and i use that tool on a weekly basis and I'm very grateful for it yeah I would say what I've seen since the pandemic is that there's been I've had so many bookings for events where companies who had had to follow these mandates for isolation as you know you should when there's a pandemic going across the world they knew that their employees really wanted to connect with each other on face to face and so there was all these events all these workshops there's these opportunities for human connection between employees from learning face to face suddenly there was a renewed interest and appetite for it um and i think you know what we see when we look in the brains of people when we look at the brain synchronicity uh you don't see the same level of brain synchronization when people are working remotely totally you see it when people are connecting face to face right that's when the magic happens that's when the that's when the innovation and problem solving occurs as well yeah because we're able to learn from one another in a much more real tangible way yeah and so i i think all of these technologies like the calculator like the written word right like the internet like social media like ai i think all of them have been created by our human desire to actually connect with one another in ways that weren't feasible before um but all of it will help us to actually value that human connection and our ability to analyze you know see other people's perspectives analyze much bigger data sets so that we can look at more diverse views look at rare things that happen totally rather than taking you know this is the average this is a human actually it's like it's looking at this diversity and all of this enhances our species collective intelligence yeah right so it's a it's i think it could be a positive thing if we decide to use these tools wisely and it's up to us that's so true that's what mogada said two years ago on this show it's up to us um and how we train ai as well also how we speak to ai it's such a big thing because it's learning from us right the whole time i want to make sure i end there because that that positive i started it feeling quite negative but i left feeling optimistic good somebody told me yesterday if you're more optimistic you're less likely to be successful and I'm so upset by hearing that.

1:41:26You're more pessimistic, you're more realist and you're going to be more successful. But anyway, the last question I always ask, which is to all my guests, and we've only had the same answer a couple of times over 500 episodes, so I always find it very interesting. It's Hannah, what does live well, be well mean to you? Ooh, there's going to be a big pause.

1:41:52I think live well, be well would mean to me making sure that I,

1:42:08making sure that my individual matter, my biological system. Such a scientist. I know, I know. is operating to its maximum capacity and potential so that I can have the most positive impact on the world around me. So I am living in the most positive way I can be so that the world is better for my friends and for my family and for my son. and his children perhaps too. We each have an impact on other people, each of us do, and the world around us. And it's our duty to make that a positive impact. Beautiful. Thank you for the very scientific lens on living well, being well. You're welcome. I love it.

1:43:06I love it when I get the scientists and everyone comes from such a scientific perspective. It's amazing. I love that question because for me, the reason why I created Live Well, Be Well is because that's my definition of a successful life. When you live well, be well, that's kind of success in my eyes. Rather than the social status, the fame, the fortune, which is actually how it is described in the dictionary, which is terrifying. I think like when we all kind of ultimately want to get to that stage of just feeling well within ourselves, I think when we have that, we feel quite successful. So I find it so fascinating and everyone has such different answers on this show.