Brain Fact Friday on ”How Conflict and Arguments Impact the Brain and Body”

Welcome back to The Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning Podcast, where we cover the science-based evidence behind social and emotional learning (for schools) and emotional intelligence training (in the workplace) with tools, ideas and strategies that we can all use for immediate results.

On this episode we will cover:

✔ The future of educational neuroscience.

✔ A mid-year look at our goals.

✔ How unresolved issues impact our brain and body.

I’m Andrea Samadi, and for this week’s Brain Fact Friday, I wanted to tie in our interviews from this week with something we can all use right away. I thought about what my friend Kate is building with YungMash Collective that we covered on EPISODE #235[i]—a mentoring community for young adults ages 18-30 to learn how to apply the most current cutting edge neuroscience to their lives to solve problems with their brain in mind. When Kate’s Dad heard this interview, he told her “what a noble cause” which is exactly what Simon Sinek said to me when he heard of my mission to make an impact in the field of education. It made Kate’s day to have her Dad’s support with her project…

Then I thought about Dr. Loretta Breuning’s Habits of a Happy Brain book that we just covered on EPISODE #236[ii] and I’m amazed at how new this topic of applying an understanding of our brain is, for improving our everyday life and results. Before this interview, I wouldn’t have thought about the serotonin boost that our mission would give both Kate and I, as Dr. Breuning taught us many things about how to increase our happy chemicals, and how serotonin increases when we have a sense of pride with our work, or social importance.

IMAGE: From Habits of a Happy Brain by Dr. Loretta Breuning

It’s only been recently that I began making the connection between the work we are doing here on the podcast, improving our results, and what our brain has to do with it all.  We’ve mentioned in recent episodes that “the first academic departments devoted to studying neuroscience didn’t appear until the 1960s” (National Geographic) proving this is a relatively new field of study to glean strategies from, and guide us towards an improved life.

Since we are now mid-year, in Q3 of 2022, I thought back to the beginning of the year, where we launched our 6 PART Think and Grow Rich[iii] book review on “How to Make 2022 Your Best Year Ever” and remembered that we opened each episode with a quote from Grant Cardone who said “In order to get to the next level of what you are doing, you must think in a wildly different way than you previously have been.”

Leading me to These Mid-Year Thoughts:

• Are you thinking in a wildly different way than you did last year?
• What are you doing differently?
• What NEW results have you attained?
• Have you broken any records, or moved beyond where you’ve ever been before?
• Are you making an “effect” (which means a change) in the world?
• Have you stopped to integrate your NEW success into your current life?
• Remember, during our Think and Grow Rich book study, we said “it’s our DUTY or OBLIGATION” to win in 2022?
• Do you think you are winning?

After thinking about these questions myself, I opened my email to see a note from Michael Thomas, the Director of the Centre for Educational Neuroscience at Birkbeck, University of London letting me know he has a new book coming out called Educational Neuroscience: The Basics[iv] that we will dive into a bit later this fall on the podcast. I had written Michael Thomas’ name on my desk last summer (June 2021) with a reminder for me to reach out to him after the interview with Professor and Canada’s Chair in Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience Dr. Daniel Ansari, from EPISODE #138[v] on The Future of Educational Neuroscience. I knew Michael Thomas as a pioneer in the field and if it wasn’t clear to me 3 years ago, when we scratched down the name of The Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning as a podcast title, it’s clear as ice now, Educational Neuroscience is going to be a part of our future.

Michael’s forthcoming book reminded me of how important this topic is for all of us to understand, (whether we are training in the field of education or psychology) where these disciplines interconnect, helping us to question our assumptions about how our brains learn and what this means for education.   

For me, this means that this podcast is a lifetime commitment to keep learning, and sharing new ideas and strategies with you (as long as listeners tune in!). I’m committed on this end to finding high quality speakers, and representing their work for all of us to learn from, in the years to come.  I keep my eyes open for those who are winning, what they are doing, and then think of ways that we can all take our results higher, as we add this new understanding of our brain, to our everyday lives.

With that in mind, for this week’s Brain Fact Friday, I wanted to tie the importance of understanding our brain, for our physical and mental health, since we are focused on our health as it relates to learning this Season. This topic began to emerge more often during those early days in the Pandemic when families were suddenly forced under the same roof for work and school, and had to learn how to interact with each other in an entirely different way.  Remember those days? Did any problems emerge that you didn’t have to face prior to this time? No one like dealing with problems like this, but for our mental and physical health, for this week’s Brain Fact Friday, we are going to look at the impact of NOT resolving our problems, and what that does to our health.

DID YOU KNOW THAT Unresolved issues (in your relationships, with your children, or even your work colleagues) … those problems we push aside because they are uncomfortable to talk about so we ignore them, to keep the peace, or have silence around a known issue, “damages our immune system in our brain and body? It damages everything about how we function as a human, damaging the tissues in our body, impacting our mental and physical well-being? Unresolved issues increase the vulnerability of our body by up to 90%” (Dr. Carolyn Leaf who appeared on our podcast last February 2021 for a BONUS EPISODE).[vi]

If we are going to reach those high levels of achievement this year, with whatever it is we are doing, and do things in a wildly different way than we ever have before, I highly suggest listening to Dr. Leaf’s most recent podcast episode where she talks about the impact of our thoughts on our health.

She shares a study that blew my mind when I heard it. She calls it “the Blister Study[vii]” and I’ve linked it in the show notes for you to see where participants were all given a wound or a blister on their hand, and then were directed to either solve an argument amicably, or in a toxic manner (either with yelling and screaming, or ignoring the problem by keeping silent). This was a controlled study, so some people didn’t act the way they would at home, but the study still revealed some fascinating things about the way we resolve conflict, and how our body heals.

After 3 weeks, smaller wounds should heal on their own (Dr. Leaf) while bigger wounds take longer. They brought the participants back after this 21-day period to see what happened to their small wound (the blister).

The study showed that those who were able to solve their conflict, or work towards a solution, (even if it was messy) came back and they had healed their wounds with an immune system that was working optimally. Those others who didn’t resolve their problems had compromised their healing from up to 65%.

Which made me look at my legs that I scraped up with a bad fall from hiking 3 weeks ago today. While I have other scars that haven’t gone away from other falls (that were more serious) the small cuts from 3 weeks ago were completely healed. Until I heard about this study, I would never have thought about how my mental health, and how I solve conflicts, could impact my physical health.

Have you ever thought about this? Did you know that if you are arguing with someone, and don’t resolve it, that you are compromising that person’s health right down to the level of how their brain cells function? That it actually “shortens the telomeres (that are like the ends of shoe laces, and protect the ends of chromosomes from becoming shorter) which impacts how we age.

To conclude this week’s Brain Fact Friday, if we are going to do things differently than we ever have before, one way would be to look at how we deal with conflict in our relationships.

Do we ignore issues to keep the peace, which we saw damages our brain and body, or do we do what’s difficult, and solve issues, as we think about the health and wellbeing of those people we interact with the most? If we really do care about others, solving our problems with our brain in mind is a healthy step forward.

Wishing you a wonderful weekend. If there’s conflict, I hope you solve it, rather than ignore it.

I’ll see you next week.

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REFERENCES:

[i] Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning Podcast EPISODE #235 with Katherine-Alexander Dobrovolskaia on “YungMash Collective” https://andreasamadi.podbean.com/e/katherine-alexander-dobrovolskaia-on-yungmash-collective-a-peer-to-peer-global-mentoring-and-empowering-community-based-on-cutting-edge-neuroscience/

[ii] Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning Podcast EPISODE #236 with Dr. Loretta Breuning on “Habits of a Happy Brain” https://andreasamadi.podbean.com/e/loretta-breuning-phd-on-habits-of-a-happy-brain-rewiring-your-brain-to-boost-serotonin-oxytocin-and-endorphin-levels/

[iii]Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning Podcast EPISODE #190 PART 1 of the “Think and Grow Rich Book Review: How to Make 2022 Your Best Year Ever”  https://andreasamadi.podbean.com/e/think-and-grow-rich-book-review-part-1-how-to-make-2022-your-best-year-ever/

[iv] Educational Neuroscience: The Basics Forthcoming book by Cathy Rogers and Michael Thomas  https://www.routledge.com/Educational-Neuroscience-The-Basics/Rogers-Thomas/p/book/9781032028552

[v] Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning Podcast EPISODE #136 with Professor and Canada Research Chair Dr. Daniel Ansari on the Future of Educational Neuroscience  https://andreasamadi.podbean.com/e/professor-and-canada-research-chair-in-developmental-cognitive-neuroscience-and-learning-on-the-future-of-educational-neuroscience/

[vi]Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning Podcast BONUS EPISODE with Dr. Carolyn Leaf on her NEW book “Cleaning Up your Mental Mess” https://andreasamadi.podbean.com/e/worldrenownedneuroscientistdr-caroline-leaf-oncleaningup-your-mentalmess5-simplescientifically-proven-stepsto-reduceanxiety-and-toxic-thinking/

[vii]Hostile Marital Interactions, Proinflammatory Cytokyne Production, Wound Healing December 2005  https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16330726/