Por qué tus emociones afectan a tu cuerpo | Marian Rojas-Estapé, psiquiatra y escritora

I'm Marian Rojas Estapé, psychiatrist and author of "How to make good things happen to you". And I'm a great fan of the world of the mind, emotions and human behavior.

Hello, Marianne. My name is Melania, I'm a journalist, and it's a privilege to be able to share with you a talk about neuroscience, psychology and emotional intelligence. Thank you very much, Melania. It's a pleasure for me to be here. You are a psychiatrist, you have studied the mind and human behavior, and you say that there are no shortcuts or quick guides that assure happiness. I would like you to tell us a little more about this. We are in a moment in history where it seems that there is an obsession for being happy.

as if there were easy shortcuts to "enjoy this and you'll get happiness quickly", but happiness is not that. Happiness depends on the meaning that each one of us gives to our life. But what happens? That in a society that has lost its meaning,

In a society that has often lost its way, we have replaced the meaning of life with sensations. Those sensations can be massages, food, alcohol, social networks... Not everything has to be bad, but it is self-destructive

when it replaces the true meaning of life. More and more research is being done on this meaning of life. The Japanese call it 'ikigai'. Nowadays, if you know that when there is that 'ikigai', that meaning that one gives to things, you can have better physical and psychological health. It even improves cardiovascular markers, but it also improves happiness. Each one of us, all those who are listening to us, you and I, Melania, we are fighting a battle on some topic of our life.

We are all constantly suffering for something. An economic issue, a health issue, a family issue, a professional issue. There is always something that worries us and those battles mark us. And how we deal with those battles will mark what we call happiness. Because happiness consists of connecting with the good that happens every day and that the bad that happens every day, those battles,

we can manage it in the best possible way. It has a nuance with fullness. Plenitude is a state where I notice that my needs are covered and I don't want anything else.

Therefore, one can be suffering a lot, but be happy at that moment, because he knows how to connect with the little and good that is happening to me every day. That is, happiness is in connecting with the little things that are emerging in the day to day. I have read you on several occasions that many times the antidote for suffering is love. What do you mean by this? The best antidote to suffering and pain is love. It is to feel loved, it is to feel

that you are not alone. That feeling of unsearched loneliness, that involuntary loneliness, is a terrible feeling for the psyche, for the mind and for the heart. And that's why, on many occasions, when one is alone,

Having someone, a vitamin person, a person who supports you, a person who listens to you, who does not judge you, who understands you, the one you tell something to and automatically makes you feel better. It doesn't matter if it's been a year since you've seen her, you know that with that person things are much simpler. That simplicity in human relationships that we long for so much. Love to whom? Well, love to oneself. That is self-esteem, to love yourself in a healthy way, not to love yourself in excess, that's where we get into narcissism, nor to love yourself little.

that enters the destructive insecurity frames of the human mind.

And that has a lot to do with the inner voice. We all have an inner voice that determines how our self-esteem is going to be and how we are going to treat each other. The second is couple love. Couple love makes us brave. Plato already said it: "There is no one so cowardly that love turns him into someone brave". I think I'm sure we all know someone who has suddenly fallen in love and transforms. And nothing scares him, and he takes risks that he would never have taken. Couple love

It's amazing. And when you have that love of a couple, when you feel loved, that feeling of trust, it improves. We know today the immune system. You have better physical and psychological health. The third is love for others, cooperation, solidarity, love for your parents, your friends, your brothers, even the people at work. When you are in harmony with the people around you,

is able to mitigate the effects that stress can have on him. If you live anxious or worried about something, an economic issue, but you feel loved, the stress that that produces is much less. Then we have the love for beliefs and ideals. Ideas are in beliefs, they are, Ortega and Gasset said. When you believe in something and you call your beliefs,

you have strength, you have strength and you overcome almost everything. And finally, the love for memories. I think that perhaps of all loves, it is the one that seems to me the most different and that's why I always love to talk about it. A few years ago, Uzumu Tonewaka, Nobel Prize in Medicine, discovered that when a person remembers something with intensity, the memory of that image, which is pleasant, activates the same mechanisms in the brain as when this happened in reality.

This is magical. When one is distressed, and this is in many relaxation techniques, when one works with MDRs or with techniques that help to improve the states of distress, bringing to the mind pleasant images, memories of people, where there was love, where you felt loved, where you felt grateful, suddenly produces biochemical effects in the organism itself. Therefore, that love, when it floods our mind, our organism,

It also helps us to be better with others, to become people who judge us, who empathize, who are affectionate, who seek common interests. I am very much to tell people to seek common interests with others, to ask others how they feel. And when I have asked him how he feels, he remembers those data, because he has learned this from my father. My father remembers everything and he carries on his agenda

of the telephone, the phones of everyone. But next to it, it has a place. His father has arthritis, his wife has Alzheimer's, his son had a school failure. And so, when someone calls someone, he always looks for that common point. Today we are so accelerated with our worries and our thoughts

that it is difficult for us to pay attention to the concerns of others. Therefore, love, indeed, Melania, I think we all know, but love is one of the best antidotes to bad times. Marian, I would like you to tell us how emotions and thoughts affect the organism. And on the other hand, what happens to us when we are constantly concerned about something? Well, I think, Melania, that this is one of the most exciting topics and probably one of the ones I like to talk about the most.

When I studied medicine, I come from a family of psychiatrists. My grandfather was a psychiatrist, my father is a psychiatrist, I have a psychiatrist aunt, a psychiatrist cousin and I have many... My sister is a psychologist. I mean, I live surrounded by people who work and study the world of the mind and behavior.

But it was hard for me, while I was studying my notes and my medical degree, to see that the emotional point of the diseases was always missing. I think we are all aware that you are nervous and you have tachycardia, you have an exam and suddenly you have a slightly more upset gut, or suddenly your eyelid falls asleep. That is, there are physical symptoms that have to do with emotions.

But where was the core? Where did the mind and body join? I started reading, I started researching, I started treating many patients and I came to an easy-to-explain and didactic conclusion so that everyone, wherever they are, anywhere in the world, can understand and apply it to their own life. Imagine, Melania, you and I are here and suddenly the alarms start ringing and someone yells "fire". Automatically, you and I

we get up and get nervous and our heart starts beating. Why? Because that warning signal, that threat, has activated a place in our brain, the hypothalamus, which sends a signal to the suprarenal glands and two hormones are activated: adrenaline, known to all, and cortisol. And automatically, what happens? My brain looks for

survival mechanisms, which are fighting and fleeing. We start with tachycardia, the heart beats for taking blood to the tissues and being able to fight or run, which is what is needed. Then begins tachypnea, which is the need to put more oxygen in the body so that my muscles and my cells have more oxygen and be able to fight. Glucose is mobilized, fats begin to mobilize

And at this moment I can no longer reason, because I am in a moment of alertness and the prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for reflecting, thinking, looking for solutions to problems, suddenly no longer lets me think so well. It's like I'm losing the thread of what I'm telling you. The hippocampus, which is the area of ​​remembrance and where we store the data, is hypersensitive to cortisol and, therefore, our memory fails and we have gaps in what we want to talk about.

that cortisol peak will take several hours to return to its original state. Why is this so important, Mel? Because that cortisol state that rises, that cortisol state will change our organism. Cortisol is a cyclical hormone. At night it is low and it has to be low so that I can sleep. And throughout the night it rises until eight in the morning, more or less, that it has its highest peak. And at eight in the morning,

I went down again to face the challenges of the day to day. But what happens if I live constantly worried about something? Here comes one of the most important ideas that I am going to transmit to you today. And it is that my mind and my body do not distinguish a real threat from an imaginary one. In the face of something physical real that happens to me, the alarm, that they catch me on the street, that they call me to tell me that my son is sick, that they tell me that my father is admitted,

That activation of the brain for something real occurs in a very similar way if I'm sitting at work, at home, and I start thinking: "What if my son is on drugs? What if I don't get there by the end of the month? What if I get caught on the street?" 90% of the things that worry us never ever happen. In fact, it's 91.4%. But my mind and my body

Do they live it as if it were real? That is, both what happens to me and what worries me has a direct impact on my mind. And this is key. Because if more than 90% of the things that worry us do not happen, that's what it's going to mean is that I'm going to induce a state of alert in my body maintained. What I simply call a cortisol intoxication. And I start to induce my body

to enter what we call the sympathetic nervous system, which is that alert state where cortisol is secreted. And that cortisol intoxication will generate changes at three levels in my body. On a physical level, my hair falls off,

Why does my hair fall? Because when you are in a state of alert, in a state of threat, it's like we're in the trenches. And then the body is looking for the body's resources to be used in the best way possible. So, if you're at war, if you're in a battle, if they chase you down the street, then the hair is not a primary organism to face that challenge. And therefore, suddenly,

you start losing hair, cortisol inhibits the correct recovery of the follicle or fibroblasts in the skin, and therefore, the scabies, the spots appear, the skin changes color,

On the other hand, you start to feel a feeling of oppression in the chest, constant lack of air, it's hard for you to breathe, you have gastrointestinal problems, which I will now explain in more detail, your muscles are tense because you always live about to run out or about to fight. And then, if you suddenly make a slightly strange movement, it may be that you have a contracture or that you stay in place or that you notice that your whole body hurts, heavy body, body that is hard for you to move, you feel more rigid.

This is physical, but cortisol also alters the functioning of estrogen, progesterone or testosterone. When you know how this hormone works, you know that when you live intoxicated with cortisol, many things happen in the body. But there is one key, Melania, that I want to explain to you, and that is:

that the maintained stress state will modify the immune system. And for me, here's the key. In a moment of punctual stress, cortisol acts as an anti-inflammatory. But when the organism lives constantly in a chronic stress state, what happens is that the immune system, inflammation, cortisol and the body are dissociated.

and what happens is that we start to get inflamed: gastritis, gastroenteritis, amygdala, irritable colon, dermatitis. That is, a latent, slight, mild inflammation enters the body that is very dangerous, because when you enter a state of inflammation in the body, many physical and psychological problems can occur. And I enter, for example, the intestinal system, which I think everyone notices. Today we know it's the second brain.

Why? Because it is surrounded by a powerful neural network and has a direct impact. What I think, what I feel has an impact on the organism. Who doesn't have an exam, a romantic appointment, a job interview and knows that his guts that day send him a signal that something is happening.

Next to the intestines, there are the arteries and veins, where what I eat, the good, will go there to nourish my whole body. And inside the intestine, inside the light, are the intestinal vellus, where nutrients are absorbed, and the famous key microbiota. Today it is one of the great topics that we are studying with more depth. I am a great enthusiast of the microbiota. It is the set of bacteria, of microorganisms, good and bad,

that help that balance to be good for the absorption of nutrients, to integrate substances into the body. Today it is key, but we know that the states of stress maintained by that famous cortisol or by what we eat, will modify the microbiota. And what is the problem with this? That through those wounds things enter, things "into" the blood

that should not enter. That is, the filter, the intestinal permeability is damaged and things enter the blood that should not enter and that are toxic to the organism. And today we know that they are the cause of some neurological or neurodegenerative diseases. But on the other hand, you are fermenting, you are with the altered microbiota and that is what generates gas and you have those abdominal swellings and those gases are annoying.

That is, sometimes when people ask me: "How do you know if I'm inflamed?" I tell them: "Look at your gums, because it's a big... If you wash your teeth, you can see the blood. Or look if, for example, you have a swollen gut, or how you feel when you eat. And you'll realize if you have that state of inflammation there. On a psychological level, the first thing that happens to me is that I'm irritable. You jump to the minimum. You are in a state of alert and you are much more vulnerable and much more susceptible. The second thing that happens to you

is that you don't sleep well. You arrive at night and, as you have that state of high alert, what happens is that you get into bed and you start turning things around and you start spinning in bed and you don't sleep. Sometimes, from exhaustion, you manage to fall asleep in bed, but you wake up at three or four in the morning with a sense of worry, with something that worries you and it doesn't let you sleep. And on other occasions you sleep like a log

but you wake up with a feeling of exhaustion because that state of alertness prevents you from reaching deep sleep. And therefore, even if you have slept as long as you need, your body does not feel completely rested. And then, in many cases, you can get sad.

And this is another very important idea, Mel, that I want to convey to you today. Many depressions come from permanent alert states. And here I am going to point it out. When you have a moment of a lot of tension, of a lot of work, where you have been very worried about something, of a challenge, you have something in mind, physiologically, when that ends, your body will be affected

and your mind will be a little sad, a little apathetic. I remember when my husband finished and approved his applications, his preparer told me: "What surprises me the most about those who prepare for the applications is that, whether they approve or not, the following months they are sad, they are like off. Why is that? Because physiologically,

When the brain has been fighting something for a long time and that ends, suddenly it is sad, it is off, it is apathetic. That is, when one knows, when one understands all this, understanding is relieving. And when one understands what is happening in his mind,

one feels relieved, because if not, what happens is that one is a slave to physical, psychological symptoms and goes as lost for life. And being able to unite the mind and body and understand that we are what we think on many occasions, that this thought

I get an emotion, that emotion has its impact on the body, it will help me a lot to be able to unstick that cortisol intoxication and those moments of stress maintained. With the pace of life so accelerated that we have, we constantly live situations of stress, of fear, of frustration, and that, as you say, if they are not channeled or attached correctly, they can

can also lead to depression, anxiety. How can we prevent and manage these states in a healthy way? Well, one of the things that I recommend the most to everyone, to young people, students, older people, adults, wherever you are, work in whatever you work, is that you have some basic notions of how you work as an individual and how the human mind and the human body in general work. And that you make a union and say: "This is what happens to me".

If you have back problems, you need to know that your moments of stress, the back is the one that will send you a warning signal. If suddenly you have blurred vision or you tend to have skin changes or your intestinal system changes or you somatize at a neurological level and your eyelid is shaking or your hands are sleeping,

you will understand much better the functioning of your body and your body. The first thing is self-awareness. Who am I? What is my way of being? Am I shy? Am I sensitive? Am I impulsive? Am I obsessive? Am I a perfectionist? Do I turn everything around? Am I suspicious? Am I dependent on the opinion of others? Am I insecure? And on a psychological level, maybe I'm one of those who have anxiety or panic attacks or I get sad. And make a little diagnosis of yourself.

For me, this is key. What are the factors that stress me? What are the factors that put me on alert? What are the factors that get me into the sympathetic nervous system, in that cortisol we've talked about? They can be people, things, memories, moments, circumstances, but when you know what your stress factors are, you'll see

How does your personality transform in the face of stress? For example, the sensitive, when he is under a stress factor, becomes a very vulnerable person. "Now I'm fine, now I'm bad, now I'm crying, now I'm distressed, now I'm fine again". The shy, when he is under stress factors, he blocks himself. The impulsive, under stress factors, is more aggressive.

The one who turns things around under stress factors is more obsessive and goes into thought in a loop. The perfectionist, when he is stressed, has a feeling of vital dissatisfaction because nothing is up to what he wants. When one understands, he feels relieved. So, when you ask me what can help us, make this scheme. I do this scheme for all my patients. How are you? What are your stress factors and how does this transform?

When you understand your body, when you understand your personality, it is much easier to face it. The second is to live a life as anti-inflammatory as possible. That is, people go out on the street inflamed. I always say that if we had an inflammation detector, the detector would break because people, more than ever, go with so much uncertainty, with so much stress, that there is a latent state of inflammation in society. I think I always say, and I tell you too, with love, although many people are going to listen to us, that there is

that we have to be careful with food, but not without obsessing. But eating with knowledge of what one feels good and bad, knowing things. It is true that today it has been shown that a lot of food inflames and alters the body and, therefore, trying to eat as best as possible and having bad food be the exception and not the rule. Second, the habit of sleep.

Today it is key. When one sleeps badly, the probability that everything will go wrong is very high, because during sleep we repair our mind, we repair our body, we repair our immune system, our hippocampus, the memory archive area, is solved. It's like everything is getting in order. And when one does not sleep, and today we sleep very badly because of the screen, because of the worries, etc.,

This upsets us. And a couple of ideas to sleep well. First, avoid copious dinners. With alcohol, this will always make us sleep worse. Second, be careful with the screen. The light on the screen transmits a type of light that inhibits the correct secretion of melatonin, which is basic for sleeping well. Therefore, take care of that sleep. Sleep is going to be a basic issue. And then, another thing that I think can help in this world we live in is to have escape routes

healthy for those moments of stress. Basic exercise, with exercise we break down that cortisol, we almost evaporate it from the body. Be careful with excessive exercise, which puts you in alert mode, but I'm talking about normal and healthy exercise that we all know.

I also recommend the education of that inner voice. That is, be careful, because we already know that that inner voice is going to have an impact on my life. So, my inner voice is going to support me and not to sink me. Make a diagnosis, how do I treat myself. The third is the people I'm around. Be careful, because sometimes part of the problem is that I live surrounded by people who put me in alert mode.

Fourth, the human being is not designed to live in the nervous system, constantly sympathetic. A little bit can help me to suddenly be deeply efficient, deeply effective, to get things done in the best possible way. But if I keep it in time, I run the great risk of getting sick.

That's why it's important to get out of that alert mode from that sympathetic nervous system to the parasympathetic one, the one of meditation, the one of relaxation, the one of breathing, the connection with oneself, connection with others, connection with the great, with transcendence. Because when I'm able to disconnect from the alert mode to connect with the relaxation mode or with the parasympathetic mode,

I recover my body, I recover my mind, I recover my skills, I even recover my immune system to face the challenges that arise in my day to day life. I suppose that many of us are very curious about the functioning of the brain and I would like you to tell us some of its processes to train it and help us improve our quality of life. A lot of things happen in the brain, right? So people come and when they come to consult, they ask you: "Maria, this has happened to me".

Why? What is it for? And when you explain it to him, there is a sense of relief. This makes sense. I'm not going crazy. It's not that my head... Or I'm a weird guy. So, when you explain to him that there are things that are... I don't say common, but frequent, or that have a neuro-scientific explanation,

you feel much more relieved. The luck we have is that today the mind and the brain are being investigated more and more. And there is a search for answers, the brain is the great unknown, but we are entering, learning, managing, and it's amazing. I love being as much as I can of everything that is happening, and every time something new is discovered, you fill yourself with a fascinating world that, in my particular case, I always think: "And this, let's see how it is explained

to people, because it's all so... sometimes so difficult to understand, because the mind... But well, I would tell you things, right?

I think, for example, of the famous amygdala kidnapping, which many people often ask me what it is about. The amygdala kidnapping is an automatic response of the mind to something that happens and you have a disproportionate reaction. And it's like the amygdala at that moment has a communication with the hippocampus, which is where the memories are, and the amygdala is where the emotion, anxiety, anguish, where we react.

and that communication channel has to be as healthy as possible. So, if suddenly there is a memory that has not been well archived,

If you suddenly come back to something related to that memory, it doesn't come archived in your hippocampus, the reaction in the amygdala is going to be very strong. So, a lot of people can say, listening to this: "Well, this happens to me with a person or with an animal or with the fear of flying or with things that suddenly make me feel bad, or with the children". Sometimes one has reactions of amygdala kidnapping in the education of children, because they get very angry at some performance that they see

and react disproportionately. So, first, as I always explain, it's being aware that this is happening to you. Trying to see how to short-circuit that explosive loop in your mind. We all go through events every day and some of them suddenly affect us a lot and others very little.

Your son may come home one day, have suspended all his subjects and that day you have already been paid and you think that the subjects, well, look, he will approve. If that day you have lowered your salary or you have lost your job, on top of that, you have suspended the subjects, it can generate in you a very negative reaction against your son. That is, life is not what it is.

There are things that are logically more or less realistic, but the important thing is the interpretation we make of what happens to us. And we all interpret life in one way or another, depending on a series of factors. I'm going to divide it into three. The first is the belief system. We all have some pre-defined ideas about what life should be like, how I want to be treated, how I want the world to be governed,

That is, at an ethical, moral, political, personal, economic level level, I want to live in this type of house, I want my bosses to treat me like this, I want my partner to treat me this way, I want my children to be like that. I want... We have some expectations, some personal, professional aspirations, both ours, from our environment,

but also how life should be managed. There are words, people, political characters that, said, automatically generate a reaction. And that is the belief system. Even the most tolerant has a limiting belief system. Why? Because many times we want our children to be engineers, doctors, and suddenly a child comes to you, I'm thinking of a patient I have, who said he wanted to be a pianist, all the family are engineers,

And the mother didn't understand it, she stopped talking to him because for her it was a drama, but her son had a gift for the piano, but she couldn't perceive it, she didn't see it. Why? Because her belief system was that anything that wasn't being an engineer was a problem, because they came from I don't know how many generations of family engineers, and the piano seemed to her that it was something that she had no feet or head for. Many times,

We have to break our belief system. I think the most important thing is to know it. What is mine? And we all have a belief system that makes us interpret things that we are told and that do not happen in one way or another according to that belief system. And it is the most difficult thing to change.

When you think about a topic in some way, sometimes it cannot be modified. And it's like hitting a wall, because I can have in front of a patient who I notice is a limiting belief system: "Accept your son, accept this issue in you, accept your past, accept that this happens in your work. I don't want to, I refuse". And many times that resistance to change is what prevents us from enjoying life. On the other hand, we have the mood.

If you're happy, the interpretation of things is much greater. I always remember when Spain won the World Cup with Andrés Iniesta's goal, who is a good friend of mine, he and his wife Ana are good friends of mine, and I remember it as one of the most plethoric moments... I love football. I loved it. I remember the next day in the hospital, everyone was happy, people were greeting each other, people were on the street, people were clapping on the street. There was a feeling of joy on the streets, right? A state of mind.

of happiness, of well-being, for a joy. But let's get serious. That mood will determine our interpretation of things. And what does that mood depend on? It depends on how we sleep. We have already explained it, but it depends on how we sleep, it depends on the circumstances. It is not the same to live in the middle of a pandemic than to live in a moment when there was no virus problem around. On the other hand, personality.

The interpretation of things, if you are deeply sensitive, that will affect your mood. If you are deeply distrustful, that will affect your mood and, therefore, your interpretation of things. And sometimes in this life, if you want to be a little happier, that happiness we are talking about,

sometimes you have to go and see that thing of your way of being, which is your Achilles heel and that prevents you from enjoying your day. If you are one of those who complain, if you are one of those who go as a victim, work on personality, because that automatically improves your mood and that automatically improves your interpretation of things. And finally, what is called the ascendant activator reticular system. It has a terrible name, but it has a magical function. It is an area that is found here behind, in the encephalic stem,

And it's a very primitive zone of neurons that has multiple functions, but it has a very interesting one, which is the filter. It's like a tracker of the brain. And it's the zone that filters everything that happens to me and keeps me with what interests me. That is, our brain constantly receives a lot of information, through the senses, especially through sight, but also through the senses.

but he only keeps what he is interested in. If you are looking for a specific work on a specific topic and you start preparing yourself for that topic, your brain will do everything possible to find that subject.

I often tell an anecdote that happened to me a few years ago when, studying my degree, I went to the United Nations to an event, a prize-giving event, and the rector of my university asked me to look for Kofi Annan, then the Secretary General of the United Nations. And I started preparing all kinds of things about Kofi Annan, in case I found him, to invite him to my university to an event that was there.

and I had never seen Kofi Annan, but at some point, in the middle of the event, I went to the bathroom and I met a very pale-skinned blonde lady and I started talking to her and I told her several things, I told her how the United Nations worked, the awards for that event we were going to.

And I said goodbye to her. And the day I returned to Madrid, this lady was on the plane and I went to say hello. I said: "How curious, the lady in the bathroom." And she was sitting next to a guy who introduced me to him, who was Kofi Annan, who was her husband. And then I often wondered: "How is that possible?" Well, I had studied

to Kofi Annan, and probably my mind had captured photos with his wife. And when I saw her, I distinguished her. That is, Louis Pasteur said: "Luck favors the prepared mind. You have to prepare, you have to study, you have to know. Because the one who prepares, the one who studies, the one who knows, perceives opportunities better.

And the important thing in this life is to activate our reticular system. If you have it in negative, you see the negative of everything. Who is the main inhibitor of this reticular system? The screen. Why? Because the screen offers you instant gratifications, dopamine splashes. It's a fake life, it's a digital life. Good things happen in real life. That digital life, those dopamine splashes, they generate moments of instant gratification, but in the long run they produce a void.

have a very similar mechanism, screens and the mechanism of dopamine, with drugs. That's why, today, many addictions to the screen, many addictions to pornography, video games, are treated with mechanisms similar to drugs. And this is a huge problem because we live in a moment in history, as philosopher Solís Ruiz says, we are drug dependent, emotional. We are increasingly addicted to vibrant experiences that reach us through the screen. And why is this so important?

because all this will stop our prefrontal cortex. Here I enter a very interesting field at an educational level, at a parent's level and at a personal level. The prefrontal cortex, which we have already talked about at several times,

is a fundamental area for attention, concentration, problem solving and impulse control. It's the area that makes us superior beings, that helps us pay attention to what we want, to be quiet in a place and listen, to be in a pastry shop, I'm very sweet, and not eat the candy while they're serving you, but you control those impulses, you manage inside.

The prefrontal cortex is a deeply immature area when a baby is born. When a baby is born, this area is completely immature and it evolves as the years go by, it matures before in women and men. Girls mature before that attention and that concentration than boys. This is very important in the educational field. Boys are still at 4,000 things and girls are much more conscious since they are younger.

What does the prefrontal cortex of a baby stimulate with? With three things: light, sound and movement. Who has not seen their baby, who suddenly sees his father passing by, or sees a light that lights up, or a little music and turns his head? What do we want for that child? That as he grows older, this child also pays attention to immobile objects, to a teacher who speaks to him,

to an adult who speaks to him, to a friend who is telling him a story, to be still in the waiting room of the doctor, to be able to read a quiet book. That is, that this prefrontal cortex is maturing and not only the attention is activated with light, sound and movement, but also, suddenly, it connects with a sunset, with a painting, with music, etc. That is, with different things. But if you put a screen on that child since he is very small, what is the screen? Light, sound and movement.

What happens is that their attention is going to be stimulated by an external tool, which is that device. And the brain works with a mechanism called "use it or lose it", either you use it or you lose it.

If we only use Wikipedia to find data, what happens is that our hippocampus, the memory area, will work worse every time. If you use Google Maps or Waze to always orient yourself, then we will orient ourselves worse every time. The less action our brain has per se,

will work worse in that strictly particular tool. If we manage to work things out, pay attention, promote our orientation, promote our memory, we are improving brain neuroplasticity. That is, we are in a moment where brain neuroplasticity, which is the ability to generate new neurons... When I studied medicine, the neurons we had were the ones we had and there was no way to generate more. Today we know that having an illusion in life

will cause a neuron migration to the hippocampus, which is the learning area. That is, we know that there are mechanisms to improve those neural connections, that if we enhance some area of ​​our brain,

that area will work better and better. Well, in the matter of attention, I think that today we find ourselves in a moment in history where in the crisis of attention people do not know how to pay attention, for many factors, because we live hyper-stimulated, because we do not have time, because it is one thing and another thing and another thing, because you take a candy and that candy has four different flavors, you go to a place and 74 things happen, so you do not connect sensorially with something punctual, but everything is multiple emotions and sensations. And all this

with the screen in the middle. That screen that what it's doing is that the prefrontal cortex works worse and worse because it's designed to relieve. But what you're teaching your brain is that you don't know how to manage boredom,

which is the cradle of astonishment and creativity, and you don't know how to manage stress, which is what will determine your quality of life. A person with will comes further than a smart person, and will is in the prefrontal cortex. So, what do I recommend to strengthen the prefrontal cortex?

Will is the ability to postpone the reward. Today we are in a moment where I want everything and now, and I want to feel now, and I want instant gratification now. That is, instead of wanting everything now, food, what I need, I strengthen my will by putting myself in small challenges. This week I don't eat this.

"This week I'm not going to watch this series, I'm just going to watch a chapter, I'm not going to buy anything here, I'm not going to spend more than so many minutes on Instagram". That is, I am educating my prefrontal cortex, I am educating my will and I am able to go much further in life. And what is that going to help me? One,

that when I get bored and let my mind go and come and go, no great discoverer came to his results and conclusions in a frenetic moment. Never. One was under a tree and saw an apple fall, the other was walking through the gardens of Athens, another... In other words, in a moment of walking, of being parasympathetic, of being relaxed, suddenly, clink, an idea came up. In a moment of frenetic stress, you don't get to the big topics of life.

you go in a superficial way and you don't go deep. To the thread of what you say about attention, in my closest circle I have several friends, teachers and teachers with whom I talk a lot about this topic. Could you give us some guidelines to improve attention, concentration and, above all, that willpower that you say is so necessary in the classrooms? Well, Mel, there is a very interesting topic and it is that we sculpt our brain in real time depending on what we pay attention to.

That's why, nowadays, depending on what we pay attention to and the ability we have to concentrate, to pay attention and that willpower,

will determine, in large part, our quality of life, our intellectual quality, our cognitive quality, our class grades, but not only grades, but the ability we have to enjoy, to connect with people, with knowledge, with nature, with everything. Therefore, promoting this is very important. I believe that one of the things that can help us to strengthen this concentration, this ability to pay attention, this willpower, the first is to learn to focus on positive things, that is,

That is, to make the decision, and this can be a class exercise, a personal exercise, to say: "Today I'm going to focus on three good things that happen to me". And talk about those three things.

Just look at something with a lot of interest so that it becomes interesting. And one thing that can be a very small thing, that you are on the street, you sit in a bench, you see someone passing by, you are in class, you look at a classmate, at the teacher or the teacher at something that they are commenting on, and you work on that, and you talk about it, and you think about it, and you meditate on it, and you even write it, that can help you strengthen your attention. Another thing is savoring.

to savor from the senses. Sometimes we are stunned by so much hyper-stimulation. Then suddenly eat something and say: "This tastes..." And if there is a mixture, then here there is tomato, here there is cheese, here there are pasta, here there are peas. That is, what do the foods taste like? Braking that stunting to suddenly savor the senses in children is something magical. Suddenly say: "Silence, what do you hear? A fire truck, a police car, a music, a melody, someone's scream.

That helps the senses to take more importance and I stop everything to focus on something particular. And when one manages to focus on something particular, it is strengthening their ability to pay attention, to teach children to discriminate, to know where good and evil are, to know how to give safe criteria pillars, because if you don't, you go on the internet and you don't know where the good and the bad are, you don't know where they are, where they are deceiving you and where they are not. There is a moment when you get so much on the phone that every day

It's news, I check everything that comes. There are times when there are surreal things that I say: "This is surely a lie", and you realize that it's true. But I know how to look for whether it's right or wrong. I think the classroom should be a place right now where I teach how to look for whether it's right or wrong, to go deeper.

to filter everything that comes to us, what is really worth it, and not to block that prefrontal cortex that comes to a point where it is not able to read a book, it is not able to find out a conversation. There was a habit that was done at my house and it is that every Sunday we all read before lunch, sitting in the living room with classical music, and my father, each one, depending on his age, we all read. And it was something that strengthened our reading. I think it is very important to go back to reading.

Reading is to the mind what physical exercise is to the body. You have to read, and I recommend reading on paper, because we don't read the same on paper as we read on screen. On paper we read with more depth, and we already know that nowadays. When you have the paper, the book passes the page, there is something that arises in the brain where it is able to get better into the story. It is true that in order to read, I want people to read wherever they want, but I recommend it. And especially when we read, for example, news, there are so many announcements and so many things that come out,

that our dispersion capacity is very high. And that famous multitasking, which we have been talked about so much, is not such. It is a continuous alternation of attention. It is

It's like a completely distorted attention. I pay attention to this and this and this and this, and I change the focus of attention very quickly. So, doing many things at the same time is low efficiency, even if we think otherwise. It's true that we have the feeling of doing a lot and we suddenly feel very fulfilled, but the reality is that we have done it much more superficially. So, whatever you do, do it by paying all the possible attention. And if you already put your heart into the matter, I won't even tell you. I mean, I'm listening to you and I'm listening to you not only from the senses, but also from the heart.

I use that feeling, I use compassion, I use the soul, I use the good, the generosity to connect with you in the best possible way. It's that pure surrender, right? Regardless of what you do, from the most everyday to the most... Indeed, because I think that few things in this life, few piropos like us so much as to say: "When you are with someone, that person has all their senses set on me". That is, there is something special that arises, that is transformed, that appears when you are with someone

and you notice that the world stops and only your thing matters. In my consultation, for example, I don't have a computer on, I write on paper, because I need the person in front of me to notice that there is no disruptor, that there is absolutely no one to break us. I write everything down and save it in sheets, because when I'm with that person I need him to know, to realize

that I only listen to her. That's why we should be careful. When we are with our children, we leave the phone, we look them in the eyes, even "sit down and get your size". How many times do I hear my own children telling you that the phone is more important than me? That's why when you get home,

Take the phone out of your pocket, in your backpack, in your pocket, wherever. Both hands open to hug, to connect. And pay attention to whoever you have in front of you, be it your husband, be it your father, be it whoever. But if you sit with the phone in your hand, you have already generated a disruptor and you have already generated that connection, that ability to pay attention to the one in front of you, where empathy arises, where those neurons and mirrors that are activated arise. You smile, I smile, I hug you,

And all that wonderful, that special moment, everything has been distorted because one hand is busy or because I'm finishing sending something that is probably tertiary. And if it's something so important, finish it in the attic. And when you've finished it and you have your attention on the people you have inside the house, open the door. But if not, wait.

And I think, Melania, that this, that you and I, that we are also talking about it here, is what we are looking for, to have a society that cares about others, that it is not only focused on that positive, that you get inside and forget about others, but that we are able to look up, connect with the eyes of the one in front of you and give importance to what really has it. One of the things you were saying about the willpower, I think it's a beautiful term and

and that really forms us as people and helps us live a fuller life. You say that you can learn from a young age, that you work in school, in classrooms,

but it would also be possible to have learned it from parents, grandparents, friends. Having an identity model in life is key, and in will, I'm not even telling you. In my case, they are my parents. Both have an exceptional willpower. I mean, I have learned from them order, constancy, perseverance, how they act, if they have one thing to do, it's what they do, do what you must do now, in this instant. Sometimes, "Don't do this now" and postpone the reward later. "Do you want this? Now is not the time."

And when you see that in your parents, it's much easier for you to do it as a child. We can't pretend that our children do things that we don't do. We can't pretend that our children are very attentive if we are seen with the phone wasting time. But if they see that we take care of ourselves, that we take care of our mind, that we take care of our diet, and your children tell you: "Dad, why don't we drink?" And you say: "After dinner,

Those little tips, those little tips, children are learning them and they know that what you want you don't do it when you want it, but there are things that are convenient and not convenient. And it's not a matter of restricting or controlling or repressing, but of management, of healthy management. Because if you don't know how to control or if you can't control everything you want, all that impulse and stop

It's also in the prefrontal cortex, it's impulse. Concentrate on what you have now and enjoy it instead of thinking about what you're going to do in half an hour and that intensity that I need to do. In the long run, you'll feel much more frustrated. What other tools can help us to do a good body and mind management and that obsession that we sometimes have to take the most of the time?

Well, I think there is an obsession, as you say, to take advantage of the time, the famous FOMO, which is now so much talked about, which is what is called the fear of missing out, the fear of losing something. So, constantly I get in, I see if something has happened at a worldwide, personal, family level, I get into the chats, I get into the news portals, with constant fear. And today, that, that digital world, we have seen ourselves immersed in a constant state of alert. I highly recommend

to remove the notifications from the screen. "I am the one who controls the device, I am the one who controls the alerts, not the alerts to me". Because something is always going to happen, there is always something. You have written in a chat, the chat of your children's school, the news that is happening all day at a global level of anything, because things are always happening. That is, the screen has made us into people who find it much harder to relax. And...

puts our mind in that sympathetic mode, in cortisol mode, in a so toxic threat mode for the organism. On the other hand, we have chronopathy. Chronopathy, which is the disease of time. Pathos, disease of chrono-time. Always doing things, always doing things, you can never stop. Marañón said: "The speed, which is a virtue, generates a vice, which is the rush".

Sometimes that rush, without stopping, to one place or another, makes you unable to stop. The person who suffers from that constant need for hyperactivity and hyperactivism, when you stop it, suddenly, they have anxiety. And therefore, in those cases, sometimes what is necessary is to say: "Hey, one moment, you can't go from everything to nothing. You have to learn little by little

to go down the stairs, because your brain does not allow that leap. That huge leap, what it can suddenly generate is an attack of anxiety. And on some occasion I have seen it in consultation. And then, on the other hand, we have perfectionism. The perfectionist, by definition, is the eternal unsatisfied. He is always restless, alert, because there are defects in everything around him. This could be better, this could be done this way. My doctoral thesis, my work, my house, the order, the clothes, the children...

And that, in the long run, generates a vital dissatisfaction because life has a very large component of imperfection. When one is very perfectionist, this can develop into obsessive-compulsive disorders and knowing the impact that this has on health is going to be very important. So, that state of alertness maintained, both by chronopathy, by FOMO, by the digital issue, by perfectionism, by the need to do things constantly in this world,

so frenetic in which we have had to live, exciting but frenetic in which we have had to live, we have tools. We have already spoken about some of them during this conversation, but I would like to point out others. We have talked about sport, which I think is key, and I would love sport with nature. There are very interesting studies that it is not the same to do sports in a city than to do sports with nature. Even these studies have been carried out by putting people on huge screens

with a forest, with a lake, and see what happens in their brain and how they eliminate that cortisol and how they manage all that state of well-being. It is known today that when one manages to do sports on the beach, in the mountains, in nature, one relaxes much more. There is a part of oneself that connects much better in nature

and enters that parasympathetic mode much better than in a gym. Be careful, if you only have it at the gym, then go ahead, because it's what your body needs. On the other hand, I find it fundamental to learn to know our body and to know how my body is somatizing. So, as the first mechanism against anguish is hyperventilation, tachypnea, that need to generate more oxygen in the body, those tachycardias,

Today we know an easy way, in quotation marks, to stop that rapid state of tachycardia or alertness. Why? Because, as we talked about at the beginning, when I notice a threat,

the first thing that happens is that my lungs and my heart change their way of beating. Suddenly I have much bigger air bubbles, I have much more intracorrect and superficial breathing, but what happens is that more oxygen enters than it should and all the change in oxygen and CO2 in my brain will generate from that blurry vision, the tingling, that so well-known feeling of discomfort. That is, that physical state of so much discomfort at first,

has a lot to do with that oxygen and with that CO2 that comes out and enters in a disruptive way in my body. Therefore, if at that moment one learns to breathe deeply and consciously,

is able to generate a state of calm within itself. And this has a lot to do with several muscles in my body, including the diaphragm, which is in charge of all this happening. When I breathe deeply and I keep breathing for a few seconds and then I take it out with depth, and if I am able to put a positive thought on it, I always say to think of someone you love a lot or a thought of gratitude, suddenly, after a few minutes,

my body works better. In the end, it is still a physical movement where we work on different types of breathing, maintaining breathing, which at first is difficult, but as a habit, even to sleep at night. Many people, when they can't rest, I tell them to do some breathing technique before going to sleep and how their body manages to calm down, lowering the parasympathetic nervous system.

I remember once I was on a plane and a lady behind me, who was very afraid to fly and who was screaming, and on the other side she said: "But breathe!" And I said: "No, if what happens is that I'm breathing too much." Well, I remember that I went behind the plane to help this lady breathe, but I was unable to, I had gone out of my hands and I was already in an anxiety attack inside the plane.

But when we relaxed it little by little, the fact of that deep and conscious breathing helped it to be able to fly and to be able to withstand the whole flight. And today we know the issue of mindfulness or full attention. It seems to me that it is a very interesting technique to understand because it consists

in connecting with oneself and being aware of oneself, of what I feel, how I feel, the sensations that reach my body. That is, there are times when people confuse it with a way of meditating, because this whole matter is very much in vogue today. I believe that the important thing is that each one has their own mechanisms that help them. After so many years,

I've met all kinds of people who connect with different mechanisms that suddenly help them. And what is known is that people who are able to stop to connect with oneself, with a thought, to tell me something nice that helps me not to be my worst enemy, not to self-boycott me, while I let go of that accumulation of negative thoughts, it helps a lot, that's for sure.

meditate, breathe, do mindfulness, there are two things that will help this to be better fruitful. And they are two tools, which are acceptance and abandonment. That acceptance that I can't control everything. Or that abandonment that sometimes we get distressed because it seems that either we can with everything we carry in our life or we are going to break. And when we work all this type of techniques, it helps me to feel better.

But if what happens is that I seek to relax from control, what that will do is generate an even greater state of alert. And I believe that connecting mind and body and knowing that at that point, which to this day I think is one of the only ones we know where there is such a brutal symbiosis, where the mind, the psyche, the soul, the body,

all of this in one and we can do it consciously, I think it will open up a world for us, a world that is exciting. Finally, I would like you to share with us and with all the people to whom this talk will reach a wonderful idea that you write in your book, which is the path that we all have ahead of us to reach our best version. Well, as we talked throughout this talk, we are sometimes in alert mode and when you are in alert mode, you are in survival mode. And survival is

to get to survive every day what is happening to you: children, work, money, health, whatever. And it's very difficult to connect with yourself there. We have talked about ways throughout the day to disconnect from that alert mode and connect with that parasympathetic system. But this is completely necessary. But also in life sometimes.

we need to get a moment of rest, a weekend, a week, 15 days, where suddenly we, in quotes, "retire" from the world's noise to be able to say: "What do I want to achieve in this life? What is my meaning? What is my 'kigai'? What are the answers to the big questions? Do I have it or not? My anguish to think

in something else, and there I have to see myself in perspective, in 3D, in 4D, in 5D, and see where I'm going and try to get the best out of what I have inside. That's your best version of what I talk about so much. And I do a mathematical equation, which I think is... Few things can be used less mathematically than in psychology and psychiatry, but I like this mathematical equation because it can help us understand. Your best version would be a sum of knowledge, what I learn, what I study, what I know,

plus the life project, that is, having some goals in life, knowing where I'm going, plus the will, that is, that prefrontal cortex, that ability to postpone the reward, that order, knowledge plus life project plus will, and all this multiplied by passion.

Passion multiplies, the rest adds up. What is passion? Passion is putting your heart into what you do. The world is full of people who don't put passion into life. The world is full of people who don't put their heart into what they do. And all jobs can transform people's lives and that of oneself. The best version is that if you're a doctor, a journalist, if you're a housewife, if you take care of your children,

No matter how hard you work, you have the opportunity to transform yourself and transform others if you use that heart. But for that, you need to stop at some point.

Reflect on your life, reflect on what you know, reflect on your goals, reflect on that will, that order, that constancy, put everything in perspective and in that way it's much easier to get your best version. Marian, thank you very much once again for sharing all this useful and necessary knowledge. It has been a real pleasure.

Thank you, Melania. I hope that through these words and these talks we can help many people to reach that balance that we all desire. Thank you.