Reduce Brain Fog & Mental Fatigue with Rowena Gates & Jim Kwik

Welcome back, Kwik Brain. Your question for today is— this is a very important topic that we get in our private Facebook group, and many of you are a part of it in our app— is this question is, how do you, how do you reduce brain fog? How do you reduce mental fatigue? How do you up your level of executive function, especially now in these turbulent times? And we're shooting this kind of impromptu. This is a very special episode at the biohacking conference, and many of you asked for resources Not only for tools and techniques, but resources to help. What do I use, Jim? What did you use to help focus and have mental alertness and to be creative when you were writing your book, for example? And you see this kind of Star Trek device here. This is one of my, one of my kind of, people say, a secret weapon, if you will, that I used when I was writing actually a good half of the book. And so I have a very special guest. This is Rowena Gates and we've been longtime friends and I appreciate you taking time from, you know, you here presenting. We're both here presenting at the biohacking conference. And, I wanted to capture this with the team to help bring this resource to you. And, we're going to talk about some quick tips on how to reduce brain fog, mental fatigue, and how to uplevel your executive functions so you could win more. today. And so thanks for being on the show.

It's a pleasure.

Yeah.

And so, you know, my friends, my clients, I'm always recommending your NanoVi technology. And you are, you know, you have your PhD, you are one of the principals at Hang Three, which is amazing. And you've been in this industry working with technology and performance for a long time. You have stories. And so I love this because You know, it's kind of— I talk about superheroes a lot, and 2 of my favorite superheroes are Batman and Iron Man. They don't have any inherent superpowers. They weren't bit by a radioactive spider or anything, but they have technology that allows them to level up their learning, their life, to really show up. And I want to talk about this technology in a little bit, but because you've been in the performance space, you speak at all of these amazing performance conferences like we're at right now. If you're watching this on YouTube, which I highly recommend, you can see the unit I'm talking about. You know, I believe genius leaves clues, and there's certain things that you and I have talked about that can help with brain fog, mental fatigue, uplevel our executive function. So what are some of your top tips? And then I want to get to talking about your amazing technology.

So my big— there's 2 areas that I look at. One is the long-term prevention of damage, so you're in top form when you sit down and have to concentrate for a long period Yeah. And those are making sure you have an appropriate antioxidant regime, not too much, not too little. And then the obvious ones, exercise and sleep, that are all things that help your brain clear up the bad stuff and feed the good stuff into the brain so it's really ready to go. So those are the optimizing performance things that, that help with the whole body, especially important for the brain.

And what's the damage? Like, how do people experience— when we talk about oxidative stress, you know, I think people have a sense of what— how would you describe it?

Well, that's when the damage outweighs the ability of your body to prevent it, basically. So it accumulates. And the brain burns about 20% of your oxygen, and it's about 2% of your weight or something like that. So you're really burning a lot of oxygen, so you have a lot of oxidants. Oxidation there and that can lead to more oxidative stress. And, you know, you have oxidative stress when you start to get brain fog, lack of performance, lack of clarity, and so on. Yeah.

And, this is a topic I think that is pretty rampant. I think people whether they're working from home or living at work and their children in the house, we're having these adverse effects on performance, And so what is it? Do people just take antioxidants or what do you recommend?

It's that whole lifestyle, you know, to optimize that side of it. And it depends on their diet. So everybody's so individual that it's hard to make a broad statement, but it is worth paying attention to and making sure that you've got the good stuff in there. You're not exposed to bad things that cause oxidative stress, any bad chemicals, too much sunlight.

Environmental toxins.

Yes, environmental toxicities, all of that. And so that's the long-term piece. That's just kind of setting yourself up for a good result. And then in the short term, there are some techniques that brain science has come up with, and I know you use to some extent, but one is the technique where you set a timer for 20 or 25 minutes, what's appropriate for you, And then you get up, you move around, and you don't think about what you were concentrating on. And for executives, it's so easy to sit down and realize a whole hour or even 2 hours have gone by staring at the screen without moving and without giving your brain a chance to catch up.

And also giving your eyes time to rest. You know, there's this digital fatigue where we're on screens all the time, or we're on Zoom. And that visual fatigue leads to mental fatigue.

Exactly. And so the visual part is something in the short term you can also do to just close your eyes for a few minutes or roll them in your head. Or another one that's really valuable, obviously, is breathwork. And literally, it doesn't have to take that long, but closing your eyes, resetting your breath, gives your body a chance to kind of reset, process what you've been Working on your brain and then clear things out and move forward. And in the long run, you're much farther ahead than if you just kept hammering at it. Meanwhile, you're creating the oxidative stress that we don't want.

And that's the thing. It's just not only what's attainable, but what's sustainable over time.

Right.

Right. Somebody, anybody could have a burst of focus or energy and work hard past the threshold, but then you create, you know, this This negative loop where it creates more adverse effects. And so, you're working and studying with students and people of ages, all ages and stages for about 25, 30 minutes, the Pomodoro Technique before we start having more of that. We have these cognitive demands, right? And then, our focus, our concentration goes down. So, you take a break, like a brain break, and you're moving. You're especially moving your eyes, which I love because— We're training our— we're looking at our devices like this, so we're at this distance. And if you're watching this on— hopefully on YouTube or, you know, one of our social channels. And but it's not getting the flexibility, right? It's not looking off in the distance. And you're also giving your—

Yeah.

I want to really emphasize and highlight something you said. You're not thinking about what you were doing at that time, right? You have this, this foveal vision, you know, where you're very focused and alert, but then you need to give your brain a little time to To rest, to be able to divergent thinking, to be able to free flow, to integrate what you've just learned.

Exactly. And if without that, it doesn't have the chance to shuffle things around, store them appropriately, and make them available when you need them, which could be a very creative process if you're lucky.

Right. And so during your brain break, you're moving your body, you're moving your eyes, hopefully you're physically moving because, you know, we're sitting behind screens all Which could be a big challenge. You're also breathing because a lot of people when they're sitting at their desk or they're studying, their diaphragm is collapsed and they're not getting oxygen. As you mentioned, your brain is approximately 2% of your body mass, but it's an energy hog. It uses 20% of the nutrients and the oxygen. You could hydrate, obviously. Some people are just dehydrated and that'll make them mentally slow. You know, as well. So that those are very powerful, simple things that people could do that make a huge difference in terms of your return and the rewards that you need to get through the day.

Yeah, and also the long-term benefit to your brain. You want to keep up on that oxidative damage because you don't want anything accumulating long-term in an aging process. And Oxidative stress kind of is the aging process because if we didn't have that, there's no reason that most of the cells in our bodies would get old.

They just—

you're constantly being damaged and you want to keep it healthy.

And, a lot of us, we need it. We're at a conference on longevity and performance. People, they're always reaching, they're always stretching, but they're not stabilizing. You can reach, but you need to also recover from that. Whether it's your athletic, your physical body, or your mind. Now, I know a lot of people are watching this and they've seen some pictures of me on social media where I have this device, this technology sitting on my desk when I'm writing. My dog is always there by my side. He, for some reason, he likes to use this also as well. But people are looking at this, might be a little confused. Now, describe, how would you describe this to someone So what do they see?

So you're seeing a box about the size of a printer with a long arm coming out of it. At the end is a tube that you can breathe from, and there's bubbling water on top of the device.

It has color?

It has color that's decorative. And then inside the device, there's all the magic happens in terms of the excitation of the water droplets that are going through the tube and inhaled.

Right. And I bring this up to everybody because people ask me, you know, Jim, what are you— what are some of the tools you're using to be able to have that extra edge, right? You know, where I feel like if I'm not using certain tools, I'm not the highest version of myself, right? And so this is called a NanoBeam.

Yes.

Okay. And so what I'm doing with it is I'm setting a certain amount of time and I'm actually— I either have this or I have some kind of Attachment to it that allows me to breathe, and it's very passive. And that's why I love. I could be doing other things. I could be reading. I could be writing. Right? And what is that? What is for some when I'm using it? It feels like I I don't have that mental fatigue as latency. You know, I don't suffer from the brain fog, and my executive function is extremely sharp. And I can tell you that I probably wrote half of the Limitless with this on. So tell me some of the science behind it because our audience likes to geek out over it. Why is it— how does it yield those results?

Well, I have to say first, it's so funny because Dave Asprey said the same thing with his Headstrong book, that it was what let him stay up and get it done years ago. But the science behind it, it's— we're drawing on other areas of science including water science, biology, Mm-hmm. And biophysics. And what we're doing is emitting a specific wavelength inside the device that can be transferred through the water. And when it hits the water, which is the mucous membrane in your nose or lungs, once it hits the water environment in the body, it's transferred throughout the body and it's initiating what's called exclusion zone or ordered water in the cells. And the reason we do that is because all proteins, everything in the cell is immersed in water, and that water is actually a source of energy for the proteins to fold. They have to fold or they don't function.

Right. Protein folding.

And the protein folding, and then we simply improve the whole environment for them. We kind of re-energize the water that lets the proteins do what They know to do. So we don't want to override anything. It's just your body knows what to do. It's just giving it a little extra support. Good. And we're giving the body a little extra oxidative stress generally with our lifestyles.

Yeah. So that supports kind of, you know, you know, I see the tool and how popular it is here at this Longevity Performance Biohacking Conference. And it's, I think, you know, when I'm talking to people about it who've been using it for I've been using personally for years. They report the same kind of results. And, people want to see diagrams and even video of how this actually works. We set up a site for you and they put together a special offer for our audience. Justin, I want to thank you for that because some people ask all the time. Again, Jim, I eat your green foods you recommend, your sleep protocol, but I want some more. I want to get I've gone from here to here. What are those things, those kind of secret weapons that allow you to— tools or technology to be able to enhance our physiology and our nervous system? So that's pretty remarkable. And it just looks— I can't tell you how many clients we have that we recommend this to, but they also see this and they just want to know what it is because it's very unique looking.

Yeah, it's a little bit— it's interesting. It's a very unique technology. There's There's absolutely nothing like it.

And you've done all kinds of patents on this technology.

Yeah, and the studies on it. And it's interesting because on acute EEG you could see inappropriate brain activity diminish in a stressed executive, which is exactly what we've been talking about. And you can see before and after. And about what's the average usage in terms of Well, on this device it's about 15 or 20 minutes, but you and I would use it more, right?

Right, especially depending on the load that we have in terms of cognitive load. And, you know, a lot of people are suffering from decision fatigue, and, you know, those are costly mistakes and errors. And so whether in this conversation, whether it happens to be knowing your limit in terms of how much time you're spending studying and working, 25, 30 minutes, Taking a brain break, using that time to move not only your body but your visual apparatus, be able to look in different directions, get some indirect sunlight, breathing, which is very fundamental. And sometimes it's interesting just to get a reminder of what you're doing when you're doing it really, really well. And if you also like to go deeper, I recommend you look at these different models and maybe they're there's one that could be supportive for you, your team, and your family also as well. A number of clients I know, and even podcast guests, have raved about this technology also as well. So I want to thank you for making this available to the world, make it available to our community also as well. So wherever you are watching this, you take a screenshot and tag, you know, Hang Three Corp and tag myself and let us know your thoughts About how you overcome burnout, mental fatigue, brain fog, how do you improve executive function. I'll share some of my favorites as always, and we will actually send a copy of my book just to some people just as thank you for participating. And so thank you again for making this available, taking time out of your busy schedule to be on the show.

Such a pleasure. Thank you. Nice to be here.

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