Speaker 1: Whether you end up having Alzheimer's. It begins, we're like,
Speaker 1: where did I put my keys? We can't tell you
Speaker 1: which one's going to go to. Ten years later that
Speaker 1: adult says, I can't find my way home. Since we
Speaker 1: don't have that answer, everybody should do things to prevent
Speaker 1: memory neurosurgence and in your biology, Doctor ruhu Jiandiel.
Speaker 2: Why is it that we feel we can't remember anything anymore?
Speaker 1: One of the most common questions people ask is when
Speaker 1: they start forgetting, like where the keys are at? And
Speaker 1: they say, hey, is this alzheimer or does this need
Speaker 1: to be fixed? Is this natural?
Speaker 2: What are we doing every day that's distracting and disrupting
Speaker 2: a working.
Speaker 1: Memory too much? Juggling multitasking has its own issues. You
Speaker 1: want to get away from your thought hijacking your body?
Speaker 2: Why do we replay negative memories? Why is it so easy?
Speaker 1: So an emotional imprint on a memory requires no focus
Speaker 1: in the technic. So emotional imprinting of a memory and
Speaker 1: trauma makes it sometimes too easy to remember, and sometimes
Speaker 1: it pops up without you even wanting to. When you
Speaker 1: were able to revisit a memory in a controlled environment,
Speaker 1: you can dampen your emotional stamp onto that memory. You
Speaker 1: don't forget the memory, you just disassociate the emotional feelings
Speaker 1: of the trauma the fear of the physical reaction.
Speaker 2: For anyone concerned that their family member may have early
Speaker 2: dementia Alzheimer's, what should they be looking out for and
Speaker 2: how can they help that person?
Speaker 1: The number one health and wellness podcast Jay Sheety.
Speaker 2: Jay Shetty Sez jo. Hey, everyone, welcome back to On Purpose,
Speaker 2: the place you come to listen, learn and grow. Today's
Speaker 2: guest is someone that we had on last year and
Speaker 2: you absolutely loved the episode. The response was incredible. We
Speaker 2: had to have him back on It is none other
Speaker 2: than doctor Raoul Johndel, a renowned neurosurgeon, neuroscientist, and author.
Speaker 2: Doctor John Deal is known for his expertise brain surgery,
Speaker 2: particularly in areas related to brain tumors, epilepsy, and other
Speaker 2: brain disorders. Doctor John Delle is also a prominent public
Speaker 2: speaker and educator, frequently sharing insights into the brain's complexity
Speaker 2: and health. His work combines clinical practice with research aiming
Speaker 2: to deepen our understanding of the brain and improve treatments
Speaker 2: for neurological diseases. Please welcome back, doctor Roll John Dale.
Speaker 2: It's great to have you back.
Speaker 1: I'm stoked to be back, man.
Speaker 2: People loved that episode and the response was so great
Speaker 2: that we were like, we have to get you back
Speaker 2: on for part two.
Speaker 1: I mean, it was hard to tell for me because
Speaker 1: you know, we're here and it's intimate. I feeling relaxed
Speaker 1: and I can communicate, but then it's going out to
Speaker 1: so many people, whereas if you do a you know,
Speaker 1: live television or you do an audience event, you can
Speaker 1: feel that energy like a sporting event. But I'm thrilled
Speaker 1: to be back, man, and I'm I'm ready to just
Speaker 1: just go off the top and just vibe.
Speaker 2: I love it, man, I love it. I wanted to
Speaker 2: dive in because I know you've been talking a lot
Speaker 2: about memory, and that's been something you've been study quite
Speaker 2: deeply recently. Why is it that we feel we can't
Speaker 2: remember anything anymore?
Speaker 1: So that was the most common question I would get
Speaker 1: from my patient. So I'm a brain surgeon. I've taken
Speaker 1: care of several thousand patients with surgery and the interaction
Speaker 1: before and after surgery, and then I've met thousands. I
Speaker 1: was talking to your team, like you know, not everybody
Speaker 1: you see need surgery or benefits from surgery, or choose
Speaker 1: a surgery. So there's just a lot of human interaction.
Speaker 1: I've had thousands of patients. I'm fifty two. I've been
Speaker 1: doing this since i was twenty five. And one of
Speaker 1: the most common questions people ask when they start to
Speaker 1: think about maybe my brain isn't going to be perfect
Speaker 1: forever is when they start forgetting like where the keys
Speaker 1: are at, or they stop remembering things, and they say, hey,
Speaker 1: is this Alzheimer's? Does this need to be fixed? Is
Speaker 1: this natural? So that the question of my memory is
Speaker 1: fundamental and I'll zoom out for a little bit. People
Speaker 1: who don't have memory of who they are are completely lost.
Speaker 1: Every day they have to invent themselves new. So it's
Speaker 1: an essential feature that one type of memory called autobiographic memory.
Speaker 1: It stitches our memories of our childhood, lifetime experiences, and
Speaker 1: it gives us a sense of identity meaning purpose, like
Speaker 1: I have been the one in this vehicle of life
Speaker 1: and those those experiences are connected, right, So memory is
Speaker 1: essential in that way for identity. On a more practical level,
Speaker 1: memory is not one word, so like there's a lot
Speaker 1: of types of memory, and I think that's where today
Speaker 1: I want to just take it one step deeper, Like
Speaker 1: I don't have all the answers, but when I'm communicating
Speaker 1: with patients, if I can take it one step deeper
Speaker 1: in the explanation and they go, ah, I get it,
Speaker 1: then they're more likely to implement the guidance they choose.
Speaker 1: There are many types of memory. Memory is not one word.
Speaker 1: So let's take one that we rarely lose, procedural memory.
Speaker 1: Once you learn how to ride a bike, once you
Speaker 1: learn how to like you know, tie your shoelaces. Patients
Speaker 1: of mind that have Alzheimer's or even brain injury, or
Speaker 1: just get eighties and nineties, they still remember that. Procedural
Speaker 1: memory is not the one we need to be thinking about.
Speaker 1: Then there's another type of memory called semantic memory, as facts.
Speaker 1: I don't want to remember my phone number anymore, Matt,
Speaker 1: I got facts on my phone. I want to connect
Speaker 1: the dots, so those kind of things aren't as important.
Speaker 1: Then there's a third type you can call episodic memory.
Speaker 1: It's a fancy word for episodes. Again, like this happened
Speaker 1: in my life, this episode, Now that's important. Unfortunately, that
Speaker 1: type of memory is what's lost with dementia with aging,
Speaker 1: and people worry about that, like does this mean I'm
Speaker 1: aging normally or is this the onset of Alzheimer's. We
Speaker 1: don't have that answer. So whether you end up having
Speaker 1: Alzheimer's or whether you just have age appropriate subtle loss
Speaker 1: of memory, it begins we're like, where did I put
Speaker 1: my keys? Like it all begins that way, we can't
Speaker 1: tell you which one's going to go to. Ten years later,
Speaker 1: that adult says, I can't find my way home. So
Speaker 1: that concept is so tricky that since we don't have
Speaker 1: that answer, I believe everybody should do things to prevent
Speaker 1: memory loss. Right, you don't, because if you go down
Speaker 1: the Alzheimer's path or just a normal cognitive decline, the
Speaker 1: guidance is still the same. ABC. Eat a certain way,
Speaker 1: think a certain way, move a certain way. The guidance
Speaker 1: ABC whether you're about to get Alzheimer's, don't know. If
Speaker 1: you're bout to have Alzheimer's or normal aging or have
Speaker 1: been diagnosed with Alzheimer's, the guidance is the same, and
Speaker 1: that speaks to how the brain and mind works.
Speaker 2: How bad is it that we can't remember what we
Speaker 2: had for dinner last night.
Speaker 1: Not a big deal at all, not a big deal,
Speaker 1: not a big deal. So those glitches are age appropriate.
Speaker 1: That happens in our thirties, forties, fifties, sixties, as we
Speaker 1: get less young. I had Patience a long time ago.
Speaker 1: She was ninety something. I said, well, you're older. She
Speaker 1: looked at me with the just a scow. She was like, older,
Speaker 1: I'm less young. So that since that day less young.
Speaker 1: So as we get less young, that's natural.
Speaker 2: Why what's happening, Well.
Speaker 1: The answer is not clear because we don't study that.
Speaker 1: What we do study is when it starts with age
Speaker 1: appropriate sort of subtle memory loss. And if you zoom
Speaker 1: out our whole about our knees age, our heart's age,
Speaker 1: our mind's age, that's not necessarily a disease, but it's
Speaker 1: age appropriate. Versus Alzheimer's, Alzheimer's and dementia, and like what
Speaker 1: Bruce Willis has frontal temporal dimension, there's a lot of
Speaker 1: different types of dementia. Maybe we should just call it dementia.
Speaker 1: Is that it starts with a little bit of memory
Speaker 1: loss that's just normal aging. But then it accelerates and
Speaker 1: what people think is like, oh, they can't remember things.
Speaker 1: It's more than that they can't remember their autobiographical memory.
Speaker 1: They can't remember who they are because they don't remember
Speaker 1: their stories from their childhood. Then they start forgetting who
Speaker 1: the loved ones are and why they're loved ones autobiographical memory.
Speaker 1: Then the injury goes even deeper and it affects their
Speaker 1: emotional regulation. Like that's a big topic I love, I
Speaker 1: wrote at a long time ago, Like the ability to
Speaker 1: say I'm angry, but that's not what I want to
Speaker 1: feel right now, that's not I don't want to act
Speaker 1: right now. They lose emotional regulation. So for caregivers it's
Speaker 1: very challenging. It's like you don't remember me, I'm your child,
Speaker 1: and then on top of that, you're angry with me
Speaker 1: all the time. It's a it's an intense experience, of
Speaker 1: course for the patient. For the person, I wouldn't say,
Speaker 1: why do can? We can? We never age in a
Speaker 1: way that's super memory all the way. Let me, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna get to that. I'm not sure we want perfect memory.
Speaker 1: That's about facts, that's about procedures the area. The last
Speaker 1: type of memory that I didn't mentioned is called working memory.
Speaker 1: This is this is the memory I want, of course,
Speaker 1: I want out of biographical memory. I'm who, I'm this,
Speaker 1: I'm that, facts are on my phone. I think I'll
Speaker 1: be able to, you know, handle a bike and laces
Speaker 1: for a while. So let's get down to if you
Speaker 1: want to level up. So the training for Alzheimer's and dementia,
Speaker 1: the training for me, the training for an NFL quarterbacks,
Speaker 1: for moving receivers, analysis, judgment, timing. That's called working memory.
Speaker 1: Too much juggling, multitasking has its own issues, but working
Speaker 1: memory is the skill I want. I want to be
Speaker 1: able to run six governmental departments. I want to be
Speaker 1: able to manage a hospital with sixteen patients on ventilators
Speaker 1: when I was twenty eight. I want to manage talking
Speaker 1: to you and having a bunch of ideas popping in
Speaker 1: the back, and which one do I bring? Right? That's
Speaker 1: called working memory, and there is guidance and training for that.
Speaker 1: There is brain training for that type of memory. So
Speaker 1: you ask me early, like, what's memory? So now we've
Speaker 1: broken it out of several types, and the one we
Speaker 1: want is short term juggling, a lot of plates, a
Speaker 1: lot of thoughts in the sky, and that's where creativity
Speaker 1: comes from. You're looking at things your working memories, pulling
Speaker 1: back imagination. Working memory can be trained. Working memory is
Speaker 1: the digital therapy peutic for Alzheimer's. Working memories like the
Speaker 1: people I look up to, they're the ones that do
Speaker 1: things the best because it's not just procedurally like I'm
Speaker 1: looking at six monitors and able to operate. It's the
Speaker 1: fact that I have a lot of thoughts in my
Speaker 1: head and my working memories. Keeping them all immediately accessible.
Speaker 1: I don't have to like, go, ah, well, where's that?
Speaker 1: What was that? Now? I've got like eight or nine
Speaker 1: things I want to talk to you about. My working
Speaker 1: memory is keeping them afloat. Let it allow me to
Speaker 1: extract them for you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, For anyone who's listening right now and they're concerned
Speaker 2: that their family member may have early dementia Alzheimer's, that direction,
Speaker 2: what should they be looking out for and how can
Speaker 2: they help that person?
Speaker 1: The story is when humans passed away in our thirties
Speaker 1: and forties, 're sort of like the heart that we're
Speaker 1: out and then we live longer. We addressed heart disease.
Speaker 1: Main you knows, as we live longer and longer, it's
Speaker 1: the brain that's starting to wear out and if you
Speaker 1: suspect that your family members having memory issues, the greatest
Speaker 1: challenge will be, and I don't mean this lightly, is
Speaker 1: that that person doesn't remember what they don't remember. They're
Speaker 1: not thinking I forgot that because they don't remember that.
Speaker 1: It's the loved ones that see it. So if you
Speaker 1: see that, you have to invite them and say, look,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm noticing a few different things in our
Speaker 1: next general visit to the doctor, can we maybe mention
Speaker 1: it to them? And they'll do a neurocognitive test. It's straightforward,
Speaker 1: draw this circle backwards and they do like those that
Speaker 1: like a little test. It's casual, but they can track it.
Speaker 1: Say hey, can we do this every year? And you
Speaker 1: track that test every year? And when you see that
Speaker 1: you're drawing the clock and you're missing numbers. Even the
Speaker 1: person with dementia will say, yeah, you know something's changing.
Speaker 1: But if you try to persuade somebody who can't remember,
Speaker 1: hey you're not remembering? Can you can see how that
Speaker 1: could just not work right, So you want to get
Speaker 1: them to somebody early. And what the physician will do
Speaker 1: is take a look at that and then they say, hey,
Speaker 1: do you have genetic history? And so certain Almost all
Speaker 1: dementia is not genetic, but there are some genetic issues
Speaker 1: that you want to know about. And then this is
Speaker 1: the best part. Whether it's age appropriate cognitive decline of
Speaker 1: certain memory, not working memory, the one where fight I'm
Speaker 1: fine for, or it's early onset Alzheimer's, that we can identify.
Speaker 1: The interventions are the same. Keep the brain arteries open,
Speaker 1: eat a certain type of food, the mind diet, and
Speaker 1: continue to challenge the brain puzzles, socializing, networking, taking a
Speaker 1: different route home using your left hand. Learning a new language.
Speaker 1: You have to learn the new language. You just have
Speaker 1: to try. You might only get like three words. You're like, hey,
Speaker 1: this language thing is not working. But it's the those
Speaker 1: those three steps are are there is that's the established thing,
Speaker 1: and I think that way that's empowering to the patient,
Speaker 1: to the families. And it's not like pill and medicine dependent,
Speaker 1: because frankly, there ain't good medicine for it.
Speaker 2: Really.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is not a There are not great treatments
Speaker 1: for Alzheimer's. They're out there, people can look at them.
Speaker 1: They're for early cognitive decline. But when you even if
Speaker 1: you were to take those medicines, you still got to
Speaker 1: do the other things. You got to walk to keep
Speaker 1: your brain arteries open. You got to irrigate the flesh.
Speaker 1: You got to eat a mind die, which is fatty
Speaker 1: fish or if you're vegan or plant based, you know
Speaker 1: they have that. And then you got to like you
Speaker 1: have to do those brain training and challenge your working memory.
Speaker 1: The same thing with somebody with Alzheimer's about to get Alzheimer's,
Speaker 1: worried about Alzheimer's, and you and me, it's the same recipe.
Speaker 2: Let's break down the recipe for people who are listening
Speaker 2: right now so that we can get into the details
Speaker 2: of those three steps.
Speaker 1: Like you know, uh, the brain is flesh. I remember
Speaker 1: the first time I saw it when I was twenty
Speaker 1: six and they opened the skull and I was like
Speaker 1: watching the professors and I was like, what is this
Speaker 1: even possible? And it gets twenty percent of the blood
Speaker 1: from your heart with these four raging arteries that come up,
Speaker 1: and it's like three pounds or five kilograms or whatever
Speaker 1: it is, That three four pound organ gets twenty percent
Speaker 1: of our blood flow. It is an energy hog. And
Speaker 1: you think it's and then it's white opal lesson, it's
Speaker 1: shimmering under the operating room lights. I mean, it's not
Speaker 1: gray matter. Great matters when they when the patients passed
Speaker 1: away and they've for mountain no no, and it's heat
Speaker 1: with every breath that heaves a little bit. It's got
Speaker 1: fluid chambers on it. It's like, it's the way to
Speaker 1: imagine it is like one hundred billion ish jellyfish in
Speaker 1: an aquarium, but there's fluid in there and they're shooting
Speaker 1: electricity and chemicals at it. You mentioned something about when
Speaker 1: I said sleep entry, and you said, yeah, versus falling asleep.
Speaker 1: Language is important for our concepts. That's what I try
Speaker 1: to do. Before I came on today, it was like,
Speaker 1: how do I describe this in a way where it's
Speaker 1: not like lebrain. I'd say the same thing. I'm not
Speaker 1: throwing shade on anybody, but take your imagination away that
Speaker 1: it's one hundred billion jellyfish packed together in clusters, floating
Speaker 1: in an aquarium inside her skull. Our brain doesn't sit
Speaker 1: on the inside of her skull. It's buoyant and it's
Speaker 1: spring electricity, and it's not in left and right directions.
Speaker 1: It's like Aurora borealis, or a school of birds that
Speaker 1: rolls back onto each other. Right, it's a there's an
Speaker 1: electrical flow that's shivering through those through those jellyfish, right, Like,
Speaker 1: that's how you got to imagine it. So when you
Speaker 1: look at it, the first thing you need to know
Speaker 1: is those four arteries that come and feed this garden. Right,
Speaker 1: And the neurons are like roses. You get what you get.
Speaker 1: You're not really growing neurons. It's a mild exception with
Speaker 1: stem cells. And then there's all the supporting cells what
Speaker 1: I call like shrubs, like extracites. Like you want to
Speaker 1: keep that garden irrigated, you sprinkle the lawn, right, You
Speaker 1: got to sprinkle blood to that flesh because that activity
Speaker 1: in those neurons is relying on the glucose coming up,
Speaker 1: and glucose is the fuel to keep those little molecular
Speaker 1: jellyfish alive. So people say, well, what do I do
Speaker 1: to keep my brain shot? Well, keep those arteries open.
Speaker 1: How do you keep those arteries open? You know that
Speaker 1: take the lipiatore walk exercise. That's not just to look good.
Speaker 1: It's to keep the main arteries and all those fine
Speaker 1: branching arteries going into those crevices open because if you
Speaker 1: start losing swaths of brain tissue. You're gonna have issues,
Speaker 1: not always. But that's the first thing. Is heart health
Speaker 1: is also brain health. That's the easiest thing. Okay. Number
Speaker 1: two is what you eat, not today or tomorrow, but
Speaker 1: over a decade. And this is well established. This isn't
Speaker 1: like one study globally the Mediterranean diet, which is mostly plants,
Speaker 1: fatty fish, beans, nuts. Those people, if you just look
Speaker 1: at like thousands and thousands over a decade or two,
Speaker 1: they have lower rates of dementia. And that's the only
Speaker 1: difference that they're having. That's the recommendation we give to people.
Speaker 1: So you say, well, why is that that kind of diet?
Speaker 1: Why does that work? And look, love have a burger,
Speaker 1: I love it. I mean, it's not the indulgences, it's
Speaker 1: that baseline habit with fish. Those neurons, the neurons, if
Speaker 1: you think of it as a jellyfish, all these tentacles
Speaker 1: ten you know, they rough numbers ten thousand, hundred or whatever.
Speaker 1: But the electrical signals that flow between our neurons, they're
Speaker 1: wrapped with something insulation. The insulation lets the electricity fire faster.
Speaker 1: That insulation is literally made of omega three fat. The
Speaker 1: brain is fatty. The fat that the brain uses to
Speaker 1: keep insulated comes from fatty fish and those kinds of things.
Speaker 1: So there's a reason to eat that way. And the
Speaker 1: last thing we've been talking about all you know all
Speaker 1: morning is focus on untentioned, on your next level of
Speaker 1: not somebody else's right, Because if I told you, hey,
Speaker 1: you want bigger biceps, we would say we need it.
Speaker 1: But this is a thinking flesh, This is a feeling flesh.
Speaker 1: This is an interconnected flesh. So vibe, think, read, whatever
Speaker 1: that is for you. But the combination of those three
Speaker 1: things is well established and there is no shortcut.
Speaker 2: Before we dive into the next moment. Let's hear from
Speaker 2: our sponsors. Thanks for taking a moment for that. Now
Speaker 2: back to the discussion. I love the way you've broken
Speaker 2: down the different memories. I had no idea that there
Speaker 2: were so many different words for memory, and I love
Speaker 2: that because it helps us really compartmentalize how we think
Speaker 2: about this really big topic. But when I'm listening to you,
Speaker 2: I'm wondering what are we doing every day that's distracting
Speaker 2: and disrupting our working memory.
Speaker 1: So what I try to do is I try to
Speaker 1: take my patient stories I try to look at the
Speaker 1: neurons in a Petrie dish. I read a lot. I
Speaker 1: read a lot of random things, and I try to
Speaker 1: think about how to answer that. What's the right How
Speaker 1: do you thread the needle between juggling enough to where
Speaker 1: you're holding on to and cultivating your working memory or
Speaker 1: you're just like just numb by this like blitz of
Speaker 1: things coming at you. Yeah, I think it's very individual.
Speaker 1: I would say it's different for children because, as we
Speaker 1: discussed last time, we're learning to move and walk, and
Speaker 1: the brain is learning to have a sense of self.
Speaker 1: There's a psychological cultivation that mirrors our physical cultivation. You
Speaker 1: don't want to flood that mind with too much. I'll
Speaker 1: let others comment on at which age they should be
Speaker 1: on social media or not. But the concept I think
Speaker 1: we can all agree on based on science and this
Speaker 1: conversation is in the developing mind. It doesn't have the
Speaker 1: filter and it doesn't have the maturity of that working memory.
Speaker 1: You don't want a kid. Our raised three sons, they're nineteen,
Speaker 1: twenty and twenty three, so I'm talking from the perspective
Speaker 1: a parent. I always try to see where are they at,
Speaker 1: and then add one more thing. But sometimes when I
Speaker 1: see families with their patients in the waiting room, I
Speaker 1: mean the kids just look down at their phones for
Speaker 1: like one hundred hours. You know. It's like you look
Speaker 1: at their you know, the they've been on there, and
Speaker 1: you ask her how long you've been on there, like
Speaker 1: a lot of them. It's just it feels excessive for
Speaker 1: that age. And then it's also the content at the
Speaker 1: later range of life. You want certain brain training games
Speaker 1: for elderly they have shown like it's FDA proved. That
Speaker 1: means you brought a lot of evidence in it. It's
Speaker 1: not just one study. I'm not throwing shade on anybody.
Speaker 1: But the game is it's a racer game where like
Speaker 1: grandma's like racing a car and there's distractions coming up
Speaker 1: and she has to avoid them. Same thing for NFL quarterbacks.
Speaker 1: I think it was Atlanta. He's a broadcaster, now he's
Speaker 1: a quarterback. That a game where they're looking at something
Speaker 1: but different lights are popping up and they have to
Speaker 1: identify them in their peripheral vision. That speed of processing,
Speaker 1: that working memory is an important skill. The question is
Speaker 1: when are you stunting its development and when are you
Speaker 1: cultivating I think it's age specific. I think it's individual specific.
Speaker 1: I think when we know we're just doing some something
Speaker 1: to shut down versus doing it as training, so that
Speaker 1: portal can be both. It can mess you up, it
Speaker 1: can hold you back, but if you have the right
Speaker 1: digital diet man, it can open up the world for you.
Speaker 1: So I think that's the way I look at it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I always think about it like an elastic band,
Speaker 2: and it's this idea that an elastic band is useless
Speaker 2: if it's not being stretched, but at the same time,
Speaker 2: there's a point at which it will snap. Yeah, and
Speaker 2: I've seen that with my own memory or my ability,
Speaker 2: my working memories. You describe it where I used to
Speaker 2: think I was doing everything I could, and then I
Speaker 2: stretched and I was like, oh wow, I could do
Speaker 2: more than I believe. And then I stretched, and then
Speaker 2: I stretched, and I started to realize that my capacity
Speaker 2: and capability was far larger than I ever imagined.
Speaker 1: And you were developing it with each stretch exactly.
Speaker 2: But if I accepted where I was that, oh this
Speaker 2: is the most I can do, actually, I would never
Speaker 2: have known. And you're saying that in some ways that's unhealthy,
Speaker 2: unhealthy that you you don't stretch and challenge. You say,
Speaker 2: video kids, you're always adding, oh yeah.
Speaker 1: So many flies to space. They don't have gravitational force,
Speaker 1: they come back. Their bones are brittle. You need certain
Speaker 1: amount of stress at the bone, at the osteocyte level.
Speaker 1: Like physiologically we need gravity. So some stress makes us grow.
Speaker 1: Too much stress fractures that bone. Okay, take that physiologic
Speaker 1: concept and apply that same to the mind. Now what
Speaker 1: I would say is that elastic band, I love that.
Speaker 1: And if you leave it idle and that elastic band
Speaker 1: gets dry, then the stretching is too late. And then
Speaker 1: the last thing I would add to that is when
Speaker 1: my sons and others they play video games is a
Speaker 1: very well studied thing. If you give them multiple levels,
Speaker 1: they'll compete to level up. But if you just present
Speaker 1: them the fifth level, they'll just say, nah, that's too hard.
Speaker 1: And if you make it too easy, then won't hold
Speaker 1: their at tension. So the nuance is exactly is to
Speaker 1: find where am Where am I at? Not that person's advice,
Speaker 1: not that person's life, but from everything that I've taken
Speaker 1: in where am I at? Where the appropriate next stress challenge?
Speaker 1: Stretch of the rubber band, next level on the video
Speaker 1: game is there that's enticing enough achievable with some effort,
Speaker 1: and then I get there, and then I get there,
Speaker 1: and then I get there and then I get knocked down,
Speaker 1: because life is going to knock you down. That's part
Speaker 1: of its struggle and its beauty. And then you might
Speaker 1: find yourself not at those same levels, not with those
Speaker 1: same coping mechanisms, but remembering that it's an incremental crawl
Speaker 1: out of that ditch that your mind can fall into.
Speaker 1: I've seen it in my cancer pati of their heroes.
Speaker 1: And so if the lesson there is that our working memory,
Speaker 1: our memory, everything from bones to biology to trees, we
Speaker 1: need stress and pressure. It's a thermostat. Stress isn't all bad,
Speaker 1: A stress isn't all good, And it's individual stress for
Speaker 1: you might be different than stress for me. In the hospital.
Speaker 1: There are stresses that certain friends of mine can handle.
Speaker 1: It's a massive stress. Yes, you're operating the middle of
Speaker 1: the night, you're handling fifteen patients for them, they're right
Speaker 1: at that. For other people that might inundate them, and
Speaker 1: that's not appropriate. So it has to be an individual thing.
Speaker 1: But biologically, physiologically, psychologically, I think knowing thyself is to
Speaker 1: know what's that next challenge for me that's enticing, that's
Speaker 1: achievable with effort, that's not too easy, so I don't
Speaker 1: give it down, or just there's no way I can
Speaker 1: get there, so I'm not even going to try.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a brilliant book called flow State by Mihai
Speaker 2: Cheek said me Hi if I'm saying his surname right,
Speaker 2: that explains this so brilliantly. He talks about the need
Speaker 2: for having your skills meet your challenge. And so he
Speaker 2: talks about this idea that either what most of us
Speaker 2: experience is our challenge is above our skills, So we
Speaker 2: get frustrated, right, we get really disappointed. You might even
Speaker 2: get depressed because your challenge is so high and your
Speaker 2: skills are so low. Or you have the opposite where
Speaker 2: your skills are really high but your challenge is low.
Speaker 2: Now you're bored. Now you're disconnected. Now you're disengaged because
Speaker 2: you can practically do everything with these And so he
Speaker 2: talks about flow state, which is what we see athletes, musicians, singers.
Speaker 2: These people are in their moments or in the zone
Speaker 2: is when their experiences and their skills meet their challenge.
Speaker 2: And while we're talking about this, the part that I
Speaker 2: was thinking about is why do we get so stressed
Speaker 2: when we can't remember something right? When we're like, oh, man,
Speaker 2: I wanted to tell you about that movie, and I
Speaker 2: want to tell you about that Oh what was the
Speaker 2: actor's name? Oh gosh? You know, we get so frustrated
Speaker 2: when we're we almost feel that glitch.
Speaker 1: I think that's because we assume that we're slowing down
Speaker 1: or shutting down. And know what I'm trying to tell
Speaker 1: people is that memory outsource that to your phone. There
Speaker 1: are people who forget their keys, forget other people's names.
Speaker 1: That's appropriate as we get less young, but older people
Speaker 1: can still have high working memory, fight for working memory
Speaker 1: and stay with that. Back to the flow state. I
Speaker 1: love that, man. I mean, I wrote about it a
Speaker 1: little bit. I'm familiar with the book, and I think
Speaker 1: the insight that he provided is that one it's individual.
Speaker 1: You can be in a flow state driving, you could
Speaker 1: be in a flow state sewing, you can be a
Speaker 1: flow state holding your kid. It's not only for high
Speaker 1: level people. I think you know as described that it's
Speaker 1: again individual, it's personal, but it takes knowing not what
Speaker 1: other people's ambitions and desires are not what other people's
Speaker 1: goals are. It takes knowing like this is something I
Speaker 1: want to get better at, this is something I want
Speaker 1: to cultivate myself. I think that's what I liked about
Speaker 1: his book was that it wasn't about the skill. It
Speaker 1: was at your skill level. Yes, it's brain searchers are
Speaker 1: in flow state. I think it's are in flow state.
Speaker 1: He studied them to understand that. The second thing that
Speaker 1: I liked about it often there's a physical component and
Speaker 1: a thinking component. And I love that because there have
Speaker 1: been times where I don't know, I mean people think
Speaker 1: like people think like brain surgery is like fixing a car.
Speaker 1: You do these twenty steps. It's every tissue, every cancer
Speaker 1: is reverse sculpting. There's at some point you have to
Speaker 1: just you have to let the maneuvers go where like
Speaker 1: it's a dance. When I've seen it done with finesse
Speaker 1: at the highest level, and in those occasions where I'm
Speaker 1: feeling that, I just remember feeling so good about what
Speaker 1: was happening without every thought being engineered and structured, like
Speaker 1: there was a I felt proud that there was a
Speaker 1: skill being released. And I think that's a flow state
Speaker 1: for me during surgery. Sometimes when I grew up in
Speaker 1: La so when the freeways are open, I took a long,
Speaker 1: fast drive through all the open roads. I had my
Speaker 1: white coat. I'm a surgeon, so we were allowed to
Speaker 1: be on there. But for driving, some people they just
Speaker 1: describe it. It's again, it's both paying attention externally and
Speaker 1: then doing something physically. I think the combination the physical
Speaker 1: move move physical activity I think should not be underestimated.
Speaker 1: Let me give you a specific example, the overlap of
Speaker 1: wanting and desire those circuits. When you talk about flow state,
Speaker 1: it's not just a psychological thing. The most times I
Speaker 1: felt that it's a mind body thing.
Speaker 2: What's the connection between you mentioned their focus and attention,
Speaker 2: what's the connection with memory? Because I think a lot
Speaker 2: of us are trying to be more present. Okay, we
Speaker 2: see it as valuable. When we meet someone you forget
Speaker 2: their name instantly. You're right, the facts will be there.
Speaker 2: But there's a part of us that feel like we're
Speaker 2: almost looking through people, We're not really there. How much
Speaker 2: does focus and attention actually impact memory or are they
Speaker 2: not connected?
Speaker 1: You know, that's a good question. I don't think I
Speaker 1: have a specific answer about that. I haven't read about that,
Speaker 1: but I will tell I will tell you that memory
Speaker 1: to retrieve it is a reconstruction. There's no rolodex or
Speaker 1: a filing cabinet. You pull it out. Memory is built.
Speaker 2: What do you mean by that.
Speaker 1: Let's think of the brain as an ecosystem, right, the
Speaker 1: general electricity that you can record electric is like an atmosphere.
Speaker 1: Then we have the flesh, the lobes. We can talk
Speaker 1: about that. Then we have networks and circuits like things
Speaker 1: that work in ensembles. They go up and down together.
Speaker 1: They never turn off. It's always like fifty one to
Speaker 1: forty nine. There's no part of the brain that shuts off.
Speaker 1: And then there's individual neurons. You can think of them
Speaker 1: as like each tree in a forest. When we talk
Speaker 1: about memory, it is not a filing cabinet. It's a
Speaker 1: hub and so it pulls. Like I want to remember something.
Speaker 1: The easiest way for me to remember something and sometimes unavoidable,
Speaker 1: like you can't even forget it, is when the emotional
Speaker 1: structures and regions of your brain have put a stamp
Speaker 1: on it. So emotional imprinting of a memory and trauma
Speaker 1: makes it sometimes too easy to remember, and sometimes it
Speaker 1: pops up without even wanting to write. So that's one
Speaker 1: type of focus attention. Emotional stamping. I don't amygdala is
Speaker 1: not positive, it's not negative stamping. It's just emotional stamping,
Speaker 1: both positive and negative. So an emotional imprint on a
Speaker 1: memory requires no focus and attention. It's just churning back there.
Speaker 1: It's activated. The smell can pop it open. You don't
Speaker 1: want to think about it, and it's coming up. I
Speaker 1: think we all know that, right, Like things we don't
Speaker 1: want to think about feelings, We don't have memories of
Speaker 1: the past blended with imagination, so you don't require attention
Speaker 1: and focus for some types of memory, usually the ones
Speaker 1: with emotional stamps. We can get into trauma and that
Speaker 1: sort of thing for the right for the rest of it,
Speaker 1: if we're engaging people. Then on the other side is
Speaker 1: there's all this like you don't want to remember all
Speaker 1: of this. It's not really relevant, right, it's a habit,
Speaker 1: you're driving, you make that exit. There's a memory, there's
Speaker 1: a procedural memory I don't want to think about, like
Speaker 1: tying my shoelad. So somewhere in between is the attention
Speaker 1: to I should remember this. I want to remember this.
Speaker 1: So memories, emotionally imprinted memories you don't need. You're just
Speaker 1: driving on the freeway and in between. The emotional memory
Speaker 1: is easy. The attention and focus to memory is hard
Speaker 1: because it's a decremental process. Meaning bandwidth is a casual word,
Speaker 1: but it takes effort. The emotional thing, oh, it just
Speaker 1: strikes you. The other one you don't want. So attention
Speaker 1: and focus requires effort. And so when you have people
Speaker 1: you're talking to you want to remember something where you
Speaker 1: want to remember them or their names, that attention and
Speaker 1: focus is something you have to dial up. And there's
Speaker 1: a couple of ways to dial it up. Removing distractions.
Speaker 1: When I talk to Lebron James, it's like it's about
Speaker 1: not thinking about it. There's one way is to remove
Speaker 1: distractions or increase attention, and that's individual focus. Is if
Speaker 1: you haven't slept, your energy towards attention is less. It's decremental.
Speaker 1: They call it decremental vigilance. Like if you're on guard
Speaker 1: in a military situation, like after a certain amount of
Speaker 1: hours or long surgery or a long shift to the hospital,
Speaker 1: it fades. If you're in the middle. Just look I
Speaker 1: want to have more focus and attention to this. The
Speaker 1: natural answers lessen the distraction, be rested, and you know,
Speaker 1: make it a priority. But that's within each of our
Speaker 1: minds based on what we're looking at.
Speaker 2: So when you just told me before we started that
Speaker 2: you're doing brain surgery at three am today, how do
Speaker 2: you maintain a level of attention? Obviously there's no distractions.
Speaker 1: Distructions people walking around, things are going wrong, are going off.
Speaker 1: You got to tell somebody, hey know my music today.
Speaker 2: So walk me through that. How are you that focused
Speaker 2: with something that sensitive in that moment? How do you
Speaker 2: prepare for that type of surgery?
Speaker 1: So the skill, the cultivation is to know when this
Speaker 1: task can be performed casually, going to the cafeteria, talking
Speaker 1: to a patient. Your emotional intensity is there, but you
Speaker 1: you learn to dial up and dial down as the
Speaker 1: situation requires. It's the fancy word is ecological validity, Like
Speaker 1: you got you got a game plan, but it's got
Speaker 1: to be tested. And so that long training in those
Speaker 1: long hours was partly because they needed labor, partly because
Speaker 1: you know, they justified it. Like if you go work
Speaker 1: in a small town or you do an operation, then
Speaker 1: the Parasi has to go back because something went wrong.
Speaker 1: You can't call somebody else. You got to run it.
Speaker 1: You got to handle it. And so what you learn
Speaker 1: is so for example, the operation went late last night,
Speaker 1: That's not a big deal to me because before that,
Speaker 1: I wasn't trying to wear myself out with drama with somebody,
Speaker 1: you know, wearing myself out with like looking at things
Speaker 1: that were distracted. I went into sort of what I
Speaker 1: call a zen mode to prevent distractions. You know, I
Speaker 1: go to a zenmo before and it's not like you
Speaker 1: can tell. And then I save that tension and focus
Speaker 1: because I know my vigilance is acremental. It fades, and
Speaker 1: then we get the patient set up and we do
Speaker 1: all of that. I'm still just whatever, you know, and
Speaker 1: until there's like a there's a physical cue for me,
Speaker 1: and then it lifts. There's attention to focus, and then
Speaker 1: there's the craft and then there's a release, and then
Speaker 1: after that there's you know, there's a crash, and then
Speaker 1: I make the decision I'm going to uber home or
Speaker 1: drive home. You know, I know the freeway, so I
Speaker 1: drove home. But that goes back to your original question,
Speaker 1: is realize attention to focus for memory for anything is
Speaker 1: a resource. Some things will grab your attention, some things
Speaker 1: don't warrant your attention. It's it's it's that middle zone, right,
Speaker 1: That's what we're trying to finesse at an individual level,
Speaker 1: you know, and a collective level.
Speaker 2: Well, I appreciate what you're saying because I remember reading
Speaker 2: about it in a book by Daniel Leviton called The
Speaker 2: Organized Mind, and he talked about this idea of how
Speaker 2: when Warren Buffett is deciding where to invest, he takes
Speaker 2: milk and cookies, rents an apartment in New York City,
Speaker 2: and lives in that apartment for five days. So basically
Speaker 2: he's doing very little when it comes to his daily
Speaker 2: require ments of food. He's cleared out his space, so
Speaker 2: he's in a new environment that's empty, and then he's
Speaker 2: sitting there making decisions. And he talked about how this
Speaker 2: was his way of removing decision fatigue. This idea that
Speaker 2: when we're making lots of insignificant decisions in the morning
Speaker 2: when we wake up, by the time it comes to
Speaker 2: a big decision at the end of the day the
Speaker 2: middle of the day, we have no energy left to
Speaker 2: make it. So most of us are stressing out going.
Speaker 2: What do I eat today? What do I wear today?
Speaker 2: Which route do I take to work today? Oh my gosh,
Speaker 2: what am I going to say to that person today? Now,
Speaker 2: by the time you get into the office, you've already
Speaker 2: made so many insignificant decisions that you're exhausted, and now
Speaker 2: you can't dial it up when you actually need.
Speaker 1: It because it's limited and is decremental over time. I
Speaker 1: love that. What I would say is again, you have
Speaker 1: to know yourself a little bit, like that's coming and
Speaker 1: it could be I'm about to have a hot conversation
Speaker 1: my lover, and this is not. This is a tense situation.
Speaker 1: I don't want to walk in that with my mind
Speaker 1: already in a fuss. I got a big case. It's
Speaker 1: going late. There was an emergency before I'm gonna start
Speaker 1: this at eleven o'clock. It needs to go tonight. That's
Speaker 1: not when I'm trying to get into a fuss. I
Speaker 1: don't know what the example will be for your viewers
Speaker 1: and other people, but if everybody can walk away with like,
Speaker 1: your attention and focus or wherever level and stage you're
Speaker 1: at is precious, is limited. You want to control your environment.
Speaker 1: You don't want to talk to certain people. Maybe you
Speaker 1: do want to talk to certain people, Maybe you want
Speaker 1: to listen to certain music, maybe you don't want to
Speaker 1: listen to Those examples are all around US athletes walking
Speaker 1: in with their bo's headphones on. They're doing the same thing.
Speaker 1: But we can explain it with neuroscience that attention is decremental.
Speaker 1: You cannot maintain one hundred sustained external focus. So in
Speaker 1: those forty hour shifts, I never did a forty hour
Speaker 1: operation and I just learned to work with my attention
Speaker 1: and focus. That was the real skill that I learned.
Speaker 1: And the buffet.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: He's also changing his physical environment. Yeah, I do that too,
Speaker 1: Like I'm going to London next next week, and I'm
Speaker 1: just people are like, oh, you like to stay in
Speaker 1: the same place, Like, no, I'm coming here to like
Speaker 1: get lost, my phone's not working, look at this, where's this?
Speaker 1: Like I need to change physical environments to have new
Speaker 1: thoughts because I'm working on something in my mind. And
Speaker 1: so I think part maybe part of what he does
Speaker 1: is is not just to get rid of the fuss
Speaker 1: and to avoid decision fatigue or decremental vigilance because of
Speaker 1: decrimental vigilants. I prefer that one is broader. I'm not
Speaker 1: telling you what to pay attention to. I'm not trying
Speaker 1: to tell you, but you're about to make a decision.
Speaker 1: Just realize this focus. This external they're catchy calling it
Speaker 1: action network and action brain network. These fountains and continents
Speaker 1: that rev up a little bit on the inside our
Speaker 1: brain for outward attention versus dreaming where it's all imaginative,
Speaker 1: Like you can't rev that up for sixteen hours. See,
Speaker 1: there's a cadence to the day. You're setting yourself up
Speaker 1: for success, individual success, fighting with somebody, dealing with a
Speaker 1: kid driving you crazy, whatever it is that's yours. I
Speaker 1: want people to walk away with like get it. You
Speaker 1: know my day is My day is a dance.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I really like that, man. I think that's such
Speaker 2: great advice, and it resonates so strongly with me even
Speaker 2: when I look at my days. So, for example, I
Speaker 2: only do two interviews per day, so you're my first one.
Speaker 2: I have another one in the afternoon. And I can
Speaker 2: only do two interviews per day because for me, these
Speaker 2: interviews require one hundred percent focus, and if you ask
Speaker 2: me to do another one on top of that, I
Speaker 2: just don't think I could be at one hundred percent,
Speaker 2: but I know that for you, I can be at
Speaker 2: one hundred percent. I then have a couple of meetings
Speaker 2: in between which are requiring a different part of me
Speaker 2: that don't require this exclusive focus. And you're so right.
Speaker 2: I think we put so much pressure on ourselves that
Speaker 2: we expect this level of focus in every conversation, every meeting,
Speaker 2: throughout the whole day.
Speaker 1: In every situation you get some bad news, you got
Speaker 1: to know, I mean, not even gonna pull off too.
Speaker 1: You got to crunch you might be a But that's
Speaker 1: exactly that's again ecological validity in your environment. If I
Speaker 1: can a car crash, I can't go into my zen
Speaker 1: and pre surgery zen mode. I call my partner. I
Speaker 1: got to know where I'm at, and so there is
Speaker 1: no final guidance. It's just that your attention and focus,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. It's great because people think
Speaker 1: like like he's a robot. Now, man, I've been through
Speaker 1: a lot. I go through a lot, I feel a lot,
Speaker 1: but I've just realized that to deliver as a surgeon,
Speaker 1: here's the dance I do with my own mind to
Speaker 1: bring it for that patient. Because that patient trusted me
Speaker 1: on a journey that's sacred, and at that moment, that's
Speaker 1: all I'm about.
Speaker 2: Before we dive into the next moment, let's hear from
Speaker 2: our sponsors and back to our episode. I want to
Speaker 2: ask you by something you've mentioned before. You talked about
Speaker 2: this idea of this emotional memory that almost comes immediately,
Speaker 2: this idea that if and I often lead this meditation.
Speaker 2: It's one of my favorite ones to lead when I'm
Speaker 2: sharing it with my audience or community. And technically it's
Speaker 2: called a loving kindness medita, and what it means is
Speaker 2: I'll often ask people before we share love with the world,
Speaker 2: I edited it slightly for people to really experience love
Speaker 2: within themselves. So I'll ask people to close their eyes
Speaker 2: and get into that zone. But I'll ask them to
Speaker 2: go back to a memory where they felt the most joyful,
Speaker 2: the most happy, and the most love. Who was there,
Speaker 2: How did it smell, what could they see, what could
Speaker 2: they hear, what could they taste? And immediately people will
Speaker 2: have a vision. People think of their wedding day. People
Speaker 2: have even thought of their dog passing away because it
Speaker 2: was a really important transition point for them. It could
Speaker 2: be the first time they celebrated their parent or bought
Speaker 2: their parent a home or whatever it was. The ability
Speaker 2: to take care of someone. Yeah, it's really beautiful. It's different,
Speaker 2: but it's really interesting. What you said is for most
Speaker 2: of us, it's actually the opposite that we do more of.
Speaker 2: So it's more common for us to replay a negative
Speaker 2: memory again and again and again and again. Then it
Speaker 2: is for us to remember what we did last weekend,
Speaker 2: even if it was positive. Why do we do that?
Speaker 2: Why do we replay negative memories? Why is it so easy?
Speaker 2: And what do we do about it?
Speaker 1: Memory is imprinted with emotion for our protection, right like
Speaker 1: you see a snake. You don't want to have to
Speaker 1: think about it. It's a global thing. But roughly, as
Speaker 1: the brain blossomed, it went from brainstem which people call reptilian,
Speaker 1: to limbic structures that people call emotional or primal brain
Speaker 1: and prefrontal cortex, which is which is the part of
Speaker 1: the brain that pushed the brain forward. They have different regions,
Speaker 1: but they're all interconnected and they're hubs, so it's not
Speaker 1: a consistent texture throughout the brain. It's not like a liver,
Speaker 1: it's not like flaw And whereas like the brain. The
Speaker 1: brain is not one thing. It's a whole ecosystem, different structures,
Speaker 1: different connections, different cells, and memory and emotion are intertwined
Speaker 1: as part of the primal limbic structures. That's the way
Speaker 1: my puppy can sniff and smell out when I'm trying
Speaker 1: to trick her. I think about it in that way.
Speaker 1: How ingenious that it is. Like if you're going on
Speaker 1: a date night, You're like, hey, Frankie, Frankie, come come,
Speaker 1: She's like looking at you. Right, that's instinct. So emotion
Speaker 1: and memory and thoughts, that is the type of thinking
Speaker 1: I don't think of emotions. Are not thinking that. If
Speaker 1: you have a brain injury and you lose those primal centers,
Speaker 1: you're paralyzed. You can't make a decision. You can actually
Speaker 1: have an injury to your prefrontal cortex and still do
Speaker 1: a lot with just your limbic structure. So emotion and
Speaker 1: memory are important, right, you want that imprint. I saw
Speaker 1: a snake. I jumped before I thought about it. Then
Speaker 1: what also happens is we have emotional regulation. I saw
Speaker 1: the snake, I jump, Then I look down the second
Speaker 1: time and it's a plastic snake. I'm not worried about that,
Speaker 1: or I'm afraid of heights and exposure therapy. I could
Speaker 1: learn to tamp down my emotional responses with my prefrontal cortex,
Speaker 1: which is the area of the brain that pushed the
Speaker 1: forehead forward. Can think of it as two fists, and
Speaker 1: there's different regions that do different things that are fascinating.
Speaker 1: That's an important system, but that system is so hot
Speaker 1: for your protection that it could go sideways on you too.
Speaker 1: So what I think is important is that most of us,
Speaker 1: when we have traumatic experiences, we don't develop PTSD. The
Speaker 1: great majority of people from hurricanes and COVID and other things,
Speaker 1: they don't develop PTSD. There is a protective mechanism on
Speaker 1: how to deal with trauma, and that mechanism is learning
Speaker 1: to uncouple the emotional imprint of the limbic structures in
Speaker 1: the primal area of the brain, A mike diligious part
Speaker 1: of it. That I was hurt and the assailant was
Speaker 1: wearing a flannel jacket. Your immediate response is not to
Speaker 1: go down that alley. That's protective. When a year later
Speaker 1: you're not able to leave your home, I'm not judging you.
Speaker 1: I'd be the same way. I'm just saying that's something
Speaker 1: you want to work on. That emotional imprint is too strong.
Speaker 1: Then you go to somebody who can take you safely
Speaker 1: based on you feeling safe. Not every therapist's office is safe.
Speaker 1: You feel safe, you bring up that memory, your body
Speaker 1: has response, and you realize, you know what, it's okay.
Speaker 1: You do that ten times and what happens. You take
Speaker 1: the traumatic, negative, hurtful, scary emotion to that memory. You
Speaker 1: don't lose that memory. Those patients will tell you, yeah,
Speaker 1: now I can think of it, but it doesn't it
Speaker 1: doesn't take my breath away. Like that.
Speaker 2: You're extracting the story you have attached to that memory
Speaker 2: from that memory.
Speaker 1: Right, yeah, the negative imprint part of the story. Yes,
Speaker 1: you're not. You're not trying to forget about it. That's
Speaker 1: the most that's the threat. Like that's established. I don't
Speaker 1: know how that works. I'm not a therapist, but that's
Speaker 1: that's the point. There is the hippocampus, the hub from
Speaker 1: brain wide memory and limbic structure. Something happens. They're meant
Speaker 1: to stamp you. Don't go down that alley again, don't
Speaker 1: get hit with that snag again. Right, Like that that's
Speaker 1: the design. But what happens in our life is we're
Speaker 1: dealing with a lot of the hurt from it, from lovers,
Speaker 1: from experiences at work, and from assault that you know,
Speaker 1: I'm working in a hospital. People still get hurt quite
Speaker 1: a bit. And so when you're able to revisit a
Speaker 1: memory in a controlled environment and not have that harmful experience,
Speaker 1: you can dampen your emotional stamp onto that memory. You
Speaker 1: don't forget the memory, you just uncouple, disassociate the emotional feelings,
Speaker 1: the trauma, the fear, the physical reaction. And I don't
Speaker 1: know if that's a negativity bias or not. I don't
Speaker 1: have an answer for that. You ask, like, why do
Speaker 1: we always remember more painful things? I mean, maybe they're protective.
Speaker 1: It's more of evolutionary psychology. Maybe that helped us. There's
Speaker 1: no way to experiment or like, I can't give you
Speaker 1: that answer. But what I would say to you is,
Speaker 1: what if we did the flip side. Maybe that's the neurobiology.
Speaker 1: I'm not talking about neuroscience and the brain, the brain,
Speaker 1: just just to be specific, what if by remembering a
Speaker 1: positive memory, you are enhancing and accentuating the positive stamp
Speaker 1: that belief. Yeah, yeah, and the and because it's interconnected
Speaker 1: with hubs and continents and lobes. Not what if because
Speaker 1: it's interconnected. Just stay with me. If you have an
Speaker 1: emotional negative negative emotional stamp on a memory and it
Speaker 1: reverberates through your body, I mean, just gooseb I mean,
Speaker 1: you know it's it's like we can go over the connections,
Speaker 1: but it's a physiologic response. What if you could have
Speaker 1: by choice in that part of that prefrontal cortex area
Speaker 1: at the bottom called orbital frontal cortex. Without getting into
Speaker 1: the the details of it, but there's an internal referee
Speaker 1: of where we steer our thoughts in our competition of
Speaker 1: wants and thoughts. What if we spent time saying, bring
Speaker 1: up positive old memories, stamp them harder, put them in
Speaker 1: a collective environment that reinforces it, bring out the positive thinking,
Speaker 1: bring out the positive vibes. It could be physiologically possible
Speaker 1: to be the opposite of PTSD emotional stamping of the hippocampus.
Speaker 1: Now there's no experiment for that, but I believe in that.
Speaker 1: There's no reason not to believe in that. And if
Speaker 1: you do that, just remember it's not happening in a
Speaker 1: spot in your brain. It's reverberating through your brain and
Speaker 1: your body. So then maybe you stop having some of
Speaker 1: those somatic symptoms. Maybe maybe you feel that flow state
Speaker 1: where your body is different and your brain is different.
Speaker 1: So I believe that every nerve is two way. A touch,
Speaker 1: it goes up, I want to move, it's the same nerve.
Speaker 1: It's bidirectional. So why can't the relationship between our primal
Speaker 1: Olympic circuits whatever migdala and our memory zone and all interconnect.
Speaker 1: Why can't that be by directional? If we can stamp
Speaker 1: a negative memories that we don't fall in that trap again,
Speaker 1: What if we can stamp a positive memory and add
Speaker 1: momentum in that direction.
Speaker 2: This is a huge, huge thing I won't be able
Speaker 2: to take away because what we've kind of stumbled on
Speaker 2: here is so profound for people, because what we're saying is,
Speaker 2: don't try to forget the bad memory. If you try
Speaker 2: to forget the bad memory, it will never go away.
Speaker 2: That memory is going to stay there because it's trying
Speaker 2: to teach you something, it's trying to remind you something,
Speaker 2: it's trying to make you aware of something. But if
Speaker 2: you can change the story, if you can give it
Speaker 2: a different meaning, if you can extract the pain, because
Speaker 2: it just completely transforms. And I'm thinking about so many
Speaker 2: moments in my life that you're so right that now
Speaker 2: you can think of that memory. The memory is not gone,
Speaker 2: but the way I think of that moment, I think
Speaker 2: of it as being a powerful part of my story.
Speaker 2: I think of it as being a beautiful breakthrough from
Speaker 2: put that crisis to use absolutely and all of a sudden, Yeah,
Speaker 2: that's really.
Speaker 1: Because it's too hard to tell somebody to forget that.
Speaker 1: They're like, uh, but I don't mean to forget that.
Speaker 1: It's the only thing I'm thinking about. It's not fair
Speaker 1: to them.
Speaker 2: I think the problem is not just people telling us.
Speaker 2: I think we want to forget it.
Speaker 1: Well because of the language and the concepts that are
Speaker 1: out there. But if we're told, no, you haven't failed
Speaker 1: because you forgot to have that thought, you haven't failed.
Speaker 1: You haven't failed in your intentional efforts because that thing continues.
Speaker 3: To grip you just say, yeah, that's in your head,
Speaker 3: that's in your life, that's your Nobody knows what happened
Speaker 3: last night to me or you or that patient or
Speaker 3: anybody so it cannot be the same advice for everyone,
Speaker 3: but it can be the same concept.
Speaker 1: We don't have infinitely wild dreams. Our dreams follow some patterns. Well,
Speaker 1: our thoughts and emotions follow some patterns. Negative emotional imprinting
Speaker 1: built in. Turn that out its head and it'll be incremental.
Speaker 1: It's not gonna be a tomorrow. I see, I get it.
Speaker 1: I can hold on to that memory. I just can't
Speaker 1: feel bad about it. That's not going to happen in
Speaker 1: a second. It's not going to happen in a moment.
Speaker 1: There are epiphanies we can get into some things like that,
Speaker 1: but that's the direction that you want to put your
Speaker 1: attention and focus.
Speaker 2: Yeah no, and it applies to even what you were
Speaker 2: saying last time you were here. And for anyone who's listening,
Speaker 2: we're not going to dive into this topic today, but
Speaker 2: you can go back and listen to Doctor Rowl John
Speaker 2: Deelle's first episode on the podcast. You're talking about this
Speaker 2: powerful state for when we're kind of await, kind of
Speaker 2: asleep in the morning. You're talking about the need to
Speaker 2: journal at that time to sleep. I've been practicing it
Speaker 2: ever since we spoke. It's been one of my favorite things.
Speaker 2: I've talked about it with people, shared it with people,
Speaker 2: and it's amazing because I was saying to I was
Speaker 2: talking to my personal trainer today where when we're working out,
Speaker 2: and I was explaining to him that if you said
Speaker 2: in that time, I'm tired, like that's the first thing
Speaker 2: you think of. Now for the rest of the day,
Speaker 2: you're just looking for proof and confirmation that you're tired.
Speaker 2: So you look in the mirror and you see bags
Speaker 2: under your eyes and go, yeah, I knew I was tired.
Speaker 2: Then you get to the day and you're late for
Speaker 2: your meing and everything's feeling a bit slow, and you're like,
Speaker 2: I knew I was tired. And now what you're doing
Speaker 2: is you're just confirming that belief and it's not setting
Speaker 2: you up. Rather than saying, I'm going to look for
Speaker 2: energy today, I'm going to find rest today, I'm going
Speaker 2: to create a space for curiosity today, whatever it may be,
Speaker 2: you're now going to look for that. And I think
Speaker 2: that at the very base level, is how we wire
Speaker 2: what we look for and what our repeated thoughts are
Speaker 2: throughout the day. And so I really love that piece
Speaker 2: of advice. I'd love to encourage people to go back
Speaker 2: to it. But going back to the conversation we're having
Speaker 2: right now, one thing that comes to mind is a
Speaker 2: lot of people today are scared of going to therapy
Speaker 2: because they don't feel even if they don't say this consciously,
Speaker 2: they don't feel they want to bring something up because
Speaker 2: it's so painful. I interviewed someone a couple of months ago,
Speaker 2: and all I could think of the whole time was
Speaker 2: that they just couldn't go there. And they haven't gone
Speaker 2: not even in their public life on a podcast. They
Speaker 2: haven't gone there in their private life because they don't
Speaker 2: want to go there. Is it true that the brain
Speaker 2: will let you go there when you're ready or why
Speaker 2: is it that they're suppressing this negative experience.
Speaker 1: I don't have an answer for that. And you know, again,
Speaker 1: the concept of the brain as a as a single entity,
Speaker 1: I would say, you know, like our brain, mind and behavior.
Speaker 1: So I try to think of it as the brain
Speaker 1: creates a mind. It can create many minds, the dreaming mind,
Speaker 1: the waking mind. During the day, we have many minds.
Speaker 1: Sometimes you're frustrated, sometimes you're tired, and then there's behavior
Speaker 1: his mind. That person's mind might be saying this is
Speaker 1: something I need to address. It's eating me up. But
Speaker 1: the behavior doesn't translate to going to take those steps.
Speaker 1: And that's the thing I'm working on right now is
Speaker 1: the difference between mind and behavior, which comes down to
Speaker 1: sort of the internal referee. Again, like the brain is
Speaker 1: created the mind. The mind can actually go back and
Speaker 1: change the brain. So certain certain ways of thought can
Speaker 1: create grooves where electricity is more likely to flow, like
Speaker 1: it's kind of steering the aurora borealis of neuronal activity
Speaker 1: in your brain. And then but there's behavior. Behavior is fascinating.
Speaker 1: You can think I need to do this, and you don't, like,
Speaker 1: where's why does that not happen? Aren't you in charge
Speaker 1: of yourself? You're not. You have a competition of wants
Speaker 1: and behavior. You know what the right thing to do is?
Speaker 1: This person might say I need to tackle this. I
Speaker 1: would be better by tackling this. So mind and behavior
Speaker 1: is uncoupled. We don't always act on what we should
Speaker 1: do or have even decided to do. But then the
Speaker 1: original thing you ask suppression. But one of the coping
Speaker 1: mechanisms is a suppressing looking at something difficult, and I
Speaker 1: see that when I was I did a lot of
Speaker 1: pediatric neurosurgery. Like you got to give the parents time
Speaker 1: to deal with the sick child. So yeah, they're going
Speaker 1: to hold it at bay, they're going to suppress it.
Speaker 1: That does mean that's a pathologic or bad therapeutic technique.
Speaker 1: It's ecological validity, right, Like in that situation, we ain't
Speaker 1: judging parents who got sick kids, right because that's a
Speaker 1: stress we can't imagine. So for this person, I don't
Speaker 1: know what's going on in the other parts of the life,
Speaker 1: but suppression of something is uh is a basic but
Speaker 1: very effective and.
Speaker 2: So it shouldn't be forced out of people, is what
Speaker 2: I'm saying.
Speaker 1: I don't know what's going on with it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, No, I think that's a really important
Speaker 2: note because I think a lot of us, especially when
Speaker 2: you start doing some of this work, a lot of
Speaker 2: people want their family member to be like you need
Speaker 2: to go therapy, like you need to go look at
Speaker 2: your past. And I feel like it's well intentioned. Yeah,
Speaker 2: but you've got to be very careful because that person
Speaker 2: may actually need to wait a certain amount of time
Speaker 2: before they feel.
Speaker 1: Ready and to fully engage and to dilect I love
Speaker 1: the attention and focus thing, because you're not. You can't
Speaker 1: just show up. You got to put attention and focus
Speaker 1: to that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. So even if you force them to go
Speaker 2: but they weren't ready to engage, it's going to be
Speaker 2: even worse and they may walk out thinking that doesn't
Speaker 2: work for them or it was a useless waste of time.
Speaker 1: Right. And I think as a physician, as a surgeon,
Speaker 1: I see myself as a cancer surgeon. Yes, brain, but
Speaker 1: cancer surgeon. I never say you need this or you
Speaker 1: need that. You can choose to not have this life
Speaker 1: saving measure. You can choose to let this thing, you know,
Speaker 1: cause you pain. I'm just talking to you about leaving
Speaker 1: you with an understanding, an informed so you can make
Speaker 1: My role is to inform you about the things that
Speaker 1: are out there in this world, this medicine, that medicine,
Speaker 1: this surgery, that surgery, and then if you choose me
Speaker 1: to be your surgeon, I will give you everything. Then
Speaker 1: I feel like that's how it should be for psychological
Speaker 1: challenges as well, Like, hey, loved one, you know, I
Speaker 1: know you. I could see you're not doing well. These
Speaker 1: are kind of the things that are out there. You know,
Speaker 1: there's this, there's that, and there is no one path,
Speaker 1: and depression gives us that answer. For some people, it's
Speaker 1: the talking cure. For some people, it's the talking cure
Speaker 1: plus a medicine that interferes with serotonin at the neuronal level.
Speaker 1: For other people, they're so close to self harm that
Speaker 1: it's a ketamine's sniff in a hospital that breaks their
Speaker 1: suicidal ideation within twelve hours, Like, wow, how does that work?
Speaker 1: I'm fascinated with that. For other people it's I choose
Speaker 1: to have stickers placed on my scalp and get shock
Speaker 1: therapy at elite centers. Like so, if you look at depression,
Speaker 1: it's just so wide, and people say, well, this treatment
Speaker 1: didn't work. But yeah, because all of those treatments only
Speaker 1: work in some of those people. But please keep going
Speaker 1: because there might be something that works for you. That's
Speaker 1: what I think. Where whereas therapy it's just it's too encapsulated.
Speaker 1: It may not have the term is encapsulated. I love
Speaker 1: the field. I've been reading about it, like cognitive reappraisal
Speaker 1: and how to stop bodily urges. Like, I love the field,
Speaker 1: but the deliveries sometimes not nuanced enough, nurturing enough inviting
Speaker 1: enough for the other person. So I would say, think
Speaker 1: about how you know people engage cancer page like, you
Speaker 1: don't have to do anything, but do you know that
Speaker 1: these things exist and may benefit you, may harm you?
Speaker 1: Depression the wide range. I think that is where I
Speaker 1: would like to see the term therapy go. So it's
Speaker 1: not a you ain't doing well, I got it all
Speaker 1: figured out. I'm judging you with this term. It's more
Speaker 1: of an invitation, an exploration that has benefited me. You
Speaker 1: may want to consider it.
Speaker 2: I remember growing up, I used to always hear the
Speaker 2: phrase we're only using five percent of the brain's potential.
Speaker 2: How true is that?
Speaker 1: Well, over here it was twenty That's the urban legend.
Speaker 1: And I think it's exciting because you think, like, hey,
Speaker 1: if I did this, I think there was a movie
Speaker 1: Radley Cooper. Yeah, like, okay, I'm I'm just waiting on.
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna be at the boss of all of
Speaker 1: this ones. I get the rest of this eighty this
Speaker 1: eighty percent kicking in. It's it's a myth, and ILL
Speaker 1: explain to you why a couple of clear reasons you've
Speaker 1: earned it. I know, but ostillly if people inspired because
Speaker 1: it's such an energy hog. I don't want to run
Speaker 1: all the brain matter to tie my shoelaces. So habits
Speaker 1: will manage with just in that ecosystem of jellyfish, just
Speaker 1: the lightest shiver of electricity will shiver through some neurons
Speaker 1: to tie my shoelaces. We want to be efficient, right,
Speaker 1: so we only use twenty percent of our brain at
Speaker 1: a time to do most things. But there is no
Speaker 1: hidden corner, and we know that categorically now with brain scans,
Speaker 1: the whole region lights up. It just lights up in
Speaker 1: different ways for different tasks. I think what's inspiring for
Speaker 1: people is to know that when you try to learn
Speaker 1: something new, when you try to activate something new, it's
Speaker 1: gonna feel like work. Like let's not it's not going
Speaker 1: to be easy. But once you get over that, it's
Speaker 1: called activation energy. Once you get over that, once you
Speaker 1: put in the original work. The best way I can
Speaker 1: describe it, you're going down a mountain. You're falling the
Speaker 1: same sleep, the slopes, the ski the grooves on the
Speaker 1: mountain that all the skiers are on. It's going to
Speaker 1: take work to create another groove of thought, of feeling,
Speaker 1: of emotion. But after a while it doesn't require the
Speaker 1: same amount of effort, so that again there's decremental vigilance
Speaker 1: and surgery, but there's also like, hey, this thing you're
Speaker 1: trying to change, put a couple months into it, lockdown
Speaker 1: for a couple months, and then the years afterwards, it'll
Speaker 1: be in your pocket. It'll be easier. It's not going
Speaker 1: to be uphill forever.
Speaker 2: Yeah, thanks for busting the myth. The last thing I
Speaker 2: wanted to talk to you about, Roll was this. You know,
Speaker 2: so many young people today are getting cancer. I just
Speaker 2: had my friend forty two, just you know, out of surgery.
Speaker 2: Thankfully's to be okay. I think I lost a friend
Speaker 2: a few years ago to carlon cancer. So many younger
Speaker 2: people are getting cancer. We keep hearing it used to
Speaker 2: be one in four, then one in three. Maybe it's
Speaker 2: going to get to one in two people have cancer.
Speaker 2: What do we do?
Speaker 1: That's a big question. So that when you look at
Speaker 1: last last thirty forty years, there have been some positive shifts.
Speaker 1: Cancer treatments are leading to significantly improved lifespan and quality
Speaker 1: of life for cancer patients. Lung cancer rates here are
Speaker 1: going down. They're starting to pop up in other countries
Speaker 1: where there's pollution, So there are shifts in cancer. The
Speaker 1: concerning shift is certain cancers, breast and coal in particular,
Speaker 1: are if on average they popped up at a certain age,
Speaker 1: that curve. You know, there's some early outliers and some
Speaker 1: late outliers, but the bulk of the curve that drives
Speaker 1: you know, understanding of how to manage that at a
Speaker 1: global and at a national level, that curve is shifting
Speaker 1: earlier and in particular for women. And that's you know,
Speaker 1: Chadwick Boseman got caught people's eyes, you know, with the
Speaker 1: Black Panther. That's somebody that was very young. You started
Speaker 1: to see people with breast cancer at much younger age.
Speaker 1: That doesn't mean they're all passing away, but two questions
Speaker 1: quickly arise, what's going on that's causing it? And then
Speaker 1: what do we do differently to catch it? Right? While
Speaker 1: waiting to figure out why it's happening? Do we need
Speaker 1: to change how we live, how we screen and that
Speaker 1: sort of thing? What's causing it? I don't know. I
Speaker 1: used to get asked this thing, like are there more
Speaker 1: brain tumors? Because everybody's on a cell phone now it's
Speaker 1: not on our ear, but the global rates of brain
Speaker 1: tumors didn't change the earlier cancers. People are saying, well,
Speaker 1: is it microplastics, is it something else? Is it that?
Speaker 1: I don't know. It's a hard thing to design an
Speaker 1: experiment for. You're not going to give a thousand people
Speaker 1: microplastics and a thousand people pretend microplastics as a and
Speaker 1: so you have to look at the data that's available
Speaker 1: to you. But there is a concern that our food,
Speaker 1: our air, our water is not good enough for people
Speaker 1: should receive more attention we deserve as a human right,
Speaker 1: better food, water, the link to cancer. I can't say
Speaker 1: that that's categorically there. What's very important is for those
Speaker 1: people out there living with that fear now, like cancers
Speaker 1: coming earlier, why not give them something that's good for
Speaker 1: them that may also be protective for these cancers. I
Speaker 1: think a lot of people on the flip side, like
Speaker 1: there was this thing like you don't need an experiment
Speaker 1: to say that if you don't open a parachute, you're
Speaker 1: not going to do well. We don't need tons of
Speaker 1: proof to say we should improve health at the systemic right.
Speaker 1: We just talked about ten years of a certain diet,
Speaker 1: what if ten years of bad water, bad food, and
Speaker 1: bad process is is the culprit, even though I can't
Speaker 1: prove it, that's the right thing to do, and I
Speaker 1: think it gives people a sense of power. Okay. On
Speaker 1: the flip side, screening needs to move early. If screening
Speaker 1: for colon cancer in the past is forty five fifty,
Speaker 1: we need to start screening people earlier. It's easy imaging.
Speaker 1: You don't have to have an invasive procedure. And here
Speaker 1: we need more reduction of what I call barriers to care.
Speaker 1: Right it's in our field. There are medicines in screening
Speaker 1: and treatment that people don't even know about. People don't
Speaker 1: even get to is a language barrier. Maybe somebody can't
Speaker 1: afford the bus. So as I work in my laboratory
Speaker 1: to make new medicine, we got to make sure the
Speaker 1: medicine and the care we got gets to everybody. So
Speaker 1: that's reduction the barriers to care education. You know, what
Speaker 1: we're doing on television, what we're doing on messaging is
Speaker 1: to start the screening a little bit earlier. And that's
Speaker 1: important because both breston and colon they grow in stages one, two, three, four,
Speaker 1: and wherever you're at if you catch it one stage earlier,
Speaker 1: that's less medicine, maybe no medicine, less surgery, maybe no surgery.
Speaker 1: So it doesn't matter where you catch it. You want
Speaker 1: that feeling of I'm glad I got screened and I
Speaker 1: caught it earlier. So those are my two suggestions.
Speaker 2: It's such a fascinating time we're living in because I
Speaker 2: think there's more data available than ever, but a lot
Speaker 2: of us are scared of seeing that data as well,
Speaker 2: and there's a fear of not wanting something but finding
Speaker 2: out too early as well. Let's you know, it is
Speaker 2: a lot of scared. And the biggest thing that I
Speaker 2: think you raised today, which I'm glad that you're focused
Speaker 2: on figuring it out, is that mind behavior disconnect, because
Speaker 2: I think we all know what we have to do.
Speaker 2: Everyone knows what they need to change, right me, and
Speaker 2: you don't have to tell them. We're all aware, but
Speaker 2: we just can't seem to do it. If you had
Speaker 2: to give anyone any final words on that, for anyone
Speaker 2: who's been listening today going I want to change my diet,
Speaker 2: for anyone who's listening today saying to us, you know,
Speaker 2: I want to work out more, For anyone listening to
Speaker 2: us today and saying I want to challenge myself more,
Speaker 2: but I feel on MOTI, I feel tired. I'm just exhausted.
Speaker 2: I'm overworked and overwhelmed. What would you say to them.
Speaker 1: To give you a big picture? You as creatures in
Speaker 1: this world, we have a reciprocal relationship with our environment.
Speaker 1: The brilliance and beauty is that we have choice. The
Speaker 1: like the first cell by the deep water. You know,
Speaker 1: we used to just drift away from toxins, but then
Speaker 1: at some point a single cell said that's nutrition. I
Speaker 1: want to swing over there, and then a collective of
Speaker 1: cells and then animals and creat so we have choice.
Speaker 1: This is like I love this. And the newest part
Speaker 1: of that prefrontal cortex, as describing to you the little
Speaker 1: the newest neurons like sedimentary layers. You know, you can
Speaker 1: see like where the dinosaurs are. You cut a tree
Speaker 1: and you can see. You can agent you figure out
Speaker 1: you in the brain, you can figure out which are
Speaker 1: the newest neurons are in this area called the orbital
Speaker 1: frontal cortex, which is orbital. It's just it's just descriptive.
Speaker 1: It just above your eyeballs and at the bottom of
Speaker 1: your front of lobes, you know, like right behind your forehead,
Speaker 1: but at the bottom, you know, and the cells there
Speaker 1: if they're injured. People have a hard time changing political beliefs,
Speaker 1: like it's different. It's it's a decision maker, and they
Speaker 1: call it the arbitrator system that it decides between things.
Speaker 1: So again, tell your shoelaces, that's not a big decision,
Speaker 1: a decision made for you. That's not a big decision.
Speaker 1: But there's a competition of wants. I want to do this,
Speaker 1: but I also want to do this. I want to
Speaker 1: have this piece of bacon, but I want to you know,
Speaker 1: I don't want to eat it. That's where we are
Speaker 1: at our most vulnerable and best, you know, that's where
Speaker 1: we're human. And rather than feeling frustrated by those wants
Speaker 1: that you can't always pursue the way you really choose
Speaker 1: to inside your mind, like I want to do this,
Speaker 1: but I don't get there. My mind is ready to
Speaker 1: do it, but my behavior doesn't reflect that. That that's
Speaker 1: called your internal referee's the it's the decision maker. And
Speaker 1: what I would the specific guide that would give people
Speaker 1: is that internal referee is vulnerable. Okay, so you want
Speaker 1: to work with that internal referee. You want to do
Speaker 1: a handful of things. Once, you want to know attention
Speaker 1: and focus is limited. Two, you want to know it
Speaker 1: is susceptible to attentional magnets. You want to stop smoking,
Speaker 1: We'll be careful looking up at that gas station, at
Speaker 1: those shiny boxes. You want to avoid eating something, and
Speaker 1: you know is you know your struggle to get there.
Speaker 1: Work with that internal referee. One, break the compulsions, break
Speaker 1: the attentional magnets that make you look at something, and
Speaker 1: then that decision goes downhill. You're like, ah, now it's
Speaker 1: at the gate. So the first thing is when it's
Speaker 1: in your head, think it out. This trips me up.
Speaker 1: I want to space myself from this. I want to
Speaker 1: physically distance myself from this. I want to only get
Speaker 1: a little bit of coke and then drive away. Right,
Speaker 1: whatever you're working on, I'm not judging anybody, But first
Speaker 1: is to give yourself the physical and psychological distance from
Speaker 1: attentional magnets that have you shift away from the want
Speaker 1: that you had decided you wanted. Two is then then
Speaker 1: if you're in it and you're like, Okay, I didn't
Speaker 1: want to have this food. I didn't want to have
Speaker 1: this puff. I didn't want to have this snort whatever,
Speaker 1: whatever your thing is. Once you're going down that road,
Speaker 1: now your internal referee is a different creature. Now, what
Speaker 1: you're trying to do is prevent it from becoming an urge.
Speaker 1: For smokers, you're looking at the shiny box, you walk outside,
Speaker 1: you smell. You want to get away from your thought
Speaker 1: hijacking your body because now you're jones and you've got
Speaker 1: your shivering. Now it becomes a physiologic thing. The game
Speaker 1: isn't lost. You can still turn it around, but you
Speaker 1: need to know the steps of desires as they happen,
Speaker 1: as in your competition of wants, and work with yourself,
Speaker 1: break potential magnets. Don't let it become an urge if
Speaker 1: you do decide to. There's a whole thing called wanting
Speaker 1: and seeking. That's fine. I'm gonna have this smoke, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna have one puff, I'm gonna throw away the pack.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna have this bacon, but I'm only gonna I'm
Speaker 1: gonna mitigate. I'm only gonna have one piece rather than
Speaker 1: have the whole thing. There are steps in the way
Speaker 1: we negotiate our wants, so It's not just I wanted
Speaker 1: to do this but it didn't happen. Develop your arsenal,
Speaker 1: the errors in your quiver of this is a competing
Speaker 1: want and I've got one two things through the three
Speaker 1: things I'm going to do.
Speaker 2: I love that, doctor l Johndelle. It's such a joy
Speaker 2: every time you hear. And I hope you'll come back
Speaker 2: when your new book's ready and everyone's been listening and
Speaker 2: watching back at home. When you're traveling, whatever you're up to,
Speaker 2: make sure you tag me and doctor John Deell on Instagram,
Speaker 2: on TikTok, wherever you push your clips, because I want
Speaker 2: to see what resonated with you. I want to see
Speaker 2: what connected with you. I always take away so much
Speaker 2: when I meet you. Honestly, it's things that stay with
Speaker 2: me for a long time, and they're good memories and
Speaker 2: the good lessons. So I'm very grateful for your time
Speaker 2: and energy. Thanks so much for coming back. If you
Speaker 2: love this episode, you'll enjoy my interview with doctor Daniel
Speaker 2: Ahman on how to change your life by changing your brain.
Speaker 1: If we want a healthy mind, it actually starts with
Speaker 1: a healthy brain. You know, I've had the blessing or
Speaker 1: the curve to scan over a thousand convicted felons and
Speaker 1: over a hundred murderers, and their brains are very damaged.