The Amazing Gardener in Your Brain (Wildcard Wednesday)

Good morning, my friend. Dr. Lee Warren here with you for some self-brain surgery.

It is Wild Card Wednesday.

And I got a late day in surgery yesterday. I got a long day in surgery today.

So rather than a new episode, I'm going to give you something from the past,

just get you ready for a conversation that we're going to have this weekend with Dr. Dawson Church.

I'm so excited to have a chance to talk to Dr. Church. She's written some incredible

books, and we're going going to talk about how your brain is a living,

active, fearfully and wonderfully created thing that constantly changes.

So if you feel stuck in your life, I just want you to know that your brain is

not even the same as it was when you pushed play on this episode.

You are constantly changing.

And so the whole game is to learn how to direct those changes in a way that

helps you and doesn't hurt you.

And guess what? The good news is that God has built your brain in a way that

is designed to do that. It's designed to heal. It's designed to improve.

It's designed mind to get stronger over time and not weaker.

And you can take charge of some of those processes through what we call self-brain

surgery, application of self-directed neuroplasticity, connecting your creator

to your mind, to your brain, to your body, to your generations.

That's how the game works. It's all about learning how to direct these processes

that are put there for your benefit.

And God says in Acts chapter 17, he directed us to be in certain places at certain

times so that we might seek him and perhaps find him. That's what we learned

from J. Warner Wallace on the show yesterday.

If you didn't hear that episode yesterday, The Truth and True Crime, go back and check it out.

We're going to have a great talk today about the gardener in your brain,

and I'll see you tomorrow for Theology Thursday.

I'm going to the operating room to do some real surgery, and you can do some

cell brain surgery right now.

We're going to talk about two specific parts of the brain, microtubules and microglia.

I'm going to teach you how your brain is a living, active, vibrant mass of constant change.

I'm going to give you one idea from science one idea was

from scripture we're going to smash them together in a

way that'll help you change your mind and change your life we're going to give

you one song from my friend tommy walker called look what happens because i

want you to look what happens when you put your mind on the right stuff i'm

going to give you an opportunity today to become healthier and feel better and

be happier and with that said my friend there's only one question.

You know what the question is? Let me give it to you. Hey, are you ready to change your life?

If the answer is yes, there's only one rule. You have to change your mind first.

And my friend, there's a place where the neuroscience of how your mind works

smashes together with faith and everything starts to make sense.

Are you ready to change your life?

Well, this is the place, Self-Brain Surgery School.

I'm Dr. Lee Warren, and this is where we go deep into how we're wired,

take control of our thinking, and find real hope. This is where we learn to

become healthier, feel better, and be happier.

This is where we leave the past behind and transform our minds.

This is where we start today. Are you ready? This is your podcast.

This is your place. This is your time, my friend. Let's get after it.

Music.

All right, you ready to go? I just want you to remember that there are all kinds

of things that are happening in the universe around you that we've never understood from science.

Sometimes these things manifest in the real world and people see phenomena.

And in times past, they thought it was magic or some kind of crazy thing.

And it turns out to just be a scientific thing happening in front of us.

And as we develop our ability to test and understand what's happening in the

world around us, we have two choices.

We can either think, look how smart we are. We figured this thing out.

Or we can give honor and glory back to the creator and say, man,

that was amazing Amazing that you made that.

And thank you for letting us be able to start to understand it.

That's what science was originally about, by the way.

Stephen Meyer's book, The Return of the God Hypothesis, is a great look at what

science really is from the beginning,

which was smart people using their brains to try to figure out and understand

and bring glory and honor back to God by understanding the depth and amazingness

of the things that he's created.

It. That's what science is for, to give us insight and how we're wired so we

can become healthier and feel better and be happier. How cool is that, right?

So I want to tell you about two parts of your brain. There's a thing called

microglia. These are little tiny cells in your brain. There's billions of them.

And when I was training in school, neuroscience school in college and then in

medical school and then in residency as a neurosurgeon, we were taught that

microglia didn't have much purpose.

People thought that maybe they were involved in sort of scavenging cells that

were broken down and helping to clean things up and provide support.

And that turns out to be true. But now we've developed this understanding of

what microglia really are.

There was a neat paper that just came out, a big review of what microglia do.

And I can link that to you if you're interested. Shoot me an email,

lee at drleewarren.com, if you want to know more about these tiny cells in your brain.

But what turns out that microglia are like little gardeners and they go around

and they prune synaptic connections in your brain.

So that's interesting. It's going to be important in a minute when we talk about

microtubules. What synapses are, of course, we've talked about it a lot.

We talk about these synapses are these connections between neurons.

So you have all these cells in your brain, neurons, that are the nerve cells.

And they're supported by billions and billions and billions of cells like astrocytes

and oligodendrocytes and microglia and ependymal cells and all kinds of other

cells that support the neurons.

And the neurons are the ones that send signals either out towards the spinal

cord and peripheral nerves to help you move and all of that or in towards the

brain from sensory cells and help you to sense things.

Okay. So motor and sensory nerves for the most part are what neurons are.

But around neurons, there need to be a communication network.

And that's what synapses are. So synapses are these little connections between cells.

There are trillions of them in your brain. Probably hundreds of trillions.

It's more than there are stars in your universe.

You truly, friend, are fearfully and wonderfully made.

Now, when I was coming up as a scientist, we were taught that the brain is stuck.

We were taught that the brain is fixed, that you're basically after a certain

age, you've made all the brain cells you're going to make, and you're stuck

with the brain that you have.

This is why genetics have been almost worshipped in our society,

in our culture, by the way,

that once you understand your genome, you got

it you know who you are you know what you're fated to be there's not

much you can do about it you just better live within the confines of

your genes if your parents were bad if your parents had bad genetics then so

be it you're stuck with it well it turns out that's not true the human genome

only contains a fraction of the information that it would require to create

somebody like you with the brain that you have the genome doesn't tell the whole story.

What makes the difference is how those genes are turned on and off in real time

and what proteins are switched on and off and how those genes are expressed

and how they combine with one another to create trillions of possibilities.

And the interesting thing about that is it can be changed.

And one of the most important influences on what happens with genes and their

expression is how you think.

Think this is all well understood now that the

way that you think changes the hormonal and neurotransmitter environment

in your brain and that sends signals to the glands and organs and

cells in your body which then turns genes on and off in different ways and your

mind really does create your brain and your brain really does create your body

and my friend it's true that thoughts become things now whether or not you're

a spiritual person this is actually 100 true we We can see it in functional brain imaging now,

and you can change the way you live.

You can change the way your body works. You can change how your offspring work,

frankly, down to three and four generations by changing how you think.

This is relevant in the trauma space. If you've been injured or you've gone

through trauma, tragedy, or massive things,

you can change literally how you respond to that, and you can pass those changes

on to your children so that you can understand that children whose parents have

been exposed to major trauma or born with a set of things that they're afraid

of or that they learn how to handle better by how their parents handled them,

which then puts a great responsibility on us, right?

But the bottom line is the teaching that I grew up with that you're fixed and

stuck with the brain that you have turns out not to be true.

Now, let me bring it back to tell you about microtubules.

Microtubules are these little like scaffolds that are formed in your brain and

they form sheaths around neurons as they're developing synapses.

And what we know now is that microtubules change dynamically in about 10 minutes

between birth and death.

They are rapidly evolving and changing. Your brain is constantly looking for

opportunities to repurpose the scaffolding.

So the microtubules grow, they die, they're scavenged, they're repurposed,

they add new scaffolds to areas that are being needed in higher quantities.

And what happens is the things you think about and the neural circuits you choose

to exercise direct the deployment of the resources to make and tear down and

rebuild new scaffolding, which means that in real time,

these are the cells that are involved in creating new synapses,

shaping your brain, and forming what's going to happen in response to your thought

process. Why is that important?

Well, there's been some really interesting studies on meditation,

for example, mindfulness.

This is this idea that you can calm your mind and learn how to stop listening

to all the outside noise and you can decide what you're going to think about,

which is what we call the thought biopsy, right?

So without any spiritual information at all, this is just mindfulness and learning.

How to control your brain.

And Eastern meditation and metaphysics says just calm the noise and put some

space in between the thing you think about and what you do.

And these studies have shown clearly now, a major review showed that multiple

areas of your brain, the cingulate cortex,

the striatum, the prefrontal regions, limbic regions, corpus callosum,

insula, medial prefrontal cortex, posterior cingulate gyrus,

all these important areas of your brain that are involved in attention control,

emotional regulation, limbic regions, and self-awareness, all these important

things can be significantly improved or changed by the things you think about.

One study showed after 30 days of meditation that there was a 22.8% increase

in the volume of the areas of your brain involved in emotional regulation.

22.8 percent so that

means that literally learning how to calm your mind for just

30 days can increase certain areas of

your brain involved in emotional regulation by almost 25

percent that means that you can choose to improve how agile and resilient you

are and things like getting triggered at work annoying things that your partner

says being startled by sudden noises or problems with your kids or worries about

politics or what happens with your money,

all these things that can stress you out, you can become 22.8% more able to

handle them in 30 days of learning how to get your mind under control.

That's fascinating, isn't it? So it brings down the point that I've heard many

people say, you can either shape your brain, my friend, or it will be shaped for you.

How is it shaped? It's shaped by microtubules, the scaffolding of your brain, how are they handled?

Well, just like if you were building a room in your house, I got this idea from

Dawson Church in his book, Mind to Matter, which is really a cool book about

the neuroscience of how thoughts become things.

By the way, Dawson Church said, imagine if you're building a house and you decide

to tear an old room down and add on a new room.

Well, you could take the copper wiring and the building materials and all the

stuff from that room and you could move it to the new room and repurpose it

for the new construction.

You wouldn't have to go out and buy all new building materials.

You could use the stuff that you already had and repurpose it.

And that's exactly what microtubules do. they break down and they're broken down by microglia.

And then that stuff, the building blocks is used in other parts of your brain

to make new synapses. Okay.

So you're constantly being pruned and refined and reshaped.

And we know now from these studies on neuroscience, on neurophysiology and neuroanatomy

of how synapses are formed, that you can literally increase the volume of brain activity,

volume of brain regions involved in emotional regulation and other areas is

within a month of directed meditation and the actual physical changes happen within minutes.

There's been several studies now showing that 30 minutes of directed mental

activity can create new synaptic connections, but they start to fade and go

away within three weeks of disuse, which means when you use something.

When you do something for over an hour or 30 minutes to an hour,

you make new synapses and those new synapses will begin to fire and form new pathways in your brain.

But if you don't revisit them and reuse them, they start to wither and fade

away within three weeks.

Now, that's why when you're studying for a test, if you study really hard one

day and then you just review your notes quickly the next day and the day after

that, you have better recall than if you only study one time, right?

That's why Deuteronomy chapter six, by the way, goes over and over about what

you're supposed to do with the word and teaching it to your children.

He says, these commandments, It's Deuteronomy 6, starting in verse 6.

These commandments I give you are to be on your hearts, impress them on your

children, talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road

and when you lie down and when you get up, tie them as symbols on your hands

and bind them on your foreheads, write them on your doorframes. What's he doing?

He's teaching you that you need to rehearse truth.

Mark Rogab said, hope springs from truth rehearsed. This is the prehab part

of the treatment plan for how you deal with the massive thing.

Of trauma and tragedy and all the difficulties that life brings along.

You bind them on your heart. You bind true things on your heart. You write them down.

You talk about them. You put them in there so that they make solid,

strong synaptic connections.

You shape your brain so that TMT doesn't shape it for you.

And the way you do that is using the architectural structural support system

that God put in your brain.

Microtubules and microglia are the nuts and bolts of how this happens.

My friend. Isn't that cool?

Now, what does Psalm 46.10 say? Cease striving and know that I am God.

Stop, be still, listen to me, think about me. Why does he say that?

Well, we talk about how directed meditation, mindfulness can create powerful

opportunities to change the way your brain is formed.

But Eastern meditation and metaphysics are all about not hearing,

about calming the voice.

Spiritual, if we wanna really add in and smash together the spiritual brain

surgery, of what we're talking about here today.

Biblical meditation is not about not hearing.

It's about hearing the one voice that can really help you.

It's about God saying, hey, I'm going to come to you in a still,

small voice. I need you to be quiet and listen for the whisper.

And I'm going to tell you how to turn your brain into something that's going

to help you become healthier and feel better and be happier.

But you got to stop striving so hard and you got to listen.

That's what meditation is about, right? calm yourself, stop striving,

relax, let things settle down, and then you can start to not hear so much noise.

Well, Jesus said, hey, cease striving, and I'm going to tell you what you really need to be hearing.

And that spiritual practice of Lectio Divina is like this chewing on the cut

of the word over and over and over.

That's the idea on neuroscience is shaping your brain, putting something true

in there, truth rehearsed. Hope springs from truth rehearsed,

as Broglieff said. and that's how you form powerful synapses to change your

brain and change your life.

Listen, there's a lot of cool stuff.

Microglia are the gardeners of your nervous system and they are pruning synapses

that aren't in use so that you can use those materials to form new synapses.

And look what Jesus happened to say about pruning.

John 15, 2, every branch in me that does not bear fruit, he takes away.

And every branch that bears fruit, he prunes it so that it may bear fruit,

bear more fruit. This is talking about your mind too, my friend.

The parts that aren't getting used are going to get smaller.

The parts that are being used are going to get bigger. So here's the question

for you, okay? Here's the question for me today.

It's not a matter of whether some parts of your brain are getting bigger and

whether some are getting smaller. That is happening whether you are an active

participant in it or you are just passively letting the world conform you to

the way it wants you to think.

Romans 12.2 is our handbook, our primer on self-brain surgery.

Don't be conformed anymore to the world, but rather be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Why?

The back half of that verse. Then you will be able to test and improve what

is God's good, pleasing, and perfect will. My question for you today, my friend.

My question for you today is, do you want to be passively shaped and have the

cells and synapses and microglia and microtubules in your brain be formed by outside forces,

things that you mirror and mimic from the culture around you,

or your own traumas and tragedies and massive things and your own ruminations

of your thoughts over and over that have gotten you to this place where you

are today listening to this podcast?

Do you want to continue to be a victim of the circumstances around you tossed

about out by everything that changes and happens in your life around you?

Or do you want to be a self-brain surgeon and take control of that process?

Because you can. Directed mental effort.

And rehearsing truth over and over will engage those microglia and reform those

microtubules to make better synapses to help you become more resilient and become

healthier and feel better and be happier.

And then you can say with my friend Tommy Walker, look what happens when I finally

get my mind going the right direction. Look what happens.

I become better able to handle what's happening. I become better able to test

and improve what's good and pleasing and perfect out there.

I get better. I get stronger.

I get healthier. I get happier when I learn to direct what happens inside my own brain.

Don't commit self-malpractice anymore, my friend.

Once you know it, that James says, once you know what's right and you choose

not to do it, that's what sin is.

Don't get all caught up in the shame part of that. Sin basically is something

that separates you from the plan that God has for your life.

And his plan for you is that your brain your brain gets smarter,

your brain gets more bulletproof, your brain gets more resilient,

so you can start living in the way that you were created and not in the way

that culture and life and trauma and tragedy and massive things are trying to force you into.

You can make it different. You can make it happen. You can change your mind

and you can change your life and then look what'll happen next.

But you know what the good news is, my friend? You can start today. One, two, three.

Music.

Hey, thanks for listening. Please subscribe to the show so you automatically get every episode.

And if you like the show, you'll love my weekly letter. Check out my writing

at drleewarren.substack.com, drleewarren.substack.com.

Get the free newsletter every week for my best prescriptions for becoming healthier,

feeling better, and being happier through the power of faith and neuroscience,

smashing together via self-brain serving, drleewarren.substack.com.

And if you need prayer, go to the prayer wall at wleewarrenmb.com slash prayer.

The theme music for the show is Make Us One by Tommy Walker,

graciously provided for free by the great folks over at TommyWalkerMinistries.org.

Check it out and consider supporting them, TommyWalkerMinistries.org.

Remember, you can't change your life until you change your mind.

And the good news is you can start today. I'm Dr. Lee Warren.

I'll talk to you soon. God bless you, friend. Have a great day.