203. BrainHealth 101: Practical Neuroscience for Everyday Life with Dr.Heather Collins

Did you know that your brain continues to develop well into your 20s? Join us as we explore the fascinating concept of neuroplasticity and how it can empower you to make positive changes in your life! 

Join us as Dr.Heather Collins, a brain scientist, explains the fascinating concept of neuroplasticity and how our brains can change and adapt throughout our lives.

In this episode, Dr. Adrienne Youdim interviews Dr.Heather Collins, a brain scientist, to explore the fascinating world of neuroplasticity and its implications for health and wellness. 

They discuss how our brains are not fixed but rather malleable, allowing for growth and change throughout our lives. Dr. Collins shares practical tips for improving brain health and overcoming negative thinking patterns.

Who is Dr. Heather Collins?

• Cognitive neuroscientist and expert in neuroplasticity 
• Advocate for brain health and wellness Author of insights on learning, memory, and behavior change 
• Passionate about empowering individuals to take ownership of their brain health

What You'll Discover:

• 🧠 The transformative power of neuroplasticity and how it can change your life
• 🏃‍♀️ Practical strategies for overcoming behavioral hurdles and creating lasting habits
• 💡 The importance of metacognitive awareness in managing negative thinking
• 🍇 Tips for nourishing your brain with the right foods and activities

Why This Episode Matters:
 
In a world where we often feel stuck in our ways, Dr. Collins' insights remind us that we have the power to reshape our brains and our lives. Her expertise will equip you with the tools to:

• Embrace change and foster personal growth
• Cultivate self-compassion and resilience
• Enhance your cognitive health through simple, actionable steps

🎧 Tune in now and take the first step towards harnessing the incredible potential of your brain!

"Just because your brain is a complex thing, I don't want people to be afraid of the word brain. That it's yours. You own it." - Dr. Heather Collins

• Website:  https://www.drheathercollins.com/ 
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/collinshr/ 

Ways that Dr. Adrienne Youdim Can Support You

1. Join the Monthly Free Mind-Body Workshops: Participate in engaging mind-body practices designed to help manage your stress response. Register here.
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3. Freebie alert. Register for our monthly free MindBody Workshop and receive a downloadable guide on emotional labeling to help you manage your emotions effectively.

Connect with Dr. Adrienne Youdim

• Website :https://www.dradriennespeaks.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dradrienneyoudim/

Transcript

Adrienne Youdim

So Heather, I am really, really excited about this conversation. I talk about the brain science a lot, but to have a brain scientist come and share her wisdom and knowledge, I'm just so excited to have you with me.

Heather Collins

I'm excited to be here. I love this podcast. I love the idea of it. And I really appreciate the idea of showing people small things they can do to make big differences in their health and wellness.

Adrienne Youdim

Well, what I'm really fascinated about is the concept of neuroplasticity. And back in the day, when I was in medical school, we did not have this concept available to us. And I think they were still teaching us that the brain gets formed by the time you're five years old, and then you're screwed, you know, thereafter. And so to know now that actually our brains are plastic or malleable and changeable, I think is so aligned with what we're trying to do on this podcast, helping people do better for themselves one step at a time. And I love when the science backs up like our best intentions for ourselves.

Heather Collins

Yeah, that's really interesting. And it's, Let's go back to the five-year-old brain, because I love the way you expressed that how you were taught in medical school is you're five years old, you go to kindergarten, your brain is done. And there are many wonderful, absolutely impressive things about the brains of five-year-olds. However, that is not when development stops. I will say that development typically continues until you're about in your mid-20s or so. And then your brain is somewhat stable, and then we see slight declines after the age of 30. And we see pretty significant declines starting around 60 or 65. But the interesting thing is these are approximations because every person is unique and individual. I will say that people are unique and individual. And when it comes to adolescent brains in particular, we should give them grace. Teenagers are known for making bad decisions. You have teenagers, I'm sure you've experienced this. And their brains are plastic just like ours are. And that means that they're sometimes difficult to understand choices and behaviors. It's just their way of their brain learning how to be plastic and learning how to grow and change.

Adrienne Youdim

 So can you start by just explaining what neuroplasticity means?

Heather Collins

Yeah, neuroplasticity simply means that rather than being set in stone, our brains are malleable and change over time. And it's so interesting to me that it took us so long to really identify this. It really did. It took science a long time to understand that it's not just brains of children that are growing, it's really brains of adults that are growing and changing too. And neuroplasticity can take a couple of different forms. We can talk about functional neuroplasticity and we can talk about structural neuroplasticity. So structural neuroplasticity refers to the hardware in our brain actually changing over time. And you can think of functional plasticity as the software in your brain changing over time. So when we talk about hardware, our brain is composed of neurons, little cells that communicate with one another in order to facilitate everything we do in life. whether it's deciding what to have for breakfast, or smiling when we see a loved one or friend, breathing and basic bodily functions, as well as really complex cognitive processes like, which car should I buy? Which career should I choose? Who should I choose as my life partner? These neurons work together in the thousands and millions to complete each of these tasks. And in fact, the human adult brain is approximated to have about 86 billion neurons. So that's a lot. And they all work together. And as you can imagine, for them to work together, they have to learn how to communicate. And when we talk about structural neuroplasticity, we can actually form new connections among neurons. So let's say we want to learn something new. Let's say that I have a good friend who's interested in teaching me how to play tennis. To be clear, I'm terrible at tennis. I'm lucky if I can hit the ball. But let's say I'm committed to learning that. As I take tennis lessons from my friend and as she teaches me the proper stance, the proper way to hit a ball, the proper way to hold the racket, the actual connections between the neurons in my brain are going to change. So they're going to change in two different ways. Neurons that help me engage in successful tennis behaviors, like actually making contact with the ball and the racket, are going to strengthen and become stronger. So that means these pathways are going to become thicker. There are going to be more pathways and more neurons connected. At the same time, neurons in my brain that are associated with unsuccessful tennis behaviors, so missing the ball, tripping, stumbling, are going to actually weaken. And because they're not used as much over time, those physical pathways between those neurons will be very, very weak over time. Meaning that I, as a result of my tennis lessons, am more likely to engage in successful tennis behaviors and less likely to engage in unsuccessful tennis behaviors. And that's one way that our brains can actually physically change. So that would be physical neuroplasticity. Another really cool recent development of physical neuroplasticity is neurogenesis. So this is so cool, Adrienne. This is not even that we can form new connections in our brain, but we as adults can actually grow new neurons. And it doesn't happen everywhere in the brain. It's very limited. But one of the coolest places it happens is in the hippocampus in your brain. And the hippocampus is a little C-horse shaped like structure deep in the center of your brain. If you were to poke your finger in your ear and keep going, you'd hit it eventually once you got near the center of your brain. And the hippocampus is one of my favorite brain structures. And yes, I do play favorites. And that's because it's involved in learning and memory. So when we think about the implications that we can actually sprout or grow new neurons as fully formed adults, supposedly, and that these neurons can help us learn new things and make better memories, I think that's just amazing. I think that's absolutely amazing.

Adrienne Youdim

It is amazing, especially because so many of us are thinking about memory and there's so much discussion these days about decline in memory and cognition. I really, I'm really interested in not only the learning of new things, but also the the intention of doing things right so like a lot of us have all of these Aspirational goals, right? Like we want to start exercising every day. We want to stop drinking every night, right? Like we want to make better choices in the food that we eat. And it's so hard to get started, to get over that hurdle. But we know that those grooves of intention can be strengthened, right? So can you talk a little bit about the hurdle and then can you talk a little bit about what happens in terms of making it not so damn hard to continue to do those positive things for ourselves?

Heather Collins

Behavior change is one of the most difficult things for humans to engage in. We are complex creatures and our brains like to run on autopilot. It makes things easy. So that can manifest itself in simple things like a morning routine. So what do you do when you wake up in the morning?

Adrienne Youdim

Okay, don't judge. No judgment, pure honesty. One of my biggest vices is having my phone at my bed stand. I've even bought an alarm clock so that I can charge the phone in the bathroom. If there are patients who are listening to this, they know that I tell them to do this, but this is very hard for me to do. So I get up, the alarm goes off, usually around somewhere between 545 and 615, and I get on my phone. And I can spend a solid 30 minutes of wasted time on my phone. But then finally I'm like, all right, you need to get your butt out of bed. I'll go wake up my daughter or make sure she's awake. And then I head either to the garage and jump on the Peloton or I go for a run.

Heather Collins

OK, so you have a pretty healthy morning routine, actually, I would argue, despite the phone, the phone issue, which is not something you would prefer to do for 30 minutes, let's say, but it just happens. And I would say that this morning routine means that you've carefully crafted this, or at least you've thought about this and parts of it. Clearly, the Peloton, the exercise is very intentional. So it sounds like one thing you would like to create a better habit for or change in your morning routine is the 30 minutes on the phone. And you've already done a really good thing about changing your environment to support reduced use of the phone. So charging in another room, having an actual old school alarm clock, which I love. I have one of those too, not to be underrated. And the next step is thinking about the challenge that you're facing and what you want to change, and that's the 30 minutes on the phone. So you've created this habit where your brain has a system of regions and a network involved for Adrian's morning routine includes 30 minutes on the phone. And so when you click, you grab your phone out of the bathroom, you sit down, you start scrolling through Instagram or reading really interesting research articles or health articles, you are kind of on autopilot. you're just involved in the phone, you're not thinking about too much else. And what we have to do is actually change the networks involved in your brain so that you're not on autopilot anymore, or at least that you're limiting your use of autopilot thinking in the morning when you're on your phone. So just as you've used an external device as the alarm clock to remove the phone from your bedtime routine, you can do the same thing for your morning routine. So if you have a home assistant such as Google or Amazon, you can set a timer, ask it to set a timer for 10 minutes, and then you have 10 minutes on your phone and you don't have to think about when to get off your phone, something else is going to tell you. The risk is if you rely on setting a timer on your phone, it's really easy to boop, hit stop and keep scrolling. But an external timer forces you to get out of the mindset that you're in on autopilot thinking with your phone and actually pay attention to something else in your environment. And that's really important in shifting your brain and how it associates your morning routine. Now, the hard thing is it's easy to say a 30-minute to a 10-minute or something like that when it comes to phone. I think this involves removing something and removing time limits, and that's a little bit easier because you do have the function of that external device. And you're in this great morning routine of exercising, and I love that. And I think that's a goal of a lot of people. One thing you can do to help facilitate that, let's say, that wouldn't involve maybe removing something, but instead revolves changing your brain's association with your morning routine to adding something. So let's say you wake up in the morning, you leave the bedroom, you go into your living room or home office, or if you have a workout room, the first thing you want to do is go to that place where you're going to do some sort of physical activity. I think adding an external cue is really helpful. In this situation, you could add a yoga mat. And that way, just keep the yoga mat in one place for a while. And that way, you know when you wake up, you yawn, you stretch a little bit, and you walk to your yoga mat. And rather than sitting on the sofa and watching TV or getting out your phone, you have a very specific place to be. And you could even help yourself with a timer. Start with five minutes every morning. Five minutes in the morning on a yoga mat. Or if you have a very specific workout routine you like to do, you can play that on YouTube or whatever kind of fitness app you have. And if it's time limited, that'll help you. The key in these behavioral changes is to start small, especially when you're adding in something. It's a little bit easier to take away than it is to add. And because taking away involves kind of pruning some networks, but adding takes a little bit more cognitive effort, let's say. So start small. If your goal is to exercise in the morning, don't start for 30 minutes. Oh my gosh, 30 minutes in the morning of adding something new. That's huge. That's massive. Start with five minutes, five minutes. And after you've done that for about a week or so, consider bumping it up to 7 or 10 minutes and see how that goes. Don't go from 5 minutes to 30 minutes, go from 5 minutes to 7 or 10 minutes. So the key to sort of retraining your brain for meaningful, lasting, positive change Is really baby steps it's really just putting your foot in the door and just getting a little bit of time getting used to something new. If you aim for the sky and you say i'm going to wake up and i'm going to do an hour of exercise every morning. This could lead to some. pretty dangerous neurobiological consequences. So namely, rather than training your brain to learn a new routine and engaging in positive neuroplasticity, what's gonna happen is you might fail the first day and then you say, oh, I forgot, I'm gonna do it tomorrow. And the second day you wake up and you do it and you feel amazing. And you're riding this high of achieving your goal and you're feeling very successful and excited. The next day, you forget about it again, or maybe you only go for 30 minutes. And since you've set your goal for an hour, you come down from this high of achieving an hour the day before to really categorizing your 30 or 20 minutes as failure. And once your brain starts thinking that you failed, suddenly, instead of activating reward circuitry and being proud of yourself and what you did, even if that was only five minutes, what you've done is essentially punish your brain and training your brain that this activity is associated with bad emotional outcomes. So by shooting too high and aiming for too much, you're really actually telling your brain that this goal you had isn't going to work and it's painful and it's icky and I don't want to do it. So baby steps are the way to go.

Adrienne Youdim

So interesting. I kind of think about it as like baiting your brain. I feel like just you bait it by by saying five minutes or ten minutes and then anything extra is icing but not necessarily saying you have to do that higher amounts, because to your point, when you don't meet that higher expectation every time, then you feel like this negative emotion towards it.

Heather Collins

Absolutely. And if we think about it that way, we can, again, go back to our five-year-old kindergarten brains and think about getting gold stars when we were kids. So maybe for five minutes, you get one gold star. And that's your goal, one gold star a day. If you do 10 minutes, you get two gold stars. And that's amazing because we all love gold stars. Gold stars are fantastic. But you're not disappointed that you don't get two every day. You're excited that you got a bonus, right?

Adrienne Youdim

You know, I want to go back to something you said earlier, talking about autopilot, because I think it also pertains to like that hurdle. So let's say, okay, we're down with getting 10 minutes of exercise per day, but there's still that hurdle. I find with patients, the issue sometimes is not the amount of time, like they're willing to put in the 20 minutes or the 30 minutes once, they get their foot in the door. But the issue is overcoming just that initial hurdle. But I know that the autopilot function of our brain over time helps us get over that hurdle too, right?

Heather Collins

It could, yeah. It depends on how your brain is functioning on autopilot. and how your routine is. So it's very personalized. And I think getting past that hurdle really is the big thing. And the best way to do that is to have a plan in place. And by having a plan, you want to think about every possible barrier to achieving that goal and producing it. So if we're talking about exercising in the morning, it could be setting up an external alarm so that you wake up in time to do it, having your yoga mat ready to go, maybe having a specific workout that you've already chosen on YouTube or something and having that queued up and ready to go so that you just have to hit play, having the clothes you're going to wear, your workout outfit picked out. and having a water bottle ready to go the night before and placing it near your mat so that you're reducing as many possible barriers as you can think of. And also by planning for it, let's say the night before, it kind of keeps your brain in an anticipatory mode and that can lead to like a little bit of excitement and a little bit of joy about oh i'm about i'm about to do this thing and i'm kind of excited about that and i'm going to help myself and so by planning for it and by reducing these barriers you've actually giving yourself a little bit of a hit to that reward circuit that makes it even more likely you'll be able to get over that hurdle and actually do it when the time comes.

Adrienne Youdim

Yeah, it's kind of like building your inherent motivation for it. Absolutely. Can you speak a little bit about negative thinking and You know, for me on this podcast and with my patients, self-compassion is always top of mind. And actually last week's podcast spoke a lot about self-compassion practices and how it helps with habit change and actually I was just reading an article last night that I think I'd quoted in in hungry for more in my book so it's funny how we forget but they were talking about how our own biases against ourselves. So negative self bias actually is a predictor of weight loss and negative bias, I guess, is a predictor of of unsuccessful weight loss. So basically, you know, it's funny, people always ask me things like what what's associated with greater weight loss, right? Is it more protein? Is it the calories? Is it the exercise? We never think about things like How we think about ourselves and how we think about ourselves and negative self image when it comes to our weight actually is a predictor for poor weight loss and weight regain. Whereas thinking positively about ourselves or not having those biases is associated with weight loss. It's like it's fascinating to me. I've heard that even negative thinking, which is so hardwired in all of our brains, right? They say we have 80,000 thoughts a day, if that's really true, 60% or 80%. Probably not. But we are wired towards this negativity bias, right? It's like a survival mechanism. Talk about that if that's not true and talk about how we can also kind of train our minds into positive thinking.

Heather Collins

Yeah, let's start with that idea. And this isn't the first time I've heard this, that we have 80,000 negative thoughts a day or 80,000 thoughts a day and 60% are negative. Okay, first of all, I don't believe that's true. And one of the reasons I don't believe that's true is because there's no way to empirically test that. So there's no... Is there a thought monitor that they... No, there's not. And when we talk about you have 84 billion neurons and they have a firing rate of upwards of 200 miles an hour, your brain has thoughts that you're not even aware of. And so it would be impossible to quantify the number of thoughts anybody has per day and also how many of those are negative. But also, I really think that when people hear that, it can incite a little bit of doom thinking in them. Well, I'm doomed to this because my brain is hardwired for this. And so we really, I think, need to shift away from thinking that our brain is hardwired for things and really shifting more toward My brain changes every day and so does yours. And every single little decision we make every day changes our brain. And so, yes, we do all have negative thoughts. Absolutely. I'm pretty sure even the Dalai Lama has negative thoughts. That's part of being human. That doesn't mean that we have to let those negative thoughts overwhelm us. You can, in essence, create a little bit of a doom spiral in your brain with, in the clinical psychology literature, it's called ANTS, automatic negative thoughts. And what that means is that your autopilot thinking gravitates toward negative thoughts. And when you're predisposed, let's say, to thinking some negative thoughts, negative thoughts can be contagious in your brain. So one can spawn another, can spawn another, can spawn another. And then these networks of neurons that are involved in that negative thinking grow stronger. So whatever you do, the more you do it, those networks in your brain grow stronger. The less you do it, those networks in your brain grow weaker and become pared down. So the idea is we would really like to pare down those brain networks involved in negative thinking. And we can do that. And like I said, our brains change every minute of every day. So if you drink a glass of water, that'll affect your brain differently than if you drink a glass of wine. And if I spend five minutes exercising, that will affect my brain differently than if I spend five minutes watching TV or on Instagram. And if I eat broccoli or some blackberries, that'll affect my brain differently than if I eat a Snickers bar. Tis the season for candy for Halloween, but it does affect our brains and our taste perception, so let's be mindful of that. And so one thing that we can do is, first of all, engage in metacognitive awareness. And that is simply just being aware of our own thoughts. So a lot of times, people spout off with negative thinking, and they don't even recognize it until minutes later that, oh, all I've been doing for the past 10 minutes is having these crazy negative thoughts. And that can lead to increase in anxiety, depression, anxiousness. challenges in regulating our mood, regulating our emotions, it can affect the way we socially interact with one another. Because if I'm thinking negative thoughts, I'm probably not going to be a great person for you to have a conversation with, or to go have coffee with, or to try to have fun with. So it can affect our friendships and our social lives too. So by simply every now and then trying to stop and be aware of what we're thinking, and you can simply say to yourself, what am I thinking? Then that's a great first step in identifying that you're having some negative thinking patterns that you don't like. And if you're thinking something negative and that's legitimate, I just got a flat tire on the road and I'm really upset about it, yes, that's going to happen. This isn't to say that negative thoughts are not legitimate. They certainly are in a lot of cases. We want to be careful when those negative thoughts start doom spiraling. So maybe it's not a flat tire on the side of the road, maybe it's I didn't get that job promotion I wanted and do I even want to stay at this company? Do I have a future in this industry? What should I do? I have no hope. That's when it starts to become really consequential for your life and for your thinking behaviors. stopping and asking, what am I thinking right now? You can identify, I'm really upset because I didn't get this promotion. And this person who's totally unqualified got it ahead of me. And I'm concerned for what that means for my future. But stopping and identifying it, we gain more control over it. So we stop the automaticity of that thought from happening, and we interject by taking a little bit of control over where our thinking goes. And then we need to ask ourselves, what are the consequences of not the process of negative thinking, but what are the consequences of those thoughts? Well, I probably shouldn't make any big decisions about my career after I've just received bad news. So I don't want to go on a doom spiral. I don't want to go on LinkedIn and look for new jobs. I don't want to go complain to my supervisor. I don't want to hand in my notice. Uh, it's important in these moments when negative thinking happens to give yourself grace, just as you were talking about and say, I'm going to put a pin in this. I'm going to give myself 24 hours to just let this play out. And I'll schedule a time 5 PM tomorrow where I can think about this again. Don't make any rash decisions and give yourself a little grace. And when that grace has happened, try to Think about the positive side of the situation. Maybe I didn't get that promotion, but maybe I really didn't want it anyway because it involved a lot of extra responsibility. And maybe I'm better off going in this other direction where I can pursue what I'm really good at as an individual contributor. So think about the positive aspects of it, and that'll help change your thinking and slowly shift it to where the automatic thinking isn't controlling your life.

Adrienne Youdim

Yeah, and what I want to kind of double down on is this physiologic pruning or the physiologic changes that happen in the brain, which I think is a really important point that, yes, negative thinking is human. And we're not talking about the times when it's legitimate, something difficult has happened. You're allowed to be upset. We're talking about the rumination pattern that we get in if we experience a failure or a limitation or a human imperfection like, you know, we like the job. um promotion or like we didn't achieve our health goals or we meant to start exercising we didn't or we experienced weight regain that can set us into this spiral of negative thinking that if we if we continue it we're building those neurons and fibers that support that negative thinking and they can have negative consequences Whereas the opposite is also true, that if we can give ourselves grace and think on a more positive light, you literally build those connections in the brain and build that ability to not ruminate, build that ability to have more kindness and grace for yourself. I think that's really powerful, don't you?

Heather Collins

Yeah, I think it's very powerful. And if we think about it as a skill, that thinking is a skill, and changing how you think is a skill. That means that a skill is something that we can all change, right? Just as I'm terrible at tennis, with a little bit of practice, a little bit of feedback, and a little bit of instruction, I can improve in tennis. Am I going to play at Wimbledon? No, never. But I can improve. My skill can improve. And it's the same way with thinking patterns and thinking behaviors. We can see that as a skill. And really, the important thing is If you get off track a little bit, you can get back on track. And just the act of getting back on track means that you're building that skill. So that's one small indicator of success. Building on that skill is success. So by choosing to try again and choosing to reorient and shift your thinking, you've already been successful at something that's really important. And the other thing is that a lot of negative thinking and the ruminating, that causes a lot of stress and a lot of cortisol production in our bodies. And I'm sure your audience already knows how harmful cortisol is to many of our health-related goals, as well as our neurobiological goals. So just by slightly shifting, identifying that you've been thinking in a negative way and slightly shifting, you're helping yourself twofold. You're reducing your cortisol and you've experienced the success in gaining control over your thinking.

Adrienne Youdim

Yeah, I love that. And powering those fibers in the brain that help you do it again and again. That's right. So I wonder as a brain scientist, what are some things that you think, well, you're a international speaker and What are some things that you wish the world would know? What are some things that you wish that we all should know about the way our brains work and function that could help support health and well-being or anything for that matter?

Heather Collins

I think just this idea of neuroplasticity is massive. Because it means that you can change your brain and you can move your brain in a direction that you want to go that helps support your goals in life. And I think that's massive, absolutely massive. Another thing I would like people to know, and I do specialize in cognitive neuroscience, meaning my expertise is in how the brain learns, remembers, and thinks about information and people. And when I tell people that, one of the first things people say to me is, I forget where I put my keys. Do I have Alzheimer's disease? And I want people to know that Individuals of all ages forget where they put their keys. That's OK. 20-year-olds forget where they put their keys. 60-year-olds forget where they put their keys. 80-year-olds forget where they put their keys. It's something we all do, just like negative thinking. It's a human condition. It happens. And that's OK. And that doesn't mean that you have a memory problem, and that we all experience glitches where we can't remember somebody's name, or maybe we don't recall a fact or an experience with the clarity that we once did, or we can't quite bring ourselves to be feeling like we're on top of our game. That doesn't mean that you have a memory or a brain problem. It could be that you didn't sleep enough. It could be that you're stressed. It could be that something else is going on in your life that's occupying your mind. And that's another situation where I want people to know that they're okay. they're okay. And just like you said, the importance of giving yourself grace, that really applies to these perceived memory glitches that people have too.

Adrienne Youdim

I love the word glitch. That to me feels so reassuring, right? Like everybody has a glitch.

Heather Collins

It's what it feels like to me. When something is a little bit off and I know it should be there, I feel like that's a glitch. And that's all we have to think of it as. It's not permanent. It's not going to happen tomorrow. It's just a glitch. But we all have them and that we're OK. And it's OK to have those experiences. And I would also like people to know that your brain is widely reported to be the most complex and complexly organized system in the universe. And we don't have the answers. We don't have all the answers, but we're learning them. And that means that something that we don't know now, we might know five years from now, just as you were once taught that when you're five years old, your brain is done. And now we know about neurogenesis and neuroplasticity. We're going to be discovering really cool, amazing things about the brain, not that far down the road that could impact our lives. So brain science is always changing and always evolving. And I also want people to know, and I think this conversation today that we've had highlights that Just because your brain is a complex thing, I don't want people to be afraid of the word brain. That it's yours. You own it. You have the right to be excited about it. You have the right to be concerned about it. You have the right to take ownership over your brain, your brain's health, and how you use it. And there are a lot of resources out there that can help you learn more if you're interested.

Adrienne Youdim

Yeah, I love that. The idea of ownership and agency, and that's really what neuroplasticity is. It's the science of having agency over your own brain and being able to make these shifts that actually get hardwired. What are some, as we close, I wanna know, what are some behaviors or what are some things that you do yourself to support the health of your brain to take ownership of your own brain.

Heather Collins

So this first one is not going to be very sexy, but it's very important. And to support the physiological health of my brain, I take a lot of, I consume a lot of omega-3 fatty acids. So for me, that means I like eating a lot of salmon, other foods, and I also supplement with fish oil supplements when I need to. So there's a lot of research that shows the importance of omega-3 fatty acids in your brain function. So just as an electrical cord has this plastic coating on the outside, every one of the fibers in your brain has a fatty coating on the outside. And it serves the same purpose as this plastic cord on a wire. It helps information move smoothly and quickly throughout your brain. And so eating healthy fats is a really important component to that. Another thing I like to do to support my brain health is to eat a lot of blueberries. So blueberries in particular have a lot of anthocyanins in them and a lot of flavonoids in them. And research has shown that they specifically contribute to the health of your hippocampus. And if you'll recall, that's the structure in your brain responsible for learning and memory, my favorite structure. So I like to do that. And as a bonus, blueberries are delicious. Any exercise you do is also going to help your brain. And I love learning and growing. I love learning new things. And when you really push yourself to learn new things, that helps your brain too. So your brain is split into hemispheres. You have a left hemisphere and a right hemisphere, and they're connected by this big bundle of fibers called the corpus callosum. And that helps one hemisphere communicate with another. And there's research that shows that by learning new things and putting yourself in challenging situations where you're forced to grow, it actually strengthens those bundles of fibers. So another way that learning helps your brain actually grow. And learning is also fun and exciting and keeps us interesting. So whatever you like learning about, keep learning. Take up a new language. There are apps for that now. Learn how to play bridge or mahjong or chess. Go dancing. Talk with friends about current events and interesting things going on in the world. All of these are forms of learning and staying cognitively engaged. And not only are they enjoyable, they're really good for us.

Adrienne Youdim

So I have to ask you this question. Maybe this is another myth. So I remember always hearing that the corpus callosum, which is the structure that, yes, connects the left and the right part of the brain and maybe helps with multitasking, is stronger in women than in men. Is this true?

Heather Collins

Well, I have also heard this. I want to be cautious about this research. I like to be cautious about any research describing gender differences in the brain, because as our knowledge about gender and sex evolve, our interpretations also evolve about that. I would say that there are definitely papers that show that. I would not say that that is always true, but there are definitely papers that show that.

Adrienne Youdim

All right, fair. Very fair.

Heather Collins

But I don't want men to lose hope.

Adrienne Youdim

Yes, because we love our men.

Heather Collins

You can strengthen your corpus callosum no matter who you are.

Adrienne Youdim

Love it. So on that note, Heather, tell us how we can stay connected with you and learn more about the brain and learn more about your tips. And I love, I just want to reiterate, I love the tips of salmon, blueberries, and learning. So where can we learn more about you?

Heather Collins

Yeah, one of the places I'm most active is on LinkedIn. And on there, I post information about the brain and brain health. And similar to your health bites, I publish brain bites on there. So bits of brain science people can use to help themselves out every day. People can also contact me on my website, which is drheathercollins.com.

Adrienne Youdim

Amazing. We'll link all of that in the show notes. Thanks so much for this conversation. It was so much fun.

Heather Collins

Thanks, Adrienne. I really enjoyed talking with you. This was a blast.