The Body & Brain Optimization Strategies Of A Professional Poker: Brain Biohacking, Ketosis, Sleep, Jet Lag, Travel Fitness Tips & More With Jason Koon.

On this episode of the Ben Greenfield.

Fitness Podcast, trying to get my body going a little bit. Lots of stretching, lots of, you know, skipping rope, but nothing intense. The heart rate's never high. To play with a guy that's losing at such a massive rate and enjoying doing it well, then everything else kind of gets put on the back burner and your body and you're just like, you know what? I'm gonna suffer for the next 30 days because I know how much money.

This is worth for possibly even longer than you'll be able to maintain with your current approach. Something to think about at least.

I'm definitely in to be the guinea pig here.

Performance, nutrition, longevity, ancestral living, biohacking, and much more. My name is Ben Greenfield. Welcome to the show. Hey. So today's podcast is a bit of a twofer. It's a bit of a twofer. I had a chance to interview my friend and professional poker player Jason Kuhn. And Jason really just did a great job outlining the life and times of a professional poker player and how that works and little hacks and nutrition tips and supplements and fitness type of protocols that he uses to survive in that environment. However, after interviewing him, I thought, you know, what we talked about in the topic of so called nootropics or smart drugs, especially to enhance something like poker, came up as a conversation topic so many times while I was interviewing Jason. I thought, why don't I also toss in for you a bit of an insight into specific nootropics and smart drugs that would be very applicable and appropriate for poker. So I turned to one of the guys who's been a previous podcast guest of mine, a doctor from Australia who happens to be one of the most knowledgeable guys on nootropics who I'm aware of, Lucas Aoun. And I always mispronounce his last name, but I'm going to do it anyways of ergogenic health. And Lucas has this fabulous masterclass online on nootropics that I've taken. It was just like the most comprehensive class I've ever taken on how to use smart drugs and nootropics. What they do to the body, the different stacks that are out there, you know, risks, benefits, yada, yada, yada. So I've taken Lucas's whole course and I'll also link to his course and the previous podcast I did with Lucas in the show notes for this show. But I reached out to Lucas and I asked him if he had any insight and he recorded an audio reply that I thought was Just so helpful that when I finish interviewing Jason, the professional poker player in today's interview, what, what you're going to hear then is we're going to transition and hear Lucas's take on nootropics specific to poker, but really there's some pretty cool stacks that I think would help anybody. So anyways, a two parter for you today and all the show notes, links to my previous podcast with Dr. Lucas, links to everything Jason and I talk about, links to Lucas's Nootropics masterclass online. You'll find all this@BenGreenfieldFitness.com Kuhn K O O N BenGreenfieldFitness.com K O O N N All right, folks, this is a first for the Ben Greenfield Fitness Show. I'm going to interview a professional poker player. Now, I have actually worked with, like, coached and consulted a ton of people in poker. I don't know why, I don't know if it's because their sleep is messed up or they want to know more about nootropics and smart drugs or they're constantly fighting an uphill battle against, you know, toxins and casinos. And there's on the line. So there's motivation there, whatever. But it seems like a lot of poker players I talk to are actually pretty interested in this whole, you know, body and brain optimization type of thing. Again, probably because it's pretty linked to some sizable paychecks. But, but I've never actually like, like interviewed a full on professional poker player aside from, I suppose some people I've talked to on the show before, you know, have, have dabbled quite a bit in poker, but aren't necessarily well known poker players themselves. My guest on today's show, though, you've probably seen him playing poker online, like if you're one of those ESPN World Series of Poker type of junkies or, you know, you go and, I don't know, hang a camera around your neck and put a Mickey Mouse hat on and go to Vegas and watch people play poker. But anyways, he is Jason Kuhn. Jason Kuhn is one of the highest earners in all of poker's history. I think he's won like, gosh, like what, over $30 million. Yeah, Jason, I mean, that's right. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. And Jason is also super into fitness. You know, he and I jam on this stuff a lot. You recently sent me a photo, Jason, you should, you should actually send, send that photo to me and I'll post it in the show notes for today's show, which folks can find@BenGreenfieldFitness.com Kuhn K O O N because Jason's like super fit too. I think a lot of people think poker players are just like people with frumpy clothing on and pot bellies and GL in a baseball cap over a smoky casino table. But not only you, but several other poker players I've talked to like you guys, actually, you're surprisingly fit crowd, at least those of you who seem to be at the, at the top of the poker game.

Yeah, it's a new age. I think the stereotypical old school gambler with a cigar in his mouth, those, those days are, are far behind us now. It's calculated, study hard, and keep the brain and body in the best shape that you can.

I actually dig that. I love the idea of like it like an e gamer, for example. You know, another sport that you wouldn't have thought would be so popular 20 years ago. You know, e gamers are not necessarily dudes in their mom's basement, you know, shoving Cheetos in their face. They're actually like keeping themselves pretty fit and doping with smart drugs and it's a whole whole new universe. So, so you, you've been playing poker for a while, right?

Yeah, really long time. I was a collegiate sprinter and I got hurt and whenever I got hurt, I needed a competitive outlet and a friend showed me poker. Next thing I know, I was like, oh my God, this is my thing. And that would have been in 2005 I started.

So you were a collegiate sprinter, which is probably where you got a little bit of that background of, of having some bent towards fitness. What, what, what distance did you run?

I was a hundred. 200 guy. Okay. Yeah. Took it really seriously for a couple years and then I ripped my hip flexor off my hip and, and that was all she wrote.

How seriously, what was your hundred time?

I was a Division 2 sprinter and I'm from West Virginia, so I wasn't like one of these Southern Florida studs, but I ran a 10 7. I ran a 107 in the 100. I won my high school state championship meet. And I was competitive. I was competitive at Division 2 college meets, but I would have never been. Yeah, I would have never been like a national class guy or anything.

I'll get called out for saying this, but that's not bad for a southern white guy. And so, so now, now though, you're, you're actually, I think you pinged me two days ago because we were getting ready to record this show and you told Me, like, kind of like this exciting new thing that you've decided you're going to start doing related to sprinting again. What's up with that?

Yeah, so there was this incredible video of this gigantic NFL player sprinting 100 meter dash against professional sprinters at like a 10, 4 or something. And this guy was like 6 4, 230 pounds. It was unbelievable. And I retweeted it and some of the poker news media replied, hey, we know that you were a sprinter. What do you think that you could run? And I said, with a year's training, if I didn't get hurt, and that's a really, really big if, because I'm 36 years old, I think I might be able to run under 11 seconds if I took it really, really seriously. And then, you know, the world blows up and everybody's like, this guy is so delusional. This is crazy. This and that. And a friend of mine who's a very wealthy businessman said, hey, you know, if you hit it, we'll donate, we'll donate some money to, to a charity of your choice. And the, and the donations will be into the six figures. So it could be, you know, somewhat significant motivation. Yeah, it's a good kind of good juju motivation. Everybody wins if I get there kind of thing. So I've started taking it somewhat seriously even though the World Series of Poker happened and I had a baby three weeks ago. So I'm taking it as seriously as I can with, with those things in front of me, but it's so much fun.

So, so what is, what is and, and definitely is a big part of today? I want to get into like the, the life, the circadian rhythm, the biohacks, the, you know, the smart drugs, the nootropics, all, all that when it comes to the, the life of a professional poker player. But for you, when it comes to training, for getting fast again in, in sprinting, what's that look like for you in terms of juggling that with your, with your poker game as well?

The most important thing I realized was it has to all be recovery based. I stay sore longer than I used to, but at the same time I'm smarter. With the way that I train, my nutrition's way better than it was whenever I was 19. So I have a physical therapist work on me two to three days a week doing deep tissue massage, dry needling stem. I have a infrared sauna and a renewed cold plunge in my house. So I just cycle through those every single day. And I have Devin Allen, who got fourth in the Olympics this year in the 110 high hurdles. Absolute freak of nature. The guy can run a 10, 2 and the 100. I mean, he's just a complete animal. He was nice enough to kind of set me up with a workout and he just said to me, you know, you're over training basically what you need to be doing now since you already have a pretty high level of conditioning and fitness. He's like, you need to run for 11 seconds or just under that. You don't need to have crazy cardiovascular fitness. So your workouts need. Exactly. So it's kind of like high output, full recovery. My lifts are like doubling up. So I'll just do sets of two on the squats, full recovery, maybe five or six sets of really heavy weight. I'll be doing power cleans, snatches, kettlebell stuff, a lot of mobility stuff. And then my, my sprint workouts are actually like 40 minutes of warming up. And then I go out And I sprint two or three one hundreds at 80 to 90 to sometimes at 100%. And I'm just trying to kind of tune up that central nervous system and get my body ready to reach new speeds. And also doing some plyometrics, but that's really it.

Yeah, it's highly phosphogenic, that sport. Meaning that just like when I played tennis in college, they didn't want us to run much at all and definitely not ever over a mile because you get your fast twitch muscle converted to slow twitch muscle. You train your body to conserve energy. You become good at buffering lactic acid or, you know, maintaining low level intensity for long periods of time. But it flies in the face of power and strength training. So, yeah, I mean, if you're, if you're training for an event that's like, you know, whatever, 10 to 12 seconds, then basically the majority of your activity is all short snappy. You know, there are books like Pavels ateline, Russian kettlebell instructor, has written books like the Quick and the Dead, literally that get into the idea that you want to avoid lactic acid because that'll kill you. But everything is just like short snappy. You know, typical workout would be like 10 kettlebel walk away. A minute later, 10 kettlebell swings walk away. But everything is like putting as much as you can into each swing maximum velocity. And you know, same as you've been training. You know, everything is just like short, snappy, quick, heavy. No bodybuilding, no endurance training. So that's going to be cool to see how you do with that.

I was going to say I was running mid high elevens for repeats in the 100 out of a three point stance and sneakers a couple weeks ago. So I think, I think I'm a big favorite to do it if I don't blow something up.

Not too shabby. Wow. Cool. Well, you'll have to keep us posted on how it goes and I'm sure that the media will be following you as well. So again, for those of you listening in, Jason's last name is spelled K O O N and I'll link to that quest for sprinting if you go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com Kuhn but really the reason that I wanted to initially interview you, Jason, was, I mean, honestly, as I've just alluded to, there's a lot of stuff poker players that I've watch, watched are doing now to optimize. But before we get into what, what you do and what you've seen others around you do, when it comes to almost like biohacking poker, what does the average day in your life look like? Like, I don't, I don't really even know how it goes. Like if you wake up and just like head to the casino or if you wake up and you flip on the TV and start learning new new poker moves. Walk folks who have no clue about this through the overview of what a day in the life of a poker player actually looks like.

Sure. So the day in my life is much different than the day for most poker players. The main reason why is I'm 13 years into doing this thing full time and I've been playing and winning at the highest stakes for the last six years. So I've kind of earned, if that's the right word, the freedom to be a little more selective with where my energy goes. So if you go back five years ago, I would have been playing a lot with the Chinese crowd that I know likes to play the biggest games in the world. So a lot of my friends are Chinese guys, entrepreneurs that like to play really, really, really big, high stakes are.

The are these guys who come in from China with a lot of money and go to the high roller rooms in Vegas.

Yeah. So that's, that's kind of how it started and how we met. But what ended up happening was I heard all of these rumors of if you go to Macau, you know, the Asian Las Vegas, if you go over there, the games are bigger and they're easier to win. So out of curiosity, I went over there in 2012 and the games were just massive. And I Befriended a couple guys that played in even bigger games that then were publicly available. So I ended up flying to places like Manila in the Philippines or Hong Kong or Jeju in Korea to play games that are just astronomically big. Some of the biggest games that have ever been ran.

And by big, do you mean stakes or the number of people?

Yes. No, the stakes. The stakes are. The number of people are very small. But you're talking games that you could win or lose five, $5 million in a night that big. That big. You know, you can play pots that are three or four million dollars per hand. And when these guys play, they. The way that they kind of structured is different than the way that American structure poker. They, they, they really cater to VIP players. And all it takes, really, is one of these VIP guys that wants to gamble huge, to kind of take a month of your life away. If you have the opportunity to play with a guy that's losing at such a massive rate and enjoying doing it, well, then everything else kind of just gets put on the back burner, and your body and your. Everything suffers. And you're just like, you know what? I'm going to suffer for the next 30 days because I know how much money this is worth. And then I'll go back to feeling like a normal human being after that. So I cycled through, doing that over and over and over and over again.

And when you, when you say suffer, what do you mean?

I'm talking with some of these private games, you're. You're playing for 72 hours.

Okay, so you're, you're talking about the actual mental fatigue and time that you put in.

Yeah. Like me, the longest session I've ever played was probably about 46 hours. But I know. I was recently talking to my friend Phil Ivey, and he said several times he's played for 72 hours straight.

Holy cow. At the, at the table that whole time.

Yeah. And these guys are blowing smoke in your face. You know, in, in casinos in the United States, you don't have to deal with playing in a poker room with car, with smoke anymore. That's gone. That's a thing of the past. Poker rooms are actually pretty clean and nice. But if you're playing with the VIP player, he gets to do whatever he wants. You know, that's. You're, you're catering to his experience. So it could involve being in a really, really small room, playing the biggest stakes imaginable, trying to stay focused, and also trying to play at a fast pace, because it's once again you're their entertainment. So if this guy is losing a bunch of money, even if you need extra time to think about a hand, you don't really get it because you don't want to be rude to him. So you just play fast regardless the size of the pot. And, you know, you could be 48 hours in, deliriously tired, famished, and playing a pot that could change your whole month. And you have to do it in under 15, 20 seconds per decision.

You said famish. Can you eat it all at the table? Are you allowed to?

You can, but I, I just know the way that my brain works and I play my best when I'm fasted. I. And now that doesn't mean I just starve myself to death when I play, but generally when I do, I'm. I'm in full ketosis. I'm drinking bone broth and sipping down MCT oil and my teas and, and just kind of chugging along. And especially in a game like that where I need to be ultra focused, I just don't eat big meals when I play. So it's just one of those things where if I'm two days in, I'm probably haven't had. I'm in a huge calorie deficit. So not to be so long winded about it, but to get back to your point, I did that for years and now I'm kind of, you know, I'm not retired. I still work very hard, but I earned kind of wanting to be balanced because that's what makes me happy is, you know, spending time with my wife and now my son and getting my workouts in. And I, and I study extensively. Poker players use artificial intelligence to study a bot. So a bot can play at a spot that would take, you say, a couple days to play a few hundred hands. A bot can play that same spot billions of times in hours. So you can have a bot play a situation billions of times, and then you can study what that bot did, and you can kind of take, you can take thoughts and abstractions away from those plays the bot made and in turn play better poker yourself. So I do a lot of studying with, with my colleagues and studying by myself with AI and my, that's kind of what my day looks like now.

How does it look exactly when you're studying? Are you in front of a computer screen seeing the actual sequences that have been played out and learning what the outcome of those are like? Like, from a practical standpoint, what is studying what the bot is doing look like?

Yep. That's exactly. So we've, we found clever ways to take these. The bot will converge, so it converges towards a Nash equilibrium. So basically what happens is, is the bot plays itself in lots of situations and decides which decisions it regrets the least. And it does it billions and billions of times until it gets to a point where either side of, of the coin, let's say the bot is playing itself heads up, it can't make any decisions that are better or worse. So it reaches a middle point where it's kind of a stalemate. And then once it's kind of reached that equilibrium strategy, that means your strategy isn't exploitable anymore. So what I'll do is I'll study by looking at shapes, you can see actual numbers and statistics, but visually you can see humans have created clever little like ways to visualize a graph or what each hand looks like in a grid. And then you study those and there's, we're all different, but I'm kind of a visual guy, so I study in lots of different kind of shapes and I'll show you sometime in person to put it into better words. But it's a statistical thing, a frequency thing, but also a visual thing.

Okay, got it. So in terms of the actual times that you are, say, at a casino in Vegas, because when I'm in Vegas, seems like every time I go there, I'll ping you, I'll be like, hey, Jason, what's up? You want to grab a meal? And you'll be at XYZ table in such and such a casino like the Aria or you know, over at, you know, where were you last time? I think we were at the, the, the mgm and, and it seems like you're like bouncing around in these different casinos in different high roller rooms. But for you, can you just play any time of day that you would like or do you need to go there in the evening or, or aside from these long kind of marathon esque tournaments that you've just described, where for hours upon hours, typical day for you, can you just kind of like go and play when you want to play?

Yeah. So there's two main types of, of games that you play in poker. One is called a cash game, and that is you can walk up to a table with money, you can sit down with your money, and at any time you want to leave, you can pick up your money and walk away. Just like you would say playing a, playing blackjack.

Right.

And that, by the way, quick interruption is the kind of game I like. Just so you know, My, the way that I think. And perhaps it's simply because I have a little bit of a spirit of scarcity still left in me from my upbringing and me being a big, big money saver from an early age. Like the guy who would get all my Halloween candy and save it under my bed, then in the summer pull it all out and sell it to all the, the hungry neighborhood kids who didn't have enough candy at the time. I typically, when I go to gamble, which I will, will ever so occasionally do, either if I'm in Vegas or here in Spokane, if I'm, you know, taking my wife out to a, to a date at the casino, we're gonna see a fight and we drop into the where the smoke free Texas hold' em room. For a little bit after the fight, I'll play. And as soon as I win, I'm like, I'm done. I, I can literally play for like 10 minutes. And boom, as soon as I get like 100 bucks up, I'm out. Done. Pull it.

See you later.

And I walk away. That, and that's just the way I play. I've just never been into gambling. Gambling as much as I suppose, just winning and walking away.

Yeah.

The thing is with me is I actually hate gambling. I don't even know the rules to craps or blackjack. Poker was just one of those things that I realized, oh, this is a skill game. I'm playing against other people. I'm not playing against the house. And from a very, very early time in my progression as a poker player, I started to be a winner. So I kind of had that positive reinforcement. So, yeah, there's that type, which a lot of players love because there's the Freed that, like you were saying, you can just, hey, I'm out. That was fun. Let's go. And then there are tournaments and tournaments. You, you, you have to show up at a specific time, you have to enter the tournament, and then you can't quit until you're eliminated from the tournament. So you're stuck to that. But the upside of the tournaments can be quite large. And I play a mix of both tournaments. Generally the largest action will be a cash game where a VIP player will want to sit down and play and leave when he wants to leave. But oftentimes when you've talked to me in Vegas, I've actually been stuck in a poker tournament where I'm like, hey, man, come by and say hi. But I can't leave because if I do, my chips will be blinded out and I'll lose all this money. Right. So when you were talking about my earnings in the beginning of the show, that was specifically in poker tournaments, but I also play a lot of cash games.

Okay, all right, got it. So let's dig into to some of the things that I think that my audience and and potentially even other poker players listening in are probably gonna be interested in. And that would be just how to hack this whole thing from a body and brain optimization standpoint, because I feel like there's some fun things we could tackle here. So you discussed how you prefer to be for these longer periods of time that you're. That you're stuck playing in a state of ketosis, which for me seems to make sense. Right. As opposed to the sprinting that you'll be doing, where you basically want to have a lot of creatine, a lot of glycogen in your system and be able to very, you know, snappily burn sugar and creatine. Total opposite for a mental game. Meaning that we know ketones are the throughput foras a very stable source of brain fuel. Your brain only really needs like 40ish grams of glucose a day, so you could easily get by on very few carbohydrates and have stable energy levels. You talked about how you'll use something like MCT oil, which, you know, when processed by the liver, is a pretty good way to generate your own ketone body. But when it comes to the fueling piece, are there any particular foods or supplements that you use especially to be able to maintain focus and. Or maintain ketosis for long periods of time, aside from what you've already alluded to, like MCT oil?

Yeah, so I dabbled with some nootropics years ago. But what I figured out that just works for me is adequate sleep. I mean, that's. That's the big one. And I probably drink a little more caffeine than I should be. Just nitro cold brews or black coffee whenever I'm playing. But other than that, I'm not slamming any supplements whatsoever. That being said, my diet is very, very strict. I model what I eat after. It's a hybrid version, but after the perfect health diet. I believe you may have been the person that sent me in the direction of that book years ago.

That was Paul Gemini. Somewhat dated diet, but the perfect health diet is based around. Well, originally it was developed for healing chronic disease, but it's a lot of safe starches, meaning the majority of carbohydrates are cellular like parsnips, beets, sweet Potatoes, yams, et cetera, you know, taro berries, some fruits versus what would be called like an acellular carbohydrate like bread or processed wheat or cereal grains or something like that. And then it's got a lot of like fermented vegetables, has a very kind of like Japanese bent to it, like seaweeds, herbs, spices, natto tempeh, those type.

Of tons of acid.

Yep. A lot of organ meats for the meats like liver, stomach, kidney, heart, marrow, you know, brain, glands and then a lot of omega 3 fatty acids. Acids like very DHA rich. So it's actually a very well compromised diet or well comprised diet. I've interviewed Paul Geminet on the show before to kind of almost like. Are you familiar with the Weston A. Price diet at all?

I am, yeah. Yeah.

Well, you should be with a new baby because like every, every woman I've worked with and every new parent that I've worked with from a nutritional standpoint for breast milk, for a big healthy, happy baby, we always go with the Weston A. Price diet, which is again like a lot of like, like ghee, fermented foods, organ meats, et cetera. I would say the difference between that and the perfect health diet is the perfect health diet might appear, if you were to look at the plate to be a little bit more kind of like slightly plant based, even more fermented vegetables, a little lower on like the saturated fats and the butters and things like that. But yeah, somewhat similar. So. So that's your, that's your, your basic diet?

Yeah, it's I. And very, very basic. Kind of. I eat, I won't say the same stuff day after day, but I know in the morning I'm gonna have bone broth, avocado, an omelet with hot sauce on it, maybe some pickles, something like that. I eat probably a little more grass fed beef than most people would recommend. I get these, this beef from First Light, it's from, it's Australian Wagyu grass fed beef. So I grind a lot of that. I'm making like pot roast with it and packing that or having rib eyes sliced up with a salad or something like that. But you know, and I do do a lot of salmon, sardines, a lot of fats and a lot of acid is kind of. And not as many carbs. Like I said, my diet's kind of a hybridized version of the perfect health diet. I'm not eating nearly the amount of carbs that they recommend and I'm eating a Lot more fat than they recommend.

Okay, got it. Have you ever considered implementing, especially for the longer periods of time like ketone esters or ketone salts? Like there are companies like HBMN or Ketone Aid or Perfect Keto as a few examples of companies that instead of having you consume MCT oil to make your own ketones, actually throughput ketones and just, just mainline them into your bloodstream to shift you very readily into a state of pretty significant ketosis.

Yeah, I've actually never tried that.

That's something that, I mean, if I were in your shoes, I would consider that as kind of being along with perhaps some of the nootropics we can talk about like top of the totem pole when it comes to what would arguably be burnt like a macronutrient and probably give you even more of an advantage than something like MCT oil. And again, like back in the day, they used to be hard to find. They didn't used to taste that great. They still don't taste that great. But yeah, like ketone esters, I think I've had them.

They're super salty, right?

They're a little bit salty, slash acidic, but man, oh man, in terms of like six to eight hours of clean burning energy with very few appetite cravings. The only thing with ketone esters, and this is the same with nootropics and with smart drugs in general, is you want to, you want to maintain a pretty significant intake of really good, clean, pure water and minerals at the same time that you're consuming them. Simply because it seems that when you, you amp up mental activity via the use of these ketones, there, there appears to be, you know, probably also because glucose can tend to draw water and salts in a muscle, when you're eating less glucose, you need a little bit more water and salts coming in from a different source. So if you, if you stack the ketone esters with really good water and then like a good mineral source, like I think one of the best ones would be like there's a company called Quinton and they do these, these hypertonic mineral like sachet packets. And you know that that would be an example of like water, the Quinton and the ketone esters is something that if you were to combine that with like a really well formulated nootropic or smart drug stack would just allow you to push your brain hard, hard and fast and deep, you know, for, for possibly even longer than, than you'd be able to maintain with your, with your current approach.

So something to think about I'm just, I'm definitely in to be the guinea pig here.

What about nootropics or smart drugs? You mess around with any of those at all? I mean, you mentioned caffeine, but.

Yeah, say eight years ago. I did and I just felt, I won't say I really felt like anything negative from them, but most of the ones that I ran, I just kind of felt like it was only placebo for me. I didn't feel like I was getting any kind of additional.

Okay, got it. Yeah, there's a few. I mean obviously there's literally like hundreds of different nootropics, right? Ashwagandha and ltheanine and CBD and CBN and phosphatidylcholine. And what I like is that a lot of companies have emerged that have pretty good done for you, stacks that combine a lot of this stuff and what I would consider to be pretty decent ratios versus you. Kind of like hunting down from fringe chemical websites. Just one of these type of molecules. Obviously from a synthetic standpoint, probably, probably the most popular one for people who want to go for really long periods of time without sleep is the off label anti narcoleptic drug Modafinil, which I've done a podcast on before. And that would be like the big guns. That would be like, okay, it's time for me to go 48 hours. I don't even want to think about sleep. I've got my ketone esters, I've got some water, I've got some minerals, a little bit of that perfect health diet type of food sources for when you need food. And then something like Modafinil, which I've done a whole podcast on, would be like for the really, really big long efforts. But the problem with that is it can long term kind of make you a little bit desensitized to dopamine. And a lot of times they kind of like mess up your circadian rhythm long term. But then if you look at some of these nootropics which are arguably a little bit more natural, those would be the ones that I think would be safer. Like there's one called Qualia that I like, they have a caffeine free version called Qualia Mind, that's one that, that I think is, is really, really good. There's another company that I've that I've done an article on, they're called New Topia and they send you this, this box of different nootropics, but they're designed for specific situations. Like they have one stack that's called like the Genius Activator, which is for, for just, just the ability to be able to process information and recall words and have better brain agility. They have another one called Social Command, which is better for cocktail parties, networking, et cetera. They have one for deep work where you just need to focus for long periods of time. Or one called Neuroprimer, which you take before you actually learn certain activities. That's another company in addition to Qualia that I think is making a pretty good lineup of, of Nootropics.

Have you personally tried a lot of these? In my experience, at least in the past, whenever I think I was taking kind of the more readily available stuff at Whole Foods or whatever, but it seemed like the amounts, they were just like there wasn't enough of anything in there to have any kind of positive benefit.

I am like an elephant in terms of dosage as far as what I need of specific compounds. And so I've specifically identified like, like the companies where like if I take something, I want to feel it. Like I want to be in go zone for hours and hours. And so the quality of mine typically like seven to nine capsules of that will do it for me. That, that company, Newtopia, that sends just like a box of stuff to your house, you kind of mix and match what you want for the day based on whatever social demands, focus demands, etc. That's another really good one. And then, you know, another thing that I really focus on, those probably be the top two that I like. But then you want to think about the actual fuel that your brain is going to be burning through as you use these compounds. And probably the top two things to consider in terms of replenishing the brain nutrients that you'll burn through faster when you're using these, it would be choline and magnesium. So typically in the evening you'd want to take and you could take it in the morning too. But some form of like a really, really good magnesium, like the same folks that do the Nootopia product, they make one called Magnesium Breakthrough that I like. There's another one called Mag SRT that's made by Jigsaw Health. It's more like a slow release form of magnesium. But what you do is you take the magnesium at night and then choline, like in the morning. And choline, you consider that to be like the gasoline that you're burning through faster when you're taking a smart drug or a nootropic.

Okay.

There's a company called Quicksilver Scientific and they make Just like a sublingual form of choline. And you could do like, you know, six to eight squirts of that under your tongue, take your nootropic head off, you know, just crush six to eight hours, get back, take some magnesium to replenish some of the magnesium that you burnt through. And like, like, if you were to do that and then ketone esters, I'll bet that. I mean, not. Not that you're suffering right now. I mean, you just. How much money did you just win a few days ago?

Like 300? Yeah.

Yeah. Decent amount. So it's not like you're, you're. It's not like you're sucking it up right now. But. But those would be a few things to think about from like, like a nootropics or a smart drug standpoint as far as, like, based on what you've described me so far, that, that I would consider kind of throwing into the mix. And by the way, folks are listening in. I've written articles on both of those approaches, and I'll link to them if you go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com Kush what about light? Obviously, there's a lot of circadian rhythm disruption, especially in what many would perceive to be the Vegas life, right? Like bright lights, late hours, really kind of like an evolutionary mismatch in terms of sunrise, sunset, daylight cycles. It's freaking hard to even find the sun in Vegas some days I've found, just because you're inside or surrounded by tall buildings. But what do you do for the sleep piece?

So we have an amazing setup. I live out in Summerlin, which is in the middle of the desert. It's really, really pretty place. My house is really bright and there's lots of light coming in. So whenever I'm here, I have no problem with that. I'll wear the blue light blocking glasses at night if I'm up late. But whenever I traveled a bunch, jet lag and the mega sessions were massive problems for me sleeping. I never found a solution for it. It actually ended up kind of giving me ptsd because I would. I would go to these stops and I would show up like sometimes a week ahead of time, but I never seem to be able to get my sleep in order. And now sometimes, if I know there's like a massive event the next day, I'll remember what it was like to not be able to sleep whenever I was in Asia. And it, like stresses me out a little bit, I got to admit it. So the. When I'm here, like I said I'm, I'm set, I'm dandy. But the over the seas stuff, I, I've just never, I've never figured it out.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean like obviously the, when, when I'm in Vegas, the, the light is the biggest one. You know, like, like not only do I travel with these little like, like LED blocking stickers that you can buy on Amazon that you can just, just put on top of anything that's in the room at night that often tends to be lit up like a Christmas tree. If you're staying at the hotel, you know, I'll unplug as much as I can, but then cover as much of the lights as possible because your, your skin is an eye, you have photoreceptors all over your skin. So it's not just about putting on a sleep mask when you sleep. But the other thing is I, I wear the, the blue light blocking glasses both daytime and nighttime in Vegas just because that, that modern overhead LED fluorescent lighting can cause the, this low level irritation to the retina that long term can lead to brain fog and fuzzy thinking.

And so the blue light during the day doesn't mess with your circadian rhythm. Shouldn't you be exposed to quite a lot of blue light?

Yeah, not if you use the ones that are designed for daytime use. Because the blue light you're getting exposed to from let's say overhead lights indoors, unless they're using like biological led, which most businesses or buildings are not using, you are getting like a non native form of very bright blue light, different than the blue light you get from the sun, which would normally be accompanied by uva, uvb, infrared, near infrared, et cetera. So what you do is you use the blue light blocking glasses, but you use one designed for daytime use. Like there's one company called Raw, RAW Optics and they have like a yellow lens that you use during the daytime. And then they've got. And that doesn't make you sleepy, right? Just blocks out the stuff that causes the brain fog and everything. And then you switch when it gets to nighttime or when it gets close to your bedtime and you don't want the bright lights to be shutting down melatonin production. Then you switch to their red nighttime lens. And so that's what I do when I'm in Vegas is I wear the yellow lens by day and then I use their nighttime red lens at night. And so then you're kind of getting the best of both worlds from a light blocking standpoint.

Okay, yeah, I know you're Telling the truth here to the audience because I walked by you in the aria at like 3pm and you had those yellow lenses on.

Yeah, yeah, but, but they're not the dark red ones. You put the dark red ones on. You'll like. If I put those on when I'm watching, you know, something at night with my family, you know, we're looking at a screen, I'll get tired, and if I take them off, I get awake. But then if, if you really are wanting to get to sleep, that's the time when, when you, when you bring out the red light glasses and then you just wear the yellow ones otherwise. And then what about. Do, do you take anything before you go to bed? You know, especially if you've got like a, a long day of poker and you want to be able to just like, you know, smash an hour of sleep. Are you taking any, any. Anything before you go to bed to kind of like shut down the body or shut down the brain?

You know, I'm unbelievably boring, but I, the, the few things that I do to knock myself out are Epsom salt soaks, like we were talking about the magnesium. That really puts me out. And other than that, I, I will go into a, my, my room super dark and sit in a sauna for a little while and just breathe deep. Or I go outside and I have a, like a Jacuzzi in my pool and beautiful stars at night in Vegas, actually. So I'll just sit out there and breathe some natural air. And we always walk right before bed. I'll walk about 3.7 miles is the loop we do. And it's just a really quiet nighttime loop. And, and that's what I have to do. Just stargaze a little bit. And that's, that's all I need. And I sleep like a rock.

That's awesome. That's awesome. It's a, it's a good practice. I mean, like the, the. If that works for you, then that's amazing. I find that some people especially who travel a lot for stuff like this and perhaps some poker players listening who, who are still traveling a lot. I, you know, one thing is, and I interviewed Dr. John Lawrence about this is kind of using like the first night when you get to where you're going, when you need to regulate your circadian rhythm. Them like a melatonin sledgehammer where his company sells like 100 to 300 milligram melatonin suppositories or liposomal formulations where you do that for one to Two nights and just kind of resets everything. And you sleep like a baby, no matter where you're at in the world. And then you just kind of, you know, back off and don't use it the rest of the time. But that, like, I'm my big one and. Because I just find I don't sleep well in Vegas. But. But if I do those melatonin sledgehammers along with a little bit of cbd, that's my go to. And there's actually a newer form of cbd and I don't know what it looks like for you guys on the legal landscape, but it's called Delta 8 THC. It's like a legal form of THC that kind of works the same way as regular weed does, but without a lot of the psychedelic side effects or the impact on your, on your deep sleep levels. And there are companies now like Noel Creek Hemp or Cannabolics that sell these tinctures and these chews that are just like, they knock you out, especially if you combine with melatonin. So those are a couple of things that I'll use if I'm kind of out of my elements or in a place where I'm exposed to a ton of lights or outside of my circadian rhythm or something like that. But what you're doing, the Epsom salt soaks walking time in nature, under the stars, like all that stuff, you know, from an ancestral and natural standpoint is absolutely amazing. So I'm glad you're weaving that in as well.

Yeah, that's amazing to me. The other thing is, is I just can't eat like four hours before bedtime. Basically, if I have food in my belly, I just can't sleep.

Yeah, yeah. And that, that's, that's honestly the case for a lot of folks. Unless they're highly like glycolytic athletes, like crossfitters or triathletes. They're the polar opposite. Opposite. Right. They have to replenish carbohydrates at night in order to be able to sleep. But most people don't do well, you know, going to bed with a full stomach and, you know, tapering it off two to three hours before bed is a pretty good idea. And then if you are hungry, my, my trick for that is I make nighttime jello. So you literally just heat up a pot of hot water and you dump a bunch of gelatin in there as you stir it up the hot water. And then I'll put like a, like a non caloric sweetener, like stevia or allulose or monk fruit in there. And these days I've been, I've been putting several scoops of the kion aminos and you just stir and stir and stir. And then you put it into like a, like a Pyrex glass container and put it in the fridge and it sets like jello. You do like one of those jello pieces. It's only like 30, 40 calories max. But the glycine lowers your body's core temperature and then you get this slow bleed of amino acids and collagen into the bloodstream while you sleep. So that's like my cheat.

That sounds great.

Yeah, they're so good. It's called nighttime jello. I have actually, I have it my new cookbook. But yeah, it's just basically super easy, super cheap to make and dude, it sticks to your ribs. Keeps your, you know, your hands out of the ice cream at night. And that's like my go to if I'm hungry at night. But I know I, you know, it's not appropriate for me to eat a full meal right before I go to bed. That nighttime jello just does the trick. Now what about like toxins, like, you know, cigarette smoke? You know, obviously you mentioned that that's not as big of a deal in casinos anymore, but I seem to notice still it seems like there's, there's just, I don't know, I feel a little bit toxic when I'm. When I'm in that kind of like Vegasy environment. Do you still experience anything like that or.

Yeah, I do. I think the biggest thing for me is I have to. It's so dry out here too. So there's a combination of like that even if you're not having smoke blown in your face, walking through a casino and kind of walking by people cranking slot machines, smoked cigarettes or whatever. The biggest thing for me is I have to be in steam for a really long time, man. I. One, we have humidifiers running through here like crazy. Like every room in my house just constantly has humidifiers going. And two, I, I need either a really intense sweat or I need to be in a steam shower and just kind of get that out. I'm. I'm not really digesting anything specific to deal. Like I'm not doing the activated charcoal or anything like that that I think a lot of people might be doing, but I just steam shower it out, lots of water and avoid. Like I said, we don't really have to be around that, but I just try to avoid it at all. Like when you're coming to Vegas, you're mainly on the strip. When I'm in Vegas, I'm kind of like in an old person neighborhood 95% of the time.

Yeah, that's true. Like you're, you're kind of in a different environment to me because you, you, you lit, you live in Las Vegas. Vegas. But you kind of like live outside the city and you can drive into the strip when you want to come in, right?

That's right, yeah.

Now, now. What about like, like for you, obviously it's a little bit different. I would imagine not every professional poker player is training for a sprinting competition like you are. But like typical day on the road, what, what does your fitness game look like, you know, if you weren't training for sprinting or what you would have done back when you were traveling a lot. Like how you actually staying fit when you're playing?

Well, I travel with a few things. I had a shoulder injury years ago and you put me onto this crossover symmetry and I always bring that with me everywhere I go. And that's actually done the shoulder bands. Yep, yep. So I grind those. I also had PRP and stem cells injected into my shoulder and I have, it's a hundred percent now. It's amazing. I went like two or three years without being able to do a push up and now I can, you know, I can bench press really heavy and do handstands and all that fun stuff. So I travel with that. I travel with a foam roller, I travel with acupressure pad. Kind of knocks me out. That nioia, I believe is what it's called. Wait, so I always, I think it's naoya. Like N a Y o Y a. I could be getting that wrong. It might be Nagoya.

And what is it exactly?

It's an acupressure pads.

Okay.

You know what I'm talking about?

What you're talking about with a little knee and you like lay on it and it kind of gradually lulls your body into relaxation.

Exactly, yeah. And loosens up kind of. You've been sitting on a plane all day. It's a nice way to loosen up. So I, I have like a little foam roller kind of stretching, mini yoga band routine I do in my room. And then we're blessed that most the places we go to just have really great facilities. But I get work, I, I train every single day that I play poker, but I never train hard. I'm just doing something thing to trying to get my body going a little bit. Lots of stretching, lots of, you know, skipping rope, but nothing intense. The heart rate's never high. I'm never like squatting 400 pounds or anything like that. It's just really more get in top shape before I go on one of these trips and then maintain as well as I can. I generally come back six or seven pounds lighter every single time though. So it's. Yeah, it's kind of a bummer. You know, I'll leave here £177 really feeling strong and I generally come back at 170.

Yeah, yeah. You know, that's, that's something I'll often do when I'm, when I'm headed off for a hefty business or travel trip is just kind of like smash myself the week prior and then use the travel as a bit of a, like a deload week. The, the thing that I've been doing for the past year or so is I'll travel with those blood flow restriction bands because I can, I can literally like tourniquet my arms and legs while in my hotel room, you know, before I head to the conference or whatever and do like a half hour of just. And I use one of those, those suspension straps that you can hang from the door and do pull ups and everything from. And so I'll just have that and the BFR bands and one elastic band and I'll do like 30 squats, 20 push ups, 10 pull ups, 30 lunges, 20 like of some type of core exercise and then like you know, 50 jumping jacks and just like go through that as many rounds as I can for like a half hour. And when you have the blood flow restriction bands on, the ability to be able to maintain and sometimes even build muscle with just body weight is amazing. And the fact that it cuts down on the trip to the gym, whatever, the extra, you know, 20 minutes you'll spend walking 10 minutes down the long hallways, hunting down the gym, coming all the way back, like if I can just roll out of bed and strap those things on and go. It's, it's so convenient. So that's, that's what I do when I travel now.

Yeah, I definitely look into that. I'm all about the bands already. I, the, the bands have been lifesavers. Anything that you can attach to anything for resistance. So the blood flow stuff isn't something I'd looked into.

Yeah. Now what about, what about like, you know, meditation or, or anything along those lines that you do to kind of like keep your, your mental gain optimized?

Yeah, that's Actually been huge for me. I had like a, a really, really traumatic childhood and it, it doesn't, like a reactive mind doesn't work well in the poker world for the obvious reasons. Like, you know, there's a lot of short term luck in poker, so no matter how good you are, you're going to experience losses over the short term. And if you're not kind of in that state of mind where you're willing to kind of let go of things you don't have control of, it can really result into some toxic mental places that no one needs to be in. So done a lot of work with meditative work and I just do kind of the basic stuff that find a chair, sit upright, feel my body weight in a chair, kind of analyze my body, and then just go into a dark space and breathe without trying to think about very much at all. And I do do that religiously and I do feel like that, that sharpened me up. And I'll, even at final tables or big high pressure moments, I'll do little mini meditations, you know, just one minute here and there where I kind of just zone out and breathe and try to let go of the. Because you're constantly in your head, you're always like, your brain wants to get first place, right? So you're, you're kind of feeling attached to things that you just can't be attached to if you want to play your best poker or fear sets in and, and then you just start making plays that are based out of fear rather than just kind of looking out from an unbiased standpoint and saying, okay, I need to make this play because it's the right play, rather than, I really don't want to lose here this time, you know?

Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. That makes sense. Now what do you, are you seeing anybody kind of like up and coming in poker or anybody that you're looking to as other folks who you think have been doing a really good job at kind of like the health, the fitness, the, the biohacking piece, or is this something that's still kind of, I mean, because I'll be honest, just like talking to you, like as a professional poker player with as much money on the line as there is, you know, for, for me to bring up something like whatever, you know, ketone esters and for you not to be using them or, or nootropics, I'm like, geez, really, like, like I would have expected like, you know, guys like you to, to just be full on, you know, into this stuff. The same Ways you might be into whatever, you know, creatine and having, you know, a coach like you have for. For sprinting. So is, is it just, like, so young, this idea of poker players going after, like, full body and brain optimization, that there's just not a lot of knowledge right. Right now out there in the poker industry?

Yes, it's. It's brand new, man. I mean, just getting off the couch and going to do something and realizing, like, oh, maybe we shouldn't be eating pizza and drinking milkshakes while we're playing poker. This is revolutionary stuff, stuff in the poker world, so. But I will say there's a massive movement. It's unbelievable. Even since the time that I've started playing in the last 10 years, I feel like the average poker pro is just so much more fit and focused and trying to do the right things than they were whenever I started playing.

Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. Well, I mean, like, I would imagine that. I think you and I have talked about this before. If we were to come down there and do some kind of like a, like a conference or a workshop that we're where we take some players in and just like, you know, spend a day with me for Q and A and, you know, and learn about this stuff and take a deep dive in it. I feel like something like that needs to happen in the poker community, and I'm on board to help out a little bit. If you guys ever decide to put something together down there, I'll fly down to Vegas and get a bunch of you guys in the room and kind of take a deep dive into this stuff if you guys are ever game.

Yeah, we love to hear it. And poker players are the kind of people that when you show them things, they can be really dedicated to it. They understand what it takes to work hard to be good at something. It's just. It's just all new. And honestly, like the nootropics kind of biohacking stuff, like, a lot of the information isn't necessarily clear if it's. If it's what's right and what's wrong. Right. So with me, it's like, I just want to make sure I don't do damage to my body because I have such a good thing going already with my, with my body in mind. I'm afraid, hey, I might break myself because I have no idea what I'm doing.

Exactly. That's the problem. You try to go from good to great, and you go from good to bad instead. That's certainly something that I've seen happen before. That quest for optimization resulting in kind of a paradoxical backfiring of what you expected to happen. So, yeah, you do need to be careful, but at the same time, especially if you can do things like a genetic analysis, blood analysis, gut analysis, urinary hormone analysis, micronutrient analysis, a good food intolerance and food allergy profile, and then come in equipped with all those labs and then just like customize everything to the T. That in my opinion, like, like going in with data and self quantification is one of the best ways to make sure that you're not just shooting blind or, you know, taking some kind of a supplement that would have worked really well for one person but is not really up your alley from a neurotransmitter or the way you're wired up neurochemically, you know, and, and so, so I think that getting the testing is a pretty important component of this as well, because then you can ensure that you're actually making the right decision, not just kind of, you know, taking something that is supposedly good but might not be customized for you, if that makes sense.

Yeah. From a nutritional standpoint, I already. We have proof. With my wife and I and you overlooking our blood work and us modifying our diet and our supplementation, it made a wonderful difference in her health and in mine. And I'm sure there's lots more that we could do that way. So I'm, I'm fully open to it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, cool. Ma'. Am. Well, I mean, this is fascinating. And I would say if people have their own tips to add or they want to jump in and ask questions or follow along with your journey or check out some of the things you're up to. I'll link to everything. If folks go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com Kuhn that's BenGreenfieldFitness.com K O and Jason, anything else you want to, you want to share with folks while I've got you on, and any last little, little tips or tricks or hacks that you found to be useful?

Yeah, I guess one of the main things that I would. Since I'm talking to a general audience, I would, I would say that it's very, very important to understand that poker is a, is a skill game and it's not just a gambling kind of are the United States government's kind of gotten poker wrong. They kind of grouped it in with people going and pulling a slot machine or rolling roulette. And this is a game where people can be professional and take calculated risks and win over very, very long periods of time and over large samples. So even though that isn't related to kind of the health and fitness thing, I think people do need to understand that this isn't just like, like guys being luckier, ladies being luckier than one another. And it's, and it's a serious, it's a serious business. It's also not something you should just dive into and think you're going to be able to win at.

Well, I appreciate you coming on, sharing this stuff with us again. I think we should get, get some folks in a room together sometime and do like a full on poker biohacking workshop where, you know, I, I don't know much about poker, but I can at least, at least help you guys out with the diet and the, the supplementation and the sleep piece. And so that'll be fun to do sometime. But in the meantime, what I'll do is I'll link to everything that we talked about, folks. Go to BenGreenfulFitness.com and Jason, I'll let you get back to that little, how two week old baby?

Three weeks. Yeah.

Three week old baby. Wow, congratulations, man.

Yeah, yeah, thank you so much. It's amazing. Foreign.

So thanks for having me. Ben. I'm super excited to be talking about specific nootropics for optimal brain function in the context of a professional poker player. So first of all, I think it's really important that we take a look at, you know, what are nootropics, who uses them, and also how they work. So first of all, nootropics is just a broad term that generally describes compounds that can improve any aspect of cognitive function. So that can be alertness, focus, memory, concentration, and various aspects of executive functioning. Now, in terms of who actually uses nootropics, well, there are many influencers and entrepreneurs and high performers that, that have sort of leveraged the power of nootropics to improve their performance, whether that be at work or, you know, potentially on the sporting field and also in professional environments such as professional poker. So I think it's really important that we first of all break down a little bit about how nootropics actually work. Now, many people get confused when they hear the word nootropic. They wonder, you know, are they all like that NZT drug, the limitless pill? On the movie, from the movie Limitless. But what we need to really understand is that nootropics actually work through a variety of mechanisms in the brain. What's really important to note is that these specific nootropics all tend to work on either increasing neurotransmitter release or modulating their release, modulating neurotransmitter receptor sites, modulating neurotransmitter enzymes or enzymes that degrade or increase various neurotransmitters. And then they can also work through different parameters, such as influencing inflammation or neuroinflammation in the brain. Some of them can reduce oxidative stress. Others can directly act as precursors to various neurotransmitters. So what we need to understand is that, you know, many of these nootropics that we see on the market, they actually tend to work through a variety of mechanisms. Now, in this sort of environment with a, you know, sort of professional poker player, what we need to look at is actually some of the key executive functions and cognitive domains required by professional poker players. So this is really important because once we can strip out all of the essential components of a professional poker player, we can then curate and customize a bespoke, you know, nootropic stack that's tailored directly tailored to their cognitive domains that are, you know, of high importance in professional poker. So with this understanding, we can then apply our knowledge on various nootropics and sort of match the ones that directly target these cognitive domains. So a great example will be, you know, and certain nootropics, as I mentioned before, certain nootropics can act as neurotransmitter precursors. And with that understanding, we can then ask ourselves, well, hey, does a poker player need more serotonin, or does a poker player respond better to increasing dopamine? So with that information, we can then, as I said before, we can strip it back and customize a nootropic stack that's tailored, directly tailored to a professional poker player's needs. So what I thought would be cool is that we dive into some of the key executive functions and cognitive aspects or domains that are required by professional poker players. So, so I think one thing that we can all agree upon is that having a good emotional control or a greater emotional control is going to be beneficial under extreme stress. And as you could imagine, poker players are under enormous amounts of stress. And so anything that can help one with their emotional control and, or emotional regulation will likely, you know, see some, you know, decent benefits in terms of improving their decision making. So the whole point of emotional control is that once we build that, you know, great emotional control, it's going to help us to make logically sound decisions. And, you know, a lot of people, you've probably heard a lot of people talk about making decisions based on emotions, ie, look at the current environment that we're in at the moment versus being very rational and logical, which again could be very advantageous in the context of playing poker. So that's one key trait there. We also know that poker players, those that actually, you know, perform well playing poker, generally have a good tolerance for financial risk. You know, being either risk averse or you're very, very confident and, and you know, you back yourself is, is one really important trait, I guess, because the ability to back yourself and you know, have a lot of confidence in your decision is really important because again, being in that limbo, no man's land where you're sort of indecisive or uncertain is going to increase cognitive load and decrease your ability to operate efficiently. So I'm sure many of you can relate to this. Even when you're unsure on a decision, think about all of that cognitive power that goes into tossing up either A or B when really we want to be efficient and confident in our decision and make a decision without ruminating. And I guess overthinking, which I'll touch on fairly soon, we'll go, we'll go through some of the rumination and overthinking side of things soon. What I think it's also important is understanding the social information processing skills and social intelligence, which has been shown to be a unique factor. As I was doing some research on some of the key traits of professional poker players, it seemed like social intelligence was one huge aspect which is obviously, you know, distinct from general intelligence as social intelligence is basically a reflection of one's tendency, tendency to respond and to attend to social information and to process information observed in a social environment, as well as being capable of controlling this social information delivered via one's own behavior. So obviously we can see, you know, social intelligence being able to read other players, you know, facial expressions and even body body awareness and body body language. As we know most of our, when we communicate with others, 90% of our communication is non verbal. So being able to observe some of the social recognition patterns from the other player is going to be highly beneficial, not only for the player's own decisions, but then to sort of detect and determine the opponent's potential decision ahead. So that's pretty interesting there. What I want to also dive into is the various personality traits of those that are professional, like those that perform well playing poker. There was one study back in 2013 by Palomaki et al. Which found that greater self evaluation Less rumination and greater emotional control occurred more frequently in their sample of experienced players. They also had greater self evaluation and less rumination, which is suggestive of lower levels of the personality trait, neuroticism. So again, what we want to do when designing a nootropic stack is to reduce that rumination and improve that emotional control. We also want to be thinking about improving working memory. Now obviously this is really relevant to playing poker because we want to be targeting that acetylcholine system and neurogenesis and synaptogenesis, which is going to help to improve that working memory during a poker match. Again, this is really important as a good memory plus observation of the opponents or your opponent's decisions increases the potential for maximum exploitation of a hand situation. So again, what we want to be doing is looking at specific nootropics that can, you know, target the memory systems and various types of memory. Because there's many different types of memory performance, we want to be targeting specific types in this sort of situation. What I found interesting as well is that, you know, when it comes to professional poker, we want to be, be having a good degree or activation of what's known as forward thinking, where the decision maker plans his or her next moves by taking into account not only his or her like their own desires, but also the desires of and goals of their opponents and the moves of their opponents ahead. So again, being able to connect, connect the dots, being able to sort of think ahead, think two, three steps ahead is going to be highly advantageous for poker players. Now this is where it gets quite interesting, is that, you know, many people talk about the importance of self awareness and things that we can do to improve self awareness. And again, this is a, this is highly integral to high performance poker playing. So interestingly, as I sort of briefly alluded to before, dopamine is that neurotransmitter that many of us associate with alertness, focus, motivation, seeking out a goal, chasing our goals, chasing our dreams. But interestingly, dopamine stimulation can actually improve self awareness and also metacognition, which is the ability of the brain to consciously monitor its own cognitive processes. Now there was one particular study that looked at the influence of dopaminergic substances such as L dopa, which is found in the nootropic mucuna pruriens. We're looking at about 15% l DOPA. This particular study basically looked at the influence of L dopa and how it can alter self awareness and also the retrieval of memories. So this administration of L dopa Improved metacognition and self awareness. So with all this in mind, factoring in the key cognitive domains of a highly successful poker player, let's. So let's now take a look at specific nootropics that can directly target these cognitive domains. So the very first nootropic in this stack, in the peak poker playing stack, is something known as PRL853. Now, PRL853 is a synthetic research chemical that was originally designed to treat amnesia, which is a loss of memory. And it's actually intrigued many of us in the nootropic community for decades now. There was one human study basically looking at the effects of PRL853 on short term memory. And quite profoundly, this particular study noted an improvement of short term memory by more than 200%. Now, good luck finding another nootropic that can sort of increase that short term memory response by 200%. And interestingly, the actual PRL853 molecule is a derivative of benzoic acid and phenylmethylamine, which was discovered in 1972 by Dr. Nicolaus Hansell, who then patented the actual nootropic three years later. So interestingly, in this particular study, we're looking at only 5 milligrams. So we're looking at a 5 milligram dosage. And this one particular study in 1978, which was obviously conducted in humans, showed that a single dose could more than double memory as measured by word retention scores. And some researchers has suggested that PRL853 may increase dopamine, which we know plays an important role in memory, motivation and fatigue. So what I really want to highlight here is also the fact that PRL853 may block serotonin production. And again, you may be wondering, why is this beneficial for a poker player? Well, easy. I mean, if we know what happens when we have too much serotonin, there's research that shows, you know, too much serotonin can increase that rumination, and also high serotonin can sort of exacerbate the fear response and also worsen what's known as learned helplessness. So by blocking that certain serotonin receptors, PRL853, could be beneficial to reduce rumination and reduce fear during a poker match. So again, we're looking at about 5 milligrams of PRL853. So next up, I'd like to consider stacking that with something known as methylene blue. But methylene blue at a microdose. When I say microdose, we're looking at around 250 micrograms. Not milligrams, we're looking at micrograms. So 250 micrograms to about 1 milligram. So this is considered a very low dose. And the reason being is that microdosing can be very powerful without raising serotonin with methylene blue because it does cross the blood brain barrier very effectively. At high doses, it may inhibit MAO A, monoamine oxidase A, which can increase serotonin. So we really want to be getting all the benefits of methylene blue without raising serotonin too much. And methylene blue does show a hormetic dose response with opposite effects at low doses versus high doses. So let's get into, I guess, the basics and, and a little bit about how methylene blue works for those who don't know much. I'm not sure if Ben Greenfield had spoken about various actions of methylene blue, but I'd like to fill you in in terms of just understanding the basics. So methylene blue receives an electron from NADH and transfers it to Cytochrome C, bypassing complex 1. And this facilitates enhanced ATP production as well as decreases reactive oxygen species output from the mitochondrial electron transport chain. So again, we're looking at a compound, methylene blue being a compound that may be similar to other ATP boosters like creatine, like D ribose, like coenzyme Q10, like PQQ. We're seeing that methylene blue can enhance ATP production. And it has been reported that low dose methylene blue treatment can sort of attenuate or reduce the behavioral, neurochemical and pathological impairments in animal models of Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's disease, global cerebral ischemia and even stroke. So we're seeing that methylene blue being a highly neuroprotect protective compound or nootropic, you know, being very beneficial for poker players. And what's important to also note is that methylene blue promotes cortical neurogenesis, which again, will be highly useful in this sort of situation. It's also worth noting that methylene blue can enhance various aspects of memory performance. And as I mentioned at the start, there are different types of memory. But methylene blue can sort of enhance contextual memory, short term memory, episodic memory, and also semantic memory. So again, methylene blue, I would say, leads the way in terms of optimizing different types of neurological pathways and reducing neuroinflammation and protecting the brain against, you know, long term stresses and, you know, we're looking at a compound that's almost comparable to nicotine because we know that nicotine is also a powerful nootropic. But obviously it does come with a few drawbacks in terms of addictive tendencies, tolerance and also withdrawal. And the purpose of these compounds that I'm talking about here for this specific poker player or to enhance poker performance is that these compounds are non addictive and they don't leave the brain in some sort of deficit the next day. They're actually supportive of brain performance without leading to depletion, like many powerful stimulants such as, you know, Ritalin, coffee, cocaine. Unfortunately these can be lead to a major deficit long term. So what methylene blue and PRL A53 would stack really nicely with is finally a botanical. I've spoken about two synthetic compounds, two synthetic nootropics. The third one that I'd consider adding into this stack is Avena sativa. Avena sativa, also known as oat straw, has some pretty cool research in terms of improving cognition. What's interesting is that oat straw can also help to boost alpha brain waves, which is that which is associated with super learning, flow states and even joy. Many of you will know, and even for poker performance, if you're enjoying whatever you're doing, you're going to perform better. It just, it's generally speaking a natural tendency for us as humans. That's why many people say, you know, you want to enjoy what, enjoy your job. Well, Avenus sativa, by influencing alpha brain waves is going to, you know, improve that ability to get into a flow state and reduce distractibility and improve that, you know, alpha brainwave state, which is similar again to L theanine. And Avena sativa has been well documented to acutely improve mental function in humans. So this is really important to note is that, you know, with various nootropics, although many of them, them tend to show benefits long term, in this situation with a poker player, we want to be curating and customizing a stack that is, you know, gonna elicit benefits in the short term or acutely. We want to be seeing benefits acutely, which means quickly and short term. So that's really important when we're selecting a stack. There are various bioactive compounds that are also unique in Avena Sativa, which sort of have anti inflammatory effects and protect against neurodegeneration, heart disease and other, you know, aspects as well. Avena sativa is interesting because it does also support cerebral or brain circulation and it sort of does this by boosting Nitric oxide, which methylene blue actually inhibits, which is technically considered a benefit, but that's for other parameters. But in terms of blood flow, Avena sativa does increase nitric oxide, so we're offsetting that side effect of methylene blue. In addition, avena sativa inhibits PDE4, which again also helps to support the dilation of blood vessels and also affects signaling pathways involved in the mediation of memory formation and also has an antidepressant effect. By acting as a PDE4 inhibitor, can prolong the effects of cyclic AMP, which as I said before, is integral to memory performance, wakefulness. It's neuroprotective and is anti neuroinflammatory. We also know that oat straw sort of inhibits monoamine oxidase B, which can increase dopamine levels in the brain, which would work synergistically with PRL853. Again, going to be some nice synergy there for a poker player. So we're sort of looking at a dosage range of about 800 milligrams to about 1500 milligrams. You know, this is reflective. In the literature, we've seen benefits at, you know, as low as 800 milligrams. And so in terms of dosing, many of these compounds can be, you know, just diluted in water or taken in capsule form. Methylene blue is usually in liquid form, but again, it can be found in powder form. PRL853 can be either or powder or liquid tincture. But again, it ultimately does come back to the individual response. And also, it may be also worthwhile throwing in something that can modulate cortisol or some sort of mild beta blocker. It may be beneficial in this sort of situation. So we can use something like taurine. I've spoken about the benefits of taurine numerous times at a dosage of around 2000mg to 5000mg of taurine. But this is again dependent on how aroused the poker player is feeling and or based on their caffeine intake. So since taurine is going to reduce arousal, this can be either beneficial or harmful for certain individuals playing poker. Again, it comes back to how aroused or generally alert the player is already feeling pre match. And that will sort of determine the dosage used for taurine or whether or not it's even needed. But it does tend to modulate cortisol, it does tend to lower cortisol, and it does tend to also lower adrenaline, which is beneficial for keeping calm, keeping cool, calm. And collected, as you guys know, is highly important. So ultimately, you know, we do want to be factoring in, you know, trial and error. We want to be logging and logging our response and also consciously self monitoring to then sort of tweak your nootropic stack. So that's it for me. Hopefully this was beneficial. And yeah, look forward to seeing you guys soon.

Alright folks, well I'm Ben Greenfield along with Jason Kuhn signing out from BenGreenfieldFitness.com have an amazing week. In compliance with the FTC guidelines, please assume the following about LinkedIn and posts on this site Most of the links going to products are often affiliate links, of which I receive a small commission from sales of certain items. But the price is the same for you and sometimes I even get to share a unique and somewhat significant discount with you. In some cases I might also be an investor in a company I mention. I'm the founder, for example, of Kion llc, the makers of Kion branded supplements and products, which I talk about quite a bit. Regardless of the relationship, if I post or talk about an affiliate link to a product, it is indeed something I personally use, support and with full authenticity and transparency recommend. In good conscience, I personally vet each and every product that I talk about. My first priority is providing valuable information and resources to you that help you positively optimize your mind, body and spirit. And I will only ever link to products or resources resources, affiliate or otherwise, that fit within this purpose. So there's your fancy legal disclaimer.