In this episode, we talk to Dr. Caroline Leaf about how the mind is different from the brain, mind management, the mindset behind the meal and why you’re actually supposed to be a mess.
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Dr. Caroline Leaf is a communication pathologist and cognitive neuroscientist with a Masters and PhD in Communication Pathology and a BSc Logopaedics, specializing in cognitive and metacognitive neuropsychology. Since the early 1980s she has researched the mind-brain connection, the nature of mental health, and the formation of memory. She was one of the first in her field to study how the brain can change (neuroplasticity) with directed mind input.
During her years in clinical practice and her work with thousands of underprivileged teachers and students in her home country of South Africa and in the USA, she developed her theory (called the Geodesic Information Processing theory) of how we think, build memory, and learn, into tools and processes that have transformed the lives of hundreds of thousands of individuals with Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI), Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE), learning disabilities (ADD, ADHD), autism, dementias and mental ill-health issues like anxiety and depression. She has helped hundreds of thousands of students and adults learn how to use their mind to detox and grow their brain to succeed in every area of their lives, including school, university, and the workplace.
Dr. Leaf is also the bestselling author of Switch on Your Brain, Think Learn Succeed, Think and Eat Yourself Smart, and many more. She teaches at academic, medical and neuroscience conferences, churches, and to various audiences around the world. Dr. Leaf is also involved in the global ECHO movement, which trains physicians worldwide on the mind-brain-body connection, mental health and how to avoid physician burnout.
Dr. Leaf is currently conducting clinical trials using the 5-step program she developed while in private practice to further demonstrate the effectiveness of mind-directed techniques to help relieve mental ill-health problems such as anxiety, depression and intrusive thoughts. The primary aim of these trials is to make mental health care more affordable, applicable, and accessible worldwide, and to reduce the stigma around mental health. @drcarolineleaf on all platforms (FB, IG, Twitter, Youtube)
Memorable Moments:
3:48 The conversation is mind and brain are the same thing and people think it is, but they’re worlds apart. The brain is not the mind. You are not your brain. You are your mind and you use your brain and that's a very distinctive difference.
5:27 Your mind, on a psychological level, can be understood as how you think, feel and choose. Those three go together. You can't think without feeling. You can't think and feel without choosing.
7:11 So in other words, it's agency. So this, you choosing is you with your wise mind having agency over your decisions, over how you think, how you feel and how you choose. And that agency is something that we need to be empowered to develop and understand. And if you don't understand this connection, you kind of just bamboozle through life, sometimes making a mess and sometimes fixing up the mess, and lot of times, staying in the mess. And the messier you are, the more extreme the state becomes. And then you end up with quite extreme mental health challenges, like severe depression and all the things that go along with that.
9:04 So mind-brain-body is kind of all of this and we can actually, with our mind, look at our behaviors, look at our emotions and everything, look at the signals, become thought detectors and deconstruct down to this, and find this thought and all its memories and be constructed and reconstructed.
10:15 The first thing is to accept that mess is inevitable and mess is okay. So that’s the first thing: you're human, you're alive, you're a mess. And that's just part of it. And it's actually normal.
10:37 In other words life, life is just circumstances and events that are not things that we can control. So the only thing we actually have agency over is our reactions to the uncertainties of life.
11:41 We've got to stop beating ourselves up about being messy. It is so part of our psycho neurobiology. We are wired and designed, whatever you want to say, for mess.
11:52 The messiness is part of this experimentation that our mind/brain/body's doing all the time. What we’re meant to do is observe how we are doing it. We’re meant to stand back and self-regulate, so there's self-regulation is the second part of the answer. The first part is that it’s okay to be a mess...And the second part is self-regulation.
14:02 You know, so it’s become about this, there’s something wrong with you at your core and you're not supposed to be a mess. Actually, that's completely wrong. You are supposed to be a mess. That's how you can grow, repair, and grow. You cannot grow if you cannot repair. And if you don't miss, you can't repeat. You have to miss, to repeat, to grow. And that's the philosophy that helps mental health.
24:51 But if your brain and body are not functioning well, if they physically, the material, the substance is not healthy, then that's going to impact how well your mind can actually use your brain and your body, because your mind uses your brain and your body. And so that's why nutrition is important.
26:05 Nutrition for your brain is important. If you're going to put a lot of processed chemicals in your brain, you are going to have a problem.
26:56 The nervous system in the gut is made from the same material as the brain, [they] come from the same fetal tissue. It has as many neurons. There are many neurons in the gut as there are in the spinal cord, and even a few more.
27:38 Everything in your body is vulnerable to toxic thoughts, and to life, everything in your body's vulnerable to life. Therefore if you, cumulatively over time, are living a very unmanaged life, your body is weakening daily and increasing your vulnerability to disease. So over time, the vulnerability is there, so that's why mind management is an absolutely critical factor when it comes to day-to-day living.
28:56 So we see over time, stress that is not dealt with, toxic stress, in other words, stress that has an effect, stuff that's not dealt with, will put you into a chronic state of toxic stress and toxic stress manifests with all these signals
32:57 We see that the brain and body are literally wired for love and where we regulate our mind. If you're operating in love, we actually drive a healthy regulation on our mind. And when you have a healthy, a person who's managing their mess in this love way, they become a human that's contributing to society in a healthy, loving way. And it's core to humanity.
Dear Mind, You Matter is brought to you by NOBU, a new mental health, and wellness app. To download NOBU, visit the app store or Google Play.
This podcast is hosted by Allison Walsh and Dr. Angela Phillips. It is produced by Allison Walsh, Ashley Tate, and Nicole LaNeve. For more information or if you’re interested in being a guest on this podcast, please visit www.therecoveryvillage.com/dearmindyoumatter.
Allison: Hello and welcome to the Dear Mind, You Matter Podcast. My name is Allison Walsh, I am a long time mental health advocate and Vice President at Advanced Recovery Systems. On each episode I will be joined by my colleague and clinical expert, Dr. Angela Phillips. This show along with our mental health and wellness app Nobu, are just some of the ways we are working to provide you with some actionable tips to take really good care of yourself each and every day.
So sit back, relax, and grab your favorite note taking device. It's time to fill your mind with things that matter
Angela: Dr. Caroline Leaf is a communication pathologist and cognitive neuroscientist with a Masters and PhD in Communication Pathology and a BSc Logopaedics, specializing in cognitive and metacognitive neuropsychology. Since the early 1980s she has researched the mind-brain connection, the nature of mental health, and the formation of memory. She was one of the first in her field to study how the brain can change (neuroplasticity) with directed mind input. She has helped hundreds of thousands of students and adults learn how to use their mind to detox and grow their brain to succeed in every area of their lives, including school, university, and the workplace.
Dr. Leaf is also the bestselling author of Switch on Your Brain, Think Learn Succeed, Think and Eat Yourself Smart, and many more. She teaches at academic, medical and neuroscience conferences, churches, and to various audiences around the world. Dr. Leaf is also involved in the global ECHO movement, which trains physicians worldwide on the mind-brain-body connection, mental health and how to avoid physician burnout.
Allison: Well, Dr. Leaf, thank you so much for being on our show today. Would you mind sharing a little bit more about yourself with our audience?
Dr. Leaf: Absolutely, thanks for inviting me. It's great to be with you all. Well, yeah, I'm a cognitive clinical neuroscientist and communication pathologist, and I've been doing mind brain research for nearly 38 years now.
Now I've been writing books for years and essentially what I do. I've been studying what the mind is, how to separate from the brain, how the mind shows up in the brain and how we as humans can manage that process. And I started with obviously a deep, deep clinical level with people with traumatic brain injuries, I did some of the first neuroplasticity research in my field, which is that the brain can change because of mind input. And then from there I saw that the system's working so well for people with trauma and traumatic brain injuries and neurological issues and dementia and Alzheimer's and autism and so on then, not only can we use it in a therapeutic sense, but the system based on theory and research or something I want to do continue developing and help people apply in the day-to-day life.
And because a huge part of being a human. Well, the most phenomenal, the most fundamental part of being human is the fact that we have a mind without a mind, we’re dead. The difference between us and a dead person is our mind. And so if we don't understand this most fundamental aspect of humanity. It's really going to have an impact on how we function and that's become very evident in the past 40 years.
There's been so much focused on the physical brain and not enough on the, on the mind and the interaction between the two. So I've tried to continue in that field to try and counter a lot of the negative stuff that has actually been captured over the last 40 years and, and change the narrative. Along with the other work I do. So it's kind of a cliff notes version of 38 years.
Angela: Amazing. Yes. We're such big fans and I think one of the things that we really love and connect with a lot no pun intended because we are talking a lot about the mind, mind, body connection, and I think a lot of our listeners are probably very familiar with that concept, but I know what you explained so well in so many different ways is really sort of bringing the brain into that. And so I sort of call it your brain, mind, body connection. Can you kind of explain sort of the differences or how you see these sort of like more or less three components really integrating and how you see that connecting in the body so that people are really, you know, connecting with what that meaning is.
Dr. Leaf: Such a good question and so important. I'm going to use some props if I may. So for the listeners, I'm holding up a brain in a skull, not a real one. And this has become a very huge focus of attention for the last 40 years. It’s always been a very big area of interest, but neuroscience has exploded.
And to the extent we people are so focused on the brain that the conversation is mind and brain are the same thing and people think it is, but they’re worlds apart. The brain is not the mind. You are not your brain. You are your mind and you use your brain and that's a very distinctive difference.
And also your brain is part of your body. So I'm going to use another little model, and this is a model of the brain and body. So the brain is also the body. So you've got a mind, you've got a physical brain and you've got a physical body and it's called psycho neurobiology. And so there's the work in my field is psycho neurobiology looking at that and then looking at the agency that we have in mind is the, which is, which comes first.
That's sort of chicken and egg. And then what level of agency do we have? So the mind is the first course. You can't see the mind physically, when you just look at it, you can see the brain and body. But mind is the thing that you can actually do, it's easy to understand because if I had a dead person sitting next to me, they couldn't do anything and their brain and body would be disintegrating, but everyone who's listening and watching it.
By having this conversation, we are alive. And if we had to put all the different types of brain technology that are used, like QEG, and sign onto the, onto our brains, we would see a tremendous response. We wouldn't see that in a dead person. We would also see responses in the heart. You would see the responses in the blood.
In other words, the stuff happening right now in our brain and our body and because of our mind. So the mind shows up in the brain and the body, your mind is the first cause, your mind on a psychological level can be understood as how you think, feel and choose those three to go together. You can't think without feeling, you can't think and feel with our choosing, we are, you are, we are all now thinking, feeling and choosing in cycles at 400 cycles, literally 400 cycles per second, which is like a lot to be able to process this information.
So mind is this enormous receiver, processor of life, and, the whole point, this thing is the sort of physics side of that. We have around the brain and the body of someone who's alive, we'll see specific gravitational fields and we'll see a little magnetic fields, and this is not anything weird.
This is what makes zoom technology work. It's not anything weird. Wherever it stops us floating. So people always say, oh, that’s weird, it’s not it’s hardcore science. We are hardcore science around us. When someone dies, they are actually weight-less, there's actually a shift that the field moves. No longer is a person able to generate electromagnetic effects or anything when you’re dead.
So we know that the physics side of this mind thing, which is just spurts of the body, whatever you want to call it, I call it mind. Because if you go back into all the ancient, scientific literature, as well as sort of spiritual literature, you'll find the word mind in use fairly consistently to describe this.
So I use my mind to encompass that whole concept and it's the think, feel, and choose rotational fields, electromagnetic forces and everything that makes us human. And it's gone when you’re dead. So when you understand that, and that's quite phenomenal because we have chosen to have this conversation, you choose the questions you're asking, you'll choose how to apply this information.
So in other words, it's agency. So this, you choose with your wise mind. And having agency over your decisions over how you think, how you feel and how you choose. And that agency is something that we need to be empowered to develop and understand. And if you don't understand this connection, you kind of just bamboozled through life, sometimes making a mess and sometimes fixing up the mess.
A lot of the time, staying in the mess and the messier you are the more extreme the state becomes. And then you end up with quite extreme mental health challenges, like severe depression and severe, and all the things that go along with that. But that's not an illness. Doesn't mean your brain is diseased, which is the message of today.
We tell them, oh, you're battling with depression five symptoms later. Oh, you have a brain disease. No you don’t have a brain disease. You have experienced something in life that's adverse, or a combination of factors. It's adverse. You haven't been able to or didn't know how to manage them, or you needed to support them together, or you're a victim of something.
And therefore that process has been thought, you've processed it to your thinking, feeling and choosing through all these fields that's now in your brain. But instead of building it as a healthy thought, which looks like a healthy tree made of proteins, it gets built as a toxic thought Toxic worry thought, which is any tree that I'm holding up, is a bolt in the brain.
So our mind builds the experience into the brain out of protein and with all these electrical, chemical and genetic responses. But this is a toxic one and this is a, this would be a healthy one. And these responses are then produced behaviors or communication, how we function in life.
And so, this is going to produce toxicity. This is going to produce health, whatever those look like, because it's obviously different, whatever the context is. So mind, brain, body is kind of all of this and we can actually put our mind and look at our behaviors, look at our emotions and everything. Look at the signals, become thought detectors and deconstruct down to this, and find the thought and all its memories and be constructed and reconstructed.
And that's essentially what mind management is. And that's something you can do. You should be doing daily in very fixed pockets of time, very deliberately of periods of time, because it takes time to rewire the brain and to change the patterns in the mind. And then you can also do a daily just to manage life because we should be self-regulating every 10 seconds.
That's what the mind, brain, body connection shows. So it's a long answer, but it kind of, there's a lot to unpack there, but you're welcome to unpack.
Allison: I can't wait to unpack. So, you know, you talk about the mental mess and my management and all of this, how can we avoid some of the mess, right. Like, and I know that it's all connected and you know, our thoughts and how we feel.
And, and all of that is so critical, but how do we prevent that messiness from kind of taking over.
Dr. Leaf: Okay. Excellent question. So mess, the first thing is to accept that mess is inevitable and mess is okay. So the first thing is you're human. You're alive, you're amazed. And that's just part of it. And it's actually normal.
It's actually very, very normal because we don't know what's coming up in the next, you don't know what's taking off this podcast. You're not sure what I'm going to say next. You're not sure what the loved ones in your life are going to do today. You're not sure what's going to happen politically.
In other words life, It's just circumstances, any bent on not things that we can control. So the only thing we actually have agency over is our actions to the uncertainties of life. And that's how we have to become very strong online because we need to be prepared to be thrown and to be like little researchers.
It's like we literally are all scientists because as a scientist, I don't know exactly what my outcome's going to be. I don't know that at all. So I have quite the size. I set up an experiment and I set up all the protocols and I have hypotheses. This is what I'm hoping I will see, but let's see what actually happens.
And that's what we do as humans. We hope that, you know, we, something happens that we kind of respond and we hope it's the right response. But sometimes you respond in a high emotional state and it's definitely not the right response because it affects us. It affects others and it makes the situation worse.
So, and that's, and that's okay. That's just normal. Okay. That didn't work, so I decided to try something else. A sort of summary of the answer to your question is that messiness needs to be accepted. We've got to stop beating ourselves up about being messy. It is so part of our psycho neurobiology, we are wired and designed whatever you want to say for mess.
We, the messiness is part of this experimentation, that our mind and body's doing all the time, what we meant to do is observe how we are doing it. We meant to stand back and self-regulate so there's self-regulation as the second part of the answer. The first part is that it’s okay to be a mess and I've described that.
And the second part is self-regulation. When you consciously awake, you should be self-regulating all the time. We see from neuroscience we can do this every 10 seconds. I don't mean you must watch your clock. Watch your watch every 10 seconds, but it's being deliberate and intentionally conscious all day long.
How am I saying what I'm saying? What is the impact? Looking at your facial responses, looking at the questions, responding to your questions, reading the situation, reading the body language of people around us, reading your own body language, monitoring that process. And that's how you catch it. That's how you see. Whoops. I've made a mess. This person's upset with me. Look at their face. My heart's got palpitations. I'm not judging the situation and then fix it, repair it. And in repairing it, we going to hit areas, we're going to hit people that don't want it to be repaired, or don't like the repairing , or don't like the boundary that you need to sit up.
But that's also part of being messy in us and you don't have to take someone else's messiness onto you. So you have to protect yourself in that aspect too. So in summary, it's okay to be a mess and you've got to self-regulate the mess so you've got to manage the mess, wise mind working with messy mind.
Does that make sense?
Angela: Absolutely. Yes. Thank you for teasing that apart a little bit more. I think that's one of the most difficult for people I'm sure initially, and maybe you've seen is actually accepting it first at first.
Dr. Leaf: It’s accepting it first yeah because we, in a world that is, has from religious and from wellness and from positive psychology movements that we've had very dominant over the last 40 years. This has become a thing of. Well, these are the five steps. Why haven't you fixed yourself? Or there's the rules of religion? Why aren't you fine? No, this just say your gratitude statements. Why aren’t you fine,you know it’s become about this, something wrong with you at your core. And you're not supposed to be amazing.
Actually. That's completely wrong. You are supposed to be amazed. That's how you can grow, repair, and grow. You cannot repair, or you cannot grow if you cannot repair. And if you don't miss, you can't repeat. You have to miss, to repeat, to grow. And that's the philosophy that helps mental health.
Angela: I love that. Absolutely. So you bringing up a lot of good points too around, and this reminds me of, you know, as we have these thoughts and they sort of naturally may spiral into what we described sometimes as toxic thoughts. And I know you work a lot with trauma and just a lot of people who are experiencing very challenging experiences.
How would you sort of describe being the expert that you are, what these thoughts are and what they're actually doing to our brain and our wellbeing. I know that's something that I hear a lot from people that they're really interested in sort of learning a little bit more about.
Dr. Leaf: Okay. So you've laid a good foundation with your initial questions because you've discussed mind, brain, body, and that they and that mind is how we experience experience and that it impacts the brain, shows up in brain and body, and then it impacts the brain and body.
So part of the work I've done is to look at the impact of, first of all, what is a thought? How does it fold? What are memories? Are they the same as thoughts? What are emotions? And if they both can be unfolded. We get the same width and we do people and what do they look like? So to answer that simplistically, every experience you have, like this podcast is an experience. The mind is thinking, feeling and choosing and your gravitational fields, all kinds of stuff. And all of this is landing in your brain.
And there's a very Interesting relationship as this energy goes into brain of the experience of this podcast, we’ll just use this as an example. It goes in your brain and creates a response. So the brain is a responder. And the brain responds electromagnetically and chemically and genetically and little proteins on me that holds the content of what I'm saying as vibrations.
And I know this is typical, but this is literally what's happening. If we sentence our say, your mind brain connection analyzes it and it takes around about 15% and bolts that 15% into proteins as vibrations, and then the proteins connect and make the full branches and the, and you do this very, very fast. So you can, at the end of this conversation, it could easily be two, 3000 concepts that have been shared.
And that means that, I'm going to take my little plants again, here, that means that we have grown an actual thought in this conversation. So as you're listening to growing a thought with your mind, so your mind. Both grows thoughts into the brain with the mind brain connection. So think of mind grabbing the experience, what you listen to, what you see putting it in your brain.
And then that makes responding by building these proteins that grow into trees. And these are on the neurons in the brain. These are called interacts, the little branches. And so this is a thought tree. So this is an actual. In the brain in a physical structure, in a chillax structure, and it's called a thought and a thought has got roots and branches like a tree has got roots and branches and all these branches and roots are the memories.
So a thought is made of memories. So the memories are data. What am I saying? What are the emotions that this is generating? What are the existing thoughts that are similar that have been activated to connect to this, to help you understand this? So this is all the data, but this part of the data is your interpretation.
So, I'm pointing to the branches. This part that's inside the pot is the root system. So if you plant a tree, you plant the seed, the seed then grows into roots. And then the little T trunk of the stem forms. And then the branch has grown and that's over time. This is happening in your brain, but it's happening super fast.
So we grow a thought in the time that we listening. So as I started speaking, and as you introduce the podcast, that was the seed. And as soon as that, you started asking questions and I started speaking that data received by the mind and built into these protein vibration things in the root system. So the root is the origin, it's who's what's in, What are you receiving? What's the experience?
This is the symbol of tanious growth of interpretation. So you uniquely each of your uniquely hearing what I'm saying in your own unique way, the thought you building no one's ever spoke before. This part is completely, utterly unique to who you are as a person.
And that's what every person interprets things differently. So this is interpretation and this is all great because this is a healthy tree. What happens if it's a toxic abuse? What happens if it's bullying in a marriage or if it's racism, we've, it's a experience of sexism or if it's just, you know, whatever an argument with a loved one.
Whatever extreme, that's the origin. That's the source. There's the process in which is all distorted because this is a distorted, all the mind energy fields and everything coming in and whatever is going to create this in the brain. And that produces this interpretation, which is of, I hate this person or I hate myself or at this.
So this now is a very, very toxic situation. Your brain doesn't have wiring for that. So immediately your immune system kicks in to start finding this and sends alerts to every system of your body to not tell you, Hey, there's something wrong, which obviously your mind also is involved in this process and your brain.
So you now get a mind-body reaction, which is the sore stomach and the anxiety and the, so the emotions are all the things we experienced, the feelings and behaviors, or your mind rate and body, your psychology telling you there’s a problem. You need to embrace us. You need to get rid of us. If you keep this, you are damaging your brain, your body and your mind.
So it has to go. This is strictly your survival. So your mind, brain and body alert you and you become the thought detective to tune into mind management. Therefore is tuning into the signals. In our lives to find the thoughts, which are these trees made of memories and, and these memories are the data and these are the interpretations.
So you're going to go from signals, which are patterns. What are you saying and doing ect. To the signals, to do your interpretation, to the roots. And as you become aware of that, as you do this. Which is the neuropsycho cycle process I've developed, which helps you to do this. Then you are becoming that awareness that this creates and the work that you did, because you go beyond awareness. You don't just become mindful. You actually go beyond your deconstruct.
This makes these weaker, so these little protein bonds start getting weak, which means they can be changed. So you reward in essence, by you soft regulating, accepting the mess of regulating from the previous question through this process of embracing processing and reconceptualizing the neuroscience, you then are taking that thought that is a real physical thing of experience. And you're going from the signals to the interpretation, to the processing, to the route you're at the ending. Like you're literally putting the weed out of the garden and you are going to reconceptualize it into something that you can manage.
So it doesn't mean that this goes away. This is the toxic interpretation. This still remembers what happened because you can't change what's happened to you, but you have to, you can't change what's in you, in order to move on from what's happened to you. This will keep you stuck. You'll never move on. And that could be in a relationship.
It could be the same arguments that keep happening in the marriage. It could be the same relationship problems that are happening because you've never dealt with the abuse and that's not your fault, the abuse, but you just didn't know how to deal with it. That keeps you stuck so you have to reconceptualize that thought into a healthy thought that has a different root system and a different interpretation system.
So these branches and proteins and vibrations are now different. So you've changed the neuroplasticity of your brain. You rewired the neural network into something that now you can use to change how you communicate, how you function in life, because we function from these, whatever you doing has come from a mind, brain, body interaction.
So even one more thing about this as well, is it, as this is happening as you building this, this, the, as soon as this is in the brain, it then sends a message to every cell of your body instantaneously as well. And we have 37 to a hundred trillion cells in our brain, in our body. It's a lot of cells. So this podcast is not only building in your brain as a tree.
It's also building in your mind as energy waves. It's also building in every cell of your body as a change in your gene card. And if you don't do anything after this podcast and you never do anything else about this, it'll eventually all just become heat energy, and you'll just have a memory.
Oh, I heard something about mind and brain and trees and very little of it will be recorded. But if you spend time and that time is a cycle of 21 days, 63 days to be precise. You can then stabilize this and you will have this information useful that you can apply it in your life. And that's what a lot of people don't do.
So there's a lot there that I've answered, but it's kind of a full circle. To help understand the concept.
Allison: No I love it and I love the visual aspect and just being able to relate it to trees. Right. And, being able to deconstruct. And I love how you talked about, it's not just about self-awareness right.
It's about how you handle that, how you manage that, how you deconstruct that so that you can respond differently. And we've talked about self-awareness a little bit on this show, already. It's such a powerful concept. And when you can kind of rewrite the narrative for yourself or process things differently in a healthier way, I mean, it makes a big difference in the quality of your life and your stress level and all the things.
Dr. Leaf: Totally, totally.
Allison: And now I want to pivot now to talk about a little bit more about nutrition and how that impacts our mental health as well, and you know, our gut health and the brain neurotransmitters and all of this. So can you talk a little bit more about how important that piece is, as well.
Dr. Leaf: Absolutely. When you think of psycho neurobiology, mind, brain, body, your mind is showing up in your brain and your body and making your brain and body do all these things.
But if your brain and body are not functioning well, if they physically, the material, the substance is not healthy. Then that's going to impact how well your mind can actually use your brain amd your body because your mind uses your brain in your body. And so that's why nutrition is important. We have to exercise, you know, these, this is a physical thing.
Physical things need to be fed, basic biology and they need to be fed the right stuff and they need to be moved. So our brain and body need all of that. And so it becomes an essential part and I've actually written a book called Think of Yourself Smart, just based on these principles. And I'm writing more as well on this, but it's, it's the mindset behind the meal.
That's the most important thing. So, first of all, obviously we want to try and eat real food that's would be our objective. Real food would be things like sustainable farm to table, local organic. And these unfortunately are not always accessible to every population, which is so unfortunate because of the whole sort of money empire around nutrition and stuff.
It's become a very confusing field, which is unfortunate because we need to simplify eating back to the basics and accessibility, which is another whole conversation. But yes, nutrition for your brain is important. You're going to put a lot of processed chemicals in your brain.
You are going to have a problem. And if, obviously from anybody, then there's the whole gut brain connection called the interior nervous system. So as soon as the story builds in your brain, this is going to send a very good message. Okay. Those are two ways, quantity, as soon as the information hits the brain and the body, the entire body is aware of what's coming in.
And then you have the specifics of the thought bolding and then the genes changing and then the systems being activated. So it's kind of a overarching, there's an overall quantum effect. And then there's a specific downplaying effect. One of those is the enteric nervous system, which is the connection between the central nervous system and the nervous system of the gut.
And that has, is made of the nervous system in the guts made from the same material as the brain and same fetal come from the same fetal tissue. It has as many neurons, as many neurons in the guts, they are in the spinal cord. And even if a few more so as soon as this is both in the brain, you're going to have a reaction in your guts.
So this is immediately going to send through the wrong signals, toxic signals through to the gut. And that's why we have this incredible amount of research that's coming out now showing the link between GI symptoms and unmanaged stress and internalized stress. So you'll see, it's like one of the first areas.
That's not the only area because everything in your body is vulnerable. To toxic thoughts, and to not manage to, to life, everything in your body's vulnerable to life every second, week or making 800-2 million new cells. And if you're not managing your mind, those cells form every system, every organ, every organ and every system.
Therefore, if you cumulatively over time are living a very unmanaged life. Your body is weakening daily and increasing our vulnerability to disease. So over time, the vulnerabilities this, so that's why mind management's absolutely critical factor when it comes to day-to-day living. But then this direct link becomes very, very obvious.
Like if you have people that are in a chronic history situation, so there's a lot of like concentrates and we'll contemplate marriage or a constant toxic relationship in some way, with this chronic ongoing, you find very strong evidence of these, these sorts sending incorrect messages through to the gut microbiome.
For example, you see that it changes, it actually changes the gut microbiome. So people have lots of problems with the gut. It can also increase acidity levels. So you start seeing things like the lining of the stomach changing and the lining of the esophagus changing and changing and the lining of the gut changing.
So we see over time. Stress that is not dealt with toxic stress. In other words, this has any effect stuff that's not dealt with will put you into a chronic state of toxic stress and toxic stress manifest with all these signals. And over time, if you don't deal with it, if you keep suppressing or you keep people pleasing, or you keep trying to keep the peace or your shock absorber, you doing anything to kind of avoid situations or you do it for as long as you can, and then you explode or whatever.
This is all be happening in your brain and it's going to affect your gut and all the way down, all the way down from your pharynx, all the way through to you and in different ways, it's different for every person, but you do see general patterns and you can end up with stomach ulcers and cause if it's not coming out, it's going in.
And, because of the very strong brain material connection between the central nervous system and the interior nervous system and the guts, the enteric nervous system. We seeing, you see a very obvious connection in the gut very quickly. It takes a little longer to sharpen the heart.
The sort of auto-immune or disorders, but it's very quick in the gut. That's why people, oh, that's a kid with sore stomachs. It's just so, so quick and so damaging and leaky gut syndrome and that kind of stuff. So it's very real. We do need to be aware of that impact.
Angela: Absolutely. Thank you for drawing on so many parallels.
And I think if there's anything to take away from this, it's just how, how acutely important it is that we're taking care of both our mind and body. And we're really thinking a little bit more about the brain, which I think you've really given us a lot of food for thought there for our listeners and also in our app Nobu, we've created a new series of content that will soon be dropping into the app.
And it's all about sort of nutrition and basically. It's called brain food. So we're really trying to deliver a lot of that information that really gives people again, you brought up the issue of, you know, having access to healthy foods, right? Not everybody has that, but also there isn't a lot of education around what might be the better options be.
So we also wanted to really bring that into the conversation as well. I just think it's great though how much you're speaking to how big of an issue this is and how much it impacts us. Thank you.
Dr. Leaf: That's a pleasure. In my book, my latest book. I actually have a whole section as well on food and diet and the mind and the mindset behind the meal.
Because if you are in a toxic stress state and you're eating healthy food, you can lose up to 86% of the nutrition. So your mind will also, you can be eating a great meal, but if you haven't got your mind, right, your mind is driving the interior nervous system. So it can't work properly. So you'll, you'll have all kinds of negative reactions like your pancreas, won't secrete your PIP tides that's needed for simulation and that kind of stuff.
So, and that's not being spoken about. So we've addressed that as well. I'm so pleased about your app and then I address the mindset stuff in my book and also my app called neuro cycle. I do, we've been in lots of programs to deal with the mindset behind the mirror as well, which is super important.
Angela: Amazing. Yes. And I'm sure in your book as well, you're also touching on different tools techniques that people can do to really tune into that, that other important piece too.
Well, thank you so much. And one thing that we do ask everyone when we're sort of grounding out for conversation is Dr. Lee. Where you are at in this moment right now, what matters most to you?
Dr. Leaf: I can honestly say with, and without sounding super cheesy, and that is to operate in love because we learn from the work I have done as a scientist on the mind brain, body connection.
Second year biology, everything runs on love. We see the waves around the body. If the gravitational fields, if people are in a toxic state, those waves get affected. We see that the brain and body are literally wired for love and where we regulate our mind. If you're operating in love, we actually drive a healthy regulation on our mind.
And when you have a healthy, a person who's managing their mess in the slug way, they become a human that's contributing to society in a healthy, loving way. And it's core to humanity. It sounds cheesy, but it's so scientific. So that for me, it's like my thoughts, kind of my foundational messages.
Allison: I love it. Well, I know we're getting a link in the show notes to your book and your app, and, but I would love for the audience to know more about where they can find you, follow you, get connected with you. So where should they go?
Dr. Leaf: Absolutely. Thank you. My Instagram handle, social media handles are Dr. Caroline Leaf, our web page is Dr.Leaf.com
I have a podcast called Cleaning up Your Mental Mess. My books are available wherever books are sold as well as on our site. And the app is available on Google and iTunes and it's called neuro-cycle.
Allison: Excellent! Well, it has been an honor and a privilege to have you on the show today. Thank you for sharing your wisdom with us!
Dr.Leaf: Yeah. Thank you so much. Thank you. You asked some great questions and this is a great discussion. Thank you so much. I appreciate it.
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