Latest / Hardiness with Dr Paul Taylor / Unlocking Brain Chemistry: The Power of Dopamine, Oxytocin, Serotonin & Endorphins

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Unlocking Brain Chemistry: The Power of Dopamine, Oxytocin, Serotonin & Endorphins · Hardiness with Dr Paul Taylor

• 0:10
  Speaker 1: T J.
• 0:10
  Speaker 2: Parr, Welcome to the podcast.
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: Thanks for having me.
• 0:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and I need to start with an apology because
• 0:18
  Speaker 2: I have screwed you around like no other guests. First
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: of all, you were the victim of a dog yesterday,
• 0:26
  Speaker 2: but my dog yesterday that was unfortunately put down, so
• 0:29
  Speaker 2: I had to put you off. And then I got
• 0:32
  Speaker 2: the time wrong, and then there was a link that
• 0:35
  Speaker 2: you were in that I couldn't get into. Were eventually
• 0:39
  Speaker 2: here about a day and an hour late. But thank
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  Speaker 2: you for your patience. Now you you're doing some stuff
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: that I think is hugely important, right. I actually think
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: if we if we look at all of the mental
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: health conditions that have been expanding with every release of
• 1:02
  Speaker 2: the d s M, I think a shitload of them
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: fall under what I am terming modern lifestyle modern lifestyle
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  Speaker 2: disorder m l D. Yeah, you know, the mild anxiety,
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: the mild depression, the mild IDHD. Yeah, all those mile
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  Speaker 2: things I think are largely driven by our modern lifestyle.
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  Speaker 2: And I think you have written the manual to overcome
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  Speaker 2: them right with your book on the dose effect. You
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  Speaker 2: kind of see where I'm going here, and and and
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  Speaker 2: the stuff that you talk about I think is it's
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  Speaker 2: hugely important for everybody to understand who's living in the
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  Speaker 2: modern world. And I love the introduction to your to
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  Speaker 2: your book. It's very similar lines to my book Death
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: by Comfort, where it's about evolutionary biology and that basically
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  Speaker 2: we are ancient bodies and brains that are plunked into
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  Speaker 2: this modern world world that is just not aligned at all.
• 2:03
  Speaker 2: So but by way of introduction, tell our listeners a
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: little bit about your background and then how you get
• 2:12
  Speaker 2: into this space, the setting up of the Douche lab,
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: writing the book. Just take us on your journey for
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  Speaker 2: a little bit.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, So I love that you're also interested in evolutionary biology.
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  Speaker 1: I think a lot of the.
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  Speaker 3: Wisdom to how we can solve the reality humanity are
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  Speaker 3: now in is found in that ancient knowledge. So that's cool.
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  Speaker 3: And yeah, I'm a neuroscientist. I run this dose research
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  Speaker 3: lab where we've turned these four chemicals dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin,
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  Speaker 3: and endorphins into a psychological intervention. Then we run this
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  Speaker 3: thirty day challenge where we over thirty days, get people
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  Speaker 3: to complete challenges every day with the intention of optimizing
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  Speaker 3: and rebalancing these four chemicals. Then we're measuring lots of
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  Speaker 3: cool things around ADHD and well being and sleep and
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  Speaker 3: attitudes towards health, and we're seeing amazing impacts. In our
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  Speaker 3: latest study, we got eight of our markers to statistically
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  Speaker 3: significantly improve, which was very exciting in the research lab world.
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  Speaker 3: And my kind of background into this is I was
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  Speaker 3: just a massive dopamine addict my whole life. I mean
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  Speaker 3: to an extent I still am. I'm like a managed
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  Speaker 3: dopamine addict. And like as a young kid that might
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  Speaker 3: have been sugar, and then quite quickly it with cigarettes,
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  Speaker 3: and then it was alcohol, and then it was partying
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  Speaker 3: and pornography as a teenager social media addiction, like it
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  Speaker 3: just I was just very addicted to stimulation. And then
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  Speaker 3: when I discovered dopamine as an idea six or seven
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  Speaker 3: years ago, like before it was kind of a mainstream
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  Speaker 3: chemical of sort, it explained a lot to me about
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  Speaker 3: kind of what I was chasing and why I was
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  Speaker 3: struggling with my mental health so much, like I was
• 4:02
  Speaker 3: experiencing lots of periods of intense low mood and anxiety
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  Speaker 3: and I didn't yet understand like, oh, so, how cool
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  Speaker 3: is this your dove? Meaning this is exactly what will
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  Speaker 3: happen three days after when you're do' mean resets and
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  Speaker 3: things like that. And I then went on a journey
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  Speaker 3: of kind of healing my own brain chemistry and saw
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  Speaker 3: drastic improvement in my life, my relationships, my health, my work,
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  Speaker 3: my career, and thought, cool, this, this is important, this stuff.
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  Speaker 3: So I began turning it into this protocol and then
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  Speaker 3: that kind of has unfolded over the last five years
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  Speaker 3: into where we are to and what was.
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  Speaker 2: The process of setting up the lab? Can you just
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  Speaker 2: just give our listeners a little bit of an insight
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  Speaker 2: to that, and and and and then generating funds for
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  Speaker 2: the because you know, research is frigging hard to do, right,
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  Speaker 2: You've got to find them, you've got to find the money,
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  Speaker 2: then you've got to find the participants, and then you've
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  Speaker 2: got to publish the So talk us through the little journey.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, So a huge amount of the work was actually
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  Speaker 3: creating the intervention, so coming up with an idea that
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  Speaker 3: could have an impact. And we, for contexts, have now
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  Speaker 3: taken one hundred and four thousand people through this intervention,
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  Speaker 3: so like it's been a process of like really working
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  Speaker 3: out a lot of people with this intervention, and I
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  Speaker 3: didn't have to find amazing people to work with me
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  Speaker 3: on this project, people that were doing their PhDs and
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  Speaker 3: their masters that could contribute and bring knowledge as to
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  Speaker 3: how we could create like the most reliable and valid
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  Speaker 3: study that we could build. And then in terms of
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  Speaker 3: funding it, I was very fortunate because of my brand
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  Speaker 3: on Instagram to have a number of publishers come to
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  Speaker 3: me a few years ago that would like to do
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  Speaker 3: Dose as a book, and I chose to utilize a
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  Speaker 3: lot of the funds that they paid for the book
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  Speaker 3: to fund the lab because I felt like it was
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  Speaker 3: like a wise idea to kind of invest in the
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  Speaker 3: credibility of Dose as an idea, and that then, yeah,
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  Speaker 3: gave it was the opportunity to somewhat self fund. I mean,
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  Speaker 3: I could have spent that money on a car, I guess,
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  Speaker 3: but I thought it would be a better use of
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  Speaker 3: the finance to put it towards finding solutions to these
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  Speaker 3: mental challenges we're facing. And yeah, we've that study concluded
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  Speaker 3: at the end of last year. We're just about to
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  Speaker 3: finish the entire write up and then we're hoping for
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  Speaker 3: publication this summer, which we're very excited about. It's been
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  Speaker 3: maybe a two and a half year journey to get
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  Speaker 3: to this point because research is expensive and complicated, and
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  Speaker 3: we we wanted to run two studies on the intervention
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  Speaker 3: and in person and a virtual study so we can
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  Speaker 3: compare the data as to how the intervention is delivered,
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  Speaker 3: and then in terms of participant recruitment, we did one
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  Speaker 3: with just a university set of students and then we
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  Speaker 3: got ethical approval to expand it to the whole of
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  Speaker 3: the UK, so it's only we managed to get a
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  Speaker 3: bigger sample size after the first one was complete, So
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  Speaker 3: it's a really robust study. It's just taking its time
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  Speaker 3: and yeah, it's been cool, and.
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  Speaker 2: Are you allowed to give us any insight at this
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  Speaker 2: stage as to any differences in the in person versus the.
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  Speaker 3: Online Fascinatingly, we managed to achieve the same date in
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  Speaker 3: terms of the change, and I was somewhat surprised by that,
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  Speaker 3: to be honest, because I do a lot of these
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  Speaker 3: live experiences, and of course the in person experience is
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  Speaker 3: more fun and it's more exciting to be a part of,
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  Speaker 3: but that's not necessarily like what the study was measuring.
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  Speaker 3: We weren't measuring fun and excitingness. We were measuring like
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  Speaker 3: the actual change in behavior activation with their dopamine measure
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  Speaker 3: and so on, and we actually achieved very similar results.
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  Speaker 1: Across the markets.
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  Speaker 3: And wow, interestingly the virtual one was slightly better, But
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  Speaker 3: it could be that the intervention had like ever.
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  Speaker 1: So slightly improved.
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  Speaker 3: Maybe there's always variables because it was like three months later,
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  Speaker 3: but in terms of the things we're measuring the same results.
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  Speaker 2: That's pretty cool. That's actually really cool for for an
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  Speaker 2: online intervention to have the same impact as a face
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  Speaker 2: to face one. The the online stuff has got to
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  Speaker 2: be really really useful. And so dose stands for dopamine
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  Speaker 2: obtusly and started toning the doorphins and and and let's
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  Speaker 2: do a bit of a deep dive into each of them. First,
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  Speaker 2: cab off the rank. Let's pick dopamine, all right, and
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  Speaker 2: we could do a whole podcast on dopamine. But what
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  Speaker 2: so dopamine? You know, some people think of it as
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  Speaker 2: the chemical of pleasure, but that's not really what it is, right,
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  Speaker 2: It's more about goal directed behavior motivation. But what what
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  Speaker 2: what is its role in hard work? And you know
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  Speaker 2: it's a bit of evolutionary biology here, and also the balance.
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  Speaker 2: I know you've talked about the balance between pleasure and pain.
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  Speaker 2: So talk us through that a little bit. Yeah, stop,
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  Speaker 2: somebody has just heard of dopamine but don't really know
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  Speaker 2: much about it.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah.
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  Speaker 3: I would always see dopamine as the chemical that's driving
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  Speaker 3: motivation as a central idea. So when someone comes to
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  Speaker 3: the lab, for example, we do initial baseline assessments, and
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  Speaker 3: we're looking at how driven is that individual to do
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  Speaker 3: hard things and things they don't even necessarily want to do.
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  Speaker 3: And then also we look at their attentional controls, their
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  Speaker 3: capacity to stay focused on something. So I think of
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  Speaker 3: this a case We've got a chemical makes you want
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  Speaker 3: to do hard things, and it helps you focus on
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  Speaker 3: potentially the hard things that you're doing as you share that.
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  Speaker 3: It is kind of being deemed as this pleasure chemical
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  Speaker 3: in the modern world. Whilst there can be pleasurable experiences
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  Speaker 3: associated with dopamine, I see it much morest like a
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  Speaker 3: chemical associate with anticipation of reward that constantly makes you
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  Speaker 3: want things.
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  Speaker 1: It puts you into this wanting state.
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  Speaker 3: And for our ancestors that create this constant anticipation of
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  Speaker 3: the desire for food and shelter and fire and and
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  Speaker 3: fresh water, and then as they had that anticipatory experience.
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  Speaker 3: Dop meine was driving them and focusing them towards that
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  Speaker 3: goal that they had in their mind. And as we
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  Speaker 3: have evolved as a specie, we somewhat figured out how
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  Speaker 3: to artificially hack the experience of that reward that we
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  Speaker 3: were anticipating and seeking to attack. So, if you think
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  Speaker 3: of sexual intimacy as something that a human would naturally desire,
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  Speaker 3: the creation of pornography that can deliver a simulated experience
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  Speaker 3: of intimacy rapidly to your brain, that's going to create
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  Speaker 3: dop mein far more quickly than it is naturally designed
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  Speaker 3: to do. So you get these big dopamine spikes and
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  Speaker 3: then these subsequent big crashes because we just live in
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  Speaker 3: a brain and body that wants balance, wants homeostasis at
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  Speaker 3: all times.
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  Speaker 1: And I think.
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  Speaker 3: This way in which we're simulating everything, like social media
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  Speaker 3: is simulating community, AI is now similar in companionship, junk
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  Speaker 3: food simulating nourishment. We're simulating the key parts of the
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  Speaker 3: human experience, and that's kind of hacking this tho.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, I remember seeing Nora Volkov's work from the National
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  Speaker 2: Institute of Health like maybe ten fifteen years ago. She
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  Speaker 2: did a lot of stuff on dopamine, and the amount
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  Speaker 2: of dopamine reised above base levels. And I can't remember
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  Speaker 2: the exact stuff, but it was like it was like
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  Speaker 2: food is two hundred percent something like that, and like
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  Speaker 2: sex was three hundred percent, and then like like like
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  Speaker 2: cocaine and well over one thousand percent. Right, it's just
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  Speaker 2: just to see that was like, and it's kind of
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  Speaker 2: like we've created a bunch of nuclear rewards that kind
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  Speaker 2: of happening ahead of dopamine that that wasn't really designed for. Right.
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  Speaker 2: And so the way I kind of often talk about
• 11:53
  Speaker 2: is that when you're eating at Tim Tam, you're gonna
• 11:55
  Speaker 2: have to get used to this TJ when I you're
• 11:58
  Speaker 2: in Australia, Yeah, I've seen his bloody Alsi's called them
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  Speaker 2: tim TAM's right. But so when you're in Australias all
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  Speaker 2: know about and I said, when you're eating a Tim Tam,
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  Speaker 2: there certain neurochemicals released. This going, oh that's lovely, and
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  Speaker 2: dopamine's going words the rest of the packet because it's
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  Speaker 2: just more right. And I think nor Vocal and you
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  Speaker 2: touch on this is that when you're constantly bombarding your
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  Speaker 2: brain with huge amounts of dopamine the brain goes. Actually
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  Speaker 2: this is out of whak And and Vokov showed that
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  Speaker 2: people who are constantly bombarding the brain with these nuclear rewards,
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  Speaker 2: the brain adapts by reducing the amount of receptors for dopamine.
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  Speaker 2: And basically that means you need more just to feel
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  Speaker 2: the same. Right. Is that something that you have seen
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  Speaker 2: in the research that you're doing and when you were
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  Speaker 2: researching this book.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, So we're very interested in these two areas of
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  Speaker 3: the brain, the ventral tegmental area the VTA, which is
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  Speaker 3: the effectively kind of your dopamine factory where the little
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  Speaker 3: dopamine vesticles are being built. Then your nucleus are cumbans
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  Speaker 3: where those receivers of the doping vesicles are. And the
• 13:14
  Speaker 3: challenges is your factory can build these vesicals and then
• 13:17
  Speaker 3: it can send them to the nucleus cumbans. If you
• 13:20
  Speaker 3: only had let's just like it doesn't work as simple
• 13:22
  Speaker 3: as this, But if there were kind of ten little
• 13:24
  Speaker 3: catchers there, if you chuck like one hundred bits of
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  Speaker 3: dop mean at them, they some of them are gonna
• 13:29
  Speaker 3: be I can't catch this much dove mean, and they're
• 13:31
  Speaker 3: going to somewhat break those little things that can catch
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  Speaker 3: these doping vesicals, and then the receptors begin to reduce
• 13:37
  Speaker 3: in the quantity, so they then are less sensitive to dopamine,
• 13:41
  Speaker 3: which is why someddenly. As simple as eating a meal,
• 13:45
  Speaker 3: which would have arguably been one of the greatest dop
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  Speaker 3: meine hits in the world as a hunter gatherer now
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  Speaker 3: is somewhat boring if you don't have a screen playing
• 13:53
  Speaker 3: at the same time, and that's like a big shift
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  Speaker 3: for the human being. Like one of the greatest dop
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  Speaker 3: mean hits accessible isn't good enough unless YouTube is on
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  Speaker 3: at the same time, and you can then resensitize your
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  Speaker 3: dop means. So if for example, for seventy two hours
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  Speaker 3: you didn't eat, you didn't look at any screens whilst
• 14:09
  Speaker 3: you ate, your brain would start getting less of this
• 14:12
  Speaker 3: overbearing stimulation. These receptors start to rebuild themselves. So there's
• 14:16
  Speaker 3: a really crucial kind of destimulating approach we have to
• 14:20
  Speaker 3: take to our life to resensitize our dose means so
• 14:22
  Speaker 3: things feel good.
• 14:23
  Speaker 2: Can I give you a very poignant and recent example
• 14:26
  Speaker 2: of that, So I just I yesterday completed AE hundred
• 14:32
  Speaker 2: hour fast right, oh, okay, and so and and at
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  Speaker 2: the end of the one hundred are fast. I did
• 14:39
  Speaker 2: some refeeding, right, and I used to because I want
• 14:43
  Speaker 2: to repopulate my got micro bam. So I had a
• 14:45
  Speaker 2: bit of upple side of vinegar first, then I had
• 14:48
  Speaker 2: some keffer and and then I well, I had some bumbers,
• 14:52
  Speaker 2: and then I had my meal. The whole made beans
• 14:56
  Speaker 2: have never tasted so good. But it's because I've had
• 15:00
  Speaker 2: one hundred hours without any foot.
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: Right, and then.
• 15:04
  Speaker 2: All of a sudden that reward is like wow. And
• 15:09
  Speaker 2: again I think it plays into evolutionary biology and the
• 15:12
  Speaker 2: whole idea of fast versus slow jopamine, which you talked about.
• 15:17
  Speaker 2: Can you tell our listeners a little bit about that.
• 15:21
  Speaker 3: Yeah, It's just some things are going to many actions
• 15:25
  Speaker 3: we take are going to impact our dopamine receptors in
• 15:27
  Speaker 3: some way, and some are going to create a much
• 15:29
  Speaker 3: quicker activation of that dopamine than others. So if you
• 15:32
  Speaker 3: were to compare a timtam to a piece of steak,
• 15:38
  Speaker 3: both are going to be great for our dopamine, but
• 15:40
  Speaker 3: the steak will naturally generate dop me in your brain,
• 15:43
  Speaker 3: so your dopamine will naturally rise your body metabolizes all
• 15:46
  Speaker 3: the nutrients from a steak. A tim tam is just
• 15:48
  Speaker 3: going to artificially spike the dopemine through the processed sugar
• 15:52
  Speaker 3: and the other additives.
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: That will be in there.
• 15:54
  Speaker 3: And we aren't designed to really ever experience quote unquote
• 15:59
  Speaker 3: fast like our ancestors. They could occasionally, like might even
• 16:02
  Speaker 3: find some honey that would be like faster opening state.
• 16:07
  Speaker 3: It'd be faster, but it wouldn't have like this artificial
• 16:10
  Speaker 3: nature of what we have in the modern world. So
• 16:12
  Speaker 3: there's there's fast and slowed dove mean with food, but
• 16:15
  Speaker 3: then there's also fast and slowed dover mean with intimacy.
• 16:18
  Speaker 3: There's fast and slow with what you watch on your phone,
• 16:20
  Speaker 3: like Instagram reels versus a twenty minute video on Netflix
• 16:24
  Speaker 3: or YouTube like that would be slowed dove.
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: Mean versus fast op mean.
• 16:28
  Speaker 3: And we're just like really needing to try and orient
• 16:31
  Speaker 3: ourselves back towards like a slower way as we to
• 16:34
  Speaker 3: manage this dopamin.
• 16:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and I read a research peoper I can't remember
• 16:39
  Speaker 2: who published it, but it was basically saying that when
• 16:42
  Speaker 2: you get those fast dopamine hits from the modern world,
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: you didn't get that rebound, whereas the slower dopamine from
• 16:50
  Speaker 2: you know, doing a hard workout, you know, getting into
• 16:53
  Speaker 2: a sauna, getting into an ice bat, or as a
• 16:56
  Speaker 2: hunter gatherer, you know, hunting for a whole day because
• 17:00
  Speaker 2: you're starving. That tlpamine that's earned. That's aren't yeh, different
• 17:06
  Speaker 2: to easy tlpamine that that isn't turned and and it
• 17:10
  Speaker 2: is a more sustained release and less of a crash.
• 17:15
  Speaker 2: Is that is that? Is that correct in your understanding
• 17:19
  Speaker 2: of it?
• 17:20
  Speaker 3: Yeah, So that paper would largely be looking into what's
• 17:22
  Speaker 3: called phasic and tonic dopamine release, which is whether it
• 17:25
  Speaker 3: releases rapidly and then burns out or whether it releases slowly.
• 17:30
  Speaker 3: And a good way to think about this is our
• 17:35
  Speaker 3: heart rate is constantly fluctuating, like as you and I talk,
• 17:39
  Speaker 3: can we get into a discussion, Maybe it speeds up
• 17:41
  Speaker 3: a little bit, like we have some excitement, and then
• 17:42
  Speaker 3: maybe I'll sit on the sofa and it'll call back down.
• 17:44
  Speaker 3: But it'll be quite like small changes maybe from sixty
• 17:48
  Speaker 3: to eighty beats per.
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: Minute, like fluctuating like that.
• 17:52
  Speaker 3: If you look at someone's heart rate on a monitor,
• 17:55
  Speaker 3: it might be slowly kind of it goes up a
• 17:56
  Speaker 3: bit and then it kind of cheers back out, it
• 17:58
  Speaker 3: goes down a bit, and it's like a steady slow.
• 18:00
  Speaker 3: If you're ever watching one of those like hospital TV
• 18:03
  Speaker 3: shows and someone's having a heart attack, what you'll see
• 18:05
  Speaker 3: as a heart rate that's going like super fast and
• 18:07
  Speaker 3: super slow, super fast and super slow. It's not like
• 18:09
  Speaker 3: when you have a heart attack. All it does is
• 18:11
  Speaker 3: go up. It goes up and down, up and down,
• 18:13
  Speaker 3: up and down. And that's because the body has a
• 18:16
  Speaker 3: very unique and intelligent mechanism in it that's trying to
• 18:19
  Speaker 3: constantly return everything to baseline. So if the heart something
• 18:23
  Speaker 3: goes fast, the yeah homeostasis the next beat. If there's
• 18:27
  Speaker 3: a fast heartbeat, the body naturally has to try and
• 18:30
  Speaker 3: slow immediately the next heartbeat under that to try and
• 18:33
  Speaker 3: constantly find balance with our dopamine.
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: If our dope mean something.
• 18:37
  Speaker 3: Rapidly increases because we're watching Instagram reels, it means immediately
• 18:40
  Speaker 3: after that activity, our body has to downregulate. Our brain
• 18:43
  Speaker 3: has to downregulate the dopamine production to try and meet
• 18:46
  Speaker 3: the equilibrium. And it means that that feeling, which is
• 18:50
  Speaker 3: a bit low and apathetic, you can't alas do anything
• 18:53
  Speaker 3: like you've been lying on the sofa all evening watching
• 18:55
  Speaker 3: your phone, and then even the thought of going to
• 18:57
  Speaker 3: brush your teeth feels like too big of a task
• 18:59
  Speaker 3: to manage. That's because your dopamine has been down regulated
• 19:04
  Speaker 3: because you've overstimulated it too quickly with the quick videos.
• 19:08
  Speaker 2: And I think every every parent who has a teenager
• 19:12
  Speaker 2: will understand this. If your teenager has been on the
• 19:15
  Speaker 2: bloody film for an eye, they're just grumpy and ourselves, right.
• 19:19
  Speaker 2: I think you can just experien that for a lot
• 19:21
  Speaker 2: of people. So how what does load dopamine if somebody
• 19:26
  Speaker 2: has low dopamine? And what does that look like? How
• 19:30
  Speaker 2: does it feel?
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah, there's kind of stages to it.
• 19:35
  Speaker 3: So if I came off this call now and I
• 19:38
  Speaker 3: went on YouTube shorts on my phone and nailed it
• 19:40
  Speaker 3: for half an hour, that would be a guaranteed way
• 19:43
  Speaker 3: for me to get load opamine. The experience that would
• 19:46
  Speaker 3: follow is I wouldn't really want to do any work.
• 19:48
  Speaker 3: So that'd be like step one is like, oh, I
• 19:50
  Speaker 3: can't remember I was doing anything.
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: I haven't got any motivation.
• 19:52
  Speaker 3: And then often because you can't bother do anything, I
• 19:54
  Speaker 3: might go on my computer and then try and do
• 19:57
  Speaker 3: some work and then go back on YouTube because I've
• 19:58
  Speaker 3: got no motivation. Even if I tried to work, I'd
• 20:02
  Speaker 3: probably find that my focus didn't feel as good.
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: So I'd sit here.
• 20:04
  Speaker 3: And be like, I can't really get my brains, would
• 20:06
  Speaker 3: you like lock in on this writing or whatever I'm
• 20:08
  Speaker 3: trying to do. So then eventually I might be annoyed
• 20:11
  Speaker 3: at that experience, the fact I'm not achieving anything. So
• 20:13
  Speaker 3: then I go away from my computer, and then a
• 20:15
  Speaker 3: very common experience is I'd go and you'd go and
• 20:18
  Speaker 3: talk to someone, your partner, your kid, your family, your friend,
• 20:22
  Speaker 3: and you'd be much more irritable than you normally are
• 20:25
  Speaker 3: because if you're low in dopamine ancestrally load dopamine means
• 20:29
  Speaker 3: low chance of survival, Like you're going to be pissed
• 20:32
  Speaker 3: off if you're learned dopamine as a hunter gatherer, because
• 20:34
  Speaker 3: if you're not getting food or water, a shelter or fire,
• 20:37
  Speaker 3: you're not going to feel good about that reality. And
• 20:39
  Speaker 3: whilst our brain isn't experiencing that inability to survive, now
• 20:43
  Speaker 3: biochemically it thinks, oh, my survival are at odds because
• 20:46
  Speaker 3: I don't have this chemical in my brain so then
• 20:49
  Speaker 3: I might be more annoyed at my partner, I might
• 20:51
  Speaker 3: be less patient with my little newborn baby to an
• 20:54
  Speaker 3: irritability component.
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: If you continue down the past, so I think.
• 20:57
  Speaker 3: I'm feeling so shit, I'm sha lama, So I'm going
• 20:59
  Speaker 3: to go more dope, me, more dope, me, more doping.
• 21:02
  Speaker 3: Then you begin to get persistent low mood. So then
• 21:04
  Speaker 3: you start going more towards depressive type symptoms. And I
• 21:07
  Speaker 3: spent five years or so when I was younger, like
• 21:09
  Speaker 3: deep in this. I had an iPhone from eleven years old,
• 21:12
  Speaker 3: and I got stuck in that that world of quick dopamine.
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: Then you get into really low mood.
• 21:17
  Speaker 3: And the challenge I think, where are mental health understanding
• 21:22
  Speaker 3: is struggling in the modern world, is when you're in
• 21:24
  Speaker 3: that state and you're severely biochemically low dopamine, you will
• 21:29
  Speaker 3: think very negatively. So if I then was to think
• 21:32
  Speaker 3: about something to do my career or my work, or
• 21:33
  Speaker 3: my finances, or my relationship with my mum or anything
• 21:36
  Speaker 3: at all, I'm going to be very biased towards the negative.
• 21:39
  Speaker 3: And then if I was to go and see a therapist,
• 21:41
  Speaker 3: like I'm not feeling good at the moment, like my
• 21:43
  Speaker 3: brain's not feeling good. I sit down with a therapist
• 21:45
  Speaker 3: and I say, oh, well, it's like the thing that's
• 21:47
  Speaker 3: annoying me is my relationship with my mum, and then
• 21:49
  Speaker 3: we'd begin to like unpack my whole relationship with my mum.
• 21:53
  Speaker 3: But in reality, I'm biochemically very low and a chemical
• 21:57
  Speaker 3: that first needs to be sorted before you even think
• 21:59
  Speaker 3: about it whether that relationship is the cause of your
• 22:01
  Speaker 3: mental struggle. And I think that's where like there needs
• 22:04
  Speaker 3: to be much more of a behavioral approach to solving
• 22:06
  Speaker 3: this mental health challenge, where it's like before you go
• 22:09
  Speaker 3: like digging too deep into all your pain, first of all,
• 22:12
  Speaker 3: let's just get the body and brain like running at
• 22:14
  Speaker 3: full power. And then yeah, like there might be issues
• 22:16
  Speaker 3: in your life and grief and different things that are
• 22:18
  Speaker 3: like really painful. But I think there needs to be
• 22:21
  Speaker 3: like a step one is behavioral first.
• 22:23
  Speaker 2: I could not agree more. And I'm I'm very critical
• 22:29
  Speaker 2: of psychological interventions talk therapy that doesn't have action associated
• 22:34
  Speaker 2: with it. For me, I had I had an epiphany
• 22:39
  Speaker 2: thirteen years ago when I was training for a big
• 22:44
  Speaker 2: boxing fight, and I had I had, much to my
• 22:47
  Speaker 2: wife's discussed my half of the bathroom mirror for six months.
• 22:52
  Speaker 2: Had all of the processes right, It had my goal,
• 22:56
  Speaker 2: it had my my why on it. But I had
• 22:58
  Speaker 2: all these behaviors that I wanted to do. Like visit
• 23:01
  Speaker 2: my old school boxing trainer. Initially I started three times
• 23:04
  Speaker 2: in four, then five, then six, and I had a
• 23:06
  Speaker 2: whole heap of things. But I had all of these
• 23:07
  Speaker 2: body weight exercises and I would be ticking it off right.
• 23:12
  Speaker 2: And I noticed after a while that the more I
• 23:15
  Speaker 2: was interacting with my mirror, the more motivated I was becoming.
• 23:20
  Speaker 2: And that was my epiphany. Motivation follows action, not the around.
• 23:24
  Speaker 2: I think there's so many people, yes, that sense of
• 23:27
  Speaker 2: waiting for the motiv They are waiting for the motivation
• 23:32
  Speaker 2: ferry to come along and give them a big dollop
• 23:36
  Speaker 2: of motivation so that they can then act. Whereas if
• 23:39
  Speaker 2: they were to just start acting and give their brand
• 23:42
  Speaker 2: feedback by ticking stuff off that hey, I'm in forwards
• 23:45
  Speaker 2: motion towards a goal. That's when your brain releases dopamine.
• 23:49
  Speaker 3: Right mm, yeah, that you cannot wait for motivation. And
• 23:57
  Speaker 3: I think we've we've been led like towards a false
• 23:59
  Speaker 3: t with the idea that motivation is just this random,
• 24:03
  Speaker 3: fleeting thing. Sometimes you've got it, sometimes you don't, and
• 24:06
  Speaker 3: it's just like completely out of your control. I think
• 24:10
  Speaker 3: there will be that minor fluctuations, but motivation is much
• 24:13
  Speaker 3: more within your control than you realize, dependent on like
• 24:16
  Speaker 3: what you're eating, how much time you're spending on your tech,
• 24:18
  Speaker 3: what you're doing when you wake up in the morning,
• 24:20
  Speaker 3: how can you go outside, how can you do some
• 24:22
  Speaker 3: press ups? Like, motivation is something that builds, as you've
• 24:25
  Speaker 3: perfectly described, through action. You like the motivation comes as
• 24:28
  Speaker 3: an outcome, not as a prerequisite.
• 24:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely huge. And and what I love
• 24:34
  Speaker 2: about your book is it's very very practical. So you
• 24:38
  Speaker 2: have this, you have challenges that people can do. You know,
• 24:42
  Speaker 2: for the for the dopamine, there's there's the flow steer it,
• 24:46
  Speaker 2: there's the discipline, there's the phone fasting and cold water,
• 24:51
  Speaker 2: and then your pursuit. Pick just pick one of those
• 24:54
  Speaker 2: and and kind of go through a little bit of
• 24:55
  Speaker 2: a process that somebody could use it. Don't want to
• 24:58
  Speaker 2: do them all because I want people to read your book,
• 25:00
  Speaker 2: but just pick one of them.
• 25:02
  Speaker 3: I mean, given, yeah, given where we're out on that
• 25:07
  Speaker 3: general kind of discussion, on the phone. Like the phone
• 25:09
  Speaker 3: fast thing I see is an essential step. I think
• 25:14
  Speaker 3: across all generations, the phone is becoming much more addictive
• 25:17
  Speaker 3: than maybe any of us thought it would be.
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: And this like constant needs.
• 25:20
  Speaker 3: Just keep looking at our WhatsApps and keep checking our
• 25:22
  Speaker 3: gmails and like maybe on social media, maybe watch the
• 25:25
  Speaker 3: YouTube videos and similar to you one hundred hour fast there,
• 25:29
  Speaker 3: phone fasting is just not doing it from food, doing
• 25:31
  Speaker 3: it from your phone instead. And there's an amazing kind
• 25:37
  Speaker 3: of dopamine replenishment component of this, where if you're not
• 25:40
  Speaker 3: consuming media on a phone for a period of time,
• 25:42
  Speaker 3: your dopamine is going to resensitize as yours did with
• 25:45
  Speaker 3: the food. But there's actually a deeper component of this.
• 25:48
  Speaker 3: It's really important to understand. Our nervous system loves familiarity.
• 25:54
  Speaker 3: Familiarity to our nervous system equal safety. So when you're
• 25:57
  Speaker 3: kind of at hunter gathering, you knew the area of
• 26:00
  Speaker 3: jungle that you were in. It was like, I'm familiar here.
• 26:02
  Speaker 3: I know the predators, the food, the resources, the tribe members.
• 26:05
  Speaker 3: Familiarity made us feel safe. Our phone has become the
• 26:09
  Speaker 3: most familiar thing we actually know. It's the thing where
• 26:12
  Speaker 3: vast majority who our attention goes. And if you if
• 26:15
  Speaker 3: you spend time away from the phone for a prolonged
• 26:17
  Speaker 3: period of time, it now feels unfamiliar. So you actually
• 26:21
  Speaker 3: feel somewhat unsafe off your phone because your brain has
• 26:25
  Speaker 3: become so conditioned to use checking your WhatsApp and your
• 26:28
  Speaker 3: work and your banking and the news to keep yourself
• 26:31
  Speaker 3: in this sort of somewhat known state, and that.
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: Is then trapping us in this device.
• 26:36
  Speaker 3: Just as for our ancestors, if someone was quite like
• 26:39
  Speaker 3: an afraid hunter gatherer, they might never leave their little area,
• 26:42
  Speaker 3: and then they're actually more likely to suffer in the
• 26:44
  Speaker 3: long term if they stay afraid. One of the most
• 26:46
  Speaker 3: important parts of phone fasting is becoming comfortable with doing
• 26:50
  Speaker 3: things without your phone. So that means, are you willing
• 26:53
  Speaker 3: to wake up in the morning, take your card with you,
• 26:56
  Speaker 3: your credit card, and like go out your house with
• 26:58
  Speaker 3: your dog or your partner and go for a coffee
• 27:00
  Speaker 3: or on your own and like not have a phone
• 27:02
  Speaker 3: with you at all, and are you willing to traverse
• 27:04
  Speaker 3: the unknown? And that sounds so basic, but we don't
• 27:07
  Speaker 3: do it anymore. People don't leave their house without their phone.
• 27:10
  Speaker 3: People don't even sit on the sofa without their phone,
• 27:13
  Speaker 3: and that's one of the main things phone.
• 27:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah, no, look, I love that idea form fast. I
• 27:19
  Speaker 2: always say in workshops, if you look at your phone
• 27:22
  Speaker 2: before your feet hit the floor, you got a problem. Yeah, right,
• 27:27
  Speaker 2: If you look at your phone before your feet touch
• 27:29
  Speaker 2: the ground, you got a problem. And actually lately I've
• 27:30
  Speaker 2: been thinking about this a bit more. If you spend
• 27:34
  Speaker 2: more time on social media, then you spend exercising on
• 27:37
  Speaker 2: a daily basis, I think you've got a problem.
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: If you spend that would be ninety nine per set
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: of the population.
• 27:43
  Speaker 2: Correct. And if you spend more time on social media,
• 27:45
  Speaker 2: then you spend in food preparation. And I think you've
• 27:50
  Speaker 2: got a problem. And if you spend more time on
• 27:51
  Speaker 2: social media, then you spend on both exercise and food preparation.
• 27:56
  Speaker 2: I think you need a good hard look at yourself
• 27:57
  Speaker 2: and you need to jump on TJ's jump, because like,
• 28:03
  Speaker 2: good luck with your physical and mental health if that's
• 28:07
  Speaker 2: the condition that you're in. Right, But I've got two
• 28:11
  Speaker 2: more questions on dumbamin before we jump onto the next one. Firstly,
• 28:17
  Speaker 2: does double play a role in ADHD? Actually three questions?
• 28:21
  Speaker 2: Can you have too much stubamine? What does it look like,
• 28:23
  Speaker 2: and what's double means role in ADHD And what's the
• 28:28
  Speaker 2: role of a prediction error which a lot of people
• 28:31
  Speaker 2: can't What the hell is PT talking about? Kick them
• 28:35
  Speaker 2: in any audio?
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: Want ADHD?
• 28:38
  Speaker 3: Yes, there is a deep relationship.
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: Don't mean it's largely.
• 28:45
  Speaker 3: The genetic and potentially now modern behavioral cause of ADHD.
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: You can have.
• 28:53
  Speaker 3: ADHD genetically for sure, Like I believe they would have
• 28:55
  Speaker 3: been hunting gatherers that maybe had what we would define
• 28:58
  Speaker 3: as ADHD, like a more HyperAct to have somewhat impulsive,
• 29:01
  Speaker 3: risk taking person.
• 29:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it's a phenotype rather than disorder. But anyway, Yeah,
• 29:05
  Speaker 2: go ahead.
• 29:06
  Speaker 3: Agreed, Like I actually think hunter gatherers with ADHD would
• 29:10
  Speaker 3: have been very advantageous to have in your tribe. Like
• 29:13
  Speaker 3: you want someone that's willing to like chase the antelope
• 29:16
  Speaker 3: and jump off a waterfall to try and catch it,
• 29:18
  Speaker 3: Like you want someone that's going to have the courage
• 29:20
  Speaker 3: to do it. You don't want one hundred percent of
• 29:23
  Speaker 3: the tribe to be that character, but some for sure,
• 29:26
  Speaker 3: and I think for many people in the modern world
• 29:28
  Speaker 3: they have that symptom. And the challenge that has occurred
• 29:31
  Speaker 3: is if you have low dopamine, you are going to
• 29:33
  Speaker 3: have a dopamine seeking brain. You're going to find it
• 29:36
  Speaker 3: more exciting when you access it, and unlike the hunt gatherers,
• 29:40
  Speaker 3: now you can drink booze and watch porn and scrow
• 29:42
  Speaker 3: your phone and eat the sugar, and you're going to
• 29:44
  Speaker 3: have this propensity to be like wow, I love this
• 29:46
  Speaker 3: kind of thing. And then you have the more modern
• 29:52
  Speaker 3: what i'd call it behavioral in attention, which is kind
• 29:55
  Speaker 3: of somewhat getting diagnosed as ADHD, which is like just
• 29:58
  Speaker 3: a neurotypical brain that doesn't necessarily have low genetic dopamine
• 30:03
  Speaker 3: but abuses dopamine like I did for a decade, and
• 30:08
  Speaker 3: then you break your dope meine mechanism and then suddenly
• 30:10
  Speaker 3: you can't produce dopamine anymore. So I think there needs
• 30:16
  Speaker 3: to be like a new name for that that isn't ADHD.
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: So then there's like.
• 30:21
  Speaker 3: So then we're just like a load dop meine disorder
• 30:24
  Speaker 3: like LDD, Like oh yeah, he's got LDD. He can't
• 30:26
  Speaker 3: focus and doesn't have any motivation.
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: I think.
• 30:30
  Speaker 3: I think that would be a more truthful approach, and
• 30:33
  Speaker 3: that's not to actually put down those with ADHD, like
• 30:37
  Speaker 3: I empathize with those that actually have been born with
• 30:39
  Speaker 3: like a really hyperactive, impulsive brain, and like, I think
• 30:43
  Speaker 3: it's actually unfair on those people that so many people
• 30:47
  Speaker 3: are now being diagnosed with ADHD, because I think it's like.
• 30:52
  Speaker 2: That that's right, And and how many adults and will
• 30:57
  Speaker 2: I actually find who I kind of recognize that they
• 31:01
  Speaker 2: probably have ADHD or are some form of idiot, which
• 31:05
  Speaker 2: I'm probably in the category. And I have several metes
• 31:07
  Speaker 2: like this who have for their entire life self medicaild,
• 31:12
  Speaker 2: self self medicated with alcohol or self medicaid with drugs
• 31:16
  Speaker 2: or whatever it may be.
• 31:18
  Speaker 3: I mean, we're a self medicating specie at this point.
• 31:26
  Speaker 3: And I was definitely like I may have been like ADHD,
• 31:31
  Speaker 3: Like I was moved around schools a lot terrible behavior,
• 31:34
  Speaker 3: didn't do well in school, didn't listen in class, like
• 31:36
  Speaker 3: I definitely would be diagnosed with ADHD if I was
• 31:40
  Speaker 3: currently eight years old at school. And then I did
• 31:45
  Speaker 3: self medicate with sugar and alcohol and everything for a
• 31:48
  Speaker 3: long time. But you can naturally self medicaate with hard work.
• 31:52
  Speaker 3: That's that's basically the natural that's basically the natural medication.
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: Doing things you don't want to do.
• 31:59
  Speaker 2: But yeah, it's a shit loat harder than what kind
• 32:02
  Speaker 2: of heape of sugar and drug. Start your neck, right,
• 32:09
  Speaker 2: let's let's let's not Let's jump and talk about oxytocin, right,
• 32:16
  Speaker 2: because I think this is another very very important neurochemicals.
• 32:22
  Speaker 2: So so why why do we have oxytocin? You know,
• 32:26
  Speaker 2: what does it do in our brains? And then we'll
• 32:30
  Speaker 2: get on too, we'll get on to talk about low
• 32:32
  Speaker 2: oxuy touc and what you can do about it. But
• 32:34
  Speaker 2: first of all, tell lots of people have heard about
• 32:36
  Speaker 2: it that that it's kind of the chemical of connection
• 32:41
  Speaker 2: of love. But actually I'll tell you a little story
• 32:44
  Speaker 2: about this. I remember Jesus, it would have been ten
• 32:47
  Speaker 2: years ago, and me and my wife were right and
• 32:50
  Speaker 2: shot me walk past the shop that had this beautiful
• 32:53
  Speaker 2: jacket in there, right, and I and I knew it
• 32:55
  Speaker 2: was an expensive shop, but we said, let's just go
• 32:57
  Speaker 2: in and try it. Any anyway, I don't know if
• 32:59
  Speaker 2: you've ever been in a one of those expensive closed sources.
• 33:01
  Speaker 2: So that the assistant came up and you're you're talking about, oh,
• 33:05
  Speaker 2: you put this on, and then she put the jacket
• 33:08
  Speaker 2: on me and just says, oh it fits really well across.
• 33:11
  Speaker 4: The back and lightly rubbed her fingers across the And
• 33:16
  Speaker 4: I had been reading about oxytop and I went, I
• 33:21
  Speaker 4: know what you just did. You just that light little
• 33:24
  Speaker 4: touch created a bit of oxytocin release, which creates connection
• 33:29
  Speaker 4: and builds trust.
• 33:31
  Speaker 2: I'm like you sneaky about smart, very very good, very
• 33:36
  Speaker 2: very good. Right, So talk us through what's going on there?
• 33:40
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean I wonder if that industry or that
• 33:42
  Speaker 3: specific store has noticed that through it purely through doing
• 33:48
  Speaker 3: it and seeing more successful saying, or if someone's actually
• 33:52
  Speaker 3: studied oxytocin. Who knows which which got them there? But
• 33:57
  Speaker 3: we are a specie that is designed to bond to
• 34:01
  Speaker 3: one another very deeply, Like it's a fundamental part of
• 34:03
  Speaker 3: our evolution. We're not like an isolated specie like a
• 34:07
  Speaker 3: polar bear, for example, that is pretty happy to go
• 34:09
  Speaker 3: solo for a while. Like we operate well as a group.
• 34:13
  Speaker 3: Really as a human being, we are no match for
• 34:15
  Speaker 3: the animal kingdom alone, but we are obviously somewhat of
• 34:19
  Speaker 3: a ridiculous match as a collective. And oxytocin creates that
• 34:24
  Speaker 3: any idea to bond to, to pro create, to trust
• 34:29
  Speaker 3: or know whether to not trust individuals. And it's a
• 34:35
  Speaker 3: chemical deeply connected with childbirth and child rearing and breastfeeding.
• 34:41
  Speaker 3: And it's a chemical that is deeply undersatisfied by the
• 34:46
  Speaker 3: modern reality because we so often are choosing dopaminover oxytocin.
• 34:51
  Speaker 3: Now we lie in bed scrolling our phones rather than
• 34:53
  Speaker 3: talking to our partners, looking at our phones rather than
• 34:55
  Speaker 3: talking to our kids, and like the oxytocin's.
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: Like, what about me?
• 34:58
  Speaker 3: What about three hundred thousand year years of driving you
• 35:00
  Speaker 3: towards human connection?
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: Can I have some time?
• 35:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah? I recently saw an article that that's says something
• 35:08
  Speaker 2: about your phone is the thing that's destroying your sex life,
• 35:12
  Speaker 2: And I think that's what you just alluded to there, right, Yeah,
• 35:15
  Speaker 2: it's it's pretty crazy.
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: So mate, we did it just on.
• 35:19
  Speaker 3: Not not to get too intimate on my personal sex life.
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: That's not really my goal in my work.
• 35:26
  Speaker 3: But we we did this challenge my partner and I
• 35:30
  Speaker 3: called meals Bedroom bathroom last year where we weren't allowed
• 35:34
  Speaker 3: to use a phone when we were eating meals. Whenever
• 35:36
  Speaker 3: you went to the bathroom, like to like have a
• 35:39
  Speaker 3: bath can listen to music, or even like to go
• 35:41
  Speaker 3: to the toilet, which is ridiculous, but like it's easy
• 35:42
  Speaker 3: for phones to just come with you everywhere now and
• 35:45
  Speaker 3: then in the bedroom so meals bedroom and bathroom. And
• 35:48
  Speaker 3: what was so interesting, what was so interesting is like,
• 35:51
  Speaker 3: if you don't have a phone, and I'm trying to
• 35:55
  Speaker 3: not make this explicit, but if phones never enter a bedroom,
• 35:58
  Speaker 3: you are naturally going to want to dopamine and oxytocin.
• 36:02
  Speaker 3: But we are moderately and somewhat falsely satisfying that need
• 36:06
  Speaker 3: in the device. And if like week on't weak, you
• 36:08
  Speaker 3: just don't have a phone in the bedroom anymore, your
• 36:10
  Speaker 3: instinctive programming is going to go, oh, I need some
• 36:13
  Speaker 3: dopamine or some ol tosin, and then it's.
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: Going to think where can I get it?
• 36:17
  Speaker 3: And then there's a lovely human lying next to you,
• 36:20
  Speaker 3: and like you might seek for it in the in
• 36:22
  Speaker 3: the real.
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: World, And like, I think the world.
• 36:25
  Speaker 3: Would see a shocking shift if like if I could
• 36:27
  Speaker 3: like click my fingers and no one's out of phone
• 36:29
  Speaker 3: in the bedroom, I think we'd probably see, you know,
• 36:32
  Speaker 3: the birth rate on the rise, and like maybe human
• 36:34
  Speaker 3: connection on the rise as a result.
• 36:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, look, I totally agree. I think phones
• 36:39
  Speaker 2: in the bedroom are shocking you? Two five Iszarre of
• 36:42
  Speaker 2: the universe. I would make two rooms. Nobody shall lie
• 36:45
  Speaker 2: the phone in the bedroom, and nobody shall lie the
• 36:48
  Speaker 2: goddamn phone in meetings in any business. I think yeah,
• 36:52
  Speaker 2: I think that biggest.
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: That would be a good idea destructure.
• 36:56
  Speaker 2: Of Yeah, because there are attention things, right, and whatever
• 37:00
  Speaker 2: you pay attention to, that's what you're bringing commits sales to.
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: It's one hundred.
• 37:06
  Speaker 2: Getting back to getting back to occy touction. What causes
• 37:11
  Speaker 2: low oxytoction and how does it feel like? And then
• 37:15
  Speaker 2: we'll talk about what we can do about it.
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah, two things here.
• 37:19
  Speaker 3: So causes of the problem would largely be not being seen.
• 37:24
  Speaker 3: So like no one ever making you feel seen and
• 37:27
  Speaker 3: acknowledged and present with them. We as a specie, like
• 37:31
  Speaker 3: we want to be seen. Like my little baby is
• 37:33
  Speaker 3: such an interesting example there, she's four months old, and
• 37:37
  Speaker 3: like she just wants to know that someone's looking at
• 37:40
  Speaker 3: her in terms of like making her feel safe. Like
• 37:42
  Speaker 3: she just wants someone to actually visually pay attention to her.
• 37:46
  Speaker 3: And we aren't that different from our prior baby selves
• 37:49
  Speaker 3: as adults, and like you want experiences where someone listens
• 37:52
  Speaker 3: to you looks you in the eye, asks you questions,
• 37:54
  Speaker 3: makes you feel seen as a human, and that's becoming
• 37:57
  Speaker 3: rare in a world where we're kind of like super
• 37:59
  Speaker 3: Stress Sam to focused on our own lives and worried.
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: And then in.
• 38:05
  Speaker 3: Alignment to that, Oxytocin also deeply wants you to be
• 38:08
  Speaker 3: of service to the group, and it's deeply programmed in us, like, so,
• 38:12
  Speaker 3: help the group, help the group survive, Help the group survive.
• 38:15
  Speaker 3: And if you move into more selfish patterns of operation
• 38:18
  Speaker 3: where your life is oriented towards like how do I
• 38:20
  Speaker 3: make myself feel good at all times, like a more
• 38:22
  Speaker 3: hedonistic lifestyle, which I certainly had, that's.
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: Going to kill your oxytocin.
• 38:26
  Speaker 3: Oxtosin wants you to be seen by others and to
• 38:29
  Speaker 3: see others like that's basically like the general premise of
• 38:32
  Speaker 3: that chemical, and both of those are getting disrupted by
• 38:35
  Speaker 3: modern reality.
• 38:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I love that, and I think you know what
• 38:38
  Speaker 2: for me. One of the greatest stories about the benefits
• 38:43
  Speaker 2: of oxytocin is from the Hanoi Hilton prison camp in Vietnam.
• 38:49
  Speaker 2: Are you familiar with this, Yeah, So these are guys
• 38:52
  Speaker 2: who were in there, some of them were in there
• 38:54
  Speaker 2: for seven and a half years, were brutally tortured, were
• 38:56
  Speaker 2: put in solitary confinement at Jim Stock deal leader was
• 39:00
  Speaker 2: in solitary campaignment for four years. A total spread over that.
• 39:05
  Speaker 2: But they created this thing called the tap code, which
• 39:09
  Speaker 2: was a way that they could communicate with each other
• 39:12
  Speaker 2: by tapping out the letters of the alphabet. They had
• 39:15
  Speaker 2: this grid and a whole heap of shorthand and they
• 39:18
  Speaker 2: would communicate with each other. And I interviewed Lee Ellis
• 39:21
  Speaker 2: on my podcast and he said the tap code was
• 39:24
  Speaker 2: the glue that held these guys together, you know, just
• 39:28
  Speaker 2: to be able to communicate to another human being. And
• 39:33
  Speaker 2: I think along with vasopresson, which are you know, both
• 39:37
  Speaker 2: about connection, social bonding, level of that trust, they are
• 39:41
  Speaker 2: also very potent anti stress chemicals in the breed. And
• 39:46
  Speaker 2: I think this is this is something that we don't
• 39:48
  Speaker 2: think about, how that connection, particularly in times of struggle
• 39:54
  Speaker 2: and adversity, why that human connection is so so great.
• 40:00
  Speaker 2: And I also think it plays into maybe there's a
• 40:04
  Speaker 2: dopamine role here, like doing shured difficult experiences with other people,
• 40:11
  Speaker 2: whether it's regularly doing CrossFit or or something extreme ast
• 40:15
  Speaker 2: the Hanoi Hilton, like that creates a bond that is
• 40:19
  Speaker 2: just so so deep. Any commentary on.
• 40:23
  Speaker 3: That, Yeah, and that's fascinating and shows just how deeply
• 40:29
  Speaker 3: humans need to communicate to stay alive, stay sane.
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: And it makes you also think.
• 40:37
  Speaker 3: We're all not having to tap on wolves to create communication,
• 40:41
  Speaker 3: and yet we're still letting it go. We're still choosing
• 40:43
  Speaker 3: scrollophone and not chat to like our partner.
• 40:45
  Speaker 2: While we're tapping on, we're tapping on. We're tapping on
• 40:49
  Speaker 2: friggin keyboards rather than tapping on walls. But it's it's
• 40:53
  Speaker 2: a bit different because fierce to fiace is this shit
• 40:55
  Speaker 2: a little better?
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: Right for sure?
• 40:57
  Speaker 3: And just on that before I go on, there is
• 41:01
  Speaker 3: a really interesting study that measured mothers and daughters oxytocin
• 41:06
  Speaker 3: levels when they were texting one another and when they
• 41:09
  Speaker 3: called one another. And you see that like digital texting
• 41:12
  Speaker 3: provides no oxytocin release at all, and then the sound
• 41:15
  Speaker 3: of their voice did. So, even if it's gonna be
• 41:18
  Speaker 3: digital communication, the sound of the voice is imperative because
• 41:21
  Speaker 3: I don't know, God or nature that built us probably
• 41:24
  Speaker 3: didn't put in the program that they'll be able to
• 41:26
  Speaker 3: want a message through a glass screen like they probably thought, Oh,
• 41:29
  Speaker 3: they'll have to talk to each other to connect with
• 41:32
  Speaker 3: their voices.
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: And yeah, so it's like it's deeply.
• 41:35
  Speaker 3: Programmed into our ancient biology that you got to hear
• 41:39
  Speaker 3: someone's voice, even if it's gonna be like, for example,
• 41:42
  Speaker 3: my family are in the UK and I'm living here
• 41:44
  Speaker 3: in Australia, Like I'm gonna not I don't like for
• 41:46
  Speaker 3: lots time texting them. I'm just gonna occasionally call them
• 41:49
  Speaker 3: so I can maintain that chemical And I think from
• 41:54
  Speaker 3: a stress point of view, when for example, that person
• 41:57
  Speaker 3: like ran their hands softly across you're back with a
• 42:00
  Speaker 3: nice jacket on, Like I doubt you felt stressed in
• 42:03
  Speaker 3: that moment. You probably felt the opposite. You probably felt
• 42:05
  Speaker 3: like a sense of peace and safety came your way.
• 42:08
  Speaker 3: And we are living in like a very high quartersole
• 42:11
  Speaker 3: type lifestyle. We're can't say, getting told about all the
• 42:13
  Speaker 3: global conflict and like we just are programmed with this
• 42:16
  Speaker 3: whole fea machine to be honest.
• 42:18
  Speaker 2: And.
• 42:20
  Speaker 3: We need love and oxytocin to settle that fear within
• 42:24
  Speaker 3: us that's making us fundamentally feel unsafe. And oxytocin makes
• 42:27
  Speaker 3: you feel safe, and when you feel safe, your stress
• 42:30
  Speaker 3: hormones will calm. So I think like a real priority
• 42:34
  Speaker 3: of like, okay, like I'm gonna stimulate my oxosin through
• 42:37
  Speaker 3: physical touch, through good conversations, through asking questions, through every
• 42:42
  Speaker 3: time I go for a coffee, asking the barista how
• 42:44
  Speaker 3: their days going, and like looking them in the eye,
• 42:46
  Speaker 3: like really making that deep present.
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: For sure.
• 42:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely, I think I think that that
• 42:54
  Speaker 2: is massive. And one thing did you touched on THEO
• 42:57
  Speaker 2: that just actually made me think of something is that
• 43:00
  Speaker 2: this lifestyle that is very cortisol driven, we're very much
• 43:04
  Speaker 2: in sympathetic nervous system dominance as well. And this is
• 43:09
  Speaker 2: the thing, is that that people come home and they've
• 43:12
  Speaker 2: had a hard frigging day, right, and their whole thing is, uh,
• 43:16
  Speaker 2: you know, I need to recover, and they get out
• 43:20
  Speaker 2: their phone and they often get on Netflix at the
• 43:23
  Speaker 2: same bloody time, right, so they're double screening. And I
• 43:27
  Speaker 2: say to them, that is relaxation, which is very different
• 43:30
  Speaker 2: to recovery. When you're scrolling and you're on Netflix, it's
• 43:35
  Speaker 2: low level activation of the sympathetic nervous system. It's stimulation.
• 43:39
  Speaker 2: You're not getting into your part of sympathetic nervous system
• 43:42
  Speaker 2: and I'm not saying there's no role for relaxation, but
• 43:46
  Speaker 2: don't kid yourself that you've put your body into recovery
• 43:49
  Speaker 2: because it's just a different stimulus for your sympathetic nervous system. Yes,
• 43:53
  Speaker 2: it may not be released with cordisol, but it's still
• 43:56
  Speaker 2: stimulating your sympathetic nervous system. And you're not recovering, you're
• 43:59
  Speaker 2: not in power synothetic dominance. And any commentary on.
• 44:03
  Speaker 3: That, Yeah, I think that is right at the core
• 44:07
  Speaker 3: of why humans are feeling so burnt out and exhausted,
• 44:11
  Speaker 3: because we don't have true rest anymore.
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: Like a hunter gatherer, they.
• 44:16
  Speaker 3: Didn't hunt twelve hours a day, seven days a week,
• 44:18
  Speaker 3: there would have been plenty of time lying on the
• 44:20
  Speaker 3: forest floor, staring at the stars, like talking to each other,
• 44:24
  Speaker 3: probably having naps. And we just can't seem to have
• 44:30
  Speaker 3: like what I describe as stimulation free rest anymore, where
• 44:33
  Speaker 3: you just rest and don't do anything. And I think
• 44:36
  Speaker 3: it's because, like our minds are so over stimulated when
• 44:38
  Speaker 3: we put them in the quiet, they try and run
• 44:40
  Speaker 3: at that same speed and we get all these like
• 44:42
  Speaker 3: stressful thoughts, and I think, like to some degree, you
• 44:46
  Speaker 3: need like active stimulation free rest that winds you down.
• 44:49
  Speaker 3: So like after a day on the computer, I'll leave
• 44:52
  Speaker 3: the phone at home, I'll walk for a while, I'll
• 44:54
  Speaker 3: put my bare feet on the grass, and I'll try
• 44:56
  Speaker 3: and like gradually cool my nervous system down so that
• 44:59
  Speaker 3: then if I do come home, my partner might be cooking,
• 45:02
  Speaker 3: and I'm gonna try and like lie on the sofa
• 45:04
  Speaker 3: and maybe be in the choir or talk to her
• 45:06
  Speaker 3: a little bit. Like I'll be okay with that slow estate,
• 45:10
  Speaker 3: But if I go straight from my computers to the sofa,
• 45:12
  Speaker 3: I feel too fast that I'm like I need Netflix,
• 45:15
  Speaker 3: I need YouTube to like shut the noise down. So
• 45:17
  Speaker 3: we've got to try and like call off the system.
• 45:19
  Speaker 2: And I think what you've rightly hit on here is
• 45:23
  Speaker 2: the combination between overstimulated and underconnected. Too much dopamine on
• 45:31
  Speaker 2: itself is a problem. Not enough oxytocin is a problem.
• 45:35
  Speaker 2: But when you have a lifestyle that's driving too much
• 45:38
  Speaker 2: dopamine and not enough oxytocin, it's kind of double trouble.
• 45:43
  Speaker 3: Right, one hundred percent, And that like we really are
• 45:46
  Speaker 3: we're living in dopamin land and we're starved of oxy.
• 45:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, so so give us and again, you've got
• 45:53
  Speaker 2: a whole protocol in here, just one or two things
• 45:57
  Speaker 2: that people can do, practical things that people can do
• 46:00
  Speaker 2: to bring a bit more actually toution into their life.
• 46:03
  Speaker 3: My favorite one that we see to succeed, like also
• 46:07
  Speaker 3: in our data, is this mention of fleeting connection, of
• 46:11
  Speaker 3: making connecting with people you don't know like a really
• 46:13
  Speaker 3: significant priority in your life. It's something very practical that
• 46:16
  Speaker 3: you can definitely do where even today, for example, like
• 46:21
  Speaker 3: I've just moved into a new house here and the
• 46:24
  Speaker 3: landlord came over because he needed to check like a
• 46:26
  Speaker 3: door or something like that, and like it's the sort
• 46:29
  Speaker 3: of thing where I could have just let him in,
• 46:30
  Speaker 3: like nice to meet you, and I could have gone back,
• 46:32
  Speaker 3: and I sat at my desk like I had lots
• 46:33
  Speaker 3: to do today, but I just thought, like, I'm just
• 46:35
  Speaker 3: going to spend ten minutes I getting to know this
• 46:37
  Speaker 3: dude and asking about his life. And he told me
• 46:39
  Speaker 3: all about how he had been a like a Buddhist
• 46:41
  Speaker 3: in like India or something. I was like, wow, I
• 46:43
  Speaker 3: near this fascinating story and it really filled me up,
• 46:46
  Speaker 3: that feeling. And that's because like I have an active
• 46:48
  Speaker 3: prioritization of what I've described as fleeting connection. And this
• 46:52
  Speaker 3: is in supermarkets, coffee shops, on the beach.
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: People that walk in their dogs.
• 46:56
  Speaker 3: Like you just make the entire local community that surrounds
• 46:59
  Speaker 3: you a huge priority in your life. And I think
• 47:02
  Speaker 3: that's like a beautiful way to every day be topping
• 47:05
  Speaker 3: up a chemical that is not satisfied by life in
• 47:08
  Speaker 3: the phone.
• 47:09
  Speaker 2: I that's cracking. And in order to facilitate that, you
• 47:13
  Speaker 2: need to get off your goddamn phone reading for the
• 47:16
  Speaker 2: coffee so that you can have that conversation. Right, Yeah,
• 47:20
  Speaker 2: I love it. And what's your thought on have you
• 47:23
  Speaker 2: seen some of these nasal sprays with oxytocin?
• 47:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah, any thoughts on that?
• 47:30
  Speaker 3: They're interesting for research studies, but they're definitely not not
• 47:34
  Speaker 3: not what I would go to as a long term solution.
• 47:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's it's it's interesting. I've read one study on
• 47:41
  Speaker 2: it and I was like, Wow, that's that's pretty interesting.
• 47:43
  Speaker 2: But also concerning as well. If people are not using
• 47:49
  Speaker 2: their phones for dopamine and then just sticking a little
• 47:52
  Speaker 2: spray off their nose to get some oxytotin, It's like
• 47:55
  Speaker 2: Jesus Christ, this is this is the world that can
• 47:58
  Speaker 2: you call them? The Facebook Creaer would love right, he's
• 48:01
  Speaker 2: just in virtual reality the old time and stuck Innasele
• 48:05
  Speaker 2: sprays up your notes. That's let's go on and talk
• 48:10
  Speaker 2: about serotonin, right. So I kind of think serotonin epitomizes
• 48:16
  Speaker 2: the body Brian connection. And I loved in your book
• 48:20
  Speaker 2: that you don't dive into that. So talk our listeners
• 48:23
  Speaker 2: through a little bit about serotonin from the point of
• 48:26
  Speaker 2: view of that body. Brian got all of that stuff.
• 48:30
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so nine percent of the serotonin is being built
• 48:33
  Speaker 3: in the gut. And then we have this beautiful system,
• 48:36
  Speaker 3: the vagus nerve, which is connecting the brain and body together,
• 48:39
  Speaker 3: one of our cranial nerves. That's this It's called vegas
• 48:42
  Speaker 3: because it means wondering in Latin. And it's this this
• 48:45
  Speaker 3: nerve that's connecting us up. And I actually am going
• 48:49
  Speaker 3: very deep on this idea of the body and the
• 48:51
  Speaker 3: brain at the moment in my next book, because I
• 48:55
  Speaker 3: think as humanity have developed intellectually and scientifically, we've began
• 49:01
  Speaker 3: to construct a reality where we think that we're a
• 49:04
  Speaker 3: top down system and the brain is the thing that
• 49:06
  Speaker 3: runs the show because we think we're so like intelligent. Now,
• 49:09
  Speaker 3: as a specie, if you look at the vegus nerve.
• 49:13
  Speaker 3: Ninety percent of the information traveling through the vegus nerve
• 49:16
  Speaker 3: is the body up to the brain, not the brain
• 49:18
  Speaker 3: down to the body. And that would suggest like we
• 49:21
  Speaker 3: are primarily actually a body with a brainstick stuck on it,
• 49:25
  Speaker 3: not a brain like with a body underneath it. And
• 49:27
  Speaker 3: we're more of like a bottom up system.
• 49:29
  Speaker 1: And I think we are.
• 49:31
  Speaker 3: Completely ignoring the body now like, and I think this
• 49:34
  Speaker 3: is actually the root cause of why we find silence
• 49:36
  Speaker 3: hard in the modern world, because silence gives the body
• 49:39
  Speaker 3: the opportunity to talk, and we don't want to hear
• 49:41
  Speaker 3: what the body has to say because the body isn't
• 49:43
  Speaker 3: happy with all the grappy food and the lack of
• 49:45
  Speaker 3: sleep and the lack of nourishment and sunlight and all
• 49:48
  Speaker 3: the stress we're carrying and all the like unmet emotional
• 49:51
  Speaker 3: stuff that we're not meeting and processing. And I think
• 49:54
  Speaker 3: the body's like, give me some attention. And I'm really
• 49:58
  Speaker 3: over these last few months. Did one of these professional
• 50:02
  Speaker 3: therapeutic psychedelic treatments and I had a really profound experience
• 50:08
  Speaker 3: like unlocking some of the body with psilocybin and really
• 50:11
  Speaker 3: felt what it's like for the body to have something
• 50:13
  Speaker 3: to say and to like to feel some of the
• 50:16
  Speaker 3: wisdom there. And I think I think it's just like
• 50:19
  Speaker 3: an essential component for humanity to start realizing, like we
• 50:23
  Speaker 3: need to listen to the body, the body as answers.
• 50:26
  Speaker 3: And I think the brain has the ability via doth mean,
• 50:29
  Speaker 3: to be corrupted and to lie to us. And I
• 50:31
  Speaker 3: just don't think the body can lie to us. I
• 50:33
  Speaker 3: think the body always has the truth.
• 50:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah. So I'm a psycho physiologist, right, and my view
• 50:39
  Speaker 2: is the Brian controls everything that your body does, but
• 50:43
  Speaker 2: is completely dependent on the health of the body for
• 50:48
  Speaker 2: normal functioning, not even optimal functioning, right, because it's all
• 50:53
  Speaker 2: of that stuff that kind of goes up and really interesting.
• 50:57
  Speaker 2: I interview some many recently, an expert on the vagus nerve.
• 51:01
  Speaker 2: He's written a book called The Great Nerve, which.
• 51:04
  Speaker 1: Is Oh I saw that the other day in and
• 51:06
  Speaker 1: Apple Yeah.
• 51:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah, really really cool. Actually, and he told me that
• 51:12
  Speaker 2: this heart has got a whole heap of neurons, a
• 51:16
  Speaker 2: lot that that basically that taking information from the body,
• 51:22
  Speaker 2: not the brain, taking information, sensory information from the body
• 51:27
  Speaker 2: and then send crosstop up to the brain. So he's
• 51:32
  Speaker 2: like saying basically that that that your heart is actually
• 51:38
  Speaker 2: a lot of it is getting stuff from the body,
• 51:41
  Speaker 2: and the heart is actually giving the brian input about
• 51:45
  Speaker 2: the surroundings and what's actually going on in your environment,
• 51:48
  Speaker 2: whereas we used to think that it was all top
• 51:51
  Speaker 2: down stuff, right, pretty crazy, Yeah, And.
• 51:54
  Speaker 3: I think I actually was reading about that recently. So
• 51:56
  Speaker 3: I have forty thou neurons in the heart and there's
• 51:59
  Speaker 3: like its own level of intelligence. And a good example
• 52:03
  Speaker 3: of the body and heart having a significant impact is
• 52:09
  Speaker 3: in a moment of threat, adrenaline will release in the
• 52:12
  Speaker 3: body and the heart rate will speed up before your
• 52:14
  Speaker 3: brain has even processed what's happening. So that would suggest
• 52:18
  Speaker 3: like the adrenaline is what impacts the brain's vigilance, not
• 52:22
  Speaker 3: the vigilance then said, oh guys, make sure you turn
• 52:24
  Speaker 3: the adrenaline on down there, like it didn't go that
• 52:27
  Speaker 3: way out. So I think both obviously insanely sophisticated mechanisms.
• 52:32
  Speaker 3: The brain is ridiculous with the prefrontal cortex and its
• 52:36
  Speaker 3: capacity to theorize and analyze. But I just think the
• 52:39
  Speaker 3: body is now under met in the conversation of how
• 52:44
  Speaker 3: we feel, and it's all to.
• 52:45
  Speaker 2: Do with any bloody Descartes.
• 52:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's.
• 52:50
  Speaker 2: With its all concept of dualism that mind and body
• 52:53
  Speaker 2: are separate, and so do you know the background of
• 52:58
  Speaker 2: where that came from?
• 53:00
  Speaker 1: Really quite Yeah.
• 53:02
  Speaker 2: So Galileo, right, was at the time of Rennie dae
• 53:06
  Speaker 2: Kart and he got he wrote his his treest or
• 53:11
  Speaker 2: whatever it's called, about the fact that he had discovered
• 53:15
  Speaker 2: that the Earth was not the center of the universe,
• 53:17
  Speaker 2: because that was the prevailing thinking, and he proved that
• 53:21
  Speaker 2: actually the Sun and all the stars didn't go around
• 53:25
  Speaker 2: the Earth, the Earth went round the Sun. The Catholic
• 53:28
  Speaker 2: Church at the time was not very happy because this
• 53:32
  Speaker 2: whole thing that God made man in his image and
• 53:34
  Speaker 2: it's all about the Earth and it's the center of
• 53:36
  Speaker 2: the universe. So they actually put him under house arrest, right,
• 53:40
  Speaker 2: galile They were going to execute him, but they put
• 53:42
  Speaker 2: him under house arrest, and that made all scientists very
• 53:47
  Speaker 2: very nervous. So Rennie Descartes wrote his thing on dualism
• 53:51
  Speaker 2: and basically said, the mind slash briing is the realm
• 53:56
  Speaker 2: of the church and religion, and the body is the
• 53:59
  Speaker 2: realm of scance right, and the Catholic Church, the Catholic
• 54:03
  Speaker 2: Church went, Okay, we can live with that. So from
• 54:05
  Speaker 2: that point on, that's where you see the massive divergence
• 54:09
  Speaker 2: between Eastern and Western science. That Western science then just
• 54:13
  Speaker 2: became focused on the body. And it's only with the
• 54:17
  Speaker 2: Bloody place Ebo effect that we've actually realized that the
• 54:20
  Speaker 2: mind slash brein has got actually that there's a two
• 54:24
  Speaker 2: way interaction. Right. But yeah, really interesting high And then
• 54:29
  Speaker 2: he actually wrote when he was dying, he says, yeah,
• 54:32
  Speaker 2: that dualism stuff, I kind of made it up.
• 54:36
  Speaker 5: Science great, right, absolutely brand and has massively influenced Western
• 54:45
  Speaker 5: science to the point where we're now just realizing the
• 54:47
  Speaker 5: body brein connection.
• 54:48
  Speaker 2: Right, So back to serotonin when it's low and you
• 54:55
  Speaker 2: know what causes low serotonin? What what does it actually
• 54:58
  Speaker 2: feel like? And then we can talk about what people
• 55:00
  Speaker 2: can do about it.
• 55:01
  Speaker 3: Yeah, So I would say the bodies needs not being met,
• 55:06
  Speaker 3: so things like not having good nutrients entering the gut
• 55:10
  Speaker 3: to support the serotonin creation via the gut, not having
• 55:13
  Speaker 3: enough sunlight, not having enough sleep, these are central tenants.
• 55:18
  Speaker 3: Not having enough time, like immersed in proper natural environments,
• 55:21
  Speaker 3: which is a big thing in like Japanese research around
• 55:25
  Speaker 3: forest bathing and how good it bathing, And in terms
• 55:29
  Speaker 3: of how it feels, it's more of like a low energy, exhausted,
• 55:35
  Speaker 3: faster thinking, overthinking, tighte minds.
• 55:38
  Speaker 1: So you're tired, you're overthinking your worries, and you're just.
• 55:43
  Speaker 3: You don't have like a burst of energy in your
• 55:46
  Speaker 3: body to cool upon. Like I see serotonin more as
• 55:49
  Speaker 3: like the battery that's living within you. And ironically it
• 55:56
  Speaker 3: also can if it gets really low, it can actually
• 55:58
  Speaker 3: be harder to fall asleep, because you know, when you're
• 56:00
  Speaker 3: really exhausted, your brain can actually struggle to go fully
• 56:02
  Speaker 3: into stair arrest.
• 56:03
  Speaker 1: Overtired, Yeah, yeah, overtired.
• 56:06
  Speaker 3: I mean like even like a little baby can get
• 56:09
  Speaker 3: overtired and then and then they're like, I don't want
• 56:11
  Speaker 3: to SLEEPHI more on their life, scream at you, so
• 56:13
  Speaker 3: like you have to consistently give them. And we are
• 56:17
  Speaker 3: like that too, Like we need to be consistently given
• 56:19
  Speaker 3: a lot of sleep to ensure that our serotonin remains stable.
• 56:23
  Speaker 3: And I believe, like when I look at serotonin, the
• 56:27
  Speaker 3: central issue is the relationship we have with nature. Like
• 56:32
  Speaker 3: we now seem a bit like the mind and body
• 56:35
  Speaker 3: dualism idea. We now see ourselves as fundamentally separate from
• 56:39
  Speaker 3: nature when we literally are nature and that there is
• 56:42
  Speaker 3: only nature and the bond that we have to nature
• 56:49
  Speaker 3: not just sacrifices the potential opportunity for like a moment
• 56:53
  Speaker 3: of serotonin when you're walking in the trees or with
• 56:55
  Speaker 3: your bare feet on the ground. But I think it's
• 56:57
  Speaker 3: fundamentally moving us towards a more unnatural mode of operation,
• 57:01
  Speaker 3: more unnatural food, more unnatural sleep patterns, more unnatural relationships
• 57:06
  Speaker 3: with technology and humans. And I think like a deepening
• 57:09
  Speaker 3: with your bond to the natural world makes you seek
• 57:12
  Speaker 3: a more natural mode of operation. So you start pondering,
• 57:14
  Speaker 3: like what is all the like nutrients that are entering
• 57:17
  Speaker 3: my body, and like how much should a human sleep?
• 57:19
  Speaker 1: And how much sunli should human get?
• 57:21
  Speaker 3: And I think serotonin just wants us to be running
• 57:25
  Speaker 3: around in the jungle, jumping in the rivers, eating fruit
• 57:27
  Speaker 3: and lying on the grass like that serotonin wants that's
• 57:30
  Speaker 3: so bad, And like you can still do that, Like
• 57:32
  Speaker 3: you still run around outside of the nature and eat
• 57:34
  Speaker 3: fruit and jump in a river, like it's still accessible
• 57:37
  Speaker 3: to us.
• 57:37
  Speaker 2: Now, Yeah, you've talked about two things that I when
• 57:39
  Speaker 2: I was researching my book on the hardiness effect. I
• 57:42
  Speaker 2: was kind of blown away by the research. One was
• 57:44
  Speaker 2: the whole forest fielding and the research around that and
• 57:47
  Speaker 2: time and nature and how you know it reduces inflammation,
• 57:52
  Speaker 2: but also you spend time in nature, you actually absorb
• 57:56
  Speaker 2: some of the microbiome into your own microbiome, which is
• 57:59
  Speaker 2: just nad right, And they and I looked at research
• 58:02
  Speaker 2: on granting. You talked about standing with your feet on
• 58:04
  Speaker 2: the grass and I used to think that was wo
• 58:06
  Speaker 2: woo shit until I actually dug into the research. I'm like, no,
• 58:10
  Speaker 2: this shit is real, and it is that connection with nature, right,
• 58:14
  Speaker 2: But we are I mean, the Stoics talked about that
• 58:17
  Speaker 2: that we are all part of nature. That's that's all
• 58:20
  Speaker 2: there is, and we're just this little tiny part of nature.
• 58:24
  Speaker 2: So it's it's interesting how far away we've gone from
• 58:30
  Speaker 2: that with our natural life. But sort of walk me
• 58:35
  Speaker 2: through here quickly. What what does a day in the
• 58:39
  Speaker 2: life of someone with low serotonin? Oh no, actually, let's
• 58:44
  Speaker 2: flip it the other way. Give me a day in
• 58:46
  Speaker 2: the life of someone who is deliberately cultivating serotonin from
• 58:51
  Speaker 2: when they wake up in the morning.
• 58:54
  Speaker 3: They wake up early because they went to sleep early,
• 58:57
  Speaker 3: and they feel good about that reality, and they're like, cool,
• 59:01
  Speaker 3: I want to get up, like the sun is coming up,
• 59:03
  Speaker 3: Like maybe I want to go out and see the sunrise,
• 59:05
  Speaker 3: or I want to be like doing something with my day.
• 59:07
  Speaker 3: I maybe want to do some stretching, or sit on
• 59:09
  Speaker 3: the sofa and do some breathing, or make a cup
• 59:12
  Speaker 3: of herbal tea like that would be very serotonin vibes.
• 59:15
  Speaker 3: And throughout the day, they're going to have a certain
• 59:22
  Speaker 3: calmness about them in the face of like difficult challenges,
• 59:25
  Speaker 3: like oh, that emails a bit annoying, but like I
• 59:27
  Speaker 3: feel kind of steady and like I'll just navigate through that.
• 59:29
  Speaker 3: They're not going to immediately go into like panic mode
• 59:31
  Speaker 3: because like a body that is naturally got a good
• 59:34
  Speaker 3: amount of serotonin, it's going to have a very very
• 59:37
  Speaker 3: regulated nervous system, So it's not going to like panic
• 59:40
  Speaker 3: as much as someone that's operating from sympathetic all the time.
• 59:44
  Speaker 3: And then in moments of rest, they're going to like
• 59:48
  Speaker 3: find more peace in their rest, and then when it
• 59:50
  Speaker 3: comes to the evening, their body is going to feel
• 59:52
  Speaker 3: the tiredness more clearly and they can think, oh, yeah,
• 59:54
  Speaker 3: it's eight o'clock and like I actually feel kind of
• 59:56
  Speaker 3: tired at eight, and by eight thirty it's like maybe
• 59:58
  Speaker 3: I should go to bed soon. By nine, it's like
• 59:59
  Speaker 3: I'm going going to get and I'm going to just
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 3: go to bed, and I'm not gonna let scroll on
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 3: my phone. And it's just an energetic, calm experience that
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 3: I think is crucial to our mental health.
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I actually think this is one of the major ways,
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 2: because there's many, many different ways, but one of the
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 2: major ways by which exercise is so good for us,
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 2: not just our physical health, but particularly our mental health
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 2: because it releases monomines, it releases serotonin don't for me,
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 2: nor adrenaline naturally, and actually rebalances the whole bloody system, right,
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 2: And as does eating a good diet of low alt
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 2: process forage, where it's a shitty diet and a century
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 2: lifestyle that's just designed to destroy these natural transmitters.
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 1: Isn't it It is.
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 3: I mean, it's just not what our body's looking for,
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 3: Like three hundred thousand years of our gut evolving that's
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 3: as a homo sapeen, our free hominin ancestors is a
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 3: few million ages. Like it's not It's like, what the
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 3: fucking all this unnatural stuff in here. I can't make
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 3: serotonin out a burger. Well, some burgers like Matt and
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 3: MacDonald's and or like a derito would probably be a
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 3: better example. And uh, well, you've got to seek for
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 3: the natural way. Like we're becoming like an artificial humor
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 3: and it's not working and it's clear in the state
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 3: of our mental health. So like we gotta we gotta
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 3: go back to the natural way for sure.
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 2: So let's talk about the last one, which is in doorphins.
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 2: I mean, exercise is a good segue into this. I
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 2: mean most people, you know, when you talk about in doorphins,
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 2: they think, oh, yeah, exercise releases in doorphins. I mean
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 2: it also releases serotonin, duple me nor adrenaline, end of
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 2: cannabinoids and Inkafalon's right. So there's this, there's this, as
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 2: I like to say, there's a there is a neural
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 2: symphony happening in your breeding whenever you're exercising. But to
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 2: zero in in in doorphins as well as the feel
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 2: good chemical, what else? What is what doorphins do in
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 2: your body? How do we get them? How do we
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 2: destroy them?
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 3: I actually see them like they're definitely going to make
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 3: us feel good. And as you said, exercise is one
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 3: of those things where it's just like we are a
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 3: specie that's designed to do like thirty or forty thousand
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 3: steps a day, Like exercise is good for every part
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 3: of being a human your dope. Mean, if you're with people, oxytocin, like,
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 3: exercise is great for everything I see in the orphins
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 3: as a chemical, it's very good for getting stress and
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 3: anger out of you.
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 1: And I think.
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 3: We're experiencing quite a significant rise in like the tension
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 3: we hold within us, and I think that's driven by
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 3: sedentary living. I think like sedentary living is very frustrating
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 3: for a human, like just it just as you put
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 3: a like I mean, I could go really deep on
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 3: this idea, but just as you put an animal in
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 3: a zoo, it's going to get more angry. And the
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 3: fact it's not got as much land to traverse. We
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 3: to some extent are a little bit like that as humans,
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 3: Like they're pretty luck zoos that we're living in, but
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 3: we're somewhat contained to specific locations voluntarily.
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 1: But we're not like just like free terrain and like
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 1: run the we are we.
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 2: Are battery chick. We're like battery humans rather than freely
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 2: in humans.
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 1: Right, yeah, we're not like fully free range.
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 3: I wouldn't I wouldn't say, and we're not. And I
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 3: think when you look at like the actual biochemical function
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 3: of endorphins. When a human was stressed, like originally, like starving, hungry,
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 3: under threat from humans, under threat from a predator, the
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 3: one thing that was a constant was physical action under stress,
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 3: like you'd have to hunt for the food, find the food,
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 3: face the predator, fight the human. We never just got
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 3: stressed and just sat still and let the predator eat
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 3: us or let ourselves starve to death. Like stress was
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 3: a physical experience, and stress has become a mental experience
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 3: in the modern world, whereby like we get stressed because
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 3: like someone doesn't like something happened politically in America or ideologically,
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 3: or we get an annoying email, we're like, well, I
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 3: feel so stressed about this, and then which is somewhat
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 3: like important to let go of a lot of those
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 3: things anyway, But fundamentally, stress is not supposed to be
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 3: a sedentary experience. It's supposed to be a physical experience.
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 3: And like, so when I feel stressed or angry or
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 3: pissed off, Like because I get an annoying email or
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 3: whatever it may be, I immediately think in my head
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 3: like I need to get this thing out of me.
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 3: I can't doom scroll this thing out of me or
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 3: red wine it or chocolate it out. I have to
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 3: physically like release it. Like it's like an alien in
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 3: my body. It is so like I have a pull
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 3: up bar, I do press up so or I'll literally
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 3: like just run up and down the stairs.
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 1: Like I think of it. It's like I have to physically.
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 3: Get anger out of me otherwise I'm gonna it's gonna build.
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 3: And everyone knows like, oh yeah, I do some ex
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 3: sense I feel less stressed. But they're are like there's
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 3: nuance to this, Like even something like singing a song
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 3: and really like actually singing a song could release the
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 3: endorphins and that could create like a physicical act based
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 3: in the body. Laughing can do it, saunas can do it.
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 3: Like there are a multitude of ways to make sure
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 3: that you physically get the stress and anger.
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 2: At can we talk about Look, I completely agree with
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 2: all of that and and as I say, stress hormones
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 2: are there to make you fight or run away and
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 2: when you just sit that, you know, that's when that's
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 2: when cortisoles starts to build up, right when you're not
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 2: getting rid of those stress rnges. But but but back
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 2: back to this and the sauna idea and what I
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 2: read recently, I have to try and dig out the
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 2: research paper. Was that hate in the sauna or whether
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 2: you're in a hot bath or a hot tub, right, well,
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 2: you know when it when it's a bit uncomfortable. I
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 2: read that that is releasing dyn orphans, which are the
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 2: kind of opposing cousin of endorphins, and activating din orphans
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 2: sensitizes the endorphins system, so you actually then get more
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 2: pleasure from other things. It's is that have you Have
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 2: you heard of that at all?
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 1: I know there is a.
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 3: There is an evolutionary mechanism for dine orphans for resensitizing.
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 1: Our system.
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 3: I've heard about that about like dine orphans. I've heard
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 3: about it in the context of guiding us away from
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 3: sometimes not advantageous behaviors by giving us like a.
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 1: Bucket load of them.
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 3: I actually, to be honest, I haven't heard about it
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 3: recensitizing in the sauna, but I could see how it
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 3: would like logically make sense. I just never like to
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 3: make an assumption if I haven't read it, but rationally
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 3: like it. It sounds interesting, it does, it makes sense,
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 3: like why then sauna would be advantageous to your stress response.
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and probably cold water as well. It's like, get
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 2: the fuck out of here. It's it's kind of like
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 2: in well, well, I don't know if sorry, I'll just backtrack.
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 2: I don't know if dyne orphans are associated with cold exposure.
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 2: I've seen this on heat, but it's kind of like
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 2: the cold water immersion, Like if you're in cold water
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 2: for a significant period, or even if you get into
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 2: very cold water for a short period, you get a
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 2: massive spect of dopamine and no adrenaline. And I like
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 2: to think of these through an evolutionary biology lanes, like
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 2: if you fall into cold water, you're you're so motivated
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 2: to get out of there, right, So it's releasing dopamine
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 2: where use goal directed behavior, and it's releasing no adrenaline,
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 2: which is about focused attention and action. And so for me,
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 2: there's that very good evolutionary reason why you actually feel
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 2: great after an icepator in any keype of cold water
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 2: immersion or cold shore even for thirty seconds.
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah, one hundred percent.
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 3: I mean the brain and body is a clever system
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 3: that is always trying to guide us, dependent on the
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 3: experience that we have, and like sometimes it's giving positive
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 3: or negative reinforcement, like the apathy and the low mood
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 3: after the phone is a very intelligent mechanism. If it
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 3: made us feel great scrolling our phones, we'd all do
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 3: it for like twelve hours day and give up on life.
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 3: Like we're living in a machine that wants to help
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 3: us survive. It knows, for example, that the sauna maybe
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 3: advantages or the cold maybe advantageous, and then it tries.
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 1: To make sure you know that in your conscious reality.
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 2: I I actually want to ask you this question. So
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 2: I heard some stuff recently about how singing together when
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 2: you're in a choir or you're singing with someone, and
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 2: releases and doorphins releases are actually Tucson and marching as well,
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 2: and being ex military, I remember that when you're marching
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 2: in sync with someone, it just creates a connection. That's
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 2: probably where the military actually do that. Have you seen
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 2: any of that research.
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah, there's.
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 3: An array of things taking place there because you've got
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 3: like an intentional component for the dope. I mean, you've
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 3: got a team coordination trust component for the oxytocin. You've
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 3: got the physical action component for the endoorphins, Like we
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 3: are designed to operate in harmony, harmoniously as a.
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 2: Group, like as a tribe.
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 3: I really don't think people can understand, like, say you're
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 3: like trying to catch an antelope as a group of men,
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 3: for example, it would have been so hard to catch
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 3: a massive, fast antelope, and we would have had to
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 3: like work collectively as a team, hyper focused. Everyone would
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 3: have had their functions and in a somewhat similar way
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 3: to a march that you would have been working so
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 3: perfectly as like a collective organism effectively to try and
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 3: find food. We used to be a specie constantly doing that,
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 3: and now we're a specie that sits on our own
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 3: at a computer all day.
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 1: And it's like that that is so different. It's so different.
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 3: So the example of the marching is magic. The singing
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 3: in a choir is very popular. I actually see like
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 3: a lot of mental health benefits, and people actually talk
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 3: anecdotally that are joined choir as to how significantly better
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 3: they feel. And again, like coming back to the primitive
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 3: nature of our mind and body as tribes like that
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 3: was a key part of the tribe. Was like singing
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 3: and dancing, and like having all kinds of relationships with
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 3: the stars and the gods, and like having this like
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 3: real connection and euphoric experience of bonding. And these are
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 3: things that we got to hold onto.
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 2: And I actually think there's you're just reminded me of
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 2: about a year ago, maybe a bit bit more. I
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 2: started doing CrossFit and actually realized after a while because
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 2: I was really enjoying it, and realized after a while
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 2: that it kind of filled a gap that I haven't
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 2: felt since I left the military twenty years ago.
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 1: Coach, is the.
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 2: Experience of shared discomfort and shared suffering, right, is that
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 2: that creates I think a connection that these very very
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 2: different to normal connections, like having been through the ringer
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 2: with someone. It was a bit more extreme in the
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 2: military and particularly when I went through combat survival training,
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 2: but but in prospect particularly it was a brutal session.
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 2: Everybody's lying on the floor at the end, and then
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 2: you get up and you just high five everybody. And
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 2: there's something for me about that shared experience of of
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 2: of shured struggle that is pretty unique. Is there a
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 2: neuroscientist's answer for what I'm feeling?
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 3: Oh, anterior mid singular cortex, this will it really wants
• 1:11:40
  Speaker 3: to do things that it doesn't want to do, Like
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 3: it really wants you as a human to do shit
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 3: you don't want to do, and like that, that's an
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 3: experience where fundamentally for our survival collectively, going through extreme
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 3: physical pain would have been advantageous to our survival. Those
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 3: that weren't willing to go through it wouldn't have survived,
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 3: and their DNA is no longer here. Those that were
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 3: willing to go deep into collective group pain would have
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 3: been the ones that made it through. And I think
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 3: it's just you've got this activation of the a mc C,
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 3: which is crucial, and then you've got the dopaminergic element
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 3: of doing something hard, You've got the oxytocin of like you,
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 3: you somewhat build each other up in those examples you're
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 3: cheering each other on, or you may have a competitive
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 3: nature in like a CrossFit example, and also humans thrive
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 3: through competitive environments. So there's an array of reasons as
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 3: to why shared struggle is fundamental to us.
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 2: Have you seen talking about the antior mid anterior singular
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 2: cortex or ontior mid single which I can't remember which
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 2: way it goes, but you know it's the tenacious brain,
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 2: and I've seen research that it is. It is larger
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 2: in people who have more grit, more persistent, all of that.
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 2: When they stimulated electrically, people are more persistent on tasks
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 2: when than when it's not stimulate. And I believe through
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 2: neuroplasticity it grows through doing hard things, right, that actually
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 2: then grows that are the brain, so you're more likely
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 2: to do hard things. Again, is there anything like wouldn't
• 1:13:16
  Speaker 2: it be really interesting to say, take somebody who doesn't
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 2: do hard things, get them to do hard things for
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 2: a while, whether it's a couple of years, whatever, look
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 2: in to see if there's any changes of that part
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 2: of the brain, and then have another arm in the
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 2: study where they're doing things collectively, and see if there's
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 2: any difference. If you were a betting man, would you
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 2: think that there would be any difference in the changes
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 2: in those two groups, the solo group versus the guys
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 2: who are doing it together.
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 3: And in this scenario, are they having to do the
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 3: exact same level of difficult tasks.
• 1:13:55
  Speaker 2: Same yeah, exact same thing.
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 1: I would actually hypothesize.
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 2: Change this little verse as possible.
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 3: I would actually hypothesize that the person's solo would actually
• 1:14:07
  Speaker 3: develop more growth in their amcc because it would be
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 3: harder because they have to do.
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 1: The thing.
• 1:14:14
  Speaker 2: Nice. Yeah, actually I never thought about that. That is
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 2: interesting because it is harder to do. Anybody who who
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 2: has ever done anything harder work, I just knows it's
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 2: so much easier with someone else. That's I never thought
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 2: about that. Actually, that's a really good point, is that
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 2: there is more effort. Everybody knows there's more effort if
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 2: you've got to do stuff on your own, and there's
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 2: more effort required if nobody's watching.
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 3: Right, definitely, if you actually had to do it's like
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 3: those CrossFit workouts like I've done some of those ones
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 3: and stuff like that, if you had to it on
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 3: your own, like I feel like a lot of people
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 3: would shortcut a lot of it. So therefore, I think
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 3: overall on the study, if you weren't controlling that they
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 3: had to meet the same level of difficulty, the group
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 3: with people would end up growing their amccre.
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 1: They would work as agree.
• 1:15:04
  Speaker 2: But the outliers who did it personally and did all
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 2: of it and had to see them. Adherence would probably
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 2: get more of the most changes. Yeah, very interesting. This
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 2: has been This has been so cool. And just tell us.
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 2: You did say at the start that you you know
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 2: you've moved to Australia for a while. I know your
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 2: partner's Australian. I think you'll be in Australia longer than
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 2: you think you'll be. But tell our listeners, why are
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 2: you here and what do you what are you going
• 1:15:35
  Speaker 2: to do?
• 1:15:38
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so I've come here partly because, yeah, my partner
• 1:15:42
  Speaker 3: is Australian and we wanted our little one to meet
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 3: her family. But I had a lot of opportunity coming
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 3: in terms of TV with things like The Morning Show
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 3: and Sunrise. And I'm doing some work with this cool
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 3: organization here called Headspace, which is like a mental health organization.
• 1:15:58
  Speaker 3: I've got a big kind of keynote for that at
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 3: their conference next month. And I'm primarily here to help
• 1:16:06
  Speaker 3: the younger generation in Australia to find a way to
• 1:16:09
  Speaker 3: heal their brains and in alignment with that, like it
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 3: also requires a lot of work with the parents.
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 1: I think a lot of healing.
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 3: For example, the tech addiction, which is where I'm more
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 3: oriented to with my work. I think a lot of
• 1:16:20
  Speaker 3: it is healing it in us as adults in order
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 3: to support the other people so much so, and yeah,
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 3: so we're going to be We're going to be doing
• 1:16:28
  Speaker 3: our research, doing loads of live events in companies and schools.
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 1: That's of cool media stuff.
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 3: I'm writing my next book at the moment, which we'll
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 3: launch next year in Australia. And yeah, I'm here's see
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 3: if I can contribute to the collective of getting everyone
• 1:16:41
  Speaker 3: feeling better.
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 2: Well, I think you'll find that your mission is a
• 1:16:46
  Speaker 2: lot easier, more pleasant, shall we say, than the seeing
• 1:16:50
  Speaker 2: mission in all Blighty where the weather is absolutely shit,
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 2: but it may have a negative effect on your singular cortex.
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 1: Who knows? Who knows?
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 2: Indeed, And this has been awesome. So where can people
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 2: go to find more about your book, to find more
• 1:17:11
  Speaker 2: to buy your book, which is very very good. By
• 1:17:13
  Speaker 2: the way, I encourage everybody to go and buy the book.
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 2: And where can they go to find out more about
• 1:17:18
  Speaker 2: the Douche Lab And you give me all the socials.
• 1:17:21
  Speaker 3: Yeah, So the book is called The Dose Effect and
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 3: you can read it online Amazon and all the stores
• 1:17:28
  Speaker 3: and stuff like that, or you can listen to it
• 1:17:30
  Speaker 3: on Spotify, which people do quite like to.
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 1: I read it and it's very.
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 3: Interactive and practical and story lad with all the hunter
• 1:17:39
  Speaker 3: gatherer journey and the evolution of our brain and socials.
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 3: I always find it somewhat ironic to guide people towards
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 3: social media after everything I've just shared about the phone.
• 1:17:50
  Speaker 3: I am on Instagram and like, I have built a
• 1:17:53
  Speaker 3: cool following there and if you follow me there because
• 1:17:55
  Speaker 3: you use Instagram, you'll end up using it less as
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 3: a result of.
• 1:17:59
  Speaker 1: Coming to my page.
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 3: So yeah, at t J Power on Instagram, and uh,
• 1:18:06
  Speaker 3: the dose effect for the.
• 1:18:07
  Speaker 2: Book cool awesome, and website is effect has a website.
• 1:18:12
  Speaker 3: Yeah, we've got the door lab dot com. And then
• 1:18:16
  Speaker 3: also for all of my events I'm gonna be doing
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 3: in Australia, t J Power dot com dot UK, t
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 3: j P.
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 2: Dot Co dot UK. Okay, you need to get the
• 1:18:26
  Speaker 2: t J par dot com toda you unless somebody else
• 1:18:28
  Speaker 2: has got it. Yeah, before this podcast is released, some
• 1:18:35
  Speaker 2: bastard's got it already. Is it? Is it parked?
• 1:18:40
  Speaker 1: Parked? One's Adie Grand. I mean he's seen my Instagram once.
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 1: Adie Grand fuckers.
• 1:18:46
  Speaker 2: Fuckers. Oh and even you are coming to Australia, that
• 1:18:49
  Speaker 2: person would be like, oh yeah, you know, you know,
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 2: there's actually you've got more sway here in Australia then
• 1:18:59
  Speaker 2: you do for a dot com because you are a
• 1:19:02
  Speaker 2: public person and there is I'm going to send you
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 2: some stuff that you can actually say and threatening letters
• 1:19:08
  Speaker 2: because they are not right if they are nothing to
• 1:19:11
  Speaker 2: do with PJ par on the dot com today. You
• 1:19:14
  Speaker 2: you've got more poarer over here because you are a
• 1:19:17
  Speaker 2: public facing PERSONA.
• 1:19:19
  Speaker 1: Okay, I'll check itactly taking it.
• 1:19:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I'll flick you through some stuff. Mate. This
• 1:19:24
  Speaker 2: has been absolutely brilliant. Love that you're here in Australia
• 1:19:28
  Speaker 2: because it's it's very, very badly needed. And I love
• 1:19:32
  Speaker 2: that dual action of both kids and parents at the
• 1:19:34
  Speaker 2: same time because before the parents go blaming the kids,
• 1:19:37
  Speaker 2: they need to look at their own behavior. Check the
• 1:19:39
  Speaker 2: phone s here how many times they pick it up
• 1:19:41
  Speaker 2: a day and see more time on social media than
• 1:19:44
  Speaker 2: they are exercising and making food.
• 1:19:46
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean having this little one is even put
• 1:19:49
  Speaker 3: a mirror in my face of like, well I have
• 1:19:50
  Speaker 3: got to hear this relationship with my phone myself.
• 1:19:53
  Speaker 1: So I can help my little one get through it.
• 1:19:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah, very cool. Thanks Matte, bloody awesome, thank you.