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Neurosurgeon and award-winning author Dr. W. Lee Warren, MD delivers daily prescriptions from neuroscience, faith, and common sense on how to lead a healthier, better, happier life. You can’t change your life until you change your mind, and Dr. Warren will teach you the art of self brain surgery to get it done. His new book, Hope Is the First Dose, is available everywhere books are sold.
Good morning, my friend. Doctor Lee Warren here with you for some self brain surgery today. It's theology Thursday, and we're gonna get after it in just a minute. Today, just wanna take a moment to respond to a comment on Spotify from a listener named Roberta. Roberta wrote in and asked a great question.
Speaker 1:She actually caught me in something I didn't mean to say exactly like I said it. I'm so grateful that Roberta wrote in. We're gonna talk about her question and a quick answer to it. And I'm gonna give you basically the purpose and benefits of self brain surgery, why we do this thing, what we're all about, why we're here, and what the underlying purpose of it is. One scripture and a little bit of theology and a little bit of philosophy about why we talk about how science and faith smash together and what cell brain surgery is all about.
Speaker 1:But before we do all of that and get to Roberta's question, I have a question for you. Hey. Are you ready to change your life? If the answer is yes, there's only one rule. You have to change your mind first.
Speaker 1:And my friend, there's a place where the neuroscience of how your mind works smashes together with faith and everything starts to make sense. Are you ready to change your life? Well, this is the place, Self Brain Surgery School. I'm doctor Lee Warren, and this is where we go deep into how we're wired, take control of our thinking, and find real hope. This is where we learn to become healthier, feel better, and be happier.
Speaker 1:This is where we leave the past behind and transform our minds. This is where we start today. Are you ready? This is your podcast. This is your place.
Speaker 1:This is your time, my friend. Let's get after it. Here we go, Roberta. The question Roberta wrote in and said was a comment that I made yesterday in the setup for the episode. I was, like, a little bit of a hurry, getting ready to go to the operating room and perform surgery on some people.
Speaker 1:And I said, okay. We're done with the self brain surgery. Now I have to go do real surgery or something to that effect. And Roberta said, hey. If self brain surgery isn't also, quote, real surgery, then what are we here for, doctor Warren?
Speaker 1:That's a great question. Listen. Here's the answer. Self brain surgery is in every way real surgery. It's just as real as what I do in the operating room with the scalpel and retractors.
Speaker 1:My only point is that when I do physical surgery, I'm literally cutting people open using drills and saws and instruments to cut into their body and create a wound for the purpose of making something else better. With self brain surgery, you can do all of that without having to make any incisions, without having to shave your head, without having to saw your skull open. In this day and age, we have a lot of things that we call surgery. Radiosurgery, where you get radiation to accomplish shrinking a tumor, dealing with something. We have all kinds of things that we call surgery.
Speaker 1:Electrical patterns being stimulated from the outside of your body, we call that ultrasound surgery. We have all kinds of different things that we do that don't involve a skin incision and a surgeon actually digging around in your body. And we call those surgery because we recognize that anything that can structurally change the body on the inside is actually surgery. And so to separate the idea from physical, open, normal surgery in the operating room with anesthesia and all of that from the idea of self brain surgery that you can do at home, I sometimes say something like real surgery. Roberta, great catch.
Speaker 1:Because if if this wasn't real, if it was just self help, it was just some sort of psychological mumbo jumbo or some sort of motivational thing, then it wouldn't be very helpful. But the fact is all the studies now show clearly you make new neurons every day, and you can make new connections between them. That's called neurogenesis and neuroplasticity, the idea that you can change and direct how your cells in your brain are wired together. Something called Hebb's laws says cells that fire together wire together. So the more you create new habits, the more you say things, read things, think things, work on things, change things, then the more likely those things are to become automated and easier to reproduce more automatically in the future.
Speaker 1:And you can change the structural nature of your brain. We also know that you can turn genes on and off. You can affect your epigenetics. You can affect your offspring by changing how you think. It's for real.
Speaker 1:And to tell you the truth, this really was the greatest moment in my career as a neurosurgeon. It didn't happen in the operating room. It wasn't some instrument I invented and patented. It wasn't some brilliant diagnosis that I made that escaped everybody else's attention. And it wasn't a life I saved in the dusty tent hospital in Iraq or somewhere in Alabama or Texas or Pennsylvania or Nebraska or Wyoming.
Speaker 1:I'm proud of the work that I've done with my hands over the last 2 decades. I'm proud of the 9 surgeries that I performed this week. I'm proud of the fact that I can relieve pain and end suffering and help people. I'm proud of the team that I have, the great people at the hospital that work so hard and do such great work on behalf of other people. But that's not the most important thing that happened in my career.
Speaker 1:Let me just give you some background. The most important thing that happened to me was the day I realized that you and me and everybody else that I take care of is performing self brain surgery all the time. Whether you think you are or not, you already are a self brain surgeon, my friend. Roberta, you're already doing real surgery. Well into the 19 nineties, the era in which I was brought up as a scientist, physician, neurosurgery trainee, basically everybody in neuroscience, everybody thought that the adult human brain was fully formed, that there wasn't new cells being made.
Speaker 1:We we taught that for years. We used to say, hey. Don't hit your head. You've you got all the neurons you're ever gonna make, so don't don't hurt yourself because you're stuck with those neurons. And when you start losing them, that's when you get demented and have other trouble.
Speaker 1:That's what we thought. You couldn't make new cells. That neurons controlled every aspect of human behavior. That mind was a product of brain. That that self that things like yourself and your thoughts and your beliefs and all that most neuroscientists thought that all of that came from electrical activity in your brain, that there was a concept of mind that was just a purely brain generated concept.
Speaker 1:And, basically, that led to this stunning problem of what we call reductionism, where, basically, everybody said, well, if you're just the product of electrical activity, you can reduce yourself down to what's happening inside your cells, then that means that your whole life is determined by that cellular activity. And there's really no purpose or meaning to your life. There's really no destiny or ideas or dreams or hopes or any of that. You don't really have free will because you're just a bunch of electrical impulses that are the product of random evolutionary events that happened over 1,000,000,000 of years out of your control and once you die, you die and there's no meaning or purpose behind any of it. That's what science basically thought.
Speaker 1:And at the same time since 19 fifties when Watson and Crick gave us the structure of DNA, medical science and even pop culture grabbed onto the idea that our genes determine most aspects of our lives, and there's not a whole lot we can do about it. We're told that genes are like a poker hand that we're dealt, and and we're sort of gonna be a particular height or have a particular hair color or particular weight, that we're gonna have certain diseases or not have them, we're gonna run faster or not, we're gonna be athletic or not, anxious or not, depressed or not, narcissistic or not, happy or brilliant or whatever based purely on the genetic lottery or cards that we drew. And those concepts, the fixed nature of your brain, the idea that neuronal activity is responsible for everything you think, feel, believe, and do, and the doctrine of genetic determinism kind of converged to create a popular and almost universally taught idea that people are basically gonna be the way they are. We can learn to cope or optimize things through surgery or medication, and we can learn where to place the blame through therapy and perhaps better strategies for managing our lives.
Speaker 1:But, really, we are who we are, and other people need to accommodate us. That's what you're seeing play out in our secular culture right now. You better respect me. You better stop triggering me. You better put an environment together that's safe for me.
Speaker 1:You better accommodate me because this is how I am. This is my true self. That's what we hear. Right? In this school of thought, life doesn't have an actual purpose beyond survival or perpetuation of the species.
Speaker 1:The universe is random. It's uncaring. It's a it doesn't really care or intend to create you and doesn't care what happens to you. And sort of to summarize that reductionist, determinist worldview, you are the product of random evolutionary events that developed accidentally, and your choices are all predetermined by the structure and function of your brain. That's really hopeful, isn't it?
Speaker 1:Your genes tell most of the story of how smart you are, how how you start out, and where you'll end up in your life. Now I came up as a young neurosurgeon in this environment, but, also, I had a Christian worldview that armed me with the belief that people do have a meaning, do have a purpose, and do have a free will to pursue life as they see fit and that there are eternal consequences to how we live. I noticed that the Bible prescribes a host of things that are purported to help people flourish. And I saw in my own life that those things kept being proven correct even when science seemed to say otherwise. And I noticed as the years passed that people don't live as if their lives are purposeless.
Speaker 1:We marry. We start families. We go to church. We volunteer. We connect with others and root for our teams.
Speaker 1:We go through trauma and drama and tragedy and massive things, and we wonder what it's all about. We live like something is at stake, and we have a nagging sense that we're being sold a bill of goods when the scientists tell us we're just a bunch of neurons and genes that don't really matter in the end. So I showed up for work every day, and I went through my own set of massive things as I've written about in my books. And I realized at some point that there are basically six reasons why people come to see a neurosurgeon like me. They come if something hurts or doesn't feel normal or is numb.
Speaker 1:They come if something isn't working right or is weak or doesn't move when it's supposed to. They're unable to think or remember things correctly or have a problem thinking the wrong thing that's affecting their quality of life. They come when their balance is often as hard to walk or stand without falling. They've developed a problem with 1 or more of their senses. They can't see or feel or taste or smell or hear correctly.
Speaker 1:There's an emergency, a trauma, a tumor, a stroke, a hemorrhage, or some other rapidly developing problem that is imminently life threatening and requires immediate intervention. And as the years passed and my career, science kept progressing and I kept seeing threads that seemed to be worth tugging on. And like a good scientist, I started tugging on them. Now over the course of the podcast and the book that I'm writing now, Self Brain Surgery, I'll give you exhaustive scientific references and guests on the show and all kinds of evidence that what I'm about to say is true. But if you just wanna get the gist of it here today and trust me and follow this idea, then here's a summary of what I learned over the years of following these threats.
Speaker 1:First, neuroscientists have known have shown conclusively since the late 19 nineties that the human brain does, in fact, make new neurons every day and even more importantly, makes new connections between those neurons constantly throughout your life. Those two processes, as I mentioned before, neurogenesis and neuroplasticity, are constantly happening throughout life. And since the development of functional brain imaging in the early 2 thousands, we know now, for sure, that thoughts can direct structural changes in the brain as or more effectively than medicine or physical surgery can and much more quickly. So self brain surgery is actually much more effective, much less invasive, and much less painful than, quote, unquote, real surgery, Ruboda. Structural changes in the brain have a profound impact on people's neurotransmitter levels, their hormone production, their gene expression, their physiology and almost every aspect of how the entire body works, even how we affect the people around us.
Speaker 1:And the science of epigenetics has now shown with no doubt we're gonna talk to Dawson Church about this this weekend. With no doubt that most of the genes you inherit can be turned on or off with changing thoughts or lifestyle choices, meaning that your genetic starting point in life does not have to be in charge of your destiny. And since thinking differently can make structural changes to brain matter and to the cellular machinery that activates or deactivates genes, then the mind cannot be the same thing as the brain. There are outstanding experiments that show this from 20th 21st century physicists, neuroscientists, and neurosurgeons, the brain and the mind are separate. Time after time, when scientists investigate the long term effects of human behavior in various areas, the findings show how people flourish best always lines up with something the Bible has said all along.
Speaker 1:That's fascinating to me. And once I saw those truths, I experienced the greatest moment in my neurosurgery career. I've told you this before, but that's when I found my specific calling. I thought my calling was to perform neurosurgery operations. But once I put all this together, I see more clearly that I am here to help people figure out what's hurting them and what to do about it.
Speaker 1:Since people can change their brains by changing their minds, that means everyone is already a cell brain surgeon. You're already doing this work. That's why you need this podcast. The path forward then is to help you see that learning to use your mind to enhance and optimize the function of your brain, the expression of your genes, and the health of your body is as real a type of surgery as the practice of my neurosurgery practice that I perform in my operating room with scalpels and saws and drills and other instruments. So when you think of yourself as having some control over how your life plays out, it feels very different than it does to consider yourself a random accidental bunch of cells with no purpose and no control, doesn't it?
Speaker 1:And so if you're like one of my patients and something hurts or doesn't feel right, something isn't working, the balance of your life is off, it just doesn't taste right or look right to you, or even if you're in the middle of some sort of emotional emergency or you're just not thinking clearly, then this podcast is for you, my friend. It's designed as a resource that you can come back to over the course of your life that will help you understand and do 6 things: understand the basic concepts of mind, brain, body, and heart learn how they're connected, how they're dependent on each other, and how you can use their design and function to help improve your life in every area, how you can navigate and heal from trauma, drama, tragedy, and other types of hardship, how you can overcome anxiety, depression, loneliness, doubt, or any other type of emotional struggle, how you can conquer limiting or negative thinking and finally get your inner voice to stop attacking you and start encouraging you, to learn and master several types of self brain surgery operations to move from floundering to flourishing in your life, and adopt a new baseline perspective of being an empowered, hopeful person no matter what you're facing.
Speaker 1:Those six benefits will be of use to you over the course of your life. That's why we're here. Okay? That's what cell brain surgery is all about. But don't forget that cell brain surgery is not something that you have to do yourself because you were created and designed to heal, designed to have a mind that communicates with the great physician, your creator, and he will help you change your brain and change your body and change your genetics and change your generations.
Speaker 1:He'll help you become healthier and feel better and be happier. And that's why since we know that how you think changes the brain, changes your body, changes your neurotransmitters, changes your hormones, switches genes on and off, affects your electromagnetic field, affects the people around you, affects your generations after you. Since you know that how you think determines most of how you live and literally does surgery on the rest of your body, then that's why second Corinthians 105 is so important. Take every thought captive. Take every thought captive.
Speaker 1:I got an email, voice mail, actually, a devastating voice mail from a woman in Canada. Not gonna say her name or this situation, but she'd gone through a tremendous problem where her husband has left her, and she's dealing with cancer. And it's just a devastating situation. And she said, how can I biopsy that thought? What hope do I have?
Speaker 1:How can I biopsy that thought? What does self brain surgery have for me when this devastating thing has happened? And it's always gonna be true. Let me just tell you. It is true that that thing has happened, but the good news is trauma is not what happened.
Speaker 1:Trauma is our response to what happened. Okay? There's a difference between a problem that you're facing, a diagnosis you're dealing with, a situation that's a problem, an actual event that's happening, the problem, a diagnosis, a disease, and what we might call a situation or an ongoing reality. Okay? If it's a problem, if it's a diagnosis of a disease state, we can attack it.
Speaker 1:We can come up with a plan, a strategy to navigate it, to deal with it, to try to make it better, to try to overcome it or eliminate it or get rid of it. But if it's a situation, if it's an event that has occurred, that's always going to have occurred. And so at that point, we don't have the choice to go back in time and make it not happen. I can't bring my son back. I can't biopsy my thinking enough to make Mitchell alive again.
Speaker 1:I can't as much as I want to. And you can't make your husband not do what he did. You can't make yourself not have breast cancer just by thinking about it differently. So by saying the thought, if you think that the answer is to make the thought not true, that's never going to happen. So here's what's here's what needs to happen.
Speaker 1:You take the thought captive, and you say, okay. This did happen. I can change my response to it. I don't have to be defined by it. I don't have to be perpetually vexed by it anymore.
Speaker 1:I can learn how to recognize, as Jim Wallace said on the show on Monday, tremendous conversation with j Warner Wallace. And he said, when you suffer, look for the story and look for how you can grow and change through the story since we know that suffering often produces great change in people in the long run. That doesn't make it easy in the front end, and it doesn't make it feel better, and it doesn't make it hurt less, but it does give us hope that there can be some good to come out of it. Right? We can't change the story, but we can change the outcome of the story.
Speaker 1:We can't change the beginning of the story. We can change the end of it. We can't change the trauma. We can change our response to it. That's the good news.
Speaker 1:Okay? That's the good news. I just want you to remember, friend, that self brain surgery is real surgery despite my misstatement yesterday. Roberta, thank you for pointing that out to me. It's so important that you need to understand this.
Speaker 1:You can for example, if you meditate and pray, we know that your hippocampus grows up to 20% over just a few weeks of learning to meditate and pray. Your hippocampus is all about resilience, emotional stability, the ability to handle problems, the ability to ex engage executive control over difficult situations and not run away in fight, flight, freeze. Your hippocampus gets more robust just like your bicep does when you do curls if you learn how to think differently about the events and issues in your life. Friend, self brain surgery is real surgery. 2nd Corinthians 15 says take every thought captive.
Speaker 1:Take every thought captive. It doesn't say take some of them captive. So the whole game is to get better at what you're doing because what you're doing, you're getting better at. So if you say, hey, I'm going to practice getting my thoughts under my control. Maybe I can only do it for a few minutes at a time.
Speaker 1:Maybe I can only do it a few times a day. Maybe I can only do it a little bit. But if I do it, I'm going to get better at it. And before long, I will achieve what I call the surprising arrival of mastery. When you're learning to play the guitar, you're learning to speak a language, you're learning to ride a bicycle, you don't feel the change happening often.
Speaker 1:You just one day, you get up, and all of a sudden, the muscle memory, everything kicks in, and you can play the piece. You can ride the bike. You can juggle the balls. All of a sudden, you're able to handle something that you couldn't do before, and that's what's gonna happen when you practice taking your thoughts captive. God says he works in you to accomplish, to want, and to accomplish his things that he wants you to do that will make him happy and make you happy in your life.
Speaker 1:Life. Practice doesn't always make perfect, but practicing capturing your thoughts will make you a better and better and better self brain surgeon, and that's real brain surgery. You wanna change your mind? You wanna change your life? The good news is, my friend, you can become healthier.
Speaker 1:You can feel better, and you can be happier. And you can start today. Hey. Thanks for listening. The doctor Lee Warren podcast is brought to you by my brand new book, Hope is the First Dose.
Speaker 1:It's a treatment plan for recovering from trauma, tragedy, and other massive things. It's available everywhere books are sold, and I narrated the audiobooks. Hey. The theme music for the show is Get Up by my friend Tommy Walker, available for free at tommywalkerministries.org. They are supplying worship resources for worshipers all over the world to worship the most high god.
Speaker 1:And if you're interested in learning more, check out tommywalkerministries.org. If you need prayer, go to the prayer wall at wleewarrenmd.com/ prayer. Wleewarnmd.com/ prayer. And go to my website and sign up for the newsletter, self brain surgery, every Sunday since 2014, helping people in all 50 states and 60 plus countries around the world. I'm doctor Lee Warren, and I'll talk to you soon.
Speaker 1:Remember, frame, you can't change your life until you change your mind. And the good news is you can start today.