Why Creativity Belongs in Your Health Routine with Dr. Daisy Fancourt

Most women know they should move their bodies, eat well, and protect their sleep. But creativity rarely makes the list. In this conversation, Dr. Mindy sits down with Dr. Daisy Fancourt to explore the growing body of research showing that art is far more than entertainment or decoration. Music, reading, dancing, crafting, storytelling, and even spending time with a painting can affect stress, mood, cognition, connection, and the nervous system. Daisy explains why creative activities can help the brain enter a state of flow, how music can slow the heart rate, and why reading fiction may strengthen empathy by allowing us to experience the world through another person’s perspective. She also shares why knitting, singing, dancing, and other so-called “grandmother hobbies” are finding their way back into modern life. In this episode you'll learn: Why creativity became separated from everyday lifeHow to choose music that meets your nervous system where it is How regular creative activity may support healthier cortisol patterns Why book clubs provide more than a reason to read What the research suggests about art, brain fog, and cognitive reserve Whether online creative classes offer the same benefits as meeting in person Simple ways to bring more creativity into everyday lifeResources Mentioned Art Cure by Daisy Fancourt https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250364531/artcure/Instagram: @daisy.fancourt https://www.instagram.com/daisy.fancourt/More on Daisy Fancourt Dr. Daisy Fancourt is a researcher and author whose work examines the effects of arts and cultural engagement on health and well-being. Her research explores how activities such as music, reading, crafting, dancing, and visiting cultural spaces may influence mental health, stress, cognition, social connection, and physical health. She has published extensively in the field and works on projects examining the biological, psychological, and social effects of creative participation. For more resources related to today’s episode, visit the podcast episode page: drmindypelz.com/ep357 https://www.drmindypelz.com/ep357 Connect with Dr. Mindy: Join Reset Academy https://resetacademy.drmindypelz.com/reset-academy?utm_source=libsyn&utm_medium=podcast&utm_term=&utm_content=loc-description&utm_campaign=reset-academyWatch the episodes on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@DrMindyPelz?sub_confirmation=1Follow Dr. Mindy on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/dr.mindypelz/Subscribe to Dr. Mindy’s newsletter https://www.drmindypelz.com/Disclaimer: This podcast is intended for educational and informational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional medical advice. Always consult a qualified healthcare professional before making changes to your diet, fasting routine, or lifestyle.

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

• 0:00Mindy Pelz?

  If you are loving the conversations on my podcast and you want to go deeper with me, come join me over on Substack. It's where I share the conversations I'm having behind the scenes, the research that I'm obsessed on and paying close attention to, and really, the thoughts I don't always get to unpack here on the podcast or any of my other social media. We're taking women's health, fasting, hormones, food systems, mindset, aging, and what it really means to live like a girl in today's world to a whole new level. You'll also get early podcast access, deeper essays on my thoughts

• 0:41Mindy Pelz?

  around how we can all stay healthy in this modern world. You get community, you get conversations, and exclusive content that I only share there. I'm not joking when I said this is my new favorite place. It is currently where I am at. So you can head on over to substack.drmindypelz.com, or just search "Live Like a Girl" with Dr. Mindy Pelz directly in the Substack app. I'm super excited to have you over there. Please introduce yourself, and let's dive in to some really good conversations.

• 1:20Mindy Pelz?

  Hey, Dr. Mindy here, and welcome to the Live Like a Girl podcast, where I bring you icons, disruptors, educators, scientists, and doctors that show you what can be possible when you love and celebrate the female body you are blessed to live in. Let's dive in.

• 1:44Mindy Pelz?

  When my daughter was little, she came home from school one day glowing with pride. She had colored a picture, and she had stayed perfectly inside every single line. She held it up to me like she had won an Olympic medal. And I remember standing there, really happy for her, but also feeling this quiet ache underneath, because I realized that somewhere in that moment, a trade was being made. She was learning that the reward wasn't in what she created, it was in how well she followed the shape someone else had already

• 2:23Mindy Pelz?

  drawn for her. Watch any small child before the lesson lands, and it's the opposite. They scribble outside every boundary. They mix colors that shouldn't go together. They make up songs with no rhyme, dances with no choreography, stories with no ending. Nobody has to teach a four-year-old to be creative. We have to actively unteach it out of her. And I don't think that that's a small loss. I think it's the beginning of a much bigger pattern, one that follows women straight into adulthood, where we learn

• 3:04Mindy Pelz?

  early that being celebrated means staying inside the lines. It's a part of where we learn to just be agreeable, to be contained, and then we carry that philosophy into our bodies, into our nervous systems, our whole way of moving through the world, long after we've outgrown our childhood coloring book. And here's what's wild to me, is that there are now over 30,000 published scientific papers on what happens when we let ourselves get messy and creative again. And yet, 95% of adults will tell you, they didn't do a

• 3:46Mindy Pelz?

  single artistic thing yesterday. Not a doodle, not a hum, nothing. We have made creativity into something optional, something that's elite for other people who have some kind of special talent, when the research says it might be one of the most powerful regulators of our nervous system that we've completely stopped using in this modern world. Now, I'm talking about actual physiology here. Looking at art, drawing art, thinking about art, you start to see cortisol dropping, heart rate slowing down, the autonomic nervous

• 4:30Mindy Pelz?

  system shifts out of that scanning-for-threat state and into something calmer, safer, more like a body that trusts it's not under attack. In some studies, just listening to music has calmed pre-surgery anxiety better than the anti-anxiety medication itself. Art is so much more than decoration. It's medicine. And this is why I have brought you Dr. Daisy Fancourt. Daisy is a leading researcher on the science of arts, health, and wellbeing, with hundreds of published studies behind her. Her new book, which I highly recommend,

• 5:13Mindy Pelz?

  The Art Cure, makes the case that creativity isn't a luxury for the artistic among us. It is actually a biological need for all of us, and one most of us abandoned somewhere around the same time we learned to stay inside the lines. In this conversation, we get into why art calms an anxious nervous system as effectively as some medications, why dancing with other people releases something exercise alone never can do, and why the childhood version of you, the one coloring outside the lines and making up songs with no rhyme,

• 5:57Mindy Pelz?

  was on to something we all need to remember now. So today, in this episode, I give you full permission to go outside the lines a little, and to start to tap back in to your creative self. So let's dive in. I am truly honored to bring you Dr. Daisy Fancourt.

• 6:24Mindy Pelz?

  Okay, Daisy Fancourt, let's just start by welcoming you. I adore your book, and I can't wait to bring what's inside that to my audience. So, welcome to the Live Like a Girl podcast.

• 6:35Speaker 01

  Thank you so much. It's such a joy to be on with you.

• 6:38Mindy Pelz?

  There's something interesting that I walked away from your book. I was thinking how so many women think of art as decoration. But your science, you have a lot of data supporting that art is medicine. And I started to think, like, what would it look like if women prioritized all aspects of art as much as they prioritized a workout? How do we start to change that mindset so that women can see that all aspects of art is critical for her overall health?

• 7:13Speaker 01

  I love this idea, and I think it's even amusing we're having to have it. Because if you look back historically, women always sang, told stories, we were crafty. Like, this is something that's been so much a part of our identity. But it feels like it's something we've really lost over the last, what, a couple of hundred years? It sort of felt like anything to do with arts or creativity, it's become this more elite thing. Maybe you've got to be good at it. Maybe you've got to be an artist. Maybe you've got to have enough time or enough money to do it. And we've become really disengaged from those kind of day-to-day creative practices that are so much a part of who we should be, who we are.

• 7:47Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah. You know, it's interesting, because I picked up your book because I started, and this sounds so trite, but I started doodling. And when I was doodling, I found something was going on inside of me, and my brain was calming. And I'm not artistic. I never, like, I didn't grow up in a family with a lot of art. We went to museums and theater, but we didn't do a lot of drawing. And so, when I grabbed your book, I was like, wait, this is more than you actually doing art. This is you being around art and engaging in art. So can we start in that place? Because your perspective of art is way more than just your traditional art therapy.

• 8:30Speaker 01

  Very much so. Art is a really inclusive thing. It includes the formal creative arts therapies, you know, delivered by a trained therapist. And it also includes the kind of high art things, in inverted commas, that people think about when you say the word art, like museums and galleries and concerts. But it's also about that everyday creativity. It's about those little moments, that microdosing on creativity, that actually children do so easily. It is what kids do all the time. They're always singing, dancing, doodling, crafting, making up plays. They're brilliant at it, but we lose it as adults, even though it remains just as fundamental to us and to our health.

• 9:08Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah. So, but yet, when you look at, what, you have over 300 published scientific papers? I saw that in your book. I was like, wow, this woman isn't just looking at art. She is mixed art and science. And some of the things I saw were, like, engaging in art, there's a lower risk of dying, there's change, we're seeing it's affecting dementia, like, things that we, you know, typically look as big problems, you've really boiled it down to engaging with art. So talk to us about the science behind that and what it means to engage in art.

• 9:47Speaker 01

  This is really why I wrote the book, because when I tell friends and family about the research that I do, people are often amazed that there is this proper science underpinning it. I think people think, well, yeah, I know, I might feel happier, maybe I feel more relaxed. But they're often surprised when you say there are actually over 30,000 published scientific papers now on the health and wellbeing benefits of arts engagements. And these include sort of rigorous randomized trials that have compared arts to other things that we're much more used to talking about, like psychological therapies, or exercise, or other kinds of behaviors in our lives. But we still haven't had the public awareness around this, and it's felt like it's this bizarrely well-kept secret, which doesn't even feel ethical, because it's such a simple thing for us all to do in our lives. So it's something we should all know about.

• 10:33Mindy Pelz?

  So walk me through the neuroscience, because I'm, I love, I love a good neuroscience conversation. I go to a museum and I'm looking at paintings. I would say in the past, my younger self found that quite boring. I'm going to be really transparent, but when, but relaxing and calming. So what is happening now, you know, in my adult life, I find it fascinating. But what is actually happening when we're visually looking at art in a context of like a museum?

• 11:10Speaker 01

  So if you're going to a museum and you're looking at that piece of art in front of you, immediately you are having an emotional response to that artwork and a cognitive response to that artwork. It takes us fractions of a second to initially appraise a picture like that and to form that basic emotional response. But actually, as we're looking at it, what we tend to find is that we will focus our attention really closely onto it. And this is really key because actually art is very good at capturing that attention. And if we can give it that attention, so we can actually hold that focus for a while. It actually helps to block out things in our lives. It can be something that becomes a sort of mindful moment in directing that attention. One thing people often say is when they engage in the arts, they can get into that state of flow where you might lose track of time.

• 11:52Speaker 01

  You'll be looking at that painting and suddenly realise that you've been stood there for a couple of minutes without realising. Or you'll be crafting, or you'll be making music, or doing something else, arts engaged. And when we have that moment of flow, that's actually because we're having a synchronization between our attentional networks in our brain and the reward networks in our brain. And this is why it can feel so absorbing when we do arts. In fact, there was a great study in the US that looked at over 200 different activities that people do and found that the one that induces that state of flow the most is arts and crafts. So it really, really helps us to be in that moment. But it also then gives you this emotional response. So when you're looking, the emotion that people report the most when they look at art or engage in art is happiness.

• 12:37Speaker 01

  And that's because when we engage, we're actually activating reward networks in the brain that are really ancient networks that give us these pleasure responses. In particular, we activate the dopaminergic system that leads to the release of the neurotransmitter dopamine that makes us feel happy. And of course, lots of things do that in life, but the arts are particularly good at it because we get that dopamine release, not only in kind of joyful moments, like when we see a really beautiful, happy picture, or when we're listening to a song and you get that chorus coming back that you were expecting. But we also get it in anticipation of those moments. So it's that build up, that expectation of that chorus coming back, or the expectation of the happy ending in a book, or when you're actually thinking you're about to spot something new in that picture.

• 13:21Speaker 01

  And it's because the arts give us those constant moments of expectation and resolution, like tension and release. They're constantly giving us repeated doses of dopamine, so they're particularly good at making us feel happy.

• 13:34Mindy Pelz?

  So, and you have some research on anxiety and how art actually can calm anxiety. You know, is, we see this a lot in my community, especially the perimenopause community. You know, anxiety is, goes, goes really high during those perimenopausal years. Is, is this something where you can actually look at it like, you know, a lot of women look at for anxiety. They're like, oh, I need to take a supplement that's going to help me with GABA, or I need to get on more progesterone. My progesterone's off. But you know, what I know about how the brain operates is that it, you can put it in the right environment

• 14:15Mindy Pelz?

  and get the same response that you're trying to get from a supplement or a medication as long as you are in a different environment. So outside of dopamine, do we know, does it release GABA? Do you get oxytocin if you're there with friends looking at art? Like, how do we bring all the neurochemicals into that experience?

• 14:36Speaker 01

  Don't worry, there are lots of beneficial neurochemicals from art as well as dopamine. We really do see the benefits for anxiety, particularly from kind of relaxing arts experiences, whether that's looking at a painting or whether it's listening to relaxing music, reading books, for example, or doing those sort of mindful tactile crafts or textile activities. One of the ways that we can really track this is looking at our hormones, like our stress hormones, like cortisol. And also, which is a sign of our endocrine system, our hormone system being downregulated. And we can also see it by looking at heart rate and blood pressure, which is a sign of our autonomic nervous system being relaxed. And actually, the studies, lots and lots of studies have now have shown that even just a few minutes

• 15:17Speaker 01

  of engaging with art can lead to those reductions in autonomic nervous system activity and in stress hormones. What's really interesting as well is some studies have actually directly compared arts with taking medication. So this has mainly been done looking at kind of pre-surgical settings and saying, lots of studies have happened in hospitals and they said, well, if people get really anxious, like before operations, before surgeries is a really key example of this. So they randomised people to getting benzodiazepines to reduce anxiety, so anti-anxiety medications, or they gave them relaxing music. And they actually found that the relaxing music group was more relaxed, had greater reductions in anxiety than the medication group. So really, I think we need to think about arts as being, even the thing you can micro-dose on

• 16:02Speaker 01

  that will help you in that moment of anxiety to come back to a nice state of calm.

• 16:07Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah, you know, I've recently been diving back into understanding the polyvagal theory from as many angles as I can. And one of the pieces of information around the polyvagal theory that I hadn't really totally grasped was, was this idea that when we are in a heightened state of stress, our, our hearing becomes very, very acute and sharp because we're listening for a threat. And there is a, and you might know about this, I just learned this last week, that there's something called safe and sound protocol.

• 16:45Mindy Pelz?

  It's music you can put on that calms your nervous system to tell it, because the nervous system's scanning, scanning, scanning for threat. So talk a little bit about music, because I think this is, I'm trying to give my audience some really interesting, quick tips that can take you out of these stress states that we may have overlooked. And you show that cortisol drops within 30 to 60 minutes of music. I'm curious what you know about it actually, long-term calming the nervous system? Let's, let's dive into that a bit.

• 17:20Speaker 01

  Well, I think the first thing I'd say is think about babies. Again, always look back to babies and children. When babies are stressed and they're crying, mother singing to them relaxes them and stops crying so quickly. And we're the same as adults, music does that to us. We see the reductions in cortisol after kind of half an hour, but that's because there's a lag time on cortisol production. But actually, if we look at things like heart rate and blood pressure, which are much more instantaneous, we see that within seconds of people listening to music. One of the types of music that can really help is music that's got a beat at the beat you want your heart rate to be at. So if we were to pick something like 60 beats a minute, for kind of nice, slow, regular beats, what we actually see is that that slow, regular beat is something that our brain starts to anticipate.

• 18:04Speaker 01

  You know, our bodies and brains love rhythm, right? We are rhythm, we're constantly the beat of our heart and the beat and rhythm of our breathing and the brainwaves. And so we see this rhythm coming back and back. And as soon as our brains notice that beat in music, it starts to predict it and then starts to synchronise with it. It's a process known as entrainment. So if we listen to music, let's say at that 60 beats a minute, you'll actually find over a couple of minutes, your own heart rate's slowing down to match that rate. So that process of entrainment is a physiological thing we can do through music to calm our anxiety. And one of the things I love actually is that if you do-

• 18:40Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah, keep going.

• 18:40Speaker 01

  Well, I was gonna say, if you do it regularly, if you do it regularly, it actually accumulates as well. So if people can put aside 20 minutes, once or twice a day, then every day, just to listen to music, we actually see not only reductions in overall anxiety levels, so not just in the moment, but overall and how anxious people say they feel they are. But we can also see improvements in things like sleep, which of course is so linked in with our stress and anxiety. And even things like pain, people actually report improvements in pain just from listening to music for 20 minutes a day because of that relaxation response.

• 19:14Mindy Pelz?

  Wow, okay, how do I find, I'm, this is, I'm a music novice, I just like to listen to it. But, but how do I find 60 beats per minute?

• 19:23Speaker 01

  You, you can see it if you're, if you're listening to a piece of music and you can look at a clock and see it ticking or something. You can get that sense. But actually, there's a lovely principle called the ISO principle, which I think is really helpful here. Because sometimes if you're feeling really stressed, then just playing something calm can be a bit too much of a stretch. You can be like, right, no, I'm feeling anxious, so playing me something calm might even make me feel more frustrated with the situation. So the ISO principle says, start off with a piece of music that's matching your current state. So if you're feeling stressed, pick a music that's got fast beats, that you're really like, this is how I'm feeling. And then each track that you listen to, you can move down into slightly calmer beats per minute until you get something that's a much more calm piece of music. I'd say don't worry about exactly, is this 60 or is this 65 beats a minute?

• 20:08Speaker 01

  It's more about just moving from that high, high number of beats, that fast music, down to something that's calming and relaxing, where you feel that you've matched that new mood.

• 20:19Mindy Pelz?

  How many of you felt your brain go offline the minute you hit your 40s? When my brain started to go offline in my early 40s, I was crazy scared. I went from being the woman who could hold everything together to not being able to get through a full workday. The positive thinking that had always been my superpower, it just disappeared. Worst case scenarios, replaced it. Anxiety I didn't recognize, aversion of myself I didn't sign up for. I thought something was deeply wrong with me. And then I went looking for answers. What I found didn't just help me, it changed the entire way I understand what it means to be a woman moving through this season of life.

• 21:03Mindy Pelz?

  Your brain is not broken, it's remodeling. That's why I wrote Age Like a Girl, to really lay that out for all of you. It's part science, it's part my own story, the messy, humbling, ultimately beautiful story of a woman who had to fall apart a little before she could figure out who she actually was. If you're in that right now, I want you to know you are not alone. And this is not the end. It might just be the beginning of the most powerful chapter of your life. So Age Like a Girl, it's available now at drmindypelz.com/books. And please know, I am always cheering you on.

• 21:48Mindy Pelz?

  Okay, this is really funny because I have a massage therapist that I've been working with recently, and she was playing this really soft music. And it was actually irritating me because I would, at the end of a busy workday, I was like, I can't take so. I find out that she loves 80s music, and I grew up in the 80s. And so she starts playing, like, just like you said, 80s music. And I could finally relax. I was like, and we were like singing along and having a good time. I'm like, I've never had a massage like this. Most people think, go in, get a massage, put soft music on. But what I hear you saying is there's a mismatch. You've got to meet the nervous system where it's at, and then bring it down to a calmer level.

• 22:31Speaker 01

  Right, yeah, sometimes you go in and you are able to take that calm straight away. But exactly as you say, other times you need to go in, you've got to match yourself first. You might even find it cathartic actually having that music that is quite high octane initially to kind of process those emotions or that stress. And then you can gradually bring yourself down to the state you want to be in.

• 22:52Mindy Pelz?

  That's crazy, that's crazy. And it's so, this is, the reason I want to bring, highlight these kind of, this kind of research is, man, have we complicated health. Like, we have just moved away from the essence of life. And I keep saying that we're at, we're at a mismatch with the modern world. And the modern world just keeps us addicted to our phones and it keeps us addicted to work. And we're getting more and more anxious and we're losing more and more touch with these simple things. So, you know, and I'm wondering, as you're talking, I'm like, is it a primal, is there something primal in our brain that goes back to the days before we had all this stimulation that we're accessing?

• 23:34Speaker 01

  Well, it's interesting you mention that because there are quite a few evolutionary theories around why we even have arts, why we have music. Actually, one of the, one of the main theories around music and singing in particular, is that it evolved as a way of helping us to bond with other people. But actually, before we had speech, you know, we started off grooming one another, but when we grew into bigger group sizes, we needed another way that was a bit more efficient. And singing became that way of having that bonding process. And we mentioned some other neurotransmitters. There are some studies suggesting that we actually have increases in neurotransmitters like oxytocin that are involved in bonding when we sing with people. And we actually do see that if we sing with people and make music with them, we actually bond with them faster than if we chat to them or exercise with them.

• 24:18Speaker 01

  So there's something really powerful about this sense of belonging that we can get. So we can listen to music on our own, but we could also think, can I be singing? Can I be in a choir, for example, singing along with other people that will be giving me that full body relaxation, not just listening to the music, but actually breathing in time with it, making it myself and having that group, social support from that music experience?

• 24:41Mindy Pelz?

  That is so cool. Okay, then maybe I'm thinking with art, like, we didn't always have language like we have now. We didn't have letters like we have now. They used pictures to communicate. Do you think, is there any research showing that maybe that's why looking at a picture is, is pacifying some primal part of our brain? Because that's the way we used to communicate through writing?

• 25:08Speaker 01

  Well, it is inherently communicative arts. And actually, when we look at pictures, one of the reasons we respond so emotionally to them is we're noticing the same features we would notice in the real world around us. So in a picture, if you've got like jagged edges or you've got dark colors, that's still a threat, just like it might be in the real world as well. So that's why we respond so strongly to art, because it is something that we have to be assessing, our brains are looking at from that threat perspective, or that opportunity perspective. But it's also that we get to, we get to really emphasize the emotions through arts. When we're looking at pictures or when we're watching films as well, like, we're really getting into very deep places where we can not only think about our own emotions, but

• 25:49Speaker 01

  we can vicariously experience what other people are communicating with us emotionally, which is a really powerful thing for our brains. It's helping us regulate and understand ourselves, but also helping us put ourselves in other people's shoes and imagine things from their points of view.

• 26:06Mindy Pelz?

  I, I had heard a while back that people who read fiction, this is gonna, this is gonna be a bold statement, but people who read fiction are more empathetic. And the reason they're more empathetic is because they get into the perspective of the characters of a book. And it starts to train the, the brain to actually see things from another person's lens. Have you seen research on that?

• 26:34Speaker 01

  Definitely, I talk about it in the book. I mean, this is something where when we are reading stories and narrative, we're not just thinking about the characters, we're actually responding to them neurologically. We're responding as if we were the characters. It's a phenomenon known as neural coupling. We're kind of coupling our brains with theirs. We're putting ourselves in their shoes. And this is really a kind of good exercise for our brains, because it's known as theory of mind, the ability to put yourself in someone else's shoes and view the world from their perspective. And it's one of the really core components of empathy, being able to imagine things, not just from our own point of view, but from others. But we also actually can even feel we're building relationships with those characters in a kind of parasocial interaction. But that can be really valuable, right? I'm sure everyone's had that feeling where you've read a book and you felt like you've

• 27:19Speaker 01

  got a best friend, someone who's like you. And that's actually something known as social snacking. By reading that book, we can feel like we've not been alone, like, we've had that character, we've had that moment with, that's made us feel more like ourselves. And it can, there's also another phenomenon called social shielding. If you feel like you've had a character in a book who's like you, you might not feel as alone. So even though that character was made up, if you then go into a real life situation where you suddenly feel out of place and whatever, you've got this sense that there was someone else in the fictional world that actually was like you, that can kind of shield you from that so that you don't feel solo. And I think that as, as women as well, we've really seen that come out so much in literature over the last couple of decades, like a really big push in terms of female protagonists

• 28:02Speaker 01

  and female characters from really different backgrounds, so that people can feel, they can find that person that they can have that link with.

• 28:11Mindy Pelz?

  You know, there's, I'm sure you're aware of this, since you put a book out this year, there's a real movement of readers moving more towards fiction and not nonfiction. And just out, fiction's outperforming nonfiction in a big way. That's probably the best way I can say it. And I can tell you from my publisher's lens, their, their feeling is people want to escape. But I'm wondering if people want to actually interact with characters that feel more in alignment with their value system, more in a calmer character than the characters we're seeing, at least here in America, in our political scene?

• 28:52Mindy Pelz?

  If there's something, like what you just said is so incredibly powerful, where when we dive into a fiction book, you do feel like you are a part of another world and you're connected to another human. And I'm wondering if in times of stress, if culturally we gravitate more towards fiction? Have you seen any research on that?

• 29:16Speaker 01

  I definitely have seen research about the benefits that we get from, partly from that stress, you know, that escapism from the world that we're in. And I certainly know, like myself, if things are more stressful in life or work, I often find myself drawn back to kind of historical fiction where it feels particularly safe because it's so different.

• 29:33Mindy Pelz?

  Oh, I love historical, yep, yep. I do too.

• 29:36Speaker 01

  And I think we're seeing that with, that's what I think we're seeing with the big fantasy boom at the moment. It's, it's giving people a completely different world that's separate from the same stresses now. But what I think is interesting here as well, though, is it's often the same universal stories that are still explored in those other worlds. You know, it's stories of loss or love or day-to-day challenges, it's all, that's all universal. And actually, the reason for that is that our brains need to understand ourselves better. We need to work through emotions. We need to also prepare ourselves for unexpected events in the world. So we actually get really drawn to stories because they help our brains to practice, essentially practice real life, but through this make-believe world. And that's honing what's called the predictive coding of our brains.

• 30:19Speaker 01

  That's the ability of our brains then to respond to things in the world around us. So it's not just a kind of frivolous escapism. It's also actually really nurturing a core neurological, psychological process that we depend on to manage and respond to the world around us day to day.

• 30:36Mindy Pelz?

  That is crazy. The other, the other study I saw recently was on horror films. That a lot of people, when they watch horror films, it actually helps them work out their stress response.

• 30:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:50Mindy Pelz?

  Have you seen that?

• 30:51Speaker 01

  Absolutely. And actually, we see.

• 30:52Mindy Pelz?

  Talk about that. I found that fascinating because I, I hate horror films.

• 30:55Speaker 01

  Join the club.

• 30:56Mindy Pelz?

  But now I was like, oh, wait, yeah, like, maybe there's, maybe there's a reason for them. I'd rather work out my stress watching somebody else having a problem than myself.

• 31:05Speaker 01

  Okay, so it's true, but you need to know the hack to get this right. So we, we definitely need these scary experiences. Think about kids. Kids love reading about dinosaurs and about ghosts and these scary things. Exactly for that reason, that their brains are working out how to come to grips and come to terms with scary things, how to process it. And as adults, we still need that. Often we often love a really sad song or we love like a, uh, watching a scary movie. But as you say, some people don't like scary films. And the reason for this is if you forget that it's a film, you start to think it's real. And some people get so drawn into experiences, particularly cinema, where it can be very, very realistic around you,

• 31:49Speaker 01

  that it actually just becomes scary. So instead of having the kind of distance that we normally have because we know it's fiction. So our brain goes through the emotions, but there's that little bit of space that means we don't get quite as drawn in as in the real world. For some people watching films, they get so drawn in that they literally just get scared. They don't have that aesthetic distance. And but there is a hack for this, which is if you could put pictures of the actors of horror films like next to the screen. Or, and so you're kind of reminding yourself that they are actors rather than real people. So if you do things like that, if you read up the biographies of the actors or something, so that you're remembering their actors,

• 32:28Speaker 01

  then that helps to maintain that aesthetic distance, which means that we actually get the benefits of it without just being scared.

• 32:37Mindy Pelz?

  My, my daughter used to put horror movies on all the time in the living room when she was a teenager. And even the music was like too much for me. I had to leave the room. I, I love the hack. I love the hack. And, and I, so that would have probably been helpful for me.

• 32:51Speaker 01

  I do feel I need to have a caveat though. I, I've known about this hack for years, but I'm still too scared to try it myself. So this one is.

• 32:56Mindy Pelz?

  Right, there you go.

• 32:59Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah, exactly. But you know, one of the things I've been really teaching my audience is that, especially women, um, we respond to every single environment that we put ourselves in. So the minute you leave your house, you're, you're, you're like a big sensory organ that is, is detecting what is going on outside and safety becomes a really big, uh, piece of making sure that a woman's nervous system is calm. And often for many women, when they leave their house or they go out into crowds or in certain places, their nervous system starts triggering not safe.

• 33:40Mindy Pelz?

  Do we, do we have any research on what type of art would bring safety back to the body? Because you can't lose weight if you don't, if your nervous system thinks it's not safe. Women can't sleep if the nervous system thinks it's not safe. How can we use art to bring in the safety piece?

• 34:01Speaker 01

  I think there are two ways. One is to try and down regulate that chronic stress state that people can get into. And we know that when we're chronically stressed, we see things like heightened levels of cortisol across the day, that stress hormone. And we also lose that nice rhythm, that diurnal rhythm we should have of cortisol going up and down across the day. And it just starts to be flat and high all the time. What's really interesting is the studies that have looked at people doing arts, particularly if you're doing about one hour every week as a kind of set piece. These kind of like, so basically joining a class that you do every week. Over time, this can actually, within about six to 10 weeks, reduce levels of chronic stress, not only psychologically, but also evident at that biological level.

• 34:44Speaker 01

  So we've had the first studies coming through showing that people actually start to return to better diurnal cortisol patterns within just six to 10 weeks of regular, like one hour chunks of arts engagements. And I think this is important to kind of think about that dosage. I mean, I've mentioned earlier, using arts, that sort of 20 minutes like listening to relaxing music in a day, for example, just to give yourself those little breaks within a day. But if you can have that one hour a week, for example, of being part of a crafting class or being part of a choir or going to a museum or something, that really focused longer period of time seems to be beneficial in terms of reducing those stress hormones. And then the second thing we can do is if we're reducing that overall chronic stress, then think, well, can I use arts as a way of pushing that safety boundary, but in a, it's in a safe way.

• 35:29Speaker 01

  Because you know that if you're going to start like reading a story that's not just positive, but might have a little bit of emotional up and down, that you're just rehearsing, experiencing those emotions, but still within the safety of it being make believe. And one of the ways you can do this is to sort of find an author, for example, who you, who you know and trust. Like you know, there goes, there's going to be a happy ending, even if there's some trials and tribulations along the way. And that, that, that can be a good way of sort of having that sense of safety, knowing it'll end up in a good place. I actually think, again, children's literature can be a really nice place to start here. Because, um, I recently started rereading the famous five, um, adventure stories with my kids, which were a really big series when I was young in the UK. And because I, I remember they always end well, but they've got these adventures and twists along the way.

• 36:13Speaker 01

  But I actually found it really beneficial for my own stress. Because I found that they were just enough pushing me into those, uh, scarier emotions, but still within that safety envelope. So that can be a really nice way. And then just gradually extending as you feel more and more safe. Taking on bigger challenges with the kinds of arts experiences emotionally.

• 36:34Mindy Pelz?

  So would a book club fall into that? Cause you're gathering with people.

• 36:39Speaker 01

  I love, I love book clubs because I also think there's a safety there because you, you can even check out like, is this going to end okay? Um, and you can chat through the emotions. I'm part of a book club, actually of local mums as well. And I found it really lovely because actually it was formed by a mum to kind of cope with the challenges having had a baby. And she was saying that she wanted it to be about the books, but also about that community of knowing you're kind of all going through a similar journey together. And I think that's really lovely because it felt like if you're reading something and you found it a little bit harder, you can talk it through. So you're kind of processing it in, in that group environment as well.

• 37:14Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah, I, I finally, for the first time, joined a book club with some friends. And, um, it is true, even as you're reading the book, you know, if you're interacting with them, you haven't even gone to the book club, you know, moment or meeting, you, you're talking about it. You're, I don't like that guy. He did this. Or I love this part of the storyline. And there, there is that connection, probably brings oxytocin into it as well. Which was, would be a very different, and I'm come to think of it, a very different experience than reading the book on your own. Having somebody to talk it through with and connect with brings more neurochemicals into the picture, I would think.

• 37:50Speaker 01

  Very much so. You're adding an extra ingredient, aren't you? It's not just about the art, but also about latching that social into it. And also latching in that, that reason to, to go and be part of that group face to face. So if you're someone that might be feeling more anxious socially, knowing that actually this arts experience is going to help connect you once a month or whatever, to other people in that social environment. It's a really nice way of incorporating that into it as well, but in that, bringing that safety into the experience.

• 38:16Mindy Pelz?

  Have you seen recently, there's been a big uptick in what they're calling grandmo- grandmother hobbies?

• 38:23Speaker 01

  Granny hobbies, yeah.

• 38:25Mindy Pelz?

  Granny hobbies, like knitting and crochet, like surely there's neuroscience behind that. And it, and it really fascinates my evolutionary brain because it makes me really think deeper that we are all getting, our nervous systems are getting exhausted with all the technology that we're craving, knitting and crocheting. What do we, what do we know about grandmother hobbies?

• 38:50Speaker 01

  Granny hobbies are fabulous. And I think, um, I'm really loving seeing this particularly amongst young people now trending on social media. I think what's great about it is it's something you can do just in a few minutes as well, right? If you're taking up crochet, for example, even if you've only got five minutes, you can do it in five minutes. And I think we're used to a world where if we have five minutes, we feel we have to fill it. It's just like a given that we feel this pressure to do something. And the most obvious thing is to start scrolling on your phone. And that is the surefire way to really damage your stress and your mood with that five minute break. But I love the idea that actually you could be doing something that's very similar in terms of close finger work in front of you. But in that five minutes, you're going to have that down regulation of stress response. You've got the tactile feel of what you're doing. You might have colors or whatever coming into play.

• 39:34Speaker 01

  But you've also got a sense of meaning, like you're building something. And I think meaning and purpose are things we are really underrating at the moment in our lives. We're focusing on things that are around like productivity a lot, without actually thinking whether there's the meaning and a personal sense of purpose behind it. And those things can sound really soft, but they are linked in with basically every biological and clinical outcome there is out there. I mean, we see that people who've got that sense of meaning day to day have better functioning immune systems. They have reduced risk of developing all kinds of mental and physical health problems. I was actually in a meeting with some, um, colleagues today who are neuroscientists, who was saying they've actually found that the sense of meaning and purpose is really evidence in terms of brain imaging, how strong your sense of purpose is.

• 40:16Speaker 01

  So this is something that has these deep seated biological effects. And arts engagement is actually one of the most effective ways of increasing a sense of meaning and purpose day to day. And it's something that's so simple to do.

• 40:29Mindy Pelz?

  So like joining a knitting club or taking, like you said, a painting class like you're you're that, you know, I hear a lot from women are like, I don't know what I'm supposed to do with my life. I don't know what my purpose is, especially women when they go through the midlife and their kids are grown, maybe they get divorced and they're trying to figure out what that next step is. And they're like, I don't have, I don't have a big purpose. And then you look at all the studies on, hey, have a purpose, you're going to live longer, you're gonna, you know, you're gonna, it's gonna help with brain development. What I just heard and what you just said is going to a knitting class with the same people, going to an art class where you're challenging yourself, that could

• 41:11Mindy Pelz?

  be enough purpose to get you the neuroscientist, you know, the neurobiology upside.

• 41:17Speaker 01

  Exactly. And what's great is you've got choice here. So I think the big thing is start off with some taster sessions. So sign up, like decide you're going to have a creative month and you're going to sign up for a different taster session each week on something, whether it's online video classes, or whether it's going to a live group in the community, or whether it's doing something where with a friend where you're both going to do it together and try and learn it. And so that's a nice way for people to say, like, did I enjoy that session of crochet? Did I enjoy that drawing class? Or did I enjoy actually trying to learn to knit for the first time or doing some clay? That's a great way to start and actually figuring out if there's something that you really enjoyed and want to go back to. Having that regular class once a week is a brilliant way because it's

• 41:58Speaker 01

  giving you that structure to it. And of course, as you're learning the craft, you're not just having the in the moment benefit experience, but you're also building up a kind of a new skill. And this is really important in terms of self-esteem, a sense of mastery, which is one of our core psychological building blocks that we crave. It's a core psychological need for us as humans. So even though it can sound so small, like feeling a sense of mastery in a new craft, that can actually be what you need for your own mental wellbeing. That that can be sufficient to actually initially kickstart that psychological need. But it can also be really important for identity. And I think this is something, again, that we often overlook. Our identities are often founded on our, our work or a family role,

• 42:41Speaker 01

  for example. And often we only have a couple of identities that we actually feel we hold. And the challenge with this is that if you have a threat to one of those identities, like your work starts to go badly, or even you're transitioning out of work and retiring, then that can have a really profound psychological impact. And actually, when people pick up a new hobby, like you're joining that choir and you're now a singer or you're a knitter, that small extra identity is actually something that can help build your psychological resilience. It's a buffer when we face threats to other identities. We've actually got these other ones. There are other parts to us. So a threat to another part of our life doesn't undermine our whole sense of self.

• 43:21Mindy Pelz?

  So, so interesting, because I've spent a lot of time studying the transition, the brain changes that happen through the menopause transition. And a big piece is that we do get neurons that start to get pruned away and new neurons are forming. And it does cause a lot of women to say, oh, my identity was fixing everybody's problems and I loved that. And now I don't want to fix everybody's problem, but I'm left without an anchor of who I am. And I hope the people listening just caught that. You're saying, this isn't like you have to put on a whole new identity, like a new career or a new relationship or

• 44:03Mindy Pelz?

  new role. Yeah. That, that's insane. I don't understand why we'd now, I'm like even going deeper in my thought, like, why do we dismiss this? I know here in America, like, a lot of the art classes, they've done away with, like PE class done away with because of budget cuts. And then you look at the anxious, you know, generation that's growing up. It's like, wow, that would just probably the worst thing they could have done for even our, you know, our children as they're going through a school. Do we have anything on arts and just cognitive skills in general, keeping memory sharp, learning, being able to learn

• 44:45Mindy Pelz?

  new things? That's a big problem that I hear from a lot of menopausal women is they can't grasp on to information the same way they used to be able to?

• 44:54Speaker 01

  This is interesting. It's a really emerging area, but it's one where there's some really fascinating results starting to come through. So some of these have looked at symptoms like brain fog, and have actually shown that, again, regular arts engagement is something that can actually help to activate particular regions of the prefrontal cortex that are involved in the brain and things like problem solving and reasoning and other aspects of executive functioning. And actually shown that listening to music and making arts are activities that help to strengthen activations of those particular brain regions. But actually, as people are getting older as well, there is increasing literature suggesting that arts engagements can help with neuroplasticity, with actually maintaining some neural pathways,

• 45:36Speaker 01

  but also helping to build new ones. And this is really important when we're thinking about cognitive reserve, this idea about building that resilience of our brain against cognitive decline. Because even if we are accumulating sort of pathological symptoms in our brain of dementias, we all, some people can compensate for longer than others can. So some people, even if they've got those symptoms happening in their brain, they can appear fine on the surface. They can carry on independently, feeling like they're functioning cognitively normally for longer. And this is this concept of cognitive reserve, that resilience. And actually, increasing studies are suggesting that when we engage regularly in the arts, we actually have, we are helped to build that cognitive reserve, we're helping to build that resilience of the brain. In fact, some of my colleagues in Chile actually

• 46:21Speaker 01

  looked at people's brain age. So they were actually showing that people who are more regularly engaged doing arts activities actually have a younger brain age. They have better connectivity between regions of the brain that are vulnerable to aging. So I think this is important when we're thinking about cognition in all of its guises, whether it's symptoms that are being brought on by menopause, or if it's also symptoms that are to do with cognitive decline. It really is a case of use it or lose it. And when we do arts, we're using so many parts of the brain. It's a really, it's a really lovely kind of whole brain workout.

• 46:56Mindy Pelz?

  Does it matter if it's in person or online? Does the online experience change a lot? You know, after COVID, a lot of classes, everybody started doing things online. Is there, is there a difference if I'm going to take a class, if I do it online versus in person?

• 47:12Speaker 01

  So generally, the results are pretty similar. They are slightly more muted online to in person. And if we, that's emotionally, and we don't get the social benefits in the same way online. So if you've got the option of doing a real life choir or a virtual choir, you're getting that extra social dimension much more strongly when it's real life. And we know that's because it's not just about the singing, right? Or the, or the craft. It's about those side conversations that you have as well. It's about those physical body language interactions too. So there really is something about the embodied experience that is really, that is really good importance. But I think the message is that if you've not got the option of in person, or if you're not feeling like you're up to in person,

• 47:54Speaker 01

  if you're feeling safer to start off engaging in a virtual environment, then this still does bring benefits.

• 48:01Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah. And of course, my brain is now thinking through a health lens in that, is there, is like, which would be better? You know, art, like, like physical art, actually drawing, going to a museum, listening to music, reading a book, writing a book, granny hobbies, like, do, are all of these similar in their impact on our neurochemistry? Or do some of them outperform others?

• 48:27Speaker 01

  So it depends what kind of outcome you're interested in. If we're looking at mental health, so anxiety, depression, for example, those symptoms, we actually see remarkably similar, similar results from the trials, whether you are actively taking part, doing something, or whether you're more receptively looking at things in a gallery, or going to a theater, or going to a concert. It is different mechanisms. So for the actively participating, then you're really focusing on that building of mastery and self-esteem and identity, and you've got that tactile sensory experience. Whereas for the more receptive things, it might be more about emotion processing, or new narratives, or that exposure to kind of new fictional characters and experiences that we spoke about. But then there are other things where it can matter a bit more. So if we're thinking about,

• 49:12Speaker 01

  for example, stress reduction and sleep, then we know that that regular beat that you get from listening to music, for example, that synchronization with that beat is something that is very specific to music. But I think the overall, the sort of message is try and have a variety of different experiences. I mean, I'm not suggesting you've got to have 10 hobbies every day that you're doing, because everyone, everyone is busy. But I think figure out, is there a time in the day when you can always sit down and listen to 20 minutes of music? Like, maybe that's before you go to bed, you're always going to have that 20 minutes, not multitasking, but just really having that relaxation response to finally process your stress and calm down. For me, that 20 minutes is on my commute to and from work. Like that listening to music then is really, really key for keeping my stress

• 49:57Speaker 01

  levels at the level I want them to be after that kind of stimulation of work. But then also thinking, can you have that class that you do each week? Or can you have these ways of hacking the arts onto your existing life? Like, if you're meeting up with friends, could you meet up and go to an exhibition or a gig together? So that you're, or can you do a craft together? So you're having that creative experience layered on top of things you've already got in your routine.

• 50:23Mindy Pelz?

  Again, it's so simple. Health is so simple when we, when we get out of a myopic point of view. We have to, it's, I have a thing that I teach called exercise variation. I'm like, why do we do the same exercise over and over and over again? You know, the way the human body works is it really needs both the cardio and the weight training and the yoga and the, and the, and the resistance training. Like all of these are helpful and, um, and, and we should look at them in a weekly schedule of, am I getting the variation of these activities?

• 50:58Speaker 01

  Well, each thing will bring different ingredients and it could be that some of your arts experiences are more social, some are more relaxing, some are more pushing your safety boundaries, some are more physical, like dance. Dance is fabulous. You know, it also builds your bone density and your posture and your balance and your strength. So having this whole mix is really key. And in fact, we found in a lot of the studies, the best outcomes aren't just about frequency of engagement, but diversity of what you engage with, which is exactly what we see for exercise too. And it also avoids something called the hedonic treadmill. So the hedonic treadmill is the idea that if you just do one thing, you can actually start to adapt to it and it doesn't bring you quite the same benefits because you're expecting it and it starts to become a bit samey. Whereas if you've

• 51:42Speaker 01

  got more variety, then actually it keeps things fresher, it keeps the novelty, which keeps you more motivated to engage and enhances the wellbeing benefits you get from it.

• 51:52Mindy Pelz?

  You know, the same thing goes with food. It's like when we eat the same foods over and over, especially when you look at it through the lens of the microbiome, you, you just take one set of bacteria and you're feeding that one set of bacteria. They call it monoculture and, and you're not creating that diversity. So one of the things they say is that the best thing you can do for your microbiome is eat as many different plants as possible.

• 52:15Speaker 01

  Exactly the same. It's the doors that sing variety is the spice of life. Like it's completely true. We need to have that variety, whether it's physically, nutrition based or creatively.

• 52:26Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah. Talk a little bit about the research you found on cancer. That was, and music. That was fascinating to me. What, can music, I'm just gonna say it this way, can music kill cancer cells?

• 52:38Speaker 01

  No, I'm really sorry. This is one of the myths that I debunk in the book because I think it's important here, like that we're realistic. Like we're saying like, when are the things when arts can help, but also when are the things where there might be a myth out there that's actually really unhelpful? So yeah, I take down a couple of these. This was a, a study that had played music to cancer cells in petri dishes and claimed it had killed them. I'm really sorry, but cells don't have ears. So I don't know how we think these cells have been enjoying this music. Um, probably talking about some kind of vibration response, but this is a petri dish. That is nothing like what's happening in the body in that moment. So alas, this is one of these times when it's not helpful. But there are some really interesting studies that have looked at cancer and actually said, well, we have cancer drugs that can be tackling, you know, aspects of the disease, but actually

• 53:23Speaker 01

  there are other things that we need to think about too, whether that's mental health experiences, whether that's chronic pain or nausea or fatigue or loss of libido, or that sense of loss of identity and loss of social support. And there are studies looking at all of those other components, showing that arts can have benefits. And I think this is a really kind of powerful example, whether it's cancer or whether it's other chronic diseases, of recognizing that we have a really critical role for traditional medicine to be playing in the management and treatments and sometimes cure of those conditions. But we have to remember that we are whole people, where actually there are other aspects of our mental, physical, social, spiritual wellbeing that things like arts could actually really help with.

• 54:07Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah. Do we know any hospitals that have brought arts in to speed up healing?

• 54:11Speaker 01

  Oh my gosh, so many now. This is absolutely huge. I mean, across so many countries. I mean, there are hospital arts programs across all of the US, across the UK. Some of these have been embedded for decades now. For example, in Florida, there are actually an entire staff of artists who work within UF Shands Hospital on a permanent full-time basis, supporting all aspects of care, working really closely with all of the clinicians who are involved. There's a really embedded research program there as well. So there's a lot of this work. And actually, there are even clinicians now prescribing the arts to people. This is happening now in nearly 40 countries worldwide. You can actually get a prescription for the arts from your doctor. I've been working on a project in the US over the last few

• 54:53Speaker 01

  years, which has had 23 different sites around the US where clinicians within hospitals or healthcare, primary healthcare settings have been giving people a prescription to go and do the arts. And the results from it are so powerful in terms of showing these improvements in a wide range of, of mental and physical health outcomes. But I think it's still not got that public awareness. We ran a study in the US saying, well, um, if you ask people, did you do any arts yesterday? Only one in 20 US adults will say yes, which is insanely low. Like many more people, like four times as many will say that they did exercise yesterday compared to doing arts. But when we said, if, if a doctor prescribed

• 55:36Speaker 01

  you arts, would you do it? 76% said they, yes, they would. So I think we've really got to raise awareness. Yeah. Like the, the evidence base is there about these benefits. People need to know and they need sometimes that prompt to go and do it.

• 55:49Mindy Pelz?

  That's crazy. Yeah. Wait, you cite research linking, uh, peak fertility, creativity and attractiveness to the art. If we haven't convinced people yet, can you talk about the evolutionary thread tying creative expression to the female body and, um, you know, how that makes us, does it make us more attractive?

• 56:10Speaker 01

  This was a lovely study that I mentioned in the book, which was talking actually about how when women are at peak levels of fertility, they, they showed them pictures of men and they were saying that some of these men were really wealthy and some of them were really artistic. And apparently in these studies, women are much more drawn to the artistic, creative sorts when they're at peak fertility. And the kind of theories around this is we're actually recognizing that these are the, probably the most important skills that we have as humans, like creativity and the arts are arguably like the crowning achievement of our species. Um, and they're also the thing that, you know, AI is at least good at doing. Um, because this is something-

• 56:46Mindy Pelz?

  I was just thinking this.

• 56:48Speaker 01

  We are so-

• 56:49Mindy Pelz?

  Trying to make us all think the same.

• 56:51Speaker 01

  Exactly. And one of the great things about the arts is they make us think differently. They shock us, they scare us, they, they challenge the way we see the world. But they're also so complex. I mean, many people will know that the arts experiences that they hate the most are the most predictable, like elevator music, where you can feel like this is so bland and predictable. It's taken all the joy out of it. We really sometimes particularly get turned off by things that have been machine generated. We like that sense of unpredictability and that's what we're so great at. Like we love those creative skills. And I thought it was brilliant to see that this is something that we, we even link in with fertility.

• 57:30Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah. And you know, it's like, if you haven't, if you've gotten this far in the podcast and you're not convinced, how about we let you know you're gonna be more attractive?

• 57:38Speaker 01

  This, this study was only saying men were more attractive. It didn't look at women.

• 57:42Mindy Pelz?

  Oh, only men? Okay. Wait, come on. Where were the, did they just not study women?

• 57:46Speaker 01

  I'll make it my next study, they were.

• 57:49Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah, thank you. Thank you. I, I'm, I'm, I'm gonna, I'm gonna put the stake in the ground that it makes everybody more attractive. So what, what, what would you say to the woman who's listening to this, who is completely stressed out, having horrible menopause symptoms, trouble losing weight, trouble sleeping, anxiety, depression? This is, this is a large piece of women that, that, uh, listen to my podcast. Where, where's the door in? Like, if, if you're not, if you didn't grow up in an artistic household, like what's the step in?

• 58:23Speaker 01

  I'd say start with something really small and manageable. Start with just putting together a playlist of some songs that you know you love. And when you're having bad moments, just sit down and just listen to it, just for 10, 15, if you can, 20 minutes and see how you feel afterwards. There's lots of lifestyle advice out there, but one of the things I love about the arts is it's such a joyful one, saying, find ways to have more creativity woven even in those micro moments into your day to day. And I think that listening to music is a really easy way in. And if you feel like you can do that and you can make that something you're doing every day, even just for that few minutes, then build from there. Maybe the next step is you're going to go and read a book that you've been, that you wish you'd done, you wanted to be drawn to. And I think going

• 59:06Speaker 01

  to libraries or looking for online communities for those recommendations of books that might be safe and joyful, that can be a really lovely start to get you in and just take it from there. Maybe the next thing might be to, to look at an exhibition that's on just for a few minutes. So don't panic that this is about having to start a massive hobby and take a musical instrument or anything really big and scary. It's these small steps of trying to gradually increase the number of minutes of creativity that you have in a day and seeing what benefits it brings you.

• 59:33Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah. What about our own living environment? Can you, like, there's some, a term that I heard recently called dopamine decor, where you can actually start to put splashes of color and whimsical things on your wall and it stimulates dopamine. Could the woman who maybe doesn't have a big social network, uh, could, if she starts by listening to music, could, are there things she can do within her house? Maybe she's not going out to a museum. Are there things she can create on her walls that will give her that same sense of neurochemical lift?

• 1:00:07Speaker 01

  A hundred percent. Like find a picture or a poster that you love and put it on the wall. And there can be, you can even make the finding of this a joyful thing. Maybe don't scroll the internet trying to find a picture. See if you can head out to a charity shop and see what pictures are pre-loved that someone's left behind them. See which one you really like the look of, or go to student art exhibitions. There, I think student arts things are brilliant because that's where you can actually buy art directly from a student that's made it. And you then get that kind of personal meaning. Like maybe you met that artist and you sort of knew a little bit about that picture. And each time you look at it, you'll remember that interaction that you had with them. So you've got the joy from the art and the joy from the memory of that experience that you had with it. This is great actually to think, if you have spaces like a work environment at home, but you know you often get stressed in, putting that picture above your desk

• 1:00:52Speaker 01

  so that you've got that thing that each time you have a bad moment, you can look up and just take a few seconds looking at that. We know that even those short microdosing or looking at art can bring those neurological and physiological benefits.

• 1:01:05Mindy Pelz?

  So beautiful. What was your intention with this book? What were you hoping that people would do when they would pick up this book?

• 1:01:12Speaker 01

  People already have books on exercise and diet and sleep. And I thought, no one has written a book that's about art in this way. So I wanted to bring this science to people in a really open and accessible way, but also make it creative. Like, every chapter's got a real-life story of a real person, but a narrative to it as well. Yeah, yes, we're all drawn to fiction now, but I don't think nonfiction is that different. I think nonfiction can also have stories in it and can bring science to life with those beautiful narratives and emotions. But I also wanted it to be super practical. So the end of every chapter is what I call the daily dose. And it's my advice, like, having read about this science, what can you practically do in your life, starting today, that will put this into action? Whether you're, and it sort of breaks it down by health condition,

• 1:01:57Speaker 01

  whether you're interested in mental health, or brain health, or movements, or immune health, or longevity, or whatever. So it's really clear, practical, science-backed takeaways. And what I'm hoping is that people who are in that 95% of adults who say they didn't do any arts yesterday, can this book actually help to overcome those barriers, to find those really simple, easy ways of bringing the joy of creativity back into the everyday, so everyone can experience those health and wellbeing benefits?

• 1:02:22Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah, it's, it's, you, what I feel like you've done with this book is you've expanded what we think health is. And instead of, you know, we live in a world where we base all of our health habits off a 90-second reel on Instagram. And we're like, oh, I'm supposed to do this, not that. And I feel like what your book did is really offer us a wider lens in which we can look at our health from. Because a lot of women do the, oh, I know I'm supposed to not eat this many carbs. I know I'm supposed to go to the gym. And it's like, we've put this burden of have-tos on women. And I, I think the things we talked about today are fun and enjoyable and interesting.

• 1:03:07Mindy Pelz?

  And we tend to put anything that's gonna be fun and interesting not in the health category. So I, I really think, you know, I want to offer you what I, I really love, that you've just sort of widened the lens of what it means to be healthy. And I'm just, I'm excited for what you created here, so thank you for that.

• 1:03:27Speaker 01

  Ah, thank you so much.

• 1:03:30Mindy Pelz?

  What, what, you're a scientist. What, what's, what are you studying now? What's, what's on your, your mind that you're trying to debunk?

• 1:03:38Speaker 01

  Oh, we have so many studies ongoing at the moment. So one of the things we're looking at is really diving even deeper into the biological impact that arts engagement has. So how it affects the abundance of different proteins in our bodies. It affects inflammation in our immune system, helping to reduce it. It even seems to affect the expression of our genes. So we've got loads of biological studies like that underway. We're actually also just planning the, some of the, our first studies into the actual impact of art to people in perimenopause. There are a couple of studies out there already, but this is, this is a gap, shockingly, for perimenopause research, not enough research. So we, we're looking a lot more at that, particularly thinking about how things like singing and dancing could be something that could, could really support here. So that feels really exciting as well.

• 1:04:24Mindy Pelz?

  I read, I, I led a women's retreat recently, and in preparation for it, I read a study that, and you might, you might know this one, that synchronized dancing together, where you have to do coordinated moves together, gives you a deeper dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin, all that yummy neurotransmitters. It gives you a deeper experience than if you just show up for an aerobics class that maybe not as coordinated. What, talk a li, I'm just curious what you've found on that.

• 1:04:56Speaker 01

  I mean, dance is exercise, but when you dance, it's not just exercise. It's also the shape and the beauty and the music that can be with it and the story you're telling with your dancing. And actually, some of the studies that have directly compared dance to equivalent exercise, but without that same creative component, have shown even greater benefits from the dance. And we see that in terms of people's psychological response. So greater improvements in anxiety and depression. We see it biologically, like, greater reductions in cholesterol, for example, and even greater reductions in BMI.

• 1:05:31Mindy Pelz?

  That's crazy.

• 1:05:31Speaker 01

  And some of this is around the motivation, because of course, if people are really enjoying something, they're motivated to do it more, which means that they'll get a higher dose of that exercise. But it's also due to the fact that it's bringing in these psychological components as well. And actually, we know so much that our mental health and our physical health are so tightly interconnected, that if we're doing something, even if we're doing it, dance as exercise for physical health, if it's also improving our mental health, that in turn is benefiting our physical health too. So it really adds a whole extra dimension to exercising, if we can make it creative.

• 1:06:06Mindy Pelz?

  Well, we are all cheering you on. Keep going, keep studying, keep bringing it back to all of us, so that we can start to really look at health from a holistic lens. I think if there ever was a moment in history that we needed to get back to that, it's now. So just know that many of us are cheering you on in your research.

• 1:06:25Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 1:06:26Mindy Pelz?

  And again, I'm gonna just recommend everybody go get this book, because it's like that missing component to health that just isn't talked about enough. So, so I just appreciate you and what you're, you can tell you're passionate about it. So just excited for what you guys keep bringing forward, you and your team.

• 1:06:44Speaker 01

  Thank you. And it's called Art Cure, if anyone wants to know the title.

• 1:06:49Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah, it's called Art Cure. Yeah, I'll, I'll mention it in the intro too. So, yeah, yeah. So, okay, we have a tradition here on my podcast. You know, I've, I've written three books that all have "Like a Girl" in the title. And one of the things I'm trying to do is help women see that our feminine bodies need to be treated different. What does "Live Like a Girl" mean to you?

• 1:07:12Speaker 01

  To me, it means embracing creativity in all of its different forms and remembering that we are inherently creative beings and that we get so much joy from it. So we need to prioritize it and make the space for it day to day.

• 1:07:25Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah. And we're so creative when we're little, and then somehow, like that, when we were little girls, like, the creativity was through the roof. And then somewhere, adulthood takes it away from us. So I, I absolutely agree with that.

• 1:07:37Speaker 01

  Yeah. I say, look back to the kids, look at how they microdose on art so inherently day to day and really follow that inspiration. I think it's such a beautiful thing to watch.

• 1:07:46Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah. Well, thank you, Daisy. Everybody go grab Art Cure. And I can't wait to bring you back when you, when you write your next book. So thank you for.

• 1:07:54Speaker 01

  Thanks so much for having me on.

• 1:07:56Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah, of course. Thank you so much for joining me in today's episode. I love bringing thoughtful discussions about all things health to you. If you enjoyed it, we'd love to know about it. So please leave us a review, share it with your friends, and let me know what your biggest takeaway is.

• 1:08:22Mindy Pelz?

  I want to tell you about something that genuinely moves me. And that's watching what happens when women come together around real health science. There's something powerful that shifts when a woman realizes she's not broken. She's just been given the wrong information. And when she is surrounded by other women who are waking up to that same truth, wow, it's magic. The healing accelerates. The consistency becomes easier, the loneliness of the health journey just literally dissolves. And that's what I have been watching over and over again happen inside my Reset Academy, month after month. Women who come in frustrated and depleted.

• 1:09:08Mindy Pelz?

  They start to find their rhythm, they start to reclaim their energy. And the most beautiful part is they start rebuilding trust with their bodies. Inside my academy, you get monthly trainings, live coaching calls, and an incredible community of women who are all doing this work right alongside you. And I show up every single month with new content, new tools, new ways to explain things, because your body is always changing and your health education should grow with it. So come join me over there. All you've got to do is find us on resetacademy.drmindypelz.com. That's resetacademy.drmindypelz.com. I can't wait to see you there.