How to Detox Your Brain for Clearer Thinking, Deeper Relationships, and Lasting Happiness

hi everyone drew pro dear hosted the Brooke Marine podcast on today's episode we have dr. David Perlmutter and his son dr. Austin Perlmutter here to talk to us about cleansing our brains how do we detoxify our brains to have deeper relationships and actually make better decisions in life they're here to talk to us about their new book brain wash it's a fascinating conversation for anybody who's interested in wanting to make better decisions wanting to be healthier but not exactly sure how to get started stay tuned welcome to the broken brain podcast where we dive deep into the topics of neuroplasticity epigenetics mindfulness functional medicine and mindset all with the goal of helping you understand how your brain is not broken I'm your host drew protein each week my team and I bring on a new guest or guest plural who we think can help you improve your brain health feel better and live more this week's guests are board-certified neurologist and four-time New York Times bestselling author dr. David Perlmutter and his son who is also joining us here in Santa Monica in our studio dr. Austin Perlmutter board-certified internal medicine physician and together they're the co-authors of the all new book which is out this week please go get it you will not regret it brain wash detox your mind for clear thinking deeper relationships and most importantly lasting happiness gentlemen welcome to the broken brain podcast delighted to be here thanks for having us I want to just say as somebody who works with his family my my business partners dr. Mark Hyman but my sister's in the company my aunt's in the company my dad is helping us he's retired but he's helping us launch this new venture that we're doing it's just music to my ears and eyes to see you guys writing a book together Before we jump into it what was that process like father and son working on a book together well we've already jumped into it you want to start us sure well this is a it's been straight up one of the most meaningful experiences of my life and I really can't emphasize that enough getting to know my dad in this context is so different from turning to a father for general advice we've been doing the science together waking up in the morning drinking four cups of coffee sitting down at the table looking over these studies and having this intellectual connection that has been absolutely phenomenal but on the other hand the interpersonal dynamic of being able to work with somebody I care about so much on a message that I believe is going to be so helpful to so many people has been the other really key aspect of this and honestly I knew it was going to be a big deal writing a book I've always heard is a huge process but it has been really I don't want to say easy but wonderful throughout and I would tell you that when you have your son who thinks that dad's cool enough that he wants to hang out with them that's pretty pretty excited but we've done that for years and whether it's playing frisbee golf at night with lighted frisbees or who knows what we've done a lot of stuff together over the years now this becomes you know an incredible project with a huge goal truthfully the the messaging of our book evolved in the process of writing the book what promulgated the original idea was both of us being physicians and working with patients doing the very best we can to learn as much information as is possible then imparting that information to the patient and then experiencing an incredible level of frustration because the patient then doesn't implement that information so we wanted to design the initial plan was to design the bridge between information and actions so that caused us then to evaluate where the breakdown happens why is it that people can know what is the best decision to make and yet they don't do that and you know we as physicians and I think in general people tend to point fingers and say what's wrong with that person who's making bad decisions why don't they eat less carbohydrates or whatever the the goal may be and I think that what we learned through the research that we've done for brainwash is that there are many trappings of our modern society our modern world that really stacks the deck against you being able to make better decisions so yeah there's great information out there you know there are plenty of authors write in great books and you know we have them on our shelves books by everybody you know my books I think carry good information dr. Hyman is putting out amazing information but what we've realized is that these books and programs are useless unless they are implemented what good does it do to have the information so we've spent a year really doing the deep dive into how people make decisions which then overrides all of the rest of the information that's out there finally allowing people to rein in first the influences that are present in our modern world that are corroding their ability to make these good decisions and then more importantly once it's recognized how to fix that so that people can be satisfied can look in the mirror and realize their goals realize their weight loss their whatever it is if their goal may be so want to piggyback off of what you said I want to read a passage of sentence from the book our brains are being gravely manipulated resulting in behaviors that leave us more lonely anxious depressed distressful illness prone and overweight than ever before so you talked about those two aspects which is how do we help and support people to actually make these decisions and implement change in their life to achieve to achieve whatever goal that they want to focus on but let's start off with what is actually hijacking our brain that it makes it difficult to do so can you describe the landscape landscape and the state of threats that our brains are under today sure well let's start with one of the most important and probably most straightforward of these its food we need food we need to eat food to keep going but what is it that we're putting into our bodies well a recent study showed that 68% of the foods that people eat and buy in the store have added sugar we know sugar isn't really a good thing for us but the question has to be what is it doing to our thinking what is it doing to our brains and this is the question that I think we're now able to answer but we haven't been looking into nearly enough what is sugar doing to our brains well sugar Foster's in Meishan which listeners know is not good for the body chronic inflammation has been implicated in a variety of problems things like heart disease things like Alzheimer's disease what we're understanding now is that inflammation this process that sugar up regulates changes our thinking so let's let that sink in it's not that it changes our thinking in the long run it changes our thinking right now inflammation has been shown in several recent trials to bias our decision-making towards short-term impulsive thinking so to put that into context if you're eating a diet that increases inflammation you're going to make more short-term oriented decisions like eating a diet that increases inflammation choosing the wrong foods to be eating and that transcends just diet it gets into other things if you're somebody who struggles with online shopping now you have a diet that increases inflammation you're going to be picking the short-term reward and that means your your shopping cart might be filling up online with things that you don't need so again food is one of those entry points it's something that has been made incredibly palatable over the years and while that means it might taste good we need to appreciate that it is activating these circuits within our bodies within our brains that are making our decisions more impulsive more short-term oriented and in the big picture taking us away from the decisions that will lead us to health and will lead us to happiness and let me add before we move on from food and because it is it is a very important topic because we we recognize that in a simplistic model there are two areas of the brain that are involved in decision-making the prefrontal cortex which is the more advanced area if I may and the more primitive if I may amygdala and you know there's a balance between the two we tend to with inflammation unfortunately have more input from the primitive amygdala and as such our decisions are not really looking at the future as opposed to if we can reconnect to the prefrontal cortex and that is the area of the brain that allows us to and it participate in a process of thinking of the long-term consequences of our actions today it allows us to be more empathetic it allows us to be more compassionate it helps to tamp down this sense of us versus them that comes from the amygdala so we're trying to reconnect to the prefrontal cortex and you know as per our discussion of food and inflammation inflammation absolutely threatens that connection and I have to say that a thought came to me this morning while in the shower some of my best thoughts come to me any shower and having read the New York Times this morning they had an interesting article about what's going on in Brazil with reference to deforestation the Amazon not a good thing I think most people would agree with that but that said what has happened to the thought process around the globe is influenced by the globalization of the Western pro-inflammatory diet that as this Western diet finds its way to every corner of the globe it's changing how people across our planet think and behave locking them more into short-term reward based decision making and away from long-term consequence based thinking and being empathetic towards their neighbor towards their future selves towards the planet so it our discussion just about food could take us you know hours and hours of that would be actually a good thing but and so in a way you're almost saying just to like break it down very clearly like sugar and other processed foods which you talk to most people may say I don't really eat sugar I'm not eating sugar but Andrew it's in our food it's in everything already it's already in your pasta sauce and it's already in so many of the health products that you're getting even if it's pure cane sugar or other stuff it's so pervasive that's there this is encouraging they implement the factor of inflammation the cycle of inflammation in the body and that can even make you more selfish what Austin said and that is that you know it's actively added then this is not a conspiracy theory we know that the statistics indicate that around 68 percent of the one point two million food sold in the grocery store have added sweetener that's you know I don't know if we can ever say that's a fact somebody may say another world is flat but it's you know if you take the foods and look at them you look at the labels that's what you see now you might not see sugar you might see a high fructose corn syrup or you know people think that well maybe it's okay because it's cane sugar or it came from organically raised honeybees or maple syrup that was growing on trees that people prayed around or whatever it's sugar and it is pro-inflammatory and it is distancing your ability to make good decisions you know this is part of a larger theme that's inside of the book of the new normal that's there can you talk to us about the new normal the new reality that we find ourselves in today food is one part of that but there's a greater topic that's part of that too yeah that's that's such a good point so where are we at where are we at where we're living in the United States today well seventy plus percent of American adults are overweight or obese sixty plus percent of American adults suffer from a chronic disease rates of anxiety are around 18% in American adults rates of depression are somewhere around six percent but seem to be increasing in both adults and children things don't need to be this way because a lot of these are preventable diseases and I don't want to say all of it but we have these solutions meaning we know certain diets for example the Mediterranean diet is linked to a lower risk of developing depression we know that exercise is linked to a lower risk of developing depression we know that we can spend time with other people and that improves our health outcomes including our mood so we have kind of these solutions now why that's so important is as we mentioned before it's not the question of do we know what to do it's a question of do we know how to follow through on these things we understand and so the world as we see it right now could be a lot better with the available information so much of these things are things that are result of poor decision-making and again to give the example with the sugar it you're somebody who is you know that you shouldn't be drinking a whole bunch of soda you know that you shouldn't be eating a whole bunch of white bread but you do it anyway it's not a knowledge problem anymore it's a problem with being able to follow through on the decisions and those decisions are a reflection of the way our brains are wired so to take this to where we want to go in the book we need to get upstream we need to get upstream of the time that you're sitting there looking at the Apple and the donut and thinking I know I should eat the apple but the donut looks really good at that point a lot of the decision has already been made because it's determined by the way your brain is wired we talked about inflammation inflammation changes our decisions it changes our mood it changes our entire outlook on life and as an example of that we now understand that inflammation may actually cause depression I'll take a pause there because it's something that I only recently fully grasp the significance of this this point we look at research where they give people either vaccinations or endotoxin which is a part of a bacterial membrane and it creates symptoms of depression which means people feel more withdrawn from others it means they don't want to go socialize it means they don't enjoy life as much so inflammation we we appreciate it changes our brain but again as I said before if we know that inflammation is changing our decisions and we know that our decisions can alter the amount of inflammation in our bodies then we can get upstream of this by making the choices today things like exercising things like meditating things like even going out into nature for 20 minutes that lowers stress and when you have lower stress that lowers inflammation over time these are ways we can take back our brain for better decisions and better outcomes you know I was thinking of a couple things as we were as Austin was talking and the first was there's a great quote when Luke Skywalker first first meets Yoda I mean we get our information wherever we get it right and yo Lucas because we wants to become a Jedi and he's learning how to use the lightsaber and he's not doing a really good job and he's Yoda says well you've got it you've got to do do do not it's a pretty good impression so he says well I'm trying and Yoda says try what is try there is only do and not do so that's interesting that you know I'm thinking about that in the context of this book brainwash this is for the people who look in the mirror and say why is this happening why can't I make these decisions I bought the gym membership why am I not going why am I not getting the outcome that I want and I think that the deck is stacked against people and they don't realize it that because of these hacks into their decision-making as we've now been talking about with respect to sugar there's many other hacks and we'll talk about that but it's it's time that people stop fully blaming themselves and gaining this recognition that their ability to make and stick with better decisions has been taken from them by as we've talked about now sugar via inflammation via disconnection to the prefrontal cortex that's what inflammation does so Austen start off first with food David can you pick up on that you were talking about these other hacks what are the other hacks that are there that are hijacking our ability to move forward on the things that we actually care about well so many things and it's you know truthfully many of the lifestyle choices that you've talked about interviewed people about over the years with reference to their general health I would say that what is themed attic about basically everything that we present is the mechanism of inflammation yes the same mechanism underlying chronic degenerative conditions but now recognizing that chronic inflammation is part of disconnection syndrome is keeping you from accessing that part of your brain that allows you to plan for the future make good decisions stick with your decisions and even express empathy that is a powerful threat posed by inflammation brought on for example by not getting enough restorative sleep you know so in a way if I could just interrupt there's all these different streams that are out there little rivers that then lead into this bigger River so it could be these not getting enough sleep not getting enough food or getting the wrong types of food that are they're all going into that main river of inflammation all contributing to yes and we're gonna revisit that metaphor a little bit later because it allows us to get out of the main river into the smaller tributaries if we just choose for example to change the diet to pay attention to our exercise time in nature relationships meditation sleep etc so you know everybody it doesn't have to be put off by the idea that well I got to jump in a full-bore here and do this entire lifestyle change immediately no once you change a couple of these parameters then the decision-making apparatus improves and that will foster making more and more changes ultimately the whole broke the program is on board and people are really finally achieving a place of being satisfied with their decisions and knowing that their decisions are taking them to a better place now we were introducing sleep you know we talked about how much time do you spend exercising how much time you spend meditating how much time do you spend engaging with other people those time dedications pale in relationship to the amount of time you spend or should spend sleeping you don't spend a third of your day eating or exercising unless you're training for some ultra something or other but you spend or should spend about seven or eight hours a third of your 24-hour clock sleeping it's that important and yet we now know that a third of Americans don't get enough sleep don't get adequate sleep and you know it dovetails nicely what Austen was describing earlier and with respect to food that the same sort of findings are seen when people are not getting enough restorative sleep their decision-making apparatus is dysfunctional they make bad decisions as an example people who chronically are not getting enough restorative sleep have an average increased consumption daily of 350 calories added without any added caloric burn so that's a net 350 more on the scale of where you don't need those calories and when you consider that 3500 calories is a pound of body fat it doesn't take much imagination to think about somebody who's chronically not getting enough sleep over six to eight months to a year there's going to be a lot of weight gain and that is a problem because that's fat gain and there is a powerful association between increasing body fat and worse sleep so that is a feed forward no pun intended feed forward cycle where you're not sleeping well you're gaining weight and guess what you're not sleeping well and body fat is pro-inflammatory and asana as he described the book tell us about the body fat and our appetite for example sure this is something that was a relatively shocking thing when I finally understood and that is what do our fat cells do what do specifically our visceral fat cells do the fat cells that we find around our belly for example and research has shown us that they produce chemicals what do those chemicals do well they influence our brains they change the way we think they change the way we make decisions so the way I look at this is our adipocytes our fat cells they have this agenda they don't want to be killed off they want to survive and how do they do that well they tell our brains you should be making short-term decisions and so what we see is that BMI is correlated with higher BMI means more short-term decision-making so again thinking about this your fat cells they've got their agenda and that is staying alive not being destroyed by good decision making so they are influencing your brain to tell you keep doing the things eating the foods not exercising that will keep us going and they all seem like such small things when you look at them individually oh what's one night's sleep all right a little bit of sugar but what you vote they're really laying out is the effect that they have on each other and this is how people get down a downward spot sighs yes it's a great point drew and that is that even one night of whatever it may be bad decision-making not sleeping or one day of bad eating in the aggregate maybe it's not a big deal but it does tend to set things up let's spin that even one week of getting better sleep even one week of making sure you exercise every day or committing to as we described a 10-day plan where you're going to meditate every day for 10 days that is in using your metaphor a tributary into the the river an entree if you will to really ultimately allow a better decision-making and it you know this discussion about body fat has another pun huge implications why you know as Austin was saying the in our our fat cells seem to have their own agenda fat controls the levels of the hunger hormone ghrelin which makes us eat more and therefore we nurture our fatness and these it's like cancer cells that increase angiogenesis the growth of new blood vessels and suppress the immune response around the cancer to keep them they have their agenda they want to survive though they kill the host with all due respect fat cells are doing the same thing they will ultimately kill the host we know that it's far more than a cosmetic issue that visceral fat in particular as as austin described does you know increase inflammation and as such is associated with chronic degenerative conditions and that's the number one cause of death on planet earth and when we look at each other with the fact floating in the air right now that for the the second year in a row longevity in America is declining man that's we've got to we got to redo some things here we've got to get out some information that transcends giving people just the idea that you need to eat this don't eat that and life is going to be good no we gotta address why it is that they're not making that decision in the first place I want to come back to something that you said David which was you were talking about how when individuals don't get proper night's rest how it increases their hunger a lot of people that are listening now they would think okay if I'm not getting a good night's rest I'm just a little bit more tired but either one of you could you explain like what is that Matt that's actually happening in the body from what we know of so far that would link poor sleep to actually being more hungry the next day well I'd say there are two fundamental mechanisms that we talked about in brainwashed one being the connection between the reward system and the prefrontal cortex and the other being the connection between a part of the limbic system called the amygdala and the prefrontal cortex and it seems that both are activated in a bad way let's say by sleep deficit so we're more likely to choose those short-term rewards because our reward system is changed when we don't get enough sleep I think we better understand what's going on with the amygdala and the prefrontal cortex with what happens with sleep deficit and this probably additionally contributes to what we have been talking about which is why we choose the short-term reward the amygdala is also linked into that reward circuit and so what we see is that under conditions of sleep deficit even as short as one night there is an increased activation of the amygdala in response to threatening images there's also in response to a couple of nights of sleep deprivation less connection between the prefrontal cortex and the amygdala now why does that matter well the amygdala is not a good or bad thing it's something that has provided us amazing benefit especially in days gone by and now in the current moment as well but it's a threat response system and when we don't get enough sleep that amygdala is left to fire on its own we become more sensitive to threats or trigger-happy exactly I think of it kind of as an alarm system right it tells us when something might be going wrong and the prefrontal cortex has to come over and say hey don't worry about it things are ok and maybe adjust the sensitivity but when that connection between the prefrontal cortex and the amygdala is broken down which is what happens under conditions of sleep deficit then you have this alarm blaring in the background all the time your stress response is constantly going off when that happens you increase cortisol you increase other hormones and it puts you in a position where you're more likely to make short-term decisions from an evolutionary perspective this actually makes sense when you're under a condition of stress which in our past would have been more of an acute stress as opposed to a chronic stress you need to make a quick decision you don't want to be sitting there thinking about what will the weather look like three days from now you're thinking about how do I get away from the saber-tooth Tiger this moment but when you're sitting there for hours for days for months and for some people for years your decision-making is going to stay in that short-term focus and what does that mean well you're going to be making those impulsive decisions like eating those extra calories the unfortunate thing with sleep deficit is we see this happening after one night so that one night staying up late watching Netflix look I get it a Netflix is wonderful but it comes at a cost and that cost is better decisions I want to zoom out for a second and talk about this term that you guys have coined which is disconnection syndrome and help us understand what it is and how everything we've talked about fits into the context of this term well a syndrome by definition is it constitutes a lot of nuances so it means we can use this term disconnection syndrome in a very literal way and a very figurative way in a very literal way it's exactly what Austin's been talking about disconnection between the amygdala and the prefrontal cortex keeping the adult out of the room basically leaving the kids at home for the weekend with 30 of their closest friends while mom and dad go on a cruise bad idea we need to have the parents at home to help make the decisions what to eat when to go to bed all the things that happen that's what we are disconnected from the ability to make good decisions to plan for the future to act compassionately towards other people to embrace empathy so in the strictest sense of our application of this new term disconnection syndrome that's what we refer to but in the broader sense it is a disconnection that is induced upon us because we're disconnecting for example from the messaging of our DNA when we eat foods that are not what our DNA is used to seeing we increase inflammation we enhance free radical stress we compromised detoxification so we're disconnecting from these pathways in our genome that are set up to keep us healthy you know that's sort of one of the fundamentals of the so-called paleo movement to kind of honor our Paleolithic genome and allow it to express itself we disconnect from the messaging of our microbiome we do so by eating foods that are not good for us taking various medications that are threatening the microbiome we're disconnecting from these life-sustaining signals and metabolites that our gut bacteria are producing to keep us healthy and even more broadly because of all this happening because of our disconnection from the prefrontal cortex then we are disconnecting from each other we are disconnecting from personal interaction we are disconnecting from conceiving of the future and disconnecting from our concern over even the health of the planet so our main mission in brainwash is reconnection on all of the levels that just were presented most importantly reconnecting to that part of the brain the prefrontal cortex which is our gift you know that and having an opposable thumb really kind of define us in terms of being different from other animals I mean 1/3 of the brain cortex is prefrontal cortex in in chimpanzees I think it's 17% it's a much lower number so it's not that it's not represented in other primates or other mammals but we've got this incredible ability to plan for the future to make better decisions and you know the the revelation for us that so many aspects of our modern life like our digital experiences for example are tending to pull us away from connecting to the prefrontal cortex and locking us in to that part of the brain that is far more involved with shortsightedness and narcissism I want to talk about digital experiences because I was one part of the book that I was very fascinated to see some of the researchers you talked about there so you were mentioning inside the book about the ever-rising level of concern around increasing internet usage and some of the studies that are out there what can you tell us about what we know about the internet and over-usage and its implications on the brain well I want to make it a clear point here that technology is not a bad thing technology is a wonderful thing and when we were researching this book we were able to access studies that have been published on every corner of the earth because of Technology even cellphones wonderful thing I was able to FaceTime with my dad when I was at in Oregon and he was in Florida the point we have to make here though is what are we doing with this technology are we using it or is it using us and as you mentioned almost 70% of the world's population already has a smartphone and these numbers are projected to continue increasing so why does all this matter so much well we can get stuck with our technology where it's taking us away from the things that we know are linked to lasting health to lasting happiness for example the in person interpersonal reinter personal interactions that we have with other people this isn't to say that video chatting is a bad thing it's to say what are we doing if we spend several hours on social media blindly scrolling through other people's feeds what we talked about in the book is that there's a need to have a better approach to this there's a need for an approach where we can use technology and benefit from us but not or benefit from it but not have all these consequences happen consequences like becoming more disconnected from other people consequences like becoming more polarized against other people's opinions things that take away from our overall quality of life and I would say on a larger picture of the world are taking us away from seeing the similarities that we share as opposed to looking at these differences that become so glaring when you watch the news or go on social media we came up with this tool called time it's an acronym and it stands for the following first T time limited time restricted when you're going online when you're watching TV even if you're listening to the radio or going on your cell phone you want to set a window where you feel comfortable spending that time so let's say you wanted to watch a TV show the TV show is 30 minutes you set a timer for 30 minutes and when that timer goes off you're done so time restricted I is intentional you want to be intentional about what you're trying to do I can say that I've had experiences where all the sudden I find myself on Instagram I don't really remember how I got there it's kind of like when you're driving in a car and all of a sudden you realize you want 30 miles and don't exactly know where you've been going so intention will have a purpose to what you're trying to do if you want to go on online and check in with a friend do that thing but set it out beforehand so you don't find ten minutes later you're out checking out some conspiratorial sites how about em well M is mindful that means when you're engaging with your digital technology you want to be mindful of what's happening how are you feeling when you start watching the news because you want to be informed do you find yourself feeling really stressed which is actually now that news is so negative a common occurrence if you're feeling stressed is it actually a benefit to you anymore are you are you still learning something from watching that news or is it just detracting from your overall quality of life and then Eve's for enriching this may be the most important part of it I like to think any interaction I have should be enriching my life in some way or another and when you put yourself in a digital world there's a high chance that your attention is going to be sucked into some black hole or another you're gonna find yourself watching a whole bunch of videos that added absolutely nothing to your life you might find yourself reading comments on some sort of hateful post you might find yourself watching three hours of reality TV and I'm not saying that reality TV is bad I'm saying how does that improve your quality of life and so you want to make sure that it's enriching and I think a great place to start is after you've had a digital experience you'll kind of know you can you can pause and say was that a net benefit in my life and if not that's the time to look at it and to make some changes I think it make an important point is that these apps are and there's great things from them I've met so many friends people are listening to us using some app that's out there but they've been designed to hijack your attention exactly right and you know this isn't conspiracy theory we know that the pop-up ads that appear when you're online are designed for exactly what Drew was interested in last week so it's we're not talking about something that people don't know about that the next YouTube video that's queued up happens to be similar to the last one but kind of maybe nuanced by where you were a week ago so you know it's it's reality the the other point I think is that especially as it relates to the T of the test of time that Austin was talking about is you know we know that the average American spends six hours or more in front of a screen of one sort or another every single day which in the average lifetime will add up to 22 years spent in front of a screen and you know the implications of that in terms of the blue light the digital experience the corrupting of your brain another discussion what I want to bring up right now is when you're doing one thing you're not doing something else so that is valuable time that you could have been outside you could have been having personal relationships with other people you could have been exercising you could have been shopping planning your meal building your meal you know constructing the meal with other people and really engaged in the things that we all know are going to be to use Austin's word net positive so just that the amount of time that is being dedicated you know it's been estimated that about six percent of the world's population suffers from Internet addiction and that is you know being on the internet so much I didn't it grossly interferes with your life engagement so that's it's a big number we know that adolescents who are overly involved in social media actually have demonstrable changes in their brains have reduction in the corpus callosum that's the white matter pathway connecting the right and left hemispheres to each other and we don't know what the implications are of that change in the brain but it's probably not a good thing to suddenly start disconnecting you know it's a part of disconnection sooner I never thought of that before of disconnecting one hemisphere from the other because they're connected obviously for an important reason and again finally we we love digital technology I mean it's Laozi allows us to do amazing things but we have to put this into context of our overall 24-hour experience you know so much of behavior change and you guys are physicians so you're always working with patients and trying to help them is okay there's what you can cut out and there's what you can add in and a lot of times people get stuck because okay I'm gonna take those things out of spending as much time on the internet but they don't know sometimes we've forgotten about what to add and it kind of goes back to this the rat model of the mice model where we've heard this term of like cocaine is sugars as of as addictive as cocaine but when they took that same model of the mice and they put them in sort of a rat colony where there was a lot of things to do and so many other things they found that sugar is not as addictive so personalize it for us in your own lives each one of you how do you find that time for connection what does it really look like that can give our listeners inspiration for what they can add in to give them more options to actually connect well you know people tend to fill their days with one thing or another if there's free time somehow it gets filled and I think the point that we really want to make and we talk about so much in brainwash is that there are some activities that are powerfully net positive that are geared specifically at reestablishing that connection offsetting disconnection syndrome re-establishing connection to the prefrontal cortex and these are things that we don't want to find time for we don't want to find time for exercise we don't want to find time for example for meditation we want to make time the difference is finding time is kind of low priority making time for these things is much higher priority so if we slide in a given amount of time each day that is undeniable it's part of the schedule for our exercise for meditation then those times of day cannot be utilized for mindless time online or filled by use doing some that's not really net positive the e in in as also described in the time acronym is it enriching for you meditation is enriching physical exercise is clearly enriching really personal relationships being with other people reconnecting with people is enriching nature exposure is positive so it's all about the triage isn't it's about you know ranking these activities and unfortunately slowly but surely the mindless time spent in front of the screen works its way up to being you know as mentioned six hours of your day for the average American so it's got to be put much much lower and we have to recognize that it's a great tool but we have to contextualise and on a personal level when you think about your schedule for the week on a week that let's say you're not traveling or on a week that you are traveling out here doing interviews in Los Angeles is a little bit like meal prep you think about it on like the weekend and look at your week ahead and slot in those times do you have it automatic in your routine how have you made these activities that you love to do and that bring you towards connection how do you make them a reality as part of your week on like a scheduling basis well everyone who's involved in looking at what our schedule demands and primarily that's people to know but in the studio Andrew lure he knows darn well that we need to meditate every day and that we need to have good food and that there's got to be time for exercise so here we are a far from home we live in Florida here we are in California and every morning has been exercise meditation in the hotel room you you know we do our very best to find the very best food that's available these are on the top of the list and we love you but you're below those things in terms of what matters those are the life-sustaining choices that we make that are the non-negotiable so then the other things that we do is part of what we do in our lives you know the vocational things are important but truly making those priorities enhances this moment with you and communicating with other people so many times when people feel guilty I'll ask them okay let's start it like number one have you told even if you don't have a team and you're not an author of thought leader let's just say somebody that has a family have you told your wife that this is probably for you have you told your husband that this is a priority for you have you communicated with your work that hey listen I'll take that early morning call but then I go to the gym then I come back and I often hear that people feel guilty because they haven't even told people yet so now they're doing that activity sometimes and they get a call from somebody or interruption and it pulls them away from that so even communicating as you were hinting to earlier is such a key part of that Austin what have you gonna get yes back to that's a decision yes it's making that decision which is what we're all about here it's making the commitment and working the first step is working on the decision-making apparatus working on increasing your ability then not only just to recognize what's good for you but then to commit to doing it on the topic of community because it's such a big topic and I mean in the subtitle of the actual book you have lasting happiness deeper relationships deeper relationships is about connection how on a practical level does it show up in your life and how do you make it a priority I think it's it's a lot easier to talk about all of these things if you have all of your days free and for a lot of listeners that's not going to be the case you're going to be busy at work you're going to be doing things so it's a question of how do you build these things in and for me that was most relevant when I was in residency I was sometimes in the hospital eighty or so hours a week and so there weren't all these extra windows where I could spend several hours meditating and so I'll say first of all nature that was my way of reconnecting I would go out into the woods and then you tie yourself with other himself a lot of yourself and I'm a big proponent of doing this with other people but for me that was the meditation piece it was the exercise piece it was going out into the middle of nowhere in the gloomy gloomy Pacific Northwest winters which I love don't get me wrong but walking around these trees and just having the time to decompress and we know that nature lowers levels of stress so that makes a lot of sense I wanted to make a point with regard to how do you get yourself to start doing these things and one of the problems that we have is that the barrier to open your phone to opening your phone and opening an app is so low if you're sitting there and there's that moment of discontent you take out phone you see what your friends are up to on social media and the whole process is over before you even thought about it why that's as important is if you want to start making positive lifestyle changes and that might be going to the gym that might be spending time with your friends realize it's not going to be as easy as that right off the bat and that's why as you mentioned scheduling these things out and having a plan is so important one thing that worked well for me was just forcing myself every week to do something with new people that would be initially uncomfortable and eventually built upon those experiences for me that was joining meetup groups this is a website where you can find various conversations various groups of people that get together sometimes that talk about things you may or may not actually be that interested in but to say I want to improve my quality of life I know that interpersonal bonds are one of the ways of doing this everyone that I knew at the time was busy in the hospital and so this was a way of making new connections with people who had differing opinions with people who had differing lives but you got to make that commitment you have to make that decision that you want to get out and start fostering those connections and that's why coming back to the the model we introduced in brain wash it may be really hard for a person to say I'm gonna go out and spend time with other people even though they know that's what they want to do it may be hard for them to put on those shoes and go to the gym or to eat the right foods we need to set our brains up so those decisions are easier those decisions we want to make and so for an average person that might mean you're doing okay on a couple of these things but maybe it's the nature that's the one that you really focus on because that'll give you that extra boost it takes to then make the decision to get out and spend time with more people it may not be that you can force yourself to eat that healthy food that you know you should be eating so you find a back door and that back door might be again nature nature lowers your stress levels makes your decision-making a little more rational and now you can actually get yourself to eat that food that you know is good for you so if I'm hearing you correctly sometimes the pathway for in the area of her life that you feel stuck on could be working on one of these other spokes that's exactly right as you're working on your decision making exactly right that's great you know that really I want to touch on one for these areas it's so crucial because and then I want to talk about you talk about the plan and the roadmap that you've listed out in the 10 day brainwash which i think is worthwhile going through to help people understand how to actually make this happen and give them a little bit of a preview of what's in the book but I want to talk about exercise because that's always one that people seem to struggle with I know for myself I've always tried different sorts of components and then found out that for myself I really do need to work with somebody one-on-one or have like a friend that's kind of that I'm like training with I go hiking I go surfing I do stuff with a lot of the close friends my life but to really make serious progress on exercise which was a priority for me I need to work with somebody one-on-one the first part of reclaiming these things that are hacking our health is understanding why they're so important so what does the relationship what's the relationship between exercise and our decision-making process that's a phenomenal question look we all know exercise is good for us there's no one out there on podcast saying exercise less and why is it good for us well it improves basically every aspect of our health from longevity to heart health we want to focus on something different and that is what does exercise do for our decision-making and looking at these meta analyses of both acute exercise and chronic exercise exercise improves our executive functions we haven't really talked about that as a term but executive functions are this reflection of a highly functional prefrontal cortex executive functions are things like cognitive flexibility working memory impulse control attentional control these are absolutely essential to making good choices so if we can improve our executive functions by exercise and that might mean going to the gym and going on the treadmill or at my main lifting weights this is an entry point to better decision-making and I want to also comment on something you said which is you do better working with another person so important to experiment so that you can sustain the exercise a lot of people they say I'm gonna be now somebody who goes to the gym for an hour every single and they do it for a week or two weeks and then they can't go for an hour and then they're done the goal with exercise is to make it an enjoyable experience so I'd much rather have somebody go for a long walk with a friend then go to the gym for three days and say they're done if they can do that long walk with a friend a few times a week and do that each week also spending time with other people seems to amp up those executive improvements so that's why I would say while you're trying to experiment with exercise try to draft somebody else in and that could be a friend it could be a family member it could even be a stranger some of these groups will have meetups where they meet out on a hill or in a park and they do a simple walk together but it's a goal to find a sustainable movement plan not exercise necessarily but a movement plan and if you can get out there and do those twenty to thirty minutes of aerobic exercise five times a week fantastic you know that's what we know bumps up BDNF there are all sorts of benefits that we'll get from that level of exercise but if it's a question between staying on your couch and feeling upset because you couldn't go to the gym for an hour or just going for a walk around the neighborhood it's always better to do some movement because again we're looking at this from the perspective of improving decisions and once you can consistently improve your decisions you're gonna increase the chances that you go to the gym or go on that walk there's just getting things moving in the first place you know Austin did mention BDNF which I think really raises the notion of neuroplasticity being able to actually structurally and functionally change the wiring of the brain Dalai Lama said that the brain we develop reflects the life we lead the life we lead are the choices we make so if we choose to if we choose to look at negativity all the time watching the news and seeing how everything is so threatening then we are gonna wire a brain that is a repository for fear and respond to everything in a very fearful way if we recognize the other side the upside of neuroplasticity that we can the more we do something the more indelible it becomes the more we activate that pathway then we take advantage to reconnect to offset this whole disconnection syndrome and and allow us to access that part of the brain that really tends to tamp down this us-versus-them mentality and allows us to appreciate other people's viewpoints you know these days those darn Republicans are those horrible Democrats or you know my New York Jets are so much they're just a good team and then we dolphins whatever it is you know whether it's Muslims and Jews and Catholics everyone you know we put people in categories and we defend our positions and that defense of our place our position is strengthened when we gravitate to those social media sites that play into that and strengthen that and that's not going to be sustainable for us anymore we've got to rework this paradigm so that I can look at the world through your eyes and see what that's like and I may not agree with you but at least we can make progress because now we're sharing ideas we're not digging our feet in thinking this is the only way I mean you may have it you may tell me the world is flat I don't necessarily want to believe that and I choose not to believe it but you know what why don't you tell me why that may be the case and let's kick it around and I'll argue you know the other side of the possibilities and then we'll come to some consensus we so lack that today I mean you look around at what's going on and it's certainly not serving us very well it's almost like we've been infected by this disconnection virus yeah and it's taken over Jumby right this disconnection syndrome we've got this virus inside of us we don't recognize it we're blaming each other we're fighting with each other we're destroying the planet in the whole process we're gonna end up killing the host which is ourselves we don't wake up and start to pay attention and pull ourselves out of it and see that we're not gonna blame ourselves and feel guilty the reason that I can't lose weight is because of me I should feel guilty shameful etc etc know these these other things that have hijacked us let's step out and begin to look at how we can slowly address them so we can take back control into our own lives well that mention just now of killing the host you know is where this book events he goes I mean it's been clearly demonstrated that those in those people who have higher connection to the prefrontal cortex have more concern not just for other people but for the environment and for the planet as well are much more pro-environment and interestingly that probe being or acting in a pro environment way tends also to strengthen this connection so we're all in this together and you know I don't want to be a fatalist we're not being fatalistic at all we're looking at the light at the end of the tunnel as to where we could and need to go so there's so much incredible one of the beautiful things about technology there's so much accessibility to topics like this and conversations like this there's also an influx of information and the person that's listening there today is making trying to make decisions or making decisions and try and understand how to prioritize so they can actually make progress in their life one of the things that the book builds up to is a tenday brain rush process that people can walk through so when you were designing this process of a protocol a plan that people could follow how did you think about what is a priority that's gonna give people the biggest bang to have them go down the pathway and eventually lead to long lasting change well good decisions beget good decisions at the the bottom at the core of this whole thing it's to say if you can get to a threshold which could actually be quite straightforward where you start making slightly better decisions that is a feed-forward process you will continue to make good decisions the way we laid out this 10 day plan is we went through each of these factors which are either taking us away from a brain that makes good decisions or helping us to rebuild a brain that makes good decisions and put them together in such a way that we increase the odds that anyone reading this book would get to this place of this feed-forward process and continuing to make good decisions the the big themes with all of this are the reduction of chronic stress the reduction of inflammation and then improving things like sleep and then finally what can we do to actively influence this connection to the prefrontal cortex and to diminish the influence that the amygdala or amygdala processing has on our decisions so we would try to make this as straightforward as possible and we already mentioned this time acronym but it's things like that it's easy steps that the reader can take to start reclaiming their decisions starting today and while it is a 10 day plan and each day has different components we feel strongly that any one of these pieces will already be enough to put somebody on the right track we've talked about a lot of these things we talked about sleep for example getting a better night's sleep will statistically improve your decision-making the next day and that might be the little bump that you need to then make a better dietary decision to then make a better decision to spend time with friends and family but again as the 10-day plan is laid out we walk through each of the topics that we've already discussed on this podcast and describe how to make that implementable into your life starting with each sequential day it builds upon itself so the first day you might be changing up your digital interactions applying that time acronym and then you might say well how can I have more empathy in my day and then you might say how can I do some more nature in my day and none of this is too complicated these are things people know but we really believe that as a whole when you put this together it will give the reader what they need to finally overcome that hurdle and start making consecutive and consistent better decisions and you know ultimately it does become an a great kind of thing I mean you know you can implement the plan you could be full out on a ketogenic diet for the past three years really doing your best you know that's really helping you reduce inflammation targeting your insulin sensitivity etc but you may be sleeping five hours a night so that might be the cog in for you that really matters most so we outline each of the components why they're important and then it's really ultimately a bit of personalized medicine here you know what does drew specifically need well maybe you know it sounds like you got the exercise thing in hand you're working out with somebody but I don't know I mean maybe it's sleep for you maybe it's diet maybe it's wreaking to other people maybe it's meditation maybe it's expression of gratitude these things are all extremely valuable and you know in getting to the expression of gratitude each day by journaling by writing down things that you are grateful for that fosters empathy and guess what empathy is a manifestation of prefrontal cortex activity and therefore you know neurons that fire together wire together you're going to ultimately wire more aggressively to that part of your brain and that's what we're looking for you know this interview is coming out the week - the book is out and it's January and January has so much weight for individuals because January is often the time that people are going for especially a lot of listeners of this podcast they have New Year's resolutions they have things that they want to make progress in and in the context of deciding what to focus on there's always the weight of the years where things didn't go the way they wanted to and for the person that's out there that's listening that's tried a lot of things and has maybe been unsuccessful at some in the past in their life for that person who's listening right here right now what would you want to tell them when it comes to thinking about implementing these things into their life and moving forward well I think it gets back to why have you failed some so many times and it's not because of lack of information by and large the books the programs people are looking at are pretty darn good you know we know most of these authors and they write good stuff but it's the action part it's the implement implementation and staying with that decision making the commitment that no one's really looked at until now no one's really asked why is it that I can't stick with this program and we have such a high rate of recidivism as it relates to going back to these maladaptive behaviors eating the wrong food giving up on your gym membership or your commitment to meeting with other people etc so that's what we're focused on and yeah I mean right now the books coming out January new year new you but it's not about what the decisions are it's how you make those decisions that finally need some scrutiny and it it's that's that's where we can come in and really help because it's it's really so important that people stop this self-blame gosh I can't stick with that program something is wrong with me why am I in such a bad person that I can't I can't help myself and I eat those wrong foods again it's important to recognize how the deck is stacked against making good decisions once you recognize that then you're in a position of power you are empowered then to say this is gonna happen to me anymore and I'm gonna take control and that's what the guide is all about it's about finally regaining putting that adult back in the room and making better decisions and let me just boil this down to a simple analogy here you are at the start of this year and you're looking out over this lake and you see the other side that's where you need to go that's your goal that goal might be losing weight it might be spending more time with family it might be lowering your blood pressure and you're in this boat that you want to use to get to the other side of the link and that boat is your brain it's the thing that's going to get you there but the boat is filled with holes so until you fix the boat you're not getting to the other side of the lake and what we're talking about is fixing in the boat it's building a boat a brain that is going to get you there safely so you can stay and reach your goals yeah and and I'll tell you here we are still you know prior to publication of brain wash and the fact that 11 countries around the world have opted in you know they're they're publishing this book now prior you know agreeing to do this without ever even seeing you know the American edition is I've never been in an experience like that before so I think that it's time that you know people value each other and I think that's our message is that again we're all in this together and we need to reconnect we need to offset every manifestation or nuance of the term disconnection syndrome not just the the straightforward neurophysiology part of being disconnected from the prefrontal cortex but the whole notion of us being all disconnected from each we can make great things happen if we value each other if we embrace diversity and recognize that if we all pull on the oars at the same time together we're gonna move down we're gonna move down the the river that you mentioned earlier mm-hmm powerful a powerful closing message brainwash detox your mind for clear thinking deeper relationships and lasting happiness it's out now and you can find a link inside of the shownotes how can our listeners continue to follow the journey and participate and any other shoutouts that you want to give for the book well easiest place to find us is brainwash book.com and we'll be posting all sorts of new materials blogs videos we're on this journey with you we're still trying to figure it out we know this is the right way forward but it takes ongoing commitment and as my dad said we're all in it together so that's the spot to reach out to us to connect with us and to see what we're up to to see what the latest research shows about how to reverse disconnection syndrome I do have some social accounts my Instagram is at Austin Perlmutter and my Twitter is at Austin Pearl MD and I am at David Perlmutter MD on Facebook and have Instagram accounts as well but I think I think the best place to connect with me is dr Perlmutter dr. Perlmutter com we have robust science and it's searchable all the stuff that we talked about is posted in its full PDF form the research articles are all available and you know we see there's a lot of interaction there so I would like to foster that well on the note of gratitude Austin David I want to thank you both for coming here and being on our podcast and sharing with our listeners this incredible body of work that father-and-son team duo using both all the experience that you've had and all the new experiences that you're bringing into the table Austin and putting together a practical program for people to follow to better their lives and really getting to the source of actually what's there we give a lot of attention in the space of wellness to food food is sometimes very controversial it's a fun thing to talk about it's easy it's something that we all do today every day and while it's so important I often find that there's these other topics that actually could have people make much more progress inside a space of food if they care about that like connecting with other people and getting better night's rest and they don't get enough credit and I appreciate you both for giving them the credit that they deserve Andrew I speaking for the two of us very grateful for these opportunities over the years and this opportunity today to you know have the platform to get out the information that we think is really important and just for doing the podcasts in general the conversations like the one we're having right now are so important so that we can understand other people's perspectives and this entire world of digital technology while it has its downsides has provided us with exactly this so that we can have this conversation so that other people can hear this conversation and so that we can all learn so thank you absolutely appreciate you both thank you thank you you [Music]

Channel: Dhru Purohit

Views: 43,422

Rating: 4.8855324 out of 5

Keywords: dhru purohit, broken brain podcast, brain health, brain detox, inflammation

Id: wVmIUXAmtys

Length: 65min 35sec (3935 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 16 2020