Grow & Glow Book Chats: Rewire Book Review & The May Book

For the April Book Chat, our crew met to discuss and learn from Nicole Vignola’s neuroscience-backed self-help book Rewire. The book offers a series of bite-sized brain function lessons and a "neurotoolkit" to help yourself rewire your brain. They’re often overlapping, repetitive, and a little disorganized but I think that’s how the brain’s functions are! There’s not a simple scaffold to explain how it all works, there are overlapping, competing, and harmonious processes generating our daily thoughts and propelling our habits and activities along their daily rhythm.

The beach has always been my favorite place to read! Bo loves it, too.

I chose this book because I think it can really explain one of the basic benefits of coming for acupuncture treatment. When people ask me how acupuncture works, I tell them that we’re having a conversation with the nervous system and helping it rewire and reorient to the present moment. On the table and with the help of the acupuncture points, we practice relaxation, we practice coming down into the body, feeling grounded, centered, and connected. When we practice this in the treatment room, it is more easily accessed outside the treatment room; your neurons know the feeling and the pathways to get to relaxation. I think of this especially for things like stress and insomnia, where we want to cue the brain to respond differently, to relax, to bring us back down into a parasympathetic nervous system state. 

Here are my favorite bite-sized learnings from the book:

The Brain Is "Plastic", Not Static or "Elastic"

Let’s start with the brain being plastic: new neural connections can be created until the day we die. We used to think that after the major phases of childhood brain development, brains were relatively static. This is deeply untrue! Our neural firing patterns remain plastic and change-able until we die.

With the other half of this phrase, she’s explaining that if you make a mistake, fall out of a habit you’re trying to instill, or otherwise make a misstep on your plan to “rewire” a pattern in your brain, you’re not going to snap back to your previous state like a rubber band (elastic); you’re molding something plastic that can be perpetually sculpted and shifted. 

The Brain is Wired for Protection & Energy Efficiency

This is why we forget that this time on the drive home from work we’re going to try a different route or stop somewhere along the way– our brain is wired to be energy efficient and therefore it automates tasks. We delegate repeated thoughts and tasks to the subconscious in a process called “automaticity”. This is also something that Nicole refers to as “mental heuristics”-- your brain takes shortcuts. 

I thought the pages where she explained the complex relationship of the salience network, Default Mode Network, and the Central Executive Network were some of the most interesting & full of information I’d never learned elsewhere. Head over to the chapter called “The Power of Your Thoughts” that starts on page 98 to learn more about how these 3 networks work together to direct our attention toward either self-referential, ruminative thinking or external-focused, task-oriented thinking. An understanding of these three can really help shift away from circular thinking and explain why sometimes keeping ourselves busy is a type of medicine we’re offering our worried brains.

Neurons that Fire Together, Wire Together

“When neurons communicate with one another repeatedly, they get better at communicating and the signals between them grow stronger.” This means each time you think a thought or do an action, you prime your brain to re-think that thought or re-do that action. Analogously, neurons that fire apart wire apart. Each time you practice changing your reaction, or trying a new habit like putting your running shoes on the moment you get out of bed in the morning, or otherwise adding a space between cue, trigger, and reaction, you prime your brain to do it again and again more and more easily in the future. Doing something different and then repeating that different behavior or thought pattern helps reinforce it. This is the basic principle that explains why discipline eventually creates habit– before our actions and behaviors are fully written into our neural firing patterns, we have to work harder at doing them, but once we’ve practiced and practiced, it gets easier and easier to do it automatically.

The Basics are Powerful

Many of the most effective solutions to our mental tangles are the same ones that support our physical and cardiovascular health: breathing, sleeping, and exercise. These are some of the most potent and wide-reaching tools in our wellness toolkit—and remarkably, they’re free. Practicing intentional breathing that regulates the nervous system, prioritizing regular, high-quality sleep, and integrating movement into our daily routines can profoundly impact both mental clarity and emotional resilience. Often, the simplest practices offer the most transformative results.

Our Impression of Dopamine is all Wrong

Dopamine isn’t the evil, “pleasure” molecule that social media would have you believe it to be. Nicole explains that it’s actually the reward molecule– and we release it when we’re in pursuit of a reward, not once we’ve gotten it. She explains the way it works so clearly and hands out tips and tricks to work with your dopamine circuitry to accomplish your goals and dreams– head to page 275 to learn all about it for yourself. 

Who this book is great for:

• People who have been struggling but trying to make changes to their routines or habituated ways of being

• People who believe that some of their most challenging parts are just who they are and something they need to struggle with forever

• People who want to understand the shortcuts and best evidence-based practices to make effective changes in their lives

Our Next Book Chat: The Circadian Code

For our May 5th book chat, we’ll be reading The Circadian Code by Dr. Satchin Panda, PhD. Many people have a disrupted internal clock leading to things like daytime sleepiness, nighttime insomnia, dysregulated digestion & blood sugar, immune challenges, and so much more. I frequently talk to my patients about the ways that our hormone cascades naturally fluctuate throughout the day and how to eat, sleep, and even work according to these internal rhythms. Dr. Panda breaks down this fascinating physiology to help us work with instead of against the daily cycles of our bodies & feel our best day in and day out. 

Meet us at Neon @ 1974 Union St at 6:15 on Monday May 5th to chat about this book!

About the Book Club

In case you've missed it, I started a monthly "Grow and Glow" book discussion series to help patients, friends, and neighbors engage deeply with health and wellness topics in Western, Eastern, and Integrative medicine! Each month, I'll select a book for us to read together, followed by a conversation where we'll explore its themes. We'll cover a wide range of subjects, from athletic performance and longevity to avoiding harmful ingredients in food, fashion, and skincare, as well as preventing burnout, the neuroscience of emotions, and more. The books will include nonfiction, scientific journalism, memoirs, and even fiction.

Join us for the months that pique your interest and come chat about the book with your neighbors and friends.

Do I need to commit to the book club?

This is a casual "book club"—no need to participate every month. I'll announce the monthly book in my newsletter, and you can decide whether to join us for the reading and discussion based on your interest! We'll gather at Neon at 6:15 on the first Monday of each month to talk about that month's book and its themes.

A Lending Library

After each book chat, the book will be added to the new Glowing Gate Acupuncture Lending Library. Feel free to borrow a copy during your next visit!