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Chapter 1: What if becoming smarter is about habits rather than intelligence?
Most people assume that intelligence is something you're born with. You either have it or you don't. But what if becoming smarter is less about natural ability and more about the habits, behaviors, and choices you make every day? Research suggests that the way you learn, think, and even structure your environment can have a big impact on your cognitive performance.
And that's why today's SYSK trending topic is How to Make Yourself Smarter. In my conversation with Dr. David Bardsley, we'll explore practical science-backed ways to sharpen your mind and improve how you process information. And you'll find out what really makes people smarter and what anyone can do to boost their brain power.
So if you'd like to think more clearly, learn faster, and make better decisions, stick around. It's all coming up right after this. Who wouldn't want to be smarter? Imagine if you could think better, make decisions better, and just get through life with more brain power to navigate all you have to do in a smarter, more thoughtful way. Well, meet David Bardsley.
David became a dentist and oral surgeon after overcoming some serious learning disabilities when he was younger. When he retired from surgery, he began researching and lecturing on the topic of cognitive performance, and he is the author of a book called Smarter Next Year, The Revolutionary Science for a Smarter, Happier You. Hey David, welcome to Something You Should Know.
Chapter 2: How does cognitive performance change with age?
It's my pleasure, Mike. So before we begin about making people better cognitively speaking, if I do all the things you're about to tell me, how much is it worth the effort? Are we just going to move the needle in the laboratory, or am I going to go, gee, I feel like my brain is really functioning better?
Well, that depends on where you are now. If you're already doing these things... then doing them with a little more gusto will move the needle a little bit. But if you're not already doing any of these things, you can have a very, very significant increase in that cognitive ability. And most people that I find that I know of
are not doing these things or they're not doing them to the degree that's necessary if you want that cognitive improvement.
When people hear conversations about cognitive ability and brain function, I think there's a tendency to think, well, this only applies to older people, to people as they're getting on in years and maybe their brain starts to decline. Is this an older person problem?
The Center for Disease Control in the United States estimates that by age 40, four zero, that 50% of the population start to show some signs of what's called mild cognitive impairment. And mild cognitive impairment is, they're the first steps toward more severe cognitive impairment and ultimately with dementia and Alzheimer's. Now, not everyone,
Not everyone who has mild cognitive impairment by any means will progress into more serious forms of dementia and Alzheimer's.
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Chapter 3: What role does sleep play in cognitive ability?
But what we do know is that 100% of the people with Alzheimer's and other forms of dementia started way back here with mild cognitive impairment. And that's why it's so important to either prevent it or deal with it at that very early stage.
But what does that mean, mild cognitive impairment? Does that mean I forgot where I put my keys, or does that mean I can't do math? Give me an example of mild cognitive impairment.
You know, if you notice a song comes on, and, oh, yeah, this is, oh, I recognize this song. This is, oh, don't tell me I know who it is. It's on the tip of my tongue, and you find you just can't make that connection to that information. It's a sign of cognitive impairment. Or you might feel overwhelmed. Perhaps someone is pressing you to make a decision on something and you're not quite sure.
And it just seems like there are so many facts and information to try to make that decision, and it just seems overwhelming, and you procrastinate. So you don't make decisions as quickly, and you're not nearly as confident in those decisions.
Again, a lot of what you just described, we tend to associate with decline in brain function as you get older. So if it's happening in younger and younger people, what's causing it?
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Chapter 4: How do medications affect brain function?
Well, sleep deprivation is huge, absolutely huge. We are a sleep-deprived nation. And adults, with rare exception, need seven to nine hours sleep a night. And I know all kinds of people, I'm sure you do as well, that say they get by just fine on five or six hours sleep. And they're absolutely correct. That's what they're doing. They're getting by. They are not performing at their cognitive best.
One of the simplest things there is to do in psychology is to test that cognitive decrease That occurs with sleep deprivation. If you have just one night of disturbed sleep, you will have a measurable decrease in your cognitive ability the next day. And the military have done the best studies I've ever seen. The military studies are fantastic.
And they show that if you take a group of military personnel of mixed ages and you deprive them of sleep, first of all, you give them a cognitive test. And then you deprive them of sleep for 24 hours and then you retest them.
Chapter 5: What impact does alcohol have on cognitive performance?
They will have a decrease of 30 percent in those test scores. Now, most of us are never deprived of sleep for 24 hours straight. But those same military studies show if you take that same group of personnel of mixed ages, you administer the cognitive test and now you deprive them of sleep.
so that they get six or less hours sleep for five consecutive nights, and then you retest them, now they have a decrease of 60% in those test scores. It's one of the simplest things that we can do to make sure that we're functioning at 100% of our cognitive ability. is to get that seven to nine hours sleep every night.
Well, I think everybody can relate to that. I know I can relate to that. If I don't get a good night's sleep, I know, I just know I don't perform as well the next day. So what else? What else besides getting more and better sleep?
One of the big factors is side effects of medication. And not just over-the-counter medication, but prescription medications as well. So many prescription medications have cognitive slowing as a side effect.
Chapter 6: How does stress influence brain health?
And some of the, you know, extremely, extremely common ones like statins, you know, drugs that are used to lower blood cholesterol. And one out of four adult Americans, 25% of the adult population in the United States takes a statin on a daily basis. A lot of anticoagulants, antidepressants have a negative cognitive side effect to them.
So our goal, everybody's goal, should be to be medication-free. And look, it's not possible for everybody, but for the majority of people, it is possible. And if you can't be medication-free, you want to at least be able to reduce that medication to a minimal level to get the desired effect. And so many of the medications are due to our poor lifestyle choices.
That's why we're on them to begin with.
OK.
What else? You're not going to want to hear this. Most people don't. Alcohol is not a friend of your brain and your cognitive ability. We can grow human brain cells, human neurons in a petri dish in a lab and add just one little drop of alcohol and instantaneously 100% of those brain cells will shrivel up and die.
Now, we can't say that that happens in the living brain because we have no means yet of putting
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Chapter 7: What type of exercise is best for improving cognitive function?
miniature imaging device into a living brain so we can actually watch that interaction take place. But you can drink a certain amount of alcohol and it will never get into your brain. All the alcohol that you consume will first go to your liver and your liver has an enzyme which breaks down the alcohol into two substrates A and B that get excreted in your urine.
If you present too much alcohol to your liver, then the alcohol, the liver doesn't have the capacity to break down that volume of alcohol. Some of it will be broken down. Some of it will pass through unchanged. It gets into your bloodstream, and in 30 seconds, it's crossed that blood-brain barrier, and it's in your brain, and you will feel the buzz.
So if you feel the buzz, you know that you've exceeded your liver's capacity to detoxify that alcohol, and that alcohol has gotten into your brain. And it's not doing you any favor, believe me. And let's face it, you know, people will often say, oh, they love Gugasa wine because it tastes so good. Most people drink because they want the buzz.
Yeah, yeah, I suppose they do. David Bardsley is my guest. He is author of a book called Smarter Next Year, The Revolutionary Science for a Smarter, Happier You.
Chapter 8: How important is diet for brain health?
So, David, because people like the buzz, is there an acceptable level of drinking where it doesn't affect your brain?
Yes, there is. And that depends on the individual. So generally people who would have one drink a day and a drink is considered, you know, like two ounces of hard liquor or six ounces of wine or one beer. that that doesn't have any negative effect whatsoever. In fact, there are some studies that show that it actually has a positive effect. But it's different.
You can't just take those exact numbers because it's different. A 105-pound woman can't. can't break down the same amount of alcohol as a 250-pound man. So that 250-pound man can consume more alcohol without it ever getting to his brain than a 105-pound woman can.
What else? I'm going to imagine that stress has a lot to do with this. Huge, absolutely huge.
Floods your body with two primary stress hormones, cortisol and adrenaline, and they have a negative effect on your cognitive ability. So anything you can do to reduce the amount of stress is good, anything that you can do. And I tell people if they have significant stress or anxiety of depression, the best thing to do is to get some professional help. Okay, what else?
Well, one of the very biggest ones is exercise. And I shouldn't say exercise, it's the lack of exercise that leads to the cognitive impairment, the lack of movement. Physical activity, vigorous physical activity is truly the rifle shot to improving your cognitive ability. There are now thousands of studies, not hundreds, but thousands. I've read over 500 myself.
Studies that show the improvement in cognition that occurs with vigorous physical activity. And it has to be vigorous. Unfortunately, a walk around the block with your dog isn't considered vigorous physical activity. And that physical activity does two things. It stimulates the growth of new brain cells, which we only discovered 20 years ago could occur.
For 100 years before that, neuroscience taught that when a brain cell dies, that's it. It's gone forever. You don't grow new brain cells. But 20 years ago, they discovered for the first time that, in fact, we can grow new brain cells and we can stimulate the growth of those new brain cells. And the single best way of doing it is vigorous physical activity.
So if I vigorously run to the liquor store and... And you vigorously run back. What else? Does diet matter much in terms of what you eat or don't eat? And is it more what you eat or what you don't eat?
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