Speaker 1: I won't let my body out be outwait everything that
Speaker 1: I'm made done, won't spend my life.
Speaker 2: Trying to change. I'm learning love who I.
Speaker 1: Am, agam Stan.
Speaker 2: I feel free.
Speaker 1: I know every part of me it's beautiful and that
Speaker 1: will always out way if you feel it.
Speaker 2: But she'll some love to the why get there? Say
Speaker 2: go day Anita? Did you and die out way?
Speaker 1: Well? Happy Saturday, Out Weigh. I'm so excited to be
Speaker 1: here for a brand new series. It is our Outweigh
Speaker 1: neuro series, and I'm joined by doctor Lee Warren. Hello,
Speaker 1: doctor Warren. Hey, so good to have you here. And
Speaker 1: this is a fun series for us to do because
Speaker 1: this is kind of a crossover so over on my
Speaker 1: What's God Got to Do with It? Podcast? Doctor Warren
Speaker 1: was on there for two episodes. We'll link them in
Speaker 1: the show notes where we talked about the concept of
Speaker 1: neuro and neuro faith and so on. This series, this
Speaker 1: is the neuro series because we're going to really be
Speaker 1: getting deep into your thoughts, your feelings, your beliefs, your habits. Specifically,
Speaker 1: as you know, if you're listening to this, there's some
Speaker 1: sort of food and body prison that you're in. There's
Speaker 1: some sort of out of controllness that you feel there's
Speaker 1: something that you don't feel like you have agency over
Speaker 1: your life when it comes to food in your body.
Speaker 1: So who better to talk about the neural implications and
Speaker 1: the cause and effect chicken egg than a neurosurgeon himself,
Speaker 1: doctor Warren. But also the cool thing about it is
Speaker 1: this time last year, Amy Brown, the creator of Outweigh
Speaker 1: and my copilot for this podcast, we teamed up and
Speaker 1: we did a four part series called Acting as If,
Speaker 1: where we talked about the connection between our thoughts, our feelings,
Speaker 1: our beliefs, our behaviors and actions and how to influence
Speaker 1: them by taking a brain base approach. But now we
Speaker 1: get to talk to a neurosurgeon himself. He's going to
Speaker 1: walk us through it, and there's so much connection and
Speaker 1: crossover to what we already talk about and his ways
Speaker 1: of thinking, ways of being. So I'm just excited for
Speaker 1: us to dive on in. And this week we're going
Speaker 1: to be going through the concept of neuro thoughts and
Speaker 1: you're thinking next week we're going to get into the
Speaker 1: neuro feelings side of things. So if you feel like
Speaker 1: your feelings are driving the show, or you feel out
Speaker 1: of control of your feelings. You're going to understand a
Speaker 1: little bit more about why you do what you do,
Speaker 1: why you feel how you feel, and then we'll get
Speaker 1: into the neuro beliefs side of it, and then neuro
Speaker 1: habits and the behaviors and action side of it. So
Speaker 1: we're going to go ahead and dive on in to
Speaker 1: this week's episode all about your thoughts, and so I
Speaker 1: think a great place to start, doctor Warren is just
Speaker 1: explaining from your perspective this idea of we now know
Speaker 1: it is widely understood that our brain is plastic, it's multible,
Speaker 1: it's pliable, it's switch up able at any time we choose.
Speaker 1: But that now gives us a whole new set of
Speaker 1: options and possibilities. It really starts at our thoughts. So
Speaker 1: can you just kind of walk us through your perspective
Speaker 1: on that for.
Speaker 2: Us, absolutely, You know, we used to think like you
Speaker 2: just alluded to. Up until about two thousand and four,
Speaker 2: most neuroscientists thought that you were born with all the
Speaker 2: brain cells you were ever going to have, and you
Speaker 2: were pretty it was pretty fixed, and you just to
Speaker 2: better learn how to take care of it. And that
Speaker 2: was kind of a hopeless idea like, your brain is
Speaker 2: what it is and your genetics determine it and all
Speaker 2: that stuff, and we know now without any doubt, so
Speaker 2: from the neuropathology side neuroimaging, there's no doubt it's absolutely
Speaker 2: true that your brain makes new nerve cells or neurons
Speaker 2: every day. That's called neurogenesis, and your brain connects those
Speaker 2: new cells into networks of old cells and pathways all
Speaker 2: the time. While we're speaking, we're making new synapsis. That's
Speaker 2: called neuroplasticity. The stunning thing is that we have some
Speaker 2: control over that. So the functional imaging of the ability
Speaker 2: to look at the actual brain as it's happening, the
Speaker 2: thoughts that you're thinking, the blood flow, changes in the brain,
Speaker 2: neurotransmitter levels, and all that stuff has allowed us to
Speaker 2: basically connect the ideas that, yeah, we know that new
Speaker 2: nerve cells are being born every day, we know they're
Speaker 2: wiring in and all that to the fact that it's
Speaker 2: dynamic and it's somewhat under your own control, and that's
Speaker 2: where the power comes in. So we now know that
Speaker 2: the things you think about turn out to be able
Speaker 2: to make structural changes in your brain to create new synapses,
Speaker 2: new connections between cells and networks in your brain and
Speaker 2: to eliminate old ones that aren't helping you anymore. So,
Speaker 2: if you want to think about it like I do
Speaker 2: in surgery, if I take a pair of scissors and
Speaker 2: cut a neuron or a connection between a neuron, I'm
Speaker 2: severing a connection between two areas of the brain that
Speaker 2: aren't helpful to one another. Like if I want to
Speaker 2: interrupt seizure activity, I can eliminate seize your activity by
Speaker 2: disconnecting networks of cells that shouldn't be talking to each other.
Speaker 2: And you can do the same thing with your thinking,
Speaker 2: which is a lot less invasive.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think that gives us a lot of hope too,
Speaker 1: because people think like you know, and I hear a
Speaker 1: lot of women being like, yes, I have very negative thinking,
Speaker 1: I have very negative self talk. And they think like, oh,
Speaker 1: but this is just who I am, this is how
Speaker 1: I'm always going to be. It's just part of their
Speaker 1: way of thinking or way of being. Can you just
Speaker 1: kind of speak into that, because I think there's some
Speaker 1: people that have kind of resigned to it and think
Speaker 1: that this is how their brain will always be.
Speaker 2: That's right. And you know, on my show, we talk
Speaker 2: about the ten commandments of self brains are. One of
Speaker 2: them is to understand that not all of your thoughts
Speaker 2: are true. Leah. The fact is, your brain generates a
Speaker 2: lot of thoughts that pop into your mind that are
Speaker 2: presented to you in a familiar voice, because your inner
Speaker 2: voice sounds like you, and so that means that automatically
Speaker 2: has a lot of credibility. But there's a lot of
Speaker 2: thoughts that pop into your head that simply aren't true.
Speaker 2: They're generated based on accessing memories and emotions and feelings
Speaker 2: and current events and kind of jumbling them up, and
Speaker 2: they present to you as if, oh, I just can't
Speaker 2: ever be different than this, or I tried this before
Speaker 2: and it didn't work, or I'm such a loser, or
Speaker 2: whatever those thoughts pop into your head. The problem is
Speaker 2: if we don't recognize that automatic thoughts are often negative
Speaker 2: and often untrue, then we think we're hearing from a
Speaker 2: credible voice inside our head that we're obligated to believe
Speaker 2: and take action on. And so the most important thing
Speaker 2: for the listener today, if you're stuck with that kind
Speaker 2: of negative thinking loop, is to learn to say, hey,
Speaker 2: wait a minute, I know from science that most of
Speaker 2: the thoughts that pop into my head are not true
Speaker 2: and I am not obligated to act on them. So
Speaker 2: the first thing is then to develop a toolkit, a
Speaker 2: set of procedures, if you will, to think about your
Speaker 2: thinking and decide only to take action on those thoughts
Speaker 2: that are true and necessary and helpful and compassionate.
Speaker 1: Wow, to think about your thinking, become aware of what
Speaker 1: you're not currently aware of. Can we just follow that
Speaker 1: threat a little bit more? Because I know for me
Speaker 1: that was a very profound thought process. I'm like, wait
Speaker 1: a minute, I can basically take an aerial view of
Speaker 1: my thinking and think about my thinking. So as you
Speaker 1: explain it on your podcast and in your books, can
Speaker 1: you just share a little bit about the process of
Speaker 1: thinking about your thinking.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So, since I'm a surgeon and I like to
Speaker 2: think about things like procedures, that the metaphor just works
Speaker 2: for me. So if you come into my office and
Speaker 2: you say I've got headaches, and I do a scan
Speaker 2: and there's a spot on your brain and I think
Speaker 2: it might be causing your headaches, I don't know what
Speaker 2: that spot is until I buy it, or until it
Speaker 2: take you to surgery and put a needle in that
Speaker 2: thing and look at it microscope and get with the
Speaker 2: pathologist and we identify what that tissue is. So I
Speaker 2: can think it's a tumor, or I can think it's
Speaker 2: an infection, or I can think it's something else. But
Speaker 2: until I buyap see it, I don't know what it is.
Speaker 2: And so as a surgeon, it's called malpractice if I
Speaker 2: take action on something that I think without knowing first.
Speaker 2: So if I if I took you to surgery or
Speaker 2: sent you down to radiation and zapped your brain with
Speaker 2: a whole bunch of gamma rays because I thought you
Speaker 2: had a tumor, but it was not true. You actually
Speaker 2: didn't have a tumor. And once I buyop see that,
Speaker 2: I found out you just had a little piece of
Speaker 2: scar tissue in your brain that you didn't need to
Speaker 2: have radiation. That would have been malpractice. Right, So taking
Speaker 2: action on a thought that you haven't properly evaluated is
Speaker 2: committing the act of self malpractice. You're harming yourself because
Speaker 2: you don't know for sure that what you're doing is
Speaker 2: in response to a thought that was valid. So I
Speaker 2: teach people this idea of biap seeing your thought, like
Speaker 2: literally think wait a minute. That thought that popped into
Speaker 2: my head sounds kind of damaging to me, like, hey,
Speaker 2: you're such a loser. You'll never be better than this,
Speaker 2: You'll never be able to overcome this habit. Maybe that's
Speaker 2: not true. Let me look and see if there's some
Speaker 2: evidence that that is or is not true. And if
Speaker 2: it isn't true, then I can just eliminate it, Like
Speaker 2: I don't have to think about that thought because it's
Speaker 2: not true. It's malpractice to follow that trail of thought.
Speaker 2: And if it is true in some way, then my
Speaker 2: next thought shouldn't be, Yeah, I really am such a loser.
Speaker 2: I should just give up. My next thought should be
Speaker 2: what can I do to change that? What can I
Speaker 2: do to intervene in that to try to make the
Speaker 2: future thought more hopeful, more helpful, more compassionate to myself.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I love because it just underneath what you're saying.
Speaker 1: It denotes that you have to take radical responsibility for
Speaker 1: your brain and your thoughts and the concept of self
Speaker 1: malpractice right, there's no shame in it. It's just like
Speaker 1: a data driven term where it's it basically is saying, Okay,
Speaker 1: this is what I'm doing when I'm not thinking about
Speaker 1: my thinking. We're not shaming ourselves because I think that's
Speaker 1: a lot of the spiral that people that are listening
Speaker 1: to this go into is that shame spiral, but it
Speaker 1: denotes just really taking radical agency of this. Now on
Speaker 1: that note, when it becomes obsessive, right, because there's a
Speaker 1: lot of obsession that comes around thinking about what you're eating,
Speaker 1: think about what you're not eating. Are they judging my body?
Speaker 1: Are they not judging my body? Am I judging my body?
Speaker 2: Is it me?
Speaker 1: Is it them? I mean, I could go on and on.
Speaker 1: When you talk about the obsessive thoughts, and you know,
Speaker 1: you said talking about stopping that feedback loop, can you
Speaker 1: just speak into what obsession is in the brain and
Speaker 1: what you've experienced with how to kind of think about
Speaker 1: your thinking and transform that rabbit hole.
Speaker 2: There's a world famous neurosurgeonnamed Peter Janetta that was one
Speaker 2: of my professors who trained me, and he invented a
Speaker 2: lot of the procedures that was still use and he
Speaker 2: was so famous that Maya Angelo spoke at his birthday
Speaker 2: party one year like that. He was was a big
Speaker 2: name guy, but he was funny because he would teach
Speaker 2: us these brain surgeries that were these elaborate, complex operations
Speaker 2: took all day to perform, and he would allow the
Speaker 2: more senior residence to start the procedure before he came
Speaker 2: in the room, and he would, invariably Doctor Janetta would
Speaker 2: come in and he would watch me operate for a minute,
Speaker 2: and he would watch all the things I was doing,
Speaker 2: and he would say, hey, you're making an operation out
Speaker 2: of this. And it was kind of a joke because
Speaker 2: it was an operation, But what doctor Jenette was saying was,
Speaker 2: you're overly complicating this situationally, you're making it harder than
Speaker 2: it has to be a good surgeon, a good doctor
Speaker 2: learns how to do the mission in the most efficient
Speaker 2: and effective and best way that is possible to do it.
Speaker 2: So when we talk about thinking about your thinking, one
Speaker 2: way that you can make an operation out of it
Speaker 2: is to overthink and get into a loop of thinking,
Speaker 2: Am I thinking about my thinking too much? Am I
Speaker 2: shaming myself too much? Am I blaming myself too much?
Speaker 2: Maybe I'll never be able to stop thinking about this.
Speaker 2: And you get into this loop of right of overfixating
Speaker 2: on the process, then of thinking about your thinking, and
Speaker 2: you're making an operation out of it. So the way
Speaker 2: to stop that is to say, hey, I need to
Speaker 2: identify whether a thought is helpful or not. And once
Speaker 2: I do that, then the next step is I'm going
Speaker 2: to shift into I'm gonna stop contemplating and start operating,
Speaker 2: and we'll start doing something to make that next thought better,
Speaker 2: to make the outcome better, to have a better, hope,
Speaker 2: more hopeful place to land. So you shift really quickly
Speaker 2: from that biopsy stage to your taking action to do
Speaker 2: something to try to make the process better, and that
Speaker 2: that becomes automated and easier over time. But that's how
Speaker 2: you stop making an operation out of it all the time.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm thinking of a scalpel now. And it's
Speaker 1: like anything can be a tool or a weapon, right,
Speaker 1: And it's like thinking about your thinking can be this
Speaker 1: beautiful tool to set you free, but if you overthink
Speaker 1: the thinking about your thinking, it becomes a weapon used
Speaker 1: against yourself. So really that distinction is like who you're
Speaker 1: being while you're using it. This is so good. And guys,
Speaker 1: if you're listening to this and you love what you're hearing,
Speaker 1: first of all, we have the rest of this series
Speaker 1: coming up, but you've got to check out Doctor Warren's podcast.
Speaker 1: He's got two different podcasts, He's got a gaggle of books.
Speaker 1: So before we end this episode, where can people find you?
Speaker 1: Can you share a little bit about your podcast.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so the Doctor Lee Warren podcast, that's the main podcast,
Speaker 2: and we talk about this kind of stuff all the time,
Speaker 2: as you know, Lee and you've been on the show.
Speaker 2: So we talk about neuroscience and faith and big things
Speaker 2: like that and how we smash them together to try
Speaker 2: to find a way to become healthier, feel better, and
Speaker 2: be happy in our lives. And then the second one
Speaker 2: is a little bit more sort of Bible focused. We
Speaker 2: call it spiritual brain surgery. It's kind of looking at
Speaker 2: what we believe, why we believe it, how faith and
Speaker 2: science can help us defend it, live it and share
Speaker 2: it with other people. And they're everywhere. Podcasts are available,
Speaker 2: and then I got a bunch of books. You can
Speaker 2: check out my website Doctor Leewarren dot com, wrenmd dot com.
Speaker 2: And I write a newsletter and do all that stuff.
Speaker 2: So easy to find and I hope people will connect.
Speaker 2: We love to meet new people. So thanks amazing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, your Sunday newsletter. I will look forward to it.
Speaker 1: In my inbox every weekend. So thanks for being here.
Speaker 1: We are going to link all of that in the
Speaker 1: show notes and we will be back next Saturday for
Speaker 1: neuro Feelings. And so if you have ever wondered you
Speaker 1: know what's going on when I go to reach for
Speaker 1: food to fill a void of sadness or loneliness or
Speaker 1: comfort or stress or sorrow or whatever, or happiness even
Speaker 1: but why you're feeling the way that you're feeling, what's
Speaker 1: the cause and effect relationship, really connecting the dots from
Speaker 1: what we talked about with your thoughts, then stay tuned
Speaker 1: because we're going to be talking about that next week.
Speaker 1: So this is Lean and doctor Warren signing out for
Speaker 1: this week and Outweigh and we'll be back next week. Bye.