EPI 249: Ben Rein, PhD - Author of "Why Brains Need Friends - The Neuroscience Of Social Connection". Strategies For Improving Your Social Life To Maximize Benefits To Your Health.

Welcome back to another episode of the Peak Performance Life podcast. Today, I am very excited to be talking about such an important topic that very few people are talking about when it comes to health, but it may be kind of the secret hidden thing that no one's talking about that may be one of the most if not the most impactful things regarding your health. We have on the line with us today, Ben Rine PhD, who is a neuroscientist, author and science communicator. His research broadly focuses on social behavior with particular emphasis on the neural neurobiology of empathy. And many other things here he has a huge social media following. He's put out great videos and he's got an amazing book called Why Brains Need Friends, the neuroscience of social connection. And he's really done a great job out here on social media with a huge following, making neuroscience clear and accessible for the public. Ben, thank you so much for joining us here today. Thanks so much for having me and thanks for such a kind intro. Yeah, man, you deserve every bit of it. And I'm excited to get into this. It's not something that not a lot of people are talking about. So why don't we start with a little bit of a brief intro of how you got interested in the work you're doing today? Sure. Yeah, you know, I've always since I was young, been really interested in like why people are different, like why everyone is everyone, you know, why are you who you are. And specifically, I've been fascinated with how outgoing someone is versus how shy. And like, I literally remember being in like elementary school and looking around the cafeteria and seeing some tables where the students were really, really loud and having a lot of fun and laughing and all you know, joking together. And other tables that were completely quiet and everyone's looking down at their sandwich and no one's talking. And I thought, huh, how funny is that? Kind of forgot about that interest. It's sort of hovered in the back of my mind for a while. And then I in college discovered neuroscience and psychology. And I realized, wow, how cool is this that I can like study that. And and I with more education, I brought in that fascination from just being Oh, how interesting is it that we're all different to really thinking like, my goodness, what an incredible, like trait of humanity. It is that all of our brains have these tiny little molecular differences that you can't see. But you kind of can see and how people treat each other and how they behave. And I just thought that was the most fascinating thing. So I pursued a PhD in neuroscience. And I studied the neuroscience of autism and started to figure out like, you know, there are certain genetic changes linked to autism. And my research was really diving deep into the molecular biology there to figure out, why does this particular genetic change alter the brain and how the brain functions in a way that changes social interaction. And then I continued to study empathy, and looking at kind of the other end of the social continuum, looking at enhancing empathy, specifically through the the drug MDMA also known as Mali and trying to figure out, basically what does MDMA do what brain systems is it kind of tickling and massaging that makes us connect with others much more robustly. And so I've really been able to, you know, achieve my elementary school childhood dream of figuring out why are some people really outgoing and others so quiet. That's awesome, man. That's amazing. There's so much I want to jump into on on that as well. I almost want to just jump right in and ask you about what you think by the way, just real quick, totally off track here. But the telepathy tapes, have you have you heard those at all, that podcast? A little bit. I'm vaguely familiar. You have to catch me up. Okay, yeah, well, all right, I won't go too deep into it. But basically, they look at a lot of kids with autism and how they're able to basically like, almost mind read, and then have like different their brain works so differently that they're able to tap into different things. And anyway, it's kind of a wild rabbit hole. So let's get us back on track here. But it's just something that like when I saw it and first started listening to the podcast, and then I saw it, I was like, wow, this is incredible. Like, they literally have like a kid in the other room. And they'll have something like on an iPad that has that his mom, he's like connected with his mom. And the mom's like reading the iPad, reading the iPad. And the kid is like saying out loud the words from the other room. Like just just weird, weird, almost like conspiracy theory type of stuff. But not really. It's pretty incredible. They kind of show some cool stuff there. But I just wanted to I just want to throw that out because I know you had the background in the autism and stuff. But yeah, there's a there's a whole like history there of like parapsychology and in like the 50s, there's a lot of research and that kind of stuff, like pretty much exactly what you just described, put a person in one room, have them think a thought or like zap them or something and give them some pain and then have another person in another room and measure their brain activity to see if there's any sort of linkage or response. And, you know, I mean, there's I guess there's a reason that that field of research no longer exists is I don't think many of those studies went anywhere. But this it's so cool because there's a lot of stuff out there that like, if we're being completely honest, science just cannot explain like people who have a brain injury and wake up with like a British accent or suddenly they can speak a new language, truthfully with those types of things. I have no idea how to speculate on what's going on. But the fact that it exists is just like mind boggling. Yeah, you know, a buddy of mine actually gave a little presentation in this group that I'm a part of and he talked about how our brains like each, I forget exactly, but like each neuron in our brain has this like something that was similar to what they found in like these quantum computers. Did you see I don't know if you saw the study that came out about that, but like basically our brains potentially could be, you know, way more powerful than the most powerful quantum computing thing, like insane kind of stuff there when they talk about it. Oh, yeah, I mean, the more you learn like doing my when I did my PhD, and you really like learn about molecular biology and biochemistry, it's actually insane that we all exist the way we do. And like, if you zoom in on the single brain cell, and look at all the things happening inside that brain cell, it is a universe. There is so much happening at all times. And the fact that we have 86 billion of those all working in a complex network, and we don't constantly like have seizures or just like stop breathing, given that you have so much computation happening at every single moment. It's it is truly incredible. And like, it's one of those things that makes you appreciate like I can't believe everything in my body works the way it does and works basically so that I don't die because you would think that any little change could throw you off in a really bad way. Yeah, yeah. And I want to get into like, obviously your book and some of the research and stuff that you've done. But I'm also curious because I'm a believer in this and it's something that I try to kind of really make a conscious practice of doing. But like, what are your thoughts based on all the kind of neuroscience and things that you studied about like people actually manifesting for lack of maybe manifesting too much of a woo woo word but like creating the life of their dreams, for example, or manifesting things in their life through whatever it is visualization meditation, quieting the mind, tapping into different fields, you know, constantly envisioning something over and over in their mind until it becomes a reality. I know I've done that quite quite a bit myself. But curious your thoughts on that. Yeah, it's funny because I've seen posts on social media about manifesting and I'm like, Oh, come on, like what a joke. But then I thought about it. I'm like, actually, that's something I do in my life. And you know, this is my take on it. I mean, can putting ideas out into the universe change the happenings of the world around you and alter other people's behaviors and the way the universe treats you. I mean, I don't know, maybe probably not though, like my opinion is no. What it does change is the way you the way you approach situations and your attitude and like one example that is really easy to conceptualize is when I decide that I want to apply for an award, you know, this my university is hosting a faculty award. And I think, you know what, I think I can win that I think I deserve to win that. And I choose to apply not because I think maybe I'll win it, but because I like know I'm going to win it. Right. When you bring that attitude, think about how much better your application is than if you're like, eh, I'll toss an application out there and just see what happens. Like, that's kind of the way I think of manifesting is like, I'm manifesting that I'm going to win this award. But because I've chosen that outcome for myself, it makes me perform at a higher level because I expect to win the award, but I can't reasonably expect to win it with a crappy application. Pardon me. So I put together a really good application. And like, that is a underlying principle that I've always kind of had in my whole life where I just I'm optimistic, I'm ambitious, and I always expect the best possible outcome. And I think, you know, you can't expect something and then just give it like half effort, you know, you, if you want the best, you have to be the best, you have to perform the best. And, and likewise, if you think you're going to fail at something, you're almost assuredly going to fail because you're going to approach it with little effort. So I think that's kind of the, the my take on the science, I suppose, behind manifesting. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I mean, I go way deep down the rabbit hole into like beliefs and I got certified in neuro linguistic programming and big Tony Robbins fan over the years. And, and, you know, he would always, he would give this example. I remember I got trained by Tony Robbins, I was really lucky to have an opportunity to be trained by him about 15 years ago or so. And he, he said something, he showed something where it was like belief potential action result. He had like a square. And it was like belief, if you, if you believe you can do it, then you'll tap into the potential, you'll take the action and you're much more likely to get the result. If you don't believe you can do it, you're never even going to take the action to that's necessary to get the result. Right. So it's kind of like this self fulfilling prophecy, right? Maybe the old Henry Ford quote, like whether you think you can or think you can't, you're right. Because you're it kind of all starts with that belief system. So yeah, I'm a big believer in it. I've seen how it's changed my life in terms of belief systems. And also I would say, and again, maybe visualizing like I do in kind of my morning quiet time visualization, maybe that's maybe maybe there's not something, you know, quantum physics related attracting energy law of a trap, maybe that maybe there's not that. Maybe it's just I'm creating a clear vision of what I want and doing that every day. And so then I'm waking up every day with that clear vision. And then kind of like my mind is noticing things that maybe it didn't notice before if this wasn't on the front of my mind, you know, totally yeah, and you have a dream and you wake up first thing interpreting it a certain way because you have that vision how does it fit into that vision versus if you have a lack of clarity, you might interpret that dream a totally different way, you know, or not to mention like the content of your dreams might be different, it might be related to that vision and that dream and might help you, you know, come up with new ideas on how to pursue that dream. I think if you have this kind of like backdrop at all times in your mind of this is what I want, this is what I'm after, then it's going to kind of bias your thoughts in favor of achieving that outcome. Yeah, yeah, really fun stuff, man, I can nerd out on this kind of stuff for for hours and hours. I don't want to go too woo or too crazy here. I want to focus on, you know, some of the proven research and things that you've done here, your book, why brains need friends, the neuroscience of social connection. Let's talk a little bit about this because this, you know, I think many people may have heard of the old Harvard study, I think one of the longest running studies on on happiness and showing that, you know, people that had the most relationships and things like that live longer, happier, healthy lives. But let's talk a little bit more about that because people kind of hear that and they're like, Oh, that sounds good, but they never really dig into it. No one else is really talking about it. So I'm so happy that we get a chance to dive into it today. Yeah, I mean, there's a ton of evidence on that specifically on the relationship between what relationships and mood, you know, like, for instance, extroverts are generally happier people. And that's interesting. It makes you wonder, naturally, is it that they're interacting so often that they're happy because interaction makes you happy? Or are they happy so they're interacting more because they have more energy to go out and interact. And there is a hint here, the studies where people have basically been asked to pretend that they are an extrovert, you know, if you manufacture extroversion, do you become happier? And actually, the answer is, is generally yes, that being more social does boost mood, does make people feel better, makes people enjoy experiences more things like that. However, there's a big caveat there. If you are not an extrovert, like if you're if you're an introvert, if you really prefer solitude, that exercise of pretending to be an extrovert will only go so far. You know, it's, it's not going to benefit you beyond a certain amount of interaction, like an hour of that, great, you're going to feel awesome. A week of that, you are going to quit the study and drop out because it's horrible. And so I think just a really important framework for everybody to think about their own social life and how much they interact with others. I like to think about every person as like a potted plant. And there are some plants that need to be watered very often, or else they will die. There are other plants that they don't need to that much water. And if you overwater them, they can be they can die. Introverts are like those plants, you know, you can water them once a month and they're perfectly happy. The soil can be dry, but they don't care. extrovert is like a plant that needs to be watered all the time. So the first step for anybody to understand what they what their brain needs and likes is to understand how extroverted you are. I have an assessment for that on my website. If you want to, if anyone could check it out, you can download it, fill it out. And the higher link for people. Yeah, so it's just on my website. My name Ben Ryan, R E I N dot com slash book. And you should be able to download that resource there. And basically the higher you score the resource also has like an explanation. But the higher you score, the more interaction is right for you. Like the higher dose of interaction is right for you, I should say. So the key is like, if you want to live to 100 and, you know, be healthy and happy, socializing is a key ingredient in that. But the dose that you pursue is really important. If you're an introvert and you socialize every day because you think it's going to make you live long, that's probably actually misguided. So everybody should try to understand the kind of where they where they stand on that continuum of introversion extroversion. Yeah, that's a good point. And I was the first thing I thought of when you said it was like, I don't know, I think sometimes I'm extroverted. Sometimes I'm introverted. I don't really know what what I am. And so glad that you have an assessment for us to go see exactly kind of where we are on that scale. So we need and by the way, I'm a huge fan of this. And I found that recently, as I've kind of got older and had kids and, you know, I have a business and had less time. Actually, these groups that I'm a part of, like, you know, mastermind groups or, you know, where we meet once a month or whatever, I'm in now four of these groups. And I love when it works out where it's like once a week, I have this group meeting with, you know, eight other people or whatever, and we're sitting around and we're talking and we're, you know, we're all, you know, either entrepreneurs or into the same kind of things, whatever it's about. And I just feel so amazing and so stimulated and so much more motivated when I do that. But again, if that was every day, that would be way too much for me. I know that for sure. Yeah, exactly. That's exactly what it's about is finding your dose because, you know, you might go to one of those and on the way home, you're like, man, I feel awesome. And then you get home and like a bunch of friends are throwing you a surprise party and you're like, oh, gosh, like, you know, there goes that mood. Now this is way too much. I don't want to have to socialize for a few more hours. And I think what most people don't do is really inventory that and ask yourself, like, and the to the listener, you can do this right now. Think about for the last week or two, how much interaction have you had? How much meaningful interaction, you know, have you like, think actually this past weekend, you know, did you connect with anybody? Did you meet with friends? Once you have a grip on that, ask yourself, how does your plant feel? Is it underwatered or is it over watered? Do you feel like you could get you could really go to connect more with people? Or if you go connect with a group, then you're going to be like, no, thank you. And that simple practice of just checking in, I think is absolutely critical, just the same way as, you know, it's like, all right, my diet for the last week hasn't been the greatest, like, yeah, I ordered some Chinese, you know, and so then when I'm looking at what do I want to eat for dinner? It's like, I should really probably have like a salad or something kind of balance things out, you know, we do this for or sleep, right? Oh, I didn't get good sleep last night. I got to get to bed early tonight. We do it for a lot of things that we understand are important for our health. But maybe people just don't understand how important interaction really is. Yeah, yeah, and it's something that I've never heard of anyone tracking how many times they've hung out with their friends, right? You track everything else, you track everything with regards to your health, you have a million different trackers. But when it comes to yeah, I mean, a lot of people aren't thinking about this or making a conscious effort. So yeah, what advice do you have for people then in terms of like, maybe ideas or how does someone how do you how would you tell if someone's kind of not getting enough social interaction? Are there any kind of signs or signals? And maybe a little bit more kind of background on on some of the research in terms of like, what the what the benefits that you've seen are as well, any of those directions we can go in? Sure. Well, since I just told everyone, you know, to interact more, I should probably talk about like why it matters. Even briefly, basically, the research on on the health benefits, not just the mood benefits, but the health benefits is very far reaching. There's evidence that people who interact more are at a lower risk of stroke, heart disease, dementia, diabetes, suicide, anxiety, depression. I mean, it's it's pretty much one of those things where like you name the condition, and you do a Google search, and it's like, yep, isolation increases your risk of that condition. It's it's pretty like high up there. So and it's, and it's not like a, you know, I'll boost the risk by like 3%. It's we're talking like significant enhancement of risk. In fact, there are studies looking at like hundreds of thousands or millions of people that just looked at how much do these people interact with others, and how likely are they to die by any cause? And isolated people are at like a 32% to 50% higher risk of death by any cause, any cause, which makes sense when you think about the fact that it increases the risk being isolated, increases the risk of stroke and heart disease and all these things that can ultimately lead to death. So it is very important. It's it's really significant. And it's something that is so incredibly accessible and something we're already doing. But I think it's a kind of a perspective thing where we just don't think of it as something that we can do for our health. Like when it's Friday night, and we get a phone call and our friends say, hey, why don't you come meet us out for dinner or drink? And your couch looks tantalizing and you want to just sit down and you know, grab the TV remote. In that moment, you are I can guarantee most people are not thinking, I should really do this for my health, you know, like, just like you would be thinking, Oh, you know, you want to go to the gym, but something happened. And you're like, I should really go to the gym for my health. I think that's kind of how we should be thinking about it. Anyway, so as far as like, what happens when you are isolated and things to look out for, it's it's really hard to put a finger on like, what exactly to look out for. Biologically, when we are isolated, it triggers a stress response. It's actually quite remarkable. Studies have shown that if you, you know, put someone in solitude, solitary confinement for 30 days, their cortisol levels just gradually rise and then kind of just hover at a peak. And then if you release them into the wild and let them socialize again, those cortisol levels go back down. There's an evolutionary reason for this, that, you know, millennia ago, long, long time ago, humans existed in groups, and existing in groups was really important for our survival. And so our brains have this built in mechanism that when we are apart from our group to trigger this stress response and say get back to your group because you could die if you're alone. So that is certainly obviously outdated. We don't need that feature in our brains anymore. But we have the hardware, we can't escape it. So when you are overly isolated, it may feel like stress. Everybody I think is different, you know, everybody's the way they perceive stress, I think is a bit different. For me, I feel a little bit like flat and not motivated to do things, you know, it's like I just have a loss of energy, maybe my sleep starts to get disrupted, I start waking up earlier in the morning. Sometimes even like my body feels a bit worse, like I noticed like my back is acting up and suddenly have a sore back. I mean, whether I can actually attribute those things to interaction itself, I don't know. Or just sitting on the couch too long. Yeah, right, exactly. Yeah, sitting on my computer instead of socializing. So it's entirely possible. But I mean, the mood thing for sure. I mean, I, it's funny, because when I wrote the book, you know, I sat right here in my office, and it was just me in my keyboard and my computer screen. And I was really isolated and I felt the shift that I was writing about and it's like, gosh, I really got to take this stuff seriously. The other thing that people should know is that once you become isolated, it can actually be difficult to get out of it because there are brain changes that can happen on like a temporary scale, where if you spend a couple weeks in isolation, you can actually start to like struggle with trust, it can change the way we trust others. And therefore they start to trust us less. So it can impair our interactions that way. It can also reduce the amount of reward we experience from interacting. That isolated people actually, they enjoy interaction less. And they also show lower boosts in oxytocin when they socialize. So I think when we become interacted, or I'm sorry, when we become isolated, and we think maybe interaction is the solution, we go socialized with friends, and it doesn't feel right. I think it's important for the average person to recognize, okay, maybe this is because I'm too isolated. And maybe it needs another dose, maybe you need another dose to get back on track. And, you know, for a lot of people, we experience this with COVID. Remember when COVID kind of ended, the isolation or the lockdowns ended, and we went back to work and we started socializing again. And the interactions just felt like weird and wrong and rusty and like uncomfortable. I think that is a good sort of example of what can happen when we become too lonely. Yeah, yeah, really good points. And I also heard you mention one time that literally the like the studies that they've done on people who are isolated, it like it's basically like similar to smoking, right? If you're isolated, it's like similar similar impact on your health compared to like someone who's a smoker, which is pretty incredible when you think about it that way. Yeah, in terms of mortality risk, just basically, yeah, being isolated is increases your chance of dying more than smoking cigarettes, more than living in a polluted area, more than being obese. That's pretty wild. Because those things we obviously think about as like, Oh, yeah, you know, all those things are not good for our health. But sitting at home and watching TV, you're like, I'm fine. This is good. I don't have not worried about this at all. But quietly, it can be under undermining your health. Yeah, yeah. I think there's also something to like, just especially as you get older, right? Like I'm thinking of, you know, the example of like the health thing, right? Or so if someone wants to say, Oh, like, eating healthy doesn't matter, they'll just point to like Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger, which I'll give it to them. I believe that they've kept their brains active and stimulated and learning and talking to people and doing their annual conference every week and meeting with really smart people every week. And you know, I heard Charlie Munger, I know people who are going to his house for dinner when he was 99 years old, he was still inviting young entrepreneurs over for dinner and meeting with them and things like that. And it seems like all of that stuff because they're both think Charlie, Charlie Munger almost made it to 100 was 99. And Warren Buffett still going strong in his 90s now. And it's like, well, they're they ate McDonald's and drank soda every day, but still managed to, you know, live a long kind of seems to be a happy, healthy life with a good head on their shoulders because they stayed active. Now, comparing that, I will give an example. Personally, my father's always been a huge introvert. And he also always wanted to live at home wanted to stay at home. But he got some social interaction because he played tennis, you know, maybe two, three times a week. So he would go out play tennis, talk with people. But unfortunately, he ended up having some strokes. And he could no longer play tennis. And then he just wanted to stay in the house and have someone take care of him in the house. And I've watched him age about five years every year since then. I mean, he was a he was a really young 78 year old. And now he's a he's 85. He's still he's still trucking along. But his mind just isn't working well. And and I almost think like, you know, a lot of people have this dislike this negative, negative connotation or whatever it would the word would be on sending sending older people to like a assisted living home or something like that. And where they have other people around them. I almost feel like if he was not at home by himself, now not really very mobile. So basically, we're just watching TV all day, because you can't really do much. If he was in a facility where he was forced to go meet with people and have lunch and dinner with people and maybe play some games and do some activities. I'm convinced it would have been way better for his brain. So personally, I think that being in one of those communities for someone who's elderly is way better than being at home alone. Oh, I couldn't agree more. I actually say in the book that I think loneliness in the older generations is the biggest unspoken health crisis of our time. I mean, if you look at the data on the amount of time we spend alone, as we age, it is just like a straight line up. By the time we reach our 70s and 80s, we're spending like massive amounts of time by ourselves. And you think about it, being 70 plus is already a huge risk factor for a lot of conditions, you know, stroke, dementia, heart disease, all these things. Being isolated completely separately from age is also a very strong risk factor for all of those conditions. So when you superimpose those two, and we have older people spending a lot of time alone, and they're also less resilient, unless they're not as healthy as they used to be, I think it's really shortening and truncating the lifespan of a lot of people. I totally agree. I think that building deliberate programs to make sure that older people are socializing is really, really important. I went through this myself. My grandmother had dementia. She was fiercely independent, wanted to stay home all the time, didn't want to leave her house, didn't want to give up her house. But she towards the end, she actually started openly acknowledging that she was very, very lonely. And I told her, I said, Bobby, look, you know, I'm writing this book, you should really think about, you know, keep building a community. And I think it would have been really good for her to, to, you know, join a community and build friendships. Yeah, yeah, I agree 100%. Let's talk about maybe the younger generation now as well. We've got the phones, we've got, you know, this now we're now we're coming into the age of AI, you know, and kids, I feel like, you know, I've seen they're still interacting, but now a lot of times they're interacting on their phone, instead of in person, for example, I think there's a lot more of that going on. What are your thoughts, any research or thoughts around that? Yeah, it's a different world we have now. And I can't even imagine what it's like growing up in this era. You know, virtual interaction has become so standard. And I don't think that's good. I think that there's a discount to how it engages our brains. Because think about it this way, when you interact face to face, there's a ton of information that your brain is picking up on facial expressions, tone of voice, body language, eye contact, where you know, looking in someone's eyes and the reading the emotions looking where they're looking, I mean, there's so much. When you take one step down this kind of digital ladder, and you go to the most realistic form of interaction, that's digital, like a video call, you're losing a lot. One, you're losing eye contact. Two, you're losing social smells. Three, you're losing body language. And so you have this like, kind of flattened representation of interaction, like I really think about like, there's so much texture to our face to face interactions. But video flattens it when you go to a phone call, it's even more flat, you can just hear someone's tone of voice, you can't see their facial expressions. And then arguably the most common form of contact like text messaging or email is like almost entirely flat. It's just the words, there's no context. And the brain has a lot of social systems that do a lot of different things, they help us understand what someone else is thinking and feeling based on their social cues. It helps us assign value and like reward to the interaction. You know, the reason that we feel good when we interact with others is because similarly to why isolation is bad for us that it's important for it was at one time important for survival. So our brains tell us this is good, socializing with this person feeling at home in your community is good for you. And so, you know, we release things like dopamine, our brains release things like dopamine and serotonin when we're connecting with others. But when you're flattening that texture, and you're taking away those signals that tell your brain, you're interacting with a human being, does it really produce the same effect? Does it boost our mood? Does it stave off dementia and heart disease and all those conditions? My belief is that it does not. And there's this is an emerging area of research, but there is some early evidence that socializing online, or in less life like kind of situations is not as effective at boosting mood. So people when they text message, for instance, they don't feel as good afterwards as when they meet face to face. So I think this is something we should really be taking into consideration, especially in early life, because early life is when our brains learn about the world, we learn about what are the moral standards of our society, how do people deserve to be treated, what goes against the rules? You know, we learn empathy through experience, through seeing other people express emotions. And I think if those early life interactions are happening in a virtual format, where we're not getting all those signals to our brains, we're not only missing out on the upside of those interactions, but I think we're also maybe setting our brains up, or our children are setting their brains up for long term struggles with communication. Because I don't think I trust, you know, that a person who only has phone calls throughout their childhood, for instance, will understand how to read someone's emotion through a facial expression or by looking in their eyes when they're an adult. And I worry about that a little bit. Yeah, yeah, I completely agree. I mean, honestly, it's the main reason why I send my my kids to an actual school rather than a home school or something like that, because it's really I just want them to have the social interactions and be around people all day, and things like that. Yeah, there's certainly a lot to that. I mean, I can tell you, for example, yesterday, I was in one of these groups, and we were in person. And for six hours, we were like talking and this and I was so energized and feeling so amazing. And then I have another group that meets on zoom. And we've learned, Hey, we need to cut this thing off at three hours, because once you go past three hours on zoom, you're just getting drained and not feeling good. And it's not quite the same when you're staring at a screen. And I think text messages, I think, you know, we've had people on this podcast talking about the huge benefits of just going outdoors being in open spaces versus being closed off staring at a little phone with tunnel vision, you know, there's you there's a cl- for me, I can feel it very clearly. I don't know if everyone else can but I just feel it like I hate looking at my phone, honestly. And I feel like I have tunnel vision and it's just not quite the same. Yeah, 100%. There's actually some studies suggesting that like when we meet online, like right now, for instance, we are video calling, and your you represents like a probably three by three inch square on my screen. And I, you know, I'm focusing all of my attention on you. And this like tiny little representation of you. And there's actually evidence that when we collapse our attention into this like tiny little square like this, it actually kind of affects other domains of our minds that we become, for instance, less creative. Because I mean, no pun intended here, but we can't like think outside the box, we are literally constrained to this tiny box. And whereas when people, you know, meet in person and they, you know, kind of look around their environment and they take in information from the world around them, they become better at like abstract creative thinking. And you know, I mean, of course, it's it's extremely tiring to sit here and stare at a screen for three hours. I mean, that's that sounds not fun, to be honest. Right, right, even though they're amazing people, and I would love to spend time with them and look video conferencing, obviously, if there's people other other parts of the country in the world. And it was helpful during COVID no question. But yeah, I think getting back to in person. And I think, I think at some point, there'll be some some movement back to like, in person meetings in nature, without electronics, like at some point, there will be, you know, some, at least some community that goes off and has their own farm and shuts out everyone from from their from their world or something. Yeah, I'm sure. And by the way, just to like circle back on, you know, I kind of mentioned, like we're in this doom escape, to give some hope, I think, just a simple tip for anyone is, whenever you can take a step up that ladder, you know, go up one rung. So if you're on a text message, call the person, you know, can you incorporate more social information? Now you can hear their tone of voice, you can really understand what they're talking about, and that's mentioning to probably save some time. And if you're on a phone call, maybe it'll be better to have a video call, you can add back some of that texture. And if you're on a video call, but you let's say, you know, a person's down the hall in their office, for goodness sake, go meet them and get a coffee in person. You know, I, I just actually recently, my friend and colleague, he said, Hey, we should, you know, do a zoom call to talk about this. And we're setting it up. And I'm like, what are we doing? You live like 15 minutes from me, just come over to my house and let's have a coffee and do this in person. And I just think it's, this is a widespread problem that everything has become so convenient in virtual settings, not just that it's easier to hop on a zoom then drive 10 minutes to the office, but everything. I mean, you, you go to the grocery store and instead of going to the human cashier, you can go to self checkout, we have this automated system that's, you know, faster, you know, instead of sitting in a taxi, you can call a Waymo and sit in a self driving car. There's no human being to interact with. You can work out from home with a Peloton instead of going to the gym. You can actually order those groceries delivered to your house through an app on your phone. It's, it's like we have this remnant from COVID when people couldn't interact and businesses had to adapt. But while these things are very convenient, they are not necessarily the best things for our health. I think we need to restore as much of those tiny little like micro interactions as we can. And so I try to go to the grocery store and, you know, talk to the deli clerk and choose the human cash year. And, you know, whenever I can meet up in person, because I think it's, it's doing my brain a favor in the long run. Yeah, I even have a little home gym setup, but I rarely use it now because I just, first of all, I'm working from home all day. And when I go to the gym, I just feel better when I'm out there, I'm seeing people, right? Maybe I'm getting inspired by like, oh, man, these guys are fitter than me. I got to step up my game and whatever. But I'm just like, I'm around people. It's even if I'm even though I'm not really talking to many people, I have a few people I'll say hi to or whatever, but it's just being around people. But yes, a step up from that obviously would be forcing real real conversations and social relations. But but I like I love that idea of step up, right? Go from text message to phone, phone to video, right? Even for me just getting out of the house and going to the gym versus a home gym workout and being around other people is a step up for me. So I think that's really great. For the people listening now, they're probably convinced they're like, All right, I need more social interactions. This is good for my health. Clearly. What other what other advice would you have for someone like what are some maybe some simple steps to get started or, you know, should they join a club or community or something? Yeah, you know, I think that what is a very common problem in like the self help world is that people are always expecting that something completely new they've never heard of is going to come along and be like the solution to their problem, right? Like it would be amazing if I had like something up my sleeve that I could say do this and it'll solve here, you know, it'd be so good for your brain. But in reality, when people are given something like that, it's really hard to implement something totally new into your life. What's actually a lot easier to do is to just adjust your pre existing habits in a way that makes for a better, healthier brain. And so, you know, one of those things is like if you're already having meetings, you're already having phone calls, do it in person upgrade that way. But the other thing that I really recommend is what when I, you know, the title of my book is Why Brains Need Friends, the neuroscience of social connection. And when people hear social connection, they think, you know, deep heart to heart, like sitting down and holding hands with your friend and looking in their eyes, right? Like, it's kind of like scary and like threatening. And it's like, Oh, gosh, like that's a really big, like I don't want to dive into the deep end like that. But really social connection is like a pool. There is a deep end, like what I just described. But there's also a shallow end. There's also the steps, right? There's like a kiddie pool area where you can engage with others at whatever level is most comfortable for you at any given moment. And it doesn't always have to be the deep end. Like, if you feel lonely, and you're like, I don't really know if I want to commit to like a two hour thing with my friends, you can literally just go walk around the neighborhood and pass a neighbor and say, Hey, how you doing? You know, good morning. That's all just like, dip your toe into the shallow end, right? Or if you want, you can, you know, ask a coworker a question, you know, just go over to their desk, talk to them for 10 minutes, 15 minutes or go stand by the water cooler. I don't know if those exist anymore. But you know, just take a little step into the shallow end. And when we take away the, the scale of the commitment, and we allow ourselves to just dip in a toe or take, you know, put your up to your knee. And just for a few minutes, we are doing a service for our brain. And we're also taking the pressure off to like commit in this huge way. So anywhere in your life where you have the ability to do more of this, I recommend it, you know, you're standing in line at the cash register, and you can talk to the cashier for a couple minutes and just ask them how their day is genuinely. And I think when we do this in a way that we are meaningfully trying to get something out of it, we're actually doing it for the sake of our brain health and our mood, you'll notice that there's kind of a shift in the interaction. Because typically, like chatting with the cashier can be kind of this like, like, what an obligation, I don't have to, I don't want to talk to this person. But when you're like, you know what, I'm going to do this because it's good for me, and I'm going to see how their day is, and I'm going to actually connect for a second, you probably end up coming out of it feeling a lot better. And those tiny little tweaks just kind of throughout life can can really make a difference. And it doesn't have to be signing up for a new club. It can be, it certainly can be making new friends, getting out there, you know, involving yourself in your community is always going to be good for you. But you don't have to like, completely change your life to like, build this new area that's all new to you. You can just try to take a little step in the shallow end. Yeah, that's really good stuff. I know we're kind of coming close to the end. But I did want to ask you also one thing that I feel is maybe even a step up from social interactions, but you tell me is actually having social interactions where we're actually helping other people, right? So for example, you know, I know that I teach a class to underprivileged youth and I'm always very nervous and like, oh, man, this is going to be hard. I'm nervous about this. I'm like, whatever. But every time after I do it, I feel good that number one, I had social interaction and also I was giving and helping and things like that. Clearly, I think there seems to be something there with helping others and feeling better about yourself as well, right? Absolutely. Yeah. Sorry, I keep bringing up evolutionary origins here. But to me, I think it's interesting, you know, again, for a social species to survive really well, we need to have a lot of kind of adaptations in our brains that make us good at being in groups and make us want to work in groups. And so, evolutionarily, it makes a lot of sense that doing something nice for others would make us feel good because that historically would have been good for survival. But there's, I mean, in the modern era, there is a ton of science on this showing that, you know, doing giving people compliments, doing someone a favor, expressing gratitude, all of these things make us feel better. And I actually, I talk about this in the book, and I describe it as selfish selflessness. So doing something for someone else with the actual goal of boosting your own mood. I mean, is that controversial? I don't know, I guess, you know, it's not hurting anybody, it's helping others. But it's another one of those things where I think it's kind of a mind shift where when someone asks you for a favor, and you're like, Oh, gosh, I don't want to do this, like, what a hassle. But you're like, you know what, actually, this is good for me to do this thing for this person. And you can kind of respect it as such, respect it as a treat for yourself. Then I think it shifts the mentality a lot. And I mean, there's no doubt about it, helping others feels great. I love helping others. Yes, yeah, that's a really good reframe as well. For those that are like, Oh, man, I don't want to, I don't want to do this or that. It's like, Oh, no, you're actually helping yourself to and it's like, Oh, okay, if I'm going to feel better, then I'll do it, you know. So yeah, no, I think I think it's great. Yeah, it's maybe controversial for the people who want to do everything anonymously and, you know, be holier than now. And that's great. If you if you are one of those people. But for those that, you know, look, there's there's there's a lot of selfishness, whether whether we want to admit it or not, people are selfish, people want to do what's good for them. And you just reframe that. So now helping others is actually good for you. So I think that's great. Yeah, I actually also pose this argument in the book about whether altruism is is possible, because when someone else is like struggling, and you feel the need to step in and help them, it's actually because seeing someone struggle or have some sort of negative experience is uncomfortable for us that we take on that mood and we feel bad too. And so by helping them, we're actually alleviating our own suffering. And there are like animal studies, where for instance, if you give a rat, like an anxiety medication, and then you put them in front of another rat that's struggling, they like don't care anymore, like they normally they would help rescue the other rat, but when they have anxiety medications, they're like, that's fine, it doesn't bother me. So I'm not going to help. And so there's this this kind of biological argument that altruism is really not possible because helping others is inherently selfish. But it's complicated concept. And I do think that you can do something just from the good of your heart to help someone else. I don't think there's anything occluding that. But I think most of the time when we help others, it may actually be helping ourselves to be honest. Yeah, yeah, I agree. Last question for you, obviously, there's a big, you know, kind of mental health is is much more in the forefront these days, apparently seems to be a lot more, you know, whatever depression or mental health issues, whether someone listening now is going through that themselves, or maybe has a child or family member, you know, that's going through something like that. It feels to me like there's so many things, right? And we've had a couple people actually on this podcast talking about SSRIs and some of the things were how sometimes it may be hard to get off of them and different different things there, we won't go down that rabbit hole again. We kind of covered that already with some other experts. But I feel like, you know, there's some there's some lifestyle habits, right? Like, if a person is not feeling good, and you can get them outdoors, you can get them socializing with friends more, you can do things like that. It just seems obvious to me that these would would potentially be more effective than medication. Again, I'm not a doctor. This is not medical advice. But you know, that's what it seems like to me from everything I've heard. Any thoughts on that? Yeah, I mean, I think that it's tough. I mean, in psychiatry, it's it's kind of a difficult question, because ideally, when someone goes to a doctor and says, Hey, I'm really depressed, I need help. The front line should be behavioral interventions. You know, hey, how's your sleep? Are you exercising? You know, how are you? How much are you socializing? Do you want to try some like meditation, breath work? Non pharmacological should be the first step. The challenge, though, is when someone gets to a point where they're finally saying, gosh, I need to see someone about this, and they go to see the doctor. I think it becomes a challenge of like, well, this person really needs help. They came to see me because they probably know I am the person who hands out the, you know, anti depressants. And, you know, I mean, I'm not a psychiatrist, I'm a neuroscientist, but I would imagine that's that's tricky to try to decide who can, you know, bear trying behavioral therapies first. But I think, you know, there are so many things that can be done. Like all the things I just mentioned, you know, mindfulness, meditation, yoga. Those things are like outstanding, actually, there's some really strong evidence for like yoga and, you know, breath work specifically, you mean, those things are like comparable to SSRIs. But I think the idea with SSRIs that often gets misunderstood is SSRIs are sorry, my dog has something to say about SSRIs here. SSRIs aren't like happiness pills. They're actually like flexibility pills. They are really meant to kind of open our minds to new possibilities. And they actually they trigger plasticity, they enhance plasticity in the brain. And the idea is like there's evidence that SSRIs are more effective when paired with psychotherapy, which makes sense because if you're increasing this flexibility, and then you're using that that plasticity to talk about what's going wrong in your life and to reframe it and develop new concepts, then it's much more likely to have a long lasting effect. Then if you just take the pill and you know, go about your life the same way, it's the same thing in like the psychedelic trials, you know, psilocybin, MDMA for PTSD, like if you take MDMA, and you're and you have PTSD, and you go to like Coachella, it's not going to help you with your PTSD, right? It's not that it's going in the mind and just like doing something magical to unlock the PTSD. It's that when having when when under the influence of MDMA, and in a therapy session, people with PTSD can more comfortably approach traumatic memories, because they have this kind of like euphoric MDMA glow over them. And working with the therapist, they can really unravel this traumatic experience in the memory in a much more effective and deep way than they usually can. So, you know, I mean, I guess those are all my thoughts, you know, behavioral therapies are should be the frontline. But if you go with a pharmacological intervention, just make sure that you're using it to the best capacity and actually like working with a therapist that you like, and that you get along with because that's really important to Yeah, absolutely love that that was really spot on. I think, you know, try to do behavioral therapies first, if you have to take medication or if you're on medication, still try to do something different in your life than you were doing before, right? Use that as an opportunity, like you said, to either talk to a therapist to increase your social interactions to do something, change your daily habits and ways of living. So this has been great, Ben, we could go on and on for hours, but where can people find you follow you by the book? I know we've got a huge social media following. Yeah, well, my website is just my name Ben Ryan, it had R E I N so last name. You know, that's what you could read about my book, you can find my social media and all that. On social media, it's at Dr. Ben Ryan. So generally a search of my name on any given platform should hopefully suffice. Amazing, amazing, man. Well, this was great. Thank you so much for spreading this word. This is such an important message. We've done a lot of episodes on health and nutrition and fitness here. But my favorite ones are the ones where we talk about kind of the behavioral and minds and mindset type of thing. So this is really, really a pleasure for me. And thank you for everything you're doing. And I hope we can do it again sometime. Yeah, thank you so much for having me. And you know, to everyone at home too, just remember, socializing is one of the only things that you can do that doesn't help just yourself. It also helps other people. So when you exercise, when you get a good night's sleep, you're doing something good for yourself. But if you go connect with someone, especially someone who in your life who maybe you think is a little bit lonely, you know, you can spread that wealth. And I think that's really incredible that it's like a multiplier. So I hope you, you know, bring that into your life and try something. That's a great point to end it on. That was awesome, Ben. Thank you so much. Thanks for having me. Thank you. Thank you for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, it would really mean a lot to me if you would forward this episode along to any friends, family members, anyone that you think that would get value out of it and learn something important. The mission at Peak Performance is to help people prioritize and transform their health. And so if you think someone will get value, please, please, please do forward this episode along to them. Also, if you could please rate and review and subscribe on whatever podcast player you are listening to this on, we would greatly appreciate that as well. It means a lot. And I want to tell you about a couple of new products that we just released. You can get 20% off your first order at buypeakperformance.com. That's B U Y peak performance.com. We just released a brand new grass fed beef protein isolate. This is my favorite new protein powder because it's great for muscle building and recovering and all that kind of stuff. But it doesn't give the stomach discomfort and gas that a lot of people get from, you know, different types of proteins like whey protein, some types of plant proteins can do the same as well. 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