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 Being in a better frame of mind, exercising, eating right, being calm, stress, all of that changes things physiologically that make your whole body better at fighting cancer.
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That we agree on, that's measured.
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SPEAKER_00
Now, let's go back to the brain.
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SPEAKER_01
 Welcome to the School of Greatness.
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SPEAKER_01
My name is Lewis Howes, a former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur.
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SPEAKER_01
And each week we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness.
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SPEAKER_01
Thanks for spending some time with me today.
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SPEAKER_01
Now let the class begin.
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SPEAKER_02
 You've worked as a brain surgeon and neuroscientist for a while now, and so you're an expert on all things the brain and also the mind.
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SPEAKER_02
Trying to be.
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SPEAKER_02
Which I think is kind of fascinating.
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SPEAKER_02
Or you're in a constant studying process of it.
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SPEAKER_02
 I'm curious, the first question I have is, what do you think is the biggest factor, since you've studied both the brain and the mind, what is the biggest factor that holds us back from thinking in terms of abundance and thinking in terms of positivity?
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Why do we stay stuck on negative thinking, negative thoughts, and limited mindsets so much?
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SPEAKER_00
 Yeah, that's a big question.
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SPEAKER_00
So the simple answer is that the stories we've been told about what's going on in our skull, they're just wrong.
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SPEAKER_00
Interesting.
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SPEAKER_00
Okay, so the first thing is there's no wires.
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SPEAKER_00
 They were not hardwired.
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SPEAKER_00
There are no gears.
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SPEAKER_00
So let's go backwards.
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SPEAKER_00
Way back when, like ancient Egypt, they thought it was just like flan or something.
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The soul was in the heart.
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And I believe, you know, I can see that.
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SPEAKER_00
I've opened chest before for cardiac surgery and it's fierce.
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And what they would do is stick a straw up the nose and slurp out the brain, just get rid of it.
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SPEAKER_00
So for a while, I could understand the complete misunderstanding.
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SPEAKER_00
 Then when sort of like, you know, speakeasies and industrial revolution, all the pictures about the brain, you see them as gears.
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SPEAKER_00
But modern time, we're starting to think about it as wired.
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SPEAKER_00
I'm wired for this, I'm wired for that.
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SPEAKER_00
You're not wired for anything.
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SPEAKER_00
It's an ecosystem filled with throbbing hundred billion microscopic jellyfish, sparking electricity at each other,
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SPEAKER_00
 trying to approach each other, shaving down pruning, branching, arborizing.
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SPEAKER_00
So when I use those words like arborization pruning, those are neuroscience words in rigorous neuroscience journals.
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SPEAKER_00
But it hasn't sort of made it to pop culture.
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SPEAKER_00
So I think part of what keeps us stuck is that we think, oh, I'm wired this way, or I have to rewire.
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SPEAKER_00
And it's too on-off rather than flows, right?
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SPEAKER_00
 freeway from A to B, it's the way you see a school of birds flow, and they roll over each other, Aurora Borealis.
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SPEAKER_00
That's how thoughts and that's how feelings float through the ether of our minds.
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SPEAKER_00
When you start to understand it like that, then you know every day something new is possible.
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SPEAKER_00
Is it easy?
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SPEAKER_00
No.
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SPEAKER_00
But it's possible.
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SPEAKER_00
So that's the real way to think of your brain, mind,
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SPEAKER_00
 and behavior that it's completely plastic in the sense that you're never the same person just from a moment ago since we've met.
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SPEAKER_02
That's a good introduction to this.
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SPEAKER_02
I'm curious because
0
SPEAKER_02
 You do surgeries on a weekly basis where you open the skull, mostly the top of the skull.
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SPEAKER_00
Well, all different areas.
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SPEAKER_00
It's like ice fishing, so we make spots different.
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SPEAKER_00
Wherever we need to get, we make the hole underneath it so we can get there.
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SPEAKER_02
So it may not be a full top of the skull.
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SPEAKER_00
No, that's in Hannibal Lecter's movie.
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SPEAKER_02
So you're taking little...
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SPEAKER_00
 Yeah, little holes.
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SPEAKER_00
The slickest brain surgeons, meaning who can do it the best, make the smallest hole to get right where you need to, the smallest incision, and do the most, you know.
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SPEAKER_00
The least amount of damage, I guess, to the whole skull.
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SPEAKER_00
Have you ever had to take off the top, the whole top?
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SPEAKER_00
 No, but in trauma, after boxing, sports, car accidents, sometimes we take off two big pancake sizes on the left and right.
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SPEAKER_00
So when the brain is throbbing, you take the lid off.
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SPEAKER_00
But you don't take the whole thing off because you've got a giant vein coming down the middle.
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SPEAKER_00
You can't do the mohawk part.
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SPEAKER_00
 So you take two strips.
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SPEAKER_00
So if you look at, when I travel through South America, you look at the trephonations, the holes in the skulls, they're always on the side.
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SPEAKER_00
You can't make holes in the middle and still live.
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SPEAKER_00
Giant veins splitting the two hemispheres.
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SPEAKER_00
Oh, so that's just in the movies.
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SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
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SPEAKER_00
 That's the silence of the lab.
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SPEAKER_00
But that's a good question, though, that it's a targeted approach.
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SPEAKER_00
You want the patient to feel it the least and wake up the best.
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SPEAKER_02
Right, of course.
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SPEAKER_02
What's been one of the biggest realizations from studying neuroscience but also studying the brain and actually opening up pieces of the skull, looking in there, surgically doing things to optimize it?
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SPEAKER_02
What was one of the big aha moments for you of studying both areas where you're like, wow,
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SPEAKER_02
 There is something that I didn't think was possible that is actually possible for human beings to do.
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SPEAKER_00
Is there anything?
0
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, really good question.
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SPEAKER_00
It ties back to your first question about what holds us back.
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SPEAKER_00
So the thing that shocked me was that we could actually remove parts of the brain and people would go home a week later.
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SPEAKER_00
I'm not saying there isn't some subtle neuropsychiatric issue, but for example, I had a guy come in, he's a framer, and you know, they have the pneumatic, you know, it's not hammer and nails as many people conceive it to be.
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SPEAKER_00
 And a lot of times, when a real recoil's back, they'll pop a nail through their orbit or nose into their frontal lobe.
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SPEAKER_00
This happened.
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SPEAKER_00
And they drive in.
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SPEAKER_00
With a nail in their brain?
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SPEAKER_00
Right.
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SPEAKER_00
So that's the first thing.
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SPEAKER_00
I was like, wait a second.
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SPEAKER_00
No, no, totally.
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SPEAKER_00
I got pictures on my phone that we're not going to show anybody, but you can have a penetrating injury to certain parts of the brain and you drive in.
0
SPEAKER_00
Holy cow.
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SPEAKER_00
So that's the first thing I realized was, so there isn't a...
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SPEAKER_00
 a region in the brain for creativity.
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SPEAKER_00
There isn't a region in the brain for this.
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SPEAKER_00
So the first thing I had to realize was, no, this thing is working as an environment, as an ocean filled with like a kelp forest and jellyfish.
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SPEAKER_00
So if you drop something into the ocean, you're not going to disrupt it.
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SPEAKER_00
There's no spot for something.
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SPEAKER_00
 And that ties back to what I want people to walk away with is that you have to think of your thoughts and feelings and the working of your flesh inside your skull as a garden, as an ecosystem.
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SPEAKER_00
Just because you have one weed or one spike doesn't mean the harmony is disrupted.
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SPEAKER_00
So for example,
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SPEAKER_00
 One frontal lobe we can surgically remove if needed after trauma or tumor, and patients function.
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SPEAKER_00
They drive, they talk on the phone.
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SPEAKER_00
Again, you don't want this.
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SPEAKER_00
One occipital lobe doesn't leave you blind.
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SPEAKER_00
People think, occipital lobe blindness.
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SPEAKER_00
No.
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If I take out a tumor from the right occipital lobe,
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 I just can't trust my left rear view mirror when I drive.
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SPEAKER_00
It's a field cut.
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SPEAKER_00
Your world goes from this to this.
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SPEAKER_00
So when I first started seeing that, because I assumed you hit any part of the brain, it's your dust.
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SPEAKER_02
Because people will say, like, the left side of the brain is for this, and the right side of the brain is for this.
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SPEAKER_02
And I use more of the right side of my brain, and that's why I'm creative or whatever it is.
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SPEAKER_02
Or I'm more analytical because I use this side of the brain.
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SPEAKER_02
Or my fear-based side of the brain is heightened.
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SPEAKER_02
 So you're saying if one part of the brain is under attack, tumor, trauma, a nail, whatever it is, something happens to that part of the brain, it may not hold you back from your creativity or your critical thinking, potentially?
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SPEAKER_00
No.
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SPEAKER_00
Because the rest of your brain can compensate.
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SPEAKER_00
Now, let me give you...
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SPEAKER_00
 That's not true for the entire brain, so let me just go backwards a little bit, but those were the aha moments I had.
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SPEAKER_00
I mean, I'd seen bowels, I'd taken care of patients, AIDS was going crazy in the 80s, I'd seen a lot.
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SPEAKER_00
The first time I saw somebody do brain surgery, I was like, is that possible?
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SPEAKER_00
First, like, can you even remove the skull?
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SPEAKER_00
 And they're like, yeah.
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SPEAKER_00
And then they were, you know, can you remove that tissue to get to the tumor?
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SPEAKER_00
They're like, yeah, you just have to understand how the whole thing works globally in harmony.
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SPEAKER_00
Now, the way I think of the brain is like a mushroom.
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SPEAKER_00
And so you've got the canopy.
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SPEAKER_00
 And all the magic and the thoughts spark from the top, the surface.
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SPEAKER_00
And then they send things down to the stock, which comes deep to your mouth and comes out of the bottom of your skull and then turns in your spinal cord.
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SPEAKER_00
So if when I want to move my left hand, my right brain says, move your left hand.
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It sends down signals.
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They come under my armpit.
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They come under this nerve.
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And that's what happens, right?
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SPEAKER_00
 Now, the lower parts, you hit that, you lose something.
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Something down here.
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SPEAKER_00
The reptilian brain, the spinal cord, every millimeter does something, because it's a lot of, think of it as cables, even though it's not wires, but there are a lot of, we call them tracts, T-R-A-C-T-S.
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There are a lot of tracts that are communicating the things that the canopy thought of.
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SPEAKER_00
 And in that area, if there's a nail injury, you do get a certain deficit.
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SPEAKER_00
But in your thinking, your feeling, your emotions, your love, your fear, it's not a fear spot or a love spot.
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SPEAKER_00
It's sort of, again, the aurora borealis in the worlds of a school of birds just flowing in different energy, right?
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SPEAKER_00
So that's, yeah.
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SPEAKER_00
Exactly.
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SPEAKER_02
That's fascinating.
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SPEAKER_00
So that's, I want people to walk away with, okay, so what that leaves people with is,
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SPEAKER_00
 The fear I have is real.
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SPEAKER_00
 but it's not fixed, it's not wired, it's not permanent.
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SPEAKER_00
And through effort, through exposure therapy, through whatever it is, whatever your process is, that school of fish can flow in a different way.
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SPEAKER_00
That's, to me, that's infinitely powerful, that we are new every day.
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SPEAKER_00
That also gives us the responsibility to hold on to our positive attributes, that we can spiral away every day, we can spiral downward and we can spiral upward any day.
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SPEAKER_02
 And so have you studied brains where someone came in at one point and then maybe a year or five years later you saw them again and you were able to look inside their brain?
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SPEAKER_02
Another good question.
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SPEAKER_02
And what did you see different with the brain?
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SPEAKER_02
I wonder, can we enhance our brain by the way we think and our behaviors and our actions and the way we love ourselves and treat ourselves internally and emotionally?
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SPEAKER_02
Or can we
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SPEAKER_02
 hurt our brain by doing the opposite?
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SPEAKER_00
That's a profound question.
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SPEAKER_00
So again, let me start with a very sort of dramatic example to set the point to the larger takeaway.
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SPEAKER_00
On occasion,
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SPEAKER_00
 For epilepsy that shuts down kids, we have to actually take away half of the brain.
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It's called a hemisrectomy.
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SPEAKER_00
You have to take out half the brain.
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SPEAKER_00
We remove.
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SPEAKER_00
Everybody can Google it.
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SPEAKER_00
It's not like it's something we invented today.
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SPEAKER_00
It's been going on for decades.
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SPEAKER_00
 Because a lot of the people in this space are not actual brain surgeons, we're not getting a lot of those stories from there.
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SPEAKER_00
But there's a tremendous story there that when there's a medical need and the parents ask for it and it helps the child, we can actually make a big incision and take away a frontal lobe, a parietal lobe, an occipital lobe that's sparking seizures.
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And when they wake up, that left side doesn't work.
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Three years later, when you see them,
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SPEAKER_00
 No way.
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SPEAKER_00
This is not even sci-fi.
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SPEAKER_00
They can move, they can function fully again.
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SPEAKER_00
So the remaining hemisphere can reorganize, the linebacker can also be the defensive end, can also be sometimes even on offense.
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SPEAKER_00
 There are different roles those neurons can play.
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SPEAKER_00
And how do we know that?
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SPEAKER_02
Because you've removed half the brain and it's still functioning.
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SPEAKER_00
And we took a picture three years later and that half the brain was still gone.
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SPEAKER_01
Still gone?
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SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
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SPEAKER_00
It didn't sprout back.
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SPEAKER_00
It's not like a liver where we cut half of it off and the mom throws some back, you take a chunk of it and you put it in the kid.
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SPEAKER_00
So that part is still missing, yet that function has returned.
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SPEAKER_00
That's crazy.
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SPEAKER_00
So that's what I mean about different players on the team can cover for each other.
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SPEAKER_00
 I want people to know that that's true plasticity, and it's not rewiring, it's not regrowing, it's actually whatever you have is repurposed.
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SPEAKER_00
And how do they do that?
0
SPEAKER_00
Well, through the electrical flows of the mind.
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SPEAKER_00
There's... Wow.
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SPEAKER_02
So not the electrical flows of the brain.
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SPEAKER_02
Right.
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SPEAKER_02
The electrical flows of the mind.
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SPEAKER_02
Of the mind.
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SPEAKER_00
So what is... People are like, okay, now he's gone.
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SPEAKER_00
Now he's selling crystals in Malibu.
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SPEAKER_00
No, no, no, stay with me.
0
SPEAKER_00
 When you walk what you played right and we talked about that brief daddy know that about you fascinating I think there are a lot of parallels with surgeons and athletes.
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SPEAKER_00
Mm-hmm.
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SPEAKER_00
I think surgeons want to be athletes.
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SPEAKER_00
Yeah became surgeons.
0
SPEAKER_00
Yes the When you walk up to a stadium, there's every single, you know, so I was that so fire.
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SPEAKER_00
That's incredible.
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SPEAKER_00
I've been there.
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SPEAKER_00
It's unbelievable.
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SPEAKER_00
I don't
0
SPEAKER_00
 One thing people understand, it's the world's largest pit.
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SPEAKER_00
You come in near the top, because of the LAX flight path.
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You come in and you look down.
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They dug deep.
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SPEAKER_00
It's amazing.
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SPEAKER_00
It's good to be in my hometown.
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When you walk up and you see the pieces, 70,000 fans, think of those as neurons.
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SPEAKER_00
We have 100 billion.
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SPEAKER_00
Those little magical sparks from the jellyfish that I described, because they look like that.
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They're not squares.
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SPEAKER_00
 So you can talk, people are talking and moving, that's how people conceive or conceptualize the brain.
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SPEAKER_00
But what happens when they roar together?
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SPEAKER_00
That's what I mean about the electricity of the mind.
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SPEAKER_00
There's an energy.
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SPEAKER_00
Right, there's an energy.
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SPEAKER_00
You feel it.
0
SPEAKER_00
It's an epiphenomenon.
0
SPEAKER_00
Okay, now let's build an engine.
0
SPEAKER_00
The parts are there, you fire it up, and there's a hum, right?
0
SPEAKER_00
That's more than just the engine and the pistons.
0
SPEAKER_00
 A symphony you've got the musicians.
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SPEAKER_00
I'm less familiar with this, but they create something bigger That's what I mean about the mind that it's not a it's not a forward backward electricity zinging around on wires It's that thing that happens when you have a hundred billion throbbing growing branching neurons
0
SPEAKER_00
 And it's electricity-based.
0
SPEAKER_00
You can put a sticker on and light a small light bulb.
0
SPEAKER_00
Really?
0
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
0
SPEAKER_00
And so that's how we measure for... Have you done this before?
0
SPEAKER_00
Oh, yeah.
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SPEAKER_00
But this is decades old.
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SPEAKER_00
This isn't like... So what I want people to say is like, understand is when we remove the right hemisphere and the patient comes back three years later, kids, and they can function again, no new wires sprouted.
0
SPEAKER_00
Nothing was spliced.
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SPEAKER_00
What remained created a new roar, created a new hum, created
0
SPEAKER_00
 you know, recovered the function.
0
SPEAKER_00
So it's not always easy for people to understand, but that's the truth.
0
SPEAKER_00
And that's our current understanding of how the brain leads to the mind.
0
SPEAKER_00
Wow.
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SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
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SPEAKER_02
Can the brain function without the mind?
0
SPEAKER_00
If you get knocked down a ring, you're not thinking.
0
SPEAKER_00
Right.
0
SPEAKER_00
And if we put electrodes, there's dampened electricity, but that stalk, remember I mentioned the mushroom, that can still keep you breathing and protect your airway and keep your heart still going.
0
SPEAKER_00
So the reptilian
0
SPEAKER_00
 areas of the brain, the ones that we share with many animals, will function without a mind.
0
SPEAKER_00
Without that, if you equate mind with consciousness, thought, love, emotion.
0
SPEAKER_02
So it's like the babushka dolls where you have... So it can function, but it's not...
0
SPEAKER_02
 It's baseline function, it's keeping you breathing.
0
SPEAKER_00
Not high-level cognitive function that we use.
0
SPEAKER_02
So the mind is really what's keeping everything activated.
0
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, in concert.
0
SPEAKER_00
Right.
0
SPEAKER_00
The mind can think down the heart rate that the reptilian brain keeps going if you get knocked out.
0
SPEAKER_00
So they're integrated, and so you put it nicely, the mind can keep things going.
0
SPEAKER_00
 But if you have brain death, then there's no mind.
0
SPEAKER_00
There's no electricity.
0
SPEAKER_00
Brain deaths, unfortunately.
0
SPEAKER_00
What's that mean?
0
SPEAKER_00
Meaning sometimes the heart, the body's alive, but the brain has died.
0
SPEAKER_00
How does that happen?
0
SPEAKER_00
Well, we'll get into some, I think it's important for people to understand.
0
SPEAKER_00
So car accidents, brain swelling, those 100 billion neurons, they burst from smashing into each other.
0
SPEAKER_00
 We put a catheter in the thigh, and we score it, die, and we see there's no blood going into the skull.
0
SPEAKER_00
It's a dark vault.
0
SPEAKER_02
So your brain has- If it's so much swelling, the blood can't flow.
0
SPEAKER_02
There's so much inflammation that it's hard for blood to flow.
0
SPEAKER_00
Instead of a heart attack, you've had a complete brain attack.
0
SPEAKER_02
And for a day- No, no, no.
0
SPEAKER_02
You can't recover from this?
0
SPEAKER_00
Not even miracles.
0
SPEAKER_00
 When it's 100.00 out, there's never anything left.
0
SPEAKER_00
But for a day, since the heart nerves have their own pulse, when we can put machines and things, and to keep people going for a day or so, that's where the world of organ transplantation comes in.
0
SPEAKER_00
So a lot of guys, a lot of people who ride motorcycles, they have that kind of injury,
0
SPEAKER_00
 Their bodily organs are healthy and they often are the ones that provide transplants for other people.
0
SPEAKER_02
Their brain is not functioning.
0
SPEAKER_00
Brain death, body is alive.
0
SPEAKER_00
In that setting there's no mind, there's no electricity coming out.
0
SPEAKER_00
So when you're asking about mind and brain.
0
SPEAKER_00
 And so that's a fascinating area for people to know those examples, to understand themselves better, right?
0
SPEAKER_00
And it comes back to that we are electrical currents.
0
SPEAKER_00
We're not wires, we're not switches, we're not spots, we're not gears.
0
SPEAKER_00
Electrical currents.
0
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, they're flows.
0
SPEAKER_00
What is that?
0
SPEAKER_00
So like you go to a lake.
0
SPEAKER_00
 and you drop a big, you jump in there, whatever, right?
0
SPEAKER_00
There's a wave that moves through the lake, but the water molecules didn't ride with it, right?
0
SPEAKER_00
So that's the hum, the symphony, the roar, the electrical global waves that are pulsating through our brains.
0
SPEAKER_00
And when people say they're in the zone, or they're in a flow state, or they're in a meditative state,
0
SPEAKER_00
 that global energy flow, those waves, they're different.
0
SPEAKER_00
They can be measured and categorized.
0
SPEAKER_00
Really?
0
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
0
SPEAKER_02
So what does that mean when someone's in a flow state in terms of the mind-brain connection?
0
SPEAKER_02
What is happening?
0
SPEAKER_02
Are these 100 billion jellyfish like in symphony and they're humming at a high level?
0
SPEAKER_02
They're working in concert?
0
SPEAKER_00
Let me jump in right there.
0
SPEAKER_00
Actually, that's perfect.
0
SPEAKER_00
Actually,
0
SPEAKER_00
 You would think that if somebody's about to hit a game-winning shot, their best performance is when they're at a high level, meaning wild, frenetic.
0
SPEAKER_00
Actually, no.
0
SPEAKER_00
When they're super calm.
0
SPEAKER_00
Somewhere in between.
0
SPEAKER_00
Okay.
0
SPEAKER_00
So, not asleep.
0
SPEAKER_00
Right.
0
SPEAKER_00
But not, hey, I'm on my third espresso just taking in stuff in the morning.
0
SPEAKER_00
But focused.
0
SPEAKER_00
Focused, but
0
SPEAKER_00
 relaxed and there is a measured state for that and it usually has to do with sort of medium brain waves.
0
SPEAKER_00
That's something I'm writing about right now.
0
SPEAKER_00
And whether you meditate or you're under that the two-minute drill in football or you're a ballerina and you have that perfect, you know, dance routine coming up or maneuver, you are actually disengaging some of the things that would get in the way of you releasing a performance.
0
SPEAKER_00
 So you're not thinking the performance, you're getting out of the way.
0
SPEAKER_00
You're being, you're just being.
0
SPEAKER_00
And that has a different measurable electrical flow state, you know?
0
SPEAKER_00
And it's not revved up.
0
SPEAKER_00
It's not hyperactive, it's...
0
SPEAKER_00
 Somewhere in between.
0
SPEAKER_00
Above calm, but calm.
0
SPEAKER_00
It's not fifth gear, it's not idle.
0
SPEAKER_00
They're at their best, and they've seen that in athletes and different things.
0
SPEAKER_00
What's the fastest way for a human being to get into a flow state?
0
SPEAKER_00
For that, in my opinion, there are no shortcuts, because what it takes is a lot of practice, and it takes is a lot of learning, and then when you are performing... And being confident in your abilities, and yeah.
0
SPEAKER_00
 Yeah, but it's executing, you know, I don't think you can get no, I mean, I'd be wrong, but when I see my kids, I don't think you can get into a flow state just rolling through Instagram.
0
SPEAKER_00
It's actually delivering a skill you've trained for.
0
SPEAKER_00
So you have a craft.
0
SPEAKER_00
 that you've trained for and you're performing it at a high level.
0
SPEAKER_00
So you see race car drivers talking about stuff like that.
0
SPEAKER_00
So it is sort of your craft performed just at the edge of your comfort level.
0
SPEAKER_00
Like video games, if they're too hard,
0
SPEAKER_00
 Kids will check out.
0
SPEAKER_00
If they're too easy, they'll check out.
0
SPEAKER_00
So something about, it tends to be a physical maneuver.
0
SPEAKER_00
I always find that fascinating where, I guess you could think yourself into one of those states, but you see it a lot with people who do a physical task.
0
SPEAKER_00
 that's challenging, rewarding, something they're engaged in, and at the level of their performance.
0
SPEAKER_00
You know, it's a two minute drill at the end of a football game.
0
SPEAKER_02
Of course, yeah, it's go time, man.
0
SPEAKER_02
Did you play football?
0
SPEAKER_02
No, I love sports though, because I think there are a lot of parallels.
0
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, of course.
0
SPEAKER_02
The challenging thing is, I don't know if I'd, I don't have kids, but I don't know if I'd let my kids play football after all the head trauma that I took.
0
SPEAKER_02
I mean, every day we were just taught back in the,
0
SPEAKER_02
 late 90s, to just lead with the head, hit with the head.
0
SPEAKER_02
Now it's illegal, you can't hit the head at all.
0
SPEAKER_00
Monday Night Football used to open up with the two helmets.
0
SPEAKER_02
Splash, crashing, yeah.
0
SPEAKER_02
I remember that.
0
SPEAKER_02
And the trauma that, you know, I feel like I've had to heal for the last 15, 18 years now.
0
SPEAKER_02
 I don't know if it's worth it.
0
SPEAKER_02
I think, I guess if you're not hitting the head anymore, it's different, but there's still going to be clashing.
0
SPEAKER_00
I mean, I got a couple of thoughts about that.
0
SPEAKER_00
I mean, one thing that I didn't like about it was I think they knew this was bad for us, and they kept trying to hide it from us.
0
SPEAKER_00
Of course.
0
SPEAKER_00
Hey, just tell us it's bad.
0
SPEAKER_00
Just tell us smoking's bad.
0
SPEAKER_00
We know boxing's bad.
0
SPEAKER_00
Nobody goes into boxing and says, I didn't know.
0
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
0
SPEAKER_00
But you held information.
0
SPEAKER_00
 That you know traumatic.
0
SPEAKER_00
Yeah head injury in football was sort of messing people up That's one of my things with it on the other side is if it if it's something you love and it's an opportunity for you to advance in your life Who am I to say no as long as the risks are made aware?
0
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
0
SPEAKER_00
Hey, I
0
SPEAKER_00
 if you banged your knee against the wall 30 times a day for 10 years, your knee's gonna be jacked up.
0
SPEAKER_00
It's no different for your brain.
0
SPEAKER_00
Got it, I still wanna play.
0
SPEAKER_00
You know what I mean?
0
SPEAKER_00
It's more about that to me.
0
SPEAKER_00
We all live in different worlds and safety and risk.
0
SPEAKER_00
My sons didn't play though.
0
SPEAKER_00
They could've, but they didn't.
0
SPEAKER_00
They played flag and they all played baseball.
0
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, it's probably safer.
0
SPEAKER_02
So the brain has the ability to heal from traumatic
0
SPEAKER_02
 from trauma then, physical and emotional trauma, because I feel like the emotional hidden trauma can be more painful and harder to recover for some, the psychological emotional trauma, than the physical trauma.
0
SPEAKER_02
You can see it and you can treat the physical trauma in a sense, but depending on how intense it is, but the emotional psychological hidden traumas, I feel like,
0
SPEAKER_02
 are invisible and people don't think they need to treat it because they don't see a broken arm and say, I need to go to the doctor because my bone is sticking out, let me put a splint on it and heal it up.
0
SPEAKER_02
 We're not trained that way.
0
SPEAKER_00
There is no easy answer.
0
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, but what I will say is that Trauma this is just these are my concepts.
0
SPEAKER_00
They're not I'm not yes, there's therapeutic trauma and then what I mean by that is Resetting a bone after it's broken the pain of a cancer surgery, but then you know that your cancer has been cut out like oh
0
SPEAKER_00
 That's good pain.
0
SPEAKER_00
And we're just talking about physical trauma.
0
SPEAKER_00
Then there's emotional trauma, if people are attacked, that's also intimately connected to emotional trauma.
0
SPEAKER_00
 People who don't have memory after certain injuries or operations, they never have PTSD because they don't remember it.
0
SPEAKER_00
So the emotional context and memories related to trauma, be it emotional, physical, or a combination, requires memory.
0
SPEAKER_00
 That's cool, right?
0
SPEAKER_00
I like to think about, like, just as a concept.
0
SPEAKER_00
I don't have a solution for, I don't, hey, don't do these three things, you'll be better.
0
SPEAKER_00
Sort of not my approach, because when people did that with me, I was like, how do you know what I'm going through, man?
0
SPEAKER_00
 You look at me, you think everything's good, but are you sure?
0
SPEAKER_00
Are you sure I wasn't attacked last night?
0
SPEAKER_00
Are you sure I didn't find out that my patient didn't do well last night?
0
SPEAKER_00
Are you sure I didn't find out that a loved one was diagnosed with something?
0
SPEAKER_00
You know, like, I just don't want to put people in boxes.
0
SPEAKER_00
In fact, I want people to know that they are new every day.
0
SPEAKER_00
I'm not even the same.
0
SPEAKER_00
 of myself I was before the last few years, how can I be understood as a group of people, a man or a surgeon?
0
SPEAKER_00
I just want people to think of each other as individuals, dynamic.
0
SPEAKER_00
That said, I never judge people's trauma to be better or worse.
0
SPEAKER_00
 People are looking or stronger or justified They're looking at everybody's gonna have a traumatic event in their life.
0
SPEAKER_00
Whether it's a car crash or hearing this.
0
SPEAKER_00
It's unavoidable It's partly because we put ourselves out there.
0
SPEAKER_00
It's partly because the way we approach the world is to be completely Adaptive right if we're rigid then
0
SPEAKER_00
 There's less chances for trauma, but but that's a life less well-lived.
0
SPEAKER_00
So when you put yourself out there Traumatic experiences are unavoidable.
0
SPEAKER_00
That's it.
0
SPEAKER_02
Okay, so that said yeah, you get a bruise, but I'm gonna hear you say is that If we don't have the memory of the traumatic event, we don't have PTSD.
0
SPEAKER_02
We don't have Trump.
0
SPEAKER_02
We don't have a trauma.
0
SPEAKER_02
Yeah tail right, so that's the
0
SPEAKER_00
 That's the concept that I want people to walk away and say, memory is important.
0
SPEAKER_00
 Memory is the thing that determines whether the event remains traumatic in your heart.
0
SPEAKER_00
Whether it's painful still for you.
0
SPEAKER_00
Very good.
0
SPEAKER_00
So let's get into that.
0
SPEAKER_00
So we just need to heal the memory of the trauma.
0
SPEAKER_00
That's exactly where I'm taking it.
0
SPEAKER_00
Very good.
0
SPEAKER_00
So memories are not files in a cabinet.
0
SPEAKER_00
In the brain.
0
SPEAKER_00
How is memory categorized?
0
SPEAKER_00
Again, there are some regions that if we remove them, you would lose memory.
0
SPEAKER_00
 But memory's not only there, it relies on pulling from memories of smell to new, like for example, smell is very interesting.
0
SPEAKER_00
It's one of the five senses that we can't tamp down with our thinking.
0
SPEAKER_00
So the perfume or cologne, smell and memory are intimately intertwined.
0
SPEAKER_00
And so you're pulling from all different parts of the brain.
0
SPEAKER_00
Again, memory is a certain electrical flow in the brain.
0
SPEAKER_00
 But it's not, it's malleable, it's moldable.
0
SPEAKER_00
Just because you have a certain memory today doesn't mean that that experience, good or bad, will remain good or bad.
0
SPEAKER_00
Our positive vibe right now can be made negative, our negative vibe right now can be made positive as we look back at our day-to-day.
0
SPEAKER_00
So when you see memory that way, then you say, okay, wait a second.
0
SPEAKER_00
 I was attacked or I was hurt or something really traumatized me and I think of it when I smell that smell when I see that color I'm I'm Traumatized again.
0
SPEAKER_00
I clench up.
0
SPEAKER_02
I have like stress of fear anxiety.
0
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, so the emotional the emotional context to a memory is what you can change and
1
SPEAKER_01
 You don't want dementia.
1
SPEAKER_01
You don't want to delete the memory because that's a different problem.
1
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, you don't want to block it.
1
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, but what you want to do is change the emotional context attached to that memory.
1
SPEAKER_00
What happens if we, you hear this from people a lot who might have been traumatized as kids where they forget, they kind of block the memory and then
1
SPEAKER_00
 When it resurfaces, it's still raw.
1
SPEAKER_00
It's very raw, but they've stuffed it, they've blocked it, they've numbed it, addicted it, whatever you want to call it.
1
SPEAKER_00
Driven it to addiction.
1
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, exactly.
1
SPEAKER_00
So what happens when... I don't know.
1
SPEAKER_01
I don't know about the kid stuff as much, because that's a different space, and I don't want to, you know, I want to stay where I feel real comfortable with what I've been reading and learning.
1
SPEAKER_01
 So emotional context and memory for adults in the right setting with the right person through, you know, they have their techniques, you can actually work through the trauma of the memory and experience by going to certain therapists who help you get better with that.
1
SPEAKER_01
To process the memory.
1
SPEAKER_01
 Yeah, just to take the emotional pain, right, the emotional trauma and dampen that so you can say, for example, yeah, I was, I'm just bringing examples from my world.
1
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, when I was diagnosed with cancer, that's a traumatic event.
1
SPEAKER_01
And then you see my patients, you see them over time through different ways.
1
SPEAKER_01
 When they say, they say, I was diagnosed with cancer and I did this, their face is different describing it later than it was immediately after receiving the diagnosis.
1
SPEAKER_01
So that's a real life example, right?
1
SPEAKER_01
It doesn't have to be all the stuff related to violence and all that.
1
SPEAKER_01
The traumatic experience of a cancer diagnosis
1
SPEAKER_01
 and how patients cope with that immediately.
1
SPEAKER_01
And then you see them months later, years later, because I'd be a mess, right?
1
SPEAKER_01
I'd be like, okay, this is, I wouldn't be able to cope.
1
SPEAKER_01
But they, surprisingly, not some of them, most of them cope.
1
SPEAKER_01
They get dressed, they come in for their three month scans, which to me would be a traumatic experience every time.
1
SPEAKER_01
Is this guy gonna tell me it's back or it's bigger?
1
SPEAKER_01
I mean, think about, like, getting that thing in your mail or email.
1
SPEAKER_01
I gotta go in for this?
1
SPEAKER_01
 Scary news again, but somehow they cope and that's where in in life on a knife's edge I learned so much from them that it's possible to cope with traumatic experiences I'm not saying you as an individual can I'm not saying I can but when you look at a group of cancer patients and Most of them Wow cope live move on from very traumatic emotional experiences as well as physical experience of cancer pain and cancer surgery, right
1
SPEAKER_01
 That's the lesson I want everybody to go through in their mind when they're dealing with their own challenges.
1
SPEAKER_00
Wow.
1
SPEAKER_00
What's the biggest lessons you've learned from the cancer patients you've treated on the way they
1
SPEAKER_00
 process and handle their journey from First hearing about they have cancer in the brain or tumor or something to recovery.
1
SPEAKER_00
What's the biggest lessons you've learned there?
1
SPEAKER_01
It doesn't all end.
1
SPEAKER_01
Well, some some suffer many suffer, you know in their own ways, so it's not this You know, nobody wishes cancer upon somebody else or on you know, so it's not like you know, it's not like this thing like
1
SPEAKER_01
 It's not an opportunity, and I don't wanna ever present it that way.
1
SPEAKER_01
But those that have coped well, they invariably say, I wish I would've lived my life the way I am now after a cancer diagnosis.
1
SPEAKER_01
Like, I wish I would've lived my life having seen the finish line relatively, because it changes how they live, and they're not sad.
1
SPEAKER_01
It's a generalization.
1
SPEAKER_01
Like I said, some have suffered.
1
SPEAKER_01
 Many have suffered, but they wish that they would have made quality of life a priority throughout life, not after the cancer diagnosis.
1
SPEAKER_01
Something about seeing the finish line on the horizon makes people go, I don't like that guy.
1
SPEAKER_01
I'm not going to see him much.
1
SPEAKER_01
This is something I enjoy.
1
SPEAKER_01
They get after it.
1
SPEAKER_01
 they get to the business of living in the way they want to deep down inside, but often have been encumbered by the weirdness of interpersonal relationships and careers.
1
SPEAKER_00
Society and pressure and everything else.
1
SPEAKER_00
How do you show up in your personal life after seeing all this for the last couple decades or I guess...
1
SPEAKER_01
 That's a heavy question.
1
SPEAKER_01
I can't say that I've always dealt well with it.
1
SPEAKER_01
The human stories were important, but I was just, I was going for perfection of the craft.
1
SPEAKER_00
You were trying to be a precise surgeon, just trying to remove it and fix it.
1
SPEAKER_01
You weren't as connected to the human stories, you were just like, let me... I wouldn't say I was disconnected, but from the fifth to the tenth year approximately, when the craft became...
1
SPEAKER_01
 occupied less of my mind.
1
SPEAKER_00
Because it was more automatic.
1
SPEAKER_00
Obviously, everyone's specific, but it's more automatic.
1
SPEAKER_00
I was in a rhythm.
1
SPEAKER_01
And I actually enjoyed the challenge.
1
SPEAKER_01
And that's what you want as a cancer surgeon who's trying to be the best for you and be the best for them at this craft.
1
SPEAKER_01
That's an interesting intersection.
1
SPEAKER_01
They want me to be the best.
1
SPEAKER_01
They want me to have ambition at being the best surgeon, which means
1
SPEAKER_01
 Tackling the biggest cancer and my the people who chose me to perform their surgery have the fewest complications biggest mountain Fewest complications that that's a personal ambition that aligns with what the cancer patients wanted.
1
SPEAKER_01
So that that was an interesting thing You know it was
1
SPEAKER_01
 It drove me and at the same time I could see that since I take care mostly of stage 4 cancer and there's no stage 5 really that Stage 5 means what there is no stage 5 that means death.
1
SPEAKER_01
Okay, so stage 4 is The word terminal is not fair, but stage 4 is the most advanced cancer.
1
SPEAKER_01
So all my patients live a few years Let's just say that but that means you know after a while, you know, I was like I this I've cared for like
1
SPEAKER_01
 over a thousand people and they're no longer alive.
1
SPEAKER_01
And it started to mess with my head, man.
1
SPEAKER_01
Because stage four, there's no way to cure it, is what you're saying.
1
SPEAKER_01
Stage four, by definition, other than in blood cancers, is not curable.
1
SPEAKER_01
So the question is, can we get out a few years?
1
SPEAKER_01
Extend life, yes.
1
SPEAKER_01
And quality life during that time.
1
SPEAKER_00
Oh my gosh, man.
1
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, so after a while, I was like, man, I got a drawer full of
1
SPEAKER_01
 Invitations to funerals.
1
SPEAKER_01
Oh my gosh, and I just stood back a little bit and I was having some struggles with my own in my own life and so the answer to your question is For those For those who are involved in cancer care to To make yourself vulnerable to actually
1
SPEAKER_01
 Sort of in piecemeal go on their difficult journey with them.
1
SPEAKER_01
It can be hurtful.
1
SPEAKER_01
It was raw the last five years the last three years I've been able to take that and write about it and see that like I have been fortified by
1
SPEAKER_01
 by letting them teach me and the privilege of them saying, come along with me in my difficult times.
1
SPEAKER_01
This airplane must crash.
1
SPEAKER_01
And you will ride with us.
1
SPEAKER_01
We choose you to ride with us, but you have the parachute at the end.
1
SPEAKER_01
And after a while, I used to tell my kids that, man, I just feel like I'm crashing a lot of planes.
1
SPEAKER_01
And so it went from not noticing it to noticing it and having it
1
SPEAKER_01
 mess with me to, wait a second, that might have been the biggest gift of my craft, is to learn from the people in their most difficult times, and how they remain optimistic in the face of calamity.
1
SPEAKER_01
So I'm in a different space about the last couple of years, but that's probably the best question anybody's asked me in the last couple of years, and I appreciate that.
1
SPEAKER_00
Of course, man, wow.
1
SPEAKER_00
So how do you personally manage your mind and your brain health, knowing that
1
SPEAKER_00
 I mean, is there any, I guess, survival rates after a few years of any patient that you work on?
1
SPEAKER_00
Few, yeah.
1
SPEAKER_00
So maybe it's more of a stage three cancer, I guess, or it's?
1
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, the earlier stages have cure potential.
1
SPEAKER_01
When they come to see me, it's usually that it's spread to the brain from a cancer in the body that's broken out.
1
SPEAKER_00
 Gotcha, and is there no way to see to do a surgery on a brain that has less cancer?
1
SPEAKER_00
That's stage one or two and and and remove it fully is that possible some so hard to see that Yeah, what's it?
1
SPEAKER_01
There's two types of brain cancers one that grow from the flesh of the brain and they come in different stages and more commonly are those that spread to the brain a Jimmy Carson or
1
SPEAKER_01
 Excuse me, Jimmy Carter president is 90 something and he's got melanoma that's in the brain But it was that you know, so it's not always but for breast cancer or lung cancer that spreads to the brain it's sort of the the final manifestation of the cancers man now but
1
SPEAKER_01
 Those are heroic stories to me, right?
1
SPEAKER_01
That look you gave me, that was me five, six, seven, eight years ago.
1
SPEAKER_01
But the last couple of years, it's, man, they made it to the graduation.
1
SPEAKER_01
Moms are always like, I just want to get to where my kid is out of high school.
1
SPEAKER_01
 There's something.
1
SPEAKER_01
Is there kids with it?
1
SPEAKER_01
No, moms who have breast cancer in their 40s.
1
SPEAKER_00
They got a kid in 15.
1
SPEAKER_01
Oh my gosh.
1
SPEAKER_01
15-year-olds in ninth grade.
1
SPEAKER_01
So when you see them, like I said, it's not sad at all for me anymore.
1
SPEAKER_01
It's actually how rare of a gift that I can see people at their most valiant.
1
SPEAKER_01
Oh my gosh.
1
SPEAKER_01
So now it informs me.
1
SPEAKER_01
But back to your original question, there was about five years where it was just messing with my mind.
1
SPEAKER_00
 How does someone, this is more of a educational question, I guess, for people, how does someone prevent cancer?
1
SPEAKER_00
And where does most of these cancers come from?
1
SPEAKER_00
Is it random, that people just get it?
1
SPEAKER_00
If they're, whatever genetics, is it their environment, their levels of stress, their food intake?
1
SPEAKER_00
Is it...
1
SPEAKER_00
 you know, anxiety that are dealt with, trauma that they're not processing.
1
SPEAKER_00
What is the cause of most cancer?
1
SPEAKER_01
There are cancers we potentially give ourselves from our bad choices.
1
SPEAKER_01
Really?
1
SPEAKER_01
Give me an example.
1
SPEAKER_00
Smoking.
1
SPEAKER_01
Okay, yeah.
1
SPEAKER_01
Okay.
1
SPEAKER_01
But not everybody that smoke gets it.
1
SPEAKER_01
Right.
1
SPEAKER_01
And 20% of lung cancer people never smoke.
1
SPEAKER_01
Really?
1
SPEAKER_01
Right.
1
SPEAKER_00
Where do they get lung cancer from if they're not smoking?
1
SPEAKER_01
So, do you remember I was talking about the brain being this garden and stuff like that?
1
SPEAKER_01
Yes.
1
SPEAKER_01
 Our bodies, they're not an interesting garden in my opinion, but they're a garden too.
1
SPEAKER_01
Their skin is shedding off, liver cells grow.
1
SPEAKER_01
So when things grow, they can sprout weeds.
1
SPEAKER_01
 So parts of the body that don't ever change, like strangely, heart never gets cancer.
1
SPEAKER_01
So things that don't change don't sprout cancers.
1
SPEAKER_01
It's a byproduct of constantly having cells in our bodies die and regrow, and when you do that regrowth process, you're gonna spin off something that doesn't behave.
1
SPEAKER_00
So how do you spin off things that are healthy and healthy?
1
SPEAKER_00
 You know flourishing as opposed to little weeds here and there.
1
SPEAKER_00
How do you how do you when you're doing your both?
1
SPEAKER_00
How do you do?
1
SPEAKER_01
So I'm talking about physiologically before we get to the mind.
1
SPEAKER_01
Yes.
1
SPEAKER_01
It's an interesting point Thoughts can be thought of that way to the body when it is 99% of time is doing the right thing.
1
SPEAKER_01
We're both here and
1
SPEAKER_01
 But when you do it with a sheer volume of a lifespan, and you do it over 7 billion people, you're going to sprout some cancers.
1
SPEAKER_01
So you get cancers in the body, cancers in the brain.
1
SPEAKER_01
Can our thoughts become cancerous?
1
SPEAKER_01
That's a provocative... And can our thoughts heal cancer?
1
SPEAKER_01
That's a very provocative thought.
1
SPEAKER_01
I have not seen...
1
SPEAKER_01
 positive thinking.
1
SPEAKER_01
I'm not saying it's not possible and I encourage people to do it, but I think positive thinking, meditating,
1
SPEAKER_01
 Optimist cultivating optimism all of these things they do change the global physiology of your body Okay, I think we're not just a brain but the body right and that in turn can affect what's going on the brain But I don't know if a thought can send an electrical zap to a tumor and hurt the tumor But a certain way of thinking can make you have a certain physiologic response which there in turn could you know get in the way of cancers progression and
1
SPEAKER_00
 That's why, I mean, I feel like if we're, if we're breaking this down from what I'm hearing you say, there's a garden in our brain.
1
SPEAKER_00
There's a garden, right?
1
SPEAKER_00
And how- Think of it as a garden.
1
SPEAKER_00
Think of it as a garden or a school of fish, you know, working in harmony and all these different things, right?
1
SPEAKER_00
So if our, if we have a level of thinking that is, let's call it positive, let's call it beautiful thinking as opposed to suffering-based thinking,
1
SPEAKER_00
 Beautiful thoughts, joy, gratitude, happiness, peace, appreciation, acknowledgement, self-love and love for others.
1
SPEAKER_00
Let's say those types of thoughts versus the opposite of suffering type thoughts.
1
SPEAKER_00
If we have those thoughts on a consistent basis in the mind, would those then in fact penetrate the brain to flourish more
1
SPEAKER_00
 healthy... To nurture that part of the body.
1
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, the 100 billion jellyfish floating in harmony, would they be in more harmony and healthier as opposed to penetrating it with these suffering-based thoughts?
1
SPEAKER_00
And then in return, with the brain activated and flowing and not having these breaks and blocks,
1
SPEAKER_00
 then it's signaling down to the body to send a more healthy ecosystem throughout the body and then returning the body back to the brain and back to the mind and having a more
1
SPEAKER_01
 Let me unpack that for you.
1
SPEAKER_01
That's an enormous question that I think I have a very specific answer.
1
SPEAKER_01
Because I think when we were talking about this earlier, language can be confusing if it's used too casually.
1
SPEAKER_01
But let's take the cancer part out for now.
1
SPEAKER_01
But yeah, being in a better frame of mind, exercising, eating right, being calm, stress, all of that,
1
SPEAKER_01
 Changes things physiologically that make your whole body better at fighting cancer That we we agree on that's measured now.
1
SPEAKER_01
Let's go back to the brain as a garden.
1
SPEAKER_01
Yes, so it can we cultivate that part of the garden or can we cultivate a Garden that lean towards a positive mind frame.
1
SPEAKER_01
Yes, because if
1
SPEAKER_01
 If bombs are falling, even the most optimistic garden will go into a threat response.
1
SPEAKER_01
You don't only want to be chill.
1
SPEAKER_01
You don't only want to be positive.
1
SPEAKER_00
You want to be aware.
1
SPEAKER_00
You want to be flexible.
1
SPEAKER_00
You want to be all these things.
1
SPEAKER_01
So let's say there isn't external stress around, yet you're too jacked up.
1
SPEAKER_01
You're too stressed.
1
SPEAKER_01
That's a common ailment of city life, at least here where we have safety.
1
SPEAKER_01
This is really fascinating.
1
SPEAKER_01
It's one of my favorite things that I love talking about.
1
SPEAKER_01
 You remember we talked about the reptilian brain?
1
SPEAKER_01
You get knocked out and you stay awake.
1
SPEAKER_01
And then we talked about the mushroom canopy.
1
SPEAKER_01
Well, there's another one in the middle called the limbic system, but I call it the emotional brain.
1
SPEAKER_01
The categories are not that simple, but it's got its own little anatomy.
1
SPEAKER_01
If there was a slice down the side of my head, you would actually see the mushroom canopy
1
SPEAKER_01
 And you'd see some unique Star Wars-looking structures in the middle, and then you'd see the reptilian brain.
1
SPEAKER_01
The stem.
1
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, the stem.
1
SPEAKER_00
The stem is the reptilian brain, and in the middle is the limbic system, and on top is the mushroom.
1
SPEAKER_01
Right.
1
SPEAKER_01
We call it the cortical canopy.
1
SPEAKER_01
We use ecological terms to describe it in journals.
1
SPEAKER_01
So the cortical canopy and that emotional brain, the limbic system, they have branches towards each other, measurable.
1
SPEAKER_01
 And so when somebody goes from age 16 to being wild to being 18 and more composed, let's say adolescence, the structure of the brain hasn't changed.
1
SPEAKER_01
It weighs the same, it looks the same on MRIs.
1
SPEAKER_01
 but the person's totally different, right?
1
SPEAKER_01
Well, because of the cultivation of thought from the cortical canopy, the mushroom cap, to the emotional brain, as they integrate more, you're able to say, hey, maybe don't run across that freeway, or maybe wear that seatbelt.
1
SPEAKER_01
So it- It's learning.
1
SPEAKER_01
But it's interacting with emotions.
1
SPEAKER_01
 At the same time, you don't want to be emotionless.
1
SPEAKER_01
So emotion is making a push back to thought.
1
SPEAKER_01
Like, no, love is an emotion.
1
SPEAKER_01
This pain I'm feeling because mom is sick is an emotion.
1
SPEAKER_01
I don't want to be spock about it or tamp it down.
1
SPEAKER_01
So that cultivation of thought and emotion
1
SPEAKER_01
 is what is the most lush way to live, because then you're adaptive to stress, like, hey, this is actually something dangerous going on, thought is coming in, emotions going on.
1
SPEAKER_01
But at the same time, you have this internal, what they call emotional regulation, like nothing's wrong, and you're just freaked out.
1
SPEAKER_01
And that's where those branches, thought, meditation, therapy, counseling, hugging your puppy,
1
SPEAKER_01
 it creates a better balance between thought and emotion.
1
SPEAKER_01
And that tone, not on off, thanks for asking this question, I love this part, the tone is what life is about.
1
SPEAKER_01
You become a new parent, let that emotion run rampant.
1
SPEAKER_01
 cry, you're about to go see your boss and you know it's not gonna go well and you're starting to do things that you know is emotion running rampant, then use thought and breathing exercises.
1
SPEAKER_01
Turn the volume down.
1
SPEAKER_01
Just set the tone a little different on that and then go and see your boss or your lover or some conflict situation you're in.
1
SPEAKER_01
That is what we're doing throughout life and the example of it is adolescence where it happens for most of us.
1
SPEAKER_01
 Automatically, but then we stop like we're grown-ups that that that tone is something you cultivate through the experiences of life and Then when you get older or when the next trauma comes You're you're better Braced in position for how to cope with this a little more thought because I'm running hot on emotion or like man I'm too cold about this right now.
1
SPEAKER_01
It is a raw situation.
1
SPEAKER_01
I need a safe place to let my emotions run wild and
1
SPEAKER_01
 Right, a safe environment, yeah.
1
SPEAKER_01
That's the way I approach the intersection of thought and emotion.
1
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I think you said it, emotional regulation, I feel like is, for me, one of the most powerful skills that someone can learn in relationships, in career, in
1
SPEAKER_00
 driving, you know, on the street with other people around.
1
SPEAKER_01
Emotions are dominant, by the way.
1
SPEAKER_01
Yes.
1
SPEAKER_01
Which is great.
1
SPEAKER_00
But it's usually emotional regulation, not thought regulation.
1
SPEAKER_00
Right.
1
SPEAKER_00
But learning how to have emotional regulation is such a powerful skill for each individual.
1
SPEAKER_00
And we're never done because you don't know what's coming.
1
SPEAKER_01
Right.
1
SPEAKER_01
But it's the tending to the garden.
1
SPEAKER_01
Yes.
1
SPEAKER_01
It's the lifelong cultivation.
1
SPEAKER_00
 Because what's happening if we allow our emotions, the limbic part of the brain is the emotion-based part of the brain, thought is the... No exact regions, but there is some anatomy relative, but yes, I'm with you.
1
SPEAKER_00
It's more of the main focus of the brain.
1
SPEAKER_00
Obviously, if it was taken out, it would regulate, but... Emotion regulation.
1
SPEAKER_00
If the emotion is...
1
SPEAKER_00
 If you're always in reaction mode, you see something, ah, you're in freak out mode, you're in scream mode, you're in defensive attack mode, you're, I'm in someone's hurting me mode, if you're always in that space, what happens to the brain physiology?
1
SPEAKER_00
What happens to the actual physical aspect of the brain and how does that affect the body and the mind if your emotions are always running high?
1
SPEAKER_00
Oh, I love this question, man.
1
SPEAKER_01
When I was reading about.
1
SPEAKER_01
Let's go, let's go.
1
SPEAKER_01
 No, because this is what can empower people is an understanding of how things lean and how things can be modified.
1
SPEAKER_01
Otherwise, it's just... I can't tell my cancer patients just...
1
SPEAKER_01
 Try not to stress out.
1
SPEAKER_01
It's hollow.
1
SPEAKER_01
It's shallow.
1
SPEAKER_01
It's rude, actually.
1
SPEAKER_01
So I think there's too much of that advice going on.
1
SPEAKER_01
What I want to show people is how we're sort of designed, our natural inclinations, and then you come up with your approach.
1
SPEAKER_01
I'm telling you, how can my son got a puppy in the pandemic?
1
SPEAKER_01
 Man, that's my therapy dog.
1
SPEAKER_01
I didn't even understand the concept.
1
SPEAKER_01
I hugged that animal.
1
SPEAKER_01
And you brought so much peace and love.
1
SPEAKER_01
I'm telling you, my physiology changes.
1
SPEAKER_01
Calm.
1
SPEAKER_01
Just ha ha.
1
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
1
SPEAKER_01
So everybody's got to have an individual approach to that.
1
SPEAKER_01
So here's the two things about emotions.
1
SPEAKER_01
 We could cut out the thinking, just to put it coarsely, we could cut out the thinking brain and you'll still be alive.
1
SPEAKER_01
If you somehow were able to take out that middle part of the brain, there is no life left.
1
SPEAKER_01
The consciousness relies on things.
1
SPEAKER_00
On emotions.
1
SPEAKER_01
On emotions.
1
SPEAKER_01
Consciousness relies on emotions.
1
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, because they spark through, right?
1
SPEAKER_01
Remember the branches?
1
SPEAKER_01
Frontal lobe, deeper, branching, intersecting, the global waves of electricity.
1
SPEAKER_01
 That's why there's something called deep brain stimulation.
1
SPEAKER_01
Just let me riff on this.
1
SPEAKER_01
Go for it.
1
SPEAKER_01
So, when we want people to not wash their hands 150 times a day,
1
SPEAKER_01
 Have Tourette's or sometimes depression or sometimes a drive for obesity or certain tremors We take a little catheter and just the tip isn't covered in in in plastic and we put it into the emotional Come on, the limbic brain the limbic brain you stick it down through the top of the mushroom What do you call the quarters or cortical canopy a cortical canopy?
1
SPEAKER_00
You can punch through that you punch through that and it doesn't affect you
1
SPEAKER_01
 And you guys can look it up, D Brain Stimulate, DBS, it's around for 40 years.
1
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, yeah.
1
SPEAKER_01
So you put it through.
1
SPEAKER_01
So those drives that like Tourette's, OCD, we don't tickle the cortical, the thought.
1
SPEAKER_00
You're not just tapping the top.
1
SPEAKER_01
It's an emotional drive.
1
SPEAKER_01
Oh my gosh.
1
SPEAKER_00
So you're sticking it in through the middle of the brain and what happens?
1
SPEAKER_01
And then the tip, with just a little pulse, like the brain's pacemaker,
1
SPEAKER_01
 and it changes the electric, it's not brand new.
1
SPEAKER_01
So why would it work?
1
SPEAKER_00
You can pulse the limbic brain.
1
SPEAKER_00
How long do you do this for?
1
SPEAKER_00
Five minutes?
1
SPEAKER_00
An hour?
1
SPEAKER_00
What is this process?
1
SPEAKER_01
They wear it under their clavicle like grandma with a pacemaker or grandpa.
1
SPEAKER_00
So you're keeping it all the time.
1
SPEAKER_00
 You were right here.
1
SPEAKER_00
And what do you do?
1
SPEAKER_00
I mean, do you just push a button when you're freaking out and it kind of relaxes you?
1
SPEAKER_01
So the waves on that lake, if I also jumped in on the other side, when those waves come towards each other, sometimes they negate each other, right?
1
SPEAKER_01
Similarly, the right electrical pulse can reset the electrical waves in your brain that we were talking about earlier.
1
SPEAKER_01
That's how deep brain stimulation has worked for 40 years.
1
SPEAKER_01
So how do we create
1
SPEAKER_01
 deep brain stimulation on our own?
1
SPEAKER_01
Oh, that's a good question.
1
SPEAKER_01
Let me answer the first one and I'll come back to that.
1
SPEAKER_01
Deep brain stimulation on our own is through paced breathing.
1
SPEAKER_01
Let's get back to that one.
1
SPEAKER_00
Breathing, meditation.
1
SPEAKER_01
And I'll show you the anatomy for that.
1
SPEAKER_01
Because as we talked about, I need somebody to explain it to me.
1
SPEAKER_01
I can't just say, do this.
1
SPEAKER_01
Emotional regulation is tricky in two ways.
1
SPEAKER_01
 Hot emotions lead to high heart rates, surging blood pressure, lots of things being released, we've already heard about them.
1
SPEAKER_01
So you're running your body in overdrive for no reason, you're wearing yourself out.
1
SPEAKER_01
That makes sense to people, okay?
1
SPEAKER_01
That's a good reason to be physiologically not stressed if you can and you come up with your coping maneuvers.
1
SPEAKER_01
What's more interesting is with the intersection of the frontal lobes, the thinking brain and the emotional brain,
1
SPEAKER_01
 is that emotions are, they're coming in favored.
1
SPEAKER_01
They're always hot.
1
SPEAKER_01
The thinking brain has to do more of the work.
1
SPEAKER_01
And at some point, if you are not able to cultivate emotional regulation,
1
SPEAKER_01
 It becomes a feed-forward thing because the connections start to sever and then you start having this emotional brain that's no longer being tapped down or paced or controlled by the thinking brain.
1
SPEAKER_01
So emotional regulation is the life skill to deal with the trauma coming up, to rev your body down.
1
SPEAKER_01
 But if you don't try to cultivate it, you'll actually lose control of it.
1
SPEAKER_01
And as you get older, you'll have more rampant uncontrolled emotions and not be approaching life the way you want to.
1
SPEAKER_01
So that's the answer about emotional regulation.
1
SPEAKER_00
Do emotions have more power over thoughts or thoughts have more power over emotions?
1
SPEAKER_01
We start off with the emotions are generally on overdrive compared to thought.
1
SPEAKER_01
 So thinking through emotions, thinking which emotions have earned the right to be there, is that lifelong process.
1
SPEAKER_01
And people are like, what does that mean?
1
SPEAKER_01
Well, take adolescence.
1
SPEAKER_01
Teenager goes from 15 to 19.
1
SPEAKER_01
Very different person.
1
SPEAKER_01
 And that's all emotional regulation, right?
1
SPEAKER_01
Thought was losing.
1
SPEAKER_01
Teenagers, I miss it actually, it was a wild time.
1
SPEAKER_01
But then thought comes in to balance emotion.
1
SPEAKER_01
Reflection and thinking.
1
SPEAKER_01
So take that thing that you know happens, take my explanations, if they're of value to you.
1
SPEAKER_01
 And then say, now let me take the wheel of that thing that happened without me actually choosing or driving, right?
1
SPEAKER_01
That maturity happens on its own.
1
SPEAKER_01
Now let me take the wheel of that process and try to do it for the rest of my life, every year, every moment.
1
SPEAKER_01
 and not just say, hey, whatever I got at 18, 19 is who I am.
1
SPEAKER_01
Going back to your first thing, you're new every day.
1
SPEAKER_01
So it's a responsibility to cultivate that emotional regulation through thought and through certain behaviors for our whole life, because you never know what's going to happen, pandemic, war, and you want
1
SPEAKER_01
 You wanna be best braced for that and not approach that as a 15-year-old.
1
SPEAKER_00
You wanna have more awareness and, I don't know if you wanna call it control, but I think you wanna have control over your emotions and not let your emotions control you to do something stupid.
1
SPEAKER_01
Control the ride a little bit.
1
SPEAKER_01
Control the roller coaster a little bit.
1
SPEAKER_00
Exactly.
1
SPEAKER_00
Trim the sails.
1
SPEAKER_00
The emotions are mostly based in the limbic part of the brain.
1
SPEAKER_00
Obviously, it's all connected in certain areas, but if you're talking about an area,
1
SPEAKER_00
 And so what's the best way to train the emotional part of the brain?
1
SPEAKER_00
So that we are in, we have a personal power over it, that we're in control, that we have.
1
SPEAKER_00
Or more, it depends on the situation.
1
SPEAKER_00
We can turn it up or turn it down and we are.
1
SPEAKER_01
Depending on what's going on.
1
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, maybe we need to be more emotional in a moment and not be chill and relaxed when there's an attack.
1
SPEAKER_01
Or maybe the moment is so big, man, it's of course you're just emotionally over the top.
1
SPEAKER_01
 And we know that's what's been going on the last couple years and even today so but that but that leaves you a flexibility And it also leaves you without feeling bad like oh, I was emotional then now.
1
SPEAKER_01
I'm not I'm not a person that has emotional regulation you don't have This brain the same forever.
1
SPEAKER_01
It's a constant trimming of the sails modulating tone to me
2
SPEAKER_00
 It's a little bit of work if you're in a good spot, like, hey, this ain't guaranteed.
2
SPEAKER_00
But it's also so much power and opportunity that if you're not in a good spot, like, tomorrow can be better.
2
SPEAKER_00
And if not tomorrow, then the month or the year after, right?
2
SPEAKER_00
So emotional regulation.
2
SPEAKER_00
 the shortcut, so now we're getting to like, is there a tip, you know?
2
SPEAKER_00
I hope people feel like, wait a second, everything is possible, but it's gonna take a lot of work, okay?
2
SPEAKER_00
That's really what I was trying to get at for the first part.
2
SPEAKER_00
But are there shortcuts?
2
SPEAKER_00
Because I love shortcuts, LA freeways or whatever.
2
SPEAKER_00
Right, Waze is good, yeah.
2
SPEAKER_00
But there is one that has stood the test of time.
2
SPEAKER_00
 and that I can now explain to you based on things that we do as surgeons.
2
SPEAKER_00
And that's, I refer to it as meditative breathing in my first book, but really it's pacing your breath.
2
SPEAKER_01
And so what does that do?
2
SPEAKER_01
And that's something you study with actual scans or?
2
SPEAKER_00
No, no, no, it's even, it's wilder than that.
2
SPEAKER_00
If you have aberrant brain electricity,
2
SPEAKER_00
 and we check a scan and there's some funky marble-type tuft of brain tissue that doesn't look right, we know that's the epicenter.
2
SPEAKER_00
That's where the electricity's sprouting from.
2
SPEAKER_00
But some people that have it, some kids that have it, some adults that have it, there isn't a...
2
SPEAKER_00
 There isn't anything wrong with the scan, right?
2
SPEAKER_00
The scan looks pretty, brain looks perfect, but the electricity's off, right?
2
SPEAKER_00
That's what epilepsy is.
2
SPEAKER_00
All right, that's yet another proof.
2
SPEAKER_00
Seizures.
2
SPEAKER_00
Seizures, one seizure, two seizures is epilepsy, then you get the diagnosis, but yeah, seizures, is aberrant electrical activity of the brain, the same things we've been talking about.
2
SPEAKER_00
So when we don't know where it's sprouting,
2
SPEAKER_00
 Because if it's from a small space we can dissect it out and take away the the epicenter, right?
2
SPEAKER_00
You take it or I mean you can cut it out.
2
SPEAKER_00
We can cut it out Wow, and the patients are seizure-free really?
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah now
2
SPEAKER_00
 But what if there isn't a spot that we find and their seizures are horrible?
2
SPEAKER_00
And it's well before thinking about removing half the brain.
2
SPEAKER_00
So what they would do is we make a reverse question mark incision.
2
SPEAKER_00
It's a scalp, it's not very tender.
2
SPEAKER_00
That's what they tell me.
2
SPEAKER_00
Ribs are more tender is what they say.
2
SPEAKER_00
Patients.
2
SPEAKER_00
Then we make our little ice fishing hole.
2
SPEAKER_01
Are they numb when they're taking this off?
2
SPEAKER_00
For this one, they're asleep.
2
SPEAKER_00
There's others, they're awake.
2
SPEAKER_01
Do you numb the skull, the skin?
2
SPEAKER_01
 You just cut through the skin, no numbing.
2
SPEAKER_01
They're fully asleep.
2
SPEAKER_01
Oh, but when they're awake.
2
SPEAKER_00
At the very end, I inject the cut.
2
SPEAKER_00
So the numbing lasts the longest.
2
SPEAKER_00
With numbing, gotcha.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
2
SPEAKER_00
You're not just sitting there awake and they're just cutting it off.
2
SPEAKER_00
That is an operation we do, but that's a different story.
2
SPEAKER_00
 So you take the skull off.
2
SPEAKER_00
The brain has a covering.
2
SPEAKER_00
You don't see the brain right away.
2
SPEAKER_00
There's like a sheath.
2
SPEAKER_00
Like a skin?
2
SPEAKER_00
No, it's like almost a nylon material.
2
SPEAKER_00
You can pick it up and stitch it.
2
SPEAKER_00
That's what keeps the water inside the skull.
2
SPEAKER_00
It's not the bone.
2
SPEAKER_00
It's a sack.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
2
SPEAKER_00
Brain sack.
2
SPEAKER_00
There you go.
2
SPEAKER_01
It's a brain sack, right?
2
SPEAKER_01
It's like a sack.
2
SPEAKER_00
But it's nylon.
2
SPEAKER_00
It's pretty.
2
SPEAKER_00
And we cut it.
2
SPEAKER_00
And then the clear water pours out.
2
SPEAKER_00
You can see the surface of the brain.
2
SPEAKER_01
 And water's coming out.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, because the brain is floating in an aquarium, right?
2
SPEAKER_00
It's crazy.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, it's buoyant.
2
SPEAKER_00
Your brain doesn't sit on bone, it's floating.
2
SPEAKER_00
Again, jellyfish.
2
SPEAKER_00
And water.
2
SPEAKER_01
So when you're hitting, when you're having a lot of fast actions and you're hitting something, is it hitting?
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, your skull stops and then inside it sloshes into the inside.
2
SPEAKER_00
 That can't be good for you, is it?
2
SPEAKER_00
Well, that's where all the CTE and football stuff is the issue.
2
SPEAKER_00
It's the sudden stops, repeated sudden stops, with the brain sloshing and hitting the inside surface of your skull.
2
SPEAKER_00
That can't be good, can it?
2
SPEAKER_00
Well, people get by, but we're seeing that if you do it too much, as with kids and NFL people.
2
SPEAKER_00
So you've got it open.
2
SPEAKER_00
Then there's a little, it's the size of a deck of a card.
2
SPEAKER_00
It's got a little 96 for different electrodes on it.
2
SPEAKER_00
You put the deck of the card.
2
SPEAKER_00
 on the naked brain.
2
SPEAKER_00
You take those wires, you pop them out with little needles through the back, almost like, yeah.
2
SPEAKER_00
And then you put the bone back on, and you stitch up the scalp, and then you put some numbing medicine, and you put on a head wrap, and they hang on the hospital.
2
SPEAKER_00
 for weeks, because you're waiting for the seizure to happen.
2
SPEAKER_01
So you've got a pad on the brain.
2
SPEAKER_00
A grid, so when the seizure sparks, we can see, it was like in Connect Four or Battleship, what's that board game?
2
SPEAKER_00
Battleship?
2
SPEAKER_00
Battleship, yeah.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, it's in two.
2
SPEAKER_00
You know where it's at.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, you know where it's at.
2
SPEAKER_00
Two, six.
2
SPEAKER_00
Because that way, you know where you're gonna die.
2
SPEAKER_01
So there's a mesh pad, electromagnetic pad or something that can track with wires that are coming out of the back of this,
2
SPEAKER_01
 Connected to the monitor.
2
SPEAKER_01
They're connected to the monitor at all times.
2
SPEAKER_01
And they're there for a couple weeks.
2
SPEAKER_01
It's insanity.
2
SPEAKER_01
And they're emotional.
2
SPEAKER_01
They're happy.
2
SPEAKER_01
They're fine.
2
SPEAKER_01
They're like, hanging out, asking me some ice cream, playing some video games, watching TV.
2
SPEAKER_01
So what happened was a bunch of... The wires coming out of their necks.
2
SPEAKER_00
 Yeah, but the scalp, yeah, but we have things, people, you know, you'd be surprised what we can, what kind of devices we put in and dangle from people.
2
SPEAKER_00
You know, from broken legs, they come up with those little metal grids and they move around.
2
SPEAKER_01
So then after a few weeks, you wait till a seizure happens.
2
SPEAKER_00
 And then we know where, under that grid, where it sparked.
2
SPEAKER_00
We found the epicenter.
2
SPEAKER_01
And then from that, you track the data, you have the recording of the data, and then you can go in and then, what, tweak it or you?
2
SPEAKER_01
Remove that little part.
2
SPEAKER_01
And then they're done, they don't have seizures anymore.
2
SPEAKER_00
Sometimes.
2
SPEAKER_00
Wow.
2
SPEAKER_00
Or they're reduced.
2
SPEAKER_00
Now here's something that's more interesting for you and your audience.
2
SPEAKER_00
Well, that's a boring couple of weeks, so a bunch of cognitive science students and brain students and all, they come in and they started hanging out with them.
2
SPEAKER_00
 And they said, hey, can we go through these lessons of paced breathing and meditative breathing?
2
SPEAKER_00
Can we do this without removing it?
2
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
2
SPEAKER_00
Well, completely unrelated to the clinical work, we're hanging.
2
SPEAKER_00
I've got a direct feed of the true electricity from the surface of your naked brain.
2
SPEAKER_00
While they're breathing.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, while they're sitting there.
2
SPEAKER_00
So they do something new with them.
2
SPEAKER_00
They teach them meditative breathing.
2
SPEAKER_00
Come on.
2
SPEAKER_01
 What are you seeing on the brain activity recordings?
2
SPEAKER_00
The same thing that we see when we give Valium, which is an anxiolytic, their anxiety level goes down, their electricity goes from fast to medium.
2
SPEAKER_00
Remember when we started this?
2
SPEAKER_00
And we're talking about athletes not wanting to be in fast, wanting to be in the flow state.
2
SPEAKER_00
Meditated breathing led to direct changes
2
SPEAKER_00
 in the electricity of their brain as measured, not with a sticker on the forehead, but with a grid on the surface of the naked brain.
2
SPEAKER_00
It's true.
2
SPEAKER_00
It's true measurable changes in the electricity there for the mind.
2
SPEAKER_00
So meditative breathing that for thousands of years people have said can help you chill out, is an anxiolytic and break anxiety.
2
SPEAKER_00
Well, we have proof of that now.
2
SPEAKER_00
And I think that's important for people to know that it's not just some,
2
SPEAKER_00
 You know, it's just not a concept that's being thrown around too casually, that through awake, direct electrophysiologic recording of seizure planning surgery at elite centers, while looking for the seizures, there's a lot of data coming out about, let's play video games, let's do meditative breathing, let's read.
2
SPEAKER_00
And then what changes?
2
SPEAKER_00
And so that's what I love in book one that I shared was,
2
SPEAKER_00
 That's raw data.
2
SPEAKER_00
That's real data.
2
SPEAKER_00
And there's an explanation behind how that happens.
2
SPEAKER_00
And so what I would say to people is that's something you have that's free because I'm not selling anything.
2
SPEAKER_00
Breathing.
2
SPEAKER_00
And the pace of breathing and
2
SPEAKER_01
 What's the pace that works best?
2
SPEAKER_01
I mean, there's lots of different techniques of meditative breathing.
2
SPEAKER_00
They found, you know, it doesn't matter.
2
SPEAKER_00
You know, people say through your nose or mouth and that's kind of the confusing stuff that's out there.
2
SPEAKER_00
Well, the nose and the mouth connect before they get to the trachea and it goes to your lungs.
2
SPEAKER_00
So, it doesn't matter how, but it's about slowing the cadence and making the cadence more methodical.
2
SPEAKER_00
 a deep breath in and a deep breath out.
2
SPEAKER_00
It's no different than what we do in surgery when you feel the case getting a little out of your control.
2
SPEAKER_00
What do you do?
2
SPEAKER_00
Well, the first thing is, I just slow my breathing down.
2
SPEAKER_00
And that doesn't mean the solution will arise, but I know that puts me in my most calm and focused state to find the solution for the problem in front of me.
2
SPEAKER_00
And likely that's what athletes that thrive do as well.
2
SPEAKER_01
You don't want your brain surgeon to be like,
2
SPEAKER_00
 Well, exactly, but that's what stress does.
2
SPEAKER_00
It makes you hyperventilate, right?
2
SPEAKER_00
Absolutely.
2
SPEAKER_00
That's a great point.
2
SPEAKER_00
If you just hyperventilate just because you're just doing it as just whatever, for whatever reason, you'll get physically jittery.
2
SPEAKER_00
You will give yourself anxiety by just doing that.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I felt it just for a second.
2
SPEAKER_00
I'm showing you the proof on the other side.
2
SPEAKER_00
 do the opposite of hyperventilation and you'll make yourself less frenetic.
2
SPEAKER_00
Will that solve your relationship problems?
2
SPEAKER_00
I'm not sure.
2
SPEAKER_00
Will that make you not want to get in a fight with your boss?
2
SPEAKER_00
I'm not sure.
2
SPEAKER_00
But you should know that that puts you at your most in command of your emotions, your emotional regulation.
2
SPEAKER_00
That's a great, great question.
2
SPEAKER_01
The emotional regulation, it sounds like a big part of the
2
SPEAKER_01
 the health or the lack of health of our brain and our bodies, is what I'm here to say.
2
SPEAKER_01
The emotional regulation is at the center of our potential, let's call it sprouting of healthy brain activity and connections, and also healthy cells throughout the body and organs.
2
SPEAKER_01
 or a lack of emotional regulation could potentially damage the brain activity or could have it so up and down as opposed to a calmer activity and the body as well to create potentially more
2
SPEAKER_01
 I don't wanna call it cancerous cells, but.
2
SPEAKER_01
You wear yourself out if you let the emotions run too hard.
2
SPEAKER_01
Exhaustion, stress, anxiety, depression, all these different things.
2
SPEAKER_01
You wear yourself out.
2
SPEAKER_01
What I'm hearing you say is emotional regulation is at the core of these things.
2
SPEAKER_00
I think so.
2
SPEAKER_01
And it's the rarest skill to cultivate and the most important one, and it's in your control.
2
SPEAKER_01
But it's not easy.
2
SPEAKER_01
It's not easy.
2
SPEAKER_01
It's taken me a long time to learn this process.
2
SPEAKER_01
So we've got thoughts.
2
SPEAKER_01
 Do thoughts come from the brain or from the mind?
2
SPEAKER_00
That's a deep question.
2
SPEAKER_01
But the mind is only activated when the brain is activated, right?
2
SPEAKER_00
It's like saying, does the roar come from the person in the stadium, you know, or is its own thing?
2
SPEAKER_00
You need the neurons to roar, to connect
2
SPEAKER_00
 is that roar outside of the stadium.
2
SPEAKER_00
Interestingly, they did this experiment again with direct, I need hard science, I don't want fluffy language.
2
SPEAKER_00
Somebody says, in the next five minutes, decide on your own, at your own, whatever you want, then you're gonna move, you're gonna grab this coffee cup.
2
SPEAKER_00
And then they're measuring me.
2
SPEAKER_00
The electricity pops.
2
SPEAKER_00
 before I report wanting to move this coffee cup.
2
SPEAKER_00
What do you mean?
2
SPEAKER_00
Meaning that the electricity happens before... You make a move.
2
SPEAKER_00
Before...
2
SPEAKER_00
 I think I'm ready to make a move.
2
SPEAKER_00
You know, the ambition comes from the electricity.
2
SPEAKER_00
It's not like, I'm gonna grab this coffee cup and then electricity.
2
SPEAKER_00
It's the electricity, I think I'm gonna grab this coffee cup.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
2
SPEAKER_01
So this is something that I can't explain.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, it comes first.
2
SPEAKER_00
You've scanned this, you've seen this.
2
SPEAKER_00
More than scan, right?
2
SPEAKER_00
Because a lot of brain scans going on these days.
2
SPEAKER_00
Everybody in a car accident with a headache is getting a brain scan.
2
SPEAKER_00
I'm talking about direct electrical measurements.
2
SPEAKER_00
 You mean on the brain?
2
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, yeah.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
2
SPEAKER_00
So the electricity is the thought.
2
SPEAKER_01
So before I move my hand to grab this coffee cup, there's an electrical... I can measure a little flick like your light bulb.
2
SPEAKER_01
I can measure something before without you telling me when.
2
SPEAKER_01
So you can tell me when I'm going to move for it based on... I can tell you when electricity changes.
2
SPEAKER_00
I can't tell you your intentions.
2
SPEAKER_00
I can't read your mind.
2
SPEAKER_00
Gotcha.
2
SPEAKER_00
But the electricity pops.
2
SPEAKER_00
 before you actually think I'm having a thought.
2
SPEAKER_00
The electricity is you having the thought.
2
SPEAKER_01
What does that mean?
2
SPEAKER_00
That's crazy.
2
SPEAKER_00
But that's measurement that we can, you know, that's why it's fascinating.
2
SPEAKER_00
You know, let me tell you something about this, man.
2
SPEAKER_00
The electric, we are electrical,
2
SPEAKER_00
 beings, like eels.
2
SPEAKER_00
The nerves to your legs, you can put an electrode in there.
2
SPEAKER_00
We're electric.
2
SPEAKER_00
We're flesh.
2
SPEAKER_00
We have chemistry, electrochemistry.
2
SPEAKER_00
There's a battery.
2
SPEAKER_00
 and you separate these little ions.
2
SPEAKER_00
What's a battery?
2
SPEAKER_00
We are batteries.
2
SPEAKER_00
Those neurons are essentially batteries.
2
SPEAKER_00
They're things that are separated that currents can run through.
2
SPEAKER_00
And people say, oh man, that sounds so, I know.
2
SPEAKER_00
We're measuring it.
2
SPEAKER_00
Seizures are aberrant electrical activity without any changes in brain anatomy.
2
SPEAKER_00
I'm trying to get people out of flesh, people out of being wired to electrical flows.
2
SPEAKER_00
And then think about this.
2
SPEAKER_00
 in a bipolar disorder when you can be really manic or really depressed, the treatment is an ion, lithium.
2
SPEAKER_00
It's bipolar.
2
SPEAKER_00
And for decades, it's on the periodic table next to all the other ones like hydrogen.
2
SPEAKER_00
 It's an ion.
2
SPEAKER_00
It's stardust.
2
SPEAKER_00
Stardust, lithium, is cheap.
2
SPEAKER_00
It's a pill, and it can bring down your mania, and it can lift your depression.
2
SPEAKER_00
So I'm seeing a lot of different things that point to that we are electrical flows, our thoughts, our feelings, our emotions, and behaviors.
2
SPEAKER_00
Because that's what we're talking about today, right?
2
SPEAKER_00
The bigger stuff.
2
SPEAKER_00
 not how do I move an arm or how do I move a leg.
2
SPEAKER_00
And again, if you see your thoughts as billowing through your skull, if you see them moving like Aurora Borealis, like a school of fish or birds, that leaves us with potential that we can think differently, we can feel differently, that we can transform.
2
SPEAKER_00
 That takeaway is for you to make, but I'm trying to give you a lot of evidence that the world of neuroscience is starting to see things that way and not about gears or wires.
2
SPEAKER_01
So how do we train our brains and our minds
2
SPEAKER_01
 to live a more abundant life?
2
SPEAKER_00
You know, everybody's got their own drive.
2
SPEAKER_00
I mean, I've got people who don't like to be on lithium because they think they're more creative when they're manic, you know?
2
SPEAKER_00
So I'm not, I can't, I don't judge.
2
SPEAKER_00
I inform.
2
SPEAKER_00
It's up to people what they want to do.
2
SPEAKER_01
I guess abundant and peaceful loving life, you know?
2
SPEAKER_00
It's like all that.
2
SPEAKER_00
Well, I mean, I,
2
SPEAKER_00
 If that's your ambition, I think you would, you know, because it isn't for some actually.
2
SPEAKER_00
They want wildlife or they want to, you know, they take risks, they climb mountains, they like the thrill, you know, I don't, that's up to you.
2
SPEAKER_00
But to optimize brain function, I think in whichever direction you want to steer it is to first look at the flesh, because it is flesh.
2
SPEAKER_00
 And so keeping the arteries open and irrigating that garden, that flesh is important.
2
SPEAKER_00
So things good for your heart, keep the arteries open in your brain.
2
SPEAKER_00
You know, you want blood flow going.
2
SPEAKER_00
You want water going in your garden.
2
SPEAKER_00
That's easy enough.
2
SPEAKER_00
And you get that through how?
2
SPEAKER_00
The same things that keep your heart arteries open.
2
SPEAKER_00
Exercise.
2
SPEAKER_00
 Exercise has double benefit, but yeah, but you know, if you're my age, 49, cholesterol pills, you know, you gotta keep the plumbing open.
2
SPEAKER_00
Exercise, eating right, keeping your cholesterol down, all those things they tell you so you don't get a heart attack, well, keeping those arteries open on the surface of your heart also keep these arteries open into the garden of your brain.
2
SPEAKER_00
So that's easy for people to get, like, okay, heart health is good for brain health.
2
SPEAKER_00
Well, heart health is good for brain flesh.
2
SPEAKER_00
 but we are more than flesh, right?
2
SPEAKER_00
And so then you have to leave the world of heart behind and come more into sort of the mind.
2
SPEAKER_00
Then there's thinking thoughts, not just brain health, but thinking health.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I like that, exactly.
2
SPEAKER_00
Because it's not a pump, you know?
2
SPEAKER_00
Right, it's thought health.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I like that.
2
SPEAKER_00
And now, before we get to the electricity up here that we've touched on a lot,
2
SPEAKER_00
 We've talked about now heart health is good for brain flesh health Yes, there's something in between that we haven't touched and that's the chemical that there are chemicals Neurotransmitters often used I hate the word, you know, but don't it's a dopamine hit.
2
SPEAKER_00
It's not that simple So now there's chemicals there too.
2
SPEAKER_00
So in this garden the piece that I didn't tell you about is that those hundred billion neurons When they are trying to branch with each other when successful They never actually touch
2
SPEAKER_00
 there's always going to be a gap.
2
SPEAKER_00
And in that gap, they spray chemicals at each other.
2
SPEAKER_00
 So you have electricity coming down this neuron, and to get across this cleft to the other neuron, it sprays dopamine, it sprays serotonin, it sprays other things, GABA.
2
SPEAKER_00
And so you are electrochemical.
2
SPEAKER_00
And that's why things like Prozac as an antidepressant is out there.
2
SPEAKER_00
That's where lithium works.
2
SPEAKER_00
You can change the global electrical pattern and flows of your brain
2
SPEAKER_00
 by modifying the chemistry in those little clips.
2
SPEAKER_00
So let me give you a specific example.
2
SPEAKER_00
Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor.
2
SPEAKER_00
A lot of people are on antidepressants.
2
SPEAKER_00
When serotonin is sprayed,
2
SPEAKER_00
 The reuptake inhibitor is a little vacuum, and it doesn't clear the cleft of serotonin.
2
SPEAKER_00
You're messing with the vacuum, so there's more serotonin in the cleft that tends to work as an antidepressant.
2
SPEAKER_00
So chemicals have to be thought about also.
2
SPEAKER_00
There's the flesh, there's the chemistry, and then there's the electricity.
2
SPEAKER_00
What seems to help everything
2
SPEAKER_00
 And people aren't going to like this answer, but it is exercise.
2
SPEAKER_00
Right.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, of course.
2
SPEAKER_00
And exercise in a way where you're also thinking there are these cool things like they had of people running on a treadmill and dodging wild game.
2
SPEAKER_00
Oh, wow.
2
SPEAKER_00
 you know, thought and movement together.
2
SPEAKER_00
It is the thing.
2
SPEAKER_01
So like a, I mean, like a racket sport where you're like hand-eye coordination, you have to move, ping pong, tennis.
2
SPEAKER_00
Pickleball.
2
SPEAKER_01
Pickleball's amazing.
2
SPEAKER_01
I just started playing last year.
2
SPEAKER_01
I've only played like five times.
2
SPEAKER_01
I'm like, this is an incredible sport.
2
SPEAKER_00
I played with my sons.
2
SPEAKER_00
We were dropping them off in San Francisco for Berkeley, and they got it.
2
SPEAKER_00
I hadn't played.
2
SPEAKER_00
Dude.
2
SPEAKER_00
And my sons were like, this is why, Dad, you don't play board games with us or sports with us, because you're insanely competitive.
2
SPEAKER_00
Oh, man.
2
SPEAKER_00
You're like, ah!
2
SPEAKER_00
 I always just, they're like, okay, dad, it's... It's a fun game, yeah, yeah.
2
SPEAKER_00
But that's powerful, right?
2
SPEAKER_00
Because people sitting at home don't wanna hear, man, get on your treadmill, get active, get engaged, go out and do stuff.
2
SPEAKER_00
Board games, moving, thought.
2
SPEAKER_00
So the thought cultivation is really important.
2
SPEAKER_00
So brain, keeping the flesh going.
2
SPEAKER_00
But once you get out of thinking just about the flesh,
2
SPEAKER_00
 It's about engagement.
2
SPEAKER_00
It's about stimulation.
2
SPEAKER_00
It's about, you know, the results don't happen the next day.
2
SPEAKER_00
It's a life pattern, right?
2
SPEAKER_00
It's not knowing how to play the violin, but trying to learn how to play the violin.
2
SPEAKER_00
You don't have to learn the next language.
2
SPEAKER_00
You just got to try.
2
SPEAKER_00
You just got to try to pull from all the corners of that garden as a habit.
2
SPEAKER_00
I'm not saying all day, every day.
2
SPEAKER_00
 But nobody told us those habits should also be introduced.
2
SPEAKER_00
Nobody told us to cultivate our thought is something kids should learn, something we should have dedicated time to.
2
SPEAKER_00
We learned a lot about heart health.
2
SPEAKER_00
And now it's time to get on to brain and mind health, especially with the pandemic, especially with other things that are going on.
2
SPEAKER_00
So I think when I was in medical school, it was just heart, heart, heart all the time.
2
SPEAKER_00
And in fact, heart surgery,
2
SPEAKER_00
 Was one of the most the second most competitive along with brain surgery.
2
SPEAKER_00
Mm-hmm in the last Three decades as they've gotten better with catheters and stents and the pills have been better heart surgeons have significantly been reduced because there isn't the need for it and I think when you look at the dent that has been made in cardiac health through a couple of decades of Messaging and I mean you go in there they check your blood pressure They check all this stuff for your heart, but nobody asks you how you're doing
2
SPEAKER_01
 Right, the emotional, therapeutic side of things.
2
SPEAKER_01
Mind health.
2
SPEAKER_01
Yes.
2
SPEAKER_01
So our emotions is mind health.
2
SPEAKER_00
Well, I think it depends.
2
SPEAKER_00
So some people, let's stay with that for a second.
2
SPEAKER_00
Because for some people, the lack of emotional regulation is leading them to suffer or not have the mind health they want.
2
SPEAKER_01
But they're feeling it in their body, the emotion.
2
SPEAKER_01
When you think of emotions, you feel like your body is.
2
SPEAKER_00
And that book has continued to do well, The Body Keeps Score.
2
SPEAKER_00
It's a clever title too.
2
SPEAKER_00
It's an amazing book.
2
SPEAKER_00
 Especially in these times.
2
SPEAKER_00
Oh, it's number two on the bestseller list in New York I mean New York Times bestseller list, but right but that that space is true But there's also other people whose mind health is a lack of focus or attention like they feel good They just can't get the words out.
2
SPEAKER_00
And so my cancer patients that have chemo
2
SPEAKER_00
 They can sometimes develop chemo fog.
2
SPEAKER_00
And there's things like, you know, COVID brain fog.
2
SPEAKER_00
So yes, mind health and emotional regulation, likely the most important thing.
2
SPEAKER_00
But also other things like concentration and attention is all under the umbrella of mind health.
2
SPEAKER_00
So like, if I had an attention coach when I was younger, I could have done better in school.
2
SPEAKER_00
I see my boys, one of them, I'm just like,
2
SPEAKER_00
 You're the sharpest tool in the shed, you just can't look at a problem for longer than 20 seconds.
2
SPEAKER_00
So stay in the striking distance when that naturally comes to you in your 20s, you're going to be the boss man.
2
SPEAKER_00
 Realizing attention and focus is one part of mind health.
2
SPEAKER_00
Realizing emotional regulation is one part of mind health.
2
SPEAKER_00
Realizing that if they eat a certain way, and you teach them to eat a certain way, there is a proven mind diet.
2
SPEAKER_00
It's Mediterranean, mostly plants, fish.
2
SPEAKER_00
If you put these habits in them now,
2
SPEAKER_00
 Think about where they will be at age 49, having the tools, some of the tricks, having had the diet that has preserved their flesh the best.
2
SPEAKER_00
 likely to have staved off dementia a little bit.
2
SPEAKER_00
Those things we do now, in my opinion, that's a lesson for the pandemic.
2
SPEAKER_00
Let's not wait to see how this pandemic has just rocked kids' minds.
2
SPEAKER_00
Let's put this stuff in now.
2
SPEAKER_00
Let's front load this and then let them develop and see how this generation happens after this cataclysmic event.
2
SPEAKER_01
 As a parent of three boys, and after all the information you've learned, personally from life experience, but also as a surgeon, brain surgeon and neuroscientist, if you could only share three pieces of wisdom for parents today to raise their kids to have an optimal life, what would you say were the three things they should do?
2
SPEAKER_00
The answers I give, I want to back it with the
2
SPEAKER_00
 Even now saying the sciences doesn't mean as much as it used to.
2
SPEAKER_01
The science is fluid.
2
SPEAKER_01
It's like always evolving and changing.
2
SPEAKER_00
Right.
2
SPEAKER_00
I want to back it with an explanation that you can understand and take home and grasp.
2
SPEAKER_00
The third thing is just what we talked about.
2
SPEAKER_00
I'd love to equip them with mind health tools.
2
SPEAKER_00
So that would be a certain type of diet.
2
SPEAKER_00
 Good food, I'm not talking about being skinny, or fat, or heavy, or obese, or underweight.
2
SPEAKER_00
I'm not talking about any of those things.
2
SPEAKER_00
The things you eat, regardless of your weight, can help preserve the flesh of your brain.
2
SPEAKER_00
And that's the Mediterranean diet.
2
SPEAKER_00
So I would've added salmon a couple of times, and if you're vegan, there are vegetables that add that sort of omega-3s in there.
2
SPEAKER_00
I would've said, look, this has to be a part of what you eat.
2
SPEAKER_00
 even if you're eating french fries every day.
2
SPEAKER_00
I'm not telling you what not to eat, right?
2
SPEAKER_00
Make sure you have this at least.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, this vitamin.
2
SPEAKER_00
It's nature's true vitamin for your brain.
2
SPEAKER_00
I would have taught them that and sort of the emotional coping skills.
2
SPEAKER_00
And then we've gone over why that's important, that for these things to work, they're a multi-decade
2
SPEAKER_00
 They're a glacial process.
2
SPEAKER_00
It's not, what can we take tomorrow?
2
SPEAKER_00
Can I take this pill and it'll fix everything?
2
SPEAKER_00
If there was one, I'd be taking it and I'd share it with you.
2
SPEAKER_00
I'm not against it, actually.
2
SPEAKER_00
I just, there isn't one.
2
SPEAKER_00
And when you think of the brain and the ways we've tried to conceptualize them today, you can imagine one pill ain't gonna fix all of that.
2
SPEAKER_00
The other thing that I find interesting is when they're born, they actually have more neurons than they hold onto.
2
SPEAKER_00
 And that was one, you know, when you said in surgery, like there was an aha moment, I was like, can you do that?
2
SPEAKER_00
Well, in neuroscience, there was this one aha moment for me, it's like, they have more of those neurons, those jellyfish, when they're young than when they're older?
2
SPEAKER_00
So you're born with the biggest block of marble.
2
SPEAKER_00
And you shave off what you don't use.
2
SPEAKER_00
Because the brain is an energy hog, right?
2
SPEAKER_00
So it wants to be efficient.
2
SPEAKER_00
 So if you see that there will be a pruning of the diversity of neurons, and then certain things will have better connections and stay in there.
2
SPEAKER_00
If you know there's a culling coming for the diversity of neurons, the most broad types of neurons,
2
SPEAKER_00
 I think it's important to let them have the most broad types of life experiences So they hold on to those as they get older and then they can choose what they want to do and shave off a few They ain't using anymore right right so that it's called pruning, huh?
2
SPEAKER_00
Okay, the human brain in kids will go through pruning and
2
SPEAKER_00
 And people are like, what does that mean?
2
SPEAKER_00
Well, you know, we're born and we can't walk, and then we learn to walk, so some changes are going on.
2
SPEAKER_00
The changes are also going on up here.
2
SPEAKER_00
You're born with a lot and you're shaving certain things down.
2
SPEAKER_00
Diversity of experiences, I think, are very important.
2
SPEAKER_00
So I took them traveling with me all around the world, like, each of them, eight trips around the world, each.
2
SPEAKER_00
 Wow.
2
SPEAKER_00
And that's when we did all our vibing, bonding, talking, hanging.
2
SPEAKER_00
Of course, took them to all the practices and games and stuff like that.
2
SPEAKER_00
But the diversity of experiences is important to me.
2
SPEAKER_00
That could be with grandma, different cookies.
2
SPEAKER_00
It doesn't have to be all in and out.
2
SPEAKER_00
That helps turn the brain and optimize the brain.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, so that helps.
2
SPEAKER_00
But diversity of experiences will keep
2
SPEAKER_00
 will let them have the widest repertoire of neurons.
2
SPEAKER_01
As opposed to what, limiting their experiences?
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, because then the brain will shave off the stuff it doesn't do.
2
SPEAKER_00
If you tie one hand behind the back, certain neurons will fall away.
2
SPEAKER_01
So we want to keep those neurons as long as we can.
2
SPEAKER_00
And that's my second point.
2
SPEAKER_00
I got a buddy who's an Olympian in
2
SPEAKER_00
 in England, he's a pentathlete, Greg White, and he made a great point.
2
SPEAKER_00
I was a decathlete in college.
2
SPEAKER_00
Oh, were you?
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, yeah.
2
SPEAKER_00
Just fascinating to see.
2
SPEAKER_00
It was amazing, man.
2
SPEAKER_00
It was a great experience.
2
SPEAKER_00
I've always tried to be sort of a decathlete in life.
2
SPEAKER_00
In life, me too, yeah.
2
SPEAKER_00
I want to enjoy, it's not that I want to be good at a lot of different things, I want to see what it looks like when you get to be good at certain things.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, exactly.
2
SPEAKER_00
Because you get into different worlds, like this one, right?
2
SPEAKER_00
 The other thing is that proprioception, which should be cultivated in my mind, which is knowing your arm is up or down.
3
SPEAKER_01
 And so Greg and I, we talked about it, it would be fun for everybody should play as much as to their capacity because I know people have children with intellectual physical disabilities but similarly getting them physically is teaching them how to do somersaults, putting them in a
3
SPEAKER_01
 not that they're gonna be gymnasts, but some sort of sporting, they call it sporting over there, like exposure, so they're fully coordinated with their bodies.
3
SPEAKER_01
I think that's an important, whether that translates to less falls as grandma when they become grandparents, I don't know, but the full integration of brain to physical coordination I think would be an interesting one.
3
SPEAKER_01
 You know using the mouse with their left hand using the fork with their left hand forcing Forcing those those neurons to stay relevant.
3
SPEAKER_01
Yes, so that's in experiences and that's number two, I would say movement and Then number three is I you know, what we talked about is teaching them.
3
SPEAKER_01
What should be eaten I think it's easy to say I have this conversation when my sons are there the eyes like I
3
SPEAKER_01
 Try to eat this regardless of what else you eat.
3
SPEAKER_01
Because there are things in fatty fish, certain vegetables, and plants.
3
SPEAKER_01
 that's separate from the junk food, separate from all the other bad stuff you might eat.
3
SPEAKER_01
I mean, it's delicious, man.
3
SPEAKER_01
Happiness is important.
3
SPEAKER_01
I eat some junk food, but I have tried hard since I learned about this to... To be on the Mediterranean diet.
3
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, or to add plants and omega-3s and however you want to do that.
3
SPEAKER_01
Wow.
3
SPEAKER_01
 not to lose weight, not for all of that, but to preserve the flesh of my brain.
3
SPEAKER_01
So I think, you know, diversity experiences to keep your neurons around, lots of movement and coordination training to keep those neurons engaged, and then
3
SPEAKER_01
 eat plants to keep the flesh going.
3
SPEAKER_00
 that the bigger your body gets, the more obese it gets, the smaller your brain becomes, it shrinks the brain, or there's a correlation there with obesity and brain size, is that?
3
SPEAKER_00
I haven't heard of that.
3
SPEAKER_00
Okay.
3
SPEAKER_01
And just on a regular level, I operate on patients who are obese, and when I open their skull, they're fine.
3
SPEAKER_01
There's not, oh, I haven't seen that.
3
SPEAKER_01
You haven't seen smaller or bigger?
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
3
SPEAKER_01
And actually, that can be, you know,
3
SPEAKER_01
 I have seen withered brains work perfectly.
3
SPEAKER_00
Really?
3
SPEAKER_01
And I have seen juicy brains have issues with epilepsy or autism.
3
SPEAKER_01
So the flesh is the starting point, but it's the mind and the function that together, right?
3
SPEAKER_01
Gosh, that's so fascinating.
3
SPEAKER_01
So trying to go, if you're heavy and your brain is smaller, brain smaller, bigger, this spot, that spot.
3
SPEAKER_01
 Hard-wired not hard-wired.
3
SPEAKER_00
I'm geared for this I just but if you have a perfect-looking juicy brain, let's say right there.
3
SPEAKER_00
You're like, wow, that's a beautiful-looking It looks healthy and that's what epilepsy is.
3
SPEAKER_01
Most people it's just beautiful looking brain but the electricity that it's sparking is off and sometimes they pass out and
3
SPEAKER_01
 Sometimes they smell certain things, sometimes they have visions, but it's all from the electricity, right?
3
SPEAKER_01
Like that's a real life experience.
3
SPEAKER_01
I mean, there's stuff about they're like authors and writers that in their, before having the seizures, when they felt most connected to God.
3
SPEAKER_01
So that's an electrical thing.
3
SPEAKER_01
Their brain MRI looks the same as his brain MRI.
3
SPEAKER_00
I love this three piece of advice you'd give to parents, which is,
3
SPEAKER_00
 Optimizing the physical body with coordination type activities and doing that.
3
SPEAKER_00
The second one, diversity of experiences in life, just providing a range of opportunities to experience life at its fullest.
3
SPEAKER_00
And then nutrition, therefore mind health.
3
SPEAKER_00
Mind health tools including nutrition and emotional coping skills and emotional regulation skills.
3
SPEAKER_00
I feel like I could go for a few more hours with you.
3
SPEAKER_00
This stuff's fascinating to me.
3
SPEAKER_00
 What do you feel like you're gonna be shocked to learn over the next five years as a surgeon and a neuroscientist with the capabilities of where you see the brain, mind, emotional connection heading?
3
SPEAKER_01
The thing that has fascinated me recently, a bit out of my wheelhouse,
3
SPEAKER_01
 because it doesn't require a surgeon, which is good.
3
SPEAKER_01
I'd love for my career to be obsolete.
3
SPEAKER_01
If we can help people without having to cut them open, that's... Prevention, yeah, yeah.
3
SPEAKER_01
Or non-invasive treatments.
3
SPEAKER_01
I'm trying to invent those.
3
SPEAKER_01
I'm trying to make myself obsolete.
3
SPEAKER_01
But right now, some of the stuff the patients are, they come looking for surgeons.
3
SPEAKER_01
I don't do the type of surgery where I try to
3
SPEAKER_01
 Offer you improved something people come to me with a scan or a feeling that say can you help me?
3
SPEAKER_01
and I have to decide if I can and I guide them through that so I I Enjoy my craft, but I also want there be a time when opening a skull is no longer needed that said NPR did so out of Stanford or Karolinska, I'm not sure but I love the way science communicates you can see the you can see the work, but the
3
SPEAKER_01
 Transcranial, and again, these words can be easily manipulated, so I'm trying to give you the explanation.
3
SPEAKER_01
So when you read it some other time, you could say, I remember he was talking about the electricity of the brain.
3
SPEAKER_01
They have figured out the thing looks like the size of a camera, and they put it, it's on a frame on the outside of your skull, and they pulse mild electrical currents.
3
SPEAKER_01
 not the sky high ones from shock therapy like Jack Nicholson's in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, but the fact that if you understand that we are electric, the same deep brain stimulation, the little pulse, the heavy pulse of many electrodes of shock therapy, electroconvulsive therapy, that they can do it at more, they can turn the voltage down and they can direct it more.
3
SPEAKER_01
 And recently, in a rigorous journal, they were able to get it down to five, most of the day, sessions, and they had an 80% reduction in refractory depression.
3
SPEAKER_01
 So you're depressed, you've taken all the pills, things are difficult, you've considered things.
3
SPEAKER_01
Suicidal thoughts, yeah.
3
SPEAKER_01
That's an interesting one, let me get on that one just for a second.
3
SPEAKER_01
Because when people have suicidal thoughts and they go into a hospital, they can't wait six weeks for the pills to work, if they work.
3
SPEAKER_01
They need relief now.
3
SPEAKER_01
Or in five days, like with this kind of, just the softest shock therapy.
3
SPEAKER_01
The patient's report feels like a woodpecker.
3
SPEAKER_01
 And so the brain on the brain it that's not something a neurosurgeon will do but to me That is where things are headed Wow.
3
SPEAKER_01
I would caution don't buy the stuff from Amazon with it There's always a there's always a dark side of being manipulated by some of these so what you're saying by technology They've already been doing studies on this where 80% reduction on depression.
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah powerful from just the electronic
3
SPEAKER_00
 Shock, a gentle, for what?
3
SPEAKER_00
Well, shock therapy is for severe depression.
3
SPEAKER_00
For what, 30 minutes, or five minutes, is this an hour?
3
SPEAKER_01
It's 10 minute episodes spaced by time over most of the day, but you know, you gotta spend some time.
3
SPEAKER_01
But five days, it's powerful.
3
SPEAKER_01
And then it stays, or it's for a period of time?
3
SPEAKER_01
Very good question.
3
SPEAKER_01
Some of the patients found it to be durable, maybe in that time the pills come in, maybe in that time the therapy comes in.
3
SPEAKER_01
Interesting.
3
SPEAKER_01
But the point is,
3
SPEAKER_01
 And they can do with magnets too, so be careful on YouTube with magnets can do, but it's electromagnetic, so.
3
SPEAKER_01
 Gosh, it's fascinating.
3
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, and it's not completely in my space, that's why I'm also more fast.
3
SPEAKER_01
I'm a surgeon, I stimulate the brain, I use electric wands, I put electric pulses, but the whole space of doing it from outside the skull is a non-surgical space, but to me it's very fascinating.
3
SPEAKER_01
It reinforces a concept that our highest levels of thinking, feeling, and emotions
3
SPEAKER_01
 are all sort of electrical flows.
3
SPEAKER_00
Oh my god, this is my jam.
3
SPEAKER_01
I love this stuff, man.
3
SPEAKER_01
I'm so excited.
3
SPEAKER_01
But there's a lot of room for, you know, there's a lot of room for exploitation when you use language like that, because it's easier to say gears and wired, but it's not.
3
SPEAKER_01
Otherwise, you know, Dostoevsky wouldn't report writing his best work
3
SPEAKER_01
 the moments preceding his epilepsy.
3
SPEAKER_01
You're talking about art and literature.
3
SPEAKER_01
Otherwise you wouldn't put a little battery in the controlled medical environment and break depression.
3
SPEAKER_01
And otherwise you wouldn't
3
SPEAKER_01
 you know, being shock therapy, it's still some of these centers and it can be useful where you literally, you shock the skull and people wake up non-suicidal.
3
SPEAKER_01
Even if it happens once, all three of these things, from ancient literature and the world of epilepsy to a new study out.
3
SPEAKER_01
To modern science.
3
SPEAKER_01
To modern, it's a lot, the theme that connects it all is all juicy brains,
3
SPEAKER_01
 but all different people because of the electricity that sprouts from those juicy grapes.
3
SPEAKER_01
So it's a bit to wrap your head around, but that's our current understanding.
3
SPEAKER_01
It'd be easier for me to come in there and say, you're wired this way, you're wired that way, change your wiring by eating a blueberry.
3
SPEAKER_01
Look, it's just not where our understanding is.
3
SPEAKER_00
This is fascinating, man.
3
SPEAKER_00
We're gonna have to have you come back on for part two sometime, but I wanna ask you a couple final questions.
3
SPEAKER_00
 This is a question, well actually before I do ask you a couple final questions, I want people to check out your work.
3
SPEAKER_00
You've got a new book called Life on a Knife's Edge, A Brain Surgeon's Reflections on Life, Loss and Survival.
3
SPEAKER_00
You've got a number of books, but people can check out that one, it's the recent one.
3
SPEAKER_00
If they go to your website is, what's your website where they can learn more about it all?
3
SPEAKER_01
 Obviously just I would just you know, just Google because you see a lot of different things like yeah Yeah, you know my website isn't really the conduit, but I'm I'm a cancer surgeon at City of Hope Yes, and there's different stuff.
3
SPEAKER_01
I've been doing and are you on social media at all?
3
SPEAKER_01
I am on Instagram.
3
SPEAKER_01
Actually, that's where I put my my good stuff.
3
SPEAKER_00
Okay, cool.
3
SPEAKER_00
So we'll follow that.
3
SPEAKER_00
That's doctor at dr. John do you know John deal?
3
SPEAKER_00
Yes, J and D I a L so go check you out over there and
3
SPEAKER_00
 and the books on Amazon and everywhere else.
3
SPEAKER_00
But again, check out the book, Life on a Knife's Edge.
3
SPEAKER_00
 This stuff's fascinating, man.
3
SPEAKER_00
I'm so intrigued by this.
3
SPEAKER_00
I feel like in another life, I would've been a neuroscientist.
3
SPEAKER_00
Probably not a surgeon, but a neuroscientist.
3
SPEAKER_00
Because I just think, yeah, surgery for me, that might be a little too much, but I don't know how you do it, man.
3
SPEAKER_00
Every week, that's gotta be intense.
3
SPEAKER_00
But really fascinating stuff that you've been studying and practicing, and I want people to get the book and learn more about you.
3
SPEAKER_00
 How else can we best be supportive of you and what you're up to right now?
3
SPEAKER_01
I mean, this is, I never take it lightly to have a voice and to share my opinions.
3
SPEAKER_01
So that, right away, you've already done me a tremendous favor to invite me on your show.
3
SPEAKER_01
So we're all good.
3
SPEAKER_01
And I think, you know, I don't ask for, there's nothing I'm selling, I don't have anything like that.
3
SPEAKER_01
 I'm turning 50 this year and, you know, my pops and other people I've seen, you know, this run ain't forever.
3
SPEAKER_01
And I think I'm just super happy that I'm still, I'm exploring and investigating and tearing myself apart, you know, putting my soul work in this book and just to have the opportunity to
3
SPEAKER_01
 to have that as a component of my life, I never expected that.
3
SPEAKER_01
And so by being given that opportunity, that's support enough, brother.
3
SPEAKER_00
That's cool, man.
3
SPEAKER_00
I'm excited.
3
SPEAKER_00
I'm excited for people to get the book.
3
SPEAKER_00
This question is called The Three Truths.
3
SPEAKER_00
It's a question I ask everyone at the end of the interviews.
3
SPEAKER_00
Hypothetical scenario.
3
SPEAKER_00
Imagine you live as long as you want to live, but it's your last day on Earth.
3
SPEAKER_00
 You've accomplished everything, you've done the stuff you wanna do, you have happy, healthy life, family, all that stuff.
3
SPEAKER_00
But for whatever reason, you've gotta take all of your message with you to the next place.
3
SPEAKER_00
It's your last day, you gotta turn the lights off, there's no more electricity in the brain, and you move on to the next place.
3
SPEAKER_00
You take all of your work with you, all the message, the content, anything you shared, your lessons, no one has access to anymore.
3
SPEAKER_00
 But you get to leave behind three things you know to be true, three lessons you would leave with the world.
3
SPEAKER_00
And that's all that we would have to remember you by are these three lessons.
3
SPEAKER_00
What would you say are yours?
3
SPEAKER_01
I think the first one would be that life is short, but art is long.
3
SPEAKER_01
I never fully understood that, but through the last few years where I've become an author,
3
SPEAKER_01
 I've realized I can impact a lot of people and that the words in this book and the soul work in this book can actually last onward.
3
SPEAKER_01
So life is short but art is long and having an opportunity to leave a bit of art has been a tremendous opportunity and that would be a message I would leave the world.
3
SPEAKER_01
 The second thing I would say is, it really touched me, I think people think he was being facetious, but Kafka said, I think, and I learned about these authors and stuff later, I never read, actually I didn't read much at all when I was young, I was just rocking out and then, but in the last four or five years of trying to put this, trying to talk about the human brain and mind, you have to bring in artists and literature, but he said the meaning of life is that it ends.
3
SPEAKER_01
 My cancer patients have shown me that is when you get that feeling of Mortality that it can be fuel for you to live absolutely so and and the third thing is
3
SPEAKER_01
 if you can, this one's more mine, if you're fortunate enough to find true love, take care of it so you don't lose it.
3
SPEAKER_01
And that's on an interpersonal level between friends and lovers and parents even, you know, the children.
3
SPEAKER_01
That's what I got, baby.
3
SPEAKER_00
Man, I wanna acknowledge you for a moment for
3
SPEAKER_00
 putting your message out there in a way that we can understand it, because I think it's confusing to understand the brain, and the mind, and the emotions, and how it all is connected, and I think people are communicating in a way of rewiring, I've said these things, and it's understanding how do we start to change the language around this, and understand the brain, and the mind, and the emotions, and the body, and the flesh, and the electricity of it all,
3
SPEAKER_00
 And so you doing the practical work as a surgeon and a neuroscientist and bringing both fields together to then educate in more simplified ways of something that's extremely complex that we'll probably never fully understand how it all works.
3
SPEAKER_00
 Is really helpful and for me this has just been really inspiring so I appreciate and acknowledge your work and your Ability to want to continue to grow as a human and serve people with your message.
3
SPEAKER_00
It's really inspiring man My final question is what's your definition of greatness that elusive goal that no one achieves, but keeps us striving for more
3
SPEAKER_00
 Amen.
3
SPEAKER_00
Thanks, sir.
3
SPEAKER_00
 I really love hearing feedback from you guys, so share a review over on Apple and let me know what part of this episode resonated with you the most.
3
SPEAKER_00
And if no one's told you lately, I want to remind you that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter.
3
SPEAKER_00
And now it's time to go out there and do something great.