November 21, 2023 • 32 mins
Neurosurgeon, podcast host, and CNN’s Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta chats with Brooke about why some brains respond more positively to “now what” moments than others, what his mom’s refugee journey taught him about resilience, and why his pivot into broadcasting was one of the biggest challenges of his life. Plus, Brooke and Sanjay share the advice they’d give their 25-year-old selves.
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
What do you do when life doesn't go according to
plan that moment you lose a job, or a loved one,
or even a piece of yourself. I'm Brookshields and this
is now What a podcast about pivotal moments as told
by people who lived them. Each week, I sit down
with a guest to talk about the times they were
knocked off course and what they did to move forward.
(00:27):
Some stories are funny, others are gut wrenching, but all
are unapologetically human and remind us that every success and
every setback is accompanied by a choice, and that choice
answers one question. Now, what is it true that we
(00:50):
really only use a small portion of our brain? Is
that a myth?
Speaker 2 (00:54):
No? I think it's mostly a myth. I think the
way to think about it is that if your brain
were the United States is a country. You need all
those roads, you know, to get from one place to
the other. So you and a lot of the places
of your brain are roads. You're not actually in cities
at that time. You're just traveling one place to another,
and you need those roads. We use ten percent of
(01:15):
our brain ninety percent of the time. It's probably how
you live in your house. You may spend most of
your time in your living room or your kitchen. Probably
if you're like our house, that's where you know. We're
always aggregated in the kitchen. That's kind of how we
use our brains. You have other rooms that maybe you
don't spend nearly as much time and every now and then,
but not that much. So we use our whole brains,
(01:35):
but a very small percentage.
Speaker 1 (01:38):
Most of the time. My guest today is one of
the smartest people I know, doctor Sanjay Gupta. He's a neurosurgeon,
an Emmy Award winning journalist, an author, and a husband
and father. He's been a medical correspondent for CNN since
two thousand and one and has spent two decades providing
(02:01):
us all with thoughtful, approachable insight into the biggest stories
in medicine. Like many of you, I turned to him
during the COVID nineteen pandemic and was always impressed by
his calm, demeanor and unparalleled intellect. Since twenty twenty, he's
hosted the podcast Chasing Life, where he digs deep into aging, mindfulness,
(02:25):
and everything you don't know about the human brain. I
loved chatting with him and left our conversation feeling smarter
and more empowered. So here is doctor Sanjay Kutta. Thank
you so much for joining me today.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
Oh it's my pleasure, Broke. I've really been looking forward
to this. Do you remember that we've actually met once before?
Speaker 1 (02:51):
It is you too? Concert you remember? Oh? Yeah, of
course I do. You're not very forgettable. You know that
it's a great conversation. I remember I was standing up
really high chatting with you, and that was a highlight
for me.
Speaker 2 (03:07):
Oh well, my highlight. I still talk about it all
the time. And I'm a big fan of yours book
in many different facets of your life. So just wanted
to tell you that.
Speaker 1 (03:17):
Thank you. And you have you have three daughters.
Speaker 2 (03:20):
Right, I have three daughters, three teenage daughters.
Speaker 1 (03:22):
When are you going to be an empty nester? Because
I'm that's looming for me.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
So my youngest is fourteen, so we have fourteen, sixteen,
and eighteen. She's a ninth grader, so I guess, you know,
four years we just sent one off to college.
Speaker 1 (03:36):
How did your wife do with that?
Speaker 2 (03:38):
You know, I think in some ways she did. She
did better than I did. I think in part because
she's so process oriented.
Speaker 1 (03:46):
She's a lawyer, right, she's.
Speaker 2 (03:47):
A lawyer, yes, And I think just just the mom
part of her, you know, with all the process of
moving into the dorms and you know, making sure everything's
all settled. There were just so much process and I
got to sit back, I think a little bit more
because I'm very lucky that I have. You know, Rebecca
just takes on so much. But I think as a
(04:08):
result that was very emotional for me. I kept reflecting
on her as a young kid, and you know, just
you know, saying that thing that I always hated hearing
when I was a new dad that the years fly by.
I don't want to hear that.
Speaker 1 (04:20):
The days are long, the years are short. That's what
I was told exactly, but you know it is true.
Like I got. I was I was dealing with the
room and the linens and the bedding and setting up
the desk and setting up so I was able to
sort of stay busy. But then when I saw her
in the ugh, you get choked up in the rear
view mirror. I my husband said to me, He's like, okay,
(04:44):
I have one question for you. He said, when when
you are crying, would you rather cry in an airplane?
You know, like a flight or would you rather drive
and cry in the car? And I said, I can't
be around people. I was like, I need to cry
a car for eight out.
Speaker 2 (05:02):
You guys drove back.
Speaker 1 (05:04):
We drove back. Yeah, you does. Does your one daughter
who's in college have any idea what she wants to study?
Speaker 2 (05:11):
Yeah, she does. So she's at UT Austin and there's
a school there that's called the Moody School. So the
college is made up of a bunch of different schools,
different you know, things that they cover and specialize in,
and the Moody School is sort of marketing and advertising,
and that's that's what I think she's really interested in.
(05:32):
You know, she's eighteen.
Speaker 1 (05:34):
How are you supposed to know?
Speaker 2 (05:35):
You don't? You know that you don't.
Speaker 1 (05:38):
Well, you can talk to the brain. You can talk
about what the brain can and cannot understand at that age.
Speaker 2 (05:43):
I remember a long time ago I read this book
by Eric Erickson and he talked about the fact that
most adults probably shouldn't make major life decisions until early thirties.
And he was talking about profession and marriage and just
big life decisions and part of it, you know, I
don't He didn't say this in the book. But part
(06:05):
of it is that, you know, our brains, to you
to your question, don't don't really fully develop until mid
to late twenties, and so we're asking kids to make
these huge decisions about their lives at a very young age,
and it's it's it's wild, you know, and you know
they're going to change their minds, and that's good. It's
part of the reason we wanted her at a big school,
just to have, you know, lots of things to see
(06:25):
and options to choose from. I mean not I know
this is your podcast, but I mean you raise such
an interesting point. I mean, did now at this point
in life do you reflect and say you would have
chosen something different.
Speaker 1 (06:37):
I can't imagine doing anything different. But it took me
a while to find what I love within this industry,
and that's comedy. And I think I knew that in
one way or another from the time. I mean, I
have a picture of myself at two and I am
trying to make my daddy laugh. And I could always
(06:58):
do that. I could do it from the time I
was a little kid, and I would I just for
some reason, there was something intuitively clownish about me. Part
of it was a defense mechanism. Part of it was,
oh gosh, a million different things, but that wasn't the
way my career went. Yeah, but I do. But I
find that I can't imagine not being a performer in
(07:21):
one capacity. And then I read that you were very
musical when you were in school. Were you like a
theater kid as well?
Speaker 2 (07:29):
Me? Oh, yeah, no, I interestingly enough, I played the
accordion I took.
Speaker 1 (07:35):
That's perfect, sounds great, It's no. I know.
Speaker 2 (07:39):
It's a source of comedy for sure, But.
Speaker 1 (07:41):
You have to be so agile. You have to use
both sides of your brain, right.
Speaker 2 (07:45):
You have to use both sides of your brain. You
have to use both your hands in a blinded way.
You can't really see your fingers at all, you know,
especially on the left hand, unless you really lean over
the instrument. But I'll tell you the funny thing is
is my parents, both immigrants, big Bollywood fans. They if
you listen to Bollywood music, there's a lot of accordion playing,
especially in older Bollywood songs. So when they came to
(08:07):
the States, you know, and they had their first son,
they were like, he will play the accordion? Yes, And
there is no Bollywood accordion playing there. So I was
mainly playing pokas and stuff like that for ten years,
and it was just it was a very discordant scene
because a little Indian kid from rural Michigan playing the
accordion with mostly like these Polish festivals and things like that.
Speaker 1 (08:30):
That sounds like a Bollywood movie. Tell But so you
were from Michigan and what were you like as a kid.
Speaker 2 (08:38):
You know, pretty pretty bookish kid. You know, I have
one brother, he's ten years younger than me, so, you know,
the up until whatever fifth grade or so, I was
sort of an only child sixth grade and and really
small town in Michigan, pretty pretty rural.
Speaker 1 (08:55):
You know.
Speaker 2 (08:55):
My parents both worked for the auto industry, and so
that's that was the Michigan connection.
Speaker 1 (09:02):
How did that? How does that work? They come their
immigrants from India? Your mom from Yes? Was she Pakistan
or so?
Speaker 2 (09:08):
My mom was a what's called the partition child. She
was born in the subcontinent of India before it was
subdivided into India and Pakistan. And then during the partition,
which was in nineteen forty seven, she was five years
old and she fled, you know, with her family to
what is now India, and for the first twelve years
of her life lived as a refugee in these camps
(09:32):
outside of really outside of Mumbai. And I tell you
all that because you know, during that time as a refugee,
she became really fascinated with with engineering and the idea
that she could one day be an engineer. Even you know,
imagine being in a refugee camp in India and saying
I want to be an engineer, mostly being told there
(09:54):
are no women engineers.
Speaker 1 (09:56):
But she was the first ever engineer at female engineer.
Speaker 2 (10:00):
She was the first female engineer Ford.
Speaker 1 (10:02):
And that's groundbreaking and what an example and how amazing
it is.
Speaker 2 (10:08):
It's totally amazing. And we grew up with it, you know,
and and and it's certainly part of our family's story.
It never stops being amazing, like when we think about it,
you know, and even in today's world, the idea of
just overcoming those sorts of challenges and becoming the first
at something it was hard back then. You know, it's
still hard now to do that. I will tell you, Brooke,
(10:31):
it is interesting growing up with a mom like that,
because there's no I can't do something right, you don't
get to say that you can't do that, Like I
was a refugee in a camp in India and I
traveled by boat and you know, all this sort of stuff.
And so she's a really she's a really remarkableman, great grandmother.
(10:51):
Now she has five granddaughters. My brother has two daughters.
We have three. And it's just it's it's remains amazing.
Speaker 1 (10:58):
And fund that was that a source of pressure or
encouragement for you? That's a kid.
Speaker 2 (11:05):
That's a great question. I I it was, it was
a It was a healthy pressure. I would say it
was definitely definitely a I mean, I think that if
your parents have sacrificed that much to live in this country,
to try and make the best that they can have things,
you feel a certain sense of obligation I think as
an immigrant's immigrant family's child to live up to that.
(11:30):
It wasn't overt That's why I say it's healthy. It wasn't. Hey,
we sacrifice so much, therefore you have to do X
y Z. But you felt it.
Speaker 1 (11:38):
But it's so interesting because I do feel like our
family's experiences really do they shape us? How can they not?
But your mom also she had I mean, she experienced
trauma as as well, right, I mean just the trauma
of did she did she have siblings?
Speaker 2 (11:57):
Yep? She has, she has three seven links. She had
other siblings that were older than her that didnt that
did not survive. So she yeah, there's Look, there's there's trauma,
you know. And it's funny. One thing, Brooke and this,
this still surprises me about my mom is that she
would rather not talk about that stuff and and and
(12:20):
that's not that surprising. But what is surprising, I think
is it almost a sense of embarrassment about it. Like
it's almost like, you know, I don't want to show
you my dirty house or invite you over my my
you know, dirty laundry. It's just it's like the person
who falls down the stairs and pops right back up.
Oh I'm fine, nothing, I'm good, I'm It's kind of
like that, but extended to her her life in a way.
(12:42):
And it's something I don't think I realized until I
was much older myself about her and and could think
about things more I think from her point of view,
Like I asked her about some of these things, and
she'll say to me, is this something that you're gonna
tell the girls? Meaning my daughters, and I say, well, yeah,
I mean I think that they should, and she's like,
(13:04):
I don't. I just don't think you should tell them
this stuff. And and so it's not that there is
a some for some people, there's a badge.
Speaker 1 (13:10):
Of cultural Is it cultural or is it.
Speaker 2 (13:13):
Maybe it's cultural? I mean I do know other partition
folks from around her age group that talk about it
quite openly. But I think I think it's more personal.
Like my mom had cancer several years ago and she
didn't want people to know that either. I think there
is this. I think if you've lived the life of
a refugee where so much of your life ends up
having to be transactional, I mean that's how you survive
(13:35):
in a refugee camp, then you you don't you're you're
you're a little reluctant to show those vulnerabilities about yourself.
Speaker 1 (13:49):
I call this podcast now What because it's about pivotal
moments in our lives. Yeah, you know, it's about those
moments where you ask yourself, oh my god, now what
do I do? And I'm faced with this and they're
pivotal moments. And I'm fascinated by why some people stay
(14:09):
laying down, lying down, I did go to college or promise,
and others bounce right back up. And is there an
element in the brain that you've seen that's consistent as
to why people become allow themselves to see themselves as
victims versus see themselves as survivors or warriors.
Speaker 2 (14:35):
I absolutely think there is, you know, and this is
something that I've thought a lot about. I mean, I
would maybe widen the aperture a little bit, and to
say that, I think there are some people who, when
confronted with the daily events of our world and just
all the stuff that's going on, there are some people
who are just crushed by that, seemingly paralyzed by that,
(14:57):
whether or not they see themselves as the victim, it's
over whelming. And there are other people who are almost
strengthened by it, like you would if you were to
think about it metaphorically, like going to the gym and
getting a good workout, and yes, it was hard to
push the weight or whatever you were doing, but now
you're stronger as a result, if you were to think
of the brain that way. And I think the core ingredient,
(15:19):
and a lot of people have written about this, is
this idea of resilience of the brain, and to expand
on that to say, the redundancy in the brain. Do
you have more redundancy to be able to handle these things?
And I think that makes a big difference. And it's
not that you necessarily need to keep going through trauma
and build up some tolerance to the trauma. It is
(15:42):
if your brain is a brain that is doing lots
of different things, you tend to build more brain cells
and have more redundancy and thus more resilience. And when
you're confronted with something, you're not crushed by it. You
may even be strengthened by it.
Speaker 1 (15:58):
How did you decide to become a brain searching.
Speaker 2 (16:01):
You know it? Nobody in my family is a doctor
or a brain surgion. Most of my colleagues that was
sort of their their trajectory. They had, you know, people
in their parents or somebody. But for me, my mom's
dad got sick when I was around thirteen years old,
had had a stroke, and we're very close and I
would spend a lot of time with them on the
(16:22):
hospital at that point, and I think it was the
first time I sort of realized that, like going into
medicine could be a good profession. My parents are both engineers,
and so the expectation my dad's a mathematician, was the
expectation was that I'd go into engineering or some math
or something like that. Going into medicine, to be honest,
(16:42):
was pretty expensive, you know, to make that commitment to
go to medical school and everything. So but I think
around that age I sort of thought about it for
the first time, and with my grandfather and the stroke,
I became very interested in the brain. You know. He
had this really interesting thing that happened to him during
his stroke, which is that he could he could write fine,
he could speak fine, but he could not understand. In fact,
(17:05):
he could write something and not read what he just wrote.
And I remember thinking, like, even as a pretty you know,
a teenager at that point, that that's wild that the
brain does that. And I think it was it sort
of ignited a little bit of something in terms of
just trying to read a lot about the brain and
becoming increasingly interested in it. I didn't think neurosurgery was
(17:28):
going to be the path initially, you know, because it
seemed too intense, to be honest with you, seven years
of training after medical school. But as I got closer
and closer. I thought to myself, you know what, I
think I could do this.
Speaker 1 (17:41):
And I guess a stroke. My mother had a stroke
as well, or she'd like sort of a series of
mini strokes, and she started not being able to really
her verbal communication changed, but she started singing, oh interesting
in this like kind of beautiful, almost like a falsetto.
(18:04):
And I mean, you know, of course it was creepy
to me because she would call me and sing and
I'd be like, you're creeping me out, mom, But that
was it was such an interesting shift in her that
I find. You know, that was sort of when you
talked about your grandfather. What do you think that the
most I mean, what have you discovered as the most
(18:28):
interesting aspect or striking thing about operating on a brain?
Actual brain, like you're holding it.
Speaker 2 (18:38):
It's wild, it's the it's the brain is the most
enigmatic three and a half pounds of flesh in the
known universe. And I think about it every time I
operate on it, because you know, going back to sort
of this idea of being process oriented, when you're operating,
you have a you have a thing that you're trying
to do, you know, remove a brain tumor or put
(18:59):
a clip around an aneurysm or whatever it might be.
But when you sit back and just look at the
brain sometimes I think, you know, one of the things
that still strikes me about the brain is that it's
it's so delicate, like I I, I don't know. I
feel like, you know, we're used to like the very
important things in our life. We're gonna like really make
tough and protect it. So like when you actually touch
(19:22):
the brain, it feels like like a piece of shrimp cocktail.
You know, it's it's so soft and and.
Speaker 1 (19:28):
I may never eat shrimp cocktail again.
Speaker 2 (19:31):
Sorry, thank you for that allish allergies out there, surgents,
But you know, it's just you think it would put
up more of a fight in some ways to protect itself.
But it's it's it's still I I love doing it
performing brain surgery. I think there's a real you know,
(19:52):
you go to school for a long time, but there's
also sort of a real physical component to it. You know.
I have one a daughter who's a dancer, and she's
just so focused on her dancing moves, and she's so
good at that sort of stuff. I had. I'm I'm
not naturally, so so you know, I had, I had
to practice a lot with my hands, but I love
that physical aspect of it as well, and not still
(20:14):
is a source of great joy for me after all
these years.
Speaker 1 (20:18):
How do you develop the instincts that you need to
make those very difficult decisions that.
Speaker 2 (20:26):
Can be one of the most challenging parts of things
you write, Brooke, I mean, I think in some cases,
to operate or not operates very clear. You know, someone
has had a recent trauma and now needs to decompress
their brain, or a type of tumor that can be
resected that could you know, dramatically prolong their life. All
(20:46):
that sort of stuff is very clear, But sometimes it's
not as clear. You're not sure that someone's going to
have a good outcome. And you know, having those conversations
with your patients in a very honest and hopeful way,
you can balance hope and honesty. You know a lot
of times, you know, the idea of hope is is
I think, given short shrift. But people who have hope,
they tend to do better, you know, they tend to
(21:07):
have better outcomes. But finding that balance, and I will
tell you that, you know, I train residents and medical students.
They're younger than I am. I have three teenagers, I
have parents who are in their eighties. Now I think
I have a different worldview. I truly imagine, like, my
mom's a very healthy eighty year old. A lot of
times you hear, oh, person's coming to the hospital eighty
(21:29):
years old with such and such, and you think, oh,
eighty years old, that's old. Well, if that were my mom,
she's driving, she's totally independent, she has a really play
shuffle board, has a really joyful life. Like I would
totally operate on that, Whereas the instinct might be, you know,
is there should there be an age cutoff? I'm just
using that as an example. Yeah, But I think as
(21:49):
you get older, as I've been doing this a long
time now, that judgment that you're asking about, I think
ends up becoming probably the most important thing because the
surgical skills, you know, I did seven years of training,
I did a year of fellowship. I've been doing this
for the last twenty years. All the time, you know
that part is less of a concern than it is
(22:09):
just the judgment.
Speaker 1 (22:11):
Do you have any now what moments yourself in or
an era or times where you've just really said, Wow,
what am I positive or negative? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (22:23):
I think I've had a lot, you know, I think
on a professional level, I think this idea of straddling
two worlds of medicine, which is still my first and
truest love professionally and then the media world and saying
is this something that I could could add to that
or do as well? I think was a really significant
(22:44):
moment I came to that sort of mid life or
mid career I should say. You know, I was in
my early thirties at that point, and so to add
something that I had never done before to your life
and also have it be something that is that is
very public, like you know, you know, I was in
again an Indian kid living in rural Michigan who you know,
(23:05):
really did not have ever had those kinds of experiences
or interactions with people. To do television, that was a
that was an interesting pivot. And when I started, I
thought I was going to be mainly talking about health
policy because I had written a lot about health policy.
And I started in August of two thousand and one,
brook and three and a half weeks later, nine to
(23:26):
eleven happened, And so they just hired a guy to
mainly a doc to do health policy commentary, probably mostly
on the Sunday shows. And now they said, hey, we're
probably not going to be talking about that for a while,
considering what's happening in the world. But now you're a
doc working at an international news network in the middle
of this. And then and then all the things, you know,
I covered the war in Afghanistan, covered the Warner Rock,
(23:49):
you know, anthrax, covered just about every major conflict that
has happened over the last twenty one years, and natural
disasters and pandemics, and that was never sort of the
original plan. So I think that now what moment when
they first said this, you know, you know, also I
had this new practice in eurosurgery. You know that I
was and can you do this? And I had and
(24:10):
I and I was, you know, had young children, so
you know, all of that was sort of happening at
the same time. But I think professionally that was it.
And then personally, I mean, you know better than anyone,
I mean, having kids is I think a lot of
people who are nursing never have families. You know, you
spend most of your life during your formative years training,
(24:33):
you know, and back then it was one hundred hours
a week, so you know, trying to put another person
or people through that with you is a big ask.
So that was that was a you know, like, wow,
I have children now that that was sort of an
amazing I for a good chunk of my life did
not think that was going to happen, and here we.
Speaker 1 (24:54):
Are, and then you get three girls girls. Yeah, oh
my god, yes the track.
Speaker 2 (25:00):
Whenever I say that.
Speaker 1 (25:02):
Yeah, they are honestly the most. They bring me to
my knees more more often than not. And then they
surprise me with their capacity for love and caring and
and all of that. Switching a little bit, you are
in your seventh season of Chasing Life. Yes, can you
(25:25):
talk a little bit about the premise of that show?
Speaker 2 (25:27):
And so Chasing Life actually originally started during the pandemic
and it was more of an opportunity to the podcast.
And I don't know how how much prep time you
got when you started your podcast, but I was called
on a Friday and said, can you start Monday.
Speaker 1 (25:43):
Wow. I have a wonderful producer who keeps it, keeps
me abreast, so to speak, of things that I can
that I can do while I'm traveling and get as
much because I love homework. So I'm a big, you know, homework,
homework person. But maybe that's the maybe that's the way
you thrive, you know, clearly thrive on your feet.
Speaker 2 (26:04):
I would I would have liked a little bit more time,
to be totally honest. But I love podcasting. I love podcasts.
I listened to podcasts. I think there's a real intimacy
about it. The basic gist of Chasing Life is that
kind of wish you were talking about. The body is
this amazing thing. It can heal itself really well, and
(26:26):
it can be optimized in ways that we haven't fully appreciated.
A lot of the reason we're not optimized is because
we do things to our bodies that are bad as
opposed to not doing things. So it's as much about
seeing these cultures around the world where people live these
really healthy, happy, long lives, what we can learn from them,
(26:49):
and you know, traveling around the world and really immersing
myself in those cultures. That was a lot of Chasing Life.
This season, I've decided to in some ways go back
to my roots all about the brain, and every episode
is something blank brain, meaning the motivated brain, the attentive brain,
the depressed brain, whatever it might be, and trying to
(27:13):
figure out, like, with what we know now about the brain,
which is a lot more than people realize, with what
we know now, how can you create a more attentive brain?
And that's what I really wanted to focus on, and
selfishly whenever, Like you, I love homework and so I
learn a lot. Even though I'm a neurosurgeon, how to,
you know, protect my brain against some of the daily
(27:37):
challenges we were talking about earlier, how to make the
more resilient brain. There's real information out there that I
think can be helpful to people.
Speaker 1 (27:44):
One of the things I love about your podcast is
that you interviewed your parents and you ask them what
advice that they would give to their twenty five I
think it was your old selves. So I would just
like to ask you that question, what advice would you
give your twenty five year old self?
Speaker 2 (28:06):
I think that, uh, you know, it's funny. I didn't
really think about that for myself. I was thinking about
it for my parents. But you know, I think that
what I would basically say is that there are things
that I paid a lot of attention to that did
not end up being that important in my life. I
overtilted towards certain things, thinking that they were going to
(28:27):
be these huge important things that were going to dictate
how my life would go, for good or for bad,
and they weren't. And I probably knew that at the time,
And there were probably things that I wish I had
paid more attention to as well. And so it's hard
to know when you're twenty five. It's hard to get
yourself in that headspace. If you really sit down and
think about it, you probably can figure it out. But
(28:49):
the other thing is that, you know, I have people
in my life who are sort of frame shifted from
me about twenty years. You know, my parents are a
bit older than that. The age gap is a little
bit more. But I spend a lot of time talking
to people who are fifteen to twenty years older than
me and just be like, hey, man, is this my
overdoing it on this thing? Tell me? And he's gonna
(29:09):
be like, dude, you're not even going to remember that
two years from now. You won't even think about it again.
I guarantee it. And here I am obsessed with, like
I don't even know what it might be, some simple
thing you know, whether it be about my kid's school
or finances, or you know, whatever it might be, and
just getting that constant perspective. So I would give myself
(29:30):
that advice. Really reflect on what you think is going
to be important, to be honest about that and talk
to people who are older than you and benefit from
their wisdom.
Speaker 1 (29:41):
Well, I love your podcast, and I'm learning about I
had very severe postpartum and the one I understood the
biochemical what was happening in my brain when I looked
at it from a brain perspective, from a hormonally and
from the first time in my life, not being able
(30:02):
to power through something that was what was freeing. So
I think that one of the things your podcast this
season in particular is doing is that it's that type
of information is liberating to people.
Speaker 2 (30:14):
Well, look, I really know. Well, thank you for saying that, Brooke.
I mean, I remember you talking about your postpartum quite
a bit and I wanted to tell you that, you know,
I don't Around that time, I thought it was an
opportunity because you were talking about it, to try and
educate the audience about these issues. And one of the
(30:35):
studies that I showed, and this is a long time
ago now, and we know, I think girls have grown
right since that time. But one of the studies that
came out right around that time was a study that
actually imaged the brain functionally, and it was so fascinating
because you saw something that we had never seen before,
and it showed that in someone who was depressed, that
(30:57):
their frontal lobes of their brain, the judgment areas of
your brain were completely fired up, okay, and your amygdala,
which is your emotional center of the brain, was really
kind of cold, less functional, which meant you were kind
of like in a cocoon, and and nothing came out
because the frontal low was basically saying that's dumb, don't
do that overly judging everything that you did. And what
(31:21):
was interesting is and people who then were treated, you
did see functionally within the brain, a change less activity
in those areas and more I mean. And it was
so interesting because we had there's no biomarker for depression,
there's no blood test or anything. That was the first
time we objectively could see what depression looked like in
the brain and see objective evidence of it actually being treated,
(31:44):
which was fascinating to me.
Speaker 1 (31:51):
That was doctor Sanjay Gupta. Go check out his podcast
Chasing Life on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you get your shows. That's it for us today. Talk
to you next week now. What with Burke Shields is
a production of iHeartRadio. Our lead producer and wonderful showrunner
(32:12):
is Julia Weaver. Additional research and editing by Darby Masters
and Abu Zafar. Our executive producer is Christina Everett. The
show is mixed by Vahid Fraser.
What do you do when life doesn't go according to
plan that moment you lose a job, or a loved one,
or even a piece of yourself. I'm Brookshields and this
is now What a podcast about pivotal moments as told
by people who lived them. Each week, I sit down
with a guest to talk about the times they were
knocked off course and what they did to move forward.
(00:27):
Some stories are funny, others are gut wrenching, but all
are unapologetically human and remind us that every success and
every setback is accompanied by a choice, and that choice
answers one question. Now, what is it true that we
(00:50):
really only use a small portion of our brain? Is
that a myth?
Speaker 2 (00:54):
No? I think it's mostly a myth. I think the
way to think about it is that if your brain
were the United States is a country. You need all
those roads, you know, to get from one place to
the other. So you and a lot of the places
of your brain are roads. You're not actually in cities
at that time. You're just traveling one place to another,
and you need those roads. We use ten percent of
(01:15):
our brain ninety percent of the time. It's probably how
you live in your house. You may spend most of
your time in your living room or your kitchen. Probably
if you're like our house, that's where you know. We're
always aggregated in the kitchen. That's kind of how we
use our brains. You have other rooms that maybe you
don't spend nearly as much time and every now and then,
but not that much. So we use our whole brains,
(01:35):
but a very small percentage.
Speaker 1 (01:38):
Most of the time. My guest today is one of
the smartest people I know, doctor Sanjay Gupta. He's a neurosurgeon,
an Emmy Award winning journalist, an author, and a husband
and father. He's been a medical correspondent for CNN since
two thousand and one and has spent two decades providing
(02:01):
us all with thoughtful, approachable insight into the biggest stories
in medicine. Like many of you, I turned to him
during the COVID nineteen pandemic and was always impressed by
his calm, demeanor and unparalleled intellect. Since twenty twenty, he's
hosted the podcast Chasing Life, where he digs deep into aging, mindfulness,
(02:25):
and everything you don't know about the human brain. I
loved chatting with him and left our conversation feeling smarter
and more empowered. So here is doctor Sanjay Kutta. Thank
you so much for joining me today.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
Oh it's my pleasure, Broke. I've really been looking forward
to this. Do you remember that we've actually met once before?
Speaker 1 (02:51):
It is you too? Concert you remember? Oh? Yeah, of
course I do. You're not very forgettable. You know that
it's a great conversation. I remember I was standing up
really high chatting with you, and that was a highlight
for me.
Speaker 2 (03:07):
Oh well, my highlight. I still talk about it all
the time. And I'm a big fan of yours book
in many different facets of your life. So just wanted
to tell you that.
Speaker 1 (03:17):
Thank you. And you have you have three daughters.
Speaker 2 (03:20):
Right, I have three daughters, three teenage daughters.
Speaker 1 (03:22):
When are you going to be an empty nester? Because
I'm that's looming for me.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
So my youngest is fourteen, so we have fourteen, sixteen,
and eighteen. She's a ninth grader, so I guess, you know,
four years we just sent one off to college.
Speaker 1 (03:36):
How did your wife do with that?
Speaker 2 (03:38):
You know, I think in some ways she did. She
did better than I did. I think in part because
she's so process oriented.
Speaker 1 (03:46):
She's a lawyer, right, she's.
Speaker 2 (03:47):
A lawyer, yes, And I think just just the mom
part of her, you know, with all the process of
moving into the dorms and you know, making sure everything's
all settled. There were just so much process and I
got to sit back, I think a little bit more
because I'm very lucky that I have. You know, Rebecca
just takes on so much. But I think as a
(04:08):
result that was very emotional for me. I kept reflecting
on her as a young kid, and you know, just
you know, saying that thing that I always hated hearing
when I was a new dad that the years fly by.
I don't want to hear that.
Speaker 1 (04:20):
The days are long, the years are short. That's what
I was told exactly, but you know it is true.
Like I got. I was I was dealing with the
room and the linens and the bedding and setting up
the desk and setting up so I was able to
sort of stay busy. But then when I saw her
in the ugh, you get choked up in the rear
view mirror. I my husband said to me, He's like, okay,
(04:44):
I have one question for you. He said, when when
you are crying, would you rather cry in an airplane?
You know, like a flight or would you rather drive
and cry in the car? And I said, I can't
be around people. I was like, I need to cry
a car for eight out.
Speaker 2 (05:02):
You guys drove back.
Speaker 1 (05:04):
We drove back. Yeah, you does. Does your one daughter
who's in college have any idea what she wants to study?
Speaker 2 (05:11):
Yeah, she does. So she's at UT Austin and there's
a school there that's called the Moody School. So the
college is made up of a bunch of different schools,
different you know, things that they cover and specialize in,
and the Moody School is sort of marketing and advertising,
and that's that's what I think she's really interested in.
(05:32):
You know, she's eighteen.
Speaker 1 (05:34):
How are you supposed to know?
Speaker 2 (05:35):
You don't? You know that you don't.
Speaker 1 (05:38):
Well, you can talk to the brain. You can talk
about what the brain can and cannot understand at that age.
Speaker 2 (05:43):
I remember a long time ago I read this book
by Eric Erickson and he talked about the fact that
most adults probably shouldn't make major life decisions until early thirties.
And he was talking about profession and marriage and just
big life decisions and part of it, you know, I
don't He didn't say this in the book. But part
(06:05):
of it is that, you know, our brains, to you
to your question, don't don't really fully develop until mid
to late twenties, and so we're asking kids to make
these huge decisions about their lives at a very young age,
and it's it's it's wild, you know, and you know
they're going to change their minds, and that's good. It's
part of the reason we wanted her at a big school,
just to have, you know, lots of things to see
(06:25):
and options to choose from. I mean not I know
this is your podcast, but I mean you raise such
an interesting point. I mean, did now at this point
in life do you reflect and say you would have
chosen something different.
Speaker 1 (06:37):
I can't imagine doing anything different. But it took me
a while to find what I love within this industry,
and that's comedy. And I think I knew that in
one way or another from the time. I mean, I
have a picture of myself at two and I am
trying to make my daddy laugh. And I could always
(06:58):
do that. I could do it from the time I
was a little kid, and I would I just for
some reason, there was something intuitively clownish about me. Part
of it was a defense mechanism. Part of it was,
oh gosh, a million different things, but that wasn't the
way my career went. Yeah, but I do. But I
find that I can't imagine not being a performer in
(07:21):
one capacity. And then I read that you were very
musical when you were in school. Were you like a
theater kid as well?
Speaker 2 (07:29):
Me? Oh, yeah, no, I interestingly enough, I played the
accordion I took.
Speaker 1 (07:35):
That's perfect, sounds great, It's no. I know.
Speaker 2 (07:39):
It's a source of comedy for sure, But.
Speaker 1 (07:41):
You have to be so agile. You have to use
both sides of your brain, right.
Speaker 2 (07:45):
You have to use both sides of your brain. You
have to use both your hands in a blinded way.
You can't really see your fingers at all, you know,
especially on the left hand, unless you really lean over
the instrument. But I'll tell you the funny thing is
is my parents, both immigrants, big Bollywood fans. They if
you listen to Bollywood music, there's a lot of accordion playing,
especially in older Bollywood songs. So when they came to
(08:07):
the States, you know, and they had their first son,
they were like, he will play the accordion? Yes, And
there is no Bollywood accordion playing there. So I was
mainly playing pokas and stuff like that for ten years,
and it was just it was a very discordant scene
because a little Indian kid from rural Michigan playing the
accordion with mostly like these Polish festivals and things like that.
Speaker 1 (08:30):
That sounds like a Bollywood movie. Tell But so you
were from Michigan and what were you like as a kid.
Speaker 2 (08:38):
You know, pretty pretty bookish kid. You know, I have
one brother, he's ten years younger than me, so, you know,
the up until whatever fifth grade or so, I was
sort of an only child sixth grade and and really
small town in Michigan, pretty pretty rural.
Speaker 1 (08:55):
You know.
Speaker 2 (08:55):
My parents both worked for the auto industry, and so
that's that was the Michigan connection.
Speaker 1 (09:02):
How did that? How does that work? They come their
immigrants from India? Your mom from Yes? Was she Pakistan
or so?
Speaker 2 (09:08):
My mom was a what's called the partition child. She
was born in the subcontinent of India before it was
subdivided into India and Pakistan. And then during the partition,
which was in nineteen forty seven, she was five years
old and she fled, you know, with her family to
what is now India, and for the first twelve years
of her life lived as a refugee in these camps
(09:32):
outside of really outside of Mumbai. And I tell you
all that because you know, during that time as a refugee,
she became really fascinated with with engineering and the idea
that she could one day be an engineer. Even you know,
imagine being in a refugee camp in India and saying
I want to be an engineer, mostly being told there
(09:54):
are no women engineers.
Speaker 1 (09:56):
But she was the first ever engineer at female engineer.
Speaker 2 (10:00):
She was the first female engineer Ford.
Speaker 1 (10:02):
And that's groundbreaking and what an example and how amazing
it is.
Speaker 2 (10:08):
It's totally amazing. And we grew up with it, you know,
and and and it's certainly part of our family's story.
It never stops being amazing, like when we think about it,
you know, and even in today's world, the idea of
just overcoming those sorts of challenges and becoming the first
at something it was hard back then. You know, it's
still hard now to do that. I will tell you, Brooke,
(10:31):
it is interesting growing up with a mom like that,
because there's no I can't do something right, you don't
get to say that you can't do that, Like I
was a refugee in a camp in India and I
traveled by boat and you know, all this sort of stuff.
And so she's a really she's a really remarkableman, great grandmother.
(10:51):
Now she has five granddaughters. My brother has two daughters.
We have three. And it's just it's it's remains amazing.
Speaker 1 (10:58):
And fund that was that a source of pressure or
encouragement for you? That's a kid.
Speaker 2 (11:05):
That's a great question. I I it was, it was
a It was a healthy pressure. I would say it
was definitely definitely a I mean, I think that if
your parents have sacrificed that much to live in this country,
to try and make the best that they can have things,
you feel a certain sense of obligation I think as
an immigrant's immigrant family's child to live up to that.
(11:30):
It wasn't overt That's why I say it's healthy. It wasn't. Hey,
we sacrifice so much, therefore you have to do X
y Z. But you felt it.
Speaker 1 (11:38):
But it's so interesting because I do feel like our
family's experiences really do they shape us? How can they not?
But your mom also she had I mean, she experienced
trauma as as well, right, I mean just the trauma
of did she did she have siblings?
Speaker 2 (11:57):
Yep? She has, she has three seven links. She had
other siblings that were older than her that didnt that
did not survive. So she yeah, there's Look, there's there's trauma,
you know. And it's funny. One thing, Brooke and this,
this still surprises me about my mom is that she
would rather not talk about that stuff and and and
(12:20):
that's not that surprising. But what is surprising, I think
is it almost a sense of embarrassment about it. Like
it's almost like, you know, I don't want to show
you my dirty house or invite you over my my
you know, dirty laundry. It's just it's like the person
who falls down the stairs and pops right back up.
Oh I'm fine, nothing, I'm good, I'm It's kind of
like that, but extended to her her life in a way.
(12:42):
And it's something I don't think I realized until I
was much older myself about her and and could think
about things more I think from her point of view,
Like I asked her about some of these things, and
she'll say to me, is this something that you're gonna
tell the girls? Meaning my daughters, and I say, well, yeah,
I mean I think that they should, and she's like,
(13:04):
I don't. I just don't think you should tell them
this stuff. And and so it's not that there is
a some for some people, there's a badge.
Speaker 1 (13:10):
Of cultural Is it cultural or is it.
Speaker 2 (13:13):
Maybe it's cultural? I mean I do know other partition
folks from around her age group that talk about it
quite openly. But I think I think it's more personal.
Like my mom had cancer several years ago and she
didn't want people to know that either. I think there
is this. I think if you've lived the life of
a refugee where so much of your life ends up
having to be transactional, I mean that's how you survive
(13:35):
in a refugee camp, then you you don't you're you're
you're a little reluctant to show those vulnerabilities about yourself.
Speaker 1 (13:49):
I call this podcast now What because it's about pivotal
moments in our lives. Yeah, you know, it's about those
moments where you ask yourself, oh my god, now what
do I do? And I'm faced with this and they're
pivotal moments. And I'm fascinated by why some people stay
(14:09):
laying down, lying down, I did go to college or promise,
and others bounce right back up. And is there an
element in the brain that you've seen that's consistent as
to why people become allow themselves to see themselves as
victims versus see themselves as survivors or warriors.
Speaker 2 (14:35):
I absolutely think there is, you know, and this is
something that I've thought a lot about. I mean, I
would maybe widen the aperture a little bit, and to
say that, I think there are some people who, when
confronted with the daily events of our world and just
all the stuff that's going on, there are some people
who are just crushed by that, seemingly paralyzed by that,
(14:57):
whether or not they see themselves as the victim, it's
over whelming. And there are other people who are almost
strengthened by it, like you would if you were to
think about it metaphorically, like going to the gym and
getting a good workout, and yes, it was hard to
push the weight or whatever you were doing, but now
you're stronger as a result, if you were to think
of the brain that way. And I think the core ingredient,
(15:19):
and a lot of people have written about this, is
this idea of resilience of the brain, and to expand
on that to say, the redundancy in the brain. Do
you have more redundancy to be able to handle these things?
And I think that makes a big difference. And it's
not that you necessarily need to keep going through trauma
and build up some tolerance to the trauma. It is
(15:42):
if your brain is a brain that is doing lots
of different things, you tend to build more brain cells
and have more redundancy and thus more resilience. And when
you're confronted with something, you're not crushed by it. You
may even be strengthened by it.
Speaker 1 (15:58):
How did you decide to become a brain searching.
Speaker 2 (16:01):
You know it? Nobody in my family is a doctor
or a brain surgion. Most of my colleagues that was
sort of their their trajectory. They had, you know, people
in their parents or somebody. But for me, my mom's
dad got sick when I was around thirteen years old,
had had a stroke, and we're very close and I
would spend a lot of time with them on the
(16:22):
hospital at that point, and I think it was the
first time I sort of realized that, like going into
medicine could be a good profession. My parents are both engineers,
and so the expectation my dad's a mathematician, was the
expectation was that I'd go into engineering or some math
or something like that. Going into medicine, to be honest,
(16:42):
was pretty expensive, you know, to make that commitment to
go to medical school and everything. So but I think
around that age I sort of thought about it for
the first time, and with my grandfather and the stroke,
I became very interested in the brain. You know. He
had this really interesting thing that happened to him during
his stroke, which is that he could he could write fine,
he could speak fine, but he could not understand. In fact,
(17:05):
he could write something and not read what he just wrote.
And I remember thinking, like, even as a pretty you know,
a teenager at that point, that that's wild that the
brain does that. And I think it was it sort
of ignited a little bit of something in terms of
just trying to read a lot about the brain and
becoming increasingly interested in it. I didn't think neurosurgery was
(17:28):
going to be the path initially, you know, because it
seemed too intense, to be honest with you, seven years
of training after medical school. But as I got closer
and closer. I thought to myself, you know what, I
think I could do this.
Speaker 1 (17:41):
And I guess a stroke. My mother had a stroke
as well, or she'd like sort of a series of
mini strokes, and she started not being able to really
her verbal communication changed, but she started singing, oh interesting
in this like kind of beautiful, almost like a falsetto.
(18:04):
And I mean, you know, of course it was creepy
to me because she would call me and sing and
I'd be like, you're creeping me out, mom, But that
was it was such an interesting shift in her that
I find. You know, that was sort of when you
talked about your grandfather. What do you think that the
most I mean, what have you discovered as the most
(18:28):
interesting aspect or striking thing about operating on a brain?
Actual brain, like you're holding it.
Speaker 2 (18:38):
It's wild, it's the it's the brain is the most
enigmatic three and a half pounds of flesh in the
known universe. And I think about it every time I
operate on it, because you know, going back to sort
of this idea of being process oriented, when you're operating,
you have a you have a thing that you're trying
to do, you know, remove a brain tumor or put
(18:59):
a clip around an aneurysm or whatever it might be.
But when you sit back and just look at the
brain sometimes I think, you know, one of the things
that still strikes me about the brain is that it's
it's so delicate, like I I, I don't know. I
feel like, you know, we're used to like the very
important things in our life. We're gonna like really make
tough and protect it. So like when you actually touch
(19:22):
the brain, it feels like like a piece of shrimp cocktail.
You know, it's it's so soft and and.
Speaker 1 (19:28):
I may never eat shrimp cocktail again.
Speaker 2 (19:31):
Sorry, thank you for that allish allergies out there, surgents,
But you know, it's just you think it would put
up more of a fight in some ways to protect itself.
But it's it's it's still I I love doing it
performing brain surgery. I think there's a real you know,
(19:52):
you go to school for a long time, but there's
also sort of a real physical component to it. You know.
I have one a daughter who's a dancer, and she's
just so focused on her dancing moves, and she's so
good at that sort of stuff. I had. I'm I'm
not naturally, so so you know, I had, I had
to practice a lot with my hands, but I love
that physical aspect of it as well, and not still
(20:14):
is a source of great joy for me after all
these years.
Speaker 1 (20:18):
How do you develop the instincts that you need to
make those very difficult decisions that.
Speaker 2 (20:26):
Can be one of the most challenging parts of things
you write, Brooke, I mean, I think in some cases,
to operate or not operates very clear. You know, someone
has had a recent trauma and now needs to decompress
their brain, or a type of tumor that can be
resected that could you know, dramatically prolong their life. All
(20:46):
that sort of stuff is very clear, But sometimes it's
not as clear. You're not sure that someone's going to
have a good outcome. And you know, having those conversations
with your patients in a very honest and hopeful way,
you can balance hope and honesty. You know a lot
of times, you know, the idea of hope is is
I think, given short shrift. But people who have hope,
they tend to do better, you know, they tend to
(21:07):
have better outcomes. But finding that balance, and I will
tell you that, you know, I train residents and medical students.
They're younger than I am. I have three teenagers, I
have parents who are in their eighties. Now I think
I have a different worldview. I truly imagine, like, my
mom's a very healthy eighty year old. A lot of
times you hear, oh, person's coming to the hospital eighty
(21:29):
years old with such and such, and you think, oh,
eighty years old, that's old. Well, if that were my mom,
she's driving, she's totally independent, she has a really play
shuffle board, has a really joyful life. Like I would
totally operate on that, Whereas the instinct might be, you know,
is there should there be an age cutoff? I'm just
using that as an example. Yeah, But I think as
(21:49):
you get older, as I've been doing this a long
time now, that judgment that you're asking about, I think
ends up becoming probably the most important thing because the
surgical skills, you know, I did seven years of training,
I did a year of fellowship. I've been doing this
for the last twenty years. All the time, you know
that part is less of a concern than it is
(22:09):
just the judgment.
Speaker 1 (22:11):
Do you have any now what moments yourself in or
an era or times where you've just really said, Wow,
what am I positive or negative? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (22:23):
I think I've had a lot, you know, I think
on a professional level, I think this idea of straddling
two worlds of medicine, which is still my first and
truest love professionally and then the media world and saying
is this something that I could could add to that
or do as well? I think was a really significant
(22:44):
moment I came to that sort of mid life or
mid career I should say. You know, I was in
my early thirties at that point, and so to add
something that I had never done before to your life
and also have it be something that is that is
very public, like you know, you know, I was in
again an Indian kid living in rural Michigan who you know,
(23:05):
really did not have ever had those kinds of experiences
or interactions with people. To do television, that was a
that was an interesting pivot. And when I started, I
thought I was going to be mainly talking about health
policy because I had written a lot about health policy.
And I started in August of two thousand and one,
brook and three and a half weeks later, nine to
(23:26):
eleven happened, And so they just hired a guy to
mainly a doc to do health policy commentary, probably mostly
on the Sunday shows. And now they said, hey, we're
probably not going to be talking about that for a while,
considering what's happening in the world. But now you're a
doc working at an international news network in the middle
of this. And then and then all the things, you know,
I covered the war in Afghanistan, covered the Warner Rock,
(23:49):
you know, anthrax, covered just about every major conflict that
has happened over the last twenty one years, and natural
disasters and pandemics, and that was never sort of the
original plan. So I think that now what moment when
they first said this, you know, you know, also I
had this new practice in eurosurgery. You know that I
was and can you do this? And I had and
(24:10):
I and I was, you know, had young children, so
you know, all of that was sort of happening at
the same time. But I think professionally that was it.
And then personally, I mean, you know better than anyone,
I mean, having kids is I think a lot of
people who are nursing never have families. You know, you
spend most of your life during your formative years training,
(24:33):
you know, and back then it was one hundred hours
a week, so you know, trying to put another person
or people through that with you is a big ask.
So that was that was a you know, like, wow,
I have children now that that was sort of an
amazing I for a good chunk of my life did
not think that was going to happen, and here we.
Speaker 1 (24:54):
Are, and then you get three girls girls. Yeah, oh
my god, yes the track.
Speaker 2 (25:00):
Whenever I say that.
Speaker 1 (25:02):
Yeah, they are honestly the most. They bring me to
my knees more more often than not. And then they
surprise me with their capacity for love and caring and
and all of that. Switching a little bit, you are
in your seventh season of Chasing Life. Yes, can you
(25:25):
talk a little bit about the premise of that show?
Speaker 2 (25:27):
And so Chasing Life actually originally started during the pandemic
and it was more of an opportunity to the podcast.
And I don't know how how much prep time you
got when you started your podcast, but I was called
on a Friday and said, can you start Monday.
Speaker 1 (25:43):
Wow. I have a wonderful producer who keeps it, keeps
me abreast, so to speak, of things that I can
that I can do while I'm traveling and get as
much because I love homework. So I'm a big, you know, homework,
homework person. But maybe that's the maybe that's the way
you thrive, you know, clearly thrive on your feet.
Speaker 2 (26:04):
I would I would have liked a little bit more time,
to be totally honest. But I love podcasting. I love podcasts.
I listened to podcasts. I think there's a real intimacy
about it. The basic gist of Chasing Life is that
kind of wish you were talking about. The body is
this amazing thing. It can heal itself really well, and
(26:26):
it can be optimized in ways that we haven't fully appreciated.
A lot of the reason we're not optimized is because
we do things to our bodies that are bad as
opposed to not doing things. So it's as much about
seeing these cultures around the world where people live these
really healthy, happy, long lives, what we can learn from them,
(26:49):
and you know, traveling around the world and really immersing
myself in those cultures. That was a lot of Chasing Life.
This season, I've decided to in some ways go back
to my roots all about the brain, and every episode
is something blank brain, meaning the motivated brain, the attentive brain,
the depressed brain, whatever it might be, and trying to
(27:13):
figure out, like, with what we know now about the brain,
which is a lot more than people realize, with what
we know now, how can you create a more attentive brain?
And that's what I really wanted to focus on, and
selfishly whenever, Like you, I love homework and so I
learn a lot. Even though I'm a neurosurgeon, how to,
you know, protect my brain against some of the daily
(27:37):
challenges we were talking about earlier, how to make the
more resilient brain. There's real information out there that I
think can be helpful to people.
Speaker 1 (27:44):
One of the things I love about your podcast is
that you interviewed your parents and you ask them what
advice that they would give to their twenty five I
think it was your old selves. So I would just
like to ask you that question, what advice would you
give your twenty five year old self?
Speaker 2 (28:06):
I think that, uh, you know, it's funny. I didn't
really think about that for myself. I was thinking about
it for my parents. But you know, I think that
what I would basically say is that there are things
that I paid a lot of attention to that did
not end up being that important in my life. I
overtilted towards certain things, thinking that they were going to
(28:27):
be these huge important things that were going to dictate
how my life would go, for good or for bad,
and they weren't. And I probably knew that at the time,
And there were probably things that I wish I had
paid more attention to as well. And so it's hard
to know when you're twenty five. It's hard to get
yourself in that headspace. If you really sit down and
think about it, you probably can figure it out. But
(28:49):
the other thing is that, you know, I have people
in my life who are sort of frame shifted from
me about twenty years. You know, my parents are a
bit older than that. The age gap is a little
bit more. But I spend a lot of time talking
to people who are fifteen to twenty years older than
me and just be like, hey, man, is this my
overdoing it on this thing? Tell me? And he's gonna
(29:09):
be like, dude, you're not even going to remember that
two years from now. You won't even think about it again.
I guarantee it. And here I am obsessed with, like
I don't even know what it might be, some simple
thing you know, whether it be about my kid's school
or finances, or you know, whatever it might be, and
just getting that constant perspective. So I would give myself
(29:30):
that advice. Really reflect on what you think is going
to be important, to be honest about that and talk
to people who are older than you and benefit from
their wisdom.
Speaker 1 (29:41):
Well, I love your podcast, and I'm learning about I
had very severe postpartum and the one I understood the
biochemical what was happening in my brain when I looked
at it from a brain perspective, from a hormonally and
from the first time in my life, not being able
(30:02):
to power through something that was what was freeing. So
I think that one of the things your podcast this
season in particular is doing is that it's that type
of information is liberating to people.
Speaker 2 (30:14):
Well, look, I really know. Well, thank you for saying that, Brooke.
I mean, I remember you talking about your postpartum quite
a bit and I wanted to tell you that, you know,
I don't Around that time, I thought it was an
opportunity because you were talking about it, to try and
educate the audience about these issues. And one of the
(30:35):
studies that I showed, and this is a long time
ago now, and we know, I think girls have grown
right since that time. But one of the studies that
came out right around that time was a study that
actually imaged the brain functionally, and it was so fascinating
because you saw something that we had never seen before,
and it showed that in someone who was depressed, that
(30:57):
their frontal lobes of their brain, the judgment areas of
your brain were completely fired up, okay, and your amygdala,
which is your emotional center of the brain, was really
kind of cold, less functional, which meant you were kind
of like in a cocoon, and and nothing came out
because the frontal low was basically saying that's dumb, don't
do that overly judging everything that you did. And what
(31:21):
was interesting is and people who then were treated, you
did see functionally within the brain, a change less activity
in those areas and more I mean. And it was
so interesting because we had there's no biomarker for depression,
there's no blood test or anything. That was the first
time we objectively could see what depression looked like in
the brain and see objective evidence of it actually being treated,
(31:44):
which was fascinating to me.
Speaker 1 (31:51):
That was doctor Sanjay Gupta. Go check out his podcast
Chasing Life on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you get your shows. That's it for us today. Talk
to you next week now. What with Burke Shields is
a production of iHeartRadio. Our lead producer and wonderful showrunner
(32:12):
is Julia Weaver. Additional research and editing by Darby Masters
and Abu Zafar. Our executive producer is Christina Everett. The
show is mixed by Vahid Fraser.
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