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. My ability to focus
Speaker 1: has dropped so significantly in the last decade or so,
Speaker 1: I cannot tell you. I get so distracted, but I
Speaker 1: also get this really foggy brain as well, so much
Speaker 1: so that now when I sit down to work on
Speaker 1: my computer, I actually have to use this platform called
Speaker 1: Tomato Timer, and it's this great platform. It's essentially just
Speaker 1: a timer and it uses what's called the Pomodoro method,
Speaker 1: and it's twenty five minutes of a focus block and
Speaker 1: then a five minute brain break. So for that twenty
Speaker 1: five minutes, my goal is do not pick up your phone,
Speaker 1: do not check your emails, do not get up and
Speaker 1: walk around. You just have to work on that one task.
Speaker 1: And I cannot tell you how hard that is for
Speaker 1: me to do, but I do it. And I set
Speaker 1: myself little daily goals of you know, trying to do
Speaker 1: ten focus blocks today, ten twenty five minute focus blocks.
Speaker 1: What was really interesting was a couple of weeks ago,
Speaker 1: I went to my mum's place for a writer's retreat
Speaker 1: because I'm just getting to the really pointy end of
Speaker 1: writing my book, and and so I thought, I'm going
Speaker 1: to leave Tim with the kids and I'm just going
Speaker 1: to go to mum's. And for three days all I
Speaker 1: did was woke up early, I wrote, did a little
Speaker 1: bit of exercise, and then I wrote, and my mom
Speaker 1: would bring me cups of tea and then she cooked
Speaker 1: me a lovely dinner. But just leave me alone. I
Speaker 1: cannot tell you how productive I was. I cannot tell
Speaker 1: you how these words just spilled out of my brain
Speaker 1: onto the pages. It was such a beautiful, meditative experience,
Speaker 1: and it just got me thinking that is it actually
Speaker 1: my pery menopausal brain that is the problem with my
Speaker 1: distraction and my fogginess, or after that experience at my mum's,
Speaker 1: is it maybe just my insanely full life that is
Speaker 1: the problem. This is healthy heer with Amelia Phillips. If
Speaker 1: you're a woman in midlife, in perimenopause or postmenopause, chances
Speaker 1: are you have experienced that foggy, distracted brain that makes
Speaker 1: you feel like you are slipping from the articulate, sharp
Speaker 1: woman you once were. It's certainly not a nice feeling,
Speaker 1: and I know that feeling so well, But I want
Speaker 1: you to know rest assured, we are not alone. This
Speaker 1: is so common, in fact, that many of the global
Speaker 1: surveys on perimenopause symptoms show the same results time and
Speaker 1: time again. The most common peri symptoms are not the
Speaker 1: hot flushes and the night sweats that we associate, but actually,
Speaker 1: in fact, the most common symptoms are brain fog, cognitive
Speaker 1: changes like poor memory or difficulty concentrating, along with low
Speaker 1: mood and sleep disturbances. So what is happening during this
Speaker 1: midlife transition that impacts so many of us destined to
Speaker 1: become the dottery versions of ourselves? Or is there some
Speaker 1: hope for us, some strategies for our brain health to
Speaker 1: get back to the sharp, witty, funny, vibrant women we
Speaker 1: know we are deep down well, to help fix our distracted,
Speaker 1: foggy brains, I have bought in the big guns today
Speaker 1: neuroscientist doctor Sarah Mackay. Doctor Sarah is not just a neuroscientist,
Speaker 1: but she is an educator who specializes in translating complex
Speaker 1: brain research into practical strategies that we can use every
Speaker 1: day so that we can improve our health, our mood,
Speaker 1: and our performance. She's the author of three books on
Speaker 1: brain health, the Women's Brain Book, which is all about
Speaker 1: the neuroscience of health, hormones, and happiness. She's also authored
Speaker 1: Baby Brain, which explores how pregnancy and motherhood shape the brain,
Speaker 1: and her latest book, Brain Health for Dummies Love that title,
Speaker 1: published earlier this year. Doctor Sarah was also recently on
Speaker 1: the Mel Robins podcast. She appears regularly on TV and
Speaker 1: in the media and has a fabulous Instagram page, which
Speaker 1: I'll pop a link for that in the show notes
Speaker 1: all about helping our female brains thrive, Doctor Sarah, thank
Speaker 1: you so much for joining me in studio in the
Speaker 1: Novas Studios.
Speaker 2: Today feels very professional, doesn't it.
Speaker 3: I know, look at us go very professionally here.
Speaker 2: We could have just met and had to walk along
Speaker 2: the beach in a chat. But here we are, I know,
Speaker 2: re recording our thoughts.
Speaker 1: No, this is all too important. I want to capture
Speaker 1: everything you tell us today. It's so so important. Now
Speaker 1: I have heard you say that the fifty year old
Speaker 1: brain is not the same as the twenty one year
Speaker 1: old brain, a bit like our bodies, not quite the
Speaker 1: same as we were in our twenties. But it's actually
Speaker 1: good news. You say that there are many cognitive abilities
Speaker 1: and skills that peak in midlife. So I'd love to
Speaker 1: know what are some of these peaks.
Speaker 2: I'm glad that post resonated because I am fifty one
Speaker 2: and my social media algorithms, which of course are then
Speaker 2: and turn influencing the conversation that people have in real life,
Speaker 2: all about how once we reach this age we become
Speaker 2: like these foggy, sweaty, useless tired, depressed, anxious, faff abouts,
Speaker 2: and it just felt like I was constantly being told
Speaker 2: that at this age I was, I might as well
Speaker 2: just give up and the rest of my life should
Speaker 2: be a dementia resk reduction project and I should just
Speaker 2: slap on loads of like hormone therapy. And I wanted
Speaker 2: to just talk about what we know about the brain,
Speaker 2: what we know about cognition, what we know about the
Speaker 2: trajectory across the life span, and not just put a
Speaker 2: positive spin on it, because it's not just about let's
Speaker 2: flip the script, but let's talk about what we do
Speaker 2: know about how our brains change across the lifespan. And
Speaker 2: it's not just the sort of decline from a peak
Speaker 2: at kind of age eighteen nineteen twenty, you know, perhaps
Speaker 2: if you went to UNI or those you know, kind
Speaker 2: of first few years outside of school to now, we're
Speaker 2: learning a whole lot more and getting more thoughtful, careful
Speaker 2: ways of studying the brain across the life span and
Speaker 2: looking at different types of cognitive tests and finding out
Speaker 2: there are actually lots of skills that we have that
Speaker 2: we can measure that peak at different points in the lifespan.
Speaker 1: So how do our brains improve in a way through
Speaker 1: midlife because I agree with you, Like, we have evolved
Speaker 1: to live beyond our reproductive years, so there's a reason
Speaker 1: why women survive evolutionarily from our reproductive years. So what
Speaker 1: is happening in our brains?
Speaker 3: That is good news.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's so much we can talk about brain fall.
Speaker 2: We can talk about sleep, anxiety, depression. Leave all of
Speaker 2: that aside. Let's just talk about what we do know,
Speaker 2: which is some of the upsides. So there are what
Speaker 2: we might call when we could call it wisdom, right,
Speaker 2: Like we've always talked about wisdom, which is just kind
Speaker 2: of having years of experience. So if you think about
Speaker 2: the career you're in, and I've been in the same career.
Speaker 2: I've did an undergraduate degree in neuroscience straight out of UNI,
Speaker 2: so I've been doing this for a very long time.
Speaker 2: I now have not in built pattern recognition, but I
Speaker 2: can look at a neuroscience study, I can hear someone
Speaker 2: talk about the brain. I can think about a neuroscience
Speaker 2: topic and get a very quick, almost intuitive sense about
Speaker 2: kind of what that is about. Because I've been doing
Speaker 2: neuroscience for so long, Like I kind of I know
Speaker 2: my staff, so we might call that kind of pattern
Speaker 2: recognition or intuition, which you develop when you've been in
Speaker 2: a career for a very, very very long time. You
Speaker 2: just kind of know your shit. You've been around, You've
Speaker 2: got this long career of kind of gathered up knowledge
Speaker 2: and wisdom. We tend to think about cognition as being
Speaker 2: kind of how quickly you can remember something, Can you
Speaker 2: remember someone's name, How quickly could you solve mental maths
Speaker 2: in your mind's eye. Those are some of the cognitive
Speaker 2: skills that might peak maybe in your twenties, but we
Speaker 2: then think that they're the only things that matter, not
Speaker 2: this kind of wisdom, knowledge, and experience that we've gathered
Speaker 2: over a lifespan. So there's this these two types. We
Speaker 2: sometimes call them like types of intelligences. Sometimes we call
Speaker 2: them like kind of crystallized intelligence and fluid intelligence. And
Speaker 2: fluid intelligence is kind of like the quick thinking that
Speaker 2: we might have in our youth. It might slow down slightly,
Speaker 2: but that does make way for our whole lot more
Speaker 2: of what we would call crystallized knowledge, which is kind
Speaker 2: of the information that we've gathered and learned and the
Speaker 2: knowledge that we've developed over our say, over our careers.
Speaker 1: So you're saying that our pattern recognition improves, and this
Speaker 1: crystallized intelligence, which is essentially the crystallized intelligence, is essentially
Speaker 1: the wisdom.
Speaker 2: That crystallized intelligence is kind of like knowledge. We've learned
Speaker 2: more because we've been alive longer, so we know more stuff. Right,
Speaker 2: We've also had more life experiences, so we can be
Speaker 2: Whilst we might not be in this kind of quick,
Speaker 2: sharp thinking, growing fast like bang bang bang kind of
Speaker 2: way that we are when we're in our twenties, when
Speaker 2: we are literally building, particularly when we're posting in a pausal,
Speaker 2: particularly when we're in later in midlife. Sure the processing
Speaker 2: may slow down slightly, but that gives us a little
Speaker 2: bit of time to let ideas bubble to the surface.
Speaker 2: Perhaps there is a genuine adaptive upside to slower thinking.
Speaker 2: We're not building because of ourselves or at the point
Speaker 2: when we can impart knowledge we've got that you picked
Speaker 2: up on that idea of pattern recognition.
Speaker 3: Explain that in the real world.
Speaker 1: So what you're saying is in you know, in our
Speaker 1: postmenopausal brain, our patent recognition is often a lot better.
Speaker 2: But what does that Actually it's not just about menopause,
Speaker 2: like just aside making woman.
Speaker 3: You know everyday.
Speaker 2: When you have been working in a profession for a
Speaker 2: really long time, you're an expert versus a novice. When
Speaker 2: you start out, you don't know you're learning. When you
Speaker 2: have spent twenty thirty forty years learning information, you can
Speaker 2: kind of spot the signal from the noise. You can
Speaker 2: spot the red place, just kind of have an intuition
Speaker 2: about what's right, what's wrong, how to make decisions. You
Speaker 2: don't need to kind of labor through the kind of
Speaker 2: the processes as much anymore. There's also this other skill
Speaker 2: that we've started to understand a little bit more about
Speaker 2: and measure at lots of different ages, and we would
Speaker 2: call this cognitive flexibility. So this is the idea to
Speaker 2: be able to kind of pivot or shift or see
Speaker 2: shades of gray or look at a you know, look
Speaker 2: at a particular problem and think of multiple different ways
Speaker 2: to solve it, rather than being what we might be
Speaker 2: in our youth, very black and white thinker. There is
Speaker 2: one way to go about this. This is it, and
Speaker 2: I'm not going to like listen to anyone else's opinion
Speaker 2: or perhaps more set in our ways as we get older,
Speaker 2: So we almost see this kind of U shaped curve there,
Speaker 2: whereby at midlife, we're much more flexible in our thinking.
Speaker 2: We can kind of sit with because we're not in
Speaker 2: a rush and we're not so slow. Yeah, so we
Speaker 2: can kind of go, Okay, I'm just going to take
Speaker 2: my time to figure this out, and you know what,
Speaker 2: there could be like multiple shades of gray here. We
Speaker 2: can kind of take our time and be more flexible
Speaker 2: in our thinking. We're not so stuck in our ways,
Speaker 2: and we often see that in mid life people pivot
Speaker 2: in their careers. You know, you're talking to a teenager
Speaker 2: about like their belief system and you're like, dah, you've
Speaker 2: got like you've got years here you think that, or
Speaker 2: you know, perhaps someone who's much much older than us,
Speaker 2: we might think, oh, they're a bit more set in
Speaker 2: our ways. Midlife we can appreciate the shades of gray
Speaker 2: and the nuance and that comes from experience, but it
Speaker 2: also comes from this cognitive point and time that we're at.
Speaker 2: So again, there's remarkable things that can come from those
Speaker 2: deploying those skills and everyday life get we never talk
Speaker 2: about them because what we're busy valorizing and then perhaps grieving,
Speaker 2: you know, is that really super fast sharp thinking of
Speaker 2: our youth. But it may be that there's an evolutionary
Speaker 2: kind of mandate there whereby we're kind of building and
Speaker 2: growing and developing careers and families, and you know, our
Speaker 2: place in the world when we're young, so we need
Speaker 2: to be quick and sharp. But later on it's more
Speaker 2: about imparting that wisdom, and it's more about sitting back
Speaker 2: and kind of like looking across the life span, seeing
Speaker 2: the other people around us, and then taking on that
Speaker 2: kind of more matriarchal role which might be more still,
Speaker 2: which might be more kind of measured. Yeah, and then
Speaker 2: we can impart that kind of information on which you're
Speaker 2: not which kind of adapted to do when you're young,
Speaker 2: when you're building and thinking about yourself and making babies
Speaker 2: and building a career, that's all that matters is being
Speaker 2: quick and fast.
Speaker 1: I have heard you have put together a fantastic framework
Speaker 1: to really help us understand and just to put a
Speaker 1: little bit of structure around that for us everyday people.
Speaker 1: And you call it the bottoms up, outside in and
Speaker 1: top down. Can you just give us a quick overview
Speaker 1: of what you mean by these kind of this three
Speaker 1: three pronged framework.
Speaker 2: It puts the brain in the middle. And if anyone
Speaker 2: has any kind of healthy medically background, they would have
Speaker 2: heard of the BIA psychosocial model. But that sounds like
Speaker 2: really boring, Wow an academic, so by I love your
Speaker 2: bottom the bottom up. So a brain's sitting in the
Speaker 2: middle of like this complex ecosystem of your body, and
Speaker 2: your body is in this complex ecosystem of the world,
Speaker 2: and so your brain is receiving all of this information
Speaker 2: from your body. So it's receiving information from your ovary
Speaker 2: is about you know, your hormonal state, but it's also
Speaker 2: receiving information about body temperature and heart rate and the food.
Speaker 2: You Wait, you've got your kind of genetic background, You've
Speaker 2: got all of the things that you could do with
Speaker 2: your body. Your brain is getting this constant feed about
Speaker 2: and then your brain is constantly making meaning.
Speaker 1: Of that genetics.
Speaker 2: Everything from your genes to the food you've eaten, to
Speaker 2: your sleep, to your bone density, to your gut pH
Speaker 2: to you know, your muscle. You know you've got a
Speaker 2: full bladder, you've got a kicking baby, you've got a
Speaker 2: sore back. Think about all of the things in your
Speaker 2: body your brain is making.
Speaker 1: That's almost like the body stuff body a market.
Speaker 2: So just imagine information getting from your body.
Speaker 3: Body into your brain to your brain.
Speaker 1: Got it.
Speaker 2: Brain's going right, twenty million things to monitor, hear, and
Speaker 2: then we're the outside and will and that's the world
Speaker 2: around us is making its way into the brain. And
Speaker 2: it's not by magic. It comes in through our senses.
Speaker 2: So what we see, people think, how does it get
Speaker 2: in through what we see? Through what we hear. As humans,
Speaker 2: our sense of sight and hearing are really important. So
Speaker 2: the outside what we see a but if something's close
Speaker 2: enough to us, we can like smell it or taste
Speaker 2: it or touch.
Speaker 1: It, so that influences our brain.
Speaker 2: And that is everything from you and me having a conversation. Yeah,
Speaker 2: all of the social cognition.
Speaker 1: That brain is going crazy right now is I'm looking
Speaker 1: at you and interpreting what you're saying.
Speaker 2: That's outside the room we're and the rising and the
Speaker 2: setting of the sun, your social interactions and that includes
Speaker 2: and then you can kind of stagger it out a
Speaker 2: bit further. So we're looking at like your family structure,
Speaker 2: you know, the social structures you live in, your neighborhood,
Speaker 2: your socioeconomic kind of situation, the culture that you're in
Speaker 2: all of that outside in makes its way into your brain,
Speaker 2: and then your brain's making meaning of the context it's in,
Speaker 2: what it senses and also kind of getting the feed
Speaker 2: from your body. So it's kind of bringing those two together.
Speaker 2: But then, because we're humans, we've got this mind that's
Speaker 2: the top down. That's the top down, and that includes
Speaker 2: that the experiences that we've had, so all of our
Speaker 2: prior memories, you know, kind of our biographical past, everything
Speaker 2: that we've learned that. Our brain went, hey, that was awesome.
Speaker 2: I'm going to remember that and do it again.
Speaker 1: Don't time, don't touch the hot plate because we got burnt.
Speaker 3: Last home sucked.
Speaker 2: Never going to do that again, don't don't want to
Speaker 2: do that, going to stay.
Speaker 1: Away, leaf memory, belief havebit, cultural value, values, thoughts, thought,
Speaker 1: your thought patterns all worthy enough and those and.
Speaker 2: So each of these bottom up, outside and top down
Speaker 2: factors coalesce in the brain, and the brain kind of
Speaker 2: makes meaning of it all and goes, Okay, this is
Speaker 2: what we're going to do next. And what we do
Speaker 2: next could be sweat because you're hot, or it could
Speaker 2: be I don't know, run up and hug your mum
Speaker 2: because you haven't seen it for a while, or it
Speaker 2: could be I don't know, pick your phone up because
Speaker 2: it's ringing. But they can also influence each other. And
Speaker 2: this is where I think it gets really interesting. So
Speaker 2: you could think about, well, how does a thought influence
Speaker 2: my kind of physicality? So you could go, oh, well,
Speaker 2: I'm I've got like a really important exam coming up,
Speaker 2: and you're thinking about that, and then you get like
Speaker 2: an upset tummy, you get really a really nervous tummy.
Speaker 2: So your top down thoughts can influence your bottom up biology.
Speaker 1: Where's perimenopause is, where's the hormones? Is that bottom up?
Speaker 1: Because I would call hormones bottom up bottom up?
Speaker 2: So and the and the midlife brain where you've got
Speaker 2: like your bottom up hormones and they're roller coastering, but
Speaker 2: they're also roller coastering on an overall health baseline, you
Speaker 2: know your immune health, your gut health, how much exercise
Speaker 2: do you do, your cardiovascular health, how much sleep you're getting,
Speaker 2: what's your kind of stress response, like, what's your entire
Speaker 2: life history up to this point, what's your reproductive history, like,
Speaker 2: what's your mental health history? Like, what was your levels
Speaker 2: of education when you were you know, at school and
Speaker 2: then in a high school UNI, all of that will
Speaker 2: feed in you're looking at a menopausal brain. We're not
Speaker 2: just looking at a brain that's influenced by roller coastering
Speaker 2: ovarian hormones and then flatlining later.
Speaker 3: We're looking at a brain three structure, a brain.
Speaker 2: That's making meaning of its biology. A brain that's making
Speaker 2: meaning of the context that you're in and the messages
Speaker 2: that you're receiving, particularly what you're absorbing from the social
Speaker 2: media feed and your entire life history up until this point.
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 Dottyasmina, 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 out.
Speaker 3: The show notes for more.
Speaker 1: I mean, what I find so fascinating about this, and
Speaker 1: it's such a big unlock, is that when we think
Speaker 1: about perimenopause and our brain. You know, the messaging out
Speaker 1: there at the moment is so much about hormones and decline.
Speaker 1: But when you use your framework of those three big inputs,
Speaker 1: you realize that hormones are just one part of a
Speaker 1: very complex puzzle. So when we come to the solutions,
Speaker 1: because we don't want to feel distractive, we don't want
Speaker 1: to feel foggy in the brain, it has to be
Speaker 1: more holistic. And this is where I want to shift
Speaker 1: gears and talk about solutions because we're here today because
Speaker 1: you know, I don't want to feel foggy. I don't
Speaker 1: want to feel distracted from your perspective looking at brain health.
Speaker 3: How do we tackle this? Where do we start?
Speaker 1: If we do, do you feel like there has been
Speaker 1: some kind of decline or should I say increase in
Speaker 1: those symptoms?
Speaker 2: And for many women. It can be something as small
Speaker 2: as my something which lasted for it. It was kind
Speaker 2: of like a few weeks and I paid attention to it,
Speaker 2: and then I decided I'm not going to be a
Speaker 2: brain foggy person, so I just kind of went away.
Speaker 2: Was I don't even know whether it was real or not.
Speaker 2: This is the thing, was I was switching words that
Speaker 2: were really closely semantically related.
Speaker 3: So I might say, oh, like.
Speaker 2: My son walked in and I said, oh, listen, new
Speaker 2: that's a new lid, I mean hat, yeah, Or I'd
Speaker 2: call a dog a cash or whatever. So it was
Speaker 2: very similar.
Speaker 1: I call my kids all the wrong names. I go
Speaker 1: through everybody, including the dogs, all of that.
Speaker 2: What I find as often another way to kind of
Speaker 2: think about this, just before we get onto the solutions
Speaker 2: is maybe this is a solution is as you're a
Speaker 2: little momentary slip and a social situation. So it's in
Speaker 2: a conversation where I'm like, oh, what was that person's name?
Speaker 2: And then I'm getting really embarrassed because I'm going merely
Speaker 2: mustn't brain fog and I'm like washed up and you useless,
Speaker 2: and so I'm starting to like get all embarrassed and ashamed,
Speaker 2: whereas if you were at home, you went, oh, what
Speaker 2: was that person's name? And then it comes to you,
Speaker 2: but you're still by yourself, so you haven't got that
Speaker 2: same social kind.
Speaker 3: Of pressure like panic.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and then so probably takes mental load away from
Speaker 1: thinking exactly.
Speaker 2: So also we can catastrophize all of this if we
Speaker 2: understand it, then we don't need to, you know, turn
Speaker 2: mid life into this like kind of the beginning of
Speaker 2: the very end sort of say, there's one thing, if
Speaker 2: there was one thing, it would be sleep. We've got
Speaker 2: to start with our bottom up body. Yes, so through
Speaker 2: the three bottom up sleep has to be absolutely foundational
Speaker 2: and number one because that's kind of the if there
Speaker 2: was a chicken and egg scenario. I don't know if
Speaker 2: there was a dominoes. Yeah. The first dominoes the sleep, sleep,
Speaker 2: which is probably and if you're in midlife and it
Speaker 2: is being caused by rollercoastering hormones and you want to
Speaker 2: try HRT like have a crack.
Speaker 1: Right, you've got this concept of can't sleep versus won't sleep,
Speaker 1: which I had a sleep expert that I interviewed once,
Speaker 1: and I love this concept of at least putting them
Speaker 1: in two buckets you got can't sleep?
Speaker 3: Won't sleep?
Speaker 1: So can't sleep is all the things that you don't
Speaker 1: have control over, such as you're just waking up at
Speaker 1: three am doomers you don't know why, but then there
Speaker 1: won't sleep, which I have to put my hand up
Speaker 1: and say, I've got lots of things in this bucket,
Speaker 1: staying up to binge, watch that extra episode when I
Speaker 1: should have gone to bed early, doom scrolling before bed,
Speaker 1: eating something, you know, large meal, spicy meal, drinking alcohol.
Speaker 1: So I think, Okay, if you've got a whole bunch
Speaker 1: of can't sleep issues going on, that's to be dealt with.
Speaker 2: If some of that's medical, right, yes.
Speaker 1: Yes, actually treat that in a medical way.
Speaker 3: But what about your won't.
Speaker 2: Sleep well, I mean they all fall under that kind
Speaker 2: of umbrella of sleep hygiene.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so basic, I know.
Speaker 2: And like if you went to your GP, they're not
Speaker 2: going to just give you a sleeping piler, going to go, hey,
Speaker 2: let's take it. Let's look at are you you know,
Speaker 2: are you in the cool dark room? You're not looking
Speaker 2: at your phone?
Speaker 1: And those things do actually make a difference. Unfortunately, be boring,
Speaker 1: but they really do.
Speaker 2: They really do. There's nothing new under the sun. Kind
Speaker 2: of there.
Speaker 3: Okay, so's sleep.
Speaker 2: Okay, second, well, and I don't want to rank them
Speaker 2: because because we're all going to be coming from a
Speaker 2: different place. Diet, I just die, it's really boring. I
Speaker 2: don't really like talking about food.
Speaker 1: I'm a nutritionist. How dare you? I know?
Speaker 2: But you can't like no, I know, we know the
Speaker 2: thing just you know, don't drink coffee, Like coffee is
Speaker 2: really good for your brain health, drink three cups a
Speaker 2: day to drink them in the morning. Don't drink three
Speaker 2: cups for dinner. You know, don't drink too much alcohol.
Speaker 2: But honestly, if you we know all that, if you
Speaker 2: want to have a glass of read wine with you
Speaker 2: with your girlfriends at book club and like hoote with laughter,
Speaker 2: it's probably not doing it too much. Just don't like
Speaker 2: drink a bottle of wine every night. I'm not going
Speaker 2: to talk about diet because I just think we kind
Speaker 2: of have we know it. Don't eat crap. The other
Speaker 2: is exercise, and for a long time, the link between exercise,
Speaker 2: which you have a kind of exercise you're going to do.
Speaker 2: I'm not saying you should be doing CrossFit, you should
Speaker 2: of course we should be lifting weights. Of course we
Speaker 2: should be doing audiovascular you know, getting our heart rate up.
Speaker 2: I'm not like, the best to exercise is the one
Speaker 2: that you enjoy doing, and you're going to keep on
Speaker 2: dealing disistently. But for a while we weren't necessarily sure
Speaker 2: of the link, and now we understand, well, there's the
Speaker 2: obvious links of better cardiovascular fitness is good for your heart,
Speaker 2: but your vascular system is pretty important because your brain
Speaker 2: is feed by this really fine network of micro vessels.
Speaker 2: This is microvascular tour and your brain. So you want
Speaker 2: to keep your blood vessels healthy.
Speaker 3: It's good.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's good for metabolic health, it's good for immune health,
Speaker 2: it's good for stress reduction. So there's all of those
Speaker 2: kind of knock on impacts to physical health. But we've
Speaker 2: also learned, perhaps in like the last five to ten years,
Speaker 2: that there are now hormonal or molecular signals that go
Speaker 2: from our muscles up to our brain to promote brain health.
Speaker 2: Because we were like, why if someone has really strong
Speaker 2: lenk muscles as that lead to good cognitive health, that
Speaker 2: kind of the relationship there, And we've discovered this group
Speaker 2: of molecules called myo kinds which are released from muscles
Speaker 2: when we exercise them. They can cross the blood brain barrier,
Speaker 2: go into our brain, and they can promote brain health
Speaker 2: by kicking off lots of different kind of you know,
Speaker 2: chemical pathways inside neurons to make them healthy. Yeah, so
Speaker 2: for a while we were like, oh, maybe having being
Speaker 2: physically fit is good for your heart, and that's what
Speaker 2: it's good for your brain. Now we know that there's
Speaker 2: a direct messenger.
Speaker 1: Clearly that's why I get all my good ideas when
Speaker 1: I'm exercising.
Speaker 2: Yep, totally, and probably because you're reducing other distractions. So
Speaker 2: there's three three bottom up. And then of course there's
Speaker 2: you know, if you're you know you're going through perimenopause, menopause,
Speaker 2: you want to try hormones, you know.
Speaker 1: To smooth out the snow fluctuation.
Speaker 2: Although there's a bit of a debate about if your
Speaker 2: rollercoastering levels of estrogen, you put more estrogen on top
Speaker 2: just makes the highs higher and the lows higher and
Speaker 2: you've still got the delta is the same.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that means that's debatable.
Speaker 2: There's lots of arguments around whether it's smoothing it out
Speaker 2: or whether it's topping it up. And I mean I
Speaker 2: could talk endlessly about all all of that as well,
Speaker 2: but that's like a pretty good way to deal with
Speaker 2: your biological base on your bottom up, particularly if sleep
Speaker 2: is being disrupted because of thermal regulation issues.
Speaker 1: What about the outside in? And this is where I
Speaker 1: actually think a lot of my cognition issues is actually because.
Speaker 3: Of my outside in.
Speaker 2: Yeah, your cognitive load.
Speaker 1: I think because I realized when I stayed at Mom's
Speaker 1: and I cleared the decks, my brain works really.
Speaker 3: Don't have perimenopause anymore. I know.
Speaker 1: It was like it was like driving a Porsche that's
Speaker 1: been pulling a three ton trailer and then you drop
Speaker 1: the trailer and the Porsche.
Speaker 3: Just took off. You were being mothered, and I was
Speaker 3: in my little Your mom, your.
Speaker 2: Mum was mothering. Your mothers need to be mothers, I
Speaker 2: know it was so you mothers had much. They need
Speaker 2: to be mothers.
Speaker 3: I know so much.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we wouldn't have baby brain if we were we
Speaker 2: were mothers. So I thank yeah outside and reduce the
Speaker 2: cognitive load. Mobile phones are this massive thing we talked
Speaker 2: about how impacts your working memory, which is going to
Speaker 2: be the driver of other cognitions building.
Speaker 1: I literally need to take it out of my office.
Speaker 1: I need to sit it in another room. I need
Speaker 1: to turn it physically off, not silent mode. I need
Speaker 1: to actually power it down and leave it out.
Speaker 2: Of it in your school bag or your locker, like
Speaker 2: the kids have to do a high school not having it.
Speaker 2: Don't just think having it down face down is going
Speaker 2: to do anything. You will constantly the train that comes
Speaker 2: from trying not to look at it is enormous. Or
Speaker 2: what I have started doing because I was I like
Speaker 2: a lover a podcast. Here we are on one which
Speaker 2: I'm just always had them streaming in my ears, and
Speaker 2: then my teenage boys kind of about a year ago,
Speaker 2: because I'll call out anything, We're like, well, we already
Speaker 2: had this conversation, or you already asked me that, or
Speaker 2: they kept I kept repeating conversations with them, and then
Speaker 2: I realized I would have a conversation with them straight away.
Speaker 2: I'd go back straight to the podcast. I was in
Speaker 2: the car, I was on a podcast. I was always
Speaker 2: plugged in, so I was taking in a lot of
Speaker 2: information from the pods, from your un from the boys,
Speaker 2: and then consolid and then like kind of turning over
Speaker 2: those conversations in my mind or giving them time to
Speaker 2: kind of percolate, which is what we need to do.
Speaker 2: I was I was almost like I was multitasking. I
Speaker 2: was like, oh, yeah, paid attention, but it wasn't going in.
Speaker 3: Wasn't sticking.
Speaker 2: So I start I decided to stop listening to any
Speaker 2: I was just like driving the car, as they say,
Speaker 2: the kids say, a.
Speaker 3: Raw dog draw dogging it just don't even.
Speaker 2: Have the radion. Just drove the car around. And actually
Speaker 2: I found that it meant that I just thought through
Speaker 2: things a bit more and I feel like it totally
Speaker 2: improved my interactions with them because I had more memories
Speaker 2: of those interactions. There's another idea like go back to
Speaker 2: the old fashioned plug your phone and treat it as
Speaker 2: a widened phone in the wall that we had when
Speaker 2: we were kids. Plug it in the kitchen, turn it up.
Speaker 2: If it rings, you can go over it. Don't unplug
Speaker 2: it ever, just treat it as a plugged and.
Speaker 1: Okay, So your big tip for outside in for those
Speaker 1: of us that are feeling distracted brain foggy, is to
Speaker 1: really manage that phone and that screen time effectively.
Speaker 2: And we talk about it with kids, and we don't
Speaker 2: think about our for ourselves. Yeah, so there's that, and
Speaker 2: then I think the other outside and things would be
Speaker 2: we are blessed where we live INNY. We live basically
Speaker 2: live in a blue zone or global blue zone, and
Speaker 2: all the beaches of Sydney, right, so, I know, you know,
Speaker 2: we've got we've got the ocean, we've got the bush land,
Speaker 2: we've got the healthy people running around. We're in this
Speaker 2: environment which nudges and promotes and prompts us towards this
Speaker 2: healthy outdoors lifestyle. But lots of people don't have that,
Speaker 2: They don't have access to that, they don't have the
Speaker 2: information about that, or they know all of that, and
Speaker 2: it's still like not accessible to them. So to understand
Speaker 2: how the built environment impacts not just how you go
Speaker 2: about your day, but the ease at which you can
Speaker 2: live that kind of healthy.
Speaker 1: Calling out in your particular environment, calling out the potential
Speaker 1: red flag. Like, for example, you know, I have to
Speaker 1: drive everywhere because I live in an area that has
Speaker 1: you know, not a lot of walking. So therefore I
Speaker 1: need to find an antidote to that. Yeah, I do
Speaker 1: need to do structured walk or I drive past three
Speaker 1: drive through red rooms macs, KFCs, and so I'm very tempted.
Speaker 1: So I have to be a lot more diligent with
Speaker 1: you know, my food choices.
Speaker 3: Is that what you mean?
Speaker 2: And like having blue spaces and green spaces where you
Speaker 2: can kind of interact with nature, because that's kind of
Speaker 2: what we are. A bit of a roll around in
Speaker 2: the grass kind of.
Speaker 3: Oh it doesn't sort of doesn't.
Speaker 1: It just make you feel so much better when you've
Speaker 1: spent some time in nature. I call it either green
Speaker 1: exercise or you exercises out. But it's very easy for
Speaker 1: us as Northern Beaches girls.
Speaker 2: I sort of petificate about that the other outside and influence,
Speaker 2: which is enormously important as other people. When I wrote
Speaker 2: Women's Brain Book, the first book that I wrote, I thought,
Speaker 2: as I went through the lifespan, you know, like childhood, puberty,
Speaker 2: menstrual cycle, menopause, la la la, that the strongest influence
Speaker 2: would always come back to hormones. I don't know why
Speaker 2: I win, I'm with that as the thought, but what
Speaker 2: I found for every age in life stage that the
Speaker 2: strongest influence of health outcome is your social relationships. How
Speaker 2: well connected you are, you buy because you've got mothers,
Speaker 2: Look how much difference that made when someone was othering you,
Speaker 2: not that you were being like you were constantly mothering
Speaker 2: other people and looking after other people.
Speaker 1: But so that does that make you feel knowing that
Speaker 1: our society is moving away from that and into a
Speaker 1: much more digitously interactive environment, even to the point of
Speaker 1: when I go to a cafe now most of my
Speaker 1: cafes have gone to QR coade so used the QR.
Speaker 1: I know, it's one of my pet peeves. I hate those.
Speaker 2: We can see what the artcomes are, we can see
Speaker 2: what the art comes after that from that lack of
Speaker 2: social contact.
Speaker 1: And that is your hypothesis that that is quite detrimental
Speaker 1: to absolutely.
Speaker 2: I mean, one of the greatest risk factors for depression,
Speaker 2: one of the greatest risk factors for overall mortality, littlone,
Speaker 2: demitiro Alzheimer's diseases, social isolation, and loneliness. So loneliness is
Speaker 2: the emotional perception of being alone and feeling you haven't
Speaker 2: got people there. You can have been surrounded by people
Speaker 2: but feel lonely.
Speaker 1: Yes, some of the busiest cities in the world. You
Speaker 1: hear about people living in New York City, London but
Speaker 1: feeling the loneliest of the NFL.
Speaker 2: And then there's kind of socialized sol whereby you know,
Speaker 2: perhaps you you know you're olderly and you need someone
Speaker 2: to drive you to the doctor's appointment, or you know,
Speaker 2: there's the kind of the mechanics or the day to
Speaker 2: day ability to go about doing what you need to
Speaker 2: do if you've got other people to help you or not.
Speaker 2: And we would say that with a newborn baby, you know,
Speaker 2: you could like just feed them, change them, sleep them,
Speaker 2: and they would live. But they need love and attention
Speaker 2: and attachment. And I think for every age needs that.
Speaker 2: Teenagers need it, Your moms need it. You needed it
Speaker 2: from your mom.
Speaker 1: And I think that each age group has its set
Speaker 1: of challenges around that. And so thinking about a woman
Speaker 1: in midlife who is in that squeeze generation where she's
Speaker 1: got young children, she's got aging parents, and often life
Speaker 1: is so busy. I know for me, I can isolate
Speaker 1: myself because I just don't have the energy to go
Speaker 1: out with the girls. But then what I've done around
Speaker 1: that is I've kind of baked in socialization into my schedule.
Speaker 1: So I choose to do group fitness, and I've got
Speaker 1: a fantastic, amazing tribe at my at CrossFit, And then
Speaker 1: I'd choose to have a group of friends that love
Speaker 1: to go for walks together. And so we're kind of
Speaker 1: all in a business mastermind together, but a lot of
Speaker 1: us will break away and go off on walks together.
Speaker 1: So you're kind of baking that social into your lifestyle
Speaker 1: because you might not have the time, you know, all
Speaker 1: day on Sunday to just go and have a lovely
Speaker 1: long lunch for example.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and sometimes it doesn't need to be. You know,
Speaker 2: a group of girlfriends at my book club, we used
Speaker 2: to call ourselves a walking book club. We used to
Speaker 2: walk together. Now we just drink and talk about real estate. Again,
Speaker 2: we went through a lot of phase. But I'm in
Speaker 2: like a musical theater group. I go to watercolor classes,
Speaker 2: I try, I swim. I'd try and do as many
Speaker 2: different interactive social activities as I can because I work
Speaker 2: for myself at home.
Speaker 3: Yeah, which was hard.
Speaker 2: When my boys were little. My kind of social outlet
Speaker 2: was the school was school pick up and drop off,
Speaker 2: which I also loved. Oh, Like, you know, I'm a
Speaker 2: bit of a yapper, so I would love to like
Speaker 2: just whoever a zero.
Speaker 1: Yeah, But if you're an introvert, the school pick up
Speaker 1: the last thing. Do you sit in the car and
Speaker 1: you don't want to go in?
Speaker 2: But again, it's not about so that's the thing. It's
Speaker 2: not about how many social connections you have. It's about
Speaker 2: feeling like, you know, there is someone that you can call,
Speaker 2: you've got a shoulder to lean on. Who is the
Speaker 2: person that if you're you've got a flat tire in
Speaker 2: the middle of the night, who are you going to have?
Speaker 2: You got quantity and sometimes someone people don't don't have someone.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Oh a lot of the time, especially in the
Speaker 1: world where people are moving quite regularly, Yeah, suddenly shifting
Speaker 1: cities and starting from scratch.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So loneliness is a real riskpective for health and
Speaker 2: it's something that we have agency over. But it feels
Speaker 2: really sad even talking about people being lonely.
Speaker 1: COVID it's a big one. So that's outsiding. Yeah, before
Speaker 1: we move on to top down, is there anything else
Speaker 1: in the outside in when you think about improving our
Speaker 1: distraction brain fog that we can really be focusing on
Speaker 1: to support our brains.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I think social media has become an active ingredient
Speaker 2: and health outcomes, and we've got in a negative way
Speaker 2: you meet and positive ways and negative ways. I think
Speaker 2: we need to be mindful about where we get information from,
Speaker 2: which is announced. You know, how are we educating ourselves
Speaker 2: about whatever menopause about? You know, what are the sources
Speaker 2: of information? Because you know, our attention is limited. There's
Speaker 2: a ton of information about everything out there in the world.
Speaker 2: So how can you kind of be thoughtful and diligent
Speaker 2: about what information you've taken and what you filter out
Speaker 2: because that will have an impact on health outcomes. We
Speaker 2: can vary and I'm not wanting to get into placebo
Speaker 2: and no cebo e affixed, but you can talk yourself
Speaker 2: into a set of symptoms you can really believe wholeheartedly.
Speaker 2: And this isn't about menopause or any particular point in
Speaker 2: the lifespan, but can influence a health outcome by the
Speaker 2: information that you've taken on board. So just to be
Speaker 2: thoughtful about that and not just sitting on the feed.
Speaker 2: We're like too old for that shit, right, We've got
Speaker 2: to stop to stop that.
Speaker 1: Outside in I am hearing the those phones need to
Speaker 1: be well away. Okay, We've got to make sure that
Speaker 1: we're doubling down on our social connection, whether it's quality
Speaker 1: over quantity, and then also really filtering and being clear
Speaker 1: about where we're getting our education from, because as you say,
Speaker 1: you know what you receive, you can believe and you've
Speaker 1: got to be careful about that. What about the top down?
Speaker 2: So this could be we could talk I mean, there's
Speaker 2: a lot of different things in here, I suppose if
Speaker 2: we're to talk about kind of more like the psychology
Speaker 2: of the brain and thinking about things like our mental health.
Speaker 2: So where are you kind of at with that? And
Speaker 2: if you've ever had an episode of depression or anxiety,
Speaker 2: that's managing that. That's a strong respect for having that again,
Speaker 2: and particularly women in midlife. But if you were like so,
Speaker 2: you were that girl who perhaps went through puberty and
Speaker 2: found you know, you found your teenage years really difficult,
Speaker 2: you were more vulnerable to getting PMS, you were perhaps
Speaker 2: more vulnerable to post antal depression. You know, there's a
Speaker 2: bit of a there's a bit of a kind of
Speaker 2: a passion emerging there. And we do think that there's
Speaker 2: a subset of women going through these reproductive phases of
Speaker 2: life whereby it's not like your hormones are higher or lower,
Speaker 2: it's just that you've got some sort of sensitivity within
Speaker 2: your body and brain which makes you react to that.
Speaker 2: So just kind of think about your mental health history
Speaker 2: and kind of be on the alert because the kind
Speaker 2: of the quicker that you can intervene or be aware
Speaker 2: of that, And there's so much help ab out there.
Speaker 2: I think we don't have to kind of grind through
Speaker 2: like our mother's generation did, worry worrying and being anxious.
Speaker 2: So I kind of put psychology and managing your psychology
Speaker 2: and your mental health and that top down, and then
Speaker 2: we could talk about mindset is a little bit kind
Speaker 2: of like about the kind of information you absorb and
Speaker 2: what you pay like your attention, like where you kind
Speaker 2: of focus your attention and what you kind of think about.
Speaker 2: And you know that we've kind of like some of
Speaker 2: the outside and a top down Ye kind of kind
Speaker 2: of meet in the middle there. When I'm thinking about
Speaker 2: what the brain's doing, it's just making meaning of a
Speaker 2: situation that we're in and going, well, that was great,
Speaker 2: I'm doing it again. That sucked. You don't want to
Speaker 2: do it again. Sometimes we find ourselves really lacking in
Speaker 2: motivation to do something that we know we should, and often.
Speaker 3: Meantime that's my whole. That's the work that change.
Speaker 2: And so behavior change and motivation. It's hard to want
Speaker 2: to do things when you're not motivated, and behavioral activation
Speaker 2: you would be familiar with that. The motivation will come
Speaker 2: from doing the thing. Sometimes, if we think about what
Speaker 2: is our brain doing when it's when it's encountered a
Speaker 2: situation it didn't like, you get kind of like a
Speaker 2: dopamine neurons are always kind of firing. There's this kind
Speaker 2: of baseline rate, like a tapping of a drum, okay,
Speaker 2: and you want to baseline firing rate because then you
Speaker 2: can go faster and you can go slower. So what
Speaker 2: we see with dopamine neurons are not just about I
Speaker 2: liked that, I want to do that again, liking things
Speaker 2: and motivation. They're signaling learning. They also sign a signaling
Speaker 2: that kind of sucked last time, and they're kind of
Speaker 2: lower their firing rate, and that means the next time
Speaker 2: you encounter that situation, you're kind of like, oh, you've
Speaker 2: kind of got that.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah.
Speaker 1: So for in the real world, say you drum up
Speaker 1: the courage and motivation to go to that group fitness
Speaker 1: class and then you really don't enjoy it and it sucks,
Speaker 1: and it sucks and you.
Speaker 3: Hurt, and the people were rude.
Speaker 2: And you felt environ felt useless, and then your brain
Speaker 2: is just getting this like so, so the anticipation was
Speaker 2: not you didn't It wasn't the great thing you thought
Speaker 2: it was going to be. It's like, you know how
Speaker 2: like kids get really excited about their birthdays and they
Speaker 2: have a party in there in their room, crying because
Speaker 2: it's just every parent has had been there, and so
Speaker 2: they just get this big kind of like disappointment dip,
Speaker 2: which is their dopamine kind of signaling that sucked. I
Speaker 2: thought it was going to be great. So it's like
Speaker 2: that kind of the anticipation of the thing wasn't met.
Speaker 2: And so then the next time you're in that situation,
Speaker 2: you just remember how you felt the previous time. It's
Speaker 2: not that you somehow lack motivation in your never going
Speaker 2: to be able to exercise.
Speaker 3: Something wrong with you, I'm lazy.
Speaker 2: Your brain went that sucked last time, I don't I'm
Speaker 2: not going to do it again. So it's kind of
Speaker 2: benefit ratio if you kind of understand that that's just
Speaker 2: like a feeling, and I suppose we could call it
Speaker 2: that's an emotion it will pass. It's a bit like
Speaker 2: when you crave to do something that you know you should't.
Speaker 2: Perhaps you're trying to give up too much wine at night,
Speaker 2: or you're trying to give up smoking. You know, you
Speaker 2: get that crave wave and they say, you know, you're
Speaker 2: just kind of going to ride the grave wave because
Speaker 2: it'll come and then it'll go, and then you'll stop
Speaker 2: wanting the thing. It's a little bit like you the disappointment,
Speaker 2: that feeling of I don't really want to do this,
Speaker 2: but I'm going to do it anyway. That feeling will subside.
Speaker 2: So it's about repeating the you know, that kind of
Speaker 2: experience a few times and it might be a bit
Speaker 2: more enjoyable. There's a lot of neuroscience that have glossed
Speaker 2: over here, but these emotions in our brain are just that.
Speaker 2: They're just an emotion. It's just neurons firing off, and
Speaker 2: I can.
Speaker 1: Make a bigger meaning of it that then might actually
Speaker 1: negatively impact your behavior change in the future.
Speaker 2: Draw it down, write it out, and sometimes that can
Speaker 2: externalize this process that you've kind of absorbed and thought
Speaker 2: that this is who I am. You've made it your identity.
Speaker 2: I do it like exercise, just write down that this
Speaker 2: is what the brain is doing, and then you can
Speaker 2: kind of set it aside from you. It's outside of
Speaker 2: you then and that kind of puts a bit of
Speaker 2: a distance between you and this thing that's happened in
Speaker 2: your mind. And then kind of just have a crack,
Speaker 2: like don't just do it anyway? Yeah, you know, I
Speaker 2: think what does Mail Robinson count to ten or five
Speaker 2: or something? You know, there's life, You've just behavioral activation techniques.
Speaker 2: So there's understanding that. And actually the most efficient way
Speaker 2: for behavior change is about developing, you know, a behavior
Speaker 2: into a habit.
Speaker 3: Yes, but you've got to repeat it.
Speaker 2: You've got to like do it quite a few times,
Speaker 2: and it has to be pretty. You've got to like
Speaker 2: really get there and really want to do it for
Speaker 2: it to become something that you're doing out motivation, because
Speaker 2: motivation's fickle. Yes, you don't want it. You don't want
Speaker 2: to rely on that fear of motivation. Like you want
Speaker 2: to write a whole book, right, you don't sit down.
Speaker 2: You don't sit down and wait for like motivation to head.
Speaker 3: You just get sing you to start writing.
Speaker 1: And I always say to my listeners, who are really
Speaker 1: stuck on a behavior that hasn't quite made it into
Speaker 1: the habitual bucket. If you just retrospectively look back on
Speaker 1: your life and the behaviors that you some of the
Speaker 1: habits that you have, the healthy habits you have now
Speaker 1: that you probably didn't have in your twenties or thirties,
Speaker 1: you realize that actually you can change these behaviors and
Speaker 1: turn them into habits, even if some of them felt stubborn,
Speaker 1: Like for example, I used to be addicted to dessert
Speaker 1: every night, and back then there was no concept that
Speaker 1: this was something I could give up it, which just
Speaker 1: I tried and I failed, and here I am Now
Speaker 1: I've been able to overcome it, and so my healthy
Speaker 1: habit of not having dessert is now feel so easy
Speaker 1: and I can't believe I struggled so much.
Speaker 2: And sometimes it's understanding, like you wanted to dessert, So
Speaker 2: were you going to remove the dessert from your house
Speaker 2: so you couldn't see anymore? Or are you're going to
Speaker 2: place something and it's you know, when you wanted the dessert,
Speaker 2: what you're going to do instead? Yeah, exactly, So that
Speaker 2: cycle will kind of be there. It's hard to lose that.
Speaker 2: It's a little bit like you've learned to ride a bike,
Speaker 2: you can't.
Speaker 3: Just forget how to know exactly how to do that.
Speaker 2: And there's another technique which will just be super quick
Speaker 2: about how you could perhaps create an experience that you
Speaker 2: may have never had or that you want to make
Speaker 2: it more desirable as to use visualization or mental rehearsal.
Speaker 2: Like how athletes do they You know, they rehearse the
Speaker 2: gym routine. You can see the gymnasts at the Olympics
Speaker 2: doing that. You can see, you know, some guys can
Speaker 2: a penalty in a rugby game. You can see them
Speaker 2: visualizing the ball. You can visualize an action or a behavior,
Speaker 2: but you can also visualize your emotional response to a
Speaker 2: particular situation. I learned to do this when I was
Speaker 2: I gave a ted talk like twelve years ago or
Speaker 2: something now. I visualized before I went on stage, standing
Speaker 2: on stage and walking off the stage, my emotional response,
Speaker 2: how is I wasn't going to feel overwhelmed with nerves.
Speaker 2: I was going to feel happy and confident and proud.
Speaker 2: I was going to enjoy that talk. And then when
Speaker 2: I walked off stage, I wasn't going to feel relief.
Speaker 2: I was going to feel like gratefulness, and I rehearse
Speaker 2: the emotions.
Speaker 1: Oh and love that.
Speaker 2: So you can rehearse an emotional response to a situation
Speaker 2: and advance, not just some kind of athletic performance. You
Speaker 2: can rehearse the emotion. And what that does is it
Speaker 2: kind of makes it a bit more automatic. And that's
Speaker 2: going to free up your cognitive capacity to react and
Speaker 2: respond to whatever's happening right in front of you. So
Speaker 2: I memorized my ted talk. I also memorize my emotional
Speaker 2: responses so that all rolled out, and that means I
Speaker 2: could just be in the moment. I wasn't managing my emotions.
Speaker 2: I wasn't remembering the talk. I could just be there
Speaker 2: and do the thing. And I don't think that we
Speaker 2: realized that our mind is capable of that.
Speaker 1: Maybe that's where that wisdom comes in for midlife. Look,
Speaker 1: we have covered so much. This has been so so fascinating,
Speaker 1: and I love how you've taken us through a much
Speaker 1: more holistic approach to our brain fog. You know, I
Speaker 1: wasn't sure if you were going to come in here
Speaker 1: and just you know, have this like one solution to
Speaker 1: our distraction or our brain fog. But I think you've
Speaker 1: described it so beautifully in this framework where it's it's
Speaker 1: so many factors that into play that lead us to,
Speaker 1: you know, feeling the way that we do. So I
Speaker 1: want to, I guess wrap up with one final question
Speaker 1: for a woman listening who really does feel like her
Speaker 1: brain fog is impacting her quality of life. Over everything
Speaker 1: we've spoken about today, what is the one thing you
Speaker 1: feel she could go and do today to take a
Speaker 1: step in the right direction to support her brain health.
Speaker 2: I mean, if you're genuinely concerned, go to see your
Speaker 2: GP and talk to your GP about that, because there
Speaker 2: are screens that you can do. You know, we have
Speaker 2: breast screen, we have bowel screen, there are screens that
Speaker 2: you could do for cognition. If you're concerned about your
Speaker 2: memory and your attention, and if your GP then's like, hey,
Speaker 2: you know, perhaps we should get this checked out. Then
Speaker 2: you could be referred on. That's like perhaps not the
Speaker 2: quick student, I mean the answer you're looking for, But
Speaker 2: we can ask for help when it comes to how
Speaker 2: our brains are functioning. And more often than not, maybe
Speaker 2: it might just be it's disrupted sleep, not enough exercise,
Speaker 2: terrible food. But if there's a genuine concern, then you
Speaker 2: know you can be referred on to. You know, we've
Speaker 2: got memory clinics where you know, all of these you know,
Speaker 2: concerns and worries can be assisted properly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I think in my situation to my story,
Speaker 1: at the start my unlock today has really been about
Speaker 1: that outside in and also at the start of our
Speaker 1: conversation when you spoke about all the positive changes that
Speaker 1: our brain makes. I'm going to double down and focus
Speaker 1: on those, and I'm just going to give myself a
Speaker 1: bit of a break to say, hey, I have got
Speaker 1: a tsunami of cognitive load coming in. So that's why
Speaker 1: I forget where I put my keys.
Speaker 2: I did this post the other day that went viral
Speaker 2: about the ages of the Astronauts and the Artemis.
Speaker 3: Oh especially that went.
Speaker 2: Around the Missus most forty seven, forty nine, fifty and
Speaker 2: fifty Yeah, no twenty year olds on the Artemis performers.
Speaker 2: They were like the best humans ever. They were funny,
Speaker 2: they were humble, they were smart. People were calling out
Speaker 2: competence pawn. One of them was a woman. She wasn't
Speaker 2: up there like faffing about worrying about hot flash. She
Speaker 2: was just doing a shit and we need more midlife
Speaker 2: kind of heroes like that, where we see people doing
Speaker 2: great things. I understand that we need to be helping
Speaker 2: people with feeling terrible and there's symptoms, etc. But there's
Speaker 2: also like, there's so many great things to come still.
Speaker 1: Cognitive flexibility, pattern recognition, crystallize intelligence, emotional stability, emotional look
Speaker 1: at us.
Speaker 3: Go, doctor Sarah, Thank you so much for your time today.
Speaker 2: You're so welcome.
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