Leading Neuroscientist: Stress Leaks Through Skin, Is Contagious, Gives You Belly Fat! Dr Tara Swart

Did you know, there's a really fascinating experiment done on weightlifters? They lifted no weights for two weeks. They just sat there and they visualized themselves lifting weights. They had a 13% increase in muscle mass. People should realize how much potential they have in their brains.

Dr. Tara Swart.

She's a neuroscientist. Medical doctor. Executive advisor. And best-selling author. She's here to teach us on how to build mental resilience. To overcome our biggest challenges.

Is stress contagious?

Mm-hmm. So cortisol is the main stress hormone, and it will leak out of our sweat about this far around us, go into the skin of everybody else, and it's gonna impact them.

How ...

And as a survival mechanism, it will help you to store fat around your abdomen.

So stress causes belly fat?

Belly fat that's really hard to shift. There's another rabbit hole you could go down about social contagion. So there are statistics that show that you meet people who are at a similar psychological level to you. For example, if someone gets divorced, you're more likely to get divorced in the next year. Your own brain can play tricks on you.

So what can I do about that?

The brain is actively growing and changing till we're about 25. But from 25 to 65, if you do things that are intense enough to force your brain to change, you will actually improve the highest functions of the brain. Things like regulate your emotions better, solve complex problems, think flexibly, override any unconscious biases that you may have.

It begs the question then, where do I start? (dramatic music) Dr. Tara Swart. What are the sort of existing ideas that your work and what you speak about is confronting? The, like, unhelpful existing preconceptions about the brain, human potential-

Mm-hmm.

... that your work is confronting head-on?

So the first thing I came up against, 'cause this was around the time of the financial crisis, was the lack of understanding of the brain-body connection. So these high performing executives were kind of acting like their body was just the vehicle that was moving their brain around from meeting to meeting. And both disrespecting their bo- their physical health, but also not understanding that what they were actually really being paid for was to use their brain, and they weren't creating the best conditions for that brain to operate in. Um, and I'm talking about really basic things like sleep and a good diet and hydration and not being sedentary, managing your stress, et cetera. So, you know, this tiny organ, if it's not in an environment that is giving it the best chance of doing its job, it's not going to and a crack's going to appear somewhere. Um, and the first time I really kind of had a big confrontation with a bank was when people were dropping dead on the trading floor of heart attacks. And they asked me to work more in my capacity as a former medical doctor to help with the physical stuff, and I said, "I can't do that if we don't address the mental and emotional piece, because that's what's causing this." And they just could- could not get that.