This Is The Fastest Way To Get Dementia...The 6 Science-Backed Brain Fixes!

Steven Bartlett (0:00)

I think everybody needs to listen to this episode if they want to start 2026 properly. If there's one thing I've learned that's really stayed with me this year, it's from speaking to some of the world's leading minds about our brain, which might just be the most powerful asset that we all have. You know, if you listen to The Diary Of A CEO, you're probably listening because you're trying to get something, whether it's information, inspiration, maybe entertainment, all of which, because you're striving towards some kind of goal. And it's dawned on me this year, because I've interviewed so many incredible neuroscientists, that this all starts with having a healthy brain, because all of our thoughts, our feelings, our relationships, our memories, our chance of having a future start in the brain. So in this special Christmas episode, we're going to focus on the brain, how you can have the most fundamentally healthy brain, so you can live the most fundamentally meaningful life. I've been through all the episodes where we've talked about the brain, and I've looked at the moments that you shared and replayed the most, and the moments that added the most value to your life. And I've put all of them into this episode today. Do you remember the first time you saw a human brain?

Wendy Suzuki (1:06)

I do.

Steven Bartlett (1:07)

Did it change how you think about your own brain?

Wendy Suzuki (1:09)

It changed my life, because I was like, I want to study that. That is the coolest thing that I've ever seen in my whole life. It was life-changing.

Steven Bartlett (1:23)

I say that because at the start of this conversation, we said that most of us don't appreciate our brain. A lot of people don't even realize it's there, but the minute I had a brain scan one day, and that brain scan really changed my life because seeing my own brain for the first time, it was the push that I needed to start caring more about how my decisions and behaviors are impacting it. Let's talk about how I can make that ball of tofu in my head super healthy, big fat and fluffy. You talked about exercise early on, but we didn't really dig into exactly what you mean by exercise, because exercise I think is multifaceted in this definition. What kind of exercise should I be doing to make my ball of tofu in my head great, optimal?

Wendy Suzuki (2:05)

Well, all the research shows that the best kind of exercise that you can do is anything that gives you aerobic activity, that is getting your heart rate up. So that goes for power walking, will get your heart rate up. Soccer, so many different things. Name your activity. So many people want to say, oh, my favorite activity, will that work? And I always just say, is your heart rate up when you're doing it? If the answer is yes, then yeah, that works great. We know that that level of aerobic activity is critical because that's going to release that growth factor maximally to get into your hippocampus that will grow those new brain cells. How much? So I have an answer to that. So we did two different experiments in my lab. One in low-fit people, people that are really not exercising very much at all, less than 30 minutes in the last three weeks you've moved your body. And we asked, could we see any behavioral improvement in your memory function from your hippocampus or your ability to shift and focus attention if we asked you to move your body in an aerobic way for two to three times a week? And we collaborated with a spin class, so clearly very aerobic. And what we found was in those people that did successfully do two to three times a week a 45-minute aerobic activity, their mood got significantly better, their memory function got better, and their ability to shift and focus attention got significantly better. So that gives a little bit of a guideline for low-fit people, two to three times a week can start to give you some of those cognitive changes. But you don't look low-fit. So let me answer the question you're about to ask me with, like, what about me? I exercise pretty regularly and how much do I need? So to answer that question, we went to another spin studio and we said, look, we're going to give you free classes. You could exercise as much as you want at this studio and go up to seven times a week. And the control was just stay the same.

They were working out twice a week at the studio.