This is a download from BFM 89.9, the Business Station. It's one Friday, my name is Jeff Sandhu. On last week's show, we talked about technologies that are meeting evolution head-on and trying to tip the balance in our favour. This week, we're in similarly choppy weathers as we enter the world of the mind, in particular the mind of culture pops Matt Amatage.
An environment so hostile that it has been known to drive MRI scanners insane. Yes, it is time to Matt's pay. Matt, you have another new word you want to introduce this week? Hey Jeff, yeah, it's not specifically about the direction of today's show, but I thought while we're talking about mental health issues, we're all familiar with terms like sociopath and psychopath, and many of us actually work with one or the other, possibly both.
I know that you do, Jeff. Are you talking about yourself? I still maintain that doctor is the actual psychopath, and he has no business diagnosing anyone, let alone me. And besides, would I be doing this show if you weren't all my playthings?
No, of course not. And not everybody has empathy, and there's nothing weird about that. OK, your new word. OK, I was ranting again.
Yes, well, we've been talking a lot about artificial intelligence on the show for the last year, well, a couple of years, really. So as I was looking at the stuff for today's show, I was wondering if the AIs we're building and are eventually going to go on to build other AIs, could one day develop their own mental problems? Like the crazy AIs in science fiction? Yeah, I just watched the new Emma Stone show, Maniac, which is partially about an AI suffering from depression, and mostly about not very much.
But one thing we've talked about a huge amount is how machine intelligence differs from human intelligence. But you do have to wonder if one day there will be a bunch of algopaths, and that's my new word, sentient machines with serious behavioral issues, and that those algopaths are going to have to seek treatment. Couldn't we just reprogram them? Well, that's something we've brought up on the show before.
If you have self-determining machines, those machines may actually have many of the rights that humans enjoy, so reprogramming them may not be an option. So you can imagine a future where there's a body of health care professionals, they might be human, they might be machine, but they deal specifically with the mental health problems of artificial intelligence and algorithms. And you wonder why people think you're insane? Well, one of the reasons for this little side step is that mental health issues make people very uncomfortable.
And when it comes to the kind of stuff we talk about on this show, which is mostly technology related, it's not an area that we often come to, unless it's to quickly mention a new drug, or the probiotics and gut flora, can be used to combat illnesses and conditions like depression. And that's because technology has a very complicated relationship with mental health issues. Well, we often hear stories, some of them scientifically sound and others of a more pseudo-scientific nature. So, for example, the effect that smartphones in 24-hour connectivity and streaming video and all those other tools of the digital age, what effect those things are having on our brains and our development.
So we're going to talk about some of those today, and as I said, or as you said, rather, it's complicated. Technology is never fully one thing or the other. What is beneficial to one person in one way may have a negative impact on another person in another way. So, for the factory worker who's replaced by robot, technology is not really their friend.
For the systems engineer who's in Thai career is based on companies introducing robots, then that same technology is a really good thing. We're supposed to be talking about the human mind, and we're already talking about AI and robots. Can we start somewhere less complicated here, Matt? OK, we can start somewhere that doesn't require any technology at all, just a little bit of science.
And that science is starting to discover how important something as simple as a positive mindset can be. Not only to our mental health, but our physical health as well. Really? A Matt's playing about the power of positive thinking.
You'll be calling yourself a life coach very soon, yeah, Matt. I like to think of myself as more of an afterlife coach. That's what these shows are, really, preparing people for Armageddon and the oblivion that comes after. So your method is to introduce negative thoughts before you get to the positive thoughts?
My method is to get the bank transfer done and get out of the room as quickly as possible. Everything that happens in between is noise. But getting back to the topic, it's increasingly hard to sort through all of the conflicting information out there. So, for example, one headline I read this morning said that eating junk food makes depression worse.
Now, I'm sure that those are very important findings, but as someone who enjoys the occasional tip into junk food, well, I'm a little scared isn't the right word, but I'm not really motivated to click on that link. And then when something does go wrong, you're quite happy to disappear down the Google Fed link whole of medical opinion and crackery. And that's where it starts to get really difficult. You know, whenever you start looking at those links, you think, well, I've got all of those things.
And then you suddenly realise you're reading a Sartrecht script and you probably haven't been infected with parasites from a distant nebula. And if you are infected with parasites from a distant nebula, you're probably going to die. But if you broadcast it, you're going to be a social media sensation. So how can telling myself to smile more often change my life?
Hey, this is still me. This is not woolly on UAG. There will be no smiling on this show. Some of our listeners may have heard of Alicia Crum.
She heads up the Mind and Body Lab at Stanford University in California. Now, you can Google her. She's done TED talks and there are a lot of other video presentations of her talking on and around this subject. I'm quoting from a presentation she gave at the World Economic Forum in Davos this year, which is an organisation not known for wielding the healing power of crystals.
We get it. There are serious people and Dr Crum is probably a very serious scientist as well. Exactly. So this quote comes from Davos via the new scientists.
Now she says, our minds aren't passive observers simply observing reality as it is. Our minds actually change reality. The reality we experience tomorrow is partly the product of the mindset we hold today. Or to put it the way the new scientist has in a piece titled, How Positive Mind Really Can Create a Healthy Body.
Two people could have identical genes and lifestyles, but one can end up healthier than the other simply because they have different thoughts. That's quite a hard concept to get around though. It is. It's actually really hard to get your mind around.
It's easy to imagine some sides of it. So the person who is anxious and worries more feels a corresponding stress and that stress affects the organs like that. But Dr Crum is uncovering evidence that's a lot more widespread and a lot more nuanced than that. Like a mental health placebo effect.
Yeah. And the placebo is actually one of the places that sparked her interest in this subject. As a psychologist, she was very interested in that placebo effect, but also in the fact that its effects weren't well researched or being applied in a wider context. We're talking about measurable changes here.
Yeah. In medical trials, it's not unknown for subjects treated with placebo to release natural painkillers or chemicals that lower their blood pressure. Patients given a placebo may also start to experience some of the side effects associated with that drug as well. So it's a very strong and measurable effect.
So how does this relate to what we do in the real world? Well, one of the experiments that Dr Crum did, it was about 10 years ago, was with a group of hotel cleaners. Now they were divided into two groups. One group was explicitly told about the number of calories they were burning as a result of their work.
They would give an information that made explicit how physically demanding that work was and how their work was actually helping them to stay fit. The other group was told nothing. A month later, those in the information group had lost an average of a kilo each and most of them experienced lower blood pressure. Those in the control group stayed exactly the same.
Now that wasn't a comprehensive study, but it was a springboard for the research that the Mind and Body Lab has been doing since then. So how does this work in a neurological sense? Well, that's one of the things that researchers like Dr Crum are trying to discover. So we're at the point now where we can see the Mind set has a measurable effect on the body.
We can start to make use of those discoveries, but we're still trying to figure out exactly why. One of the theories that Dr Crum has is that our perception of physical fitness, let's say we perceive ourselves to be unfit, like me, the brain may actually be triggering inflammation and releasing chemicals like cortisol. And these chemicals in the body can affect how you respond to exercise. Or it may make you view the effects of exercise on your body in a much more negative frame.
I feel like there's a light bulb in my head, but it may die off very soon because when Pete comes back, Matt will continue to talk himself out of his version to exercise. We'll be right back on Friday, BFM 89.9. Ball Z, football moves, BFM 89.9. And we're back.
It's Friday. My name is Dr Crum. I'm a T.H. My light bulb will die very soon.
Even though we're talking about it's not going to die. Okay, okay. It's going to stay on. In fact, it might even start shining brighter.
See how positive I am. Let the light in. We're thinking positive today. And one thing that occurs to me, other examples of being positive, doing something that should be good for us, but it actually ends up being a negative outcome.
Well, this next part may come as a surprise to a lot of people, but when I'm advising clients, issues of positivity and negativity often come up. So for example, it might be a marketing campaign and we're celebrating the new year. So I will advise them not to talk about the end of 2018. I'll advise them to talk about 2019 and all the possibilities that that year will open up.
It's not about spin. It's just about positioning. We're talking about the same thing, but we're choosing to address it in a positive light, the beginning of something rather than the end of something else. And how does that make us healthier?
Look, it's an analogy. You couldn't give me a bit of time. Let's take eating healthily. Now, some of Dr.
Crumb's research suggests that the effect that eating healthily will have on your body depends in part on the way that you frame it mentally. Now, I know that doesn't make a lot of sense. So Dr. Crumb's team carried out an experiment in 2011 where volunteers were fed a milkshake and their levels of a chemical called grailin, which helps control our reaction to hunger, was measured before and after the shake was consumed.
One group was told they were eating a healthy, low calorie shake. The other group was told that the same shake was a high calorie indulgence. So presumably the low calorie group burned the shake off much faster. That's what I imagined would happen, but that's not what happened.
The measurements afterwards showed that the levels of grailin were markedly higher in the low calorie shake group. The volunteers in that group also felt less full, less satisfied. The fatily spicondrous were all full and satisfied. And that's because high levels of grailin correspond with our notion of food deprivation.
And it actually triggers changes in the body. It slows your metabolism down, and you're more likely to store the energy as fat. So telling people it was a low calorie shake was actually counterproductive. So the takeaway is that eating healthily is actually bad for you then.
No, the takeaway is that the way your mind frames the action also has an enormous impact on the result of that action. So if you're someone who eats healthily but frames it as depriving yourself of high fat or indulgent or comfort foods, you're actually casting that good action in a negative light. And the negative effects on your body, or sorry, the net effects are actually a lot less positive than they should be. So Dr.
Krun suggests that we cultivate a mindset of indulgence. We treat everything that we eat as indulgent. If you're eating a lettuce leaf, it is the most awesome lettuce leaf in the world. You know, you have to savour the taste and the flavour and the texture.
It does seem to be a little one-sided, though. Okay, I keep mentioning Dr. Krun because she carries out the kind of sneaky experiments that I would carry out if I was doing that job. Scientists at other universities have also recorded similar results and phenomena.
And this has implications for many areas of our lives, including stress management and aging. It's not just related to food. But we do have to talk about some other aspects of technology and mental health. So if you are interested in this subject, as I said, do Google Dr.
Alicia Krun. And if you can listen to her TED Talks, listen to some of her other video presentations that there is online, it really is a fascinating area. And I think it's one that we'll come back to on the show as we start to make those connections between what actually happens in a neurological sense, why our brains are actually having these responses. No, man, one of the areas that seems to get a lot of press is the negative effects that technology has on our health itself.
Well, I imagine quite a few of our listeners, especially those that own children, is that the right terminology? We'll have seen headlines that there is a growing mental health crisis in the young. There's quite a lot of controversy over that. There is a lot of disagreement about whether or not that's true.
So some indicators like suicide rates in the under 30s seem to be stable in many Western or developed countries. So that suggests that even if there is an increase in mental health issues, they tend to be treatable rather than chronic. One quote I read was quite nice. It's that human nature is very stable.
The way of measuring rates of mental disorder is remarkably unstable. Hasn't there been an increase in the levels of self-harming behavior in some countries? Yes. And even the reasons for that have been hotly debated.
So in the past, self-harming behavior was something that people generally kept secret. What we're seeing is an increase in visible self-harming. So people are documenting those actions on social media. And that's leading some health professionals to wonder if a trend is actually separate from traditional self-harming.
That this has become an acceptable way to signal distress to your peers and to your family. Haven't we concluded that phones and social media are leading to anxiety and isolation and factors like low self-esteem and poor body image? Well, that's where we get into the yes, yes, no, yes territory. People's lives on social media are hard to live up to, especially the so-called influencers.
Now I've got friends who are posting photos every day from places like Bali or Iceland. So you assume that they're there and that their life is one long holiday. But I know for a fact that they were only there for a two-day mini break last month. They just took a lot of photos.
So there's a dislocation between the story of social media and the reality that the person posting it actually lives. And it's really relevant that Facebook and Instagram call those temporary post stories. You know, we associate the word story with fiction and maybe that's how we should approach social media too. Like it was one of those true crime movies and this story is based on real-life events.
So you agree that we're putting pressure on people, especially the young? Well, the bigger question I think is how resilient people are. Now I've followed the debate about weight loss lollipops over the last few weeks and companies like Facebook do have to work a lot harder to stop that kind of to stamp rather that kind of nonsense out. It's not just harmful to people who are still trying to form their self-image.
And that's pretty much all of us. Forming yourself image is not something that's unique to the young. We're still doing it. But it's also something that those companies are profiting from and it's something that's quite dark and unpleasant.
But that's not to say that studies have concluded that the digital world is negative for young people. Actually, some studies such as one conducted by the Oxford Internet Institute, which despite its dubious name is actually part of Oxford University. Now they conducted a study into 120,000 British teens a couple years ago and they concluded that moderate use of handheld devices actually correlates to a small positive effect on your mental health. So what are we missing?
Well, there's a much greater awareness of mental health issues. The stigma is decreasing. People are more open about their struggles with depression, anxiety and other conditions that were once thought to be a bit shameful, maybe or a bit weak. And while that tolerance is fantastic, the facilities that most countries have to deal with this new openness are really being stretched.
So the supply is not meeting the demand. And rather than letting people disappear back into the shadows where they may choose to self-medicate rather than seek treatment, technology is stepping into that gap. There's an app for that. Nothing so right.
But there are apps to help connect people to support services. So that might be medical health clinics, counselors, all that kind of thing. Apps and forums can also provide a helpful support network for people suffering with many health conditions, not just mental health issues. It's good to know that you're not alone.
Other people are in a similar situation. It doesn't replace medical care, but it can be a good way to augment it or supplement it. And those services surprisingly also provide a wealth of insight and data for clinicians and researchers, because they often only get one side of the conversation in their engagement with patients. So they get to see patients engaging with other patients.
Presumably tele consultation is another possibility. Sure. Mental health services are often very unequally distributed, even within developed countries. So talking to a psychiatrist or a psychologist or counselor over a video link may be an imperfect solution, but it does help for people who don't have ready access to services near where they live.
Obviously, most clinicians will recommend developing that one-on-one face-to-face relationship. But this approach could actually increase the number of patients a medical professional is able to effectively see. Tele consultation in general is a direction that a lot of medicine has been heading in over the past few years. But what I think is potentially more interesting from the technology point of view is virtual reality.
Hey, hang on, I thought you said VR was useless. Yeah. No, it is an entertainment vehicle because we've seen the Holodec, VR goggles genuine to a borrowing mole that's flailing about in the sunlight. They're useless and they give me vertigo.
But they do have relevant specific cases and this is one of them. So one study was published in the medical journal, the Lancet Psychiatry in July this year. I have a lifetime subscription. It was an automated treatment with no counselor and it used immersive virtual reality simulations to help 100 people deal with their fear of heights guided by an avatar.
So each of the test subjects use the simulation over a four-week period. No medical health professional, just the avatar. And there was a marked improvement in their ability to cope with heights by the end of that course of treatment. And these simulations could be extended.
Yeah, listeners can check out an article at the Guardian.com by Jason Freeman called Don't Dismissed Text Solutions to Mental Health Problems. They can't be such a snappy type of snappy article. The number of conditions where automated systems are suitable may be limited, but certainly VR may become a mainstay of mental health treatments. It allows doctors and counselors to place patients in scenarios and gauge their responses over time.
So it isn't something that just works for a version therapy. It may end up being a very important support or enhancement tool in a lot of cognitive therapies for many conditions and disorders. Two weeks in a row and we end on a happy note. And that happy note is very important because it's really worth having a look into that positive mindset stuff.
It's not a cure-all, but it might give you some insights into why your approach to fitness or diet or health or even managing your normal aches and pains doesn't seem to be as effective as someone who's doing exactly the same thing as you're doing. You know, we all talk about hitting a wall where things don't seem to work as well anymore. But maybe it isn't actually a wall. Maybe we're hitting a mirror.
Wow, wow, wow. After life coaching, if you want some of those, you could check out culturepop.com. Let's culture with a key. And you know what, you're right, the lag bulb in my head is still there.
Don't worry, everyone, normal service will be resumed next week. Also, you can find out how to bring a little bit of mass painting to your company on the site as well. The podcast will be back with these ones after this video. Thank you for listening to this podcast.
To find more great interviews, go to bfm.my or find us on iTunes, bfm89.9, the Business Station.