July 21, 2026 · Episode 76
54 Min, 57 Sec 

Summary

Is creative expression a self-indulgent hobby — or a neurological necessity for cognitive health?

This week Breallyn brings the science on creativity and brain health — and it turns out the thing you keep pushing to the end of the to-do list is the thing your brain needs most. From hyperplastic toddler minds to menopausal brain fog to the 70-year-old jazz guitarist still lighting up a room at Shadowfax Winery, Lyndon and Breallyn trace what creativity actually does to the brain across an entire lifespan.

And it doesn’t matter if what you make is terrible!

You might want to listen if:

• You’re waiting for life to calm down before getting back to your art (spoiler: it won’t).
• You are navigating perimenopause or menopause and want to reclaim your identity, focus, and mental clarity.
• You’ve written off learning something new because you think you’re too old, too busy, or too set in your ways.

Pain In The Arts is a weekly Australian podcast about creative life — as it happens. Hosted by Lyndon (musician, studio owner, producer, working guitarist) and Breallyn Wesley (copywriter, Masters in Creative Writing, writing her debut novel). One of them never knows the topic until recording begins.

Love this conversation? Get exclusive podcast episodes on our Patreon and support the show!

Transcript

Lyndon: Welcome to Pain in the Arts, where the pursuit of meaningful art meets the unpredictable demands of real life, and where one of us hears the topic at the same time you do.

Breallyn: Yeah. Thanks for joining us. I’m Breallyn.

Lyndon: And I am Lyndon.

Breallyn: The dog keeps kicking the mic into me.

Lyndon: It did that last time, and it’s gonna have to be, I don’t know, either let out of the studio or put down, one of the two.

Breallyn: Neither of those are happening. She’s sleeping and dreaming. It’s school holidays, so at any moment we may have to stop.

Lyndon: It’s school holidays, so you’re frazzled and at the end of your wits.

Breallyn: Whereas you’re calmly sailing through as if it’s just another week.

Lyndon: Yeah, pretty much. That’s exactly right.

Breallyn: I’m sensing some inequalities going on here.

Lyndon: I’m sensing an episode restart.

From Banter to Big Topic

Lyndon: I’ve forgotten whose week it is.

Breallyn: Do you have one?

Lyndon: No, but —

Breallyn: I guess it’s my week then…

Lyndon: But like — let’s go. I’m not sure whether last week was your week also. It looks like you’re chomping at the bit to get on with it.

Breallyn: So we talk a lot about how tricky it is to get our creative practices happening during a busy life and with all the responsibilities and so on going on. And we know our listeners are often juggling the same kind of challenges. We hear feedback from people going, “Yeah, it’s really tricky to get this happening,” or, “I just get things set up and then life takes a U-turn with different things, and I find that my creativity or just my ability to sit down and do the art that I want, it takes a backseat.”

So it always seems to be this thing that it’s something we wanna do more than we get to do. Sometimes a lot of our listeners are working artists and they can push that time into their day because it’s their working day, so it’s happening, which is great.

So I wanted to give us another perspective today on why creativity is so important for us to do, and it’s to do with our brain health, our body health as well, but primarily to do with why our brains benefit so much from having creativity in our lives. And I also wanted to chuck this idea at you — we’re always told that humans are wired to survive. Like we have to go after what’s gonna be imperative for our survival.

Lyndon: And is it just me or whenever you hear that you kinda go, “Yeah”?

Breallyn: And it seems removed from our modern-day life when we’ve got so much that is between us and extinction sort of thing, because we’ve scaffolded so many things into our civilisations and our communities so that risk of even a death from exposure or from starvation and that kind of thing, that’s very far removed from daily life usually.

Lyndon: Why it just comes at me like a bit of a greyed-out question mark is because on one hand we get told how different we are from animals, and then on the other hand, we also get told how we’re the same.

And it’s like when you get told that we’re insignificant. These are things that you hear every day coming at you from different places, different formats, different people, different media. Whatever, you’ll hear someone saying, “Can you believe how small the Earth is in the vastness of space,” and all this sort of stuff, and you get told how small you are. And then in the next breath, someone will be telling you how incredibly unique you are and how you can change the world and all this sort of stuff.

And you’re like, “Oh, okay. I guess these things coexist.” It can be a bit confusing, and some things you just don’t question, and you go, “Okay, I guess everything’s possible or could be true.” So yeah.

But I know what you mean, yeah.

Breallyn: Yeah. It’s weird in the context of that — like, of that drive to survive —

Creativity and the Survival Drive

Breallyn: that humans have such a highly developed sense of what beauty is, what aesthetic appreciation or musical appreciation is, that we have this bizarre drive for beauty and for seeking after something that kind of lights us up. So we both are driven to appreciate art and to create art.

And in terms of survival, it’s a real brain-bend to think that’s happened, because it’s not efficient. It’s not closed-ended — finding food is, or building a shelter is. There’s no end to what a beautiful scenery is or a beautiful, inspiring piece of music is or something like that.

It’s this nebulous kind of thing. Different people appreciate different things. The drive is never satisfied to finish seeking after that or seeking to create those things.

Lyndon: Oh, you mean like someone who finally eventually climbed K2 and then they go, “That’s not enough for me,” and they look for the next mountain? That kind of thing?

Breallyn: Yeah. If you’re looking in survival terms, like building a shelter, finding food, or planting crops, it’s cyclical, it’s closed-ended.

Lyndon: What happened?

Mic Zap and Studio Asides

Breallyn: The dog nearly tipped the microphone over on me.

Lyndon: Oh, I thought you got electrocuted.

Breallyn: What? Is that a possibility?

Lyndon: I’ve been electrocuted on stage. Every time my lips touched the microphone, or at least got within a millimetre, I got zapped, repeatedly. Because this was many years ago in Flinders Lane in Melbourne. At a venue called The Ivy, I think, when I was playing there with the cover band.

But yeah, I couldn’t judge how far away I was from the mic because I’ve developed this technique of you hit the mic with your mouth and then you know where you are. You just go right up to it, and then you can pull back from it. ‘Cause you’re playing guitar at the same time, so you know. Yeah, you can’t put your hand on it to make that judgment.

So anyway. I got electrocuted — I guess I’m using that term loosely — but so much so that my eyes were watering and my lips were numb. And I just couldn’t do anything about it. Yeah. So anyway.

Breallyn: Safety first.

Lyndon: You can get zapped anyway from a microphone.

Breallyn: Okay. Oh, I’ll try to not put my lips on it. I mean — that’s why I’ve got — ugh, all the people that have used it before…

Lyndon: That’s why I’ve got microphone insurance.

Breallyn: I hope you’ve got life insurance for me.

Lyndon: I just wanna assure any future clients that the microphones are perfectly safe to sing into. Yeah.

Why the Brain Needs Creativity

Breallyn: Yeah. So that was just a bit of an aside about how we are so attuned to needing creativity and needing art in our lives, both to appreciate and to look at and to have it open our minds, but also to be creating.

That it’s actually a biological drive within us. And I wanted to talk about what it actually does to us throughout our lifetimes if we give ourselves the time to be creative and actually set that as a priority in life, or just something that we regularly do. Because I think it’s nice to look at what happens to our brains if we’re given that chance —

Lyndon: Were you —

Breallyn: to be creative…

Lyndon: Were you saying before in aside or preamble or whatever that if all we did was pursue that creative stuff, then we would not survive? We’d die because we need these other things, and those other things make more sense for our survival, and they’re closed-ended, whereas creative stuff is like, you never kind of get your fix. It’s never necessarily done. You could spend your whole life working on one thing. Is that what you’re sort of saying?

Breallyn: No, the opposite. Oh. Yeah, no. I was saying —

Lyndon: What?

Breallyn: This is what I’m saying. We know that we have to do those other things like seek shelter, seek food and water, ensure our safety. Those are things we need for survival. Okay. So it’s absolutely incredible and mind-blowing that we’ve also developed this insatiable drive for being creative and for appreciating art. Because why would we need that? It doesn’t ensure safety. It doesn’t feed us. It does the opposite.

It sends us on these quests. It takes up a whole lot of our time. The sort of the time to develop the craft practices has taken generations. It takes people their whole lifetime to become a master in some kind of creative skill. So what’s that got to do with survival?

When we look at the baseline of what you need to survive, we’re never told about it. We’re never told that it’s important or that humans need art to survive, and yet we actually do.

Lyndon: Okay.

Breallyn: We actually need it more long-term. It might not be there for your immediate — if you’re chucked on a desert island, it’s not the first thing you’re gonna do is create art. But once those immediate needs are addressed, having to be creative, having to have some kind of art in your life becomes important over time. So yeah, I just think it’s amazing that we have that, and we have never gotten rid of it. It’s always a growing concern in the human heart.

Lyndon: You know when people say, “If you’re trapped on a desert island”? All the islands I’ve seen look luscious and very desirable.

And then I realised, when I was thinking about it — unfortunately, while you were re-explaining —

Breallyn: Oh, geez.

Lyndon: the whole premise —

Breallyn: Do you understand the point yet?

Lyndon: Yeah, I do.

Breallyn: Okay, great.

Lyndon: But, we’re on the desert island. Australia is a desert island —

Breallyn: I guess —

Lyndon: all the lushness —

Breallyn: It’s a continent.

Lyndon: We’re an island, and all around the coastline and going in a little bit is more luscious and whatnot. But it’s mainly desert in the centre. It’s largely uninhabited. So we’re actually on that desert island that people are talking about.

Breallyn: Oh, I don’t know. I don’t think you could call such a large landmass an island.

Lyndon: Definitely an island. Isn’t it in our national anthem?

Breallyn: Is every other continent an island? Is Europe an island?

Lyndon: It just popped into my head.

Breallyn: Okay.

Childhood Brain Plasticity and Creative Play

Breallyn: Let’s look at creativity throughout a lifespan. So in childhood, particularly early childhood, the brain is this hyperplastic pruning machine. It’s always producing these millions and millions of synaptic connections every single day, every second almost, like growing and growing all these connections, and then also pruning and cutting away what isn’t stimulated.

So if something happens once but then it’s never repeated, then that sort of interest or ability or recognition just drops away. So when a small child — like toddlers, preschoolers — are given a lot of time and activities and time to use their imagination, time to play with different art materials and make music or make noises with different things and really just play in those creative ways, what happens is that it’s a whole lot of pre-verbal scaffolding that they learn.

They learn all sorts of ways of making different kinds of connections and not just one sort of superhighway of connection to talking. They make a whole lot of different ones. And playing with tactile art implements and especially learning music forces the left and the right hemispheres of the brain to communicate across what’s called the corpus callosum. It’s like the main data highway across the two hemispheres of the brain. So those two sides are continually interacting, talking, making pathways, problem-solving, learning new things across the whole brain.

The whole brain lights up when children are playing creatively as opposed to sitting down and being taught systematically or on screens particularly. That is killing everything, but —

Lyndon: It’s a good argument for Montessori, isn’t it?

Breallyn: Yeah, I guess it’s what’s behind that thinking. Yeah. It’s not new information that —

Lyndon: But also —

Breallyn: kids need creativity —

Lyndon: is that still a thing, the left and the right side of the brain? I thought that has been — not necessarily debunked but they’ve moved on from there, haven’t they?

Breallyn: The understanding of what’s happening in the different sides has moved on as the technology of scanning the brain has developed. So it’s — yeah, they’re not necessarily just saying, “Oh, you’re creative, you’re using your right hemisphere,” whatever, anymore.

Lyndon: Yeah, ’cause this is another one of those things that you hear all your life — left side of the brain, right side of the brain, and one’s for this and one’s for that. And I’ve always — I haven’t put it in the same category as being told that if you go outside when it’s cold you’ll catch a cold. But it has just seemed to really simplify something that we all know is so complex.

And I’ve been really interested in the last decade just hearing how it seems like they can map the brain a bit more, and they can kind of see what’s going on. And all kinds of different things, and strangely enough, it is supporting a lot of things that we may have associated with old wives’ tales, or to do with being outside and catching the first rays of sun and all this sort of stuff. They can actually go, “Yeah, this is what’s actually going on in the brain, and it is actually really good for you —

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: to do that.” And you’re like, “Oh, so Grandma sort of knew something.”

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: Absolutely. She proved it herself.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: But now it can be proved that it wasn’t just a notion.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: So yeah, so in all of that, I just thought, the left-right brain thing, it really is dumbing it down, isn’t it, for people?

Breallyn: It’s definitely dumbing it down. It’s not showing the complexities of what goes on in the brain. But I think what is clearer now is that doing certain activities makes one part of your brain work harder than other parts, or if you’re just watching something, there’s only really one part of your brain that’s involved.

Whereas doing creative problem-solving, getting into sort of a flow state of creative work, it’s working a whole lot more. It’s not just working one part. It actually is developing new pathways all the time. It’s not just reenacting the same old pathways again and again. So yeah, I think definitely creativity is — yeah, it’s what the whole episode is about. It’s important for humans to do. It’s important for brain health. But not just in the developing and formative stages, but all throughout the lifespan.

Lyndon: I read today that people who are actually in the process of creating something, often while they’re doing that, the other parts of their brain that you’d normally associate with — I guess some of those other things that you were talking about earlier, survival things — actually get shut down. And that’s why I’m relying on you for my —

Breallyn: Survival.

Lyndon: ongoing survival. No, I’m just kidding. But that is interesting because it does sometimes feel like that when you’re right in it. You feel like an army could be encroaching on you and you would be killed because you didn’t notice that they were in your home.

Breallyn: Weirdly enough, for many years I pretty much deliberately stepped away from my creative practices. And it was literally because I was so wired to protect our kids — especially Birdie, who’s obviously been very sick and in need of constant support — that when I would start to be creative, even just journaling or something, and I would start to get lost in that sort of frame of mind where you know, time disappears, and the world around you disappears somewhat, and you are getting into that new creative space within your own head.

I just was like, “I can’t get lost in here.” ‘Cause there’s a kid who’s relying on me. I’ve gotta be onto it. I need to be planning the next thing and making sure that everyone’s okay.

So yeah, I just knew I didn’t have the time for it, but more than that, I couldn’t risk getting lost in a headspace that wasn’t all about survival and all about making sure our kids were okay.

Lyndon: It’s interesting.

Breallyn: It was scary to be doing that, and I had to realise at some point that, okay, I do have some little windows now that I’m allowed to do that. I’m allowed to have that creative time, and it’s not gonna endanger anyone.

Lyndon: Yeah, and like you probably could have allowed yourself more time, but I know what you mean. It’s that feeling of going, “I can’t take any risks. I’ve got it.” Like you were hypervigilant basically —

Breallyn: Yeah…

Lyndon: with that stuff.

Breallyn: Yeah. Definitely.

Lyndon: Yeah. Yeah. They’ve also apparently discovered that — and when I say they, you know who I’m talking about. Those people. The people that — the part of their brain where the synapses are firing a lot, like when they’re doing something creative, but also all those other areas are also firing. Guess which people they find that in?

Breallyn: Which people?

Lyndon: If my memory serves me correctly — just remember, I’m not a scholar —

Breallyn: This is a man on the brink of —

Lyndon: I’m not a scholar —

Breallyn: not surviving.

Lyndon: People with bipolar.

Breallyn: Oh, really?

Lyndon: Yeah.

Breallyn: Yeah. That’s interesting.

Lyndon: Yeah.

Creativity in Mid-Adulthood and the Cost of Cognitive Rigidity

Breallyn: As humans move into more teenage years and into mid-adulthood, a lot of those synapses are pruned away, and the brain becomes quite hyper-efficient, and it is more sensitive to automated processes. So this is where you start developing systems that enable you to go to work on time, and run a household, and drive, and do all those sorts of activities. It’s wired to develop the sort of ingrained cognitive shortcuts that help us in those areas. So that’s what the brain is trying to do at that stage.

But the cost — even though that’s good and it’s really important — it can also lead to some cognitive rigidity. If you are not giving yourself that time of creativity, it’s very easy to become set in those ways and not look outside of them. But creativity, like doing something that’s new and different, that is a creative thing — that’s forcing yourself — not forcing, but allowing yourself to do something where you don’t know the outcome yet. What that does is force the brain out of those well-worn grooves, and it disrupts a lot of those rigid loops of adulthood.

One of the great things about creativity during this stage of life is that it can drastically reduce stress and the cortisol buildup that comes with just the automated — get to work, do the shopping, do this, do that, do the other. So yeah, creativity’s extremely helpful for that. And they have figured out that about 45 minutes of art making significantly slashes that baseline cortisol. So if you could do that every day, every week, whatever you can —

Lyndon: 40% did you say?

Breallyn: No. You weren’t listening ’cause you were taking a photo of the dog on the floor.

If you do 45 minutes of creative art making —

Lyndon: That’s what I said.

Breallyn: Music. No, you said 40%.

Lyndon: What did they say?

45 minutes per day. Do you reckon they are just at home looking in the mirror going, “I am so smart.”

Breallyn: I don’t think so.

Bad Art Still Helps Your Brain

Breallyn: And the interesting thing about that is the outcome of the art has zero impact on what happens to the brain. You can make the worst looking thing. You can —

Lyndon: Yeah, I hate this —

Breallyn: you know — Oh —

Lyndon: this is the bit I don’t like to hear.

Breallyn: Practice. Yeah, you can practice your music and it can just sound terrible. Your fingers feel like sausages, nothing’s working. It doesn’t matter to your brain. And it doesn’t actually matter to your cortisol. Even if you end up at the end of that creative session going, “Dah, that didn’t work out,” or, “I’m gonna scrap that whole thing. I’m chucking it out.” It doesn’t matter. The very fact that you’ve been doing it is actually important for your brain and —

Lyndon: It suddenly explains —

Breallyn: and your stress levels.

Lyndon: This suddenly explains the auditions for, like, all those TV singing shows. The best parts are always so horrendous.

Breallyn: Why? ‘Cause they’re doing the bad art?

Lyndon: Yeah, because no one told them to leave that at home.

Breallyn: Yeah, we’re not talking about performance in this.

Lyndon: Because they’ve done what you’re saying, for at least — what was it? 45 minutes a day. And they’ve — and it’s made them feel really good. And then they’ve seen the —

Breallyn: Their cortisol is at zero.

Lyndon: Yeah. And they’re like —

Breallyn: They’re pumped up on the endorphins.

Lyndon: “This is the best I’ve felt all week.” And then the ad comes on, “We’re taking applicants for Australia’s Got Talent.” And they’re like, “Oh, I think I’m gonna do it.”

Breallyn: That’s the best episode.

Lyndon: So I suppose it is a good thing.

Breallyn: I suppose.

Lyndon: Good on them.

Midlife Brain Fog and Menopause

Breallyn: Let’s talk about what happens in the midlife shift and later adulthood. So things change for humans often in what they’re doing, their activities. Like children move out of home or they’re not as dependent anymore. Often there are changes in work — you might be looking toward retirement or career shifts, in general. And what happens biologically is that there’s a bunch of changes as well, certainly in women, and I wanna focus on women for a moment because it can be a time of massive biological change as they approach menopause.

So that perimenopause and menopause time of life means that pretty much chemically everything changes, which sucks. It’s like we haven’t gone through enough changes throughout life anyway. But often what happens in the brain at this point — this hugely dropping oestrogen affects glucose metabolism in the brain. So it drops away and that stabilisation disappears, and this is what women refer to as brain fog. I do it all the time — forgetting a word, not being able to access it. It’s like it’s on the tip of my tongue and I can’t remember it, or thinking about, “Oh, what was I gonna do again?” That sort of descending brain fog.

It’s very annoying, and it can be really severe for some people. There are memory lapses and also an increase in sort of baseline anxiety. And yeah, all sorts of different changes can happen.

So what’s that got to do with creativity? If a woman at this time in her life can make time for some process-based creativity, creative practices, things like writing, painting, crafting, anything like that — because it activates the default mode network. So this is the brain’s daydreaming, reflection, pondering type centre, which is really important because this calms the nervous system’s fight or flight response, and it helps to clear away all that brain fog by essentially routing thoughts through a nonlinear pathway.

So when you’re creating, you’re using many different neural pathways, and it’s not just the same old pathway. So you’re arriving at the same thoughts or the same destination via different pathways. So it helps to clear away that brain fog.

So it’s a really important practice for many reasons for women at this time of life, and for men as well. And interestingly, researchers have actually found that visual artists specifically — this was a study done for visual artists — they showed on average a 6.2 reduction in biological brain age compared to their non-creative peers. So it can literally make your brain younger by being creative during these —

Lyndon: Six — what’s 6.2? What does that mean?

Breallyn: Years. They’re measuring what your essential brain age is, what your thinking level is, where you’re at. If you’re around sort of 50, 60 years of age, and they’re saying that those who are creative have younger brains. They’re fresher. They’re using more brain activity than those that aren’t creative.

It’s a good thing, apparently, when you’re getting up there in age — you want a younger brain. When you’re in your 20s, you might want a more mature brain.

Lyndon: You can’t win. What do you think about terms that are used to describe complex medical science, like brain fog? What do you think about terms like that? Do you think they’re helpful, or do you think they’re not taken seriously?

Breallyn: They’re definitely not taken seriously. And don’t get me started on the disparities between the descriptions of men’s health as opposed to women’s health. It’s really badly dumbed down for women — like brain fog, like whatever, have a complaint, why don’t you?

Medical Terms That Minimise Pain

Breallyn: Whereas it’s actually quite a serious thing that happens.

Lyndon: Maybe that’s what irks me with stuff I see online, because it’s also perpetuated by women as well. A lot.

It’s a marketing thing and also nearly like a “we all understand each other” thing, because you hear those sorts of terms all the time.

Breallyn: Yeah. And as a marketing tool for sure.

Lyndon: And these days marketing can look like someone’s social post as well.

Breallyn: Yeah. And it can look like, “Hey, we’re here to help you, and we’re all in this together.” Yeah. But it is a serious thing because it’s part of a system that isn’t geared towards equality, so it continues to perpetuate itself, which is not great at all.

But yeah, it’s a difficult one. Like brain fog — we understand it because you go, “Oh yeah, it’s just almost like a temporary thing. Like a wind can blow it away, and it can be over in a minute.” Which does happen — you remember that word, you remember that thing you were gonna do. And it isn’t a permanent condition. It’s not cognitive decline or something like that. But yeah, I think there should be a better term for it.

Lyndon: Yeah, I think about this.

Migraine, Brain Fog, and Being Dismissed

Lyndon: I’ve had to deal with this being a migraine sufferer, I guess the term is.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: Or living with migraine disease. It’s been misunderstood, or not understood, by — I think when something isn’t understood by the wider medical community, then there’s very little chance of the public having any sort of real knowledge about it.

And brain fog — I’ve heard that used in recent years to describe what happens to people with migraines when they’re having a migraine attack. And it can happen before the pain comes, and it happens after the pain comes. And I’ve always thought it’s not a very helpful thing to say because it’s already like — growing up with migraine, this is weird where this conversation is going. Welcome to —

Breallyn: Welcome to brain fog.

Lyndon: Welcome to Pain in the Arts — but in the medical fraternity. But so like, for instance, I used to come across this all the time. If I had a migraine attack people would go, “Oh, you’ve got a headache.” Or they would just think it was a headache. Or if I described to them why I couldn’t — I need to go home from school or whatever — it was like, “Oh, he’s got a headache.” Like I’d hear teachers say, “He’s got a headache, he’s got to go home.” Basically diminishing what was actually happening.

So then to hear people start talking about a symptom of a migraine attack being brain fog — I’m like, that’s not helping.

Breallyn: It’s not helpful either.

Lyndon: And you hear other terms that are — oh, for sure — that are as diminutive as brain fog. Yeah. So I just think, in what you’re describing as well, it’s hard for people to take it seriously and empathise, ’cause, what’s a little fog?

Breallyn: Exactly, yeah. It doesn’t sound serious. It doesn’t sound like it impacts life or anything.

The Endometriosis Dismissal Cycle

Breallyn: It’s been true for years for women suffering endometriosis — just being called period pain or “she can’t handle —”

Lyndon: Yeah, that’s right.

Breallyn: the period pain.” Like it’s so horrendous. Like when you actually figure out what is going on in that woman’s body and then it’s minimised to this, almost like — what a whinger you are. Toughen up. Don’t let us all know that you’re in pain.

Lyndon: Has it been —

Breallyn: How embarrassing…

Lyndon: has that been a term for a long time now or not? Endometriosis.

Breallyn: It’s been a condition that’s been known about for a long time. But what’s literally happened is that young girls, particularly 13, 14, 15 year olds, will be going to their doctors going, “I’m in a lot of pain with period pain. I don’t know what’s happening to me.” And they’ll go, “Oh, it’s just period pain, take a Panadol. There is a condition called endometriosis, but it’s very rare, so it’s very unlikely that you’ve got it. You really don’t have it.” And the fact that everybody keeps saying it’s very rare, you don’t have it, means that all of these women who do have it, it hasn’t been picked up and —

Lyndon: So they probably don’t think they have it.

Breallyn: They probably don’t have it.

Lyndon: Is that ’cause — you wanna think, yeah, ’cause it’s scary when you think there’s something wrong with you and you don’t know what it is. And then when you get told it’s rare and it’s unlikely you’ve got it, it actually makes you feel a lot better, doesn’t it? Not physically, but mentally you feel a lot better. You go, “That’s —”

Breallyn: There’s nothing wrong with me. I’ll just suck it up and pretend that I’m not in —

Lyndon: Not that there’s nothing wrong with me, but —

Breallyn: this excruciating pain —

Lyndon: Not that there’s nothing wrong with me, but that it might not be the serious thing that I thought it could be.

Breallyn: No, the opposite has happened — that young women feel shut down. They feel, again, like their symptoms are completely diminished, that maybe they just can’t handle it like everyone else can. And there is just something wrong with their pain tolerance, like they just need to put up with it. Yeah. And all that happens is that the illness continues —

Lyndon: Yeah.

Breallyn: and gets worse.

Lyndon: That’s what happened to me as a kid too. Yeah. Like I’d go, okay, maybe I’m not — especially when I didn’t know I had migraine, I thought it was just a headache. And other people seem to get headaches and take a Panadol and they’re fine.

No, but what I’m talking about is that psychological thing that happens when you go to a doctor’s — ’cause you’re thinking the worst, and then they go, “Look, you probably don’t have it.” And you feel better afterwards that you don’t have something that you thought might have been life-threatening or whatever. But yeah —

Breallyn: Possibly.

Lyndon: I understand what you’re saying.

Breallyn: But this is month after month, year after year.

Lyndon: Yeah.

Breallyn: Never ending. And there is unfortunately a situation where women’s pain is usually diminished by doctors — by men and women doctors — much more than men’s pain. It happens with dentists. Men are given stronger painkillers for the same procedures as women.

Lyndon: You know what we’re like, though. That’s fair enough. You’ve seen men when they have a cold.

Breallyn: Yeah, I know.

Lyndon: They need those painkillers — give me everything.

Breallyn: Oh, poor things. Poor little babies. Yeah. Don’t get me started, okay? ‘Cause we’re gonna start

Lyndon: You told me not to get you started.

Breallyn: Pain in the Feminism. So yeah, there’s definitely problems with medical terminology and —

Lyndon: I’m so glad I brought it up.

Breallyn: the understanding of it.

Senior Brain Health Myths

Breallyn: Moving on to how creativity impacts us in the senior years of life.

Lyndon: Wait. What’s this —

Breallyn: Moving on…

Lyndon: senior years business? Senior.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: You’re not talking about us.

Breallyn: We were in the middle years. Keep up. We’ve talked about children. We’ve talked about adolescent and young adult brains. Then we’ve spoken about the middle years, and now we’re onto the senior years.

Lyndon: That’s all right. But can you talk about the senior years as though it’s not us, and like it’s other people and in the very, very distant future for us?

Breallyn: Possibly. Like, I don’t know.

Lyndon: Just — hang on. You seem to be —

Breallyn: jumping into there.

Lyndon: Just — all right. Just one — I need a Werther’s Original before we can continue. And a digestive. Would you like a licorice allsort to get through this next section?

Breallyn: I actually don’t mind a licorice allsort.

Lyndon: Oh, the worst. Oh.

Breallyn: What happens in the senior years is that there is natural cognitive decline, loss of processing speed, and an elevated risk of neurodegenerative diseases, such as dementia and things like that. So this is a time where the brain is susceptible, it’s slowing down, it’s more at risk, and definitely needs attention, and needs people to be aware of the risks and what they can do for their brain health.

Now, something that we’re always told is you can’t teach an old dog new tricks. It’s actually wrong.

Lyndon: Hang on a minute. But we were just confirming that a lot of the old wives’ tales are true earlier.

Breallyn: Yeah, but the new tricks — you can’t teach an old dog the —

Lyndon: You can’t.

Breallyn: You just — and people think this way. “Oh, I’m old now. I can’t, you know, I don’t wanna learn computers. I don’t wanna —”

Lyndon: Some —

Breallyn: “do this sort of thing. I don’t wanna — this is the way I’ve always done it. I don’t wanna do something different.” What? Fair enough.

Lyndon: Because as we get older, we want a simpler life. Why would you wanna start doing things you don’t particularly wanna do?

Breallyn: Not that you have to do things you don’t wanna do, but the thought, “Oh, I can’t learn it,” or, “Ugh, maybe I’m just too old to learn this. Maybe I shouldn’t be trying something new. Maybe I shouldn’t take up that hobby I’ve wanted to do for a while,” whatever.

Lyndon: There’s probably circumstances like — tap dancing.

Breallyn: No, that would actually be very good for you to do.

Lyndon: For some people. Yeah. Taking up water skiing.

Breallyn: That would be fun.

Lyndon: That would be fun to watch.

Breallyn: My mum, when she was — I think she was in her 70s or almost in her 70s —

Lyndon: It couldn’t have been that long ago. Yeah.

Breallyn: So she’s still in her 70s. Yeah. Until next year. Yeah. She would still get up on water skis, and she even went into the Mulwala Canal.

Lyndon: Intentionally?

Breallyn: Yeah. Had her water skis there, got my brother to get the ski rope, hook it up to the back of his car, and drive down the canal road while she skied down the canal — in her 70s.

Lyndon: Hang on a minute. That sounds all kinds of illegal. And the word accomplice comes to mind. Yeah. Why aren’t they both in jail?

Breallyn: I wonder what would’ve happened if the police came — if my brother would’ve —

Lyndon: It’s Mulwala. Nothing would’ve happened. Are you kidding me?

Breallyn: They would’ve asked if they could have a go.

Lyndon: It would’ve gone something like that. “Oh, g’day, Boydy.”

Breallyn: Yeah, probably.

Lyndon: “Is that you, Sue?”

Breallyn: Probably would’ve been the same policeman that gave my brother his licence, when he was 17, by asking him to drive up to the shops ’cause he wanted to get a pie and the paper.

Lyndon: Oh, gosh. So all the cops are here, Brea. Finally. They’ve answered my call. She’s here.

Breallyn: They heard that my mum was water skiing.

Lyndon: Yeah.

Neurogenesis and Learning New Things

Breallyn: The brain can actually build new pathways and have neurogenesis, which is the growth of fresh brain cells in memory centres and in processing centres, but it actually needs novelty to do so. You can learn new things even at a stage where memory might be declining and processing speed might be slowing down.

It’s actually a great idea to learn new things because you do form new neural pathways. Your brain does grow and develop in new ways, but it does need you to take on something new and different. Don’t just stay in the same tracks doing the same thing. Do something new. Do something creative because that will build up your cognitive reserves and build these alternative pathways, which makes for a stronger, healthier, more networking and working brain.

Lyndon: When you said novel, I immediately thought novelty.

Breallyn: But — yeah, novelty.

Lyndon: Novelty.

Breallyn: Novelty, so newness. Something that’s different.

Lyndon: Ah.

Breallyn: So take on a new hobby or continue the creative works that you’ve always enjoyed, but yeah, keep stretching, keep learning, keep doing it. Increase your practice, keep on going with it.

Lyndon: So if I was playing, for most of my life, like a Fender guitar, could a novelty be to now start playing a 1956 Gibson Les Paul? Would that count as novelty? Or do I need to buy a novelty guitar?

Breallyn: Yeah. Do I need —

Lyndon: to buy one of those plastic Wiggles guitars?

Breallyn: Yes, you do. That’s the one you need.

Lyndon: Is that what you mean by novelty?

Breallyn: Yeah. I’m not gonna be put on the record saying you need new guitars. I’m looking at 20 guitars sitting in this room. Yeah. Let’s —

Lyndon: count them again.

Breallyn: But keep on playing would be the thing, and don’t just play the same songs. Write something new, play something new, develop a new style.

Lyndon: Do you know how there’s so much information coming at us in the world? Which information do you just switch off to?

Breallyn: Oh, so much of it.

Lyndon: Yeah. Yeah. Mine is talk on dementia ’cause I just go, “I think I’ll be right.”

Breallyn: Why? You think you’ve shown the early signs for too long?

Lyndon: No. As in, not I’ll be right ’cause I’ll get it. What are you talking about? Because I feel like I do activity all the time that is stimulating my brain.

Breallyn: Yeah. Yeah, I think so.

Lyndon: And because the activity is linked to being a musician, I actually have to keep doing it for the rest of my life. I can’t just go, “I’ll stop that now. I’m gonna retire.” I have to keep doing it. Yeah. That’s good.

Yeah. I actually saw — a couple years ago, do you remember we went to Serge and Brooke’s wedding?

Breallyn: Yep.

Lyndon: Was it Shadowfax Winery? Yep. I’m sure we went there. It might have been we were just having a look at the place with them. Do you remember that? We met them.

Breallyn: Yeah, they invited us to go on the wine tasting with them to pick the wines for the wedding feast.

Lyndon: Yes. Yeah. And inside, that restaurant was packed. And there was a duo or a trio playing, and the guy leading it, playing jazz guitar —

Breallyn: Yep…

Lyndon: and singing as well, I think, was easily 70 years old.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: He was fantastic. I don’t know if you remember. I was so impressed with the music. I was so impressed that he was still doing it, ’cause normally you see much younger guys. Yeah, it was awesome.

Breallyn: Yeah. Oh, for sure. Yeah, it’s great when people continue —

Lyndon: I should’ve found out who that was.

Breallyn: doing stuff, yeah.

Creativity as Lifelong Medicine

Breallyn: So talking about how creativity can be a really important medical intervention essentially, or like a health practice. People talk about going to the gym all the time or eating healthily, that kind of thing. Certainly as, like for women now, a lot of the advice is, “Don’t worry as much about the cardio side of fitness. You need to start lifting weights.” You gotta build that muscle mass and that strength because that’s what’s really gonna help you as you get through life and begin to get into those senior years where muscle naturally declines. Have a good solid base of muscle before that happens.

The same with creative practices. It should definitely be up there with health advice for people throughout their lives, like all through every stage of life. Only 10 minutes can be really good. You can do a quick sketch. You could write something down, even journaling, playing a few minutes on your guitar or whatever instrument, dancing even — just 10 minutes will be enough to release dopamine and break those negative cognitive loops, so it’s very good for your mental health.

That 45-minute set is very good too in lowering cortisol. That can make a massive difference to the brain and to the body over time if you’re regularly just finding an hour here or there a couple of times a week to just do something that you love doing creatively. It’s really helpful to your brain and your body.

And if you are able to do like a multi-hour block — like if you are a practising artist or if you get more time to really engage in a creative practice like writing something, creating something, painting something — it can get you into that deep flow state. And we talk about it a lot, like getting into the flow, like we just got into the zone. When you’re writing something, for me, time disappears, everything else fades away, and you’re just accessing that creative place inside yourself where all sorts of things you are discovering, and it’s oh so great when you get there.

What’s actually happening is that your brain has reached delta and theta wave frequencies.

Lyndon: Oh no, you’re gonna ruin the magic for me.

Breallyn: So y —

Lyndon: Permission to switch off.

Breallyn: You’re all about the frequencies and the sound waves. I hear about it all the time.

Lyndon: Yeah, that’s different. That’s different.

Breallyn: So it just means that your brainwaves are operating at a different wavelength than they do when you’re shopping or whatever.

Lyndon: You know I understand it, I just don’t want to understand it.

Breallyn: But what —

Lyndon: I don’t want you to destroy the magic.

Breallyn: I’m not destroying any magic. I’m just saying — like it’s so powerful that it’s like the same sort of thing that happens if you were to reach one of those deep meditation states. And if you’re not into meditating, which I know you’re not —

it’s good to know that your brain gets there anyway —

Lyndon: I’m not into —

Breallyn: by doing a creative thing.

Lyndon: Yeah, I’m not into forced meditation.

Breallyn: Yeah. And it gives your nervous system time to rest. It’s a restive state for your nervous system as well, like a real reset. So that’s why it’s so important for your body and brain, as well as for you to know that you’re enjoying that creative time and you are getting some output of the creative thing that you’ve wanted to do. So it’s healthy for so many reasons.

So this is Pain in the Health Notes, I don’t know. Did —

Lyndon: Did it used to annoy you when you saw older people — seniors, let’s say — getting excited over the smallest things, like they just saw a beautiful flower, or they just witnessed the way the wind moved through the willows? Or, let’s say, did you see that glistening spiderweb? I noticed you said that to our son yesterday — to have a look at some tiny little moths frolicking in the afternoon sunlight in the long grass.

Breallyn: They were really cute ’cause they were just bouncing up and down, and the sunbeams were coming through. You could see through their wings. They were —

Lyndon: Was he impressed with it, or do you think he just went —

Breallyn: I don’t know, but I’ve —

Lyndon: He went, “Oh, there’s — I’ve got much more important things on my mind, like Gaza and —”

Breallyn: Yes, probably…

Lyndon: and my next gig.”

Why Children and Older People Notice Beauty

Breallyn: He probably did think that, but this is the thing with that stuff — like I’ve always made a practice of pointing out things like that to our kids and talking about different things, playing games with that sort of stuff. We used to, on the drive to school, come over this hill and you’d look down the valley and you could see the city skyline in the morning sort of sunlight. And every day the clouds and the sky would be different, and we would play this game of who lives there today?

So it might be a fairy kingdom, it might be dragons, it might be trolls. Like anything. Could just be, if it was a dreary day, it was like, “It’s only accountants living there today.” Sorry, accountants.

Lyndon: Gee.

Breallyn: Yeah. It just was —

Lyndon: way to diminish our listenership…

Breallyn: The accountants are all switching off. I’m so sorry.

Lyndon: My gosh. I hope you have a bright, sunny day —

Breallyn: I hope you have a bright, sunny day.

Lyndon: You give them such a hard rap.

Breallyn: I don’t.

Lyndon: You do.

Breallyn: You do.

Lyndon: No, I don’t. I don’t even like to speak of them.

I used to play those games with the kids as well. What would you rather — would you rather be eaten by a colony of ants or stabbed in the eye with a blunt pencil? Similar.

Breallyn: Not quite similar. But no, I always point out nature things, or the light, or the — let’s enjoy the sunset, or whatever it is. Because I think it is those moments and those natural things that are important. And I tell you who enjoys them — small children and older people.

Lyndon: That’s what I’m saying.

Breallyn: And yeah, but people through the middle of their lives are so busy trying to run around figuring out what’s important that they miss those things. So it’s important to have time with children or older people —

Lyndon: Okay, so —

Breallyn: because they can remind you that these things —

Lyndon: Wait, we should do an ABC series on it.

Breallyn: are the fabric of life.

Lyndon: Maybe. Do you think though, when say the grandmother is with the grandchild, and they’re saying all that stuff, and the grandchild’s all into it, and then 10 years later, the grandparent is still saying that — “Hey, have a look at the way that cat just flicked its tail.” Do you think the older person or the grandmother in this story is saying that to that teenager because they haven’t realised that they’re not a toddler anymore, or because they go, it’s actually really important to keep noticing these things?

Breallyn: I think it’s really important to keep noticing these things.

Lyndon: No, I know you do.

Breallyn: Yeah, no. That’s — I think most people that are doing that, pointing it out to young people or saying that stuff, is because —

Lyndon: intentional…

Breallyn: it’s intentional. And I know, like my dad’s always done it to me throughout the years as well. That’s probably where I got it from. He’d always stop and point out the birds and the trees and the nature and, maybe have a story, maybe not, just be like, “Look at this.” And there was definitely a period of time when I was a teenager, it was like, “Ugh, yawn.”

Lyndon: Yeah.

Breallyn: But that didn’t actually last that long, where I was too busy, or, “How can I possibly look at that incredible mountain? Don’t you understand I have a pimple on my chin?” Like it’s so dramatic and all-consuming. So yeah.

Lyndon: And I suppose it’s when they start pointing out the same thing, that’s where you kind of start making a bit of a call to your siblings and go —

Breallyn: No, not at all. It’s different every day if it’s a nature thing. But no, I think it’s important to stop and notice it. And that’s a drop in cortisol as well — as soon as you start to notice beautiful things.

Lyndon: I tell you what I was thinking about — we’ve spoken about moving out to the Yarra Valley area.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: We’ve spoken about that for a long time. And I’ve been doing gigs out that way, and I really enjoy the second half of the drive when I’m actually going through some of the back roads and going through the bush, and I often put my window down just to smell what the bush smells like. And it’s really good if it’s rained overnight but the sun’s out. You start to get a smell of the eucalypts and the different plants that are around there and the smell of the soil.

And I had this realisation last weekend when I was driving out there. I thought, “Actually, if we lived out here, I wouldn’t be doing this drive.”

Breallyn: You’d be doing the second half of it. You’d be doing —

Lyndon: No —

Breallyn: you’d still be doing the last few kilometres.

Lyndon: No, ’cause those kilometres are on this side of the Yarra Valley. Obviously there’s bushland everywhere, but that particular stretch of road that I like —

Breallyn: Maybe you could just go for a drive there.

Lyndon: I know, but it’s like when people go, “Oh, I love the coast,” and then they move down there, and then they never — you know, they rarely swim in the water or that kind of thing.

Breallyn: Yeah, it can happen. I think I’d be appreciating it every day though, like looking —

Lyndon: Yeah.

Breallyn: Yeah, I think you would as well. Yeah, well — you love the bush.

Lyndon: This is the thing. It’s like we say we’re gonna go there. You don’t want a property in an area there that sort of could have just been transplanted from where we are now. You want one that’s more in danger of being burnt down during the fire season. Don’t laugh about that. But do you know what I mean? That’s ideally what you’re after — that you walk out onto your veranda, and you’re surrounded by what makes that area special.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Creativity Is Medicine at Every Age

Lyndon: To a degree. Anyway — that’s all we’ve got time for. That’s it. This is another one of your episodes where you’ve married art and science, which I actually don’t mind. But what were you saying?

Breallyn: I think —

Lyndon: What was your point?

Breallyn: Not that I wanna make a point every time, but —

Lyndon: Health and science and — no — particularly women’s health today, science, cognitive decline, and the arts. But that’s a tremendous wrap-up. My wrap-up would just be — creativity is important at every age.

Breallyn: So it’s never too late to start. No amount is too much or too little, and you get the health benefits whether you create a masterpiece or whether you just do a dodgy little scribble on a page. It doesn’t matter. It does the same good effects for your body and your health.

Lyndon: And 10 minutes of tap dancing a day is being prescribed by you. That’s what I remember.

Breallyn: Let’s get your tap shoes then. Get you started.

Lyndon: Oh, I’m a tapper from way back.

Breallyn: I know you’re a ballroom dancer from way back.

Lyndon: You shut your dirty mouth. Oh, boy.

Breallyn: How many lessons did you do?

Lyndon: I tell you what, that did not serve me well in Year 11. Didn’t —

Breallyn: increase your social standing?

Lyndon: Not at all. It was very damaging. I had to start trying to balance it out with saying to people, “I’ve done karate as well.” It’s funny, isn’t it, when you look back and you can start to pinpoint the moments that led to your incessant bullying.

Oh, just a big shout out to Karingal High School — nay, Secondary College — nee, it is now a retirement village.

Breallyn: Oh, you can get back there. Full circle.

Lyndon: Back there. Full circle moment. Wow.

Breallyn: Thank you for listening today. We hope you have a great week, and we’ll see you next time.

Lyndon: Bye.

Breallyn: Bye.

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