Barbell Shrugged - Performance Brain Health - Part 1 with Dr. Tommy Wood, Doug Larson Travis Mash & Dr. Mike Lane #832

Episode Date: January 21, 2026

In this episode of Barbell Shrugged, Doug Larson is joined by longtime co-host Travis Mash and new co-host Dr. Mike Lane for a return visit from one of the show's most popular guests, Dr. Tommy Wood. Tommy breaks down the core thesis of his new book, The Stimulated Mind (releasing March 24), which uses dementia prevention as the headline but is really about boosting cognition at every stage of life. The crew sets the tone early: brain health is not "old people stuff," it's performance, learning, and resilience, built daily through how you live and how you train. Tommy makes the case that "optimization" only works when it fits real life, and that the brain adapts like the body: sleep, nutrition, and exercise support it, but you still have to "train the brain" with demanding learning and skills. He outlines a practical learning dose-response, roughly 30–90 minutes of deep challenge per session, 2–3 times per week as a sweet spot for consolidation, while acknowledging the power of daily touchpoints for habit formation (Doug's Duolingo streak and the "don't break the chain" approach). From there, they go deep on exercise modalities and cognition: aerobic work and interval training improving hippocampal function (memory), high-intensity work potentially driving brain benefits through lactate → local BDNF, and coordinative/open-skill sports (racket sports, dancing, martial arts) producing outsized brain returns for the same physical strain. The conversation closes with a fast but important run through risk, genetics, and lifestyle: Tommy explains ApoE4 as a risk multiplier that's highly environment-dependent, amplifying bad inputs (inflammation, poor metabolic health) but also amplifying the benefits of doing the basics well. They hit the big nutrition levers for cognition; omega-3s, key B vitamins (methylation), vitamin D, iron, plus polyphenol-rich foods (berries, cocoa, coffee/tea), and squash the common "red wine" rationalization by emphasizing net outcomes (sleep and brain volume matter). Finally, Tommy emphasizes the under-rated keystone: social connection and pro-social behavior, arguing that the Mediterranean "diet" is really a Mediterranean lifestyle, and that isolation can erase many of the benefits of even a perfect nutrition plan. Links: Doug Larson on InstagramCoach Travis Mash on Instagram  

Friends, Doug Larson here, and this week on Barbell Strugged, myself, Travis Mash and Dr. Mike Lane, welcome one of my favorite all-time guests, Dr. Tommy Wood. Tommy's the greatest dude. He's an MD, PhD in neuroscience at the University of Washington, and he's putting out a new book. Everything he does is about brain health, and this book is called The Stimulated Mind. It's all about warding off dementia and staying sharp, quote-unquote, at any age. So it's not just a dementia book, even though it has that in the title. But really, it's about cognitive performance and keeping your brain as healthy as possible

for as long as possible. And a big part of that's just keeping your whole body healthy, eating right, sleeping, training, all the things. Tommy's also a strong man competitor and a long-time fan of the show. I love talking with him. So if you're interested in brain health and keeping your brain healthy all the way to the end, this show is for you. Enjoy the show.

Welcome to Barbell Strugged. I'm Doug Larsen here with Longtime Co-Oce, Travis Mash, and our new co-host, Dr. Mike Lane. Again, if you haven't listened to the last two or three episodes of the show, Andy, and Errs. Andrew Barner, a longtime host for eight years, the Barbell Strug has moved on to bigger and better things in the world. And I've taken over as the main host here. And then again, Mike Lane is joining us here for the long haul.

And today is special day. One of my favorite all-time guests, Dr. Tommy Wood. Dude, welcome back to the show. Thanks so much having me back. It's super awesome to be here with all of you. Yeah, dude, hell yeah. I was fucking stoked to hear that you were coming out with a book. You said that and I was like, oh, it is about time, my friend.

I'm not seeing it yet, so I'm excited to read it eventually, but I'm happy to have you back on and talk through it all. Yeah, thanks. So if people have listened to the previous episodes, we did on Barbell Shruggs, one of the areas I work in is looking at cognitive function, how to build it, maintain it, prevent it from declining. And that's essentially what my book is about. It's called The Simulated Mind comes out March 24th. Yeah, like super happy to talk to you guys about it. And, you know, all the topics around those kinds of parts of brain health. Is it just dementia or all the air?

I mean, I see that it's like, you know, avoid dementia, but like give it. Let's go through your whole background here. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It looks super exciting. Great question. And so you're right there.

So the subtitle of the book is about preventing dementia. But in reality, everything that is in the book is about how to boost cognitive function from day to day, like any stage of life. And then as you do those things, you are essentially stacking the deck in your favor in terms of long-term cognitive function and dementia risk. So definitely actionable stuff for like today, but then hopefully that translates to long-term benefits. Super pumped.

Yeah, and again, for the audience, Tommy's very much in the performance world. Again, Tommy, for people that haven't heard your past shows, like give more of your background with training and kind of the performance side of things. Like, your dementia, you kind of think old people and like that's your world, but that's not necessarily the case.

So give your whole background here. Yeah, sure. So my day job is as a neuroscientist. I'm an associate professor at the University of Washington. I study various how to treat various kinds of brain injury in babies, TBI, in athletes and military populations. And that's kind of the day-to-day component of my lab. Alongside that, I do a lot of work in particular sports performance.

So I work overseeing performance programs for a number of Formula One drivers through a company called Hints of Performance. And so in that arena, it's everything that I can help the drivers with and their coaches primarily around nutrition, sleep, physiology cognitive function so really trying to you know get as much as we can you know out of the the human machine in in that environment as sort of messy and you know complex as it is yeah I I've probably said this on the show before for those I haven't heard of though like I credit you with my my current ability to

to speak a small amount of Portuguese I've been doing Portuguese for about a year and a half now so you'll follow in Poconji Portuguese now And it really is because of you. Like I was on the fence about learning Portuguese for a long time. And we did a past show where we talked about all the basics of health. You know, obviously you got sleep well, eat well, train, take care of your physical health. And if you do so, then, of course, you're taking care of your brain health at the same time. Your body's all one big collective system.

But one piece that you mentioned that I feel like was the weak link in my chain was I wasn't really pushing myself as far as learning anything language related or music related. And so the idea of like always be a white belt, really pushing yourself to learn truly new and novel things is one of the things that can ward off a cognitive decline. I was like, man, I got to, I got to jump into the language world. And it's kind of bucketless item just to learn a second language altogether. But really you're the guy that pushed me over the fence with the realization that it might really help my long term brain health because I'm fucking terrified of Alzheimer's and dementia and all that stuff. Me too, me too. And like, I'm way ahead of you guys age wise. So I'm even more scared.

So yeah. But then you also just went back to school for a significant fear of time. Right. So I think you're definitely engaged in that same process. And this is essentially the core thesis of the book, right? There's a whole bunch of stuff that's important for brain health, sleep, nutrition, and exercise.

And lots of different types of exercise affect different parts of the brain in different ways. I'm so excited. Always. But like the core, the core, The core idea is that how we use our brains really determines how they function, just as how we train our bodies determines how our bodies function. And yet, right, you do a certain training program. You can get the most out of that training program by attending to nutrition, by attending to sleep, other stresses, that kind of stuff, right? But if you want bigger biceps, no number of naps and protein shakes is going to get you there if you don't do any bicep curls.

Right. So, and like the brain is essentially the same. we can support it with all these other things that's super critical. But if we don't think about how we're using our brains, we're not thinking about how we're directing its function. Within that, what would you say would be kind of the dose response you'd like to see? So essentially, if we're trying to learn that new language, what do you think would be kind of like the optimal dosage daily, weekly,

if we're trying to take advantage of that plasticity? Yeah, so there's two different. parts of this, right? One is like the initial language development. So the first part of learning that we have as kids into early adulthood. And that's what determines a lot of our end cognitive function. The longer you spend in school, the higher educational attainment, essentially the higher the peak and the later the peak of your average cognitive function. And that's basically because as a professional learner, the more time you spend challenging the function of your brain, its function responds as a result.

We then assume that when we're older, we can no longer take advantage of that, right? I'm too old to learn new things, right? When I was a kid, I could pick up a new language and now I can't. And most of that is related to the fact that we just don't invest the same amount of time and attention to it that we did when we were kids. Yes, the adult brain is slightly different because it's already been shaped. And so you want it to retain that shape because it's adapted to your environment and the skills and things that you're good at and like what you have exposed it to.

But it is also capable of change. So when you're thinking about learning, in order to, right, the more, like more is better, right? The more you do, the faster you'll learn, of course. But if we're trying to think about this in a practical sense, then I think there are two things that we can think about. One is how long does the average brain engage in a complex topic where it's being challenged? And that's somewhere between 30 to 90 minutes. And if it's a very new topic, it's more cohesion demanding, maybe that's at the lower end. If it's something that you spent a long time doing, so the 90 minutes comes from,

you know, the classic Erickson papers on 10,000 hours, expert vitalness, all that kind of stuff, right? And even then, in that 90 minutes, those people probably take breaks. So you're talking about something between 30 and 90 minutes. And when you look at how much you get out of each individual training session, the optimal seems to be doing it something like every two or three days. So yes, you can learn faster by doing it more frequently. but there's more redundancy.

You get less out of each individual session, whereas if you do something, you sort of push the edges of your current capabilities, you then sleep, you reset everything, you've consolidated what you've learned, and then you build on it. The way that you get the most out of each individual session

is if we're doing like two to three sessions a week, something like 30 to 90 minutes. And that's something that I think most people have the time to be able to do. Wait, you're telling me, cramming doesn't work? parents. Yeah, don't sleep. Just like get as much in as you can in a short period of time. No, that doesn't work.

And I say this as somebody who tried that. And I think we've all tried that at some point. It doesn't really work very well. Every medical school student has figured that out at one point or another. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I'm big fan of every day. I don't know what the science says about that specifically. You're saying every other day, like for me,

I very specifically try to touch a handful of items every single day. Having a daily touch point, whether it's like neurologically like the fastest way to learn or not, like psychologically for me, having a touch point every day, like keeps me in the game. Yeah. Keeps me from forgetting about it. Like it's, you know, have it. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Like that, that, the thing is that there's no like one way that you have to do it. And this is the kind of, like, one of the issues that I have with protocols and optimization is that, like, none of that actually works once you're out in the real world because each person is going to need something slightly different. So I can talk about optimal learning theory. Like, how do you get the most out of each individual session, right? That's kind of why I talked about there. But Dr. Andy Galpin here.

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I can talk about optimal learning theory. Like, how do you get the most out of each individual session, right? That's kind of why I talked about there. But if only doing it two-three times a week means that you don't make a habit of it and it doesn't like become part of, you know, the sort of the things you do on everyday basis, then that kind of goes out that theory goes out of the window. So if it's something that you enjoy, you want to do it every day, that's great. You will learn faster.

Absolutely. And if you've got the time to do that, fantastic. You're sort of like most of the benefits we see from the learning these new skills, come earlier on in the process, right? You get the most out of it when you're sort of like at the, the steepest, lower part of the learning curve. So if you can leverage that and really get into it and repeat every day, you know, that's great. Actually, stole that from Seinfeld. Like, he's famous for for having the idea of like putting a calendar on the wall. and every day that you write a joke, you put an X on that day on the calendar

and you just never break the streak. And if you do that, then eventually you'll be hopefully good, or at least better than you are right now. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, like not taking a day off, it just keeps me in the game psychologically.

Like, I don't forget about it. That's actually, like, related back to my comment about learning Portuguese, like, I do many things to learn Portuguese. But I do a touch point every day. And conveniently, the Duolingo app actually tracks your daily streak. So, like, I know that I'm on day 520 right now.

Yeah, like every day you do it, it goes to ding and like it like updates your your streak number. And just not wanting not wanting to break that streak is like a very psychologically powerful for me. And probably for a lot of people since there's like 300 million people on dueling or whatever it is. Yes. That being is everything for me. Like those streaks and I'm just a pattern person. It's like if it's if it doesn't fit into my everyday life, it's really hard to like say, okay, I'm Wednesday. I'll do this.

It's like it's the things I do. I'm with you, done. There's the things I'll do every day. Guaranteed you get done. Yeah. Everything else is like up in the air, you know. Wait, so in the book, is it all the same stuff we've talked about on past shows, but like you're taking care of your physical health, et cetera, plus additional things?

Or how is it structured? Yes. So the book is structured in three parts. The first part is a little bit of a history of neuroscience in kind of like an accessible way. that sounds kind of daunting to many people, but sort of like, why do we think about the brain as we do? And that's important for a few reasons. One is that when we think about particularly long-term cognitive function and cognitive decline, we've become very focused on Alzheimer's disease and the proteins associated with that in the brain like amyloid and tau. That's everything that we think

about when we think about the aging brain. It's all come down to that. And so I talk about the history of why we think that. So just basically because 100 years ago, when we were starting to really figure out how to study the brain, all we had was a microscope by we, I mean Alzheimer, as one of the people who was doing that. And then all you could do was just look at this brain under a microscope and say, oh, yeah, this thing looks weird, so it's like a clump of amyloid, and this person had deranged cognitive function. They must be connected and this must be the course, right? And over the past 100 years, all we've done is just like more and more and more and more of that. We've tried to break the brain down into like increasingly complex individual components.

And yet we don't understand how the brain works as a result. And there's this really nice quote from Ian McGilchrist, who wrote a book called The Master in his emissary. And he basically says that neuroscience is focused on the amassing of information without ever trying to figure out what that information means. So I essentially kind of talk about that and then say, but we're probably never going to fully understand the human brain. But if we step back,

we can see there are these core things that drive the function of the brain and the body, and they are generally the same things. And we know that they work and we don't have to like get super deep into all the mechanisms that we might never actually fully understand. And we just think about like playing the game of brain health, as I call it, and then what that includes. And then so then the next part is the chapters to talk about that. So like exercise and how different times of exercise,

resistance training versus sprints versus coordinates of exercise, how that affects. Can we talk about that? I'm really curious. I'll say, I'll tell you why, like, I read the book Spark a long time ago. Yeah. Dr. John Rady.

And like, you know, and he talked a lot about exercise. You know, a lot of that was cardiovascular. But then later he's changed his mind and talks about strength training. But I've always wondered what does what. Yeah. So I'm super excited about that. Yeah. So I'll finish.

Just like exercise comes early, then there's nutrition, stress, sleep, social connection. And then there's like a chapter that includes like cardiovascular health, the effects of sex on the brain. And that I mean like biological sex rather than, you know, sorry, Travis. You saw him, you saw his mood go up and then it came right up there. I was about to go home and say, Dr. Woods said we have to. Well, so actually, that is true.

Highly, highly recommended. And there's an interesting story in the book about, let's end right there. Viagra and dementia, which we can come to later. And then like air pollution, oral health, gut health, like, all that kind of stuff. And then like kind of the book comes together with like a model of how I think about how all those things fit together. And then how you just like apply that in your data. day life. So that's kind of like the overview of the book. Sounds amazing. Thanks. And I'll

Travis, glad you send you a copy. So the exercise thing, I like cover, like there's maybe three main types of exercise. If we consider like aerobic and anaerobic being on like a spectrum, right, where intensity definitely matters. So like the lower. levels of aerobic exercise, these seem to be particularly beneficial for the gray matter of the brain. So if people, like, imagine a cross-section of a brain, if you've ever seen one, it's kind of like super wrinkly. And around the outside, that you have the cortex, which is gray matter. And then that's where sort of like most of our complex cognitive functions arise. And then there's more gray matter kind of deep in the brain where you have like the basic gangly

and the thalamus and this kind of stuff. And these are sort of more ancient parts of the brain that regulate basic, sort of like very basic physiological functions. In between those is the white matter, which takes up about 60% of the brain. It's responsible for very fast connections between different parts of the brain and the brain and the body. And the white matter is really where a lot of, you know,

evolutionary advancement has happened in humans compared to other species. Humans have a lot more white matter than other species. and that kind of helps to kind of run those connections. And when we think about aerobic training, that seems to particularly affect the gray matter, so the cortex around the outside, and then that includes the hippocampus, which is really important for memory function.

And accordingly, we see in studies where people do more aerobic training, we see improvements in the function and structure of the hippocampus and improvements in memory. So aerobic exercise is really good for memory. the best study on this recently came out where they did they had people do the Norwegian 4x4 protocol if anybody yeah so Mike it gets worse than that yeah wait yeah film me in on that what is that so Norwegian 4 minutes max output yeah so it's four minutes 85 to 95% max heart rate with four minutes rest times four and and and in this

Or you'd live, MASH, you'd live. In this study, they did it three times a week for six months. Oh my God, really? However, and they had multiple groups. And they also had just like a moderate intensity group where they just like jogged for 40 minutes and then they had like a low intensity group. That the sort of the four by four groups, so this like high intensity interval training kind of high level aerobic zone four-ish. training, they saw significant improvements in hippocampal structure and function that were retained

for five years after the end of the study. So they stopped training after six months and they still had better hippocampal function five years later. But it's confusing because I thought you said the aerobic work was really good for the hippocampus. But evidently, like the high intensity is better. Yes. So both are true because there are other studies that show that if people are older, and or less fit, brisk walking four times a week for 40 minutes was enough to improve cardiovascular fitness and hippocarbial structure and function. If you are already some degree of fitness and you have some degree of fitness and or you're younger and healthier, then more intensity is going to be required to see improvement. So both are true,

depending on where you are in terms of your current fitness level. So if you're complete, sorry sorry go ahead go ahead yeah i was to say this so if you're completely sedentary and or or you know have lost some significant physical function then just some like low level aerobic work is going to be enough to see benefit but then you know depending on your current level of fitness if you want to see more benefit you're going to have to work harder is essentially kind of the answer yeah and correct me if i'm wrong but for the audience who doesn't they don't study brain or neuroanatomy me like hippocampus is tied closely to like short-term memory and learning and things like that. Yes, yeah, exactly.

So, and it's also one of the areas of the brain that's affected late on in dementias like Alzheimer's disease. It kind of, it sits sort of like just inside your ears. It's like the medial temporal lobe. But yes, yeah, that's essentially the if you're studying the brain and memory, usually somebody ends up looking at hippocampus because it's like just so, such an important part of that. That's what they talk about in the book Spark. They talk a lot about the hipocampus lighting up. And he did mention the intensity, the more, the better.

Yeah. Yeah. But very much like start where you are and you'll see benefit regardless of where you are. You just see, but then if you start, if you're starting from a good spot, you're going to need to push a little harder to see some more benefit. I'm sorry, because I think it's more of a mechanism of literally just more blood flow to the brain from the cardiac output. or just the sheer literal mental effort it takes to push that hard for those durations. So, again, I think it depends on where you are on the spectrum.

So if you're relatively unfit, but we know that cardiovascular health, vascular function is critical for the function of the, so the hippocampus in particular, but also the brain more generally. But when you look at the hippocampus on a brain scan, it has the densest and most common. complex blood flow of any area of the brain. And so its function is really determined by its blood flow. So if you have poor vascular health, that's going to be the main limiter. So then any aerobic work that improves that is going to improve that function. But as you get up the scale of intensity, people are more interested in like the exocines that get released that are intensity dependent.

So when you look at things that get released during exercise, brain-derived neurotrophic factor, which is a trophic protein that supports, that helps to support particularly the function of neurons that are recently active. So if you've driven some kind of neuroplastic process, that can be supported by brain-derived neurotrophic factor or BDNF, that get released by most exercise in an intensity-dependent manner. But what's interesting is that the BD, you can measure BDNF in the blood after exercise. The BDNF that's in the blood is having more of an effect on, say, muscle function than it is on the brain because BDNF in the body doesn't get into the brain. It doesn't cross the

blood brain barrier very well. But lactate gets into the brain very easily and lactate increases the production of BDNF locally in the brain. So lactate is thought to be one of the connections between high-intensity exercise and improvements in cognitive function, partly because it drives BD and F production. Wow, which goes, Andy talked a lot about, you know, the lactate being a big, like, fuel for the brain. Yeah. Is it even better than even glycogen or so. So that's one of the reasons why, potentially.

But then there's a, the issue is there's a whole bunch of other things that get released as well. So in this study, they found that the big other cortisol response to exercise, the greater the improvement in cognitive function. And that could just be because it's a measure of the level of intensity. Or, you know, we know that cortisol in the presence of other, like, supporting proteins like BDNF can have, like benefits for cognitive function. But then, you know, they didn't measure MOTC, IRISA, LACP, Corrine, like, all these other things that get released by intense exercise. So it could be any of those things or all of them together. they they seem to and they're released in an intensity dependent manner so that goes back to like we're not

100 percent so we just know what happens like yeah yeah got it i got it yeah yeah yeah mas you mentioned uh dr radie's book spark uh that was one of my big takeaways from that book and i haven't read this probably a decade now but but kids that would train before school would have increase in bd and f production and then they they ended up with with better outcomes for for whatever they're measuring regarding learning after having trained in the morning and that was one of the mechanisms that I remember from that book. That was like one of the first times I really like, um, studied that in any real depth.

Me too. And it just blew me away like, like, send me on a whole different direction like no, I was in school. Thanks to that book. So, when you think about both the stuff they seem to PE and recess, when you remove both the children both they're learning, but also their ability to, oh, I don't know, pay attention and yeah.

Yeah. Behavior. Sure. Yeah. It's crazy. Yes. And I apologize for kind of going in a slightly different direction. here. Cardio, as much as I hate the fact that it is important for brain health, what as far as playing sports,

like combat sports, things like tennis, things that require a solid amount of hand-eye, what have you found there of kind of like it's used for brain health and like frequency where you should do things that are more chaotic? Like I love barbell lifting, but it's Kabuki theater. You should be doing the same thing over and over again, so it's not really challenging new brain pathways, so to speak. Yeah, that's a great question. So that like comes on to the next type of exercise that's really critical for brain function, which is what you would call the research calls co-ordinary exercise. And that includes open skill sports, right? So anything that involves a board or a ball and requires you to like response to the environment quickly,

right? So they've looked at badminton, table tennis, dancing, all that kind of stuff. It requires both more complex motor skills, but also more rapid processing speed because you, you're having to react to somebody passing to you, you're having to like strategize a way you're going to place the ball next, like all that kind of stuff. They, for a given level of physical intensity, they have an outsized benefit for the brain.

And they've done like lots of studies, say like comparing dancing to circuit training or comparing badminton to static like cycling. And you see the same thing. So the the closed skill or the sort like the unimodal exercise is beneficial, where they do see benefit in that group, but they see more benefit in the co-ordinative group.

So for a given amount of physical strain, you get more benefits for the brain. That's probably because of all those additional skills and cognitive functions that you're challenging. Plus, you're often using more total muscle groups. And therefore, you may be releasing more of those things that we mentioned earlier. But like for kids in particular,

this is really interesting because there are studies where they've taken kids, they've split into three groups, then they had one group that just did, it was a control group, didn't do anything additional. They had one group that did, say, running. So I think that I had to do like laps of a track. And then they had a group that did like playing with balls,

skipping, like coordination exercise, like sprint ladders and that kind of stuff. And again, both exercise groups saw benefits, but they saw more of a benefit in those kids who were doing these more sort of complex motor skills. So yes, there's this. aspect of the aerobic part, the things to get released during exercise, that are certainly beneficial. But if you layer on some kind of complex motor component and faster processing speed reaction on top, you get more benefits. So that could be martial arts, board sports, ball sports, dancing, like anything. Weight lifting. Olympic weight lifting. I'm not sure that

counts. As much as I love Olympic weightlifting. Try it. What about? gymnastics like with gym gymnastics absolutely and you know i think this is one um this is one area where like crossfit has certainly brought a lot of these new kind of complex motor skills to the forefront we got people doing handsstand walks and all these other kind of stuff that they wouldn't have done traditionally i think those new skills are certainly going to be beneficial on top of like the absolute like physical benefit you know which which sports or activities um end up with the I'm like with the highest lactate numbers. Like we're talking about high intensity interval training and that type of thing.

Like certainly combat sports and wrestling are in that category. But I'm also wondering just like if you're just doing basically hyperchemy training, like then you get the same kind of cardio-ish, so to speak, benefit because of the lactate production involved? Or how does all that play into it? Yes. So so yes and no. And I think the balance is going to be due to like other things that are produced at the same time.

So there are, you can definitely get. So if you think about like a hit protocol, like some amount of sprints with some amount of rest in between and those things are kind of matched. So like the higher the intensity of the sprint or the longer, the longer the rest. In general, over some period of like 20 to 30 minutes, you can get your lactate into the high single digits or low double digits, right? 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, something like that. And you see that again and again in the studies. you can also hit that level of lactate with you know like on a leg press so there's a study where they had weight trained people do max reps at 60 then 70 then 80 percent of their one rep max with two minutes

rest in between and by the by the end of the 80 percent like max rep set where they were getting like 10 to 11 reps on average lactate was 10. on average and it stayed up there for like 15, 20 minutes afterwards. So if you work really hard doing some kind of compound-ish movement, you can definitely get lactate up there. You can also get similar levels of lactate light in the 5 to 10 range doing a blood flow restriction work. So lactate is certainly going to be responsible for some of the benefits you see for resistance training. But what's interesting with resistance training is that it seems to be more. beneficial for the white matter than the gray matter. So you see improvements in executive function

decision-making and processing speed, which are sort of more related to the structure and function of white matter with resistance training, you know, compared to say aerobic training that seems to be particularly beneficial for memory. So this is probably because there are other things that are released when you load the body up like that, that aren't released when during aerobic, training. So probably the most important one is IGF1. We know the IGF1 is really critical for both the development and the structure and maintenance of white matter in particular. That's been studied across all of those different areas that I mentioned earlier. So when I'm talking about the developing brain in my lab, one of the reasons why babies born preterm have white matter issues is

because they lose the IGF1 that their placenta would provide while their brain is developing in utero. So we know that IGF1 is really critical for YMatter function and more IGF1 is produced with resistance training compared to aerobic training. And then other things like osteocalcin might play a role here too, which is released by the bones when you kind of load them up. When you when you are mechanically stressed the bones, they release osteocalcin. And that may have some similar kind of other benefits in the brain. So yes, lactate you can get across all of these things, but then some of the other benefits are probably going to come from the different balance of things that get released based on the type of exercise that you're doing.

That's what naturally, but sorry, that's how naturally ties into sleep. If you don't get up sleep, you're not getting as much natural IGF1 production as well. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Oh, man, that's important in that. You know, this might be a stretch, but I've heard my dairy, milk in particular, like, stimulates IGF1 release in adults. if for babies, since you mentioned babies in White Matter

second ago, if they're on, if they're formula fed babies and they're not breastfeeding, is there an IGF1 issue with that? So that's a great question. And therefore a brain health issue? So I don't know if anybody's looked at that specifically, but there's been a big move recently to maximize the use of mother's own milk in babies born preterm. If you can't get, if for some reason you're not producing,

then donor milk is used, like human donor milk is used instead, but you then sort of then, sort of then formula is used if, if needed. And that's because we tend to see better outcomes in babies fed human breast milk compared to formula in, when they're that sort of like vulnerable and small, right? But we don't really know all the, right? It's another thing where we don't really know all the reasons why. So IGF1 could be one of those, but it could be a a whole host of other things that people are looking into. Yeah, to imagine the mechanisms there are broad. There's hundreds of reasons you probably should have breast milk over formula, but this

would be one of many. Yeah. Equally, formula has improved a lot in the past few decades compared to what it was maybe 10, 20 years ago. So if you can't, and it's important to say that because for some reason, like not everybody breastfeeds, not everybody has access to breast milk, right? So formula still works just fine. But there's a lot of really interesting stuff in fresh.

human breast milk like stem cells. That's actually something, some of the small extracellular vesicles like exosomes released by the stem cells in fresh human breast milk. That's something that a student in my lab actually has some funding to study, like how that affects might be like neuroprotective in brain injury. So there's a whole bunch of cool stuff that's in breast milk that we're only like starting to understand right now. I want to say, first, I really appreciate you pointing out the limitations of lactation.

My wife's breast cancer survivor, so that was never an option. And I also want to preface this for anyone listening, do not call CPS. And since Moore's formula doesn't have creatine, but human breast milk does have creatine. I did make the joke to my wife. I'm like, so. Just for clear, it was joke, didn't do it. But you're right, the food matrix, we're still figuring out all the things in breast milk. Yeah.

And we didn't realize was naturally there. You know, I hadn't thought about this when I asked about the lactate piece, but someone said this, I believe on the show like a decade ago, we were talking about lactate in the highest lactate values. And they told me that bull riding has tested the highest out of almost any sport for lactate, which I remember having controversy about that comment on the show because you're only bull riding for like five or 10, five, 10 seconds, eight seconds, whatever it is. Like I don't know how that would be possible to get high lactate values in such a short run. Well, you can definitely like being scared. Yeah, except for Del Selva. It's a full body isometric, you know? Yeah.

I was actually on, I was on a podcast recently. It hasn't come out yet. But when I was talking about open skill sports and I said ball sports, the host was like bull sports. And so actually I hadn't thought about ball sports, but right, they require all those things that you mentioned in high lactate, high coordination, right? Maybe that's the, as long as you don't hit your head.

Maybe that's the next frontier. So we shouldn't do like a bull riding for brain health campaign. That's not the new way of improving brain health? I, um, the first time I ever went to a state fair in the U.S. I went to the Washington state fair a few years ago. And they did, they were doing wall riding. You've ever seen that? You get like these sheep and then you like,

strap this kid to the top of a sheep and it like sprints down and then like throws them into a fence. Like, uh-huh. Yeah. I'm very much like let people do what they want to do. but that definitely didn't feel great to me. No chance. Yeah. So actually, I mentioned the Anders as like exit of the fitness industry and like moved out

to the country. So actually I went out to visit him because he bought a farm and I went out there and his, his boy is like five years old or whatever like did the wool riding thing. I never seen it before, but he did really well. Like he fell off the side of that thing, but he just kept hanging on, hanging on to the wool and getting drug by that thing and the crowd's like cheering for him. Oh my God. It was great.

Tough little kid. Yeah. I did. In the same vein of the double-edged sword of certain sports where, like, combat sports, you know, MMA, boxing, you know, you do have the risk of a TBI, but obviously it's incredibly cognitively demanding. What would you say is probably the best choice where, like, the double-edged sword is a single-edged sword where it gives you the cognitive demands

without the, I mean, it's pretty hard to get a concussion from a ping-pong ball, but it's relatively easy to get one from someone's. I've blocked a lot of punches with my face. As much as other boxing, I don't plan on doing it any further. Yeah. This is where grappling comes in. That's right. Yeah.

Yeah. So I think anything that's more like grappling or coordination focus, then you think like Capoeira and things like that, like maybe those are where you'd focus more than ones where a big part of it is trying to get punched or need in the head. Equally, you can learn a lot of those skills without ever having to actually fight, right? You can do all of that stuff. That doesn't

mean you need to actually get in the cage. So I think a lot of it will be, what do you enjoy doing? What do your friends do? But, yeah, I would minimize the likelihood that you're going to get your bell rung as much as possible.

There may be some, and then certainly, like, so especially if you have like Apple E4, right, this is the main genetic risk factor for late Alzheimer's. I would definitely steer even further. clear of sports that have a high risk of concussion if you can. So maybe there's a little bit of like personal risk kind of balance in there as well. But equally, if you're doing a really good job in all these other areas,

then maybe you've mitigated a bunch of that risk, probably not all of it. But you could you could certainly mitigate a lot of risk, you know, depending on other areas of lifestyle. Yeah. All right. So you mentioned April E4. Let's dig into that. And then I also want to talk nutrition here.

Yeah. So Apple E4 is interesting. I guess we'll kind of like to start with the bigger picture. So anybody who doesn't know apollip protein E is a protein produced by the body, which is really important for handling lipids or fats. And that includes in the brain. And most people, like the vast majority of people have two copies of Apopoea that comes in three. different flavors, two, three, and four. ApoE4 is the most evolutionarily ancient version of ApoE for humans and then a two and three developed later. And those who have at least one copy of ApoE4 have an increased risk of Alzheimer's disease. And it's like two to six times higher risk if you have one copy, six to 20 times increased risk-ish if you have two copies. compared to those who have 2-3 or 3-3. So there's been a lot of interest in this, understandably, because this is the most important single genetic risk factor

that's kind of relevant to all of us for late onset Alzheimer's disease. But, of course, most people who get Alzheimer's disease don't have APOE4, and not everybody who has APOE4 gets Alzheimer's disease. So it's not like there's no genetic determinism. It doesn't guarantee that you're going to get it. It does increase risk. What's interesting, and I think if you look across all the evidence that exists so far, I think it mainly acts as a risk multiplier.

So when you look at big epidemiological studies and then also studies of things that might be beneficial, it seems that those who have risk factors for dementia, like poor diet, high blood lipids, high blood pressure, excessive alcohol intake, those risks are amplified by APOE4. But then the flip side of that is that those people who have APOE4 may benefit more if those risk factors are attended to. So several studies suggest that if you have APOE4, you get more benefit for brain health by doing exercise.

Or you may get more benefit by making sure that you have adequate omega-3. status. So it's mainly, you know, it's impossible to say you can eliminate all the risk, but essentially if you address most of your lifestyle and environmental-related risk factors for dementia, if you have APOE4, you've probably eliminated the majority of that increased risk. And some of this evidence comes from multiple studies that show that there are populations around the world where APOE4 does not increase the risk of dementia. So that's Bolivian Chimene, who are a hunter-gatherer group in Central America, of the Nigeria and Yoruba.

And then there's also a more recent study of indigenous Americans. Basically, then the one final study where looking at individuals of Sicilian Italian heritage, where ApoE4 doesn't increase the risk of mortality and cardiovascular disease when they're living in Sicily, but does increase the risk when they're living in America. Why? Yeah.

So I live in Sicily, dude. So all of that kind of suggests that the effect of APOE4 is very much environment-dependent. Wow. And a big factor, it seems to be tied to inflammation. So APOE4 increases neuroinflammation and other inflammatory responses, like in response to some kind of trigger. So, right, that could be alcohol or smoking or something like that. And so you see in like big meta-analys that individuals who take anti-inflammatories

if they have ApoE4 see some benefit in terms of reducing their dementia risk. I'm not saying you should go out and nobody should take Ibrophid every day, but it kind of suggests inflammation is an important part of that. Similarly, those who have ApoE4 may get more benefit in terms of their dementia risk if they take a if they take a statin and statins have anti-inflammatory effects. So I think a lot of it is related to the effect of ApoE4 on inflammation. Really. What about nutrition before it gets too late?

I'm curious about that. Yeah, like on that note, like you just mentioned anti-inflammatories related to nutrition. Like should you be then taking, you know, plenty of EPA or just fish oil in general and or curcumin or any other just potent anti-inflammatories from a supplement perspective? To the notes. Yeah.

So I think there's a few things. The big ticket items that we know are important from a nutrition standpoint for like cognitive function and dementia risk are omega-3 status. So adequate omega-3s is critical. B-vitamin status, particularly the B-vitamins that affect methylation. So B-12, folate, B-6, and riboflavin. Vitamin D. Iron status is critical. Probably more commonly an issue in women than it is in.

men, but it's still something that you have to attend to. Those are like, those are the big ones. And we see that again and again. Did I mention vitamin D? Vitamin D is another one. And so then omega-3 certainly play a role in managing information. Other nutrients the pop up again and again are the antioxidant polyphenols. So the things that make coffee, tea, and chocolate sort of brown, color and berries kind of purple colors, those. And also, I recently was reading about a few studies on the roasted skins of nuts and seeds, when they go that kind of like dark brown color, they have similar polyphenols that have similar effects.

So they improve certain aspects of gut function as well as vascular function and then having a direct antioxidant effect in the brain. And then the sort of like the oranges and yellows and pinks. So lutein, zeaxazanthin, azantin, or so the pink. from seafood, those kinds of antioxidant polyphenols seem to be really critical across various, various different studies. So those are like core nutrients that pop up again and again. How you then get that, I'm much less worried about, right? As long as you're hitting those nutrients that we know are critical for the brain, like other things become important, magnesium and zinc,

important for like neuromodulation, like helping to regulate neurotransmitter production. So there are other things as well. But as long as you're getting these core nutrients and avoiding metabolic disease, I think excess energy availability, metabolic disease is another critical risk factor. So as long as you're not overeating and you're getting these core nutrients, how you do that, I think is much less important. It's probably going to be a nutrient-dense, minimally processed diet. But I think just like hitting those targets is the most important thing.

to add a little nuance and this is where I know certain people will try to extrapolate when you see polyphenols like that means I can drink a bottle of red wine each night because it's kind of polyphenols. Like if you don't mind just like stopping that line of anyone's logic just like right there cold in the track. Yeah, appreciate it.

Yeah, sure. So it's funny because like anytime you talk about polyphenols, everybody jumps to red wine. And like I would highly recommend wild blueberries instead. Probably not quite the same at a party, but much more evidence of benefit for those. But then also, anytime you talk about alcohol, everybody finds a way to justify their current level of alcohol intake, whatever that is. And that could be the teetotalers who tell you that all alcohol is terrible for the brain, you should never drink any, versus those

who've managed to justify their nightly glass of red wine, right? So from a pure polyphenol perspective, you will get much more benefit, I think net benefit for blueberries, dark chocolate, that kind of stuff, right? But I think the overall kind of data on alcohol intake and the brain and health in general is that if you're drinking less than one drink on average per night, you're probably okay, like no net effect. If you're drinking every. day, that's associated with smaller brain volumes, increased dementia risk. So like, the occasional drink is just fine. I don't think you need to be puritanical about it. But equally, that's not the same as licensed to be like, oh, I should drink red wine every night because it's good for my brain.

So I kind of, so I think that that's kind of where I stand in terms of the current evidence. Especially with the effects on sleep, you know, it's like, you know. Oh, yeah. Yeah, it's like since I stopped drinking. I mean, you know, I'm not a teetotaler, you know, but, you know, without doing it, you know, I guess on the occasion, I stopped that and my sleep has gotten so much better. It's just like, and so it's so worth it to me to be like, you know. Yeah, we know, like we know alcohol causes a relative REM sleep deficiency, right, that you never quite catch up from. And there are certainly people out there, like, I've seen this on social media a lot of recently like, oh, we should make younger people drink again because then they'll socialize more. And yeah, like, Social connection is super important as part of brain health, but I don't think we need to drink to achieve that. But equally, I don't think we need to go around telling everybody that they should never drink because it's terrible for their brain. Because the occasional drink is not going to have a massive effect, if any effect.

So, yeah, like somewhere in there, like, if you want to occasionally go out with your buddies and have a cocktail, great. But just don't do it every night. What about social? Because now we're getting super at the end. But like, what about that social aspect? Yeah. So I remember having a conversation with a friend of mine. He's a former palliative care physician in the UK.

And I was like telling him about sort of like the ideas behind this book. I previously published a paper with a friend of mine, a neurologist, Josh Turknet, sort of on this idea. And he was like, I'm sure that's right, but it all comes down to like social connection. Right. So there's this idea of building skills and learning things. But you only really do that to like go out in the world and use. use those skills that you've learned with other people, right?

That's essentially why humans develop skills in the first place. So there's this very clear signal that the quality of our social relationships is an important predictor of long-term cognitive function. And that's probably because when we're socially isolated, we activate stress responses. These are then associated with chronic disease, heart disease, dementia. But equally, other people give us the opportunities to use our brains and complex ways that we know are important to kind of maintain function. So I think it comes from both of those directions.

And then, right, that means however you choose to kind of engage in these different processes, be that changes in your diet, the different sports that you do, the different skills you want to learn, doing that in a social context, your layers on even more benefit. And the final part of that is that one of the particular areas that seems to be beneficial is pro-social behavior. So this is one of the other things that we get the opportunity to do when we interact with other people is be nice and supportive of other people. And volunteering and you're sort of like doing acts of service to others. like we can talk about the fact that yeah it activates the vagus nerve you see this kind of autonomic like response and like decrease in stress responses but it also just like has this seems to have

this net benefit in terms of both physiology and cognitive function you know because it feels good right yeah dude it's bad that we got to put it in a medical term yeah yeah exactly so interacting with other people and doing good for them seems to be like one of the magic uh pieces of magic that you can do for your brain long time. Yeah. Don't be a dick. Be excited. That's what it all boils down to. There you go.

In fact, you've got it up with the Mediterranean diet. It's a Mediterranean lifestyle. Turns out if you live in a hilly place where being an older member of a culture is something of reverence and you're eating a very clean diet, you kind of live a really long period of time. But if you get shipped off to the retirement home and nobody wants to hang out with you. Like go figure. And I would argue that if you were if you were shoved in a room by yourself and the nursing home and somebody fed you a pristine Mediterranean diet, you're probably not going to get most of those benefits because, right, you're alone.

You're not physically active. You're not doing all this other stuff. There's arguably going to be more important. So 100%. We actually got we got a shout down here. We got a hard stop and come up in just a few minutes. Yo, we barely got into it though. Sorry.

We got to count this as part one of this book show and go to part two and cover many more topics here. But, yo, like I said, at the beginning of the show, always love to having you on. Where can people find more about you personally and about the book itself? Yeah, yeah, thanks. I also like, where did that hour go? Seriously, this is awesome. So people can find more about me on Instagram at Dr. Tommy Wood, DR. Tommy Wood, my website, Dr. Tommy Wood.com.

and the book go to the Stimulatedmind.com and it's all there. It's available for pre-order right now from like anywhere that you would buy a book. Fantastic. Travis Mash. Matchelage.com. I want to sell that book on Matchel League. That's amazing. Thank you. Everyone should get that.

I'm definitely going to read it. Yep. 100%. Same. Dr. Mike Lane. Yeah. Mike Lane, PhD on Instagram. Right on.

I'm Doug Larson at Douglas E. Larson on Instagram. We are Barbel Shug, Barbell, underscore Shrug. If you want to work with Dr. Mike Lane and Travis and possibly even Tommy Wood. I know you and Andy have been talking about doing some work inside a rapid as well. So you might be a part of the crew here very soon. You can go to Arteelab.com, A-R-E-T-E-L-A-B.com. That's where we have the R-R-T-A program.

It's our flagship program. One of the most comprehensive data-driven and just most premium health and performance programs in the world today. I'm working with Dr. Andy Galpin and our full team at Rapid Health Optimization. Again, check that out at Arte-Lab.com. A-R-E-T-L-B-B-com. Friends, we'll see you guys next week. Thank you.