633: The Invincible Brain with Johns Hopkins Professor Dr. Majid Fotuhi

[MUSIC] And when there is no vision, the people perish. >> We choose to go to the moon. >> If today were the last day of my life, what I want to do, what I am about to do today. [MUSIC] >> Change will not come if we wait for some other person. [MUSIC] Or if we wait for some other time. [MUSIC] We are the ones we've been waiting for. [MUSIC] Welcome to the Strategy Skills Podcast, where strategy partners teach you the tools and techniques to solve mankind's greatest problems. [MUSIC] >> Welcome to the Strategy Skills Podcast, I'm your host, Chris Farova. And our podcast sponsor today is strategytraining.com. We have some gifts for you. You can get episode one of how to build a consulting practice at firmsconsulting.com/build. You can also get the overall approach used in well managed strategy studies at firmsconsulting.com/overallapproach. And my Kinsey and BCG-Vinning Resume, which is an actual resume that led to offers from both of those firms. And you can get it at firmsconfulting.com/resume-PDAP. And today we are going to talk about one of the most important topics we can possibly talk about, cognitive health. And we have with us Dr. Majid Fatouhi, who is MD, PhD, Wald Renout, neurologist and agent professor at John Hopkins, who is redefining how we think about aging, intelligence, and brain health. And in his new book, The Invincible Brain, Dr. Fatouhi reveals that in just 12 weeks it's possible to prevent and even reverse cognitive decline at any age. So I'm really looking forward to this discussion. Majid, welcome. Yes, thank you very much for having your podcast. Really appreciate it. What are some of the key things people generally don't understand about cognitive health and how can they maintain it and then enhance it? I think most people assume that with aging, their brain will decline and that there's nothing they can do about it. Most people assume that cognitive clients are inevitable as you get older. And we now know that there are many things you could do to preserve your cognitive functions and even improve them. So let's talk about some of those things. Maybe let's start from listing them and then we can dive deeper into each. Okay. Well, I think that people need to keep in mind that there are five pillars of brain health. Exercise, sleep, nutrition, stress management and brain training. Exercise is the most important thing you could do for your brain. When you exercise, you increase the number of mitochondria inside your cells which provide more energy for them to function better. You increase the parts of the brain that are important for memory. You create new neurons in the parts of the brain for memory. Exercise is really the most important of youth when they come to the brain. As a no brain, you really need to exercise. But then you have sleep. And the sleep is very important. You need to get seven to eight hours of sleep. Unfortunately, in this part of the world, people work too much. They have so much anxiety and I have everybody gets there at least seven hours of sleep. However, I think people need to make that a priority. They really need to make an effort to go to bed at the same time and figure out what prevents them from getting good sleep and make sure they sleep at least seven hours. Next is nutrition. The food you eat makes a difference in the quality of your brain. When you eat junk food, things that are high in trans fats or high processed food, you increase the amount of inflammation in your brain. And that can cause difficulty with thinking, memory, problem solving, getting things done. So you really want to avoid junk food and you want to try to eat a medley training diet, basically a diet that is high in foods and vegetables. You want to eat fish two or three times a week and you want to drink plenty of water. You want to use extra rich in olive oil. And really try to eat fresh food as much as possible. Avoid boxed food and things that come in cans and packages. Stress reduction is the next thing that is very important for brain health. When you stress, you increase levels of cortisol, which is a stress hormone. And that can cause significant damage to your brain. So meditation, breathing exercises and changing of your mindset can make a difference on whether or not your brain is healthy. And finally, brain training is very important. You want to challenge your brain as much as possible every day. Your brain is like a muscle and the more you use it, the stronger it gets. So these are very simple things that people can do and the secret that most people don't own appreciate that doing these things regularly and religiously for six weeks can make a difference in how well you feel, how well you function. And if you do it for four weeks, we can actually see increases in brain volume on MRIs. These interventions appear to be simple but they're powerful. Definitely. So let's talk a little more about them. So exercise. The questions that come up of course, okay, so what should I do? So that's the thing. So that's what we recommend. People need to do the kind of activity they enjoy doing. If you enjoy going for a run or if you enjoy going to a gym and doing class exercises or if you prefer to do weight lifting at home, do it. It's really not that different whether you do aerobic or weight training. Both of them have been shown to improve cognitive function. When you aerobic exercises, you increase your cardiac output, you increase number of mitochondria in your brain and you have a lot of health benefits. When you do weight training, you increase them out of muscle you have in your limbs. And muscle seems to be a source of neuroprotective hormones. When you exercise, especially when you do weight training, their molecules called myokines that are released from the muscle, reach the brain and seems to have protective properties in the brain. So ideally, you want to do a little bit of pulse. However, that should not prevent you from doing something. Going for a walk every day for half an hour is great. Simple walking, 3000 to 5000 steps a day can actually reduce the footprints of Alzheimer's in your brain. If you like to go for a run, even better. Anything can be better than nothing. And ideally, you want to exercise about three hours a week if you could. You want to maintain a daily level of activity. You want to try to walk around as much as possible. And then you want to do three hours of exercise, maybe three one hour sessions throughout the week and you can do 45 minutes of aerobic and then 15 minutes of weight training. Well, they are taught on something like yoga. Yes. You know, yoga has many different shapes and forms, obviously. And when you do yoga, you increase your flexibility. And I think that is a very good thing to do. However, if you're just doing stretching exercises and do different yoga poses, that really accounts more for mindset, stress reduction, reducing cortisol levels in your brain and calming your mind, not so much as physical activity because you really are not exerting yourself that much. I think the minimum amount of exercise is for 20 minutes of something that gets your heart rate up a little bit. You want to get to the point of having a puffing. You want to feel a little exercise. And if you do yoga or Tai Chi, that's a series of stretching exercises and postures without really getting your heart rate up a little bit. Still a good thing to do, but you won't go on their bucket for exercise. This is what I want to confirm. So glad you mentioned the heart rate. Can someone overdo exercise? Yes, that's a good point. I think you want to be fit. There's a measure of fitness called VO2 max. You go on an exercise machine, they put a mask on your face to measure the amount of oxygen and carbon dioxide, and they ask you to pedal as hard as you can. After 20 minutes or 30 minutes, they keep increasing their resistance of the pedal. So it's harder to keep going. And then comes a moment that you can't push any further. And that peak is called VO2 max. The maximum amount of oxygen you can use at peak exercise. VO2 max is an indication of how fit you are. And there are tables for standards of fitness in men and women in different age groups. For example, in someone between ages of 1665, the good VO2 max is like 3035, and then optimal VO2 max is 35 to 40. And I don't mind it's 40. So I know what I am, and I'm trying to keep it at that level. for women is slightly lower, but again, it's standardized. You wanna measure your viewer to max, and these days many smart watches can give you your viewer to max, just find it on different options, and it's already been recorded. So you have it in your smart watch already. Now, some people exercise like 10 hours a week. I think the benefits of exercise are the most for people who are doing nothing and they do something. So if you do nothing at all and you go for 10 minute walks, you see a huge benefit. If you go for a half an hour watch, oh my God, great benefit. But if you go from one hour exercise to two hours exercise, the benefit may be 5%. And if you go from two hours exercise to like six hours exercise, there's no evidence that the benefits would quadruple. The benefits seem to plateau. There are benefits obviously for endurance. You wanna be have endurance and some people like I do long distance biking sometimes. I do it for fun of it. I don't do it because I have to or that I'm required to. I do it because I enjoy doing it. In general, the hours of exercise is the sweet spot for most people if you wanna do a little bit more. Like I probably do more than that. I do about an hour and a half, three or four times a week. But I think I enjoy doing it. It should not be a chore. People need to pick and exercise the enjoy doing. That's the most important thing. It could be dancing, it could be bowling, it could be going for a hike, skiing, tennis, pickleball. There's so many things I could do. In my book, I made a list of like 30 things that people can consider. - Majit and Bodhi, say that going for a walk increases your heart rate enough to consider an exercise. - Yes. Again, anything is better than nothing and some exercise has significant benefits. And there are at least five studies that I know which have shown people who walk anywhere between 3000 steps a day to 10,000 steps a day reduce the footprints of Alzheimer's disease in the brain. It actually reduces the amyloid that's the marker of Alzheimer's disease in the brain. And people who walk 10,000 steps a day, that's a lot of walking. Somebody who's job, it requires a lot of walking with a 10,000 steps a day, they reduce the risk of Alzheimer's disease by 50%. So exercise the weight bearing activity, you carry your weight. So even though you walk for say 20, 30 minutes, it's not the same thing as when you sit at something and you exercise because you're sitting. One of the advantages of walking is as a weight bearing exercise. And it's surprising that an hour of walking as a simple walking in your neighborhood can have profound benefits for your brain. Even if you don't get to the point of puffing and puffing. - But you would still recommend getting to having an puffing. - That's what I do. Yes, you want to increase. If you want to be really serious about it, there are two ways to look at it. You want to be casual, like, ah, I want to have a better brain, but I'm good anyway. Or look, this is a high priority for me. I want to have a tip-top brain. The same goes with your body. You can say, look, I have, I'm okay, shape. I want to keep it like that. Or you want to say, look, I want to be tip-top athletic shape. The interventions would be different. So when it comes to brain health, if you want to just maintain good brain health and slow down the effects of aging in your brain, you just can go for walks and it works very well. But if you say this thing, I want to be a mental athlete. I want to be super sharp. I want to be so sharp that I can memorize long lists. I can be quick. In that case, exercise is a very important intervention. And you want to measure your view to max. And then bring your view to max on top of the range for you. So for example, if you're 55-year-old woman, the optimal view to max may be 25 to 30. And you measure your view to max and you're not there. And then you try to do things that increase your endurance, your stamina. That means that you probably do need to go for a brisk walk or maybe you should go for a jog. Or you should go on a treadmill. Or you should go on a peloton. Or you should go a rowing machine. You really want to push yourself to increase your view to max. Your view to max will not go up with it just walking apart. And are there any dangers for your brain if you push too hard? So we discussed how your returns getting less and less. If you exercise in a ready for six hours a week, and you add another four hours on top of it, you're not going to get much more intents of returns. But let's say you are really pushing yourself very hard. At some point, you push yourself to a point that it is bad for your brain. No, to my knowledge, there is no evidence that excessive exercise, like people who do a marathon or do Iron Man will have any harms to their brains. There's no evidence that the benefits would be cumulative. It's not linear. It's not like the more you do, the better it will be for your brain. There comes a point where you reach a plateau. Look at your muscles, for example. You can work out, you can lift 50 pounds to 100 pounds, 120 pounds, not to 50 pounds. And your muscles bulge. But at some point, they're not going to be like, how this huge? At some point, you're muscles are toned, but they're not three times as big as it would be if you just exercise one hour. And your brain is in the same situation where the benefits increase, but at some point, it's not linear because that's how it is. Very helpful. Thank you so much. Last question on exercise, at least so far. What is your exercise of choice for yourself? Yes, I actually, as I mentioned, I exercise two or four times a week. I have a Peloton machine at home, so I exercise. I do a biking for one hour. And then I do 45 minutes of weight training exercises. And I don't do huge weights. I do some videos on YouTube that I watch. I don't mostly body weight, like doing push ups and sit ups and, you know, launches and things like that. I don't go to extremes. Every minute of weather is nice. I go for long bike rides. I enjoy going to nature and biking for 60 miles, 80 miles, sometimes 100 miles. It's like it's cool for 60 to 80, sometimes 80 hours. I just go to nature, lose myself in nature. And I love it. These days, low chili are in here, so I don't get to do it. Thank you. Eight hours, that takes a lot of time in the bike for eight hours, that is amazing. I think once you built your stamina, then it's not that hard. And I don't do it, thinking I'm exercising. I'm just having fun in nature. I'm just biking. And I'm not really-- I do pause for lunch. If I have an hour of break for lunch, and along the way, I may have like five minute, 10 minute breaks that I think some water. But I love it. It's nature is beautiful. And I'm actually not that tired. Because I go on my own pace. I don't-- I'm not racing the whole time. I'm way on my own pace. I enjoy listening to birds and seeing the deer's and watching, you know, just animals around and it's so relaxing. I love it. Because I understand, definitely. Let's talk about sleep. I think this one is very important, because with all the other things people feel they have it under control. If they wanted to, they couldn't prove nutrition. If they wanted to, they could exercise more. But with sleep, many people feel that they cannot really control it, because they cannot fall asleep. You're right. Well, like anything else, there's always a solution for problems. This is not a unique problem. It's a very common problem. And there are solutions for it. In my book, I have a whole chapter about all the things that can cause sleep problems and all the solutions for it. But let's talk about some main things. One of the main reasons people can't fall asleep is because they have too many things on their mind. They're worrying about mood gethes. They're worrying about the contracts that they have to sign the butt, children having issues, about marital issues, family issues. And the solution to that is, you need to sort things out. You can't have a lot of loose ends in your brain. You need to take ownership of your problems. You have to have a plan. See, as a doctor, I see patients. When a patient comes, it gives me all their problems. I make a list of priorities. I make an action plan. I have, for example, a person has obesity, diabetes, hypertension, insomnia, sleep apnea, center lifestyle, stress problems, and a poor diet, all of those things. And then I sit with them and I said, for this, we're going to do this. And for each one of them, we have an action plan. Then I say, in the first three weeks, we're going to work on your walking. So during that time, we're not going to worry about sleep. We're not going to be able to do everything at once. So, So they work on the walking for a few weeks. try to increase it from 5 minutes a day to 10 minutes a day to half an hour a day to 45 minutes a day. That's the goal. Once they get there, say, "Okay, now let's talk about your food choices. Reeducate them with the food choices and then we talk about, you know, when you see chocolate, you can eat it. Chocolate is good for you. But when you see doughnut, you should not eat it, doughnut. Spikes your sugar level, has high levels of trans fats, has zero nutritional value for you. Don't eat doughnuts. Don't. Not once ever. Think of it as smoking. Don't. So for three weeks, we work on education about diet and then, you know, we could talk about stress reduction and so forth. So if you have trouble falling asleep and there's a lot of things in your life, you just sit down, write them down, type them in on a app you like and set priorities and realize that a lot of things just have to wait and that you know what? Most things don't matter that much. They say, "A kid is not studying." Of course, it's apparent you think, "My god, my kids are studying, they're not going to get good college, the future is ruined." Well, not really. Life will go on, and you don't have to really, you know, worry about it that much. It will work out. Let's work on issue number one. But if that is a priority, then look back to see what things have worked in the past. What things have worked for other people? Let's have a plan of action, but we look at three things. Let's say I need to negotiate and give a reward for every A. So you get $100 every time you have an A. See that works. If it doesn't work, we go to the punishment route. You know, every time you know, you don't do well, we're going to take your phone for four hours from you. See what happens. But the point is in your mind, you have an action plan. In your mind, you have a system of how you're going to handle the thing that's keeping up at night. And that allows you to have peace of mind and fall asleep. That applies to mortgages, to relationships, to everything else. So number one reason for people having difficulty falling asleep or waking up in the middle of the night is anxiety and stress. And as I said, you need to own your problems and have an action plan. That helps a lot. The idea helps is meditation or just doing slow breathing exercises. Another option is to just read a book. You know, scrolling on your phone does not help fall asleep. You really need to get a book either, you know, an audible book or a book on screen or actual hard copy paperback book. I mean, that one that really helps people fall asleep. I mean, I will always fall asleep if I read a book. I mean, it's incredible how you can, you know, I'm just going to sleep. Point is, there are solutions for these problems. And these days, there's abundance of problems. You cannot actually be, like, tell me, this is my problems. What are the solutions? You know, the sleeping problems have many solutions and many causes. For some people, it's caffeine. They may not know that the soda they had with dinner had caffeine in it or, you know, maybe they too much. Sometimes spicy food cannot. I don't really recommend supplements for sleeping. However, there are herbal teas, camel meal, other herbal teas that help magnesium helps. Most important thing is to have the right mindset. And of course, the identity can happen. Sometimes people are not physically tired. If your body and your brain are not physically tired, then your body is not really ready to sleep. Now, physical means you've got to the gym, you've walked a lot or you worked around the house, you cleaned the house, you did the dishes, and also mental workup. You know, when I do my work on my desk for four or five hours in the evening, I'm tired. My brain is tired. I just fall asleep. So, you're right. Sleep is not something that we have that much control because we just have to let go and for this to happen. It's not the same thing as having control on how many minutes you exercise. But our physiology is built around sleeping. And we need to understand what is preventing us from sleeping, eliminate those and provide the environment that will allow us to fall asleep. I hear it from a few people that they use alcohol to fall asleep. What are your thoughts on that? I'm not a fan of alcohol. Alcohol at a small amount used to be considered safe. And even protected for the brain over the past five years, we've learned that even a small amount of alcohol seems to be detrimental for the brain studies have shown that even one or two drinks a day can reduce the brain volume just a little bit over many decades. However, I think if you're exercising, you're eating right, you're meditating, you do everything right, and you really want to enjoy your glass of wine. Just go ahead and enjoy it. Don't let don't, don't, don't, don't with, no, don't prevent yourself from enjoying life with the concern that that little alcohol would affect your brain in the future. It definitely does not help with sleep. You may fall asleep, but then you wake up in the middle of the night. In general, it's better to avoid alcohol as much as possible. I drink alcohol myself on occasional weekends that we go to social gatherings. I usually have one or two drinks, just social gatherings. I don't drink at home. I will definitely not recommend it for sleeping purposes. It's definitely bad for sleep. I'm also not a fan, 100% of green with you. What would you recommend to someone who is struggling with sleep because they sleep most? That's complicated. That's complicated. I think it would be helpful for them to see a sleep specialist. It could be related to pan-resolved, stressful situations, even childhood trauma. I have had patients who had nightmares and really affected the quality of their life. They dreaded phone sleep because they didn't want to have the nightmares. However, that's a rare condition. It's not that common. A sleep specialist helps. What do you mean you have to share pre-cardinetrician on top of what you already shared? Yes. Food is like medicine. Just to think of it, you put all these things in your mouth and they go to your GI tract and they find their way in the bloodstream and they go to everywhere, including your brain, your heart, your kidney, your liver, your skin everywhere. Food is really medicine. However, if you have food that contain molecules that are harmful for the brain, then you're harming your brain. A common molecule found in junk food that affect the brain are trans fats. These are a form of fat that is usually made in factories to help food stay on the shelves for longer period time. So somebody selling a muffin. I didn't want to sell it and put it in a wall, but they wanted to stay in the shelf for a month instead of going back in a week. They add trans fats to those muffins, which will help them stay on the shelf for longer period time. Those trans fats increase inflammation in the brain and they also shrink the brain. People who have higher levels of trans fats in the brain have a smaller part of the brain for memory called hippocampus. So junk food harms the brain significantly. If you want to have a healthy brain, step number one is to minimize junk food. Don't eat French fries, cookies, ice cream, donut, chips. If there's no nutritional value and it's not fresh, try to avoid that. Now, you go to a party and you're always watching a football and there's some chips. Okay, you can have some chips. But don't make a habit of having cookies all day or having donuts or muffins all day or things that are clearly sugary or have high trans fats or highly processed food are harmful for your eyes, for your skin, for your brain, for your heart, for everything. Because it's not just the brain that's affected, all our body parts will be affected. And that's something we do have control over. Now, there's a thing about addiction. People who eat sugary food, they're addicted to the sugar component of, let's say, sweetened sodas. The sugar is sodas cause addiction because of the sugar triggers the work parts of the brain. And when you don't have enough, you get withdrawal symptoms which makes you go and seek more of the coke or other sugary soda you have. So it'd be much mindful of the fact that you may be addicted to certain food and be stronger to avoid them. Makes a lot of sense. Are there types of foods where most people think it's good for you, but it's actually very bad for you, especially for your brain, or including for your brain? I can't think of any food that you should really avoid, even though it sounds to be good. Fruits and vegetables are good for you. Sometimes there are fruits that can increase your sugar levels quickly. I love watermelon. I love watermelon. I love the taste of it. You know, some real cold watermelon in a hot summer day. I love it. I would sometimes sit and eat a whole bowl of watermelon. I loved it. I learned that actually watermelon has a high sugar content. Even though it's a natural food, it does increase your sugar level. I dread knowing that. I wish I didn't know that. I ruined my enjoyment. Now I still eat watermelon. It's not eating in the whole bowl. I'll have a quarter bowl. I really don't finish the whole bowl. Because I know that otherwise doing everything right. I have done all my things right. I'm not going to deprive myself of the pleasure of enjoying this watermelon that I love so much. Some natural fruits do have a high sugar content. You want to be mindful that just because something is healthy doesn't mean you can eat five pounds of it. You can't say you're like kiwi or you're like watermelon or honey, dew or something. You can't just eat a lot of it at once. You're still putting a lot of sugar in your body. I don't know that. As long as you have a reasonable balance diet, you're fine. There's no secret thing that people think it's good, but it's really not good. How much water do you think we need? Or you know how much we need to let us know? I think you should drink when you're thirsty. Some people overdo it. I think many people don't drink enough. You should have a glass of water here and there throughout the day and you should maintain hydration. But your body tells you how much water you need. If I go for a long bike ride, I drink a lot because I know I can't wait for my body to tell me I'm thirsty. I need to sort of pre-hydrate when I get on my bike. So in general, I think you should drink water when you're thirsty. I also have occasional glass of water here and there. You can't really obsess that you're not getting enough water. I don't think it's necessary to walk around with the bottled water everywhere. I keep drinking water throughout the day because the water drinking you're just going to urinate. It's not going to stain your body. Your kidney carefully regulates how much water you need, how much sodium, how much potassium, how much magnesium, you just stain your body and any variation gets corrected by the kidney. So if you drink a lot of water, you're just making your kidney work more to excrete all that extra water. So you need to be reasonable and drink about five, six cups of water a day as you're thirsty, but don't force yourself to drink extra unless you're doing something like a marathon or a long bike ride or you're going to exercise class. You know, you're going to sweat a lot. The bottom line in a lot of things is it turns out that taking care of your brain does not require extreme interventions. A lot of reasonable things can have a huge difference in your brain health. So a little bit of exercise, you know, getting your sleep right, being reasonable, what you do, they can they all can help. And when you say five, six cups of water, would you say that tea does not count? Yes, because tea and coffee can actually increase your nation, which means that whatever you had will be urine, you know, it will go in a toilet at the end. So in general, that five, six cups a day does not include tea or coffee you drink. Makes sense. Yes, I knew that, but I wanted to double check for all our listeners and to make sure we have it. So everyone knows. So let's talk about stress reduction. And then I wanted to start with you probably also have patients who went through traumatic experiences, especially in early childhood and that impacted development of their brain and how their brain functions. And that also impacts the level of stress they feel and how much they can handle before body goes into a state where it really is stressed to high degree. What would be your recommendation to our listeners who had such background when it comes to protection, their brain and enhancing cognitive abilities? Yes, stress can be a source of brain shrinkage. High levels of stress increase levels of cortisol and cortisol is toxic to the spotter brain for memory called people campus. Mindset makes a huge difference on your daily experiences. If you repeat that when I was a child, somebody treated me poorly and everything is I'm not the same, and you repeat that thought. It's called repetitive negative thought. That reinforces, increase of cortisol and reinforces the thought. So the more you think about it, the more you repeat it, the more you are stuck in repeating it. Your brain has a high degree of maliability. Your brain can change a lot. So for example, when you learn to play the piano, when you practice the piano, you are reinforcing pathways in full of incordinating your hand eye coordination. When you have learned how to play basketball and you learn how to throw the ball just right, you're enhancing the strength of connections that are important for hand eye coordination. So your brain is not fixed. Your brain is constantly changing at a very small level, but nevertheless at the level that we can see on MRIs. So after three months of exercise, after three months of learning the piano, there will be measurable changes on MRI. After three months of learning how to play golf or any other sport, there are measurable changes in your brain. Similarly, when you have a negative thought and you repeat it and you repeat it and you repeat it, you're reinforcing those negative pathways. Because the brain doesn't make a distinction between good and bad, your brain makes it realize that you repeat it something and those pathways are getting stronger. So that's why it becomes more difficult when somebody has had a thought since childhood, where they had a bad childhood experience and those thoughts get repeated. For so many decades, those thoughts have been repeated and have become a part of their life. The good thing is that they can change. They can't stop on those thoughts. It's not easy. It requires what's called cognitive behavioral therapy. Some people surprisingly snap out of it. There are people who have one session with the therapist and they say, "Oh my god, I wasted 30 years of my life going over a thought that really doesn't help me." To think that my mother abused me or my father was rude to me or if only I had lived in a different city or wish I had come to this part of the world or I should have lived separately. All of those things don't help you now. The past is past. The future is not here. You need to enjoy the moment. Some people actually have an aha moment and snap out of it. But in most cases, a cognitive behavioral therapy session can be very helpful and psychologists and therapists of experience in this can really help patients free themselves at these negative thoughts. It's a very good thing about behavioral therapy. So let's talk about general stress reduction. How can we manage stress, especially given what's happening now and for all our listeners, we have very driven, successful people who have a lot of obligations, responsibilities and a lot of stress in their lives? Stress is self-generated. People often forget that the stress they perceive is perception, not reality. For example, you expect to reach certain milestones in what you have set for yourself in your career. You decide to have this many clients or you decide to make this much money in 3 months or 6 months or so forth. You have financial obligations based on those things. In reality, you have created those stresses for you. There's really nothing that's real. Don't think that's real. If there's a fire in the house, there's just no storm outside. The child is really sick and has cancer or something. Those are real stresses where it's not you're perceiving it. But your perception of why things happen the way you want them to happen is your problem. For example, if somebody is chewing next to me and the chewing sound is bothering me, well, it's up to me to be bothered or not. They shouldn't be doing that, that's correct. But I have the choice of stress about it or not stress about it. It may sound simple, but it's really profound and it's very true. It is very true that your stresses are self-generated. You make most of the things that are stressful yourself. And it really helps to pause and set priorities as to what things are important. And one of the things that happens a lot in the United States is that people are busy. They have a lot of work to do. You have to go to work, they come home, they have to pick up the kids on the way, they have to prepare the meal, they have to take care of all the bills and they have all the social applications. A lot of people in mid-life have parents or older and they have issues and the kids have issues and of course, co-workers are not always nice. And so it's a lot. And the way to look at it is, well, you created this life. Maybe you don't have to take the kids in four different classes. If you don't have time, maybe they should not be on a piano, less than an soccer team and also be a part of the band. If you don't have the time, you signed up for them. You are the one who initiated it, so it's your problem. Okay, not as a problem, deal with it, but for next semester, don't do it again. You will not be a worse parent in the world if your kids don't go to five or six different classes. Or if you really think that's a priority, then maybe you should work two days a week and spend more time at home. See, the expectations are unrealistic that you want to have a full-time job and you want to be a full-time mom or a full-time dad and you want to be able to attend to your social gatherings. In some ways, when you look at someone, it's like, oh my god, I have so much work to do. They're telling you about their failure to manage your time. And there are lots of people who, when you talk to, they seem to have a lot of time all the time. They seem to be relaxed. They seem to be fine. And it's not like they're lucky. Some of them may be lucky, but most of them are not just lucky. They decided to manage their time. The other thing that people don't do in this part of the world is that they don't allow a buffer for things to go wrong. There's no buffer for the kid to be sick and use their home. People are pushing themselves to the minute. They work till five, they go to the gym at five, fifteen, they go home at seven thirty, dinner is seven, forty five. And it is such a tight schedule. There's no room for the traffic to interfere with their schedule or their mom decide to come visit them or something else that happened. Bottom line is this. There is a, I mean, my book I talk about 30 different types of intelligence. This is not just math and physics and logic and processing speed. Intelligence is a broad term that covers all our cognitive capacities, our ability to read, write, type, drive, do our taxes, do our works. These are all cognitive abilities. And so people, some people are innately good in some things and not other things. Like some people are just good with music, some people are just good with math, or with numbers, some people are just good with memory. So those called innate intelligence and they're acquired intelligence where you become good at something and our brain has the capacity to become good at something. One of the thirty different types of intelligence that I described in my book is the lifestyle intelligence. Which means you know that exercise and diet and sleep and meditation are good for you. How successful have you been in leading a life that has allowed you to do all those five pillars of brain health? And if you're doing it, you have what I call lifestyle intelligence because there's no question these days that these things are good for you. Nobody has said, you know, exercise is not that important. Nobody says that and I'm not the first person and nobody says, "Eat what you want, it doesn't matter." I mean people know these things that have been enough of scientific evidence for these things that people don't question what I call the five pillars of brain health. So if you're doing it and you seem to make it easy, that you seem to be in good shape and you're exercising and you're eating it. And for you, you get a start label for your what I call lifestyle intelligence. And if you don't have that lifestyle intelligence, then figure it out. Look at some people who seem to be doing it, learn from them and gradually change it. All of these things will help you to have less stress and feel more in control of life. In general, you want to be in control of life instead of feeling that you're chasing things, that you're always just keeping your head about the water. See, a lot of people have that sensation that they're sinking and they're just keeping their head about the water with all the things that are around them. An eliminating source of stress is one of the best ways for you to feel you're on top of the world, that you're in control and you have some extra time. You have some extra time to help people. You have some extra time to do nothing at all. You just want to sit and do nothing. It's actually a good thing to be bored once in a while. And you can decide how much you're going to cut on your social media time, which is usually not the productive, useful time I spent on your phone. And instead of that, go for a walk with your kid, for example. Very good advice. And let's cover brain training to make sure we wrap it up. And I think this one is where people will know the least about how they couldn't prove that area what would you recommend. The brain is like a muscle and the more you use it, the stronger it gets. The important point is how you use it and the choices you make. You want to pick challenging activities that are fun. If you decide to do crossword puzzles and you hate them, don't do them. You need to enjoy the process. We're talking about exercise, how you pick something that you like. And you make that your formula exercise. Same thing goes with brain exercises. You want to do stucco or whaddle or taking dance lessons or taking music classes, learn a new language. Again, I have a whole list of things at the end of each chapter about 30 different things people can do. But take something that resonates with you that when you're doing it, it's not a chore. For example, I like learning languages. So I know a few languages and everyone's several other practice them. And I enjoy it. I know it's good for me because I want to improve my French example. So it's good for me. It's useful. And it counts as my brain training box. In my head, I think of these buckets of the flight players of brain health. And every day, I try to put something in that bucket. So I put an exercise bucket. You know, I don't force myself. If I don't feel like exercising, I may just do it a little bit or I may do it in afternoon or may I do it next day. And so that's my exercise bucket. And then for a food bucket, that's easy. I just don't need junk food. And I don't eat too much. And I don't buy bad foods or fridge, never contains any soda or junk food period. And I'm always tired. I always fall asleep. I don't know if I'm wrong with sleep. And then I do some breathing exercises during the day. And I might just lower score low. And I do something for brain training. And so it's not that complicated. It's really not that complicated to incorporate these factors of brain health and have a set of mind where you're in control of life, everything is okay. And you're just smooth sailing in your life. Such an incredible discussion. Anything else you wish that I asked you and they didn't? I think the most important thing for people is to change their mindset about aging. They need to stop thinking that aging means becoming frail. When I go to like long bike runs or sometimes I do a thrattle on, and I see that people who are 30 years older than me are just keeping up with me, I love it. I tell myself, I want to be like them. I want to be in my 80s and early 90s and be jogging and running and doing things and writing books and you know, do all that things. And so I would like people to have that mind switch. To start looking at the second half of life as a new beginning, as a time where you flourish and blossom and you enjoy life. Last question, my favorite question to ask. Over your entire life time so far, what were two, three aha moments, realizations that really changed the way you look at life or the way you look at business? Yeah, I remember I was a kid. I was probably seven years old. It was a summer day and a weekend and my father and I were in the backyard. I have a small little garden and and we're just playing around with planting some please and my father was something I'm just seeing next to him and my knees playing with soil. And he said something about everyone is the architect of his own life. And I said, what do you mean? So well, you build the life that you want, but you build it. You can blame other people. You are the architect of your life. I remember like my hands were filled with soil and I'm just playing with these things and I thought building a house that I am building the house. I'm going to house I want to build. And if it's my future, what kind of future I want to build. And I feel like, oh, so I better have good foundations. And if I'm the architect of my life, I want to build a beautiful house, a beautiful life. And that really was an hour moment that I realized so I built the life that I want. It's not like people build the life for me. And you know, when I was 13 or 14 years old, I wrote a book about seven secrets to become successful as a kid. Then I wrote this book. It was never published, but I wrote it anyway. And I sort of searched the literature back then. I went to library and I looked at quotations from Thomas Edison, John F. Kennedy, Gandhi, other famous people as how they became successful in what they were doing. And what was what did they say about what their secret was, which was often feel passionate about what you do, be persistent, have a sense of purpose, be kind, be generous, don't give up and things like that. But I wrote it. And that really built the foundation of the life that I went on to build. Incredible. Thank you so much. I really enjoyed our discussion today. Thank you for being here. Yes. Yes, Chris. Thank you very much for inviting me. Of course, we can all listen and learn about you by your book. Anything you want to share. I have a website is doctor for two he calm D R F as in Frank O T as in Tom you H. I doctor for two he calm also I have social media posts on Instagram and Tik Tok and LinkedIn Facebook. And if people just the invincible brain dot com, he will also take them to my website. I am working on an online course that contains information and also working on an app. So people who type my last name, they will find a lot of resources to look for. Thank you. Thank you. My G. Our guest today was Dr. Majid Fatouche. His book is the invincible brain and our sponsor today for the podcast is strategy training dot com and we have some gifts for you. You can access episode one of how to build a consulting practice at firms consult in dot com forward slash build. You can get the overall approach used and well managed strategies studies at firms consult in dot com forward slash overall approach. And you can get my Kinsey and BCG being in resume example, which is an actual resume that led to offers from both of those firms. And you can get it at firms consult in dot com forward slash resume BDF and that template works for any seniority level. Thank you very much for tuning in and I'm looking forward to connect with you all next time. Thanks for listening to this episode of the strategy skills podcast stay up to date on all of our latest training by signing up for our email updates on firms consulting dot com. We look forward to helping you develop your strategy critical thinking decision making and communication skills next time here on the strategy skills podcast. [Music]