The NEUROSCIENCE Behind Manifestation & How You Can Leverage The Laws Of Attraction | Dr Tara Swart

can you explain the Neuroscience behind manifestation and share some effective brain hacks that can enhance our ability to achieve our goals okay so I think manifestation has had a bad R for a while because it's often associated with like frequencies and vibrations and the universe and I wanted to for myself um understand the cognitive science behind it and feel that I was the author or the driver if you like of that process rather than you know this idea that you create a fantasy and you just sit at home and wait for it to come true so I spent a summer vacation basically researching whether cognitive science so that Psychology and Neuroscience could back up the laws of attraction so manifestation is one of the laws of attraction and what I found is that there isn't even really agreement about what the laws of attraction are um so my book The Source I put them into six categories which um are abundance manifestation magnetic desire patience Harmony and Universal connection and I'll come back to those um so what I did find was that it was very easy to um explain manifestation and the laws of attraction with with Neuroscience so it's basically putting your mind to something setting a goal taking the actions that you need to to make it come true in the real world and and you know staying motivated ated until it actually does it's it's as simple as that but in terms of the brain mechanisms that are going on behind it is so the the process in terms of practicality is raised awareness focused attention deliberate practice and accountability and I always say that raised awareness is 50% of the battle if you don't know what you want if you don't know what you want to bring into your life if you're you know not really sure what your purpose is or what you want to achieve then you'll just go through like you know just dealing with the day-to-day and those bigger goals or kind of you know longer term life aspirations probably won't happen because you won't attend to them but if you know what you want then the way that your brain filters information data is that is based on Survival unless you prime it with this is what I want to achieve you know I want to be on Max's podcast in LA right um um then your brain will selectively filter out the things that don't relate to that and filter in the things that do and the next stage is selective attention so then you'll notice oh I'm going to be in La should I let Max know that I'm going to be in La maybe he's got a spot on his podcast um and the final part of that is called value tagging which is how the brain tags things in order of importance and again this is an unconscious thing usually but but if you're into manifestation and you're practicing it then you can help your brain to tag things that are more likely to help you thrive rather than just survive wow fascinating when did when was the the the concept of the Law of Attraction the laws of attraction when did that first appear in the cultural Zeitgeist I mean I think it's always been there and I think it has its ups and downs and what's been really interesting to me is because my book came out in 2019 and you know what was really lovely with people that I know personally who aren't scientists at all was that they said you know I've always been interested in manifestation but because I've never really understood how it works now that you've explained the science I'm actually going to do the things that you know I haven't actually done before um I noticed that the book became popular again during the pandemic and I think people had maybe more time to think and you know things changed in terms of work so maybe people actually thought you know what did I always want to do and maybe I could make that happen um and you know personally I think there's a very long Tale in terms of a mental health crisis of the pandemic that's still going on so I am kind of getting a lot of people reaching out to me again about the book now so and but if you go back you know to the secret or if you go back even to like ancient you know times like the Greeks and Romans and stuff and the Egyptians I'm pretty sure they you know practiced those things probably just didn't call it the same thing wow and so at what point in your career did this become something that you felt was worth studying and ultimately writing a book about yeah so you know I my stories are so random that I don't think they're that helpful to other people I'll tell the story and see if I can get like a you know a sort of um takeaway from it so I became the world's first neuroscientist in Residence at a five-star hotel in London wow yeah that's an interesting position yeah exactly they'd always had an artist and why does a hotel need a neuroscientist res well you say that but it's actually really obvious cuz what do you do at a hotel you sleep eat you drink you exercise and you relax and what are my Five Pillars rest fuel hydrate oxygenate and simplify you're right yeah wow very interesting I know at first I did think it was weird and people asked me and I couldn't really answer it and then I thought actually it completely makes sense um so I created a brain power menu and brain mocktails and I did some talks and I had like a nighttime routine that I created for people yeah it was really cool so it got a lot of press and so penguin Random House reached out to me and said we have you know really best-selling books one on sleep one on diet one on exercise one on mindfulness and we think as a neuroscientists that you can write one that brings all of those together and my brain didn't even go into gear my mouth just said I could do that but I actually have an idea of writing about vision boards and visualization and they were like we we'll just get the contract and the pen out right now um so that's when I then spent that summer you know vacation thinking is there enough here to actually write a book about it and you know it became clear very quickly that there was and and for me I had always had a spiritual practice in my personal life but I kept that very separate from being a doctor in the NHS or being a professor at MIT for example um so writing it brought those things together more for me but actually that the although it's external validation the response from people once it came out really made me feel like okay this is okay to do this in my career to talk about spirituality and manifestation and visualization um and yeah I haven't looked back since then that's amazing and so walk me through your your academic background because we're talking offline you have a you studied Parkinson's disease for your PhD which is a fascinating to go from that to writing about manifestation I mean it's a very interesting leap yeah you know looking back there's a thread for me in all the kind of seemingly strange choices I've made and you know you were saying that you're very interested in neurod degeneration well you know manifestation is like the other side of the coin isn't it it's it's completely optimizing your brain it's actually getting more out of your brain than if you just lived your regular life and obviously degeneration is loss of cells but manifestation is neuroplasticity so that's like connection of cells um so you know maybe I had to start study degeneration to be able to like move to the other side of the coin and so basically yeah I went to medical school after high school I I took three years out to do my PhD in the middle of that then I went um we have like the last three years is in the hospital and you do all your like practice so I had done my PhD um thinking that I was going to become a neurologist but in practice that didn't require the people skills that I think you were a real Forte for me because it was much to you know about tumors and abscesses and strokes so it's very functional and physical and of course you had would have to have a good bedside manner but in Psychiatry it's people's mood and their brain Playing Tricks on them and hearing voices that aren't there and you know um you know hallucinations and delusions and I just thought this is so fascinating um and actually now the field of Psychiatry has has really changed become more interesting with like the use of psychedelics and um but at some point you know sort of seven years in I thought this wasn't going to be like intellectually stimulating enough for me for the rest of my life and I wanted to do something else um so I moved into coaching because it was quite a transferable skill and then about 3 years in Neuroscience became a buzz Topic in business and Leadership so then I started speaking about it and then um even though I was so traumatized by writing up my PhD I and I've written three books even though I keep saying I'm never going to write another one again but it's kind of like what I imagine getting a tattoo is like you know I can't even imagine getting one although there have been times where I've thought about the potential potentially getting one but apparently it's like an addictive thing yeah despite the obvious pain entailed with getting one people get like hooked on it and so that's kind of like bookwriting as well you you get you get kind of hooked on the on the process and then you know the feedback loop of it coming out and all the Fanfare and then after that all that dies down then you're like all right well what's next you know oh I another one I don't have that addiction but interestingly I I sometimes as a psychiatrist consider excessive tattoo um tattooing as a form of self harm yeah I would agree with that because when I did child psychiatry I saw a lot of um girls that had been abused and they would cut themselves and the mechanism for that is that emotional pain and physical pain actually like register the same way in the brain but when you have physical a wound you release natural painkillers to to deal with that wound but when you have emotional pain you don't release the same um hormones or neurotransmitters so cutting is a way to get relief from that emotional pain that you can't get otherwise and I sometimes you know in clinic would think if people had like a lot of tattoos that that could be kind of the same thing wow yeah I mean no shade against people who enjoy body art but yeah but sometimes you see like an excessive amount of and you're like you know makes me wonder at least like what's going on there you know very interesting and also there are some studies that show that some of these analgesic drugs like like acetam Menin right can yes they can blunt physical pain but they also have an effect on neurological in terms of blunting like emotional well I mean Michael Jackson's a classic example of that right he was addicted to painkillers um more for emotional reasons and physical reasons fascinating so why why did you pick Parkinson's disease I'm just curious um do you want the real answer I was obsessed with that movie Awakenings H um love Robin Williams and Robert dairo anyway but that movie did something to me when I was a teenager I just absolutely loved it and so I was at Kings College London um studying medicine and then in the third year we could just do topics of our choice and then get a like an a bachelor's degree and I chose everything neuroscience neuroanatomy neuropharmacology and then I did a summer project in the lab um which was in the Chelsea Campus of Kings College London um and then I got offered the chance to stay on and do a PhD and and you know I was in the neuro degeneration group group but I was particularly in the Parkinson's lab um they've extended now to Alzheimer's and and um amyotrophic lateral sclerosis to think about that that's a m um but at the time the focus was very much Parkinson's and so it just for me like really fitted with having like watched that movie and felt so passionately about these people that were imprisoned in their own body and their mind and um you know it's it's obviously really really hard work and once a year you get a visit from the Parkinson's disease society and some patients and their families come and every time that happened you know you would really remember why you were doing what you were doing when it felt very tough yeah but from what I understand about the field of Neurology it can be very demoralizing because the tools classically have historically have been so limited in terms of their efficacy you know there's this saying that neurologists don't treat disease they admire it yeah which is a a just to illustrate how you know how Bleak it can be once you finally have received that diagnosis unfortunately yeah it it is and I think you know as a practitioner that what's interesting that's changed in the last 30 years because I did my PhD 30 years ago is that we only really understood the brain from when something went wrong so if there was an injury or a stroke or a tumor you could try and guess you know which part of the brain correlated with certain functions since we've had had more sophisticated scanning techniques that's really changed the field you know and it's allowed us to understand things like emotion and decision making and um you know optimization of the brain so so that's you know that that's that's been good and um but but I you're right you know I have to say like since I did my PhD it feels like stem cell research hasn't really progressed that much like as much as you would think it might have in that time um for for central nervous system disorders anyway yeah yeah prevention I think is really the New Frontier with regard to these kinds of of conditions and so that's a big Focus for us on the show the prevention of neurogenerative diseases not you know the whole sort of catalog of chronic non-communicable conditions that seem to be so frequent frequently diagnosed today um but getting back to to neuroscience and manifestation how can we harness insights from your research from Neuroscience to perform better dayto day um so I you know that raised awareness piece is really important once you know what you want then it's not a case of immediately jumping in and doing something about it but it's about observing so Gathering data what do you notice about your thoughts your emotions your actions um you know whether you take healthy risks whether you notice and grasp opportunities or not once you've gathered that data then then you can see what you might need to do differently and then the third stage is deliberate practice so that is going out and you know applying for jobs and you know practicing getting job interviews even if you don't always get them but just getting that like or you know going dating and just kind of understanding how that world works and what you what you are looking for and what you have to offer and all that kind of thing and then it's not really a stage but the fourth piece is accountability because it's obviously very easy to give up if you know and I think with with neuroplasticity when we are changing our Behavior trying to do something new we're creating new Pathways in the brain but the brain is very energy efficient so it likes to go down that same old road that it's you know been traveling down that's easy um so when you're creating a new pathway it's hard to work you know just think about walking through a field where there's already a path or walking through like really tall grass that you've got to kind of struggle to get through obviously with time you wear it down and it becomes a pathway so in the brain you can't undo something that's already there but you can overwrite it with a new desired Behavior wow um and what happens is people think of used to before the scanning think of psychological work as just mental you know like that it's not correlated with something physical but you are literally like building a pathway or a brick wall in your brain and what happens is it feels like you're working really hard but nothing's changing because there's a Tipping Point where you've got enough neurons that have connected up with each other that they're now stronger than the previous pathway and then it just feels like everything falls into place but just before that moment that's when you know it can be really easy for people to give up and that's why I mentioned magnetic desire because that is an emotion that is so strong that it will keep you motivated even when you know it feels like nothing's happening and you might as well give up so the the the whole concept of rewiring your brain that is actually a concept with neuroscientific backing like that's not just like a colloquial pseudoscientific catchphrase like we actually do have the power in many regards for rewiring our brains yeah so we used to think that around the age of 18 or when you physically stop growing that your brain becomes set for life like that your intelligence levels and your personality that they can't change after that time now that we've got this all this amazing scanning and we can look at healthy brains and young growing brains um we know that that process is very active till we're about 25 but that from 25 to you know 70 plus you have to make more effort to keep your brain you know what we call plastic which is flexible um and that's mostly encouraged by new learning so exposing your brain to new new things and it has to be attention intense enough to change your brain so crosswords and suduku aren't really enough but learning a new language or learning a musical instrument that is sufficiently hard work that it changes your brain and the great thing is that so I try to learn something new every year not so much because I need that language or that musical instrument but because I know that it's improving the executive functions of my brain so these are the highest functions of the brain nothing to do with being an executive it's just a neuroscience term and it's things like regulating your emotions um overriding your conscious and unconscious biases solving complex problems thinking flexibly thinking creatively that kind of thing H what role does diet and lifestyle play other than like building our cognitive Reserve learning a new language or instrument as you alluded to are there any diet and and lifestyle habits tactics tools that we can use to to encourage that process I'm laughing that you're asking me because this is you know this is what I love about the content that you share like I all the diet stuff every time I look at your content I'm like yes I completely agree with it and that's exactly how I eat so what I would say is that genes and neuro receptors load the gun but lifestyle pulls the trigger so of the Five Pillars that I mentioned in relation to the hotel so sleep diet hydration exercise or to be honest just deep breathing because a lot of people now with the levels of stress are just not even breathing properly um and you know some form of mindfulness or relaxation or um you know simplification those are kind of the five you know ways that I describe those things and diet is super super important um I always I mean the way that I ask people to work it out is how long would it take you to die if you didn't do one of those things um so usually sleep kind of comes out on top cuz you can go without drinking water for quite a long time you can go without eating for quite a long time but if we're talking about the quality um of what you're eating which is really important then you know what I always say is that I make all of my food choices and drink choices looking at what you're drinking compared to what I'm drinking this just a black iced coffee iced Americano um which apparently is very good for the brain if you look at observational data yeah but you know the quarter life of caffeine is 12 hours so that means that's a good point yeah that is a good point called out I just got called out and it's about 300 p.m. late time so you're right so it's probably a little bit late and I'm also a slow metabolizer of caffeine so okay ah Tara but it's so good okay so going back to your dietary and drink choices food and drink choices are all um made on a brain first approach and I feel that when PE people do that then everything else gets taken care of so for example I'm a big fan of Tony Yun as well who um yeah yeah yeah uh plastic surgeon yes he's great so everything that he says about your skin and your hair and your nails and like how to keep them beautiful if you eat with a brain first approach then if you can see that your Skin's in good condition that your nails are in good condition that your hair's in good condition then you must know that your brain is getting everything that it needs because brain's tiny right it's 2 to 3% of your body weight but it's using up 20 to 30% of what you eat and so it's not going to give up its resources for your skin if it hasn't had enough so that's one like good measure of of you know how you're treating your brain um and you know because the brain is mostly fat and water good fats and hydrating foods and and you know water are the best things for the brain so but let's get let's get into this because I know we're really similar on this so for me I eat 30 different plant species a week and that includes tea or coffee black pepper spices Etc so it's not as hard as people think um and for example if you eat like bell peppers in three different colors that counts as three different plant species and then my favorite foods are anything purple so the darker skinned the food the better it is for you because it's got those an anthocyanins which are like just super antioxidants um so in terms of you know if people are worried about dementia prevention then blueberries purple sprouting broccoli um good quality like organic coffee dark chocolate um that kind of thing um and then yeah I mean you know there's this big thing that I think you and I are both part of but there are other people as well now on Instagram um talking about eating like a lot of fat you know the good fats so eggs avocado olives olive oil nuts seeds um all of that you know even like lean meat and seafood um yeah all of that stuff and then you know the hydrating like leafy greens and salads and yeah yeah it's a perfect beautiful prescription for a healthy brain yeah you nailed it anthocyans I think are yeah that's a wonderful recommendation there I mean I think most obviously found in blueberries right but there's uh there are many items in the produce section that contain them you've got I do you want to know what I've started doing now that I never thought I would do please yeah eating ke with the skin on oh my god I've been recommending that for years at this point I know and I I saw that you had but I I like would I don't even prefer a peach over a nectarine because I don't like the fuzzy feeling um but when I read the research on you know how how um nutrient DSE the inside of the skin is I was like okay I'm going to have to do this and I literally like stood over the kitchen sink with the SK with the skin on and took a bite and then just thought it's not that bad it's pretty good actually it's not just not bad I love it I love it and allegedly I haven't been able to find quantification of this but there's more vitamin E in the skin which is a particularly important yeah um antioxidant with regard to brain health because it's a fat soluble antioxidant yeah and very good for your skin as well and very good for your skin so your skin really is kind of like a a reflection of of your internal health you would say yeah but if you think back to the pandemic because we were all so stressed like chronic low level or or higher level stress um the inflammation produced by the stress hormone cortisol causes systemic dryness and because your skin is the extremity of your body that's it really shows up there um so people had a lot more like scalp issues and hair you know hair was kind of drier and frizzier and skin was dry um so yeah I think that's where it was very noticeable but even you know now day-to-day it can be noticeable as well for people um if they're not drinking enough water um so the calculation for water is half a liter for every 30 pounds of your body weight per day um and if you drink a lot of caffeine or alcohol or you live in a really hot place then you might need to drink a bit more than that as well um yeah and what's interesting about skin psychologically is because there's actually a field of of research called um psycho Dermatology H yeah never heard of that yeah so so that's the connection you know about the gut brain connection right yeah so this is the connection between your mental state and your skin wow so if you are depressed or stressed then that can show up on your skin you know anything from just dry skin all the way up to ecma dermatitis psoriasis things like that and also if you have skin issues particularly on your face or parts of your body that are exposed to other people that affects your mood because you it affects how you feel about yourself you know you don't feel good about yourself you want to hide things from people so that's a a two-way connection just like the gut brain connection wow that's so interesting going back to cortisol yeah cortisol is it is a very interesting hormone and there's a connection between chronically elevated cortisol and the accumulation of belly fat which um obviously visceral fat is no bueno from the standpoint of systemic Health can you speak to that sure so we have two types of fat so subcutaneous fat which is evenly distributed all around our body and visceral fat which is around the um abdominal organs um and cortisol has a particular mechanism because in terms of survival when we lived in the cave if we had high levels of cortisol so let me just go back a little bit so in a 24-hour cycle which is connected to the light dark situation outside and our sleep wake cycle most people know that melatonin helps you to fall asleep but cortisol actually helps us to wake up so in a 2 24-hour cycle depending on your age and gender cortisol fluctuates throughout the 24 hours being highest just before you wake up in the morning and then there's a normal range for people where you know if something stressful happens we have this amazing adaptive stress response and you know we can release some cortisol and adrenaline and deal with whatever we need to and then it should go back to normal levels if it stays at the higher end of the range or it goes above that and stays high for sustained periods of time then there are because it's released from the adrenal glands above our kidneys but it goes around the blood crosses the bloodb brain barrier and there are receptors in the brain that notice the levels of cortisol and monitor them and if they see that the levels are high and sustained high they think there's an imminent threat to our survival and even though we've evolved beautifully in many ways in some ways we're still very much wired for survival in cave times and so one of the um potential threats to our survival is starvation and to protect us from that cortisol drives storage of fat in the abdominal fat cells so that if we were waiting to hunt that willly Mammoth we could digest that fat to Keep Us Alive until we were able to actually find food now obviously most of us are lucky enough in this day age that starvation isn't an issue for us but that's that mechanism still works so I do think in the pandemic you know everyone put on weight but it wasn't evenly distributed um it was yes gen generalized weight gain but also a lot of people saying I've had to let the belt out or not you know the trousers are too tight um and so that was very much driven by by stress um as well as the fact that probably we were all at home cooking you know more than we ever do and eating more yeah no it's very it is super interesting you know like obviously many people today are struggling with overweight we live amidst the first time really in human history where there are more overweight people walking the Earth than underweight and obviously calorie intake plays a huge role in whether or not somebody is going to gain weight or lose weight but there is this hormonal milu that does influence where a person stores that weight and um in so far as chronically elevated cortisol can help encourage that that visceral storage um more specifically I mean I have to say though Max I really do notice the difference being in America compared to the UK in terms of like the food choices um you know just the use of high fructose corn syrup and sugar it's it's I find it much harder to eat healthily here than I do at home have you seen these memes where they'll show identical products but products that are sold in the US ju deposed against prodct products that are sold in the UK but the identical you know we'll say like fruit loops or something uh Skittles you know like some of these like Ultra processed food products but in the UK they use their Pro the ingredients tend to be a lot better for lack of better term healthier less bad you know are you aware of that like and why is there such a difference between the products that are sold there yeah so we didn't really use high fructose corn syrup I we do use sugar but not as much so for example I even find the bread here is sweet and I normally drink English breakfast tea but I don't I'm very like fussy about it so if I'm here I'll just prefer to drink coffee because the tea won't be how I like it um and normally if I drink coffee because I don't really drink coffee I have to like add some like sweetener like coconut sugar or something to it but I've realized that in the US I don't have to cuz the coffee is already Sweet it's crazy um so what I'd really like to educate people about because I I speak to my own team about this is that and you know I know that Dr Arman and um Tim Spectre have spoken about this too and to some extent being a little bit criticized about you know saying that Coca-Cola is better for you than orange juice but the thing is orange juice is it's tricks you into thinking it's healthy um so if I drink a juice like I will drink a green juice I won't drink one with any fruit in it um so having said that blueberries are super healthy I wouldn't juice them you know if I eat fruit I'll eat it whole and actually I don't even eat much fruit and I know that Tim and um Dr Arman don't either you probably don't either do you I know I eat whole fruit but I'm not like one of these like unlimited whole fruit consumers one of the amazing things about whole fruit is that it's self-limiting I'll eat like two or three a day and I and I feel great typically low sugar fruits you know I I have a bias towards Berry and um kiwi I love kiwi lately I've been obsessed with pears D pears yeah they're very in one pair you get six grams of fiber it's it's it's not a very sweet fruit yeah um yeah I'm not I'm not opposed to fruit I don't have a problem with fruit and you said you try to eat 30 plants a day a week yeah but I mostly eat mostly that's mostly vegetables and spices so I I will eat blueberries and I found actually my friend in La got me onto this and I found in London PR peeled pomegranate seeds because I can't I'm just like can't be bothered to peel them a great luxury yeah very expensive but oh so good yeah um you know I'll eat raspberries and um the and Kiwis now yeah but not that much else do you have a a stance on protein because that that this is actually one of the more controversial claims that Dr Spectre makes and he's been on the podcast I think you know that was a great episode but I disagree with him on his stance on protein [Laughter] in terms of like losing muscle mass and you know starting to think about bone health um so increasing protein and doing some strength training are you know big there there small things I can do that are going to make a really big difference for me at this age I love that no that's that's wonderful to hear um and also exercise is really I mean aside from it's it's the benefits that exercise has on bone health on muscle mass there's a huge benefit to exercising on brain health and neuroplasticity yeah so I actually have like a particular view on this I'm not sure if you will agree with but um because stress is such a big issue in the world what I see is a lot of you know type A Personalities in law firms or Banks or hedge funds having a really stressful job and then going and doing high-intensity exercise that actually spikes your cortisol so I'm much more in of gentler exercise for people um and I'm now obsessed with this new field of research called neuroesthetics or neuro Arts what is that um so it's basically about how Beauty and creativity are really essential and very good for our mental health our health and our longevity oh I love this yeah and so because nature is the pallet that we've existed in for all time as humans um you know unless you have like serious allergies or something most people find nature beautiful beholding nature is like it it fills us with like Beauty and love and Trust um and so you know doing like a long walk in nature to me it for the brain is like the ideal um form of exercise and I've got those cool um velcro weights that you can put on your ankles so it kind of like covers the you know some weights but being in nature and just you know walking briskly but it doesn't have to be like a you know super high intensity like Sprint or kind of you know really massive weights and and that kind of thing so I'm very much in favor of do everything is to like calm your nervous system lower your cortisol levels um and be healthy but you know those five things I mentioned sleep and diet and everything I always say try to do all the right things in terms of you know lifestyle and micro habits but don't stress about it because it's the stress that will kill you in the end and that's partly why I also am a bigger advocate for gentler exercise than high-intensity exercise now wow the neuro Aesthetics is that what you called it wow so there's a neuros pychological benefit to beholding beauty beholding and making have separate benefits make what do you mean by making so it's the difference between going to an art gallery or actually doing a sketch or a painting yourself right so it's again the difference between I love going to the ballet that's my favorite thing but then equally I have to like push myself a bit more to like dance around the living room or sing in the shower kind of thing you know so it's both both a good for you and they have different benefits to the brain wow yeah I love the whole gentle movement thing I think that's that's super important I mean we know that walking pushes fresh blood I mean it oxygenates all the tissues in the body but it it it sends fresh blood nutrients oxygen up to the brain as well being sedentary literally drains blood from the brain yeah being sedentary is is really bad um so I think just yeah walking and breathing properly both are really important so I um I'm staying in West Hollywood at the moment but I walked 40 minutes to um go and get my hair done and then I had lunch next door at one of my favorite places and then I walked here to yours um and you know I just love the trees and flowers in La and I stopped along the way and I was like touching Tree Trunks and like smelling flowers and yeah it's so nice I'm so jealous that you live in you live in London correct yeah I love London I got to spend a good amount of time there last year three separate trips and uh and I walked all around that City and it's like almost better than New York cuz there's so the neighborhoods are so different and and London is so dense and there's so much nature like unlike New York it's as dense if not more dense than New York City but there's just so much more there are so many more opportunities to to expose yourself to Nature I mean there's so many parks and I was there on days it was the summer and the weather was particularly nice it was just beautiful and everybody was out and it was just yeah it was magnificent it was amazing did you only go to London or did you get to the countryside at all I did get to go to uh very privileged I got to go to Soho Farmhouse oh yeah out in the cwds yeah yeah beautiful yeah yeah yeah the English Countryside is really special look I love New York as well but thank you for saying that about London yeah I'm very proud to be a London yeah I'm a big Anglo file I love it there um one of the things that he posted recently on social media that that I thought was fascinating you made the distinction between a ritual and a routine so how can we use rituals to cement healthy habits MH so I'd like to make a sort of general statement around on that which is that intent or intention is very important in the brain so if you think for example about intermittent fasting or Tim restricted eating like I eat between 12: and noon and 8:00 p.m. the difference between that to the brain let's say I do that intentionally every day and you say oh you know I'm so busy with my podcast sometimes I just miss meals so I'm actually intermittent fasting too well no so in the brain skipping meals by mistake is actually bad for you and intentionally restricting your eating is good for you same with daydreaming and mind wandering so if you find that you drift off you lose attention that's not good that's not a good sign but if you do take the time you know like on the nature walk for example to just let your mind like think about you know um possible like Alternatives or like you know what could happen in the future that kind of thing then that's that's good for your brain and so a ritual is it's pretty much like a routine but it's got more intention behind it um and it's it's something that you sort of savor so it's the difference between jumping in the shower and having like a magnesium salt bath with you know like a candle or aroma therapy essential oils kind of thing um and so for me like when I make my cup of English breakfast tea or matcha in the morning it it's a ritual it's I don't I'm not just like you know putting a tea bag in hot water and then like have drinking it really quickly the whole thing is to me it's like a action of beauty you know it's just like everything is about it is like you know I've got my favorite mug and um it's that you're more mindful about it yeah yeah yeah and I just I really Savor that cup because I only have one caffeinated drink a day before 10: a.m. 10 a.m. smart smart and ritual then is something that you do almost like rote like like autonomically well actually I think I would disagree with that because I feel a routine I mean is a routine is more root and a ritual is more like you're actually really like there's a tension intention a routine yeah the routine is like the you know your drive or your your commute to work every day your um yeah like your pre-bed like Beauty routine unless you are particularly mindful about it for whatever reason but yeah so so you would say a ritual is something that we bring more mindfulness to MH and so how does that then what are the benefits of that like how does that help us to cuz you know I mean something that we struggle with in in the wellness world which I'm sure you're aware of is that you know it's it's it's painfully obvious that the information uh in terms of how to live more healthily is out there like there's no shortage of information today right but it's like how do we how do we as science communicators as people with platforms that are ultimately trying to reduce suffering and encourage people to adopt healthier Lifestyles right um get them to actually like adhere to and sustain the things that they know to be true but they just can't seem to cement you know well I think that's kind of answered by you know a little bit by the difference between a routine and a ritual which is it's like it's the why isn't it it and and you know I remember having a coaching client that was working in a bank who was overweight and he said you know I used to be really into running but I got married later in life I've got a very young child and it's really important for me to spend all of my spare time with him and so I genuinely said this has become now like you know something that I use as a trick with my clients but at that point I said I completely get that like you would have to believe that it's going to make you a better dad or you're not going going to do it and I I can see why and then he just had this light bub moment and he said well it will make me a better dad and it will make me live longer and I'll be more likely to see him you know go into adulthood and get married then at the moment what I'm thinking is I'm really overweight I've got a really stressful job I'm probably going to have a heart attack and die and you know that's why I want to spend all of my time with my son but if I make myself healthier then I will have more time with my son and you know he got back into his running and you know really um sustained it and lost loads of weight and that was great so and you know I mean I think even you and I don't do all the things that we know that we should do right so and I think role modeling is really important in a good way but also in this way of just being honest about the fact that we're human and we don't always do everything that we know that we should um I was talking about those 12 micro habits um with Mel Robbins and they gave me a correction which was they said you you said that you start with 12 micro habits and then you said at the end of the year you've got 10 habits embedded that you know you know you no longer think of but you need to repeat that sentence and say 12 and I said no because I don't always achieve all 12 and you know they really loved that they were like that's so you know authentic and um so like I said I have found that doing the micro habits that has a cumulative effect and then that helps me to reach like bigger goals that I might need to because it's had so much benefit for my brain um and with each one I'm just thinking about my list at the moment I have very specific reasons why I want to do those things so I was extremely lucky at the beginning of this year I went to work on a well-being island in the Maldives wow so I had two weeks um and it was all about health and well-being and I all the reading that I hadn't been able to do you know catch up on throughout the last year on um longevity and inflammation I I read it all I made notes and then I created my 12 habits from that so yeah INF inflammation is really at the root of everything that goes wrong in our lives and um longevity in terms of you know I don't really necessarily want to live till I'm 100 or whatever but I just I want to live well for as long as I can um so what would you say the big levers are with regard to longevity having looked into this through uh neuroscientific lens MH um so the obvious things are things we've already discussed like sleep and diet um and exercise and breathing and hydration um Stress Management is massive you know like I'll I'll repeat it again you can do all of those things but if you're stressed it's it's going to have a very bad effect on on your system um so the tweaks like you know eating more protein doing more weightbearing exercise they they become important as you as you age but I would say that having a purpose that is bigger than yourself is really really key um and you know there are so many studies on the health and mental health benefits of volunteering for example um but it doesn't have to be as obvious as that but I just think I don't quite know how say this without I don't mean this in a judgmental way but what is your life if it's only about you and it's not about something that's you know greater or helpful to society or other people um I think it's a privilege to be able to to get to that place but if you can then you've probably got a lot of other things in the right place so I think that's a great sign having a noble aim something larger than yourself something disconnected something that you're striving towards that is disconnected from your ego something that doesn't benefit you directly but the lovely thing is that when you do things like that it's actually really good for you so that's one area that it's okay to you know it's almost like selfless SL selfish cuz it's still going to be really good for you yeah yeah was that is that something that you're trying to like f in your own life or is that's cuz I feel like you've you've clearly had that I mean for the majority of your your academic career has been about helping yeah so I mean I think you know I've been a doctor and a coach and um from the beginning of the pandemic I realized very very quickly there's going to be a massive mental health consequence of this and that's when I really ramped up putting as much free information onto social media as I can um and you know I'm also the trustee for a charity for gynecological cancers so wow yeah yeah the lady Garden Foundation how yeah how did that come to be um well I was wanting to do something you know philanthropic give my time I've always given money to charity but I feel like actually giving your time is you know is is very precious um and I'm just trying to think how it actually started um oh so the wonderful Jenny halpen she has a PR agency and um I think I gave them some quotes for something um and she also runs the lady Garden foundation so when I I found out about that sort of got into a conversation and said you know can I help out and um yeah this was before the pandemic so it's been probably four five years now um just try to you know do what I can to help like with the running of the charity but also raising awareness of those cancers for women and girls as well yeah wow so cool yeah cancer is on the rise amongst amongst young people I don't know specifically about women but I know that in general um we're exposed to many carcinogens on a daily basis and you know you throw that into the millu of chronic stress and you know suboptimal diets chronic sedentary behavior and it's just yeah it's no wonder that we're seeing it doesn't take a a you know a cancer expert to um to deduce from that that yeah we're going to see higher incidents of of these conditions and I really want to put that I want to take it a step further than than than you have so basically we are fighting off little cancer cells all the time that's what our immune system does and and on that point when you walk in nature when you walk past trees and particularly some trees like Pines and Cedars and cypresses which you have a lot of here um they release a chemical called a phytoncide which triggers the release of natural killer cells in our immune system so that's actually the mechanism for why nature physiologically is so good for us boosts our immune system so having said that we are fighting off little cancer cells all the time what I believe is happening now to these young people because there's a massive rise in mental illness and in you know or mental health issues and young people as well is that there is no biological issue without a mental issue and there is no mental issue without a biological issue we our understanding of the brain Body Connection has come a long way but I think there's a lot like more more of of how we're going to understand that so these I mean you know in the financial crisis people were having heart attacks and getting cancer from stress and now what I'm seeing with young people is this rise of mental illness and um I wasn't actually aware of that statistics so much but it completely makes sense to me if younger people are getting more cancer because they're completely stressed and anxious and depressed and lonely and isolated and it's it's terrible um you know so that that's yeah I guess that's behind the reason that I want to do as much as I can to give out information about mental health but also you know to role model just living in a certain way um and and and be very clear that that way is not perfect all the time at all um but it's mindful of putting my brain first is the mental health epidemic that we're seeing do you have the same rates of mental distress in the UK as we're seeing here is it comparable cuz I know the UK does a lot better than we do here I mean there's a on average adults consume about 10% less ultr processed foods in the UK as compared to here and I know that just like Europeans in general they seem to have a although I don't know if English people consider themselves European no not since brexit no not even since before that to be honest really interesting interesting um yeah I just wonder if if things are different over there and if so what might that be attributed to I think I think the biggest difference is around the use of medication and probably around diagnosis as well so I think you might be better than us at diagnosing but and we do overmedicate as well but not to the extent that that happens here um and you know even just pain use here is just seems excessive to me you know um I always say to people the leading cause of headache is dehydration like if you've got a headache drink a glass of water don't just reach for Tylenol straight away um because you know the effects that that will have on your liver and you know your gut and everything um so I don't I don't know like number for number if it's comparable but I do think that we're less quick to medicate so uh you know some good good lifestyle habits like our family doctors will say like go for a run um have you got someone that you can talk to um that kind of thing so yeah I mean although as a psychiatrist I was often undoing the amount of medication that you know family doctors had had put people on but um yeah here I think it's very prevalent to be honest yeah the whole ethos is see it say it sorted we don't really uh yeah that's not as much part of the ethos here although I think it's I think the role that diet and lifestyle can play in mental health I think that's starting to to gain greater awareness certainly with the with the um you know increasing research in the field of nutritional Psychiatry for one such an exciting field it's so exciting yeah the role of diet and mental health I think that that you know it's still a very it's in it's a field that's in its infancy we only have a handful of really legitimate randomized control trials to to to reference like the smiles trial which is I think the most well-known of them but um but yeah that's starting to to gain greater acceptance that like what oh my God what you eat actually can have an impact on your mental health which I think is like no pun intended a no-brainer but it's good to finally have data right yeah and then all of the research now on exercise and how exercise can be used to augment mental health I mean it's very very exciting very empowering um I read um this nutritional psychiatrist top brain foods um included anies and muscles now it's quite difficult to eat those I mean I can eat muscles when I'm out I I don't really cook them at home but if I get a small jar of anies like that right you basically for a week all I will eat is taffard and like nisis salad because you have to use it up in three days Yeah so basically every so often I have like an anvy week for my brain and anies are so good yeah they're really good very salty though very salty yeah but but super tast Seafood in general Seafood in general is are fantastic um so many different options you know if you don't like anchovies I mean their sardines are fantastic macro mackerel yeah great source of omega-3 fats minerals um and I try to eat all of those like wild um rather than farmed but the one thing I will eat organic which means it's been farmed is prawns because um to get prawns naturally they have to scrape up the seabed and I can't like contribute to that so yeah but they're great prawns are great I mean you can't go wrong with seafood really I mean even farm raised salmon which is you know I try to buy wild whenever I can but I don't want people to fear Farm ra salmon cuz it's still going to be a better option for dinner than boxed mac and cheese true you know yeah we can't let perfect be the enemy of the good and I think no that's that's a very valid point yeah super super important stuff and you know if if cost is an issue then you know rainbow trout is cheaper than salmon but you would get like similar benefits from it red meat is a bit more controversial but I go to bat for it I think it's a very uh powerful brain food yeah have you noticed since you've been reintegrated or integrating red meat into your diet have you noticed any any changes any benefits um I haven't eaten it very much I'll be honest um I wasn't actually doing that for my brain that I was doing more for like muscle um Mass retention and bone health um so I'll have to get back to you on that one yeah yeah any other tools to mitigate chronic stress cuz it is a problem um yeah I mean so many of us are are are stressed out these days and also yeah so just general General tips but then also I'd be curious to know what role you think social media is playing in all this okay so I want to just connect this up to what we were saying before about overmedicating mental health issues so one of the things I would like to role model is that I have been through some serious challenges in my life and what I learned from the first one that contributed to you know helping me through the the second one is the resources that I had in me to be able to deal with those things and a game Cher for me was changing my gratitude list from where it was it was always about external things family friends travel um and it just got a bit boring so then I started thinking you know I'm writing the same thing out pretty much every day what else could I put on this list and when I started adding in things like my resilience my creativity my vulnerability my ability to ask for help it was like oh wow I know that I've got these things now and I'm repeating this to myself and when I really need to like dredge to the bottom of the barrel to get through you know an obstacle I know that I've got those things and so for me knowing that I had the resilience to overcome the things that I had to without resorting to taking medication really helps me to move forward positively and know that I can deal with life um and you know if you've got a major mental illness or you can't deal with something that's really difficult in your life it's absolutely fine there's a time and place for medication but that knowledge that you can get yourself through things is really really important and so there's a couple of things around that and and again you know how I said people have really stressful jobs and then going to do high-intensity exercise and I don't really Advocate that this is not something to do when you're already stressed but if you find a period of time in your life where there's no major stresses going on and you want to try to boost your resilience then what we do is called um stress inoculation so it's introducing a little bit of stress into your life but showing your brain that you control the recovery afterwards so not time restricted eating like we discuss you know like that time window but proper intermittent fasting where you reduce your calories to 500 a day for women and 600 a day for men two non-consecutive days of the week that is a form of stress because you're essentially kind of starving yourself on that day but you always eat normally the next day so if you wanted to do that for you know weight loss you would actually also be getting brain benefits I remember when I I did it before my wedding for about three months and I had read sedata by Herman Hess before and um so this monk goes into the material world and looks for a job and people ask him what he can do and he says I can wait I can pray and I can fast and I didn't really understand why fasting was a skill until I did it um and you know then I realized that it really you know it builds up your resilience but it also helps you to regul your emotions because normally if you're hungry you'll eat right but on those fasting days you can't eat when you're hungry you have to ride that wave of hunger until it goes away by itself and that just made me think okay well if I'm sad or angry or afraid I can also ride that in the same way that I can you know deal with hunger and the other um main sort of form of stress inoculation is cold showering or cold plunging but it must be followed by you know the shower becoming warm or what I do is I run the bath before so I know it's there and then I have a cold chair and then I get in the bath um when I was um the neuroscientist in Residence at the Corinthia Hotel they have an ice chamber and a SAA so I got to use that which was like quite fun so great it's uh I love that you brought this up cuz there's actually um yeah there's good there's good research on this well the the concept is like hormesis right that you're talking about whereby you apply a certain acute dose of stress to the body yeah and there are many ways to do it ice plunging saunas um fasting and you become it it stimulates these Pathways that make you more phys physically resilient right but then there's like a spill a crossover yeah a spillover effect that almost functions like a sort of cross adaptation whereby you become more Psych techologically resilient as well you know I mean those things are they're just so connected they can't not happen like that you know another um way of inducing hormesis is with ashwaganda tell me about that so um again people tend to take it when they're stressed and um what I advise my friends and family is to take it when you're not stressed so for example I took it for two or three months in the leadup to my us book launch cuz I knew I was going to be like doing a lot of travel and a lot of you know appearances and that it would be stressful so and that was in in October so over the summer where I wasn't too stressed I took ashwander because every day um for a couple of months yeah most days you know I don't always remember every day but um so that induces a sort of a mini stress response and then your body learns to adapt to that stress so then I stopped taking it before I started to travel to the US and um you know I did end up in tears at one point on on those trips but apart from that it went quite well H I love the concept of cultivating like innate strength um I think that's really powerful I you know I went through a really dark time myself personally when my mom my M I don't know how much you know about my background but my mom was very sick she had uh she had Louis body dementia MH and um you know it was really difficult for me and my family and at the beginning at the onset of her symptoms it caught all of us completely off guard because I had no my mom was young for one and you know so that in and of itself was upsetting I had no prior family history of any kind of neurod degenerative condition and so at first we didn't we you know we thought it was like some kind of cosmic joke you know like how could my mom develop this like my her mom was in old age at the time and cognitively totally healthy and giv me goosebumps yeah and in intend with that I was um in between jobs and I was at a real career low like I didn't know what I was going to do next I had this amazing post col job that kind of ran dry and I was you know I I didn't there was no logical next step for me at and at the same time I was dealing with this like the you know the worst thing imaginable happening in my personal life my mom the person who I love most in the world getting sick and um and I remember there was a uh I found this company that was making like these intention bracelets um one of my friends started actually in in LA and uh the exercise of the of the company was to think of the and the mission was to they would make these custom intention bracelets and so you had to think of a word like what was the word your intention and you know I'm not a meditator so like the idea of having a mantras was all like a foreign concept to me you know but when I remember like at that at that moment I was like okay well what's the word what what do I really need right now to manifest in my own life and more than any other word the word that stood out to me was the word that would be the the Mantra that I felt would be most useful for me in that moment in that time in my life was trust you know and not necessarily trust that I've ever had trust issues with other people but it was to trust myself that I didn't know how I was going to get through this ending feeling of Doom that I was experiencing in my personal life and also with my career to be honest um but I just knew that I that if I just trusted myself you know that I would have my own back and um and yeah and that word for you know for a good number of years during that period to me was uh incredibly powerful and Incredibly it was like a safety blanket and it and it helped P pull me through to be honest one of my mantras is I trust myself um and and just on that note because I don't think I really answered this properly is like you know the sort of you said I'm not a meditator and I'm not really into mantras but anything that connects the mind and the body so yoga actually means Union and yoga is not just yoga poses it's it's um it's yoga poses it's breath work it's meditation it's gratitude um also things like journaling and speaking to someone else so getting you know all those worries that you had on your mind if you had someone that you could really speak to it it would have you know helped you to not just have them going round and round in your head and you know some form of exercise that makes you sweat can also release excess cortisol from your your system um when we're very stressed the body leeches itself with magnesium and the easiest way to know if you're magnesium deficient is if you ever get a Twitchy eyelid um whoa yeah or like little microm muscular Twitches in your fingers or toes usually um so it's important to supplement with magnesium if you are aware that you're stressed you know just like you would take extra protein if you were going to run the marathon or whatever um yeah you know I think what you've just said about you know that I could trust myself and back myself really comes back to what I was what I was saying about what it gave me to know that I got through something really difficult without kind of you know not without help at all I mean obviously I've got like amazing support but without kind of you know medication or yeah yeah interesting about magnesium I take it every day yeah I'm a huge fan I find that it um cuz I'm prone to headaches not not super frequently but I definitely get migraines occasionally yeah and magnesium really helps and yeah there's good evidence for magnesium for migraines yeah but I didn't know that about the twitching because magnesium does help with like nerve transmission right yeah magnesium helps with like 300 functions in the body and interestingly it helps with stress but it's also used up more by stress um so yeah it you know underlies mood sleep neuromuscular Junctions skin um how do you take yours I use um I take magnesium glycinate okay which is just a pill like a couple pills M but uh but yeah the the I I wasn't familiar with the the the stress angle but I know that drinking like a lot of caffeine coffee increases your your your need for magnesium um and yeah I just take it you know and also magnesium glycinate I think is great because you can there are different forms of magnesium obviously citrate can have a laxative effect if you take a lot of it magnesium glycinate you can take it on an empty stomach it's just magnesium bound to glycine which is another really great um amino acid super bioavailable and yeah I just take that like that's part of my like I'm not a big supplement guy I don't take that many I mean I definitely take some but yeah magnesium is like a staple for me I bathe in it to five times a week really yeah tell me about that is it like a wait is epom salt no um I get magnesium salts specifically um cuz it's best taken transdermally actually um so like when I travel I've got a little spray that I bring with me that I just you know five to 15 sprays that you just rub onto your skin um but I like do like having the bath when I'm in England Terry walls is a big fan of Mag magnesium baths do you are you familiar with her work no she's a physician who developed Ms oh and uh she's one of the goats in my view in the in at that sort of intersection of nutrition and neurology she uh is a physician who developed Ms and got it completely under control um by using you know paleo Paleolithic dietary principles so like leaning heavily on dark leafy greens like kale um and also organ meats and animal S Foods things like that red meat and uh she has a famous Ted Talk which you may have seen I don't know it's called minding your mitochondria I haven't I'd love to I'm I'm obsessed with mitochondria I've just been drinking spirulina since I've been here have you yeah what is spirulina good for it's that green stuff right that's the spirina is the blue stuff and chlorophyll is the green stuff yeah yeah yeah so that but that Ted talk back when I was like going through this with my mom I stumbled upon that okay it's about 12 years old at this point and um yeah it was really opening cuz you know I think now we take for granted the fact that we have experts like yourself talking about you know the the the role of diet in in brain health but I mean 10 years ago nobody was talking about brain food I mean you know and you know you inherit your mitochondria from your mom I've heard that yeah your mitochondrial DNA yeah comes from comes from Mom and mitochondria they were originally like uh what is the it's they were originally like bacterial cells right something like that I'm trying I'm trying to think back to my embryology from medical student days well back way before there were multicellular organisms like apparently mitochondria were these they were engulfed by a larger cell oh and that yeah yeah that's this is ringing a bell but you know what's super fascinating is when I was at Medical School um like when I did surgery surgical training the surgeons used to just cut fascia like it was like a thing that we didn't need and now we know that fascia is like an organ in its own right and the latest thing is you know we always think that the appendix is a vdal organ that you don't really need it um so I'm not sure in the US but in the UK If you have symptoms of appendicitis and they they cut you open to check the appendix it has to be removed because if anyone has an appendix SC then it's assumed that they don't have an appendix um but now we know that it's like this hot bed of bacteria that you know um is related to our gut microbiome and kind of is is very necessary so yeah all these things that we thought oh you know why do we have that organ we don't really need it we're finding out new things all the time it's crazy it's crazy what would you say are some of the top misconceptions that people have about um neuroscience and I guess more specifically their brains so I was at a conference um in Boulder Colorado this weekend and there were amazing speeches but two or three people t about left brain and right brain and it's that that and the fact that people say you only use 10% of your brain are two the two things that annoy me the most I watched that movie Lucy on a plane where it kind of says like because we only use 10% of our brains but this person that you know took took these drugs and then now she's using all of her brain I was like I can't watch this movie what a dumb idea that you just like people out there thinking you could just lob off 90% of your brain and be okay I don't think so I know but we did used to do like frontal labotomy and Corpus kosum surgery and stuff which is pretty horrific but um anyway that aside so this whole left brain right brain thing like at some point given like the limitations of research we thought you know the brain does have two hemispheres and we thought that it was you know that the right brain's very rational and the left brain is creative or emotional or whatever it just it doesn't work like that now that we can scan we know that it's not so much to do with parts of the brain that relate to certain functions it's much more to do with systems and subsystems and networks and so you know the lyic system which is the size of your clenched Fist and then you've got your cortex around that that's the system that is you know more to do with emotions and intuition and stuff like that and then um you know we've got the control mode which is Task focus and the default mode which is the more mind wandering like creative um system so yeah just to move away from using this language about left brain right brain oh the other one um is amydala hijack so you know love Daniel Goldman's work and again that is how we thought it worked when he he wrote emotional intelligence but I found that in my coaching with Executives it's it's a great excuse for Behaving Badly at work right so what I try and teach people now is it's not like if you experience an emotion unless you're completely disregulated which obviously that's not okay but it's not like okay I got very angry about that and so I couldn't help the fact that I went red in the face and I yelled at someone and made them cry it's it's more like you're a chef with certain ingredients so if I if we both have water milk flour eggs and sugar then if someone says someone annoys us you could make like a scrambled egg and throw it at them but I could make a cake and give it to them that's how how we should think about managing our emotions H so wait we have these ingredients at our disposal yeah but ultimately that it's up to you to determine what you do with those ingredients yeah I like that talk about Bridging the Gap between food and Neuroscience it's very interesting I've got another tip for you actually which is about olfactory enrichment so that's basically smelling as you know as large a variety of different things during the day as you can and the research shows that it helps our cognition um and memory as we age H because that's one of the first things to go right is our sense of smell that's like a red flag right if you're if there's a change in your sense of smell may you see a see a doctor well well obviously Co really brought that to you know the four for people because I think it was a sense that we really underrated even though it's actually the most emotive sense because of our five senses the cranial nerves for the other senses travel all the way around the skull before they connect up so for example the optic nerve goes from here all the way around the skull to the oxital lobe that where our visual cortex is but the olfactory bulb goes from here just like an inch back and um and it's very close to the memory and emotion centers so if if I ask you you know what smell brings back a strong childhood memory for you h well uh off the top of my head I um probably the smell of Tommy girl perfume is that a weird answer there's got to be a story behind you there is yeah you're blushing as well yeah uh Tommy girl perfume was like the first perfume that was like marketed towards like girls back when I was in elementary school yeah and uh I mean I'm maybe dating myself but like Tommy Hilfiger was like the brand dour like when I was in elementary school and um all the cool kids wore Tommy hillfiger and then when Tommy girl came out all the cute girls started wearing that that is so until all my crushes you know like were wearing Tommy girl in elementary school and I think also maybe like middle school and it's like a cheap perfume you know but now whenever I smell that kind of thing it just bring brings me back to like my elementary school like all the girls that I had crushes on that's so cute that never gave me the time of day different podcast bet they regret that now maybe they maybe who knows they're all probably married with kids at this point but but yeah so Tommy girl whenever I smell that I actually once bought it I bought it actually like I found it online I don't know I don't even know if they still sell it no but I bought it just so I could like have it and you know this it's not as creepy as it sounds I just wanted I was just thinking maybe we're going to edit this for hours no I bought it cuz I just wanted like reminisce and like you know see if if it if it brought me back and it did in fact bring me back you know yeah ck1 was another one at the same time ck1 right yeah cuz it was the first androgynous perfume wasn't it it was the first androgynous perfume yeah but back when I was like you know a teenager like all the all the girl it was like the trendy perfume you know yeah brings me back different time different era I know and now I don't even I mean I don't wear cologne or anything like that you know I think it's like kind of P right like nobody who wears that stuff anymore it's all filled with like phalates and I know stuff that you don't want in your system exactly um so on the smell thing there's a few interesting new bits of research that I found out if you smell or something reminds you of the smell of your parents or grandparents house you get what's called an avalanche of memory because there's obviously so much that went on around the time that you would you would have been a child in those homes um and there's a guy um MIT who has done some research into medical DET detection dogs so there are dogs that can smell certain types of cancer and created an artificial nose that can do the same wa yeah it's incredible that's so cool is the the proximity of the old factory bulb to our brains is that why people like to put up their nose similar reason um well so what happens is that at the top of our nose at the interface with the brain there's something called um epithelial cells and so that's kind of like a little bit it's like an like netting and so some of those drugs can go directly into the brain through that um they're obviously also inhaled and you know when you mentioned phalates and stuff but things like you know facial Spritz or hairspray whatever perfume as well um we inhale that and it goes into our lungs and to the smallest you know cells in um you know sort of sacks in the lungs called the alvioli and goes into our bloodstream so it's not just you're putting it on your body but you're also inhaling it and it's going straight into your bloodstream yeah and when you compared to when you ingest something it has to go through like liver detoxification and all that stuff unless it's sublingual then it goes also straight into your wow under the tongue goes straight to your bloodstream so what's next for you what are you what are you most excited about in terms of your advocacy your career um well I might write another book I can't believe I'm saying this I I very distinctly have said on several podcasts I'm never writing another book again it's been five years since your last been five years yeah um I'm very excited about my my own podcast as well but love going on other people's podcasts um so I think yeah moving more into the you know me media and social media space um I just feel like that's got the largest reach for my work to help people that makes a lot of sense are you still affiliated with King's College well so I'm my academic position is at MIT Sloan so I'm a visiting senior lecturer at Kings college but actually I just recorded one video for their two Master's programs years ago and it just gets replayed so I don't actually do live teaching there that's where they're doing a lot of really cutting edge research on psychedelics right Psy psychedelic assisted Psychotherapy and John's Hopkins that's where I keep an eye on for the latest research interesting well this was super fun super excited to uh get to know you and and yeah what a fun fun conversation um I've got one last question for you I guess but before we get to that where can people find you on social media how can they support your work pick up your books and listen to your podcast thank you you um so I'm most active on Instagram where I'm Dr Tara swart and my book is called The Source um in the UK it's called The Source open open your mind change your life and in the US it's called the science of the brain secrets of the universe um but they're both called The Source but they've got different covers and my podcast is called reinvent yourself with Dr Tara I love it so cool well last question that gets asked to everybody on the show what does living a genius life mean to you um two things so one would be about neuroplasticity so doing something you know annually at least to like keep your brain like growing and changing and then the other thing is something that I mentioned already which is you know doing something that doesn't benefit you directly but is like for the greater good I think that's a genius life well you're living it thanks for doing what you do too you're the best hey if you like that video you need to check out this one here and I'll see you there [Music] [Music]

Channel: Max Lugavere

Views: 13,307

Keywords: max lugavere, Dr. Tara Swart manifestation, Swart on brain science, Manifesting goals Dr. Swart, Tara Swart neuroscience of success, Dr. Swart's manifestation techniques, Brain plasticity Tara Swart, Swart on achieving dreams, Dr. Tara Swart on positive thinking, Neuroscience behind manifestation Swart, Tara Swart's guide to manifesting, Dr. Swart law of attraction, Manifesting your reality Tara Swart, Tara Swart on mental resilience, Dr. Swart's tips for manifestation

Id: bImZ468SRnU

Length: 83min 41sec (5021 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 01 2024