Dr. David Perlmutter, M.D., and his son Austin Perlmutter, M.D., have co-authored a book entitled Brain Wash which will be released on January 14, 2020. Based on their description of the book, as seen below, I want to heartily recommend this book to you.
Some of the central themes of the book are ones which we need to practice in these times: the importance of forming strong interpersonal relationships, the mindful use of technology, the benefits of time spent in nature, and the importance of healthy eating and nutritional practices.
Here is how the author’s describe their new book:
“Look around and ask yourself, could things be better? We believe the answer is a resounding yes. And this is our ultimate goal in bringing out our new book, Brain Wash.
Brain Wash is a functional roadmap for understanding how so much of what characterizes our modern world influences our brains and, most importantly, our decision-making.
From our modern diets to our lack of restorative sleep to our virtual addiction to our digital experiences, the trappings of modern times actually conspire to keep us unfulfilled, impulsive, and self-centered.
Brain Wash begins by bringing these powerful influences into stark reality. We present a framework for appreciating the negative impact of these exposures, and then provide a set of practical interventions for reclaiming our brains and improving our physical and mental health.
We’re all taking part in a grand experiment, and it’s our health and happiness that are at stake.
Indeed, the very wiring of our brains has been altered to keep us hooked on devices and activities that do not benefit us.
Our attention has been commoditized and our emotions manipulated for the profits of others. In addition, modern life has simply not been set up to optimize for happiness or health.
Multiple factors contribute to our epidemics of anxiety, depression, obesity, chronic disease and loneliness, but one central factor at play is that we are trapped in a spiral of impulsive, short-term, unhealthy decisions.
Clearly, there’s a better way to live our lives.
The Brain Wash Promise
You can reclaim your physical and mental health and reshape your life for the better. But you can’t do that until you understand the reality of modern living.
The first step to decreasing the hold of instant gratification and poor decision-making is to understand how it became the default for so many of our choices.
When you can see how and why you’ve been targeted, manipulated and otherwise convinced to adopt unhealthy practices, and the mental and physical consequences of these influences, you can start to recreate your life in a way that better serves you.
We explore the incredible degree of ongoing manipulation of our brain’s basic functionality through commercial messages convincing us that short-term fixes are the route to happiness, digital media platforms that expose us to purposefully addictive content, targeted attention-grabs and unrealistic comparisons as well as the synergistic impact of over-consumption of ultra-processed food in activating these same reward networks in the brain.
We explain the impact of our negativity bias in the news, and how the current atmosphere of tribalism and polarization over-activates a specific brain area, the amygdala, diminishing the ability of the more rational prefrontal cortex to make well thought-out, balanced decisions.
We then explain how chronic stress, sleep deficit, and inflammation all contribute to compounding the situation, exploring the fascinating research showing that these modern day stressors actually change neural structures, brain activation networks, and, most concerning, dramatically shift our thinking to short-term, emotionally reactive, and less empathetic patterns.
We then shift gears towards the positive and empowering part of our story as we introduce practical methods for reducing these assaults to our brains and decision-making by covering the recent research on the health benefits of lifestyle choices like nature-exposure, especially as it pertains to lowering levels of stress.
We cover the research on the diverse benefits seen with mindful/meditative practices, with a specific focus on data suggesting better top-down prefrontal control over the impulsive amygdala that happens with meditation.
We also look at dietary changes designed to reduce inflammation and help us release our brains from being directed by amygdala-based impulsivity. We finish our review of pragmatic interventions with the benefits associated with interpersonal connection (emphasizing in-person connection).
We can’t wait to get this book in your hands!”
David Perlmutter, M.D. and Austin Perlmutter, M.D.
Crestone and Beyond
The major themes of this book revolve around the growing bodies of research which validate the common sense benefits of spending time in nature, developing deeper interpersonal relationships, using technology mindfully, and eating in a health promoting fashion.
Unfortunately, these common sense themes are being washed out of our lives and culture by a consortium of big industry movements whose profit based motives end up harming the individual, the collective, and the planet. Brain Wash is an important and necessary writing to help us understand why and how we need to wash out the big industry brain washings which have flooded our lives and culture in the post WWII period. It is time for everyone to experience a reality check into a more wholesome kind of brain washing.
While developing its major themes, Brain Wash also reveals how we are being duped, manipulated, and harmed by consumerism and other aspects of modernity; all aspects of which I have come to regard with dubiety and growing concern over the past 30 to 40 years of witnessing the tsunami of consumerist changes inundating our now denatured and gadget oriented culture.
Consumerism is rigged so that it is addictive. An addiction is any behavior we do as a result of a fear of internal growth. If you are feeling fear, don’t try to distract or disengage yourself from it. Fear deserves exploration and understanding. It is a rather helpful and informative emotion when mindfully engaged. Our lives are not meant to contract and stagnate by numbing our fear with the tidal wave of trending consumerist fast fixes for our every desire and need. Ongoing growth in body, mind, emotions, and spirit is the best daily practice.
A power scrub is not the intention of this book. A daily practice of simple gentle healthy types of common sense habits is the way to develop a more meaningful relationship with oneself, and having owned that, then we can give it to others as we engender deeper, more meaningful, interpersonal relationships.
Nature is the best teacher. Food comes from nature. Electronic gadgets, while useful, do not come from nature. These points are what I refer to as common sense. One learns how to live a more simple lifestyle by helping simple lifestyle neural circuits develop and grow. This requires common sense wholesome daily practices. A simple walk in nature without the cell phone is a nice way to start. Being with your friend without a gadget in your hand is another nice practice. Eating unprocessed whole foods is essential.
To have a look at what this valuable book offers, you can download the free introduction here.
In addition, the Drs. Perlmutter have created 3 beautiful and informative short videos on the major themes of the book:
- Unhack Your Brain: Getting Back to Nature
- Unhack Your Brain: Digital Detox
- Unhack Your Brain: Eating Mindfully
This book will make a positive difference in the lives of many people in our society and around the globe. Congratulations, kudos, and thanks to the Drs. David and Austin Perlmutter, and congratulations, kudos, and thanks to anyone who gets this book, reads it, and practices its good advice.
You can order Brain Wash from brainwashbook.com.
Thank you for reading.
Signing off from Crestone and Beyond
Related Reading
- Body Fat Threatens Ability to Make Good Choices…a 2-5-20 writing from Dr. Perlmutter’s website which explains how obesity harms the prefrontal cortex executive function and allows for bad decisions due to the resulting dominance of the amygdala, which is associated with impulsivity and narcissism. “Brain Wash focuses on reclaiming our ability to make good choices by reconnecting to the prefrontal cortex.”
- Brain Karma…”Is delusion hardwired?”…author Wendy Hasenkamp, PhD, offers a nice writing from the Buddhist and neuroscience points of view. This composition is a very nice companion perspective to everything written above. Neural plasticity and karma are explored.
- Health Effects of Isolation…the health effects of loneliness are explained. Also, the illusion of connectedness via electronic devices is alluded too, and this is just one more toxic aspect of EMF devices.
- Dropping Distraction…more ideas about how to take control of your life.
- The Tech Industry’s War on Kids…a must read article about how our children, and adults, are being purposefully psychologically altered and harmed by tech devices.
- The Common Sense Census: Media Use by Kids Age Zero to Eight, 2017…children under age 2 are spending an average of 42 minutes a day with screens, and children ages 2 to 4 spend a whopping two hours and 40 minutes on screens.
- Children and Media Tips from The American Academy of Pediatrics…the Academy recommends avoiding screen time entirely in kids under 2 years of age, with the exception of video chats (i.e., FaceTime with grandma and grandpa). In kids between the ages of 2 and 5, they suggest limiting screen time to one hour, and also recommend that an adult be present during viewing.
- Is your child’s use of electronics an addiction or a bad habit?…another portrayal of this worrisome trend.
- Smartphones can prevent parents from cultivating feelings of connection with their children…yet another portrayal of this worrisome trend.
- Internet Addiction–Yes, It’s Really a “Thing”…internet addiction disorder (IAD) is a true addiction and a growing problem which further separates us from one another.
- Analysis: Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg under fire as scandals mount…Facebook’s company policies and lack of oversight are being exposed.
- Associations Between Screen-Based Media Use and Brain White Matter Integrity in Preschool-Aged Children…a November, 2019 study published in JAMA Network, using advanced brain scanning technology, has found that preschool-age children with higher screen usage had impaired brain development compared to kids with lower screen usage. More specifically, the children who used screens more had reduced myelination of neurons in the brain. The myelination of neurons is directly tied with reaching developmental milestones.
- Groundbreaking Study Discovers an Association Between Screen Time and Actual Brain Changes…NIH researchers studied 4,500 nine- and ten-year-olds and found premature thinning of the cerebral cortex in those that used screens more than seven hours a day.
- Devices Divide…a podcast by a teenager who struggled with her usage and relationship with electronic devices and wanted to create a space to explore such impacts. The podcast interviews a number of healthcare thought leaders.
- Bored and Brilliant: How Spacing Out can Unlock Your Most Productive and Creative Self…a good book on the importance of boredom, by Manoush Zomorodi.
- What to Do When You Don’t Know What’s Next…”There’s so much chaos in the world right now that we have little choice but to wake up to it. Heightened uncertainty is an excellent opportunity for growth.” The author presents 8 steps for personal accountability and growth in difficult times.
- Adventures in Going Nowhere…author Pico Iyer has figured out how to be still in the midst of the world’s busyness. “If your car is broken, you don’t try to find ways to repaint its chassis; most of our problems—and therefore our solutions, our peace of mind—lie within.”
- Health Benefits of Urban Nature Exposure…Dr. Perlmutter describes a study from the University of Michigan that “shows us is that there are, in fact, demonstrable benefits from even a 20- to 30-minute nature experience, even in an urban environment.”
- Twelve Million Phones, One Dataset, Zero Privacy…”After spending months sifting through the data, tracking the movements of people across the country and speaking with dozens of data companies, technologists, lawyers and academics who study this field, we feel the same sense of alarm. In the cities that the data file covers, it tracks people from nearly every neighborhood and block, whether they live in mobile homes in Alexandria, Va., or luxury towers in Manhattan.”
- Myth of ‘Moderation’: Is There No Safe Amount of Alcohol?…posted here on 7-24-22. The harms of alcohol consumption are reviewed here; especially harm to the brain. Studies conclude that there is no safe level of alcohol consumption.
- The Velocity of Life…a writing on this website from July, 2015, where I attempt an earlier description of the problems which our modernity brings us. The reading references at the end of the writing are all appropriate for consideration in light of the themes of Brain Wash.
- Nature Genius…a February, 2013 writing on this website about our greatest teacher and spiritual assistant…Nature. We need to involve Nature in our daily lives. We also need to preserve Nature and stop destroying it.
- Saving Earth…another website writing about the preservation of our most precious resource. Good planets are hard to find.
- Minding Your Meditation…a March, 2014 writing on this website about meditation, its practice, and benefits.