December 20, 2024 • 14 mins
George Noory and neurobiologist Dr. Kristen Wileumier explore ways to maintain brain function, the importance of gratitude and visualization to become more successful, and techniques to lower stress and live a more fulfilling life.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Now here's a highlight from Coast to Coast AM on iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
And welcome back to George Norry along with doctor Kristen Willemeyer.
Her book is called Biohack Your Brain came out about
four years ago. I remember when you were on the
program talking about that book, Kristin four years ago. It
just wood by like that, huh.
Speaker 3 (00:20):
I know, thank you so much for having me on
the show. By the way, it was so grateful.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
We were talking about the neurobiology and some of the
aspects of it. I'll let you finish that up before
we move on.
Speaker 3 (00:34):
Yeah, I'm trying to remember where we are before we
were going to commercial break a. Really neurobiology is just
studying the brain again at the level of this single
cell and understanding how cells communicate with one another, whether
electrically or through the synaptic passical recycling process. And the
(00:54):
work that I was doing was really understanding in individuals
who mutations in a gene that leads to the young
onset former Parkinson's disease called park two, what kind of
disregulated signaling was going on at the level of the
single cell. And when we understand that kind of work,
we understand why those populations of neurons are most vulnerable
(01:18):
in Parkinson's disease, which tend to be the dopaminergic neurons.
So I would work in dopaminergic cell cultures as well
as type Campbell cell cultures to really understand again those
mechanisms of why did the short happen?
Speaker 2 (01:35):
What are some of the detrimental practices things that people
do that are not good for the brain.
Speaker 3 (01:42):
Oh, such a great question. I mean, we were talking
about dietary practices and making sure that you know, people
are following healthy dietary practices to help slow down in
reverse cognitive aging, which is why I was talking about
the Mediterranean diet and the Dash diet. But one of
the most dectumental practices that most people do is number one,
(02:04):
eating too many processed foods. So we want to make
sure that we get rid of excess processed foods. You
want to again have the living foods, whole foods, plant based.
People tend to consume too much sugar, and we know
sugar is inflammatory, and the American Heart Association recommends that
(02:25):
women have no more than twenty five grams a day
of sugar and men have no more than thirty six
grams a day of sugar. That's excess sugar. So when
I was running a brain directed weight loss group, I
would have people track how much sugar they would have
in a day and just guess what this sort of
average amount of sugar people consume in a day is.
Speaker 2 (02:48):
I have had two sisters. One passed away. She had
a brain tumor.
Speaker 3 (02:53):
Oh my god.
Speaker 2 (02:54):
We're trying to figure out what happened, what she did wrong,
And the only thing we could decide Kristen was she
was on her phone all the time. And this was
before the year or where people texted.
Speaker 3 (03:09):
She was.
Speaker 2 (03:10):
She had that thing up to her head on the
side that the tumor. Yeah, is it conceivable that had
something to do with it?
Speaker 3 (03:18):
You know, I will share with you. You know, one
of my dear friends and colleagues is a neurosurgeon, and
he and I talked about this, that the cell phones
mirror that the head or you know, sometimes people will
put them in their pockets or when women are working out,
(03:38):
they'll put it. You know, could stuff it in there?
Do you want to call it? Like there that near
the glass issue?
Speaker 2 (03:51):
And you can get away with saying that.
Speaker 3 (03:55):
I know, I found that, you know, some people do
have a higher incidence of tu of our growth where
the cell phones are, so that is definitely a plausible mechanism.
Speaker 2 (04:08):
Yeah, we always suspected something like that because she was
you know, she would talk to her daughters endlessly. She
was just always on her cell phone always.
Speaker 3 (04:18):
Yeah. Oh my gosh, I'm so sorry to hear about that.
By the way, So we were talking about the detrimental
practices that you know, people tend to do that can
impact healthy brain function. So you know, you were just
talking about the cell phone and having it too close
to the ear, keeping it on your body. People can
(04:39):
also eliminate artificial dyes and preservatives from their diet. No
alcohol unless you're healthy, right, So a lot of people,
you know, consume a glass of alcohol per day, and
you know, we always say alcohol is not a brain food.
That can be neurotoxic to the brain actually if you
(05:01):
drink it sort of over the course of time, so
that's that's toxic and can actually shrink brain volume. Be
careful of eating proplastic containers that have by senol a
because that can be toxic. And even you know, too
much television or social media, you know, try to limit
(05:23):
that to know more than two hours a day if possible.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
Stick to radio right, stick to.
Speaker 3 (05:29):
Radio stiak to listening to your show'ry.
Speaker 2 (05:34):
In your book, you've talked about how to change your
brain in ten minutes. What are some of the techniques there?
Speaker 3 (05:42):
Yeah, I have a section called ten ways to biohack
your brain in ten minutes. Thank you for bringing that up.
So these are ten simple practices that you can do
every day, and they entailed. The first one is have
blueberries per day every day. So we've talked about the
brain imaging research shows that blueberries and green leafy vegetables
(06:03):
are really the best for preserving your long term brain health.
Second thing is just go and get a brisk walk
in each day. You know, even if it's ten minutes
a day, right, getting a brisk walk in can boost
the blood flow to the brain to three. You want
to practice gratitude, so we talk about gratitude helping improve
(06:26):
the positive brain networks, right, helping to improve optimism. So
just having that daily practice of gratitude. Another thing I
put in there is the use of aromatherapy to help
reduce stress. So if you think about inhaling a really
good sense like lavender or citrus. You know, we have
(06:49):
all of these ordorant receptors in our nose that are
direct pathway to the brain, so we can use a
sense of smell and these really sort of calling sense
to help home the brain down. We also have visualize
your day, so I tell people to take ten minutes
a day and visualize your perfect day. So if you
(07:12):
think about professional athletes get up in the morning and
they visualize, say if you're a basketball player, you can
be visualizing your perfect free throw. So use that power
of visualization to really set the tone for the day.
Another thing that you can do is I say take
ten minutes and create what I call white space, to
(07:34):
take ten minutes in your day to just sit quietly
to be calm. You can use that time to meditate.
That can really be helpful and sort of creating a
nice useful way to start your day. I also have
learning new word each day, so as you build your vocabulary,
(07:55):
that helps improve your communication skills. And one very easy
way to do that is you can go to the
Mirriam Webster app and have a new word of the
day sent to you. So it's a very quick way
to build your vocabulary. And another thing that I recommend
is practice doing something with your non dominant hands. So
(08:18):
I tell people to try to practice writing with your
non dominant hands. That helps stimulate neuroplasticity and the brain
or the ability to form new neural connections. And last,
but not least, is sitting up straight. So think about
your posture right, having good costure when you're sitting at
your desk, or George, when you're sitting right now in
(08:41):
front of your microphone, are you sitting up straight with
your shoulders back right, your head up. That can actually
help help your blood flow to the brain. So again,
ten very simple practices that you can do each day.
Oh last one is you can also have a pew
the dark chocolate, So dark chocolate contains flavonols. The flavonols
(09:04):
help to open up the blood vessels in the brain.
And having again more open, relaxed blood vessels improves blood
flow with the brain. And that is one of the
number one things you can do to really help keep
your brain healthy, is to keep that blood flowing.
Speaker 2 (09:21):
My aunt used to tell us about that, and I
never got who could understand it? What is it about
chocolate that makes it good? For the brain.
Speaker 3 (09:29):
The chocolate has the flavonols, and the flavonols actually work
to help keep the blood vessels open. So the flavon
els not only protect your neurons, but it also has
an effect to keep the blood vessels open, so that
more open your blood vessels are, the more blood flow
you'll have to the brain.
Speaker 2 (09:49):
Give us some important facts on the brain that you
found fun and interesting.
Speaker 3 (09:55):
Oh, the important facts of the brain. Well, it's three pounds, right,
So you've got this three pound organ, but it consumes
twenty percent of your brain's oxygen. So it's a highly metabolic,
metabolically active tissue. So you want to make sure you
have a lot of antioxidants to protect those beautiful neurons.
(10:18):
Each neuron can make up to ten thousand connections, so
it's extraordinarily complex when you think that your brain has
eighty six billion neurons and it makes brillions of connections.
And you know, when I teach this to young kids
trying to get them excited about the brain, they say
(10:40):
that the number of connections on the brain is sort
of less than half in the stars in the Milky
Way galaxy. So it's just fascinating it's beautifully complex organ
that we have. And I always tell people one of
the things that the neuroimaging research has showed us is
that disease is like Alzheimer's, which we talked about earlier
(11:02):
in the show, begin to start at the cellular level
one to two decades before you have a symptom. So
this is why I really like to sort of be
a cheerleader for people to embrace healthy practices to take
good care of their brain. And you brought up some
of them because you were telling me your ninety six
(11:23):
year old mom is still doing well and driving her car.
So you know, if we just think about doing things
like adhering to a Mediterranean diet, keeping a consistent exercise practice,
you know, adequately hydrating our brain, probiding that good nutritional support,
you know, healthy emotional regulation, all of that can help
(11:45):
support our brain health and really serve as an effective
buffer against brain aging.
Speaker 2 (11:52):
What is it about the brain that gives you an
Albert Einstein and someone who is not.
Speaker 3 (12:00):
Oh, such an interesting question. Well, you know they say
that Albert Einstein really linked into having a meditation practice,
So it's like, what's the difference between you know, somebody
who is a genius and somebody who's just a very
smart person. I think there is something about Albert Einstein
(12:20):
in his use of meditation to help really connect inward
and get these extraordinary insights right the theory of relativity.
So I think, you know, we can learn from people
like Albert Einstein to think about incorporating a meditative practice
into our day to day life, not only for helping
(12:43):
to keep us calm and more emotionally resilient, but really
to tune in and sort of connect to our inner
wisdom and our inner guidance. And I think that's, you know,
one of the sort one of the many things that
made him a genius, because he used to say imagination,
which again comes from intuition, is really the key to
(13:06):
intellectual high intellectual functioning.
Speaker 2 (13:10):
What does stress do to the brain? Christian?
Speaker 3 (13:13):
So, stress and chronic stress can actually function to shrink
the brain. So we always tell people it's really important
to manage your stress. So stress can shrink brain volume
in the prefrontal cortex, which is the error the brain
essential to higher cognitive functions. Right, Your prefrontal cortex is
(13:35):
like the CEO of your brain, so it helps with
planning and decision making and impulse control and personality. So
if you have chronic stress and the excess cordisol that
gets released from chronic stress, there the glugle quarter cord
receptors are in the prefrontal cortex. Again, it can serve
(13:55):
to shrink the prefrontal cortex. We also have a high
number of glugle cordid receptors in the hippie campus, which
is the area of the brain essential to learning and memory.
So again when we're under a lot of stress before
having shrinking our atrophy of the tissues and the prefrontal
cortex and the hippie campus, that's not going to really
(14:17):
serve us well if we really want to preserve our
cognitive health. Elevated stress also activates the amigdala, so that's
the part of the brain we sort of call that
our fear center and it becomes more active. So that's
what leads to sort of a heightened anxiety when we
have stress. So it's really important if we want to
(14:40):
live a long, healthy life to find ways to mitigate
and manage stress.
Speaker 1 (14:45):
Listen to more Coast to Coast AM every weeknight at
one am Eastern and go to Coast tocoastam dot com
for more
Now here's a highlight from Coast to Coast AM on iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
And welcome back to George Norry along with doctor Kristen Willemeyer.
Her book is called Biohack Your Brain came out about
four years ago. I remember when you were on the
program talking about that book, Kristin four years ago. It
just wood by like that, huh.
Speaker 3 (00:20):
I know, thank you so much for having me on
the show. By the way, it was so grateful.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
We were talking about the neurobiology and some of the
aspects of it. I'll let you finish that up before
we move on.
Speaker 3 (00:34):
Yeah, I'm trying to remember where we are before we
were going to commercial break a. Really neurobiology is just
studying the brain again at the level of this single
cell and understanding how cells communicate with one another, whether
electrically or through the synaptic passical recycling process. And the
(00:54):
work that I was doing was really understanding in individuals
who mutations in a gene that leads to the young
onset former Parkinson's disease called park two, what kind of
disregulated signaling was going on at the level of the
single cell. And when we understand that kind of work,
we understand why those populations of neurons are most vulnerable
(01:18):
in Parkinson's disease, which tend to be the dopaminergic neurons.
So I would work in dopaminergic cell cultures as well
as type Campbell cell cultures to really understand again those
mechanisms of why did the short happen?
Speaker 2 (01:35):
What are some of the detrimental practices things that people
do that are not good for the brain.
Speaker 3 (01:42):
Oh, such a great question. I mean, we were talking
about dietary practices and making sure that you know, people
are following healthy dietary practices to help slow down in
reverse cognitive aging, which is why I was talking about
the Mediterranean diet and the Dash diet. But one of
the most dectumental practices that most people do is number one,
(02:04):
eating too many processed foods. So we want to make
sure that we get rid of excess processed foods. You
want to again have the living foods, whole foods, plant based.
People tend to consume too much sugar, and we know
sugar is inflammatory, and the American Heart Association recommends that
(02:25):
women have no more than twenty five grams a day
of sugar and men have no more than thirty six
grams a day of sugar. That's excess sugar. So when
I was running a brain directed weight loss group, I
would have people track how much sugar they would have
in a day and just guess what this sort of
average amount of sugar people consume in a day is.
Speaker 2 (02:48):
I have had two sisters. One passed away. She had
a brain tumor.
Speaker 3 (02:53):
Oh my god.
Speaker 2 (02:54):
We're trying to figure out what happened, what she did wrong,
And the only thing we could decide Kristen was she
was on her phone all the time. And this was
before the year or where people texted.
Speaker 3 (03:09):
She was.
Speaker 2 (03:10):
She had that thing up to her head on the
side that the tumor. Yeah, is it conceivable that had
something to do with it?
Speaker 3 (03:18):
You know, I will share with you. You know, one
of my dear friends and colleagues is a neurosurgeon, and
he and I talked about this, that the cell phones
mirror that the head or you know, sometimes people will
put them in their pockets or when women are working out,
(03:38):
they'll put it. You know, could stuff it in there?
Do you want to call it? Like there that near
the glass issue?
Speaker 2 (03:51):
And you can get away with saying that.
Speaker 3 (03:55):
I know, I found that, you know, some people do
have a higher incidence of tu of our growth where
the cell phones are, so that is definitely a plausible mechanism.
Speaker 2 (04:08):
Yeah, we always suspected something like that because she was
you know, she would talk to her daughters endlessly. She
was just always on her cell phone always.
Speaker 3 (04:18):
Yeah. Oh my gosh, I'm so sorry to hear about that.
By the way, So we were talking about the detrimental
practices that you know, people tend to do that can
impact healthy brain function. So you know, you were just
talking about the cell phone and having it too close
to the ear, keeping it on your body. People can
(04:39):
also eliminate artificial dyes and preservatives from their diet. No
alcohol unless you're healthy, right, So a lot of people,
you know, consume a glass of alcohol per day, and
you know, we always say alcohol is not a brain food.
That can be neurotoxic to the brain actually if you
(05:01):
drink it sort of over the course of time, so
that's that's toxic and can actually shrink brain volume. Be
careful of eating proplastic containers that have by senol a
because that can be toxic. And even you know, too
much television or social media, you know, try to limit
(05:23):
that to know more than two hours a day if possible.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
Stick to radio right, stick to.
Speaker 3 (05:29):
Radio stiak to listening to your show'ry.
Speaker 2 (05:34):
In your book, you've talked about how to change your
brain in ten minutes. What are some of the techniques there?
Speaker 3 (05:42):
Yeah, I have a section called ten ways to biohack
your brain in ten minutes. Thank you for bringing that up.
So these are ten simple practices that you can do
every day, and they entailed. The first one is have
blueberries per day every day. So we've talked about the
brain imaging research shows that blueberries and green leafy vegetables
(06:03):
are really the best for preserving your long term brain health.
Second thing is just go and get a brisk walk
in each day. You know, even if it's ten minutes
a day, right, getting a brisk walk in can boost
the blood flow to the brain to three. You want
to practice gratitude, so we talk about gratitude helping improve
(06:26):
the positive brain networks, right, helping to improve optimism. So
just having that daily practice of gratitude. Another thing I
put in there is the use of aromatherapy to help
reduce stress. So if you think about inhaling a really
good sense like lavender or citrus. You know, we have
(06:49):
all of these ordorant receptors in our nose that are
direct pathway to the brain, so we can use a
sense of smell and these really sort of calling sense
to help home the brain down. We also have visualize
your day, so I tell people to take ten minutes
a day and visualize your perfect day. So if you
(07:12):
think about professional athletes get up in the morning and
they visualize, say if you're a basketball player, you can
be visualizing your perfect free throw. So use that power
of visualization to really set the tone for the day.
Another thing that you can do is I say take
ten minutes and create what I call white space, to
(07:34):
take ten minutes in your day to just sit quietly
to be calm. You can use that time to meditate.
That can really be helpful and sort of creating a
nice useful way to start your day. I also have
learning new word each day, so as you build your vocabulary,
(07:55):
that helps improve your communication skills. And one very easy
way to do that is you can go to the
Mirriam Webster app and have a new word of the
day sent to you. So it's a very quick way
to build your vocabulary. And another thing that I recommend
is practice doing something with your non dominant hands. So
(08:18):
I tell people to try to practice writing with your
non dominant hands. That helps stimulate neuroplasticity and the brain
or the ability to form new neural connections. And last,
but not least, is sitting up straight. So think about
your posture right, having good costure when you're sitting at
your desk, or George, when you're sitting right now in
(08:41):
front of your microphone, are you sitting up straight with
your shoulders back right, your head up. That can actually
help help your blood flow to the brain. So again,
ten very simple practices that you can do each day.
Oh last one is you can also have a pew
the dark chocolate, So dark chocolate contains flavonols. The flavonols
(09:04):
help to open up the blood vessels in the brain.
And having again more open, relaxed blood vessels improves blood
flow with the brain. And that is one of the
number one things you can do to really help keep
your brain healthy, is to keep that blood flowing.
Speaker 2 (09:21):
My aunt used to tell us about that, and I
never got who could understand it? What is it about
chocolate that makes it good? For the brain.
Speaker 3 (09:29):
The chocolate has the flavonols, and the flavonols actually work
to help keep the blood vessels open. So the flavon
els not only protect your neurons, but it also has
an effect to keep the blood vessels open, so that
more open your blood vessels are, the more blood flow
you'll have to the brain.
Speaker 2 (09:49):
Give us some important facts on the brain that you
found fun and interesting.
Speaker 3 (09:55):
Oh, the important facts of the brain. Well, it's three pounds, right,
So you've got this three pound organ, but it consumes
twenty percent of your brain's oxygen. So it's a highly metabolic,
metabolically active tissue. So you want to make sure you
have a lot of antioxidants to protect those beautiful neurons.
(10:18):
Each neuron can make up to ten thousand connections, so
it's extraordinarily complex when you think that your brain has
eighty six billion neurons and it makes brillions of connections.
And you know, when I teach this to young kids
trying to get them excited about the brain, they say
(10:40):
that the number of connections on the brain is sort
of less than half in the stars in the Milky
Way galaxy. So it's just fascinating it's beautifully complex organ
that we have. And I always tell people one of
the things that the neuroimaging research has showed us is
that disease is like Alzheimer's, which we talked about earlier
(11:02):
in the show, begin to start at the cellular level
one to two decades before you have a symptom. So
this is why I really like to sort of be
a cheerleader for people to embrace healthy practices to take
good care of their brain. And you brought up some
of them because you were telling me your ninety six
(11:23):
year old mom is still doing well and driving her car.
So you know, if we just think about doing things
like adhering to a Mediterranean diet, keeping a consistent exercise practice,
you know, adequately hydrating our brain, probiding that good nutritional support,
you know, healthy emotional regulation, all of that can help
(11:45):
support our brain health and really serve as an effective
buffer against brain aging.
Speaker 2 (11:52):
What is it about the brain that gives you an
Albert Einstein and someone who is not.
Speaker 3 (12:00):
Oh, such an interesting question. Well, you know they say
that Albert Einstein really linked into having a meditation practice,
So it's like, what's the difference between you know, somebody
who is a genius and somebody who's just a very
smart person. I think there is something about Albert Einstein
(12:20):
in his use of meditation to help really connect inward
and get these extraordinary insights right the theory of relativity.
So I think, you know, we can learn from people
like Albert Einstein to think about incorporating a meditative practice
into our day to day life, not only for helping
(12:43):
to keep us calm and more emotionally resilient, but really
to tune in and sort of connect to our inner
wisdom and our inner guidance. And I think that's, you know,
one of the sort one of the many things that
made him a genius, because he used to say imagination,
which again comes from intuition, is really the key to
(13:06):
intellectual high intellectual functioning.
Speaker 2 (13:10):
What does stress do to the brain? Christian?
Speaker 3 (13:13):
So, stress and chronic stress can actually function to shrink
the brain. So we always tell people it's really important
to manage your stress. So stress can shrink brain volume
in the prefrontal cortex, which is the error the brain
essential to higher cognitive functions. Right, Your prefrontal cortex is
(13:35):
like the CEO of your brain, so it helps with
planning and decision making and impulse control and personality. So
if you have chronic stress and the excess cordisol that
gets released from chronic stress, there the glugle quarter cord
receptors are in the prefrontal cortex. Again, it can serve
(13:55):
to shrink the prefrontal cortex. We also have a high
number of glugle cordid receptors in the hippie campus, which
is the area of the brain essential to learning and memory.
So again when we're under a lot of stress before
having shrinking our atrophy of the tissues and the prefrontal
cortex and the hippie campus, that's not going to really
(14:17):
serve us well if we really want to preserve our
cognitive health. Elevated stress also activates the amigdala, so that's
the part of the brain we sort of call that
our fear center and it becomes more active. So that's
what leads to sort of a heightened anxiety when we
have stress. So it's really important if we want to
(14:40):
live a long, healthy life to find ways to mitigate
and manage stress.
Speaker 1 (14:45):
Listen to more Coast to Coast AM every weeknight at
one am Eastern and go to Coast tocoastam dot com
for more
The Best of Coast to Coast AM News
Host
George Noory
Popular Podcasts
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Therapy Gecko
An unlicensed lizard psychologist travels the universe talking to strangers about absolutely nothing. TO CALL THE GECKO: follow me on https://www.twitch.tv/lyleforever to get a notification for when I am taking calls. I am usually live Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays but lately a lot of other times too. I am a gecko.