33. The Link Between Psychological Health And Immunity With Dr. Mary Rensel

This week on Healthbite, I discuss the impact of psychological health on the immune system. Dr. Mary Rensel, assistant professor of medicine at the Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine in Cleveland, Ohio, and the Director of Wellness at the Mellen Center of the Cleveland Clinic. Dr. Rensel is also the founder of Brain Fresh, a coach support system as well as co-owner of Brain Ops, a program focused on optimizing work performance through neurobiology. Dr. Rensel shares her proven techniques to help mitigate stress and how that can help improve immune function. 

Highlights

• Can stress affect your immune system? 
• How three 15-minute breaks throughout the day help increase your immunity?
• One simple strategy Dr. Rensel uses to maintain control over her emotions. 
• Dr. Rensel's proven technique to help you achieve a positive mindset in as little as 30 minutes a day.

Find out more about brainfresh at brainfresh.org
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Transcript

Dr. Adrienne Youdim, Host: 0:03
Hi, this is Dr. Adrienne Welcome to Health bite the podcast where we explore all things health and wellness. This episode of health White is sponsored by Dell nutrition, a line of functional nutrition bars and supplements. I've personally curated to enhance health and well being. This week I had the pleasure of speaking with Dr. Mary Rensel assistant professor of medicine at the Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine and director of wellness at the Mellon center of the Cleveland Clinic. Dr. Rensel work focuses amongst other things on brain health and integrative medicine. And her academic medicine interests often intersect with wellness, advocacy, innovation, coaching and strategic initiatives. Amongst other things, Dr. Rensel is the founder of brain fresh, a coach support system, as well as co-owner of brain Ops, a program focused on optimizing work performance through neurobiology this week, Dr. Rensel, and I spoke about neuroimmunology, an area of interest in expertise and on the practices of integrative medicine, which not only help us feel good, but also help boost our brain health, as well as our immune system. This conversation was truly nourishing, as Dr. Rensel saw gives us her expertise, and pearls of wisdom on how to live well. Let's dive in. Well, welcome back to our podcast health bite. I'm so happy today to be with Dr. Mary Rensel. Dr. Rensel is a neuro immunologist, and has so many great pearls to share that are evergreen and also so relevant to our present situation at the tail end. I'm hoping of the pandemic where we hope that we are at so welcome. I'm so happy to have you here.

Dr. Mary Rensel: 2:04
Thank you for having me. I'm thrilled.

Dr. Adrienne Youdim, Host: 2:06
Neural immunology sounds so profound and almost intimidating. Can you tell us a little bit about what that specialty entails?

Dr. Mary Rensel: 2:17
You know, my favorite word ever is something called psycho neuro immunology because that word is definitely intimidating. I remember the first time I saw that word, and I was like, I need to break this down. What does this mean? I love the word because it really tells us a lot about ourselves, how our psychology domains, our psychological health, and then our immune system and our nerves, how it all matters and how it interacts. And we've heard a lot about that with COVID. You know how to support our immune system through the stressors of ongoing risk of infection, etc. And so we've learned, you know, what it actually matters, like what we eat, and how we sleep and how we interact. And if we have any skill with emotional processing, it actually matters for our immune system, which is pretty cool that we could do things like you said, little bites little things each day to really lead to long lasting change, and potentially even you know, avoiding a serious infection. It's pretty neat, you know, things that we can potentially modify day to day or really enhance, which is some knowledge, you know, it's not dramatic activities. They're very doable, but they really matter.

Dr. Adrienne Youdim, Host: 3:17
Your specialty and your area of expertise really brings together kind of everything that we're grappling with right now. So what are the things that we can do to enhance our immunity, as well as the mental health and psychosocial stressors that have been imposed upon us right in the midst of this pandemic, and change in routines and work life and family life and all the other things that come with this? This is really a perfect cross section of bringing those two things together. And it seems and I'm sure you'll tell us more that these two areas Really do come together. immunology and psycho neurology really go hand in hand, right?

Dr. Mary Rensel: 4:03
Yeah, and I think if one thing I want to hope of, for, you know, living through a global pandemic, I'm hoping that we've all realized the importance of our day-to-day actions to support our healthy immune system and getting through a very stressful time. So you know, if you asked your friends I asked my friends, you know, what are some things that you've started doing since the pandemic and even me personally you know, I put it in my journal now like, what I'm going to meditate and when I'm going to journal and when I'm going to lift weights, when I'm gonna get my cardio because I don't want to miss it, you know, because sometimes I look at my week and I'm like, Where can I squeeze it in? I got to get it in here somewhere. So I've realized when I don't do those things, it makes a dramatic difference for kind of how I handle my week and kind of my emotional state and the nice thing is, you know we can influence those things by just some simple skills and that's why I love you know, your podcasts how you talk about breaking it down little bite size information, you know, what am I favorite thing is if we're trying to put our brain into more positive emotional state, if we can stay in a positive emotional state. It's our more creative state. So if we can do that, and how do we get there? How do we encourage you to get there some simple things like just gratitude or compassion, like you're just having compassion for someone or for yourself, like, you know, this was a busy day, I got a lot done already. Sometimes even by the time you get to work, you've already done 10 things you think, you know, that was pretty good. Just some compassion, little gratitude, you know what I'm able to walk to work, I'm able to see I'm able to speak, I'm able to think you know, thank goodness, sometimes you have to go back to the basics of what you're grateful for to get your brain into that healthy state. So they say you need like three positive to counteract one negative. I think a great example, I was reading in a book lately that said, think about someone that said something bad, like, Oh, I didn't like your outfit, or we didn't appreciate that comment. You said think about someone who said that something in the last year, I bet you still think about it and know exactly what they said. But think of the last person who said you looked nice, or you know, they liked your that mentioned in the meeting, you just let those things go. That's what we really have to hold on to and a positive, so three positives to counteract one negative. Yeah,

Dr. Adrienne Youdim, Host: 6:00
there's so much that you said there that I really want to kind of piece out the first, you know, you started by talking about some of your habits that you have implemented in a very structured and routine way. And I think that you're right, we have kind of realized during this time is that these habits, like exercising, or movement or meditation that were maybe aspirational, we are now realizing how critical they are to our emotional and physical well being. And because of the fact that our routines have been kind of out of sorts, that we really need to be even more intentional about maintaining those habits. And I love the idea of scheduled time, right? So really making it a necessity to get around that I like that tip. And I think if we can talk about like an actionable health bite it is. And I know we'll talk about some of these behaviors in a little bit more detail in terms of what it actually does for our health. But you know, plugging that in, I think the other thing that you began to touch upon is kind of positive psychology, right? So some of the things that we can do like gratitude practice. Let's get into that a little bit further before we talk about the negativity bias. Right. So let's talk a little bit about the positive psychology. And I'd love for you to talk a little bit about the data or the evidence behind it. Because sometimes we feel like self compassion and gratitude are kind of these will, will we things are like Dan Harris says pollyannish things, but they are actually grounded in science.

Dr. Mary Rensel: 7:31
Yeah, there's some really interesting studies, there's a group here, I'm in Cleveland, Ohio, and there's a group here at weatherhead, our business school a case, and they did some really interesting research, looking at coaching, you know, people getting their MBAs and they went through some professional coaching, that if a coach started with a positive session, rather than starting with a negative session, and the negative session was more just like data, like, you know, did you read three hours? Did you get this done? And the but the positive session was, you know, envision, you know, what could it be like, you know, what, like, dream a little bit just kind of big, wide open questions. And if the coach started with positive questions, they always liked the coach better, they had more positive memories of the coach, and they actually succeeded better in their studies, they got more data, they are more researched on even one session with a positive based coach, you know, so I think, you know, we can all do that. We don't have to hire a coach, we can just have those times with some big open thinking, you know, so what could it look like? What are some possibilities, not reality, necessarily, don't think of you know how you're going to solve every problem. But just really big, wide open, think down the line, what's important to you, if we're trying to achieve that positive mental state where we're more creative, I like efficiency, you know, so when I get something done, I look at my week, I want to get as much done as I can, but still have some fun, and you know, get my work done. So I can still be with my family and friends in a safe way. And I want to do anything I can to be efficient at work. And so one of the ways to do that is to get out of the stress, nervous fear, task oriented only thinking but get to the bigger creative thinking because sometimes I will miss patterns. If I'm only focused on one task, or very stressed about a task, I'll miss what the what nature is telling me where I should go with a project or some bigger ideas in relation to some my projects. So there's some things we can do to manipulate you know, how creative we are, how innovative we are. That's, you know, pretty interesting, right? And so what does the data say? The coaching data is pretty clear that positive value based coaching is really important if you're trying to get someone to change or to think about some new solutions. And then just structurally, when you think of the nerve cells, if you want to think of them as like little branches with all these little ends to them like a Fern or something, our body makes more of those if we take good care of our brain. So the brain is an organ that needs a little attention and support and you know, if we're in a positive emotional state, the nerves actually connect are more efficient. And the more we do things so if something scary or new to you, the more you practice it, the more your body is going to try to be efficient with the connections of the nerves so that it's easier and easier. And we think of that as learning right and being a master something,

Dr. Adrienne Youdim, Host: 10:02
you know, makes me think that in this particular time where you know, some of the concerns that I hear from patients, and quite frankly, what I have experienced myself in multitasking from home, right is that focus has been very difficult. And so this is kind of what you're sharing with us is clear data in terms of how positive psychology or maybe gratitude practices or beginning the day with a positive intention can actually help those connections between the brain cells or the neurons, and actually help promote productivity. And so something that I think even like general public is starting to hear about is neuroplasticity, right? Which is what you're referring to, to the fact that our brains continue to grow past childhood, and that we can actually rewire the circuitry of our brain to make ourselves more productive in this particular case, just based on some of these feel good gestures.

Dr. Mary Rensel: 11:03
Isn't that neat? It is it is. And there's also some neat studies suggesting that showing that you know, if you know, you have a big day coming up, if you get a little exercise that morning, you will be able to handle the stress better, you know, so that you can turn on some factors called neurotrophic factors, like factors that support the nerve functioning, you can adjust that you can enhance that but with some of your behaviors as well. So movement exercise, can I help that mindfulness can help that, you know, like you said, gratitude can help that. So we all want an efficient, easy, productive day at work, you know, and there's some ways that we can manipulate that by our behaviors.

Dr. Adrienne Youdim, Host: 11:42
Let's stick to our focus a little bit on the exercise piece. So what you're saying is that movement or exercise can actually turn on neuro trophic factors or these you know, factors or hormones, so to speak, that can help juice up or ramp up the brain activity. And you know, even right now that in a way, we have so much more time, but we really have so much less time, you know, despite the fact that we're not commuting, etc. Time is always a boundary for people. So tell us Is there like a limit? How much do you have to actually do that exercise or movement to reap those positive benefits?

Dr. Mary Rensel: 12:22
I think that's still being figured out exactly how long like some of the researchers like there's a researcher at MIT looking at nerve health and how they connect, and she concluded that you need at least 30 minutes at a time. But like the coaching team here at Case Western, when they looked at it, they found some benefits to the positive psychology if you did about 15 minutes throughout the day, you broke it up three times. So what did that positive psychology mean? That it was even as simple as like petting a cat or dog, you know, so like connecting and that emotional contagion, like you know, your dog or cat loves you you love your cat like that, like back and forth with emotions can set you in a in a good place, kind of reset you if you've had a busy morning, zoom all morning and take a little break, you know, or just some movement just to take a break and enter kind of rewire reset, the coaching group found that if you had some renewal moments throughout your day, even if they were five to 15 minutes, it seemed to matter even if it was as simple as stopping and having a conversation with somebody else outside of work project, not a stressful conversation more about, you know, enjoyable conversation.

Dr. Adrienne Youdim, Host: 13:24
And it sounds like you can do mix and match. Right? So you can do maybe 15 minutes of exercise, and then 15 minutes of dog petting and then 15 minutes of connected conversation.

Dr. Mary Rensel: 13:37
Exactly, yeah, I think that was really neat. And so that's not long, and that it doesn't take a lot of products or skills to do those kinds of things. But the connection, as we know, you know, connection has been so challenged. And we know that but there's some safe ways to do that. And it looks differently. It's like this, you know, on zoom or what have you. And you know, just Unfortunately, this is this good as it gets some time to see people's faces and not be able to experience all the interactions that you have when you're in person with somebody. But that really matters to have those connections. And sometimes that looks different, like I've heard people starting to write letters or go for a walk from a distance together. You know, I've seen walking groups out, it's just nice in any way to connect with a human because our brain really likes that we're tribal, you know, we're used to having people around us. And we don't always love that we feel like that's a challenge. We don't have the time for that we're too busy for that. But actually our days would likely be more efficient if we put some connections in our days, like we said, little breaks.

Dr. Adrienne Youdim, Host: 14:30
That's all great information. I did want to get back to what we termed as negativity bias. And the fact that often or always rather, the human mind focuses on the negative. That's kind of physiologic to right like it's not being a Debbie Downer, necessarily to fixate on that negative comment to use your example as opposed to all the positives. So I think that in and of itself is an important point that You know, that experience is human. And, you know, normal, we all do it.

Dr. Mary Rensel: 15:05
Yeah, it's a safety mechanism. So the brain wants to remember negative things for safety, that's fine. So you just have to say thank you, Brian, thank you for remembering that I'm going to move on. You don't want to think of three good things, you know, to counteract that. But that is a safety mechanism. And that's why, you know, you Stress Stress alone is not a bad thing. As you know, it's what gets us moving. If we see a fire, it gets us moving from a fire, it knows, if we're thirsty, it, it gives us a stimulus to go drink water. So stress is okay. But when we have excessive chronic stress, that can really affect our work performance. And that's been clearly shown in many studies. So it affects our concentration or cognitive ability, you know, just being able to take in data and make some good decisions or get some good innovative ideas, it's harder when we're always feeling stressed, if we want to manipulate our emotional state, we want to try to put it in some positive phases throughout the day, so that we can still be task oriented, which is our stress mode a little bit, but then also, our creative side can also come out periodically. And then you know, we also have to acknowledge that we have to express our emotions throughout the day. So one of the recommendations is three times a day, write down three feelings, that doesn't take too much, you might want to write down what you were doing. And you might then see a pattern say, Oh, you know, always upset when I see x, maybe I could preempt that with a little walk or stretch before I have to do that x activity, because now that you see throughout your week when your negative emotions are coming up. So becoming aware of your emotional phases kind of throughout the day, and just learning some tips and some tools on how to emotionally process Some people say, you know, I just don't want to go in that closet, that's a closet, that's a place I don't want to go to, I don't know, if I'll ever come out, you know, but really just naming them gives them a lot less power. And I think that's the power of sometimes when people meditate, you imagine a balloon with a feeling on it, and it floats away or a fish swimming by with a feeling on it and it goes away, you give it less power, it's when we don't talk about it, we don't know what we don't want to do, we don't want to approach it, that's sometimes then it will have some power over us.

Dr. Adrienne Youdim, Host: 16:57
I like to reiterate the point of our inability to discern fear, and stress or danger, right. So our emotional brain will take nagging children or yelling bosses, or Tigers all in the same way. So our body's responses to react to that in a certain way, which is just stress or fight or flight. But these measures that you bring up are actually ways that have been shown to dampen that response, right? drive down the heart rate.

Dr. Mary Rensel: 17:30
And you can acknowledge Yes, thank you, Brian, you know, that's evolution and kept us always scanning the environment and looking for anything dangerous, that's fine, we're glad to have that we want to be safe or crossing the street, we're always kind of scanning. So yeah, we need to learn how to counteract that. And just to acknowledge it, and just to be able to recognize it, that's also helpful, because that is something a lot of people choose not to talk about emotions throughout the day, like I'm working, I don't have time. And so Who has time for that stuff, you know, I just try to get my work done. But the fact if we can just pause and that's all it took, you know, one of the study showed is really productive. If just three times a day, you just wrote down three motions, that really made a difference in people's focus and productivity just to acknowledge that yes, you have feelings, yes, they come throughout the day. Yes, you can have 10 emotions at once, you know, and then obviously, you know, see a professional if you need help with some tools and stress management, etc. Because that's been really helpful for a lot of people during all this stress with COVID.

Dr. Adrienne Youdim, Host: 18:24
I think the point that you make that, you know, perhaps people don't want to engage in that, or they don't want to wallow in that. But in fact, it's the opposite, right? So if people are able to give it the attention that it needs, and to name it, then you can create some space between you and that thing, as opposed to being all consumed by it. That is a practical strategy.

Dr. Mary Rensel: 18:49
Yeah, because sometimes you get to a point, you're like, I don't know what's wrong, something's wrong, something is wrong, I can't focus, I'm not getting anything done in it. So if you had a habit of just kind of checking in with yourself, and knowing that it's not your job to fix the feelings, we're not saying anything about fixing them, we're just naming them if you need help fixing, that's where there's a lot of professionals out there to help with that. But if you just need just some basic tools to how to number one, even know what's going on in your emotional state throughout the day, there are typical patterns, you know, and some some people notice every time before I walk into this meeting, I feel x well then you can take that information and make a plan for it, you know, once you realize your daily pattern.

Dr. Adrienne Youdim, Host: 19:24
So we've talked so far about these techniques and strategies on how to manage acute and chronic stress, namely your emotions, being more aware and maybe present to them how that can improve our focus and our productivity, which we are eternally and consistently concerned about. I'm interested now to bring it back to the immune enhancement or the immunology piece. So I think what people are less aware of is how these practices actually can help boost your immune system. Isn't it

Dr. Mary Rensel: 20:00
amazing so yeah there's been really interesting studies showing meditation which you don't have to be an expert you don't have to be a buddhist monk level of meditation you could be a very new meditator there's been some interesting functional mri studies and immunologic studies that you know pretty quickly even if you're really new at meditating you can put your brain kind of in a more creative calm state which is pretty neat you know that we have that power and when we get there we live in chronic stress land if we're always in chronic stress our immune system is always ready to fight it's kind of stunned by a lot of cortisol in our system and so that actually decreases our ability to fight things off and when we're in more of a relaxed state throughout our day our immune system can you know balance like it needs to and be ready for whatever approaches rather than us making a natural hormone which is cortisol because we're stressed which is actually you know something that makes it more difficult to fight off infections

Dr. Adrienne Youdim, Host: 20:55
overall high cortisol does help suppress or does suppress the immune system can you talk a little bit about for example the functional mri piece and the changes that they see in people's brains by checking brain activity so i'd love for you to give an example of that as well as maybe one of the examples of how very concretely the immune system has changed with some of these behaviors or practices

Dr. Mary Rensel: 21:23
or yeah so there was an interesting study again related to coaching and you know starting with a positive session and they talked to some students they were undergrad students and they talked to them about their vision what's important to you what are your values how do you envision yourself in 10 to 30 years what could it look like like really those wide open creative kind of questions rather than you know did you do your homework and did you read and did you check these boxes and when they put the various groups either the very open ended positive vision based value based questions and compared to the group that was talked about you know just assignments they saw different areas of the brain lighting up in each of the group and the one area of the brain that was most lighting up in a very positive group was the envisioning area so it was a part of our brain that helps us see things and kind of plan movements and that was the area that was more often lining up with those folks which is pretty neat and then the other group was more like the stress level of the brain you know and routine part of the brain

Dr. Adrienne Youdim, Host: 22:21
so it speaks to again that enhancing your creativity when you open your mind and explore and that way so it gives validity to rest and play for even the super productive individual and so tell us also about the immune enhancing benefits of these practices

Dr. Mary Rensel: 22:42
yeah so you know if we know there's a certain part of the brain that reacts to stress and if it you know it's our hypothalamus our deep you know in the center of our brain it will release certain hormones and chemicals related to hormones when it's stressed what it's perceiving danger and the interesting thing i don't know if anyone you know is listening has tried guided imagery but that's a time when you can close your eyes and you can just take your brain to your happy place like i love nature i could close my eyes and think i'm in a you know beautiful forest and i can hear the birds so my brain thinks that's where i am right so i can just take my brain out of a stressful place and learn about the tools of guided imagery because they're expensive studies showing that if you learn those tools like meditation guided imagery you can adjust your immune system to a more reactive healthy state rather than thinking you're always in stress so it's pretty neat that we could take our brain to our happy place ourselves like within 10 minutes closing our eyes you don't have to go anywhere you don't have to go anywhere risky with COVID you know you can stay home close your eyes and pretend then you try to envision all the senses like what does it feel like playing the drums what do you hear you know what do you feel on your hands and you know what are you seeing and then suddenly like you don't even remember what you were stressed about you know because you've totally distracted and distracted your brain from what it was perceiving as fear the other way to do that is just taking a watch walk in nature so a lot of people are home zooming and staying online all day long and it's really hard on the brain to keep that focus so the way to do that is to go out in nature for a little you know 510 minute walk but don't take your phone don't put your air pods in you know you just take in what you're seeing and hearing and smelling and that will really again detract and distract from what you were perceiving as fear or stress

Dr. Adrienne Youdim, Host: 24:23
and physiologically those factors that signify a higher stress response like heart rate and respiratory rate and skin temperature these physiologic parameters all settle down to so i like to point that out because it's actually a physical sign that your body is responding and they've shown that being a nature helps rev all of that down

Dr. Mary Rensel: 24:46
is that amazing and i always as a brain doc i always think of the brain during those times you know because the brain is kind of at mercy of the blood flowing there so if there's not good blood flow because we're worried we're constricted we're waiting for something to happen we're out viously not getting good blood flow to the brain to help us be more creative because the brain is at our mercy. And the other thing to know about the brain is it's really metabolically demanding. So it needs a lot of good calories all day long. It's always on, it's always working, even when we're kind of relaxing, that's the other thing to talk about is the default network in the brain. So there's kind of a when we're peaceful, and we're relaxing, if you want to say daydreaming, you know, your brain is kind of assimilating what it's done all day, what it's seen. So that's another reason to have fun and relax. And now we're telling you, good look at this, you get to play fun, relax, and you get to kind of veg out on the couch for a bit because you get to let your brain kind of enhance and kind of process all the information you gave it all day, it doesn't mean it's not doing anything, it's actually kind of coordinating and shifting and filing, if you want to think you know, it's kind of processing where everything goes. So that's kind of a neat thing, too. So these are all renewal moments, you know that you need to give your Brian little of those renewal moments. And also, I'm sure you could tell us way more about healthy diet throughout the day, throughout the night, something that will last because your brain needs a 24 seven, you know, it always needs some good healthy nutrition.

Dr. Adrienne Youdim, Host: 26:03
And I think what people don't realize is that the brain runs on sugar. And it doesn't have to be sugar like gummy worms, which people who listen to this podcast knows my you know, secret not so secret anymore fixation. But you know, having those you know, not all carbohydrates are the same. So having those good carbohydrates is giving a sustainable source to the brain as a source of fuel because the brain can't utilize fat. I also know that there's information and data around the immune response to things like creativity in very specific terms like your white blood cells, or your infection fighting cells being boosted through like connection, or even your response to vaccination, which is something that is very much a hot topic item. I'd love if you would talk a little bit more about that.

Dr. Mary Rensel: 26:58
Well, yeah, a lot of people have been hearing lately about the flow state, like something that you do that you would lose time, you know, like, you would like, Oh my gosh, I can't believe an hour went by when you were doing something, I like to do some crafts or something. And I look up and like, Oh my gosh, it's already you know, I you know, making like our own body lotion with my daughters or like sketching or something, you know, now all sudden, I lose time, you know, and so then you think what just happened, but you can imagine that my blood pressure was low, my pulse was nice in low and my breathing was probably nice, and you know, long and slow. And so those are the good times again, for the immune system during those experiences where you're doing something you really love, and that distracts you in like you said, even if you're with someone that you really care about, and you are caring for or care about that matters as humans to, like we talked about, we're tribal people, we really need others around us, no matter what you say, like, people are challenging. I mean, they bring some challenges into our lives, you know, they don't always do what we want. But you know, having others around us is really important. I love the studies, especially about like social networks, saying, you know, if you mapped out, you know, who you see the 10 people you see most in your life, you know, do any of them exercise or eat healthy, because it will matter for you and your behaviors, because you just share resources, and you talk about things. So the people you see the most will bring opportunities into your lives. And it's it's really neat to think about and that's something to be strategic about if somebody moves away, or you know, somebody they think like, I don't really have anyone that close to me that ever talks about a healthy diet or what they're doing, just to learn about nutrition, etc. Go out and find someone or find someone at work, like, Hey, we talked about this once in a while or you know, share a recipe once a week or something like that, you know, because the more we do that strategically, that more it helps our well being, which is really wonderful news. You know,

Dr. Adrienne Youdim, Host: 28:41
sometimes I feel a little bit remiss talking about connection right now, because so many people are feeling disconnected. But what we were discussing, even before we started was that, in a way, because of the circumstance, we've kind of dialed into some of those networks that we wouldn't have otherwise dialed into, like these online communities, and as a result, have found people, you know, colleagues across the country, as in our case, that we would have, you know, worked for not for COVID, I don't think I would be searching for colleagues to interact with on the other side of the country, because I'd be, you know, interacting with the ones that I know, in my own, you know, place of work. So I also know that for my patients, a lot of them are finding these networks through like exercise groups, for example, or even a lot of these wellness groups and practices programs that are popping up. So there are ways in which we can still do this work, even though it's different. As you mentioned at the beginning, it's different but not necessarily not just as nourishing.

Dr. Mary Rensel: 29:46
I agree with you. Yes. And I do think there are some things that I will certainly keep throughout that I started over the last year and I agree. I mean, I have met people, you know, nationally and globally, honestly, you know, just through online communities have shared values. You know, I loved Talk about, you know, like this, like sharing good news and figuring out ways to help, you know, my patients and friends of family, you know, really be able to understand health and how to, you know, put it into their lives, and to show the importance of just being intentional about it to set up an action plan, something that can work for your life and schedule it in schedule yourself in. But yeah, I there are things I won't give up after COVID that I only started because of COVID, which is what I'll be grateful for that part.

Dr. Adrienne Youdim, Host: 30:27
So I know as our time is coming to a close, I know that part of your work is coaching coaches to level up, right, or coaching leaders on how they can maximize the effort of their teams. And it came to mind that in a way, we are all coaches and or CEOs, right? Whether we are truly CEOs of an organization or CEOs of our household, we are coaching some humans, right. So what would be maybe a piece of advice you would give to the person who is kind of in charge of navigating others?

Dr. Mary Rensel: 31:05
Yeah, I love that. Thank you. Yeah, I think we hear a lot about mindset, just change your mindset, you know, and so I hear a lot about that. But I'd like to focus on the mind in the mindset that it's an organ, it needs some support, like I have an iPhone, but I don't want to know how it works 100%, but I want to know how to optimize it. So I want to know how to optimize the mind and mindset. And there's a few things like we've discussed during our time together, you know, there's things that you could do, and there's a lot you can do without, you know, buying anything, and there's things you can do at home. So I would say start with connecting put three priorities, connecting with others in a safe way, these days. You know, think about lifestyle, and that's a big word, but that's how we live our days. And then emotional connections, emotional processing, you know, if anything, write down your emotions, you know, if it will be once or twice or three times a day just to see a pattern because they become less scary when we write them down. And they have less power than we just normalize. Yes, we have those and they come and go and then we can learn how to optimize our brain for a really great productive days. And that's it's very doable. It's a learnable skill. resiliency is a learnable skill and brain resiliency is also learnable.

Dr. Adrienne Youdim, Host: 32:13
Yeah, I love when what is practical and effective, right? also feels good. This is where these things align.

Dr. Mary Rensel: 32:23
Yeah, yeah, a lot of times as a doctor, we say, I'm sorry, you got to take this medicine this and this I get here, you know, not what we're saying is, this is fun stuff. You know, have fun, connect with others good for your immune system, good for your your noggin, you know, it may actually help your focus. So this is really good news.

Dr. Adrienne Youdim, Host: 32:39
Well, this has been such a lovely conversation. Thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me. And for those of our guests who are interested in learning more about you, where can we find you?

Dr. Mary Rensel: 32:52
You can find me on LinkedIn. That's one of the easiest ways Mary Rensel on LinkedIn and brain fresh.org is a website and an install the brain fresh and so yeah, your LinkedIn is good one to start if you want to find me there.

Dr. Adrienne Youdim, Host: 33:05
Perfect. Thank you so much, Dr. Mary, we'll talk to you soon.

Dr. Mary Rensel: 33:08
Yeah, stay well.

Dr. Adrienne Youdim, Host: 33:10
I hope you've enjoyed this episode and are inspired to take a small bite towards your own health and wellness. If you love what you heard, please subscribe on iTunes and Spotify or anywhere else you podcast and share us. If you're looking for more info you can find lots of content and sign up for my newsletter adult nutrition calm. There, you can learn more about me and my curated line of supplements and functional protein bars. Thank you for listening, and I look forward to seeing you again next week.


Transcribed by https://otter.ai