Speaker 1: All your brain is doing is kind of gathering a
Speaker 1: lot of information. Is it goes along through life in
Speaker 1: stores that information so that when you're in that situation
Speaker 1: next you can make that decision about what to do.
Speaker 1: And a lot of the time we will be making
Speaker 1: decisions based on did that feel really good last time?
Speaker 1: Or did that not feel so great?
Speaker 2: Wow?
Speaker 3: Welcome to the one you feed through our time. Great
Speaker 3: thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have,
Speaker 3: quotes like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what
Speaker 3: you think ring true. And yet for many of us,
Speaker 3: our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity,
Speaker 3: self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't
Speaker 3: have instead of what we do. We think things that
Speaker 3: hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not
Speaker 3: just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent
Speaker 3: and creative effort to make a life worth living. This
Speaker 3: podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in
Speaker 3: the right direction, how they feed their good wolf.
Speaker 2: What if I told you that some of the most
Speaker 2: popular beliefs about your brain, like the idea that you
Speaker 2: only use ten percent of it, are completely false and worse,
Speaker 2: these myths might actually be holding you back from real change. Today,
Speaker 2: I sit down with neuroscientists doctor Sarah McKay to debunk
Speaker 2: the biggest neuromiths you probably still believe. We'll also explore
Speaker 2: why willpower isn't the magic bullet for behavior change and
Speaker 2: what actually is, And Sarah shares a deeply personal shift.
Speaker 2: She's making it fifty that might just change how you
Speaker 2: think about your own life space, if you're ready to
Speaker 2: separate fact from fiction when it comes to your brain,
Speaker 2: and maybe even rethink how you're living. Stick around. I'm
Speaker 2: Eric Zimmer, and this is the one you feed. Hi, Sarah,
Speaker 2: Welcome to the show.
Speaker 1: Thank you for inviting.
Speaker 2: I am happy to have you on. I first came
Speaker 2: across your work, I think because my partner, Jinny, subscribes
Speaker 2: to your email list.
Speaker 1: Oh that's cool.
Speaker 2: The thing that sort of hooked me and that I
Speaker 2: wanted to talk about was that you often talk about
Speaker 2: neuro myths, and so we'll be getting into neuro myths.
Speaker 2: We'll be getting into your latest book, which is called
Speaker 2: Brain Health for Dummies, and all of that in a moment.
Speaker 2: But first we'll start like we always do, with the
Speaker 2: parable of the wolves. And in the parable, there's a
Speaker 2: grandparent who's talking with their grandchild and they say, in life,
Speaker 2: there are two wolves inside of us that are always
Speaker 2: at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things
Speaker 2: like kindness and bravery and love, and the other's a
Speaker 2: bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear.
Speaker 2: And the grandchild stops think about it for a second.
Speaker 2: They look up at their grandparent and they say, well,
Speaker 2: which one wins, And the grandparent says, the one you feed.
Speaker 2: I'd like to start off by asking you what that
Speaker 2: parable means to you in your life and in the
Speaker 2: work that you do.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it means quite a lot right now. I was
Speaker 1: thinking about this last night because I'm one of those
Speaker 1: sort of seasons of life. Let's say, my mother loves
Speaker 1: to talk about seasons of life where I think that
Speaker 1: kind of the balance and moments and places and people
Speaker 1: kind of working against each other. So I turned fifty
Speaker 1: at the very beginning of the year. Last year, it
Speaker 1: was a huge year. I wrote a couple of books.
Speaker 1: We had a lot going on. I had lots of great,
Speaker 1: exciting fun things happen, But we also had quite a
Speaker 1: lot of stress in our family, and I decided that
Speaker 1: this year, turning fifty, I was going to take like
Speaker 1: a gap year. I think growing ups are meant to
Speaker 1: call it a sabbatical, which is I don't want to
Speaker 1: be at my desk. I don't want to be writing.
Speaker 1: I don't want to be I don't spend too much
Speaker 1: time thinking, to be honest, I'm going to do podcasts
Speaker 1: and speaking, but I want to travel and I want
Speaker 1: to connect. I'm trying to sort of shift a balance.
Speaker 1: I think my oldest son it's his final year of
Speaker 1: high school and he'll probably go away to university next year.
Speaker 1: And I left academia many years ago when I had
Speaker 1: my boys because I wanted to be at home with them,
Speaker 1: and I feel like it's a really nice book end
Speaker 1: of his schooling to kind of be here, I mean,
Speaker 1: to be honest, he probably won't notice whether I'm here
Speaker 1: or not, but he will notice the food and the baking.
Speaker 1: Just to kind of shift my focus and just sort
Speaker 1: of slow down and live a bit of a slower
Speaker 1: linear like I like to say, less of a three
Speaker 1: sixty life. So I feel sometimes I can be in
Speaker 1: a tug of war between striving and achieving and trying
Speaker 1: to do all of the things and parent with trust
Speaker 1: not anxiety, try and give up control and be a mentor.
Speaker 1: So I feel like I've purposefully decided this year it's
Speaker 1: not the word slow down, but perhaps anchor myself a
Speaker 1: little bit more. You know, people have a word of
Speaker 1: the year. Last year, I had this word equanimity, and
Speaker 1: I think I'm going to to reuse it again this
Speaker 1: year because I think that's about kind of being grounded
Speaker 1: and balanced and when life is kind of rushing around,
Speaker 1: I'm going to try and be a little bit more
Speaker 1: like linear, choosing way to place my focus yep, and
Speaker 1: a calm away this year. I think I need that,
Speaker 1: my body needs that. I want to give that to
Speaker 1: my family again. So that's what that parable kind of.
Speaker 1: It's about not fighting between different ideas. It's just about
Speaker 1: lip sitting summ aside and leaning into some others.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that idea of being away from your desk is
Speaker 2: one that sounds good. I've been working on my first
Speaker 2: book and it's due to the publisher in a month.
Speaker 1: So oh, congratulations, thank.
Speaker 2: You, thank you. So I spend a lot of time
Speaker 2: at my desk. Normally you spent a lot of time
Speaker 2: sitting down alone even more. Yeah, and just lately the
Speaker 2: last few days, I've just had this feeling like I
Speaker 2: get off and I'm like, I just need to go
Speaker 2: for a walk, you know, with no music, no audio books,
Speaker 2: no podcasts. I hate to say it, listeners. I don't
Speaker 2: advise that. I think you should always have the one
Speaker 2: if you want, now.
Speaker 1: Do walk without a podcast if you have a busy brain.
Speaker 1: I find it stops me thinking. As I say I
Speaker 1: don't like this three sixty, my brain will just be
Speaker 1: going off in a million angles.
Speaker 2: So I agree, And generally I felt like no stimulation
Speaker 2: for just even thirty minutes, where it's like there's not
Speaker 2: something coming at me. So let's move into talking first
Speaker 2: about neuro myths. What does that mean to you? And
Speaker 2: what are some of the most prevalent neuro myths out there.
Speaker 1: This is interesting because I haven't thought to be perfectly
Speaker 1: honest about neuromths in quite some time. I feel like
Speaker 1: when I started, I sort of started the current phase
Speaker 1: of my career, which was very much about my backgrounds
Speaker 1: a PhD neuroscientist, a research When I left academia and
Speaker 1: I was home with my boys for a few years,
Speaker 1: and then I set up a sort of teaching talking
Speaker 1: writing about neuroscience was probably at a point in time
Speaker 1: when I don't know whether people know whether that's gone backwards.
Speaker 1: People were as scientific literate as they are now, But
Speaker 1: then sometimes I wonder if that's, like I say, changed again.
Speaker 1: Neuroscience wasn't as popularized then as it is now, and
Speaker 1: I don't think people had as clear understanding. And so
Speaker 1: there were lots of ideas people had about the brain
Speaker 1: that were reasonably whether they were widely shared, whether I
Speaker 1: just tuned into them that as a neuroscientist I'd never
Speaker 1: heard of. Because when you're in the neuroscience research world academia,
Speaker 1: you're doing your thing and you're surrounded by other like
Speaker 1: minded people. And so then when I first stepped out,
Speaker 1: there were people saying things about the brain that I
Speaker 1: didn't necessarily think were correct or I'd never heard of before.
Speaker 1: So I thought, I'm going to bust those myths. Let
Speaker 1: me show them and tell them. And so I started
Speaker 1: talking about some of these ideas, and honestly, it feels
Speaker 1: a little bit old for me now to talk about
Speaker 1: what some of them are. Maybe these ideas around we
Speaker 1: have a right creative brain and a left analytical brain.
Speaker 1: And you're either right brained or you're left brained. Or
Speaker 1: learning styles either a kinesthetic, an auditory, or a visual learner.
Speaker 1: We only use ten percent of our brain. I think
Speaker 1: these are some of the more popular ideas that are
Speaker 1: out there about the brain. And initially I used to
Speaker 1: be I'm going to bust the myths and I'm going
Speaker 1: to tell them. And I have learned a lot in
Speaker 1: the last sort of seventeen years. I suppose of doing
Speaker 1: what I do that busting a myth isn't a way
Speaker 1: of connecting with other people and educating them about neuroscience.
Speaker 1: No one wants to be told now what you think
Speaker 1: is wrong, in fact that it'll make them dig their heels.
Speaker 1: And that's why I say, when you say, what do
Speaker 1: neuromiths mean to me? This is what it means to me. Now,
Speaker 1: That's not how I now approach their work that I do.
Speaker 1: It's around taking ideas that are correct and are accurate,
Speaker 1: and are based in the research or at least our
Speaker 1: current understanding of where ideas about neuroscience are, and then
Speaker 1: sharing them in a way that will resonate with someone
Speaker 1: that will land with someone and then if they come
Speaker 1: to me and ask, well, what about this or what
Speaker 1: about that, then I might say, hey, let's kind of
Speaker 1: take a look at what our latest understanding is. And
Speaker 1: often it will be kind of different. I suppose some
Speaker 1: ideas that have persisted over the years, and maybe not
Speaker 1: so much neuro myths, but might be just inaccurate ways
Speaker 1: of phrasing discussions about the brain. And perhaps the one
Speaker 1: that I still tend to rant on a little bit
Speaker 1: about would be the reptilian brain or the lizard brain.
Speaker 1: And this gets thrown about, is this kind of phrase
Speaker 1: that we've all got this kind of lizard brain inside
Speaker 1: of us, kind of waiting to be scared, to freeze
Speaker 1: or to flee, or to fight where lizards don't typically fight,
Speaker 1: and that kind of controls everything that could potentially go wrong,
Speaker 1: that controls our behave. And we don't have a lizard
Speaker 1: brain because we're not lizards. We're humans. Our brains are
Speaker 1: far more complex. We're not born with this kind of
Speaker 1: fear hub inside us waiting for something to go wrong.
Speaker 1: So that is perhaps not a myth that I tell
Speaker 1: people is wrong, But I try and present different ideas instead,
Speaker 1: which I think are more contemporary ways of explaining how
Speaker 1: the brain works that I think are more useful and
Speaker 1: give people a bit more agency and a bit more
Speaker 1: to kind of move on with in a useful way.
Speaker 2: With the lizard brain, I mean, obviously, I think that
Speaker 2: you're right, we're not lizards.
Speaker 3: Yes.
Speaker 2: Secondly, I think one of the things that you talk
Speaker 2: about in your book, and I think if you dig
Speaker 2: into neuroscience a little bit, you start to realize is
Speaker 2: that there's a lot of connectivity among parts of the brain.
Speaker 2: So to think that one part of your brain is
Speaker 2: doing all of something is misleeding. But is it safe
Speaker 2: to say that we have a part of our brain
Speaker 2: that is more I don't even know if this would
Speaker 2: be safe to say limbically based a part of our
Speaker 2: brain that is more react dictionary that is from older
Speaker 2: brain structures in creatures that we've evolved from and we've
Speaker 2: built on top of that. Or is even that a misunderstanding.
Speaker 1: The brain is complicated. It does a whole lot of things.
Speaker 1: This idea that we evolved from lizards, first of all,
Speaker 1: is inaccurate, because an evolutionary biologist will be able to
Speaker 1: tell you, you know, mammals didn't evolve from lizards. If
Speaker 1: you kind of look at a kind of an evolutionary tree,
Speaker 1: they branched off. We branched off. We kind of evolved
Speaker 1: along one kind of path, and they evolved on the other.
Speaker 1: So this idea that we've retained some lizard part in
Speaker 1: us as inaccurate. On top of that, if we look
Speaker 1: at how the brain develops, this idea that there's this
Speaker 1: kind of like layer by layer kind of development of
Speaker 1: the brain where by these primitive lizardy parts develop first
Speaker 1: and then the other parts grow on top or develop
Speaker 1: on top. Again, that's not necessarily how our brains develop either.
Speaker 1: So the idea that they evolve and then develop in
Speaker 1: this way has been set aside. The idea was really
Speaker 1: popularized many, many years ago, kind of back in the
Speaker 1: nineteen sixties. We've learned let's just say we've learned. We've
Speaker 1: learned a lot in the last five years, let alone
Speaker 1: a lot from the nineteen sixties when it was originally
Speaker 1: proposed this idea of this kind of lizard brain, or
Speaker 1: the limbic brain. It was proposed by this chap Paul MacLean,
Speaker 1: And when he was first describing the different parts of
Speaker 1: the brain, he didn't even label the limbic brain, the
Speaker 1: so called limbic regions of the brain as the lizard brain.
Speaker 1: He in fact labeled them as the mammalian brain. The
Speaker 1: lizard part or the reptilian part of the brain was
Speaker 1: even kind of more sitting below there. It was more
Speaker 1: parts of the brain that are involved with things like
Speaker 1: kind of respiration and heart rate and sleep and awake,
Speaker 1: et cetera. So, if his description is accurate, people aren't
Speaker 1: using his description accurately today, And I think, what's kind
Speaker 1: of funny. What I always encourage people to do, do
Speaker 1: a Google image search for lizard brain or reptilian brain
Speaker 1: and look to see the diagrams that people have drawn
Speaker 1: of this, and you could get an array of twenty
Speaker 1: of them, and I guarantee every single one of them
Speaker 1: will label a different part of the brain is lizard
Speaker 1: or reptilian. And the reason they can't label that is
Speaker 1: because it doesn't exist. It's not kind of a thing.
Speaker 1: What we understand now the current contemporary neuroscience perspective, and
Speaker 1: this may change, is that we don't have these kind
Speaker 1: of hardwired neurobiological basic emotions that are widen from birth
Speaker 1: whereby every human on the planet is going to respond
Speaker 1: in an identical way, in the same way that every
Speaker 1: lizard on the planet does, like elizard of Morocco and
Speaker 1: New York and in my backyard here in Sydney. You're
Speaker 1: all going to behave the same way we humans don't. Instead,
Speaker 1: we talk about this idea of constructed emotions, and some
Speaker 1: of this has been popularized by various neuroscientists, whereby like
Speaker 1: everything else in our brain, like a thought or a memory,
Speaker 1: or an expectation or a belief, and emotion is also
Speaker 1: constructed from kind of multiple inputs, or we can think
Speaker 1: about them as like ingredients. So some of these would
Speaker 1: be from our bottom up kind of physiological body, the
Speaker 1: sensations we feel in our body. Some of us are
Speaker 1: more consciously aware of what happens in our body than others.
Speaker 1: The situation we're in, the context we're in, the people
Speaker 1: we're with, I mean, and there's a whole lot of
Speaker 1: data coming in these days from like your mobile phone.
Speaker 1: So a war happening on the other side of the
Speaker 1: world is now happening thirty centimeters away from your face,
Speaker 1: and that gets combined with our memories and our personal experiences.
Speaker 1: The language we've learned to describe these kind of feelings.
Speaker 1: And so there's this kind of conglomeration of or this
Speaker 1: kind of a mix or construction of all of these
Speaker 1: different components that create this kind of feeling that we
Speaker 1: would have that we would give a particular word too.
Speaker 1: And we know that this is the case because people
Speaker 1: can learn to experience new emotions as they have different experiences.
Speaker 1: As they're going through life, we gain a much broader
Speaker 1: kind of emotional vocabulary, so to speak, as we get older.
Speaker 1: We see this from small children to teenagers to adults
Speaker 1: in terms of the nuance and the kind of shades
Speaker 1: of gray that we learn to understand and feel and experience.
Speaker 1: And we also know, from say therapy or cognitive behavioral
Speaker 1: therapy or other types of sort of learning or training,
Speaker 1: that we can learn to respond in different ways to
Speaker 1: situations by understanding all of these different inputs. If we
Speaker 1: had a lizard brain that controlled our emotions, where would
Speaker 1: be like the lizard in Morocco, New York or Sydney.
Speaker 1: There would be no variation, And that's not the case
Speaker 1: in a human.
Speaker 2: Do you think the lizards are insulted by us constantly
Speaker 2: talking about them in this way?
Speaker 1: I don't really think that lizards. You have that many
Speaker 1: deeper thoughts. I do spend a lot of time. I've
Speaker 1: got a little lizards, very familiar with lizards. Have little
Speaker 1: lizards sort are happening in my house. There's lizards inside
Speaker 1: the house. Australia is a wild place to live. There's
Speaker 1: a lot of wildlife in an out My dog just
Speaker 1: thinks that they are all meant to live in here
Speaker 1: with him. Has it learned that they don't belong. What
Speaker 1: I really try to teach and encourage people to do
Speaker 1: is to think about the words and the phrases they
Speaker 1: use to describe neuroscience and all the brain and all
Speaker 1: their behavior, because it can be very limiting if we
Speaker 1: use certain phrases. It almost dials us in to think
Speaker 1: that that is the only option. So I don't even
Speaker 1: like using the word stress. And that's kind of I
Speaker 1: suppose related to these ideas of lizard brains. When we
Speaker 1: say the word stress, it's a useless word in the
Speaker 1: English language, because it could mean the thing that's happened
Speaker 1: out there, know, whether it be a natural disaster or
Speaker 1: something that you've seen on your phone, or it could
Speaker 1: be something that you've imagined It could be a threat,
Speaker 1: it could be a challenge, it could be an opportunity.
Speaker 1: One event could be all those three diferent things, depending
Speaker 1: on who you are. We've got various sort of physiological
Speaker 1: response systems which are deployed over different sort of time
Speaker 1: scales and response to those threats, challenges, and opportunities. We've
Speaker 1: got sort of our stress response systems, but they're not
Speaker 1: only responding when something is scary or a threat. They're
Speaker 1: also responding. You know, your heart rate rises as you
Speaker 1: stand up so you don't faint. That's controlled by your
Speaker 1: sympathetic nervous system. Some people like to call out your
Speaker 1: fight and flight system. Your heart rate isn't rising as
Speaker 1: you stand up because you were once chased by a
Speaker 1: sabertoothed tiger. It's just how your body is responding and engaging.
Speaker 1: And then we've got the feeling that we use. So
Speaker 1: we've got the threat, challenge, you, opportunity, the response systems,
Speaker 1: and then we've got this word that we would use
Speaker 1: to describe our physiological response in the context. And again
Speaker 1: we like to use the word stress. So what I
Speaker 1: try and do with all of the neuroscience education I
Speaker 1: do is to give people a very clear biological understanding
Speaker 1: what is happening, and then some more sophisticated language to
Speaker 1: describe that, and that blows open opportunities for them to
Speaker 1: act in different ways instead of focusing and all, we've
Speaker 1: got a lizard brain in this vital flight.
Speaker 2: Yep. So let's change directions just a little bit, because
Speaker 2: I'd like to get a neuroscience perspective on a couple
Speaker 2: of different things. So one of the things that this
Speaker 2: show is about, and one of the things that I
Speaker 2: help people do in various different ways, is to make
Speaker 2: changes in their lives of different types. But change is difficult.
Speaker 2: This may be me using a broad term like change,
Speaker 2: which is like using a broad term like stress that
Speaker 2: doesn't isn't helpful enough. But from a neurological perspective, is
Speaker 2: there a reason that change is so difficult for us? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I mean as a neuroscientist, bat that back and asking
Speaker 1: to define change in a little bit more of a
Speaker 1: clear way. So if I was to reframe that question
Speaker 1: and think about change, would be you're in place A
Speaker 1: and you want to get to place B. Now that
Speaker 1: might be you're wanting to learn something new, So maybe
Speaker 1: you're you know, you're fifteen years old and you're a
Speaker 1: real example. You're in high school and you're studying Shakespeare
Speaker 1: and you've got to learn some quotes, but you know
Speaker 1: an essay that you've got to write in class coming up.
Speaker 1: That's change. That's you've got to read Shakespeare, which you
Speaker 1: find a struggle and really difficult, and then you'll get
Speaker 1: to the point where you've learned those and you can
Speaker 1: understand and write about that. So that's change. Learning something
Speaker 1: new is change. Having perhaps a mood that you know,
Speaker 1: you've got low mood and you've been struggling with that
Speaker 1: for some time, and you want to have more upbeat moods.
Speaker 1: So perhaps you've been diagnosed with depression or anxiety. Perhaps
Speaker 1: you've just got the blues and you want to not
Speaker 1: be like that anymore. That's that's also changed. So we've
Speaker 1: got different types of scenarios. Or perhaps you're trying to
Speaker 1: learn a new skill, Like you know, I'm in a
Speaker 1: musical theater group. I'm very untalented at singing and dancing,
Speaker 1: but I do like knocking about in the back row
Speaker 1: with the other mums and the ensemble. We've got to
Speaker 1: learn a new dance for the show. Coming up, and
Speaker 1: it's like we first get taught it and again that's changed.
Speaker 1: I have to change something to be able to get
Speaker 1: from point A to point B. And if you are,
Speaker 1: you know, five years old or ten years old, and
Speaker 1: it's a context relevant type of learning that you're doing
Speaker 1: or change that you're trying to make, it is a
Speaker 1: whole lot easier than it is when you're fifty years old.
Speaker 1: Anything is easier to learn when you're young versus old.
Speaker 1: And one of the principles around that is based on
Speaker 1: the degree of plasticity in which your brain kind of has,
Speaker 1: or the degree to which it changes by experience. And
Speaker 1: we know that there are certain times through life, particularly
Speaker 1: during infancy, childhood, adolescence, and then interestingly, some context relevant
Speaker 1: plasticity takes place in pregnancy for women, where the brain
Speaker 1: is incredibly kind of receptive and can be shaped very
Speaker 1: very easy by the experiences it has, and in fact,
Speaker 1: it often fundamentally requires those experiences to guide its development appropriately.
Speaker 1: And we might call these sensitive periods of development. And
Speaker 1: by and large, these kind of phases of life open
Speaker 1: and then they close because you want to grow up
Speaker 1: and learn and adapt to the environment and the context
Speaker 1: in which you're in and be changed and molded and
Speaker 1: shaped for it, and then an adulthood function within that.
Speaker 1: And so what we see is that the capacity for
Speaker 1: plasticity dialing down. Some types of different brain networks that
Speaker 1: are responsible for different types of behaviors we might perform,
Speaker 1: will retain plasticity longer than others. So your hearing centers
Speaker 1: and your brain are very very plastic when you're very
Speaker 1: very young in infancy, and then they kind of close down.
Speaker 1: So it's much harder to learn languages later in life
Speaker 1: than it as earlier in life. Life, and if you're
Speaker 1: born profoundly deaf and you never hear spoken language, it's
Speaker 1: going to be very very hard for those brains you
Speaker 1: just to ever hear spoken language later in life if
Speaker 1: there's not an intervention straight away. However, we can still
Speaker 1: learn to solve a maths problem, We can still learn
Speaker 1: to play a new musical instrument, you can still learn
Speaker 1: new dance moves, and your fifties, forties, fifties, sixties, and seventies.
Speaker 1: It's just a whole lot harder than it was then.
Speaker 1: So again it's going to very much depend on what
Speaker 1: is this change that you are wanting to make and
Speaker 1: what is the process by what you're going to go
Speaker 1: through that change. If it's learning a new motor skill,
Speaker 1: if it's changing a thought process. Often those are kind
Speaker 1: of two different things, because learning something new is often
Speaker 1: easier than trying to unlearn something old, because typically, say
Speaker 1: you have this thought that you're always having, Perhaps you
Speaker 1: berating yourself for being a useless mother. I used to
Speaker 1: do that. Now I think I'm a brilliant mother. But
Speaker 1: back in the day when my boys were young, I
Speaker 1: used to think I was terrible. It was completely fine.
Speaker 1: It was just going through early toddlehood years. It was
Speaker 1: very hard to unlearn that to stop that thought process.
Speaker 1: In fact, I had to figure out what triggered that
Speaker 1: thought process. This is what we would do if we
Speaker 1: were talking about habit change. What is triggering or causing
Speaker 1: that particular thought, and what can I think or do
Speaker 1: instead when I encountered that trigger, Instead of trying to
Speaker 1: unwind a thought, I had to learn a new thought
Speaker 1: in its place. So it's very important when we're talking
Speaker 1: about change to say, am I just trying to learn
Speaker 1: something new? Do I need the skill development that someone
Speaker 1: could teach me? Am I having to learn something new
Speaker 1: but I really don't want to like learning Shakespeare quotes,
Speaker 1: And so the problem isn't the teaching and the skill development.
Speaker 1: The problem is like the kind of the motivation and
Speaker 1: the grit and the kind of emotional regulation required to
Speaker 1: form the task and the absence of wanting to or
Speaker 1: is there some particular habit or learned skill that you
Speaker 1: don't want to do anymore? So you need to kind
Speaker 1: of unpack the trigger for that and learn a new
Speaker 1: process in its place. And those are three different kind
Speaker 1: of brain networks and processes that would be involved for change.
Speaker 2: Before we dive back into the conversation, let me ask
Speaker 2: you something. What's one thing that has been holding you
Speaker 2: back lately? You know that it's there, You've tried to
Speaker 2: push past it, but somehow it keeps getting in the way.
Speaker 2: You're not alone in this, and I've identified six major
Speaker 2: saboteurs of self control, like autopilot behavior, self doubt, emotional
Speaker 2: escapism that quietly derail our best intentions. But here's the
Speaker 2: good news. You can outsmart them. And I've put together
Speaker 2: a free guide to help you spot these hidden obstacles
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Speaker 2: getting back on track. In psychology studies, there is discussions
Speaker 2: about the idea of willpower or self control, and in general,
Speaker 2: the behavior change lens on this is that you want
Speaker 2: to rely on these things as little as possible, right.
Speaker 2: You want to set up your environment, you want to
Speaker 2: get all the support that you can get, et cetera,
Speaker 2: et cetera. But neurologically, do we know where this idea
Speaker 2: of willpower or self control comes from? Which, I guess
Speaker 2: I'm just going to define it as I'm in a
Speaker 2: moment where I need to make a choice, and I've
Speaker 2: got the two wolves going right, and one wolf is
Speaker 2: the one that I've decided I want to follow, and
Speaker 2: the other is the other wolf. Do we know what's
Speaker 2: happening neurologically when somebody is sort of in a moment
Speaker 2: of wrestling with these questions and then making the right choice.
Speaker 2: Is it solely an executive function? Do we know? It?
Speaker 1: Probably depends how sophisticated yourself awareness and executive functions are,
Speaker 1: and whether you're able to kind of stand back and
Speaker 1: look at those choices from a distance and then consciously
Speaker 1: choose which one or the other to choose, or whether
Speaker 1: you know, perhaps you're very emotionally disregulated and you know
Speaker 1: you'll be driven to the right or the wrong decision.
Speaker 1: You're listening to your emotions instead of being able to
Speaker 1: thoughtfully engage in that task. What I always try to
Speaker 1: explain to people is pretty much that one of the
Speaker 1: main things that the brain does is it draws from
Speaker 1: our past experiences and predict what we should do next.
Speaker 1: So whether that be you know, the construction of emotion.
Speaker 1: Last time I was in this situation and my body
Speaker 1: was feeling this way surrounded by these people, then this
Speaker 1: is what I felt, So I feel that again. Or
Speaker 1: the last time I was in this situation, I made
Speaker 1: choice A and that felt really good, So I'm going
Speaker 1: to do choice A again. Or last time I was
Speaker 1: in this situation, I chose B and it did not work.
Speaker 1: I was very disappointed, or it was really scary, or
Speaker 1: I really didn't enjoy it, So I'm going to do
Speaker 1: A instead of B. So all your brain is doing
Speaker 1: is kind of gathering a lot of information as it
Speaker 1: goes along through life in stores that information so that
Speaker 1: when you're in that situation next you can make that
Speaker 1: decision about what to do. And a lot of the
Speaker 1: time we will be making decisions based on did that
Speaker 1: feel really good last time? Or did that not feel
Speaker 1: so great last time? And part of that learning process,
Speaker 1: the signaling process for that one component of that there's
Speaker 1: a whole lot going on, is what we would call
Speaker 1: like kind of our dopamine system. People think that dopamine
Speaker 1: is released just when something feels great, but actually it's
Speaker 1: a learning queue. It's been constantly kind of dribbled out
Speaker 1: this kind of like really sort of slow rate. And
Speaker 1: the reason the brain often sort of has these kind
Speaker 1: of baseline rates. It's not going from zero to on.
Speaker 1: It's got a baseline rate. That means it can dial
Speaker 1: up the release and it can dial down the release,
Speaker 1: so you've got far more kind of you know scope there.
Speaker 1: Dopamine to act as a teaching signal. So if something
Speaker 1: was really horrible last time you did it, dopamine dropped off.
Speaker 1: If it was really good last time, dopamine went up,
Speaker 1: and that's a teaching signal that didn't work, that did work,
Speaker 1: and so the next time you encounter that, an advance
Speaker 1: of you making the decision to act, you'll be going, oh,
Speaker 1: that felt really great. Oh it didn't feel really great,
Speaker 1: and that'll be part of the desire to do it again,
Speaker 1: or the kind of oh gosh, the feeling of not
Speaker 1: wanting to do it again. Often the problem lies therein
Speaker 1: when last time you think you didn't really enjoy it.
Speaker 1: But it's kind of the smart voice, and then you're
Speaker 1: trying to override that feeling of a version or disappointment
Speaker 1: or you know, I just I don't want to do that.
Speaker 1: But that's the thing that you've got to do, and
Speaker 1: that's really tough. And that's all around dopamine acting as
Speaker 1: a teaching signal, so a brain can predict what to
Speaker 1: do next.
Speaker 2: Well, you've got the other example also, which I think
Speaker 2: addiction is the extreme version of you know, I've heard
Speaker 2: addiction framed as a learning disorder. I'm a recovering person.
Speaker 2: When I heard that, it made a certain sense to
Speaker 2: me because in the beginning it was all good. It's
Speaker 2: obvious to me why I did it and why I
Speaker 2: kept doing it because it felt freaking great and I
Speaker 2: loved it and it made my life.
Speaker 1: That's kind of the unspoken yeah thing about it. Especially
Speaker 1: they say drugs of addiction, or it feels really good,
Speaker 1: that's why you keep doing it.
Speaker 2: But over time the adverse effects start to really add up,
Speaker 2: and it almost seems as if the brain is not
Speaker 2: getting the new learning information on a deep enough level. Right.
Speaker 2: It almost just seems like that reward learning loop somehow
Speaker 2: has just been broken. Yeah, but I think we can
Speaker 2: say this even on a much lesser level. Let's say
Speaker 2: people who have a mild issue with eating more than
Speaker 2: they want to in the evening, and when they do it,
Speaker 2: now what they end up with is shame and remorse,
Speaker 2: which seems that if reward learning was driving the whole show,
Speaker 2: your brain would be like, oh, the last three times
Speaker 2: I did that, maybe it felt good for a minute,
Speaker 2: but I just then felt terrible for an hour. And
Speaker 2: yet yeah, we continue.
Speaker 1: Particularly when we're talking about drugs of addiction, they have
Speaker 1: a psychoactive component. Part of the problem there is that
Speaker 1: acting on the exact same neural pathways and signapses as
Speaker 1: that reward learning process. So that kind of makes it
Speaker 1: twice as hard because they've interfered with that process others,
Speaker 1: you know, it's more like the act of doing them.
Speaker 1: The psychological process is acted on those pathways. So I
Speaker 1: don't know enough about addiction neuroscience to know how much
Speaker 1: we can sort of differentiate in tweak between those two.
Speaker 1: But I suppose one of the definitions, and there's many
Speaker 1: definitions of addiction, is that you are compelled to keep
Speaker 1: on doing this behavior or activity despite the negative consequences,
Speaker 1: even if you're not getting the high or the pleasure
Speaker 1: from it anymore. And that's the difference between what we
Speaker 1: would call a habit or an automated behavior and an addiction,
Speaker 1: because a habit you can always intervene, you can consciously intervene,
Speaker 1: whereas an addiction, you're often compelled even if you don't
Speaker 1: want to do it, you still appear to be compelled
Speaker 1: to do it despite the negative consequences. And that makes
Speaker 1: that very very hard. And I mean that's why we
Speaker 1: have these, you know, support programs of people with problems,
Speaker 1: because again these circumstances, change is so incredibly difficult, yep.
Speaker 2: And habit has aspects of that nature to it, though, right,
Speaker 2: I'm basically probing it an unanswered and probably unanswerable question, right,
Speaker 2: which is where does something verge from being a bad
Speaker 2: habit into an addiction? And I don't think we have
Speaker 2: to answer that, but there is something happening. Even with
Speaker 2: a bad habit, you sort of feel it, right. You
Speaker 2: might technically yes, you can intervene, but I like to
Speaker 2: think of it as like the habit energy, which is
Speaker 2: just the pushing forward. Yeah, it feels so strong.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and often. I mean if it was as I
Speaker 1: like to call them, a true habit from a neuroscience perspective,
Speaker 1: which was very, very similar to an automated behavior riding
Speaker 1: a bike, for example, as the motor process that has learned.
Speaker 1: You have to be very conscious and aware about it,
Speaker 1: engage a lot of cortical networks to learn that process,
Speaker 1: and then eventually your brain goes wrong. I know how
Speaker 1: to do that. I'm going to store that down and
Speaker 1: the striatum where I would just roll at motor program
Speaker 1: out when someone gets on a bike, you don't roll
Speaker 1: the motor program out when you're not on a bike.
Speaker 1: So there's a specific trigger or contextual situation in which
Speaker 1: that behavior is performed, and it doesn't require typically motivation.
Speaker 1: You don't really need to think about how to do it.
Speaker 1: It's a little bit like the analogy of brushing your teeth.
Speaker 1: I like to say, well, it's a light brushing your teeth,
Speaker 1: but actually it's not just going and brushing your teeth.
Speaker 1: It's that the way that you move your hand around
Speaker 1: your mouth, move the brush around your mouth. You probably
Speaker 1: do that the same every time, but you never really
Speaker 1: think about that. So again, that's a stored behavior. But
Speaker 1: you can get on a bike and go, well, I'm
Speaker 1: just going to not pet all. I'm going to stand
Speaker 1: here and not do that, so you can intervene consciously.
Speaker 1: The addiction would be not being able to stop yourself
Speaker 1: from doing that despite not wanting to. So that's how
Speaker 1: we would differentiate a habit from an addiction. Addictions that
Speaker 1: compulsion despite the negative consequence.
Speaker 2: Let's talk a little bit about some of the things
Speaker 2: in your Brain Health for Dummies book, and the things
Speaker 2: that you talk about in that book are cognitive diseases,
Speaker 2: Alzheimer's dementia being some of the most common ones. I
Speaker 2: think there's a section that's called knowing what's normal aging
Speaker 2: versus dementia. So talk to me about this because those
Speaker 2: of us like you and me, who've hit fifty, right,
Speaker 2: we have to start to wonder about this stuff a
Speaker 2: little bit like Okay, what's normal here and what's early
Speaker 2: mild cognitive impairment? And my dad died of Alzheimer's, Ginny's
Speaker 2: mom died of Alzheimer's. So we're on the lookout to
Speaker 2: a certain degree. So how do we know what is
Speaker 2: normal aging and what is a problem.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we do get to a certain point in life
Speaker 1: when you have those sort of like tip of the
Speaker 1: tongue moments, or you used to be really really quick
Speaker 1: and sharp, and I'm like that. I used to be
Speaker 1: like they really quick and sharp, and now I've got
Speaker 1: like quick, sharp teenage sons and it drives me crazy
Speaker 1: because because they think I'm kind of a bit dopey
Speaker 1: and slow, and I'm like, excuse me, I'm very well qualified.
Speaker 1: I may be your mother, but that not capable. So
Speaker 1: we do get to these points in life when these
Speaker 1: things happen, or they can happen throughout life. It just
Speaker 1: may depend what we want to attribute them to. And
Speaker 1: to use the example of teenage boys who are very
Speaker 1: sharp and quick, they I reckon at least two or
Speaker 1: three days a week now, Still they will come to
Speaker 1: me because they can't find their school tie, or they
Speaker 1: can't find their shoes or one of them left their
Speaker 1: pea bag at school. Now, if I was doing that
Speaker 1: much forgetting of my personal belongings, I would be probably
Speaker 1: at the GP asking for some kind of cognitive test.
Speaker 1: But we're not assuming that there's anything wrong with them.
Speaker 1: What's probably going on there is attention. And when we
Speaker 1: think about memory and we think about what we remember,
Speaker 1: a big part of the information that we take in
Speaker 1: and what we felt out is around attention. And that's
Speaker 1: one of our most kind of precious resources that we
Speaker 1: can kind of learn how to control that we're kind
Speaker 1: of halfway there. So sometimes when we are forgetting things,
Speaker 1: like we're leaving things in places, it's really just coming
Speaker 1: down to what are we choosing to pay attention to
Speaker 1: and what are we not. We know, through pregnancy and
Speaker 1: early motherhood, lots of women, many many women, for out
Speaker 1: of five women will say, oh, I'm really forgetful. I
Speaker 1: can't remember everything, Like my brain's not working the way
Speaker 1: it used to. And part of that is around attention
Speaker 1: and just still trying to do it all as well
Speaker 1: as trying to look after a whole new human. So again,
Speaker 1: a lot of that is around attention. But other times
Speaker 1: in life it may not be you know, just that
Speaker 1: there's a lot going on and we're trying to remember things.
Speaker 1: You may genuinely feel that there is some kind of
Speaker 1: cognitive impairment with your brain, or you might just be
Speaker 1: noticing that things are sort of starting to slow down
Speaker 1: or change. And as we go through life, we know
Speaker 1: that one thing that does change is kind of the
Speaker 1: processing speed in which we're kind of able to sort
Speaker 1: of sort through all of the information that we have
Speaker 1: with our brain and retrieve it. You know, part of
Speaker 1: that is not that the information's not there and it's inaccessible.
Speaker 1: We might just be a bit slower at retrieving it. However,
Speaker 1: at the same time we've learned, we've gained a whole
Speaker 1: lot of experience and a whole lot of wisdom, so
Speaker 1: you know, we've also got this kind of treasure trove
Speaker 1: of content and information and learning that the young swift
Speaker 1: thinkers don't necessarily have at hand. Forgetting where you left
Speaker 1: things is probably an attention issue and is pretty common
Speaker 1: and normal, But getting how to drive a car or
Speaker 1: getting lost when you're driving, that's when we need to
Speaker 1: sort of start checking things out. So then you would
Speaker 1: head off to your general practitioner or your family doctor
Speaker 1: or wherever you are in the world. I tried to
Speaker 1: write this book so everyone in the world could read it,
Speaker 1: because there's different healthcare systems in different places, so people
Speaker 1: are going to have access to different resources. Then you
Speaker 1: would go and you might say to you, I would
Speaker 1: go down to my local GP and I'd say, Ruzica,
Speaker 1: I'm forgetting things. And then she would just look at
Speaker 1: me because she's this very tall Eastern European lady and
Speaker 1: should be like, tell me a little bit more. She
Speaker 1: would be slightly skeptical knowing me. But then there's various
Speaker 1: types of cognitive testing that can be done that would
Speaker 1: act as a good screening tool to help her decide
Speaker 1: we need to send Sarah off to say a memory
Speaker 1: clinic to get this locked out in much more detail,
Speaker 1: or we can reassure Sarah that this is completely normal.
Speaker 1: And there's standard tests that are used in a lot
Speaker 1: of places in the world where say a perfect score
Speaker 1: might be thirty, and they test all different aspects of
Speaker 1: your memory and your reasoning and your being able to
Speaker 1: name objects and remember numbers. There's a lot of kind
Speaker 1: of quick type executive skills that are tested in these
Speaker 1: and say a perfect scores thirty. If you've got below
Speaker 1: sort of twenty four to twenty five, then that might
Speaker 1: be kind of cause for concern, and perhaps we'll go
Speaker 1: away and do a bit more of an investigation to
Speaker 1: see are these cognitive symptoms the sign of something to
Speaker 1: be concerned about, something neurological. If you get above that,
Speaker 1: it might just be you need to kind of look
Speaker 1: at you know, what's your sleep, like, what's your mood, like,
Speaker 1: are you're doing enough exercise, all the kind of typical
Speaker 1: health and wellbeing things, just to kind of get you
Speaker 1: back on track, because it might not be neurological. It
Speaker 1: might be just lack of well being.
Speaker 2: So if you draw a clock and it looks like
Speaker 2: a Salvador Dally picture, that's a good sign that maybe
Speaker 2: things are going wrong.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So there's lots of different kinds of tests in there,
Speaker 1: like here, copy this or remember this. You know, we'll
Speaker 1: name ten animals you know be able to kind of
Speaker 1: perform those, And I guarantee that a teenager will be
Speaker 1: able to do that quite quickly. Someone in their fifties
Speaker 1: will be doing that slow. You probably get there, but
Speaker 1: you might not be quick quick quit quick. But then
Speaker 1: as I talk about and the book, there are lots
Speaker 1: of different types of mental abilities. And if I was
Speaker 1: going to go and have brain surgery, because you know,
Speaker 1: so I had a benign tumor that I needed removed,
Speaker 1: for example, I would much rather have a fifty five
Speaker 1: year old skilled surgeon who maybe sometimes is a bit
Speaker 1: slow at remembering names versus the twenty two year old
Speaker 1: trainee who's super super super quick, because obviously there's a
Speaker 1: skilled set involved there. So there's a whole lot of
Speaker 1: different ways to think about mental capacity as we age,
Speaker 1: And there's this lovely idea whereby, you know, perhaps we
Speaker 1: do need to be kind of quick and fast, and
Speaker 1: we're building and we're kind of creating, and we're kind
Speaker 1: of as we're younger, we're needing all of the quick fire.
Speaker 1: And then as those skills kind of lessen as we
Speaker 1: get older, that's okay, because we need to be kind
Speaker 1: of still, and we need to be slow, and we
Speaker 1: need to be able to gather the information and mull
Speaker 1: over it and in part wisdom. So maybe becoming like
Speaker 1: if you're a female and matriarch, isn't about having that
Speaker 1: quick fire memory and remembering every single little item. It's
Speaker 1: about the kind of the slower imparting of wisdom in
Speaker 1: a more thoughtful way.
Speaker 2: Is there much happening in the neuroscience world that you're
Speaker 2: aware of that seems exciting On this dementia front, there's.
Speaker 1: Things that are happening and then the things that I'm
Speaker 1: excited about it. So I think that people are desperate
Speaker 1: to try and find it, like a cure if you've
Speaker 1: been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease or front of temporal dementia,
Speaker 1: one of the dementia's like, what kind of medicine can
Speaker 1: we give that person and make them better straight away?
Speaker 1: And there's lots of different people working on that problem,
Speaker 1: and it's incredibly complex because you know, I think it's
Speaker 1: pretty safe to say that Alzheimer's disease is a disease
Speaker 1: of unhealthy brain degeneration, typically seen as you're older, but
Speaker 1: it's kind of an accumulation of years, if not decades,
Speaker 1: of unhealthy brain aging, and so it's not like if
Speaker 1: you've broken a leg, where you can kind of fix it.
Speaker 1: So it's a very complicated problem in there. What I'm
Speaker 1: more interested in, which I think is more kind of
Speaker 1: population data science, I think is taking a look like
Speaker 1: a really big like kind of zooming out from the
Speaker 1: whole globe, looking at rates of dementia around the world
Speaker 1: and looking at different kind of cohorts of ages of
Speaker 1: people going through because we've got a lot of throwaway
Speaker 1: statistics about dementia, like two out of three cases of
Speaker 1: dementia women. Why is it women? Is it something to
Speaker 1: your female biology. Let's look at menopause and that must
Speaker 1: be the answer. Give woman an HRT. You have solved
Speaker 1: Alzheimer's disease. No one's kind of going back to that
Speaker 1: original statistic and trying to interpret and understand that. And
Speaker 1: it's interesting if you look at the difference between prevalence,
Speaker 1: which is the number of people with a diagnosed disorder
Speaker 1: at any kind of moment in time, versus incidents, which
Speaker 1: is kind of always the rate in which you're adding
Speaker 1: new cases in. We've also got it's like a pool
Speaker 1: of water, You've got incidence as the inflow, but you've
Speaker 1: also got people dying as they're flowing out the bottom.
Speaker 1: And if we look at healthy, wealthy countries around the world,
Speaker 1: sometimes the US is included and that sometimes it's not Australia.
Speaker 1: And you know, so the Nordic countries and some European countries.
Speaker 1: That's to say, to be more safe, we're actually seeing
Speaker 1: the incidence of Alzheimer's disease and other dimesias declining slightly.
Speaker 1: We're seeing more prevalence because that's as less outflow because
Speaker 1: people are living longer, but actually the inflow is slowing
Speaker 1: a bit, so we're starting to see that incidents coming down,
Speaker 1: and that gives us some clues to the cause. And
Speaker 1: we know partly the incidence is coming down because we're
Speaker 1: getting much better at treating some of the diseases that
Speaker 1: predispose people to Alzheimer's, like art disease and metabolic disorders, diabetes, etc.
Speaker 1: So that's slowing the incidents down in the healthy, wealthy countries,
Speaker 1: but we're not seeing that in parts of the world
Speaker 1: that are less wealthy and more unhealthy with as much
Speaker 1: lower socioeconomic support, where people are poorer but want of
Speaker 1: a better language. So that's interesting because I think if
Speaker 1: we take that perspective, it gives us clues into where
Speaker 1: we could be intervening as well. The two out of
Speaker 1: three cases of dementia. We need to have a look
Speaker 1: at Alzheimer's disease and again prevalence versus incidents, and what
Speaker 1: we see in terms of Alzheimer's disease that males and
Speaker 1: females when we're looking at women in their sort of
Speaker 1: sixty seventies and eighties, we're looking at people in their sixties,
Speaker 1: seventies and eighties. There's more females in there because they're
Speaker 1: living longer. But are the incidence rates the kind of
Speaker 1: the rates of inflow the same. It would be very
Speaker 1: easy to think, oh, it's the rate of inflow of
Speaker 1: females as much greater, but actually you don't see a
Speaker 1: greater rate of inflow until you're looking at people in
Speaker 1: their nineties. The men just kind of die off soon
Speaker 1: as that they're coming out of the pool. So the
Speaker 1: overall prevalence is higher. And so we've got to start
Speaker 1: to be a little bit more sophisticated with thinking about
Speaker 1: the stats instead of assuming the statistic that you heard
Speaker 1: is correct and then trying to look at the causes
Speaker 1: from there. I'm interested in taking this bigger picture perspective
Speaker 1: because we must do that, or else we will jump
Speaker 1: to trying to solve a problem that may not necessarily
Speaker 1: be the right problem to solve. Midlife The greatest risk factor,
Speaker 1: which no one talks about because it's very unsexy and
Speaker 1: it doesn't make for good social media content, is hearing loss.
Speaker 1: It's an untreated hearing loss and then later in life
Speaker 1: untreated vision loss, and no one wants to talk about
Speaker 1: them because they're very, very boring and very unsexy. But
Speaker 1: what is that meaning If you can't hear and you
Speaker 1: can't see, your brain is not like interacting with the world.
Speaker 1: It's not receiving input from the world. It's almost shutting
Speaker 1: off one of the signals coming up from your body.
Speaker 1: It's completely shutting off those senses to the world. And
Speaker 1: that's how we kind of a meaning of the world
Speaker 1: and navigate our way around and use our brain for
Speaker 1: what it evolved to do. So there's lots of kind
Speaker 1: of points in which we can intervene, and I think
Speaker 1: unless we take this big picture perspective that's what I'm
Speaker 1: interested in, we're going to be intervening in the wrong places.
Speaker 2: That makes a lot of sense. I mean, honestly, a
Speaker 2: lot of the things that you do to be more
Speaker 2: preventative of Alzheimer's all fall into the not very sexy category.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's the basic stuff like eat better, exercise,
Speaker 2: get better, sleeping.
Speaker 1: Yeah, all of those things. Yeah, most health and wellbeing
Speaker 1: advice is boring. I like to call them the tech bros.
Speaker 1: I call them ice bath boys. They like to dial
Speaker 1: it on that top one percent and like tweet that
Speaker 1: because they think that's going to matter. But the vast
Speaker 1: majority of the population isn't doing the ninety nine percent,
Speaker 1: so the top one percent isn't going to make any difference.
Speaker 1: They just popularize it. Yes, you know, we need to
Speaker 1: get all of those basics right, and some of those
Speaker 1: basics are beyond the control of an individual. Air pollution,
Speaker 1: education and childhood, you know, a lot of those. Or
Speaker 1: head injury. I mean, you can like try and prevent
Speaker 1: getting a concussion, but like you might just get knocked
Speaker 1: over by your dog and hit your head. You know.
Speaker 1: You know, we've got lots of contributing factors that are
Speaker 1: risk factors, individual risk factors, but the individual can't necessarily
Speaker 1: do things about And then that overall metabolic health, heart health,
Speaker 1: metabolic health that we talk about, which is the diet
Speaker 1: and the exercise and keeping you know, your blood pressure
Speaker 1: under control and your cholesterol down and all of the
Speaker 1: boring things most people aren't doing, and a lot of
Speaker 1: people just don't have the education, or the capacity or
Speaker 1: the kind of resources to be able to manage that well.
Speaker 1: And particularly in parts of the world, you know, the
Speaker 1: low and middle income countries, is even harder to do that,
Speaker 1: and that's where we're seeing the cases of dementia rising.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I do think you make a really
Speaker 2: good point in the book, and you just met it there,
Speaker 2: which is that there's a bunch of risk factors. There
Speaker 2: are some that are modifiable, and then even within the
Speaker 2: modifiable ones, right, there are some that are going to
Speaker 2: be easier given your geographic, socioeconomic type status.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this enormous kind of social factor embedded in it
Speaker 1: that people don't realize. I live in the Northern Beaches
Speaker 1: of Sydney, one of the healthiest, wealthiest, kind of you know,
Speaker 1: places to live in Australia, if not the planet, and
Speaker 1: it's very easy to be healthy when you are resourced
Speaker 1: and when everyone around you as fit and healthy. If
Speaker 1: I lived in a completely different part of the world,
Speaker 1: I'd be surrounded by a completely different social and resource environment,
Speaker 1: which would make it that much harder and perhaps wouldn't
Speaker 1: occur to me because everyone I know wouldn't be behaving
Speaker 1: in a certain way. So I think we need to
Speaker 1: be very, very careful. And I know that there's a
Speaker 1: bit of a shift without trying to police language. Not
Speaker 1: about that, but if we're talking about lifestyle choices, there's
Speaker 1: a bit of shame in there. And it's not always
Speaker 1: taking into account why people make a lifestyle choice. It
Speaker 1: may not just because they lack willpower. It's usually very,
Speaker 1: very complicated.
Speaker 2: Before we wrap up, I want you to think about this.
Speaker 2: Have you ever ended the day feeling like your choices
Speaker 2: didn't quite match the person you wanted to be. Maybe
Speaker 2: it was autopilot mode or self doubt that made it
Speaker 2: harder to stick to your goals. And that's exactly why
Speaker 2: I created The Six Saboteurs of Self Control. It's a
Speaker 2: free guide to help you recognize the hidden patterns that
Speaker 2: hold you back and give you simple, effective strategies to
Speaker 2: break through them. If you're ready to take back control
Speaker 2: and start making lasting changes, download your copy now at
Speaker 2: oneufeed dot net slash ebook. Let's make those shifts happen
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Speaker 2: and behavior can be so very challenging because there are
Speaker 2: so many different factors. What are a couple of other
Speaker 2: things besides the things we just talked about around diet, exercise, sleep,
Speaker 2: that are risk factors that are modifiable. Let me even
Speaker 2: broaden it out a little bit, because I think that
Speaker 2: what we're talking about is a healthy brain here at
Speaker 2: any age, right, And so we may choose to engage
Speaker 2: with these things more because we're like, oh, I don't
Speaker 2: want to get Alzheimer's. We may just choose to engage
Speaker 2: with them because we just want to have a healthier
Speaker 2: brain overall. What are a couple other strategies people could
Speaker 2: kind of walk out of here that they should be
Speaker 2: thinking about if they want a healthier brain.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think if I had to kind of choose
Speaker 1: a couple, and I would like to try and choose
Speaker 1: those which are most important. One would be sleep. Lots
Speaker 1: of people have problems with getting a good night's sleep,
Speaker 1: and there's lots of resources out there now to teach
Speaker 1: us about sleep high gene and how to kind of
Speaker 1: manage sleep. And again that's kind of a bit boring,
Speaker 1: but it's super important because that's sort of the foundation
Speaker 1: on which everything else can be built. If you miss
Speaker 1: one night's sleep, you feel not great weeks months, and
Speaker 1: it increases mortality, and it increases poor brain health. And
Speaker 1: then lots of those kind of first signs and symptoms
Speaker 1: people might start to query about as my brain working
Speaker 1: may be around an adequate sleep, or you're sleeping but
Speaker 1: it's not good deep healthy sleep. So if you can
Speaker 1: do all of the things to get your sleep sorted,
Speaker 1: that would be great. But again we don't need to
Speaker 1: belabor that point. The thing that I think perhaps always
Speaker 1: always shows up in all of the research search I
Speaker 1: do and the teaching I do, is around It's another Yes,
Speaker 1: it's that social you know, the sort of the social
Speaker 1: relationships and people that we have around us, and they
Speaker 1: can be the source of the greatest kind of you know,
Speaker 1: neurological architecture and support that we need for a healthy brain.
Speaker 1: But they can also perhaps be one of the greatest
Speaker 1: sources of stream. Yeah, And I think if we look
Speaker 1: at the phases of life we go through when there's
Speaker 1: probably these inflection points whereby our brains are most vulnerable
Speaker 1: stay to develop mental health problems or later in life
Speaker 1: neurological you know, problems or diseases of unhealthy brain aging.
Speaker 1: So we look at puberty and adolescents. Young people look
Speaker 1: a bit more vulnerable to mental health disorders. But a
Speaker 1: large component of that is the social brain is going
Speaker 1: through this massive phase of reorganization from you know, the
Speaker 1: focus towards family, towards friends, and the greatest vulnerabilities. There
Speaker 1: are kids who are lonely or socially isolated, or perhaps
Speaker 1: have been bullied or picked on. It's the social component
Speaker 1: there that the greatest risk or the greatest kind of benefit.
Speaker 1: We see that all throughout life that the social architecture
Speaker 1: that we have around us is one of the strongest,
Speaker 1: and in some studies it comes up almost top is
Speaker 1: the strongest kind of protection for good health. The biggest
Speaker 1: brain reorganization that we're seeing taking places in the social
Speaker 1: networks of the brain. Because you know, we're tribe animals.
Speaker 1: It's fundamental to a health and well being to have good, strong,
Speaker 1: healthy social connections. You know, like go out and make
Speaker 1: lots of friends. Sounds like a little bit of a
Speaker 1: trite piece of advice, but you might think about this.
Speaker 1: I actively chose to do this after I wrote my
Speaker 1: first book, because I spent like a year sitting down
Speaker 1: in my office alone with my dog writing and I
Speaker 1: got to the end of the year and I had
Speaker 1: this book that I felt terrible because I've been doing
Speaker 1: all of the opposite things that I should be doing
Speaker 1: to feel healthy. So I needed to get up out
Speaker 1: in the world, move, connect, communicate, interact with other people.
Speaker 1: Then you're kind of using your brain for what it
Speaker 1: evolved to do. Didn't evolve to sort of sit in
Speaker 1: a little room all alone staring at a screen. It
Speaker 1: evolved to be moving and navigating around the world with
Speaker 1: other people by your side.
Speaker 2: Excellent. Well, I think that is a great place for
Speaker 2: us to wrap up. Sarah. Thank you so much for
Speaker 2: joining me on the show. It's been a real pleasure
Speaker 2: to talk with you.
Speaker 1: You're very welcome.
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