How to tell when dietary/lifestyle changes are working? - with Drs. David & Austin Perlmutter on Optimize Coach

You're listening to Optimize with Bryan Johnson. More wisdom in less time.

Some of the people were actually able to stick with, for example, the plan in, I think It's Brainmaker, the seven day plan. @ the end, I have a friend who has anxiety and depression. And um, you know, you had the studies where, you know, you were able to literally transplant depression with the rats and it was almost impossible to tell if there was a difference. And you know how important like early wins are and being able to like see, you know, a reward for all your effort. So I was wondering if there's any like, since it's been a while and obviously your new books are a slightly different topic, but is there any like, additional support for that theory that's a little less animal studies based and is there any practical tools we can use to tell that it's.

Working? Let me say that the focus of Brainmaker really did a deep dive into the role of the gut microbiome. And how does it relate to the brain? How does it relate to cognitive function, brain aging, brain resistance to disease, and even mood issues like anxiety and depression? At the time that book was written, there was very, very little human study done in that area. Almost everything we did was from the animals. Since then there's been some, not a whole lot. As a matter of fact, I was on a forum last night, as of last night, with some people who are doing a lot of research. And even in that discussion, we realized that we're still not at a place where we can recommend specific diets or specific changes to the gut microbiome via any technology via fecal transplantation, the use of probiotics to truly intervene in terms of making changes in mood. That said, I think since the time of Brainmaker, the validation of the really central role of inflammation in depression has been quite impressive. We know that depression is, you know, front and center and inflammatory disorder. To me, it allows me to feel comfortable making the leap that anything we could institute that would help reduce depression might. I'll characterize it as might. I feel it would very likely, but I'll just say might to be safe, might have an impact on depression. So getting individuals with depression to change their diets to a lower inflammatory diet, in instituting exercise, which multiple studies have indicated is very beneficial for depression, in fact might be more beneficial than any pharmaceutical that we have available for us. And I'll just say, interestingly that the SSRI antidepressant medications are actually anti inflammatory as well. Just to add a little bit more support to this Connection between inflammation and depression. We know that sleep disorders are exceedingly common in individuals with depression and that there does seem to be improvement in depression inventory indices when attention is paid to even getting a better night's sleep. So it's a tough nut to crack over time. For a number of reasons. I don't think that mood disorders get the attention that they should. But I think certainly your point is well taken, that we're in the midst of it and we're still looking at the science. But I think we've got enough information right now that we can say at least mechanistically, inflammation is playing a role, that the gut bacteria play a huge role in inflammation. And therefore I'm feeling on pretty solid ground in terms of thinking about how food might influence.

Mood. Okay, yeah. Is there a way that. What would be your recommended way for a person to tell if they're succeeding at reducing their.

Inflammation? That's a great question. I mean, certainly some forward thinking laboratories right now offer markers of inflammation that can be checked in the blood, like simply C reactive protein. There are others like tumor necrosis factor, alpha interleukin 1, beta interleukin 6, et cetera. But I would tell you that if you want to look at some very simple surrogate markers that do have a relationship to inflammation, some, something as simple as blood sugar relates to levels of inflammation. Higher blood sugar, higher levels of inflammation. So, you know, there are plenty of ways that people these days can know their blood sugar and can know them moment to moment, having, you know, used a device like a continuous glucose monitor and know what your blood sugar is doing moment to moment. Full disclosure, I'm on an advisory board for a company called Levels Levels Health and they have software that looks at your continuous glucose monitor that then gives you recommendations and interprets what those numbers mean. So we're really moving to a place of giving people incredible feedback as to how their lifestyle choices are influencing, in this case, glucose. And what I'm telling you is that plays a role really front and center in terms of increasing or decreasing, as it were.

Inflammation. Okay, yeah, that's really cool because I have a continuous glucose monitor that I actually got because I really just wanted to measure ketones. But now if you know it can, if it can be a judgment of inflammation as well, that's, that's pretty useful. And it's just higher is worse and then that's all there is to it. Is there a.

Delay? This is a terrible play on words, but we want to get you in the sweet spot. Maybe I should say that the Goldilocks zone would be better because too low a blood sugar, if you ever do it, may be an issue for you in the long run. Too low of an insulin level has been correlated with increased risk of dementia, as a matter of fact. And certainly we know what the dangers of too high a blood sugar are as well. So I think as with everything, as with your exercise, as with sleep, you know, there's not enough, not, not so good, right Spot good, too much not so good. So, like everything and it's this U shaped curve that you want to try to target and beyond that, perhaps find out what seems to work best for you. And you can understand that based upon getting feedback, whether it's wearing an OURA ring and looking at your sleep or a CGM to look at your glucose or knowing your target heart rate when you're exercising, all these things are wonderful ways for you to be personal about your approach to your life and what seems to work for.

You. Okay.

Cool. Thank.

You. I'd love to hear too, some more tips on the delay. So I'm sold on. There's a behavior that I've learned is good for me. I've got tools to actually take action on that behavior. And then I do it for a day and I'm like, hey, is it, I don't know, is it working yet? Is it not working? Or two days or three days or a week later? Do you have tools or suggestions for someone in terms of continuing to engage with that behavior, when to kind of expect something or maybe manage that? Oh, I feel like I've been working hard, but I haven't yet and got the payoff.

Yet. This is always the challenge with any sort of intervention. It's, we want to know it works immediately. And that's why every diet plan that you can see on a magazine in the grocery store says £20 in the first two weeks. You need to see something so that you believe what you're doing is working. Now, what they don't tell you is that everyone puts that weight back on or just about everyone puts that weight back on. You know, it's like the Biggest Loser effect. The challenge then is to bridge this gap between knowing the things that work. You can look at the science. Exercise is good for you. Eating a balanced diet is good for you. Getting good sleep is good for you. There's no doubt there. There's nobody out there saying exercise less, don't eat healthy food. But what we need is to have that almost visceral experience of knowing and Some of that comes from seeing it in our real lives. Saying, I got enough sleep last night, I woke up, I was more energized and I made that connection. And some of that is going to be the development of habits where you no longer have to be so worried about whether it's working or not because it's so easy. But that really is the biofeedback that my dad is talking about. With the continuous glucose monitor. If you start feeling off, for whatever reason, you feel a little bit lightheaded, you feel a little bit annoyed, you can look down and see your glucose. And the idea would be sometimes it's correlated and it may not be for you the glucose, it may be the sleep, it may be for you the exercise. For example, in my case, one of the assets that I'm trying to amp up as much as possible is creativity is insight. And I find that exercising, doing my circuit and is the best way to generate new ideas. So I've associated that with the immediate impact of generating new ideas. That may not be the case for everyone, although I will say the research substantiates this. Exercise is associated with an increase in creativity. So I think that it has to be not just this generalized, I will be healthier, I will be happier. And it's looking at something that is specific to you. And so in the case of creativity, maybe it's exercise. However, for some people it might be nature exposure. With nature exposure, there is an increase in creative thinking. There's also an increase in attentional control, which is the ability to maintain focus. So if you're working really hard, you want to be focused on whatever your task is, and you take a break to look out at nature. Maybe you just watch a nature video on your laptop, if that's what it comes down to, and you're able to go back to work and be more focused, you'll make that connection in your brain. Those circuits will wire together. So I wish there was a way to say here's exactly how you're going to engage these habits or engage these actions to ensure that you get those short term wins. But I think that what's so important about a coach is that you can look at all of these different options and you can say based on your history and what we think would be most valuable to you, here's where I recommend you start. And not putting all your eggs in that one basket, right? Not trying to say, if you go out into nature or you eat some more probiotics, everything is going to be better. Saying it could Be your thing, but maybe it isn't. And so we'll keep experimenting until you can make those neurons wired together, because those are inevitably the things that are going to get you motivated to continue on. Right. To continue doing that thing time and time again, which will, over the course of several months, embed it as a habit. And that will free up your conscious brain to enable you to pick the next thing which gets you closer to whatever your outcome of choice is.

Perfect. Thank.

You. Thank you. And thank you, Connor, for the question. We'll bring up Nya next. And I love that so much of the language that you use, Austin. Making the connection, running the experiment, just starting with something and seeing, does it work, does it not work? Being willing to try something else and using that data, whether it's from a device. Obviously I like devices. I got auras and Apple watches and all sorts of things. But looking at the device or just making that connection of, okay, I'm trying to be more creative. Wow. When I exercise, I notice I have more ideas. Can I explicitly, consciously make that connection in the moment and then over time, build up a habit so that I don't have to do it so consciously? I just know this is what's good for me. This is what creates that outcome that I'm looking.

For. That is what your brain is always doing. I just want to be clear. Your brain is always making those associations. It's just that sometimes we're aware of them. So it's a question of how can you focus your attention to be aware of the connections that are valuable to you. And it works the opposite way, too. It may be that you. You find yourself eating a tub of ice cream each night. You don't really know why it happened, but it happens. Your brain has made the association between watching the news, getting stressed, and then trying to cope with it by eating that tub of ice cream. That's unconscious. You can bring your awareness to it, make it conscious, and then you can deconstruct it and replace it with something better. So it works again both ways. And it comes back to our earlier conversation about focusing your attention, bringing mindfulness to your actions. But I think it comes to you look at your outcome, whether your outcome is a good one or a bad one. And then you work your way backward and ask, what were the steps leading up to this happening? And you can usually find some sort of a pattern with it. Now it's up to you as to whether that's interesting enough to deconstruct it. But the answers are really there. It's just a question of spending enough time with it to see how that kind of manifests in you. What are the steps that lead to that.

Outcome? You know, Austin just brought up a very real life example in passing. He said, well, you know, you find yourself watching the news and next thing you know, you eat a tub of ice cream. But there's a lot of wisdom in that, because when you're watching the news, you're tapping into your fear center. You're tapping into your impulsivity, bad decision making part of your brain. And you are continuing to enhance your connection to that area at the cost of losing your connection to the higher part of your brain in terms of being a better decision maker. And therefore you can't help yourself. You've taken the good decision maker offline and what do you do? You eat foods that are not good for you, but who cares? And we talk about, in Brainwash, the research that looks at how sleep plays a role in that as well. That one night of not getting a restorative night's sleep, one night amplifies, in this laboratory experiment with humans, amplifies the activity of the amygdala, this center of the brain, for these impulsive decisions, by 60%. And another study that we quote, looked at people who generally don't get good restorative sleep, their average intake of calories is 300 calories more a day than people who sleep well, which after 10 days, that's 3,000 calories equal a pound of body fat. So it doesn't take a lot of imagination to see that we can make better choices in terms of what we're exposed to. Yeah, you want to be informed of what's going on and watch the news, fine. But turn it off after a while, whatever that time needs to be. And get a better night's sleep, get a little time in nature, reconnect with other people, maybe work on an exercise program. This all feeds in to allowing you not to choose to eat those foods that you know darn well are bad for.

You. We hope you enjoyed this episode.

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Johnson. To find out more, go to Optimize.

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