Grow New Brain Cells: The 10-Minute Habit for Focus & Memory with Dr. Wendy Suzuki - E153

brain areas in the entire brain that maintain this capacity to grow new brain cells.

“Have you noticed that the world that we live in has been doing most of the thinking for you?”

That your beliefs, perceptions, reactions, fears, and doubts have been shaped by unsolicited outside noise? How easy it's been for you to slip into that default sleep walking mode and label it as life and reality. Yeah, that ends here. Welcome to the Makes sense with Dr. JC podcast. This is your opportunity to start thinking for yourself, reclaim control, and step back into that role as the shot caller and dominant force of your own reality. It's when you

change the way that you look at things that the things that you look at begin to change. So let's wake up, let's rise up, and let's make sense of why and how shift happens. So first and foremost, I actually want to tell you what I like about you, but first, if it's okay, I would like to speak to your brain first, if you're fine. I don't think anybody's

“ever done that. What I want to do is I want to, from a place of gratitude, talk to Dr.”

Wendy Suzuki's brain. So first of all, to your brain, I would like to say thank you. Thank you for adapting. Thank you for producing new hippocampal cells to strengthen your neuro pathways and make her feel more clarity and confidence in response to her moving. Because had she not felt that way, we probably wouldn't have a lot of this cool stuff that we're going to talk about. So thanks for responding to stress with a positive fashion

without a collapse, but in some sort of growth, I want to thank your brain for doing that as well. What I love about Wendy is that, you know, she's a scientist. So when she comes across something that's fascinating, even if it's a challenge of sorts, like any scientist she starts to experiment. From what I gather from your story, you know, you pushed yourself really, really hard in academia. This is part of the irony of health professionals in general,

is they always like, they're here trying to make breakthroughs for everybody else, but they

always sacrifice their own bodies and health. And I was actually a chiropractor for 20 years, you know, and I had a bad back, you know, so it's going to be funny. But instead of quitting when adversity struck, you know, she did what any curious scientists would do and she should went into experimentation. And when I first saw you at the limitless live event, and I was just kind of talking to you about this, the first thing I noticed before I even knew anything about

you is that you were on stage kicking and punching and getting really, really excited. So from a standpoint of just somebody observing, it was very exciting to watch, but leader, what I found is that you were actually improving your own brain health, but in doing so, given experience where people walked out of there, experiencing what you have been talking about. So I just found that very, very fascinating because it takes the idea of interacting with an audience to a whole new level.

And any show that I've watched you guessed on whether it's Mel Robbins or Steven Bartlett and all

these fancy shows, you know, you always do the same thing. And I noticed that the people that

interview you kind of leave a little bit smarter and healthier with their big fan fluffy brains and things. So I'm excited from a selfish standpoint for this interview because I'm sure that I'm going to leave in better shape than I came in. So welcome to the Make Sense with Dr. Jc podcast, Dr. Wendy Suzuki. Dr. Jc, thank you. That was such a lovely, the most interesting intro that I've ever gotten to receive. So thank you so much. That was lovely. Well, you know, I think that we are all

gaining so much from your brain. And I don't think anybody's ever thanked it. So you are correct. My brain has never been thanked though. I must say that my my official CS welcome for all of my college of arts and science students is Dr. Suzuki, you have a beautiful brain. So my brain has been

complimented. Okay. Very regularly, but but never thanked. So so you're right. You're right. Well,

I wonder just right off the bat. I wonder if you've always had a beautiful brain or, you know, are they when somebody compliments you? Are they complimenting you because of all the work that you've done? You know, I mean, how would you answer that question right off the bat? Well, that's such a great

“question because that's why that phrase is magic. The phrase is magic because everybody has a”

beautiful, incredible astounding brain. You don't have to do anything. You are there with your

age you are, no matter what you've done, what you're about to do till that's part of why I love that.

One of the things that I was thinking about, I always kind of find something nice to say about people

and it's genuine. But but I'm curious, we're going to get into a lot of the movement correlation with brain health, but what I was just doing was, in essence, complimenting you and affirming some things about you. So when somebody speaks to people with something like appreciation, what happens inside of the brain? I know that there's a dopamine thing in an oxytocin thing, but is there something to say before we get into the whole story for people being nice and

encouraging and expressing appreciation to one another? Yeah, that's such a great question

“because I think that absolutely. What did I feel when I heard that story about myself and the”

gratitude that you're expressing towards my brain? It was surprising, it was unexpected and those surprising, unexpected, positive things are wonderful ways to spike dopamine in your brain. And that just brings up those feelings of reward. I feel good. I feel happier. And so yes, that is part of the argument for doing that, that that you feel good. It makes everybody else feel good.

And it's also part of the argument for the power of mindset. So you as a amazing host, know that

you want your guests to feel appreciated, welcomed in a good frame of mind when we start these conversations. And so you just did a major power move to make me do that by changing my brain chemistry. And so that is something that anybody can use in their everyday life, from their family relationships,

“their family conversations, even if you have, even if you have the same conversation every single”

day, maybe you are leading lots and lots of people in your corporation. That is a very powerful lesson that you've just given all of us. And as a husband and a son, but also a semi that works very often with men and women, there's something also to be said about an unexpected compliment. Right, that's right. We'll probably get into some of that, what areas of the brain,

you know, because if somebody's getting, getting compliments, but they're always used to it,

that's probably going to be lower level brain stuff. But if you're surprised to all of a sudden. So it wasn't strategic. I actually do like those things about you. And I want to thank your brain, but I'm happy it worked out. I've heard your story. And I just think it's so fascinating

“because I think anybody can relate to their mess turning into their message. I don't know if”

you spoke about that with Mel, but I mean, that's kind of what seems to have happened. It's from what I understand. You had your tenure and you were doing some research on something that was very fascinating about hippocampus and memory and stuff. But as a result of it, you kind of turned into a little bit of a hot mess yourself and unknowingly kind of stepped into everything that's transpiring now. So I'd love to get that story out there for anyone of this not here

heard it before. Yeah. So I think my story is relatable to so many different people. You have some dream in your life and you've been working so hard and mine was I wanted to get tenure. I was assistant professor at New York University and they have this wonderful process called tenure where they give you six years to become a world-class scientist. And if you do that, you get tenure and you get a job for life and if you don't, you're fired. So, you know, no pressure, no big deal.

And so you're working really hard. Am I doing enough of my world class enough? Do I have enough publications? And my strategy was just to work hard. Put your head down and work hard. You know how to do that, Wendy? And I did. And I kicked out all those other things like friends and going out to dinner and going to Broadway, even I love Broadway. And I just worked hard in my lab and I got more cranky and I wasn't sleeping well and I was stressed out and I'm not doing very well.

I gave myself a vacation by myself because I had no friends and I decided to go river rafting in Peru. And so I went on this river rafting trip with a whole bunch of really athletic river rafting people. A lot of triathletes were on this trip and it was so fun and I got outside and I got physical and we were rafting pasties inca ruins and I felt so good. That when I got back, I said, okay, I have to keep this movement and being outside in my life and I went to the gym and I

And I somehow, I made it stick. I started going to the gym more regularly. Every workout felt

“good and better and I got a little bit addicted to going to the gym regularly. And that felt”

good and there was an immediate kind of positive mood boost. Like I felt when I immediately got back from Peru. And so I had this model in my mind. It's like, how can I make myself feel that way more often because it wasn't how I was feeling in my life? So the gym helped with this. And but then fast forward a year and a half. I was feeling better. I had so much more muscle, muscle power. I have lost a lot of weight. I was feeling so much better. And but it was

deeper than that. I felt like I so first deeper than mood. Mood is amazing. Mood was everything.

I felt energized. I was happier. I was I was more friendly to everybody around in my life. But then I was sitting down riding my grants. And I felt like my writing was better. I felt like my thinking was better. And my focus was better. And that's what made me sit up and take notice that it's not it's not just a mood. It's mood. Which often comes immediately very early with with a regular workout routine. But it was focused and memory. I happen to be studying memory in my own lab. And

“that's what sent me back to the literature. What do we know about exercise in the brain?”

What is happening to me right now? And so what did I find? Oh my gosh. You know, all this evidence. That I had learned in my past. But I hadn't been thinking about it. That exercise actually enhances your focus. Enhancers your hip-a-campal cell growth. And there's so much evidence. And so much more evidence that had accumulated since I had been exposed to this in my undergraduate life. And then that moment when I was, you know, six years into my trying to get tenure. And so that was a huge

revelation. It's like, oh my God. I think I've just improved my brain by mistake. Thank goodness. I needed it because I'm about to, you know, put it in all my documents and kind of wait with baited breath to see whether I got tenure. And that not only, okay, I got tenure. And that was all great. But it really opened up this possibility. It's like, now what you're going to do when you've gotten tenure. You have your job for the rest of your life. You are one of the chosen at

at the university. What are you going to do? And I'm like, I really want to study memory. Okay, what's going on? That was such a transformative kind of event. I ended up eventually. First, starting smaller research projects about the effects of exercise on the brain in a classroom. I taught a class called can exercise change your brain. And I got certified to teach exercise. So I can bring exercise into the classroom, which is what I do now. I make everybody move

in my lectures, because I must sort of exercise instructor. And I know how powerful that is. And so I bring them into the joy of movement and what it does for your brain.

“But that turned into a switch of my whole research program. And that's what really brought”

me to where I am right now. And what I'm talking about when I'm doing and what I think is so powerful for everybody from elementary school students all the way up to our most senior of senior citizens. So powerful. And the message is the same. Exercises transformative for your brain. So many amazing things there. And I'm just going tracking through your story and how you didn't go on that rafting trip with the intention of getting some exercise. It was probably

more of just stepping away. And I also find it very funny how we always explain those moments

when we're working really hard. And you even said it. You said, and I had my head down. It just doesn't sound good for your brain. So have your head down and work hard. It's fascinating. And it says a lot for exercise because what it's implying is that just by going on and moving your body, you might have an epiphany as well. And I break through. I had a patient that was a little old lady, but she was just fascinating, very, very wise. And she said a quote that just

lives with me every day. And I went through a big health transformation. So I can tell I can say that it's true. She said, it's on a healthy body that a healthy mind rests. You know, I just wanted to get down and just start honoring her. And to the point, I lost a bunch of weight. And I got

healthy about 20 years ago. And it transformed my life. But once again, I never knew how it would

affect my brain. And the first thing that I remembered was how I stopped forgetting my keys. I used to

I'm excited to learn more about this stuff. So you are a scientist. So it's geek out a little bit. I love science. So I want to speak a little bit more about the scientific component of it. And

“I believe it's called hippocampal neurogenesis. So could you just explain from the person that”

totally knows what that is to the person that doesn't even know what a hippocampus is? What exactly that is? Okay. So the hippocampus is an incredible brain structure that we all have. There's one on the right side of the brain. There's one on the left side of the brain. It lives deep in the temporal lobe, which is the part of the brain kind of behind your ear there. So deep down in there as protected

as it could be in there. The hippocampus is a structure that we now know is essential for our ability

to form and retain new long-term memories for facts and events. Not everything, but facts and events are really, really important. Events are what builds our own personal history. So you have damage to the hippocampus, which can happen in diseases like encephalitis, and you lose that ability to form new memories. So you have the memories from your past, but you can form not a single new memory, which is that due to you, it puts you in a block of amber in the moment that you lost your

hippocampus. You can't put anything into your own personal history ever again. That's actually tragic. So we should all be first thankful for this hippocampus that we have. It means that I remember this conversation. I'll remember the wonderful introduction that you gave me and questions

that you're asking me. But the other incredible thing that the hippocampus does, besides allowing

us to form new memories for facts and events, is that it retains the capacity to grow brand new brain cells into adulthood. And there's only two brain areas in the entire brain that maintain this capacity to grow new brain cells. One is the olfactory bulb that helps you smell and the others that hippocampus. And so what does that mean? Well, that means that everybody has this capacity to get new brain cells that could potentially help your memory get better at any age.

And so the next question everybody could ask is how do I do that? How do I grow new hippocampal brain cells? So the easy answer is that everybody gets a few more just because you're human,

“but to grow even more, you need to get a protein in your brain called brain derived”

neurotrophic factor. It's a growth factor. Very important during early development when you're growing in your mother's uterus. And BDNF can increase in one particular situation that we have talked about for this whole podcast that is moving your body. Moving your body particularly at a level that increases your heart rate. That is aerobic level activity. We'll increase the level of BDNF in your hippocampus. And therefore increase the number of brand new brain cells

that are being grown. And that is, that is the secret sauce that anybody anywhere needs to have the biggest fattest fluffiest hippocampus that they can, which means that their memory is good. hippocampus, part of the hippocampus is also involved in emotional resonance. So mood regulation is in there. But the thing that most people just light up for is, yeah, I want a better memory.

“I forget my keys too. What if I never did that anymore? What if I could remember people's names?”

Oh my god, that would be so amazing. This is the formula. Get your heart rate up as much as you can

aerobically. We happen to be in the winter Olympics season. And I always think about all of that

amazing work that those athletes do aerobic training all through the year to have this five seconds of glory when they go down the slalom. I'll probably take some more than five seconds. But you know, that very short time period, all of that work is increasing their level of hippocampus BDNF and is helping them grow new hippocampus brain cells. I bet they didn't even know that. But that's what they get in addition. And all of us, even though we're not Olympic athletes, can get a little bit

of that by simply going on parwalks as much as we can. It's as simple as that. So fascinating, you know, there's an interesting quarrel. I played lacrosse and that's a lot of fun. But when you're going to school, talk about workload and you have that. But it's interesting how we all got good grades. And there's definitely a quarrelation, there's structure. But you know, we were on a wear of that because all the other kids were actually actively trying to kill brain cells, if you

know what I mean. But here we are. We weren't allowed to do drugs. We weren't allowed to, to party,

laughing at this idea, especially what's going on in our society now. It's like everything is about losing weight. And I'm just thinking about Gabrielle Lyons thinking big flat fluffy nothing. I hear you say it all the time. And I kind of know what you mean. But what do you mean when you say big fat fluffy brain and how is that a good thing? Yeah. So we know for a fact from many, many studies in experimental animals that the size of the hippocampus in rats that are running on a wheel a lot,

which is their favorite form of aerobic exercise is literally bigger. And okay, I added the words thought and fluffy because that goes with big. So but it's based on a biological fact. It started in rodent studies, but now it's been confirmed in human studies that activities that increase BDNF and or activities that really focus on hippocampus function. There are very famous

“London taxicab driver studies because that's what the hippocampus is really good at is”

spatial learning and memory brilliant neuroscientist in London, Eleanor McGuire asked the question well that's the case. And London taxicab drivers have to study for four years to take this big test called the knowledge to learn all the lawful driving routes through this complicated city. Maybe that helps their hippocampus. Yes, it did. It correlated with increased size of the hippocampus, big and fat and fluffy again. So that is just a biological fact. But what I talk about also is a big

fat fluffy brain and that comes from my mentor, neuroscience mentor, the woman who kind of inspired me to become a neuroscientist. Her name was Professor Marion Diamond, the very first female to ever

get a PhD in neuroanatomy at UC Berkeley ever. First woman PhD became an incredible instructor

“an incredible neuroscience kind of ground breaker for the discovery of brain classes. She showed”

that rats that were raised in what they guessed to be an enriched environment, which was a rat cage full of toys that got changed out lots of other rats to play with running wheels. I like to call it the disney world of rat cages that that actually increased the size of the outer covering of the brain, our brain and their brain, mammalian brain, called the cortex, in visual areas in somatosensory that is the touch area. And that was the first finding of

big fluffy brains coming from what she called enriched environments. What was the control, what was the reference, it was a impoverished environment, which was basically a shoebox of a rat cage, no toys, but free food and water and no running wheel and maybe one of the rats so they wouldn't get so lonely compared to that. The rats in disney world raised in disney world had bigger outer covering to the brains and eventually it was shown that their hippocampus was bigger. The

thickness of the hippocampus, the size of the hippocampus was bigger. And so that's where I get the phrase big and fat and fluffy. So dare I say that means that size matters in this situation.

And you know I've always been and this is a complement to my wife. I've always been very much

“more attracted to intelligence and now I know why you know so that's why I find my wife extremely”

beautiful but maybe it's because she has a big fat fluffy brain. Here's an interesting question and I want to get more into the science of the movement and stuff but I want to talk about memory because if we look at the hippocampus and I think it's really cool that you mentioned over and over again that there's two. A lot of people don't know that, you know and that's super cool right there. Like I actually had somebody when I shared that with them they're like

no that's wrong and I'm like look it up first before. But we also know that there's a filtering

system. I mean this is kind of the work that I do. I always refer to the brain as a sense making

meaning making machine and very often it's faulty. I was joking with Jim quick because you know his bestselling book is called Limitless and I was like well we should write a new book called Limit It because we are limited and how much we actually see. So my question to you is that if the hippocampus is retaining memories but we also know that very often we conjure up memories that are based on an illusion of what we think happened maybe because of trauma

and things like that. Is there any correlation of getting a big fat and fluffy hippocampus

improves because a lot of people are locked into a memory of something that happened that

didn't necessarily happen. I always say what you see is what you get but it's not necessarily

what is. So is there any studies or correlation that the sense making and meaning making machine

“becomes more efficient as we're building brain cells? Because that's what I would be interested in.”

Well here's the data with building of hippocampal size through aerobic exercise. There's so many studies in rodents that have shown this. It's hard to study meaning making rodents but what they get is better spatial memory that's the easiest thing to study. It's so well honed in rodents and so you get basically better memory of the kind that the rodent hippocampus does. That is that is clear. You get you get better memory performance. In humans also there is

evidence that certain forms of memory get better. Meaning making has not been studied and I would not agree with the idea that you start exercising a lot. Lots of BDNA for your hippocampus and it does get bigger. The memories that you've already made get better or more accurate. It's that you the hippocampus is then better able to encode the new memories. So that is the predicted findings from all the data there. Here's where that question comes from. So thank you for sharing

“the data. So I go to the gym and I'm in a place now where that's how I manage things like”

stress anxiety, depression. I don't eat drink and things like that. I go to the gym and everything is it's like prosak. But what I also identify is that let's say my wife and I are having a heated conversation or maybe I'm dealing with some sort of a stressful event at work. I'm much better at handling that event when I come out of the gym as well. So that's what's fascinating is is it almost appears that exercise and what it does for our brain gives us a better operating system. And that is

huge value because I think most people are worried about stuff that maybe doesn't really require

so much worry. You talk a lot and you always use the word love when you talk about the neurochemical

bubble bath and you alluded to it a little bit. So I want to ask a specific question about it. But first, what do you mean when you say a neurochemical bubble bath? By neurochemical bubble bath, I mean that every single time you move your body that you have a clear image of what that's doing to your muscles and to your limbs and things. But that movement actually stimulates the release of a whole bunch of neurochemicals, neurotransmitters that you've heard about like dopamine,

like serotonin, neurodrenaline and BDNAF also cortisol is part of the neurochemicals that get released in your brain with movement. Exercise is a stress. You need that sugar to be released that cortisol helps with so that your muscles have the energy that they need to work because you are an exercise is a form of stress. So this was, I don't know how I, I don't remember how I came up with it. But it's just so boring to say and then dopamine is released. Like big deal. Maybe it was

after I did a review paper and I just looked at this list of amazing neurochemicals that get released

after exercise. It's something exciting and I like a bubble bath and so it's a release of all these chemicals as if you have this wonderful sea salt bubble thing happening in your brain. It's a beautiful image to help people imagine the positive things happening in their brain when they're moving

“their body. And so that's what I mean. It just means that there are well-known set of chemicals,”

including our transmitters that get released with exercise. And to help you remember it, I call it a neurochemical bubble bath. I love that. When I go to the gym tonight, I'm going to walk out the door and say, sweetie, I'll be back for dinner. I'm going to go have a bubble bath. Yeah. That's perfect. I love it. Can I go back? I want to answer your question about why when you go to the gym, you are better able to deal with your difficult stressful situations. And that brings

up the second tea brain area out of many. But number two, really, that gets benefit from every single time you move your body. We talked about the hippocampus and BD enough. The other brain area that really is the number one in terms of effectiveness. If you look at all the studies on

area that they cite as being benefited prefrontal cortex? Prefrontal cortex is being benefited

“partially. We hypothesize because it uses dopamine as a neurotransmitter. That's being released.”

Oh, it's helping the prefrontal cortex. But the prefrontal cortex is your executive executive CEO of your entire brain. And one of the things that it controls is your emotional regulation. There are feedback loops from your prefrontal cortex down to an area called the migdala right in front of the hippocampus that is your anger or stress area. It gets activated in lots of difficult situations. And when you let that stress bubble up, that regulation from prefrontal

cortex to the migdala gets cut off. And the migdala takes over and you are angry, you are angry. You are all the kinds of angry. And it makes everything worse. Exercise at the gym enhances strengthens that regulation from the prefrontal cortex to the migdala. You are good.

“You can handle that person. You know that person's going to give you a hard time. But you are”

there. You know what's you can predict what's coming. We've all had that feeling where, yeah, you you predicted that beautifully. And you answered the question before it was even asked or addressed the issue before it even came up. That is part of the benefit that you get with your regular workout. That prefrontal improvement because it's enhancing your emotional regulation.

I always wear this hat. And this is kind of part of my new book and my stick in it. It sounds

like this. It's hmm. And what it stands for is H followed by three M's. And it stands for haven't made up my mind. And what's fascinating about this is I'm going to geek out it just a touch from my studies. I'm not a neuroscientist. I'm just a fan. But I've done a lot of reading.

“And that's what happens when your friend is gym quick. You have to read a lot. What I speak”

about is the stress response system and how a lot of people, it's kind of like the reverse of what you were just talking about, how the hippocampus and the amygdala kind of get together in the lower levels and tell the freefrontal cortex. Here's the deal. And then people are getting these weird perceptions and ideas flying off the handle, letting their knee jerk reflex. So the idea of cognitive distancing, you know, Victor Franco talks a lot about that. But the idea of pausing

that and saying, okay, we'll come back to that in a second. But then allowing your freefrontal

cortex to actually have a say. So what I teach people to do is whenever something occurs or you have a stressful event, you just say, hmm, and that's that's the anchor. But what I'm hearing is that that probably plays a big role when I come back from the gym is I no longer feel compelled to react where now I can move from reaction to response. And that's probably why we have much healthier conversations and sleep probably plays into that as well. One thing I want to

point out which is interesting, everybody's trying to get rid of stress. But what's interesting is we're also kind of talking about fighting stress with stress, with tension, you know, going to the gym and doing some work and stuff like that. So I find that fascinating. Here's the distinct question about the bubble bath. And I love the bubble bath, you know, I just wanted to know how you came up with it. What is it about movement or exercise that specifically? I mean, I know it's a

cascade of events. But when we talk about heart rate intensity, duration, what of those is the primary thing that is triggering the bubble bath? Yeah, that's such a great question. We don't know all the answers. We actually know more about the triggering of BDNF release in the hippocampus. There have been three pathways identified. One makes sense. So when your muscles are working as they do in exercise, they release a factor into the blood that has been shown to go up from the peripheral

blood system where your muscles are working up into the brain, blood system and transform into BDNF. There's another ketone body that gets released from the liver during exercise also,

a pre BDNF molecule gets converted into BDNF once it goes into the brain. And then a third is

factors released by fat cells when you are exercising also contribute to this kind of convergence of more BDNF that ends up being released in your brain. In terms of what exactly is triggering,

We know it happens in animals. We know it happens in humans. The mechanism still being explored.

But the mechanism for the BDNF is one that we have a little bit of a better handle on. So fascinating. I'm just wondering if I could just go to the gym for five minutes now and be fine. I'd love speaking to people like you. I've had Jill Bolte Taylor on the show as well. It's just so fascinating when you learn the science behind some of these things. A lot of people are going around saying, "This is interesting. I didn't forget my keys today," and all that.

But there's a science to it and we can actually leverage it. So what I'm really, really fascinated

“with, and I think that most people are, is how little do I have to do, because most people”

are not doing. So if somebody wants a bubble bath, if somebody wants a big fat, fluffy brain, the average person is going to, and with the crazy lives, the average person is like, "What's the minimum?" And I've heard you talk about that. But what's the minimum effect or effective dose of movement? Yeah. So the answer to that is quite clear. Studies have shown that just 10 minutes of walking can have enough of an effect to lower your anxiety into pressure levels. And so that's

great. But then you say, "Well, but I want the fat hippocampus." Does it give me the fat hippocampus?

And the answer is probably not alone, but that's the minimum dose of all these things that I've

been talking about. They don't call it, come all in a pre-made package. They come a little bit separated. And the BD enough seems to be most readily released with that aerobic exercise. You can get some aerobic exercise with the power walk. The 10-minute walk studies were not aerobic walks. They were just walk for 10 minutes. And I think everybody's has experience that, I can't stand it in the office anymore. I'm going to go outside and just take a regular walk

around and say, "Okay, I feel a little bit better." That is the movement having an effect on your basic mood on part of the bubble bath. Other elements, especially the long-term elements, big fat, fluffy brain indicates anatomical changes. That goes into physiological changes in your hippocampus. I'm sorry, you don't get that with just ten minutes of walking. You get that with regular aerobic workout. And that's where the prescription gets a little bit fuzzy. I can add the findings

for my own studies in my own lab, which is that we showed that low-fit people that are working out less than 30 minutes a week for the last three months actually have improved pre-functal and hippocampal function. When they start to do aerobic workouts for two to three times a week, 45 minutes. I need aerobic. I mean spin class is what we ask them to do. We give them three spin class and that moved the needle. And so it is doable. It's not as low as ten minutes, but you have

a little buffet that you can choose from now. I'm buffet. It's funny because we have conditioned things that we say that prove your point. I'm going to go walk it off. In fact, when I was in college, I worked at a bar. That was like a bouncer at the door for a little while. And we used to say,

“hey, go walk it off, go cool your head. So now we understand what that is. But we also say you have to”

walk before you run. So when we talk about, safe to say that when we talk about the ten minutes, there's a dramatic effect of it. But if you want the long-term big-fat fluffy effects, what we're hoping is that the walk maybe turns into a run of source on day. I believe everybody has to be addicted to something. And I think it's human nature. So we want people to get addicted to something that's good for them. Is that safe to say? Exactly. Yeah. I think it's safe to say,

I also know that by using the running metaphor, you are horrifying so many people. I was like,

I will never run in my whole life, which is when we need to remind people that dancing,

walking fast with your dog, walking far with your friends, there's more than one way to get this movement into your life. So important to realize that be creative and use your own likes. It's not all about doing the worst horrible thing that you think you're never going to do because you're never going to do it. And a little bit of coaching, yourself coaching, to remind yourself,

“what are those things that I have enjoyed through my life is a great direction to go to find”

that thing that you will do? Makes sense. Makes perfect sense. Are you a big fan of things like meditation and breath work and do they play a role in this as well? Absolutely. I'm a huge fan.

I really want to do this and I would try and then I would fall off the wagon and try again.

“I finally found something about 10 years ago that really made me meditate regularly daily,”

which is a team meditation. I meditate over the brewing and drinking of tea. I learned how much I love tea. And then more recently I started going to a yearly breath meditation retreat where you do structured breath meditation every day, morning, afternoon, and then you have

some break. It's a lovely fun thing to do. But that is very powerful as well. The very first

kind of meditation was breath meditation. The oldest form of meditation. And it is powerful as activating your person with that nervous system immediately. So getting good at bringing that those patterns into your breathing seems kind of silly. I know how to breathe. Well, I learned I didn't know how to breathe. And now I have many more patterns to call on in lots of situations. So big concern, hot topic is, you know, the rapid advancement that we can't stop of things like

AI and my last guess that I just interviewed was this guy, Rizwan Verk, who was the authority and simulation hypothesis. And so we don't even know if any of this is even real. You know, we're moving into this AI dominant era and much of my work kind of recognizes that for the most

“part human beings without even knowing it are kind of like delegating and offloading. I think”

you call it cognitive offloading. We're kind of delegating and offloading thinking to the matrix per se, you know, to social media, to news and all that. We've kind of like somehow mistaken efficiency as intelligence. What are your concerns with that? And what do you think needs to be done about that? Because we're using our brains less and less. And I don't think that's a good idea.

Yeah, that's not a good idea. I do think there's powerful things when can use AI for as a

dean of the largest private undergraduate college in the country. AI is not helpful to offload all your essay writing. Obviously, that is where you want to use your reign. It's gotten just too easy to offload all of that thinking, all of that work. It takes time and practice and poor grades turning into better grades to actually learn how to write. I know that from long, hard efforts at writing and people, oh, you're a good writer. You wrote two books. Oh, I took me so long.

How many red marks did I get on my papers a lot? I had nobody to write it for me. Oh, that's not true.

Everybody had, if you were rich enough, you always had access to pay somebody else to write it for you.

That was always there. Now it's more equitable. I guess that's part of a good thing. But I think that there's a big element of timing of when this could be most efficient to help the world get better and not just me to get more time, although for myself, which is, which is important. But I think strong thinkers using AI strategically is very powerful. I think giving it willy and nilly to our kids to go run a muck and use it not to think and to be able to finish their

“huge piles of homework that is terrible, the worst thing that we could ever do. So it is an age-specific”

thing. And, you know, what we're already in these conversations about how to AI proof our classes. And I think what I've loved seeing is that it ends up being many more conversations, deep conversations that are part of the grade that you have with each other. You have with the professor so they can see the developing of your ideas in real time. We're not, you know, using AI. We don't have a solution already made, but a colleague of mine wrote a op-ed about how sales

of blue books guyrocketed last year because that we're going backwards to tell me in your own words, in your written handwriting, what you know about this. And that is the purest way to understand a student's understanding of the topic at hand. It seems like if we progressively bypass the prompt phase and we don't wrestle with our own thoughts, we're going to be in trouble. Back to their cognitive distancing concept, if I ask you a question because I'm wondering what I can do for people as well.

So if I ask you a question or ask my children a question that will not suffice with a program

but we also burn a lot of calories thinking and people are taking a break from that.

“I would assume that a question that I ask you, like, you know, maybe I asked you one of these questions”

today and you're in your prefrontal cortex when you're thinking, right? Is there any science in benefit to that? Because that's my biggest fear is that we're moving further and further away from thinking and it might be efficient right now, but I would assume the long-term effects are going to be bad or could be bad. But is there a little bit of a cognitive fitness component to this when you tangle with your thoughts and you think? Oh, absolutely. I mean, I'm in the

business of teaching, thinking, thinking about not just my discipline neuroscience, but all the other disciplines represented in a college of a typical college of arts and science, a liberal arts, institution and I deeply believe that all of that kind of thinking is what got me to where I am today. Yes. I majored in physiology and anatomy when I went to college, but I was also,

I took a lot of French classes. I went abroad and I did my third year abroad and I learned French

and I took French literature and French art classes in French and that really taught me how to think. Of course, it was in an era where there were no computers and there was no, there were computers, but they were not Google and certainly AI wasn't even a glimmer in anybody's eye. So the practice of thinking is so important and has been shown by the National Academy of Medicine to be also very,

“very powerful together with exercise. As you were saying, you have to work your brain. It's like a brain”

workout, thinking that it is a brain workout and it's not, sorry, I have nothing against Sudoko. It's not just Sudoko, that's a little bit too pattern patterning. It is strategic. It is chess. Learn a new language. Do something that's like, oh, God, that's not going to be easy. That's going to be a little bit hard. That is great for your brain and also, like exercise, leads directly to positive brain plasticity. My biggest concern is efficiency. You know, we're addicted to it and, you know,

you mentioned learning a language. Kids don't need to learn languages now because the apps do it for them. So good parenting, right? We got to lead by example and you know, sit down some rules. You spoke about in your book Good Anxiety, which I think is the funniest name for a book ever because I mean, like, hey, I'm going to, my goal is today to have some anxiety because it's good. According to Dr. Suzuki, I love the concept though. I explain what you mean when you talk

about anxiety is not necessarily a villain. It could be good. Yes, absolutely. So I always say that

anxiety, in fact, is good because we all have it. It's something that every one of us experiences out of all of our millions of years of evolution. It didn't leave us. And so you have that, what is it there for? It's there for protection. It is a protective emotion. It keeps you safe from other things and that is why it survived. It helped us survive as a species, millions of years ago. Okay, now it's not as beneficial because the stimulants of anxiety are far too many and far

too accessible for us. However, the Book Good Anxiety tells us how to get back to that protective element of anxiety and really use the power of anxiety. I talk about all the superpowers that come from anxiety because if it is protective, it can't just be, oh, I'm going to teach how to reduce it,

“right? How are you going to use it? And that's how the book was born. It was, it was both science”

meditation on anxiety but also a very practical use of actually here are all the ways as I started researching and writing the book that I already used my anxiety for my benefit. And that's how the book kind of came to be. Okay, brain rot. And you know, there's there's actual terms, you know, and the kids think it's funny like, you know, I heard my son say to my daughter like, oh, she's doomed scrolling and stuff like that. So my question is, is those are dopamine hits, you know,

and getting likes and views and comments and we're living in a bubble bath of dopamine, but it's being generated without thinking. Exactly. Is this affecting the effectiveness of movement? Are we going to have to work harder to get the results that you're talking about with

I don't know any studies that look at that directly. I think it could get harder to benefit from

exercise because it's harder to pull our way, pull ourselves away from the doom scrolling or just any scrolling, right? It's not all doom related. Sometimes it's, you know, a positive or other thing, not just doom related. Right. So yes, to pull yourself away from that that is addictive and is dopamine generating and reducing our ability to focus for longer periods of time. That makes it harder to start going to the gym makes it harder to perhaps appreciate the dopamine

that's generated there because you get all the dopamine from your doom scrolling. But you get other things that come with exercise. You do not get that energetic, good, you know, work out

“feeling from doom scrolling ever. So I think indirectly it is an effect and so there's lots of ways”

to look as a society about how to decrease that habit, taking phones away or not allowing these kinds of smart phones until much later in our maturity and to use it responsibly when you get into high school college, university, all of these things are really, really important to think about systemically. Do you have children? No, I don't have children. So one of the things that I notice in my kids as a result, I mean, I have dream kids, they're great, they're athletes,

they do everything right but they are glued to the screen sometimes and I'm seeing an increase in the attention lag, you know, it's like, yes. Lexi, Lexi, Lexi, and then they kind of look at you, there's definitely some things that are going to have to change there. I would love to note what your morning routine is and I know that you talk a lot about how movement in general is good

“but you choose to do it in the morning but what's the essence of your morning routine and why?”

So the essence is I try and get all the good things for my life and for my brain done first thing

because I found that if I leave them later, then something always takes its place. So my routine

is I like to wake up early, I've always been an early bird, I wake up between 5 and 5.30. I first do my team meditation so the meditation over the brewing and drinking of tea that last for about 45 minutes and then after my tea, I do, I like to do a 30 minute but sometimes if I have to get going early, it goes down to 10 minutes, cardio, weights kind of workout, I also throw in some yoga in there if I need a stretch out in the morning. My optimal time is 30 minutes, I have

all these 30 minute workouts that I really love. Then I have breakfast and then I get into work usually by 830, 8 or 830. So that is my third morning routine on regular workdays. And if you were only allowed to keep one of those things for your morning routine, which would you

say is the most valuable one that you would just never ever not do? That is a very

diabolical question. I'm sorry about that. And I feel bad saying this because I wrote a book all on exercise and so people can't throw away the exercise. But I can walk up and down the stairs, I cannot get my team meditation back in the same way. Interesting during the day. So I would keep the team meditation and then because I couldn't do anything else, I would, I would up my walking upstairs and doing an extra lap around things to get my workout in, not in the morning. That's

what I would do. Perfect. And I'm sorry I asked that question to you. That's okay. But I was just curious. It was my dark passenger that said that. So just final question, if somebody is listening to this and they have this little tickle of wanting to do something, what would you recommend is the one thing that they do to get started, what would be the best way for them to take a step forward to start tapping into some of this stuff? I think walking

“is the best thing. Walking outside on a nice day, don't choose the rainy horrible day. And just”

just do a 10 minute walk and notice. Notice how you feel before, during and after. You have literally just given your brain above a bath. Notice how that feels and that will get you started. Yeah. And if you like the bubble bath, maybe you'll take a longer bubble bath. Exactly. I feel like I just had a bubble bath and I think everybody that listens to this will feel the same. So I want to thank you so much for taking time. It's an honor and a privilege that you've been

in what we called the Dragon's Layer. You did fantastic. Oh, thank you. How should people that

to learn more about your work? Yeah. You could find everything including all my Instagram and all my

“handles at WendySuzuki.com. It's my website. Good here about my classes, about my vision for the”

college, about all of my work and talks and podcasts of appearances as well. So that's the best place.

Dr. WendySuzuki, thank you so much for being on the make sense with Dr. JC podcast. It's been

“nothing but a delicious delight. Thank you so much for being here.”

Thank you for having me. This was so much fun. My name is Dr. WendySuzuki and this podcast

makes sense. That's it for today. To support the make sense with Dr. JC podcast, be sure to subscribe, like and share as well as follow the make sense sub-stack for free daily quotes, live streams, and blogs. And remember, learning without action is just another form of distraction. If something

“hit home and you learn something today, give it away. That's the only way it's going to stay.”

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