473. Future-Proofing Your Brain Against Cognitive Decline with Dr. Tommy Wood

Speaker A: Anybody who's ever been passionate about health and lifestyle and habits and has tried to get somebody else interested in that will realize that often that's really hard, if not impossible.

Speaker B: That's Dr. Tommy Wood, neuroscientist, researcher, and human performance consultant.

Speaker A: Rather than trying to get somebody to do something themselves, bring them into what you're doing already. So how can you learn a new activity together? Like, how can you help somebody start to challenge themselves in a low risk way so that they feel like, oh, yeah, this is worth doing?

Speaker B: I'm Michael Mogul, founder and CEO of Krisp, the nation's number one law firm growth company. I've built my business through practice, not theory. Krisp started with just $500 to my name and has grown to over 8 figures in reven over the last few years, earning a spot on the Inc. 500 list of the fastest growing private companies in America. Our approach has been to take everything we've learned about generating massive growth within our own organization and help the country's most ambitious and committed law firm owners do the same for theirs. In each episode of this podcast, I sit down with innovative market leaders from the legal industry and beyond to learn from those who thrive in the face of adversity, challenge the status quo, and define what it means to be a true game changer. I sat down with Dr. Tommy Wood to discuss the direct links between physical health and mental acuity, the true causes

Speaker C: of cognitive decline and how to avoid

Speaker B: them, and how to enhance brain function and learning at any age.

Speaker A: If you're in your 70s and you can see that you're building a skill in something, automatically your brain is then changing its reference point. But oh yeah, an old dog can learn, uh, new tricks, right? Then all of a sudden, your mindset starts to shift.

Speaker B: That's coming up on the Game Changing Attorney podcast. Before we begin today's episode, I, uh, want to remind you that we aren't beholden to any sponsors or run any ads on this podcast. This allows us to present all of our episodes raw and unfiltered. I'm not going to push any made to order meal services on you or try to save you any money on your car insurance. That being said, I have, uh, one small request. If you receive any value from this podcast, please give it a five star review, pay the fee, so we can keep this podcast free.

Speaker C: Dr. Tommy Wood, welcome to the podcast.

Speaker A: Thanks so much for having me. I'm excited to be here with you.

Speaker C: Yeah, man, I was telling you offline, like, just how long tried to get you onto the podcast. I'm obviously a big fan of your podcast. We'll talk about the book, but a bit about your background for those listening that may not be as familiar. You know, I've heard you describe yourself as like uh, a neuroscientist, performance coach, elite level professional nerd. I guess if you could share a bit about that and more. So like how you got into the field of neuroscience.

Speaker A: Yeah, sure. So I AM uh, an MD, PhD. Although I don't uh, work clinically anymore mainly because my medical license is based in the UK and now I'm based over here, um, in the us. Um, I'm a professor of neuroscience at the University of Washington. So I run a, a basic neuroscience lab that's like my day job is finding ways to treat and prevent uh, brain injury. A uh, variety of different brain injuries, including uh, brain injuries in babies, uh, concussions in you know, military and athletes. And then looking at ways to you know, slow cognitive decline, prevent and prevent dementia largely, uh, using sort of like big population data sets, like that kind of, that kind of stuff. So I originally trained in biochemistry. That's what my undergrad was, uh, in. Um, I then uh, got increasingly interested in sort of human health and performance. I was a, ah, I was a rower as an undergrad and then continued rowing and was um, sort of coached a lot of rowing when I went to medical school. And those two things just sort of like continued in parallel. Right. I had sort of like the clinical side. I ended up doing a PhD, sort of have my formal kind of academic side. That was where I started to uh, get into neurosciences during my PhD. Couldn't quite figure out what I wanted to specialize in as a doctor. So I sort of took a sideways step, um, into a lab to do a PhD. Focused on the, some aspects of um, treating brain uh, injuries and at the same time kind of built out my work in human performance. So I started blogging, podcasting, helped build a startup company working with a wide variety of athletes in terms of all aspects of health and performance. And through that work started to work with more sort of like elite professional athletes. So I do a lot of work in Formula one right now. Um, and those sort of, over time those two kind of tracks have kind of come together. Right. So I have the kind of the formal academic side, the stuff I do in the lab, the research I published, then I have the applied side working with athletes. You're writing a book about brain health to kind of make this stuff applicable and meaningful to uh, you Know every, everybody sort of out there who's thinking about their brains and sort of bringing those two kind of sides together really. What can we learn about the brain in the formal research setting? And then how do we really apply that to human performance in human health?

Speaker C: Yeah. And, and I want to dig into the book. I, I know the book came out a few months ago, the Stimulated Mind. You, you talk a lot about just future proofing your brain, whether it's from dementia or any, you know, age, age related. But I'm curious, like we could just start by defining what is a healthy brain.

Speaker A: My definition is purposefully broad. Um, I think that a healthy brain is a brain that does what you want it to do, when you want it to do it. And the reason why I keep, keep it fairly broad is because, um, each of us wants our brains to do different things. Right. You and I have different skills that we want to build and perform at. But there are also some similarities. We want to be able to make decisions quickly and calmly, even when we're sort of under pressure. We, to be able to hold things in our working memory, um, maybe do calculations or estimations or decision making sort of, uh, in a timely manner, that kind of stuff, and have maybe good interpersonal skills. That's an important part of cognitive function. Maybe we're thinking about sort of what we call crystallized intelligence or wisdom. So having this bigger picture of how everything kind of integrates to, to sort of have a sort of an overview of an important topic. And that's something that actually we humans tend to get better at over time. I think you need this broad idea of what brain health is because each of us want to do different things with our brains every day. But there are these core underlying features that we know are important for everybody and they also have core inputs that I think are important for all of us to sort of give to our brains on a day to day basis. But then beyond that, uh, there's a huge amount of flexibility. The final part is to have this sort of broad definition of brain health means that we don't necessarily have to always stick with very formal medical diagnoses of things that are going on with your brain. Right. Because there's still uh, or there's an increasing appreciation of like, you know, brain fog and subjective cognitive decline. And like just something just doesn't quite feel right. And that is still a meaningful thing that should fit into some idea of whether a brain is healthy or not because that's affecting you on a day to day basis. So I Think that kind of gives us scope to talk about the wide variety of things that we experience with our brains and hopefully can help our brains do every day.

Speaker C: Yeah, I want to dig into that from your experience. What, what leads to the degradation in brain performance over time? I mean, outside of kind of the obvious of like alcohol and so on, but like, I guess just as a whole, how much does aging play a role versus other factors?

Speaker A: Yes. So one thing that is important to talk about, maybe even before we get into some of the details, or maybe there's two, two important things to talk about. One is kind of that idea that you, you briefly brought up, like this idea of like, how does aging affect the brain? Because this is. Anybody who's in their sort of 40s, 50s, maybe even in their 30s, is already thinking, oh, you know, I'm going to get a little older, my brain's going to get a little slower, and I'm not going to be able to do the things that I could do previously. There's been this kind of pervasive idea in the, in society that the adult brain, first of all is fixed at some point in our, uh, late 20s, early 30s. And then from there it just declines. Right. Aging takes hold and there's, there's basically nothing we can do to change a downward trajectory. And in reality, we now know this is completely untrue. So the adult brain is capable of change, improving size, improving structure, improving function pretty much at any age. The only time when maybe we completely lose that capacity is, uh, when we're experiencing like the late stages of dementia and neurodegenerative disease. Yes, we will lose some function with aging. Like, we can't prevent the aging process entirely, but it's much more a shifting in function than it is a loss of function. Right. So I already mentioned that as we get older, we tend to become better at integrating information and looking at the bigger picture. Even though something like processing speed might decline slightly. So maybe not just like, not quite as quick processing information as we were before. That also makes us less impulsive. Right. So there are some potentially beneficial trade offs there. So one is just thinking about, yes, your brain, uh, function may change over time, but it's not necessarily detrimental. It's just a shift. Um, and then the other part is thinking or knowing that the brain is capable of adapting and improving its structure and functioning. Even in our sort of 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s. We have data going back now even into the middle of the 20th century in some of the first studies where they followed the same people over Decades, they showed that the majority of people maintain cognitive function into their 70s and 80s. And that's not what we expect. We think that we're going to constantly lose function over time, but that doesn't have to play out that way. But we risk causing it to play out that way if we expect that that's what's going to happen. Because what we see is this, uh, idea of stereotype, um, embodiment theory, which is that if I believe that aging results in a loss of function, I will stop doing the things that can prevent a loss of function from happening. So you tell yourself, I'm too old to learn, that I'm too old to lift, that I'm too old to do that. But doing and lifting and learning, those are the things that actually help you build and maintain function. And we have evidence from randomized controlled trials that you can do that Even in your 70s, start an exercise program, start learning a new skill. You can change the structure and functioning of your brain, you know, even later in life. So yes, there are some changes with age, but we actually have a huge, like, much more capacity to change that than maybe we might think. So then if you think about the primary drivers, right. You mentioned smoking, excessive alcohol. Those are obviously, uh, big ones. Um, but to kind of think about, um, I like to think about a framework. So I have this idea that I call the 3S model for brain function. And this is a way to sort of bring together what could be 30, 40, 50, 60, 70 things that I could listen to that are important for brain health. Right. I could just like reel off a whole bunch of stuff. And then you kind of struggle to figure out, well, how do those pieces fit together? How do I make that apply to me? So I think all of the major risk factors or all of the major drivers of cognitive function, regardless of where you are on m, that sort of age trajectory, fall into three main buckets. So they're the three S's, they're stimulus, supply and support. So stimulus is cognitive stimulus. Uh, how do you use your brain on a day to day basis? I think we have pretty good evidence at this point that the primary driver of our brain function is how we use our brains. So just like the primary driver of your physical function is how you use your body, the brain is essentially the same. So this is learning, skill building, problem solving, social interaction, complex movement, that kind of stuff. That's what drives the brain to adapt and change and, and sort of improve and support function. Then when you're doing one of these activities, whatever it is learning a new skill. You activate a certain set of networks and cells in the brain. In order for them to do that job, they require a supply. This is the second s of several things. Blood supply, right? So that's going to bring in oxygen and energy, uh, so usually glucose. So you need good cardiovascular health, heart health, and good metabolic health, um, because that's what helps regulate blood flow and energy supply. You also need good, a good supply of nutrients. So there are several nutrients that we know are critically related to long term cognitive function and risk of later cognitive decline. So iron, B vitamins, omega 3s, vitamin D, things like that. There are other aspects of the diet that are important as well, but those are the ones that we have some of the best evidence for. So you stimulate an area of the brain, it brings in a supply of all the things it needs. And then, um, the sort of adaptation and function building doesn't happen during stimulus, it happens during recovery. Just like you don't get stronger in the gym, you get stronger when you rest afterwards. Right? That's kind of how athletes build function, is they train and then they build, they get better and fitter when they're recovering. So this is then the third s the support, uh, this is my support bucket. So one critical path of the brain in particular is sleep. Sleep is when the brain cements new connections, builds new structure, kind um, of creates the function that it is you're hoping to improve or maintain long term. We can further support that with things like, um, factors that the body creates in response to exercise, like trophic factors we call them, that sort of like support the function of neurons. Hormones play a role here. So other aspects of physical health kind of support the brain in adapting. And then we want to avoid things that impair that adaptation. So that's where smoking comes in, that's where alcohol comes in. But there's other things that fit in there, like, uh, chronic stress, especially if it impairs sleep, uh, air pollution, poor oral health or dental health. That's, that's uh, that's an important one too. So, so those are kind of like the buckets and all of those interact, right? So if you sleep better, then many aspects of your heart health improve and you're more likely to socialize with other people and you're more likely to do cognitively challenging tasks because we avoid those things when we're tired. So it's not like this big list, right. You kind of change one thing and the whole sort of network shifts in your favor. That's why I don't like, I don't like to just like talk about long lists of things because they, because they all sort of interact. But to finally answer your question, where I think people make um, worth some of the biggest mistakes might be or some of the um, biggest areas for people to focus on probably depends a little bit on where they are in their life trajectory, right? So in people who are sort of in midlife and they're career driven, right? We've talked about entrepreneurs, lawyers, but it could be academics, any kind of knowledge worker really, where they tend to fall down is in the support bucket, right? So they're getting plenty of stimulus. They're doing jobs that require them to problem solve, learn new things, interact with people on a day to day basis, right? So their brain is getting plenty of stimulus, but they usually ignore aspects of recovery, sleep. You know, they're constantly multitasking, task switching, never actually given their brain time to kind of take a break even during the day, let alone at night when it really needs to. That's also a time in kind of midlife when health starts to kind of drift. So we start to see a little bit of increased risk of like heart disease and maybe like some pre diabetes. Um, and as sort of like our body composition changes because hey, we're not exercising because we're so busy like building this thing or this company, right? Or our careers. And so like that's that in that time of life, kind of that drift of health, usually negative, and that lack of focus on recovery, those are kind of the big buckets that I, that I would see again and again and again as we get later in life, as you're approaching maybe retirement, depending on when that is, like 50, if you've been really, really successful or you know like mid-60s like everybody else, um, that's when you're at risk of losing stimulus, right? You're, you're not going to get that same input that you get every day. You're not going to interact with the same people, you're not going to be problem solving every day. So then you have to think about how else can I create like challenge myself, challenge my brain in order to like, it's the same as if you're an athlete and you quit working out, you're going to lose all that athletic and physical prowess that you built up. Whereas you really don't want that for your brain. You want your brain to maintain its function even if you're sort of moving to the next chapter in your life. So can you volunteer, learn a language Travel. What other ways can you stimulate your brain in order to maintain its function? So like, those are the two things that I see most commonly across sort of like a broad range of people.

Speaker C: Yeah, man, I love that. I want to dig into so much of this. So one of the things you shared was, was really around. I think the expectations around about aging can influence outcomes. And, uh, we've heard the saying that when you retire, you expire. But in light of everything you shared, like, have you ever had any experience in changing somebody's perspective around it? So, like, the same people that will say, well, I'm too old for this or I'm too old for that, like, how does somebody go about changing that person's perspective or it. I mean, like, what does that take is really what I mean. Like, especially those that have aging parents that, um, they may look at them and say, hey, you know, exercise is great for you, and they want to avoid like dementia and all these different things. But that person may be in the mindset of, I'm already too old, I'm past the point of being able to do any of this stuff.

Speaker A: Yes. So first of all, I, I will say that anybody who's ever been passionate about health and lifestyle and habits and has tried to get somebody else interested in that will realize that often that's really hard if, if not impossible. Right? So like, there has to be something that brings that person to it. I think we've all had a family member or a friend when we're like, hey, think about these things that you could do for your health. And they're just like, they're not interested. Right. So one thing I will say is that if you are somebody who's like, really passionate about this stuff, it can be very stressful for you to try and get other people interested where they're not interested. So just like, it's worth remembering that people have to come to themselves in some way. And so a few ways to do it include, um, rather than just like telling somebody or trying to get somebody to do something themselves, bring them into what you're doing already. So how can you learn a new activity together, like go start a new sport and you're both beginners, right? And so you can kind of learn together. How can you make it fun and engaging? How can you help somebody start to challenge themselves in kind of a low risk way so that they feel like, oh yeah, this is worth doing. And like, it could be classes, it could be, you know, language apps on the phone, it can be starting new sports, it can be volunteering on some, like, common goal that, that, you know, you both find interesting or that they might find interesting. The main thing that people need to see is that they can start to do this and then they'll feel the benefit from it. Because there is this core human need to feel like you're doing something useful or you're engaging in something challenging and that you overcome it, right? So the other side of that is that if you like, take somebody and you throw them in the deep end and all they do is fail, right? They're, they, they're going to tap out really quickly. But any way that you can sort of like start right from the beginning and just like baby steps, like, can, you know, let's go and play some pickleball and like, can you get the ball back and forth over the net a few times and then can you sort of like start to build from there? And as, as people see, like if you're in your 70s and you can see that you're building a skill in something, automatically your brain is then changing its reference point. But, uh, oh, yeah, like an old dog can learn new tricks, right? And then all of a sudden your mindset starts to shift and especially around, especially around physical activity. Like once you start to feel a little bit more capable, you then want to do things with your body because you feel more capable. And there's you. You could come at that from any direction. It could be walking, it could be a ball sport, it could be a martial art, uh, it could be lifting weights in the gym. Or all of that is just going to start somebody, like, feel like, oh yeah, I can do stuff like this. And then, oh yeah, now I want to go and use that. Those are kind of some of the ways in, I think. Um, and it's really just about pick a, pick something that somebody will find fun or engaging or is maybe always wanted to try, have it be slightly challenging but low risk. And you know, you know, if they can do it with other people they love or like friends or family, as they start to build confidence and see that they're more capable, they're going to want to do more of it. What doesn't tend to work is somebody just like telling them to do something because that immediately sort of like, um, and I say this, I mean, I've done that a ton. Hey, why don't you try doing this? Nobody wants to hear that. So it's all about just like bringing people into it. Make it fun, make it engaging but challenging because then that allows them to See, oh, hey, I'm, you, uh, know, maybe I'm capable of more than I thought I was.

Speaker C: Nowadays we live in this like performance optimization type culture. So there's going to be somebody wondering, like, what's the, what's the minimum effective dose? Like what. In terms of, in all these different factors, we're talking about sleep, we're talking about exercise. Even in terms of just uh, the proper amount of like stress, what would you say would be like the, the correct amount of or even the minimum to start to see an impact in brain health?

Speaker A: Yeah. So the simplest answer is that for most of these things, from the starting point of where most people are, more is more is more. Um, and I don't mean that in like a maximalist, all day, every day kind of kind of way. What I mean is if you're somebody who works out once or twice a week or not at all, and you add one workout a week, that is enough to meaningfully improve cognitive function. So there are some studies that have looked at, uh, exercise is a great example of uh, the amount of exercise that it would take or an increase in exercise it would take to create detectable and meaningful change in cognitive function. And that is government guidelines of physical activity. 150 minutes of moderate to vigorous physical activity per week. And so if that's really low level activity, like gardening, it's like an hour a day. But if it's sprinting, it's five minutes a day on average over a week. Right. And if it, so then if you're like, you're walking a couple of times a week and then you add like, you're like lifting once or twice a week, that's enough to like meaningfully improve cognitive function. And the benefits are kind of linear. You add 2,000 steps a day per day compared to what you were doing previously. That significantly reduces your risk of dementia by like 5 to 10%. So what I mean from more is more is that like, just adding these incremental steps can make a big difference. But for each of the things that you mentioned, right, There is obviously some kind of ideal minimum effective dose where we think we would see significant benefit. So for sleep, it's getting at least six hours of sleep a night, every night, probably ideally at least seven. But six is where the risk really starts to uh, increase. For physical activity it is probably, you know, government guidelines, 150 minutes a week. Ideally you'd split that up into like two or three sessions of some kind of aerobic type training. One, maybe one of those includes some sprints or something higher intensity and like one to two sessions of lifting per week, something like that. If you can layer on um, some kind of complex coordinative movement that has an outsized benefit for the brain over and above, just like unimodal, like single dimension aerobic training, if that makes sense. So like if you compare badminton to cycling, both are great for you for cognitive function, but badminton is better because you're layering on like complex movement skills, reacting strategy, that kind of stuff. Same if you compare like dancing to circuit training or um, they've done table tennis versus jogging or something like that. So like all of these are great. But like, if you're layering on this complex coordinative movement on top of the of like the aerobic type training as well, you get more benefit. So make one or two of your exercise sessions a week, like what we said, tennis, pickleball, martial arts, soccer, something like that, dance class, then that's, that's a really good minimum effective dose of both aerobic and a resistance training. If you're doing resistance training once or twice a week, then for like skill learning, you tend to get um, the most bang for your buck in terms of the amount you learn from each individual session if you return to a new skill or whatever it is you're learning every two or three days. So you would, you obviously learn faster if you were doing it every day. But we don't all have time to go to a language class every day or you know, spend several hours every day learning a new musical instrument. Right? But you kind of see that when you learn something, there's this curve of learning. So you learn it and then you forget some of it. It's sort of like the learning decays. Um, and then if you come in at sort of like every two or three days, you still remember a lot of what you already did, but you've had a chance to consolidate it because that happens during sleep. And then that's how you get the most out of each individual session. So have some new thing that you're learning, something that you're bad at right now that you do two or three times a week. And in reality when you're doing this, it requires a lot of cognitive effort. Hopefully you've turned off notifications and you're not checking your email at the same time, that kind of stuff. So then maybe it's only 30 to 60 minutes each time because that's how long that we can really, we can really focus on something new and hard in one go. You, you know, on average, so 30 minutes, three times a week, something like that. Those are kind of the principles that I'd start on in terms of what's the minimum effective dose for some of these, like big, big rocks. But we can, like, dive more into any of those depending on, on where you want to go.

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Speaker C: Yeah, well, I think if you just going a little bit broader, I know you've talked a lot about just modern environments not being aligned with brain evolution. I want to talk a little bit about that. Just the role in which our environment plays, um, even down to things like just, you know, with AI nowadays, like those that are relying really heavily on AI, does that potentially impair cognitive skills? Is it impaired decision making? Is using AI tools? Does it make you dumber? I mean, I'm just, I'm just curious. Yeah.

Speaker A: Yes. So there's a few ways for us to think about that that I'll get to, but to kind of like set it up, I think we could think about the modern environment more broadly as it pertains to our, uh, health and how we've had to, uh, respond in order to kind of keep these really important inputs for our body and physiology in the face of the modern environment. So one would be physical activity. We know that historically humans moved for at least six to seven hours a day, took 20, 000 steps a day. Right now the average US adult is like a quarter of that. And physical activity is like a core requirement of our physiology. It helps to drive baseline function. And so because we've engineered movement out of our environment, we've had to invent exercise. Right, because exercise, um, in itself evolutionarily doesn't really make that much sense because we're expending energy that we don't need to, but we do actually need to because we're not moving as we normally would, uh, have done tens or hundreds of years ago. Similarly, the modern food environment looks nothing like the food environment that we would have more typically seen throughout our evolutionary history, which is, yes, periods of abundance, but also periods where we just didn't have access to that much food. And actually most of our movement was spent trying to find food. So because of that, we're now, our modern food environment is life shortening. Um, and so therefore we've had to invent diets to kind of over overcome that. Right. And so now I think the next phase of that is our, uh, brains have relied on early life. Motor skill building, language, language learning, social interactions, and then we sort of maintain those over time. We keep building skills, we keep using those skills to either support ourselves or support our family, our tribe, you know, wherever we were in our evolutionary history. And then as we got older, we became sort of repositories of knowledge. So we were like teaching and kind of sharing what we'd learned. But we're still kind of really cognitively engaged with the group because we still have this role to play. We still have to use our brains on a day to day basis. We're now at a point where we're engineering those things out of the environment. We don't have to learn skills because AI can do it for us. We don't have, have to remember things and teach it because Google and, you know, a good search engine can do that for us. So I think we're now at a point where we're going to have to start inventing cognitive stimuli in order to maintain our cognitive function or just be really, really deliberate about how we use these tools because they're not inherently bad. Right. Um, the way that I think about it and there's some, um, there's some kind of early research on this. There's going to be a lot more research that will be done. So I think we need kind of like a framework of how to approach it at this point. And hopefully that framework is still relevant regardless of what AI looks like in like, two or three years. Because at this point, I don't think anybody could really predict that. But it's about whether the use of this tool is augmenting the skills that you want to build, the skills that you want your brain to have, the things that you want to be good at, or is it allowing those skills to either atrophy or not be built in the first place? And what I mean by that is if there are certain things that you need to be good at. So I need to be good at designing experiments, um, analyzing data, uh, writing research papers. Right? That kind of stuff. As a scientist, that's, that's my job. That's what I need my brain to be good at. If I have AI do that for me, I will lose those skills because I'm not engaging those same parts of my brain. I'm not building those skills in the first place. Um, and therefore I'm allowing those skills to atrophy. I'm not doing science. The bots are doing science for me. And this would be the same for this is the same in any career. And it could be legal, it could be medicine, it could be anything that requires you to use your brain. If you're offloading all of the complex skills that you've built to AI, you will lose those skills, just like you'll lose strength if you stop training. But you can still leverage the benefits of AI without that happening. So the best examples of research in this area they took, um, students writing essays. And people might have heard this study. There's like an MI study done at mit, um, and they had students write essays under three different conditions. So one is they just had to write the essay based on whatever they knew on the topic, using their brains only. And then in another group, they could use a search engine. And then a third group could use an LLM. I think they used ChatGPT. And what they saw was that as you went up the levels of, like, technological support, the networks activated in the brain related to writing essays were less activated. The more kind of help you got then, the less ownership those people felt of their work and the less, well, they remembered it because they didn't do the work right, they didn't engage those parts of the brain. They didn't do the work. And, um, so it's not their work, therefore they don't remember it either because they didn't do it. So if, like, if you start there, it sounds like all doom and gloom, like you use AI to do work for you and you don't activate the brain and. Right, that's all bad news. But there was one group that wrote the essay first using just their brains, and then were allowed to rewrite the essay now using ChatGPT. And what they found was that that group had some of the best final output. So how that would apply to everybody else is. Right, whatever it is that you're trying to do, design an experiment, write a research paper, write a presentation, um, write an essay is you try and write it yourself first and then you use a tool to like, give you feedback. Right. This is what I wrote. What am I missing? What could I do better? How could I think about this differently? You get feedback, so it would be just like sending it to, uh, you know, a mentor or a friend who's an expert in the area. And they say, hey, you need to think about this, you need to change this. You know, I don't think you're thinking, I don't think you've got this quite right. And then you integrate that feedback yourself. So you've built skills, but you've ended up with a better final product and you've learned more in that process. So you're actually driving skill building using this tool. And you could probably get to that final end product faster because you've got like a constant sort of, uh, feedback partner. You can also use AI to offload menial jobs that you don't need that don't require any complex skills that frees up time. And then you can actually spend time doing the complex work with your brain the rest of the time. With that time, you've kind of freed up. So that's kind of how I think about it. Uh, how are you using this to augment your skills? Or are you sort of increasing the risk that you'll lose those skills? And how can you kind of navigate that to keep using your brain, first of all just for your own cognitive function, but also just because of the skills you need to kind of advance in whatever career it is that you want to be good at? Can you help it build those skills rather than just take those skills over? And I think it's that combination that's going to mean the majority of knowledge workers probably aren't going to have to be fully replaced by AI because it's going to be the combination of human skills, human thought, wisdom, that kind of overall big picture integration that AI isn't going to be great at, uh, but can sort of help you refine that process and help you build a better final product in terms of physical product, but also maybe even in terms of greater overall stimulation and skills yourself, because you're constantly able to kind of refine and build them in that way.

Speaker C: And, and speaking of like, just the ability to learn new skills, I want to talk a little bit about, like, neuroplasticity. And I know you talked about that. It continues into adulthood. It's not just something you have as a child. Although, you know, kids learn new skills very quickly. I have two young girls and they could be learning multiple languages and they could be speaking them both at the same time. It's amazing. But, but as an adult, is there a way to accelerate our ability to learn new skills?

Speaker A: Yes. So there's a couple of, again, like, important sort of background pieces of information that I think kind of we can build from. So the first is that you're right, um, neuroplasticity is slightly harder in adults and learning is maybe slightly slower, but not necessarily for the reasons that you might think. So the first is that when you're a kid, your job is to learn, like, your brain is just like trying to absorb as much as it can from the environment, all the different skills. It's gonna like, try stuff and fail and integrate that. And that's gonna, that's like how you build a brain in the first place. Once you're an adult, you want your brain to be fairly fixed because it spent all that time adapting to the environment up to that point. And that's what allows your brain to be good at the things that it is today. Right? So you want it to be slightly fixed. But that doesn't mean that it's not capable of change. It just means that it requires a certain amount of effort to tell your brain, hey, this is important, right? This is a skill I need to build. This is something I want to be good at. So that requires actual focus and attention on the task. Right? So it's really hard to learn new stuff. If you, you got the email open and you know, you get in the text messages and you're thinking about something else, you're like a little bit distracted because of that thing that happened at work earlier, uh, that, you know, you're still kind of ruminating on. Your kids don't have that. And so a lot of the reasons why we feel it's harder to learn as adults is because we're stressed and distracted and tired. It's not that your brain can't do it, it's that you're not dedicating yourself to the process of learning in the way that your kids are. So yes, some of it is to do with kind of the adult brain becoming slightly more developed in terms of the final product based on its previous environment. But the other part is, are you truly engaging in the learning process in the way that your kids are really trying things out, pushing the limits of your abilities, failing, laughing about it, taking a nap and coming back and doing it again. And like adults don't really do that. So when you're then trying to enhance neuroplasticity as uh, as an adult, think about how you can build those things in. So one is how can you actually apply real true focus to the task at hand? So the first thing is eliminating distractions as much as you can, even if it's just for short periods of time. Like we talked about 20, 30 minutes, emails off phone is turned over in another room, right? You, whatever it is that you're trying to learn, whatever plat, like neuroplastic process you're trying to drive, that's your one focus, right? Then uh, we know that there are certain ways to enhance or kind of activate some of these neuroplastic processes. They tend to be based on level of arousal. So this is also important for like focus and attention in the first place. So if you're kind of coming to it and you're like a little bit sleepy and not really into it, like you're just not going to engage in the material in the same way. So the easiest way to hack your way into this is to go and like take a brisk walk, a 20 minute jog, some kind of physical activity. We know that tends to open the gates of neuroplasticity, but also helps to sort of like increase arousal, releases a lot of these neurotransmitters that kind of help us with focus and attention. Um, but equally you could do it with bright light. You can do it by like um, splashing cold water on your face or like uh, a small amount of cold exposure, loud or sort of upbeat music. All of these things can kind of help us sort of lock in and get that level of arousal that where our brains are actually going to engage in them in the material. Um, exercise is the easiest, but you can use any of these tools to kind of increase arousal that increases focus and attention allows you sort of like do whatever it is you're trying to do. And then the final part is the recovery. Right. We talked about the final parts of generating new synapses. Neuroplasticity. This happens during sleep. So giving yourself actual a good amount of sleep opportunity and hopefully at a similar time every night, that's going to help a lot. But also giving yourself a break, um, during the day. So even just like after you've done some kind of hard cognitive task, step away completely for five minutes, do like, don't look at emails, don't go back to work. Um, it could just be a couple minutes of breath, work, meditation, walk outside. Um, it could just be like watching comedy, uh, clips on YouTube. And I say that specifically because there was like one study that did that. But it's just like allow your brain to just like switch off for a little bit. It's just like you're doing sprints in the gym. You can't keep going back again and again and again. You've got to like take a rest in between. So give yourself like, do something hard with your brain. Focus just on one thing, then relax for a few minutes. And then that night actually give yourself a chance to sleep and rest and recover. You do those things, you're already well ahead of the curve in terms of being able to build new skills, drive neuroplasticity, because those are kind of the core elements of it.

Speaker C: Yeah. Uh, I want to talk about the other aspect of environment really around like human brains being wired for connection and like social interaction, whether it's with people or with pets, impacting brain health. Now I know that we live in a society these days where there's a lot of isolation. And I think because of the level of connectedness of the Internet and social media and so on, that we're actually um, more apart in many ways. Now some would argue that a lot of the introverts like that. Right. So I'm curious as to if that's restorative to them. Um, it certainly could be detrimental to an extrovert. But I guess if you could speak to a little bit of the socialization, social interaction, why that is so important, how it impacts brain health.

Speaker A: Yeah, so my favorite story about this goes all the way back to, uh, uh, Charles Darwin, who's obviously famous for the theory of evolution, survival of the fittest, all that kind of stuff. And after he wrote, uh, on the Origin of Species, which is sort of like the set of essays that kind of gave us the Theory of Evolution about A decade later, the story goes that he realized that that didn't explain human evolution. Like survival of the fittest didn't explain humans and societies and how we kind of came to dominate the globe. And so he wrote a separate body of work called the Descent of Man, like specifically on human evolution. And he came away with this idea that it was the group of individuals who were the most sympathetic to one another. And it's what he called sympathy is probably what we would call empathy nowadays. But it's the group of individuals who supported one another the most. That's the group that would do the best. So it wasn't like every human for themselves. It was this group for each other. That's what drove human evolution. And this essentially is again something that seems to be baked into our physiology. So in particular, pro social behavior seems to do a whole bunch of magic. Things you can measure in terms of improved heart rate variability, decreased stress responses, decreased immune responses. And that is doing something beneficial for somebody or something else. Um, and so that's looking after somebody who's sick, that's looking after a pet, that's um, potentially even like volunteering for something like beyond yourself to kind of improve. And it could be the environment or some group of people that you want to support, like through a charity or something like that. Those kinds of acts of things beyond ourselves and bigger than ourselves seem to have these very important effects on our physiology that you can measure, uh, that then relate to long term disease risk and which uh, obviously affects brain health as well. And you see that people who volunteer have lower risks of dementia. People who have pets have lower risk of dementia. And people who um, have been in caregiver roles tend to have a lower risk of dementia. Though the one kind of caveat to that is the very stressful caregiver role where you're sort of like looking after an aging parent and you have to have a job and you're sort of looking after your kids and then the sort of, the burden becomes too much. But just this role of caring for others seems to be beneficial actually for our, for our own health. So this then really shows, and you see this in a bunch of different studies, that those who have greater social connectedness, they have bigger brains, their brains don't atrophy as fast over time, they maintain better cognitive function over time. This is particularly in older adults right in their 60s, 70s, 80s, um, there are some really cool studies looking at different types of social isolation and in relatively young, otherwise healthy people. So simulated, uh, Mars exploration experiments by groups like NASA, polar explorers who are by themselves on the Antarctic for months at a time, uh, prisoners in solitary confinement, um, when you look across all these kinds of studies, you see very specific areas of the brain that tend to atrophy because they're no longer getting that stimulus. And these are the areas of the brain that are most susceptible to things like cognitive decline and Alzheimer's disease. So it's these same areas of the brain that really rely on this sort of like social based type interaction and stimulation. When you then bring technology into the mix, it's interesting that it kind of depends on the overall setting of your social relationships. So in older adults, so again, 6070s, 80s, if you're using technology to connect with people that you wouldn't be able to otherwise, that's a net benefit. Actually if you're using Facebook and Zoom or WhatsApp with family members who you wouldn't see otherwise, that's a net benefit. If you're using online technology as your main source of social interaction, as maybe younger millennials and Gen Z and Gen Alpha are, that seems to be a net negative because we do require this sort of like in person social connection, uh, as, like a, as like a baseline. So depending on how it fits into the bigger picture, it could be good, it might be detrimental. And like the, the underlying piece of all of this is your own personal personality. Right? Because often when you talk about social connection, you're right. The extroverts go, yeah, this is super important. And the introverts go, hang on a second, what about me? Like, I don't want to go out and like hang out with a bunch of other people. It doesn't make me feel good. And so if you're really interested in this topic, I recommend a book called why your brain needs friends by Dr. Ben Ryan, who's a friend of mine. Um, and this is his area of expertise, but he talks about, um, plants in their soil and different types of plants need different amounts of water in their soil to thrive. Right? And so water is social contact, social interaction, Right. If you're, you know, some kind of plant that needs a ton of water, right. Then you need to go out and make sure you're getting this social connection in lots of different ways, lots of different people. You know, that's what's going to help you thrive. But if you're a succulent or a cactus, you will do great with just like a little bit, um, and that's fine too. So the core question is, do I feel lonely? Do I? Or and, or like, do I feel supported? Do I feel like I have people who'll help me in a time of need? Do I feel like I have access to these kind of spaces or groups or pets because it doesn't have to be human? Where I, like, I have the kind of connection that makes me feel fulfilled. And if that's one person or one dog, that's fine. But if you feel lonely or you feel unsupported, or you feel like you don't have the, like, people who you can call on in a time of need, that's when risk really starts to increase. So I think the same principles are relevant to all of us, but exactly how you navigate that and the volume and the type of interaction is then going to depend on our own, on our own personality. So it's just that, and it's, it's largely driven by that internal feeling. How do I feel in terms of my connection? Do I feel supported? Do I feel lonely? Do I have the people that I need?

Speaker B: Got you. Gotcha.

Speaker C: And I want to pivot just with the, with the time we have remaining. I know you've worked with formula, uh, one drivers. I'm a huge F1 fan. I'm just curious, from your experience, what. What makes the mental performance of F1 drivers so unique?

Speaker A: It's funny because there are m. There are many aspects of being a Formula one driver that are very similar to like, what the rest of us do on a day to day basis or the rest of us struggle with. But it's just the environment. The environment seems so alien because. Of course. Right, of course it is. But I think you see these same themes popping up again and again. And of course there's some other stuff that we can definitely apply, um, and talk about that's unique to them and I'll kind of get to that. But things that they have to tackle all the time. First of all is where we talked about skill building. They've spent decades learning increasingly complex cars, increasingly complex strategy and infrastructure, kind of things that they have to deal with in order to drive a Formula 1 car compared to Formula 2, Formula 3, or go karts, where they probably started. And that's skills that they've built up over time. Right. Over decades. And that's because it's been a singular focus. All they've done is get better at that. And that's how you. That's really how you keep building skills into your 20s, 30s, 40s, is through that process. On the other side, something they really tend to struggle with is recovery Right. They're basically jet lagged nine months of the year, you know, flying from country to country, a race every week or every other week. And so a big focus for them is how can I recover, how can I get enough sleep, you know, how can I build in these routines to make sure that I'm able, sort of look after myself and keep, you know, keep, you know, stay fit, stay fresh for an entire season and like, that's the same for the rest of us. How can I, with a busy job and kids and all these different commitments, how can I make sure that I have time for myself, that, you know, I do get the sleep that I need, that I can sort of look after my physical health? Because that's what really gives me the foundation to perform from uh, and that's like. So that's actually very similar. But then when you, when you start to work with, um, sort of elite level athletes, and I'll say that I work as part of a big team, so I work at a company called Hints of Performance. They provide medical and coaching services to Formula One drivers, but also they work in a lot of different elite sports. Um, and I'm head scientist, so I sort of oversee the performance programs in terms of, are we at the cutting edge of the best possible rigorous science, be it in terms of recovery or nutrition or you know, other aspects of, um, different types of adaptations that a driver might need based on, you know, where their performance could be improved. But then we have psychologists, we have doctors, we have coaches who kind of run this stuff on a day to day basis. So most of our drivers have a coach, that coach usually has a master's degree in strength and conditioning, although they m. Might be in nutrition, physiotherapy. And they're there every day. Right? So they're running the training program, they're running the nutrition, they're helping with travel, they're helping with recovery, they're like doing everything. Um, and so like, that's the person that I often interact with because they're tracking the data. Ah, they're there kind of implementing things on the ground every day and seeing what's happening, seeing how, how the driver is responding. And so then we also have the, you know, the psychologists. And that's probably where a lot of this, you know, a lot of these guys sort of tend to be really elite, is finding ways to learn from mistakes, um, kind of figure out how to get the most out of themselves, but also out of the, the huge team around them. Right. Strategy engineers, like everybody back at the Factory like how do you kind of have, you know, with these different sort of like circles of individuals around them. How do they get the best out of themselves and out of the other and out of their team based on their own again, based on their own personality. How do they communicate with people? How do they give feedback? How do they learn from mistakes and then come back and do it again? Because right. Mistakes are expensive in, in Formula one, right. As a driver you crash your car, it's hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars that have to be spent to fix that. So I think that's really where you see um, see this sort of like the elite top drivers come out is a sort of like a lifelong process of learning about themselves, learning about how to come back from defeat or mistakes. A lot of that comes from sort of like uh, I think some of the most successful athletes I've seen over, you know, long periods of time are those that are the most self compassionate. And we actually have some good evidence from the literature on that. So self compassion, being made up of um, self kindness, mindfulness and a, ah, common humanity. So like being able to sort of understand feelings and emotions when they come up but not judge them. Understand that, you know, all humans make mistakes, um, sort of be kind to themselves when they do make mistakes rather than like constantly beating themselves up or telling them they're and they need to do it better next time. Like for most people that approach, for some people that approach does work, but for most people that approach doesn't work. And so learning how to regulate their emotions, learning how to kind of go through their sort of feelings and interactions in a non judgmental way and you know, learn from them, um, that's why I see sort of like psychologically in some of the most successful athletes over long periods of time.

Speaker C: And if our listener here takes away only one thing from, from our discussion, if they want to maximize their cognitive benefit, what's like one area they should tackle first?

Speaker A: Right back at the beginning when I was talking about the, the, the 3S framework, um, or maybe even before that, the first thing to take away is that the knowledge that regardless of how old you are, you have the capacity to actually change your cognitive trajectory. Um, because if you don't realize that or you believe that's not true, you won't do any of the other stuff because you won't think it's worthwhile. And this is where most people are at. They're like, I'm going to get older, I'm going to lose cognitive function. Dementia is in My destiny. And therefore they don't bother engaging with these other things because they don't think there's any point. So that's the first thing is realize that we have very high quality data to show that with small interventions, starting an exercise program, starting a new, like, new skill learning, improving cardiovascular health by like treating high blood pressure, you can significantly improve cognitive function. And then the next step is, of all the things that we've talked about, is there any in there which like, sounds a little intriguing? Like, oh, yeah, that's something that I could do. I could go to a dance class or, you know, I could go to the doctor and get my blood pressure checked because I don't even know where my heart health is. You know, I haven't had a basic check about maybe I have prediabetes and I could. That's a very easy thing to check, relatively easy thing to address if you need to, especially if you catch it early. So, um, or is it, I could, you know, get to bed 15, 30 minutes earlier each night. Um, I could take my kids to go and play pickleball, right? So they can learn something, I can learn something. We can have fun together. We get some social interaction. One thing that sounds kind of intriguing, that's, that's the one thing to take away. That's the one thing to do. Because when you do that, like I mentioned earlier, lots of other things will happen at the same time. You may ideally have to improve or change lots of things, of course, but just by starting to improve one, the whole sort of network starts to shift in your favor.

Speaker C: And as we come to a close, this being the Game Changing Attorney podcast, what does being a game changer mean to you?

Speaker A: Having worked in by so many different, so many different fields with lots of, lots of different people from lots of different, uh, like, uh, walks of life, being a game changer to me is, is being you're providing a positive influence to the sphere of people around you. We can't all fix everything for everybody. We can't be everything to everybody, but we can have a positive influence on those immediately around us, whatever the size of that circle is, because then people in that circle can go and do this the same out from there. So, so like, that's, that's what I try and focus on as much as I can, is how can I be a positive influence on those people directly around me or who I have some kind of interaction with, because then I hope that it can ripple out from there.

Speaker B: I want to give a huge thank you to Dr. Tommy Wood for taking

Speaker C: the time to join us on the

Speaker B: Game Changing Attorney Podcast. If you found this episode valuable, here are three free ways that I can help you grow your law firm. Number one, download the first chapter of my book absolutely free at gamechangingattorney.com Number two, you can shoot me a text at 404-5316-7691 and I'll answer any question that you've got for me. And finally, number three, if you can leave this podcast a five star review, it'll help us gain access to more influential thought leaders and bring their lessons learned here to you. For more information on our interview with Dr. Tommy Wood, see the show notes for this episode in your podcast app or visit legalpodcast.com.