Dr Tara: You ask yourself the question, and you can either place your hands on your head or just focus on answering it from that part of your body, why do I want this car or do I really want this car? Answer it logically. Then take five deep breaths and put your hands on your heart and ask the same question but answer it emotionally. And then take five more deep breaths, put your hands on your belly and answer the same question again from your intuition. Now, if they're aligned, then you probably do actually have magnetic desire for that thing.
Dr Rupy: Welcome to the Doctor's Kitchen podcast. The show about food, lifestyle, medicine and how to improve your health today. I'm Dr Rupy, your host. I'm a medical doctor, I study nutrition and I'm a firm believer in the power of food and lifestyle as medicine. Join me and my expert guests where we discuss the multiple determinants of what allows you to lead your best life.
Dr Rupy: Friend of the podcast and one of my favourite authors, Dr Tara Swart is back on the Doctor's Kitchen show today. She is a neuroscientist, former medical doctor, and author of The Source, a book that has been hugely impactful to my career and mindset. And she's also host of top-rated life scientist podcast, Reinvent Yourself with Dr Tara and brand ambassador in the beauty and well-being space. Today, we're going to talk about neuroplasticity, the ability of everybody to adapt and change way later in life than we originally thought. Dr Tara will talk to us about exercises for how to better tap into the potential of our brains, as well as the science of why manifesting and vision boarding, also known as action boarding, works so well, plus how ancient wisdom has influenced her practice. Her idea is very simple. No matter how old, how stubborn, or how set in their ways, everyone has the capacity to change. And to add to that, everyone has the ability to manifest a future for themselves full of love, joy, health, and whatever you desire. But your mindset and willingness to let go is crucial. I think you will love Dr Tara's science-influenced approach to manifesting and ancient practices. It really does resonate with me. Remember, you can watch the podcast on YouTube where you can support the podcast in a no-cost manner by just hitting subscribe and the notification bell. You can download the Doctor's Kitchen app for free. Right now we have over 600 recipes, each with step-by-step images to help you get into that mindset of healthy eating every day. Plus, you can check out our free newsletter, Eat, Listen, Read, that you can subscribe to, I should say. You can subscribe to on the Doctor's Kitchen website right now. Every week I send you a recipe to enjoy, something to listen to, something to watch, something to read that will help you have a healthier, happier week. But for now, onto my podcast with the wonderful Dr Tara.
Dr Rupy: Tara, it's so good to have you here again, actually face to face in this podcast. We're going to get right into it. I want to talk to you about manifesting. What is the science from a neuroscientist's perspective about why manifesting works?
Dr Tara: Okay. There's a few ways I could approach this. And I think it's a good idea to start off by saying that manifesting is basically setting a goal and making it happen. So, there's a process of change in the brain that helps us to move towards, you know, a new habit, a new behaviour, something we want to bring into our life. And in practical terms, that process involves knowing what you want, so that's raised awareness, focused attention, which is looking out for opportunities that can lead you closer to that goal, deliberate practice, which is taking the actions that you need to be doing to achieve the thing that you want, and then accountability, which is basically how do you make sure that you don't give up if it takes longer than you thought or it's just harder than you thought or it feels like it's never going to happen. Because in the brain, when you are working towards a goal, you're basically reinforcing a pathway in your brain. And so neuroplasticity means that we can change and flex pathways in our brain. And even though it might feel like a psychological thing, that physical hard work is going on in your brain. So, it's tiring, you need extra resources to feed it. And there's a tipping point where the pathway becomes strong enough that you're in all the right habits and you're moving in the right direction and it feels like you can achieve the thing that you want. But there's always a period just before you get to that tipping point that often people feel like giving up because it's all the hard work and no result yet. So, the motivation is important. I think with manifestation, some of the things can be about, well, everybody else is getting engaged, getting married, having a family, so I should do that too. But I think it's really about digging down into what is your magnetic desire, which is the thing that will pull you through that time where it feels like it's too difficult. And so what's actually going on in the brain, and I'm going to put that together with visualization or what are known as vision boards, but I call action boards for the reasons I've just said, which is that you have to do stuff to make it happen. But there's some processes in the brain called selective filtering, selective attention and value tagging. And so because we're bombarded with so much information, we naturally filter out things that we don't need to know about. So for example, you're not aware of your clothes on your body all day because you don't need that sensory input. But if you're not directing that filtering, your brain's going to do it on a default basis, which is really just prioritizing your survival. If so, if you can direct it more towards by having an image of something that you want or a list of something that you want, then that helps. And so that helps then to you to pay attention to opportunities that could lead you in the right direction. And the value tagging is how those things are tagged in order of importance in your brain. And there's a logical side to that, but there's also an emotional side and that's again why I call it magnetic desire, which is that it has to be something you want so much that it's like top of mind, front of brain, and you notice everything that's connected to it possibly coming true.
Dr Rupy: I wanted to talk a bit about magnetic desire actually, because what conjures up in my head is this idea of mimetic theory or mimesis, whereby you see something on Instagram, let's say, or you see that your friend has got a new car or is going skiing, and then you automatically start desiring that. You mimic the desires of somebody else. How can you teach yourself or be aware of that sort of mimetic desire pull that can be stealing away from your true magnetic desire, something that will pull you through because you actually truly desire that?
Dr Tara: That's such a great question. I've never actually been asked that before. And I think a good way to check that is whether it's aligned in your head, your heart, and your gut. And by, you know, scientifically, I mean logically, emotionally, and intuitively. So, if we take an example of your friend's got a new car, you know, use the one that you gave, then if you ask yourself the question three times, and there's actually a really great exercise called unfurling where you ask yourself the question and you can either place your hands on your head or just focus on answering it from that part of your body. And basically say, why do I want this car or do I really want this car? Answer it logically. Then take five deep breaths and put your hands on your heart and ask the same question but answer it emotionally. And then take five more deep breaths, put your hands on your belly and answer the same question again from your intuition. Now, if they're aligned, then you probably do actually have magnetic desire for that thing. If logic's telling you one thing, but intuition's telling you another, or your emotions are telling you another, then if there's, you know, if there's discord there, it's worth kind of questioning that, you know, maybe journaling, maybe chatting to a friend or a therapist or something about why it's not aligned.
Dr Rupy: I love that. I've never heard of that. And what did you call it? Unfurling?
Dr Tara: Unfurling, yeah.
Dr Rupy: Unfurling. I've never heard of that exercise. I'm going to start putting that into practice because literally thinking about it out loud, you know, your head, your heart, your gut, it sounds quite spiritual. It sounds like something that, you know, our mothers might have told us or, you know, extended family, particularly us, you know, both coming from similar backgrounds. But there is science behind it as well, right? There is a science behind how your brain is connected to your gut, which is connected to your heart.
Dr Tara: And it's actually, it's it's a coaching exercise. So it's kind of it's it's one that just works nicely because of the way you like embody it. But if you think about the six ways of thinking in my book, then there's logic, emotion, intuition, which we've just covered, but there's also motivation, physicality, and creativity. So with if I'm coaching executives, I get them to actually work through those six and ask themselves the question. So even when I was working with guys who were trading, I would say work through those six, why might you make this trade logically, intuitively, creatively, everything.
Dr Rupy: And would you get them to put?
Dr Tara: No, because at that time I didn't actually know the exercise, but for some people it suits to do it in that way that is more technical and scientific. And for some people it's just going to feel more right to do it in this, you know, very kind of visceral way.
Dr Rupy: I talked to you about this during your podcast and video where I described to you the manifesting process that I put in practice after reading your book about the studio that we're literally sat in right now. And actually, I wanted to read you the affirmation that I literally read to myself every single day because I'm not too sure whether you got the same vibe when you walked in here, but I, so for those of you listening to this for the first time, I started reading The Source. I spoke to you, we had some coaching sessions, and I started writing down exactly what the vibe should be in my studio that I had no idea that I could afford to to to start renting. I had no idea what it actually looked like. I didn't know whether I was going to be able to even create the team that we have today. And so the first line of this is, walking into the Doctor's Kitchen HQ is like entering a health-conscious foodie's paradise. At the front desk, there was a deep green backdrop of plants broken up by vibrant dynamic bowls of their distinctive logo. Glass panelling streams a gorgeous amount of natural light into the double height room. The clatter of pans and low-fi beats and happy voices in the background knows lets you know that this is a place of work, fun, and incredible food. Aromatic spices, cinnamon, cardamom, paprika, provide a warm greeting that leads you through the mixture of tables and soundproofed meeting rooms.
Dr Tara: It's crazy. That is crazy.
Dr Rupy: Yeah. And that's, I mean, hopefully you got that kind of vibe. And that's I would literally, it gives me goosebumps every time I read this and I'm in the studio because I read that to myself. And there's a whole long list. I won't go through the whole thing. There's a good sort of like essay here of of every sort of detail. I read that to myself every morning.
Dr Tara: Did you read it out loud?
Dr Rupy: I read it out loud.
Dr Tara: So, one of the things, so, you know, for some people, action boards are the thing. There's I've got a really interesting theory about reading something out loud. Additionally, if you had handwritten it, but you know, you typed it. So basically you typed it up. Then you read it and you're speaking it out loud and you're hearing what you're saying. So you're actually touching upon several different parts of the brain. You know, the part that articulates speech, the part that hears language and processes it, the part that reads. So, you know, it's it's an alternative. I'm I'm, you know, very happy for people to do lists. But I think writing out, you know, almost something like a magazine article or a letter to yourself is is really, it's more creative.
Dr Rupy: That that was written through the lens of a journalist of a magazine that had visited or was going to visit the Doctor's Kitchen HQ. And I described all these different elements as if I were writing it myself. And it goes into an interview a little bit later on where I talk about the app and I still need to add a few extra bits to that actually and start reading that every single day. But for me, that was a a powerful illustration to myself about this the value of manifesting, the value of action boarding. And I did have my action board as well, which had like some images of, you know, these kind of things as well. And through the process of
Dr Tara: Hang on, wasn't there a specific pink fridge?
Dr Rupy: Yes, there was a specific pink fridge. I get to that later on in the document as well about like how there is this vibrant big pink fridge in the middle of the studio. And it just so happens that Smeg who, you know, we approached had the exact pink colored fridge. I mean, you think about like fridges, they don't particularly come in, you know, retro colors like that. And that particular pink is the exact same pink that we have in our brand colors as well for Doctor's Kitchen. So it kind of all aligned and you know, reading your book again, of which I've read like three or four times, the value tagging and the selective attention really makes a lot of sense to me now because in this field of noise that we're constantly exposed to, you know, whether it's news or whether it's something in your line of vision or like chatter in the background, you are paying more attention to the things that you have signalled as value to you just by virtue of you literally reading this out loud every day or visioning something or looking at your action board. And so that for me was like a an illustration of the science behind everything that you talk about with manifesting.
Dr Tara: It's great to hear, you know, a real life example of it working out so well as well. It's always, you know, even though it's, you know, obviously a huge area of research for me and I'm a big advocate of it myself, it always still feels so special to hear a story like that.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, yeah. With um, with manifesting and the science of manifesting, there there appears to be a lot of people talking about this more recently, right? We already already had like, you know, the, I think it's Rhonda Byrne, is that her name?
Dr Tara: Rhonda Byrne, yeah.
Dr Rupy: Rhonda Byrne with the secret and stuff. And you come along and you give like a real sort of credibility to the art of manifesting. Where do you think mistakes are being made in action boarding or vision boarding or manifesting that lead people to not sort of realize their their their dreams or, you know, things that perhaps people could improve that you see quite often people are making those mistakes.
Dr Tara: Yeah. So one is something that we've already sort of covered, which is, you know, being very sure that these are the things that you actually want and for the right reasons. And then then I'd say there's two major things. One is, quite often what I hear people say is I've selected images, I've laid them out, but I haven't glued them down yet. And what I've learned over time is that that final step is basically you saying to yourself, I deserve all of these things. So often lack of deservingness is an issue that's underlying either not making the board, not finishing it, um, not putting things on it that actually, you know, I want to talk about the balance between dreaming big and feeling that you deserve things, but the other issue being that people are putting just fantasy images on there and not doing any action to actually make it come true.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, yeah. So, you know, what I don't believe as a scientist is that you can just visualize or look at a vision board and not do anything and that that thing can come into your life.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, yeah. A lot of people, I I I think might be listening to this and and saying to themselves, well, yeah, okay, Dr. Tara, I've, you know, I've got my vision board, I've I've made a list of things that I want in life and nothing's coming true. I've tried it. And especially around this time of year where people are making sort of promises or trying to renew old promises that never came to fruition, like improving my weight, sticking to my diet, you know, starting that business idea. In in response to those people who are criticizing this idea of manifesting, what what are the things that you would say to them to to to improve upon?
Dr Tara: Um, so again, I'm going to like come at this a few ways. One is that I have actually extended my view, like through learning myself of of how to complete that process better. So I do believe in making preferably a a physical board, although, you know, that you can do them on online as well. Of making sure that you are actually looking at it at least on a daily basis. And then adding in visualizing it being true. So a little bit like how you've written that story of what it feels like to be in the place, what it sounds like, what it smells like. Um, kind of immersing yourself in that, even if it's for like one minute, five minutes, you know, preferably longer if you can. And then when you're really feeling it in all of your senses, giving a huge amount of gratitude for the fact that that has materialized. So, because that moves your brain from the fear state to the trust state. And so that reduces the balance of cortisol, the stress hormone, and improves the balance of the bonding and love and trust hormone, which you can already imagine is going to make you go out there and take healthy risks. Um, I think that, you know, whether it's any of the examples that you've just given, like my weight or my diet, or it's something more tangible, like a job or a house, or a partner, the question in my mind would be, what have you actually been doing to make that come true? You know, I think the reason that so many New Year's resolutions fail is because people set goals that are unachievable, um, and you know, breaking them down into into like really small pieces. You mentioned actually something similar about habit stacking, but the year that I achieved the most was when I gave up on big New Year's resolutions and I thought, I'm going to change three things in the first quarter of the year, just small things. And then I did another three, another three, another three. So, you know, that's potentially 12 habits. I would say at the end of that year, I had 10 things that were complete habits for me now that hadn't taken the same kind of effort as, you know, a big new goal at the start of the year that we've all made before and then never completed.
Dr Rupy: What were some of those?
Dr Tara: Some of them were really simple things like drink more water, go to bed half an hour earlier, you know, walk a bit longer than, you know, you might have to. Um, I'm actually trying to think because that was so many years ago.
Dr Rupy: I've always tried to do with the sleep one. I'm I'm constantly struggling with that myself actually of trying to go to sleep slightly earlier. And my excuse is that my wife does make us go to sleep later because she's always like, you know, asking questions about the day and stuff and wants to stay up and watch something or whatever. So I kind of have her as an excuse, but I should be a little bit more rigid with myself.
Dr Tara: I mean, I guess for that one, you could make it, you could make it like, okay, we can still have the chat, but we go to bed and have the chat. She's got questions, then at least if you've moved to the bedroom, then you're starting to signal, this is sleep time.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.
Dr Rupy: On the subject of three things, I wanted to talk to you about three big things today. And I think I I sort of hijacked the first one. I really wanted to talk about the science of manifesting, my personal experience, and why I think everyone should be living and experiencing this idea of abundance and limitless potential and actionability and action boarding, whatever, you know, your goals are. What are the two other things that you feel people should really know about from from your own expertise and experience?
Dr Tara: Um, so I have slightly pivoted, um, where I'm focusing at the moment to be more about how applying ancient wisdom can be helpful with modern mental health or health struggles. Um, I think, you know, like you said, manifestation seems to have become really popular again. I don't want to keep talking about the pandemic, but I think that was an opportunity for people to step back and think differently and, you know, maybe make some changes in their life. It was also a time where the appreciation of being in nature, the appreciation of smell as a sense, you know, were sort of heightened for all of us. Um, and so basically the two areas that I would like to talk about are ancient wisdom and quite an emerging field called neuroaesthetics, which is about the health, mental health and longevity benefits of beauty, art, music, nature, so you know, it kind of connects to the ancient wisdom of those things in our life. So, you know, how indulging in a creative activity for 20 minutes a day boosts your mental health and can actually contribute to you living longer.
Dr Rupy: Oh, wow.
Dr Tara: Yeah. Um, and so I'll start with a an experiment that kind of came to mind when you were describing the environment for for Doctor's Kitchen, which is that in so it was done on rats in three groups, and one was put in an enriched environment. So things like the colors, the textures, the smells that you described. Um, one group was just in a kind of, you know, regular cage with the hamster wheel kind of thing. And one group were put into a deprived environment. Now, it won't surprise you to hear that the rats in the enriched environment, they demonstrated neuroplasticity, they made new connections, their brain, you know, essentially grew. But what we were shocked to see was that the rats in the deprived environment actually lost brain cells.
Dr Rupy: Oh, wow.
Dr Tara: Yeah. So, so basically, it's you can understand that enriching your environment, seeing beautiful things, exposing yourself to different smells and textures. So there's also some research that's come out recently that shows that the more different scents you have around your house or in your life, um, can actually stave off the onset of dementia symptoms.
Dr Rupy: Oh, wow. Wow. So just having different, like, you know, a really good spice cupboard, for example, or like just different areas in your house where you have different stimuli.
Dr Tara: Yeah. So, you know, whether it's a diffuser or a candle, um, or, you know, what you have in your shower. Um, and so basically, neuroaesthetics also says that the things that you experience first thing in the morning kind of set you up for the whole day, right? So, you know, whether that's that you used a pillow spray or you've got some fresh flowers by your bed, um, the texture of your bedding. Um, the first thing I do in the morning before I even start to think is I give gratitude for all of my bedding. So as soon as I realize I'm awake, you know how easy it is to then start thinking, oh, you know, I've got to do this today and that today. I just start with, I love my my pillowcase. I love my pillow. I love my mattress, you know, and so again, you're shifting your brain from potentially going down the kind of stress, you know, stresses of what I have to get done today, you're shifting it into gratitude and abundance and oxytocin.
Dr Rupy: I definitely need to lean into that a lot more because my wake up uh this morning was that of, okay, I've got to send these emails. I've got to make sure I've got all the spices and the ingredients ready for Tara's recipe today. I've got to make sure that, you know, we I I've got a brief of what we're going to be chatting about. I've got to do this thing later on this evening. So my mind immediately goes to my to-do list. And actually, I'm that's certainly something I'm going to start leaning into a lot more of just going straight into gratitude for the things that I completely brush over in the morning. That's, yeah, that's that's definitely going to be something I change straight away.
Dr Tara: And I'm sure that's very common. You know, what you've described is very common for people. Um, but what I've realized is, so and and just to bring this back because I didn't fully answer your question about some of my micro habits. Um, so some of them were very focused around my morning routine, which was to do deep breathing whilst I was still in bed. Um, do, you know, if I was doing meditation, to do that either in bed or like just, you know, as soon as I got up, um, journaling was one of the habits as well. So, what that made me realize because I was doing the breathing and all the mindfulness in bed, is that there is a little tiny pause moment that you can take before your brain starts to go down that list of things that you have to do today. Once you kind of experience that, and and, you know, I feel for sure now that I've told you, you'll experience it tomorrow morning. That's when you know that you can do the gratitude and actually offset the list of things that you have to worry about.
Dr Rupy: So offset that spiral into sort of the to-do and the the stresses and all the rest of it and just looking out for that pause, basically. I'm definitely going to 100% do that because I'm experiencing that a lot more. And actually, it's funny because um, my wife used to be the kind of person that woke up straight away, grabbed her phone and looked through all the WhatsApp messages. And we had loads of conversations about it and her excuse was like, all my family are in Australia. I need to check the the messages straight away and I need to make sure that I'm getting back to them. But in reality, what happens is you dive into a WhatsApp chat with your friends who are back home and they're all chatting or gossiping about something and then that sort of like derails your morning. Now, it's almost like the mentee has become the master. She doesn't look at her phone for like the first 60 to 90 minutes of her day. She does a gratitude journal pretty much straight away. She mists her plants in the morning, which is like her sort of like Buddhist activity, you know, she's just quietening the mind. And I'm the one who's now like falling into bad habits when uh when I wake up in the morning. So there's there's definitely things that I can sort of space out my morning to prevent that spiral.
Dr Tara: Yeah. And it's, you know, I mean, and this goes the same for me as well, but it's interesting how sometimes, you know, like your parents' food habits, for example, have changed as a result of you. But you might do something, but you tell other people not to, you know, so it's like physician heal thyself. But it's really actually great to see examples of people who've picked up tips from you and are doing them because that's that's accountability in a way.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So this whole idea of neuroaesthetics, how come this is only sort of, is this something that you're leaning to a lot more recently or is this something you've already been aware of and it's um, you know, it's
Dr Tara: No, I actually only really became aware of it fairly recently, like in the last few months. But then when I looked into it, um, there's a there's a center at Johns Hopkins, um, which is, you know, just such a good hospital for so many different types of research, like the psychedelic research and stuff like that. Um, and it connected up for me with ancient wisdom and the experience of really reconnecting to nature and, you know, again, like you said earlier, I feel like a lot of us have gone backwards with that, you know, because like life's just at full pelt again. Um, is that interestingly, you and I might have different tastes in art or music, but nature is the palette that we are all pleased by because we've existed in it forever. So, um, you know, things like a sunset, a sunrise, the stars in the sky, you know, that's that's what we were appreciating as beauty when we lived in the cave. Um, so the benefits of being in nature, being connected to nature are now proven by science, but, you know, we're always that it's part of every ancient culture is a connection to nature, to the land. Um, to cave paintings, to drum beating, to dancing, you know, like all of those things, we were doing those things. And if you think about it, we didn't really have time for indulgent luxury activities when we lived in the cave. So why were we doing those things? Because they're actually really important to our survival. Um, you might know this, but I've been this is one of my new facts that I love talking about, which is that so forest bathing, you know, it comes from Japan. Um, being in a place with trees or plants or both, certain types of trees more than others. So I think cedars, cypresses and lime trees particularly, but, you know, all trees, um, they secrete something chemicals called phytoncides that trigger the release of natural killer cells in your immune system. So it actually physically boosts your immunity to be around trees.
Dr Rupy: That's immense. Yeah. I've heard about house plants actually releasing phytoncides and and, you know, how it can be a sort of natural air purifier. And so particularly, you know, living in an urban environment as we both do, it would be pertinent to have more house plants in in your household and all the rest of it and trying to go out into nature as much as possible. But the the whole area around forest bathing, natural killer cell boosting and actually having that literal effect on your immune system is fascinating.
Dr Tara: Yeah. I mean, I remember when I heard quite a few years ago, and this was just when I was on safari, that, you know, if giraffes have been nibbling a certain type of tree too much and it's endangering the survival of that type of tree, they release chemicals that make other similar trees turn bitter so the giraffes won't eat them.
Dr Rupy: What? Really?
Dr Tara: So, like that was just like, I just loved that fact. But, you know, those years ago, I didn't know about, you know, what trees do to our immune system. It's yeah. And the mycelium networks with mushrooms and stuff. There's just a lot of really interesting stuff coming out right now.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, yeah. I need to dive more into the mycelium network and just how fascinating and interconnected this all is because for me it's a, we had Professor Nutt on the podcast a few months back talking about his research with psychedelics and, you know, some of the newer stuff that, I don't know if you have any perspectives on psychedelics in in your area or or your field.
Dr Tara: Yeah, I think, you know, all I can say at the moment is that the research is very promising after one or two doses of various types of of psychedelic substances. Um, there are really quite long-lasting benefits on things like depression and addiction. I think my concern is that it's not well regulated. Um, so if that kind of therapy was used always in conjunction with a qualified professional, um, it looks very, very promising. I think at the moment around the world, there are sort of various views on it. So interestingly in Australia, as you know, is usually quite progressive. And so they gave the go ahead to this, um, as medical treatment and then realized very quickly that none of the nurses or doctors really, you know, have been trained to how to do it. Um, so, yeah, I've been watching it cautiously. And I will say that from a discussion I had with a professor at Johns Hopkins, that there are these benefits, as I just described, but there is no benefit that cannot be replicated by sleeping eight hours a night, meditating, exercising, eating healthily, and managing your stress.
Dr Rupy: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I I like that because I think a lot of people wrongly so gravitate to the easier, quote unquote, solution of take this pill, have this, you know, one-off dose and you'll be fixing your trauma or your bad habits and it will allow, you know, you to sort of engage in those practices better. But I think there is value in doing it the old-fashioned way. And I I think we sort of brush over the effectiveness of those things that you just listed for, you know, a new sexy treatment.
Dr Tara: I just want to be clear that I'm not saying that about mental illness. I'm saying that for like, you know, well-being. But also that we don't currently have enough longitudinal studies to to, you know, know about the long-term benefits or consequences of of using those drugs. And we, you know, we do know, for example, that with a lot of MDMA use in the 80s recreationally, that there was an issue with basically running out of serotonin later in life or, you know, receptor sensitivity becoming diminished. So, we just don't know.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I had the privilege of chatting to on the podcast, one is Dr. David Hamilton, who's a chemist and um, wrote a book called Why Woo Woo Works. And it's brilliant. It's really interesting. It talks a bit about like the placebo effect and the power of sort of um, belief in things like crystals and and the sort of high powers and and stuff like that, that again is a very uncomfortable topic for everyone to talk about, particularly medics and scientists. But also Dr. Jeffrey Rediger, who's a Harvard psychiatrist actually, who wrote a book called Cured. And it was all about how doctors refrain from talking about spontaneous recovery. I'm an example of spontaneous recovery because you can't explain my atrial fibrillation dissipating through the lens of what we understand about what triggers AF in the first place. But in reality, you know, I changed my diet, I reduced my stress, I changed my exercise habits, my mindset. He would be a really interesting person to talk to because he actually studied this as part of his PhD, I believe, and he's a former surgeon. So, yeah, I'm going to connect you with him as well. He's brilliant. He'd be a wonderful person to have this conversation with. This has been brilliant. I love chatting to you. Honestly, I wanted to talk to you about so many other subjects. Your book, like I said many times before, I read all the time. I've read it about four times now. I love your explanation of manifesting, neuroaesthetics, and um, this diving into ancient wisdom, I think is something that I really want to go into a bit more, particularly through the lens of food, because it's so easy to sort of like explore it through the lens of cooking and cuisines and it's that door into so many different cultures and cuisines that I just think.
Dr Tara: Let's create a movement.
Dr Rupy: Exactly. Yeah, yeah. I love it. Thank you so much. I really appreciate you being here.
Dr Tara: Thank you. Thank you so much.
Dr Rupy: And helping me manifest this.
Dr Tara: Yay.
