Dr. Deb 0:00
Welcome to Let's Talk wellness now the Podcast where we explore the intricate connections between health, healing and living your best life. I'm Doctor Deb, and today's episode is all about understanding how brain health, hormones and environmental stressors, like injuries, infections and toxins can shape our lives. We'll delve into how the brain functions, how trauma and stress can disrupt these processes, and most importantly, what you can do to heal and thrive. We'll also touch on the challenges faces facing our military personnel, including the impact of repeated gunfire and toxic exposures, and how these stressors can lead to lasting neurological and hormonal imbalances, plus, I'll share why my favorite hormone, pregnant alone, plays such a vital role in brain function. So grab a cup of tea. Settle in. Let's get started.

Dr. Deb 0:55
You know, the brain is this really magnificent organ. It's a symphony of regions that work together to enable thought, movement, memory and emotion. Now let's break it down, segment by segment to appreciate its complexities and understand how injuries or hormonal imbalances can disrupt its delicate harmony.

Dr. Deb 1:19
The frontal lobe is the brain's executive hub, responsible for decision making, planning, problem solving and emotional regulation. It's also crucial for motor control and speech damage. Here can lead to impulsivity, poor concentration and personality changes. For example, veterans exposed to blast injuries, repeated blast fire often report difficulties in focus or emotional outbursts due to disruptions in this area. Now the parietal lobe is the lobe that processes sensory input, touch, temperature and spatial awareness. It integrates sensory data to help us navigate our environment. Injuries to the parietal lobe can result in difficulty recognizing objects, challenges in spatial navigation, or even a reduced sense of touch. Think about someone trying to read a map but struggling to comprehend spatial relationships. That's a parietal lobe issue. Now the occipital lobe is located in the back of the brain, and the occipital lobe is responsible for processing our visual information. Damage here can result in visual loss, difficulties recognizing faces or objects, or even visual hallucinations for someone who's experienced a concussion, visual disturbances are often linked to this area. Now the temporal lobe plays a vital role in memory, language comprehension, that auditory processing, hearing injuries or infections that affect this area can lead to hearing issues, memory loss, difficulty understanding speech and for example, prolonged exposure to loud gunfire can damage auditory pathways here, affecting both hearing and memory retention. Now, the limbic system is a collection of structures, including the amygdala and the hippocampus. This regulates our emotions, our memory and our brains response to stress. The amygdala actually processes emotions like fear and pleasure, and over activation due to trauma or chronic stress can lead to a heightened fear response, anxiety disorder or an emotional instability in the hippocampus, this structure is essential for forming new memories and spatial navigation. Chronic stress or exposure to high levels of cortisol can shrink the hippocampus, impairing memory and increasing susceptibility to conditions like PTSD. Now, cortisol is typically produced as a result of stress. It's produced by the adrenal glands. We are more concerned about what cortisol does to our belly weight than what it does to our brain, but that chronic over exposure to cortisol can directly affect the hippocampus and can cause these kinds of memory issues. So where do we make a lot of cortisol from? Well, we make cortisol as a stress hormone. So the more stress we're under, the more our body creates cortisol. It comes in to try to put out the fire. If you're in chronic pain,