Sana Qadar: Hey, it's Sana Qadar from All in the Mind. This is Mind Hacks, our brand new midweek mini-pod where we try and get some tips and tricks and hacks from the experts we speak to about what they do to look after their own mental health. So we ask a few specific questions, kind of in the vibe of the game eff, marry, kill, but we're way politer, we're asking love, hate, avoid. And this week we have Professor Joel Pearson from the University of New South Wales. He's a cognitive neuroscientist and the director of the Future Minds Lab at UNSW. We had him on our main show this week talking about AI and how that's changing our brains and whether it might be causing cognitive atrophy. So if you want to listen to that, scroll back in your podcast feed. But for now, Mind Hacks. Here we go.
Sana Qadar: So I'm going to ask you four questions. First one is love, and the question is, what is one mental health tool, strategy, or practice or piece of advice that has made a real difference to you in your life?
Joel Pearson: I'm going to say two, so I'm going to break the rules. Exercise and sauna.
Sana Qadar: Exercise and sauna?
Joel Pearson: Yes.
Sana Qadar: Okay, I feel like everyone is probably going to say exercise, but tell me about the sauna.
Joel Pearson: Oh, I get a tremendous mood boost from the sauna. It's almost like a version of exercise you can do while you sit still, I find.
Sana Qadar: So the perfect kind of exercise?
Joel Pearson: Yeah, but it does other things as well. It reduces heat shock proteins and it does get your heart rate up. So last year we got a sauna at home, and so I'll try and use that when I can if I'm not up for exercise. Or in the evenings after the kids have gone to bed, I'll go and hit the sauna. And that is, for whatever reason, if you can't do exercise, hit the sauna and you'll get a similar mood boost.
Sana Qadar: How long do you spend in there?
Joel Pearson: I don't think time or temperature is a way to think about it. So I have wearables where I'll go off my heart rate and discomfort. So if you're going to use the sauna, it depends what the temperature is, but also most importantly what your internal temperature is when you go in there. If you've been to the gym, if you've been running or doing exercise beforehand, your internal temperature is already really high, so you don't need to spend as much time in there. So you want to go off heart rate, get your heart rate up to the point where you feel that discomfort. So go off that feeling of discomfort and your heart rate rather than just time, because half an hour going in cold is not the same as half an hour going in hot.
Sana Qadar: Good advice. Okay, hate. What is the biggest stressor in your life currently and how are you managing it?
Joel Pearson: Probably right now and on and off over the years, it is stress or anxiety. It gets me and it will periodically come up and down. And because I have this weird thing where I love stimulation, I love nicotine and caffeine, I love things that stimulate. I love this source of energy, so I'll tend to lean into those things too often sometimes and then I'll go too far and it'll push me over the edge into this sort of stressed anxiety state. And so I don't like that, but at the same time I kind of like it just a nudge or two before that critical level. And so the state I like to be in is a really flexible state where I can be switched on and take on stress and anxiety, but then find a way to rapidly recover afterwards. So if you think about this, up and down and up and down, because the worst thing I can do or anyone can do is get stuck in that high stress state. And so I don't like the feeling of anxiety, but I like the feeling of energy and stimulation and being hugely excited about things. And sometimes all those things can come together and push me over the top, and then I have to pull back on all those things and quiet my life down, do more exercise, more sauna, take more supplements and different kinds of food that will slow me down and relax me.
Sana Qadar: It's like a balancing scale.
Joel Pearson: Yeah, it is.
Joel Pearson: And I think that's the best, if you look at animals in the wild, then they will have a few minutes of life or death and then they'll, like a tiger or a lion, then they'll just lay around doing nothing for the rest of the day. So there's this peak, and it's the same with people at the Olympics, the Winter Olympics is on right now, where they'll want to go hard, high stress, high performance, and then recovery and just do nothing almost for a number of hours.
Sana Qadar: Okay, avoid. What is one mental health practice or trend or gimmick that you think people would be better off treating with caution and why?
Joel Pearson: There are certain things that people have said, I don't want to, no, I shouldn't name names.
Sana Qadar: Go on, name names.
Joel Pearson: I mean, there's so much reward for certain influences to say certain, you know, biohacky things that can change your life and do this.
Sana Qadar: Precisely why we asked this question.
Joel Pearson: Yeah, and so what happens is people will map out, and some of the best people in the business do this sometimes, and they'll find a thing that works in a rat model or in a mouse model or an animal model, and then they'll translate that to humans and then give that as human advice, where that hasn't been tested in humans. And sometimes it will translate, but other times it won't. So that's why going from animal research to human research is important, because humans are very different to rodents. And so, also the body's really complicated. And so one idea would be that, you know, you need to wait a number of hours before you have coffee in the morning. So this is a popular thing going around. And as far as I have been able to find, there's not that much information to support that. There are components in the research that would support that in theory, whether that all comes together in the human body and says that, you know, if you wait two hours before having coffee in the morning, you will have more energy in the afternoon, is what certain people have said. I haven't seen any human evidence to support that. So there are situations like that.
Sana Qadar: So free pass to have coffee whenever you want in the morning (both laugh).
Joel Pearson: I think so. Yeah, yeah, go to town.
Sana Qadar: Cool. All right, the final question is, what is the biggest thing that people get wrong about your work? Is there any misconceptions you'd like to clear up?
Joel Pearson: Hmm, well, two, when I talk, I've written a book about intuition, I talk about intuition a lot, and they'll just take me to, depending on who they are, they'll either take me to say that intuition is amazing and you should use it all the time, or take the other side of the coin where they're saying I'm destroying the magic and spirituality of intuition by making it scientific. And then when it comes to AI, people will think I'm coming to talk about AI. I'm going to teach them how to use, how does AI work? How do you teach AI things? How should they use AI? But I'm talking about the AI revolution and its human impact and societal disruption and the psychology around AI. So there's that confusion there sometimes.
Sana Qadar: And if people want to learn more about your work on intuition, we had you on our episode about intuition and gut instinct. We will link to it in our show notes.
Joel Pearson: Sounds good.
Sana Qadar: Thanks Joel.
Joel Pearson: Pleasure.