Speaker 1: Why is it so hard to get real answers about
Speaker 1: your health? If you've been told that everything looks fine,
Speaker 1: but you know that something is off, we're not imagining it.
Speaker 1: That's why I created Vitality three sixty to help you
Speaker 1: better understand what's going on inside your body so that
Speaker 1: you can take the targeted action needed. With a functional
Speaker 1: health approach plus testing, we go beyond the guesswork to
Speaker 1: uncover the root causes of your symptoms. I've teamed up
Speaker 1: with Doctyesmina, an incredible integrative GP and together we will
Speaker 1: help you decode your body's signals and answer questions like
Speaker 1: why am I always exhausted? What's really causing my stubborn weight?
Speaker 1: Am I inflamed? Insulin resistant? Or maybe missing key nutrients?
Speaker 1: Because when you understand your body better, you can transform
Speaker 1: your health. Visit v three sixty dot health or check
Speaker 1: out the show notes for more. This is Healthy Heir
Speaker 1: with Amelia Phillips and welcome to one of my mini
Speaker 1: motivation episodes. These are shorter, targeted episodes where we tackle
Speaker 1: one specific question or challenge head on. Today we're bringing
Speaker 1: in neuroscientist doctor Sarah Mackai to discuss psychedelics, peptides and
Speaker 1: brain health.
Speaker 2: Doctor Sarah is the author of three.
Speaker 1: Books on brain health, including her latest book, Brain Health
Speaker 1: for Dummies, published earlier this year.
Speaker 2: She was also.
Speaker 1: Recently on the Mel Robins podcast and has a fabulous
Speaker 1: Instagram page which I'll pop the link into the show
Speaker 1: notes for you. It's all about helping our female brains thrive.
Speaker 1: So here is what doctor Sarah had to say about psychedelics,
Speaker 1: peptides and brain health. Psychedelics, they are such a hot.
Speaker 2: Topic at the moment. You know, we've got.
Speaker 1: Things such as psilocyburn, which is the active compound in
Speaker 1: magic mushrooms. You've got MDMA in ecstasy, and they're now
Speaker 1: being used in select clinic settings to treat disorders such
Speaker 1: as treatment resistant depression and PTSD. And I have to
Speaker 1: say there's some quite encouraging research and success coming out
Speaker 1: of some of these clinical trials. Can you please give
Speaker 1: us a very kind of broad overview of what's actually
Speaker 1: going on at a neurological level when we are putting
Speaker 1: these psychedelics into our body.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Australia is one of the very few countries in
Speaker 3: the world. I'm actually I haven't followed it for a while,
Speaker 3: that's kind of given the go ahead, yes, a betrayal, yeah,
Speaker 3: to some very select well trained psychiatrist working and the
Speaker 3: space to use you know, these these as a kind
Speaker 3: of a treatment. It's not like you're going out to
Speaker 3: woollies and buying some magic mushrooms to you know, help
Speaker 3: your recovery from your PTSD. That's not the sort of
Speaker 3: the state where I haven't looked into this for quite
Speaker 3: a while. But the long story short is, particularly when
Speaker 3: we're looking at psychedelics, they put the brain and this
Speaker 3: kind of very very very plastic state almost the same
Speaker 3: type of state where a lot of the brain because
Speaker 3: we haven't talked so much about brain networks, so that
Speaker 3: the different parts of the brain that kind of connect
Speaker 3: and communicate with each other, they become very kind of
Speaker 3: hyper connected and almost go into a state of plasticity
Speaker 3: whereby they can kind of form new pathways and new
Speaker 3: ways of talking to each other. Kind it becomes far
Speaker 3: more malleable, and the networks can kind of react and
Speaker 3: reorganize far more efficiently instead of becoming quite set in
Speaker 3: their ways. And perhaps say someone's got PTSD and there's
Speaker 3: a like that kind of trauma scenario playing over and
Speaker 3: over and over and over in their mind, and the
Speaker 3: tried all of the other things. It puts the brain
Speaker 3: in this state of plasticity where like kind of a
Speaker 3: new pathway could be much more easily formed, and it's
Speaker 3: not simply a matter of throwing the psychedelic and the
Speaker 3: brain will do that. It needs to be needs the
Speaker 3: talk therapy and needs the therapy at the same Yeah,
Speaker 3: because my understanding is, you know, these go for a
Speaker 3: few months, and so someone will have like quite a
Speaker 3: significant dose of either the PSILOCYBERM or the MDMA, and
Speaker 3: then over a two to six hour period, they're in
Speaker 3: a room with you know, all the props, whether it's
Speaker 3: music or sound or light, and the psychiatst psychiatrists most importantly,
Speaker 3: asking very considered and specific questions to help unlock whatever
Speaker 3: that issue. And then you know, they I think, I
Speaker 3: can't remember if it's every three weeks or six weeks
Speaker 3: or probably the treatments are changing and varied, but they
Speaker 3: go through a few of these dose sessions over a
Speaker 3: couple of months. And so it's this combination of the
Speaker 3: psychiatrist's input that is helping when the brain's I guess
Speaker 3: it's a bit like hot yoga, right when your muscles
Speaker 3: are all loose and supple and you're able to stretch.
Speaker 3: A bit further is that kind of brain becomes. If
Speaker 3: you google what happens to the brain on psychedelics, there's
Speaker 3: this really famous figure that I saw. The researcher who
Speaker 3: created that figure, I was on Twitter or linkedln or
Speaker 3: something not that long ago. Going to snow become one
Speaker 3: of the most shared images and all the neuroscience because
Speaker 3: it kind of shows this kind of really colorful rainbow
Speaker 3: image of the different brain networks becoming much more kind
Speaker 3: of hyper connected with each other. So it's like they
Speaker 3: kind of go into this the state of like kind
Speaker 3: of flux and flexibility that enables the brain to create
Speaker 3: a much newer, healthier pattern and wave connected.
Speaker 2: And I can't.
Speaker 1: Imagine if it's got the power to create these newer
Speaker 1: and healthier patterns, I can imagine there's a bit of
Speaker 1: risk involved as well, because what if it has the opposite,
Speaker 1: what if it creates an even work.
Speaker 3: This is why you know, people you might do so psychedelics,
Speaker 3: you have a bad trip and you can end up
Speaker 3: seeing the psychiatrist because you know you've got a psychosis
Speaker 3: or something. So you know, you don't know which way
Speaker 3: it's going to go, and that's what it needs to
Speaker 3: be done in this kind of really controlled and regulated way,
Speaker 3: and lots of psychoactive psychoactive drugs and substances work in
Speaker 3: these ways. There's this really interesting theory. This is not
Speaker 3: what I know you were going to ask me about,
Speaker 3: but it just time. It's a really interesting theory about
Speaker 3: even SSRIs. So lots of people find SSRI, selective serotonin
Speaker 3: reuptake inhibit is help with symptoms of depression, but it
Speaker 3: takes a while for them to kick in. We know
Speaker 3: the SSRI kind of hasn't action at the sign aps
Speaker 3: to increase serotonin quite quickly, but your depression symptoms take
Speaker 3: a really long time to maybe three weeks to sort
Speaker 3: of start to resolve. What we think happens is this
Speaker 3: is this cool kind of idea that's been tested, is
Speaker 3: that when the serotonin levels go up, it changes your perception,
Speaker 3: particularly your social interactions and perceptions of other people. So
Speaker 3: someone with depression may walk past someone in a hallway
Speaker 3: and that person might look at them or not, and
Speaker 3: then they go, oh my god, they hate me. They're
Speaker 3: not looking at the world through rose tinted glasses. It's
Speaker 3: almost the opposite. So they just have these repeated bad experiences,
Speaker 3: which feeds into their depressed state. As soon as you
Speaker 3: take an SSRI, you start to perceive other people's social
Speaker 3: interactions in a much more positive light. So you then
Speaker 3: have to go through this sort of weeks of having
Speaker 3: repeated positive interactions with other people. It's almost like your
Speaker 3: brain needs to learn that actually, the world isn't.
Speaker 2: Isn't as a safe isn't this terrible.
Speaker 3: Doom and gloomy place where no one likes you. It's
Speaker 3: almost like you put on the rose tined to glasses,
Speaker 3: but then you have to live in.
Speaker 2: That world for a little while. You have to.
Speaker 3: So there's lots of things that we are learning about
Speaker 3: how the brain reacts and responds to psychoactive substances that
Speaker 3: may act in ways that we don't yet quite understand,
Speaker 3: even though we may know that they work. And the
Speaker 3: thing is, I always say they will work for some
Speaker 3: people some of the time, not everyone all the time.
Speaker 3: We need to be very very careful not to rule
Speaker 3: something in or out because it worked for me or it.
Speaker 2: Didn't work for you.
Speaker 1: So interesting, why is it so hard to get real
Speaker 1: answers about your health. If you've been told that everything
Speaker 1: looks fine, but you know that something is off, you're
Speaker 1: not imagining it. That's why I created Vitality three point
Speaker 1: sixty to help you better understand what's going on inside
Speaker 1: your body so that you can take the targeted action needed.
Speaker 1: With a functional health approach plus testing, we go beyond
Speaker 1: the guesswork to uncover the root causes of your symptoms.
Speaker 1: I've teamed up with Doctasmina, an incredible integrative GP, and
Speaker 1: together we will help you decode your body's signals and
Speaker 1: answer questions like why am I always exhausted? What's really
Speaker 1: causing my stubborn weight? Am I inflamed? Insulin resistant? Or
Speaker 1: maybe missing key nutrients? Because when you understand your body better,
Speaker 1: you can transform your health.
Speaker 2: Visit v three sixty dot health or check out the
Speaker 2: show notes for more.
Speaker 1: All right, I want to ask you about peptides and
Speaker 1: I know there, I just I wish my listeners could
Speaker 1: see the look on your face when I just said
Speaker 1: that word. But the petties are being marketed to the
Speaker 1: biohackers wanting to you know, hack They wait longevity and
Speaker 1: I have to say personally, I've got big concerns about
Speaker 1: the reach that they are gaining in such a short
Speaker 1: space of time, given their minimal efficacy, their minimal FDA
Speaker 1: TGA approval, and lack of clinical trials. But I still
Speaker 1: want to check in with you as to whether you
Speaker 1: are particularly excited about any of the ones being discussed
Speaker 1: from a brain health perspective. I want to see maybe
Speaker 1: you've got a different take and you think there's some
Speaker 1: promising sides out there.
Speaker 3: I haven't seen any of the marketing that's going on
Speaker 3: on social media.
Speaker 2: You've not been fed yet. Wait till you start looking.
Speaker 2: Just start typing my phone.
Speaker 3: My phone's on airplane mode right now, so it's not
Speaker 3: going to listen. It's not hearing this conversation.
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, it'll be interesting now.
Speaker 3: I haven't been fitting you of this. I was asking
Speaker 3: my personal trainer this morning at the gym, I see
Speaker 3: you sort of. She's like, oh, yeah, last couple of months,
Speaker 3: it's all I get, which is interesting. I mean, the
Speaker 3: TGA has just come out in the last few weeks
Speaker 3: here in Australia. Warned like, just be careful because you're like,
Speaker 3: maybe you're importing these from China, and you're injecting them
Speaker 3: into you. I mean, people aren't wanting to take a
Speaker 3: vaccine or take the oral contraceptive pearl or take I
Speaker 3: don't know something that's well studying and has got a
Speaker 3: really great risk profile, but they are and they'll inject
Speaker 3: something else because.
Speaker 2: Some bro has promised, has promised.
Speaker 3: I don't like to call them brows. Actually, I prefer
Speaker 3: to call them ice bath boys and put them back
Speaker 3: in the little place where they kind of struggled them along.
Speaker 3: It's just this crazy, wide, wide wild west out there.
Speaker 3: I'm quite conservative, and I'm also not a doctor. I
Speaker 3: don't treat people. So you know, what would the clinical
Speaker 3: practice guideline say? What does the TGA say? No way
Speaker 3: would I be doing anything like that. That's not to
Speaker 3: say peptides per se are just like kind of chains
Speaker 3: of amino acids, and we've got them already in our body.
Speaker 3: GLP ones are a type of pep tide. We've got
Speaker 3: signaling molecules in our body. But like you kind of
Speaker 3: tweak one molecule, you know, this massive cascade because everything's
Speaker 3: in this kind of internal feedback loop, So we don't
Speaker 3: know what we're doing when we're putting these into ourselves,
Speaker 3: and I wouldn't be taking any of them. A lot
Speaker 3: of them have got evidence, like rats and mice, right,
Speaker 3: and then you go into you know, a small trial
Speaker 3: and humans you might see some benefits. You go into
Speaker 3: a full randomized.
Speaker 1: And many of them don't even have haven't even made
Speaker 1: it that far. I thought that's what you're going to say,
Speaker 1: but I did just want to check in case there
Speaker 1: was some amazing one that.
Speaker 2: Just take some coffee.
Speaker 1: I got. This is my next question to laugh and
Speaker 1: I want to We're going to I'm going to do
Speaker 1: a bit of a rapid fire because I'm like, if
Speaker 1: not peptides to give us a mental edge, then what
Speaker 1: else can we do to give our brains that short
Speaker 1: term edge that's safe?
Speaker 2: And so yeah, my first one was coffee.
Speaker 3: Or coffee, yes, okay, three or four cups a day. Yeah,
Speaker 3: as long as it's not disrupting your sleep. There is
Speaker 3: no evidence that it's going to be bad for you.
Speaker 3: There's so much evidence it would fill us room that
Speaker 3: it's good for your brain.
Speaker 1: Yep, okay, great, yeah, Oh my gosh, my listeners are
Speaker 1: just high fiving you right now. What about a mega
Speaker 1: three supplementation.
Speaker 3: And two minds about that. I think if you're not
Speaker 3: eating the whole fish, you're better off gone and a
Speaker 3: piece of salmon. Not everyone can afford to do that.
Speaker 3: You're better off eating the whole food.
Speaker 2: But if you had not an oily fish kind of gowl, yeah.
Speaker 3: Like I think, you know, maybe yeah, yeah, okay, but
Speaker 3: it's probably not going to do you any harm. But
Speaker 3: you'd be better off eating whole foods.
Speaker 2: Okay. What about creatine?
Speaker 3: Oh gosh, Minefield. I was like, I got AI should
Speaker 3: design chat you be teacher to design me a pot
Speaker 3: of creative. If I was to sell like Pink Creating
Speaker 3: fog Off, I was going to call it like doctor
Speaker 3: Sarah and fog Off creatine for metopause women, and please,
Speaker 3: I will make millions if I had the gumption to
Speaker 3: do it. I take creatine. I started taking creating. There's
Speaker 3: a tiny bit of data. I know that there was
Speaker 3: a clinical trial that was going to be started up
Speaker 3: recently and it had gone through ethical approve. It was
Speaker 3: actually here in Sydney. But then the data came in
Speaker 3: saying that the dose wasn't going to be big enough.
Speaker 3: And I had gone through all of the ethical approove
Speaker 3: life and there's a whole PhD students project on it
Speaker 3: and that and they were like, actually, the dose isn't
Speaker 3: going to be quite enough to touch the sides to
Speaker 3: see benefits. If we're going to see it, we need
Speaker 3: to see increased levels in the brain.
Speaker 1: Which is what around the ten grander something like, because
Speaker 1: I think traditionally it's for muscle and performances.
Speaker 3: Five and it's pretty well established for building muscle, like
Speaker 3: you've got to be listing the weights and it will
Speaker 3: help with that. The really interesting story is around particularly
Speaker 3: midlife brain fog, when we're talking about that reduction in
Speaker 3: the metabolism and the reduction and the efficiency of neurons
Speaker 3: turning glucose into energy, and that's like partly hormonally driven
Speaker 3: like that, like the hormones kind of help the neurons
Speaker 3: use glucose, and the insulin does that and the rest
Speaker 3: of in the other cells in your body, but in
Speaker 3: your brain, estrogen kind of helps manage that processing. Can
Speaker 3: creatine kind of side step that you know where you're
Speaker 3: going through that kind of adaptation through perimenopause. That's kind
Speaker 3: of the question, and there is a little bit of
Speaker 3: evidence out there in some teeny tiny trials, saying perhaps.
Speaker 1: My argument is take it for six to eight weeks
Speaker 1: and see if you notice a difference.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but it's hard, you know then like you don't
Speaker 3: know whether efforts for yourself it's a placebo or not.
Speaker 3: And that's always my thing, because you can convince yourself
Speaker 3: of any.
Speaker 2: True you could.
Speaker 3: You could take flour and water and like say this
Speaker 3: is going to make me feel.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, I would much get to have the clinical trials.
Speaker 3: But like so I think that there's probably not going
Speaker 3: to be harm done unless you've gotkidney disease. Yeah, because
Speaker 3: people are like every teenage boy on all the beaches
Speaker 3: is smashing back the creuse. I can't even get it
Speaker 3: at the supermarts out, So.
Speaker 1: Okay, but interesting, there's nothing that you're taking it I'm taking.
Speaker 1: I feel like I noticed a difference when I started
Speaker 1: taking it in both performance in the gym. I'm a
Speaker 1: bit of a good lab rap because I'm so consistent.
Speaker 1: And yes, it could be placebo, but I notice absolutely
Speaker 1: in the gym, like I know when I'm doing you know,
Speaker 1: when I get to about six berpes in a row,
Speaker 1: I will feel my body like I will physically feel
Speaker 1: myself slowing down, and I was getting to more like
Speaker 1: nine or ten interesting, and that was definitely not placebo.
Speaker 1: But then in my in my focus, I noticed a
Speaker 1: difference as well.
Speaker 3: Because I've got a wild imagination, so I can placebo
Speaker 3: on no Cea by myself super easily. I ended up
Speaker 3: in neurologist having an MRI a few years ago because
Speaker 3: I had been dizzy for weeks and week all months,
Speaker 3: like six months, and it turned out I was just
Speaker 3: quite streets. And he said, some people get insomnia, some
Speaker 3: people get hit apes. He said, you've just got dizzy.
Speaker 3: And he said tomorrow, next time, when you get dizzy,
Speaker 3: just kind of go oh whatever, I'm just dizzy. And
Speaker 3: then he said, and then just start spelling words backwards.
Speaker 3: I was better with him one day.
Speaker 2: Oh my goodness, I had like the sea bowed myself.
Speaker 3: I love that I'm personally weary because I can convince
Speaker 3: myself or of all sorts of things. Either way, I
Speaker 3: would not tell anyone else to take creatine because I've
Speaker 3: said I'm taking it, or I think it's good for
Speaker 3: your brain, but.
Speaker 2: I'm taking Yeah, you are taking all right.
Speaker 3: I might start marketing fog off one day so I
Speaker 3: might go and try the space.
Speaker 2: We'll get you back on for that. All right, so short,
Speaker 2: too many.
Speaker 1: We've got caffeine, we've potentially got a Mega three's, we've
Speaker 1: potentially got creatine. Is there anything else to give our
Speaker 1: brains a bit of an edge?
Speaker 2: Like sleep?
Speaker 1: Ah? Love it?
Speaker 3: Sorry? You know, like a good laugh? Honestly, I feel
Speaker 3: like we forget about just enjoying ourselves and just find
Speaker 3: some funny friends. Oh, I just like hang out with them.
Speaker 2: Oh, I love it laughing the best medicine. Doctor Sarah,
Speaker 2: Thank you so much.
Speaker 3: You're so welcome.
Speaker 1: Why is it so hard to get real answers about
Speaker 1: your health? If you've been told that everything looks fine,
Speaker 1: but you know that something is off, you're not imagining it.
Speaker 1: That's why I created Vitality three point sixty to help
Speaker 1: you better understand what's going on inside your body so
Speaker 1: that you can take the targeted action needed. With a
Speaker 1: functional health approach plus testing, we go beyond the guesswork
Speaker 1: to uncover the root causes of your symptoms. I've teamed
Speaker 1: up with doctor Esmina, an incredible integrative GP, and together
Speaker 1: we will help you decode your body's signals and answer
Speaker 1: questions like why am I always exhausted? What's really causing
Speaker 1: my stubborn weight? Am I inflamed, insulin resistant? Or maybe
Speaker 1: missing key nutrients. Because when you understand your body better,
Speaker 1: you can transform your health. Visit V three sixty dot
Speaker 1: Health or check out the show notes for more