impulsivity it's narcissism it's us versus them it's fear the prefrontal cortex is empathy it's compassion it's thinking about the future in terms of what we do today that's where we need to make our decisions based from from the prefrontal cortex unfortunately when we eat the modern diet of our planet or when we watch the news or we spend too much time online we lock in to the image below we lock in to the trial in the room and we're not able to make good decisions as i mentioned at the beginning of our time together while all the great books are of a are there not useful for anybody unless we're able to implement or put bring action in terms of what all these 2 reference books are talking about in the same thing goes really for our mentality how we look at other people our next door neighbors people in another community and even people in other countries right now

we look upon people around the world with fear with and us versus them mentality and this is brought about because of the way our brains are being rewired you know grain brain talked about the changes in the diet around the world and like you say a lot of people gain some benefit from now from that but now we're really want to look at how we can change how people look upon each other and how we look upon our planet and almost all of your books are focused on the brain reaches far as i understand is not only in our house not only professional orica damage but also a personal of balance for you because from what i know you lost your father to alzheimer's now you keep referring to yourself as we and i know that you rode this latest book with your son who is also a trained doctor what he bringing to the table. well austin promotor m.d. is a board certified physician in an area called internal medicine and austin brings

a very youthful a very guarded perspective of how this is extremely important information for his generation and really brings a an incredible level of science and knowledge to the project so what a what a gift for me to be able to share in this experience bringing this book to the world you know as as we have this conversation we're getting ready to publish this book keeper in the united states and it's already been acquired by 16 other countries around the world and you know we believe this is going to be an important game changer that we desperately need we need to come together and we think that is you know the way to our survival is to look upon each other as friends not flow and you know whether it's losing weight or whatever your goal may be achieving that goal as you mentioned earlier in our conversation the new year's resolution all well and good but unless you make certain decisions you're not going to be able to

follow through and that's what brainwash offers the ability to actually change your decision making ability well let's talk about those decisions because one of the take a waste of your book for me was that we as humans can now really decide how millennial evolution will work on our own bodies we can pick and choose which evolutionary adaptation to empower and which on the contrary to keep in check and i think that takes these old debate of nature versus nurture to a whole new level of the big ation doesn't it. it does and what a wonderful question to ask especially these days when we realize that it's not a dichotomy between nature meaning our genetics and nurture meaning our environment not at all i mean for many years it was either one of the other and we now understand that it is actually a very beautiful dance better kurz between our nature our genes and nurture our

environment that the foods we eat the amount of sleep we get in even our exercise each day actually change the expression of our life code of our d.n.a. that's very very empowering and it also carries with it a lot of responsibility as it relates to our health we now recognize that globally the number one cause of death are what we call chronic degenerative conditions and these are by and large related to the choices that we make every day in terms of our food in terms of our activities as well as our use of technology i have a very big chapter on technology and what's interesting and fascinating about it to me is that technology may be new but it's added in from your book that the ways in the which the tech companies are trying to hijack our brains are essentially the same old tricks that the big food or the big tobacco companies are using and that

is manipulating the brain's reward circuitry making us feel good so that to be come back for more more and more is it fair to say that their business model is ultimately based on flustering addiction. without question without question and the more that happens the more the brain becomes a conduit for that very thing that you are talking about and let me be very clear i am not anti technology at all i mean look you and i are able to have this conversation because of some incredible leaps in technology we wrote the book brainwashed based upon an unlimited resource of knowledge having the internet but we all recognize now that when we spend hours and hours mindlessly on the internet that those are precious hours those are times lost that we could be doing other things that are very constructive and help providing we know that our attention is absolutely gamed by pop ups by click bait you know the average american spends more

than 6 hours a day in front of one type of screen or another whether it's a tablet television or their computer screen that as of 2 about 22 years of screen time in the average life time it's been said that when you're doing one thing you're not doing something else and those something else things are really important exercise reconnecting with people spending time in nature for example you make a very interesting point in your book that on the one hand humans have evolved in gauging physical activity but only as a had we were also selected to avoid unnecessary exertion so being a couch potato also has an evolutionary basis to it it's just a matter of how much you're willing to succumb to it and that leads me to the question to the issue of balance reach essential to all your books how do you decide how do you add dr a dot golden middle. it's a terrific question and that is what it's all about we use the term sweet spot i

kind of reject the turncoats the sweet part but you're right too much or too little of virtually any of our lifestyle choices is not good we want to be in that that what we call the goldilocks zone as a relates to exercise you can overdo it or you can spend your time as you mentioned as a couch potato you can sleep too much which isn't good for you or not get enough sleep for example but what we recognize is that the human body likes to be stressed when it is stress it responds in a positive way to some degree unless it's overstressed we in primitive times didn't have food for days at a time and that turned out to be actually activating of some very important survival mechanisms but you know you mention for example the way that our we are being manipulated to be online and even even food i mean here in america about 68 percent of the food sold in grocery stores had as added sweetener why exactly what

you mention to keep us coming back for more and that sweet flavor hacks into a primitive gene pathway that says that sweet foods are safe and sweet foods have high nutritional content but not all the time again it's finding absolutely finding the balance but now it's all through how these activities increase something that i've mentioned many times in previous books and that is inflammation inflammation is a cause of alzheimer's heart disease diabetes cancer and now we know that inflammation is keeping us from ken neck ting to that part of the brain that we've been talking about the prefrontal cortex that allows us to be forward thinking and empathetic people now this fundamental change you mentioned a moment ago and that you. explore in your book the. change in the application of

the brain's theory of words circuitry of from the promotion of live sustaining activities to disease inducing pleasure seeking do your thing it has the potential of destroying the human race not to be too dramatic here. well in the book we were dramatic there's we don't have the luxury right now as we say of pulling punches so what we've recognized as an example is that inflammation as i just mentioned is keeping us away from that part of the brain that we need to access the prefrontal cortex and inflammation is a consequence of the modern diet this diet that is reading around the globe which is pro inflammatory is changing the wiring and therefore the behavior of people all around the globe and you know we need as we talked about earlier to come together so it is what we call an existential consideration so there is no need to pull the

punch here we can be very direct and it's time that we confront some of these things that are happening while dr perlmutter it's also time for us to take a very short break now but we will be back in just a few moments statement. for . the shredder and get rid of it fantastic team but you're. right in saying they're driven see the purple cast that i have been going up what i want to.

go out on the field in 2020. welcome back to worlds apart with david perlmutter neurologist and call the 3rd of the upcoming book brainwashed dr perlmutter just before the break restarted talking about the connection between what you eat and how you treat others and yourself you know this link between inflammation and lower levels of empathy and that you put it down to the broken communication between the amygdala and the prefrontal cortex with the former taking the better of the latter aren't you concerned that some

people may interpret that as an excuse to be a jerk what about free will even the when the your arteries are on fire with inflammation. i wouldn't say this is an argument against free will i mean i think what we're looking at are the anatomical structures that allow us to make judgment and when we make judgment which is impulsive and suddenly reactive versus reflex reflective then we get into trouble we should me making our actions by and large by thinking about the future consequences what i do today might affect you tomorrow what i do today might affect my health in 10 years so i think it's really one of our wonderful attributes as humans to be able to think about the future instead of acting impulsively somebody says something bad about me i immediately fire off a twitter tweet about that person that's aggressive i mean that's we need to hold

those things in check and make more thought through decisions and consider the feelings of others consider how it will affect the future empathy towards other people and even empathy towards my future self you know empathy is the ability to see things from another person's perspective we call that cognitive empathy and we sure need more of that these days in a few years back before i read your books i was much heavier and i was definitely a very difficult person to be around i think the 1st parts made the how to fasting ecstatic fasting that is but i'm still struggling with this 2nd part because when i'm on day 2 or 3 without food i can literally fill my body policy with adrenalin and courtship you know being a nasty person in that condition is so much easier i wonder if you have any advise on how to tame courses all when the your on the extended fasts. i would say make

sure that you're engaged in meditation meditation directly offsets cortisol and the other thing that is really important and we've got all the science in the world talked about in the book is nature expos or i mean research demonstrates that just getting out into nature can dramatically reduce cortisol very very quickly even if it's a natural environment within a city even if it's a potted plant in your kitchen and even if it's just a photograph of nature that you happen to put in your living room so any connection with the natural world goes a long way to offset that very cortisol that you are referring to now since you mentioned meditation i do personally find the extended fast far more enjoyable when i meditate and meditation is all about switching off certain parts of your brain where's your book is primarily focused on super

charging your cortices what about the importance of turning it off do you think people need to develop that i believe just you know getting inside their own how it's rather than going outside. i think both i think you know it's a bit of a coke with i'm getting inside your head but what we do know with regards to meditation is that immediately it lights up the prefrontal cortex and the more you do it the more that prefrontal cortex is functional even when you're not meditating and the more it is connected to the a make the law allowing the prefrontal cortex to calm down the you make below when it's not connected we call that in the book disconnection syndrome and that's what we're trying to reverse we're trying to reconnect the prefrontal cortex to the rhythm a villa give it the ability to calm things down and really basically bring the adult back into the room. everybody knows that about the harm of junk food but one

of the 1st things meditators realized is that our how they have to be a lot of junk thoughts thoughts greasy smelly sticky leave us feeling bloated feeling sick and with food at least sometimes you can you can understand what you're eating what about the thoughts how do you separate did john from the good stuff when it comes to your mental capacity. well it's been said that neurons that fire together wire together and the more you do something the more you even think about something the more those pathways become indelible so it's all about really guiding your thinking process to things that are more positive for example turning off the negative news that is so pervasive these days i mean the news is all about things that are aggressive and fear inspiring so it's you know those types of negative thoughts that we want to kind of distance

ourselves away from everybody is going to have intrusive thoughts for example when we engage meditation or prayer that's normal but lovingly and kindly we try to push those thoughts away and return to the program whatever the meditation prayer program might be it's totally normal for that to happen but it does get easier and it does get better with time i think one of the very interesting thoughts that i got while reading your book is that while food is information because it influences the expression of our genes information is also can also be processed like food if can a fact our body in both good and bad ways in fact the news organizations are essentially relying on the same model as the big foot companies and the big tech companies that to be discussed earlier they're also appealing to. the parts of the brain that they can essentially hi jack. that's right you know the dalai lama told us that the

brain we develop reflects the life that we lead it means in a very real sense we are moment to moment sculpting both the form and the function of our brains and one of the major goals we had at the beginning of brainwash was to call out exactly what you just said and that is the fact that there is this obvious manipulation of our brains that is taking place by technology by marketing through technology again the pop ups and the now the things that are so attractive online to take us away because our attention is valuable to others just calling it out like we've done and brainwash is a major 1st step later on in the book we talk about then what are the tools that you can utilize to recognize it but also to distance yourself from being so highly influenced day by day now dr perlmutter you precise your book with a quote from the great russian writer leo tolstoy if you want to be happy be and

dandy you go on to say that billions of dollars that being stand on persuading people to pursue and crave things that make them and happy that make them seek to make them addictive is that out ultimately a matter of person now or social responsibility for you. both you know i'm and i am now in the meaning part of life where are the what life is all about is the central question for me and i've realized that. part of the meaning of my life is to make a contribution so it's that interaction of doing what's right for me personally in terms of my health and terms of the structuring of my brain but beyond that and they're not disparate they are connected as i do that i realize the importance of reaching out and having compassion and empathy for everyone around me no matter how different their viewpoints may be and my hope is in some small maybe even

a big way that brainwash will have this type of influence around the world and we can begin to realize that we're much better off if we just listen to each other and come to conclusions based upon having the opportunity to listen to many ideas but there is still an important question of regulation and many proponents of capitalism believe that the free market will eventually soar those things out and yes if we look at the state of public health in the united states in the united kingdom even in russia i mean with 2 thirds of the population being admitted to look we seek with the chronic degenerative diseases now being the leading cause of mortality demarc clearly in the doing what they're supposed to be doing what do you have an opinion on what the the role of the state should be in all of this. well you know the free markets are not interested in your health that's

a given the free markets are interested in the success of whatever they are promoting i believe that the the function of the state if it is truly to look out for its constituents meaning us would be to look at what is being sold is that necessarily in our interests you know here in america for example it's mandatory that you wear your seatbelt and we're having a big issue right now in america because of a thing has become so popular and now there have been 38 people who have died from vaporing so the government is getting all excited about it and people are claiming that the government has to get involved here and i agree with that but you know over 1000 people in america dies every single day from cigarette smoking and there's no there's no action there because of exactly what you said the free

market system 475000 americans die from cigarette smoking each year and it's not like we don't know what's causing it we know the components of tobacco smoke that kill people and yet that's what the free market has given us so it's important that these ideas get brought out to the public attention so people can make decisions well beyond what government is willing to do in terms of intervening and yet speaking about the government i heard you say in one interview dad the u.s. food and drug administration's decision to prioritize carbs in nutritional guidelines may have led to more premature deaths than will build one and world war 2 combined and that's i mean that's astonishing proposition because we are talking about hundreds of millions that's far more than any tally tyron regime has ever killed i wonder if you believe that. legitimate economic activities

here you know good faith economic actors can average be separated from the company is made a conscious decision to prey on our sensibilities do you think those companies that prey on our reward circuitry have to be treated differently than from others. i don't think it's going to happen in the near term but i think it's important for us for us as consumers to recognize 1st and foremost recognize that this is going on once you recognize that this is something happening day in and day out that you are being manipulated then suddenly you can regain control and put a stop to it or give it your best effort i think that reining it in but you know through legislation may not be anything we can hope for immediately and you know my comments as it relates to the number of desperado about by the what happened was in the late 1960 s.

early seventy's we began to castigate or point fingers at dietary fat and then ultimately here in america our government started to make recommendations about limiting dietary fat and what happened then in food manufacturing is that more sugar was that it and this trend carried around the globe we recognize how sugar relates to these chronic degenerate conditions that the world health organization now indicates are the number one cause of death on our planet then you connect those dots between sugar between the dietary shift and these this important cause of death now importantly in brainwash we are calling attention to the fact that this dietary change is threatening how you see the world it's threatening your mood and it is threatening your decision making moving forward that has to be called out and that is our mission can deposit if you know it it's also a very easy to trained out a round of it a little bit of knowledge and

a little bit of dedication and a way dr prelude i thank you very much for the pleasure of talking to you and for all the aspirates q how people to be not serious of that own fate and our own minds well i'm delighted to hear that and i'm very great. well to have the opportunity to spend time with you today is our last season so let me take the opportunity to thank you for being with us this year and the 6 years before that it's been fun best of luck and hope to hear again in 2020.

the world is driven by dream shaped by one person. who dares thinks. we dare to ask.

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playing. very well now continue watching on since last. thousands of american men and women she was just sort of in their country's military and the decision. every song came to a complete. the day that i was raped and. you know told to shut up kill me and i see how it destroyed my life any screamed at me and he made me come in and he grabbed my arm and he write me with his birthing if you take into account that women don't report because of the extreme retaliation and it's probably somewhere near about half a 1000000 women have now been sexually assaulted in the u.s. military is a very very traumatizing thing tat happen but i've never seen trauma like i've seen

women who are veterans who have suffered military sexual trauma reporting rape is more likely to get the victim punished them the offender and almost 10 year career or chose very invested in and i gave a sex offender who was not even put to justice or put on the registry this is simply an issue of our in violence male sexual predators for the large part of target whoever is there to prey upon whether that's a man or one. of the 2 days there are good dentists and bad that is the bad news in the united states deems to be a threat to the looked at it is those worn in syria the cia and the u.s. military were engaged in covert actions really throughout the world. where they were assassinating populist leaders they were backing up right away military windows funding an army of death squads there's no. more because there's always

a small. or a really good. profit. pearson calls donald trump to thank him for information that helped for the new year terrorist plots in st petersburg. u.s. warplanes strikes in syria and iraq killing at least 19 people iraq has condemned the raids is a violation of its serenity. and in the stories the shape the week a passenger plane crash in kazakhstan kills 12 people and leaves dozens injured. u.s. presidential candidate michael bloomberg apologizes to his team used prison labor to promote the election campaign.

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