Feel Better, Live More with Dr Rangan Chatterjee - BITESIZE | How to live a happy, healthy and fulfilling life at any age | Daniel Levitin #137

Episode Date: December 4, 2020

Imagine if you could reverse ageing and cognitive decline and improve your brain health purely through your mindset and approach to life. Feel Better Live More Bitesize is my new weekly podcast for your mind, body and heart. Each week I’ll be featuring inspirational stories and practical tips from some of my former guests. This week’s guest is Daniel Levitin, a neuroscientist, cognitive psychologist and bestselling author. He explains why what we do day-to-day affects not just our short-term health, but also how our brain changes with age. Daniel describes 3 personality traits, or mindsets, that are the key ingredient to longterm health and happiness. By cultivating a mindset of conscientiousness, curiosity & gratitude we can slow the ageing process. These are simple and fun things we can do now to live a live a healthy and fulfilling life both today and into our old age. Show notes and the full podcast are available at drchatterjee.com/112 Follow me on instagram.com/drchatterjee/ Follow me on facebook.com/DrChatterjee/ Follow me on twitter.com/drchatterjeeuk DISCLAIMER: The content in the podcast and on this webpage is not intended to constitute or be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your doctor or other qualified health care provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have heard on the podcast or on my website. 

Today's Bite Size episode is brought to you by AG1, a science-driven daily health drink with over 70 essential nutrients to support your overall health. It includes vitamin C and zinc, which helps support a healthy immune system, something that is really important at this time of year. It also contains prebiotics and digestive enzymes that help support your gut health. It's really tasty and has been in my own life for over five years. Until the end of January, AG1 are giving a limited time offer. Usually they offer my listeners a one-year supply of vitamin D and K2 and five free travel packs with their first order. But until the end of January, they are doubling the five free travel packs to

10. And these packs are perfect for keeping in your backpack, office, or car. If you want to take advantage of this limited time offer, all you have to do is go to drinkag1.com forward slash live more. Welcome to Feel Better Live More, bite-sized your weekly dose of optimism and positivity to get you ready for the weekend. Today's clip is from episode 112 of the podcast with Dr. Daniel Levitin, a neuroscientist, cognitive psychologist, and best-selling author. In this clip, he outlines some of the key factors that will enhance our lives right now, as well as increase our health span, and not just our lifespan. The number one factor that influences how you're going to fare at any age is a personality trait, a mindset, you might call it, of conscientiousness. That swamps all other factors in terms of whether you're going to be healthy and happy at age eight or age 108.

So, I guess, can you finish a task you started? Not only that, but can you do the best possible job you can? Can you do not just good enough? Can you try to push yourself to do more, to do better? Can you grow in whatever it is that you're doing? If it's keeping a garden, if it's cooking for yourself and your family, if it's choosing vegetables,

learning which ones to choose at the market so you get the most flavorful and healthy ones with the most nutrients. Any area of a human endeavor where you can learn and keep learning is what's neuroprotective. I mean, it's fun. It is fun, yeah. It's curiosity, really, which is a separate trait. It's number two on the list after conscientiousness. People who are curious do better in life. So conscientiousness and curiosity, the two Cs of aging well. If you can remain curious and learn new things, that's neuroprotective. It doesn't mean that you

won't get Alzheimer's or that you can reverse it or slow it down, but it does mean, based on the research, that you may get it and nobody would notice it for years because you've built up this cognitive reserve. Think of it this way. If you go to the gym and you can bench press 200 kilos, on a bad day you could still do 50. I can't, but you've got some muscle reserve. Same thing with the brain. You build up this reserve through doing new things, whatever they are. Just to bring this full circle, the other third quality that we can all work on is gratitude. As you know, I had the opportunity to meet with the Dalai Lama in doing the research for the book. And he meditates on gratitude and compassion two to

four hours every day. And he believes the real secret to happiness, not necessarily longevity, but happiness, is to embrace gratitude. If you're happy for what you have, and you're not focused on what you don't have and feeling slighted or carrying around anger and such. And how come so-and-so has a Tesla and I don't? Or, you know, so-and-so got promoted and I didn't. So-and-so's spouse is better looking than mine. All of that stuff throws our brain into a kind of fear mode. It activates the amygdala.

It releases cortisol. But, you know, Warren Buffett agrees. The idea of experiencing gratitude. My grandmother was an immigrant to the United States from Germany, a Holocaust survivor. She escaped the Nazis. And she had written out on a piece of paper the things she was grateful for. And she recited them every morning when she woke up and every night before she went to bed. She was not religious, but we were talking about how you could affect change. And we talked about meditation and medication and psychotherapy. Another thing that works is religion. All the world's religions teach you that you can change yourself. You can become more compassionate or generous or more tolerant

or express more gratitude. So she had this list, and she told us that every day she woke up, she told me and my mom around the time she was 79, that she sang God Bless America every morning. God bless America, written by another immigrant, by the way, Irving Berlin, another Jewish immigrant. And she felt that it was her purpose to do that. She had to express gratitude that her family was saved. So for her 80th birthday, my mother and I bought her a little $80 electronic keyboard. And I got pieces of masking tape and put them on the keys to play the song and I put

numbers on them. So she'd know what order to play them in. And she loved it. She'd never played an instrument before. So she's doing one, two, three, four, five, six, you know, like this. And then by the time it was her 81st birthday, she had lifted the masking tape off and was playing it from memory. By her 82nd birthday, she'd worked out a rudimentary harmony with the left hand. Oh, wow. She kept improving. She did this every single morning and every night before she went to bed until she died at 97. And we found the keyboard on her bed table.

Hope you enjoyed this week's Feel Better, Live More Bite Size, your weekly dose of optimism and positivity to get you ready for the weekend. Please do spread the love and the feel good vibes by sharing this episode with your friends and family. And if you like what you heard, why not go back and listen to the full conversation for more content from me please do sign up for my weekly newsletter where i share every week things that i do not share on social media topics that i'm thinking about quotes that i'm pondering articles that have moved me and sometimes even music that i'm listening to. Around 100,000 people already subscribe. You can check it out

at drchatterjee.com forward slash subscribe. As always, I'll be back next week with the long form conversation on Wednesday and the latest episode of Bite Size next Friday. I hope you have a wonderful weekend.