Dr. Alok 'Dr. K' Kanojia

Because literally there is a hormone in your body that is keeping you awake.

Now this becomes important because if we want to alter our cortisol levels, one of the best ways to alter cortisol levels is our psychological stress.

So the way that we deal with stress will increase cortisol or decrease cortisol, okay?

So people do have circadian rhythm problems for sure.

Second thing, incredibly fascinating.

So if we look at studies on narcolepsy, okay, so here's one thing to understand.

If you want to understand how something in the brain works, the best way to understand it is by looking at a disorder or disease where that part of the brain is messed up.

So if I want to understand how a car works and I remove, I don't know, if I take all the oil out of the car, I will very quickly discover what the role of oil is.

If I want to understand how a wheel works, if I remove a wheel, I will see changes in the car that tells me what the wheel is doing.

So when we look at disorders like narcolepsy, which is when people fall asleep, and cataplexy, which is when they get paralyzed and fall asleep, that's when we will see a couple of very important things about how the brain works.

Okay?

So there are two circuits that we're going to talk about.

The frontal lobe and the amygdala.

The amygdala is our negative emotional center.

of the brain, it is also our stress and our survival center.

So this gives us anxiety and fear.

When we're afraid and anxious, the amygdala is lit up.

So why is this our survival center of the brain?

Because if we think about what's the role of fear, when I'm walking through the woods and I see a grizzly bear, fear is what keeps me alive, right?

So the amygdala is there to keep us alive.