In this episode of the Flex Diet Podcast, I sit down with my good friend Dr. Tommy Wood to dig into his upcoming book, The Stimulated Mind — a ridiculously practical guide to building a better brain. We get into all kinds of fun rabbit holes: how technology is changing fitness, why lactate (yes, the same stuff you curse during hard intervals) is actually rocket fuel for your brain, and why a solid dose of cardio is one of the most underrated cognitive enhancers out there. We also tackle resistance training, neuroplasticity as you age, and which sports and drills actually move the needle for cognition. And because it’s Tommy, we even wander into the spicy territory of psychedelics and whether they may have a place in brain health. If you want real, actionable strategies to boost memory, focus, and long-term cognitive performance—without drowning in jargon—this episode is for you. Tune in and geek out with us.
In this episode of the Flex Diet Podcast, I sit down with my good friend Dr. Tommy Wood to dig into his upcoming book, The Stimulated Mind — a ridiculously practical guide to building a better brain.
We get into all kinds of fun rabbit holes: how technology is changing fitness, why lactate (yes, the same stuff you curse during hard intervals) is actually rocket fuel for your brain, and why a solid dose of cardio is one of the most underrated cognitive enhancers out there.
We also tackle resistance training, neuroplasticity as you age, and which sports and drills actually move the needle for cognition. And because it’s Tommy, we even wander into the spicy territory of psychedelics and whether they may have a place in brain health.
If you want real, actionable strategies to boost memory, focus, and long-term cognitive performance—without drowning in jargon—this episode is for you.
Tune in and geek out with us.
Sponsors:
Triphasic 2 book now available!
Episode Chapters:
Flex Diet Podcast Episodes You May Enjoy:
Connect with Dr. Tommy Wood:
Get In Touch with Dr Mike:
Speaker: [00:00:00] Welcome back to the Flex Diet Podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Mike Nelson. On this podcast, we talk about all things to increase performance, add muscle, improve body composition, do all of it within a flexible framework, and without destroying your health. Today on the podcast, got my good buddy, Dr. Tommy Wood, and we're talking all about his brand.
New book, the Stimulated Mine, which comes out around March and you can pre-order it now. So we talk about everything from, uh, the role of technology and fitness fitness versus exercise, how this helps primarily also cognitive health. Uh, surprising role of lactate in BDNF, which I did not know. So I learned something new here, which is awesome.
The role of cardiovascular training in brain health resistance training in [00:01:00] brain health, the benefits of doing different sports and different activities. Dr. Tommy gives a breakdown of the best ways for increasing neuroplasticity and aging. What are some things you should do, uh, different drills. Uh, I even asked him about the goat drill, uh, from Coach Cal Dietz, which is in the Phasic two book that.
I authored along with, uh, coach Cal Dietz and even the role of psychedelics in brain health and a whole lot more. So I wanted a huge thanks to Dr. Tommy for doing this podcast. Uh, maybe he agreed to it because I also probably for maybe three or four years now, I'd have to go back and look. Uh, had been doing his training for Strong Man in different competitions.
He's done so. Maybe if he didn't agree to it, he ends up with some horrible 1000 meter repeats via the concept two rower in his training. But we'll [00:02:00] leave that aside for now. Uh, so Dr. Tommy Wood is a crazy person who did a MD first through a full program in the uk and then decided, eh, I'm gonna go back and do a PhD in neurology.
So he went back and started from scratch again. And did a PhD in neurology, which, uh, some programs have, uh, MD PhD program, which is combined, uh, is typically just not too much longer than a PhD. But he went the very difficult route of doing 'em both independently. So he is currently studying neurology, metabolism and neurogeneration at the University of Washington, the Department of Pediatrics and Neuroscience.
Uh, he's looking at how lifestyle factors, training, nutrition, stress, lactate all those things affect cognition and different function across the lifespan. Uh, in addition to many other things, [00:03:00] he's also a high level consultant working with elite athletes, uh, formula One drivers and all sorts of people blood work.
I've done his course, uh, with Dr. Ben House, who's also a good friend on blood work. And he's got a great book coming out this Stimulated Mine where he is translating the cutting edge neuroscience into practical ways to boost memory focus and better brain aging, also via nutrition training and your daily habits.
So I am super excited for the book. I know he has done his homework on the references and making sure that it is both. Correct via the current science that we have and also making it practical. So he does a great job of translating all that research into things you can do at the end of the day. So super excited for this podcast.
I think you'll really [00:04:00] enjoy it. Uh, check out some of our sponsors here. Uh, we've got Element, if you are looking for nutrition via hydration. Uh, I'm down here still in South Padre, Texas and I've noticed that being hydrated, especially with something a little more sodium has been, uh, super, super helpful when I'm out.
Um, kite boarding there. And then also we've got what I call the flex four. So if you want to know is top tips for improving brain health go to the link below, put in your email address and we will send it to you directly. If you're already on the insider newsletter list, then you will get it sent to you directly already.
Um, but if not, you can join the newsletter list for free and you'll get Dr. Tommy's top four tips for improving your Brain Health and very short order. So check that out along with my private newsletter and if you have any [00:05:00] questions or anything else I can do to help you out hit me up via the newsletter there.
It's probably the best place. So without further ado, enjoy this podcast with my good buddy, Dr. Tommy Wood.
tommy-180009_Recording_640x360: Welcome back to the podcast here, Dr. Tommy. How are you? I'm very good. Thanks for having me back. It was great to see you. Yeah. Yeah. Some people may think that I threatened him that if he didn't come back on the podcast, he would have 2K rower repeats in his training.
But I, I did not,
Dr Tommy Wood: Not yet. Not yet. I always dread the day that you'll just decide to throw that into the coaching app and I'll have to do it. But you have the 62nd repeats. Yeah. 60 seconds. That's, well, even that's that's miserable enough. Yeah. I can, 'cause I can work pretty hard for 60 seconds.
So just a couple of those and I'm pretty smoked.
Dr Mike T Nelson : Yeah. I found lately [00:06:00] just, I've been adding or trying to, at the end of my upper body day, just 60 seconds all out, like on a salt bike. Yeah. And it's crazy, like for me to do it on a rower definitely sucks. Yeah. It's hard. I'm so not used to that damn assault bike that my efficiency is even worse.
That yeah, I'll like, I think my max heart rate's 1 73 and I'll hit one 70 in 60 seconds on that. It's just horrendously bad.
Dr Tommy Wood: Yeah. I think on the rower, like I can I know at max output what I can sustain for that period of time, but like on an assault bike basically, but I'm like dying by 15 seconds in yeah, I've given everything and there's nothing.
Then it's just, then you're just hanging on for 45 seconds
Dr Mike T Nelson : and pretty much yeah. That's what looks like and you look down and you're like, oh man, I gotta be close to 60 seconds. I did this the other day. 32 seconds a bitch.
Yeah. Well, why do we torture ourselves with this exercise thing? You, I, you were telling me it's good for our [00:07:00] cognitive health. Even I thought it was just getting bigger biceps.
Dr Tommy Wood: Well, obviously bigger biceps is the main reason why, of course I do it. But you're right there, there are some things that are supposedly supposedly good for the brain.
A few a few different ways now that we are into it, that exercise can improve cognitive function, right? It has both acute effects and long-term effects and different types of training seem to have different effects on the brain. So you need a little, I ideally you would have a little bit of everything, which is why.
One of the reasons why I do cardio when it's not always my f I thought you were gonna say we had to all do CrossFit now. Oh, you could do that. I think you could. We were at that conference together last year where I and CrossFit Health. Yeah. And I gave a talk on why CrossFit could be good for your brain because Right.
You do strength work, you do aerobic work, you do complex complex skills and gymnastics. And all of those things seem to set have different effects on the brain be beneficially plus like the community aspects. There's a lot of reasons for sure why [00:08:00] CrossFit can be good for the brain.
Yeah.
Dr Mike T Nelson : And that was a great conference. That was super fun.
Dr Tommy Wood: Yeah. Yeah, it was good. But so, so for say the really intense stuff in particular when they've looked at aerobic or. Those kind of modalities at higher intensities, and that's where we see some of the best evidence, actually for long-term preservation of progressive function that and resistance training, although they affect different parts of the brain sort of high intensity work and probably the best study that did this used in Norwegian four by four.
They did this in older adults. They had them do four by four, three times a week for six months, three times a week, three times a week for six months. So it was quite a lot of work. Six months. Yeah. How did they find these super humans to do this? Well, these are like people in their sixties and older.
And then they also, they feel soft. Yeah, exactly. It reminds me, there's that, I think you've written about it, that protocol that like maximally boosts VO two max in 10 weeks, but basically everybody died and [00:09:00] quit because, oh, that was
Dr Mike T Nelson : the old school 1977 SSON trial. Yeah. Yeah. It freaking absolutely brutal.
But I think the average VO two max in 12 weeks went from, I wanna say 46 to 61, I think amazing bananas, like the biggest VO two max I've ever seen in a study in moderately trained humans ever. But the protocol was just horrendously bad. Yeah. And the rumor was like. It was most of the people in the lab actually participating and some other people.
And so it was like this big contest that no one wanted to drop out because they'd probably be persecuted forever for, dropping out. So, yeah.
Dr Tommy Wood: Yeah, so, so I don't think this is that bad, right? Yeah. Oh, that's good. But four by four, three times a week, six months. And this was significant and changes in hippocampal the structure and function of the hippocampus.
So being that this part of the brain that's really critical for memory and is affected particularly in the later stages of dementias like Alzheimer's [00:10:00] disease, and this effect persisted for several years after they finished the. The training protocol. Wow. And that was compared to a group that they had a sedentary control group, and then they had a, just like a moderate intensity continuous group.
So like the same period of time, like 40 minutes at like zone two, three, kind of level by comparison. So the higher intensity stuff does seem to have this big impact on on cognitive function and the hippocampus. And one of the reasons for that seems to be lactate which is then why torturing yourself on a own machine might be good for your brain.
The, when we think about cognitive function, lots of people talk about BDNF, right? Brain derived neurotrophic factor. This helps to support neurons, particularly those that have been stimulated or are undergoing the processes of neuroplasticity, like bolsters these neuroplastic processes that we start through skill learning, activating different parts of the brain with, different activities.
So would you say it's like brain [00:11:00] fertilizer? Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. It's just like miracle growth for neurons. Yeah. What's interesting though is when studies talk about BDNF, right? So they look measure circulating BDNF in, in the blood. And that certainly probably has an effect on peripheral, the peripheral nervous system.
There's a whole like nervous system in the gut that could be affected by peripheral BDNF. The BDNF that you produce in your body as in during exercise and that you measure in the blood doesn't seem to really get into the brain or very, it doesn't. It does. Yeah. I wondered about that. Every time people are talking about crap, I'm probably guilty of that.
Yeah. And and I have been too until I started really digging into this for my book does it get blocked by the blood-brain barrier? It doesn't cross the blood brain barrier. Ah, interesting. So this is where lactate comes to the rescue. So lactate very easily crosses the blood, my barrier, so yep, lactate uptake in the brain, just like ketone uptake into the brain is like proportional to the circulating levels.
So the more lactate you have, [00:12:00] the more gets into the brain and lactate stimulates the local production of BD NF. So it transports that message of high intense exercise to the brain to generate BDNF. And there are other molecules that, that do that, that are generated through exercise. So IGF one seems to do it and that IGF one is particularly bolstered through resistance training.
And then osteocalcin too also seems to be able to get, which, from the, the stress of loading the bones seems to also be able to cross the pelvic barrier and stimulate local BN F production. But I think lactate is the one that we understand the best. So you're producing some of these things peripherally.
Then they go into the brain and then they generate BDNF there. Lactate maybe being the most important one for that. So that's why I think we have evidence which we can go into, like all different kinds of exercise and movement are beneficial for the brain, both acutely, small periods of movement, acutely improved cognitive function.
But [00:13:00] intensity does probably matter too. And that's because things like lactate then stimulate the production of local bdnf.
Dr Mike T Nelson : So BDNF then I would imagine has to be serving some other function peripherally. I just read a new study the other day that showed. I think it was BDNF was correlated with, it was either mTOR activation or muscle mass.
I think, I can't remember exactly, it was association studies. It wasn't saying this caused one the other or whatever, but I think it was trying to figure out people genetically, I think that produced more bd NF were more likely to be a responder to exercise, if I remember right. But so it b enough doing something to the muscle or peripherally or somewhere else, then
Dr Tommy Wood: yeah I'm sure it has it probably has multiple, like peripheral trophic signaling effects.
It's just that effect that we think that is having on the brain, it's probably not getting a chance to do that. It's happening after proxies then get into the brain Yep. And stimulate it locally. But yeah, it's certainly having a peripheral [00:14:00] effect. It's just, we can't measure BDNF in the blood and immediately know how much bd NF is in the brain.
Dr Mike T Nelson : Yeah. And that would make sense probably to some of those earlier studies where. If I remember right, they did look at BDNF and they did see an association with hippocampal volume. Mm-hmm. But it wasn't CAU core or causation. Right? Yeah. So it was probably BDNF going up, lactate going up. At the same time, lactate is the signaling molecule, crossing the blood brainin barrier, and it is causing these changes, but it wasn't it, its association not necessarily causative.
Dr Tommy Wood: Yeah. So, one example you might be thinking of is this classic paper was published in P-P-N-A-S like 15 years ago. Ericson. Etal, yeah. Yeah. Where they did the walking intervention. So this was the first time that we saw, or I think that people saw improvements in the size of hippocampus in older adults.
Where previously we just thought that hippocampus just gets smaller and shrinks away and, Yeah. The older we get and it's all bad. It's the size of P and then you die. Yeah, exactly. It's all bad news and there's nothing we can do about it. But so this was 40 [00:15:00] minutes of walking three times a week, and they slowly increased intensity over time.
And you're right, the circulating BDNF correlated with improvements in hippocampal volume over time in the, and they had like a stretching group as like a control group.
Dr Tommy Wood : Mm-hmm.
Dr Tommy Wood: But it all, the improvements in hippocampal volume also correlated with improvements in. Via two max,
Dr Tommy Wood : which is
Dr Tommy Wood: probably a proxy of right, the amount of in higher intensity work that they manage by the total intensity and total volume of work they manage to do.
So then you can think that by you, by the end, where they're doing. More intense periods of work, they're probably generating some lactate that's improving fitness and it's, signaling BDNF locally in the brain. So yes, you can measure it in the blood, but there was probably one of those other signaling molecules was acting as like a go-between.
Dr Mike T Nelson : Very cool. Do we know if ketones produced BD F in the brain? I haven't looked at any of that.
Dr Tommy Wood: Yes. It's they've shown that in a couple of mouse studies. [00:16:00] So, beta butyrate is a histone d decease inhibitor and one of the histone d acetylators that it inhibits regulates the production of bdnf.
Oh. So at least in animal models, giving giving ketones increases BDNF production in the brain.
Dr Mike T Nelson : Yeah, because I've noticed the literature, at least on lactating and ketones in the brain, is they appear to be doing very similar Yeah. Things as far as I can tell, which is interesting.
Dr Tommy Wood: Yeah there's, well, they, right, they have you, they share the same transporters.
They have some of the same biological effects in terms of epigenetics and gene regulation. So, yeah. Not identical, but Correct. They both can act as metabolic substrates as well as signaling molecules. So, yeah there is quite a lot of overlap and some people have suggested that especially as you get older, your MCTs, your mono carboxylate transporters that let ketones and lactate into the brain may decrease as we get older.
But you maintain them if you continue to do high intensity exercise because that then allows lactate to get [00:17:00] into the brain. I, all the evidence I've seen still says that when you're older, lactate and ketones still do get into the brain, but some have suggested that those who do regular exercise may be best poised to then leverage the effects for of ketones if they generate them.
Dr Mike T Nelson : Very cool. And I'll pitch my supplement idea. Can we use lactate as a supplement?
Dr Tommy Wood: Yeah. So, well, so people have talked about this for a long time.
Dr Mike T Nelson : I've been talking about this for 12 years now. When I started, everyone was like, you're an idiot. This is the dumbest thing I've ever heard. And I went so far as actually literally almost filed patents on it, but I didn't have the money to do it.
Dr Tommy Wood : Yeah. And
Dr Mike T Nelson : now people are starting to be like, Ooh, lactate, lactate this, lactate that. I'm like, yeah.
Dr Tommy Wood: Yes. So I guess the question is, how much do you have to give? How do you give it? I, there are studies, I think they're giving exogenous lactate in intensive care settings. Yep. Potentially for neuroprotection, just like some of those studies are ongoing with with ketones.
I don't know if lactate salts have [00:18:00] some of the same issues as ketone salts in terms of are you act, do you, especially if you take them in orally, are you getting. Sustained large increases in circulating lactate. But if you could do that, I would believe that you would then be able to leverage some of those benefits.
But like you said, you've been talking for about it for more than a decade. You've got guys out there like real experts in lactate, like George Brooks have been talking about this for a long period of time. We just haven't yet seen those studies that are closer to bringing it to something that we can actually put into practice.
Dr Mike T Nelson : Yeah. And the handful of studies, at least for Ergogenic performance are, I would say mixed and calcium lactate, I think is off patent now also. So some of the early patents from Cito Sport and stuff like that I think are expired now also. Mm-hmm. So in terms of ability to maybe innovate in that space possibly.
So if anyone out there is interested, please contact us. We're open for business.
Dr Tommy Wood: Yeah. Let's fill some people with lactate.
Dr Mike T Nelson : Yeah, 'cause for years I'm like in, [00:19:00] 'cause you get pitched I'm sure a ton of supplement ideas. And I would say a lot of the ones I get pitched are half crocked at best.
Yeah. I'm just like, Hey man, give me the physiologic explanation. Don't, I don't even worried about experimental data yet. I don't even wanna see the human studies to see if it works. Just give me your pitch on, based on current physiology, how this may possibly work. Mm-hmm. And I would say 60% fail that.
Yeah. But
Dr Tommy Wood: you can, but even then, unless they're talking to somebody like you, they can make some kind of like massive, oh, they can make a cool story. They can make a cool story, a massive mechanistic jump of people like, oh yeah, let's take, let's, that sounds great. Let's throw some of that back.
Dr Mike T Nelson : Yeah. And even then the amount of compounds that even make it past that, that make it past animal models, make it into humans actually work. It's not everything is the next creatine, but there. There are compounds that do make it through that do have an effect. So you can't say they're all bunk either.
So,
Dr Tommy Wood: yeah. No, exactly. That's I think that's the [00:20:00] interesting part of this kind of work. The in the, in, in my book, which we're gonna talk about. Yes. Please plug the book. So, okay, so I've got a book coming out early next year in March called The Stimulated Mind, which is about how to improve cognitive function on a day-to-day basis, but also prevent or decrease your likelihood of getting dementia and significant cognitive decline long term.
And in like the beginning of the book, I talk about some of the history of neuroscience and some of these issues that we mentioned, like we try and. Get these very fine mechanistic details of how the brain works. And then we try and target that with this one drug that does this one thing.
And like none of none of it works in humans. It works, it just doesn't. And I say this as somebody who does that, I do that for a living.
Dr Mike T Nelson : That's why I'm laughing, because that's literally what you do for a living. That's literally what I do for a living
Dr Tommy Wood: Is test these things out in the hope that something will translate because I believe things will yes, but the vast majority of stuff that works in mouse and rat in, in mice and rats not, is not gonna work in humans.
And we [00:21:00] just have to know that going in. But I remember the, so I tell the story of the first time that I really realized this, it was during my PhD and I went to a conference where a guy presented, or in his presentation, he talked about this paper called 1026 experimental Treatments for Acute Stroke.
And this is now in, this is published in 2012. So this paper is now almost 15 years old. And. They basically show that there were more than a thousand ways to cure or dramatically reduce the effect of a stroke in a rat. And none of those work in humans. And I was just like, what are we doing seriously?
It's just like literally mind blown. And that doesn't mean I, I don't want people to lose all faith in preclinical science, but I think we just have to be a little bit more skeptical when somebody like has this fancy implausible mechanism for this thing that you should take to improve this other thing when, especially if [00:22:00] they give you a mouse study.
'cause in reality, most stuff that works in mice isn't gonna work in humans. But some stuff some stuff does and will, and we're trying to figure out those d
Dr Mike T Nelson : different pieces. Yeah. And now I'm so. Jaded. I'm almost happy if it's a preclinical or a mouse study because at least it wasn't a cell line study or something done in a fucking earthworm or some other shit.
Yeah, there's a lot of that going around too. Yeah. Like you just as you scale up, like you're, even if it does work, your effects just drop off. Yeah. Like fasting maybe, or co extreme caloric reduction may be amazing for a nematode, but as you scale up through the models and even just get to primates, it tends to drop off.
And again, you could argue we have a lot less data that, there may be something there, which I would probably generally agree with, but it is not these huge magical returns that you are expecting to happen. It's just humans and homeostasis tend to just crush most things.
Dr Tommy Wood: Yeah. And [00:23:00] so there's like the fasting caloric restriction literature, I think is a great example because mm-hmm.
What I think the real outcome of all that research is, and I'm stealing some bastardized version of a quote from Charles Brenner, who's, a an expert in the longevity space where he's basic. He says, yes, in all these animal models, caloric restriction extends life. But what they're really telling you is that an environment where you have access to unlimited calories is bad for your health.
And then doing something that counteracts that is beneficial. So that means that if somebody is, EU caloric has good body composition, isn't succumbing to the modern food environment, layering chloric restriction on top of that is very unlikely to provide additional benefits. But if you.
Per chloric restriction in place in somebody who is succumbing to the effects of the modern food environment, then it will be beneficial. Right. But those you you have to look at it from the other way around. And you might you might have seen the paper that my [00:24:00] friend Christy Storch wrote looking at the effects of fasting on, on muscle cells.
Have you had her on the podcast? Have you had that? We had one She'll
Dr Mike T Nelson : be back on to talk about that paper and her zone two stuff because Oh my god, people may not like zone two.
Dr Tommy Wood: So, but I think this is a really nice example of how, like this story gets told even mm-hmm. In very big journals, right?
There are big journals where fancy scientists have written, intermittent fasting is beneficial for health because autophagy and all these other things. And then, right. She did a systematic review of all the literature on intermittent fasting on autophagy in. Rodents. So mice, rats, and humans.
And first she found that actually the effect of intimate fasting on autophagy wasn't nearly as clear in rodents as people tell you it is. And then she found that there's basically no effect in humans. And that's probably because intimate fasting in humans is not the significant caloric stressor that it is in rodents.
Right? Yeah. If you, if a mouse doesn't eat for 24 hours, it dies. [00:25:00] Yeah. And so it's just, you're not comparing apples with apples here. And so I just think, again, another example that you have to really understand what's going on in the human environment and how to look at it to really figure out then what is gonna be useful for us to do.
Dr Mike T Nelson : Yeah. We had Dr. Kurt, I don't remember his last name on the podcast, talking all about autophagy. He did his PhD in California on that. And the short synopsis is basically. Eh, it's hard to measure and humans do it automatically. There's not a ton of stuff you can do to push it around a little bit.
Like when I did the flex side cert, I went through and looked, I tried to find like what was the biggest stimulus for autopage, if that is the thing, which we can argue about that. Yeah. Yeah. And I think the, using different, molecular markers, the biggest one I think I found was coming into the lab and doing horrendously horrible interval work.
Not replacing those calories, just having some protein, so like a sleep low approach, [00:26:00] and then coming back the next day and doing horrendously horrible output on low liver and low muscle glycogen. And I think you saw some markers of autophagy go up for almost was it 78 hours or quite a while.
Yeah. But to do that, if anyone's ever done that work. Is absolutely miserable. It is a horrendously bad to do. It's no fun. Yeah.
Dr Tommy Wood: But, and so, but that's if you wanna maximize autophagy. Correct. But I think there's also studies that show you just go and do 30 minutes at 70%. Oh, exercise is massive for it.
Yes. Yeah. So just go for a brisk walk and all your autophagy will, will kick into
Dr Mike T Nelson : gear. Yeah. Yeah. Cool. Yeah, so back to cognitive stuff, which is great. Well, I'm sure we'll have a few more rabbit trails here and there, which is awesome. Back to the hippocampus, like what, why do we care about it seems like the hippocampus is one of the main target areas of research.
Obviously there's other brain areas too, but why do we care so much about the hippocampus for the [00:27:00] average person listening in? Why is that a good brain structure to keep intact?
Dr Tommy Wood: Yeah, it, that's a really in interesting question and I, it just seems to
Dr Mike T Nelson : show up in the, and maybe it's just my research I read, it just seems to show up like all the time.
Dr Tommy Wood: You're right. It shows up everywhere. Probably for a few reasons. One is it's very, it's structured changes across species, but it, it's very evolutionarily con conserved and it's it's this very distinct structure. So if you easy to see, yeah, it's very easy to see, oh yeah, that's hippocampus.
It's got this very distinct, there it's layer of parametal cells. You can spot it from a mile off. And so because maybe because some of the other structures that are affected by dementias in humans actually don't exist in rodents where we're doing most of these studies. Let's focus on the hippocampus because mice have got one.
And we know that the hippocampus is important. The other reason I think is because when we think about dementia. And age related cognitive decline. The thing that we think about the most is memory, right? That's the [00:28:00] thing where I'm gonna forget who I am. I'm gonna forget my loved ones.
I'm, gonna forget that I turned the stove on, turned the stove on, I left the oven on or whatever, didn't lock the door. And the, that, the bec because of that, the hippocampus becomes this thing that's at the forefront of our minds, because hippocampus is critical for that process of encoding and consolidating memory.
However, I. There are a whole bunch of other things that happen when you get dementia and a whole bunch of other cognitive functions that get affected. Many of which I would argue are potentially more, more important. But we're we have, because we think dementia, we think memory, and we think memory, we think hippocampus.
And so the hippocampus is, and overrepresented, and I even see this in, I have these meeting like big meetings with other cognitive neuroscientists, like trying to do some research in this area. And everybody who's talking about dementia is talking about memory. That's what they focus on.
Like they can model it in computer models, they can measure it in all these different ways in humans. But [00:29:00] something else that I think is really critical and is lost, early on in, in these sort of dementing processes is executive function, right? So decision making and. Our ability to regulate ourselves in the world and how we respond and interact to people.
Right. That, or interact with people. That's the sort of like a big part of executive function. So whenever I'm trying to describe what executive function is, it's when you have this fleeting thought that you wanna say something or do something, and your brain is no, Tommy, don't say that.
It's that's really bad. Don't tell this person what you really think of them, because socially, this is a really bad idea. That's executive function. And so that gets lost and that's, and a big part of the the prefrontal cortex and the frontal lobes are really important for executive function.
Especially the white matter that sits underneath the gray the gray matter of the frontal lobes and. The reason why I'm telling you this is because the white matter is particularly protected by lifting weights. So resistance [00:30:00] training, so compared to the gray matter the outer cortex and the hippocampus, which sort of counts as the sort of like deeper aspect of the gray matter in the medial temporal lobes.
The white matter, that's where aerobic exercise seems to have its biggest benefit. But white matter seems to be particularly protected by strength training or resistance training. And there are studies that have been done in older men and women doing some kind of resistance training program.
And it's like the basics. Two to three times a week, you do five to six exercises across your whole body, three sets of eight to 12 reps, just the standard resistance training process. Pretty vanilla, right? Yeah, super vanilla. Nothing like, no heroics required, no drops, that's no length and partials, bro.
Shit. No, exactly. Like why would people even train like this? But when they do that, so within six months significant changes in the structure and function of of the white matter and improvements in like executive control and executive function [00:31:00] in particular, and this, so this, there was a paper that we published one or two years ago now.
Louisa Nicola was the first author and she summarized all the literature on these are the changes that we see in the brain with age. These are the changes we see with dementia. These are the areas of the brain that are affected and these are the areas of the brain that seem to be particularly protected by resistance training in randomized control trials where you then look at brain imaging and cognitive function.
So that's, another one of the reasons why I lift then now I can say is, oh, I'm, it's, I'm doing it, I'm doing it for my white matter brain gains. Yeah. So I, yeah, peripheral gains and brain gains at the same time.
Dr Mike T Nelson : So aerobic work and strength work actually target different parts of the brain. So both would be beneficial.
They're just doing slightly different things, correct.
Dr Tommy Wood: Yeah, exactly. So, and there was a recent meta-analysis that, that looked at all of this and basically said that aerobic training, particularly beneficial for things like memory and then strength training particularly beneficial for things [00:32:00] like executive function and then also what they call global cognition, which is usually just like if you do a bunch of different tests and add all their results together.
Strength training seems to have a bit of an edge. There was on top of that though, something that's maybe less talked about, but there was a really good metaanalysis that was published in, I think it was in Nature Human Behavior a few years ago that looked at in addition to resistance training and aerobic training, they looked at coordinative training.
So this, you wanna explain what that
Dr Mike T Nelson : is?
Dr Tommy Wood: Yeah. So this included a whole bunch of different things, and this was like including kids and, adults and ol older individuals. But it's basically anything that requires some kind of complex motor skill and or reacting to the environment or other people at the same time as, doing some kind of physical work.
In some parts of the literature, they might call this open skill sports rather than closed skills which is like running, cycling, rowing, [00:33:00] right? All these sort of like unimodal, unidirectional aerobic activities. Open skill is like badminton, table tennis, soccer, anything where it's like a dynamic environment that you also have to move in multiple planes and you like, react.
Those seem to have an outsized benefit for the brain above and beyond the physical training effects. We see similar things with dancing in kids. They've done this with like ball sports and jump rope and that kind of stuff compared to running. So it seemed that there were studies where they do obstacle course racing or obstacle course running versus just like running around a track.
And even though the effect like within each study is ready to be small, it's this consistent effect that. Having to coordinate either multiple muscle groups and or, use your brain to respond to the environment on top of the physical strain of the work that you're doing seems to have an additional effect for the brain.
So in that metaanalysis they found that coordinative training was actually the most [00:34:00] beneficial for cognitive function compared to other forms of training. I think it's annoying when we say that these things are mutually exclusive because we've already talked about how different types of training affect different cognitive functions, different parts of the brain.
So I think you should do a bit of everything. It's interesting that beyond just the physical work, using your brain at the same time seems to have an additional benefit.
Dr Mike T Nelson : Yeah. And that's. For years now, I've broken it down into yeah, you should exercise, you should go lift weights, you should do some cardio stuff.
Multiple benefits cross there. Mm-hmm. And then I said, for, you should do some recreation. Yeah. This is especially aimed at fitness people. Have a sport, go do something else. Do something for fun, like for God's sake. Go play in an unfamiliar environment or an environment that's like slightly changing all the time.
Yeah. And if you can't find anything else to do, I'll even take pickleball at this point. Yeah. Oh yeah, just do something. Because it's so funny how, not a lot of trainers, but a lot of 'em are like, Ooh, [00:35:00] look at how fit I am. Look at how buffet I am. And it's all they do is train. It's do you play any other sport for fun?
Golf, tennis, surf, kiteboard, like pickleball. Like just something. I'm not saying you have to go out there and do this every day, but they're like, oh no. I'm like. There's so many benefits to doing that, and now it's cool to actually have science to say yes, there is.
Dr Tommy Wood: Yeah I've, I certainly have fallen for some of this myself.
Like where you think on multiple scales, one oh yeah, I'm getting my reps in the gym. I'm doing my cardio. Then it doesn't matter how. And all those
Dr Mike T Nelson : things are great. Like people should
Dr Tommy Wood: do that. Yeah,
Dr Mike T Nelson : absolutely. We're not saying not do
Dr Tommy Wood: that. No, I completely agree. But then but then thinking, well, it doesn't really matter if I just sit in a chair the rest of the day or.
And it probably does matter if you do that. And or it doesn't really matter if I'm not doing some other kind of sport because I'm already doing these things that I know are beneficial for my body, but you haven't layered on some of these like social effects and these other stimuli that you could be getting that are probably important too.
So [00:36:00] I think it's easy to get stuck in that routine. Oh, for sure. Finding ways to, to break out. I think that's where people are gonna start to see some magic. Especially if they're already like hitting those basics of strength and cardio.
Dr Mike T Nelson : Yeah. And all I just heard you say is everyone should learn the kiteboard.
That's all got outta that
Dr Tommy Wood: whole, that whole time. I feel like every time we talk, that's the one thing that you take away. It just seems like a bit of a bit of a coincidence.
Dr Mike T Nelson : Yeah. I can take anything and be like, yeah, that's the reason you should kiteboard, bro.
Dr Tommy Wood: That's one thing that I haven't, that I haven't done yet.
We'll have to, well, we'll have to figure that out One day. You can take me, you can take me kiteboarding
Dr Mike T Nelson : it. It's fun. Take a lesson. It's hard to learn it. It's one of those things where you look at it and you're like, that can't be that hard. And then you actually try it and you're like, holy crap, that thing is way more sensitive than I thought.
And if I do it wrong, yeah, there's some big forces involved. So, but I,
Dr Tommy Wood: I think it, it is a nice example because right, you are constantly having to adjust to the environment, [00:37:00] right? Respond to the wind, respond to the weather conditions as well as, I don't know, avoid other people kit boarding around you.
Yeah. Know you have to do a lot of that. And so all of that stuff I think is great. You're having to read what's happening in real time and respond to it and develop like the motor skills the, and the visual motor coordination to do that. Like I think all of that stuff is really great.
Dr Mike T Nelson : Yeah. And there's a built-in social environment too, because yeah, you can go by yourself, but probably a lot better to be safe and go with other people most of the time. You'll have somebody launch your kite, land your kite. And I found things that are have a steeper learning curve to them.
They tend to do a pretty good job of weeding out a lot of the assholes 'cause they just don't stay with it long enough. And so even if you have a pretty high movement iq, it's still gonna take a fair amount of reps for you to learn. Yeah. And it's just, it's probably Brazilian jiujitsu and other stuff too, like where you, everybody just gets humbled at some point.
Dr Tommy Wood : Yeah. And
Dr Mike T Nelson : then you're dependent on each other, even if you're really good, like you may have an equipment failure, like something may bad may [00:38:00] happen. So even if you are an a-hole and you sneak through, like you'll probably play a little nicer knowing that you have to depend on other people.
You're like dumped
Dr Tommy Wood: on your ass. Yeah. Yeah. So I think there's something to that. Yeah. And I guess, to bring it back to the book, like one, one of the reasons, one of the reasons why it's called the Stimulated Mind is because, so my whole thesis. Is that the way we use our brains di is the primary determinant of how that, of how our brain functions.
And I relate it to exercise because I'm a bit of a meat head as yes. And if you think about any tissue, there are multiple tissues and organs in the body where their function is proportionally related to the amount of stress or stimulus that is placed on them. Right? You can think about alcohol in the liver, right?
You give it more alcohol, gets better at metabolizing alcohol. I'm not saying that's what you should do, I'm just saying that's how it does, that's what it strain in my
Dr Mike T Nelson : liver, man. Yeah.
Dr Tommy Wood: It's the immune system with vaccines and infections, right? You, they get exposed to those stresses, they respond appropriately and they, [00:39:00] and it works better.
Bones with loading mo skeletal muscle with mechanical tension. Cardiovascular tissue with, aerobic exercise. The function is directly related to the stresses placed on it, assuming you then allow it, give it time to adapt and recover afterwards. And the brain seems to be exactly the same.
So if I want bigger biceps, I need to do more bicep curls, right? I can improve the capacity for bicep growth. If I sleep well, eat well, manage my other stresses, don't drink too much, right? All that kind of stuff. But I can take as many naps as I want and drink as many protein shakes as I want, but I won't get bigger biceps unless I do bicep curl, right?
Yep. And so the brain is essentially the same. There are all these other things that are important too, of course, sleep, nutrition, cardiovascular health stress. And I get into all of that is is in the book as well. But the idea is that you need that stimulus in order to. Create neuroplasticity in order to build and [00:40:00] maintain these networks of function in the brain and structures within the brain, both in the first place, and then to maintain them.
And one thing that we lose as we get older is actually much less losing the capacity for neuroplasticity. The seven or eight decade old brain is still capable of neuroplasticity. It's still capable of making new connections. It's still capable of learning new skills, but what we don't do is give it the environment and stimulus in order to drive that.
So we don't go and do the kiteboarding because we don't wanna look stupid falling on our ass and relying on other people to help us. Right. There's a lot of that going on at first. Yeah. But pe as we get older we actively avoid those scenarios where we suck at stuff and we look stupid.
And really the most important thing we can do is to lean into that, right? That discomfort you feel when you're doing something you're not good at is [00:41:00] the brain recognizing, hey, there's this big gap between what I'm capable of and what I need to be capable of, or want to be capable of. That's what stimulates neuroplasticity, that's what stimulates the growth and function and maintenance of cells and structures in the brain.
So that's what we need to be seeking out. So I say all of that because right, if there are these things that weed people out because they're hard or they're gonna fail, that's the stuff that you need to be doing. And it doesn't need to be card boarding. It could be dancing, it could be learning a language, it could be learning an instrument.
It could be going out and socializing with people. If, you work at home all day and you don't spend much time with other people, right? There are lots of different ways to skin that cat, but that kind of discomfort of new stimuli is really what then drives all these plasticity processes in the brain.
Dr Mike T Nelson : Yeah. And that's what I love about. Having a new motor skill, you're learning because you have the physical manifestation of it in front of you. So like I'm still trying to learn how to foil board now. Yeah. So great. Now get on a board and put a hydrofoil three feet [00:42:00] under you and go pl just on that uhhuh oh my God.
And just get my ass kicked all over again now. But when you get those like few seconds of riding above the water, you're like, oh, that's two whole seconds better than I did yesterday. Like you can, it's almost like golf, like you hit a golf ball like once out of 400 shots, you're like, that's just enough to make you come back and want to try golf again.
Yeah. But at least you have those little tiny markers of improvement that you can see, which when I'm trying to get people to do stuff, I'm like just focus on those things. Focus on what you were able to do. Like the other things, there's a lot of side benefits to it, but it's easy to go, well, I don't wanna look stupid, I don't wanna try anything hard.
I'm just gonna do the same thing I was doing before. It's like you're gonna get the same thing you got before, you're not gonna get anything new. Yeah. The,
Dr Tommy Wood: I like the way that you think about it there, because we know, if you think about the things that we get drawn to again and again, and you're thinking a little bit about dopamine signaling, although everybody's talk about dopamine and dopamine.
Oh, dopamine's everywhere now. [00:43:00] Vaccine. Like dopamine's the cool kid on the block right now. But the things that sustain our engagement are things that have a variable reward, right? That's mm-hmm. That's part of it. So that's that thing there, right? Like you're doing it for that two seconds on the foil ball where you're just like, oh yeah, that feels really good.
And then your brain uses that response to say, okay, well let me think about all the different things that came together to allow that to happen. That, that one time, right? That's part of what dopamine is doing. And then like over time, that slowly improves. So if you fi, if you can find like those little, whatever it is, focus on that one thing where you've got that little win and you're like, oh yeah, that felt good.
Right? And so even if like in the big scheme of things, you still suck those like small windows of sometimes variable reward because you're still learning it, that can then like help, first of all, it's gonna help keep you engaged, but also that's actually what's driving some of those improvements in the brain.
Dr Mike T Nelson : Yeah. And just like anything, it's a process. Like nothing [00:44:00] worth, I think, high a achievement, whether it's just personal or something you wanna do. If it's super easy, it just doesn't have the same sort of reward to it, and like it, I think the longer you do those things, you know going in yeah, I'm gonna try to find the good progression, regression, get some good instruction, et cetera.
Even in the best circumstance it's still gonna be hard. I remember trying to do a back roll last year where you go and you just do a 360 in the air and you ride out of it. Mm-hmm. And I ate shit for 113 reps over I don't know, like seven days of just Yeah. But I got it at the end.
I was like, ah, sweet. I figured it out. Of course, then I hd it on the next one trying to do it again. But I knew going in that it wasn't gonna be an easy process. And then, and that's okay. Yeah. Right. I think now we want everything. Like now we want everything to be easy, but the things we get that are easy, I don't think we ever appreciate either.
Yeah. So it's this fine line of, [00:45:00] yeah, you're probably gonna have to do some work, whatever that thing is, do an advanced degree, hitting some lifts in the gym, getting a new PR running. But those are the things I think you also then appreciate. And those are things that have these, all these other like side benefits to 'em also.
Yeah.
Dr Tommy Wood: Oh, definitely. And I think tangentially to this or, and is the thing that we've been increasingly told that we should be looking for, which is flow, right? Mm-hmm. Everybody wants to be in flow all the time. Me too. But the interesting about flow is that, right? The definition that I like the most is that flow is the maximum expression of a complex learn skill, right?
Mm-hmm. I like that. And so, and that could be anything driving a car, speaking a language, right? Anything that's this like complex skill that you've learned and then you're just like, everything you've done so far is just like happening perfectly, and it could, playing a music in an orchestra or whatever.
There, there are multiple different ways that you can achieve this, but the thing is that flow doesn't drive neuroplasticity, right? [00:46:00] Flow is your brain leveraging all the things it's already learned.
Dr Tommy Wood : Yeah. If
Dr Tommy Wood: you want to then increase capacity, it's gonna feel d. And that is not flow.
And so actually when we're trying to build capacity, when we're trying to improve, we're trying to, get our brain gains. We shouldn't be expecting flow. It should feel hard and it should suck because that's, that friction is then what drives those changes. But also to to have good performance, you don't need to be in flow, right?
In, when you talk about sports performance they talk about two kind of optimal performance states, right? Flow states and clutch states. So in a clutch state, you can still perform really well. You're performing the maximum of your capacity, but it's hard work and right. And that's that a lot of athletes who are winning world championships and crushing everybody around them, right?
They may not feel like they're in flow. They are having to work really hard, both cognitively and physically to do it. But that's okay. You can still achieve like really good performance without flow. So. [00:47:00] The re this is this is like one small like box that I have in, in, in my book, just be in, in the last chapter.
I have all these different ways that we can leverage our workday in order to just perform better and feel better cognitively from day to day. And one of the things I have is don't expect that you're gonna feel like you're in flow all day, because actually that's probably not what you want.
Yeah. It's just not realistic and we spent so long where everybody's oh yeah, we need to be in flow or else we're not achieving our best. And that actually, that's just not true. That's not necessarily what good performance or growth feels like.
Dr Mike T Nelson : Yeah. To me. I agree. I think flow is the, almost like the advanced reward state.
Yeah. It's yeah. Now I can probably ride most conditions and probably be in a relative state of flow kite boarding. I can do a 10, 12 foot jump, probably fine if I pushed a 15 to 20. It is starting to go 2025. There's a slight chance I may piss myself on the way down. It's definitely not a state of flow.
Yeah. It's cool when it lands and I make [00:48:00] it Yeah. Uhhuh, but doing, a hundred plus attempts at a back roll, there was no state of flow in that at all. That fucking sucked. Yeah. But it's cool when you get it at the end you're like, oh, that was great.
Dr Tommy Wood: Yeah. Exactly. I think we just need to, a lot of, when people are thinking about, and this is one of the things I've seen so much of and you've seen it too in this kind of world.
Everybody's trying to optimize everything. Yeah. And one of those things that we're always trying to optimize is flow. And I think sometimes we have these unrealistic expectations of what good learning or performance feels like. And so just knowing that sometimes actually it's good that it doesn't feel good.
Right. That's kind of part of the process.
Dr Mike T Nelson : Yeah. Speaking of not feel good, we had you do the the famous goat drill from Kyle Dietz. Oh yeah. Yeah. What is your honest opinion of that as. A way for people to do complex motor skills, like we're talking about doing sport and doing all this stuff.
And one of the pushbacks that, that I get a lot, which I understand is I just don't have time. Yeah. I don't have any equipment. I don't wanna learn. And so I've had pretty much all [00:49:00] my clients or in the process of them doing the Go Drill from Cal Dietz, and you can maybe explain what that is and give us your honest opinion if that is a poor man substitute for a few minutes, for people who are like, I'm just so busy and I just don't have time to do any of those things in my life.
Dr Tommy Wood: Yes. So, at least the version that I've been doing, which, so I've watched a few videos and I watched a bit of extra stuff from from Cal's work. And so basically I set up a couple of I think I use like kettlebells or like fat groups. I just like stick, I stick them on the ground and then I have a, I have this dot that I put on the wall of my gym and then I run these like lateral figure eights around.
The, these sort of these little obstacles I put on. And at the same time, I'm passing something laterally around my body. So like sometimes I'm going in the figure eight one way and passing it the other way at, or like vice versa. And then at the same time I'm doing a random subtraction, like serial subtraction of like [00:50:00] numbers in, in my head.
So like I, I think in some of Cal's stuff, like they have a coach there and they're like yelling out arithmetic questions like 17 plus 22 and you have to do that in your head. Whereas this is a way to do it On your own. On your own. Yeah. Yeah. So like I'll start at some random number, like 72, and then I'll take away sevens as a kind of do this.
And then when I get to, like when, then I get to zero I'll stop. And I actually I actually really enjoy it. I'm not very good at it. I'm not particularly coordinated. Oh, me neither. I'm horrible. But I think he gets everything firing, like in addition. Unlike just like sitting on the rowing machine, like I'm having to shift and move a, like I'm moving in multiple planes of motion at the same time.
Yeah. I am engaging my brain at the same time. Oh, and sorry, you have to like, I have to keep visually, I'm keeping my eyes on the point of the whole time. So I'm not like watching the floor with my feet. I'm having to kinda like navigate space with like other cues. And I think this kind of navigation complex movement all the [00:51:00] evidence that we have suggests that this should be beneficial for the brain.
And we know that. As you layer each of these things on top of one another, you get worse at each thing individually. Mm-hmm. So as you then build them together, you should be able to develop capacity in one whilst being stressed in another. And the, a lot of what we do in some of the athletes that I work with, so like in Formula One drivers, is we're thinking about how do we maximize available cognitive capacity when somebody is under significant physical load.
And this is really important in say field sports, right? Cal does all the stuff in hockey, ice hockey. Yeah, I'll count that as a field. Because there is some evidence that if you add cognitive load on top of those like complex movements, you increase injury risk because you are not using that cognitive capacity to then figure out where your body is in space.
And so if you can train some of that, train some additional cognitive capacity, you might decrease injury risk because you [00:52:00] have that little extra cognitive buffer to then be able to also figure out like your body position and you're tired and you have to like, read the defense and all this other kind of stuff is happening at the same time.
So. I fully believe that this can and should be beneficial. I don't think there's any evidence for it. Like this specific version of the drill is the best version to do. But there's, there is a lot of evidence on, layering on these different tasks that then, brain endurance training is one way.
It's talked about in the literature. You do some endurance exercise, you layer on some kind of cognitive task at the time. You do worse at both, right? You can't maintain the same power output or the same level of cognitive function if you're doing both at the same time. But when you're then doing either separately, later you have either your greater endurance or maybe you've improved some aspect of cognitive function at the same time.
So I think you can do these very complex cognitive and physical tasks then give you additional capacity when you need to perform at a later date.
Dr Mike T Nelson : [00:53:00] Yeah, I think of it as you're kinda like. Increasing the physiologic headroom. Yeah. Like you're just opening up more space to hopefully then use later as to the best ability into kind of where you need it.
Dr Tommy Wood: Yeah. And you know what perhaps unsurprisingly in my book I talk about this concept of headroom. Now I'm talking about cognitive headroom. Yeah. Yeah. Basically this idea of what's your total cognitive capacity? How can we expand that and maintain that? And I break that down into resilience.
So it's the different things that you can do that would allow your body to resist some of the factors that happen with aging that can negatively impact cognitive function. So we know that physical activity is really important for resilience. Like even if you have a bunch of pathology in your brain, if you do more physical activity, it has less of a negative effect on your cognition.
Then the other thing, the next thing is reserve. So that's one type of reserve is brain reserve. How much brain do you physically have in your skull? And one thing that's important for [00:54:00] brain reserve is caloric load. So there are studies that show that are very low caloric load. You have smaller brain volumes.
So this has been done in like hunter-gatherer groups. But it's a U-shaped curve. So up to a certain point, more calories is better. You invest more energy into maintaining brain structure or building brain structure, but then you can enter like a energy toxicity. That's where we have like metabolic syndrome types of diabetes.
And then volume decreases again. So finding a kind of sweet spot in terms of chloric intake seems really important for brain reserve. And then my final RI have three R's of headroom, resilience, reserve, and then my final one is resolve, which is basically as you get older, being willing to continue to engage in all these different things that help you to maintain re resilience and reserve.
Because I think that's the thing that a lot of people lose is they just stop doing this stuff and then function de declines as a result. So I really like the idea of headroom and that's exactly something that, that I talk about a lot in the book.
Dr Mike T Nelson : That's awesome. [00:55:00] If I were to add a fourth hour, I would add responsiveness.
I don't know what you think about this theory that I, as you get older, your system in general is less responsive, but you can make up for that by changing the stimulus and the input. So for example, if we use exercise. I think you can maintain at a very high level, but if your ti, if your system is not as responsive, you probably need to invest more time, be more diligent with the stimulation that you're doing.
Mm-hmm. We know this happens with protein, with anabolic resistance, like you're not responding the same amount with upregulation of muscle protein synthesis to the same amount of protein, but if we give you more protein, that may counteract some of that too. So, I don't know. That's just something I've been playing around with lately.
No,
Dr Tommy Wood: I I think that's, I completely agree. And while I didn't have that sort of into my in my framework of headroom, I do talk about examples of say, athletes who've maintained function for very long periods of time. Yes. So, Ronaldo and soccer, LeBron, Tom [00:56:00] Brady et cetera Louis Hamilton and Fernando Alonzo, if we're talking about formula One,
Dr Mike T Nelson : definitely.
Dr Tommy Wood: And what they do, I think very consistently well is they figure out like. F I'm gonna do training that gives me the adaptive response that I need. What's the thing that I need, what's the physiological response I need to generate? I've, I very specifically do that type of training, and then I focus on recovery.
So it's no junk volume, no, like extras. It's like knowing exactly what I need to do in order to get the stimulus that I need and then focusing on recovery. Whereas when you're younger, you don't have to worry about that. But particularly if you want longevity in a sport, that's something that, that you need to focus on.
So I think that's exactly it is knowing what you respond to, like focusing on that and then putting all the things in place so that you do get the maximum adaptation possible from that stimulus.
Dr Mike T Nelson : Yeah. Would you agree that you can probably doing that type of approach, you can probably [00:57:00] keep a relatively higher output, like higher than most would think, but.
Because the system is a little bit maybe less responsive, you paradoxically may have to invest more time instead of less time. I think you end up
Dr Tommy Wood: it, it could go either way. One is that you may have to invest more time because like maybe you have to spend more time warming up. Get the system.
Sure, yeah. The system geared up right. To respond. But I think you can also save some of that time because you're just doing less of stuff that isn't going to give you the necessary stimulus. You've learned
Dr Mike T Nelson : what you're more responsive to. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So I think it could go both ways. Yeah. And
Dr Tommy Wood: maybe the net overall effect is you could do it in a similar amount of time.
You just have to be much more targeted with what you're doing.
Dr Mike T Nelson : Yeah. Yeah. I think of the studies on some of the hyper stuff with the responders versus non-responders and there's been a little bit of work there showing that if you just give more volume to the non-responders, they do respond better and stuff like that, so.
Dr Tommy Wood: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.
Dr Mike T Nelson : Very cool. So last couple questions we wrap up here. Well, that's a little bit off the wall, but. [00:58:00] What are your thoughts about brain health and brain cognition, plasticity, and the use of psychedelics? Is that anything that's in the book or what are your, just kind of general thoughts.
I know it's a little bit outta left field.
Dr Tommy Wood: Yeah, no not left field for you. I should have. No, I should, that's what I'm curious. I'm like, what? I shoulda, shoulda anticipated this question. So I actually don't talk about psychedelics in the book and maybe that was a bit of a misstep, but I try to make it as much like stuff that anybody can, anybody have access to.
Yeah. Anybody has access to anybody can do is like super practical. As well, there's obviously plenty of technical detail as well, but Yeah, because we're
Dr Mike T Nelson : missing the basics for sure. I a hundred percent agree. Yeah. Yeah.
Dr Tommy Wood: But, but I think the field of psychedelics, like how they affect like brain network activity, default in a mode network.
Yeah. Particularly in individuals who've had traumatic experiences or they have like perseverative thought processes that were associated with various mental health issues. Like I think there's huge scope there and we've, we've already seen, plenty on ketamine, [00:59:00] M-M-D-M-A ibogaine in PTSD maybe related with brain trauma.
So I'm super excited about where that's going. It's not at a point yet where I'm like, oh yeah, this is the thing. Yeah. And I think some of the more recent studies have been a little bit more, a little bit more mixed. Yes. But yeah, certainly something that I'm keeping an eye on and very interested in.
And when you look at, say, some of the animal studies, there are some interesting things. So if you think about neuroplasticity and there, there's some studies where if you give some of these psychedelics to like cells in a dish or whatever, and you look at or mice and then you look at new synapses that how, like developing or regressing.
There, there's some sets of studies that suggest that maybe you need macro dosing rather than microdosing. Mm-hmm. So like microdosing is is increasingly common. But some of the effects may need macro dosing, right? Yeah. Like you may need to like fully trip in order to see the benefits.
But I, I think some of that is, is just like being tinkered out. But I, the, [01:00:00] it's interesting to me because everybody's oh yeah, I can just get away with microdosing, but that may not be enough to actually trigger some of the effects.
Dr Mike T Nelson : Yeah. Literature I've seen, I'd say microdosing probably has some benefits.
We can refer to the podcast that with James Fatman and Josh on here also. But I think for the big changes we see in reported studies, like it's generally a pretty, pretty hefty dose for that. Yeah. But you do see periods of like critical windows opening. Again, you do see massive upregulation and neuroplasticity for a period of time, which yeah, again, is not always a benefit.
Like I could make an argument that if you trip your balls off somewhere and you have a very negative experience and you go back to a life that is just absolutely chaotic and disastrous, you probably did more damage than good. Yeah. Now you're like creating all these changes just in the wrong direction a lot faster.
So it's not always a benefit.
Dr Tommy Wood: This is the thing that and again it's almost like the dopamine [01:01:00] thing, which is oh yeah, everybody's more neuroplasticity is better. Right.
Dr Tommy Wood : Not always,
Dr Tommy Wood: but 'cause there, there are now ways to do this or, because interventions being studied that, sort of like stimulation based rather than, say, drug based or and so like TMS, transcranial magnetic stimulation or TDCS, T-D-A-C-S where you use electrical currents there's random noise stimulation, there's vagal nerve stimulation, there's light, stimulating with different frequency of light that might increase neuroplasticity.
And a lot of these are being tested in Alzheimer's disease, cognitive decline. But I just, on my podcast, I recently had a friend of mine, Andrea Stocker, who studies TMS in depression and cognitive impairment. And one thing that I think they're starting to realize is that, right, you do, you stimulate the brain with these like strong mag magnetic fields like you do with TMS.
You create a window and initiate the process of neuroplasticity, but then. Nobody directs that [01:02:00] neuroplasticity towards anything. It's just Hey, I don't understand. Here's more neuroplasticity. And then I'm like what happens with it? So, and then
Dr Mike T Nelson : they just go, eh, and I'm like, that was end of your study.
What do you expect to happen?
Dr Tommy Wood: So, so I think this is the next step. Yes, we should, especially when, so part of cognitive decline in dementia, some people say dementia is essentially the fundamental loss of neuroplasticity. So neuroplasticity we know is critical in this process of losing cognitive function.
So finding ways in individuals who c who can't do these other things that we know are beneficial for neuroplasticity or just won't, right? Or, some mental health or something may prevent them from doing that. Then creating this window to allow the shift to happen, I think is great.
Yeah. And there are multiple ways to do it. We do it with psychedelics, do it with TMS, whatever. All of that's fantastic, but you then need to find a way to direct that neuroplasticity and that's the next step. We're just like, there's not that many people who have actually gotten to that point.
Dr Mike T Nelson : Yeah. That's my argument for years for like my [01:03:00] functional or clinical neurology buddies is, yeah, maybe you need to have more neuroplasticity and then maybe you do a weak intensive of actual, vestibular, neuro retraining, whatever target you're trying to go after. But you have to train that system on something and not just leave it up and go, Hey, maybe it'll get better.
It's
Dr Tommy Wood: eh, exactly. Like creating neuroplasticity. Then go sit on the couch and watch movies like, nah. Yeah, I'm not sure that's gonna make any difference.
Dr Mike T Nelson : Yeah.
Dr Tommy Wood: Thanks very much. So, it's called The Stimulated Mind. Do you know what? I'm so terrible at the sales plugging thing. I'm trying to get better at it. So it's called The Stimulated Mind.
You can go to the stimulated mind.com and then that will direct you to all the different places where you can buy books or anywhere that you buy books. Normally online, it's available for pre-order. It doesn't come out for six months, but if you pre-order it now over the next few months, I'll send you some goodies and be very appreciative because the pre-orders really do help to drive interest and make booksellers realize that people might wanna buy it.
As part of that, if you do [01:04:00] pre-order it or not, sign up for my Substack which is Better Brain Fitness. And when you sign up for that, you in your and sign up for the free version. You don't have to pay for it. Everything on the Substack is free. When you sign up for that in your email address, you get this PDF that includes all the blood tests that I think are important to track Nice.
For cognitive function, and then the nutrients that map onto those blood tests and the foods that you can get 'em from. So, very cool. That's like a big chunk of information that's in the book that you could just get as a p you'll get as a PDF when you sign up. And then on that substack, you'll get updates on the book and you'll get my podcast that I do with Josh Tuckett, who's a neurologist, which is a lot of fun.
What's the name of the podcast? It's called The Better Brain Fitness Podcast.
Dr Mike T Nelson : Awesome. Yeah. I would highly recommend people buy the book. Check out the substack, check out the podcast, and yeah, I'm super excited to, to read it because I know you put a lot of hard time and effort into it. And not only is this something you do all the time, but you also do this in practice by consulting, working with F1 and all sorts of different athletes.
And I know you [01:05:00] actually read the research, which I think is becoming. I feel like a Stone age person that still reads research now. It used to be I was happy if someone read an abstract. Now I don't even think they read abstracts anymore. I think they just type stuff into the old AI and go, must be right.
AI can do the
Dr Tommy Wood: summary. So I, there is in related to that, so for a health book I like, I put my foot down and I was like I won in text citations. So there were little numbers throughout the text. Love, if you wanna find the ci, like just like in a paper. So it's not written like a paper, it's written like a accessible book.
But if I write a sentence and you're like, hang on a second, let me see that paper. You can find that with that number. But I have 1800 references for the book. Holy crap. And. My editor was like, I just can't publish that. That's 200 pages that I need to put at the back of the book. I just can't afford that amount of paper.
So the reference list will be on my website. The text citations are in the book, but when the book becomes available again, you just go to the stimulated mind.com and all the [01:06:00] references will be there with, in text citations. So people can go and dig into the primary literature if they're interested.
Dr Mike T Nelson : No, I think that's awesome because I've, on a smaller scale, I've had those same arguments and I won't name the site that used to do this. They used to edit out my references. So I would write articles for them and I'm like. Crap, this sounds like I just made this shit up now. And so what I did was I started getting cheeky and I would, this is online so you don't have any excuse of printing.
And so I would weave them into the whole phrase and I would use like the a PA and say, Dr. Wood et all the 2016, blah, blah, blah, blah. And so they, if they were gonna take him out, they have to re-edit everything and change it. And magically they left them in then.
Dr Tommy Wood: Yeah. Do you know what, it's still the number of times that I see, so like people on Instagram, right? They cite these papers all the time and I like, I'm like, oh, that sounds interesting. I'm gonna find that paper. And those papers don't exist. Like people are just making up PMs to like, make it look like they're citing stuff.
Drives, drives me crazy. [01:07:00] So if you don't like something I wrote and find the paper and disagree with my interpretation of it, I want you to be able to do that. So you can come to me and say, Hey Tommy. This paper is shit. This is why you're wrong. I wanna know that. So, all of that has to be out there, or I think we erode some of the trust in in science.
Dr Mike T Nelson : Yeah. Stop citing those papers with old three eyed gray-haired ferrets and you're okay.
Dr Tommy Wood: There are no ferret papers. The, there's no ferret papers no ferret papers that, so 99.99% of the paper cited are in humans. Probably that 0.001% is the preface of the book where I talk about studies in owls.
But the rest is all in humans, I promise.
Dr Mike T Nelson : That's good. So we have no Petri dish studies to make fun of anymore. Nope. Awesome. I'd highly encourage everyone to check it out. I'm super excited to read it myself. Make sure to get on the Substack podcast, all that great stuff. And thank you so much for being on the podcast here.
We really appreciate it. That was awesome.
Dr Tommy Wood: Yeah. Thanks for having me. And thanks for everything else and all [01:08:00] the coaching and all the support and friendship. I really appreciate it.
Dr Tommy Wood : Yeah, of
Dr Tommy Wood: course. No problem. Thank you. Thanks everybody.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much for listening to the podcast. Really appreciate it. Huge thanks to Dr. Tommy Wood for coming on the podcast here and describing all the great stuff that's gonna be in his upcoming book, the Stimulated Mind. It is available for pre-order right now on Amazon, so make sure you check that out.
Uh, we've got links to everything below. Um, they're not affiliate links. I don't make a dime off of it. But I. I know Dr. Tommy's work very intimately and I know the book is gonna be amazing. I know how much work and effort he has put into it. And it's also a great topic that having someone translate a ton of the research into things you can do, uh, to help your [01:09:00] brain, I think is super important.
And if you are interested in his top four tips for improving your Brain health, uh, check out the Flex four down below. Put in your email there, that'll add you to the daily newsletter list, and we'll also send you his top four tips directly to your inbox. If you're already on the Fitness Insider newsletter list, then you will automatically get them, so you don't have to worry about that at all.
We're looking for hydration stuff. Check out our friends below. Add element. I've been trying their new lemon salt, which is pretty good. I wouldn't say it's my absolute favorite. I'd say it's probably second or third on the list right now, but it's quite good. Uh, my favorite still right now is the raspberry.
That's what I'm drinking this morning. Uh, anything else I can do to help you out? Please let me know. Best place is to hit reply via the newsletter. As always, thank you so much for listening. Make sure to order Dr. [01:10:00] Tommy's book coming up, uh, pre-orders. Go a long way to helping authors, uh, launch their book, which is why we wanted to do this podcast early and get the word out to hopefully get more people to pre-order the book.
I've already pre-ordered it, so thank you so much for that. If you have someone who's interested in this podcast, please forward it on to them. Hit us up with all the likes and the reviews and the comments and all that wonderful stuff goes a massively. Long way to helping the podcast, uh, reach a wider audience.
As always, thank you so much for listening. Really appreciate it. We'll talk to all of you next week.
What do you suppose they call that? A novelty act? I don't know, but it wasn't too bad. Well, that's a novelty.
Speaker 3: This podcast is for informational purposes only. The podcast is not intended as a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, [01:11:00] or treatment. You should not use the information on the podcast for diagnosing or treating a health problem or disease, or prescribing any medication or other treatment.
Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified health provider before taking any medication. Or nutritional supplement, and with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition, never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it. Because of something you have heard on this or any other podcast, reliance on the podcast is solely at your own risk.
Information provided on the podcast does not create a doctor patient relationship between you and any of the health professionals affiliated with our podcast. Information and statements regarding dietary supplements are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. Opinions of guests are their own, and this podcast does not endorse or accept responsibility for statements made by guests.
This podcast does not make any representations or warranties about guest qualifications or credibility. Individuals on this podcast may have a direct or indirect financial interest in products or services referred to therein. If you [01:12:00] think you have a medical problem, consult a licensed physician.