Why We Need to Be Brainwashed with Dr Austin Perlmutter

If you're enjoying this program , please like , subscribe or leave a review . It will help others to learn about our work . And now please enjoy this week's episode on the subject of why we all need to be brainwashed with our guest .

With my good friend , dr Austin Perlmutter , who is the renowned internal medicine specialist and co-author of the book Brainwash , we journey beyond the conventional medical paradigm and into the vast potential of our brains in order to shape our health decisions and lifestyles .

So imagine breaking free from the stuckness that holds back so many of us and replacing it with vibrant health choices that boost our cognition and well-being . This episode is an eye-opener for anyone looking to revolutionize their approach to health by understanding the pivotal role of the brain . Chronic inflammation isn't just a buzzword .

It's a critical factor that Austin Perelmutter unravels . He shows its intricate impact on our mental clarity and mood . Delving into the intricate dance between our diet , stress levels and the gut-immune-brain axis , this episode offers tangible strategies to combat the stealthy assailant of neuroinflammation .

Through our discussion , learn how to reclaim your brain's health , one mindful choice at a time , and to also set the stage for a life less susceptible to the grips of diseases like sleep quality and social connections . Along with the fascinating workings of the brain's immune system .

From establishing restorative night rituals to understanding the influence of microglial cells on our brain's health , this episode equips you with the knowledge to nurture your most precious asset . It's not just about living longer , but about enriching those lives with clarity and joy .

Join us to find out how simple daily health practices can have profound effects on your brain's longevity and your overall quality of life . This episode is brought to you by Elm Nutra , maker of the Prolong Fasting Mimicking Diet . If you'd like to try it , use the link in the show notes for 20% off .

So nice to have you here .

I needed to have my own journey to get me to the point where I felt like this was important for me and something that I wanted to learn more about , and that journey was , in essence , going into internal medicine . So internal medicine , as most people may be familiar , is more general medicine and then you can subspecialize .

Many internal medicine doctors work in the hospital admitting people and caring for them there . Many of them are in primary care looking after a wide variety of ailments and again , some subspecialized cardiology , pulmonology , gastroenterology .

But for me , during my internal medicine training , and in med school as well , there was a very clear signal that I got and it was an increasingly clear signal as I neared the end of my training and that was that , despite every amazing modern medicine and therapeutic that we had , that the things that were driving the majority of diseases were not being adequately

addressed in the clinic . And this probably isn't , you know , breakthrough information for people listening to this program .

But for me , who had expected that , coming out with this arsenal of antihypertensive medications , heart failure medications , diabetes medications , I would be capable of reversing disease , and realizing that that was just not the case , it was a big deal .

So this led to a number of patient visits where I had this really significant revelation that the best I was doing in most of these cases was slowing the rate of decline , meaning you're going along , you're getting worse and that slope can be a little bit less steep , but really not addressing the reasons why people were on that downhill slope in the first place .

And what became really clear to me is that at the core of the majority of our modern day top killers and contributors to disability is how our brains work . And why is that ? It's because our brains are the principal driver of our decision-making . So you want to talk about the value of exercising , eating healthy food .

Well , in order to care enough to do those things , to be motivated to do those things , your brain has to be set up in the right way . You want to talk about mental health .

Well , mental health issues are brain issues , and what I recognize is that we really do have access to some powerful resources as it relates to prevention of brain problems and even treatment of brain problems .

And so for the last years , my mission has been to understand the biological basis for what I call stuckness , and that stuckness is what happens in our bodies , and especially in our brains , that programs us towards these destructive patterns , and helping to understand how lifestyle modification everything from decision neuroscience understanding how we make choices and how we

can improve that to the foods that we eat and how they're incorporated into our brain cell membranes and change our brain structure and function can be leveraged to improve people's quality of life and decision-making and cognition through the brain .

And so that's led me on a number of different kind of pursuits in the last few years writing books , doing research , educating .

It's been incredibly fulfilling , but the bottom line is I'm thrilled to be here , to have the opportunity to deliver some of this information to people who maybe haven't heard about the power they have to prevent brain diseases , to prevent a number of other diseases , through lifestyle modification .

Let's take your interest and your work and kind of look at aging and longevity . What's your perspective on aging and longevity ?

What we've also seen is that the last decades of people's lives tend to be pretty low quality as it relates to their health .

So that's a real problem , because it means that , first of all , we're not living maybe as long as we could be I think that's pretty true and , second of all , the quality of those years , our health span , is not as good as it could be . So then you can say well , why is this the case ?

And what science has been pretty clear on is that the top causes of disease , of death , of disability these are things that relate to the quality of our decisions .

So , talking about the quality of our day-to-day choices as being principal drivers of how long we live and the quality of those years and there's a number of different ways you can kind of slice into aging there are a number of different pathways that are involved .

I'm sure you'll have experts talking about many of those , the ones that I have been kind of principally involved with or I guess the specific one that I've been spending my time on is the connection between the immune system and how we age .

There are tons of studies , tons of research now showing that as our immune system ages , it correlates with our overall body's aging , and that the aging of our immune system may actually increase the rate at which we develop diseases and even die earlier .

And why that's important is , of all the systems in our body , the immune system is one which turns over incredibly rapidly . So you're making millions of new immune cells every minute .

There's an incredible opportunity to kind of reset and reprogram your immune system for the better , so that you are reducing your risk of developing these things that increase your risk of dying early , of having a worse overall health span . So we've kind of gone from very wide to very narrow here we're talking about people are dying earlier than they need to .

They're having a lower quality of their life experience than they need to . There's a number of things that contribute to that .

One of those things is issues with the immune system , specifically elevation and inflammation and other aging related immune problems , and that's something that we can act on to go all the way back up to the top of that and act on how long we live and the quality of those years , to go all the way back up to the top of that and act on how long we live

and the quality of those years .

Many people have heard about inflammation , and I think we have to break this down a little bit so that we can understand some of these higher level concepts . So inflammation is , in essence , defined as kind of damage to swelling , heat , pain of tissue .

That's the way people usually think about it and that's true , but as it relates to risk for dying early , as it relates to risk for basically the majority of our chronic diseases , what we're talking about is chronic inflammation , and what that is is a sustained imbalance in the immune system .

I'm going to say this again Inflammation , chronic inflammation , is actually a sustained imbalance in the immune system . So if you're really looking to improve your inflammation , you're actually looking to improve your immune balance . That's the pathway that you need to activate .

That relates to risk for , again , most diseases , but why I care about it so much is that we now understand that the immune state of our brains , specifically the inflammatory state of our brains , correlates with our decision-making , with our cognitive state of our brains , correlates with our decision-making , with our cognitive state , so meaning risk for developing

Alzheimer's and other dementias , quality of our thinking in a given day and our mood . So that's really important , because what we're saying here is the inflammation in our brains may increase our risk for developing age-related diseases like dementia .

It may increase our risk for developing things like depression , which is a big deal at any age , and where I get really excited is influencing brain inflammation may actually improve the quality of our cognition of our decisions right now . So , yes , working on that is a good strategy if you want to reduce your risk for age-related conditions like Alzheimer's disease .

But also working on your brain inflammation or neuroinflammation may be a good strategy to improve your decisions so that you're doing better at work , so you're more available in your relationships , so you're more motivated to make lifestyle changes .

So this is really a key kind of facet of what we can do as far as understanding how we develop problems and understanding how we can act on them .

It just bounces back and forth . Can you address how we interrupt that pattern and reverse it , in which we're getting it snowballing down in the right direction ?

This is one of the more concerning aspects of this , where you're , in essence , creating a feed forward cycle , that snowball rolling downhill , where your bad decisions lead to more inflammation , inflammation leads to worse decisions and , before you know it , all the aspects of what should be healthy behavior are moving towards destructive behaviors that promote inflammation .

So this is really a big issue . So what can we do about this ? How do you break that cycle ? As it relates to inflammation specifically in the brain , I think there are two things to look at . So what can we do to help break the cycle of neuro inflammation ?

The first is to understand that the brain's inflammatory state is largely a reflection of environmental inputs . So meaning what happens around us , what we take in , has a big role to play in our overall immune state and may influence our brain's immune state . So what are those inputs ? What are those variables ? Well , certainly it's what we put in our mouths .

So the food that we eat , we know , plays a large role in our overall health and appears to significantly influence our immune system , and we'll go into this in a bit more detail in a moment . But just to make this connection , why would the food you eat influence your brain . Well , the majority of your immune system is located in your gut .

We're talking 70 plus percent of your immune cells in your gut . So those immune systems or those immune cells in your gut are going to influence your whole body and your whole body's immune system . So you get inflammation in the gut that's not necessarily going to stay localized . Food that you take in influences the immune cells in your gut .

Those immune cells and signals influence your entire body , including your brain . But also the vagus nerve , which runs throughout kind of the body , but especially from the brain to the gut and backwards again , is picking up data from your food and converting that data into signals that may influence your brain's immune state .

So just let's put that aside for a moment . But food is a significant way in which we influence our overall immune state and may influence our brain's immune state . So making the right choice is there .

But the other bucket that I think is largely missed , as it relates to what we can do in a given day to reduce our risk for brain inflammation , is to pay attention to what comes in through our eyes and through our ears . What do I mean by that ? One of the strongest connections between inflammation and our environment relates to stress .

High levels of sustained stress correlate with higher levels of inflammation , and it's thought that this is also the case as it relates to the neuroinflammation inflammation in the brain .

Stress can come from a variety of sources , but when we're talking about a psychological stress , it's more of how we interpret our environment than it is something objective in our environment For many of us , not across the board .

There are certain people who , you know , can't necessarily escape from psychological stress , but for many of us , we get to make decisions as to how much of that to take in . So now layer in to this story the fact that the average American adult is spending upwards of 11 hours a day in front of their screens .

That is a direct conduit between the media coming through your screens and the state of your brain stress , and that stress is a direct conduit into your brain's inflammatory state . So what is the quality of that media that we're taking in ? Well , it differs depending on what we consume .

But I will just say , even though I do think it's important to remain informed , that excess exposure to news is probably one of the biggest contributors to chronic stress . Actually , it turns out it is when you poll American adults , that's seen as a big contributor .

So to kind of expand back into the big picture here , the point being , if we want to positively influence our brain's immune state , if we want to do things that may help lower inflammation in our brains , we have to pay attention to what we're taking in , and that means paying attention to what we consume through our mouth and what we consume through our eyes

and ears , and really dialing in the quality of those inputs across the board .

There are some people who don't need as much interaction with other people , but for the average person that's really important and you can kind of get into some of the mechanisms there . So at a very basic level , having people that you can confide in seems to correlate with lower risk for depression .

But we also know mechanistically that having people who are close to us , that we care about , maybe an anti-stress intervention , that oxytocin , which is a molecule that tends to be produced in certain kinds of uh , interpersonal interactions , may have an anti-inflammatory effect and may have other effects on our brain function which are linked to better mood , to better

long-term outcomes . So social connection is it's a double-edged sword . I think we have to be clear there . But it is a major variable and I think , just generally speaking , forget about the research for a moment and think about the people in your life who seem fulfilled , who seem to wake up with vigor .

It's rare for me to see those people who are not closely linked into a social web , whether you're looking at Robin Dunbar's number 150 people or Facebook followers of 6,000 people . I don't think that's the important thing .

I think what I've seen is people who have close relationships with other people that they feel they can trust , that they can learn from , that they can enjoy life with . That seems to be so important in protecting our overall health and protecting our brain health .

So if inflammation correlates with worse patterns of decision-making , then , in theory , being around people who have higher levels of inflammation would mean being around people who maybe are making more impulsive choices . Um , but what's also seen is that inflammation may correlate with things like ability to relate to other people .

So what you're finding is that inflammation seems to have people withdraw from social interactions . So there's all these ways in which what you're seeing as far as how people behave is actually a reflection of these exact things we're talking about what's going on in the brain , what's their inflammatory status in their body .

So , again , you're looking at things from a more macro perspective . As far as , oh , that person's feeling this way , that person's talking to me about this thing .

What you're seeing is a manifestation of their brain's immune state , and there's really fascinating research showing that if you take healthy participants or volunteers and you inject them with a molecule called LPS , which is a piece of a bacteria that reliably increases inflammation in the body , that they will feel a desire to withdraw from other people .

They will feel a desire to not participate in social activities . They will feel depressed .

So , thinking about this and thinking about the correlation between inflammation in our bodies and the food that we eat , and thinking about how our modern society in the United States and increasingly in the kind of Western exportation of our diet and our lifestyle is promoting inflammation , could there be a correlation there between how people's mental health around the

world appears to be declining ? Could there be a correlation there between loneliness and people feeling socially withdrawn and their diet ? I mean , I think there is .

At least we should talk about it , because what we're talking about here is that , with the mass exportation of unhealthy food patterns the Western diet or the standard American diet around the world , what we may be doing is not just decreasing people's metabolic health .

What we may be doing is not just decreasing people's lifespan , but we may be getting to these fundamental mechanisms of how we interact with other people and how we feel and in doing so , having a much , much bigger effect on the health of our planet than we think , by something as simple as eating more sugar or eating less fiber , eating less variety of nutrients

.

You're talking in a broader sense , about how this can influence what goes on in our society in fact .

But one of the revelations that I had is that when you start to understand neuroscience a little bit more , the biochemistry of what happens at the neuron , at the synapse , you can begin to appreciate that the way that we feel and experience life and interact with other people is a reflection of these molecules , these tiny little molecules and receptors , the structure

of our neurons , the connections between our neurons , and that that is constantly in flux . So we talked earlier about this idea of stuckness and I do want to qualify that by saying it's really important to understand that your body , and specifically your brain , is always changing .

So you've got billions of neurons , you have trillions of connections between those neurons and those connections in particular are always changing . And the example I give people is if you know something right now that you didn't know yesterday , how is that possible ?

It's because you have changed the function structure of your brain in a way that you've encoded new memories . So this is always happening and it can happen for the better , where you are actively changing your brain function to improve your quality of life , or it can happen for the worse , and I think

that's really key . So certainly we can get stuck in self-perpetuating patterns where we make unhealthy choices . That strengthens the connections and those neurons , makes it more likely that we make an unhealthy choice the next day . That happens a lot and that's actually what we see a lot . As far as people saying I don't understand .

Every day I eat the same junk foods or I want to exercise , but I just can't get off the couch and go to the gym . We've solidified these patterns in our brains that make it really hard to pull ourselves out . That happens through the same mechanism of changing out of those neurons and the way that they connect with each other .

But that's still an open door to go the opposite direction , and so a lot of my education has been in helping people to understand simple tools they can use to rewire their brains , and it gets to a lot of the things that we've already discussed .

I cannot tell you how many times I educated patients on the value of eating healthy food or the value of exercise , both of which we know strongly correlate with improvements in overall and brain health . Moving your body . Fundamental Eating real food as opposed to processed food . Fundamental , but not always fun , not always enjoyable .

There's a reason why junk food is so popular , and it's not because it tastes really bad . It's because it tastes really good . It activates our reward centers . It makes us enjoy that meal , even if it isn't good for us . You know , take a I don't know .

Pick your poison a granola bar made of pure kale and hemp seeds , and then compare that to a Krispy Kreme donut . One of those things is going to be palatable to most people and the other one is going to be palatable to a very small percentage of people .

So the point I'm making here is if you're looking at ways to improve your overall health , it's not just about finding things that work in the science . It's about things that work for you , and that's why we have to look at things that both work as far as their mechanisms and the research and are enjoyable . People do things they enjoy .

They don't do things especially in a sustainable fashion that they don't enjoy . So sleep this all gets me to sleep . When people get a good night of sleep , they are significantly more likely to choose healthier and less calories the next day . That's it right , that's enough . If you're looking at a way to eat healthier , pay attention to your sleep .

That takes us outside of this scenario that most people find themselves in , which is I learned all this good stuff about what to eat for a healthy body , for a healthy brain , to live longer , and then I get to the restaurant . It's just so hard , you know , not to eat the rolls , not to have the soda , not to have the dessert .

I know what I need to do , but I can't do it , and that's the scenario most people find themselves in . It's not a lack of information , it's a lack of follow-through . So what you need to do is not wait until the moment of choice .

To make a healthier choice , you need to program your brain from a probability perspective to make it more likely that tomorrow you make a healthier choice . Sleep does that . People who get more sleep tend to make better choices around food the next day .

Similarly , people who get more sleep have been shown to have a decreased activation of a part of the brain called the amygdala involved in fear processing . Why is that important ?

If you want to move through life in a way that allows you to make healthy choices , to feel good , to be reflective , it requires you to engage a part of your brain called the prefrontal cortex and it requires you to have good connection between that prefrontal cortex and the amygdala , the fear and also just emotional response and decision-making hub that speaks to

the prefrontal cortex . People who don't get enough sleep seem to have a decrease in that communication and increase in activation of the amygdala .

So mechanistically , what we see is you know there's changes in how the brain functions based on missing out on sleep and , from a more pragmatic perspective , there are changes in how people act and feel the next day when they don't get that good night of sleep .

So I highly recommend for people if you're going to do one thing today , it's improve the quality of your sleep , and I can give a whole bunch of suggestions on how to do that if you'd like , but I would start there and then the other things I wanted to address are neuroplasticity and habits , but we don't have to go there yet .

By the way , one of the things I , as you just recommended , one of the things I like to suggest to people that I'm working with , is doing planning about what you're going to do tomorrow or the next day , because when you try and make a decision in the moment , you're more likely to make an emotionally based decision , whereas if you plan and then program ,

you're more likely to make a more rational cognitive choice . But and you know , sleep is very important with regard to this . So , yeah , why don't you give our viewers , our listeners , a few suggestions to improve their sleep ? Because that's one of the symptoms that pops up the most in my work and , I'm sure , in your work as well .

But about a third of American adults consistently get less than seven , six hours of sleep , which is really not enough . There is still this question of how do I know if I'm getting good sleep , and I think there's several ways to slice it . So on one end of the spectrum is a wearable your whoop , your aura . Not everybody has access to that .

Not everybody , I think , needs access to that . On the other end of the spectrum is the subjective feeling . So , do you wake up feeling rested ? Are you drowsy during the day ? Are you needing to take naps ? There's also some additional data you could get . If you have a partner , they could tell you if you snore , do you stop breathing in the night ?

These are signs that you may not be getting quality sleep , even if you feel okay . But I'd really look at those first ones , which is do I feel rested ? Do I feel sleepy during the day ? Are my energy levels relatively stable ? Am I needing to take naps .

These are indicators that you may not be getting good quality sleep and even though there's a pretty big range of what people will say a person needs , generally speaking we're talking between seven to nine hours , or maybe seven to eight if you want a slightly tighter window of quality sleep each night .

And I say quality there because some people get in bed and they toss and turn and they're awake half the night and they might have spent nine hours in bed , but they wake up the next day with only a couple hours of good sleep .

So that would be , I would say , a starting point is to ask yourself subjectively , how have you done , unless you have access to something like a wearable , which , again , I'm not recommending people rush out and buy .

So if you're concerned that you're not getting quality sleep and to be honest , I would say all of us should be concerned about that because of the significance of brain function and sleep , meaning people who don't get quality sleep seem to be at an increased risk of developing depression and Alzheimer's and overall , worse cognition , worse overall health , cardiovascular

disease , cancer you want to pay attention to your sleep . So now you've established you care about it , either because you know that there's something telling you you didn't get good quality sleep , or because I convinced you you need to care . Independent of that , what can you do to improve that quality of your sleep ?

So there are some simple steps that I think most , if not everyone , should be able to take , and there are some that I think a certain subset of people would really benefit from . Let's start with the basics benefit from . Let's start with the basics .

When you're thinking about sleep , you really want to make sure , just like you've already said , that you're not trying to make it happen on the spot . It's not like you run your day , you run your race , and then 9.30 PM , you turn off your phone , you turn off the TV , you get into bed and you're going to fall asleep . That's not how the human body works .

Our bodies , our brains , are accustomed to a time that is very different than when we live now , meaning we're accustomed to be paying attention to the light that comes in from the sun hits our eyes . We are also incredibly sensitive to the light that comes in through our screens .

We're accustomed to a version of ourselves that isn't , you know , drinking four cups of coffee each day . That's not the environment that our ancestors grew up in . They weren't . Tens of thousands of years ago , they weren't waking up and having their triple shot espresso before they started their day of hunter gathering . That's just not how it worked .

So we're kind of adding in these additional elements that are throwing things off . So I always tell people you really need to start your sleep routine midday and that means paying attention to what chemicals you're putting into your body that are going to throw off your sleep . Most people don't know that caffeine has a half-life of six hours .

So that means if you have a cup of coffee at 12 o'clock in the afternoon , there's still half of that caffeine hanging around in your system at 6 pm and there's still a quarter of it hanging around your system at midnight . So I would tell people , if you're not already doing this seriously , consider stopping your caffeine intake at 2 pm .

There are some people who are fast metabolizers of caffeine who can handle it later . There are some people who are slow metabolizers of caffeine who may need to increase that to noon or even 10 am .

But I think , as a starting point , understanding that if you're taking in coffee late in the afternoon or any caffeinated drink , that's going to throw off your sleep quality and just similar . On that subject , alcohol is a significant disruptor of sleep quality .

So that extra nightcap or whatever might feel like it's making you sleepy , but your sleep quality will actually be declining because of that . So that's one . A couple of other quick tips . One is to lower the temperature of your room . Research shows that when the temperature of the room is lowered actually promotes better sleep .

Somewhere between 60 and 67 degrees is most researchers would recommend . Find what works for you there , but trying to find ways to cool off the room seems like an important step . I'll give one more here , which is consistency of sleep .

So a study published in 2018 showed that adults who had more fragmented sleep meaning they didn't go to sleep at the same time , they woke up at different times had a number of negative health outcomes . We all kind of know intrinsically that for kids , consistency is really important . Turns out , that's key for adults too .

So I think getting to bed at a similar time at least five days of the week and waking up at a similar time at least five days of the week is really important for keeping our brains in a pattern of feeling sleepy at a certain time and being able to wake up and having high energy at a certain time .

And the last thing I'll just say , because we could talk about sleep for a while , is , especially if you carry extra weight , especially if you snore , especially if you feel sleepy during the day or your spouse or partner tells you that you stop breathing in the night , seriously consider talking to your medical provider about getting a sleep study .

Sleep apnea is an increasingly large threat , meaning that many more people are experiencing this than they used to , and it is incredibly damaging to our overall immune , cardiometabolic health .

So that's one of the most straightforward things you can do is ask your practitioner if you need to be screened for sleep apnea , especially if you have some of those risk factors I described , because there are good things we can do to manage that , and it's one of the things that most strongly correlates with a lot of these health outcomes that I've already

described .

For a long time , and still for many people , there's been this idea that the immune system is outside the brain and then we have this impermeable blood brain barrier that keeps everything out and then there's no immunity in the brain . This is very much not the case .

For a long time , researchers , scientists , have known that the brain has its own immune system and there's a special cell that lives only in the brain . It's kind of a specialized immune cell . It's called the microglial cell . This is a special cell that lives only in the brain . It's kind of a specialized immune cell . It's called the microglial cell .

This is an immune cell that patrols the brain , looking for threats . So if you get a bacteria in the brain , this is the cell that says found you going to take you out if you have damage in the brain . So if you suffer a concussion or something , they might get activated to help clean up or respond to that damage . Why is this so important ?

So microglial cells may be kind of the portal by which inflammation in the body gets converted into inflammation in the brain . This is really important because it means that these microglial cells are actually critical as far as brokering that connection between your overall state and your brain state .

And what's fundamental to understand about microglial cells is that they have these different what we call phenotypes , but really different states of function . At a very simplified level , a microglial cell can have , let's say , three states of function . One is a resting state .

It's not really resting , it's not really a fair thing to say , but these are microglial cells that are spending their time patrolling and looking for data , for threats , and the way they do this is actually fascinating .

They have all these networks of interconnecting microglial cells where they in essence span the entirety of your brain and are constantly reaching out , looking to see is there a signal that something is going wrong .

When these microglial cells detect that signal and that signal might be inflammation or basically a piece of a damaged cell they respond by changing the way that they look and changing the way they function .

They kind of evolve into the next stage in their function and that can turn them into a pro-inflammatory type where they're actually increasing levels of inflammation , which sometimes is necessary , or more of an anti-inflammation cleanup version of themselves .

So research across the board as it relates to neurodegenerative conditions so thinking of Alzheimer's , parkinson's , lewy body , a whole lot of different brain states , as well as research in depression and other mental health states have shown that microglial cell activation may be a significant contributor to perpetuation of those states may be a significant contributor to

perpetuation of those states . So I call them kind of signal amplifiers , in that if you have inflammation in your body and the microglial cell gets a taste of that , it says , okay , we're doing the inflammation game and it might actually increase the inflammation and sustain that inflammation in the brain .

Even if you never had an immune cell from you know , from your bloodstream getting into the brain . And that's been really a fundamental misunderstanding , I think , which is that you need to have immune cells from your bloodstream break through the blood-brain barrier to cause inflammation . It may be the case that these microglial cells can do it on their own .

So the long story short here is that your brain has an immune system , that your brain's immune cells are called microglia , and there are things that we may be able to do to help keep those microglial cells on our team so they're not running rampant , causing damage and contributing to things like cognitive decline and mood issues .

So if you had a bacterium that gets into your brain , you want that microglial cell to go in , create inflammation , bring in the cavalry and destroy that bacteria so you don't get an infection in your brain . That's really important .

But it's thought that over time that we can get to a place where we just have a chronic level of inflammation in our brains , much like what we might see in our bodies , and that this is correlated with risk for disease .

So here you get to a point where , either because of diet , or because you're not giving your body other things it needs , or because maybe you have an APOE4 genetic type , that there is an increased risk for these microglial cells to be activated , and that's really the concern .

So we're , in all of these conversations , talking about really what happens over months and years , more than we're talking about what happens in the context of a short-term issue .

So what you do for your body tends to translate into things that you do for your brain , and that's good news , because it means for most of us , it's the simple things that matter most as it relates to all of the health outcomes we care about .

What research shows is that issues with neuroplasticity are linked to a variety of mental health and cognitive health conditions . So where I focus my attention is primarily in understanding how neuroplasticity maps onto depression , and here what's been very interesting is kind of these bidirectional pathways and by bidirectional I mean they both influence each other .

So between inflammation and neuroplasticity is a great example of that . What research has shown pretty consistently is that inflammation , as well as high levels of stress in the brain , appear to dampen healthy neuroplasticity , so they may actually make it harder for us to rewire our brains for the better . Uh , there's a number of ways in which this may happen .

One of the examples that I like to give is that both chronic stress and inflammation decrease levels of a molecule called brain-derived neurotrophic factor , or BDNF , and BDNF , sometimes thought of as a miracle grow , for our brain cells is key to both creating new brain connections and even growing new brain cells .

Bdnf levels tend to be lower in conditions like Alzheimer's and depression if you measure them in the spinal fluid , if you measure them in the bloodstream . And it's actually thought that some of our drugs that we use for various conditions may work in part by increasing BDNF and increasing neuroplasticity .

So I'll go over this again Inflammation may damage healthy neuroplasticity by lowering levels of BDNF . Interventions for conditions like depression are thought to work in part by increasing neuroplasticity through increase in BDNF levels , as have things like psychedelics .

So this may be one of the ways in which we're understanding these molecules that seem very different , you know , surface level , as far as what they're doing may all kind of contribute to some of the benefits to brain structure , function and mood .

But we are seeing record levels of depression , and that's especially the case in , unfortunately , our youngest demographics , so children and adolescents . That's where prevalence rates of depression seem to especially have been increasing . We also see similar rates with anxiety and general stress . So , with that said , I asked myself well , what is the best ?

The standard of care really only set up to manage mental health issues when they become so bad that they can be diagnosed and treated with conventional therapeutics and or psychotherapy .

So , in this context , I am incredibly bullish on learning about new modalities that may help us to improve mental health , and psychedelics fall squarely in that category us to improve mental health , and psychedelics fall squarely in that category .

My bias is that we have over-concerned ourselves with the downside potential of psychedelics and missed out on some of the upside potential for a range of factors , and we're starting to move back in the other direction and maybe have flipped in some ways where some people are saying that they are the cure for everything .

But the question would be you know , how do psychedelics work ? That's the question that I'm really fascinated by , because it's one thing to just say , well , you take it , everything gets better .

I think it's necessary for us to understand more of what happens when a person uses psychedelics , to gain larger acceptance in the scientific community that these aren't just molecules that lead to a trip , a hallucination , and that's the primary mechanism .

Just like we were talking about before , if you see somebody and they're feeling low and they're acting in a certain way , what you're really seeing is their underlying neurochemistry and neurobiology manifesting in their thoughts and their actions .

And , similarly , when you think about psychedelics , yes , if you were to take a couple of grams of psilocybin , you would have a very intense psychedelic experience . That is a reflection of what's happening in your brain at the level of the synapse . So , with all that as a preamble , what do we know about how psychedelics work ?

The primary mechanism of action for classic or classical psychedelics and that would be things like LSD and psilocybin and DMT mescaline would be that they bind to a specific serotonin receptor called the 2A receptor . But what we now understand is that the 2A receptor itself may activate neuroplasticity .

And another way that psychedelics may work and this is especially the case for ketamine is by way of activating neuroplasticity through glutamate channels . So I know that's getting very technical . Let me give a couple of details to help kind of round this out .

There have been a number of studies conducted in the last few years to look at what happens when people are given psychedelics as it relates to their BDNF levels , and what we've seen , at least in these preliminary studies that LSD , ayahuasca , psilocybin and ketamine are linked to elevations and BDNF levels .

So that isn't to say that we've sealed the deal , the connection is secure but it is to say that there's more at play than just the trip experience , that what we're seeing there is a manifestation of these chemicals , pathways in the brain .

And coming back to the initial idea here , if the premise is that so many , if not most , of us today are experiencing some degree of stuckness , we're locked into patterns of thought and feeling and action that we don't want anymore but we can't get out of it , neuroplasticity represents the most direct understanding of how we can change our brain structure and

function and if we find safe and effective pathways to alter that neuroplasticity for our benefit . That may be absolutely vital to targeting things like depression , anxiety and even helping us to prevent conditions like Alzheimer's disease .

In closing , can you tell us , tell the audience , how they can reach you if you have any particular projects you want them to know about ?

But if people would like to learn more , the best kind of access to all these these ideas uh , most of them kind of typed out in longer form blogs is my website , which is austinpromotercom , and I sent out a weekly newsletter where I spend a lot of time trying to convey these brain ideas .

But I would just come back to you know , as people are making the investment in longevity and living longer , living better lives , the brain is that pathway forward . And why do I say that ?

It's because you could rejuvenate all your cells , you could remove every single wrinkle , you could have perfectly functional knees , you could have basically the body of a 20-year-old when you're 130 . It doesn't matter if your brain isn't there . That's you right . That's the ability to enjoy it .

So I would just say , as it relates to these larger conversations , don't forget to put this investment in your brain health , because that is going to be the ability to enjoy a longer life Without your brain alongside for the ride . It doesn't matter .

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