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Tag Archives for " the tailored brain "

January 10, 2022

Tailor your brain for optimal mental performance with Dr. Emily Willingham

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The brain is a very special organ that we are just beginning to understand. Dr. Emily Willingham provides a science-based roadmap to better mental performance in her book, The Tailored Brain. Avoid the useless, and sometimes dangerous brain performance hacks and focus on the key things to make your brain healthy.

Transcript

Let's Say Hello

[00:02:20.830] – Allan

Hey, Ras.

[00:02:21.950] – Rachel

Hey, Allan, how are you?

[00:02:23.680] – Allan

I'm good. So we did the recording of two episodes at once. Rachel and I were literally just sitting here five minutes ago wrapping up the other episode, I think, 519 that you just listened to last week. This episode, there's no real “Hello,” but we wanted to have this little “Hello” segment. So when I say welcome back, it doesn't sound so weird.

[00:02:46.090] – Allan

So let's go ahead and have this conversation with Dr. Willingham

[00:02:50.830] – Rachel

Great.

Interview

[00:03:18.910] – Allan

Dr. Willingham. Welcome to 40+ Fitness.

[00:03:22.090] – Dr. Willingham

Allan. Hi. It's nice to be here.

[00:03:24.480] – Allan

Your book is called The Tailored Brain, From Ketome to Keto to Companionship, a User's Guide to Feeling Better and Thinking Smarter. And as someone who's now in their mid 50s and hitting the second age in the second half of the 50s, I don't feel as smart as I did when I was younger. When I was 13, I knew everything.

[00:03:48.850] – Allan

Don't we all?

[00:03:49.850] 

Then I got into College and it's like, okay, I got some things to learn. And now I feel like, okay, if I don't use my brain on a regular basis, it could turn to fat. It's already 60% fat, but it's like it could just stop working one day and I just wake up and not know my name. So I think a lot of us know dementia is a real thing. Some of these are real. You're really losing it. And other times it's just okay. So I forgot where I left my keys. That's not really dementia, but I don't want to forget where I left my keys. And so thinking of ways that I can improve my not necessarily intelligence but memory and the capacity to function well or at least feel like I'm still not losing it.

[00:04:34.540] – Allan

I think it's really important. So I appreciate the opportunity to have you want to talk about a book like this.

[00:04:39.140] – Dr. Willingham

I'm really glad to be here to talk about those things because it does address them all.

[00:04:43.690] – Allan

Good. So now I think a lot of times we go into this and it's like, okay, I want to be smarter. I want to maintain my brain. I want to do some things and we're kind of given these studies because the easiest way to know what works is to actually study it and then come back with these results. And so we know you kind of do have to use your brain for it to continue to function the way you want to. And you can get smarter at certain things.

[00:05:11.730] – Allan

Like, if you studies you do Sudoko puzzles, then your brain is going to learn how to do Sudoku puzzles really well. And I had a guy on before, and he said, Well, if you really want to challenge yourself, try to write a Sudoku puzzle, and I did it's not easy to actually do it reverse engineer Sudoku puzzle, but I did it. And actually, if you go to the show notes for this episode, I'll include a link to that if you want to do that. [Note: I'm looking for this puzzle. I found the solution PDF, but not the primary puzzle I did in 2016.]

[00:05:41.230] – Allan

But sometimes what we see as far as the press and the headlines and this and that is not that it's wrong. It's just sort of the pseudoscience as you put in the book, and you had a really cool checklist. So why is all this stuff out there that isn't true, actually out there? And what are some ways and you have ten questions. But what are some ways that we can look at it and kind of know. Ok, this is probably not true.

[00:06:11.830] – Dr. Willingham

Well, I first published this checklist. It was when I was being a Forbes contributor. Or maybe it was even earlier than that. But the aim of it was to get people to sort of critically analyze information as it was coming to them. And I think the first place that you can look and be analytical is who is giving you this information? Where is that information coming from? And so you want to look at the source and to think, well, what might their agenda be? And I don't mean in a conspiratorial way, but in a way of what motivation do they have to say, “Oh, you need to try this elixir of life. It's going to add ten years to your lifespan?”

[00:06:53.070] – Dr. Willingham

Okay. So go see who makes the elixir of life. Who is this person? And do they have any association with it. That doesn't immediately negate that it's effective, but it's a starting point for you to maybe think. Okay, well, that's a little weird. I should dig a little deeper.

[00:07:14.710] – Allan

I have to admit, I'm just as likely to fall for these things as anybody else because some of it just sounds so cool. You're listening to this one podcast and this guy's like, oh, you've got to try this one supplement. It's going to make you so much more focused, so much smarter, you're going to be so much more creative. And so you go out and you pay the $90 and you buy that bottle of supplements.

[00:07:44.460] – Allan

I don't know. But I felt like maybe it was working. But then at the same time, I also know I'm not someone who's immune from the placebo effect with things like that. So can we talk a little bit about supplements, particularly as we look at things like neurohacking?

[00:08:05.720] – Dr. Willingham

Sure. Yeah. And that plays into this list as well, because one of the things you want to look at is to claim something that's kind of exceptionally broad. Is it going to help your whole brain to do the same? Because the brain is a really complicated organ. It would be kind of odd for something to really have a huge global effect that way. The other thing is what you described, which is a testimonial. Somebody says, oh, this is the thing for me, but there's not an evidence base that is being provided when somebody says, oh, this just made me feel better.

[00:08:33.830] – Dr. Willingham

The other thing is if you spend $90 on something, you've sunk some cost into it. And we don't like to think that we wasted those costs. We don't like to think that we wasted our investment regardless of whether it's monetary or some other form of investment. And so then we kind of become invested in a kind of a more extended way, right?

[00:08:53.900] – Allan

It's a cognitive bias at that point.

[00:08:55.450] – Dr. Willingham

Yes. Exactly. We have this bias, man. I really hope this works. And then, yes, placebo effect is real. There's a physiological underpinnings to it. There's a study that they did with psychedelics with microdosing. And in some cases, they had the people dose with their own microdoses of psychedelics that they were using. But in some cases, they swap this out for just nothing, not the people taking them, but the researchers. And then later did the big unveiling. And the people were very surprised to find that they had these experiences that they thought were because they were microdosing psychedelics.

[00:09:34.120] – Dr. Willingham

And there was nothing. There was nothing in the pill at all. One of them literally said, wow, you've actually found some way to put spirituality into an empty pill. So that's something that's coming from within. It's a physiology that's saying, yes.

[00:09:48.010] – Allan

And the micro dosing just to kind of be clear on that. If anyone doesn't know what that is is basically where you take a psychedelic. And instead of taking what would be considered like a full trippy-trippy kind of dose where you're really going off the deep end of these things, it's a piece of it, maybe a 10th or 20th of a normal dose.

[00:10:09.340] – Dr. Willingham

That's right. You're not supposed to really trip on like you would if you did a big walloping dose of mushrooms or something like that. So, yeah, you're just supposed to just kind of feel, I guess, a little lifted, you know, if you take them.

[00:10:23.860] – Allan

Yeah. And so that's really popular with coders in Silicon Valley and some of the other creatives out there that think, okay, I can walk into the workplace and not look like I'm tripping and still kind of get some benefits from this drug that I'm taking.

[00:10:37.490] – Dr. Willingham

Right now.

[00:10:39.120] – Allan

Another two things you talk about, which is again, it's kind of that fascinating science fiction. Oh, wow. If we could do this, we could talk to animals. Kind of thing is DCS, which is using current and TMS, which is using magnetics. They're very similar. And you talk about a little bit about how there's a little crossover between one and the other. Can you talk about those technologies, how they're being used and what you're seeing about them?

[00:11:07.270] – Dr. Willingham

The Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation is the one that strikes me as kind of holding the danger because it's one that people even just order a kit. Please don't go do that because the evidence base for it's, doing anything that people want it to do is not as sparse from what I can find. I had one neurologist who has a lot of experience with this. Just say, please don't go experimenting with your brain. You order them, you put electrodes on you set up your brain and some place that allegedly is going to achieve the outcome you want, whether it's feeling smarter or having a greater attention or focus or whatever.

[00:11:48.150] – Dr. Willingham

And if you go and look at boards where people aggregate and discuss these effects, some of the things they say are really kind of frightening. I lost my second language. I can't spell anymore. I can't find words and all that is anecdotal as well, but balanced up against the fact that there doesn't seem to be a lot of data to support it. I would kind of steer clear of that. I would go for a walk before I would put an electrode on my head and just kind of zap my brain and hope I was getting the right spot.

[00:12:20.170] – Allan

Yeah, because that's crazy because I'm like looking at you and I don't wear the same hat. We bought a kit. It's like, okay, we're talking about trying to fire off particular neurons, and those are not like big things. They're little bitty things we're trying to find and specify, and we're trying to do it. I guess looking in a mirror.

[00:12:45.070] – Dr. Willingham

The whole thing strikes me just a little bit of a clue, so I would not run and spend however much it is $40. Some of them are quite inexpensive, which might also be a bit of a red flag, I don't know

[00:12:57.300] – Allan

Or the Burns on your head.

[00:12:59.000] – Dr. Willingham

Or those Burns on the head that they talked about as well. I'm just thinking, yes, I'm going to try walking first and see if I get anything from that.

[00:13:06.700] – Dr. Willingham

The other one, though, that you mentioned, is Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation and you cannot go and order. This is a very pricey thing to do. And they have done some trials with these where they, for example, apply the simulation and people see very transient improvements in how they perform on certain cognitively challenging tasks. And then it's also something that is used for depression, and that is a prescription and a version of it, so that one shows more promise, and there's also a more controlled exposure. You can't order yourself TMS.

[00:13:45.850] – Allan

I think the reality of these things is that you have doctors. If a doctor's working with you to solve a problem and they're using these therapies then they're coming from a place where they do this. They do this every year, every day, every week, and as a result, they have some experience with it. They know what not to do things. And as a result, as a part of a protocol or a treatment, you understand that and say, okay, but if this is something you're trying to do on your own, neither one of these, even if it's accessible, is not necessarily in your best interest.

[00:14:22.200] – Dr. Willingham

Exactly. Again, this is a situation where practice actually does make perfect, just like you get better at doing crossword puzzles and more of those that you do. You're right. Clinicians are going to have a level of expertise and understand how to map the brain and target the right place for something like TMS. That would be. So it would be like trying to cut your own hair almost, you know, to really get to the right place and get the kind of tailoring that you want for it.

[00:14:46.330] – Allan

And then the final one is games. And this one was kind of interesting to me because I've always thought if I learn how to do Sudoku, learn how to maybe play chess or learn a foreign language or those type of things that those stimulations are, there's definitely got to be some benefit to it. But when you get on those games that are specifically for cognitive enhancement and I'll even confess, I went to a doctor and part of his protocol for talking about aging was that he was going to make us cognitively better.

[00:15:20.030] – Allan

And after I played the game that he had me play for half an hour, I just knew if I came back and played that game, I now know things I didn't know going into it the first time that I was probably going to do better at that game just for the sake that I've played it before.

[00:15:36.530] – Allan

People like these games, they feel like you're doing something. But what you've seen out there is that maybe they're not giving us the enhancement that we think they are.

[00:15:46.530] – Dr. Willingham

Yes, they are video games. They are brain games. There are all kinds of things that people said, oh, this is going to give you this kind of globally improved thinking, right? But there are some researchers who have really gone granular with the data from the studies that have been done on these things, and it's a wash. So you don't see what they call far transfer effects away from this precise skill that you're building when you do a crossword puzzle or play chess, for example, one of them just said to me, you play chess because you enjoy it, and that's the best reason to do it.

[00:16:28.790] – Allan

Kind of one of those things of doing the crosswords and just staying a little bit sharp with them because you feel good sitting there on a Sunday doing The New York Times crossword puzzle is actually relaxing. It's comfortable, which being relaxing kind of takes us to the next topic that maybe you feel smarter because you've taken time to destress.

[00:16:49.610] – Dr. Willingham

Yeah, that's a big one.

[00:16:52.550] – Allan

Because I could tell you. Well, I'll tell you when I'm stressed, my brain works like I'm in kindergarten again, it's almost like I become a dumber person. Sorry, but that's not to say it.

[00:17:07.490] – Dr. Willingham

I feel sort of like it's a washing machine in there. Everything is just going to switch around. I can't, like, just capture the thing I'm trying to capture because there's just too much going on. And it is true that stress does do that. This is a cognitive burden on you on top of everything else. And yeah, if you're sitting there and you're doing The New York Times Crossword on a Sunday, and especially if you get that thing completed without cheating at all, you know, you get this little reward and you feel pretty good about yourself and everything feels kind of refreshed. And you took time away from everything else around you just. And that is relief. It lists a burden out of your mind, honed again.

[00:17:50.030] – Allan

Now we own a bed and breakfast. And so this guy came up yesterday and he was in a hurry, and he threw this math puzzle at me real quick. And so here's the deal. Basically, if they charge something on a credit card, I have to charge them 5% to cover the fees. And so he said, okay, well, how much do I'm like $130? He's like, okay. He said, I'll give you $40 in cash. And I said, okay, that's 90 left. And then the 5%. And I said $4.50. But then I sat down on my calculator and I calculated it came up to $3.60. And I'm like, okay. And so I just charged him $3.60.

[00:18:23.410] – Allan

And after he walked away, I was like, okay, I was stressed. I was pressured, and I knew it was $4.50. But then I let my brain turn off because of the stress of getting this guy done quickly, because now I've got to get it in the system. Then I got to charge the credit card. I turned my brain off. Why does stress affect us that way? Like you said, washing machine or for me, it's just I'm an accountant by trade before I became this. And I'm like, the math was in my head. But I didn't believe myself. I had to recalculate and made a mistake and then still didn't pick up on it. After he was gone.

[00:18:59.650] – Dr. Willingham

Right there's, a famous book called, Thinking Fast and Slow by Kahneman (https://amzn.to/3FgA8HM), in which he sort of talked about these two systems. We have. One of them is our snap decision system, and the other one is the more deliberative long-term system. But that second one takes a lot of resources for us to really take time and think through things. And when we're under stress, we kind of just default to that other one that maybe is not as filtered or as deliberative.

[00:19:24.410] – Dr. Willingham

There's a study that they did where people who were overtaxed with a lot of multiple tasks at once, if they were given an option to get some money now or wait a little while, like, a half hour or something and get double the money when they were overtaxed that way, kind of similarly to what you were experiencing, they're just, like, just give it to me. Now. I just don't have time to think about this. And either way, at least I guess I'm getting some money.

[00:19:47.860] – Dr. Willingham

Whereas if you had been deliberative, you're just sitting there doing your New York Times crossword and nothing else you'd be like, yeah, I'm going to wait get double, right?

[00:19:59.870] – Allan

So we've talked about that neurohacking and how that Stuff's not going to work. And obviously the stress is something that all of us are dealing with probably more now than any time in our lifetime with all the things that are going on in the world and more every day. What are some things? And I particularly want to dive into a couple of them. But what are some things that we can do to improve our cognition and effectively tailor our brain?

[00:20:25.490] – Dr. Willingham

Well, you actually mentioned one, and that is an activity that makes you feel better, right? But in the book, across all of the facets of what we do with our brains, I looked at physical activity is a big one. And if you engage in it with somebody else or you get out in nature while you're doing it, you add some dividends to it as well. Now you've got me. I'm thinking like using accounting terms because you mentioned accounting, but those two things feed off of each other and everything that we're doing when we do those kinds of things is we're giving away a little bit of our cognitive burden, right?

[00:21:08.440] – Dr. Willingham

When you do things with your body, when you do physical activity, the physiology that goes on there is, yes, you get more oxygen to your brain. There are some molecules in your brain that you can get higher levels of them that will help you kind of refresh neuronal connections and things like that. But you're also kind of using your body, which if you're having adrenaline from stress and anxiety and things like that helps you kind of fizz that away as well. There are all these things that go on that intersect that relieve that burden in our heads and give us some space to be more clear in our thinking.

[00:21:43.320] – Allan

Yeah. For me, when I was in major stress mode at work, when I was in corporate, it was okay. I got to go throw heavy weights around, go to the gym and just pick up heavy things. My co-host, Rachel, she's a runner. So for her, if she gets stressed, she's probably going to put on her running shoes and go do something long. But if you're looking at the types of exercises that are best for improving cognitive, are there some that are better than others?

[00:22:14.090] – Dr. Willingham

It is really what you just described. I mean, some people really that deep bodywork where you just feel it so deeply, they get a huge benefit out of that. And others get benefit about from the forward motion, along with just kind of, I think being outside and things. I have somebody in my house who has to do both pretty intensively so that their mood feels better for them and they feel kind of more at peace inside their own heads.

[00:22:40.380] – Dr. Willingham

So that's the tailoring part is how much do you do and what kind what the studies do show is it doesn't have to be a ton. It can be pretty moderate kind of according to the recommendations of the public health folks.

[00:22:54.090] – Allan

Okay. So this could be just going for a walk, particularly in nature. It can be doing some yoga, Tai Chi.

[00:23:00.890] – Dr. Willingham

Tai Chi.

[00:23:00.890] – Allan

Okay. There you go.

[00:23:03.470] – Dr. Willingham

Exactly as we get older. It's kind of harder for us to do some of the heavy things, right?

[00:23:09.430] – Allan

Yeah.

[00:23:09.940] – Dr. Willingham

The kind of more strenuous things. I also am in my mid 50s, and that's just kind of been my experience. And so you make adjustments for that. But there are all kinds of physical activities that seem to be effective.

[00:23:22.340] – Allan

Yeah. So this is just another benefit to exercise. So take that to heart, not just looking and feeling better, but actually being a little bit smarter.

[00:23:33.090] – Dr. Willingham

Thinking better, feeling a brain that I think is more comfortable with this.

[00:23:38.270] – Allan

Cool. And then another big one that was in the book that I think we all know this is important, but it used to be really woo-woo. And now it's kind of more mainstream. But mindfulness, and a mindfulness practice. Can you talk a little bit about how that helps us and kind of ways that we can think about using mindfulness to help.

[00:23:58.310] – Dr. Willingham

Right. I came to that as somebody who was a skeptic of it for lots of reasons. And it's a bias that I brought to it. And so one of the reasons I wanted to look at it for this book was, you know, I want to see what the evidence looks like for this. And then I came away. I wrote this book during the pandemic, and I came away using things that I had read about because I was like, oh…

[00:24:24.530] – Dr. Willingham

So I'm a knife when it comes to this kind of thing. And there are practitioners out there who are probably just going, yeah. Duh, right? But for someone like me, it was very effective to learn about that and to find an evidence base for it. What I found was that when you start to get into spiraling thinking, especially sort of self focus and not in a good way. But if you do practices that click you out of that so that you're using kind of an executive function to order yourself around and make yourself do the responsible thing, and you're co-opting your attention network in a really conscious way so that you're directing your attention very consciously that gets you away from those thought processes that are kind of internally and negatively oriented.

[00:25:11.420] – Dr. Willingham

It's been really useful. Spiraling anxiety. I use a lot for that because of what's going on in the world right now. I would almost say for me, it's been kind of life saving in a way good.

[00:25:27.410] – Allan

Dr. Willingham, I define wellness as being the healthiest, fittest, and happiest. You can be what are three strategies or tactics to get and stay?

[00:25:35.420] – Dr. Willingham

Well, first of all, you can call me Emily. I should have mentioned that.

[00:25:40.130] – Allan

Now you earned that doctorate. I know that they do not just hand those out. There's a lot that goes into earning that Dr. So no, it's yours.

[00:25:51.120] – Dr. Willingham

I appreciate that acknowledgement. Thank you so much.

[00:25:53.980] – Dr. Willingham

I would say the three things that I took away from this book and that I am using are mindfulness that I really work on just clicking myself back into a moment. I think it helps me for a lot of things, including focus and memory and things like that.

[00:26:10.750] – Dr. Willingham

The other one is social engagement. I'm not an extrovert. So I'm not saying, especially right now that you should go to a big party and hang out with people. I mean, in a sense of that really kind of reciprocal sharing that you have with people with whom you're close and you help each other and you relieve burdens by talking with one another and recognizing each other's emotions and that kind of thing and providing that sort of support.

[00:26:38.650] – Dr. Willingham

And then the last thing is that physical exercise. I actually doubled my walking. I went up from I used to target 3 miles a day, and now I target five or six just because I kind of need more to keep things clear with the way the world is right now and the anxieties that you can have about it. So those are my three that I took away.

[00:26:58.630] – Allan

Great. Thank you. So, Dr. Willingham, if someone wanted to learn more about you, learn more about the book, The Tailored Brain. Where would you like for me to send them?

[00:27:07.500] – Dr. Willingham

They can find me on Twitter at Ejwillingham, and that's probably the best place to start.

[00:27:13.590] – Allan

Okay. You can go to 40plusfitnesspodcast.com/520, and I'll be sure to have a link to the Twitter account you just mentioned. So thank you so much for that. Thank you for being a part of 40+ Fitness.

[00:27:26.750] – Dr. Willingham

It was really great to talk to you today. I appreciate you having me.


Post Show/Recap

[00:27:37.890] – Allan

Welcome back, Ras.

[00:27:39.510] – Rachel

Hey, Allan. What a really interesting conversation you had with Dr. Willingham. The brain is such a mysterious organ. It really is.

[00:27:49.050] – Allan

Yeah. As she got into the brain, this is one of the things I think that's cool about this book. If you're interested in learning more about the brain, was she literally mapped the brain out in a similar fashion the way you would actually look at a globe as you start thinking about how the brain works. So she's got the whole world. And then she's got continents and countries and cities and using those as a metaphor for describing the parts of the brain and how the brain works.

[00:28:19.180] – Allan

And there's things that she brought up. I'd always heard, okay, there's the lizard brain, there's the mammal brain, then there's the human aspects of our brain. And she said, it's a lot more complex than that. It's not like there's layers of brain that do these things. It's certain parts of the brain fire. And if something's not working, then your brain can adapt a little bit and fire from different ways. And while they are getting better and better at kind of imaging how the brain works, everybody has a unique, their own thing, brain.

[00:28:52.840] – Allan

And so the way it works for me isn't always the way it works for you and then spend a lot of time talking about intelligence and how all these things, the pills, the electricity and magnetism, the games and all of that. How those biohacks, neurohacks, if you will, don't really, ever bear out. They make you like the games. You can be better at the games. If you do a crossword puzzle, you get better at crossword puzzles, but they've not yet shown where you can take that and take that over to say, okay, you're a smarter person because you did crossword puzzles, or you're a smarter, better person because you play a game where you were doing something, tagging, butterflies, whatever.

[00:29:40.590] – Allan

So there's these things out there, but people will sell them to you. You can buy one of those brain zappers for a couple of $100. Run some electricity through your brain. Maybe you feel better and feel like you learned something. Maybe you learned that you could actually mess up your brain pretty bad running electricity through it like some of the stories she's had in the book. And so just recognizing that really, there's not these quick fixes these little things. And I tried one of the neuro enhancer things.

[00:30:11.330] – Allan

That was just basically, it was not meant for long term. I'm going to be a smarter person. It was just okay. You're going to feel sharper. You're going to be more alert. Nootropics. And blah, blah, blah. I tried it and I felt like maybe it was giving me a little bit of an edge. I was feeling better, felt like I'm thinking better, but at the same time, it just could have been that I was on placebo effect and I don't know any better. And then I just didn't want to spend $90 for this stuff because again, it didn't do that much, $90 worth. But I felt a little bit. But that could have just been there was a stimulant and I was like, I'm awake.

[00:30:54.850] – Rachel

Sure,

[00:30:55.990] – Allan

Really, when you boil this down with the premise of the total book is of all the things they ever shown that are measurable, measurable, intelligence, measurable, better brain lifespan, everything. It comes down to a few core things. Her favorite was exercise, but there was also sleep, nutrition and stress reduction. And I can tell you today through stress reduction, my brain works a lot better than it did when I was working a corporate job.

[00:31:32.770] – Allan

I can think circles around myself when I had that corporate job because I was chronically stressed all the time and I don't live that way now. And so my brain just works a little bit better. It's a little bit more creative. I mean, I can read a book in a day.

[00:31:53.030] – Rachel

That's awesome.

[00:31:55.670] – Allan

I mean, by reading in a day, I don't mean reading the whole day. I mean, I can literally now 250 page book read it in about four and a half 5 hours. And so yeah, standard kind of work day, taking breaks and a lunch. I get up in the morning, I start reading and 02:00 in the afternoon. I finished reading the book. I send the show plan over to the author and “Boom” done for the day. I had to be able to do that this week because I had five interviews

[00:32:24.830] – Rachel

For sure. Holy cow!

[00:32:26.610] – Allan

Yes, but exercise, nutrition, sleep, stress reduction. If you put those all together, what we're talking about is improving your health, improving your fitness. And so the moral of the story is healthy body, healthy brain.

[00:32:48.950] – Rachel

Yes. And be aware of those snake oil salesmen. Those get rich, quick schemes and train your brain schemes. It's just not proven out. But I think if I were to reorder those helpful tips, I'd start with sleep. Sleep is the most important time for your brain to rest and recover.

[00:33:10.220] – Rachel

And stress reduction cannot be emphasized enough and good food and good movement. I think those are the best ways to keep your whole body healthy, especially your brain.

[00:33:21.680] – Allan

Yeah, I completely agree. All right. I'll talk to you next week.

[00:33:27.540] – Rachel

Great. Take care, Allan.

[00:33:29.100] – Allan

You too.

[00:33:30.030] – Rachel

Thank you.

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