Dr Mazda Turel’s prescription for living long, thinking good at THE WEEK ‘Healthy Young Mind, Healthy India’
Neurosurgeon Dr. Mazda Turel, author of 'Bheja Fry', shared insights on 'The Young Brain' at a mental health event, advising on lifestyle choices for brain health and discussing the brain's adaptability and early learning potential.
Neurosurgeon Dr. Mazda Turel, author of 'Bheja Fry', shared insights on 'The Young Brain' at a mental health event, advising on lifestyle choices for brain health and discussing the brain's adaptability and early learning potential.
Neurosurgeon Dr. Mazda Turel, author of 'Bheja Fry', shared insights on 'The Young Brain' at a mental health event, advising on lifestyle choices for brain health and discussing the brain's adaptability and early learning potential.
And the talk was so true to how he writes—laced with humour, jokes, life lessons, and a judicious mix of biology, neurology, philosophy, and pragmatism, yet carrying within it the seeds of profound learning and a direction living should take. Author of the acclaimed Bheja Fry, Dr Mazda Turel—neurosurgeon, writer, columnist, and speaker—kept his audience enthralled during a 30-minute-long talk on ‘The Young Brain’.
Addressing his audience at ‘Healthy Young Mind, Healthy India’, THE WEEK’s event on mental health organised at New Delhi’s marquee India Habitat Centre, the neurosurgeon offered practical suggestions: “Never take life very seriously, indulge in aerobic exercises, eat well and sleep well, practise mindfulness and meditate, spend time in nature.” Practical suggestions that everyone can practise, but few actually do.
He added that it is very much possible to live long and think young by generating new neurons in the brain—a process called neurogenesis. “It doesn’t take genius to be better. It takes diligence... Adaptability of the brain is a beautiful thing.”
Dwelling on the immense possibilities of the human brain, Turel said: “While just 10% of the brain’s capabilities are used, 20-25% of the total energy consumption by the human body is taken up by brain activity.” So much work for the brain!
Built with 80-100 billion neurons, the brain’s storage capacity is estimated at 2.5 petabytes. One petabyte is 1,000 terabytes. One terabyte equals 1,000 GB. “If you were to put all of the brain’s capacity on 16 GB pen drives, it would take 1,56,000 pen drives.”
Offering advice to the many young students in the audience, Dr Turel said: “Don’t think of your mistakes as mistakes. Think of them as data.”
Succour for the young lay in another finding: that brain capability is at its maximum in the younger years, more specifically between 2 and 7 years of age. “It can learn a language it didn’t speak. It can master a skill it couldn’t perform... It can experience adversity and develop resilience.”