How Neuroscience Affects Focus, Anxiety & Your Child’s Brain : Sid Warrier | @Sidwarrier

0:00 I firmly believe that every child is curious it's just how they express that curiosity would be different obviously the Gita I don't think was written at a time when Neuroscience was the way as we understand it today how do you even make that connection I have seen 4-year-olds plan their entire day I have seen 15year olds who don't do that why it does it work why are things the way they are why do people behave the way they do you're

0:23 always the Curious k for parenting tips celebrity interviews recipes conversations with experts DIYs and lots more subscribe to kidstop press now we probably don't realize what an important role neuroscience and mental health play in our daily lives and affect our productivity efficiency and overall well-being Dr Sid Warrior is a neurologist public speaker content creator author he's all about making

0:53 Neuroscience easy to chat about smashing the stigma around mental health and getting folks talking about mindfulness learning and changing Behavior today we will be talking to Dr sth about the effects of science mental health our eating habits and how humans behave and why we behave the way we behave he's spoken a lot on Neuroscience but he will need to make it a child's play in today's episode because if he doesn't make it as simple as ABC then of course

1:24 parents can't implement it welcome Dr sth thank you for having me and it was Str how we started because I was like you are like a real doctor doctor because he's doing all of these incredible things while being a practicing doctor yeah how does this happen the reason I don't want to stop practice very honestly is because uh that is what grounds me to everything that has brought me till here and um content creation as enjoyable as it is

1:55 as fun as it is it's exciting but at the end of the day I've spent more than 15 years studying and uh yeah I I heard about that um when I when I find myself in my op seeing patience um that reminds me of what got me till here and that is something that I would like to continue in however shape or form uh that is something that keeps me connected to neurology core neurology right you know

2:24 I truly believe that who we are in our adult life is somewhere sewn into our childhood right very early on tell me a little bit about your family and did you always know that this is what you're going to do in some form and when you look back now does it feel like this is where I was supposed to be so it's interesting because uh the labels that we give to what we want to do uh depends on what is available uh I

2:53 grew up in a family where my dad is a doctor and my mom is a music teacher M so half the time I would spend learning music from my mom and uh around the age of I think 12 or 13 I knew that I was interested in science and medicine became an obvious choice uh not once did I regret that I've always enjoyed studying biology somewhere around um when I was 22 that was towards the end of my mbbs I

3:21 realized that I'm very interested in mental health and I thought I wanted to do psychology that's when I understood that psychology in India is through ART oh it's not through science um and so my interest in human behavior took me into the brain and that's when neurology became uh again an obvious choice right so how did you know that you wanted to do something with human behavior like how are you so sure that's what really drew me I I found uh myself reading

3:53 about psychology I found myself reading about even U subjects around psychology like um hypnosis for example I found it very interesting when I was growing up and I wanted to understand why it does it work why does it why are things the way they are why do people behave the way they do you're always the Curious kid absolutely yes you read like way ahead of your time you were always did you like always break things dissect

4:19 them try to fix them back always observe people sitting in the park but still mentally physically there but mentally just watching people around funny you should say that because I used to play with these blocks right and um you would have these different colored blocks and they would give um these pamphlets that uh suggest how you can build a robot you can build a car and as fun as it is to follow those instructions I always would

4:44 try to play around with them and see ohy what else can we build with this uh this is supposed to be building a robot but what if I build a Empire State Building you are an ideal child I would want to have because as moms we know that when when our kids are given Lego breaks sometimes want to just build that and they believe that after they've built that ideal scenario then it's done they don't want

5:07 to go back to rebuilding it I would say that's a skill set in itself um and I firmly believe that every child is curious yeah right uh there is no child without curiosity it's just how they express that curiosity would be different and so as a parent sometimes we sort of um project our own sense of curiosity onto them thinking that this is the way to express curiosity and all other ways are wrong right but that's

5:34 not how the brain works so how does the brain work the brain is constantly exploring mhm all the time every waking moment the brain is constantly exploring its limits to see where can it push its limits and it is also constantly retreating back to safety mhm this is how the brain works we are always in this e and flow of exploration and safety so at no point are we satisfied with only safety at no point are we satisfied

6:04 with only exploration so this back and forth is what uh parents struggle with in fact all adults all human beings struggle with this back and forth because we think that we should be one steady state right right we we would like things to be static because static is easy something that is steady is easy to comprehend to deal with but the brain is not static the brain is constantly Dynamic it is constantly changing you know it's so

6:34 many questions and I'm literally not following the Q cards but so many questions that are coming alive you said that the parents project their curiosity and how they want their child to think onto the child and I see so much of that happening with parents where they're constantly projecting yeah to their children like if they want and I and I you know when I meet so many parents and I've met so many across 10 years of

7:02 working with them that I always project my inefficiencies as a parent onto my child so if I am not a great public speaker I will make sure that my child goes to Dramatics class or an elutions class you're always projecting overcompensating coming from deficit mindset yeah how would you want parents to come out of that so we would obviously see reality in a particular way because of our life life experiences right there's nothing wrong in that yeah

7:32 so a parent who has grown up reading books and if that has helped them they would be convinced that if the child doesn't read books then it's a mistake that's not necessarily true but the parent would be convinced of that uh on the other hand suppose if they had not read books and they felt like that was something missing in their lives they would also overcompensate there that oh I missed out on this therefore my child

7:57 should not uh both of these come from a place of the parent over correcting something for themselves right right it's not necessarily uh quote unquote good for the kid it is the parent trying to solve something in their own head I don't see anything wrong in this honestly because you have no idea what a child is going through said do you I'll tell you why um every child I would say every brain learns to explore

8:29 the world in its own way right right and if a parent believes in something them sharing that belief system with their child is not wrong I truly believe that that is what parenting is what we do need to understand though is that your brain is not your child's brain absolutely that's the only thing and so if a child is figuring out other ways of exploration the parent can calm themselves down down into realizing that

9:01 there are other ways of getting there the way that you went through is not the only way so long as the parent understands that yes yes but your belief system is merging with that's how it's got to be done versus saying belief system plus curiosity should be the ideal scenario but that does not happen my way is the only way that is a problem yeah but telling the child that this was my way and it worked

9:32 or it didn't work very valuable interesting if they don't do that then I I believe that is a disservice mhm so the parent should share their experience they should give the child whatever starting Advantage they can but believing that this is the only way is a fallacy got it another interesting thing that you said about the push and pull of the brain both in children and in adults and that brings me to a question that we

9:59 often get asked is building resilience building grit and I see so many of us as parents constantly asking you know we were just tougher gen Z gen Alpha um gen beta now is is just not Tough Enough like they're constant they give up before they've even explored it how do you build resist resilience in children so so I have to say right now

10:32 though that a lot of things that I'm talking about um they come from a space of reading and learning about neuroscience and observing things in families in kids who have come to me both as relatives and as patients sometimes you know we deal with a lot of kids in neurology I'm 100% sure that when I have kids it would be different there is always an academic absolutely

11:04 perspective and there is some a lived perspective AB so I want to acknowledge that right now that there will be many things that I will learn when I have my children that being said uh it's still useful to know how a brain works right because I I believe that it gives us some amount of insight into what is going on in someone's Behavior by understanding what is going on in their brains um so coming back to your

11:29 question question uh when we talk of resilience resilience is the brain's ability to do two things one is not go into a defensive State at things that are not threatening mhm and B suppose if you do go into a defensive State how quickly can you come back to a calm state so our brain has two states calm and threatened the biological term for this is is parasympathetic and sympathetic so

12:01 these are parts of your autonomic nervous system right so whenever there's a threat your brain goes into sympathetic that is fight and flight and when you are calm you go into parasympathetic resilience is if you get a threat can you deal with it without going into sympathetic that is resilience that comes through practice you've faced that threat before you've overcome it now you're confident now it's no longer a threat for you that is resilience or if you go into a threat

12:28 are you going to remain in sympathetic even after the threat is resolved are you not able to calm down the sooner you're calming down the more resilient you are so as the kid grows you are hoping that the kid becomes more and more and more resilient uh and so they're able to cope with threats better interesting and you said that comes out of not going into the flight and fight mode comes out of a lot of practice so

12:56 what is that process and that practice the the simplest example that I give which is easily understood is physical exercise right so when you say facing stress you can think of it as resistance you want to do something something is coming in the way now you can't do that thing right that is what resistance means so if I want to lift a 5kg dumbbell I'm not able to lift it easily because the weight of the dumbbell is

13:25 giving me resistance if I keep exercising even ually my muscle grows strong enough that now I can lift it that resistance becomes lesser my muscles have become more resilient right right now this concept is very easy to understand in the gym but somehow people really struggle to understand it in terms of school or work yeah so at school your say a child is trying to study they are struggling with geography for example right for some reason they they're not

13:55 able to grasp the subject we believe that we should keep teaching them that same subject in that same way and the child should now figure it out but what we don't get is that is the equivalent of somebody trying to lift 100 kg weight and they're not able to do it now immediately you will think that but that's silly you should start at 10 kg right but somehow we don't do that in academics got it so if somebody's

14:25 struggling with a particular subject and it's subject specific some kid kids may be very good at maths but they may struggle with history yeah so we need to learn how to break that history topic down and convert that 100 kg history topic into a 10 kg history topic lovely how you do that is up to your creativity as a parent but that is the way to do it right and that's how you build resilience next question as a followup

14:51 to that I know because I know most kids hate math do you love it uh initially no okay later on yes but now that makes a followup question so one is why what makes some kids good at math and some kids not good at math and how did you go about switching from not liking to liking it so I have a theory that math is an entirely logical subject

15:24 M right it is entirely in your uh now I'll get technical it is your prefrontal cortex right okay so prefrontal cortex is the most evolved part of the brain and that is a part that deals with planning calculation rational thinking all of that now the problem is your prefrontal cortex starts evolving around say 8 10 years and it becomes quote unquote evolved by the age of 25 mhm okay now before that it's not

15:55 that you don't have a prefrontal cortex before that but it's immature right it's not it's not strong enough all other subjects have some sort of visualization so whether it's history or science um if you're learning about ecology zoology you can visualize something you can visualize a plant you can visualize history you can visualize uh you know geography yeah in maths especially algebra there is no visualization right it's just numbers and calculation you have to do a lot of

16:27 calculation I believe that some some kids struggle with it because they're not able to visualize it properly this is just this is my understanding the reason I liked algebra later on was I realized that all algebra is actually geometry it's just that we not taught that way because I used to enjoy geometry now that you say I'm trying to visualize it and you're probably right all algebra is actually geometry but it's just that we not taught that way

16:57 and kids are actually all animals understand maths through space okay all math is space for example if a monkey has to jump from tree to tree the reason that their brain does calculation is it calculates how far is the tree yeah and it calculates it in terms of fractions so if my hand is say half a meter long then this tree is 10 times that distance so it understands it in fractions that's how our brain comp

17:28 mutes everything mhm it's all in fractions it's all in multiples of each other so that is the way our brain navigates environment space distance speed if you are able to teach maths from that perspective kids would this is my theory that kids would understand it much better interesting yeah and that's why you struggle and so when I started Lear liking maths that's when I that was the time when I understood that oh if you visualize maths in Geometry terms it

18:01 makes it much easier right and when you speak of the development of the prefrontal cortex only you know active development only post eight or nine how does this sequence building happen because sequentially you're teaching your kids how to how to you know much much earlier than 8 or 9 right I mean sequencing is something that you start teaching them much earlier on so how does that happen but this part develops only much

18:31 ler so one of the beautiful things about the brain is that it is very plastic M so whatever you teach your kid that becomes the norm I have I have seen four year olds plan their entire day saying that 4:00 5:00 I have I have tution at six and the mom doesn't have to do anything I have seen 15 yearolds who don't do that there are there such a range because literally

19:01 every brain starts off from quote unquote scratch but how it develops is so much to do with the environment with their own psychology with um nutrition there are so many variables that go into it right that it is wonderfully plastic it can be anything and the amazing thing is there's no deadline it's not that the 15-year-old because he couldn't or he or she couldn't do it at the age of 15 oh now everything never going to be

19:28 absolutely because it's plastic it continues to be plastic so everything can change from 15 to 16 yeah so at no point are you uh done in a good way or a bad way yeah right so there's always hope there's always a positive change that can happen or negative change that can happen um so the when you when you ask about sequencing that is the concept of future planning can a child's prefrontal cortex arrange uh tasks in the order of

20:00 importance or in a chronological order that this comes first this comes later initially they cannot because they're not able they're not able to understand the concept of time that once I do this then I can do this there's no concept of time initially but um actually even at the age of three or four kids have already figured out so there are puzzles where you can't do step three until you've done step two and kids figure it out

20:29 so your early prefrontal cortex abilities come pretty early on it's just that you you don't have access to those skills at all times until you're much older you know I am selfishly thinking puzzles games so the prefrontal develops very quickly and then it just goes on but I know of course that's a whole other conversation that's a whole other conversation but while you were talking about the BL brain being plastic

20:59 and I'm sure that every parent who's listening to this episode is going to ask is why doesn't anything stick onto that plastic brain like why do parents have to give same instructions multiple times and the instructions are as basic as brush bath breakfast clean your room like we we sound like a broken record at some point in time so are those not reaching the brain or they getting lost in transit or like what what's happening I mean I'm sure you heard that a lot

21:30 before but uh I would say that this is not a problem with just children uh can we really sit here and think that we have reached the Pinnacle of discipline no no we haven't we haven't we'll be hypocritical if we say that exactly right so it's um it's a brain problem I wouldn't say it's a Child Problem the brain will not pick up new habits because new habits are

22:01 uh over a period of time you know if I had a full room of parents you would be outweighted right now because all of us would have raised our hands and listen we've been doing this since they were 6 months old yeah and now when they're 15 the reminders are still going on I'll break it down F I'll tell you why but actionable that after when I go back home I can Implement absolutely so why and how how so why is it difficult let's

22:28 talk talk about that right the reason that a new habit the brain resists a habit or any demanding action is because of uh two things one is it's not their identity yet this is the most important one if it is your identity you will do it if it is a brain's identity that this is who I am then it is it's not even easy it is inevitable okay as long as it's not your identity is external the locus of

23:00 motivation or the source of motivation is external someone else is making me do it and that triggers all of your Rebellion uh ego issues drawing boundaries who are you to tell me all of those things will come in right because it's external somebody else is making you do it you are not a person who brushes every day that's number one number two is that doing an action from your prefrontal cortex because this is

23:30 an action that is not a habit yet is very cognitively exhausting say that again suppose if I were to tell you to talk to me while calculating the uh table of 17 okay so 17 into 1 17 into 17 so you have to do it in your head while talking to me okay I couldn't because the last one I missed because of that good so because that calculation is being

24:00 done by a prefrontal cortex you have to actively calculate it so anything that the prefrontal cortex actively has to do is exhausting yeah it takes energy yeah right but breathing is not being done by your prefrontal contacts it is being done by your primitive brain so it can go on in the background and there's no problem but if I were to tell you to focus on your breathing and keep focusing on your breathing while talking to me but don't

24:27 forget to focus on your breathing it becomes cognitively exhausting again because then it comes to your prefrontal context got it this is what happens when the child has to make themselves brush every day right it's exhausting they have to force themselves because it's not a habit yet so this is they would they now start associating that task with a cognitively exhausting one yeah and so they rebel against the task itself got it

24:58 M so this is the problem now how can we solve it yeah okay the way to solve this or the way to solve any habit creation is ideally it should become a habit it should become an identity but that comes later initially the immediate reward and the immediate punishment should be clear okay and both of them have to be kind of modulated did the reward has to

25:30 be just good enough and the punishment has to be just bad enough because if it is too much on either I know this is I'm listening I'm listening I'm trying to think and I realized the challenge is that every parent kind of needs to make this customized to their child yeah because what works as a punishment and what works as a reward for each child is different because of their particular brains but if the reward is good enough

25:58 and the punishment is just bad enough without creating a sense of too much threat right if it is in that zone then it is example so that my prefrontal cortex is not occupied of thinking of this and it doesn't seem like a task sure like for example I mean I'm trying to remember my own childhood um I used to love going to the club okay I should love playing in the swimming pool and all that we would go at 7 and if I don't

26:29 brush we don't go yeah got it it's as simple as that right so if I don't brush I don't get to go is that very cartin stick yeah and that's fine because that's very that's not the ideal scenario in the parenting space because then it is going to be a caran sck approach absolutely I don't think uh we need to think of it as um even carrot and steak it's just everyone needs a reason to do something mhm not just

26:58 children everyone needs a reason to do something right you're doing something for something now that can be either an immediate gain or a very long-term gain right so the reason why do you why do we brush every day so that our dental health is good so that much much later we don't get we don't have to go through unnecessary D can this has been communicated there's no impact what the long-term game exactly because they're not living in the long term because

27:25 their prefrontal cortex is not developed enough so expect a child to think about what will you do when you're 35 is is a lot you you can't do that right so everything is immediate because their brain is at that level of development and I don't think there's anything wrong in that um what is important though and I can't stress this enough that the sense of threat or rather the so quote unquote negative reinforcement I would always ER on the

27:57 side of not putting enough negative reinforcement because I'm The more I've the more I read about early development the more I realize that that sense of safety is extremely important and once that sense of safety is confirmed the child is not going to feel unsafe then you can experiment with levels of positive reinforcement then you can experiment with levels of punishment right even the punishment should be that the child should not have their core sense of

28:29 threat activated this is the key this is the key point of any new habit formation this is also the key point of resilience because that sense of safety is what allows you to explore that is what allows you to think outside the box allows you to be creative all of that depends on that core sense of safety right you know in one of your blogs I remember you've written that Neuroscience has taught you that the brain is pretty similar to Lego breaks M

28:58 um can you elaborate on that and I want to know what would the first couple of foundational bricks be and how would you kind of you know extrapolate that to to Childhood yeah the reason I thought of it that way is because um we tend to think of our brain our nervous system as one thing right as one system but it didn't evolve this way yeah so over billions of years each part of the nervous system evolved separately and

29:32 they got added on top of each other you know sort of like a building so each level that got added brought with it its own strengths and its own complexities and at no point have we gotten rid of those older Parts yeah so you could say that we still have a lot of evolutionary baggage yeah right so our fear of the dark for example right that is it's very deep yeah um or sugar

30:03 right I remember when I interviewed um Professor you all and uh he explained the concept of sugar so brilliantly in his book Unstoppable where he said the reason we crave sweet and is because it wasn't in abundance and because we were primitive and we were Hunters we would get those sweet or we would just get food so it was so much scarcity that the idea was to ho ho ho right and eat more than you could

30:30 consume because you don't know when you would get it next correct and that's kind of replicated back in the way we consume sugar because we don't know when are we going to get it next absolutely and not just that what is a core minimum level of sugar in fact what is sweet is not inherently coded in the brain yeah it's something that the environment teaches you m and the best example for this is um suppose you go of

30:58 sugar for a month zero sugar okay no fruits nothing zero sugar after that you drink plain milk or you drink coconut water and it will be the sweetest thing you've ever tasted wow because now our brain has rewired into realizing what is minimum sugar so our brain doesn't have an inherent uh sense of this is sweet mhm right it is very very subjective and because we are exposed to so much sugar

31:30 right from childhood and now that new report has come up that you know kids are being given so that core level of wiring is environmental uh we are not we don't need this much sugar we don't need this much calories and uh because of that earlier like you said the because of evolution in scarcity yeah we are not we have not adapted to abundance yet right right but it's it's while we're talking on the subject of sugar and food um you

32:01 you've obviously spoken a lot about food and its impact on the brain uh tell me more about why are what one what is the impact and the second is what foods are causing that level of impact and the third is how do we make the correction that the wrong is eliminated let's talk about the wrong first uh because I think that is far more important M than the right right

32:35 because our our body has evolved to deal with a a wide range of foods right but all of them made in a particular way uh so the wrong is more important and the wrong I would I would say is highly processed food that would be the main thing uh because whenever whenever we are dealing with highly processed food we are talking about a lot of trans fat uh food stuffs

33:06 fried in oil that has been reheated several times and that is a problem right so that in leads to Downstream effects in your body that leads to increased free radicals there are there are several Downstream effects of that A A good rule of thumb I would say is um anything anything that is prepackaged in a plastic container um unless there is no other way that would be something to avoid especially in

33:37 children uh so because that is that becomes the food that then our gut bacteria get used to that is what we consider as Baseline then and that Downstream will lead to more chances of binge eating that is the that is the flow chart as I see it anything that you are eating which is cooked fresh right and by fresh I mean even that day I know that a lot of working parents will cook in the morning they'll use that food in

34:06 I would still think that is okay because of modern refrigeration I think that's the the the quality of the food is still maintained but um prepackaged Foods um while there is more and more evidence coming out um I would say that we should I would recommend earing on the side of caution and going for as much Fresh Foods as possible I that could be fruits that could be freshly made vegetables um I wouldn't go more into what kind of

34:34 diet should you follow everyone has their own reasons for doing this but this is one thing that I'm I feel pretty strongly about right and again when we're speaking of sugar uh and its impact um we we don't what what really happens in terms of and that kind of causes that addiction and it's a silent addiction which you don't realize right like you're watching something and you'll be like I need to order this like what what's that connection that's happening

35:05 and how can the how can you train yourself to break that chain like okay I'm seeing this as a as as a video right now and I feel like ordering it immediately yeah and that's what your brain is feeling like I'm craving this like what's the signs to that and the stop there is one network that everyone should know about in the brain uh so in the brain stem which is the one of the most primitive parts of your

35:28 brain is around your neck uh there's a part called as the the midbrain and from there your a chemical called dopamine is released right and dopamine goes all over the brain yeah and at different levels of the brain it has different actions so in the lyic system is an area called nucleus acumin uh again a very primitive part and that is the part that deals with emotions so the nucleus acumin is very sensitive to dopamine so

35:56 whenever there is dopamine and it goes to nucleus accum it makes you happy MH you get pleasure out of that and because it is so sensitive and because it feels good our brain figured out that let me attach this network to anything that is evolutionarily good for me right so eating a high calorie diet dopamine attaches to nucleus equipments you feel good uh you take a risk and it works out that is good for evolution

36:28 now unfortunately it's one thing to do these things in the jungle but back in the day when we were you know monkeys but now in our modern world where you can order food in 5 minutes you can order a cake you can order ice cream you can go to a casino and you can gamble the same things are now activating that Network right and you're getting pleasure out of things that earlier never existed right right so this is the loop of ADD

36:58 all addiction acts on this same network now the issue is that once your self contr control drops and there's another Network for that uh which is based on a chemical called serotonin yeah so serotonin is like dopamine's elder brother so if there is serotonin it can calm the dopamine Network down and say relax it's fine you don't need to do this but if serotonin levels are low your threshold for activating that dopamine Network goes down so you will

37:30 crave that dopamine Spike more easily right now one of the times when serotonin is low is at night yeah when you're supposed to be sleeping but you're not at 2: a.m. serotonin levels are low that is the time when you will feel like binge eating you'll feel like uh mindlessness yes mindlessness let me watch Netflix let me let me do anything that makes me feel good in this moment right so that sense of recklessness comes in that moment right and once you

37:58 are Reckless you will reach out to the closest or easiest available source of dopamine whatever that is yeah and most of the times it's food got it the other things that can make you feel good is human contact hanging out with friends laughter all of that but there is more resistance to that it's not easily available easily food is right there right right it's in your pocket it's in your kitchen just reach out and you've solved for that problem right that is

38:24 why Bing eating happens also that brings me to my next question which is um you know when we're talking of the dopamine effect we're also talking of validation right first that validation was coming from immediate now it's coming from external and today children are obviously struggling with a whole bunch of anxiety and feeding off dopamine of someone else right in a way that you are not it's not it's not about oh I did this and I resisted this and I got this

38:54 and that gave me a dopamine Kake it's about the The Unwanted or the you know the inaccessible or living through somebody else's life um that's kind of I mean it's not giving you the kick it's in fact pulling you back but how are we um how are how are we going to Shield our children from this sort of um you know chaos that's actually going on in the brain yeah which is saying I want to lead this this is inaccessible how do I

39:24 get there and we've seen free cases of of um you know parents doing crazy things children doing crazy things to achieve the inaccessible yeah so again the reason that it developed is very logical earlier uh we say we were growing up in a village okay and in a small tribe of 500 people yeah now in order to get Social validation which is the people in your tribe telling you

39:56 that you are amazing you did something great is a lot of effort you have to actually go and do something pretty incredible or pretty useful to society and then they would validate you yeah and when they validate you you get a sense of safety which means now they're not going to kick me out of the tribe yeah you also get a sense of power which is now when I say things people will do things both of these are very valuable

40:21 for survival yeah and so the reason that somebody telling you good job is valuable is because of this so there is a dopamine Spike that comes when somebody validates you likes you yeah now that like is putting up a photo on Instagram you put up any photo just put a selfie and at least one person would like it two people will like it 100 if you have a lot of followers a thousand each like is a good job yeah

40:54 right so you want that because again our brain is still living in the jungle right our lyic system is still living in the jungle so our lyic system still thinks that oh this person is in my tribe and now they have validated me now they're not going to kick me out now because the effort and the reaction is so immediate and the effort is so minimum that now our brain can't calculate that this uh reaction is not

41:21 worth that much it's not worth that effort and so we chase that immediate thing yeah um it doesn't mean that validation is wrong M right every child every parent in fact should know that validation is great but earned validation over a period of time so after say for example I'll use my own example which is after I've done my uh when I cleared my MD medicine or I cleared my DM neurology when somebody wishes me and

41:50 congratulates me I feel like I've absolutely deserved it right I've worked for it I slogged for it I worked I I got it and you should congratulate me and that happiness feels earned yeah but um just putting up a post uh somebody like me I should know that those things are not the same right you have to give weightage to it the problem happens when you when you can't give the right weightage and you think that both of

42:15 these are equally good then you would end up making mistakes got it so long-term versus short-term it's again everything is about long-term versus shortterm got it and you know another thing that would be um interesting to talk about here is um teen troubles right like we were talking about this before what happens between the ages of 11 to 16 where they're in a stage of rebellion and as parents we find it really hard to

42:47 just get through like what's what's changing there so this is the Adolescent brain M so there is a child brain so say till 10 years of age and then 10 to you could say 18 or even 25 is the Adolescent brain the brain is changing and the change mainly happens in the prefrontal cortex that is when the prefrontal cortex is learning to control the lyic system mhm before that the lyic system is

43:19 pretty much in charge right uh a 5-year-old is pretty much in control of the lyic system is controlling you will see a five old throwing Tantrums throwing you know rolling on the floor crying because they didn't get a toy for him that is how the lyic system reacts around the Adolescent age the prefrontal cortex is developing and it is trying to control it it is trying to be logical but at the same time the way I see it

43:47 the way the narrative plays out in my head is the lyic is resisting mhm so there is ego there is demand for control and most people will feel that the fight is against the world right you know that you have to fight but most kids will feel like the fight is against my parents the fight is against yeah you know the outside world and we all know that once we are 30 you realize that oh the fight was

44:18 never with the world the fight was with myself yeah that is when the prefrontal cortex really matures and understands that all the fight that I was doing outs side was actually just to gain control over myself this is the journey that every brain goes through because that sense of fighting with oneself does not exist right in the Adolescent brain because it's not mature enough to understand that meta concept so a 10-year-old will look at the world from a single brain

44:49 everything is one to explain to a 10-year-old that there are two brains inside you there's a prefrontal there's a limic it's not possible they may may not understand it but the parent should understand this yeah absolutely right so when a child is acting out when a child is resisting the CH the parent should look at the child and understand that okay this is the lyic system the prefrontal cortex is not developed yet it will take its time so what are the

45:14 things that I can do to help the lyic system calm down and help the prefrontal cortex mature faster so these are two separate action items right and if you look at it from that framework I I believe it gives you a better sense of what is happening instead of looking at the child as just one brain acting out that's not the case the child is actually fighting against themselves they're trying to figure out their place in the world they're trying to figure

45:42 out what does having an identity mean they're figuring out who is my friend who is not their loyalties are changing and on top of all this there is sex hormones yeah at that age right so that whole network is scking in so there's a lot of conflict going on within themselves so everything that is coming out is a result of that conflict got it and um you know while we're while we're on this conversation another very

46:10 important thing that pops up is we seeing a lot of children um with a lot of disabilities mhm um as well it could be it could be dyslexia or we seeing a lot of children on the Spectrum right now with with autism and and parents often ask me and I and obviously I'm I'm uh I feel less equipped to answer that question what really went wrong or why did this happen like is there is there

46:41 something um that that we're missing or is this ex you know this extreme uh individualistic less social behavior causing more children to be on the Spectrum so this is a difficult topic because every brain uh processes information slightly differently right there's a there's a spectrum of how we process information but because there is neuroplasticity uh kids over a period of

47:13 time kind of learn to process information in a similar way but at the start they may all be seeing things very differently now there will be kids on the Spectrum who process information in a way that is different enough from quote unquote normal that we think this is a problem whether it is a problem or not is very individual to that kid and every parent who feels that their child is struggling with learning should get

47:44 their child evaluated properly right so uh a child psychiatrist or clinical child psychologist should look at their child and there are now tests to understand this much better what is interesting though is because of our understanding of Neuroscience now there are more and more solutions coming out right which are not MediCal they are they are behavioral so once you understand that a child is seeing say letters differently or numbers

48:16 differently uh now how can we use that information and teach the child to learn in that existing framework interesting instead of forcing the child to learn with our framework we can now learn how does a child learn and try to teach them in their language and hopefully the most important skill that a child needs to learn is how to learn right within their own framework how to learn what they learn is not that

48:48 important yeah it's not that important that they learn um multiplication or uh geography or history but they need to learn how to learn some new information in their own way once we teach them that the rest of the uh challenge becomes much easier they definitely need guidance uh it is very difficult for a parent to be able to do this entirely by themselves and um there are now more and more resources available for that but this

49:17 understanding of teaching the child in their language is key right and also you know when we're talking initially about um you know night and the ser T in and then we're talking you've spoken a lot on the cardian Rhythm as well yeah do babies come with a cardian rhythm because I'm sure not a lot of moms are going to agree because I know a lot of moms ask this question why do babies not sleep at night yeah like why do some mom

49:44 say I have a I have a night bird and I my child sleeps through the night and I my child just does not sleep at night like what what really happens there it is true that different children have different cardian rhythms yeah right that is true there are some children who sleep in the day some children who sleep at night um what happens is gradually brains reset into a fixed

50:14 cycle so the main hormone that we'll talk about is melatonin okay okay so melatonin is sort of the clock Setter in the brain because melatonin responds to light mhm so imagine again let's go back to the Jungle right before electricity um sunrise sunset as light comes up the light enters your eye it goes into the pineal gland melatonin comes out uh uh sorry melatonin goes down uh and your brain wakes up yeah at night when it's

50:49 dark there is no light coming into your eye melatonin goes up and it activates the Sleep Network right that is the sardian Rhythm this has Downstream effects on the rest of the body so right every organ in your body has a clock that responds to this Master Clock yeah right when a child is born um the mother's breast milk also has melatonin right so depending on the time at which the mother is feeding the baby the

51:18 mother's melatonin goes into the baby and that helps set the baby's uh cardian Rhythm right and so breast milk at night has more melatonin than breast milk in the morning right so it is important that this fact is important so say if you're expressing breast milk you have to also remember what time did you express it and try to give why parenting so hard I get it but you as a mother you're

51:48 just feeding on demand you're not thinking absolutely that so oh so you were saying if I'm feeding in the night the Melatonin is anyways lower um no if you're feeding on demand I'm saying if you're not expressing say if you're feeding on demand then your body is naturally increasing melatonin in your breast milk and so the baby is getting melatonin and that sets that helps to set the baby's Rhythm it doesn't happen overnight but over a

52:13 period of time the baby's brain becomes used to light and dark and and a large part of the babies today have formula fed so what happens there I I wouldn't I wouldn't Panic about it because eventually the baby's brain is capable of resetting that's the thing because of neuroplasticity brains can adapt it's fine brains can adapt I'm waiting for you to have a baby you know I I no no I was just touch with I was very very

52:42 lucky that I don't know what what it was I just say karma but both my kids slept through but I know parents who struggled and they've really got rakun eyes because of the first two years that child just wouldn't sleep absolutely and I'm I would never ever say that it's not a challenge right I wouldn't even say that knowing all this will now solve your problems yeah I don't think that is the purpose of Neuroscience yeah I think

53:07 that the purpose of Neuroscience is to understand why something is happening and if we are lucky enough maybe there's a solution for it right but just knowing what is happening why is it happening and is this okay yeah or should I ask for more help right I think Neuroscience can solve that much currently right so at no point would I pretend that oh if I have a child it's going to be I'm not saying that what I'm trying to say is

53:36 that you know these are all checkboxes that you're filling but I mean that baby has just come with his own mind and he refuses to kiding um you know refuses to tame down so I'm I'm just trying to think like you know what are the check boxes that are missing that a parent is not filling in that they they still need to go through um that of the struggle um but it's very interesting that you that

54:00 you know I mean every every day I just keep learning so much about this like whether it's the gut microbiome which is formed with breast milk or now the Melatonin which is in you know which is also being pair through the yeah I would stress upon the importance of light though yeah for me that is the key that is the most natural way of regulating a cardian rhythm so just being aware not just for babies actually even for us

54:24 just being aware of how much light we are exposed to at night me all the time and help them navigate the battle that they help they're actually having with themselves every single day absolutely thank you so much for having me the one thing that I would like to leave people listening is um the brain is constantly changing MH so your child at 5 years is not your child at 10 is not your child at 15 not your child at 20 and it

54:53 doesn't stop that's not your child at 25 30 35 at every every few years your brain adapts to new things changes and so many times we are not able to calculate long term the brain is not able to think of how can this compound over time so we would tend to overreact on immediate things yeah that this one thing is the best thing that's ever happened or the worst thing that's ever happen this has solved my child's all

55:22 future problems or now nothing can uh nothing good good can ever come after this you know we go into extremes because a parents brain is not very different they are also dealing with the same limic problems as anyone else so there is a sense of you know extreme emotions especially to do with children right but with time and with neuroplasticity incredible things happen right so just give it time I would say that that is very very important because

55:52 everything does change with time right Dr Sid we can't let you go without telling us or sharing with us some neuroscience and you know there's there's so much conversation on biohacking at the moment so if you want to give us like few actionable ways of actually navigating through that Absolutely I'll give you um few things that I do yeah uh so the the problem that most people are facing now is one of concentration right there's so many distractions going

56:19 around so you're not able to focus on anything for Beyond 2 minutes now yeah so the reason that we not able to focus is because like I said at the start our brain is constantly exploring yeah always and when you're trying to read a book and your phone is next to you and the phone pings now your attention has shifted away from your book to your phone you are always thinking of what is my friend doing what is what is

56:45 happening at work what is what is happening at home so this sense of exploration is a heightened sympathetic State yeah you are in a way it's a sign of threat right because the reason that you're exploring is because back in the jungle you were looking for Predators right always you are always looking to see if there is any you know uh any any bush is moving is there any rustling of the grass oh is there a

57:15 tiger there that is why you're at a heightened state of attention in order to focus you need to calm down and by calming down I mean switching your body from sympathetic to parasympathetic MH so one hack that I use now is suppose if you have to focus suppose you have to study from 10 to 10:30 before starting to study try to go into parasympathetic before it's like sleeping don't directly go from bright light to dark don't directly jump from a

57:47 heightened state of sympathetic to a state of focus it's not possible your brain is struggling Take 2 minutes just take deep breaths for even six breaths and you'll find you're able to focus so much better because every deep breath pushes your body into parasympathetic more and more so there are couple of ways in which you can do this for me the best thing is four to five breaths a minute so you have to slow down your

58:17 breathing so that each breath LS for around 10 seconds you do this for 1 minute and then you start studying you you will find that or whatever work you're doing you'll find that you're able to focus much better number one the second hack that you should do is be aware of where your eyes are flickering to just become aware of it and you will realize that your eyes are constantly flickering even when you're reading a book even when you're trying to study

58:47 work your eyes are flickering all over the place once you become aware of that understand that that is a sign of heightened sympathetic State mm M practice fixing your eyes at a point M the more you do that the longer you can fix your eyes to a particular point the more you get to control that sympathetic State and you'll find it easier to focus right these two things are something that everyone can practice so in fact

59:17 the earlier you start practicing this the better right so training kids to do this is a great exercise everyone should try this at home right and there's no harm in doing this so you should absolutely do it before starting to study just do this two exercises for 5 minutes and you'll find a difference the third thing is the importance of sleep if you have not slept your body is in chronic sympathetic State again going back to the Jungle why

59:46 would you not sleep because you are under attack because sleeping is too risky you are not in a safe space there are you know threats around you so when you sleep is when you are most vulnerable yeah so if you've not slept your brain is convinced that you are in a hostile area and you have to be very alert right so you're very aware of everything going on around you you cannot focus sleep better sleep is the one

60:15 thing that fixes your body and we are in a society of chronic sleep deprivation right all of us adults kids everyone so the importance of good sleep cannot be overstated it's many hundred times more important than brushing so we the amount of stress we put on brushing is U much more than we put on sleep but good sleep is probably the most important thing you can do more important than diet more important than exercise they're all

60:43 important but good sleep is the one thing that you should stress on because that is when your body goes into parasympathetic interesting so that would be the third thing great thank you so so very much this was incredible for parenting tips celebrity interviews recipes conversations with experts DIYs and lots more subscribe to kid stop press now