No.1 Neuroscientist: Stress Leaks Through Skin, Is Contagious & Gives You Belly Fat!- Dr. Tara Swart

frozen or they would have no food. He needed to ensure that at least five women became pregnant. their sperm at the same time, so that if there was a food shortage or there was a stillbirth or a miscarriage or whatever, at least one in five would survive, in order to do that they had to be fertile at the same time, so that is why that mechanism exists now, we don't need it now, but it's still connected to the way we operate, so those sex steroid hormones like estrogen and progesterone leak out of sweat at this distance around us and that's why that if you live with another woman or if you know that you sit at your desk every day, then the hormone particles from my sweat would enter through the other woman's

skin

if she is how far away I mean, they wouldn't have to be sitting next to each other if they lived together then that means they are interacting enough for it to happen well so the particles don't if they work together If they work together and sit next to each other every day then that too It happens, so you know that in a small office that has like six girls, menstrual synchronization will happen.

Funnily enough, it's run by the alpha female, so yeah. Can you find out if you don't already know who the alpha female is? Well if you know, basically let's say that My cycles don't change and everyone says: Oh, I have my period early or I haven't had my period yet, but now it started, then that would mean that I was probably the alpha female, how does the body who is the alpha female? That will have to do with testosterone levels, why the body, why does that matter, who is the alpha female, why? It matters that they synchronize with it.

No, I don't know if it really matters. I think it's just a case of physiology, so it's a bit like in gorilla troops, the

stress

levels of the silverback gorilla affect the other. gorillas more than gorillas who appear to each other, so we have a natural hierarchy and it must also be related to survival, so she was probably the person who the alpha male was going to impregnate first, probably, so everyone must to fit in. line because when she starts having sex they need to be ready, yeah, okay, and it's also probably going to have to do with things like, you know, survival jeans, so they're going to be the people with the toughest genes because that's what you will want to pass. she's fine too, it makes sense more resilient, okay, so where were we

stress

ing the contagion?

All the hormones in the menstrual cycle, basically, cortisol is a hormone that works the same way, so cortisol is the main stress hormone and it doesn't matter if you are a man or a woman, but it does matter where you are in the hierarchy of the organization, as I just mentioned, usually in that conversation that I mentioned to you when you walk into a room and then you feel completely exhausted, usually the person who comes feeling exhausted is less important than the person who has had that effect on you. them and that's why this is so crucial to leadership because your stress levels as a leader as a CEO will have more of an impact on everyone else than everyone else. basically together, so managing stress is obviously important for you, but it's important in terms of what happens to other people and the first problem I ran into was CEOs and CFOs who said, well, no.

I'll show them I'm stressed, I won. I won't tell you what's happening with the numbers. I won't show emotion in front of them and I said they will still know physiologically that it will affect them, so now you really have to do something about it. and the other thing about cortisol, which is pretty fun, well one of the side effects is pretty fun is that as a survival mechanism, it will help you store fat around your abdomen so you know back in the cave if you potentially don't. you will like. find food for a month that if you had extra fat around your abdomen you could digest it and survive until you could find food, so with my clients in financial services it got to a point where as soon as I walked into the room they just raised their hands. t-shirt and say, "You know how I've been the last month," and then I had a very, very funny incident when I was speaking in a bank and the CEO's personal assistant was in the audience and I was explaining to him that you know.

Leadership stress seeps in and she says that stress can lead to

belly

fat that you can't get rid of and she yelled that he's the reason I'm fat, but Steve, no one really laughed, yeah, and that's when I knew I was Well, he obviously is like that. Stressing everyone out, oh God, no one lost, not out of fear or anything, or just because everyone thought it was true, it wasn't funny, it was true, Jesus, so stress causes

belly

fat, belly fat that's really hard to get rid of. change, so again what you would see. with people is that they said oh, I've gained a little weight around the waist, you know how to do something about it, so I started eating less.

I started exercising more and I still can't change. Over and over again, that's when I would explain that this is the impact of cortisol, as long as you keep losing extra cortisol, nothing is going to change and like I said, even exercising more or eating better, less or differently, whatever it is. , it would not change. that fat, you had to get to the root because you had to reduce cortisol. It also got me thinking that when you consider promoting someone in your organization, you need to be very careful not to put a particularly stressed individual with high cortisol

leaks

in the organization. there's going to be a significant impact for everyone below them, yes, it's that accurate, yes, yes, no, that's a very good way to put it.

I mean, I always think of that phrase: what got you here, won't get you there, which is more about the fact that people get promoted because they're good at what they do, but they're not actually taught all the best things. management and leadership skills, but that is a really pertinent point if there is one person who is stressed particularly suppresses stress, something that some of these successful people do, then it would have an impact on the entire organization, then the question arises, then, If someone is listening to this and says, you know what? I am a cortisol leaky person.

I am highly stressed and it is probably affecting the people around me, what can I do about it? First of all, if someone says that half the battle is won, the problem is when people aren't aware of that, um, but let's say you are, so let's say I give them that list of signs and symptoms that you have high levels of cortisol including things like sleep disruption because cortisol is part of the 24-hour clock melatonin helps us wake up cortisol helps us fall asleep cortisol helps us wake up, you may have noticed fat in the belly, because of the really strong connection between the brain and the gut, any kind of reflux or indigestion symptoms are often signs that you also have high levels of cortisol and of course things like irritability. and mood swings, the thing I hear people say the most is that I can stay calm when I'm at work, but when I get home, if my kids are, you know, annoying or if my partner asks too much, I just complain. , so that means you're one step away from breaking out at work if someone pushes you too hard, so that's not good because cortisol is pro-inflammatory and it also dries out the system a lot, so you may notice that your

skin

is very dry or If you have skin problems, your skin is not only the physical limit of your body, it is also the psychological limit of your body, so often stress appears on the skin, so there are two main things you can do, one is the physical exercise because you can literally sweat out cortisol. get out of your body so you can sweat out the excess cortisol from your body by doing aerobic exercise.

The other one is journaling, so write down what's on your mind instead of just leaving it there and going around and around or if I have a therapist or a trusted friend who talks it out loud, so it's all about eliminate cortisol or negative thoughts associated with stress from the brain-body system. I think this is fascinating. I looked at the back of our YouTube channel. and it says that since this channel started, 69.9 percent of you who watch it frequently have not yet pressed the Subscribe button, so I am kind enough to ask you if you have ever watched this channel and enjoyed the content if you are enjoying. episode right now, please, can I ask you a small favor?

Press the Subscribe button. It helps this channel more than I can explain and I promise that if you do it to return the favor, we will make this show better and better and better and better and better, that's the promise I'm willing to give you if you push the Subscribe button. We have a deal? I've had a real revelation in my life over the last um maybe six months about sleeping again. That's why I said, I think, before we started recording that. I don't have any meetings scheduled before 11 a.m. m. and I sleep with the eye mask on and I just wake up when I wake up, yeah we do, oh really, yeah, I never met anyone who had that.

It's a privilege. I have to admit it. not everyone can do it due to work circumstances, but the importance of sleep, you are a

neuroscientist

, yes, there are many people who have dysfunctional sleep, we live in a world where I feel that it is increasingly difficult to have good sleep. Um, how important is that for the brain and also you know we're talking about stress, but yeah, containing our stress levels is so important that I can't stop talking about it and I understand that for some people it's not an option. that they just don't sleep well or their sleep is interrupted because they have small children or they work shifts, so I'm not particularly talking about people where there is a reason why you can't sleep this way.

I'm mainly directing this outwards, if you have a choice, this is the way you need to sleep and that's why if you don't have a choice, there are some things you can do to mitigate it as well, I mean, obviously. I have worked shifts as a junior doctor in the NHS and I travel a lot so I am jet lagged half the time but I try to do everything I can to make that as good as possible and the reason is that we have always known that when You sleep, you leave your memories and new learnings, you process your emotions, the cells and the body regenerate.

We know that for a long time that has never been enough to make these highly motivated CE level people want to give up. eight hours a night to sleep, you know, if they feel like they can get by with four or five, then they'd rather do it because they have so much to do. Eight hours and 15 minutes is ideal in population norms studies so that doesn't mean it's for everyone, but for most people that's ideal, actually sleeping more than that can be depressogenic, so it can be start to lower your mood, so you don't want to sleep for more than nine hours, but the ideal is to do so. in bed for nine hours to sleep that amount of time, so there was award-winning research between 2012 and 2014, when we were just starting to understand how important clearing the brain is during the night, so this brand new system that doesn't We knew there was what is called the glymphatic system, it is like the lymphatic system of your body, but it has to do with glial cells, which is why it was called the glymphatic system.

That system is a very active type of brain waterway cleaning system. We used to think that the There is fluid around the brain and there are ventricles that are like lakes and then there are areas that passively drip through the brain at night. We weren't expecting to see spurts of fluid flushing toxins from the brain, so these are exactly the things I see in the pathology of dementia diseases like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, like Tau proteins, amyloid plaques, and neurofibrillary tangles. How do you say that in English those things are very actively removed from the brain during the night and that process takes seven to eight hours to complete? cleanliness that's why you need to be in bed for eight to nine hours, so seven or eight hours are needed for a restful sleep or just being in bed just sleeping, not in bed, if you're in bed awake , you're not asleep, you know? you have to be asleep, but you will go through different sleep cycles every 90 minutes, this is not on time, this only takes seven or eight hours to eliminate this stuff from your brain, so one of the things I do say for people who don't sleep well is that if you find yourself awake at night and you're not lying on your side, get on your side because that's the best position for this cleansing process.

In fact, I have a special pillow that makes me sleep. on my side because I didn't naturally sleep on my side, so it doesn't matter if it's left or right, but that's a better position in terms of the neck veins than sleeping on your back or front, so that's one thing. you can do it, oh youyou woke up, you know your sleep was disturbed, at least turn on your side, what is this special pillow? I guess you just boasted about her and then moved on. I feel like it's a memory foam pillow. Can I mention the brand? of course yes we will make sure they sponsor it before the memory foam pillow this one is from Temple UK and they actually gave it to me because I was talking about seeing things from the side yeah that's great okay I sleep on my side .

My girlfriend sleeps on her back but I can't sleep on my back, it's funny because I start on my front and it lasts 15 minutes because my lower back hurts, yes I turn on my side but I've always wondered. If there was um, when you look at the tribes and our ancestors, how they would sleep, they would sleep in groups, they would sleep alone, they would sleep on their side, on their back, do you know the answers to any of that? um, I know that sleeping together is definitely how we evolved from co-sleeping in groups and what I find interesting is that it was necessary to snuggle up like that to have physical warmth in the cave, but also because of that proximity and interaction you got more bonding hormone, oxytocin, so you also experienced the warmth of being part of a tribe, um and I think they took their side because they would have to be prepared for an attack from a predator, so you need to keep your dominant arm, ready for, you know , grab something and they most likely slept on their left because they would have been protecting their most vital organs, the heart, I'm just thinking about this binding chemical and how it comes out when we're. very close many couples many people I sometimes also sleep in the extra room because I have work commitments but that will mean that I get up early or my partner has work commitments I mean she gets up early but even some of my friends who are in The early stages of parenthood have separated and have a divorce situation during sleep.

When you talked about the link in oxytocin that is released when we are very close and obviously during the night is when we literally touch each other. Is it conceivable that by separating rooms and divorcing ourselves from sleep we are eroding our bond? I would never, you would never sleep in a different room than maybe if there was a small baby and one person had to go to work and one person didn't, but that's temporary and ideally people would find ways to compensate for that. I mean, I guess you're in a love bubble with the baby's oxytocin at the time, so that's pretty neuroprotective. but sleeping together is fundamental to our survival, it was physically when we were in the cave, but now I would say that emotionally, spiritually, it is fundamental to our survival.

What do you mean by sleeping together just to clarify, sleeping together, mainly in You know, in our society that's as a couple, but in many other cultures, the whole family sleeps together, why would you never do that? You seemed very passionate about it because the bond, the physical warmth, the skin-to-skin contact is very good for you. I love the confidence, you know, I mean, I'll tolerate it if someone wakes up early and I don't have to wake up at that time. I'll even tolerate it so you get less quality sleep. There will be no less quality, see if I used HIV monitors and showed that even at that time, if my husband woke up at five and I didn't wake up before eight and he kissed me goodbye, he gave me a peak. of resilience at that moment resilience yes, how is that measured?

So I was using that finished technology, where you wear the HRV monitor with a gel pad on your chest, and it's color-coded based on whether you're doing light exercise, heavy exercise. whether you're stressed or whether you're regaining resilience and most people regain resilience overnight, but you know you can see clearly with people with young children that you can see when they wake them up during the night because they would be distressing, some people regain resilience. during the day, if you know, let's say you're with your partner or your brother and you're just sitting together and it's super relaxed or if you love your job, you know you can see that happening during the day too, but because I'm so obsessed with my sleep that I normally wouldn't accept any disturbance of it, but the power of sleeping together and cuddling all night is so neuroprotective that I would encourage everyone to do it if they can.

I also know some people who say "oh, I sleep." better if I sleep alone, um, but we are not meant to survive alone, we are meant to survive as part of a tribe and I think you know this now, since the pandemic, people are more lost, alone and disconnected than ever if I have someone who you can actually sleep with during the night. I highly suggest you do it, so I want to go in that direction because I'm very compelled by it, the change in the world and the loss, the lonely, the disconnected, but just pause for a second on this word resilience that you're using related to heart rate variability that you're talking about like a physiological resilience like the body is more resilient versus the kind of when we talk about resilience we say in a more psychological context of like it can withstand the most stressful pressure, but you would use the heart rate variability monitor that measures the distance between heartbeats and you saw that when your husband kissed you, your heart rate variability increased, meaning your body was physiologically more resilient. measures both because it compares your heart rate variability to your heart rate, okay, then you know if you're exercising because your heart rate has increased, but if your heart rate is at the same base level, then then then the change in variability. it can mean you're stressed or you're regaining resilience if your heart rate is high then obviously it's physical but it's a factor of both so it's not just about physical resilience but when it's in this turquoise color.

Zone that's actually more about regaining psychological resilience, but you know those two things feed off each other, but you can tell the difference because of your heart rate, so obviously I was asleep, so my heart rate was low and you saw what on the monitor. He literally saw us, but because he also does it every 15 minutes and I saw the highest point of turquoise at that exact moment. It's funny because my girlfriend, about a month or two months ago, I left the house pretty early in the morning. maybe at the same time, 6 a.m. in the morning, when she was still in bed and I approached her and gave her a big kiss.

I basically kissed all around, if this is so soft, I kissed all over her face and her nose and I just gave her a big hug and stuff and walked away like I got in the taxi and got out of whatever and she told me the same day or the day after he left, I don't know what happened there, but something is unlocked. on me and you know, then my girlfriend went on to say that he had had some challenges with her menstrual cycle and she had her period, that's amazing, he's always right when he tells me things and she knows it, but I I give him. credit I'm always skeptical because we think differently she's quite spiritual I'm very like I need some science and um she told me that and I just thought that a kiss and a hug in the morning couldn't have had any physiological impact on her, but now I'm starting to wonder if I was wrong once again, that's surprising.

I mean, you know some of these things can't necessarily be explained immediately by science, but if you use your intuition, then you have to do it. ask yourself and I feel like you're starting to think that might be true when I'm given a reason I accept things if you know if there's even a Slither of science that could justify it then I come up with the ideas but I need the science. Do you think men and women are different in terms of their intuition and their ability to love? You're smiling, your ability to understand some of these forces that exist in the air because my girlfriend seems to be so in tune with feelings and intuition and I'm less so, yeah, so let's put it this way, if you had a hundred people in a room , 50 men and 50 women, and you asked them to line up in order of height, not all. men would be taller than all the women in the middle, there would be some kind of mix and it's like that with the brain and intuition and everything else, so yes, there are some, there is some disparity, so I think most People would agree that there seem to be more women than men in touch with their intuition, but it is not at all that all women versus all men.

Do you think women are more in touch with their intuition? I think they are more open to accepting that it exists and I think More men need science to explain how intuition works. Interesting. I wonder if there was a neurological reason in the brain for that. I think there would be more women and men who believe in intuition and who like feelings that are difficult to explain in this, yes. You know, that's changed a lot, I mean, I remember when I was teaching at MIT about seven years ago and I was teaching the science of intuition, someone really stood up, you know, it's all the senior leaders in the classroom, it's executive education, someone stood up and I said well, I'm not going to make a really important decision like hiring or firing based on my intuition.

It's me and he was pretty young and some of the older guys turned around and said this is how I would make my decision. and my biggest decisions, but at the time it was still like not everyone was really sure that that was your superpower, but I think people are starting to understand more that with age and experience and wisdom you do understand that the Intuition is actually your strongest. It should be your strongest decision-making modality, what is intuition? Because you can't remember everything you've experienced in your entire life, but you know somewhere in the neural architecture and you also know in the gut neurons that the information is stored.

Because you have experienced it, then perhaps you would say that you understand that wisdom and experience are the product of patterns that you have seen repeating in your life and that are conscious to you. Intuition is the lessons you have learned along the way. you are not aware of them, but they are still stored in your nervous system, so the less aware you are of them, the deeper they are pushed into the nervous system, which is why there is a process called Hebian learning named after

neuroscientist

Donald Hebb and that Basically, you know, the neurons that fire together connect with each other, but the things that you have learned today, like the things that you have learned from talking to me, are going to be very present in your mind and like little paths that just they connect to each other, but things that you learn when you were five, like when you put your hand in the fire and it burned you and you never want to do that again, that's something that deep down you're not really aware of. that, but you already know it and other things you may not remember, so we believe that that wisdom is pushed from the outer cortex towards the limbic system, which is the emotional system of the brain, towards the brain stem, towards the spinal cord and towards the gut neurons and that's why they sometimes call it gut instinct because it's that feeling of knowing something but not knowing why you know it, but it actually has to do with the fact that you have wisdom and experience, which is embodied in you, but you're not necessarily aware of it, it's quite surprising to hear that those memories that wisdom can be in the gut people think of you, you know, I think I'm certainly someone who always thought that my cognition, my memories and everything my intelligence exist. only in my brain your memories and your cognition and your IQ are in your brain but your intuition is in your brain and your instinct this sounds super stupid but I don't care I should be I should be honest about my stupidity where? my intestine I thought it was like my stomach that's where I put the food yeah so you know you have your stomach you have your small intestine you have your large intestine yeah you have other organs your liver your spleen your kidneys and they are all innovative which means that they all have nerves in them, just like your heart, so you know we could have a similar conversation like this about your heart too because your heart only knows how to be because of nerves that penetrate it, so you know this round brain here and the spinal cord that goes down the center of your back that

gives

rise to all the neurons that go out to your arms, your legs, all your organs, your skin, which is your largest organ and that's how it works because each part of your body doesn't have nerve cells or you know nerve pathways in them, so that's the connection that brings us back to what I was saying about the connection of the brain and the body.

They are intimately connected and it is a two-way thing, they cannot exist without each other and the more you understand that there is that constant feedback going back and forth, the more you can take advantage of that type of thing, the moreyou can. You know it days before you get sick. I bet your girlfriend knows it days before she gets a cold or the flu, yes she knows it, yes, all the time, and my clients never know it, and as soon as they go on vacation, they get sick. all week why when they go on vacation because they suppress it so they can do their job and you can suppress the illness or you just can't not recognize it, it's not necessarily that they had a cold virus that they suppressed, but that your body Do you know what?

Cortisol is weakening the immune system and as soon as it breaks down, that's when it succumbs? And there was a time after the financial crisis when there were people who said, "You know, I've had this cold for about four weeks or six weeks, but everyone has it, and I said, I'm sorry, but do you really think that is it normal? Do you think it's normal to have a cold for more than a week and you know? It takes a challenge like that because also the other thing that happens when you think in a group, whether it's at work or in your social circle, is it? that we don't challenge ourselves enough on that kind of thing, so if a friend said, oh, I've had this code for six weeks I could say, "Poor you," but if I wouldn't, someone might, but.

You know, it's also about saying: Is there something else wrong? Because that's not the usual thing. And for me, that would absolutely lead back to cortisol. A second ago we were going to go down the path of the crisis that's coming than you. speaks, what is the looming crisis that worries you Stephen I. I saw this at the beginning of the pandemic. It is no longer looming. We are in crisis, so you already know everything. The health anxiety, uncertainty, fear and loss that we experienced during the pandemic was pretty bad, you know, it caused a level of stress that no one alive today has experienced before, but we have come out of it.

I know that we are relatively I don't know if I could say back to normal or in The New Normal and we have not paid attention to the consequences of what happened to us and when I say we I mean everyone, from the babies that were born at that time who never saw anyone other than their immediate family, the teenagers, who interestingly the boys did better than the girls because they played video games on the Internet, so they stayed connected, you know, the older people who were isolated, the people those who liked to lose their loved ones, etc.

There are so many things I could say more than that. We haven't really recognized that that's what happened and what we went through. Most people don't really understand what has changed for them or what is happening to them right now as a result. of that and we certainly haven't made any plans for the future. um you know, I'm very interested in indigenous wisdom right now and one of the things that I've learned about the first Americans is that when they make a big decision for their community they imagine the impact of that decision Seven generations in the future not even we think about a generation in the future we only think about what's going on right now we don't even really think about our own future like some Most of the time I remember thinking that literally in March 2020 this is going to be a mental health crisis like anything that happens physically and as time went on I thought about a mental health crisis and then I started thinking, what else could I do?

So it was and of course I had time to pursue some of the other areas of interest that I couldn't when I was traveling and gardening, so, you know, I started reading more about spirituality in ancient cultures and stuff, and I thought this. it could be a spiritual revolution when you say spiritual revolution, it's a very big broad term, what do you mean if I look back and you know you've told a very nice story of my journey since I changed careers? I started with that physical part, you know, for me, where I was working there was stress but people were having heart attacks, then I spent many years working on mental resilience with people and emotional regulation was part of that and that became important again. in the pandemic. because we were in closed spaces with people and you know, and it was very different and it was difficult, it was homeschooling and work and everything, um, which I've seen as some of the good things that I've seen as a result of the pandemic. is that we definitely have a new appreciation for the importance of our time in nature, so I think most of us felt that knowing that being able to go out and be in a green place was really important and because there were no planes and no traffic, you know, we were able to see the stars in the sky again, we saw incredible sunsets, people started to appreciate birdsong and now studies show that the time you spend in nature actually has a really positive impact on your physical health, your health. mental and your longevity.

So, you know, that's a good thing that's come out of this, but do we still know that we're making time for it or are we just going back to our old ways? The other interesting thing that has come up is having a purpose. That transcends yourself is really important for your mental health in particular, but it will have knock-on effects, so you know you could say, "Well, I do my podcast and I love doing my podcast and I get to meet interesting people and you know I do." I share." knowledge with others a lot of it still has to do with self-satisfaction so having something that doesn't necessarily do anything for you but

gives

you a purpose in life is really important and what that could be that could be that could be volunteering I might know, you know, you know, for me, like me, I give out a lot of free information on Instagram and not to try to get a job or anything like that.

It could be, just so you know, when I say volunteering, that sounds pretty big, but it could be like asking your elderly neighbor if you can do the shopping for him when you go to the supermarket. It could be calling a friend and checking on them, something that makes you feel like life is worth living, but it's not. It won't necessarily make you money or directly improve your life. I've talked to a lot of therapists who talk about the fact that two of the things we never want to feel are that we're different and B that we're not enough. and I was thinking about it through the lens of our tribes in the context of a tribe, if I was different, I was at risk of being kicked out of The Tribe and if I didn't feel like I was enough, I was again at risk. of being kicked out of the tribe because I am not valuable to the tribe and in the context of what you were saying about serving others is that again like a prehistoric desire to feel that we are adding value and that we are of use to the tribe by serving the The greatest good of our tribe is that where that instinct comes from in us.

I love what you've done, which is exactly what I said and that's when I'm not sure of the answer. I will return to Evolution. I always do that, yeah, yeah, I love it. I don't think I've thought about it like that before, exactly like that, but I think it's true. You know, one tribe unfortunately couldn't afford to carry dead weight, so if it wasn't enough, you know, if you were injured, if you were immobile, if you were old, if you didn't contribute, then you could be left behind and then there's this new really interesting area of ​​research called neuroaesthetics or neuroarts, which is about having some kind of creative activity in your regular schedule, so there's a lot of research that shows that if you don't do something creative once a week and that could be dancing, music, painting, drawing, going to the theater, reading a novel, it's quite broad.

Time and nature are actually included in it, then because nature is the palette that we all love. You know, you might have different tastes in art or music, but all humans love nature because we've always been in that beauty, so the impact of that on your mental health and your physical health and your longevity is also huge, but as every morning, I thought about this this morning because I wanted to mention this, but last night I zested a lemon while I was cooking, so this. In the morning when I went to get the milk out of the refrigerator, I smelled it because it was in the refrigerator and I thought it was so beautiful and then they say things like "You know if you've put a bouquet of flowers next to your bed." table and it smells good and that's the first thing you smell in the morning and then you like to look at the beautiful flowers if you have beauty objects in your house if you hear the birds singing in the morning that's all newer Aesthetics is living a life that is aesthetically pleasing for your brain and is good for your health, why should we go back to Evolutions?

Please, that's my favorite activity. I think it has to do with safety, so if you could dedicate your mental resources to appreciating beauty. That must mean you're safe, that must mean you're not just trying to survive, so I actually mean we appreciate beauty, so seeing smelling, you know, hearing nice things taste, it's going to make us feel better, but it's also going to make us feel better. we are. We're only going to do that if we have the luxury of being able to do that, so it can be such small things, but also what it signals to your brain is that I'm safe because I have time to read a novel or I have time to Turn up the volume on the music and dance around my living room through the framework of this idea that paths that shoot together connect.

I was also thinking about every time I've seen a tree, I've been safe, is there any association with safety trees? You know what I mean every time I've been out in nature, yeah, I've been physiologically safe, so now it's the case that because there's that neurological association, the pathways have widened and activated together if you know that. You talk about the body of the brain. answer if I put myself in that situation again it will tell my body that I am safe, yes, that is neuroplasticity, it is repeating that and giving you the message that every time I am near trees I am safe, I feel safe.

It won't be the same for everyone. I imagine that again, when we lived in the cave, we naturally did things like look at the stars in the sky at night, dance around the fire, make cave paintings, um, so that's very connected to our psyche. Also, you know, they would adorn themselves a lot more than we do, so the appreciation of aesthetics has always been there and not just nature in some of our rituals and ceremonies, and really the conclusion that I've come to with this . The whole spiritual crisis and then the potential Revolution is that all the things that we need to go through that Revolution have always been in the world since we existed and that to me is beautiful because it's not like we have to do something.

Crazy new things that we've never thought about before, we can say it like I say it, we know about generational trauma, intergenerational drama and epigenetics and how all these bad things can arise in the future, but there's also a lot of beauty. and the wisdom that is there that we can access is that we don't have to like reinvent the wheel at all, we can just go back to doing the things we did when we were at peace, it's interesting, but that's not going to be the case. It's not easy to do in the worlds we live in because we have built a society in a world where yes, we live in these four white walls, like they are alone in cities, yes, we are more alone than ever before, we order our food using glass screens.

We use pornography as a replacement for intimacy and connection. These social networks instead of socializing. The Internet connection has reduced the real connection. How would you like to completely redesign society? It seems like you can start with yourself, so I completely agree with all those things that What I just said is how most people live, but I don't live like that, how do you live, doctor? I actively tried to spend as much time as I could in nature and I like a lot of plants and flowers in and in my house I'm very, very careful about who's in my tribe, so they're deep, meaningful, positive spiritual relationships.

I don't use porn or dating apps. I only pass through your legs. Yeah, and you know, I try. What do you think of pornography? In the brain, I mean, the two most basic drives in the brain are sex and food, so the potential impact is enormous. I agree with you that there has increasingly been a huge disconnect between men and women in real life, which is really sad. that's disconnected um I have an ideal of what a woman would be or can be it's very distorted by porn um I think if I put it together you know what I hear from my friends about dating apps with the way people feel that can deal with others have really changed and I think this has also accelerated since the pandemic, so this real lack of empathy for the consequences of your actions and comments on other people and I think porn contributes to that because it changes the way that people men see women. um I think the impact on women in terms of how you should look, how much plastic surgery you should have, what you should be prepared to do in an intimate relationship or actually the biggest issue I would have is what you are expected to do when You're not even in an intimate relationship you know just when it becomes more of a transaction when the rules havechanged you know again what I hear now very commonly is oh, we've been on three or four or five dates or whatever, that must mean you know how to go to the next level, so I think getting back into really respectful relationships, having a lot of empathy for other people, caring for the people in your life.

That might be lonelier than you. When I say you know, I mean I don't have my phone in my room, but when I say limit screen time, it's hard because we will use our screens to work and communicate with our friends. but there are studies that show that the amount of time you spend even communicating with friends online versus face to face has all kinds of impacts in terms of how comfortable you are socially, how empathetic you are, this can have even on teenagers. big impact on body dysmorphism, so it's okay to spend a lot of time online, as long as you also spend a lot of time with people face to face.

One of the things you said was about limiting who is in your tribe, why? important, why is it important to not hang around certain people and spend more time with other people from a neurological perspective in terms of our health and our outlook and our outcomes and neuroplasticity? So if we just want to tie this in a little bit with the question that you Googled, what is

contagious

stress, then there's another rabbit hole that you could go down, which would be about social contagion, so there are statistics that show that in your social group, if someone gets divorced, you are more likely to get divorced next year.

If someone in your social group is obese, you are more likely to become obese. I'm not saying at all not to be friends with someone because they got divorced or gained weight, but I'm talking more about attitude issues so you know how you treat other people, how kind you are, how generous you are, how open You are having conversations about intuition or spirituality, basically, you meet people. who are on a similar psychological level to you, so we are always working on ourselves, hopefully, and you want to be with people, if so, then you want to be with people who are also growing, who are open to challenges, who are learning, who are interested in exploring spirituality, those who care about their mental health and the mental health of other people, so it's really about you knowing having this circle of trust and knowing that you have support, but Just as if you do something that's really not right, someone will leave.

I want to tell you that you mentioned the word neuroplasticity before, what is it, why does it matter? And I think looking at your work previously you had a little epiphany about this topic in your career or you realize you know if you probably like it better. most people don't even think that it's something they don't believe, they think that once you grow up you're set in your ways, but it seems like there was an epiphany at some point in your career where you realized the importance and To look at the possibilities that neuroplasticity presented well, we have to start by saying that when I was in medical school and doing my PhD in Neuroscience we didn't know about neuroplasticity, so we absolutely thought that when you stopped growing physically, everything in your brain was ready for the rest of your life that you couldn't change your intelligence you couldn't learn to manage your emotions differently um that it would be much more difficult to learn new things what we know now is that the brain is actively growing and changing until we are about 25. and I missed it no you didn't you didn't miss it.

I know I looked like I was 24 but you didn't miss it so 25 to 65 and I would say even further now if you don't do anything to If you change your brain it will tend to stabilize so you know if you're in a job where If you do the same thing every day and you're pretty good at it, you could stay that way for the rest of your life and that's fine for Some people, if they do things that are intense enough to force their brain to change, then they can basically learn a lot of new things, but also get what we call global benefits in your brain, so let's say maybe you decided to learn a new language.

Have you learned Portuguese or French? Have you spoken to her? Have you spoken in a way that made you feel very? It feels like you know when someone tells you something and it feels like they've already had a conversation behind your back because that's how money is, no, in fact I have a deal with her this year that I would learn Portuguese by the end of the year and I would win. in September now and I know six words so it felt a little bit close to home so let's move on so that's it. Great, then you have a reason to learn a language or two.

If you do, your brain will not only reap the benefits of being able to speak French or Portuguese, but it will also improve your executive functions. These are the highest functions of the brain. things like being able to regulate your emotions better solve complex problems think flexibly think creatively override any conscious or unconscious biases you may have these are great benefits that can be gained by simply doing something like learning a language or a musical instrument um and it can be things smaller ones like traveling interacting with people who have had a different life than yours cooking something new taking a different route to work reading a newspaper or magazine that is very different from what you normally read making a podcast well, you do this every day , yes exactly, yes, so it's not inducing neuroflasticity in your brain, although you're learning about different people, yes, you're meeting different people, you're learning new things, but it's probably not what we would call intense enough attention to really be changing the pathways in your brain. having all these conversations is not like expanding my es in terms of the facts you are learning, yes, but your actual process of knowing, finding a person, doing a little research on them, getting to know them, having a conversation with them, being good at asking them certain questions, that's a very natural path for you, so you know you're getting better and better at it, but that's not a big new change in your brain, so what's okay?

So I think when people hear about neuroplasticity when I first do it. I heard it even existed. It was a revelation. We could do things to change our brains. What do people typically want from neuroplasticity? They want to be someone else in other ways. They want new habits. They want new ways of living. thinking they want to stop being a negative thinker or an overthinker in certain situations if I would like to stop being an overthinker or a negative thinker or if I would like to um, you know, there are certain habits that we all have and that I have in my life.

I feel like it's me now, yes, like procrastination, procrastination shows up sometimes. I just say things that no, no, I don't procrastinate too much because I don't really have a choice these days. some things I think we all do things I think yeah, yeah, we all do um no. I'm really glad that you took this into the intangible because obviously I use the language analogy as a great one to help people understand that you learn something new, you build that pathway in your brain, it changes your brain, it has other benefits, but it What people really seek is to change habits and behaviors that do not serve them in life, yes, either due to lack of motivation, yes, as motivation. overthinker negative thinker lose you lose your temper um uh you know I feel very stuck people pleasing you know like so many things mood reactions yes yes then the process for that is elevated which is supported by neuroplasticity like the physiology of what happens in the brain consciousness, so let's say you know your relationship broke up again for similar reasons and you know what happened before, then you get to a point where you're okay last time, I just didn't do it.

I really dealt with it and moved on to the next relationship. Now I'm starting to see that there is a pattern. I think I need to do something different. The first step is to detect the pattern and the first step is 50 of the battle, so you will know it once you know it. Okay, this is something I think, believe, or do that results in an outcome I don't want. That's half the battle, so once you've done it, don't try to change anything immediately the next time. The stage is called focused attention, so you look around in your life, at work, in your personal life, as you know.

Sports, if you play sports, with different types of people and through your past, where are the times that I have done that, what, what, what, what, what triggers? me to do that or what pushes me to do that let me give you an example so we can work this out uh these steps with an example I have a friend in my life who repeatedly dates people who are married or in a relationship oh and it ends how you would expect that it would end in her heartbreak, yes, but it's this spiral that she's in, yes, so the first step would be to become aware of this pattern, you are dating people who are in this, for some reason, you are like this in this case, that's how it is.

Obviously, if you're getting into relationships with people who are already attached, you know you're aware that what I'd like to go deeper with her is what does she believe about herself that makes her think that's okay, and I'm already imagining that there must be a level of self-esteem that he's struggled with, you know, and maybe there's something in his childhood that caused that, but you'd only do that if you didn't believe you deserved someone. so that's the kind of conversation I would have with someone like that. I would probably ask her like you know what goes through your mind when you decide to do that again and she would say something that she is aware of thinking that I would want to dig deeper beneath that and ask what it is that she believes about herself that makes her thinking that, so that's a pretty important part of heightened awareness, is going beyond the thought into the belief that it's the next step or, certainly, if it has a story.

This is because maybe in a diary I recognize that I wrote down correctly, this time I dated someone who was involved in a relationship with another person or this time I had an affair with a married man, what happened to that decision? Doing the process is the point from which you agreed to go into it, what the consequence was, so really that's the focused attention that links that decision to the consequence. You know, one of the things I say is that you are basically the sum of every decision you've ever made. done in your life, that is who you are, so once there is a little more understanding and attention to what causes that and how it happens, the next stage is deliberate practice, so the first challenge will be next time Let her meet a man who is not available. and he may not yet be able to say no to that, he may have to make another mistake, but he will make it armed with all the knowledge that he has now and will see him as he is or will be able to.

Say no to that man this time, so the next step is deliberate practice, which is where you say, "Okay, I used to behave like this. This is the new me I want to be, as someone who says no to all married men." "that, um, you." you know replace every negative thought with a positive thought or whatever you're working on, so you look for scenarios to practice this new behavior and at first it would be difficult because you have a path there that may have been established from childhood and that is used to to do a certain thing and the brain is a very energy-hungry organ, so it's always trying to use the path of least resistance, let's say I think too much, okay? and you ask me these questions and I have this voice in the back of my head saying why is Stephen asking me what he's trying to do is trick me.

What I would try to do is silence that voice in my head and say "okay" in this podcast with Stephen, I will focus on him, take his questions as they are and speak from my area of ​​expertise. I won't worry about other things that you know can happen. in my head and let's say this time I manage to do it 50 of the time and then I go and do another podcast next week and I manage to do it 75 of the time, you know, and so on, eventually this new path that I've been building comes together. it'll come back stronger than it was before and then every time I go on a podcast I'll be fully present and attentive and I'll get to the end and that's the new me now so the behaviors that we repeat so let's start from the beginning of those three steps, the first step is becoming aware of the pattern in our lives, the second step is becoming really aware of the pain or consequences of that pattern and the third step is something like setting an intention about who we want to be and the goals we have and then practice it as much as possible and that's the three steps to the fourth, it's not a step, but the fourth factor is responsibility because most people who are left to their own devices will give I catch up with that process when it feels really hard, a step three, yeah, um, so you know, with years of practice and journaling, I've gotten better athold myself accountable, but for most people there has to be something external, so it could be a friend, um, one of the reasons I'm a big fan of making these action boards is that there's something very tangible in front of you that with images of what you said you wanted to achieve this year and that you can see clearly and your friends and family can see at the end of the year, whether you have done it or not, um and you know, of course, that you can have a real professional person who is there, like your language teacher, to hold you accountable.

We'll have to edit this because you're really pushing this, you have an agenda here. I've actually been talking before just a second ago about how when you try to create a new path, if there's one that's very well established from your childhood, it's getting harder and harder, so I've always been disorganized. I lived. I grew up in a house that looked like it had been hit by an atomic bomb. Yes, it was just a show. Inside it was an absolute disaster. So the habit of being messy is pretty well established. The pathway in my brain to be disordered is well established, yes, but more generally, I'm thinking about trauma and what trauma looks like in the brain when we've had really traumatic early experiences in our life or in the context of my friend.

We have learned that we don't deserve someone or that we are not worthy or that we know that we are not enough or that we are different, that could be a very well established path, doesn't that suggest that there are some behaviors? patterns that are practically immovable, practically immutable. I don't want to say yes to that, but what I will say is that we've stopped using this term wired, which in a way means it's there forever, and we're talking about soft wiring. Now, because of neuroplasticity, I know people who have gone through incredible amounts of trauma.

An example will soon appear on my podcast who has worked so hard on herself that she is truly in a beautiful place as a helping psychologist and Vedic astrologer. Other people learn to deal with that drama, so a lot can happen. She was clearly a very resilient person and she was educated. Some people deal with the consequences of trauma for the rest of their lives and you know that it rules their lives and it's sad, you may not be able to deal with every single thing that you've experienced or the full extent of what you've experienced, but I think that there's a lot everyone can do before, you talked about generational trauma and epigenetics, when you said what both of those are, when I first heard about generational trauma I thought it was like woo-woo uh fluffy hopeful like wishful think like a good way of blaming your ancestors for the way you are, so when I first heard about this concept that you could inherit trauma from your parents or your grandparents, it just seemed to me that it could possibly be true, yes, I know, I want to say it's a relatively new area of ​​research, so I'm going to break this down into a few things, so generational trauma, um, and you can look for this is related to specific moments in the Acts that were placed. in particular marginalized groups, so like the early Americans, slavery, in Asia, there are some particular groups that were treated in a certain way and that's why the impact of generational trauma is that when something happens to a generation, there is a psychological overflow and it may have something to do with the fact that you always feel isolated or you always feel alone or you always feel on the sidelines or you always feel excluded that is because an entire generation withdrew in a certain way and that has an intergenerational impact The trauma Epigenetic is about how some external event actually changes the expression of your genes, so we have a genotype and a phenotype.

Genotype is your DNA, it doesn't change, but phenotype is which parts turn on and off. The most famous examples of this are the Holocaust and the Dutch famine. but there are other examples and we're now enough generations away from that to have seen more than three generations of changes in stress responses and so it's not always bad, so sometimes people are more resilient because their grandparents or great-grandparents went through something terrible sometimes. people are more anxious and it's hard to necessarily know why things might go one way or another. I always tell people that you are not born with the genes your parents had when they were born, you are born with the expression of the genes. that their parents had at the time of conception and then of course their mother's stress levels during the trimesters of pregnancy and this is not meant to blame anyone for what happened in the past or how stressed they feel when they are pregnant to raise awareness about the fact that if you have something in your family history or if you had a particularly stressful pregnancy, you can use neuroplasticity to improve the chances that your baby will express genes that will be more useful to him in life than if you I didn't know all this, so if you had a particularly stressful pregnancy, let's say you're a woman who was really stressed when you were eight months pregnant, how does that affect the baby and what symptoms do you like?

I'm probably going to see something in that baby that I wouldn't have otherwise, okay, so I'm going to give you a really tangible answer before I get back to something we were talking about before imagining that the mother is a heroin addict. affecting the baby, yes, yes, and that's because they share the same blood supply, yes, so if the mother is stressed and has high levels of cortisol, then that cortisol passes through the placenta into the blood supply. baby's blood and basically being stressed from the womb could activate genes that make you not resistant to stress or more prone to anxiety or mood disorders and you're already starting, you know, inflammation and this as a baby little one who hasn't even been born yet.

I know it sounds terrible and it really isn't. I don't want to make this sound like all moms have to be completely zen and never stress because that's just not reality, but you know everything you can do, of course, to manage your stress during pregnancy is helpful, but then understanding completely that if your child then starts to show similar symptoms of anxiety or inability to manage their emotions after an age when they should be able to, you can introduce them to meditation, you can sit with them and talk to them about their emotions and how they behave. .

I feel like there are a lot of really great books and videos that you can use to educate kids about that kind of stuff. I always say knowledge is power and unfortunately hard things can happen to people in life but every time something like this happens. For me, I have fallen down a rabbit hole. Okay, what can I find that can help me get through this and get better? I just think as you talk about pain and the brain, the relationship between you know what happens in the brain. When we're experiencing pain and stuff, we think about the pain and the strong emotions of Heartbreakers.

Many of us, including one of my best friends, are the reason he is recently grieving a relationship he lost and I have another friend who lost someone in his life. He passed away. and he is such an absorbing force that he seems to resist advice. I was wondering if through your work you would learn something about pain in the brain and how to break the heart. Yeah, so I think there are so many versions of grief that we have. I've seen particularly in recent years the loss of someone's sense of loss of self through the breakdown of a relationship and the loss of someone through actual death, um, and it's interesting to hear you say, as an attentive viewer , which is so overwhelming and I resist advice.

I firmly believe that to ever heal from pain you have to get to the bottom of the hole and however you do it, that's not something anyone else can comment on. I think if you're doing things like going back to work or partying too much to avoid it, that's not okay, but if someone has to go somewhere emotionally to deal with the pain, you have to support them and allow them to do that and then, Sometimes, maybe nudge him gently in terms of how you are. Know? Are you feeling any kind of healing, resolution, understanding or acceptance?

I think, especially with pain, that if we haven't been through something ourselves, it's very difficult to imagine how bad it is, even though you may know, you care a lot which makes you think that you have to go to the bottom of the hole because I think we are very emotionally avoidant. I think that's part of the bigger problem I was talking about, which is being lost and disconnected and I remember when my first marriage broke up and I was changing careers thinking that if I hadn't been a psychiatrist and known the things that I know, I can see how You could end up in a psychiatric ward for what you know. the breakup, the breakup of a marriage, um, so all I'm trying to say, I'm not trying to say that you have to feel terrible, what I'm trying to say is that you have to process all the emotions and, in a way Anyway, you have to give up. a little bit because if you try to overlook it, it will come back and bite you later and I've seen a lot of stories of that happening where people you know did really cool things, like writing a book about it or, you know, pouring out all their care, love and attention to other people and they finally discovered that they hadn't really dealt with their own emotions, so when I say go deep I don't necessarily mean feeling really terrible, I mean processing all the emotions. completely because then you can really heal and at some point move on, it doesn't mean you forget that you know the person or what happened, but if you try to gloss over it, I think it's dangerous because it's so deep, it's so deep. emotion, it's such a quick confrontation with your own mortality.

I discovered a product that changed my life called Eight Sleep and I'm so proud to say today that I spoke with the founder of the brand and now he is a sponsor of the podcast. and one of the things that I've learned on this podcast from talking to sleep experts like Matthew Walker is how important temperature is when it comes to sleeping, the temperature of your room, the temperature of your bed and also one of the big ideas I have. What I got from talking to some experts was that the temperature of the room should fluctuate throughout the night as you progress through the different stages of sleep, so when you first go to bed, it should be quite cool. in bed, then it should cool down a little bit and then the temperature should rise near the end and that's a reflection of what would have happened in nature once upon a time, you've probably learned that I have sponsors on this podcast that I use and products that I love , my sponsors should be a reflection of the conversations I'm having, but also a reflection of what I'm using in my life, so to celebrate being a new podcast sponsor, I always want to get a discount for you and I have one for sleep eight. dot com, which is eight, sleep.com, slash Stephen and if you do that, you'll save a hundred and fifty dollars on the Pod case that I have on my bed, which I'm talking about, grab your Pod case, send me a DM and let me know how It suits you, since you will know that this podcast is sponsored by huel.

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The factors that have the greatest impact on changes in the brain, so the first is myelination, and anyone who plays a lot of sport and repeats a certain weight training will understand that that is what is happening in their muscles, you know? When I said you know? You come here almost every day and you sit down with someone and you interview them and you're really good at asking questions, that's something you're super good at because you repeat it, it becomes like a superpower and that means that what's happening there ismyelination, so myelin is a fatty substance that covers some neuronal pathways and those pathways become fast pathways.

Now there is an evolutionary reason why we have some fast paths and some slow paths and the reason is that if you put your hand in the fire your hand out reflex is a fast path, but the pain reflex is a slow path. because if you are incapacitated by pain the moment you put your hand in the fire you will not be able to get away from it, one of the mechanisms. Neuroplasticity is getting even better at something you're really good at and that happened through myelination, the most common, which is something you're pretty good at, but if you had a lot of time you could get really good at it, but Maybe it doesn't take much time, it happens through synaptic connections, so that may seem like quite a lot of hard work, but if you try hard, you can change your brain, which means that the neurons that already exist in the brain become connected. each other and begin to form new pathways and the third mechanism, which does not occur much in the adult brain but does occur around the hippocampus because we establish new memories in life, occurs a lot in the brains of children, is called neurogenesis and that is , little embryonic nerve cells that float around in the brain, actually become fully formed nerve cells, neurons, and they connect through a synaptic connection and maybe myelinate, and there's a factor, a growth factor, that's involved in which the embryonic cell becomes an adult cell, which is called bdnf or brain-derived neurotrophic factor and trophic means growth, so neurotrophic is the growth of neurons and the things that mainly contribute to that are aerobic exercise and consumption of dark skin foods, yes, dark skin foods, yes, so let me figure out the exercise first because this is one.

One of my fun facts is that if you do aerobic exercise regularly, the turnover of those cells in your brain is about 13 to 14 percent. embryonic to adult yeah, okay, because we want neurogenesis to happen, okay, okay, if you haven't been exercising for a while and then you start, the cell turnover rate is like 30, so it increases after a period of inactivity with new aerobic exercise. So that's my excuse for being a couch potato half the time and then starting again. Who are you kidding? Okay, so you're going to speed up the speed that you're making those connections, yeah, making the embryonic cells grow into new cells and then connect with the existing ones, so I want to make sure I'm very clear on this, so if I'm trying to develop, if I am trying to speak a different language by exercising which has an impact on your learning and retention of memories, yes, in simple language, if I am doing aerobic exercise, my ability to accelerate my neuroplasticity will increase, yes, what happens If not aerobic exercise?

If I'm just lifting heavy weights, there are benefits for your brain from other types of exercise, but weight training is not as related to neurogenesis. Well this isn't so much about language as it is another example of Mind Over Matter so this was an experiment done on two groups of weight lifters I thought you might like this um that's a great compliment thank you very much You think I'm a weightlifter. I think I identify as a weightlifter, although you looked at me and thought I'm a weightlifter, thank you. For many, this was finger and elbow weights, so maybe it's not as glamorous and the six rounds, so one group lifted finger or elbow weights.

I think this was a two week study and they showed I think it was about a 40 increase in muscle. target muscle group mass for those weights, are their counterparts just imagined lifting weights for two weeks, didn't lift weights for two weeks, just sat there and visualized themselves lifting weights and had a 13x increase in muscle mass, interesting for We can't tell our brain to grow muscle by doing that, but it could be doing that instead. I've been going to the gym. It would be a lot easier if I could watch football and tell myself I'm lifting weights well.

I don't think you can watch football, I think it's all like visualization and you know, intention and attention was a big part of it. I mean, that speaks to the power of our thoughts again, doesn't it really? If our thoughts can tell our brain that growing muscles what it has been is that it is in the widely accepted book, it is the truth. I'm surprised there aren't personal trainers that just sit you down in an empty room and just do it right, think about how many athletes use visualization as part of it. From their training, of course, they do the exercise and the practice and everything, but that is used enormously in sports.

Obviously it's not a case where I would then go home and start imagining myself exercising, but it does, again reminding me of the importance of only thinking about positive things that are in line with my goals, yeah, I mean, what? What's the harm in imagining yourself more muscular or younger besides eating dark foods and getting enough sleep? You know, it's like it's part of the package. You want to know? What should you eat to be able to please? What are these dark skin foods? Basically, you know, at the basic level we want people to have a healthy, balanced diet that's primarily plant-based, but where you can choose a darker version of a food.

The pigment and skin of that food have higher levels of antioxidants called anthocyanins and also contribute to neurogenesis, so it's basically like eating black beans instead of navy beans or eating blueberries instead of strawberries, dark chocolate instead of milk chocolate, broccoli with purple sprouts instead of green broccoli. Um, and good quality coffee counts too, yeah, so you know, I try to vary what I eat, but I also always choose the darker option if I can, okay? Is there anything else one needs to know about the process of neuroplasticity? I have discovered so far that it is about letting go of understanding the patterns we have in our brain, understanding the consequences of them, repetition is key to establishing new paths, is there anything else that I need to really be aware of because I want to grow my brain and changing my brain, yeah, so the responsibility part, which is also creating the conditions in your body so that your brain can do all those things, so you know this is a little repetitive, but sleeping about eight hours a night and have a regular sleep. and awake times seem to have an added benefit, we don't know why, so within an hour, so go to sleep between 10 and 11, wake up whenever you want.

You're not sedentary, so being physically active doesn't necessarily mean you have to go all out. gym, to be honest, in terms of neuroplasticity, you don't want to do too much high-intensity exercise because it increases your cortisol levels, so it's better to do fairly gentle exercise, eating 30 different plant products a week and varying the color as much as possible. You might know how to manage your stress, whether it's through meditation or just eliminating the causes of stress, if you're doing that and staying hydrated, if you're doing all those things and you want to play level two of the game, you could start To do it. time-restricted feeding, so only eat between ioni between 12 noon and 8 pm. m., but you can do it from 8 a.m. m. to 8 p.m. m., so that type of fasting is also very beneficial for your brain, but only if you have the right foundation, it will not. help you if you don't, what does it do for the brain? fasting intermittent fasting um well it helps regulate your blood sugar levels so you know that raising your blood sugar levels is not good for your body or your brain and fasting and calorie restriction does. .

They have benefits for brain health and longevity, but you only know that if your basics are correct. You know that someone who is stressed, eats poorly, or doesn't get enough sleep will not benefit from time-restricted eating or intermittent fasting, because it is a form of stress. in your body, but it is a form of stress that your body can withstand and use to build resilience if the basic level of things is good and for neuroplasticity to occur, we must take on big cognitive challenges, challenges that break existing pathways, yes . I want to learn to be a DJ.

I have been learning for about 12 months. This feels like a huge cognitive challenge to me. Yes, that's great. That's the kind of thing that would set a new path in my brain. Absolutely someone is looking to build. your self-esteem and your confidence what the brain tells us about the process of doing that is what goes back to what we said about awareness about understanding feelings and consequences and about goal setting and repetition and responsibility We will get there to that, but there's actually a little boost that's really helpful, particularly in terms of confidence and self-esteem, which is that there's usually a particular recurring negative thought that's associated with feelings of lack of confidence, um, so if you can identify what that is and create a positive affirmation that is the opposite or something that counteracts it, then that can be a great way to start.

My phrase would have been that it has to be perfect and it is not going to be perfect. I wouldn't have been able to say this last year, but I can now. You could probably say it will be better than perfect. It's going to be amazing, as I know. But to get there, I could have said. It doesn't have to be perfect but it's going to be great or I could have said maybe it will be perfect sometimes a question I ask myself is what is the best possible outcome that could happen here so it's changing the language in your mind about the things that you think, that's basically metacognition, which is that you can understand your own thinking and then reverse that narrative pretty strongly, even if it doesn't seem like it's totally true and repeat it so much that you start to wear yourself out.

That other way, does language really matter? the language we say to ourselves yes, yes, it really matters, yes, how we talk about ourselves, how do we know that matters? I mean, it's neuroplasticity, if you're repeating something in your mind or out loud, then if that's being repeated more than another statement it's the one your brain is going to believe, so we can effectively trick our brain by telling us something else. repeatedly because there's this whole movement in the personal development community that says just look in the mirror. and you tell yourself I'm beautiful, I'm attractive, everyone will love me, I'm going to be rich and I thought it was hard for me to get on that train, yeah, that one because I know I am I'm lying to myself in my subconscious or whatever. .

I just know that if I said those things I'm not saying about myself, but yes, yes, saying these things far, far away. I just think my brain is smart enough to know I'm lying to myself. I think there's an element of reality to it, so there are some things there, which are those particular things that you said that are very superficial, they're not really the things that people should say to themselves, um, what I find and I. I picked this up from a podcast with Lewis: He said that sometimes he would just say to himself, I'm safe, I'm safe, I'm fine, and in fact, sometimes I just say to myself, I'm safe, that's what I need to listen, no.

I'm beautiful and it surprises me that that feels like something everyone probably wants to say. B. you are not addressing the underlying problem, yes, you are not addressing and I will be rich. I mean, that's the worst. because you actually have to do things to make that happen, you know you can't just say that, so I think finding the things that you need to say to yourself that don't have to do with societal expectations or parental expectations or, you know, the social group, um what everyone else is doing, what you really want to know for yourself, that will prepare you to be able to go out into the real world and do the things that you need to do to get the other things that you want there, said.

You can't just say it, you have to go out and do it now, when people hear this term manifestation, it's highly associated with just saying things or thinking things and it's less associated with going out and doing it, so yeah, a lot of people just shut down when Someone talks about manifestation because it sounds like some kind of woo-woo. Put it on the vision board and it will happen. In fact, I think I've said this several times, but I wouldn't say it. It was an argument, but a disagreement that resulted in the person I was talking to literally getting out of a taxi in the middle of New York City and walking away.

I had a date many years ago and the girl told me that she was going with you. You can manifest anything in your life, so you can think about it and then it will happen, so I thought you think you could think about becoming a millionaire and then it will happen and she says, yeah, and I go, and you go.you would do I don't even have to like doing all the things and she said no, you could just think about it and the universe will attract it into your life. Do you believe in manifestation and if so, what form of manifestation and how is that supported by neuroscience?

I believe in manifestation based on your brain, so your thoughts, your beliefs, your actions, so I called my book The Source. I've said that your brain is the source for you to attract everything you want into your life, so I sat down. One summer, I researched the laws of attraction and just saw if I could explain them through cognitive science, which is psychology and neuroscience, and I could, so I thought, oh, I'm onto something here and the first stage to I understood that. It absolutely has to do with the way you think, but it's not magically like attracting something in the atmosphere, it has to do with the changes you make based on your thought process.

I do, but I do believe in vision boards, but I call them action boards because I see them as a representation of what I want, but I still have to go out and make those things happen. I think it's also much more empowering to believe that it's your brain that makes those things happen and not some things. external force that you're not really sure what it is so how would I manifest something in my life? Say I want to manifest a great relationship. I'm in a great relationship, but say I was single and wanted to manifest the perfect partner.

As? Could I manifest the perfect partner in my life using the brain as a source? Yes, I think the preferred method is to create a list of the attributes you want in that person, but then you need to make sure you are everything. that's on that list, oh, so if I want a blonde, I have to dye my hair, no, I'm kidding, I'm kidding, okay, I understand what you mean, so you're talking about core qualities and values, yeah, and then make sure. that you represent those qualities and values. I've never heard anyone say that, but that's very important because I know a lot of people who would write a list that they couldn't live up to in terms of core values ​​that they probably would want to have. your partner should be disciplined, care about your health, be honest and if you're wondering if those are those things that you would probably fail at, to be fair, my partner is much better than me in many ways, almost everywhere, um, I.

It would probably fail that list too Why is it so important? I think you hear a lot of people say this is what I really want in someone, but you never hear people say, I've really worked on myself and this is what I believe. I have to offer, and psychologically you meet people at the level of psychological evolution that you are at, but equally on the other side of the coin you meet people at the level of psychological wound where you have to be in a balanced relationship with someone who It's really cool if you have to bring something to the party, I mean no one is going to hang out with you if they're really awesome and you're a drag, but drugs want awesome people, this is the problem, right, right, I guess you have too afraid to say it like when I was a when I was at the peak of my life when I was a drag.

The most annoying thing in my life, I attracted drag people, but I wanted amazing people and I could never get them, yeah, but I feel like with you that was part of your journey of knowing that you could become an amazing person, yeah, exactly, so you got an amazing person once you did the job that got you out of draxville. Amen, okay, that's super interesting, so make sure you are the things on that list because we will rise to the level of our values ​​and we will fall to the level. of our wounds, yes, I love the way you put it, but you also know that what you have to offer in a relationship is just as important as what you want from it and I don't know, as a society, we just don't know.

I seem to think so. In fact, there's a note in my journal where I wrote that people who focus on what they want usually don't get what they want. People who focus on what they have to offer usually get what they want. That is incredible. Basically the same thing yeah she just repeated it you plagiarized it no but it's in my journal and I posted it on Instagram story a while ago which was just an observation for me in business when you hire people people where they focus. Can I get a raise? Can I get a raise?

Normally, they don't get the raise, but the people who focus on what they have to offer, yes, they are the ones you give everything you promote and give them the paychecks. because they're focusing on what's most important, which is, I think, over long periods of time, not always in the short term and not always in all cases, but life will eventually give you more or less what you deserve in the long term. , in general for most people. Not always yes, because there will be someone who says yes, yes, so you can't, what's wrong with me because I filed the warning, but generally that's what I've observed and I've seen people game the system. take it a little further than their talent or their value, but life has a wonderful way of bringing us back to the level of our values ​​and you said it in relationships, life will take you to the depth of your wounds or to the height of your values, so really, if you want to find a sustainable way to get what you want in life, it's to work on what you can offer other people.

Yeah, I think it made me think that, actually, if that, we constantly say, oh, you know, I want to. I want these paymaster eyes, I want that man who has to be a cortisol-inducing state in your body, but if instead I say, what can I do for Stephen? I have so much love to give, that will be oxytocin and Who will be more attracted to what is interesting? Oh, that's so true. One of the things I want to talk to you about that has been rising in the culture recently is neurodivergence, a big topic, autism, ADHD, so much so that I had a mother send me a voice note.

The other day her son was just diagnosed with autism and she's really struggling with it and trying to understand what it means and where it came from and if it was hereditary and there are so many guests on my podcast that have talked about the rise in diagnosis . of ADHD and um, is it something that we are causing by the way that we choose to live our lives when you and from an understanding of neuroscience what is neurodiversity and what causes it and what cures it? Yeah, so this would come more from my experience as a psychiatrist when I also worked with children, so neurodiversity is basically anything that doesn't fall into the category of a typical brain, so you know the way the majority of the population thinks and how your brain works so that would include things like dyslexia and dyscalculia and ADD, ADHD and autism, trimming Asperger's spectrum and other things.

I think a lot of this has to do with better diagnosis, so I'm not saying that's not the case. These things have increased, but I think we are also much better at diagnosing. For example, when I worked with young children with ADHD, when I first saw them and took the full family history, there was often an absent parent. who had actually been in several different relationships and couldn't hold down a job and you thought yeah, he probably had it but it wasn't diagnosed, so there's an element of that. I think it's an adaptation to the world. which is changing at such a rapid pace that, as you know, there's always been so much technology enabled and some people would say autism is even like a form of evolution in a way that helps us keep up with the changing pace of the world.

I don't necessarily think we know if its prevalence is increasing. I think so, but partly it is increasing naturally and partly because we are better at diagnosing it. I also sometimes wonder about things like dyslexia if humans have always had an element of dyslexia. but it is more obvious and more challenging in the world we live in. Think about the school system, writing and education are fairly new constructs, yes, yes, exactly, so this is not about neurodivergence but rather about things like gender identity and sexual orientation. , what I found in my research with indigenous wisdom um is that those things were understood a long time ago, there was a place for people and an understanding of their role in society and sometimes even an elevated role, so it's really interesting that we're dealing with things now like knowing what gender your child wants to be and what life you know your child will have if they're gay or whatever and apparently these ancient cultures We were dealing with this all the time, no problem, you second series of your podcast will focus on some of this work that you learn, yeah, what are some of the interesting things that if you could just tell me a few that you think they would have had? the most significant impact on my life and you can't mention learning Portuguese.

What would you tell me about? So one topic that's come up quite strongly is around creativity, which was kind of mentioned, but doing things like humming and singing are actually really beneficial and they've obviously been around forever and we don't really know why the People made them in the first place, but in terms of expressing creativity and calming the nervous system, that's something that seems to have come from something like Ayurveda, but also from early Americans, it was also good for health and the immune system. . I think he said yeah, like through the nose, hmm, there's different, you know, there's different times you can do it, even like, go on, I can see.

If you're avoiding it, I'll be in the trailer, it's also humming like in the back of your throat, humming like between your lips, so, oh, it's such basic stuff, I mean, you can do that on the tube, you know you can do it. that's going down the drain no it's not why that would help why that would help us I really don't like knowing the answer I mean just choose I'm just thinking about this, what can we get from indigenous wisdom that could help us? Now, but I guess it has something to do with the regulation of your parasympathetic nervous system.

Okay, yes, I'm getting older in general, longevity and aging. One of the really interesting things you talk about in the book is this idea of ​​a kind of psychological preparation and psychological preparation of aging. and that psychological preparation is the effect that the aging mindset has on our physical body how our thoughts about aging affect our physical capabilities what I interpreted is that our thoughts about aging have an impact on our aging, yes there is actually a Really fascinating study. It's one of my favorites to talk about, which was three groups of octogenarians, people in their 80s, and one group was the control group, so they lived normally for a week.

One group had to remember that they were 60 years old for the most part. of the week whenever they got the chance and a group was taken to modernized versions of their houses that looked like their house 20 years ago they were given newspapers dated 20 years ago they had pictures of themselves in that house when they were 60 years old and one of the things was they got there and said okay you know who's going to carry our suitcase to the dorm or whatever and they said no you're 60 now you're carrying your own suitcase so it literally started from the moment they got there there and these old ladies had to carry their suitcases and the gentlemen had to carry them up.

After a week, the people in that group were taller because their posture improved. musculoskeletal coordination than they had a week before in the before and after photos that were shown to people who didn't know them, they were rated as younger in the photos from a week later and the photos of getting to that place um and the group of memories also had some improvements, but not as many as a group that lived as if they were 60 years old, so there were three groups, yes, those who went back and relived their life, those who remembered and those who did nothing at all, yeah, wow, and that really.

This shows the impact of what we think about ourselves and then all the physiological consequences of that. You talk about this, um, your eyes too, but they were going to do, was it like laser eye surgery? No, no, it's like people told you. you needed glasses, well my optician told me he's of Indian origin and he's the same age as me and he said oh I think you know you're probably going to need reading glasses next year and I said no I don't want reading glasses. It makes you look really old and he said yeah I know I know we both look younger than we are but you know your eyes will age like anyone else's and I said no they're not so I I went and came back a year later.

He said oh, how's your reading going, so that's okay. In a way, it was good. Tara, so she's giving me my eye exam. He turns around in his little chair halfway and says your eyes haven't gotten any worse, they haven't even stayed the same. I've gotten better and I said I know and he said what have you been doing and I said well I just told you no and you said I'll have to get glasses forreading and when I'm looking at my phone or a book and I feel like it would be a little easier if I moved it further away.

I just don't know what that does to the brain. Why did that improve your reading? Well, I hadn't experienced any problems with my reading, but I was obviously seeing the numbers change slightly. I didn't really do much more than what I just said, so it was like not accepting the limitation and then not changing my behavior and I think that's what you see in the third group of people, which is that they had to change their behavior. to live without any help and in a way that they had to when they were younger, so it essentially removed the limitations that we put on ourselves, which is that if I'm X age it must mean I need reading glasses or I need a cane or whatever.

There is a kind of experiment opposite to that that was done with young medical students in Florida and they had to walk between five rooms and on the table were five pieces of paper with a word on them and they had to string together a sentence from them and but that was not the case. It was the real experiment, they thought that was the experiment, the real experiment was that in one of the rooms the words that were on the table were the Florida Beach Sunshine Walk bungalow and everyone left that room more slowly than they left any of the rooms. the other rooms because those words are associated with retirement and that made them slower.

You asked me what is an important language in art for our brain. how important it is, so just saying words can change our behavior so quickly, that's what the experiment showed. I've been thinking a lot, you know, I said I have this Vlog on YouTube called Behind the Diary and in two of the episodes, um, I surprised myself while filming because I said words that I thought wouldn't be helpful and I think someone in the comments really challenged me. because there's a day when I'm filming Dragons Den and I'm filming myself. I'm just talking about what's going on.

I say, oh, I really need a coffee this morning and I stop and say I shouldn't say need and then I say, there's something about this casual use of the word need throughout our lives that's disempowering me. It's making me a slave to coffee, so I raise this point and I'm sure people think I'm a little weird for doing that. I really need to not say the word need associated with things because then I will. probably develop a psychological um and maybe a physical one like someone with a physical need for that for that thing and they're just also bringing that word need need into your life like you don't have enough like that, you need something um I'm constantly changing my words like if you knew, modifying them that way, so I would say, "Oh, I'm going to treat myself to a coffee and that was your decision, you were powerful there, yes, that's a choice you made, yes, there is a general point here about personal responsibility also when people talk about um, I can't exercise, um, I don't have time, it feels like a really disempowering framework versus I have other priorities that feel empowering and I think about this all the time because if Ask someone why they don't exercise.

They will usually blame some Force. The framework makes it seem like there is a force that controls their life for them and that they didn't give them the time or they couldn't.while in reality it is just a typical case of priorities and your child or your job that pays your mortgage may be your priority, but I think it is important. I have always felt that it is important to acknowledge the fact that you made the decision to care. of your child or going to your job that pays the mortgage versus You didn't know I didn't have time, yes, this is what I think so much about language and the language that I use and how that dominates my life, even telling it constantly.

I say myself that I'm disorganized and messy, so how come that probably makes the MSC person what we've talked about that we probably should have talked about? Is there any study or information about the brain and how we change habits that are stubborn? um or anything else you've learned from ancient wisdom. You know, I know we've talked very broadly about a lot of different things, but I hope that for me that's my intention with every sentence I've said. For you, it's that people need to realize the potential they have in their brains and how capable they are of having an even more incredible life than the one they already have.

I think I accept it now more than ever because I've had this conversation. with you I think I accept that there is a lot of untapped potential in me and that I am not this kind of fully formed rigid mass of cells that I can fundamentally change. I think a lot of people probably are if they've gotten to this point. in the conversation I will also accept that if you were to close, I guess the first step is what I should do immediately as I move forward in my life from here, that would help me start moving towards that person that I want. become the great successful organized partner in your cool business with your podcast all those things what's that first step and you know, the funny thing is my brain keeps thinking about the taxi driver I'm on my way here who said I heard the podcast and he told me that it gave me a little window into his world, so he drives the taxi every day and I know a lot of taxi drivers who listen to the podcast and we chat and often have dreams to do. other things to tell me John, I want to start my own business someday and I'm just looking, I'm looking for the first steps, but I reflect on what you said and I'm going, they're going to be like this.

They are strongly connected to their patterns, their jobs, their habits and their routines, and it's very difficult to make that leap, yes, so if I could give people a conclusion to start with, that's really simple, but it doesn't mean that there isn't a lot of hard work on the other end it would be very clear what you want so you mentioned some things spend five minutes sitting down and visualizing those things being true and then be thankful for that that would be my first step be thankful for those things be true just five minutes I'm a great companion I'm not messy my podcast is super successful like watching it feel it in your body taste it in your mouth hearing it in your ears fully immerse yourself in it for five more minutes if you can and then just be grateful for all of that essentially what What you are doing is moving your brain from a state of fear to a state of trust and that is the gateway to making these changes, thank you very much.

You really are a wonderful, thought-provoking conversation and I've learned a lot and you've given me a lot to think about and you've changed my mind about a lot of things in my life, that's a huge compliment, you know? I know some things about neuroplasticity because I've had guests here talk to me about it, but now I understand it better and I also understand, I think most importantly, the part of manifestation that is understandable through the lens. of science, yeah, I guess we have a closing tradition on this podcast where the last guest leaves a question for the next guest without knowing who they'll leave it for.

Oh, this question is what could you choose to change and choose to feel good about? pretty much the same thing that's the question the question says what could you choose to change and choose to feel good? um. I assume it's the same. I was finally able to realize my dream of feeling like I was truly a creative person and I'm not exactly that. I'm sure that would still look like that, but I'm on the road to that, so I think being clearer about that would be great and actually doing that would be great too. You're already a creative person, although thank you very much for saying that I feel like I have one more step to go before I really feel like I've done it because that was something very ingrained for me, I mean, there's a little bit more of a backstory that I didn't tell them. but my English teacher told me that you are so good at drama that you should read English at Oxford and go to Radha and I came home and told my parents and they literally said oh my dad said Over my dead body you will go to school medicine and Then after that you can do whatever you want and I think there is that frustration that has been there for a long time, like these days, you can't imagine anything better than your child coming home and one of the teachers have chosen.

This is exceptional um but of course at the time there were no people of color on television so it was considered an even bigger risk than it would be now and I have to say you know that every time I see someone who looks like me and who says I did it as an actress. She just makes me very happy. So why did your father say that? I think Indian parents, you know, think that stability is the key to their children's happiness, so having a stable career and having a regular salary. I don't really come from a family of entrepreneurs that's why it was so crazy when I quit my job and started a business no one could understand it and I was afraid of not having a regular paycheck and then at some point I realized I could earn zero in any month, but I could also, you know, there's no limit to what I can earn and I think I realized this when in one month I billed what I was earning in a year as a doctor.

Didn't they think you were your grandmother reincarnated and she grew up in a village in India and didn't have access to education and that was a big regret for her, so they gave me the best education money could buy? MD and PhD is like it was overcompensation and actually wasn't necessarily what I always wanted. Thank you so much for giving me so much to think about, what a wonderful conversation, what a wonderful ray of sunshine and like you were in the world. I'm so excited to see your career continue to evolve and touch and help so many people.

All your work is incredible. You also have your podcast coming out, which I think everyone will be very excited to hear because if it's anything like this conversation, it's going to be tremendous value, when is it coming out? It will be released on October 4, but the first season is now available to listen to. If people haven't heard it, already reinvent yourself with Dr. Tara, yes, what is the second season, in that second season your goal is to do a lot of ancient wisdom, yes, such exciting things, very excited to hear that, so the October 4th we will be attentive to that.

Thank you so much for her time, um, thank you Dr. Tara Swart, there's actually the word art in her name, but have you ever noticed that there isn't? Okay, I'm excited for our next conversation and to hear how you've pursued that creativity because it's certainly within your reach. you um and it's a wonderful honor to have met you today and to learn from you thank you so much, thank you oh