- Hey guys, welcome to this week's Wednesday Checkup.
Is this making you uncomfortable?
Let's talk about it, peewoop.
(upbeat music)
If your brain experiences a sudden onset of silence,
it triggers the auditory cortex,
the part of your brain that translates sound,
just as much as if you heard a really abrupt loud sound.
So if you got a little uncomfortable
during that last section, you're not alone.
Especially in the current era in which we live,
where notifications, Netflix, Podcast, YouTube,
traffic noise is all around us,
a moment of silence can be quite unnerving.
Actually the reason why I wanted to discuss
both silence and noise on today's Wednesday check up,
is because two weeks ago I was invited to speak on a panel
at South by Southwest.
Shout out Austin, Texas.
And discuss how noise can adversely
or negatively impact your health,
on side note what's pretty crazy
is I had to follow Mark Cuban's presentation,
and I'm a huge Shark Tank fan.
So meeting him in the green room was crazy.
Traditionally when you meet people
that are either celebrities or billionaires,
they travel in packs of five, ten,
make up artists, managers whatever.
He was by himself, he was in a t-shirt when he found out
that one of the young girls in the room was a fan,
he invited her over, told her Shark Tank stories,
super nice guy, Mark Cuban you're the man.
Alright sorry back to silence,
I think the first thing that needs to be said here
is that in this current day and age that we live in,
despite the fact that we're hyper connected,
I mean everyone has a phone, everyone has social media,
anyone can message pretty much anyone anywhere in the world
and yet we're still all really disconnected.
And I think silence or the lack of silence
plays a role there.
Let me explain what I mean.
Most people will incorrectly define silence,
as a passive state with a lack of sound.
I don't think that's what it is.
I think silence is an active state where you're interacting
with both yourself and your environment.
When you have some time away from noise,
away from distractions, away from notifications,
you're truly able to focus,
on what you've accomplished today,
what mistakes have you made today, where you can do better.
In talking to a lot of my patients
and discussing the topic of silence,
what I've come to realize is that,
a lot of discomfort that stems from silence,
is usually from the idea,
that people don't like to be left alone with their thoughts.
That they have a lot of anxieties that start to seep in.
Their insecurities start showing to their own minds.
But when they're constantly feeding their minds
with dopamine hits and doing things and staying active,
they're distracting themselves.
So when you have a moment of silence,
it suddenly brings all these things to your attention,
and it can be quite distressing.
I don't think that's reason enough to ignore silence.
I think that should be even more of a reason,
that you should seek some silence throughout the day,
for a moment of self reflection.
And when I say self reflection, it doesn't mean meditating
with your fingers touching and your knees crossed,
just means having a moment of silence away from the kids,
away from the families, away from the cellphones,
away from the traffic noise,
where you can just sit and be a human for a second.
Many people tell me that, I do the same thing Doctor Mike
and I listen to relaxing music.
Actually a study published in the Journal Heart,
found that music had an arousal effect on the human body.
The heart rate, breathing pattern, blood pressure
and then when you turned off the music,
and went into full silence, all those factors dropped,
meaning that the person relaxed, even below baseline
before the music was even present.
We all need that.
So many of my patients come in with hypertension.
If I can just prescribe them a moment of silence
in order to lower it,
I think that sounds a lot better
than facing the adverse reactions of some medications.
I don't want you to think that I'm saying silence is better
than all other sounds and music and all that,
it's not what I'm saying.
As with everything in nature, in our bodies,
there requires a balance.
Relaxing music can trigger a calming period of arousal.
Upbeat music can prepare us for a challenge
and get us excited to meet new goals.
When we have silence,
it allows us time for reflection and growth.
Balancing all of these things is extremely important
in our everyday life.
And when you swing in one direction too far,
you're gonna have a problem.
A study done in 2013 on silence received a lot of buzz
and publicity because it showed that mice,
who experience two hours of silence per day,
actually had a growth of nerve cells within the portion
of the brain that's responsible for memory.
Now people got very excited about this
because of the prevalence of conditions
like Dementia, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's,
and they started to postulate
that perhaps silence at one point
can be a treatment for these conditions.
And maybe that can be the case,
but this is a preliminary study.
And the biggest caveat here is that this was done on mice.
We've cured cancer and other diseases in mice before.
And that success doesn't always translate to humans.
We've talked about silence but lets pivot to noise.
It's been long documented that a prolonged exposure
to loud noises is not good for our health.
Talking about hearing loss, heart health issues,
stress levels, lack of creativity and productivity.
And as a holistic physician, I truly see the negative impact
a loud environment has on my patients.
For example, there's been a study done, that looked at folks
who lived near loud environments,
train tracks, airports, et cetera.
And what they found is that they have higher levels
of cortisone, the stress hormone
that gets released when your sympathetic
nervous system kicks in.
That's that fight or flight response you get,
when you see a lion or bear, think about that.
Loud noises can stress you out just like a lion or bear.
Another study done by Cornell university,
found that those who work in noisy office environments,
were less likely to be productive
and more likely to be cognitively impaired.
This is why I'm not a huge fan of open office environments.
You need your private space.
You need that silence.
As the wise Ari Gold would say,
- "Silence Lloyd, it's golden."
- We talked noise, we talked silence,
now lets talk mail time.
Before we start, I wanna give a personal and huge thank you
to my man Phillip De Franco, for giving us not one,
but two shout outs in his YouTube videos,
I grew up watching him, he is a YouTuber
that I really admire.
Actually this is really embarrassing,
I'm gonna show this to you live on camera.
This was my very first attempt at YouTube,
I tried to be Phillip De Franco here.
A new article from German a respected medical journal,
put into question if working solely on the weekends
is as equally as beneficial as working out
throughout the week.
It is common knowledge that exercises...
It's so bad I can't watch it.
But Phillip thank you for inspiring me to educate
young folks all across the world,
and to make some content that is meaningful,
and honestly have some fun,
cause this is a pretty fun process
and I'm blessed to be able to do this.
All right lets open up some package.
Okay, I don't know.
Why, is life hard?
This shirt smells like vinegar, and it says don't stop now.
Live, survive thrive and stay happy and healthy.
What, someone sent a present for Bear, it's a little gator.
I think it's awesome that you aspire to be a therapy dog.
Oh my God no way.
Hi my name is Kelly,
and I'm a huge fan of your YouTube channel.
My friends and I saw you have a Roxy pillow
and we decided to get you a Bear one to match.
Visiting your Facebook page occasionally,
I see that you like being a man of style, a top hat?
What's up, how you doing?
How you doing?
Cheers to you good lady.
No, legit, no legit if these fit right now,
I'm gonna be grateful cause this..
I've been wanting gloves like this for a while.
Yo, Sherry Williams, I can dig these
and if you don't think I look good in this hat,
probably neither do I but I still appreciate the gesture.
(upbeat music)