We’re taught to believe mental decline is an inevitable part of aging. But what if you could maintain a youthful, high-performing brain well into your golden years? Imagine having the memory of someone decades younger, razor-sharp focus, and unstoppable productivity.
In this fascinating conversation, brain health expert Dr. Marc Milstein reveals game-changing strategies from his book The Age-Proof Brain: New Strategies to Improve Memory, Protect Immunity, and Fight Off Dementia.
You’ll discover:
• The surprising truth about what really causes your brain to age (it’s not what you think)
• Simple daily habits to keep your mind sharp and prevent memory loss
• How the health of your heart, gut, and metabolism directly impacts your brain
• Why stress isn’t always the enemy (and how to leverage it for sharper thinking)
• The “miracle grow” for your brain that most people aren’t utilizing
• And much more!
Whether you’re 25 or 85, this mind-expanding episode will shatter conventional myths about cognitive decline and provide a revolutionary roadmap to optimizing your brain power for years to come.
You can find Marc at: Website | Instagram | Episode Transcript
If you LOVED this episode:
- You’ll also love the conversations we had with David L. Sinclair, Ph.D. about reimagining aging.
Check out our offerings & partners:
- Join My New Writing Project: Awake at the Wheel
- Visit Our Sponsor Page For Great Resources & Discount Codes
photo credit: David Welsh
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________
Episode Transcript:
Jonathan Fields: [00:00:00] So have you ever felt like your brain just isn’t quite firing on all cylinders at mental fog, or forget ness, or lack of focus, or just inevitable side effects of getting a little bit older? Please tell me this isn’t just me. Well, get ready to have your assumptions shattered. So what if I told you that cognitive decline doesn’t have to be a harsh reality of aging? That you can keep your mind razor sharp or your memory powerful and your productivity soaring if you want for decades to come? It’s not only possible for so many of us, but there’s a clear roadmap to make it happen. My guest today is doctor Mark Milstein, a leading brain health expert and author of The Age Proof Brain New Strategies to Improve memory, Protect immunity, and Fight Off Dementia. Mark earned his PhD in biological chemistry from UCLA and has conducted extensive research in genetics, cancer biology, neuroscience, and more. And he’s about to really open our eyes to some pretty mind blowing revelations that will transform how you think about brain aging. You’re going to learn the surprising truth about what really causes your brain to get older, and it’s probably not what you think. Milstein shares daily habits that are what he describes as like miracle. Grow for your neurons, and you’ll discover how the health of your heart and your gut, and even your ability to manage stress directly impacts your cognitive longevity. This conversation challenges some long standing myths and hands you a bit of a revolutionary blueprint to optimize your brainpower from your 20s all the way through to your 90s. So excited to share it with you! I’m Jonathan Fields and this is Good Life Project.
Jonathan Fields: [00:01:42] You know, the big starting point really is the deep work that you have been doing around understanding what happens to not just our bodies, but our brains and also the feedback mechanism. You know, as we age, as we move into the later years in our lives and maybe even make sense to sort of define what we even mean by aging and the later years in life. And, you know, I think one of the big assumptions that is probably an interesting jumping off point for us is this notion that we’re born and when we’re in our 20s and 30s, we’re like the prime, our physical prime, our emotional prime, our psychological prime, our brains, our muscles. Everything’s working like the way that they quote should be, like they’re at their peak. And then it’s this, quote, natural process that all of those systems go through decline. And it’s just it is a part of what we accept when we move further into life. Your focus has been around the brain, but I think that’s also narrow to say that because a lot of your focus is actually the fact that you can’t talk about the brain without talking about everything else. But let’s talk about this fundamental mythology or assumption just as a starting point, that everything kind of like fades over time. And that’s just the way it is.
Marc Milstein: [00:02:54] That’s what we want to dispel and get to this new idea that you can slow down significantly the aging process of your brain, that your brain has two ages, the number of years you’ve been on this planet. And then how old is your brain, really? And so it is true that starting at the age of 40, the brain can start to shrink and that shrinking can have an impact on memory, focus and productivity. But really, the hopeful insights from all this research is that we can do things to keep our brain more youthful. We can improve our memory. We can be more productive for many, many, many decades. And we see this in these studies. And we also see just a group of people called Superagers who are 80, 90, up to 100. They have the memory of someone who’s 25 years old. So we really clearly see that there are things that we can do. We can protect our brain. And also we have to be aware that as we age, there are aspects of our brain that improve. We gain wisdom, confidence, perspective. So all those things are absolutely positives. We just want to be aware that we want to do the things that we can do to keep our brain in tip top shape for as long as possible.
Jonathan Fields: [00:03:56] I mean, let’s maybe do a little bit of defining also just for clarity. So when we talk about what happens to your brain, one of the things that you just shared is, you know, sort of like in the Fortyish age range that like that, that for a lot of people, as you progress, the literal size of your brain shrinks. What’s happening there?
Marc Milstein: [00:04:15] Well, it’s a couple things. It’s there’s blood flow changes. You know, that’s why exercise is so important. Stress management, inflammation. So if you think of your brain as this £3 blob, basically that it can lose blood flow as we get older, that can shrink it. Our immune system, which is really there to protect us, can turn on us and start attacking the brain. And you can imagine an immune system attacking the brain can shrink it. And it’s also just loss of use. The brain is a use use it or lose it organ. And as we get older, there’s things that we don’t do as much. You know, we might not be working on balance. We might not be working on recall. And so we want to practice those things, but make them fun and engaging. And so that essentially, if we’re not using it, it can shrink. And also aspects of our physical health can can deteriorate as we get older and cause the brain to shrink as well.
Jonathan Fields: [00:05:08] Yeah. So when we think about the brain, it’s not just it’s the size. Like it’s not just, oh, a bigger brains, a better brain or a smaller brains or worse brain. It’s we’re really, I think, like on a day to day basis, what you and I and probably everyone listening is really thinking about is like, well, how does this affect function? So when we think about brain function, what are the primary things that we’re looking at or measuring as factors to determine like how well or not well like or how old or young is my brain, you know, regardless of my, my physical age on the planet.
Marc Milstein: [00:05:39] Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So there’s a couple of things that people can ask themselves and just actually to remember it myself, I use the word brain because these things are very helpful to remember. So each letter of the word brain has a new question that we can ask. So the letter B is I mentioned balance. There are studies that show that people have better balance as they age, have a younger looking brain. If you scan their brain and take a picture of it, it’s more full, more plump. Um, so we want to do things like you mentioned. We were talking beforehand snowboarding, skiing, you know, yoga, dancing. That’s why these things are so important, because we want to keep that part of our brain active, that’s involved in balance. So just assessing, you know, am I am I doing things that that are keeping my balance intact? Am I working out that part of my brain? Um, are is for recall. So, you know, we live in a world where everything is on our phones. You want everything you want to look up is right there, and we can lose the ability to recall information. And so just practicing a trivia night, you know, taking your to do list, turning it over and saying, I want to I want to see if I can remember this.
Marc Milstein: [00:06:39] And just assessing how how robust is your recall? Um, a is assess your day. How are you getting through your day? I should say assess how you’re getting through your day is a and you know, it’s okay to forget to pay a bill or miss an appointment. But what we’re seeing is we don’t want to say that memory loss or changes in cognitive function, significant changes are normal because we want to get on top of them right away. So if you notice any changes, you’re having more difficulty getting through the day remembering things. We want to get to the root of it, because we clearly see now that we can treat things and we can, we can, we can help the brain work better. I is for actually the intensity of your walking. So we have all these fascinating studies that show us that people who walk about 30 minutes a day doesn’t have to all be done at the same time, lower their risk of memory loss or dementia by about 60%. And that’s really what we’re talking about, is how do we lower the risk? How do we bring risk down? How do we push the odds in our favor? But there’s these interesting studies that show that if you walk with a little bit of faster gait or a little bit faster pace, people tend to have a more youthful looking brain.
Marc Milstein: [00:07:43] And so there’s something of assessing like, how’s my walking? Am I able, am I able to walk a little faster pace? And then N stands for what’s your number. And what I mean by that is how old do you feel. And part of this is actually perspective and mindset. People who say they feel younger than their actual age, you again scan their brain and their brain looks more youthful. And we actually see that people who have a positive attitude towards the aging process have almost a 50% lower chance of developing dementia. So we really want to get the word out. That part of this is a piece of a complex puzzle is how do you feel about the aging process? Are you do you have a positive attitude towards it? Are you doing youthful activities? So those are just five questions. You can kind of get a sense of what your brain age is.
Jonathan Fields: [00:08:29] It’s really interesting to me also because I think a lot of people, if they’re asked the question, well, how would you assess, you know, how your brain is functioning. The immediate things that pop into my mind are, you know, like processing speed. How quickly am I at like adding this or memory for sure. But what immediately I’m thinking about is all of these seemingly like brain oriented cognitive functions that I’m looking to measure, like my creative capacity. How do I make connections between this and that and see, like the third thing. Pattern recognition. But what you just laid out is something very different, something more expansive. And the notion that you might actually look at the way that you’re physically moving through the world as key indicators of how your brain is functioning. It’s fascinating to me.
Marc Milstein: [00:09:17] Yeah. And these are these are simple things. There there are things that we can push by the wayside and say, oh, that’s that’s part of the aging process or that’s not really related to my brain, but there are red flags that we want to pay attention to because, again, you know, one of the most important messages here is that we have more control over the destiny of our brain than we ever thought.
Jonathan Fields: [00:09:39] Yeah. I mean, it also, you know, like it’s there’s all sorts of chicken and egg questions buzzing in my head right now, which is, you know, like if you see somebody in their 70s or 80s or 90s, God willing. Right. Like out walking slowly, you know, probably knowing nothing about that person. You might assume. Well, sure. Like, there’s there is age related physical decline, like shrinking of muscle tissues contraction or like limited mobility in the joints. That’s what’s happening. But what you’re offering here is it may be a yes. And like part of the slowing down of the physical expression, physical movement through the world may actually be related to brain function.
Marc Milstein: [00:10:17] Yeah. Yeah. It’s a way to think about this that we’re not used to thinking about. And also it’s within what somebody is capable of doing. So somebody one person’s pace, um, is, you know, at a certain age is different than another pace. But we just want to think about are we challenging ourselves in physical ways? Are we you know, we don’t want to hurt ourselves, but we want to just be continually saying, like, you know, just want to push it just a bit so that we’re we’re keeping our body and brain in shape.
Jonathan Fields: [00:10:42] Okay. So this is bringing up another question for me as we’re having this conversation. I’m in Boulder, Colorado. Um, and but I spent my entire life until two years ago in New York City. Nobody drives in New York City, you know, unless you have to. Right. Um, so it’s a walking city. You spend, you know, like. And I remember, you know, every once in a while, I was sort of like, track my steps and without even trying, without trying to quote exercise like a typical day, I would put in like 10 to 12,000 steps or 5 to 7 miles and just moving my body. Is there research that you’re aware of that looks at, that can identify measurable differences in the brain function of people who are sort of like existing car based cultures versus walking based cultures?
Marc Milstein: [00:11:28] Well, we we absolutely see that people who walk it improves brain function. We see that there’s a part of the brain called the hippocampus. And when people walk and they get that about 30 minutes of walking a day, you actually see that this part of their brain actually gets stronger. It gets bigger. And so we know that it’s it’s never just one thing when it comes to brain health. But walking is something that we can point to and say we have quite a bit of data where if people walk, you know, and it’s not about it doesn’t have to be power walking. It doesn’t have to be like, I’m going to go on a, you know, A5K walk. What they’re actually seeing in the studies is that, you know, get off at a subway stop a little earlier, get off at the bus stop a little earlier, park a little farther from an errand, walk with a friend. All of it counts, and all of it adds up. So it’s this idea that it’s a part of what we see. And when we see when people tend to live longer, their lifestyle involves some aspect of walking. And so that it’s something to be aware of, something to think about as something that we can do that’s very easy to adopt.
Jonathan Fields: [00:12:25] Yeah. So the other thing that happens in the city, and I think that brings us to one of our other curiosities, is something you write and speak about quite a bit is on the one hand it gives and the one hand it takes. I’m outside. I would be walking a whole lot. I’m also walking through an environment that is laden with stuff that’s moving into my system. So, you know, one of the big questions for me, and I’m sure for others is if age isn’t this sort of like natural thing that shrinks your brain or causes dysfunction over time, makes it age if just chronological age? What does like are things like what you breathe in? Like what are the actual factors that do contribute to an aging brain?
Marc Milstein: [00:13:05] Yeah, that’s a great question. So one of the the frontiers of what we’re seeing is that pollution plays a role. Um, you know, if you think about what’s going in your nose, your nose, right at the top of it is your brain and the things that we’re breathing in matter. So the health of our planet impacts the health of our brain. Um, something we want to start talking more about. They’ve done some studies in Canada where they found that people who live closer to busy roads have a higher risk of memory loss, but they are actually able to lower that risk if they spent about 20 to 30 minutes a day walking in a local park. So we want to do things that we can to. It’s all about, you know, some things bring the risk up. We want to bring the risk down. Um, some things we can do that we can take control of, like spend more time in a little bit of nature is helpful. It doesn’t have to be a national park and be a local park down the street. But thinking about what’s happening in our environments in terms of just layouts of cities and and pollution and those things, those things are related to our brain health. We’re really seeing that more and more. And then also what we eat impacts the age of our brain.
Marc Milstein: [00:14:08] Um, we talked about moving and exercise impacts our brain. Um, what we’re learning staying active, learning new things, being social, finding purpose, um, is important for brain health. And then also underlying conditions your heart, your gut, your metabolism. So certain conditions like diabetes. So it might sound overwhelming that there’s all these factors. But it’s actually good because what that means is it’s not just one thing because we’re all dealt different cards and we are in different situations, both in our environment or both, you know, Genetically or based upon where we’re living certain situations, because it’s not just one thing that gives us an opportunity to say, well, let me just leverage what I can control. I can take control of these parts of my health. I can try to get more activity. I can try to learn new things. So by not just being a direct route or one one road to to memory loss or dementia, it gives us this opportunity to say, well, let’s just take as many as I like to say as like think of it like straws on a camel’s back. It’s not one thing. It’s these things add up. Let’s just take as many straws on the camel’s back as we can.
Jonathan Fields: [00:15:09] Yeah. And I think it’s it’s a good way to look at it also. Right. Because we all come from different life’s different expectations, different obligations, different levels of access and privilege. And there may be certain realities that, like, you just have to live with. Yeah. But what you’re saying is it’s not fatalistic. Like, yes, there may be certain things that you’re not going to change or you can’t change, but there’s a whole list of other things that we can explore as contributors, both to slow down the aging process and potentially attach to really complement a healthier brain. And we’ll be right back after a word from our sponsors. Let’s talk about some of the things that you just that you just offered up in a little bit more detail. A lot of it is about the relationship of the brain to different parts of your body, different systems in your body. One of the things that I’ve always been curious about is this relationship between your brain and your heart. And years ago, I was in the yoga world, in the mind body world and the spirituality world. And there’s a lot of eastern philosophy around that centers around these energetic centers in your body and also deep connections between literally like your cognitive, your, your, your brain up in your head and your heart. And it seems like there’s a lot of research that that’s evolved over the last few decades that’s starting to actually say this. There’s actually real science behind this.
Marc Milstein: [00:16:32] Just to put in perspective, I always like to I like fun facts. So if you were to take your vessels and veins just yours and lay them end to end, if you could somehow lay them end to end, all your vessels and veins, they would go around the earth more than twice. And that’s just yours. So all these vessels and veins, a big part of what they’re doing is sending and taking away oxygen, carbon dioxide, key nutrients to your brain. And if you just think about we need to have those vessels and veins functioning. And if we don’t have them functioning, if they’re clogged, if they’re plugged, we can’t get the nutrients from the heart to the brain. So it just really at a fundamental level with every beat of your heart. If you can’t get the nutrients to your brain, even little dips in oxygen can damage brain cells ability to function and have a negative impact on memory. So there’s this very strong, just fundamental connection between the health of your heart and the health of your brain.
Jonathan Fields: [00:17:27] So I mean, when people think about the classic cardiovascular risk factors, we think about that in terms of heart health. Well, I want to make sure that, like, my heart is okay. It’s beating. Well, I don’t have a major cardiac incident. What you’re basically saying is. Yes. And think of that as a primary contributor to the healthy functioning and potentially the the not accelerating aging of your brain at the same time.
Marc Milstein: [00:17:51] Absolutely. And we actually there’s these really fascinating studies just out this year that have shown that your blood pressure in your 30s can impact the age of your brain ten, 20, 30 years later. No kidding. Yeah. So it’s like and, you know, we all we hear about blood pressure, but taking a moment and saying, do I actually know what my blood pressure is? You know, do we really know those numbers. And thinking about what they found is if people have numbers like 110 over 70, their brain looked younger ten, 20 years later. So these are things that we have really good treatments for either lifestyle or, if people need them, medication. And the thing is, is that we want to take advantage of those things because we don’t have the major intervening treatments yet for certain brain health conditions. You know, we don’t have a cure for Alzheimer’s. We don’t have a cure for dementia. So we want to say, well, what can we do that leads to it that we can treat? And that’s where we say, like, let’s take care of our heart. Let’s treat blood pressure, these things, we can do it. So we want to just be on top of these things.
Jonathan Fields: [00:18:47] Yeah. And if you’re offering up here, you know that you can literally identify a marker in your 30s that may have a negative effect on brain function 20, 30, 40, 50 years later, God willing, like you live that age, then it becomes a really strong rally cry to say like, because I think most people think about it. Well, if and when I start to realize I’m forgetting things, or like there are signs that my brain isn’t functioning the way I want. Like, I’ll deal with it then. But what? You’re kind of plant the seed you’re planting, if I hear it right, is this starts like decades earlier than most of us. Think about it when we think about, like, wanting to actually keep our brains healthy.
Marc Milstein: [00:19:24] Yeah, absolutely. The way I always think about it is, imagine you’re at the beach and you see the waves coming in. We can see the waves. Those are the symptoms of memory loss, dementia. They’re clear when we see them. But think about where it’s calm past the waves beneath the surface. It seems calm there, but there are waves there. In fact, some of them have been traveling for hundreds of miles. We just don’t see them until they get close enough to the shore. And things are happening in our brain and in our body. Ten, 20, 30, 40 years before you’d ever see the symptoms of memory loss. It sounds scary because that means these things are happening now. But these things like memory loss, they don’t in almost all cases don’t happen overnight. So that gives us time. Now we want to do these things now. Take action now before we see those signs of memory loss.
Jonathan Fields: [00:20:07] To me that’s you know, I’m I’m well past my 30s. Um, but it also like, I get the sense that part of what, you know, we’re learning is that it’s almost like that question like, when’s the best time to start? Yeah, like and like there’s two answers. Well, the best time to start was like 30 years ago. When’s the next best time to start now.
Marc Milstein: [00:20:26] Right. Right. Yeah. And we see so there are studies these really interesting sites where they take people in their 60s, 70s, 80s, and these are people who actually have genetic risk for Alzheimer’s, and they put them on an intervention. They optimize their sleep, which is something that is critically important. That’s a that’s a really important thing for your brain health is optimizing your sleep. And then all these other things we’ve been talking about, and you mentioned at the beginning like measuring processing speed and, and executive functioning and people who do these interventions, the things that we’re talking about, their processing speed goes up 150% compared to people who don’t do these interventions. That’s people in their 60s, 70s early 80s. So we really see that essentially at any age, these things are important. And just as you said, we just want to do them, you know, at any age is when we want to take these actions.
Jonathan Fields: [00:21:13] Yeah. So we have a direct link between cardiovascular health and the healthy functioning of your brain. And we want to be thinking about cardiovascular health early. Anyway. It’s weird to talk about to ask you this. You know, my curiosity is sort of like the nervous system and the healthy function of the brain because, of course, like the nervous system, It’s all one giant feedback mechanism. You’ve got your peripheral nerves. You’ve got your central nerves, and it all wires up into the brain eventually. But when we think about our nervous system, are there big, giant nerves? Are there big things? Are there new discoveries that we know about the healthy functioning of what we think as more of our peripheral or central autonomic nervous system and the brain that we can think about, explore, or support in some meaningful way?
Marc Milstein: [00:21:54] Yeah, that’s a really interesting question. We know that there’s the vagus nerve, which runs from the brain pretty much down to your gut. And so that’s where we see this powerful connection between what’s happening in your gut and what’s happening in your brain. You know, we used to always think that, for example, you know, you were you were nervous because something was happening. You were nervous about giving a big speech or something. And then your that nerve sent signals to your stomach, and your stomach got upset or you got butterflies. But now we know that things can be happening down in your gut that aren’t quite in balance, and that can send signals back up through the vagus nerve to your brain that can throw off your feelings, your mood. Raise the risk for anxiety. So what we see is that it’s very much a two way street. And so we realize that I like to think of that vagus nerve as almost like a guitar string that runs from the brain to the, to the gut. And if it’s basically plucked fast, that can make us feel kind of on edge or anxious. And if it’s sort of slowed down, we can feel more calm. And what we realize is that there are certain foods that we eat that actually can send signals to our brain that are much more calming. And there are certain foods that we eat, um, that can send signals that are much more stimulating in a negative way so that we feel more overwhelmed or anxious. So that’s an area that we see that we can actually start thinking about our brain health through our gut. Um, and that’s another avenue where we say that, well, we want to utilize this because we want to do everything we can to to leverage our brain health through avenues that we can control.
Jonathan Fields: [00:23:20] Yeah. I mean, the gut brain connection is fascinating to me. I remember reading a study probably a solid chunk of years ago now where, um, they drew a correlation between the makeup of the microbiome in the gut and sort of like the the vast array of critters and bacteria that live in the gut and mood. And this ranged from impulse like, like deep impulses to do certain things to anxiety to depression to OCD. The notion that the bacteria that lives in your gut would somehow have a direct feedback mechanism, like a line of communication straight up into your brain that would then control your behavior. Kind of blew my mind, but it seems like increasingly like there’s evidence piling on to that that early, sort of late discovery.
Marc Milstein: [00:24:06] Yeah, absolutely. I mean, there’s it’s amazing to think about. But at the same time, you know, we’ve been talking about for a very, very long time that gut feeling that people have. And so we intuitively have these, these senses that there is this relationship. And now the science is really bolstering it. And one thing that I saw recently was just so fascinating is that if you like chocolate, if you’re like a chocoholic, there’s actually different species of bacteria in your gut that are sending signals to your brain saying, go get me some chocolate, as opposed to people who don’t like chocolate as much. So you know what you’re eating and your choices and your tastes. Part of what’s happening, a very piece of a very complex puzzle, is signal sent from your gut to your brain.
Jonathan Fields: [00:24:47] Okay. So clearly, I think like probably 99% of my body is made up of whatever bacteria you just described, because I often say like my blood type is 72% dark.
Marc Milstein: [00:25:00] Right, right. Right, right. No, I relate.
Jonathan Fields: [00:25:03] Um, so, I mean, but what’s interesting to me is, is so there almost like there are two things that I think about in the context of your gut makeup and brain health. One is, um, the nature of the microbiome, the the different bacteria, the mix of bacteria that’s in there. And also as you just shared particular types of food where like you can identify a food that you eat and can trace it up into how it affects the brain in a fairly linear way. Um, so I can see how the food, you know, you could basically run your own experiments.
Marc Milstein: [00:25:34] Right, right.
Jonathan Fields: [00:25:34] You know, and probably look at a list of whatever the research has identified at all. Microbiome. To me, it’s this area where it has remained a fascination of mine. And I know there’s a ton of work going on around it now. Um, but I wonder when we hear about the microbiome and the connection to the brain and also other systems in the body. I wonder if we’re getting a little ahead of our skis, because I’ve heard a lot of claims about, like, this is what it should look like. Like, this is a healthy gut. This is an unhealthy gut, and this is how it affects you. I haven’t yet, and I try and track the research around this in a fairly good way. It feels like there are a lot of claims that there’s so much hope and optimism around it, but like actually understanding what does like a microbiome look like that truly would be healthy. And is it is it completely different for every different person? Like, how do we. I guess part of my curiosity is, are we even near a point where we can actually be prescriptive in a meaningful way?
Marc Milstein: [00:26:32] Yeah, that’s an important point. Whenever we have discoveries, we have marketing jump ahead of the science. Um, and so there’s always the rush to sell things or promise more than can be delivered. And when it comes to the microbiome, the complexity is that you take two people and they’re both, you know, would have healthy microbiomes. And you we do these, you know, these very complex analyses, and they have very different makeups of different types of species of bacteria, but they’re both healthy compositions of bacteria. So we can’t say at this point, you know, you just need to add a little bit of this bacteria to this soup of complex bacteria, and then you’re just fine. And that’s where we run into trouble with the promises of certain types of, you know, you just need to take this probiotic or that probiotic. Where we do see benefit is we’re clearly seeing that the ultra processed ingredients. So I always tell this quick story, is that I was in a museum in Chicago, and they have a Twinkie there that was unwrapped from ten years ago, and it looks great. It looks like you could eat it and it would taste just fine.
Jonathan Fields: [00:27:34] That’s just terrifying to me, by the way.
Marc Milstein: [00:27:36] It is. It’s a it’s a it’s a marvel of modern science. But the issue is, is that the foods that never spoil, that are just loaded with all these additives and preservatives, we clearly see that those ultra processed ingredients increase the growth. They feed bad bacteria, which can release inflammation into the bloodstream and then do damage to the body and the brain. So with some really just simple, you know, actionable aspects of things that we can do, we can go a long way. Just saying, you know, when you look at what you’re about to eat, if it’s packaged, just say, can I pronounce this? Is this a chemistry experiment gone wrong? Those are where we see a lot of benefits. Just try to minimize those things. The additives to the preservatives, the ultra processed ingredients, whole natural foods most of the time for the general population. If someone has a specific underlying condition, we’re seeing some evidence that certain probiotics or certain diets can be of benefit, but that is really under the care of a physician as opposed to, you know, somebody just saying, try this or try that or anecdotal. So a lot of benefit from really simple things. But when we get into like, let’s just specifically treat this condition, it’s we don’t have something that’s for everybody. You know, just this is there’s no magic pills, unfortunately.
Jonathan Fields: [00:28:51] Yeah. So it’s like, we know this is a thing. We know, sort of like the big rocks. But we’re still early in the process of discovery. Yeah. When I think about the microbiome and the gut, also, one of the things that the conversation around that, and this is something you talk about as well, is how that relates to immune function in the body. And certainly like optimizing our immunity over the last couple of years is something a lot of people have been really trying to figure out for obvious reasons. But there’s an argument that also says immune function is also a key thing to think about when you think about the health of your brain.
Marc Milstein: [00:29:23] Yeah, absolutely. So what we’re seeing is, is that conditions ranging from depression to Alzheimer’s, they have this autoimmune component not in all cases, but in some cases. What’s happening is that our immune system, which is, as we mentioned earlier, supposed to be protecting us, gets confused. And instead of protecting the brain, it starts attacking it. And there’s these these cells in the brain that we’ve identified. They’re called microglia. And they’re very much like if you go to an aquarium or you see a fish tank. Those bottom feeders, they gobble up waste garbage, trash. They keep the fish tank clean. You have something just like this in your brain and they gobble up, you know, your brain makes garbage and waste and trash. And part of the aging process is that our brain can fill up with this waste or byproduct, and we have trouble getting rid of it. So the microglia are tasked to getting rid of this waste and garbage. When they’re doing a great job, they keep your brain youthful and clean, but they can get confused. And what can happen is instead of eating up the garbage, they start gobbling up or attacking healthy brain cells.
Marc Milstein: [00:30:23] And that’s when we see damage. If it’s, you know, parts of the brain involved in mood, we see that can raise the risk of depression. If it’s parts of the brain involved in memory that can damage memory. Um, and so what we’re seeing is that there’s this relationship between keeping our immune system not boosted, but balanced, because we want to keep these microglia focused and concentrating on just eliminating waste in garbage, keeping your brain clean and healthy, but not attacking healthy brain cells. And part of the signals that they’re receiving just to tie this all together is coming from the gut. Um, things can pass from the gut up to the brain and and confuse the microglia, those ultra processed foods that we talked about. They can release factors into the bloodstream that can confuse the microglia. So that’s where, you know, all of a sudden, these pieces that don’t seem connected, we realize, oh, wait, what we’re eating impacts our immune system, which impacts our brain.
Jonathan Fields: [00:31:10] Yeah. It’s almost like you have these little, for lack of a better word, scavenger.
Marc Milstein: [00:31:13] Yeah. Yeah, exactly.
Jonathan Fields: [00:31:15] You know, and and when they’re functioning the way that they should be, it’s great. They, they’re mopping up the toxins and helping the brain really function optimal way. But they have the ability to be triggered, to almost become hyperactive and also in your language, confuse so that they’re not just gobbling up the bad stuff. They start to gobble up the good stuff. Yeah. And that can happen through environmental input, it sounds like.
Marc Milstein: [00:31:36] Absolutely.
Jonathan Fields: [00:31:37] Part of that being what you eat. Yeah. I mean, I’m always curious about things like this because if you have something like y. And this is an impossible answer, but question. But I’m still going to ask it. Why do we have something that exists in our body that serves a really positive construction, health creating function, but also has the capacity to turn negative and turn destructive within our systems? Like, where’s the shut off switch that says like, this is the thing that does good, but there’s a way to basically like make it function. So it just does good and and only good. And I guess the bigger question I’m asking is like, how does something like this get confused?
Marc Milstein: [00:32:16] Yeah, yeah. I mean, that’s, you know, the body is overwhelmingly complex and there’s messages and signals being sent to these microglia, these scavengers, as you put it. And it’s not just in most cases one thing that throws it off. And we do have backup mechanisms and checkpoints and security surveillance systems. And the immune system has like these rankings where if something’s going wrong and there’s like a, you know, a certain soldier goes AWOL or is isn’t functioning properly like they’re eliminated. But so it’s it’s hopeful to realize that your body is really trying at every level to protect itself. But sometimes things, too many things have happened and the system falters. And that’s why we want to look at this from an integrative approach. And we want to say that it’s not just one thing that’s really a big message is that, you know, people say, but, you know, is it only just what I eat? Well, that’s a piece of it. But when you sleep at night is when you rebalance your immune system and you help those microglia. Stay tuned and focused and you kind of do a monitoring of your immune system. To make sure everything is running efficiently and effectively. Um, so that’s why it’s this, this more of an integrative approach. And these systems that are designed to protect us, just like, you know, in your home. You know, your fire alarm is there to protect you, but sometimes it wakes you up at three in the morning. Beeping. So things like that. They have their they have their purposes. But sometimes they just go awry. And we just want to do everything we can to keep them working efficiently for as long as possible.
Jonathan Fields: [00:33:45] Yeah. If they go awry. Um, do we know if there are methods to actually bring them back into a healthy, functioning, like positive space? Like, once they’re not that way.
Marc Milstein: [00:33:55] Yeah. Yeah, definitely. There’s tools that people can talk about with their doctors. They can measure things like CRP, which is C-reactive protein. It’s a, you know, a marker. It’s not everything, but it’s something. It’s a tool that can be used to say that. Is there inflammation that’s now getting into the bloodstream that could be traveling to the brain. And so there’s evidence that if you can bring that number down to lower levels or undetectable levels, that you can improve function of your heart, your joints, your brain, so that. Yeah, absolutely. We see that the body wants to heal. It wants to recover. You know, there’s the reality is, is that if too much damage has been done, then it’s much harder to recover. But that’s why we keep coming back to this idea of prevention, catching things early, being proactive with these systems. But absolutely, if things are caught early, the body in most cases tends to heal.
Jonathan Fields: [00:34:43] And we’ll be right back after a word from our sponsors. We haven’t really spoken about what are we talking about when when a brain becomes less functional, like what’s, you know, you describe some of the factors that measure it. But I think the big thing that pops out for most people is, um, I won’t be able to think the way that I want to think. I won’t be able I won’t be as effective, as productive, as creative. Um, and then the really big fear, I think for so many people, especially when they get later in life, and especially if they’ve been around others or have people in their family or have a history in their family, is the idea of dementia or Alzheimer’s? And you also identify this sort of like other layer, I think you call it mild cognitive impairment. So if we talk about mild cognitive impairment, dementia and Alzheimer’s, what are we actually talking about with with each one of these three different things?
Marc Milstein: [00:35:34] Yeah, absolutely. So we’ll start with where did I put my keys. Where did I park my car. What was that person’s name. Those sorts of memory issues. They’re normal. So I want to reassure people that, you know, we live in a world where there’s a lot of distraction, there’s a lot of multitasking and just simply slowing down one thing at a time. It’s okay to forget things here or there. That’s normal. But if you’re seeing a change in an increase in frequency of memory issues or forgetting things that you once remembered, we want to get on top of it because the next layer is something called mild cognitive impairment. What we’re seeing is that over the age of 65, about 12 to 18% of people have this mild cognitive impairment. And we would define that as increasing memory issues. You know, I’m forgetting to pay a bill more often. I’m having trouble remembering how to get somewhere where I’ve gone many times. And these are warning signs. It doesn’t mean that somebody is definitely going to develop to the next stage, which is dementia, but it’s the risk is higher. And we’re seeing that if we can catch things at this stage, we believe we can bring the risk down of developing dementia. What dementia is, is memory loss changes to the personality, trouble making a decision, so much so that it’s impacting the ability to get through the day. And dementia is not a disease, it’s just the symptoms of these memory issues. There’s many, many things that can cause dementia.
Marc Milstein: [00:37:00] Anything from a hormone imbalance, a vitamin deficiency side effect to a medication, an injury. But one specific disease that causes the symptoms of dementia is Alzheimer’s. It’s the most common specific disease that causes memory loss dementia. That’s why we have to be talking about it. But it’s not the only thing that causes dementia. Other factors that cause dementia about 20% of them. Hormone imbalances, vitamin deficiencies, other factors in our body. Those things are highly treatable. So if somebody’s showing signs of memory loss, we don’t want to say, oh, it’s something we definitely can’t treat. We want to get to the root of it, because we want to get the word out that in about 20% of cases, it is very treatable. But Alzheimer’s is one specific disease that is complex. Part of what’s happening is the buildup of these plaques and tangles. You can think of it like waste or trash in the brain that interfere with the brain cells ability to function. It causes the brain to shrink. That’s not the only thing that’s happening in Alzheimer’s. We also believe that this inflammation is a key part of it. The ability of the brain to metabolize sugar and sugar is what the brain runs on. Believe that parts of our heart health are involved. So it’s multiple factors. But that’s really how we lay it out from, you know, just the common day to day memory issues that are just part of life all the way to things that are very serious.
Jonathan Fields: [00:38:18] It seems like one of the things that is a common indicator is with each one of these stages is, you know, is this interfering in a meaningful way with the way that I go about my day? And that when you’re trying to figure out, like, is this. Yeah. Did I forget my keys? Did I forget the person’s name? Or like, am I tipping into mild cognitive impairment or more? Um, a lot of the questions that you might just ask are really just like on a day to day basis. Is this stopping me from being able to just be completely at ease and comfortable living and doing and being the way that I want to be?
Marc Milstein: [00:38:56] Yeah, absolutely. And then just really asking yourself, is it a function of me being tired? You know, am I, am I sleep deprived? Am I overwhelmed? Am I constantly on my phone or another device and then switching back and forth and saying, wait, what was I just doing? Multitasking is it’s very difficult to remember when we’re multitasking. And then also just being aware that we live in a world with a lot, a lot hitting our brain these days. So, you know, taking some breaks and saying, wait, how is that impacting my ability to remember and recall and then all these little tricks of memory champions that we can utilize that can help our memory too, that are based really about based upon how our brain actually works. So there’s a lot that we can do, but if things are progressing, we don’t want to just say, oh, that’s part of the aging process. We want to dig deeper and figure out what’s going on.
Jonathan Fields: [00:39:42] Yeah. I mean, but you also just offered something interesting, which is it’s almost like the way that so many of us have learned to function and the way that so many of us have defaulted our attention, which is to sort of like perpetual switch tasking and distraction. It’s almost like we are mimicking the condition of mild cognitive Impairment simply because of the behavior and the choices or the or the default behaviors that we’re making on a daily basis without even realizing that that’s got to be affecting us.
Marc Milstein: [00:40:12] Yeah, absolutely. I mean, there was these studies just recently that people who are on like 2 or 3 screens at the same time have a harder time just remembering the things that they were learning in that moment. And a lot of us are on two screens at the same time. And part of it is that your brain evolved in a way where it filters a lot out. We think our brain wants to remember, but really our brain wants to forget that. That’s the thing is, it’s like really wants to be very selective about what it remembers. There are certain things that slip through, things that are funny, things that are emotional music, things like that. But the brain is constantly throwing most of the of the things that are entering our brain away. And one of the thresholds to which determines whether or not we’re going to remember something is whether or not we’re focused on it for about seven to 10s. And then the brain, the brain decides, oh, this information is important. I’m going to I’m going to actually remember this. And if you think about it, we live in a world where we don’t spend two seconds remembering where we parked our car or put our keys, we’re often just on to the next, on to the next, on to the next. Wondering why we’re having so much trouble remembering things. So, you know, it sounds simple, but just slowing down and saying, I need to remember this. I’m going to eliminate all distraction. People are surprised, you know, how much more they start to remember when they use their brain as it evolved, as opposed to, as you mentioned, as sort of how we’re using it in our in our modern world.
Jonathan Fields: [00:41:24] Yeah. And you mentioned earlier in the conversation the notion of recall, you know, how many people remember the telephone number of their five closest friends right now?
Marc Milstein: [00:41:33] Right. Yeah. And how many did you remember, like 20 years ago? 15 years ago. We had them all memorized. Yeah.
Jonathan Fields: [00:41:38] right. You just knew everybody. And now it’s like nobody knows anything because you don’t have to.
Marc Milstein: [00:41:44] Yeah.
Jonathan Fields: [00:41:44] And the question becomes like, but what is that doing to us? Not just for us in the moment? Like what? Long term? Like if we’re just if we’re not using all of that capacity and using all that capacity, it’s really important to preserve brain health. Like what are the long term repercussions of defaulting to technology to handle so much of what our brain used to do, like a generation ago?
Marc Milstein: [00:42:05] Yeah, absolutely. And our brain, once the information is stored somewhere safe, like your cell phone, like a phone number. Your brain’s like, I’m not going to remember this. And so it’s hard nowadays to remember a phone number once you put it in your phone. I mean, there’s people that are, as you mentioned, like, very close to me, and it’s very hard unless I really focus on it to remember a phone number. But it’s almost like judo. You can use this to your advantage because there are some things, like in the hour before bed, they actually said like because we so often want to forget things or so easily want to forget things that we put down in our phone or on paper, that they actually help people fall asleep better or faster. Easier. If in the hour before bed they like write down a to do list and they look at it and they go, this information is stored somewhere safe. I’ll deal with it in the morning. And it’s kind of like putting it away, letting your brain let go of it, because a lot of what wakes us up in the middle of the night or has makes it hard to fall asleep is that idea that’s sort of spinning and we can’t let go of it. We can’t stop thinking about it. So there’s something to be said for using the way our brain works to our advantage, and letting go of information that can help us forget long enough to fall asleep.
Jonathan Fields: [00:43:08] Yeah, it’s it’s that that’s that balance. Um. Isn’t that always the case?
Marc Milstein: [00:43:12] Yeah, yeah. Very true.
Jonathan Fields: [00:43:14] You mentioned a couple of other things. One is okay, so the brain uses glucose as a primary fuel, which is great. I mean, most of us have plenty in our body, but there’s also talk to me about the relationship between brain health and not just having enough available glucose to function as, as a fuel, but the having glucose dysregulation in your body, insulin resistance, potentially even pre-diabetes or diabetes or diabetes. Like, is there a relationship between those states and the health of our brains?
Marc Milstein: [00:43:43] Yeah, absolutely. So besides age, one of our single greatest risk factors for developing Alzheimer’s dementia memory loss is untreated diabetes. It raises the risk by 65%. And what’s happening is that there’s a part of your brain that’s involved with not only managing insulin, which is in in regulating sugar. It’s also that same factor is also involved in managing trash in the brain. It’s a separate mechanism. Remember we have all these backups. And if the body is overwhelmed trying to deal with dealing with the insulin and overwhelmed with sugar, then it ignores the trash in the brain. It’s kind of like if you’re busy, your desk gets messier because you’re not paying attention. You have other things you need to do. Same thing in the body. And so this idea is, is that 50% of our population either has pre-diabetes or diabetes. And it’s a driving force. It’s a part again, I keep saying this, but it’s a part of the puzzle of what’s driving the memory loss, the Alzheimer’s, the dementia that we’re seeing. And the hopeful news is there are studies that show that if you can get diabetes under control, If you can manage it, the risk for memory loss comes down significantly. And so it’s another avenue where we say that we have really good treatments for diabetes.
Marc Milstein: [00:45:04] We want to want want people to be on top of their blood sugar levels, you know, have the doctor’s appointment, get those numbers checked. Because if we can treat those conditions or keep people from developing those conditions, that’s a very powerful way to protect the brain. And then you mentioned insulin resistance, which is if we think of diabetes as, you know, significant inability to manage sugar pre-diabetes, we’re on our way to developing diabetes. Insulin resistance is not quite pre-diabetes, but the body is not handling sugar like it needs to be. This is much more common than we thought. A lot of people don’t know they have it. And just to show how it’s related, we’re actually seeing studies that show that people have insulin resistance have a significantly higher risk of depression. And we would say, how is that related? Well, the health of our brain is related to the health of of the metabolism. Metabolism is not functioning correctly, the brain can’t function. So again, it’s not the only thing that’s happening in depression, but it’s increasing risk. Again, it all comes back to this idea that we have things we can do and we just want to do them.
Jonathan Fields: [00:46:03] Yeah, no, that makes a lot of sense. And as horrifying as it is, the end note on almost everything we’ve talked about is and we have agency, you know, like there are things like there’s so much of this is environmental and behavior and there are choices that we can make that can make really dramatic changes. And I want to talk about some of those choices and some of those things. Um, there’s one other thing that I’m really curious about here, which is stress on the brain. You know, um, we have all been through a couple of years where not only have a lot of people experience health incidents and a ton of inflammation in the body and fighting illness or fighting disease, but it’s ratcheted up the level of not just acute, not just sort of like, oh, there’s a stressful moment or stressful interaction or you’re like in this moment where it’s just really hard, but like chronic stress where it’s just like the baseline fabric of life. And it’s been that way for a lot of people. I think honestly before like in Before Times, but the last couple of years has really raised the baseline for so many. Yeah. How does that interact with brain health?
Marc Milstein: [00:47:07] Yeah. So it’s it’s very much in line with what you’re saying is that stress in a moment is actually really good for your brain. A burst of it. We think of it like this. The cortisol release. That’s the stress hormone. Um, I like to say your brain’s like your car. If you leave it in the garage, it falls apart if you never drive it. But if you overdrive it, too much cortisol, it also falls apart. And so it comes back to this idea of balance that we actually want to have some stress in our life. We want to have things we want to get done. We want challenges we want to tackle. That’s all good, but we just need to take a break from it because it’s very much related to this fight or flight response that’s just deeply programmed in our brain and our body. It’s good for us to have these moments of action. We want to do things. We want to get things done. Keeps our brain youthful. We actually see that people who have a little burst of stress, their hippocampus, the part of their brain involved in memory, it gets actually bigger and stronger. But if that cortisol is either chronically released, we never take a break from it or it’s too much. Too often the hippocampus shrinks. So that’s what we talked about in the very beginning.
Marc Milstein: [00:48:07] What are the things that shrink the hippocampus? Well, too much cortisol release too often shrinks the hippocampus and can damage memory. And that’s why, you know, when all this complexity, we keep coming back to this idea that we just want to manage stress and take breaks. Everybody has a different amount of stress that’s right for them. But I like to think of it like, you know, your body’s like a glass and stress is water. There’s nothing wrong with water in the glass. We just don’t want it to overflow. And that’s where mindfulness has become mainstream medicine, because people who practice mindfulness, which is really just being in a positive present moment, taking a break from all the stress that’s around us, possibly taking a break from the devices that inundate us with a lot of stressful information. It just allows our brain to take a break And we see in brain scan studies that people who practice things like mindfulness or even just hobbies, you know, fun hobbies that are positive distractions, they actually get better at managing their stress. Their brain fundamentally changes, their hippocampus gets bigger and stronger. Um, so really it just comes down to this idea that, yes, we are living in a time. I think one of the words of the year was, was it permacrisis or something, something like that, where it’s like we’re just in a constant state of being inundated with information and the news and social media and all these, these avenues and personal professional that we just need to give ourselves permission to take a break a couple times a day.
Marc Milstein: [00:49:26] Um, you know, take a walk, get some nature. I don’t want to throw too many studies out, but I’ll give you one because it’s just one of my favorites. They actually. We know nature is so good for your brain. So people who walk in nature for ten minutes, their stress levels drop. So in Japan, they said, okay, let’s let’s try something else. And they put a plant on people’s desk. And people who looked at the plant for two minutes, their stress levels dropped. And then they said, well, how do we make this even better? And they found one thing that made people’s stress levels drop faster and further than just staring at the plant. And that was spraying the plant with some water. So it’s probably being in the present moment. It’s a little bit of nature, a little bit of purpose, all these things, we know they’re important, but now we’re realizing how important they are for our brain health. So it really just comes down to finding those things you love to do and taking a break.
Jonathan Fields: [00:50:08] Yeah, I love that. And the nature thing resonates with me so deeply. I mean, part of the reason I am where I am right now is because I’m so aware of how being in nature affects me. You know, I chose to to move 2000 miles from where I’ve lived my entire life so that I could walk out my back door and in seven minutes be in some of the most beautiful mountains and trails and natural environments in the world. Um, but what I love that you’re saying also, is that. Okay, so yes, I did that and I had the ability to do it. But even if you don’t put a plant in front of you, right. And then maybe water it once a week. And it’s really, really, really simple. Things like exposure to nature on that level can make a real big difference. I love when I first heard that Japan, who I think has led with a lot of these ideas, has designated forests they call shinrin shinrin yoku forest, which translates to forest bathing because they’re aware of the profound effect that nature has on just the human condition there that they’ve literally allocated, you know, like resources to make access to it more easy. So we’ve kind of tumbled into some of the things to do, which is which is where I wanted to circle around to mindfulness. You mentioned as a really powerful, um, way to explore stress, um, being in nature as a really powerful reset or even exposing yourself to greenery, even even if you’re an indoor environment. Talk to me about movement and exercise. Years ago, I remember hearing this phrase was being thrown around all the time in relation to exercise, movement, and the brain. And it was called the quote, Miracle-Gro for the brain and people spoke about this chemical BDNF, brain derived neurotrophic factor. That was a long time ago. Um, where are we with our take on how exercise movement being mobile affects brain health? And like, how does this advise how we can make decisions?
Marc Milstein: [00:52:00] I mean if we had a magic pill for brain health, it would be exercise. And if we just take one step back and think about all the things that it does beyond miracle. Go for the brain is a great way to put it. But the idea is, is that think about what exercise does to your heart. Well, that’s important for your brain. If you exercise, you’re likely to sleep better. That’s important for your brain. That’s when we wash out a lot of the toxins that in our in our brain when we’re sleeping. You think about your immune system. When you exercise, you help balance the immune system so it can be involved with balance. We talked about that. That’s so important. So it really just hits a lot of check marks on the list of what’s so important. So I always you know when I give talks I always say that if you want something that’s a really bang for your buck activity. Go dancing or play a sport. Because if you think about it, these things are social. They’re stress relief. They’re movement. They just hit so many things on this list and they’re fun. You know, we want to do it’s hard to adopt things that aren’t fun. So we want to let people know that you know, the things that you’re enjoying doing. Double down, embrace them. If you’re not doing them, give yourself permission and time to do them. But exercise is not only releasing tons of factors into the brain that are important for brain health, they’re optimizing all these other systems that feed into your brain. Um, and so it’s just it’s critically important. Also for stress relief, we often notice that, you know, when we’re stressed, if we move, we take action, stress levels tend to dissipate. And so just, you know, that’s why yoga, Pilates, all these things are so important for stress management because we actually send signals to our brain when we start moving to just kind of calm ourselves down.
Jonathan Fields: [00:53:33] Yeah. So it’s sort of like the, the central key for so many of the other things that we’ve talked from stress, from being social, from inflammation and sleep. And I think, you know, a lot of times I’ve heard the research around sleep as this is if there’s one thing that you could really maximize, it would be really dialing in your sleep. And yet when you tell that to people who struggle with sleep, that that is not great. It seems like one of those things where it’s like, but I feel like I have so little control over this thing. Yes, there’s the classic sort of like bullets of sleep hygiene that like everyone can do. But a lot of people do that, and they still really struggle with sleep because it’s related to so many different things. But when you talk about exercise, it’s almost like this indirect mechanism because you get the benefit of the exercise. And as you mentioned, exercise often actually makes sleep come more easily and sustain more deeply and for a longer duration. So it’s almost like getting to the same end, but with a mechanism where people feel like I do have control, more control over my ability to actually say, I’m going to, I’m going to go dance, dancing, going to move my body. I’m going to jump rope, whatever it is that’s just fun and playful and maybe social. I have control over that for 20 minutes a day or whatever it is, right. Right.
Jonathan Fields: [00:54:48] I don’t necessarily feel like I have that level of control over, just like saying, I’m going to do this thing and I’m just going to sleep. It just it feels much more sort of like a black hole where I just don’t quite get it.
Marc Milstein: [00:54:58] Right. Right. Yeah. Yeah. It’s hard. It’s hard to say. I need to go to sleep now. I need to, I need to get the best sleep now. We can put pressure on ourselves, but. And also thinking about sleep as not something that’s just the hour before bed. But even as soon as you, you know, soon after getting up, one of the most powerful things we know based upon how your brain works now is just getting outside, getting some natural light, even on a cloudy day that sets in mechanism a timing mechanism that actually can help you fall asleep at night. So we live in a world where often we’re either spending more time at home or commuting and not getting outside. So a little bit of outdoor time in the morning. This dose of light really does help us sleep. It’s a it’s one of the things I call really small, really simple, but really powerful. And so those are the things we want to be aware of too.
Jonathan Fields: [00:55:43] I love that there’s certainly a conversation to be had around food. I think a lot of us, you know, and it ties in with, I think, the conversation we had around the gut. Um, like, we’ve probably all seen these lists of, quote, brain foods, which tend to really involve like a lot of healthy fats, fatty fish and avocados and good nuts and veggies and stuff like this. Um, I think that’s sort of like one of the more common things and more like general health oriented things. Also, I didn’t want to skip the idea of or to brain health of, um, novelty and learning, you know, because I think we saw for a chunk of time this proliferation of brain games and apps and things you do on your screen and everyone’s like, this will make you like, you know, increase your memory and increase your creativity, increase your cognitive function, and preserve your brain size for like, forever. And then there seemed to be a bit of a backlash against that, saying, well, not so fast. Maybe yes, maybe no, but we’re not entirely sure.
Marc Milstein: [00:56:42] Yeah.
Jonathan Fields: [00:56:43] Where are we with the state of the importance of novelty learning experiences, challenging your brain as a mechanism to preserve a healthy brain?
Marc Milstein: [00:56:52] Yeah, yeah, I’m glad you brought that up. Because part of what’s happening when we’re aging is we’re losing connections between our brain cells. So you’ve got about 80 billion brain cells, and in between those 80 billion brain cells are 100 trillion connections. And those connections are those are your memories. That’s how you move. That’s how you think. And as we get older, we can lose some of those connections. It’s just part of the process. But if we learn new things, we’re making new connections and we’re putting connections back. And the more new connections we make, we don’t tend to notice the loss as much. And we learn new things. We make new connections, I should say, by learning new things. And exactly what you said is very true. It’s the marketing jumped ahead of the science in terms of, you know, the apps and the brain games. They tend to make people better at the apps and the brain games, but they don’t seem to carry over to day to day memory. But really, where we do see some positive impacts and good evidence is just pick something outside of your field of expertise and learn that new thing. Newness causes new connections. We also have some evidence that newness causes a release of a chemical called norepinephrine in the brain. That can help kind of spray away some of the or clean up some of that waste that we talked about. So it’s another dual benefit. There could be a musical instrument, could be a little bit of brain science, art history.
Marc Milstein: [00:58:06] It doesn’t really matter what it is. The newness is important. And then also part of this is being social. People who attend dinner parties have about a 4,850% lower chance of developing memory loss or dementia because when we are social, we’re learning things, we’re learning new things, we’re hearing we’re being engaged. So that’s a really important piece of this. This puzzle, too, is that, you know, you don’t have to go to a dinner party if that’s not your thing, but just be engaged, be social, be learning new things. It could be a phone call. It could be a zoom call. It doesn’t really seem to matter what it is, but we want to be learning and part of learning. One last quick thing is that we see that people who have hearing loss or, you know, loss of vision, those things, if we can treat them simply with something like a hearing aid, it can also protect memory. People who have even mild hearing loss have a significantly increased risk of memory loss. If you treat it with a hearing aid that goes away. If we’re not hearing, oftentimes we’re not learning. So we just want to be aware that our senses are part of how we learn. And again, it all comes back to I think our theme today is there’s things we can do. So when we can do it, when we can, we want to do it, um, and just prioritize learning new things and being social.
Jonathan Fields: [00:59:15] Are you aware of any research that shows that, um, learning not only creates new connections, but also may help preserve old connections?
Marc Milstein: [00:59:23] Yeah. So there is that idea that if the brain is being used, the brain says that it’s sort of similar to this idea of just the right amount of stress. The brain really kind of has this sense that I’m being used. I need to maintain. I only need to like, make new connections, but I need to make sure I’m making old connections that are useful. I need to solidify them or keep them strong. Um, the brain does also get rid of connections. It feels like it’s not needed through a process called pruning, which is really important for your brain too. It’s like a garden. You want to get rid of unnecessary things. But this idea of keeping what’s important, um, is something that we believe if we keep our brain active, we can help optimize that process.
Jonathan Fields: [01:00:07] Yeah. Um. Love that. And I love this. Sort of like the general theme like you just shared is that, well, first, your brain just declining in function is not necessarily a natural thing. Um, there are a lot of different contributors, um, environment choices, behavior and genetics and probably a whole bunch of other things we don’t even know about at this point. Um, but there there’s not this fatalistic thing of like, this is just what happens to our brains as we age. Um, like, we can do things. And many of the things that we talked about, from sleep to exercise to nutrition to socializing to learning, like these are all things which are powerful, often free and accessible to most people, which I love. You know, it’s not like you have to go out and like each one cost you something, right? These are things that most of us can say yes to.
Marc Milstein: [01:00:55] Yeah.
Jonathan Fields: [01:00:55] Um, and the other big theme, I think, is no matter what age you are, you know, it’s never too early or too late. Just start. Not just. And now, maybe if you had, you know, motivation to say yes to any one of these things that we’ve talked about, now you have additional motivation because, you know, it’s going to affect something you care deeply about, which is effectively not just the thing that makes you think and create, but it’s like the seed of your identity.
Marc Milstein: [01:01:19] Absolutely.
Jonathan Fields: [01:01:20] And I think that is the biggest fear for so many people who are sort of, you know, further into life is a sense of losing their identity and the notion that there are things that we can do, is super empowering, so it feels like a good place for us to come full circle. So in this container of Good Life Project., if I offer up to you the phrase to live a good life, what comes up?
Marc Milstein: [01:01:40] I think to be doing the things you love with the people you love, um, for as long as possible, and embracing the small moments and realizing that those small moments and the little things, you know, sometimes we can get wrapped up in big goals down the road, but really embracing the simple pleasures of a walk with a friend, a walk with a loved one, a good laugh, a good conversation, going, dancing, singing music, all these little moments and embracing them and taking time to really say I’m so thankful. And having the gratitude for them is adds up to a great life.
Jonathan Fields: [01:02:18] Mhm. Thank you.
Marc Milstein: [01:02:20] Thank you.
Jonathan Fields: [01:02:22] Hey, before you leave, if you love this episode, Safe bet, you’ll also love the conversation we had with David Sinclair about reimagining aging. You’ll find a link to that episode in the show notes. This episode of Good Life Project was produced by executive producers Lindsey Fox and me, Jonathan Fields. Editing help by Alejandro Ramirez. Kristoffer Carter crafted our theme music, and of course, if you haven’t already done so, please go ahead and follow Good Life Project in your favorite listening app or on YouTube too. If you found this conversation interesting or valuable and inspiring, chances are you did because you’re still listening here. Do me a personal favor. A seven-second favor. Share it with just one person. And if you want to share it with more, that’s awesome too. But just one person even then, invite them to talk with you about what you’ve both discovered to reconnect and explore ideas that really matter. Because that’s how we all come alive together. Until next time, I’m Jonathan Fields signing off for Good Life Project.