EPS07 - Navigating Stress with Nutrition & Neuroscience with Dr Delia McCabe
Welcome to the We are Human Leaders Podcast, In today's episode we're diving into a topic that every single human being on earth has experience with - stress. In our wide ranging conversation with Dr Delia McCabe, we explore how to navigate stress using nutrition and neuroscience and the intersection of the two.
Stress is a natural occurrence in everyday life, however its impact can be detrimental to ourselves, and how we lead others. Dr McCabe helps us understand the relationship between our nutrition and its impact on our brain and our ability to manage stress. This session is incredibly insightful and sheds light on the power of nutritional neuroscience and how we can take practical steps in managing our stress just through what we eat.
Delia McCabe (PhD) shifted her research focus from clinical psychology to nutritional neuroscience upon discovering nutrition’s critical role in mental wellbeing while completing her Masters. Delia’s research into the neurological effect of specific nutrients on female stress has been published in several peer-reviewed journals, she is a regular featured expert in the media and her two internationally available books are available in four languages. Using her background in psychology, combined with evidence-based nutritional neuroscience and neurological perspectives, Delia supports behaviour change and stress resiliency within corporates, and for individuals who want to optimize their brain health, via online courses, workshops and tailored events internationally.
We hope this episode has underscored the importance of nutrition to your capacity to Lead yourself and others, and perhaps has inspired some shifts in your own behaviors and habits. If so, let us know what those are! If you’d like to feel connected and supported in your Leadership journey, we invite you to join us at www.wearehumanleaders.com - thanks for being with us for this episode.
If you would like to connect with Dr Delia McCabe's work further, find her two incredible cookbooks with recipes backed by evidence-based nutritional neuroscience and her full suite of programs at her website https://www.lighterbrighteryou.life/
Connect with her via Instagram here https://www.instagram.com/lighterbrighteryou/
Become part of the Human Leaders community and learn live from expert like Dr Delia McCabe every month and much more at www.wearehumanleaders.com
For accessible access, view the podcast with closed captions below and access the full conversation transcript.
Episode Transcript:
Spk0 Alexis. Spk1 Sally Spk2 Delia
Welcome to the We Are Human Leaders podcast. I'm Alexis Zahner and together with my co host Sally Clarke. We're diving into a topic that every single human being on earth has experienced with stress in today's conversation with Dr Delia Mccabe. We explore how to navigate stress using nutrition and neuroscience and the intersection of the two stress is a natural occurrence in everyday life. However its impact can be detrimental to ourselves and how we lead others. Dr Mccabe helps us understand the relationship between our nutrition and its impact on our brain and its ability to manage stress. This session is incredibly insightful and sheds light on the power of nutritional neuroscience and how we can take practical steps in managing our stress just through what we eat. Delia McKay PhD shifted her research focus from clinical psychology to nutritional neuroscience. Upon discovering nutrition's critical role in mental well being. While completing her master's Delia's research into the neurological effects of specific nutrients on female stress has been published in several peer reviewed journals. She is a regular feature of expert in the media and her two internationally available books are published in four languages using her background in psychology combined with evidence based nutritional neuroscience and neurological perspectives. Delia supports behavior change and stress resiliency within corporate and for individuals who want to optimize their brain health via online courses workshops and tailored events internationally. This conversation has both wanting to take frantic notes to get down all of the insights and inspirational ideas for shifting our behavior the Delia shares and a deep appreciation for the science that backs Delia's work. We're sure you'll feel the same. Welcome in. Welcome Delia to the We are Human Leaders podcast that human leaders, we really focus a lot on the story and the journey that leads us through life and brings us to the work that captivates us. And so we'd love to hear from you a little bit about your life story, the journey that you've been on that's brought you to the work that you're doing now. Thank you sally and thank you Alexis and sally for inviting me to be here. It's really an honor to support you in the wonderful work that you do. And I love the fact that you look at how a person got to where they are because that really does shape us the experiences that we have. And for me it was at that point when it happened it seemed really simple and it seemed like a self evident decision that I had to make. But when I look back, I realized that I was really stepping off the well trodden path and it happened like this. I was working with a group of really smart schoolchildren who were doing poorly at school, that's the control group, the experimental group were doing really well and I was looking at what the psychological variables were that underpinned either achievement or underachievement. And I was examining all sorts of things with these Children. I was looking at their relationships with their parents and I was looking at the relationship with teachers and I was looking at the study skills that they had or didn't have. And you know, the level of commitment that they had to, the education. I was looking at all these different things and developing questionnaires. And then as fate would have it on one of the questionnaires I developed, I had a little bit of extra space and my husband had recently invested in a health food store. And so I was really curious about nutrition and food and had been for most of my life because of my mother's influence. And I just thought, let me ask them a question, what is your favorite food? And every single one of the Children in my experimental group, um the Children who were doing poorly but could have excelled every single one of them said that they loved junk food, whereas my control group who were doing really well at school, didn't they liked sunday roast and roast veggies. And I was really, really very surprised at this response because very seldom in research, do you have a very clear distinction between two groups? And at that point in time I wrote up my thesis, I think I mentioned something about this, but I couldn't go into detail because it wasn't part of my protocol or part of my, my questions, you know, that the psychological variables with my focus and I was very pregnant. Another part that destiny played. And I thought I was just gonna sit back a little bit and see if there was anything to this does what we eat really impact our brain function. And you know, that was the point where I already diverged and I went down a different path because all of my colleagues wanted to be talking to therapists and what I wanted to do. I wanted to obviously help my clients to feel better, but I wanted to find out whether their brain was well nourished because it has already dawned on me that to make change and to get our brains to really function optimally. They needed the right nutrients and I couldn't in integrity, really sit there and ask them about their relationships when I wanted to say to them, hold on a second, what did you have for breakfast? And so that was really what happened to me 25 years ago and I stepped away from it and I know that I had colleagues saying to me, what are you doing? Nobody talks about that, you know, look at all the psychological theories that we have to learn, and I was like, hold on a second, it's deeper than that I wanted to get to first principles. So that's basically how it started. And then I started looking at the stressed brain and specifically the stressed female brain and that has led me to the work I do today to make the brain stress resilient because stress is going nowhere, or should I say negative stress is going nowhere and we need to make our brains really capable of coping in a very, very complex sophisticated world now. So Delia you were working in psychology at the time as a therapist or something like that, but in schools is that right? I was busy doing my Master's in clinical psychology and I was busy running a little business where I was looking at aptitude, interest, intellect and different variables that lead people to make good decisions about the career that they would pursue. That was a little business that I had. So I drew on those Children when I when I put my master's together to look at underachievement because I kept on seeing this among these Children, you know, these really, really smart kids in terms of their intellect and capacity, but their school marks looking really, really bad and I wanted to see what was what actually was the mechanism underlying this, and so obviously there were psychological variables that were part of that, but the nutrition was a huge red flag for me. And so when I saw that I said hold on a second, I will step away from the conventional talking therapist and isn't that interesting that it's it sounds like it's sort of a shift in in your view to sort of zoom out rather than simply focusing on that sort of psychological aspects to actually zoom out a little bit and see the human being as a little reluctant to use the word, but holistic sort of more holistic view on um the the interplay between what we consume and how our brains function and and it's interesting and almost, you know, it sort of seems weird to me that there would be any pushback from from your colleagues, but I'm curious, I'm curious about your experiences there was that a challenge that you sort of had to overcome to sort of strike that path? It was interesting sally I've always been the kind of person that will step out and do what I think he's right and pursue something that I'm curious about. So it didn't really bother me, no, because I thought to myself and I probably was young enough and arrogant enough to think to myself, well you just haven't seen this part of the picture yet, and in a sense, I was right because I started looking at researchers, you had touched on the subject and I had to track them down all over the world because this wasn't a conversation that was really robust at that point in time for me, I really had to find these people and find obscure journal articles and find a paragraph or a sentence in a book that alluded to the fact that, you know, nutrition and the brain were actually linked, so I didn't really mind if I look back at it now, I think it was probably quite arrogant, but I really felt very, very strongly and probably because I had worked with these kids over a period of months and I was seeing their low mood, you know, their inability to focus and concentrate the fact that their parents were complaining about them being moody and not sleeping well, and the fact that some of them were putting on weight, so all of these things lead to me, led me to believe that there was something else at play here, something that no one else was actually going to take the time to look at it, and someone had to, and so my curiosity was really peaked. Well, I'm glad it was Delia, because it's brought us here and to, you know, the incredible work that you've been doing, and I want to talk about something that, you know, every leader, everyone who's employed or every human being on earth right now is really um you know, has experienced in their life and probably at various stages in the last few years, I'm sure has experienced quite a lot of and that is still, and I'd love if you could help us to get a better picture and understand the nature of stress and perhaps some of the common causes of stress that we do encounter regularly in particular in leadership and in workplaces as well. This is a great question Alexis and something that we really do need to get a handle on, because stress is a beautiful process that happens in the body when we are under pressure and when we feel like our life could be at risk. So let's just think about this for a moment. You know, we speak about walking through the forest and it's a beautiful day and we are completely calm and relaxed in that piece and suddenly we hear a rustle in the bushes. Now it's very important to keep in mind that emotion travels faster than thought, and this is to ensure that we don't stop and think about whether there could be a tiger, it's to ensure that we start running before we before we can think to get away from that threat, because if it's not a tiger, nothing will happen. But if it is a tie game, we make a mistake and say, well maybe it's not, you know, we wouldn't be here because our genes wouldn't have wouldn't have brought us here. The challenge is that that stress response, which is to get us away from that tiger as fast as possible, is only meant to last for between 30 to 60 seconds because that stress response, we either didn't need it after that period of time because we either escape the tiger or we become it's lunch. So it wasn't necessary for this process. This hypothalamus pituitary adrenal access process to continue for longer than 30 to 60 seconds. So that's the first part of this whole equation. The second part is that we now live in a world where there are tigers anymore and we now run away metaphorically from psychological threats. And let's just take Covid as an example, it's the perfect example. It descended, there was confusion, there were rules that were changing. Nobody knew what to do. Nobody knew what the threat review was. Nobody knew what was going to happen Down the line. So this was a threat response that lasted for a lot longer than 30-60 seconds. And in the world actually it's still in existence out there in the back of our minds. What's happening? Is it going to die down and so on and so forth? So that stress response now doesn't just include the hypothalamus, the pituitary and adrenal glands to get us away from the tiger. It also includes the prefrontal cortex because now the prefrontal cortex and the hippocampus, which is our memory ceo are involved in this and they are going, okay, well, how does it look like this is going to play out? What are the consequences of covid? How long do you think it's going to last? And the memory that we have of maybe similar situations are so different to this pandemic that we have nothing to refer back to, no frame of reference. So it's as if there's an ongoing neural loop that keeps on going backwards and forwards. And I wrote an article about this on my blog about why Covid stress is worse than ordinary stress and it's because of this uncertainty, there's nothing to fall back and say, look, this is what happened in 1922 or whatever. People often refer to the spanish flu as being similar to Covid, but it wasn't really so we don't really have anything to refer back back to. So that running away from the tiger was a very healthy response. It got us away from the tiger, we could relax, we could calm down, our breathing, calm down. Our parasympathetic nervous system stepped in again and we were fine. Some stress like Covid isn't like that. Now the challenge with leaders just leaving Covid out of the conversation for a moment, leaders are constantly exposed to situations where they don't have any control, where they're trying to wrestle control where they've got to try and be agile and flexible and think of new creative solutions to challenges and just be creative and innovative in a complex competitive market that requires different skills from the brain. But the brain will still get stressed if it feels overwhelmed and it feels like it feels like it can't cope, but it's a different kind of stress. It's not the stress of running away from a tiger, it can be seen as more of a proactive stress and then once again the hippocampus gets involved and the prefrontal cortex, which is basically our creativity center and the two of those parts of the brain interact. The problem is if a leader feels really overwhelmed and feels like they can't cope and feels like they don't have enough time and they don't have the resources that they need. Then what happens that hypothalamus, pituitary, adrenal access will kick in and then that will take over. So it's as if the amygdala which is the threat response or the lighthouse fear and threat response stands up and says, look this is more important because this psychological threat is perceived as a physical threat and then the brain can't get involved in this higher order thinking which is what creativity and innovation and flexibility is all about. So that's where leaders have to be really careful and have to watch out for the stress that can become overwhelming when they find themselves in a situation where the body and the brain feels like it's a physical threat but it actually isn't, that's it sounds like a complex explanation, but you get what I'm saying, there is a subtle difference and an important difference between feeling as if you can't cope and that you're not not capable of coping and that you don't have the resources you need and a situation where you actually feel slightly stressed because there's a little bit of tension and you can still think creatively. There is a difference between those two states of mind. Yeah. And so what I'm really hearing here Delia is that some of those, you know, really high, those moments of high stress can actually feel like quite a life threatening thing in the body, like our bodies treating that in the same way we would if a tiger was to jump out, that's what you're saying. Absolutely. Because you see the body and brain can't separate that that was an ancient response that was set into place for our physical survival. But now we don't live in the same environment, but our brain hasn't changed, Our brain still responds in the same way. So we have to be very alert to that. And one of the most important things to do if we are in a situation like that where we feel that stress response is to actually move our body physically, because you see that's what adrenaline is trying to get you to do. Adrenaline is getting glucose pumped into your muscles so that you can run away or fight the tiger. So when you don't move and you sit at your desk and you carry on being overwhelmed and thinking, oh my goodness, I can't cope. You're actually not using that adrenaline and then it starts messing with your body's metabolism. So it's best to get up and go for a walk, go and do some, you know, some good yoga lunges or do something that uses up that adrenaline even have a conversation with with somebody that you trust and that you can rely on for perspective, but move while you're doing that because in that sense, you're using that adrenaline which otherwise would just be sitting and you know, stopping your body from functioning optimally. So that's the one part of the this handling the stress response. I love that point Delia and it really aligns with a lot of the work that I've done around burnout. I think the chronic state of stress that we get to in burnout and so often I think our instinct is when we're really stressed and we've got a lot of work going on is to simply sit at the computer and keep cranking it out and it seems almost counterintuitive to then go for a walk or put on some music and have a dance or give someone a call and talk about something completely different. So and I think particularly when we're you know focus in stress becomes more narrow and so we don't have that perspective perhaps to be able to say, oh no I really do need to go for a walk, get out and do something. We just think I need to meet this deadline. Um that's a waste of time and we've become very focused and almost exacerbate the issue at hand. Is that am I saying that correctly? Absolutely. You see if you just think about the physiology of it once again what actually happens to our eyes, our eyes actually focus our vision actually shifts to make our vision much more focused on the one thing. So we have a physiological response to this stress because we need to focus on this tiger and focus on our getaway and that's exactly the opposite of what we need to do in a modern environment. We need to open our perspective go for that walk. So it's a physiological response that we have to become conscious of so that we can act in a counter intuitive way to be able to dampen that stress response. Because this is something else that very few people know is that the parasympathetic nervous system and the sympathetic nervous system are supposed to work together. Okay, the PNS is the rest and digest part of our nervous system and the SNS is the chronic stress nervous system, the run from the tiger nervous system. What most people aren't aware of is that the PNS is supposed to be on a lot more than the sns. The sns is only supposed to get switched on when the tiger appears. The PNS is supposed to be on most of the time. But what happens now, this is the case. The sNS is on all the time and the PNS is very seldom switched on. And that's why the words burnout are perfectly applicable because what actually happens, the PNS burns out which, you know sally from your work. So when people start beginning to understand this, they go, oh I actually have to work on my physiology to make sure that I'm switching the PNS unconsciously because naturally the sNS wants to be on all the time in this world that we've all created and you know, it's fascinating. I've looked at some of the examples that are in nature around moving your body and you know, I'm sure that whoever's had a dog here listening has seen that when a dog comes into contact with another dog, all the little hairs on their back spike up and they're ready to attack or they're ready to flee or whatever they need to do. And if you've ever paid attention to when that threat is removed, what that dog will do is do this big shake out of all of its body and it's almost like it releases all the energy out of its body again and it's wagging its tail and moving around like normal um and that's almost as human beings, what we forget to do, we we get that activated nervous system and we stay in that sympathetic nervous system because quite simply we forget to go and give ourselves a good shake out and bring the nervous system back down to rest and digest 100%. And I think we can learn a lot from the mammals that's around us who actually know how to work with their physiology because this very, very pesky prefrontal cortex that is so highly developed and attuned, we think we can override our physiology, but we actually can't and it really doesn't pay us in the long term to try to do that. And you mentioned the term earlier Delia that I'm really curious about, You mentioned proactive stress and I'm wondering sort of in the context of leadership, whether there are times when we can actually, when stress does have a positive impact on our capacity to lead into focus and really curious about that term proactive stress and what that might mean for leaders. Well, it's just a term that I use every now and again to explain to people that it allows us this kind of positive stress allows us to actually be proactive and think about the future and say, okay, let's do this or that that doesn't happen because often people get stressed because they think about what risk is going to, you know, lead to if we do this, what happens if that bad thing happens. But if you use stress properly, then you become proactive in a creative way. And this is where we need to take into account that, you know, without any stress, we wouldn't get up in the morning, we just lie in bed, we need that stress to get us up and to get us going. And a little bit of stress is good, but it's a bit like Goldilocks, you know, and the bowls of porridge, we need to make sure that it's the right kind. We don't need too much and we don't need too little, we need the right kind and that's where proactive stress comes in. So we need to have that, we need to understand that if we don't do something, something bad can happen. And as a leader that we mean failure, a lack of being able to deliver whatever that metric is. So that that can be a stress that leads us to think ahead and that's where the prefrontal cortex comes in are consequential thinking, which is where the proactive comes in. Okay, we don't want that bad thing to happen. What can we do to prevent that? And then the team works together to say, okay, these are all the variables that are possible. How can we navigate our way through this to make sure that the end result is the one that we want and that's where proactive stress comes in. That's what I mean by that is basically using our prefrontal cortex in a situation that we could devolve into becoming stress junkies. But no we don't. We actually step up and say, okay, this is what could happen, let's let's tackle it and change that. So that's what I meant by that sally Yeah, I love that and I think that's the word that stands out for me is the preventative because I think that's a really key part of leadership and certainly human leadership is being able to function from a place where we're not just reacting to trigger points around us reacting to the situations that we're in but we're actually capable of taking that, that proactive approach to things and preventing situations from occurring and really shifting that that model of leadership. So I really love that term. Thank you for sharing that. It's a pleasure and that is a perfect segway into speaking about brain function in relation to nutrition. Because one of the things that we know about the brain firstly, that is the greediest organ that we own, at only 2% of our body weight. It actually uses upwards of 50% of the carbohydrates that we consume when we stressed and 25% if we're not and those figures obviously vary, but we know that without stable and consistent energy in the brain, we have blood glucose dips and then adrenaline goes up and adrenaline goes up to force us to go and find food. So the brain wants this stable blood glucose because the more stable the blood glucose is, the better the brain functions because it doesn't have to worry about where energy is coming from. It doesn't have to push out adrenaline. The challenge with the brain is that there's no place to store energy. So we have to rely on a consistent, stable supply of energy through the food that we eat. And when people become stressed, a few things happen when they become chronically stressed, their taste buds change and this is this is something weird because what actually happens is they gravitate naturally to highly processed foods because those foods actually stimulate a response in the body which releases endogenous opioids. Now we all know what opioids do. Opioids calm us down and the body has the capacity to make opioids. But these foods stimulate that response. So it becomes a habit to eat those kinds of foods, even if we don't know about this mechanism, because we feel calm after eating those kinds of foods and we learn that that becomes a habitual response so we feel calm and relaxed and we feel better for a little bit of time and then of course our blood glucose dips and then we go again and look for something to get our blood glucose up. So this is part of the challenge with being chronically stressed. It actually shifts the way you eat and what you eat for you no longer eating for nourishment you're eating so that the foods that you eat are dampening the stress response and that is a problem because we don't want this to happen. Because not only do those foods drive unstable blood glucose, which is the last thing the brain wants. They also devoid of the nutrients that the brain needs. And the brain doesn't just need those nutrients on an ongoing basis for normal functioning, the brain needs more of those nutrients when we stressed because something else that a lot of people aren't aware of as well is that adrenaline and cortisol are made from nutrients they don't just appear out of the ether in the body. Adrenaline has specific nutrients that are required to be able to produce it. And many of those nutrients are the same nutrients that are required to make things like serotonin and dopamine. So when you think about what's more important to get away from the tiger or to have a little nap, no, the body and brain will always prioritize survival. So adrenaline synthesis is prioritized over serotonin synthesis. So when people are chronically stressed, not only do they tend to eat poorly, they're not getting enough nutrients and they need extra nutrients because of this ongoing cortisol and adrenaline synthesis. So that's why people when they've been chronically stressed will feel themselves really exhausted, they just feel tired and it's not just a neural exhaustion, it's also a physical exhaustion because many of those same nutrients are used to actually make energy within our mitochondria. So that's the one thing that happens. The second thing that happens is that they battle to sleep well, because why the same nutrients are required to make serotonin, which is the precursor to melatonin, which helps us go to sleep. So that's something else that happens, our sleep gets impacted. And the third thing that gets impacted quite a few, but three and four, let's say, um is mood. So people will find themselves much more irritable, They'll be frustrated, they won't be able to keep their their mood stable because they don't have enough of the right nutrients to make the neurotransmitters that are required to keep mood stable. And then there are also changes that happen within the limbic system in the, in the presence of chronic stress. But the other thing that happens number four is that our capacity to focus and concentrate is significantly diminished and not just because we don't have enough nutrients to make the neurotransmitters required for that focus and concentration, but also because when we really chronically stressed, we cannot think of anything besides getting away from that stress, getting away from the tiger. So the limbic system is completely focused on survival. Whereas we're saying to the brain hey, where's that creative thought? Hey, we need to be on our a game here, we've got a whole lot of things that we need to present do execute the brain is going to forget about me. I'm not interested in that, I'm interested in survival and you're not giving me enough nutrients either. So guess what we're in for a perfect storm. So that all of these things that are happening under the surface which most people are not aware of because of a lack of nutrients and also the gravitation to process food. So it always sounds yeah and it almost sounds like a chicken and egg game deal because what I'm hearing is I'm really stressed and because I'm really stressed, I'm going to go to my fridge and eat the chocolate bar and maybe grab out a can of soda to give myself a quick hit of sugar so that I can go back to my computer, have that energy to keep being stressed and as a result of that I almost felt like I was hearing you suggest that there is a mental load incurred through thinking about being stressed, like the thought that I need to go and do something that's creative, I need to go and do something that's innovative. My prefrontal cortex is telling me that, but my limbic system is telling me no, sorry mate, you're too stressed for that. So we're just going to keep you being stressed, which I imagine then creates more of a mental load about not being able to do the things you know you need to do because you're too stressed to do them. And so this whole cycle keeps continuing, it does. And the problem is that you actually need somebody to hold your hand and say to you, hold on a second, what are the priorities? What I'm, what I like to do with people, I firstly say what are your values? Because if we can get back to values, we know what to prioritize, you know, if I could have a dollar for everybody that says to me, I really want to be healthy, but they're doing the exact opposite, it's quite amazing. So once we work out what values are what can we put in place to make sure that you are living up to that value and if it is great food and looking after yourself and now you know about brain nutrition, then guess what? Then you need to sort out your pantry in your fridge so that when you open the fridge you can find something delicious that you need in that moment where you feel, oh my goodness, I'm so overwhelmed that I need something yummy, but not something that's going to undermine your mental health so we can set ourselves up in an environment that actually supports our brain health. And over time, guess what happens, you start supplying the right nutrients, the brain starts responding, you start thinking more clearly, you can look at the situation and say you know what, I don't need to pay attention to that at the moment because it's not a priority. But this is you just become clearer in your thinking because you know when I speak about brand nutrition, I break it down into three basic areas and this is really making it very simple. The first thing is how do neurons connect if we look at what neurons need to function optimally, we go back to what those nutrients are, that's number one, Number two, how does the brain actually use energy? How does it make energy and use energy? If we figure number two out, we know that we can supply that energy in a stable way. Okay, third option is 3rd, 3rd part of this process is how do we keep those neurons healthy? Because if we've got the neurons connecting beautifully and we've got enough energy for them to work really efficiently, then we need to keep them healthy to keep on doing that. Once we get those three things in place, guess what happens, it becomes a really positive virtuous positive cycle, because then everything that you do every single meal that you eat, every single snack that you consume is all taking into account those three things connection, energy and health of the neurons, then it doesn't become an issue anymore, and I think that's a very important thing for for leaders to realize, because once they've got that in place, their thinking becomes something that they can rely on, they don't have to reach for that coffee to give themselves that adrenaline hit, which is actually what coffee is when I do in person presentations, and this is a long time ago, I bring up a slide and I think Alexis, you've seen that coffee slide, haven't you? And I say to people, this is how coffee works, and normally when I say to them I say okay who wants to know how coffee works, and you know, 50% of the audiences don't tell us we want to drink our coffee, we don't care, and the other 50% are like oh maybe we should know, tell us, and I just said, look, knowledge is power, so I just tell them, and when they see how coffee actually works, they realize that all they're getting is an adrenaline hit from consuming coffee. And what does adrenaline do? Adrenaline does make your brain sharper? Why? To look for an escape from the tiger? It's not making your prefrontal cortex beamer creative, it's just making your brain beyond high alert. So we need to avoid that as the default position for people when they feel like their brain is running on empty, they need to find other things to do which they are to make sure the brain stays really optimally functioning. And then one more thing to add, I feel like I'm doing a lot of talking. I love it, but it's a big conversation. The other thing is that the prefrontal cortex is the greediest part of the brain. So you've got the whole brain that's greedy. But the prefrontal cortex is the greediest part. Why? Because it doesn't have automatic workarounds. The rest of the brain has these automatic workarounds that have developed over eons, but the prefrontal cortex doesn't, it's continuously looking back to other parts of the brain to say, oh okay, how does this work? In relation to that? What about that thing that happened in the past? Didn't somebody say something about that is continuously referring back. So it's very, very greedy from a nutritional perspective, an energy perspective, but it also runs out of energy faster than the rest of the brain does because it doesn't have automatic workarounds. So people need to use their prefrontal cortex early in the day if possible. Some people find it works better in the evening or late afternoon, but most people find it works really well when we well rested and then to make sure you're also supplying enough of the right nutrients because then you can harness the capacity of the prefrontal cortex, which is magnificent and it's taken us to the moon if you think about what the prefrontal cortex is capable of, if we know how to look after it and something, just a very distinct connection that I want to make for people listening here, Delia, is that what I'm hearing is that the food that we eat isn't about just say satiating our hunger, the food that we eat, in fact is feeding our brain what it needs to function. So what we're choosing to eat is very, very critical to the health of our brain. And just quickly before we do move into some of what those foods are. Delia, can you just take a moment to explain to everyone listening what exactly the prefrontal cortex does what that sort of rational part of our brain? Because I think that, you know, that's terminology that might not be familiar with everyone. Can we just take a minute to dive a little bit into what exactly the prefrontal cortex is and why that's important to us and our stress function with pleasure Alexis, it is important to understand with the prefrontal cortex is and very simply it's basically the ceo of the brain, it's the part of the brain that allows us to look at the situation and say what could be the outcome here? If I do X. It's the part of the brain that allows us to analyze information so we can take in a whole lot of information, look at that information and find patterns, detect differences, figure out what could have had happened to cause this. It's the part of the brain that allows us to think very deeply about concepts and to come up with new ideas. So it's also the creative part of the brain that allows the brain to look at the situation and say, hold on a second, if we do X. Could this happen? Would that be positive? Would it be negative? So it's a higher order insightful part of the brain that also allows us to keep our emotions in check. So let's just take alcohol as an example and this will be pretty clear to anyone listening, is that when people become really inebriated, they will say a lot of things and do a lot of things that they wouldn't do when they were sober why? Because the prefrontal cortex actually gets switched off and it's the inhibitory part of the brain so they wouldn't be standing on a table dancing around and taking their top off if they were fully functioning in their prefrontal cortex was working really well because it would say, hold on a second, that's not, this is not the right place to do that, but when they're not sober, then that's what they end up. So the prefrontal cortex is what we think of as the most human part of us that really makes us human allows us to look at situations, carefully, make good judgments, think critically, think consequentially, think in abstract terms, be capable of inhibiting thoughts, words, behaviors because we understand when they're relevant or not and also allow us to be created. So it's an extremely, extremely powerful part of the brain and we want to be able to harness it because that's when we can thrive and certainly as leaders, I think Delia, it's such a critical part for us to be able to lead um sort of in the human leaders perspective as well, we lead ourselves well and to be able to lead others so anything we can do to really optimize its function as leaders is obviously going to really support us. Um I wanted to sort of shift also to talking maybe about some specific examples of ways that we can sort of tangible ways that we can start to nourish ourselves and increase that level of nourishment that we're providing our brains and I have to say I'm Um I went through eating disorders in my 20's and I've become quite allergic to the idea of hard and fast rules and all the different kind of diets that we see. Um so I'm a little allergic to rules. However, I do know that I think through becoming a yoga teacher and learning more about my body and it's functioning, I've very happily come to quite, I think quite a healthy and nutritious diet, sort of of my own volition. I'm curious. And there's almost a two part question. What what do you tend to sort of recommend to people, sort of generally as in terms of foods that might be nutritious, or a way of approaching nutrition that might support people, and how do you encourage people to find that intrinsic motivation that they might need to change what they're eating and how they're nourishing their bodies in a particular way? Great question sally, But long answers. Bring it on, we love it. Let's first think about the first part of this equation. First part of the question, when we think about what the brain needs. The first thing to know is that 60% of the drive weight of the brain is made up of fat. Now, people may say, why does that matter? Well, it matters because 20% of that, 60 needs to be made up of a very specific kind of fat because that fat allows the neurons to connect optimally and allows the neuronal membrane to be very flexible and very agile if that fat is not present, both this speed of communication and the capacity for neurons to be synthesized and to jump across the synapse to the other neuron is impacted, 95% of people are deficient in those specific facts for a whole lot of reasons. And I already told Alexis my lecture on fats and oils is a three hour lecture. So we don't have three hours here. But the bottom line is that without those, the right fats, that's 20 to 25% of that, 60% need to be made up of these specific facts that allows the brain to function optimally. So that's the first thing in terms of nutrition, most people are deficient in those fats and those are both Omega three and Omega six fats, the media and many people got the wrong end of the biochemistry story when they said that Omega sixes are bad for the brain. In fact, without Omega sixes, we can't lay down memory. So omega sixes are critically important for the brain. But the kind And the ratio in relation to Omega three are really important to know. So that's the first thing. The right fats are critically important for brain function. It goes without saying that those fats are also involved in a myriad of functions within the body. Endocrine system metabolism. Anything that you can think about in the body, including our skin, is impacted by those fats as well, but we're just speaking about this in relation to the brain. So fats are critically important. Second thing carbohydrates, the brain's preferred source of fuel is carbohydrates. The brain can run on fat, but it only does that under certain circumstances. And that again is another long conversation. But the kinds of carbohydrates the brain wants on nutrient dense fiber filled carbohydrates. So that's anything from broccoli to cauliflower, to pumpkin to brussels, sprouts too. Kale leaves. Those are complex and nutrient dense, fiber filled carbohydrates. The gut breaks them down and allows that glucose which is released from those carbohydrates to find their way into the bloodstream and keep blood glucose stable. So when that blood glucose finds its way to the brain, it is also stable. Obviously processed foods do exactly the opposite of that. So those are the kinds of foods we want to avoid. So this is complex carbs, nutrient dense. The third thing is protein. We need protein as well, but we find a lot of protein in plant produce as well. It's not just found in animal, in animal produce, it's more concentrated in animal produce, but it doesn't mean that you can't eat lots of plants and also get protein. And I belong to the group of researchers that know that the mediterranean diet is the most well researched diet and that's the diet that has shown the most benefits for mental health. Okay, so that's those three things and then of course we have antioxidants. Now, if you're eating a lot of nutrient dense fiber full carbohydrates, you'll also be getting a lot of antioxidants and why do we need antioxidants? Because the brain is as busy as it is and it produces a vast quantity of free radicals that can lead to brain inflammation. And we want to counter the free radicals with lots of antioxidants. And that simply means very colorful food. And the first thing that jumps to people's minds are things like blueberries, you know, things like raspberries, things like butternut carrots, brightly colored produce provides a lot of those antioxidants. Now, if we look at all of those kinds of foods, we can see that those who are very close to nature, those foods supply us with the kinds of nutrients we need, both the macronutrients. That's the fact the carbs and the protein and the micro nutrients and those are things like magnesium and zinc and potassium and phosphorus and selenium, all of those that are also required for the brain to function optimally and for the brain to make energy and for the rest of the body. So once we eat that kind of a diet which doesn't have to have lots of rules attached to it, it really doesn't, it just needs to be as close to nature as possible, then we're giving our body and our brain the nutrients that it needs interestingly though talking about eating disorders. One of the things that a lot of people aren't aware of is that eating disorders have both a psychological and a physiological component and the physiological component that most people aren't aware of is that what drives the person to start limiting certain foods happens because of psychological variables. And many of the foods that they start limiting our foods that are deficient in essential fats and zinc. Now zinc is an extremely important nutrient because it's involved in over 300 different enzyme reactions in the body, it's also involved in adrenaline synthesis, serotonin synthesis and so on. However, it's also involved in our taste buds. So when people become deficient in zinc food no longer tastes good and so they have to either eat highly processed foods or they lose their appetite and can easily turn their back on food because they no longer feel hungry. And it's also related to the fact that it's that that zinc is involved in serotonin synthesis and serotonin is involved in appetite regulation. So there are many reasons why people start limiting their foods and that's the psychology discussion. But the physiology discussion and the brain discussion relates to zinc and its impact on the neurotransmitter synthesis and on our taste mints. But to just add one more thing to this complex where that I'm trying to answer this question before I get to the next one, Next, next answer. The other thing that's really important to note is that when people eat this way it becomes less and less challenging to eat this way, because guess what? The brain is getting all the nutrients that it needs and so it starts functioning really well. But the other thing is that food tastes better and why does it taste better? Because fat molecules allow flavor to disperse really well in the mouth versus food that doesn't contain fat. And that's the reason the low fat diet, you know, craze died a terrible death. It should have died a long, long time before it died because the food manufacturers weren't adding fat, but they had to add a lot of other additives to that plastic cardboard food to make it taste good. Whereas when we eat really healthy food and we add the right fats, those flavor molecules dispersed beautifully in our mouth and allow us to enjoy the flavor of the food. So that allows me to actually answer the next part of the question sally because the question was, you know, how do we make ourselves do this? How do we incorporate this into our lives? We do that by eating that way because it actually becomes pleasurable. It's not punishment, were not depriving ourselves. It just becomes a way of eating. And when I feed people in my home, they're always amazed because I have no msg I never use any stock. I never use anything artificial, but I use food in such a way and fats in such a way that the food tastes really good. And it's simply because I understand the biochemistry on this delia, essentially. What I've heard, you summarize then in terms of what we should be eating and what we should really be trying to avoid is I noticed none of the foods that you mentioned, you know, came out of the packaging or would have been highly processed in any way. So that also means because I know, you know, there is as you mentioned, that low fat trend, but I know you can go to the supermarket now and there's sugar free, blah blah, fancy package things that look like they could be quite healthy for you because I think there's a whole industry around um pre packaged health foods. But effectively what I've heard you say is that the closer to the real deal, the closer to the fruit or the vegetable or the piece of protein in its original format is the best way for us to get and extract everything from it. Is that right? 100% Alexis that food needs to be as close to nature as possible, because our body and brain respond to what nature provides for us everything else our body has to work really hard to try and drag nutrition out of. And if people just remember that the people that are making the money are the people that are manufacturing that food, they're taking decent food, they turning it up, they're taking stuff out there, adding stuff in and then they're selling it to you and all it does is undermine our health because ourselves didn't evolve to eat that rubbish. So that's exactly it. Go to your farmers market, find your local farmers market, go there trying to get organic as often as possible because pesticides accumulated fat and because the brain is so fat, dense pesticides are a challenge in the brain. And we know from robust research that most farmers that use pesticides are much more at risk for developing Parkinson's. So these are things that we have to keep in mind when we think about as close to nature as possible. That means no pesticides, you know, just try and get away from that because the brain is the most magnificent organ. It's also the most sensitive organ. So that sophistication and the capacity to change its shape comes with a price and the price is sensitivity. So you don't get one without the other, there's no free lunch, You don't get this magnificent orbit and get to abuse it because if you do that, it's going to turn around and not be able to deliver what you needed to deliver. And, you know, we live in a complex society. We honestly do and it's not going to get less complex. So to be able to harness the best out of this magnificent orbit, We really need to treasure it and we need to nurture it and get it back to basics. I've heard you say, you know, like it sounds to me like food doesn't need to be a very complex thing, if we're just looking for food, you know, in its original nature's package, you know, a blueberry as a blueberry, not as a blueberry muffin or a blueberry fruit bar, um that's just going to work wonders for us. Absolutely, But I think the thing also to keep in mind is that there are select foods that you can find and make that kind of mimic processed food. I mean I make a really delicious muffin and I put chocolate chips into it, but make sure that they're 70% dark chocolate rapido, sugar, fantastic organic chocolate chips, and then I'll throw blueberries in as well. So I do that and it's delicious and it's nothing about deprivation, it's just about knowing what those tweaks are and nudging ourselves in the direction of enjoying that food a whole lot more than the refined food, because eventually what happened, your taste change and then you eat something that's highly processed and really sweet and you go, oh, that doesn't taste good anymore, because you actually started wiring new neurons together, but now prefer a different taste and of course your taste buds are working really well because you're getting lots of zinc. I love that. You mentioned that word also just it's not about deprivation, because I think that's also and there's also a psychological aspect to that, that when we start to deprive ourselves of things that that actually can have a trigger is to be more interested in them or make them more alluring in some way. So really avoiding the sense of deprivation and really seeing it as this beautiful nourishment of this incredible organ and body that we have. I really love that perspective on it. Yeah, I think deprivation is differently, a terrible thing. Most people never stick to anything if they feel deprived. Yeah, absolutely. It becomes a question of willingness at that point, doesn't it? And Delia, I'd love to get into helping people to understand because I think we're often we don't always understand the link between stress and some of the other physiological ways that they can make us feel. Um and so I'd love to know what are some of the symptoms that we should tune into that might indicate to us that we are experiencing perhaps too much, too much stress or, you know, too much ongoing stress. What are some of the things that we might be able to tune into in our bodies with that One of the things, and I think I mentioned it earlier was sleep gets impacted when we're really stressed. And I think most people know this that when you feel chronically stressed and overwhelmed and time poor and there are too many constraints on you, you would wake up between one maybe at 34 in the morning and maybe wake up in your heart's racing and that's just because cortisol starts rising before it should which should happen closer to dawn and then you lie there with your heart racing. And one of the things that this happens is because there's not enough nutrients to make serotonin and melatonin. And also that ongoing stress response is making sure that your blood glucose is up and down up and down up and down. So that effect sleep. We need stable blood glucose during sleep because the brain is actually busy doing a lot of things when we're sleeping, we're not aware of it. But the brain is busy cleaning itself. It's busy realigning itself. We think it's getting involved with long term memory consolidation. So there's a number of things it's doing. It's not as if it doesn't now need nutrition. It's just that everything slows down from a physical perspective which allows the mental activities that need to happen during deep sleep happen. So that's the one thing asleep. But the other thing that happens is that people can't concentrate and why they can't concentrate because the brain is thinking there's a tiger, I need to get away from the tiger. And so focus on concentration happens because we inhibit other thoughts and that happens via prefrontal cortex activity. So you can't inhibit those intruding thought, You can't focus and concentrate because your stress level is really high. So whenever people say to me, you know, I can't concentrate. I'm reading a book. I'm reading an article and I read one sentence and I don't know what I've read and I said to them, okay let's talk about your stress levels. And then they go, I don't think I'm really stressed. And then we just take off a few other boxes and other things are like grinding your teeth. And that's what happens when people are stressed in their sleep. They'll be grinding their teeth and then they'll wake up with a really bad headache and normally it's kind of like a muscular headache and they can feel it and it just feels really bad. But that's because while they're sleeping, their bodies still pumping adrenaline and cortisol. So those are a few of the ones and the other one of course is gravitating towards foods because your cravings go up so it may be a mid morning and you're sitting at your desk and you just feel I have to have that chocolate bar. Where is it that I hide it from myself? Where is it? I need to go and find it and then you eat that. And that that pleasurable response apparently last for about three minutes, which is a very short period of time. And then what happens is your blood glucose will take a big dip after it's taken a spike, you know, so that's another thing. Your cravings go up. So emotional eating will increase when we feel stressed because we don't really know what to do. So those are some of the things that happen and then of course being exhausted just feeling tired all the time. And that's of course as we've discussed, you know, the nutrients required to make adrenaline and cortisol are basically stealing the nutrients from the mitochondria. And so it's no longer capable of producing nutrients. I mean producing energy a denizen triphosphate, so that's something else that happens. And then of course people just feel cranky and frustrated. Someone will say something and they'll just bite their head off and then they'll think later to themselves. Why did I do that? And they're doing that because they're responding intuitively, but they're responding that way because the tigers lurking in the background, they can't think rationally again, prefrontal cortex isn't inhibiting that snarky response that it would have been able to inhibit if they were calm and they didn't have all of that adrenaline and cortisol pumping through them. And you know, for leaders this is a huge challenge because if you're leading people as we've spoken about often and I know that human leaders is really gets this, we don't put on a leadership had under certain circumstances. We leaders all the time and so we can't say, well I'll look after my diet for this week. But when I go on holiday I'll throw caution to the wind, it doesn't work that way. We leaders all the time whether we're leaders in our company leaders with our family, leaders with our peers, our colleagues, even our friends, this is something that we embody. So making sure that we deal with stress and become stress resilient is a very important part of being a leader. And one of the ways to do that, as I said, you know, first principles go back what's happening at the neuronal level and delia. What about digestion? Can sometimes having an upset tummy or struggling to go to the bathroom and things like that cannot be a sign of stress. Absolutely. I'm glad you mentioned that the digestive challenges are a huge play a huge role with the way the brain functions. We just have to think about when you stand up and speak in front of a group of people. Those butterflies that you feel or some people say they feel like bats running around in their in their gut is because the brain and the gut are in communication via the vagus nerve and through other very interesting and complex processes. So yes, when we feel tense and stressed, those emotions can definitely impact the gut. And one of the things that a lot of people don't realize is when they get a desire to go to the toilet when they really really stressed. It's because the brain and the body are in communication and are saying to each other, look, the tiger is chasing you, you need to avoid your bells so that you become lighter to get away from the tiger. Now that sounds like a very basic explanation and it sounds quite horrid, but it's actually how deeply physiological that stress responses and interestingly women suffer more from irritable bowel syndrome, dead men and there are a few reasons for that, but we know one of the main reasons is is because of serotonin functioning in the gut and the way female hormones work with serotonin. So that's just another part of this conversation. But yes, absolutely. What goes on in the gut will affect the brain and what goes on in the brain will affect the gut because bi directional relationship is something that we can't get away from and it's critical to eat well because when you eat well the gut bacteria make sure that the gut lining stays robust and food particles don't pass into the bloodstream that can set off an inflammatory response that can find its way all the way to the brain. So when we eat well we don't just keep our mood stable. We also make sure that we dampen inflammation because of keeping that gut lining healthy, which then also impacts our emotional connection. So it's a beautiful process when it's working really well. Delia, you've blown my mind so many times during this conversation and I'm someone who thought that I knew quite a bit about brain function and quite a bit about stress and a reasonable amount about nutrition. But you've really um given me so much to think about um and taken pages of notes here. Um so thank you so much for sharing your incredible expertise and I know this is just this is just a tiny part of all of the incredible work that you do, but it's been a genuine pleasure to share this conversation with you. Um as a final question, I would love to know, drawing on your expertise, but also your lived experience. If you're gonna leave leaders with one sort of key takeaway about nutrition and neuroscience, what would that be? It's an excellent question because interestingly, I actually put together a list of things that I started doing or becoming more disciplined doing when Covid hit, because people said to me, what are you doing? How are you coping with the stress? And I put together a checklist and so I have that available and you can absolutely share that with your listeners if you want to send them the link. So that's that's the one thing that checklist. But I think the thing that I've taken away myself is that you really have to set up your environment to support you because when you're feeling really, really stressed and things are feeling as if they're out of control, which for a lot of people was a lot of the last two plus years, you need to be able to just respond to what's in your environment and it needs to be supportive. So when I go and open my pantry, for example, I open my fridge I find in there, the foods and the nutrients and the evidence they supplements that support my health and my well being and my mental health. I don't have to then make a decision, Oh, that's not good for me and it's not for me now, I'll choose this because what hap when we get to that point of making a decision often later in the day decision fatigue has set in which is another whole conversation. So we want to be able to rely on that knee jerk response. Aha, Yes, this is what's for dinner. So, I think setting yourself up for success is really, really critical in this realm. So, my runners are really right outside my laundry so that I just go to them. I don't have to go and dig through 1000 things to find my runners, You know, I've got my yoga set up, it's in my diary, I don't have to, every time yoga is appearing, say to myself, how am I going or not? No, it's just go and do it. And the same as my pantry and my fridge. So that's probably the thing that I would say for me as a lived experience, set up your environment to support you under all circumstances, not just when you're stressed, but always amazing. That resonates so strongly and I think that's really beautiful inspiration for us all to take away. Thank you so much for your time, Delia. It's been just an absolute pleasure. We hope this episode has underscored the importance of nutrition to your capacity to lead yourself and others and perhaps has inspired some shifts in your own behaviors and habits. If so, let us know what these are at human leaders, we know that to lead others effectively. We need to take full accountability for ourselves and how we show up. This includes taking care of our well being and stress through what we eat. If you'd like to feel connected and supported in your leadership journey, we invite you to join us and the human leaders community at www.wearehumanleaders.com.