Passion Struck with John R. Miles - Dr. Connell Cowan and Dr. David Kipper on Overriding Brain Chemistry and Behavior Patterns EP 311

Starting point is 00:00:00 Coming up next on PassionStrike, what we found in our research was that we are sorted out into two different brain types. We each fit into one of these brain types. They're based on a deficiency in one of two neurotransmitters that we inherit. So we don't actually have a choice about which team we're on. about which team we're on. And one of the transmitters is dopamine, which is a more activating neurotransmitter, and the other transmitter is serotonin, which is a more calming neurotransmitter. And to go a little deeper, these two interfacing transmitter types are necessary for evolution in order for the species to evolve, and not just in in humans but in all animals. Welcome to PassionStruct. Hi, I'm your host, John Armiles, and on the show, we decipher the secrets,

Starting point is 00:00:52 tips, and guidance of the world's most inspiring people and turn their wisdom into practical advice for you and those around you. Our mission is to help you unlock the power of intentionality so that you can become the best version of yourself. If you're new to the show, I offer advice and answer listener questions on Fridays. We have long-form interviews the rest of the week with guest-ranging from astronauts to authors, CEOs, creators, innovators, scientists, military leaders, visionaries, and athletes. Now, let's go out there and become PassionStruck. Hello everyone, and welcome back to episode 311 of PassionStruck.

Starting point is 00:01:33 Ranked by Apple is one of the top 20 most popular health podcasts, and thank you to all of you come back every single week. To listen and learn, had to live better, be better, and impact the world. PassionStruck is now on syndicated radio on the AMFM247 National Broadcast. You can catch us every Monday and Friday from 5-6pm. Links will be in the show notes.

Starting point is 00:01:52 If you're new to the show, thank you so much for being here. Or you simply want to introduce this, to a friend or a family member, we now have episode starter packs, which are collections of our fans' favorite episodes that we organize into convenient topics that give any new listener a great way to get acclimated to everything that we do here on the show. Either go to Spotify or passionstruck.com slash starter packs get started. In case you missed my interviews from last week, I had on Joanna Grover, who is a board certified coach, member of the International Coaching Federation, as well as the Harvard Institute of Coaching. In her groundbreaking book, The Choice Point, Joanna equips us with the ability to use functional imagery training to take control of the decisions

Starting point is 00:02:28 that define our lives. I also interviewed New York Times' bestselling author and renowned speaker and wellness expert Chris Carr, about her upcoming book, I'm Not A Morning Person, which launches on September 19. It's an amazing book, go out there and preorder a copy of it. My talk with Chris was a transformational episode about love loss and all the life-changing insights we received when we embraced them. I also wanted to say thank you for your ratings and reviews. If you love today's episode or either of those other ones I mentioned, we would appreciate you giving it. I've started rating an review and sharing it with your friends and families. I know we and our guests love to see comments from our listeners. In today's episode, we dive deep into the fascinating realm

Starting point is 00:03:06 of human behavior and the power of our brains. Have you ever wondered why it feels like we often sabotage our own best intentions, or get ready to uncover the science behind it all? Joining us are two distinguished experts in the field, Dr. Cannell Cowan, New York Times bestselling author of Smart Woman Full of Choices, Dr. David Kipper, co-host of ABC Radio's nationallyally syndicated Show, The Medical Show.

Starting point is 00:03:28 Together they present their groundbreaking book Override, which empowers us to take control of our own brains. In our discussion of Override, we delve into the intricate world of neural transmitters revealing how they influence our thoughts, emotions, and actions. We unveiled the science behind why we often sabotage our best intentions and provide a fresh perspective on personality types, serotonin, and dopamine. By understanding our own chemical imbalances, we gain the tools to reshape our reflexive behaviors and cultivate intentional self-control.

Starting point is 00:03:57 Back by the latest scientific research, Howard and Kipper shed light on why we are the way we are and how we can overcome our innate challenges. So get ready to override your old patterns, break free from self-sabotage and take control of your brain. Join us in the stock-provoking conversation as we uncover the secrets to unlocking your true potential. Thank you for choosing PassionStruck and choosing me to be your host and guide on your journey to creating an intentional life.

Starting point is 00:04:21 Now, let that journey begin. I am so excited to welcome Dr. Connell Howan and Dr. David Hipper to PassionStruct. We will be talking today about this book that I have right here override and I'm so excited to have you on and congratulations on the launch of your book. Thank you very much. Thank you. Well, I think it's important for the audience to get to know both of you. And I always wonder when people collaborate on a book, what made that happen? So I was hoping you guys could go through this 50 year relationship that you've had and the epiphany that led you to writing this book. We meant a long time ago.

Starting point is 00:05:06 We became friends. We started working together. We've had a very long rich friendship and collaboration for many years. I think one of the things that professionally that struck us was from my point of view as a psychologist and from David's point of view as an internist, how hard it is for people to use the kind of information that they get about themselves, about life, about what would be healthy and constructive for them to be able to incorporate easily. They just were not able to do that.

Starting point is 00:05:46 There was a resistance to changing those things that would have made their lives better. And I think it was really that kind of question that led us into exploring what that resistance to change is and it led us to how we manage stress and how it's influenced by our brain chemistry and the autonomic nervous system that we all have and the slight imbalances that I think tip is toward habitual behaviors that make us very resistant to change and what we've learned how to do

Starting point is 00:06:25 and what we've incorporated into the book is ways to leverage those brain chemistry tendencies that we have in a way that not only addresses the resistance to change, but actually makes it a little bit easier to overcome. That's really why we titled the book Override. Okay, and David, I think to lay a baseline down throughout the book, you refer to shields and swords as the two different types of brain types. And this is what sets the baseline

Starting point is 00:06:58 for the entire book. Can you go through for the audience? What is the difference between the two and how might someone recognize what they are? John, just to add a little bit to what Connell said, one of the things that we realized was that the generic advice that we were both given as a medical doctor and as a psychologist, we're not holding water. And all these self-help books weren't seeming to give the answer. So we knew there was something deeper.

Starting point is 00:07:30 And what we found in our research was that we are sorted out into two different brain types. We each fit into one of these brain types. There are hybrids to these brain types. They're based on a deficiency in one of two neurotransmitters that we inherit. So we don't actually have a choice about which team we're on. And one of the transmitters is dopamine, which is a more activating neurotransmitter, and the other transmitter is serotonin, which is a more calming neurotransmitter. And to go a little deeper, these two interfacing transmitter types are necessary for evolution

Starting point is 00:08:12 in order for the species to evolve, and not just in humans, but in all animals. It was interesting in our research that we found this to be true in birds and in mice and in other animals that were non-human. So, the two different types, sort out, as I said, into one that is more exploratory, risk-taking issues with managing their impulse, needing immediate gratification, motivated by a reward, and these were the dopamine deficient group. This was a group that was more associated with the type A personality, the more optimistic personality, but this is where it came from.

Starting point is 00:08:57 It came from this relative deficiency in the neurotransmitter dopamine. On the other side of the equation are those that are deficient in the neurotransmitter dopamine. On the other side of the equation are those that are deficient in the neurotransmitter serotonin. And again, opposite to their dopamine cousins, these are people that are more cautious, are less likely to take a risk, control their impulses better. They are worry warts, they can be hyper-condriacal. So these two groups were bipolar opposites in their behavioral patterns. And these behaviors were predictable. There are no specific or meaningful tests in the blood for serotonin and dopamine.

Starting point is 00:09:41 We can certainly test for these, but they're evanescent in the bloodstream. So depending on what you're doing at the time, how stressed you are, how relaxed you are, those values don't really give us much information. It's hot, and I looked at the behavioral patterns it separated out as I just described. So the people that are more outgoing and more curious and risk-tolerant, we call those people the soards, again just to give it a name, and the people that were more cautious and protective we call shields. So the soards are those that are dopamine and balanced, and the shields are those that are serotonin and balanced.

Starting point is 00:10:26 And we use this nomenclature in order to pollute your reading through the book and applying this to the different chapters that you mentioned and parts of our lives that are all affected by these differences. And I think a follow on question to that would be, how does each type hope with stress? Because I imagine it's very different depending on what type of brain balance that you have.

Starting point is 00:10:52 It is. And it really relates to these imbalances are really in the direction of being slight deficiencies in those nearestransmitters. So that the people who are imbalanced in serotonin side, on the calming side, they have experienced too much activation, too much stimulation in their nervous system. And so the way they cope with stress is to try and tamp down that activation

Starting point is 00:11:23 because they don't have enough serotonin to do it pharmaceutical. Conversely on the dopamine side, if you have too little dopamine, the way you calm down is in essence by calming up. You want to ramp up the amount of stimulation. You feel more normal. You feel more comfortable when you have a little bit more stimulation. So they manage stress and sometimes mismanage it by looking for ways to ramp it up. That's why they're more risk tolerant. They take more chances because when you're taking a chance, you experience some amount of potential danger, threat, uncertainty, and it increases the amount of arousal. So all these things really relate to the amount of arousal in the system at any given time.

Starting point is 00:12:17 Yes. And for someone who's gone through trauma, I know a lot of people who've experienced PTSD, instead of dealing with it, tend to internalize a lot of the impacts from it. What causes that to happen versus the inclination to want to seek help and mitigate the circumstance? So PTSD affects both sides, both groups. So PTSD happens when we experience a very traumatic event. There's a certain branding at that moment into our memory centers of that event.

Starting point is 00:12:56 So it sticks with us. You can remember where you were with 9-11. You can come right back to when you found out the towers were assaulted. For some of us, we can remember when Kennedy was assassinated. These big events, and it's going to be on a lower level as far as a more personal level of things that happen in your life that are traumatic either in your childhood, whatever those events are. They're locked in. When you are reminded of that event, if you are shy on the stimulating transmitters,

Starting point is 00:13:33 the dopamine people, again, their behaviors accentuate those behaviors that we see where there are impulse issues, there are all the activating behaviors that we see, and that group become more exaggerated, and on the other side of the equation for serotonin people that experience to PTSD event, when they are reactivated, again, as column pointed out, this becomes too much a rousal into their nervous system, so they retreat even further. So it actually exaggerates both behaviors on either side when PTSD is reactivated. Yeah, that's really fascinating how it has an adverse effect on both groups, but in different ways.

Starting point is 00:14:22 I wanted to bring it up because it is a topic that we've covered a lot on the show. I think it's an important distinction for people to understand. Well, kind of, you guys open up the book by asking a fundamental question that I think all the listeners probably have thought at one time or another. And that is, why do we keep things that we know don't serve our best interest instead of doing the things that are helpful and constructive. And so I was hoping you might touch on that through the science that you uncover in the book. We're pretty bound by wanting to be comfortable. The emotional comfort that I'm talking about where you feel safe, normal at peace is I think an intuitive barometer for what we experience as homeostasis or balance in the system.

Starting point is 00:15:17 And it's good so that if you're cold, you put a jacket on or you turn the heater on, we use comfort as a tool to make adjustments around, but comfort can also be, work against us, it can be very self-defeating because some of the things that we need to do that are healthy for us make us uncomfortable. You have a serotonin imbalance, for example, you may be much more prone to social anxiety. Going out and having social interactions, which would be healthy for you to do, and would ultimately be generative and constructive in your life, you might avoid. The avoidance then serves that barometer of comfort because when you avoid something, you get a little bit of a reward hit, a release and arousal when

Starting point is 00:16:13 you've avoided something you anticipate making you uncomfortable. So comfort is really the kind of internally organizing principle that we all use. And sometimes we use it in a way that's healthy for us and sometimes we use it in a way that really hurts us. Well, there has been so much talk about pushing yourself out of your comfort zone and choosing the growth option instead. It's interesting that this is really rooted in the brain type that we have. So I found that to be really fascinating in the way that you describe it.

Starting point is 00:16:53 One of the sections of the book that really caught my eye was, you all right, that repetitive, negative thinking is linked to cognitive decline. And that's something I never really understood before reading it. Can you tell the audience a little bit more why that's the case? Negative thinking for the Sarah Shonen group is their comfort zone.

Starting point is 00:17:17 Negative thinking for the dopamine group is it doesn't register. They're looking for stimulation. They're looking for new information. They don't assess problems in the same way. They're more optimistic. The more you engage that behavior, and in this case, the negative thinking we're looking at a particular trait of the shields, the serotonin group, they're not evolving. They're not challenging themselves. They're not going into a social situation that might in fact pay off into a new friendship

Starting point is 00:17:55 or pay off into something that would actually be good for them. The less you challenge yourself in that regard, the less you're going to evolve. If you look at data on dementia as an example, one of the therapies that we have available to us to inhibit the dementia creeping in is to stay intellectually challenged and to keep ourselves motivated to learn new things to negative thinking is the opposite of that. This is some, this becomes important for you to keep your brain cells moving. And if you just retreat into these comfort areas, your cognitive abilities are going to suffer. Yeah, it is interesting though, because there is a rise of both dementia and Alzheimer's that is occurring.

Starting point is 00:18:47 Do you think modern society and the foods we're eating and the microbiome are playing into that? Do you think we're not getting enough sleep and the amyloid plaque is building up and it can't be released? What do you think are some of the causes for the rise? Because it's not just in the United States, it seems to be a global phenomenon. If you look at pollutants, everything doesn't relate to brand chemistry imbalances, obviously. And there are a lot of things that affect cognitive abilities over time in the process of

Starting point is 00:19:19 agent. It was reading something just in the last few days about the image was that we tend to ingest in one way or another, breathing it in or eating it, a credit card was of microplastics every day. I don't know how they came up with that, but that was the image was a credit card worth of microplastics. There are microplastics in the Antarctic. It is everywhere. It's in the water we drank it's in the air that we breathe, plastics that have taken over our lives. So if you look at just that pollution, our environment is

Starting point is 00:19:59 changing. And I'm looking at those things that are obviously global. Those are not just something that is going on in our comfort. I think stress and the rapidity of change, we've never experienced change at quite the rate that we are experiencing. I think globally, the adaptation to change has always been at a slower pace. It is just accelerating. So stress is another element. But getting back to what David was saying about negative thinking, I think that the reason

Starting point is 00:20:36 that that is such an important notion is that it's one of those things that you can attack because negative thinking it constrains behavior. It underlines those things that you tell yourself that rule out certain kinds of things as opposed to ruling them out. It tends to amplify. And in those amplifications, it restricts more and more, you know, what you'll do. And the more you restrict what you do, the less degrees of freedom that you have, and the less that you really use your brain in a functional way that keeps it most alive and vibrant.

Starting point is 00:21:17 John, you brought up two very interesting points. You brought up the microbiome. We've learned that there is a definite gut-brain relationship. We inherit our microbiome. What the microbiome is, it's a collection of bacteria, viruses, funguses, toxins that sit in this little structure called the seacom. The seacom is the connection between the small intestine and the colon. It's where the appendix sits.

Starting point is 00:21:47 And in that very small area, we have this balancing act of all these different things. That balancing act that we do inherit controls our immune system. It controls the concentration of dopamine and serotonin and other neurotransmitters. It regulates our blood sugar. It does a lot of different things. It has a direct relationship with the brain and how our emotional system plays out. So the microbiome, which we're really starting to understand now, is crucial to understanding the brain. Using sleep as an example, getting back to the swords and the shields, and how this plays

Starting point is 00:22:30 out and relates to dementia, both sides have sleep issues. So someone that is a shield and shy in serotonin neurotransmitters. They have a sleep disturbance because they don't fall asleep easily. They lay there and ruminate about all the problems that they had not only during the day, but what's going to happen the next day or a month from now. So they have a sleep problem from that point of view. The sores on the other hand. They have a sleep disturbance, but there's this different. There's this based on wanting constant stimulation. So they don't go to sleep. They stay up as long as they can. So the brain requires at least two hours a night of restorative sleep. We need seven hours about in total.

Starting point is 00:23:17 Two hours of that has to be restorative. And what happens during restorative sleep is that the ventricles in the brain which are like the kidneys for theles in the brain, which are like the kidneys for the rest of the body, they clean up the toxins. And if you're denied those two hours of restorative sleep, the ventricles aren't going to get to do their work. And these other products, like you mentioned, the amyloid, the tau proteins, they build up, they don't get excreted, and they start plugging up some of these glial cells or these neurons that we think are directly

Starting point is 00:23:52 related to memory and to cognition. A sleep disorder, and we get into this in the book, a sleep disorder has direct reference to both groups and the microbiome has an overall relationship to how our basic chemistry is formed. The microbiome determines whether we're a disorder or a shield. That's interesting. I interviewed Dr. Cara Fitzgerald, I'm not sure if you're familiar with her or not, but she lives in Connecticut. She wrote a book that came out this year called Younger You,

Starting point is 00:24:26 and she was the first person to run a clinical trial where she was able to show against a control group that through diet, sleep, reducing toxins, she could reduce biological age. And it's interesting to me if I am not getting adequate sleep, how much in a very quick time my cognitive functioning and other aspects start to decline. I find the same thing depending on what I'm eating as well.

Starting point is 00:24:56 If I'm eating a very clean diet, I have much greater ability to focus. I feel much more energized. I feel just tremendously better, and I typically sleep better. And I find when I start allowing a more junk diet in, it has an almost overnight impact that you can feel once you start experimenting with it. It's interesting because through her research, she found that 40% of premature deaths could be prevented by the choices that we make,

Starting point is 00:25:27 which are leading to things of so many unhealthy lifestyles that we have right now. And it seems through your research that brain type and how you approach those life decisions directly has a huge impact on how you're gonna live,, how you're going to feel, how you're going to perform. And those relate directly to your brain type to whether you are shy and either serotonin or dopamine. And when you don't sleep, you're producing more cortisol to keep you alert. And more cortisol is going to ultimately lead to some agitation and some poor eating behavior. If you're very tired, you didn't sleep.

Starting point is 00:26:11 Well, you're going to eat any kind of cracker or chip or anything that's not good for you to keep your blood sugar up. And so I think she's exactly right. Well, I think that has given the audience a really good foundation for the brain types. What I wanted to do now in the interview was to go into, how does your brain type influence different aspects of your life? So, the first one that you all cover is how the brain chemistry influences our most fundamental approaches to work in career. And, Honol, I was hoping you might be able to take that one.

Starting point is 00:26:47 The way it relates to working career is very much based on which side you're in balance. If you look at how we manage other people, whatever relationships we have, we deal with managing emotions, managing expectations. There are certain kinds of tendencies that shields have, those who are deficient in serotonin, that manifest in their work. And conversely, on the sword side, there are certain kinds of aspects that get manifested in terms of work. And what we've tried to do is to explain how some of those things come up and can be compensated

Starting point is 00:27:35 for. And if you're on the dopamine side, the anger for example is one thing that everybody needs to manage. Some people, and if you're managing down, you're a boss and you are supervising a number of people, it's very easy to misuse those kinds of relationships in terms of anger management. Anger is one issue that people with dopamine balances can have. When they get aroused, they tend to be more expressive, so they discharge it. Whereas serotonin imbalance people, when they get overly stimulated, they tend to feel more anxious.

Starting point is 00:28:18 They internalize that kind of anger. So if you're in a position of supervising people and things aren't going well, you've got to learn how to manage your anger and modulate that. The ways that it affects work are, in terms of things like self-confidence. If you have social anxiety, it makes it very difficult to come into a group and make a presentation that you might be expected to make. Issues around brain chemistry play out in countless ways in terms of how we approach our everyday work. Yeah, and part of what I read in the book is you said that shields typically underreach which can create obstacles to success, and they need to change

Starting point is 00:29:07 their risk profile to accommodate for that. And on the other hand, swords have obstacles when it comes to ambition and success. So one of the things, I think, Connell, you brought up earlier was that we have more stress hitting us now than we ever have before. And I think if you look at what automation, AI, robotics, everything else is throwing at the workforce today, the workforce of tomorrow is going to completely change. Hundreds of millions of jobs are going to change. So I think one of the fundamental things, if's listening to this is how do our brain types impact the way we're going to be able to adapt to the shifting workplace environment?

Starting point is 00:29:52 That's really an interesting question because if you look at the requirements for being competitive, today are very different than they were even decade ago. And I think that this change is going to continue to accelerate. And you brought up something that I think is certainly affects people who are serotonin imbalance. They do tend to underreach. They underreach because underreaching is more comfortable. Not because that's the limit of their capacity, but it's the limit of sometimes of their comfort. So it's comfortable to underreach. But I think if you look at the changes that are going to have to really deal with being uncomfortable.

Starting point is 00:30:46 We're going to have to deal with kind of stretching our capacities to deal with with comfort. Because we're going to have to learn new techniques to stay up with the evolution of where AI and robotics are going. There are going to be a lot of jobs that are lost. Aren't capacity for intelligence is as human beings is pretty much set so that we're gonna have to really push ourselves,

Starting point is 00:31:17 I think, to stay up with the changes, to remain competitive. Either that is, there can have to be some kind of economic model of the changes to remain competitive. You there is the going to have to be some kind of economic model of changes. If work becomes something that done by robots and not by human beings, then there's going to be some new economic model of that we're going to have to invent. It's also been a totally changed the way we look at our own career choices. I'll use medicine as a perfect example. In medical school a hundred years ago we were taught algorithms to solve problems. We

Starting point is 00:31:52 didn't have the use of certain imaging techniques and blood tests and so we thought more we examined more carefully. Now those algorithms through AI have been reworked and you can take a picture of a skin lesion, send it to your doctor, you'll not only know what that is, but they'll also recommend the treatments. And this is going to become true in all aspects of medicine. And doctors that are used to spending time asking questions and getting to know you personally and establishing a trusting doctor-patient relationship, that's going to change. We're not going to see eight people a day. We're going to be required to see 30 people a day. The other day I got an elevator at the hospital and there was a robot that was moving around and it was functional for the hospital. It brought supplies to the

Starting point is 00:32:46 nurses. It actually could wave its arm as if it was almost human and have big eyes. It made it look like it was human but we're going to have to adjust as consent to all these different nuances that are being redefined. It's going to be a different world and if you're a shield or a sword with that amount of stimulation and the comfort that we had that's now going to be less comfortable, all of these things are going to require us to know who we are to better adapt. Yeah, I think that's an important point. And I also found it was interesting, even we talked about the microbiome earlier that

Starting point is 00:33:29 you all found a correlation between the microbiome and social connections, which I found was pretty intriguing. What was that connection? One of the connections with the microbiome is the more diverse the microbiome is a diversity in terms of the biome is connected to diversity in terms of behavior. And so if you need a restricted diet, you tend to have less diversity in the microbiome. So if you take a kid who is a finicky eater, there are only a certain few foods that that kid will eat. That microbiome that will be affected by the diet that that child eats is going to

Starting point is 00:34:13 have an impact on the range of behaviors that child will feel comfortable engaging in. So even just our food groups, by expanding food groups, you expand that microbiome and in that expansion, you give yourself degrees of freedom and behavior that you don't even think about, that just happened as a result of that kind of diversity. And to validate the microbiome in this, which as we mentioned earlier, is what actually determines the level of serotonin and dopamine in our systems. So that's a very important part of who we are. They've managed to take the microbiome from someone that was thin and transplant that into someone that was overweight and that person that was overweight

Starting point is 00:35:09 lost weight. And this is one of several examples of how we're going to be using the microbiome to treat health problems. And this is a little bit in the future, but these studies have already been validated, so that work is underway. I think one of the most fascinating things that I've seen in healthcare and in some ways, I think is going to be an amazing positive. And in some ways, I can see it being a negative is the way that technology and medicine

Starting point is 00:35:38 are coming together, especially when it comes into automation and genetics. And I see both sides of this, the great things that are gonna happen and the unintended consequences that people who are inventing these new technologies haven't even thought through, similar to things that have happened already in the digital world.

Starting point is 00:35:59 Well, David, I'm gonna send this back to you before panel came on. You and I were talking about chapter eight on marriage. And I said, I wanted to ask you a question on that. And that is, what is reciprocal validation? And why is it important to the success of your relationships? I'm going to take a stab at that question, but I will admit that Khan is the expert on this.

Starting point is 00:36:24 But I was relating to my own marriage as an example, and then perhaps Khan, you can fill in the details here, but I am on the dopamine side of the equation, and I'm more of a sword, my wife is more of a shield, and this relates not just to my marriage, but to all relationships that were engaged in. So if you take a sword on one side and a shield on the other side and you take these two people into a car showroom to buy an automobile, well, the sword is going to want to come out of that showroom with the car. They're buying the car, they're coming out with the car.

Starting point is 00:37:08 That's their immediate gratification, that's their goal. On the other side of the equation, the person that is more of a shield is going to say, well, I think we have to hold back a little bit and shop around and see if we can get the best deal. So now you have two people in a relationship in a marriage that come from different sides of the neurotransmitter equation and their reflex behaviors are expressed and they become oppositional, whereas if you understand that in your relationship and you don't take it as personally, you understand that, gee, this is just my reflex. This is just my wife's reflex. Understand it on that level.

Starting point is 00:37:57 It's a lot easier than if that relationship helped as opposed to being angry or upset. So that's an example of this, and Kahn, do you want to fill in some details on this? It's always been interesting to me that emotions are contagious. If someone is a little spooked by something and feeling anxious, that anxiety can leak into the people that they're around and intimate relationship obviously it has an impact there. If you're married to someone of a like brain type, you can tend to amplify things that they really shouldn't be amplified. You get two people who are shields who are vaguely hypochondriacal and they can really get themselves going because

Starting point is 00:38:47 they amplify the very tendencies that it should be balanced out. Or if you get two sorts together, sometimes they can get into trouble with overspending and if they have issues around impulse control. They spending is a great way to get a dopamine hit. You can bump up your dopamine pretty easily by spending some money that maybe you don't have. So that relationships, depending on whether you're with someone of like brain chemistry

Starting point is 00:39:20 or different brain chemistry, the effects are very different. What David was talking about was something where they're in opposition. Now, in my relationship, I'm more on the shield side and my wife is much more of a source. We have issues that balance that relationship. And then there are times where my tendency is to do something that's very different from her. So I think understanding those things that relate to something that you don't intend,

Starting point is 00:39:49 that you just have inherited, make those differences not only more understandable but more acceptable. So you don't take those things as clean and quite as personally as they might. Well, I believe one of the biggest things that impacts relationships is we sometimes get into competing with our partner. And these brain types definitely would interfere with that competition if you're not understanding the needs of the other person or how you're kind of balancing each other.

Starting point is 00:40:22 So I really appreciate you taking us deeper on that. The last area I wanted to talk about because I thought it was an interesting one is why does a calm child grow into a healthier and more successful adult? And I'm assuming calm here is someone who has not been raised in a stressful situation, maybe someone who has an experienced abuse or other aspects, but I was hoping you could first qualify that and

Starting point is 00:40:53 then expand upon it. If you're calm, you have more access to who you are. The unique expression of social abilities, cognitive abilities, your emotional range, all those degrees of freedom are increased. But CUM is related to a rousal or activation in the central nervous system. So that if you have a child who is embalished on the serotonin side Naturally, they experience a little bit more activation than is comfortable So to calm them down you really Work with them you give them skill sets that are common. They can be mindfulness

Starting point is 00:41:44 exercises for kids, but you teach them how to deal with their relationship with themselves, how to self-sue. So those kinds of skills have the tendency to come them down. If you're in balance on the dopamine side, the issue is very different. Common is really learning how to increase the amount of arousal in the system, because kids who are dopamine deficient tend to feel calmer when they have a little bit more stimulation. That's why so many kids get diagnosed, particularly little little boys if they're in balance on the dopamine side can get diagnosis ADHD. And very often their medication is prescribed. Well, you'd think that, and these medications are stimulant medications, whether it's

Starting point is 00:42:38 Ritalin or Adderall, or they're on the arousal side. They stimulate the nervous system. You think if you give some of those Distractable and has attention problems a little bit hyperactive can't sit without forming around Stimulate you think that would just put them off the chart But what it does is comes them down because their behavior is what's compensating for the lack of natural stimulation in their nervous system. So when you amplify that pharmaceutical with a medication, you bring it up naturally, they can drop all of the compensated behavior, they become more focused. So kids need to be calmed up and calmed down

Starting point is 00:43:24 because when they're calm, when they're feeling at ease, they have most access to their uniqueness and their abilities. And they then express those in the most constructive ways that they are capable of doing. And that pharmacology that const speaking up applies to both sides so that if you are serotonin deficient and that's creating a tremendous amount of worry and rumination and obsessive behaviors, if you give them a medication like the SSRIs that are serotonin-producing, those behaviors are mitigated and they become less anxious, they worry less, they ruminate less. So there is a pharmacologic approach to treating these two different sides. However, that's only a part of it because the behavioral relationship that we develop throughout our lives has to also be addressed.

Starting point is 00:44:31 Those are the harder ones. It's easy to give somebody a pill, an ADHD kid a pill that's a stimulant to calm them down. It's much harder to treat people once they become young adults or older adults that have developed these habits over their life, that compensate to make these changes. This plays out in the health issues. And why people, it's hard to get people to lose weight to stop smoking, to sleep better. So this is where the behavioral aspect and the strategies that we offer in the book become very important. Okay, and I always like to close on this question with authors, and I'll let you each take a

Starting point is 00:45:12 turn answering it. If there was one thing that you wanted a reader to take away from your book, what would it be? I think from my point of view, what I would want a reader to take away from the book was a feeling of not only understanding themselves in a much deeper way than they have before by being able to identify some of the things that are related to their brain chemistry, but that they would feel like they had more degrees of freedom going forward.

Starting point is 00:45:48 They could do things in a little bit different way that would make them more in control of their lives. I think that the intent of what we try to give our patients and what we put into the book are ways to really increase your degrees of freedom, to give you a greater sense of control over the things in your life that would be helpful and that would be constructed to your relationships that would allow you to eat in a more consistently helpful way, exercise more consistently, but to bring vitality and help and clarity into your life.

Starting point is 00:46:29 My response to that, John, would be that I would like the reader to come away with the understanding that they actually will have more control in their life to becoming more comfortable and to understanding those behaviors that have consistently gotten them into some hot water on some level, and that there's finally a mechanism by understanding their brain chemistry and applying very strategic exercises to change those, that we're no longer restricted to generic advice for changing our behavior. Our book is very personalized. I think that it's a very interesting way to look at why you do the things you do and to give you the tools to do them better.

Starting point is 00:47:19 Okay, and if a listener wanted to learn more about you and the book, what is the best place for them to go? There's a Rebson thing go to override books.com. That's probably the best place for them to go. Okay, well, thank you so much for coming on the show today and discussing this great book and Congratulations again on its release and this many decades year of partnership that you both have. I really appreciate you coming on today. Don, thank you very much for having us. It's been a pleasure. It has been.

Starting point is 00:47:54 I thoroughly enjoyed that interview with Dr. Cannell Cowan and Dr. David Kipper, and I wanted to thank them and Penguin Random House for the privilege and honor of having them here on the show. Links to all things Cannell and David will be in the show notes at passionstruck.com. Please use our website links if you purchase any of the books from the guests that we feature on the show. All proceeds go to supporting the show. Videos are on YouTube at both John Armeyles and PassionStruck Clips. And you can also catch us on syndicated radio on the AMFM 247 National broadcast Monday and Friday from 5 to 6pm Eastern time. Links will be in the show notes.

Starting point is 00:48:27 Advertiser deals and discount codes are in one convenient place at passionstruck.com slash deals. I'm on LinkedIn where you can sign up for my newsletter and you can also tune in on all the other social channels at John R. Miles where I post daily. You're about to hear a preview of the Passion Struck Podcast interview that I did with my friend Hillary Billings, who's a popular viral video creator and strategist with over a billion views. She is a co-founder and CEO of Attentioners where she leads a creative agency that helps entrepreneurs and brands drive reach and revenue through short form video strategies.

Starting point is 00:49:00 Hillary is also an expert on the psychology of attention. Deluted focus equals deluded results. So what we want to do is be very intentional and hyper focused on the messaging, on the intent, on the way that we are going to go about getting the results that we want for people to just hyper focus that reputation to be able to break through. Otherwise, it's like throwing spaghetti at a wall and someone's hoping that at some point that it'll stick. The fee for this show is that you share it with family and friends when you find something useful or interesting.

Starting point is 00:49:32 If you know someone who is interested in the science that Dr. David Kipper and Dr. Anel Pauin discussed today then definitely share this episode with them. The greatest compliment that you can give us is to share the show with those that you love and care about. In the meantime, do your best to apply what you hear in the show so that you can love what you listen. And until next time, go out and become Ash and Strut.

Starting point is 00:49:59 you

Passion Struck with John R. Miles - Dr. Connell Cowan and Dr. David Kipper on Overriding Brain Chemistry and Behavior Patterns EP 311

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