Dr. Dave Rabin

So just by putting your smartphone into Do Not Disturb mode, as one example—

then rather than the phone's vibration or ringing steering our attention, we decide when we want to look at it, right?

And if we're deciding when we want to look at it, then we can say, oh, I'm going to check it once an hour.

I'm not going to look at it every time it bangs or dings.

And so then rather than the phone controlling our attention and where it is at any given time with its notifications, we choose, right?

That's a huge difference, right?

You choosing is you're exercising free will and your attention muscle.

in humans that we have evidence that trauma passes down through the epigenetic code which is the the code on top of the DNA that regulates stress response genes and regulates the way our cells function and that can get passed down in humans we've seen for three or more generations Wow and in animals we've seen it passed down for up to 14 generations

So when you think about trauma in a modern neuroscience sense, we should not be thinking about it on just the basis of what I've experienced in my life, which is often enough.

But our bodies store information about trauma.

meaning that our parents and our grandparents and beyond have experienced in their own lives.

So one of the best examples of this is that in our ancestors who experienced famine or food austerity for extended periods of time, that their bodies –

realizing that there wasn't as much food around.

This is our ancestors, so multiple generations back.

When they experienced food austerity or famine for extended periods, their bodies said, there might not be enough food around.

So for me and for future generations, I'm going to change the epigenetic code to remember there might not be food around, and I'm going to decrease metabolic rate.

So that is an adaptive epigenetic stress response that's really important in times where there's not enough food around for extended periods.

And that gets passed down to multiple generations because if our grandparents had trouble getting enough food for extended periods, then in the past that would be likely to also impact their children and their children's children.

So they pass down the epigenetic code that is –

marked on the metabolic genes that say, decrease the speed of metabolism, store more nutrients, keep it for longer, make the nutrients last longer.