#48 Angry Brain…

Hey, gut check project fans and KB MD health family. This is Eric, I’m here with my awesome co host, Dr. Kenneth Brown. And this is Episode 48. I don’t have a clue what we’re gonna talk about.

0:12
Well, I think that Okay, so if you did not see Episode 47, we put a lot of work into that one. Yeah, we’ve gotten a ton of great feedback on that. And it’s just the beginning, because because of that episode, we’ve been contacted by a lot of other scientists, a lot of people. And we’re gonna be having a really special PhD on to describe her research soon. And it’s, you know, thankfully, it’s pretty cool. Yeah, it’s

0:34
really, really cool. We actually got a lot of feedback not only in the traditional sense, thank you all for who’ve been emailing in and messaging. But the two patients who came through and watched it right before we scoped them, I was impressed to how many of them tried to do what you did to me and made me list everything out. And so that was that was pretty interesting. So

0:53
just a recap of 47 it was important because we’ve uncovered a lot of important research showing how the polyphenols like polyphenols in atrantil can actually help your innate immune system. And it’s, it’s the tip of the iceberg because I’ve been contacted by out both allergist epidemiologists, some PhDs going wow, that is exactly what my research is in. I’d like to talk about it more.

1:16
What about just this morning, we had that discussion with somebody over in the UK who is specifically utilizing guess what polyphenols for athletes and elite athlete training. Never met the guy before has an incredible program. What do you think of that? Oh, that’s

1:31
great. It’s actually Aiden Goggins. And he he wrote the cert diet, which is the I believe it’s the diet that Adele lost all her weight on and it’s all about the benefit of polyphenols turning on these sirtuin pathways. He’s he agreed to come on the show also great guy super smart. That was awesome hanging out with him this morning. So what’s going on with you? Let’s let’s get let’s make this more casual this time. The last couple of podcasts have been so intense with the immune system and stuff. Let’s change it up a little.

1:56
Yeah, man. I chatted with gage this morning. He scores out of tech he’s loving School, which is great. And you know he’s he’s enjoying his time as a freshman. His most college kids who are freshmen should be doing Mack is in midseason basketball. He loves it. He just He scored his 106 point where this basketball team is last week. He’s super pumped about that. Okay,

2:20
let’s let’s clarify that. So he scored his 106 documented point or he scored the 106 I

2:25
scored the 106 which is the high watermark for his current code. That’s awesome. That’s awesome joints. He joins his brother who was the first person to push a coach over 100

2:34
Yes, that’s awesome. So the reader brothers doing proper to the basketball team.

2:39
Their dad’s terrible. I know.

I got a shiner got a little shiner. Here you go look at the camera here. Yeah, look at the mirror image of me. Yeah, we’re doing little remodeling on the house. And unfortunately, the middle of the night I tripped over a box and face planet. So as I was telling my patient I walked in and we’re gonna put him to sleep. And he’s like, Whoa, Doc, he’s like, do a get a little tussle. And I’m like, no. And he’s like, well, it’ll probably only affect your modeling career for a bit. And I’m like, Well, I’m actually a hand model. So that’s why I protected myself with my face. Yeah, why don’t you show that finger

and see how good of a handball you are?

3:16
Well, I played I play the before picture and all hand model. A bunch of Orthopedic Surgeons jabbed me they’re like, hey, yeah, can I use that in an ad?

3:26
I specialize in ring finger. Yeah. We’re gonna straighten it out.

3:32
Oh, guess what I signed up for what? I signed up for the Wim Hof breathing. Wow, awesome. I’m doing the Wim Hof if you don’t know who Wim Hof is, he’s this crazy guy that has this incredible breathing course which we’re gonna talk about that I read. I read James nesters book called breath, the site the lost science, and everything is all over there. Oh, dude, it’s because we’re all just like, Whoa, you can change your life by breathing. And that’s what the Wim Hof Method is just breathe. And it’s so I’ve been doing this every morning for we’re going on two weeks now. And the problem is it also involves cold exposure. So every morning instead of waking up and doing my Yani coffee and warm hot shower, I’m breathing a ton and then jumping into a cold shower so we’ll see

4:16
feedback on it. Okay, well, just real quick, since I don’t know where we’re going with today’s show. I’m just gonna go ahead and ask is this one of those things from Wim Hof where he is having you breathe in at a certain interval breathe out a certain interval so that you can achieve something and then it can you can you shed a little light on them?

4:32
Yeah. So the Wim Hof Method in a nutshell is a cyclical breathing where you, you over inflate and then you exhale to atmospheric pressure. So you go above atmospheric pressure to atmospheric pressure. You do this in a cyclical way, almost like a wave and you train yourself to breathe in a cyclical way. And what that does is that increases your oxygen saturation of the cells decreases your co2, and I know where you’re going because last time we I started talking about putting physiology, we ended up doing a whole podcast on that. Check out COVID episode three or four. But what that does is that actually raises your pH because the co2 retention will increase the pH. Okay. So in this book, in breath, I got really into that because we realized that in our stress society and the more stressed you are, we tend to shallow rapid breathe, which actually is the improper way to do it. So when you want to relax, you breathe six seconds in six seconds out, that should be the proper tempo. This is a different method. This is to supercharge your parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous system interesting. And then you do 30. In this case, you can do like 30 cycles of this. really deep breathing and then it on number 30, you exhale, and you hold your breath. So you and you time it and it’s really funny because I’m following him on the course. And he’s this very, he’s been on Rhonda Patrick show and always been a me Joe Rogan. And everybody and so he’s so funny, because he’s the same all the time. I think he’s always Wim Yeah. And so he’s been on Ben Greenfield and stuff. And so he’s, you know, you feel like this bond, because I’m like, holding my breath. And he’s like, it’s okay. You’re good. You can do longer. You’re,

6:12
I mean, the guy is a physical walking experiment. He’s done everything, especially when it comes down to this controlled breathing situation.

6:19
Yeah, he holds like 20 world records and stuff. Yeah, but but it’s all but it’s all based off science. It’s not like and that’s what he tries to tell everybody. He’s like, anybody can do this. So that’s what I’m, that’s what I’m going to experiment. We’ll

6:28
see if I can interesting. I’m curious how how they’re explaining to lay people because that’s probably what this is written for. From lay people all the way down to the science. So maybe that would be a topic that we will get into after you experiment with it a

6:40
little bit. Yeah,

6:40
I’m really interested.

6:41
But we want to keep this episode light. Okay, this is just gonna be a fun, easy episode. Or we’re just gonna relax. Gosh, I was sitting there with Dr. Ackerman in the office. And I got a quick question for you. Because uh

6:56
have a quick question for me after talking to Steve

6:57
Yeah, okay. Because it says cuz Stu, and I kind of disagreed on something. And I was like, Are you insane? We got in this discussion about carbonated water and he actually likes Waterloo over Bella VB. Like more like I couldn’t even believe it. I’m like, Are you insane? Okay, well, wait, who’s

7:15
insane? He’s insane for liking for liking Waterloo.

7:18
Like how can you like Waterloo? Over Bell v. I mean, it’s a apparently, well,

7:25
I never questioned the fact that you are a doctor until right now. Because apparently, Stu is on the right side of history. And you’re on the wrong side of history.

7:33
How can you even say that? I mean, the bubbles in this are more effervescent, the flavoring is better. I mean, I have

7:40
a feeling that you’re way more prepared for this talk than me. I’m just going to tell you that Waterloo kicks ass. Because I think Waterloo labor looks really cute

7:48
is delicious. We can argue about this calories,

7:50
no sugar. I don’t know how many of these are crusher day, but I think they’re awesome.

7:55
I don’t want to spend this whole podcast arguing about which carbonated beverage is better? I do I do have a real question for you. Okay, because I was totally forgot this. And I know that you and I’ve done this. Would you mind explaining to me? Because I know you’re really like theoretical mathematics. Can you explain to me again, the Yang Mills existence and mass gap in mathematics?

8:15
I would but it would take way too long. Okay.

8:17
So I mean, you’re super smart. And I realized that that would normally be just like a no brainer. I don’t want to tell you that Yang Mills I love not being patronized back. Alright, so the whole reason for that set up. Was I I’ve been talking to a lot of patients and a lot of patients that have had COVID are having lingering symptoms and brain fog and things like that. And so you call them the the long haulers. Well, I see that all the time, because we see that people that have gut inflammation, end up having other things going on. So I was like, wow, you know, what, what, what is happening there? And then I started going down a little rabbit hole and Angie and I looking up articles and then you know, found this article where we thought Oh, when we initially when COVID first came out, it’s like oh COVID infects the brain. And then I think you and I even discussed the possibility of the vagus nerve being a conduit where viruses can get up and it was all theory and everything. And so then I started thinking Wait a minute, if we end up with all these long hollers, what’s the effect on the brain and then on the effect on the brain, I went down a little rabbit hole. And then I’m like, Well, wait a minute. If we end up with lots of neuro inflammation, how does that impact our psychiatric help?

9:34
Health health? Yeah,

9:35
because I’m, I really believe that we’re gonna end up in another pandemic. So many people are suffering from depression and anxiety. And we may end up you may end up in a situation where if you had this infection, you could end up having a little bit more anxiety, OCD, different things. And so neuroinflammation then that got me thinking, Wait a minute, how does how will this affect spouses and families and things? Because divorce rates through the roof and I’m like, What if whoa, wait a minute, what if all this inflammation and the stress is leading to psychiatric changes, but not even something really tangible that you can sit there and label a DSM for diagnosis on? What if it actually affects your cognitive ability? And so then,

10:20
let me just stop there. How could it not?

10:22
Right? Totally agree, except this is this is a podcast where we try and make sense of things. Sure, that that are like that. So that’s the rabbit hole that I went down. And now I’m going to bring it back. So what’s interesting is I did I do want to discuss one article that looked at damage in dissected brains and people that died of COVID. Okay, and it’s not as straightforward as you think. Okay. And then I started thinking, well, if there’s the inflammation that’s there, then I found an article that actually discusses neuro inflammation, psychiatric illness, followed by here’s what happens in our brain when we disagree. And ultimately ending up on disagreeing takes up a lot of mental real estate. So that was a really long setup to ask you a mathematic question, to pretend like I tied up your brain arguing over carbonated water. I’m sorry. I was trying to figure out how to set up how we’re gonna talk about today’s episode, which is all about the brain. Okay. It’s all about neuro inflammation, the brain and the fact that we’re still in the middle of this pandemic. It really wasn’t to bring you on the show and argue about water and then ask you a theoretical math question that I just googled 30 seconds before we came on the air

11:35
live is fine. I’m just glad that I wasn’t up for the challenge, either.

11:39
You would have freaked me out if you would have noticed.

11:42
It is would have been a random Google experience to be interesting. So if I understood what you just said that you’re saying that we we probably waste far too many resources metabolically and over our brain trying to disagree with someone. Well, it’s Yeah,

11:58
that But let’s get back to the inflammatory process. Okay, Episode 47 was the innate immune system. And it makes sense why we have all this inflammation. So I guess what I’m saying is, let’s prepare ourselves for the possibility that more than the usual number of people may be behaving in a way that they may not, or they may behave an extreme way, because I just heard a podcast this morning on med cram, that he was discussing that an article came out on the online version of ama, where they were looking at these, they surveyed, like a bunch of 170 people, and a shockingly high number had residual symptoms, three to six months after actually being diagnosed with COVID. And of this group, they were all really mild. And so what, what we’re now realizing is, is that we may end up having a lot of these young people that had really mild COVID end up having symptoms of they’re just fatigued. Brain fog is super common. Sure. shortness of breath, it’s common. Sure. So I think that we need to start preparing for this, I guess, is what I’m getting not only preparing for, here’s, here’s something that we don’t know. So you just said three to six months. I mean, the the full on onset of COVID, still wasn’t even one year ago. So if we’re looking at that number, there, we’re not even looking at like a threshold for this to end, right. Because we don’t know that yet. There’s not enough time has passed. We’re saying three and six months, because that may just be as long as that infection has existed for

13:32
that number of people. 100%. So

13:34
let’s jump into these articles. But I like where you’re going with this. Because this is what I want to do is prepare for what makes sense of things before it actually happens. I’m actually quite proud of something. And I’ve heard this from several people that whatever, nine months ago when we did COVID one and two, I’m sure yeah, we actually still stood the test of time. Yeah. Because one of my friends was actually talking about this, the fact that he’s hearing he’s going back and having fun looking at podcasts at the beginning. And now it seems absurd the things that were saying, and I got scared. I was like, we’re totally absurd. And we were actually pretty pretty spot on.

14:10
Yeah, but I mean, I think quite honestly, in a lot of this has to do with the way that people who’ve communicate with us we, what we approach it isn’t politically motivated. It’s, I think that we’re trying to always lean on what research says, and what research means. And so you can actually filter off, sometimes the stuff that’s just noise. And that’s what we try not to do here is deliver noise, we want to see if we can bring some context to what we think is real.

14:37
So what I would like to do is let’s talk about this and let’s look at this from a future neuro inflammatory process. And it all comes down to one thing that we’ve said a million times on this show inflammation. Sure. All right, so the first article that I came across, and these are all obviously very recent articles, some of them just a few days ago actually. Study uncovers blood vessel damage and inflammation in COVID-19 patient brains, but no infection. So this is a surprise that they did an in depth study and how COVID-19 affects patients brains, and they consistently spotted hallmarks of what they consider damage in an MRI while the patient was living, okay. And then they ended up taking a sample of 19 patients that actually died, and then they did an autopsy on them, okay, assuming that they would find necrosis clots. Because we’ve been talking about clots during this, oh, you’re gonna have these thrombosis factor five lied and gets kicked in, and then you’re gonna have you know, clots happen. And so what they found was now the exact opposite was happening in these brains. What they did is they found these bright spots contain blood vessels that were thinner than normal blood vessels. Yeah, they gave up integrity, didn’t they, they gave up integrity, they had leaky vessels. And this appeared to leak proteins, like fibrinogen, the brain, which triggered an immune reaction locally, sure. microglial cells, these spots were surrounded by the innate immune system T cells trying to control it. And what that ended up happening was that the brain’s own immune cells, tried to shut this down, created inflammation, which ultimately led to the neuro inflammation seen on these MRIs.

16:20
Yeah.

16:21
So the fascinating thing about that is controlling the inflammation may have prevented these lesions from forming. That’s not why these patients died. But it does give us insight as to why people will be having brain fog in the future.

16:33
Without question, then guess what? That processes, even though it’s specific right now about COVID-19? These things cycling out of control that that’s not new, though, right? I mean, people have had these kind of problems before. And it’s just like you said, it all goes down to inflammation. So what can we do to help control inflammation that doesn’t get out of control?

16:54
So what you just said, This isn’t new? Yeah, you’re exactly right. An article in 2013, in the Journal of neuro inflammation, shows that there are multiple lines of evidence to support the pathogenic role of neuro inflammation in psychiatric illness. why that’s important is because neuro inflammation can lead and then they go on to describe all these psychiatric illnesses. Now, one of my friends had a recent zoom, 50th birthday parties, a football player and some other football players were on there. And so, you know, you start looking at all these, the players that played a career in that, and that’s what I was thinking. I was like, you know, neuroinflammation, how do we protect all these? And then I started thinking about, you know, veterans and things like that. Looking at this article, we’ve known that inflammation does this for a very long time. So I’m like, well, recently, let’s see what’s happened. Let’s see if they tied it to very specific diseases, do a Google Scholar shirts, and you will see that there’s a link between neuro inflammation and depression, aggression, fatigue, obsessive compulsive disorder, addiction, anger, chronic pain, all of it. The the scientists return to today, he checks inflammatory markers in his athletes. Yeah, he trains a lot of MMA fighters, a lot of pro boxers and things,

18:09
guess what he’s checking, TNF alpha, interleukin six.

18:14
So we already know from prior podcasts that eating functional foods will help with inflammation. So what I want to do is take a different turn. And like I was kind of prepping, let’s prepare for the possibility that we may be dealing with more people that have neuro inflammation. So how do you handle it, there may be more mental illness coming towards us. Sure. And mental illness can be a spectrum, mental illness just might be a few. If you’ve ever suffered from anxiety, even a little bit of anxiety that that can incapacitate you. And that goes all the way to complete debilitating, OCD or schizophrenia and things. And it looks like it’s all coming down to inflammation, let alone now we’re just talking about the short term, let alone dementia, Parkinson’s, and so on, which is, once again, inflammation is the cause of that.

19:09
Yeah, absolutely. And I like that at the very beginning, you were at the very beginning. But about a minute and a half ago, you were talking about how do we protect these people like you saw on Jr’s zoom call? But also, what do you do for those who are sustaining an assault right now or inflammation right now to heal them to help bring them back? Because I think it’s both of those things. Let’s say that someone’s having an anxious problem, long term anxiety. Do you really think that having a long term poor diet along with that is going to help them with their mental state and recover it’s not you still have to give your body the tools to give it I mean, a mechanic can only fix the car with the tools and you have to give your body the tools to help your brain heal.

19:55
So when you have inflammation, there’s a possibility that you are Maybe have a little more anger, which could lead to arguments. So now let’s get into the physiology of arguing. I mean, I could see how heated you got when I was insulting Waterloo there. And I know. So this is a study that actually was published in in the Journal of nature and neuroscience. Basically what they did is they looked at people during an argument, right, and they tried to see what actually goes on. And so in a heated disagreement, generally speaking, you may lose respect for the person that you’re talking to, you know, whether it’s about something real heated or whatever, but if you’re passionate about it, you will lose respect and whether you feel appreciated or not, a lot of times what is described as that the other person is ignoring them, or they feel ignored. And so there’s a concept here where you’re passionate about your thing, I’m passionate. When when I walk out of the room, I feel like I’ve been ignored, like you have not heard anything, and you feel the exact same way. And then there may be some truth to that. There could be Did you ever wonder what’s going on in the other person’s brain that could explain that? So understanding when you’re looking at somebody, and you’re like, I’m talking but you don’t really seem like you’re hearing me?

21:12
Can I kind of guess on what you heard this may be going? Sure. So as a as a younger person engaging in an argument, I oftentimes would find myself, let’s say that you and I were having a true disagreement. And that your your first approach to me was to tell me why you felt something that I was doing, or that I thought was completely wrong. So the first thing I hear is, he doesn’t like what it is. And while you’re talking and making that point, I’m really just fortifying my position. Really not even listening to anything that you would have said, however, as a, as an older adult, I would imagine, and you learn this as a parent to really go to the child or the person you have a disagreement with. And try to find an area where we already agree or even compliment the other person. So that you’re really beginning to build a bridge and make it look like your point of disagreement is you’re arriving at it that there’s a problem that we have together.

22:14
That is correct. From the top. Okay, now let’s talk about what’s actually going on in the brain that leads to that. Okay, so to get to that point, so that you can take control of it. So have you ever been in a heated argument? All right. So what they did is they took 21 pairs of volunteers, and they asked them to make financial decisions, decisions in particular, they each had to assess the value of real estate, then they had to bet money on there a second. All right, so each volunteer, terrible, I know, each volunteer laid in a brain imaging scanner while performing the tasks, so that the scientists could record and the volunteers had to agree on the price of real estate. If they agreed, each of them became more confident, and they bet more money on it. Which makes sense, because that’s the tribalism if you affirm what I’m believing Well, yeah, we’re both right. Are you kidding me? You need to buy some GameStop.

Yeah, then we get really excited.

23:27
I love this Reddit group.

23:29
That’s, that’s exactly what it is. Yeah. So stop and think what Reddit is, when you do a sub group, you’ve already positioned yourself in a tribe. And when you say something, and you get up voted, you’re just like affirming exactly what’s going on. So that’s totally cool. So I agree with you that I’m more sure that I must be right. Now what’s going on is the activity is in the brain region called the posterior medial medial frontal cortex, which is also known to be involved in cognitive dissonance. And it’s the part that will track the confidence level in the person that you’re with. So there’s a section of the brain that lit up when they agreed. And it was associated with the fact that they were agreeing and they had more continental cortex. No, no, no, it’s not. It’s the posterior medial frontal cortex. Okay, so wherever post posterior medial frontal Let me think about that. neuroanatomy is ridiculous. It’s hard. It’s like where is it? It’s in the back. Middle. upper part. Yeah. On the lower. I mean, southwest corner. Yeah. All right. So anyways, so they found that the more competent one volunteer was, the more confident the partner became and vice versa. It and once again, it gives the feeling of why we joined tribes and why we seek out people with similar opinions. Okay. However, the interesting part is this when people disagreed, their brains became less sensitive to the strength of others opinions. Remember that the posterior medial frontal cortex when they agreed it tracked the content So I’m sensitive to exactly what you’re saying. So what they’re saying here, when people disagreed, they became less sensitive to the strength of others opinions. And after agreement, the post your medial frontal cortex cortex, could no longer track the partners competence on the scan when they disagreed and went, yeah, and went away. Consequently, the opinion of the disagreeing partner had little impact on people’s conviction that they were correct. Regardless of whether the disagreeing partner was very sure in their assessment, or not at all, they doubled down. They went, Oh, no, they disagreed. So this one shut off, and perceived no lack of confidence in the other person. Does that make sense? Like it’s, it’s, it’s not even a conscious thing going on very much sense. Blood went away from that part of the brain. And so pretty interesting. When they tested the volunteers memory, so a lot of times you’d say, Oh, they just didn’t listen to me. They just didn’t, they didn’t remember it. clearly didn’t remember. Because I feel that way a lot when you walk away, and you’re like, well, they didn’t listen, they won’t remember anything. That’s not the case. They actually tested the volunteers memory of their partners assessment and bets. Rather, it seemed that contradictory opinions were more likely to be considered categorically wrong. And therefore the strength of those opinions was unimportant. Yeah, that’s right. So you can understand how we end up in this polarizing society, if that’s going on. It’s super complex, multi layered reasons for all this stuff. But how can we increase our chances, you said it best right there. So the end of this article was, well, if this is going on, do something First, find someplace to agree on first, because when you get to an agreement level, if you and I are agreeing, then I assess your confidence, and I automatically a part of my brain gets turned on. If we’re finding the common ground, then I’m that part of my brain is ready to see if we can do this. So it’s a subconscious thing. We don’t know what’s going on, it’s going on on a physiological level, that that part of the brain kind of gets lit up. And so in the midst of a heated disagreement, just take a step back, find a common ground, and be like, Hey, I know that you’re super passionate about Waterloo, and you’re part of that subreddit, our Waterloo kill all other, you know, bubbly, but you know what, you know, what’s really good? Doesn’t matter the brand. I just like the effervescence, right?

27:26
Yeah, it’s all about the effervescence, as long as it’s waterloo.

27:31
So I’m the one that found the common ground, so I was prepared to accept your opinion. But you didn’t, you didn’t join me on that.

27:38
The way it started 20 minutes ago.

27:41
So the whole reason why I asked you the math question. So, um, it started out with Oh, my gosh, we’re gonna have a lot of people with neuro inflammation. Oh, my gosh, they’ll be arguing How do you prepare yourself for these arguments? How do you tell, like many things, I do better when I know, oh, I’m behaving like this. My body’s doing this. I’m tachycardic. My blood pressure is rising, because I’m letting my emotions have a physiologic effect. Okay, so same thing. So you get an argument go, Oh, why am I being so dissonant here? It could be because blood is going to the wrong part of your brain, instead of where it should go. So that’s step one. And then the reason why I asked you the math question, because this is the article that came out on January 14. disagreeing takes up a lot of brain real estate. This one is fun to me. Because much like the adage, it’s easier to smile and frown. disagree, is exhausting mentally.

28:36
I mean, think about it, you you have a great encounter with a friend, it feels good. And you don’t want it to end if you’re locked into a disagreement. Think of people sweat sometimes when they’re when they’re just having a verbal disagreement. And I’ve got Yeah, that’s not even surprising. It’s it’s not surprising, but

28:56
what is always surprising to me is when scientists can prove it, and they have tests to do it. Oh, for sure.

29:02
Sure, your brains lit up on that one. So

29:03
this one’s really cool. So they is defense though, right? Well, we’re gonna get into it right here. Check this out. It’s more than just defense, something really unique. And it’s fascinating. This comes out of Yale. So Yale, researchers devised a way to peer into the brains of two people simultaneously, while they are engaged in discussion. So when two people agree, their brains exhibit a calm synchronicity of activity focused on the sensory area of the brain. I’ll say this, again, a calm synchronicity in the sensory area of the brain, okay. This was the sensory area. They didn’t get into the exact place but it could be the amygdala, it could be you know, various areas. However, so many other regions of the brain are involved in higher cognitive groups. But when they disagree, so when you’re agreeing, you synchronize in the area of the brain, that is the sensory area, okay? In other words, I can feel and see your social cues. Okay? So when we disagree, however, many other regions of the brain involved in higher cognitive function become mobilized as each individual combats the other’s arguments. So say that again. So if we’re arguing, instead of me just sinking into almost a Zen state of, we’re in the sensory area right now, my brain knows that we’re arguing. And so my brain shifts blood to the frontal cortex, where there should be higher cognitive functioning, and it’s trying to prepare and figure out how we’re going to do whatever and come back at it. And so it just, it just lit up and these people, so our entire brain is a social processing network. However, when you disagree, you lose the social processing cues, because you get away from the sensory aspect. I believe that so it becomes all trying to wrap your brain around the logical thing, why in the world, would you like Waterloo, and I’m, you know, so it becomes this, the state and you don’t have any, any control over it. So to test their theory, they looked at 38 adults, and after they match them up, based on their responses that the researchers used, they put them in this really cool imaging technology called a functional near infrared spectroscopy. And what they were able to do is record their brain activity while they’re engaged in face to face discussions. So remember, the last one, they were kind of in this functional MRI, and they were kind of arguing over a thing. This one specifically allowed them to do real time where two people could like, get in their face and be like, are you you know, like a argument or whatever it is. And what they found is pretty cool.

32:04
Yeah, so if I am.

32:06
So if we agree, we are in sync? Sure. If we don’t, then I’m trying to use my brain to figure out how to get you to do what I want you to do. So when they were in agreement, the brain activity was harmonious and tended to be concentrated on sensory areas of the brain, such as the visual system. thought this was super cool. Okay, think about when you used to date. And you could tell we’re all of a sudden, it’s like, the data is going well.

32:33
Why is she walking away?

32:39
So your date, your dating life? Was that bad that she actually showed up? You’re like, oh, when she’s leaving, or she’s leaving to

32:47
what am I doing?

32:48
Well, you’re, you’re not in sync with the sensory areas. Yeah, learn that. But I thought this was fascinating. But the visual system as a sensory area gets in sync. And the visual system, presumably in response to the social cues from the partner.

33:03
Okay. Makes sense, though. Because you’re almost trying to complement what it is that the person there is doing. Right? That’s Yeah,

33:09
exactly. So like, I just think it’s interesting. When you’re like, man, I really, it’s that classic thing. Oh, yeah, I know that person. Yeah, we had a great, really cool, we really connected or, you so easy to get along with or, you know, it’s

33:21
seen as kind of a bad thing, whenever, whenever it’s highlighted, because a wrong decision ultimately is made. But there, I think it’s just somewhat natural for people to long term when they are jiving with someone else to develop certain confirmation biases. And it’s not necessarily always wrong. The conclusions, it’s just highlighted when a confirmation bias turns out to be the wrong decision. Doe s that make sense? Because maybe when people are agreeing, and they’re working together, it’s actually fostering teamwork. And people need other people, wolves are in packs, etc. It’s like part of that has to happen so that people feel comfortable working together. But if they’re disagreeing, it’s like you said, I’m your brains working this puzzle? How am I going to effectively remove myself from this guy’s opinion or this thought? Because it’s not working out for me. So you really don’t care that the visual cue is telling you that the other person is uncomfortable. So you don’t you’re not tuning in to the fact that they’re wanting to pull away? In fact, you’re kind of glad.

34:25
Yeah, that is totally true. The first article showed the activity, the blood flow, sure, this art or I’m sorry, that basically the blood flow, this article shows the actual activity and however they do it. So it makes sense that once we start disagreeing, I start shifting blood to the the cognitive region of my brain, and it just starts bouncing around trying to figure out how to do that if two people are

34:47
agreeing, you’re almost allowing yourself to trust the other person to help you in figuring it out. So you’re a little bit more relaxed, it’s not requiring as much as you begin to disagree. I just wonder if this plays into Little bit of biology like, Well, look, we’re in disagreement, we’re not working together, I’ve got to assume more responsibility of this thought this process this conversation.

35:10
And then you know, these these guys looked at that, and they’re like, well, meanwhile, if they’re disagreeing activity, increasing the brain’s frontal lobe, your home of higher order executive functions and filtering, and but that’s a necessary evolutionary response. Yeah, because if I’m actually in a disagreement, like my like this could escalate, I need to start thinking and planning ahead. The problem is when you start having disagreements over stupid stuff, or things like that, or you have the same disagreement, let’s say with a spouse, like you know, I don’t know, it’s really random, but like, clean up your bedroom, you’re so messy, when you come home kind of thing, just random. And fortunately, since I disagree, I’m able to cognitively avoid that. You know what, never mind I realize I’m just going to go home and be in sync from now on and just be one with my mess. Sure, and just allow it to happen. Yeah, or I don’t consider it a mess. Yeah, just said, I actually don’t consider it that. So what knowing that we’ve got this synchronicity when this happens when two people agree that brains exhibit calm synchronicity, focused in the sensory areas of the brain, and discord, the brains engage in emotional and cognitive resources. Now, here’s the cool part, if we’re both disagreeing, and this is both going on, when we’re in synchronicity, we’re playing a symphony together. When we’re disagreeing, and your cognitive functions doing this, and minds doing this, we’re both playing symphonies in our heads, but they’re different. Trying to play him at the same time. It’s

36:36
like a jazz band.

36:40
So you’re, you’re equating jazz to cognitive dysfunction.

36:44
drummers playing one song bass players playing another. I love jazz music, but it’s wild.

36:49
So the bottom line is, when you’re actually in agreement, you have less cognitive engagement, you have more brain power to do other things. I thought about this, because when you’re really like, well, like when we scope like, when I’m scoping, you get into this flow state. And things are good, just, it’s just things just your brain just goes. And

37:08
so over the years, we’ve worked together now several, I mean, really, I think the first time that we worked together as in 2012, and in that time, we’ve seen certain technicians in the room, right, come through and and work with you right now. And we, you’ve had several great technicians. But over the years, I’ve seen us where maybe you didn’t have the one that caused them not that they were bad, but one that didn’t compliment the way that you scope, or the pace that we have in the room, something like that. And right now, we’re really fortunate because pretty much every technician that we have right now is really, really, really good. That being said, interesting, that when we’re all on the same page, and we can have a we can have a day with several patients, but we catch every problem. patients feel great. They wake up awesome. turnover. Time is awesome. And we’re all

37:58
we’re never behind. Oh, all those things still happen regardless, but we’re just smiling more in those days. Yeah.

38:05
Thanks for a great day other than I’m out of here.

38:08
You know, what’s funny about that? Now, that really brings up a good point where I have, I have a lot of surgical friends that do really kind of like neurosurgeons and things. Yeah, and wow, at what I would consider now where I’m like, man, they’re so sad. They gotta have that same anesthesiologist, they gotta have those texts, they gotta have that certain music going. They gotta have that. That’s not OCD. That’s them getting in sync.

38:28
Yeah. But it’s, but it’s kind of a home, right? Because everyone’s agreeing with this environment. This scenario, and I do that same thing with Eckhart, when I’m doing is eyes, you know, I mean, it’s, we’ve got a great pace. But some of that, honestly, it’s kind of overused term, it’s kind of curated, right, we have a playlist that we listen to, that the patients will relax to, but it’s good for us.

38:50
Yeah, that’s gonna be a whole separate thing about the what happens when, you know, you played certain music, and they’d like now now knowing that you can, like examine the brain while they’re doing you don’t have to be hooked up to things. I don’t know how this test was done. So I just thought it was kind of interesting thing, I went down a rabbit hole where I’m very nervous about the possibility of varying degrees of long haul or symptoms. I don’t like the term long haul. Because we’ve seen this with other viruses. I see it all the time. I mean, we’ve seen it with EBV, we’ve seen it with,

39:19
which is really new. And we don’t have enough data, especially because you said it from the very beginning. They got people who’ve been exhibiting these symptoms for three to six months. And if you look at the timescale for how long this has been out, that could technically be for as long as they’ve had the problem.

39:34
And then if you’re one of these people, you’re like, Hey, you know what I had COVID and nothing’s happened. So I’m sure I’m clear. That’s cool. be on the safe side. Do the thing that we I was talking about eat functional foods. Take in polyphenols, avoid fasting. Yeah, avoid fast food. And, you know, if you do find yourself in an argument, and you’re like, Hey, you know what, this person probably has a lot of brain inflammation. find some common ground, get a box of Atrantil set it there and be like we both need to calm down. I need to improve my microbiome and you need to block that neuro inflammation that’s making you so mean towards me.

40:06
Yeah, they’ll totally be receptive if that’s the first thing. I’m sure.

You look angry.

40:14
You look angry. Have you had your ? That should be a commercial? We do. Yeah. Two spouses fighting. Somebody shows up.

40:21
I mean, anyone loves being told that it’s your significant other The first thing out of your mouth, how was your day? You look angry. Everyone responds to that.

40:31
You look like you. Your frontal posters. cerebral anterior cortex is not firing. And

40:37
yeah, just start off with a cotton that just anything nice shoestrings today?

40:42
Well, thank you find that common ground.

40:44
Yeah, start start with the shoestrings and then see if we can grow from there.

40:48
Alright, so you can disagree. So So the moral of this podcast is that, number one, find yourself in an argument, first of all, give somebody the benefit of the doubt that, hey, they could be having some inflammation going on in their brain. And if you’ve heard this podcast and understand that, then you can stop and go, Okay, now I understand that blood is being shunted someplace else. So it’s going to be very difficult to continue this path. Let’s take a second, find some common ground and start there and see if you can work your way back.

41:14
It makes sense. And it doesn’t have to just be COVID. If you have someone that’s in your life, and you’re they struggle with anxiety issues, and you always wonder kind of why they’re on edge, it may not really be their fault.

41:25
Yeah, I mean, it all comes down to the inflammatory process that’s going on. And if you’ve got neuroinflammation because of God because of other things, it’s from a science standpoint, it’s always real you can I think it’s easier to see the other person’s perspective when you can, when it’s easier for me to always understand somebody’s perspective, if I can break it down to a soul level, you’re short of breath, that means that your co2 is you know, like, I can go Okay, that’s cool. I’m not gonna say why are you short of breath? We only ran one lap.

42:04
Yeah, it’s this is what’s going on. It’s so weird to say to somebody. Yeah, well, I think it’s a really good point. And I’ll, I’m gonna pull the curtain back here a little bit. And it’s not exactly just an anxiety, inflammation of the brain. situation, however, it is a brain situation. And it was somebody who was close to me that started acting a little strangely. And for a while no one really knew. But my dad, who was always happy go lucky. For a brief period in his life, there was 24 months or so where he was irritable. And nobody really knew why, however, me included, everybody, unfortunately, hadn’t had an exchange with my dad. This is several years ago, where we would probably have like an argument where I’m never even heard just the guy growing up, really. And it turns out, he had a brain tumor. And once we got a treated, and he was back to us back to, you know, normal dad. But oddly enough, I’m just thinking of situations where you just have to have enough empathy that if you feel like someone’s on edge, I love the way you said it, give them the benefit of the doubt, find common ground. If you’ve always been running into recall, someone just find the common ground, because who knows, you may actually help them. You’ll certainly get further in your conversation. And I wished it. Did I known that even back then. I mean, of course, it we were we were over it quickly, when we all figured out what was what was going on. But it was something that he couldn’t control at all. And but yeah, it’s worth giving someone a bit of a doubt.

43:44
The brain is so fascinating to me, because when you say that he couldn’t control it all whether it’s a tumor or whether when people I was listening out, man, that fighter that’s on Joe Rogan’s most recent episode. Oh, what’s his name is? Justin Ren. Justin read.

44:01
Yeah. Is it just an idea? He does the in Uganda? Yeah.

44:06
He does such an incredible job of explaining addiction and depression. He’s been through it in a way that you’re just like, Whoa, yeah, like I did not know it got like that. And even Joe was like that. I’m just the kind of guy that can walk away from things. And guess what, some people could have walked away from everything that he struggles to walk away from. It’s just not how it worked for him. And it’s how his brain is wired. And it helped him to understand he actually said that flat out he’s like, once it was explained to me that I have less dopamine going on. And once I take this, it hits me different than it hits other people. And finally learning that allowed me to realize this is not a mind over willpower kind of thing. This is strictly when I do this. This is what’s going to happen. If you’re a diabetic. And I’m like, Eric, I got the greatest donut. You’re gonna love it. It’s amazing. And you look at that and go well, if I eat that my blood sugar will spike and I will end up Possibly, you know, an hyperglycaemic crisis. It’s that makes sense, right? Yeah. But we never talked about the brain, we never say, oh, if you drink the day before, maybe the following day, you may end up with your GABA receptors depleted, and therefore you’ll have increased anxiety. And that can lead to panic attacks. Yeah, things like that.

45:19
My cousin, psychiatrist and years and decades ago, I remember him telling me that one of the most difficult things to deal with in psychiatry is that it’s not like orthopedics, you can see a broken bone and want to fix it. You just can’t see the brain, you just see the resulting things of people’s behavior. And that’s kind of hard, because it’s all when you’re little, you’re told to behave, Oh, of course, behave, do the right thing. Whatever. If someone misbehaves so many times, it’s attributed Well, they’ve chosen to act poorly. But maybe, maybe some things are just in a process of inflammation where they’re making. Yeah, they’re making bad decisions, but maybe they’re arriving at the decision, not really, how they wanted to get there. And then, you know, we

46:07
talked about what we’ve, I mean, CTE is a relatively new thing. But CTE is now showing up. And not just in football, it was discovered there. But now we’re seeing in MMA fighters, which we thought MMA was safer than boxing, because, you know, you didn’t get hit 20 times. But now we’re seeing some of these fighters do some different things we talk about some of the very, you know, some very sad and horrific suicides, and some things like that have gone on with people that have had long careers in professional wrestling is one and that and you’re just like, Whoa, and people want to block your players.

46:39
Oh, really? Yeah. head butting? Oh, yeah, knocking that

46:43
knocking the ball around. It’s great. It’s crazy. And so it all comes down to inflammation. And so it’s it’s sort of, it’s sort of my life’s mission, you know, the brain gut access, decrease the inflammatory process in the gut, and the brain and the same thing, and we can do it all the time. You know, increase your NRF two pathway, decrease your your TNF alpha, your interleukin sector and liquid ones. And those are those are fancy words for just saying, Let’s stop the inflammatory process.

47:09
Yeah, that’s it. It’s crazy. But it’s all it’s not it’s all but so much of disease and chronic disease is just tied back to inescapable long term inflammation.

47:20
And that’s so good. Circling all the way back to the very first thing that I said the whole Wim Hof thing as I started reading about it, actually one of my patients who’s suffering a lot from a multitude of symptoms, kind of like a systemic inflammatory process. And it’s really kind of struggling to come out of it. And we’ve tried a lot of different things. He’s like, he’s like, Doc, it’s like, I’ve been doing this thing called Wim Hof Method now for a couple months. And I was like, I’ll try anything. And then as I started looking at it, it actually, because you control the parasympathetic system, which is the vagus nerve, which is the great highway from the gut to the brain, you actually do change the whole, well, I don’t know the exact aspect. But if you’re affecting the parasympathetic nervous system, you’re going to decrease neuronal activity in areas that you don’t want it to be hyperactive. So breathing, that’s how come calming breathing increases parasympathetic, exhaling, and that’s how come there’s so much meditative yoga. And there’s so many things like that there’s a physiologic thing that goes on if you do it, right. Which also brings up an interesting point, because I just thought of this, just now, every time I’ve ever done yoga, like a yoga class, and I’ve done quite a bit, it’s mainly just to kind of get it out of the way. It’s like, I’m gonna go do my stretching thing. And when they say home, and they do this, and I had cognitive dissonance, I was like, I was gonna argue the fact we don’t really need to make these weird sounds, can we just stretch? And now I just realized, and here I am, I did that. I went in there with a disagreeing attitude of why we have to do these other things I just wanted to get my stretch on. And I’m at fault for that. I just realized, I just noticed that there it is,

49:03
you know, even when someone’s intubated in surgery, in your right eye when you’re applying the yoga and the humming or whatever, because basically, you’re creating resistance for the air to leave the lungs, etc. The hyperinflation of the lungs. Well, guess what we do someone’s intubated and we need a valsalva maneuver, we basically just hyper inflate the lungs, but we’re just doing it mechanically. And it’s because it’s been proven time and time again that that is going to stimulate the vagus nerve and get the acetylcholine from the Vagus,

49:34
man. See, this is what I liked that book so much. They went into that where they said that if you slow exhale while humming through your nose, you actually increase nitric

49:44
oxide in the blood as well. Yeah, because you need the veza dilation to bring in blood that’s been metabolized or the blood it’s been bringing the metabolites co2 back to the lungs be breathed off. I mean, it just goes in that cycle over and over again. And it’s kind of cool because this is This is really why I want to do this show, I think because later after you do some more Wim Hof, because I’m really curious on how they explain it to the layperson. Maybe we could lay down a little bit of physiology that way that if someone’s sitting there, sitting on the edge of Wim Hof, or nesters ideas, we can actually show physiologically why what they’re saying,

50:20
actually makes a lot of sense. And there’s a lot of science on this. I think that a lot of academic institutions have used him as a guinea pig because he allows it because he’s not only a believer, he is the example he Yes, and then they can show all these different physiologic changes, but it’s really cool. So like, I’m thinking, you know, practice, practice what we preach here. I don’t know like next time I find myself in an argument with somebody have something locked and loaded, that you can agree on just so that you can almost like press the reset button. Possibly. Yeah. Oh, wait, hold on. I know that you’re doing this. But if you’re noticed, and then just something that’s kind of that everybody will agree on me. Of course, everybody likes Jolly Ranchers. Yeah. You know, that’s high fructose corn syrup. Yeah. I was just thinking of things that people would normally like. Yeah, normally.

51:11
Yeah. Honestly, in today’s climate, I don’t know that there’s any one thing other than you could say oxygen is good to breathe. And Sun is good most of the time.

51:20
I know that the Lord is gonna call you up be like Eric, what happened? Every time that I want to tell him to go clean his room or something? He says that that don’t you think that my hair looks pretty? It’s it’s become a weird tick. I

51:35
think we need to scan as bright as the common

51:39
that’s common ground.

51:40
Yeah. Well, man, awesome. Awesome. Surprise there. I love I love the topic.

51:47
But we’re good. We’re gonna get sciency Yeah, we’re gonna have some guests on that can can kick some knowledge on their books and on the on the research that they’re doing?

51:53
Yeah, keep an eye out for Olivia and Aiden to be joining the podcast here really, really soon. Sweet. I’m excited about that. And we’re still not finished with the installments on on the immune system, literally. Keeping up with the email over the last episodes, as well as preparing for a couple of other things. Just the new year is etc. We’ve had a really bizarre shake up in our schedule at the info center. Whether we’re full or not full of random times. There’s news. Yeah, life still goes on here too. Hey, we

52:26
got a new president of the United States.

52:30
Oh, yeah, that’s right. I forgot about that.

52:32
So there was immediately executive orders, which were like, Oh my gosh, how’s this gonna affect us? And

52:36
did you know what we have to work? We still have to put gas in the car. So take care of the kids. Ultimately, all politics is still local. I still gotta be nice to everybody around the house. You know, you said

52:48
you put in order gas in the car then kids and I know deep down USA stuff to work got to buy my Waterloo. Oh, Bill, the gas

52:57
that’s given. It’s like taxes,

52:59
Episode 48. So next time, if number one, hopefully you will never get COVID if you do get COVID and it’s mild. Keep an eye out that there appears to be a low level inflammatory response which could lead to other things so control the inflammation by controlling your diet eating a very colorful plate. Top zinc Yeah, takes a vitamin D. The polyphenols in our trunk to have been shown to help with the innate immune system. See Episode 47 your sleep? Absolutely. pillars. So any parting words hurt

53:30
now? Thank you all for for I mean, seriously, the the last two episodes the amount of email sharing. Thank you. Yeah, and I appreciate it.

53:40
Yeah. So please, like subscribe, the usual stuff, share it. We want to try and get the word out and if there’s any questions or anything, email them, we try to get to it. We have Angie Coker secret weapon who will find any article anywhere in the world at any hour.

53:57
Yeah, he gets some sleep.

54:01
All right. Thanks, everybody. Bye bye. It’s

54:02
Episode 48 till later