Mind Matters: How To Build A Better Brain with Drs. David & Austin Perlmutter #271

Our ability to choose how to react to the world around us is a direct reflection of our cognitive health — and in these uncertain times, it has never been more important to stay mentally fit.

So I wanted to share this episode with Dr. David Perlmutter and Dr. Austin Perlmutter, a father-son duo who combined their neurology and internal medicine expertise to write Brain Wash: Detox Your Mind for Clearer Thinking, Deeper Relationships, and Lasting Happiness.

This new book exposes how our health, our relationships, and even our thinking have been damaged by modern culture and offers a practical plan for healing. And in this episode, the doctors have a ton of additional lifestyle, diet, and mindset recommendations to help you keep your head right.

These dudes are incredibly smart, but they’re also just really cool, down to earth people who bring a huge amount of empathy and love to this conversation — and after listening, you’ll know exactly why that empathy is so critical for both our individual health and society as a whole.

09:00 — What inspired David and Austin to write a book together?

• Austin saw patients were struggling to followthrough on recommended lifestyle changes; patients were getting the information on how to live healthier, but it wasn’t sticking
• They decided people need to know how to make better decisions for their health and happiness outcomes
• They focused not on what decisions you should be making, but the decision-making process itself
• The prefrontal cortex’s role in decision-making
• The more we make crappy decisions, the worse our ability to make good decisions becomes
• Zenbunni Biodynamic Coffee

14:20 — David’s previous book, Grain Brain, and the myths it dispels about our diets

• Debunking the low-fat scam — a scam propagated by the sugar industry
• How this contributed to obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, and neurodegenerative diseases
• The aggressive efforts being made to influence our mindset and choices
• We’re not fat because we overeat, we overeat because we’re fat
• More than 60% of the foods in the grocery store have added sweeteners
• Why sugar is so bad for your brain
• How a high-carb, high-sugar diet negatively impacts your mood
• How diet influences our decision-making

27:55 — Our dietary choices should be based around one core unifying idea: what can we do to lower inflammation in our body?

• The nuances of what fats are good or bad for us
• More processed foods cause more inflammation
• How our diet compounds emotional trauma and limbic system loops
• What is inflammation and how does it affect our brain?
• How inflammation from any cause affects our mood
• Providing a bridge between information and action

37:33 — The core message of Brain Wash: we need to cultivate empathy

• Are there any good sweeteners?
• How companies are taking advantage of our desire for sugar and our desire to be in a tribe
• Why going on social media is opting to be socially manipulated
• How we become addicted to our devices and how to break free from those addictions
• Narcissism Vs. Empathy
• How narcissism affects your health
• Why your prefrontal cortex is so important

52:53 — How inflammation affects the brain

• How our understanding of inflammation and the brain has evolved rapidly over the last few decades
• How depression relates to inflammation
• How inflammation affects our decision-making and what we can learn from that
• Inflammation and brain fog
• Dr. Kelly Brogan and the global mismanagement of depression

01:05:49 — When it comes to things like depression, how much of it is being caused by inflammation vs. trauma?

• Trauma seems to hurt the connection between the prefrontal cortex and the amygdala
• “Stress signalling pathways that impair prefrontal cortex structure and function”
• The best quick fix to break free from a fight or flight nervous system response
• Helping people manage unnecessary stress over time
• Luckily, we can nurture and repair the connections in our brain using empathy and gratitude

01:11:22 — What we can do to start training our brain after we reduce inflammation

• Dr. Daniel Amen
• The simple recipe for most people: enhance your neuroplasticity through physical exercise and then do good things!
• Your brain reflects what you put into it

01:19:04 — The relationship between brain health and addiction

• Addiction is a problem with the prefrontal cortex
• The crazy way that prayer affects our physiology
• How God Changes Your Brain: Breakthrough Findings from a Leading Neuroscientist by Andrew B. Newberg and Mark Robert Waldman
• Can we self-regulate our own “triggers?”
• What chronic stress does to our amygdala

01:34:23 — Can microdosing or macrodosing psychedelics contribute positively to our brain?

• There’s compelling evidence about the effects of psilocybin and MDMA in a clinical setting
• The role of ceremonial plant medicines and clinical psychedelics in making positive changes to your brain
• We can be the conscious architects of our brains

01:41:06 — Activating the pineal gland and its relationship to fluoride and calcification

• Dr. Joe Dispenza
• What we know about people who have had their pineal glands removed

01:46:53 — What role the cerebellum plays in neuroplasticity<