The Brain Scan That Changed Her Life — And Yours Too

[00:00:03]Do you remember the first time you saw a human brain?

[00:00:06]>> I do.

[00:00:07]>> Did it change how you think about your own brain?

[00:00:09]>> It changed my life because I was like, I want to study that. That is the coolest thing that I've ever seen in my whole life.

[00:00:21]>> It was life-changing.

[00:00:23]I say that because we, you know, at the start of this conversation, we said that most of us don't appreciate our brain. A lot of people don't even realize it's there, but >> Yeah.

[00:00:29]>> the minute I had a brain scan one day, and that brain scan really changed my life because seeing my own brain for the first time, >> Yeah.

[00:00:37]>> it was the push that I needed to start caring more about how my decisions and behaviors are impacting it. So, let's talk about how I can make that ball of tofu in my head super healthy and big, fat, and fluffy.

[00:00:47]>> Right.

[00:00:48]>> You talked about exercise earlier on, but we didn't really dig dig into exactly what you mean by exercise cuz exercise, I think, is multifaceted in its definition.

[00:00:56]>> What kind of exercise should I be doing to make my ball of tofu in my head great?

[00:01:03]>> Yeah.

[00:01:04]>> Optimal.

[00:01:04]>> Mhm.

[00:01:05]Well, all the research shows that the best kind of exercise that you can do is anything that gives you aerobic activity, that is getting your heart rate up. So, that that goes for, you know, power walking will get your heart rate up, soccer, so many different things. Name your activity. So many people want to say, oh, my favorite activity, will that work? And I always just say, is it is your heart rate up when you're doing it? If the answer is yes, then yeah, that that works great.

[00:01:34]We know that that level of aerobic activity is critical cuz that's going to release that growth factor maximally to get into your hippocampus that will grow those new brain cells.

[00:01:45]>> How much?

[00:01:47]>> So, um I have an answer to that. So, um we did two different experiments in my lab. One in um low-fit people, people that are really not exercising very much at all, less than 30 minutes