Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - Louisa Nicola on Optimizing Brain Health

Starting point is 00:00:00 When we engage in aerobic exercise of around 30 minutes or more, we release these specialized neurotropic factors, right? So one of them is called BDNF, brain-derived neurotropic factor. And it turns out that when we exercise, we have a robust release of this molecule. And this specifically enhances neurogenesis, which is the creation of new brain cells, neurons. Hello and welcome to Muscle for Life. Thank you for joining me today for a new episode on brain health, which is something that we are either helping or hindering through our daily actions.

Starting point is 00:00:43 Just like really every other aspect of our health and our fitness. It's just most of us fitness people think more about those other aspects, like our body composition, for example, than our brain health. But as we get older, the stakes get higher with brain health because maintaining a healthy brain, a functional brain, is not just a nice to have. It is essential for maintaining a high quality of life, a vibrant life, a productive life. of key parts of our brain health and brain function, we are going to experience that as losing a part of ourselves, a part of our personality, a part of our capabilities, a part of what makes life worth living. And so we want to avoid that for as long as we can.

Starting point is 00:01:39 And so that's what this episode is about. How do we achieve a high level of brain health and function? How do we maintain that for the duration? And today you are going to be learning from my guest, Louisa Nicola, who is a neurophysiologist and Alzheimer's disease researcher, a human performance coach, and the founder and head performance advisor of NeuroAthletics, founder and head performance advisor of NeuroAthletics, which is a company dedicated to helping people achieve peak performance through neuroscience. Before we get started, have you ever wondered what strength training split you should follow? What rep ranges you should work in? How many sets you should do per workout or per week? Well, I created a free 60-second training quiz that will answer

Starting point is 00:02:27 those questions for you and others, including how frequently you should train each major muscle group, which exercises you should do, what supplements you should consider, which ones are at least worth taking, and more. To take this quiz and to get your free personalized training plan, go to muscleforlife.show, muscleforlife.show slash training quiz, answer the questions, and learn exactly what to do in the gym to gain more muscle and strength. Hello, Louisa. It's nice to meet you. Hi, it's nice to meet you. Hi, it's nice to meet you. Yeah, thank you for taking the time to do this. I appreciate it.

Starting point is 00:03:09 I'm super excited. Yeah, it's a good topic. Like I was saying just a moment ago offline, it is very topical. I see more and more people talking about brain health and caring about brain health, which is cool. And when Damien, who works with me on the podcast, proposed you, I immediately liked it because I have not produced in-depth content on brain health in particular. I've commented on it kind of tangentially here and there, but this is going to be a good episode because it's going to touch on some things that I've already seen people asking about and just responding to, again, and other things that I've produced. And so where I thought would be a good place to start is just a comment from me that something I've seen regarding general health. And I wanted to then segue to brain health from

Starting point is 00:04:06 that. So something I've seen really since I've been in the health and fitness racket 10 or 11 years now is that most people seem to put a lot more importance on diet than exercise for the purpose of maintaining health, improving health, achieving better longevity. And I, as I've learned more and more, my position has come to, based on just my understanding of relevant literature, has come to the conclusion that it's probably the opposite, that for the purpose of improving health, for the purpose of maintaining health, for the purpose of minimizing disease, dysfunction, living a long life, regular exercise of at least a moderate, let's say moderate to high intensity exercise, and that would be strength training and cardiovascular as well, that doing that is actually way more important than eating well. Now, you should do both if you want the best results, but if you only had, let's say, the willpower or the inclination to do one, I would argue that do the exercise. If you do that, that is going to give you a lot more

Starting point is 00:05:19 bang for your buck if we're just looking at health. Is that true to some degree for brain health as well? Well, look, so the way I would rather address this is more so from a longevity standpoint. And what you're alluding to is the fact that when you look at all of these studies that are done on longevity, we really have three pillars that we can choose from, right? And it's the three pillars that I often speak about, which is exercise, sleep, and nutrition. It's really important to differentiate between the things that we really need to do compared to the quote-unquote accessory items, which is what I call them. So you can imagine a cupcake, right?

Starting point is 00:06:06 You've got the cake and then you've got the icing on top. The cake which sets the foundation of your entire health span and lifespan, meaning the quality of your life and how long you want to live. These really come down to Mother Nature's gifts, which is exercise, sleep, and what you put into your mouth. Everything else outside of that is generally an accessory. It's the cherry on top. I'm talking about the cold baths. I'm talking about the saunas, the supplements that you take. These are all accessory items. So we have to, without a doubt, we have to get these three things in line every single

Starting point is 00:06:46 day, understanding how to exercise, how much to exercise, where you sit in terms of how strong are you in terms of your gender and your age, how well you're sleeping. That comes down to quality, quantity, and consistency, and then the quality of your food as well. And then if you actually really dig deep into all of the data, it turns out that the greatest amount of effect that you're going to have on longevity outcomes, meaning, okay, if we want to live really well, live a really good quality life until 100, what matters most and what's going to push the needle the most? And it turns out that, yes, it is exercise. Because if you eat very bad, or let's just say if you don't eat a well-rounded

Starting point is 00:07:35 diet, it will not have the same effects as if you ate a really good diet and didn't exercise. So you're right. It turns out, which we're going to get into the science of, it turns out that exercise, whether it's the moderate, whether it's vigorous physical activity, or whether it's strength training, it turns out that these forms of exercise or these forms of activities do weigh in and have more of an effect than nutrition. And I also have to preface this entire conversation with saying that nothing should be guesswork. Everything, you should be looking under the hood at least twice a year. And by that, I mean, you should be doing thorough blood work. Another thing that I don't see happening often enough is people not getting blood work taken,

Starting point is 00:08:27 not understanding their biomarkers, and therefore not understanding how fit they are, how healthy they are. I don't know if you agree with this, but a lot of people are just walking around with this fake health, meaning that they think they're healthy because they don't have a disease. But health isn't just the absence of disease. Health really should be, are you waking up motivated, excited, with a high libido, with a great appetite? Are you feeling strong? That is the picture definition of health. If you wake up and you are tired, you have brain fog, you are lethargic, you are not

Starting point is 00:09:07 motivated, you are unhappy, we have to look at that and ask ourselves why. And the best way to do this is by first going to the drawing board and by looking at blood work to see physiologically what's going on. That's a good point. It's something that I didn't pay any attention to up until, well, I actually just, ironically, a week ago or so, sent my first few vials of blood off to a lab because I'm 39. I've never had any of these issues. I've always had good health by those standards. I mean, as I started, things changed a little bit when I started having kids because then sleep gets a little bit worse. And then with sleep getting worse, everything gets worse, but still generally have maintained good health by those standards. But to your point, it's also just general medical advice. Once you turn 40,

Starting point is 00:10:07 you should start doing regular blood work anyway. It really is something that you should do. And so curious to see the results. I mean, I'll be surprised if there's anything wrong, because if there is, I suppose I don't really have any symptoms. And also I've joked with my wife and friends that if something is really wrong, then I'm just cursed because I don't know if I could do anything else, quote unquote, right in terms of how I eat, how I sleep. I don't drink alcohol. I don't smoke or vape. I eat very little sugar. Not that that matters that much, but it's just not really a big part of my diet.

Starting point is 00:10:45 I'll have some here and there. Lots of fruit, vegetables. What else could I do? I lift weights for a few hours per week. I do cardio for a few hours per week. So it would be ironic. I maintain a good body composition. It would be ironic if something was really amiss because they're actually, I don't know

Starting point is 00:11:01 what the solution would be. What else could I do other than, I guess, take drugs that I would have to take because it's a problem and there's no way that supplements would be the answer to something like that. So anyway, but I totally agree. And I think it's smart. It's smart to do that regularly because even if I take myself, okay, maybe there's not something majorly wrong, but maybe there are maybe not deficiencies, but maybe there are some insufficiencies that I'm just not aware of that I could get ahead of that if I don't address may cause issues that are harder to address.

Starting point is 00:11:39 It could take years to develop. And so that would show up in blood. Whereas if I didn't do that, I would just be basing it on criteria like you said. How do I feel? How good can I go? Yeah. And yes, look, first and foremost, you said the word symptoms. Symptoms are wonderful because they are the body's only way of communicating with you. Your body communicates to you via symptoms.

Starting point is 00:12:10 You mentioned that you don't have symptoms, right? But this then brings me to the world of Alzheimer's disease, which is my world. It's where I, this is what I research. This is what I publish about. And what we see is that you can go symptom free and then all of a sudden your first symptom is the first sign of cognitive impairment. So just because you are also in the absence of symptoms doesn't mean we shouldn't be getting the regular checks because these diseases, the horseman diseases, as Dr.

Starting point is 00:12:42 Peter Atiyah calls them, cardiovascular disease, Alzheimer's cancer, they are not a one point in your life. They occur about your age in your 30s, 40s, 50s, and then your first symptom, which is that, oh, what street do I live on? Oh, what's my neighbor's name? Where are my keys? They tend to happen at around 70 years old. And earlier you mentioned how important exercise is. I wanted to come back and just ask you to explain why. Why is exercise so important for longevity, especially compared to diet, which is where, again, I see most people who are at least willing to think about these types of things and think about

Starting point is 00:13:46 their future in this way, most people tend to default to diet. And one theory for that could be that exercise is harder than diet. I was going to say it's because it's easier. It just takes more work. It's easier, especially if diet is just some fad diet bullshit trend, like eat three Brazil nuts every day, and then you just won't have these problems. Or just don't eat any vegetables anymore. Just eat meat. Oh, you like ribeyes with sticks of butter? That's all you need to eat now, and you'll be fine. That sounds nice. That's what people, they want to hear that. They don't want to hear,

Starting point is 00:14:21 no, no, you actually have to exercise basically every day. You don't have to kill yourself every day, but you got to do it whether you like it or not. You got to do strength training. You also have to do cardio as well. If you really want to make sure that you are giving yourself the best chance for a long, healthy life, it's not enough to just bang weights. It's good, but you should also really be doing this cardio. It seems like many people are less receptive to that. Yeah. And it's because it is harder. But let's actually reverse engineer everything.

Starting point is 00:14:54 Let's talk about what are the things that we need? What are some vital signs that we need? Let's just call it at the age of 80 in order to have a good quality life. And by the way, everybody's different. This is like, I've done hundreds of podcasts and I get a lot of feedback and they are, well, Louisa, we don't care. We will just, when we reach our time and our time's up, then that's it. And that's great, right?

Starting point is 00:15:17 I totally disagree with that, by the way. You probably do as well. Yeah. You probably do as well. I disagree with that mentality because it's very hard for us to imagine a situation that would be bad or worse and really understand how bad that's going to be. It's easier to just say that. To be like, oh, well, when my time's up, I'll just go however I'm going to go. Maybe I'll just wheel myself off a cliff, whatever. I guarantee you that person is not going to be so stoical and philosophical when they're 70 and they can't remember what street they live on and they haven't done these other things.

Starting point is 00:16:01 So they have a hard time even sitting down and standing up. They're not going to be saying that anymore. They're going to say, I wish I would have taken this more seriously 40 years ago. Yeah. And I see it time and time again. And the one thing that we have to understand as well is, like I mentioned, my area of research, Alzheimer's disease, it is the only disease where you literally lose yourself. You lose who you are. I've had many cases where I will see somebody and they will immediately, I could say, hi, Betty. And they will say, who is Betty? And that is the most scariest thing for me, you know, because out of all of the diseases, this is the one where you actually lose who you are.

Starting point is 00:16:49 But let's go back to the longevity piece and we have to reverse engineer. What is it that you should be able to or want to be able to do in your 80s? Well, you would most likely want to be able to walk around. Walk pain-free, walk injury-free, walk maybe surgery-free. You want to be able to, in the unlikely event, be able to get down, get up off of the ground, or maybe pick your grandkids up. All of these require endurance or cardiorespiratory fitness to an extent, because you have to remember when you're 80, you do exert energy in order to just get up out of bed, get up off a chair, go to the toilet. These things actually exert energy. And if your VO2 max falls too much, these everyday activities become quite difficult.

Starting point is 00:17:38 Yeah. And we're going to get into that. And then you also have to maintain some level of strength. You have to, it takes strength in your lower body to walk to the grocery store, to pick up groceries, to walk up a few steps. This requires strength. So therefore, lower body strength is very important. And in fact, when you look at the studies, when it comes to longevity, the best studies we have is leg strength. Notice how I said strength, not size. Although muscle size is a very big, it's got a very big link to longevity. It turns out that the strength of the muscle,

Starting point is 00:18:13 not just the mass, is more important. Then we have to think, okay, great. If we want that, what do we have to start doing? The first thing that we really have to understand is we have to understand where are you currently sitting. So if you are a 40-year-old man or woman, whatever age you are, one of the best ways to measure your fitness is via a VO2 max test, which is what you mentioned. And these are really easy. It's a measure of cardiorespiratory fitness. Basically, it's measuring how much oxygen can you use during your upper limits. The test is brutal. And no matter if you're doing it in a lab, and by the way,

Starting point is 00:18:50 no matter where you are in the world, these are really popular. You can probably go and get one done. I think at most of them might cost you $99. Even a really well-conducted VO2 max test, they're really brutal, but they will give you a baseline understanding of your fitness and it will benchmark you against your age and your gender. And then you'll be able to think, okay, great. Right now I'm sitting at maybe a 40 milligrams of oxygen, or maybe I'm sitting at a 50, depending on how fit you are. And then you can scale up to from that. But at the age of 40, we do see a decline in our VO2 max. And the way that I like to tell people, the way that I want everyone to think about it, is you want to have reserve.

Starting point is 00:19:43 Think about your fitness and your cardiorespiratory fitness and your VO2 max as your reserve. There is no upper limits to it. So there is no upper limits. If you keep getting fitter and fitter, there's no detriments to that. You want to get as fit as you can when you're young and try and maintain that every single year because God forbid something happens. Let's just say you need to go into emergency foot or leg surgery and that's kept you out of, you know, that's keeping you in hospital or sedentary for a few weeks. You lose your fitness then.

Starting point is 00:20:18 So you want to have enough reserve as much as possible. And every time you move up in the fitness scale in that VO2 max score, the more life you are putting onto your years of being here. So that's really, really important. And then we also have to understand that there are weekly requirements, right? So when it comes to actual how much you're exercising, right now, the CDC, their physical activity guidelines state that we should be getting at minimum 150 minutes to 300 minutes a week of moderate to vigorous physical activity. I don't like the wording. Physical activity is really, if you look up the definition, it is anything that you're doing when you're not seated. So I don't agree with that

Starting point is 00:21:12 statement because my mother says to me all the time, but Louisa, I did my exercise today. I was out doing the gardening and I was putting the clothes on the line. I said, well, that's physical activity. But her nomenclature is really the same as the CDC guidelines. I think we need to change that because we need to be exercising. Emphasis on vigorous. Physical activity, fine, but what does vigorous mean? Yeah. Vigorous is hit, really. That's when you're doing the upper limits of your, around 80% of your maximum heart rate. Yeah. Or in strength training, it's when you're doing the upper limits of your around 80% of your maximum heart rate. Or in strength training, it's where you're lifting heavy weights close to failure.

Starting point is 00:21:49 You're exerting yourself intensely. Like 80% of your 1RM, yeah. But I have to tell you that a lot of the research that's done on this quote-unquote 150 minutes to 300 minutes when it comes to longevity, it actually skews further to 300 minutes a week. So I think we need to change the physical activity guidelines to say that we should be doing 300 minutes of moderate to vigorous physical activity or moderate to vigorous exercise per week. So anyone at home listening, you want to be doing some form of cardio, if you will, your long bike rides, your long runs, whatever that is, you want to be doing that for 300 minutes a week. It's not that hard to do. And it's up to you, what, if you do the

Starting point is 00:22:38 math, a half an hour a day? Yeah. Yeah. It's close. when we're talking about five hours per week. And how does strength training factor into that? Would you say that that should be independent of strength training? we also lose muscle strength and muscle mass as we age. And it tends to be a steep decline, not just a little, you know, it is steep. It gets steeper as we get older. So in order to build up that strength, we need to be working at around, you know, I'm not a personal trainer, but to build that strength, you do need to be doing at least four strength sessions per week. strength, you do need to be doing at least four, four strength sessions per week. And for people who are feeling maybe a little bit discouraged because I'm just thinking about people who are, you know, just it's a lifestyle thing. It's not that they're unwilling to do it. It's they're thinking, okay, so now I'm supposed to be doing five hours of cardio per week, which again, somebody might say, I'm willing to do it,

Starting point is 00:23:49 and I'm supposed to get into the gym. And let's say a strength training session to be effective probably needs to be at least 30 minutes. It's probably going to range between 30 and 60 minutes. And so they're thinking I'm supposed to do up to maybe another three or four hours of strength training per week, and I just can't do that, or maybe other people are just not up to doing that yet for whatever reason, what would you say, where do you start to get, just looking at the Pareto principle and how it applies to so many things, where does that 20% that delivers 80%, or at least when do you start moving into that spectrum where, again, you've made it, I think, clear that if you really want to put yourself in the best position to thrive for the rest of your life, this is what you're going to do. You're going to do five hours or more of cardio per week. It's going to be a lot of steady state cardio, which is great for improving your VO2 max. If you want to do some high intensity

Starting point is 00:24:42 stuff, you can, but obviously you're not going to do five hours of sprinting per week. That's not what you're saying. No, that's not necessary. And you're going to be doing at least a few hours, let's say a strength training per week. And more is even better. I mean, there's probably a point of diminishing returns, but that would at least represent a, you would probably, it sounds like you'd give people an A for that, minimally like a B plus for that. That's pretty good. And though for people who can't do that or don't want to do that just yet, is there a lighter version of that where you start to enjoy many of these benefits? It can get better, but you are now markedly better than doing less than this threshold.

Starting point is 00:25:33 You know what I mean? Yeah. And so the biggest marker of longevity is actually adherence. So we don't want to go out and just smash it and just kill ourselves in the meantime and end up hating it. Because remember, our motivation molecule, which is dopamine, we have a dopamine loop that is ongoing. And we close the loop every time we set a goal and we hit that goal.

Starting point is 00:25:59 And that is what propels us to get up the next day and put our shoes on. So you don't want to be doing anything first out of the ranks. You really want to go slow and steady. And some of the best improvements in strength, muscle mass, and even fitness comes from those who are completely sedentary and then they go out and they just start walking. So the best way to do this, in my opinion, is to start walking. If you're completely sedentary, 15 minutes a day. Move that to 30 minutes a day. That's going to be the easiest way to get started. Start with one day a week. If you do not strength training, just start by going to the gym just one day a week. Get used to the weights. I also am a big proponent in hiring professional trainers to help you. I've got one

Starting point is 00:26:46 for my parents because why would they go to the gym? They don't know how to lift weights. So I'm like, you're just going to waste your time. You're going to waste your money. You don't even know what you're doing. The last time my mother was in a weight room, I was in Australia. I watched her. She didn't know I was there, but I was spying. I got kicked out of the gym. And I saw her lifting one kilo weights, dumbbells. That's like three pounds. And I said, what are you doing with that? That's not going to do anything. So that's when I said to her, that's it, we're getting you a trainer. So everyone should start with what they can. But then unfortunately, sometimes even for me, I have been so busy today.

Starting point is 00:27:22 As soon as we get off this, I'm going to go and run and only do, I'll probably only get to do a 45 minute session at the gym, but I run there. So I don't like it either. I actually hate it. I'm an endurance athlete by heart. I raced triathlons for Australia. So I love endurance. I could run all day, but to lift weights, to me, mentally frustrating. Like I have to talk myself into it every day, but I know the science behind it, what it's going to do to me. So I'd love to just touch on, because hopefully we can inspire the audience if we touch on some of the science behind why this is just so good for you. Yeah, that was actually my next question.

Starting point is 00:28:02 And specifically, how exercise affects brain health. most vascular rich organ in the entire body, meaning that it has the most amount of arteries, veins, and vessels, blood vessels, right? And it's a very hungry organ. It represents 2% of our entire body weight. It consumes 20% of the calories that we intake, and it's very energetically demanding. So it needs, it requires oxygen and nutrients to survive, right? Every single part of your brain is accounted for. And it turns out that at the age of 80, our brain begins to atrophy. That's just part of the natural brain aging process, right? We're all going to experience, you know, thinning of the cortex as we get older.

Starting point is 00:29:02 It turns out that the brain is that type of, it's that organ that says, if you don't use me, you'll lose me. And if we don't get blood flow to the brain, a certain amount of blood flow to the brain every day, it ends up atrophying. So we need as much blood flow as possible. How do we get blood flow to the brain? Well, yes, it's happening when we're sedentary, but we can actually get a profusion of blood flow when we exercise. And one of the best ways to do that is from our zone two, moderate physical activity, running or exercising. And that's what aerobic exercise does. You're pumping blood to the brain. It's delivering oxygen and nutrients to it. So that's one of the best reasons why we run or we

Starting point is 00:29:54 do aerobic training for brain health. The next one is, and this came down to the first studies that were ever done on Alzheimer's disease, brain aging, dementia, and exercise. And what they found was that when we engage in aerobic exercise of around 30 minutes or more, we release these specialized neurotropic factors, right? So one of them is called BDNF, the brain-derived neurotropic factor. And it turns out that when we exercise, we have a robust release of this molecule. And this specifically enhances neurogenesis, which is the creation of new brain cells, neurons. And it specifically happens in an area in the brain called the hippocampus. The hippocampus, which lives deep within the

Starting point is 00:30:45 temporal lobes, it's this area of the brain that is responsible for memory, learning, memory consolidation and formation. Arguably, it is the first thing to go during mild cognitive impairment and Alzheimer's disease, which is why we get memory complaints. Short-term memory tends to go. And some of the best studies that have been done have shown that aerobic activity actually grows the hippocampus. So your hippocampus grows in volume, so it grows in size, but also the density. So you can actually see proliferation of these neurons within that structure. So we now have evidence that exercise in that form can help with mild cognitive impairment and overall brain health.

Starting point is 00:31:36 And then strength training, how does that, does it complement what we're accomplishing with or does it do anything unique in the context of brain health? When you think about aerobic activity, you're really thinking about BDNF, but when you think about high intensity physical activity, right? So if anybody wants to even improve their efficiency, okay, if you want to improve your mitochondrial efficiency, which is one of the big proponents of longevity, the powerhouses of the cell, that's where your zone two is going to really play out. So zone two, which is around 65% of your maximum heart rate, you'll get this if you go and do a VO2 max test. But the best way to know that you're in zone two is like with a talk test, right? When you can exercise, you can

Starting point is 00:32:21 maintain exercise, like you're huffing and puffing, but you can also have a conversation. When you're in that zone, you want to be in that zone for three hours a week. So you're exerting all of the neurotropic factors that I just mentioned, BDNF. You're getting blood flow to the brain. But then if you want to increase your VO2 max, you want to bump it up and work at that vigorous zone. So maybe at around 80% to 90% of your maximum heart rate, you want to do that for around 20 minutes a week if you want to push the needle on your fitness

Starting point is 00:32:50 scores. And when you're doing that, you're also exerting a number of other beneficial factors. One of them is lactate. So lactate is really great and that actually helps with pushing out even more BDNF. So lactate also acts as a fuel for the brain during that vigorous physical activity. So we want that. Then if we move into strength or resistance training, that's where I think you're going to get the biggest bang for your buck. So if we even go, you know how you mentioned earlier, exercise or nutrition, I said exercise. If we even go further down and you said, well, if we had to choose for long-term brain health and Alzheimer's disease, what would it be? Unfortunately for me, it would be weight training. I don't like that, but that's

Starting point is 00:33:38 where we see a whole other host of benefits that happen from weight training. One is, okay, yes, we get an increase in skeletal muscle mass. If we have more muscle, we have more mitochondria. And we know from studies in centenarians, we see that they have more mitochondria than people who don't live to 100, right? So that's really important. More muscle mass, also more leg strength will help us not fall when we're 80 and maybe it will help us on unsteady surfaces. And maybe, I mean, that's a fairly low bar, especially for those of us who are in pretty good shape and plan on staying that way. I think you and I, when we think about being 80, we want to be able to do more than just

Starting point is 00:34:26 not fall and break ourselves. Ideally, we still can be active in some way and still have, even if it's just playing pickleball or something, I don't know. Exactly. I want to be able to actually run or do a triathlon with my grandchild. Yeah, there you go. I'm putting that out there. Yeah. So what else does strength training do? Well, it's actually really beautiful because what happens is when we do any form of muscle

Starting point is 00:34:58 contraction, when we go to the gym and we're lifting weights, we release from the cells of the muscle, we released these muscle-based proteins. They're called myokines. They live within the cells of the muscle fiber. So when we contract that muscle fiber under tension, let's imagine a bicep curl and we're curling our arm and we contract the muscle fiber, we release these myokines. And these myokines go into the bloodstream and then they go all through the body. We have receptors on almost every organ in our body. We have myokine receptors on our liver, on our heart, on your prostate. We have them everywhere. And when they go into the brain, for example, because we have receptors in our brain,

Starting point is 00:35:45 they help the brain slow down atrophy and they also help with executive functions. Our executive functions live in the frontal lobe of the brain, right behind your forehead. They live in the frontal lobe. It's called the prefrontal cortex. This is what houses who you are. This is what houses your reaction time, your processing speed, your memory, your ability to think. So we need those to survive. And when we have these myokines going in, it's basically acting as fertilizer, if you will. It goes in, and it also helps with the expression of other neurotropic factors. For example, one of my favorite myokines is irisin and it's my favorite one because

Starting point is 00:36:32 it was only recently discovered in the last 10 years and it comes from the name of the Greek god Iris and Iris was a messenger to the god and that's exactly what irison does when it's released from skeletal muscle and it goes into the bloodstream it travels up to the brain it crosses the blood-brain barrier it basically acts as a messenger so it's not doing the work what it does is it goes and it communicates with bdnf and it enables BDNF to express itself even more. We've got other myokines, cathepsin B, myostatin, lactate, and then we've got another really interesting one, which is IL-6. And for years, we've known IL-6, interleukin-6, to be this pro-inflammatory cytokine. It was scary. We're like, we don't want the IL-6. We

Starting point is 00:37:26 want to get rid of IL-6. It's implicated in diseases. However, IL-6 is that bipolar molecule, right? It's the one that says, well, if I'm released, depending on where I'm released, that's how I'm going to act. And it turns out that when released as a myokine through the skeletal muscle, it acts as an anti-inflammatory. And that is so important. So when you exercise, when you're doing strength training specifically, you're getting a whole host of benefits that are so crucial for the long-term health of your brain. That's great. I didn't know that about IL-6. That's interesting. Do you sometimes lack the energy and the motivation to get into the gym? Do you sometimes want to hit the snooze button instead of the squat rack?

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Starting point is 00:40:14 Use the coupon code muscle. Save 20%. Try Pulse risk-free and see what you think. What about brain training? Before I get to other questions this is just there's just so much of this out there little games and things and again a lot of importance can be placed on this i guess you know to give it a fitness analogy to me and i may be wrong so i'm asking it it may seem like uh the the emphasis put on supplementation, where people, whether they're selling supplements or whether they're just hoping to benefit from supplements, where there's way too much importance put on supplements to the exclusion of eating and exercising and so forth. Are brain training games similar to that, or is there actually some validity? Is there a reason to do any of them,

Starting point is 00:41:04 similar to that? Or is there actually some validity? Is there a reason to do any of them? Anything in that realm? Yes and no. Remember, we are all trying to achieve a level of stress in order to adapt. That's who we are as humans. Evolutionarily, what we're trying to do, the only way for you to grow larger muscles is by placing load against a system. And then you adapt to that system and then you get harder and harder and that's the only way you're going to grow right the only way you get fitter is if you keep pushing yourself harder and harder the thing with brain games whatever that is it doesn't matter as long as it's hard but what happens is we get on our app and it turns out that it you know we maybe even you want to play Donkey Kong, for example. Yeah. So Candy Crush is not brain training.

Starting point is 00:41:49 I don't, yeah, no. So what you want to do is you want to actually do some form of hard mental training and couple that with aerobic training. That's where you're going to get the most benefits. where you're going to get the most benefits. And I discovered this back in 2015. So I moved to the US in 2016 and I immediately got picked up by some NBA players. And the first thing I was doing in 2016 was I was doing neuroathletics training with them. So my company, Neuroathletics, that's what it's derived from. And we were doing anything from ball drills where I was just working with hand-eye coordination, visual acuity. We were doing contralateral movements, anything that's going to stress the brain. And let me tell you, I had these guys sweating and I didn't even have them moving that much. But because of the amount of mental stress that I was placing against their nervous system, so much better than playing Sudoku. But look, all you want to do is

Starting point is 00:42:47 you want to maintain something difficult, difficult for your mind. That's why learning is great. And this is why you see accelerated aging when people retire because they're no longer doing that. They're no longer working. They're no longer stressing their mental system. So brain training such as get two balls, tennis balls, throw them against the wall, do some reaction training, do some balance training. That's what's really going to push the needle forward. types of activities, the benefits transfer into other domains not associated with juggling balls or bouncing balls off of walls? Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Like you even look at road, if you look at the statistics of traffic accidents outside of falling asleep at the wheel, a lot of them have to do with reaction time. Our reaction time diminishes as we get older. So this really plays out in everyday tasks, reaction time, the stove, something falling off the stove,

Starting point is 00:43:54 catching it, getting your kid, like any time that you're going to need reaction time. What about processing speed? That also diminishes. Your ability to think about something and react to it intelligently. Your visual system deteriorates as we get older. So work, even that helps. So there are so many, we are using our cognitive functions on a daily basis. And these are the things that improve. Brain training, by the way, adverted commas, if you guys are watching on YouTube, Brain training, by the way, adverted commas if you guys are watching on average, I think, and averages are obviously skewed by a lot of zeros and a lot of high numbers. I think it's one book a year, I think is on average among Americans. Appalling.

Starting point is 00:45:00 Yeah. And there are a lot of people that read, they read no books a year. And so there's reading books and that's great. But then there's reading hard books and those are two different things. And I say that, yeah, I'm reading. So not to go off on a tangent, but I'm ignorant in the world of investing because it's never been very relevant to my life. I've invested primarily in my businesses and that's done well, but now I need to learn about investing outside of private businesses and I just don't know anything about it. So I ask the CEO of my sports nutrition company, he's really into this stuff. So I ask him, give me some book recommendations. So he recommends a book by Bogle on index investing. Good. That was good for me, my level of being completely ignorant. When I started the book, I could define index fund.

Starting point is 00:45:54 I knew that. But I couldn't even define what is a short sale or a futures. I don't know. I didn't know these things. Right? So that's the first book. OK. I read it.

Starting point is 00:46:02 The next book he recommends is a book by David Swenson is his name. And I guess he's a legend because he managed Yale's endowment fund for a couple decades or so or a decade or so. And he took it from, I believe, 1 billion to 20 billion, which is ridiculous in terms of performance and because there were regular distributions, probably of anywhere between 3% and 6% a year. But he's still, even with that, if he didn't have to distribute money every year, it would have been 50 billion. So it's crazy. And so he wrote a book on building a portfolio. Now this book is, he's obviously, he was, he's dead now, he was a professional writing for professionals, and I'm not a professional investor. So this book is hard. I'm spending probably just as much time in ChatGPT asking it to break things down for me than I actually- Summarize this in dot points for a six-year-old. Well, but there are a lot of technical terms. And just going to a dictionary for technical terms

Starting point is 00:47:10 often doesn't work because they're very brief. They don't give you a lot of context. They often contain other jargon that you can get into now. Okay, so now I have to go look at this next word because I don't know what that one is. And then you get in this chain and you might spend 30 minutes trying to sort these words out just to understand the first word. And so GBT, I found, is useful because I can say, I'm ignorant. I don't know very much about this. So help me understand these things. of not just technical jargon, but also just observations, examples, explanations of things, but very little... Again, it's not written for somebody who doesn't know anything about this world. It's written for somebody who knows all this stuff and they're just looking for

Starting point is 00:47:59 Swenson's take on these different asset classes and how you put things together. And so anyway, something I've come back to just because the process has been a little bit infuriating sometimes and partly because, and I don't blame my CEO who recommended it, but partly because I'm like, this is such a bad book recommendation for me because I know so little about this. It would be recommending somebody who they don't even know what a calorie is, and you're going to give them a college level textbook on nutrition and say, hey, just read this. You'll learn. However, I've come back to this point of, well, it's good to read hard things. It's good to go through this process. It's not me. It could be a little bit more efficient. good to go through this process. It's not me. It could be a little bit more efficient. I suspect there's another book out there written by somebody with also an impressive track record that is,

Starting point is 00:48:50 it's written more for where I'm at in my level of not knowing anything. However, I can get through it with GPT and I am learning a lot and it is forcing me to slow down and really think these things through and really understand first principles, not just accept a glib understanding of, okay, I guess that's just how that works. These two things, they just correlate in these ways. And I guess that's just the way it is. But if somebody were to ask, well, why? Why does when that goes up, that goes down? I don't know. Well, why? Why does when that goes up, that goes down? I don't know. So that's been a crutch. It's been a crutch. I'm like, all right, it's good. It's difficult. I'm going to force myself to get through this. Yeah. That's exactly the same as biochemistry. You've probably seen this, social media is rampant with advice and opinions and people just putting things out there that are just, it's misinformation. And oftentimes, I get asked, I taught first year medical students and people ask me often, oh, how can you sit on a podcast? I've done a four hour podcast. It's because I did 10 years of university or actually more than that to understand if something goes up, what comes down. In order to say one thing or give one piece of advice, you know if it's coming from a reputable person, you know that

Starting point is 00:50:12 there is around 10 years of education behind that. And I push myself every day. I read textbooks. I don't know. It's what I love. My friend brought this up to me last week. She said, Louisa, do you read fiction books? I said, no, I read textbooks because there is just so much for me to continuously learn. And because I publish and I write academic papers, I have to learn a lot. So I read textbooks and I feel, I feel like my brain is sweating when I'm doing it. Yeah. You know, when you read things and then you're like, wait a minute, then you reread it and then you go through it. You highlight it. Yeah. A, B, C. Okay, good. I believe I understand that. And again, in my case with this book, I often am going over to GPT even to check my

Starting point is 00:51:03 understanding just because that's just, I'm just, I don't going over to GPT even to check my understanding just because that's just, I don't know, maybe I'm overly conscientious, but I'm reading this because I need to know this stuff. It's going to matter in my life. So I don't want to misunderstand things and then go lose a bunch of money essentially because I didn't take the time to do the hard work. But anyway, just a random little personal anecdote related to learning hard things. Something I'd recommend is I think reading fiction is fine. Ironically, I've long had an interest in writing fiction, even though I have read basically none of it for a long time because I only read for work, really, and things

Starting point is 00:51:40 that I needed to know to achieve goals that were not related to writing fiction. But I would say reading fiction is probably better than not reading at all. It's better than watching Netflix probably. Correct. But to your point, if you want to really challenge yourself cognitively and if you want to get a lot of the cognitive benefits from learning, it's probably better to read more challenging material. And I mean, I suppose you might be able to find more challenging fiction in a sense. I mean, but it's easier to go to nonfiction. I'll say that. Yeah. And if you, you know, just closing the book chapter here, no pun intended, I would highly recommend, and I do this as well, to read out loud because this

Starting point is 00:52:32 is going to help with your language formation and your language processing, which are two areas of the brain that also deteriorate as we get older. And it's one of the biomarkers that's implicated in frontotemporal dementia. I'm sure you've heard of the word aphasia, which is arguably what Bruce Willis has due to his diagnosis of FTP. So yeah, frontotemporal dementia, yes. Interesting. And so that's something that you do when you're reading, you reading out loud i read out loud yeah and um it's it's funny i like that yeah so let's talk about i want to hear your thoughts on alcohol and marijuana two things that many people use to decompress, to relax. And from what I've seen, in the last several years or so, more and more information has been coming out to counter the narrative, which I had seen for a long time, which was not a big deal. Alcohol, not a big deal. Marijuana's

Starting point is 00:53:46 not that bad for you. Everything in moderation and so on. Yeah. And I think that largely comes down to ignorance, A. However, I did read an article that said that it was something along the lines of in the last year, I think it was 2023, they've seen a decline in the amount of people buying alcohol at music festivals, et cetera. So I think that's a really good sign. But look, I really have to iterate that alcohol, no amount of alcohol is good for the brain or the body. And in fact, it's actually like poison because you have to think about when you ingest alcohol, that alcohol gets metabolized and it turns into acetyl aldehyde. And acetyl aldehyde is actually poison. And that's what's

Starting point is 00:54:31 actually deteriorating the cells in our body and the cells in our brain. Now, I will caveat this by saying that one glass is probably not going to do you any harm. It's not going to do you any good, right? But it's probably not going to harm you in any way. Maybe it's just going to increase your calories for the day and maybe make you feel a bit tired the next day. Although the frequency matters. One glass a day, one glass an hour, one glass a week. This is correct. I'm talking one glass, maybe one glass every two weeks will definitely not do anything. However, the best study that we have, and I'm going to pull it up here. And it was actually called, it was printed in Nature, which is a high stringent

Starting point is 00:55:17 journal. And it's titled Associations Between Alcohol Consumption and Grey and White Matter Volumes in the UK biobank. And they discovered something really amazing. Basically what they did was they took around 37,000 middle-aged and older adults and they looked at their brains. And what they did was they gave them a moderate amount of alcohol, one to two alcohol units a day. Some of them received four alcohol units a day. And what they found was they saw extremely negative relationships between alcohol intake and global gray matter volume, global white matter microstructure volume and regional gray matter volume. So what does that mean? It means that when you are a moderate drinker, now a moderate drinker is classified for females

Starting point is 00:56:13 as seven drinks a week and 14 drinks a week for men. Now, I have to tell you, I've got some friends who are pretty in my stance, wild. Sometimes they're doing seven drinks in two days. So for them, they're probably chronic drinkers. And I hear that 14 drinks a week for men is maybe, is that like an average? I don't know the data off the top of my head. It's been some time since I have written and spoken about this. I just don't remember. I do remember, though, this point of one to two drinks a day being very common.

Starting point is 00:56:52 Yeah. And one being more common for women and two being more common for men. But I can't say for sure. And if that's the case, then yeah, we're talking about 14 drinks a week, just being average. So what you're doing, when we talk about the gray matter volume, that is the cerebral cortex, that you're getting thinner of the gray matter volume. So the gray matter is where the neuron cell body sits. And then the white matter is the myelinated neurons. The white matter is responsible for conduction, velocity, and speed. So that's where we think in our information processing speed.

Starting point is 00:57:29 It's also implicated in diseases such as multiple sclerosis. This is all getting thinner and wearing away just from alcohol consumption. So it's incredibly detrimental to you. And then pile on the fact. Go back to the first part of the podcast where we spoke about the core pillars of human performance, which is sleep, good nutrition, and exercise. When you drink alcohol, ethanol, which is what we're drinking, is a sedative. So you're actually blocking deep sleep and you're blocking REM sleep. So not only are you deteriorating the cells of your brain and your body, but you're also stopping yourself

Starting point is 00:58:12 from sleeping. And if you stop yourself from sleeping, you're doing another whole cascade of problems. So alcohol is, and then if you really want to go into the finances, then it could be, we could put that on there as well and say, well, you're just spending money for no reason. So there's so many detriments of alcohol. And what about marijuana? Oh gosh. And I really, there is no amount of marijuana is good for you. And I have a famous quote, I say that's been retweeted like thousands of times, which is,

Starting point is 00:58:46 marijuana is not helping you sleep. I don't care if you think it's helping you sleep. I don't care. It is not. And when I say sleep, it might sedate you. It's not enabling you to get into deep and slow way sleep. And in fact, chronic marijuana use over a number of years can actually induce psychosis. So I just...

Starting point is 00:59:12 Minor caveat there, a little asterisk. Yeah. So yeah. In fact, I actually read a great study that I put out the other day saying that cats and a certain molecule in cats can do the same thing, but we won't go there for the cat people. But yeah, look, marijuana is, you've got to ask yourself, right? Like, what do we, I think the better question is why do we feel the need to have alcohol or marijuana? I'm not talking about the one glass of wine because my dad is a wine guy and I sit down and I love having wine with my father. So that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about if you're drinking two or three a night and you feel like you have to, to medicate yourself out of something, that's the question we have to ask ourselves. Or even if, oh, I'm smoking marijuana because

Starting point is 01:00:01 I can't sleep. Why can't you sleep? What is going on in your biochemistry that is stopping you from doing something that we were born to do? And then what is causing those biochemical problems? What in your life is happening that is driving you? And that's often obviously what is happening that is driving you i mean that's often obviously what what is happening with people who are maybe not even abusing alcohol depends on how you define abuse but regularly using alcohol regularly using marijuana at least in my experience uh from many people i've met over the years it's it's stuff going on in their life and they feel stressed and they feel anxious and they want

Starting point is 01:00:49 to um get some sort of release from from burdens of problems and and so forth and it's of course easier to turn to drugs than it is to face what can sometimes be some gnarly situations that are not easy to resolve. Correct. I hear that. And that's definitely a psychological component to that. Yeah. Last on my list is supplements. And I saved that for last because they are the least important, certainly less important than exercise, less important than sleeping well and eating well as well. But what supplements are at least worth considering for improving brain health or helping maintain brain health? Yeah. The two that I always talk about is, and this is without blood work,

Starting point is 01:01:44 this is without looking at your bloods, what we all should be getting if we want to have a healthy aging brain is I'm very big on creatine. So creatine, we used to know it as the fitness and bodybuilding supplement, but we now know that it is highly, highly effective for the aging brain or even for the brain. So it is involved in cell energy metabolism. So it's involved in the creation of ATP, our energy source and our fuel source. More energy, more life, really. That's the way you have to think about it. And so many women shy away from creatine thinking that A,

Starting point is 01:02:23 it's going to affect their kidneys. It's not. There's been no... It is the safest supplement on the market. There's been no... Probably the most researched as well. The most researched, but there's actually no studies that have showed adverse effects in any way, really.

Starting point is 01:02:39 So there's no effects on your kidneys. It's not going to... I mean, it might bloat you a little bit, but that's not detrimental. And if it does, you just maybe instead of having five grams, you have two and a half grams. Yeah. And I'll just say for any women who hear that and immediately are alarmed in speaking with many, many women virtually, particularly over the years, thousands and thousands I've emailed with, particularly over the years, thousands and thousands I've emailed with, it's very rare that I will hear from a woman who really notices bloating from creatine. I think that was more of an issue maybe a decade or two ago when it was processed in different ways. But if you just get

Starting point is 01:03:17 a micronized monohydrate, chances are you're going to be totally fine. You're not going to notice any bloating whatsoever. That is completely correct. And then there's also, it doesn't increase DHT, so it doesn't aid in hair loss, no matter what people are saying. So we've got a really great study that was done on women, menopausal women who wanted, the study was based around increasing bone density. They actually gave women over a two-year randomized control trial, they gave them 10 grams of creatine per day. And guess what happened? There was no side effects of hair loss or kidney damage or bloating. What they did was they did increase their bone density, which is phenomenal. Another reason why women shy away from it is they think that they're going to get big. And I just can't even deal with that because I've been trying to

Starting point is 01:04:11 increase my muscle mass for like 10 years now, and I'm not a bodybuilder. So it takes a lot to get big. So women, start if you can on five grams of creatine per day. There is no limit to the age, so you can keep taking it. You don't have to load it. Just start on five grams of creatine per day. There is no limit to the age, so you can keep taking it. You don't have to load it. Just start on five grams a day. And this goes for men as well. We also know that some of the early studies now that are being done, preclinical studies on Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease, it helps in these disease states when they're taking creatine. It even serves as a neuroprotective mechanism and they trialed this against NFL players and they got them taking 20 grams of creatine per day and it served as a protective mechanism against

Starting point is 01:04:59 knocks to the head and getting hit. So that's the first one. Can I follow up with a quick question on that to the next one? So five grams a day, that's a pretty standard protocol that's been the fitness protocol for a long time. Is there evidence that taking more than that could be particularly beneficial for further improving brain health? The reason I ask that is some time ago, I interviewed Darren Kandow, I believe I pronounced his name correctly, prominent creatine researcher. And at that time, I remember he was talking about some new research that was coming out that was suggesting that maybe more than five grams per day, if you really want to give your brain the most that it can get out of creatine, we may

Starting point is 01:05:44 want to think about 10 grams per day. What are your thoughts on that? And again, that was a comment some time ago based on the data that was available at that time. Yeah, no, no, I completely agree. And that's the upper limit. That's what I'm trying to get my dad to take. And it comes down to like, do you feel okay when you take it really? That's what it's about. Do you feel like sometimes like I got used to the five grams, so I started taking seven and a half grams. And I did feel a bit like, oh, I can feel it. So sometimes I come back to five and it just comes down to individuality.

Starting point is 01:06:18 Okay. Yeah. I'm the guy who just takes 10 grams and feels fine. So that's the way I do it. In one go, I just mix it up and drink it. Oh, good. What can help for people who, if they don't feel right over a certain threshold is to split it up. You had mentioned that, but I just wanted to tell people, even to get to five grams,

Starting point is 01:06:38 my wife is like that where she takes too much. She just feels a little bit off, so she just splits it up. So she can take, I think, maybe up to a gram or so at a time just with breakfast, take that. And then with lunch or sometime in the afternoon, take another gram. And that can also help with bloating if somebody is one of the unlucky few who gets bloated from, let's say, three grams or five grams. Often just breaking it up into smaller doses and just doing that throughout the day can resolve that. Yeah. And then you also want to be taking your omega-3 fatty acids, specifically EPA and DHA. We know that the 20% of the brain's lipids comprises of DHA. So EPA and DHA are two components that come from fatty fish, such as salmon and mackerel. And these are really, really great, not just for the

Starting point is 01:07:36 brain in the sense that you're feeding the brain what it's made of, but there's also data showing that it can ameliorate amyloid beta, like the plaques that are built up and implicated in Alzheimer's disease. It has a strong, there's a strong safety profile with omega-3 fatty acids. Some of the, you know, depending on where you go and get it, some of the supplements can be rancid. So you want to be getting it from a reputable company. But one of the greatest things that it does is it can help

Starting point is 01:08:05 lower inflammatory biomarkers. Something that we're all struggling with is the amount of cortisol that we have going through our body, the amount of inflammation. So we want to be able to dampen that down as much as possible in a natural way. And that's a really great thing of omega-3 fatty acids. And I believe you said four grams per day of combined EPA, DHA? Yeah. And that's important because for general health, if people just are poking around online, they're probably going to see as low as 500 milligrams per day just for general health. And they're going, okay, I guess I'll just take one pill a day.

Starting point is 01:08:45 Exactly. So you want to be doing the upper limits and that's where all of the data is. But guys, you want to go and get a test called the omega-3 index, which was formulated by Dr. Bill Harris out of OmegaQuant. Really easy test. It's a pinprick test and it will actually measure your omega-3 status. And in the US, we have an omega-3 deficiency, if you will, of people reporting to have a reading of 4%. And that is highly implicated in all-cause mortality. What you want to be doing for a life extension study, which is increasing health span and lifespan, you want to aim to get an omega-3 index of 8% or more. I have 10.5%. Flexing, flexing. Flexing. But I've been taking omega-3, high-dose omega-3s for several years now. Same. So I'm going to take the test. We'll see. If my test is better, I'll send you my results.

Starting point is 01:09:42 Please do. And then also on the list here, I want to get your thoughts on is magnesium. Yeah. A lot of attention being given to magnesium, at least in the last six to 12 months, it seems. You can see it in Google Trends. And then there are specific forms where there are claims made about one form being particularly important for brain health versus another and so forth. And magnesium's great, right? Because at NeuroAthletics, we do a lot of blood work

Starting point is 01:10:13 on our clients when they come to us. We're doing like 10 vials of blood in their first week. And if somebody comes back with a low vitamin D or they've got vitamin D deficiency, which is with a low vitamin D or they've got vitamin D deficiency, which is pretty much a large population here in the US, what we know is that we can actually increase vitamin D just by supplementing with magnesium. And a lot of the population is also low in magnesium. So magnesium is naturally found in cruciferous vegetables or green leafy vegetables like kale, spinach. So we have to be getting adequate amounts of magnesium. And it's also a cofactor to so many different enzymes in the body. So it's extremely needed.

Starting point is 01:10:57 And there's many different forms of it. I supplement at night to help me sleep better and for cognitive health with magnesium L3 and 8. And then during the day, I'm having magnesium biglycinate. And what amounts? Oh, I actually don't know the correct amounts that I'm having, but I can look them up because I've got my profile. I'm guessing it's probably 150 megs of each, between between 100 and 200 mg of each, I would guess. I'm having, so one capsule is 135 mg, I'm having two. Okay.

Starting point is 01:11:34 Of both? I'm having three of the magnesium L3 and eight at night, and then I'm having two of the 135 by glycinate. Yeah. Not that I'm saying anything wrong with that. I just know that a standard kind of safe one-size-fits-all, especially in the absence of blood work, is often around 300 to maybe 400 mgs per day. And there's also different forms for different reasons. You know, the magnesium L3 and L8 are great for cognitive health and sleep.

Starting point is 01:12:04 The magnesium-by-glycinate 8, great for cognitive health and sleep. The magnesium glycinate can be great for muscle soreness. And then you've got magnesium citrate, which can help you be more regular for those who have got constipation issues. And with the L3 and 8 in particular, just because we're talking mostly about brain health, why is that one good for your brain in particular? It's the only one out of all of the magnesiums that's been shown to cross the blood-brain barrier and it can penetrate the central nervous system, which is the brain and spinal cord. Great. Any other supplements that are on the list? Again, my supplements are really aligned with A, my goals, B, my gender, C, my age, and D, my blood test taken in september it came back with low iron like i did an iron study i had low iron stores like ferritin total iron and i thought that was really interesting because

Starting point is 01:13:10 actually iron is needed for many different things in the body one of them is this um to synthesize dopamine another is for your thyroid so i'm like now i'm on 75 grams per day of iron. And I mean, that's a supplement that probably most women, the vast majority of women should be taking just because of the iron loss that occurs. Due to menstruation. Just that alone. Exactly. Yeah. And particularly with women who are not eating large amounts of meat,

Starting point is 01:13:46 which in my experience is most women, they're not eating four steaks a week or something. Yeah. So I thought that was really interesting. Yeah. So that's my supplement stack, if you will. I'm also very, like I'm having a lot of protein per day. I'm talking about- Which is also what everyone really should be doing at this point. Yeah, I'm having around 120 grams. Which might sound like a lot to you, but to bodybuilders, they go, oh, what's that, a gram per pound per day? That's just the table stakes. What do you mean?

Starting point is 01:14:23 Yeah. Well, this was a great discussion. That's everything I had on my list. Is there anything else that is still bouncing around in your brain that you want to say before we wrap up? Anything I should have asked? No, we did my favorite topics, which was exercise and Alzheimer's disease. Yeah, it was great.

Starting point is 01:14:43 A lot of good information. And so then why don't we wrap up with where people can find you, where they can find your work, anything in particular you want them to know about? Yeah, I have a podcast, The Neuro Experience, that people can listen to.

Starting point is 01:14:56 I've also got our signature and flagship course, which is mainly for coaches and health coaches, athletic trainers, et cetera. It's called the Neuro Athletics Coaching Certificate, and that can be found on my Instagram. And my Instagram is Louise and Nicola. Awesome. Well, thanks again for taking the time to do this. I really enjoyed it. Thank you so much, Mike. I had so much fun. I've worked with tens of thousands of people over the years, and the biggest thing I see with the people I have helped the most is they're often missing just one crucial piece of the puzzle. And if you are having trouble

Starting point is 01:15:35 reaching your fitness goals as quickly as you'd like, I'm going to guess it is the same thing with you. You are probably doing a lot of things right, but dollars to donuts, there's something you're not doing right. And that is what is giving you most of the grief. Maybe it's your calories. Maybe it's your macros. Maybe it's your exercise selection. Maybe it's food choices. Maybe you are not progressively overloading your muscles and whatever it is, here's what's important. Once you identify that one thing, once you figure it out, that's when everything finally clicks. That's when you start making serious progress.

Starting point is 01:16:14 It's kind of like typing in your password to log into your computer. You can have all the letters, numbers, and symbols, right? Except just one. And what happens? You can't log in, right? But as soon as you get that last remaining character, right? Voila, you're in business. And I bet the same can be said about the body you really want. You are probably just one major shift,

Starting point is 01:16:38 one important insight, one powerful new behavior away from easy street. And that's why I offer VIP one-on-one coaching where my team and I can help you do exactly that. This is high level coaching where we look at everything you're doing and we help you figure out that one thing that is missing for you. And it can be a couple of things too. That's fine. There's no extra charge for that. But once we figure it out, that's when you start making real progress. That's when you start looking better and feeling better. So if you're ready to make more progress in the next three months

Starting point is 01:17:16 than maybe you did in the last three years, and yes, that has happened for many of our clients, head on over to muscleforlife.show slash VIP. That's muscleforlife.show slash VIP and schedule your free consultation call, which by the way, is not a high pressure sales call. It's just a friendly chat where we get to learn about you and your goals and your lifestyle, and then determine whether our program is right for you. Because sometimes we do speak with people who just aren't a good fit for our service, but we almost always have other experts and other resources to refer those people to. So if you are still listening to me and you are even slightly

Starting point is 01:17:57 interested, go schedule your free consultation call now at muscleforlife.show slash VIP. Call now at muscleforlife.show slash VIP. then makes it a little bit more easily found by other people who may like it just as much as you. And if you didn't like something about this episode or about the show in general, or if you have ideas or suggestions or just feedback to share, shoot me an email, mike at muscleforlife.com, muscleforlife.com, and let me know what I could do better or just what your thoughts are about maybe what you'd like to see me do in the future. I read everything myself. I'm always looking for new ideas and constructive feedback. So thanks again for listening to this episode and I hope to hear from you soon.

Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - Louisa Nicola on Optimizing Brain Health

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