← BETTER! with Dr. Stephanie Estima | Strength, Body Composition & Perimenopause
BETTER! with Dr. Stephanie Estima | Strength, Body Composition & Perimenopause
The 10-Minute Habit That Reverses Brain Aging & Helps You Sleep Like a Teen with Ariel Garten
01:22:17
Unlock your brain's potential! Discover how meditation can transform your mind and body with Ariel Garten on the latest episode of Better with Dr. Stephanie Estima. Dive into the science of neurofeedback and boost your brain health effortlessly. Watch the full episode at https://youtu.be/v5_dP9XaQG4
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- [00:00]
A
I think a lot of us skip meditation. There's so many other things on the list. It feels selfish to stop. I mean, exercise feels good to do because we're working, we're doing something, we're being active, eating well. We know we made this good choice. We're going to feed it to our families now. And there it feels like, you know, it spreads out. But meditation can almost feel like this selfish act. Like, do I really have time to just sit quietly for 10 minutes? I'm not doing anything. But it turns out that when you do meditate, you're doing a lot. There's a lot going on under the hood during that meditation session. And, and it benefits not just you, but your family and your community and everybody around you.
- [00:42]
B
Hello, my friends. Welcome back to another episode of better with Dr. Stephanie. It's me, your host, Dr. Stephanie Esteema. If you have tried and failed and feel like you absolutely suck at calming yourself down, at trying to reduce your cortisol and your stress, I have an episode for you. My guest today today is Ariel Garden and we are talking all about neurofeedback and how we can use practices like a neurofeedback device, maybe through meditation, maybe through sleep, to help with a variety of different things. Stress being the number one, stress and anxiety, sleep and cortisol and inflammation, all the things that women in midlife deal with. Aryel is a neuroscientist. She's a former psychotherapist, a fashion designer turned entrepreneur and the co founder of Muse. It is a brain sensing headband designed to help people meditate, sleep and train their brain. She has studied biology, psychology with neuroscience designation at the University of Toronto, and she's worked in labs researching Parkinson's disease and hippocampal neurogenesis. And she is now the co founder of Interaxon, which developed the Muse brain sensing headband. So what do we talk about in this, in this conversation? Well, we talk about what happens to the brain as it ages. What are some of the fundamental changes? The areas of the brain that age, some age faster than others. Some get more. Some areas of the brain get more active, some areas get less active and how we can actually change that for the better. As we're aging, we talk about that ruminating voice, you know, the one that I'm talking about, the one that tells you you're not good enough, you're not smart enough, you're not capable enough, you're not worthy enough. We talk about the Default Mode network and how we can actually decrease that Voice. Hallelujah. Finally, how we can decrease that voice through specific practices. And then we also talk about sleeping and napping. So all the different brain waves, what is happening when we're sleeping, what type of sleep we get deep sleep or REM sleep at what points in the night, and then how we can actually optimize that as we are aging as well. And all of the things that we really want to be thinking about. I mean, we on this show talk a lot about strength of the body. So we talk about lifting weights and we talk about cardio and different types of cardio speed training, high intensity interval training, Zone two training, keeping our physical bodies healthy. And of course, that in turn helps with driving up brain health. But this is a different, a slightly different perspective where we're talking about the brain down. So we're talking about how can we actually make our body better by improving our brains. And so I think you're gonna have a, a lot of insights here. If you've ever tried any type of neurofeedback, or if you've ever tried to meditate, or you're finding that your sleep is just really changing in midlife, I think you're gonna find this conversation incredibly enlightening and it's gonna give you some real action steps on how to improve it. So without further delay, please enjoy my conversation with Ariel Garten. What if you could get the benefits of a 45 minute run in just five minutes? Well, that's exactly what Carol Bike does. It is an AI driven workout that is scientifically proven to improve your fitness, your metabolism and your brain performance in record time in just three sessions per week, clocking in at five minutes each. This can roll back your metabolic age by a decade. Carol is not just another exercise bike. It is a time machine for your health. And this is so important for us ladies, because our VO2 max, which is how well our bodies use oxygen, is one of the biggest predictors of our longevity. The problem is that it naturally declines with age. And in fact, 95% of people never sprint again after the age of 30. And I do not want to be part of that statistic, and I know you don't either. Carol Bike is the first workout scientifically proven to reverse that decline in VO2 max in just five minutes, three times a week. And the result is a 12% boost in VO2 max in only eight weeks, meaning better cardiovascular fitness, sharper brain performance, and a younger metabolic age. It is efficient, evidence based, and designed for consistency. No excuses, just science and action. Head over to carolbike.com and use code better for $100 off of your purchase. Again, that's carolbike.com and use Code Better at checkout. Arielle. We are live. Welcome to the Better podcast. I'm so happy to have you here today.
- [05:20]
A
Oh, it's a joy and a pleasure to be here with you this morning.
- [05:23]
B
I am very excited about our conversation and we are going to talk about how to increase our brain size and we are going to talk about how to be calmer, how to not freak out on our partners or our children. And we are laying the big promises early and we're going to talk about how we can do this through meditation. And I thought you are the perfect person to have on the show. We've had this conversation before on the show around meditation, but I think your background and your very in depth understanding of how the brain works, how the brain ages, I think is going to be very useful for our audience. So, so the first question where I want to start off with, with meditation. And this is potentially a bit salacious, but we'll just start here. This is one of those things where everybody, when they start doing it, they feel better. They're like, oh yeah, it's like, you know, when you have like a really great sleep, you're like, oh yeah, this is what it feels like. I should probably go to bed a little bit earlier. You know, and when we're meditating, we feel better. It's like, you should have more water. When you are more hydrated, you're just happier. You know, your mouth doesn't feel like it's a dry suck. But so many of us skip this. Like so many of us are like, yeah, I know meditation, I should do it. But like, you know, I gotta get my zone two, I gotta get my weight training, I gotta get the kids, I gotta run to soccer, all the things. So why, why do we put this at. Or maybe at least my experience with my community, I see them pushing meditation off and that might also be a personality. Like, you know, the personality in terms of my community, they're very high achieving, you know, oriented, like success oriented people. Why do we, why do we skip meditation?
- [07:01]
A
That is a great question. And I think a lot of us skip meditation for exactly the reasons you just mentioned. There's so many other things on the list. It feels selfish to stop. I mean, exercise feels good to do because we're working, we're doing something, we're being active, eating well, we know we made this good choice. We're going to Feed it to our families now and there it feels like, you know, it spreads out. But meditation can almost feel like the selfish act. Like, do I really have time to just sit quietly for 10 minutes? I'm not doing anything. But it turns out that when you do meditate, you're doing a lot. There's a lot going on under the hood during that meditation session. And it benefits not just you, but your family and your community and everybody around you.
- [07:43]
B
So talk to us a little bit about what those benefits are. So let's talk about what's happening under the hood with our own bodies and brains first. I think that one of the fundamentals for, especially for my audience, which is perimenopausal and menopausal women, like, life is really busy right now, and it's a very unique time in a woman's life where she is so exquisitely busy. She's maybe starting to take care of caregivers older than her. Her children are turning into teenagers, and there's a different, you know, parenting skill set that's required there. Why is it? What is happening under the hood? Because I fundamentally believe that we have to give to ourselves first before we can give to other people. It's like the old adage, like, you know, put the, you know, the airplane plane thing, or you put the thing on your mouth first or your nose first before you start to, you know, help others. What's happening for us when we are meditating regularly?
- [08:32]
A
So when you meditate regularly, you're going to see some dramatic, you know, subtle, but actually dramatic changes in both your mind and your body. So when we meditate, we are going to do this very simple activity, and it's almost deceptive because you're sitting there, you're focusing your attention on your breath. You're breathing in and out, and part of you can go like, okay, what? I'm just breathing, Breathing. What's the big deal? As you're doing this breathing exercise, you are noticing when your mind is wandering and you're just bringing your attention back to your breath. And as you do this, what you're actually doing is you're training your brain to stay out of your stressful, anxious, ruminating thoughts and to be able to come back to something neutral, which is your breath. Now, that might seem kind of simple, but the extension of this is that you actually learn how to take control of your own mind. So all of us go through the day with thoughts racing through our head. You know, we're thinking about the gym and our mom and the work. And the Instagram thing that we scrolled that made us annoyed or excited, and we just have these streams of thoughts. Well, it turns out that you don't actually need to pay attention to all these dreams. And you can have choice and agency over where your mind goes and what it pays attention to. And so that allows you to, A, be much more efficient in your day and choosing what you think about, B, be much more regulated in your emotions because you don't need to be thinking about the crappy things that are making you anxious or stressed or whatever, because sometimes they're just ruminative and not useful. And then C, allows you to significantly decrease the stress in your body because you don't have to stick on those ruminating thoughts. And as you're doing all of this, you are also strengthening your brain, which we're going to get into later, and you're calming your body. So as you take deep breaths, focusing your attention on your breath, neuroscience shows us that focusing on your body, body takes you out of your mind. Seems super intuitive, super straightforward. But I was just talking to a colleague, Norm Farb, and he has a bunch of great research that shows that people who are depressed and ruminative thinking have less attention to their body when they do a meditation practice. The part of their brain, the insula, that relates to paying attention to their body actually increases. And when they do a meditation practice, their default mode, network, the ruminative parts of their brain, have less activity. So this meditation practice really is able to take you out of your thoughts and give you more agency and choice over the ones you choose to engage with. So that means that we can now, instead of feeling super distracted, like there's all these things in our mind, we can make the choice. This is what I want to be focusing on now. I'm here with my kid. He wants me to help with his homework. I can let everything else go. And this is what I want to pay attention to. I want to notice that I'm with him and I want to enjoy the time because my brain's not doing 50 things at once. So that's just one of the benefits of meditation. We will get into so many more over the course of this episode, I.
- [11:34]
B
Think, and maybe that's why I find that I have the best meditation sessions immediately following the gym. So I will. I am someone who very much lives in my head all the time, and it's very useful for me. I mean, the gym is healing in many ways from a physical perspective. And we've talked about that in Many, you know, many different episodes. But it's also healing because it's gets me out of my thoughts. Like I have to completely my mind muscle connection. I'm thinking about the hamstrings or I'm thinking about the calf or whatever muscle that I'm working. And I find that when I come home from that session and then I put on the Muse headband and I do a 10 or 15 minute session, those are the sessions where I don't, I don't know how to say it other than like I get lost in the meditation. Like there's like that little chime at the end of the, when you finished your meditation on, on the, on the Muse app and it's, it'll say, hey, how are you feeling? Like. And I completely have lost all sense of time and I feel like I've really gotten. I don't know what the word is. Maybe it's like enrapture. Some I go somewhere else. It's like a different dimension. Like I'm not quite conscious and I wonder if it's because I have maybe primed my body with the movement and then I sit in the meditation. Is there any evidence to that? Have you ever heard people when they find that they move and then meditate, or can you do it the reverse? Is there a right way, optimized way to do it?
- [13:01]
A
Sure. So this idea of moving, improving your meditation is real because you've gotten yourself into your body and because you're now flooding your brain with bdnf, which is brain derived neurotropic factor, which is helping you build a better brain and helping you gain more cognitive control. You've also increased the oxygen to your brain, so your brain now works better. It has more oxygen, it has more blood flow. And so you're also able to better exert your cognitive control. So it's working on multiple dimensions when you pair exercise with meditation. But we don't want to give you more to do. You don't have to do it that way. You can just take five minutes out of your day anytime. And when I say the words out of your day to some people, that even causes anxiety. But let's think about this as five minutes where you can just enjoy. Five minutes where you can drop into a space of peace and calm. I know you know the woman you described at the beginning, the busy, busy woman. I'm 46 years old, got the kids, got the aging parents, got all the things and the jobs. And sometimes all I crave so much is it for all to stop. Just. Just let it stop for five minutes.
- [14:11]
B
Yeah.
- [14:11]
A
And, you know, we can talk all about the benefits to the mind and body of meditation, but there's also just the simple benefit of making it all stop just for a few minutes, getting lost in that enraptured state. And sometimes in your meditation, you're so distracted and agitated that you can't get there. That's okay, because every day that you do it gets you closer and closer to getting to that state. And even little bits, even just the five minutes of deep breathing, calming your mind and body, working on yourself in that way is unbelievably rejuvenating. So I had a conversation the other day with a different colleague, Dr. Dave Vago. Both him and Norm are meditation neuroscientists. And Dave has a new, amazing protocol that he does that allows him to see the movement of glymph in the brain during meditation. He uses an MRI to do it, an fmri, and it's a totally new, unique methodology. And he was telling me that he has now demonstrated that during meditation, you are actually moving glymph through your brain in a way that is similar to sleep. So we might have heard like, oh, if you meditate, you need less sleep. I'm not going to tell anybody here to meditate instead of sleeping. Please also sleep. But it turns out that meditation really does have some of the rejuvenating benefits of sleep in that simple 5, 10, 15 minute exercise.
- [15:37]
B
And just for my listeners that are not familiar with the glymphatic system, just give us the back of the envelope explanation around what that is.
- [15:44]
A
Sure. So in our bodies we have lymph, and we've all heard about the lymph system and how important it is to drain it in order to move lymph through your body, drain excess toxins, et cetera. It turns out that in your brain you have a very similar system, and it's called the glymph system. So it's a system of fluid movement through your brain, and it does very much a similar thing to the glymph in your body. It flushes out toxins. Your glymph is particularly active through the night. So one of the reasons that we want to have deep sleep is because in deep sleep, your glymph systems are the most active and it flushes out all of the accumulated waste from the day, including amyloid beta. So some people hearing might notice that amyloid beta, that is the thing that accumulates when you have Alzheimer's disease. There's a theory that one of the things that becomes so dysregulated prior to Alzheimer's disease is sleep. And so you don't end up moving glymph through your system and moving out the amyloid. And so there's a theory that deeper sleep can be very beneficial to staving off Alzheimer's for multiple reasons, including the fact that the movement of glymph in deep sleep flushes out amyloid beta toxins. Looping this all the way back to the meditation study and the conversation I had with Dave. He was suggesting that possibly this meditation activity, movement of glymph could also be flushing out amyloid beta and be potentially staving off age related cognitive decline in Alzheimer's as a result.
- [17:15]
B
That's fantastic. That's fantastic. If 10 minutes you can get a little, like a little mini cleanse, a little, you know, car wash. Right. For the brain.
- [17:25]
A
Mini brain flush.
- [17:27]
B
Yeah. Yeah, that's fantastic. Coming back to what you said earlier, you know, choice and agency and regulated in your emotions, one of the things that I've always, that I've, I've struggled with, I think everybody has struggled with is with that con, that incessant chatter that happens in the brain. You, at some point when you start to observe it, it's like, oh, okay, I can observe the voice, but I don't necessarily have to be the recipient to the voice, right. So that, you know, I talk about this voice. It's always, I mean, at least this is my voice. It's like not good enough, not smart enough, not, you know, capable enough, not doing enough, not enough, not enough, not enough, not enough. And there was a, I, I can't remember when it was, but I remember maybe it was after going to a seminar or reading a book. And I just remember thinking like, oh, I can just listen to it. Like, I don't have to, it doesn't have to yell at me and I don't have to, like, I can just hear it, but I don't have to be the recipient to the messaging there. And I think that meditation really augments that or really, really helps to differentiate that. When you are able to be the observer of the voice. I'm like, oh, okay, there she is again. I wonder why she's here. Is she, Am I tired? Do I need a snack? You know, where is this coming from? And then you can start to identify the patterns when that voice tends, like when that chatter starts to, you know, increase in frequency.
- [18:48]
A
Yeah. So there's also a neuroscience correlate to that. So the chatter that we hear in our brain, the sort of monkey mind as we call it in more western interpretations of eastern philosophy, that monkey mind has a real corollary in the brain and that's your default mode network. So the default mode network is a relationship between the prefrontal cortex and the pcc, the posterior cingulate cortex. And when you ask somebody to just lie in a MRI machine just for the fun of it, or an FMRI and do nothing, just for fun, you know, and just chill and do nothing, what you see is most of the brain is quite quiet. But the default mode network, that loop between the PCC and the PFC is still active. So when we ask somebody to do nothing, there's still just this ruminative chatter that goes on in your mind. And in people with depression and anxiety, their default mode network is incredibly active. So we have more and more of that ruminative talk. When you do a meditation practice, either short term or long term, you start to see a decrease in the activation of the default mode network. So if you put a long term meditator in the scanner and ask them just lie there and do nothing, their default mode network is close to silent. And so you are really training that ruminative internal dialogue part of your mind to not blab at you so much, to not incessantly be going and to be able to have more top down cognitive control.
- [20:15]
B
Fantastic. And that sounds a little bit like psychedelics. I know that one of the things that the default mode network, it's sort of like our mask. And then when you take like a psilocybin or whatever, mdma, whatever, whatever altering state altering drug, it also tends to affect the default mode network. Right. So the DMN also attenuates in its activity totally.
- [20:38]
A
And that's why you have the sense of dissolution of ego.
- [20:41]
B
Right, right. And so can meditation and meditation. For those who don't necessarily want to go on a psychedelic trip or you know, go on ayahuasca or whatever, all the, all the things that we sort of hear in modern. I mean, it's not modern. I mean these have been around for mushrooms and ayahuasca and all the things have been around for forever. But this is a non pharmacological intervention to actually get the same result.
- [21:07]
A
Yeah. So it's not going to be exactly the same result as a trip because these trips have all sorts of different influences that allow you to really loosen your grip on reality and reassess your internal world in different ways. However, one of the non drug ways of doing it is various forms of meditation. And so the most basic form of meditation that people learn, that's most proven in the research and kind of has the best efficacy, is focused attention meditation. And there you're focusing your attention on your breath. When your mind wanders, you notice it and you return in muse. That is the mind meditation. And that allows you to have the benefits that we just described of noticing your thoughts, being able to gain control over your mind and quiet your default mode, network. There are other forms of meditation, like non dual meditations, in which you are really challenging your brain and your sense of self and consciousness to recognize that you are connected to all things. So you might be doing a meditation where you are working specifically with your awareness. And so you become aware that you are aware. And then you feel the room around you and you question if the room is around you and are you aware of the room? And then you move your awareness larger and larger and then there's this weird moment where everything sort of flips and you're like, holy for Jesus. Like, I am the room, I am the space, I am all the things.
- [22:32]
B
Yes.
- [22:34]
A
And that is that unbelievable moment of the dissolution of the ego where you realize that, wow, all the things that I thought and felt and, you know, so nicely structured, maybe they don't matter so much. You know, maybe I can loosen my, my reins on them and see the world from a new way. And you return with a shifted perspective and a much greater sense of openness and possibility. And so we're in a fascinating place as women in our 40s because we both need to be incredibly highly structured in order to accomplish all the things that we want. And like, get the lunches made. I'm still in lunches process. Some of you, your kids might have moved on from needing you to make lunch, but like, I'm still in lunches. Get the lunches made. You know, get to work on time, do all the things and have it go chick, chick, chick, chick, chick. But at the same time, you want to be able to have these shifts in perspective where you can like jump up and see your life and see your world and say, oh, is this still working? You know, do I need to be so attached to this? Does it really matter if the laundry gets folded on this day or not? Like how, how can I loosen my perspective to be open to shifting and changing in all of the ways to my adapting priorities and needs?
- [23:47]
B
I love that. As you were talking about the non dual meditation, I was thinking about my husband Gave a talk once, and it's maybe my favorite, favorite one that he's given. And it was all about that we're actually all. The way that he had sort of structured. It was this idea that we're all just. We all think that we're separate, but in the same way that we. We see ourselves as separate. Like, here's a cell, here's the skin barrier for me, and I'm separate from you with your skin barrier. And then your cells have that cell wall. He's like, we're actually just like all God's fingers. You know, it's like you think that you're separate because you can see, like, the different fingers moving, but if you sort of look a little bit deeper, we're all sort of connected to, like, the main hand. And I was like, ugh, that's such a wonderful thing to think about. And I feel like the world, if we acted. I mean, maybe this is. We won't get off topic too much or veer into politics or anything, but I feel like if everybody thought that way, if we're actually. We're more alike than we are different, I think we'd fundamentally live in a different world.
- [24:44]
A
I agree. I mean, part of why I started building Muse over a decade ago was this possibly naive belief that if we all just meditated, the world would be a better place. We'd have less fear, less scarcity thinking, less need to protect. Protect mine and yours and keep them separate. Because we ultimately recognize that we are all beautiful, capable beings who just want to be happy in our lives. And we interact with one another in ways that are transactional or scared or unpleasant because we're trying to protect, because we have hurts and fears. And when you start to meditate deeply and when you start to do more inner work, you begin to realize that, no, we are all connected. And my hurts and fears are from past trauma that I can heal. And you have a lot more time and space in your body and heart to act generously and supportively and engagedly towards both the people in your life and strangers around you. So it's my magic formula for a better world.
- [25:48]
B
Okay. So I love that. That's a hell yes for me. I wanted to talk a little bit about the focused attention because we see so on the Muse app, which is, by the way, you are. I should I. I don't think we mentioned this. We're just diving into talking about Muse. You are the co founder of the Muse meditation app and the application. You know, whether it's a. I was one of the. I was telling you before we got started, I had like the original Muse band where you know, you had to sort of wet the sensors like on your forehead. And my hair, my hair was always a problem because it would always get in the way. So I always had to put my hair up. And now there's. I don't. What is the. What is the current version? It's a soft headband. That's the one that I have.
- [26:23]
A
Yeah.
- [26:24]
B
So that one. Yeah, yeah.
- [26:25]
A
For anyone who can't see the video, or if you want to see it, come see the video, I'm holding up the Muse S. Athena. So Muse has been around for over a decade. So the first device you were describing, the white one, that was the very first one that we came out with back in 2014. And since then there's been a ton of innovation. Muse is a brain sensing headband that helps your overall brain health. We have applications to help you meditate, track your brain function, help you sleep. We've been talking all about meditation today. And so Muse contains EEG sensors that track your brain activity and they give you real time feedback during your meditation process to help you first of all understand if you're even meditating in the first place, help you do it better and help you either start or enhance your meditation practice.
- [27:14]
B
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- [32:09]
A
Sure. So just for a little further explanation for people who don't know what Muse is. So Muse is tracking your brain, your heart, your breath, and your body during meditation and during sleep. And you're actually able to be guided directly by your own body. So in the mind meditation, as you meditate, you hear the sound of your mind like the weather. So when you are distracted and thinking, you hear it as stormy. And as you bring yourself to quiet, focused attention, you quiet the storm. And when you're able to stay focused on your breath, then little birds start tweeting, which is rewarding to your brain. And in the heart meditation that Stephanie was describing, you're actually hearing the sound of your heart like the beating of the drum. So you're literally hearing each one of your heartbeats. And it turns out the concept that we have of hrv, heart rate variability is something that you can actually hear. So as you breathe in, your heart rate increases, and as you breathe out, your heart rate decreases, and your heart rate variability is your highest beat on your in breath relative to your lowest beat on your out breath. So that difference on the high beat and the low beat is what we actually see in the number of our heart rate variability. So with Muse, we don't just give you a number. We let you actually hear that your heart actually slows down on your out breath. And actually, the more time you spend in a low, extended out breath, the slower your heart is going to go and the more relaxed your body is going to be. And so it's really incredible to hear your own body, like to hear these phenomena we didn't even know existed that constantly go inside of you.
- [33:41]
B
Yeah.
- [33:42]
A
And so when you're able to get real time feedback on your brain or your body while you're meditating, you're like, wow, that's what's happening. Like most people when they. Many people when they meditate for the first time, they sit down, their mind's wandering, and they have no idea what to do. And so Muse guides you. It's like, okay, well, you hear the storm, your mind is wandering. Let's quiet that storm. Quiet your mind. And then when you're quiet, the little birds chirp, which is a reinforcement to your brain, just a subtle reinforcement that says, yep, you're doing it right. Yep, you're doing it right. Yep, you're doing it right. And then so you learn very quickly what to do. So it's kind of like trying to exercise on your own just randomly, versus going to the gym and having a trainer. It shows you what to do, and it teaches you multiple lessons. So in meditation, one of the important lessons that we learn is equanimity, which is just being okay with what is. And when your mind wanders off to the storm and you get upset about it, it gets stormier. And so you learn to let go of the upsetness and to just sit with what is. And then it gets quiet. And then when you're really quiet in the birds chirp. If you get too excited about it, those birds fly away.
- [34:55]
B
And so for me, yeah, that's me. I'm like, oh, a bird. I have to retrain myself. Like, that's okay. It's okay. It's just a bird.
- [35:02]
A
Yeah, just stay chill. It doesn't matter what's happening. Just stay chill. Just stay chill. So you're really subtly learning this concept of. Of equanimity and being reinforced to just staying in that neutral state of focused attention on your breath. And then it turns out. So there have been over 200 studies done with Muse and multiple. Multiple different brains. One study was done looking At Muse, meditation versus just a standard meditation practice. And what they discovered was those people who were doing meditation with Muse had not only all of the benefits of meditation, but also had improved brain state throughout the day. So throughout the day, their brain looked more like somebody who was in a focused, calm, attending state throughout the day when they weren't doing the practice. So it turns out this neurofeedback training really has not only benefits in the moment teaching you, but also more effectively changes your brain throughout the rest the of of the day.
- [36:00]
B
And it's. So it's okay to suck at meditation. Like, I just also want to say this.
- [36:03]
A
Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.
- [36:05]
B
To start, because we all do. Like, I, you know, when I first hear birds, I'm like a bird and then the bird's gone. Right. So I am not practicing equanimity in that moment. Right. Or there's been many times where I've sat down with the Muse and it's all stormy and it doesn't matter what I do. And it'll say, you got 40% and, you know, three birds or, you know, whatever, but it's okay. It's okay to suck. And I think that, that. And it's okay to be a beginner. Maybe that's, maybe that's a better way of saying it as well, is that everybody starts somewhere. So you're not going to be, you know, you would never go to the gym and say, okay, I'm going to go do a barbell back squat with 10 plates on each side. You're going to slowly, you're going to start at the machines and then you're going to work your way up in the weight. And I think that maybe the same application potentially might be true with meditation as well. Like, it's okay not to be really good at it in the beginning because it's a skill that you're, that you're honing, correct?
- [36:54]
A
Yeah. And I want to even throw out the idea of being good at it. That's also an abstract concept. So what we are doing is we are practicing. So we are practicing the art of noticing our thoughts and choosing to make a different choice than listening to our thoughts. And so everybody, when they sit down with meditate and to meditate, has a lot of thoughts. This idea that, like, I'm going to sit there and I'm going to have no thoughts is about as, like, likely as you levitating. So we all have thoughts. That's what our brain does. It generates thoughts to us all the time, and we like that. That's because we have a brain. That's good and it works. Your practice in meditation is to sit there to begin to notice that you're having thoughts. Like, that's a huge leap to begin with. Like, you're not just in your brain with thoughts going all the time. It's like, oh, I can notice that I am having thoughts. The next step, which is a huge, big leap, is to say, hey, I don't need to follow this thought. I don't need to think about the grocery list or the garbage or the fight or whatever. I can just put my attention on my breath. In the next moment, the thought is going to regenerate again, because that's what our brain does. It generates thoughts about things that it thinks you need to pay attention to. So that's your limbic system triggering your mind to say, like, hey, this thought was important about the fight that you had. You need to pay attention to it because it made you feel crappy, that fight. And then it's our job to exert our prefrontal cortex and say, you know what? Thanks so much for reminding me about that, but actually, I don't need to think about it right now. It's cool. We can just let that one go and come back to our breath. And the more you do this, the more you let go of the thought and come back to your breath, the more you are strengthening your cognitive control. You're strengthening your ability to choose what you attend to, and you're actually strengthening your prefrontal cortex. So there's this very cool idea that, like, you're so in your brain, you have an amygdala. The amygdala is the part of your brain that is responsible for your fight or your flight, that's always scanning for danger and, like, you know, warning you about all the dangers all the time, even if they're not real dangerous. And you have your prefrontal cortex. The prefrontal cortex is like the parent. It's the part of the brain that knows better, that can think, that can, you know, discriminate, that can inhibit, that can say, hey, no.
- [39:07]
B
Nope.
- [39:07]
A
Bad idea, kiddo. So it's like the amygdala is the little kid who's kind of freaking out about everything and is scared that there's a monster under the bed. And the prefrontal cortex is like the parent who can come in and, like, turn on the lights and say, nope, it's just a shadow. We're all fine. Shh. Amygdala. Shh. It's okay. It turns out that when you do a meditation practice, what you're actually doing is strengthening your prefrontal cortex, and you're strengthening your prefrontal cortex's up ability to quiet your amygdala. So you have projections that go from your prefrontal cortex to your amygdala that send it signals. And as you engage in a meditation practice, you can send more and more of those signals from the parent to the child to say, shh, it's okay, it's okay, it's okay. And in long term meditators, you see not just a decreased activity of the amygdala, but actually decreased size in the amygdala. And in long term meditators, you also see an increase in the thickness and the volume of the prefrontal cortex. So it really is like you're going to the gym for that, you know, strengthening part of your brain. So back to the idea that, you know, good, not good, it doesn't matter. It's a practice, it's a trajectory. And every time we do it, we get better.
- [40:21]
B
When you were talking about the prefrontal cortex and its ability to sort of quell, like, you know, shh, it's okay. Amygdala, you can, you can go to sleep now. It's fine. Like, I was, as you were saying that I was thinking about my children who tend to be the most chatty in the evening. Like, they just, you know, they do their thing during the day and then when it's time to go to bed, like, they want to tell me every single detail that happened in school that day, even though I pick them up and I'm like, how was school? They're like, good. And I don't hear until all the details until it's like 8:30 or 9 and we're doing bedtime routine. So it brought, it sort of brought me to this idea of sleep. And I wanted to maybe think, because I think that a lot of maybe it's just my children. Hopefully it's not just my children, but I think that a lot of people can get a little anxious in the evening, right? Like, we get a little. And especially women, right? We start to see changes in our ability to initiate sleep and also to maintain it. And the initiation piece, at least I hear this a lot for my community is like my. I'm wired. You know, I'm tired, but I'm wired. Like, my mind is racing. I'm thinking about the to do list. I'm thinking about the things I didn't get done today. That are now being migrated to tomorrow's to do list. And I'm thinking, thinking, thinking, thinking, thinking. So is this when we're talking about this inhibitory ability of the PFC on the amygdala? So the pfc, the parent part of the brain, saying, like, shh, it's okay, you're good, you're good. Is that also going to have any corollaries or any impact on a woman's ability or, you know, woman or man, anyone's ability to initiate and then maintain sleep?
- [41:46]
A
Oh, that's a cool question. So, yeah, at the end of the day, your prefrontal cortex gets tired. I mean, like, all parts of our body, we've all heard of decision fatigue. You know, your brain gets tired when it's had to do all these things. And the part of our brain that's good at inhibiting and taking control also needs a rest. And so it's not doing as well by the end of the day, which is fine, totally fine. It's, you know, it's done its job. We can quiet now. We heard a lot from people who were using MUSE to help them fall asleep, because turns out that when you do this exercise of quieting your mind, sleep comes much more easily. But then we made the newest device, Muse s Athena, to actually help you fall asleep. So we use the same biofeedback concept as during the meditation, but we apply it very differently. So as you fall asleep with your Athena device, MUSE is tracking your brain and tracking its movement from wakefulness into sleep. And as we predict that you're about to move into sleep, we start to change the tone of the meditation that you're listening to. And we change the volume, the tone, the aspects of the audio in such a way that it actually starts giving the brain permission to go to sleep, permission to just let go. And once you are asleep, we turn it off. And so it's a beautiful experience that we call the digital sleeping pill. It's been demonstrated to improve latency to sleep onset by 55%. And then if you are wearing the muse throughout the night and you wake up in the night, MUSE automatically brings back in the same meditation or experience that helped you fall asleep the first time, goes through the same process of guiding your brain into sleep to help you fall back asleep. So for a lot of women who either have difficulty falling asleep or falling back asleep, it's like a total game changer. And it really also reduces the anxiety around sleeping because, you know, you've got this thing that's just gonna help you fall asleep and fall back asleep.
- [43:46]
B
That's fantastic. And I think if there's ever a time, if there's ever a justification to pick up a Muse headband, like, that's it. You know, if there's a woman in perimenopause who is struggling with her sleep, which is probably the first complaint actually that I hear, it's usually sleep changes, mood changes, and then we start seeing body composition changes, like, usually those three together. But it's the sleep that usually starts and it's like early 40, like late 30s, early 40s, like, I don't know. I just can't fall asleep anymore. I used to be able to, you know, X, Y and Z, and now I can't do that anymore. And I'm. I'm staring at the ceiling. And the other thing that I think that you said, which was really important, is the brain is really associative. Right. So if you start associating sleep with this time of anxiety because you can't fall asleep, like the next time and the subsequent times that you try to get into bed and fall asleep, it's going to be a source of, of anxiety for you. So I love this idea that, that you, that, that the, that the device is sort of listening to how you're calming yourself down and then repeating those patterns if you're, if you're waking up again. So that that anxiety and that association that the brain makes with sleep doesn't become a negative one.
- [44:56]
A
Yeah. Let's talk about sleep and anxiety for a minute. Because the, the most sort of interesting form of insomnia is one in which you, you just have anxiety about sleeping and you're lying in bed and you're not sleeping. And so now you're worrying about not sleeping. And that worrying about not sleeping is part of keeping you up.
- [45:15]
B
It's like so meta and so. Yeah. It's so cruel. Yeah.
- [45:19]
A
And so one of the things that is fundamental to learn in order to sleep better is that you don't need to be afraid of not sleeping. So going to bed, I'm going to lie there. Whatever happens, happens. And when you, instead of lying there, anxious, choose to meditate. With or without a device. It doesn't matter. You're sitting there. Just pay attention to your breath, meditate, even if you don't sleep for like five hours. Great. You got five hours of meditation. That's fucking phenomenal. Pardon my language. I don't know if I can swear on the show.
- [45:50]
B
Oh, yeah, you can.
- [45:51]
A
I would have been squaring up A storm earlier. I've been, like, restraining myself.
- [45:55]
B
If only you had let me know.
- [46:00]
A
Yeah. So this idea of letting go, of anxiety around sleep can be huge. I know. For me, a few years ago, I started to wake up sweaty in the night. And at first, it was the grossest thing in the entire world because I woke up hot with my sheets drenched, and I thought that what I needed to do was to dry off, and it would, you know, then be 15 or 20 minutes of. Of trying to, like, fan myself with my sheet and, like, try to figure out new pajamas. It was always the underwear that was the worst and the grossest and, like, try to fix it. And then one day I just realized, hold on, I can just be sweaty and it doesn't matter. And that whole concept of equanimity, of just being okay with what is sort of clicked in. In regards to the sweat in my sleep. And. And I would wake up after that, and I would realize, oh, I'm sweaty. Big deal. And I'd fall back asleep. And it might seem impossible hearing it, but it was, like, the hugest shift, because all of these things that we fight against just keep us awake. Whether we're fighting against the fear that we won't be sleeping or fighting against the thoughts or fighting with the thoughts about what we're gonna do tomorrow or the time that it is, or the fact that your husband is snoring or that it's too hot or it's too cold. As soon as you engage it, you're now engaging your cognitive mind, and that is taking you out of sleep. As soon as you accept it and your body goes, oh, we've accepted this. We don't have to, like, stay up worrying about it or dealing with it or fighting with it. You can just slip back into sleep now. It may not be so easy for everybody, but that's such an important piece to let go of the things that you think are keeping you awake. I was like, oh, this sweat. You know, I can't sleep in this sweat. Well, honestly, actually, I could. And now I do each and every night. I'm still sweaty, mainly from the thighs down. It varies with my inconsistent period, and I don't care. It's amazing. And I just fall back asleep.
- [48:06]
B
I don't care. It's amazing. Yeah, I think that's the title of the. Of the episode, and I don't care. And it's amazing. It's like, that's the. There's this woman online. Gosh, I'm forgetting her name. I want to say It's Melinda or something. She's like. She has this little thing where it's like, welcome to the perimenopausal we do not care club. She's like, we do not care about X. And then she goes through all the things she doesn't care about. That's what you're just. You're like, yeah, I'm sweating and I don't care. And it's amazing, you know, it's like. And I've let that go. That's so fabulous. Your midlife lack of energy isn't a caffeine deficiency problem. It's a mitochondrial efficiency one. If you're finding your energy dips between meetings and workouts and those perimenopausal ups and downs, I want you to think more about, about optimizing your energy production rather than having more coffee. Meet troscriptions Just Blue. This is a precision dosed methylene blue buckle trochee. And methylene blue works like a tiny electron shuttle for your mitochondria. It supports ATP production, which is the energy currency that our cells run on. And we are after cleaner, steadier energy and focus without the jitters. Early human brain imaging even shows that low dose methylene blue can improve attention and memory networks, which. Exactly the circuits that suffer the most in midlife and that we lean on the most in our midlife transition. Each trochee is 16 milligrams and it's scored. So you can choose how much. You can choose your dose. I would start with a quarter trochee and swallow it because you probably don't want a blue tongue. Or if you do, you can just let it melt on your mouth and in about 15 or 20 minutes, you're going to feel that smooth energy lift and that mood lift as well. So one pack has up to 16 DOS doses. This is a completely new way to optimize your health and I want you to give it a try at troscriptions.com forward/better or just enter better at checkout. For 10% off your first order. That's t R O S C R I p t I-O-N-S.com better for 10% off your first order. Let's actually talk just because we're talking about sleep. Obviously sleep is a different state of consciousness. So I wanted to. And I forgot to ask this earlier, so I want to make sure just. And this is for the nerds that are listening. Let's talk about some of the different brain waves, like the different state, like the different States of. I want you to talk about, like alpha theta waves. And then when we're in. And when we're in those different brainwave states, and then maybe some of the benefits that meditation can, can have on each of them.
- [50:40]
A
Sure. So when we are. So first of all, what is a brainwave? Your brain communicates. Your neurons communicate electrochemically. So they're sending little signals back and forth to each other, little electrical signals. And those electrical signals can be read on the surface of the head. So the sum total of those electrical signals we hear is your brain waves. Your brain has all sorts of different brain waves going on simultaneously. Think about it like an orchestra. So you have 10 violins, you have 15 tubas. Like what? God, that would be really noisy. But you have a range of different instruments. They're all playing their own little pieces. And then the sum total audio we hear as the overall global brainwave activity. And in different parts of the orchestra. If you're sitting at the back, you're sitting at the front, some parts are going to be. Some brain waves are going to be louder, some brain waves are going to be quieter. You're hearing different tunes overall. As a big generalization, we can say that when you are in a state of active thinking, you have an increase in beta activity. When you're anxious and ruminating, you have a greater amount of high beta activity. When you are in meditation and calm, you have a greater increase in alpha activity. When you are dreaming, like daydreaming, you have an increase in theta activity. So that's sort of a wandering mind. And then when you have an increase in delta activity, you are in deep sleep. So in daytime, we tend to move between alpha beta and high beta. And then as we move from alpha, Alpha's kind of calm, quiet, focused attention. Quiet, calm. As you're moving into sleep, you're moving from alpha through to a little bit of theta. And then when you're in deep sleep, you're in delta waves. So delta waves are really big, slow waves. They're like one and a half, two hertz hurts. Really, really slow. And it's kind of like your whole brain is moving together in this big, slow, beautiful pulse when you're in deep sleep. And in deep sleep is when we activate the glymph system that I talked about all the way at the beginning of the interview. And because your whole brain is like pulsing in this rhythm, your glymph system is able to really effectively move in this pulse and move fluid through your brain. And your brain is also effectively able to communicate in different ways because your whole brain is on this, like singing the same delta two. And it's kind of like a nice thumping techno, slow techno. And that allows parts of your brain to communicate together differently than they did before. Which is why sleep is also important for things like memory consolidation or learning. Yeah, and learning. Yeah, because your brain can talk together in ways that it doesn't during daytime and it can consolidate those memories. And so your brain goes through all of these changes day and night, and they all have different specific functions. And it turns out that using processes like neurofeedback, you can both hear what your brain is doing, the different rhythms, and start to guide it into more effective ways of being. So in the focused attention, neurofeedback, the mind meditation, what we're doing is we are also enhancing your alpha activity. So when you're focused on your breath and your alpha is high, we're giving you reinforcement to even enhance your alpha further. And then in deep sleep, we have a brand new feature that's going to be coming out soon that actually enhances deep sleep. So it's giving you gentle audio stimulation at the same frequency as your delta waves tuned specifically to you. So it's on the upswing of every delta and that allows you to enhance your delta activity, the communication of your brain in this like deep state that deepens your deep sleep to ultimately give you all of the benefits of deeper sleep. So once you understand how the brain works, you can use tools and technologies to further enhance it.
- [54:33]
B
So Muse is almost like a, like a neurofeedback personal trainer. Like it sort of listens to your, your different, your unique pattern and then feeds it back to you as a way to enhance, let's say, the deep sleep. Like with the audio frequency. Like, I can't wait for that to come out to. That's incredible. So if you are someone, let's say it's a very stressful week or you've been traveling or whatever, and you're having a hard time dropping into that deep restorative sleep. Having that ability to, for the device to sort of stimulate that and to sort of augment it, I think is really, really powerful, especially in modern life. Like in, you know, I think that meditation is one of those things that's been around for thousands, if not tens of thousands of years in terms of humanity, but it's almost been lost in our modern, like, everyone knows that we should be doing it, but we're not. We're too busy. We're too this. We're too stressed. We're this and that. And I think that if we have something that has learned the way that we like our unique neurological signature, to be able to feed that back when we need a little bit of help, like a personal trainer would, I think is really effective and really, like, really powerful.
- [55:40]
A
Yeah, it's totally, totally amazing. So. So when I started this work in the early 2000s and 2001, I was in a research lab and was working with an early brain computer interface system and was able for the first time to slip a single electrode on my head. And by shifting my brain state, by focusing and relaxing, I could then hear what was going on. It was like, oh, my God, this is incredible that we can have feedback on our brain. And then through the years, as we've evolved the systems and the technology and brought in new tools and techniques, we can now really personalize it so we can track your brain and based on your own brain, feed you back the information that you need. And it's been game changing.
- [56:24]
B
And so when we're in. Okay, so I have a question about deep sleep. So you said we're in delta, which is these slow. Like the whole brain is sort of moving together to, you know, the whole. Everything is moving together. That's where we're consolidating memory and learning. What about REM and what about other stages of sleep? Like REM is, you know, rapid eye movement. It typically happens, you know, you go. You go deep, and then from deep sleep, you kind of pop up back to rem and then that. That repeats several, several cycles over the course of the night. Is that still delta or is that. Is that something else? Is that more of the theta?
- [56:57]
A
I will tell you all the things.
- [56:58]
B
Yes, tell me all the things. Yeah.
- [57:00]
A
Okay. So as for the audience, as you're sleeping, your brain goes through a predictable set of cycles. Ideally, your sleep is gonna be somewhere seven to nine hours. And at the beginning of your sleep, you start from wakefulness. Then you go into N1, which is light sleep, which is also known as hypnagogia. So as you're falling asleep, you can start to have sort of like these sort of trippy feelings. It's a bit of a dream. And if you're woken up, you're like, no, no, I wasn't asleep. But it's like, why was I just thinking about that weird thing? And then you go into N2. N2 sleep is light sleep. And in N2 sleep, you have these things called sleep spindles and K complexes that prepare your brain for sleeping more deeply. And sleep spindles are associated with memory consolidation. Then you drop into deep sleep, which is we call N3. And for the first half of the night, the first approximately four hours, your cycle is going to be dominated by deep sleep. So you're going to go light sleep, deep sleep, back up to light sleep, back to deep sleep, back to light sleep, maybe a little wakefulness or a REM for a second, back to deep sleep. So in the first half of the night, you ideally, in, like, perfect sleep, whatever that means, you should get two to two and a half hours of deep sleep. Then the second half of your night is dominated by REM sleep. So you have very little deep sleep. In the second half, you're instead going from light sleep to REM sleep. Maybe just touch into deep for a second to light sleep, to REM sleep, to wakefulness, to REM sleep, to wakeful. And in the second half of your night, you're gonna see that you have a lot more awakenings which are normal. It's okay to, like, pop awake for a second in sleep and then go back into a dream and pop awake for a second and go back to a dream. That's how our brains are sort of designed to be able, that we can monitor the environment. It's all cool. Back to sleep. And the second half, you're gonna get more of your dreams. What the brain looks like in REM sleep is actually more like what it looks like in wakefulness. So in a lot of ways, it's difficult to differentiate a waking brain versus a REM brain. It's quite cool. There are some hallmarks that you can use to differentiate it. With Muse, we are actually able to track sleep as effectively as a sleep lab. So in a sleep lab, they're tracking your EEG in order to determine your state of sleep. If you're using, like, a Oura ring or a Fitbit, that's just using your hrv, which is just a proxy. So the accuracy of things like deep sleep is not great because they're not actually able to see when you're in delta.
- [59:34]
B
Okay, okay, so then. So we have. So the deep sleep, we want to have that the first half, you're going to mainly profit from that in the first half of your sleep cycle. And would you like. My grandmother used to always say, one hour before midnight is the equivalent of two afterwards. And I wonder if that ancient, you know, like, she had no high, you know, no high school, like, no, you know, further education. But she always used to say, you have to go to bed early. And I wonder if that is that when we are going to bed at let's say a 9 or a 10 or maybe even 11 o' clock at night, is that going to help us drop in to a deeper sleep? Or does this timing matter? Or is it does chronotype rule the day? Like what is the best practice for making sure that we can profit from that deep sleep?
- [60:22]
A
Okay, so first of all, your grandma was kind of right because that deep sleep is the most important sleep. If you have to lose something, rather lose your REM rather than the deep sleep. However, both are important. REM has really important implications for memory consolidation as well. So when you're cutting out on sleep and getting up super early to go to the gym earlier than normal and you're losing out on your REM sleep, you are losing out on something that's beneficial to you. So let's really try to prioritize all of the sleep. Yeah, when the sleep happens is different for everybody based on when you're used to going to sleep. So if you are used to going to sleep at 10pm every night and you're like, oh, I want to try going to sleep earlier, I'll go to sleep at 8, it's just not going to work. Your body is not going to be prepared for sleep then and your sleep pressure is not going to be high enough and you're just going to get kind of shitty sleep. So if you do want to try to move your bedtime earlier for any reason, you want to do it in little increments like 15 minutes at a time. And then you want to do all the best practices to set your circadian rhythm to be ready to sleep that night. So great ways to set your circadian rhythm light in the morning. Going to sleep actually starts 16 hours before when you first get light into your face. Should I take a minute and talk about sleep? Hold on, I'm going to explain something you, to, to you. So why are we sleepy? We have two different cycles. One is melatonin and the other is adenosine and sleep pressure. So melatonin is set by light. So when you wake up in the morning, you get light in your face. The light goes through your suprachiasmic nucleus and it turns off your melatonin tap. Melatonin is like the sleepiness signal for your brain. When dim light sets in in the evening, your melatonin starts to turn on and it takes about 90 minutes for your melatonin to reach its peak. So that's why you want to do things like dim your light, stop looking at your computers with bright lights. 90 minutes before sleep, I know that's nearly impossible. So even an hour or 30 minutes is much better. You want to have your highest point of melatonin when you fall asleep. Then as you fall asleep throughout the night, melatonin begins to unbind. And in the morning, it makes you feel more awake. You put light in your face, it turns off the melatonin tap, and it sets you right ready for 16 hours later to sleep and start to get your melatonin high, high, high, so you can be asleep. The second system that we have is this molecule called adenosine that builds up sleep pressure. So throughout the day, this molecule called adenosine binds in our brains and builds up our sleep pressure so we feel sleepier and sleepier and sleepier and sleepier and sleepier. When your sleep pressure is at its highest, you fall asleep. As you sleep, you release all of your sleep pressure. It's next to nothing when you wake up. And then the cycle starts again. Caffeine binds to the same receptors as adenosine does, and it blocks your sleep pressure. So that's why if you have a caffeinated beverage, it makes it much harder to fall asleep because you haven't built up as much sleep pressure throughout the day because the caffeine has blocked those receptors. So that's why we do things like no caffeine until. No caffeine until. Sorry, no caffeine afternoon. So, you know, last coffee, 10 or 11, cheap chai, whatever it is that you're drinking. And so you want to make sure that if you're going to sleep earlier and you're trying to set your sleep cycles earlier, you've done all of the things to manage your sleep pressure and your melatonin to help you fall asleep earlier. So you want no bright lights in your eyes for 90 minutes before bed. You want to make sure you have no caffeine in your system. You want to make sure you didn't take a late nap because that robs you of your sleep pressure.
- [64:01]
B
Ooh, naps.
- [64:02]
A
Okay, yeah, naps are wonderful and phenomenal, but not past like two o' clock because then they can rob you of your sleep pressure. Ooh. We actually have a new cool feature coming up in the new year called Smart Nap that will actually time your nap so that it doesn't take away from your sleep that night.
- [64:17]
B
Okay, so this. Okay, sorry, I'm gonna stop on naps. Yeah, we have to stop on naps because there's some. So I have this is my party trick. I can fall asleep anywhere and I can say to myself, I don't know how I do this, but I'm like, I just wanna take a 15 minute nap and I don't set a timer, does nothing and I will literally put my head down, completely fall asleep and wake up like almost to the minute 15 minutes later. It's usually a minute before, so I'll usually wake up 14 minutes later. However, there have been times when I've done this and it hasn't worked and I have slept beyond that and I wake up so groggy I feel disoriented. Don't be fooled by the frigid temperatures. Keeping hydrated in the wintertime is super important. In colder temperatures we sweat more due to a higher metabolic demand of trying to maintain a core body temperature. We lose more fluids and electrolytes through our urine, we lose more water through respiration and just general breathing. And our skin dries out in the wintertime as well. We are a ski family and over this winter we have been using Elementi's Chocolate Medley. The chocolate chai is absolutely incredible with some boiling water, a splash of milk and my kids love the chocolate mint with some hot water. This is our apres ski. We cozy up with Element Hot after hours on our cross country trails. Now for a limited time you too can get the Element Tea Chocolate Medley and enjoy them hot as I have been doing with this exclusive insider bundle for you. When you buy three boxes of any flavor, it doesn't have to be the chocolate, it can be any of the flavors that they offer. You are going to get the fourth box free. If you head over to drink link element.com forward/drestima, you'll see that exclusive offer at the bottom of the page. That'S-R-I-N-K-L-M-N-T.com-R E S T I M A and tell me which of the chocolate melody you love the best. Let's talk a little bit about naps. Length and then the smart nap. Like that. I can't wait for that. I'm so excited for that. So tell me about the. Tell me about naps. You mentioned already that it brings down our sleep drive or pressure to sleep. But length of nap. You mentioned time, nothing after 2 o'.
- [66:31]
A
Clock.
- [66:32]
B
Tell me about the length of the nap.
- [66:34]
A
Yeah, so you wanna make sure that you don't get too deep into sleep in your nap. So you wanna catch like one deep sleep cycle that's it? Because if you, that groggy sensation that you get is from when you nap too long and you wake up in the wrong part of your cycle and then you end up with what we call sleep inertia. Sleep inertia is because our brain is still being bathed in sleepy chemicals when your eyes are awake. And that gives you that groggy, disoriented feeling. So the ideal nap is 25 minutes or less. 15 minute nap is phenomenal. That's going to get you a little mini sleep cycle in there. It's perfect. Don't go beyond 25 minutes and not after 2 o'.
- [67:18]
B
Clock.
- [67:18]
A
Like wake up by 2 because napping relieves your sleep pressure, which means that you won't be sleepy enough when nighttime comes. And so sometimes we end up in these cycles where we can't fall asleep at night, so we nap during the day, which then perpetuates the cycle because then we can't fall asleep at night.
- [67:36]
B
Okay. So when we're wearing the Muse, so we would wear, when this feature comes out, we would wear the Muse headband for the nap. And it is going to, based on your brain waves and patterning, it's gonna say, hey, somewhere between 15 and 25 minutes. And it's going to maybe cue you like, no, no later than 2:00 in, in your day. Like how, how does the nap feature? How's that gonna work?
- [68:01]
A
Yeah, so it's actually tracking your sleep during your nap. So I mean we, we don't all fall asleep instantly. So that's why setting a timer for 25 minutes doesn't really work because some of us lie there for 10 minutes before we fall asleep sleep and then we're woken up the wrong time. So it actually tracks your brain as you're falling into sleep. It allows you to just have one sleep nap cycle so that you'll be refreshed. Once it sees you've had that nap cycle, then the alarm goes off and it wakes you up.
- [68:30]
B
That's super cool. I love that. Yes, that's super cool. Ugh. So I haven't worn the Muse yet overnight. I think that that's actually going to be what I'm going to do tonight because I want it to start learning my patterns. I've only ever used it for like after the gym or like a 2. Sometimes I'll do like a 2 o'. Clock. I feel like my energy starts like 2 to 3 o'.
- [68:50]
A
Clock.
- [68:50]
B
I need a little like instead of a siesta, you know, instead of a Nap. I do a little meditation session. The question I had that I want to make sure that I ask you as it pertains to meditation in general sometimes. And I ask this because I am a recovering type A personality. I'm like, I'm going to meditate, I'm going to be the best meditator. I'm going to meditate the shit out of this thing. Which is the wrong way to approach meditation entirely. So my question is, when we're thinking about meditating, is it better to do like one big mega session or is it better to like break it up into small little like, you know, you said like the five minutes where you can just stop everything, like the chaos of your life and you can just kind of drop into your body. Like is it better to do smaller little five minutes here and there, but more frequently, let's say during the week rather than like one big session on a Sunday or a meditation retreat? Because I'll be honest with you, I'm never gonna go on a meditation retreat. It feels really unattainable for me. But a small little 10 minute something before I have a meeting or when I'm feeling like a little low energy is really doable for me. So is it for my, for my type A personality, women who are listening, is one big session, let's say 60 minutes or whatever better than smaller, frequent, or does it matter? Just as long as you're doing it cool.
- [70:12]
A
So the best length of time to meditate is the length of time you're gonna do it for?
- [70:18]
B
Yes.
- [70:19]
A
So whenever you can fit it in is good and consistency is key. So you can't just meditate once and be like, great. I've meditated for the month now. Just like going to the gym, it's a practice or like eating well. It's a thing that you wanna be doing regularly so that you build up the skill. And the goal is that you might just be doing it for five minutes a day every day. And like, like that's cool. Then you move it up to 7, then to 10. 10 minutes once a day is spectacular. If you can consistently do 10 minutes every day, that's phenomenal. There may be a day when you have a little more time and you want to try a 25 minute session. That's heroic. It's all good. It may be that you just start with three minutes because that's all you can fit in and you feel a little like, makes you a little nervous. So you know, three minutes is doable. Cool. Start, start with that.
- [71:07]
B
That's a good buy in. I could, like, psychologically, I could buy in for three minutes if it feels like really intimidating. I like that.
- [71:13]
A
Yeah, just three minutes. There was actually a study, the very first study done with MUSE was by the Mayo Clinic. And they gave women awaiting breast cancer surgery muses back in 2015, and they told them to use it for three minutes a day. This was like our very, very, very first muse, the simplest exercise, the same white band you had, and these women told to use it for just three minutes a day ended up after three months, having significantly improved their stress, their fatigue, and their quality of life during the cancer care process. So just tell yourself three minutes a day. That's good enough. Mayo has since gone on to do probably seven other studies with Muse, including their own healthcare professionals using Muse. So during the pandemic, they gave 45 of their doctors and nurses in the emergency room MUSE devices. And what they found was a 54% decrease in burnout, improvements in stress, in cognition and in sleep. And when we, when they looked into the data and looked at how often they had used it, it was an average of five minutes a day.
- [72:19]
B
Wow, that's fantastic. Yeah, that's fine. And you know, you, you said 25 minutes is heroic, which I think is. And you know, 10 minutes is phenomenal. Like that. Those are all numbers. I think that we can probably eventually, you know, I'm, I joke and I say like, my second job is a Uber driver in the evening to my children for all their extracurricular activities. But sometimes I'm waiting, you know, like, it's like the practice is supposed to finish at 7:30 or 8:30 at night. And the coach wanted to talk to them. There's no other, you know, there's no other classes that are coming after them. So he knows he has the pitch for another, you know, 15, 20 minutes. And he keeps them for 15 or 20 minutes. And honestly, that's some of the times when I meditate. I will also do my Kegel exercises during that time. I do my A lingo, you know, like there's that little, like that, those little, like 15, 20 minute, little lost. Like otherwise lost moments are the times where you can actually, it's like, okay, I'm just going to drop in and do a meditation. Like I, I love that. And the MUSE headband is like, has kind of, it's, you know, you could just throw it in your purse or, you know, it's so small. It's just in your, in your hand. It's nothing.
- [73:26]
A
Yeah. So I keep Mine in my pocket.
- [73:28]
B
Yeah.
- [73:28]
A
They're super robust. Most people are like, oh, it's delicate. I have to treat it. Delicate. We have two different ones. So this is the MUSE two. And this one does all the.
- [73:36]
B
I had that one, too. Yeah.
- [73:37]
A
Yeah. This is meditation for brain, heart, breath and body, as well as tracking cognitive function. And this one is the Athena. And honestly, you can just go like that and put it in your pocket.
- [73:49]
B
Yeah. Fantastic. Fantastic. Is there any. So you said that. I know that in. Just in preparation for our conversation today. I know there's been, like, 200 or something studies that Muse has done. You've talked about the breast cancer one. Is there any. Any research or literature that you're particularly proud of or. That is. You know, the word that's coming to me is, like, that's tickled your. You know, your desire to learn more about how the brain works and how meditation can impact, like, you know, healthy aging of the brain or how the brain ages or how the brain operates day to day.
- [74:18]
A
Yeah. I mean, there's so much. So Mayo Clinic recently completed a study with long COVID patients using MUSE demonstrating that it improved their outcomes. They've shown the same for Cushing syndrome and fibromyalgia. So that's amazing.
- [74:29]
B
Oh, that's good.
- [74:30]
A
FM in terms of meditation and the brain, there's lots of studies that are currently in process, a number of them on Parkinson's and Alzheimer's. So there's two Parkinson's studies currently running using MUSE mind meditation as the intervention for Parkinson's to see if it can improve symptoms. There's a number of Alzheimer's studies using MUSE to track sleep. And then upcoming, an Alzheimer's study using MUSE meditation and an MCI study also using our prefrontal cortex neurofeedback. So we haven't talked about a whole other aspect of muse. We've talked a lot about the EEG and brainwaves. The MUSE s Athena has a second set of sensors in it that are called FNIRs frontal near infrared spectroscopy. And it's tracking the blood flow to your brain. And not only does it track, but it also helps you improve.
- [75:19]
B
So we have from the left to the right hemisphere. I've seen that on the. I don't know exactly how to interpret it yet. Maybe you can help me. But I've looked at it. I'm like, oh, that's interesting. Yeah.
- [75:28]
A
Yeah. So what you're looking at is your HBO and your hbr. So you're looking at the amount of oxygen delivery available in Your brain and the amount of oxygen that has been used up or depleted by your brain, which is a good thing, that means that your brain is actually processing that oxygen. So ideally you want your brain to have lots of oxygen moving to it and you want your brain to be using up that oxygen because that means it's active and working, working. And so we have a exercise that's called the strength, mental strength where you are doing prefrontal cortex neurofeedback to teach your prefrontal cortex to work more but and consume more oxygen, so have more nutrients brought to it and then use up those nutrients. So that is being utilized in studies to see if it can have an impact in staving off. Mild cognitive impairment.
- [76:18]
B
Yeah, we haven't really talked about Alzheimer's. Again, this is a. And even just like mci. So mild cognitive impairment, subjective cognitive impairment. These are some of the early signs we've had, you know, Dr. Dale Bredesen on several times talking about how from a nutritional standpoint and some of the different categories of Alzheimer's, but this is a disease that hits women far more than it hits men.
- [76:39]
A
And it turns out that things like meditation can really help to stave off age related cognitive decline, can potentially help to move the glymph and move beta amyloid from the brain. Enhancing your deep sleep can also potentially do the same thing. So there are many, many reasons why we want to engage in a meditation practice for at least five minutes a day. Longer is better. But hey, whatever you do is great. And there's lots of reasons. We want to really focus on our sleep and accept whatever comes to us in the night so that we can maintain our calm. If you meditate for five hours while sleeping, awesome. It's all good if you don't sleep. But let's start to change our habits and our behaviors in order to enable greater amounts of sleep and cognitive health.
- [77:28]
B
And so is there any. Do you know what might be happening with. So when we're talking about MCI or sci, so cognitive impairment of any, you know, of any amount, what is the, we'll say benefit to a regular meditation practice on either staving that off or I'm trying to be careful with my words here. Or just, you know, helping the brain age better.
- [77:58]
A
Sure, many things. So first of all, as your brain ages, your prefrontal cortex, just like all of our bodies, you know, they say start, starts to thin or shrink and a regular meditation practice is able to maintain the thickness of the prefrontal cortex even as you age and in fact, there's a very cool study done by Dr. Eileen Lueders and she looks at the brain of meditators, long term meditators versus non meditators, and she saw that long term meditators have brains that look on average 7.5 years younger. Whoa. And she defined a long term meditator as somebody who'd meditated for five years or more. So, you know, minimum of five years of meditation, you can get a brain that looks on average 7.5 years younger.
- [78:40]
B
At five minutes, it seems like three to five minutes is like the minimum effective dose.
- [78:45]
A
Yeah, we don't want to oversell it, but the trend looks really impressive that doing this practice is really, really key for the brain meditation. We haven't talked a lot about the impact on the body, but it's also huge. So as you relax the body, you are dilating your blood vessels, which is going to increase the blood flow to your brain, more blood flow to the brain, better cognitive function. You're going to be decreasing your cortisol levels and your inflammation. So a lot of brain health is also about managing inflammation in the brain. There are some people who have beta amyloid plaques but have no inflammation and don't have Alzheimer's like symptoms. So inflammation really does play a huge piece in degrading the brain's ability to effectively communicate and function. So meditation both has those direct impacts on the brain and the structure of the brain, as well as positive impacts on the body that help you to stave off age related cognitive decline.
- [79:50]
B
Fantastic. Fantastic. Well, this is as I suspected. This was a geeky magic carpet ride on all things brain, aging and women. I would love for people to, if you, if they want to find out more about you, they want to find out more about Muse, the meditating headband that you can use for meditation, for sleep. Where can people find you and the product?
- [80:15]
A
Sure you can find me on all the socials. The tag is hoosemuse and you can find muse@choosemuse.com so we're on Amazon or.
- [80:25]
B
On our own website and I believe that we have. And we'll put this in the show notes as well. I know that we have a discount for listeners, anybody who wants to purchase any of the Muse headbands for wear. I know that there's a 15% discount, so I believe the code is better. But we'll make sure that there's a clickable link there in the show notes, which is very generous of you to offer as well. So thank you so much and thank you for this conversation, I have learned so much. You've reinforced a lot of the understandings that I had around the inhibitory properties of the prefrontal cortex. And. But I'm particularly enamored with the idea around sleep and anxiety and how we can improve our sleep as we age and just healthy brain aging in general. So thank you so much. This has been fantastic.
- [81:06]
A
Oh, it was super fun. It was so nice to spend time with you. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
- [81:12]
B
All right, Betty's. Welcome to the after party where I tell you some of my highlights, lowlights, favorite parts, not so favorite parts of this episode. And, and this is one of those topics. Meditation is one of those topics where I think initially most people are like, one more thing to do on my very, very long to do list. And then when you start doing it, you're like, okay, fine, whatever. I feel better. And that's really part of the reason why I actually wanted Ariel on the show was to highlight some of the things that we are all really silently struggling with. Like, we're all like pushed to the max in terms of like our calendars and our obligations and our to do lists. But when we're able to just take like a little 5 minute, a little 10 minute drop in into our bodies, it can really make profound differences in our abilities everywhere else in life. And I think, at least for me, I can say very honestly, okay, like, I would not lie to you, okay, I don't like meditation. Okay. So I, I don't like, I don't like it as a concept because. And she actually, Ariel said it earlier. She's like, it doesn't feel like you're doing anything. And the type A they were covering type A in me agrees with that. It's like, yeah, I'm not doing anything. I'm just sitting with my eyes closed. Like, what, what's next? What's next? What's next? However, I will say that the more that I do it, the better that I feel. And then when there is a blow up, whether it is in my business or, or teenagers or, you know, whatever, whatever it is, I just get a little bit. There's just a little bit of extra room between the time that I react with my amygdala and the before my, actually my prefrontal cortex or the sort of the parent brain comes online. Like, I just get an extra little millisecond before I snap or before I get angry. And at least that's what meditation has, has really given to me. So I, and I don't do it all the time. Okay, so that's the other, that's the other thing. I use the Muse headband. I use it probably. I don't know if Ariel's gonna kill me, if she's gonna listen to this part, but I probably do it like four times a week. And I do it for like 10 or 15 minutes. I do it right after I work out. That's usually the best time for me, for me to sink into my body. And the other time that I really like to do it is like that two to three o' clock hour. I think I mentioned that on the show because I feel my energy starts to, you know, wax and wane a little bit. At that time, I start finding the thousand tabs that I have on my computer. I'm just flipping aimlessly between them at that point. So I just need like a brain break. So I'll usually go and do a little bit of movement, laundry, something, whatever. Get like a little walk around the block, and then I'll do some meditation. So like a 10 minute session at that time. And it really makes a big difference for me. And it doesn't make a big difference all the time. Like, that's not to say that now I am Yoda and I have all the wisdom, you know, on the planet. And I never do things that later on I need to apologize for or that I need to walk back. That's not what I'm saying at all. But I am saying that it gives me a little bit more grace with myself and with the other, with, you know, the people that I love the most around me. So that's what it does for me personally, as someone who is a type A, achieving, you know, knowing that we have like, it's like, God, we got to do zone two, we got to do zone five. We got to periodize our training. We got to do lifting weights. We got to. And now we have to meditate. It is really those little stolen moments where I'm waiting for the kids at soccer practice or I'm have a, you know, finish my work. I know I have a team meeting in 20 minutes. So I, I know I have 10 minutes to kind of get comfortable, do my meditation, kind of get back, you know, have a body break, and then get back to it. Those are the times when I, when I find that this is where the real value is there too. Okay, so a couple of my favorite points or favorite parts of our discussion was this idea of learning about the observer versus the recipient. You know, she said like your, your brain's job is to literally generate thoughts. And it's going to generate thoughts and thoughts and thoughts on thoughts, on thoughts, on thoughts, on thoughts. And so this movement towards like observing the thoughts rather than becoming the recipient of the thought. Right. So the default mode network that she was talking about that I had described as, you know, that inner voice voice that tells me like, not good enough, not smart enough, not pretty enough, not capable enough, not worthy enough, not, not, not, not. That tends to dampen with time. And I have a very. My default mode network is also a type A personality and she is a bitch that won't quit. So I probably need to meditate for a little bit longer in order to get a bit of a better handle on her. But, you know, I will say that it, it does help me notice. Notice those. Those voice, that voice a little bit more. I'm like, oh, there she is. Oh, am I tired? Am I hungry? Do I need. What do I need? Why is she louder right now? So I really like that part of our conversation. I also thought it was really interesting that she was talking about a study from one of her colleagues that a meditation session can imitate sleep insofar as the glymphatic system, like the. Basically the car wash for the brain overnight where it cleans out all the towel tangles and the beta amyloid, amyloid plaques and stuff. A meditation can actually imitate that. So I thought that that was super cool. And then I really, really liked the con. Well, we got into like all the sleep stuff, like the different sleep stages and the brain waves. But I loved the conversation around the napping. So the 25. I love the guidance of 25 minutes or less and then not after 2pm so that you don't mess up like sleep drive or your, you know, your sleep pressure for when you want to fall for sleep later in the evening. And then we kind of. Towards the end, there was. I mean, I knew that there was a lot of research behind the Muse headband, and I was familiar with the breast cancer research that she had cited when we were chatting. But it's actually crazy to think that there's been over 200 research papers done on the Muse headband as it relates to a variety of different conditions. And she mentioned they're looking at pretty parks, Parkinson's and Alzheimer's right now. Fibromyalgia and Cushing's. And so, like, it's all these different physical. And using air quotes, if you're listening, physical ailments that can be at least, you know, ameliorated or remedied to some extent by calming down the entire system. So it is my hope that in whatever medium you would like to practice meditation, that you find three to five minutes my challenge for you, my Easter egg. Deep into this show, if you're listening still, you are my hardcore. You are my hardcore Betty. So find three minutes this week and just sit with, you know, sit on a chair somewhere with a pillow on your lap. Close your eyes. Three minutes. Set a timer. Done. Let me know how you did. And if you decide to use the Muse headband, let me know if you tried the heart meditation where you hear your own heartbeat and they make it into the sound of a drum. It is just the most. I mean, I don't know if I gushed enough about it on the show, but it's my favorite. I think it's my favorite meditation to do is to hear my own heartbeat. Okay, so that's all I got from you. Until next time, I bid you adieu. All right, all right. I hope you enjoyed today's episode, and I must give you the obligatory legal and medical disclaimer here. This podcast, Better with Dr. Stephanie, is for general information only. And then. And the advice recommendations we discuss. Do not replace medicine, chiropractic, or any other primary healthcare provider's advice, treatment, or care in the consumption of this podcast. There is no doctor patient relationship that has been formed and the use and implementation of the information discussed are at the sole discretion of the listener. The information and opinions shared on the podcast are not intended to be a substitute for primary care diagnosis or treatment. In other words, guys, be smart about this. Take it with a grain of salt. Take this information to your primary healthcare provider and have a discussion with him or her to make the best choice. That is for you. Remember, I am a doctor, but I am not your doctor, and these conversations are meant for educational purposes only.