Modern Wisdom - #425 - Louisa Nicola - How To Maximise Your Brain's Performance

Episode Date: January 22, 2022

Louisa Nicola is a Clinical Neuroscientist, Neurophysiologist and high performance coach. Maximising performance isn't just about being as physically fit possible, it's ensuring that your brain is operating at its peak condition all the time. Louisa works with NBA superstars and trading floor managers to refine and enhance their brain function using the latest research. Expect to learn Louisa's non-negotiable supplements for brain health, how to get to sleep more quickly at night, why throwing a tennis ball at a wall is good for your mind, the impact of sleep on brain performance, Louisa's training protocol for maximising cognitive function, how to stay calm under pressure and much more... Sponsors: Join the Modern Wisdom Community to connect with me & other listeners - https://modernwisdom.locals.com/ Get 20% discount on the highest quality CBD Products from Pure Sport at https://bit.ly/cbdwisdom (use code: MW20) Get perfect teeth 70% cheaper than other invisible aligners from DW Aligners at http://dwaligners.co.uk/modernwisdom Extra Stuff: Check out NeuroAthletics - https://www.neuroathletics.com.au/ Sign up to Louisa's Newsletter - https://neuroathletics.substack.com/  Get my free Reading List of 100 books to read before you die → https://chriswillx.com/books/ To support me on Patreon (thank you): https://www.patreon.com/modernwisdom - Get in touch. Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/modernwisdompodcast Email: https://chriswillx.com/contact/  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello friends, welcome back to the show. My guest today is Louise Nicola. She's a clinical neuroscientist, neurophysiologist and a high-performance coach. Maximising performance isn't just about being as physically fit as possible. It's ensuring that your brain is operating at its peak condition all the time. Louise works with NBA superstars and trading floor managers to refine and enhance their brain function using the latest research. Expect to learn, Louise's non-negotiable supplements for brain health, how to get to sleep more quickly at night, while throwing a tennis ball at a wall is good for your mind.

The impact of sleep on brain performance, Louise's training protocol for maximizing cognitive function, how to stay calm and a pressure, and much more. This is a topic that I've been thinking about for a long time, which is that very few people outside of sport treat their chosen pursuit with the same level of care and attention and rigour that athletes do. And now what you're finding is coaches with an athletic and sporting background, moving out of sport and into other areas,

like coaching, trading, floor managers on how to get the most out of their performance. And I think increasingly you're going to see people take that more granular, more athletic style approach to their performance in different domains. But now it's time for the wise and wonderful Louisa Nicola. Louisa Nicola, welcome to the show. Yeah, Chris, so happy to be here. How would you describe what you do for work? Well, my company, Neuroathletics, is literally the intersection of neuroscience and athletic

performance. Around six years ago, I would say, six years ago, 2016, I saw a gap in that market where I was looking at athletes, I was training athletes, I had a neuroscience background and I thought, why is everybody obsessed with making these athletes better by just working on their speed and agility? Why are we not working on their brains? The brain is a powerhouse of the entire system. So that's what I did. I just started my company and started working on the brain. Okay, but you don't just work with athletes, right? Correct. So right now, so at the start, the conception, your athletics was purely athletes and then we moved into an only

major league soccer NFL and NBA pathway. And then just by chance two years ago, we got the attention of the finance world. And let me tell you, their brains are their brains own dire need of neuroathletics. So we now serve as some of the financial world. What's the similarities between a portfolio manager and an athlete? Lack of sleep, first and foremost, secondly, competitiveness. Thirdly, they've got that ability to do whatever it takes. They're not just getting up for a day job at 9am and putting their suit on. They have to train like athletes to get the best results. Some of the guys I'm working with tell me, Louise, if I don't make this

trade tonight, if I'm not in the peak state to make a good trade, I could lose $30 million. Okay, so slightly high stakes. When you actually put it like that, you think, I was kicking a ball about, you know, you're kicking a ball into a goal, or is it mounted, it's not $30 million. You said that both of them were under-slept. Do you find that your athletes on average are under-slept?

Is that something specific to athletes? Or do you think that this is just the entire world is under-slept and athletes are a subsection of the world? Very good question. So I think everybody, not just athletes and portfolio managers. I think everybody is under-slapped. Now just 12 hours ago on Twitter, I posted a tweet saying, guys, I think I have it all wrong. I've been talking about sleep deprivation, but instead, why don't I talk about, why don't we say REM sleep deprivation or slow wave sleep deprivation. I think I think we've got it all wrong when we talk about sleep deprivation. Now a

lot of people in society are sleep deprived. Now sleep deprived is classified as six hours or less, I live in New York City. Almost everybody in the city is sleeping six hours or less. It's a New York City. Almost everybody in the city is sleeping six hours or less. It's a hustle city. But then also now because of technology, because of what we're eating, because of how we're going out, the fact that the pandemic has brought us inside,

we are being exposed to things that are keeping us up longer throughout the night, but also disrupting our patterns of getting into deep sleep and slower end and REM sleep. So I coined this new phenomenon, I think of 2022. Instead of somebody saying, I'm sleep deprived, I'm going to say, well, what part of sleep deprived are you? Are you lacking REM sleep or you're lacking deep sleep? Yeah, well, most people aren't tracking on average. There's some freaks amongst us that are that have got a whip strap or that wear an aura ring,

but not many people are. And it was only when I started wearing a whip strap that I realized time in bed doesn't equal time asleep and time asleep doesn't always equal the same amount of quality of sleep. Even though you wake up on the morning and you realize there's something good, right? Wrong side of the bed syndrome. But the fact that even about whatever 85% efficiency or a 90%

efficiency say which is pretty good, that's all right. You need to be in bed for nine hours to get eight hours and the number of people that are in bed for nine hours is basically zero. Yeah and sometimes that's a struggle for me, especially now being in Australia. But here's the thing, you're wearing a woop strap, so I wear all three. Now what we know when we're talking about sleep physiology, in order to really understand sleep apnea, okay, we'll go through a sleep study, you have to go into a lab and they hook you up with all of these machines. They start with the head, the eyes, you've got an oxymidam, an nasal cannula. Now that gives you a very precise measurement

of your sleep stages. How can we possibly mimic that outside of the lab? Well, companies such as Aura, Wub, other companies have now invented these wearables. But the accuracy is where I think we need to talk about. You're wearing an auto right now. Studies show that the auto has a better PSG reading, sleep study reading. What's PSG? Oh, it's a polysummon delivery. That's basically a sleep study. Okay.

When you point to a lab. So it kind of mimics, I think it was the statistics around 87% at mimics, what's happening in the lab, whereas the whoops drop is a bit different, it's more so better for exercise and performance and HRV tracking. Do you know what the percentage was for the whoop? I don't, but my thing is, when I wear the whoop sometimes at night, it can be, it slides around on your hand, sometimes you wake up and it's like misfolded. So maybe that's the, maybe that's what's happening. Getting back to brain health, we'll talk about sleeping a bit, but what do you mean when you talk about a high performing brain?

What is that? So we've got, when we look at the brain, we've got both the software and the hardware, the hardware being the actual brain itself, okay? And we can have many problems wrong with that. For example, when an NFL player has a concussion, that's really messing with the hardware. They could have a dent in their brain. They could build up tau-oper fees within that area. But then there's the software, which is how are you thinking?

How are you feeling? What are your thoughts doing in your brain? It's like the cognitive part of it. How's your reaction time? So I work with both of those. Now, with anything, in terms of progression, how's your reaction time? So I work with both of those. Now, with anything in terms of progression, how we're meant to measure things. So what we do with all of our athletes is,

we measure them in month one, they come into, they come and see us, whether it's in person or whether it's online, and we do an actual EEG scan. So we put a cap on them, we're measuring their brain ways, we're understanding what's happening with both the software and the hardware. And then from that, we then put in a performance program.

And that could consist of upping their vitamins or upping their EPA-DHA, which is known as fissioil. We look at sleep because sleep has an impact on the brain. We look at reaction time, we look at visual acuity. And we even do breath work, because breath work is another major factor affecting the hardware and the software. So if I would say if you've got a high performing brain, there's probably about 10 different set points, and if you're at 10 out of 10 for all of those set points, then that would be a high performing brain.

What does it look like on a biological level? You're a bit, so do you mean like what's the, when you go inside of a scan, what do you see? Do you see more connections? Is it to do with the speed of the synapse is firing? What's it actually mean? So it's the speed, okay? It's a speed. We look at, we look at information processing speed. Your ability for your eyes to perceive a stimulus, relay it back to your brain and for your brain to understand what it is. So that speed, it could be 0.4, it could be 1.4. So obviously the 0.4 would be better,

and this is measured in milliseconds. So why do we want that? Well, you think of driving. A lot of traffic accidents happen on the road because of reaction time or sleep deprivation. So we're looking at everything. Your ability to make a decision at work, whether to make the trade or not make the trade, to make the phone call or not make the phone call is all dependent on your information processing speed. And then there's also decision making skills. So when they're doing the scan, they're looking at it's not just a scan,

like it's a hospital grade EEG, but you're not just sitting there, you're doing a task, we can have them reacting to something on the screen, so it measures that in real time. What sort of things are you getting them to do? What are the tasks? Look, I spent 16 hours with that EEG on watching one of our NBA players just do jump shots. It was a very hard day. Hang on, he's got the cap on while he's training. Yeah, we just had him doing jump shots. And I was literally measuring what is happening when he's getting the ball in the basket.

And I don't speak technical when I'm talking about sports because I just don't know the technicality of it. Right, I understand. That must be, you said there'll be a particular pathway, right? There'll be a sequence, a common sequence of particular neurons that need to fire in order for the throw the ball toward the basket. Yeah. Action to be deployed.

And we can put this on a trade, for example, a tie-in month. And we can measure at what time, what was his brain doing at the time he made a good trade, what was his brain doing at the time he made a bad trade. So then we can then predict, we can then pull the software and predict when he's going to make a good trade or not. What are the main principles that people should consider when they're trying to maximize their brain's performance? Oh gosh, do you have a few days?

Yep. Yes, so first one that I, and I'm going to talk about the ones that I think are not spoken about, okay, that are looked over. First one is hydration. Chris, you've been drinking some water over and they've been on this core for 15 minutes, okay? You're hydrating. It's so important for the brain to be hydrated.

Now, we have anywhere from 80 billion important for the brain to be hydrated. Now, we have anywhere from 80 billion neurons in the brain, nerve cells. In order for them to think, react, produce a movement, or do anything, those two brain cells need to synapse together. You mentioned that earlier. It's when they fire together. In order for them to fire together, we have a pump called the sodium potassium pump. So literally, our brain, where have you heard sodium of potassium? Electrolytes, right? So our brain really needs to be hydrated to literally do anything. When we're dehydrated, we're not thinking straight,

we're not being able to produce many things. So I always say, keep hydrated, not just with water, but with electrolytes too. So we have an electrolyte protocol in your athletics. We do sweat tests. So I always say, keep hydrated, not just with water, but with electrolytes too. So we have an electrolyte protocol in your athletics. We do sweat tests. So if some of our athletes are sweating a lot more than the others, and we determine that sweat test, we think, okay, if you're sweating this much,

this is how many electrolytes you're losing. So we dose them for that pre-game post-game and throughout the day. So that's number one, okay? The second thing is consistency. Your brain is actually pretty dumb. Okay? It's just this hunk of meat sitting inside your skull, but it likes consistency. It likes to wake up at the same time every day and go to sleep at the same time every day. It also doesn't like to be shocked. When it's shocked, it doesn't, it's not really prepared for

anything. So consistency with sleep routines, morning routines, eating habits, etc. Now we can move on to more of the pharmacological aspect. Now outside of normal pathologies, if you've got any diseases, etc. There are certain nutrients that our brain likes. Our brain is literally made of DHA. And if you look at an omega-3 supplement, official, okay? Omega-3 is consist of EPA, DHA, and ALA. So I'm always supplementing with EPA, DHA. I do two milligrams in the morning, two milligrams at night. There's so many benefits.

You're not just feeding your brain, but you're also lowering inflammation. We know that inflammation in a chronic state is bad for us, both murely and physiologically. So one of the the utmost biggest protocols that we do with our athletes is you've got to be having EPA, DHA. I would urge you know everybody out there to be looking at the scientific literature on that. Do you have any brands that you suggest particularly because I'm going to guess that there's some changes in the quality?

Oh yeah, I speak about that as well. Manufacturing right now is a it's a scary thing out there. You don't know sometimes what you're buying. Some of the some of the drugs that they're selling just at the supermarket, you know, you don't know what they're laced with. So, manufacturers matter. Now, the brand that I use is Thorn,, T-H-O-R-N-E. Why? Well, there've got so many certifications. I know them, like I've gone in, I've really researched, I've done my research on them, manufacturing is clean. And you also want, when you're having an APA-DHA,

sometimes you know the quality of an official, when you have it, and you feel that you can taste the fishiness of it. You ever felt that and it's like this is disgusting. Yes. Yes. So that's how you know the quality of it. So it really matters what you're having, okay? If when you're ingesting it and if you're ingesting the EPA, DHA, if it smells and it's got that fishy smell or taste, you know it's not a good quality. So everything else, when we're talking about supplementation, we do that. But then there's also what are you supplementing at night to get a good quality sleep? Because we know that sleep is one of the determining factors of brain performance. So what are you doing at night to get yourself into deep sleep stages? Now, I have a sleep stack, I would say, a sleep protocol,

and a consists of the first one is magnesium L3 and A. I take this every night. First and foremost, magnesium. We know magnesium that to be good for the body. There's three types of magnesium. We have it when we want to stress, to leave and have better functioning muscles, recovery, et cetera.

But there's one magnesium out of those three that crosses the blood brain barrier. And that is magnesium L3 and 8. So once it crosses the blood brain barrier, it's going to calm down your nervous system. It's going to get you into deep sleep. So that's one of the sleep protocols that we have. magnesium L3NA, and then for some of our athletes or clients, some of them are feeling as if they've got a racing mind at night. So we

may get them to supplement with GABA, which is an inhibitory neurotransmitter. So these are the things that, you know, without wafting on too much that you can be doing at night or during the day. What do you thought on 5HTP? I don't supplement with it, but I'm noticing a lot of men asking me this question, not women through. So I can't comment on it because I don't have it, but I have noticed that Angie Hieveman talks about that a bit.

Okay. What about dosage for the magnesium? What would you aim for? So the one that I get is from pure encapsulations or life extension. It's a blue bottle and you have to take three at night. So you're just following the recommended dosage based on whatever it says on the bottle. Well, yeah. Okay. There's a jigsaw health to a mag SRT and that's one that's pretty well Touted Ben Greenfield's a big fan of that that's pretty good Yeah, yeah, it is they have a magnesium cellate pre bed Drink thing which is okay, but because it's I

Must have some sort of bicarbonate or something to help it mix with the water, and if you have that last thing before you go to bed, I always end up finding myself needing to sit up and burp. It's like the most weird byproduct of having a sleep drink. Do you think, oh yeah, but the fact that it's fizzy means that I need to, anyway, what about exercises? So let's say that that's some of the principles behind making your brain healthier. What about things that people could do? Exercises that you take your athletes and your traders through

to try and improve their mental capacity? Oh, so many. So one thing that we focus on is zone two training. And that's when you're, you know, we've got different zones of training. Obviously, maybe zone five would be at maximum, zone two is that comfortable pace where you can talk but you're also exercising, okay? And we measure this through our VO2 max testing. So we do a lot of zone two and the reason being is that this area of exercise is the most efficient to be training the quality of the mitochondria. The mitochondria are the powerhouse of the cell.

So, once we get out of a zone three, once we get into zone three and zone four, we're training outside of that mitochondria. So, that's one area that we trained because we also focus on longevity. Okay? Everyone knows that an athlete has an expiration date. So, we're focusing on longevity as well. But the next part of it is,

so, the reason why neuroathletics really came into play or existed was because I was doing a lot of reaction training. You know, I was working just with a tennis ball and a couple of lites back in 2016. Just getting them to throw the ball to the wall. And what I found this was doing was it was training different areas of the brain. We're working on hand-eye coordination so their ability to see a target, catch a ball, use reflexes, and then I started working from there. I got them to stand on one foot through the ball to the wall, control actual movements with the brain. So we were doing so much

with hand-eye coordination, and that's how neuroathletics really came into play. So if you want to do anything for your brain in terms of exercising, train it towards fatigue, you want to be doing, you just want to get a tennis ball. We're actually going to bring out some neuro balls, but I'm trying to figure out a way to name that better. Yeah, neuro anything with balls in is going to be difficult. Just going back to the zone two, duration and frequency per week, what would you say? Three times per week, for one hour, or around 50 minutes at minimum. Okay, so it's a big commitment for this, especially if you're an athlete,

you've got your other training to do skills and work and stamina and blah, blah on top. But I suppose that's probably not a bad active recovery day. Exactly. Is that how you try to use it? I use that depending on who I'm talking to because some of the, I've got a 56 year old male who's in the trading business and he's, he may be very unhealthy so I'll just get him to do zone two, yeah, three hours a week.

And he does that on a stationary bike. It's so easy. He's got one set up in the living room. He's got kids, so it's just on that. No hard. What's the heart rate range that people should be aiming for to hit zone two, ish? Well, see, this is the thing,

that the science suggests that you shouldn't just work on heart rate. But for my athletes, we do, okay? Because I do a VO2 max test for them. You're always rated against what their max is? Exactly. Everybody's different. But if you want to measure it, it's really around 65% of maximum HR, which you know is

really easy. It's just walking around really. Am I right in thinking that zone two for that sort of duration, for that sort of frequency is also what would be prescribed if you wanted to to raise the ceiling on your HIV as well. Well yeah look so HIV is another it can raise HIV values yes and that's purely because you're working within that space you working on the mitochondria if you really want to get technical you want to measure your blood lactate. And that's what we do. The only caveat on that is who wants to pin prick themselves every time they're writing, right? Okay. And let's say that someone does want to take the ceiling of that HRV up. What would your prescription be for that person? Well, we know that HRV or heart rate variability reflects how adaptable your body can be. It

measures the specific changes in time between successive heartbeats. So we know that we've got resting heart rate, we've got our actual heart rate. We know that it's measuring the time between those two heartbeats, okay? And it's basically a measure of your autonomic nervous system, which is everything that is happening automatically. See, we know it's a good measurement of health and recovery. So if we want to be working on that, then we know that, okay, first and foremost, we need to really have a recovery day, okay, or we need to be doing recovery things during the day. Second thing is, it's dependent on food intake, okay,

or the quality, or if you're having alcohol or any type of drugs per se, that's going to go in and mess with your sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system, okay? So we want to wait to stabilize everything. So sleeping well, sleeping consistently, hydrating, getting adequate exercise, all of these things are going to eventually into a higher or more stable HRV. That is keeping HRV more stable and also acutely making it as optimal as possible. How about raising the ceiling of HRV overall, taking it from a 100 or a maximum green recovery on your

loop being 70 to a maximum green now being able to be 80 or 90 or 100. What are some of the things that you could do to raise that ceiling? Well, it's measuring during sleep, okay? So I don't know if you know that but it basically goes in Whether it's an orro ring or whether it's a workshop you're basically going in and it's taking a two-minute Two-to-four-minute measurement during your sleep So if we're not in a deep sleep stage or we're not we haven't recovered properly be basically going in and it's taking a two minute, two to four minute measurement during your sleep. So if we're not in a deep sleep stage or we're not, we haven't recovered properly, you're not going to get a high enough value. So if we really want to raise the roof and I would say the number one thing you need to

work on is sleep. Okay, cool. What about the impact of sleep on brain performance then? What are the, what are the impacts that you see there? Look, it's not just brain performance then? What are the what are the impacts that you see there? Look, it's not just brain performance, it's also immunity. Okay, so sleep or sleep deprivation plays a number of key roles. Okay, now I've pulled up, if you don't mind, I've pulled up a study that I reference a lot, but I really want to get it right for you and your audience. Okay, there was a really very famous study and it was done in the Journal of PNAS.

What they did was they took a group of healthy adults and they limited them to six hours of sleep a day for one week. They found a change in the activity of 711 genes. Okay? So we've got a gene, our genes are epigenetic pool, we've got the human genome is around 20,000 genes. From getting lack of sleep of six hours a night resulted in the change of 711 genes. That's around 3% of our entire genome. What they found was out of that 711, about half of the genes were up regulated and half of them were down regulated. The ones that were impaired, when we say down regulated,

that means impaired. The genes that were down regulated were the ones associated with the immune system. And the ones that were up regulated were the ones associated with tumor production, long-term chronic inflammation, cardiovascular disease. So that's really important to know that only after one week, you're changing your epigenetics,

you're changing your human, you're changing the genes. That's insane to think about, right? Because we're all sleeping, sometimes we've gone through a week, I'm sure you've gone through literally seven days of sleep deprivation somewhere in your life especially for the new parents out there and in that time you're probably finding that You know when you're working so hard and then all of a sudden when you stop you get sick It's the same thing. So it's pretty much the same thing. So

sleep deprivation or sleep impacts immunity. But then let's go into more of another thing. And I'll give you the link to that article. Let's talk about why athletes need sleep. First of all, back to the software. What we see, there's many studies that have been done on basketball players. What we see that a lack of sleep can go through and interfere with reaction time. It can interfere with visual acuity. They're ability to see the ball at the speed of light and

react to it. That's the software things. They're ability to think fast. That really goes down and that's diminished, which one second full of bronjams can mean the difference between winning and losing, right? That's the first thing. But then let's look at more of a hardware thing, okay? When we fall asleep, we go through three stages of sleep in the first, in the first third of the night, okay? We go through stage one, two, and three.

That's comprised of deep sleep, okay? Slow wave sleep. During these stages, there's one really critical thing that happens, and that's hormone secretion. Ormones are released during that stage, okay? It's pro-dominantly in stage three, which is slow wave deep sleep. These hormones are human growth hormone and testosterone.

So for yourself, Chris, if you're not getting into those deep sleep stages, you're not going to be getting the adequate release of human growth hormone or testosterone. So human growth hormone is responsible for protein synthesis and recovery and a whole bunch of other things. Babies sleep a lot and that's why they grow fast because they've got a lot of human growth hormone. And then have you ever heard of the same, well maybe seen men that have got breasts? LAUGHTER

Mantidies, call them what they are, Louise. Well, whatever you want to call them, you could say that it's a build up of estrogen and a lack of testosterone, okay? Maybe because they're not getting into that deep sleep stage. Do you see a...tip before you start working with the guys that your floor traders, do you see a particular body start? I mean, they built like bags of milk mostly? Yes, I do. And I, that's the first thing I say, and they get really upset. Tell them that you tell these guys that are making $30 million trades

that they're built like bags of milk. I go to my eaters and you don't sleep, and they're like, I'm too much. And they're not really coming to me with their shirts off either. I can just see it. I'm like, no, leave your shirt on, it's fine.

Please see it. For the lovers, all that is holy. So so many different things happen during deep sleep. And then we move on to REM sleep, rapid eye movements sleep. Now during this time, your body is completely paralyzed, but your brain is still active. It's what we call it the dream sleep state. But what else happens during this stage? Well, we get things such as learning, so memory consolidation, and all of the learning takes place during REM sleep. So if we're not getting into these two stages,

it's really gonna mess us up the following day. We're gonna wake up with brain fog, we're gonna wake up feeling irritable, we're not gonna be remembering things, and we're also not gonna be able to execute to the best of our abilities. So we really need to be optimizing for sleep, and that's a really big thing that we focus on at Neurathletics, because there's coaches

out there. So we work with one particular NBA team. And I'm actually going through and coaching the trainers and the coaches, because they're like, well, we didn't know this. Everyone's just working on the ball skills, you know? And the one thing is about what's happening when they go home at night. How long did you play Xbox for? What time did you get up?

What's your pre-bad routine? Yeah, it's some... How does sleep debt and sleep repayment work? Is that a thing? No, sleep is not like a bank. So if you're going to debt, you can't go through and pay it back. So once you lose sleep, that's it. You're done.

That's why I don't like binge sleepers. People who are like, that's okay, I'll sleep five hours during the week, maximum productivity, and then just build it up on the weekends. It doesn't work like that. That's a shame. Yeah. Because that would be, well, I mean, what can you do?

Let's say that you do have a bad night's sleep, presumably sleeping a little bit more the following night isn't a bad idea. Well, no, of course, there was actually, I just put out two weeks ago, a study that was just, that's just come out in very high stringent journal that says, there's no such thing as, as too much sleep. Okay. Meaning. Sorry, meaning that we know what happens.

We know the effects of sleep deprivation on the brain and the body, but when you have too much sleep, there's not really much that happens. You just maybe you might get a bit fatter over the course of it. There's nothing bad that happens, which I think is great, but that's only a good study to run. If you could try and somehow get people to sleep 12 hours a night or 14 hours a day, I guess, for seven days or 14 days and try and record the changes there. That'd be really interesting. I'd be more interested in finding out why they have time to sleep that much. Because they're not high-powered floor traders, that's why.

They're not selling their soul at Goldman Sachs, that's the reason why. I mean, here's another thing that I've got in my mind There must be attention you go into these high-powered trading floors. I think the athletes on the whole probably Would be more accommodating to I understand that I need to sleep This is my entire life. It's geared around performance But not many people treat their

Output at work on a trading floor with the same level of rigour that athletes do, right? They're not going in to get a massage to loosen off whatever it is or the equivalent mentally. How do you get someone who isn't bought into the world of, I need more sleep than I'm getting high powered, go getting Taipei people or where massive ties and pinstripes suit. How do you get them to let go of that sort of hustle and grind mentality? Well, actually, I find the reverse, okay.

I find, and I didn't even think this. I see the sporting world as, now I've got some athletes who say to me, well, the way I'm number one, or I'm in the MBA, what's the, you know, I don't wanna athletes who said to me, well, the way I'm number one, or I'm in the MBA, what's the, you know, I don't want to be like LeBron, I'm already in the MBA, I'm doing better than nine percent of the world. I don't really need to get better.

They are the ones that annoy me. Whereas the traders are the ones who say, well, if I'm not at that state, then I'm going to lose $30 million. So they do everything they can actually. They're more coherent and obedient to the method, the neurathetics method than the athletes. That's a very good idea. Yeah. Both of them do go through jet lag. A lot of them are both groups are flying. Okay. So that's another thing that the athletes are getting on and off planes, especially during the playoffs.

Some of them are doing three flights a week, and they're feeling it. And they're just a bit, you know, like, so we've got jet lag protocols as well. Whereas there's more consistency in the finance world. Yeah, that's interesting. I suppose the markets are always going to open at the same time, which is going to give them that sort of rigidity that they need. But also, you think if a player is going to play mediocre, okay, let's just say he's in Miami Heat, he plays mediocre, he's not going to lose $30 million.

He might just not play as well, but he's got the team carrying him. If the day trader needs to make a trade on Saturday at 3 a.m., he makes a mediocre trade, he can lose a lot of money. Okay, so the pressure on a trading floor is much more on the individual and the changes in his performance are a lot more acute. Yeah, that's interesting. I suppose specifically with basketball, it is such a team sport. You know, you could have, you could probably have a player that has an absolute stinker of a game and the team still win. And maybe the coach is thinking, oh, you had a bad day, but they'll probably forget about it

because the team won as opposed to the accountability that you get being on a trading floor. And if you make that bad decision and you're 30 grand in the red, someone somewhere is going to come and shout at you. Oh, yeah, or you've lost the life savings of a family. Or that, yes. What are talking me through your pre-bed or your optimal pre-bed routines?

You know, I know that everyone that's listening will be familiar with the digital sunset, but realistically, what's the sort of minimum viable dose or the most compliant, easy routine that somebody could go through before they go to bed on a night? Well, the first thing I start with, don't make it law. Just do it as many times throughout the week that you can. If you knock off three nights a week, great. Next week we'll work on four. The first thing is not eating three hours prior to falling asleep. Anything at all.

Yeah, we don't want any activity. We don't want any raises and quarters old. And that's what happens when you eat. We don't want anything digesting. That's the first thing, okay? The second thing is obviously we're not gonna be having any caffeine, the caffeine has a half life of 12 hours, but don't want caffeine past 12 p.m.

Okay? That's the first thing. I always say that you're preparing for sleep the moment that you wake up, okay? Now, one really important one, I struggle with this every day, and that's eliminating, like you said, digital light, but it really is bad. So I know for some people they say, well, always I can't do that.

So I do get them to wear blue light blocking glasses, although I don't particularly believe in them 100%. But it has some small effects. I've seen some mixed studies about them. Well, it doesn't block out all of the blue light. That's what the promise is, but it's not that. So if we just treat it as if it blocks that sum, that's a better thing to say, because it's true.

It doesn't block it all out. But we do, if we could be walking around with X-ray vision at night, then that would be great. So that is eliminating light, especially you don't want to be looking at light between the hours of 10 pm and 4 am. Now that's that, but then there's always two complaints that you have. You have to figure this out. Do you have a problem falling asleep or do you have a problem staying asleep?

So these two things offer different prescriptions. You have a problem falling asleep. That means your brain's just going at a million miles an hour. So you may be wanting to supplement with GABA, gamma amino butaryc acid. But around a year ago, I caught on to the fact that there was a lot of research that was being brought out about temperature, okay, and the ability to manipulate your core body temperature to get into sleep.

So in order to fall asleep and stay asleep, our core body temperature to get into sleep. So in order to fall asleep and stay asleep, our core body temperature needs to drop at least two degrees. Okay? So that's great. So we can get cold. But then I realize that it's not about ambient temperature, it's not about you can't just put the thermostat on or the air conditioning get really cold. It's about core body temperature. The only real way to do that is via two things. First one is sleeping on a temperature-controlled mattress, or hiring somebody throughout the night to just cool you down with ice packs.

The latter probably isn't feasible. So you have to look at a cooling bed. And around a year ago, somebody said, have you seen eight sleep? They're a sleep fitness technology company. I don't know if you've heard of them, but I invested in one of their mattresses and I had the best quality of sleep that I've ever had. And so I now sleep on an eight sleep temperature controlled mattress.

So basically it, it locates your heart rate, okay? And it gets you, once it figures out all the ways is in deep sleep It gets you into that it drops your core body temperature down by dropping the temperature of the mattress And you're able to get into those deep sleep stages. How does it detect that? It's actually you've got a you've got an app, okay, but also the bed because it's Technology driven it's picking up on your heart rate. So in the morning, the app actually shows you. Your bed can pick up on your heart rate through the mattress.

It gives you HRV metrics in the morning. It says, the way that you slept in your deep sleep, you did. The exact same things that you see with your work, it does the same thing. Wow. Okay, that's pretty impressive. Yeah, it's amazing. And so I partnered with the company because I harassed them. I said, I need to be part of the movement that you're doing.

So now I have all my athletes sleeping on that. So I got a chili pad mattress topper, which is very, very similar sort of thing, although it doesn't know when I am, where I am. And I took it off because it was winter, and I was using it to cool me down, but now maybe I'm thinking that you're probably right because the house is quite warm, it's cold in the UK at the moment. Then ambient temperature is okay-ish, but in the bed is completely

different to what you have going on outside. The same is whatever being in a hot country and thinking that blasting the aircon and changing the temperature of the room is going to change what happens underneath the covers. Exactly. I don't know with the chili pad though. It doesn't do heating does it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it goes both ways. Yeah. So the second one which I've got is the they've given it a stupid name and I can't remember it. So sorry, sorry, chili pad. Anyway, it's the small one that goes underneath. It's like the all row or something. And that comes with an app. And the app, you can change temperature throughout the night.

It'll cool down to just below 16 degrees Celsius and it'll heat up to 40 degrees or something unbelievably hot. And it'll move you throughout the night. It also has, I think eight sleep hours as well, where it can wake you up with, is it heat? But it does vibration as well, right? It does vibration. It's very annoying because it doesn't stop until you get out of bed. So it's like, what a bastard.

Yeah, so sometimes I kind of said, I'll just, I'll jump up and then I'll jump back and get out. Get back in. Outwarded your bed, you've done well. What about reducing sleep, sorry, reducing the amount of times that you wake up throughout the night then. So that's sleep latency, maybe some GABA,

make sure that people are feeling a little bit. What about deep breathing and stuff like that, actually, for sleep latency? Any other takes? Well, let's just define sleep latency is your time that it takes you to fall asleep. Okay, but when we're getting up throughout the night, okay, so that's a different thing. And some people are waking up to go to the bathroom, usually with men over the age of,

I think it's around 65 to 70, they're waking up at 4am, it's like a thing. Okay, and they're going to the bathroom. All men will worldwide or nationwide are getting up to go and have a whiz at the same time. Exactly. Same time. It's funny. But what can we be doing? Well, you've got to figure out why it is that you're waking up. But in order to, like I said to you, to decrease that sleep latency, that's comes down to not

having a lot of activity happening in your brain and body. Breathing exercises. Okay. Breathing exercises are amazing. It calms down your sympathetic nervous system, activates the parasympathetic rest and digest nervous system. See your karma.

What would be a protocol for that, like box breathing or something? I like box breathing, but I actually have a 1pm and like a 4pm protocol, which is literally Being silent for 10 minutes. That's all it is because I noticed that if you put in too many protocols like sit there put candles on do this Things like this. It doesn't really work out. So all it is it's about 10 minutes of silence It's very hard if you close your eyes and you try and keep that Keep that notion happening, it's very hard.

But you can try it and start off with that. One thing that I woke up this morning, and one of my, she's a portfolio manager, she message me, she's like, had the best sleep of my life and my HRV increase because of this one technique. And I'll tell it to you, we have a tape to your mouth during the night. I've tried it. I've tried it. I've tried it, yes.

It never really seems to stem a mouth. I don't know whether I'm trying to talk in my sleep or something, but yeah, I've tried. Or the sweat may have ripped it off. Not that hot. Come on. I don't know. But I got that. But you, that's a great little hack.

Okay, taping the mouth. Mouth breathing is bad. We don't want to be mouth breathing. So in order to really breathe through your nose through night, the night, you want to tap your mouth, just make sure that you don't have any breathing issues with I want you. Mm-hmm. I've used, so I've just started using this year, nasal strips to open my airway up on my nose.

So you'll have seen athletes use these before. That's really, really nice, especially if you have, like, narrow nasal passages. That makes such a difference. Yeah, it's literally like constantly having your nostrils flared. So there's so much more room. It feels really lovely. It's really satisfying. I have no idea. I haven't done it for long enough,

I've only done it for maybe a week. So I haven't been able to compare, but I've tracked it on my whoop because you can give custom inputs about what you did during the day. So I've got days when I did and days when I didn't and we'll see if that makes any difference. But I mean, by the end of the night,

I've asked Ben Greenfield about this because I think his wife is the most normal person on the planet, and Ben Greenfield is like the complete opposite. And I asked him, what does she think? He's getting into bed, he's got the blue light blockers on, he's got something stuck up his nose, he's got his finger on a HRV monitor, all of this crazy technology.

And apparently his wife just like reads a down-brown novel and falls at and has the perfect eight hours sleep that nobody ever needs to to try and alter. So yeah, I think they're it well, yeah, but there are going to be a lot of very odd or disgruntled partners after someone just decides to go to it. But whatever, you know, you're already married. They can't leave now. Now that you've decided to adopt a weird bedtime habit, I want to talk about the guys that you're dealing with, whether it be athletes or

floor traders, about how you instruct them to stay calm under pressure. No, well that's hard. To do it in a healthy way, it's all about consistency and protocols. So we have this one protocol, which literally every time you think about thought, every time you're freaking out, you have to perform a drill and might be a clicking drill which anchors your thought, okay? Or it might be practicing a double inhale exhale like a physiological side to calm down the nervous system. But what I find is no matter how many protocols you put in place for that moment, it's how strong are you and how strict are you to activate them during that stressful moment?

Okay? So I've got one player on the Miami Heat who I talk to every time he goes on, before he goes on the actual court because he freaks out too much. Okay? And we do video calls. So. And you're talking this guy through some cues. What do you mean when you say either a clicking or a double breath

Inhale to anchor their thoughts? What do you mean? Because when you're when you're freaking out your anxious your mind is going at a million miles And now you're thinking so many things so if you just stop it, okay, and change direction Literally what do you have to do when you're going down a highway? And you want to change direction you have to stop eventually and once you stop Okay, you can stop by doing. So clicking is like a form of your brain is like, okay, I'm going to click and they know through their protocol that in order to click, they have to anchor their thought into something else.

Okay, so that's kind of like noting in mindfulness meditation. Yeah, it's in sports psychology. There's one method where they get you to wear an elastic band around your wrist and every time you have a panic They you slap your wrist. That's very old school though. Yeah I've seen people do not so that's one but also sometimes if I'm talking to someone It's just about they're making things up in their head everything that can go wrong Okay, I'm gonna go on the court. I'm gonna lose this. I'm going to get the ball, I'm not feeling good, it's just calming that down. It's strange to think that players that are professional athletes and do it week in week out still have the same sort of nervousness that a normal person would do before they go and give

a talk or whatever. It is, it gives a different perspective when you see, a good example might be someone like Jake Paul, who is very new into the sport of boxing. But putting him in the athletic foot, like that. I'm trying to be delicate here. But my point is that you have someone who isn't a trained athlete,

who hasn't gone through yours, decades, several iterations of walking out in front of a huge crowd. And yeah, I, I don't know, I have a friend who's a very high level DJ and he, every single time before he steps behind the decks, throws up every single time, every single one of them because that's how nervous he is because he wants to do well. And he, he's playing in front of 10,000 people at Madison Square Garden or whatever it might be and every single time before he goes out he throws up. Wow, that's, you know, look, anybody, I say athlete, but I mean anybody performing at a high level

and he obviously is too. Yeah, it's scary. What about research on heat and cold exposure? Is there any new cool stuff that you've seen recently on that? I'm actually about to get. I love cold immersion. I speak about it. I've got a podcast dedicated to it. I'm actually getting my first ice bath. It's going to come here to Sydney because I can't fit it in the New York City apartment.

But it's absolutely incredible. Okay, there's so much research around this to suggest that this is so important to do, to literally bring down the inflammatory biomarkers responsible for inflammation. That's the first thing, immersing yourself in cold water. We know that there is a pathway now where you get into cold water and the pathway can go up to your brain and have a really good effect of decreasing neural inflammation. But one thing that I love about it is that once you get into cold water within about five minutes, you get this massive release of not just cold shock proteins, but we get a massive

release of noraponephrine. And that is that it's both a hormone, and a neurotransmitter. And as a neurotransmitter, it is responsible for focus and vigilance. So if you wanna get that, I think everyone, everyone should be doing some form of cold therapy. I absolutely love it.

I do it. You just gotta be really, really strict to not do it straight after training. Because once we do that, what we do is we block the whor-medic response of hypertrophy. So, when we go and work out, we're working out our muscles, we're strengthening them, we want them to create a bit of information so they tear a bit and rebuild. That's what makes them stronger. And if we go and stop that rebuilding by blocking those pathways through cold, we're not going

to get the effects. So cold immersion, love it. Everybody should get a cold bath. Give me your optimal cold immersion protocol across a week. What would you prescribe to someone? I don't do it for less than 12 minutes. And that's really hard, depending at the temperature. So I'm not going to speak Fahrenheit because it's not my first language, but in terms of I do, I've got a thermometer inside the bath and it drops to around 12 degrees, which is freezing. Celsius or yeah. Okay. And you're doing that for you said 12, no less than 12 minutes. Very less than 12 minutes. Sometimes it goes down to nine. How many times a week? less than 12 minutes. Sometimes it goes down to nine. How many times a week? I try and do this five times a week. Wow. So I saw Hubermann had posted, not long ago, saying that the most recent research suggested at nine minutes of cold

exposure a week. And you're doing what? 60. So this seems to be a big disparity between those two. What's the reason for choosing 12 and five times? Well, I mean, that's what when I found this, you know, in the scientific literature, it said, you've got to be doing this at least once a day, really. It's like when people say, well, why can't I just get into it? What's the cryotherapy chamber? It's not going to do you anything. Oh, yeah, it's not going to do you anything. It's just, I feel like it's gimmicky. And no one's going to, no one has $90. I think it's like $90 a session to do you anything. It's just I feel like it's gimmicky and no one's going to no one has $90 I think it's like $90 a session to do this every day. I think at bare minimum the science says okay bare minimum three times a week

Okay, bare minimum I'm just crazy. All right Just having a coffee in a month. Have you had a look at contrast therapy? Ronda Patrick was talking about this that's going from the heat to the cold. Is there any research about whether that has effective, more effective, less effective? She actually says, I saw, she put this, she was on Joe Rogan and she said that the science,

she goes, it makes her feel good. So it can have a placebo effect, but the science isn't there to suggest that you're getting more benefits from doing cold shock, heat shock, cold shock, heat shock. So they're two different, they're two different pathways. I prefer the cold, but I, you know, if I can one day get a sauna in for a sauna, single person, then I would, because the effects that you get on the cardiovascular system are fantastic. Imagine saying that you can get those effects, the heat shock proteins that are both neuroprotective, and they help with the cardiovascular system.

Imagine if you could do that for 20 minutes and mimic a one hour or two hour ride on the bike. I'd rather do the sauna, right? Yeah, there's a place in Austin called Kueh, which is a wellness recovery center, ketamine psychotherapy and vitamin IVs and stuff, but it also has a two cold tubs and a sauna and they do contrast therapy or they suggest contrast therapy. And it is one of the good things about going from the sauna into the ice bath is that because

you are so hot, when you get into the ice bath, the initial cold is easier to tolerate, and then as you stay in there over time, obviously that, what's it called, agitator in the tank is continuing to flow cold water in, but you are, it's the reverse of the frog in boiling water. It's the man in tiny swim shorts in the ice bath, but it gets easier to do it that way. And then I also find that getting into the sauna

after that as well, you've got a little bit of time to bring yourself back up. So I think your tolerance on both increases, but yeah, I'd be interested to know what research ends up coming out around contrast therapy about whether going from the extreme of heat to cold and back again actually is advantageous or not.

Let's look at it clinically and this is why I don't think it's the best thing. If you're putting your body into a hypothermic and then a hypothermic, hot, low, cold, I don't think that's good for the systems. I don't think doing that to your heart or your body would be beneficial. I think just dropping it down and staying there and just doing that and maybe later on a few hours later, getting into the opposite effect would be better. I don't think going like this is necessary

because I've actually tried it. I've got to tell you, I was so dizzy. I almost, I felt like I was going to faint. What about heat exposure? What's your favorite protocol for that? Or how much would you suggest that people do? So you can also do this by getting into a hot bath, which is something that I do with magnesium, okay, because I don't have a sauna. Hang on, magnesium in the bath.

Yeah, magnesium salt. Okay, why? Yeah, magnesium salt. Okay, why? Carbs my body down, makes me very, very sleepy. You're literally soaking in the magnesium through the largest organ in the body, which is the skin. And heat makes you sleepy anyway. So it prepares you for bed. That's another protocol people should try.

But I think the protocol is to get the benefits for the cardiovascular system at the heat shock proteins. I think you're going to stay in there around 20 minutes, 23 minutes. Okay. I've definitely noticed when you go into a sauna, if you're in there for about 10 to 15 minutes, it begins to get difficult. And then if you stay in for a little longer, there's a tingly sensation. Is that the heat shock proteins? Is that the feedback of the heat shock proteins being released? Or is there any way that you know when you've got to that?

Because you can be in a sauna for 20 minutes or 23 minutes or 25 minutes. But presumably, if it was 20 degrees hotter, you would have hit that point after 15 minutes or whatever it is. So is there a way that people can tell when they've been in for long enough? I'll tell you something that's really fascinating. Okay, have you heard of hormisus? Yes. So it's pretty much when your body has to survive, so survival of the fittest. Okay, so when you feel at that moment where you're about to die, okay? That's when the effect comes in, and that's the hallmark response.

So if you look at longevity studies, if you look at centenarians, people who live to 100, it's because they've gotten into that state of whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger. That's what hall mesas is. So if you can be doing this, that's why heat shock proteins

and why cold shock proteins exist to put us in that survival mode. Okay. So it's at that point. That's why I don't really believe in cold showers to mimic this. People like, well, I do cold therapy, I do cold showers. It's like, but it's just a cold shower. That's not shocking your body to that survival mode, right?

There's a big difference between immersing yourself for five minutes and even doing a cold shower because it's never It never just sinks in through your skin for as long right there's not as much time that your body is being in contact with cold Temperatures you get out of the ice bath and you shivering sometimes if you've been in for long enough Oh, yeah, and that shivering is a great response Okay, that's that that non shivering thermogenesis or the shivering actually activates brown fat or brown adipose tissue. Am I right in thinking that you're supposed to have wrists and clavicle under as well for something to do with brown tissue? I should literally put it in the neck down. Okay, is that just to immerse the most of you or is there something special about those areas? No, that's just to get the most of the immersion possible.

Sometimes I put my feet out the end of the bath, but what about psychedelics and LSD for enhancing sport performance? Didn't you look at something to do with this? I did. I wrote a stuff stack. So I have a weekly newsletter that goes out. And we tapped into this because I spoke to Dave Robin, and he's at the forefront, he's

a psychiatrist, he's at the forefront of psychedelic medicine. And look, I think it's going to be great, not for sports performance. I think it's going to be great for the treatment of depression. And I'm all for it. I think it's I think it's amazing. I'm excited to see how it can be done clinically with a trained professional, but only in that area. I don't know if I would think that there's any correlation. Maybe this is just me. Correlation yet with sporting performance.

You don't think players playing off their face, imagining bright green footballs flying towards them and stuff like that in a dragon in the sky? You don't think that's performance enhancing? Well, I wrote about this famous, I figure out what his name is, I figure out what year, but he had his best hit. He was a baseball player. He's best hit done on LSD. No way.

Yeah, yeah, I've got it on my sub stack. I'll send it to you, but it's, um, it's fascinating research. And that could just be because maybe he was calmer and he was just, you know, apparently it, you know, when you're dosing or micro dosing with psychedelics, whichever one maybe it's LSD or psilocybin, you are tapping into that creativity mode. Okay. So maybe that could have had an effect on it. Well, they're definitely could have had an effect on it. Well, they're definitely connecting synapses that don't usually, right?

Different areas of the brain that aren't usually communicating with each other is enabled when the default mode network gets switched off. It does surprise me that someone's able to do swing anything at anything if they're on LSD, but. Well, it depends on dosage as well. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. True.

If it's whatever, what's it? Sub awareness below the threshold of awareness, whatever it is. Well, you can tap into the area that's going to be clinically beneficial for you, or you can tap into that one that makes people jump off a roof, right? Get that one. Get the second one. That's the one that we want. What was it? I heard you talking about, so we've spoken about throwing a tennis ball at a wall. What was the fact, something to do with standing on your left foot and throwing with your right? What was that?

Yeah. So left brain and right brain. We've got two hemispheres. They're connected by a bridge. Left part of the brain is responsible for the right part of the body, right side of the body, right side of the brain is responsible for the left side of the body, it's like this acts, it's a control actual, it's how we see as well. I love the fact that you can be working on the left brain, okay, your brain is having to think and see,

but you're actually producing the movement with your right hand. So we do a lot of things where I'll get them to lift their leg up, their left leg up, so they're standing on their right leg and they're throwing the ball to the wall with their right hand. Also, one thing that I get all my athletes to do at some point is wear an eye patch. Literally, if you go to the farmer's thing, you can eye patch for if you've got an eye infection, put that on and it blocks out one part of their eye or it blocks out the vision of their eye. So this, that means if you've got an eye infection, put that on and it blocks out one part of their eye or

blocks out the vision of their eye. So this, that means if you're going to block out the right eye, means the left eye is going to get stronger because it's only got one eye to see. So it's going to have to scan everything. So it's progressive overload for your eye. Are you familiar with slap block? Do you know what a slap block is? No, that was going to say are they the block. Do you know what a slack block is? No, that was going to say it by the the goggles. No, so you know what a slack line is, right, which is kind of like a tight rope thing that you tie between trees and hippies do in LA. So the slack block is a small around about two feet long and it's a kind of like a skateboard deck that's about the width of a foot and it sits on a pyramid of foam.

You have seen this. Yeah, I have seen this, yeah. Yeah, they're dope. They're so good. Yeah, really, really good. And that was balancing, right? Correct, yeah. So what I was doing, I ruptured my Achilles about 18 months ago and one of the things that

I was advised to do was any sort of standing on one leg while throwing a tennis ball at the wall. So the reason to do that is that it causes you to need to readjust constantly. You know, the ball goes to the wall, you got to readjust it, catch it again, got to readjust. And I worked up to doing it on the slack block and what you do is you take columns of foam out so you can imagine that there's columns cut through it. And as you take more of them out, there's less structure below the skateboard deck, which means that it becomes more and more difficult to keep your balance on, and over time you can work, so it's in the kitchen, so a lot of the time I'll go in and one of the boys will be stood

on it, and like trying to chop stuff, and like this is a recipe for disaster. But doing that, while throwing a ball at the wall, the progression that you see in terms of your balance, your judgment was really, really high. You know what's interesting, they say that you can't have proper brain health without having good balance. Now there's a little area underneath the brain, it's separate from the brain, but it's called the cerebellum. It literally means in Latin mini brain. It looks like a mini brain and that's the area that's responsible for posture and balance. So you can literally train that area of the

brain by standing on one leg or by standing on a balance board or by standing on a whatever you're doing. And that's another thing that we do. But one thing, you know, I mentioned earlier was these strobe goggles. So we have these goggles right and they've imagined just one part of the right side and it's cut into four, it's cut in quadrants. So I can program it for my athletes to see all three quadrants and then block out the upper right. And what does that do? Why did they need that? Well, we see in the forequad, and so that means that they're going to be strengthening all of the areas in the eye except for the one blacked out, okay, to overcompensate. Where can people go if they want to check out

your substack and follow more of the stuff that you do online? You can find me on Instagram, Louise and Eccola, or the diamond vases my handle. Or if you really want to get more information on brain health, upgrading brain performance, you can go to our substack, which is neuroathletics.substack.com. Sweet, we made it. Thank you, Louisa. You're Chris. Yeah, oh, yeah, oh, yeah, oh, yeah.