Brain Surgeon’s Advice On How To Stop Negative Behaviors And Strengthen Your Mind

depression, OCD, and and obesity, the drive to eat. It can all be modulated and they're all housed near each other. That speaks to what they are is is an imbalance of the emotional drive with the ability for the frontal lobes to tamp down some of these instincts. It's instinctive to eat. Sometimes it can feel instinctive to be depressed. And sometimes obsessive compulsion is is a part of our brain and it's it's a natural part of our brain. It It's okay to have those feelings. When you have them too much, the imbalance isn't just electrochemical in those emotional hubs. It's a It's the frontal lobes not accessing their potential to tamp down some of the emotions. Hey everybody, welcome to Health Theory. Today's guest is Dr. Rahul Jandial. He is a dual-trained neurosurgeon who has both an MD and PhD and he's based out of the world-famous City of Hope Hospital here in Los Angeles. He's a researcher and author of 10 books and countless academic papers on the brain. And as if that wasn't cool enough, he's also one of the stars of Fox's TV show Superhuman and the co-host of a National Geographic Channel documentary on the brain alongside Bryant Gumbel. Additionally, he's the founder and co-director of INCA, a nonprofit that performs free surgeries in underprivileged areas around the world. And his latest book, Neurofitness, explores the real science of peak performance. You had me at peak performance. I'm totally obsessed with this stuff about what we can do to really supercharge ourselves. Given that you've been a neurosurgeon in literally cracking people's brains open, been on the show, seen some really extraordinary people, what is the human animal capable of? Like what when people I find they don't pursue anything cuz they don't think they're capable of much. But what are we really able to pull off? Well, if you're thinking about just what the brain can do, I like using just crazy gnarly examples. I used to work in an Alzheimer's clinic when I was trying to get into medical school. And once in a while, these older folks, they would have dementia. Parts of the brains would literally wither, like the flesh would wither. It's not just the thinking and the electricity. Right. And hidden painting abilities would come out. So, you see, and I'm not talking like they're going to be at in in a museum at some point, but a dramatic change in their in the way they wrote, in their ability to paint landscapes. And you see the before and after pictures. And those kind of things make me think there's a lot of untapped potential. So, those examples, when I take you know, when I take care of brain injured, it's not all sad cases. They can be phenomenal in some ways. And you learn that there's so much going on in the brain that we are not seeing on the daily level. So, I think there's a lot of potential we have an we haven't tapped into that we could if we structured things better in our daily lives as also in the ways we approach our kids in the next generations that we talked before we got started. That's what I want to dive into. So, how much of brain training is real? I know for a minute it was like brain training is everything, and then it was like no, it's all BS. And then you talk [clears throat] about that specifically in the book. What's the the conclusion? So, the conclusion is anything difficult where you have to think is good for your brain. If you ask Usain Bolt, how do I get stronger legs? Run. It's intuitive. But the flesh in our skulls, it's meant to think and feel. And that is the power of self-growth. And it's a thinking machine. It's a thinking flesh that you actually have to use or to protect itself cuz it's energy hog, right? It's 3 lb, but uses 20%. If you're not using parts of it, it'll program itself to let those parts of the garden wither. So, the diversity of thinking and the depth of thinking just one level past what you're used to is the way to keep the whole garden flourishing. And it is a garden in there. There's chemicals, there things moving, there different types of brain cells. It's not just neurons. So, I always try to give that metaphor analogy if you will that it's a garden and you have to irrigate it and stimulate and tend to all the corners, particularly the ones you're starting to neglect. Maybe it's your left hand. Getting out of the box and engaging the recesses of your mind is the most important thing. And then you have the then the then the creative things happen. You don't just sit down and have them happen. You got to work and dream and go hard and on top of that something creative can happen. So, is there a specific protocol? Like I know people have said brush your teeth with your left hand or one of the coolest things I've ever heard about staving off dementia is to take dance class because having to do bodily movements but in a particular rhythm and learning new steps is like sort of the ultimate trifecta for keeping the brain young. Are there things like that cuz people listening right now they want to write something down. Step one do this. Step two do this. So, now we have the understanding that the brain is meant to think. The brain is also meant to command your body to move. And absolutely, the minute you don't use your left hand, the right parietal lobe with the motor strip says I'm not getting used much. I'll shave down that I'll shave down that density of those brain cells a little bit. So, that's where movement's important. So, simple things like getting the mouse you know using the mouse with your left hand and using your phone with your left hand is a powerful technique. And then the other thing is navigation. When you see old people and they lose their way home, well that has a particular address also. Many things are global in the brain but navigation is in the temporal lobe and they have dementia in that area. Navigation also is uh spatial awareness is a function of the brain and sometimes when we're on our phones too much we don't have that. So, my kids I tell them don't look down. Not religiously or adamantly but try to just remember our route and just look up and see how see how far you can get. Uh I think those habits will help us as we get less young. And those are practical things we can do during the day. And as far as the uh the other element is brain training, I I doesn't have to be some weird game that's not intuitive. I think brain training just means learning as a habit. Mhm. One step past where you're comfortable. If you're reading it and you know it, your brain's in it's an idle. If it's too hard, it's not even engaged. It's I'm not I'm not even going to win this race. I'm not going to kick in a second gear. So just just like video games, just good enough to get to the next level, right? They don't hit you with the fifth level, the tilt level up front. It's level one to level two, level two to level three. And that's what learning is. So despite your knowledge and intellect, it's just that level right beyond you that is brain training. So you don't have to buy an app, you just have to challenge yourself and think. Right. So in the book, um you talk about some pretty powerful the sort of blocking and tackling of improving your brain. What are some things, whether it's sleep or diet, that you think people are just woefully um mishandling? So Well, we can take we can take each one, you know. Sleep is a tricky one. I I spent a decade without sleep. Going Monday morning at 4:00 or 5:00 a.m., come home Tuesday at 7:00 p.m. That's a shift. Wow. And what you realize during that time is even if you can get a few hours of sleep, don't do it. Really? Yeah. Disrupted sleep as residents and people can write in. We If you can just get an hour or two, sometimes it's better to stay up the whole night. And it's a story well worn between residents. They pass that on to each other. And the reason is the sleep disruption can be quite difficult on the brain. And so if you're going to get five good hours of sleep going on to people who aren't in surgical training, maybe that's better than 7 hours of disrupted sleep where your phone is going off and different things are pinging your way. So, that's one lesson I think people should understand. In my family, what we do is I actually start, you know, I start turning the lights down in the house. I don't want to make it dark, but I just take off the the floodlights and I start getting more ambient light. It's just like a a trigger for your mind, in my opinion and for my boys, uh to like there's a transition coming here. You have to rev down your thought, but the the light change is the trigger and it's not melatonin in the back of your brain that everybody's been talking about. It's actually called the suprachiasmatic nucleus. You can get to it through your nose and there uh there's a small cluster that is a circadian rhythm setter. We all of us, plants and animals, have been on this revolving Earth and are in tune to it. That it's a it's the daily revolution of the Earth's rhythm that we're in tune with. It's not the pineal gland releasing one magic chemical that makes you fall asleep. When we cut out the pineal gland, when it has tumors or cysts, they sleep just the same afterwards. I've done the surgery myself. We don't worry that if we take out the pineal gland, they're not going to sleep the next day. That this and that's the only thing that makes melatonin. But we know when we go through the nose and we mess with this area by the hypothalamus, their temperature regulation is off. They're like 104 for no reason. Their sleep is off. So, sleep is a very complicated thing that cannot be addressed just with melatonin. I believe you can catch up on sleep during the weekends. And the way to get in a sleep rhythm is to not have a stimulant and start shaving the light as you get later on in night. That's the way I would approach, you know, all the issues with sleep that are going on. [snorts] That's super [ __ ] interesting. Let's talk about the MIND diet. I found that really interesting in the book. Yeah, that's well known. So, this is not to lose weight. It's what nutrients to put inside you where if you have 1,000 people here and you have 1,000 people here and for 20 years they eat differently. What are the numbers of people with dementia, all other things being equal? It essentially says uh it doesn't have to be Mediterranean. It just has to be plants. Like as I tell my kids, plants, which is you know, fruit or salad. It doesn't have to be just salad. You know, yogurt, nuts, lean meats like po- you know, chicken and salmon. What is it that salmon has? Omega-3s. It's the only thing in our literature that we know is a is a nutritional component in food that is good for brain health. And the omega-3s are a unique type of fat that are, you know, the brain is an extremely fatty organ. And so it needs to it needs to have those fats. So omega-3s uh are the only things nutritionally that I would say is you could supplement or actually add salmon in a couple times a week. So that's the MIND diet twist on the heart diet by adding a little bit more emphasis on salmon, which you can't have is a lot of fried processed food. And if you have a cheat day or whatever, you have a burger, it doesn't negate what you've done. I think that's the hardest thing about dieting for people. They feel like the shift has to be complete and religious. And to me, it's more glacial because the benefits will also take decades to accrue. You know, that's my that's my you know, those are the nutrients that are best for the brain. Mhm. You talked about intermittent fasting in the book. What do you think about that? What is its impact on the mind, longevity? Um what's its place? to kick the MIND diet into next year, and you're thinking I don't want to just stave off brain degeneration, right? Like what if you wanted to work on focus and cognition? These things are harder to test, but when you go into the big neuroscience journals, they speak about intermittent fasting. And the best way I can explain it is your brain's a hybrid vehicle. It grew, it evolved through through thousands and thousands and thousands of years of lots of food scarcity. You didn't eat all the time. And so it's got a backup mechanism called ketones. So after 16 hours if you don't put glucose in and the liver's done the releasing the glucose it's held on to through glycogen reserves then it'll start burning fat. They'll clip off those oxygens and hydrogens and they'll make ketones out of it. Intermittent fasting can also help you lose weight. I think that's why most people are interested in it. But it's the way the brain prefers to get its fuel source. And it's based on a diet um lessons about dieting learned through uh controlling epilepsy and seizures in kids in areas where there's no medicine. So I was in Ukraine and when they don't have medicine or a type of seizure, seizures are abnormal electrical activity in the brain, just like an arrhythmia would be an abnormal electrical activity of the heart. Uh they would just feed them all fat diet. You could smell it in the hospitals. So something about an all fat diet forcing you into just using ketones. Now intermittent fasting is back and forth, glucose and then ketones, glucose and then ketones. But for kids, if you just get them almost nearly all ketone as the source that goes up to the brain through an all fat diet, their seizure rate go down. You know, so that's proof that food changes mind. Because the mind is the electricity sparking through that flesh. Food will change the electricity, detectable, measurable electricity in your brain. Food affects mind. Food affects brain. With that premise we can talk about, okay, MIND diet will hold off dementia and intermittent fasting might make you feel like you've had a cup of coffee once you get in the rhythm of it. It's not going to make you smarter, but it'll bring you to your most focused, to bring you to your most attentive. It's not going to Oh, I'm intermittent fasting and now I can do physics. It's It's It's not like that. It's your personal best. And then the habits you demonstrate to your family by trying to be at your personal best. And then your kids see that and your friends see that. And I think that's how you impact generation change is to have capable people demonstrate, "Hey, it's not hard and this is the best we can do for ourselves." It's really interesting. I I have a very different relationship with intermittent fasting. So, I intermittent fast a lot. So, I'm fasting almost 20 hours a day. How does it feel? Awesome, but it does It isn't additional clarity for me. So, what I find is that it changes my relationship to hunger. So, I'm not thinking about food in the way that I would be thinking about food if I'm eating over a longer period of time cuz I'm in ketosis. So, if you took my blood, not now probably cuz I just had a big meal about 3 hours ago, but if you would have taken my blood this morning at like 10:00, 1,000% I was probably posting a 1.5-ish. And when I'm in that range, I feel great, but I don't feel extra. But I find it is extraordinary for fat loss. So, the reason I'm doing it now is so I cycle throughout the year. So, in the winter I worry a lot less about carrying a bit of fat. So, I probably fluctuate during the year 5 to 7 lb probably. And then for the summer, then I'll sharpen back up. And then again the the cycle repeats. So, that I find it really effective for. I find it really effective for changing my relationship to food so that I don't need to eat. If I were going to miss a meal, not a big deal. If my only choice to eat something bad versus to skip a meal, then I find that it's it's just a different relationship. Right. So, here's where I think I understand it a little bit differently. It's not like you expect clarity when you pop into ketosis because it's been 16 hours after you've eaten or since your last meal. It's just the going back and forth over a few weeks, over a few months. Those months you'll have maybe more clarity than the months before when you weren't doing it. a hypothesis about that that's testable, but obviously we're not going to be able to figure it out here. But my gut instinct is if you're used to a high carbohydrate diet, a thousand percent you'll be like, "Holy [ __ ] this is a revolution. My life is so much better. I'm clear." All of that. But because I don't almost ever have non-vegetable carbohydrates in my diet, because if I were to cheat, then I get it. Then I am a little bit foggy. So the delta's less for you since you already started with a better diet. from a clarity perspective, this layperson, so discount the [ __ ] out of it, but this layperson's vibe is or hypothesis is is that this is a lack of carbohydrate thing that gets people non-vegetable based carbohydrate that gets people the clarity. But there's even another benefit to it, which is it will radically alter your relationship to hunger is probably a better way to say it than food, which is pretty interesting. Yeah. So but you're whole psychology of the the feed forward of, you know, forward loop cycle of eating and then the I don't know that. What does that mean? Well, it's just the the fact that you get a rush when you eat. Yes. You know, it's it's you're supposed to. I mean, and fat tastes richer because somehow you know, we figured out it was more advantageous, you know, to have this because it's more nutritious, at least from calorie point of view. And so those things are set inside us. I mean, if it's good for us, it gives us a rush. Sometimes if it's bad for us, it gives us a rush. And I love the complexity of that. I love that animals get high. I love that some people think that there. It's I totally am with you, but explain to people how animals get high. Well, they eat fermented food. They bury stuff underneath. They they they search certain things in the environment that are uh you know, psychoactive meaning it changes the way they feel. And what's unique about these substances like cannabinoids or even nicotine that when you as a scientist I'm reading papers and it says cannabinoid receptors. We have named scientific terms for cannabis inside our body. There is a nicotine receptor nicotinic receptors. So that active agreement ingredient from tobacco I'm not saying smoke. But just to understand that the chemicals in plants have perfect locks for which they serve the keys in our bodies. We we grew with the plants. We change with the plants. We use the plants to our advantage. And now the the plants and the food have have gone the other way and it's a disadvantage to for us. And the biggest problem I don't understand that. because we're eating too much. Mhm. So before food scarcity was an advantage because it kept us from it was intermittent fasting by you know by necessity. Yeah. And that if you think about it just conceptually it's just another hypothesis if during times of hunger you were less sharp or lack of food made you dull rather than sharpened your wits about where the lion was or where the other where was the berry where was the fruit where were the shellfish in Southern South Africa. If it made you dull that wouldn't be a positive thing. So I think I think it makes intuitive sense also that just a little bit and with all respect I know people can't get food throughout the world. I've traveled the world. I know there's bad food everywhere but on an intellectual level for people trying to take it to the next level is is a bit of food scarcity can actually sharpen your mind and neuroscience is trying to understand at the molecular level what's going on, what's swimming into the brain, and which receptors are being turned on. But I think I think it does make some intuitive sense, you Let's go back to plants as medicine and locking key. Have you microdosed or macrodosed for that matter? I haven't, but a lot of people do and I'll and I and I'm I'm an extremely non-judgmental person and they they have a biology. And when you understand them, um you you can understand which one may be of use for you. Let's go into the biology. I'm sure you're well aware of all the literature about coming out now about like um psychedelic psilocybin specifically on depression and anxiety. What's the biology going on there? Yeah. There are trials, I don't know if it's New York, at cancer centers where cancer patients are taking psychedelics to deal with the existential crisis of a cancer diagnosis. That's even higher than it to me it's like cuz you're starting to think like this parts of me are eating myself from the inside and growing inside me. It could give you a real sense of what what is identity. I think if there's a cancer patient and they want to try it and we can study and learn from it, why not have something more in the toolbox for the the psychological weight and difficulty they're going with while we're doing, you know, while we're working on chemo and surgery, the psychological weight of a cancer diagnosis. So, psychedelics tend to um work in that way. The mechanism in the brain, it's mysterious, you know. There are certain receptors that get activated. Serotonin is one of them, but in a different area serotonin is used for Prozac. But in a but you know, psychedelics also work with serotonin. So, there's this myth that dopamine is a happy chemical. This is the this chemical. It's not that linear. At the stage of life you're in, the location, who you are. Sometimes we we uh dopamine when it's low and it makes gamblers out of people. One of the side effects of replacing dopamine is making people gamblers. So, I love the variety of roles each neurotransmitter plays. You're not having this complexity. Dopamine's a happy chemical. That's too simple. We want I want a more nuanced approach to understanding the brain. Uh and psychedelics are the thing that it it's the strange you know, we're wildly creative in our dreams. The things we think of in our dreams and don't remember. So, clearly the machinery is there in our mind. Let's just say that. How do we access that? I think psychedelics allow people to access that. There's uh there's this thing called uh you know, sort of sense mixing where people Synesthesia? Yeah, but bigger than that cuz that's that becomes I I try not to use those words because then people think it's a diagnosis. Mhm. But, a lot of people can have a a relationship with music and feel like they can feel it. I don't mean just the bass coming through. And a lot of people can see different things. And I I think that's that ability is where it's it's heightened in sleep and it's released by psychedelics. The Do you think something's being turned off or something's being turned on? I think that's a great question. I think something's being turned off. The boss is The boss is told to get the [ __ ] out of here. How familiar are you with transcranial magnetic stimulation? I'm not very uh familiar with it. I know some people are having uh good results with it, but my worry with it is there's too many like inexpensive untested gizmos being sold on Amazon where you put on a certain magic helmet. [laughter] So, there's always that, right? It always And you've seen some of those things where like one electrode on the forehead. thing is I haven't, but it makes me want to go find them. So, here's this out. We can measure your brain electricity from without having to go inside your skull. It takes more than one electrode. Mhm. And so, it's the manipulation of real technology with fancy branding and I and I worry about that. And I and I worry about people um not just misunderstanding that they've bought something that can't help them, but hurting the proper technologies that will come out in 5 years or later on. You know, it's sort of it's sort of muddying the muddying the the environment for the real technology that's going to come out. But if thousands of years ago one time that I said fascinating thing I read, for headaches they would take electric fish and just put try to zap the skull with electric fish. And that's modern electric you know, shock therapy that that the your mind is the electricity flowing through that flesh. And you can alter it with magnets. So, you can use a magnet and alter the electricity in our mind. That's not how the knee works. That's not how the the heart works. Heart is a pump. And so, that's why the brain is fascinating and I don't want the garbage ones to come out and give it a kooky science vibe when when there's going to be some good stuff that comes out in that area. Yeah, [snorts] that's really interesting. Is there anything that you think is legitimate that is non-invasive that you guys are using at the cutting edge right now or is that all in the future? Um there's actually FDA approved a sticker that that is electromagnetic and somehow beyond my understanding uh those patients live longer with their cancers. And that's a So, the the field of electro magnetic manipulation isn't just for brain enhancement. That the cancer cells that grew in the flesh of our brain are also electrically responsive and can be manipulated. It's that fascinating. It's an electrical I would explain it like it's a it's an ocean of electric jellyfish. And the the thoughts are not the jellyfish or the brain cell. It's the sparks happening in between. And those sparks are what you manipulate with uh when you take Prozac the sparks the the tentacles don't touch. They spray these they spray dopamine they spray serotonin in different quantities and they last inside this cleft where the the two tentacles of the of the jellyfish are touching at different durations. So when you take Prozac it's a basically it slows down the vacuum of that space in between and let's serotonin float a little longer and thereby have greater effect. Those reuptake inhibitors and then there are other things where these electrical currents coming down if you magnetically stimulate or electrically stimulate or even when the skull is open I can physically stimulate the brain and make it squirt chemicals that you're you're dancing with this electricity and these chemical charges that are bouncing between each other. So then the number of brain cells becomes less relevant and more [snorts] about what's happening in between. That's why I just I just think the the future for brain size brain health is going to be even better than what we're what we've already seen but we have just started to manipulate the mind. Yeah, which is my absolute fascination. I want to go back to brain plasticity and talk about how this actually works. So I'm writing a book right now and it's about how to use basically how to take control of your mindset but I believe that the process by which you do that is values beliefs identity. It's it's a priorities it's like this whole and I often use when I'm talking to people about it the analogy of your identity being like cancer and that cancer is not like a little ball that you can just reach in and pluck out. It's got all these crazy [ __ ] tendrils and because it's so intertwined with the healthy tissue that like getting it out is very very difficult. And there's so many things that are just intertwined like there's no way for me to tell you oh it's about values oh it's about identity oh it's about repetition or whatever. It's it's all of it [ __ ] mashed together, but it all comes back to the brain is this malleable thing, and it can change both form and function. And Agree. what are the things that make it change form and function? So, while I have you as a captive person here to talk about the brain, what what is that process? So, like forming a new maybe habit's the wrong way to think about it, but I think about part of your job, if you want to change your I'll even go so far as to say your um the affectations of your personality, cuz I think there are some parts of it that are just it's who you are, it's hardwired, all that. But, there are certain elements of your personality, what you desire, what you pursue, things like that that are manipulable. Um how do we go about moving some of that to the default network, so that it's so ingrained in you, that it's so many times that it becomes second nature? I love this question. It's the hardest question, cuz I've I've I went all magical with these jellyfish brain things, and you're like, well, so how do we harness that? Yeah, exactly. Right. So, it's 3 lb, and it uses 20% of the blood flow. Uh that said, the way I think habits function, this is these are my ideas, is that because it's such an energy hog, it wants to be efficient. So, this whole myth about you only use 20% of your brain, no, we use 100% of our brain, and pictures show that. But, to get things done, we might only use 15. Mhm. We to get something complicated done, we might only use 35. Otherwise, you you'd just be Otherwise, you wouldn't be an efficient animal or human in the savanna if you couldn't really control this uh important, but not having not having it in fifth gear all the time is is a is an evolutionary strategy, in my opinion. So, I explain to my kids, okay, so So, then it falls into ruts, cuz efficiency is about ruts, like dominoes falling in a certain path. And the best way I can explain it is as you grow, the brain the way the electrics the electricity flows, the way the connections are prioritized is a bit like skiing down a mountain. It It starts creating these electrical grooves of sort where if you see something, you see a cliff, uh fear, it goes down a certain path. And every time you do that and you reinforced it, it actually becomes less expensive energy-wise to follow and fall into that habit. So, these pathways, these habits in our mind, these rituals, these things that uh are good for us, we want to hold on to those, but a lot of them have become deeply carved, you know, routes down the mountain. And filling those in, burying them, and finding healthier ones is going to be an energy-expending process. Okay? The effort will be harder in the beginning, and then as you create a new route down the mountain, you can condition yourself to having more favorable and constructive responses. That's the best way I can explain is why effort will lead to change, and your most effort will be spent in the beginning, and then you can change your emotional and cognitive responses by conditioning yourself to find a different different route down the mountain. What is that process at a cellular level? What does that look like? What's happening? So, here's how I've always thought of it. You don't actively undo a habit. You create a new habit, and the old habit atrophies, and now it's trying to basically remap this new pattern. But in remapping, you're sort of breaking that old pa- or not breaking it, but it's it's over time it's just beginning to atrophy. I don't know a better way to say it. Dendritic plasticity uh neuronal plasticity at the cellular level is all about uh use it or lose it is a very old phrase, but it applies. If it's reaching out looking for an electrical signal to come by and trigger it, release shower with some chemicals. After a while, if it's not bathed in what it wants, the brain will say, "Let those dendrites wither and morph and reach out to other tentacles." Mhm. Uh those That's the cellular basis of steering electricity within your brain. That's the cellular basis for creating a new electrical groove down the mountain. And that Let me give you some examples. People are like, "Well, that sounds very off-the-wall." No, no, no, not at all. You're born with more brain cells than as a kid than you are as an adult. And Because we're losing them slowly over time? You we're equipped with a lot that we can't hold on to. Uh you're going to reinforce the ones that you're using. And the ones you don't use your brain will say, "I don't need to hold on them cuz they're just using energy." But the the plasticity is we start off with more brain cells than we hold on to. Yet, we get smarter as then when we are when we for the most part when we are from our as kids. And we get more coordinated as we lose brain cells. They're They're example That's the example that shows you that uh it's about the connections and reinforcing those patterns. I hope that empowers people to be like, "Wait a second, it's not a static thing." And much I would like I would exercise for my body there are things maybe I should do for my brain and mind, especially while the window is still here uh to set those into actions and make them constructive habits and maybe pass them on to the generation that follows. What are you calling that window? I want to believe that window is open till the day I [ __ ] die. It is for everybody, but not to the same degree. You know, I would say that window is less than 40, less than 30 even is a is the most bang for your buck. But, there's no doubt that the ability this plasticity we're talking about is highest in your teens. And that's actually when you get a lot of mental health disorders, so weird thing. The most dynamic shape-shifting is in adolescence. So, we come into our identity, but we also it's also a a peak of mental health issues. So, you're sort of setting your your cognitive and emotional thermostat. And then 20s and 30s and 40s and 50s, it does it does slow down, but it doesn't wither to zero. Mhm, that's interesting. Um, my the my thesis in life is that we're far more malleable than we think. The science that I've read pegs it at about 50/50. So, you're 50% genetics, it just it is what it is. We all have predilections, there's things that we're better at. Intelligence is certainly has a genetic component, all of that. So, let's say that's 50%. You're just 50% is unmutable, can't [ __ ] change it. It's like height. It is what it [ __ ] is. But, 50% of it on the other hand is to really be scientific is epigenetics. So, it's going to be your response to the environment. If you had a radical case and you had somebody come to you and they were um, all I don't want to get lost in the word depression, but they're sort of depressive, they're lost in their life, they're 35, things haven't worked out the way that they want, they're a bit temperamental, they don't really have hold over their environment, like how would you get them in line? Like, what are things that like I have a list of things I would tell them to do, but I would think they're suboptimal compared to somebody who's actually looked inside of a brain. Yeah, that's a tough question because I don't take care of people with mental health issues. In a neurosurgery, sometimes we do place catheters into the emotional hubs uh inside our brain. So, the thinking brain is like a mushroom cap. end? Uh you can electrically break an obsessive-compulsive disorder habit. We've seen patients come in and they okay, you talked about something I'd never heard of before. You called it electrical plasticity. Is that what you're trying to disrupt? Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So, That's [ __ ] interesting. So, wait a second. So, if I'm disrupting the electrical We're resetting it, changing the oscillations. It's not on or off. What is that coming out of? Like so, in the heart you can put a pacemaker and get it to beat on a certain rhythm. Right. What's driving that in the brain that creates a certain electrical pattern? Uh so, you're basically the electricity in the brain is shooting through hubs. Does this all come down to repetition? Well, I think right now repetition can uh ingrain a physical habit. Uh-huh. But, what we're talking about, just to go backwards on this, if you look at a snake, and you've never seen one before, a lot of people reflexively jump back. And let's say it's a plastic snake. First time you might jump. Second time you say, "I've seen that before." Your instinct was tamped down by your frontal lobes. And those structures are our emotional and instinctive responses to our environment. They should be under They should be malleable by our thought. The thought of these giant frontal lobes behind our forehead should say to them, "You don't have Just cuz you're angry doesn't mean you should physically reach out and hurt somebody. Just because you've seen a snake, you know it's plastic, you don't have to jump every time. Just because you're afraid of public speaking doesn't mean after a while you have to be afraid of it." So, that It's not conditioning. It's It's a thought that tamps down instincts we feel are uh destructive or or not useful. So, when I see, going back to the electrical stimulation, when I when I grab a doorknob, I sometimes I think, "Oh, you know, I mean, I should wash my hands." But, if I grab a doorknob and go wash my hands 80 times, the frontal lobe is having a hard time tamping down those emotional hubs, and we can drill a hole and put a catheter into these subcortical structures. They're like nodules within the the web of of neurons, and electrical tickling of that will snap the patient out of this obsessive-compulsive disorder. Does it last? It last? Get the [ __ ] out of here. Deep brain stimulation, you'd love this topic. But, uh depression, OCD, and and obesity, the drive to eat, it can all be modulated, and they're all housed near each other. That speaks to uh what they are is is an imbalance of the emotional drive with the ability for the frontal lobes to tamp down some of these instincts. It's instinctive to eat. Sometimes it can feel instinctive and sometimes uh obsessive-compulsion is is a part of our brain, and it's it's a natural part of our brain. It's okay to have those feelings. When you have them too much, the imbalance isn't just electrochemical in those emotional hubs, it's a it's the frontal lobes not accessing uh their potential to tamp down some of the emotions. Do you think that that is um I want to talk garden variety [ __ ] I get there's always going to be outlier cases. But, garden variety uh depression, let's start there. Or even the garden variety, like they can't get over the fear of the snake or public speaking anxiety, we'll round it to. Um is it me not using my prefrontal lobe to tamp it down, or is it that I either have a diminished prefrontal lobe from a uh physical, like there's a physical structural problem in my brain, or that the fear center, of the amygdala, whatever, is kicking off the anxiety is is physically over robust, or is it just that if if you had them, could you train them to use thought alone Yeah. to get a hold of it? That's a good question. I know where you're going with that because I don't empower people to think down their anxieties. Uh I think there's no other way and I'm not copping out of a straight-up answer on it. There's no other way to say it's all of the above. Uh some people actually have uh aberrant robust, you know, lighting up of some of these structures. Amygdala are ones people usually think of, but in these subcortical structures, some people actually correlate that they light up more and they have greater addiction in that group. So, there's a structural element, there's a life context uh element, and then there's also the uh the frontal lobe element, and that thinking of creating new habits, uh creating new values, uh creating less triggers in your life. That's the opportunity that we all have, and I think that's the project you're working on. What's the stuff we can control without zapping ourselves and without putting pills in us? Those things set the boundaries, but the frontal lobe regulation of how we feel is in your own command. And you've seen it in Buddhist monks, you've seen the mind-body connection in deep divers. There's actually two nerves that come down and wrap around the heart. They can think down there pulse. They can think down how fast their heart beats. This is not like baloney. This is You can put ultrasound We can You can look it up online. You see videos of it. That shows that thinking can change thought can change how fast your heart beats. Why wouldn't we believe that thought can change those subcortical structures about anxiety and depression? If you get depressed, you're sort of you know, that you can get stuck. But people who aren't having those mental health issues, but just want to be better and live a more rich life in the sense of personal experience, we can think about our lives and our habits and triggers and create effects inside us. The mind-body connection is is mind down to body. And many people feel, you know, body back up to mind and that's where meditation and and and meditative breathing come in. But those connections are real. You see examples around you. If your frontal lobe can only help you 5% and somebody else's all dialed in and helps them 50%, doesn't matter. That's your best. And that's an avenue available to you, but it's not a it it's not a simple one. It's not a quick fix. It's not going to be a bullet. It actually takes work. You mentioned repetition. It takes work, it takes effort. Uh and there is no shortcut to it, but it's a glacial change that can happen over a few months to a few years. And I think once, you know, like people go to the gym, they can't not go to the gym anymore. I think people who find these rituals and habits that make them feel better, they become addicted to that and they're constructive and they're not pharmacologic. I want to hear what you think about this cuz this is going to be a key This is a key thesis that I have that will play out in the book and it certainly played out in my life. One of the things I think is most under valued is repetition, repetition, repetition. Like if if you left me alone with somebody that had this whatever bad habit, um I would have them do good things. The whether it be thinking, prefrontal lobe trying to lower the heart rate, whether it's diaphragmatic breathing, like whatever the case, whatever physiological hook that I'm trying to tap into, which is is another part of the thesis. So, there are physiological hooks into changing your brain states. And so, I would have people, whether it's calming yourself down, taking you out of the sympathetic nervous system just from breathing from the diaphragm to get into the the parasympathetic nervous system. And I would have them do that over and over and over and over until that is so the using your your double diamond scheme analogy, there's a new slope. They've got the groove, the rut is I think you called it. They've got that [ __ ] rut and it's positive and my understanding that they want to fall into. Exactly. And my understanding of what's happening is what I would be helping them do is create the pathway that requires the least amount of energy because the brain is hardwiring it. It's um wrapping in the myelin sheath so that the electrical signals are trans um they're going more efficiently. And so the brain from a caloric usage standpoint is trying to do whatever is most efficient. And so simply through intelligent repetition, you're moving people into the default network of the brain so they can sort of [ __ ] space out. And when they space out, they're becoming more calm. Their default reaction is the de-excitation of the nervous system. Yeah. No, I like I like what I'm hearing. Uh so the the question is repetition and I agree it's not thinking about the mountaintop. You can by the way you breathe, you can change the electricity in your mind. We've seen that with the people we put grids on. Like we have actual measurements now. But that's the you know, what's the structure where you get the most out of repetition? What is the perfect spot where uh meditative breathing hits that sweet spot for people. And they'll increase it if it continues to benefit them. But the food, the breathing, sleep is a hard one, but to me um food, what we eat, and meditative breathing, I think are the most uh graspable and measurable. Uh the creativity stuff, the sleep stuff, uh the exercise stuff is harder for people. Uh but the exercise stuff is in its own way the most important if we could get back to that. Ooh, why? Keeps your brain arteries open, releases all these neurotrophic factors inside your brain. So not just the plumbing that irrigates the flesh of the brain. Tell me about BDNF. Yeah, they're nerve growth factors. They're all neurotrophic factors and the whatever the the for the in this case to be abbreviations GDNF, BDNF, NGF, it doesn't matter. They end with GF. And growth factors. So it really is I've heard your word miracle grow, but getting back to the garden analogy uh to keep the flesh we're going to get, you know, electricity is one thing. To keep the flesh healthy uh you have to irrigate it. And that has to do with your brain arteries. And since we already said it's not a it's not a ball you know, it's these uh you know, these jellyfish and they're moving and they're throbbing and they're pulsating and their tentacles are reaching out. There's a lot of space in between. And that extracellular space outside of the actual cells, outside of the neurons, outside of the jellyfish if you will it's not just water. There's chemicals floating around in there. Now, dopamine might be just from tentacle to tentacle, you know, serotonin might be this way, but what's it what's in all the stuff around all those billions and billions of neurons? They're growth factors. And minerals. And chemicals that the brain naturally has. But there's also the soup that these billions and billions of neurons are floating in. BDNF is a key component of that soup that helps regulate the health of each of those jellyfish or neurons. can trigger more of that through exercise. you exercise and it releases it all it showers itself. It's not like the thighs thigh muscles sends it up to the brain. The brain says, "Hey, I'm feeling good. This is good. I like this. I'm going to create a new rut. I'm going to remind you you feel good when you run. The brain will shower itself with growth factors. There are growth factors. Brain says, "Hey, you know, the electrochemical balance is better with those." So, I think that's where you get the runner's high. You know, it's not just adrenaline. It's not Dopamine's a happy chemical. I'm jacked up. I'm on adrenaline. It's just such a complex ecosystem. And rather than feeling um intimidated by that, to me I just see opportunities on how people can, you know, improve their lives. Mhm. I love that. Yeah. Tell people where they can find the book, where they can find more about you. Uh the book is on HMH uh their website, but it's it's everywhere and it it's my best shot at the brain, but every chapter opens with like, "Here's some crazy stuff I've seen or crazy stuff I've read. I just want to let you know I'm in this space. I'm not lecturing. Here's my point of view." So, it's got those elements in it. It's not just "Do these three things. Do these three things." Mhm. You get that, but first I earn your trust with the stories and the science. Right. Very cool. Thank you. If people were going to make one change that would have the biggest impact on their health, what change would you have them make? Mental health? Sure. Um It's a good one. I think exercise is too easy. Um too easy and too hard, actually, the way we live. To me, with my kids, I've been trying to drag them to the gym. I We got the a new membership and all that. But changing what shows up on the counter Mhm. is powerful. And if we ate less and if we ate efficiently and we did, you know, it's a less carbon imprint. I think all of those things, it's good for the planet, it's good for us. It's mind and body. And And then it's also communal. You know, then then it goes to the next generation. It's not just something I did at Equinox and with my yoga mat in Malibu. And then I think it can perpetuate, so it's not just an individual thing. I love that. Thank you so much for coming on the show. That was fantastic. Guys, I can think of nothing more important to learn about than the brain, so I hope that you will dive deeper and check it all out. And until next time, my friends, be legendary. Take care. [applause] Thank you guys so much for watching and being a part of this community. If you haven't already, be sure to subscribe. You're going to get weekly videos on building a growth mindset, cultivating grit, and unlocking your full potential.