Here's Part 2 of my interview with BioMark's Pass it On Series on Health and Wellness Tips. 
The original post can be found at https://biomarking.com/2017/11/28/the-brain-and-the-body/

Thank you BioMark for including me! 
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​BioMark: Hey Swee Lin, welcome back! The last time, you shared really insightful advice on eating habits and moderation. You even brought the whole conversation of nutrition to the realm of the brain, which is interesting because it seems that the brain is central in health and wellness. In fact, recently the Nobel Peace Prize of Medicine went to a trio of sleep scientists. With this growing development in mind, let’s kick off this discussion with how we can take care of our brains and optimise our sleep.Swee Lin (SL) : Sure! So, we should all work with our natural circadian rhythm. While I believe that we are generally really different and respect bio-individuality, the majority of people are still designed by nature to sleep when the sun sets and to wake up at the early dawn. The thing with our current society and economy is that we lose track of the importance of sleep.


When we consider our circadian rhythm, two hours after the sun sets, our bodies start to produce melatonin. Melatonin is the sleep hormone that has a production cycle that mirrors a typical bell curve. It starts at 9PM, peaks around 12AM, and starts to taper off around 3AM. So, try to get to bed by 10-11PM! You can shift the majority of what we do late at night to the morning instead.


If you’re an email checker, wake up early at 5AM and check your email. If you want to watch Netflix and you tend to binge on it, there is a way to resolve that. Go to sleep at 10PM and wake up at 5AM so that you get that recommended 7 hours of sleep. When you get up, you can watch an hour of Netflix before you have to leave for work. So we’re not taking away your joys or entertainment, we’re just shifting how you plan your day. It’s basically a different approach to time management.


BioMark: That’s interesting, so what happens when you don’t get enough sleep?SL: When we don’t get enough sleep or if we get poor quality sleep, there is a whole cascade of negative effects within our body.  If we don’t sleep well enough, our body tends to produce more cortisol in the brain. Cortisol is the stress hormone and when it starts to go off, other hormones start to cascade with it. For example, ghrelin, the human hunger hormone, goes up when you are sleep-deprived. So your body is primed to eat more and whatever that you’re eating, you’re going to store faster as fat because it is under pressure to keep you alive. And when we are blessed with access to too many calories, this overconsumption isn’t very helpful.


On a very practical level, there are studies out there that show that cognitive function suffers. Your ability to solve problems creatively, your decision making, and memory are get compromised. Researchers have shown that, as a result of mild sleep deprivation, the dendrites in the hippocampus of mice shrank and became thinner. This messes up memory and ability to function.


Additionally, it is really important to be asleep between 10M-3AM because melatonin production is highly related to human growth hormone (HGH) production. As we get older our HGH levels start to slow down. And when you don’t repair or replace cells as easily, you start to age. So if you’re trying to prevent that, why wouldn’t you go to sleep to maximise the healing, restorative benefits of human growth hormone while you’re asleep? It’s not about giving up things you like, but it’s about working with your circadian rhythm.


BioMark: While we may understand the cons of the lack of sleep, the toughest thing is taking that first step. How did you go about making changes and ones that last?SL: There are some basic habits that you can adopt for yourselves. For example, I try to make sure that, for a couple of nights a week, I actively take the phone charger out of the room, put the phone out, and give my device a break. I bought a very cheap old-fashioned plastic alarm clock that I have to set manually to wake me up. You don’t have to do this every night. But if you stick with this for a few nights a week, it really makes a huge difference.


The other thing is to recognise that while doing something by yourself is tough, it’s easier when you have a community. So if I can get whole departments, or whole floors of colleagues, behaving one way, and they all understand the reason for the change, then the behavior becomes more supported. The ideal is to get people to be aware of that, to adapt it, and change it.


BioMark: Considering that a lot of people are busy with long work hours, what advice do you have on structuring exercise into their daily regimes?SL: Sure, let me start by sharing about the Blue Zone Communities. What is found in these communities is that in nearly all of them, they do not physically exercise in the way we would describe it. They won’t go for yoga classes or run on treadmills. Rather, they are physically active as part of their everyday lives – they walk more and use their bodies intuitively with the work they have to get done. Unfortunately, working in a knowledge economy, a lot of us are very sedentary. Some tips I share with busy executives include types of physical health hacks to do even in corporate attire. These are 5-10 minutes long and include a right balance of some strength, cardiovascular, and stretching exercises that can be done, potentially even in heels as I have tried.


BioMark: Would you be able to tell us more?SL: Sure, you can start to do that every 2 or 3 hours. It gets your circulation going. I have a fitbit on me and I have it buzz hourly to remind me to get 250 steps. I remember even in my early days when I was working in consulting and I would sometimes get into the office early, or if I was working late at night, I would deliberately brisk walk 2-3 laps around the office to get that circulation going.


Tune in next time for the final installation of our 3-part series with Swee Lin.

BioMark: Hey Swee Lin, thanks for joining us today. I read that you are a health strategist and executive coach for the corporate scene – can you share with us how did you get to where you are today?Swee Lin (SL): Sure, I have always been interested since I was younger. But a lot of what I thought was healthy was not necessarily what was good for me and so I kept learning and adapting over the years.


A couple of years after my son was born, perhaps due to fatigue, I noticed a few quirks with my spelling. This prompted me to go to a neuroscientist and do a brain scan. We found signs of advanced ageing. It was very odd given that I was 38 then and my brain looked like a 60 year old’s.


I started to look at what was missing in my life and it wasn’t just food or exercise or hydration; it was also things like am I sleeping right, what were the quality of my relationships, how do I manage stress. All of that became much more important and I started to learn different techniques to reverse the signs of ageing in my brain. At the same time I also realized that this would help my kid, who has autism, improve his cognitive function. What you start to find is that everything that is good for young brains is also good for preventing older brains from ageing further. So that is when I became more and more passionate about the subject of the health and wellness.


BioMark: That’s really interesting because when we think health and wellness, we don’t always think about the brain as much. Do you have any insights on how we can tie food and nutrition to the brain?SL: The first thing to understand is that a lot of what we eat can be curative. Yet, you can also eat things that might taste really good but could also result in a lot of metabolic waste and inflammation to the body. And what inflames the brain is what, very often, inflames the rest of our body.


The second thing about food would be to think about the link to biochemistry. Everything that we eat, and that enters the brain, can either promote or reduce certain neurotransmitters that can change our mood, concentration, and energy levels. For example, everyone knows carbs make you sleepy, especially after a high carb lunch – but not many people understand why. That’s because if you have a high carbohydrate lunch, it tends to make the amino acid, Tryptophan, much more accessible to the brain and that results in a release of Serotonin, which is a neurotransmitter that makes us feel very calm.


BioMark: It’s the happy hormone!SL: Yeah, it is the happy hormone. It’s a hormone we want, but not always right after lunch.


BioMark: Because we go back to work and we need concentration.SL: Exactly, so you want to stay sharp and focused. And so you’re better off doing lean protein, a small amount of good quality fat/oil, and lots of leafy greens and that would keep you sharp.


BioMark: Given that the landscape for health and wellness changes so frequently, can you share your own journey in navigating nutrition?SL: What has become really interesting for me is, when reading, I’m seeing that the evidence is starting to say that even decades ago, a lot of scientists, doctors, and researchers, realised that the root cause of a lot of metabolic diseases was not necessarily caused by fat but by carbohydrates. It’s just that we have gotten used to eating according to the food pyramid that we have been trained to think of fat as bad for us.


For example, let’s look at butter. There’s this huge debate of whether butter or margarine was better for us. And now magazines, like Time Magazine, have front pages informing us that butter is not bad for you. And the reason why they are finding that is because it is the hydrogenation of fats that’s causing the most oxidative damage.


BioMark: So what advice do you have for individuals to filter trends that they see online so that they can make informed diet changes?SL: That’s a really good question. I think unless you’re really interested in this and spend hours googling, especially in this age of fake news, the best advice is to fact check as much as you can. So what do you do at this stage, you can:


1. Go to more trusted websites
For example, WebMD tend to provide better quality information. Some of the emerging functional medicine-focused physicians also provide very good information online. So while medically-trained, they are also interested in the holistic interactions of the body and how food helps.


2. Analyse the credibility of your sources
If you’re following famous bloggers, check if they do citations or if they are referencing articles and studies. And if you have the time (and the geekiness like I do), you can look at how these studies are set up. For example, we talk about red meat. Eating red meat, from a fast food chain, mass produced in the form of a hamburger, is very different from eating red meat from a grass-fed, hormone-free, antibiotic-free, cow. This is because the different qualities of the meat can massively affect the output of the study. And if they tell me it was grass-fed, then I’ll look at that.


3. Go back to your own physiology
The next part then is what is the right portion size. For simplicity, it’s roughly palm-sized. The good or bad news is that, depending on your size, you get a larger or smaller piece of protein. So for example if you’re more petite, which I am, I tend to have a much smaller palm and, hence, portion which is the right size for me.


BioMark: It’s interesting how you brought up the analogy of different body builds and portion sizes. How do you think we can tailor nutrition to each individual?SL: One of the ways that you can think about eating intuitively is The Plate. The way it works is that on the plate you eat, you divide it into quarters. For one quarter, you fill it up with a palm-sized portion of protein. For the next quarter, put in the same amount of carbohydrates. Ideally, it should be as unprocessed as possible. On the other two quarters, either double down on vegetables, or you can put in one-quarter vegetables and one-quarter fruit.


Keep vegetables and fruit as colourful as possible because the more colours there are, the more antioxidants we will get. I’ll ask for less carbs and more vegetables if I can and I’m fine with paying extra because it’s for my own health. Moreover, depending on the type of carbs, they can potentially be very inflammatory to our body. You don’t want to overdo it.


BioMark: You highlight that you will go the extra mile for your own health but was there ever a time where you weren’t as focused on what you’re putting into your body?SL: I think in general I’ve always been focused but being a human being, I get greedy and tempted. It is very easy to order a huge pizza. Similarly, it’s very hard to stop at two or three slices because it just tastes so good. A tip would be if you’re a pizza lover, make sure you’re ordering it during periods that you’re being social.


Have friends to share that pizza and insist on ordering side vegetables so that it is more balanced. Moreover, it’s the fiber from the vegetables that’s going to slow down the rate of the fat absorption. This is especially since the fat in pizza is highly processed and hence unhealthy. The extra vegetable fiber also lowers the overall glycemic index of the meal. And so you won’t experience as sharpo 0f a spike in blood glucose levels compared to just eating pizza.


BioMark: That’s really great advice! Before we end this first segment, would you be able to share what was the key change you adopted alongside this portion change?SL: The key change that I made involved drinking a lot more water. I wasn’t getting my 6-8 glasses of water a day and I thought that was okay.  Often, when we’re dehydrated, the body goes into a bit of stress. This stimulates the hunger hormone –ghrelin – so we feel hungry or tired when we might actually just be dehydrated. Considering that the human brain is roughly 70-80% water, I realised that for my brain to function well, I need to stay hydrated. That way I don’t get tricked into eating unnecessary calories too.


And with that, this wraps up part 1 of our interview. Tune in next time for the second installation of our 3-part series with Swee Lin.