Podcast: E40 - Wk 3, The BWW Masterclass

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So we're talking today about exercise and sleep, and we're gonna go over the food in just a second. Let me kind of give you the frame of this. We're talking about mindset, assessment, sustenance, training and habits. So when we look at the seven steps to create mastery, we're looking  at training and habits for this week. Training and habits, right? We were on sustenance last time and now we're on training and habits as well as not necessarily sustenance, but responsibility. Because working on exercise and sleep, it does put a lot of pressure on you. That definitely is  different.  These are things that you're gonna have to have good rhythms around indefinitely for good brain health, okay? And so there's like a lot of pressure in our program um when it comes to like, is something that you need to have mastery around and this is your responsibility.  So I do wanna, I want us to look at it from those two perspectives, okay?

All right, so that's where we are in our seven steps and let's go backwards one. So let's review, let's do an overview. Fiber at 30 to 50 grams a day. And you may wanna just take a picture of this slide, right? Fiber at 30 to 50 grams a day. Protein at every meal and snack protein for the day equals half your body weight in grams as an  absolute minimum as an  absolute minimum.

Okay, so we said kick the sugar habit. It is very harmful to the brain. We talked about sugar a lot. Eat healthy fats. Eat healthy fats. That's your salmon, that's your fish oil, that's all the things. Nuts, all the olive oil. Do not eat close to bedtime. Do not eat close to bedtime. Read labels or just buy food that doesn't have labels, right? All right, so the value of sleep, seven to eight hours.  Sleeping seven to eight hours. The brain integrates memories from the day. So that's your rapid eye movement, okay? So REM is where we do that integration  of memories from the day. It prepares your brain for the next day. And actually, um lack of sleep allows a pile up of junk in the brain.  And I don't know if you've heard of this before. And again, my sincere apologies that you cannot see me today.  I don't know if you've heard of  glymphatic detox. I don't know if you've heard of this. um Glymphatic detox is not part of the Amen Clinic um training. And some of the things I've added to  this deck, to these slides are gonna be just things that have shown up in the research and things that I talk about in my practice a lot.  So um I wanna say that we're gonna be talking here at this moment about lymphatic detox and elevated positioning. Okay, so there is a lymphatic system in the body that we knew. So lymphatic system in the body.

They didn't know that the brain had its  own lymphatic system specifically for drainage of the brain. I think just in the last three to five years, they realized this. So when you don't get enough sleep, you don't allow your brain to detox. And that can be part of what happens when we start talking about dementia and Alzheimer's and just all of these brain threatening things that occur.  It is super important for us to detox our brain. Okay.  So when it talks about this lack  of sleep allows a pile up of junk in the brain, we're talking about the glimphatic detox, glimphatic detox. Okay.

And so that's a really important thing to keep in mind. That's something you can take away from our sleep talk today and do something about, okay,  is to make sure, okay, I know I need to let my brain detox. So much of the body is healing in the sleep, right, in the seven to eight hours of sleep. The first few hours of sleep, your body tries to as best it can do organ repair and deep muscle tissue repair.

So you'll find that in the deep sleep in the first few hours, that's what it's really doing. um Then you can see that your body will get into more of the REM phase a little bit later  on.  You'll hit an early REM and then you'll hit more REM later on.  But then glymphatic detox actually occurs later in the sleep cycle. So you really do want to make sure you're getting all of your sleep because the different hours actually do different things. Glimphatic detox elevated positioning  is you need to not be laying completely flat. You need to not lay completely on your belly.

Side sleeping is ideal with a slight elevation. So that means slightly pile some pillows up so that your brain can drain into the lymphatic system and remove the junk that piled up in your brain.

There's so much argument about how to sleep, positioning of sleep, all these things. And the research is very clear that your brain needs a little assistance getting some of the gunk that it is removed from the brain into the lymphatic system via um the back channels of  the skull and along the neck. So if your neck is compressed, if you're laying on your belly with your head kind of arched back and you're not in the right positioning, you're not facilitating great detoxification.  So a little bit of elevation and ideally sleeping on the right side is better for this detox process.

Lot of um feelings around detoxing on the right side because the liver is over on that right side, liver gallbladder. The left side can put a little bit of pressure on the heart, but at this point, nobody is going to really fuss with you, whether it's right or left side. It's just better to not be laying face down into your pillow with your neck compressed, with your body completely flat. You really want to try to get over to your side.  And so that's not part of this particular training. That's just the continued mentorship that I receive around what's ideal for detoxification. um Okay, so the sleep strategy beyond that, did I cover my little notes that I put? Lymphatic system,  And hopefully we know what the lymph system is. If we don't, I can talk about that towards the end of this sleep talk. um Both sleep and exercise are super important for lymphatic detoxification and cleansing.  So the sleep strategy, care about your sleep.

So when I started navigating having an autoimmune disorder and that diagnosis, um one of my mentors said that what he tells his lupus patients is to  sleep like life depends on it, like it's your job. It is your job. I always look at sleep as something that is like a responsibility I have.  And that's why I highlight it. Responsibility is one of our seven steps here. um It is my responsibility to facilitate sleep so that my body can do  its God given job. Right? It was designed, I don't even have to do anything. I just have to close my eyes. I just have to turn off the TV, put down the phone.

You know, not be excited before. I don't have to do anything. Like it's an amazing system where it repairs itself. It detoxes. I just have to get out of the way. I just have to facilitate the process, right? I mean, that's, that's what's so crazy. Sleep is not like dietary choices where we have to say no, no, no, no. Oh yes. No, no, no, no. Yes. Right. It's all day. It's all these decisions. Sleep is just, okay. 9 30 is bedtime. 10 o'clock is bedtime, 10.30 is bedtime. Whatever the time is, that is the bedtime. And from there, I'm gonna get seven to eight hours of sleep and I'm going to set my room up to allow for this. And I'm going to detox to the best of my ability. Okay,  so stop doing things that disrupt sleep. Blue lights before bed, right? So that's your laptop, that's your phone. 

There are no TVs in bedrooms. TVs are a big no-no for bedrooms. um That's it. They're just a big no-no for bedrooms. So, okay. So we just don't do that. m And, oh, your bedroom should be pretty chilly. So we wanna have a pretty chilly bedroom.  Whatever that means to you, whatever that means to you, your body heats up with all of this stuff. Look at all the stuff it's gotta do at night, right? It's doing all these things.

So it tends to warm up overnight.  And so we need the room to be cool. We need the room to be quiet. um We just need to stop doing things that would disrupt sleep.  People sleep with their animals. I tend not to judge. I just ask that if it's an 80 pound dog, we might need to reconsider this. This is not going to be supportive of sleep. um Don't eat in bed. That's a big pet peeve of mine. I just don't like it. Don't eat in bed.  Don't eat close to bed. Just don't do things that disrupt sleep. Okay, big no-no. Some of these are big no-no's. Do the things that support sleep, right? So that's what we're saying with the cold room.  sleep, I'm a little bit of an odd sleeper. So  I do all the things that support sleep. um I sleep in clothes that are really soft. I sleep with the room cool, but I also have an eye mask. I also turn off all cell phones and put everything in. Do not disturb. um I'm a fan of making sure that um the Wi-Fi is off in the house so that because they have research that the EMS in the house can be very disruptive to sleep.  And I tend to be sensitive to everything. If you can be sensitive to it, I'm probably going to be. So I just turn that off. ah I also sleep with um these earplugs that are made out of an eco material that are not like your normal old fashioned earplugs, but they look  like wax. They actually look like wax  and they completely block sound because I'm a very light sleeper. And that started to develop um with having an autoimmune disorder. I was always a little light, but not like I am now.  And so I can sleep anywhere now because these things block out all sound. I have slept on airplanes. I slept  on busy streets and hotels.

These things are amazing. And so I block out light, I block out sound. And if you can sleep with a bit of a weighted blanket, that can also be really good for you as well. Okay. So if you have a weighted blanket and you have experimented with that, that can be really good for you as well. So these are things that support sleep. Okay. And if you have questions about anything I propose, you can always put it in the chat so that way you don't forget it and we can come back to it. Okay, so what are the things that rob you of sleep? What are the things that rob you of sleep? Gadgets.  So TV doesn't allow you to get deep sleep. And this really hurts most people's feelings. So many of my clients have TVs in their rooms. They do not like for me to say this,  but TVs don't allow you to get into deep sleep. um Okay, there we go. Caffeine.

Oh, let me back up. Let me just say it's not just  TV. It's going to be playing with your phone. It's going to be being on your iPad. All of these things interfere with being able to get into that deep sleep. em Your uh the watches, the smartwatches need to be turned off. They need to be put into do not disturb. All of these things we have to we have to worry about now. Okay.

Caffeine, alcohol, medications,  all of these things. Caffeine needs to be six hours away from bedtime. Six hours away from bedtime. Alcohol is not helpful to sleep. So we want to avoid alcohol before bed. Despite all of what we think, it is actually not helpful to sleep. So we want to avoid that. People will find that it might help them initially fall asleep, but what it ultimately does is disrupts their sleep. Medications, unless it's some sort of sleep support medication, which I tend to ask clients to not do.

If you can avoid taking some sort of sleep medication,  that's always ideal. If we could do something natural, learn how to work with the body naturally,  that is preferred. But  outside of that, medications really need to be away from bedtime. One of the things that could be disrupting your sleep is one of your medications. Okay, so it cannot be warm. A warm room is not helpful. There cannot be light. I like blackout  curtains.  I like for people to really take seriously all of these things that make the room super dark. um Close the door, cover any sort of lights that are coming off  of, um whether it's a plug or something like that. You want to just be aware that these things can really, and let me interrupt and say this, let me interrupt my train of thinking here. A gentleman I really respect wrote a book a long time ago  about sleep.

And you actually have light receptors on your skin.  You have light receptors on your skin. So it's not just your eyeballs that we're worried about. Okay. So if there is light in the room, you have light perception in your skin. And so we really need the room to have light blocking and always. So like some of us have these charging blocks and we have a little light on it that needs to be covered up. We need to just really block the light  and the devil is in the details. It's these little things that can really mess people up.

That's why we're talking about it.  Noisy. You want to make sure that um it is not noisy, right? You want to make sure that um if it is, if there's any kind of like sound around you outside of the house, that kind of thing you're putting in your earplugs, you have an option for that.  Now, the other thing we need to do is process feelings like worry,  anger, um anxiety. um

If you're having a hard time discharging some of this, I actually recommend to people that they do squats, uh they do jumping jacks, they do something to discharge all of this angst before bed.

Restless leg, um that's a big problem for people. So that's something that you want to  take to your MD and have a discussion around just like what's going on  so that you are able to get good sleep. So having restless leg and not having that addressed can be a serious problem.

Sleep apnea. There are so many reasons that sleep apnea is a problem.  Not getting oxygen to the brain while you're sleeping is a massive problem. Okay. So you want to get sleep apnea diagnosed and get it treated.  I have  always seen people who have shift work, who work overnight, who work into bedtime. And let me talk about that here in just a moment. um Have a really hard time with getting restorative sleep. Okay, so then I'll have people who are nurses, I'll have people who  maybe they get home at 11 o'clock, so then they can't fall asleep until one or two o'clock. um And that really disrupts their whole circadian rhythm. You really wanna try to get to sleep before midnight. You really wanna try to get to sleep before midnight.

If you are sleeping on the other side of midnight for every hour  on the other side of midnight that you are awake, you need to add an hour. So what that means is if you go to bed at one o'clock, now you need instead of seven to eight hours of sleep, you need eight to nine. If you go to bed at two, nine to 10. For every hour on the other side of midnight, that you are going to sleep, have to add an extra hour of recovery.

And attention deficit.  Attention deficit tends to create a situation where people are not able to fall asleep when they're supposed to,  and they tend to  not be able to wake up in the morning. So untreated attention deficit disorder  actually is a sleep robber. And so we need to make sure that ADHD is treated. And so I have a number of ADHD  clients and patients in the practice.

And what we do is we always try to make sure they've got good exercise during their day, they are supplemented.  And  oftentimes I have to give them something to help them set their sleep rhythm, get their circadian rhythm managed. What helps  sleep? What helps sleep? Meditation.  Meditation, things like heart math things like using,  I don't know if y'all are familiar with heart math, but heart math, things like using binaural beats, hypnosis, all of these things help with falling asleep. I have clients that will use special music to help them sleep.  Whatever it requires, you want to really consider using all of these different things to help you to fall asleep.  You're trying to do all kinds of things. You're trying to get your prefrontal cortex to turn off the rest of your brain so that you can get into deep sleep. um

So whatever, and you notice we did not start with supplements. We started with calming the brain down, right? A cool, dark, quiet room. All right, I had beat that drum to death. oh A cool, dark, quiet room.  Solve emotional issues before you go to bed. Please do not go to  bed angry, irritated, anxious. This is not gonna help you sleep. The limbic emotional part of your brain is gonna be way too active. Now, we take melatonin no more than 14 days at a time, but you can take melatonin.  I don't recommend taking, like you have to pick your position.  You either take one to two milligrams of melatonin or you take mega doses, like six to 10, if not 15 milligrams of melatonin.

Taking small amounts of melatonin are actually, it's not as helpful. like take a really, really small amount or a large amount, but the medium doses chronically actually make it so that your brain  will stop making its own melatonin because it's actually a hormone. So melatonin is kind of like thyroid hormones, sex hormones, melatonin is its own hormone.  And if your body detects a lot of exogenous, so outside of the body, melatonin coming in, it will shut down its own production. So I tell people, you go  on uh melatonin for short periods of time  and  then come off of it. So you wanna weave it in and out. And you're really using it to tell your brain what time bedtime is. So when people travel  or they've been sick or something's going on or it's been the holidays.

I get them on melatonin just to get their brain to know, oh, OK, 8 PM, 9 PM, 10 PM, this is my bedtime. Because that's what it does. It helps us to reset when bedtime is.  Magnesium, most people are chronically  deficient in magnesium. So the types of magnesium, glycinate is a good one. If you're looking to try to take magnesium.  There are also Trimag formulas that can be really good. You just want to avoid...Oh, what is the one I want you to avoid?  Oh, it starts with a G. There's the,  it's magnesium oxide.  So that's one, put that here, you want to avoid magnesium oxide and then it was energy, was a C, citrate. Oops, that's not quite how you spell it, citrate. Okay, those two are for constipation. Those aren't going to help with sleep. So we don't need citrate and we don't need oxide, you need glycinate and then all the other ones that you come in contact with or Trimag. As long as the Trimag does not have ah the citrate  or the uh oxide in it. Those help with constipation. So I actually will put into people's protocols, oxide and citrate for bedtime for constipation. The rest of them, you can take mega doses, and I mean mega doses of magnesium  to help with muscle cramps, to help with restless leg and to help with poor sleep.  As part of my diagnosis with an autoimmune disorder and fibromyalgia, pain has been a big piece of it.  And one of the things that has saved me is  and kept me off of pharmaceuticals  is magnesium. Magnesium in  all its just various forms. I love magnesium. So I take magnesium  and I take all the different forms of magnesium and then I rub it all over everything. I put it on my feet, especially the soles of your feet are a great place for you to absorb magnesium for pain and discomfort and for sleep and then I put it on the painful areas. Okay. I cannot emphasize enough if sleep and pain or  muscle spasms are your problem, then you need to be using magnesium if you or your child,  we do have somebody who sent in a question about having  muscle cramps at night.  If you're having muscle cramps, then you need um electrolyte powder but it also needs to have magnesium in it.  a muscle um relaxing formula would be something that's an electrolyte powder that has magnesium mixed in. Okay,  now, um if you  are a worrier, okay, if you tend to run... uh

If you're in pain or if you worry about things, you need to add something that has a little bit of serotonin support in it. Okay.  Um, and so that's what these two are five HTTP and SMS.  These are going to be serotonin support formulas.  Um, that's going to show up when we do your brain typing. Okay.  Um, and I tend to be a little careful with telling people to just take serotonin support formulas  because I don't, I don't want to go that route first.

We need to be working a bit more individually and then we need to trial 5-HTP and serotonin support to see if that's exactly what you need. Because sometimes I find that serotonin actually can be activating and agitating for people uh when that's not the reason they're having a hard time sleeping. So we just want to be mindful and careful with that, okay? um Sound therapy, I think we all know like white noise, pink noise, all the different kinds of noise,  all the different sounds of nature and all of those things that can be helpful. Warm feet, cold feet are not gonna work. So we need a cold room, but we need warm feet. Isn't that something? Warm feet with magnesium on them and a cold room with a weighted blanket. I swear, right? You would think like that guy said, you need to act like it's a job, sleep like it's a job, right? Like your life depends on it because in some cases it really can.. it really can depend on it. um And uh getting this right can make a huge difference. I think part of how I put lupus into remission was really taking the sleep seriously.  You don't mess with my sleep. You just don't mess with my sleep. Everybody knows that now.  So I take it very, very seriously. You cannot stress me out in your bedtime,  all of these things. um And that has really, really helped my body to get into REM and then to get into deep muscle recovery. um Okay, and then lavender.  I had my  nieces here and um ever since I've had them around and near me, which has been the last few years,  when they come to visit, I spray down their pillows with lavender and I spray the air with lavender and they have come to expect that.  So we always get requests for lavender to be sprayed in the room and diffused and all of the stuffed animals have to have lavender. It's this whole thing. But don't we all wish we learned all these little things earlier in life, right? Knowing what calms us, what we need to be doing for it. Because there's so many teenagers with sleep disturbances and dysregulated sleep patterns that I have to kind of teach these things to. So my parents listening here, these things can help your child. The lavender, the magnesium cream on the feet. The room being cool, they can't be too hot. All of these things are easy so that we're not giving children all of these things that change their neurotransmitters and change their  melatonin, their hormone that is melatonin. So  sleep affects 60 million Americans at some point in their life, which is huge, which is huge.  Okay, so  research has been done around the accuracy and accuracy of, this is always done on the military of course, on soldiers and sleep and how it impacts them, right? So at seven hours of sleep, soldiers are 98 % accurate in target practice. And with every hour, and that's what I'm trying to make super clear here, there's something that happens with every hour of sleep.

But with every hour, we lose significant accuracy, every hour. At just six hours of sleep, just losing one hour, we go from 98 % accuracy to 50%, 50 % accuracy, which is just incredible. From six to five hours, they are 28 % accurate with their target and at four hours they might as well just hang it up. 15 % accurate. And that is because all that great detox that I was talking about and all these wonderful things that needed to happen, none of that happened. You know what they got? At four hours they got muscle repair. That's all they got. That didn't help their brain. So like if their quadriceps or legs or their feet were  fatigued from the previous day, all they would have gotten with that four hours is repair of muscles, but not brain healing and not glymphatic detox. You really need to get seven hours of sleep. You really need to shoot for that seven hours of sleep. And then I have clients that are working with me and I'll find that there are a number of people in my practice getting way too much sleep. So I also don't like to see anything north of nine hours. I don't want nine and a half, 10, 11, 12 hours of sleep.

You're not supposed to need that much sleep. Unless you're a baby or a teenager and only at certain times as a teenager, you are not supposed to need that much sleep. Something's wrong. That's what I tell my clients. Something's wrong. Do we have any questions about sleep? I just think sleep is absolutely fascinating. And it's like I said, it's very passive. It's an easy thing. It is a low hanging fruit.

Nutrition is so much harder than sleep. And it seems like, yes.  Well, it was interesting what you said about uh no one needing more than seven, eight hours because I was thinking about my daughter.  So I've been wondering, I like I grew up, you know, bedtime nine or,  you know, whatever. And  so I pass it on to her, basically trying to get her in bed by nine. But she tends to be awake at six o'clock before six. Yeah, around six o'clock when she wakes up. Right. So she's right there. mean, how old is she? 16. 16. 16. OK. So different things will affect them. So teenagers are a funny bunch because they are notorious for just the sleep is all over the place. Sometimes hormones…hormonal shifts can make it so they need a little bit more. If she has, if she doesn't go right to bed at nine and it's more like nine 30, she's actually falling asleep and she's waking up right before six o'clock or at six. That's really putting her at like that eight and some change. Okay. If she gets up to go to the bathroom, cause I actually have a lot of my clients in my practice deeply, deeply, like I really should have some sort of, I should invest. I think I'm going to leave this call and I'm going to invest in Oar Rings  because I deeply believe in telling people to buy like an Oar Ring  or a Whoop and I prefer Oar Rings because their science is better.  And I monitor so many um sleep apps for clients.

The data is astounding. It's how many times my kiddos are waking up. I'm like, what were you doing up at two o'clock in the morning? Like, what did you do? You were up for like 20 minutes. Like I can tell them what they were doing or they're kicking all night or they laid there for 40 minutes and couldn't fall asleep or you'd think they got up at six, but they really woke up at 5.15 and it's like, well, what were you doing then? So it's a lot of us lose sleep over the night.

A lot of us lose sleep. I tell them, set yourself up for success, what you are doing with your daughter,  you're basically setting her up for like nine hours of sleep.  I doubt she's sleeping that whole full nine hours. I rarely see that with um these sleep gadgets.

Yeah, she tells me she takes about half an hour or an hour to to sleep.  So then you're like at perfection because she's probably getting around eight hours, which is exactly for a teenager where she needs to be. But I have teens coming  in sleep deprived at 10 hours and  more and they were in bed for 11 hours. And that's what I worry about. Those are my kiddos that are not okay. They're actually unwell. And that data communicates that.  So I think you're doing just fine.

Yeah, yeah, they need the higher end. The teenagers do need the higher end. um So that nine hours, you know, would be OK. But I think she's coming in around eight and some change and that's perfect.

Okay, thank you. Yeah, absolutely.  Absolutely.  Again, this is one of our easier things to do. Exercise harder than sleep.  Harder than sleep. So if you take anything away from today, do the easier thing. Go to bed. Just put yourself to bed. Turn off the TV. Put the devices down.  Your body just needs you to get out of its way. Just get out of its way. Let it do its job. That will help you with your weight. That will help you with your brain…your digestion.  For me, was an autoimmune disorder.  It is amazing what you can do at sleep because exercise, um that's harder and it's an absolute requirement.  Frailty kills a lot of people. Broken hips sends you to the hospital. My grandmother, God bless her, keeps falling down in the house. She's about to be 84 and she just, lives by herself.  And I'm like, this, my poor grandma, she won't move in with any of us.

And she keeps falling down and I'm just like, know the data, know? And so  we need to be strength training. We need to be walking. need to, you know, the muscles,  there's a ton of research around how muscles actually help brain health now.  They always thought it was just cardio, but the muscles are powerhouses for energy production and help keep the brain healthy.  So we need to be working out. um The people with the most muscle, and the most brain reserve have the highest chance of recovery and going back to a normal life if something puts them in the hospital, if something happens to them, if there's a traumatic brain injury. So I'm a big fan of gym time. Okay, it's what you do. Like just doing squats strengthens the cerebellum, which is the back part of the brain.  It makes your brain stronger.  exercise is not for vanity,  it is for longevity.

And then vanity is a lovely  side benefit here, but it is really for brain health. Okay. um You need muscle reserve built. So you gotta lift weights. You gotta build muscle. um So,  and this is coming out of the Amen clinics. This is not even my data. um Exercises is a fountain of youth. You can't exercise your way out of a bad diet. So I want you to know that it's probably about 70 % diet and then 30 % exercise and strength training that creates the body that you want and then the brain that you want. So you cannot, I've always said that over the years, you can't exercise your way out of a bad diet. Though there are many athletes that believe that they can. I have the data to show that you can't.

More muscle on your body, excuse me, more muscle in your body, the more calories you burn overall, helps your metabolism.  Bone density is critical for women who run the risk of osteoporosis.  So you do need  denser bones, strength training does that for you. So does vitamin D and a healthy diet with lots of protein. Walking two times a week has the same effectiveness as taking ZOAFT. Movement  is designed to help us deal with mood issues. Movement also helps with sleep. Super important to move.  My auraring will say, and I have lots of apps for data, boy, you get deeper sleep when you work out. Well, of course I do. I burn off all the stress.  I burn off all kinds of things that are bothering me and I can process stuff. um And then because of the muscle repair that has to happen due to the workouts, um my body goes into a deeper version of sleep.

So if you don't know what to do, walk like you're late four days a week. Just move fast, okay? Do four or five one-minute bursts of speed walking. Lift weights, especially if you're a woman, because we are very prone to osteoporosis.

Now this is the minimum. Okay, four days a week, you need to move like you're late.  You need to do one  minute bursts of speed walking. So this is called high intensity interval training. So HIIT, that's what those boosts are, those bursts of speed walking, high intensity interval training.  There is a ton of brain research on HIIT training. So I tell everybody they have to do HIIT.

People don't like exercise because they have a negative association with it. So make it something fun instead, right? I love playing tennis. So that's really fun for me. um I love to dance.  I love um exercise set to music that's choreographed. I don't even feel like I was exercising when I do that. That's fun, right? So I would do like kickboxing to music on beat because that was fun…anything you can do to make it go by quickly.

All movement matters. You pick what you want to do. Now, different brain lobes, like different kinds of  movement. So there's that part, but all of it is important. And if I didn't say do something fun already, please do something fun.  So try to make it fun.  One of my clients was recently telling me she just schedules um walking dates with all of her friends because that way she has the social time and then the accountability. She won't ever stand anybody up and she'll go and walk and talk with them.  And they can walk and talk 45 minutes one direction, meaning they have to walk back 45 minutes. So that helps her, which is a lot of walking. um Now, here's what I'm telling you. This is me going off script. This is not from the Amen Clinic. The research is super clear that anything you do four days in a week changes your brain.

So clients ask me, it enough that I did two days of exercise? And I say it in a loving way because I want you to be around for your family. No. So I'm glad that you did that and it's good that you did that, but two days out of seven is not going to change anything.

Two days out of seven is not gonna change anything. So maybe you got some detoxification and some energy improvement on those two days, but there are seven days in a week. You have got to do what you're going to do more than the days that you don't do that thing, okay?  So I need four, I need four, four, four, four, four. Okay, I take four days at 10 minutes  over  one day for 40 minutes. That is how important it is.

I have said through way too many trainings, you're getting the gift of all the stuff that's in my brain and I promise you I would not lead you astray. You have got to do this four days a week. And then change happens. So when I work with children, I tell their parents, I'm giving you a ton of homework. You've got to do all these exercises for the brain with your children.  And I'm sorry, but three days ain't gonna cut it. need four. I need this child's brain to change in the...

The amazing things I see in my practice when these parents give me five days a week  of whatever the thing is for their child, the brain changes. The brain changes. And I've seen it and I've been trained in it.  And so please move four days a week. If you take sleep, exercise, hydration and protein away from this program, your life will be changed. It'll change it. I promise you. We're not that hard. We make this really complicated.  Human beings are not that hard to keep upright if we just do the basics, right? um You can make anything a HIIT workout. All my clients love to overcomplicate things. And it's like,  you poor baby, why do you tell yourself that it has to be so complicated? It's like, I have to go to a gym. No, you don't. No, you do not. Go outside, walk slow, and then walk really fast for a minute, and then walk slow for two minutes, and then walk really fast for a minute. That's high intensity interval training.

That's all you have to do. Watch TV, march in place, then march in place really intensely while you pump your arms, and then march in place slowly.  And then march in place really intensely, and then march in place slowly. Now you're doing high-intensity interval training.  And if you do it wearing a heart rate monitor, some sort of gadget that tells you where your heart rate is, then now you can prove that it was high-intensity interval training, and you have just saved your brain. You just saved your brain by doing that.

Do that four days in a row. That's all you gotta do. That's it. Okay? So now 30 minutes is my idealized minimum because that's what the research is showing. That's gonna absolutely change the brain. But I told you, I'll take four days, 10 minutes, because anything you do four days in a row or four days period, not even a row, will change your brain.

So they've done tons and tons and tons of research on meditation.  And they have found that people that meditate for an hour a day, five days a week, literally increase the thickness of the front part of the brain. There are very few things that can grow brain tissue, but meditation has been researched to actually grow brain tissue. They found that at five days a week, for an hour, the thickness of the front part of the brain increases but they also found that there is more um conductivity across neurons and receptor sites in the prefrontal cortex at 10 minutes a day of meditation.

So yes, an hour of exercise would be amazing and 30 minutes is the gold standard, but 10 can change your brain. 10 can change your brain. Cardio and toning are a must. So if you decided to do some high intensity cardio work, like the knee pumping and the fast walking, like I said, and then you sat somewhere and you did some wall squats, maybe you don't do like burpees or something like that, but you're squatting against the wall or you hold yourself in a plank, that's toning work. You do some toning with dumbbells, that's toning work. And I really want you to wear a heart rate tracking device, some sort of watch, some gadget that tells you where your heart rate is. Okay, good, right on time.  So the takeaway is the homework. Prioritize sleep, consider a sleep tracking device. And the one that I like is the OarRing. I just put that in the chat.

I really think it's a game changer. It really, just, it just is a game changer. just, people tell me that their nervous system is doing one thing and then the oar ring tells me it's doing something else. And I say, I'm sorry, but you're not in sympathetic every day. You're actually in parasympathetic most of the time. And then their whole perspective of their mental health and their physicality changes. Right? The ring tells me that. The ring tells me all kinds of things. Are they getting enough oxygen?

Are they, what kind of sleep quality they're getting, what time they went to bed. Then I can say things like, will you please stop going to bed so late? Like I can tell you like there's your, what your ring is telling on you.  So stop going to bed at midnight and start going to bed at 10. It just, anything  we measure, we can manage, right? Anything we measure, we can manage. I have absolutely fallen in love with measuring sleep data because it has changed my client's life. It really has and so exercise is a must. So that's, it's non-negotiable. We must exercise it for brain warriors,  high intensity interval exercise,  consider some sort of exercise tracking device. So you could get an Apple watch.  Um, the Oar Rings also track steps and they track, um,  exercise as well. I don't find them to be amazing for tracking exercise, but they will.  And then four days is the magic number. Four days is the magic number.

Okay, and so then our next lesson that we go to is mindset, appreciation, gratitude,  and all things psychological brain change. So what questions do we have about exercise? What questions do we have about sleep? Any gadgets that we have questions about? um Let me go back  up here. I said we could recap.

food and the 30 to 50 grams a day of fiber, protein at every meal and snack, half your body weight and grams of protein as an absolute minimum.  So if you weigh 200 pounds, you need a hundred grams of protein a day minimum.  Typical chicken breast has 30 grams of protein in it. And I just said you might need a hundred grams a day. So you would need the equivalent of three chicken breasts a day.  Easy.

And then some protein is typically something that people are not doing a very  strong, committed, focused job of, and it's going to change your brain. um Kick the sugar habit. um 20 grams for women, 25 grams a day for men, I mean, for children, and 30 grams a day for men. Eat healthy fats, lots and lots and lots of healthy fat.

We rely to, you don't need to a low fat diet. You need to eat a high fat diet, olive oil, nuts, salmon, grass-fed meats, if you can afford it. If you can't, then you just do the best you can.  But grass-fed beef and um chicken, um wild caught salmon, really clean fats. um Take your fish oils that are put in your protocol. Do not eat three hours before bedtime.

So, or within three hours of bedtime is the best way to say it. Your cutoff is supposed to be three hours. And then try to just buy foods that don't have a lot of labels. You know, keep that pretty simple.  Do you wanna let me know how food went? Y'all are coming off  of the holiday. m Did you  show up differently  for this holiday than you normally would? Do you have thoughts about um nutrition? 

Feel free to answer that question as well as have you had a plate that had more vegetables, healthier proteins, healthier fats on it here recently? Just all kinds of food questions.

So um we typically have  mac and cheese for Thanksgiving.  So I did for myself, I did a collie version.  Nice.  Congrats.  And decided to treat myself. So instead of just the basic cheese, I did  a Gruyere and some  smoked cheddar.

So, okay. Wow. You saved yourself all kinds of starches  with that. That was a very high fiber option. um And you saved yourself all kinds of starches. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. Did you feel like you were missing out? Actually, I didn't.  Yeah. Okay. So just remind yourself of that it didn't feel like missing out. It still felt decadent and it felt like, you know, like fun and a splurge  because you met the taste bud receptors where they were.  And I think cauliflower has come quite a way. So  that's fantastic. um Nice. And were you able to get, cause cauliflowers are vegetable though it was  summing out a carbohydrate there, but were you also able to get protein in and other like green veggies in?

The other thing is I'll throw this out there. Try not to eat the same proteins every single day. So I have a lot of food sensitivities in my practice and a lot of it  comes from people having eggs every single morning for breakfast  or having chicken every single day. So try to mix up your protein sources. And that's a more advanced tip. I'll typically once people are mastering some of the things that are on this slide. 

I'll come back around and I'll say, okay, so now Monday is a fish day and Tuesday is a turkey day and Wednesday is a chicken day and then Thursday is a fish day.  And I have people trying to make sure they rotate so then their body doesn't start to develop an inflammatory response because that's a big problem to foods it's been overexposed to.

And just the healthy fats, you know, olive oil…really lean into the olive oil. um I think it's something like two to three tablespoons a day of olive oil  are what we're talking about here. You don't want to cook in the olive oil. You want to drizzle it on top of the food after you cook it because it doesn't have a high smoke point. Avocado oil is better for cooking and um coconut oil has a higher smoke point.  You drizzle with  olive  oil.

But there's tons of research around just getting a variety of different fats in for brain health. So your omegas are super important, but you do need like seed oils and things like that, like pumpkin seeds, need um sunflower seeds, you need  walnuts and almonds, you need the different oils to be healthy. So, okay, all right, I think I am at my time.  So I'm going to close this out there.

Today was sleep exercise and a review of food. So I think we did it.  And I hope to have a computer that will show my face next time.  I don't know if we're just going on with my camera, but I am gonna keep working on that.  And then our next,  so this is, have two more left, two more weeks left.  And this is mindset, appreciation, and gratitude next.  And um I want to highlight how the mindset, because now you're learning all the behavioral things but now it's time to lean into changing the way your mind perceives these types of things.  And so mindset is the first step. I got to food and  certain things first because I  feel like assessment and sustenance are really hard  and I wanted to get those supplements rolled out  and I wanted to talk food early so we could keep coming back to it, but we're gonna hit mindset now so that you can kind of stay anchored there  and essence and responsibility. So that's where we'll go.

Okay, so good to see you. Thank you for hopping on with me. Thank you for listening to the recording wherever you are  enjoying this.