Hey, it's friend Mel and welcome to the Mel Robbins podcast.
I just finished recording the conversation that you're about to hear.
I don't even know how to describe what just happened in the studio.
You're about to go on a journey into your own mind.
This is a conversation so powerful and shockingly personal with the incredible neuroscientist, Dr.
Wendy Suzuki. Dr. Suzuki, she just left like the door just shut.
And now I'm sitting here, my head is spinning.
She's gonna teach you the astonishing ways you can transform your life just by taking care of one thing, your brain.
This conversation is packed with everything that you love, with groundbreaking research, mind blowing takeaways, deeply personal stories that are truly gonna hit home.
But here's what I didn't see coming.
There were tears, lots of tears.
And get this, she brought a human brain, a real human brain into the studio.
And I held it. This isn't just another episode, this is a conversation.
You're gonna remember and thank yourself for listening to for the rest of your life.
Hey, it's your friend Mel.
I am so excited that you're here.
It is always an honor to spend time with you and to be together.
If you're brand new, welcome to the Mel Robbins podcast family.
And I also wanna acknowledge you for something.
Thank you for choosing to spend time listening to something that could truly help you live a better life.
I just think that's so cool.
And today's guest is someone I have been wanting to sit down with ever since I started this podcast.
Who am I talking about?
Dr. Wendy Suzuki. Dr.
Suzuki is a world renowned neuroscientist and the Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at New York University.
She is a leading researcher known for her groundbreaking research in the areas of memory, brain plasticity, and the simple things that you can do every single day to improve your learning, focus, memory and brainpower.
She's also a pioneer in researching how moving your body and exercising improves your brain health.
And what I love about Dr.
Suzuki is that she's just one of those kind of people that you wanna hang out with.
She's super cool and she makes neuroscience easy to understand.
She's so passionate about it.
And she has this unbelievable ability to make neuroscience personal and profound.
So please help me welcome Dr.
Wendy Suzuki to our Boston Studios.
Thank you for having me.
I cannot tell you what a big fan I am of this podcast and of your teachings and on Audible and so thank you.
Yes, absolutely. Holy cow, I have a brain crush on you.
So that's a really amazing compliment, thank you.
And what I love about the work that you share is that all of this stuff is free and accessible and things that you can put to use as soon as you listen to this.
Yes, you named the thing that is also my favorite thing.
You don't have to have lots of money or influence.
You just need to decide to do these things in your life today and you have access to the power of neurobiology to change how your brain works.
I have to say, if you're listening to this and not watching YouTube, she is exploding with energy and vitality.
And I am so excited to dig into this because you not only walk the talk, as you say, but you can feel it in the energy that you bring just by how you're moving through your day -to -day life.
And one of the things that I also love about your work is that some of the simple changes in the science that you're about to share with us today can impact somebody's mood or focus or wellbeing starting today.
Can you speak a little bit to that, like what somebody might expect is an immediate impact?
Yeah. So, I mean, what you're going to learn is really about the power of neurobiology, the power of the neurobiology of movement on your brain, of meditation on your brain.
I hope we get to sleep in your brain.
I know you talk a lot about the power of social connection.
We are social animals.
There are so many circuits in our brain that evolved so that I could see what your energy level is.
Are you happy? Are you sad?
Are you excited about this conversation?
And I think anybody watching will say that we are both really excited about this conversation.
We can tell that because there are brain areas specific to helping us interpret that facial expression.
That is why I love being a neuroscientist.
It is teaching me about myself, about how to be better in this world, to feel better in this world.
And this is also why I love being dean of a large undergraduate college like New York University College of Arts and Science, because I'm the brain health dean.
I want every single one of my students to have a big fat fluffy brain and to be able to soak in all of the information, all the education.
That is my mission as dean.
What is a big fat fluffy brain?
Well, a big fat fluffy brain is a brain that has constant what I call positive brain plasticity going on.
So brain plasticity is the human brain's amazing ability to change and grow in response to the environment.
Positive brain plasticity is growing in the positive direction.
Unfortunately, there's also negative brain plasticity where things can shrink and get smaller and functionality can disappear.
But imagine that certain choices that you make in your life can improve the brain's anatomy, physiology, and function.
And that has been the focus of my neuroscientific research for the last 30 plus years.
That is so cool. And you know, when I hear the word plasticity, and neuroplasticity, and the fact that your brain can grow, yeah, are you talking about like it can actually get bigger or smaller?
Or are you talking about the like insides of it can change?
What do you mean? Yeah, like for a normal person like me?
Yeah, when you say your brain can grow positive or negative?
Yeah. So let's take the positive.
My brain can grow in the positive direction.
Certain brain areas, in fact, my very favorite area of the brain called the hippocampus, critical for our ability to form and retain new long term memories.
That is one of only two brain areas in the human brain, where brand new brain cells can be born in adulthood.
So you and I are already growing brand new shiny hippocampal cells.
And one of the wonderful magical secrets that we'll talk about later is the fact that physical activity can actually help even more hippocampal cells grow.
And yes, that means that your memory will get better.
So not just cells growing, but positive brain plasticity also means that the connections between the neurons that are already there can grow.
So you can have more connections.
And that also we know can correlate to better performance, say in your prefrontal cortex for focus and attention.
As you're listening to Dr.
Suzuki, I'm sure you're having the same thought I'm having right now, which is, boy, I wish I had taken a class from you in college.
I mean, you are so exuberant about the topic that I cannot wait to just start to peel away the layers.
Why is it important just at a top level baseline understanding to care about the health of your brain?
That's such a great question.
And my answer is that the human brain is the most complex structure known to humankind.
Not Einstein's brain, not Marie Curie's brain, but your brain, Mel's brain, Wendy's brain, every single one of your listeners brains.
Imagine that the most complex thing known to humankind and everybody has things they do well, things they don't do well, that is so unique to you.
It defines how you see, feel, smell, laugh about the world.
And it's unique to you.
The reason why you need to take care of that brain is really about taking care of who you are as a person.
Your personal history is in there.
Your future decisions are in there.
And it truly is an awesome thing when you think about the structure of the brain.
And that is part of my nerdy neuroscientific reason for doing all the things I do to make sure I do take care of my brain.
So how would the person who's listening to us right now feel different in their day to day life?
If they were to prioritize their brain health, as much as we tend to focus on the things we eat or taking care of our muscles, what would happen if you did this?
So many different things.
You would have lower levels of depression and anxiety, higher levels of energy.
Your focus would be better.
Your memory would be better.
Your creativity would go up.
All of these things come from the studies that have been done both in animal model systems and in humans about the effects of positive brain plasticity and bringing those elements into your life.
Amazing. I would love to hear you share how you got interested in the brain and becoming a neuroscientist in the first place.
Yeah. I have a very specific origin story of how I decided I wanted to become a neuroscientist.
It was my first day of my freshman year at UC Berkeley.
And I walked into a first year seminar class called The Brain and Its Potential.
Had no idea who taught this class, but I thought the title was interesting.
And I remember walking into the class.
There's only 15 students.
And I saw this professor at the front of the classroom.
And I describe her as kind of a neuroscientific Beyonce.
She had like control.
She was fierce, but in a very positive welcoming way.
She controlled that classroom.
And she started telling us about how the brain was the most complex structure known to humankind.
Then she put on these gloves and slowly and dramatically, she had a hot box in front of her and she dramatically opened the lid of that hot box and she pulled out a real preserved human brain right there in front of all of us students who had never seen one before.
And the gasp in that classroom was audible.
And she told us about brain plasticity, which turns out she discovered, she discovered, she discovered her name was Marian Diamond.
She was the very first female PhD in neuroanatomy conferred by UC Berkeley ever.
And in the 1960s, she and her colleagues discovered that the adult mammalian brain, she was studying rodents at the time could change and grow in response to what she described as an enriched environment, which was, I like to describe it as the Disney world of rat cages.
You compare the rats in Disney world of rat cages compared to more of a shoebox condition, both rats got free food and water.
But if the adult brain couldn't change at all, which was the dogma of the time, then those experiences should have no effect on the brain.
This is where she discovered that the outer covering of the brain, the cortex actually grew in response to the Disney world of rat cages.
And that was one of the very first demonstrations that the adult brain could change because of the environment that you live in.
And she told us that.
And I'm like, okay, Beyonce of neuroscience, the coolest thing I've ever seen, this is a human brain.
I want to be just like her.
And so that's when I decided I want to be a neuroscientist.
And now you're even better because you're Dr.
Wendy Suzuki, man. I love that.
How did you start studying the impact of exercise on the brain?
You mentioned earlier that there was this big shift that happened in your life that had you completely transform from the inside out what it felt like to live your life.
What happened? So I was trying to get tenure at New York University.
It's a very stressful thing.
It was a very hard class scientist.
And if you pass the test, you get a job for life.
That's tenure. But if you don't, you're fired and you have to leave in humiliation.
And so for these six years, it's like, oh my God, am I going to be fired or am I going to be part of the club?
And my strategy wasn't the best one.
It was - Well, did you get tenure?
I did get tenure, but still my strategy wasn't the best, which was I'm just going to work and put my head down.
I'm not going to do anything.
I'm living in Manhattan and I love Broadway, but no, I'm not going to do that.
I'm not going to have friends.
I'm just going to work and I'm just going to have my research lab.
So I did that for many years and I wasn't very happy.
And I didn't have very many friends and I was feeling lethargic and I ate too much takeout and it was bad.
And the thing that started the boat turning around was I gave myself a vacation.
I went on vacation by myself because I had no friends and I went on this river rafting trip to Peru and it was beautiful.
And we were rafting every day and there are these triathletes on the trip and it was so much fun, but I quickly realized that I was the weakest person on this trip.
Upper body strength was not my forte at that moment.
And I came back thinking, okay, I don't want to feel that way on a trip like that.
I want to keep going on trips like that.
That was exactly what I needed.
And to help me not feel like the weakest person on the trip, the most obvious thing for me to do was let's just go to the gym.
Let's just add that into my just work all the time workaholic life.
And that's what started the shift.
That regular gym going started me feeling better and I started eating less takeout and added and added until I realized I did an experiment on myself.
Oh my God, I feel so much better, which led me back to looking at the neuroscience of that because I was focused on another form of brain plasticity, which is memory formation and forming new memories changes your brain.
And that is really the most common form of brain plasticity.
But I was getting back to my roots, back to marrying diamonds experiments when I went to the gym and changed my life because it turns out that in the Disney world of rat cages, you can ask, what was it?
Was it the rides? Was it the social interaction?
It was the running wheel that was in those cages.
All you had to do was give a rat a running wheel and they got the vast majority of all of those positive brain changes.
And I'm like, oh my God, I've discovered my own Disney world of rat cages.
It's my gym down the block.
What was the moment where you had an epiphany as both Wendy trying to get herself back in shape and off the kind of miserable track versus Dr.
Suzuki going, oh my God, I got to study exercise.
When did you have that moment where you're like, I did have that moment.
And it was a year and a half into my starting to go to the gym, I was feeling good.
Do you remember where you were?
Yep. I was sitting at my desk and I remember what I was doing.
I was writing a grant very hard.
It's like a horrible, stressful thing to write a grant.
And it was so memorable because as I was sitting there writing a grant, I had this thought that went through my brain that had never gone through my brain before, which was, gee, grant writing went well today.
That was good. That was a good session.
I never think that.
I'm never going to get this grant.
I'm going to be grantless.
But I had that thought and I thought, wow, am I just having a good day?
That's an amazing thought for me to have.
And I thought, well, you know what, the one thing that I've changed in my life recently for the last year and a half has been my physical activity.
And then I started thinking about, well, why did grant writing go better that day?
And two things came to mind.
My focus and I felt like my focus was better during that grant writing.
But I also have hundreds of journal articles on my desk, trying to pull together my multimillion dollar idea.
And you need memory for all those details.
It's like, I think that was better too.
Gosh, my focus and my memory are better.
What's going on here?
I was studying memory in my own lab.
And then it's like, could the exercise, is that what's happening to me?
And so it wasn't on a how I'm going to study exercise.
It's like, could that be it?
And it actually sent me to the classroom because when you want to learn something new, you always have to develop new classes.
I decided to create a new class called, can exercise change your brain?
I was going to answer my own question.
Could exercise change my brain?
You're a genius. You created a class to help you answer the question because then the class creates a format where you've got to dig into the research.
Yeah. I mean, two for one, right?
I had to do it anyway.
And I might as well answer the question that I was trying to answer.
And then I thought, well, wait a second.
If students are coming to my classroom every day, what if we all exercise together?
What if I do a study and test them at the beginning of the class and at the end of the class, but we'll all exercise together.
So I'll turn it into an experiment.
So I ran to my administrator and I said, can I have money to hire an exercise instructor so we'll all do exercise together?
And she said, no. And I'm like, oh, and then went back to my desk and thought about it.
And then I went back and I said, would you pay for me to get teacher training if I learn how to teach an exercise class?
And she said, yes. And so I went to the gym and I learned how to teach the favorite class that I was going to in the gym called Intensati that combined physical movements from kickbox and dancing yoga and martial arts at a very New York class.
Patricia. Patricia Moreno.
I know her. Yes, you do.
Yes. So she helped change my brain.
And so I got training from Patricia.
I trained for six months, you know, my cats could do Intensati really well because I did it so much in my apartment and I went back and I taught this class.
And so I turned the music on and they did it.
They did it with me.
And so many things changed in that moment.
The invisible wall between the talking head at the front of the classroom and everybody else disappeared because when you're shouting affirmations with professors like, oh, you're one of us, you know, we can, we can sweat together.
And the level of engagement that I got from those students that first we sweated for an hour and then we did an hour and a half of interactive discussion about what do we know about the effects of exercise in the brain.
It set my bar for interactions that I want in every single classroom that I go into.
I love that story for so many reasons, because I would imagine that was hugely out of your comfort zone.
Yes. Yeah. And it illustrates the power of just leaning into something.
And it also illustrates the fact that a no doesn't mean no.
That just means now I got to find another way.
Yeah, exactly. And you did.
And the funny question that I had to ask my colleague, because if I'm going to do an experiment, I need a control class.
And so I'm not the only one teaching an elective class.
So I had to go to my literally the guy that runs the lab next to mine.
I'm like, are you teaching your, your elective class?
And he said yes. And I know they, they meet for exactly the same amount of time.
And I'm like, do you make your, your students exercise during class?
Like, no. And I said, would you mind being, being the control?
Cause I would take 30 minutes, you know, to have them do all the cognitive tests at beginning at the end.
And he said, okay, I'll be your control class.
And so I had my very first experiment.
Dr. Suzuki, before we get into all the research on exercise, I'd like to go back to something that you mentioned about your professor, who was the mentor.
You told the story about the hat box because I saw that you brought a hat box and maybe my team is playing a prank on me because I see that it is now behind you on the shelf.
So I'd love to take a quick break so we can hear a word from our amazing sponsors.
And when we come back, I want to talk to you about what is in that hat box.
And we're going to do that after a short break.
Do not go anywhere.
Dr. Suzuki and your buddy Mel Robbins are going to be here waiting for you after a short break.
Welcome back. It's your friend, Mel.
You and I are spending time today with the incredible Dr.
Suzuki. So Dr. Suzuki, you just told us the story about your professor who inspired you to become a neuroscientist.
And you told us the story about how she had this hat box.
You know, when you walked in, you were carrying a box.
I was. Yes. And actually, Mel, that box shows that my undergraduate advisor is not the only one that has a hat box.
Can I show it to you?
Yes. And by the way, when you're done listening to this episode, go check out the YouTube episode because you'll be able to watch everything that's happening.
Dr. Suzuki is standing up and she has gloves, rubber gloves on top of a hat box.
Yes. Okay. So what do we got here?
Okay. Putting the gloves on.
I'd love to show you what's in my hat box.
Okay. This is a real preserved human brain.
Oh, like in a person that was in a human being?
Yes. This is a real preserved human brain.
Her name is Betty and she's the most photographed preserved human brain on the east coast.
Can I give you some gloves?
You want me to hold it?
Yeah. Okay. I think.
There you go. Okay.
Let me put the gloves on.
Hold on. Oh God. Okay.
Is it normal to be nervous about handling a brain?
Well so, you know, every time I pick this human brain up, I think this was somebody's life.
This was somebody's whole personality here.
And I feel so lucky that I get to have this specimen that has been in our department for over 26 years.
So it's preserved in formaldehyde.
Okay. But it does represent this person.
And so I pick it up with reverence every single time.
So can I ask you to stand up and come over here so we can move over.
Oh, okay. Hey, I don't want to drop her.
Oh, it's lighter. Oh, no, it's not.
It's heavier than I thought.
Yeah. Look, so here's the right.
This was in a person.
Yes. But look, oh, okay.
What do you open? Okay.
Can you hold on a second?
I can definitely look.
I'm not going to drop it, but I, so she is pulling apart the top of the brain.
It's just, does everybody's brain do that?
Yes. It's supposed to do that.
It's supposed to do that.
There's a right and a left hemisphere, but I'm just pulling it apart.
So you can see how deep the folds of the outer covering go.
You know how much surface area is represented in this fold of thing.
If I put it out, it's probably as big as this dining room table.
Meaning if you took the macaroni and put it as one big noodle, it would cover the table.
Exactly. Yeah. Are those tubes?
These are folds. These are folds of a sheet of what's called the outer covering, the neocortex.
And we get more bang for our buck because it's folded in.
A rat cortex is completely smooth.
Sorry, rats. You don't have as much computing power as you do from all of this.
Yes. It's kind of like, I can't believe how heavy it is.
Yeah. Well, there's a lot densely packed in there.
This is controlling everything from our breathing to our movement, to our memories, to the way you feel right now holding a human brain for the very first time.
I feel so weird. Well, only because I don't think about my brain and to think that there is something this heavy.
I would say, I'm trying to think of an object.
It's literally if you were to put not a half gallon, but a quart of milk in your hands, is that about the right?
Yeah. I think that's right.
It's like three pounds.
Yes. Yes. And it is like two chicken breasts bone in, in terms of the size.
It's like in my full pong.
Now, where's the front of it?
Yeah. Then parietal lobe, visual spatial functions, where things are in space, occipital lobe, primary visual cortex is back here.
Visual? Yeah. We see from the back of the brain?
We see from this part of the brain.
If this part of the brain is damaged, you are blind.
So when a parent or grandparent says, I got eyes in the back of my head, they weren't kidding.
It's almost like, for real, it's like it's back there.
Yeah. They have their visual cortex in the back of the head.
They are seeing from the back of their head.
Absolutely. If you had a concussion.
Yeah. Would you see damage to the surface or?
Yeah. You know, sometimes it causes a bruise kind of thing.
But what I always tell people is, have you had that experience where you bonk the back of your head?
Yes. See stars? Yes.
It's because you are physically stimulating the visual cortex.
And that physical stimulation is causing visual imagery of the stars.
That's what's happening.
That's not normal vision, of course.
And is every human being's brain pretty much the same color?
Yes. This is the temporal lobe here.
The last lobe. Okay.
And if we flip it over, Oh God, what is that ugly thing on the bottom?
The nub is the start of the spinal cord.
So it goes, yeah, it got cut off.
Whoa. Okay. And then this thing, I feel like I shouldn't be looking at this part of Betty.
This is like, Oh my God.
It's all good. It's all good.
This is the cerebellum critical for fine motor movements.
So we can walk smoothly because of our cerebellum, but I love the bottom part of the brain because right here is the bottom part of the temporal lobe and right below this cortex here and below this cortex here.
That's where the hippocampus sits.
Your favorite part.
My favorite part. You can't see it from the surface, but it's right below this area right here.
Okay. Where is that annoying little amygdala, a part that is creating fight or flight?
Yes. The part that keeps us in an alarm state also for Texas.
But where is that sucker?
It is right in front of the hippocampus.
It's an almond shaped structure right about here, but below the surface.
Gotcha. So the hippocampus is like a, um, a curved structure like this.
So here and here and the amygdala is just my fist that sits right here.
This is the front of the temporal lobe.
Okay. Wow. And what is like this here looks different than like the foldy stuff.
So this is the orbital frontal cortex and the olfactory bulb got pulled off of the, this brain.
So it looks a little bit different because there's a little bit of damage, but can you see this, this X right here, that is the optic nerve.
No way. Yes. Yes. And the chiasm means cross.
So the cross you see right there is the crossing of all the fibers from one side of your visual field, going to the other side of your visual cortex.
Now, is that why this is a random question, but is, is, is that like, when somebody has a stroke, is that what gets impacted if they're, um, well the whole brain gets impacted in different parts.
So the strokes that cause motor impairment, you can't move your arm anymore.
It's damaging the arm motor area of your motor cortex.
That's wild. Dr. Suzuki, Betty, and I are going on a walk, right?
Yeah. And so we're, we're moving our bodies.
How does that cause just the movement itself in the limbs triggers information that goes up into your brain.
Is that how that works?
Yeah. That's a great question.
Um, the, the, the exact mechanism of how dopamine and serotonin is, is triggered with physical activity is not that well known, but I go back evolutionarily to the fact that we are physical beings, despite the fact that all of us are just sitting in chairs all the time.
And, and that is, um, that is a longterm survival mechanism.
That's why it makes us feel good because we were made to move our bodies.
And, um, I guess we could just take advantage of it more because we're not moving enough, but that's what you get every single time.
That is so cool. The other thing, sorry, we have to go back to the bottom.
Um, this is, um, the brainstem area right here, right before this, the spinal cord.
This is that area that controls our heartbeat, our respiration.
And so brainstem damage, if this goes, then your heartbeat will no longer beat that.
That is lethal, but such a critical part of the brain.
I'm still shocked by what just happened in this studio.
And honestly, I feel like it's time for me to take these gloves off and go give my hands a good wash.
I'm going to go do that.
And let's take a quick pause so you can hear a word from our amazing sponsors.
But when we come back, you and I are going to cover the specifics on how moving your body improves brain function.
And it'll give you that big fat fluffy brain that Dr.
Suzuki has been telling us about.
So stay with us. Welcome back.
It's your friend, Mel Robbins, and you and I are spending time with the amazing Dr.
Wendy Suzuki, who is now going to do a deep dive into how exercise improves pretty much everything when it comes to your brain function and brain health.
So you have now taught the class.
You've done the experiments.
You've written the international best selling books on the topic.
What does the power of moving your body do to your brain?
Every single time you move your body, you are releasing literally a flood of neurochemicals in your brain.
That is the physical thing that happens.
And I'm not talking about run a marathon.
I'm talking about even taking a walk, a 10 minute walk gets that flood of neurochemicals going.
Is it different if you do get your heart rate up?
Yes, it is. But the power starts with a 10 minute walk.
That is one of the take homes from our conversation today, Mel, is the neurochemical flood.
It starts with a 10 minute walk.
What is in that flood of neurochemicals?
Dopamine, serotonin, noradrenaline, endorphins, growth factors.
The first three, dopamine, serotonin, noradrenaline, what's that going to make you feel great?
Well, you've just given your brain this flood of neurochemicals that I like to call a neurochemical bubble bath for your brain.
And I love that image because if you move regularly, think of it as a regular bubble bath for your brain.
These neurochemicals that are making you feel good, the growth factors go to your hippocampus, that is what's growing those brand new hippocampal cells.
The power of exercise comes from that neurochemical bubble bath.
I love that image. I love the image of being outside for just a 10 minute walk.
Every one of us can find 10 minutes and you can imagine that flood happening.
And I also, I'm personally, I'm a bath person.
So when you say bubbles and the bath in my brain and bubbles are fluffy, and I don't know that I wanted a body part to be big and fluffy, but now I do want a big and fluffy brain that a 10 minute walk at a minimum causes that flood of really positive chemicals.
And this goes back to what you were saying, which is neuroplasticity and growing your brain works in the positive.
Yes. And not doing these things, I suppose works in the negative.
Well, you know, the negative comes from the most common negative brain plasticity drivers, very familiar to all of us.
Stress, chronic stress, chronic anxiety are two things that will cause retraction.
So is the flood of all of those like super power, do you call them chemicals or what are they called?
Neurochemicals, neurotransmitters.
Gotcha. So does the flood of all those neurochemicals relieve anxiety?
Is that why taking a 10 minute walk, if you're feeling anxious, can make you feel better?
It's because of the release of the neurochemicals.
Yes. Yeah. The most common drugs that one gets prescribed for depression or anxiety are releasing forms of noradrenaline and dopamine and serotonin.
So this is a natural way to get that.
It's free. You don't even have to change your clothes.
So that that is just the magical power of moving your body for your brain.
I love that. How does exercise improve focus?
Improved focus is the most common positive effect that has been reported from studies of exercise on the brain.
Easiest to find improved focus.
We know it's affecting the prefrontal cortex and the mechanism of that and what exactly is happening is less clear than some of the other brain areas.
We think that growth factors are also involved and that it involves not growth of new brain cells in the prefrontal cortex, but new synapses.
You get an immediate positive effect of focus from that same 10 minute walk.
And with long -term regular exercise, your baseline levels of focus and attention go up.
And that's where you expect to get real physical change in your brain.
Wow. I personally notice a increase in energy, which I always find to be weird because I'm usually dragging myself to the gym or dragging myself out of bed to go on a walk or a hike.
But when I'm done, even though I'm tired, I feel this boost of energy.
Can you explain why exercise increases your energy?
One of my favorite findings is in groups that were assigned the exercise condition, the motivation to exercise increased in them.
So more exercise improves motivation to exercise and the energy piece that you're talking about is likely due to the flood of dopamine and serotonin that go to your brain.
Do you feel more energized when you're happy and when the reward that you get with dopamine?
Yes, you are. So I'm going to say that it's probably most likely due to those same neurochemicals we've been talking about.
Well, I was just thinking about this morning.
So this morning, the alarm goes off at 535.
We've got a huge day in the studio.
I'm super excited to meet you and to talk to you.
And as I was rolling out of the hotel bed, my husband was down here with me.
He's like, where are you going?
I'm like, I got to go exercise.
He's like, but you have a huge day.
And I'm like, because I need to be energized.
And I know that if I go exercise at six o 'clock in the morning, when I walk in that studio, I will be a different person.
And so it was something that I realized I'm doing, especially on days that I want to perform.
Yeah, me too. And can you explain a little bit about why, if you've got something big going on today, starting your day with exercise is a really smart thing to do.
Well, so it is going back to that wonderful flood of neurochemicals.
You are starting your day in a good mood.
You're improved your focus and attention, which we all need for a big day.
You're also increasing your adrenaline in your body with exercise.
What I love to do to supercharge that adrenaline boost every morning is hot cold contrast showers.
So I do my regular hot shower, but at the end, I push it all the way to maximum cold and boost.
Okay. It was hard the first time I did it.
But once you get used to it, that's a natural adrenaline boost.
And that is like, I need that.
If I forget, I go back into the shower.
No, I do. I do go back into the shower to get it.
If I forget it, because just like you, you need to be up.
You need to be ready for that day.
And that together with exercise are really powerful ways to get that energy up.
So Dr. Suzuki, I want to stop you right there because that is a second huge, free takeaway.
We talked about the 10 minute walk.
Yes. We have talked about this flood of neurochemicals that you can get by moving your body.
Now you are talking about a habit that you have as a neuroscientist, where you end every shower by spinning the dial from that amazing steamy, awesome, warm shower.
Oh, I love that feeling.
Don't you? And you start feeling a little tired.
You're like, oh, do I really want to get out of the shower?
And then Dr. Suzuki is like, oh yeah.
And she turns it up cold.
And now she's how long do you stand there?
Yeah. And do you actually let it hit your head or do you cheat like I do and you hit a shoulder?
So I let it hit everywhere, but now I'm used to it.
The first time it was only a tiny little shoulder, but you get used to it.
And now it's longer.
I could do it much, much longer.
And now I'm much more sensitive because different places you take showers have different coldness of the water.
So, so yeah, I like it when places are really cold.
So I could really test myself because the colder it is, the bigger adrenaline boost that you get.
And so now I'm sensitive to what that feels like in me.
So the cold doesn't bother me.
What I'm kind of addicted to is the adrenaline that comes with it.
So for the person listening, if they wanted to try this and they're going to do it today or first thing tomorrow morning, and you turn the shower to cold.
Yes. How long would you want them to try to stay in there?
And what does it feel like when that adrenaline rush hits?
Cause I think when you do it the first time, your immediate reaction is get out of the shower.
Is that what you're waiting to feel?
Or is it the get out of the shower thing?
And then you stay for a second or two to feel this like, ah, hit your body.
Like what are you looking for?
So the person listening can try this at home.
Yeah. So it is a shock as everybody imagined the very first time.
And so you do feel shocked and you want to kind of try to stay as long as you could handle it.
But, but if you felt the shock, that's, that's the point.
Get out, you know, um, uh, dry yourself off.
That is going to last, I'm going to say easy the rest of the morning.
You are going to feel that adrenaline.
I mean, that's why I do it.
If it only lasted for two seconds, I wouldn't bother to do it.
I do it because this is a boost of physiological adrenaline that is natural from this cold.
And, uh, and it stays in your system.
And I feel the energy difference when I do that.
In case it's helpful, the way that I have developed this as a habit in my life, cause I agree with you.
It's shocking, both what it feels like and it is shocking.
The difference that you feel like I can go from super sleepy to laser focus by simply turning the dial on the shower.
And the way that I do it is once you put the conditioner in your hair, when you go to rinse it out, turn the shower to cold.
Wow. That's a good long.
Yeah. It's 20 seconds about, I can, I'm pretty fast enriching it out now, but it's a way to really try this and get the brain changing and life affirming and focus increasing benefits that you're talking about.
That's so cool. How does movement and exercise improve your memory exactly?
When you move your body and, and here there is a level that's very important.
Aerobic activity that is any kind of movement that gets your heart rate up.
Think dancing, think power walking.
Those count for aerobic activity.
Aerobic activity is critical because there are these growth factors that you need to get that hippocampal growth.
They come from muscle movements.
So you have to have enough muscle movement.
They come from release of ketones from your liver.
And these growth factors get released kind of peripherally go up into the brain, go directly to your hippocampus and go into that part of the hippocampus where new brain cells are being born all the time for anybody, whether you exercise or never exercise, you get new brain cells, but with more exercise,
more growth factors get released and more new brain cells are born.
And those new brain cells grow and integrate.
And the cool thing we know about these new brain cells that are born in adulthood is they're kind of like teenage brain cells that they're really hyperactive and they want to get involved in all the memory circuits that the hippocampus is involved in.
So they make your hippocampus work better.
And we know an enormous amount about the physiology, the detailed physiology of the power of those brand new adult hippocampal brain cells.
What type of memory does it help?
Because, you know, like, you know, if you think about memory, I'm one of these people that I think due to chronic anxiety and undiagnosed ADHD, I don't have a lot of memories from my childhood, at least not that I'm conscious of.
I know they're like in there somewhere, but I can't quite access them.
I know I was there for my childhood, but I can't quite remember a lot of it.
And I know that's a very common thing.
So is it impacting that kind of memory or the short term working memory that you need if you're learning a new subject and you got to take a test?
Yeah, it is affecting your ability to form new long term memories for facts and events.
All the things you learn, all the students learning stuff in school right now, that is because you have a working hippocampus and more shiny new hippocampal cells will make those memories easier to form.
That kind of memories for facts and events.
Also, I need to emphasize that the hippocampus is critical for spatial memory.
Your ability to wayfind is also really, really dependent on the particular kinds of - What does that mean, spatial memory?
Spatial memory means how to get from here to the subway, how to get from one place to the other, where the supermarket is relative to my childhood home.
That memory or learning a new route, highly, highly dependent on the hippocampus.
Have you done any research on the impact of exercise and dementia or Alzheimer's?
I don't even know the technical way you describe that type of memory impairment that people face.
I haven't done direct research.
A lot of my research is done in younger populations.
For the reason that I want to change the movement patterns in younger people, because the longer and the more you move your body, the better off your brain is in older age.
What we haven't said, which is key to understand, is that the prefrontal cortex and hippocampus are most susceptible to both aging and neurodegenerative disease states.
That is, cells die, synapses melt away in these two brain areas.
They go, oh, so that means that if I'm moving my body and get aerobic exercise, I'm making these two key vulnerable brain areas as big and fat, as fluffy as possible.
I'm not curing aging or dementia, but I'm staving it off.
That is the power of long -term regular movement in your life related to aging.
If somebody's listening to this and they're thinking, oh, Dr.
Suzuki, I am living that life you described of you in a lab with no friends, and I am alone on a raft trip in the river of life, and I have not been exercising for decades.
Is it too late? No, it's never too late to start moving.
The reason I say that is that we know people that have mild cognitive impairment, which is on the way to more severe levels of dementia, put on an exercise program, you can see the improvement in them.
Never too late. Movement is going to continue to have this great thing.
It's always there for us.
It's amazing. I love that.
So tell us what to do.
I'm imagining you in your exercise clothes, Dr.
Suzuki, tell us what kind of exercise.
Okay, so what kind of exercise?
What I would recommend, and this comes from studies that I've done in my lab.
First, we did studies in people that are low fit.
So they move their bodies less than 20 minutes a week for the last three months, and we put them on an exercise regimen, aerobic exercise 45 minutes, three times a week.
It was a spin class, 45 minute spin class, but the point is that it was aerobic.
They did that and compared to 45 minutes, three times a week of power scrabble competition in my lab.
So that was the non -aerobic control experiment.
And what we found is that three times a week, 45 minutes aerobic activity would improve their mood, improve their focus and improve certain forms of hippocampal function.
So is it effective?
Yes. We saw it in three months and there is a number for everybody.
Three times a week, 45 minutes.
That's a doable thing.
Three times a week, 45 minutes, you get brain effects.
Now you say, well, I don't work out that little.
And so we did the next study in kind of mid fit people already working out two, three times a week.
Okay. So mid fit. Yeah.
I'm trying to see if I actually fit in that category.
Two to three times a week you're working out and that could be lifting weights.
Yes. It could be going for a long walk.
Right. It could be yoga class.
Like you're just doing something.
Yes. Okay. So we asked what will change their brain and we said, okay, you could go to this spin class as many times as you want during the week.
And so we had people staying actually three times a week and those that went up to seven times a week.
The take home from that study is that the more you worked out, the more brain changes you got.
And that's great. It's democratic.
You earn what you get.
So it works on a continuum.
And I used to say every drop of sweat count, but then turns out there's a lot more people than I realized that don't sweat.
So now I say every turn of the exercise bike wheel, that counts what I'm doing counts, walking, dancing, gardening, all of that counts.
And the inspiration is just do it a little bit more.
You're going to get the benefit.
It's not like it's not going to count.
It is going to count.
Just find a way to get into your life importantly in a way that you enjoy and in a way that you're doing.
If somebody is wheelchair bound, or they are injured, or they're combating an illness, so they are very sedentary, is there some kind of something that you can do?
I mean, imagine if you're wheeling yourself, that's a very aerobic activity.
So you are moving your body, but where do you recommend somebody start if they are sending this episode to someone that they're worried about.
And the person who is listening to this is thinking, I can't do any of that.
Right. Right. For most of us, that we might send this episode to, it's that there is lack of a habit of movement.
And there, I say so many times, walking counts.
Do you walk? Well, I walk to the car.
Can you walk a little bit more?
Can you park the car farther away?
All these things that you're already going to do, can you take the stairs up so that it doesn't feel so much like Jim going that is off putting to people?
And I understand that.
But it turns out that maybe it's a walk with a loved one, a walk with your pet.
Maybe it is a walk at the museum.
Maybe you love the museum.
Okay. Well there, I'll walk around.
There's so many ways to be creative about getting movement into anybody's life.
What I really love about your message and your research is the visual of this flood of neurochemicals and the fact that so many of us reach for something in a bottle and you have something in your body that you can unleash.
And I'm not shaming anybody at all because medications save lives.
They're a very important tool in the toolkit.
Yeah. But don't forget about the one that's actually designed by your own body.
Yeah. And when you understand the science, it makes your resignation over the fact that you've let yourself go or you don't have a lot of time or what difference is a 10 minute walk or turning the dial to cold to get the blast of adrenaline.
It actually makes a profound difference.
It does make a profound difference.
Little things, that's the thing.
You don't have to completely change your lifestyle.
In fact, it might be scary.
So I completely changed my life.
But it started with that first class that I went, I still remember it was a hip hop dance class.
I'm a terrible hip hop dancer, but I still went and it's like, even though it was terrible, I still feel better.
It might be different for you.
It might be, I love this park and I'm just going to walk around this park that's near my house.
It's convenient. The park's not going anywhere.
It's always going to be there.
What is that thing that you can do that will be easy for you to do to move your body?
How does exercise improve longevity and decrease your risk for disease?
So I have to turn to my friend Robert Wallinger when you talk about longevity because his wonderful studies at Harvard that he oversees shows how important social connection is for longevity.
That is the number one thing.
And of course, physical activity that increases your heart rate and decreases your propensity for getting cardiovascular disease.
That's great too, but for longevity, it is social connection.
And so taking those walks with a friend, including your pets, all those things.
I like to multiply all these effects that come from great science.
My father, a very smart guy, he was an engineer and one day he drove back from the 7 -Eleven, that's only about eight blocks from our house.
He would go there to get his afternoon cup of coffee.
And he told my mom that he had a hard time finding his way back home.
That's the spatial memory I was talking about that's so dependent on the hippocampus.
And as a hippocampal expert, when my mother told me that, I knew immediately there was a problem with his hippocampus.
That is the structure that is first affected in dementia, including Alzheimer's dementia.
And that is what he ended up being diagnosed with.
I wish I could say so therefore I had him immediately on an exercise plan.
He was in his early 80s, maybe late 70s when that happened.
I can't remember exactly his age.
He was a little bit wobbly on his feet.
He did like going for a walk, so he would go do that.
But there was a little bit of danger.
As we all know with older people, there's a little risk taking.
Again, going back to social interaction, the more time that I could spend with him, the more time that we can get him together with family where he came alive and he can talk about all the memories that he had is a great way to go.
As Japanese Americans, I'm third generation Japanese American.
My parents are second generation Japanese Americans, other Japanese Americans out there will know, we don't say I love you to each other.
Not because we don't love each other.
It's just that you don't have to say that.
It's just not part of our culture.
But when my father had this dementia diagnosis, I said, gosh, I want to start saying it.
But it's very awkward when you're an adult child and you've never said, I love you to your parents as an adult.
Do you just like blurt it out?
It's like, what should I do?
I had a long internal conversation about this and I realized that I should ask permission, like let's talk about it.
And I didn't want to say, because you have dementia, I want to say I love you.
I was like, let's keep it light.
Let's just ask. But I wanted to do it for my mom and my dad.
And I would call every Sunday.
And when I called, my mom would always answer the phone and I would tell her about the week and then she would hand the phone to my dad and I'd tell him all the same stories.
And then that's how the conversation went.
But this Sunday, I decided I'm going to ask whether we can start saying I love you for the first time in our whole adult lives.
So it started out normally.
And at some point in the middle, I said, you know, mom, I realized we never say I love you at the end of these conversations.
What do you think about saying I love you?
Silence, silence on the other end of the phone.
It's like, what is she asking me?
She's never asked me that before.
And of course, I was just terrified that she would say no, because she might.
I mean, she may not be comfortable.
I didn't know. I'd never asked her that question before.
But after what seemed like hours, it was just a few seconds, she said, I think that's a great idea.
I said, oh, okay, great.
And so we kind of finished up our conversation.
And then both of us realized at the same time, I think that we had nothing more to say to each other.
And we both knew that we had both agreed to say this thing.
I kind of describe it as, you know, it felt like two lions kind of circling each other.
What's going to happen?
Who goes first? And, you know, it was my ask.
So I said, okay, I love you.
And she said, I love you too, in our very Disney voices so we can get through it.
And so I had the conversation with my dad, and it was a little less awkward with him because I knew my mom says yes.
And I knew my dad would say yes.
And so we agreed with my dad.
I said, we said, I love you hung out the phone and burst into tears because I had kind of changed the whole family dynamic of generations of not saying I love you.
And that was the tipping point in my family kind of history from not saying I love you to saying I love you.
But the reason why I started telling the story is that the following week I called back again and I love you with my mother was significantly less awkward.
But my father said, I love you first.
And he remembered after a whole week, he was in the middle of dementia.
He didn't remember anything, but he remembered that we had agreed to say I love you.
And he said it first.
And because I'm a neuroscientist that studies memory, I know why.
And it's because emotional resonance makes hippocampal dependent memories stick.
And his hippocampus was not working well.
But the emotional resonance of his adult daughter asking for the very first time to say, I love you.
It formed a new memory in my dad.
And that was obviously something that I'll always remember because the last time I spoke to him, we also said, I love you.
It's so beautiful. Oh my God, I'm gonna be crying over the brain for crying out loud.
I'm really proud of you.
Thank you. For recognizing what you needed and also recognizing what your parents needed and asking for it.
And the story demonstrates something you said earlier, which is the brain is the most intricate, complicated, amazing, beautiful thing about a human.
And you have the ability to change it for the better.
Yeah. And for anyone that's listening that feels like you are in a family dynamic that you wish would change, all it takes is one person to do it.
Yeah. What a gift you gave to your parents and to yourself.
Yes, it was. And I still enjoy that gift in my regular conversations with my mother.
So yes, I think about that day often.
What did it teach you as a scientist to have that personal experience?
It really brought home how precious our memories are.
It defines who we are.
It defines our personal histories.
And if you lose that personal history, you still have your same personality characteristics, but that's what's so sad to see as the family member, those memories slip away.
But when they come back or when one is created anew, you celebrate it in a different way.
So it really kind of brought all my science home to me.
It's beautiful. So beautiful.
I am so struck by what a profound experience this has been to be with you.
And one of my missions is to take the smartest people in the world like you and some of the most complicated research and to try to make it personal and useful.
And you have done that for us today.
Oh, thank you. In a way that not only I know that I personally feel so much more empowered and motivated, but I have a bigger reason for why this truly matters.
And is there anything that you want to say to the person listening as your parting words?
So my parting words for everybody listening to this podcast is that you have a beautiful brain.
We all have beautiful brains.
That is the message that I try and bring.
And the recommendations that I give are so that you can keep that beautiful, big fat and fluffy brain going as long as you can.
Well, you certainly empowered us to do that.
It is such an honor to meet you, to get to spend time with you.
Thank you, thank you, thank you for being with us.
The honor is mine. Thank you so much.
And for you, I just wanted to say in case no one else does, that I love you and I believe in you and I believe in your ability to create a better life.
And it has been such an honor to spend time together today and to learn from Dr.
Suzuki. And I know that if you take to heart everything she just shared with you, not only from her brain, but her heart, that you hold the keys in your hands to take better care of your brain, which will lead you to living a better life.
And I truly hope you do.
I'll see you in the next episode.
All right, now you want us to be quiet, Kevin?
Kindergarten teacher, Kevin.
Yeah, yes. Cranking it down.
Yeah, it's like you're right.
It's like the one a semi truck when it turns off.
Is that good? Oh, gotcha.
I like that. Great call.
Okay, great. Okay, great.
Yeah, I love it. It's great.
Great. Oh, and one more thing.
And no, this is not a blooper.
This is the legal language.
You know, what the lawyers write and what I need to read to you.
This podcast is presented solely for educational and entertainment purposes.
I'm just your friend.
I am not a licensed therapist.
And this podcast is not intended as a substitute for the advice of a physician, professional coach, psychotherapist or other qualified professional.
Got it? Good. I'll see you in the next episode.
Stitcher.
