Why habits start with your "cave brain"

NARRATOR: Our brains are out of date. Millions of years ago, when making babies, when eating, when trying not to get eaten

were our full-time jobs, our minds developed a very important survival tool. It basically goes like this.

We see some food that looks good, our brain says, calories, survival, and we eat the food.

It tastes good, and as a reward, our brain tells us we actually feel good. Because it feels good, our brain says, remember what you eat

and exactly where you found it. This plays over and over in our minds. We get hungry-- trigger, we seek out food--

behavior, and we feel good-- reward. Simple, right? This also works for avoiding danger.

Trigger-- see saber tooth tiger, behavior-- runaway, reward-- survive.

And remember to tell our buddies to avoid that part of a cave. Fast forward a few million years from now

when food is not hard to find, but there are a ton of things that make us feel bad. Anything from our job to our relationships

to our social status. New problems, but the same brain trying to use this same program.

What happens? Caveman brain says, next time you feel bad, why don't you try eating something good so you'll

feel better? We thank our brains for that great idea. Try this, and quickly learn that if we eat chocolate or ice

cream when we're mad or sad, we feel better. Same learning process, just a different trigger.

Instead of a hunger signal coming from our stomach, this emotional signal feeling sad triggers that urge to eat.

Later, feeling sad or stressed out triggers that urge to eat. Now with the same brain mechanisms,

we've gone from learning to survive to literally killing ourselves with these habits. And it turns out our brains don't stop at eating.

They use the same reward-based learning process for all sorts of things, from smoking cigarettes, to using opioids and other drugs, to even getting anxious.

The good news is that you can get your old brain to work in today's world. At Claritas Mind Sciences, we found a way

to hack the reward-based learning system to help you step out of unhealthy habits and into healthier ways of being.

And how well does this work? Some of our clinical studies have found five times the quit rates for smoking,

a 40% reduction in craving-related eating, and close to a 50% drop in anxiety.