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

27:01And it's not declarative. I can't declare how I do a backhand in tennis. But it is in your motor functions. And this is dependent on the striatum and a motor related structure. And then there's the prefrontal cortex dependent on that working memory or scratch pad memory, keeping things in mind. So you and I are both trying to remember what we've just said so we can we can link it to things that we might say in the future. One of the things that I found really interesting, both as a marketer, but also as a podcaster and as someone that's making a lot of content and trying to get people's attention.

27:35As I was reading through your work, it became quite clear to me that there's an open overlap between memory and attention in many respects because you were talking about these four things that make facts or events memorable. And many of those things are things that I think about as a marketer when I'm trying to get someone to engage with something, click on something, buy something. What are those four things? Can we go through them? Absolutely. So I like to say there are four things that make memory stick. And this is after 25 or 30 years studying the hippocampus and how memories work. Number one is obvious repetition.

28:12Okay. You remember things with repetition. Number two, not as obvious. Association. The hippocampus is an associative structure. It associates one thing with the other. For example, your name and your face. So I'm just met you and I will remember your name and your face now. But it also helps you remember things like who's married to each other, associating the husband with the wife. Have you heard of the memory palace? Yes. Yes. So this is a technique that has been used for many, many ages to help remember things. And it is a strategy where you picture a special location that's very familiar to you, like your childhood home.

28:56And when you need to remember a list of items, you take an imaginative walk through that very familiar environment and place those items in particular locations in the environment. That is associating something really familiar. Your childhood home, you know every corner of it with the new thing you need to remember. And that works and has worked for memory champions for many years because the hippocampus associates things together. That's number two, association. Number three is novelty. We remember novel things. I've never been to this particular studio ever before in my 26 years in New York and Brooklyn.

29:39So this is a novel thing in a room. I will remember coming here to do this podcast with you. Our brains and this is where it interacts with the attention system. Our attention system focuses on things that are novel. Why? Because it could be dangerous. If I've seen things over and over and over again, I don't notice them. And they go into the background. It's not going to hurt me any, you know, it's not, it's not going to cause me any danger. Recha, that's why cliche doesn't work in marketing. Exactly. Yeah. And so but something novel. Ooh, that really perks people up. I use that in my teaching all the time.

30:17Surprise students with an element of what you want them to learn and they will remember it better. But the fourth one, which is so powerful and we know it intuitively. We understand this intuitively is emotional resonance makes things more memorable. We remember the happiest and the saddest things in our lives because that emotional resonance is solidifies those memories. Where does that come from? It comes from a structure called the amygdala that sits right in front of the hippocampus right in the front of the temporal lobe. Right here and the hippocampus is right behind it. Amygdala means almond.

30:58It's an almond shaped structure and it sits right in front of the kind of tube shaped structure that is the hippocampus behind it. And the amygdala is kind of infusing the hippocampus and kind of giving it a little jolt when it's emotionally resonant. Either really happy or really sad. You brought with you what you've told me is a real human brain. Yes, I did. Now I'm not sure if you're just winding me up. But we're talking here about novelty and surprise and things you'll never forget and emotional resonance. Correct. And what you're saying that I was conscious that over in the corner of the room it appears that there's a human brain in a box.

31:38So Jack is just bringing the human brain in. Yes. I've never seen a human brain before. That's why I brought you gloves so that you can hold it if you like. If you like. Do you have permission to, if there is a human brain in this box and you're not winding me up, did you have to get permission from the owner of that brain? So this was purchased lawfully by my department, the Central Frontenoral Science at New York University. So it is lawfully ours to use as a teaching tool. And it does bring enormous novelty to any situation that I go into and makes people really think about their brain in a new way, which is why I bring it.

32:23What is in that box? In this box is a real preserved human brain named Betty. Was the person who used to own that brain called Betty? No, we don't know the name of the person. Okay. I named this brain Betty. So can you tell if it's a man or a woman? No, I can't. Ah, men and women brains not different at all. They are, but in very, very subtle ways that we wouldn't be able to tell just looking at the outside of the brain like this. Okay, I'm ready. Are you ready? I think so. Okay. So I'm going to open the hat box. No way is that a real out. Are you joking? Is that really a brain? It is a real preserved human brain.

33:14There it is. Frontal lobe. Frontal lobe. Occidental lobe for vision. Occidental lobe back there. And in this brain, I don't know if you can see it from over there. If I pull apart the two hemispheres, you can see how deep the folds of the brain. The surface is folded in that deep into the brain, which expands the surface area of the outside of the cortex. The rat cortex is flat. There's no folds. Humans and elephants and dolphins have lots of folds. They have much higher capacity for computation because of the folds that you see in this brain. It's smaller than I was expecting. Really? Half the people say it's smaller.

34:06Half the people say, wow, that's enormous. Interesting. Is that the color of a brain? The color of the brain is darker than the real brain if we opened up my head right now because of the formaldehyde, the preservative chemical that this has been sitting in for at least 26 years. This brain has been in my department for ever since I got here 26 years ago. I feel like I probably should hold it. I think you should hold it.

34:39Oh my god. It's wet. Yes. So, I mean, that defined this person's whole life, how they saw, felt, smelled, heard, and thought about the world. Just right there in your one hand, in your right hand. It's crazy to think that this little thing is, oh, it's different underneath. Yes. It's crazy to think that this little thing, this little... That's the start of the spinal cord right there. Okay. That you pointed at. And this stuff at the underneath at the back. That is the cerebellum, brain structure, critical for fine motor movement. So, we wouldn't be able to walk smoothly if you have damage in your cerebellum.

35:30Isn't it interesting that like everything, as you say, everything this person worried about, every thought, every memory, every relationship, all of their education, the school they went to, the university, everything they saw and remembered and all of their trauma and their anxiety and maybe their depression, everything they went through. Even their last days before they died is like captured in this little ball of like tofu that sits in my hand, an entire human being's existence. It's true. But they watched on TV, their favorite movie, their favorite number, color, everything. It's in this tiny little ball of tofu.

36:14It's true.

36:18Oh, gosh. It is amazing. And actually in real life, firm tofu is the consistency of the brain. I often bring in a block of firm tofu when I demo this for students. In addition to Betty. Do you remember the first time you saw a human brain? I do. Did it change how you think about your own brain? It changed my life because I was like, I want to study that. That is the coolest thing that I've ever seen in my whole life. And I want to study that and I want to be just like her. And so it really like, okay, now I decided this is what I want to do. And it was it was it was life changing. I say that because you know the start of this conversation we said that most of us don't appreciate our brain.

37:14A lot of people don't even realize it's there. The minute I had a brain scan one day and that brain scan really changed my life because seeing my own brain for the first time. It was the push that I needed to start caring more about how my decisions, behaviors are impacting it. So let's talk about how I can make that ball of tofu in my head super healthy, super big fat and fluffy. You talked about exercise early on but we didn't really dig into exactly what you mean by exercise because exercise I think is multifaceted in this definition. What kind of exercise should I be doing to make my ball of tofu in my head great, optimal?

37:51Well, all the research shows that the best kind of exercise that you can do is anything that gives you aerobic activity that is getting your heart rate up. So that goes for power walking will get your heart rate up soccer. So many different things name your activity. So many people want to say, oh, well, my favorite activity will that work? And I always just say, is it is your heart rate up when you're doing it? If the answer is yes, then yeah, that works great. We know that that level of aerobic activity is critical because that's going to release that growth factor maximally to get into your hippocampus that will grow those new brain cells.

38:32How much? So I have an answer to that. So we did two different experiments in my lab. One in low fit people, people that are really not exercising very much at all less than 30 minutes in the last three weeks you've moved your body. And we asked what could we see any behavioral improvement in your memory function from your hippocampus or your ability to shift and focus attention. If we ask you to move your body in a aerobic way for two to three times a week and we collaborated with a spin class, so clearly very aerobic. And what we found was in those people that did successfully do two to three times a week, a 45 minute aerobic activity, their mood got significantly better.

39:24Their memory function got better and their ability to shift and focus attention got significantly better. So that gives a little bit of a guideline for low fit people two to three times a week can start to give you some of those some of those cognitive changes. But you don't look low fit. So let me let me answer the question you're about to ask me would like what about me? I exercise pretty regularly and how much how much do I need? So to answer that question, we went to another spin studio and we said look we're going to give you free classes. You could exercise as much as you want in this in this at this studio and go up to seven times a week.

40:06And the control was just stay the same. You know, they were they were working out twice a week at the studio. And so was the other group that when you were testing them against. Yes, exactly. And so what we found was basically every drop of sweat counted the more you exercise the more change in your brain we noted both your hippocampal function prefrontal function and mood. If you you were already getting benefit, you know, you're already going twice a week, but the more you did the more brain changes you got. So that that doesn't give the formula that I would like, but we were heading in that direction, which is part of one of the questions that I want to answer.

40:48But I love to leave people with the idea that every drop of sweat counts for building your brain into the big that fluffy brain that you really want. And then in the real world, again, making it super real for people. Yeah. How does that change how I show up? Yeah. If you allow it to should have a beautiful effect on your mindset that your mindset around how often should I take wake up and 30 minutes early and do that walk before I start my day or accept the invitation to go walk the dog with with a neighbor. It's not an obligation. It is something that you're doing for yourself. It is going to have direct benefits on that ball of tofu as you call it in your head.

41:41It's going to make it work better. And I mean, I think the most immediate thing that I benefit from every single day is the mood boost that you get from that serotonin dopamine nor adrenaline that gets released every time you move your body. I always think that because I do a lot of podcasting and it's I'm super reliant on my brain being attached to my mouth and sometimes I notice that it's not. Sometimes I'm not articulate. I can't get my thoughts together. Yes. And I always try to figure out the correlation between what I did that day when I have a good day versus a bad day. Yeah. And I've from from you and also I speak on stage sometimes.

42:15So I've often asked myself because I saw Tony Robbins. Yeah. The speaker one day on a trampoline before he goes up on stage. I asked myself, okay, should I be doing a workout in my green room before I go up on stage for a big talk presentation? You think I should. Oh, yeah, absolutely. What's the basis of that in science and essence? It's the basis is that immediate fact. So there's three key effects that we know happen every time you move your body. First one is moved. You're going to get your dopamine, your serotonin up. Second is focus and attention. So so a single workout isn't going to make more synapses in your prefrontal cortex.

42:52But the prefrontal cortex uses dopamine. And so it's clear that even a single workout can make your prefrontal cortex work better in terms of focus attention. Also very important anytime you're speaking. And the third is reaction time. Your reaction time is you know motor your you're working your motor cortex when you move your body and your response and reaction time is significantly shorter after a even a single workout compared to if you just don't work out and sit sit alone. So great great things to do a great thing to do before you you stand up and speak. What about coffee?

43:33I'm trying to figure out if coffee is good for my brain. Yeah, bad for my brain. I've had a couple of mixed messages around the impact it might be having. Yeah. You know caffeine is a stimulant and people respond to that kind of stimulant in different ways. So it's over stimulation with caffeine is is not good for your ability to put words together. You know this is where I turn to a main theme in my book healthy brain happy life with this which is self experimentation. For you how what can you titrate your coffee to see what level of coffee is best for whatever your podcast or you're giving a talk.

44:16The other thing that couldn't work similarly to coffee that that I've started and that I do every morning is hot cold contrast showers because that cold that you shower on yourself after the heat stimulates adrenaline in you a natural adrenaline. It wakes you up and okay it was painful the first kind of few times I tried it but then you get addicted to it and I have forgotten to do it and gotten back in the shower just to douse myself with cold water because I feel better when I do that for for you know first thing in the morning. So lots of different things that one can explore with. Okay on the other side of the coin then what are some of the central behaviors that people do that destroy their brain.

45:08Well sedentary behavior is one of them not getting enough sleep is critical we haven't talked about sleep yet. Sleep is so important for normal functioning of the brain I like to scare my students by saying that you know in torture situations if you deprive a person of sleep for too long they literally die they die you cannot function if you are deprived of sleep for too many hours in a row it's that critical yet we don't we we happily you know watch too much Netflix at night and and and get only five hours of sleep when we could have had eight. So what's happening exactly why is it so important well there's there's so many different things I'm going to I'm going to say to one is that we know that in regular.

45:59Healthy sleep there is activity in the hippocampus that helps you strengthen the memories that you have formed in that previous day it's called consolidation and it's so important if you shorten that if you don't get enough you are not consolidating your normal every day. Memories and second it is the time during sleep when all the metabolites all that garbage that your brain is producing because all biological cells produce garbage it gets kind of cleaned up through the cerebral spinal fluid that that is flowing through your brain and if you do not get enough sleep you build up garbage metabolites in your brain it's like you have a gunky brain and do you feel like I feel like I have gunk in my brain when I don't sleep enough.

46:46That is exactly what is what is happening. When you think about things that we consume you know like food and drink and alcohol and all these kinds of things is there is there anything that if I'm trying to have an optimal brain I should be having or not having. Yeah well so I think the most evidence is around the benefit of the Mediterranean in diet which is basically all healthy kind of organic not organic but non processed is the word I was trying to think of things to eat that are very very colorful. There is so much evidence about how good that is generally for the brain that that is my go to what should I eat well is it on the Mediterranean diet if it is then go ahead if it's too processed only do it just a little bit.

47:38Is it true that if we have less friends if we have less strong relationships if we're lonely then our brain will shrink and is more prone to dementia and Alzheimer's and things like that yes we are social creatures and there are really powerful studies that have shown the correlation between the number of social connections that we have including just saying hello to the barista at Starbucks it's not a close friendship that you develop over. For 30 years it's just how many people you interact with and greet and longevity the more people you are regularly interacting with the longer you are living overall longevity but if you go into brain health absolutely it's also very very healthy for you it also brings happiness so friend and colleague of mine Robert Wallinger studied what makes people happy the study started in the 20s and the next day.

48:38In the 1920s in Harvard and after all of those many many many decades the answer is what brings happiness is the strength of your social connections so it makes you happier it makes you live longer and yes loneliness on the flip side causes stress long term stress that that damages the brain and yeah in the long term can can make it smaller and less healthy. Do you have any brain routines like a morning routine for your brain absolutely so every morning I like to wake up and I do a tea meditation which is a meditation over the brewing and drinking of tea and this is after many years of yo yo meditating I knew meditation was good but I just couldn't really get into it and I was introduced to this form of meditation from by a monk who who invited me to tea.

49:35And and just did this silent meditation outside in a beautiful location and the ritual and the sequence of brewing drinking seeping re starting over again kind of kept me in kept me in the flow and so I start with about a 45 minute tea meditation then I do about a 30 minute workout I try and do cardio strength sometimes I do yoga sometimes I just do mobility. And then I have breakfast and then I go to work. Oh and then I do that heart hot cold contrast shower is also something very helpful for my brain health because it really does in me that adrenaline boost that I get just energizes me and I love that feeling at the beginning of the day.

50:22Just going back to that question because I want to close off on it as well the idea of what would I have to do to destroy my brain so no sleep. I'm going to be sad and tree. Yeah. I'm going to have no friends. Yeah. And smoking smoking is very bad for your health and your brain. Okay alcohol alcohol. I mean yes long term alcohol can cause significant and named brain diseases. And then I'm going to have to use moderation even moderation now studies have shown is not very good and the reason why it's not good is that alcohol disrupts your sleep even though people drink it to go to sleep faster the sleep is much more superficial and is not deep and it's not the healthy sleep.

51:06So that is not good overall for your for the for sleep depth and and health and therefore brain health. I'm going to be a process diet to help my brain and I'm not going to have a lifestyle that is novel because we talked about learning. Right. Yes. So I'm not going to learn anything. All of these things should shrink that little. You're not going to be mindful also. Does mine is that as evidence that being mindful which is like meditation and being in the moment helps the brain. It does. There's beautiful studies showing brain plasticity in the areas that are important for focused attention meditation the practice of meditation is basically a practice of enriching the function of your prefrontal cortex.

51:56So you can focus on that object either the breath or or loving kindness is is a form of meditation. So yes, there's been studies that brain changes occur in long term meditators that are that are absolutely beneficial. What if I'm on social media all the time because there's not that good for me because I'm going to be seeing lots of new things all the time and I'll be learning lots of new things. So isn't if I sat on a screen for seven hours a day. Is that good for my brain social media does that take you away from real people and interacting with real people. Yes. Okay. Then then it's modulated by that there is the same thing.

52:35There's a difference and I think your brain knows it and look there's there's enormous amounts of evidence showing that the increase in use of social media especially in young kids correlate with huge increases in depression and anxiety. And so that's a lot of the anxiety levels particularly in young girls. So when when kids started getting the smartphones and started to spend more and more seven hours a day on social media that's when the anxiety and depression went up. That's for young kids. I use social media as well as a tool for business that is a little bit different. I'm not 13 years old and you're not 13 years old.

53:16So, so you know, there's some warnings. I think that need to go into into that. But, but let me let me be clear. No, it's not the same social media is not the same as social interactions face to face with people. Are you concerned about what social media is doing to our brains? Yes. Because you know, we hear those stats around young young girls are struggling most with social media and we think to ourselves, well, that's because there's a lot of like comparison and all these kinds of things and there's a lot of toxic messaging and such. But if we think about the physiological consequences of social media, what it's actually doing to our brains at a chemical level.

53:54Yeah. What would you as a neuroscientist guess is that like is the physiological harm to the brain? Not the sort of cycle. I'm thinking about not the psychological okay. Oh my god. She's more this than me, but like the physiological harm. But the psychological harm causes stress stress releases stress hormone that goes into the brain that at too high and too constant a level can start to first damage connections and then kill cells. So it's intertwined there and that that is part of what is happening. You can't you know, pull one one away from the other. Because our you know, we're social media is designed to kind of it's like pulling the slot machine handle like pull down on the feed and I get ping all of this nice picture and ping.

54:41There's notifications and comments, etc. It's that you know, I think about the constant. They say there's constant dopamine here. Yeah, they refer to is it a dopamine hit is that's what happening when we're being stimulated by social media or a slot machine. Yes. And is there is there any harm in just a constant dopamine hit all day every day? Well, I would not I'm going to answer that question by saying I would not want to be addicted to gambling. That gambling is addictive. It's hard to get away. You you you lose all these other things that we just decided were all good for you, including sleep, including social connections, including exercise.

55:17And I think that's part of what social media is doing for our young kids is not good that they're not joining teams outside to be social and interactive in in that kind of now it seems like an old fashioned way, but it's very, very powerful way for development and brain health. I think I'm addicted to my phone. And I often ask myself is that is that a problem and from what you said it sounds like the problem is what I sacrifice. Yeah, through that like addiction to that device. Yes, it is that that the issue is I sacrifice social connections maybe movement. Yeah, you know, although I do work out every day, but the brain is smart enough to know that there's no substitute for real human connections.

56:02Absolutely, absolutely. And that's going to make me what I'm trying to I need you to help me scare me out of this phone addiction that I think I have, but I know many other people have as well. So that is going to limit your potential for brain growth for brain plasticity. It is going to limit your possibility for for you know, not to be dramatic, but joy in your life. There's different kinds of joy that you have in in real person to person social interactions that it feels pretty good on social media if you get lots of likes and you know, but it's not the same. And I would I would say that to scare yourself out, you're going to have to bite the bullet and do a two week phone detox.

56:59What would that do to you? How would you feel? I just could never imagine such a thing. Well, which is a real shame isn't it really because I just think about like my ancestors and my parents, they must they must think I'm so strange, but it's just the way that like when my phone dies, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like nervously waiting for it to come back on. I'm like staring at it like, oh my god, like, what am I going to do with myself? And I remember those studies they did on people where they gave them the choice of either sitting alone with their own thoughts or giving them self an electric shock and a huge amount of people in that study actually would rather give themselves an electric shock than just sit alone with their thoughts because it's some kind of stimulation.

57:40That's kind of how I think I am now like, I don't know what I do without my phone. It's really sad. I know this people listening to me now that think I'm an absolute like, I'm really sad, but it's just the net is the truth. You know, and I do wonder what it's doing to my brain, but I think you're right. I think it's actually what it's doing to my like my life. Yeah. The joy, the connections, being there to experience things and. I mean, that point that you made is a very profound one, the not wanting to be alone with your thoughts is the core of meditation. Can you be alone with your thoughts and focus on something, something organic, usually the breath, but also a thought like loving kindness.

58:26That is a very powerful practice to do and it's hard. I find it hard to and I actually notice I find it harder when I'm. When I'm using social media and am I using my phone more. But I feel most creative and most imaginative when I do practice that that is being alone with my thoughts. What comes into mind? How does my own imagination work, which is very much dependent on the hippocampus as well. It's putting together all these things in your memory and new and interesting ways that are unique for you or unique for me. And it doesn't work the same if you are stimulating your brain with social media all the time.

59:12You, I mean, you wrote a book that kind of speaks to what we're talking about here. You wrote a book about anxiety. Yes, I did. At 2021, I think the US version is called good anxiety, isn't it? Yeah. Slightly different title in the UK. Yeah. Why did you write a book about anxiety? I wrote a book about anxiety because I started to notice my students getting much more anxious than they ever used to be. And this was before the pandemic. I mean, I had the idea to write this book in 2018, 2019. And so first I noticed it in the students that were getting so stressed out before finals. They never did that before.

59:51So so many accommodations that were asking for. And I'm going, what's going on here? But then I realized it wasn't just them. I'm getting more anxious as well. My friends are more anxious. And I really wanted to dive into that. I didn't want to be anxious in that way because part of me was like, oh, I'm just New Yorker. I'm just anxious all the time, right? Because that's what New Yorkers are. No, this has changed. And we forget that before the pandemic, there was still global warning, warming. There was still political issues that lots of people, including me and all of my students were worried about.

1:00:25And that was the impetus for trying to dive in and ask, well, I made my life happier with exercise. What is the approach when it's anxiety? And not clinical anxiety. I did not have clinical anxiety in the vast majority of my students in have clinical anxiety. They had what I called everyday anxiety. Just worried about the things that are going on in the world. And there were just more things to be worried about. Is that normal? Is that human? That is human, absolutely. But is it human in the, is the quantity in which we experience a human? I think it is. I mean, because I think about my ancestors.

1:01:04I think they probably, I don't know, I always imagine my ancestors kind of are just chilling. But they didn't have, they didn't have global warming, but the ocean is about to, you know, get sucked up in plastic. And the ozone is going to come down. No worries like that at all. But the everyday anxiety for me is like emails and WhatsApp. Well, by everyday anxiety, I mean the anxiety that people are feeling today, that is not at the clinical level. So all the things that we just mentioned, global warming and wars in multiple places in the world, all of that contributes to the higher level of anxiety.

1:01:44And your ancestors in mind went through two world wars. But, and that was anxiety provoking. No question about it. But they weren't also all the other things that were contributing to it, including the higher than, you know, extremely high anxiety and suicide levels of our young people that are, you know, strongly linked to social media. So that's another element. What did you find then when you started uncovering and trying to go on this search and figuring out, you know, the nature of anxiety and what we can do about it? Did you first find that you're writing your hypothesis that it is increasing?

1:02:23Yeah. Yeah. How much? Do you know how much? You know, it shifted over the time that I wrote and published the book because I started in 2018 and then it was published in the middle of the Pan -Dapink in 2021 where anxiety levels went up approximately 20 % worldwide. So, but the social media anxiety, that is going up in girls even more than 20%. And that's kind of in parallel. So I actually don't know how to integrate those two levels, but they're both going in the same direction. Why are women, young women becoming more anxious and suicidality amongst that age group is rapidly increased? You know, I think that it's that comparison that is so easy to do.

1:03:15And I see it in my own work at the university that when I was going to college, I had no idea what rank I was in number in the application, but they could see that immediately. They know exactly what number they are in each and every class they take in their whole high school class in their application to the five schools that they applied to or 10 or 15 now, that they're applying to. That gives a much higher level of stress when you know those numbers immediately that we never had. So, there are stresses like that that they're experiencing. More information. Yeah. More...it's funny because more social connection.

1:03:58But it's one of the social connections I don't mean real world social connection. I mean, more followers and likes and more people that can message me and tell me something, and DM me or comment on my thing. Right. More noise. Yeah. The volume's increased, which seems to be driving more anxiety. Where do we experience anxiety? From a physiological standpoint, where is anxiety? Because it feels like it's in your chest. So, anxiety is kind of a full body experience. And anxiety is strongly linked with the stress response. So, an anxiety provoking situation you meet somebody that you had a big fight with before.

1:04:40Oh, I'm anxious. I might have to speak to that person before. That launches the stress response. That is dependent on what's called the sympathetic nervous system. And so, this is where it becomes full body. So, what happens when your fight or flight system is activated? Your heart rate goes up. Your respiration goes up. Your irises get bigger. So, you can see everything and look out for that, that annoying person that you're worried about. And blood is shunted from your digestion and reproductive organs towards your muscles. So, you can fight or run away. That's what all of our ancestors evolved to protect us from.

1:05:21Not the social media post, but the lion or the tiger that could come and attack us. So, it made sense for that kind of stressor or that kind of threat. Unfortunately, our bodies do the same exact thing when the nasty DM comes in from somebody I wasn't sure who it is. But they're saying something really bad about something I care about a lot. And we get this stress response, we get anxious because of that. And somebody asked me, is that mean our brain is not very smart? And the answer is our stress and our threat system is not very smart. It isn't differentiating between the line that could physically kill us and the DM that might wound our pride, but will not kill us.

1:06:07But it causes the same kind of stress response and anxiety response. What do I do about that? You have to learn how to turn the volume of your own anxiety down. And part of that is, I'm not saying you have to not look at your DMs or not look at social media. There's lots of ways to turn your anxiety down. We've already talked about some of those approaches. Exercise immediately decreases anxiety and depression levels. And there, you don't even have to get aerobic. 10 minutes of walking can significantly decrease your anxiety and depression levels. That is a powerful tool that everybody can use right here right now.

1:06:50Breath meditation. Did you know that breath meditation that is deep breathing is the oldest form of meditation? Why? Because equal and opposite to that fight or flight response that everybody seems to know about is the rest and digest part of your nervous system called the parasympathetic nervous system. That calms you down. It slows your heart rate down. It slows your respiration rate down. And shunts blood from your muscles towards your digestion and reproductive organs. So you can do those weekend, rest and digest kinds of things. Well, everybody should be asking, well, do I have that system?

1:07:30Yes. Everybody has that system. Everybody has a parasympathetic nervous system. How do I activate that? The best and most effective way that you could activate that right now is take three deep breaths. Because that's the only thing you have conscious control over that can launch all the rest of that parasympathetic activity slow in your heart rate. I can't slow my heart rate by thinking about it. Can I take three deep slow breaths right now? Absolutely. And monks, hundreds, if not thousands of years ago, realize that. That is the thing that I can do immediately to slow my slow my stress response down is very, very powerful.

1:08:09Sadness. Sadness. Sadness is can be linked with anxiety. And you know, sad lists like anxiety is something that people I think would like to kick out of their lives and just never have any more at all. If I could get rid of sadness and anxiety, I would be the happiest person alive. But would you? Because my argument in good anxiety, my book, good anxiety, is that these prickly emotions, these difficult emotions like anxiety, like sadness are really, really valuable because they're focusing us on things that we should be paying attention to specifically anxiety. It is a warning system. Oh, there's that person.

1:08:57Oh, you didn't have a good interaction. You need to pay attention. Now, should it throw you into an anxiety attack? Perhaps not. Use some of these techniques like like debriefing and going for a walk. But it is a warning system. And why is this valuable? Here's why it's valuable. It's valuable because when you know what you are worried about, your fears that your anxiety focuses you on, it actually tells you about what you hold most dear in your life. And that is something that we should all really want to know. So if you're a people pleaser, you are doing lots of things to maybe too many things to please people.

1:09:43But that means that you care about personal interaction. And I start with this one because I'm a people pleaser. And I realized that people pleasing response and the anxiety that it does evoke is reminding me that what's very, very valuable to me is that interaction with people. I care about that. That's a beautiful thing. I value that in my life, in my personality. Q1 is often when businesses start implementing new systems and processes in hopes of creating efficiencies for the year ahead. And over the course of my career, I've learnt just how crucial having the right systems in places, one which has helped me across many of my investments is NetSuite.

1:10:26They're also a sponsor of this podcast. NetSuite is the number one cloud financial system through their streamlined platform. You'll find all of your accounting financial management inventory and HR in one place. Their technology has been a real game changer, especially for my team at Flight Studio. As over the last year, we've moved out of startup mode and into scale at mode. We no longer have to juggle multiple systems and having everything together has reduced the number of manual tasks and arrows. Over 41 ,000 businesses have chosen to future proof their business with NetSuite. So if you'd like to learn how it can help your business, head to netsuite .com slash Bartlett and free download the CFO's guide to AI and machine learning.

1:11:05That's netsuite .com slash Bartlett. We could see love in the brain. Can you see if someone's in love in the brain? If we scan the brain of someone that's in love when they're interacting with their partner, could we see that? Yes, in fact, they have scan people who are in the throes of romantic love and people that are in, you know, many years into a loving relationship. And there are lots of reward areas that get activated when you're scanning the brain of somebody that, that, you know, is in the throes of deep romantic love that is in the first few weeks. You can't get enough of the person.

1:11:44You're with them all the time. You can't stop thinking about them. A lot of the reward areas are are activated. A lot of the social interaction areas, including the insula part of the brain right in the side here. Just just in the area near the ear, deep into the cortex, get gets activated. Doesn't that mean that if we don't fall in love, if we don't have those feelings, that that part of our brain might shrink? Because if, you know, they say often things like you use it or you lose it, they say neurons that fire together wire together. If I'm not in love, if I don't have those social connections, well, the love part of my brain gets smaller.

1:12:24And would that make it more difficult to love in the future? That's a great question. I think that that study has not been done. Absolutely. If you don't use that part of the brain, you will not, you know, gain the function. And so, yeah, not not using your love part of your brain is not a nothing that I would ever recommend. Some people, I guess, don't have a choice. Well, I guess they have a choice in the sense that they can do things. They have optionality, but for whatever reason, some people don't find love. It's just an interesting observation because in all other parts of the brain, you have to like, Do you mean romantic love?

1:13:04Romantic love, yeah. But, you know, there's all sorts of different kinds of love, deep friendship. It's actually what I was going to say is that they tried to look at the difference between romantic love and maternal love or paternal love. And it turns out that long term relationships, like romantic relationships, the marriages that last for many years, start out, of course, in this romantic phase. But it turns into more of a maternal paternal pattern when you go farther and farther along. That is a win. That is not something wrong with your brain. I think love does evolve over time, and there's many different kinds of love beyond the romantic Hollywood, you know, and Disney kind of form of love.

1:13:59So you can see the honeymoon phase in the brain. Yes. And then you can see the more mature love, I guess. Yes. In the brain. It's been interesting. I guess the opposite of love, I guess might be hate, but I think when another sort of thing that people might think of as the opposite of love would be rejection or heartbreak, and through all of our lives we encounter heartbreak in many forms. We encounter romantic heartbreak, but also other forms of heartbreak. As I read through your story, I could see moments in your story where you encountered various types of heartbreak, grief. You talked about your father passing away from Alzheimer's?

1:14:38Yes. Well, he had a heart attack. He had Alzheimer's dementia when he passed away. He died of a heart attack. And just three months after your dad's death, your younger brother died of an unexpected heart attack, each 50. Yes. And you say in your book Good Anxiety in Chapter 4, you say the death was unfathomable. Yes. As someone who studied the brain and therefore has a really strong understanding of the physiology of the human mind. And has also written a book about anxiety. So you have this sort of two -pronged approach towards understanding feelings and emotions. Yes. In those moments, what did you come to understand about the nature of emotion, the most intense emotions and how they captivate us and how we can find our path through the jungle?

1:15:27Yes. I like that word that I used. It was unfathomable.

1:15:37Both of those losses at the same time, it was hard to process. And I remember the waves of grief that would come over. It wasn't constant. It would be like waves. So I have one. And then it would recede and I felt a little bit better. But then unexpectedly, it would come again. And I'd never think goodness experienced that before. And it was in the middle of writing the book Good Anxiety. And I put it aside because I couldn't write when I was going through this terrible grief and had to do something that I'd never ever had to do. And actually, it was my biggest fear. Unnamed biggest fear in my life was to have to give a eulogy.

1:16:25I have a fear of uncontrollable crying in public. And I'd always been afraid of eulogies. And I never had to give a eulogy. And I had to give this eulogy for my brother. Another unfathomable. How could that be happening? And I got through that. And I learned something in the process. And I remember working out to try and make myself feel better during this time. And the instructor said about the workout with great pain comes great wisdom. And I just glombed on to that message. Because I was feeling great pain. What was a wisdom? Like, I need to find some wisdom. What is that wisdom? And I realized, because I had to say something at this eulogy, that the wisdom was that on the other side of that unfathomable grief that I was feeling.

1:17:35The only reason why I was feeling that unfathomable grief is because of the deep love that I had that it started with. So if I didn't love them as much, I wouldn't have this deep a grief. So in fact, the grief and the depth of it was a sign of the love that I had for them. And that was the wisdom that I found. And that was the solace that I found. And that was a message that it gave in that eulogy. And then I became obsessed with the flip side of these awful emotions that we all go through grief is this one. Because I had to go back and finish this book, Good Anxiety. How is that going to do that?

1:18:26The book was transformed by that event because I realized that if I could find the wisdom and the power of the most horrible emotion, I'm going to say grief. What is the flip side of anxiety? What is the gift? What is the superpower that comes from anxiety? And I needed to find gifts and superpowers. And that's why the book got written in that way. And I name superpowers that come from anxiety that was that was heightened after after this terrible event. But I found them and I used them all the time. It was therapeutic, actually. How did it change you, the loss of your brother and your father in such a short period of time?

1:19:15How are you a different person because of those two events? You realize that everybody's going to feel these emotions sometime in their life. And I can bring more empathy and compassion to those experience for others. And I remember, I never wanted to talk to people that had a loss. I never knew what to say. I knew I was going to say something wrong. I just had no idea. I felt lost.

1:19:53And it is, I do feel wiser. I feel like I have more empathy. I have more knowledge. Can I ask you a question? If there was a pill that you could take to not feel the grief. In the moment when you were in the throes of that grief, would you have taken it? And in hindsight now, would you have taken it? I know. I'm not a pill taker. I wasn't clinically, I didn't feel like I, oh, I can't go about my life. It was a terrible emotion, but I didn't feel completely debilitated with it. Other people do. Maybe they would take the pill. I would not take the pill. And after the lessons that I learned from going through those emotions, absolutely, I would not take the pill.

1:20:54And that was part of the lesson of writing this book. That anxiety is critical for us. Because anxiety and sadness and anger are critical to help us appreciate those joyous moments of our lives. If we had no grief, no sadness, no anger ever, then every day would, you know, it would just be mundane. But it gives that value. I mean, our highest highs are extra high because we know those lows. And that also is probably how this grief that I experienced affects me. I appreciate that the good times even more. As a neuroscientist who understands the brain and the systems and then to a neural pathways and all this stuff and how we think.

1:21:49Does that leave much room for spirituality? And those kinds of things are you spiritual? I am. And what does, you know, because when some people think about spirituality, they think they think it's the opposite of neuroscience. They think, yes, if I spoke to some people, some people that I know, they think of that the decisions and the feelings and the energies are outside of our body, not going on in this ball of tofu. And then some like hardcore people, scientists will explain all of our experience through this ball of tofu. Yes. Where'd you sit? So I've evolved over time. So when I was a young scientist, I, no spirituality, no religion, everything can be described by science.

1:22:38Like I have, prove it, prove it to me. I want to, you know, see the data. I happily went through that phase for many, many years of my life until I realized, I didn't even realize, I think I needed something more in my life. And then I realized, first I was in need. Then there was a realization, well, can I really prove that the only thing that is true is that what I, what I can prove. What if there are things beyond proving in the, in the scientific method? And I think there are things that in the spiritual realm, in the religious realm, that absolutely could be true. Could be true. Could be true.

1:23:34That cannot be solved, cannot be proven with the classic scientific method. Things that you believe. Yes. What makes you believe them? Because on one hand, you said you kind of want to, which is an element of that. Yeah. But as a, I'm interested as a scientist, as a neuroscientist, you must have been trained to be able to explain. That's how you pass the exams. You're able to explain why you have these beliefs. Do you, in that part of your life, do you just kind of say, I've, I felt it. Is that the, no, it's, well, part of it, yes. I, I, I do feel it. But it was the realization that the scientific method, in my opinion, is not the end all and be all that I thought it was when I was a young scientist.

1:24:23Can you prove that these other realms don't exist? And if they exist in ways that cannot be proved in a scientific method, well, maybe your scientific method is wrong. Is that, is that a possibility? Have you had an experience that made you believe in another realm? Have I had an experience? I have, in my academic way, I have studied texts that are, the oldest texts that we know, the Bible. And I was raised in a, actually, it was a half -Christian, half -buddhist family. And, but my, my core belief was Christianity. And so, yeah, I, I, I, I go to church. I, I, I really appreciate the power that, that religious beliefs bring to my life.

1:25:29It actually really decreases my anxiety. And that's not the only reason why I did it. I was looking searching for an anti -anxiety kind of solution. But I was looking for maybe something more than the scientific method in my life. We're going in one direction as a society. Like more, yeah, I told you I'm basically addicted to my phone. I'm like, screens, loneliness. Less connection, less friends, less people we can turn to in a time of crisis, according to all the studies. And as we go further and further down that road, I think it's making it more obvious of what's at the end, the other end of the street.

1:26:17And it's robbing us of something at a really deep level that I think I'm noticing more and more as I grow older. I think that's actually why I want to have kids now, because I think I'm in search of that greater meaning or purpose in my life, beyond just like making more money or just, you know, all the superficial stuff. Yeah. You used it to me before we started speaking, you're thinking a lot about community. I am. Why? Because I think it is a balm to students and to everybody. And I think those events that we can create that bring people together and talking to each other and learn everybody each other are joyous events.

1:26:52And I see it in me and in the students that come to these events. It is clear that that is something that is a little bit unfamiliar to students right now, but has an immediate effect. What is the one thing we haven't spoke about regarding Betty, the brain over there in the corner, but the brain in front of you? The most important thing about the brain that we didn't discuss. You know, you only have one. And we have an opportunity every single day to make it as healthy as it could be. I watched my father pass away with Alzheimer's dementia. And we have elderly people in my family as well. And it motivates me even more to keep my brain healthy and to make as many friends as I can, to have as many connections as I can.

1:27:59Because I want to be as happy as I can be for the rest of my life. And I want to have, and I want to have a big fat fluffy brain. So you only have one. And there are things you can do right now today to make it stronger.

1:28:16Wendy. Thank you so much. Thank you for the way that you deliver. I think it's so deep rooted in a really undeniable passion. And you're on a real mission to make other people live better lives. And I think that's something that deserves to be highly commended. It's so apparent in everything you do that you're so focused on helping others. In a way that I don't always see. And that comes from reading through your story. I can see the pivotal moments throughout your story that sent you on that mission. And I do describe it as a mission. These two books are fantastic. You wrote the book in 2000 that we published in 2015 called Healthy Brain Happy Life.

1:28:54And then your second book which came out in America called Good Anxiety, which is a phenomenal book that really helps to reframe how we think about anxiety. And I think that reframing helps us experience it differently. But also shall I say, Derrace, be grateful for the signal, the lessons that it's there to teach us, the wisdom that it gives us. We have a closing tradition on this podcast where the last guest leaves a question for the next guest not knowing who they're leaving it for. The question left few is in this book. Oh. What do you think is the best quality of humanity? Ooh.

1:29:30Compassion. And what does that mean? Compassion means...

1:29:44Feeling... Feeling for the experience of others. Both good and bad. So I can experience your joy, compassionately, and I could experience your grief compassionately. I think that is because I've been thinking so much about connection and community, that function of or emotion of compassion is really top of mind for me. Wendy, thank you. Thank you.

1:30:41Q1 is often when businesses start implementing new systems and processes in hopes of creating efficiencies for the year ahead. And over the course of my career, I've learnt just how crucial having the right systems in places, one which has helped me across many of my investments is NetSuite. They're also a sponsor of this podcast. NetSuite is the number one cloud financial system through their streamlined platform. You'll find all of your accounting financial management, inventory, and HR in one place. Their technology has been a real game changer, especially for my team at Flight Studio. As over the last year, we've moved out of startup mode and into scale at mode.

1:31:16We no longer have to juggle multiple systems and having everything together has reduced the number of manual tasks and errors. Over 41 ,000 businesses have chosen to future -proof their business with NetSuite. So if you'd like to learn how it can help your business, head to netsuite .com slash Bartlett and free download the CFO's guide to AI and machine learning. That's netsuite .com slash Bartlett.