Hey there, my friend.

Welcome to the podcast.

This is Brian del Turco, episode 344, Jesus Smart X podcast.

Listen, my apologies.

It's been three weeks since an episode was released.

It's been a crazy time.

I won't go into details, but this is a weekly podcast, so we're meant to release weekly.

And we're going to be doing some, you know, better moving forward.

We normally are good with that, but I wanted to release an episode today.

This is a little bit different.

Some research I did and a small article that I wrote on the website jesussmart.com sleeping our way to a better brain.

Okay.

And I do believe that God gives us wisdom.

I think that when we read about Solomon in the Old Testament, he asked for wisdom for the sake of God's people, that he would be able to rule well as a king and render good sound judgments for the sake of God's people.

God really liked that, by the way.

And he promised blessings and rewards to Solomon because of his prioritization of God's people.

That right there just tells us something.

It's.

It's a.

It's a God hack, a holy hack.

That when we prioritize God's people, whom he loves so dearly, there are blessings and rewards that come to our life.

But God also gave him wisdom about trees, about nature, about all kinds of practical issues.

The Hebraic Old Testament understanding of wisdom, to my.

My understanding, it's not just like the Greek abstract wisdom, philosophizing, but it's very concrete, it's very practical, skillful.

How to live skillfully, how to live artfully, how things work best.

The Hebraic understanding of wisdom.

I'm really drawn to that.

Well, sleeping our way to a better brain.

I want to share something with you.

I think it's very important.

Let me just say this.

To begin with, our brain is the most complex matter in the universe.

There is no matter more complex than what's between your ears.

The most powerful computers that we can develop don't come close to competing with it.

Do you know that your brain is the busiest organ in your body?

It only weighs 2 to 3 pounds, but it consumes 20 to 25% of your total energy.

Oxygen and nutrients and energy.

Here's the thing, though, when that much energy is consumed, there's going to be waste products.

You're saying, wait a minute, we're talking about the brain.

Why are we talking about waste products and sleeping our way to a better brain?

Well, I'm glad you've asked that.

Question.

Each day, these waste products build up throughout our body, including our brain.

And by the end of the day, after we've made all these decisions and worked and thought all day and made conversation and generated thoughts, I don't know how they measure, measure these things.

They say that our brain can think something like 50, 60, 70,000 thoughts per day.

Some of us have more thoughts than others.

Okay.

Some of us, our minds run too hot.

Okay?

But by the end of the day, our brain is dirty.

What do we mean?

Just from being busy all day.

And it produces, literally in our brains, waste products.

Just like throughout our body, waste products are, are produced.

This is an important key to brain health.

You know, we want to do things in our 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, 20s even, that mitigate against dementia, Alzheimer's, against cognitive decline later in life.

God wants you to have a strong brain.

He wants you to finish strong.

We need you to think hard and long and strong throughout the course of your life.

So our brains have to have this opportunity to remove the waste, because there is a real effect if this doesn't happen.

A dirty brain performs low and eventually can open itself to disease.

And this is where the importance of sleep comes in.

Okay, if we mess up our sleep, we can mess up our brain.

Now we know that these three things have a positive impact on cleaning our brains.

Number one, this is not going to be surprising.

Regular exercise, I'm talking about walking, movement, you have to move, running, other aerobic exercise, even weightlifting and resistance training.

Even body resistance training helps our brains.

But regular, consistent exercise, here's another one that can creep up on people.

We've got to be diligent about this.

Maintaining healthy blood pressure.

High blood pressure works against the well being of our brain.

You may have to be on medication.

I'm currently on a medication for it, but I'm also doing other things in terms of eating, exercising.

The last medical visit I had, I was told, well, if you keep it up, possibly this med can be eliminated from your life.

So we'll see.

But at any rate, maintaining healthy blood pressure.

And then thirdly, a diet rich in vegetables, healthy fats and antioxidants.

Okay, vegetables, healthy fats.

You want like olive oil, coconut oil, what's that other oil that's good to cook with?

It's escaping me at the moment.

You want to stay away from seed oils like canola oil, soybean oil and other seed oils.

They're bad for our bodies, they're bad for our brains.

We want to have healthy oils, healthy fats in our diet.

Fat, healthy fat is very important to our brain.

Now, the most important thing, though, in addition to exercise, healthy blood pressure, a diet rich in vegetables, healthy fats and antioxidants, the most important thing, according to research, may be.

You got it.

Sleep.

In The United States, 30% of adults and 66% of adolescents are regularly sleep deprived.

And this affects our learning.

Sleep deprivation affects memory and even our mood.

Sleep deprivation contributes to inflammation in our body.

It's a silent killer.

High blood pressure, and it's linked to diabetes and obesity.

Sleep deprivation, adults, how many hours of sleep do we need for optimal Brain Health?

About seven to eight.

About seven to eight hours.

And adolescents, unsurprisingly, may need 10 hours.

Okay, now sleep deprivation can cause serious brain and bodily harm.

Now here's our secret weapon to maintain a clean brain.

This is really what it's about.

Sleeping our way to a better brain.

Is sleeping our way to a cleaner brain?

Okay.

We have something in our body that God has designed called the glymphatic system.

And it's much more active when we sleep.

And what does it do?

It flushes away.

This system in our body is like a, like a, a vacuum system or something.

It's a cleaning system.

It flushes away toxic substances between the cells in our bodies and between the cells, the neurons in our brains, the glymphatic system.

You got CHAT GPT, look it up.

G L Y M P H A T I C Ask it what it does.

Ask AI how the glymphatic system helps your brain.

I when I researched this originally, I AI really wasn't a thing.

I know it's going to be there, though.

CHAT GPT has become a thought partner for me, if you know what I mean.

So the glymphatic system is sort of like this overnight cleaning crew that comes in and cleans the building.

It's a cycle.

It's a system.

Okay, so here's a breakdown of how it works.

Your brain cells perform autophagy, which means self eating.

It mops up diseased and damaged bits of protein and metabolic waste.

Then a special nervous system, special nervous system cells.

This is the whole cycle of the cleanup process.

These nervous system cells, they sweep in and they scavenge additional waste.

And the glymphatic system flushes out dirty fluid and molecules from inside your brain tissue through a network of pathways, and clean fluid replaces it.

These lymphatic vessels surrounding your brain deliver the waste to your lymphatic system, which rids the body of toxins, waste, and other unwanted material.

So because this, this super important system, this glymphatic system is much more active when we sleep, we don't want to short change this process over time.

Our brains can age and deteriorate in their performance and become vulnerable to disease because of this not sufficiently clean toxicity.

So you see, I'm going to be honest with you.

Let's talk about spiritual warfare for a second.

This podcast believes in spiritual warfare, the unseen battle.

It manifests in many ways.

And spiritual warfare against you can manifest very practically, very concretely, like sleep deprivation.

You have a right to a good night's sleep.

Psalms 127 says, Unless the Lord builds a house, they labor in vain, who build it.

Unless the Lord guards the city, the watchman stays awake in vain.

It also says in that short psalm that depending on the translation you read, the Lord gives his beloved sleep, or it could be translated, he gives to his beloved in their sleep.

So pray for good sleep, you know, keep a clear relationship with the Lord.

Do the things, you know, the sleep hygiene things before you go to sleep, minimize screen time, try to go to bed and wake up at the same time all the time.

I think the experts say do it seven days a week, even the weekends can disrupt that cycle apparently, but certainly do it for the work week, five days a week.

And do the things with sleep hygiene, a cooler room if you need to, use white noise, if you need to pray and meditate before you go to sleep.

Okay, anything to help you sleep better and ask the Lord for better sleep because this system, this cycle works optimally as we sleep.

So what do you think?

We want to ask the Lord for better brain health.

We want to ask the Lord for discipline.

And we're going to pray about this in just a moment, if you don't mind.

We want to ask the Lord for discipline, to live well, eat well, drink enough, hydrate well, exercise, manage stress, sleep better.

And, and we want to do the things, you know, maintain healthy blood pressure levels.

And we want to do these things that, that help us, empower us to have better brain health and then ask the Lord for better brain health.

The Lord blesses your activity.

He blesses what you build, he blesses what you work on.

Okay, don't.

Let's not just try to ask the Lord for something.

And then all the practical things we do work against that.

He blesses what's in order.

And so I hope this is interesting to you.

I hope it's helpful.

I've heard experts say the number one thing we can do for our total well being.

The baseline thing is sleep, healthy, sufficient sleep.

On top of that, you can stack exercise, nutrition, stress reduction, all of those elements.

But sleep is foundational to better well being.

I love the Old Testament word shalom.

If you've been around the Bible or been around teaching, you've probably heard that word and you probably know that it's, it means peace.

It does mean peace, but it's a bigger word than that.

It's a very pregnant Hebrew word which means well being.

Nothing missing, prosperity, just total well being.

It's, it's a word which is like homeostasis.

Shalom in our life releases the full potential of the human being, the complete well being.

And so let's pray for that now.

And we just want to do those practical things which are in alignment with our prayer, things that God can bless.

Father, we thank you for the way you've made our bodies.

We are fearfully and wonderfully made, and that our soul knows very well.

Psalm 139.

You have made us with recuperative capacities.

You have made us with rebound ability in our bodies, in our, in our brain.

You have designed systems of protection, immunity, cleansing.

We live in a dirty world.

We live in a polluted world, Father.

Even in the thought realm, we live in a dirty world.

And we just, even physically we need the rest that we need so that the hours we are awake are optimal.

We have better mood, better hormonal balance, better functioning, and we're preserving our brain for the long term.

Help us to sleep.

We pray that you would help us to sleep well, that we would do the things we know we need to do to sleep well.

And we also pray your added blessing on all of our works of our hands and what we apply ourselves to in terms of health and wellness.

In Jesus name, Amen.

If you'd like to take a look at a short article I've written about this, you can go to jesussmart.com Sleep Better Brain.

It's like sleep hyphen, better hyphen brain.

This is episode 344 on the podcast.

We will have a show notes page for this episode coming up@jesusmart.com maybe you know somebody who would value this.

Can you think of somebody who needs this?

I'm sure you can because there's such a problem with sleep today and there's such a quest for wellness that people need and some are pursuing.

Share this episode with them.

They may enjoy it.

And I think there's many things we can talk about related to brain health and perhaps we will will do that here.

I mean my thinking about being Jesus smart, you know, it's like get Jesus smart.

Jesus knows how human flourishing works.

My thinking about Jesus smart includes the practical physical, mental, well being as well as other practical areas.

So we, we, we're grateful for God's wisdom and God's information.

We have access to the word of God can ask the Holy Spirit to teach you.

Yes you can.

Holy Spirit is the greatest AI in the universe, the greatest search engine.

Holy Spirit knows everything.

And you can ask him.

Lead me, Holy Spirit, to a book I need right now or lead me to the right videos to watch.

Lead me to articles, you know, Lead me to the right people in my life that can motivate me in this and that can share ideas with me.

Ask the Holy Spirit to do that and keep asking him and watch what happens.

He will lead you.

You will grow in understanding.

All right.

I appreciate you my friend.

We'll catch you next time.