The Mel Robbins PodcastThe Ultimate Guide to the Female Brain: Neuroscientist Reveals How to Boost Mood, Energy, & Focus
EVERY SPOKEN WORD
140 min read · 27,904 words- 0:00 – 1:31
Welcome
- SMDr. Sarah McKay
By the time you're about five, your brain is at like an 80 to 90% of where it will be for the entire rest of its life.
- MRMel Robbins
Wait, hold on a second. That is so fascinating.
- SMDr. Sarah McKay
And the really wild thing is-
- MRMel Robbins
Is Dr. Sarah Mackay is a brilliant neuroscientist and author. She got her Master's of Science and Doctorate in Neuroscience at the University of Oxford. Dr. Mackay is an expert in how the female brain works, puberty, periods, sex, pregnancy, menopause, hormone replacement therapy, and dementia. You're never gonna look at yourself or what's possible the same way again. Is it true that female brains are, quote, "wired for emotion" and that the male brain is more logical?
- SMDr. Sarah McKay
False, false, false. False.
- MRMel Robbins
One of the things that I read in your book is that a woman gets her period about 450 times in her lifetime.
- SMDr. Sarah McKay
Mm-hmm.
- MRMel Robbins
What is happening in the female brain when you're going through your menstrual cycle?
- SMDr. Sarah McKay
Oh, gosh, this is like, we could do hours, hours and hours on this one, Mel.
- MRMel Robbins
What does the pill do-
- SMDr. Sarah McKay
Oh.
- MRMel Robbins
... to your brain?
- SMDr. Sarah McKay
One of my favorite topics, Mel. So-
- MRMel Robbins
I can't believe you just said that. What is going on in our brains-
- SMDr. Sarah McKay
Yeah.
- MRMel Robbins
... when puberty hits?
- SMDr. Sarah McKay
Brains go through puberty too. And the really wild thing is-
- MRMel Robbins
How does pregnancy-
- SMDr. Sarah McKay
Gosh.
- MRMel Robbins
... change the brain?
- SMDr. Sarah McKay
We see this enormous structural reorganization-
- MRMel Robbins
Really?
- SMDr. Sarah McKay
... and rewiring of the brain through the course of a pregnancy.
- MRMel Robbins
What happens?
- 1:31 – 6:07
Your Brain is Not Broken
- MRMel Robbins
Hey, it's your friend Mel, and welcome to the Mel Robbins Podcast. I am so excited that you're here. I am excited to be here with you and to learn together. It's always an honor to be with you and to spend time together. But today's episode, holy cow, is this gonna be a good one. And if you're a new to the podcast, I just wanted to personally welcome you to the Mel Robbins Podcast family. I am so glad that you're here because you made the time to listen to this particular episode. Here's what I know about you. You're the kind of person who not only values your time, you also value your mind. And today, you're gonna learn how to unlock the power of your mind from a neuroscientist who has been studying the brain for over 30 years. And if you're here right now because somebody shared this episode with you, well, that's pretty cool. I wanna point out that you have people in your life who care about you, and they want you to understand the truth and the science about how your brain works and how to work with it. Or they may have sent this to you to validate some of the experiences that you've had or that you may be dealing with now, and to give you some tangible things that you could change in order to make your life better from one of the leading neuroscientists in the world. Isn't that pretty cool? So thanks for hitting play. Dr. Sarah Mackay is a brilliant neuroscientist and author who has flown over 10,000 miles all the way from Australia to be here in our Boston studios for one reason, she's here for you. Dr. Mackay has spent 30 years studying the brain with a specific focus on how three factors impact the development of the female brain and the male brain. She got her Master's of Science and Doctorate in Neuroscience at the University of Oxford, which is the number one ranked university in the world. Mm-hmm. The entire world. Dr. Mackay is an expert in how the female brain works in every stage of life, from utero to puberty, periods, sex, pregnancy, menopause, hormone replacement therapy, and dementia. We are gonna walk through every single one of these stages. You're gonna learn what's happening in the female brain during each and every one of those stages today. And if you're a guy who's listening, I'm so thrilled you're here because you're gonna learn a lot about your brain too. Dr. Mackay is the author of three best-selling books on brain health, including The Women's Brain Book. And here's what she's gonna tell you. Your brain is not broken. It is powerful beyond what you can believe. It is adaptable. In fact, it's always adapting. And once you understand this and you understand the three factors she's going to teach you about that you need to know that impact how your brain adapts, you're never gonna look at yourself or what's possible the same way again. So please help me welcome Dr. Mackay to the Mel Robbins Podcast. Dr. Sarah Mackay-
- SMDr. Sarah McKay
(laughs)
- MRMel Robbins
... thank you, thank you, thank you for jumping on a plane, flying 10,000 miles to be here in our Boston studios. I am so excited to meet you, to learn from you. Thank you.
- SMDr. Sarah McKay
Well, thank you for the invite. I'm so excited to be here.
- MRMel Robbins
Well, we-
- SMDr. Sarah McKay
It's- it's cool.
- MRMel Robbins
We have so much to learn from you. Now, you have been a neuroscientist for 30 years.
- SMDr. Sarah McKay
Mm-hmm.
- MRMel Robbins
You have written three books about the female brain. You speak and teach about the female brain to audiences around the world.
- SMDr. Sarah McKay
Mm-hmm.
- MRMel Robbins
Could you speak to the person who is with us right now and share with them how might life be different if they take everything that you're about to teach us today to heart and they apply it to their own life?
- SMDr. Sarah McKay
Mm. I would like them to know that their brains are not broken. There's a real focus, it seems, on things like brain fog and baby brain and burnout and, you know, we're forgetful. And it- there's always a focus on what goes wrong.
- MRMel Robbins
Mm.
- SMDr. Sarah McKay
But when we think about the course of our lives and what neuroscience is actually showing us, it's teaching us that our brains aren't broken. They're adaptable and resilient, and that's the main message.
- MRMel Robbins
Is it fair to say, just for the person listening, that when-
- SMDr. Sarah McKay
Mm-hmm.
- MRMel Robbins
... you talk about male/female brai- brain, you're talking from neuroscience and a biology standpoint?
- SMDr. Sarah McKay
Yeah, that's what I'm talking about, yeah.
- MRMel Robbins
We're not having a conversation about gender?
- SMDr. Sarah McKay
No.
- MRMel Robbins
Okay.
- SMDr. Sarah McKay
Yeah, and we can talk about gendered experiences, the experiences of being a person in the world.... who is a girl, who is a boy, or perhaps the identity that you have. But typically where neuroscience is focused is looking at kind of... Is, is looking at brain
- 6:07 – 20:42
How the Female Brain Actually Works
- SMDr. Sarah McKay
biology.
- MRMel Robbins
Dr. Mackay, I wanna give you some of the common things people say about the female brain, and can you tell us if these are fact or fiction?
- SMDr. Sarah McKay
Okay.
- MRMel Robbins
Is it true that female brains are, quote, "wired for emotion" and that the male brain is more logical?
- SMDr. Sarah McKay
Oh, false, false, false. False that there's a male brain that's wired like this and a female brain that's wired like that. I mean, men feel emotions, and I'm quite logical. I'm sure you are too, Mel, so false.
- MRMel Robbins
And that female brains are wired for intuition-
- SMDr. Sarah McKay
Mm.
- MRMel Robbins
... and the mother instinct. Is that a thing that we're hardwired for?
- SMDr. Sarah McKay
I think intuition is a human phenomenon, it's not male or female, and that's really based on experience and wisdom, and that's not a, a sex-based difference.
- MRMel Robbins
How about women make rash decisions, we're very emotional decision-makers?
- SMDr. Sarah McKay
Mm. (sighs) That's really fading into that, that stereotypical myth that because women have a menstrual cycle or our hormones change and fluctuate, um, that that's kind of what's driving us, and I don't, and I don't think that's the case. I mean, I feel like quite a logical, rational being. Um-
- MRMel Robbins
I feel the same way-
- SMDr. Sarah McKay
Yeah.
- MRMel Robbins
... but I can get really pissed off and emotional too.
- SMDr. Sarah McKay
Yeah, but, I mean, you know, I think all males can too. I think perhaps we've been socialized perhaps to express those in different ways, but the idea that women are so emotional and, and irrational, um, and that it somehow emerges from our female pink brains from Venus is just false.
- MRMel Robbins
Let's talk about math.
- SMDr. Sarah McKay
Yeah. I think math, or maths as I, (laughs) as I say, I add the S on, um, this is one of these stereotypes which is pervasive. It's all around, it's, it's all around the world, it starts quite young, and it extends right through this idea that males are more brilliant. It's this real stereotype. And males are also very confident about their brilliance, or their apparent brilliance, versus women who are a whole lot more humble. And I think even this idea that boys are brilliant and girls are perhaps less brilliant, but they're hardworking, starts really young. And so this is another, um, piece of research that I always like to discuss, it came from a research group in New York, and we can put it in the show notes. So, the researchers went in and they were looking at children in those first few years of elementary school. So, they went in and talked to kids who are about five and six, and said, "Hey, who do you think out of these two people in these images here are gonna grow u- uh, uh, are super smart?" There's a picture of a male and a picture of a female. And they asked them wha- five and six-year-olds, and th- the girls picked the woman and the boys picked the man. Right? And then they say, "Who wants to play the game for super smart children?" And all of the girls put their hands up and say, "Me," and all the boys put their hands up and say, "Me." Then they go back a couple of years later and the kids are seven and eight, and they say, "Who of these people is smart, the man or the woman?" And all the boys go, "The man," and all the girls go, "The man." And then they say, "Who wants to play the game for the super smart kids?" And all the boys go, "Me." Some of the girls still go, "Me," but lots of the girls go, "Oh, that's the game for the boys, 'cause the boys are the smart, brilliant ones." And that starts to emerge, and they've, they've gone and they've looked at this, this in, in, in different parts of the world, that kind of by about ages seven, boys have, you know, think that they're brilliant and the girls have started to recognize, "Well, it's the boys that are brilliant." Being clever and good at maths is a boy thing.
- MRMel Robbins
So, how do you explain that as a neuroscientist? Is that because of the images you see in the media and the people that are in elected office and just the world reflecting back to you, and so subconsciously your brain is recognizing a pattern-
- SMDr. Sarah McKay
Mm-hmm.
- MRMel Robbins
... and it starts to go, "Oh, people who look like that do things like this. I look like this, which means I don't do things like that." Is that kind of what's happening?
- SMDr. Sarah McKay
I think it's all of the things. It's, it's everything from TV, to books, to even the way we talk about it. And I think we can be incredibly well-intentioned as well and perhaps give a bit of implicit messaging. And there's some phrases I think people use and I always try and pull them up on it. They might go, "Oh, well, girls can do maths too," or, "Girls are just as good at maths as boys," and that's kind of implying that boys are the reference point and then girls can also do that, or boys are the maths people but girls can be maths people too. So, I think we're not... We, we almost need to be really careful about the implicit messaging we're inadvertently sending little girls by saying, "Girls can too." Perhaps we should be saying, "There is no difference in ability to do maths between boys and girls," start talking about what the science actually shows.
- MRMel Robbins
Is that what the science shows? There's no difference between-
- SMDr. Sarah McKay
Yeah. There is no difference.
- MRMel Robbins
... a boy or a girl's ability to do math?
- SMDr. Sarah McKay
If we got any boy and any girl, just randomly picked them, we couldn't see differences in s- in, in, in math scores. Some studies, some of the time, if like we were to look at like 10,000 boys age nine and 10,000 girls age nine, there might be a few extra boys scoring right at that, sort of the top, top, top, top marks, but like a teeny tiny amount. And that's perhaps where that gendered stereotype comes from. But what no one's ever saying, although perhaps people might in... Have, have kind of come across that, if we were to do the same perhaps with verbal ability or reading ability, there might be a few girls kind of right at the top there as well. And there's this, this other crazy study, I believe this was published in the New York Times, where they looked at Google searches and they found there were twice as many Google searches for "Is my son a genius?" than "Is my daughter a genius?" But people were more likely to search for "Is my daughter fat?" or "Is my daughter ugly?" than "Is my boy?"
- MRMel Robbins
Now if you draw-
- SMDr. Sarah McKay
It's kind of wild.
- MRMel Robbins
... d- draw, if you dial down though, Dr. Mackay, to the neuroscience implications of this-If you're seeing, by the age of 7 or 8, a belief system and patterns that get reflected back to little boys that say, "You're smarter," or, "You're this," and then the pattern that gets reflected back to the female brain, referring to the experience-
- SMDr. Sarah McKay
Hmm.
- MRMel Robbins
... and the development of a brain inside the little girl's body, how does that messaging change the wiring and the firing and the-
- 20:42 – 26:23
The 3-Part Framework to Rewire Your Brain
- SMDr. Sarah McKay
- MRMel Robbins
So you've developed this three-part framework that can really help us better understand the brain-
- SMDr. Sarah McKay
Mm.
- MRMel Robbins
... and how it works and how it's programmed and what impacts it.
- SMDr. Sarah McKay
Mm. Mm. Mm.
- MRMel Robbins
Can you walk us through that?
- SMDr. Sarah McKay
Mm. Well, it's inspired by the biopsychosocial framework, which is a really boring way to (laughs) to talk about things. So I like to talk about biology as being the bottom up, so our brain is receiving information from our bottom-up body.
- MRMel Robbins
Okay.
- SMDr. Sarah McKay
So that is everything from our hormones to the food we've eaten to, you know, muscle tension to sensations we can feel in our body, to all of the signals that we wouldn't have a - you wouldn't have a clue what your gut pH is at any moment in time. So your brain is receiving all of that data. Data is also streaming in from the outside world through our senses, through what see, what we hear, and if something's close enough to us, we could smell it or taste it or touch it. And that includes everything from the rising and setting of the sun, to other people and our interactions with them, to our lived environments, to what is streaming in on that, you know, phone that we're, we're holding in our hand. And that's become a really big outside-in influence within the last decade or two. And the brain is then making meaning of what's happening in our body, in the context of the outside world, but we've also got what I call top-down, and that could be our thoughts, our expectations, our past experiences, all of which is kind of mixing up with the bottom-up, the outside-in, and the top-down. And each of these factors can influence others. So we know that perhaps an outside-in influence could shape a top-down experience, so perhaps loneliness could shape the experience of depression.
- MRMel Robbins
Mm.
- SMDr. Sarah McKay
Or we know that something bottom-up can shape something going on in our brains, so we know during pregnancy, for example, the hormones during pregnancy shape and sculpt our brain so that we interact with the outside-in, a baby, in a particular way. So that's just how I like to simplify the complexity of all of the information that the brain is making meaning of at any one moment in time.
- MRMel Robbins
Let me see if I can give that back to you. So you have a three-part framework, and the first one was bottom-up, which basically the way I would put it is, every single physical input datapoint that is happening in your body-
- SMDr. Sarah McKay
Mm-hmm.
- MRMel Robbins
... is messaging up to the brain.
- SMDr. Sarah McKay
Mm-hmm.
- MRMel Robbins
And that's one thing that shapes your brain. It's one thing that impacts your brain.
- SMDr. Sarah McKay
Mm-hmm.
- MRMel Robbins
Second thing is you're getting flooded from the outside world-
- SMDr. Sarah McKay
Mm-hmm.
- MRMel Robbins
... through your senses, all kin- from the headlines to people's moods, to all that stuff, and all of that-
- SMDr. Sarah McKay
Yeah.
- MRMel Robbins
... actually also is input-
- SMDr. Sarah McKay
Yeah.
- MRMel Robbins
... into your brain that changes-
- SMDr. Sarah McKay
Mm-hmm.
- MRMel Robbins
... and shapes your brain-
- SMDr. Sarah McKay
Mm-hmm.
- MRMel Robbins
... how it functions, the patterns-
- SMDr. Sarah McKay
Mm. Mm-hmm.
- MRMel Robbins
... all of it, and then you said top-down which is the thoughts, the messaging, the things that you're thinking about-
- 26:23 – 38:19
How Puberty Rewires the Brain
- MRMel Robbins
Um, after kind of the primary school, when we get into puberty-
- SMDr. Sarah McKay
Mm-hmm.
- MRMel Robbins
... what is going on in our brains-
- SMDr. Sarah McKay
Yeah.
- MRMel Robbins
... when puberty hits, and why does it feel so crazy intense and confusing?
- SMDr. Sarah McKay
Yeah. So, I always like to say brains go through puberty too.
- MRMel Robbins
Oh, I love that.
- SMDr. Sarah McKay
Yeah. 'Cause we think about it as being something that our body does-
- MRMel Robbins
Yeah.
- SMDr. Sarah McKay
... but our brains are going through puberty too. So, if we just... Let's just focus on female puberty, but male puberty happens too, and in fact, male and female brains follow a similar trajectory, but kind of almost kickstarted by sex hormones. So, it doesn't matter whether it's the estrogen in the girls' brains or the testosterone in the boys' brains, they kind of follow a similar trajectory.
- MRMel Robbins
Okay.
- SMDr. Sarah McKay
And, and in fact, just to kind of clarify that, we often h-... You, you might have heard this idea that girls' brains are more mature than boys' brains when they're going through the teenage years. But that's because girls, on average, tend to go through puberty about a year or so earlier than boys, and what we know is that brains are more likely to track along pubertal stage than chronological age.
- MRMel Robbins
Oh.
- SMDr. Sarah McKay
Yeah. 'Cause you think about, you know, all of the kids that you've ever known when they start going through puberty, and you could get a boy who's going through puberty quite young, like perhaps, you know, he's six foot tall, his voice has dropped, and he's got hair everywhere, and he's 12, whereas you could have a little girl who's 16 who hasn't started her periods yet. Well, his brain would perhaps be at a later stage of development than hers would be. But we-
- MRMel Robbins
That's so cool.
- SMDr. Sarah McKay
Yeah, but we typically s- think that girls' brains are more developed than boys', but that's just 'cause on average, girls hit puberty a year, a year earlier.
- MRMel Robbins
No... No wonder middle school is so confusing-
- SMDr. Sarah McKay
It's crazy.
- MRMel Robbins
... because you basically may be sitting next to somebody who's got like a 19-year-old brain, but you yourself-
- SMDr. Sarah McKay
Hmm.
- MRMel Robbins
... have like the 12-year-old pubertal stage-
- SMDr. Sarah McKay
Hmm.
- MRMel Robbins
... in your brain.
- SMDr. Sarah McKay
Hmm.
- MRMel Robbins
Wow, that makes a lot of sense.
- SMDr. Sarah McKay
Yeah. Yeah. So, there's these... There's sort of like a biological clock sort of switches over in your brain saying, "Hey, it's time to start puberty," and then that sends a message down to your ovaries, and then the ovaries sort of start that monthly cycle. It takes a while for ovulation to kind of set in as we're going in through puberty, um, but then we start to see the ovaries releasing pubertal hormones or sex hormones, primarily estrogen and progesterone. And what we see in brains then is a lot of the growth that happens during childhood in the brain, particularly the gray matter, which is kind of the wrinkly outer kind of covering of the brain, and also some little subcortical structures, we see that sort of start to refine and streamline. So, that's if we've got all of the neurons or the brain cells that we're ever gonna have, what we see is the connections between them kind of pruning and tuning. So, we see the ones that we don't need almost being kind of pruned away and the ones that we want to be, they, they kind of become tuned.
- MRMel Robbins
What ones do we not need?
- SMDr. Sarah McKay
Well, what determines what ones stay and what ones go are the experiences that we have. So, the brain kind of goes into this sort of new phase of sensitivity to experiences.
- MRMel Robbins
Really?
- SMDr. Sarah McKay
Yeah. Very similar to what we see when a little child's like learning to talk. So, their language centers of their brain go into this critical period, and those little people will seek out experiences of language. They're constantly pointing and asking why and wanting to get your attention. They're constantly wanting you to converse with them because the language centers in their brain need conversation to wire up. When you're going through puberty and adolescence, a large part of that reorganization and pruning and tuning is in the social brain. Um, and that's when we start to see...... those parts of the brain reorganize and shape. And what, what is kind of required, I think fundamentally to go from the family nest out into the world and, you know, build a new tribe of your own, is courage. And one thing that we see as the flip side of courage is bravado. So, we've also got, layered on top of all of the, the social brain development, we've also got a lot of sensation-seeking, like wanting to kind of go out and have all of these experiences, because that's kind of what courage to need the f- leave the family nest is kind of resulting in as well. It's like, "I need to go out and I need to try all these new things, and I need to have these experiences, and I need to do all of these things with all of these different people," because the brain requires all of that to, one, rewire and reorganize to become an adult, but two, to be brave enough to become an adult.
- 38:19 – 39:41
What Happens to Your Brain Without Sleep
- MRMel Robbins
do. You mentioned sleep. Can you- can you explain? You just kind of casually was like-
- SMDr. Sarah McKay
Yeah.
- MRMel Robbins
... well, sleep is the number one thing.
- SMDr. Sarah McKay
I think-
- MRMel Robbins
Why is sleep-
- SMDr. Sarah McKay
I think if-
- MRMel Robbins
... and getting more sleep, other than social connection-
- SMDr. Sarah McKay
Yeah.
- MRMel Robbins
... for the male and female brain, why is sleep so critical for the female brain?
- SMDr. Sarah McKay
And I- I think for the brain-
- MRMel Robbins
Okay.
- SMDr. Sarah McKay
... for babies, teenagers, everyone, if we miss one night's sleep, everything is harder. It is so much harder to do all of the other things that we need to do, you know, both on our to-do list, but also to look after ourselves. We all know how bad we feel after one night's sleep being disrupted.
- MRMel Robbins
What are the repercussions? Like, what's happening when you sleep that's important for your brain health?
- SMDr. Sarah McKay
So, there's a whole host of different things that kind of go on. So we know that we... that's when our memories get consolidated during the day. Our brain's kind of sifting through and reshaping and kind of moving our memories and our experiences and what we've learned into- from short-term storage into long-term storage. And we know that, again, poor sleep is a risk factor for poor mental health, for poor brain health, increases your risk for almost every health condition. You know, people who consistently have bad sleep have higher rates of mortality. So, you know, it permeates every aspect of kind of our physiology and our psychology.
- MRMel Robbins
Makes sense.
- 39:41 – 42:16
This Is Your Brain on Your Period
- MRMel Robbins
One of the things that I read in your book is that a woman gets her period about 450 times in her lifetime. And yet, uh, you know, you still don't quite understand how to deal with the fluctuating moods-
- SMDr. Sarah McKay
Mm-hmm.
- MRMel Robbins
... and the brain fog and all the other mental and emotional symptoms of PMS.
- SMDr. Sarah McKay
Mm-hmm.
- MRMel Robbins
What is happening in the female brain when you're going through your menstrual cycle?
- SMDr. Sarah McKay
Oh, gosh, this is ... Like, we could do hours- hours and hours on this one, Mel. So, (laughs) we have this brain and ovarian conversation that sort of starts at puberty, and it goes maybe 450 times through your life, depending on how many pregnancies you have, and if you're on the pill, you can flatline it, until menopause. In the last couple of years, there are these epic studies that have been done by women scientists who have started experimenting on themselves. They're like the- the Marie Curie of neuroscience. And so they are doing all ... Instead of waiting around for someone else to do the study, they're like, "Let's just do it on ourselves." So there's a couple of scientists who have said, "Right, I'm gonna put myself in a brain scan every day to see what happens across the course of my menstrual cycle." And they're being very meticulous and very careful and taking blood samples so they know exactly which day they're on, what their different hormone levels are doing, and then they'll lie in the brain scanner and just lie there for a couple of hours. And what you can do is just look to see how the brain is just reacting when you're lying there doing nothing. So we see as you go into ovulation when your estrogen kind of, um, peaks and a couple of days later, 'cause the brain networks take a kind of... they kind of lag a little bit behind the hormone 'cause the way the hormone works on the cell as it interacts with your chromosomes and your DNA, it's not like this immediate, like, millisecond response. It takes a couple of days. We see that those brain networks become far more kind of, um, integrated and specialized when there's high estrogen and then there's... the- that estrogen kind of drops off and then progesterone starts to rise in the days before your period. Different brain networks sort of start to interact more with each other. And for some women, that just might feel like... it might feel like nothing. But for other women, it might feel like an absolute emotional roller coaster, right? So the ebb and flow in everyone is going to be the same. The levels of hormones in everyone are gonna be the same, but for some reason in some people, that can feel like a roller coaster. Others, it barely feels like a gentle ripple.
- 42:16 – 47:59
What the Pill Really Does to Your Brain
- SMDr. Sarah McKay
- MRMel Robbins
What happens... What does the pill do-
- SMDr. Sarah McKay
Oh.
- MRMel Robbins
... to your brain?
- SMDr. Sarah McKay
Yeah.
- MRMel Robbins
Like, what's happening in your brain?
- SMDr. Sarah McKay
So the same scientists that have lain in the brain scanner every day over the course of the month, the- they gave the study a very cute name. They called it 28andMe, and then they did a study of the oral contraceptive pill and called it 28andOC, for oral contraceptive. Very-... epic science that's been done by these women, um, and then they went on the pill. And so, we know that when you go on the oral contraceptive pill, which is an excellent form of contraception, um, that it flatlines your natural levels of hormones and then you kinda get this high level of hormones from the pill, and it kinda depends on which formulation that you're taking.
- MRMel Robbins
Does it hurt your brain?
- SMDr. Sarah McKay
No. It's, it's... What we would see if we're looking at these networks is that the networks then flatline. Instead of ebbing and flowing with your natural levels of hormones, your natural levels of hormones are flat, the, the levels of hormones from the pill are flat, and so your brain waves just kind of go flat. And for some women, that might feel like stable mood.
- MRMel Robbins
Uh-huh.
- SMDr. Sarah McKay
So we know some women go on the pill and they find it stabilizes their mood, particularly women that have extreme PMS or the extreme form of that PMDD. Some women find that going on the pill makes their hormones, stabilizes their hormones and makes their f- their emotions feel stable. Other women might feel maybe their emotions are flattened.
- MRMel Robbins
Hmm.
- SMDr. Sarah McKay
'Cause we've all got very, very different sort of responses and sensitivities to how hormones are interacting with our brain, and there does appear to be sort of a subset, um, of women who are hormone sensitive.
- MRMel Robbins
And by hormone sensitive, what exactly do you mean as a neuroscientist?
- SMDr. Sarah McKay
Yeah. So, there... It's, um, we don't know. I mean, this, we're, we're still kind of at the very, very early stages of starting to understand what is going on in a brain that's responding to hormones, let alone what is going on in the brains of all of these different people who have different types of experiences and different types of emotions. And it's particularly emotions that we're interested in across the course of the menstrual cycle. So, there is, there are plenty of women who will say, "Yeah. Look, I have PMS symptoms. I experience, you know, I feel angry and irritable and grumpy and weepy," et cetera, before their period. Um, there are also a subset of women who might feel particularly energized and maybe even a little bit frisky, kind of, uh, with the onloading of estrogen, so around ovulation. We've all got these different sorts of, uh, appears to be this different kind of baseline sensitivity to these hormone-
- MRMel Robbins
Mm.
- SMDr. Sarah McKay
... fluctuations. And it's not that the levels of hormones are any different. There's something in the way that we're responding to those-
- MRMel Robbins
Mm-hmm.
- SMDr. Sarah McKay
... hormones-
- MRMel Robbins
Mm-hmm.
- SMDr. Sarah McKay
... that are changing, but we don't really kind of know what it is. We do see these hints back to, like, girls who go through early puberty and perhaps even girls who have experienced early childhood trauma.
- MRMel Robbins
I can't believe you just said that, because I just wrote down on this piece of paper, "I wonder if hormone sensitivity is correlated to adverse childhood-
- SMDr. Sarah McKay
Experiences.
- MRMel Robbins
... experiences or sexual abuse."
- SMDr. Sarah McKay
It, it is.
- MRMel Robbins
It is?
- SMDr. Sarah McKay
Not, um, and- and that's not an inevitable, if you experience that, you will be hormone sensitive or if you're hormone sensitive it is only due to that. But we, we see a tendency, and so there is, you know, there are some clinicians and researchers, particularly those working in the menopause space, who are starting to recognize the sensitivity and then kind of going all the way back to early childhood and asking women, "Well, you're in perimenopause. You've got depression or you had postmenopausal depression. What was your early childhood like?"
- MRMel Robbins
Mm.
- SMDr. Sarah McKay
It's not a direct-
- MRMel Robbins
Yes.
- 47:59 – 57:44
Motherhood Changes Your Brain, Here’s How
- MRMel Robbins
How does, uh, pregnancy and motherhood change the brain?
- SMDr. Sarah McKay
Oh. One of my favorite topics, Mel. I've written a whole book on this. So, an overarching statement I would make would be that pregnancy prepares the brain and mind for motherhood. And some studies have been done, and this was, pretty much nothing was published on how women's brains changed during pregnancy and motherhood until sort of around 2017. So it was-
- MRMel Robbins
2017?
- SMDr. Sarah McKay
... quite late. We knew what was happening in animals. (laughs) There are these, there was a group in Spain and, again, there's, there's some really great researchers out there working on women's health and they're all women.And it's because they are the ones asking the questions. So it was back in 2009, these kind of three women were having this conversation and said, "Well, what would happen if we became pregnant? Let's go look at the research. There is no research, let's do the study ourselves. Let's get pregnant and scan our own brains and try and find some friends to join in." And so that has like... Th- this field of sort of the maternal brain or the neurobiology of matrescence, you could call it, has sort of exploded. And so they've scanned women's brains before their first pregnancy and after their first pregnancy. And more recently, another epic study done by a woman who's experimented on herself, scanned her brain all the way through pregnancy, and we see this enormous structural reorganization-
- MRMel Robbins
Really?
- SMDr. Sarah McKay
... and rewiring of the brain through the course of a pregnancy.
- MRMel Robbins
What happens? Oh my God, you're literally-
- SMDr. Sarah McKay
(laughs)
- MRMel Robbins
... like making another human being.
- SMDr. Sarah McKay
You're making-
- MRMel Robbins
So is the brain, like, figuring out how to talk to the mechanics of the baby?
- SMDr. Sarah McKay
Yeah. Yeah, so the biggest... So they see... And this, when I first... The way I... I don't like to say this 'cause people immediately think that something has gone wrong.
- MRMel Robbins
Say it.
- SMDr. Sarah McKay
But we say we see a 4% volume loss in the brain during the course of a pregnancy. But we also see-
- MRMel Robbins
We gain it in the stomach-
- SMDr. Sarah McKay
We also-
- MRMel Robbins
... so it's fine.
- SMDr. Sarah McKay
Yeah, we als-... We also see this in teenagers' brains and adolescent brains, right? They get slightly thinner as the brain is streamlining and refining and pruning and tuning its synapses. And we see this throughout the brain during the course particularly of a first pregnancy, and it's primarily in those parts of the brain which are involved in social cognition. So what is-
- MRMel Robbins
What does that mean?
- SMDr. Sarah McKay
What is someone else thinking? What is someone else feeling? How do I read the needs of somebody else and how do I deploy the right behaviors to look after them? And then-
- MRMel Robbins
Meaning you care more about it?
- SMDr. Sarah McKay
Who is the other person that you're going to be looking after at the end of a pregnancy? It's the little baby.
- MRMel Robbins
Yes.
- SMDr. Sarah McKay
So your brain is being reorganized to deploy the right types of behaviors to look after your baby. And that sounds very kind of like I'm describing what happens in an animal, but we've got very... A, a whole lot of data from, you know, many other animals in the mammalian kingdom looking to see how their brains reshape and reorganize so they deploy the right types of maternal behaviors. Same thing h-
- MRMel Robbins
Well, if you don't, the baby's gonna die.
- SMDr. Sarah McKay
Well, exactly. The same thing happens to us. So we become very, very tuned in. Our... You know, this new baby comes into the world and y- you can't really sort of think about anything else. All of your attention, particularly with your first baby, is solely focused in on that little baby. You almost can't think of anything else. No wonder you can't remember about the bananas or the keys or-
- MRMel Robbins
How horrible-
- SMDr. Sarah McKay
... your husband's lunch.
- MRMel Robbins
... the labor was.
- SMDr. Sarah McKay
Yeah, (laughs) or anything like that.
- 57:44 – 1:10:37
How Menopause Reshapes Your Brain
- SMDr. Sarah McKay
Yeah.
- MRMel Robbins
That's true. So let's talk about menopause.
- SMDr. Sarah McKay
Yeah.
- MRMel Robbins
Because another period in a woman's life-
- SMDr. Sarah McKay
Yep.
- MRMel Robbins
... where we tend to talk about brain fog-
- SMDr. Sarah McKay
Mm.
- MRMel Robbins
... is when we're going through menopause.
- SMDr. Sarah McKay
Mm.
- MRMel Robbins
What is happening to the female brain when we dry up like a raisin? (laughs)
- SMDr. Sarah McKay
(laughs) Well, that brain ovarian conversation that's been going on, we've talked about puberty, we've talked about menstrual cycle, we've talked about pregnancy. It kind of starts to falter a little bit and it's been you know kind of going on really nicely for many years and then what happens is menopause actually starts in our ovaries, right? We run out of eggs. Ovaries start to give up, sometimes, you know, they ovulate, sometimes they don't. The brain is up there listening going, "You didn't ovulate. Ovulate."
- MRMel Robbins
(laughs)
- SMDr. Sarah McKay
The ovaries go, "Okay. There's huge amounts of estrogen." The brain goes, "Not that much."
- MRMel Robbins
(laughs)
- SMDr. Sarah McKay
The ovaries go, "Okay, sorry." So, you know, we kind of get this roller coastering and that's what we would call perimenopause and then our brain is starting to respond to that massive roller coastering. We know kind of what happens with our bodies. We get irregular periods. We can get really heavy periods. We can get none and then they come back and it lasts for two weeks and all of the things that are going on and our brain is kind of in the middle trying to adapt and respond and flex and kind of make the most of this sort of situation that- that it's in.
- MRMel Robbins
Uh-huh.
- SMDr. Sarah McKay
Brain fog is one of the words that we use. It's kind of umbrella word that we would use to describe this kind of constellation of symptoms, perhaps not dissimilar to baby brain again, but this time there's probably a little bit more of a biological cause behind it. But we're not sure exactly what is this kind of nice neat biological pathway and I love a biological mechanism. We know that the estrogens kind of roller coastering and then after menopause it's flat-lining. We're pretty sure we know how the brain causes hot flashes and how that's- e- estrogen is involved there.
- MRMel Robbins
How does est- How does estrogen cause hot flashes in the brain?
- SMDr. Sarah McKay
So we've got the hypothalamus, that part of the brain that's receiving all the data from our body, so it's also, it- it regulates our body temperature and the thermostat in the hypothalamus is almost set by estrogen. For some reason, the- the brain evolved to be s- have that thermostat to be set by estrogen. When the estrogen starts doing its crazy thing, the thermostat gets really narrow. So the top goes... So it gets much narrower so your body temperature only needs to rise a tiny bit to kind of hit the upper level and your brain goes, "It's hot in here, it's hot in here," and it sends two signals out to your body to cool down. Physiological signals like you go really red and you sweat because it's an emer- in an emergency situation-
- MRMel Robbins
Mm-hmm.
- SMDr. Sarah McKay
... and then also for you to go, "Oh, I'm hot and therefore I will behave in a way to cool myself down, I'll take my jumper off." When you are asleep at night, your body's like doing the whole sweating thing but sometimes you've got the covers on but you're asleep and so then your brain needs to wake you up. And some women describe it in- in my experience, being 50, um, it feels a little bit like you've had a fright, like you wake up and you've gone (gasps) .It's not like just waking up normally, there's... you can almost feel the adrenaline going through your body because your brain has had to wake you up-
- MRMel Robbins
Mm-hmm.
- SMDr. Sarah McKay
... wake you up to behave in a way to also cool you down because the sweating wasn't quite doing enough.
- MRMel Robbins
Yes. By that point, it's like a puddle on my side of the bed.
- SMDr. Sarah McKay
Yes. Yes.
- MRMel Robbins
And then I'm like, "Huh? How was I asleep when these sheets are so wet?"
- SMDr. Sarah McKay
Yeah. Yeah.
- MRMel Robbins
"And why am I so warm?" Yes.
- SMDr. Sarah McKay
Yeah. And we know a couple of things. We know if we put estrogen back in with menopause hormone therapy, or HRT, whatever you're gonna call it, we know that that kind of, kind of reset that thermostat, and we know that that's... putting the estrogen back in is one of the best treatments for vasomotor symptoms. What we're seeing and, you know, some of the ideas are that we know that body temperature and sleep are really intimately entwined, and every menopausal woman knows that, right? You might not know that if you're a young teenage fella, right? You might not have figured that out. But we all, we all know that. About 70% of the hot flashes that we have overnight, and so the studies have found about 70% of the hot flashes will wake us up. You might not remember waking up, but your sleep's being disrupted.
- MRMel Robbins
Mm-hmm.
- 1:10:37 – 1:15:16
Your Brain Is Stronger Than You Think
- MRMel Robbins
Dr. Mackay, what's your parting words?
- SMDr. Sarah McKay
I was thinking about this. Because all of the work that I talk about in all my books and teach and I write about, that's not research that I've done. It is me talking about the work that other researchers have done 'cause, you know, I, I don't work as an academic neuroscientist anymore. I, I'm a science communicator, and I just have so much to thank all of those researchers out there doing the work. Like, so many of them, like, some of them are like women of steel who are asking these hard questions, battling for the funding, and then, you know, seeking the answers, and it takes a really long time to do good science well. It takes time and money and you have to be meticulous, and sometimes it's nuanced, and sometimes it's mixed, and sometimes the answer is still we don't know. And so, I think my parting word is I just want to, like, acknowledge them and thank them and cheerlead them because I couldn't do what I do. I'm just talking about the work that they've done, so, so yeah, my parting word to them is just to say, "Thank you."
- MRMel Robbins
I love that. I'm gonna say thank you too.
- SMDr. Sarah McKay
Hmm.
- MRMel Robbins
And is there any final thing you wanna say to the person who has just spent all this time learning from you that you want them to know about their brain or the future that's possible for them?
- SMDr. Sarah McKay
I think we have been told for centuries the story that women's brains are unstable and chaotic and dysfunctional, and other than males. And our brains are actually, like, resilient and adaptable, and that's not just me saying that 'cause it's a nice thing to say. It's really and truly what the neuroscience is showing. And so, I know that there's gaps, I know that, you know, not everyone has, you know, the best life experiences, but the, the research is sort of showing us that there is a really good news story, and if we look at the s- look for the strengths and we also tell ourselves the good stories, then we may be able to influence some more positive health outcomes along the way.
- MRMel Robbins
Amazing. Thank you for being here.
- SMDr. Sarah McKay
Well, thank you for inviting me.
- MRMel Robbins
I learned so much from you today.
- SMDr. Sarah McKay
(laughs)
- MRMel Robbins
No, seriously.
- SMDr. Sarah McKay
Yeah.
- MRMel Robbins
Like, I feel... my brain feels like popcorn is popping all over the place-
- SMDr. Sarah McKay
Mm-hmm.
- MRMel Robbins
... because you challenged me to think about this topic completely differently.
- SMDr. Sarah McKay
Hmm.
- MRMel Robbins
It's very empowering to think that...Between your ears and on top of your neck is this incredible organ that is constantly adapting- Mm. ... and has this crazy intelligent design. Mm. And when you understand the fact that it's only just responding to the input- Mm. ... physically- Yeah. ... and from the world- Yeah. ... you actually hand us the keys to- Yeah. ... think more critically- Yeah. ... about how to add positive input, how to- Yeah. Yeah. ... stop buying the lies that we're being told- Yeah. ... about the way that women are, or girls are, or- Yeah. ... men are, or boys are- Yeah. ... and understand that it can always adapt and change. Yeah. And that's a very positive- Yeah. ... and encouraging thing. Yeah. I, I just feel so much smarter, and I really appreciate you hopping on a plane, you coming all this way, you pouring into us. Thank you for the work that you're doing. This has been amazing. And I also wanna thank you. Thank you for taking the time to listen to something that is gonna help you understand your mind and unlock the power of it. And in case no one else tells you today, I wanted to be sure to tell you that I love you, and I believe in you. And I believe in your ability to not only create a better life, but with a better understanding of the way that your mind works, I think you can unlock the power of it. And I can't wait to see what you do with everything that you learn today. So thanks for being here, and I will see you in the very next episode. I'll be waiting to welcome you in the moment you hit play. I'll see you there. And thank you for watching all the way to the end. I love being here with you on YouTube. Thank you for sharing this episode with people that you care about. Thank you for being a subscriber, because it really is a way that you can support us in bringing you extraordinary experts. I know what you're thinking, "Mel, stop talking. Tell me what to watch next." You got it. This is the very next episode you're gonna love, and I'll be waiting to welcome you in the moment you hit play. I'll see you there.
Episode duration: 1:15:16
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