# This Is The Fastest Way To Get Dementia...The 6 Science-Backed Brain Fixes!

An episode of [The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1291423644), 26 Dec 2025, 1 h 05 min.

Audio: https://pdst.fm/e/pscrb.fm/rss/p/mgln.ai/e/1390/claritaspod.com/measure/p.podderapp.com/2544644999/mgln.ai/e/1651/episode.flightcast.com/01KCV8KSH2MS2SX9RA8BY93ZTE.mp3

New year, healthier brain? Start 2026 RIGHT by protecting your brain, with EXPERT advice from The Diary Of A CEO’s top guests on brain health, dementia risk, brain fog, nutrition, addiction, and more! This EXCLUSIVE CHRISTMAS EPISODE brings together BRAIN HEALTH advice from world-leading experts, including: ◼️Dr Rhonda Patrick ◼️Dr Wendy Suzuki ◼️Andrew Huberman ◼️Dr Nathan Bryan ◼️Dr Daniel Amen ◼️Simon Mills They explain: ◼️Why dementia and Alzheimer’s often begin with damaged blood flow, not memory loss ◼️How food, nitric oxide, and circulation directly affect brain aging ◼️The daily habits that grow or shrink your brain over time ◼️Which modern trends help neuroplasticity and which silently destroy it ◼️The simple lifestyle shifts that protect cognition for decades (00:00) Intro (01:03) Effects of Exercise on the Brain (06:08) How to Improve Speaking Skills and Memory (07:46) Effects of Coffee on the Brain (09:20) What Destroys Your Brain? (11:51) Impact of Social Relationships on the Brain (13:24) Effects of Creatine on the Brain (19:33) Creatine for Sleep (22:31) Creatine Loading Myths (25:20) Creatine for Depression (27:07) Neuroplasticity Explained (36:03) The Role of Nitric Oxide in the Brain (44:32) Habits That Are Good for the Brain (48:42) Is Loving Your Job Good or Bad for Your Brain? (50:30) Bad Things for Brain Health (51:49) Does Hearing Loss Lead to Alzheimer’s? (53:12) Effects of AI on the Brain (54:18) Natural Remedies for Brain Health (57:56) Rosemary Effects on Brain Health (01:00:29) Benefits of Dark Chocolate You can purchase Dr Nathan’s book, The Secret of Nitric Oxide, here: https://bit.ly/4pq3ZVu You can find out more about Dr Nathan’s N1o1 website, here: https://bit.ly/4jgcJfl The Diary Of A CEO: ◼️Join DOAC circle here - https://doaccircle.com/ ◼️Buy The Diary Of A CEO book here - https://smarturl.it/DOACbook ◼️The 1% Diary is back - limited time only: https://bit.ly/3YFbJbt ◼️The Diary Of A CEO Conversation Cards (Second Edition): https://g2ul0.app.link/f31dsUttKKb ◼️Get email updates - https://bit.ly/diary-of-a-ceo-yt ◼️Follow Steven - https://g2ul0.app.link/gnGqL4IsKKb ◼️ Independent research: https://braincompilation.tiiny.co Sponsors: ExpressVPN - visit https://ExpressVPN.com/DOAC to find out how you can get up to four extra months. Wispr - Get 14 days of Wispr Flow for free at https://wisprflow.ai/DOAC Ketone - https://ketone.com/STEVEN for 30% off your subscription order

## Transcript

[0:00] I think everybody needs to listen to this episode if they want to start 2026 properly.
[0:04] If there's one thing I've learned that's really stayed with me this year,
[0:07] it's from speaking to some of the world's leading minds about our brain,
[0:11] which might just be the most powerful asset that we all have.
[0:15] And if you listen to the dialogue we see,
[0:16] you're probably listening because you're trying to get something,
[0:18] whether it's information, inspiration, maybe entertainment,
[0:21] all of which because you're striving towards some kind of goal.
[0:24] And it's dawned on me this year because of interviewed so many incredible neuroscientists
[0:27] that this all starts with having a healthy brain because all of our thoughts,
[0:30] our feelings, our relationships, our memories, our chance of having a future start in the brain.
[0:35] So in this special Christmas episode, we're going to focus on the brain,
[0:40] how you can have the most fundamentally healthy brain,
[0:44] so you can live the most fundamentally meaningful life.
[0:46] I've been through all the episodes where we've talked about the brain
[0:49] and I've looked at the moments that you shared and replayed the most
[0:52] and the moments that added the most value to your life.
[0:55] And I've put all of them into this episode today.
[1:03] Do you remember the first time you saw a human brain?
[1:06] I do.
[1:06] Did it change how you think about your own brain?
[1:09] It changed my life because I was like, I want to study that.
[1:16] That is the coolest thing that I've ever seen in my whole life.
[1:21] It was life changing.
[1:23] I say that because at the start of this conversation,
[1:25] we said that most of us don't appreciate our brain.
[1:27] A lot of people don't even realize it's there,
[1:29] but the minute I had a brain scan one day and that brain scan really changed my life
[1:34] because seeing my own brain for the first time,
[1:37] it was the push that I needed to start caring more about how my decisions
[1:41] behaviors are impacting it.
[1:42] So let's talk about how I can make that ball of tofu in my head super healthy,
[1:46] it's a big fat and fluffy.
[1:48] You talked about exercise early on,
[1:49] but we didn't really dig into exactly what you mean by exercise,
[1:53] because exercise, I think, is multifaceted in the definition.
[1:56] What kind of exercise should I be doing to make my ball of tofu in my head great optimal?
[2:05] Well, all the research shows that the best kind of exercise that you can do
[2:10] is anything that gives you aerobic activity that is getting your heart rate up.
[2:16] So that goes for power walking.
[2:19] We'll get your heart rate up soccer.
[2:21] So many different things, name your activity.
[2:24] So many people want to say,
[2:25] oh, well, my favorite activity will that work?
[2:27] And I always just say,
[2:29] is your heart rate up when you're doing it?
[2:31] If the answer is yes, then yeah, that works great.
[2:34] We know that that level of aerobic activity is critical
[2:37] because that's going to release that growth factor
[2:40] maximally to get into your hippocampus that will grow those new brain cells.
[2:45] How much?
[2:47] So I have an answer to that.
[2:49] So we did two different experiments in my lab.
[2:53] One in low fit people, people that are really not exercising very much at all,
[2:58] less than 30 minutes in the last three weeks you've moved your body.
[3:04] And we asked what could we see any behavioral improvement in your memory
[3:11] function from your hippocampus or your ability to shift and focus attention?
[3:15] If we asked you to move your body in a aerobic way for two to three times a week
[3:21] and we collaborated with a spin class, so clearly very aerobic.
[3:25] And what we found was in those people that did successfully
[3:30] do two to three times a week, a 45 minute aerobic activity,
[3:34] their mood got significantly better.
[3:37] Their memory function got better,
[3:40] and their ability to shift and focus attention got significantly better.
[3:44] So that gives a little bit of a guideline for low fit people two to three times a week
[3:49] can start to give you some of those cognitive changes.
[3:53] But you don't look low fit.
[3:56] So let me answer the question you're about to ask me,
[3:58] what about me?
[3:59] I exercise pretty regularly and how much do I need?
[4:04] So to answer that question, we went to another spin studio and we said,
[4:08] look, we're going to give you free classes.
[4:11] You could exercise as much as you want in this at this studio and go up to seven times a week.
[4:19] And the control was just stay the same.
[4:22] They were working out twice a week at the studio.
[4:25] Control was the other group that when you were testing them against.
[4:27] Yes, exactly.
[4:29] And so what we found was basically every drop of sweat counted.
[4:35] The more you exercise, the more change in your brain we noted,
[4:40] both your hippocampal function, prefrontal function, and mood.
[4:44] If you were already getting benefit, you're already going twice a week.
[4:48] But the more you did, the more brain changes you got.
[4:52] So that doesn't give the formula that I would like,
[4:56] but we were heading in that direction, which is part of one of the questions that I want to answer.
[5:01] But I love to leave people with the idea that every drop of sweat counts
[5:06] for building your brain into the big, that fluffy brain that you really want.
[5:12] And then in the real world, again, making it super real for people,
[5:17] how does that change how I show up?
[5:22] If you allow it to, should have a beautiful effect on your mindset,
[5:27] that your mindset around how often should I take wake up on 30 minutes early and do that walk
[5:37] before I start my day or accept the invitation to go walk the dog with a neighbor.
[5:44] It's not an obligation.
[5:46] It is something that you're doing for yourself.
[5:48] It is going to have direct benefits on that ball of tofu, as you call it, in your head.
[5:54] It's going to make it work better.
[5:56] And I mean, I think the most immediate thing that I benefit from every single day
[6:02] is the mood boost that you get from that serotonin dopamine,
[6:06] nor adrenaline that gets released every time you move your body.
[6:08] I always think that because I do a lot of podcasting,
[6:10] and I'm super reliant on my brain being attached to my mouth.
[6:14] And sometimes I notice that it's not.
[6:16] You know, sometimes I'm not articulate.
[6:17] I can't get my thoughts together, whatever.
[6:19] And I always try and figure out the correlation between what I did that day,
[6:22] when I have a good day versus a bad day.
[6:25] And I've, from you and also I speak on stage sometimes,
[6:28] so I've often asked myself, because I saw Tony Robbins, the speaker one day,
[6:33] on a trampoline before he goes up on stage.
[6:35] I asked myself, okay, should I be doing a workout in my green room
[6:39] before I go up on stage for a big talk or presentation?
[6:42] You think I should?
[6:43] Oh yeah, absolutely.
[6:44] What's the basis of that in science or science?
[6:46] It's the basis is that immediate fat.
[6:49] So there's three key effects that we know happen every time you move your body.
[6:54] First one is mood.
[6:55] You're going to get your dopamine, your serotonin up.
[6:58] Second is focus and attention.
[7:00] So a single workout isn't going to make more synapses in your prefrontal cortex.
[7:05] But the prefrontal cortex uses dopamine.
[7:08] And so it's clear that even a single workout can make your prefrontal cortex work better
[7:14] in terms of focus, attention, also very important anytime you're speaking.
[7:17] And the third is reaction time.
[7:19] Your reaction time, you know, motor, you're working your motor cortex
[7:24] when you move your body and your response and reaction time
[7:28] is significantly shorter after even a single workout compared to if you just don't work out and sit alone.
[7:36] So great, great things to do, a great thing to do before you stand up and speak.
[7:41] What about coffee?
[7:44] I'm trying to figure out if coffee is good for my brain, bad for my brain,
[7:50] a couple of mixed messages around the impact it might be having.
[7:55] Yeah, you know, caffeine is a stimulant
[7:58] and people respond to that kind of stimulant in different ways.
[8:03] Oversimulation with caffeine is not good for your ability to put words together.
[8:09] You know, this is where I turn to a main theme in my book, Healthy Brain Happy Life,
[8:15] which is self-experimentation.
[8:18] For you, how can you titrate your coffee to see what level of coffee is best for whatever,
[8:27] your podcast or your giving a talk?
[8:30] The other thing that couldn't work similarly to coffee that I've started and that I do every morning
[8:37] is hot cold contrast showers because that cold that you shower on yourself after the heat
[8:45] stimulates adrenaline in you, a natural adrenaline.
[8:49] Ooh, it wakes you up and okay, it was painful the first kind of few times I tried it.
[8:55] But then you get addicted to it and I have forgotten to do it and gotten back in the shower
[9:01] just to douse myself with cold water because I feel better when I do that for, for, you know,
[9:08] first thing in the morning.
[9:09] So lots of different things that one can explore with.
[9:13] Okay, on the other side of the coin then, what are some of the central behaviors that people do
[9:18] that destroy their brain?
[9:22] Well, sedentary behavior is one of them.
[9:26] Not getting enough sleep is critical.
[9:28] We haven't talked about sleep yet.
[9:30] Sleep is so important for normal functioning of the brain.
[9:35] I like to scare my students by saying that, you know, in torture situations, if you
[9:41] deprive a person of sleep for too long, they literally die.
[9:45] They die.
[9:46] You cannot function if you are deprived of sleep for too many hours in a row.
[9:51] It's that critical.
[9:52] Yet we don't, we happily, you know, watch too much Netflix at night and get only five hours
[9:58] of sleep when we could have had eight.
[10:00] So what's happening exactly?
[10:02] Why is it so important?
[10:04] Well, there's, there's so many different things I'm going to say too.
[10:08] One is that we know that in regular healthy sleep, there is activity in the hippocampus that
[10:16] helps you strengthen the memories that you have formed in that previous day.
[10:21] It's called consolidation.
[10:23] And it's so important.
[10:24] If you shorten that, if you don't get enough, you are not consolidating your normal everyday
[10:30] memories.
[10:30] And second, it is the time during sleep when all the metabolites, all that garbage that your brain
[10:38] is producing because all biological cells produce garbage, it gets kind of cleaned up
[10:44] through the cerebral spinal fluid that is flowing through your brain.
[10:48] And if you do not get enough sleep, you build up garbage metabolites in your brain.
[10:53] It's like you have a gunky brain.
[10:55] And do you feel like I feel like I have gunk in my brain when I don't sleep enough?
[10:59] That is exactly what is what is happening.
[11:02] What when you think about things that we consume, you know, like food and drink and alcohol
[11:07] and all these kinds of things, is there anything that if I'm trying to have an optimal brain,
[11:11] I should be having or not having?
[11:14] Yeah. Well, so I think the most evidence is around the benefit of the Mediterranean diet,
[11:24] which is basically all healthy, kind of organic, not organic, but non-processed is the
[11:31] where I was trying to think of things to eat that are very, very colorful.
[11:36] There's so much evidence about how good that is generally for the brain, that is my go-to.
[11:43] What should I eat? Well, is it on the Mediterranean diet?
[11:46] If it is, then go ahead. If it's too processed, only do it just a little bit.
[11:52] Is it true that if we have less friends, if we have less strong relationships, if we're lonely,
[11:57] then our brain will shrink and is more prone to dementia and Alzheimer's and things like that?
[12:03] Yes. We are social creatures and there are really powerful studies that have shown the correlation
[12:12] between the number of social connections that we have, including just saying hello to the
[12:17] barista at Starbucks. It's not a close friendship that you develop over 30 years. It's just how many
[12:23] people you interact with and greet and longevity. The more people you are regularly interacting with,
[12:31] the longer you are living, overall longevity. But if you go into brain health,
[12:37] absolutely. It's also very, very healthy for you. It also brings happiness.
[12:44] Friend and colleague of mine, Robert Wallinger, studied what makes people happy. The study started
[12:50] in the 20s, the 1920s in Harvard. After all of those many, many, many decades, the answer is
[12:59] what brings happiness is the strength of your social connections. It makes you happier, it makes
[13:04] you live longer. Yes, loneliness on the flip side causes stress, long-term stress that damages
[13:13] the brain and in the long term can make it smaller and less healthy. Here's the fifth most replay
[13:21] moment. When I asked you before this conversation started rolling, what you're really excited about
[13:26] the moment your response to me was, there was a few things, but one of them, which lit up your face,
[13:30] was creating. Yes, and it's funny because... It lit up your face again.
[13:36] Yeah, it's funny because creating has been around for, I mean, ever for decades. And it's always been,
[13:42] in my mind, it was like one of those Jim Bro things. I'm like, I don't need to be swole.
[13:48] I don't need creating. This gets swole. This was the thought for many, many years. And then over
[13:54] the last five years or so, the effects of creatine on the brain started to really get my interest.
[14:03] Anything that affects the brain, I really become interested in. And so that's kind of what
[14:08] did get me the most excited about creatine, but also I started doing a lot of resistance training.
[14:15] And so I was like, okay, here I am now. I'm like one of those Jim guys. I'm doing the barbells.
[14:21] I'm doing the squats and the dead lifts and all that. And so why not give myself some of the
[14:26] creatine? But what is creatine? Why is it important? You talked about earlier, why doesn't our
[14:34] body just make more of these things that are so beneficial? We do make creatine. We make about,
[14:40] I don't know, our liver makes about one to three grams a day of creatine. And our brain also makes
[14:46] the creatine. And those are the two organs that make it. Creatine gets consumed by other
[14:52] tissues like the muscles, probably the one that's the greatest because creatine is stored as
[14:58] phosphocreatine, but it's used to make energy essentially. So it can increase muscle mass. It can
[15:04] increase muscle strength in combination with resistance training because you're able to regenerate
[15:10] and make energy faster. So for example, I became interested in it after reading studies where
[15:17] people that's supplemented with creatine that were engaged in resistance training were able to
[15:23] gain more lean body mass. They were able to gain more strength. It was increasing their training
[15:27] volume. So you can do one to two more reps, right? Whatever exercise you're doing. And it seems
[15:35] to decrease the recovery time between those those sets as well. So you're able to increase your
[15:40] training volume. Well, anything that's going to increase your training volume is going to then
[15:44] have the downstream effect of, you know, increasing the adaptations like increased muscle mass or
[15:50] increased muscle strength. I started supplementing with creatine about a year ago. And I started
[15:56] supplementing with it for that reason for the my training. And I was doing about five grams a day
[16:01] because that was really what was shown to be beneficial for muscle health in combination with
[16:07] resistance training. And it's important for people to realize that supplementing with creatine by
[16:13] itself without any type of resistance training isn't going to grow your muscle. It's not going to
[16:17] make you stronger. You have to put in the effort because what creatine is doing, it's helping you make
[16:24] the energy quicker, right? And then being able to make that energy quicker means that you're
[16:29] able to then do that exercise better, harder, more of it, right? So it's sort of supercharging
[16:36] your exercise routine. I had already been aware of the effects on the brain. I thought maybe the
[16:42] five grams a day would do that. So what are the effects on the brain? Well, your brain also consumes
[16:47] a lot of energy, you know, needs a lot of energy. So it does make its own creatine. But it turns out
[16:53] if you can, if you can give your brain more of that creatine, particularly under a period of
[17:00] anything that's causing stress. So let's say lack of sleep or let's say emotional, psychological
[17:09] stress or in my case, high cognitive load where you're just every day learning concepts,
[17:19] complex things, you're trying to remember them. You're putting the ideas together and coming up
[17:23] with new hypotheses and you know, you're just you're just you're studying a lot and it's very
[17:29] cognitively demanding and it's it's a type of stress on your brain. That's like my life, right?
[17:35] Under this condition of stress, depression is another one. That's a stress on your brain or
[17:41] neurodegenerative disease. That's a stress on your brain. So any kind of stressful condition,
[17:45] that's where creatine shines in the brain. I would argue that all of us who who has the perfect
[17:53] amount of sleep never has stress, nobody, right? There's always some sort of stress in the background.
[17:58] So that's when I was like, okay, so if you're the perfect person, you have no stress, you get
[18:05] the perfect amount of sleep every night, your brain makes enough creatine to kind of do what it needs
[18:10] to do. I know that I'm constantly under stress. So I'm like, okay, well, I think I need a boost.
[18:16] And this is where a lot of very interesting studies have come out of many different labs,
[18:21] some out of Germany that looked at the dose of creatine and how it increases creatine levels in
[18:27] the brain. And this is why I now supplement with 10 grams a day. So the study out of Germany
[18:34] found that five grams a day of creatine, if you're supplementing with five grams a day,
[18:38] your muscles are greedily consuming it, particularly if you're working out. They want it. They want
[18:43] it. After about five grams a day, especially over a few months, like you're saturating your muscle,
[18:48] and that's enough, right? Anything above that kind of spills over to the brain. And so what this
[18:55] German study found was that 10 grams of creatine increased creatine levels in several different
[19:00] regions of the brain. And that was probably the most exciting evidence that supplementing higher
[19:06] than five grams a day was actually doing something in terms of getting creatine into brain.
[19:11] There have now been a variety of studies that have looked at different outcomes, right? So if you
[19:16] supplement with 10 grams of creatine or even go higher than that, like 20 grams of creatine,
[19:22] how does that affect cognitive function, right? And so some of these studies have been done by
[19:27] Dr. Darren Kandau. He's at the University of Regina in Canada. And they've looked at things like
[19:34] sleep deprivation. And it's been found that if you take someone and you sleep deprived them for
[19:41] 21 hours and give them about 25 to 30 grams of creatine, it completely negates the cognitive
[19:50] deficits of sleep deprivation. Actually, not only does it negate the cognitive deficits of sleep
[19:55] deprivation, it makes people function better than if they were well-rested. That's where I was like
[20:05] wait a minute. There's many times when I'm traveling, I'm jet lagged, lots of times when I'm
[20:10] sleep deprived and I have to be doing a podcast or a presentation, whatever. And in those situations,
[20:17] I go up from my 10 grams to more like 20 grams. Like today, for example, I wasn't really
[20:24] sleep deprived, but you know, there's a lot of high-cognitive demand. This is a long podcast.
[20:30] All that stuff. And so I went up to 20 grams today on my creatine. And I will say, even at the 10
[20:36] grams, for me, we were talking about this with respect to being in ketosis. I don't feel that
[20:43] mid-afternoon crash when I have the creatine. Not being on a ketogenic diet, not being in ketosis.
[20:49] It's very clear for me. And I've done this where sometimes I only do five grams. And then
[20:55] if I do that, I'll notice. I'm like, why am I tired right now? So there's something interesting.
[20:59] And maybe it's placebo. I'm going to throw that out there. Very possible. But I don't know. Maybe
[21:05] the creatine is, again, it's able to regenerate that energy quicker. And so that's also beneficial
[21:10] for the brain. And now I would say all these creatine researchers, a lot of them are shifting
[21:15] to the brain. It used to be all muscle-focused. And now people are super interested in what
[21:20] creatine is doing to the brain, especially if you're supplementing with more of it.
[21:25] And this is important for people that are under a stressful situation. But also for vegans,
[21:31] because creatine is found in food, mostly in animal products, like meat and poultry and fish,
[21:36] dairy. A lot of vegans don't eat that. And I've had so many of my vegan friends.
[21:42] I've got them on the creatine and it's changed their lives. I mean, they're like,
[21:46] this is like incredible. Can you imagine someone who's not getting any creatine from their
[21:50] diets? They know me. And all of a sudden they start supplementing with 5, 10 grams of creatine.
[21:56] And it's like they have energy. Some people say they require less sleep, which is kind of interesting.
[22:01] That's kind of a comment I've heard many, many times from people is that it's like their brain
[22:06] doesn't need as much sleep. They have more energy. So I've been a big fan of the creatine,
[22:12] not only for the muscle, especially because you know, working out is something that's very
[22:15] important, but for the brain as well. I always thought of creatine as something that you
[22:21] took and you kind of had to load up on and then over a couple of weeks or months the effects would
[22:25] kick in. But you're telling me that if I had creatine in the morning, that same day I would
[22:30] experience potentially improved cognition if I have a big enough dose. Yes. So great question.
[22:38] A lot of studies that have been done that you're referring to have been done in the context of
[22:43] exercise and muscular performance. And the reason why people have to load up on like they do a
[22:51] loading phase, let's say 20 grams and then they go down to this sort of maintenance phase of 5 grams
[22:56] is because it takes, I don't know, I think it's about a month or so before you can saturate
[23:03] your muscular stores of creatine. And then it means that the creatine, which is actually stored
[23:10] in your muscle as phospho creatine, is there and ready to be used to make energy. So it takes,
[23:17] again, it takes about a month or so to do that unless you are really giving your muscles a high dose.
[23:24] Right. So the 5 grams a day, it can only do it for so many days and then finally you
[23:29] get saturated. When you do this loading phase, you kind of just accelerate that whole process.
[23:34] And so that's why when people are doing these experiments where they want to test the effects of
[23:38] creatine, they want, they want the participants to have really high levels of creatine in their
[23:42] muscles quick because they don't want to do a month-long experiment, right? They want the experiment
[23:46] to be like a couple of weeks or a week. So that was kind of the whole concept behind this loading
[23:50] phase. If you're not someone who's going to some kind of competition, you know, like your
[23:56] across-fit games or something, you don't really need to do that loading phase if you've already been
[24:00] supplementing with 5 grams a day for like a month. When it comes to the brain, what's happening,
[24:06] if you get above that 5 grams, that's pretty much all consumed by the muscle. You're having some
[24:12] leftover in circulation and the brain takes it up and it takes it up, right? When it really shines
[24:19] is under that stressful condition, which again, for me, I feel like every day is like cognitively
[24:25] demanding for me because I'm constantly, you know, learning new material or learning new information
[24:30] or working on things, right? And so there's a lot of cognitive stress on my brain. And so I feel like
[24:35] I'm constantly under that stress and that's where getting the creatine in your brain helps you make
[24:39] that energy quicker. And so that's why, like I've done, I've had, you know, been jet lagged and have
[24:44] have to give a talk at, you know, like 5 AM in the morning, my biological time after not getting
[24:50] sleep and I've done like 25 grams of creatine and it's insane how much it helps me. Again,
[24:56] it could be placebo because I'm anticipating that effect, which is fine. placebo is a real thing,
[25:00] it's great. I'm all about it. But there's some evidence also that this works, right? That the
[25:06] creatine is helping with under that sleep deprivation and that stressful condition. I was reading about
[25:12] study in 2025 where they gave creatine to people that had depressive symptoms alongside CBT training.
[25:20] And the people that had creatine and the cognitive behavioral therapy training
[25:24] experienced a greater improvement in their depression symptoms than those who just received
[25:29] the cognitive behavioral therapy, which is, which is incredible. It's fascinating. I mean,
[25:35] depression is a type of brain stress, right? I mean, we know inflammation plays a role in
[25:41] in depression. We know oxidative stress plays a role in depression. And there have now been some
[25:47] animal studies that have shown creatine is somehow having an anti-inflammatory effect. That
[25:52] hasn't all been worked out. So I don't know if it's all just the energy component of it. It could
[25:58] also be this other sort of newly identified role that creatines playing in sort of having an
[26:04] anti-inflammatory effect. And I don't know enough about that. I don't know that there's enough
[26:08] even known about that, but I do know that it exists. And it's fascinating because again,
[26:13] I think where creatine really shines in the brain and it's been shown study after study is
[26:18] under some kind of stressful condition, depression or sleep deprivation. Or there's a new study that
[26:23] came out. It was published, I don't know, a month ago or so, showing that it was a very small pilot
[26:29] study and I want to caveat this. There was no placebo control. But it did show that giving
[26:36] people with Alzheimer's disease creatine, I believe it was 20 grams a day, did improve their
[26:42] cognition. And so again, this is a whole new field where now we're looking at creatine in the
[26:48] brain, not just the gym bros and not just the muscular effects, but in the brain and how it's
[26:54] affecting the brain and being beneficial for cognition, for brain aging, for depression.
[27:01] Here's the fourth most replayed moment. One of the most inspiring and I think liberating things
[27:06] that I've heard in your work is this idea of neuroplasticity because if the brain can physiologically
[27:13] change based on what I'm doing, then it means that who I am now, my identity, that 19-year-old
[27:18] who's sleeping in the money thing with the ferret isn't who I always have to be. I can literally
[27:23] change. We've spoken a little bit around what causes the motivation to actually change,
[27:28] but knowing that my brain will actually change, those two things are really inspiring for me,
[27:34] because it means that whatever rut times stuck in isn't necessarily a permanent one.
[27:38] Now you said that the motivation to change comes from fear.
[27:41] Well, in my case, it took a fear circumstance, fear of becoming a permanent failure,
[27:48] to motivate immense change. And that was that circumstance. I do believe, however, that the
[27:56] best work, our most creative and best work, comes from a love of craft.
[28:02] But sometimes in order to find what you truly love, you have to be scared into setting off
[28:07] on a path to find it. So, neuroplasticity is absolutely real. But if the question is, can
[28:15] a person change? Can you learn new things? Can you unlearn certain patterns? Can you overcome
[28:20] traumas at any age? The answer is absolutely categorically, yes. How? Well, it's very clear that as
[28:30] a child, until about age 25, more or less, just passive experience will shape the brain for better
[28:37] or worse. After about age 25, and again, these are not strict cutoffs. We can change our brain,
[28:44] but what's required is a market shift in the neurochemical environment under which something
[28:50] happens. So, one of the reasons why any traumatic event will forever be remembered,
[28:56] although, by the way, you can remove some of the emotional load of that, trauma does not have to
[29:00] be traumatic forever, is because when we see or experience something very intense of a fearful nature,
[29:08] there is the release of certain what we call neuromodulators, things like epinephrine, adrenaline,
[29:14] and other neuromodulators that cause a state shift in our body and brain. And the neurosystem
[29:22] recognizes this as unusual, and as a consequence in the subsequent days, there's reordering of the
[29:27] connections. So that the brain can prepare for that event should it happen again. This is why we
[29:34] have what's called one trial learning. You go to a certain location, something terrible happens
[29:38] there. You will forever associate that location with something terrible. But there are tools,
[29:43] therapy, and other tools that can allow the emotional load to be removed from that so that you could
[29:49] go to that location and feel calm, no fear whatsoever. The good news is you can also learn anything
[29:55] you want to learn, provided there's a shift in this neurochemical environment. This is why when we
[30:00] are very interested and focused on something, two of the main requirements for neuroplasticity,
[30:05] we have to be alert and we have to be focused. We can't learn passively as adults. We can't just play
[30:11] a lecture about AI and large language models or neuroscience in the room, and then the knowledge
[30:19] doesn't just sink in biosmosis. But if we pay attention and we're alert when we pay attention,
[30:26] there's a shift in the neurochemicals associated with that attention. What we call the catacolamines,
[30:31] it's three molecules dopamine, epinephrine, and nor epinephrine, all which cause an increase in
[30:36] alertness, all which cause an increase in focus, a tightening of our visual field and our auditory
[30:41] field. So like cones of attention is one way to think about it. And then it sets emotion, a bunch of
[30:47] biological processes such that if we get adequate sleep that night, maybe the next night as well,
[30:53] there's reordering of neural connection so that that knowledge that new experience is consolidated
[30:58] in your brain. You are forever changed as a consequence of that experience. So when we hear that
[31:04] the brain is constantly changing, everything that we encounter changes our brain. That's not true.
[31:10] Why would the brain change unless it needed to? As a child, the brain is basically a template for
[31:16] change. It's trying to understand the environment and make predictions. And so that's true. Neuroplasticity
[31:21] is a cardinal feature of childhood and adolescence in the teen years. Just think about the music you
[31:27] listen to when you're a teen. No other music will ever have as much significance. And that's because
[31:32] as a teen, your body is flooded with hormones and neuromodulators that the amount of meaning that
[31:37] comes from now seemingly trivial events when you're a teenager or adolescent is immense. That song
[31:44] meant so much and it's because of the neurochemical milieu it creates in you. But as an adult,
[31:49] it takes a stronger stimulus as we say. The nervous system is very efficient in that way. It doesn't
[31:55] change unless it has to. And it always changes if it needs to in order to keep you safe. This is why
[32:02] there's an asymmetric influence of fear as opposed to just interest in terms of what will shift our
[32:08] brain. But it's nice to know that love and excitement and appreciation are very strong stimuli
[32:17] for changing the brain. From everything we know about neuroscience, it's clear that it doesn't matter
[32:23] if you're 90 years old, 70 years old, 50 years old. If you want to learn, you can learn. And that
[32:29] learning occurs through neuroplasticity, which is the reordering of neural connections, strengthening
[32:34] of certain connections, weakening of others. And in some rare cases, the addition of new neurons. But
[32:39] you absolutely can change your brain, but you have to pay attention to the thing you want to
[32:45] incorporate into your brain. You have to be alert while you do that. And then you absolutely have
[32:49] to go get some rest because it's during sleep and during meditative states and during rest
[32:55] that the actual rewiring of the brain occurs. You know, every once in a while you come across
[33:00] a product that has such a huge impact on your life that you'd probably describe it as
[33:06] a game changer. And I would say for about 35 to 40% of my team, they would currently describe
[33:13] this product that I have in front of me called Keytone IQ, which you can get at keytone.com
[33:19] as a game changer. But the reason I became a co-owner of this company and the reason why they now
[33:23] are responsive to this podcast is because one day when I came to work, there was a box of this
[33:27] stuff sat on my desk. I had no idea what it was. Lily in my team says that this company have been
[33:32] in touch. So I went upstairs, tried it and quite frankly, the rest is history in terms of my focus,
[33:38] my energy levels, how I feel, how I work, how productive I am, game changer. So if you want to
[33:44] give it a try, visit keytone.com slash Stephen for 30% off. You'll also get a free gift with your
[33:49] second shipment. And now you can find keytone IQ at target stores across the United States,
[33:54] where your first shot is completely free of charge. All I had to do was brain dump. Imagine if you
[34:00] had someone with you at all times that could take the ideas you have in your head, synthesize them
[34:06] with AI to make them sound better and more grammatically correct and write them down for you.
[34:11] This is exactly what whisper flow is in my life. It is this thought partner that helps me explain
[34:16] what I want to say. And it now means that on the go, when I'm alone in my office, when I'm out
[34:21] in a bow, I can respond to emails and Slack messages and whatsapps and everything across all of my
[34:26] devices just by speaking. I love this tool. And I started talking about this from my behind
[34:29] the scenes channel a couple of months back. And then the founder reached out to me and said,
[34:33] we're seeing a lot of people come to our tool because of you. So we'd love to be a sponsor,
[34:36] we'd love you to be an investor in the company. And so I signed up for both of those offers.
[34:40] And I'm now an investor and a huge partner in a company called Whisper Flow. You have to check
[34:44] it out. Whisper Flow is four times faster than typing. So if you want to give it a try, head over
[34:49] to WhisperFlow.ai slash DOAC to get started for free. And you can find that link to Whisper Flow
[34:56] in the description below. There are a few sports that I make time for, no matter where I am in the world.
[35:01] And one of them is of course football. The other is MMA, but watching that abroad usually
[35:05] requires a VPN. I spend so much time traveling. I've just spent the last two and a half months
[35:10] traveling through Asia and Europe and now back here in the United States. And as I'm traveling,
[35:14] there are so many different shows that I want to watch on TV or on some streaming websites.
[35:18] So when I was traveling through Asia and I was in Kuala Lumpur one day, then the next day I was in
[35:22] Hong Kong and the next day I was in Indonesia, all of those countries had a different streaming provider,
[35:26] a different broadcaster. And so in most of those countries, they had to rely on express VPN,
[35:31] who responds to this podcast. Their tool is private and secure. And it's very, very simple how it
[35:36] works. When you're in that country and you want to watch a show that you love in the UK,
[35:40] all you do is you go on there and you click the button UK and it means that you can gain access
[35:44] to content in the UK. If you're after a similar solution in your life and you've experienced that
[35:48] problem too, visit expressvpn.com slash duac to find out how you can access express VPN for an extra
[35:54] four months at no cost. Here is the third most replayed moment. For those people who have just
[36:01] clicked to listen to this conversation, can you tell them the mission you're on and why it's so
[36:08] important? Yeah, well, thanks so much for having this conversation with me. I think that illustrates
[36:12] the problem, right? Someone isn't informed as you don't know anything. I've never heard of
[36:16] nitric oxide. So it's important for us to just make a distinction between like nitric gas that
[36:22] people, you know, inhale. And that used, if you played like some of those racing car games,
[36:27] you press a button and the call goes really fast. Well, that's nitrous nitrous nitrous. These are
[36:32] two separate things. Yeah, very good point. So this is the not nitrous oxide nitrous oxide is,
[36:39] I mean, I'm asking it's a dental anesthetic, right? It's a gas. It's called laughing gas. That's
[36:43] in two. Oh, it's the chemical formula. What we're talking about is nitric oxide or in one nitrogen,
[36:50] one oxygen. This molecule is is foundational for human health and longevity. So nitric oxide is
[36:56] a gas. It's a naturally produced molecule. It's a signaling molecule in the human body. And so it's
[37:01] it regulates things like blood flow and oxygen delivery and it mobilizes our own stem cells to help
[37:06] us recover and repair and replace dysfunctional cells that improves energy production inside the cell.
[37:13] And it regulates blood flow. So nitric oxide is a gas. It's produced in the endothelium. So the
[37:18] endothelium is the single layer of cells that line every blood vessel throughout the body.
[37:23] So the function of these endothelial cells is to regulate vascular tone and to regulate,
[37:29] you know, solute exchange and extravization or transport of molecules across that endothelial layer.
[37:36] And so when your endothelial cells can no longer make nitric oxide gas,
[37:40] they no longer dilate. So the blood vessels become constricted. You start to get inflammation.
[37:46] You get stiff arteries, plaque deposition. And that's what starts cardiovascular disease
[37:51] for atlas grocers. So let me get this straight. I'll repeat back to what I think I understand
[37:55] about nitric oxide. And you tell me if it's accurate. So this nitric oxide is a chemical that
[38:02] is in all the blood cells of my body. And it allows my blood cells to basically expand,
[38:08] open up so blood can flow through there. So if it dilates, it dilates the smooth muscle,
[38:13] which is not affecting the cells per se, but it's dilating the smooth muscle that surrounds the
[38:18] blood vessels, which is clear to relaxation in dilation. So my blood cells would then expand
[38:24] and what blood would go through there. But if I'm deficient, that mechanism doesn't work and my
[38:29] blood cells wouldn't expand, ultimately expand through the relaxation of the muscles.
[38:34] That's right. And therefore I would have higher blood pressure, which can lead to a series of
[38:39] downstream diseases and consequences. And so when we look at the graph that I showed a second
[38:45] ago, where we're seeing, for anyone that can't see this graph because you're listening on audio,
[38:49] we're seeing nitric oxide levels in young people up to the age of roughly around 20 are optimal.
[38:57] And then from about 30 to 70, there's this tremendous sort of 80, 90% drop. In terms of chronic
[39:04] disease, that is downstream from me losing nitric oxide level. Can you give me a bit of a
[39:09] menu of chronic disease that is associated with this nitric oxide deficiency? Yep.
[39:17] We've touched on them. So erectile dysfunction. So when erections in both men and women are
[39:21] dependent upon dilation of the blood vessels to get engorgement, to get increase in blood flow,
[39:26] and that's what an erection is. And we call that the canary in the coal mine. Because for years,
[39:31] people thought it was a lifestyle disorder, right? Well, erectile dysfunction. Yeah. But now
[39:36] it's recognized that it's a symptom of loss of nitric oxide and really an accelerated form of
[39:42] cardiovascular disease, high blood pressure, metabolic disease, and diabetes. And then the other one is
[39:48] obviously Alzheimer's because Alzheimer's is a vascular disease. And nitric oxide corrects every
[39:54] single thing we know about Alzheimer's. It improves blood flow to the brain. It improves glucose
[40:00] so it overcomes the metabolic aspect of Alzheimer's. It reduces inflammation. In fact,
[40:05] the number of my patents on the method of reducing inflammation. It inhibits the oxidative stress
[40:10] we see in Alzheimer's and neurological disease, and it prevents the immune dysfunction. And when you
[40:15] do that, when you restore blood flow and you get nutrients and oxygen in and you take out the
[40:19] metabolic waste products, there's no misfolding a protein. So you don't get the amyloid plaque,
[40:24] you don't get the tail tangles. So this simple molecule nitric oxide gas, I'm absolutely convinced
[40:30] we'll eradicate and cure Alzheimer's. Really? Because it addresses every physiological root cause
[40:36] of Alzheimer's. If you can get it administered therapeutically to patients,
[40:42] early enough? No, I think that's a very key because the success or failure of any clinical trial,
[40:49] any drug and any clinical trial is dependent upon the design of the clinical trial.
[40:53] And what patients at what stage of disease that you enroll these patients? So what are the
[40:57] inclusion criteria and what are the exclusion criteria? And there's a stage in every disease,
[41:04] whether it's hard disease, kidney disease, Alzheimer's, where you've reached a point of no return.
[41:09] There's really no medical therapy that's going to reverse that disease because it's progressed
[41:14] to a state that's irreversible. So I think what we try to do is take
[41:18] patients early in the process, what we call vascular dementia, the mod cognitive impairment,
[41:24] early Alzheimer's. Because what I want to be able to demonstrate is two things. Number one,
[41:29] can we stop the progression of disease? Once it started, can we stop the progression? And then
[41:35] number two is we want to enroll patients far enough along to where we can show regression.
[41:42] So can you move the needle back? And so that's a very kind of a specific and finite patient population
[41:49] when you design a clinical study. Number one, at the absolute worst, we want to stop progression.
[41:55] At the absolute best, we want to show that we can regress disease. And that's the goal of therapy
[42:00] is that you understand the mechanism of disease to the extent that you can treat it, you can prevent it,
[42:06] you can reverse it, and you can cure it. When I think about the role that food plays in my
[42:11] nitric oxide production, what should I be eating to increase my nitric oxide levels or to keep
[42:19] them at a healthy level? I think the same answer is for that too. It's not so much what we should
[42:27] be eating. It's what we should not be eating. Okay. So we'll cover those step by step. Number one,
[42:32] you have to avoid sugar and high glycemic index foods because sugar is a toxin. It's a poison
[42:40] and a think about what sugar is. So when we eat sugar or drink sugar beverages,
[42:47] whether it's sucrose, whether it's fructose, whether it's high fructose cornstripe,
[42:51] the end result inside the human is we see an increase in glucose. So elevation in blood sugar or
[42:58] blood glucose is diabetes, right? And now there's continuous glucose monitors that you can get
[43:05] anywhere. And everybody does this. So if you eat something and it causes an increase in your
[43:09] blood sugar, blood glucose, then you should avoid that. Because glucose, as the name applies,
[43:15] is glue, right? It's sticky. And if we if you have a soda and you spill it on your countertop,
[43:20] you come back the next day, it's sticky, right? Well, that's what happens inside the body.
[43:24] That sugar sticks to everything. It sticks to proteins. It sticks to enzymes.
[43:28] And it lowers my chick oxide production. Absolutely. That's why diabetics have a 10-time higher
[43:35] incidence of heart attack, stroke, all-cause mortality, mortality. That's why they develop
[43:39] neural, neurological or peripheral neuropathy. That's why they have non-healing wounds. There's
[43:44] no nitric oxide. That's why they're developing diabetic retinopathy, macular degeneration,
[43:50] pancreatitis. I mean, all of that can be traced back to a lack of nitric oxide production,
[43:55] because the sugar stuck to the enzyme, the sugar destroys the oral microbiome and completely
[44:01] changes the the ecology of the bacteria and completely shuts down nitric oxide production,
[44:06] right? But I think to answer your question, what should we be eating? I think you've got to eat a
[44:11] balanced diet in moderation. You know, Americans are overfed. All you got to do is walk around and see
[44:17] the epidemic of obesity, good high quality protein, good quality fats, and little or no carbs.
[44:24] And it's really that simple. Here's the second to most replayed moment.
[44:29] When you think about behaviors and habits that are popular and trendy at the moment,
[44:34] are there any that stand out to you as being particularly good for the brain or particularly bad
[44:39] for the brain? Because I had a couple come to mind that I wanted to throw at you. I mean, one of them
[44:44] that's exploding in the UK at the moment is paddle, which is kind of, I think you call it pickle
[44:50] ball here. Good for my brain, bad for my brain. It's so good for your brain, because
[44:58] it's working your cerebellum. And I told you that because yours was sleepy.
[45:05] And as you activate this and you do that with coordination exercises, it then activates your
[45:11] frontal lobes. Does that mean that people that are uncoordinated have a cerebellum issue? Yes.
[45:16] Oh, really? And the more you do it, the better coordination you develop.
[45:25] And that's why coordination exercises for kids, so we talked about kids, is you want to do that
[45:32] with them early, play sports, but not sports where they're going to get a head injury, right? I mean,
[45:39] we have to be smarter than we are. But when I was young, my mother, who's now 93, was the
[45:52] ping pong champion in the neighborhood. And she was really good. And she never let us beat her
[45:58] until we could. But she was always encouraging. I've got, I was looking at it as you were speaking
[46:08] about different trends at the moment that are really good, bad for the brain. And one big trend
[46:13] at the moment is neuroplasticity training. Lots of people are doing games and using other things to
[46:19] like there's apps you can get that are neuroplasticity training apps. Does any of that stuff work?
[46:24] Some of them. Some of it works. And if you're, so for example, if you're doing memorization games,
[46:31] do them while you're on the bike. Now, not in the street, but if you're on a stationary bike,
[46:40] and you're doing those games, it's been found that exercise increases blood flow to the hippocampus,
[46:52] meaning you're more likely to remember it and your strengthening your brain in the process. So
[46:59] exercise with new learning. Stunner. So if I want to learn something, I should do it while walking
[47:07] or moving in motion. Right. So if you're listening to a language app, you know, example, do it while
[47:14] you're walking mindfulness and meditation, good or bad for the brain. Great. I published three
[47:20] studies on a Kundalini yoga form of meditation called Kirt and Kriya. It's a 12 minute meditation.
[47:27] I always say it's the perfect ADD meditation because it's only 12 minutes. And for 12 minutes,
[47:32] you do this. Sata na ma. Sata na ma. Sata na ma. It's two minutes out loud, two minutes whispering,
[47:42] four minutes silently to yourself, two minutes whispering, two minutes out loud. You're done. Sata na ma,
[47:50] birth, life, death, reborn, birth, life. But the one we studied is Sata na ma. And so if they
[48:01] look at up Kirt and Kriya, activates your cerebellum, activates your frontal lobes, comes down
[48:11] your emotional brain. People who did that for 12 minutes or eight weeks, their resting frontal
[48:21] lobe function was stronger. So simple. What the hell is going on there? I think it's the focused
[48:31] attention plus you're doing a coordination meditation. Sata na ma. Sata loving your job,
[48:41] good or bad for the brain. Absolutely great for your brain. If you're learning new things,
[48:50] people who are in a job that does not require new learning, have a higher incidence of Alzheimer's
[48:57] disease. So if you're stagnant in your work, you have a higher risk of Alzheimer's. And like,
[49:02] if I just read brain scans all day, well, I know how to do it. I'm not learning anything new.
[49:10] So I do that. But I also am writing about something I don't know about. Or I'm learning something
[49:21] new. What if you're working with ourselves? I'm sorry. I love the job, but I'm working with
[49:26] bad for your brain. Chronic stress increases cortisol. And I think everybody should sort of know
[49:34] their baseline cortisol level. And cortisol shrinks the hippocampus and puts fat on your belly.
[49:44] So that's two very bad things for your brain. Breathwork, that's a big track. Excellent. Excellent.
[49:50] You want to break a panic attack? The 15 second breath, four seconds in, hold it for a second
[49:59] and a half, eight seconds out, hold it for a second and a half. You just do that four or five
[50:07] times. Your whole nervous system will calm down. And the research shows take twice as long to
[50:16] breathe out as you breathe in. That's why four seconds in, eight seconds out.
[50:22] It shifts your nervous system, doesn't it? Yes. It increases something called bagel tone.
[50:27] Okay, some bad things then. Social media usage, chronic social media usage, good for the brain,
[50:31] bad for the brain. Because you're constantly comparing yourself to people who aren't real.
[50:37] What about workaholism and hustle culture? So I love my work. Am I addicted to it? I don't know.
[50:50] But I love it. When they say people are workaholics and it's bad for the brain,
[50:59] it's there working with assholes or doing something they don't like or doing it for the money,
[51:09] but without other purpose. Microplastics. That's a big truffle for the brain. One of the major
[51:18] causes of hormone disruption and cancer. I'm other environments. Thank you for not giving me
[51:26] a plastic water bottle. That's okay. Imagine if we did that. A lot of time these days talking
[51:32] about the microplastics and other environmental toxins that I think people are becoming more aware
[51:36] of now, which is good. Noise pollution. Bad for the brain. And if it hurts your hearing, hearing loss
[51:46] is actually one of the risk factors for Alzheimer's. Why is that? I did it because you're not getting
[51:53] input. And if you're not getting appropriate input, your brain starts to atrophy. And if you don't
[52:05] hear what other people are saying and you have a lot of ants, you have a high negativity bias,
[52:11] is you can actually begin to get a bit paranoid and fill in the empty spaces with negativity.
[52:19] I just bought some new Apple AirPods. And when I connected them to my phone, it said,
[52:24] you want to do a hearing test. So I did the hearing test. And then I asked my girlfriend, I said,
[52:28] you should do this hearing test as well, because I needed something to compare it to. And I was a
[52:31] little bit shocked. It said I hadn't lost any hearing yet, but my hearing was significantly not as
[52:38] good as hers. And I remember thinking, gosh, you know, this is, but I didn't have any idea that
[52:44] it was linked to Alzheimer's at all. So now I've turned down the volume for the first time in my life
[52:49] because I think you're hearing declines regardless, really, of what you do with age anyway.
[52:54] But as you said earlier, like starting from a better baseline when you're talking about the
[52:58] brain reserves is really the game, I think, with aging. My last point is my last question is a bit of
[53:07] seems to be uncorrelated, but the world is heading towards a world that's driven by artificial
[53:12] intelligence. It's like all the rage at the moment, if you log on in the internet, people talking
[53:17] about they're going to lose their jobs, all of these new tools that allow us to optimize our lives
[53:21] in a variety of different ways. When you think about the world of AI that we're heading into,
[53:26] there's so many ways that I imagine it's going to make your job easier as someone who's doing scans
[53:31] of brains and so on. But do you think artificial intelligence is going to be good or bad for our brains?
[53:37] I think in the short run, it's going to be bad because your brain is going to do less,
[53:48] and that's bad for the brain. I think it's fascinating to watch what's going to happen.
[53:55] And ultimately, in the words of my friend, Byron Katie, argue with reality, welcome to hell.
[54:04] We need to figure out how to use it to enhance our lives rather than to steal brain development.
[54:13] Here's the first most replayed moment. There was a study done in 2007 that showed
[54:18] Kirk, I don't even say it. Kirk, cumin. That shows Kirk, cumin up regulates anti-oxidant
[54:26] defenses and down regulates oxidative stress. There was a study done in 2016, which is a
[54:33] metronalysis of random control trials found curcumin comparable to ibuprofen in terms of pain relief.
[54:41] Yeah, there's a lot of work on Kirk and Min and Turmeric. As I said, a lot of people get confused
[54:46] because they think they only work if you absorb it into the blood. And I'm saying that actually you
[54:51] don't. What you do is you work with the microbiome to make it useful. And there's early preclinical
[54:59] studies taking place around the impact it can have with cancers. And there's promising
[55:03] but early studies showing the impact that Kirk, cumin that comes from turmeric can have on brain
[55:08] health. Yes. Well, that's focuses switching on to the blood supply to the brain, what we call
[55:15] the vascular effects on the brain. And there's something we used to call the blood brain barrier,
[55:22] which probably we heard of, which is seen to be the place where the barrier stops a lot of stuff
[55:29] entering the brain and potentially upsetting it. We now know this blood brain barrier is a very
[55:34] dynamic, interesting interface between the brains tissue and the rest of us is now called the
[55:43] neuro vascular unit NVU. And it is so exciting. And the more we look at it so far, the more we find
[55:53] of the things that help the neuro vascular unit, the blood brain barrier, our plants. And we have
[56:00] green tea. And if you really want to help our brain health regular drinking or green tea,
[56:12] it's been showing to be really useful. Not that rather than the supplement, by the way,
[56:16] is the drink that you have. I'll put it in here. Right, so we can make it.
[56:24] So as you make that, can you explain to me why green tea is a good idea? Because it contains
[56:32] a number of, again, polyphenols. And polyphenols are these colors. These colors, yeah.
[56:38] In this case, it's green, obviously. And memory green tea is just the smoked, unprocessed part of
[56:44] the tea leaf, it's a plant called Camelia. So this is a nice Japanese tea pot. It's a sort of
[56:56] thing you'd have green tea in. And these are the mugs, but we fill these up already with gender
[57:02] and sentiment. So let's leave it for a moment. But we can, while it's sitting there for a while,
[57:08] there are a number of these polyphenols in green tea that seem to be particularly effective
[57:16] in modulating that barrier we talked about, the neuro vascular unit between the brain and the rest
[57:21] of us. And there's all sorts of reasons why regular consumption of green tea seems to be linked
[57:28] to less of this sort of trouble. What sort of trouble? The dementia type problems, the
[57:33] cognitive decline as you get older. Do they find that in cultures where they drink a lot of green tea,
[57:38] they have less dementia? Yeah, but that doesn't mean there's a cause and effect. So you need a few
[57:42] other things to establish that. What we're finding is that other plants have very likely powerful
[57:49] effects in this area. And I mentioned the rosemary. Now all you need to do to appreciate rosemary is
[57:56] to press it and sniff. That smells so good. Really nice. That's not just nice because what you're
[58:04] doing there is you're inhaling volusual oils, the things to give the smell. And when you're inhaling,
[58:11] they're literally going into your brain because part of the brain actually reaches the outside world,
[58:18] it's called the olfactory lobe. And when you inhale something, it literally moves into the brain.
[58:24] And from there into the limbic system. Remember there's a line in the Shakespeare play called
[58:30] Hamlet, a philia. The young lady says, rose me, that's for remembrance. Because everyone knew that
[58:39] this improved cognitive functions. And when I was in working on that campus in Maryland,
[58:45] we actually did a clinical trial with rose me in people with struggling with their crosswords,
[58:51] they get older and found that although it wasn't a conclusive study, there were pointers to it
[58:56] improving cognitive or violence in those people. And there's been other studies since that
[59:02] reason that reinforced that. I would say that rosemary is one of the ones to watch in terms of
[59:08] long-term brain health. There's another remedy called ginkgo that a lot of people know about,
[59:13] which there's used as a prescription medicine in Europe for cardiovascular problems. And that's
[59:20] been shown to be likely useful. And using the same sort of mechanisms as we've seen here. And with
[59:27] the green tea, I'll check it here. Yeah, that looks all right. You see it's more yellow than green.
[59:40] And this is flavored with a little bit of mint to make it a little more agreeable. Sometimes people
[59:46] find green tea is not their favourite taste. Green tea is rich in polyphenols, which are linked
[59:52] to benefits ranging from heart and brain health to fat loss and cancer prevention.
[1:00:00] It's got a nice minty flavour. Yeah, with that, couldn't you? Yeah, yeah. I got a friend out
[1:00:06] again. She's all over this stuff. She's always bloody right. Well, you know that,
[1:00:10] you've learned that lesson a long time ago. I know, right? Like I say it all the time on this
[1:00:13] podcast, but she's always like two, three years ahead of what then someone really, really smart
[1:00:18] comes and tells me. And I spend those two or three years in denial. I'm like, what the fuck is she
[1:00:22] like to get rid of that? Don't get me start on quick cow. If you start talking to me about a cow.
[1:00:26] No, no, no, no, no. She's been telling me that I'm going to nail this because there's a lot of
[1:00:31] people listening who will want to hear this. Coco. Yeah. Chocolate. Start chocolate is a medicine
[1:00:39] end of one of the best medicines around is 50 grams or 100 grams of 75% or more dark chocolate.
[1:00:49] Do you know what? I've just realized my girlfriend, she's going to live till she's 150.
[1:00:53] Because she all she eats 90% or something 80% dark chocolate. She drinks green tea all day. She has
[1:01:03] the ginger and cinnamon drinks all day. She eats the full rainbow. She should be stepping in for you.
[1:01:11] I know, I know exactly. Now, Coco, seriously brain health as well, cardiovascular health.
[1:01:22] I mean, they just, they do studies where they've put Coco into what volunteers, it means students
[1:01:27] usually, you know, so young kids and they were able to show changes in the blood flow within
[1:01:35] minutes, so little than an hour of eating Coco. An official changes in your blood flow.
[1:01:43] They call it the heart medicine. Heart circulation, brain.
[1:01:49] So she's my girlfriend's very spiritual. She runs a business called Barley Breathwork.
[1:01:53] Hashtag, I have to say that. But in her business, one of the things she does at the very start of
[1:01:58] the session with women all over the world that come to her retreats, is she makes Coco for them.
[1:02:04] And you notice instantly how people change when they've had a hot cup of Coco.
[1:02:10] And she says it almost brings out their heart. And I guess that's because of the circulation
[1:02:15] reasons. It is. But it also, of course, we know it contains a few other beneficial,
[1:02:21] stimulate stimulating things, sort of similar to the effects of the coffee, which in
[1:02:26] certainly as I already said is a medicine as well. But Coco and chocolate does have a
[1:02:32] lifting effect, which is why we love it so. And we have to be clear here, we're not talking about
[1:02:37] hot chocolate that comes from a packet or something necessarily. We would like it to be as dark as
[1:02:41] possible. Okay. So the less sugar, the less fat. So we talk about 75% cocoa solids,
[1:02:50] you know, so it's dark chocolate. And it tastes a bit more medicinal, doesn't it? It's not a sweet.
[1:02:56] But I'm saying to many of my patients take 50 grams a day. It's a medicine.
[1:03:02] Damn. She's right. My fridge is full of dark chocolate. I tend to avoid it, but the
[1:03:07] drawer of my fridge has all of her dark chocolate in. And it's, she likes it 90%. If she can get a
[1:03:13] 90% she'll take it. Yeah, 90%. It's hard to tell. Yeah. Yeah.
[1:03:18] I'm going to look at the green tea. It was a study done in 2008, which supports
[1:03:26] how it improved cognitive function memory tension accuracy. And long-term consumption
[1:03:31] is associated with lower risk of cognitive decline and Alzheimer's disease,
[1:03:35] according to the journal of nutritional biochemistry in 2011.
[1:03:39] It's nice to have somebody else just say what you said. Yeah, but it's exactly.
[1:03:44] I didn't realize that I didn't, I had no idea. I had no idea. All those times I turned it down
[1:03:51] when she offered it to me. Hmm. Go and say sorry. I have literally literally, I've got to
[1:03:57] in. Wow. Heart, health, brain function, fat burning and metabolism, cancer prevention,
[1:04:03] early evidence, blood sugar, insulin sensitivity, gut and oral health.
[1:04:12] If there's anything we need, it is connection, especially in the world we're living in today.
[1:04:16] And that is exactly why we created these conversation cards, because on this show when I sit here
[1:04:21] with my guest and have those deep intimate conversations, this remarkable thing happens time and time
[1:04:27] again. We feel deeply connected to each other. At the end of every episode, the guest I'm
[1:04:32] interviewing leaves a question for the next guest, and we've turned them into these conversation
[1:04:37] cards. And we've added these twist cards to make your conversations even more interesting.
[1:04:41] And there are so many more twists along the way with the conversation cards. This is the brand new
[1:04:45] addition. And for the first time ever, I've added to the pack this gold card, which is an exclusive
[1:04:51] question from me. But I'm only putting the gold cards in the first run of conversation cards.
[1:04:57] So get yours now before the limited edition gold cards are all gone. Head to the link in the
[1:05:01] description below.

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