Easy Ways To Get Smarter, The Best Jet Lag Hacks, Why Cold Water Is Better Than Cryotherapy, Weed Before Sleep & Much More

My name is Ben Greenfield, and on this episode of the Ben Greenfield Life.

Podcast, once you get into cold water, what you're doing is you're getting this massive, robust release of norepinephrine. And norepinephrine is amazing because it's both a hormone and a neurotransmitter. So when it's released in the brain as a neurotransmitter, it's involved in vigilance and focus. And you can actually get a 350% increase in this neurotransmitter when you jump into cold. That's huge. So you get all this norepinephrine, but then you've also got these cold shock proteins which are also having an effect on the brain. And I think in terms of dosage, what you're looking at is you're looking at around five times a week. So that's the only caveat. Five times a week at like three minutes per session, depending on the temperature.

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All right, so I gotta ask because I heard this about you. I don't know if it's true but coming from a former swim bike run junkie, is it true that you were into triathlon at one point?

Yeah, I was heavily into it. It was my entire life. So I was on the Australian team and I raced. Yeah, I was doing around 20 races a year and training 40 hours a week. Definitely not me right now. I'm definitely not in that field anymore.

But yeah, I used to hang out with a bunch of Australians because I would race in like Southeast Asia and Thailand and of course Australians would always show up at like Ironman Hawaii and stuff. What is it about Australia that it makes such good triathletes or at least seems to. Is it the swimming or something else?

I honestly think it's the swimming because that's how I got into triathlon in the first place. And when I used to race I was first out of the water. And we are brought up in Australia, we it's mandatory that we're able to swim at least 2 km in the ocean. So in order to actually go through I think it's like in eighth grade to go through to ninth grade you have to pass this life saving certificate. It's like a government mandatory drill that you have to do. So we all learn from a young age how to swim and my mother put me into swim classes when I was very young I became competitive. I learned how to swim in the ocean and that just led to a career in triathlon. And I think a lot of Aussies, you'll never meet an Aussie that says I can't swim.

For the longest time I'd hear people talk about Ironman and always assumed it was like the Iron Man. That we talk about over here, but there's like a whole different swimming kind of ironman in Australia. Right.

I'm not sure if there's a. If it's different. I mean, I don't know what you guys do over here, but yeah, like, it's. It's brutal. And what I've noticed is a lot of the triathlons here are flat, whereas you just never know what you're up against in Australia. You, like, get there and it's like, it could be. It could be choppy one day. It's definitely always hilly, so you have to train for that. And, you know, in terms of bike, even transition. There was one transition that I did, it was in Queensland and it was like a kilometer long from the ocean to the bike. So it's brutal.

I love that. Running. Running a kilometer in your wetsuit. Yeah, the ironman I was referring to, I think it's like some kind of like a paddle race or like lifeguarding competition or something like that. Does that sound familiar?

Yeah, there is. It's on one of those boards where you. Like this.

Yeah, yeah, Like a paddle race. By the way, for those of you listening, if you want to watch the video version, it's going to be@BenGreenfieldLife.com Nicola N I C O L A Do you say your name Nicola or Nicola? Luisa.

Nicola is my last name.

Okay, all right, cool. So you said here when you were referring to not being in Australia anymore and you're in New York now.

Yeah, based in New York City.

Okay, cool. Is that where. Where the whole like, neuro athletics lab or facility or whatever is?

Yeah, and I actually started off. So I moved here in 2017 and I started off in LA, which is where I, you know, that's where the athletes were originally for me. And I ended up getting one stint a speaking gig here in New York and I came here and fell in love with it, so I ended up staying.

Oh, wow, cool. Well, I want to hear more about what you're doing at your whole lab and stuff over there. But, like, how. How did you get out of triathlon into medicine? Were you doing both simultaneously?

Both simultaneously, but more so. So I started off with exercise physiology and I fell in love with physiology, the science of performance. And ultimately, when you're a triathlete, which, you know, you should know this, you become obsessed, a bit obsessed with data. Right. So date back. Like, I was doing triathlons at, you know, I'm in my early 30s now. I was doing triathlons when I was like 17, and I remember when the first polar heart rate monitor came out and I was, we were so excited. It was so exciting to us. And then I had a polar watch, so I was able to track my heartbeat. And it was just, it was amazing. And I remember back then thinking, wow, this is incredible. And so I was delving into the science of everything. And then we had a one day workshop our coach organized. Usain Boltz, running coach. He was from Colorado and he came to Australia and he was giving us a lecture and he said to me one day, he brought up this machine and I had no idea what he was talking about. So I was at university doing exercise physiology. He said, louisa, we should do an EEG scan on you. And I said, what is that? And why would you do that on me? And he said, we assess your brain, brainwaves and we can train your brain waves to be better. And I was like, I had no idea what he was talking about, but I fell in love with it. And that's when I knew, when I started to delve into it, I understood what the brain was. I was like, I have to go and pursue a career in this.

Oh, wow. That's funny that you bring up the heart rate monitor because I remember the old ads. I think it was Scott Tinley, when the heart rate monitors first came out in Triathlete Magazine. Yeah, they're like, it's kind of like the old cell phones for our cars, right? Because my parents were like early adopters of technology. So we had a giant cell phone like the size of four bricks with a huge antenna coming out of the car. And that early original heart rate monitor was the same thing. It was like a freaking computer strapped to your chest that, you know, who knows how much extra wattage you'd have to produce on the bike to even be able to power the bike wearing that thing. And of course now they're small and precise and on your cell phones and barely the size of a quarter. But yeah, the original heart rate monitors were a huge thing when they first came out. They blew people's minds. And you just have to go to an X phys lab or something like that to get your heart rate tested during exercise.

Yeah. And then it made training, like so much more exciting because you'd go there and, you know, coach would say, louise, I need you to run four minute kilometers, or, you know, you need to do six by four minute efforts. And we would be able to track on the heart rate monitor what our heart rate was and then would Also be able to track the distance, and it would beep as the distance would be, and it was just. It made you a better athlete. So that's. It was like data was making me better. And then I thought, well, what. You know, imagine putting data on my brain that could even make me better, right?

Yeah. Yeah. And it sounds like that's what you're doing now at neuro athletics. It's funny that you have a background in exercise phys. That's what my master's degree is in. So I spent a lot of time doing, like, the lactates and the indirect calorimetry and everything like that in the lab. But we rarely looked at or considered anything like brain waves or mental performance or anything like that. So with you getting an original EEG scan, where'd you go from there as far as developing what you do now?

Well, so right before I was meant to fly to Beijing, I had a massive change in my life. It was two weeks going to Beijing, which is where I was going to compete, and it was everything I had been training for my entire career. Two weeks before going, I went on a bike ride with my two teammates, and I got hit by a car. And this was on a highway? Yeah, I was in the bike lane, and this guy, he was around 85, 90 years old, he had been traveling for three hours without a rest stop, and he was going so fast. Fast. I think he was going 10 km over the limit. And he. He must have been looking at us on the bike and you know when wherever you look, you just end up steering that way. And he just. He just clocked me. So he took me out. I broke my leg, snapped some ribs, obviously had to forfeit my position. And so that's when Usain Bolt's running coach said to me, you should do an EEG scan because that's how you're going to get back on the bike. So I had a very big fear of getting on the bike, and so I was. I did an EEG scan, and what he showed me was after the end of it, it wasn't a raw eeg, so we had to get somebody to interpret it. But he showed me, like, some frontal lobe damage. And I just. I was obsessed about it. I was thinking, okay, well, what does frontal lobe damage mean? What does my. My brain was, quote, unquote asleep in different areas. And I was like, what does that mean? So I was training my brain visually, so I was trying to visualize myself getting back on the bike, and then I'd go through and do Another EEG scan to see if my brain waves changed. So that was the first time that I realized the brain is special when it comes to high performance. And it was the missing link. You know, when I went to do the EEG scan, the doctor said, you know, are you even sleeping? And I said, no. Like, as triathletes, we were taught not to sleep. We were taught to be on the bike and run. So I was sleeping five hours a night, and he said, no, I need you to sleep eight hours. So we didn't know that. Like, I didn't know 15 years ago, they didn't tell us about sleep and the power of the brain as it relates to human performance.

Yeah, and the EEG scan thing, for people who aren't familiar, you're referring specifically to the scan where you put electrodes over certain areas of the brain and you're measuring actual brain wave data, like, like alpha beta, delta ratios, things like that.

Yeah, that's correct. So originally you would get an EEG scan when you'd go into a hospital, and you still do if you've had a seizure, for example.

Okay, so. So the EEG scan. And not that I want to put you out of a job by asking this question, but my experience has always been that you got to go into a facility and very precisely get gel placed on different areas of the head and then electrodes attached. And I've always wondered when getting that done, like, why couldn't there be like a at home EEG test? We just like pull on a helmet and it measures. Does anything like that exist?

So let's just break down what an eeg? So the electroencephalogram is like you said. You put this cap on your head and there's all these leads coming out, around 32 leads. And what it does is it measures the electrical activity in your brain. So we have brain waves and we're able to pick up on how they're operating in the brain. And this is used to detect abnormal brain function. You know, if somebody has a car accident, they've had, you know, they've knocked their head, or they've had a concussion, or they've, you know, resected a tumor out of their brain. Like, you can go through. It all affects the brain and how the brain is functioning. So you can go through and you can assess how well your brain is functioning from an eeg. Now, when I started working in a neurology lab and in a clinic, I was using this EEG scan, but we were using it to pick up on early Onset Alzheimer's disease, because early onset Alzheimer's disease or cognitive impairment, if you will, is a pre dementia state. So we could assess the cognitive function of these brains and what the EEG does when they run it through the lab, the test results would come back and it would say you've got early cognitive function. So I was doing these, Ben, like daily, like 10, 20, 30 of them per day. And I was thinking, huh, imagine if we did this just on a normal brain, right. And nobody was asking that question. And when I asked the, the attending, he would say, I don't know, Louisa, like why do you care about that? You just need to do your job and just need to scan these brains. So I contacted the company, the EEG company and I said, listen, I work with elite athletes and I want to start scanning the brains of NFL players. So they gave me this device, which is around $150,000 and they gave me this and I started scanning these brains and it was amazing.

So basically you still have to go to, to a clinic like yours or a hospital to actually get like a medical grade EEG scan. You can't do it. Like, you know, for example, like they say the, the Oura ring or some of these wearables get pretty close to sleep plasmography. I don't know if that's true. There's like home heart rate variability measurements. There's some stuff people can measure in their own home. But is EEG pretty much like not accessible right now as far as an accurate measurement in someone's home?

In terms of an accurate measurement, you have to get a hospital grade eeg. So my one is portable, it's a real hospital grade eeg. And I hook it up to my computer and I test you on the spot. Everyone can't just use this at home because A, it's a medical grade EEG and B, you won't know how to interpret the results.

Yeah.

So it comes down to interpretation, but anyone can really just put a cap on you in the right place. Place the electrodes, place the gel. But it's all about the, you know, who's reading the, the results to you.

Yeah. A few years ago I did a podcast with a guy named Dr. Andrew Hill who runs Peak Neurofeedback in LA. And me and my sons went down there for a week and we did pre and post eeg. We spent a week there twice a day doing neurofeedback training, you know, flying these spaceships with our mind and kind of getting that subconscious slap on the wrist where the spaceship would slow down or the music would fade or the smoke would, you know, stop coming out of the back of the spaceship whenever you'd stray into those brain wave zones that he was trying to detrain our brains out of. And the post EEG was super interesting. Like, my son Taryn had areas of distractibility and ADD adhd. Like, symptoms that pretty much like banished my own distractibility or ruminating thoughts were significantly reduced through that. And I saw a lot of the value from the neurofeedback when I went in and did that. But it sounds like at neuro athletics you're doing more than just eeg, right?

Oh, yeah. EEG is just part of our decoding sequence. So when you first come to us as an athlete, by the way, I call everybody an athlete. So we primarily work with elite athletes, NBA players, NFL, et cetera. But we're also servicing financial services here in New York on Wall Street. And they're interesting characters, but I call them athletes as well. Okay, so you'd come in. Yeah, you'd get an eeg. But we do everything, we do blood labs, we get so many different measurements and we do cognitive assessments, we do visual acuity tests, we do VO2 max, which is really interesting, actually. They yield really amazing results in terms of not just to see what your cardiorespiratory fitness is, but to also see, like, you know, so many other measurements, like, how are you? You know, what's your metabolism like? Like, what's your lactate threshold like? It's. It's amazing.

That's super interesting. I want to delve into more detail. So let's say I walk in there and I'm just like, louisa, I want a better brain. Build me a better brain or at least analyze what's going on with my brain right now. What exactly am I going to go through?

First thing is your EEG scan. So when we do that, it's only a 25 minute scan. Once we interpret the results, we get both the raw data, the raw EEG results. We also get head maps, which I think you would have got when you did it with Andrew Hill.

Yeah, it's like, it's like a map of all the different areas of your brain.

Yeah. So it maps all the areas of your brain and it shows you which area has dysfunction, which area has hyperactivity, which is classified. You'll see a red brain or you'll see hypoactivity, like which areas of the brain just is low activity and they're not switching on, which would be like a blue brain. So we'll test those functions. So we test every area of the brain, and that's amazing. So then we can get a full map of the brain. Then we move on to blood. So blood work, I think, is just like, you can't optimize any part of your life without measuring what is happening in your blood. So we get everything, like full lipid panel. I'm talking like we go into obviously ldl, hdl, ldl, C, apo, B, lp. We're doing all of that. We're going into homocysteine. We're just hormone function. There's so many different areas that we.

Touch on with that, with the blood work. By the way, is there anything particular, like any parameters you're looking at that you think are really specific as far as identifying potential problematic issues with the brain that might fly under the radar that people aren't looking at in their blood work right now?

Well, there are certain ones that you can look at, like certain neural hormonal biomarkers. But like I first like to look at. Let's also do a DNA test. Right? Let's look at the like. Are you. Do you have the APOE4 gene? Because that's going to really determine everything else. Because if you're an E4, E4 carrier, then we know that you're predisposed to Alzheimer's disease. So. So then we're going to have to, you know, your blood labs are going to look completely different. But let's say you come in and you don't have the, you know, the genetic predispositions for Alzheimer's disease, those risk genes, and everything is fine in that aspect. Then we look at your blood work. We may see you've got an elevated homocysteine. Okay. We may see that you're not able to process B vitamins. So that's a really big hallmark that we need to look at for cognitive function. We even do an omega 3 index test, which so many people in this field are kind of wary of. But I generally do advocate for a high omega 3 index, and we're doing that. And we're getting all of our athletes supplementing with at least 4 grams per day of EPA and DHA.

Okay, interesting. I think the last folks I interviewed about fish oil research and Omega 3 said that despite the lab values for omega indexes indicating something like 4%, I think they said being good, that they recommended when you were testing it was like 7 or 8%, like almost twice that.

Well, we recommend 8%.

Okay.

And above. Yeah. And by the way, if you have afib, like, for example, my father has afib, which ended up leading to a stroke. So I don't have it right now, but maybe I'm, you know, genetically predisposed to this condition. You may not want to take such a high dose.

Hmm. Why is that?

Because it's an anticoagulant. So it can thin. Yes. So you just. You don't want to be taking it and having AFIB at the same time. So you have to consult with your medical practitioner. However, whenever anybody asks me, what are the best supplements for the brain, one of the ones I always recommend is EPA and dha.

Okay, got it. I might want to ask you about any nootropics or smart drugs that you recommend later on. But. But before I do you. So you do the eeg, you do the blood test. What else do you look at?

VO2 max. So we are picking up on cardiorespiratory fitness. Now, you would know this when you do your exercise physiology degree masters. You would have done this in the lab. Right. You would have conducted one for us. We learned that this was only reserved for elite athletes, but now we know that huge biomarker of longevity is having a high VO2 max. So we're getting everybody doing a VO2 max. We generally do it on a treadmill rather than a bike, but a bike yields the same results. So we do that, and we're able to get their VO2 max score. We're also able to get their blood lactate score. So then we can set zone two parameters. So we do a blood lactate test as well with a lactate meter. We do a cognitive assessment test. So we've got 10 different cognitive assessments that you go through. So as we keep talking, I want everyone to be able to separate the brain from cognition. What I'm trying to say is when I say brain functionality and brain structure, I'm talking about the eeg. And then when I talk about cognition, I'm talking about things such as attention, reaction, focus, information processing speed.

Okay.

Yeah.

So anything in addition to the cognitive assessment, after they've done that.

So we've also got hormone check. We do a complete hormone check. And then. Yeah, no, that's it. We've got an exercise physiologist on board. And he then goes through and does all of the one repetition max. He does the standing box jump, the vertical jump test. So we've got the exercise parameters as well. And that's all in month one. So month one with us is literally just testing. We need to test everything so we get to know you better than you know yourself.

Yeah. That's interesting that you talked about the lactate too, because that flies under the radar, is a really, really good way to determine for people listening in what would be called your aerobic threshold, or what Luis referred to as Zone 2, meaning you can figure out the blood levels of lactate at certain heart rates. And typically once your blood levels are above about 4 millimolar, which is how lactate is measured in terms of the units, then you know that you've kind of crossed what would be called your anaerobic threshold close to that point. And you can actually, using certain equations, determine with pretty good accuracy at what point the aerobic threshold occurred. And that would be kind of like your, your maximum fat burning, your ideal aerobic zone, right?

Yeah, correct. What I forgot to mention is we do a psychological assessment as well because we don't think that anybody can go through and achieve peak performance of any type without tapping into psychology. And then we do an at home sleep study. So we don't do that personally, but we outsource that. So somebody comes to your home and measures your sleep. So you mentioned earlier, Ben, you said, oh, can the OURA ring. So I'm wearing an OURA ring right now and I'm wearing a whoop. If you say to me, but is this doing the same thing? My answer is no. And it's always going to be no. You cannot replicate an in house sleep study, a PSG polysomnography with these wearables. It's almost accurate, but it's not 100% accurate. Just like an EKG is not the same as, you know, you can go and get your real HRV from an electrocardiogram in the hospital, you can't get that same measurement from a wearable.

Yeah, I think, I think the most valuable data is just to be able to at least see subjective comparisons in sleep scores. Right. Even if it's not truly accurate in terms of close to a percentage point of your actual, let's say deep sleep cycles or sleep latency or something like that, you can at least get an idea of how your daily lifestyle, food supplement habits, et cetera, are affecting you relative to whatever your score might be, whether or not it's accurate.

We hook everybody up to one of either of these devices, just whatever they like the best and that's how we track them. And honestly, I'm just picking up on consistency. So I'm looking at the hrv. I'm looking at their sleep and that's pretty much what we're using it for. It's not the be all, it's not the holy grail, but it's a good measurement tool.

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Let's talk about some practical stuff. Not that testing isn't practical, but as far as things that your athletes or the financial professionals or anybody else that you're working with or a listener could do, as far as like brain building or mental performance exercises during the average day. And let's say they don't just want to download like an, I don't know, the N back training app or Lumosity or Brainscape and be tied down to their phone. What are some practical things you could do, possibly even device free to build your brain during the day?

I'm going to pull up a wonderful study that was done in 2004 and I quote this on every podcast and I think it's really interesting. So it was printed in journal, printed in Nature Journal. Sorry. So what they did was they got a group of healthy students and they got them to juggle for three months. So juggling just with two balls, I think they're only juggling for 20 minutes a day, which is not that bad, right? So they got them to learn how to juggle first. What they found, and I quote, was jugglers had more gray matter, which consists largely of the nerve cells in the mid temporal area and the left posterior intraparietal sulcus, which processes visual information. So that got me really excited. It showed us, or essentially proved a hypothesis that if you were doing any form of hand eye coordination drills, you are growing the gray matter of your brain. That was 2004. And then once I started to, you know, once I started the company, this was in 2018, I started to go down this rabbit hole of we can grow the gray matter of our brain. So that's when I came up with these neuro athletics drills that anybody can do at home. So first of all, all you need is two balls, okay? Just get tennis balls, for example, and start with throwing the ball. So let's Imagine you have a tennis ball in your right hand, stand a meter away from the wall, and I want you to just throw the ball to the wall in an overhand grip perspective. So you want to be able to cup the ball overhand, throw it overhead, and catch it overhand. So what this is doing is you've got manual dexterity there with your fingers. You're getting hand eye coordination because you have to obviously catch and throw the ball. You're getting visual information, so your eyes are getting exercised, but then you're also getting information processing speed. So on the axon, which. So when we look at the brain cell, the brain cell consists of the cell body. Then it has this axon that comes off of it. And the axon is where all of the speed of transmission occurs. So we can strengthen that, and that's called processing speed. And that's one of the measures that we test using the eeg. But you can build your processing speed by doing exercises like this. So very easy. Stand a meter away from the ball, throw the ball with the right hand, then throw with the left hand. You may see a difference in these two. Then what you want to do is throw the ball with the right, and on the bounce back, catch it with the left and repeat that process. And that's like literally level one. It gets very fun if you keep doing it.

Okay, so a couple questions for you. The first is, what if you're, like, holding something like. Like a racket? Like, let's say I want to do this with a pickleball paddle and a wiffle ball, and instead of throwing, I'm hitting. Is. Is there a difference or have they looked at, like, hitting versus throwing activities for something like that?

You can. And that's all well and good. However, you're not getting the hand, manual dexterity in it.

Okay. Unless I like. Unless I like, hit and then catch in one hand, and then switch and hit and catch in the other hand.

Yeah. And also remember that one of the biggest things when making a change is adherence. So adherence to any protocol is going to be key. And I think that you got to minimize the effort. You can just get up every morning. Everyone has a wall in their apartment, you know, or in their house. Get a wall, go somewhere, get two balls, and that's all you need. And then you can make it even better so you can do things like, once you've graduated level one, which is just throwing to the wall, hold the ball in your right hand, stand on your right leg and lift your left leg up off the ground, so now you're. Now you're balancing, right? And you're throwing the ball to the wall.

The balancing thing makes sense, too. What do you think about the idea? Because I've heard this recommended before about, like, brushing your teeth with your left hand, side of your right hand, or even, like, brushing your teeth with your left hand and. And standing on your right foot while you do that. Are those kind of things just mostly coordinative, or did they actually develop the brain in the same way as that juggling study that you mentioned?

Yeah, I've heard that often. You know, brush your teeth with the left hand stuff. It's. That's a very minor, fine skill. It's not going to move the needle to where you want it to, because imagine your brain. I want everyone to imagine your brain just like a muscle, and it has the exact same usage, which is use it or lose it. So I don't know if you've seen Ben, the homunculus.

Yeah, Explain to people, though.

So basically, there's this human homunculus, meaning that every area of the brain is responsible for something different. And if you Google homunculus, what you'll see is you'll see this, the cortex, which is the outer part of the brain, with this human creature with the hands and his legs on every area of the brain. And it basically shows a human map, a map of our brain, which every area is responsible for something different from the way that we stand to the way that we pick things up to the way that we perceive things. Now, what happens is, as we get older, we stop using certain areas of our brain, because when we're younger, what are we doing? We're jumping up a tree or we're catching things, we're throwing things. And as we get older, we stop doing the fun things we did when we're little kids. And that area becomes smaller. So the areas that you use less often, they start to shrink and eventually die, just the same way as your muscle tissue. If I am not doing bicep curls and I'm not placing intensity or pressure on my bicep, it's going to shrink. It's the same as your brain. So when we do these skills, you know, brushing your hand, it's not. It's not hard enough. You're not going to induce hypertrophy, if you will. You've got to do harder things, things that are challenging, things that are, like, excitatory, but also places pressure for you to think.

Yeah, I don't know. I feel like a flailing Muppet Sometimes I'm trying to brush my teeth with my left hand. But that's interesting. I guess maybe there's a lot of people who are keeping the dental industry in business doing a crappy job brushing their teeth with their left hand. Maybe you guys ought to start throwing balls now. What about if you're. I realize you got to include a safety disclaimer or whatever, but what about if you're driving? Like, a lot of people commute and maybe want to work on developing the brain just while they're. They're driving? Are there certain things you could do.

Not while you're driving? I wouldn't suggest that. However, interesting fact, one of the leading causes of motor vehicle deaths is actually reaction time. So improving reaction time can help you make you a better driver. But I wouldn't suggest when you're driving to do anything.

What about, like, left, right eye movements or gazing at things off in the horizon? Because I've heard the eyes are kind of like an external brain. So, yeah, I guess maybe whether you're driving or not. Are there certain things you could do with your eyes to develop a better brain?

We do do a lot of visual exercises, and I can run you through a few because I think they're really, really fascinating. So do you remember going in to an optometry office when you were younger and you'd look at this thing called a Snellen chart?

You mean with the big E at the top and then the letters get.

Progressively smaller reading the smaller lines? Yeah, so, yeah, so that was, you know, back then, that was a way to test your visual acuity. Now we have so many different ways that we can test it. So let's just stay on the board draws for a moment. Let's just say you're throwing the ball to the wall. If you go to cvs, you can buy an eye patch, like a pirate eye patch, for $5. What you can do is you can place it on your eye and then continue doing the same drills. Now, what have you done? You've essentially blacked out and lost 50% of your eyesight. So what is that doing? Well, let's have a look at what the eyes are. You just said that they're two pieces of the brain, and they are. They were just pushed out during neural development. And you've got these two little eyes.

Kind of. Kind of gross to think about. We should almost call them, like, brain prolapses.

Yeah, it's so. And if you watch it in real time on an mri, it's crazy to see them getting pushed out of the skull. But imagine your eye. The eye connects to the brain via this nerve called the optic nerve. It's one of the cranial nerves. It goes into the eye, it goes into the brain. And then the way that we process information is it goes and connects all the way back into the back of the brain, which is called your occipital cortex. So this is where we process information. So from there, the occipital cortex says, oh, that's a tree, or that's a ball, or that's a car. And it sends a message back up to your frontal lobe, which is where your brain is, the CEO of your brain. And it says, okay, we need to get out of the way if that's a car. Or we need to put our hand up to catch the ball if it's a ball. So your brain goes through a lot during that process. Now, what happens if we black? What if we essentially say, hey, brain, we've lost 50% of our eyesight? It then works harder for you to see the image. So if you're wearing an eye patch and you're doing these ball exercises, you're essentially placing even more pressure and demand on your brain, essentially like weights, creating more neural demand. So then it has to figure out, oh, my gosh, we've lost. Come on, guys, get into gear. We've lost half of our eyesight, and we need to catch the ball and we need to move. So it's growing new areas of the brain. And you're also working on visual acuity.

Man, you hear it here first. Dress your kid up like a pirate for Halloween. You can make them smarter. I can also imagine a whole bunch of people at their desks now, podcast listeners looking like Captain Blackbeard at their desk. Do you ever just use a palm and just cup one eye to cover it up just while you're doing random activities?

Yeah, you can. And look, we go even crazier. We've got strobe goggles where we place them on our athlete, and there's four quadrants, and we can black out just like the top quadrant on the right side of the right eye.

For example, I've seen Steph Curry, the Golden State warriors, doing that.

That's the exact same one.

Now, related to the idea that we were talking about earlier regarding so sleep, I would imagine that a lot of these folks that you're working with get derailed when they're traveling to tournaments or events or they're dealing with jet lag. Like, what. What are some of the big Dial movers for you when it comes to managing things like sleep during travel or jet lag.

Well, first of all, you have to adjust your sleep schedule. So they're like gradually shifting the sleep schedule before departure. It's such a pain, but you have to. So that's the first thing that we figure out. Like where are you traveling to and how can we adjust the sleep. Sleep schedule 72 hours before departure.

Now, now when you're adjusting the sleep schedule, are you adjusting these so called, what they call like zeitgebers, like when you eat, when you get exposed to light, when you exercise, you're doing all of that in the time zone of where you happen to be traveling to?

Absolutely. We're adjusting everything because food is very big as it relates to circadian rhythm. It basically tells your body that you're awake or that you're preparing for sleep. And then we do, you know, adjusting for light as well.

How many days in advance?

72 hours.

Okay, so three days in advance, you start to adjust your schedule for where you're going and then what?

Yeah, so then once we get onto the plane, that's the next thing. Depending on how long the ride is, we try and advocate for eating minimally. I won't say completely not eating. If it's a three hour flight, then don't eat. But if you are, we encourage all of our athletes to take their own food. And you can, you can take, you know, people think you can't take food, but you can so take your own food. Once you're on the plane, you're still going to stick to your schedule of time zones. So you're going to sleep. If it's 11pm in your time zone and you're on the flight, you're going to sleep at that time as well. You can try, if you can try and sleep, you can take some sleep aids if you need. Third thing is over hydrating. So not just hydrating. I want you to drink more water and electrolytes than what you would on the ground.

Now we should issue a disclaimer here, like don't get hyponatremia. You don't want to over, over hydrate. As you know from triathlon, that's like it's more often than dehydration that sends people to the medical tent. So, so be careful, don't, don't dilute your fluids. I'm right on board with you, Louisa, about avoiding food on airplanes, especially the actual airplane food, but eating in general, not only due to the circadian issues that you talked about, but also the microbiome disruption that's been shown in literature, especially for long haul flights. But one, one thing that I always keep in my bag. I'm curious to hear your take on this because it seems to have a little bit of a potentially like a DNA or a radiative protective effect would be ketones like drinkable ketone esters or something like that to kind of keep the appetite satiated during the flight. You ever mess around with something like that?

I do. I was taking ketone IQ and I travel quite often. Tomorrow I'm flying to Europe which is crazy. So I'm on that. You know, I'm doing this to myself as well. I'm. For the past 72 hours I've been on Europe time. So I'm also taking ketone iq like ingestible ketones. And what I'm also doing is I don't know if you do this. Do you ever take a greens powder with you as well?

To be honest with you, I find that greens powders make me super duper regular. So I don't do them on a long haul flight because I just don't like spending lots of time in the airplane bathroom. So no, I don't use greens. You like those though for a flight?

I do. Because what I'm trying to do essentially is also eliminate or decrease, I wouldn't say eliminate, decrease the amount of inflammation. So we're already getting like. Yeah. So you have to remember as well your oxygen isn't as great, it's pressurized. So we need to do anything that we're, you know, going to be able to decrease the amount of inflammation that we have. Water, obviously electrolytes. I take a greens powder with me as well just to help with that. And then I'm wearing blue light blocking glasses. I always say don't rely on blue light blockers at home because they're not going to be doing one. They're not blocking blue light 100%, especially.

From on the skin's photoreceptors. They're not blocking any of that.

No, exactly. But when you're on a flight you need to get as much help as you need. So these blue light blockers are going to help you. Getting a sleep mask, getting earplugs, getting whatever it is to make you feel comfortable and at ease on that flight.

Okay, that makes sense. And I mean the ketones, those will kind of modulate the NF Kappa B pathway to a certain extent and, and have a little bit of an anti inflammatory effect. But you know, the other two things I like is I'll use hydrogen tablets in all the water that I drink just because that's kind of a selective antioxidant that allows me to get some anti inflammatory action without needing to go take green poops in the bathroom. And then the other one is nad. NAD has some really good properties, especially even as far as making you feel better when you get to where you're going. So there's some companies that make NAD patches. I'll just like slap one on my inner thigh or like the back of the arm, you know, an area of hairless skin. And I find that NAD works fantastically. Do you ever use nad?

I've never used the actual NAD patches, but then again like it's got to be able to penetrate the cell nad. And does the patches do that?

Yeah, yeah, they've got some pretty good data on actually. I mean the oral bioavailability of NR and NMN and even like NAD or nad, plus it's pretty decent. But intravenous, transdermal or even suppository based delivery, you get way better. Cellular delivery.

Yeah.

You know what's interesting is I've tried a lot of these tactics and the thing that seems to be the biggest dial mover for me, Louisa, and I catch some flack for this. But I put in my bag, like before I go through security, an actual like jogging suit that's lined with silver fabric that's essentially like a wearable Faraday suit. And after I go through security, because you can't go through security on Earth, you look like a ghost and you freak everybody out and you got to do the whole pat down. But afterwards I put that thing on and it's like a full body hoodie and pants. I think there's a few different companies that make them. Mine is no choice is the company that makes it. And it's got a full zip up hoodie. And since I started using that thing especially for long haul flights, my amount of jet lag has plummeted. It's crazy. And it's just like a full body, like a Faraday suit. You ever seen these?

No. I just wrote down no choice. I want to have a look at it because I travel so often.

Yeah, it's, it's crazy. I mean I was shocked. And even has little plugs in the cuffs of the pants so that when you get to where you're going they have little alligator clips and you can ground to a metal object like when you're waiting for your bags or whatever. In baggage plane. So you get like this massive amount of grounding and earthing. And again, like it's not the most fashionable item to wear on a plane, but it seems to work really well.

Is it compression as well?

They have like long johns that you can wear underneath them, but they're not compression gear per se. I'll usually have compression socks on and then, yeah, pull that thing over it. Now sometimes when I get to where I'm going, I feel really good if I can jump in a cold body of water or do like some cryotherapy or something like that. But whether or not it's related to sleep or jet lag, I'm just curious, is there anything to the idea of heat therapy or cold thermogenesis when it comes to mental performance?

Yeah, I was just going to add on that when you get to your destination, one thing that we get everyone to do, depending on what time it is, like if it's early morning, we always get somebody to get off the plane and go for a run. It's like a mandatory, like get off the plane and exercise. It's going to get you. The fastest way for you to adapt to the time zone is through exercise. So that's what we get somebody to do. Okay, now, heat and brain health. Yes. I think that there's more to say about cold and the cold shock proteins that are released when you get into cold immersion than what you do in hot. So first of all, saunas are amazing. I think they yield more cardiovascular benefits than neural benefits. There's been studies to show that you can actually mimic cardiovascular workouts through the sauna. So just the same thing as what your heart is getting when you're going for a 40 minute run, you can get the exact same effects from going into a sauna. So I advocate for that. I love going into the sauna, but I think the real benefit is going into cold immersion.

You mean specific to the brain?

Specific to the brain and it's through this RBM3 pathway. But just to be really plain and simple with everyone, what happens is once you jump into cold water, I'm not talking about cryotherapy either. Once you get into cold water, what you're doing is you're getting this massive robust release of norepinephrine. And norepinephrine is amazing because it's both a hormone and a neurotransmitter. So when it's released in the brain as a neurotransmitter, it's involved in vigilance and focus and you can actually get a 350% increase in this neurotransmitter when you jump into cold. I'm talking, like, that's huge. So you get all this norepinephrine, but then you've also got these cold shock proteins, which are also having an effect on the brain. And I think in terms of dosage, what you're looking at is you're looking at around five times a week. So that's the only caveat. Five times a week at like, three minutes per session, depending on the temperature.

Why not cryotherapy?

I don't think that you can get the same benefits out of cryotherapy as what you would with cold immersion. Again, I'm talking about someone who has to adhere to a protocol. And I think getting into a cold bath is much more manageable than going to a cryotherapy chamber.

Yeah, I feel the same. I just never noticed it as much. And I've even come across some information about the hydrostatic pressure of the water against the skin being a little bit better from a recovery standpoint, as well as the dunking of the head under the water from a cranial nerve standpoint, kind of activating the mammalian diver reflex and potentially having a better effect on vagal nerve tone.

Yeah, that's correct. And then also, you also have to think about the downstream mechanisms of inflammation. A lot of us are in an inflammatory state. You know, I live in New York City. We're always, you know, stressed. That's another effect of cold. So you're also getting the. You're also blunting the inflammatory cytokine storm that's occurring as well. So that's another reason why I like it. Another caveat. You don't want to be going into a cold bath straight after a strength training session because you're going to blunt that hormetic response to exercise. That's the only time I'll say not to get into it.

Yeah, if the muscle temp drops a lot, it's got to be like over 1 Celsius drop to blunt the inflammatory or the. The satellite cell hypertrophy response. And that typically for most people is like 10 minutes or more at under 40 degrees. So, like, if you're taking a quick cold shower or just like jumping in the ice right after a workout just to make sure you're not sweating out the armpits at work or whatever, it's. It's not a big deal. And it feels fantastic.

It feels fantastic. But also, I think over time, you get used to that. Cold showers, you have to keep getting colder and colder, which is why an ice bath is going to yield the most return. And I just like the fact that you can do so much from. In terms of immunity. We know that you can even induce mitochondrial biogenesis from getting into the cold. I'm sure everyone knows what that is. Your mitochondria, you're quote, unquote, the powerhouse of the cell. They create energy, literally in your cell. And you can create more mitochondria in your cells by getting into the cold bath.

Yeah. And the cold shower. You're right. Sometimes it doesn't get cold enough. But, you know, it sounds like you travel a lot, so, you know, the hack for that is if you're at a hotel, you just go to the ice bucket, and you fill up the bucket in the hotel room with ice and you hang that from the shower head so all the shower water gets super icy cold, and you don't have to, like, fill up the whole bathtub with ice cubes.

That's a really good hack.

Yeah, it works really well, actually. So you can. You can use it like a coat hanger. If you don't have a handle on the ice bucket, that allows you to hang it from the shower head. So there you go. I just ruined everybody's vacation.

I love that. What about.

I briefly mentioned it. And I never like to make people think. On this podcast, you can pop a pill to get yourself smarter, but it's always interesting to hear the take of folks like you, especially a neurophysiologist on this wide world of nootropics and so smart drugs and snortable peptides and all these things people are doing. Is there anything that you particularly favor with your athletes or the people you work with when it comes to something you could take to increase mental performance?

So, look, first and foremost, I think that unless you have your sleep dialed in and your exercise dialed in and your nutrition, I don't think that supplements are going to help you. If you're going to take a prescription medication, maybe like Modafinil, for example, or provisional, that may definitely help you. But if we're talking about supplements, okay, if we're talking about something that you can get over the counter, some of the things I like to get my athletes to supplement with during the day, first and foremost, everyone's on creatine. We used to think that creatine was just for the body. We now have substantial evidence to show that creatine is also not just good for the brain, but necessary because we have cells in our brain. And obviously we have cell energy production happening in our brain. That's where creatine comes in and helps with that. So creatine monohydrate, if you're a female trying to start off with 5 grams per day, it won't get you bulky, it won't bloat you, it's safe and it's extremely effective. I have my dad taking it, he's 72.

Creatine's amazing, especially for sleep deprivation. I think that the two best things for me in a sleep deprived state is creatine and nad. I think creatine for the reasons you just mentioned, as a, as a phosphate precursor for energy. And then NAD seems to simulate some of the cell repair mechanisms that you'd normally be getting from a good night of sleep. And if I'm sleep deprived, I'll take creatine and NAD regularly in the mornings on any days like that, or for jet lag or travel.

I think with the NAD in a sleep deprived state it makes sense because if you're sleep deprived and you're not getting into deep sleep, you're not activating the glymphatic system which is our sewage system in the brain. So you're detoxifying and getting rid of these amyloid beta for example, and all of these neurotoxins that build up. NAD will come in and be able to clear out that process and maybe induce mitophagy as well.

You mentioned Modafinil. What do you think about that?

I love it. I think it's great. But I don't think it's for everyone. Look, I've used it. I didn't have any crazy side effects. It helped me study it. Got me through some days, really hard working days. I don't take it. I haven't taken it probably in like a year.

Seems to help a lot of people through sleep deprivation. I interviewed a guy. I'll hunt down the podcast and link to it in the show notes if folks go to BenGreenfieldLife.com Nicola Jonathan ironically talking about brain performance. I'm forgetting his last name. Anyways, we did an hour and a half long podcast about Modafinil and it is interesting as far as its efficacy is an off label narcoleptic drug. He had some concerns about a impact on sleep cycles which you hear reported from a lot of people. They'll start to take modafinil and kind of get like this tired but wired up at 3am consistently even for like a week after they stop using it so you kind of got to be careful from that standpoint. And then perhaps more concerningly because of the flood of dopamine that it causes potential for dopamine desensitization, meaning sex doesn't feel as good. You start to get cravings for food. You could tend to be less motivated when you're off it. So I think my take on Modafinil and I do have some, and if I take it, it would be, for example, if I'm traveling long haul and I know I'm going to be sleeping maybe three hours and I got to get up on stage the next day and power through an entire conference day or something like that. It's my big guns for if I really, really need something. But aside from that, you know, I'm a fan of some of the, some of the less sledgehammer like compounds and there's a lot of them out there. I mean, you mentioned creatine, I mentioned nad. Those probably wouldn't traditionally be classified as nootropics or smart drugs per se, but are there any others that come to mind for you?

Alpha gpc, that's a really great one for getting people to concentrate and focus better. So are we getting a lot of our finance guys supplementing with Alpha GPC around 2pm because that's that time of the day where they've been up for half the day and they're about to just fall asleep at their desk or their focus isn't as good. So we're getting them supplementing with Alpha GPC as we're moving throughout the night or if they're traveling like one supplement that we get them to use whilst traveling is phosphatidylserine, which we've found has been great. But generally when it comes to nootropics, it's, it's also about hydration really is. We know that when our, our brain cells synapse together, we know that we need electrolytes for that. So making sure that you're supplementing with sodium, potassium, selenium, zinc, these are the things that are going to help drive your brain to produce the energy that it needs throughout the day. So I often look at things that are not classified as nootropics. As a nootropic, you bring up a.

Good point because you do want to cover your bases from a gas in the gas tank standpoint with nootropics because you're essentially accelerating the burn. You mentioned choline, which I think stacks really well with any of these things that reportedly speed up the brain Even, even like caffeine, for example. And then you also burn through a lot more minerals and magnesium, not only when you're sleep deprived, but when you're using central nervous system stimulating compounds. So I think magnesium is a good idea and I see a lot of people, they'll stack something like new Pept or Modafinil or, or some done for you. Blend with choline and with magnesium so that you're not burning through all your fuel at the same time that you're increasing the brain's needs.

And then depending on how much caffeine you are having, when we start to move into the night, then we start a whole new supplement stack. So we've got L theanine, which can also counteract the effects of caffeine. We're getting people to supplement 20 minutes before bed with magnesium. L threonate. So these two things can really help get somebody into a sleepy mood. Because when we don't advocate for melatonin. So always generally try and keep our guys away from melatonin.

Why is that?

It is a hormone. We don't want to go through and disrupt the natural process of melatonin being secreted because that means you're going to have to eventually be on it for the rest of your life. Although if we are traveling, it's good to help you get back onto the time zone. I always think about melatonin, right. A naturally secreting hormone that gets secreted in the response to darkness. It is a hormone. Right. So, and it's. You can just go and buy it at the health food store or at cvs. It's like, I'm not walking into CVS saying, could I get a bottle of testosterone, please? So I think we need to caution that with control. I think we need to, you know, I think everyone needs to really understand that, yes, it still is a hormone.

Isn't us one of the few countries where it is OTC melatonin?

Yeah. You know, in Australia you need a prescription unless you're over the age of 60.

Wow, interesting. What about. Because a lot of people will do this and report they get great sleep, especially people with ruminating thoughts or people who are super type A or in a very stressed out scenario, they'll take an edible before bed or like smoke a joint before bed. What are your thoughts on that?

You know, I put up a tweet that went absolutely viral. It said that, I don't know who needs to hear this, but THC isn't helping you sleep. So I don't care who you are even if you think that alcohol is helping you fall asleep, you're actually sedating yourself. So you're putting yourself into a sedative state which is not. You're knocking yourself out, you're not going into sleep. So although you may be out cold and it may be quote unquote helping you fall asleep, it's just helping you fall into a knockout state. So I don't advocate for it at all.

On Saturday night I was at dinner with a friend. I think he takes a Delta 8 THC edible before he goes to bed. And that's the only way that he's able to sleep. And he says that although he's aware that it impacts sleep sometimes in a deleterious fashion, the sleep that he can't get when he's not taking it is so horrific that he thinks it's worth it for him to take because it's better than not sleeping at all. It's not addressing the underlying issue.

Right, exactly. We can all take things, we can all take illicit things. Just, you know, I mean, I'm not going to go and have a line of cocaine if I'm just feeling tired one day constantly because it's going to pick me up. It's. Everyone has to go through, everyone's going to have some form of, you know, ailment. You have to address it. And the one way to really address it is by getting an at home sleep study which is going to assess everything, even the ambient temperature around you, the CO2, it tests everything. So unless he's had that, I don't think so. Unless he hasn't got any underlying issues.

Yeah, yeah, I agree.

And then one thing I didn't point out either is a great nootropic during the day. Is L tyrosine as well? I don't know. Have you ever used L tyrosine?

Yeah. But explain to people why you like it.

Obviously it's a precursor and it can make you actually feel happy and good and focused. And I notice that if you are not eating red meat, for example, or you're not having a carnivore dieting, you may want to supplement with L tyrosine. It'll help you focus and have better cognitive performance during the day.

Heard similar things about taurine. What do you think about that?

Taurine's good. It makes for me, it makes me itchy. I don't know why. It brings the blood up to my skin and it makes me feel like itchy. I've had it in a pre workout.

Before I made sleep Gummies last night. Here's my recipe. I want to hear your take on it. I use tart cherry juice, like organic tart cherry juice I just bought off Amazon. Then I added glycine because apparently it can lower the body's core temp a little bit during sleep. I added Rishi and Ashwagandha and then cbd, not thc but, but cbd. And then I heated that all up and refrigerated it and made little sleep gummies because somebody sent me a bottle of these sleep gummies a few weeks ago. I looked them up on Amazon. It was like 50 bucks for a bottle. I thought, well, gosh, this is just basically gummies, which is gelatin, which is pennies on the dollar with some sleep enhancing compounds added in that you could just stir all together and refrigerate. So I actually had a couple last night before bed and they seem to work really well. Just glycine, cbd, couple of Adaptogens and then gelatin and tart cherry.

Did you put gelatin as well?

Yeah, I just used like grass fed gelatin and then a little bit of lecithin powder because it helps it to emulsify and not get very clumpy. And I think it might be my new go to sleep gummy recipe.

That's amazing because actually Ashwagandha, it's funny because Peter Attia, he actually is now experimenting with Ashwagandha and I wrote a newsletter on it, Ashwagandha helping with sleep. So that's a great thing. But glycine is amazing. What you said was completely valid and true. It does help with dropping core body temperature. I sleep on a temperature controlled mattress, but I know that not everyone has that opportunity. And everyone should know that if you're having any type of sleep disturbances, it could be core body temperature. So in order for us to fall asleep and stay asleep, our core body temperature needs to drop at least 2 degrees. The reason why we get up in the morning, our core body temperature rises and actually wakes us up in the morning and then we get a surge of cortisol which gets us out of bed. So if you can do anything to help drop your core body temperature down at night, then that's a good thing.

There you go folks. You heard it here first. Take glycine for night sweats and wear a pirate patch at work with to make you smarter. Louisa, where can people follow you?

I'm pretty active on Instagram, which is louisanicola Underscore. I have a podcast as well, the Neuro Experience and If anybody's listening and they're a trainer or they're a fitness enthusiast, we actually have a two day in person training course that we do every three months. The next one is June 3rd and June 4th in New York City. And we have a code which is Ben, if anyone wants to come, you can get 20% off.

All right, I'll put that@bengreenfieldlife.com Nicola N I C O L A Louisa thanks so much for coming on, sharing with us everything you're doing, neuro athletics and all these little tips. I appreciate it.

Thanks so much for having me, Ben.

All right, folks, I'm Ben Greenfield with Dr. Luisa Nicola signing out from BenGreenfieldLife.com Nicola have an amazing week.

More than ever these days, people like you and me need a fresh, entertaining, well informed and often outside the box approach to discovering the health and happiness and hope that we all crave. So I hope I've been able to do that for you on this episode today. And if you liked it or if you love what I'm up to, then please leave me a review on your preferred podcast listening channel, wherever that might be, and just find the Ben Greenfield life episode. Say something nice. Thanks so much. Means a lot.