Secrets For A Healthy Brain

Tired of the, I know it's here somewhere, moment? The new ScanSnap IX 2400 scanner means you'll never search for a receipt again. Our simplest scan snap experience yet. Just press the blue button and instantly convert documents into digital files you can find in seconds. Perfect for busy professionals who need organization without complexity. With instant one-touch scanning, 45 pages per minute speed, and automatic data extraction, the IX 2400 saves your files exactly where you need them. No more mystic spence claims or lost warranties. Just peace of mind knowing everything important is safe and instantly accessible. Ready to stop wasting time hunting for paperwork? Visit scansnapit.com slash podcast and discover how simple document management can be. ScanSnap. The smarter way to work. Hey, it's Anna and Mandy from our podcast, Sisters in the City, and we're currently sponsored by the Department for Work and Pensions. Life's busy and admin gets forgotten, but if you're claiming benefits, listen up. If something changes, you need to tell DWP. Otherwise, you could face a penalty. That could be a partner moving in, even if they keep their own place. Or if your car doubles up as a taxi and a family car, you must only report work related costs. Or forget and savings like premium bonds. To find out if you need to report a change, search tell DWP. There once was a woman who lived in a shoe. A size-to-snug book. What could she do? But that's not where her story ends. Thanks to a little help from her experienced friends, she got her score into much better shape and relocated to a box fresh new place, with room to grow and a mortgage to suit. Now, she lives in a spacious four-bedroom cowboy boot. Better your experience credit score to help get mortgage ready. Experience. Better your score. Better your story. Hi, I'm Raj Punjabi Johnson, head of identity content at HuffPost. And I'm Noah Michaelson, director of HuffPost Personal. Welcome to Am I Doing It Wrong? The show that explores the all-too-human anxieties we have about trying to get our lives right. So Raj, I just want to address right up front that I have a bit of a cold. This is why I sound this way. It sounds sexy. Thank you. But today, I want to know, are you taking care of your brain wrong? Probably. Sure. I have so many other body and mind things to worry about every day that I feel like I don't know enough about brain health. Now that I've reached a grown lady age, which we'll not be revealed until later, I think it's time for me to really start thinking about keeping my brain healthy. Yeah, same. I never think about my brain, other than I did a lot of drugs when I was younger. And I know that probably rotted my brain. I have a hard time remembering things. Or big parts of my life, I can't remember it all. But otherwise, I don't think day to day like, is my brain healthy? How am I keeping it healthy? It does everything for us. Seve you late. Yeah. So we should probably start thinking about it. You know who does think about it though? Dr. Rita Achari, she's a neurologist and independent practice for 30 years. She specializes in preventative neurology focusing on brain health through nutrition, which I think is so interesting and also cellular health. She's also a clinical associate professor in the Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation at the McGovern School of Medical Health. I know. Let's go. Bring it on. Dr. Rita, thank you so much for being here. Thank you for having me. I'm so happy to be here. So our brains are responsible for so much. I mean, I nerd out on those documentaries, you know, and Netflix and every day. They show all the different connections and it's just incredible. Yeah. I want to start with though, like what does a healthy brain look like in function? Like how do you define a healthy brain? That's an amazing question because we talk about brains, which are up there in our skulls. But those cells that are there and all the connective fibers and things that are there also connect through axons and nerves to every, every little bit of our bodies, right? So one of the things when I guess ask them, well, you know, what does a neurologist do? My husband's answer was really the best I think, which is they deal with nerves and you have nerves everywhere, right? So although we think about the brain in terms of of higher cognitive processes, right? So thinking and being and you know, it's the center of mind. It also is the control for everything that we do. So we have to think about the brain and the nervous system really globally, right? From moving our little finger to having a thought, to smelling, to remembering something, all of that is controlled by the nervous system. I know that's a big, big thing, but the brain does a lot of work. Throughout our lifetimes, we start off when we're born, our brains aren't even completely formed. So it's the myelin, which is the the coverings of the axons, the wires in the brain, continue to actually form and become healthy even after we're born. So we're not fully formed. And then as we continue to age in different phases of our lives, different things happen. We are always concerned about as we age the fact that it takes us a little bit longer to come up with something. Mm-hmm. And you know, when you were 30, it was really easy to come up with the word the fact, whatever. And then when you're 60, it's a little bit longer, just slightly longer. And we think of that as somehow being unhealthy, but it's normal aging of the brain, right? So if we think about the brain as a hard drive, the more you store on it, it's going to be just a little bit slower. So from 30 to 60, by 60, you've got 60 years of stuff up there. I love that. You've got memories, right? You've got memories, you've got facts, you've got work experience, you've got life, you've got emotions, you've got all that up there. So when you can't find the exact name or the exact word and it comes to you a little bit later, it takes a little bit longer, that latency is a little bit longer. That's not necessarily unhealthy, right? So these are the normal processes of aging and the aging brain that we, I think, a society need to embrace rather than be afraid of. Yes. That's slaying. That is blowing my mind. I've never heard anyone talk about it in this way. And I think that is such a healthy way to think about it. Yes. Because especially we did an entire episode on aging and just this, the idea and our culture, especially that getting old is a bad thing. And it doesn't have to be or it can just be a normal thing. Yes. Doesn't have to have any kind of value judgment placed on it. Yeah, when we did the episode on vision, the doctor kept saying, congratulations, you're aging. Like true, you're not dead. That's awesome. Right, you're still here. Yeah. That's right. That's exactly right. And I think I'll just tell you from my own experience, right? When I, I practiced neurology with my father for 25 years. And I remember when I was, you know, 40 and he was 60 something, I would ask him a question. When I was a child, my dad's response, the only response he ever gave me when I asked him if I could do something was we'll see. So it's always funny when, you know, I started working with him. I asked him a question and he started in one place and then he meandered and meandered and meandered and he kept going. And in my mind, I'm thinking, has this man forgotten the question that I've asked him? And he's my dad. So I'm going to just be respectful and wait. Well, what I realized is he brought it back to the exact question that I had asked. He answered it perfectly. But that journey that he took me on, I understood the whole history of the question that I had asked. Not just the fact, but the whole history. And I know now that I've just done that to you, which is I've given you a meandering answer for, it's okay for things to take a long time. These are unhealthy. When we really start to have problems where we cannot remember, we cannot remember the conversation that we had yesterday, we cannot remember if we're an organized person, where we put things where we cannot remember how to make something work that should be easy for us, right? Those things are troubling. Those things are of concern. But things taking a little bit longer as we age, that's normal. I do have a question about something you said that babies brains are not fully developed. When are our brains fully developed? Because I have a cousin who's a neurology student and she's like, oh, she's always talking about these like, do she guys? She's dating in her 20s and she's like, his prefrontal cortex is not developed yet. And I was like packing up and like, how true is that? Are we fully developed in our 20s or like teens? When does that happen? We continue to develop. When I was a young neurologist at medical school was once you're at about 1820, your brain is fully formed, we're understanding that that's not true. Probably into our late 20s, early 30s, things are still developing. Wow. That's crazy, right? I mean, you're not fully, you're still learning, you're still doing things. I'm going to take you into the electrical world of the brain. That brain, all of the electrical signals change over time and probably somewhere between 26 and 30 is when we see complete kind of stable patterns. Right? So, it's a long time. And we also know that as we age, if you get damaged to a part of the brain, we have actually seen the birth of baby neurons, right? After a stroke. So even though we think what we've got is fixed, not true, and we're always remodeling, right? And we're also becoming stronger and moving around, right? So it's, it's, we're a dynamic process and the brain is that way too. It's so cool. Yeah. We really want to get into how we keep our brains healthy. And one of the reasons that I was so excited to have you be a guest is that you've done so much research into nutrition and the brain. So let's start there. When it comes to nutrition, what have you seen that actually has an effect on helping the brain stay healthy? What are some of the most exciting things that you've seen? So you know, the, I see a lot of people who come to me with problems that are not solved on an MRI or another test, right? There's not something obviously wrong that a neurologist can say, here, here's the problem. So people have things like brain fog and numbness and tingling and other situations. I'll tell you a story. My first, I had a scurvy patient, right? You're thinking about scurvy in the United States. So it was a young lady who had epilepsy and she was convinced the medicines were giving her this rash and joint pain. Well, it wasn't the medicine that turned out that she had no vitamin C in her system. She graduated from college, was working in a bar, was not eating very well, just canned soup. And all it takes is about four weeks of no fresh fruit, food, and vegetables to develop scurvy. And that's what happened to her. So, and she had stopped taking her epilepsy medicine so she was having seizures, right? So it was a crazy thing. So that started to be on this journey of, wait a minute, are we not nutritionally healthy? And over time, what I've discovered is the number one reason for all these kind of neurologic problems that aren't huge are that we are nutritionally deficient. The data is bearing that out. So we are, we suffer in the United States from something called high calorie malnutrition, right? Right. So that is we are drowning in a sea of calories. We are malnourished in a sea of calories. And if you think about how to keep your brain healthy, the brain has to have a balanced diet, right? The brain has to have, we think of macronutrients, right? We think of protein fat, carbohydrate, but really what those protein fats and carbohydrates, what food gives us is a complete set of micronutrients. And what are micronutrients? Those are vitamins, minerals, salts, all sorts of things. But vitamins are things that our body does not make that we have to have from food. So when we are thinking about how do we keep our brains healthy, we need to talk about consuming a balanced diet every day, right? We don't make vitamins and minerals. We store now a little bit of vitamin D in our skin maybe. We may store a little B12 in our livers up to 5,000 years ago. Get this. We used to make our own vitamin C. Our bodies made vitamin C. That's how important it was. That's insane. We developed the ability to go out and we had agriculture and we could get fresh fruits and vegetables. Our bodies said, okay, we don't need to make this anymore. But now we're not eating in the same way that we used to eat. So for brain health, you need a completely balanced diet. It's so funny because when I think of scurvy, I think of a pirate from the 18th century. When I'm imagining most people, Dr. Rita, aren't suffering for something that severe. They don't have, it's not like they're not taking in any vitamins, but I'm imagining that most people are deficient in a lot of ways. Like you said, they're eating high calorie diets, but those calories are from fast food, processed foods, they're actually not getting the vitamins. So for you, what are the vitamins that people should be looking out for the most when it comes to brain health? What can we get those vitamins in? I know it's better to get it from food than pill, like supplements. Ideally, we would have a plate twice a day or we would eat twice a day. And I'd like to come back to this. By the way, eating means chewing. You know, this new culture of smoothies where everything goes into the gut before your teeth have ever chewed it, right? Teeth are the first part of the digestive system. When you start chewing and all those lovely enzymes, amylase and tilase are acting on that food, it's waking up the rest of your gut. It's waking up your microbiome to get ready, right, to consume and absorb all the things that we need to absorb. So chewing is really important. In terms of what vitamins, again, inside the cell, all those vitamins, each of them does something and it's like a finely tuned machine. So you can't just fix one part, right? It's like the car. If everything's great, but one tire is flat, the car is still not going to go. So the goal is to get all of it together. And I know it seems really overwhelming when we think about it. But the idea of eating the rainbow, right? So lots of fresh fruits and vegetables, whole grains, right? This is, we consume, I think 90% of us are something consume most of our grains in ultra-refined form. We need to go back to whole grains, whole foods, meat, fish, whole treat that is whole, right? And you want some dairy and you want some nuts and seeds and you want all of that and you want to try to, throughout your day, kind of get all of those things. Yeah. It's always the same answer from the smartest, most enlightened physicians. Yeah. So just like the wellness industrial complex will try to sell us an idea. Like celery is going to save you. Blueberries are going to save you. But the truth is like get some stuff in every day, but that's harder. That balance is harder. No, it is. I'm wondering, what do you think about those brain supplements? Whenever I watch Jeopardy, there's always an ad on Jeopardy for Previgen, which I guess is like a brain supplement that's supposed to help. Do you think any of those supplements actually do anything? Should people take those? Yeah. And then we have to add like new tropics and cognitive enhancers. Like I've heard that those are just like mostly caffeine. So no, they don't help you. They don't help you. And one of the most interesting parts of the wellness industrial complex, you know, we have the food industrial complex, the wellness industrial complex is this weird idea that somehow we are smarter than our bodies. Yeah. We're not. We are not smarter than our bodies. Our ancestors lived a certain way, they ate a certain way, they did certain things. And that's the reason we existed. Right. They've all lived, yeah. Yeah. So the concept that all of a sudden a Siberi is going to be the answer to all my woes is just wrong. I always come back to this. So I am third generation doctor, right? And my grandfather was the town physician and small village in India in the 50s and 60s. This is before Tylenol. This is before Advil, right? This is before most things. He was able to cure people, right? I kept I keep thinking that is like, how the heck did he do that? I got 22,000 FDA approved drugs. And my patients are sicker now than ever. And he did it. He actually sit on his lap, you know, when he was seeing patients, but he did it with food and the small amount of medications that he had, he had actually go make pills for people. This is how long ago this was. But you could do that. And he fixed people with limited amount of medicine, but with rest, with clean water, with good food and community, right? All of that. There was care involved, not a pill, care. Let's take a quick break and we'll be right back. Tired of the, I know it's here somewhere. Moment. The new scan snap IX 2400 scanner means you'll never search for a receipt again. Our simplest scan snap experience yet. Just press the blue button and instantly convert documents into digital files you can find in seconds. Perfect for busy professionals who need organization without complexity. An instant one-touch scanning, 45 pages per minute speed, an automatic data extraction, the IX 2400 saves your files exactly where you need them. No more missed expense claims or lost warranties. Just peace of mind knowing everything important is safe and instantly accessible. Ready to stop wasting time hunting for paperwork? Visit scansnapit.com slash podcast and discover how simple document management can be. Scan snap. The smarter way to work. Hey, it's Anna and Mandy from our podcast Sisters in the City and we're currently sponsored by the department for work and pensions. Life's busy and admin gets forgotten, but if you're claiming benefits, listen up. If something changes, you need to tell DWP otherwise you could face a penalty. That could be a partner moving in, even if they keep their own place. Or if your car doubles up as a taxi and a family car, you must only report work related costs. Or forgot and savings like premium bonds. To find out if you need to report a change, search tell DWP. Jack and Jill went up the hill in their new convertible roadster. The handling was good and under the hood was a hybrid electric motor. Their new set of wheels came with a great deal thanks to their experience score. They got a better rate because their score was in shape. Now their walking days are no more. Better your experience credit score to help unlock better reads on car finite. Experience, better your score, better your story. Welcome back to Am I doing it wrong? Here are two of Roger's favorite things and I love the teaser about this. When it comes to brain health, what are your thoughts on having a martini or smoking a joint? How are alcohol and cannabis affecting our brains? Oh my goodness. Okay. I'm going to start with the alcohol. Okay. I'm going to start with the alcohol. So there's a big focus on it right now. Right. The whole idea of no drinking. And so I'm going to go back to the ancients. I'm going to go back to the ancients where you know, bitterly, we turned water into wine and that's supposed to be a good thing. We have used wine in religious and celebratory functions for thousands, tens of thousands of years, right? The Egyptians used it. I just was an Indian for a neurologic society meeting and discovered that the moguls had wonderful vineyards and a viticulture. So all over the world, wine has been part of human existence. We're still here, so it didn't destroy us. Now that doesn't mean that people don't have problems with alcohol and excess consumption is not great. 15 years ago, there was a study that said one drink a day, if you do that for a year, your hippocampus, your memory area starts to shrink. So we know this is not great in terms of regular use. So what I tell my patients and what I do myself is, and by the way, I love a good martini. So if I have a martini, then probably the next two days, you know, I'm going to have it with food, the next two days, I'm probably going to let the alcohol completely get out of my system. 36 hours, completely clear, be fresh, let the cells be healthy again. And then, you know, if you want a glass of wine and all of these things, certain people will have, they just have problems with alcohol. Those people, you know, it's like problems with anything, whether it's problems with eating, obsessing about anything, that situation, the neuro biochemistry of that situation, it's very hard for those people. So they should definitely stay away, right? But alcohol in general, and I'm going to sound completely unlike everyone who's talking right now, but in moderation, given time for the body to clear it all is a good thing. I also think not so much dry January, but periodically, take a couple of weeks, take a month, and be alcohol free and see how you feel. Totally. Right. And then you kind of know what's going on. And if you have a glass of wine or two glasses of wine because you're having a beautiful dinner with friends, which by the way, also is great for your brain. Right. Yeah. Right. That connection, community, can the reality, that's all really important. It's just trying to keep it in a controlled way so that you're healthy. So I'm not an anti alcohol person, but I do think giving time to clear it from your body is important. Okay. Okay. And I'm going to say, I don't have a very good memory. I don't remember a lot of my life now. Is that a real thing? Am I imagining that? Am I still stoned? How do you feel about people? You know, you're not imagining it. Right. What is the things we experience? We're not imagining it. It's really happening, right? You've got intuition. You've got experience over time. So that's how you're feeling. It's good news. Now, is that your body has a great way to kind of heal and you'll probably recover for some of that, right? We do a lot of things when we're young. And we still are here. We're still living. So the body, again, the body is smarter than we are. The problems with cannabis. I will start off by saying that cannabis ativa, the plant, was used to detoxify the soil at Chernobyl. Right. Wow. Because that's kind of a big deal. What does cannabis do? Cannabis is excellent at extracting all of the heavy metals from the soil. And that goes straight up into the buds, right? So it's sort of a difficult thing to deal with. In the 60s, when the cannabis was not as strong as it is now, not as potent as it is now, they did studies in Chelsea, in England, in London. And those people who smoked cannabis on a regular basis actually had some atrophy, so some loss of brain cells from the inside out. So yes, it does affect the brain. I am concerned that we're, we don't know what we're doing, right? We've never actually studied cannabis and its effects. Like so many other medications that can come from plants. There are probably some really good compounds in there that do help us. It's also used just again, ritualistically in, in worship and things has been since, you know, the BC times. So small amounts in controlled use, perhaps is okay, but I don't know that. All I've got is studies that tell me what happens with regular use and what happens with regular use is really not great for the brain. And we're seeing that in places in the United States where people are, you know, smoking cannabis, we are watching a slightly higher rate of psychosis and young people in teenagers. And we are seeing people who are having problems with their memories. So again, a plant that is very interesting, I think maybe if we can get rid of the toxins and learn how to work with the THC and the terpenes and all the other fun chemicals that are there, it might be of great use. We use it a form of cannabis in a medicine called Epidylex. We use it as an anti-segeumaticin and children. So it has brain effect, right? So we have to be really respectful of this plant. It's, it's really an interesting plant. And I'm not a yes or no person, right? I'm not, no, I'm not passing judgment on this at all as a scientist and as a scientist, a physician, I just want to know how to use it safely. Just a little bit on what else we're ingesting that could be harmful to our brains. Sodium sugar, do you have anything to tell us about like, you know, curbing intake of like a lot of salt to your sugary foods for our brain? I start with salt. Salt is, salt is really interesting. We need salt, by the way. Sure. Too much, right? So if you've got high blood pressure, if you're tending towards high blood pressure, things that have too much sodium chloride in them, probably are not a good idea. I want to talk about salt in a different way. Iodine, do you guys know about iodine is really important for brain development and brain function. Oh, okay. And we iodized salt early in the 1900s because there was an epidemic of goiters, right? Which is thyroid swelling and the thyroid not functioning. And there were all these children born with developmental disabilities because they were born to mothers with an adequate iodine. So iodizing salt was a public health measure, right? But now everyone thinks that there's some kind of processing and that's something wrong. So we are now all using kosher salt, diamond salt, hemolane salt. Yeah. We use some of these fancy salts that we think are healthier. And guess what I'm discovering? Iodine deficiency. Oh my God. I guess people have stopped using iodine. So I've got a little group of people with what they thought was Hashimoto's thyroid disease, thyroiditis. It's really iodine deficiency. Yeah. Iodine, the thyroid got better, right? You need iodine to turn something called it for the thyroid hormones to happen. Iodine binds right there. And thyroid is important for everything in our bodies. Dr. Rita, I'm just going to text you every time I'm at the grocery store. But you're right. Yeah, you're right. Here's my question, though. I'm guilty of this. I have my mauled in salt. I have my kosher salt. I have my mauled in salt. And I love it. Yeah. Is the only place that we're really getting iodine in salt? Are there other places to get it that so if we're not going to use iodine salt, we could get it somewhere else. See, food is a great source, right? See, food is a great source. And no, you mentioned meldon salt, right? Yeah. If your meldon salt is really coming from France and it's from the marshes and it's being harvested properly, you're probably doing okay. But I would still, to be certain, I'd keep one of those little blue canisters of iodized salt and put that in your cooking, right? Okay. And finish with your meldon. Okay. So delicious. But put a little bit of that in your cooking. And I'm guilty of this. I mean, I was totally using every other fancy salt until about two years ago when my husband said, where are we getting our iodine when I discovered someone with an iodine deficiency? And I'm like, oh, yeah, you're right. I totally did this wrong. So we now have our blue canister back. So you can use all the other salts to finish. Yeah. The conversation in Dr. Rita's house is so much smarter than the conversation they go, where are we getting our iodine from? That's their dinner time conversation. Yeah, yeah. And I was like, where are my blue socks? Like, I don't remember. But we are gaining from it now. So I'm happy about that. I can feel my IQ just. Yeah. Yeah. I'm going to break and we'll be right back. Tired of drowning in paperwork, the scan snap IX 2500 scanner gives you back hours every week. No more digging through filing cabinets or losing important documents. Scan documents are instantly searchable on your PC, laptop, or mobile device, with lightning fast scanning, Wi-Fi connectivity, and an intuitive 5-inch LCD touchscreen, transform paper into digital files in seconds. Buy a scan snap IX 2500 before March 31st and claim a free echo lights IQ home office P4 shredder. Ditch those overflowing drawers and create the clutter free workspace you've always wanted. Stop letting paperwork control your life. Visit scansnapit.com slash podcast. Scan snap IX 2500 connected, convenient, superior personal productivity because your time is worth more than filing. Terms and conditions apply. Scan snap. The smarter way to work. Hi there, it's Jay Cumpfrey here and our podcast, High Performance, is currently brought to you by Volvo and the fully electric EX90. The Volvo EX90 is a large fully electric SUV perfect for the family with seven seats as loads of room for everyone and with up to 378 miles of range, it's great to keep the journey going. It's also reassuring to know the EX90 is designed with the safest Volvo car ever made so you know you and your loved ones are protected and the fast infotainment system is perfect for seamless connectivity so you can keep the music playing the whole time. What more would you want? Search Volvo EX90 to find out more. Electric range may vary based on driving behaviour and conditions. Hey, it's Anna and Mandy from our podcast Sisters in the City and we're currently sponsored by the Department for Work and Pensions. Life's busy and admin gets forgotten but if you're claiming benefits, listen up. If something changes, you need to tell DWP otherwise you could face a penalty. That could be a partner moving in even if they keep their own place or if your car doubles up as a taxi and a family car, you must only report work related costs or forgotten savings like premium bonds. To find out if you need to report a change, search tell DWP. Welcome back to Am I doing it wrong? Any thoughts on sugar? Sugar, the less refined it is, the better it is for us. We have in our brains the amount of real estate that is devoted to taste and smell is huge. It lives right next to the area for memory. You can smell and something reminds you of something. It's next to the insula, there's also that area where we feel we're comforted, we feel happy. All of those things are connected. When I talk about sugar, we like sugar, humans like sugar. We like sweet things. It's awesome. We want to keep our sugar intake as much as you can in the non-refined form. Super refined is just not great. It's things that have something called a high glycemic index. It requires a lot of insulin. It's just not great for you. If you can go towards demoreras and raw sugars and brown sugars, honey, lower maple syrup, which hasn't been fully refined, those are better for you. A little bit of white sugar. It's okay. Once in a while, it's okay. If you're doing that three times a day, probably not so good. The other thing about sugar is our palettes. It's true with salt as well. Our palettes are sensitive. You can eat a little bit less, a little bit less sweet, right? You can train your palate to say, I don't need quite as much and it still tastes great. Can we shift to exercise? How important is exercise to our brains? What would you say is maybe the best form of exercise for our brains? Is there one? Exercise is critical for the brain. You really should strive for about 30 minutes of continuous activity, mild to moderate. Whether that's on a bike, whether that's walking, whether that's jazzy, or dancing, or whatever you want to do is fine. There have been studies done that. For the heart, if you do 10 minutes at a time, the heart's great with it. There's something about the brain that there needs to be some continuity. So that 30 minute mark, right? When I go for a walk, everybody knows I'm not going to stop to say hi because I'm not going to stop. That is really critical. So 30 minutes of mild to moderate, sustained activity is great. If you can do 45 minutes, if you can do an hour, that's even better. There were studies done about, again, about 15 years ago. That 30 minutes of sustained activity reduces your risk of developing memory disorder by 30 percent, 45 minutes, around 50 percent. And then if you can exercise one hour continuously every day, you reduce your risk of memory disorder by 70 percent, which I think is huge. Wow. I didn't even think about it for that. It seems like the more that I read about walking too, just walking seems to be so good for the body. And like you're saying now too, for the brain, we should do an entire episode on walking I think. Yeah, definitely. It's incredible. And I think people think they have to be in the gym, they have to be sweating, they have to be going through all this pain. Go for a walk. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, go for a walk. And I think, I will tell you something else, which is I think if you can, go for a walk outside, right? Because when you go outside to be in nature also lifts your spirits, right? Hearing bird song, the human ear canal, I know you guys did a great episode on hearing, I loved it. But the human ear canal is perfectly tuned to bird song. Oh, wow. Right? So it actually makes us feel good. So if you can get outside, look at nature, be part of it. That's great. And you don't, for a lot of people, I don't think you even have to use the word exercise. I just talk about going for a stroll, right? After dinner. So I'm just take a stroll, right? Walk. It's great. It reduces your blood sugar. It improves your brain health. It gets you some good muscle tone. Reduces your risk of osteoporosis. I mean, I could go on, but there's no substitute for exercise. There's no pill you can take for it, and I can't do it for you. So you've got to do it. Yeah. You know, for me, the like lightest kind of exercise that makes me feel better immediately is yoga, like a little gentle yoga. And so I want to hear about what yoga and meditation can do and just tell you guys it. Like about maybe 12, 10 years ago, I went through the hardest break up of my life. I was so depressed for six months, and I joined a yoga studio, and I'm still great friends with the teacher, and told her, and she told me come every day, like seriously, come every day. Like this is going to make everything okay. And I was on the mat six days a week. Every day I took a yoga class, and I used to cry on the mat. It was a very safe space. Yoga every single morning, and I felt so much better, so much faster than I would. Yeah. Like it's so woo-woo and ridiculous, but like yoga saved me. I love that. But I also'm curious, like what is yoga's effect on the brain? Yeah. Please tell us something. Okay. So guess what? There's actual biological MRI data to support everything you're saying. Okay. It's so cool. It's wonderful. This is new data to me. I was again at this meeting in India, and there was a whole session presented on yoga, and meditation, and the biologic basis for this, right? So as you said, it does sound woo-woo, but here's the thing. Whether you are doing the ancient Chinese meridian system, the Ayavathic chakra system, and there's a Greek also central line through the body, right? All these ancient cultures felt something about this. Well, it turns out that, you know, your brain's one of them at your throat, at your neck, there's a plexus in your chest, there's a plexus in your gut, gut microbiome, we haven't talked about that. So important for the brain. And then in sort of in the pelvic area, these are the main plexuses, and what you can show with functional MRI is increased activity in all these areas in people who do regular yoga, right? So the nerves are actually more active. They are things are restful, things are coordinated, there's more blood flow. So all of this is happening when you do yoga, right? Tremendous information, real biology, no longer woo-woo, okay? And when we talk about meditation, people who do a regular meditation practice, we know that the areas of brain responsible for anxiety and depression, those areas calm down. And the areas of where we have memory and coordination, sort of what we call executive function, you guys were talking about front lobes recently, but all of those areas become more robust. Wow. And we are seeing that on MRI. So no longer just, you know, woo-woo, something that I'm just talking about, real science behind what the ancients knew. That is so cool. I mean, we could obviously do an entire series on just the brain, like we talked about in the beginning because it controls so much of our body. We're sort of coming towards the end of the episode. What else, Dr. Rita, should we be doing for brain health? Maybe talk a little bit about sleep. I'm imagining. When you think about it, what are the key things, the other things that we should be thinking about in our routine? Sleep is critical. Sleep is the time of the brain where everything kind of gets. I think of the brain as, you know, during the day, you are pulling out books like in the old library way, right? You're pulling out books and you've got them on this giant table. Everything you do, everything you think, everything you smell, everything you eat, sitting there in this giant jungle. Sleep is kind of like the librarians coming and putting all the books back. Right? Right? So you can say, wait, what am I supposed to do tomorrow? And you can go, and here's the book for tomorrow, and you know what to do. If you don't get enough sleep, those things don't get reshaped. I have no idea what you're doing tomorrow, right? You're just kind of like, oh my God, where am I looking? So sleep is critical for that. Sleep also is the time where many things that are just junk for the brain. So things like amyloid, which accumulate normally in our brains, gets cleared during sleep, right? And amyloid is the protein when it becomes abnormal and then kind of stays accumulated, stays associated with Alzheimer's dementia, right? So sleep is critical. If you don't sleep, you can't remember, you can't learn, and you're grouchy, and you get kind of emotional, right? Sleep deprivation is a form of torture, right? So sleeping is critical. So getting enough sleep. And I'm going to say that there's sleep, that there's a second thing which is rest, right? Sleep and rest are two different things. That's why they have two different aids. So yes, you can sleep, but when you've been super active, take some time to rest. We have a hard time in our society doing nothing. Yeah. You know, on my Sundays, my partner and I do a new thing, at 2 p.m. we stop everything and we rot for the rest of the day. I love that. Just TV. No, that seems really healthy, or read a book, or take a nap, or hang out with a friend. Yeah, play with the kitten. Yeah. I think you're right, Dr. Rita, though. I have a really hard time with that. I feel guilty. If my inbox is not at zero, if I didn't finish that thing, I feel like I punish myself and think you can't, you don't get to rest. Well, Noah's a lovely person overall than I am, because I have no fucking problem at all doing nothing. I do. I feel guilty, but I think I mean, I'm getting literally Drs. Orders, whereas she's saying you need to rest. So I'm going to try harder at that. The last question we love to ask our experts is, if there is one thing that you would never do, or that you would always do, to help with your brain health, what would that one thing be? Well, I've been talking about it and doing it all the time, which is feed myself well every day. I love that. Okay. Anything you would never do? I probably now would not put myself in any situation where I could have a massive head injury. Yeah. Right? That's a big thing. So try to avoid accidents as the daughter of a neurologist. I never understood why I was never allowed to have heavy mobiles and stuff on top of my bed. Now I get it. Right? So avoid hurting your brain. Yeah. I had a friend. She recently just visited and she's a roller skater. And she's in her 40s like I am. And she's like, you don't roller skate? And I was like, no, I don't know how, but also at this age, I just don't. That's not something I'm going to try to do. I don't need a broken hip. I don't need a head injury. If you're a great roller skater, great. But like you said, there are some things in my life I've decided are just not going to be part of my life. Exactly. I was invited skiing. I was like, you know what? Not going to start skiing at 40. Yeah. I think that's healthy. Yeah. These are very wise decisions. Right? Protect your brain. Yeah. Yeah. Dr. Rita, this has been amazing. I feel like I've learned. I say this every episode, but especially this episode, I reconsexualized the way that I think about the brain. And that's because of you. Thank you for that. Yes. Oh, so great. You're so welcome. It's been so much fun to talk to you. I hope I've given you some interesting information and hope it's been useful. Definitely. Absolutely. It's time for better and five. These are your top five takeaways from this episode. Number one. We learned today that your brain is like a hard drive. As you age, it fills up more. So it might take a little more time to access things as you get older. And that's totally normal. Number two, skip the supplements. The best nutrition for brain health is surprise, surprise, a well-rounded diet filled with macro and micronutrients. Number three, keep a container of iodized salt in your kitchen. You do need iodine. Number four, studies show 30 minutes of continuous exercise is crucial for brain health. So get going. And once you get started, don't stop till you hit 30 minutes. Can't stop won't stop. Number five, sleep is super important for brain health, but so is rest. So make sure you're getting in your Sunday rot like I do. Okay. So Noah, have you been doing brain health wrong? So like I said, my mind was blown several times in this episode. But actually, I don't think I've been doing it that wrong. I eat pretty well. I get sleep, I exercise. The one thing I think I need to work harder on though is, and you seem to be great at this, is the resting, the rotting. I'm going to try to not feel so guilty about not having that, you know, everything done that's on my to-do list. And really taking time to like just watch an episode of the Real Housewives or whatever it is. I'm going to be to coach you. Yeah, no. It's a tough job. I'm going to need that because it sounds like rest is really important for our brain. It's beautiful. What about you? What did you learn? I'm actually going to take a page out of your book and figure out how to eat more balance. I think I'm doing okay. You know, everything else. I'm really big on good sleep, etc. But I feel like I'm not, again, coming back from the gut microbiome episode. I'm not diversifying my diet enough. I just need to try new vegetables and like try new fruits and all that stuff. And it's a constant quest for me. But our brain does so much for us. I owe it this. And it's like we heard from Kevin Curry in the meal prep episode last week or a couple of weeks ago just trying one new thing a week maybe. Yeah. You know, it's easy to maybe not easy, but it's not that hard to get more stuff into your diet. If you just try something new. I totally agree. Anyway, until next time, as long as there are things to get wrong, we're going to be right here to help you do them better. I love you and your brains. Do you have something you think you're doing wrong? Email us at, am I doing it wrong at halfpost.com and let us know. Fancy making your day even brighter at Gala with thousands of dazzling slots, slingo and live casino games, there's more to Gala than bingo. Sign up and collect Gala points for free to spend on extra play, fab prizes and real life treats. Gala, where a little joy, goes a long way. 18 plus points expire on the 7th of the following month. No cash equivalent, restrictions and TNC supply, gamblerware.org. Tired of the, I know it's here somewhere, moment. The new ScanSnap IX 2400 scanner means you'll never search for a receipt again. Our simplest scan snap experience yet. Just press the blue button and instantly convert documents into digital files you can find in seconds. Perfect for busy professionals who need organization without complexity. With instant one touch scanning, 45 pages per minute speed, an automatic data extraction, the IX 2400 saves your files exactly where you need them. No more mystic spence claims or lost warranties. Just peace of mind knowing everything important is safe and instantly accessible. Ready to stop wasting time hunting for paperwork? Visit scansnapit.com slash podcast and discover how simple document management can be. Snap. The smarter way to work. Hey, it's Anna and Mandy from our podcast Sisters in the City and we're currently sponsored by the Department for Work and Pensions. Life's busy and admin gets forgotten, but if you're claiming benefits, listen up. If something changes, you need to tell DWP, otherwise you could face a penalty. That could be a partner moving in, even if they keep their own place. Or if your car doubles up as a taxi and a family car, you must only report work related costs or forgotten savings like premium bonds. To find out if you need to report a change, search tell DWP. Jack and Jill went up the hill in their new convertible roadstep. The handling was good and under the hood was a hybrid electric motor. Their new set of wheels came with a great deal thanks to their experience score. They got a better rate because their score was in shape. Now their walking days are no more. Better your experience credit score to help unlock better rates on car finite. Experience. Better your score. Better your story.