How To Learn Faster, Jump Higher, Increase Explosiveness, Push Harder & Biohack Your Brain Beyond It’s Normal Capacity.

Hey, what's up? It's Ben Greenfield. If you're a fan of strapping odd things to your head to make yourself be able to do things like learn music faster or acquire skills more efficiently, you're going to dig today's episode. In this episode of the Ben Greenfield Finish Show.

So there's a raw amount of electrical output that is related to your brain that is literally the battery for your muscles. So when you lift weights and you're training to lift more and more weight, you're also training your brain. It's not just about musc. You know, the way we do research is very different. We have people come into our lab and half of the people get real stimulation. The other half of the people get what we call sham stimulation. So it feels like the real thing, but it actually doesn't work.

He's an expert in human performance and nutrition, voted America's top personal trainer and one of the globe's most influential people in health and fitness. His show provides you with everything you need to optimize physical and mental performance. He is Ben Greenfield.

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Hey, folks, it's Ben Greenfield. And last week, I posted to Instagram this photo of me dripping with sweat in my gym, bragging about what I called in in that particular post. The most dangerous piece of workout equipment that I own. And it was not some kind of a heavy mace or a unicycle or a parachute or some other kind of risky exercise device. It was just this simple piece of headgear. It looks like a nice set of Bose or Sony earphones, but embedded in that headgear is this device that is now recognized by modern exercise science as one of the best ways to enhance things like skill acquisition or decrease how hard a workout feels. So you can literally push yourself way harder than your brain would normally allow you to push. And it can even do some really interesting things in terms of cognitive performance. And there's some research on language learning and all sorts of super fascinating.

Hacks.

That this type of headgear can be used for. So it's all based on this science of something called neuropriming. Neuropriming. You're going to learn a little bit about that in today's episode, and that's developed from about 15 years of research, is basically the process of causing motor neurons to become more excitable before or during exercise or athletic training or skill acquisition to do things like increase your strength and your skill and your explosiveness and your endurance. And I've been playing around with this thing. A piece of headgear is called the Halo, the Halo sport. I've been playing around with it for about a month, using it prior to workouts primarily. And I've also used it prior to a few tennis lessons that I've taken. And it is so. I mean, the way I like to think about it is there's some stuff like fish oil that you can take that you kind of keep your fingers crossed is working, because unless you overdose with it, which gives you explosive diarrhea, I can tell you that from personal experience, unless you overdose with fish oil, you just kind of like keep your fingers crossed. It's like decreasing triglycerides or increasing HDL or decreasing inflammation, something like this. You actually notice a profound difference immediately. Like, I'll walk in and do a set of deadlifts after priming with this thing, and it literally feels like I'm ripping the weight off the ground nearly effortlessly. And I've let a couple of my friends who have come over and worked out of my gym try it, and they. They cannot believe that what this thing actually does, especially in terms of allowing us to push way harder than we normally thought possible in the gym. And I honestly, I don't fully understand how it works. However, my guest on today's podcast does, because he is a neurotech entrepreneur. He specializes in devices that improve brain performance, and he is the co founder of the company that developed this particular piece of headgear made by Halo Neuroscience. And again, it's called the Halo Sport. So My guest is Dr. Daniel Chow, and he was originally the head of business development at a company called NeuroPace, where he helped to develop, really, what was the world's first responsive neurostimulation system that was approved by the FDA for treating epilepsy. And before that, he got both his MD and also his master's in neuroscience from Stanford. So he's a smart cookie. You also worked at. You're a consultant at McKinsey and Company. Is that correct, Dr. Chow?

Yeah, yeah, that was like my business school replacement.

Okay, cool. I think another guest I've had on the show a couple of times, Dr. Peter Attia. I think he was involved with McKinsey and also attended Stanford. Do you know Peter?

Classmate of mine.

Oh, really? No way. Yeah, that's Funny.

He's awesome.

Okay. Cool. Small world. That's very cool. By the way, have you sent him one of these to try at all?

I should. I haven't talked to him in years, but, yeah, I should reach out. Love that guy.

Yeah, you totally should. I mean, the last experiment I was talking with Peter about was where he was sucking down a bunch of, like, liquid ketone esters that essentially tasted like rocket fuel to see how much harder he could push himself on a bicycle. And so this would be right up his alley. I should connect you guys after the call and plant the seed. But anyway, so this piece of headgear, from what I understand, and correct me if I'm wrong, Daniel, this is based on something called tdcs, which I think a lot of people might be familiar with. Is it not? Or am I mistaken?

Yeah, that's right. That's sort of our tech stack.

Okay.

Yeah. TDCS is short for Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation. So basically, you know that that word describes the use of creating an electric field on your scalp that is strong enough to get through your skull while gentle enough to interact with your cortex to. To neuromodulate.

All right, so you. You threw out some terms that I want. I want to clarify. So transcranial Direct Current stimulation. You're stimulating the cortex in your brain. And what exactly, for people who. Who might not be familiar with the cortex, what is the cortex? What does it do?

Yeah, so the cortex is sort of the outer layers of your brain. It's seen as a part of your brain that is more advanced versus deeper centers of your brain, like the thalamus and the basal ganglia, kind of like the reptilian brain versus the cortical centers of the human brain and primates, more generally, is really what makes us different from reptiles and birds.

Okay, got. So. So the cortex is what makes us different?

Yeah, yeah. In a nutshell. I mean, grossly oversimplified, but yeah.

And why is that? What is it the cortex does that. These other parts? Because I know, you know, we have, like, the lizard brain or the deep brain or what some people call, like, you know, the. The Labrador brain that responds, you know, subconsciously to things like stress, right, like the amygdala that will increase blood pressure and. And cortisol production response to, you know, something that. That might present us with some kind of a risky scenario. But when it comes to the cortex, what exactly is that doing that these other, deeper parts of the brain aren't?

Well, you know, the deeper parts of the brain are creating like, they're controlling things like, like heart rate, like body temperature. You know, things that just happen reflexively without us thinking about doing it. Our breathing rate, for example, you know, our breathing rate just happens by itself when we sleep, you know, our heart rate just happens by itself. Gut motility is controlled by the brain, and again, that just happens by itself. So these sort of deeper structures are just controlling things that are more automatic in. In life. Sort of higher processing centers are all so called cortical or embedded in the cortex. And these are things like memory. It's like cognitive control to control impulses. Like, Ben, you probably want to eat more than you do. Why don't you eat more? It's your cortex that tells you, no, you can't eat, you can't snack. Right?

Now that's something that I'm able to consciously control with the cortex.

Correct.

Okay, got it. Now, this tdcs, this works on the motor cortex, is that correct?

Yeah. And that's specific to Halo Sport. So just taking a step back, there's a special part of the cortex called the motor cortex. So the motor cortex is a special part of the brain that controls movement in our bodies, and it happens to sit neuroanatomically right above our ears. So that's why we could build Halo Sport into a set of headphones. Because the arch of the headphone, any headphone like Beats or Bose or whatever, just naturally goes over the motor cortex. So if. If your listeners go to our website and they see a picture of Halo Sport, what they'll notice is some specialized equipment built into the underside of the arch. So, like, Ben, you're familiar with this because you've been using Halo Sport for a while. But what your listeners will see are these things called. We call them primers. You know, within this group, they're effectively electrodes.

Are those all the little gray things that when I first got, I was freaked out because they look like spikes. And then later I realized they were just like this rubber that you put a little water on before you put the headgear on. Not actual brain spikes. But. But is that what you're referring to? These three little plastic devices that fit onto the top of the headgear?

Exactly.

They're calling primers rubber, I guess the rubber. Not plastic, right?

Yeah. Well, just like technically, they're. They're pieces of foam. And I mean, there's a story behind that. They're actually calligraphy pen tips, if you can believe that. So that. That'll give your listeners an idea for how soft they are. They're yeah, they're actually like if you've used a Sharpie, that's, that's about, you know, how, how, how pliable those, those, those, those nibs are. And yeah, that is where we create an electric field that will gently interact with your motor cortex.

Okay, got it. So when the TDCs or the transcranial direct. You said transcranial direct current stimulation, right? Correct. Okay, so when that stimulation is traveling through these electrodes and stimulating my motor cortex, what exactly is happening? Like, what's it doing?

Right, so a 20 minute session with Halo Sport. So you know, when I say that like technically what's happening is an electric field is interacting with your motor cortex. That will put the motor cortex into a temporary state of hyper learning that lasts for about an hour. So like our ask to the athlete is basically to warm up with this thing. So give us 20 minutes so that you can neuro prime. You know, often our athletes are doing other things while the Halo Sport headset is on their head, like typically warming up. When your warmup is done after about 20 minutes, your neuro priming session is also done. At that point, get after it. Like feed your brain quality reps, deliberate reps, thoughtful repetitions, powerful repetitions, and what that will do. Those repetitions will be encoded within your brain at an accelerated rate.

How's that happening?

Yeah, so it's making the motor cortex slightly more excitable.

Okay, got it. And so sorry to interrupt. So the motor cortex would normally be generating like neural impulses that are going to pass down your spinal cor and allow for execution of movement. And what this is doing is making that motor cortex hypersensitive to the input that it's receiving from the environment.

Right, right. It's basically like a great way to think about this is, Ben, what if you saw me at a park and I'm struggling to do a pull up and you're like, I know, Dan, I'm going to help this guy just laugh at you. All right? You're weakling.

Only the strong survive, baby.

Fair enough. All right, so let's pick somebody else. Let's pick my co founder, Brett or something.

Okay.

Not you, Ben.

A nice person.

Yeah, so Brett sees me and he's like, okay, you know, I know. Down. I'm gonna give him 10 pounds of assistance. And with those 10 pounds of assistance, I could do a pull up. So basically what Halo Sport is that 10 pounds of assistance, like you still have to do 90% of the work. We're going to help you with that. Last 10%.

Now, when the excitability of the motor cortex is stimulated using this transcranial direct current stimulation that's being delivered through the headgear, it makes sense that I would be able to generate more neural impulses to muscles and then be able to acquire some kind of a skill or be able to perhaps complete a complex task like swinging golf club or shooting a free throw or serving a tennis ball more efficiently. Where does the part come in where it's actually. Not only is it easier for to execute, say, the motion of a deadlift, but I'm able to lift more weight. Is it shutting down the Golgi tendon organs in the muscle? Is it just increasing the recruitment of motor neurons? Why is it that I'm able to push myself? And this was why I actually called this piece of headgear a dangerous piece of workout equipment, because I can just go crush myself, and if I don't hold back, I can work out really hard and be really sore the next day after I've used this thing, after I've done the neuro priming session. But what's happening there on a physiological level?

Yeah, so there's two things happening. So one piece of this, I think, is fairly easy to understand. And that is like, what powers our muscles. Doesn't matter how big your muscles are. The brain is powering your muscles. So there's a raw amount of electrical output that is related to your brain that is literally the battery for your muscles. So when you lift weights and you're training to lift more and more weight, you're also training your brain. It's not just about muscles. Right? Like, like we understand muscles where we lift weights to. To tear down the fibers so that we can build them back bigger and stronger. But when you're lifting weights, you are also training your brain such that the raw electrical output from the brain interacting with their muscles is more robust. So that part of neuro priming, like that teachable skill of telling you, like, teaching your brain to generate more electrical output, is a learning phenomenon. I don't know if that makes sense.

To you, Ben, but like, okay, guys, so. So I'm basically teaching my body how to recruit additional muscle fibers.

Yes. Okay, yes. But not only that, not only recruiting more muscle fibers, but firing them, each one of them, more robustly in.

In a greater amount of coordination too.

And then that's the second part. Strength is also a skill. Like, there is proper technique and form associated with lifting weights. Not only is it injury prevention, it's also biomechanics behind it, there's a certain sequence of movements that you need to execute perfectly to achieve your max. If you don't do it, if. If the biomechanics are not there, if the skill is not there, you're not going to lift the max that you can. So, you know, I know yourself and all of your listeners, you know, because this is your podcast, and this is a pretty passionate group of people. Technique is important. We all know that. And to the extent that you can learn proper technique faster, that makes you a better lifter, that makes you more powerful. So skill is a strength.

Okay, so I was speaking at a biohacker summit over in Finland a couple of months ago, and I talked about this guy called the Goatman. Have you ever heard of the Goatman?

No.

Okay, so he's this dude who basically went to live with the goats for, I think it was weeks and up to months. He's got a whole book about. His name's Thomas Thwaites, and he, like, strapped prosthetic limbs to his body. He, like, attached a rumen to his stomach, like an external rumen to his stomach, and really did, like, live in a field with goats for multiple months to be able to become closer to nature. But one of the things he talks about in his reports of, like, how he turned himself into a goat was he stimulated his motor cortex, and I believe he used tdcs to stimulate his motor cortex to disinhibit his ability, or I'm sorry, not disinhibit, but inhibit his ability to be able to speak the human language because he didn't want to. He wanted to feel like he couldn't, like, talk and stuff while he was out there. And that got me thinking about, like, how this kind of stuff could be misused. I mean, where does the safety come in when it comes to using something like TDCS to more or less shock the motor cortex? Like, how do you know doing something like this is safe? Like, how can you overdo it? How can you. You know, for example, why is it that he could, like, shock out his ability to be able to speak the. The English language for a certain period of time using his motor cortex? Like, how do you. How do you kind of. Kind of allow for. For this to be safe?

All right, so not knowing Goatman, it's difficult for me to comment on what he did.

I'll link to the Goatman book. By the way, for those of you listening who want to read the Goatman story, all the shownotes for this podcast are over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com Halo Sport that's BenGreenfieldFitness.com Halo Sport just like it sounds. And the book is called Goatman How I Took a Holiday from Being Human. But fill me in on your take on this and why this would be safe if he could do that to his brain.

All right, okay. So let's not assume that Goatman used tdcs and let's also not assume that even if he did, he used it in the way that we're using it. So let me speak from Halo Sports perspective and what we've done as a company, Halo Neuroscience. So we've tested a lot of people. We've tested over 2,000 people now and many of those people multiple, multiple times over and some people longitudinally for over a, for several years. And we collect data of all of these people. We ask them questions, open ended questions around safety primarily. We're also testing for efficacy and trying to get results. But with all of these people, we're also looking at safety. So we'll ask open ended questions like how do you feel? How does your head feel? These types of things. And we try to solicit an answer. And if we don't hear anything, if they say, oh, everything's fine, then we'll go hunting, like specifically hunting for side effects. We'll say, do you have a headache? Do you have scalp pain, do you have blurry vision? Are you having problems focusing? Are you having memory problems? And we'll test their memory, we'll ask them to walk a straight line, balance on one foot, do these kind of simple tasks to test their motor control. And we can't find anything.

You can't find anything in terms of like a deleterious effect of this type of stimulation?

We can't find anything. We also give them our phone number. So when they leave, if there's anything that pops up in the hours, days, weeks thereafter, call us. And we don't get any calls. So that's our experience with a couple thousand people. Then we could also turn to the scientific literature. So there's a couple of thousand papers published in the peer reviewed scientific literature that covers 80,000 people studied and in other people's hands with other people's equipment using the same sort of technology. And their reports on safety are also excellent. Like there's nothing that we can find and we were looking hard for side effects when we can't find them.

So when it comes to tdcs, that's actually something that no studies have found to be deleterious for the brain in Terms of like long term use of something like this?

Well, yeah, I mean used within reason. Like, you know, with Halo Sport, we've engineered it to a specific way so that you. It's very difficult to use it improperly and.

Well, one thing that annoys me is when I want to show it to my friends and let them work out with it. Like it automatically makes it so that I can't use the unit again for I believe it's like a 24 hour period of time. Is that the frequency with which you're comfortable recommending people use it?

Yeah, so it's a little bit less than that. I think it's eight hours.

Oh, is it eight hours? Okay.

For some reason I thought it was 24. And that is really diminishing returns. Ben, you could use it back to back. You know, you could use it for two back to back sessions, but you're not going to get any additional benefit from that second session. Okay, so we just lock you out.

Okay, got it. Yeah, you lock it out. I noticed I gotta like open a support ticket if I want to like use it again within that eight hour time frame. And did you guys just kind of choose that randomly or is that based on research in terms of like the frequency with which the use of something like this is recommended?

Yeah, based on research based on peer reviewed journal articles and also. So, yeah, it's less of a safety risk, it's more of a diminishing returns, you know, sure. After some point of like extreme use, there might be a little bit of skin irritation. So we just want to avoid all of that. And we also know our customers, you know, our customers are hungry for performance.

Got it.

And if you tell them 20 minutes is good, they'll think 40 minutes is twice as good, 60 minutes is three times as good. Yeah, we just want to relieve people of the temptation and lock them out.

So I've been experimenting with this thing for about a month and like I mentioned, I used it before a couple of tennis lessons. My wife and I now are this, this is our form of marriage strength building is we're now playing in mixed doubles tournaments together and doing afternoon lessons on Wednesday. So we go in and work with an instructor on Wednesdays. And while we're driving in the car, I have my Halo sport on my head. And of course she laughs at me whenever I do these things. But I love experimenting with this stuff to allow me to better absorb what it is that Jeff, our tennis instructor is going through with us in terms of, you know, me standing taller in my backhand and me rotating more on my forehand and having a looser grip on my serve, etc. And it seems to really work for that type of skill acquisition in addition to being able to help me be kind of more of a beast when I'm lifting heavy weights. But what I haven't tried it yet for and what I wanted to ask you about was can this be used for like learn, like if I want to do language learning or if I want to, for example, like if I have an important or dense book to read, can I do a neuro priming session before something like that and experience benefit or is that not something this is designed for?

Well, so not with Halo Sport. Halo Sport is a motor cortex specific neurostimulator, so it should be used for movement based training.

Okay, so it's all movement based.

Right. But let me maybe give you a window into the vision for the company. You know, we want to grow into a human performance company. We don't want to stop with just sports. So there are other parts of the brain that we can reach, that we can neuromodulate, that we can induce these temporary states of hyper learning to be used and to like give different customer bases value. So, you know, in essence we want to challenge this 10,000 hour rule. We want to challenge the slowness of human learning. We wanted. Let me ask you this, Ben. Are there things in your life that you don't even consider thinking about? You don't even think about starting it because it takes too long to learn?

Yeah, I mean like right now I'm messing around with ukulele and guitar, but I thought about. Because my kids just got this cool little actually really nice piano up in the hallway. I've thought about starting to play piano, but I know the 10,000 hour rule. We were actually talking about this at the dinner table last night with the family. How if I started playing the piano right now, I'm 35, I'd be about 60 by the time, with the amount of time I can devote to piano to where I'd actually be really good at playing the piano. And to me I'm all about stick to itiveness and practice and dedication. But that does also seem like an intimidating amount of time to get good at something.

Totally. And you might not have the patience and this would be very reasonable to withstand the first five years of sounding really bad.

Right.

So there's, there's all kinds of things like in my life, what if I, you know, what if I want to get better Like, I want to. Like, I speak very poor Spanish. I want to get better. I played guitar as a kid and I'm terrible now. I want to get better at that. But I don't even start doing it any of these things because it just, it's too painful to learn. And I'm not willing to go down this path because you're right, I'm going to be 60 before. Like, I'm at an aptitude that I'm actually happy with. So let's say, for example, you know, with Spanish, you want to learn Spanish and you're using duolingo on your phone and it's happening at this annoyingly slow rate. Like, what if you paired that with neurostimulation of your language cortex?

So that's the part that you. That's the part that you tort. So. So you've got your language cortex, your motor cortex and different cortices on different sections of the brain. And you basically know, based on the shape of the head, where on the skull to place something like TDCS to hit a different cortex.

Exactly. So this is sort of a window into what we want to do for our next product. Right. You know, it might not be language, but it's a good one. You know, you could actually use Halo Sport for music. It's not going to help you with the emotional or creative aspects of producing music.

But it would help with where my fingers are placed.

Exactly. It'll help you with the technical aspects of. And it's really interesting, Ben. Like, you know, we've been live as a commercial company for about a month and a half now and we've been able to engage with many of our users who have bought units and we ask them, what are you using it for? And it's just a really surprising number of musicians are buying this. Like, this is a. This is a user base that we've. We haven't done any marketing towards. Like, we've been only focused on sports.

That's awesome. I'm actually, I'm headed down to LA tomorrow morning for some trips and meetings and stuff down there. And I always pack my ukulele when I can because I like to play the ukulele in the evenings. I'm actually going to toss my Halo Sport in my bag and try this, try a Neuro priming session before I play my uk just to see what happens. I hadn't thought about using it for something like that, but that's actually, that's a really cool idea and I can just use it right on my Motor cortex to, for example, like, allow my fingers to learn better where to, where to be placed.

Yeah, yeah. That sort of manual dexterity that is required out of your fingers, particularly your left hand, because that's the hand that's interacting with the strings.

Gotcha. Now there are actually, there's three different settings. So just the way that this works, for those of you listening in, it syncs with an app on your phone. So you, so you open up the app app and the app allows you to like start a session, pause a session or. And this is what I want to ask you about, Dr. Chow, choose a different session. So there's like one for legs and arms and core, but then there are two other sessions for, I believe it's like the hands and the fingers. Right?

Yeah. So, you know, most of your users, if you're using it for purposes, for applications in the gym, you want to use legs, core, shoulders, that, that application, that mode. For the two other modes that are really getting at fingers and hands, this is for like really delicate work for hands and fingers. So this would be playing a musical instrument like guitar or piano or violin. It would be for video gamers.

That's what I was going to ask you about for like Esports, if it could be used or something like that.

Absolutely. So for your keyboard hand or, you know, if you play console games for, you know, either of hands need to be very quick and dexterous. Certainly for your mouse hand, if you're like playing League of Legends or Counter Strike or anything like that, that really requires like precision with your mouse hand, incredible amount of fine motor control that is required. So yeah, so those two programs for hands and fingers, it's those types of applications and like for some of our work with the military, they use, you know, hands and fingers setting for shooting practice.

So I could use like. So if I'm right handed and I shoot the bow, which I do, I, I, I train for bow hunting competitions, would I want to run the session that targets my right hand or my left hand?

Probably a little bit of both. Both need to be pretty steady.

Do I just run two sessions and do one for my left and one for my right?

Uh, yeah, probably on separate days.

Okay, got it. So, so what's going on when you're stimulating the motor cortex? Like, like what's the different signal that you're sending when you choose right versus left? Or is it just like targeting just a specific part of the headgear versus the whole thing?

Yeah, so there's, the motor cortex is divided into different areas so there's certain areas that are. That are used to control your fingers. There are certain areas that are used to control your legs, arms, shoulders, so on and so forth.

Okay.

Every muscle group is represented in this topography that is called the homunculus. So they say there's a little man in your brain, and. And it's sort of referring to the anatomic divisions of your motor cortex. So, like, we know how the motor cortex maps, and we can take advantage of that. So that's why if you look at the underside of the arch of Halo Sport, there's three different electrodes, depending on which program you pick, will turn on or off, different combinations of those three that are. That are lying on your scalp.

Okay, that makes sense. That makes sense. The main one I've been using is just the legs, arm, and core, just because I just wanted to get the full meal deal effect. But I was curious about those other two sessions that I haven't really played around much with, because I kind of wanted to get your take on when would be an appropriate time to use them. So that's really interesting.

For the applications that you've Talked about, it's 100% appropriate that you use the Lay Coronarm program. So you're doing things right. But like, if and when you want to try it with your uke, I'd recommend the hands and fingers program, specifically the one that favors your left hand.

Okay, got it. Now, there are a bunch of. The first time I really ran across transcranial direct current stimulation, you know, to deliver these low currents to the brain, was actually on Reddit. There's like a whole bunch of groups, and I'll link to them on Reddit that are like, make your own TDCS units, et cetera. And this was. I started to look into this after listening to a really interesting Radio Lab episode in which they talked about, I believe this woman who was. She was testing out, like, shooting, I think is what it was, and found that her performance on shooting tests just went through the roof after a short amount of time of tdcs. And then after that episode, I went over to Reddit and there were a whole bunch of tutorials on there about how to make your own TDCS headgear using essentially 9 volt batteries and stuff you could buy at.

At.

At Radio Shack, more or less. So how is this any different than like a, like a, you know, do it yourself version of TDCS that you're finding a lot of people doing on. On these, like, on these Reddit forums?

Yeah. So the, the radio lab is called 9 volt nirvana. If you want to link to that or if you're, if you're, if your listeners want to just Google Search, if you Google Nirvana, Radiolab, it'll be your first hit, almost guaranteed. And yeah, it's, it's. I, I would say that is a pretty dramatic representation of what could happen. Perhaps sensationalized a bit, but, but still, I mean, this happened to her, so I don't want to discount that. But yeah, it was pretty incredible. So I encourage your listenership to check that out. It's, it's, it's entertaining at the very least. And then there's the Reddit forum. There's a Reddit forum for TDCs. I think there's probably close to 9,000 people on that forum. So it's a pretty robust forum. And this is really like a part of the world that I love. Like this biohacker community, I think is just so damn cool. Like people building their own stuff and just trying it and just taking control over their bodies and self experimentation. And this is all in an effort to learn from each other and to get better. So like I regularly surf that forum. I'm more just kind of a listener and not a contributor. You know, maybe, maybe that'll change in the coming days and weeks, but, but yeah, I just, I love sort of engaging with this community, just sort of that as a bystander to see what they're up to. Now the downside of this community is that there is a fair amount of technical skill to build a working neurostimulator. There's recipes that are posted and you have to go to Fry's or Radio Shack or even build a little board for from digikey. And you can do it with, you know, a little bit of reading and, you know, like, you know, maybe looking up some electrical engineering books and this kind of thing. You could probably, you could probably do it it. But can you do it to the extent that you really build in all of the controls to make sure you're getting a quality and consistent current amount of current, that you have the safety lockouts such that if you're overstimulating, your circuit knows about it and gracefully turns itself off? Do you have access to quality electrodes that can get through hair conveniently, easily, cleanly, so that, you know that the contact patch is actually going over the part of the brain that you want to modulate? Like, you know, these are all kinds of things that, you know, the biohacker community should ask itself to make sure that they're doing things right. And another thing that, like, I think that sort of challenges the field of biohacking is the lack of organization. It's basically a group of solo actors doing things, sort of one off things in an open label fashion. So everybody knows that they're getting the real thing. You know, the way we do research is very different. We have people come into our lab and half of the people get real stimulation. The other half of the people get what we call sham stimulation. So it feels like the real thing, but it actually doesn't work. So, you know, there, you know, we're able to. And you know, both groups get the exact same training and testing. So we know that any amount of training will make people better. Right, that makes sense. You train, you get better. So it's not enough for us to say we helped you get better. Right. Like we have to get better in excess of a control group. And that's how we. That's sort of the amount of scrutiny and rigor that we put our results against. And you know, that's how we build products, that's how we innovate. And none of this happens in the biohacker community.

Okay, so basically what you're saying is that this device is just more precise and more controlled. If you didn't want to kind of like cowboy your way through TDCS yourself, right.

Like you can build a thermostat or you can buy a nest.

Yeah, right.

Like there's just like features and functionality and thought that has gone into a device that Nest has gone through, versus you could hack together a thermostat and just use that and plug that into your wall. Probably work, cost you less money, but there's probably important features that you're missing too.

Now Michael Johnson, who's a sprinter, you know, he's. He's the guy famous for wearing the, the gold Nike shoes back in the day, you know, and he. And for Olympic gold medals. I know he's using this a lot himself and with a lot of the athletes that he's coaching now for sprint performance. And from what I understand, and this, I believe, was how I found out about the Halo sport. The Golden State warriors used this during their basketball season last year. Is that true?

Yeah. So I can't speak towards that.

Okay.

All right, well, I can talk about.

I'll try and find the article and link to it. But what I want to ask you actually is who's using this? Like, are there people that are actually using it in terms of the professional sports realm? And if so what are they reporting back about it?

Yeah, so we're the big four professional sports in the United States. So football, basketball, baseball, hockey, we're live across all four of those big sports. In some sports there's just a deeper understanding and a better cultural fitness for training technologies such as ours. So I would say we're more deeply penetrated within baseball, you know, partly because there's something called the minor leagues of baseball and there's an understanding that a 24 year old rookie is still a pretty young rookie. It takes a long time to build the skill and to understand the craft of baseball before you can play professional baseball. So like we only see the 40 players that make the majors, but there's another 180 players in the minors that we don't see. And all of these people are hungry to make the majors.

Yeah.

And the team has a shared interest in them making the majors because they end up being a cheap professional for them. Like, you know, to the extent that you can train these young players to be professional major leaguers faster, you know, that's before they become free agents. And it's, it's sort of cheaper talent. So they have a shared interest in training these folks to be true major league baseball players. So baseball has been a great place for us to start. But, but yeah, like with the NFL, especially with the combine training, which we are entering that season right now, you know, as bowl games finish, the top college football players drop out of school and they go into six weeks of health. The NFL combine is in late February, so combine training basically starts right now. And they settle in at these elite training facilities like Michael Johnson. Performance is one of them, but there are others. And they train like crazy for six weeks to optimize every last little ounce of performance that they possibly can so that they can perform better in front of NFL scouts at the combine. So programs like this, combine training is great for us because we love data. We love to put ourselves up against a number. Yeah, right.

Yeah, that makes sense. And by the way, that article about the Golden State Warriors, I'll link to it in the show notes. But that same article talks about the Golden State warriors and a bunch of Olympians using this to prepare for Rio talks about some different hurdlers and sprinters. And I actually had a couple of questions, questions for you based on, on that specific article. For example, a lot of the athletes were saying that they felt as though they recovered more quickly. Is that just a placebo effect? I mean, I don't understand how stimulating the motor cortex prior to Activity would assist with. With later recovery of the muscle fibers. I mean, and. And I'll be. I'll be. I'll shoot straight with you. Like, for me, I'm more sore the day after I use it because I push myself harder.

Yeah. You know, Ben, we get it both ways. And I think there's. Let me stop by first saying, we haven't studied this formally. So what I'm about to say is based purely on empirical evidence that I hear by word of mouth from, like, users like yourself. I've heard it both ways. I've heard it from people who say they feel neurologically, like, from a brain standpoint, neurologically more recovered the next day than they would have otherwise. I've also heard something that people call readiness. Right. Like, there's, like, a readiness score that you could assign to different parts of your body. And they feel neurologically more ready much earlier in their workout. So what would have taken 20 minutes to kind of get into the flow neurologically, they feel right from the very beginning. I've also heard at your weight band where people say, listen, I worked out so hard the day before that, the next day, there's a little bit of a hangover. You know, that's. That's good and bad. Like, a good, hard, intense workout is going to help with performance, but, you know, the next day, you got to take it easy. Yeah. Because we are human and we do break. Right. We need to take care of ourselves, and we need to limit our reps. So, you know, our. You know, our whole mantra is. Is around making every rep. Like, every rep is precious.

Yeah.

Yeah. Like, the human body is allowed a certain number of reps. You have a lifetime number of reps, and that lifetime number of reps starts counting down the second you are born. And it is up to you during your physical prime to make the most out of those reps. That's something that's.

Actually been on my mind a lot lately while I've been working on maybe just because I'm getting freaking old and I'm thinking about dying. I don't know. But I really want to maximize my time in the gym. So I used to not think about breathing at all when I'd work out. I just breathe the way that I breathe and I work out. And now I make a concerted effort to make every breath count. So I do a ton now. And we've done some recent podcasts on this when I'm in the gym or exercising outdoors, a lot of nasal breathing and a lot of breath hold training. Because I figure if I'm out there anyways, I might as well make every second count. That's kind of like my logic with using this Halo. I'm like, if I'm going to be doing deadlifts lifts, I want to make every rep count. So if I can stack on either side of the bar 15 to 25 extra pounds, or I can recruit my hamstrings more efficiently because I've done the motor cortex neuro priming beforehand, I'll take it. I'll take every extra rep. And so for me it seems like it's perhaps going hand in hand with increased age. But I agree with you on that every rep counting thing.

Could I just add to that? Yeah, one thought. So we have some users use Halo sport as an efficiency tool rather than a performance tool. So there's a group of athletes that are like, I will do everything for every last bit of performance and let's go after it. I want to set records for myself or for the world. And that's awesome. There are other sports that you train to a certain aptitude and then it's about saving your body. For example, the military, like, you know, the military, I didn't know this, but for special operations, you need to train for years before your first real day on the job. And even then you're still kind of learning the craft. So it takes years to mint one Navy Seal, for example, or one Green Beret. And it's in the military's best interest, also the best interest of the soldier to keep that job. So part of keeping the job is not having your body break. So to the extent that they can make their training more efficient so they, they put less training load on the athlete. And I'm talking about tactical athletes now, military personnel, that's a good thing. So I didn't know this, but there are many Navy SEALs that are in their young 40s. So Navy SEAL could be active military for, you know, 20 some odd years before they retire from active active duty. And that's a good thing because these are such highly trained individuals. Like, let's keep them fresh for as long as possible so that they could stay on the job. And then also for football, so football is so physical when you're on season. It's more about survival than performance. And yet you still have to train. So what if we can make that training more efficient? Yeah, let's think about training load and minimizing training load to maintain a certain level of performance aptitude. Yeah, so. So yeah, it's like it's like it's about getting the most out of every rep, the most bit of performance out of every rep, whether it be to a certain aptitude and you're done or just really going for it. Right, right.

Yeah, that makes sense. And that actually leads to the other question I wanted to ask you, and that's this like whole concept of like, like neuro doping. Right. And I know, like the World Anti Doping association, from what I understand, hasn't banned like LASIK eye surgery or, you know, the use of neurofeedback or the use of tdcs or something like that. But especially, you know, we mentioned esports a little bit ago, which is turning into like a billion plus dollar industry in terms of it being like the super bowl of gaming, you know, and so there's athletes like, you know, neurodoping with Modafinil or Adderall, you know, for alertness prior to competitions like that. And, and then there's also, of course, folks who, as we just mentioned, like Olympians who are using this device. Do you think that this stuff is going to remain legal? I mean, have you guys looked into that? Do you know if WADA is talking at all about starting to regulate the use of these kind of devices?

So let me answer that a couple of different ways. So let's answer it very formally as defined by wada. So WADA has three criteria, of which if you have two out of the three, then you are considered illegal. First criteria is you get something for free. Second criteria is that is that it is unsafe for the athlete. Third criteria is that it is against the spirit of the sport. Okay, so the first criteria, getting something for free, that's not us. You can neurostimulate all you want, but if you don't train, nothing's going to happen.

Okay, so when you mean getting stuff for free, you mean, like it's not that if an athlete received like a free device from you, it would be considered doping.

Oh, not economically free.

Okay, yeah, that makes sense.

Yeah.

Like, so you still need to engage in deliberate practice. When you use this, right?

Like epo, you get free red blood cells, steroids, you get free lean body mass. You know, there's things that you get like, you know, modafinil, you get free attention and focus, you get something for free. Like, fortunately with neuropriming you get nothing for free. You still have to do the work. Like nothing happens unless you feed the brain training repetitions. Okay, so that's number one. Number two is around safety. And again, I'll Just refer to the data, like our data, the data in the published literature. Everything points towards a safe product. And then three, against the spirit of the sport. This is kind of a grab bag. There's a lot of subjectivity around this. I think it would be hard to argue that using electricity in the brain would be against the spirit of any sport. Like electricity in the body. Like, people use muscle stimulators for recovery and for rehab and these kinds of things. We've been using electricity in the body for decades. I think it would be very difficult for anyone to argue that, you know, using electricity the way we're using it is anything different from how we've been using it historically. So that's the WADA criteria. Let's just have fun and talk about performance enhancement in general. It quickly becomes a philosophical discussion, which is, again, I think it's just a lot of fun if you think about performance enhancement. Most performance enhancing products and techniques are actually legal. Like lifting weights is performance enhancing. Right. Like a good night's sleep is performance enhancing.

Yeah.

Training at altitude is performance enhancing. Even some weirder things like sleeping in hyperbaric chambers and, you know, the LeBron James liquid nitrogen thing where you rapidly cool your body. You know, that's. That's also legal.

Right.

So there's actually more forms of legal performance enhancement than illegal.

Yeah.

Where. Where something becomes illegal is, you know, I think WADA does a nice job is kind of crystallizing that with their three criteria.

Yeah. So. So it's. Is it free? And what are the other two? One more time.

Yeah, you get something for free. Free performance safety.

Right.

And then. And the third thing is, it's against the spirit of the sport.

Okay. Yeah. Okay. Well, that makes sense, man. It's a whole different discussion. Everything from LASIK to cryotherapy to all these other means that. I guess the question with this is, if some athletes are able to get it because they can afford it, does that somehow make it unfair for athletes who maybe can't afford something like this or don't have access to it? Like, does the inner city basketball player trying to make it in the NBA? Are they at a disadvantage because they can't get like, you know, LASIK eye surgery for their free throws and TDCs for, you know, for enhancing their dribbling skills prior to practice?

Well, it's a $750 device. You know, if you're an elite athlete, you should have the funds to have access to a $750 device. It doesn't matter what country you come from like any. Any of the elite sports organizations that I've ever been to. And I've been to some that talk to some that, you know, are more cash draft, like 750 bucks is something you could still afford.

By the way, it's actually 6:30 if you stay in until the end of the podcast, where I'll give folks a discount code.

Just. Oh, right on. Yeah, there you go. There you go. And, yeah, we do. And we have certain discount programs like, you know, for like, you know, buying at volume, get a discount, this kind of thing. So.

Yeah. Okay, I have a few other questions for you. Just, Just a few practical questions while I've got you on. First of all, why do I need to put water on it? Like, comes with a little spray bottle to spray these little rubber electrodes. Why do I need to do that prior to using it?

Yeah, so we still need to. We still need a flow of ions to go. We need a bunch of positive ions to go in one direction, and then on the other side, we need a bunch of negative ions to go the other way. And for that, we need a solution.

Okay, got it. So that's just to solidify the connection.

Right? We need a little bit of water. Doesn't have to be a lot, but we need a little bit of water to interact with your scalp so that we could have good electrical contact.

Okay, and what if. Because obviously the motor cortex is located on a specific part of the head, and when I open up the app, it shows me where to place the actual headgear, like, how to place it. And it even won't start the session until it's placed correctly, until it solidifies the connection. But I mean, what happens if you put this too far forward or too far back? Are you shocking areas of your brain you shouldn't be shocking, or what's going to happen if something like that occurs? Well, to give you an example, I currently have a bicycle next to my gym. And what I've been doing when I use it prior to workouts is I'll hop on the bicycle and just wear it for 20 minutes while I'm doing my cycling and warming up, and then I'll hop off the bicycle and go do the hard stuff or the complex tasks. But I've wondered when I stand on the bicycle or when I sit back, if the headgear kind of moves forward or back a little bit, what's happening? Am I risking something if it moves a little bit?

Right. So we designed Halo Sport such that with the understanding that there could be Some variability in the way people put on a set of headphones. So we've already accounted for a centimeter of play either in the forward or backwards direction. So. And we did a bunch of user testing, you know, several hundred people, and we just asked them to put it on and, you know, greater than 95% got it right the first time. Where some people we were, we need to educate some people. It's especially some of the younger folks where just from a style perspective, they like to tilt it further back. That's not the way you wear hairless board.

Okay.

Like when you're standing up straight, the headset should be pretty much vertical and. Yeah. But for the most part, people get it right the first time without any instruction.

Okay.

You know, if you were to be really extreme about it, you would be, you know, missing the parts of your brain that you need to stimulate for athletic training. You would be stimulating other parts of your brain and there would be really no downside. You just wouldn't get the upside.

Okay, got it. So make sure that I really do have it placed over the motor cortex when I use it.

Right. Okay.

All right, got it. And then the other question that I had for you, and this is just something I found interesting, was before you developed this and helped design it, you developed this thing called a neuropace. And from what I understand, this is something similar, except it's actually like via a surgical procedure placed into the skull. Is that correct?

Yeah. So my whole career is around using electricity as a therapeutic agent for the brain. So our last project, and this is where Brett and I, my now co founder, actually met. So Brett and I go back like 15 years. We were both really employees at this company called NeuroPace. So at NeuroPace, we built basically a pacemaker for the brain. And you're exactly right, Ben. It's an implanted product. So it's typically a three hour surgery where a neurosurgeon delicately inserts electrodes into the brain with an electronic pulse generator about the size of a small matchbox. Getting implanted in the skull, when everything is kind of stitched up, it's cosmetically transparent. You can't tell that anything's been implanted. So that's good. And also when everything is stitched up, the equipment under the skin has everything it needs to function autonomously. So it has its own battery, its own computer chip, its own software, and it can function for three to five years on its own. And what it does is it's constantly listening to the brain's electrical Activity such that if it senses an electrical signal suggestive of how to happen, it proactively delivers a small electrical impulse to the brain to then normalize its activity. So, you know, epilepsy is a disease of seizures. They can happen basically anytime at unpredictable times, which is problematic for the patient. It is a chronic disease. You typically get epilepsy when you're very young and you live the rest of your life with it. It's a disease that's very difficult to treat with drugs, unfortunately. So the opportunity to use a device to really help people was something that we, you know, I like, really proud that we accomplished at our last company.

Yeah, that's interesting. But you decided that for this particular thing, you're not going to require Olympians to split open their skulls and implant a device into their heads. Not quite as scalable. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, you know, that's actually one of the things that made us sad at neuropace is that even some of our patients who are severely epileptic and were offered this life changing technology and you could see in their eyes that they can envision a new life for themselves if they were to go through the surgery. And yet they decline it because they're too afraid of the surgery.

Yeah.

So, you know, what we want to do with Halo is really get around that we saw an opportunity to build neurostimulators that are specifically non invasive that could be built into elegant, wearable electronics.

Yeah, cool. Well, I mean, it's kind of sexy looking, I mean, honestly, you know, and I'll put a photo of it in the show notes if you guys want to see it, but I mean, it's literally just like a, like a cool piece of headgear. And honestly, when I travel with it, what I found is because it has that audio cable that allows you to connect it to an MP3 player or a phone while you have the headgear on. I can double up and use it as like a sound blocking device when I'm on an airplane, etc. And just have like one less thing to pack. So I don't just take the electrodes off and I put the headgear on and just listen to music through it. So if anything else, it's just like a really, really kind of sort of spendy pair of headphones. If you decide you don't want to do the tdcs, you've always got that option. But it's.

Thanks. Thanks, Ben.

Yeah, no, no worries. Just in case TDCS doesn't work out for you, you guys can get into the headphone business.

Well, we actually did put a lot of effort into the sound, and the sound is actually better than Beats. Like you compared the audio spectrum from ours.

Yeah. So if you're listening and you want to get this and you own Beats, you could just throw your pair of Dr. Dre beats on Craigslist and get a couple hundred extra bucks to put towards this thing. I own it. And I know when I do these podcasts, you guys all wonder, how does Ben use all these different biohacking devices? And honestly, it's not hard. I have my little infrared device that I just throw on at night. I keep it on my bed, bed stand when I'm reading at night before bed, and I run that for about 20 minutes. And then when I'm writing in my fiction book, I do my neurofeedback for about 30 minutes a day. And again, just kind of double tightening my writing and my neurofeedback. And then for this, for the halo, like I mentioned, while I'm doing my warm up that I'd be doing anyways, I throw this thing on and do my neuro priming with it. Or I wear it in the car when my wife and I are driving to Texas tennis. And it's pretty easy to implement this kind of stuff into your life once you figure out how to make biohacking a habit. And the only risk you take is, of course, funny looks that you might get from people when you're driving down the street with laser lights stuck up your nose or some TDCS device shocking your head. And by the way, the last thing we should mention, I think Dr. Xiao, is it's like a light tingling sensation. I think I've been using the word shock.

Shock.

It's not like you're racing a tough mudder and flipping out and going into, you know, seizures on the floor because you're getting, you're getting a true shock. It's, it's, it's like a tingling. It's like somebody's giving you a little scalp massage up on your motor cortex.

Yeah, thank. Thanks for that, Ben. Yeah, it's a pretty mild sensation.

Just a clarification. It's not, it's not necessarily designed for masochists in that sense, however, masochists in the sense that if you really want to push yourself hard, this thing works. Skill acquisition. A lot of really interesting research that you guys have put on your website. Dr. Chow. From explosiveness to power to rate of force development to muscle fiber recruitment. So this thing really does have some cool studies behind it, I'm using it. I really think it's a game changer in terms of getting through a hard workout. And one other thing I wanted to mention to folks is that after a long day for me, a cognitively demanding day when it's hard for me to push myself through a hard workout, this is my new trick. Trick, my new hack is I put this on and it actually, because it reduces the rating of perceived exertion, it makes that hard workout that I normally would substitute for an easy walk in the sunshine. It allows me to get through the tougher training session and get a little bit more fitness into my body on the day. So cool, cool thing that you developed, Dr. Chow. And I want to thank you for coming on the show and sharing this with us. And I also, for those of you who want to, who want to get the get the discount, I'll fill you, I'll fill you in on how you get that. You can go to the show notes over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com Halo Sport. I'll put a link to the Halo and you'll wind up on their website. And when you do, you get $120 off. So it drops it from 750 down to 6:30. It's free two day US shipping, so you'll get it just about right after you order it for free. If you live around the US there's no interest financing. If you want to split this up and pay like 100 bucks a month for six months and get it that way. Cool, cool. Way to spread out the cost if you need to go easy on the cash flow and then there's a 30 day money back guarantee on it too. So if you decide it doesn't actually make you play the ukulele better, you can just send it back and so it's a cool deal. So that's all over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com HaloSport. That's where the show notes are. Or if you just want to cut straight to the chase, just go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com Halo and you can grab one for yourself. Dr. Chow, I want to thank you for coming on the show today.

No thanks, Ben. I really enjoyed it. Yeah, it's been great. Yeah, thank you.

Awesome. Well folks, until next time, I'm Ben Greenfield along with Dr. Chow from Halo Sport signing out from BenGreenfieldFitness.com have a healthy week.

You've been listening to the Ben Greenfield Fitness podcast. Go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com for even more cutting edge fitness and performance advice.

Sam.