Dhru Purohit Show - How Movement Radically Transforms The Brain (Rebroadcast)

Episode Date: December 27, 2021

This episode is brought to you by AirDoctor. The most common explanation for why exercise makes us happy is far too simplistic. The psychological effects of movement cannot be reduced to just an endorphin rush. Physical activity influences many other brain chemicals, including those that give you energy, alleviate worry, and help you bond with others. It reduces inflammation in the brain, which over time can protect against depression, anxiety, and loneliness. Regular exercise also remodels the physical structure of your brain to make you more receptive to joy and social connection.    In today’s mini-episode, Dhru speaks with Dr. Kelly McGonigal, Ryan Glatt, and Dr. Rangan Chatterjee about how exercise can improve the treatment outcomes for depression and anxiety, how exercise decreases our chance of cognitive decline, and simple ways to build exercise into your everyday life. Dr. Kelly McGonigal is a health psychologist who specializes in understanding the mind-body connection. She is the bestselling author of The Willpower Instinct and The Upside of Stress. Her latest book, The Joy of Movement, explores why physical exercise is a powerful antidote to the modern epidemics of depression, anxiety, and loneliness. Ryan Glatt is a personal trainer and brain-health coach with over a decade of experience in the health and fitness industry. He currently works alongside clinicians and researchers to study the effects of cognitively-enhanced and comprehensive exercise plans at the Pacific Brain Health Center in Santa Monica, California.  Dr. Rangan Chatterjee is regarded as one of the most influential medical doctors in the UK and wants to change how medicine will be practiced for years to come. His mission is to help 100 million people around the globe live better lives. He hosts the most listened to health podcast in the UK and Europe, Feel Better, Live More—which regularly tops the Apple Podcast charts and is listened to by over 2 million people every single month. Each of Dr. Chatterjee’s four books have been Sunday Times bestsellers including his latest, Feel Great, Lose Weight This episode is brought to you by AirDoctor. AirDoctor has an UltraHEPA filter that is 100 times more effective than ordinary HEPA filters plus a dual-action Carbon/Gas Trap/ VOC Filter, so it removes 100% of particles in the air and the vast majority of volatile organic chemicals and gases, like formaldehyde and ozone. It’s the best home air purifier I’ve found because it combats all the different forms of toxins in our air and can be used in any room of the house. Right now AirDoctor is offering my community $300 off. Just go to drhyman.com/filter, Make your home a sanctuary, clean up your air, and feel better— it’s an easy step towards optimizing your health.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Coming up on this week's mini episode of the Drew Perrault podcast. One of the things we know is that physical activity typically of a moderate intensity or greater, it is as effective and antidepressant as anything else that's ever been studied, and it enhances the effectiveness of other treatments. That exercise is an effective treatment for anxiety disorders, and that people who are physically active are at less risk for things like depression and other mental health challenges. Clean air is a cornerstone for health.

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Just go to Dr.heimen.com slash filter. That's DR. Hyman, H-Y-M-A-N-com slash filter to get this deal today. Make your home, your sanctuary, clean up, your air and feel better. It's an easy step towards optimizing your health with air doctor. Hey everyone. I'm Melanie, producer of the Drew Pruitt podcast. For the month of December, we're going to be rebroadcasting our most popular mini episodes every Monday. Today we're rebroadcasting our mini episode with Dr. Kelly McGonogle, Ryan Glatt, and Dr. Rungan Chatterjee, and we're talking about

how exercise decreases our chance of cognitive decline, how it can improve the treatment outcomes for depression and anxiety and simple ways to build movement into your life every day. I hope you enjoy it. Hi everyone, I'm Drew Brode here. The most common explanation for why exercise makes us happy is far, far too simplistic. The psychological effects of movement cannot be reduced to an endorphin rush. That's way too simple. Physical activity influences many other brain chemicals, including those that give you energy,

alleviate worry and help you bond with others. It reduces inflammation in the brain, which over time can protect against depression, anxiety, and even loneliness. Regular exercise also remodels the physical structure of your brain to make you more receptive to joy and social connection. In this mini episode, I speak with Dr. Kelly McGonical, Ryan Glatt, and Dr. Rungan Chatterjee about how exercise can improve the treatment outcomes from depression and engagement. anxiety and how exercise decreases our chances of cognitive decline, super important, and simple ways

to build exercise into your everyday life. Let's listen in starting with my interview with Dr. Kelly McGonical, a health psychologist who specializes in understanding the mind-body connection and a best-selling author of the willpower instinct, the upside of stress, and the joy of movement. What does some of the research show us out there when it comes to happiness and pulling ourselves out of anxiety, pulling ourselves out of depression, making ourselves a little bit more resilient when it comes to movement's ability to support us in that. Yeah. So I want to preface this by saying something. It's whenever you, whenever I or other people start to talk about how exercise can be an antidepressant, can help with mental health, one of the very first concerns people have is that you are

dismissing the value of something like medication and therapy. And so, I'm just, I actually want to start this because I want to talk to people who might actually benefit from movement to know that I would never argue that exercise should be a replacement for anything that works, whether it's transcranial magnetic stimulation of the brain or psychotherapy or antidepressant medication. So I'm not somebody who's going to come out here and say, if you're depressed, you should just exercise, and it's your fault if you haven't cured yourself yet. You just need to go for a run. So with that sort of caveat in place, one of the things we know is that physical activity

typically have a moderate intensity or greater. And that just means your heart rate is getting up enough that you have to breathe harder, but you're not completely out of breath, that it is as effective and antidepressant as anything else that's ever been studied and it enhances the effectiveness of other treatments. That exercise is an effective treatment for anxiety disorders. And that people who are physically active are at less risk for things like depression and other mental health challenges. And this has been studied. If you're someone who cares about data, the data for this is as strong as you can imagine.

You know, because you could say, well, of course, people who exercise more are less likely to be depressed because when you're depressed, it's really hard to exercise. Maybe it's all correlational. But this data and these arguments come from epidemiological studies that have followed people for decades. Every country you can imagine on the planet this has been studied, every socioeconomic status, every age, every physical ability, anything you can imagine. Longitudinal studies, interventions where you take people who are sedentary and help them be active. Interventions where you take people who are active and you make them become sedentary and they become depressed and more anxious. I mean, if you're looking for data, this data is really secure that movement helps people either recover from or prevent or just live with. mental health challenges. And it operates at so many levels I couldn't even begin to explain.

Well, I try to in the book. But sometimes I think it helps to give a few different examples of the way that this works so people can understand how deep this goes. And I'll give you two biological examples about how exercise affects the brain, which I think are absolutely phenomenal and people aren't talking about yet. So one of the most recent findings, and this is this is, this is is pretty innovative. Only a few papers have been published on this suggests that lactate, which is the metabolic byproduct that your muscles make when you exercise. And a lot of people blame it from muscle soreness, which is probably not true. But everyone knows. We've all heard this. Like you defles it. Yeah. So research now suggests that lactate that's produced by exercise,

it's in your bloodstream. It actually travels to your brain and functions as an anti-anxiety and can actually help people recover from things like trauma or depression. That lactate itself, that is produced as a metabolic byproduct of exercise, actually helps with brain resilience and mental health. And the reason I love that example is, you can't get more literal than the thing that happens because your muscles worked hard. That byproduct that we've been saying is so bad, it's like makes your muscle sore.

like that actually is like an antidepressant for your brain and that you can produce it literally in workout one right like everyone is going to produce lactate when they exercise so that's one example and another biological example that I love is this new insight that your muscles are like an endocrine organ and that your muscles produce chemicals that they release into your bloodstream when you exercise that have profound effects on the brain one of the most commonly cited examples is irisin, which can protect against neurodegenerative disorders like Alzheimer's, that it can also protect against or help people recover from depression and trauma. And these are molecules that are literally produced by your muscles when you contract them.

Any muscle contraction, that means any form of movement or exercise, is producing molecules in your bloodstream that travel to your brain, cross the blood brain barrier, and function as an antidepressant or as a brain protective. And the first paper that I think was published maybe 2013 that was writing about this, the scientists were like, I think we've discovered hope molecules. This idea that your muscles are giving you

an intravenous dose of hope every time you exercise. So those are two of my favorite biological examples to give because everyone's heard of an endorphin rush. And sometimes people think when I say that exercises is good for mental health challenges, they think, oh, because you get an endorphin rush, and so it makes you feel better. I'm like, no, we're talking about, like, profound healing molecules that you can only get from contracting your muscles and that have long-term effects at changing the function and structure of your brain.

There are so many benefits of movement that go far beyond the cardiovascular effects and weight management that are often the focus of exercise. It's actually an essential piece to maintaining prime cognitive function throughout life. I explore this topic in my interview with my good friend Ryan Glatt, a personal trainer and brain health coach with over a decade of experience in the health and fitness industry. So we know that more exercise and higher levels of cardiovascular fitness, higher levels of physical activity, they decrease our chances of cognitive decline. They decrease our chances of developing dementia. Even if your genes say, hey, you're at a high risk for dementia, you may stave it off or you may develop it. seven years later instead of right then and there, right? So exercise has been found to be extremely

beneficial for staving off cognitive decline. Like not just like extremely beneficial, but like way more beneficial than any drug that we know that's out there. Yes. It's at to that degree it has Yeah. So people love the title like pharmaceutical companies hate this intervention because they can't recreate it. It's exercise. It's been called a polypill because it does so much at so many different levels. not just neurobiologically, but metabolically to the endocrine system, to psychology. It's amazing what it can do, especially when you have the right exercise prescription. So when it comes to preventing cognitive decline, the earlier you start the better. So lifelong physical activity and lifelong exercise will help you than if you just started five years before you might get dementia, but it's also never too late.

And for many guests you've had, there's a lot of research suggesting the symptoms. or the neurodegeneration that might precede cognitive decline happens in midlife, right? Or it can be found at midlife or there's risk factors. We know that to be true. The interesting thing about exercise and preventing cognitive decline is that the World Health Organization, while they're not the Institute for Functional Medicine, it's the World Health Organization. And they are really strict about the research they pay attention to.

Exercise is so good for preventing cognitive decline. It is at the top of their list in terms of evidence weight and recommendations, so evidence-based recommendations for preventing cognitive decline. But interestingly enough, when we have conversations around brain health, when we talk to patients at the Pacific Brain Health Center, when I just casually discuss brain health with people about in the world, right? It is usually the last thing that is emphasized or considered in relation to brain health. Even from their practitioners often.

It's not like, okay, it's like, hey, maybe this drug or now a little bit of like some dietary stuff, eat your fat, have your fish oil. etc. But we don't emphasize exercise enough, which is a big part of why we're having this podcast here is to show in terms of interventions. If you care and you pay attention to, if you, if you are listening to this podcast and you are wanting to hold off on eventual cognitive decline. Yes. And minimize it. If you have any concerns about Alzheimer's, which is such a pervasive disease that's there or other forms of dementia, like this is your friend. in helping fight those things.

It's your best friend. So contrary to popular belief, you don't need to go to the gym to have an effective workout. So many people say they don't have time for the gym to overhaul their diet, to spend quality time with their loved ones. You see our well-being often gets added

to the list of things that we have to do. And that list just gets on getting longer and longer. But what if I told you that all it takes is five minutes a day to make a real difference in your health? My good friend, Dr. Rungan Chatterjee, one of the most influential medical doctors in the UK and Europe shares with us his simple ways to build movement into our everyday lives. Even within the wellness world, we always knew that exercise is a good thing in general.

It's a good thing to do. It's a good thing to see. But it's only been recently, even in the space of functional medicine, that we've really connected the power of movement and its impact on brain health. Why is it that you think? that there's been this resurgence in rediscovering movement, exercise, play, where previously it was kind of seen as something that we're going to ignore a little bit, and if you want to be more fit and build some muscles, you focus on movement. If you don't, that's fine. You know, just focus on your diet and these other components. I think the reason is, is we've been very reductionist when we look at our health, when we, you know, the way we practice medicine for a number of

years now. And, you know, we've always had this very simplistic conversation that, you know, movement of physical activity is simply to do with burning off calories. So, you know, if you eat too much, right, you can burn it off by working out more. You know, that's the sort of conversation we've had around movement. But really what's happening now is in the last five or ten years, the research on all this, all these lifestyle changes, including movement and exercise, is, is, is just so overwhelmingly profound that we're discovering that physical activity and movement are doing things to our genes, to our gut bugs, to our brains, that we don't have drugs that can do anywhere near what physical activity can do, right? We're understanding more science,

such as physical activity increases levels of something called BDNF, brain-derived neurotrophic factor. Basically, this is a very powerful compound that's made in the brain that helps your nerve cells grow. Well, let's think about that for a minute. We can improve the growth. We can increase the growth of our nerve cells by moving more, right? We don't have a drug, really, that can do that. There are some sort of compounds that being tested at the moment, which might be able to in some way, you know, in a small way, replicate some of that. But the reality is, by moving more, we can improve. the levels of BDNF in our brain, right? This is game changing for the way that we view lifestyle. This is game change for the way, you know, I said these are thought to be soft interventions.

You know, this is not the real medicine. Hey, if there was a drug out which would improve levels of BDNF in your brain, you would be hearing about it. You know, when you're in the States, because we can't see adverts for drugs in the UK like you can hear. You'd see it everywhere, right? You say, go into your local pharmacy and buy this because this is going to improve levels of BDNF in your brain, right? This is where we're going in medicine, but also we've forgotten how things are interconnected. You know that increasing physical activity, right, changes the composition of your gut bugs, right? Because the body is interconnected, and that's what I'm always about making small changes in these four key areas, rather than trying to max out in one.

I think you do a little bit, in each one you get the synergistic effect. So, you know, we talk about movement. What I'm talking about, right? You know, walking more, increasing how much you walk has been shown to help reduce your likelihood of getting Alzheimer's disease, right? So just generally improving our walking, how much we walk is a fantastic idea. The way I do it is, you know, I'm very lucky my kids live 0.6 miles from school. So rain or shine, we walk the kids to school because it means that, they're walking 0.6 miles on the way, 0.6 miles back. So every day, they've got 1.2 miles in just from walking to school. And if I or my wife are dropping them and we're walking,

we're getting 2.4 miles in a day just from doing what we have to do anyway. You've kept it simple. You've integrated it into your life. Exactly. I'm not going to the gym to do it. I'm just looking for opportunities. When I go to the grocery store, okay, in my car, I park at the other end. So I'm not looking for the nearest one to the super, to the grocery. to restore entrance, I'm looking for the further space. So I have to walk to that, to the entrance, right? This is counterintuitive. We're always looking. I want to park as close as possible because I need to keep moving and get, you know, get my things done quickly. You know, if you need to take a bus or a train or even you're taking a car to work or to school, do you know what? Park it 10, 50 minutes away, right?

So you have to go to work anyway or you get off the bus one stop earlier and walk that last bit. because it's about building these things in to your everyday life. If you think it's just going to come from a gym three times a week, you know what? After a while, that's going to fade and you ain't going to be getting enough movement. So all these things are about building in small changes to your everyday life. But I really want to highlight something called strength training. I think that strength training has been very much undervalued in society.

We associate strength training with teenagers, and people in their 20s wanting to look buff and wanting to look good, right? But once you hit the age of 30, we're losing muscle mass every year. In fact, we can lose up to 5% of our muscle mass every 10 years if we're physically inactive. But why is that important? That's important, because our lean muscle mass is one of the strongest determinants of how well we're going to be as we age, both for our weight, whether it's our blood sugar and type 2 diabetes or our brain.

function, right? So here's the point, right? Why have we undervalued strength training? So there's this really great study that was actually done on women, although I think this applies to men as well, and they compared people who did aerobic exercise versus strength training. And what was incredible is that both groups who did, you know, aerobic exercise and strength training showed an improvement in elements of what we call that executive brain function. And what I mean by that is things like their working memory, their ability to modify their behavior in response to a changing situation. So that's a good thing. But actually the strength training group got something extra. They were the only ones who experienced improved powers

of attention, right? So that their attention was better and they were even better at resolving conflicts. Right, let's think about this from a minute. We're talking about doing some strength training, it is literally changing the structural function of your brain and how it's, and how it's dealing with things. And, you know, I realized this a few years ago. So I started telling my patients, hey, guys, you got to prioritize strength training. You know, maybe 30 minutes, 40 minutes, three times a week in the gym, it's going to be really good. And they'd come back and see me a few weeks later. Said, how are you getting on? Hey, Doc, you know, I've not had time, you know, I've, works been busy. You know, the gym's too far.

And in that moment, I thought, you know, I never thought they're not doing what I'm telling them to do. What I thought was, I'm not giving them information in a way that they feel is practical and applicable in their everyday life. I've got to do a better job. And in that moment was born something called the five-minute kitchen workout that I used on Doctor in the House, but I go through in detail in my book, which is really this idea of a strength workout that you can do in five minutes in your kitchen. right, you don't need an expensive gym workout, you don't need any equipment, you can modify it for any ability level, right? You don't even need to change your clothes. I'm removing the barriers to entry. So I had this couple in their 60s who came to see me and they were actually worried about they were pretty good, but they were saying, how can we reduce our likelihood of having problems

with our brain as we get older? You know, we're okay, but we just want to do what we can. And I went through the research on strength training. And I said, guys, you know, I don't have time. Yeah, we're not going to do that. And it's not on our thing. And I said, have you got 10 minutes a week? So what, 10 minutes? I said, yeah, have you got five minutes twice a week? I said, yeah, okay. So I taught them this five minute kitchen workouts, right, for their ability levels. I took my jacket off in my clinic and I was on the floor. I was showing them how to do it. And they were very skeptical. But they went away and they tried it, right? Four weeks later, they came back to see me. I said, how are you guys getting on? I said, hey, doc, we love it. We're now doing it upstairs

every evening while we're running our evening bath, we do it for 10 minutes, six nights a week. So this is the couple who thought they didn't have time, energy or the inclination to go to a gym to work on their strength. Yet by making it simple and achievable, by saying, just give me 10 minutes a week, right? Within four weeks, that has become 60 minutes of strength training per week. You know, I don't what they're doing now, hopefully they're going to be doing more. But health has become overcomplicated. My whole approach is about simplifying it. I've got patients in their 20s doing my five-minute kitchen workout. I've got patients in their 70s doing it, right? One of the exercise is a press-up. Right, true, if we're on the floor now doing a press-up, that's a very difficult exercise.

But you know what? Most people can do it against the wall, right? And this is what I try and do with everything I do in my patients in my clinic, on my TV show. In my book, there are literally, you know, hundreds of tips on how you can actually put these principles into practice in your life. These are tips that actually are not tips that you should do because I'm telling you to do them. You should do them because these are the tips that over 17 years of seeing tens of thousands of patients, these are the tips that work in real life. These are the tips that people are actually going to do. And when you get started and you incorporate at least a few things in all these categories, you're motivated just like this couple to increase it a little bit further. Yeah.

Because you actually feel the difference. There's no bigger. If you're going to rely on willpower, you're only going to get so far. But if you do some things that you can incorporate fairly easily into your life and you feel incredible, which is what you're giving to your patience and your readers, it's going to motivate you to continue because it's not willpower. You genuinely feel good. You are truly the CEO of your own health and it's one of the most important jobs you'll ever have. So as the CEO of your own company, your own health, what will you commit to starting today to bring more movement and exercise into your daily routine? Even if it's only a few minutes, it can still make a radical, radical difference. Thank you for tuning into this mini episode. I hope you

enjoyed it. If you feel so inclined, please check out the speakers that we featured in this episode. Kelly McGonical, Ryan Glatt, Dr. Rungan Chanderjee, you can find their links to their social media in the show notes below. Share this episode with a friend if they loved it. And as always, text me 302-200-5643 to let me know what you thought of today's episode.