Speaker 1: I won't let my body out me outwait everything that
Speaker 1: I'm made, don't won't spend my life trying to change.
Speaker 2: I'm learning love who I am, A young strong I
Speaker 2: feel free. I know every part of me. It's beautiful.
Speaker 1: And that will always out way if.
Speaker 3: You feel it.
Speaker 2: But she'll some love to the vio. Why have there
Speaker 2: take you one day? Anita? Did you and die out way?
Speaker 1: Well? Happy Saturday, Outweigh. I'm so excited to be here
Speaker 1: for a brand new series. It is our Outweigh neuro series,
Speaker 1: and I'm joined by doctor Lee Warren.
Speaker 2: Hello, doctor Warren. Hey, so good to have you here.
Speaker 1: And this is a fun series for us to do
Speaker 1: because this is kind of a crossover. So over on
Speaker 1: my What's God Got to Do with It? Podcast, Doctor
Speaker 1: Warren was on there for two episodes. We'll link them
Speaker 1: in the show notes where we talked about the concept
Speaker 1: of neuro neuro faith and so on. This series, this
Speaker 1: is the neuro series because we're gonna really be getting
Speaker 1: 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 some.
Speaker 2: Sort of out of controlledness that you feel.
Speaker 1: There's something that you don't feel like you have agency
Speaker 1: over 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.
Speaker 2: But now we get to talk to a neurosurgeon himself.
Speaker 1: He's gonna walk us through it, and there's so much
Speaker 1: connection and crossover to what we already talk about and
Speaker 1: his ways of thinking, ways of being. So I'm just
Speaker 1: excited for us to dive on in. And this week
Speaker 1: we're going to be going through the concept of neuro thoughts,
Speaker 1: and you're thinking next week we're going to get into
Speaker 1: the neuro feelings side of things. So if you feel
Speaker 1: like your feelings are driving the show or you feel
Speaker 1: out of control of your feelings. You're going to understand
Speaker 1: a 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.
Speaker 2: 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 3: Us absolutely, You know, we used to think like you
Speaker 3: just alluded to. Up until about two thousand and four,
Speaker 3: most neuroscientists thought that you were born with all the
Speaker 3: brain cells you were ever going to have, and you
Speaker 3: were pretty it was pretty fixed, and you just to
Speaker 3: better learn how to take care of it. And that
Speaker 3: was kind of a hopeless idea like your brain is
Speaker 3: what it is and your genetics determine it and all
Speaker 3: that stuff, and we know now without any doubt. So
Speaker 3: from the neuropathology side neuroimaging, there's no doubt it's absolutely
Speaker 3: true that your brain makes new nerve cells or neurons
Speaker 3: every day. That's called neurogenesis, and your brain connects those
Speaker 3: new cells into networks of old cells and pathways all
Speaker 3: the time, like while we're speaking, we're making new synapsis.
Speaker 3: That's called neuroplasticity. The stunning thing is that we have
Speaker 3: some control over that. So the functional imaging of the
Speaker 3: ability to look at the actual brain as it's happening,
Speaker 3: the thoughts that you're thinking, the blood flow, changes in
Speaker 3: the brain, neurotransmitter levels, and all that stuff has allowed
Speaker 3: us to basically connect the ideas that, yeah, we know
Speaker 3: that new nerve cells are being born every day, we
Speaker 3: know they're wiring in and all that to the fact
Speaker 3: that it's dynamic and it's somewhat under your own control,
Speaker 3: and that's where the power comes in. So we now
Speaker 3: know that the things you think about turn out to
Speaker 3: be able to make structural changes in your brain to
Speaker 3: create new synapses, new connections between cells and networks in
Speaker 3: your brain, and to eliminate old ones that aren't helping
Speaker 3: you anymore. So, if you want to think about it
Speaker 3: like I do in surgery, if I take a pair
Speaker 3: of scissors and cut a neuron or a connection between
Speaker 3: a neuron, I'm severing a connection between two areas of
Speaker 3: the brain that aren't helpful to one another. Like if
Speaker 3: I want to interrupt seizure activity, I can eliminate sezer
Speaker 3: activity by disconnecting networks of cells that shouldn't be talking
Speaker 3: to each other. And you can do the same thing
Speaker 3: with your thinking, 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.
Speaker 2: It's just part of their way of thinking or way
Speaker 2: of being.
Speaker 1: Can you just kind of speak into that, because I
Speaker 1: think there's some people that have kind of resigned to
Speaker 1: it and think that this is how their brain will
Speaker 1: always be.
Speaker 3: That's right. And you know, on my show we talk
Speaker 3: about the ten commandments of self brains are one of
Speaker 3: them is to understand that not all of your thoughts
Speaker 3: are true. Yeah, the fact is, your brain generates a
Speaker 3: lot of thoughts that pop into your mind that are
Speaker 3: presented to you in a familiar voice, because your inner
Speaker 3: voice sounds like you, and so that means that automatically
Speaker 3: has a lot of credibility. But there's a lot of
Speaker 3: thoughts that pop into your head that simply aren't true.
Speaker 3: They're generated based on accessing memories and emotions and feelings
Speaker 3: and current events and kind of jumbling them up, and
Speaker 3: they present to you as if, oh, I just can't
Speaker 3: ever be different than this, or I tried this before
Speaker 3: and it didn't work, or I'm such a loser, or
Speaker 3: whatever those thoughts pop into your head. The problem is
Speaker 3: if we don't recognize that automatic thoughts are often negative
Speaker 3: and often untrue, then we think we're hearing from a
Speaker 3: credible voice inside our head that we're obligated to believe
Speaker 3: and take action on. And so the most important thing
Speaker 3: for the listener today, if you're stuck with that kind
Speaker 3: of negative thinking loop, is to learn to say, hey,
Speaker 3: wait a minute, I know from science that most of
Speaker 3: the thoughts that pop into my head are not true,
Speaker 3: and I am not obligated to act on them. So
Speaker 3: the first thing is then to develop a toolkit, a
Speaker 3: set of procedures, if you will, to think about your
Speaker 3: thinking and decide only to take action on those thoughts
Speaker 3: 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 3: Yeah. So, since I'm a surgeon and I like to
Speaker 3: think about things like procedures, that the metaphor just works
Speaker 3: for me. So if you come into my office and
Speaker 3: you say I've got headaches, and I do a scan
Speaker 3: and there's a spot on your brain and I think
Speaker 3: it might be causing your headaches, I don't know what
Speaker 3: that spot is until I buy ope it, or until
Speaker 3: it take you to surgery and put a needle in
Speaker 3: that thing and look at it under the microscope and
Speaker 3: get with the pathologist and we identify what that tissue is.
Speaker 3: So I can think it's a tumor, or I can
Speaker 3: think it's an infection, or I can think it's something else.
Speaker 3: But until I BUYAP see it, I don't know what
Speaker 3: it is. And so as a surgeon, it's called malpractice
Speaker 3: if I take action on something that I think without
Speaker 3: knowing first. So if I if I took you to
Speaker 3: surgery or sent you down to radiation and zapped your
Speaker 3: brain with a whole bunch of gamma rays because I
Speaker 3: thought you had a tumor, but it was not true.
Speaker 3: You actually didn't have a tumor. And once I buyop
Speaker 3: see that, I found out you just had a little
Speaker 3: piece of scar tissue in your brain that you didn't
Speaker 3: need to have radiation. That would have been malpractice. Right,
Speaker 3: So taking action on a thought that you haven't properly
Speaker 3: evaluated is committing the act of self malpractice. You're harming
Speaker 3: yourself because you don't know for sure that what you're
Speaker 3: doing is in response to a thought that was valid.
Speaker 3: So I teach people this idea of buyap seeing your thought,
Speaker 3: like literally think. Wait a minute, that thought that popped
Speaker 3: into my head sounds kind of damaging to me, like, hey,
Speaker 3: you're such a loser. You'll never be better than this,
Speaker 3: You'll never be able to overcome this habit. Maybe that's
Speaker 3: not true. Let me look and see if there's some
Speaker 3: evidence that that is or is not true. And if
Speaker 3: it isn't true, then I can just eliminate it, like
Speaker 3: I don't have to think about that thought because it's
Speaker 3: not true. It's malpractice to follow that trail of thought.
Speaker 3: And if it is true in some way, then my
Speaker 3: next thought shouldn't be yeah, I really am such a loser.
Speaker 3: I should just give up. My next thought should be
Speaker 3: what can I do to change that? What can I
Speaker 3: do to intervene in that to try to make the
Speaker 3: 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.
Speaker 2: It's just like a data.
Speaker 1: Driven term where it's it basically is saying, Okay, this
Speaker 1: is what I'm doing when I'm not thinking about my thinking.
Speaker 1: We're not shaming ourselves because I think that's a lot
Speaker 1: of the spiral that people that are listening to this
Speaker 1: go into is that shame spiral, but it denotes just
Speaker 1: really taking radical agency of this.
Speaker 2: Now on that note, when.
Speaker 1: It becomes obsessive, right, because there's a lot of obsession
Speaker 1: that comes around thinking about what you're eating, think about
Speaker 1: what you're not eating.
Speaker 2: Are they judging my body? Are they not judging my body?
Speaker 2: Am I judging my body?
Speaker 3: Is it me?
Speaker 2: 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 3: There's a world famous neurosurge named Peter Jannetta that was
Speaker 3: one of my professors who trained me, and he invented
Speaker 3: a lot of the procedures that we still use. And
Speaker 3: he was so famous that Maya Angelo spoke at his
Speaker 3: birthday party one year like that. He was a big
Speaker 3: name guy, but he was funny because he would teach
Speaker 3: us these brain surgeries that were these elaborate, complex operations
Speaker 3: took all day to perform, and he would allow the
Speaker 3: more senior residence to start the procedure before he came
Speaker 3: in the room, and he would, invariably Doctor Janetta would
Speaker 3: come in and he would watch me operate for a minute,
Speaker 3: and he would watch all the things I was doing,
Speaker 3: and he would say, hey, you're making an operation out
Speaker 3: of this. And it was kind of a joke because
Speaker 3: it was an operation, But what doctor Jenette was saying was,
Speaker 3: you're overly complicating this situationally, you're making it harder than
Speaker 3: it has to be. The good surgeon, a good doctor,
Speaker 3: learns how to do the mission in the most efficient
Speaker 3: and effective and best way that is possible to do it.
Speaker 3: So when we talk about thinking about your thinking, one
Speaker 3: way that you can make an operation out of it
Speaker 3: is to overthink and get into a loop of thinking,
Speaker 3: Am I thinking about my thinking too much? Am I
Speaker 3: shaming myself too much? Am I blaming myself too much?
Speaker 3: Maybe I'll never be able to stop thinking about this.
Speaker 3: And you get into this loop of right of overfixating
Speaker 3: on the process, then of thinking about your thinking, and
Speaker 3: you're making an operation out of it. So the way
Speaker 3: to stop that is to say, hey, I need to
Speaker 3: identify whether a thought is helpful or not. And once
Speaker 3: I do that, then the next step is I'm going
Speaker 3: to shift into I'm gonna stop contemplating and start operating,
Speaker 3: and we'll start doing something to make that next thought better,
Speaker 3: to make the outcome better, to have a better, hope,
Speaker 3: more hopeful place to land. So you shift really quickly
Speaker 3: from that biopsy stage to your taking action to do
Speaker 3: something to try to make the process better, and that
Speaker 3: that becomes automated and easier over time. But that's how
Speaker 3: you stop making an operation out of it all the time.
Speaker 2: I mean, I'm thinking of a scalpel now.
Speaker 1: And it's 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.
Speaker 2: This is so good. And guys, if you're listening to
Speaker 2: this and you love.
Speaker 1: What you're hearing, first of all, we have the rest
Speaker 1: of this series coming up, but you've got to check
Speaker 1: out doctor Warren's podcast. He's got two different podcasts, He's
Speaker 1: got a gaggle of books. So before we end this episode,
Speaker 1: where can people find you? Can you share a little
Speaker 1: bit about your podcast.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so the Doctor Lee Warren podcast, that's the main podcast,
Speaker 3: and we talk about this kind of stuff all the time,
Speaker 3: as you know, Lee and you've been on the show.
Speaker 3: So we talk about neuroscience and faith and big things
Speaker 3: like that and how we smash them together to try
Speaker 3: to find a way to become healthier, feel better, and
Speaker 3: be happy in our lives. And then the second one
Speaker 3: is a little bit more sort of Bible focused. We
Speaker 3: call it spiritual brain surgery. It's kind of looking at
Speaker 3: what we believe, why we believe it, how faith and
Speaker 3: science can help us defend it, live it and share
Speaker 3: it with other people. And they're everywhere. Podcasts are available,
Speaker 3: And then I got a bunch of books. You can
Speaker 3: check out my website Doctor Lee Warren dot com WWNMD
Speaker 3: dot com. And I write a newsletter and do all
Speaker 3: that stuff. So easy to find and I hope people
Speaker 3: will connect. We love to meet new people.
Speaker 1: So thanks amazing, Yeah, your Sunday newsletter. I will look
Speaker 1: forward to it in my inbox every weekend. So thanks
Speaker 1: for being here. We are going to link all of
Speaker 1: that in the show notes and we will be back
Speaker 1: next Saturday for neuro Feelings. And so if you have
Speaker 1: ever wondered you know what's going on when I go
Speaker 1: to reach for food to fill a void of sadness
Speaker 1: or loneliness or comfort or stress or sorrow or whatever,
Speaker 1: or happiness even but why you're feeling the way that
Speaker 1: you're feeling, what's the cause and effect relationship, really connecting
Speaker 1: the dots from what we talked about with your thoughts,
Speaker 1: then stay tuned because we're going to be talking about
Speaker 1: that next week. So this is Lean and doctor Warren
Speaker 1: signing out for this week and outwigh and we'll be
Speaker 1: back next week.
Speaker 2: Bye,