The following is a paid podcast. iHeartRadio's hosting of this podcast constitutes neither an endorsement of the products offered or the ideas expressed. Hello, and welcome to boost your brain power. I'm your host, doctor Eric Kaplan. All right, we're gonna be talking about some hormones and neurotransmitters and important things to keep that brain functioning at a high level. One of the most important hormones is cortisol. Cortisol is the stress hormone. When you have too much cortisol,
it could deposit belly fat around your waist. So a lot of people have difficulty losing weight that belly fat around waist. It's because the cortisol is too high. When your stress levels go down, the belly fat goes down. Many times, when I go on vacation with my family, I might eat worse. However, because my stress levels are down, I actually lose weight.
Because cortisol will slow your metabolism, It'll mess up your brain function, interrupt your sleep, your digestive process, your respiration, your cardiovascular function, your mood. So we want to make sure cortisol is in order. The way cortisol works is we want it high in the morning when you wake up, and lower at the night when we're trying to rest and go to sleep. One of the things that stimulates cortisol is electronic exposure the blue light.
Now, remember I just said that we want cortisol high in the morning, so it's actually a good idea to expose yourself to electronics in the morning because that's the time when we want cortisol highest. Conversely, at night, we want cortosol very low. So nighttime we want to stay away from the electronic turn off, the computer turn off, the iPad and the cell phone, all these smart devices. At nighttime, we got to turn everything down.
That way, cortisol levels will go down and our sleep will improve, our anxiety will decrease, our energy will get better if our cortisol levels are high in the morning and lower at night. Now, if you have a job where you need to use electronics at night, then you're going to use blue light filter glasses, so that will decrease cortisol. If you need nice, good, cheap blue light filter glasses, just give us an email info at
Kaplan brain Ebody dot com and we could hook that up for you. You just put these on if you want to, you know, watch a TV show it's at night. You have to wear these blue light filter glasses. If you're you exposed to electronics, including your cell phone, without these glasses, then your cortisol levels are gonna go too high. It's better not to use any electronics at alls. Better to go outside for a walk, you know, play a sport, go for a bike ride, take the dog
out, play with your kids, do something outside. Remember we said in the previous episodes it's good to go outside during sunset so that your brain sees the sun go down, and now it's time to decrease cortisol. But if it's nighttime and the TV's on, your cell phone's on, the computers on, all the lights are on, cortisol is increased at night, and that is going to make your sleep a lot worse. That's going to increase stress, not gonna be able to handle your environment as well, because you're gonna
be in stress mode. That's when your cortisol levels are too high. So we want cortisol high in the morning and we want it low at night. So more electronics during the morning and day less electronics at night. Other stuff that stimulates cortisol is food when you eat. So if we want to have high cortisol in the morning and then low cortisol at night, the way to eat is like a king for breakfast, a prince for lunch, and a pauper for dinner. So again, you want to eat like a king for
breakfast, a prince for lunch, and a pauper for dinner. The reason we eat is for energy, and we need most of our energy in the morning in the afternoon when we're getting our stuff done. So that's why you need big meal first, second big meal, second, very small meal third, and you want to end your meal very early to keep that corsol levels down. So what I recommend is to eat from ten am to six pm.
So ten am is your largest meal, and then let's say you have one pm, second large meal, lunch, and then you say five pm you have dinner. Small meal. That's going to keep your corsol high in the morning and then low at night. It's a brain hack, but you could do it. Take advantage use this knowledge. Don't do what a typical American does, which is a skip breakfast. I have just a cup of coffee, have a sandwich or a salad for lunch, and then I have
a huge, big dinner late at night. That's the opposite of what you should be doing. If you follow what everyone else is doing, you're gonna end up like everyone else, which is heart disease, cancer, obesity, diabetes, Alzheimer's disease. You want to end up like everybody else. Do what everyone else does. Coffee in the morning, sandwich for lunch, big dinner at night. It's a recipe for disaster. Cortosol levels maintained from track
exposure and food exposure. All right, the next harmonies testosterone. Testosterone should be highest in the morning. That's when we get stuff done, when you want to exercise, when you want to think, When I have sex in the morning, your testosterone's highest. It's when you have the most energy. You gotta be that morning person. Shouldn't be groggy in the morning, needing a cup of coffee. That means you're testosterone and cortisol levels are abnormal.
So we got to start changing our habits. Got to start exercising in the morning every single morning. Get the testosterone high. Not only aerobic exercise, but anaerobic exercises, weightlifting exercises, weight resistant exercises. You can do calisthetics. I really believe in the hit type of workout, high intensity interval training where you go really hard and then you take it back a little bit, and then you go really hard and you take it back a little bit,
really hard and take it back a little bit. That's the best way to exercise. Got to exercise all different ways. Don't always do the same routine. You know, you don't want to be Oh, Monday, I do biceps and triceps, and you know, Tuesday I do legs, and Wednesday I do the bike or the treadmill. Don't get in that regiment. You have to change it up all the time. I'll make your testosterone highest. And to exercise really every single day super important. But do something fun that
you like to do. So if you don't like, don't going to the gym. Don't make that you're exercise because then you're not going to do it. You know, you got to find stuff that you like to do. Might be a dance class, you know, it might be bicycle, might be roller skating, might be tennis, might be soccer or basketball, might be swimming, might be jogging, running, sprinting. Find something that you like to do that's fun and something that you can improve. You always got
to improve. You know, if you're a runner, you've got to improve your speed, or you're got to increase your distance. You know, if you're weight training, you got to increase that weight. You know, you've got to challenge yourself. And when you do that stuff that makes your brain stronger. Not only would that increase portosol and testosterone, but it'll make your
brain function at a higher level of improve your improve your mood. So every day I don't care, even if it's just for five minutes, you do some sort of exercise. Everybody has five minutes to do some sort of exercise every morning. All right, I gotta get it done. If you got to set the arm five minutes earlier, said it five minutes earlier, all right. So that's cortisol, that's testosterone. You got to keep that body moving. You use it or you lose it. All right. And then
estrogen we got to talk about. You know, everybody has estra and guys have estrogen. Girls have estrogen just you know, women have a little bit more estrogen than men do. But the problem with estrogen is many people have too much of it. You've got to decrease it right, and we get estrogen from soy. A lot of soy products of estrogen. Plastics, a lot of plastics have estrogen. How to get rid of plastics, just turn everything into glass and stainless steel. That's it. It's very easy to get
rid of plastics. They're just convenient, but they're bad for the environment, bad for your health, bad for your inflammation. You know, there's like an aisland the size of Texas a plastic just floating around in the Pacific Ocean. So much plastic and the earth in the ocean. It's scary. Let's not into the problem, all right, it's already gone too far. So if you don't do it for your health, do it for the environment.
The average person consumes about a credit card size worth of plastic every year. Very scary. We cannot keep having all these plastics. When you store your food and plastics, it leaches into the food. So as soon as you get home from the supermarket, what you want to do is clean your fruits and vegetables. It's very easy to clean. You want to get all those chemicals off it. And what you do is you just put them in a big bowl, your fruits in your vegetables. Put a bunch of baking soda.
So you mix cold water baking soda, let it soak for an hour, and then you just strain it out, you know, clean some more, which is some fresh water, and you store it in glass. And you'll see that they last forever when you store it in glass. When you keep it in those plastic containers from the supermarket, they they actually get bad much quicker. Let's try it. And it's beautiful to see all. You
know. You just stack up these glass containers with all your fruits and vegetables, all the different colors and red and orange and yellow and green, blue and purple. All right. So stay away from the plastics to decrease your estrogen. Stay away from the soy products. To decrease your estrogen. Soys everywhere. It's tofu, it's being curved, it's at a mamma. It's in soybean oil, it's in soy sauce. I mean, it's on all these dressings. And you know, it's it's pretty crazy how much we don't
realize that soy is everywhere, all right, So be very careful. It's in all those fake meats, all right. So you got to decrease, the plastic decrease, the soy decrease, your estrogen more when we come back from the break. If you want to improve your brain function, help with memory, focus, sleep, digestion, energy depression, anxiety, dizziness, balance, vision, headaches, brain fog, weight loss, or simply want to maximize your human potential and prevent future diseases, that this is the show
for you. Don't misboost your brain power with doctor Eric Kaplan and you will learn natural, integrative, and holistic approaches to modern day medical problems such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's stroke, autism, add concussion, autoimmune diseases, insomnia, fibromyalgia, vertigo, migraines, for posture, pain, TBI, skin and digestive problems. Doctor Kaplan is most famous for getting to the root cause of a wide variety of brain and health conditions, rather than treating symptoms with traditional
medicines and risky surgery. To contact to doctor Kaplin, you can call this team at two or one two six one two one five zero or visit his website head Kaplin DC dot com. Welcome back to boost your brain power. I'm your host, Doctor Eric Kaplan. Okay, so we're just talking about cortisol and talking about testosterone and estrogen, Let's talk a little bit about melatonin. Right. So melatonin is one of the most taking supplements that patients tell
me about because they're told that that's going to help with sleep. So a lot of my pages, they come to me their whole list of supplements and they think, oh, I'm very healthy. I'm taking all these vitamins and supplements. And I say, well, that doesn't mean you're healthy. You were very healthy, you wouldn't have to take all these vitamins and supplements. Those are pills. Why are you gonna take pills? That's just like medicine. Oh, let me take this pill to help me sleep. Let me
take this melatonin to help me sleep. Right, that's just like taking a sleeping pill. It's just not many side effects. Right. So a lot of people think when they're doing it the naturally, it's a healthy way. But what's the healthy way. It's not taking melatonin. It's figuring out why you're not sleeping properly, why are your circadian rhythms off? And guess what, It's probably related to cortisol. Cortisol and melatonin are inversely proportional. What
that means as cortisol levels go up, melatonin levels go down. So if it's eight o'clock at night and you're watching TV, you're on your cell phone, the computers on, the lights are on, you're snacking on the couch, your cortisol levels are going through the roof. And guess what, if you're watching the news, it's gonna double. So what are you watching at at night? Also? Are you watching vampires and demons killing each other and
mysteries of sex crimes and murders, and you know the news? And what are you watching and you're watching all these shows with blood and gore and war. Are you watching the news about you know, disasters and racism and political corruption and you know the inflation? And is everything going to put you in fear mode which will increase cortisol in the stress harmone. So not only that the lights are on, but what are you actually watching? You know,
if you're gonna watch something at night, make it funny. Are you're relaxing, make it loving? You know, watch like if you got Netflix, watch like Fuller House or something. It's just like ah ha ha ha, little family, cheesy love. You know that's what you want? Something relaxed and calming. You want your your whole night, you're gonna be thinking about those less few hours of what was going on. If you're stressing about work,
you're gonna have a stressful sleep. If you're thinking about all this stressful day at work, it's not good. You're watching the news before bed, it's not good. If you're watching sex crimes before bed, that's not good. If you're watching murder mysteries before bed, that's not good. If you're watching, you know, war documentaries, that's not good. What are you
watching. It's not only the light but what you're watching as well. All right, So that's very important that we decrease melatonin in the morning and increase it at night. We want to have high energy in the morning. We want to be resting at night. So we don't want to medicate or just take melatonin. We want to rewire our brain through a process called neuroplasticity,
so that our melatonin naturally goes up at night. If you're taking melatonin at night, then the brain is like, I don't need to produce it on my own. You're giving it to me synthetically. Why should I work for it? And you're never going to heal properly. You need the brain to heal on its own. You need to rewire the brain so you don't have to take supplements, so you don't have to take medicine, so you don't need a c PAP machine, you don't need to do all these sleep studies.
You have to rewire your brain. But how do you know what area of the brain you need to rewire, Well, you have to test the brain. To analyze the brain. The best test, especially for cortisol and sleep and stress memory, focus all that stuff. That is the q EG brain mapping. The q EG brain mapping is a non invasive test. There's no radiation. You don't have to take it like an MRI where you're in that small tube and take this contrast fluid. It's like a cat skin or
a pet skin or an X ray. We have all this radiation. So what we have to do do is where a cap it's like a swimmer's cap, and the swimmer's cap has electrodes that are attached to it in all different spots all around the different areas of your brain, and it measures each area
of the brain. Measures the brain waves, the alpha brain waves, the beta, theta the delta, so it measures all these brain waves and depending on the location of where the abnormal brain waves occur, that will tell us what areas of the brain are not working, so we can locate it and literally locate the area of the brain that's not working. And then once we locate the area of the brain that's not working, now we come up with
therapeutic exercises to stimulate those weak areas. Okay, so it's very different. So I'm not the doctor that's going to write you a prescription for medicine to take care of your problem, not going to put a band aid over it.
We're not going to hide your symptoms. But what we want to do is do the evaluation, get to the root cause, and then come up with a natural, holistic, integrative with no risk or side effects, a solution of therapeutic exercises that are going to strengthen that area of your brain so I could function at higher level. But first step is to do the test that's the q EG brain mapping. This test only takes about fifteen to twenty
minutes to do. It's pretty easy. It's normally five hundred dollars. But if you're one of the first seven people to call, text or email you can get the q EG brain mapping for only twenty one dollars. Yes, it's usually five hundred dollars, but if you're one of the first seven people, you can get it for only twenty one dollars. All you have to do is call or text six four six two two one six seven three eight, or you can email info at Kaplin Brain, embody dot com. I'll
say that again. You can call or text six four six two two one six seven three eight, or you can email info at Kaplin Brain and Body dot com. Just say you're one of my radio show listeners and you want to be one of the first seven people to get the q EG brain mapping for only twenty one dollars, and that will literally tell us. Do you have sleep deprivation? Do you have insomnia? Do you have anxiety? Do you have too much cortisol? Do you have white matter inflammation? Do you
have a thyroid problem? Do you have intestinal inflammation? Is really cool technology. Take advantage it tells us. Do you have anger aggression? Troubles with focus motivation? Do you have trouble shifting tasks? Do you have working memory problems? Sequential memory problems long term memory, short term memory. It breaks everything down based on the location of the brain and what's that part of the brain responsible for. But the beauty part is not only do we figure out
what the problem is, The best part is the solution. You know, we could come up, Oh, if the frontal cortex is off, then we could do this exercise. If the temporal cortex is off, we could do this. If the cerebellum's not working properly, this exercise works well, right, But it all depends and you might know a lot of times when we do the brain mapping and I read the results, patients are like,
oh, yeah, that makes sense. And I'll be like, oh, you know, you're approprial septions off or something, which is your awareness of your body and space, and we could see that on the brain map. And then patients will be like, oh, yeah, I'm always bumping into things or knocking into things or tripping over my feet, or I'm always dropping things and clumsy, and you know that stuff is picked up on the brain map. So we figure out what areas are wrong, and then we come
up with easy therapeutic exercises you could do to strengthen those weak areas. That process is called neuroplasticity. It's rewiring the brain to take care of the weak areas to make them stronger. I'm not gonna give you a prescription, you know, like riddling to help you focus, or you know, sleeping pills
or anxiety pills or antidepressants. But we're gonna figure out what's wrong and teach you how to naturally and holistically help improve your brain so you can function better, feel better, and live a better life more when we come back from the break, don't miss boost your brain power with doctor Eric Kaplan every Saturday from two pm to three pm to learn the secrets of how to optimize your
brain function. You can improve memory, focus, energy, sleep, digestion, mood, skin, metabolism, and strength by following the science and research that doctor Kaplan will be sharing with his audience. Join the adventure of discovering how to help the brain and body in a natural way while having fun at
the same time. Listen to boost your brain power. If you want to function better, feel better, and enjoy the quality of life you deserve, call two O one two six one two one five zero or email info at Kaplan Brain and Body dot com. If you're interested in a free ten minute consultation with doctor Kaplan, or visit Kaplan DC dot com for more information. Welcome back to boost your brain power. I'm your host, doctor Eric Kaplan. Okay, so we were just talking about, you know, how to
improve your brain function, get in control of your hormones. We're going to talk a little bit about kind of stuff in the brain as well. You know, those are super super important to get in tiptop shape. All right, So you know there's a lot of you know, these what we like to call happiness chemicals that your brain needs to produce to feel best. The one that most people know it's called dopamine, and that is more like the
reward, the motivation chemical. You know, there are lots of ways that you could naturally increase dopamine finishing a task, like having a little checklist and okay, check this, check this, celebrating the small winds. So once you complete those tasks, give yourself a reward. You know, you got to celebrate. It can't just be work, work, work, work with
no reward. So you do the task and then give yourself a reward, but make it a healthy reward, you know, not like oh now, I can eat a doughnut or something, you know, make it a healthy reward. Self care increases dopamine. Just looking good, you know, you know, dressing nice. You know when people give you compliments, Oh,
you look so good, that's gonna increase dopamine. Even when you look in the mirror and you're like, oh wow, you know, I like pretty good today, and I like, oh I like this outfit, or I like the way my hair is, or like my makeup or my glasses and hat or whatever it is. You know, you want to quick, hey, I want to look good. Look the part of a clean shaving and whatever it may be. You know, don't look like a bum, don't look like a mess. Your brain's gonna decrease activation. When you look good,
you're gonna feel good. So you gotta look that part that's going to increase dopamine. And one of the easiest ways to increase dopamine is exercise. You gotta exercise. Remember we said every single day for all the hormones, every single thing, especially in the morning. Morning exercise. Get that dopamine going, get that cortisol going, get that testosterone going. We're increasing exercise,
Right's super super important. Another easy thing listening to music, right, you know, when you're driving that guard, blast them music, or you're you know, singing in the shower with your favorite song on. That makes your brain feel good. You want to increase your dopamine, Put on your favorite song and start singing, yell, enjoy it, smile. Ones that have emotional attachments to it, Those are the best listening to music all right.
And one that I practice every single day as well is gratitude. So every day I have my gratitude list. I'm grateful for this, I'm grateful for that, and it's simple things. Grateful for my wife, Grateful for my kids, Grateful for my car, my house, my businesses, my books, my radio shows, my newspaper columns. I'm thankful that I could see. I'm thankful I can hear. I'm thankful I can walk. I'm thankful I can poop and pee and sleep and the stuff that everyone takes for
granted until you lose those things. Okay, it's gonna be grateful. You live in America, Grateful you live in New Jersey or New York. Grateful you have friends and family. Grateful you have your health. Every day, go and wait for your health to be gone, to be grateful for it. You know, when I eat food, I'm like, oh thank God. My digestis ships and work. I can produce enzymes and hydrochloric acid, and I could hoop every morning and I never have to push. It's never
difficult. You know. To have great bout movements is one of the best things you could ever have. But you gotta be grateful for that, all right, So gratitude, write it down, Say it, and I'll literally write down the same exact list every day. You know, I'm thankful every day that I could walk. You know, that's who God wants to take
care of. People that are grateful, right, Nobody wants to be around somebody who's always complaining about everything's always miserable, life's horrible, everything's bad because they're looking for the bad things. I bet you a lot of these people that think their life is horrible have eyes that they could see, have ears that they can, have a mouth that they could chew food, have a bed that they can sleep in, they have a roof up over their head.
There's so much to be grateful for, but they're complaining about things that are meaningless. All right, don't be around people that are complaining that are negative, because then you start complaining and you start becoming negative. All right, what's another happiness chemical serotonin? Right, that's the mood stabilizer. Every day in my office we have bananas and everyone's like, oh, I do you always have bananas? They say, oh, there's so much sugar and
bananas. It's natural sugar. It's not as bad as table sugar. It's not as bad as high fruit toast corn serup. When you get it from the whole fruit, it's extremely healthy. If you're just taking the sugar out of the fruit, then it's not healthy. The sugar is the juice. So that's why it's not good to have apple juice orange juice. Right when you have the juice, you're taking out all the good stuff, all the fiber, and you're leaving all the sugar. Getting back to the bananas,
though, the bananas have serotonin. So I want my patience to be in a good mood when they're in my office. We're gonna give them some bananas better than taking an antidepressant. And I don't know if you guys know this, but if the bananas have a brown spot on them, that has been proven to have chemicals that fight cancer. All right, So you want serotonin and to prevent cancer. Have a banana with some brown spots, all right, So how else can we increase our serotonin. One thing that's very popular
these days that a lot of people know about is meditation. Meditation will increase serotonin. Now, a lot of people have difficulty with meditation. They say, oh, I can't sit for a half hour and not think about anything. It's very difficult. But what I recommend doing is the relax technique. And I start in a seated position and I relax all the muscles in my body, starting from the top of my head at the bottom of my toes, and depending on how long I have, I'll make it last that amount
of time. This morning, I didn't have much time. I was a little bit out later than usual last night because I had an event my seminar series. A bunch of my radio listeners were there. We learned a lot about how to improve brain function. That was in New Jersey in River Dge and New Jersey at six thirty last night. We do it live. We also do it over zoom. We have our last seminar series, which is
to boost your brain power. Boot camp where we're reviewing it the previous six seminars, and that seminar is normally one hundred dollars for the entire review, and if you're one of the first seven people, you can get that seminar for only forty nine dollars. You can do it live zoom, you can get the recording. It's a summary of all my previous seminars, the last six modules, which was memory focused, Depression, Anxiety, oxygen sleep,
Energy, Nutrition, Inflammation, brain Exercises. It's a summary of all the previous modules there and like I said, every one of the first seven people you can get it for only forty nine dollars. Just call six four six two two one, six seven three eight, where you could text us as well or email info at Kaplan Brain, embody dot com. That's going to
be July twenty six. It's the last module, number seven. It's the last one to summary of all the previous six So if you haven't seen any of them, this is the one to go to because you'll get a summary of everything, all right, And that is going to be July twenty six, six thirty to seven thirty in River Edge, New Jersey. Just gives an email or a call or a text, and we'll set you up with
that, all right. So because I was up late last night, I slept in a little bit today and then I didn't have time for my normal meditation, which is going to help increase serotonin levels. But I got in my thirty seconds and I did the relax technique. So I relax the muscles on the top of my head. Then I relax the forehead that I say in my head, I say relax. I relax my temples, and then I relax my jaw. Then I relax my cheeks, and then I relax
my neck and relax my shoulder. So I picked the thirty main spots starting from the top going all the way to bottom, just in my head saying relax, relax, relax, relax, and we keep relaxing all the muscles all the way down, and stuff might come into your head during that thirty seconds, and that's okay. By the next relax, you're figuring out which is my next muscle group. So you just focus on your body, focus on the relax, and that's all you have to do. So that way,
if you get distracted, you just go back to saying relax. And you go back to relaxing your muscles and go from the top to the bottom and you can literally do it for thirty seconds. That's all you have to do, but that'll start to increase your serotonin levels. Yoga will also increase your serotonin levels. So you can meditate, you can relax, you can do yoga, you can practice mindfulness. There are so many good strategies to
increase your serotonin, which is the mood stabilizer. More when we come back from the break. If you want to improve your brain function, help with memory, focus, sleep, digestion, energy depression, anxiety, dizziness, balance, vision, headaches, brain fog, weight loss, or simply want to maximize your human potential and prevent future diseases, that this is the show
for you. Don't miss boost your brain power with doctor Eric Kaplan and you will learn natural, integrative and holistic approaches to modern day medical problems such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's stroke, autism, add concussion, autoimmune diseases, insomnia, fibromyalgia, vertigo, migraines, for posture pain, TBI, skin and digestive
problems. Doctor Kaplan is most famous for getting to the root cause of a wide variety of brain and health conditions, rather than treating symptoms with traditional medicines and risky surgeries. To contact doctor Kaplan, you can call his team at two O one two six one two one five zero or visit his website at Kaplan dc dot com. Welcome back to boost your brain power. I'm your host, doctor Eric Kaplan. We're talking about how to increase your serotonin.
The mood stabilizer meditation is one. The release the relax technique. You could do say relax or release. I like both of them. Sometimes I'll switch back and forth. Yoga you can do it with other people, which I like. Get out of the house. If you can do it outside during summer, there's so many summer yoga classes. They're doing it, you know, in the park and you'll be with other people. That is sweet. That is the best thing to do. You could do it in a yoga
studio. You can do it YouTube. There's there's yoga videos you can watch for free, so you don't have to pay for a class. So there's no way, you know, you cannot do it. There's plenty of opportunities to do yoga. There's plenty of opportunities to do meditation. You can practical mindfulness, which is where you only think of one thing at a time. When you're eating, you just focus on the smell, the taste, the
texture of your food. You're not scrolling through your phone. When you're at the gym, you're focused on your muscles and the contracting and you're breathing. You're not talking to other people and socializing or texting your friends or going through the radio. You're in gym mode. When you're at work, you're in work mode. You know you're not checking in with your wife and seeing how she's doing. You know you're in work mode. Whatever your work is.
You focus on your work. You be mindful. You always think about what you're doing. When you're at your kids soccer game, be focused on your kid. Look at everything, even when they're on the bench. Look at what they're doing on the bench, and be mindful. So when you come back, Oh, I saw you laughing with your friend Tom on the sideline. What are you guys joking about? And then he starts laying Oh Tom and said this, and then so pay attention, be mindful. You know,
when you're at the soccer game, pay attention to your kid. Okay, that is mindfulness. Deep breathing well also improve your serotonin. The best way to breathe and increase serotonin is inhaling for four seconds, hold it for seven seconds, and exhale for eight seconds. Make sure you breathe with your diaphragm. As you inhale, the diaphragm goes down and out, and as you exhale it comes up and in the Other thing that increases seratonin is running.
Remember we said about the hit. So what you do is you run really fast, super sprint, and then you do a little walk, and then you run again one hundred yard dash, and then you walk, and then you run again. And when you get really good you can start to extend it. And I run for two hundred yards, and then I run for four hundred yards, and then I run for six hundred yards, and you keep on increasing it. Other things that increase serotonin is sun exposure.
Get out of the house, get sunlight. I know doctors will tell you the sun is dangerous only if you have a history of skin cancer, where I want you to be super super careful. But other than that, be out in the sun. The sun is not your enemy. The sun gives you life. We'd all be dead. Without the sun. All the plants would be dead, all the animals would be dead. We'd be dead. And the sun gives us life. The sun is everything. And when you go outside, take off your glasses, take off your hat, roll up
your sleeves, roll up your pant legs. You need sun exposure. Your eyes need exposure. You don't look directly at the sun, but look towards the sun, look next to the sun. So without your glasses, so you get the exposure. All right. The next chemical I want to tell you about is oxytocin. That's the love hormone. And we get that with
healthy relationships. You know, every day, do something to make somebody happier, to increase your healthy relationships, even if it's just a text message, a phone call, an email, a comment on social media, just something to improve your relationships with the people that mean most to you. You know, if you really want to do something mean write them a letter, write them a card, and then do something with them. Hey, I got us tickets to see the new Broadway play you really wanted to see, or
you know, do something with them, build those healthy relationships. You know, it's like my dad loves to walk around the track in Park Ridge. So I was like, hey, you know, I had a day off. I said, hey, let's go walk around the track. That's his favorite thing to do. And so that helped really build our healthy relationships. So, you know, do what other people like to do to build healthier
relationships. There hugging family. You know, it's like the worst thing was that COVID nineteen when they're like, oh, everyone's got to stay six feet apart, and then family members stop hugging each other and say, oh, you're gonna kill grandma if you hug them. It says, no, you're gonna kill your brain. If you don't hug them. You're not gonna get your oxytocin. Playing with a dog. So guess what I did when we weren't allowed to hug people. I got a dog, so now we could
play with the dog. That increased our oxytocin. And that dog brought so much love, so much contentment to our family. My wife never even liked dogs. Now she's obsessed with dogs. I mean, that dog works so much, love so much. We get more exercise, we get more sunlight, we play more, we just laugh more. Everybody loves the dog. Because the dog loves you every minute of the day. They're never mad,
they're never angry, they're never complaining. The dog always loves you. So if you have the capabilities, I definitely advise you to get a dog that will increase your oxytocin levels. Helping others. We always got to help others, to give to others. We're on this earth to help others. Don't be selfish. Make it always about other people. When you make it about other people and help other people, you're not only going to help them.
You're gonna help yourself. You're gonna help other people. That view that you're gonna change the world. You're gonna increase oxytocin. You're gonna increase that love hormone. You have to help others, whether it's charity, whether it's volunteering, whether it's just helping opening a door, giving a nice tip, like surprising someone doing a good deed. The good thing is oxytocin. Let's start holding each other's hands again. Let's start, you know, touching more.
That's how we increase oxytocin. All right, and the last one we're gonna talk about is the endorphins. Right, everyone wants those endorphins. That's the painkiller. The way to get endorphins is laughter. Remember I told you, if you're gonna watch something, watch something that's gonna make you laugh. If you're gonna watch a movie, make a movie that makes you laugh. Dancing. We were talking about how listening to music increases dopamine. Well, dancing
increases your endorphins. So when you listening to the music to help your dopamine, at the same time, start dancing to increase your endorphins, and also take a dance class. That's good for the brain as well. And when you a lot of times when you're dance, you're hugging people, you're holding their hands, that's going to increase oxytocin. So you're listening to the music, you're holding the hands, you're dancing together, you're deep breathing at the
same time. You know, hopefully you do it outside and get sun exposure and then you get all four of these hormones going right. A lot of people are gonna like this. Dark chocolate increases endorphins, not milk chocolate, but dark chocolate. Meditation that's also for serotonium but also good for the endorphins. And lavender oil essential oils. You can get a good diffuser. Don't light these incense and candles. Get a nice diffuser with lavender essential oil.
That's going to increase your endorphins. Those are just some good natural brain hacks that I wanted to share with everybody today to improve your brain function and balance it out. Now, the best way to balance out your brain function in a left and right type of thought. Right, So all those things that we were just talking about is general. Right. So when you get sunlight, it's stimulating your whole body. When you do exercise, it's stimulating your
whole body. You know, when you're hugging, it's your whole body. But some people have brain issues because there's imbalances from left to right. The typical thing is bipolar, manic, depressing, or people who have depression and anxiety, or they have highs and lows. You know, sometimes they have low energy, sometimes they have high energy. Sometimes they can't sleep, sometimes they're always tired, sometimes they're always hungry, sometimes they're never eat sometimes you
know, they're always cold, and sometimes they're always sweating and high. You know, it's like they're imbalanced. They don't have homeostasis. There's no consistency. So sometimes with that it's an imbalance. It's called a functional disconnect syndrome. Say, they don't feel connected to their bodies. But how are we going to know that. We got to do a test to figure that out.
The best test to figure out if there's an imbalance of the left brain and the right brain, or to figure out which lobe of the brain, or which side's underactive or which side's overactive. It's called the v video testography. This is a great test. There's no radiation, there's no side effects, there's no risk. All it is is a it's a camera. It's
an infrared camera that measures your eye movements. You follow these dots and we do different head movements, eye movements ups and down and left and right and fast and slow, over and over, and based on that we could figure out where the imbalances are. This test is normally five hundred dollars. It only takes about twenty minutes to do. However, if you're one of the first seven people to call, text or email, you can get this five
hundred dollars VNG test for only twenty one dollars. All you have to do is call or text six four six two two one six seven three eight. That's six four six two two one six seven three eight, or you can email info at Kaplan, Brain embody dot com. If you signed up for the QEG for twenty one dollars, you can also do the VNG for twenty
one dollars and we're gonna make it even better. You can do a one on one with me where I go over your blood work, I go over your history, any pest diagnoses, any medications you're taking, any vitamins you're taking. We look at your posture, we look at your alignment. We look at your memory, your focus, your balance, your muscles, your reflexes, your range of motion. Check out your heart, your lungs, your gut. It's a full physical and neurological evaluation that's normally five hundred dollars,
but you can get that for only twenty one dollars as well. All you have to do is call six four six two two one six seven three eight or email info at Kaplan, Brain embody dot com and you can do all three twenty one dollar QEG, twenty one dollar VNG, and a twenty one dollar one on one with me, Doctor Eric Kaplan. All you have to do is call or email, and you can do all three at the
same day. It'll be a long time, you'll be there for a few hours, but we'll get it all done and you can get your diagnosis and we come up with integrative, holistic, natural solutions how to boost your brain power, improve your function to feel better, function better, and live a better life. We are not the office that's going to do surgeries and give you medications and you write all these prescriptions. But we're the type of doctor
office that teaches you how to help yourself. Because the power that made the body heals the body. Your body has the potential to heal on its own. But you got to put in the work, and you've got to do the right things, and you have to change your lifestyle, and you got to improve your good habits. But we're the ones that are going to figure out where your problems are, where your weaknesses are, and teach you how
to improve them. Because you're only as strong as your weakest link. Most people like to do the stuff that they're good at, but we got to figure out where your weaknesses are so that you could live a long, healthy life. It's all about quality of life because you might live many many years,
but you don't want to be miserable and sick. You want to be happy and healthy and independent and not have to depend on anybody else and feel like you can do anything and be anywhere and go anywhere and experience the world and give to others and enjoy your family and your friends and love life. Okay, I hope you guys learned a lot today. For more information, you can just go to my website Kaplan DC dot com. Check us out
on social media Kaplan Brain Embody on Instagram and Facebook and TikTok. You can go on our YouTube channel Kaplan brain Embody and subscribe, like, comment, share, We love you guys, and I'll see you next week. Don't miss boost your brainpower with doctor Eric Kaplan every Saturday from two pm to three
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and enjoy the quality of life you deserve. Called two O one two six one two one five zero or email info at Kaplan Brain and Body dot com if you're interested in a free ten minute consultation with doctor Kaplan, or visit Kaplan DC dot com for more information. The proceeding was a paid podcast. iHeartRadio's hosting of this podcast constitutes neither an endorsement of the products offered or the ideas expressed.