Midlife Brain Fog, Focus & Female Power with Dr. Therese Huston

(00:00:00) Midlife Brain Fog, Focus & Female Power with Dr. Therese Huston
(00:04:09) Where to start?
(00:13:19) Cognitive Flexibility
(00:25:19) Exploring the percentage of the brain we use
(00:43:19) Getting older is not a grim picture

Is brain fog stealing your focus? In this must-hear episode of The Body Pod, cognitive scientist Dr. Therese Huston joins Laura and Haley to reveal the brain science every woman over 40 should know. Learn how to calm your nervous system, boost clarity with simple breathing, and sharpen focus with zone 2 cardio. Designed for women in midlife, perimenopause, and beyond, this episode offers practical, research-backed tips to stay sharp—without a lifestyle overhaul.

You’ll walk away with:
✅ Tools to fight brain fog
✅ Workout tips for better focus
✅ Science-based strategies for midlife clarity

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, everyone, This is Haley and I'm Lara, and welcome
to the Body Pod.

Speaker 2 (00:11):
We are so excited to have Terese Houston on the
podcast today. She is a cognitive scientist and she just
launched her latest book, fourteen Simple Ways to Improve Your
Life with Brain Science. We cannot wait to get into
this combo with her.

Speaker 1 (00:29):
And is it sharp? Is it just a go by sharp?

Speaker 3 (00:32):
You can yeah, you can just call it sharp sharp.

Speaker 2 (00:34):
Yep.

Speaker 1 (00:35):
Easy for people to remember and go order on their
Amazon cart. That's what I'm thinking.

Speaker 2 (00:39):
Go to go to Amazon, type and sharp and add
to cart because you were going to need to improve
your life.

Speaker 1 (00:47):
Yes, Teresa, how long? How long have you had When
did the book launch?

Speaker 3 (00:53):
It launched April twenty ninth, so just recently.

Speaker 1 (00:56):
Okay, so rarely beginning. I knew it was in the
last couple of months. But yeah, okay, that's not gratualation.

Speaker 3 (01:03):
So thank you your coround.

Speaker 1 (01:06):
Yeah, yeah, I take you to write.

Speaker 3 (01:09):
I started writing it in twenty twenty one, so I
guess three years to write and then there's the year
of editing and getting it just right. But yeah, about
three years to write. So thank you. It's very exciting.
I hope. I hope both of you have books in
the future because you bring so much to the world.

Speaker 1 (01:25):
So we'll see, we'll see. As you've seen, we're very
organized and interaction. This is what you can hire out for, right,
like as far as the writing, and like I just
need a ghost writer, and I need an editor, and
everyone can benefit from an editor. So that's good. So, well,
welcome Teresa. Can you just give a brief so for

(01:48):
anyone listening, obviously sharp we have fourteen ways to improve
your life with brain science that can seem like, what,
what the heck? I'm interested? What the heck is it?
So if somebody coming to you to read your book,
what do you want them to get from it?

Speaker 3 (02:04):
Well, so, the thing I've been telling people when they
ask me what my book is about, I say, it's
how neuroscience can help you have a better day. Right,
And there are chapters on how to get focused, chapters
on how to get creative, two chapters on how to
be less stressed, a chapter even on how to support
your partner when they're super stressed. Because the strategies are

(02:24):
different if you're dealing with your own stress versus helping
someone else navigate their stresses, and you know, there's just
so much neuroscience is having a heyday right now. Brain
science is having a heyday where finally neuroscience is actually
helpful and can help not just patients but everyday people
who are looking to enhance their performance or maybe keep

(02:45):
their performance where it's at, but at least reduce their stress.

Speaker 1 (02:48):
I love that, and I love that that neuroscience is
kind of coming into it's getting more familiar. I mean,
you would have said that five years ago with or
even ten without social media. It's like, well, how does
that apply to me? Uh? Today, we're specifically, and we
had we've kind of mentioned this to you. We we
would really like to focus on not only everything that

(03:10):
you just said of kind of nailing down the absolutes
that this book can bring and what it can do
for you in your life, but specifically since we are
pretty much a female only audience of women, you know,
thirty five plus all kind of in this perimenopozzle postmenopuzzle
phase of how how this can specifically help. So all

(03:34):
of us are stressed, all of us are time crunched,
multitime except I have to say you're you're yeah, multitasking
your your presence and your vibe is like all me good.
I might like a yoga like retrieved of just zen.
So clearly you've done some work, hence writing the book

(03:58):
for women that are time crunched, and they're just like
I have got nine million tabs open all the time
in my brain. Yes, where do I start?

Speaker 3 (04:09):
Great question? And not only do I think, because I'm
at this chapter of my life as well, and so
I tried to write a book that I would want
to read, you know, a book that has great science
as well as fantastic practical applications that I can do
right now today, not not that I need to rearrange
my life for, but that I can just work in today.
So where would where would And with those nine million

(04:30):
tabs open, I just need to say, Haley, I'll bet
it feels like half of them are frozen and you're
clicking and nothing happening.

Speaker 1 (04:38):
I can't remember them. I know, we don't even know what.

Speaker 2 (04:42):
I know what's in them.

Speaker 3 (04:44):
Yeah, So where to start is a great question. So
I would say, first of all, any we're going to
talk about how to take restorative breaks today, and I
want to reassure you that any break is better than
no break at all. Right, So I think all to them.
Often we think we need to power through and just

(05:04):
keep working because that's going to make us more productive.
But we're not powering through. We're actually powering down. I
want to introduce to think of it that way. You're
not powering through, your powering down. And one of the
simplest things you can do is a breathing break. And
you know we're breathing now, right, not that you're not breathing,

(05:24):
but there are very restorative ways to breathe that actually
will help you give your body a signal to calm down.
And it might be worthwhile just to do one of
those real quick right now. Would you like to try one?

Speaker 2 (05:36):
Yes? Please, let's do it. Yeah, and everyone listening do
it with us too.

Speaker 3 (05:42):
Yes, you can try it right now, or you can
go back and thirty seconds and you're you know, your
Apple podcast and try it again and in a few moments. Okay,
So just get get yourself comfortable, and I'm going to
tell you what we're going to do and then we'll
do it. So I'll first describe, so I'm going to
ask you to fully exhale, and then what we're going
to do is a very slow inhale to account of five,

(06:04):
which is a long inhale, and ask you to hold
for two and then we're going to exhale for seven,
which is a slow exhale. But usually the slow exhales
easier than the slow inhale. Now, if you find that
you're doing this the slow inhale and at about three
or four you're like, I can't inhale anymore, just start
holding your breath early that that'll be fine. The most
important part is the really long slow exhale. Okay, so

(06:28):
everybody ready, Yeah, okay, great, So just exhale and we're
going to start an inhale two three four five, Hold
two exhale two three four, five six seven, and we'll
do again inhale two three four five pause two exhale

(06:56):
two three four five six seven. Okay, So how do
you feel? I do too, Like, Wow, isn't that amazing? Yeah?
So what's happening there is you've got something called your
vegas nerve. I don't know if you've I've listened to

(07:17):
a bunch of episodes, but I don't know if you've
talked about the vegas nerve. I'm getting some nods The
vegus nerve travels in both directions, from your brain down
to your lungs and your gut, but it also flows
back upwards. And one of the things you can do
is when you're controlling your breath like that, you're sending
a signal back up to your brain through your vegas nerve,
like hey, everything's okay, it's all okay, we're not in

(07:39):
panic mode. And it sends that signal to your amigdala,
your a migdalah will feel less threat It sends a
signal to the rest of the brain like, hey, we
can be a clearer thinker right now, everything's okay. So
your whole system gets clearer and more relaxed. And in
the lab they'll do this for two minute cycle. We
just did about about twenty seconds worth, But if you
did it for a lot longer, if you did a

(08:01):
few more cycles all the way through two minutes, they
find a huge improvements in your ability to think as
well as people feel much calmer. So you know, it's
an easy one. You can do it just in the
middle of a meeting with other people, right nobody has
to know, okay.

Speaker 1 (08:16):
So two things just came to mind. Number one, No,
I'm airing my journey laundry. So I got eighteen year
old son, you know, he came home to visit and
most of the time now that he's moved out, like
we don't have these these periods of animosity. I'll say, oh, contention,

(08:37):
but we had this like argument last night. And two things.
Number one, I wish I could have paused, yeah, and
like done two minutes of breathing before being reactive. I
think I would have changed the wall, like fly off
the handle. Yeah, you know if that were the case.

(08:58):
And then two, same child that happens to struggle with
some anxiety, and I feel like this, I've heard this
before of stop, pause, breathe, and it sounds so intuitive,
like we all know that. Well, I'm not holding my breath,
I'm not necessarily like whatever, But when you sit there

(09:22):
you can have this clear. To me, it sounds like
it makes it It makes you less reactive and to
think more about like, you know, we tend to catastrophize
in our head that anything at that moment might be
life or death. But is it really yes. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (09:42):
And it's interesting because the you know, people often talk
about the amygdala as a threat detector in the brain,
but the amygdala is actually just a like this is
really important detector, right, So good or bad, it's like,
we need to pay attention to this now. And so
if you can calm down your amigdala and that long,
slow excit is what's really sending that signal to the amygdala,

(10:02):
like hey, everything's okay. If you can calm down your amygdala,
then other parts of your brain can decide what's most important, right,
So you're kind of freeing up other resources to be like, oh,
I don't have to be listening to what my son
is saying. I need to be listening to the tone,
for example, right, or his body language. But you could
queue into other things rather than just your own emotional

(10:24):
agitation that's going up and up and up. So yeah,
it would be beautiful, but I'm guessing your son would not
appreciate in that moment saying all right, everybody, let's do
a deep breath.

Speaker 2 (10:35):
He's so mad.

Speaker 1 (10:40):
So this goes along with the parasympathetic and sympathetic exactly.

Speaker 3 (10:45):
The vagus nerve is part of the parasympathetic nervous system,
and so you're activating your parasympathetic nervous system telling your
sympathetic nervous system chill.

Speaker 1 (10:55):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (10:55):
I'm going to use this too with my one year old.

Speaker 3 (11:00):
I love it.

Speaker 2 (11:01):
Say more Laura, Well, she's nineteen months but she is
the sweetest thing. But she is very spicy, and nineteen
months old little babies run around and they get upset
very quickly, and just the screaming, the arching of the back,
the throwing of the fits. I just have tried to

(11:24):
be very conscientious of not reacting because she needs to
express herself, obviously, and it's hard. You want to yell
or react or whatever. But I have been trying to

(11:44):
just wait for a minute. And there's a couple of
times I've walked out of the room and just been like, Okay,
I'm going to go back in now, because that would
have been I would have hated how I responded and reacted.
Like Haley was saying, it's not because I never like
when I am reactive. Afterwards, once I calmed down, I'm

(12:07):
always regroutful of Oh I shouldn't have acted that way,
or I'm the adult here.

Speaker 3 (12:15):
Hmm, exactly, Well, I have. I was talking with a
therapist who specializes in some different breathing techniques, and she
gave me a great tip that you might be able
to use with your nineteen month old, and that is
with kids, what she finds especially effective is to tell
them pretend you're blowing on a hot piece of pizza. Okay,
so it's a really and you could even maybe maybe

(12:37):
not not with your son, Haley, but Laura, with you
with your younger one, say okay, we're all going to
blow on a hot putumber, blowing on a hot piece
of pizza. So that rather than having them count the
slow x heels, they can already picture like, oh, you
got to go. Yeah, that's for a long time, right,
So it's a clever one. That's a that's a nice
one to try.

Speaker 2 (12:54):
That is a good tip. Yeah, you have time to
not screw up your kids.

Speaker 1 (13:00):
It was reactive. Okay. So when we look at the
neuroscience part of a female brain, and I think that
this will kind of lead us into the cognitive what
do you call it? Cognitive flexibility? Flexibility flexibility. So we

(13:20):
know I didn't know this, as I just say, we
know I know now, But the brain changes during menopause
and in this pery postmenopause phase, the brain is changing,
and I feel like, like what I say, I'm having
this brain fog all the time and it makes me

(13:42):
feel especially when I'm running groups. I'm like, this is embarrassing.
I have this on the tip of my tongue and
I can't think of the word or I had that
thought and now it's completely gone and I can't. So,
just is that where cognitive flexibility could help or come
into play or is that a totally different conversation.

Speaker 3 (14:03):
Yeah, so there's two important concepts you're raising there. So
there's both brain fog and there's cognitive flexibility, And do
you want me to talk about both or is there
one that's more important for people.

Speaker 2 (14:12):
That don't know what cognitive flexibility is or who haven't
hurt Yes, yeah, let's.

Speaker 3 (14:22):
Yeah, okay, great, all right, So first on cognitive flexibility,
which a lot of people haven't heard about, but neuroscientists
are very excited about because it seems to be one
of the things that is best benefited, for instance, by exercise. So,
cognitive flexibility is your ability to adapt to changing circumstances.

(14:42):
Nice and simple, can you So you have a plan
A and on the fly you need to come up
with a plan B. Right, the technology is failing Haley
in some part of life, and you need to be
on your feed like, Okay, if I can't solve it,
who can solve it?

Speaker 2 (14:58):
Right?

Speaker 3 (14:59):
Just that's that be cognitive flexibility not being thrown, but
being able to come up with a new plan And
if Plan B doesn't work, can I come up with
a plan ce. Cognitive flexibility tends to go down for
both men and women as they get older, and partly
that's because you have so much accumulated knowledge on one
solution that you just kind of want to just like,

(15:20):
can't we just do the thing I know how to do? Right?
So it goes down for both men and women, but
it especially goes down for women during paramenopause and menopause
because as you get these big fluctuations in estrogen, you
have a lot of receptors and your prefrontal cortex to
estrogen that are waiting for estrogen to like let the

(15:42):
prefrontal cortex know we need to come up with a
plan B. So it's this part right behind your forehead,
above your eyebrows and behind your forehead bone that is
your prefrontal cortex, and it's what's responsible for coming up
with a plan B and a plan CE, and I
got this, I got this, I got this. However, with
those estrogen receptors in that part of your brain not

(16:02):
getting as much estrogen as they're used to, basically, it's
slower to come online, it's slower to come up with
a plan B, and so you feel like you're kind
of stuck in Plan A and you're getting frustrated with well,
I but I know how to do Plan A. Why
can't we just go with that? And so that cognitive
flexibility tends to diminish as as all of us get older,

(16:23):
but especially during this part of life, it can feel
especially frustrating because your prefrontal cortex just isn't as responsive
as it used to be.

Speaker 2 (16:30):
So when it diminishes, will it ever come back? Like?
Can we improve it?

Speaker 3 (16:35):
Yes? Well, so there is an interesting yes, so we
can talk about the specific strategy. So in general, the
research suggests that the good news is that the cognitive
frustrations that we're feeling around paramenopause and menopause. I think
it was the Swan study. You know the abbreviation for
that the better than I do. Anyway, the Swan study

(16:57):
found that even the women experience some cognitive you know,
not even impairments, but they experience some diminishment in their
cognitive function during paramenopause, and during menopause, it either stabilizes
or it rebalance and it goes back to what it
was before as soon as estrogen levels, uh normalize and

(17:19):
you know, become right than goodness. Well, so it's it's
not all down here, down here from here already. That's
that's what I'm saying. But there are things in addition
to the fact that once estrogen levels, you know, either
you go on HRT or they just they go down
and your body gets used to them being lower rather
than being up being down, being up being down, there

(17:40):
are things you can do to improve your cognitive flexibility.
So aerobic exercise immediately improves your cognitive flexibility. And and
so this is a great ide This is great. You know,
there's lots so much talk right now about strength training
and the benefits to your body of strength training at
this period of life so important, but I want to

(18:02):
make sure that people know that the aerobic exercise is
really good for your brain because aerobic exercise produces something
called BDNF brain derived neurotropic factor and as well as
lactic acid. Right, So, and lactic acid can cross the
blood brain barrier, and when it crosses the blood brain barrier,
cognitive flexibility goes up. So aerobic exercise and so and

(18:26):
longer aerobic exercise leads to longer cognitive flexibility. So if
you can work out for a half an hour, you'll
have more cognitive flexibility than if you can just work
out for fifteen minutes. Likewise, if you can do a
forty five minute spin class even better. So anything where
you can do more sustained, moderate level of intensity of
aerobic activity, you're going to experience more cognitive flexibility that

(18:47):
day than if you hadn't.

Speaker 1 (18:50):
Okay, I'm going to just ask the question that I'm
going to get hit up with nine I'm going to
save myself nine hundred DM answers. So when you say
aerobic exercise, so in our world women are hearing you know,
yes we need cardio. But it is broken down into

(19:10):
two camps. It is zoned to low intensity, steady state
aerobic exercise or it's high intensity interval training or sprint
interval training, which is kind of under the same umbrella.
So there are two main camps here, Steady State study
sounds like what you're talking about. And then there's these
intervals which pull more lactic acid and require more recovery

(19:34):
and all of that. And so you know, as women
are getting this because before, I feel like if somebody
were going to the doctor at this age, the doctor
would say, go do some you know, one hundred and
twenty minutes of aerobic exercise or whatever, and so that
was really being covered. But now that's kind of being
forgotten there and now it's more like, well, we have

(19:56):
to make it this high intensity intensity, right, and you
know my camp is what we have to do both
and strength training of course is in there too. So
this all is a well rended program in your research.
When you're saying aerobic, you're meaning not these high intensity
interval sprint, hard effort sessions. You're meaning just you know,

(20:18):
aerobic as we understand it. Steady State, Yeah.

Speaker 3 (20:23):
Well, here here's what. Unfortunately, where the literatures are, I
wish there was more overlap. So the research on this
is usually instead of talking about zone one, zone two, zone,
you know, instead of talking about the zones, they usually
talk about how high intensity is it, and they are
usually talking about moderate intensity. So fifty to seventy percent
of your maximum heart rate is what these studies are

(20:45):
finding is optimal. So would that be zone two or
what zone would be?

Speaker 1 (20:49):
Zone two is okay, depending on the expert and.

Speaker 3 (20:52):
Fair enough and arch share enough.

Speaker 1 (20:56):
It's usually around sixty to seventy percent is zone two,
and then you know above that is zone zone three.
But zone two and zone three, it's kind of like
the lines get crossed a little bit with exactly where
that threshold. I mean, unless you were doing like a
breath test sure at an exercise physiology lab those lines,

(21:19):
so it sounds like anywhere in that zone two slash moderate.
Some people call it moderate, some people call it low
intensity studies. Okay, yeah, fifty to seventy kind of put
you in that that what we would call low intensity
study state.

Speaker 3 (21:34):
Yeah, that's great. I'm glad that you got that. That
you asked for that, and I've been frustrated that the
literature doesn't talk about it in terms of these zones.
But I appreciate that you can do the translation. The
challenge can be with going at a high intensity, which
it sounds like it would be, you know, zone four.
The challenge there can be that people get so tired

(21:56):
that their cognitive flexibility goes down for other reasons. Right,
So if it's just an exercise snack, if it's just
perhaps ten minutes of that kind of high high intensity
interval train, that might be fine. But if you were
to do a full forty five minute workout where you're
doing a whole bunch of those, you might feel so
exhausted afterwards that your cognitive flexibility actually takes a hit

(22:17):
for a while.

Speaker 1 (22:19):
This is absolutely what I wanted you to say, because
I think that there is there's reasons. This is another
one because I'm thinking of just like the physical reasons,
not necessarily the brain cognitive flexibility. That was never on
my radar. But you know, there's that camp and then
there's that high intensity. And again the pendulum in fitness

(22:42):
usually tends to swing one way or the other. But
really what you're saying is like, we need both. We
need the high intensity because most women aren't getting that,
but clearly we need this as well for the neuroscience,
the brain, the stuff that we're talking about for being
sharp today. Wow.

Speaker 3 (23:02):
Okay, exactly, Yeah, So you're you know, you can think about, Okay,
what kind of exercise am I going to do for
my body? What kind of exercise am I going to
do for my brain?

Speaker 1 (23:10):
All right, let's take a quick break to hear from
some of the body pod sponsors. We'll be right back.
So when we're talking about anything else on the cognitive
flexibility piece that we haven't covered.

Speaker 3 (23:26):
Another way to and so this is something that I'm
doing in practicing more and more often myself, is to
do what psychologists call cognitive reframing. So cognitive reframing is
too and this is this is to practice so that
when game time comes, you want to do this kind
of in the low stress moments. But by practicing this

(23:49):
in the low stress moments, you're going to be able
in those high stress moments to have cognitive flexibility. And
the thing the practice in the low stress moments is
what's called cognitive reframing, and that is to ask yourself
questions like what would my best friend advise me to
do here? Or what am I not thinking about right now?

(24:09):
You're basically because doing things like that activates your prefrontal cortex,
and your prefrontal cortex gets really engaged with like, oh,
what would my best friends say right now? You can
even like fill it in with a name, so you know, Laura,
you might fill it in with Haley's name. What would
Haley advise me to do right now? Or you can say,
all right, what am I missing here? What am I
not thinking about? But to practice that activates your prefrontal cortex.

(24:32):
And as I've already mentioned, your prefrontal cortex, it's not
functioning is the way you'd like it to or the
way that it used to because of diminished estrogen. And
so you're basically helping get kickstarted back into gear. And
so that can be a really helpful way to get
practice in the less stressful moments of life, to practice
having a new plan be or a new way to

(24:53):
think of things. So those are some nice little phrases
to play with. What would my best friend advise me
to do? Or what's another way to think about this?
And that can help in getting you more cognitive flexibility.
It trains that muscle.

Speaker 1 (25:05):
All right. So we always hear that we only use
a certain percentage of our brain. Yes, what is that percentage?
And can we expand on that?

Speaker 2 (25:16):
Can we tap into a higher percent.

Speaker 3 (25:20):
So this is this is one of the most popular
myths worldwide, and I think we can blame the media industry.
Like the movie Limitless, which I love with Bradley Cooper, right,
it was this notion that we only use ten percent
of our brains. It's it's a it's a popular movie trope.
The research actually indicates that what we use on a
given day, maybe if you're really sick, you might use

(25:41):
less one On a typical day where we're interacting with
others and we're solving any kind of problems and moving around,
you're using one hundred percent of your brain or or
close to it. So you're using all.

Speaker 1 (25:52):
Of your brains. Oh, it seems like a weight. The
biology would give us ten percent.

Speaker 3 (25:59):
No, exactly. Yeah, if if there were areas that you
weren't using your basically, your brain would start metabolizing those
areas and and you know, use it for you use
that space for something else. You know you're not You're
not going to have brain areas that are just sitting dormant.
The brain is way too expensive metabolically for it just

(26:21):
for dishoot tissue to just be sitting there. On the
other hand, one of the things I'm really emphasizing in
sharp is we can improve our potential, not because we
are all of a sudden, you know, capitalizing on all
these fields of neurons that are just sitting there fallow
and not being used, but because we can use our
brains differently. And by that I mean, for example, what

(26:45):
we've just talked about the example of your prefrontal cortex
is not as responsive as you start to go through
pre perimenopause and post menopause. That's so frustrating. However, there
are ways we can be sneaky and activate the prefrontal
cortex by things like aerobic exercise at a moderate intensity
or level level two, boarding on level three, or that

(27:05):
those kinds of things will get your prefrontal cortex working
in the way that you're more used to it working.
And so the prefrontal cortex was working even before you
did that aerobic activity, and you're just getting to fire
more robustly. Now.

Speaker 1 (27:19):
Exercise is really the medicine, like the cure for for
so much, so many things exactly. So Okay, if we
have if we're using all of our brain, then and
we start to have this decline when we're right, and
then again, I know what happens for men and women

(27:45):
if we're if we're doing that, Like we we know
that learning a new language can kind of stimulate that,
is that part of like solving a problem. Is that
kind of the same. Dancing is another one that that
can help. What about like crosswords obviously that like crossword
puzzles and stuff like that is does that kind of

(28:07):
help with the cognitive flexibility too? Or the everything that's
in your book for being short?

Speaker 3 (28:14):
Sure, So things like dance and movement are not necessarily
at least the research it might help with cognitive flexibility.
I haven't seen research on that. One of the things
that for instance, dance is especially effective at doing is
because yeah, you know, I haven't danced with anyone recently,
but when you dance, right, there's the memory component because

(28:37):
you've got to remember the steps if you're doing some
dance that you've learned. There's a social component because you're
interacting with others. You're trying not to bump into people
or you're making jokes as you bump into them. And
there's also the physical component you're moving around. So it's
this wonderful trifecta and memory tends to be improved when
all three of those are activated. So that's one of
the reasons dance is so wonderful, but you could also

(28:58):
get it from exercising with a friend, right. Exercising with
a friend would have those various components, particularly if you're
doing some kind of circuit where you have to remember
the circuit, right, so that would have memory that would
have the social component as well as the physical component.
So these are reasons to get out and exercise with
other people and to text your memory while you're doing it.

Speaker 1 (29:18):
Now, I'm really mad that I was supposed to go
dancing this weekend with some friends and they were like,
we're going to go lat and dancing, and I was like,
let's make the dinner take.

Speaker 2 (29:31):
No brain. Your brain could have been working better this week.

Speaker 1 (29:38):
To my friends.

Speaker 3 (29:41):
So if I could just.

Speaker 2 (29:43):
What are the other what are other ways that we
can make our brain work better and have those improvements,
because I didn't know that about dancing or you know,
the like trifecta.

Speaker 3 (29:56):
Yeah, yeah, well it's really it's really fascinating. One of
the things that they is that for people over sixty,
you know, I don't know how much of your audience
is in that age group, but for both men and
women over sixty, if they take a six month dance class,
even if they've never danced before, they're starting it at
sixty six month dance class. They actually get more neurons

(30:17):
added in their hippocampus, a key area for memory. So
it's not just that you're using the memories better that
you have. You actually get more brain. You increase the
volume in your brain by taking a dance class. So
it's just like, well, this is what I'm going to
do when I retire. I need to take a dance class.

Speaker 1 (30:33):
I think my fitness over forty and start dancing.

Speaker 3 (30:38):
Start dancing, all right, age. But to get back to
your question, Laura, let's come back to brain fog. So
brain fog many of us are familiar with this idea,
Like you're trying to think of a word and it's
just not coming to you, or you don't think nearly
as quickly as you used to, or you're trying to
problem solve and you're just like, why why is it?

(31:00):
Because it's I haven't had my coffee yet or have
only had one cup of Why Why am I just
not thinking as clearly as I used to? Right, we've
all been there, or if you haven't been there, you're
lucky one of the reasons, and some I've heard some
neuroscientists take the strong, really strong position on this, one
of the reasons that we experienced brain fog is because
of the sleep disruptions during perimenopause and postmenopause. Because one

(31:24):
of the things that and I've heard that people take
the strong position that it's entirely because of sleep disruption,
and the reason is one of the things that happens
in sleep is something called glymphatic clearance. Have you guys
talked about glymphatic clearance at all? Is that a phrase that.

Speaker 1 (31:40):
You're no, no.

Speaker 3 (31:42):
No, okay, So glim This is really fascinating. So one
of the things that happens, especially in deep sleep, which
often happens for most of us early in the night,
is that some of the some of the neurons in
our brain actually shrink a little bit, just temporarily, and
they're basically creating room for what's called glymphatic clearance, where
basically cerebro spinal fluid kind of rinses through and it

(32:04):
removes waste products in the brain. So I think of
this as like your night janitor, right, you know, you've
you've been busy all day you know, coffee cups are
like piling up on the tables. There's you know, people
have been throwing away paper and missing the trash can,
like there's all By the end of a busy work day,
a bunch of stuff is piled up, and at night,

(32:25):
the night janitor comes in and clears it all out.
The thing is, if you and that's what glymphatic glymphatic
clearance does. It clears out the waste products so that
the next day you're clearer in your thinking. If your
sleep is disrupted, especially the deep sleep early in the night,
and you're waking up because of hot flashes first let's say,

(32:45):
or night sweats, oh my goodness, you don't get that
glymphatic clearance, and as a result, you're more likely to
experience that brain fog the next day. You know, basically
the room is you walk into the meeting room and
everything's cluttered and you're like, what happened? Like I can't
get to work, and so you're more likely to experience
brain fog on nights when you've had those hot flashes,

(33:07):
you've been waking up and you've had trouble going back
to sleep.

Speaker 1 (33:10):
I'm really ticked about the estrogen receptors being all over
our body and the fact that we lose the it
just seems like, okay, take away the menstrual cycles. Fine,
but like, why God don't we just keep like the estrogen.

Speaker 3 (33:26):
I know, it's so rough, It's it's really interesting. I
listened to a fair number of wellness podcasts, some hosted
by men, some hosted by women, and it's one of
these frustrating things, especially when they'll have an expert guest
on talking about sleep and it'll be two guys talking
about it, and they won't mention in any of the
issues that women face at this stage of life, like oh,

(33:47):
come on.

Speaker 1 (33:49):
Yeah, yeah, you're getting canceled in the in the you know,
Perry and post menopausal community service.

Speaker 2 (33:57):
Yes, I want to know what you learned over all
these years in how they approach decision making and if
there's ways to improve it, how can we make better decisions.

Speaker 3 (34:09):
It's a great question, and it's been interesting as I've
consulted with female leaders at various companies, especially in male
dominated industries, which unfortunately most industries are. These women who've
risen to roles in leadership face a number of challenges
that all of us or many of us can relate to.

(34:32):
First of all, they are often they often have to
juggle this balance between being collaborative and being decisive. Right,
So the research is very clear on this. Women as
leaders tend to make more collaborative decisions, which is great.
So female mayors will do more work to find out
what their constituents want, right, so they take more input.

(34:54):
Female doctors are more likely to consult with another doctor
before they make a decision on a hard case. Then
a male doctor is likely to consult with people, so
they tend to be more collaborative in their decision making. However,
so that and the research shows that clearly leads to
better decisions. Okay, so we should all be doing it right.
The downside is is that often when women leaders are collaborative,

(35:16):
there's as decision makers, they're seen as indecisive. Right that
she couldn't make that decision on her own, and that's
why she had to ask for others, ask others for
their input, as opposed to being seen as no, she's
just a smart decision maker and that's why she asks
other people. So is this really tricky thing that I
see so many female leaders facing? Is like, I know,
it's going to be good to ask for input, but

(35:37):
I don't want to be seen as a week leader
who can't make a decision, right, So how do I
do this? And so that's a really fine tight rope
that a lot of female leaders walk. So I just
if you've experienced that in your own work situation, you're
not alone. It's very common. And another challenge that I
think women face as decision makers is that there are

(36:00):
and labeled as you know, she's just going with women's intuition.
You know that they're just going with their you know,
women's intuition as the label. With men, they'll call it
going with their gut, and that scene is a good thing,
whereas women's intuition is seen as like this mysterious, I
don't know what's happening over there. I don't know what
she's doing. Maybe it's an emotional decision, right, It's almost

(36:23):
laden with that. And the research actually shows women tend
to actually be more analytical in their decision making than men.
They actually tend to go deeper into research before they
make a decision. So it's actually the opposite. I think
perhaps because women's decisions are questioned so often that they
tend to do more research because they want to be
able to back up why they are doing a particular thing.

(36:45):
Does that answer your question at least a little bit
about men and women differences and how they perceived as
decision making up.

Speaker 2 (36:52):
I just think that's probably an interesting part of your
career because I think women generally do think about all
the layers of decisions, So that doesn't surprise me that
women are better decision makers.

Speaker 3 (37:07):
Yeah, And one of the fascinating things is that testosterone.
I did a New York Times article on this a
few years ago. One of the fascinating things is that
when testosterone levels are really high, it can impair judgment.
And so it's one of these really interesting things that
a lot of researchers or some research neuroscientists are making

(37:27):
the argument that women make better decisions because of their
lower testosterone levels overall compared to men, especially men that
take testosterone supplements. It creates a false confidence, and so
people who have high testosterone levels might rush into a
decision before weighing all the evidence, as opposed to lower
testosterone individuals. You know, we don't usually talk about the

(37:49):
advantages of lower testosterone, but that would be one of them,
So it's pretty fascinating stuff.

Speaker 1 (37:55):
Yeah, that's news to me. No, I'd never heard any point.
So something I've been wanting to ask you is about shortcuts.
Oh show, we always we always want to try to
take shortcuts, And on our intro pre podcast call, we
kind of discussed that a little bit. Why doesn't the

(38:17):
brain like shortcuts? Because if you tell me to breathe
for two minutes, I'm going to breathe for forty steps
and that's good enough. You know I did it. I
checked it off. And so our shortcuts good or bad
for us in our brain when we're trying to be
like step by step by step, or I'm going to
find an easier way to shorten something down.

Speaker 3 (38:36):
Well, when it comes to taking breaks, a short break
is better than no break, right, So in terms of
if you're looking for ways to restore yourself, it's better
to take a little break. For instance, researchers are finding
that as short as a fifth of a mile walk
is enough to increase your creativity levels when you come
back to your desk, So a fifth of a mile walk,

(39:00):
even if you only walk at like a twenty five
minute mile pace, which probably is slow for most of us.
Most of us are going to be faster than that.
You're only walking for about five minutes, right, So a
five minute walk can boost your creativity. And so that's
a very brief break that most of us can take.
Just be sure to sit back down at your desk.
So it's not that the brain is resistant to short breaks.

(39:21):
There's a growing movement in the neuroscience community for things
called micro breaks, and a micro break is less than
ten minutes, anywhere from two to ten minutes, and that
might mean the breathing exercise that we did, that might
mean getting up and doing some jumping jacks or plank
hold a plank on and off for two minutes, So

(39:42):
it could be physical or it could be. One of
my favorite little micro breaks is actually an affection micro break.
There's fabulous research that twenty seconds of affection will lower
your So I was going to say cholesterol will lower
your cort assault levels. Soul levels tend to really be
a mess during a parimenopause and post menopause. And it

(40:06):
can be simple as you guys can do this with
me if you just put both of your hands on
your heart. Because self affection here works too. It doesn't
have to be affection from another person. Twenty seconds and
you just you know, just move your hands around a
little bit whatever feels cozy. It might be a self
hug where you grab the tops of your shoulders, but
if you do that for twenty seconds, it lowers your
cortissalt levels and it will make you feel calmer. I

(40:29):
employed this the other day in a store where I
was having a very stressful experience with a sales clerk
and I just, you know, as we're talking, I just
put my hands on my heart as we're talking, and
I just began to calm down. She had no idea
what I was doing. Maybe she just thought that I
was like, you know, calm down, heart, but really I
was actually trying to lower my cornsol levels and it worked.
We improved our interaction. So it's a wonderful little tricky

(40:51):
technique you can do.

Speaker 1 (40:52):
So you can do that with hugging an animal for
twenty seconds, yes, or yourself.

Speaker 3 (41:00):
So the research that I've seen has been with interacting
with either another human so a partner or a child
for twenty seconds that works, or for yourself, so self affection.
The research I've seen with pets has all been done
with dogs, maybe because cats won't hang around this long,
but it has all been done with dogs, and they

(41:21):
find that three minutes seems to be the key for changing. Actually,
oxytocin levels will increase for both you and your dog
if you play with them for three minutes. And by
playing with them, you know, like looking at them, stroking them,
not like throwing the ball in the backyard. It has
to be something where you're physically close to one another

(41:43):
and that's enough to increase your oxytocin levels. Oxytocin levels,
as far as the research I've seen, it doesn't tend
to go down during paramenopause, but the receptors become less
responsive to oxytocin in the brain, and so it might
be one of the reasons for any women who are
listening who are like, yeah, I don't feel as connected
as I used to, you know, to certain people in

(42:04):
my life. That could be changes in those relationships. But
also because oxytocin is you're not as responsive to it.
It's one of the reasons you need even more oxytocin
right now in your life because basically the neurons in
your brain aren't as receptive as they used to be,
and so you're probably feeling a little more disconnected or
lonely than you used to and that we can chalk
that up to that change in responsiveness to oxytocin. So anyway,

(42:27):
three minutes with your dog, that could be another wonderful
break that you can take in the middle of the day.
And actually it'll lower cortis in the dog. It also
increases oxytocin levels. In terms of lowering cortisol, it's not
so clear, but it does change oxytocin.

Speaker 1 (42:42):
Yeah, I'm obsessed with dogs, so I mean everyone should
own it. And this has just started since perimenopause. I
mean I was indifferent to dogs. I grew up with dogs,
but then we got one, and I guess it's different
when it's your own at this stage in life. But
I mean, my dog, I am. I get it, Like,

(43:02):
of course it's going to help you know, they're going
to help relax you. And yeah, hence the service animals
that so many people have.

Speaker 3 (43:10):
Oh so true. Good point.

Speaker 1 (43:11):
Yeah, Well, if someone is listening that that just wants
one takeaway from our conversation, what would you hope that
it would be?

Speaker 3 (43:19):
I think the takeaway and I really appreciate your asking
this question. I think the takeaway would be getting older
is not a grim picture. We can I talk quite
a bit in my book about all the different ways
that we can get back to our old selves, if
not even be sharper, we can we can add to
our hippocampus, we can add to our prefrontal cortex. So

(43:39):
getting getting older can be I like to think of
the analogy of a stage and acting. It used to
be when we were younger, we thought like I could
be anything, and I could be any role in any play. Right.
I could be a full time stay at home mom
and be amazing at that. Or I could be in
sub Saharan Africa and be a doctor and be amazing

(43:59):
at that. Like we saw all these possible rules for ourselves.
At this stage in life, we're no longer picturing all
those rules. Instead we're like, what is my real self?
What is my true authentic self? And I'm going to
step into that spotlight as that person and the mic
is on and I'm going to be heard and I
want that. And so that's what I want people to
be thinking about. I want them to be thinking as

(44:21):
I step into this stage of life. I am going
to be mentally sharp, and I'm showing up as my
true authentic self and that's really means something I love.

Speaker 1 (44:28):
That's that's the perfect way to kind of wrap this
up if we're looking at because obviously our message is
always like you know, getting talking nutrition and fitness and
outside of different different guests that we have on that's
all always what we're pushing. But this, uh, this need

(44:50):
for strengthening the brain, and I think it's just again
we all know this, but I feel like it's so
far down the line. Like I know that metapause is
around the corner for me, but the brain, you know,
kind of dementia or losing the you know, the cognitive flexibility,
all of that, I feel like seem you know, I

(45:11):
wasn't even really aware of that or really being like
I need to start doing this now. So how much
time would somebody need in a day every day if
they're like this is important to me. I love this book, Sharp,
I get it. What's the minimum again? Sure? The minimum
dose that will make someone just stick to a habit

(45:35):
and be consistent with you know, how much time is
that or what would you.

Speaker 3 (45:39):
Recommend if you're only going to do one thing. And
this is the this is the one huge change I've
made to my daily routine. That would be adopt a
morning meditation. And the research is clear that ten minutes
has huge benefits. If you don't think you could do ten,
adopt a five minute morning meditation because that has huge
benefits for several areas of your brain. It actually improves memory.

(46:01):
It can improve your ability to remember things by seventy
five percent on that given day. So if memory, if
you're feeling like so much brain fog, that's a lot, right,
and so and you know you need to meditate a
lot to see that benefit continue. But that would be
a reason to work it into your day every day.
So that would be if you were just to add

(46:21):
one thing, and my favorite it would be okay for
me to mention my favorite app is that all right,
of course?

Speaker 1 (46:27):
Yeah, okay?

Speaker 3 (46:29):
And it's free, the Healthy Minds app. It's out of
the University of Wisconsin, Healthy Minds. It's free. And what
I love about the Healthy mind that's what it's the
one I use now in the morning. Is I've had
other I've had paid subscriptions and I still have those.
What I love about Healthy Minds is you can do.
They have. You get to choose do I want to
do an active meditation while I'm taking a walk? Or
do I do you want to do a sitting meditation?

(46:49):
And do I want to do five minutes or ten
minutes or fifteen. So you you set all these parameters
and then it gives you the meditation that you've just
dialed in. So I can do it while I'm doing
the dishes, can do something else while I do the meditation.
So it's that's worth looking into.

Speaker 1 (47:06):
That's available to everyone.

Speaker 2 (47:08):
I'm so grateful that you wrote this book because all
of my conversations with my peers and friends, we all
are talking about how we feel like our brains are
just not working the way they used to and hoping
that we can get back to filling normal again. And

(47:28):
I love that you are giving us the hope and
the encouragement that we will be sharp again and sharper
we can even improve.

Speaker 1 (47:39):
Thank you. I love that you just said that that
this is you can make it active like a walk,
but that still counts as meditation. Does I sit in
my hot tub? Please tell me that that counts. I
think that kind soil like that would count, so I
try to stay off my phone, and I'll get on
my hot tub in the morning and I just try

(48:00):
to like relax because for me, meditation it makes me
want to I had a client just come back from
India and I train her and the first week she
got back, she'd be like, Hayley, I see her in
the morning before the sun comes up, and as soon
as the sun will start coming up, she's like, you
need to go outside and watch the sun come up.
And she would just like stare at the sun. And
I was like, so we do something. We gotta go back,

(48:25):
get and do this and it's really hard for me
to calm down. So this is so it can be
actual meditation where you're sitting, you're listening to an app,
you're guided through it, guided through, you're quiet, you're just
you know, letting whatever come to you. Or it could
be a walk without a podcast or you know, scrolling
Instagram or anything that we're just present.

Speaker 3 (48:47):
You're just present exactly. And sometimes I do walking meditation
where I'm going to try to pay attention to the execs,
to all the things in my nature environment as I
do my walk around my neighborhood and I notice, oh,
look at the little tiny buds on the flowers right now,
we're you know, we're doing this in the spring, or
that's a new crack in the sidewalk I'd never noticed before,
But just trying to become aware of things in the

(49:09):
environment that even on the walk that I do every morning,
that perhaps I haven't noticed before, and that would be
meditative as well. So there are so many ways to
do this to work it into your day that feel
restorative and that you know, don't require you to go
to India for example. Benefits are well and so I
haven't seen research on the active meditations, so that's a
fair question. But this program by the Healthy Minds team

(49:32):
is actually developed by a neuroscientist, so I think he
you know, I trust him to be guiding us in
the direction of what's going to be best for our brains.

Speaker 1 (49:40):
Is and.

Speaker 3 (49:45):
No, no, no, His name is Richard Davidson, Richie David
Davidson at University of Wisconsin. So different different.

Speaker 2 (49:56):
I am to Haley and I are not good meditators.
We talk about it often.

Speaker 1 (50:01):
This is great.

Speaker 3 (50:02):
I think you'll like this one.

Speaker 1 (50:03):
Thank you so much, Teres. This is I wish I
could keep you on for longer. This. This has been
an incredible conversation and something that honestly is not easy
for me or I think for Laura. Naturally we're used
to really running at high levels and just always having
ten million tasks. Sure, but I'm kind of like hopeful

(50:28):
and that this is the next step that I need
to go down, and that feels like it's right for
a lot of reasons, but even more for the brain benefit.
I feel like for peace, I would say, for me
to be able to do some of these drills and

(50:49):
and you know, take on something where I like dancing
that we discussed or something like that. That's something new
that keeps the brain engaged and it's important. I mean,
it's all important as we are on this aging spectrum.

Speaker 3 (51:07):
One of the things I like, I'm beginning to say
to people. You know, people love to say it's not
about working harder, it's about working smarter, And I'm starting
to try to push back on that and say, it's
not just about working smarter, it's about resting smarter. Yeah,
And that's what I want to empower people with. How
can we rest smarter.

Speaker 1 (51:25):
So everyone healthy minds app We'll put that in the
show notes as well as Teresa's book Sharp. I'm super excited.
I'm so glad that we have the PDF. I'm longing
to sit down and actually read it. I think I'll
get the audible version as well, so I can listen
to it. I like to listen to something while I'm

(51:46):
relaxing and getting ready for bad So thank you for
your time today, and thank you for your beautiful vibe
and what you bring to this conversation and your sweet spirit.
It's been an honor to with you over the last hour.
And thank you for joining us on the body Pod.

Speaker 3 (52:04):
Thank you. I'm learning so much by listening to your show,
So thank you for all the good you're both doing
in the world.

Speaker 1 (52:09):
Thank you, Thanks for listening.

Speaker 2 (52:12):
If you enjoyed this episode, please consider giving us a
five star review and sharing the body Pod with your friends.

Speaker 1 (52:20):
Until next time.