Moment 164: AVOID These 3 Phone Habits That Are Hurting Your Brain! The Mental Health Doctor: Dr Aditi Nerurkar

In this moment, the world renowned expert in stress, Dr Aditi Nerurkar discusses how the majority of people in the modern world suffer from ‘Popcorn Brain’. According to Dr Aditi ‘Popcorn Brain’ comes from our excessive use of smartphones and social media. This is a real biological phenomenon where your brain circuitry ‘pops’ due to overstimulation and spending too much time online. Your brain never really gets a moment of rest, as being online means it it receives a nonstop stream of information. ‘Popcorn Brain’ is different to the psychological disorder that is internet addiction, as internet addiction seriously affects your ability to live your life, whereas Popcorn Brain defines modern life with everyone being constantly distracted. One of the ways that you can overcome ‘Popcorn Brain’ and improve our mental health is by reducing your reliance on your phone, making sure that you create healthy digital boundaries, so that you give yourself the mental space to live your life. Listen to the full episode here Apple- https://g2ul0.app.link/wSPySPjv1Jb Spotify- https://g2ul0.app.link/neGcOqnv1Jb Watch the Episodes On Youtube - https://www.youtube.com/c/%20TheDiaryOfACEO/videos Dr Aditi Nerurkar - https://www.draditi.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:03Steven Bartlett?

  If I wanted to be really, really stressed and really, really anxious, right? And I want it maybe a bit, throw in some depression. If I wanted stress and anxiety, how should I live?

• 0:15Speaker 01

  That's a great question. Get on your phone, make sure it's on high brightness and scroll through every social media platform, every news platform, watch graphic content of videos of horrible, terrible things happening in the world at midnight. Keep doing that off and on until four, five AM. Your cortisol spike usually happens around six AM. You know, give or take for people, that cortisol spike is a natural thing that happens. It's part of your circadian rhythm. It's what prompts you to get up out of bed.

• 0:52Speaker 01

  Of course, make sure that you are, you know, you check your phone right away, right when you get up out of bed and continue scrolling. This is a really fun exercise of what not to do rather than what to do.

• 1:08Speaker 01

  It doesn't always happen in like, it won't be one day because you do have some reserves. But if you did this for one month, I would say, instead of like one day.

• 1:16Steven Bartlett?

  I'm gonna do it for one month.

• 1:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, 30 days, 30 day plan to maximize anxiety and stress.

• 1:22Steven Bartlett?

  I want to talk about social media. And in your book, you use this term popcorn brain, which I, for a second, when I read what popcorn brain meant, started to think, maybe I now have a popcorn brain. What is a popcorn brain?

• 1:36Speaker 01

  Many people, most people have popcorn brain. Popcorn brain is a biological phenomenon, a real biological phenomenon coined by a man named Dr. Levy, a psychologist. And it is essentially your brain circuitry starting to pop based on overstimulation. So it's not like your brain is actually popping, but it's that sensation of popcorn-ing because of spending too much time online. It is hard to disengage from what's happening online because there's a constant information stream and it is difficult to live fully offline where life moves at a decidedly slower pace. Popcorn brain is an affliction that nearly every single

• 2:19Speaker 01

  person has right now. Think about what you do when you're waiting in line at the grocery store. You're not just like letting your brain wander, pondering things, you are on your phone. What are you doing at the bank? On your phone. At a car wash, at a traffic light, pedestrians, walking across the street. They're not looking up at the light. In fact, it's like one of the hazards, a public health hazard of pedestrians having near miss accidents because they're looking down on your phone. I see it in Boston all the time. A busy street and people are looking at their phone.

• 2:48Steven Bartlett?

  Most people listening now will be like on a tube, somewhere on a train, on a plane, looking at their phone while they're listening to this, but.

• 2:55Speaker 01

  We rarely give our brains a moment of rest. So popcorn brain is different. A lot of people will ask me, is popcorn brain internet addiction? No. Internet addiction is a real, it's called internet addiction disorder. It's a DSM four criteria and it means, that's our diagnostic criteria in medicine. And it's a real disorder, but what really defines internet addiction and popcorn brain is that internet addiction interferes with your life where you're unable to do certain things. Popcorn brain, on the other hand, is ubiquitous. It's everywhere. It is what defines modern life. Those two are very different things.

• 3:38Speaker 01

  And when we are feeling a sense of stress, we are especially prone to popcorn brain. Why? Because when we feel stress, we talked about the amygdala, right? Like that part of our brain that is focused on survival and self-preservation. Back evolutionarily, when we were all cave people, there was a night watch person and that person would sit by the fire, the tribe would sleep and that person would scan for danger to keep the tribe safe. In modern times, we have all become that night watch person. And we scroll incessantly when we feel a sense of stress because it is our primal urge.

• 4:21Speaker 01

  It is the way our amygdala feels a sense of safety because we are scanning for danger. We are no longer in a tribe or not cave people anymore. So what do we do? We scroll. That is how we are scanning for danger, especially when we are feeling stressed. In recent times, there's been a lot of bad news. In fact, it feels like the onslaught of bad news, one thing after another. Whether it's a climate disaster or a conflict in a certain part of the world, or something or the other is always happening now. The information stream, it is rapid and unprecedented. And so we are constantly scrolling and scanning for danger. And it's that primal urge to scroll. So how do we? The goal is really not to limit our social media use or media use

• 5:03Speaker 01

  because we know, studies have shown that it is not about abstinence because that actually doesn't have an impact, a positive impact on our mental health or our wellbeing. But what does have an impact on our mental health and wellbeing is decreasing our reliance to our phones. You know, most of us check our phones 2,600 times a day. That is a statistic. 2,617 times a day is the average number of times a person looks at their phone. Think about that, right? The other thing you want to think about is when you're thinking about like, huh, do I have a reliance on my phone? It's like, the goal here is to reconsider your relationship with your phone.

• 5:48Speaker 01

  It is not about abstinence. We're not trying to become digital monks here. It's about creating digital boundaries. In every relationship in your life, you have boundaries. You have a boundary with your partner, with your children, with your colleagues, because relationships need boundaries, right? To thrive. Why don't we have a boundary when it comes to the relationship we have with our phone? There is no boundary. It is simply porous. We check in the morning, we check at night. What's the first thing you do when you wake up? Before your second eye is even open, you are scrolling.

• 6:23Steven Bartlett?

  Studies show that 62% of people check their phones within 15 minutes of waking up and about 50% check them in the middle of the night. I'm guilty of this. Like, I'm not going to pretend I'm some saint here. I'm that person. I'm on the upper end of that scale. I'm glued to my phone, glued to my phone. And you know what? When I'm stressed, I'm even more glued to it.

• 6:45Speaker 01

  So we talked about popcorn brain. And that's what happens when we spend too much time, too much time on our phone. There is also this concept of brain drain. What happens to us and our brain power even when our phone is close by, but not in use because of the sheer potential for distraction. So our phones are really powerful. They are not benign devices. One antidote to popcorn brain and to brain drain is a media diet. And there are really three ways that you can instill this media diet into your life to help with your primal urge to scroll. The first is time limits, 20 minutes a day.

• 7:27Speaker 01

  And set a timer if you have to for engaging and consuming bad news. The second is geographical limits during the day. Keep your phone 10 feet away from your workstation if you can, out of reach, out of arm's reach. And at night, off your nightstand. Keeping your phone off your nightstand could be the biggest game changer because in the morning, when you wake up, like most people, checking their phone, instead, you aren't just scrolling, you're getting up, maybe brushing your teeth, using the bathroom, and then you can engage with technology. But that one small shift could be key. And the third is to set some logistical limits. So creating some sort of boundary in a digital boundary could make all of the difference

• 8:08Speaker 01

  in your relationship with your phone, thereby improving your stress and mental health.

• 8:13Steven Bartlett?

  There's a lot going on in the world right now. There's a lot of bad news. There is wars, there is, I mean, in the whole sort of two decades that I've been on the internet, social media, I have never lived through a moment, maybe the pandemic was somewhat similar, but I think this is maybe even more extreme, where I go on my Instagram and I see videos and photos of dead babies.

• 8:41Steven Bartlett?

  Not that far away from where we are in Europe relatively. And there's a, there's a sort of trauma involved in that, so much so that the other day I walked into the, into my kitchen and my partner was sat there and she's just crying and she's looking at her phone and she's crying. And, you know, I put some things on her phone just to make sure that she wouldn't accidentally stumble across those things again. And then the next day, we had the same situation happen where she was in the kitchen and she was very, very upset. She was again, tears coming down her face. She's like struggling with it for multiple days in a row. And it just made me think, that's an extreme example, but yeah, I mean, like.

• 9:19Speaker 01

  It's not an extreme example. I had the same thing happen to me. I knew all the, I know all the science and yet I was also weeping. And I think many people are feeling exactly like your girlfriend. And the science supports this, you know? We're experiencing in many ways, it's like the cycle of trauma. And a researcher who I spoke to for my book, Roxanne Silver, who is a psychologist in California, has shown through multiple studies that your risk of PTSD increases when you consume graphic images, even if the thing that you're consuming is happening thousands of miles away.

• 9:58Steven Bartlett?

  Like the war.

• 9:59Speaker 01

  Like any conflict, any climate disaster, anything. If you start consuming graphic images and videos, you increase your risk of PTSD, your own personal risk, even though you have not had any direct trauma, because it's indirect trauma that you're seeing. And so it's a cycle. The more videos you consume or the more graphic content you consume, your amygdala gets fired, your primal urge to scroll starts going haywire and then you scroll some more and then you scroll some more because you don't feel safe. You don't, you know, so this is a common occurrence. It is not uncommon. It is your biology working as it should, because it is your biology of stress and clickbait

• 10:40Speaker 01

  and doom scrolling are both powered by the same biology that governs the fight or flight response. And there is actual data to show that it increases your risk of PTSD and increases your risk of getting mental health conditions later in life, so years later.

• 10:59Steven Bartlett?

  When I think about all the things that are going on in the world. I'm conflicted, right? Because you can't ignore those things. But at the same time, those things are giving you PTSD.

• 11:09Speaker 01

  That's right. Well, the key is, and I work in journalism. I'm a medical correspondent. It's not about censorship. Being an informed citizen is critical at all times, especially now. You have to be an informed citizen, but you have to create some digital boundaries. So you're protecting your sanity and protecting your mental health. There are also other ways that you can get involved by supporting various causes and donating and taking action. We know that that is also very helpful. But you want to limit your engagement with graphic content. You can also limit your engagement with looking at videos and looking at images and instead read about it, right? Like follow certain accounts that you trust and read about what's happening in the world.

• 11:54Speaker 01

  It is not about censorship because the news and journalism, and I am speaking from the perspective of being a journalist or correspondent, it's vital. It's vital to democracy. It's vital to functioning society. But there has to be a line between being an informed citizen and protecting our mental health and our sanity. And understanding that if you are having difficulty sleeping, if you notice any alarm signs like mood disorders, if you're having an uptick in anxiety, depressive thoughts, thoughts of hurting yourself, hurting others, that you should seek counselling and seek medical attention because these are not benign thoughts like you, you know, it's very easy to say, oh, but it's happening far away. I shouldn't be feeling like this. Don't should yourself, right?

• 12:39Speaker 01

  Instead, seek the help because this data shows that you are at risk if you are over consuming. There is a fine line between consuming and over consuming the news at any time, especially now, but really at any time.