Importance of Sleep, Preventing Dementia & Ways to Enhance Brain Health I Louisa Nicola DSH #391

seven and a half hours of sleep every human should be aiming for seven and a half hours of sleep per night wow i've seen certain people say they can operate on four to five hours but that is not good advice yeah that's definitely not good advice you're definitely running on on adrenaline and i mean people always argue with me and they say well how come i feel fine i say well come and see me when you're 60 and i'll see how fine you are

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All right.

Welcome back to the show, guys.

I'm your host, as always, Sean Kelly.

We are here with Louisa Nicola today.

How's it going?

It's going really well.

Thanks for having me.

Yeah, of course.

Professional brain coach, right?

Well, I mean, that's what they say.

Neurophysiologist by trade, human performance coach.

Nice.

Yeah.

And how did you get into that?

You know, I actually started off as a triathlete.

Okay.

Yeah.

So three sports killed it, I guess, in Australia.

I was racing for Australia and then obviously went and studied, did an undergraduate degree, realized at the age of 19 that I fell in love with the brain and everything about it.

So I just dedicated my life to it.

Amazing.

Yeah.

Yeah, the brain really fascinates me and we're still learning so much about it, right?

We're still learning so much about it.

I mean, my primary area of research is Alzheimer's disease and cognitive decline with a focus on resistance training.

Nice.

So I'm that exercise goal.

So I actually took the 23andMe test.

Oh, nice.

And I had the Alzheimer's break.

Okay, so the Apo E4 variant.

Okay.

So is there any way...

I forget which one, actually.

No, I mean, like, you just got one or do you have two cognitive?

Oh, one.

Okay, that's great.

One, yeah.

Well, I mean, look, the thing about that is that doesn't mean it is a death sentence.

It doesn't mean that you are going to get Alzheimer's disease.

It means that you raise your risk of getting it.

But there are many different modifiable risk factors for preventing and delaying the onset.

Right.

So has there been any studies done on what can prevent it?

Yeah, absolutely.

That's exactly what I study.

And we can go into it.

Yeah, I'd love to.

So first and foremost, there are three genes associated with the disease, meaning that if you do have these, you will, unfortunately, get it.

And it happens, you know, just like chromosomal disorders, such as Huntington's disease.

You know, if chromosome 4, if you have that, then you're definitely going to get Huntington's.

You can't change it.

And then with Alzheimer's, you've got presenelin 1, presenelin 2, and amyloid precursor protein.

If you've got these, and we definitely know we can't prevent it.

But the other ones that you've just mentioned, the A-lipoprotein

E4,

and there's, you know, E1, E2, E3, and E4.

The E4, we know, raises your risk.

So there are many different things that you can do to prevent it.

And I would definitely start off with exercise.

There's, you know, there's so many different things, not smoking, keeping your lipids

in place, in control, getting natural sunlight, you know, exercising, sleeping well, having a nutritious diet.

not getting diabetes, hopefully.

Yeah, I'm doing most of these, so that's good.

Yeah.

And you're sleeping well?

Not as well as I'd like, actually.

Yeah.

And that's a real problem, I would say, because if you do already have that variant, then you want to do everything you can to lower the risk.

Right.

I actually did see you on another show talking about the importance of a cooling pad.

Well, I wouldn't say it's the importance of a cooling pad.

So

we can explore sleep, if you will, because I think it's very underrated.

We spend a third of our lives in sleep, and yet, unfortunately, many of us are living in this sleep-deprived state.

They actually classify sleep deprivation as six hours or less.

Wow.

Yeah, I live in Manhattan in New York, and I would say that most people are walking around in a sleep-deprived state.

Wow.

Yeah, I used to, in high school and college, I used to sleep about five, six hours.

Yeah.

And look, I, you know, sleep is extremely fundamental.

But, I mean, look, when you're in college and when you're young, I always think that you've got a leeway.

Right?

Your brain fully develops by around 25 and then it starts to atrophy at around age 30.

Wow, that's actually young.

Yeah, unfortunately.

Yeah.

We were actually prehistorically, like evolutionarily, I should say, we were built, our brains were built for reproduction and survival.

Dang, I thought it was much later than 30.

That's fascinating.

But look,

it's a slow progression.

Got it.

Right?

We can accelerate this through lifestyle habits.

Like, you know, drinking can accelerate neuronal loss.

Neurons are...

brain cells.

We've got around 87 billion neurons in the human brain.

And when I say they begin to atrophy, they begin to decrease in cell size.

It's just the natural brain aging process.

If you see an MRI of an individual at the age of 30 and then an MRI of somebody at the age of 80, you will see a significant difference in the size.

The 80-year-old will have a smaller brain and the 30-year-old will have a bigger brain.

And then the space between like the skull, let's just say, and the brain, it would be thicker in the 80-year-old because it's smaller, it shrinks.

So you can definitely accelerate this shrinking process.

But we'll go back to sleep.

Sleep generally has four stages, right?

We've got stage one, where you're falling asleep.

That's when your eyes are rolling in the back of your head.

Stage two is light sleep.

That's generally the thing that you're going to see on a sleep tracker.

You've got a whoop strap, an auring, you'll see light sleep on there.

Then we move into stage three, which is known as deep sleep or more formally slow wave sleep.

It's interesting because you see it on an EEG in a sleep lab and you'll see these big delta waves, which would suggest you're in slow wave sleep this for you and for most people but you especially is absolutely fundamental to your process because what happens in this stage is you activate this sim system called the lymphatic system right so you're in in deep sleep lymphatic system turns on Tiny little cells in your brain, glial cells, they shrink.

And all of this fluid in your brain starts to wash through your brain.

Okay, it's like a washing machine per se.

They wash out toxins.

They wash out these toxic proteins that build up.

One of the toxic proteins that builds up in the brain is amyloid beta.

This is one of the hallmarks of Alzheimer's disease.

So you want to be getting into deep sleep to wash these toxic proteins out of your system.

Interesting.

So I should start tracking how much deep sleep I'm getting.

Definitely, if you can, you know, and you should be aiming at at least seven and a half hours of sleep.

Every human should be aiming for seven seven and a half hours of sleep per night.

Wow.

I've seen certain people say they can operate on four to five hours, but that is not good advice.

Yeah, that's definitely not good advice.

You're definitely running on adrenaline.

And

people always argue with me and they say, well, how come I feel fine?

I say, well, come and see me when you're 60 and I'll see how fine you are.

So it starts taking a toll, basically.

Yeah.

Look, it's like compound interest.

Albert Einstein says that compound, he said that compound interest was like the eighth wonder of the world.

It's the same in science.

It's the same in medicine.

Things compound.

You lose, you know, you have lack of sleep in your 20s.

Yeah.

You lose sleep in your 30s.

It will compound.

Wow.

Yeah.

I didn't know that.

And in terms of alcohol doing damage to the brain cells, is that permanent or it can that be reversed?

It can't be reversed.

Really?

Yeah.

You know, actually, you know what's interesting?

Smokers, actually, if you are a smoker and you've been smoking a pack a day, you can cease smoking.

And after five years of complete cessation from a cigarette, you can go back to baseline.

Isn't that interesting?

Yeah.

Yeah.

I think that's really interesting.

I'm not promoting smoking by any chance.

I think it's terrible.

It's one of the risk factors of all-cause mortality.

However, drinking is a whole different beast.

Drinking, like, you know, part of the alcohol that is fit for human consumption is ethanol.

Ethanol actually converts into acetyl aldehyde and acetyl aldehyde is poison.

It is actual poison.

Wow.

It will kill your cells.

It'll kill your cells in your body and in your brain.

There's actually wonderful studies that have been coming out of, you know, from the UK Biobank that shows literal damage and thinning to the cortex of your brain, the gray matter and the white matter.

That's probably why you feel so terrible after drinking the next day.

Well, a hangover is a poisoned-induced state.

So yeah.

Jeez.

And it's such a promoted thing in high school and college to just drink.

Yeah, well, interestingly, alcohol also blocks sleep.

So you think, you know, you go to sleep, right?

You think, but alcohol, wine makes me tired.

You're actually just sedating yourself.

You know, it lowers the inhibition.

Yeah.

Makes you feel drowsy, knocks you out, but you're not actually getting into deep sleep and in REM sleep.

So in turn, you're blocking.

These areas that are, you know, these stages that are extremely important for health.

Wow, that is scary.

Yeah, I gave up drinking a few years ago.

I'm pretty happy I did that now.

Yeah.

I've also seen you talk about the importance of blood pressure

and maintaining good levels there, right?

Definitely.

Blood pressure is extremely important, you know, generally looking at 120 over 80.

And I'll tell you why it's super important.

Hypertension is...

a risk factor for many of these diseases that we speak about.

And we'll talk about Alzheimer's disease.

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Sorry, that's

your brain is an extremely vascular rich organ, okay?

Your brain has blood vessels, many of them.

In fact, if you were to pull apart all of the blood vessels in the brain, it would span 400 miles.

Wow.

So it's extremely rich with these blood vessels.

And there's many different types, okay?

You've got big arteries, you've got veins, and you've got these tiny little ones called capillaries.

They're one cell thick.

They don't have muscles around their walls.

They're tiny.

They're the first things to go during hypertension.

So when your blood pressure is high for a sustained period of time, you will get the breakdown of these tiny capillaries.

And if you start killing off these little capillaries, you kill off blood flow to the brain.

If you kill off blood flow to a certain area of the brain, you don't feed the neurons.

So the neurons end up dying.

So blood pressure and blood pressure control is extremely important for the brain.

Yeah.

And do people typically have good blood pressure levels?

Well, it depends on how, depends really on how fit you are.

Yeah.

It depends on how healthy you are.

It depends on how good you are at managing stress.

We know things,

anxiety can raise it,

different pathologies can raise it, alcohol can raise it, poor diet can raise it, obesity can raise it.

So there's a lot of stuff that can raise it.

Wow.

Yeah.

And then you've got other risk factors such as atrial fibrillation, which is what my father actually had.

And this is what ended up leading to his stroke, which was minor.

But just getting this under control is extremely important.

And you know what?

It's so easy to measure.

Measuring your heart, measuring your blood pressure first thing in the morning is a really great way to start.

Oh, you do it every day?

Yeah, well, I don't personally.

I mean, I do if I'm at home and when I'm traveling, I don't.

But a really great way, you know, as soon as you hit, let's just say 40 years old, go and buy one on Amazon.

They're pretty cheap.

Get a notebook, put the date and just track your measurement.

And what you're looking for is you're just looking for a trend.

and seeing, is it trending upwards?

If it is, and it tends to go maybe to 130 over 90, maybe that's the time to intervene.

And in fact, that is actually the time to intervene.

Interesting.

So 120 over 80 is optimal.

Correct, yeah.

What if you're below that?

No, that's fine too.

Okay.

Yeah.

I mean, evidently you don't want to go too low, but yeah, that's fine.

Interesting.

I've also seen you talk about EEG scans.

Yeah.

Do you know what that is?

It's a brain scan, right?

Yeah, true.

So, I mean, you're a physiologist.

One of the primary tools that we use is an EEG.

It's an electroencephalogram.

So it's one of of those caps that you put on your head and there's many leads that come out of it.

And it's used to measure the electrical activity in the brain, like the brainwave activity.

And normally you'd go and get one of these scans when you maybe had a seizure.

We've got epilepsy.

And I was using it to pick up on early onset Alzheimer's disease.

I was doing everything.

You know, I was looking at reaction time.

I was looking at information processing speed.

I was even measuring visual acuity using a brain brain scan.

And I was picking up on areas of dysfunction.

And I thought to myself, if we can pick up on areas of dysfunction in a Alzheimer's brain or a brain that has early onset Alzheimer's disease, surely we can pick up on

different areas of dysfunction in people with healthy brains.

So that's actually how I started working with some of my Wall Street executives.

Oh, nice.

Yeah, I just started scanning their brains and figuring out, oh, look, you've got areas of dysfunction in the the frontal lobe, arguably a very important

lobe for an executive.

That houses all of our executive functions.

So, yeah, that's how it started.

That's exciting.

I'm actually going to get a brain scan next year.

What type?

I don't know.

I'm going to Dr.

Amon's office.

Okay, that's a SPECT scan.

Okay.

What's the difference there?

Well, to be completely honest, it's actually widely discredited, that type of brain scan.

And I think mainly because you don't see this in clinical practice.

You wouldn't see a SPECT scan.

It's not on the same line as an MRI or an EEG or a CT.

So I personally haven't used one.

Dang, I might have to reconsider this now.

Well, do you feel like you have ADHD?

I think he focuses on that.

I do, actually.

Okay.

Well, I just wanted to see, I was interested because he was on Diary of a CEO and I saw his results and he had some...

I don't know what he calls it, but some white space or something.

Okay.

Some head trauma.

Because I used to play sports.

Yeah.

So I'm curious if I had that mainly.

Yeah.

And look, the best way to assess that, in my opinion, would be an MRA and an MRI.

And then, yeah, I'm not really sure what the SPECT scan will come up with, but that's quite interesting.

I know that they're colorful.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Interesting.

Yeah, I do think it's important to get these types of scans, to get blood tests, DNA tests, gene tests.

Look, honestly, I think everyone, you know, I get asked often, where should I start when it comes to my health?

If you aren't getting a blood test, you get a new fresh batch of blood, blood cells every 120 days so you can arguably be getting your bloods done every four to six months right yeah not many people are doing this no okay not people aren't even getting like a thorough blood test once a year but blood can tell you everything it's like popping the hood of a car and going in as a mechanic and looking at everything yeah and it doesn't lie it's not anybody's opinion it is there it is facts it's telling you the health of who you are today absolutely And I'm sure you know this in the U.S., where we've got this epidemic of low testosterone.

Yeah.

Right.

Most men presenting, you know, this is a testosterone reading of 300 nanograms per deciliter or less.

Testosterone deficient.

Yeah.

Quite scary because testosterone is vitally important, especially for men.

Yeah.

Under 300, super low.

Yeah.

And this is something that you can just go and get tested.

Yeah.

What do you think is causing it to be so low these days?

So many things.

You know, during that deep sleep phase when you activate your glymphatic system, you're also getting the release of growth hormone.

You're getting the release of testosterone as well.

So if we're not getting into deep sleep, maybe that's lowering it.

We know that endocrine disrupting chemicals,

you know, I'm drinking from a bottled water right now.

Some of these EDCs may leak into the water.

Wow.

Yeah.

So that's scary because a lot of people drink from plastic water bottles.

Correct.

And there's, you know, environmental factors, a lack of proper training, lack of proper nutrition, lack of

activities that make you feel good.

Yeah.

You know, like

a lot of people get testosterone

wrong thinking.

It's just this hormone that's involved in erections.

Yeah.

We know that it's actually involved in so much more.

It's there primarily to make effort feel good.

It's closely related to how energized and how focused you feel.

There's many different ways to raise it naturally.

You don't have to just turn to TRT.

You know, that you.

Yeah, I'm not a fan of that.

Yeah, really focusing on these, I call them just mother nature's gifts, which is literally, are you sleeping well?

In fact, there was a study that was done, and it was out of Israel where they took both men and women, they subjected them to 20 minutes of sunlight three times a week.

Both naturally increased testosterone and estrogen.

Wow.

And that's just through sunlight alone.

Interesting.

I didn't know sunlight increased testosterone.

Yeah.

And you can see, you know, there's other different hormones involved in the process as well.

Even having low vitamin D can affect testosterone levels.

Low DHEA, they call DHEA the youth hormone, even being low in DHEA, which is a precursor to testosterone, can cause low testosterone.

So it's, you know, it's multifaceted.

You don't have to turn to exogenous drugs first and foremost.

You can be doing so much more.

So I think with our modern society of being enclosed, you know, how long have you been in here in this studio today?

Four hours.

There you go.

You're not getting that, you're not getting sunlight.

I got some this morning, but yeah, I try to get 15 minutes every morning while I ground.

Yeah, I try and get three hours all day.

Three hours?

Yeah.

Holy crap.

It's actually primarily the reason why I got a balcony in New York City.

You know,

I'm right in the heart of Manhattan and I was like, I've got to have a balcony.

Wow, three hours.

That's a lot.

I know.

Is there studies done on like the more you do, the better?

Well, not necessarily.

I mean, yes, the more you do, the better, to an extent, provided that it's safe.

Yeah.

But you do need, you know, we weren't built to be indoors.

No.

We were built to be outdoors.

Our eyes should be getting natural sunlight.

And this is also for circadian purposes as well.

Yeah, you're supposed to do it when you get up, right?

First thing in the morning, set the circadian rhythm, turn the clocks on, but also just to help you sleep at night.

The more sunlight you get during the day, the better you're going to sleep at night.

I do notice that when I go to the beach, I am so tired.

You're exhausted, right?

Yeah.

Yeah, me too.

Yeah, completely exhausted.

Whenever I'm on vacation, I want to sleep at like 5 p.m.

Yeah.

And there's another thing.

We're not getting outside enough.

Vitamin D deficiency is extremely prevalent, especially

on Thursday.

There you go.

I'm guessing maybe it's around 20 or 30.

Oh, I forget forget the level but i was in the red and i had my testosterone was 552 which is okay okay i guess yeah

and yeah so again vitamin d

it's interesting right because we walk around thinking that vitamin d is a vitamin right but actually gets converted to a hormone and it's actually involved in around five percent of the protein encoding genome so it's really important imagine just walking around right and

saying that oh i'm low in testosterone, whatever, or I'm low in estrogen, it's whatever.

But we don't take vitamin D as seriously because we don't know that most people don't know that it's actually a hormone, right?

So, I didn't even know that.

Yeah, so it's um,

it gets converted into a hormone and it plays a huge role in so many of the processes of the body.

What other deficiencies are common that you're seeing in blood tests?

Uh, definitely magnesium.

Magnesium is, you know, it sits at the chlorophyll molecule.

So you get magnesium naturally through leafy greens.

Right.

Most people are not eating.

Definitely not.

Definitely not.

But you know, it's extremely important, especially for women.

We know that one in three women over the age of 50 will experience an osteoporotic fracture.

We know that even estrogen, obviously, in postmenopausal women, they don't produce estrogen.

So that has a risk factor for getting osteoporosis.

I think magnesium is just, it's so important for that, especially that.

Yeah.

So when you're coaching these top-level CEOs, these pro athletes at the top of their space, what are some common issues you're seeing with them?

Well, drinking is one.

Okay.

Yeah.

Look, I'm seeing everything.

I'm getting the guy who comes to me at age 49 saying, you know, I'm just, I'm not as sharp as what I used to be.

My focus isn't there anymore.

And once we do, you know, the battery of tests, we literally get like thousands of data points on somebody.

We're doing everything from blood work, we're doing VO2 max testing, we're doing like everything physiologically to understand who they are, and we're doing a brain scan.

Wow.

Yeah, so we, and this is a hospital-grade EEG that we're doing.

Man, you're doing everything.

It's an FDA-approved product.

There is no controversy around what an EEG is.

It's not like a SPECT scan.

And we're looking at what's happening in their brain and their body.

From there, we can then talk to them and put a protocol in place so they can just be getting a seat at the table.

When you do a blood test running, you get these deficiencies.

When you supplement, right, let's just say vitamin D deficiency and you've got a magnesium deficiency, we start getting you to supplement with these two things.

You're just plugging the holes.

It doesn't mean that you are thriving and performing at your peak.

That just means you've gotten a seat at the table.

Most people in the United States are walking around thinking that they're high performing just because they are in in the absence of disease.

Just because they don't have cancer, cardiovascular disease, dementia, that they're high performing, but you're not.

You should be thriving.

Humans should be thriving.

You should wake up excited, happy, energized, focused, high libido.

You should be.

And if you aren't, something's off.

Wow.

So what I'm seeing is, A, focus.

Like, if your focus isn't off, what's the matter?

Let's talk about it.

It could be a testosterone deficiency.

They just don't feel like they can decide anymore.

They can't make good decisions.

And by the way, I'm taking care of guys who have got around 300 million under asset.

Jeez, that's a lot of pressure.

It's a lot of pressure.

They've got teams that they've got to take care of.

They've got wives.

They've got kids.

It's just so much to handle, right?

How can you even think that you're performing at your peak?

And, you know, you've...

So like, yeah, we're getting guys who are like that.

Then we're getting guys who are not exercising.

We're putting exercise protocols in place for them,

a marade of issues.

Yeah, when it comes to exercising, is there amount of days per week you recommend on average?

Yeah, well, everybody's different.

Yeah, you know, we base it on whatever you're optimizing for, really.

But generally speaking, in terms of you know, the guidelines, so the physical activity guidelines state that you should be exercising aerobically for 150 minutes to 300 minutes per week.

I would argue and I'd argue against that.

I think that we should be doing at least 300 minutes of vigorous physical activity a week.

Five hours.

Yeah.

For many reasons.

Brain health benefits, longevity benefits.

Look, even going outside and walking and doing your 10,000 steps per day can help a lot.

But if you really want to be performing at that high level, staving off these disease states, we have to get your exercise up.

We have to be doing your vigorous physical activity, moderate to vigorous physical activity per week.

You should be strength training

at 80% of maximum,

one repetition max, at least three times a week.

That's something I need to do more of.

Do you count sauna as exercise?

No.

Oh, I need to step up.

Yeah, sauna is sauna, ice baths.

These are supplements or these are accessory items, I call them.

They're not in the pyramid of human performance, which at neuro athletics is you've got exercise sleep and nutrition if you aren't if you are not optimizing for these three then you're doing yourself a disservice I don't care you cannot ice bath your way out of a good diet right

speaking of exercise there was actually a great study done to show the effects of a specific protocol on testosterone

and you can raise testosterone levels by doing a 10 by 10.

So 10 sets, 10 reps,

and with a two minute rest in between.

Wow, just any exercise?

Yes, but granted, you have to keep hitting for every set.

You have to be doing 80% of your one repetition max.

80%.

Got it.

So every set, you'll probably have to adjust the weight to hit that.

But just doing that, I mean, it would be hard, but even that can raise testosterone levels.

Wow.

That is fascinating.

Yeah, there's so many natural ways of doing it, and people are just injecting stuff in their ass, like to raise it.

You know, I mean, I even heard sauna can raise it.

Yeah, that's true.

Again, I mean, again, these outside of exercise, sleep, sauna, ice bath are great.

Yeah.

One thing I don't agree with is red light panels.

And, you know, I did a post on this.

You're telling me this.

I just joined infrared sauna last week.

No, no, infrared sauna is fine.

I'm talking just specifically guys who are putting red light panels near their testicles in the hopes that it's going to increase testicular size.

Got it, got it, okay.

So definitely stupid.

I think what's happening on Instagram right now, which you can probably agree, is that we're just getting this competitive, stupid drive.

People are, who can be in the ice bath the longest?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Who can be in the sauna the longest and the hottest?

It's like, what are you doing?

Yeah.

That's what social media does.

And there's a lot of misinformation too.

Yeah.

Is there any myths in the health space that you see on social media a lot?

Well, there's actually many.

I mean, look, I think that there's many myths.

There's many people.

I don't think that people go out and necessarily saying bad things to hurt people.

I think maybe they're just misinformed, or maybe they're trying to sell a product that I don't think is necessarily deemed to be effective.

For example, red light on your testicles.

Red light therapy can be great.

Yeah.

And

there's some pre-clinical data to show the effects of red light therapy on stroke patients, for example, and improving mitochondrial health.

Do I think it outweighs sleep and exercise?

No.

No, definitely not.

Have you looked into urology at all?

We just had someone last week come on and talk about it.

Are you going to talk about

drinking your pee?

Yes.

Yang you that.

Oh, God.

Have you looked into it?

No.

Okay.

Is this because of urine stem stem cells?

Yes.

Yeah.

Haven't looked into it.

Okay.

Don't know anything about it.

Don't know if it's, if this is a thing, haven't heard of it.

Okay.

I probably would have, but I think there's better ways of dealing with that.

That's cool.

How do you stay on top of all the new studies, all the new information?

Because there's so many different sources.

Yeah.

I mean, I know how to critically appraise data.

So it's something that we learn in clinical epidemiology, it's called.

You know, you learn how to assess data if it's good if it's not um what is a really great study that's been done yeah so i'm constantly reading i have a team as well we're constantly deep in the weeds of what is real and i also publish um i've got something i've got a really great systematic review review article that is going to be published shortly nice and i do this with a team of highly credited scientists and doctors so

what's that going to be about it's actually the effects of resistance training on cognitive decline and Alzheimer's disease.

Wow, that's exciting.

Yeah, look, it turns out resistance training is, I would tell you, it is a pharmacy for your brain.

When you perform weight training, for example, what you're doing is inside the cells of your muscles, you house these little proteins.

They're called muscle-based proteins.

They're myokines.

These myokines literally live in your muscle cells.

And when you contract these muscles, they get expelled into the bloodstream.

When they go into the bloodstream, they go and connect to different receptors all over the organs.

You've got receptors on your heart, you've got receptors in your brain, you've got receptors on your prostate.

Wow.

Yeah, there's a really great study that was printed in Cell that showed that these myokines actually go to the prostate and they inhibit tumor cell growth.

Really?

So they're really looking at the effects.

It's called the brain-body crosstalk, meaning how does the brain interplay with different organs in the body to stave off cancer and

neurodegeneration.

Wow, that is so cool.

In terms of brain health, what it's doing is these myokines are going into the brain and they're going into a little area.

They're going all over the brain and they're having positive effects.

But they're also going into a little area in the brain called the hippocampus.

It's deep deep in the temporal lobes, just behind the ears, these seahorse-shaped structures, and they actually grow.

Okay, they help grow the hippocampus of the brain.

So you're getting volume growth.

This area is responsible for memory consolidation.

That is so cool.

Is there a best time of day to perform these workouts, like morning or night?

Look, I...

If you can just get it done, just because we're not robots, getting the exercise done, first and foremost, is the first thing that you should focus on because adherence is the hardest thing right so

firstly getting it done secondly i would say furthest away from sleep as possible and i actually look this is not my area nutrition is not my area i know you had lane on yeah yeah um but you know arguably if you're doing it in a fed state and you can lift heavier then that's great i love that man i never realized the importance of weightlifting i got to start again i can't believe you're not i know this is an eye-opener for me Arguably, aerobic training as well, running is so, so great for your cardiovascular system.

It's extremely amazing for your heart health, your circulatory system, your brain health.

Yeah.

I do basketball twice a week, so that's good at least, but the weightlifting is something I need to incorporate.

I love that you do basketball because you're also taking into consideration this neurocognitive aspect of training where you're working with hand-eye coordination, reaction time, speed, visual assistant, visual acuity.

Yeah, yeah, it's a lot of fun for sure.

Now, as someone who studies brains,

what is your take on the IQ system?

Do you think that's an accurate way of measuring intelligence?

I don't think so.

I think, look, I think true intelligence, and this is also actually what I'm seeing on social media.

You can remember something, right?

You can read it, remember it, and just blurt it out on Instagram in a reel.

But I think the true mark of somebody's intelligence is really knowing the back end of that.

sure you can say hey guys exercise is great for brain health what what do you why and what are the mechanisms of action behind this so if you can really explain that i think that that's a true mark of intelligence look an iq test maybe that's a have you taken one oh god i took one in high school i mean i i haven't taken one since yeah what'd you get i don't even remember yeah i actually want to do one i want to do it just to see but i don't feel like it's like you said like there's better ways of quantifying it yeah i mean look it takes into consideration everything, right?

Yeah.

Math.

I mean, doesn't it do math, English?

I don't know.

It's like six hours.

I don't, that's the part I don't want to want to do.

Yeah, I don't think I want to sit through that.

It reminds me of the SATs, which were horrific growing up.

You probably took a ton of tests going to med school and everything.

I took a ton of tests.

I went, yeah, I went.

I did undergraduate degree and then my postgraduate, my master's.

I took so many tests.

I was actually a mathematics teacher.

Really?

Yeah.

Wow.

So you were just bringing back all these memories of me writing tests.

I worked at a high school, an all-boys high school.

And you had to write the tests yourself?

Well, yeah.

That's what we did back then before, like ChatGPT.

This is going back 10 years now.

Yeah.

We'd have to, I'd literally handwrite tests, and I used to be on a chalkboard and a whiteboard.

Oh, my gosh.

I mean, I'm not that old.

I wouldn't say chalkboard.

I was always on the whiteboards.

The sound of chalk gives me nightmares.

Yeah.

I caught the tail end of that first grade.

One of the other things that a lot of men um are experiencing in their 40s for some reason uh not a lot of men i'm seeing like what i'm seeing is a lot of guys are like louisa my hair's falling out hair loss hair loss is a big thing and it's also a confidence issue right

um

what we know when it comes to hair loss is

that what happens is testosterone gets converted to something called five alpha reductase, okay?

And that produces DHT.

and what DHT does is it binds to the hair follicles and it miniaturizes them

and so the more DHT you have the more miniature these follicles get and eventually they stop producing hair and so then they end up closing up and that's generally how you

get hair loss wow and there's many reasons why this happened there's eight like psychological stress is a huge one yeah you know even for me i feel like you know, I think 50% of people by the age of 50, I think that was a stat, will experience some sort of hair loss.

Dang, that's high.

Even for me, I used to have thicker hair when I was younger.

I guess living in New York City adds to the stress level.

Second to that, I've seen a lot of women actually

have

stress-induced alopecia, which is where they're just like losing little, like, I would say, like 50-cent piece loss of hair.

Yeah.

And then, yeah,

that's crazy.

So is there a way to reverse that hair loss or not?

Well, I mean, it's not my area, but I know that there's like, you know, there's treatments.

I think it's called finasteride,

which I think what that does is it inhibits DHT.

So it can really help with hair loss.

There's two that

I think inhibit DHT.

Then there's another form that

helps with blood flow to the scalp

to help, yeah, with hair loss.

Well, Louisa, it's been fun.

Where can people find you and your coaching and everything?

You can go to Louisa Nicola on Instagram, or you can follow the Neural Experience, which is my podcast.

Nice.

We'll put it in the description.

Thanks so much for coming on.

Thanks for watching, guys.

As always, we'll see you tomorrow.