Increasing Your Brain Span with Bryce Wylde

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Hey this is JJ Virginia. Welcome and thanks so much for joining me. This is Ask the Health Expert here. I put the power of health in your hands and give you access to the top people in health and wellness. In each episode I share safe ways to get healthy, lose weight, heal your gut, detox and lots more. So if you want to get healthy and get off the dieting for life merry go round, I'll give you strategies that will help you look and feel better fast. So what have you done for your brain today? That is what we are going to be talking about and we're going to talk about a new concept out there. You probably heard about lifespan, how long you live and then the next step up is health span. How long do you live well? And Dr. Bryce Wild, my guest today is now talking about brain Spanish. How long do you live cognitively? Well I'm super excited to be sharing this with you today. I'm just going to give you a little heads up. You're getting his book for free and you can get it at jjvirgin.com forward/brainspanners let me tell you a little bit about my guest Dr. Bryce Wild. He's a leading health expert and clinician specializing in integrative and functional medicine, nutrition and supplementation. He blends the latest in science and technology with traditional and ancient remedies and he's also the co founder of the DNA company and I have done, gosh just lately a podcast with my buddy Cash who is the other founder of the DNA company and such great information. So make sure you check that out too. He's the author of four national best selling books. He's the previous host of CTV's Wild on Health. He's featured on countless network television shows including Fox, NBC, abc, CBS and over the last decade a regular guest expert and medical Advisor on the Dr. Oz Show. And so again be sure to grab the book jjvirgin.com brainspanners and I will be right back with Dr. Bryce Wild. Hey JJ Virgin here. Okay, real talk. So often the holidays sneak up on me. Travel, gifts, hosting, you know, all the things, and suddenly it's like, wait, who spent what and where? And I know I'm not the only one who's looked at a bill in January and thought, wow, that escalated quickly. If you want to keep your finances under control this holiday season, you need to be using Monarch. It's rated the Wall Street Journal's best best budgeting app of 2025. Monarch is the all in one personal finance tool that brings your entire financial life together in one clean interface on your laptop or on your phone. Monarch lets you link everything and gives you real time visibility so you're not shocked later. Right now, I've been checking the holiday spending category so I don't accidentally start the new year with that dreaded debt hangover. And honestly, just seeing everything laid out is already helping me stay more aware. This season, Monarch does the heavy lifting. It links your accounts in minutes, gives you smart categorization and super clear visuals. Yes, that end of your reset could be a real goal this time. Don't let financial opportunities slip through the cracks. Use the code virgin@monimal.com in your browser for half off your first year. That's 50% off your first year@monarch.com with the code Virgin.

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You've been on before too, haven't you?

No, this is my first time with you. I've had you on mine recently, which is maybe why I don't know.

All right, cool. Dr. Bryce Wild. I thought you'd been a regular on the show, which clearly we will need to make you be a regular on the show. But I was compelled to have you on with the title, the subtitle of your latest book, what have you done for your brain today?

That's so good. Thank you. Yeah, thanks so much. Well, you know, we often get forgotten about here in Canada. This is where I am based in Toronto, Canada, born and raised. I'm a dual citizen.

I can hear it.

And a boot and, you know, but we've got a really, you know, pretty good healthcare system here of which I'm proud of when it works. And we've been got our functional medicine gurus, so we're keeping up. We're keeping up. With the Joneses here in Canada, I think. Yeah.

Well, I think healthcare should start at home. That's my own opinion. And I know a lot of the stuff that you do really helps people take this stuff home. But why did you decide to focus on the brain?

It was actually a major impetus was my own mom and my father in law. So back in 2017, they were dually diagnosed with Alzheimer's. Wasn't in the family. I had no idea really much, I mean, as a clinician myself, about the.

Stages, both of them, mother and father in law.

Yeah.

Holy smokes.

Yeah. And pretty much the same stage. You know, my mother was in education all her life and my father in law, pretty smart guy in engineering. And they can dupe you, you know, an intelligent. Well, most folks, when they have this diagnosis are known to fool the average individual, Especially close family and friends when they don't want to admit there's something wrong. I don't know if you've seen the movie Beautiful Mind. Russell Crowe, there's a scene where he enters in the cabin where his wife is really not privy to, and it's like area of refuge and experimentation. And there's all these notes hanging from the ceiling and the wall and you get this impression of, you know, obvious like psychotic break. Schizophrenia was. Was his issue. So one day, and I hadn't been my mom's condo for months, I'd pick her up regularly, bring her over to the house and we'd have dinner and I'd bring her back or I'd ever ubered back. And I walked into her condo and there were notes everywhere, you know, very similar to that scene in Beautiful Mind. And one of them I first read was my sisters, whose name is Tanya, spelled with a Y and it was spelled with an I and it was a dob or date of birth with a question mark on it. And I thought to myself, wow. Yeah. So that was the first awakening I had that something was going down with my mom, had her tested and assessed and she was already well into stage two of Alzheimer's. So this got me thinking. You know the subtitle of the book, what have youe Done for your Brain Today? The book itself is called Brain Spanners. The idea is that we've come to revere and appreciate lifespan. That's how long that ultimately will clock on our lifelong calendar. But we've graduated over to healthspan. The concept that we wanna not just sort of live longer or square the curve and hopefully die in our sleep very quickly. But those ages, those years just Prior to that knockoff, you want them the best quality. So that last decade of your life and what are you doing to work backwards? Perhaps reverse engineer so that whether you're 90 or 95 or however old you're going to be, you're still able to push, pull, jump, squat, lift, move, walk, carry 30 pound bag of groceries a kilometer, be able to walk up a number of flight of stairs, physical as well as mental things. And then I took it one next level. Interviewed a number of experts in the field. I don't pretend to be the brain expert, although, as you know, every book you write is like a mini PhD. So I interviewed a PhD.

It's not a mini PhD. Books written well require so much research and then you have to know that what you're doing is actually going to work. So you've applied it. So it really is like what else is a PhD?

I guess no one's really. You're not in front of a board and you know, presenting your dissertation to. No, you're forgetting what it is. And your peers, they're even worse.

Like, let's be honest, you got it.

So, you know, the best of the best. You're in there as it pertains to brain health and exercise and nutrition. Of course, you know, we've got the likes of Dr. Andy Weil, our friend Bill Harris, we've got Dr. Daniel Amen, a lot of the brain experts, and with the flair that I have an appreciation for natural medicine, really, that's the whole concept is what can we do naturally to expand our brain span. Because ultimately, again, lifespan is one thing, health span's another. But if we can achieve brain span, brain span is as long as we will live, an optimal cognitive faculty, then that's the life you want to have. You know, I mean, you know what's.

Cool about it too, Bryce, is that a lot of the things. And it always works this way, doesn't it? A lot of the things that you do that will help with brain span will also help with health span. So, you know, that's the bonus now having had a son and having a son right now who had a severe traumatic brain injury and some neurodegeneration, which boy, there's so much great stuff now that can start to can reverse some of this stuff, which is amazing. Cause like years ago that was like it, you know, wasn't gonna. You, you know, I've seen firsthand, like until you've really witnessed it, you don't realize just what happens when someone, when you start to lose, you know, Lose brain function. It's absolutely frightening. And I would imagine, like with your mom, you probably don't want to admit to yourself, right? So she wasn't admitting it to you, but she just, you know, it's like my dad had a really bad cough and wouldn't get it checked. He didn't want to admit after being a smoker for 40 years that there could be a problem. Problem. And so that's a challenge because as we know, like the sooner you catch this, which you probably need to catch it immediately right now, because by the time you start to see signs, right.

Starts in your 30s, way before there are signs or symptoms. And I wouldn't say regardless, but considering and factoring in genetics, in fact, one of my first interviews, the book kind of took its own evolution into what it became. But I interviewed Dr. Dale Bredesen, who wrote the book, of course, the End of Alzheimer's. And he sub classified, you know, a number of subtypes of Alzheimer's, some of which are more glycotoxic or related to, you know, glycemic index and overeating, you know, sugars and refined carbohydrates, you know, another subset which is more pro inflammatory. There's some frost over there. Of course, my mother's situation, though, amongst these five subtypes turns out to be was toxic. So she grew up on a seed farm in England where the use of pesticides was abhorrent. And it seems to be that among other things, she does have the genetic predisposition as it pertains to this allele that we've discovered, the apoe variant. She's a 3, 4, in fact, not the most predisposed, being a 4 4. But anyways, all these different considerations for it turns out she was or is of the toxic predisposition. So, yeah, a lot that I learned from Dr. Dale Bredesen was able to, as you put it, manage, stabilize and even in some aspects, reverse. And that's true. And so even full circle to this whole concept of brain scanners, as you alluded to at the top, we are talking about findings in the last decade that we absolutely have the power in late age to be or exude neurogenesis, which means new nerve cell, brain cell formation, neoplasticity, neuroplasticity. This is the idea that we can actually couple and uncouple and recouple nerve connections, form new nerve connections. The brain's active. And this is the whole premise of the book. The idea is that brain spanning and then living as long as we possibly can, with optimal cognitive faculty, is to appreciate both our genetic predispositions, our environmental, our diet or lifestyle. And most of us know what we weigh. We know what our blood pressure is. We know what our cholesterol levels are typically. And we know all these different. But who knows what their hippocampal volume is? That's something people would be going, what is that? And we should all know. We should all have baseline MRIs, maybe even starting as early as our 30s and 40s. The hippocampus course is a memory center deep within our brain, and it has a certain size or a volume. And if we track that over time and we start to see it shrinking prematurely, that's a reason to get even more proactive about what you might be doing to keep, you know, healthy brain. And healthy brain literally translates into, you know, everything. Every organ system, our immune system, our endocrine system, hormone system, metabolism, everything.

You know, one of my favorite speakers and an old, old friend of mine is Dr. Daniel Amen. And I always love that he says, you know, when it comes to your brain, size matters. And he's spec scanned my son Grant, a number of times. We've all also done neuro quants, so we've been watching this hippocampal volume. I would love you to talk about some of those things. And I. And you know, what you measure and monitor, you can improve. I'm just. I'm so frustrated right now that we are at a point that we are in, you know, 2022, and we still step on a scale instead of stepping on a body composition monitor. Like, it is so ludicrous to me, and that we don't just have people do continuous glucose monitoring periodically just to make sure that they're in check, that these are not just things like we have these tools down, we're not using them. But, you know, no one's talking about measuring your hippocampal volume. Yeah, Monitoring that, like, it's just not being talked about. How easy is it get to test? Because, you know, it's not covered here in the States. And, you know, I know we just paid for all this. And then how. What are some of the things that can cause shrinkage? And then what can you do about it?

Sure. So I came to learn also in my research about the brain and to be able to preface this book, I love to do a Biology 101 for most folks just like you, doing a lot of media and just give people a better understanding as to what this organ is in the first place. So in the book I sort of help folks to digest this whole idea and this concept of what the brain is. A lot of us understand the heart's a pump. Let us understand the lungs are like bags that, you know, inspire and bring oxygen in and out and how our guts work, but don't really understand the brain and certain features like the hippocampus and how much control we have over these things, you know, as we're alluding to already and by the way, Grant's story was in the book, it was a huge feature as to how he recovered. And I've had since, you know, a few patients actually over the years with bad falls, you know, and one of the fourth floor of a hotel in Cuba who we actually put on the same protocol as Grant and did very, very well. So we can talk about that as well. But you know, this whole idea of over evolution, you know, there's that our brain has essentially evolved to become quite, I wouldn't call it fragile, you know, more fragile than, you know, perhaps it was millions of years ago. There's essentially four things, you know, I revere in high regard here. One is genetic mut that occurred the discovery of fire. By the way, this is a very interesting thing. It's very relevant to your question, by the way, having more time by virtue of discovery of fire to eat, more time on our hands to eat and forage and walk around. Then of course agricultural practices. These things all happen and they relate very much to this question of what can we do, how can we test, how do we approach the brain as it pertains to multi system organs and it's being in control. I just love to preamble this with this story that essentially about 5 million or so years ago, we don't know to the date exactly, but around that point there's a single gene known as rgap11b. When we talk about genes, we're talking often about mutations and or switch outs or variants along a particular area or let's call it a zip code on the gene. In this case a single zip code, let's call it digitized by Google replacement. In this gene known as rgap11b increased something called convolution, particularly in the prefrontal cortex. So the brains in most mammals are quite smooth. Humans are very different for this one reason. Again, 5 million years ago this mutation occurred. The gene allowed for this ruga or this large amount of convolution to occur. That means more brain mass in a small space, particularly in the prefrontal cortex, which is personality and a brake pedal as it pertains to what we would otherwise do through our intuition or instinctual predisposition. Then about 2 1/2 million years ago or thereabouts, began to eat meat, marrow, a lot of the fat, perhaps even the fat is more important than the protein. Muscle tissue providing these essential fats, but also B9, vitamin B9 and B12, we began to eat meat. Then roughly half a million Years later, about 2 million years later, we started cooking food with fire. That allowed us to digest food outside of our body, which freed up all this time on our hands. Took us about eight hours or so prior to that to consume all our calories in the day, masticating, chewing, enzymatic, breaking down the mouth, et cetera. But now we've got fire, we're cooking outside and we're growing our brain with these methyl support, B9, B12, and these essential fatty acids. And then only 50,000 years ago, really good evidence that there's a mutation, you know, about this in the fads 1 and 2 gene. This encodes the delta 60 saturates, which you know a lot about, which helped to increase essentially our absorption of alpha linoleic acid into the Omega 3s, EPA, DHA. This assimilation of Omega 3, of course, helped us to grow an even bigger brain. And there's a few other examples, but those four general examples, of course, and then we, the idea that we started to practice agricultural practices, so it started to grow grains and beans and legumes and all these other things and stopped hunting and foraging around 30,000 years ago. In fact, the irony here is that as we developed intelligence, we soon realized that we no longer had to hunt and forage. Began to practice this modern age agriculture and heavy grain diet again around 30,000 years ago. And now it's the processed diet, of course, which causes us the most disease.

Right, you took it too far.

Right. And with fire and that other cooking technology, we can now consume all the calories we want in a single day, in a single drive through in five minutes or left wolfing down a burger and fries. So we need to go back.

You know, Bryce, just being in Peru, which has 192 microclimates, and looking at their gardening terraces, like when you go to Machu Picchu, those things are gardening terraces and how they did this and all the different varieties of potatoes and corn and then the guinea pig they eat in the alpaca. So it was, it was like, holy smokes. You know, like we just, we, we did some great things and then we took it too far, like obviously with some of the toxins that are now impacting the brain, right. And then overabundance, this is it.

And so, and you know, and the real irony, in fact, and it's, you know, it's probably the epitome of irony in this case is that now in order to satisfy or sort of reverse a lot of this, you know, aging in the brain and deterioration of brain during our lives is that we often go back to a raw food diet. I mean, I think that's extremely ironic. But so, so it's a full circle. To answer your questions where I understand this sort of evolution of our brain, understand how it's so it's become very fragile. In a few of these, it's worked in our favor. Obviously we're a lot more intelligent, introspective. We have, you know, self awareness and consciousness, but the brain's a lot more fragile than it ever was millions of years ago. With that and these practices around agriculture, this is again the bottom line. There are many tests in which we can assess not just brain function and volume for that. In my clinical practice, I look at things like functional MRIs, looking at volume of the hippocampus and so forth. And this is a few thousand dollars for most people. It's not so easy to absorb for a lot of folks, but getting this baseline is really important. There' things though that we can do to analyze our glycemic index or looking at sugar over time. Hemoglobin A1C is a good example. We can look at our immune system. I often look at what's called a cytokine panel. These are all options for folks to do a deeper dive in. Cytokines are inflammatory messengers, part of the immune system that often get tied into this brain gut connection that we're to learn more about. When there is leaky gut, we're hearing more about that as well. There is leaky brain. So one of the first tests I do to identify whether there's problems with the brain is I look at something called zonulin. This is a test that a lot of folks can access as a little protein marker. Essentially it's supposed to keep. We have absorption in our gut. We're supposed to, to be able to absorb nutrients, both macro and micronutrients. But when we're hyperpermeable, and that is to suggest there is a leakiness in the gut, and there are things that move from your gut into your general circulation which probably shouldn't. In fact, they shouldn't and they can ultimately permeate and leak into the brain. When there's a leaky gut scenario, there's a leaky brain scenario. So that's something I like to screen for. Micronutrients.

I'm looking at this though. So like if someone were to do a hippocampal volume test, they did a functional mri, they looked at that, they'd still need to figure out if they are not where they should be. And even if there's where there should be, like, what do we need to do to make sure that we're not creating any assaults to it. You're still gonna have to figure out if it is, if you are less than you should be, why it is. And that could be anything from, you know, could be toxins. So I guess you would see this in some of your genetics. Could be blood sugar, could be stress. I remember, boy, when I was under chronic stress and you know, like all of a sudden your memory's going, you're like, you know, right, so, so you'll, you'd still have to go back after that point and go, what the heck's impacting it?

Absolutely.

So the reverse of it is, you know, going and looking at all the things that could impact your brain which impact your health anyway. You know, like if you've got poor glycemic control, you're going to have challenges if you don't.

And this is exactly what I was getting to. So if we consider the brain as the most important organ, it's irrefutable that it is. It's a two way highway as it pertain those cardiovascular markers we care so much about. I mean, cholesterol is a bit of an old story, but what are the inflammatory. Either the cytokines or oxidized LDL that affects the heart can affect the brain as well. What are the blood sugar measures? What are the toxins the liver is dealing with? It's going to directly impact the brain. But if we revere the brain first and foremost of that organ that we care most about, that there are tests for, like we keep bringing up this functional MRI for hippocampal volume. If that's shrinking over time, there are ways in which you can manage that shrinkage, even reverse that shrinkage. That's the good news. And often that's done by managing the systemic effect of blood sugar, micronutrient status, omega 3 fatty acid status, exercise spread. I think that we're in a state, more now than ever, I believe, of dysautonomia, this imbalance between sympathetic and parasympathetic state the ability to manage, not just cope, manage with stress effectively be able to get into a state of parasympathetic dominance versus sympathetic dominance. Shrinks cortisol as you know, shrinks the brain. And certainly substance abuse that Dr. Amen as we both know is always all about. No matter whether it's marijuana, it's become more legalized or it's alcohol. These are legal drugs but they're shrinking the brain more than anything including the hippocampus. The good news though, and I mean this is really my area of expertise there is nutrition select aspect of nutrition and how to manage not just macros or macronutrients but micronutrients. By understanding first your genetics and some of these other tests we talk about and then nootropics. These are things that we can consume in supplement form that we believe. There's good science, not always, but often pretty good science to appreciate. Supplementing with these ingredients can actually add to your potential for neurogenesis. New nerve cell, brain cell formation and neuroplasticity. The ability to regrow and reform new nerve cell connections. This episode is brought to you by Buffalo Trace Distillery. Powerful yet smooth.

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Now I know everyone's going to get a ebook of your brain Spanners which is awesome and I'm going to put that@jjvirgin.com brainspanners but right now just so super actionable. Someone listening right now when you just mentioned nutrition like give, give like the. What are a couple things they could do nutrition wise will have an impact, massive impact on the brain. Then we're going to go through the list. Let's start there.

Yeah. So my number one is Omega 3 and obviously this plays its story well through Grant's trauma and recovery.

Oh my gosh. But I had to sneak it into.

The hospital because at therapeutic ranges, right?

Damaging.

So that's actually why I brought it through that very super top line evolution. This FADS 1 and 2 gene that controls for an enzyme. It's a single gene that controls for such an important enzyme that converts this alpha linoleic acid, you know, into very essential omega 3 fatty acids. We wouldn't have grown the brain that we currently have, the brain that I refer to as more fragile than it ever was in our evolutionary spectrum. This is so important to the brain. Omega 3 fatty acids. In fact, we're fat heads. Our brain is like 60%, some authorities say more percent fat. And within the nerves cell membrane, along with our red blood cell membrane, there has to be saturation of this particularly important fat in order for cell to cell communication to occur. What we call depolarization. We're bioelectric beings, so there's all this biology and chemistry about us, but we're also electrical. So we have these electrical impulses which translate to thoughts and emotions and executive function. So saying all that is to say that Omega 3 levels, I believe are very important. Most of us walk around just like with vitamin D deficiencies, we walk around with omega 3 deficient status and that's terribly impactful negatively to our brain. This is the work, by the way of Dr. Bill Harris, who you know. Well, it's as simple as an at home finger blood stick test, right. So with a little couple of drops of blood, we can submit to the lab and identify our omega 3 red blood cell membrane concentrations to get that corrected. Most of us walk around with 3 or 4%, we want 8% or higher. And that is imperative to cardiovascular health and brain health particularly. So that's number one, getting pulled and understanding your method.

And by the way, I gotta just shout this out. You're probably not gonna be able to fix that with food alone.

Yeah, exactly. So good point. So a lot of what I preach, a lot of I talk about is going above and beyond dietary or nutritional intervention. I really feel that in many cases you can't eat yourself the therapeutic level, nor in some cases do we want to, because sometimes this is more about what we avoid than what we put in. And so when we're talking about fish, right, fatty fish, they're typically the larger fish. One of the most popular courses, salmon. And when you get a very good clean sandwich is very difficult. Then of course eating that every other day is a great idea. Still hard to get therapeutic ranges. And so with that said, I mean, again, we're trying to avoid things like heavy metals, dioxins, furans, parabens, all these different things that affect the brain negatively and they can come with fatty fish.

I know it's a different, this is not our 20,000, 30,000 years ago fish.

Exactly.

Because all the pesticides and stuff we're using are running off somewhere.

Exactly. That's number one in My opinion number two and maybe just to continue on this toxin front is to understand how well you detoxify from a genetic perspective. Some of us do it way better than others. We've come to learn that the brain, brain doesn't have lymph like the rest of the body. The ability for the liver and the lymphatic system to rid of waste. It's got a glymphatic with a g. So glial cells, these are non thinking cells and they are responsible particularly at night under the right conditions, which happens to be very cool, 68 degrees or so, deep restful sleep. This is when the glial cells wake up and detoxify the brain. And I don't mean these ethereal, you know, toxins that are emitted from the smokestacks of industry. I'm talking about our own metabolic waste on a day to day basis. So just living and breathing and eating, we make waste sleep. It turns out one of the most important factors of sleep and recharging, resetting the brain has to do with this glymphatic activity. So detoxifying the brain and how well we do that, there's ways in which we can keep the finger on the pulse to our systemic levels of detoxification.

You just gave a great, great piece of information. I just want to highlight again because you know we talk, when we talk about sleep, we're like get your bedroom to 68 or below, right? And I remember when I first met my husband, I'm like, this was one of ours. I'm like honey, gotta take the temp down. But you just gave a very good reason for why we need to do this. So just hit that one more time just in case someone's like I don't wanna be cold.

Yeah. The glymphatic system, the brain's detox ability to clear up the mess of the day prior relies on cool temps. It just doesn't work unless you've got your sleep hygiene appropriated. And that means co comfortable blackout blinds. All that we've heard about, you know, in terms of that optimization of sleep hygiene. But the most important thing neck and head out of the covers is that it's cool. They don't activate, they don't wake up and detoxify the brain unless it is 60, 65 to 68 research shows is the optimal levels. So. So optimizing detoxification by first testing both genetic ability. I'm a co founder of the DNA company. I think we run one of the best panels.

I totally agree. We had we had Kashif on the, on the podcast. It was fabulous. Like, incredible reports. We ran one on me, on Grant, on my husband Tim. So great, great, great information that's super actionable and super easy to understand. And like, you know, ideally this is just going to be something that you like. You're born, you have a genetic test, so you. And then the information gets updated as new information comes out. So you just know where you need to focus if you're. That's right, good, detoxify or not. I think even, even if you're a good detoxifier. My husband and I, every single day that we're home, we get in our. Our sunlight and sauna. That's just like, that's one things we do. We weren't doing it. Bryce. And I was like, okay, I gotta like, we got a cold plunge. We were really good about that. And I was like, we. But we meditate every morning. So now we take Dr. Joe Dispenza in the sauna with us. Do that. So we're killing two birds with one stone. I don't know where that saying came from. And then we go and cold plunge after.

Well, I think that falls on this list. I was going to hit that up next after methylation. So park that thought for a minute because I believe there's a way to be testing, knowing your numbers, keeping your finger on the pulse of sympathetic hyperactivity. So this is that whole idea, the notion that stretch shrinks our brain and things like saunas and deep cold plunges and things like that help us to essentially enhance or improve parasympathetic tone or vagal tone. So I'll definitely get to that in a sec. But methylation is another big one. So it's almost synonymous with inflammation. This is the ability of our body. I refer to this as sort of like a relay race. You've got five runners in your team and you've got a baton. And they've got to pass a baton, obviously, and clear the finish line in order to win the race or at least do well. That baton is a methyl group or CH3 in biochemistry. And so passing that baton along requires these five genes to work really well. And again, you can test for these genes to determine where you've got issue. If and often a lot of us have methylation defect, we're dropping that baton. Disqualifying from finishing this race. This is the responsibility of B12 and the right types of B12, depending on who you are genetically, and B9 or folate in order to get that baton through one racer to the next to finish this race. So a lot of us have genetic glitches as it pertains to methylation. And if and when we do, we have brain problems and we have brains on fire. For a lot of folks, DNA that supplies to genetic sequence anomalies and keeping an intact gene pool, preventing genetic mutations. So testing and understanding methylation, that's really important as well. And I love this urinary test. Anyone can access this, which is basically a downstream analytic for inflammation. Again, methylation, inflammation go together to determine systemic levels of inflammation because when inflammation is high, and we've talked about a few things that might contribute to that, toxins in the environment. Leaky gut means leaky brain. When there's inflammation, there's problems. There's a test called 11 dehydrothromboxane, very easy test to run on urine. It's called the chronic inflammation test. Folks can look this up, you submit this, this is way downstream, you know, Cox, you know, thromb all the way down to the very sort of end. How pro inflamed are you? You're systemically or in your brain inclusive, how inflamed are you? And then now is that acute like.

So question on that test, let's say that you ate some, some really inflammatory stuff the day before. Is this a more of a, like a hemoglobin A1C test or is this more of a fasting glucose test like, like what's the.

More of in the middle? Bingo. More of in the middle. So great question. It's not quite that three month end point or that acute. You know, you can't. The most influential component of this test is whether or not you're taking any form of NSAIDs, aspirin in particular, that's going to skew you favorably. But otherwise there's, you know, very little you could do over one night. It'd be more of the course of a couple of weeks that would impact one way or the other. And by the way, omega 3 fatty acids as we've come to learn, are incredibly anti inflammatory. So your omega 3, they've done these tests, these studies. Omega 3 saturation is directly correlated with downstream 11 dehydrothromboxane. So great idea to keep your finger on the pulse for general levels of inflammation and methylation. And I said I'd bring it up. I think that people have to understand better where they're not perceived stress because I mean for stress is for one person, one thing, it's a different thing for another person we can learn to manage it better. Most people, people cope with it. It. Check four point cortisol. I like that test as a salivary. Cortisol of course is one of the most important stress end points that we can look at. Shrinks the brain. So I run this four point over the course of the day. It's supposed to peak up in the morning and then kind of come down over the course of the evening and after you prepare you for sleep. But we are in a state, I believe of hyper sympathetic or sympathetic dominance. We're always go, go, go. We're always put, you know, just, just constantly fired up, weird, let's face it.

Right, right, right. You're celebrated if you're, if you're in that state.

And so this is the way of the world. And I'm not saying there's easy ways. And there's some easy ways, you know, breathing, there's ways in which we can ultimately increase tone, vagal tone or parasympathetic tone. You just mentioned a few. So going into your sauna, really good evidence around this ultimately improving heart rate variability which is directly correlated with vagal or parasympathetic tone. Immersion in cold environments such as a cold ice bath, which is awful. But these are terrible. They're stressful environments.

So you have to think like 10 minutes I'm in there every day now, 10 minutes. I just want credit.

And so you know what, and that, so what that's doing in the moment is of course creating stress, but it is the parasit is the return. So the more practice makes perfect, the more you practice this in conjunction. I love the breathing techniques taught by Wim Hof. I think if people aren't familiar with him, they should look him up. Also simple breathing, like box breathing 444rule or 5, 7, 8 rule. All these different rules that people can invoke. Being able to manage stress in the moment, such as a cold immersion in an ice bath. But it's not the immediate experience that very stressful. I want to get the hell out of that, that cold immersion experience. It's the return to that parasympathetic state. Like everything is fine, I survived that, I'm going to be okay. That translates into the brain and mental aptitude that you survived and the speed at which you are able to return to parasympathetic state. So again from stress fight or flight to relax, rest and digest. The speed at which you do that happens faster and faster over time with more practice.

It's like exercise, you know, and, and I was an exercise physiologist first and one of our big things was how quickly could you go from a target to max heart rate all the way to recovery. And that's how we would track. And the challenge here is it's easy to track heart rate. How do you track. I just moved from sympathetic to parasympathetic. How would you track that? So again, HRV or what?

Yeah, yeah, exactly. I would be looking at heart rate variability in the moment anyways. And of course, you know, the more variable you are, we could dive into that. But the more variable your heart rate is, beat to beat, the more likely you are in an optimal state, that is to say, more likely able to quickly translate from sympathetic fight or flight to parasympathetic rest and digest. I like using technology as much as possible, but I think biochemistry is the more telltale over time. And so that four point cortisol tells me a lot. This is where I get into neurotransmitters. This is where I start looking at urinary neurotransmitters on average every three months for a lot of folks who typically. So there's, there's two types of neurotransmitters. There's inhibitory. They ultimately are very, very useful. We don't have enough of those as a, as a society, by and large. And there's excitatory, I think again, like we are in the state of sympathetic dominance. Our excitatory neurohormones are often too high. So, so you can be in sympathetic state or always stressed out and having negative mental emotional experiences related to neurochemical imbalance or neurotransmitter imbalance because your neuroinhibitory levels are too low, such as gaba. I see that all the time. Gamma aminobutyric acid, it's a neurotransmitter you can also supplement with. This is often too low. It makes the individual feel as if they are in sympathetic dominance or in some cases neuroexcitatory hormones like adrenaline, noradrenaline, serotonin, they're too high. So I work with folks in order to help balance and equilibrate those things, often using amino acids or phytonutrients, Biochemical, what we call modulation is the end game. So there's all kinds of wonderful functional biochemistry that we can look at to help folks manage this from a neurological nutrition supplementation form anymore. But this autonomy, I think, I mean one of the things I personally do besides cold dunks like you and, and saunas is Forest bathing. You know, this is something the Japanese call shinrin yoku.

I was right. So I was just at Asheville for a wedding at the Biltmore. And they had that on the, they had two things on the, the list of like activities. And one of them was chocolate meditation, which sadly I was not around for. I'm like, I'm in. And the other one was that, that. But they both were there, you know, I couldn't fit the schedule. And I was like, what on earth is forest bathing? What is it?

So it's really interesting. So this is not just getting out into nature, immersing yourself in greenery and having a nice time, you know, walking around a forest. Although it is that there's a number of elements of forest bathing. The Japanese refer to this and you know, particularly the Okinawa, which is kind of like, you know, Hawaii paradise. Offshore Japan, where centenarians, people that live beyond 100, exist in large population compared to the average, particularly females actually. And they've made it a habit of science of forest bathing. So a couple of factors are going on here. One, this is just like we talked about a moment ago, hormetic. The hormesis is that really perfect sort of bell curve where too little of something, a substance or a stressor, whether it's exercise or cold plunging, too little of that's not going to do much. Too much might kill you. But it's that perfect Goldilocks zone of getting the right exposure. Turns out, you know, phytosinates, which are naturally emitted volatile organic compounds from nature, from plants, from trees, are emitted that cause us just enough stress that our natural killer cells are evoked. So our immune system, frontline innate immunity, goes up in a forest amongst greenery. Turns out there's also negative ions which counterintuitively might sound bad for you, but actually really good for you. These negative ions boost serotonin, a feel good hormone particularly. And of course you're familiar with Huberman, the Huberman Lab. When you do this first thing in the morning and you get that amazing sunlight coming through the tree crests and hitting the bottom of your eye where most of your photoreceptors are shutting off melatonin, the sleep hormone, the brain only wants that at night. And turning on serotonin in the day hormone, that's going to evoke more than just feel good and a proper circadian rhythm translating to a better sleep at night. But again, so immune function goes up, you know, feel good. You do this with people, other friends or family, and you're now Emoting. And so there's, there's an impression the heart.

But what are you doing? So, like, I mean, Tim and I went out hiking. I called to me, hiking as you go up a hill. So like, I hiked in Peru. This was not hiking. It was walking through. Through the forest. But when they call it forest bathing, I mean, are you lying in the dirt? What are you doing? Are you just standing there?

Like, what, you're not grabbing a bar of Irish Spring and washing down? And it's exactly like you said, you don't even have. We're explaining all the benefits here, but at the end of the day, forest bathing is just you immersing yourself in thick green nature. You already did it. It's that easy by doing it.

Here's the thing, Bryce, I'll tell you. So we were also staying in an Airbnb with a bunch of friends and we went. Went hiking out there two days in a row. And on the second day, driving down to the hike, we saw a family of black bears. Now, it's very different hiking when there are bears about. It's a very different. Like you are on total alert. Right? So maybe that was part of it. I don't know. Maybe that's part of.

What is it? Yeah, what is it? Black, Black, fight back. Brown, lie down, White. I can't remember. But anyways, the idea is, yeah, of course you're just going to want to be in some place where there's, you know, a sense of, of, you know, trust that you're safe.

Yeah, there's no spiders, poison ochre ivy and no bears, but that doesn't exist. I guess that would be like a Disney forest. Anyway, that is. That is super cool. I could go on all day with you now. I'm glad that there is that you are giving the books. I know we've just touched the surface of this and I think the, the big through line of this is again, and you know, you have lifespan. We've looked at lifespan without healthspan. Makes no sense. Who wants to live a long time poorly? Like, that's the worst thing I can imagine is living and being kind of like, you know, like trapped in your body or trapped in your mind. So then there's the health span, but that really doesn't address really keeping that cognitive ability up. And so I love this new coining of brain span because. Because it is so key critical. So you're going to get the book. It's JJVirgin.com BrainSpanners to get the ebook that will give you what you need to look for and what you can measure and then what you can do about it. And as you saw, there's a lot of information that you wouldn't normally think about. And I'll tell you, I think that kind of moving forward, we're seeing a big shift, at least I hope we are. And it's not just because I'm focusing on it, but that this shift to really looking at our nervous system, knowing that we need to make this sympathetic to parasympathetic shift that we've got to take care of our nervous system we never talked about before. I think that the pandemic shone a bright light on what is going on and that if we don't take care of this, it's gonna massively take down our health and especially our brain health.

Absolutely. I couldn't have said it better myself. And there's why I would be remiss if I didn't also. We talk about in the book, but if I didn't also underscore the importance of testing annually something as simple as a Montreal Mini Cognitive. Montreal Mini Mental. Keeping an awareness as to your cognitive scores. This is memory and function of the brain. Where would someone do that very inexpensively with their family doctor? Just request it earlier and folks can understand how their predisposition to cognitive decline and Alzheimer's might be upon them. And there's a lot they can do, of course, to reverse, manage, stop and even reverse that.

Nice. And yeah, I think that's the most important thing here is. I know preventative health is the toughest thing to sell, but boy, especially with brain health, you don't wait till you start to really see signs in your in trouble.

So it's, it's the, it's the subtitle of the book. If folks really want to wake up and do something, the most important thing they can do for their health is ask themselves that very question, what have I done for my brain today? And it should be a plethora, multifactorial number of things. And if they do that, they will advantage the rest of their body, as we just concluded.

Nice. That's a great way to end. What have you done for your brain today? Thank you so much, Dr. Breischeild. I super appreciate you.

My pleasure. Thank you.

All right. Oh my gosh. Forest bathing. I mean, who knew? I gotta tell you, when I heard forest bathing, I'm like, are these like people running around the forest naked? What is this? So now we know. Now we know. I'm gonna just do my backyard. Bathing, I think is what I'm gonna start with, since I have palm trees and grass and I live on a canal, which is super awesome. So I want to remind you again, be sure to grab that book jjvirgin.com brainspanners and if you've not yet subscribed to the show, go to subscribetoj.com There you go. So you never miss an episode. All right, I'll see you next time. Bye.

Foreigners. This is Anne Bogle, author, blogger, and creator of the podcast what Should I Read next? Since 2016, I've been helping readers bring more joy and delight into their reading lives. Every week I check all things books and reading with a guest and guide them in discovering their next read. They share three books they love, one book they don't, and what they've been reading lately, and I recommend three titles they may enjoy reading next. Guests have said our conversations are like therapy, troubleshooting issues that have plagued their reading lives for years, and possibly the rest of their lives as well. And of course, recommending books that meet the moment. Whether they are looking for deep introspection to spur or encourage a life change or a frothy page turner to help them escape the stresses of work, school, everything, you'll learn something about yourself as a reader and you'll definitely walk away confident to choose your next read, with a whole list of new books and authors to try. So join us each Tuesday for what Should I Read Next? Subscribe now wherever you're listening to this podcast and Visit our website, whatshouldireadnextpodcast.com to find out more.