Health Podcast: Baby Weight Fitness; Got a Bug in Your Ear?; Scrabble Your Immune System

In this episode we feature:

An interview with neuropsychologist Dr. Aldrich Chan.

Take a cold plunge.

Iodine could fix your sluggishness

Social Prescriptions

And more ways you can improve your health today!

For more information, and to sign up for our private coaching, visit tesh.com

Our Hosts:
John Tesh: Instagram: @johntesh_ifyl facebook.com/JohnTesh
Gib Gerard: Instagram: @GibGerard facebook.com/GibGerard X: @GibGerard

Transcript

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Gib. Hello and welcome to another episode of the podcast. I'm Gib Gerard here with another special intelligence for your health. With Connie Selleck, edition of the show. Her guest today is neuropsychologist, Dr Aldrich Chan, founder and CEO of the Center for Neuropsychology and consciousness. So get excited about a little dive into Neuropsychology about what is it? What does it take to make your brain your brain? We'll dive into that today. So here we go without further ado, intelligence for your health with Connie Celica, here's a strange way to boost your immune system. Play a game like Scrabble. According to a UCLA study, your body sees competition, even in a board game, as something it might need to defend itself against. That increases immune cell function, making them more active. So immune cells move more quickly into the bloodstream, where they spread throughout your body and that protects you from illness causing pathogens. So play a friendly game against someone to boost your immune system. If you are 50 years old or younger, or know someone who is the Dana Farber Cancer Institute has found your cancer risk is much higher than any previous generations. In fact, with colorectal cancers, specifically, those born after 1990 now have quadruple the risk than those born before 1950 The reason our modern lifestyle, researchers say tumors being found in younger cancer patients are often biologically different than those found in older patients. They're not showing signs of being hereditary, and according to gastroenterologist Dr Andrew Chan, this offers the strongest evidence ever that lifestyle is now the top cancer risk factor, because compared to older generations, people born in the last 50 years tend to consume more sugary drinks, take more antibiotics and spend more time sitting or being inactive. And while any one of those habits is known to damage Health, Dr chan says the combination of them creates the perfect environment for increased inflammation, which promotes tumor growth. In other words, researchers now believe our lifestyle accounts for more than half of our risk for getting cancer, and it's why we should be doing everything we can to avoid smoking, to eat a healthy diet and get adequate amounts of sleep and exercise. That's true for all people, but it is especially important if you are under age 50, coming up, we'll talk to neuropsychologist, Dr Aldrick chan he'll share the mental health benefits of taking a cold plunge, and he'll tell us how long we need to stay in the water to get the benefits. But first, you don't need to use wet wipes after using the bathroom. Internist Dr Holly Phillips says there's no hygienic advantage for adults to clean themselves with wet wipes instead of toilet paper, plus some wipes contain aloe, vitamin E and alcohol, which sounds great, but they might actually irritate your skin and leave it stinging and inflamed when dealing with anything that touches your private parts, always choose products that are unscented and chemical free. Well, it looks like babies are the new kettle bell. Fitness classes are adding the physical weight of a child to workouts with people strapping their babies to their chest and doing bar workouts, Mat Pilates and dance classes in Columbus, Ohio, the flux flow Dance Center invites parents, grandparents and nannies to wear newborns in carriers while they dance, and the baby class is the most popular dance class they offer. People all over the world tune in online, wearing their own babies and dancing along virtually. Amber Angeli is a dance instructor in Denver, and she's certified hundreds of instructors around the world in GROOVE DANCE a baby wearing dance method she created, and aside from getting a workout with a 15 pound baby strapped to you, the classes also create a social environment for the new parents during a time when they're most isolated. Joanna McNeely is the founder of the Center for baby wearing studies in New York, and she says classes can increase muscle engagement in babies and help parents with long term core control. And that's the latest fitness trend, strapping on a baby for a weighted workout. Okay, listen to this. How many pillows do you sleep on? Well, there's no harm in using two unless your neck is at an angle that will cause pain in the morning. If you like your head elevated, make sure the rise starts at the base of your neck, where it meets your shoulders, so the weight of your head won't put pressure on your spine as it tilts forward. But if you're sleeping on old flattened pillows, and you need two just to prop your head up, that is a problem, because old floppy pillows are probably full of. Dust mites, which can cause your allergies and sinus issues to flare up. So ditch those flat as a pancake pillows and get some new ones your sinuses and neck will thank you. Today, our guest is Dr Aldrich Chan. He's a neuropsychologist and founder and CEO of the Center for Neuropsychology and consciousness in Miami, and with a record number of people reporting more stress and anxiety these days, I asked Dr chan right off the bat, how should we deal with stress? So the first thing for me to note is that biologically, having mild to moderate degrees of stress can actually be beneficial. It's built into our systems, and we call this eustress. Eustress can optimize learning. And I think as a society, we become so stress phobic that I think lots of people might exaggerate the impact that stress may be having on their lives simply by the label itself. Just because you feel stressed doesn't mean that there's something wrong in your life. It may, in fact, mean that there's something right. The problem is when the stress becomes so severe or chronic that somebody doesn't have the resources to deal with it, and this is when it becomes unhealthy. So the first stress intervention, I would say, is really a shift in attitude towards stress itself. Learn to accept that mild to moderate levels of stress is normal and even healthy. And so I would say aim towards prevailing in the face of stress, as opposed to seeking out happiness. You said there's a good type of stress known as eustress for our listeners, that's spelled with an EU that's considered normal psychological stress. So how do we know if we have beneficial eustress? Yeah, that's a great question. So the first thing to note is that when you are feeling eustress, your sympathetic system, your fight flight system, is active. However, it's not so active to the point that it's overwhelming. So you may feel your heart racing, you may feel your hands getting a little sweaty, perhaps, but it's not overwhelming to the extent that you don't feel like you have what it's what it takes in order to handle the stressor so you are confident that you can tackle whatever obstacle is in front of you. Today, we're talking to neuropsychologist, Dr Aldrich Chan. He was just saying that there's a good type of stress that's normal and healthy, like traveling is stressful, but it's a good kind of stress that's short term and can be handled. Then there's bad, chronic stress that feels overwhelming. So I asked Dr chan how we can manage the overwhelming, long term stress that's damaging our health. Personally, I'm a big fan of meditation and actually cold plunges as ways to develop increased resilience to stress. Meditation is very well supported by science. At this point, it has been shown to improve cognitive faculties, emotion regulation, even immune functioning and cold plunges force your body into a stressful situation, but it's controlled and it's safe, and among others, it releases things like norepinephrine and dopamine that can assist with mood and every exposure may be increasing one's tolerance to stressful situations, possibly strengthening the tone of what we call your vagus nerve, which is the only cranial nerve that descends into your gut and acts as a highway of information flow between your gut and your brain. And low vagal tone tends to be correlated with higher sensitivity to stress. So if I decided to take a cold plunge when I'm stressed, how long do I have to stay in the water to get the benefits? So yeah, some people break it up. I prefer to just stay in there for like 20 minutes, actually. So I'm a little bit different. But the key though is that when you're in the cold water, your body is automatically going to react. And the cold is something interesting, because it's not like we become completely desensitized to it every time you go in, it's going to provide a jolt to your system, but the more you do it, the more you get confident about the fact that your body will adapt in that cold environment. Be careful drinking white wine. A study from Iowa State University found that when people pour white wine into a clear glass, they pour 9% more than people who drink red wine. That's because white wine blends in with the glass, causing drinkers to pour more and drink more than they intend to today's medical term Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome, or pots, that's a condition in which your heart beats faster than normal. When you transition from lying down to standing up, you may feel your heart race, or you may feel dizzy, light headed, faint or fatigued. With pots, your body can't keep your blood pressure steady and stable, and pots is pretty common. About one in 100 people will develop it at some point, but cases have more than doubled since the pandemic, and one reason is that POTS is increasingly being linked to viral illnesses like the flu, covid and pneumonia. You can also develop it after surgery or. A head injury. The good news is that POTS is not life threatening, and there are a bunch of treatments that can help, mainly exercise and changes in diet. For example, reclined aerobic exercise like swimming, rowing and recumbent bicycling have the best results, but even walking more can help. Medical compression stockings can also help push blood up from your legs to reduce pot symptoms. As far as diet changes, a lot of times, POTS patients need more salt and fluids to increase blood volume. There are also medications that can help and in 80% of cases, the condition improves on its own, and that's today's medical term, Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome or pots Coming up, we'll hear more from neuropsychologist, Dr Aldrich chan he'll explain how quality social interactions can protect us against conditions ranging from depression to PTSD. But first, let's say you ate a huge meal, you're stuffed and you're worried you're going to have a tummy ache or heartburn because of it, try this trick. Take 10 minutes to visualize a place that makes you feel relaxed, like a warm beach with gentle waves or a tranquil forest filled with trees rustling in the breeze. According to research from Morristown Medical Center in New Jersey, that will help they found that visualizing a peaceful environment calms the nerves that control digestive tract function and that improves digestion and speeds up the emptying of your stomach. In fact, it can cut your heartburn risk by 68% so the next time you're worried that a big meal will come back to haunt you, take 10 minutes post meal for some relaxing visualization. How many times has this happened to you? You meet someone new, they tell you their name, and a few seconds later, you've completely forgotten it. It happens to me all the time. Well, here's how to remember the name of the person you're talking to. Just spend a few extra seconds looking at their face. In an experiment conducted by Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, study, subjects wearing eye tracking devices were shown random faces and names, and it turns out that women were 12% better at correctly recalling people's names simply because they spent a few extra seconds staring at a person's facial features, the brain is encoded to remember visual images better than auditory information. So use the trick President Franklin Roosevelt did. He'd imagine a person's name written on their forehead, and that's how he remembered the names of everybody who worked in the White House. So the next time you meet someone, when they tell you their name, really look at them while you absorb the information, you'll be more likely to remember their name in the future. Okay, listen to this. If you exercise today, you'll perform better at work tomorrow. That's according to the Harvard Business Review. For the research, hundreds of study subjects wore fitness trackers while their performance at work was monitored by their supervisors, and the data confirmed that exercise helps you perform better at work the very next day, and one of the biggest reasons is because exercising today helps you sleep better tonight, and when you're well rested, you perform better on mental tasks, the next day, you wake up with greater energy and better concentration, and that directly impacts your work performance, back with more health intelligence from neuropsychologist Dr Aldrich Chan and he endorses the latest science that shows some mental health conditions can be improved With a so called Social prescription, meaning enjoying more social interactions and activities with your friends and loved ones. So I asked Dr chan why those are so important. First thing I'll say is that this makes a lot of sense, given that we are very social animals, and to consider anyone in isolation would be seeing the forest for the trees. Lots of people don't see it this way, but language and touch these can be vehicles that can dysregulate another person's brain, like if someone is constantly yelling at another person in the form of verbal abuse, this can potentially lead to something like PTSD, but on the flip side, it can also regulate the brain the appropriate amounts of social support and social experiences can effectively reduce symptoms of depression and anxiety. For example, someone who's feeling depressed partially because they feel isolated and misunderstood, say they're asked to join a social setting despite their perhaps cynicism, and to their surprise, they find someone who feels the same way and are open to having deeper discussions now they feel understood, less isolated, and this can substantially improve mood back with more health intelligence from neuropsychologist Dr Aldrich chan earlier, he said that a key part of overcoming a stressful situation is to embrace the mindset that some stress can be good for us in. It's a practice known as reframing, and I asked Dr chan to explain more about why reframing helps turn almost any negative situation into something much more positive. Reframing can be basically changing your perspective on a particular difficult situation. So let's say you find yourself in a situation that is unfortunate and you're feeling very down and stressed and overwhelmed, if new information comes into play, or you gain an additional perspective that could push you towards seeing the moment not so much as overwhelming, but as an opportunity that can be overcome. And if that is the case, then that is one example, for example, in which you can handle or tackle a major stressor that then changes into a eustress we know overuse of antibiotics can lead to antibiotic resistant bacteria, But there's another concern, developing Type Two Diabetes, scientists found antibiotics alter the balance of our microbiome, the billions of microorganisms living in our gut, and when the balance is off, it can cause changes in insulin sensitivity and glucose tolerance, which can increase the risk of type two diabetes. So don't take antibiotics unless you have a bacterial infection that requires them more intelligence for your health. From neuropsychologist, Dr Aldrich Chan, if you'd like to know more about him, or his center for Neuropsychology and consciousness in Miami, check out Dr Chan, cnc.com and he has a trick for improving memory called chunking. It's an exercise that Dr chan actually uses to help people who've suffered a concussion or stroke improve their memory. So I asked Dr chan to tell us more about it. So if you if you think of a phone number, which is a good example, they're chunked, right? It's not like you just get all the digits altogether, but you have the area code, it breaks up into three, and then it breaks up into four, right? So as soon as you break it up like that, it's going to improve your ability for recall. So aside from chunking phone numbers, can you give us another example of how we might use chunking to remember something? So as long as you integrate strategies, you can improve your your recall of memory. There are many other types. For example, like I used to play this game where I would have a friend lend me their credit card, and within 10 seconds, I'd remember all the digits. And part of what I was doing was I was looking at the numbers, chunking them, and then creating a story out of those numbers. So like a 98 year old meets a 50 year old that flies on a 757, and you know, X, Y and Z. And basically, you come up with a story that brings together those those numbers. And when you provide an underlying substrate, structure and meaning behind it, it's going to improve your ability to recall what the numbers are. Experts say we need to pay attention when we're walking our dogs, because too many people are trying to multi task. We walk our dogs while scrolling through our phones making calls while listening to a podcast or pushing a stroller. It's understandable we are busy, but animal behaviorists say that at best, dog walkers who aren't paying attention can confuse or frustrate their dogs, and at worst, they can endanger the dog's safety. Leslie sin is a board certified veterinarian behaviorist, and she equates inattentive dog walking to distracted driving. She says our dogs communicate primarily with their body language, so if you're not paying attention, you won't know how your dog feels, and the Cleveland Clinic says only a small percentage of people can actually multitask effectively, so distracted dog walkers may not notice potential threats, bicyclists, joggers, cars or unleashed dogs. By the time a person looks up from their phone, another dog could be ready to attack, or your dog could eat something dangerous. You could also hurt yourself if you're not paying attention. A study by Johns Hopkins found that humans injuries while dog walking increased more than four fold in the last 20 years. The bottom line is walking your dog should be about building your relationship and focusing on what your dog needs, and that may be the only time he gets out of the house that day. So keep your phone in your pocket. Here's an email I received at Connie at intelligence for your health.com. It comes from Shannon Mueller, who writes, I saw a story on the news about a woman who had a spider crawl in her ear when she was asleep. How common is this. Shannon, I don't want to freak you out, but according to a study in the Journal of family medicine and primary care, about 20% of foreign objects found in ears are insects. It even happened to one of our radio show producers a few months ago, the insects found in ears typically include. Include ants, mosquitoes and spiders. The good news it's extremely rare for bugs to do any damage inside a human ear, and the most you'll likely notice are some unusual clicking and rustling sounds, a slight tickle or the sensation that something's moving in your ear. Bugs almost always crawl out on their own, but researchers say you can encourage them by putting a few drops of baby oil or olive oil into your ear canal, but never, ever stick a Q tip or tweezer in there, since that could squash the bug and make it even much harder to get out and definitely see a doctor if you feel like something stuck in your ear for several days because there have been cases of bugs malting or shedding their outside shell and needing to be removed surgically. Well. Thank you for your email. Shannon, I hope a bug does not crawl in your ear. Okay, listen to this. If you're feeling sluggish, you may be low in iodine. About one in three people are and it's a mineral that our thyroid needs to function properly to see if you are iodine deficient. Integrative medicine expert Dr Tasneem bate says, get some liquid iodine that brown colored disinfectant from the pharmacy and rub some on the underside of your arm, if your skin quickly soaks it up and leaves no tell tale, yellow mark your iodine levels are low. A quick fix, add a half a teaspoon of iodized salt to your daily diet, because the salt in processed food is not iodized. You can also get iodine from seaweed or ask your doctor about taking a daily multivitamin that contains 150 micrograms of iodine. You've heard us say that the best way to avoid getting sick is to regularly wash your hands with soap and water, but that is especially important in the first few hours of the morning. Researchers at the University of Cambridge found we're a whopping 10 times more likely to get sick from cold viruses, for example, when we're exposed to them in the morning compared to afternoon or evening. It's down to a key gene researchers have identified that's responsible for boosting our immunity, and for some reason, that gene is least active when we first wake up, which makes our immune system significantly more vulnerable to morning attacks from germs. Meaning, if someone at work is sick with the flu and they touch a light switch, for example, and then you come along and touch the same switch a few minutes later, you're more likely to get sick if it's early in the day. So if there's ever a time to be obsessive about hand washing, it should be between 7am and noon, more intelligence for your health from neuropsychologist Dr Aldrich Chan, and when it comes to relieving stress, he's a fan of mindful meditation, so I asked Dr chan to tell us How practicing mindfulness can improve our mental health. Mindfulness provides people with a, I would say, a competitive edge in life, and it's the state of being open, non judgmental, non critical, and completely present we're so busy talking and thinking that we fail to fully receive what the world has to offer. And it may help us live in the moment, so that we don't lose time thinking about the past or the future needlessly. And what I usually hear people complain about quite often when they try any mindfulness practice, is that they can't meditate because their minds are wandering. But that's pretty much the whole one of the big points of meditation, right? It's to refocus the mind every time it wanders, because our minds naturally wander. And unfortunately, the more your mind wanders, the more likely it is that it will wander to negative places. And in my opinion, it's quite sad that children in many school systems don't learn how to regulate their emotions or focus on the present, especially because emotional intelligence is actually a higher predictor of success than intellectual quotient, and this is actually part of the reason why I developed the meditation group and the sage program. The sage program being dedicated to helping young adults develop techniques for self regulation, awareness, goal, attainment and emotional intelligence. If you'd like to know more about the sage program that Dr chan just mentioned, check out Dr Chan, C, N, c.com, Dr Chan is spelled C, H, A, N, that's it for our show today, our special intelligence for your health with Connie Selig, edition of the podcast, I'm Gib Gerard. Don't forget to rate comment and subscribe on Apple podcast, Spotify, wherever you get your podcast, it helps us out a lot, and also you can reach out to us on social media. All of our links are listed down in the show notes. We try to respond to every DM, every mention of the show, because ultimately, we do the show for you guys. So thank you so much for listening. You.