Dementia is the clinical diagnosis of losing so much cognitive function that you are not able to take care of yourself on a day-to-day basis. In this episode, Dr. Joe Rogan discusses the science behind this phenomenon, and how we can prevent it.
00:00:24.000Future proof your brain from dementia and stay sharp at any age.
00:00:30.000First of all, what prompted you to write this?
00:00:34.000So I've spent a long time working in a whole range of different spheres related to the brain, how to treat newborn brain injury, how to treat and maybe even prevent certain traumatic brain injuries and concussions, looking at what affects long-term cognitive decline and dementia, as well as working with elite professional athletes, particularly Formula One drivers, trying to help them stay on top of their game for as long as possible.
00:01:02.000And I saw across all those different areas, there are these core things that the brain seems to thrive on that are required either for development or maintenance of cognitive function.
00:01:14.000And these are things that people can apply to themselves on a day-to-day basis, improve their focus and well-being now.
00:01:22.000And then long term, that translates to a lower risk of dementia.
00:01:27.000So is dementia an is it is a genetic is it a genetic thing or is it a function of atrophy?
00:01:42.000Certainly there's a genetic component.
00:01:44.000So maybe we'll zoom out to start with and just think about what is dementia?
00:01:50.000Dementia is the clinical diagnosis of losing so much cognitive function that you're not able to take care of yourself on a day-to-day basis.
00:02:00.000There are several different types of dementia.
00:02:03.000The most common is Alzheimer's disease.
00:02:05.000That's something like 60 to 80% of cases of dementia.
00:02:09.000The next most common is vascular dementia, something like 10 to 20%.
00:02:13.000And then there are others like frontotemporal dementia, Lewy body dementia, dementia you get with Parkinson's disease.
00:02:19.000But those first two, something like 70 to 90% of dementias, they are directly tied to a lifestyle in the environment.
00:02:30.000And right now, it's estimated that somewhere between 45 and maybe even 70 or more percent of dementias are preventable.
00:02:37.000And most of those fall into those two categories.
00:03:37.000Yeah, so four essentially has an effect of amplifying certain inflammatory effects in the brain.
00:03:45.000That's probably why it makes CTE worse, makes it more likely for you to get CTE, because if you're getting repetitive impacts, repetitive injuries, then it sort of exacerbates or makes that inflammatory response worse.
00:03:57.000But when you think about that in terms of Alzheimer's, if you have one copy of ApoE4, your risk of Alzheimer's has increased by sort of two to six times.
00:04:05.000If you have two copies, it's six to twenty times, depending on how you look at it.
00:04:10.000But all the data suggest that ApoE4 is a risk multiplier, right?
00:04:17.000So it's not that if you have a copy of ApoE4, you're definitely going to get dementia.
00:04:23.000It's that in the setting, particularly of the modern environment, risks of dementia or risk factors for dementia are amplified, like excessive alcohol intake, physical inactivity, low-quality diet.
00:04:37.000So that also means that if you have, if you, if you then address those risk factors, you have greater benefit, right?
00:04:45.000Because you're offsetting some of that additional risk.
00:04:48.000So however you look at dementia from a genetic standpoint, and it can also be family history, right?
00:04:53.000If you have a family history of dementia, you have an increased risk of dementia.
00:04:57.000But a lot of what comes with family history is shared environment and shared lifestyle, right?
00:05:01.000You eat and sleep and move like your parents did.
00:05:04.000And so if they had a lifestyle that might increase their risk of dementia, you get that as well.
00:05:10.000So even if you do have an increased genetic risk, you can offset a large part of that through lifestyle and other environmental factors.
00:05:18.000Okay, so for some people, there's an increased genetic risk, but do some people who do not have this increased genetic risk, do they still have a possibility of getting dementia just from atrophy or just from sedentary lifestyle?
00:05:32.000So the kind of the way we would say it is that not everybody who has ApoE4 gets Alzheimer's, and most people who have Alzheimer's do not have ApoE4.
00:07:26.000So when you started studying this, do you have someone close to you that has Alzheimer's or is it just a field of study that you're interested in?
00:07:36.000One, I focused initially on the brain early in life and then elite level cognitive performance in athletes.
00:07:46.000And you kind of see that these things sort of tie together.
00:07:49.000Like what happens early in life, what happens during life, affects what happens later in life.
00:07:53.000But I also had my grandfather died of dementia.
00:07:56.000He was an alcoholic and he had a combination of alcoholic, you know, alcohol-induced brain atrophy plus vascular dementia.
00:08:07.000I really wonder about people today, and this is one of the reasons why I was so interested in this, because what are we just talking about before, that people are being oversaturated with nonsense but not stimulated in any way that challenges your mind.
00:08:20.000I mean, this is a constant state today.
00:08:22.000And then on top of that, you've got a lot of people that are using AI throughout their day to solve all their problems where they don't think at all.
00:08:33.000And there's been some studies on that that show that it's a decrease in cognitive function.
00:08:52.000So this one, maybe one of the studies you're thinking of was a study they did at MIT.
00:08:56.000And they had students write essays and they could either just write it using whatever they had in their head already or using Google or using an LLM.
00:09:06.000And what they showed was that as you increase the amount of outside support you got, you know, Google and then I think it was ChatGPT, then there was less activity in the brain networks associated with actually doing the task and students remembered less well afterwards.
00:09:31.000But what's interesting is that they found a version.
00:09:35.000So like some of the students who had previously written an essay just for themselves, then they asked them to go back and use ChatGPT on top.
00:09:47.000And what they found was that the final output was better.
00:09:50.000So the way that we can use these tools, rather than just asking it to do all the stuff for us, which is what most people are doing, and I think will cause skills and maybe even parts of the brain to atrophy because they're not being used, is we use them as orthotics.
00:10:06.000Like they can expand our capacities, right?
00:10:09.000You try writing it all first, and then you say, hey, what did I miss?
00:10:38.000I mean, completely uncharted territory that people are staring at their hand for eight hours a day.
00:10:43.000I mean, that's really what you're doing.
00:10:45.000You're staring at your hand and you're hoping, usually unsuccessfully, to get something that really excites you and something that's really unique and changes your perspective on things.
00:10:55.000I mean, I think maybe when I was using social media every day, maybe once a day I would get something that was really interested in that I would save.
00:11:06.000And I would think, okay, that'd be a good subject to bring up on the podcast.
00:11:09.000But the rest of the time, it was just horseshit.
00:11:13.000Well, part of the algorithm, and this, you know, I'm not an expert in training algorithms to do this, but part of the goal of the algorithm is that you don't get everything that is perfect or that immediately captures your attention up front, right?
00:11:40.000But what's particularly interesting about social media is it leverages the fact that we are social beings.
00:11:47.000So we prioritize information that is called, the acronym is Prime, prestigious, in-group, moral, and emotional.
00:11:55.000And this is even greater in social contexts, right?
00:11:58.000Because we are trying to learn about our social environment so that we can survive our group and be fitter.
00:12:04.000And so social media makes us think that we will get that information whilst at the same time offering us the exact opposite, which is essentially isolation.
00:12:13.000But it leverages that desire of the human brain to find this social information and this social connection whilst not giving us any of that.
00:12:23.000Also, without getting any feedback from another human being while you're communicating ideas.
00:12:29.000So you can say the most horrible shit to people in a comment or a text message and you don't think about it because it's like there's not a person there.
00:13:00.000I mean, some of the richest corporations in the world, they gather a thing that we never thought of was valuable, which is data.
00:13:07.000I mean, when people first started using these things, when people first started using the internet, nobody really thought that data was going to be one of the biggest commodities in the world.
00:13:16.000Yeah, but now if they know what captures your attention and what you'll spend money on, and that's a perfect way to get as much out of you as possible.
00:13:27.000So the concept is future-proofing your brain.
00:13:32.000What are the things that you think people should be doing to try to future-proof their brain, other than avoiding social media and avoiding a lot of the stuff that we're talking about here?
00:13:42.000So I think every tool has a possible use.
00:13:46.000So for instance, social media, if you have crafted a social media that allows you to maintain connections that you wouldn't have otherwise, like the original version of Facebook as it existed 25 years ago was just like posting pictures and you could like chat with some family members, right?
00:14:05.000So if you use social media like that, and there are studies that show that if you're using online tools, including social media, and it increases communication and connection beyond what you would have had otherwise, that can be a net benefit.
00:14:19.000If it's all you use and it's replacing in-person human connection, then it's a net negative.
00:14:24.000So there can be ways that it could be beneficial.
00:14:27.000And if your Instagram feed is just like cute dogs running around in the snow, which is what most of mine is right now, that can be a nice five-minute break between cognitively demanding tasks.
00:14:42.000But when you think about future-proofing your brain, this idea that there is some unknowable future, right?
00:14:50.000We don't know what the future is going to look like.
00:14:52.000But if we want to exist in that future, we're going to need good processing speed, good decision-making skills, good working memory, good emotional and social skills, right?
00:15:08.000And so in order to maintain those, we need to challenge and stimulate them.
00:15:14.000So I think the most important thing most people can do is think about new challenging and often creative skills.
00:15:24.000And there's a lot of evidence for creative arts, music.
00:15:28.000What they do is they improve the function of networks in the brain that are at risk during the processes of aging, particularly because they're important for attention and social connection.
00:15:43.000And so if we really invest time in doing these things that we suck at and get better, but get better at them, we maintain these broad cognitive skills that we're going to need in the future regardless of what happens.
00:15:58.000So the goal is to build as much cognitive capacity as possible.
00:16:03.000I have this idea of headroom, which is the difference between what you need on a day-to-day basis versus what you're truly capable of.
00:16:11.000It's the difference between, like on a day-to-day basis, your legs need to be strong enough to like get you up off the toilet, right?
00:16:18.000But your maximum capacity is like, what's your max back squat?
00:16:22.000The difference between those is your headroom.
00:16:24.000And then that gives you capacity to perform when you're injured or sick or you need to like lift your car off your buddy because it got flipped in a car accident.
00:16:34.000Like when you need to draw on greater resources, you want those resources to be there.
00:16:38.000Because we are going to be stressed, sleep deprived, sick, and we still want our brains to function.
00:16:43.000So investing in like really challenging tasks and skills builds that capacity so that we have access to it when we need it.
00:16:52.000What is the function and like what is the effect on the brain when you learn a new skill, like sucking at something, which I always tell people is one of the best things you can do.
00:17:02.000A lot of people don't enjoy it because they're ego.
00:17:04.000They don't like being frustrated that they're terrible at something.
00:17:07.000But there's something about not being good at something and dedicating yourself to it and seeing market improvement that stimulates all sorts of areas of your mind, which I find really interesting.
00:17:20.000So most people don't realize that the process of learning, which in itself is like the core process of neuroplasticity, right?
00:17:29.000The brain making new connections and cementing new connections.
00:17:33.000That whole process is driven by failure, essentially, and making mistakes.
00:17:39.000Because your brain is a prediction machine.
00:17:40.000It's constantly predicting what's going to happen next based on the world around you and what you're trying to do.
00:17:47.000And so imagine that you're trying to do some kind of new move in jiu-jitsu or something.
00:18:06.000But that's what diverts resources in the brain to say, hey, we need to close the gap between what we hoped would happen and what actually happened.
00:18:13.000And that's what drives neuroplasticity.
00:18:15.000And this is also then what drives the cementing and function of these networks in the brain associated with that.
00:18:22.000So the idea that you start sucking at something and you get better at it over time, that is exactly the thing that the brain needs in order to improve and maintain its function.
00:18:35.000Think you know what's going to happen during the big game?
00:18:37.000Call it with DraftKings Predictions, a new app where you can predict outcomes on football's biggest game.
00:18:44.000Make real money predictions on the big game and put your money where your knowledge is.
00:20:19.000And if you think about like one of my favorite books is Range by David Epstein, which talks about the broad range of skills that people who then really success really succeed in academia or sports have, right?
00:20:33.000They had like a broad base of talents that they can then draw upon as they specialize later in life.
00:20:39.000And I think that's something that we can all aspire to.
00:20:41.000But equally, what's probably more common is that we try something and we do it for a little while and then we just kind of like give up on it and we try something else.
00:20:50.000And there's like a little bit of benefit to that.
00:20:53.000But when you look at some of the studies that really examine the effect of learning some of these creative skills, and they've done it with tango dancers and painters and video gamers, when you compare an expert to an amateur and where you're seeing the benefits of expertise in terms of the function of some of these networks in the brain, it really is the development of some level of expertise is probably required to see the maximum benefit.
00:21:21.000Obviously, the learning curve is steepest at the beginning, right?
00:21:24.000Right when you're beginning to learn something, that's when you'll learn the fastest.
00:21:28.000But there is also some benefit to expertise.
00:21:30.000So some of that, just to say that pick one or two things that you're actually excited to continue getting better at for a long period of time.
00:21:40.000And so then maybe you do have to try a bunch of different things until you find the thing that really gets you going.
00:21:48.000But across all those different skills, they have similar core effects on the brain.
00:22:22.000And I'm seeing this like excitement in this new project.
00:22:26.000And we were talking about it, about how that is one of the things that's very difficult to do, but it's more complex than learning because it's learning and interacting.
00:22:43.000You're learning, but you have to, it requires like this back and forth with another person.
00:22:49.000You have to understand sentence structure.
00:22:51.000It's just like calm, and especially French is so different than English.
00:22:55.000There's so much weird shit involved in it.
00:22:57.000But you could see, like I could see in her that like this is very stimulating to her mind.
00:23:02.000And it made me go, oh man, I should learn a language.
00:23:04.000But I'm like, fuck, where do you have the time to learn a language?
00:23:07.000But then I thought about like when I was on social media all the time, I would look down at my phone some days and it would say, screen use today, six hours.
00:23:22.000I'd be able to go to Taqueria and order in Spanish.
00:23:25.000It's like we spend so much time doing nonsense that anything that you can do that requires your brain to be in that uncomfortable state of, what is the, oh, what is this?
00:24:42.000So when you look at the trajectory of cognitive function over the over like your entire life, imagine like a graph where on the one side you have cognitive function and it could be something basic like processing speed.
00:24:53.000How quickly does your brain process information?
00:24:59.000It tends to peak sometime around our sort of mid-20s to early 30s.
00:25:04.000It's usually the peak on average tends to be higher and later the more time we spend in education.
00:25:10.000So the more time we spend essentially as professional learners, the more we can build that kind of final capacity.
00:25:18.000After that, it's just sort of like an average decrease downwards.
00:25:22.000And a colleague of mine, Josh Turknet, and I, he's a neurologist, we wrote a paper a couple of years ago where we theorized that the reason why we see that decline at the population level in cognitive function from about that age is because we go to work, we do the same thing again and again and again.
00:25:44.000And then everything else in our life gets in the way.
00:25:49.000And we never spend that same time investing in building our cognitive capacities the way we did when we were kids and when we were in school.
00:25:59.000And so the decline is partly because we just stop doing that.
00:26:04.000So one of the theories of aging is that it's just the continuation of development, like process of development.
00:26:12.000And most of the processes of development in the brain are refining connections based on the environment and the stimulus the brain receives.
00:26:21.000So if you start removing stimuli because you're no longer engaging in these like cognitively challenging things, the brain's going to start removing connections.
00:26:32.000And as a result, you start to see decline.
00:26:35.000And so there are studies that show if you have a very stimulating job, it's very complex, problem-solving skills, lots of social interactions, you have a slower rate of cognitive decline as an adult and a lower risk of dementia.
00:26:48.000You see in individuals who continue to engage in reading, reading, writing, lectures, dancing, a whole bunch of hobbies, again, you see a slowed rate of decline.
00:27:01.000So some of what we just expect to happen with age is because of the way we stop engaging with the world and we stop challenging ourselves.
00:27:09.000Well, it completely makes sense, right?
00:27:11.000Like if you think about physical activity, it goes along the same kind of path.
00:28:30.000And as long as I tire myself out from activity, I can relax and I can concentrate on things.
00:28:37.000And I'm very interested in certain things and I can lock into them and concentrate.
00:28:41.000But if I was forced to be in a classroom with a very boring teacher teaching a subject I'm not that interested in and I was a child, if I had the wrong parents, luckily I didn't, I would be medicated.
00:29:58.000But if I took a stimulant right now, I'd be like, dude, I am so much better.
00:30:02.000So, no, but do you know what happens in certain individuals with ADHD, when you give them stimulants, they calm down, right?
00:30:09.000So I think there's a combination of multiple things.
00:30:11.000Some is, yes, like these can be very beneficial traits in the right settings, but you also have to consider that we're layering on a modern environment that's like bright lights at night, a whole bunch of caffeine and stimulants.
00:30:28.000And yeah, of course, some of it is, I think, right, the teacher is boring and they're just not engaged because the majority of people with ADHD can still focus on things that they're interested in focusing in.
00:31:24.000Maybe I wouldn't be able to concentrate on anything.
00:31:25.000My brain would be bouncing all over the place.
00:31:27.000Like, how much of it is a biological requirement that your body has to release energy?
00:31:34.000So I think you can, I would expand it out even further than that because physical activity is a core requirement of our biology and physiology.
00:31:44.000There's a nice quote by Inigo Saman Milan, who's a well-known exercise physiologist, who says that physical activity is baked into our evolutionary development so much so that now we've had to invent exercise in order to prevent what happens when we don't move.
00:32:08.000So the lack of movement is a disease-causing pro-aging situation.
00:32:16.000So to stop you there, what if, I mean, or do they, when they treat kids with ADHD, do they take that into consideration?
00:32:25.000So as I, well, I'm not an ADHD researcher, so I genuinely don't know.
00:32:31.000But I would think that before you would give someone a stimulant, maybe track and field.
00:32:40.000Do something where you've got to run around where you're like, ooh, oh boy, I can focus now.
00:32:45.000I think that that's, again, I would say that that's needed for all kids regardless of any potential diagnosis.
00:32:52.000So of course, I think that should be taken into consideration.
00:32:56.000Whether that's going to be enough for every kid, hard to say.
00:33:02.000But we know that all humans require significant amounts of physical activity just for their biology to work properly.
00:33:09.000So certainly if that's not being taken into account or it's not available or it's not encouraged, there are a whole host of conditions where that's going to become a problem.
00:33:17.000Well, it just only makes sense, right?
00:33:19.000And I mean, this has been talked about forever.
00:33:23.000The Stoics used to talk about it, quieting the mind.
00:33:26.000I mean, samurais used to talk about it, like that physical activity.
00:33:30.000One of the main benefits the Chinese used for kung fu thousands of years ago, quieting the mind.
00:33:36.000And the propensity that we have in the society, this direction of almost immediately prescribing a medication for something, when it seems like what you're doing is you're dulling a biological requirement.
00:33:51.000You're dulling the impact of this biological requirement that you're not needing.
00:33:56.000Why wouldn't we prescribe exercise first and then think about those things?
00:34:00.000Like, for instance, like hormone replacement.
00:34:04.000If you have a good doctor, an ethical doctor that is working with someone and they find out you have low testosterone, one of the first things they do is adjust your diet.
00:34:16.000They say, well, you have so much food in your diet that causes inflammation.
00:34:19.000You have a very high rate of complex carbohydrates.
00:34:28.000Let's remove those things first and then let's see what happens.
00:34:33.000And then you increase your protein and you start drinking water and you go, oh, look, your hormone levels are going up naturally.
00:34:40.000Well, because you're fucking poisoning yourself, right?
00:34:43.000So wouldn't you, I mean, why don't they prescribe exercise for kids?
00:34:49.000Other than the fact that you can't make money off of it, wouldn't it be a good idea?
00:34:54.000So I think that all kids should absolutely get several hours, ideally, of movement and physical activity of different kinds every day.
00:35:05.000Part of the problem, it's not that scientists or doctors don't think that's important.
00:35:13.000Right now, the systems that we have make it very difficult for those things to be put in place, right?
00:35:21.000So making sure that every kid has the time and the resources to be able to exercise and the right kind of people so that they know what they're doing and they're supervised.
00:35:32.000And it's the same with, say, with testosterone replacement if your testosterone is low.
00:35:39.000Like most, right, the primary cause or one of the most common causes of low testosterone in men is right that combination of metabolic disease, being sedentary, poor quality diet.
00:36:57.000I think that those of us for whom this has become a part of our personality and our lives, like you and me, of course, of course you just do that.
00:37:09.000But for people who have never had anything like this, and it's never been a part of their environment, it's never been a part of who they are, changing that actually requires a ton of work and coaching.
00:37:37.000Jellyroll was 500 pounds and he's lost 300 pounds and he did it with no Ozempic, no GLP1s.
00:37:47.000He just started walking and started cutting sugar out of his diet and slowly but surely, not even slowly, over the course of just a couple of years, he shrunk to like a normal sized human.
00:38:00.000But he drew inspiration from a lot of other people.
00:38:03.000You know, one of them, he's good friends with my good friend Cam Haynes, who's an ultra marathon runner and endurance athlete.
00:38:10.000And so, you know, he's taken him on runs and worked out with him and helped him and just watching YouTube videos.
00:38:16.000And just all he started doing was just walking, you know, where he couldn't walk up hills and he would just walk around his block and walk up the hill when he didn't want to do it.
00:40:10.000It's just that different people are going to need different levels of support to do that initially, right?
00:40:16.000Gain that momentum, understand how that feels, how it changes them.
00:40:22.000And right now, the majority of people don't have access to that kind of support.
00:40:27.000And I absolutely hope that that changes, right?
00:40:30.000The food environment changes so that it's much easier to change the way that you eat and that the built environment changes so that it's much easier to go out and have a walk and do a lot of that.
00:40:42.000So I think we just have to consider that it's both, right?
00:40:46.000There's an individual component, right?
00:40:47.000But there's also like a societal component where we have to make this as easy for people as possible and sort of like build it into their lives such as they are.
00:40:56.000Okay, so let's consider the societal aspect of it.
00:40:59.000Let's consider the like how would you implement something?
00:41:04.000Like let's imagine that you get appointed to some committee that's in charge of trying to facilitate this growth and improvement in people.
00:41:17.000So I think you need a few different parts to it.
00:41:24.000One great part would be to say through, you know, if you could dramatically improve quality and access of like education at all levels and make physical activity just be a regular part of that.
00:41:39.000That has been slowly removed from many educational curriculums around the world over time.
00:41:45.000So bring some of that back and it just becomes part of day-to-day life.
00:41:49.000And then you would also teach people the skills involved in some of these other things.
00:41:54.000So like teach people how to cook and how to do that within the bounds of what they have access to, their cultural preferences, dietary preferences, financial abilities, that kind of stuff.
00:42:07.000Right, that should be a part of a school curriculum.
00:42:10.000Just like you should teach kids about taxes and all these other things.
00:42:14.000And so I think if you start early on and you do this with sort of curiosity and skill building, then you release people out into the, you know, that I think that's the place to start.
00:42:27.000Because when you get out into the real world and you're working three jobs and you live somewhere where you don't want to go for a walk outside and like you can barely get six hours of sleep every night and you've got three kids that you're trying to look after, saying, oh, hey, you should do 100 push-ups every day, like that's not going to happen.
00:42:45.000Other things are going to happen that are more important.
00:42:48.000So I think there's that part, maybe the skill building part.
00:42:51.000Then it's thinking about how people have opportunities to do those things.
00:42:57.000And then I would think about access to high quality healthcare, psychological care, like these things that sometimes people need help that they can't get access to or it's expensive or whatever.
00:43:12.000So I think giving more of that so that they get support when they need it would definitely help as well.
00:43:18.000I think one great way would be to devise a website, make like maybe like even a government website where you put in like your body weight.
00:43:32.000What this, that, the other thing, what's your diet?
00:43:36.000And then they implement a program and you could follow online with a bunch of other people that are doing the same thing and post your results.
00:46:06.000The one downside of that is that there was an app, I can't remember the name of it, that tried to build that for exercise.
00:46:13.000So like you'd have these buddies and they'd be your accountability buddies.
00:46:16.000But what happened was that when people started to slip, they left the platform much faster because they were like, I don't want my buddies to know that I'm not doing what they are supposed to be helping me do.
00:46:26.000So you kind of have to like build in multiple buffers and different ways to help people depending on what it is that motivates them or not.
00:46:33.000I mean, we have public education, right?
00:46:42.000Why don't, I mean, how much money would it cost to have community gyms set up where you don't have to have money to join, where it's paid for by your taxes?
00:46:50.000You're not talking about something that's outside of, you know, like financially, it wouldn't be feasible.
00:47:27.000And there was something very similar close to where I grew up in the UK, just like for a couple of pounds, you go do some kind of martial arts class or something similar.
00:48:51.000But the thing about Planet Fitness is they kind of a lot of these big gyms, not just singling out Planet Fitness, they kind of hope that you don't show up.
00:49:31.000You know, fucking crazy people shitting in the shower.
00:49:36.000Blue Cross, Blue Shield, many health insurance plans offer gym membership through reimbursements, discounts, or programs like ActiveFit or Global Fit.
00:49:46.000Benefits can include $20 to $400 annual reimbursements.
00:49:51.000So some people can use their health insurance to get some of that fee covered.
00:50:11.000Well, the thing is, like, there's one thing, like, for someone, and I've taken friends to gyms before that don't work out, and they're like, what do I do?
00:51:34.000Whereas all the data suggests that literally any type of movement above what you're doing right now is beneficial, cardiovascular health, cognitive health, dementia risk.
00:51:44.000So I think some of it is just like letting people know and having people understand that it doesn't take that much to move the needle.
00:51:52.000And then when they start to do a little bit, right, you get a bit of a bug.
00:52:51.000One of the things that I like when I talk about movement in particular or exercise and say cognitive function is that you will start to see benefits relatively quickly.
00:53:04.000So if you go and do a six second max sprint a couple of times, right?
00:53:10.000And there are studies that show this, you will acutely, like immediately see an improvement in cognitive function, better blood flow to the brain.
00:53:17.000You've created arousal, which is really important for focus and attention.
00:53:21.000If you go for a walk outside, right, you will sleep better that night.
00:56:10.000They do the sleep, they do the training, like they're traveling with them the whole time.
00:56:14.000They sort of can manage as much of their life as possible.
00:56:18.000And when you're thinking about that level of skill, the stimulus part has taken care of itself, right?
00:56:30.000One of the reasons why these guys are so good is because it's all they've done every day for two plus decades, four decades if you're Lewis Hamilton or close to that.
00:56:44.000So, and that's slowly building these skills first in karting, then in these different formula categories, formula three, formula two, up into Formula One.
00:56:53.000And so the kinds of things that we might work on, and so like I'm helping the coaches, working with the drivers, we have like a huge team, you know, doctor who works with a bunch of Olympic athletes as well.
00:57:07.000And so it's a combination of, are there any individual performance limiters?
00:57:12.000So we might do some blood tests, look at nutrient status and various other things, you know, make sure they're really on top of that with their diets.
00:57:20.000But then in that kind of world, and like, I'm sure you experienced this yourself, everybody's got a thing for you to try or a thing for you to do, right?
00:57:31.000Like you're constantly being bombarded with the latest, greatest technology and like this guy wants to study this thing.
00:57:37.000So a lot of what we do is like be really careful about the things that get added and maybe even take stuff away if we need to.
00:58:34.000So it's what can we do to maintain their level of performance throughout the season?
00:58:38.000This is something that the coaches do a ton of work in.
00:58:39.000Like how can we, what kind of exercise and how can we do targeted training to like maintain performance throughout the year?
00:58:47.000And then the other part is how can we get as much recovery as possible?
00:58:51.000Because if we want them to adapt to all the work they're doing and come back each weekend at the top of their game or as close as possible, we need to get them to rest and recover and come back and do it again.
00:59:04.000So often we're not focusing on the stimulus part.
00:59:15.000In Formula One, often it's how can we get these guys to recover better?
00:59:18.000How can we get these guys to sleep better?
00:59:20.000And then that might be technology, but it might also be, you know, just like, how can we nail the basics again and again, make sure they're getting enough time in bed, right?
00:59:28.000Especially when you're traveling a bunch, that gets really difficult.
00:59:31.000So we're often focused on the recovery side and how we track, like, how do we collect those data?
00:59:36.000How do we know when something's starting to slip and get on top of it early?
00:59:40.000That's the kind of stuff we tend to focus on.
00:59:42.000So let's talk about the jet lag aspect.
00:59:44.000What are the strategies for mitigating jet lag?
00:59:48.000And like, how do you went, like, let's say if they fly in for a race, like if they're going from Europe to the United States and they have to race, how many days in advance do they arrive?
00:59:59.000And how do they shift their circadian rhythm and eliminate jet lag?
01:00:06.000Yeah, there's the time for them, like the number of days they come before the race will depend on how long it was since the last race, plus what other things they've got going on.
01:00:19.000But it's often like two or three days, right?
01:00:21.000They'll try and get it come in the beginning of the week, at least like Monday, Tuesday, if the race is then going to be on Sunday.
01:00:28.000And then as much as possible, you might start to try and shift things earlier.
01:00:34.000So shift your light exposure so that it aligns more closely with your destination a couple of days before you travel.
01:00:43.000Shift exercise and caffeine timing again, because those things shift circadian rhythm so that so you can kind of get closer to what you're going to do when you land.
01:00:55.000And so those are probably the primary tools is exercise, light, caffeine.
01:01:01.000You can use some of them use melatonin.
01:01:13.000It's a fancy word for like time giver, like helps to drive circadian rhythm.
01:01:16.000So often when you're flying, they'll give you a meal that's happening like in the middle of the night in the time that you're going to land, right?
01:01:26.000So often you might try and avoid eating while flying and then have your next meal in time with like a normal meal timing when you land.
01:01:34.000I've heard that one of the things to help with jet lag is just eliminate meals when you're flying, period.
01:01:40.000There's something about eating, even if it doesn't have anything to do with the time.
01:01:44.000Like, say if you're flying from Los Angeles to New York, one way to eliminate jet lag, they say, is just to not eat on the flight.
01:02:12.000Because what is explained to me is that just there's something about your body processing food when you're flying that actually exacerbates jet lag.
01:02:22.000So I can't think of a you know other than that makes sense.
01:02:25.000Other than the fact that, I mean, you're obviously, you know, sat still for long periods of time, which might not normally happen at that time of day as well.
01:02:32.000I think the majority of it in terms, certainly in terms of jet lag plans, is thinking about the timing of meals relative to circadian rhythm because you normally break your first fast at a certain time of day, have dinner at a certain time of day.
01:02:44.000So I think most of it is related to circadian timing.
01:02:50.000Because one of my strategies, like say if I have to fly to London or something like that and I want to avoid jet lag, I immediately go to the gym.
01:03:09.000That's a great way to help to offset some of the jet lag because you start to tell your body, oh, hey, like, even though it's whatever, midnight in Austin, right, this is the time when I want to be awake.
01:03:21.000So it starts to advance the circadian phase.
01:03:23.000So, exercise, some people like to do cold exposure, right?
01:03:54.000One of the issues that we have, it's not an issue, it makes perfect sense, is that the supplements that we use with the drivers have to be third-party tested, right?
01:04:06.000NSF for sport certified and informed sport certified.
01:04:08.000So, some of the things that we might like to try is that because the drivers get tested because the drivers get tested.
01:05:17.000But in reality, there aren't many peptides where I'm like, where I would say, or actually, I couldn't think of any where I'm like, this will have a definite benefit based on high-quality studies in humans, right?
01:05:33.000And so, until we get to that point, plus the sort of like the gray area of the sort of legality of it, we tend to focus on the real, I mean, it's the basics, but we know that they work.
01:05:49.000But there are peptides that have shown to increase sleep and increase REM sleep in humans.
01:05:55.000Yes, boy, I wish I could tell you because they talked about it, but I never tried it.
01:08:02.000But there's plenty of anecdotal evidence, especially with professional athletes, with BPC 157 and TB500 particularly, for tissue injuries, for recovering quicker from tissue injuries.
01:08:34.000But so with drug-free sport, like with the UFC, they use thorn supplements.
01:08:41.000That's what the UFC recommends, which are very good and third party tested.
01:08:44.000So you have to find whether it's pure encapsulations or some legitimate, well-proven, established company that provides you with third-party tested supplements.
01:09:08.000You're always calculating and movements.
01:09:10.000What supplements are these guys taking that benefit them?
01:09:14.000So when you think about complex skill performance, and there's like a whole chapter on this in the book, the most important driver is arousal, right?
01:09:35.000And are you set up with the right level of sympathetic activation, neuroadrenaline, adrenaline, cortisol to kind of get the best level of performance?
01:09:46.000And don't let any one of those overwhelm the other ones.
01:09:52.000It's the Yerkes-Dodson curve named after a couple of guys who actually did studies in mice that then translated actually surprisingly well over to humans.
01:10:00.000And so what it says is that if you're sort of under-aroused, you're kind of disengaged, a bit lethargic, right?
01:10:07.000You're not really going to perform well.
01:10:16.000At the top of the curve, you're capable of flow states, clutch states, which is where you can perform at your best, but it's still like, it's hard work.
01:10:24.000And so what you're trying to do is get the guys to the top of that curve.
01:10:29.000And this, for many, involves some element of routine, right?
01:10:33.000Knowing that I've done the thing that I know that's going to make me feel good.
01:10:36.000And so it's a combination often of the things that we've already mentioned.
01:10:58.000So some of them have a cold plunge or You can fill a wheelie bin with water and ice and jump in that.
01:11:07.000It doesn't need to be that cold, actually.
01:11:08.000So for increasing endurance performance, like 20 minutes at around 20 degrees Celsius or like 60-ish Fahrenheit, that significantly improves endurance.
01:11:20.000Is there a benefit to 20 minutes at 60 degrees Fahrenheit versus three minutes at 34 degrees?
01:11:28.000So the problem is that when you get too cold, you can actually decrease cognitive performance.
01:11:36.000So there's a fine line when it's really cold that what you want to do is you want to decrease core temperature without negatively affecting cognitive function.
01:11:45.000And so that's easier to manage at slightly less cold temperatures.
01:11:49.000Because just like if you did really, really exhaustive exercise, right?
01:13:41.000There are some newer caffeine-related compounds that if we can get them when they're third-party tested, you know, some may try those.
01:13:49.000So theocrine or teacrine and paraxanthine, which is a metabolite of caffeine.
01:13:58.000They may have some fewer of the like anxiety promoting, high blood pressure, high heart rate effects, but maintain some of the cognitive effects, especially in combination with caffeine.
01:14:07.000So you have a little bit less caffeine plus a bit of those.
01:14:09.000They're harder to get sort of third-party tested and stuff.
01:15:02.000Like most of the things that you take, there probably isn't, or that anybody would take, there might not be an NSF for sport certified version.
01:15:09.000There's very few companies that do that routinely for all their supplements.
01:15:12.000God, you'd think that that would be really accessible because nootropics are so common now.
01:15:21.000Plus there's the, when we're working with different drivers, they each have very unique needs.
01:15:28.000So it's trying to, it's a combination of what do I think is really going to move the needle and not overcorrect.
01:15:36.000I think most coaches I've spoken to in Formula One have a story where their driver had three espresso before it got in the car and then he overcooked the first corner.
01:15:45.000So it's a really tricky balance of trying to make sure that they can systematically get in the zone to perform well in the car without sort of pushing them too far over the over the other side.
01:15:56.000And so that's where supplements become trickier because it's very easy to downregulate if you've overcooked it through some of those physiological means, right?
01:16:07.000I can do some breath work or something to kind of calm myself down.
01:16:10.000But if I've like stuffed myself full of caffeine, it's going to be hard to like come back from that.
01:16:16.000And then you sort of step in the car and it could cause some issues.
01:16:18.000So we tend to focus on some of the physiological stuff and then maybe a little bit of supplementation because that seems to be the sort of like best balance across those different needs.
01:16:27.000Well, it seems like Formula One would be a great place to develop framework for this because there's so much money involved.
01:17:26.000And that's one reason why Hintzer has been very successful as a company is because they've been, we're very good at walling this stuff off.
01:17:32.000Like we know what's good for this guy.
01:17:35.000And we sort of leave those separate because different frameworks, different approaches might be needed.
01:17:40.000Well, it's such an extreme example because any little deviation that you wouldn't normally feel in everyday life could be disastrous in a Formula One race.
01:17:52.000What about different things to stimulate cognitive function, like playing chess or doing, is there anything that those guys engage in specifically to improve the way they think?
01:18:08.000Again, it depends a little from driver to driver.
01:18:14.000A lot of them play some kind of video games, which actually have some interesting evidence to support them in terms of improving cognitive function.
01:18:24.000I think for them, though, a lot of that is, it's almost like relaxation.
01:18:30.000Like when you drive a Formula One car for a living, like playing a video game isn't necessarily as challenging.
01:18:40.000And so a lot of it tends to be very car focused, right?
01:18:45.000They get tons of time in the simulator.
01:18:47.000Like during the season, they get a lot of time in the car.
01:18:50.000So there's nothing that consistently would work or that everybody does.
01:18:55.000I think a lot of where the cognitive training side comes from is during driver development, right?
01:19:02.000How can we get more sport specific or supporting cognitive challenges in younger drivers as they're developing?
01:19:12.000So we might use some cognitive training tools and some other things to try and support some of those development processes.
01:19:19.000Because by the time they're at the top, especially if you want to maintain it, the main thing that you need to do is obviously maintain those driving skills, which you'll get through the day-to-day aspects of the job.
01:19:31.000Plus, then it's really continually paying attention to sustained physical health, physical performance, especially because of the arduous schedules and all that kind of stuff.
01:19:43.000So often again, they're focusing on the other areas because they know that will help them stay at a high level for longer.
01:19:49.000So they're focused on recovery from all the unavoidable aspects that are going to mitigate your performance.
01:19:56.000So sleep, some of them use different meditation or breath work or other devices just to kind of help maybe like gamify it slightly or you make it a slightly more enjoyable experience.
01:20:10.000It's easier to do, easier to switch off if you're doing things related to sort of like vibration and that kind of stuff.
01:20:19.000You mean like pressure plates, like those standing on plates?
01:20:37.000So some of the guys have a shift wave.
01:20:39.000It just kind of depends on what works well for them in terms of like allowing them to downregulate, allowing them to kind of sleep better.
01:20:46.000And again, we sort of often focus on the more sort of physiological environmental side rather than trying to throw a bunch of supplements at it.
01:20:54.000Well, it seems like that's a great place to study Formula One drivers because you're dealing with these like fine lines, this tiny differential between success and failure.
01:21:05.000And one of the interesting things is that the sort of the real performance stuff is kind of siloed within the team.
01:21:13.000So then, right, because that's related to performance in the car and that's sensitive information.
01:21:19.000So a lot of the time we're kind of thinking about, and this actually, across most sports, the best predictor of performance is subjective well-being.
01:21:34.000And so like there are tons of studies, even like coming out now, like you compare that to blood tests and HRV and all this other kind of stuff.
01:22:10.000Plus like keeping an eye on their body and all that, you know, all All those sort of things to sort of put them in the best spot possible when they get in the car.
01:22:17.000Do you coach them to avoid toxic relationships?
01:22:21.000I'm not sure if anybody's ever gotten into that.
01:22:24.000For fighters, it is like one of the number one predictors of poor success in a competition.
01:22:33.000Guys with horrible relationships, whoever's fault it is, both fault, both parties, whatever it is.
01:22:39.000But those are the ones when they have really bad relationships.
01:22:42.000Like there was this one guy that I know that was a really high performer, very good fighter, but he had this crazy girlfriend and she required so much attention that it would drive her nuts when he was getting ready for a fight because he was spending all his time concentrating on the fight and it would peak literally the night before the fight.
01:23:02.000Like their relationship was so toxic, she would always start fights and all the coaches knew it.
01:23:07.000She would start fights after he weighed in because he was so locked in on the fight the next day that he wasn't paying attention to her.
01:23:14.000So she would storm out of the hotel room and go down to the bar by herself and he would freak out and he would always wind up performing poorly.
01:23:22.000At least I personally haven't seen the evidence of that in that world.
01:23:26.000I will say that fighters are kind of crazy though.
01:23:30.000It's an interesting group to study because it's a very bizarre activity to begin with.
01:23:36.000The way I describe it is high-level problem solving with dire physical consequences.
01:23:42.000Although you could say that Formula One is similar in that respect, right?
01:24:11.000What are the most challenging athletes?
01:24:14.000I assume you've dealt with a bunch of different athletes from various sports.
01:24:18.000What are the most challenging ones to deal with?
01:24:22.000The one, I think the ones that I found most challenging are, it's usually because they're pulled in so many different directions that it becomes difficult for them to like really engage in the things that we know is going to help them perform long term.
01:24:46.000Um, and so, as uh and like, I have friends who work in the NBA, for instance, where I think this is amplified even more.
01:24:54.000Right, you have teenage millionaires who can literally do whatever they want right, but you have to like, keep them on on task, and we see that in a lot of professional sports, and so it's that it's that kind of stuff is what's um distracting them?
01:25:09.000What are the other things that they're doing that's stopping them from being able to engage in these processes?
01:25:14.000Um, and so you, you can have like really good conversations and put together really good plans and like, in the moment, they're really engaged and they're interested and right, they want to do well right, this is their job and they love it.
01:25:29.000But when other things start to come into play outside of that conversation, they don't engage with things, they don't do it, they don't see the results that they want, they get demotivated.
01:25:40.000But it's usually because, like other things in their life right, could be like the toxic relationships, but it tends to be other other distractors, that kind of um, pull them away from that, that sort of like core goal.
01:25:52.000Unfortunately, success is a big one right, because the motivation to succeed in the first place is, you want financial gain, you want recognition, you want all these things that you're chasing after, and then, once you get them, now what?
01:26:06.000And some Some, some people like maintain, like really dead, they maintain dedication to the craft.
01:26:14.000Like this is the thing that I love and I want to do it every day.
01:26:16.000And the longer you do it, the more you have to take care of like the little details.
01:26:21.000Like early on in your career, you can train however you want, eat however you want.
01:26:25.000If you have a certain set of skills and training up to that point, you'll do pretty well.
01:26:31.000But you want to sustain that for a very long period of time.
01:26:35.000It requires an increasing amount of dedication to the other areas of your life to make sure that you can still do that.
01:26:42.000And I think sometimes people just aren't honest with themselves in terms of what they really want to do or what they're going to spend their time doing.
01:26:49.000So that's the most frustrating thing is when you sort of hear one thing, but you see another thing because of the other areas of life that are taking over.
01:27:00.000So what do you do if you have an athlete, like say an NBA athlete, and you see all this talent, all this potential, but then you notice that they're getting pulled in all these different directions?
01:27:11.000Maybe they're just like spending money all the time and partying and hanging out with girls.
01:27:16.000And how do you get them back on track?
01:27:40.000So Formula One is the one where I primarily am like face-to-face with athletes.
01:27:43.000In other professional sports, I'm like an advisor to the team that works with them on like a data, health, nutrition kind of work kind of stuff.
01:27:52.000And when you compare notes, what are the differences between like dealing with Formula One athletes versus dealing with like NFL or NBA or baseball?
01:28:01.000A lot of the stuff comes down to differences in travel schedule and training and the ability to capture data, for instance.
01:28:13.000So data capture in Formula One is really hard because of the types of travel and you don't get to aggregate across a team, whereas you're part of a big team, there's several people you can kind of work, but you work with and aggregate data across to kind of understand what's happening with individuals as well as like overall.
01:28:33.000But I think that Formula One is unique because it's so individual in terms of each driver has their one specific team and it's often very difficult to capture some of the data that we might want to capture, like getting blood tests on guys who are in a plane every other day, right?
01:28:57.000Whereas other places where they have a home base and this kind of stuff is usual, you might be able to get at that better.
01:29:04.000So I think that's maybe one of the biggest differences is the travel schedule and how easy or not it is to like capture and aggregate data.
01:29:12.000when you're working with these formula one athletes like how much are you changing the methods that you use like year to year um it will depend on whether so i mean my job is to stay on top of the latest research right so
01:29:30.000So what's come out recently that we think will meaningfully move the needle in reality, and I think this is the case in the majority of professional sports that I've interacted with.
01:29:47.000The main thing is getting the boring basics done consistently.
01:29:53.000And again and again and again, we know that's foundational to sustained performance.
01:29:59.000And yeah, like the Some of the tools and technology for recovery and some of the supplements, especially if you're trying to address nutrient insufficiencies based on an inadequate diet, which is also very common, those things do make a difference.
01:30:19.000But the main struggle, at least from the guys that I regularly see, is having an environment and framework that allows them to keep doing that stuff, like stay on top of a specific training program or stay consistent with a certain sleep routine that allows them to sleep well.
01:30:39.000Those are the things that make the biggest difference.
01:30:42.000And so it's like that's where we tend to focus.
01:30:44.000And then maybe every year or so, we're constantly improving our data capture and our data analysis.
01:30:51.000We're constantly trying to improve sort of like the support processes because we know that with the better support, we can make sure they're more likely to do the stuff that's going to make a big difference.
01:31:05.000And then maybe every sort of like year or two, there's a new thing that comes in.
01:31:09.000And we're like, oh, yeah, we're fairly confident that this is low risk, high potential benefit.
01:31:14.000It's not going to take a ton of their time, right?
01:31:16.000That's that's another thing is when I first walked into the paddock in, it was here in Austin.
01:31:23.000That was the first time I went to Formula One to like start working with these guys.
01:31:26.000I like, I showed up and I'm like, I've got like a, I've got like a hundred things that these guys are going to love.
01:32:34.000There's not 19 other guys or now 21 other guys trying to get past you.
01:32:40.000And then, right, so that, so some of it is that, right?
01:32:43.000Trial and error, you acknowledge that you just have to be really confident that you know what problem you're trying to solve and that it's an important problem, right?
01:32:51.000So I've worked with coaches and their driver where like reaction time was a very specific thing, like off the line, we think we need X amount improvement.
01:33:02.000So then it's a combination of practice, maybe tinkering with some supplements, maybe tinkering with some of that arousal stuff that we talked about earlier.
01:33:11.000So you need to make sure it's an important problem.
01:33:13.000Then you need to think about like what's the hierarchy of things that have the highest likelihood of benefit and the lowest risk and then sort of work your way through it.
01:33:22.000And I realize that this is all kind of in the abstract because it just like really depends on the problem that's in front of you.
01:33:28.000What about the psychology aspect of it?
01:33:31.000I mean, this is a very controversial aspect of mixed martial arts in particular, because there's kind of two schools of thought.
01:33:42.000I have a good friend who's a coach that recently told me he's not working with any fighters anymore that need a mental coach.
01:33:53.000They need a mental coach because I want a motherfucker who just knows that this is what he's supposed to be doing and just go out and do it.
01:33:59.000I'm like, boy, but that kind of limits your athletes, right?
01:34:03.000Like, do you think that there's benefit in mental coaching?
01:34:10.000Or do you think like to reach a championship level, there's an inherent mindset that you must have going into that?
01:35:09.000I mean, again, it's just, it's so dependent on the individual.
01:35:17.000But it's also very common across all athletes, right?
01:35:19.000So it's like overcoming failure or fear of failure or maybe it's dealing with difficult relationships, which for various reasons they can experience.
01:35:33.000And then it's how their inherent thought process is when that happens.
01:35:38.000So we know that the most resilient athletes are those that tend to be self-compassionate, right?
01:35:56.000guys who are hard on themselves but for sustained and and so this is looking across like as broad as possible across sport Those who are most successful most often, of course, there's going to be the killer who's just like hardened himself and gets the job done, of course, right?
01:36:14.000But these elements of self-compassion that include things like mindfulness, like thinking about the world and understanding it and about their place in it and common humanity, which is like treating themselves as they would treat other people and acknowledging the right, we all make mistakes and stuff always happens, but I can overcome this.
01:37:25.000And that's the point that he's making in this address.
01:37:27.000And it's those kinds of mental skills that seem to be most important.
01:37:31.000So when you've had a history of beating yourself up and being hard on yourself, and that's kind of gotten you to that point, there will often be a stage where there's so much accumulated pressure or stress or failure that just working harder and being harder on yourself isn't going to get you past it.
01:37:54.000Athletes who are successful for a long period of time tend to have those other abilities to like think about the bigger picture, understand what they've overcome previously, treat themselves more like they would treat others.
01:38:05.000And they seem to be the ones who overcome failure and then continue to succeed.
01:39:53.000They'll make a couple of bad shots and then the match goes downhill and they wind up getting steamrolled.
01:39:58.000And I think you can, there's other stuff going on.
01:40:01.000You can think about it in terms of that arousal curve we talked about earlier, right?
01:40:05.000As you get stressed and worked up about a missed shot, you're pushing yourself further and further away from the level of arousal that's required for performance.
01:40:23.000Well, that's one of the most important things about a shot, because even if your mechanics are good, if you think you're going to miss, you're going to miss.
01:40:29.000It's a weird thing because you know what to do, you know how to do it, but if you think, fuck, I can't miss this shot, you're going to miss.
01:40:36.000Like nine times out of ten, it's very weird.
01:40:39.000So it's a very mentally the game, a giant percentage of it once the skills are acquired, because most of them, when they get to an elite level, have all the skills.
01:40:58.000There's, I mean, across every different aspect of cognitive performance, well-being, there's, you know, again and again, you see that psychology drives physiology and drives performance.
01:41:14.000Like you can measure these things as you think them, as they then change physiology, which then alters how you perform.
01:41:22.000So, I mean, this is a very, very long answer to your question of, like, is like psychology and mental skills important?
01:42:18.000I keep allowing myself to spiral into this same sort of mental state and I have to find a method.
01:42:25.000And so like, when you talk with psychologists, what do they, what tools and what, what, what sort of strategies do they give these athletes to abandon negative thinking?
01:42:42.000There are a few different ways to approach it.
01:42:44.000And again, like, don't want to pretend I'm a psychologist, right?
01:42:48.000These are, these are the, we have other people with these skills for a reason.
01:42:53.000But I think a lot of what becomes important, again, is thinking about the causes of maybe initially the causes of mistakes and then the causes of stress and why that may or may not be beneficial and the way that you can you can leverage it.
01:43:16.000So there's a lot of research on understanding that stress responses are there to divert resources to something that matters and something that either requires your attention or adaptation to it, right?
01:43:32.000So understanding that actually stress in the moment, in that kind of moment is a good thing and you want to leverage it rather than be scared of it.
01:43:41.000So, and we know that people who are trained in this mindset, so this is work by Aylio Crum at Stanford, the stress is enhancing mindset, also like predicts how well Navy SEALs do during training, like how much they sort of like appreciate that stress response is important.
01:44:04.000Not only that, you still get stress, where you still can measure stress hormones.
01:44:08.000That still happens, but you release other things that help to also counteract that and drive adaptation.
01:44:16.000And it results in better decision making when stressed.
01:44:20.000So reframing some of these responses can be important, as well as then thinking about after a mistake happened, thinking about other examples of times when you did that and you overcame it or having like these different parts of understanding what it is to be a human, even when you're performing at an elite level.
01:44:40.000Maybe some of it is building in routines so that you feel confident in a given situation, right?
01:44:52.000And when I do these things, I know I'm going to perform well.
01:44:55.000That can be a double-edged sword for some people because, and I think this, we see this a lot of this in the in the world of sort of like health optimization.
01:45:03.000We assume that we need to do all these things in order to perform well.
01:45:07.000And so then if those things don't happen, we think we won't perform well, right?
01:45:10.000So that's another way for us to get in our way, our own way.
01:45:14.000So you kind of have to balance that depending on the individual.
01:45:17.000And then some of it can be in the moment, right?
01:45:21.000So you're one of those pool players and you're getting increasingly frustrated because you're not making your shots.
01:45:28.000It's almost impossible to think your way out of that, right?
01:45:32.000Your brain is too busy being dunked in adrenaline to like make good decisions.
01:45:37.000So that's where you might have tools like leveraging your physiology, breath work, closing your eyes, visualization.
01:45:47.000Those things sort of work from the bottom up to kind of help your mind get a grip and like get back in the game.
01:45:53.000So it's a whole bunch of different things depending on what you might need.
01:45:58.000Is it, I need to regulate myself in the moment?
01:46:00.000Is it how do I set myself up for success through a series of, and it could be like, what's my warm-up?
01:46:08.000What's my, what am I thinking through?
01:46:10.000What am I visualizing before I perform?
01:46:13.000Or is it tools to kind of deal with the processes of failure afterwards?
01:46:17.000And I would also think that even just the knowledge that these high stress situations where you do encounter failure can produce a result inside the mind that can be beneficial if harnessed.
01:46:32.000And so one of the ways that this is taught to other people, right, not just athletes, is like, think about all the people who've performed under significant stress, right?
01:46:44.000This is what the human mind and human body is capable of, if only we allow it to do that.
01:48:27.000But I mean, this is one of the things we talk about all the time with mixed martial arts athletes in particular is that today is such an amazing time for them because there's so much access to video.
01:48:39.000So you can watch all these performances by all these elite athletes and then it raises your personal standards because you're mirroring what these people are capable of doing.
01:48:49.000And in your head, you have a very high standard because you've seen it.
01:48:53.000And that inspires people to become better.
01:48:56.000And so the athletes that we're seeing today, I say all the time that martial arts has evolved more in the last 30 years than it has in the last 30,000 years.
01:50:08.000If we think about these traits that we'd maybe like to carry over that help us perform or maintain performance for long periods of time later in life, like some of that curiosity, not worrying about these burdens, continuing to engage in these things that challenge ourselves that kids just readily do, right?
01:50:28.000The brain is exploring and trying to learn.
01:50:30.000I think we need more of that as adults.
01:50:33.000But when you think about the standard being set or thinking that things aren't impossible, there's two parts of that.
01:50:41.000One, yes, that's a huge aspect of achieving higher and higher levels of athletic performance.
01:50:47.000But for many of us, like us regular people, when you spend a lot of time seeing other people performing so much better than you, it can have the opposite effect, right?
01:50:59.000I think this is something that we see on social media.
01:51:02.000There's some really interesting, there's some really interesting studies on social rank, right?
01:51:08.000So we are always trying to see where we rank in the world compared to others, right?
01:51:12.000It's the part of us like being social beings.
01:51:14.000And so if you spend all day looking at people who are richer, more beautiful, more jacked than you are, internally you demote yourself, right?
01:51:26.000You give yourself a lower social rank, and that creates a social stress that triggers genuine stress responses, right?
01:51:33.000Increased sympathetic activation, activation of some like inflammatory processes in the body, very similar to if you're socially isolated.
01:51:40.000So for some people who have the, you know, are on a trajectory to improve their performance, you know, because they're elite athletes and they're seeing these other guys do it.
01:51:50.000They're like, oh yeah, yeah, I can do that.
01:51:54.000But in like the general world, the rest of us, when we spend so much time seeing other people do other things better than us, it can almost have the opposite effect.
01:52:05.000It's very, that's the thing between the difference between an athlete and someone who is intimidated by other people's performances instead of being inspired.
01:52:16.000Yeah, so but that's what I mean is that when you're one type of, when you're an athlete and you're seeing other guys like you do this thing, right, that's like, oh yeah, that creates a bar you want to try and hit.
01:52:28.000But that same thing is very different out for the rest of us based on like seeing how we compare to others.
01:52:37.000Well, particularly in things you can't control.
01:52:55.000You can't apply that sort of like rational thinking to it.
01:52:57.000Well, then even worse for young girls because a lot of them are getting surgery because they know that some girls have radically improved their looks through surgery.
01:53:04.000And so they think like this is the solution to everything.
01:53:06.000And I just need to get a nose job and a chin job and a this and a that.
01:53:11.000And also it's like the psychological aspect of being controlled by paying attention to other people's lives is very weird.
01:53:19.000And it's, you know, Jonathan Haight wrote a great book about it called The Coddling of the American Mind about the impact of social media and particularly on young girls.
01:53:40.000And that aspect of it of comparing yourself to other girls is particularly devastating.
01:53:46.000It's like there's you see when the impact of social media, when social media gets introduced into the world, immediately you see more self-harm, suicidal ideation, all these different things increase.
01:54:00.000Whereas like, so those same stressors, if you were in a position like an athlete and you're a competitive athlete and you see someone who's elite, you would be inspired, but you feel helpless to achieve these goals that, you know, like you can't get any taller.
01:54:20.000You can't look, it's just, this is what you got.
01:54:23.000And then you see these, and then you see people that are using filters.
01:54:26.000So it's not even what they really look like.
01:54:28.000Yeah, so I think that's why there's this, it's interesting that very similar exposures, depending on who you are and what you're trying to achieve and what you have the ability to achieve, can have dramatically different effects on mental and other well-being.
01:54:47.000And but you would imagine that for competitive athletes, you've already developed a certain amount of resilience already.
01:54:55.000You already have a competitive spirit and you are working towards a thing that's a high level of achievement in something you're already doing.
01:55:03.000So seeing a Michael Jordan, seeing a LeBron James, seeing if you're a basketball player, you would be inspired.
01:55:10.000And instead of being like, I'll never be as good as that guy.
01:55:13.000You'd be like, fuck, I want to be as good as that guy.
01:55:26.000We didn't talk about this in terms of like the approaches of the most successful athletes is that they don't just say, I want to be like LeBron or Kobe.
01:56:13.000And so like, you can be the best you've ever been and be amazing.
01:56:19.000Like you can run fast enough to won a gold medal any other year, but like sometimes you're out of luck because Usain Bolt shows up.
01:56:26.000So like you've got to focus on the process because you can't guarantee the outcome.
01:56:30.000But by focusing on the process, right, you're going to get much closer.
01:56:34.000Yeah, that's interesting because if you are a person trying to be the best in the world and you happen to be in the same weight class as Mike Tyson, it's going to be tough.
01:56:44.000Yeah, but I mean, that's always been the case.
01:56:47.000That's the thing in championship level fighting.
01:56:49.000You find that when someone is a real outlier, that what happens is all the other people in that weight class tend to achieve a very high level, even if they never wind up being as good as Anderson Silva or whoever it is.
01:57:06.000Winds up being a very competitive contender class underneath it and much more competitive than divisions that are not being dominated by elite fighters.
01:58:06.000Thank God I didn't try to read from it.
01:58:08.000So, the first part of the book is about some of the history of neuroscience and why we think about the brain the way we do and some of the limitations that's created.
01:58:19.000Like, why we think about Alzheimer's disease as just being like the accumulation of amyloid and tau proteins in the brain, which people might have heard of, right?
01:58:28.000That's what it's been boiled down to, when there's actually a much bigger picture and many other things that are important.
01:58:35.000Was it Alzheimer's where the amyloid plaque where that idea was sort of proven to be a little bit bullshit?
01:58:44.000So, there have been a so not really, but kind of.
01:58:49.000So, there were several seminal papers in that were manipulated in some way, right?
01:58:56.000And this, unfortunately, is quite common where you change the figures, you manipulate these blots to make them show different things, and you kind of move them around and copy and paste.
01:59:04.000It kind of shows what you want to show.
01:59:05.000And so, like, for some of the seminal papers in Alzheimer's, that turned out to be the case.
01:59:10.000But it doesn't discount the fact that it's still a part of it.
01:59:15.000But people have increasingly looked away from just the accumulation of certain proteins in the brain for two reasons.
01:59:23.000One is that we had, as a field, they had to create new ideas like resilience.
01:59:32.000And there's this thing called cognitive resilience, which is how much cognitive function do you maintain in the face of these proteins building up in the brain.
01:59:41.000And that's because the amount of amyloid you have in your brain doesn't really predict cognitive function and cognitive decline that well.
01:59:49.000So, some of that is related to other things.
01:59:51.000So, we know that like exercise is an important part of that.
01:59:55.000And then we know that there are these other things that are important as well.
02:00:00.000So, inflammation, other cells in the brain that become critical.
02:00:05.000So, like the white matter is a really critical structure in the brain.
02:00:07.000It's what allows us to have really fast processing speed, decision-making, executive function, the function of the prefrontal cortex.
02:00:15.000All of that is kind of dependent on white matter structure.
02:00:18.000And that seems to be really related to like vascular function, vascular health, resistance training is really important to support that.
02:00:25.000So, like, all these other things become important as well.
02:00:28.000So, like, that's kind of the, it's just showing like the first part of the book is saying, hey, we kind of focused a lot here, but actually, it's not that that's not important, but like, there's a whole bunch of other stuff that's important too.
02:00:40.000And a lot of it is related to things that we have control over.
02:00:43.000So, then, you know, we talk, I talk about all the different types of exercise, how different types of exercise affect different parts of the brain in different ways, nutrition, talk a lot about cognitive stimulus, social connection, sleep, like I said, stress management and stress mitigation, and how you can kind of manage your performance in the moment.
02:01:03.000And then, all of that comes together in terms of into like a model that I call the 3S model of how these different things kind of interact and affect you on a day-to-day basis.
02:01:15.000So, the first S being stimulus, right?
02:01:18.000We've talked about all the reasons why that's important.
02:01:22.000The second S being supply, which is if you stimulate a part of the brain or a network in the brain with a new skill, that area of the brain, the neurons and the astrocytes there, they ask for more blood flow.
02:01:36.000So the blood vessels have to widen, they dilate to bring in more oxygen, bring in more glucose or whatever metabolic substrate you're using, ketones, lactate, et cetera.
02:01:46.000And so you need really good cardiovascular health.
02:01:52.000So high blood pressure and high blood sugar are two of the biggest risk factors for later dementia because they affect this supply component, either the blood flow getting there or being able to regulate your energy.
02:02:05.000And then there's a bunch of nutrients that are important in that bucket as well.
02:02:08.000So omega-3s, vitamin D, iron, magnesium, because they have very B vitamins, they have very specific functions in the brain that we know that if you're deficient, you have an increased risk of cognitive decline and dementia.
02:02:21.000And then you've stimulated a part of the brain, you've kind of given it all the substrate it needs to do its job.
02:02:26.000Like we've talked about, adaptation occurs and function gets enhanced when we sleep or when we recover.
02:02:33.000So like that's support is the third bucket.
02:02:44.000Hormones that get released or proteins that get released that support neuroplasticity in the brain, things like brain-derived neurotrophic factor.
02:02:51.000And then you want to avoid things that kind of inhibit that process.
02:02:56.000It creates like an over-training kind of picture in the brain.
02:03:01.000Smoking, excess of alcohol, air pollution, those kinds of things can have a negative effect.
02:03:08.000So like that's how the that's how they all interact.
02:03:10.000And the fact that they interact means that depending on what feels most impactful to you, like what's the thing that you think you can move the needle on?
02:03:19.000By focusing on one area, the whole network starts to shift.
02:03:22.000And we see that in multiple different studies.
02:03:25.000So if you focus on sleep and you sleep a bit better, then the next, then we see that like inflammation decreases and blood pressure improves and blood sugar improves.
02:03:35.000And the next day you feel more sociable.
02:03:36.000So you're more likely to interact with other people in a friendly way.
02:03:40.000And you're more likely to engage in cognitively stimulating tasks because when we're tired, we kind of shy away from those things.
02:03:48.000So there are studies in older adults where you give them a brain training program and they sleep better because when you stimulate a tissue, you then drive greater need for recovery afterwards.
02:04:10.000So if you just know that they all kind of communicate and interact, anywhere you come in, you can start to kind of shift things in your favor.
02:04:19.000Now, when you're compiling a book like this, I would imagine there's a lot of editing.
02:04:23.000And so how do you decide like what to leave in?
02:04:26.000I mean, this looks like it's, I mean, obviously these are all blank pages, so they're not numbered, but it looks like this is at least a 300-page book.
02:04:40.000So unlike most health books, every time I make a statement or I mention a study, there's a little number and that gives you the paper or papers that I'm talking about that supports that.
02:05:13.000Like, anyway, people who want to, yeah, people who want to do that can do that.
02:05:18.000But in, I'm not quite sure how it ended up being this way, but I actually had to cut very little.
02:05:27.000Like, there were things where I kind of went down a little bit of a rabbit hole and my editor was like, meh, I'm not sure we really need this.
02:05:35.000I basically wrote until I got to the word limit and then I stopped.
02:05:39.000And I focused on the things that I knew that were important and were going to stay important even in the age of AI and as technology improves and changes.
02:05:49.000So there wasn't a ton that ended up getting cut out.
02:05:53.000But when you're putting it together, how do you decide what's prominent?
02:05:59.000What's the most important thing to focus on?
02:06:04.000So when I started, when I started writing, actually I'm going to disagree with my former self.
02:06:18.000I wrote the first part of the book like three times.
02:06:21.000And the first time I wrote it, it was like 40,000 words all focused on psychology and like super like esoteric and academic.
02:06:31.000And I was like, nobody's going to read this.
02:06:33.000So like I had to be scratched a couple of times.
02:06:36.000So then the core middle part of the book is all those different areas that we know are important, like the big rocks, and practical frameworks for how to address those.
02:06:48.000And then there's just like a, then there's an introduction to like, why should you care about this?
02:06:52.000Like, for like in individuals over 40, dementia is the most important health concern, right?
02:07:03.000More than 10% say they've experienced changes in cognitive function.
02:07:08.000We know that the rates of dementia are going to double or triple in the next two or three decades.
02:07:13.000Like, so why do people care about this?
02:07:32.000Well, I'm glad you wrote it because I think it's a very important thing.
02:07:35.000And I think there's a lot of people out there that don't understand the risks of being sedentary and that these are things that you can change.
02:07:43.000And that you can improve the quality of your life by making those changes.
02:07:47.000And it might make you uncomfortable to begin something like that, but there's some real value in that uncomfortable feeling of trying something new.
02:08:31.000And there is evidence you can improve it even later in life.
02:08:33.000And so a big part of this is that when you write the, you know, earlier we talked about this graph of cognitive function, right?
02:08:42.000It increases to sort of 20 or 30 and then it declines.
02:08:46.000When we're doing studies that show that kind of thing, what we're doing is we're looking at a whole bunch of people, maybe tens or hundreds of thousands of people, and we're saying like you plot them all on a graph.
02:08:56.000And yeah, as you sort of increase in age, there are some people who are going to lose function.
02:09:00.000You kind of like draw the average down.
02:09:02.000But we've known essentially since for the last 50 years that when you look at the same person over several decades, it's actually very normal for us to maintain function.
02:09:16.000So like the Seattle Longitudinal Study was run by a guy called Warner Shai in Seattle.
02:09:22.000And it was one of the first studies where they measured cognitive function in the same people every seven years for several decades.
02:09:28.000And like every seven years, they measured the same people and brought in new people.
02:09:31.000And so they ended up with people who were like in their 20s up to over 100 years old.
02:09:36.000And they found that the average effect by that, I mean that more than 50% of people maintained the same level of cognitive function into their 50s, 60s, 70s, and 80s.
02:09:46.000And those data were used to actually raise the retirement age in the US in the 1980s because they showed that it actually wasn't normal for people to decline.
02:09:55.000But the problem is now we've embodied this idea. that as you get older, you will decline.
02:10:03.000And as a result, you stop engaging in all the things that we've talked about.
02:10:06.000So you're like, oh, I'm too old to lift that.
02:10:12.000And as a result, right, it's a self-fulfilling prophecy.
02:10:14.000You stop engaging in those processes and decline happens as a result.
02:10:18.000But if we know that it's possible to maintain function and we continue to engage in those processes, the norm should be that function is maintained.