This YouTube interview (Josh Trent with David Perlmutter) examines how modern lifestyle factors—especially poor diet, certain medications, and insufficient or non-restorative sleep—impair neuroplasticity by increasing inflammation. Perlmutter contrasts amygdala-driven impulsive decision-making with prefrontal-cortex deliberation, links one night of poor sleep to up to a 60% increase in amygdala activity and higher inflammatory markers, and describes the glymphatic system (activated during deep sleep) as the brain's waste-clearing mechanism relevant to neurodegenerative disease risk. He emphasizes sleep hygiene and clinical applications of these ideas for improving decision-making.
Questions this video answers
As much as a 60% increased activity in the amygdala.
The glymphatic system.
Title: "📵DOES FACEBOOK BLOCK NEUROPLASTICITY?...🧠Discover how to detox your mind for clearer thinking"; Upload date: October 20, 2020.
Chapters
The ability to make the good decisions. The ability, that apparatus that the wiring of the brain has been sabotaged. So our brains tend to get locked into acting impulsively using an area of the brain called the amygdala. And there is so much about our modern world that is locking us into making poor decisions, short sighted decisions and based on impulsivity. I want the jelly donuts right now. I want to stay up and binge watch whatever it is, whatever program is on Tiger King, you name it, whatever it is that we know isn't necessarily in our best interest, but we do it because we don't have the ability many times to access the other part of the brain, the prefrontal cortex, that allows us to basically let the adult come back into the room and help us with our decision making. That would say, you know, as a matter of fact, you need to eat less refined carbohydrates. And guess what, maybe getting out for a 15 minute walk would be a good thing for us to do.
Well, I think about this pathway where there's the signals coming from our tissues back and forth to our brain. For people that have had physical trauma, you know, how do they do they have a rougher time with neuroplasticity because it's so baked in from the severe trauma.
They have a rougher time not with neuroplasticity in general, but they do have a rougher time in terms of undoing these influences. But as many have reported, they can be undone. Now that said, what works directly against neuroplasticity and neurogenesis, the growth of new brain cells, is inflammation. So we have a teeter totter then between neuroplasticity and inflammation. So whatever we do that increases inflammation will tend to make it more difficult for us to engage neuroplasticity and vice versa. So we really want to do our best in order to allow our brains to rewire, to do everything we can to offset inflammation. What enhances inflammation we need to be aware of. Well, we know that there are plenty of foods that are pro inflammatory, hyper processed, ultra processed, simple carbs, bad fats, omega 6s, et cetera, bad diet as it relates to our gut, bacteria, plenty of influences in food and certainly medications, antibiotics, acid blocking drugs, non steroid anti inflammatory drugs. The list contains more than 1,000. But other lifestyle things tend to fan the flames. Interestingly, flame inflammation of inflammation. And that would be certainly not getting a good night's sleep. Even one night of non restorative not getting enough restorative sleep is associated with A dramatic uptick in inflammation markers in our bodies and as much as a 60% increased activity in the amygdala. So maybe it sounds like I've been talking about sleep quite a bit. You know what good reason? It's so underrated. And it's such a powerful on ramp in brainwash. We talk about it as perhaps being the most important on ramp these days towards reducing inflammation, reducing cortisol, regaining connection to the prefrontal cortex, and really rebalancing the immune system. Underrated.
We need to get more. I think that people forget. It's funny, you know, you're the. The book is Brainwash. When we're sleeping, there is a chemical release that washes our brain, and I think people forget that. Do you remember the name of the chemical that's released? I forget the name of it. Dr. Parsley talked about it.
Yes. So actually there are several involved. But what you're bringing up is something called the glymphatic system.
Yes.
And this is recently discovered by researchers at, I think, University of Pittsburgh in collaboration with others, and that is that during deep sleep, which occurs later in the evening, we activate a system that really basically shampoos the brain, if you will, that helps the brain rid itself of toxic accumulations that occur during waking hours, during brain activity, and also things like misfolded proteins. And that turns out to be very thematic as it relates to neurodegenerative conditions like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. As Dr. Walker, in his book why We Sleep, talks about even one night of not getting enough restorative sleep. When you look at the spinal fluid of volunteers, the next day shows higher levels of this amyloid protein that has been associated with Alzheimer's disease. So, yeah, I mean, that's when our brains clear out the debris. So we. You know who valued sleep, right? Nobody. We consider it downtime. You want to be productive, you need to stay up late, work on your project, get up early.
Yes.
Because sleep is wasted time.
You're changing the narrative. It's not about work hard, play hard. It's about resting hard, too. And I remember I was talking with Rob Wolfe on the show, and he was telling me he guards his sleep at knifepoint. He's like, nobody gets in the way of my sleep. And I feel like right now that needs to be something that we're all aware of, like really guarding one's sleep. What do you recommend for people to guard their sleep? Like, what are the tools? What are the ways of being.
Well, I think the first thing you do before you even implement the tools is you recognize how darn important it is. Look, you don't spend eight hours a day exercising or eight hours a day eating. And yet exercise and diet are really all that people talk about on the Internet. For example, eat this diet, lose weight, exercise like this, get some great abs. But you should spend seven to eight hours, in other words, close to a third of your life doing this thing that all animals do, and that is sleep. That's how valuable it is. Our ancestors, when the sun would go down, they would go to sleep and the sun would come up, they would wake up. So that's hard baked into our genome. So then where do we get to the dynamics of that and more importantly, the hygiene part of that? And that is first recognize how important it is. And now we look at. So why am I not getting a good night's sleep? Well, it could be having caffeine after 2pm it could be spending time on your computer, exposing your eyeballs to blue light, which then goes through an area called the suprachiasmatic nucleus that then degrades your ability to make melatonin and your pineal gland. Guess what? You're not gonna sleep as well. It might be you didn't get enough exercise. You're not really as tired. So there are a lot of things to look at that are simple modifications that may well help anybody get a better night's sleep. And I will tell you, there's probably nothing better for decision making than a good night's sleep. You know, we're now are creating a program for medical doctors for helping their patients in their decision making. So we've taken the brainwash book and we're using the guts of that program with doctor training to help them be better healthcare providers towards their patients. Because again, it's not that doctors don't know a lot of stuff. They do. And it's not that they don't try to give that information to their patients. They do. But it's step three, where the breakdown occurs, that is.
