The Surprising Power of Silence & How to Overcome Your Cravings - SYSK Choice

Speaker 1 Today, on something you should know, why the next time you need to make a decision, you might want to wait till you have to go to the bathroom. Then, the power of silence.

Speaker 1 It's magical because we live in a very noisy world.

Speaker 2 One way we know that is we look to emergency sirens. So, in the past hundred years, those sirens have gotten six times louder in order to cut through the noise around us.

Speaker 2 The estimates that 65% of the population, about 450 million people, live with decibel levels that are harmful to their health.

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Speaker 1 Something you should know. Fascinating intel, the world's top experts, and practical advice you can use in your life today.

Speaker 1 Something you should know with Mike Carruthers.

Speaker 1 Man,

Speaker 1 this is going to sound weird to start off this episode, but

Speaker 1 if you need to make a decision,

Speaker 1 wait until you have to go to the bathroom. Research published in Science Daily says people make better decisions when they have a full bladder.

Speaker 1 That's because when the mind is struggling to restrain a bodily function, it's easier for us to exert self-control in other areas.

Speaker 1 The authors of the study explained that when you're preoccupied with thoughts of finding the closest bathroom, your ego is in check.

Speaker 1 You're much less likely to overthink things or give into unrelated impulses. Consequently, the decisions you make are simple and efficient and more likely to be right on the mark.

Speaker 1 And that is something you should know.

Speaker 1 You may not realize it, but we live in a very noisy world that keeps getting noisier. And that's not an especially good thing.

Speaker 1 When was the last time you truly got to experience silence? Total silence. It turns out to be really good for you.
And all that noise, not so good for you. And it's more than just that.

Speaker 1 The sounds we hear have a real impact on our health and our well-being. Noise can affect your mood, your relationships, how well you think.
It has all sorts of ramifications.

Speaker 1 And it's easy to brush it off and say well it's just noise but i invite you to take a few moments and listen to lee mars she is a consultant and coach and co-author of a book called golden the power of silence in a world of noise hey lee welcome to something you should know

Speaker 1 hey thanks for having me mike so i think everyone has heard the phrase silence is golden and and and there was a hit record in the 60s called silence is golden by the tremolos

Speaker 1 and I think there's this general belief that silence is good, that in the right situation, silence can be very profound and

Speaker 1 just good for you. I'm not sure how or why, but I think there's a belief in that.
But why?

Speaker 1 Why is silence good? And maybe an even better first question would be:

Speaker 1 what is silence? I mean, is silence a thing or is silence the absence of something?

Speaker 2 Oh, that's a great question.

Speaker 2 Well, on one level, it really is the absence of noise, and we look at it coming, the noise coming to us through our ears and through our screens in many cases, and also the noise that's just generated by our own darn minds.

Speaker 2 But as we explore this question, the deepest silences, when we asked all those interesting people, neuroscientists, politicians, artists, poets, a man incarcerated on death row, all kinds of people, we asked them that question, and they pointed us towards a deep internal silence.

Speaker 2 So it's not necessarily just about what's happening outside of us, although that's also a lovely type of silence, but a silence internal that brings about a type of presence

Speaker 2 where we believe there can be healing and enjoyment and connection and all kinds of things.

Speaker 1 And you believe that because why? Because you want to believe that or you have real evidence to believe that?

Speaker 2 Well, it's not so much that we're researchers studying that, but what we are doing in our work in the world is, for example, I work with a lot of scientists and engineers who are trying to get harmful toxic chemicals out of our products and out of our environment and they were coming at these issues these you know really complex and intractable issues in a certain way in the four walls of their offices and under fluorescent lighting and all these things but we took them out into the redwoods and really contemplating these issues with big open space and open calendars and no wi-fi And they really came to some novel thinking, breakthrough thinking.

Speaker 2 So really time and time and again, I am seeing the results of people tapping into silence, connecting with one another in a different way

Speaker 2 to come through that breakthrough thinking.

Speaker 1 In your definition of silence, is it all

Speaker 1 audio? Because like when you say we went out to the redwoods, to me, that's also like a visual silence. Like you're getting away from the clutter of your life and you're seeing something.

Speaker 1 It isn't nothing, but it's very peaceful.

Speaker 2 Yeah,

Speaker 2 the taxonomy of noise we take on in this, and we could take on visual and things like that, but we kept it to auditory noise, that which happens in our ears and the decibel levels, which has been exponentially on the rise, in case you're wondering.

Speaker 2 And the research really does bear that out.

Speaker 1 So let's talk about that.

Speaker 1 Because that's something that, because it's so

Speaker 1 gradual, I think, that people don't. realize that, but the world is getting louder.
Yes. And how do we know that?

Speaker 2 Yeah, it feels like it's getting louder, and it really is getting louder. So one way we know that is we look to emergency sirens

Speaker 2 indicator for the surrounding environments, because of course they need to cut through the din in order to get our attention.

Speaker 2 So, in the past hundred years, to your point, it's been gradual, but those sirens gotten six times louder in order to cut through the noise around us.

Speaker 2 And we do a better job measuring decibel levels in Europe overall than we do in the United States.

Speaker 2 But the estimates from the World Health Organization is that 65% of the population, about 450 million people, live with decibel levels that are harmful to their health.

Speaker 2 So on that auditory level, it is definitely getting louder. But we also thought it was important to look at information.

Speaker 2 So in 2010, the past CEO of Google, Eric Schmidt, estimated that every two days we listen to as much information as we did from the dawn of civilization to 2003.

Speaker 2 So we are taking in, the studies show, about five times as much information as we did just a generation ago.

Speaker 2 So there's just this overwhelming amount of information being generated and that we're trying to take in on a day-to-day level.

Speaker 2 And that, we believe, actually increases our internal chatter, our internal noise.

Speaker 2 So Ethan Cross, a professor at the University of Michigan, estimates that we listen to something like 320 State of the Union addresses of internal compressed speech every day.

Speaker 2 So our concern is with all this auditory, informational, and internal noise that we're really not able to tune into what is most important to us in our lives, our relationships, our work, and our purpose for being here.

Speaker 1 So, you mentioned a moment ago that all this noise, all this

Speaker 1 chatter that we have to turn the sirens up louder to get over is harmful to our health. Well, how so?

Speaker 1 Because I think people have a sense, just a sense without knowing anything, that quiet is nice and it's probably better than lots and lots of noise, but how do we know it's health-related?

Speaker 2 We know this through different studies, which look at not just the harm that comes to us in the ears.

Speaker 2 You know, certainly hearing loss is a serious issue that can lead to isolation and things, but it actually is also tied to cardiovascular disease, to diabetes, to loss of sleep, and all of the downstream effects of loss of sleep as well.

Speaker 2 So there's a lot of science coming out. Initially, we looked at silence as more of a control variable.
So the other side of that is the benefits of silence.

Speaker 2 So it used to be that silence was sort of where we considered a baseline to return to, but now it's actually showing in all these studies where they look at different inputs, say like pup sounds or music, classical music or silence as a control variable or so on, that silence actually leads to growth of neurons in the brain, in the hippocampus, in the area associated with memory.

Speaker 1 I've had the experience, being in the business I'm in, of being in walking into certain recording studios, radio studios that are very well built. And

Speaker 1 that silence is different than the silence that you hear just because you turn everything off.

Speaker 1 It is a profound silence that is deafening almost. And it feels good.

Speaker 1 It's like, wow, that's really, it's just very relaxing. and,

Speaker 1 and it's an amazing experience if you've never had it.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I had that experience also walking into my brother's sound studio, and I noticed it wasn't just like what was happening in my ears, but what it was happening in my nervous system. I just felt

Speaker 1 calmer.

Speaker 2 So it is a delicious experience to try to seek out if you can.

Speaker 2 Not all of us have a sound studio or an anechoic chamber available to us, but those who have really report to to that being an extraordinary experience of sound being so different.

Speaker 2 The refracted sounds are being absorbed in those rooms. That's why it's so different.

Speaker 1 Well, I do love that experience. And it's not only a lack of sound, it's a feeling.

Speaker 1 You feel that silence. You not only hear it.

Speaker 2 Yeah, there's a great story of John Cage, the famous composer, who walking into an anechoic chamber. You know, he was very excited about silence as a musician.

Speaker 2 He certainly understood the importance of silence, the silence between the notes that makes music what it is. So he walked into this anechoic chamber in Harvard University.

Speaker 2 And when he got in there, he heard two sounds, a high-pitched sound and a low-pitched whooshing.

Speaker 2 And so he stepped outside again after a while and asked the engineer, well, wait a minute, that room wasn't silent at all. I heard this high-pitched, I heard this low-pitch.

Speaker 2 And the engineer said, ah, the high is your nervous system, and the low is your blood in circulation.

Speaker 2 So we ask this question, is there even really a thing as silence, as pure silence in a world that is vibrating and whooshing and whirling? And the answer is probably not.

Speaker 2 But there is an experience of silence, an experience of our attention being able to put it where we want it, where we intend it.

Speaker 1 And so what about, because there's silence, And there's noise, but there's also sound.

Speaker 1 And to me, I don't know how you define it, but sound would be something that you isn't noise, isn't chatter, isn't objectionable. It's what you want.
It's music or whatever.

Speaker 1 And even a lot of people who meditate meditate to music. People who study meditate or study to music.
And as if that's, well, I don't know why people do that.

Speaker 1 Why do people do that?

Speaker 2 Well, you're right in that when we're talking about noise, we're talking about unwanted distractions. So that is different from sound or certainly music and things like that.

Speaker 2 It's also different on the informational level from data, which is neutral. You know, we like data.
Or internally, it's also different from thought, which we also enjoy.

Speaker 2 So the distinction is that unwanted distraction.

Speaker 1 We're talking about silence and why it's so good for you. My guest is Leigh Mars.
She's co-author of a book called Golden, The Power of Silence in a World of Noise.

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Speaker 1 So, Lee, how much silence is enough? Is it just the more the better? I mean, you can't sit in the room for 24 hours and have all silence.

Speaker 1 So, when do you start to see the benefits or see the bad effects of noise deteriorate with how much silence?

Speaker 2 Well, we wrote this book not for the people who can run off to retreats for six months at a time. We really wrote this book for people looking for silence in their noise-soaked, full lives.

Speaker 2 And we argue that you can find those micro-moments, and those micro-moments for finding quiet can make a big difference.

Speaker 2 So, that can be even when you find yourself stuck in a long line unexpectedly, or maybe you're commuting and your radio or podcast goes out, that you could actually welcome that silence,

Speaker 2 sink into it, and take advantage of that unstructured time and that open space to just not have information again coming in to you all the time, but to just appreciate the openness of that.

Speaker 2 But is there a sense of you really optimally should have so many hours of silence every day or no one's done that study no one's really doing that study and so we say like do the study yourself notice notice what really the difference is so the signals in the body that tell us that we are saturated by noise are different for each one of us but i'll tell you mine for example i notice a clinching in my jaw when i'm feeling saturated by noise i'll notice an irritability with those i love most i confess and i'll notice that i start to kind of lose track of things i'm repeating tasks or, you know, going back over.

Speaker 2 Things are falling through the cracks. So that's when I'm saturated with noise.
Those are the signals. That's the evidence, if you will.

Speaker 2 And then when I am actually getting enough quiet, what I'll notice is that my creative thinking is much more amplified. I'm more generous with myself, with my time, with others.

Speaker 2 I do more favors for people. I just feel more abundance in life.

Speaker 2 And so for each of us, it's to look at really what are the signals that we're saturated by noise and how can we take care of that, maybe turn down the dial a bit.

Speaker 2 And what are the signals that we are finding the silence that we need and require to really be the kind of person that we want to be in this world?

Speaker 1 So I get that silence has its benefits, but it also seems sometimes that when you're sitting in silence,

Speaker 1 you can start to ruminate and think about problems and things. And that really what you want to do is distract yourself

Speaker 1 with maybe music or a podcast like this one. So you're not ruminating and thinking about your own problems as opposed to just sitting in total silence.

Speaker 2 Well, it's like, I think we think of it as sort of it's the place to start

Speaker 2 because in this noise-soaked environment where it is so loud and jarring and the impact of that on our health is, you know, is without without question as with the science we lay it out.

Speaker 2 And then the desire to get into a place of a quieter internal state, it just doesn't require absolute silence on the outside. Although that could help, that does help some.

Speaker 2 But you mentioned for yourself, it's maybe a little better to have a soundtrack or a podcast or a different place to focus.

Speaker 2 And so, we're just trying to create a little bit more space for the ways that we find that internal silence that is so nourishing to us, that helps us get clear on what it is we care most about, where we put our energies, and what is true in our life.

Speaker 2 And that could be in a loud environment. Like I said, sort of like in my dance studio,

Speaker 2 that's how it is. It's loud, but I'm quiet.

Speaker 1 When you think about it, when there's a problem, when there's conflict, the tendency is to talk more about it, to argue about it.

Speaker 1 And maybe

Speaker 1 a little silence would help rather than trying to hammer it out.

Speaker 2 The Quakers have been doing that for hundreds of years. When there's a sense of polarity or positionality or rigidity in a meeting, the clerk will call for silence.

Speaker 2 And in that silence, an answer will come, some resolution.

Speaker 2 And so even if it means like, you know, taking a break from that problem at hand, sleeping on it for a night and coming back together, just giving a little space to it, clarity can come through that place.

Speaker 1 I wonder why people don't seek this out just on their own, that because it does tend to feel good and relax you and make you sharper, why we don't tend to gravitate to this just because.

Speaker 2 I know. If silence is so good for us, why aren't we doing more of it?

Speaker 2 There's a few answers to that. I mean, there might be some things that we're

Speaker 2 uncomfortable with or not wanting to face about our lives or behavior or whatever the way things are going that make it challenging.

Speaker 2 And certainly, Nietzsche spoke of that years, hundreds of years ago, the horror of the vacuum. So, and my teenager will tell you, awkward silence is the worst thing under the sun to go through.

Speaker 2 So, there's, I think, some nervousness and varying degrees of fear. So it's not just our personal choices that we're not, you know, choosing silence when it's so clearly good for us.

Speaker 2 It's also we have systems that are driving towards more content and data, whether it's eyeballs on a page and click through the

Speaker 2 pristine attention is valued at zero our time playing with children or looking at art or walking through nature. But if we're clicking through and eyeballs on a page, it's being valued by GDP.

Speaker 2 And so

Speaker 2 we're set up, the system is set up to make noise. So it's not just our own personal

Speaker 2 failings here. There are things we can do to bring more silence to our lives, but there's also a system that's driving us towards making more and more noise.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Well, again, there's not a lot of money in silence.

Speaker 2 Apparently not.

Speaker 2 But there is a lot of value,

Speaker 2 which takes us back to that silent, that silence is golden. So speech is silver.
Silence is golden is that aphorism that shows up in cultures all over the world.

Speaker 2 And the polymath, Thomas Carlyle, he liked to think of that as speech is of time, silences of eternity.

Speaker 1 But what you said a moment ago that silence is scary,

Speaker 1 that rings true to me, that awkward silence, that somebody's got to be talking if there's two people together because you can't have...

Speaker 1 silence. That's something odd about that.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I think for many of us,

Speaker 2 it's a new terrain. and yet it's pretty old technology if you think about it, just allowing for space for people to be together.
There's certainly cultures that value that more.

Speaker 2 We look at Japanese ancient principle called Ma, where the empty space is seen as pure potentiality.

Speaker 2 So the kanji character is a temple gate with slats through it, and there's golden sunlight pouring through those slats. That's the kanji character of ma.

Speaker 2 So this the synonym of silence, it's a synonym for silence, for emptiness, but pure potentiality, which is found in the artwork of, say, ikibana flower arrangements where the petals and the and the leaves of the art piece are as in are important and featured, but so is the silence around that, the emptiness around that.

Speaker 2 Or in scroll painting, the swoosh of the brushstroke is what's the center of the scroll, but the empty space around it is also of equal importance.

Speaker 2 And we find that in conversation, there's more emptiness and more space to reflect. So it really trickles throughout the culture.

Speaker 1 Well, that's true, too, here. I mean, you know, there aren't too many people that are,

Speaker 1 it's your good friends that you can sit in a room with and each read a book or do your own thing and not feel compelled to

Speaker 1 chat. You know,

Speaker 1 there's something very comforting about that.

Speaker 2 Absolutely.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 One of my favorite things is to share silence because silence is magnified when it's shared.

Speaker 2 What I mean by that is that there's something inherently close to sharing silence, something that creates an intimacy in that space.

Speaker 2 And of course, when we think about rituals and ceremonies, often those moments of shared silence are, they feel pretty transformational. It's a little hard to explain.

Speaker 2 It's a little bit in the realm of the ineffable. But what I notice in those shared moments of like a wedding or even a funeral or something, when there's just some silence where

Speaker 2 the collective is holding that silence together. It's not just, it's not just, I don't know, the poignancy of the importance of that moment, the sacredness of that moment is shared.

Speaker 2 And I feel like we come out different people with a different sense of connection.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that's, see, that's really interesting, that group silence

Speaker 1 at an important event like that. You know, that's why people have, you know, we're going to have a moment of silence.
And

Speaker 1 there's something very moving about that.

Speaker 2 Yeah, it's an old technology. This is not a new hack.
We've been doing this for a long time.

Speaker 2 And our argument is really just we need to bring a little bit more space in for more silence. We've swung a little too far in one direction.
Let's swing it back.

Speaker 1 Well, it's interesting.

Speaker 1 This is, I think, the first time on this podcast the topic has been not about something, but about the lack of something, that silence is that lack of noise and the power that's really in that silence.

Speaker 1 I've been talking to Lee Mars. She is a consultant and coach and co-author of a book called Golden, The Power of Silence in a World of Noise.
And there's a link to that book in the show notes.

Speaker 1 Thanks, Lee. Appreciate you sharing this.

Speaker 2 Oh, thanks, Mike.

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Speaker 1 I'm sure you get food cravings. I crave Thai food sometimes.
And chocolate, sometimes Mexican food, and a few other things.

Speaker 1 Anyone who's had a craving knows a craving can be very powerful. But what is a craving? It's kind of like hunger, but it's very specific hunger.
So how is it different from just being plain hungry?

Speaker 1 And perhaps more importantly, what can you do to curb those cravings and maybe even prevent them so they don't sabotage your diet? Here to discuss all of this is Amy Shaw.

Speaker 1 Amy is a board-certified medical doctor and nutrition expert with training from Cornell, Columbia, and Harvard.

Speaker 1 And she's author of a book called I'm So Effing Hungry, Why We Crave What We Crave and What to Do About It. Hi, Amy.
Welcome to Something You Should Know.

Speaker 3 Thank you so much for having me.

Speaker 1 My sense is that a craving,

Speaker 1 hungry is when you're hungry and you want to eat something, and a craving is you're hungry and you want to eat ice cream or brownies or something very specific. Is that a fair definition?

Speaker 3 Yeah, I definitely think that that's one definition.

Speaker 3 I think even clearer to me is that it's two separate areas in the brain, in fact, working independently of each other, meaning that you could be hungry without activating the cravings area of your brain, and you could be craving something without actually being hungry at all.

Speaker 1 Really? That seems...

Speaker 1 That seems weird. It seems like every time I've ever had a craving, it's because I was really hungry I, and I wanted that particular thing.

Speaker 3 Well, I'll give you an example.

Speaker 3 Say you finished a beautiful dinner. You have eaten all the things.

Speaker 3 When the check comes and they say, oh, did you guys want any dessert? And everyone at the table looks at each other and they're like, oh, I'm full. But kind of do want to look at the dessert menu.

Speaker 3 You know, it's like, you kind of want to see what's on there. That's cravings.

Speaker 3 That's like you want that dopamine release in your brain that would come from chocolate or ice cream or, you know, some kind of dessert-like item that even though you're full, you're willing to order something that will give you that feeling.

Speaker 1 And so, what is that? Because I've been in that situation where I've been at a table and the waiter comes over and says, do you want to see the dessert menu? And I have no interest.

Speaker 1 But other times I think, well, that sounds pretty good. Let's take a look.
So what's the difference?

Speaker 3 Our brain will want something that creates a dopamine release. And it depends on so many different things.

Speaker 3 But in general, our brain loves the feeling of a dopamine release that comes from either food or enjoyment, like, you know, going to something that you really enjoy.

Speaker 3 Gambling and gaming kind of fits in that category where you get a release of dopamine by doing that activity. Sometimes it's a matter of, have I done it before and now my brain wants more of it.

Speaker 3 It's related to stress. It's related to what else has happened in your day.

Speaker 2 I'll give you this example.

Speaker 3 Dopamine in our brain is created this pathway. This cravings pathway is created to keep us going back for more.

Speaker 3 So if you've had a big dessert and you had a great dopamine explosion in your brain, what your brain will do is like say, oh, I want that again. That's the dopamine pathway.

Speaker 3 It's like, it's pleasure mixed with motivation to try to get it again. And it's our,

Speaker 3 it's a pathway that probably was created, we think, to keep us motivated to, you know, find more housing, to procreate, to find more food.

Speaker 3 So body does not want you to give up once you've found a beautiful food source. It wants you to keep coming back for more.

Speaker 3 And so dopamine, the cravings pathway is a dopamine pathway that will keep you coming back for more. And that's what gambling is.
That's what gaming is. That's what desserts do for you.

Speaker 3 That's what processed foods do.

Speaker 1 And when you don't want to give into those cravings, you resist it. And resisting a craving can be very difficult and often ends in failure.

Speaker 3 Instead of resisting your cravings, start retraining your cravings.

Speaker 3 Start retraining yourself so that you don't have to seek out that late-night dessert, that the alcohol, the drugs, the gambling, all of that.

Speaker 3 So, I talk about like a five-step plan, but the number one thing is changing the way you eat.

Speaker 3 So, we now know that our gut bacteria is very responsible for sending signals to the brain about when we're full, when we need more, when we're craving.

Speaker 3 So, getting that gut bacteria to feel full itself, to be happy, happy, is the number one goal. Eating the right foods, foods that the gut bacteria love,

Speaker 3 will help you send signals to the brain that you're full.

Speaker 1 And those foods are?

Speaker 3 Number one is fiber. So probiotic and prebiotic fiber.
Number two is polyphenols. These are the brightly colored fruits and vegetables and spices, teas and chocolate.

Speaker 3 Number three is high amino acid foods. So these are your high protein foods that really signal to the brain that you're feeling satisfied and full.

Speaker 3 Number four is dopamine-producing foods. So, like I mentioned, cravings pathway is due to your body wanting a dopamine release.

Speaker 3 And there are foods that you can be eating to raise your bason levels of dopamine. Number five is omega-3 fatty acid-rich foods.

Speaker 3 These are things like salmon and nuts, and these also trigger something called CCK, which is cholecystokinine, is a satiation hormone.

Speaker 3 And number six is glucosinolates. Glucosinolates are a plant compound found in cruciferous vegetables like broccoli, cauliflower, kale, cabbage.

Speaker 3 They are full of this glucosinolate compound that tell the gut bacteria or feed the gut bacteria and then in turn the gut bacteria tell the body that we're full.

Speaker 1 But when people crave stuff,

Speaker 1 is it typically

Speaker 1 sweet?

Speaker 3 It can be sweet or it can be savory. Remember, there's people who love French fries and they would have those over any kind of sweet.

Speaker 3 So salt, sugar, and fat are the three things that people typically crave. And the thing is, Mike, is that food companies know this? Food companies know the science that we're talking about right now.

Speaker 3 They know how to rewire our brains to have the most explosive dopamine release from their foods.

Speaker 3 So what they do is they figure out: okay, if we put this much salt, this much sugar, this much fat, we could actually create a food that would be so craveable that people would keep coming back for more.

Speaker 3 And that's literally

Speaker 3 the problem with the food industry today is that they're creating foods that would never have this combination in nature. They're creating foods that are so cravable

Speaker 3 that whether we're hungry or not, we're going to go after those foods. And I'm not, it's not just the food industry.

Speaker 3 The gaming industry, Instagram,

Speaker 3 gambling, porn. They all know how these pathways work.

Speaker 1 What are some examples of cravable foods?

Speaker 3 Doritos,

Speaker 3 Pepsi and Coke, McDonald's, Happy Meal. You know, it's called Happy Meal for a reason.
It's literally creating a

Speaker 3 explosion explosion in your brain of dopamine and makes you feel happy in the moment. But remember, dopamine is very smart.
It dissipates quickly and you feel uncomfortable.

Speaker 3 Right after you eat something that's got a huge dopamine release, you immediately feel

Speaker 3 a mix of pleasure and discomfort. Like, oh gosh, when am I going to get this again? You know, I got a, am I eating too much?

Speaker 3 Should I be eating this? It's like this pleasure mixed with discomfort. And our processed food industry is full of those.
So McDonald's is a classic one that everybody kind of talks about,

Speaker 3 and Doritos, you know, all the soda companies really work on this a lot. Candies.

Speaker 1 So I've always thought, I mean, I remember hearing the advice that, you know, if you're hungry for a Snickers bar, I mean, you can fight it.

Speaker 1 But if you just have the Snickers bar, shouldn't that and doesn't that, have you ever studied this where you have the Snickers bar and you go okay that was great and life goes on or does it create more problems can't you just give into your craving and you're done

Speaker 3 absolutely not it's actually the opposite so when you understand how cravings pathways work is that the more you do it the more you reinforce that pathway and so it's just like alcohol exactly the same pathway.

Speaker 3 You have a drink or you have a lot of drinks and the next day you say to yourself, yourself, Well, I feel like having a drink, and I feel like if I just have one,

Speaker 3 it's going to be fine. I'll not have that craving anymore.
And you know, we know now the biology behind it, you have one drink, and it kind of reinforces that pathway to have want more of that.

Speaker 3 And that's exactly the same thing with processed foods. If you have that Snickers bar today, just to just to give in to your cravings,

Speaker 3 what it does is it reinforces the pathway and it makes you want more of the Snickers. And then tomorrow, you're probably gonna want a Snickers and a half.
And this is very true.

Speaker 3 If you ever know anyone who loves Starbucks or those

Speaker 3 Frappuccino type drinks, you know, in the beginning, they taste really sweet and you can only have a little bit, but then over time you start craving it more and more.

Speaker 3 You can have a tall, and then you have a grande, and then you have a venti. And then before you know it,

Speaker 3 you're having a actual jumbo-size frappuccino when your craving hits.

Speaker 1 So is this primarily or exclusively a food problem or are there other things in life that affect this?

Speaker 3 No, this is a modern life problem. Actually, gambling is the best example of very, very strong craveability.

Speaker 3 So what happens is when you gamble, you lose you lose you lose and then all of a sudden without you anticipating it you win and you create this huge dopamine explosion and it creates this pathway in your brain because now once that dissipates you're like oh my god I got to do that again because wow that feeling was just so delightful right

Speaker 3 so that's what the cravings pathways does.

Speaker 1 Are there other things, things that might seem unrelated to the craving itself that actually help to fight the craving?

Speaker 1 I guess what I mean is, so for example, if you sleep more, do you crave less? If you're bored, do you crave more? Are there other things that can affect how much you crave something?

Speaker 3 I would love to give you an example, easy, lazy. I call it the lazy example because people love this example.
Getting sunlight into your eyes activates a hormone called alpha MSH.

Speaker 3 That hormone makes you feel satiated.

Speaker 3 And when you get adequate sunlight during the day, you increase your chances of feeling full after meals. It calms the cravings and it makes you feel fuller.

Speaker 3 And if you think about it, you know, some people will say, oh, yeah, you know, if I go for a nice sunny walk, not only is my mood better, but I'm not craving the bad foods or bad things in my life as much.

Speaker 1 What else works besides sunlight?

Speaker 3 Eating foods with protein. So when you start to replace the right foods back into your body, you reset your hunger hormones and your neurologic pathways and most importantly your gut bacteria.

Speaker 3 The gut bacteria will sense amino acids from proteins in your gut and it will tell your brain that, hey, you're getting nutrition.

Speaker 3 There is a very

Speaker 3 interesting hypothesis called the protein threshold hypothesis that says when you get enough protein in your GI tract, your brain starts to create satiation hormones, the neuropeptide YY, the CCK, the leptin, to say to your body, all right, we got what we need, time to stop.

Speaker 3 But if you're eating foods that are really low in protein, which is, you know, ultra-processed foods, snacks, you will keep eating because your body hasn't hit that threshold yet of protein and so this might makes it so usable to me i said oh well okay if i want to have better control of my cravings i need to increase the level of protein in my meals especially early in my meals so that by the time i start to digest the protein i start to get the fullness signals and so i'm not diving into the cake or the dessert at the end of the meal it seems that with food cravings at least, and maybe other kind of cravings, that just letting time go by will help.

Speaker 1 That

Speaker 1 the thing that you're craving to eat,

Speaker 1 if you don't eat it, pretty soon you, I don't know, you just don't crave it anymore.

Speaker 3 Say you ate a meal. This happens to me all the time.
Say you ate a meal and you did order dessert, but it took forever for the waiter to put in the dessert order and for it to come back.

Speaker 3 And by that time,

Speaker 3 your satiation hormones have kicked in, right? You were like, oh, I don't want it anymore. I'm done.

Speaker 3 That is a very common way to kind of get over cravings. Is after a meal, just go for a walk or maybe you do something else before you reach for that dessert.

Speaker 3 And often your hunger hormones have kicked in and you are fine with not having that craving at the end of the meal.

Speaker 3 It's much harder, as you know, when your cravings are very strong. Cravings are the strongest pathways in our body.

Speaker 3 They motivate us to move, to get up out of our seat, to get in the car, to drive across town and have that thing that we're craving.

Speaker 3 So it's often not as easy as just saying, oh, well, just take a walk or, you know, distract yourself for 15 minutes. It just depends on how strong and how deeply rooted that craving might be for you.

Speaker 1 What are some of the other hacks, tricks, first aid,

Speaker 1 whatever you want to call it, that help to work on cravings in the moment?

Speaker 3 Oh, I love the peppermint one. So peppermint oil or a dark chocolate with peppermint.
Peppermint works to

Speaker 3 calm the craving centers in our brain. So what they did is

Speaker 3 they actually experimented on people who sniffed peppermint every two to three hours. And then they actually looked at their brain waves through MRI.

Speaker 3 And they found that those people who had sniffed the peppermint

Speaker 3 were much less likely to have cravings for food than the people who didn't. So, that's a really easy one.

Speaker 3 And you can allude that that would be true for even though they use peppermint oil in the study.

Speaker 3 You can imagine that it could be like, you know, drinking a peppermint tea or having a peppermint dark chocolate, like it could help you with those.

Speaker 3 There was another study where they used walnuts, walnuts in a smoothie. And the interesting thing, Mike, is that they gave two groups smoothies.

Speaker 3 One group had walnuts in their smoothie, and the other group had something that had a texture of walnuts, but not walnuts, a placebo.

Speaker 3 And they found that over two weeks' time, the group that drank the walnut smoothie had craving centers in their brain that were calmer

Speaker 3 and less likely to light up at the visual cues of cravings as compared to the group that just had the shake with the placebo.

Speaker 1 Are cravings predictable? Can you then say, well,

Speaker 1 given this set of circumstances, I know I'm going to end up craving something, so maybe I can stop it before it starts.

Speaker 3 Yes, absolutely.

Speaker 3 We are in control. Our brain is plastic, much more so when we're young, you know, zero to five.
They're super plastic. But then even as adults,

Speaker 3 if you recognize you have a craving for something unhealthy you can anticipate and change that so

Speaker 3 I'll give you an example when I know for me for example that baked cookies like freshly baked chocolate chip cookies is something I often crave and I know that if I keep it in the house all I think about is when I can have that cookie, when I can have the next cookie, when I'm allowed to have that again.

Speaker 3 And I recognize that that was a craving pathway

Speaker 3 signal. And I recognized that I wanted to change that.
So what I did is instead of having chocolate chip cookies in the house freshly baked, I had just some really high quality dark chocolate.

Speaker 3 And what I would do is when I would crave

Speaker 3 the chocolate chip cookie freshly baked, I would say to myself, well, you know what? I'm going to do a better thing.

Speaker 3 I'm going to give my body a reward, a dopamine explosion but something that's positive something that I could like live with and be happy with so I gave myself the dark chocolate and I call it the intermittent reward schedule so what you want to do is the best way to create a pathway for a new craving is to intermittently and randomly reward yourself

Speaker 3 with a positive food or item that can reshape that pathway. And so I actually retrained my brain to crave dark chocolate.
Now, for some people, that might not be good enough.

Speaker 3 They might switch it for something else, but it has to be something that creates a dopamine response in your brain so that when you replace one for the other, you still get a good feeling.

Speaker 3 So you can't replace the baked hot chocolate chip cookie with a celery stick. Because that's not going to give you the dopamine response to help you retrain your brain.

Speaker 1 Yeah, well, you got that right. I'm pretty sure that's not going to work.
I've been speaking with Amy Shaw.

Speaker 1 She's a board-certified medical doctor and author of the book, I'm So Effing Hungry, Why We Crave, What We Crave, and What to Do About It. And there's a link to that book in the show notes.

Speaker 1 Thanks for being here, Amy.

Speaker 3 Thank you so much.

Speaker 1 You probably assume that your homeowner's insurance policy covers your home, and it probably does, but it may also cover a lot more things than just your house there's a good chance that your homeowner's policy covers you if you get stuck with counterfeit money or a forged check it might also protect you if you get sued for libel fraudulent purchases and money transfers on your credit or debit card might also be covered by your homeowner's policy if something gets stolen out of your car

Speaker 1 Your auto policy probably won't cover it, but your homeowner's policy probably will. If you have renter's insurance, those things might be covered as well.

Speaker 1 It's a good idea to actually read the fine print of your policy. You might find some nice surprises, and that is something you should know.

Speaker 1 I know that leaving reviews for things can be a pain in the neck. I don't do it a lot, but I do do it for things that I do really like or experiences I really didn't like.

Speaker 1 Hopefully you have some good feelings about this podcast and you would just take a moment and leave a rating and review wherever you listen. I'm Micah Ruthers.

Speaker 1 Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know.

Speaker 1 The Infinite Monkey Cage returns imminently. I am Robert Ince and I've sat next to Brian Cox who has so much to tell you about what's on the new series.
Primarily eels. And what else?

Speaker 1 It was fascinating, the eels. But we're not just doing eels, are we? We're doing a bit with brain-computer interfaces, timekeeping, fusion, monkey business, cloud, signs of the North Pole and eels.

Speaker 1 Did I mention the eels? Is this ever since you bought that timeshare underneath the Sagasso C? Listen on bbc.com or wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 5 Oh, the Regency era. You might know it as the time when Bridgerton takes place or the time when Jane Austen wrote her books.

Speaker 5 But the Regency era was also an explosive time of social change, sex scandals, and maybe the worst king in British history.

Speaker 5 And on the Vulgar History podcast, we're going to be looking at the balls, the gowns, and all the scandal of the Regency era.

Speaker 5 Vulgar History is a women's history podcast, and our Regency Era series will be focusing on the most rebellious women of this time.

Speaker 6 That includes Jane Austen herself, who is maybe more radical than you might have thought.

Speaker 5 We'll also be talking about queer icons like Anne Lister, scientists like Mary Anning and Ada Lovelace, as well as other scandalous actresses, royal mistresses, rebellious princesses, and other lesser-known figures who made history happen in England in the Regency era.

Speaker 5 Listen to Vulgar History wherever you get podcasts.