Summary:

On this episode of “Wellness Your Way”, host Megan Lyons interviews Dr. Romie Mushtaq, a neurologist and wellness expert, about her journey from traditional medicine to integrative medicine and her research on the “busy brain” syndrome. Dr. Mushtaq explains that the syndrome is a result of chronic stress and burnout, leading to symptoms like difficulty focusing, anxiety, and insomnia. She also discusses her “Brain Shift Protocol”, which aims to address these issues by focusing on sleep, hormones, inflammation, food, and technology. Dr. Mushtaq emphasizes the importance of individualized approaches to wellness, noting that one-size-fits-all solutions often fail to address the unique needs and experiences of each person.

Full Episode:

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Transcription:

Megan Lyons:

Thank you so much Dr. Romy Moshak for coming on Wellness Your Way. I am very excited to have you here,

Dr. Romie Mushtaq:

Megan, it is an honor to be here for you and your community and break down some things that folks may be surprised to hear about Busy brain and nutrition.

Megan Lyons:

Yes. Well, I personally am excited to dive into it and I know we’re going to cover so much, but I’d love to hear just to start out how you wound up here.

Dr. Romie Mushtaq:

Oh, I wound up here. That’s a loaded question, isn’t it? Right. You can

Megan Lyons:

Take it however you want though.

Dr. Romie Mushtaq:

I will tell you this, the day I graduated from medical school, if you would have told me I am going to leave practicing medicine, start my own company, be a chief wellness officer, do research outside the halls of academia, I would’ve thought there was a mental health issue and I would’ve argued with you. And it is a deep and profound lesson as a young girl being raised by immigrant parents with a very goal-directed life and what success would look like, that no matter how much you try to plan a successful life, life, life may have a different plan for you. Yes,

Megan Lyons:

I’ve experienced that myself as well. And very interesting to hear that you didn’t always picture this as your career path. So can you tell us a little bit more about what inspired that change from traditional medicine to where you are now?

Dr. Romie Mushtaq:

Yeah. Being a doctor like you, your background, having the academic excellence, having graduated from Harvard and working in management consulting, that never really leaves us. I think what no one prepares you for is the career trajectory that your parents and my parents may have had where you pick a career, you train in it, you stay in one vocation or one company until you retire. That was maybe the way I was raised, but that is not the way of the world today and the world is in need of helpers and healers and empathy and we’re going to be called upon to use our skills, but in maybe different ways than was planned. And that’s the lesson, but how that started, yeah, I am the proud daughter of immigrants and English is my third language. I am the first born and I had a success mantra from birth from my father.

I have one daughter and you will become a doctor. And I love my mom and dad. I had a wonderful upbringing. Everything they did, they sacrificed to make sure us children would have an education. And I did everything that you would do. Training as a young child for academic excellence, I think equate it to people who may have been in sports or their children are in sports and they’re excelling really well, you pay extra money for baseball camp and coaches and travel around the country with them. I mean that’s what happens when you’re training academic excellence in childhood. And so I mission accomplished. I got into medical school and I entered neurology at a time where less than 5% of the brain doctors in America were women. And I loved my job. I was doing cutting edge research, not only seeing patients but on women’s brains and hormones and epilepsy and migraines.

So doctor, researcher, teacher mentoring the next generation of doctors and fabulous designer shoes. And it all looked perfect and successful from the outside. But in that old model and what I see today, what’s known as the hustle culture of today where you wear stress as a badge of honor and you keep pushing, I ended up very sick and this was in the days Megan today having a conversation about mental health and burnout just seems so basic is what the kids would say on Instagram. But gosh, back then you weren’t allowed to say anything. You were a failure. And I was the only woman or one of the few women in the department. I couldn’t let the sisterhood down, but oh my god, my brain was struggling and I was ignoring it and pushing through cognitive mental health symptoms of what we’re going to talk about shortly is a busy brain and the burnout finally caught up with physical symptoms.

And I ended up in lifesaving surgery in 2010. And as I was laying in the hospital, I had this humbling moment of nothing I learned in my childhood or as in medical school is going to help me. I need a different path forward. And that’s what started this journey. And I lived in shame for quite some time. I couldn’t cut it. That’s how a lot of these big traditional systems are designed. You just can’t cut it. Literally. That’s what happens when you let a woman join the academy. And then as I transitioned to integrative medicine, started to see patients, companies started to ask me to come speak, there was this aha moment. It isn’t just me roi, it isn’t just a woman in medicine. This is happening to men and women across every industry. And here we are today that I’m like, we need a solution to the mental health and burnout crisis. And as a doctor and as a chief wellness officer, I know it doesn’t really exist out there. And I was like, I’m going to research it, I’m going to test it, I’m going to create it. And now we have the book, the Busy Brain Cure, and here we are today. That is the journey. And I just spoke without taking a breath, so we’ll breathe and pause here.

I dunno, I am having some kind of emotional reaction in the middle of this interview. My life is and career is flashing before my eyes. And I just maybe just sit here in a moment of humility of this is where we are today. It’s exciting and humbling all at once

Megan Lyons:

At wow. Well, I am excited and humbled just by hearing that because I relate to so many parts of that story and I still somewhere find deep inside of me that drive and that desire to play into the hustle culture. And yet I’ve seen in myself physically, and of course emotionally and mentally as well, the repercussions of doing that. And I know that’s not the answer, and yet I still want to prove that I can cut it sometimes. So it’s a really challenging That’s okay

Dr. Romie Mushtaq:

And that’s why I wrote this book because as I went into integrative medicine and trained in yoga and mindfulness, I love that idea of go with the flow, but I still want to succeed. I want to make impact on the world. I want to run a successful business. I want to succeed as a chief wellness officer, as you do with your goals. And I talk about this in section one of the book, specifically in chapter one, are you stuck on a stress success cycle that in order to succeed at a personal goal like finding a spouse and having children, if that’s your desire or personally whatever the next goal is, can you do it without stressing yourself out? And that’s what the busy brain care and the brain shift protocol are all about. Megan, if I had to have real talk with you, I don’t know about the people you serve on your podcast and when you speak, but girl, nobody wants to hear in my community, just eat berries and breathe and go with the float. We’ll run over you with our wearable tech and our designer shoes. We’re driven people. I not serve people that pay mortgages, they go to night school, they’re raising children, they’re caring for elderly, and they’re working 40 hours a week, maybe a part-time luxury in every industry. I just want us to be able to do it without stressing ourselves out.

Megan Lyons:

Okay, now I am sold and continue to be excited. You’re using three terms that you’ve coined, busy brain, brain shift protocol and brain cure, and these are all hallmarks of the work that you’ve done, that you’ve researched so much and put into this amazing new book. But I’d love to just start out by giving your definition of those. So what is a busy brain? And then we can get into the brain shift protocol.

Dr. Romie Mushtaq:

Amazing. Yeah. So I want to ask you, Megan, even today or maybe in your previous career, I went through these symptoms and I’m going to ask your listeners, do they resonate with these five six? You can’t get going in the morning with your personality unless you have a cup of coffee. Maybe you’re going to tell Megan and I, it’s a cup of coffee, but it was really a few energy drinks, no judgment from either one of us. And you get to your desk and you have multiple browser windows open on multiple screens and multiple browser windows in your brain and something that should just take seven minutes to do. 72 minutes later you’re in anxious analysis paralysis. Let me go get coffee. Why am I having anxious anxiety? Why am I ruminating on negative things about what somebody said about my winter coat as I walked into the office today?

What’s wrong with me? And then you’re like, wait, I heard Roy and Megan on a podcast on the way to work today, I’m going to stand on self-care. I’m going to go home and sleep and do the protocol. Roy said, and you go home and you’re like, I can’t freaking take the edge off from everything I had to put up with today. Give me a glass of wine or three and if you don’t drink, you’re like, let me have that bougie overpriced supplement I got from some Instagram influencer. Ooh, we’re relaxing. We’re going to unwind you put your head down on the pillow. You are following the protocol that Megan and I are doing together and all of a sudden you’re like, there are 72 warring conversations going on in my brain. Or if you fell asleep, you wake up at somewhere between 2:37 and 4:17 AM and you’re like, I’m wide awake. Lemme just get up and do a load of laundry and knock out some emails that is a busy brain hyperactivity and I want to go. You’re nodding up and down. I’ve been there. Me too, me too.

Megan Lyons:

Absolutely. Particularly the evening, the morning, I can actually wake up without coffee. I can be productive, all that, but oh, the evening, my brain is still going a million miles a minute and it’s very hard to unwind it. So I relate a lot

Dr. Romie Mushtaq:

Symptoms, Megan, with that, I know you would appreciate it. In traditional medicine, neurology, psychiatry, psychology, we treat adult onset attention deficit disorder or difficulty focusing ruminating anxiety and insomnia’s three separate diseases. They’re all one spectrum of a particular pattern, which we’ll break down in a minute of brain inflammation known as neuroinflammation, and that’s the busy brain. The problem with western medicine is you’re either using caffeine to fuel yourself all day, which is just going to make anxiety worse, and then you can’t sleep. And so you’re going to take a sedative like alcohol or an anti-anxiety sleeping pill that’s going to make the difficulty focusing in the anxiety that withdrawal the next day worse. So it’s like you’re in this vicious, what I call stimulant sedative cycle every day. You can’t get going without artificial stimulation and you can’t calm down at night without putting something in your brain.

And that’s the busy brain syndrome. And it happens in high-functioning, highly intellectual people. And we have a test that we will give you the link to and for your listeners to take for free. This is how we did the research during the pandemic when I was speaking virtually, we had the opportunity to collect research data and then as we came out of the pandemic, so 17,000 people took this busy brain test to get their brain score during the pandemic, and that helped to inform me. It’s a validated neuropsychology task that has been around for over 50 years and it talks to us about the negative impact of stress on our cognition, our mental health, our physical health. So from that data I was like, oh, this is what’s happening to our busy brains and burnout and we need to find a protocol. So that’s what a busy brain is.

Megan Lyons:

You’ve very well defined a busy brain for us, and I know 99.9% of the audience is raising their hand metaphorically and saying, yes, I’ve experienced some of those symptoms myself too. And you’re nodding as well. So let’s talk about what you learned from this survey and from your research and developed into the brain shift protocol. Can you give us an overview of what the brain shift protocol is?

Dr. Romie Mushtaq:

Well, here’s this thing. It’s kind of like Megan, if I, I’m turning into the Indian auntie that I quote their wisdom throughout my book and I say, everybody come over to my home for a cup of chai and wear your afternoon. Finally, everyone’s going to come dress differently. One silk, sorry or one silk dress does not fit everybody the same way. That’s the problem in today’s world with people giving advice to treat the negative effects of chronic stress and burnout or the busy brain, we all want a quick Instagram reel or TikTok video giving us a life-changing habit to do, and then we think it’s done and it doesn’t work that way. And that’s what we learned. So looking at the data of 17,000 people, what we learned is as your stress levels go up above a brain score above 30, it means you’re starting to have a busy brain.

We have a few categories, so mild busy brain or a brain drain. We know that energy-filling activities that would normally create a sustained dopamine boost in the brain like exercise, exercise, going to that yoga class, good sex is actually feeling draining now and we need to do something about it. Once you get a score above a 40, you now have a busy brain and you’re heading towards negative consequences to your memory, your mood and your physical health. And above 60 is a burnout. And these are the people that thought they were healthy and all of a sudden they went to the doctor and they’re like, what do you mean I’m too young to have diabetes or high blood pressure? Where did this acid reflux come from? I didn’t use to get sick when my kids came home from school with all these viruses. Now they’re fine and I keep getting walking pneumonia like what’s going on?

That’s the negative impact of having a longstanding busy brain. And that’s what the research showed us. But here was the surprising thing, Megan, you and I were hearing all the data the last few years. We’re eating too much, we’re drinking too much for stress, we’ve gained weight. Our research actually showed that the top three complaints that people had were related to sleep and energy, difficulty falling asleep, waking up in the middle of the night and difficulty falling back asleep and then waking up, having slept a full night, but not having enough energy to tackle your day. That was the top three out of the 20 symptoms that we found consistently.

Megan Lyons:

Wow. And is this, I know this is an oversimplification, so I’m going to put that caveat even before the question, but does this all come down to cortisol and it’s upstream impacts on basically everything else in the body or can we not make it that simple? You’re shaking your head

Dr. Romie Mushtaq:

No, I think those are the, you’re right. And I don’t want to discount that. Those are a lot of the models of acute to chronic stress that we were dealing with before the pandemic and why I wanted to research this because I know being in workplace wellness as a chief wellness officer for over 7,000 employees and seeing what’s out on the market, those stress-busting techniques that will tell you to go do 10 squats or a deep breathing or meditating for 10, 20 minutes, that is no longer effective when we, in today’s world of chronic stress and burnout and what we found in the research, there’s something even deeper going on. So I call it neuroinflammation, a particular pattern for busy brain, these three for symptoms that happen. And what we’re seeing is chronic stress will trigger an inflammation pattern of raised interleukins in the brain, an inflammatory marker in the brain.

We know this exists when people have Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s or MS plaques in the brain, but you can get it just from chronic stress and burnout. And what it particularly does is disturbing, it goes to the busy brain center is in simple terms, I say it for nonmedical people, but for people wanting to know clinical terms, the seat of your circadian rhythm, the SCN nucleus, and the hypothalamus, which is the biological clock for the entire brain and the entire body. So it’s not just your sleep wake cycle, can you rest all night and have energy in the day, but our biological clock now controls our hormones, our energy, our digestion, and all of that is off. And that’s what we found. So we, at its essence, the brain shift protocol is looking at all the downstream negative effects of a disrupted circadian rhythm. So yes, the cortisol, to go back to your original question is a small part of it.

And I break down all the science in chapter one into, it was amazing in writing this book, I had gave a keynote lecture for the operations team at Delta Airlines. They invited me to see a tour of operations at one of the busiest airports in the world, Atlanta Hartsfield Jackson Airport. And in chapter one, I take you behind the scenes and break down how your busy brain is like airport operations. And when a storm comes through and flights are canceled or delayed and there’s a ground stop, that’s exactly what happens to our brain and our body with a busy brain. And so the hypothalamic pituitary adrenal axis is affected, so all of our hormones, so we kind of went from that basic, oh, your stress hormones, cortisol are elevated and to something a little bit more complex that there are 50 hormones in our brain and body and all of them are negatively impacted.

And so what does that translate to, Megan? I’m going to share what happens to me when I’m under chronic stress if you feel like it or maybe your listeners can share with us as well on social media. I have acylation. That’s what I ended up in lifesaving surgery for. So when I’m stressed out or fatigued, I get my difficulty swallowing and my chest pain back again and regurgitate. I know that I’m pushing too hard when that happens. We actually had to take a break in this interview so I could deal with that. I get GI symptoms. How about you when you’re under chronic stress or before you transitioned into this, what were your symptoms like?

Megan Lyons:

Oh, well, I still do have chronic, I don’t have chronic stress, but I still do have stressful moments for sure. I luckily do not suffer from the same symptoms that you have. The first thing I’ll notice is extreme shoulder tightness radiating up into the back of my neck and then giving me a headache. I will feel chest palpitations in the past if I have pushed it too far, I actually feel it in my kidney. So I’ve had several kidney issues that I feel are by stress that are kind of like those undetermined quotes issues. And that’s pretty much it. It’s more of a chest anxiety, tightness feeling than it is the specific regurgitation or anything like that. Digestively for me,

Dr. Romie Mushtaq:

Thank you so much for openly sharing that because I just wanted your listeners to hear, look how different mine and Megan’s symptoms are, but it’s the same busy brain center in the brain when stress is ongoing. And by the way, that’s that hypothalamic pituitary adrenal axis. The adrenal gland doesn’t only take care of cortisol and adrenaline, but also mineralocorticoids that determines our hydration and what the kidney is secreting. So when we’re stressed, we often get dehydrated. We’re dumping key minerals, and it’s when you tell me I feel something in my kidneys, I’m not surprised between kidneys and lower back pain. And your listeners can have a whole other myriad of symptoms from digestion to difficulty breathing to hot flashes and you’re nowhere near menopause or so many different things. So that’s why I really wanted to have this conversation and that’s what happens. So when your score on the busy brain test is above a 40, your symptoms are unique, just like what you would wear to auntie’s chai party.

Megan Lyons:

Yes. Wow. Thank you for sharing that. It all is starting to make sense. I do have one question about something you’ve mentioned and then we can push further into the brain shift protocol. I’ve tried so hard to understand the research behind this 3:00 AM wake up phenomenon. So you said something like 2 47 to four 17 or I don’t remember the exact numbers, but I’ve noticed so frequently people with chronic stress waking up in that three o’clock hour. And I’ve found loose research that shows that we do have a natural cortisol bump there and if you have cortisol dysregulation, that’s enough to wake you up, but not strong enough for me to actually fully understand it. Do you fully understand this?

Dr. Romie Mushtaq:

Yes. Yes. And it brings together the worlds of Ayurveda, the most ancient Indian ancient medicine in the world, traditional Chinese medicine. And I feel western science is just catching up to that. So I want to go back to our circadian rhythm and the way humans were created is we are supposed to naturally slow down as the sun sets, which is harder for people living farther and farther north of the equator. You have longer, darker days in the winter times. So we give compassion there, but really your energy hormones, cortisol isn’t bad. You need it elevated in the morning with adrenaline and dopamine and all of that, but that should calm down as the sun goes down and serotonin and melatonin, your feel good and sleep good hormones should elevate so you can naturally rest in the middle of the night when you wake up. There’s actually a cortisol bump that shouldn’t be happening, elevated cortisol levels, so it shouldn’t be happening.

But where did that come from? We know in ancient Ayurveda and Chinese medicine that between two to 4:00 AM is a time for your thyroid and adrenals to be resting and having restoration. Very fascinating, isn’t it? Yes. That there’s a 24-hour clock of while one organ is going, another one is resting and restoring, right? There’s a system. The body is beautiful that way and that when you’re waking up that there is actually overactivity in the thyroid and adrenal glands. So when you look at western science, what does it show us? You have a disturbed circadian rhythm that is now waking us up in the middle of the night. And where did that start from? Is the awake center in the brain is now telling the thyroid, oh, time to get up and get energy. The thyroid is going to tell the adrenal uhoh, Megan and Romey are sound asleep and it’s between two to 4:00 AM Hey, pump out some gasoline to wake ’em up in cortisol and we’re awake.

But it’s a false awakening because ego thinks, oh, I’m awake. I have energy. Let me knock out a few emails, let me do laundry. But the brain is still really wired and tired and as is your body and that’s where mistakes can happen. Or you’re not feeling your best self and you’re like, let me get coffee and get the cortisol levels way up and start my day. And that’s not natural for most people who are not third shift workers and have to be awake at that hour of the night. So yes, it’s a disturbance, but there are other things that can contribute when we’re running the brain shift protocol. I lose friends and I may on this podcast, but it’s coming out in January and maybe your community is practicing sober January. I can’t tell anything correctly from your labs if someone has drank alcohol within the prior 72 hours because alcohol in itself raises the temperature in your brain, in your hypothalamus, in the temperature center.

It will create that middle of the night awakening for other reasons, and it prevents you from also going into deeper stages of sleep. So if you drink even four ounces of wine or one ounce of hard liquor, it will disturb your circadian rhythm enough. That’s one area that we typically screen for. The other one we have to be careful for is someone who’s stressed out. They may not have a diagnosis of pre-diabetes or diabetes. Megan, and I’d love for you to help me unpack this with your knowledge as well, but their circadian rhythm and the stress, they now have really bad, what we call glycemic control, blood sugar control, and they didn’t eat quite the right thing before bedtime and their blood sugar is dropping in the middle of the night. Those are the two things I screen for before I start looking at hormones. So that was three answers of why people wake up in the middle of the night.

Megan Lyons:

Those are all fantastic. And again, I think people are starting to understand, oh, I’ve had this symptom. I know there’s something here, but maybe I’m making it up, or maybe it’s just a fluke or maybe there’s an alarm in my neighbor’s house that I don’t remember. So I recall. And now they’re saying, wow, this is actually founded in science. There is something my body is working to tell me that something is a little bit off, and I believe that so strongly our bodies will tell us the message. We’re just not great at listening to the message and interpreting that message. And that’s what you’re helping us do through the book.

Dr. Romie Mushtaq:

Yeah, absolutely. Get a score. We walk you through the book and hey, if all the science that Megan and I are geeking over isn’t your jam, the book has so many stories, my story stories of the leaders and the teachers that came along the way to teach me these things as well as stories in section three of people who went through the transformation. That makes it easy to understand so that you know that Megan and I aren’t the only ones that wake up in the middle of the night when life is, we have a busy brain and our thoughts, we can’t control our thoughts and worries.

Megan Lyons:

Yes. That is so wonderful. So give us a little preview if everyone’s causes of stress are a little different and everyone’s symptoms are a little different, which we’re unpacking here, it must’ve been really hard to write a protocol because I’m imagining that one specific protocol is not perfect for every single person. So how do you guide people through that and allow them to customize it for themselves?

Dr. Romie Mushtaq:

The simple answer is yes. We did research the protocol. I had a little time on my hands in the global pandemic. I wasn’t traveling for speaking and I got traumatized watching the Tiger King on Netflix, and I thought binge watching series is not my thing. So I went back to the psycho neuroendocrinology literature. Megan, if I had free time, I would go back on top of my MD and get a PhD in psycho neuroendocrinology. It is how our psyche, our mood can change the structure and function of our brain, neuro that can impact our immune response and our endocrine, all of our hormones. And so I went through the research and I said, what are the eight most impactful things we can ask people to do to reset the busy brain center and get them on the right track without having to go on a diet?

Diet is a four-letter curse word in our community and in our global brain shift community, and we can unpack that in a second. So I did come up with a protocol that everyone could do, but the secret sauces, we find that about 40 to 50% of people do just fine and see immediate improvement within the first 21 days for people that are either having daytime energy issues or something deeper is going on. And the second half of the protocol, we strongly recommend getting labs and we actually have labs slips that are in the book. They are@busybraincure.com where you go to get all the additional resources from the book. We unpack what labs to get in chapter 16 of the book, so 16 and 17 as well. And that’s the key of finding it out. And so when I wrote Brain Shift, the shift is actually an acronym that stands for the five key areas that the protocol touches.

You and I have already kind of broken down the science of S sleep and the circadian rhythm age is hormones for both men and women, and that can be off and it has to be corrected. Otherwise you’re not going to get out of a busy brain. And you hear the story of me discovering my thyroid issues and how it is a health crisis for women that is not being recognized. I is for markers of inflammation specifically vitamin D three is one big one, and we have a couple more in there in the book. F is how you use food to fuel your energy and your brain without going on a diet. And tea is the role of technology and how technology has caused a DD and our difficulty focusing during the day. So that was a lot to unpack, but we hit those five areas in the eight weeks of the protocol, especially if you go get your labs done, you’ll get answers.

And an example, can I share this with you, Megan? Do you know the two most common things? My team in Florida, almost 2000 executives in our research protocol had gone through the brain shift eight week program. We were doing it with companies and maybe more than half would go get labs. In that eight week time, we would look at the labs and there were two things that were off with everyone that had a score above 40 that could resonate with all the symptoms we talked about with busy brain, a low vitamin D three level, D as in dog, and two abnormal thyroid panel because I made them get a full thyroid panel and not just the TSA, both men and women. And it’s a battle I know you have to have with your primary care doctor. We’ve partnered with lab partners that can actually draw these labs for you.

You can go to busybraincure.com and learn more. We wanted to make it easy for people. I want you to get these labs. I mean, we literally save lives every time we run this eight-week protocol because someone got the labs and now they see the thyroid off and there was a nodule and the stories go on and on and you’ll read several of ’em in the book and that’s why it’s just one size doesn’t fit all. But in my organized brain, I was going to create a protocol that we could help most people, and that’s exactly what we do. People are sleeping better and focusing during the day and energy in just eight weeks. But the most important thing if you go get your labs is you now have an answer of, Hey, chronic stress and busy brain disrupted my busy brain center and it affected my vitamin D three levels or my hormones and I’m going to fix these now. And that’s how we heal the negative impact of burnout and stress.

Megan Lyons:

Oh, I love it. I love the protocol. I love acronyms myself too. And I really want to dive into the F, which is food because our audience loves food. They are very familiar with the concept that diet is a four-letter word. So that is no surprise to us here. Oh, good.

Dr. Romie Mushtaq:

Yes. Oh good.

Dr. Romie Mushtaq:

We hate diets because it’s January and the world is being forced to go on a diet. The diet books are everywhere. Do this cleanse, do this diet, do this 30 day program. And here’s what my research found. Two things that are important, Megan, that I think your community will resonate. One is going on any kind of cleanse or protocol that requires food prep and things that are out of your natural routine will actually raise your stress levels and make a busy brain and burnout worse. But here’s the second thing is I’m a chief wellness officer and a company of over 7,000 people. I get hired by other companies to talk about building a culture of wellness. I want to live in a world where vegans and paleo and carnivores and chocolate lovers and people who love bani like me can all sit at the same table without judging one another. And belonging inclusivity is so important. If I had to put it in a different way, most of the top 10 trending diet plans that are being pushed out right now in the new year, Megan are very Eurocentric. They don’t practice inclusivity. I think of some of, I come from a South Asian heritage, some of my favorite dishes involve rice, and that’s taken away in most diet plans, and yet that brings me comfort. And so the whole idea is if you cure your busy brain, you’ll stop stress eating, but you can allow yourself comfort food.

Megan Lyons:

This is extremely interesting. I’m so glad we’re going here and I would love for you to help me unpack the thoughts that are going on about my specific situation. So I eat meat, I eat plants, I eat rice. I eat chocolate every day because that is my ultimate comfort food. And we can look into all the research about antioxidants and polyphenols and magnesium and all this stuff, but at the end of the day, it’s just tasty and I like it. And I don’t eat 12 bars of chocolate every day, eat what makes me feel good, so I’m happy. But where I’m stuck is the food prep because I do food prep every week, I believe and have believed until this moment that it is reducing my stress because I no longer have to worry when I finish my client call at 7:00 PM about, oh my gosh, what am I going to have to make? Do I have groceries? Is there food for me? Am I going to be up too late because I’m cooking dinner? It genuinely feels easier to me through the week. However, it’s not my favorite time of the week actually doing it. So am I fooling myself or is it possible that this is reducing stress?

Dr. Romie Mushtaq:

Amazing. Okay. Can I tell you, thank you so much for your honesty and candid because I want to also address this as female leaders and entrepreneurs. I think any woman-owned business is going to resonate with us, any of both of our listeners and all the women leaders because, and I say this because food prep typically falls on a woman, whether you’re like me and you’re single or you are food prepping for a family, right? Here’s the thing, when I talk about food prep, it sounds like you and I are in a place where we have pretty consistent ideas of what we eat for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. And so food prep is also my least favorite day of the week, and we’re going to unpack that because I’d rather be doing other things, but food prep is easier because I like the foods I’m prepping, I know the foods I’m prepping.

I don’t really deviate from my system very often. Maybe if I’m in the mood to try something during I have time, but in my world as a professional keynote speaker, chief wellness officer, and now author of this book and launching it out there, I haven’t had time to do that. So we just keep it consistent then. Yes, because it’s something that doesn’t require additional decision-making or a change in a pattern. Here is what I would recommend is for food prep. Can you hire that out? As a female leader, when I work with c-Suite, mid-level managers and companies or other successful entrepreneurs like yourself and myself, Megan, I say, what is your time worth? And that includes your rest time. And so for me, food prep, it’s a nightmare. If I was doing it myself, it was food prep. I would have to make sure groceries all get here on Saturday, often have to come from two different locations, and then food prep is all day Sunday. And then could I have an authentic moment with you? I’m so tired from the food prep. I don’t want to clean up the kitchen on Sunday so often it’s a mess Monday morning. Does that ever happen to you?

Megan Lyons:

Well, it is my husband’s pet peeve to have unwashed dishes. So that’s just a rule of our marriage that we each wash that no one leaves a dish in the sink. So no, that doesn’t happen. But if I weren’t married to this particular husband, I’m sure it would happen.

Dr. Romie Mushtaq:

Yeah. I mean single sister here with the dog who can’t help with the dishes unless he let him lick the plates. And I’m not going to let Raja do that. And so the idea is to hire it out. And at this point, I have a chef doing meal prep and we get meal delivery when I’m home and when I’m on the road, I have one of my team members that she knows exactly what I eat for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and her job is to look on DoorDash or Uber Eats and have it delivered to wherever I’m traveling and speaking. And they look at my calendar and I say this not with pride or with shame, because some people are going to, they’re going to be judging like, oh, Romy, look at her. She got all bougie and she got staff and a chef. And I’m like, no, you know what?

I budgeted for it that way. I was like, if it has to come out of a vacation budget or entertainment budget or somewhere else so that I can stay healthy and relieve my stress, that is what I chose to do. Right? You have a system in your house where your husband will help you with kitchen cleanups. So that’s what I want to talk about. But to go back to your food prep question, think about the nutrition plans where you’re now forced to do food prep for foods. You may not want to eat recipes that may be new to you, and cooking doesn’t bring you joy. That is severe stress. If you actually measure stress hormone levels of people when they are dieting or working on their diet or thinking of a diet, it’s actually negating eating the healthy food. Because here’s a fun fact is our gut really responds our stomach and our intestines to high stress levels. So if I’m really stressed out because I had to go to three grocery stores, I had to make a complex meal, I had to store it all in the fridge and clean up the kitchen. If I open something in the next 24, 36 hours and eat it, the stress hormones have affected my digestion, then I’m probably not going to digest that kale or that salmon very well and get the nutrients out of it. It’s fascinating.

Megan Lyons:

That’s very fascinating. And the audience is a bit familiar with that gut-brain connection because it is so strong. I am hearing audience questions that are saying, okay, Dr. And Megan are saying, Megan eats chocolate. Dr. Romi says, don’t go on a diet. This is great. But I like McDonald’s. And what if I ate McDonald’s every day? Cool. Probably people are saying not every day. Okay, I don’t think. Same thing.

Dr. Romie Mushtaq:

Here’s the thing I’m not going to judge, but let’s unpack this. Okay, so first of all, I want every audience member that’s listening because you and I are going to put this podcast on our social media. So drop it on both of our Instagrams below. The first question we ask when we’re going through the live eight week protocol, and you’re going to see it in the book, is what’s your favorite comfort food? And what comfort food did you eat this week? So if your comfort food is a fast food, I want you to go get it at least once this week. My comfort food changes with seasons like an Ayurveda, so it’s a little chilly right now. My comfort food is hot rice and hot rice with some kind of curry or something on top of it, right? Which most traditional diet plans do not allow you to eat rice, VA rice, you mentioned chocolate.

There is a difference between stress eating and comfort food. And we go over it. You read the story of Dr. Pritchard and the role of comfort food and how I brought that into the protocol. In chapter seven of the book, in chapters 15 of the book, I actually break down what you’re going to do for food. You are allowed to eat whatever you want. If you tell me I’m going to go get french fries or pasta, here is the protocol that we have, Megan and that we researched. You choose either a high glycemic carbohydrate, so if your chocolate isn’t 70% dark chocolate and sugar free, if it has some sugar in it, my rice will bump up your glucose load, French fries or McDonald’s. The bun on the burgers shakes will do the same. Go ahead. Just don’t have caffeine one hour before or after the carbohydrate.

Interesting. Chocolate typically has an insignificant amount because caffeine to the brain will bump insulin levels, and actually it’s fine for focus, but when you add the sugar on top of it, it’s fueling the neuroinflammation and very higher cortisol. And so what we found in the eight week protocol, first of all, you do not start this week one. Week one through four are all about restoring your sleep and your rest at night because we found that once we got your serotonin levels healthy, we recommend supplements as well to help with that. All of a sudden, the stress eating stops. So I’m going to use, I love chocolate too. Or I talked about rice and bani. Megan, you and I know what a healthy portion of chocolate is, or maybe one dinner plate of rice and bani, if I’m stressed out, I’ll eat 12 squares of the bar, chocolate bar.

Trust me, when I was on writing deadline a year ago, I did that. Or I will have three bowls of bani. That’s stress eating, but saying, Hey, if twice a week I am eating rice because it gives me joy, I’m eating bashi or jasmine rice with my favorite curries and all of this, yay that schedule. So please, if McDonald’s brings you joy, I ain’t judging you at all. I grew up in a small town in Illinois, and the only dining options when I were growing up were fast food restaurants. We were Wendy’s, not a McDonald’s family, but hey, it all goes, but schedule it any other day of the week. Eat. And so in chapter 15, the only biohacker the brain shift that week is separating carbs and caffeine. And here’s what happens. Most high performing people, we need our caffeine in the morning and maybe at lunchtime.

So all of a sudden, you’re picking the low glycemic carbohydrates instead. Amazing. And that switch comes quickly. And then in week 16, we add one healthy fat to every meal. That’s it. Even whatever you’re eating, put a spoon of olive oil. Make it easy. I don’t need you to cook anything special, but I eat steel cuts, oats in the morning, and I just got to tell you, olive oil in that is nasty. So I put a little coconut oil in that one. But yeah, or in flax seeds or chia seeds or whatever that may be, right? So that’s it. That’s the simple hack. And so can I tell you why this was so important to me? Because I want to go back to being a chief wellness officer and all the companies that I serve in the diversity in the audience. I want people to eat foods from their cultures.

I don’t want diverse foods to be demonized. And also, if you have children and there’s a birthday party or you want to have a date night with your loved one and it’s an anniversary, I want you to go and experience joy. Because one thing I know from traveling the globe and working with clients from all over the world is there’s a universal love language. Everybody speaks, and that’s food. Food brings people together and joy and food should not be a weapon. So hey, it’s January. Let’s all just toss out the diet books and join us on a journey to brain shift. Megan, do you want to do this with me in your community? Absolutely. Let’s do this. Let’s celebrate comfort food and let’s do this biohack where you choose. And we have a list in the back of the book in the appendix, as well as on cure.com, busy brain cure.com, where all the resources are. You can look up low glycemic carbohydrates, high glycemic carbohydrates. I ain’t going to judge you if you went and got pasta or Wendy’s or in and out or you said McDonald’s. Could I be honest? Do you know what came to me as far as fast food? Sure. All of our Texas listeners are going to love this. What a burger.

Megan Lyons:

What a burger. Oh, yes. I’m here in Texas. You’re in

Dr. Romie Mushtaq:

Texas. Oh, I got one word for you. I got one word for you, Megan. So I can’t wait to come visit you, and I’m going to drag you out late at night. One word, honey butter chicken biscuit.

Megan Lyons:

I have to say, I have never had the honey butter chicken biscuit, so you may be my first when you come to Texas.

Dr. Romie Mushtaq:

My God, yes, honey butter chicken biscuit. And the thing is, is I have such an incredible memory with it. I was speaking at Texas a m University, and I had just gotten my heart broken. Here I am having to lecture thousands of faculty members on happiness and mindfulness. And I had just gone through a bad breakup and the women from the president’s office who had taken me out to dinner, and they saw me eating my diet rabbit food because this is before the brain shift protocol was out, and I got teary-eyed at dinner when they started to ask me personal questions. And I’ll never forget this one friend, she looked at me and she goes, you know what your problem is? It ain’t that man. And I just look and I’m like, oh yeah, if someone can diagnose my single problems, please tell me. She’s like, is that their rabbit food you’re eating? I have one more for you, honey butter chicken biscuit. And when they picked me up early in the morning to take me to the airport, they arrived with the honey butter chicken biscuits hot from Whataburger. And I got to tell you, it healed my heartbreak. And every time I think of it, I think of that sisterhood.

Megan Lyons:

I love it. And that

Dr. Romie Mushtaq:

Meal, yes, and the comradery. Think of how many meals we have where we remember people because of the food we’re eating. And I want to bring that back.

Megan Lyons:

That is so incredible. You have one over the hearts and the brains of all of our audience. I know every single person listening has been nodding vigorously like I have been this whole time. And they want to hear more from you, for sure. I want to hear more from you as well. So I’d love if you could just leave the audience with any parting words and then please be sure to say one more time the URL for your website, which we will include in the show notes as well.

Dr. Romie Mushtaq:

Now, if you find yourself in a dark place that I once was, I want to tell you what I wish somebody had told me when I was going into surgery that your brain is not broken, your mind is not a mess, and your spirit didn’t depart your soul. You don’t have to go this journey alone. There is some higher reason that you were meant to listen to this conversation with Megan and I today. And we’re both here with you. I have a solution for you. It’s as simple as click the link in the show notes here at go to Dr Romie, D-R-R-O-M-I-E.com. You can take the busy brain test for and get your score, and you can find the book wherever you buy books, busy Brain Cure. It is on Amazon. It is au audible. It is in bookstores. It is at Barnes and Noble, and I can’t wait to hear from your community. My community, my community’s used to this, but we’re going to have fun. What is your favorite comfort food? And please tag Megan and I on social media when you’re sharing that comfort food. And Megan, I need to make a special trip now to Texas to get a honey butter chicken biscuit.

Megan Lyons:

Come on down. We’re happy to have you here. We will include all of those links, please, audience members, go take that quiz, see if you need to get that book, which I highly recommend and go follow Dr. Romie. I very much appreciate your time and your wisdom here today. Thank you for sharing.

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