BRAIN EXPERT Explains How To Boost Brain Health & IMPROVE FOCUS | Dr Rahul Jandial

[Music] so rathole welcome to the feel better live more podcast thank you for inviting me I'm happy to be here so I thought you know you new book is it's full of private school tips and tools as well as some great stories and anecdotes from your career as a neurosurgeon but I thought a really nice place to start would be you know you're here in London you're doing promotion for your book how's the jet lag doing hugg is terrible because I haven't done all the tips people might you know think that our valuable to break jet lag drink a lot of water or don't have a glass of wine try to get sleep my son and I are here we're going hard in London we are we've been to Stonehenge we've taken a bike tour we went to Tate Britain saw van Gogh so we're we're just enjoying it all and I think it's liberating to be able to see London both as a tourist and to get into these corners such as meeting you and being in this space so I'm having a great time and thank you again for including me Hey refreshments I hear that you've actually come to do your promo tour with your son Howard your son he's 14 I have three thirteen fourteen seventeen I take them I take them all over the corners of the world and it's never for business it's always for pleasure yeah no that's fantastic and we'll definitely explore children's health and brain health a little bit later you said you're not doing the things that you should be doing for jetlag and I'm really interested we're currently speaking it's about 11 o'clock in the morning where do you live in America I live in Los Angeles okay so eight sounds behind so your body clock is potentially thinking it's 3:00 in the morning yeah so we know the sleep is Chris Cole from Renault so what's going on in your brain at the moment given that you are trying to be alert trying to have a conversation with me about brain health when your body thinks it's 3:00 a.m. yeah sleep deprivation is unhealthy on occasion it's okay but prolonged sleep deprivation is not good for you it gives you diseases for a short trip like this I'm familiar with sleep deprivation at its surgical training and in the States before they before they limited the hours to 88 and I mean we were doing 40 hour shifts for me when I'm sleep-deprived I become disinhibited more handed a bit more jovial I think that works for me during this trip so I'm I'm okay with it but for most people they should understand that we as well as plants grew on a planet that has a revolution and so it's a diurnal basis of not just our sleep patterns but the DNA and our tissue changes at night and during day we're meant to cycle that way and it's not from the pineal gland and melatonin that regulates it it's actually from a suprachiasmatic nucleus a fancy term for a structure hanging down beneath your brain that you can access through your nose and it is based on a 24-hour clock and recent Nobel Prize was given to it so the getting into a rhythm of day and night is extremely important for your health it is designed not in your not just in your brain but in the DNA readouts in your liver and your muscle in your intestine so it's mind-body regulation that the Sun and the Setting Sun of the Rising Sun does sure and then as in the Western world but actually all over the world now as we move to 24-hour societies and shift workers common we know that that has a detrimental impact on our health but for us and neurosurgeons you sort about your early days of trainee so you are there you're cutting open someone's skull what are the effects of you doing that when you're sleep-deprived because if you're working 88 hours plus here a week you must have operated at some points when sleep deprived yeah I have operated sleep revived for maybe a decade when I was in training back then it was the way to staff hospitals you couldn't hire five trainees to work 30 40 hours each some people felt like that's the only way to get the necessary experience and when they limited it what we found in the States was when they limited the work hours the complications and the errors didn't go down because that increase in handoffs also raised the risk for the patient's so it didn't solve all the problems but it was a major problem what is it like to feel what is it like operating when you're sleep-deprived I think we select for ourselves in medical school I think there are certain personality traits and driven personalities that go into brain surgery or maybe cardiac surgery and on occasion we end up working in areas where you can't call another doctor the next day and many of the smaller towns in the States if you do a brain surgery and the next day you need to tinker with that patients skull again as you said you can't call somebody else so if you didn't sleep that night you still have to perform I think general limiting of work hours is great me when I was sleep deprived as training as a trainee there was usually another professor alongside with you so you were a team but is performance affected by sleep deprivation absolutely can you still perform a task in a capable manner I like to think I did so but truck drivers to cops to surgeons and definitely pilots sleep deprivation is not only bad for your health it's it's the best way to not perform well if that's your goal yeah it's interesting that those professions now have limits I'm a driver Solomons pilots of limits yeah I guess we as doctors in our profession we've been pretty late to the game in terms of recognizing off that ability and there's actually being sleep-deprived I mean I can look I started off as a physician digna follow G that was the speciality I chosen to go for and it was stealing before I switch and I can remember so clearly I was a junior what you guys are call an intern I'm guessing I was probably what we call a second-year Sh oh here see anyhow officer and we were still doing the old-fashioned on-call shifts so I got to work at 8:00 a.m. worked all day and then I was on call that night and you know I was working through to the following day to the evening I remember getting there and you know it relied on the fact that you would usually grab a couple of hours or something at night you would normally quieten down so you could actually maybe put your head down for an hour or two and that would get you through but we just had a busy night lots of kids came in I didn't get to the mess I didn't get to my room and I was thinking as a junior doctor at the time I thought hey I'm sure when my senior gets in they'll probably like me home early today yeah and it didn't happen yeah I did and then we said oh you prepped for the afternoon water and that's like in my head I'm thinking I'm exhausted and anyway what I did finish it four or five PM yeah so I've been working for I know you've done this many many times but just my own experience so that was well that was a good what 24 hours and another ten at least 34 35 hours yeah of work yeah I remember I was in the car on the way home on the Ring Road from Manchester and the traffic had stopped because it was busy you know and the next thing I know that's horns going on around me because you're shut down I've fallen asleep in the middle lane the scary so all the other cars around me have gone and everyone behind me is beeping me and I scare the life out of me something that wakes you up I mean that got me home no problem but that is that is really scary and dangerous so I guess the question is you know we talk and we're going to go into what sort of pro-ice things we can do for our brain health but given that we're living in a sleep deprived Society is arguably the most dangerous place to be in a motor vehicle because how many people around you are actually sleep-deprived I know I know operating a car you know without the ability to do so awesomely I like that question I mean I think the semi autonomous features in cars now that the string will vibrate if you go out of your lane those things will help but we are we are in an extremely distracted society so let me backtrack to the story you were telling just now about you know Acutes came in that must mean a lot of admissions or a lot of things were happening in the middle of night I found and the surgical residence I knew if we were just given the opportunity for one one and a half hours of sleep it was actually better that we pulled an all-nighter there was something weird about just shutting your brain down for just a touch you hit the pillow you pop back up in a 40-hour chipper for an hour and a half it kind of threw off threw off your energy and your focus even more than just in during the night awake so I used to rather than get an hour of sleep I'll just walk around the ICU talking to nurses and seeing what's going on but that let and that's a story you mentioned the book that led me to understand a little bit about the dangers of disrupted sleep and what I talk to my kids about is it's you know they say you want seven eight nine hours of sleep I read if you could get five hours of uninterrupted sleep that might be better than eight where you got up once or twice to answer your phone or it pinged and the light went on so disrupted sleep is now almost an epidemic because all the devices and lights that are near us that are tripping up that circadian rhythm we talked about the sunrise and sunset that we that that it led to our evolution of all these biological cycles work I think the treatment for that is more sophisticated devices they're the devices aren't going anywhere I don't want them to go anywhere I like having a superpower computer in my left pocket the first thing I look at and sometimes it's the last thing I look at but if we could regulate the glow the access the frequency for our kids that's what I do my teenage sons is let's just start turning it down around eight and just give me an hour without a phone and your face before you go to bed I mean they're teenagers and that's a big ask and they said why I said well it would be great to just have your brain entertain itself for one guy one damn hour rather than having a device pummeling content into you I think the ability to drift into random thoughts is very important to the brain especially the moments before you drift into sleep yeah and so I have tried my best to they all have phones they do their thing I don't really I don't know I don't really I talked about the digital diet just choose good content as well as all the indulgences on your phone mix it up and just get it out of your face the last hour before you go to bed Fridays and Saturdays my wife and I will binge on Netflix and fall asleep sometimes with a laptop in the bed there's nothing wrong with that but for kids in particular the ability to be creative and day dreamers it's fundamental and I worry that these devices are tripping them up before they go to bed yeah I think the point about downtime yeah I think it's really important it's something I've written about in my last but the stress solution all the monstrous and its impact on our health and one of the things I see happening in society is that downtime is slowly being eroded from our lives so the example I often give is you know you're here in London right if you were here 15 years ago in London I'm gonna guess that if you went into a local cafe to order a coffee you would stand in line and you know what you you probably be daydreaming people watching looking around you you might be looking at all the pastries and trying to think I can have one I'm not gonna have one you might interact with the barista if you go into any one now as I'm sure you have done since you've gotta here and again I'm not criticizing cuz I do the same thing a lot at the time we're all stuck in our phones right we're trying to catch up on that email I'll quickly check Instagram every little bit of downtime now I think has been eroding out and I think that's how many a consequence so my question really is what is that doing to your brain when we're constantly distracted women not allowing ourselves to just be and allow our minds to wonder yeah I don't have an answer for them the reason is we don't have enough data for that so the question is also asked about the devices maybe being beneficial for grandparents because they can have access to children's videos and posts so the effect of social media and constantly being on your phone because my children when they're looking at their phone they're swiping Instagram yeah I'm checking emails and swiping Instagram they're just swiping Instagram and the visual content and they look up they seem to function well I mean they're multitasking well but you're right there seems to be there is no empty space in the day where again they're not being pummeled with by some visual stimuli from their from their phone we don't know the effects are having because it's been 10 15 years and as you know you need date over longer periods of time like when they figured out the mine died or is over decades cardiac issues over decades so I don't have an answer for is it changing the structure or function of children's brains but in you know undoubtedly it is I'm just curious to see which doctors and scientists are gonna be able to figure that out yeah I'm not sure it's all for the worse hey I'm sure it is not all for the worse I think there's so many benefits to social media but I'm sure there was some negatives as well I'm sure we're probably having a huge global experiments at the moment and I don't think it's necessarily the technology it's how we use the air yeah same with booze right yes anything like if you're drinking yeah not the wine if yeah bottle wine every day that's gonna have a certain impact on you you know so if you're having a glass of wine every now and again we your friends is part of a lovely meal that's gonna have a different out cause the same trout but it's having a different impact right yeah the the phone thing is a very interesting conundrum it is the way in which they engage the world but it's also the way in the work the way the world can actually lead them to the wrong path I mean not just the phone 13 reasons why I came out there's a little bit of a spike in suicides I don't know what to make of that you know I want them to know about it but I didn't know what to make of that we know what Facebook in politics that those rules weren't set right so I love what you're saying about the listen these devices aren't going anywhere the television is not going anywhere rock and roll is not going anywhere drugs aren't going anywhere but how do we structure some boundaries and constraints within those devices so people who use them in a destructive manner have some triggers for example gamblers they don't ingest a drug yet they do all kinds of they can have an addiction that's equal to equal the addictive and destructive as cocaine and they never put a chemical inside their body so casinos have certain things with gamblers and rules there's gambling hotlines you start to put things in I think for some of the kids that cannot manage and choose a healthy digital diet or actually even a food diet there should be some boundaries maybe maybe the maybe what we did with supersize at McDonald's also needs to apply within Facebook and Instagram and you know YouTube is now making a kid's channel because maybe it's not good to have kids channels and porn on the same thing yeah so those constraints without being too stifling because I tell my kids I want to be allowed to make bad decisions I don't want too many constraints I just want to know the truth about them and I think you've hit it perfectly what's the way to let them have it but set some boundaries up so they know when they're getting into dangerous terrain I mean you say you've hit it perfectly I'm not convinced with my own children perfectly I think yeah I'm sure you're the same you you know we're trying to figure out right they're trying to learn the sides we're trying to learn from our own intuition and we're trying to do the best that we can hold are you kids my kids my son is just turned nine my daughter's sex some okay so they cancel you right into it not quite yet but almost with my son no phone at 9:00 not at the moment no so I don't know if culturally it's different here from the US or where I live I had no idea but at the moment it's not become an issue yet but I'm expecting it to within weeks tonight and so you know I'm sort of it's interesting here how other parents do it right 11:00 or 12:00 is when we are three teenagers back then there was that was the average age when somebody got a phone and the parental blocks Rekia are key and just the heads-up about those parental blocks they're good at removing so you sometimes have to supplement with another app or feature to make those even harder yeah cuz the reality is our kids are probably gonna be more tech savvy than us and they're gonna know how to get around these things yeah Robert you mentioned rock and roll just now and I got my attention as a music fan my entire life someone who spent a lot of his teenage years and 20s and still now going to rock and roll concerts for you that's great that sort of Pete my interest so rock and roll or let's expand out music what impact does music have on our brains that we know and there's actually somebody in San Francisco or somewhere else he's putting musicians in fMRI scanners and those scanners don't tell the whole story but they do tell something new compared to just putting electrodes on somebody's head and so these different technologies that you know we're an electric brain for flesh is electric it's I think of it as a jellyfish it's the tentacles or spraying chemicals and electricity we can detect it from the surface of the brain and we can actually put people in machines and look at blood flow and when you do that for musicians it's really interesting because it's a physical performance if you're learning to play music I think I want to pivot from listening to move it music to learning to play to me learning to play music that seems to be the thing that leads to the most left-right right-left connections and electrical currents passing through the corpus callosum your brains like a walnut there's a bridge in the middle and music hearing it playing it thinking about it using your fingers to control it seems to pull from the most corners of our mind and I can't imagine that not being good for you because as you know with the brain you don't use it you lose it it will down-regulate it will let wither certain corners of the brain if they're not actively engaged so I think music especially when you're a kid learning to play music has to be good for the brain do we have data on that no but do we have instinctual feelings about it being beneficial yes yeah and I think as you say instinctively we think that you know our kids learning a new skill whether it was a supports or a musical instrument is the likely to yield benefits I think one of the one of the reasons for me that might apply is because it often puts you into flow States you know and I think for us as well you know when something's that you know it's not too difficult then it's unachievable this a little bit a little bit harder that we have to concentrate you have to you you access that flow say I find those people who get into the flow State and I think some people have you know may not know what that means and they may think that's kind of fluffy but there is a measurement for that so when you're awake the and resting and focus those are alpha waves if you look at for example sharpshooters just the moment before they hit a target likely athletes a footballer scoring something and I felt quarterback ballerina the the release from the constraints of thought that come from your frontal lobe and letting a well-trained behavior exert itself the brain is actually less active it lights up less brightly it's more efficient in its pathways and that flow state is an alpha wave that's detectable similarly with Buddhist monks likely with deep divers before they do their dive it's a state of being focused awake and calm and I think our phones and the technology and everything we're doing is pushing us away from that so if we can find skills and habits that let us harness that channel it know how to get into it that would be great I think learning music and like to say with urban music learn it and then let it go that's that alpha wave flow state that I think could be very beneficial for anybody to learn music I guess what you're saying is essentially this whole idea that you know let's say a golfer for example who-who freezes and crumbles and the final back nine at a major tournaments I'm super fascinated with this this whole idea that when we learn a new skill we are you know rationally worth thinking about it we're trying to learn all those movements that we need but then when we need to perform you know we just want to have absorb that forget about you know rashly thinking about everything and just let it go but I think it's happening with a lot those golfers and in any sport when you freeze is that you're starting to overthink again instead of just letting your innate ability that you've trains just come out you're then started to think oh yeah okay make sure you get to this point in the backswing major you've stopped I think it's what you said about letting go right is is that the key to allowing our brain to function at its peak it's you learn and you then develop mastery and then you let it go so you just allow us to perform yeah and I think let's let's dig into that a little bit deeper I don't think when a surgeon is is moving swiftly and with minimal trauma to tissue or a footballer's making their moves and you're thinking what this seems effortless they look relaxed they're moving in a way that is is efficient it's not it's not strained you can see it in their face they're not trying and thinking that's not a reflex reflex is you I don't want people to think it's a you've trained 10,000 hours an hour you know I don't know I don't believe in the 10,000 hours yeah I like to have conversations with teenage kids and I go to dive bars in Los Angeles when I'm off duty and my friends are just a bunch of normal fellows I just tell I well we know surgeons that I've done 10,000 operations and they're still no good so how can it be 10th that right so the 10,000 thing and that I that that limits the inclusion of talent into the equation and when people say flow and saying it's a reflex oh you do it so much it's reflexive it's actually a misconception reflexes I as you know the you tap on my knee and I reflexively will kick it it doesn't even go to my brain it just goes to my lower back and comes back and makes my leg move that's a reflex thought and anxiety and controlling your your movements we know what that is that's frontal lobe that's too much CEO involved in the game what is that flow state what is somebody performing at a high level is one somebody who's mastered something just like a creative thought has to come on top of lots of knowledge yeah a flow state has to come on top of lots of practice and then it's about harnessing the subcortical structures in my this is the way I understand it so the brains like a canopy the CEOs on top and you know the cortical canopies doing the thinking but below that on the way down to our spinal cords there are these subcortical structures that fine-tune the movements they're the structures where you see a snake and you jump but then you realize it's plastic and the next time you don't fall for it so there's all the subtle intuitive movement and instinctive responses going on and the challenge of a flow state is once you've mastered it and you're golfing you're in that back nine like you said the anxiety is making those subcortical structures say freak out freak out ask the CEO for help and it's gonna start interfering with it and the mastery underneath is saying just let it go most people will have a flow state when they're not under pressure and the lights aren't on the challenging thing for athletes is how to deliver that under the stress of a game winning situation and and clutch performance to me that flow state is not performing better than what you would do in practice but just doing what you would normally do under these extremely anxiety-provoking stressful conditions so for people listening to this who are not high performing athletes I think there's a lot of take home there for them so I submit that we all want peak performance in our lives whatever our life entails whatever we need to do whether it's be a father whether it's to be a good office worker what would be a new rescission whatever it is we are all I think on some level wanting to perform at our peak so what can somebody listening to this or watching this on the video learn from what you've just said that athletes can do how can they use that to help them in their daily lives yeah that thank you for that transition because the lessons we learn from athletes in ballerina and other people apply to everybody and so when we speak about what people can do when they're stressed out on an LA freeway when they're about to go into a meeting with the boss and you're anticipating something not going well when you're coming home and your relationship hasn't been good the time-tested method and the one that we now know see I don't want to just tell you things without telling you how I know why I have the privilege to be even asked that question to me is meditative breathing it's a very powerful way to quell that anxiety storm that those instinctive structures have done I'm gonna see my boss and those subcortical structures are firing and they're unhappy much like you'd see a snake where you're at the edge of a cliff there's certain things that should be released in your body but those have been repurposed in a negative destructive way where we feel that at work we feel that at home we feel that when we look at certain social media how do we tamp that down just like we would slowly walk away from a fear of heights how do we walk away from just the general anxiety that's filled our life during the day and I deeply believe and particularly now because there's hard core data I'll go into this a little bit is meditative breathing I don't know what mindfulness is I don't know what your mind is thinking my mind is thinking or your mind is thinking but I know that that the brain is connected to the lungs in the heart through this thing called a wandering nerve it comes down and that that the brain can send signals down to your heart and Buddhist monks can slow down their heartbeat I know when I put a little coil on there for people with epilepsy kids with epilepsy a vagal nerve stimulator and we send electricity the electricity can actually go upward into your brain and quell epilepsy epilepsy seizure is an aberrant electrical activity of your brain think of it as an arrhythmia your heart is epilepsy the brain it's called a vagal nerve stimulator it's been around for a while this is something you can look up right now we put electrical coil on this nerve and it calms electricity it's not even in the brain but meditated breathing deep breathing an in a count of four to go in a count of three or two one to hold and a slow-release if you do that just a little bit before you engage in that next stress provoking task it too works like a vagal nerve stimulator without a 70-200 surgery to calm the electricity in your brain and you say okay that sounds where did you get that well well you know you know meditations been going on for a long time we've seen Buddhist monks do certain things and others deep divers are a great example of that but we we know this now because the study came out last year and children and young adults and actually all people if they have epilepsy and aberrant electrical activity of the brain arrhythmia the brain if usually treats with medicine sometimes they find a little nodule we cut out it's usually not cancerous sometimes we don't know where it begins and it's hard to know what to do without understanding the origin of it so they come in and they have brain surgery we make a big incision we moved the skull when we put a grid on the surface of the brain it's not deep brain surgery its surface brain surgery there is a difference and then the wires come out of their head and they have to stay in the hospital for a week and that's recording them 24/7 waiting to catch that that that Firefly that this origin the seizure where is it because they know with radiation you can zap it and you can cure them of it okay so it's meant to be therapeutic but what are they doing for that week when they're just kicking back getting bored so income all the neuroscientist from San Diego the highest per capita is at that see on the ocean that's a San Diego they come in and say hey can we hang out with you and the recordings going on Wow and they actually asked them let's do certain tasks and then they went through like meditative breathing with these patients and these kids and these young people and they're watching the electricity change and get closer to that alpha wave get closer to the calmer electrical signals in their brain after just deep slow deliberate breathing and that's accessible to us all without having to pay for it so that's a great thing is free right yeah but the book is not it's meant to be all the magical things that are right there I mean when you pull into work before a big operation I'll take a few minutes and just and just slowly breathe that and you can find it happen it's a count of foreign hold for a couple count of four out and then what happens is you don't the count as much it becomes a habit it becomes a part of your routine it's free you don't have to do it for 30 minutes you're not gonna be walking on coals and all the exaggerated people exaggerate things people think about it is a resource available to you that has been harnessed for for millennia and that now you have crazy brain surgeons providing you the electrical proof if you're a skeptical kind of person to me that's magic yeah absolutely and I think you know it brings a lot of weight to this to this term just breathe I mean it's it's deceptively simple but it really works and I know this shall be given a lot of talks to companies about wellness and how they can improve productivity and what's really interesting is a a breath that I sort of used with my patients something I've written about a lot is the three four five breath when you breathe in two three and you hold for four and you beam out four five yeah and what I'm talking to people a group I'll I'll often will collectively do just one of those breaths to get them takes about 10 or 12 seconds em and I ask people straight away how do you feel how can you feel a difference just on one breath and about 80 percent of people put the hand up and that's just one breath you do that a few times as I say it's in five of those three four five breaths takes one minutes you will put your body in a different states because breathing is like information for your body and it's responding so then it's interesting that you know you as a neurosurgeon before a big operation will use breathing yeah thank you for that and thank you for allowing people to find things about themselves that can help themselves you know because that in itself is power also and you know I'm from the states and I'm from Los Angeles and it has become a bit commercialized that people think metod it's actually breathing ie the meditative component is I like to call it meditative breathing because it lets people know it's gonna help them meditate where's a lot of people say oh I don't know how to meditate what do you mean just think about it Mount Everest or do I have to buy yoga pants and be in Malibu and drink green juice they just become so so distracted from the ascent of the essence of it which is deliberate breathing just breathing and what happens is if four people are thinking my gosh that can't work is way got nothing to lose York you go you're equipped with it and I think many people I'm not seeing 100% they'll find that that's a wonderful habit to add to their life to turn down the anxiety even if it just creates a pause before you go into an anxiety provoking situation it lets you get your thoughts in order as well as get your instincts under control so you don't go in there say something outlandish or over-the-top it's a great break in the day it's a few minutes and I like to do it before I go to bed I like to do it before a big case I like definitely do it before a meeting or conversation and sometimes like before when I came here I didn't want to do it I'm you know I don't want people to think I'm some yogi master with all that I don't have any of it I am breaking the rules and going hard in London I am NOT doing meditative breathing before this because I want to just be loose and I want to be disinhibited but if I were anxious and this doesn't provoke anxiety I hope I'm not stressing you see you being on this show I love it I mean I this is you know you're uh you're offering me a creative Avenue that's that's the bucket in my mind that this interaction right now getting you and me is but for those people on the freeways or on the tube stressed out there's a resource available to you and if you're listening to your earbuds with your phone there's so many free apps that'll help you set the cadence it's such an easy way and a smart way to get close to the flow state turn down the anxiety and I'll give you one last example you're saying okay then I sigh I don't believe them I okay take you to a gnarly story again this is rare you know if the perturbation of the system is what sometimes reveals the mechanics you know so there's disease called moyamoya Japanese people get it more than the rest of the world nobody knows why I had a patient a kid and basically you have these four arteries popping off your heart going into your brain and sometimes right when they pop through the skull rather than breaking into this beautiful tree of small blood vessels they get they get clogged at a young age and these kids develop this fine blood vessels this vasculature that's very sensitive to breathing and when we when we have surgery that needs to be done in those patients we have to tell the anesthesiologists at the end don't let this kid cry because if they cry and hyperventilate breathe too fast the signals will be sent to the find blood vessels to shrink hyperventilation skittish breathing is a squeezer of blood vessels that can clot off the work of our surgery kids this is a proof it's been 20 years don't let kids cry after moyamoya repair at a Children's Hospital all the neurosurgeons can talk about it so there's biology too slow breathing working through the vagus nerve yeah and then there's also biology too - rapid breathing and hyperventilating being not good for the brain in certain conditions so there is basis to breath controlling mind yeah incredible um I'm gonna move to practical tips for us what we can do in our lives as adults to help improve our brain health but before we go there you when kids are coming up a lot yes that example you just gave I've had the pleasure of meeting you for senior son he's just he's lovely really you know she's incredible to say hi and and for me actually it's really nice to see you traveling with him on a PR tour and it makes me think it's something I've thought about for years I'd love to take my kids with me but often we think actually know what's better for me just to go do my work and then come back but but actually just seeing and hearing you say how rewarding that experience is for you and your son it makes me think about reevaluating how I do these things so thank you for that but I want to go deep into kids him so you in the start of your book I think it was interesting to me how your knowledge as a neurosurgeon has in some ways shaped and what you do with your children and it's really to do with that attitude to risk some of the things that we might perceive as risky you will allow them to do I think I think it was climbing a tree is an example but some of the other things that others might allow them to do like crossing a road and you're pretty strict on what if you could elaborate that so first of all my wife unexpectedly got pregnant now I say unexpectedly because she was an ob/gyn and training and I was a neurosurgeon and training and she's like I'm pregnant I said well that was a hundred percent you heard jurisdiction I thought you had that under control so we had kids when we were in training back when those hours are 40 hours shifts it was nuts back then right when she was so we and my siblings and her siblings we're not the oldest but we had kids first and there was like a generation gap where I hadn't I hadn't seen kids being raised for a while and so she and I just kind of made up our own stuff you know she's so we brought in a lot of what I call diversity of interactions partly by necessity partly by choice we put them a lot of different schools we put them in a lot of different faith-based schools secular schools we took them to a lot of different places they ate a lot of different food a lot of different music grandparents nannies we did all those things and part of what motivated me is when I my had my kids when I was also in the Children's Hospital and I remember reading the study then people were suggesting and I think later on an orphanage in Belarus proved it such a sad case but an illustrative one so I always like to tell you my story and it can be sometimes too intense and maybe even a bit macabre but that lets you know like wow why would we ask this guy about kids first I got three teenage kids III do children's brain surgery on the world usually in Eastern Europe and Central America but the kids in an orphanage that were left alone and not tended to the the beautiful undulating pattern of that brain which is like a the reason it's like that it's like imagine taking a giant pizza and squeezing it like an accordion to put it into a box it gives you more canopy square footage or square kilometers if you will and what happened was they started losing the ridge because they they needed less parts of their brain the brain is an energy hog if you don't use it it's twice three pounds and they use it 20% of the blood flow 20% goes to that thing in our skulls so it's not advantageous to feed parts of the brain that you're not actually using it'll start to wither and I hence he'll use it all these heads yeah but in a in a way that that's an active process at the structural physical level parenting in a in a way that would preserve the the flesh inside my children's skulls was important to me and then at a microscopic level I was getting my PhD then and we were seeing this thing called synaptic pruning so in some ways a the biology the brain is very Landscape Architecture we use words like pruning and dentist and dendrites and you are born with more brain cells all of us then you are intended to keep running the ones you keep as a toddler when you're young are the ones that were tickled that were engaged and we know that again because if somebody's born with an eye that doesn't work that part of the brain starts with brain cells but if it's not using it it'll let those things wither so my parental approach and I don't need I don't know if it's working or not it's not even about the outcome I did I took the best approach I could I could I just took them to all different stretches of experiences I had I'm doing you know free running for one one summer that led to dabble with some music we've traveled all over the world for pleasure languages food constant interaction and and and for example what better thing for my 14 year old son to come here and find himself having the confidence the ability to navigate London coming from Los Angeles that's my gift to him as a father I'll let school do the algebra and the geometry and the and the grammar actually don't do homework with them it's kind of a weird thing I really just chat with him like we're talking I'll take a pull of interesting article I'll be like let's talk about this I just want to hear how you think you just keep up with me and talk to me teach me it's interesting where's the new ideas said what about what about that you know the orphanage you mentioned what was going on there so why would that brains you know adapting in the way that they were was it a lack of touch was it this is faint lack of touch the forty hours when I was doing those shifts I missed my kids as for a fuse and they were telling us not to have the kids in their bed and I'm not trying to come up with policy or you know I get advice on the show just my wife and I two medics at that time too in training we put the kit between us because of touch I wanted to have them near me I wanted them to hear me breathe I wanted those things and the lack of touch will shut down certain parts of you brain the lack of sight visual stimulation will shut down parts your brain and here is the thing that just really broke my heart the introduction of a stressful environment will change the brain forever right if you have to fend off assault if you have to worry about getting home safely that's too much to put on that brain because now what you're doing is you're messing with the emotional thermostat that subcortical structure you're gonna make it harder for that kid to find that flow state in their life as they mature because you primed them to always be under threat and that survival instinct that lets and survive also against the way gets in the way of happiness and tranquility and I think I'm not a policy person but that's why you need to put a lot of resources into kids yeah because if you don't set that thermostat right they're not gonna be healthy adults and you're gonna be paying on the back end for people who are thinking about it from a financial point of view yeah and then that's super fascinating and I think you know those early years are critically important we know that as hopefully as a note of optimism for people listening who might be thinking as many parents do you know maybe the first few years were very stressful and there were certain situations that are their control often you can feel very bad as a parent responsible guilty what can I do now but but we're gonna we are going to come to these tips and there's things that we can always need to improve our brain function yeah and I do want to make sure we cover those you mentioned well two things about your about your children about your son in particular really first one is why were you so cautious this is what I got from reading your book about letting your children cross the roads yet you're happier than jumping trees okay first question and the second question is you said that your son here in London what a great gift that he can now start to navigate his way around London about navigation I was thinking about GPS smartphones is there a an unexpected consequence to our brains by outsourcing its ability to think you know many of us we don't know where we're driving anymore our GPS takes us and if the GPS brings down we don't know where we are we don't have got to get back so quite a few questions that way if you could tease your way through them yep know it I worked at a Children's Hospital and I saw how kids died so I apologies to the audience this is just who I am I always learned from things and I have intense experiences but we saw kids choked they fell out of second-story windows they were burned and they got hit by cars all these ridiculous SUVs giant vehicles and fast roads and so when they were younger I wanted them to be safe because pediatric mortality frankly is you know that's the first thing you want to avoid so that's why I didn't do I didn't mind if they fell out of a tree and they've they've taken they've taken some scrapes the one that's here now is got a scar from his forehead he drove in Tina rode his bike into a garage because I again I saw from Children's Hospital that stuff to heal from and so that's why I didn't at that time want them to be crossing the crossing streets and stuff like that in the neighborhood people did you look at it death yeah no injury first you gotta get him to live you gotta feed him and get him to live and then you can do all those things we talked about by diversifying and what are we robbing our kids from by letting them push the navigation app so that's interesting it it's okay in my opinion I don't want them to be memorizers it's okay for them to have all the capitals of American states that we used to have to memorize in their pocket I'm like I don't care if you get a good grade on that that's not really what I'm not trying to grow robots so that kind of memory and loss of capacity I'm kind of okay with but there's another type of memory called working memory where they can juggle a lot of things I gotta get to school and of this text multitasking that's really a skill that's what that's what we all want to do better and in a calm fashion right although some neuroscientists will say it's impossible to multitask I've read that for many years scientists as a book I don't if it's the organized mind where I said I you know and I just completely disagree you know the highly Funke some people I know my kids they can do a lot of different things not necessarily eight projects on the kitchen table at the same time but I mean multitask eight different things that need to get done during the day without dropping the ball and connecting them in a seamless fashion I think that's that's called working memory I think that's important the particular thing we were talking about different things yeah so exactly so it just raw memorization of phone books I don't mind if they leave that lose that able to get through the day and not drop the ball and know what comes first will come second priorities as you know when the Acutes came in you had to take care of the triaging is working memory and then but the navigation one I have I'm particularly opinionate about I don't like them to press the route app he said well where does that come from why is he just is he making that stuff up or where did you get that the temporal lobe actually has grid cells GRI D no scientists have found that there are cells in particular cluster of tissue in the temporal lobe that help you with spatial navigation and so what I tell my kids is come on you gotta be good at this because this state was this spatial navigation is that cognitive reserve that you build now is what people lose and dementia when people have Alzheimer's they can't find their way home it's in that same space so building up spatial navigation is good for you now it's good for when you're older it's good when you're a surgeon it's good if you're driving and those grid cells are important to cultivate so what we do and many people do it their own way but for my sons if we're going somewhere in Los Angeles or even around the world let's just look at the map you can press route if you want but then you got to put it away 101 South 10 East exit this make a left so I want them to think about the sequence of navigating an environment and if you think about it it was probably useful thousands of years ago in the Savannah like witch cave which Rock that's a very important skill to have and it's deeply rooted in neuroscience and biology in her brain I love it it reminds me a little bit and I've got to be honest my tendency is to go a bit extreme on things sometimes when I apply them to my cells I'm really kind and compassionate I hope to my patients and a lot more relaxed with myself I can be quite sometimes and when I used to do a lot of house visits or house cause I think you guys call them from from general practice I remember my car did not have a sat-nav and at that time still doesn't actually and I was quite resistant to using them so what I would do is what I knew I've got to go and visit these three patients I don't know their address I'd look on Google Maps as to roughly where they were in relation to the surgery but whereas working and I sort of had a hold on it I'd lock it into my heads and then I'd go to my car and sort of try and picture eyes and go let me see if I can figure out and get there and I guess what I didn't realize I was doing is that I was working out these grid cells which I feel pretty good about myself now they've seen it but no it's interesting isn't it that's all my suggestions I want there to be a scientific basis yeah not that other suggestions aren't great no but I'm not here to give you suggestions that I can't back up with hardcore science or clinical stories and grid cells do exist there in hardcore neuroscience journals yeah and that explains why preserving navigation and thinking about that so people want to do puzzles people want to be thirsty for challenge I think holding on as navigation in a three-dimensional environment is very important I want to move now to practical tissues because this podcast is called feel better lift more the reason it is it's quite self-explanatory but I believe that when we feel better in ourselves when we're functioning better we get more out of our lives we've got more energy to do the things we want to do we've got more cognitive capacity to do the things that we'd like to do in our spare time and even at work and there's plenty of tips in the book I want to sort of may I would say quickfire but just go through them systematically I was really struck by a paragraph I read that I think was in your book about how even at 60 or 70 years old a few simple lifestyle changes with patients or with the public has been shown to increase their performance on cognitive tests and I think that's really empowering for people and when they think oh well I didn't do this I've had a stressful life yeah wait a minute there are still things you cause noodley so let's go through what are some of the things that people can whether it's that diet whether it's you know whatever you go through some of the tips you think he's useful and I thought about how to explain that so it's not too much of a listicle for people let's do a 24-hour day about I'm just I'm just thinking about this now I'm just gonna take you through things you can do you if you have the luxury so first of all food I mean people are starving in this world and food scarcity bad food I'm respectful of that that said if you wake up considered skipping breakfast a couple of times a week in neuroscience journals and from what we know about the biology of it that intermittent fasting going 16 hours couple of times a week without eating glucose well your liver will run out of its glucose reserves it'll burn fat into these things called ketones the brain is a hybrid vehicle it's not all gasp it's not all electric it likes both and so if you have dinner at 8:00 and it's Monday evening consider having your next meal be midday the next day that's an easy way to get to 16 hours it doesn't mean you're fasting for days and days there is neuro scientific literature that intermittent fasting is good for attention and focus okay now it's lunchtime and you're thinking about what to eat before that I would consider taking five minutes to just breathe deeply like you're doing now just bake deep breaths a couple of times a day three times a day for three minutes make it easy see how that works for you just the pause might be helpful now it's time to eat the food you choose is important and I think there's delicious food to eat that's actually good for your brain and how do I know that well we don't have a pill for Alzheimer's but we do have the mind diet which is essentially Mediterranean food that if you look at a group of thousands of people over a long period of time they had less dementia so now that you've figured out the cadence of eating which is intermittent fasting skipping breakfast a couple of days a week now that you've brought in pre lunch three minutes of just deep breathing that's meditative breathing choose plants choose nuts choose occasional fatty fish my fatty fish has omega-3s which is an absentia component of your of your brain it's the wrapping around all those connections that keeps those electrical signals firing faster and on that point given the growing tendency to follow a vegan diet in your opinion can that be problematic I don't think so because this is a good question I was asked they said no at Stella McCartney's yesterday and there are good nutritional sources for B vitamins as well as omega-3s I don't have the the name chicken supplements if they choosing to go vegan then you may recommend they supplement with something can be very well and B vitamins but if they supplement omega-3 from fish oil then they're not vegan anymore but there are other supplements and what I also say is the benefits of being vegan if you can pull it off are so great that a little bit less omega-3s because you're not eating fish I think it far out you know far exceeds are you saying that relative to the standard of course you live in America said the standard American or the standard Western diet relative to that are you suggesting any increasing plant foods is generally a good thing absolutely not only is it it's a good for the animals though you're not killing it's good for the planet but it's actually what your body prefers it's healthier for you and if you want to eat meat consider the Mediterranean diet words fatty fission and poultry paths on the beef pass on the fried food pass on the processed food now if you do have a burger you're not gonna undo what you did just make those things an indulgence rather than a habit so now you're at lunchtime you've chosen the Mediterranean diet more plants less meat the right kind of meat and your day goes on and then the question is what's next to improve your health it's a bit of exercise is great the brain likes exercise because it is flesh don't don't clog the plumbing to your garden because swaths of your garden will wither so people have strokes and injury it's because blood flow is not getting into their brain that's the way to hurt the structure a brain so what's good for the heart is good for the brain then the other thing it does is it bathes itself in these neurotrophins that's what my science is on BDNF brain driving and so that's what my grants are on when the brain exercises its showers itself it's not like thigh muscles release healthy brain chemicals that swim up there it's got its own pharmacy you give it the right behavior and interaction it'll reward itself so exercise keeps the plumbing open to the flesh of the brain as well as releases and molecules that serve as miracle miracle growth for the brain a couple of times a week is a good place to start do we know what specific exercise is good for the brain to get for BDNF levels or is it we don't well some people are starting to suggest some strength training is an essential component so if you're just running a marathon you might want to throw in some light weights but more a little bit more exercise than you're currently doing is good is what the brains gonna say hey I like this direction I'm gonna shower myself with BDNF yeah exactly and I think we can look strength training I'm a huge fan of strength training I do think we undervalue muscle mass in society and in health but generally speaking for most of us if we just increase how much we move get vertical even yeah get out of the chair that's gonna help just the postural elements of standing yeah is a first step next thing you know you're walking make sure you know you're taking the stairs so these are simple things these are free things and so exercise and then the day the day moves on and you're getting to the evening if you can I like to read something completely unfamiliar I've got a stack of old magazines and just flip through just just new new content for your mind and I think it's since its thinking flesh and of course it likes blood it likes to be irrigated of course it likes a certain kind of diet because the components and needs but it also wants to think if you asked you saying bowling me how you eat you buy muscles stronger take some stairs well how do you get your brain to be healthier think and everybody's level next level of thought and challenge is individ we don't all have to do the same puzzles we don't all have to have the same career but get out of your comfort zone if you will just with the thoughts so flip through something different on your phone read something different on your phone develop a new habit I think that's important and then for those of us who have creativity as an ambition and I have the luxury of having creativity as an ambition because cutting out a cancer from somebody's brain is a three dimensional thing understand trying to guess what mother nature is how mother nature is working in science is a creative thing I'm not a technician I'm not a I'm not an intellectual frankly in the end I'm an instinctive person who wants to harness his creativity so you know people are micro dosing people are doing different things but we're you know those that requires pharmacological intervention I don't support that what I would say is we're all wildly creative in our dreams and people are finding that when you on the transition from awake to asleep and from sleep to waking up it's called hypnagogic and hypnopompic there's actually those same alpha ways that we've been talking about just for 10 20 minutes as you drift into sleep and your tasks are done and Salvador Dali mentioned that it's like he uses sleep as a psychedelic tool for creativity to solve problems it's not gonna happen every time but I like to look at my riddles at the end of the night in my--in and I have a Notes app and I write a few things in a wake-up and I write a few things that transition is less sort of a strange portal to your subconscious and again based on science if you put some electrodes on the brain at that time you have those alpha waves that we talked about awake but focused and calm and you also have these other waves these delta waves that waves that are light sleeping early dreaming it's the only time where you have both awake and asleep wave kind of heard in one of your articles that sorry I've read so one of your ask us that you say leave a pen next to your bed so that you can actually take advantage when those creative thoughts come just before better just when you wake up you can actually just jot them down and yeah and yeah that's that's incredible you said learn new things yeah how important can learning a new language oh it's an essential thing and whether you get it right is actually secondary it's the it's the process of trying to learn so language music the act of learning makes your brain say I gotta I gotta pull from different pathways I got to get to different corners of my mind it's actually an energy consuming activity and and that's what engages the the greatest corners and recesses of your mind is to learn new things particularly music particularly languages social interactions we know these things and now I'm just trying to give you a biological basis brains efficient if it wants to fall into its rut and breaking the rut in a constructive way it's gonna be good for your brain globally as your mind thoughts and emotions as well as the flesh that's that's one strong way to stave off dementia yeah and that's very powerful you're keeping your brain out so you have trying new things and I think what you said was super empowering it's not about whether you can actually master that language it's about whether you master playing the piano just the process of trying to yeah that's gonna do all the groundwork and other sort of heavy lifting in the brain which it which is super empowering doing things with your non-dominant hands I'm asking aches I'm interested but be it's something that I often do in my son like I we've been playing table tennis you caught the table tennis in America on ping pong and both we've you know we've been playing that in the back garden and sometimes we'll try and play with our left hands my bones white hands in and and Daddy says to him hey yeah this is really good for your brain this you know to ride it with your lap dance what's going on there and is it good for your brain yeah it is I'm a two-handed surgeon the neuro surgery requires the use of left and right so to facilitate that I had a mentor when I was younger say you know put your right arm in a sling for a little bit just just just to be crazy just to me just to see how that goes and over a few weeks it's awkward but your left hand it fits your non-dominant hand it can't catch up quite a bit and that that effort to learn how to use parts of your body that that you weren't you know relying upon is what I learned about for my patients you know when they have injuries when they come in with stroke where they've had a brain tumor moved sometimes they have weakness in their arms and legs and their ability to speak they have these central nervous system issues and and they have to rely on what's left and that is a very powerful thing because when they come back to clinic three weeks later or you see them three months later they're quite facile and that is brain plasticity that is brain rehab relying on extremities relying on thought relying on communication that you wouldn't have originally had so when I use my mouse with my left hand and force myself to do that or chopsticks and I encourage my kids to do that what it's doing is the left hand for me that's non-dominant is controlled by the right side of the brain that part of the brain if you don't engage it will also start to wither a little bit yeah and so before you get into those habits and again nobody's saying if you're gonna throw the football for a championship and came to use your non-dominant hand but the recruitment of brain cells in your right hemisphere by using your left hand and your left arm to bring in habits I think is a powerful and effective way not only does it bring those brain cells in just think about at the musculoskeletal level if using your phone your whole life with your right hand you're gonna stave off arthritis by bringing in the other hand as well so it's good for your brain it's good for your joints it's a way to be a more balanced person physically in music again it's a two handed sport brings that in nicely yeah incredible Rahul look just to finish it off then I know we've gone through tips but I'm gonna push you a little bit here sure I always like to lead the listener with some really actionable practical tips that they can apply in their own lives immediately to improve the way that they feel or improve the way that their brain functions so what are your top four tips sure and for people listen to this that they can think about applying into their own life one would be get vertical that's the most essential thing when I see our patients who can come out of a bed and stand they grow you can see a withering flower come back to life if they can get vertical being standing and moving is very imprudent for a frame whatever you're at just do a little bit more to make subtle but important changes in your diet get rid of the red meat and fried food add in some more of the Mediterranean diet you're still going to enjoy what you're eating you can have a glass of wine salmon red wine yogurt fruit it's not a tough thing it's just changing the direction of what you're eating the other things that I would do is I would consider I would consider getting some of these apps that's an interesting place to start I don't know which ones I'm recommending but there are brain training apps yeah brain training works certain governmental agencies are using it we use brain training as brain rehab in our patients find some puzzles find some content read a book do something unusual that will also be good and the fourth one I would say is you know try to find happiness it's the most elusive thing but we also know that people who have mental health issues or people who are depressed their brain start to change they are brain injured from the way they are thinking so if it's within your power to be happier to pursue relationships and crafts that make you happy that will probably be the best thing for your brain health great tips I hope well I know that will them inspire people you say to read more guys I would recommend that you get roles new book life lessons from a brain surgeon the new science and stories off the brain it's a really fascinating reads everything that rathole and I spoke about will be on the show notes page for this episode of the podcast dr. chaski com forward slash brain surgeon so do check them out I'll try and get links to those studies that were all mentioned in the conversation so you can check them out if you want so in clients enjoy the rest you say in London and I hope we get to do this at some point in the future thank you for including me you

Channel: Dr Rangan Chatterjee

Views: 62,016

Rating: 4.9241333 out of 5

Keywords: The Four Pillar Plan, Whole 30, NHS, GP, Progressive Medicine, Type 2 Diabetes, Low Carb, Four Pillar Plan, brain surgeon, neuroscientist, brain health, brain, meditation, breathing, rahul jandial, stress, the stress solution

Id: 8HzqKg4lPH4

Length: 64min 13sec (3853 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 02 2019