Something You Should Know - What You May Not Know About the Food You Eat & How to Get Out of a Rut

Episode Date: March 9, 2020

A lot of items you buy at the grocery store are actually a lot cheaper at the drug store. This episode begins with a look at where the bargains are in your neighborhood pharmacy. http://www.goodhousekeeping.com/home/cleaning-organizing/germs-in-new-clothes Wouldn’t it be nice to get some clear and unbiased advice on nutrition? You are about to. David Katz, M.D. is founding director of the Yale-Griffin Prevention Research Center who studies the latest science about nutrition. Recently he teamed up with food writer Mark Bittman to write a new book called How To Eat: All Your Food and Diet Questions Answered (https://amzn.to/2I5Vsor). Dr. Katz joins me to discuss what the latest science says what you eat. Do you use emojis when you write? While some people think they are a little silly they can serve a very important function when you write texts and emails. Listen as I explain and you might find yourself popping an emoji into your next email. Source: Daniel Goleman, author of Social Intelligence (https://amzn.to/2TrrDE4) Ever been in a rut? Most people have and it’s interesting because as boring as it is to be stuck in a rut, it can also be very hard to motivate yourself to get out of it. Michael Platt joins me to talk about why we get into ruts and how to get out of one more easily. Michael is a professor of marketing and neuroscience at Wharton School of Business and his website is http://plattlabs.rocks/ This Week's Sponsors -Upstart. To discover how LOW your interest rate is, go to www.Upstart.com/something Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As a listener to Something You Should Know, I can only assume that you are someone who likes to learn about new and interesting things and bring more knowledge to work for you in your everyday life. I mean, that's kind of what Something You Should Know was all about. And so I want to invite you to listen to another podcast called TED Talks Daily. Now, you know about TED Talks, right? Many of the guests on Something You Should Know have done TED Talks. Well, you see, TED Talks Daily is a podcast that brings you a new TED Talk every weekday in less than 15 minutes. Join host Elise Hu.

She goes beyond the headlines so you can hear about the big ideas shaping our future. Learn about things like sustainable fashion, embracing your entrepreneurial spirit, the future of robotics, and so much more. Like I said, if you like this podcast, Something You Should Know, I'm pretty sure you're going to like TED Talks Daily. And you get TED Talks Daily wherever you get your podcasts. Today on Something You Should Know, there are some things you buy at the grocery store you really should buy at the drugstore. Then, a look at good nutrition and what the science says about breakfast, salt, fat, and dairy.

So if, you know, your drink du jour tends to be Coca-Cola, substituting dairy for that is almost certainly trading up. So in that context, you could say it's good. On the other hand, we absolutely don't need dairy. It's not really normal for adult mammals to consume dairy. Also, if you don't use emojis in your texts or emails, you probably should. And how to get out of a rut when it's so easy to stay stuck. If you feel like you're in a rut, I think that you need to change things.

You need to shake things up, do things differently, have to force yourself to disengage from the routines you're in and taste something new. So go out and explore. All this today on Something You Should Know. People who listen to Something You Should Know are curious about the world, looking to hear new ideas and perspectives. So I want to tell you about a podcast that is full of new ideas and perspectives, and one I've started listening to called Intelligence Squared. It's the podcast where great minds meet. Listen in for some great talks

on science, tech, politics, creativity, wellness, and a lot more. A couple of recent examples, Mustafa Suleiman, the CEO of Microsoft AI, discussing the future of technology. That's pretty cool. And writer, podcaster,

and filmmaker, John Ronson, discussing the rise of conspiracies and culture wars. Intelligence Squared is the kind of podcast that gets you thinking a little more openly about the important conversations going on today. Being curious, you're probably

just the type of person Intelligence Squared is meant for. Check out Intelligence Squared wherever you get your podcasts. Something you should know. Fascinating intel. The world's top experts. And practical advice you can use in your life. Today, Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers. Hi there. Welcome to Something You Should Know. And I'm going to start today by saving you some money, I think. Many of the things that you can buy at the grocery store or big retailers like Target,

you can also buy at chain drugstores like CVS or Walgreens. But are they a good deal at the drugstore? They can be, if you know which items to buy. Here are some things that can be incredible bargains at the drugstore? They can be, if you know which items to buy. Here are some things that can be incredible bargains at the drugstore. Breakfast cereal. This is one of the items drugstores price below grocery stores to get you

in the door. Plus, each week you'll normally see a different cereal brand or selection on sale. Dairy and eggs. They're often cheaper by a dollar or more over grocery stores. Makeup. If you use drugstore brands,

you'll usually get a much better deal at drugstores than at grocery or department stores. There are often rewards for these products that you can then combine with coupons and get fabulous deals. Garbage bags. Walgreens garbage bags are particularly good,

and if you snatch them up when they're on sale, they are about half the price than the name brand garbage bags at the grocery store. Personal care items. Things like soap, body lotion, toothpaste, toothbrushes. If you combine rewards points and coupons, toothpaste on sale can end up being free at the drugstore. And that is something you should know. It's impossible for me to imagine that you, as someone who eats,

that you don't have some questions about food and nutrition. What's good to eat? What's not good to eat? And it's hard to get objective advice. I mean, I get pitched guests to come on this podcast who are big proponents of a vegan diet, while others want to come on and talk about the Mediterranean diet. And still others want to talk about the paleo diet. And they all want to sing the praises of their respective diets. But realistically, most people aren't going to listen to an interview in a podcast and then go try, let alone stick to, a vegan diet or any other diet. Here with some informed and objective advice on food and nutrition is David Katz. He's a medical doctor

and founding director of Yale University's Yale Griffin Prevention Research Center. Interestingly, he has partnered with food and cookbook writer Mark Bittman to write a new book called How to Eat, All Your Food and Diet Questions Answered. Hi, David. Welcome to Something You Should Know. Great to be with you, Mike. Thanks so much. So I don't want to go too far down a rabbit hole on this because I want to get to the specific advice. But why do you think, generally speaking, why do you think there is so much confusion about what people should eat, what they shouldn't eat, what's a good diet, what isn't. Why? Money. You know, the one word answer is money. And then if we go a little further down the rabbit

hole, I think desperation breeds gullibility and gullibility makes for a seller's market. But, you know, Mike, I mean, massive money to be made on pseudo confusion about diet. So, you know, if the public is perpetually confused or at least willing to pretend that they're perpetually confused about diet, big food loves it. They can keep inventing new varieties of junk food with high profit margins and sell them no problem. So you want fat-free junk, we can make that. You want low-carb junk, we can make that. You want gluten-free junk? No problem. And on it goes. And then, you know, Big Pharma, I think, loves it, honestly.

And I say this as a physician, but, you know, I think the military industrial establishment loves the status quo. So massive profits selling food that makes people fat and sick, and then massive profits selling people drugs to treat the diseases they never needed to get in the first place. I think, all due respect to our publisher, Big Publishing loves it because only where people are or pretend to be confused about diet can you keep selling them new solutions, fad diet books that make the bestseller list again and again and again and again. I think the morning shows love it. Media loves it. So an awful lot of entities are profiting enormously from it.

When the dust all settles, is basically moderation and sensible eating really the answer here rather than trying to chase the latest fad diet? I would say balance is a better word, and it's a word Mark and i use in the book because it you know it something is either in balance or out and if it's in balance it's intrinsically good and out of balance is bad and and the problem with moderation is people do apply it to individual foods and i kind of i have a joke it's a little bit apocryphal and it's a little bit real based on patients i've had you know patient who says well doc it's okay if I occasionally, you know, in moderation eat pizza, right? And say, yeah, yeah, sure. In moderation and in moderation bacon, right? Okay. I'm not enthusiastic, but if you insist and in moderation hot dogs and in moderation hamburgers and in moderation salami and in moderation candy, and you get the idea, right? The end of all the list of I eat only in moderation,

the question then is, well, what else do you eat? And the answer is, I can't really think of anything, right? So your whole diet can be very immoderate because, you know, you eat a moderate amount of a whole wide variety of bad stuff. So balance may be a better solution because nutrients and foods are either in a balance that's good for you and sustainable or they're out. And, you know, honestly, the punchline here, we don't get credit for it. Michael Pollan can get the credit for it. His seven-word punchline, eat food, not too much, mostly plants. There's very little basis to argue with that.

There's just a lot of detailed conversation to be had within that context. How do we know what we know? What does the science tell us? What can we trust? What about the particulars? What about dairy? What about eggs? What about meat?

What about lentils and lectins and gluten and on and on it goes. So yeah, at a high level, a balanced array of wholesome foods in a sensible and often time-honored assembly. Some of the best diets, for example, the Mediterranean diet, you know, they're a product of heritage and culture rather than a renegade genius who figured out yesterday, hey, there's a new best way to eat. One of the things that interests me about this is there is a lot of talk like we need to educate people about how to eat better. And I wonder about that because I don't is there is a lot of talk like we need to educate people about how to eat better. And I wonder about that because I don't think there's a person on the planet, or at least in the United States,

who doesn't know they're supposed to eat more fruits and vegetables and they're supposed to eat less junk. I mean, when you tell someone that, I can't imagine someone saying, oh, really? I'm supposed to eat more fruits and vegetables? I'd never heard that. I mean, honestly, you think that the average person doesn't know that pinto beans are better for them than jelly beans? I mean, are we really that confused? Isn't a lot of this just sort of feigned confusion and then maybe collusion? Because if we pretend we're confused, we don't have to do anything. Those experts can't agree. I mean, yesterday processed meat was bad. Today it's good. And so, you know, they can't agree about anything. So, you know, you'll find me at Burger King.

So I think there's a bit of that. I think I would agree with you. I think everybody basically knows. I think underlying so much of this discussion about what to eat is body weight. I mean, there are concerns about, you know, heart health and eating this and not eating that may help or hurt your risk of cancer and all that. But I think in a more immediate way, people are worried about body weight. People are getting fatter. And so how fat is too fat? It's a difficult question to answer quantitatively. Where body fat accumulates has massive implications for the

health risk, premenopausal women in particular, and for that matter, there's ethnic variation too. But some people are prone to gain excess body fat in the hips, thighs, buttocks, lower extremities, and the metabolic effects of that are pretty minimal. And it's interesting that women have a greater tendency to gain weight in this distribution than men because evolutionarily, women have a reason for a fat reserve that men don't have, and that is feeding another living symbiont, i.e. a fetus. So, you know, it kind of makes sense that women could store more body fat safely than men who don't really need that much. But whether it's postmenopausal women or it's men or people from specific ethnic backgrounds,

ethnic Indians, for example, who have a tendency to put weight around the middle, all who store weight around the middle are much more prone to adverse metabolic effects, impaired insulin sensitivity, elevated blood lipids, and so forth. And then, you know, the reason it's hard to answer your question how much fat is too much is that people who are highly sensitive to A, storing fat around the middle, and B, the adverse metabolic effects, they can get into trouble even with a body mass index that's well below the cutoff of 25. It's actually, it's got a name, it's called lean obesity, where, you know, no, they don't

register as overweight or obese, but all the fat they've stored is in the worst place possible, doing all the worst things possible, and just a few pounds can get them into serious trouble, whereas other people can gain 10 times as much weight, put the fat in safer places, and show almost no signs. So, you know, in general, we talk about a body mass index, which is weight adjusted for height of 25 or above is overweight, because that's the point where across the board, you start to see indications of impairments in how you're handling insulin and blood sugar, impairments in blood lipids, increases in inflammatory markers and so forth. But there really isn't a one size fits all. One of the things that people point to when they say, well, you know, eating more vegetables and plants, all that's great, but then you don't get enough protein.

And the only way to get protein, enough protein, is from meat, to which you would say… Wrong. Absolutely wrong. We know for a fact it's wrong. And while you don't necessarily want to watch a documentary as the premier education on any scientific topic, if you think that's true, I would recommend you watch The Game Changers, which I was privileged to be in. But it is, if nothing else, it's a very vivid demonstration that you can not only get enough protein from plants to function as a human being, you can get enough protein from plants to be one of the world's most extraordinary athletes.

Strength, endurance, you name it. All amino acids, all essential amino acids can be found in plants. That's where the animals we eat get them. They all originate in plants. Most Americans get too much protein, not too little. Excess protein does not make you bigger and stronger. It's just excess calories like everything else. Protein, in fact, stimulates an insulin release. So excess protein makes you more vulnerable to insulin resistance and diabetes. Excess protein is bad for the kidneys, bad for the liver, and bad for the skeletal system. So there's no real advantage in it.

If you're a competitive bodybuilder, we could have a different conversation. But otherwise, no advantage in excess protein. We have studies that show that the average vegan doing a decent job of getting a balanced array of foods readily meets requirements for all essential amino acids. There's no particular need to combine foods in special ways, just eat a balanced array of foods and on and on it goes. And we have studies showing, and these are really quite compelling. So for example, one study out of Harvard, well over 100,000 people followed for 30 years. The higher the percentage of total calories from animal protein, so that would be mostly meat, processed meat, dairy, processed dairy, and eggs, the higher the rate of premature death from all causes.

And it was quite a robust effect, whereas the higher the percentage of total calories from plant protein, that would be beans, lentils, nuts, seeds, whole grains, the lower the rate of premature death from all causes. So a massive divide there. A quick anecdote, and I'll be done with this answer, but I was at a hotel recently for a talk. I was getting a, they had a quinoa salad on the menu, and it looked like the best choice for me, and so I ordered that, and the server asked me, do you want protein with that? Quinoa actually is an excellent source of protein, but the idea that unless I put a chicken breast over that salad, you're going to waste away to nothing. It's just wrong. I want to talk about breakfast. And by the way, I'm talking with David Katz. He is a medical doctor and co-author of the book, How to Eat, All Your Food and Diet Questions Answered. Contained herein are the heresies of Rudolf Buntwine. First wild monk turned traveling medical investigator.

Join me as I study the secrets of the divine plagues and uncover the blasphemous truth that ours is not a loving God and we are not its favored children. The Heresies of Redolph Buntwine. Wherever podcasts are available. Since I host a podcast, it's pretty common for me to be asked to recommend a podcast. And I tell people, if you like something you should know, you're going to like The Jordan Harbinger Show.

Every episode is a conversation with a fascinating guest. Of course, a lot of podcasts are conversations with guests, but Jordan does it better than most. Recently, he had a fascinating conversation with a British woman who was recruited and radicalized by ISIS and went to prison for three years. She now works to raise awareness on this issue. It's a great conversation. And he spoke with Dr. Sarah Hill about how taking birth control not only prevents pregnancy, it can influence a woman's partner preferences, career choices, and overall behavior due to the hormonal changes it causes.

Apple named The Jordan Harbinger Show one of the best podcasts a few years back, and in a nutshell, the show is aimed at making you a better, more informed, critical thinker. Check out The Jordan Harbinger Show. There's so much for you in this podcast. The Jordan Harbinger Show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. So, David, is breakfast the most important meal of the day? If you're hungry in the morning, if you do hard physical work all day, breakfast can be quite important.

Your tank may be empty when you wake up. You need to fill it. You're going to burn through it. You may not have issues with your weight. A lot of people, and I'm among them, just aren't hungry when we wake up in the morning and sort of feeling like you have to submit to lore and eat breakfast because your culture says you should actually just causes trouble. If you eat when you're not hungry, you wind up being hungry when you ordinarily wouldn't be. And I've only found ill effects of it. I wait until I'm hungry and I wind up having my daily breakfast at lunchtime. You know, at some point you have to start eating again, call that breakfast.

But no, you don't have to eat it at any particular time. I think as long as over the course of a typical day, you eat the amount of food that your body requires. So that can be measured in total calories. You eat a variety of wholesome foods and some sensible balanced assembly. Any which way you get there from here is fine. And I think the beauty of that, Mike, is it's an approach, if you will, to personalize nutrition. You can pick the time distribution of eating that works for you. As long as your average intake on a daily basis, weekly basis is good stuff in a sensible, balanced array, you'll be fine. What about salt? Is it really that big of a deal if you don't have a tendency to get high

blood pressure, or is it really something to be concerned about? It is a big deal, but you don't really need to focus on it specifically. So I say it's a big deal in the immediate aftermath. And, you know, it's interesting, this is testimony to how often we're getting news about nutrition and goes back to why people are confused that, you know, it's in every news cycle. So there was just a big study, meta-analysis, looking at all the prior evidence on salt, blood pressure, and implications for heart disease, stroke, all-cause mortality.

And probably the largest database on the topic ever assembled and in agreement with much of what we thought we knew before, found that higher intakes of salt are consistently associated with higher blood pressure, even for people who had a normal blood pressure baseline. Lower intakes of salt are associated with blood pressure reduction. The evidence is strong. It's decisive. It's consistent across populations. So I think it really is important. But the reason I wouldn't fixate on it is that you think about America, 80% of the salt we all eat comes to us from processed foods. And the more highly processed the food, all the way up to ultra processed foods, the more highly concentrated the sodium tends to be along, by the way, with concentrated sugar and other chemicals and such. So, you know, yes, salt is important. But I think the best way to deal with that is not to banish a salt shaker from your home, but to focus on eating wholesome whole foods and minimize your intake of highly processed foods, which would include stuff that you get in various glow in the dark bags, boxes, bottles, jars and cans, but also most of what you get at fast food-in-the-dark bags, boxes, bottles, jars, and cans, but also

most of what you get at fast food places. That's where most of the action is. Then bonus, if you're avoiding ultra-processed foods, you're cutting out a large amount of sodium, but you're also cutting out a lot of added sugar, a lot of food chemicals, a lot of dubious junk, and whatever whole minimally processed food you use to replace that, likely to be much richer in fiber, minerals, vitamins, antioxidants, all the good stuff your body actually needs. I remember hearing something that if you do eat a lot of salt, that if you're taking in a lot of sodium, that as long as you take in potassium, they kind of balance each other out. Yes or no?

Maybe. And this is one of those areas where there's legitimate controversy. And we have similar debate, by the way, about essential fatty acids. So there are some camps that, and when there are these camps and they're all legitimate, it's because we don't have definitive science yet. We're still working on it. There are some camps that think it's the total amount of omega-3 fat in your diet that matters most. And there are others that think, nah, the evidence looks more like it's the ratio

of omega-3 to omega-6. Sodium and potassium is much the same. So the average American and the average person in any industrialized country anywhere in the world gets way more sodium than we're natively adapted to get and generally gets way less potassium. So we're actually out of balance in both directions. So I would say probably fine to focus on reducing sodium. But again, back to what I was just saying, if you focus on replacing highly processed foods with unprocessed foods, especially vegetables, fruits, whole grains, beans, lentils, nuts, and seeds, you're actually fixing both problems because plant foods are natively rich in potassium and natively low in sodium, pretty much uniformly. So you're actually

fixing both sides by shifting from highly processed to unprocessed foods. A couple of more quick questions. Dairy, good or bad, because there are people who scream from the mountaintops on both sides of that issue. There was just a really good comprehensive review in the New England Journal of Medicine on this topic by my dear friend Walter Willett at Harvard and his colleague there, David Ludwig. And so if you have a typical American diet and your drink du jour tends to be Coca-Cola, substituting dairy for that is almost certainly trading up. It's richer in nutrients. It's fortified with vitamins A and D.

It's got calcium. It's got protein. It's more filling. Almost everything about it is better. So in that context, you could say it's good. On the other hand, we absolutely don't need dairy. It's not really normal for adult mammals to consume dairy. The only dairy that really is native to us is breast milk from our mothers. And there's all sorts of evidence that dairy can contribute to cancer development, that the saturated fat is probably at best marginally harmful, maybe worse than that.

So if the alternative is an optimal plant predominant diet, I would say probably best to avoid it. So, you know, a lot of these good or bad questions omit the critical corollary question, which is instead of what? Dairy instead of Coca-Cola? Yeah, good. Yogurt instead of cheese doodles? Yeah, good. But if you tell me you're actually willing to have an optimal plant predominant diet and drink water when you're thirsty, should I add milk or butter to that? Hell no. Should I replace extra virgin olive oil with butter because butter is back? Hell no. The I replace extra virgin olive oil with butter because butter is back? Hell no. The best we could say about butter is maybe it's a little less harmful than we once

thought, although that's not entirely clear to me, but there's no evidence that it's beneficial, whereas extra virgin olive oil, we have massive amount of evidence of net health benefit from it. So instead of what is crucial, and that's why here too, a one-size-fits-all answer tends to dumb the subject down. It could be good, it could be bad. By the way, in case you don't have time to ask, the same could be said of eggs. If you're eating eggs instead of donuts for breakfast, you're trading up. On the other hand, if you're willing to have steel-cut oats and mixed berries with walnuts, absolutely have that much, much better for you than eggs. What about gluten?

Seems like a lot of people are going gluten free. And if you don't have celiac disease, which is, I guess, the sensitivity to gluten, if you don't have that, should this even be on your radar? Shouldn't be. Or at least if you don't have celiac disease or some lesser version of gluten sensitivity. So about 1% of the population, that's pretty high to be honest, but about 1% in 100 makes antibodies to gluten. And by the way, I don't really think gluten is the problem there because gluten has been part of the human diet since the dawn of civilization 12,000 years ago and maybe longer than that. I think the problem is all the ways we're disrupting a healthy microbiome, which then makes us react in new and adverse ways to things that are in the food supply. And I think the

sensitivity to gluten is really more about disrupting the microbiome than anything to do with gluten. But be that as it may, about 1% of the population makes antibodies and so has gluten enteropathy or celiac disease. They should absolutely avoid it. And then up to about 10 times as many, so 10%, may have symptoms with gluten. And again, I think that's related to their microbiome. So they don't make antibodies. It's not dangerous for them to consume gluten containing foods, but when they do, they don't feel well, they get indigestion and they're better off avoiding it too. As long as they replace gluten containing foods with nutritious foods rather than gluten-free junk. But that leaves 90% of the population who derives no benefit whatsoever from cutting gluten out of the diet.

And a wide variety of highly nutritious foods like whole grain wheat and barley contain gluten. And so you're kind of throwing out the baby with the bathwater at best. And if you're not gluten sensitive, there is no bathwater. So it's just one of those things that turned into, you know, sort of a Hollywood endorsed fad. And that's a bad place to go for good dietary guidance. Well, there's so much more we could talk about on this subject. But one of the things that really seems to stand out to me anyway, is today, I think more than ever before, it has become clear, even to the casual observer to this, that what you put in your body, the food you put into

it, really has a substantial impact on your health and longevity, and it's important to keep up with the latest. David Katz has been my guest. He is a medical doctor, founding director of Yale University's Yale Griffin Prevention Research Center. And he, along with food writer Mark Bittman, are authors of the book called How to Eat All Your Food and Diet Questions Answered. You'll find a link to that book in the show notes. Thanks, David. Thank you, Mike.

Real pleasure to be with you. Appreciate the time. Hey, everyone. Join me, Megan Rinks. And me, Melissa Demonts, for Don't Blame Me, But Am I Wrong? Each week, we deliver four fun-filled shows. In Don't Blame Me, we tackle our listeners' dilemmas with hilariously honest advice. Then we have But Am I Wrong?, which is for the listeners that didn't take our advice. Plus, we share our hot takes on current events. Then tune in to see you next Tuesday for our Lister poll results from But Am I Wrong?

And finally, wrap up your week with Fisting Friday, where we catch up and talk all things pop culture. Listen to Don't Blame Me, But Am I Wrong on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday. Do you love Disney? Then you are going to love our hit podcast, Disney Countdown. I'm Megan, the Magical Millennial. And I'm the Dapper Danielle. On every episode of our fun and

family-friendly show, we count down our top 10 lists of all things Disney. There is nothing we don't cover. We are famous for rabbit holes, Disney themed games, and fun facts you didn't know you needed, but you definitely need in your life. So if you're looking for a healthy dose of Disney magic, check out Disney Countdown wherever you get your podcasts. Everyone likely finds themselves in a rut at some point in their life. And if it has happened to you, you know it can be hard to break out of that rut. Which is weird when you think about it, because if you're in a rut, you don't like it. But it's often just easier to stay stuck than it is to get motivated to get out. So what's going on here?

Is there an easy way to get out of that rut that can just suck the life out of you? Here with some insight into that is Michael Platt. Michael is a professor of neuroscience and marketing at the Wharton Business School, and he is one of several researchers who've looked into this idea of why people get into ruts and how to get out of them. Hi, Professor, welcome. Hey, thank you. It's really great to be here. So what is a rut? I mean, can you be in a rut and not be aware of it, or must you be aware that you're in a rut to know that you're in a rut?

Well, I mean, for me, it means kind of stuck in the same routine, right? You just kind of can't get out of it. You don't know why. You do the same thing over and over again, basically out of habit. And are we more or less wired to be that way? Does that help us? In fact, we are wired to build habits. It's a really important and efficient mechanism to make sure that we repeat things that have generally led to good outcomes. And so that's kind of one of the first things brains ever learned to do on this planet was once you discovered something kind of reasonably good, you would repeat that behavior. And so we have this very kind of ancient system built into our brains that allows us to learn from our actions

and to build efficient habits. But of course, those habits can get in the way of discovering something that might be better. Everybody, I think everybody, has been in a rut where they're doing the same thing over and over again, and there's something that doesn't feel quite right about it, and yet it's hard to break out of it. I mean, you know, people do the same thing, but don't seem motivated to change. It is really hard because this habit system is so powerful. In fact, drugs of abuse are so pernicious because they hijack that system for building habits. I think you're right, we do have this sense often that, wow, it's kind of almost a feeling of urgency, like I feel like there might be something better, but it's really,

really difficult to get unstuck. You know, the good news is that every one of us has within our brains a specialized brain circuit that can push us out of ruts and out of routines. Okay, so if you are in a rut or you feel like you're in a rut and you want to get out, what's the best way? What can you do when you don't really feel motivated to do anything? How do you motivate yourself to get out? Yeah, so each of us has this circuit within our brains. This circuit is set, the dial's set at a different level in each person. So some people are a little bit more prone to move on, you know, to not get stuck in routines. So at the extreme, that would be

folks with, you know, ADHD or ADD. And some folks, their dial's a little bit more set toward focus and sticking with what they got. So those are people who tend to like to do the same thing over and over again. They prefer routine over exploration. So I think one thing is very clear from the fact that we have two systems, and when one of these systems is on, the other one is off, and vice versa, that if you want to get unstuck from a routine, if you want to activate this exploration network, you have to disengage from routine tasks, from things that you know how to do,

but they're really boring, and you just have to get them done. So sitting in front of your computer working on an Excel spreadsheet is sort of death for this exploration network. Getting up, going for a walk, that kind of disengaging from your computer actually liberates this exploration network and allows it to become active. And there's circumstantial evidence that when we do that, that actually will kind of carry forward for some time, and that if you engage in other tasks that require some degree of exploration or creativity, that you'll actually be more creative. And feel less inclined to go back in your rut? So I don't know so much about the

subjective experience of that. I don't know that that question has been asked in quite that way, but the evidence is that you will be less stuck in previous routines. So one way of measuring that is that was developed decades ago is something called the alternative uses test. And think of it this way. If I were to show you a picture of a common household object, a pencil or a brick or a tire from a car, and I said, take two minutes and I want you to think of every possible use you could come up with for one of those objects. So what can you do with a pencil that's not writing? Could you use it to measure things? Could you use it to roll out dough? Could you use it as a hairpin? And when you do that,

you're actually kind of revving up this exploration network in your brain. You're actually really using it then. And there's some evidence that when you do that, that kind of revving up this exploration network in your brain. You're actually really using it then. And there's some evidence that when you do that, that kind of provokes the state of your brain into a more exploratory state so that things that you do subsequently, you'll be less habit-prone. For how long? Yeah, that's a critical question. We don't know whether these changes last,

how far they carry forward. My hunch is they don't carry forward that far, but there are things that you can do, activities that you can do and build into your schedule that can help to make sure that you are kind of maximally activating and exercising this part of the brain. So if you, this is something I do, you know, I make sure that I get up from my desk and I go for a walk probably every 15 minutes, you know, at minimum every half hour so that it gives my brain the opportunity to kind of clear itself, disengage from the work that I was doing and allow it to explore. And my own subjective sense is that I'm much more creative then. In fact, my best ideas come to me

when I'm walking the mile and a half it takes for me to walk from home to work, or when I go out and go for a run. So people talk about a rut as being, you know, something to get out of, that you're stuck in a rut, it has a very negative connotation. Is being in a rut necessarily a bad thing? If you're really good at, you know, doing the same thing over and over again, who defines if it's a rut? The person that's in it? That's a great question. I would say it has to be this subjective sense that you feel like you're doing the same thing over and over again without any real rationale and that there is a sense that there might be something better. I think it's very easy to kind of make that very tangible in the case of like dating, right? So if you, you know, you're, you're seeing somebody for a year or two years and it's comfortable and you know, it, you know, it's effortless to really do that,

but there might be this sense that you're missing out on connecting with someone who much, who might be much, much better. So that subjective sense of, uh, kind of being unwilling or unable to, uh, disengage from what you got because it's pretty good, but something much, much better could be on the horizon. But something, and that dating is a great example, something much better could always be on the horizon. I don't care what you're doing, there's always somebody better, there's some job better, there's some career better, there's some girlfriend better, and you could chase that and never be happy. That's true, too. I mean, that is the real

conundrum here, right? Which is, how do you optimally set or regulate that trade-off between exploiting what you know versus searching for something that might be better. And, you know, thankfully, kind of evolution has really built that regulatory mechanism into our own brains, and it seems to operate in a way that is consistent with what the math tells us we ought to do. And I think that when we get stuck in ruts, it's just a sense that we don't have enough information to know that there is something better over the horizon. But if you're somebody who's doing the same thing every day, and you feel like you're really making a contribution and you find it at whatever level satisfying, then that's not a rut. That's just doing the same thing every day.

Oh, I don't think it's a rut at all. I think it's being productive. And for many people, that brings tremendous satisfaction. And I think for many people, it's well aligned with their own personality and the way that their brains work. And yet other people might say, well, Bob, you're really stuck in a rut. And Bob might think, no, I'm not. I'm perfectly content. Absolutely. Absolutely. So I think, you know, that gets back to the, you know, the question again of who defines what a rut is.

And I think it is, it has to be your own sense, you know, your own subjective sense of feeling like, boy, I'm really doing the same thing over and over and I'm unsatisfied. There must be something better. And so when the dust all settles and, you know, there's lots of different people in lots of different ruts, the overall advice is what? If you feel like you're in a rut, I think that you need to change things, right? You need to shake things up, do things differently. You have to force yourself to disengage from the routines you're in and taste something new. So go out and explore, exercise, do things like meditation, which a lot of people practice. And that seems to also kind of rev up your brain's innovation network.

So there are a bunch of things that you can do, but it really takes some action, some activation energy, either on your own part or on the outside. I mean, there's a really wonderful example from a study done of, it was a partial strike on the subway system, the train system in London, and this was back in like 2014. And it forced people to find new ways to work and new ways home. And then after the strike was over, an analysis of kind of where people were swiping their Metro cards showed that, I don't know, 5% to 10% of people had actually identified a better route to work or home, and they were sticking with it.

So in that case, it suggests that an outward kind of shock or provocation is necessary to get people unstuck from routines. And so maybe, I don't know, maybe you ask a friend to help kind of push you out of the rut if you really feel like you're in one. Right. Yeah, because that's always the thing is even people who know something's wrong, you know, it's hard to motivate yourself to do something as opposed to being forced to do something or some tragedy that forces you to do something or someone pushes you to do something.

Right. I mean, well, you know, I think a good example, you know, probably something we've all experienced is if you travel, right, and you find yourself in a new city, in a new place, there are no routines, right? And you're forced to explore and to develop new habits or to explore new opportunities. And sometimes we feel, I think, and myself, I've certainly felt this, that you feel almost like a different person under those conditions. That's true, right. Yeah, every time you do that, you go to a place where there isn't, you're completely out of your routine.

It's kind of energizing. It's kind of like, because everything is new. Exactly. I mean, I think for many of us, it's energizing, as you say. For people who are really built for routine, that can probably be stressful and troubling. Yeah, well, they probably don't go on those vacations either. Probably not, unless their friends really force them to.

Right, right. What else can people do to shake themselves out of that rut? I imagine that people who find themselves in a rut probably have other ruts. You know, it's probably the same old job. It's the same old friends. It's the same old, same old. What else can shake it up? Another kind of context or situation that seems to rev up the brain's innovation network is actually being in a social setting. So being around other people

seems to rev it up. We don't know whether that produces kind of creativity or gets you out of routines, but it revs up this exploration network probably because social context groups are so, there's so much uncertainty there, right? Things could go very many different ways. And so your brain is already revving up and kind of simulating all those possible outcomes and kind of considering all the possible new behaviors that you might engage in. And so the advice there is to just be around people or is it certain kinds of interactions or what? Well, I think that if we're talking about how to get unstuck from a routine, getting out and doing new things, but especially things where

there are lots of people around, right? That is going to just create many new opportunities for exploring new options. But again, if you're one of those people that doesn't like being around other people, you like to go do your little rut in your shed out back, maybe that's not a great thing. Well, no, certainly not. I mean, if you really have to know yourself, I think, and that's the challenge. Sometimes it's hard to know ourselves, but if you really do have a good sense that you are a person who prefers routine, who prefers ritual and habit, and trying something new or being around other people is stressful, then by all means, don't do it. Well, I know for myself, I've been in ruts at times in my life,

and I know it can be tough to break out of them, but I can't remember a time that I did break out of them that I wasn't glad I did and didn't feel better for doing it. So thanks for the advice. Michael Platt has been my guest. He is a professor of marketing and neuroscience at the Wharton School, and there's a link to his website in the show notes. Thank you, Professor. Thanks, Mike. It's been a real pleasure to be on the show. If you don't use emojis in your typed correspondence, you might think about doing it,

even if you think they're a little bit too cutesy. Daniel Goleman, author of the book Social Intelligence, says, If an email's tone is neutral, we as the reader tend to assume the tone is negative. If it's not meant to be negative, an emoji of maybe that smiley face, well, that can help brighten the whole tone of the email and the message you're trying to convey, as long as you don't overdo it. There are now emojis for everything, and it can sometimes really clarify your message if you use them strategically.

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