Litla Landowski.

Welcome to episode two.

Your episode two.

I'll probably one hundred because we already did one a long time ago, well not that long ago.

But and what we found is that what I thought was we knew another episode with you, because let's call it part two of what we started with as as a neuroscientist and a lecture at the University Tasmania, vice President of Science Technology Australia like I could go on and I will go on later and a multi war winning science communicator, et cetera.

But today's topic, what I find is really interesting for me is obviously we're talking about longevity, health span, lifespan.

One of the things that is really important to me is learning.

And whilst I say, and everyone says to you, Mark, you know, going to limpiano, Mark, go to learn language.

You know, if you want to avoid Alzheimer's and dementia or just have a better brain for the rest of your life, do these things and it will continue to learn.

But learning is not that easy, and as we get older it's twice as hard or ten times hard.

Maybe you could explain why is it harder for a start as we get older compared to say, when we're five or six or fifteen.

Oh.

Look, when we're younger, our brain is basically hardwired to learn.

We are tiny, little pattern recognition programs.

Our brain is trying to figure out how to navigate through the world, and to do that, it has to learn sound, it has to learn what words mean, It has to learn that if I do this, people will react badly, or if I do that, people like it, and so you have to learn very quickly.

The more like is survival mode.

Yeah, what kind of is.

It's basically creating the program for you to then be an adult and to navigate the world.

And then I guess the cost side of that is when we are learning, when our brains are very young and adaptable, it's not very energy efficient.

So as we get older, our brains become more efficient, but we're less good at learning, and we have to really be intentional about switching that process on.

That's weird.

So like you when you say fishing, that's very interesting.

So our brain learners become efficient, in other words, not waste energy that our body would.

And I guess our bodies are bigger too, so we probably when we're little we need less energy because we're everything smaller, but as we get bigger, we've got to start to balance the use of energy.

That's funny with you and I just talking about a few months ago about energy just generally in the country.

But we're to learn how we efficiently got to learn how to balance energy usage by our brain and our body.

As understand, our brain has some crazy percentage of energy use competitive rest of the body.

What it was that yea percent?

Yeah?

Now, and when we're talking about energy, we're talking about you know, the need for glucose and maybe fast Yeah, all of it, Yeah, all of it.

It's basically getting twenty percent of our bodies blood supply.

Of course, when you're exercising and doing really hard exercise, your muscles are using a lot too, but generally it's about twenty percent.

So when we're little, we're really efficient in terms of being able to our brains.

Really efficient.

Should own neurons.

Let's get him deeper into it.

And neurons are really efficient in scrambling about learning about them because there's be a thousand things coming at as my little kids like words, language, situations, colors, whatever shapes, we're scrambling all the time.

We're really good at that.

But as we get as we get older, does their brain sort of say, okay, Mark, hang on, let's just chill a little bit here, and let's just concentrate on one thing at a time.

Is that where we become better doing or I become more likely to want to do one task at a time, and I find it difficult to do more than one thing at once.

I couldn't really agree with that statement per se, but think of it like this.

So, when you're really young, your brain has lots of these extra connections which essentially give you the ability to learn new things.

And then the more that you do whatever that thing is, let's say, learning how to play a sport, then those connections become really really hardwired.

They become more efficient, and then the ones that aren't useful in playing that sport become removed use it or lose it exactly, and so they become more efficient.

And then I would almost argue that the reason why our brains are less adaptable as we get older is because we've basically made our map of the world.

We've figured out how to do our job.

We've figured out how to get from a to B, from our work to home, we figured out all of these things that allow us to navigate the world around us.

So all of those extra connections in the brain get removed because we don't need them, we don't need to learn new things, and so you know, the ability to learn becomes dampened essentially as a result.

Can we pick up those that ability again?

So like like we've gone.

I mean, this is probably with this concept of plasticity, which I like you to talk about, comes into play.

But we know we're at a certain age, We've done a whole lot of things.

We're confident in what we know, what we do every day, and we have sort of routine because we love routine, right I do, and everything's sort of more easy we challe don't.

Therefore, I don't challenge myself as much because I'm pretty good at getting things done.

That sort of gives me in a good position in my life.

Then all of a sudden, icessarily start.

I'm going to go and learn violin.

And it's like fully difficult, Like it's coordination wise.

You your ears got to be going, You've got to be able to read music, so you go, ah, it's got to tell your hands what to do.

Not quite like that, but whatever, and I get completely confronted.

Is that is it?

What's the process?

How whereby I can maintain that when I call that sort of desired to keep playing or keep learning, because if it's really hard, you'll give it up.

That's right.

I guess you've got to keep challenging yourself and reminding yourself that the reason why it feels difficult is because you've gotten used to what was the routine in your life.

And if you think about it, let's say you've moved country and suddenly you're living in a new city and you've got a new job all of a sudden a new language.

Yeah, you have to learn all those new things, and so there'll be a massive blossoming of neuroplasticity, This ability of our brain to learn will be happening through that time because we have to.

You know, we're driven by need, and so if you don't have the need to learn the violin, it will be more difficult.

But when we do have the need, then those changes come a lot more easily.

That's very interesting because I haven't think to myself and I marvel at these people.

So people come aroun our country.

You see them in shops and various other places and you mightseell, well, where are you from, and they will say, you know, somewhere where they don't naturally speak English and Japan for example.

And then you say to them, wow, you only be need for three is your English is pretty good.

And I immediately think to myself, my god, if I had to go to Japan and learn Japanese, let alone rue to write it, I would be no chance.

But I think what you're saying is if I was thrown into the deep end, I would be more of a chance.

And if you're driven by need, that's the thing, because you're when you're driven by need and your attention is focused on have to learn this language.

I have to figure out how to navigate this city.

See, I have to learn my new job.

Then increased attention is part of the secret to being able to learn.

In order to learn, you have to be paying attention to what you're doing.

That's why it's so easy to learn things that interest you because you're paying attention.

It's not hard to do that.

So then if you're trying to keep your brain neurologically vibrant as you get older, and you know, people say, go and learn a language, et cetera.

Maybe I think what you're saying is perhaps, sure, go do that, but make sure you pick something that you're really interested in.

There some relevance to you, or there's some reason why you want to learn it a musical instrument.

They just don't go pick violin, for example, because if you don't really love violin, and you not haven't always wanted to play violin, maybe it's going to be pretty hard to do because there's no sort of need for it, that's right, no real excitement about it.

But if you say, I want to be like Liberaci and be able to pay play the piano like liberacycus always love Liberaci a pianist, maybe that's more incentive for your brain to get going.

Is that what you're saying when we come to pick a learning mode precisely?

Yeah, attention and alertness, You're focusing on the thing that you love, and that's why it becomes easier.

So, and how does plasticity work this plus cicity you think, because I mean I read somewhere that we lose brain cells every year after we lose lots of things, but we lose brain cells every year after certain age.

Yeah, up to age forty, about five percent shrinkage in our brain per decade, Well, so a lot, but you can stop it, we can protect us.

So what is happening then when you say we're losing why are our neurons, Why is our brain shrinking?

Why are our neurons disappearing?

What's causing that?

Part of it is that we're not challenging ourselves.

Part of it is that our ability to make new brain cells also decreases with age.

So we actually have the ability to make new brain cells, especially the learning and memory center in the brain that has an incredible ability to make new brain cells.

But if we're not challenged ourselves, if we're not exercising, we're not doing all these things.

Physically, Yeah, physical exercise is one of the best ways to make these new brain cells.

And there's a few reasons for that.

It's creating, it's increasing the production of essentially brain fertilizer, So things like brain derive neurotrophic factor.

If you're doing resistance exercise, then your bones will release something called osteochalcum, which also affects the brain, So resistance exercise also fantastic.

So these things will physically increase your brain's ability to make these new brain cells, because otherwise, naturally the ability to make these new brain cells as we age drops down.

So what happens?

What's the signal that, let's say, we've got all these things that we develop with exercise, whether it's resistance training or via to max training or zone to training, whatever the case may be.

What is the what sends the signal to those out to say, because you just make your way to the brain through the bloodstream so that I can make some more brain cells.

What is the signal?

Is there a signal that says, send these goodies up to me because I want to create a few a few more neurons because I'm trying to learn to speak Italian.

Yeah, it's it's those factors.

It's that brain derived neurotrophic factor, It's the osteocoalson.

It's also the increased blood flow to the brain, because when you're exercising, more blood flow goes to the brain, and therefore more blood flow, more oxygen, more nutrients, therefore more brain activity.

And but how does the brain or the neurons know, Well, jeez, Mark, we've got to increase your memory because we're trying to learn language, and you've got to remember all these words and contexts and conjugations and everything else goes with it.

Right now, our capacity is full, you know, we've you've got a whole lot of the stuff that you've learned over the last million years, and you've be stored some of it.

How does the brain Is it just a survival mechanism?

Brains as shit.

We need with more neurons in the memory part of the brain, well, the learning part of the brain, let's produce them.

Think of it like this.

If your brain is constantly making new brain cells, but you're not learning new things, they just die, they just disappear, right, But if you're using them, those new brain cells will become integrated into circuits in the brain.

And at least from studies in rats and mice, what they've shown is that it takes about two weeks for those new brain cells to become integrated, which is why it might take a couple of weeks before you notice these changes in your learning and memory if you're starting to exercise again for the first time in a long time.

What's the difference, by the way, between learning and memory.

So if I'm if I just get back to a language, if I'm learning a language.

I can look at the I can look at going to Google translator, and I can put the English sentence in there, and I'll give me the language in Italian.

Give me the same phrase in Italian.

I can look at it, I can read it.

I haven't really learned it, definitely, I haven't committed it to memory.

The memory to me, to me is the most challenging part.

What would be the process to optimize my ability to learn and remember what I wanted to be able to say?

Well, I think if we go back to this principle that attention and alertness are important and a few other things attention, alertness, sleep, repetition, breaks, and mistakes, and I'll talk about those in a moment.

But if we need attention and alertness, one of the best ways to do that is by increasing your fight or flight system, your stress system, essentially, so exercise running up and down the stairs, doing star jumps.

If you're at work, yeah, whatever it is, do a walk around the floor before you learn.

So increasing that adrenaline is actually going to improve your attention and therefore your ability to focus on what you're learning.

And then we know that when you're having less trouble to pay attention the work that's in front of you.

Then you're more likely to retain that information for the long term.

So I just stop there for a moment later, because that would mean it would be very hard to learn if you just get up eight o'clock at seven o'clock in the morning, go straight to your study wherever the case may be, the office, and start working and try to because do no excise and say, let's say it's very quiet, no stimuli.

You were just said by yourself, and it's three or four o'clock in the afternoon, your sun probably feel a bit weary, and maybe just no natural light coming into the room.

That would sort of seem pretty hard to learn in those conditions.

Certainly later on in the afternoon.

In the morning, it tends to be a lot easier for neurotypical people because you have more of those neurotransmitters around.

Anyway, when you wake up, typically.

What about sunlight?

Does that early morning sunlight because we keep hearing I keep hearing human talk about getting out there one hour after the sunrise, one hour hour after you wake up, assuming you wake up in the morning, and getting some direct sort of infra red light from the sun into your eye eyes because they apparently they stimulate cortisol and something like that.

Is that like a little hack that we could be using to help ooselves learn.

Yeah, brightness of light is really good for increasing your alertness.

And think of it like this.

Let's say it's bedtime and you've got a bright down light above you.

It's basically sending a signal to your brain that hey, this is the middle of the day and the sun is above you.

Be alert, be awake, don't go to sleep.

That's why it's really bad to have bright lights at night time, because it's sort of increasing that alertness and stopping you from making the chemical melatonin which helps you fall asleep.

So bright light is a really useful way of increasing that alertness.

So it would it be fair to say, then, in terms of our circadian rhythms, that's the rhythm of awake and sleep, let's call it that to make it easy from my point of view, would it be fair to say that we learn better in the morning.

Let's assume we sleep at night, and we are normal night sleepers.

We sleep at night.

Is it fair to say, because there's always the case for me, when I was studying universit et cetera.

I was always better first thing in the morning.

But then some people say to me, I know, I'm a better at night.

How's that all work?

Yeah, so most people will be better in the morning, unless you're you're not neurotypical, or let's say you've got delayed face sleep disorder, in which case your neurotransmitters and hormones are a little bit of askew.

But for the most part, for most people, learning in the morning will be the best way to go.

And then your ability to learn as the day goes on, as you become more tired, it becomes harder.

It diminishes.

Certainly that's the case for me.

So that's learning.

But it's one thing to learn, say, maybe the order of words and the sentence in a particular language for argument's sake, that's something you learn.

You might learn, you know, whether you if we're talking frendship, whether you're a cute or the graph goes on top of a letter, and whether you might work out you know where the emphasis is put in relation to the word compared to say, how we would say in English.

That's learning, But how do we lay down this stuff in my memory?

So the next day, I want to wake up and I thought, now, okay, I know all those words, I know those sentences.

They seem to me to be different things.

Are they different things?

And they're different parts of the brain.

Well, we think of, I guess learning as the process and memory is when that learning gets committed to memory in the long term.

So if we use those principles of paying attention and being alert, and if we repeat the thing that we're trying to do over and over again and we sleep, then those things in combination are really useful because when we're repeating something, it's basically a signal to our brain that hey, this is something that keeps coming up in my life.

It's obviously important.

So in order to be more efficient could remember the brain is all about efficiency, then it is more likely to then actually flag that this is something that needs to be committed to memory.

So then when we sleep, that is when all of these short term memories, all of these things that we've learned throughout the day get committed to long term memory.

So essentially, if you don't sleep, then the things that you've learned through the day don't get committed to memory.

They really those connections get removed.

They literally get gobbled up by cells in the brain.

So if you don't sleep, then all of that hard work that you've done through the day is essentially wasted.

I want to come back to sleep, because I'm quite fascinated by sleep.

But I know you got more questions just on the learning piece you said and repeate.

I remember once I was listening to someone I come was talk about the process of learning, not memory.

But the process of learning is you read it you know, or you listen to what you watch it.

Whatever the case may be.

You're learning from a teacher let's call it, and it could be Google AI, it could be someone like you, a teacher.

That's the first part.

The second part is you should do an action in relation to it, like write it down, do some action around the thing you've just learned.

Then the third phase of it in terms of learning, is to teach it or repeat it.

As you said, teach it.

Maybe teaching is not the right word.

It doesn't mean I have to stand in front of a class and teach it, but prosecute it.

So you know, maybe if we're talking about language, and help me out here if I'm going the wrong direction.

But let's say I'm learning a language, I might look it up on some sort of Google translator, whatever the case may be, AI, wherever you're be learning from, then maybe I should write it down.

Don't just read it and look at it and think you're going to remember, because you won't see you write it down.

And then and then I practice on someone that's teaching, teaching, just practicing what you know or prosecuting what you know.

And the more often you prosecute it, more likely likely it is that you learn it.

Is that what you mean by repeat.

It could have process, it could even just be writing it down multiple times, but also by the act of you teaching it to someone, you are repeating it, and also by writing it down.

That's a great way.

And I'm glad you mentioned that because studies have shown that writing things down does enhance learning and memory.

But isn't that bad because today we rely on AI and we don't write anything down.

When you say write down, does typing it down way to writing it down?

Writing?

So actually get a pen paper and write the word down.

Yeah, it's I guess it's activating more brain regions than typing.

It's that so you're not only just it's not only the words and the meaning of the words, but it's also connecting to these motor circuits in the brain that are involved with writing.

So the more you engage your brain, the more likely you are to retain that information.

And when you're teaching, you're also engaging with someone.

Also, you're more motivated because you're trying to convey something to them, and you're more engaged in that interaction, and therefore you're paying more attention because you want them to You're looking for their body cues.

Are they understanding what I'm saying?

Do I need to rephrase it?

And it causes you to repeat it, but be doing so while you're paying attention.

That's interesting.

So if you're learning an instrument, he sort of suggests that you've got to teach you to telling you what to do, and you're listening and you're practicing.

It'd be great if you can take some notes.

Let's say we're learning to play the piano.

But importantly, what it sort of suggests to me is that start playing what you just learn in front of someone like it.

That's sort of one way of repeating it.

Like it's you're and you're practicing to an audience.

And you actually wanted to when here with their reactions, Oh that's great, Mark, or that was crap, or you miss you hit the wrong notes, or it didn't sound right, or it was too quick, too far, so it sounded like merryga around music or because which my mother used to say when I was to do piano.

I played piano, and my mother used to say to me when I practice, So my mother used to make me.

It's funny.

I don't know if she wouldn't known the stuff, but she's to make me.

After i'd come back from my lesson, which was once a week on a Tuesday morning, I would come home and Mum would make me play in front of her what I'd learned, and I just get so annoyed with it.

But I think it actually helped me absolutely, and she would critical not critique it so well, they sound a little quicker.

It didn't like I said, I'll you know common music that everybody knew the sound of, you know you'd be able to especially it was classical stuff because everybody so mostly knows all the classical music that you play in the piano.

And I actually think that helped me in hindsight, and I now know if I try to learn something and I use AI, I don't learn it anywhere near as.

Efficiently, No, because you're not engaging all those brain circuits essentially.

And I think what you said there was a great point is that you've got that immediate feedback from your mum.

Yeah, right, And we know that if you're making mistakes as you learn, then you're much more likely to retain that information.

Think of it like this.

Think of a time in your life where you made a bad mistake.

You know what you did wrong, You remember that in absolute clarity, you're not going to make that mistake ever again.

And what's happening there is that when you've made a mistake, your brain is increasing the neurochemicals that are involved in attention, so that way you pay more attention because you've just made a mistake, right, so you want to know and you want to focus on how to do it properly.

So you've increased these neurochemicals that increase your attention.

They make you a bit anxious, you feel a bit uncomfortable.

It's not a nice feeling.

But then you repeat it and then hopefully you get it right.

Then when you get that right, because you've repeated it.

We've got these other neurochemicals that based like dopamine for example, that basically say, hey, you've done it right, now, let's commit this to memory.

So making mistakes makes you pay attention, and then doing it right afterwards means you commit that to memory much more easily.

It's basically the perfect cocktail of events.

That's why gamifying learning is so useful, because you make a mistake, you quickly learn from it, and then you do it right and you can.

So that reward process was obviously designed in an evolutionary sense for us to remember what it is we just learned exactly, it sort of seems.

And if you're choosing to do a learned language, it's better sort of maybe to learn it in a group, or to be learning it with someone you can go to speak to after you learned it, like say, for example, in my case, if I'm learning to speak Greek, which is what I used to do.

I used to go then and sit down with my dad on a weekend and try, especially in the early days, awkwardly to speak to have a conversation with him in Greek.

And then of course my dad would hate it if I say a word wrong, and he would pick me up on it.

So it seems like if you're looking for efficiency anyway, and you want to be successful learning a language, seems like have a teacher, take notes, do plenty of practice, and then go and talk to someone about it who knows what the hell is going on.

Yeah, so they're going to sort of critique you, yes, and be prepared to make those mistakes embrace them.

It feels uncomfortable, but uncomfortable, it's just the way that your brain is preparing you to learn and to be better than the person you were five minutes ago.

Yeah, that's interesting.

So in other words, be prepared to go and prosecute what it is you've learned and make a mistake.

Lean into the discomfort.

That's the But that discomfort is one of the things that actually stops people from undertaking the task.

That's right, And it makes me feel really sad because we've especially I look at so many students and I see that that discomfort will make them turn away from the learning and then they just won't try it anymore.

So if we make a mistake and then we walk away, remember our brain is basically trying to be a sponge in that moment.

So if we walk away, we're going to learn to associate that anxiety with failure and then never learning how to do whatever it was we were trying to learn.

So we're teaching ourselves to associate failure with more anxiety, and we will.

It's like this never ending loop.

And so that's because you talked about when you get it right or when someone corrects you, and then you repeat with the correction and they go, yeah, well done, it feels good.

You feel good right, yeah, yeah, so you get the.

Reward and the brain says, let's learn remember, yes, yeah.

Keep going.

So but maybe round the other way too.

If you say I'm just too anxios aout so I can't say it and then you stop the process, maybe the brains rewards you again, says, Okay, you're not anxious anymore.

That makes me.

I'll reward you for that.

Like it's sort of because you lose the anxiety.

You lose that anxiety and all of a sudden, I don't know whether it flushes your brain with dopamine or something, but like he was sort of relieved.

Yeah, is that a reward?

The relief, the feeling of relief, Is that a reward a brain is a brain rewarding you for relief or with relief.

I don't know the answer to that.

It's interesting because if that is the case, then you become someone who will always avoid the tough shit and you will never advance.

Yeah, and maybe part of that is to do with life conditioning.

Like if you're constantly experiencing hardship in your life and you've told you no good and you're constantly stressed, then you might move to avoiding things as a way of avoiding that pain.

So when you just says really important thing is stress.

So when you talk about stress, there are good stresses and bad stress.

Some stress is good for you, so like lift and weight, Like a certain stress on your muscles is actually good for muscles because it helps maintain strength and bulken that sort of stuff.

I guess the same applies to your neurons in your brain.

When do you know that the stress is overwhelming and no good for it?

Which just like like I know in the gym, if I go and try to bend stress one hundred and fifty killers, that's stress is no good for me, and that's going to tear.

I'm going to tear something going to get damaged.

But when it comes to the brain, how do you know.

So there's two different things to think about.

There's you can have too much stress in the moment and you can also have too much stress for too long.

So let's say too much stress in the moment when you're feeling anxiety.

So, really, our brain has this optical level of function, right, It wants a certain amount of these neurochemicals to pay the most attentions.

So if we think of stress as a way of paying attention to what's important in the moment.

So if you've got these neurochemicals that just the right amount, then you will perform better.

Studies say that you will perform better if you have that right amount of stress going on.

If you have a bit too much, then that's when you move into anxiety and your performance goes down.

Overwhelmed, that's right.

And that's what we see when we see these fleets who let's say they're playing basketball and there's an easy shot, you like, they know how to do that, it's an easy shot, may cook it, but they miss it.

Right, that's because that optimal level of hormone it's actually gone a little bit too high.

There's a bit too much cortisol, there's a bit too much more adrenaline, and they've gone out of that optimal range, and that's why you end up with performance anxiety.

Right, So in the moment, if you're a little bit too stressed, then your performance will go down.

Well, given we're talking about learning and learning as a really good lever for a better lifespan, how do you how would you say that we should assuming we're learning a language or doing a musical instrument, assuming we want to now repeat, in other words, perform, but like an athlete, but we've got to perform what we've learned.

It might be a sentence, it might be playing a piece that you just learned.

How do we how do we manage that anxiety or how do we manage that level of cortisol or whatever it is as apartment around my brain that allows me to do it successfully as opposed to being overwhelming.

Mindset mindset matters.

I don't know what mindset means.

Literally, just what you're thinking about the situation.

So for example, there was a study done by Dr Crumb I think she was in Harvard at the time, and I really love this study.

They essentially had a group of managers, and they told some of the managers that stress does all these great things.

It basically allows you to increase your performance.

It allows you to be the best version of yourself.

You will perform better.

And then they told the other group essentially your stuff.

Yeah, the other things about stress, which are true, but they're not exciting or positive necessarily.

And the ones who realize that stress is good.

You know, my heart is beating faster because it's getting more oxygen to my brain and to my muscles, and my palms are sweaty because it's also part of that response.

And I'm breathing faster because it's also getting more oxygen into my lungs to my brain.

Then people who knew that performed better and they released less of that core result.

They're released just the right amount, right, not too much, not too little.

So really, your mindset has so much power to control how you respond to things.

And so if you go into a situation and you say, oh, I stuffed up.

You know this is my fault, then you're going to have more than the optimal amount.

You're more likely to be anxious, and therefore you're more likely to perform worse in these situations.

I think we really underestimate the incredible power of our mindset, and we call them belief effects, how we believe something should be and how it should turn out.

It has so much power to influence our physiology right at the cellular level.

That's interesting.

So I was just thinking to myself then, when you were talking about the role of mindfulness in as a practice, and I know it's over use and over talked about, but just being aware of what anxiety might be or what not being able to control, not being able to rest your mind, your thoughts sort of coming towards you, and just accepting that, well it's anxiety, that's fine, or it's a shame, that's fine, they're normal things.

But just let them come through and then let them go out again, that process of mindfulness practice.

And therefore probably this takes us into another realm.

But in terms of learning and memory, and I will talk about sleeping, but in terms of learning memory, how important is it then, therefore, to maybe practice mindfulness or meditation, let's say, on a daily basis to help you learn better.

Yeah, I mean, there's absolute good evidence there that if you're practicing mindfulness, then you're going to have been slightly less stressed, so therefore less likely to be anxious.

It also is associated with a bigger hippocampus, a bigger learning and memory center in the brain.

Is that the part of the brain whether we do learning and hpper campus.

Yeah, so, I mean there's lots of that's right.

So people who practicing these things have a bigger hipo campus, that's right.

Yeah, So that that.

Sort of makes sense to me because everyone keeps telling this.

You know, in a day you should do blah blah blah, exercise, sleep, nutrition, you know, meditation, practice, learning for longevity, you know, et cetera.

And I wonder whether or not we none of us know the reason why I've got to do all those things.

We just say, Okay, I take that they're all transactions, but they're not connected.

But they are connect the should be connected.

So maybe the meditation mindfulness is a way of learning better or just improving your chances of learn of learning.

And so instead of sort of getting very stressed out about it because you know, you know, I've gone through these processes and I remember one time when my kids were younger, used to take them to Greek school, and you know, all the kids and myself, and I used to do it too, and iced to go through the school books, of the Greek school books, and I got to a period period where I got a bit more complex and I and I had so much going on in my life workwise, and it just got too hard.

I gave it up because I had too many other things going on in my life.

I didn't practice some meditation those days.

Today I reckon I could do it with meditation.

And I guess what you're saying to me is that the reason these people say do all these parts in a day every day is to make the overall experience better.

That's one way of thinking of it.

Because you said xcize getting blood to the brain, you don't going to get blood and all those other things you talked about, what do you call them, the chemicals.

Brain derivenure, a trophic factor.

Factor, all those good chemicals for the brain.

It's not just marketing.

Need to go to Jim do some resistance work, or market you need to go and do a zone four, zone five run or row whatever.

It's not just that as a transaction.

It is all part of the overall plan.

I find it really interesting how a lot of the religions in the world have these practices which are essentially like mindfulness, like prayer, having gratitude, and they I mean, this is kind of an innate wisdom because actually, like things that we've we now know the science has backed up that it has these beneficial effects.

On the round because you've been now look at the brain and an MRI machine.

Yeah, but it's interesting that like, actually there's a there's a beautiful innate wisdom in that.

You want you wonder how the hella walk this stuff out, especially you know, the Hindu population around and Buddhism as well, in the Tibetans, et cetera.

Around mindfulness of meditation.

You look at someone like the Dalai Lama, I don't know, he's fairly old, is it probably late eighties, and he's saying I actually read a note the other day where he said he thinks he thinks he'll live to one hundred and twelve or something like that, which is interesting.

But he's I've seen studies or I've read about studies where they've put his brain on a RI machine and he's hipper, campus is much beiger than the average person, and how he can actually close everything down through meditation.

He can just pretty much put his brain into stop mode, where's there's no energy being u there's no activity, nothing.

He's just And that's not based on he didn't do this based on science.

He's done this based on thousands of years of fourteen dollar alarmers.

He's a fourteenth dollar alarm or I think, and yeah, he's based on that.

That what they've worked out.

In a religious sense, he also talked about gratitude.

I'm glad to raise gratitude as a as a as one of the elements of mindfulness.

But how important is it too?

And prayer generally and not I'm not trying to get religious here, but like prayers is a full meditation for me.

If I don't touch on that process of prayer before I go to sleep, I don't go to sleep.

But the moment I started always halfway through off full sleep.

And I don't know and i'll onet of it.

Is that because my brain has become used to thinking Mark's doing this, it is time to go to sleep.

Or is it the prayers, prayer itself, the process itself that makes you fall asleep.

Oh, it could be a bit of all of the above.

So if prayer is kind of a bit like mindfulness.

It's a bit like belief effects, because you're putting yourself into a certain mindset and you're believing that a certain thing will come true, and it's also calming you down.

Then it's going to make the process of falling asleep easier because you'll be more relaxed.

I was thinking about the Dalai Lama point that you made before, and that was a really interesting study that it took a bunch of people who have never done meditational mindfulness before eight weeks thirteen minutes a day, and within those eight weeks, the hippocampus became bigger, So the learning and memori center became bigger.

The prefrontal cortex, the decision making part that allows you to you know, decide things, to pay attention to things, all those things that make us uniquely human, became a little bit bigger as well.

And the stress part of the brain became smaller.

So the amidala became smaller, right, so he became less visceral and aggressive or responsive to things, so less triggered.

I guess you could say, so it has these really profound effects on brain architecture, but then also how we behave in different situations.

That I find that quite fascinating.

So why is it?

I mean, you're a neuroscientists, but why is it We've only seems to me, we population wise I'm talking about, have only maybe in the last two years that it would be really interested in how the brain works.

We've always been really interested in the heart and the lungs and muscles on the liver and the kidneys.

But all of a sudden, everything seems to everything seems to come back to the brain.

It is, well, but why is it only more recently?

Look, it is definitely having a bit of a renaissance, and I think maybe Andrew human is part of that.

You know, He's made it accessible to the bulk of the population and people have started to realize, Wow, learning about why I am the way I am gives me tools to be a better person.

Yeah, and a better person?

Is that about?

Or even just rationalizing, like you know, understanding why you might have reacted in this situation or how to do better in other situations.

I think that's so empowering, Like knowledge is power.

Yeah, totally.

If we could look at we briefly to a better exercise, But can we look at two other aspects or three other aspects of longevity and how important that is to the brain.

And because you know if your brain, if your brain stops, well forget about how fitture, it's not worth living.

Everything else is finished.

Let's too a best sleep.

And in terms of learning or memory, And you mentioned that during this if you sleep properly, and I want to talk about ask you what that means.

But and you're more likely to lay down a memory of something you learned on the previous day.

Well, yeah, let's just look at the architecture asleep.

So we have light sleep, deep sleep, slow wave sleep, and rem sleep.

Of those three, let's say make it.

Let's make it easier mathematically.

Let's just say we're in bed where we go to sleep for ten hours.

Not many people do this, but let's say we've got to sleep for ten hours.

How do I know if I've had enough ramsleep?

How don't know I've had enough deep sleep?

I don't know if I've had enough slow wave sleep?

And how do I know if I've had enough or ten hours of had enough sleep all together?

But how do enough I've had enough of those in order to keep in my memory what I've learned to day?

For well, is there some sort of rule of thumb.

Well, I guess the rule of thumb is the longer that you're asleep, the more of those you'll get get You have more of the deep sleep earlier on in the night, and you have more of the shallow sleep later on in.

The night and in the morning too.

Something.

Yeah, that's right.

So if you think about it like this, if basically every ninety minutes you go in and out of rem sleep into deep sleep every ninety minutes, and in the first part of the night there's more time in the deep sleep, and in the later part of the night slash morning, you're spending more time in this shallow sleep and less in the deep sleep.

So ultimately you get to have these these different processes happening during sleep in different amounts depending on how long you sleep.

But if your people our age, we're aiming for about seven to nine hours on average.

We're all little bit different, but about that that's the aim which we're thinking for most of us.

But the longer you are asleep, the more of those benefits that you get.

So but in terms of laying down your memories or remembering something, memorizing.

Something, okay, that's more in the deep sleep, right, Okay, So let's say you're learning procedural stuff.

So let's say learning a sport or learning information, then that's going to be more in the deep sleep, in the non rem sleep, okay, and more of the emotion processing side of sleep, and the dreaming happens in the rem phase.

So let's say you're an athlete, it's really important that you get that first stage of sleep, deep sleep.

Yeah, but at the same time, you also need the rest as well.

Yeah, So it's physically physically yeah, So I mean it depends on what you're trying to measure.

Really, are you trying to measure that you're becoming better at remembering things, or you're also trying to remember a measure that you're a better human and better able to regulate your emotions.

It's kind of important to actually measure that because we're a whoop ender and actually whop actually on the apple tell you you know, or estimate for you.

It's pretty easy to work out what how long you're asleep for, but estimate to you of that period relative to yourself.

It's not relative to a population, is relative to yourself, whether or not you had a good a good amount of rem or a good amount of deep sleep.

So we wave sleep relative to the night before, the week before, the month before, et cetera.

You know, you can get a bit obsessed with these things, but it also tells you how much lightsleep you had to And it's and I thought to myself, I can just tell you what it's something to me, I'm, on average, in a seven and a half hour average night sleep, I'm getting about three hours of the two combined.

Let's call it restorative sleep and deep sleep.

That seems to me when I feel pretty good.

If I get less than that, fully shit, And it's all about it's it's not all about me.

But it's about my metrics relative to me, not my metrics relative to you or anyone else in the work, because they're all different.

But there would there be an ideal amount?

Would someone say to me a mark, you should be getting at least fifty percent of your seven hours in this sort of restoraed sleep.

Is there sort of rules of thumber and this stuff?

Look, I think you made a really good point with measuring.

So when we have data and that data doesn't match our expectations, So if we think that we haven't had enough sleep, our performance will be worse even if we.

Have well took ourselves into it.

Yeah, so it comes back to that mindset, those belief effects.

So they did studies where they gave people measured all those things and then they lied.

They were like, actually, you haven't had enough sleep.

They had, They told them that they hadn't, and as a result, their performance went down because they thought they hadn't didn't have enough sleep.

Yeah, so that's why it's a bit of a challenge, like you need to be mindful that, try not to let things influence it too much.

If you haven't had enough sleep, tell yourself, I'm doing great, I've had enough.

I can get through today, and you will end up performing a little bit better than you were if you were.

If you're down on yourself and you say, okay, I haven't had enough sleep today, everything is going to go wrong.

Yeah.

It's funny because I've talked to some of the people and I got the same device, and especially for sports people and they have to go and train even if they didn't have a great sleep.

They might have had just had a kid, you know, them and their partner might have been awake all night with a kid, but kick could be sick or whatever, but they're still going to train well.

They might even have to play or perform the next day, and that mindset piece become very important to them because it's very easy to go, oh shit, it's told me that I'm no good and I've got a yellow or a red read as opposed to a green.

Reed.

Trygument's sake, And you're right that those guys, they're blokes that have me talking to They've been telling me that they've had to develop a process whereby they can override that they can do better.

It doesn't really matter.

Yeah, like data is great.

Data is useful, but maybe don't live by it every day to sort of have that data, but don't look at it in the morning and say, Okay, my day day is going to be bad because I haven't had enough sleep.

So maybe choose how often you actually look at it, because do you actually need to know every day that you haven't had enough sleep or that you have Is that necessarily useful on the whole.

It's useful to know trends over time, but on a daily basis, do we need it?

Because it's interesting because I asked AI in relation to this the other day.

When do you know if you run down?

And when does an individual when they rundown?

And I said relative to measurement, you know, let's assume you a device that measures stuff.

And by the way, it's not really measuring.

Is calculating as opposed to measuring.

It's not a clinical measurement.

It's a calculated measurement based on data.

And it said something like what you just said.

It said, if you're trying to work out whether or not you are run down, and you have ten days in a row where your recovery is suboptimal, then you might be getting into that territory, but you should know what it is you did the day before.

You might be overtraining for to say, physically, or you might be overworking physically, so you know you're not necessarily in rundown situation.

But if it continues on is when it becomes a problem.

So you just mentioned, is that if it becomes a trend where your metrics are underperforming, way underperforming what you normally do, what your normal metric is, where your best metrics are or your optimal metrics are, then that's a sort of indication when you run down.

Now, if you're run down, I dare say it's pretty hard to.

Learn, absolutely, and part of it is it's hard to pay attention if you're tired, and also your brain chemicals aren't going to be in that optimal state as well.

What about things like people who have attention deficit disorder, what about they're always sort of scrambling Unfortunately for them, it's tough.

So how do they do they learn?

Can they penalize for learning or that penalized in life to learn, or how do they manage themselves?

Well, I mean it's harder for them to pay attention, but at the same time, if it's something that they're interested in, they can hyper focus.

In fact, it can be the greatest gift because a person with ADHD can I guess, tap into this super focus because they love the thing and they're getting a lot of DOPA mean that their brain is not used to having in those levels and then do perform incredibly and learn very fast.

So it's all about what's relative.

And you know, we have these differences in brain activity, but it can be really advantageous in different societies or in different constructs of the world.

In today's society, where we've got to do turn up at a certain time and do certain things in a certain order, then maybe that can be frustrating or less optimal for an ADHD brain.

But in other circumstances where you don't have those rules and regulations about how you have to spend your time, and if you have the ability to hyper focus for a whole day, then you can actually totally perform incredibly well at whatever it is that you're trying to learn or trying to do.

And often society prescribes for them drugs, like in the US is out of all which is probably being abused to some extent, not abused, but use when it's not needed.

And hear Australia Riddlin and like you know, even one of my own sons was on Riddlin.

I didn't know but at the time when he was twelve.

He's much older now, but you know, I don't know this for the doctor said he needed to take and he found it gave him a lot of assistance.

What happens when people take it and they don't they're not they don't have ADHD, like they think it's an advantage to take this stuff.

At Roland or ad Brittallan, that's their brain.

Yeah, great question.

So if you're not already struggling to pay attention and to focus on things, then look, it will make it easier for you to pay attention to whatever whatever it is that you're working on, but it won't actually translate to better learning and memory.

So it's it's quite interesting.

It's almost a paradox.

So people who take things like ritalin or modaphanil, whatever it might be, we're just what you explained.

Madafinol.

Medafinil is something that was originally developed for the army to be able for snipers to stay wake.

Yes, very similar.

It basically increases a bit of dopamine and more adrenaline.

I've tried.

I tried, and it's actually it winds you up.

Yeah, so it increases your alertness.

So even if you're not someone with ADHD, you will still be more alert and that is measurable.

That's that definitely happens, but it won't translate necessarily to their outcomes.

Most of these studies were done in students, and you know, when you have a student who is taking these but they don't have ADHD, their performance is not only not any better, it might actually be worse.

But they perceive themselves as having done better.

So your perception that you've done better in a test is a real one, but the reality is is that you've probably actually underperformed.

You think you've done well, but you've actually done a little bit worse.

It is more definitely the same as adderall.

We don't get at all here, do we In Australia.

It's an American thing.

I think it's.

The same thing, are they?

I think I know that kids get riddle in here, people get riddle in here.

Adderall is violence, so I have to i'd have to double check that I can't.

But medafinal is not the same thing.

Medfinite is not the same thing.

There's a weightness.

Well, it's actually really activating these similar circuits in the brain.

It's just slightly different mechanisms, but ultimately it's pretty much doing the same thing.

The only difference really is that some of these drugs might release a bit more or might make more dopamine accessible in the brain, or might make a little bit more neu adrenaline accessible in the brain.

But it's just slightly different amounts similar but slightly different.

So if we're talking about the importance of sleep, then we're talking about in terms of learning.

I'm saying now in terms of learning and memory and in terms of the important and assuming that those things are important for brain life span and what I mean by a health span.

So in other words, you live longer with a more health healthy brain.

Not the most healthy brain, but it's healthier if you do that competit.

If you don't do it learning, then you and you look at sleep and you're saying, you know, you've got to get the right amount of sleep, You've got to get the right stages of sleep.

Therefore, it sort of says to me that I've got to go I've got to start to become a bit more structured.

So Mark, maybe now you've just also told me that maybe at the end of day I can't learn as well as again at the beginning of the day we talked about the importance of early morning sunlight.

Were not the importance to the value of it.

So maybe that becomes part of a structure.

So I get it up a certain time within one hour of me waking, I face the sun.

I don't look at the sun.

I face the sun.

I do it for fifteen minutes.

For example, my cortus I was up, I can learn probably better around that period of time.

My learning window definitely isn't eight hours.

I mean not many people can sit around alone for eight hours two three hours.

Look, we have just like we have this sort of rhythm during sleep, we have a bit of a rhythm during the day as well.

So we call it the old trade in rhythm.

So that's a bit contentious.

But about every nineteen minutes you go in and out of minutes in and out of peak alertness.

So that means there's going to be a window about thirty minutes in every ninety minute block where you're paying more attention, and then there'll be another thirty minutes where you're really not paying much attention.

So and do you get up and have a coffee?

What do I do when that ninety minutes?

Because that doesn't mean I can only do it for ninety minutes one day.

I can do it.

Again multiple times throughout the day.

So what do we do?

Get up and go for walk?

What do we do?

Meditate?

Do something else?

Be kind to yourself, do the emails that don't require you to be focusing on the task, make a phone call, yep, or run up and down the stairs and don't look your in sacram Yep, no, yes, definitely.

In fact, that's a good one that you've pointed out, because memories and things that we learn, they're actually they're not very solid.

That once you've just learnt something new, those memories are really kind of fragile.

And so if you then go and do something else like scrolling on your phone.

Then rewarding yourself for that, yeah, then.

There's actually a bit of evidence that you're more likely to actually then erase those things that you've just learned.

So if you're going to take a break, take an actual break and allow yourself to kind of contemplate the things that you've just been trying to learn, rather than actually scrolling your phone and then actually taking completely different information.

Yeah, that makes sense to me because I've tried that.

And you know, when you start looking at special socials, you get this massive distraction and then you actually lose your momentum.

Very very fast because the phone is giving you dopamine.

Remember when you're learning and you do things right, you're releasing a bit of dopamine.

It's basically a signal that says, Yep, done it right, learn this, But you're scrolling your phone and getting a little bit of dopamine from seeing the cat video that you like or the I don't know, the other video that is appealing to you.

Then you're releasing dopamine, but it's not associated with something useful to you.

You might learned something, but it's not useful.

Yes, it's definitely not the thing you've been trying to study your work on.

So so we go get up in the morning.

Do that going to give you something like perhaps sort of activate your system circadium system to start to learn.

Maybe you do your learning the morning.

You do it in you know, ninety minute blocks, get up and go for a walk.

You've got to we'll talk about nutrition in a second.

I'm assuming you know, if I want to talk about coffee and food.

Then at a certain time at night, you've got to recognize the fact that there's not and your cicading rhythm, melotone and everything's come up and it says, well that's it says your brain.

Market's trying to go to sleep, and you know, all your all your receptors and your brain just exhausted and saying, giving me arrest, and it's time to sort of lay down some memories, and we want you know, this type of sleep, you know, you know, restorative sleep broken up in the two parts, they're not going to get up in the morning.

But you said exercise.

Really I got to so I know, I'm going to go to sleep a certain time because I've got to want to wake a certain time, because i want to go to do my exercise at a certain time, so I can go back to my learning.

Whether you're a student or you're a one in a business doesn't really matter, none of those you'd be just learning.

If I we will talk about expos mem But if if I'm in that position, are we then leading a very structured life all of a sudden and does it become sort of like, I don't know, not as much fun.

Of course, it's not as spontaneous.

How do you weave these things?

In Sponsoran eighty you know, I don't know, you know, just having it, not having such a regimented life, or if you want to optimize, you you've got to be regimented.

Is that right?

Well, Look, our body loves routine.

We are amazing pattern recognition machines.

So if we get into the habit of doing certain things at a certain time, of day.

Our body will prepare us for that even if when not doing it.

Here's an example.

So if you always have a coffee at eight am, then your body will anticipate that you're going to have coffee at eight am, and if you don't, you'll have a headache.

Wow.

The reasons that is coffee is a vasoconstrictor basically makes your blood vessels become a little bit smaller, right, and you get less blood flow to the brain, which sounds a bit paradoxical, but anyway, you get slightly less blood flow to the brain after you have a coffee, so your brain then tries to respond to that by stretching those blood vessels out again.

It sends signals to the blood vessels to make them.

Open up a bit.

So let's say you haven't had your coffee, but your body is used to having it at eight am.

Your blood vessels will automatically dilate a bit because they're expecting the caffeine to hit but there's no caffeine there, so your normal blood vessels become even bigger, and then you get the headache, which is the.

Same eff effect after alcohol.

Yeah, so it's really routine.

Is great for our bodies.

But you know, spontaneo is fun as well, And I guess the thing is.

Right, How do you balance these says up there?

I just say our Friday night's my cheat nine, or Saturday night's my cheat nine, or weekends and my cheat time when I want to get a bit when I feel like it.

I don't learn, I mean, how do what would you suggest?

Look?

I think understanding the principles are key and then you can just fit it into your life.

So for me, for example, I don't like exercising in the morning, No thanks, it's not for me.

But if I know that I have to learn something, then I will try and do a little bit of X, even just fifteen minutes beforehand, and then my ability to focus on the things that I'm about to learn is so much better and I'm much more likely to retain that information for the long term.

So if I'm going to be doing a workshop at two PM, then I can do that before.

Then if I'm trying to learn in the morning, then maybe exercising in the morning is a better thing to do.

I mean, not your metaphor session.

You know, you're just saying it's just something to get your blood floaming.

That's right.

The studies have been on saying twenty minutes, so that's what the studies say, but the reality is it's probably not that much.

Trust your body.

Five minutes might be enough, just really getting that heart rate up, because when you're getting your heart rate, sorry, not just heart rate, but it's increasing blood float to the brain, it's increasing the amount of dopamine in the brain, it's increasing the amount of more adrenaline in the brain, an acetal colin, these all of these are really important for creating an environment in your brain to help you focus on what you're about to do next.

And of course to have energy apart from those stimulants.

To have energy, you've got to have the right mannutrition because you know, you're your brain, like every other cell in your body, has has to produce ATP in a little area called the mitochondria within your cell and PU the cell.

Were billions of these things we probably I don't know, maybe more, but you've got to You've gotta have the right sort of chemistry within your body to produce the various things that help produce energy, which is AHP at the end of the day, and it comes from ATP at the end of the day.

So in terms of nutrition, because we've covered off learning and routine and structure, and you know all the things that we hear everybody talking about, meditation, sunlight, exercise to stimulate ourselves.

We know about the ninety minutes.

We know we've going to get some sleep to lay down our memories and to recuperate and recover our brain.

But we've got to eat the right amount of food and the right types of food.

Would it be fair to say it's very difficult to learn if you're just eating shit all the time?

Absolutely, you were just I mean.

Getting super processed food five times a day, every day of the week, drink and booze every night, smoke and Siggy's vaping.

What does that stuff do to our ability to learn?

So many elements there where do I start?

Okay, maybe first things first that if you've got high levels of insulin, then it's associated with slightly less good brain function as a result of having to a sugar Yeah, so if you have a high sugar breakfast then and you have high levels of insulin, your ability to learn goes down.

So having a breakfast full of complex carbs that are not broken down easily.

So let's say I don't know whole oats or something, then that's.

A good one.

That's a good one.

Yeah.

But if you're having I won't name the name, but if you're having some sort of sugary sort of cereal.

Yeah, your performance will be much worse so ms of learning, in terms of learning and attention and focus.

So that's one thing to consider.

There's also the effect of those foods on your microbiome, so I mean the gut brain connage.

Yeah, the gut brain connection is really a big thing that we're coming to learn to be important.

Now.

Some of the examples are, Look, our gut microbiome are not only they're helping breakdown food and creating vitels and that sort of thing.

They're also releasing other metabolites that are really important for our body function.

So some of these key metabolites are certain fatty acids that make our brain work a little bit better and they help protect integrity of our brain.

So it's not just that we've also got the effect of these gut bacteria on our brain directly through what we call the vagus nerve.

So the vegas nerve is basically this nerve that connects our gut to our brain, and those signals go really both ways.

Now, there've been studies that have shown that if you take certain probiotics then it affects your mood, for example, and if you were to cut that vegas nerve, then those benefits, the benefit of mood is lost.

So it kind of it's a bit like what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.

Because the vegas nerve, which is sort of at the back of the year, right, saw around this territory on your neck.

It's when we sort of helps us with our paras parasympathetic response or how fast the heartbeats.

Is what you're talking about, is here, right, But it's sort of there, nerves just there.

It's sort of it's everywhere, so everywhere from here up as I understand, it all connecting up and it has these little detectors on little signal grabbers, and it signals in your heart or your lungs, or your gut or wherever arms muscles and if those they all sort of check in, check in with the nerve itself, and the nerve then sends a message up to your brain.

Is that what we're talking about?

And we never talk about the vagas of why there we don't talk about the vegas nerve very often?

What is it?

But we just talk about everything else?

But we very really And is that would that be considered as the vegas have considered to be part of the brain.

Yes, it's what we call a cranial nerve.

Cranial nerve, right, because is that the back here somewhere?

Is that?

But why why don't we as soon as we're getting a lot of coverage lately the vague nerve and it seems as though it responds to things like saunas a responsive coal coal, cold bas or cold immersion, sees respond to sunlight at certain times the day morning has one effect even as another effect.

How come a's all of a sudden become a big deal or is it probably in your what it's always been a big deal?

But or is it just because, like you said earlier, people like Huban and that are sudden to talk about it.

What does that?

Yeah?

Look, I mean you can think of the vagus nerve as if it's the connector between the brain and the rest of the body.

Essentially, then it's constantly giving instructions to the rest of the body and it's also receiving all of that input from the sauna, from the exercise, from the other things, and it's taken that information to the brain.

So it's really this conduit of really important information about what is happening inside our body, how we're feeling, and it's really influencing what's going on in our brain as a result of.

That, because it does hang around your gut.

One of the connections the gut and I think what you're saying is the nutrition question or the nutrition plank in longevity relative to learning and keeping our brains healthier.

I think what you're saying, and correct me if I'm wrong, is that the Vegas novel sent a bad message to the brain if you're filling your gallup with say.

Sugar, essentially, of course, it's also releasing other chemicals, insulin, all those sorts of things aren't affecting brain function as well.

I guess in terms of other foods and other supplements or other things that are really good for brain health.

I mean, there's been a lot of studies that say taking this supplement can be good for you, but the best evidence comes from deficiencies.

So bear with you taking yeah, or what your body doesn't have enough of So for example, if you have low levels of amiga threes in your body, you're aiming for about eight percent.

If you've got like say five percent or three percent.

If you're a vegetarian, you're more likely to.

Have really low levels.

Then you're more likely to have dementia forty nine percent more likely to have dementia.

If you have low levels of vitamin D, you're forty nine to sixty three percent more likely to get dementia.

These NeuroD generative diseases over time.

Coaling as well, really important.

Cheme is colling.

He says, a set of coaling before which comes it gets from the vasa.

But what is that?

What is colin?

Never hed of that.

Col Colin is in chemical, it's in meats.

Our body makes it and it is made into a seedle.

Coaling this neurochemical neuro transmitter.

You're a modulator that improves attention.

It's really important for movement, lots of different body processes.

It's definitely important in the mitochondria because it's it's part of the energy process.

Acet of colon Is that the right way?

Well, I think you're creating.

Creating maybe with threating, but so, but acet of colon, you don't naturally have anybody have to ingest it.

You do make it, but it's you need to get more of it from your diet, right.

So, and you know all of these things are really heavily found in fish and meat.

Right.

And people often say, well, we haven't always been eating fish, but actually we have.

We always had to live near a water source, right.

You saying we have some we haven't always eaten fish.

Yeah, but actually we historically we have.

It's bad fish.

It's actually only more in modern times that we've stopped eating.

Lots of fish to catch big beast.

Yeah.

And you know these things that are in a mega three, So things like EPA and DHA, they are used in every cell.

It basically makes the outer wall of the cell essentially, and if you don't have the right amounts of EPA and DHA, then it influences how well cells work.

So EPA is really important for mood, but DHA is really important for the structure of brain cells, especially like most of the brain is actually fat, things like DHA.

Right, And I guess the way that you could think of it as working is if the outside of a cell is a wall some things have to go into the cell to help, Yeah, a brain cell or any cell really, but some things have to go in nutrients, food, whatever it might be, and some of the waste has to go out.

So you've got these little doors that basically allow some things to go and some things to go out.

Dha is a bit like the grease on the door that allows that door to open and close a lot better.

So if you don't have enough DHA, then it's hard for those things to go in and out of cells, So waste builds up, you don't get enough energy.

Ultimately, that affects how your brain functions.

And that's and that's normally you buy that in a capsule or something like that that's usually has it's called EPA DHA.

Yes, yeah, yeah, that's that's an example.

Yeah, And so if you want if you're more interested in improving your mood, then you might want to have higher amounts of EPA, But if you just want general brain health, then higher amounts of DHA for example.

But ideally try and get good amounts of both.

Yeah, that's interesting a gram or two.

So nutrition is key to learning, and memory exercise is key to learning.

A memory sleep is key to learning a memory, and learning and learning is key to keeping the brain.

It for longer exactly, and keeping your brain healthier for longer.

So the more we use our brain, the more resilient we are to diseases of aging and I guess especially neurodegenerative diseases.

And the reason for that is it's something called cognitive reserve.

So the more that we do things, the more reserve we have in our brain.

Think of it like a battery pack.

The bigger our battery is, then the more we can I guess run the battery down before we notice that things are going wrong.

Okay, so let's say there's a person who is going to get dementia anyway, they're going to get later in life if they have more of this cognitive reserve, so it can really help buffer even if you're already going to get it through.

We don't know, no one ever, No one ever knows for sure, but there are things that we can do to reduce the risk of dementia and also to delay help sooner it comes into our life.

That's really interesting because some it's funny, you know, I know people who are in there mid seventiesn't older and I know people in the mid seventies and older, and what I notice is that they tend to stop it's called it supplementing themselves.

They tend to have not such great diets for some reason.

It's not like it's a I don't need to eat that.

I don't need to eat that.

And I'm not saying they have to do it a lot, but they just decide not to not to eat the things that they should be eating.

They also say, I can't excise someone, it's too much trouble.

And sleep is probably not that bad a thing.

But those two things, exercise and nutrition, and I'm not saying like having the world's healthy s meal, but there are some things you need to have a lot of, just say e P A Dha.

I find that fascinating that older people tend they're the ones that need it the most.

And they because they're brain cells have sort of you know, become efficient and everything's under control, and they tend to so we don't need the brain says, we don't need this brain cells anymore.

They're just taking our energy when we don't need them.

So the body's really efficient, gets rid of things we don't need, use it to lose it and all of a sudden they become they get a deficit in their brain cells neurologically, and then they leave themselves open to get Alzheimer's or some other dementia risk.

How are we going to change society?

I mean, that's what this shows about.

But how are we going to change the way people think?

I mean, what is it like?

And we've got to get to those people or get to their kids to tell their parents and their grandparents.

Have you thought about that?

You're an euroscientists.

I know you understand the science of this stuff, but have you ever thought to yourself, maybe Marbly Goosa goes further and or is it a government thing?

What do you think is a way we can actually improve the health of our minds across the population.

Markets people like you.

It's getting the message out Knowledge is power and letting people know that there are things that we can do to be the best versions of ourselves and to optimize our health and to optimize our longevity everything in the long term.

Yeah, but the problem is little.

You know, people turn sixty five in this country, Okay, you don't have to work anymore.

We don't want you to work anymore.

You can now access to super innovations, so they're actually encouraging them to stop working, stop learning, stop you know, stimulating their brains.

They and then they sort of put them into retirement and they say you're go and play golf and which sort of okay, but nothing wrong with it.

But it'smit, you know, it's not really It's good as a pastime, but it's not nothing else.

It's not going to make you live longer.

I just don't understand the process, to be honest with you, I don't understand the lack of thought that now what we know about science and now what you guys are telling the world.

You know, and you're getting a much bigger platform today than you've ever had before.

Neuroscience has got a much biger platform that's ever had in the past ever, but only some people know about it.

I know this show is important, but you know, we get to quite a few people.

But like at the end of the days, I said, as a government thing, I actually think government have a responsibility.

As a government, you say, to give us the best, to be the best possible version of ourselves.

We need to do these things.

I think part of the standard of living in a country that's run by government is for us to be the best possible version of ourselves.

And clearly the best possible version of ourselves is to live longer and better.

Yeah, it comes down to brain economy and brain capital.

Like if we realize that good brain health allows us to perform better in society, it allows us to be better citizens, it allows us to work with people more, allows us to be able to support one another more.

Then and be less of a drag on society exactly.

It's actually, it actually is so good for the economy.

Like when we measure things, we call it social production, but the basically the amount that people give that aren't it isn't measured in dollars, So things like caring for grandchildren, happiness.

Yeah, yeah, the things that we do, volunteering, all of those things contribute so much to the economy.

And I have a colleague who's working in this, but I can't remember the numbers off the top of my head.

But it's a huge amount that we actually contribute, particularly in retirement, because you're doing those things because you're not necessarily working, but you're contributing in other ways.

Actually engaging those processes and doing that is doing so much for the economy.

And if government really looked into that and said, hey, focusing on brain health means that people can do more of this indirect work for the world or.

For our nation, our own communities.

Yeah, then that has a huge tremendous payoff.

But we've moved so far away from the way our bodies are designed.

You know, we used to live in communities where we supported one another.

You know, we would do things that we call it pro social behavior.

We support one another.

Take the clothes of line because running is the next one neighbors down the.

Shops, that's right.

And through those things, we're experiencing gratitude.

We are we are helping one another.

We're allowing the community to work better.

We're having social engagement.

When you're engaging with others socially, then you're releasing things like oxotoastin in the brain, which makes you feel closer to that person, but also it reduces your stress hormones as well.

So hanging out in a community setting and helping one another is incredibly good for the brain.

And doing all of these things like eating well, you know, having those a mega threes, having those other things in our diet has profound effects on the way that we can actually integrate into society and help one another in society.

Well, but I think I agree with you, and I'd like to see some additional measures in how our country's going as opposed to just GDP inflation, unemployment, productivity.

Be good to see some other measurements.

Some countries like Bhutan have happiness measurements, and so I think Finland does too.

But what you're saying is quite interesting because it means we've got to operate as a community.

But one of the things that phones are doing today is there actually dividing community through social media in that we become much more individualized and I can you know, younger people they consider room.

The other day, I was driving past somewhere.

There's four boys at a bus stop.

And the four boys obviously mates.

They're all got the same school uniform, one looked all around the same age.

But everyone of them just sitting there looking at their phone.

Not one of them was talking to the other one.

Whereas when I was three in my mates, when I was at age, i'd have been kicking the ball, pushing somebody, laughing at somebody with skylarking or whatever the case, and be but these kids, and I was stopped at the licesn and I was watching him for a minute or so, not one of them got up to engage with the other one.

They might have engaged through the social medium shared it, but there was no discussion.

Is that dangerous for us?

From a neuroscience perspective, It actually really scares me because if we think about what you're doing when you're on social media, actually, let's think about what you're not doing.

If you're spending say seven hours on social media during the day, that's seven hours that you're probably sitting down.

It's seven hours that you're not engaging in exercise.

It's seven hours a day that you're not having face to face com stations.

It's seven hours a day that you're not actually learning how to talk to people.

Your brains are developing, that's right engagement.

You are absolutely developing those parts of the brain that are involved in language and texting, right, that's no doubt about it.

But the other things don't have a chance to develop.

And it's really this use it or lose it philosophy.

Really that if you're not practicing these skills, or let's say you're a younger person, you've never actually developed them to begin with, then that has catastrophic consequences.

So, like we grew up in a world where we learn how to read each other's body language and how to tell tone of voice and read all of those indirect cues about how to talk to someone, if you've only been communicating via text, then you would walk into a situation and just see a neutral queue, like just someone being relaxed as they might.

They must hate me.

So you walk into these situations and you feel a lot of social anxiety because you haven't developed those parts of the brain that allows you to read those social situations.

And it also changes, I guess, the way that you feel about yourself.

So if you're used to posting, you know, the highlight reel of your life on social media, and you get likes from it, then you kind of feel like people like you for this online version of you and they don't actually know the real you inside, and that creates loneliness because you feel like no one actually knows me, no one actually likes me.

And so that's why even though we can be so connected over the phone, we're actually can be so deeply lonely.

Well, I think it's probably one of the reasons why the Minister at the time for Science at the time set up the Superstars of STEM, which is a science Technology, Engineering maths of which you're a member, one of the first cohort.

And to some extent, I think it was that music ed music is not along with the Minister of a science for a whole lot of reasons.

But he's still a member of Parliament.

And I think that it's great.

It is great, it's a good thing.

But I think we need to have the media.

I'm doing it, but media, as mainstream media needs to highlight this sort of stuff more because we need to hear more people with a voice, with a voice of authority.

By the way, I have no voice of authority.

I can talk to people with voice authority, but you're good authority and you're as Superstars of the Superstars of STEM group cohort.

And I think there's a new cohort now.

But I see there is a responsibility coming from that.

And I think that instead of prime ministers and treasurers and everyone getting I'm talking about you know, we stopped this mine and we stopped that.

That's great.

We should hear rather too, but they should be up there showcasing what you guys are doing.

You're you're one part of the Superstar stem.

There's lots of other types of scientists and everything in there, but when it just comes just a good example is how can we measure Australia's happiness?

So, how can we measure Australia's readiness to live longer?

Or how can we measure Australia's Australians as a And these are nation building concepts.

How do we build a nation with the best standard living in the world.

Forget about a resources and a sort of stuff.

Just happy people who are who know how to practice gratitude and who are going to live a long way a long time, you know, out live all the blue zones of the world.

We should be austraight should be the blue zone of the world that we should be given where we live.

Yeah, there's this concept called brain capital which it's been embraced in Europe and we really need to embrace it here.

It's really measuring the benefits that you can get from having good brain health.

That's for a nation, brain capital for the nation, so that they're actually are they doing these measurements in Europe?

Are they I feel like I should know the details of this, but I can't remember it.

Sorry, it doesn't matter.

But it's a good I know it's off the topic and everything.

But and because I'm sort of apologized for developing beyond this because it's a little bit political, but I think it should be government policy.

Yes, and absolutely I'm going to I look up this brain capital stuff because I'm going to push for this and sort of say, well, how do we measure our brain capital?

We want to measure our bloody thing in this country.

We measure everything Australia, your statistics measures stuff.

Every single day something gets published about measurement like and some like crazy detail on some of this stuff, but no one's ever said how we going as a nation intellectually.

And this is something that we need to introduce next year.

One dent, the international brain community, neuroscience community is working on this and we want to create this blueprint for Australia.

Australia should be one of the like if it was an OCD initiative for brain capital Australia, Like if there was, Australia should be one of the first countries to take up as a member of the OCD, like if the OCD came out tomorrow with a practice rule in relation to how social media works or shouldn't, or when people should be banned from social media for age ye on, Australia's member would be one of the first countries to talk about Or if we talked about the environment and they always CD come up some of them from an environment, Australia would be one of the first countries to do this.

So if the always you know, internationally, someone comes up with something about brain capital, Australia should be one of the first countries to talk about it.

Yes, let's do that.

I'm totally I'm gonna I'll tigle them up.

Good to see Leada, Great to see you, Thanks for having me.

Thank you.