Moment 180: Neuroscientist's Top 5 WORST Habits That Are Destroying Your Brain: Wendy Suzuki

In this moment, professor and neuroscientist, Wendy Suzuki outlines how to destroy your brain. Many of the ways to wreck your brain health are obvious, such as poor sleep, smoking, eating a processed diet and no exercise. However, some brain damaging habit are more subtle, including not learning and using social media. Wendy says that the increased use of social media is a massive concern for how it will impact the younger generation. This is because their brains aren’t getting the benefits of real social connection and can suffer from increases in depression and anxiety, leading to the release of stress hormones which damage the brains cells and connections. Listen to the full episode here - Spotify- https://g2ul0.app.link//Dr04Ovfy1Mb Apple - https://g2ul0.app.link//fXnzPEhy1Mb Watch the Episodes On Youtube - https://www.youtube.com/c/%20TheDiaryOfACEO/videos Wendy: https://www.wendysuzuki.com/wendy 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?

  What would I have to do to destroy my brain? So, no sleep?

• 0:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 0:07Steven Bartlett?

  I'm gonna be sedentary?

• 0:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 0:09Steven Bartlett?

  I'm gonna have no friends?

• 0:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 0:11Steven Bartlett?

  And, smoking?

• 0:13Speaker 01

  Smoking is very bad for your health and your brain.

• 0:16Steven Bartlett?

  Okay, alcohol?

• 0:19Speaker 01

  Alcohol, I mean, yes, long-term alcohol can cause significant and named brain diseases. Moderation, even moderation nowadays, studies have shown it is not very good. And the reason why it's not good is that alcohol disrupts your sleep. Even though people drink it to go to sleep faster, the sleep is much more superficial and is not deep and it's not the healthy sleep. So, that is not good overall for your, for the, for sleep, depth and health, and therefore, brain health.

• 0:54Steven Bartlett?

  I'm gonna eat a processed diet to hurt my brain. And I'm not gonna have a lifestyle that is novel. Because we talked about learning.

• 1:03Speaker 01

  Right, yes.

• 1:04Steven Bartlett?

  So I'm not gonna learn anything new. All of these things should shrink that little...

• 1:09Speaker 01

  You're not gonna be mindful, also.

• 1:12Steven Bartlett?

  Is that evidence that being mindful, which is like meditation and being in the moment, helps the brain?

• 1:18Speaker 01

  It does. There's beautiful studies showing brain plasticity in the areas that are important for focused attention. Meditation, the practice of meditation, is basically a practice of enriching the function of your prefrontal cortex. So you can focus on that object, either the breath or loving kindness is a form of meditation. So, yes, there's been studies that brain changes occur in long-term meditators that are absolutely beneficial.

• 1:50Steven Bartlett?

  What if I'm on social media all the time? Because isn't that good for me? Because I'm gonna be seeing lots of new things all the time and I'll be learning lots of new things. So, isn't, if I sat on a screen for seven hours a day? Is that good for my brain, social media?

• 2:04Speaker 01

  Does that take you away from real people and interacting with real people?

• 2:09Steven Bartlett?

  Yes.

• 2:09Speaker 01

  Okay, then then it's modulated by that.

• 2:12Steven Bartlett?

  The same thing?

• 2:13Speaker 01

  There's a difference, and I think your brain knows it. And look, there's there's enormous amounts of evidence showing that the increase in use of social media, especially in young kids, correlate with huge increases in depression and anxiety levels, particularly in young girls. So when when kids started getting the smartphones and started to spend more and more seven hours a day on social media, that's when the anxiety and depression went up. That's for young kids. I use social media as well as a tool for business. That is a little bit different. I'm not 13 years old, and you're not 13 years old.

• 2:55Speaker 01

  So so, you know, there's some warnings, I think, that need to go into into that. But but let me let me be clear. No, it's not the same. Social media is not the same as social interactions face to face with people.

• 3:09Steven Bartlett?

  Are you are you concerned about what social media is doing to our brains?

• 3:12Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 3:13Steven Bartlett?

  Because, you know, I hate we hear those stats around, you know, young, young girls are struggling most with social media. And we think to ourselves, well, that's because there's a lot of like comparison and all these kinds of things. And there's a lot of like toxic messaging and such. But if we think about the physiological consequences of social media, what it's actually doing to our brains at a chemical level.

• 3:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:33Steven Bartlett?

  What what would you, as a neuroscientist, guess is that like, is the physiological harm to the brain? Not the sort of psychological, I'm thinking about like, not the psychological, okay, oh, my God, she's more this than me, but like the physiological harm.

• 3:46Speaker 01

  But the psychological harm causes stress. Stress releases stress hormone that goes into the brain that at too high and too constant a level can start to first damage connections and then kill cells. So it's it's intertwined there. And that that is part of of what is happening. You can't, you know, pull one one away from the other.

• 4:10Steven Bartlett?

  Because our, you know, where social media is designed to kind of, it's like pulling the slot machine handle. I pull down on the feed and I get ping, oh, look, there's a nice picture. And ping, there's notifications and comments, et cetera. It's that, you know, I think about the constant. They say there's constant dopamine hit.

• 4:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:26Steven Bartlett?

  They refer to it. Is it a dopamine hit? Is that's what's happening when we're being stimulated by social media or a slot machine?

• 4:31Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 4:31Steven Bartlett?

  And is there, is there any harm in just a constant dopamine hit all day, every day?

• 4:36Speaker 01

  Well, I would not, I'm going to answer that question by saying I would not want to be addicted to gambling. Gambling is addictive. It's hard to get away. You, you, you lose all these other things that we just decided were all good for you, including sleep, including social connections, including exercise. And I think that's part of what social media is doing for our young kids is not good, that they're not joining teams outside to be social and interactive in, in that

• 5:08Speaker 01

  kind of, now it seems like an old fashioned way, but it's very, very powerful way for development and brain health.

• 5:15Steven Bartlett?

  I think I'm addicted to my phone.

• 5:18Steven Bartlett?

  And I often ask myself, is that, is that a problem? And from what you've said, it sounds like the problem is what I sacrifice.

• 5:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:25Steven Bartlett?

  Through that like addiction to that device.

• 5:27Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 5:28Steven Bartlett?

  Is that, that the issue? The issue is I sacrifice social connections, maybe movement.

• 5:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:33Steven Bartlett?

  You know, although I do work out every day, but the brain is smart enough to know that there's no substitute for real human connections.

• 5:41Speaker 01

  Absolutely, absolutely.

• 5:44Steven Bartlett?

  And that's going to make me what? I'm trying to, I need you to help me.

• 5:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:49Steven Bartlett?

  Scare me out of this phone addiction that I think I have, but I know many other people have as well.

• 5:56Speaker 01

  So that is going to limit your potential for brain growth, for, for brain plasticity. It is going to limit your possibility for, for, you know, not to be dramatic, but joy in, in your life. There's different kinds of joy that you have in, in real person-to-person, social interactions that it feels pretty good on social media if you get lots of likes and, you know, but it's not the same. And I would, I would say that to scare yourself out, you're going to have to bite the bullet and do a two-week phone detox. What would that do to you? How would you feel?

• 6:41Steven Bartlett?

  I just could never imagine such a thing.

• 6:43Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 6:44Steven Bartlett?

  Which is a real shame, isn't it really? Because I just think about like my ancestors and my parents. They must, they must think I'm so strange. But it's just the, just the way that like when my phone dies, I'm like, it's like, I'm like nervously waiting for it to come back on. I'm like staring at like, oh my God, like, like, what am I going to do with myself? Like, and I remember those studies they did on people where they gave them the choice of either sitting alone with their own thoughts or giving themselves an electric shock. And a huge amount of people in that study actually would rather give themselves an electric shock than just sit alone with their thoughts because it's some kind of stimulation. That's kind of how I think I am now. Like, I don't know what I'd do without my phone. It's really sad. I know there's people listening to me now that think I'm an absolute like, I'm really sad, but it's just the nature of the truth, you know?

• 7:28Steven Bartlett?

  And I do wonder what it's doing to my brain, but I think you're right. I think it's actually what it's doing to my like, my life.

• 7:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:36Steven Bartlett?

  The joy, the connections, the being, being there to experience things and.

• 7:42Speaker 01

  I mean, that point that you made is a very profound one. The, the not wanting to be alone with your thoughts is the core of meditation. Can you be alone with your thoughts and focus on something, something organic, usually the breath, but also a thought like loving kindness? That is a very powerful practice to do and it, and it's hard. I find it hard too. And I actually, I noticed I find it harder when I'm, when I'm using social media and when I'm using my phone more.

• 8:19Speaker 01

  But I feel most creative and most imaginative when I do practice that. That is being alone with my thoughts. What comes into mind? How, how does my own imagination work? Which is very much dependent on the hippocampus as well. It's putting together all these things in your memory in new and interesting ways that are unique for you or unique for me. And it doesn't work the same if you are stimulating your brain with social media all the time.