The Possibility of Maintaining Sharp Cognitive Abilities with Age

American neurosurgeon, medical reporter and writer Sanjay Gupta joins Tony for an engaging conversation about brain health and its effects on your life. From movement to nourishment to rest, Tony and Sanjay share life hacks that have been proven to improve both the quality and longevity of your life from Sanjay Gupta’s newest book, Keep Sharp: Build a Better Brain at Any Age. Learn and laugh with these experts as they take you on a journey through cutting-edge information and inspiration about brain health and exciting developments for the future of this field. 

WATCH HERE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxZkwX4i-14

Show Notes:

1:00 TR introduces today’s guest, a renaissance man

1:30 Sanjay’s new book, Keep Sharp

2:00 TR: How did that journey begin and what influenced you?

2:58 The first female engineer hired by Ford

3:20 Sanjay’s mom: “if you don’t hire me, you never will.”

4:30 Sacrifice

5:25 Medical marijuana and being able to shift

7:00 Sanjay during Covid-19

7:30 Sanjay did not see the merits of medical marijuana originally

8:00 94% of the studies were designed to look for harm, only 6% looking for a benefit

8:35 I different picture started to emerge      

9:05 TR: You did such a good job bringing the human emotion to it

10:08 Total transparency

10:20 TR: What made you decide to write Keep Sharp?

11:20 Sanjay wrote his book before Covid-19

12:05 The mental impact of Covid-19

13:09 You can build new brain cells at any age

15:20 Defining a healthy brain

16:40 We use 10% of our brain 90% of the time

17:20 Neurogenesis

18:40 Practice makes perfect, but it is change that builds resilience

18:50 TR: Are there skills that you’ve never tried, learning a language, singing?

20:15 TR: Is there dopamine that comes from creating these new pathways?

23:17 TR: Pattern recognition, pattern utilization, pattern creation is what makes people masterful

23:35 Fundamentally, people know the right things to do

25:00 A healthy brain is tied to a wider circle

27:25 Sanjay uses his daughters as a sounding board

29:00 Brisk walking is far better than intensely exercising for the brain

29:50 Get vulnerable

34:12 The brain is exquisitely sensitive to sugar

34:40 You may be overly indulging your body and starving your brain.

35:14 TR: Tell people what the long-term impact of starving the brain is

35:40 Changes in your brain that sets you up for dementia potentially

36:28 TR: Where is the link between side effects of covid and obesity?

39:50 TR: We seem to be outsourcing our health to the pharmaceutical industry, but they can only do so much.

42:00 Medical AI and being the CEO of your own health

42:37 The two words no one wants to talk about

43:45 We can now visualize the inside of the brain

44:33 The process began decades earlier

46:10 Injecting AI behaviors for health

48:10 Technology will continue to add to our lives

49:00 There might be a better use of our time and energy

50:00 The Vatican and stem cells

55:00 We have the capacity to heal ourselves

57:01 Optimizing our life so it is frictionless

57:30 Sanjay: Three teenage girls in the house

57:57 TR: What did you learn from the super-brainers project?

59:04 Confirmation that the brain can get sharper over time

59:20 TR: The more meaningful connections you make, the more you remember.

1:01:00 Blood pressure drugs to prevent destructive memories forming

1:01:55 Dementia Village

1:08:02 1.65-billion-person experiment  

1:09:20 Sleep is essential to memory

1:11:00 “As your friend, you should get more sleep Tony”

1:12:05 Tony comes to mind when Sanjay writes

1:13:00 Habit stacking

1:15:00 Polishing memories

1:16:00 TR: What is your Ikigai?

1:18:05 The difference in data interpretation

1:21:20 Childhood hunger

1:23:05 Experiencing this world fully

1:24:20 TR: You’re a gift to us