After Covid: Optimize Your Brain In a Changing World | Jim Kwik & Oz Garcia

Welcome back to the Kwik Brain Podcast. I am your host and your brain coach, Jim Kwik. And in this special episode, we are going to talk about COVID brain. Everyone knows somebody who's had this challenge if you don't have it personally, how to really optimize your brain power in a changing world. So I'm really excited to have in the studio today a good friend, famed nutritionist Oz Garcia. Thanks for being on the show.

Jim, thank you for having me. I'm thrilled.

Absolutely. So, Oz Garcia, I'm actually a client of his. We met years ago speaking at an anti-aging conference in Sardinia. And for those of you who know, it's one of the Blue Zones. And so he is an expert on anti-aging, longevity, and so much more. I want to talk about your new book, which I think this is your 4th or 5th book.

That— it's actually my 5th book.

You're right. And it's called After COVID: Optimizing Your Health in a Changing World. And we specifically want to talk about your brain health. Now, I want to make a disclaimer here that this This is not intended to diagnose or to treat any kind of medical condition. Certainly talk to your medical professional, your doctor.

That's correct. Absolutely.

This is to protect not only us, but to protect you. Okay. And so let me talk about a little bit about your journey. Now, this book, congratulations, is full of hopeful ideas and really helpful ideas on your personal journey, but also a lot of the research you've done over the decades in brain optimization.

That's correct, yes.

Now, I know of recent— now, is it okay to say your age?

Yes, it is.

Go ahead. Okay, Oz is in his 70s, and so he really represents for me really optimization. And so tell me about what your COVID experience, how did that happen? And how can our viewers, whether they have this situation with themselves or a family member or their team or a friend, how can they not only bounce back but bounce forward?

Correct.

Sure.

Well, let's unpack that because there are a number of things that you brought up. One is my own personal story, how I wound up getting COVID at the worst time possible. This is at the rise of the beginning in 2021 of what's called Delta, Delta Plus. I had the misfortune of going in for sports surgery, elective surgery, and consequently was put in a recovery room with somebody who was carrying the virus. Little did I know, right? So I went from being an extremely fit individual, 40, 45 years of being an athlete, runner, triathlon triathlete, ultramarathoner. And all of a sudden, after the surgery, I went home.

And you're right, your immune system was really compromised.

Well, very much so.

Going through the surgical procedure. So specifically, I like to talk about COVID brain, and some of the symptoms include sleeplessness.

That's correct.

Anxiety, depression, things like Focus and concentration issues.

Terribly so, yeah.

And I think a lot of people who are listening could identify with some of these things, things like brain fog.

That's right.

What are some of the things you would also add?

Digestive problems.

Yeah.

Inflammation problems, general sense of being in pain. And for many people, joint problems tend to get aggravated, loss of muscle mass. And I would say quality of life concerns. People actually don't have the sense of optimism. that you would typically find if you were occupied and leading, you know, a productive life. That tends to be killed off.

Okay.

It took me quite a while when I recovered to actually get a sense of what was meaningful. And a lot of that had to do with recovering all the things that we're talking about, like getting my brain back, making sure that my immune system was working properly. And we'll talk about that. What are the things that lead to that? And then improving my quality of sleep. All of that contributed to getting out of, you know, post-COVID syndrome. And in many ways made sure that I didn't wind up with long-haul COVID. Those are the things that we're gonna discuss now in terms of how to improve your brain first.

So I want everybody just to maybe even take notes, share this with a friend or a family member that maybe might be struggling in this area.

That's correct.

Did you have a number of these symptoms?

Very much so. And to your point, it's certainly 1 out of 3 Americans that develop COVID wind up with long COVID. So it isn't the only, or post-COVID syndrome, and we'll define that a little bit more, but we've already done a good job. Remember that there's not a lot of information on the market in terms of what can you do to actually pull yourself back together afterwards. So the book was my response to just that problem. How do I get my life back? How do I get my health back given all the years that I've been a nutritionist, an expert in neurohacking, in biohacking, and so on? So I think, We need to kind of first lay out what are the best protocols? What are the best things that you can do so that you actually get control over your brain again so that you get control over your immune system? A lot of people with long COVID, actually people that don't have long COVID or post-COVID wind up with weakened immune system function. So easier to get colds, easier to get run down, easier to get stressed out, a lot more needless suffering because of blowouts, let's say, within their diet. We could talk about that extensively in terms of how do you begin to craft your way of eating so that it serves your best interest in terms of getting your brain back, your microbiome back? So let's talk about that for a moment.

Perfect. And I just wanted everyone who's watching or listening to this, that having read the book and spending time with Oz Garcia, that this is great protocol just to optimize your brain, whether you are struggling with post-COVID, COVID brain or not.

No question about it. In fact, one of the things that I did, Jim, was appropriate a lot of what runs within our field to improve your thinking overall that I could appropriate it and make it relevant to recovering from COVID Okay. So what you'll find in the book and in terms of what we're talking about, what we do is that a lot of the things that improve brain function in any case are going to work really well in terms of getting you out of the trough that you're stuck in. If you've got, you know, post-COVID syndrome, you've got brain fog and you're not thinking well, There you're going to have 2 problems. You're going to have problems with short-term memory and long-term. And that's terrible, obviously, if you're a professional and just can't get back to work and use your brain at full capacity.

Okay. So let's state some of these things in terms of what helped you to be able to recover and things that you would recommend to our audience. Where would you start if you have a patient coming in, a client coming in? And I know you and I work with a similar level clientele. Very high-performance oriented, where do you start?

I'll be very frank with you. I think the first thing you need to do is really clean up your eating.

Okay.

So no matter where you were before, you know, afterwards, quality of what you eat plays a tremendous role. The amount of anti-nutrients that are in your diet have to go. So you have to eliminate alcohol consumption for sure.

Okay.

Most processed foods. These are things that most of your listeners are well aware of. Qualitatively, Plant-based diet with a high-quality protein in there. For me, it was primarily seafood. A lot of the products that you and I like so that you wake up in the morning, you have a smoothie that's high in phytochemicals, different kind of compounds that you're gonna add to preparing a really great smoothie so that your microbiome is fed in the morning. Into that, I'll put a high-quality yogurt, let's say a cashew nut yogurt, so you get the probiotics in there. Probiotics are gonna be critical in terms of building your microbiome.

Okay.

'Cause 70% of your immune response and how well your brain works is gonna pivot off the quality of the bacteria in your colon. So we're gonna talk about prebiotics, probiotics, and then postbiotics. All of these things are critical to actually getting your brain back.

Okay, so first we have diet, right? So you're eliminating the toxicity.

You have to.

The processed foods, the high level of sugar, which compromise our brain and our immune system even more, that you're getting the best foods in. And we've done many podcasts and conversations on this in the past, but it's also, you don't just get your nutrition through your diet. You also, you know, people come to you for nutritional support.

That's correct.

IVs, supplements, peptides.

Let's begin with probiotics. Critically there, you're gonna have to want to get lactobacillus probiotics, the ones that actually are recognized, and these are known, and I've laid it out in the book, that are actually gonna improve communication between your brain, you know, and your gut, and that's gonna make your brain work a lot better, period. Secondarily, some of the nutrients that I think that make a big difference. Let's talk about alpha-GPC.

Okay.

This is a critical nutrient that actually makes your brain function with, with great efficiency. So communication between the left hemisphere and the brain right hemisphere improves dramatically. Choline, citocholine, absolutely critical. This actually improves your ability to stay focused and pay attention to what's going on around you with full executive capacity.

Right.

You begin to lose those functions a lot. Many people complain about this, whether you've got COVID, or you're recovering from COVID or not, just from generally being stressed out. Let's jump to that. What are the best nutrients that are actually gonna help your brain and reduce the amount of cortisol, adrenaline, or epinephrine, too much dopamine that, that's swirling through your brain? So I would recommend ashwagandha.

Okay.

Right away, bacopa. All right, rhodiola. These are nutrients that actually are based in plant material and they actually have a profound effect on how soothing your brain responds. You have the products that actually maximize efficiency. and the ones that regulate the amount of stress that they deal with. Those are some of the most critical ones, right? Beyond that, we're gonna talk about peptides. Now, peptides are very unique products, very novel. They're novel combinations of amino acids, which are precursors to proteins. Peptides, you're gonna read about in the book.

Mm-hmm.

You can actually do searches on 'em, but there's several that I love a lot. One is cerebral lysine.

Okay.

And that's not all that difficult to get. Cerebral lysine is manufactured in Europe. And one of the things that it does is it repairs central nervous system damage, neuronal damage. It improves your ability to stabilize your moods remarkably. And cerebrolysin can be used both as an IV, can actually be used as a sublingual product. So that's one of the top peptides of all. If you're dealing with mood disorders, whether you're recovering from COVID or not, I would recommend Selank, Semax. These are available quite easily by getting online. And they make an immense difference in terms of also increasing brain-derived neurotrophic factor.

BDNF.

Correct.

Which is like fertilizer for our brains and neuroplasticity.

Exactly. These are— this is an enzyme that you're producing along with dendrite neurotrophic factor so that you're actually building the connections between one neuron to another better. And that gets damaged in terms of the stress you deal with on an everyday basis, certainly in post-COVID, where you've got material left over from the virus leaving your body and all the waste product that's left behind.

Yeah, and again, Oz Garcia is not prescribing these at all. This is, again, not meant to be medical advice. It's not intended to diagnose or treat. Make sure you talk to your health practitioner, your qualified doctor, to be able to take guidance from them. So we're talking about brain nutrition, and we actually, I've been on a protocol that you created for me 4 or 5 years ago. Everything that Oz talked about will be in our show notes. including links to his website, to his books, to his clinic at jimkwik.com/notes. So besides nutrition through diet and supplementation, you mentioned another area, which is sleep.

Oh, no question about it.

So how important is sleep in terms of someone's recovery to bounce back and bounce forward?

I'd say that about 60% of how well you perform in life, how well you recover from anything, whether it's a catastrophic event in your life, separation, a divorce, even having a child, All these are things that can cause tremendous amounts of stress. And the best recovery path is to get adequate sleep.

Right.

We were talking about devices that actually allow you to quantify, measure the quality of your sleep. You and I are both wearing Oura Rings. I certainly am. This is a device that will allow you to track the quality of your sleep, deep sleep, REM sleep, where a lot of memory consolidation takes place, the amount of time that you sleep, how much oxygen You're inhaling when you're sleeping so that you can see if there are any problems in terms of your breathing, if you have apnea or not. HRV, heart rate variability. This will tell you how well you're dealing overall with stress in your life. Higher HRV on your Oura Ring, the better you're doing. The lower, the more that you know that you need to deal with stress overall.

What other tools do you use besides an Oura Ring?

I love NuCalm. I think NuCalm is a terrific tool for actually calming your brain down, calming your body down. Those of you that don't have a facility to meditate well, NuCalm will actually meditate you. The Muse device. Muse, I think, is terrific. It'll teach you how to use your brain to focus again on getting your mind quiet. And this is gonna help tremendously in helping you recover from stress, stress-induced events in your life and so on. One of the devices that I like also, and you're gonna get this in NuCalm, are the little discs that you put on your wrist and that'll actually knock you into a very calm state overall so you can meditate better.

Yeah. Okay, so these are the tools. So, so we'll actually list all the tools that, that Oz put all together in the show notes at jimkwik.com/notes.

Very good.

Big fan of NuCalm, big fan of Muse, and we'll put even, even some more. And so, so now we have nutrition, we have sleep, we have tools. Going back to sleep real quick.

Sure.

Do you have, uh, 2 or 3 of your favorite tips, uh, to be able to optimize your sleep?

Um, some people probably know, uh, the work of Matthew Walker, Matt Walker, and, and a And I got to tip my hat off to him. A lot of this I've learned from him. You have to have a room that's cool, uh, all lights off. I use, uh, night goggles to sleep with. I like to listen to a meditative tape. Okay, so I'll put something on, um, where it can actually begin to quiet my mind.

You and I are revealing like our age with the tape, with the audio, with audio tape. So most, most people are listening to an app or something on YouTube or some kind of Exactly.

So I like, uh, Sam Harris's Waking Up. I mean, there's so much content there. I mean, you just go on forever. And this actually puts me to sleep and keeps me asleep.

There is— so it's dark.

It's like a bear cave.

And you would see you have your sleep sanctuary and it's cold.

Even in the winter, I turn off all the heaters.

Okay.

Beyond that, I like a chili pad.

Okay.

So I also have that too. Some people like to have, uh, PMF mats.

Okay.

I have a PMF device called the Halo.

Okay.

Right. And that also helps you recover from stress, sleep better.

So we have tools, we have some sleep, you also have nutrition. So now that you do—

yeah.

So now that you have nutrition taken care of and your sleep and some tools that help you with the NuCalm, the Oura Ring, to be able to— are there any other areas that you want to talk about in this in terms of that have been really critical or pillars that was supportive in your, again, your recovery or just in general for brain optimization?

Let's talk about morning routine.

Okay.

You know, when you get up in the morning, and you should get up, it's not like I've got a superpower where I can do this every morning, but I like to get up between, somewhere between 5 and 7 most days. That means that I have time to get behind my morning routines. Journaling is critical. There's study after study after study that indicates that if you do gratitude journaling, 5 to 10 minutes in the morning, 5 to 10 minutes in the night, it actually has a profound effect in terms of your states of mind, mood, and your ability to think quicker. That'll also set you up for the day. Cold shower.

Okay.

All right? And in your case, in my case, we like to do ice dips in the morning.

We were doing that this morning, right? We use a cold plunge or a cold shower.

Correct. And you may wanna do contrast. Hot shower, cold shower, hot shower, cold shower. That'll get your circulation going. Get your journal going in the morning. Sit down and do meditative practice. One of the ones that we also recognize, besides doing gratitude journaling, is to do a mindful meditation. One of the ones that's recommended, again, from many people, people that you and I know that are leaders in the field of mindfulness, is to do a lovingness meditation.

Okay.

Right, which is called Metta, and there are plenty of YouTube links to that. That'll also set your mind at ease so that you can think better, and it also improves connectivity between long-term and short-term memory.

Okay.

Right? Beyond that, getting outdoors. It's always good. So if you can get outdoors in the morning, Okay. Right? And you've got your dogs and you've got a perfect place to be outdoors. I'm right next to Central Park.

Right.

So whether it's winter, fall, spring, or summer, you gotta get outdoors. Andrew Huberman is a big advocate of getting 20 minutes to 30 minutes of sunlight in the morning, even if the sky's overcast. That's always gonna be really critical.

Outside, not even through your windows because that would filter out some of the spectrum of light.

That's correct.

Go outside and you get grounded also, you know, to the earth, and you also get fresh air.

Absolutely critical. And if you live in a city, you gotta find, A resource where you can get to a park, right? That's gonna make a huge difference. Some of the other things that I think are really important is bodywork. We talked about this. So acupuncture, cupping, deep tissue. To go long periods of time without getting any kind of touch, certainly in terms of bodywork, is gonna cost you because we build up a lot of tension and stress within our muscles too. That needs to be relieved.

Okay, fantastic. And so we have things like the tools that we talked about. You mentioned Touch. What about community?

Yeah, one of the most important things of all. What we do know, and certainly when we talked before, when you talked before about the Blue Zones, like in Sardinia, what we know about people that live the longest and how it is that you can cure yourself and recover quicker from long-haul COVID or post-COVID, or even from a bad cold or any of the problems that we discussed before, catastrophic events in a life, is to have a really broad community. Being alone is one of the deadliest plagues today. Dear friend of mine has written a book called and talks about how isolated even students in colleges are.

Yeah.

Right, and how that affects your states of mind and shortens your lifespan.

Yeah.

People that live the longest in the Blue Zones into their 90s and so on have broad communities, not only their brothers and sisters, but their kids, their great-grandkids, and on and on and on. That seems to have a profound effect on normalizing brain function.

Yeah. So it's not just your neurological networks or your biological networks, it's your social networks.

Being able to have intimacy, having an intimate life, Having an intimate life with people that you love, you know, getting the oxytocin, which I'm sure you'll describe later, is critical for your wellbeing.

Now, when you talk about the physicality, and you mentioned this briefly, exercise. What about physical movement? How important is that in terms of your recovery?

Let's go to that for a minute. I want to leave that for last because a lot of people that are recovering from COVID don't have the ability to work out, right? But let's just say, generally speaking, then I wanna touch on this for a moment, working out and being fit, is gonna make a difference in terms of every single aspect of your life. Yes, you will sleep better, you'll have better intimate sexual life, you're going to think better, you're gonna be much more productive overall, and you will likely live longer. We know that even 10 minutes of walking a day is gonna make a measurable impact on quality of your heart.

Okay.

Blood sugar levels, and so on and so forth. What I found when I was recovering was that even if I did a little bit of exercise, Jim, and I mean little, like one pushup, Whereas before COVID I could do 150. It'd be 50, break, 50, break, 50, and then work with my home TRX device. I couldn't do any of that.

Right.

It was a big effort to just crawl from my bed and get over to my mat and do one pushup. Like James Clear would talk about in Atomic Habits, and I know you admire him greatly, and so do I.

We've had him on this, on the show also. We'll put links to all this.

That's where I took my cue. I was like, all right, if Jim could actually— James Clear could walk only 3 or 4 feet, and then the next day he could walk 4 or 5. I took my cue from that. So, so once I was able to get movement going and be able to breathe, and we didn't talk about that, you know, being able to get into a breathing routine also in the morning is really absolutely critical.

Yeah. This has been a power-packed episode. I mean, every, every word coming outta your mouth is something that's actionable, very practical. Uh, people thinking, how can I remember all this? And there's no, you know, we don't have any teleprompters or anything. You and I are just talking. Um, I was going through it in my head. I just, this is a no BS approach. And what I mean by that acronym, the T-H-E-N-O-B-S. And so the T stands for the tools that you mentioned.

Okay.

So we mentioned a lot of tools in this conversation from the Oura Ring to NuCalm.

Correct.

To all these things, hyperbaric chamber.

That's right.

Which is amazing. The H, what I would say is help. And that's the healing force of people around you, people that coach you, community as well. The E, I would say, stands for exercise. All right. And so we talked about the power of movement. I love this. The NO. And so the N, as we go through, is nutrition, which you can get through your food, you can get through supplementations and peptides and so on.

Yes.

The amino acids. The O has to do with the outdoors, the healing powers of being with fresh air, sunlight, grounded. And then BS, let's say, and we're doing this together, it's the acronym too. So the B would stand for bodywork.

Correct.

So breath.

Correct.

All right. So get that healing touch.

Get the Wim Hof app. You know, that's an easy one. Easy place to start.

Yes. And then the S, as you stated in the beginning, is one of the most powerful things, is your sleep.

Correct.

And so no BS, very practical things everybody could do. We'll put all the show notes at jimkwik.com/notes. I highly recommend, uh, for brain optimization, or if you know somebody struggling in this area, uh, brain fog, anxiety, uh, you know, something having to do with long COVID.

Sure, but general body aches overall. Yeah.

Check out these books, including the most recent one called After COVID: Optimizing Your Health in a Changing World. And I would say and optimizing your brain health.

Correct, you will.

In a changing world. How can people find out more about your ministry, your practice, your books?

Sure, go to my website, ozgarcia.com. It's easy enough, O-Z-G-A-R-C-I-A.com. It's a good beginning. Type in my name on Amazon.

Yeah.

On Instagram, it's Oz Wellness. On Facebook, it's Oz Garcia.

Awesome. And I would challenge everybody right now to share this with somebody who is really struggling. Share this with somebody who's struggling and even take a screenshot of where you're listening to this, whether it's Spotify, It's iTunes, it's YouTube. Tag Oz, tag myself so we get to see it. And what I want to do is everybody just share one thing that you got out of this. What's one area that you want to improve in? And you don't have to use the mnemonic, the No BS, right? But if there's one area, an insight or an instruction, an idea that you want to share with your fans, your friends, your family, your followers, please post that. Because you tag us both in it, I will repost some of my favorites and I'll actually gift a copy to 3 individuals of Oz's most recent book just as a thank you for being part of our community. Oz, thank you so much for not only the work that you do, but thank you for specifically supporting me, you know, on this journey of optimizing my brain.

And you me. I'm delighted at the friendship that's evolved over the years, Jim.

Yeah, I love that also when we were talking when you were going through this, you really dedicated some of this time when you're recovering to your own learning.

Correct.

And you're really— and you're learning, you're writing, and you were doing lots of reading and keeping your mind— you know, it's not just exercise, physical exercise, which was the E, it was also mental exercise.

Very much so. You have to keep your brain active. And like you— and I took— I learned this from you— you have to read continually. And that's a requirement. It's certainly— if you're trying to get better overall from anything, you've got to indulge. Even if you read a page of a book a day, it makes all the difference in the world.

Absolutely. Reading is to your mind what exercise is to your body. You read to succeed. Alex Garcia, thank you.

Jim, thank you so much.

Thank you everyone for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a review. Obviously subscribe so you don't miss another episode, and, and share it, because together We could be limitless. And, uh, thank you very much. I'm your brain coach, Jim Kwik, and I'll see you on our next episode.