We're back with one of our favorite guests.
He is a New York Times bestselling author,
he's also the author of the soon to be released
Heal Your Drained Brain,
I don't even know what that means but
I know I can relate to it.
(laughs)
This sweetie over here is Dr. Mike Dow is in the house.
(applause)
Thank you for having me.
So buddy, I bet you I have this, whatever it is.
I think you do too.
Oh yeah, see what did I tell you.
What is a drained brain?
A drained brain is when you are stressed,
frazzled, and fatigued.
So 350 million people around the world have
and anxiety related disorder,
and Rach, what I don't think people understand is
first, you know you're stressed, right?
You said you didn't know what a drained brain was
but you know you have it. I know I have it.
And I think a lot of women especially
tend to overwork themselves.
That's right.
Like whatever your job is,
or however many schedules you're balancing in your family,
women put themselves at the bottom,
and they take everybody else's stress
and we absorb it like sponges.
And it's dangerous.
So what I want people to know and I talk about in this book,
is number one, there are so many natural ways to fix it
that are safe and number two,
when you don't fix it and when you don't take my advice,
you are four times more likely to develop
the number one cause of preventable death
and that's high blood pressure,
and women who have panic attacks and
I give you some remedies for that in the book,
you're more likely to have a heart attack.
So please --
It's the number one killer of women is cardiac disease.
Yeah, so I mean this isn't just about feeling better,
it's about your life.
I think we've all known this,
I mean it's common sense.
When you internalize stress,
of course it's going to affect your health.
I wanna give you some natural remedies because
there are so many natural remedies and Rachael,
a lot of them are actually found in the kitchen, right?
So cortisol is what we don't want,
what we want, Diana, and what you need a lot of,
you want more gabba, and you want more serotonin.
Those are two chemicals, neurotransmitters that are gonna
help you feel at ease.
Your body takes amino acids from your diets.
So check this out, there is an amino acid found in quinoa,
there's an amino acid found in spinach.
So your body takes this glutamine,
your body takes this tryptophan, right?
And then it take co-factors, what are co-factors?
They're vitamins and minerals found in fruits and vegetables
so vitamin B6,
Some pepitas.
Zinc, folate, also know as vitamin B9,
Cruciferous vegetables, chickpeas
And then vitamin C
Boy are you gonna have a lotta fiber, girl!
(laughs)
And then one of the best things for the brain,
and one of your favorites, a little EVOO.
Olive oil!
We know that this is just the best thing for your brain.
And viola, you've balanced your brain in the kitchen.
(applause)
Fantastic, right?
And this, you know quite frankly is the way
a lot of young people eat now, you know.
You go down to the Sweet Korean or around the corner
in our neighborhood it's the University Place Cafe.
And they make their own salads.
Yeah, thank goodness.
This is an easy, and accessible thing to do.
Yeah.
You're not gonna tell me that
doughnuts are good for your brain.
I have some bad news.
So you know we saw that,
the way the prefrontal cortex shrinks,
we also know from recent research that
spiking your blood sugar with things like
doughnuts and french fries
shrinks another part of the brain, the hippocampus.
The hippocampus is essential because it can
help you remain resilient in the face of long term stress.
So i like --
These are things you should not be eating a lot of anyway,
and everybody loves a french fry,
if you're going to a game or
you're going out with friends or something.
But if you're livin' on two doughnuts and a sack of fries
a day, you got bigger problems than your brain.
Yeah, yeah.
Now what about caffeine?
So caffeine, I love me some coffee.
I love coffee.
I do too, I really do like it in the morning.
I like the fragrance of it, kind of the ritual of it.
So moderation is key.
Remember that cortisol wave?
There's also a wave of melatonin.
Melatonin should obviously spike at night,
and then go low in the morning.
So if you have one or two cups of coffee,
that is going to balance your brain.
But when you start having three, four, five,
what that does is that throws off that 24 hour
natural rhythm.
I see.
Now you're drained 24 hours a day,
now you're dependent on it but you're not sleeping at all.
So you know you have to be careful and I think
moderation is key and it does sort of give your body
a little bit of an adrenaline jolt.
(applause)
(chimes)