BSB Ep 83
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[00:00:00] Welcome to the Bitesize Brilliance Podcast. I'm your host, Dr. April Darley, and I recently had a friend give me a call because she wanted to get a little insight. She thought she had ADHD because she was experiencing some of the classic symptoms that you hear about: brain fog, just losing her concentration, forgetting her tasks, a little bit of issues with memory, and she wanted to get my perspective on it as both a retired physician and a neuroscience and resilience coach. All great coaches and doctors are brilliant investigators because they ask deep insightful questions to gather information.
To get more of a complete picture. And because we're objective, we can see patterns that other people might miss. When I asked my friend about her childhood, these different points in her life, what came out is these [00:01:00] symptoms were relatively newish. She didn't have them in childhood.
And most doctors can tell you when clients come in or patients come in, they have a tendency to self-diagnose. Sometimes their diagnosis is spot on because you do know you, you know what you're experiencing in a subjective way. But a lot of times it wasn't spot on because there are so many other diagnoses out there but what tends to happen is the brain loves a good label. I did a podcast episode on this. It's episode 61. If you wanna take a on that, and you can love 'em or hate 'em, but labels help our brain remember things.
They help us learn new concepts because they give us a framework to build on top of. For example, if you're trying to teach your toddler to [00:02:00] speak and you introduce them to a grape, you would say, this is a grape, it's a fruit. So they have to learn both the word fruit and grape. They have to learn what that means as a concept.
But the more fruits you introduce, this is an orange, it's a fruit. This is an apple. It's a fruit. They now. Learn faster because their brain has created a pattern of what fruits are. So they've created a concept of fruit, and now everything you pile into that label as fruit, they learn it faster. So your brain just loves a good label.
It helps us with a sense of personal identity. It helps us learn and remember things, and it gives us a sense of context. And we want to be careful with the dark side of labels because sometimes we apply a [00:03:00] label to ourselves that is doing more harm than good. So if you were to apply the label of, _"I'm inattentive, I don't have a lot of focus, or I have ADHD"_, and these things haven't been actually diagnosed by a medical professional, your brain doesn't know the difference, your programming, they're neurons, you're programming the network to act as if.
And so the brain is like a golden retriever who really does want to please you. And when you tell it, certain labels over and over and over, you're basically saying, go fetch more of this. So then you start noticing maybe you do have more brain fog, you have more inattentiveness, you have more issues with memory.
Because you've trained your subconscious more of this, please, and it's because of an attachment [00:04:00] to a label. It's weird, but that's how the brain works. Now, in the case of my friend, it wasn't ADHD because the symptoms were too new, but there were other things that could be. And think about something that's going on in your life right now.
What labels are you attaching to? And when it comes to something like memory, other things that can have the same sort of symptoms with loss of focus, decrease in memory capacity, getting distracted easier come down to habits instead of biology or physiology, like what you would see in actual diagnosed ADHD.
Some of the big things I'm gonna talk to you about. Is your digital consumption. I just came across reference of a study that said short form video content is one of the worst things you can [00:05:00] do for brain health because consuming these. Micro, these reels, I'm just gonna go out and say it like Instagram can hate me, but these YouTube shorts, these little Instagram reels where they're 30 seconds, 90 seconds, a minute, and just doom scrolling.
It's giving your brain burst, burst, burst, burst of dopamine, and you're depleting your dopamine supply quickly through artificial means instead of through sustained means like crossing off something on a checklist, going to lunch with friends. These are natural sources of dopamine. Taking a walk in nature can give you a hit of dopamine, but our digital habits, the doom scrolling, we are training ourselves to burn through dopamine supply quickly, and dopamine is addictive.
[00:06:00] The more you use it, the more you want. But like any brain circuit, the more you use it, especially when it comes to addictive habits, the less effective it becomes. So your intention to just pop on social media for five seconds, half an hour, passes. You didn't even know, like casinos hijack this because they know the flashing lights, the free drinks, the sounds.
These are all quick bursts of dopamine that your brain is going, gimme, gimme, gimme more and more and more. So if you are struggling with in attentiveness really take a serious look and consider a digital detox for yourself. That is limiting online time, deleting social media apps off your phone. And just being aware by me saying this, you listening to this podcast, awareness is the first step to any sort of change.
You may [00:07:00] not have been aware that your spaciness or inattentiveness could be due to something like this because the system is a little bit rigged against you. Social media was designed by some very clever people who already knew about the brain's addictive tendencies. They knew about neurotransmitters like dopamine, and they knew what it took to get you hooked on the enjoyment of it.
Right or wrong. We bought in. You know, we bought into that 'cause we're creatures who are designed to move away from pain and toward pleasure. I get it. Our biology, our physiology got hijacked for a hot second there. But you are ultimately in control. Even of that, you just have to choose a different action when you are exposed to a trigger.
In this case, the trigger might be, _"Ooh, I'm bored. I think I'll get on social for _[00:08:00] _five minutes"_. That's a trigger. The boredom, the action would be you go on social, the reward is your dopamine. So much of life runs on automatic pilot of trigger, habit reward. Now that you're aware that three part system exists, you can make some different choices.
The best choice to change this is the trigger. Stay away from your triggers if you can. But if you can't try to catch it in the second step, even if you're exposed to the trigger, you can still choose a different action. You don't have to pick up the phone for social media. This is important to note.
Steps one and two are the best place for you to make changes to your habits in your life. If you hit step three, the dopamine has already been released. It's a little too late, so you've gotta catch it earlier before you get the reward. I know we all like rewards, but when it comes to getting hours of your life [00:09:00] back, when it comes to getting your brain health back, these are changes that you want to do.
So that's step one. Watch or monitor your online consumption. Step two i s you want to do brain training. So I asked my friend, , _"Are you doing anything to strengthen your cognitive ability?"_ The answer was no. And I hear this a lot sadly. What I mean by cognitive training, are you doing puzzles?
Are you learning a foreign language? Are you reading books that are new? Are you reading long form content? Because here's the truth of the thing. When I was in school, if you're Gen X millennials, when we were in school, we were taught that paragraphs ideally were around three to four sentences. Recent marketing courses, I'm talking marketing courses I've taken in the last year said paragraphs need to be no more than two sentences.
Ideally, you [00:10:00] just do a bunch of little word one-liners and you highlight words. Why? It's because we've lost the ability to focus long enough to read long form content. Why? Because of brain rot from quick dopamine bursts. So doing brain training, like learning a new language, doing physical puzzles, doing things like Sudoku.
Hobbies, crafts, knitting, things like this where you are actively engaging your brain's machinery to build new structures, new neuroplastic connections, to learn things, to keep that prefrontal cortex sharp. It's one of the best things you can do for yourself and your health. Number three, physical exercise.
Look, we all know it, but [00:11:00] we have been told we need to exercise from a standpoint of heart health or bone health, but there's a lot of research that's coming out. It's really important for brain health. Especially not skipping leg day, believe it or not, really making sure you bulk up these large muscles in your body, have a link to better cognitive health later in life.
Muscle strength, and for ladies that are going through menopause, your muscle strength is going to be your BFF for cutting down that brain fog, that inattentiveness. So exercise is no longer just being pushed toward something we need to do for heart health, but it's for brain health too. All right, and number four, you want to make sure that you are [00:12:00] taking care of your stress response because if you are not learning the tools you need for true resilience, burnout is one of the major causes of brain fog, inattentiveness, d istraction. It looks a lot like ADHD, but it's actually burnout and your nervous system has become dysregulated. There are a lot of things that you can do with that, and in my course, the Bespoke Brain System, I actually go through natural, quick, easy ways to reset your nervous system.
And I have a group course coming up that I would love for you to be a part of. I'm gonna drop the link in the show notes, but if you jump on that waiting list, I'm gonna be doing a founder's launch.
And you as a founder are going to get some very exclusive perks on a [00:13:00] course I have coming up called the Neuroscience of Stress. In that group coaching course, you are going to learn how the brain views stress, how to work with stress, and yes, stress can be positive. For example, exercise is a stressor.
Your thoughts are stressors, so you're gonna learn to work with both internal and external stressors. There is an entire module on brain food. What does your brain actually need in terms of vitamins, minerals, micronutrients, supplements, and activities to be at its best state? You're also going to learn about your brain's chemistry. You're going to learn if you don't have the right balance of neurotransmitters why symptoms like brain fog happen. And this is all gonna be covered in my upcoming group coaching course, the Neuroscience of Stress. Sign up to get on my waiting [00:14:00] list, , and we'll drop that link in the show notes.
And just be aware of the labels that you're giving yourself, because every label programs your brain for an outcome, and you wanna look at this label and go, _"Is this helpful or harmful to me? Do I want this label to be part of my identity?"_ And if the answer is no. Change it, and that is entirely within your control.
If you want more help on how to do that, you can also book a free consultation with me at aprildarley.com and I'll show you what that takes. Until next week, my friends, goodbye.
