Clutterbug - Real-Life Hacks and Tips to Declutter, Organize and Clean your Home Fast - Can Cleaning Your House Slow Down The Aging Process?! | Clutterbug Podcast # 217

Episode Date: April 1, 2024

Can cleaning your house slow down the aging process in your brain?! According to new research, pushing yourself to do small "Micro Sucks" like cleaning and scrubbing can actually strengthen the part of your brain that contributes to super-aging!  It's that time of year to declutter and spring clean our homes, but if you need a little extra push, this podcast is for you! Watch the incredible interview with Dr. Andrew Huberman here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8OHYynw7Yh4 Study on aMCC and Super-Aging: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9272062/ Another Study on aMCC and Aging: https://alz-journals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/alz.13438        You can find more Clutterbug content here: Website: http://www.clutterbug.me YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@clutterbug TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@clutterbug_me Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/clutterbug_me/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Clutterbug.Me/   #clutterbug #podcast       Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today's podcast is going to blow your mind. I've probably said this before, but I really mean it this time. Like this actually, I'm still just gobsmacked. Hey, Clutterbugs, welcome back to the Clutterbug podcast. A couple of days ago, my husband sent me a YouTube video and it was this interview with Dr. Andrew Huberman. I've never heard of this person, but Joe sent it to me. He was like, this is going to blow your mind and it did. I'm definitely going to link this YouTube video in the show's notes below. You have to watch it. He is obviously going to explain this concept much better than I am, but I want to give you the Cole's Notes version because I feel like this is new information that changes the game when it comes to our brain health, when it comes to aging, when it comes to motivation,

and when it comes to honestly cleaning our house, it's all connected. And this makes me incredibly excited. You know that I'm definitely not a scientist and not good with brain terminology, but there's a part of your brain called the anterior mid-sigulate cortex, which I am definitely not saying properly, but we're going to call it your AMCC. and it's the part of your brain that when they're doing scans, when you are using willpower, this part of your brain lights up. So when you're doing tasks, whether physical or mental, that you really don't want to. If you're doing something like you like doing or you want to do,

this part of your brain is not activated. It's only activated in times of, I don't want to do this, but I got to okay and you're going to push. yourself to do something, even something really small. And this doctor, who I was watching, this Dr. Andrew Huberman, he calls these small tasks that you can do micro sucks. So like something that sucks, but it's tiny enough that it's micro and you push yourself to do it, like the dishes. And they're like covered in food and you don't really want to. Or you notice, I don't know, your toilets looking dirty and you're like, ugh. I don't want to, but I probably should. And you grab the toilet brush and give it like a quick swirl.

These little microsucks actually light up the part of your brain called your AMCC and strengthens it. So over time, it's kind of like exercising, you know, you lift weights, even a five pound weight. You are growing that muscle. Your brain is exactly the same as that. not in that it's a muscle, but in that using different parts of the brain actually strengthen and thicken those parts of the brain. So why is this important? Why does doing sucky things, why is that important for overall brain health? This is where crap gets super insanely fascinating. So they know for a fact that your AMCC, the whatever it's called, the anterior mid, whatever cortex lights up and changes and grows when you do something challenging.

But they've done a ton of studies. And I'm going to link some of these studies in the show's notes below. But he talked about these studies in this interview. And then I went and read these studies. So fascinating. What they're showing is superagers, which are people who maintain a healthy cognitive function, well into their 70s, 80s, and 90s, people who have the same brain function as someone in their 20s.

So not only are they quick thinking, but they're not having any sort of loss of memory, any degeneration at all when it comes to brain functions. So they studied hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of these people that they call super agers. So it isn't about their physical health. We're talking brain health here specifically, someone who is just as quick, someone who is showing no signs of degeneration of their brain at all versus hundreds and hundreds of people who have regular aging brain. So a little bit slower, they're maybe having some confusion when they're in their 70s and 80s. And if you know anyone in their 70s or 80s, you know that forgetting things like names or little type of, yeah, they're just not as quick as they used to be, but there are a huge

part of the population that are also called superagers. The point is, when they were studying the brain, they had these two groups of people, they hooked their brains up to little electrodes so they could see all aspects of their brain to really see what was different. The only difference that all of the superagers had, that the people who were aging normally, their brain was aging normally, the big difference was that all the superagers had a really thick AMCC. So prefrontal cortex, hippocampus, all this other parts of the brain, the different parts of the brain didn't correlate 100% of the time to, this super aging, very healthy brain. The only thing that they saw again and again that everyone who

had this super aging brain, what they had, was an abnormally thick AMCC. And we know that you can strengthen this part of your brain by doing things that you don't want to do, by practicing willpower. I thought this was so insane that I didn't even really believe it because you basically found the secret to like amazing brain health. You basically found the secret to being a superager and they can pinpoint it to one tiny part of the brain and the fact that that part of the brain can be developed at any time by doing simple daily things, mind-blowing. So let's take this a step further. Not only were they linking this to super aging,

but they were also showing that this part of your brain is directly also linked to depression. So people who struggle with a lot of depression or anxiety have a smaller and thinner, AMCC than people who do not. This part of your brain is obviously incredibly effective. But how do we train it? How do we get this brain looking like beef and buff so we can have all of these incredible psychological advantages and neurological advantages? And how do you basically increase your, it's your willpower, it's your like grit in life? life. It's all about doing things you don't want to do. And he calls them, Dr. Andrew Huberman calls them microsucks and macro sucks. So a macro suck would be a big task that you don't want to accomplish.

But little microsucks can add up to the same thing. And what he's saying is, okay, so say you are running a marathon. And you have to really push yourself to run this marathon. And it's physically exhausting and it's physically challenging, but it's also mentally challenging. If you actually enjoy this activity, you find it enjoyable, even if it's challenging, that doesn't stimulate your AMCC. So just doing challenging things is not the answer here. Just doing hard things is not going to get you the same results. It's doing things you really don't want to do. Having to push yourself and do things that every fiber of your being is saying, nah, I'm going to procrastinate that. I don't want to do that crappy thing. I'll wait till later. It's being like, no. I mean, Mel Robbins, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1,

she must have the AMCC of a bodybuilding brain boss, man, because that's what she is all about, right? It's about getting up and taking it and doing the task that you know you need to do, even when you don't want to. And these micro sucks can be literally something that is one minute or less. One minute or less. Something that you're scared and you want to chicken out. You're like someone invites you for coffee and you don't know this stranger and you're like, oh my gosh, I really, I would rather eat dog poo than have small talk with this stranger who has invited me out, but you push yourself and you do it anyways.

It doesn't have to be climbing a mountain here, friends. it's any time you go out of your comfort zone and do something small that you don't want to do, you are actually strengthening a part of your brain that not only will make you have more willpower in general and make every time you want to do a task you don't want to do a little bit easier, you're establishing grit and tenacity in yourself, but you're also strengthening the part of your brain, which obviously has something to do with cognitive function as we age. If this part of your brain is stronger, you become a super ager. It keeps away depression. It helps keep away anxiety. It helps just not have cognitive decline and all of these type of like

confusion and things that come with aging. This is boncadongs to me. Like being armed with this little bit of knowledge, I feel like makes me, makes it even easier to get up and do the stuff I don't want to do because not only do I know I'm going to be proud that I did it and I know that in doing it, you know, my life's going to be a little bit better. But now I have this added benefit of no for a fact, scientific fact, that this is improving my overall brain health and contributing to less cognitive decline as I age. So how do we put this with cleaning? Because this is immediately what I thought of, right?

I was like, oh my gosh, this is maybe the secret key that we, that we need to get people up doing the crap that they know they should do and they don't want to do. Maybe if they can't do it just so their house looks better or feels better, maybe they could do it for their brain health. Maybe that's one more reason. That's just enough more of a reason to get them up and get them going. So I wanted to share that with you put this in the back of your brain because now I'm going to talk about spring. cleaning and why you should get up and spring clean your house. But your AMCC, that brain thing, I want that to be something you also think of as a why this is important. So it is officially spring.

And as someone who creates content about cleaning and decluttering for a living, I am very aware that this is the time of year where everybody's wanting to spring clean their house and like searching for content on spring cleaning. But then I was thinking, why? Like, why? And I, I get the bug, too. I, it gets this time of year. And I innately, I'm like, oh, I got to declutter. I got to open the windows. I got to start scrubbing stuff. I got to flip my mattress. I have to start, like, cleaning my appliances and deep scrubbing everything. But it really got to me, it got me thinking, why? Is this a learned behavior? Is this because my mom did it and her mom did it? Or is there something really else going on that's making us feel the urge to really scrub our house? And so I did some research. And what I found

was actually really kind of fascinating. It's really a combination of a lot of things. And a lot of it is biological. Weird. In the world. winter, it's darker, right? The days are shorter. So our body creates more melatonin, which makes us sleepier, which makes us kind of feeling a little more lethargic. We're doing a lot less. We're certainly cleaning a less. We're moving less. This is just part of nature, right? Part of human in nature. When it turns into spring, our body naturally feels a little bit of a spark and motivation. There's more sun. The days are a little bit longer. And this natural rhythm we see in all animals, not just human beings. And that kind of transitions to we got more get up and go. We got a little

more pep in our step. We actually want to kind of shake off the tiredness and start feeling more energized. And we look at the mess that we have because it's this time of year where our house actually becomes the dirtiest and the messiest because we've been sort of slacking all winter. So that mess combined with that little spunk of motivation and energy that we're getting makes us kind of honestly feel the urge to clean, which I thought was very cool. It's also when they look at foxes and wolves and birds and a lot of animals, this is the time of year where they're cleaning out their dens. like they're getting rid of all the winter accumulation of gross hair and feces and all the other stuff, but also birds are like creating nests. This is nature's time to make our home fab across tons of different species.

Again, maybe this has something to do with that melatonin shift that we have at this time of year. Maybe this is just a biological thing that's built into us for survival. But we biologically feel the urge to clean our nest or our den or whatever we want to call our house in the spring. Also, there's a definite cultural component as well. So I was doing research because I'm like, why? Why, friends? Why? And I was like looking at all these websites.

There is so many different religions that go back hundreds, if not thousands of years, that either this is their new year, so it's like New Year and New Year, so there's the Chinese, a lot of like Asian cultures, Japanese that do a really deep down clean this time of year as part of their culture, as part of their just heritage that they've always done, because it's new fresh start. But also, I didn't know this, but in the Jewish religion, there's something to do with bread, where they're like removing all bread or something, listen, I'm going to just Coles notes this and I'm, I apologize if I'm butchering this, but there is, in that culture, there's a deep down cleaning

that happens this time of year to make sure that there's no bread crumbs in the house at all. So super, super deep cleaning. There's an Iranian tradition and culture where they're scrubbing the, every nook and cranny of their house this time of year is like part of that religion. So I feel like because this is across so many different cultures and so many different religions and going back literally hundreds and thousands of years, this could be again just ingrained in us and passed down from generation to generation to generation. So on top of the biological reasons of why we want to clean, there's also cultural reasons why this is the time of year that we really want to clean.

And I also think it just feels good. It feels good to do a deep down purification of your home, a reset of your home. So why I wanted to talk about this in today's podcast is I know you want to do this too. We all want to do this too. We know we should. It's innately in us that something is calling. us to scrub out the cobwebs, to scrub the floors, to really declutter our clothes, to get stuff out, to open the windows, to bring in fresh flowers, to get a fresh start with a clean house

for spring. We feel it with all of our beings. But are we getting up and getting started? Oftentimes no. We have a spark. And this is so important because this is rare that we actually like want to clean. But there is something in you right now that is like, yeah, I want to. But it's going to be hard and how do I get started and where do I start? So I'm telling you what we need to do is think about what I talked about at the beginning of this podcast that micro suck. And allow that to be the push that you need to take this spark and make it a freaking

bonfire friends. Get up and do something small. Get your butt in your closet and start getting rid of clothes that you did not wear over the winter. Now is the time you're going to pack up the winter coats and you're going to bring out the spring. You're going to go through those shoes and you're going to declutter like crazy. You're going to feel bags and boxes of stuff and it's going to suck a little bit and you're not going to want to. But these are micro sucks that we can do. Little tasks, little projects that you got to push yourself. It's going out of your comfort zone. It's causing you anxiety. You don't really want to. But deep down, you know you should. And so we're doing it not only because we are spring cleaning because this is our body is craving the spring cleaning on a deep

biological, cultural level, but also it's going to make you a superager. It's going to flex and grow your AMCC as you're also getting all the benefits of a clean and decluttered fresh home for spring. We are doing the microsucks today. I want you to just dive in with. reckless abandon and do something hard right now. Whether it is decluttering, whether it's scrubbing, take the stuff out of your fridge and deep clean your fridge. I want you to clean your dryer vent with soap and water friends. That could just save your life. Give that a really good scrub. Get those cobwebs out. But the biggest impact that you can have is 100% getting things out of your home forever doing a big deep down declutter because it's going to be way easier to deep down clean

when you have less stuff and you're going to see a bigger impact if you spend a half an hour today filling a trash bag and filling boxes with donations you are going to see a huge difference your house is going to feel more spacious and fresh and brighter and it's going to be easier to wipe the surfaces because there's less stuff on them. We are throwing stuff out like you're a crazy person today. And I know it is hard, but this is also working out your brain so you can be a super ager so that you can have amazing cognitive health. We do things like little puzzles and crosswords and we play chess on our phones in the hope that it's going to help us starve off cognitive decline as we age. I'm 45. I think about that. I think about dementia.

I think about the fact that my grandmother, who is in her 90s now, has called me by the wrong name for the past 20 years. I can never remember my name. I don't want that. I want to be sharp as attack. I'm already a little dull. I don't want to be duller. I want to be sharp. And if I don't, I can get that by doing the hard stuff that I should be doing anyway so that I get the results of a clean house, man, that's an added benefit. I'm getting the best of both worlds here. I'm doing two for one. There are so many reasons and I talk about them in all these podcasts of why we should get excited, of why we should make our house a priority because I know that it affects every single aspect of our lives. But what I didn't realize is that it also affects our brain

health and our aging. And that is just one more reason to get up and do it and be excited about it. You know what I'm saying, friends? Micro suck. And I'm just giving you a short podcast today because right now I want you to go and I want you to listen to that YouTube video. You can listen to that. podcast of Dr. Andrew Huberman talking about this because it is fascinating and amazing. And I'm also going to link studies to give you like all the knowledge here because this is mind blowing and life changing. And it is one more reason to scrub that toilet friends. Thank you guys so much for listening. I hope you're feeling motivated and I'll see you guys next time.