Speaker 1: Now here's a highlight from Coast to Coast AM on iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: And welcome back to George Norry along with doctor Kristen Willemeyer.
Speaker 2: Her book is called Biohack Your Brain came out about
Speaker 2: four years ago. I remember when you were on the
Speaker 2: program talking about that book, Kristin four years ago. It
Speaker 2: just wood by like that, huh.
Speaker 3: I know, thank you so much for having me on
Speaker 3: the show. By the way, it was so grateful.
Speaker 2: We were talking about the neurobiology and some of the
Speaker 2: aspects of it. I'll let you finish that up before
Speaker 2: we move on.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm trying to remember where we are before we
Speaker 3: were going to commercial break a. Really neurobiology is just
Speaker 3: studying the brain again at the level of this single
Speaker 3: cell and understanding how cells communicate with one another, whether
Speaker 3: electrically or through the synaptic passical recycling process. And the
Speaker 3: work that I was doing was really understanding in individuals
Speaker 3: who mutations in a gene that leads to the young
Speaker 3: onset former Parkinson's disease called park two, what kind of
Speaker 3: disregulated signaling was going on at the level of the
Speaker 3: single cell. And when we understand that kind of work,
Speaker 3: we understand why those populations of neurons are most vulnerable
Speaker 3: in Parkinson's disease, which tend to be the dopaminergic neurons.
Speaker 3: So I would work in dopaminergic cell cultures as well
Speaker 3: as type Campbell cell cultures to really understand again those
Speaker 3: mechanisms of why did the short happen?
Speaker 2: What are some of the detrimental practices things that people
Speaker 2: do that are not good for the brain.
Speaker 3: Oh, such a great question. I mean, we were talking
Speaker 3: about dietary practices and making sure that you know, people
Speaker 3: are following healthy dietary practices to help slow down in
Speaker 3: reverse cognitive aging, which is why I was talking about
Speaker 3: the Mediterranean diet and the Dash diet. But one of
Speaker 3: the most dectumental practices that most people do is number one,
Speaker 3: eating too many processed foods. So we want to make
Speaker 3: sure that we get rid of excess processed foods. You
Speaker 3: want to again have the living foods, whole foods, plant based.
Speaker 3: People tend to consume too much sugar, and we know
Speaker 3: sugar is inflammatory, and the American Heart Association recommends that
Speaker 3: women have no more than twenty five grams a day
Speaker 3: of sugar and men have no more than thirty six
Speaker 3: grams a day of sugar. That's excess sugar. So when
Speaker 3: I was running a brain directed weight loss group, I
Speaker 3: would have people track how much sugar they would have
Speaker 3: in a day and just guess what this sort of
Speaker 3: average amount of sugar people consume in a day is.
Speaker 2: I have had two sisters. One passed away. She had
Speaker 2: a brain tumor.
Speaker 3: Oh my god.
Speaker 2: We're trying to figure out what happened, what she did wrong,
Speaker 2: And the only thing we could decide Kristen was she
Speaker 2: was on her phone all the time. And this was
Speaker 2: before the year or where people texted.
Speaker 3: She was.
Speaker 2: She had that thing up to her head on the
Speaker 2: side that the tumor. Yeah, is it conceivable that had
Speaker 2: something to do with it?
Speaker 3: You know, I will share with you. You know, one
Speaker 3: of my dear friends and colleagues is a neurosurgeon, and
Speaker 3: he and I talked about this, that the cell phones
Speaker 3: mirror that the head or you know, sometimes people will
Speaker 3: put them in their pockets or when women are working out,
Speaker 3: they'll put it. You know, could stuff it in there?
Speaker 3: Do you want to call it? Like there that near
Speaker 3: the glass issue?
Speaker 2: And you can get away with saying that.
Speaker 3: I know, I found that, you know, some people do
Speaker 3: have a higher incidence of tu of our growth where
Speaker 3: the cell phones are, so that is definitely a plausible mechanism.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we always suspected something like that because she was
Speaker 2: you know, she would talk to her daughters endlessly. She
Speaker 2: was just always on her cell phone always.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Oh my gosh, I'm so sorry to hear about that.
Speaker 3: By the way, So we were talking about the detrimental
Speaker 3: practices that you know, people tend to do that can
Speaker 3: impact healthy brain function. So you know, you were just
Speaker 3: talking about the cell phone and having it too close
Speaker 3: to the ear, keeping it on your body. People can
Speaker 3: also eliminate artificial dyes and preservatives from their diet. No
Speaker 3: alcohol unless you're healthy, right, So a lot of people,
Speaker 3: you know, consume a glass of alcohol per day, and
Speaker 3: you know, we always say alcohol is not a brain food.
Speaker 3: That can be neurotoxic to the brain actually if you
Speaker 3: drink it sort of over the course of time, so
Speaker 3: that's that's toxic and can actually shrink brain volume. Be
Speaker 3: careful of eating proplastic containers that have by senol a
Speaker 3: because that can be toxic. And even you know, too
Speaker 3: much television or social media, you know, try to limit
Speaker 3: that to know more than two hours a day if possible.
Speaker 2: Stick to radio right, stick to.
Speaker 3: Radio stiak to listening to your show'ry.
Speaker 2: In your book, you've talked about how to change your
Speaker 2: brain in ten minutes. What are some of the techniques there?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I have a section called ten ways to biohack
Speaker 3: your brain in ten minutes. Thank you for bringing that up.
Speaker 3: So these are ten simple practices that you can do
Speaker 3: every day, and they entailed. The first one is have
Speaker 3: blueberries per day every day. So we've talked about the
Speaker 3: brain imaging research shows that blueberries and green leafy vegetables
Speaker 3: are really the best for preserving your long term brain health.
Speaker 3: Second thing is just go and get a brisk walk
Speaker 3: in each day. You know, even if it's ten minutes
Speaker 3: a day, right, getting a brisk walk in can boost
Speaker 3: the blood flow to the brain to three. You want
Speaker 3: to practice gratitude, so we talk about gratitude helping improve
Speaker 3: the positive brain networks, right, helping to improve optimism. So
Speaker 3: just having that daily practice of gratitude. Another thing I
Speaker 3: put in there is the use of aromatherapy to help
Speaker 3: reduce stress. So if you think about inhaling a really
Speaker 3: good sense like lavender or citrus. You know, we have
Speaker 3: all of these ordorant receptors in our nose that are
Speaker 3: direct pathway to the brain, so we can use a
Speaker 3: sense of smell and these really sort of calling sense
Speaker 3: to help home the brain down. We also have visualize
Speaker 3: your day, so I tell people to take ten minutes
Speaker 3: a day and visualize your perfect day. So if you
Speaker 3: think about professional athletes get up in the morning and
Speaker 3: they visualize, say if you're a basketball player, you can
Speaker 3: be visualizing your perfect free throw. So use that power
Speaker 3: of visualization to really set the tone for the day.
Speaker 3: Another thing that you can do is I say take
Speaker 3: ten minutes and create what I call white space, to
Speaker 3: take ten minutes in your day to just sit quietly
Speaker 3: to be calm. You can use that time to meditate.
Speaker 3: That can really be helpful and sort of creating a
Speaker 3: nice useful way to start your day. I also have
Speaker 3: learning new word each day, so as you build your vocabulary,
Speaker 3: that helps improve your communication skills. And one very easy
Speaker 3: way to do that is you can go to the
Speaker 3: Mirriam Webster app and have a new word of the
Speaker 3: day sent to you. So it's a very quick way
Speaker 3: to build your vocabulary. And another thing that I recommend
Speaker 3: is practice doing something with your non dominant hands. So
Speaker 3: I tell people to try to practice writing with your
Speaker 3: non dominant hands. That helps stimulate neuroplasticity and the brain
Speaker 3: or the ability to form new neural connections. And last,
Speaker 3: but not least, is sitting up straight. So think about
Speaker 3: your posture right, having good costure when you're sitting at
Speaker 3: your desk, or George, when you're sitting right now in
Speaker 3: front of your microphone, are you sitting up straight with
Speaker 3: your shoulders back right, your head up. That can actually
Speaker 3: help help your blood flow to the brain. So again,
Speaker 3: ten very simple practices that you can do each day.
Speaker 3: Oh last one is you can also have a pew
Speaker 3: the dark chocolate, So dark chocolate contains flavonols. The flavonols
Speaker 3: help to open up the blood vessels in the brain.
Speaker 3: And having again more open, relaxed blood vessels improves blood
Speaker 3: flow with the brain. And that is one of the
Speaker 3: number one things you can do to really help keep
Speaker 3: your brain healthy, is to keep that blood flowing.
Speaker 2: My aunt used to tell us about that, and I
Speaker 2: never got who could understand it? What is it about
Speaker 2: chocolate that makes it good? For the brain.
Speaker 3: The chocolate has the flavonols, and the flavonols actually work
Speaker 3: to help keep the blood vessels open. So the flavon
Speaker 3: els not only protect your neurons, but it also has
Speaker 3: an effect to keep the blood vessels open, so that
Speaker 3: more open your blood vessels are, the more blood flow
Speaker 3: you'll have to the brain.
Speaker 2: Give us some important facts on the brain that you
Speaker 2: found fun and interesting.
Speaker 3: Oh, the important facts of the brain. Well, it's three pounds, right,
Speaker 3: So you've got this three pound organ, but it consumes
Speaker 3: twenty percent of your brain's oxygen. So it's a highly metabolic,
Speaker 3: metabolically active tissue. So you want to make sure you
Speaker 3: have a lot of antioxidants to protect those beautiful neurons.
Speaker 3: Each neuron can make up to ten thousand connections, so
Speaker 3: it's extraordinarily complex when you think that your brain has
Speaker 3: eighty six billion neurons and it makes brillions of connections.
Speaker 3: And you know, when I teach this to young kids
Speaker 3: trying to get them excited about the brain, they say
Speaker 3: that the number of connections on the brain is sort
Speaker 3: of less than half in the stars in the Milky
Speaker 3: Way galaxy. So it's just fascinating it's beautifully complex organ
Speaker 3: that we have. And I always tell people one of
Speaker 3: the things that the neuroimaging research has showed us is
Speaker 3: that disease is like Alzheimer's, which we talked about earlier
Speaker 3: in the show, begin to start at the cellular level
Speaker 3: one to two decades before you have a symptom. So
Speaker 3: this is why I really like to sort of be
Speaker 3: a cheerleader for people to embrace healthy practices to take
Speaker 3: good care of their brain. And you brought up some
Speaker 3: of them because you were telling me your ninety six
Speaker 3: year old mom is still doing well and driving her car.
Speaker 3: So you know, if we just think about doing things
Speaker 3: like adhering to a Mediterranean diet, keeping a consistent exercise practice,
Speaker 3: you know, adequately hydrating our brain, probiding that good nutritional support,
Speaker 3: you know, healthy emotional regulation, all of that can help
Speaker 3: support our brain health and really serve as an effective
Speaker 3: buffer against brain aging.
Speaker 2: What is it about the brain that gives you an
Speaker 2: Albert Einstein and someone who is not.
Speaker 3: Oh, such an interesting question. Well, you know they say
Speaker 3: that Albert Einstein really linked into having a meditation practice,
Speaker 3: So it's like, what's the difference between you know, somebody
Speaker 3: who is a genius and somebody who's just a very
Speaker 3: smart person. I think there is something about Albert Einstein
Speaker 3: in his use of meditation to help really connect inward
Speaker 3: and get these extraordinary insights right the theory of relativity.
Speaker 3: So I think, you know, we can learn from people
Speaker 3: like Albert Einstein to think about incorporating a meditative practice
Speaker 3: into our day to day life, not only for helping
Speaker 3: to keep us calm and more emotionally resilient, but really
Speaker 3: to tune in and sort of connect to our inner
Speaker 3: wisdom and our inner guidance. And I think that's, you know,
Speaker 3: one of the sort one of the many things that
Speaker 3: made him a genius, because he used to say imagination,
Speaker 3: which again comes from intuition, is really the key to
Speaker 3: intellectual high intellectual functioning.
Speaker 2: What does stress do to the brain? Christian?
Speaker 3: So, stress and chronic stress can actually function to shrink
Speaker 3: the brain. So we always tell people it's really important
Speaker 3: to manage your stress. So stress can shrink brain volume
Speaker 3: in the prefrontal cortex, which is the error the brain
Speaker 3: essential to higher cognitive functions. Right, Your prefrontal cortex is
Speaker 3: like the CEO of your brain, so it helps with
Speaker 3: planning and decision making and impulse control and personality. So
Speaker 3: if you have chronic stress and the excess cordisol that
Speaker 3: gets released from chronic stress, there the glugle quarter cord
Speaker 3: receptors are in the prefrontal cortex. Again, it can serve
Speaker 3: to shrink the prefrontal cortex. We also have a high
Speaker 3: number of glugle cordid receptors in the hippie campus, which
Speaker 3: is the area of the brain essential to learning and memory.
Speaker 3: So again when we're under a lot of stress before
Speaker 3: having shrinking our atrophy of the tissues and the prefrontal
Speaker 3: cortex and the hippie campus, that's not going to really
Speaker 3: serve us well if we really want to preserve our
Speaker 3: cognitive health. Elevated stress also activates the amigdala, so that's
Speaker 3: the part of the brain we sort of call that
Speaker 3: our fear center and it becomes more active. So that's
Speaker 3: what leads to sort of a heightened anxiety when we
Speaker 3: have stress. So it's really important if we want to
Speaker 3: live a long, healthy life to find ways to mitigate
Speaker 3: and manage stress.
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