The Joe Rogan Experience - #629 - Andrew Hill, PhD

Episode Date: March 24, 2015

Andrew Hill, PhD, is a lecturer, scientist, explorer, and also the lead neuroscientist at TruBrain.

It's not that tight. Joe Rogan Podcast, check it out! The Joe Rogan Experience. Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night! All day! I'm not sure if playing that before you talk to somebody is a good idea. It seems jarring. It seems like, all of a sudden,

like you have to, like, talk it down. So it becomes like a conversation again. Because otherwise it's like, oh, what the fuck just... Right? You are a neuroscientist, oh, what the fuck? Right? You are a neuroscientist, correct, Dr. Hill? Yeah, a cognitive neuroscientist. Would that not affect the way your brain? Absolutely.

Hearing sort of, you know, call to actions will change how you then react to things. Fucks with you, right? Yeah, absolutely. Does something. Yep. We were talking, Dr. Andrew Hill is on the podcast today, and we were talking before the podcast started. I didn't want to talk to you anymore.

I wanted to get you in here and sit you down because you said something really fascinating, that you take people who may have problems with substances, and you, instead of getting them to abstain, you get them to use them responsibly, which is an alien concept in this day and age. Yeah. I mean, this is not terribly common in substance abuse, you know, sort of treatment world. There's a few companies that do it. And one of them is here in Los Angeles, Alternatives. And we will take people that, you know, might have an issue with alcohol, let's say. And the only option is not abstinence for our program. We have moderation options, controlled use options, harm reduction. So someone might come in and say, you know, look, I consider myself an alcoholic, but I want to start drinking again.

Or, you know, I'm someone who has been abstinent for a long time and struggles with craving, struggles with, you know, choice. And whenever I slip, I slip big. Help me figure out how to not be that guy, how to use responsibly or to not use. So we don't necessarily say you must be a moderate user or you must abstain. We ask clients what they want to do and then help them figure out how to get there. And for many of them, they come to us because we do offer a moderation, moderate alcohol use approach. That seems pretty novel. Is it?

It is pretty novel, yeah. One of our principals, Dr. Mark Kern, has been doing addiction work with Moderation Focus for about 30 years in L.A. And so it's not the newest thing ever, but it's newer than AA, of course, which has been around for pushing 100 years now. Yeah, AA people seem to think that that's the only way to go. You have to do the 12-step program. You have to call everybody you ever wronged. You have to pray to Jesus. You have to call everybody you ever wronged. You have to pray to Jesus. You have to drink a lot of coffee and smoke cigarettes. Yeah. It must be. It must be.

Yeah. I mean, you know, uh, the biggest difference, uh, for an alternatives approach or a harm reduction or moderation approach compared to AA and in my perspective is that a lot of the AA approach is disempowering. You must give up control, you know, surrender. And I think that there's another option out there and that's architecting more control, more power. Let's figure out your cues for over-drinking. Let's figure out what happens, you know, why do you get to five or six or seven drinks? Like what happens on drink two? You know, what are the triggers for like going home and, you know, automatically driving into that liquor store parking lot you always pass by?

So we help people figure out all the different triggers and cues that are driving their out-of-control use and what control use might look like for them, what sort of appropriate mindful drinking might look like for them. And if it's alcohol, people spend the first month with us abstaining anyways, just to reset tolerance. Because to be good at moderation tolerance. Because to be good at moderation, you have to be good at abstinence. So the goals may not be abstinence always in our alcohol program, but everyone takes a month off, resets their tolerance, you know, gets some sort of clear head, gets their sleep fixed. And we're doing other things besides the alcohol interventions and therapy and biofeedback and mindfulness and

another, you know, sort of whole team approach. But then at the end of that month, if folks decide they want to, we go to a bar with them, sit down, they order a drink, we give them a breathalyzer and they have their first drink and we, you know, they get breathalyzed every... Do you drink with them? Not at this... No, no. Later? You know, I don't typically go to the bars with our clients This there's some legal issues with drinking with them like when we go to a bar with them

We buy lunch and they buy the alcohol To avoid so you can't even buy it. We don't provide the drugs and alcohol. Yeah, of course So do they drink by themselves sometimes a lot of the clients that we work with carry around little breathalyzers in their pocket that A lot of the clients that we work with carry around little breathalyzers in their pocket that several times a day ping them and ask them to blow and get a little camera snapshot. It is them and a GPS location. And so we determine where they are, who they are, and what their blood alcohol is. And unlike most other treatment programs, if you blow dirty on a breathalyzer, it's usually like, you're out of here. With us, it's like, oh, great.

So you drank. What was that like? I see you got this blood alcohol level. How many drinks was that? Was that two? Okay, interesting. Over what time frame? How did that feel?

And we get people to, in a very structured way, analyze what alcohol is instead of it being sort of momentum-based behavior. There's a certain amount of like pull that something has a draw and attracted like an, an, an energy to something that's forbidden. Yeah. And that, that is very problematic for people that are addicts. I've seen it firsthand many times where people just have this overwhelming desire to do what they're not supposed to do. Almost because it's like the pressure of abstaining is just overwhelming. It's like that issue is always a cloud hovering over them.

Yeah. Also, things that are forbidden become attractive. Yeah. And the conversation about them gets shut down a little bit when things get sort of, you know, put in these little isolated bulwarks of dangerous and forbidden. Right. putting these little isolated bulwarks of dangerous and forbidden. So it's hard to talk about problematic alcohol use if any alcohol use is considered problematic. Yeah, it becomes one of those things where

everyone has this very rigid idea of what an alcoholic is supposed to do. And if you bring up something like what you're proposing or what you actually, not just propose, but you enact in treatment, that's got to receive a lot of criticism. It does. And, you know, we get long-term sort of 12-step type saying you're going to kill people, people are going to, you know, have problems. The thing is, you know, we've done some research in our center and folks self-select abstinent track or moderation track. And the self-selection appears to be what drives success, not which track you're on. So if people identify their goals, we help them reach those goals. But if your only goals are, or if your only allowable path is you must

be abstinent, then you aren't taught any skills about how to drink a little bit. You know, so when people who are on an abstinentonly sort of treatment programs have slips, they have big slips. They just say, okay, I'm off the track. Yeah. Ooh, let's just pound it back. There's that. There's that discounting.

Oh, you know, I've screwed up once. Might as well just go for it. And there's also the piece about skills. They don't know how to drink two or three or four drinks if all they do is abstain. Now, the common thought on genetics and addiction is that certain people have just a predisposition for alcoholism, for drug addiction. Is that a fact? Yeah, there's an opioid receptor in the brain.

I forget if it's the mu or the kappa, but one of the opioid receptors in the brain, there's one genetic sort of flavor you can have where alcohol is extra rewarding. Where you love that sensation, you love the feeling a little more than the average person might. But is it just that? Is it just they love it more? Well, it's more rewarding and therefore learning is reinforced. I mean, rewarding meaning what you find appetitive or interesting or yummy. If you find things extra yummy, then your behavior is modified to get more of that thing. Right.

But the way I've always thought of it, I don't have a genetic predisposition to alcoholism. And I've had friends who do. And there's this weird thing that happens to them when you see them drink where they go gerbilize. You know, where they're like, no one's there. They have shark eyes. You know what I mean? Where you're looking at them, you're like, where they they go gerbil eyes you know where they're like no one's there they're shark eyes you know what i mean well you're looking at them you're like where are you man are you in there like you literally don't see them anymore well these folks are probably you know thoroughly into a hardcore drinking you know lifestyle right this is not their first big slip in a long time this is sort of a uh you know go to the bar after work every day or go to the liquor store and grab a half bottle of wine every day.

This is, you know, reinforced behavior. I don't think even someone with those genes would have sort of a checkout or some, you know, lack of sudden self-control their first drink after abstaining for a while. It's the behavioral sort of slippery slope that we get on that causes the problem folks that have this extra rewarding effect from alcohol You know get pulled down that slope faster, but it's still not you know Predetermined you're not going to become an alcoholic just because you have a more rewarding effect from alcohol or something else see I was always confused. I didn't think that it was a reward issue I I thought and this is based entirely on you you know, just talking to people. There's no research, obviously. But I always thought it was just something happens to them where they cannot help themselves. Is that just the common way of discussing it because of the 12-step treatment program ideal? The 12-step treatment program ideal.

Yeah, I think partially there's this idea of, well, you're powerless over alcohol, therefore accept that you're powerless. But a lot of that powerlessness or I can't control my behavior is because of the sort of over-learning that comes where behavior is no longer choice. It's almost automatic because you've gotten so rewarded so many times from that behavior that then the behavior becomes reinforced. I mean, you know, all addiction is this way, but all addiction is just learning. It's not some special form of learning. It's just learning. So what you're talking about is people that have learned to lose control. So does that, like, there's the common thought about Native Americans,

the common discussion when people talk about Native Americans and alcohol is that they didn't have alcohol in their diet. We introduced it to them with the Europeans rather than introduced it to them and then they became almost instantly addicted because they did not have the genetic predisposition to process it. Is that BS? I think it's partially BS. I think it's more about, you know, if you lock a bunch of people on a small plot of non-farmable land and don't give them any mechanisms for advancement and take away all their power and then give them a drug to abuse, they abuse it.

You know, there's always these studies showing that if you give a rat unfettered access to drugs and alcohol, it sits there and, you know, hits the lever until it dies, right? That's actually not true. If you give a rat access to cocaine or alcohol, well, probably not alcohol, but something really rewarding, it will only self-administer the drug and sort of starve to death for the reward when the environment isn't interesting, when the environment's impoverished. If there's lots of rat toys and lots of other cute rats hanging out, they're much less interested in becoming cocaine addicts or whatever it is.

It's only in the absence of stimulating enriched environments do these sort of automatic behaviors take over. So I would argue, at least partially, the Native American alcohol connection is because these are people who are disenfranchised systematically and then given an escape. I had that discussion recently with Dr. Chris Ryan, and he's the author

of Sex at Dawn, a very interesting book, but one of the things that he brought up is the environment itself that they do these studies on rats, they're in a cage. Yeah. They're in a cage, there's fluorescent lights, and there's people in lab coats that are hovering over them. Right. It's about as unnatural as you can get. Yep.

And any escape that they could probably seek you know to to try to mitigate the stress that they're under yep i mean it's a completely unnatural environment it's not like you're giving them cocaine out in the wild right if you did do that they probably they probably wouldn't go after it yeah i mean um you know if you put some toys in their cage they stop self-administering to the same degree right it's not as interested in i mean addiction is not the goal the reward is not necessarily the goal when things are interesting, novel, when you can explore your environment. Right.

So their brains are programmed to seek out food, to seek out sex, and to seek out shelter. And when all those things are screwed up because they're in this completely unnatural environment, they don't know what to do. Yeah, exactly. I mean, and this is not just rats. I mean, humans are given this, well, if you're an alcoholic, if you're a drinker, a problem drinker, you're always going to be a problem drinker is the prevailing wisdom, which also isn't true. Something like 90, 95% of people that are problem drinkers learn to not be problem drinkers with no programs, with no intervention, no therapy. They just learn to get control over their drinking. therapy. They just learn to get control over their drinking. Do you think that that, well, that's a really interesting point. It's a really interesting point when you think about people that look forward to happy hour. They look forward to that drink after work. Like how many boring jobs

have turned people into alcoholics because while they're at work all day, they're just constantly itching away at their natural reward systems. Just, God, something, I've got to get something in here. Exactly, yeah. And boredom and lack of ability to tolerate boredom or tolerate uncomfortable emotions, of which, you know, boredom can be one, is often the biggest driver for problematic substance use. Oh, wow. Boredom.

Boredom or... That's why dudes get drunk when they're married. Well, it's probably one of the reasons. It's a big one, right? Yeah. That is amazing. That story has always been, that story of the tests with the rats and the cocaine has been just sort of repeated ad nauseum. Sure.

To the point where everybody repeats it. And until Chris Ryan brought it up that way, I never really thought about it. I just thought, wow, cocaine is just super addictive. And then he brought it up that way. I'm like, oh yeah, of course they're in a fucking cage. Right. You know what? They're all stressed out, freaked out. No wonder why they're doing blow. Yeah, exactly. Right. And, you know, and things like cocaine, meth, the psychostimulant class of drugs, they affect a neurotransmitter primarily called dopamine. And dopamine is the reward signal. It's the interest, salience, appetitive. You know, when you see a hot girl,

you get a dopamine bump. When you eat an ice cream sandwich, you get a dopamine bump. When you do a line of blow, you get a dopamine bump. And a second one from the direct, you know, cocaine affecting the dopamine system. So the stimulant class is sort of so addictive because it's pleasurable and because it directly modifies the dopamine sort of system. So you get a one, two, almost a double reward, if you will. And do you apply the same sort of treatment protocol with cocaine that you do with alcohol? We don't. No. You know, there's a bunch of reasons why.

For things that are sort of drugs of abuse like cocaine, meth, you know, we would probably ask folks to abstain or encourage them to. But there's some other drugs you can abstain from. You know, someone's on, like, drugs for pain management or psychiatric drugs they need to take for whatever reason. We would do a more harm reduction approach for drugs, prescribed drugs that have become drugs of abuse. for prescribed drugs that have become drugs of abuse. But for recreational drugs of abuse, like cocaine, there's legal and ethical issues with offering moderate cocaine use. Well, what if cocaine was legal?

Then we would. Then you would. So it's only a law. Cannabis, for instance, is sort of right on that edge of being legal or not. And we would offer cannabis moderation if someone was legally using cannabis. And if we were in Colorado or Washington state, we'd be offering cannabis as an equal moderate player, so to speak, with our alcohol program. Well, does that concern you that the only reason why you don't use cocaine in that way is that it's illegal? Well, I mean, I think a lot of people can get in trouble with cocaine in a way a lot of people can get in trouble with cocaine.

In a way, they aren't going to get in trouble with weed. So I think the bar for risk versus harm versus, you know, what we're, we're potentially the, the cost of failure is much higher for some of these heavier drugs. Right. So we're never going to offer like a heroin moderation program. But isn't alcohol equally bad for you? I mean, when you look at statistics of abuse and the health consequences, alcohol seems to rank right up there with heroin. There are more alcohol abusers. Is that what it is? Then there are heroin abusers and people don't, don't abuse heroin from like age 12 to age 80. Right. At high levels. I mean, people can abuse alcohol their whole lives at high level. And survive.

And survive somehow or, you know, manage. That's not going to be the case with cocaine or heroin or, you know, major opiates or stimulants. Now, when you talk about opiates, of course, in this country today, you consider pills. Yeah.

Because this is the new form of distribution. Mm-hmm. Have you ever seen that, the documentary, the OxyContin Express? I have not. It is a really fascinating piece that they did, and it actually helped alter the law in Florida, because Florida used to have those, you're aware of the whole situation in Florida. Sure.

They had pain management centers, for folks who don't know, and these pain management centers were essentially one-stop heroin shops. Yeah. They'd give it to you in pill form, but you would go there. There would be a doctor right there. And you'd say, hey, doctor, my back's all fucked up. All right, well, you need pain pills. And then you would go.

Literally, you would exit his door and go to the next door, and that was run by the same company, and it was a pain management facility pharmacy. Yeah. And you'd go in there, and all they had was pills pills and you would just go and buy Oxycontins. And there was all these people waiting outside. Vanguard did the show on it and it was amazing. It was amazing because they followed people who were hooked on it. They followed people that were going, hopping from clinic to clinic and it was just rampant. Florida had some ungodly percentage of people that

were prescribed Oxycontin. Now of course elders are also, I mean Florida, half the state is elders and pain management is much more common, pain management in the medical sort of space is much more common when you're 70, 80 years old than it is when you're 30 or 40. It's very important when you say elders that you say age and not Mormons. Yes. Yes Not the not not the quorum of 12 or whatever No, like like people 60 65 and up is what I consider elders I have some friends that are Mormon and we were over their house and some elders came over and they were in their 20s

Yeah, they're there. They were this is elder John. This Wilson. Like, get the fuck out of here. I'm not calling you Elder. Yeah, I have a buddy who's a Jack Mormon, you know, a lapsed Mormon. And he's this, you know, 55-year-old guy with dreadlocks down to his ankles and, you know, musician. And he left the Mormon church, but he was an elder in his, like, early 20s before he sort of decided it wasn't for him. Yeah, he could have used some heroin. Yeah. Got him off that early, maybe.

So you think that if more people had heroin, you would see health consequences far worse than what they are of alcohol? I do, yeah. I think it'd be hard for people to abuse high levels of opiates without their life falling apart very quickly. And this is, I mean, some people get into alcohol and go downhill very fast. Other people get into alcohol and never have a problem with it, even drinking high levels.

Well, what concerns me about those pills more than anything else is I've had friends that don't have problems with anything else, and they got on pain pills and then boom, including there's a family member that I have who just got injured at work, got on pills for his back, and then gone. Really common story. It's bizarre. It's like something steals who they are.

Yeah, and once you're addicted to pain medication, the doctors won't give it to you forever. So at some point, you're getting off the pain medication prescriptions, but you might still be addicted. So you seek street opiates, and that's sort of the standard story there. So there's an itch that they can't scratch anymore, and it just becomes overwhelming after a while. So you seek, you know, street opiates and that's sort of the standard story there. So there's an itch that they can't scratch anymore and it just becomes overwhelming after a while. Yeah. And is a lot of that the same thing? Sort of the psychological pull of something that's forbidden or something that you're not supposed to do?

Or is there a physical component to the heroin addiction? There's definitely a physical component to addictions. But, you know, the withdrawal symptoms and the... I mean, addiction is really two things. It's dependence and tolerance. And the tolerance you can get for some drugs very quickly. The dependence might not show up the same way for everybody. But other folks may have dependence, meaning withdrawal symptoms, from low amounts.

Heroin is fairly addicting. The withdrawal from heroin is brutal. I believe the physiological addiction of nicotine might be greater than heroin, but the withdrawal is not as bad. So the physical withdrawal, the actual aches of your body. Yeah. Carl Hart described Dr. Carl Hart. I forget the name of his book, but he's been on the podcast before. Remember his book, Jamie? Doesn't matter. It's unimportant.

He said it was like having a bad flu. Yeah, dope sick. He said it's very overrated as far as the amount of pain you go through. I mean, the flu kind of sucks. It does kind of suck. But everyone looks at it as if like, it's this horrible bone aching, like I've never done Oxycontin. So I don't, I don't know. I've never done heroin. So I, I, I'm just guessing. Well, think about what the opiate system does endogenously naturally in your

body. It helps you not feel pain. It helps reduce pain and inflammation. So if you've been abusing with supra-physiological levels massive opiates, and then you withdraw them, your pain reduction system is overly sort of sensitized, and then you feel things as painful that were not considered painful before. So I think that a lot of the withdrawal is sort of resetting the opiate, the endogenous pain management system. Interesting. withdrawal is sort of resetting the opiate, the endogenous pain management system. Interesting. So there's probably all sorts of weird little aches and pains that you already have that you're just completely unaware of. And then they glaringly become obvious. Which is what happens when you get the flu and you, if you worked out the day before,

you feel like crap, you know, muscles are extra achy because now there's inflammation and, you know, spasms. And I think all that probably happens too when you're withdrawing from massive opiates. Now, when you get a guy like Rush Limbaugh, who famously was taking something like 90 pills a day, something insane. I don't remember what the number was, but it was off the charts where he had his housekeeper would go out and buy him the stuff. And how does that happen? Like, how does one keep ramping it up? Well, I mean, I think you have to be resourceful. And I think you mentioned earlier people, you know, clinic hopping or doctor hopping. I mean, that's a really common sort of way people

abuse pain meds is they get multiple people to prescribe. And it sounds like, you know, Rush may have had his friends and family, you know, helping to develop his habit. When you're taking lots of different things, though, there's an added risk, and that's what's called polypharmacy or interactions between your drugs. And a lot of painkillers, a lot of major tranquilizers are very significant drugs that suppress the cardiovascular system, the respiratory system. And so if you combine different types of drugs being given from different doctors who aren't aware of the different drugs that you're being given, then you can get into life-threatening side effects very quickly for some people.

That was the big issue in Florida was that they didn't have a database up until recently. So you could go to one doctor, get your prescription, and go right down the street to another doctor, and they couldn't share information. So you'd never know, hey, this guy already has a prescription. He's going crazy and he's getting pills all over town. Yeah. And you know, to some extent those little, uh, pharmacy slash prescription shops, uh, they, they remind me of, you know, the, the, uh, cannabis culture we have in most States now where, you know, you can walk into a little mom and pop sort of prescription center where you, maybe you see a doctor, maybe you see their nurse practitioner, you pay your 40 bucks, you walk out with a card, you go next door and you put your card down and walk out with your weed. You know, nowadays you go online and you say, I'd like this

strain delivered at my door at this time. And it shows up at your door with a smile and a little mint. Um, it's a very different, uh, sort of way to deal with drugs than the gatekeeper of the physician who's carefully paying attention to your full use spectrum and managing your life, managing your health with some, you know, good perspective on you. When we have these, you know, as you mentioned, the short time, we have 10 minutes with the doctor or something, and it's a prescription out the door. Yeah. Well, the cannabis one is kind of a joke because although there are people, I mean, I know people that use it for health reasons, the vast majority are juking the door. Yeah. Well, the cannabis one is kind of a joke because although there are people, I mean, I know people that use it for health reasons, the vast majority are juking the system. They're just like, Hey, I've got a headache, you know, getting free pot. Stress is one of the biggest

detriments to health. You know, cortisol rises, your hippocampus dies and cells fall apart and your body heals less fast and you learn less well. Your frontal lobe shuts down. Stress is a big problem. So, you know, I would argue that even the recreational cannabis users who sort of game to the system are getting the stress reduction benefits from it typically. Oh, no, I would agree with you most certainly. I also think that life itself is a disease and that you need a drug to treat life itself. Yeah, maybe a desirable difficulty.

It's just ridiculous. Well, the pressures of the average nine to five existence plus traffic, commute, bills, family is overwhelming. I don't believe that our bodies are designed for this. And I think that any means that you can without completely destroying your body and mitigating whatever pressures and stresses you're under, I'm all for it. I mean, I think aspirin should be legal. I'm a big fan of almost everything being legal, but I think that some folks are going to have a much harder time

with certain substances than others. Yeah. And that's individual variability as part of it. The genetics you show up with, it's also things like your environment, you know, what you see used, how you use, why you use. You know, are you using because you want to feel comfortable or euphoric or have some good time or watch a movie and find it extra interesting? Or are you using to shut down the pain and boredom of your life? Right. Those are very dramatically different ways of using substances. And are you using it to mitigate the effects of trauma, especially trauma from your childhood, which is one of the things that people don't consider when they talk in disparaging ways

about people being addicts. Yeah. They don't consider the fact that this person might have been wired in a certain way because of traumatic experiences that they had while they're developing, where their mind was developing. I see that all the time. Their genes represent that. Yeah, I mean, I do brain mapping, QEEG, and we look at sort of functional patterns in brains and try to tie it together to people's behavior and the things they're struggling with. And I often see in people that are struggling with alcohol, sort of a sensitization, a hot spot on the back of the brain in an area called the posterior cingulate cortex, which is to some extent involved with like sensitization to threat, noticing danger. And that spot shows up, that overactivity shows up when people have experienced fairly significant trauma. So it's a pretty common reason people are using drugs and alcohol. Is there a way to mitigate that? Is there a way to diminish the effects of...

Oh, sure. Yeah, there's multiple ways. It's a short answer. I do a lot of neurofeedback or biofeedback on brainwaves. So you might measure that like excess beta, excess fast activity back there. It's not a stuck level. It's always fluctuating moment to moment. And so whenever it trends in the right direction, goes down, you make something happen, make a chime play or a spaceship fly or a Pac-Man eat some dots. But it fluctuates in the wrong direction a minute later and the Pac-Man stops some dots. But it fluctuates in the wrong direction a minute later, and the Pac-Man stops. And then the brain fluctuates in the right direction, and the Pac-Man continues.

The brain starts to go, oh, cool, input whenever I'm doing one thing. And so it does more of that one thing. And this trains down or trains up certain patterns in the brain to change regulatory modes. Wow. So what's the mechanism of this? What's causing this? Yeah, Like, what's causing this? Yeah, well, it's basic learning. I mean, when you were a baby flopping around trying to learn how to walk, there was a lot of random activity making your limbs move. Or semi-random, you know, just trying random, your brain was just kind of setting up random pulses to see what happened.

And suddenly you put your arms down on the ground, you push yourself up and you could see more. You could see, you know, further in the distance. Your brain went, oh, cool. Remember this pattern of muscle activity because this one gets me to, you know, see more stuff and explore the environment. And it wasn't like some magical, your brain went, okay, you know, contract the left bicep and then the left forearm. It just kind of happens randomly until it produces the desired effect, which is, oh, I'm sort of crawling now. And then the brain does more of the thing that let it get more input, avoid danger, get pleasure, whatever the learning reinforcers are. The same thing happens when you're sitting in front of a biofeedback machine trying to make a spaceship fly or a car race around a track with your brain. You want it to happen.

And so whenever the car slows down and peters out next to the race course because your brain got distracted or tense the brain doesn't like the lack of input and it starts to go hey wait where's my where's my input and it tries to figure out oh i'm controlling this environment out in the world therefore i should do more of x less of y it's it's a it's actually a non-cognitive process believe it or not you aren't trying you're more sort of letting it happen. We're instrumentally or shaping, conditioning the brain in certain directions. And are there certain triggers that could potentially bring you back to the negative state that you were in because of the trauma? Like are there things that people have to avoid once they go through this process to keep from lapsing?

For biofeedback, not generally. The neurofeedback or biofeedback process is typically changing the brain and changing it permanently permanently It's kind of like if you know if you were limping because your left knee was off and you went to do six months of Physical therapy from then on you're walking with appropriate gait and you're always practicing the new muscles and coordination and things so Neurofeedback isn't permanent for everything. There's an active disease process going on, like schizophrenia or HIV or something. Then the problems you're able to reduce can reemerge. But if you've got ADHD or migraines or sleep issues or anxiety or trauma or OCD or PTSD, these things all do appear to change and change in a largely permanent way for most people.

Wow, that's amazing. That's incredible. And how long is this process? Like say if you take someone who's had a traumatic childhood and issues with abuse and substance abuse because of that and then they enter into some sort of a treatment like this, how long of a process? Yeah, most of my clients start off with sort of a training program. It's like going to the gym. If you go to the gym once every so often, it doesn't do much. So I ask my clients to come in two or three times a week for about 30 sessions total. And that's enough.

30 sessions is enough typically to make one and a half to two standard deviations of change. Pretty big change. So it can take a dramatically ADHD person and give them control over their attention management. It can re-regulate sleep, eliminate migraines. So 30 sessions is my answer to that question of, well, how long does it take? 30 sessions, that seems really small. You know, three, four times a week. You might get it done in, you know, six, seven, eight weeks.

To eliminate your ADHD, your anxiety, your trauma. That's incredible. Yeah. Now, what is ADHD? What exactly is it? Because you hear people saying that it doesn't exist. You hear people saying that it's just some way that they diagnose children so they can give them medication. a mental illness, it doesn't really exist. It doesn't exist.

I think what we have is a natural spectrum, continuum of attention management resources. And some of us can notice everything in the environment and turn our attention and just be wide focused and be pulled off by all novelty. And other folks are good at being heads down and sustained attention. You know, 10,000 years ago, we needed hunters who could like, you know, see the little tiger hiding in the corner or the hard, you know, red berry, hard to spot piece of fruit hiding under the leaf, who could notice all the little environmental cues. And we also needed folks who could sit behind the village and like weed the plants all day long. So I think that there's a natural sort of reinforcer of human, you know, a range of human attention regulation where some folks have more novelty seeking, more wide focus, and other folks have more narrow or sustained attention. So when we say ADHD, you know, the diagnostic criteria in general in mental health isn't

really about what's going on. It's about what's going on and does it interfere with your life. So you can be really hyperactive, really spacey, really checked out, really hard to talk to. But if you're successful, I wouldn't call it a pathology. I wouldn't even call it ADHD. And to call it ADHD, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, the deficit implies you have less attention than average. But, you know, we all know ADHD people that can sit and play video games without stopping for 20 hours straight.

That's not a deficit of attention. That's an excess of typical attention to some extent. So it's really about managing your attention in ways that are appropriate to the demands of the environment. If your classroom teacher wants you to sit still for 45 minutes and you can't, then it's a problem. It becomes a problem because of the classroom though, doesn't it? And if you have someone who has this issue with attention when it comes to things that they're not into, but

yet they can focus extremely well on something that they're fascinated by, and then that benefits them and they become successful at that. If you are in a negative environment as far as teaching or school, and they try to get you to become this person who's just like everybody else, then it becomes something they want to medicate you with. Right. And they could be medicating away, medicating away something that makes you unique and could actually benefit you in your life. Absolutely. And there are benefits for having, you know, more abstract thought and more novelty seeking and be able to integrate abstract concepts. Especially for artists. Especially for artists, especially people that aren't, you know, like I'm, for instance, horrible at math. I cannot do math in my head. I'm discalculic. But I'm verbally about as good as it gets.

So, you know, I was always sort of not rewarded by being in math classes and really rewarded being in, you know, language or, you know, whatever, English class. The artist ADHD kid thrives in, you know, one tenth of their high school classes, potentially if it's dramatic ADHD. But, you know, I would say that most people don't have dramatic attention regulation issues. They have minor attention regulation issues that can be changed. You mentioned that ADHD people can be fascinated by things and really, you know, pay attention. The prefrontal cortex, the most frontal, most anterior part of the brain, the most human part, the part that developed the latest, is really the executive of the brain, the CEO. And a the part that developed the latest, is really the executive of the brain, the CEO. And a lot of how it does its job is by telling the rest of the brain, no, you know, don't turn your head and look at this other thing. Don't, you know, grab that woman.

Don't eat that food. Don't, you know, it's no, no, no, no, no. It's a lot of what the PFC does. In ADHD, the PFC is often underactive. It's kind of like the CEO is asleep at the wheel. And so other parts of the brain kind of take over. It's like the sensory system sees a pretty bird fly by and turns your head before you know it. Because the CEO is not telling you not to. This is why ADHD folks tend to really pursue activities that are dangerous. You know, skydiving, motorcycle riding, taking drugs, risky sex. Because anything risky, challenging, dangerous lights up the PFC and really turns it on

and activates it in a way that most ADHD people don't experience most of the time. This is why if you have an ADHD kid, they train parents to yell at them to create the conflict that then produces a more active prefrontal cortex. They train parents to yell at them? Yeah, without even knowing it. They train people around them to create conflict with them because being yelled at, being punished, being engaged aggressively lights up the prefrontal cortex. So they do behavior or they engage in behavior that will cause people to yell at them subconsciously. To get the reward of having a feeling alive, a feeling on.

Whoa. Whoa. That's freaky. Now, when you're dealing with people that have such an incredible amount of variation, the variation between human beings and personalities and, and you're, you're sticking them in a classroom and you're forcing them to adhere to some sort of a program that was designed by someone who's never going to meet

them. And it's the same for everyone across the state or something. Something along those lines. How damaging is that for someone's education? I mean, it seems to me that like, it just seems that that sort of pressure to conform is going to be met with resistance. Yeah, of course it will. And the more unusual you are, the harder it will be to conform. But I would say for most people, you're still getting basic skills, even in these sort of homogenized programs.

And is there some benefit from just dealing with this homogenization, dealing with the boarding, the curriculum that they're forcing upon you? Just some sort of stress management benefits? I mean, you know, it's certainly people management. You can't teach every individual kid one-on-one. Um, and so there has to be an accommodation or a compromise somewhere for doing classroom, you know, public school, you know, broad teaching. Um, I think technology is changing that. I think the massively online, you know, courses that are mostly free these days, um, that's mostly adults taking those's mostly adults taking advantage of those, but I think that will change how we teach children long-term.

It will allow more individualized. If you take the traditional public school common core system on one end of the spectrum, and you look at something completely opposite like Montessori schools, Montessori is all about finding the thing the kid is interested in, and then funneling all their learning down that one avenue of interest. I love the idea behind that, but Montessori also lumps all these ages together. It's true.

And a lot of weird social shit goes on when you have a 12-year-old with a 6-year-old. Yeah. Yeah, it's, you know, but that's also a little bit more, I mean, I'm not sure that we need to segregate ages. You know, we create cohort effects. People experience specific things because of the groups they're lumped in with. That's a little artificial. A couple hundred years ago, we had a 6-year-old and a 12-year-old and a 16-year-old in the same classroom. And they probably all learned from each other, even if they didn't know it.

Right, but aren't they all on different levels? A 6-year-old and a 12-year-old are going to be learning completely different things. Maybe, but at six years old, I was learning like most 16-year-olds. Well, you're a super genius, dude. Well, you know, hey, thanks. But the point is that even within all a bunch of six-year-olds, you know, class of, what is that, like third grade or something, you know, you've got some that are functioning several years below their level and some that are functioning many years above their level the first intelligence tests were really age norm test They said you know here you're functioning compared to your chronological age. Where's your mental age? That was the first sort of round of intelligence tests that were created

It was all about age you know developmental age versus chronological age, but it would seem to me That would be incredibly different I'm not that aware of the monetary system other than friends that have kids in it that have complaints. But I would think that the variability would be so large that if you have a classroom of 20, 30 kids, how are you going to pay attention to each kid's needs? You're going to have to have multiple teachers. You do. And in Montessori, you tend to have smaller classroom sizes with more teachers, teachers' aides, Montessori assistants. You know, in a public school, you tend to have smaller classroom sizes with more teachers, teacher's aides, Montessori assistants. You know, in a public school, you might have one teacher for 35 kids, if you're lucky.

If you're lucky. And in a Montessori program with 25 or 30 kids, you probably have four or five adults in the room. Knowing what you know about the mind and the development of the mind, is the current state of education, public education in this country. Is that one of the more frustrating things that you have to consider? Not really. I mean, people learn so many different ways. And I also don't think that learning stops when you're out of school. So I think that the role of public education should be to do as much as possible for as many people as possible. But, you know, the people at either of the extremes are never going to be well-served.

People that are struggling or people that are advanced are never going to be well-served by, you know, general public education, while it's this sort of 1 to 35, 1 to 40 ratio. Right, but that was the point. Why is it 1 to 35, 1 to 40? And why does it receive such poor funding? And why do teachers receive such little respect?

I mean, I'm a teacher. I teach at UCLA. And, you you know we get paid adequately as a lecture college it's a college but even at that level you know the pay is not all that dramatically amazing I feel like you know like maybe you're implying that we should be paying people shaping our young people's minds a lot and treasuring their roles yeah it should be a huge honor. Yeah, we don't have that. We don't tend to have a lot of traditional mechanisms left

in our sort of modern Western culture. We don't look at, you know, coming of age or differences. I mean, women have an obvious coming of age thing that happens between like 9 and 13. There's a physiologic change, so it's obvious. Boys don't have that. And so, you know, a thousand years ago, we hit 13 years old. We were, you know, made men. It was some ritual. We don't,

you know, hunted a boar, who knows, got a tattoo. But nowadays people go from, you know, being children to adults without any clear stages, without the sort of social reinforcers of where you are and what your life means in terms of the community, in terms of your family. So I think that's unfortunately, you know, it's a function of living on a planet with 7 billion people. That's this topic that's been brought up on this show many, many times because I'm a big, I'm a big fan of and a big proponent of engaging in difficult activities to understand yourself. And I think that coming of age rituals, they at the very least signify to a child, like now I am this.

In martial arts, you get belts. And when you achieve your blue belt, there's this moment where you get that belt, you go, wow, I am a blue belt now. And it doesn't seem like it should be much, but I remember when I was doing jujitsu and I went from a white belt to a blue belt now. And it doesn't seem like it should be much, but I remember when I was doing jujitsu and I went from a white belt to a blue belt, I was like, wow, I got my blue belt.

But meanwhile, I was the exact same person. Nothing had changed other than the ritual. But you were recognized as different. And in historical, cultural, sort of coming-of-age rituals, the young person is given advice by all the men in the village, all the women in the village. They pick a new name sometimes. They go through like an ordeal.

I mean, the ordeal, I think, is what you're talking about too. The ordeal should not be underestimated. I don't know if we haven't met before, so I have a history as an ecstatic shaman. I've done a lot of ecstatic work around... What does that mean, an ecstatic shaman? Pushing yourself hard until your reality changes.

Mercedes Eliade, the sort of guy who defined shamanism, defined it as ordinary reality is what we all have. And if you push yourself hard enough through any mechanism you can think of, eventually your reality breaks and you have other insight, other knowledge, other ways of understanding the world. And so for me, it's been things like, you know, dance all night long or drumming or, you know, other things as well. But the idea is to push yourself until you get out of your own way, until your monkey mind breaks down, until you leave that behind. So as a shaman, you would lead people in these dance marathons? Sure. Or just do it myself. I mean, I'm a West African drummer as well. So I'm often like, What does that mean? It means I drum for dance classes. I drum for, you know, people dancing all night long around

a fire until they flop on the ground speaking in tongues. The idea is to give yourself a chance so you can change your reality. So you're looking at this though, from the point of view of a neuroscientist instead of a crazy hippie. Well, I was a crazy hippie before I was a neuroscientist. You can't tell, but I have about as much ink as you do. And so I have a lot... How could that be possible when I see your forearms?

Well, you know, it's all... It's all over your back and chest? Exactly. What do you got, like flowers? No, it's all Celtic. It's all Celtic. and chest? Exactly. What do you got, like flowers? No, it's all Celtic. Keep on trucking? It's all Celtic. Really? Yeah, yeah.

But, you know, I grew up on the East Coast as a hard-nosed East Coaster, and I found this world of being a sort of shaman, if you will. I'm also a motorcyclist, so I ride cross-country and do a lot of long-road trips. But, yeah, I also put a nice dress shirt on and go and do science, too. So you walk in and out of many worlds. Yeah, yeah. I think it's important to do that, to not hold any identity too rigorously.

What is your opinion of Ibogaine? I don't know enough about it is the short answer. I think it's interesting. I'm intrigued by it. And I think for folks that are struggling with certain types of drug addiction, I mean, I have some clients who've gone through that particular thing and say that they're, you know, they were impressed by it. And I think for folks that are struggling with certain types of drug addiction, uh, I mean, I have some clients who've gone through that particular thing and say that they're, you know, they were impressed by it or they, they got something out of it. I just don't have enough,

you know, real clear firsthand experience to talk about the amount of people that have done it. I've never done it either, but the amount of people that have done it, that have had, uh, addiction issues and gone through it and it's wiped out their addiction issues. It's pretty staggering, but you know, that isn't only true of ibogaine that's true of things like ayahuasca mushrooms mushrooms ketamine electric convulsive shock therapy really these things and this is a hypothesis I'm you know this is a theory I have that all of these things act this in a similar way on the brain to reset to cause a systemic wide sort of flip the switch you know ECT is still used for medication resistant depression

it's one of the few things that works if drugs don't work for your depression ECT will lift your depression so will ketamine you know one is zapping you one is sedating you but I think they're really going after sort of a reset deep in the brain in some way. So this transformative experience being so completely alien to normal states of consciousness is enough to give you this new blank slate, or at least a new starting point. Yeah, or at least, you know, maybe it could be sort of hormetic. It could be a stressor your body reacts to with healing. sort of hormetic. It could be a stressor your body reacts to with healing. So almost anything that affects depression, that lifts depression, does so by raising a neurotrophic factor in the

hippocampus. The hippocampus is involved with memory formation, also exploring the environment. And there's a compound called BDNF, brain-derived neurotrophic factors, a growth hormone or growth factor in the brain. Anything that lifts depression raises BDNF. BDNF is the final common pathway, if you will, of antidepressants. It's not serotonin, not dopamine, norepinephrine. It's not exercise. It doesn't matter what you say your antidepressant drug or mechanism is. How it actually works downstream is BDNF.

Wow, that's fascinating. I'm really glad you brought up the expression depression. Yeah. Because I don't suffer from depression. I've had many close friends who do. And I've always been concerned or confused or curious as to what causes it. Is it an environmental issue? Is it a biological issue? Is it a combination of the two? Because I've had friends whose lives were not going well. Their career wasn't going well, their romantic life wasn't going well, and they were

depressed. Then their career turned around, their romantic life turned around, and they were no longer depressed. And so I've always wondered how much of this idea that we have of someone being sick is just based on the input that you're getting from your environment, whether or not you're getting positive feedback. If you're in love, you'll feel great. You know, you're with someone you care to be with. If you have a job that's awesome, you get excited to go to work. All these things are good. You're doing well. You don't have to worry about your bills.

You're in a rewarding relationship where you feel supported and loved. You don't have this feeling all the time of being lonely or being left out. How much of that is an environmental issue? How much of that is just your brain is lacking a certain amount of pills? And how many people are medicated because their environment is shitty. Yeah. And so instead of giving you the impetus to change and alter your environment to benefit you, you're instead given a pill that makes your environment tolerable. Yeah. It's a really complex question. There's a few things to think about. One is things like

depression or anxiety aren't always bad. You know, there's often a good reason to be sad or a good reason to be tense. You know, if your spouse dies, you're going to be depressed. You know, you have an exogenous and outside cause for your depression. You lose your job. You, you know, your bank account's empty. There's lots of good reasons to be stressed and to have sort of negative emotional reactions to those things. Anxiety is the same way. If you're being chased by a tiger, you better be anxious. You better run.

When someone's life becomes less stressful, you're right. Some people become not depressed anymore. And that's, I would consider that like a low-key form of depression. If they just get a little bit depressed or depressed because of exogenous life things. All the diagnostic criteria for depression suggest that you need to have all these symptoms for many weeks. I think it's two or three weeks minimum across more than one domain of your life. So it's not simply being sad for a few weeks because of a bad thing that happened to you. It's what happens with how your emotional regulation gets changed by that or turns into a problem.

So there are many people, their lives get better, they get a new job, they have things perk up, and they don't become non-depressed. They stay depressed. They stay maybe just anhedonic. They can't experience joy for something from their life. Or they experience, you know, more subtle swings of mood than full-blown depression. But depression can last even in the face of your life being awesome. How long has it been that we've diagnosed this idea of depression?

I mean, for the longest time. How long? How many decades? Several, time... Longest time? How long? How many decades? Several, certainly. Two or three? More than that. I would say that major depression, I'm not actually sure

when it crept into the DSM. The whole issue of diagnosis is a very thorny issue anyways. The DSM was not really developed, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, which is what psychologists and psychiatrists use for diagnoses, was not really developed to help with diagnoses it was developed to help with insurance companies it's kind of like the BMI you

know the BMI for you and me would say we're overweight if not obese because we're you know pretty beefy guys but I'm not obese at 180 pounds right you know but if I was if my body fat was higher, muscle mass was lower, I would be. And the same thing's true with diagnoses. It was really a tool used to figure out what to pay on insurance to some extent. And so at a population level, if I took a thousand people, the BMI would work pretty well for most of them. And the same is true of the DSM.

It works pretty well at a population level. But the same is true of the DSM. It works pretty well at a population level. But when you drill down to the individual, sometimes their symptoms don't fit the DSM or how long they've had symptoms for, or the course of their disease doesn't really totally fit. And does a psychologist say, oh, you don't fit all the criteria, therefore I can't give you a diagnosis? No, they pick whatever's closest so that your insurance company can pay for their therapy and so that you can maybe get the drugs that they want to give you. So it's a pretty vague. I mean, the diagnosis is not as precise a field as a non-psychologist might think. I love that you use that term disease because that's what I wanted to bring up because that's what it's referred to as a disease.

Yeah. Depression is a disease. And you hear it all the time and I you hear it oftentimes in commercials that are selling drugs and that really concerns me because I'm like well you might be giving someone the green light to take a pill and it takes away the power from them takes away the power to change your life to alter your life for the better because you've got this horrible scenario in your life, horrible situation, circumstances, whatever. They're leading you to feel like shit all the time. And someone's coming along and saying, hey, man, you don't need to get a better job. You're depressed.

Right. And, you know, all those. I mean, I think it is a disease. Because you're not at ease? It's a dis-ease? You're not at ease? Sure. Sure.

Because you're not at ease? Is it dis-ease? You're not at ease? Sure, sure. I think it can become a disease. It can become entrenched and become stuck in that mode. And that's when it's a big problem. From the point of view of brain activity, if you look at depressed brains, if I brought in 100 depressed brains into my clinic and did brain mapping or QEEG on them, what I would find in most of them is an asymmetry in the frontal lobes. Many people who are depressed have an overactive right frontal lobe and an underactive left. This bias of left side being more active than right is typical. Glass half empty, approach the world, explore environments. When the right is more active than the left, you withdraw, you shut down,

you don't want to do anything. And so there is a brain signature often present in major depression of a left-right bias that goes in the opposite direction. You know, if you measure the Dalai Lama, he'd be really strong left biased. What about bullshit? Is there a part that says bullshit? Can you find out what that is on him? Do you think he's full of shit? I don't think.

I'm not buying the robes. Uh-huh. No. Okay. All right. All right. What came first, the chicken or the egg though, when it comes to this right left brain thing? Really good point. Yeah. I have no idea. I mean, I've never, you know, track someone through being non-depressed into depressed because they'll come and see me once they're depressed. So it could be a predisposition. Your brain is a little bit like this and you're a little bit, you know, oriented towards becoming a little bit depressed, and then stressors mount. I mean, genes are the same way. Genes only account for about 30% of our experience. And 70% of our experience is how the environment interacts with us.

And the same is true of anything else that's cognitive or psychological. You may have a slight tendency towards a depressed brain, you know, right front dominance. But unless your life becomes sucky or things really build up or you feel unsafe or unmet or unfed or something else, you might not ever develop the depression patterns that really you get stuck in. Have you ever monitored people pre and post depression? Oh, sure. Someone who has recovered from it? And what are the what are the changes that you observe? I mean, all the time, you see the asymmetry reverse go back to the sort of normal or typical brain patterns. Yeah, it happens all the time. I mean, not every person with depression has frontal asymmetries. But it's happens often enough that I believe it when I see it in the brain maps as a sign. I mean, I often do brain maps without

doing clinical histories first, because I don't want to be biased. So I'll sit you down and, you know, record some baselines. And then after I have the data, I'll say, okay, I'm seeing this pattern. I'm seeing some frontal asymmetries, you know, this, this thing here, uh, the literature suggests, and many people that come into my clinic have some depression when they see this pattern. Is that true for you? And I usually get a, yeah, how'd you know? Um, or anxiety, there's's patterns for there's patterns for ADHD or trauma, you know, OCD or PTSD and so I tend to unpack what I'm looking at based on their symptoms and Then confirm get them to confirm what I'm guessing. So now I want to do a brain scan before I wasn't really not interested I want to find out what the fuck is wrong with there you go

I want to get in there come down, come down to Beverly Hills, and we'll hook you up. How long does it take? It takes under an hour. And we can do a pre and post, a two-condition map for you if you wanted, like a totally clean off of caffeine or something else. Marijuana. Marijuana. You don't have to beat around the bush, man.

I saw the look on your face. No problem. You had like a little half smile. Yeah, yeah, sure, sure. How dare you. So if you want to come in one day without having smoked up, get a brain map. That's going to be tough. And then smoke up. We'll do another brain map and I'll show you how your brain changes. And here's something interesting. The brain mapping is the assessment process. We often do the neurofeedback or the

training process. Neurofeedback seems to reset tolerance to cannabis in a few days. Neurofeedback seems to reset tolerance to cannabis in a few days neurofeedback meaning biofeedback on brainwaves Biofeedback on brainwaves meaning what does that meaning a training up or down? Specifically making your brain make more beta and less theta which is an attentive Focused calm state and how would you do that? So I would stick an electrode to the top of your head and measure the amount of let's's say, theta. And theta is a brainwave that when it goes up, you're distracted, impulsive, checked out. When it goes down, you're focused. And it's going to fluctuate moment to moment because you aren't making a static amount of this brainwave. You're making, you know, the amount your environment and your internal environment demands.

And so whenever it tends to trend down, maybe I'll have you play one of your podcasts and the volume swell, the volume of your podcast will go up whenever your theta goes down. Whenever your theta goes back up, the volume drops. And so your brain goes, hey, wait, I was listening to that, you know, interesting guy. And over several, you know, over half an hour, you might have several hundred of these resuming of feedback, of rewards. And that can be something like an audio or a video it can be a spaceship flying Doesn't seem to matter how we reward the brain when training Just when we yoke the rewards to some parameter. That's changing in your brain and by just stimulating various

Areas on the scalp just measuring areas just measuring your Stimulate the stimulus, the feedback is actually coming in your eyes and ears. Music, video, animations. But then, you know, when your brain trends or drifts in the wrong direction, the game stops. The music stops. The podcast audio drops. Whatever it is

you're playing with on the computers. And it causes your mind to want to get it back. Your brain. It's lower level in your mind. Yeah, you're okay We'll define the difference. What's the difference? The mind is what you're aware of I would say and and this is a more core low-level I mean this this process of biofeedback was discovered in the late 60s on cats Cats are notoriously bad instruction followers right fuckers, right?

So you're never gonna this is not a cognitive process cats didn't make, in this case, cats got a dropper of milk. Whenever their brain waves went up in one direction, milk came out of a dropper. And they learned over time to produce more of this brain wave that gave them a milk dropper. Oh, fascinating. And then six months, this one experiment that Dr. Barry Sturman did in the late 60s, six months later he pulled a bunch of cats out of his subject pool to do a rocket fuel exposure experiment. NASA had said, hey, look, our astronauts are getting really sick. They're getting nauseous.

How dangerous is this, you know, hydrazine stuff we're using as rocket fuel? Could you please expose a bunch of animals to it and see, you know, how much it takes to kill them or what the dose response curve is. And so Dr. Sturman at UCLA in the late 60s was exposing cats to increasing levels of rocket fuel vapors and found that a little bit, you know, they panted, a little more they stumbled, a little more they cried, and then like seizure, coma, death. This nice linear, you know, with increasing dose. Except of the cats he was using, a certain subset, like six of 30 or something, to have seizures and the whole curve of unstable brain was pushed to the right couldn't figure out why until he realized oh wait a minute i used these same six cats in a previous experiment to increase their brain waves in this

one brain wave that i thought was a nice target to go after it turns out that brain wave is the anti-seizure brain wave when you you train it up, you have decreased, dramatically decreased seizure activity in the brain. And so he found this, you know, this brainwave was sort of meta stable in encouraging brain activity. And his lab manager at the time was a medication uncontrolled epileptic, having like tens of seizures a month, which is basically a death sentence. Your brain will, you know, Swiss cheese over time and you'll have major, major long-term problems. And she demanded he build her a biofeedback machine to train up this brainwave. And over the next year or two, they did some training.

And after a couple of years, she went off all meds and was seizure free. Whoa, that's crazy. And about that time, Barry Sturman's funding was all pulled. Really? And about that time, Barry Sturman's funding was all pulled. Really? He submitted a paper to Epilepsia, the journal, and suddenly his government funding all vanished. So the conspiracy theorist ideas start to mount when you think about the late 60s and big drug companies not wanting a non-drug intervention for epilepsy out there.

Now, what is the current protocol on this stuff today? I mean, how many people are using this kind of treatment to deal with epilepsy? I'm not sure, actually. I'm not an epileptologist. I've had a few folks come through my center who do have seizures, and I've reduced them. But I'm not sure of the numbers of epileptologists out there using it. The numbers of neurofeedback providers, just as a hand-waving guess, let's say there's 10,000 in the U.S., and there's many more, of course, throughout the world. When I go to big conferences, there's 1,000 to 1,500 people at the professional trade shows for this stuff,

and there's two of them. So you figure extrapolating, there's at least 10,000 practitioners in the U.S. In fact, just down the street here in Woodland Hills, some of the giants in the field, the Othmers, they sort of founded the field. Soon after Sturman made these discoveries, the Othmers at EEG Info launched sort of the field of neurofeedback for clinicians. They built software and hardware for many years for clinicians to use. Well, that is unbelievable. The idea that they would pull funding just because he's come up with something that takes away from the money that the pharmaceutical company... And who knows if that's actually what happened, but it's a good story that there's this potential, you know, sort of big brother, big pharma inflection.

And this is not beyond the pale. This is very possible. You know, when neurofeedback started getting really big, a lot of what it was first used for is ADHD. It's sort of the magic bullet for ADHD. You know, it's called the 20-hour solution for ADHD. When this was starting to really be used maybe 15, 20 years ago, a couple of the big drug companies were paying scientists to go to CHAad meetings the the adhd support group meetings and say nope neurofeedback doesn't work they were being paid by the drug companies to go and you know anti-shill for for you know anti-neurofeedback well we find that today with marijuana we find that today with pharmaceutical companies paying people to talk badly and and not

just that but testify about the negative aspects of cannabis and then you find out they're being paid by pharmaceutical companies hundreds of thousands of dollars yeah I mean what when did money get in so deep into not only medicine but politics I mean when you and I were kids this wasn't like this was it I don't know I mean I wasn't paying attention as a ten-year-old but yeah I don't think we're as aware or maybe it just wasn't as transparent just now we're aware of it. Information, you know, being everywhere wasn't really there in the 70s the way it is now, right? Right.

Well, all the Nixon studies. Nixon funded a bunch. The Nixon administration funded a bunch of studies trying to find the negative aspects of cannabis. And failed, basically. Not just failed. Found so many positive things they had to bury. Yep. Yeah.

We're dealing with that today. I mean, today you still have, there was this horrible story, horrible video of the head of the DEA having a conversation with someone in Congress where the guy is breaking it down to her saying, what is worse? Is cannabis as bad as meth? And she's like, well, they're both bad and they're both bad. Okay, what has more negative health risks? Is it cannabis or is it meth? And she won't do it. She won't do it because it's an ideology.

She's got a very specific pattern of thinking and speaking that she's supposed to engage in and she won't vary. She won't deviate. Yeah. And there's not, unfortunately, it's not a lot of good research out there. I mean, I'm putting together a cannabis study with my lead tech at Alternatives and we're going through a literature review trying to figure out what the state of the literature is. And I'm looking at brain activity. So my questions are things like, well, how long is it active in your brain? And what are the brain changes that cannabis produces? And we're looking at studies from the 70s and some of them in the 80s. And little footnotes and methodologies say, okay, the THC concentration in this study is 2%.

2.5%. 2.1%. Whatever. And nowadays, you know, the stuff being delivered to your door from the collective is 20%. 23%. 25%. So cannabis has gotten 10 times as strong since our parents were, you know. Well, that's all just dirt weed, though. There was a study that they did recently.

They said that they got a hold of some marijuana from the 1960s and 70s, and the variation was between 2% to 5% for shitty weed, but as high as 15% for what they called Acapulco Gold. Right, sure, sure. Or Sensimilia. That's what the old-timers used to call the good weed. Kind Bud. 2 to 5% for shitty weed, but as high as 15% for what they called Acapulco gold. Right, sure, sure. Or sensimillion. That's what the old timers used to call the good weed. Kind bud. That's what they call it, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

But so that means that the good weed of today and the great weed of then are pretty similar. But the great weed of today is some next level shit. And all the scientists and the average, you know, squares in the late 60s didn't have access to the Acapulco gold. How did they not? The scientists? Well, I mean, all the studies were done on low potency compared to today, low potency weed. So I'm not sure why they didn't have access to it, but they were all using 2%, 3%. They were probably worried about the man.

Everybody was scared of giving them the good weed. Yeah, probably. They didn't know anybody but today you're dealing with these botanists that are going deep and they're i've heard as many as 30 to 35 percent i've never seen that i'm not sure i'd want that it's a little too much right here wow 35 wow that's it a little too much is it oil blow your fucking head off no that's just some crazy weed that these guys have put together. 30% is a lot. I've given it to people that are from out of town and they don't function well on it. It hits them in a very strange, it's funny to watch. Do you do it during your podcast? It's kind of cruel. I've done it. Wow. Not cruel. They ask for it. They want to see what's up. But the real issue is really that it's just what are you used to? I mean, if you're used to this 34% THC, you know you take one hit and you're good. It's like alcohol. I mean, is alcohol, is stronger alcohol a problem? No, not really.

We know that whiskey is stronger than wine. You know, we know that. So you drink a large glass of wine, you're fine. You don't drink a large glass of wine you're fine you don't drink a large glass of whiskey right but it's harder to you know it's rather it's easier to get into trouble with whiskey than beer sure because the the momentum has you know faster consequences yes that's a very good point so I want is the same thing and I mentioned that I eliminate tolerance to marijuana in in the first week of training people's tolerance is gone

I'm just gone and I work with people that are often like yeah, man. I'm professional. I know what I'm doing shut up Mm-hmm. Okay. Well, you know just be really careful. No, no, no, I'm good. I've been smoking for 25 years How does this tolerance get? Minimized I'm not sure what the mechanism is I just know that it's a real effect people come back the next day and like yeah, man I smoked up and I I stared at the ceiling all night. I couldn't get out of the couch. I was drooling during dinner.

I couldn't talk to my wife. What did you do to me? It's like giving a giant blunt to a high school kid who's never seen weed. It's a multiple on the dose effect in some way. Does it deal with the effects of it from eating it as well as smoking it? Or is it only smoking

it it must be this it must be both I haven't actually rigorously examined the differences but it must be both I would wonder because the the difference in eating it is very dramatically different because you know what it's processed by the liver you know yeah but it's still THC I mean eventually the brain is still getting a similar effect it's actually not not. It's 11-hydroxymetabolite. When it's processed by the liver, it's producing this new substance that's five times more psychoactive than THC. I know it lasts a lot longer. I don't really enjoy eating it.

It's not just lasts longer. It's a totally different drug. Your liver produces this metabolite, 11-hydroxymetabolite, and it's so much more potent, which is why when people eat cookies, they always think they're dying. Right. They always think, oh, my God, somebody dosed it. I'm sure you've probably heard of this. There's a hilarious 911 call where these cops had stolen weed from these kids and made brownies with it.

And then they eat the brownies and they call 911, and they're like, time's going by really slow. I think we're dead. You've never heard it? No. It's hilarious. Oh my god, that's funny. You should pull it up, Jamie, because everyone should hear this because it's so fucking stupid. It just shows you that cops are just people and the idea

that you could give these people outrage over a 911 call. He wants to know why no charges have been filed against a police officer who admits to confiscating marijuana is this listen to this What marijuana I don't know if they had something in it you please can rescue you guys have fever I think no I'm just I think we're dying I don't know we made brownies, and I think we're dead time is going by really really really really slow Yeah, not responsible use right there. Yeah, I will listen to that to the day I die. A fucking dummy.

Well, that's the problem with eating it. Most people aren't aware. I mean, even you are not aware that you're eating it. It's a process called a one-pass when it goes through your liver. Yeah, first-pass metabolism. Yeah, and it blows your brain out the back of your head. Now, you know one of the tricks to bring somebody down who's overindulged? Caffeine.

Ibuprofen. Really? Yeah. Ibuprofen seems to take the edge off of weed. So do nootropics. But ibuprofen specifically seems to reduce the memory impairments you get when you smoke. That's fascinating. The memory impairment, the short-term memory impairment.

And potentially long-term learning memory as well. What about the actual feeling of being high? Does it mitigate just a tiny bit can take the edge off like I've had friends that have you know? Oh my god. I'm dying. I've you know done too much. I've eaten three cookies whatever mm-hmm and well Here's my profit in 20 minutes later. Okay. Thank you. What do you give him like 800 milligrams like 400 and 400? Yeah, and I hear there's a new trend in college students studying with 200 milligrams of ibuprofen and a bong hit Whoa, because I wacky kids. Because they don't affect the memory formation.

I'm glad you brought that up, because a big problem in college today is Adderall. Oh my God, huge problem. Now, what's going on with that? Because that seems to me, I've never done Adderall, but from the people that I've talked to that have and understand it, it's a stimulant like very close to amphetamines. Very close to meth. Very close to meth. me yeah much lower dose and slightly different molecule but but very very close to a you know strict class strip stimulant my uh good friend the late great robert schimmel

who was a hilarious stand-up comedian a great guy he had a bunch of health issues himself and um uh he accidentally took adderall once and, uh, he had taken the wrong medication. I don't know like whose it was. I don't, I don't remember the story, but I remember he called his doctor up and he said, Hey, I took this Adderall. Like, am I fucked? Cause he had heart issues. And, uh, the doctor said, no, you're going to be fine. Just, uh, just ride it out. You're going to be fine, but you know, obviously don't take it again. But, uh, and you know, if anything goes horribly wrong, call me, but I think you're going to be fine. And he said, he just cleaned his house and organized his notes. He said he took all of his comedy notes and just went over them. He said, I couldn't believe how organized I was. He was so

motivated to get things done. And that, and that push of stimulants does happen. This is why students abuse it, but that push doesn't continue if you take it every day. Okay. Right. So it's like you're chasing the dragon. Yeah. And the euphoria. I mean, your friend had some euphoria probably from it too.

That goes away as soon as you're used to the drug. Well, he wasn't interested in doing it again. He just accidentally did it. But he's like, God, I got so much work done. And I've heard that before. Like my friend Eddie. My friend Eddie Bravo dated a few gals who had problems with stimulants. And he said you would always tell because you'd go over to their house and be fucking spotless.

He was like, those chicks would always be cleaning their apartments. They would just constantly be cleaning. What is it about stimulants that make you want to get things done? Well, dopamine is the primary neurotransmitter boosted by stimulants, and dopamine is the reward signal. It's the salient. This is interesting. This is motivating.

So you get a motivation. You know, you find even boring tasks interesting. Wow. So you would want to do things like clean your house. Yeah, because you want to do something because you want to engage with your environment. You want to explore, reshuffle, play around with your environment. Now for kids, this chasing the dragon thing with college has got to be a giant issue though, right? You're popping these pills and at first it's benefiting you and then slowly that starts to wear out.

So you're taking more. And a lot of kids aren't ADHD, not wear out so you're taking more and a lot of kids aren't adhd not dramatically and they're taking stimulants off label other people's you know black market prescriptions um and you know there are some consequences to psychostimulants there are some negative consequences if you're not managing them in the absolute right way you should including things like cardiovascular side effects and habit formation and appetite suppression. And, you know, all these things can cause major issues for me. College students are some of the least healthy people anyways. They're sleep deprived. They eat

like crap. They don't know how to like live their lives as adults yet, but they have no structure that their parents used to give them. Um, and so with all of these problems, you throw a stimulant into the mix and they find they can be super productive on it. And you find kids that are now drug-seeking or trying to get diagnoses so they can get drugs. Yeah, we had this young gal who was an intern on Fear Factor back in the day. And she was very nice. And you would never think of her as being someone that had a problem with the drugs. But, boy, you bring up Adderall around her and, like, ding! Her eyes would light up like she had like two like white stars for pupils and she'd be like who has Adderall

That's the cocaine response, right? Oh, that's my cocaine. You know, it's that's the that's the it's the it's the reward It's the dopamine hit makes you go. Yes. That's the most interesting thing I've ever heard of, you know Yeah, I was watching her and this guy this other guy who used to work there, and they had this conversation And he's like yeah, well you know I would just take Adderall and she's like you got Adderall you have Adderall like and yeah It was weird. It was like you were watching someone like Trenton's like Gollum in the ring. Yeah Yeah, yeah Dopaminergic drugs are in my opinion some of the most dangerous things we have because they they hijack learning Because they really get in the way. And so it's not just that it's pleasurable and that's reinforcing.

It's the pleasurable and dopamine gets boosted to super physiological levels. Well, how ironic that it hijacks learning when you're using it to help learn. Yeah. But you're not really learning, right? You're just studying. Yeah. Some of the psychostimulants do seem to improve learning. I think Ritalin is in that class, but Ritalin is a very atypical psychostimulant.

A methylphenidate is not a typical like Adderall or something. And it actually improves learning? It seems to improve long-term potentiation or at least affect it in some way that is not negative. What about Provigil and NuVigil? Those are other drugs. I'm a huge, I hate them. Really? Yeah. I took modafinil, Provigil, myself off label for attention and just about died from it. Ended up in the hospital, head to toe, hives, lungs closing up. Wow. I've never heard that. I had a massive systemic

reaction to it. And people that have attention problems, and I grew up ADHD, people that have attention problems have dramatically increased side effects from that class of drugs, Provigil, NuVigil, Adafinil, Arm Adafinil. I've taken that stuff and nothing. Nothing's happened to me at all. But I take 150 milligrams. I took 100 every morning for two weeks. Well, it's prescribed to take every day.

I mean, when you're prescribed, take it every day. That's how it's supposed to be. Oh, so you were given a prescription for this stuff. I was given a prescription. It wasn't just an experiment. I mean, it was an experiment because I didn't like psychostimulants. And I said, hey. How long ago was this?

This is just before I launched TrueBrain, which was one of the reasons I did it. So, like, two and a half years ago. And I ended up, you know, in the ER at UCLA, literally head to toe hives. I couldn't. I couldn't. Wow. I was miserable for about three and a half weeks. And I, it was what they, what they said eventually was it was something called, um,

erythema multiform minor. And there's a major form that's called Steven Johnson syndrome. And that's where your skin peels off. Whoa, dude. So I, you know, I, I luckily didn't have that major version, but I was still incredibly miserable and my lungs were, you know, having major issues. So I just about died from modafinil. I've heard many people that are terrified of that stuff, but they couldn't figure out a reason why. And yours is the first real legitimate. Well, it boosts brain histamine. And histamine is like a master neurotransmitter and all the other neurotransmitters can be modulated by it.

So you raise histamine, you raise dopamine, raise histamine, raise serotonin. other neurotransmitters can be modulated by it. So you raise histamine, you raise dopamine, raise histamine, raise serotonin. And for me, the histamine, the brain histamine caused a body histamine over sensitization or reaction or something. Wow. So, and this is not uncommon. If you look at the old, like some of the review papers on modafinil, you find that all of the studies on people with ADHD have incredibly dramatically increased side effects compared to non-ADHD people. So you shouldn't use, you know, modafinil is great if you're asleep, you know, a narcoleptic person or somebody who's doing, you know, sleep-wake-shift disorders or things. But unless you absolutely need it to modify your sleep, it's not great for attention. I mean, I got some mild attention

benefits from it the first couple of weeks. It's just nothing compared to psychostimulants. It's nothing compared to neurofeedback. Or even like meditation, mindfulness can change your brain and shore up attention resources. I want to get to mindfulness in a moment, but what is the difference between NuVigil and ProVigil? Yeah, so Modafinil, the first product, ProVigil is the brand name, is a mix of left and right hand molecules. When you're making organic chemistry, things are sort of naturally developed in sort of two mirror image molecules in most chemical synthesis. And so there's an L and an R form of the modafinil. They're mixed in the modafinil product.

In the R modafinil, which is NuV in the modafinil product in the in the our modafinil which is new vigil it's only one half it's the it's the right-hand molecule er and so the our molecule theoretically you know typically in organ brain chemistry one of the molecules is psychoactive and one of them is much much less so and or causes side effects so a lot of the modern drugs will use an l or an r form only and get rid of the other half of the molecule um modafinil both the l and the r uh versions of the molecule are psychoactive the r form is a little more psychoactive and tends to have a more stimulant type feeling. So subjectively, I've taken both. Subjectively, monafinil is interesting and has a sort of bimodal peak

where you get one hump six hours in, another hump about 12 hours in. R-monafinil has the same sort of 12 to 16 hour window of activity, but it's only one peak of activity. It's because you only have one molecule. So in regular monafinil you're metabolizing two different substances, if you will, having slightly different effects from them. And the R-monafinil is only one half of the molecule. Of the mix of molecules you would get. I've only

tried NuVigil. I haven't tried ProVigil. But I've done it many times when I'm tired. So ProVigil will be a little bit less stimulating and you might have some additional effects from it that are not... NuVigil, so provigil will be a little bit less stimulating and you might have some additional effects from it that are not. NuVigil or provigil? Pro. Pro is the mix of L and R. NuVigil, uh, the, the generic name for NuVigil is R-modafinil. Okay. You know, A-R-modafinil, but it's the letter R. You can think of it that way for the right hand molecule. So that, that's

the more discreet, theoretically fewer side effects. It's a bit stronger in some ways, more of a stimulant effect, where Provigil or Modafinil is the racemic mix of the left and right hand molecules. And when you started having your side effects, was this an accumulative effect? Did you see it right away? No. No. No, it took about 12, 13 days in before I had it. Like I woke up, my hands were kind

of puffy and itchy. And by the end of that day, there was like deep, deep soreness in a lot of parts of my body. And, um, like the bottoms of my feet and my palms were like sensitive and itchy. Whoa. And I didn't take any more. And the next day I woke up like with a pressure urticaria, massive hives. So you knew that it was most likely related to that. Well, I have no allergies to any medications. I've never experienced anything else like that. I've never had hives in my life. I'm not someone who gets, you know, hay fever.

So I had no idea, but the only thing I've added in to my sort of regimen, at the same time, at the end of this two weeks, I also got the flu. Wow. And it's likely that the immune, you at the end of this two weeks, I also got the flu. And it's likely that the immune surge of getting the flu interacted in some way with the histamine surge from the provigil. And the two things together were sort of a perfect storm of my body hating itself. But I am not a fan. And I also think that the gains, the possible gains, attention, cognition, focus from modafinil are minor. Not that dramatic. I mean, choline forms, alpha-GPC, much stronger support to cognition than modafinil is.

Well, I found that to be the case. I found choline to be much better as far as memory retention and execution and things along those lines. But as far as being awake. Yeah, less wakeful promoting. But wakefulness and cognition are not necessarily the same thing. Yes, I agree. So, you know, wakefulness, if that's your issue because of narcolepsy, because you're working night shift, there may be a reason. You know, you're a jet fighter or

an airline pilot, commercial airline pilot, where you're up for many hours having to remain on. Sure, there's a reason it might make sense. But not if you're a biohacker just trying to get a little more out of your schoolwork or more out of your high-powered business day. I don't think there's really any benefit or any good reason to take them at Afanil compared to what else is out there. Yeah, I know a dude who's taking it every day for like eight nine years Mm-hmm, and he was wacky as fuck mm-hmm, and I think that might have had something to do with it Maybe yeah, just and chicken and egg, you know, yeah not being forthcoming about taking it either It's one of those weird things you wanted to kind of keep on the DL hmm

Tim Ferriss who wrote a book the four-hour body or Tim He didn't want to talk about it in his book because he was worried that people would start taking it like candy. And they are, to some extent, especially in Silicon Valley. Yeah, I was just going to bring that up. And Dave Asprey talks about modafinil, and they're all very pro-modafinil. I think I'm the only guy out there in the biohacking space who's like, this stuff is minimally effective, it's dangerous,

and unless you're an arcoleptic, it's just not for you. Well, coincidentally, you're the only one qualified to actually discuss the real mechanisms of the compounds and the way they affect your brain. Yeah, and we don't know what modafinil really does to the brain. There's some theories. We think it boosts brain histamine. We think it sort of flushes the orexin system, the hypothalamus, to make you wakeful. But that's all still theory. What about this shit?

Cannabis? No, this isn't cannabis. What is that? This is tobacco. This is one of these wacky vape pipes thing that the kids are smoking. See these things? Interesting. It's a vaporizer for tobacco.

Yeah, everybody's smoking tobacco out of these wacky things. I'm not a fan of tobacco I was a cigarette smoker for a few years you were yeah, maybe like five years or six years. How long ago was this? I probably quit about a 12 or 13 years ago So I think I smoked from like, you know college and then a few years after the nicotine though nicotine as a drug Yeah, does have some sort of a benefit or some sort of a promotion of cognitive function. Yeah, it's glutamate receptors. It affects learning in some ways, we think.

Sorry, acetylcholine receptors. We think it's absolutely affecting learning in some way. But nicotine, of course, is fairly addictive. Right. And nicotine is also carcinogenic all by itself. All by itself, even though it has some medicinal benefits. Yeah, much less so carcinogenic than like tobacco, burnt tobacco. But nicotine, even by itself, has some carcinogenic properties.

But you see the carcinogenic effects or the people that have an issue with cigarette smoking, it's far more likely to cause cancer that it is people that are using like say like cigars most because they aren't getting the dosages yeah is that what it is yeah people that have they use cigars are much more likely to have oral cancers right people that smoke have lung cancers but what are the numbers on on cigar smoking because what i understand with the way what i've read is it's fairly uncommon for people who are regular cigar smokers to get mouth cancer. Like, you might have to be one of those wacky, you know, George Burns-type characters. Right, always carrying one around.

Yeah, I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I mean, I think you're right. I just think that as a class, like, you know, what's the benefit? It's minimal. Again, some benefits to learning cognition, but you can get those same benefits by getting a good night's sleep. Really? Or by,

you know, meditating. Um, so friends that are writers that are cigarette smokers and they say there's nothing like it. Like Tony Hinchcliffe, he just can't get off the cigarettes when he's writing. Like he wrote for the Justin Bieber roast recently. And he said when he's in a writer's room and he starts firing up the

cigarettes, the ideas just start flowing. Sure. And you know, is that state dependent learning? Cause that's when he's in a writer's room and he starts firing up the cigarettes, the ideas just start flowing. Sure. And, you know, is that state-dependent learning? Because that's what he always writes. Could be, right? Also, you know, the saying we said for alcohol. How many writers would say alcohol is their muse?

A lot. I mean, it's sort of like the Steinbeck disease, right? Hemingway. Yeah, Hemingway. This is really, I mean, and is it true? I don't know. Yes, you can get yourself out of your own way. You can get some chemical support and start being creative.

But is it really helping you be generative in new ideas? Or is it just helping you not be stressed? Or is it simply that you've associated being creative with drinking? Well, I know marijuana. There's no doubt about it. It's a little bit different. That's giving you some ideas that just don't exist other than in the marijuana state. And they might not be good ideas.

Yeah. They sound great when you're, Oh my God, I just discovered everything. And then later you're like, what the hell was I thinking? That doesn't, is that all I thought?

Well, that's not as exciting as I thought. Well, it's also, you try to like read what you wrote down. I used to have a joke about it. How did it go? That I wrote down, I actually wrote this down.

A unicorn is a donkey from the future. I wrote that down on paper. I'm like, what the fuck is wrong with me? Like this shows you, like that doesn't make any sense. Yeah. But when I was high, I was like, this is hilarious. It'd be funny if your audience was high. Even if they were high high they'd be like

What a unicorn is a donkey from the future doesn't make any sense. Yeah, not really Yeah, it's ridiculous But there's something that happens when you do smoke marijuana that does excite the creative aspect of consciousness Sure, whatever that is whatever that is and you know we don't know bad we don't know everything cannabis is doing it's not simply one you know don't say THC or the 11 form from you know liver format there's like 700 different psychoactive compounds in the burning plant right and they did they differ depending on the strain dramatically sometimes I mean sativa and indigo are not the same plant you know you know they came from very different

sort of you know genetic, if you will. Sure. One being the South American variety and one of intensely tropical climates. Yeah. And they have different benefits. So, I mean, I don't think we yet know. And I'm kind of excited by what's happening with the medical and recreational cannabis in this country because we're finally doing some of the research. We're finally looking into constituent components,

all the other cannabinoids beyond THC. We're starting to examine the endocannabinoid. We have a cannabinoid system built in. There's a neurotransmitter called Ananda, you know, the Sanskrit word for bliss that hits our endocannabinoid systems. That's Ananda. That's what the Sanskrit word for bliss is. Yeah, exactly. That's fascinating. And we have, you know, we found the receptor in the body before we found the ligand,

the binding compound in the body. But we knew that this thing, this receptor in the body existed, and cannabis bound to it. And so this receptor, was this developed from the human body growing up or evolving with the use of this plant? Is that where it's from, or is it just inherently a part of our system? I think it's inherently a part of our system. I mean, you know, evolution tends to reinvent the same thing. It tends to conserve biological constructs, molecules, organ systems across species. So a mouse has a heart, so does a human. They also have endogenous cannabinoid systems.

I think we have at least two categories of cannabinoid systems. One is immune and one is bliss. And we know an exogenous, a plant that affects the bliss system, you know, cannabis. Echinacea affects the other cannabinoid system. Echinacea is an herb that boosts your immune system. Does it really work to boost your immune system? I think it does, yeah. I mean, I certainly have taken it. Um, if, if you take it when you're just starting to get sick,

it can shut down an illness in my experience. Really? Yeah. Um, I've always wondered whether or not that was legit. I think it is. I don't think it's as dramatic as, you know, antibiotics or anything. Um, but I do think there's some, there's something there, but you know, this, this, this plant, this purple coneflower echinaceaacea plant, is a cannabinoid. It affects your cannabinoid system. That's how it affects your immune system. That's amazing. What about CBDs and CBDs in relationship to cancer,

which is something that is being researched quite a bit lately? Yeah, I'm not up on all the research. Some of the first papers over the past couple of decades were all CBD, CBD, CBD, reducing inflammation, reducing cancer, killing cancer cells. I've seen a few papers recently that say the non-CBD compounds also do that and do it better. Wow. Non-CBD oils. Like THC has anti-cancer properties.

And do it better than CBDs. It may, yeah. CBDs being good for inflammation, joint pain, things along those lines. The paper I read had THC also working on all those other aspects as well. Wow. So the isolation of the CBD might just be because people are trying to avoid THC? Trying to avoid the psychoactive, yeah. Because CBD, it's non-psychoactive. In fact, the ratio of CBD to THC affects how psychoactive something is.

So too much CBD and you aren't going to get high off your pot. Oh. Even in the presence of THC. Interesting. It counteracts each other. It counteracts each other, exactly. Sort of an inbuilt check. Isn't it frustrating to you that all this stuff, which probably could have been figured out a long time ago, were legal?

Yeah. It's a little frustrating but i look at you know if you go back you know 100 years ago technology was nowhere compared to where it is right now i i sort of see us on the the exponential curve the hockey stick of acceleration now so would it have been nice if 50 years ago we were getting into this stuff sure but it doesn't on a global time scale doesn't really bother me that it's happening now versus last decade. Well, it doesn't bother me that it's happening now. What bothers me is the suppression that exists.

It used to exist, like the same suppression that caused this reluctance of pharmaceutical companies to accept this treatment of epilepsy that didn't involve drugs that they sell. Well, the initial anti-cannabis movement was textiles in this country, right? Yeah, textiles and paper, actually. Yeah, they didn't want the flax or the fibers coming in and supplanting the cotton industry and the fuel industries and things. It was directly connected to the production and creation of a machine called a decorticator. Decorticator?

Yeah, the decorticator was the first time that they developed a system of processing hemp fire that didn't involve slavery or hard manual labor. The reason why cotton took such a foothold is because they came up with the cotton gin. When Eli Whitney came up with the cotton gin, cotton became much more viable than cannabis, than hemp. The fibers of hemp are far stronger, far superior for making paper and cloth.

It's just way tougher. Absolutely, like 10 times more cotton is or something. Canvas. Canvas comes from the word cannabis. Cannabis was originally a hemp product. Oh, interesting. I had no idea. Far more durable.

Yeah. Far more durable for pants. The original Levi's were made out of canvas. It was all cannabis. Interesting. Yeah, it's all hemp based until that motherfucker that they made that book or they made the the movie reefer madness no wasn't that it was uh it was William Randolph Hearst all right the Orson Wells movie right yeah citizen came yeah there was all about this one asshole right William Randolph Hearst owned Hearst Enterprises.

He owned, you know, all the newspapers he owned. I mean, he just had this massive stranglehold on information. Yeah. And he was a motherfucker. And this guy came out with the idea of, first of all, they got in cahoots with Harry Anslinger. And they decided to call it marijuana, which wasn't a name for it before. Marijuana was a name for a wild Mexican tobacco plant. It wasn't even cannabis.

So when Congress was outlawing marijuana, they didn't exactly understand that they were outlawing hemp as a textile and as a commodity. So then you had to get like a tax stamp in order to grow hemp. And then, you know, they needed it for World War two so they started this campaign hemp for victory and hemp for victory was this famous video that they that Jack Harer who was a famous sure yeah famous marijuana activist found this video to sort of sort of establish what he had been saying all along like look this is something that we had grown and used as a culture for thousands of years human beings it's it's it was a huge part of i mean it was what george w or george herbert

walker bush that was what his parachute was made of when he parachuted to safety in World War II. It was what the sails that Columbus sailed on was made out of. They were all made out of hemp. Yep. Rope. Yeah, all of it, rope. And when they decided to demonize it, the way they did it was to go after racism. They said this marijuana plant was making blacks and Mexicans rape white women.

Right, right. Everybody went fucking crazy. Yeah, well, you know, fear, uncertainty, and doubt, and marketing was even sort of a big player back then. And nowadays, it's hard to get good information about anything without a decent degree to understand where the noise is coming from. But in a lot of ways, it's very similar to what you're saying about taking away this non-drug option of treating epilepsy yeah it's like they

realize that okay there's money to be made with this one solution this new solution there's no money to be made let's attack it yeah that's what they did yeah yeah I mean there's there's people making CBD or CBN only strains of cannabis purely for epileptics now, that they suppress seizures. I mean, you don't want to give a five-year-old kid a joint. You know, they're already pretty stoned as a five-year-old, right? But CBN or CBD can suppress epileptic activity. You know, where is, I mean, that's a charged issue, giving a kid cannabis.

But I don't see any ethical or problematic use, even with children, if you're using it as an anti-epileptic intervention. Well, I have direct experience with a very good friend of mine who has a child who has extreme epileptic seizures. He gives a kid medical cannabis now. He moved to a state where it's legal. He moved to Washington State, and he gives his kid a very small amount every day, and there's no longer any seizures. This kid was having multiple amount every day and there's no long no longer any seizures this kid was having multiple seizures a day he was more he's also got he's on the autism spectrum he's also got like some pretty severe social issues which were mitigated substantially once he started interesting interesting but there's all sorts of other connections to gut bacteria and there's a bunch

of inflammation issues diet and things that change that for, for kids who suffer from these things that they don't totally, truly understand. Right. And, and we may never, cause I mean, every individual is a little bit different too. I mean, autism specifically is not really one thing. It's more like the autisms. Um, the only thing consistent across them is the social deficit, but you can have a high-functioning Asperger's individual with superior cognitive skills, incredible abilities, but still some deficits in other areas. And they're so concerned with opening up the doorway to this stuff that even non-psychoactive versions of these plants are illegal.

Like hemp. We have a huge issue with that at On it my supplement company because we sell protein hemp proteins very bioavailable but we have to get it from Canada right because we can't you you can you sort of can grow it with the state's didn't that law just change like last week yeah can now start growing commercial hemp sort of you would know more it does sort of has. It sort of has. But it's got a lot of resistance.

It's got a lot of resistance in terms of how it's going to react or how the federal government is going to react to it if a Republican gets in office in 2016. That's also one of the things

about medical marijuana. They've recently softened their stance considerably on medical marijuana. But all it takes is one thing, one Jeb Bush motherfucker to get into office and things can get really weird. But as of right now, we have to get our stuff from Canada.

We would love to buy it from America, from American farmers. But also it just should be something that people could, it's a plant. It's ridiculous. It's not killing anybody and it's a plant. It should be really that simple. Does it kill anybody? No. Is it turning people into slaves?

If aspirin was invented today, if aspirin was invented today, aspirin would be a scheduled substance. That's amazing. Controlled substance. It probably would, right? It has side effects. It can kill you. Sure. Yeah, and not only that, there's a lot of medications that they prescribe, especially for people that have heart disease, where aspirin can just nip that shit right in the butt.

Aspirin is an amazing, amazing anti-inflammatory. Oh, yeah, absolutely. And it's at least initially from a natural willow bark. Yeah. Can you get it in a natural form still? Is it available? You go out in the forest and, you know, the inner bark of a white willow tree. That's all it is?

And chew it, and then you'll get acetylsalicylic acid, yeah. Wow. And how will you know how much bark to chew? I don't think the dosages are an issue. I think you'll absorb it and get pain relief or whatever. So it's only when you swallow it that it becomes an issue? No, I think it's being absorbed through the mucosa, but I don't think you're going to get concentrated doses the way you do in tablets of aspirin.

Yeah, that's what I mean. So you can overdose on the tablets. You can't overdose on chewing the bark. You probably can, but you'd have to be an asshole. You'd have to be an asshole. And it probably tastes like ass. These are very bitter substances. How did everybody ever find out that that gives you relief from a headache? I don't know. Probably some

druid brewing it in tea or something a couple of years ago. Yeah, it's an interesting thing that that's been around for so long and there's so, and it's sort of like very subtly swept under the rug, the health benefits of aspirin. Sure. Sure. Well, you know, in, at least in the cardiac medicine, uh, there's still this focus of giving people the heart risks, uh, or heart cardiac, uh, risks of heart attack, you know, prophylactic doses of aspirin every day to reduce the strain on the blood system. Well, I've also heard people say that after you get

to a certain age, you should just take aspirin every day anyway, just to mitigate the natural reaction that your body has to inflammation. Yeah. Or the clotting. It's really about clotting. And I think, you know, paracetam is a better drug for that long-term than aspirin because it has other benefits. That's interesting. I wanted to bring those up, the different nootropics like paracetam, the different racetams. Sure. What are your favorite ones when it comes to nootropics and what causes you to prefer those? Well, you know, I'm one of the scientists at TrueBrain, so I help people.

And TrueBrain, you have it right here. Yeah, we brought you some drinks. It's a nootropic drink. Yeah, we have drinks in capsule form. And the drinks sort of are the first to market little mini drinks. You got three different colors here. Yeah, three different colors. Green, blue, and orange.

Why is it different? Well, one's caffeinated. Which one? It should say on it. It's the blue or the green. You don't know? I forget. This is your shit, man.

I know, I know. Well, we keep iterating and changing it. So this is the latest flavor we've ever come up with for you. Okay, this is caffeine free. The blue one is. The green one's caffeinated then. Okay. And the orange one is the boost. So the blue and the green ones are paracetam based with CDP choline. This is the original? Yeah. Green's the original? The green's the caffeinated one. Okay. Has 80 milligrams of caffeine, not a huge amount. And then the orange one is oxy-racetam based. 80 milligrams is not a lot. No.

That's like a cup of coffee, though. It's like a four-ounce cup of coffee, of drip coffee. Isn't that, though, aren't we considering that because of how jacked up Starbucks is? Because Starbucks' Aventi is 200 milligrams of caffeine. More than that. Is it? Probably, yeah. Really?

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, caffeine's somewhere betweeni is 200 milligrams of caffeine. More than that. Is it? Probably, yeah. Really? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, caffeine is somewhere between 75 and 150 milligrams for every 8 ounces of drip or one espresso shot. So it takes three espresso shots to equal the amount of caffeine in a 12-ounce drip coffee. Right. That's why a lot of people think that espresso is much stronger. And the darker you roast, the less caffeine you have in the bean, right? That's another thing that's a misconception, right?

People think, oh, give me the dark roast. I don't want to get fucked up. No, a French roast is like up to a third less caffeine than a light roast. What do you got there, Jamie? 450. 450 milligrams from a 20? Is that Starbucks? Yeah.

Is that a Venti? Yeah. Okay, so 180. 180 is a short. That's what I was thinking of So between a short, a tall Tall is their middle, right? And then, I fucking hate all these

Foreign words God damn it, don't call it a grande Call it a medium Well, there's lots of reasons to boycott these guys Now, they just went after the state of Vermont Starbucks and Monsanto Joined together to file suit against Vermont for mandating labeling

of GMOs. What? Starbucks and Monsanto. They have GMO coffee? No. They just want to. They don't want to be mandated to label. What an if. Well, isn't there an issue with GMOs with that there's an immediate

demonification. Yeahification knee jerk yeah when people don't understand that every fucking tomato you buy at a grocery store is genetically there's no such thing as a non-gmo cow there's no such thing as a non-gmo ear of corn if you're eating ears of corn that shit has been modified corn's been heavily modified recently in the past 10 20 years but we've been gmoing cattle with selective breeding for thousands of years. Right, but isn't there a difference between selective breeding and splicing in non-native genetics, which they have done to increase the resistance to certain pesticides? Yeah, roundup mostly.

That freaks people out, rightly so, right? Totally, yeah, absolutely. Isn't it one of those things where there's not an either or? There's benefits to genetically modifying things to our advantage, but there Totally, yeah, absolutely. Isn't it one of those things where there's not an either or? There's benefits to genetically modifying things to our advantage, but there's also greed. And also when people don't want to address the actual real health concerns of their creations. And that's what people are worried about. That's why when Brazil as a country filed suit against Monsanto and won. Brazil as a country filed suit against Monsanto and won.

Yeah. I mean, Brazilian farmers joined together and filed this gigantic suit. But then there's the Indian farmers that they have this huge issue where they get leased out these seeds and then they're in debt. They wind up committing suicide. Yeah. Yeah. I heard that article recently. God, it's staggering.

It's sort of like the old sharecropping model where you, you know, rent the land, sell the seeds, sell the tools. And, you know, now you must work for me for the next 60 years to make back your money. Yeah, and Monsanto is the one who's profiting off of it. And just a, what's this? Monsanto Latte. Tell Starbucks to serve only organic non-GMO milk. True. Starbucks is a member of the Grocery Manufacturer Association group challenging Vermont over GMO labeling requirements.

False. Starbucks has joined forces with Monsanto to sue. I was fooled. How dare you. I know, I was fooled. How dare you, Dr. Hill. How dare you. You're one of those guys.

I guess so. Just for Pete's shit, you're fine dare you. You're one of those guys. I guess so. Just for Pete's shit, you're fine. Starbucks is not a part of Monsanto's GMO lawsuit. This is from Starbucks. Stop food labeling. All right, well, now we know. Okay, great. That was from 2014, sir.

How dare you. I read an article recently that seemed legit. What was it in? The Onion? No, no, no. It seemed legit. It was written in English. Right.

It was on the internet. What the fuck's wrong with people? That's the bar for some people, no. It seemed legit. It was written in English. Right. It was on the internet. What the fuck's wrong with people? That's the bar for some people, yeah. Some people. Well, there's a lot of, I mean, there's websites now that will just write stories. They don't even pretend that they're writing something that isn't a, like, it's not even funny. Yeah. Like, they don't try to make it seem like a parody.

Right. It's just there to light a fire. Well, they just, it's clickbait. Clickbait is a huge issue across the board. It's a huge issue with sites even that I agree with. There's a lot of progressive sites that do it. They write these really

inflammatory titles and then you read it. Right, I can't stand the, you know, and you won't believe what happened next. It's like, no, I'm not going to even go there now. Just leave me alone. One of them was about peanut butter and jelly being racist. And I was like, what the fuck is this? And so, of course, everybody's tweeting it and retweeting it. And if you actually read into it, it's like, I think some editor just jazzed up this idea of three meals a day and peanut butter and jelly.

And, you know, where does three meals a day come from? What is the idea and then? Someone actually put in the you know the byline is it in fact racist like oh fuck and then everybody's they're saying that three meals A day is racist and then you start tweeting. It's clickbait. They fuck you Yeah, they just in this it's just this mad rush to get people to read your shit. And in doing so, you've sacrificed all credibility. Yeah, and you can be inflammatory about peanuts without being stupid. I mean, peanuts are somewhat dangerous, you know, people's health potentially. Now, why don't I read about peanuts that said that it wasn't always the case

and that one of the real concerns about peanut allergies is that keeping kids from peanuts when they're very young because you're worried about peanut allergies could in fact be causing peanut allergies yeah there was a recently a study that found that by doing a manipulation of gut bacteria they could eliminate peanut allergies in mice really yeah so it seems to be some core uh you know functional gut thing that's gone awry to produce peanut allergies in these individuals. This doesn't taste that bad. Which one's that? The caffeine one? Yeah. That's the worst one.

That's the most bitter of all three. Because caffeine is a pretty bitter molecule. Oh, it is? Like it has a taste to it? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, try decaf versus caff coffee and you'll be able to tell the taste of the difference. There's a bitterness under the caffeine flavor. Yeah, there's like a milder sort of taste.

What do you think about, like, you ever try that Kopi Luwak? No, I have not tried it. The bean that comes from a civics butt? Yeah, I mean, I have a problem paying 70 bucks for a cup of coffee, first of all. But I have not yet tried the Kopi Luwak. Yeah, I bought a bag of it once. Well, I bought it at a place, and it was really smooth. If you haven't heard of it, there's an animal called a civet that is like some type of cat.

Like a weasel. But I think it's in the cat family. And they eat coffee beans and then shit them out. And the farmers didn't want to waste these coffee beans, so they would literally pick them out of the dung of the civic and put it into, you know, they would roast it. And it somehow or another, stomach acids do something to the bean. Yeah, it makes it like really smooth. Yeah. All the enzymes. But does it affect the caffeine content? I don't know. I don't know. My guess is the roasting is really where that matters the

most because you have to bring the oils out of the bean to the surface and caramelize them or oxidize them to produce the flavor you're looking for. So my guess, the longer you roast, the more the caffeine goes down. And non-roasted coffee beans have some sort of antioxidant effect as well, right? Yeah, the green coffee bean thing, the chloro, what's the word? Chloro, I forget what the compound is. Yeah, but there's some antioxidants. I mean, green, brown, whatever coffee you have.

Westerners get more antioxidants from coffee I think than all other sources combined. That's incredible. You know, we drink a huge amount of coffee, but there's a lot of benefits. I mean, I'm a big fan of the coffee. But it gets demonized, doesn't it? It sure does. I mean, and there's some drawbacks. You know, coffee would not be considered

a strict nootropic. I mean, my, my definition for the word nootropic is improving cognition, supporting output with no appreciable side effects. So coffee does not fit. Doesn't, doesn't, doesn't fit that bar, but do I use it? Absolutely. I mean, I wake up in the morning with too much blood in my caffeine stream, you know, race for the pour over and make one first thing. Well, you know, I'd love it it as a ritual it's like one of those things i just love a warm cup of coffee yep in the morning it's just like it feels like this is a nice way to relax your way into the day absolutely and the ritual piece of it should not i mean it's a really big part of it for me it gives you a chance to be mindful um when folks come into my office for

qegs i asked him to abstain from coffee that day or tea or whatever. And then when they're done, I hand them a, you know, handcrafted cup of coffee that I've made for them. Handcrafted is one of my least favorite expressions. Is it really? Yep. I'm really getting pissed. Is it, is it redundant? Is it the, uh.

Well, it's just one of those things. This is a handcrafted burger. Here's hand, we make, serve handcrafted cocktails. I make, I make the coffee for my clients when they're, when they're done their brain map. The doctor brings you a cup of coffee because it's... Let me give you some good coffee, my secret stash. Oh, what kind of coffee do you use?

I use a mix of small origin organic batches. I have them delivered to me from a couple of different places in the country. Yeah. So there's a place up in Portland, Oregon that ships me my little stash. Oh, that's nice. Okay, cool. Yeah, I have a bunch of different favorites like the coffees do have a different flavor profile oh yeah sure sure sure there's some interesting ones out

there you know um i had this guy peter giuliani giuliano giuliano giuliano he's um a coffee expert and uh he told me that all coffee originates from Ethiopia. All of it. Initially? Yeah. And that. Very narrow part of the world it grew in initially. Yeah. And that from there, they started taking it to all these different parts of the world. Like Arabica. Arabica.

Arabica. How do you say it? Arabica. Arabica. Beans. Yeah. They took it to Saudi Arabia. Yeah. They took it to all these different parts of.

South America. Yeah. Yeah. And then they started growing it in all these different parts of South America. Yeah, and then they started growing it in all these different places But we always can think of you know, Columbia's being like where that dude Juan Valdez lives He's he's growing all the awesome coffee. I actually prefer African coffees to South American typically You know a little more complexity little darker flavors in them typically Well, he brought me some Ethiopian coffee that tasted like lemons. Wow. It was really interesting.

It was like, he doesn't drink it with any cream or anything in it, so it was just black coffee. Yeah. And it had this, like, really lemony taste to it. It was really good. Interesting. Really good and really unusual. I was like, whoa. And there's a bunch of different weird flavors.

Like, Kona is one of my favorites from Hawaii. Yep, sure, sure. Hawaii has some really interesting flavors and you go look What is causing this stuff? It's just altitude. Mm-hmm altitude the water going in the soil Cuban cigars Right a very distinct flavor which we can now legally bring back into the country finally like a hundred bucks worth. Yeah. Yeah Yeah for now, I mean that that's gonna you know widen I'm sure yeah, I'm sure it will Officially you can only go now if you're part of an education group. Oh, I'm teaching people shit all the time.

There you go. I'm part of an education group. Having you on this program is educational for the folks that are listening. So I think I'm a, who's to say I'm not? You want to go to Cuba? We should be. Fuck yeah, dude. Let's do it.

Let's drive one of those old cars they have down there. That's right. They have all these 1950s cars from before the embargo. Yeah. Cause they couldn't, they haven't been able to get new cars. Uh, Western cars anyway, since then. But it's sort of like a real knock on consumerism because they do a great job with these cars. These cars are in amazing shape. There was this image that I saw recently online of all these people driving these like 1950s, early 1960 cars. And they're beautiful. They're really well kept yeah

I was like that is fascinating like we have this idea that cars we have to get a new car every year The new cars or we have to have a new model every year Yeah there the new cars have to have a substantial improvement in all areas of performance and Braking and gadgets and all this different jazz, but they also you know like a modern car today would not last 50 years On an island. It's true. You know, too many complexities, too many small electronics.

It just would fall apart. You know, the reason they have 50s cars in Cuba is because you can remanufacture and replace those parts and keep them running. Yeah. In a way that you would not be able to with like a Prius or, you know, some modern, you know, fuel-injected thing. Especially a Prius. Anything that has batteries. That's a huge, huge issue. The lithium ion and the batteries. Cobalt.

That stuff wears out. Cadmium. Yeah, that's one thing that people aren't taking into consideration when they think about the fact that they're driving some eco-friendly vehicle. Well, it's eco-friendly for right here. Right. Not necessarily eco-friendly for where it's being pulled out of the ground. Yeah, I saw an article, I think

it was inflammatory more than real, but it pointed out that the ownership cost and the impact, environmental impact of a Prius versus a Hummer were equivalent. Yes. Because a Prius has a 100,000 mile lifespan and has all these really expensive mine battery components that go into it.

Where a Hummer has like a three hundred thousand mile lifespan And it's just an old-fashioned, you know Traditionally engineered car right so there's there's a You know that's sort of disingenuous though because who the fuck drives a Hummer for three hundred thousand miles totally and and you know if you dig Into the math some of it is a little bit biased doesn't seem to work out all that well But it's not simply that because you drive a car that is electric, it's not only, you know, that's not the only benefit on, you know, you not buying gas

is not the only benefit of having a hybrid. It would be amazing, though, to see what would happen if you took every car in Los Angeles and replaced it with an electric car. First of all, there would be people with dead batteries everywhere. There'd be assholes that forgot to charge their car, blocking the road off.

Because you just, you don't have the access to charging. It takes too long. People are late for work. They don't have that half an hour to get that 50% charge, whatever the fuck it takes. But the sky would look different. It might. I mean, the air quality has improved pretty much every year since Reagan in LA, right? Like Reagan was the peak of the horrible smog. I have to tell folks that, you know, when I go back to visit the Northeast where I'm from,

that, oh yeah, we don't actually make jokes about LA smog. It's like, well, it's actually not that bad. There's the air quality is pretty darn good, especially where I live in, you know, West LA. It's where you're getting the wave from the ocean air. Yeah. It's, it's pretty good. The smog, you know, when I first moved to LA in 2005, in 2005, I rode cross-country on a motorcycle, and I was coming down to the San Fernando Valley, and there was this layer of black and orange sludge that I drove down into, you know? Even that's happening less and less, I think. So I think the sort of Southern California smog trope is really overblown these days.

Well, the smog laws that they put in place and the smog screens that you have to put your car through, they're pretty substantial. They're doing a good job as far as that. It makes it very difficult for you to take cars post-1975. Pre-1975, they're exempt. But post-1975 cars, there's a lot of them that have a huge issue

getting smogged, getting smog cleared. I have one that's post that, but it's a diesel, so it's exempt. Oh, stinky. No, it runs on vegetable oil. Oh, you're one of those guys. I have a couple of vehicles. One's a veggie oil diesel, and one's a motorcycle. I have a traditional gas car, too. Now, when you

say it runs on vegetable oil, where do you get your vegetable oil? I haven't been driving it too much, so nowhere recently, but I have a friend from Englewood who had a small company. He delivers it. He would deliver gallonswood who had a small company. He delivers it He would deliver you know gallons of you know sort of reclaimed waste vegetable oil. He was clean Yeah, they kick it. I had a buddy of mine who converted he bought an old Mercedes Yeah, old diesel those are the best ones to convert yeah, and he converted it to kitchen oil And he would get it from restaurants. Yeah, I their kitchen. Oh exactly now these days

I mean 20 years ago you could do that. These days, there's entire companies that have relationships with the Japanese, Chinese restaurants to do this and to resell it as a commercial company. What kind of gas mileage do you get with one of those cars? I mean, I was getting more than 30 miles a gallon with diesel still as an early 80s car. And I think I lose one mile per gallon on veggie oil. So instead of like 30 you'd get like 29 miles a gallon yeah 31 to 30 or something and is it a large vehicle you're talking about yeah it's a 300 cd mercedes you know 3500 pound vehicle big heavy two-door mercedes but

still a big one that's not very heavy 3500 is that really heavy compared to a modern car? Sure. Really? Yeah. What do you think a modern car weighs? 18 to 2,500 would be my guess. That's crazy. No. That's like a really, really light sports car. Okay. Like a 1970 Porsche

with everything stripped out, with no radio, no heat. If you're lucky, I don't know if that's true because I had a 2,200 pounds. I had an early 80s

Oldsmobile Delta 88, big old lanyard, and that thing was only 4,200 pounds. That doesn't make sense either. Are you sure? Yeah. Because I have a Porsche 911 GT3 RS, which is the lightest model they make. It's 3,000 pounds. And that's very light. It's extremely light.

I mean, it has carbon fiber seats. They strip out all the sound deadening. And it's like, they It's extremely light. I mean, it has carbon fiber seats. They strip out all the sound deadening. And it's like, they make it as light as possible. No, I'm 100% positive. Okay. All right. I'm actually pretty deep in this world of lightening cars. Okay.

Like, they drill into foot pedals to make the car lighter. A little lighter here. They drill into the handle of the door. Like, to take a tiny... Have you ever seen a 1972 911? Yeah. It's a tiny car oh yeah much smaller than a 911 of today yeah if you're lucky you get one of those down to 2,200 pounds if you're really

a fucking psycho you can get it down to like maybe 1,800 but you have to use carbon fiber fenders fiberglass fenders things along those lines you You really compromise a lot of no comfort at all. The dashboard's stripped down. My Mercedes, I'm not sure what it weighs, but it's a heavy car. It's not a light, low-key, tiny car. Well, it could be 3,500 pounds, but I mean like a BMW M3, for instance, which is a sporty car. Yeah, I have a Mini Cooper, a modern one that's, you know, lightweight.

That's very lightweight, yeah. But an M3, which is not a big car is 3900 pounds Wow. I'm surprised Yeah, most people are yeah The most people think their cars are lighter than they really are like a for instance like a Dodge Challenger You'll see those new Dodge Challengers. He's looking at about 4,500 pounds Wow. Yeah. Yeah, okay It doesn't look like it would be. No, not at all. Not at all. You're dealing with V8 engines, metal frames.

Yeah. Interesting. All that jazz. Yeah. People would be surprised at how heavy your shit is. I have a Lexus X SUV. That's like 6,000 pounds. That fucker.

Oh, my God. Big fat pig. So maybe they're getting heavier again, too, then, as we bolt more things onto these vehicles. Well, they're trying to make a lot more cars out of aluminum now. Like Ford has done that. Yeah, they just released a new truck with an aluminum frame, right? Yes. They've done that with their F-150, and they've reduced it by more than 700 pounds.

Wow. Was it steel before, I assume? Yeah. Steel frame? But it's amazing because the new aluminums that they're using are just as strong, if not stronger in some ways than steel. And they're substantially lighter. It's really incredible benefits as far as gas mileage, all those things. Yeah.

The way they construct them is a little bit different, but so far no detriment. The new Range Rover is doing the same thing. The new Range Rover is cut somewhere between 600 and 700 pounds from their cars as well. Okay. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. Interesting. Well, you know, regardless of the weight of the MBZ, I'm still getting 30 miles to the gallon on diesel. Well, diesel is way more efficient, right?

Yeah. Well, it's compression. It doesn't explode the fuel. It burns and releases the gases. So it's not an explosive decompression. So it's much more efficient. Neil Young has like a ranch in Northern California where he grows his own plants, converts them into biodiesel, and powers his own vehicles with his own diesel creation. Closed loop.

Isn't that amazing? I love it. He's a pretty amazing guy. Oh, he's the best. He's a fascinating dude. He had some weird project he was doing, though, that everybody was like, all right, good luck with that. Dude, he had some weird project he was doing, though, that everybody was like, all right, good luck with that. He was trying to make some super expensive MP3 player that recreated the sound of vinyl or as close to it as possible.

Okay. And he had a GoFundMe or a Kickstarter or some shit like that. And people were like, what? First of all, no one's giving Neil Young money. It's not happening. Dude, you're rich as fuck. You've got a thousand acre ranch in Northern California. You're making your own diesel. All right.

You spend your money. Right, right, right. So like that was problematic. But it was also like the shape of this thing. It was like, you know, those Toblerone, whatever it was, chocolate bars. That's what it looked like. Like a pyramid shape, but long, you know, and you pull it, pull it up, Jamie. This is a fucking disaster.

I mean, never went anywhere. And then we gave a shit about it. But the idea behind it was to create a richer sound that sort of emulates the actual recording, the original recording of the, of the MP3. So it reproduces it without the, the lossy sort of compression. Yeah.

So to take this compressed sound and convert it into something that has like more depth, more richness to. Sony has a new thing that they just announced too. Here it is. The Pono. Highest resolution. See how it looks like a chocolate bar? That little weird fucking shaped thing. Is anybody buying those things, Jamie? I don't think so.

No. Nobody's buying that fucking thing, Neil Young. How dare you? How dare you waste your time, you genius. Looks kind of like a Nintendo game controller or something. Yeah, it's a very odd-looking device. And it kind of got trumped recently because Sony just released some new version of Walkman. It's much thicker. It's heavy.

It looks like a cell phone. It looks almost like an iPhone. But it's only for MP3s. It looks almost like an iPhone, but it's only for MP3s. And this Sony version is just much, much, it's much more powerful as far as its ability to, much more powerful than your phone, rather. I don't know if it's more powerful than Neil Young's creation. We're getting away from things here. Mindfulness.

I want to talk to you about mindfulness. What do you mean by mindfulness? When you say mindfulness, that's one of those terms that, like, people go, oh, I'm not religious, but I'm spiritual. You know, I'm practicing mindfulness. It's, I love it as a, as a, as a thought, but I don't like developing meditation practice would be good for you. And I get the response, oh, I can never shut off my mind. Well, that isn't the point of meditating. It's like, you know, the point of going to the gym is not to be strong. The point is to lift weights. Like there's an exercise. Meditation is a practice you do. And you might get to a quieter mind.

But the practice is not quieting your mind. Right. So to answer your question, mindfulness is paying attention to the present moment in a specific way on purpose. Now that sounds simple. It is. But it's not really simple in practice, is it, for most folks? It is. It actually is.

Well, there's many different types of meditation, right? The classic meditations of Vipassana, Samatha, Metta, these are all fairly similar in that you pick something, some anchor to hold your attention on. And then simply you notice when you've drifted. Since you have a mind, it will drift. It'll get, you know, fantasize, dream, remember, wish, plan. And when you notice you're not holding that attention focus, that anchor,

you release whatever it is you've gotten distracted by and bring your attention back to the anchor. And that's the wrap of meditation. That's it. Oh, I'm supposed to be thinking about this sound or watching my breath or listening to one note or something in a music play. Oh, I've gotten distracted. Oh, let it go. Not now. Back to the focus.

Again and again and again and again. And that's the entirety of most classic meditation is noticing when you've gotten distracted. Oh, let it go. Not now. Back to the focus. Again and again and again and again. And that's the entirety of most classic meditation is noticing when you've gotten distracted. You've left your anchor of your attention. Put down the distraction. Go back to the anchor. So it's not a loss when you get distracted. Not only is it not a loss, if you aren't getting distracted, you probably aren't alive. You know, if you have a mind, it will get distracted.

That's what they do. You know, your mind pays attention to your pains, your distractions, your wishes, your fantasies, your memories. I mean, it's doing all of these things. If you're able to sit down and shut your mind off, you probably don't have one. So when people talk about the difficulty that they have in meditation, you think they probably get to that step. And they go, God, I can't do it. And they're basically saying, I'm not any good at it. Instead of saying, well, being good at it or not is not the point.

The point is doing it. You know, if you went to the gym and pumped iron into a bunch of bench presses, were you good at it? Well, maybe like a personal record or something. But going versus not going is what matters not you know critiquing necessarily every little bit of what you do some people are terrified though of silence yeah terrified of silence and just being sitting alone doing nothing that's like no they would rather climb a fucking mountain in their underwear yeah then just sit alone in a room by themselves and by themselves.

Just think, okay, I'm going to leave you here for three hours. You can't talk. I just want you to breathe in. The three hours thing is scary too, right? You tell people, here's how you should meditate. And, you know, they go to a meditation class, like a Buddhist center, and they have to sit there for an hour and a half. That's a big ask initially.

So I often tell folks 20 minutes, you know, even that can be a big ask for some folks. So I say take your first five minutes and do a concentration practice. Take a very narrow focus. Like watch the sensation of air crossing your upper lip. Just pay attention to that tickle. That's it. Very narrow, tight, spatial focus. And do that for five minutes.

By the end of that time, your mind's probably a little more stable. And then do what I call an awareness or insight practice. Watch more rhythmic things like your breath rise and fall or the sound of traffic going by the road or something. And when you say your mind is more stable, how so? Well, you have less random things popping up in your

mind after doing some concentration practice. It feels less busy, less of the monkey mind chatter. It's still there, but it's a little less insistent when you've done some concentration practice. I feels less busy, less of the monkey mind chatter. It's still there, but it's a little less insistent when you've done some concentration practice. I mean, concentrating on anything sort of redirects your attention resources and what you're thinking about. And if what you're really thinking about is simply attending, focusing for its own sake, then you build those resources and build more strength and resources in focusing.

And so then later on, when you're walking around the world, you have a more spacious mind, you have some space between your thoughts, you're less automatically reactive, you're going to cut somebody off in traffic and, you know, pick them the bird. These are all things that happen as a consequence of developing more resources. So what you do on the cushion or, you know, wherever you happen to meditate translates to less reactivity, more sustained focus, better attention, better sleep, less anxiety, less anger, but you aren't practicing all those things. Those things come from having more stable attention, more stable executive

function. I sort of feel like a lot of people operate on momentum and that they kind of, that momentum oftentimes is like nipping at their heels and they can never rest. It's like the momentum of all their past actions and thoughts and the things that they have to deal with in their life, their bills, their responsibilities, all that stuff is sort of pushing you. And when they go to bed, they're like, their bills, their responsibilities, all that stuff is sort of pushing you. And when they go to bed, they're like, their head is still spinning. I can't stop thinking. I got a key.

I'm on my mind. Shut their mind off and all this background noise starts to rise to the surface. Sure. Yeah. A meditation is something that can quiet that. Absolutely. It will help you choose how you react. I mean, the phrase I use is intention versus momentum.

You learn to choose and to act versus react and to be, you know, act from a place of choice and control instead of always, you know, reeling based on your environment. Do you use sensory deprivation tanks? I have. I have not. It might be fun to do, you know, considering I have a sort of ecstatic, shamanic

history. You have? You have not? I have not. I have not used float tanks, no. I've never done a float tank. That's crazy. I know right I've never Never ended up in one really I've been interested in it, but never quite happens How does a guy like you not get into that that seems really bizarre to me? You can't try everything. I mean there's all kinds of things that I've gotten into yeah, but that's the motherfucker I can't believe you haven't tried that I've had one in my basement for the past 15 years, 13. And is it a body temperature, Epsom salts kind of thing? Yeah. Well, um, I started doing it in the, uh, early two thousands. I, um, I went to a place and tried it out for the first time and I was hooked. I, you know, read about it, seen the altered States movie, got

excited about it, read John Lilly's book the deep self and if you've never done it it's it's meditation times 100 sure because you don't feel your body you like literally detach from the body right right once you become relaxed enough to do the same meditation practices concentrate I'm I concentrate with on my breath that's what I do in with the good out with the bad and I do it over a long period of time. Like I like to do a one minute breath. I like to do one minute in and one minute out because it's very difficult and requires a lot of discipline. It requires a lot of discipline,

not to just exhale all your air right away. But in doing so, that's like the base. That's how I build up my, and then anything after that is easy and the focus on The breath it takes away from freaking out about the fact that you're floating around this tank And you don't feel your body and the absence of sensory perception. You don't really not getting anything in there You're getting a little bit of movement. Sometimes your body will develop like itches Oh my god, I gotta itch my face. Yeah, and it's really don't it's not you know, you didn't get bit by a fucking mosquito You're just freaking out. It's like itches. God, I got to itch my face. And it's really, you don't, it's not, you know, you didn't get bit by a fucking mosquito. You're just freaking out.

It's like. It's random sensory. Yeah. Your brain's freaking out because it's not getting any input. So it starts creating problems. There's lots of ways you can sort of trick the brain into producing input like that. Even without, you know, climbing into a float tank. The simplest hack for that is probably something called Gansfeld classes.

Take a ping pong, cut it in half, trim the edges so they aren't sharp, and essentially make a pair of goggles where you're covering each eye with the ping pong half, ping pong ball, and then sit and look through the white balls at a white wall that you're projecting light onto. So there's some indirect light.

Keep your eyes open and stare at the insides of these curved spaces. You can't resolve distance. You can't resolve a flat surface. And after a few minutes, you start hallucinating. Interesting. It's the same thing you experience. I'm sure you have some hallucinations when you're visions, when you're deep in your float tank, too, right?

Yeah, you certainly do. The same exact thing gets triggered within moments sometimes for for some people a few minutes anyways with gonsfeld because the eyes being open and trying to look but not seeing any surface it's a very similar phenomenon i bet to your float tank yeah i bet it is the difference being that in the float tank one of the benefits of it is the fact that you there's in the absence of sensory deprivation sensory input it seems like your brain has way more resources. So it seems like problems seem to be easier to fix. Solutions seem to be more apparent.

You just have a better understanding of things. Yeah, you know, I think why I haven't gotten into float tanks is because I have other, you know, ecstatic. Ecstatic meaning taking you out of ordinary reality. I have other techniques that work really well for me and that I tend to use, you know, like rhythmic movement until your mind, you know, shifts. And then for technology assisted stuff, I mean, I run a neurofeedback center. I can put you in a state in half an hour, you know, with wires on your head. And so if I want to dial in a specific state, I will dial in a specific state for myself. This is a massive benefit to that tank. I would really love you to experience it and then hear what your thoughts on it are. Sure.

I'll send you down to the float lab in Venice. You're in the west side. Yeah, I live in Culver City. Yeah, the float lab is the spot. I mean, this guy, Crash, who's created these tanks, has got the most advanced tanks. Oh, I have a friend of a friend, actually. I've heard of him. Yeah, he's a master when it comes to that. When the entire float world was building these flimsy, plastic, sort of shitty things. I remember those things, yeah. Yeah, he came up with this giant steel-walled structure that looks like a meat locker.

Okay. His are far more insulated. They retain heat better. The linings are far thicker. He uses the same linings that they use when they make koi ponds. Oh, nice. Like everything he built to the 10th degree. Yeah, I'm interested in checking it out. Might be some way we could do underwater.

Your head's not immersed, is it? No, but it's under half water. Your body's floating, right? So if you're lying on your back, picture water. I would love to do an EEG, but you can't do EEG underwater. We're wet electrodes. Couldn't you develop some electrodes? Where are you attaching the electrodes?

Scalp. Scalp, all over the scalp? Yeah. Could you keep it to the frontal area? It wouldn't give you the, it wouldn't be, the thing with EEG is to compare your results to any existing literature, you have to record the same spots or the same distribution of spots. Would there be a way to do it inside some sort of a diver's cap?

There might be. Yeah, exactly. There are a few ways that this might be accomplished. Because I've seen EEGs done on actual divers, like on scuba divers. So there probably are ways of like electrodes that can get wet, that you can sort of seal against the scalp with colloidal gels and things. But I would love to see what happens to brains under that altered state. Yeah, I would love to see you try it. I'd love to see you do some tests on it.

Crash is also developing some sort of a weird video component to his tanks where he has engineered these screens to have the lowest amount of light emission that you can possibly have while still seeing the image. So that these images, because you're in complete silence, complete darkness. I mean, there's no light in there at all. So having this incredibly minimal amount of light on these screens, you can see the images, but you don't see the television. You don't see the screen itself.

And he believes that in the absence of sensory input, your brain having more resources, you can take in information better. So you can learn quicker. I mean, I think it's probably very likely. Less distraction. And also you can do things, if you did things from first-person perspective,

if you had videos of people learning things from first-person perspective, it could sync up in your mind. Yeah. Interesting. It must happen to mirror neurons in some way then well it's just theoretical at this point I don't think he's actually achieved it I mean he's he's I know he's got the tank set up right now with this this video maybe you could yeah sounds like we need to do is that a biofeedback component to it where what you're seeing is contingent on your brain moving in specific directions mmm yeah then you can actually could mean if the float

tanks putting you into this receptive state and deep state quickly and it sounds like it is with biofeedback you could probably you know like incredibly powerfully just move people across state shifts well it's the only atmosphere that I know of the only environment where your body is literally untethered from your mind yeah Yeah, yeah. You don't feel anything. It feels like you're flying, like you're floating through the universe. And there's a weird illusion of motion that you get when you're in that thing.

When you're floating for a while, you feel like you're flying, like you feel like you're flying forward. Interesting. Like you're moving. There's a feeling of movement. Can you feel gravity? I mean, are you aware of it? No. You're totally floating. Because of the fact that there's a thousand pounds

of salt in this water, and the water being 93.5 degrees when you float, or 94. Some people, you're floating in this. It's very buoyant. You're not feeling anything. The water becomes your air. The air becomes your skin. It's all one thing, and you're just no more input, and and you just...

Total darkness. I'd love to hear more about what trash is doing. I just don't understand how you haven't fucked with that yet. It seems like something right up your alley. It does, actually. It's probably just a function of I'm one guy. There's too many things going on. I've lived a lot of different lives,

a lot of different careers. Sounds like it, you crazy shaman, wacky tattooed man. I mean, I started grad school at age 35. Did you really? You know, and had other careers before that. Like what other careers? Oh, let's see. I worked inpatient psychiatric crisis for many years.

That must have been fun. Yeah, that was kind of crazy. The most violent hospital in the state of Massachusetts. Oh, Christ. We were doing 5, 10, 15 restraints a shift when I first got there. Wow. And after a year, I took over training people how to do restraints.

That's why you started lifting weights? No, I was actually really into Aikido back then. Oh, okay. And that's about safe, management of safe energy, or not getting hurt when people are throwing punches, basically. And I took over training the restraint team, and after another year we were down

to like one a month because it was some of it was the expectations we were setting on the patients in the hospital you know the conflict was was there right like oftentimes people discuss that when they talk about police violence that much of the violence that they get involved in could be mitigated if they had a better way of communicating with people. Sure. Absolutely. So I did that. My first jobs were working on farms in a little farming town in the Northeast, picked berries. I was a baker and caterer for a few years. I worked in residential homes with retarded and multiply disabled adults. Worked in high tech for several years. Worked in a middleware database company for a few years, worked for a neurofeedback guy, worked for an MRI imaging center doing a prediction of

depression relapse based on brain changes when people withdrew their meds. So really a pretty broad, high tech, human services, and then now I'm sort of combining the two. How much work do you do with people that have encountered traumatic brain injuries? More than I thought I would be. You know, neurofeedback is largely tuning circuits that exist. And TBIs, traumatic head injuries, traumatic brain injuries, are often different architecture. The brain has been physically traumatized. Some TBI people, I can make really quick changes. I have one client right now. She came to see me. She was having some tremors on opposite side from the head injury. She was having a lot of impulsivity, which is a pretty standard

thing when you're head injured. Yeah. Impulsivity is a weird one, isn't it? Yeah. It's pretty dramatic often for head injuries. And she's now finishing her 30 sessions. She's, you know, gone off all of her meds. She's no longer on anticonvulsant. She's not on any anti-impulsivity meds and no slower sleep meds. So her brain changed very, very quickly and sort of in the direction I was hoping it would. And it sort of just did what I asked it to. I had a client last year who came to see me and I just couldn't get his brain moving. There was just too much going on. What do you mean by couldn't get his brain moving? I couldn't get his frequencies to train up or down enough. I couldn't get his symptoms to shift. He was, you know, get worn out at noon every day and he was really impulsive and all the standard TBI stuff. So I

think I've worked in the past decade with about seven or eight TBI people. And, you know, three of them were dramatic responders and a couple were tough, you know, tough movers. So this guy that you couldn't get him to move, what did you want to? You know, he ended up going overseas to teach English. He sort of had an end to the time that I had him because he was going to the next job, which was overseas. Um, so I only had him for like six or eight weeks or something. So had I had him, I would have said, look, let me stop billing you, which is what I do when I

don't make results. It doesn't happen very often, but I say, let me stop billing you and then just keep training and we'll keep trying different things until I find something that works for your specific brain. And so it takes some of the pressure off them, but not making it financial. Yeah, exactly. So I signed people up for pressure off them by not making it financial. Yeah, exactly. So I sign people up for like a 30-session package, which costs some money. It costs a little over $4,000. And 90% or more of people, their brains do exactly what I ask, and they're really happy with the results.

Does insurance cover that? Sometimes. Depends. Alternatives, which is where I do neurofeedback, is not a provider for any insurance. So if you've got a PPO or something, we can often submit against it for partial reimbursements or things. The addiction side of Alternatives, we actually are getting pretty good coverage these days. Dr. Jaffe and Kern just got the center certified as an outpatient partial hospitalization day program. That's the non-12-step treatment program we have there.

So this gentleman that you weren't getting results with, what was his issue? He had some sort of a concussion, massive. Yeah. Car accident. Yeah. And he, and he went coma for many weeks, lost a big chunk of his brain in the front. And so he had massive impulsivity because the frontal lobe again is your inhibitor. So like as far as drinking, sexual things, speeding. It was sort of like acquired ADHD he sort of acquired it in his mid-40s because of this head injury we had no self-control said whatever you know inappropriate You know and then he would get worn out by 1 o'clock every day noon 1 o'clock He just was just done which is really common in TBI

Just to not having any mental stamina and so for him it, let's get your sleep better because he wasn't sleeping well. Let's make your daytime energy better. And let's get you less impulsive with the goals. And those things all moved, but they moved, you know, a fraction of what I really wanted them to move. And most people, I mean, the reason why it was so frustrating because for most people, neurofeedback is sort of, you know, it's my silver bullet. I can do lots of things with it. I expect that nine or more than nine out of 10 people will just, you know, their brains will do what I ask. Even if they're dramatically impaired, you know, profoundly, you know, self-stemming autistics, people with major PTSD or major alcoholism, or a lot of really common presentation these days is people that have been on sleeping meds for decades and they aren't working and they can't sleep. But they're still on massive amounts of sleeping meds.

Ambient type things? Yeah, all kinds of things. What are your thoughts on those? The short answer is there's no such thing as a sleeping med. None of these sleep drugs make you sleep. They all are hypnotics. They put you in a trance-like state. They sedate you into a hypnosis or hypnotic state. And then if you're tired and the normal sleep reflex is

there, it takes over and you fall asleep. But it didn't put you in a sleep state. It put you in a hypnotic state, which is very different than a sleep state. I have some friends that have real problems with those things. They have to take them all the time, or they do take them all the time. They think they have to take them all the time. And they don't work after taking them for a while. So people come to see me and say, I've been taking sleep drugs for, you know, 10, 20 years and I haven't slept well in 10 years. And so I start training up their frequencies that cause deeper sleep at night, more relaxation. You know, there's sleep architecture is maintained by specific frequencies in the brain, sleep spindles. And so I'll train those up, make them stronger.

So they're able to fall asleep more easily, stay asleep more easily, wake up more refreshed. So I have a friend and he takes two a day. He takes two of those fucking ambient things at night. He scares the shit out of me. Everyone's always worried he's not going to wake up one day. Yeah. What would you do to that guy? I would say, you know, how comfortable are you, you know, reducing your Ambien?

And usually the answer is, I can't. So, okay, let's move on. Okay, let's forget him because he's a junkie. Let's go, I mean, Ambien junkie. He's probably a junkie for some other shit, too. Let's go with someone who just has a problem sleeping, doesn't take anything. Takes a little Tylenol PM or something. Great. I would just start training them.

I mean, do a brain map and brain assessment, figure out which patterns are driving their sleep issues. And usually it's some of the patterns involving too much beta activity toward the middle and back of the head. Sometimes it's the same patterns that are producing some anxiety formations. And so I'll find these patterns. And then I'll just start training decreased amounts of beta, increased amounts of alpha or theta, bringing those slower brainwaves up. Maybe train up the sleep spindles, which is what keeps you deeply asleep. Once you fall asleep, it prevents you from kind of being woken by all the outside stimuli. And what would you train this with?

With biofeedback, you know, measure, because you're making all brainwaves all the time. This is something people often don't know. Right now, Joe, you're making delta, theta, alpha, beta, gamma, and other brainwaves we haven't named. You're making all of them all the time. Other ones we haven't named? We haven't identified them either? We've identified them, but we haven't really named them. In order of discovery, Alpha was the first one. Alpha is the first Greek letter. But Alpha is about 10 hertz, 10 cycles per second. And there's at least two or three waves slower than alpha that we discovered later. So in order going from slow to fast, it's delta, theta, alpha, beta, gamma.

And gamma traditionally stops at 40 hertz, 40 cycles per second. But brain waves go up to about 200 or even 300 cycles per second. Wow. But we haven't necessarily given those functional, you know bands different names beyond gamma So does it bio? There's there any biodiversity does everybody have the same sort of frequencies everyone has the same functional frequencies But you know you might have more alpha Than I do

You know as a baseline and so when I'm doing the brain maps, this is a really good question when doing the brain maps I'll take baselines Let's say I've sit with your eyes closed for five minutes record your eyes closed you know resting state and then record eyes open resting state the brains very different eyes open and eyes closed I mean very very different typically and so I'll take that baseline data and compare it to a normative database with thousands of brains in it and get you know heat maps picture maps out of that that tell me how different you are

than the population, statistically. How much of that varies based on intention, based on... Not much at all. A QEEG or brain map is stable year after year after year after year, barring maturation, medication, or head injury. What about sleep? If somebody's really sleep-deprived, there are some differences in the QEEG.

But if there are a little bit of vagaries in sleep here and there, don't actually affect the sleep. If somebody's really sleep deprived, there are some differences in the QEG, but if there are a little bit, a little bit of vagaries in sleep here and there don't actually affect the sleep. It's much more important, like caffeine status and psychostimulant status. Those things are much bigger deal when I'm doing brain recordings than how rested you are. I mean, folks come in having not slept. It's not a very valid reading or having been, you know, drunk the night before. It's not a valid reading, but if someone's just like i got seven hours not nine hours i have no problem you know and uh then statistically we say okay you know let's say your brain has x amount of alpha with your eyes open if it's too much that means you're spacey too much theta means you're impulsive too much beta in the

back might mean you're uh anxious you know different asymmetries in the front mean you're anxious. You know, different asymmetries in the front, maybe you're depressed. And so I'll see five to 10 of these big patterns. I draw some arbitrary line in the sand, you know, more than one and a half standard deviations I consider clinically relevant or problematic, maybe. And then we sit and talk about all these patterns that rise to that, you know, outlier level and try to figure out, well, you know, this one can mean this. Is that true for you? Oh, it is. Okay, great. Let's believe that one. This one can mean this. This one can mean this. Oh, this one isn't true. Okay, let's say normal variant for you. Let's move on. So these are not diagnostic tests. They're more sort of prognostic where I'm guessing

about what might be true. But the pattern, the brain mapping patterns don't fit into nice diagnostic boundaries. So, you know, I might see like a really dramatic ADHD pattern and the person reports somewhat mild attention problems. But, you know, if there's a dramatic outlier, three, four standard deviations out of range, chances are very good that thing is causing you some trouble in some way. I would like to do this, but I'm worried that I might find out I'm way more fucked up than I think I am Well, everyone's a little bit fucked up. You know I mean all brains are different. What about the Dalai Lama? He's pretty fucked up, too

He has got that stupid robe on didn't he have a major health crisis recently? I don't know I think he did Yeah, I just say that I have a friend who had some experience with him and said he's kind of full of shit Yeah, I have a friend who grew up with him, actually. Oh, yeah? They grew up together in a monastery. That's hilarious. He doesn't say much about him, but he's also a Tibetan guy, so he's pretty chill. Right. It's a weird way to live your life. As the reincarnation of a godhead?

Or a spiritual leader? Yeah. Yeah, I would say so. I think Steven Seagal is one of those, too, according to him. Didn't he gain some sort of reincarnation status? Did he? As an Aikido master, I would say so. I think Steven Seagal is one of those, too, according to him. Didn't he gain some sort of reincarnation status? Did he? As an Aikido master, I'm sure. I actually initially was trained by the guy that was his first teacher.

Really? And that teacher I do not like teaches through pain and intimidation. Really? I'm not terribly impressed with Seagal's Aikido. How dare you? I know. He's going to come kick my ass now. But, you know, I'm an Aikido person, and I haven't done it in a few years,

but I'm not that impressed with Seagal's lineage or his on-screen Aikido. Wow. How rude. I know. I know. I'm such a jerk. I can't even believe you're saying this. Well, I don't understand Aikido that much, so I'm sure you would know more than me.

To me, it looks cool, flipping people around. Yeah, it looks like you have to cooperate It doesn't look like it would work I think if you shot a double on him and got a good grip on your hands. He's going for a ride Yeah, it's it's you know Most of Akito is learning to recognize force coming at you and not being in the way of it, right? You just creep up on them slow and punch them in the face. As long as you're not running at them with your hand over your head like this, I think you're going to be okay.

Right, exactly. Although you can, the angle of the hips and the eyes, you can sort of, a lot of Aikido, like a lot of martial arts, is very heavy in the footwork. So you step to one side and pivot around, and by the time they've swung their fist, they're overbalanced now, and you can just kind of knock them over.

Yeah, but you take an NCAA D1 wrestler, good luck. Put one of those guys against O'Sensei or some of the people, the pinnacle of Aikido, and I'd love to see that. I would too. Kick my ass. Yeah, but against the best guy.

You bring your best guy. I don't get fuck there They're actually were in the 70s several videotaped multi multi martial art Competitions expositions between Oh sensei the founder. Yeah and several other Principles of other martial arts. Can you watch that online you can yeah? Yeah? Yeah? I would like to watch that so How do you say this guy's name? Oh, oh sensei Oh and then sensei he has a name that I remember but uh He's known as Oh sensei in Aikido. What do you recommend? Like what videos or one specific?

I'm gonna look at there's an exposition video from like the 70s That's sort of the big one that shows him, you know knocking people over without touching them and things You know, it's a little crazy a little yeah But like like not not his friends like, you know, the karate master from Japan getting knocked over and things. Without him touching him. Yeah. I mean, there's a few of that. How do you think that worked?

Knowing what you know about the mind. Probably because he, you know, gave us a little cue that made them prepare to move in one way. And then switched it. And, you know, they were essentially using their mind against them. Overbalancing them, you know. You believe that? Yeah. Really? You think that? Yeah. Really?

You think that a guy can knock a guy over with his mind just by giving him subtle cues? Yeah, like shifting your weight to the person attacking you shifts their weight, and then moving out of the way as the person falls over. That doesn't work. That is only going to work on someone who doesn't know how to fight. 100%. Well, you should look at some of these videos. I would love to look at them right now with you.

Okay. Because let's see if you could pull that up because I have a vast extensive experience in watching bullshit, especially martial arts bullshit and a lot of it comes from these Traditional martial artists that claim to be able to write anticipate and use people's well There's very little claims being made by a sense a in fact And he doesn't claim that he has some ancient lineage that, you know, came down

from the mountain. He created it from Tai Chi and horses and sword forms and everything else. It's a modern art, not an ancient art. Well, there's some martial arts that are very, the ancient martial arts that are very effective in actual hand-to-hand competition, like Judo, for instance. Very effective. Jiu-Jitsu,

of course, a derivative of and akito is not really a hard martial art like like a judo i mean akito is a judicia a judith jujitsu it's in that category but it's softer than judo or kung fu redistribution of energy martial art you take someone's energy use it against them the the issue is is this the gentleman that's a sensei yeah so this is someone coming at him? Okay, this is terrible. Show me something good, because this guy doesn't know what the fuck he's doing. That guy's running into him. See, this is the thing with all these goddamn demonstrations.

That guy's willingly cooperating. Well, yeah, I mean... Look at that. He's practicing the technique. And practicing the technique, you either cooperate or your arm breaks. Well, this isn't even cooperating. This guy's throwing himself on the ground. This is silly.

This guy's running towards him and letting this guy clothesline him. Come on, that doesn't ever happen. The guy's just standing there. This would never work against a train fighter. Never. Not in a million years. You get an NCAA Division I wrestler, he's going to shoot on this guy, and this guy's going to be on his head in seconds. It just doesn't work. This is what I'm looking at. I'm looking at nonsense. You're looking at people practicing techniques, not a multi. Let's see the multi. What should he look for?

Exposition, I think. I think it was in Japan. Exhibition or exposition? I think it was exhibition. Exhibition, not exposition. Exhibition. Tell meosition. Yeah. Exhibition. Tell me one of those looks good. And then I think if you put either judo or karate and you'll also find it because it was a multi martial art meeting in the 70s.

There's a lot of fuckery when it comes to martial arts and a lot of people that get trapped into all this fuckery. And I've met a lot of people that are very intelligent people that swear that their sensei is the guy that has the answers to all this jazz. And I just have, I've seen too much. I know how much of it is based on predetermined ideas that you have about this person's abilities. I make no claims about my senseis, the people I've learned from being from on high. The first day I rode a motorcycle, I crashed it when flying through the air

and was standing on my feet watching the bike spin away because I was doing Aikido so much. Oh, I'm sure. Well, that's balance. There's a lot of videos of guys getting, there's a great video of a guy Getting rear-ended while he's on a bike he flips through the air and lands on his feet Yeah, and it just yeah, I was thrown I landed on my shoulder on the on a street on tar and was standing up watching the bike spin away with one little tiny

tear in my shoulder because I Took the force of being thrown the way I had my body had been trained Well I'm definitely not saying that learning how to fall isn't a huge skill to have if you want to ride a motorcycle and fall down right learning how to fall is a big part of both judo and jiu-jitsu and Aikido and a lot of different martial arts but this motherfucker is not stopping anybody from getting him down I'm telling you right now that old dude with his clothesline technique well this is hard to see with

that kind of shit it's also it this is hard to see with that kind of shit it's all demonstration it's also hard to it's also hard to pick apart you know from from here if you were in the in the the dojo watching the footwork you might you know perceive it a little bit differently I'm watching someone who's not a 90 year old guy with a with a with a polite student right you know that there are different uh right that's why i want to see some real shit i've never seen it i've every single one of those i mean i've seen some judo demonstrations where there was a one that we played recently was amazing there was

this old judo but the way he moved was logical i mean i i understood that what he was doing was effective yeah based on my knowledge of the human body movement. That's not. I'm watching some cooperation there. I'm watching a guy run into this guy's punches or this guy's forearms. Got anything, Jamie? No? A Turkish wrestler versus a Kikidoka. Okay.

That sounds interesting. A Turkish wrestler versus an Aikido guy. Okay. Let's see. First of all, the wrestler looks like Aikido guy. Okay. Let's see. First of all, the wrestler looks like he's about 60. And who knows if he's really a wrestler. Takes him down, like I thought.

Mount. Exactly. That's what I'm saying. Taps him. Head and arm choke. That's what I thought. Now, let's see this again. Okay, he's going to try it again.

Okay, here he goes. Grabs him. Th throws him to the ground again grabs him throws him to the ground yeah this is what i expected exactly see this is what happens in real life this is what happens this is an arm bar this is a guy who's not even good at arm bars he needs a left leg over the face that's that's reality This shit doesn't work. And it's a beautiful art to practice. It looks cool, but as far as efficacy and actual grappling against a skilled grappler. But the goal is not skilled grappling. The goal is to learn how force works when your body's flying through the air.

Right. And when someone's punching in the face, learn how that force is coming at you to be safe. The goal is not to strike. Many Aikido places don't even teach much in the way of attacks. Well, that guy wasn't striking him. That guy just grabbed him. Right. But I'm saying that it's not a me against you conflict art. It is let's work on playing around with forces that are moving between us together. I totally understand that. And I think it was initially developed to Disarm people with a weapon when someone would come at you with a weapon to use the energy of that weapon to take it away From them. I just think as far as an actual martial art. It's one of the least effective in real practice I mean, yeah, but again the goal is not necessarily face-to-face combat You know if you you can pick other things that are more military and are trying

to kill. When the goal is kill, the goal is not killing or meeting force with force. The goal is keeping people safe in Aikido. The goal in like Krav Maga is to kill you or to kill your opponent as quickly as possible and disable them. That's why I brought up wrestling because wrestling, the goal isn't to kill you

either. The goal is to just hold on to you. Well, the goal is to just hold on to you Well the goal is to control Control your body which it would be probably the most effective way to avoid getting hurt if you Had someone coming at you if you can control their body they can't hurt you sure sure but controlling yourself is probably the the higher Focus on Aikido I would say I think you're fucking buying some mumbo jumbo, pal. I think they got you. Maybe they do. Maybe I'm been, I'm indoctrinated.

Well, this is still long history of that stuff where it's like a part of people's, uh, map of the world. You know, you have your model of the world of what's effective and what's not effective. And one of the, like,

there's a lot of people that don't like the idea of mixed martial arts because it's not in, in many ways, it's not traditional martial arts and some of the Some of the positive benefits of traditional martial arts have sort of been cast aside in favor of mohawk tattoo savages right the reality is a lot of the ideas that Powered those traditional martial arts beliefs are bullshit Mm-hmm, and we thought they were real for a long time and there was only one way to find out if they were real Yeah, yeah competition. Yeah, and in competition you find that the reality is

Most of that stuff doesn't work. Yeah, but you know, that's that's also competition. I mean i've been attacked in bars You know someone grabs you in a bar and before they know it i'm standing next to them And they're not interested in attacking me anymore because their wrist is you know in pain or they're on the ground or You know that that's happened to me. I've used this stuff in real world environments Not against some like, you know professional wrestlers coming at me but against some asshole in a bar, right? You know, it's a it's it's very valid. It's very useful. Okay What that means to me is it works great as long as a guy doesn't know what the fuck he's doing. Well, you know, a traditional martial artist isn't going to walk around trying to kick people's asses.

That's what an unskilled asshole does. Yeah, but that's not necessarily true. Because you could run into someone who's an asshole who's skilled and just they have issues they have you know they could have emotional issues there's a lot of people that are skilled fighters that go and pick fights yeah i suppose and if you have aikido and they have that you're gonna get fucked up no because i'm not gonna engage with their fight i'm gonna step aside when they you know and also these guys are drinking beer in the bar they're getting they're they're drunk and you're in the bar too but too. But I don't get out of control with alcohol.

You're assuming they do though. I think the best martial arts will work on trained killers. And Aikido just doesn't. Okay. It's just I don't want to shatter beliefs, but this is an important subject to me. Because it's something that I went through my entire adult life. And as a young man, I kind of went through the broad spectrum of what to believe in, what not to believe in. I have no problem that it's not a competitive martial art.

It doesn't work the way wrestling or Krav Maga or karate or judo. I'm okay with it being not as practical as those. I still think there's incredible benefit in learning to use your body and keep yourself safe in a crisis environment. Well, there's benefit in gymnastics. There's benefit in a lot of different things that I would... Look, one of the best platforms for going into jujitsu we're recently finding is break dancing these break dancing guys

there's a whole team of them from 10th Planet Jiu Jitsu that started out as break dancers and these guys have this incredible athletic ability because they learned how to support themselves on one hand, do handstands and spin around and they can manipulate their bodies in these incredibly unique ways and these guys

you'd never think of breakdancing being a martial art. But once these guys learn basic positions, they're so good at them. I would say the same is true of an Aikidoka. You take someone who's learned that and put them in a more hard form, they're going to have skills that descend from balanced posture, moving around your center, moving from a strong place. I would agree. I would agree. Most certainly. I just would be real concerned, and this is one of the reasons why I'm so adamant about this.

I'm very nervous about people getting inaccurate ideas in their head. And I've seen it in action. I mean, we used to have guys when I was, my competition days, that would come to the gym that had come from some crazy kung fu martial art where they had this distorted perception of reality. And they would spar with people who actually knew how to fight and they would get knocked out. It was horrible to watch. Because they had this idea in their head of who they were. Right. And then in practice, it just didn't work at all.

Nobody in an Aikido center has an idea of themselves as a sparring fighter. No, but they have the idea of themselves as how well they would be able to keep someone away from them. Yeah, if somebody grabs them or comes running at them. Like that guy that we just saw get tackled over and over again very easily. Sure, but I wouldn't let the guy tackle me. I just wouldn't have been there. What do you mean you wouldn't have been there? He would have come at me.

I would have stepped to one side and just not been in the way. But don't you think that guy wanted to do that? No, because he was trying for a specific technique. He was like, grab my arm and I'll do the technique I'm thinking of. So do you think that if you were in a matted room with someone who's a trained grappler, you'd be able to keep them away from you? For longer than that guy, yeah. Yeah.

Maybe not much longer. Yeah. You got to try that. A lot of people have ideas in their head of what is possible. But you got to put that in action. I'm also heavily trained in restraining people. How so? I mean, I restrained people in psych hospitals for several years.

That was my job. Crazy people flipping out, throwing chairs, you know, six foot five, 300 pound people. And I can restrain them alone often or with one other person. You know, one of the things that I think would be really interesting to talk to you about specifically is what is going on in the mindset of someone who is engaging in conflict? Because one of the most important aspects of any physical altercation is being able to keep your wits about you. Yeah.

You know, violence, conflict causes a huge surge in adrenaline, cortisol, which is a stress hormone, and it shuts down the connections between the executive, the CEO of the brain, and the other parts of the brain. We sort of have a dual track brain or mind almost. We have top down resources and bottomup resources. So there's automatic things that happen. Like I can't look at the picture behind you without seeing it. That's bottom-up. That's automatic. And then there's top-down, you know, how I interpret what I'm seeing or how I decide to feel about it. That's, you know, top-down versus bottom-up. A lot of the bottom-up stuff in crisis and in violence is what takes over.

And the top-down ability for your intentions, your perceptions, your moment-to-moment perspective on your brain or on your reality, that goes away in a crisis. And the PFC, the prefrontal cortex, gets shut down, or at least its connections between the PFC and the rest of the brain get shut down a little bit. And you go into automatic deal-with crisis mode. I wish we could monitor that in competitive martial arts contests because I've seen it time and time again where people are professionals and they have a long experience of competition, but they get to the big event, whether it's fighting for the world championship, fighting a contender, the main event on a big show, and they freeze. Totally. You see the nerves.

The adrenaline kicks up. I used to be, in college, I was a fencer, and I fenced a lot, weapons. And most of the time, it's pretty chill and left-handed, which is an advantage in fencing often, and so I was pretty good at my school. I was one of the better people. But then you go to these big events, and the adrenaline kicks in, and there's spectators and a crowd. It's a very different environment.

It's state-dependent learning where you learn skills in one set of contexts, and if the context changed too much, the skills may not be there. So these fighters who get to the big event haven't practiced in the big event room or with enough noise or enough flooding or enough you know caring about the fight right to the point where they can bring the same resources online that they learned you know it's like musicians that I'm sure you know some musicians who can't play unless they're stoned mm-hmm because that's the only way they've ever played music right yeah

state dependent learning so that's that's that's always overblown it's not quite as dramatic an effect as we think it is you see it with stand-up comedy, too You see some sometimes people can work well with small crowds very little pressure And then if you put them in front of a large crowd that you literally see them constrict Yeah, and some of that's this the sweet spot. They're used to living in right. There's the there's the stress response curve It's an inverted U the Yerkes-Dodgson curve. And a little bit of stress. It's sort of stress versus performance on two axes. A little bit of stress means better performance.

A little more stress, better performance. A little more stress, performance plateaus. A little more stress, performance degrades. And this can be like stressors, like I'm stressed out, or just physiological arousal, heart beating, getting ready to do something. A little bit of this stuff is good. A lot of it is not good. And if you're not used to existing, not used to performing in a mode on the far end of that curve, your performance is gone.

Yeah, it seems like there's a wall that they hit that's unexpected. And then they just get this, like, I didn't think this wall was going to be here. Now what? just get this, like, I didn't think this wall was going to be here. Now what? Well, they're used to performing somewhere in the top of the curve where they're stressed out enough or they're physiologically aroused enough to perform very, very well, but a little more stress, reaction times down, judgments down, awareness, memory, learning, all these things are impaired. In that sense, do you think there's anything that you could do that would help athletes compete under massive amounts of pressure?

Yeah, I do actually this sleep spindle that we tend to train up called SMR sensory motor rhythm in the brain Seems to improve athletic performance. It's used a lot in golfers who are trying to get in the zone And the way most neurofeedback is is non voluntary operant shaping but with golfers you follow them on the golf course with a laptop, and when their brain goes in, they get ready to tee up and get ready to strike the ball. And then they wait until the computer makes a noise and tells them, okay, you're in the

zone now, and then they release and you hit the ball. And so there they're trying to associate the feeling of being in the zone with performing, with delivering the golf balls, the club swing or something. Is it one of those things that's very difficult to replicate? Because a lot of times being in the zone means almost like you're,

you're in that Zen state, right? Which is why you're training the brain to go there again and again and again and to know, and you're, and you're giving an audit, an audio cue. So you start to recognize,

Oh, that tone means zone. That's what it feels like right now. Okay. And if you reinforce that association, if you're pointing at that state and saying, oh, there it is, there's your brain, it's in that state, you get sort of more able to access it.

Is it difficult to replicate when you have a guy there with a laptop? It seems like an almost... For golfing, it is. There's several sports and performance-oriented neurofeedback approaches these days, and they all are somewhat similar. Reducing the stress response and increasing attention to keep you in that sweet spot to some extent. You know what would be fascinating? If you monitored the brainwaves of fighters leading right up to the moment they got into the cage, and then take the equipment off of them, let them compete, and then find out where the winners were

when they stepped in and where the losers were. That might work. The brain sometimes changes states very, very quickly. And so because it's a lead-up to an event, you probably would get relevant data. But you're right, you have to take the equipment off when you're actually physically moving around. Especially if you're going to get hit. Just movement. Muscles are also electrical.

Okay, right. And so any muscle movement causes a burst of noise, which swamps the brain measurements. So you would get a lot of noise even if they're warming up. Yeah. It wouldn't really work. Yeah, pretty much. So you'd have to kind of measure them in stillness

as they were about to step into the cage, and that would take too much time. Might not. I mean, it depends on what you're measuring. When I do assessments, it's a full head of EEG and gelled caps and things, but you can stick a single wire or an ear clip on someone's head and measure EEG. How long would it take? 30 seconds.

That might be worth studying. Measure for a 30-second baseline or something? Yeah. I don't know. I don't know enough about it, but I would think that there would be some interesting data that you would get based on. I mean, it would be really fascinating if we found out. Well, look at this.

All of the winners were in this zone. Yeah. And all of the losers were in this area. Yeah. You'd probably find increased fast alpha, sort of flow state. You know, a lot of beta, but not a lot of very fast beta. So, focus, but not anxiety. Probably very low amounts of slow brainwaves like delta and theta,

which happen when you're dreaming or creative or checked out. So my guess is as the performance would be correlated with better access to flow states and focus states and less presence of anxiety states and distractible states. There's so much to learn when it comes to the human mind. This is such a fascinating subject of conversation because most people have no idea of what's going on below the surface. It's like we have this unbelievably powerful supercomputer that's running our reality and we don't have a clue as to how to operate it. The most complicated machine we know about. You know, three pounds, but more connections in the brain Then there are stars in the galaxy Yeah When I would did this infinite monkey cage with Brian Cox recently and they were talking about how much more complex a frog is than

The universe yeah, I'm like I'm done. Yeah, I can't you can't radically the human brain can store more bits of information Than there are atoms in the universe Now we don't store all that information, but we're never going to run out of storage space. This is a bit of a cheat, but the rubric for that is you take the number of neurons you have, let's say 100 billion. We have more, but 100 billion. And you think about the connections they can make with other neurons. So 100 billion neurons tied to 100 billion neurons. And let's ignore recurrent connections. And let's ignore connections from one neuron to multiple, which does absolutely happen.

It's actually the rule versus the exception. And let's ignore the fact that glial cells, which are also brain cells, are also computational. Let's just take the neurons and just take the neurons connected to all the neurons. So number of neurons raised to the power of the number of neurons. So, 100 billion raised to the power of 100 billion. That number is larger

than the estimate of atoms in the universe. Jesus Christ. So, you can store more bits of information than there are bits of information.

That's insane. We should end with that. Perfect. It's the ultimate mind fuck, ladies and gentlemen. Wow. You're welcome. Thank you very much, man. It's the ultimate mind fuck, ladies and gentlemen. Wow. You're welcome. Thank you very much, man.

It's been an amazing, amazing conversation. Thanks for having me. I really enjoyed it. Really fascinating. Your stuff, people, if you're interested, it's called True Brain. This is the nootropic blend, the three different ones. I tried the one with caffeine, which you said tastes the least good, and it was pretty good. Nice.

And your center is called Alternatives. Yeah, Alternatives Brain Institute. You can access to both the websites at alternativesbh.com, which is behavioral health, and then TrueBrain, trubrain.com. Really, really fascinating. Thank you very much. I really appreciate you coming on. All right, ladies and gentlemen,

we'll be back in a couple of hours with Duncan Trussell. So we'll see you then. Much love. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Cool. We'll be back in a couple of hours with Duncan Trussell. So we'll see you then. Much love. Bye-bye.