Neha Pathak, MD, FACP, DipABLM: Welcome to the WebMD Health Discovered podcast. I'm Dr Neha Pathak, WebMD's Chief Physician Editor for Health and Lifestyle Medicine. If you're listening to this podcast right now, I'm gonna bet that your email is open, maybe your phone is ringing or a text is coming through, and there's probably a streaming show paused somewhere in the background, or maybe it's even running.

And you're not alone. Many of us reach to our phones first thing in the morning before we've even opened our eyes, and we spend our days bouncing between devices, inboxes, apps. And at night, we find ourselves falling asleep to doomscrolling longer than we'd like to admit, and maybe even binge-watching shows even though we're exhausted.

And constantly being on doesn't just drain our energy, it rewires our brains, and it blurs the lines between what's urgent and what's unimportant. And I know I feel that every time I feel a ding on my cellphone, I feel like it's the most urgent matter in the world, even if it's just an unimportant marketing text.

And all of this leaves us feeling overwhelmed and disconnected from what's real in our lives. So today, we're gonna talk about why our brain and our body need regular digital detoxes. We'll explore how everyday habits contribute to a busy brain, and why stepping away from screens in small, realistic ways will improve our sleep, focus, mood, and relationships.

But first, let me introduce my guest, Dr Romie Mushtaq. Dr Romie Mushtaq is a board-certified physician who serves as Chief Physician Wellness Officer for the Great Wolf Resorts, where she leads data-driven wellness and culture initiatives for over 14,000 employees. She's dedicated her career to researching brain health and performance in the workplace, and is a highly sought-after keynote speaker on culture and leadership, working with Fortune 500 companies and global organizations.

Her thought leadership has been featured in dozens of international media outlets like The Financial Times, NBC, Forbes, NPR, and TED Talks. She's the USA Today best-selling author of "The Busy Brain Cure," published in nine languages as a guide to healing burnout in the workplace. Her mission is to help high-achieving professionals protect their brain and use brain science to build connected teams where people feel seen, heard, and connected.

Welcome to the WebMD Health Discovered podcast, Dr Romie.

Romie Mushtaq, MD, ABIHM: Thank you, Dr Neha. An honor to be here with you all today. And really, I always start by setting an intention and thanking the listener for the time that they are spending with the both of us between their ears, and allow us to be of service to make sure everybody feels seen, heard, and that you know that you're not alone.

Pathak: I want to thank you so much for setting that intention, and that sets me up for my next question to you was really how did you come to this work? What was your own personal health discovery or aha moment? Because you do so much that is so needed, and I'd love to know how you got here.

Mushtaq: Neha, it may be a story that feels over-told and oversold today, but I was one of the first physicians out of the gate, and maybe that's what it is to be called a visionary is the enormous pain you have to undergo. I am the daughter of immigrants, and success was labeled to me as one thing. "We have one daughter, and you will become a doctor."

I excelled in STEM and went to medical school and entered neurology at a time where less than 5% of the brain doctors in the United States were women. Even back then, I was doing cutting-edge research on the role of women's hormones in the brain in epilepsy and migraine throughout the life cycle.

Yet I was struggling, and we didn't have a term to talk about mental health in the workplace back then, let alone burnout. And chronic stress can cause physical disease, and chronic stress can kill you, and it nearly killed me, and I should know better. I'm a brain doctor. In 2010, I ended up in life-saving surgery, and when I woke up in the surgical ICU, I wasn't worried what the cardiothoracic surgeon was going to say to me.

I remember being in a really dark place and feeling alone. And the worst part was, Neha, nobody asked me at work if I was okay, and I was visibly struggling. And today, that fuels my mission as the CEO and founder of the Brainshift Institute and as a chief wellness officer that I believe everyone should feel seen, heard, and no one should feel alone at work.

Pathak: Wow, what a powerful story. And I wanna thank you so much for sharing that with us, with all of us that are listening.

So powerful and such an important discussion that we're having today. So I'd like to kinda narrow us into one piece of that burnout that comes from this feeling of always needing to be on. I think a lot of times we think about social media use, smartphones, digital detoxes necessary because a lot of what we're doing outside of work.

But if we think about what our modern work environments look like, it is being in front of a screen, being accessible at all hours, having emails that come to us all the time because of smartphones. So for people like me that grew up without a lot of early in my formative years, today's world of modern technology, all the apps, all the ways that everyone can stay connected really makes me feel overwhelmed and constantly like I have to be on. So what is this doing to our brains?

Mushtaq: Thank you. I wanna give this backtrack story of how I'm going to come to the diagnosis I'm about to give you of busy brain and how our brains are transforming with constant digital distraction. When I gave my story as a TED Talk, companies back in 2014 started to hire me to teach stress management and mindfulness, and it gave me a window into companies and to do research to say, "Wow, I'm not alone in feeling stressed," part of a sandwich generation.

And I think regardless of industry, especially the higher up you climb i- the hierarchy of your business, there's this constant global pressure to always be on, whether you're a doctor and you're always on call, you work for a company and you can't miss a sales email. It translates the same way.

We knew something was happening to our brains. And so in chapter nine of my book, I delve into the latest research that we're still learning about digital distraction and digital ADHD.

So when I went to medical school, attention deficit hyperactive disorder was only something that was diagnosed in childhood, or what you're hearing about now is a lot of adults in the Gen X Boomer generation, especially women, were never diagnosed, and they were missed in childhood.

What we know now from the psychiatric and brain science literature in the last seven to eight years is that this use of digital devices has rewired our brain, in simple terms. And I just wanna ask you a question, Dr Neha, 'cause I certainly am guilty of this. Somebody tells us the latest thing to watch on Netflix, we turn it on.

Do you have your laptop, iPad, or phone with you in your lap as well, or all three?

Pathak: Right now? Yes.

Mushtaq: Same.

I'm just as guilty, right? And sometimes we give ourselves an excuse of, "Oh, I'm gonna put that show on in the background and catch up on work," or you just get lost in social media. So we've gone from just needing a single device all the time, emails, to having multiple browser windows open on multiple devices, and then it's multiple browsers windows open in our brain.

And that actually is-- Social media is designed that way, and unfortunately, most corporate cultures are designed that way, that you always have to give your attention, and that's draining and it's rewiring our brains. And so the conversation you and I are having recording this podcast in 2026 is very different than even the conversation we were having five years ago as we were in the middle of lockdown because of this attention economy.

Mushtaq: We're dividing our attention. Your dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin, endorphins are exhausted. They're pushed to the brink. You think you need more caffeine. You think you need a ADHD medication. You take it, and you go back into the cycle. And then high-achieving professionals, men and women, then tend to go into perfectionism and procrastination, and something doesn't get done until you've given yourself that false deadline.

It's just like me binge-watching that series. I couldn't put it down, and my adrenaline is pumping, and I need to do the next one. And so until you hit the absolute deadline that this email has to be sent, now that adrenaline's pumping, and all of a sudden these are the people that tell me, "But doctor, I work best under stress, and I get my deadlines done."

And listen, it's not that your brain or my brain is inferior or superior to one another. These systems like social media, these binge-watching these shows are designed that way. And sa- same with many of our workplace cultures that have global teams. Like, there's this constant fear in you of, "Oh my God, if I sleep or I spend two hours with my family having dinner disconnected, am I going to miss something important?"

Pathak: So talk to us about that because I think a lot of people recognize that it feels almost impossible sometimes to stop scrolling, and all of the things you described are essentially ways that we keep ourselves scrolling, whether it's constantly rechecking our work emails or whether it's on social media or even something like what I was going for was to be very lighthearted.

So, I intentionally was like, "I'm not gonna watch hard news. I'm just gonna do this lighthearted news," but there's an infinite scroll there. So tell us a little bit about why this is intentionally done to keep us feeling like we have to come back and we can't leave.

Mushtaq: I want to give the same business analogy. If you look back into the early 1900s, into the 1950s and '60s of the tobacco industry and what they were doing, and they knew they had an addictive substance. They were paying advisors, sometimes even doctors or scientists to say, "No, no, tobacco is fine for you. If, in certain doses, you're gonna be just okay." And they knew it was addictive, and then they were creating advertising that made it look sexy or you're the only one, you're gonna be left out. You're not cool or rich if you're not smoking. Think of that. If you've watched Mad Men, you'll get to see it all unfold. I want you to know that social media companies and streaming and the online news, they've put billions into this research on how to keep us going. It's consumerism. And so that's essentially, I think, from a 30,000-foot view, what's happening. I say that not to be an alarmist, not to be a Debbie Downer, but what I don't like when I'm having conversations with professionals is that somehow we get personally shamed.

This is not a willpower issue. This is breaking an addictive cycle and understanding your brain chemistry and hormones to replace it with something that's more healthy and not addictive.

Pathak: So let's then kind of move in that direction. So you've helped kind of set the stage and really helped us understand what it is that we're talking about when we say digital addiction. So it's anything, it's any of these things. It's not just social media. You've helped us understand that there are psychological components, but also physical components to this.

So we're feeling that heart rate pumping, we're feeling that anxiety, and we're also feeling badly about ourselves and recognizing that we may be having attention issues that we didn't have before, and we're questioning why that is. So how do you then set yourself up for successfully shifting and addressing these issues?

Mushtaq: When I give keynote lectures or when we built our whole person wellness program at Great Wolf that we call Be PAC Positive, it was designed with brain science in mind. And in simple terms, non-medical terms, I call it learning how to dose your brain. Dose, D-O-S-E, stands for dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin, and endorphins.

When we're just on digital devices, it's like a constant dopamine hit, and we are reducing our feel-good hormones like oxytocin and serotonin that govern our sense of connection, our sense of wellbeing, our ability to sleep, our ability to have a good mood. And then endorphins decrease, and we have more physical pain and mental pain.

So I always say, "What can you do to dose yourself?" And there is something about creating a schedule and all those productivity tools and apps that are out there on the phone, but I always say the first step is to recognize where you are and give it a score. I felt that was the simplest way to let people know where their brain was.

So, for instance, here in the United States, I know you have global listeners, you can't get a home mortgage or car insurance without someone running your credit score and as a financial health. Why don't we have a brain score? You should know at all times in the last two weeks what's your brain doing.

And so that's where we took a validated neuropsychology stress test. We labeled it the busy brain test, and so you can take that. And I wanna know, is your score below a 30 or above a 30? Below 30 is great. Your dose hormones are in balance. And as it goes higher, we know you get—you have chronic stress or a busy brain, which means difficulty focusing, difficulty falling and staying asleep, and feeling anxious during the day.

That ruminating anxiety that intellects start to have. So that's number one, is know your brain score so we can start from there. For people that score we saw above a 55, 60, you're now heading into the chronic inflammation in the brain of burnout. And we wanna address that because, remember, in the beginning, I told my story for a reason.

Chronic stress will cause disease. Chronic stress can kill you. A year or two ago, if you tell me, "Well, Dr Romie, my labs were fine," but now your score is above a fifty-five, sixty, I want to recheck those markers of inflammation. I wanna make sure some of the key things, your vitamin D as a dog is balanced.

Hormones in men and women can go astray, and our sex hormones are not just about our libido or regular menstrual cycles or perimenopause, but it directly affects our ability to focus and our ability to remain calm. So number one, I—I want to do that. It—I think get your brain score and get some labs checked.

So that's step one. Then step two is how do you design a workday that is most beneficial to your circadian rhythm? And it's a big field of neural wellness that's going on right now, and this is critical. In an age of AI where we can't disconnect and AI is, quote, "doing the thinking for us," we have to protect our brain at work.

And this is a more difficult topic, Neha, but I really want to say this is—it has to start from the top. So if you are a leader and/or a founder listening to this, you have to model this for the rest of your organization. So if you're that boss that on vacation you're still logging on to team meetings, you're still responding to emails and making sure people email you, you've just set a toxic culture.

So I think step one, know your brain score. Step two, it has to be a culture change within your organization. And then we can talk about what to do in real life.

Pathak: So talk to us about that piece of setting yourself up for success. And you mentioned earlier that you have this 30-minute start-of-the-day routine that really sets you up. So tell us a little bit about that.

Mushtaq: I wanna break it up into something simple that we've been testing inside our company at Great Wolf Resorts. It's called the 3-30-3 Brain Reset Method, and that to restore our DOSE, our dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin, endorphins, three minutes, 30 minutes, and then three hours. It's like breaking that addiction cycle.

Can I put my phone down for three minutes and make contact with another human being? Ask them, "How are you feeling today?" We have, like, stretching exercises we do. Do a stretch break. Put on a song that uplifts you, that naturally elevates and sustains dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin, and all of a sudden the procrastination starts to dimmer a little bit.

Then we build into 30-minute breaks, what—and those key things are movement, nature, and social connection ideally. You hear a theme. I'm trying to get people to socially connect again and disconnect. And then three hours is the ultimate goal that ideally once a day, but in most worlds we can't do that, twice a week.

Could you have a three-hour break where you have minimum or no digital device use? You are cooking and eating a meal with your family. You are all going for a hike or a bike ride in the outdoors. You're raking leaves in your backyard. You're planting your herb garden. Understand that fear to check social media, your text messages will come.

Honor it. Say, "I'm gonna give myself 30 seconds," and then make sure there's no emergency and put it down if you need to, right? Because people have kids. We have elderly parents. We wanna make sure they didn't text us and something's wrong. But have those regular breaks, and that's how we break the addiction cycle.

My 30 minutes is in the morning. I know my day varies every day. I don't know if I'm getting on a flight to a different city, how many meetings or interviews I have, what I'm doing, and so we actually put it, my chief of staff, on my calendar that first 30 minutes of the morning. I have an old-fashioned alarm clock and I don't pick up the phone, and 30 minutes in the morning is to hydrate, pray, and meditate.

No matter how desperate I am of like, "Oh my God, let me check my calendar. What was my first thing?" I have to trust that if I set my alarm at 6:00 AM this morning that I don't have anything waiting for me at 6:30. Like, I can wait this 30 minutes and get going for the day. And, and that's probably the one thing I think most people can do, even if that 30 minutes is dragging your kids out of bed and getting them ready for school, you're not on your phone.

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Pathak: I love it. So, in terms of the 3-30-3, so the three minutes, is that something that you're sort of breaking your day up with?

Mushtaq: Yes. Ideally, we know for people that have a desk job, you're sitting in front of multiple digital devices, you need to, what I say, get up from the scene of the crime. Your brain sees your office desk, your mobile phone as a crime scene. Put it down, get away, and do something different. And we want to foster human connection.

The average age of our employee at Great Wolf is 19 years old. Our lifeguards and retail, they have grown up with digital devices, so we're trying to teach them, when you have a break, don't go to your phone, go to another human being. And we're actually training our supervisors and managers on empathetic listening and how to foster these fun social connections.

Pathak: I love what you're saying, and I love that this is being done in community at the workplace, because I think it kind of speaks to what you said earlier, which is that not only is there sort of this internal addiction that happens, and that's meant to happen, as you really explained to us in a, in a very concise way.

But there's also this external piece where it feels like everyone else is doing it. Everyone else is on social media, or everyone else is looking at their phone, or everyone else has a smartphone. So now I'm really thinking about that population that you're talking about, the young people, the children in our lives.

So, so talk a little bit about how you can start instituting some of these changes if you're not in a workplace culture where this already exists.

Mushtaq: I mean, I'm responsible for leading myself. You're responsible for leading yourself. And our children follow our actions, not our words. And I can't tell you how many parents have this conversation with me, yet they're also scrolling on social media, online shopping, and all of that, right? And that's where you put your attention, it grows, and that's what the energy you're having in the household.

So we have to lead our children, whether they are in our home, whether they're our nieces and nephews, our grandchildren, the children at work and in school, and we need to be the change we want to see in the world. I think there is a big analog life movement going on on social media. I live in downtown Chicago now, and I see more and more local coffee shops have board games, and I see people actually using them.

I think that's the world we need to go back in. Like, my wish is that we make public libraries the coolest place to hang out again and pick up physical books, for, for the introverts that are out there like me. And I, I know that is what's going to be key, and we have to start by leading ourselves.

And it's not perfect. Give yourself grace, and then start over again because you're like, "Okay, in the next hour, I'm gonna start with three minutes again." And if you missed your 30-minute window when you get up or before you go to bed, put a 30-minute window in the middle of the day. I did that yesterday. I took an hour and a half to do food prep in the middle of the day. I knew I'd be too tired at the end of the day, and I was working pretty late, and it, it was just wonderful. So now I have healthy food to eat all week.

Pathak: I love what you said about setting ourselves up for a digital detox in a very manageable, controlled way so it doesn't feel overwhelming. We also talked about some of the health risks from being overstimulated and stressed out and living in this digital world. What does the research tell us about the health benefits of stepping away?

Mushtaq: There's a twofold prong here. Is number one, if we step away and we connect with other humans, which is the goal, we know that social isolation or loneliness is the number one risk factor for heart disease, depression, cancer, you name it. Even more so now than, than metabolic syndrome. And in fact, that social isolation increases your risk for the risk factors for metabolic syndrome.

So that's one aspect of disconnecting to reconnect to other humans. But then let's also just talk about my individual brain or your individual brain, is when we start with the 3-30-3 method and we cure the busy brain and balance our hormones again. What we found in our literature in, in studying 17,000 brains was that the three most things people were suffering with was insomnia, difficulty falling and staying asleep, difficulty focusing during the day, and the ability to remain calm and not get anxious or have procrastination.

And we found that in typically seven to 10 days of instituting the protocol that's in the book, people actually were falling asleep and staying asleep through the night, and they were able to focus at work and get things done. Cross off that proverbial to-do list. Instead of opening the email and letting it fester all day of, "Oh my God, I need to get back to this," it was, "I'm gonna do that one hard thing this hour, and if that's the one email I need to tackle, I'm going to do it."

And then there's that dopamine reward of, "I did the hard thing," and then it just leads to the second email you were getting done. So that is the key, and it starts by getting your brain score. We help you reset your circadian rhythm or your neural wellness with a sleep protocol. You-- we have to get you back to sleep, and then after that, we institute the 3-30-3 method.

Mushtaq: I love the very practical 3-30-3 framework. Are there physical cues that we should also be thinking about? So where we put some of these devices, just the opening up some of these devices.

Pathak: What can we do around that to sort of set our space to set us up for success?

Mushtaq: There are a lot of apps, number one, that you can use on your desktop screen, your laptop, your iPad, and your phone that only allows you to have one app open at a time, one web browser open at a time. It will block your ability to get on Yahoo News or social media, whatever it is, or Netflix.

So I, I think that's okay, but that feels punitive as well, like you're being punished. When we look at, again, bringing Eastern medicine and feng shui principles in with neuroscience and psychology, is a cluttered desk is a cluttered mind. And so two things that I always tell executives is which way are you sitting and facing?

And one of the things we make a mistake in doing is that our desks are facing a wall, so we have blocked energy, and then there's clutter everywhere. So I think the biggest thing I could tell right now is take everything off your desk, wipe it down, clean it, and only put things back that you really need for this next day.

You probably don't need the stapler today, and then have things that cue dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin, and endorphin. So for many people, that's pictures of a loved one. I also think picture of your dream job or your dream goal or your vision board, having that up there. If you have an award from work, putting that up there.

Things that foster success in your mind. Then create the technology stations, and it's okay-- I, I'm very intentional that I put my cell phones away right now for this interview, that I can have a 30-minute block where I don't have a mobile device. And I'm really trying to train my brain to do the same in my personal life, that if I'm going to sit down and watch something on streaming, on television, not to have my phone or iPad or laptop open.

I'm really setting that cue and saying... I'm guilty sometimes of having three or four devices or screens open, and to say, "Get it down to one." And, and I think your physical environment is the biggest cue, both at your desk and then in your bedroom.

I really wanna honor and thank you for spending this time with us today in this conversation, and I'd love to cede our last few minutes to you if you could speak directly to our audience.

Pathak: You've given us so many tips. What would you like someone to take away that they can start on today?

Mushtaq: I think the biggest thing I want you to know if you're listening is I see you, I hear you, and I believe in you, and you're not alone. And if you just know that, maybe you'll put down the digital device and go connect with someone else that's in your life or that you work with and repeat these same words to them: I see you, I hear you, I believe in you, and you're not alone.

One small shift creates big impact.

Pathak: So, so beautiful, so powerful. And I wanna thank you again for your time.

Mushtaq: Thank you so much for having me, and thank you to the listeners.

Pathak: I'd like to share my three key takeaways from our conversation today. First, our modern digital life is exhausting our brains and feeding into our burnout. The constant notifications, dings, extensive screen time, endless emails, texts, social media, and streaming all stimulate the same reward and addiction centers in our brain that substance use and gambling do.

And over time, this busy brain pattern triggers anxiety, insomnia, trouble focusing, procrastination, and perfectionism, making us feel like we always have to be on.

Second, this is a culture problem, not a willpower problem. It's easy to beat ourselves up for all of this overstimulation, but we need to take a step back and look at the world around us. Every system that surrounds us is deliberately designed to keep our attention hooked. Doomscrolling and checking emails constantly is not a personal failure. It's a predictable brain response to addictive designs and reinforced by social and work cultures that reward constant availability, reactivity, and cultures that ignore signs of stress.

And finally, small structured resets can start to heal our overstimulated brains. Dr Romie shared her 3-30-3 method, encouraging brief, regular breaks from devices to reconnect with people, to engage in movement, to connect with nature, and to structure meaningful routines.

So that's 3-minute micro-breaks throughout the day, 30 minutes of daily protected time, like phone-free morning rituals, and, as often as we can make it work, three-hour-long digital-free blocks to help rebalance our brain chemicals, improve our sleep and focus, and create space for human connection.

To find out more information about Dr Romie and digital detoxes, make sure to check out our show notes. Thank you so much for listening. Please take a moment to follow, rate, and review this podcast on your favorite listening platform. If you'd like to send me an email about topics you're interested in or questions for future guests, please send me a note at [email protected].

This is Dr Neha Pathak for the WebMD Health Discovered Podcast.