Top 5 Tips for a Better Brain

To say that our brain health is important is an understatement. Our relationships, the quality of our work, our joy, our vitality, everything can vastly improve when our brains improve. For this video, I wanted to provide you with some of my personal tricks and tips for achieving a super brain or an ultra mind. So the first question I got was, can you tell us what your morning routine is? What do you do as soon as you wake up? Well, not every day is perfect, but my ideal routine, and I try to do it most of the time, before I do anything else, I just sit and do a meditation for 20 minutes. And this sets my day up for the whole day. And it has profound effects on myself, my brain, my energy, my focus, and it really gets me started for the day. That's my first thing. Next question is, what do you have for breakfast every day to make your brain as sharp as possible? Well, what I love to do is start the day with what I call Bulletproof Coffee. It's my friend Dave Asprey. and he essentially created this cocktail, which I actually had when I was in Tibet 20, 30 years ago, which was yak butter tea. Essentially, they take yak butter, salty tea, and they put it in there, and it really helps fuel your metabolism. The reason I like it is because it, MCT oil, which is the oil you put in the tea with a little grass-fed butter or in the coffee, actually builds ketones in your body, and ketones are the preferred fuel for your brain. They sort of supercharge your brain function and your mitochondria, and they kind of keep you alert and functioning. And sometimes you don't need to eat for the rest of the morning I sometimes will add a little eggs or I'll sometimes have nut butters on a rice cracker. Sometimes I'll have some paleo granola with little almond milk and some fruit. Depends on how I'm feeling that day. But I make sure that I get fueled for my day. The next question I got was, do you do movement every single day? Is it important to move every day? Well, sadly, I don't get to exercise every day, but that is my dream life. And I'm trying to create that. But I try to do as much as I can. I play tennis when I'm home. I do yoga, I'll go for a bike ride, I try to stay active, I go for hikes. So I vary it up. I don't have like a strict go to the gym workout, lift weights, but I try to do flexibility, strength, and aerobic conditioning. And I do things that are fun because I hate the gym. Now the reason it's important is that exercise increases something called BDNF. BDNF is called brain derived neurotrophic factor, which is like miracle grow for your brain. increases the connections in your brain cells and helps your brain grow new cells. It's shown to be effective in preventing Alzheimer's, to treating depression. It's more effective, actually, exercise is more effective than antidepressants for treating depression. So it's a powerful tool that I use to keep myself energetic and clear and focused and happy. It's really important for me and I think it's important for everybody and most people don't realize how important it is. Now, there are lots of different types of exercise. You find what you like. do something, please. Next question I got is, what supplements do you take for a better brain? Well, brain health is complicated. So you need all the nutrients, right? You need a whole multivitamin with all the minerals and vitamins B vitamins. Sometimes people need an extra set of vitamins called methylation support, which is basically B12, folate and B6. Now this helps build the happy chemicals in your brain, the neurotransmitters to make you happy. They help build serotonin. and they're really, really important. The next thing I do is take a fish oil pill because fish oil, omega-3 fats, that's what part of your brain is made of. It helps your brain cells talk better together. It helps brain communicate better within itself and it's very important for brain health. It's been shown to reduce violent crime, to help ADD, to help bipolar disease, to help dementia, to help autism, to help depression. It's very powerful. So multivitamin, fish oil and methylation support, also I recommend vitamin D because vitamin D is super important for your brain and I take vitamin D every day. And then I add a bunch of other stuff depending on how I feel. I use mitochondrial support because I had chronic fatigue. I take CoQ10, lipoic acid, carnitine. Not everybody has to do this but for me I think it's important. So I have a cocktail of mitochondrial nutrients that I like to take and also some detoxifying compounds like N-acetyl cysteine. I also take anti-inflammatories like turmeric. So I use these to help support my health and they're very powerful. not just for my brain, but for my whole body. So what do I have for lunch so I don't crash in the afternoon? Well, for breakfast, I basically have fat and protein most of the time, not carbs. I mean, most Americans eat dessert for breakfast. They eat cereal, they eat muffins, they eat bagels. I mean, cereal, most cereal is 75% sugar. So it's not really breakfast, it's dessert. And so I think those are gone from my life pretty much. and the same thing for lunch. I basically eat protein and fat and lots of veggies. So most of my diet essentially is veggies by volume. So plant foods by volume, meaning you put a ton of vegetables on your plate and then most of my calories are from fat. Over 50% of my calories is from fat. It doesn't take up a lot of space. You pour olive oil on your salad. There's way more calories in the olive oil than there is in the lettuce or the kale or whatever you're eating. So for lunch, my favorite thing is what I call a fat salad. Now fat salad is basically greens and I like arugula. I take some cherry tomatoes, I have to cut them up. Washed arugula, I'm lazy. I take some pumpkin seeds, toast them for a minute, throw them on there, that's fat. I take avocados, also great fat, monounsaturated fats. Sometimes I'll take a can of sardines or mackerel or wild herring, which are all very high in omega-3 fats, low in toxins, or a can of wild salmon, throw it in there. So it's basically a fat salad. I got fat from avocados. fat from pumpkin seeds, fat from wild fish, and also fat from the olive oil. So that's really what I love and it keeps me going and allows me to eat tons of veggies. The next question I get is, what do you do to calm your brain after a long day? Well, I've learned all kinds of hacks that help me reset my system. Now, I can't do all of them every day, but again, another meditation session of 20 minutes, very powerful. I love to do it in the afternoon. Don't always get to do it, but it's really powerful. Sometimes I'll come home and take a steam. I've got a steam shower, which is awesome, and I jump in the steam for 10-15 minutes, and then I jump in an ice bath. That just re-changes my biology, resets my state. I'll exercise sometimes. I'll just do a workout or play tennis. That also helps me reset after a long day, and it burns off the stress chemicals. When you do a sauna, or when you meditate, or when you exercise, you are literally burning off cortisol, adrenaline, and all the stress hormones, and you're resetting it with these parasympathetic hormones, they keep you calm and happy. So very, very simple things you can do, but very powerful. I got asked, what do you eat for dinner? Again, it's the same thing. I basically have like three vegetable dishes I make. Like, for example, last night I made a big tomato salad with cucumbers, basil, I put lots of olive oil, balsamic vinegar, salt, pepper, a little avocado, and then I made a big steak salad, which is essentially not a big steak, but a big salad with a little bit of steak. It's called that a Pegan diet, which is lot of vegetables, a little bit of animal protein. And I got some grass-fed skirt steak, grilled it on the grill, sliced it really thin, and put it on a big plate of arugula and chopped fennel. I threw actually some avocado in there and just some radishes and just whatever you got in the fridge or whatever you can get, but lots of colors, variety, more avocado and vinegar, and we had some grilled eggplant. So that was amazing. And I also had a corn on the cob. So we had like literally four vegetable dishes. with a tiny little bit of sliced beef. And that is really how I eat most of the time. I like to eat lots of veggies, lots of plant foods, and meat as a condiment or condiment, as I say. And I think that's really a very healthy diet. I didn't have rice, I didn't have bread, I didn't have potatoes, I didn't have starch. That is okay. You don't need carbohydrates to thrive. In fact, you don't even need carbohydrates to live. In fact, protein and fat are essential. Carbohydrates are optional. So I really encourage you to realize that most of the health problems we have in this country are from sugar and from starch. So can you have a potato occasionally? Sure. Can you have sweet potatoes? I love them. Winter squash? Great. Do I eat sugar? Yeah, of course I do, but in minimal amounts. And I think of it as a recreational drug. Just like I drink tequila once in a while, I have a little bit of sugar once in a while, like dark chocolate. But it's not a staple or a large amount that I have every single day. The next question was, what are some of the things that you absolutely avoid in order to keep your brain clear. If I want to keep my brain clear, I definitely avoid sugar, alcohol, processed food, which I do anyway, and I make sure that I get rid of all the chemicals, additives, weird stuff that's not food in my diet. And I've pretty much done that anyway, so it's sort of how I live. But anytime, like you're traveling in an airport or I'm in some restaurant and there's some weird thing, it can take me down. in terms of my clarity and focus and attention. And so I really am very careful to avoid those things most of the time. But it's basically starch and sugar which makes you have a food coma and it's also all the additives and chemicals in food that can actually cause your brain to kind of frizz out. We know for example in ADD that if you give kids a drink that's colored with let's say pomegranate coloring versus red dye, the kids who have the red dye are bouncing off the walls. Their ADD is out of control. and it's something we know and it's measurable. So I basically stay away from all that stuff. The next question from my community was, what are some of the things you do every day to boost your mitochondria? Well, you're wondering what your mitochondria are. They're these little energy factories in your cells that take oxygen and food, they burn them, and they actually run your body. And if they're weak or they're not running well, it's like a car with a carburetor that's dirty. Your car doesn't run well. Your gas mileage is low. You don't really have a great functioning engine. And the mitochondria are your engine, so I make sure I take care of them. And so there's a couple things. One, they love fat, so I fuel them with fat, particularly MCT oil. The second is I don't eat a lot of starch and sugar because they're mitochondrial poisons. Third, I make sure that I exercise both interval training, which is really fast and slow. So, like, when I'm playing tennis, my coach runs me around. I'm like, sucking air pretty bad. That's called interval training, where you go at extreme as you can in terms of speed for like 30 to 60 seconds and then you stop. And you do that a bunch of times and that really revs up your mitochondria and makes them work better. And then strength training, it can be using your own body weight like yoga or calisthenics or using weights. Also that builds more muscle which contains mitochondria. So those are really great strategies. And then lastly, I make sure that I take mitochondrial supplements, things like CoQ10, Carnitine, and acetyl cysteine, sometimes I use D-ribose, also B vitamins, riboflavin, niacin, these are some of the B2, B3 vitamins, very powerful and I take off of these as a cocktail, sometimes I use amino acids which help as well and all of those things will help actually boost up my mitochondria and I find that they help me work out longer, be less tired after and just function better and my brain's happy when I do that. Do you have any tips or tricks for achieving mental clarity? And you know, you do so many things at once and you have always have a great attitude. How can you achieve this and how can we achieve this? So, well, I try to just follow the laws of nature. I eat real food, I exercise, I try to de-stress and meditate, I take saunas or steams, I make sure I connect with family and friends, I take the right supplements, It's not that hard. I mean, once you organize your life around the right principles and these become habits, they're kind of automatic and you feel bad when you don't do them. And then when you don't do them, you feel so bad that you go, I'm going to go back and do that because that made me feel so good. So I make sure that I structure my life to actually do the simple things that make a big difference that are available to almost all of us and cost nothing for most of them, whether it's, you know, exercise or stress management. or eating food, you have to eat that anyway. So it's all doable within the context of most of our lives.