Unlocking Brain Health and Sleep Optimization with Amy Lang

Dr. Christine Li [00:00:00]:
Welcome back to the Make Time for Success podcast. This is episode number 222. Today, I have the distinct pleasure of welcoming back my friend and colleague, Amy Lang, to the podcast. She is a certified master health coach, respected author of the book, Thoughts or Habits Two, and a brain health licensed trainer. In this wonderful episode, Amy shares with us her expertise on optimizing brain health for women experiencing the transition of menopause. Her focus has been on empowering women to boost their brainpower, guard against the risk of Alzheimer's, and maintain sharp cognitive function throughout the later years in life. In our discussion, she shares many profound insights and practical strategies for you to develop effective habits, ensure your restful sleep, and nurture your self care, all crucial elements in supporting your brain health. She shares a lot about her personal journey, and she will help you to get a strong foundation for enhancing your well-being and preserving your vitality.

Dr. Christine Li [00:01:08]:
You don't wanna miss this compelling episode. So let's go listen to it. Hi. I'm Dr. Christine Li, and I'm a psychologist and a procrastination coach. I've helped thousands of people move past and overwhelm so they could begin working to their potential. In this podcast, you're going to learn powerful strategies for getting your mind, body, and energy to work together so that you can focus on what's really important and accomplish the goals you want to achieve. When you start living within your full power, you're going to see how being productive can be easy and how you can create success on demand. Welcome to the make time for success podcast.

Dr. Christine Li [00:02:00]:
Hi, everyone. Amy Lang and I have been doing a little bit of laughter before we pressed record, so we're already on a track to delivering a really fun, really informative episode. I wanna welcome Amy back to the show. Amy Lang is a certified master health coach who focuses and specializes on optimizing brain health. I can't wait to ask her so many different questions. We're gonna have a great conversation, and you're gonna end up feeling like you have a lot better handle on sleep, what goes into sleep, what you need to do with your sleep patterns. Welcome back to the show, Amy.

Amy Lang [00:02:44]:
Thank you so much for having me back. I'm excited for this episode.

Dr. Christine Li [00:02:48]:
Yes. Yes. Yes. Me too. Amy has already been on the show, and she's been just such a wonderful friend and colleague to me over the years. And over the years, I've really relied on her for her brain. And I think I mentioned that in the first episode. She is a font of wisdom, knows the current research, knows how to describe the current research in a way that is understandable to people who are not necessarily research hounds or maybe necessarily even curious about these topics.

Dr. Christine Li [00:03:26]:
And I know more recently, she's been deeply interested in helping people with their sleep habits. So we've decided that's gonna be the focus of today's episode. But before we get into the nitty gritty about sleep, I wanted to ask Amy, what caused her or what was the background? What is the origin story of how you became a habits expert?

Amy Lang [00:03:54]:
Probably from owning the health club. So I was the owner of Pacific Heights Health Club for fifteen plus years. That's in San Francisco. And you can imagine for health club, how many people joined because they wanted to lose weight or get in shape. That's like the the two big reasons. And in terms of weight loss, so often we would offer, say, a six week challenge. And so people like projects, the beginning, middle, end. Right? And there's a a flawed reasoning with weight loss where they're like, okay, I wanna lose the weight first and then figure out how to keep it off.

Amy Lang [00:04:46]:
And when I finally got them into the club and I could have a real conversation with them, not not all the marketing stuff, but literally have a conversation with them. I was like, what have we thought about movement like you think about brushing your teeth? Because so often, like with a six week challenge during the summertime, people would be like, well, can I extend it a week because we're gonna be on vacation? And and I was like, are are you gonna brush your teeth while you're on this cruise or wherever you're going? Okay. How about if we're moving? It's just moving maybe a little differently. So it was really, like, less about dieting, dieting short term. Let me overhaul my life and much more about how do we work with our brain and body and do things. And the thing about habits, they conserve energy, which works with your brain. And when you get those habits dialed in, those healthy habits that you want, then you're automating what's important. You have a system to make sure that it happens as opposed to having to spend a lot of conscious energy trying to make it happen.

Dr. Christine Li [00:06:05]:
Okay. That's a great explanation. Thank you for that. But does being a gym owner make you understand habits? Like how did you understand that that was the right way to think about habits?

Amy Lang [00:06:17]:
I think it's a lot of it comes from reading. Like, I read The Power of Habit. I read Compound Effect. I read Tiny Hab you know, like Atomic Habits. I think everyone's read that one at this point. I think it was really just the whole when I really started applying it to my own life, it became very clear like, oh, this makes much more sense. And the more I understood the science behind it too, the more it was kind of really working with my brain and body as opposed to against it, as opposed to creating states of scarcity or lack words, you know, and and then learning sort of all the mistakes that we tend to make in trying to achieve our goals, right? Even even getting so attached to certain outcomes that are ones that we really don't have any control over. Whereas we can control literally what we choose to do today.

Amy Lang [00:07:20]:
That's the only place we actually can exert control, really. Yesterday's gone. Tomorrow's not promised. We only have the like, this moment, really.

Dr. Christine Li [00:07:31]:
Yes. I love that. Thank you. So now you are demonstrating and communicating with a very calm and patient and loving tone. Have you always had that tone? And I'm kind of maybe developing a lead in question to what have you been like with your own self in terms of self regulation, keeping the habits, being kind and patient with yourself? What is your own backstory, if you don't mind sharing that?

Amy Lang [00:08:00]:
Well, so when I had the health club, one of the trainers actually, I talk about them in my book. Shameless plug, thoughts or habits too. He was my trainer there and he was actually getting certified as a life coach. And was really interesting because in a conversation I have with him, he was like, your superpower is kindness. So I think in terms of how I communicate, this is just kind of the way I am. The kind of my being. I probably listen more now than when I was younger. I was very talkative when I was younger.

Amy Lang [00:08:40]:
And as far as the conversations that I have, the self talk, if you will, I think I I was probably when I was younger, I was much harder on myself. I still catch myself, right? And one of the things that I teach people that I try to practice myself as much as possible is this four step reframing method. I call it practicing TLC, where it's becoming aware of the thought. And when I say that practices like meditation really help with that, where you can literally sort of be that neutral observer of your thoughts. So once you become aware of them, I say shine a light on them because our thoughts, especially those that self talk, the automatic negative thoughts, they are fleeting. It's like a dream. And if you don't capture it, it's very easy to lose it. So journaling is really helpful.

Amy Lang [00:09:44]:
And I actually think also when we write, we're using different parts of our brain. So we end up in a different place than if we just let it bounce around in our head. When we write, we create a little distance, we can actually observe a little better. And yes, so you really get to see what it is that you're thinking. Even saying it out loud versus letting it go around in your head makes a difference, right? So once you become aware of the thought, then let's challenge the premise of it. And I usually use four questions. Is it true? Is it kind? Is it necessary? Is it helpful? I know Byron Katie has a different set of four questions. Doctor.

Amy Lang [00:10:27]:
Daniel Amen has kinda built on that.

Dr. Christine Li [00:10:30]:
Yes.

Amy Lang [00:10:31]:
But I love those four because if you cannot answer yes to all four of those questions, then this is an opportunity to reframe it in a way that better serves. Right? So that we're literally aligning the thought that we want with emotion that it generates. And we talked about energy stuff, right? Like that emotion that creates the energy that propels you in a particular direction so that you're taking action. When we get those all aligned, then things become easy. I'm always like, let's how do we make it easy? Like this podcast, I'm excited. I'm, I'm like, we're gonna have fun. You're all I'm always having fun when I talk to you. And you're so good at asking questions.

Amy Lang [00:11:21]:
That's one of the things that I'm like, how do I get better at asking questions?

Dr. Christine Li [00:11:28]:
Well, Amy is a thank you for that, and I always have fun with you. And Amy is an optimizer, I would say. She is her brain is on the lookout for ways to make things easier, make things smoother, have things make more sense, which I love. I I love that, and I I try to be like that too. I don't think I'm naturally as gifted in that category as Amy is, but I I appreciate the way her mind works. Like, the gears are turning to figure out the issue. So it sounds like you've always had a way to kind of work through your thoughts, your habits, your emotions, and your energy. Does that make sense?

Amy Lang [00:12:08]:
I don't think I always did. So I when I was in my early thirties, I actually went to counseling. So for like three years. And one of the things that I learned that I share with folks is the learning cycle. Lots of people know it as like your thoughts drive your emotions, which drive your actions, which lead to whatever outcome. Right? So I break it down further, where I really talk about we have a particular situation, we use our senses to take in what's happening. And that along with the thoughts we have, our beliefs, we create meaning from it. There's an interpretation.

Amy Lang [00:12:54]:
And it's that interpretation that drives the emotions that we have. And so when you think about it that way, then it's like all the choices that you have, the ones you're gonna make are gonna align with that emotion. Right? So it doesn't mean that the all the other like, a lot of times we get into this all or nothing thinking. We see a binary choice when there's actually a whole continuum of choices. But again, I go back to it depends on how you're looking at it. Can you even see that that choice exists? And then when you align with it, you get a particular response, that response generates outcomes, that outcome ultimately is evidence for your brain. And we have a confirmation bias. Right? We wanna be right.

Amy Lang [00:13:47]:
Our brains are always looking for, like, yes, I solved the problem correctly. And so we look for evidence. So that's how come I'm always like, if we make it easy, then we give we fuel ourselves, right, with evidence that, oh, this is working. This is working. I can do this. I'm the little engine that could.

Dr. Christine Li [00:14:07]:
Yes. Yes.

Amy Lang [00:14:09]:
So I learned that in counseling. That was the game changer for me when I understood, oh, it's my interpretation that I'm making it mean something. And I have the ability to manage that. So I did not always have that. That was something that I learned.

Dr. Christine Li [00:14:29]:
Alright. Thank you for teaching us all that. And I feel in as old as I am at the moment that I feel like I'm constantly learning different versions of that thoughts lead to emotions lead to actions lead to results scenario and that we're always learning about possibilities and we're always learning about shadow parts of ourselves. We're learning different ways that we can run ourselves into problems and out of alignment. And I just love learning about the same things that Amy loves to learn about as well. But I also appreciate Amy disclosing about the therapy piece, because that's also such a valid and beautiful way to learn about how you're functioning, how you're treating yourself, how your habits are going, and to get somebody else's companionship and viewpoint on what's going on with you. For those of you who are listening, you have never been in therapy, it can be such a mind and body opening experience where you are able to explore in a zone of safety parts of you that may never have gotten daylight or been seen without the help of a professional in a private space and some time dedicated to that process. And, of course, I've been through years of therapy myself, many, many years of therapy.

Dr. Christine Li [00:15:57]:
Alright, Amy. So you have given us the basic understanding of how habits go and how our thoughts and feelings and behaviors are connected to each other. And we've talked about how alignment really helps to get us going in the right direction, helps us to save energy and time. But what happens it makes me think about people who are thinking, I'm gonna stick with my habit, and then they don't. Right? And that's been every one of us, you and I, and everyone who's listening. So I just wanna get your sense of what's going on when you have a plan. Cognitively, you've designed what you think is a reasonable, doable plan. And then lo and behold, you're not going to the gym.

Dr. Christine Li [00:16:45]:
You're not eating the foods that you decided were good for your body type and your particular stage in life. Can you describe just any thoughts that you have about when we are not sticking with our plans? Well,

Amy Lang [00:17:01]:
we are creatures of habit. Like, if you were I was thinking about doing, like, a habit inventory right now of from the moment you wake up, like, what are the things that you do where it takes minimal thought, minimal energy? I get up, I go to the bathroom, I always exit the bed from a certain side, go to the bathroom, brush my teeth. Right? There there are things that I do that I don't have to think about. Some some of it is nature calling. Right? But brushing my teeth isn't, but it's automatic. So brush my teeth with my right hand because I'm right handed. Right? So they're like, it would be interesting to do an inventory of all the things that we do automatically. So one of the things I talk about with brain health is our brain is only 2% of our body weight, but it actually uses, like, 20% of the energy.

Amy Lang [00:18:05]:
So it's an energy hog. Your brain has, like, three big priorities. Number one, to keep us safe. Number two, to conserve energy. And number three, to seek pleasure. Right? Rewards. And so when we don't do the thing that we were planning, I think we've just defaulted to some other habit. Mhmm.

Amy Lang [00:18:32]:
It's we're just on autopilot at that point. That's most of the time. And there are other times where maybe you you're making a choice, like, am I gonna go work out today or not? And even there, that would be an opportunity when you become aware of it. It goes back to that whole a lot of times like you're three steps away from it already and then you're like, like, why am I doing this again? In that moment, while it's still a little fresh, that would be a great opportunity to journal. So there's this, you know, as I described that four step process, there was an assumption there that you became aware of the thought before things went sideways, right? It can go sideways, that's fine. You become aware of it. At that point, you can always kind of go back. Okay, how did I get myself here? What were the thoughts? What were the feelings that led me to do this instead? I just basically stay in my comfort zone.

Amy Lang [00:19:38]:
So ultimately, it's still about our brain saying, I've seen this before. I know this pattern. This is what I do. This solves the problem. I don't feel like it. Well, why don't I feel like it? How am I thinking about it that leads me to say, I don't feel like it? Because I think that that's probably like, when you verbalize what it is, that's probably the thought. I don't feel like it. Okay.

Amy Lang [00:20:06]:
What thought proceeds? I don't feel like it. Mhmm.

Dr. Christine Li [00:20:10]:
I love these thoughts. I particularly like the fact that you're probably defaulting to an old habit, one that you've been using because that explains a lot. Right? Because we're always, like you said, throughout the day, using habits. And so if things are not going the way you are planning for, it's likely you're doing some other habit that maybe makes you feel more comfortable in the moment. And maybe you got away from your plan, and we can take a look at that, and you can be mindful about it. You can journal about it. You can do any sort of investigation you want. Alright.

Dr. Christine Li [00:20:49]:
So now I think this is a perfect juncture to hop over to the sleep conversation because we all have sleep habits. We all have the requirement of sleep every day. And we all have such widely differing behaviors and routines and attitudes about sleep. And sometimes those behaviors, attitudes, and routines change day by day. And I'm just excited to hear what you've learned and found and implemented for yourself and for your clients. I am bringing up this topic because sleep hygiene and getting good enough sleep is such a priority problem. I will say that. I will call that a priority problem, meaning it is high on the list of problems that clients discuss with me and with other group members in our coaching groups, and it just keeps circling back.

Dr. Christine Li [00:21:55]:
Right? No matter how many times we can look at it, somebody's gonna have a struggle with sleep. And I understand that because I I am not someone who sleeps perfectly myself. I have my ideas of what perfect sleep would look like for me, and sometimes I aim for that, sometimes I don't. So I just wanna get your basic take on sleep for women in midlife, and what are some of the complications of getting that really good solid sleep consistently for women in midlife.

Amy Lang [00:22:30]:
Okay. Well, actually, just a week or so ago, I presented to a group of moms, the Young Men's Service League. So all the moms there had boys in high school, so grades nine through 12. And when you look at what age they were, I I started the presentation asking three questions. Who here is having trouble falling asleep, staying asleep, or falling back to sleep? Those are three different things. And I'd say three quarters of that room raised their hand. And then I asked, okay, how many of you are experiencing brain fog? And I probably got half the room. And then I asked, who here has had frozen shoulder? And I got two thirds of the room.

Amy Lang [00:23:28]:
So I'm raising this because you said midlife. These are really women probably perimenopausal that are experiencing symptoms, right, of menopause, of really sort of the the decrease in estrogen. And estrogen is not just a sex hormone. I mean, we I think we understand that now. It's not just about reproduction. It is this master regulator, especially in women's brains. So when we have hot flashes and stuff like that, right, that's the hypothalamus trying to figure out how do I regulate temperature because this my estrogen is not there anymore. So sleep disturbances are very common for women going through menopause, the menopause transition.

Amy Lang [00:24:19]:
So both before and after. Right? So menopause actually represents when we are officially out of eggs. I don't think there's actually a way to measure it. I think it's really literally, these days, there's medical menopause, like, if you had a hysterectomy, right, and your ovaries were removed along with that. But otherwise, it's usually one year after your last period is you're considered, okay, menopause. So that's a day. And then everything else is either peri or post. It's very sort of fuzzy definition from my perspective in that sense.

Amy Lang [00:24:57]:
But so when we talk about sleep, recognize that it is oftentimes estrogen. Like, I was in my up until I went through, like, menopause, I was a good sleeper. I didn't have trouble falling asleep, staying asleep, falling back to sleep. I usually didn't wake up, so there was no falling back to sleep. And I am now full transparency, I am on on hormone replacement therapy. Mhmm. So and that has helped. But there's lots of other things that we can do.

Amy Lang [00:25:32]:
So stress, chronic stress is a big one. I actually sat down before we because I knew we were gonna have this conversation. I was thinking about like, what are common mistakes that people make when it comes to sleep? And one of those mistakes that I had listed, it was actually number five. So but I'll just reverse the order here. So number five, I was saying was lying in bed, worrying and ruminating, especially if you're lying in bed for like twenty or more minutes. So if you catch yourself doing that, right, where you've been lying at, even if it's just thoughts bouncing around, maybe you're not worrying, right? Get out of bed. Like we want the association with our bed to be sleeping, not a battleground. And I think if you're lying in bed thirty, forty minutes, like you're struggling to fall asleep, what are you thinking about when you look at your bed? Like, oh, what am I gonna do? How long is it gonna take tonight? That's that's not helpful.

Amy Lang [00:26:43]:
So try even going to a if you have another another place to sleep, another bedroom, you could try that. So sometimes, like if you're waking up in the middle of the night, it could be that you're too warm. So one of the things that we need is our body to cool, to stay asleep. So if you're sleeping next to someone who's a really warm sleeper, that might be adding to the problem in addition to whatever you're going through yourself. So if you're lying in bed for a long time, I would say get up. Get up, you can do something else. I would try to steer you away from looking at a screen though. Like if you wanna read a book, listen to a podcast might be good.

Amy Lang [00:27:29]:
Something that allows you even like a progressive muscle relaxation meditation would be good. I actually if folks wanna I have one, I recorded one. So they would like to go to moxie-club.com/pmr,lowercase for progressive muscle relaxation. That's an option for them. But the idea here is to get your mind to quiet, to focus on one thing, and to relax your body. So if you're stressed, if your brain if you're just worrying about something, you're triggering a stress response. There's how and how are you gonna fall asleep if if your brain thinks there's a threat of some kind? So that's why we really wanna get our parasympathetic nervous system to kick in. So anything we can do to get into that mode will help.

Dr. Christine Li [00:28:29]:
So Which is the stress less. We're the calmer part of our calming a part of our nervous system.

Amy Lang [00:28:36]:
Right. Versus the sympathetic nervous system, which is the stress versus Yes.

Dr. Christine Li [00:28:41]:
Right. Yes. And the activating kind. Absolutely.

Amy Lang [00:28:45]:
With the cortisol and everything else that we've heard about. So lying in bed, I would say alcohol consumption. I've I don't drink alcohol, but a lot of my clients, if you look at, like, social media, a lot of folks are talking about how especially with perimenopause, postmenopause, that alcohol is just not a good mix. Right? It is not getting metabolized the same way or as well. And so alcohol when you look at sleep is more of a sedative. So sedation is not the same thing as sleep. Now, if you're using alcohol to help you fall asleep, I think what's really important to understand is alcohol will fragment your sleep, meaning you're much more likely then to wake up. And it also disrupts REM sleep, which is your dream sleep.

Amy Lang [00:29:45]:
So you need REM sleep for things like memory consolidation. This helps with learning. So it's that idea of, like, if you sleep on it and you get a good night sleep, then stuff that was in short term memory, right, makes its way into long term. And it's almost like there's an indexing system that's occurring. All these connections are being made too. So, yeah, alcohol can can really disrupt that whole process. And it dehydrates you as well. So which for your brain is not a good thing.

Amy Lang [00:30:23]:
Another common mistake, you talked about the attitude around sleep where I mean, when I was growing up, it was the well, I'll sleep when I'm dead. You hear a lot of that. There's that Midwest I grew up in Michigan, the Midwest work ethic. I watched my parents who I don't think they got enough sleep, quite frankly. Mhmm. My parents didn't retire until they were 76 years old. And my dad talks about how they got up at 06:30. Right? And I would I know I saw them up at around, like, 11:30 or 12:00.

Amy Lang [00:31:05]:
So they weren't even giving themselves the opportunity to get eight hours of sleep. And so usually, it's somewhere between seven and nine hours. Right? It depends on the person. But if that's why you often hear eight. I think it's the average. Right? But I don't think my mom was getting seven hours of sleep at night. So my mom has Alzheimer's. She was diagnosed when she was 78.

Amy Lang [00:31:32]:
So they retired seventy six, seventy eight, she she got diagnosed. And yeah, I think between the chronic stress and sleep, you know, she grew up in Taiwan. I know she had or has hepatitis b, chronic hep b. She had malaria when she was little. Right. So there's, like, new research that's talking about infections like COVID nineteen, herpes zoster that are potentially gonna be added as risk factors for dementia. So, yeah, we wanna these are, you know, I'm my brain is these days, us all focused on how do we optimize our brain health. And sleep is one of those things.

Amy Lang [00:32:20]:
So sleep just I wanna put a plug in here. When we get deep sleep, our glymphatic system, which is like the janitorial service, right? During the day, we naturally produce amyloid and tau. These are proteins that are just naturally occurring. It's not like something's gone wrong. When they accumulate and become plaques and tangles, that's where we get into trouble. That's when when there's like an inflammatory response that kicks in as well. But deep sleep helps to clear those proteins before they become an issue. Think about it as like when they're not all clumped together, when they're not turning into plaque.

Amy Lang [00:33:04]:
It's like when you brush your teeth and floss, right, we wanna avoid the the build up. So that's why deep sleep is so important. Deep sleep happens more in the first half of the night versus the second half. So we've talked about this before where when you look at the the sleep wake or the sleep cycle, and how I don't want to I don't think I want to go through all of that in this episode. But you can listen to some of my episodes where I go through it. But, ultimately, it's that, you know, during, let's say, an eight hour sleep, more deep sleep happens in the first four hours. So if you short your sleep, let's say, you normally go to bed at eleven, get up at seven, that means the first four hours happen between eleven and three. Second half is between three and seven.

Amy Lang [00:33:59]:
If you were to short your sleep, and I'm looking at my clock. If you got up at say 5AM one morning, you're gonna lose out on REM sleep. That seems to make sense. What if we reversed it? What if you went to bed at two in the morning and got up at seven? You would actually be losing out on deep sleep. So your body naturally does the deep sleep in the first in that first part. Like, there's a circadian rhythm thing that's going on. So it's not just like, Oh, I'm just starting and I'm always gonna get deep sleep and lose out on REM sleep. That's not how it works.

Amy Lang [00:34:35]:
So okay, so I talked about lying in bed. We talked about alcohol consumption. So sleeping in on the weekends. There's this idea of, oh, I accumulated sleep debt. Can I make up for it? Our bodies, we're creatures of habit. Our bodies crave that routine. If you have a pet, I have a dog, Christine. Like, we know they love routine.

Amy Lang [00:35:01]:
Our body is the same way. So if you can, I would say really endeavor to go to bed and get up at the same time every day? Sleeping in on the weekends, oftentimes, if you sleep in, then your sleep drive has been affected. So that means you won't wanna go to bed as early. Right? If you get up at, oh, ten or eleven, you know, you watch teenagers. If you get up at, like, ten or eleven versus when you normally get up at, say, six or seven, what's gonna happen at nighttime? Right? So on the weekends, if you push it out and then Sunday night, now you can't go to sleep, but you gotta get up early. That doesn't really work. So I would say just endeavor to try to keep that the same. Late night snacking is a big one.

Amy Lang [00:35:57]:
You know, I know in the weight loss world, people used to always have this rule, like, oh, you know, to to not eat after 07:00 or whatever. I think part of it is just it depends on what time you go to bed. Mhmm. But the idea what so late night snacking, think about what people are often eating when they're snacking too. So if you're eating stuff that's high in sugar, refined carbs, so so not necessarily just sugar, but just simple carbohydrates to begin with. What are you doing to your insulin levels? Like, if you wanna lose weight, insulin is not your friend in the sense of getting your body to burn fat. It's not gonna happen. So from a hormone perspective, it's not gonna happen.

Amy Lang [00:36:44]:
I won't get into all the details in this since we're talking about sleep. So if you're eating those really simple carbs, you're basically probably increasing your heart rate. You're right. There's all this kind of stuff that's happening because give a kid a bunch of sugar. Watch them bounce off the wall. We're just adults, so we don't bounce necessarily. But it's it's still happening within us. And when it comes to brain health, type two diabetes and obesity are big risk factors.

Amy Lang [00:37:19]:
It's interesting that, you know, I I came from that fitness, wellness, trying to lose weight world. I wanted to pivot to brain health, and I come, like, full circle, like, it's all connected. Metabolic health, your cardiovascular health, and your brain health are all interconnected. So if you take care of your metabolic health, you're helping the rest too.

Dr. Christine Li [00:37:46]:
Yeah. I was doing just a side note. I was doing a TikTok yesterday, very side note, but I realized with the message I was delivering in that TikTok that I agree everything is connected. So whatever you're doing to take care of your health is also pinging back and assisting your emotional health and how you communicate with other people and how you face new challenges and then how you sleep at night. So as you're going through the list of mistakes that people make when it comes to getting those great hours of sleep and getting the good deep sleep and REM sleep, I said, this is just regular human behavior. But it also made me think, wow, if we all got consistently good, healthy sleep, we would probably be much more likely to be able to cut down on some of these mistakes just naturally. We wouldn't feel as much like snacking in the middle of the night because we'd be properly sleeping, and we wouldn't feel like our hunger, eating issues, and patterns were so chaotic. Right?

Amy Lang [00:39:01]:
Yeah.

Dr. Christine Li [00:39:01]:
And then maybe that would lead to easier weight maintenance, and that might lead to a more stable mood. All these things are related. I think we know that intuitively, but then we decide, oh, you know what? I could skip tonight's sleep, or I can I can live on five hours? It's just one night. And every time I talk to Amy about sleep, I run to my bed. I just think, no plaque for me. No more, you know, no more firing the janitorial staff in my brain. I am gonna do better with this. And I wanna thank you for just being so loving and kind with your explanations of what are the consequences and what are the the easy shifts that you can do to just improve things even a little bit, that all of this matters and all of this is connected and all of it's really important.

Amy Lang [00:39:57]:
Yeah. Well, one of the things okay. So if we tie sleep and weight loss together, okay, so we're talking brain health as well. But when we say it's all connected, so I talked about metabolic health and cardiovascular health. What about, like, hormone balancing? So when when you look at, like, the principles of optimizing brain health, so I have identified five. K? And there's kind of a hierarchy. So the top two are energy management and restoring balance. K? Or if you think about, like, Eastern and Western medicine and functional integrative medicine, we're talking about balance and harmony.

Amy Lang [00:40:46]:
So when we talk about energy management, there's a TED talk by doctor Lisa Musconi from, I think it was 2017. And she has the PET scan, so this brain imaging of a same woman pre and postmenopause, and you get to see the energy metabolism, right, the energy usage activity, whatever you wanna call it, in different parts of her brain. And you can see a significant drop before and after. And she said it actually represented like a 30% drop in metabolism. So women's brains are more vulnerable, I believe, when it comes to Alzheimer's. And I mean, the statistics right now are we've got about seven million adults in The US living with Alzheimer's, of which two thirds are women. We outnumber men two to one. And at age 45, our lifetime risk of developing Alzheimer's for women is one in five.

Amy Lang [00:42:04]:
So twenty percent. That's that's a big number. And if you have a family history, so my mom has Alzheimer's. Her mom had Alzheimer's. So I haven't gotten genetic testing and stuff, although I'm seriously considering it. I think we need to start thinking about Alzheimer's the way we think about cancer in that earlier detection is better. We have more options when we detected early. The earlier we can, then the more we can actually, like lifestyle changes or interventions can make a bigger impact.

Amy Lang [00:42:44]:
So by the time, you know, you look in a brain, like my mom's brain at this point, there's probably so much irreversible damage. Even if we could get her to do, like, be super diligent about all the things, and we can't because my dad's kind of gatekeeper for that. That's a whole another issue. I think we could probably slow down the progression, But the damage is done. There's a lot of damage that's done. So the good news is when we're younger, there's this thing called neuroplasticity. Right? There's this concept of cognitive reserve and brain reserve, where if you have this mindset of I'm always going to be learning new things, then you're like, can't it's so one of the principles is use it or lose it. So brain's like a muscle, right? We wanna keep using it.

Amy Lang [00:43:41]:
I think there's mental stimulation, learning new things, being socially active, right? The quality of your relationships matter. You're using different parts of your brain when you're interacting with people. So reading people, you know, I started taking tennis lessons a few years ago. I love that. I'm outside, I'm moving my body. And it's always changing, like the how that other person, you know, you play with different people, they have different patterns, all that stuff. So I think I'm probably helping my bra I'm doing what I can to help my brain is essentially what I'm saying. So I am doing my best to walk the talk.

Amy Lang [00:44:21]:
Does that mean I'm perfect? Absolutely not. There are a lot of things I'm like, okay, I need to focus on that. Right? And like So one of the other mistakes just before I forget, or I don't want to forget is, scrolling on your phone, like TikTok or Instagram or whatever before you go to bed, especially if you struggle to fall asleep. Because you're basically like that light from the screen, you hear about blue light, right? That light from the screen is like tricking your brain into thinking that it's earlier in the day. So you're just kind of pushing out sleep. And that's why I say, like, listen to a podcast on it. You know, if you as part of your bedtime routine can, like, turn down the lights and things like that, that can often help. You talked about that whole, the chain, right, where you were talking about depending on, like, where do you want to intervene during the day to get that better sleep? Is it to go to bed earlier? Is it to not to to not do the late night snacking? Is it like where where can you break the chain, so to speak? Maybe one of the easiest things to do.

Amy Lang [00:45:44]:
So I talked about the mistakes. One of the things you could do is when you get up in the morning, can you go for a quick walk outside? That tells your brain like, oh, it's daytime. It's morning. Like, how do how do we help that sleep drive kinda kick in? And then it will help you wake up too. Right? Because you're walking, blood circulation, all that good stuff. I kinda lost my train of thought. Where did we wanna go with your last question?

Dr. Christine Li [00:46:13]:
Well, I I I think you're doing fantastically because you're covering so many different areas that we could maybe just say, okay, I remember Amy said I should get out the door in the morning because that's gonna help me at night. And I just think if our listeners take one or two, like, one piece of wisdom, one activity that they can do, that that could set off a whole new chain of attitudes and actual behaviors around not just sleep health, but overall health. Right? The things that you were talking about that you're doing for your brain health, they're helping your life. They're helping your your vitality, which is, of course, feeding back to your brain. This girl wants to live. This girl wants to stay relevant and alert and flexible. And I just think that's good at any age, and that is good advice for anybody, man or woman, menopause or not. And let's just spend the the thinking time and the planning time and the life investment time into things like this because we think so much about work.

Dr. Christine Li [00:47:24]:
We think so much about being good people. That's all great, but we also have to feed back into our bodies because our bodies and brains are working so overtime to take care of us. We wanna put in the sleep so that our bodies and brains can really work like the master machines that they are.

Amy Lang [00:47:45]:
Absolutely. Ultimately, our brain is responsible for what we think, how we feel, what we say, what we do. Right? Our personality, our memories, our intelligence. Our choices. Our judgment. Yeah. Yeah. Planning.

Amy Lang [00:48:05]:
All of that stuff. And so, like, a healthy brain gives you like, I always talk about we can't control outcomes, but we can create conditions. A garden is a really good analogy. Like, there are things we can't control whether or not it you know, like if there's gonna be a drought or whatever. I mean, if you have a house plant, right? Water it, fertilize it, talk to it, right? All of those things, we get to control those things. Those are our behaviors. And when we create those conditions, then we put ourselves in a position to it's much more likely for us to get those outcomes that we're looking for. But ultimately, the control lies in what we can do today.

Amy Lang [00:48:58]:
Right? I I keep going back to the, like, what you do today is what truly matters. So if we focus our attention on what we can control and, again, like, we can't control the outcomes. I think one other thing when I'm talking to clients is we actually can't control what other people think, say, feel, or do either. We we wanna you know, why can't I get them, you know, or this person makes me so mad or whatever. It's like, no. We don't have that power to make someone feel something. So even someone else if you say like, Oh, this person makes me so mad. I'm like, Ultimately, it's still how you think about it, and how you're interpreting it.

Amy Lang [00:49:48]:
I'm not saying you're not accurately, but just understand. Ultimately, it's still your thoughts that are triggering that emotion.

Dr. Christine Li [00:49:58]:
Yeah.

Amy Lang [00:49:58]:
And so in that sense, we have more control than we give ourselves credit for. But then, yeah, when we try to control what someone else is thinking, we really can't I said, I guess maybe unless you, you know, you've been hypnotized or something, then then that's a whole another ballgame.

Dr. Christine Li [00:50:17]:
Yeah. Different episode.

Amy Lang [00:50:19]:
Otherwise, yeah. Then then it's like I you know, instead of trying to manipulate, I actually think it's developing the skill of clear, direct, authentic communication, you know, where you're talking about healthy boundaries and all that stuff, that's where we wanna go in terms of, again, like what you can control.

Dr. Christine Li [00:50:42]:
Okay.

Amy Lang [00:50:43]:
Great. That's a whole another thing.

Dr. Christine Li [00:50:45]:
I wanna go back to the five principles of optimal brain health. I have energy management and I have restoring balance. I have a feeling you went through the other ones in conversation, but I just wanna make sure our audience knows what are the five points for optimal brain health, if you don't mind going over those for us.

Amy Lang [00:51:10]:
Sure. So number one, yeah, we're talking about energy management. Number two, restoring balance. Number three is addressing root causes. We didn't actually talk about that. But when you think about prevention, you know, one of the things with our healthcare system is that we're very focused on treating treatments. So, okay, in our healthcare system, when we talk about prevention, we're talking Western allopathic medicine. There's primary prevention, so that would be preventing the disease from occurring.

Amy Lang [00:51:55]:
Now if you have a strong immune system, that can help. Right? That's that would be like, well, I think of this prevention, but vaccines are also a form of prevention. K? And then secondary prevention is literally treating the disease. So think antibiotics for an infection. Right? Anything where it's a cure, so to speak. And then tertiary prevention is really treating symptoms. So cough medicine addresses the cough, right? Suppresses the cough, doesn't treat the underlying cold virus. Okay.

Amy Lang [00:52:32]:
So our healthcare system is really focused on disease management, not really on healthcare, right? So if you think about from a scale of like minus 100 to zero, our health care system is about playing in that area. When I think about like health, deep health, true health, whatever you wanna call it, wellness, you know, wellness has kinda gotten a little fuzzy in its definition, but I'm thinking about how we play in the zero to a hundred. So when we talk about addressing root causes, that's where it's trying to stay in that zero to 100. Yes. So all of these lifestyle protective things that we can do. It's not just about preventing cognitive decline, it's actually boosting our brainpower. Like, maybe that's the message is sleep. If you keep thinking about it from this place of I'm not getting enough sleep, that's actually in a lot of ways, we're still triggering a state of scarcity in our thinking.

Amy Lang [00:53:44]:
What if we could flip that and talk about, I love my brain, right, and I wanna take good care of it. What can I do to help that? Right? What can I do to take better care of my brain now that I know? Right? And so, oh, I can give it the opportunity to get like eight solid hours of sleep. How would I feel? What would life look like if I did that? What a much more empowering, like, uplifting way of thinking about sleep and going to bed earlier. Like, I see those memes on Facebook where it's like, oh, you know, all the things that we didn't want to do when we were kids, when we get older are the things we want. We want to take a nap. We want to go to bed earlier. Right? Like, oh, I'm like, think about it that way is more like, oh, I'm taking good care of it. So when we address root causes, we're intervening much earlier.

Amy Lang [00:54:46]:
We're addressing things before, like, the damage can be done, so to speak. Right? Okay. So that's number three is addressing root causes. Number four is understanding like it's all connected. Like so you we really want to approach it holistically. And when we do that, like, actually, there are multiple intervention points then. It's not just like one thing. Right? I think this goes back to, like, allopathic medicine.

Amy Lang [00:55:14]:
And I'm not trying to slam Western medicine. I I really think, you know, our physicians are trained using an evidence based approach. And the gold standard is randomized double blind control studies. It's very hard to study lifestyle interventions. It's it just is very difficult to do. But at the same time, like, when you look at where cancer is now versus years ago, right, when they talk about precision medicine and early detection and all that stuff, I truly believe that's where Alzheimer's is gonna go. So if you notice any symptoms or signs, if there's any question, instead of trying to avoid it, like, take a wait and see approach, I actually think, like, getting a diagnosis is actually really helpful. Because, again, it's like you can start making some changes early that can potentially help your body actually repair itself so it can heal.

Amy Lang [00:56:15]:
So this is it reminds me of like, you know, if you have a little kitchen fire, right? Like if it's just in the pan, you're able to like put it out, then maybe there's minimal damage. That's different from when your house is on fire. Yeah. Okay. So it's all connected as the fourth one. And then the fifth one is use it or lose it, which we talked about. So energy management, restoring balance, addressing root causes, honoring the interconnection, and then use it or lose it.

Dr. Christine Li [00:56:52]:
I love it. Thank you for explaining and for putting this all together over time in your book, Thoughts Are Habits Too. And for taking the time to just really give us your understanding, your deep understanding of why this matters, of how this all works, and what we can do to help ourselves to have better brains, to help better sleep, to have better experiences in the day to day because we're taking care of ourselves and our future selves at the same time. Could you remind me what the name of your podcast is? Because you did mention that you talk about all these things on your podcast as well. So I wanted to let our followers know where they can find you on the podcast.

Amy Lang [00:57:43]:
Sure. It's Happy and Healthy with Amy Lang.

Dr. Christine Li [00:57:46]:
Okay. Wonderful. And then also, I know you are working specifically with clients in terms of optimizing brain health coaching. Could you describe a little bit more in detail what you're doing and how people can get in touch with you if they'd like to work with you?

Amy Lang [00:58:08]:
So as far as what I'm doing, I'm still doing habit coaching. At the end of the day, it is really habit coaching. We are focused though on the habits that are derived from those five principles that I talk about. So there's five principles, and there are, like, eight essential protective factors. So oftentimes, you hear about the risk factors. And I talked about that, right? The risk factors like type two diabetes and obesity, high blood pressure, chronic stress. Depression is actually a risk factor. So the Lancet Commission actually published a report in July 2024, last last summer, that identified 14 modifiable risk factors.

Amy Lang [00:58:59]:
There are more, like the list is growing. Like, the Lancet Commission report didn't talk about chronic sleep deprivation or sleep disturbances, but I I think the research is showing that that is a concern. Chronic inflammation, poor oral health is one of those things. We know oral health is important for cardiovascular health. So I go back to it's all connected. Yes. I think we're talking about systemic inflammation, where it's not so it's not just your heart health, it ends up being your brain health as well. So, yeah, so there's there's all these risk factors.

Amy Lang [00:59:37]:
I think of it as, you know, in emergency situations, the instruction is instead of telling people what not to do, like don't panic, it's better to tell them what to do, stay calm. So I like talking in terms of protective factors. So from the principles, I have essential eight protective factors. And from there, we come up with what are habits that make sense for you. So there's a lot of, like, precision habit making, I guess you would call it, where we're really looking at your particular life, how do we apply and integrate those principles into your life. So it's very evidence based in that sense, but it's got that sort of east meets west kind of approach to it as well. So I am all about primary prevention and not treatments in that sense. So, like, right now, I have a twelve week coaching program.

Amy Lang [01:00:41]:
So that's the one where I really I'm trying to create a a course from that, but I think it ultimately, it is applying and integrating those principles into your life through habits so that, again, we're automating the things that are important.

Dr. Christine Li [01:01:02]:
Terrific.

Amy Lang [01:01:02]:
And really coming from this place of of self love. Like, I I always say, like, we don't we don't want toxic fuel to drive us. We want it to be, like, from this place of self love that's fueling our efforts.

Dr. Christine Li [01:01:18]:
Beautiful. And how can our followers stay in touch with you and or work with you?

Amy Lang [01:01:24]:
So you can go follow me on Instagram at habit whisperer. I also actually started another account called at amy line coaching that's really focused on Alzheimer's prevention. Habit Whisperer kinda combines the weight loss and Alzheimer's. I think that the algorithm is maybe a little confused at this point. And then my website, there's amylangcoaching.com is one, and then moxie-club.com is the other one. So again, not to confuse things. Amy Lang coaching, again, is focused very much on Alzheimer's prevention. Moxie hyphen club dot com is really about optimizing your brain health.

Amy Lang [01:02:09]:
So from a marketing messaging standpoint, it's like, which one do you wanna focus on? Alzheimer's prevention and protecting your brain health or boosting your brain power. That's why they're two different websites.

Dr. Christine Li [01:02:24]:
Okay. But lots of ways to stay connected. They will all be listed in the show notes. And Thank you. Again, I wanna give great thanks to Amy. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Dr. Christine Li [01:02:34]:
It's been a wonderful conversation, and I hope everybody like me tonight is gonna run to bed. Thank you, Amy. It's been a delight. You're a delight. Thank you so much. Aw.

Amy Lang [01:02:45]:
Thank you so much for having me back. It's been so fun.

Dr. Christine Li [01:02:49]:
Alright, everyone. I will see you next week. Get some sleep, get some rest, do those early morning walks, and I'll see you soon. Bye. Thank you for listening to this episode of the Make Time for Success podcast. If you enjoyed what you heard, you can subscribe to make sure you get notified of upcoming episodes. You can also visit our website, maketimeforsuccesspodcast.com for past episodes, show notes, and all the resources we mentioned on the show. Feel free to connect with me over on Instagram too.

Dr. Christine Li [01:03:23]:
You can find me there under the name procrastination coach. Send me a DM and let me know what your thoughts are about the episodes you've been listening to. And let me know any topics that you might like me to talk about on the show. I'd love to hear all about how you're making time for success.

Amy Lang [01:03:44]:
Talk to you soon.